New Year Starts 2005

Topics:

1. "Reconciliation" Study Circles: meeting on Wed. night went quite well, people were there who I was surprized and pleased to see: Shari Blanton, David Arthur. Also, a new participant, Claudia Boynton (sp), from St. Mary's, tasked with bringing Study Circle process to St. Mary's.
   
2. Cooking breakfast, revelations, reading:
1. This morning I cooked a "simple breakfast"
2. I've been reading Richard Olney's Simple French Cooking as well as, most recently, Elizabeth David's An Omelette and a Glass of Wine: both are revelations of what good writing and good writing about good cooking can be.
   
3. The simple breakfast that I cooked this morning was pancakes with left-over soup: doesn't sound particularly memorable or even appetizing. But my thoughts as I savored it while reading Elizabeth Davids essay para Navidad were along the lines of, if we don't record, remember, reflect on, moments when revelations come then, what's the point? So, these notes.
4. The pancakes were to be simple, and they were. No recipe. I put a couple tablespoons of unbleached all-purpose flour in a bowl, joined them with a little less corn flour (fine meal would do, I think). To this I added pinches of baking powder and baking soda, a pinch of salt, a few grinds of coarse black pepper. I mixed well one egg with about a cup of buttermilk with a little more thin yogurt. When this was all well mixed I added it to the dry ingredients and stirred in the bowl to break up the lumps, but not too much. Meanwhile, I had heated a griddle.
5. In the microwave I reheated, slowly, some leftover soup in a small bowl. As it had set, congealed, gelled, it was a bit before I realized it was not a leftover fish soup but instead the little bit of vegetables and broth left from a red snapper en papillote (which see below.)
   
6. I cooked the little bit of pancake batter, resulting in five or six small cakes. I rolled them up with a little butter in each. I cut the rolled logs into several narrow pieces, each now a sort of pinwheel.
   
7. I then took the bowl of leftovers with its rich fish broth and the rolled pancakes over to the dining room table, sat down, and ate the pancakes segments dipped in the fish broth. Awhile I read the E. David essay, para Navidad, about how in southwest France, in near poverty and deprivation, the people would prepare foods of memory to save until Christmas, how the weeks and months before Christmas had ther moments of anticipation, of waiting, and of the quiet joy (my term, not hers, she doesn't seem to me a "joyous" type writer - who knows what kind of person she was?) of looking forward to the time when all the riches saved up could be savored and enjoyed. I would look up, out our grand view across the clear blue water rustling in a light breez to the clear blue winter sky - moment of awareness, of joy, of enjoyment and simple living amidst the chaos and destruction we're seeing in the media about the horrific tsunami in the Indian Ocean. A revelation, a memory, quickly fading now as I am finishing this up on Fri, January 7.
   
8. The recipe for the red snapper:
1. Mark's New Year's Eve 2005 version
   
   1 (8-ounce) salmon fillet, pin bones removed
   1 (2-3 pound) whole red snapper, cleaned, head on
   2 teaspoons salt
   1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
   1 small bunch fresh parsley, chopped
   1 whole lemon, zested and then thinly sliced
   1/3 cup julienned fennel bulb
   1/3 cup julienned carrots
   (Other tender vegetables as available)
   1 cup thinly sliced red onion
   2 teaspoons minced garlic
   1 orange zested, peeled, then thinly sliced; discard seeds
   1 tablespoon fish sauce
   1 tablespoon soy sauce
   1 tablespoon Fruity olive oil
   1/2 cup white wine
   1 tablespoon butter
   
   Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.

   Cut foil into 15 by 48-inch sheet. Fold in 1/2 and lay on baking/cookie sheet. Unfold. Coarsely chop fennel stems, 1 stick celery and put on bottom of foil. Lay snapper diagonally on sheet pan on top of 1 foil. Salt and pepper fish, inside and out. Place 1/2 lemon and orange zest, 1/2 herbs inside cavity of fish along with 1/2 of lemon, and 1/2 of red onion. Arrange vegetables next to fish on all sides. Put garlic, and remaining lemon and orange slices and red onion on fish and lay tomatoes and fennel creating somewhat of a wall. Pour fish and soy sauces, wine over fish and dot with butter. Drizzle with the fruity olive oil. Fold over edges of foil to create an almost airtight seal. Bake in oven for 30-40 minutes. Carefully open and serve or fillet before serving (be aware of bones in the fish). Serve fish with vegetables and spoon broth over fish. Reserve leftover vegetables and broth for use later.

3. Memory, forgetting - interesting that this is becoming a focus of Karl's research.