Dinners with Becky and Mark

I'm visiting my friend Becky in Washington DC. We went to college together; after college we traveled through Europe and then lived together in Paris for a half a year or so. I'd never cooked before. I started to learn to cook from her.
We lived in half an apartment in the 16th arrondissment (the fanciest one) in Paris. Madame, our widowed landlady, lived in the other half. In French fashion, she kept the kitchen, we had the bathroom. She used our bathroom to take a full bath once a month or so.
So my first cooking experience was in the bathroom, cooking on a hotplate, one of us sitting on the toilet, the other on the bidet, stirring our dinner in the bathroom. We put groceries on the fire escape to keep them cool, and shopped for dinner on the way home from work at l'Ecole Berlitz, where we both worked teaching English to our mostly French students.
Becky's still a cook, and so now am I. Her kitchen has most of the same things to cook with that mine does. She and her husband Mark are going through some nasty health issues and I'm here cooking and helping get the car inspected -- and making more messes than I want, like spilling coffee on the dining room rug and freezing the lock on the porch door.
The first night we served up a bunch of leftovers. For the second night I cut up a bunch of vegetables that were almost over the edge -- cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, celery. I started by sauteeing garlic and onion and a few red peppers, then added the vegetables and a cup or so of water. Hmmm. How do you get this to taste like vegetables but not too bland? Becky had a jar of Nellie's African Sauce, mild. I added a couple of big tablespoonfuls.
Then, we went shopping at Whole Foods. I had planned to cook a chicken, but we'd gone to get the car inspected and the chicken would take too long. So I found some haddock -- a long way from Gloucester -- and poached it in the vegetable broth. It was good.
Tonight we did the chicken. The 4lb. roaster from Whole Foods was super. I cut up a lone potato, an onion, and a weary bag of little carrots. Becky produced a beautiful blue pottery roasting pan from Poland. I added the vegetables to the pan and tossed them in olive oil, and found fresh thyme in the 'fridge which I put in the "cavity" along with about 7 or 8 whole cloves of garlic.
Joy of Cooking suggests a preheated 400 degree oven for an hour or so, plus a 15 minute wait before carving. I melted butter and olive oil and dribbled it over the chicken, and then dribbled a bit more a half an hour later. After an hour the chicken was not quite done. We upped the temperature to 425 for fifteen minutes and then let it sit for a while before carving. It was delicious. The vegetables were wonderful. I hope they use all this to make a great soup next week!
Becky's daughter Alexandra has a brussels sprouts recipe which we did tonight. You cut the sprouts in half, melt butter and olive oil in a frying pan, sautee chopped garlic and then remove it from the pan, then place the sprouts carefully, face down, in one layer in the pan. Sautee the sprouts until they are close to cooked, then add the garlic back in and stir it all around.
I'm going to try this with big pieces of garlic - maybe half a clove each.

Mexican wraps

We have a wonderful restaurant in Gloucester called Jalapenos. Is that why I've been cooking more TexMex lately? Or because I got a crock pot and started cooking more beans, and one way to serve them is in a wrap? In any case, I've been searching for the perfect wrap, and here it is.

Joseph's Flax, Oat Bran & Whole Wheat Flour Lavash Bread. It's great for any kind, any cuisine's idea of a roll up, and works well with cheese and beans and sour cream and avocados.

It's a wrap, as they say on the label.

Beans in a pot

My friend Mary Kay Timm lived in Lincoln, MA, about 10 minutes from my home in Sudbury. Our sons were friends. She was a potter. I still have several great cooking pots she made. She's no longer a potter, and now her name is Yanna Coffin, and she lives in Gloucester, about 10 minutes from my home in Gloucester.
One of Yanna's pots is round and tall. It rounds in just over half way up, and has a small lid. It's a perfect bean pot. I've also cooked rice in it. A few days ago I was looking through my cookbooks and came upon the rice recipe I used to cook in Yanna's pot. It's in the Deaf Smith County Cookbook that my brother's first wife, Beth, gave me years ago. Beth and I cooked and gardened together.
A few days ago I cooked beans in Janna's pot. As far as I can remember it was red beans with an onion, some garlic, a bit of red pepper -- I didn't actually serve them as a meal. My brother Eric, who had them for dinner while we were away, said they were a bit "crunchy." I refried the beans and used them in echiladas a few days ago, but there was still a half pot left tonight, and Judith, who had prodded me for not posting recipes, was coming for dinner.
So -- I sauteed an onion in olive oil, added some chopped garlic and a diced pepper and a chopped mushroom. To this I added a cup of brown basmati rice, stirred it, and then added a bit of white wine. To cook the rice I poured in a large can of crushed tomatoes, brought it to a simmer, and simmered it till the rice was beginning to get soft.
Heeding Eric's warning that the beans were still crunchy, I put the bean pot in the oven at 250 degrees. I added the rice to the bean pot before the rice was cooked. The pot is still in the oven -- I'll edit the post after dinner and let you know how it turned out!
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A couple of hours later: We watched the beautiful match between Nadal and Federer and ate the beans and rice. It was excellent. Judith and I figured out that I must have added cumin to the beans -- it made a wonderful smoky base of flavor to the whole dish. Thank you Judith, thank you Yanna/Mary Kay, thank you Beth.
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Duncan, Eric, and I are having the third night of "beans in a pot." I sliced and fried two chicken sausages with one green pepper, and a can of corn to add a bit of liquid. I also snuck in a bit more cumin. We warmed it up in a 250 oven, then added the extras and served it with lavash flat bread, grated cheese, and a bit of sour cream (all we had left was a bit). Reminds me of a recipe I wrote down years ago: chicken for three days in one pot.