St. Phillips; Dinners Friday, Saturday; Shopping

• Recipes discussed:
  
• Cauliflower fricassee with a raita: Elements of Taste by Kurz & Kaminsky
• Salmon with a pan-fried crust and orange ginger chili couli: Elements of Taste
• "cabbage loaf" from Richard Olney's Simple French Food.
• 6 minute cod in a spicy red fennel sauce (using flounder): Wells The Provence Cookbook.
• At St. Phillips yesterday, I attended a forum where Fr. Nat Porter delivered the remarks for the discussion of grace in life. I saw an ad for this in the Sat. morning paper and thought it is time I began to get serious about getting known in the St. Phillips community. At the end of the forum Nat introduced me as a friend he had known for over 40 years, as we met, he announced, at the March on Washington in 1963. Afterward, a couple of women from the church came forward to announce themselves as also having been there. I note that Shari Blanton, with whom I worked on the Study Circles for the Slavery Reconciliation Walk in September and who is on the new Study Circle planning committee, is giving the fourth and concluding talk in the monthly series.
  
• Dinner last night (Saturday): Both dishes from Elements of Taste by Kurz & Kaminsky, excellent model teaching cook book I have been studying; meaning, they exemplify aspects of their theory of taste and cooking via actual recipes for one to cook, to learn both technique and theory through applications of the theory:
  
• Cauliflower fricassee with a raita: I had found I used a leftover raita with cucumbers that had drained overnight, substituting coarsely grated daikon radish for the beansprouts for a nice crunch and thinly sliced shallots for the chives: very good. The fricassee was a little too crunchy, a little too sharp - less lemon juice or more sugar to cut it and a longer cooking time either on stove top or in oven
  
• Salmon with a pan-fried crust and orange ginger chili couli: I substituted panko bread crumbs for the rice flakes specified and that worked fine; excellent dish.
• Shopping: Also, shopped during the day at Sam's for salmon, paper towels, coffee - should have gotten six red/yellow pepper bag for, as it turned out, we are out of them. Went to Bed, Bath & Beyond for Microplane grater - which I used for the fricassee, above, to grate the zest off of two lemons - amazingly fine zest as well as a paper towel holder for the garage. Also drifted through Whole Foods, Barnes and Noble where I bought a book of Wodehouse on Jeeves. Finally, went to Shoppers Food for corn tortillas but couldn't find cans of chipotles in adobo sauce.
• Dinner Friday night:
  
• Note that I had abstained from wine or liquor since 1 January, for both dieting and spiritual reasons, for a system cleansing, for a calming effect. In all respects this seemed to be a good thing and, after two dinners with wine, I shall go back on the discipline today until the end of the week.
• For dinner I made a "cabbage loaf" from Richard Olney's Simple French Food. From Patricia Wells The Provence Cookbook to go with it, a recipe whose title I have already forgotten but is something like 6 minute cod in a spicy red fennel sauce.
  
• Cabbage Loaf: Not my favorite title for a recipe but a delicious mound. I had about 1/2 a cabbage which I boiled. I added diced mushrooms and red pepper and zucchini sauteed in butter. I used broth or sauce from the previous evening's New England Fish Chowder in place of milk and chopped a few pieces of fish and potato also into the loaf. After cooking the requisite 30-40 minutes I served it, but I think it could have cooked a bit longer as the center still seemed a bit mushy and, as a leftover, it's almost runny. It has a great flavor but needs a bit more stiffening.
  
• 6 minute cod in a spicy red fennel sauce: I made the spicy red fennel sauce but instead of cod I used the fish I had, a fillet of flounder with skin on. Although the fish was fully thawed and ready to go, it did not cook in six minutes. After about ten minutes, I served it, and it still needed further cooking, so I put it in the microwave for three minutes and that did the trick - immaculate white fish emerging through the delicately perfumed sauce - exquisite.