Gumbo!

Halloween 2010


I made gumbo a few years ago but was not at all happy with it. The roux never "took" and the okra made it pretty slimy. So, late summer when I saw a recipe for it in Cook's Country (My version of the recipe is here) I was doubtful I could pull it off. But it had a method for coming up with a dark fragrant roux that was worth a shot. Was I ever glad I took a chance; this is one of my top meals ever IMHO.

To cook the roux, you start by putting raw flour in the Dutch oven and toast it over medium high heat for about 5 minutes. When it starts to turn brown, whisk in the oil then transfer the pot to the oven for 45 minutes.

 Timing is everything. While the roux is in the oven Jeff and I chop and measure.

After 45 minutes the roux came out of the oven; it was every bit as dark and fragrant as I had hoped. I figured we were on to something.

The Creole holy trinity of onion, green bell pepper and celery go into the roux, followed by the aromatics of garlic, thyme, and cayenne pepper. That is followed up by a combination of low sodium chicken broth and Thai fish sauce (really). Once that simmers; in goes the chicken for 30 minutes. 

While the pot is simmering, I start the rice. Toast it in butter for a few minutes, then add water and salt, and cover for 20 minutes.

Do a few dishes while things are simmering. Then the chicken comes out to be taken off the bone and chopped into bite sized pieces and put back in.  andouille and the shrimp join the party. Notice the lack of mention of okra. It is an optional ingredient so I left it out.

Linda made a delicious salad; Carla made corn bread:

Here we are at the end of the meal. Check out our new artwork just behind Carla: pastel and acrylic on sand paper. It was her birthday present this year.

For dessert we had coconut cream pie that Dianne McDonnell made yesterday. We were over to their place last night to have some delicious taco soup and watch the world series and see the Ducks trounce USC.

I'm thinking I need to change to a 6 star rating system so I can give it 6 starts. Jeff said "you could just make 5 stars louder". I responded "this is 6". If you've got a few hours and and want to cook one heluva meal, go for this.

Freedom From Fear - Chapters 11 & 12

These two chapters bring a close on the New Deal and prepares us for the second half of the book covering World War II. The two chapters are:

• Chapter 11 - The Ordeal of Franklin Roosevelt
• Chapter 12 - What the New Deal Did

Although FDR won a big victory in 1937, it wasn't complete. Although he demonstrated the change of the Democratic party by showing he didn't need the "solid south" to be re-elected, he was unable to move his agenda forward. During the campaign he tried to remake the South by supporting reformers, but his candidates did not win.  A reporter once rhetorically asked one of the southern senators (forget his name) if Roosevelt wasn't his own worse enemy; "not as long as I'm alive" the Senator replied. 

As a result of his miscalculations in the election he had implacable folds in both houses of Congress. These southern Democrats successfully filibustered a bill which would make lynching a federal offense. Of course the excuse was "state's rights". The south was worried that the anti-lynching bill would be followed by a civil rights bill. 

By 1938 the era of The New Deal was essentially over; there was no major legislation to extend reforms. In fact, the roots of modern conservatism started at this time. Southern Democrats "issued a ten-point 'Conservative Manifesto' that denounced the sit-down strikes, demanded lower federal taxes, and a balanced budget, defended encroachment and warn of the dangers of creating a permanently dependent welfare class" (p 340)

In 1937 a modest recovery had started, but was soon washed aside by another wave of recession in 1938. 

The lasting  legacy of the New Deal was structural reform rather than economic recovery.  In his summary of The New Deal, Kennedy says the pattern of reforms can be summed up in a single word: "security". (p 365). In addition to Social Security, which gave security to older Americans, The New Deal brought security "for capitalists and consumers, for workers and employers, for corporations and farms and homeowners and banks and builders as well" (p 365). With the exception of social security and agricultural subsidies, these goals were reached without massive taxpayer costs. The New Deal used the twin strategies of information and reliability to bring about this security. 

Security in the financial sector

In the financial sector security was brought about by two changes. The first was to separate investment banks from commercial banks which secured average American savings deposits from speculation. The second change was the introduction of the FDIC which guaranteed bank deposits up to $5,000. These two actions did not levy much cost on taxpayers or member banks; neither did it introduce impose heavy regulations. Together they injected "unprecedented stability into the American banking system" (p 366)

Security in the securities industry

Security was injected into the securities industry through the introduction of the Security Exchange Commission (SEC). Prior to this, there was no reliable information for investors to use to make informed investments. The power of the SEC lay in two provisions. The first mandated standard disclosures of corporate health: balance sheets, profit and loss statements, and compensation of corporate officers. The second was the requirement of verification of this information by audits using standardized accounting procedures. This action elevated the status of accountants.

Security in the Housing sector

The Federal Housing Administration was created in 1934 to insure long-term mortgages much like the FDIC secured depositors' accounts. This was also when Fannie Mae, the Federal National Mortgage Association was created.  These changes made it possible for people to buy houses with relatively low (10%) down and long term (30 year) mortgages. At the same time, construction and appraisal standards were put in place so that lenders could lend money with some level of safety in the property they were lending on. The housing sector was an especially important vehicle for reform because of its wide-reaching impact. There were no geographical boundaries; people all across the country needed housing.

The long view

In the past, I've viewed the Great Depression as an event in American history that "just happened" in a smooth flow of history. Now I think it can be seen as the visible fault line between frontier America filling out the country and modern America with diminishing free land building within the borders. In this decade America was remade; lasting social change had taken place. If nothing else, government was seen to have a "major responsibility in ensuring the health of the economy and the welfare of citiznes" (p377)

Come the end of the day, FDR steered America between the Scylla and Charybdis of "orthodoxy and revolution". (p 380) Germany, Austria, and Italy didn't go the same path. We'll see the ramifications of that in the second half of the book.

Freedom From Fear Chapters 6 - 10. American Labor and Recovery

This is a dense, interesting book. Lots of details but still a pretty nice read. The chapters I've finished in the past few weeks are:

• Chapter 6: The Ordeal of the American People
• Chapter 7: Chasing the Phantom of Recovery
• Chapter 8: The Rumble of Discontent
• Chapter 9: A Season for Reform
• Chapter 10: Strike!

I've never appreciated just how hard times were in the Great Depression; my mom, aunt, and uncle have told me stories from their lives, but to read about the magnitude of hunger and need for much of the 1930s is heartbreaking. 

As I mentioned earlier, Hitler was able to capitalize on similar problems in Germany to rise to power. There was certainly a big undercurrent of discontent in our country but it never really coalesced under one person or one ideology. This is most likely because of the immense size of the country and the resulting diversity. Different group saw the problems and solutions differently. The farmers in the great plains had different solutions in mind than the displaced industrial workers in the northeast or the landed cheap labor farmers in the south. 

Father Coughlin and Huey Long built large constituencies; but their solutions were really not workable. When Kennedy writes about the thrall of Coughlin using the new media (radio),  I can't help but think of the Tea Party and cable networks today: 

"He played guilefully on his followers' worst instincts; their suspicious provincialism, their unworldly ignorance, their yearning for simple explanations and extravagant remedies for their undeniable problems, their readiness to believe in conspiracies, their sulky resentments, and their all too human capacity for hatred" (p234)

Long and others hoped for the 1934 midterm election to go to the conservatives, which would push back the small progress the Roosevelt administration had made. This would result in a backlash and the possibility of Huey to become elected and perhaps become a dictator in 1937. FDR saw this radicalism building and feared that they might succeed inteh short term. But the resulting damage to the existing parties and social discourse would result in a sustained period of paralysis. "Not social revolution but statis was the worst plausible outcome of the radial agitation" (p 244)

FDR was a brilliant politician; he co-opted much of the platform for the 2nd New Deal. Kennedy argues that he turned against the upper class, the capitalists and industrialists in order to pull a following from the admirers of Coughlin, Long, and others. 

In Chapter 10, Kennedy outlines the steady improvements of union organization. The sit down strike against GM resulted in the biggest organized labor gains in decades. Because the governerships had fallen into the Democrats power, industry could not always count on the police and National Guard to beat the workers into submission. "For virtually the first time in the history of American industrial conflicts, state officials determined to sit on their hands, leaving labor and capital to negotiate their own way out of the impasse. Discipline and raw economic power, not legal injunction or political intervention, would determine the outcome" (p 312)

I've got another couple of chapters to read on the Great Depression before Kennedy takes up World War II. This is a fascinating book.

White Bean Soup with Kale and Andouille

I saw a nice recipe for this soup in this week's Oregonian FoodDay (you can find my copy of it here). One of my unmet goals last year was to make something with different color beans. I'd done red beans and rice and pinto beans but hadn't tackled black beans or white beans. I saw this recipe and figured I'd found my answer for cooking with white beans - great northern beans in this case. There were two optional ingredients that piqued my interest: pomegranate syrup and applewood smoked salt.

I made my shopping list and headed over to Bales Thriftway at Kinnaman and Farmington road after dropping off some items for the AHS Band rummage sale (I left my recycling container there; rats). I found the syrup okay, but needed Stephanie's (a courtesy clerk at the store)   help to locate the salt. Turns out they had just gotten it in. Herb and Dianne came in after breakfast to have a smell. It was REAL smoky; Herb may make some himself in his smoker. I thought it would be a great addition to the soup

I started the beans soaking in salt water: 3 Tablespoons to 6 quarts water. I had just read about this in the November 2010 Cooks Illustrated. It is supposed to make the skins softer.

After breakfast with the McDonnell's and a quick walk, I gathered the ingredients for the obligatory photo shoot.

Then I commenced to choppin'. Next time I'll wait on the Kale; it doesn't go in until the last 30 minutes of cooking and I could have had things started earlier. 

The onions, carrots and celery are sweating it out on the left while I brown the andouille in a skillet

Beans, chicken broth, crushed tomatoes, andouille and a pinch of the applewood smoked salt meet the vegetables and cook down for a couple of hours. I had "beans" on the mind more than "soup" and it looked a little thin when I started so I cooked with the lid off hoping to get more of a bean feel to things. Looking back I think this was a mistake; the beans took longer than I expected to soften; a full 3 hours really. And it ended up a bit thick; I added a little more chicken stock to get things back to a more soup-like consistency.

The kale goes in for the last 30 minutes. After that cooks down I add the brown sugar, balsamic vinegar, and pomegranate syrup. You've no doubt heard my rant about sugar in beans; I am not a fan. I just do not get baked beans. So, I was a little doubtful about adding both sugar and syrup but the amounts were very small so I figured what the heck.

Carla made the corn bread and dinner is served

I'm rating this 4 stars; definitely a do over. I don't think the pomegranate syrup is a must. I had to buy a whole pint just to use a teaspoon or two. I bet we find something to do with the rest; pomegranate martinis, anyone?

Sometime this winter I've got to make a nice pot of cuban black beans; anyone have a recipe for me to try?

Spaghetti and Meatballs

I received the November 2010 copy of Cook's Illustrated and found two recipes that looked very appealing. One is pot roast (sounds like a recipe from the 60's) and the other was spaghetti and meatballs. Meatballs seemed right up my alley so I was all in. The recipe is on the Cook's Illustrated site, but it is a paid site; my version is here.

This recipe was billed as spaghetti and meatballs for a crowd. This recipe serves 12 people. There would be four of us for dinner: Carla and me, Jeff, and Linda. I knew we'd want to send some home with Jeff and keep some for a 2nd dinner later in the week so I figured I'd cut it in 2/3's and make it for 8.

I took Friday off and did the grocery shopping figuring I'd have all kinds of time Saturday for cooking. I got kind of busy on Saturday morning though spending some time at Summer Lake Park where the Beaverton Rotary club was having a barbecue cook-off. Herb, by best bud, was an organizer and I thought I'd stop by to see how it was going. Had a nice chat with Herb, Bob, and Patrick, but didn't see anything but closed lids; as they say: "if you're lookin' you ain't cookin'".

Anyway, by the time I finally settled down to review the recipe in the afternoon, I realized I'd better get busy. Cook's Illustrated recipes are usually good, but they take a lot of ingredients and I wind up with a messy kitchen and a LOT of dirty dishes. This would be no exception. I tried to get pictures as I went along, but I ended up fighting the clock, and couldn't grab as many pics as I would have liked.

Here are the ingredients for the meatballs. It's hard to make out, but I have 4 ounces of prosciutto on the bottom right of the picture:

I wanted to get pictures of the mixture then of the meatballs; but I would have had raw beef and pork everywhere. I need to recruit someone to take pictures as I go.

After forming the mixture into 2 oz balls, they go on two racks in cooking sheets. After roasting for 30 minutes (flipping and changing position after 15 minutes) they come out looking delicious. Jeff had just come over and we couldn't help but take one and divide it up between us. Yum.

While the meatballs were roasting, I started the sauce. I had to grate a large onion to get started and since I was in a hurry ended up with three nice scrapes on my hand. When I make a fist, they line up real nice just like they did on the grater.

After the sauce simmers for 15 minutes, I added the meatballs and put the whole thing back in the oven for an hour. Here it is out of the oven

Another reason I need an assistant is I'm terrible at plating the food; what a mess, noodles flopping off the side of the bowl; spatters of sauce everywhere. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating and this tasted good if I do say so myself.

It wasn't just spaghetti; we had salad too; here is Jeff showing it off while Carla gets ready to sit down.

And we sit down to eat.

This recipe earns 5 stars on my 1 to 5 star rating system. If you are coming over to dinner in the next few months as part of a crowd; you may get this (don't worry, we'll have turkey for Thanksgiving; not pasta).

If you aren't vegetarian, I highly recommend this recipe.

Chile Verde

Fall has hit; a cool and rainy day is the perfect day for a nice bowl of green pork chile.  My recipe comes from Karen Ray at the Food Network; it was an award winner and I've found it to be my favorite. My absolute chile is the Sunset Magazine El Cid chili; but that is a red, beef-based chile as opposed to this nice green Mexican dish.

One thing to know before diving into this recipe is that there is a lot of prep time required. It took me about 1 hours and 15 minutes to get things chopped, diced, cubed, etc.

I laid out all the ingredients:

That will all need to be chopped! Preparing the poblano chiles is probably the most intensive work; we want to get the tough outer skin off. The first step is to roast them; I put them on the gas burners turned on high and turn them a few times

After they get nice and charred I cover them up to let them steam a bit

Ah, the skins are all nice and puckered.

Now we rinse them under cold running water to get the tough outer skin off. Be careful here; if you have sensitive hands be sure to wear gloves. These are mild chiles but still can affect your skin. As I peel them under the water the smell and Capsaicin  rises and I got choked up. My hands felt a mild sting for a couple of hours. Here they are after rinsing to remove the skin.

Next we open them up, remove the stems and seeds and flatten them out preparatory to chopping them.

While I cube the pork and chop the onion and chiles I have the tomatillos , green enchilada sauce, salsa verde, and spice mix simmering on the stove. 

Here we are ready to start building the stew. Onion, pork, chiles, and garlic. Notice I still have a couple of green peppers in the background. I'll finely mince these later; they don't go into the stew for another 2 hours.

I sauté the pork and onion in batches. About 30 seconds before tossing into the chile pot I add garlic just to get it fragrant. You can see the chile pot in the background.

After all the pork, onion, and garlic have been added, in go the chiles.

After 2 hours of simmering I add a cup of the green peppers, adjust the seasoning and simmer for another 45 minutes. Here it is toward the end, it's nice and reduced and the flavors are all melded.

Dinner time! Top with a dollop of sour cream. Serve with tortillas and beer. Salad optional!

Yum! I rate my recipes on a 1-5 star basis; this is one of the few with 5 stars. Perfect for a rainy October afternoon.

Freedom From Fear Chapter 5

Chapter 4: The Hundred Days


In this chapter David M, Kennedy discusses the first 100 days of the Roosevelt administration. This time, marked by a special session of Congress, was the kick start of much of the New Deal. There are a couple of surprising things in this chapter for me.

The hallmark of the New Deal, the National Recovery Act, which gave us the Civilian Conservation Corp and the Public Works Administration was more than anything a response to a bill that Congress was going to pass: the 30 hour work week. The idea of Congress was to limit the workweek to 30 hours so that the available amount of work would go around. Roosevelt saw this as not workable, for many reasons, including the fact that it just wouldn't work for farm work where the schedule is set by the cows needing milking.

The second surprising idea was that the America's policy in response to the Great Depression was a major contributing factor to World War II. We've already seen in earlier chapters that the war reparations on Germany was crushing their economy and giving fertile soil for Hitler's brand of nationalism. At the same time, the New Deal  policies were intrinsically  inflationary; this inflationary pressure was incompatible with a balanced budget, a  balanced foreign trade, and the gold standard. England had gone off the gold standard and the United States by this time had given notice we would suspend the gold standard with every indication we would go back on it.  After the end of the first 100 days of the Roosevelt administration there was an international economic conference for nations to agree how to get back to being on the gold standard. At the meeting FDR dropped a bombshell by saying America's domestic woes trumped international trade balances and we would follow our own interest, which included staying off the gold standard.

This statement was fuel to the fire for Germany. They figured at this point it was every country for itself; if America was going to focus solely on domestic priorities at the expense of international relations, they would follow suit. As a result the Nazi party continued its rise to power by following a strict nationalistic agenda.

WOW. This really blew my mind.

Freedom From Fear Chapters 3 & 4

I've finished the next two chapters of David M. Kennedy's Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929 - 1945. The two chapters cover the end of the Hoover Administration and the lead up to FDR taking office.

Chapter 3: The Ordeal of Herbert Hoover
Hoover was elected because he was a problem solver; before becoming president (I think in the Coolidge administration) he built the plan to feed the starving people in Europe following the World War. Given that, Americans trusted that he would be able to solve the depression.

Hoover did what he could to help the agricultural depression and helped the banks. But there simply wasn't a mandate to help the working class with unemployment insurance or a program to feed the hungry. The prevailing philosophy of the Republican party was "Volunteerism"; fraternal organizations, churches and such could provide for the needy. The problem was that the sheer numbers of people out of work dwarfed anything that local, small organizations could fix.

Hoover and his administration saw the roots of the depression not in the stock market crash of 1929 but rather as a result of the World War. Germany had to pay crushing war reparations to England and France. At the same time England and France owed massive amounts to America who funded the war. Germany borrowed money from the United States and used the money to pay the war reparations to England and France who in turn paid off their war time loans to the United States. It was a 3 legged stool that would collapse if 1 of the legs came undone. Germany was the loose leg. They simply could not keep up the payments and keep their society going. Of course, this is where Hitler came in, whipping up nationalist fervor in a country suffering from the results of the war itself as well as the reparations.

Many in the country: progressive Republicans (history's term not mine) and the banks were in favor of permanently ending war reparations and forgiving the loans to England and France. Of course, this would mean the banking industry would profit by lending money to a world that did not have its governments bogged down with national debts. Hoover was able to convince England and France to suspend the war reparations payments for a year to help Germany.

At the same time the world was operating on the gold standard which meant a country could only have an amount of money in circulation as a ratio of the gold stock in the federal reserve. It  was simply unheard of to have a nation with an out-of-balance budget (except in war time). As the crisis deepened, gold flowed overseas creating deflation in the U.S. The only way to keep the budget balanced was to raise taxes. Of course this just made things worse.

By the end of the Hoover administration (FDR wouldn't take office until March 1933) the U.S. economy was at a virtual stand still. Following the election, Hoover tried to get Roosevelt to get on board with his programs, but FDR was not about to be tied down to Hoover's policies. It is surprising to me, as it was to many in power, that the people did not rise up in anger and revolution.

In the end Hoover was quite progressive for his time; he did what he could given the philosophy of the government; this was simply new ground that the world was just not prepared to deal with. As Einstein said, to get out of a problem, you need to be smarter than the brains that caused the problem.

These first chapters really put in focus the economic and political problems we've had since the collapse of the mortgage industry. We seemed to have learned the lesson of deflation; this is why the U.S. put together the TARP program; to keep things moving, to keep demand going. Once things stop it is very difficult to get them moving again. In the early 1930's we saw what happens when the banks get relief but not the rest of the country; deflation and depression.

Chapter 4: Interregnum

This chapter covers FDR as he prepared to take office in March 1933. Two important traits of FDR were his unbridled optimism and willingness to listen to everyone. He never, ever, seemed down. Even his closest advisory never saw him appear shaken or worried. He was like an virtuoso actor where you only see the character, not the actor. He curried the opinion of many different points of view, but was very careful to never tip his hand. This was very frustrating to the senior members of Congress who wanted him to support their side; they'd think he supported them but were never sure.

In contradistinction to the Hoover administration, The Roosevelt Brains Trust  seems to have seen domestic roots of the depression. In this view, the rapid advances in industrialization created an imbalance in the distribution of wealth. The captains of industry got the lions share of the wealth. The result was that the workers did not have enough money to purchase the products that would keep the economy afloat. It was the government's duty to keep the balance.

"...concentration of economic power in huge industrial enterprises was a natural and beneficial feature of modern, advance societies; and that the enormous concentrations of private power necessitated the creation of commensurately powerful public controls, or governmental regulatory bodies" [pp 120-121]

There was definite fear in the winter and spring of 1933 that the social fabric of the country would rip. As a result the most pressing items on the agenda of an early Roosevelt administration might be political stabilization rather than restoring the economy. There were 3 linch pins of the New Deal "social reform, political realignment, and economic recovery flowed and counterflowed through the entire history of the New Deal." [ p 117]

It looks as though the progressive wing of the Republican party would join with the Northeast industrial workers to reform the Democratic party going forward.