As I was testing a recipe for Tonno alla Ghiotta yesterday, this little fellow stopped by. About the size of a small cat, and weirdly adorable, this young opossum scrounged for leftovers I'd tossed to the crows, then scratched through the snow for any bits of seed or suet the birds might have dropped from the feeders hanging from the iron hook above.  I'm told opossums eat tons of ticks, so I hope this little guy and his family hang around.

New doings around the old house this fall.  Tree planting (one hundred of these adorable 2-year old balsam firs), shutter repair and painting, window replacement.   More work to follow in the spring, as we return the house to Mrs. Hoffman's traditional color scheme, reassess the health of cedar fencing, and with luck, embark on a substantial planting throughout the field.
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Zucchini coins with garlic, red wine vinegar, and mint
 
Adapted from a recipe found in Rustico: Regional Italian Country Cooking, by Micol Negrin, who reports that the name of this dish suggests its roots among the poor of Sicily, Apulia, and Latium.  The addition of vinegar and mint is commonplace, yet nothing short of transcendent. 
 
Method:
 
Scrub several medium zucchini and slice into coins 1/4 inch thick.  Coat the bottom of a large frying pan with a few tablespoons of olive oil and set over medium-high heat. When the pan is good and hot, add the zucchini in a single layer and fry, flipping as necessary, until golden brown on both sides. Zucchini will absorb oil, and you may need to add more to keep the coins from scorching.  Remove to a plate lined with paper towel to drain excess oil.  Salt and pepper rather aggressively. Repeat with remaining zucchini coins. If frying several batches, keep zucchini warm, covered, in a low oven if desired.
 
Arrange drained zucchini on a serving plate. Sprinkle with several tablespoons of red wine vinegar and minced garlic. Chop or chiffonade a few mint leaves (up to 1/4 cup, according to taste) and scatter over the zucchini.  Serve right away.  
 
Worried about the zucchini absorbing too much oil in frying? Roasting will allow better control.  Line a large baking tray with parchment paper.  Drizzle very lightly with olive oil and spread the oil with your fingers. Arrange the zucchini in a single layer. Roast at 375 degrees for 25 to 30 minutes, flipping midway, until coins are golden brown on both sides. Salt and pepper as desired. Zucchini may be drizzled lightly with additional olive oil if desired at this point. Proceed with plating and dressing the coins as described above. 
 
 
 
 

      I love a good grocery store. What cook doesn’t? In the dead of winter, a stroll through a spacious produce department overflowing with luscious fruits and vegetables is nothing short of therapeutic. The baking aisle nudges the fancy with herbs and spices in jewel-like jars, silky flours, crystalline sugars, aromatic ingredients and extracts from all over the globe.  Wines from bubbly to Burgundy. Breadstuffs galore, sweet and savory.  Under sparkling glass, every cut or hunk or part of red meat or plump poultry you could desire ready to wrap in paper and tie butcher twine.  Half culinary Nirvana, half gustatory Las Vegas side show, the modern American mega-grocery is built to entertain and drain.
 
    Having said that, I do nearly all of my shopping at the small grocery store at the north end of town.  What it might lack in variety, it makes up twenty-fold for me in comfort and reliability. The small produce department nearly always has fine representatives of the usual suspects that fill the cart or handbasket: apples, pears, bananas, organic grapes; several varieties of tomatoes, local and Canadian potatoes, and root vegetables of the moment; as well as fresh, reliable greenery, bagged and bulk: leafy bunches of this and trimmed heads of that, fiddleheads and asparagus for the flush when in season, a bin devoted to eggplant, the peppers in assorted shades. Meats and poultry aplenty; baked goods and deli delights at hand; and boxed, packaged, and bottled pantry staples well-stocked to boot.
 
    The beauty of regularly shopping in a small store is obvious: I know where everything is, and what price I might expect to pay. A walkthrough is efficient, and nearly always sufficient for what might be on the week’s menu, barring entertaining guests or hosting a special celebration. And the faces I see are friendly and familiar, in the aisles and at the registers, where I’m known: where women who delivered groceries to my father in his decline comforted me after his loss, where another asks me often if I’ve seen the ghost lately in the halls of my house. 
 
     Even so, sometimes a trip to any grocery store is more than I can bear. Do you know that feeling? That the world outside the doorway is just, for whatever reason on a given day, utterly overwhelming?   I get dressed, put on some makeup so I don’t scare the little children, as my mother used to say, but leaving the yard seems far too much to handle. There’s no pep talk while putting on the boots that will work. No deep breath and venturing out. There’s simply a surrender to stasis.
 
     We had such a day recently. In truth, we have them more than occasionally.  No particular cause other than the unnamable angst that haunts the ill-examined life, perhaps. On even such a day, though, a person has to eat.
 
     And as a person who has to eat, though one easily distracted by the bright and shiny, I’d not shopped for a while, apparently. The pantry holdings were sparse. True, I had on hand the angel hair pasta and cans of peeled, plum tomatoes I’m rarely without. Other than that, the most exciting features were a small can of maple syrup-enriched baked beans, a box of corn bread mix, and a bottle of cocktail sauce. Pretty slim.  The fridge did hold, along with the sad remains of a head of Romaine, what was left of a baked chicken from two nights before.  And eggs.  And, as I keep it in the fridge, a bag of King Arthur flour.
 
       An obvious solution: Chicken soup with egg noodles to the rescue.
 
     Homemade egg noodles. Not because we didn’t have a bag of them in the pantry (full disclosure, I did not), but because I needed to make egg noodles. I needed a simple task to undertake and complete in the confines of my safe kitchen to bolster a little faith in myself, to reaffirm that, with time and devotion, I could perform a small feat of kitchen alchemy and turn a cup of white flour, an ordinary egg, and a little cold water into delectable gold.
 
     Self-esteem more or less restored. Body and soul nourished through the creation and consumption of a delicious pot of soup.  And agoraphobia to be dealt with another day.

Chicken Soup with Leftover Baked Chicken and Homemade Egg Noodles
 
Method:
 
For the noodle dough:  Mix one cup of flour and a half teaspoon, more or less, of salt with an egg. Stir together, and add in just enough cold water until the mixture holds together.  I tend to start this process in a bowl, having never found the joy in breaking an egg into a well of flour and working it in.  What usually happens, on my porous breadboard anyway, is the creation of a real mess at first which requires scraping and cleaning before the fun even begins. So, I start in a bowl, then place the misshapen ball of dough onto the floured board. 
 
Knead in extra flour as necessary to make a smooth dough.  This takes some time. Which can be sort of the point of the enterprise. Enjoy it.  Depending on my state of mind, I not infrequently gather up the dough and throw it against the board, once the dough hangs well together in a ball.  There is something enormously satisfying about this, and it works. 
 
Once you’ve worked the dough into a beautiful, smooth ball, wrap tightly in plastic and allow it to rest in the refrigerator for 30 minutes or so.
 
For the soup: Place leftover baked chicken, broken into parts as desired, skin and all, into a pot and cover with cold water.  Bring to a boil, then lower the heat to medium or medium-low. Simmer for a good 40 minutes, until the chicken is very tender, skimming off foam as it forms.  Remove the chicken to a plate and allowed it to cool. Strain the broth, return to the pot.  Adjust the flavor to taste with salt, pepper, a pinch of celery seed, but mostly with a quality bouillon or Better than Bouillon soup base (there’s a low sodium version, by the way).
 
When the dough has rested, remove it from the refrigerator and cut it into four pieces. Set one piece on your floured board, and rewrap the rest.  Let the rolling games begin.  You do not need a machine of any sort to make beautiful, thin egg noodles.  Roll the dough into a rectangle, turning over from side to side as you roll both length and height, adding a slight amount of flour to the board as needed to keep the dough from sticking, until you have a rolled the dough more or less as thinly and evenly as possible. 
 
Now to the business of cutting: With a sharp knife, slice off any slight unevenness around the sides.  Then slice as desired – noodles of a half-inch in width and four or so inches in length work beautifully for soup.  Once you’ve sliced that section of dough, arrange the noodles lightly into a nest and set aside, if necessary to save space. Continue rolling and slicing the remainder of the dough.
 
I have a thing about egg safety. My mother would use raw egg whites in desserts when we were growing up on the farm, but I wouldn’t dream of it now. This is probably too extreme. I don’t care. I’m of the ‘rather be safe than sorry’ ilk.  I don’t eat raw eggs, even when I know where they come from, and I rarely allow egg-heavy dishes to linger for more than a few days in the fridge.  Further, raw egg plus raw flour hanging around is a recipe for stomach distress if there ever was one.  If you have left over noodle dough, wrap it air tight, refrigerate right away, and use it promptly, within a day.  Or humor me and toss it out.
 
Back to the stove. Set a second large pot of water on to boil (you’ll cook the noodles in this pot, to avoid overcrowding and overcooking).  Salt the water slightly if desired.  Pull the chicken meat from the bones, and shred into bite-sized pieces. Return meat to the pot of broth. Bring just to a boil, and if desired, add in a few handfuls of mixed frozen vegetables, or young peas and thinly sliced carrots. Keep it simple.
 
When broth is hot and seasoned as desired, vegetables cooked, and meat heated through, gently add the noodles to the second pot of boiling water. Lower heat and simmer for two to three minutes until noodles are cooked and tender.  Test at two minutes; overcooking happens, and it’s not necessarily a disaster, but try to avoid it.  When al dente, strain gently into a colander or fish out the noodles with a spider or mess strainer, and stir into the soup. Serve right away.
 
About those noodles. I overcooked them, despite the two-pot routine. They were still delicious. Of course they’d be great as a side dish with butter and a little chopped parsley or scallions. And . . .you’ll not find a finer egg noodle on the shelf of any grocery store, large or small.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Butter and lightly flour a 9 x 5 loaf pan.
 
Mix together in a small bowl:
 
1/2 cup chopped dates
2 tablespoons water
 
Cover loosely, and microwave for 30 seconds to 1 minute, to hydrate the dates. Stir and set aside.
 
In a large bowl, whisk together and set aside:
 
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spices (or a mix of cinnamon and nutmeg to taste)
Pinch of salt
 
In a medium-sized bowl, add:
 
3 overripe bananas, sliced
1 stick (8 ounces) of melted butter, cooled
2 eggs
2 tablespoons molasses
1/3 cup yogurt (or buttermilk)
2 teaspoons vanilla
 
Mix together very well. An immersion blender works beautifully here.
 
Add the dates to the banana mixture and stir well. Stir this into the dry ingredients until just mixed.  Spoon batter into the prepared baking pan and gently smooth the top.
 
Bake at 350 degrees for about one hour and ten minutes, until nicely golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.  Allow to cool for a few minutes, then run a knife around the edges of the pan if necessary to loosen, and remove the loaf to a cooling rack. Try to resist slicing until cool.  Keep fresh and moist by wrapping completely cooled loaf tightly in plastic wrap.  Refrigerate if desired, but bring to room temperature before serving.  Serve within a few days.
 
 


 

Early Sunday morning, soft and quiet beneath a few inches of snow fallen overnight.