PureSchmaltz

Rendered Fat Content

EasyBaking

07 08, 15 06:10 Filed under: Life-Mooving
easybake
I realized yesterday afternoon that even this sorry Deluxe Executive Home kitchen, with its forty watt Easybake® oven, could feel like home to me. I caught myself slipping into that state of mind where I find almost no separation between imagining and doing, perhaps the best possible manifestation of the elusive flow.

Around eleven, I realized that my old and dear friend Dan would arrive in a few hours. The Muse had supposed we would just eat out, and I’d presumed something similar until I flashed on the fact that Dan’s overnight on his way to Albuquerque would be my first opportunity to make a guest supper since before we left Takoma Park, nearly two and a half months ago. How could I pass up this opportunity?

I thought perhaps short ribs, slow roasted with veg, and a passel of those ping pong ball-sized golden beets. Dan’s basically an old school carnivore from Chicago. He tolerates veg as long as it stays in its place, which is not too awfully close to the meat, which is always the purpose of any meal. He’s a home brewer and considers beer to be perhaps the original food group, and he has an exquisite beer palate, so I’d find some unique brews he probably hadn’t yet encountered.

An hour later, I was browning off the short ribs in the cast iron while prepping the background veg. Six sides, a short three or four minutes per, I completed the veg prep just as I turned the ribs to brown that final side. I’d salted them rather heavily before barely greasing the pan, leaving the dregs of the Schmaltz fat roasted potatoes I’d concocted for breakfast. The ribs browned almost crispy on the outside, better to seal in the juices for the slow oven and the braising liquid to reconstitute.

I borrowed heavily from leftovers for the veg background. A Ziplock with excess previously slow-roasted veg from that rabbit stew. Another with three fine fire-roasted Pimento peppers. Mushrooms unsuitable for any purpose other than melting into indiscernible background flavor. Four fine fresh baby red onions with tops. A whole head of sticky red-tinged garlic. I threw the dozen golden beets into the BIG stock pot, covered them with cold water, then placed that pot onto a back burner set to high, which means the full 40 watts of power.

I transferred the meat into the bottom of a deep enough pot then added dregs of my next to last quart of veal neck bone stock and about a half bottle of decent red wine. I deglaze the cast iron with the onions, quartered, and the mushy mushrooms. Once those had sufficiently blackened, I moved them in on top of the meat and added the garlic and pimentos to the pan, with a splash of red wine, which stained the garlic. I squeezed the leftover rabbit stew veg on over the top before turning the mushroom/pepper stuff in on top of that, then set the resulting mess into that slow oven.

I remembered those two Ziplocks full of Muse-made tomato sauce and put one to thawing to add a bit of sweet to the base. I removed the meat pot just long enough to slip the sauce burg in on top of everything. By then, the beets were about done, so I just turned off that pot to let them cool their own heels while the slow roast began, then I went to make some more headway in that James Lee Burke novel I’d just discovered. An hour later, I checked progress and found that the oven might have best been characterized as just a tad too slow as the sauce burg was barely thawing and the braising liquid barely warmish to the touch.

I pulled out the oven thermometer, which, of course, is basically unreadable, and frustrated, managed to drop it through the oven racks clear through to the forty watt heating element. I finally managed to determine that, indeed, the oven was humming along at the prescribed 300 degrees, more or less, but that this temperature was inadequate to cook anything at this altitude. I heated the meat pot to near boiling on the stove top while resetting the oven to what any flatlander would consider hotter than low and slow; 350. Once the meat pot started sweating a bit, I replaced it into the newly hotter oven then returned to Burke. Shortly thereafter, the Deluxe Executive Towne Home started smelling like a decent diner on short rib night.

I wash as I prep, so that by the time I’m finished prepping, I have exactly one bowl, perhaps, and the cutting board and knife left to clean. The kitchen felt pristine save for the slowly cooling beets. Even the many Ziplock bags were washed out and drying, stuck to the cupboard door. I decided to vacuum the floors in celebration.

The afternoon unfolded just as if scripted, except for the unfortunate incident with the three hundred degree oven, which I decided to reframe as a new class of preparation: the warm marinade. Each ingredient seemed to just appear as if merely needing to cross a chasm the width of a synapse to manifest. I’d inventoried the fridge just two days before and still held a true impression of its contents, and I could not have stocked it better for the purpose at hand. Perhaps more importantly, I lost the crushing self consciousness I so often feel when engaging in some creative effort. I was not just experiencing flow, but embodying it.

That big old brain scientists blame for our rise from the jungle muck can also enmire us in worse, for it’s active anticipation and passive reflection are fully capable of blinding any one of us from what’s right before our eyes. We get tangled up in musing, I guess. I certainly do. I might receive no better gift than the small package that arrives unbidden which I open to find not automatic action inside, but unburdened engagement. I am never even aware that I’m there, so enthusiastically and unselfconsciously engaged am I. I am not really anywhere at all, at least not the me I so familiarly recognize looking back out of my weary mirror. I held no mirror up to my self while prepping that supper. I thought not at all. The world simply did my bidding without me seeming to bid anything.

Oh, such a gift to be so completely unaware, so deeply engaged that I forget to fret, so thoroughly involved that I could truthfully swear the supper made itself! Screw the mindful, thoughtful, reflective life. I love to outrun the enclosing captions, to out-distance the alluring narrator, to slip past and by that skeptical audience of one. Nobody complained about the result, though I could not really rightfully claim much of any responsibility for it. Supper produced itself as if I was the tool of the ingredients and not the other way around.

©2015 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved









Tags: ,

blog comments powered by Disqus

Good For A Goose





PureSchmaltz Archive Search


December 2024
November 2024
October 2024
September 2024
August 2024
July 2024
June 2024
May 2024
April 2024
March 2024
February 2024
January 2024
December 2023
November 2023
October 2023
September 2023
August 2023
July 2023
June 2023
May 2023
April 2023
March 2023
February 2023
January 2023
December 2022
November 2022
October 2022
September 2022
August 2022
July 2022
June 2022
May 2022
April 2022
March 2022
February 2022
January 2022
December 2021
November 2021
October 2021
September 2021
August 2021
July 2021
June 2021
May 2021
April 2021
March 2021
February 2021
January 2021
December 2020
November 2020
October 2020
September 2020
August 2020
July 2020
June 2020
May 2020
April 2020
March 2020
February 2020
January 2020
December 2019
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
June 2019
May 2019
April 2019
March 2019
February 2019
January 2019
December 2018
November 2018
October 2018
September 2018
August 2018
July 2018
June 2018
May 2018
April 2018
March 2018
February 2018
January 2018
December 2017
November 2017
October 2017
September 2017
August 2017
July 2017
June 2017
May 2017
April 2017
March 2017
February 2017
January 2017
December 2016
November 2016
October 2016
September 2016
August 2016
July 2016
June 2016
May 2016
April 2016
March 2016
February 2016
January 2016
December 2015
November 2015
October 2015
September 2015
August 2015
July 2015
June 2015
May 2015
April 2015
March 2015
February 2015
January 2015
December 2014
November 2014
October 2014
September 2014
August 2014
July 2014
June 2014
May 2014
April 2014
March 2014
February 2014
January 2014
December 2013
November 2013
October 2013
September 2013
August 2013
July 2013
June 2013
May 2013
April 2013
March 2013
February 2013
January 2013
December 2012
November 2012
October 2012
September 2012
August 2012
July 2012
June 2012
May 2012
April 2012
March 2012
February 2012
January 2012
December 2011
November 2011
October 2011
September 2011
August 2011
July 2011
June 2011
May 2011
April 2011
March 2011
February 2011
January 2011
December 2010
November 2010
October 2010
September 2010
August 2010
July 2010
June 2010
May 2010
April 2010
March 2010
February 2010
January 2010
December 2009
November 2009
October 2009
September 2009
August 2009
July 2009
June 2009
May 2009
April 2009
March 2009
February 2009
January 2009
December 2008
November 2008
October 2008
September 2008
August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
July 2007
June 2007
May 2007
April 2007
March 2007
February 2007
January 2007
December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
July 2006
June 2006
May 2006
April 2006
March 2006
February 2006
January 2006
© 2006-2024 by David A. Schmaltz all rights reserved

Made in RapidWeaver