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"You really have gotten back on the horse with a vengeance!,” the lovely Kimberly said to me the other night in chat.  To paraphrase my pal Ur, damn yes. 

But first, a digression, simply because it’s been a long time since I’ve felt good and ranty.  Last night, as I was getting dinner ready, I heard a familiar melodica line from the television, a line I quickly recognized as “This is the Day,” from the The’s Soul Mining, an album I have loved for the past 20 years (and still do).  Then I heard Lloyd cry, “Oh, no!,” which could only mean one thing:  “This is the Day” was being used to sell something.  Specifically, it’s being used to sell this.  I should really be used to this sort of thing by now, now that Led Zeppelin is used to sell Cadillacs and Iggy Pop is used to sell cruise lines.  I should remember that the world didn’t end because some savvy advertising hotshot decided that we’d be more inclined to buy something if that something were accompanied by the Devo and Smiths songs of our youth.  Nevertheless, this particular ad campaign really frosts my butt, not only because they’re using one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite bands, but because “This is the Day” is a deeply melancholy song despite its catchy tunefulness.  The chorus, “this is the day your life will surely change,” is, to put it mildly, not to be taken literally.  (Of course, there is a precedent for this, too:  I remember a Lee dungarees ad from about six or seven years ago that featured the opening lines of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son”—“Some folks are born, made to wave the flag/oo, they’re red, white and blue”—but, of course, did not continue on to John Fogerty’s scathing point about who ends up fighting and dying when we go to war. ) Ah, well.  If it has to happen, I hope that Matt Johnson, who essentially is the The, gets a great steaming pile of cash from Masterfoods and/or BBDO for their use of his song.  I hope they give him so much money that he can do papier-mache with it, or buy a small island somewhere, or even just eat gravlax off the supine form of some nubile starlet or other.

But enough of that.  Kimberly had actually been referring to the fact that earlier in the day, I had been to the butcher in my neighborhood, where I can buy decent organic antibiotic-free chickens for approximately $1.50 per pound less than I’d pay for the same chicken in Manhattan.  Since the butcher only sells these chickens whole, I picked up three of them.  When I got them home, I cut them up, marinated the breasts in buttermilk and Penzeys Bicentennial Rub (to be poached the next day), marinated the legs in full-fat Greek yogurt, salt and a sweet saffron-enriched curry powder (to be roasted the next day), and turned the backs, necks and wings into stock.  I used to do this on a somewhat regular basis, at least once a month, using the breasts for chicken salad, the legs for stews and pilaus, and the stock for everything from soup to pasta sauce.  While I was always pleased with the results, and while I was glad that I’d expended the effort once the chicken was in the fridge, the stock was in the freezer and the dishes were washed and dried, I always considered this to be “utility cooking,” the kind that you do to have enough food for weekday lunches and dinners, but not particularly adventurous or fun.  Then I went through a bit of a slump, and fell out of the habit of cooking ahead.  Once I decided to study for the LSAT, all plans for regular cooking fell by the wayside:  We ate a lot of takeout, I bought a lot of potstickers and tamales from Trader Joe’s, and when I could get it together to cook something, more often than not it was Pasta With:  Spaghetti with butter and nutmeg.  Spaghetti with parmigiano-reggiano and black pepper.  Spaghetti with olive oil, garlic and lemon (an old Cooking on the Edge recipe inspired by an old John Thorne recipe, both of which we used to live on in our retail-bookselling days, when we were making exactly 70% of the money required to keep us alive).  On really ambitious nights, I would make gnocchi (boil water, dump frozen gnocchi into pot) with a brown butter sauce from Sally Schneider’s A New Way to Cook (brown a little butter, add a little balsamic vinegar, boil, add water or chicken stock, boil, reduce, add salt).  The salad accompanying this was usually a bundle of watercress dressed with mustard vinaigrette.  More often, though, it was pizza, pizza and more pizza.  Granted, it was terrific pizza, from the little Italian restaurant around the corner, made with fresh basil, fresh mozzarella, a vegetably tomato sauce and a crust the thickness of a one-pound coin, but it was still takeout, and with every pizza ordered, I felt less and less like my old self.

I don’t know exactly what it was that tripped the switch, so to speak.  It might have been the approaching cold weather—I’m sorry, but I’m not brokenhearted by the disappearance of 72-degree weather in New York City in January—or it might have been my return to regular workouts at the East 54th Street Rec Center, or it could have been as simple as a three-day weekend, but whatever it was, it has resulted in some swell food, as well as in the realization that there is one thing that can never be taken away from me, namely:  I do not know when to say “enough.” Before I’d even bought my first tiny little bag of lettuce at the market on Saturday, I knew that I was not equipped that day to buy a lot of heavy foods in quantity, and yet, within an hour I’d bought two bags of onions, five pounds of potatoes, close to ten pounds of apples and a quart of maple syrup.  Of course I had to be all macha about it, “Oh, this isn’t shlepping!  This isn’t heavy at all!” Then I took a bus uptown to Kalustyan’s,where I picked up four pounds of blackeyed peas, to be used for hoppin’ John, as well as for one of my favorite dips, the evocatively-named Hillbilly Hummus from Crescent Dragonwagon’s Passionate Vegetarian, essentially a hummus recipe with blackeyed peas replacing the chickpeas and peanut butter replacing the tahini.  As I carried the beans, along with my Bags and Bags o’Fruit and Vedge to the counter, it occurred to me that I might have made a slight tactical error, as I was due to meet Julie and Bunni for lunch, and I had not left myself enough time to run the groceries home before lunch.  Ah, well, I thought.  It was then that my eyes lit upon my favorite cheap luxury, a little stack of bags of bamboo rice.  (By “cheap” I am speaking in the context of luxuries, not of rice; I can buy ten pounds of basmati rice in my neighborhood for the price of a pound of bamboo rice.) Of course I had to buy two pounds of the stuff, as well as a pound of beluga lentils.  At this point my shoulders were slumped and my biceps were straining under the weight of all this stuff, and yet I didn’t cry uncle, didn’t call Bunni or Julie and tell them I’d have to be a bit late; no, I dragged all this stuff to Third Avenue, where I caught another uptown bus.  I breathed a sigh of relief, glad that I’d have at least 20 minutes before I’d have to get off the bus—and then remembered that Julie had been to the retail store at King Arthur Flour in Vermont just after Christmas, where she had called and asked me if I wanted anything, and I asked her to bring me a five-pound block of Merckens caramel.

After lunch, I took a taxi home.  I could have bought myself another decent lunch or two with the money I paid in fare, tip and toll across the Triborough, but as the taxi pulled up directly in front of my house, I’d thought it was the best money I’d ever spent.

So once again life chez PTMYB does not exactly reign tranquil, but it is starting to look like itself again.  I can come home and know that I can actually cook dinner without asking Lloyd, sheepishly, if he wouldn’t mind having one more pizza.  (Mind you, now that I’m reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, a birthday present from my dear friend Sharon, I am aware that eating chicken during the winter is a deeply unseasonal act, but that is a topic for another post.) We have a big pot of hoppin’ John, we have Hillbilly Hummus, we have two loaves of rice bread -- well, we have one in the freezer and one that’s just about completely eaten, and plenty more on the way, thanks to the big bag of basmati I’d bought after I’d brought all the food home and put it away.  Eventually we’ll have potato and leek soup, or frittata, or oatmeal bread, or the fabulous fiery red Indian lamb stew called roganjosh.  And we’ll have mache, or corn lettuce, because even in the dead of winter, something green will find its way up out of the ground.

Speaking of green...it is probably an act of criminal self-indulgence to want to live on bamboo rice when I can buy basmati for a tenth of the price, but I have found the dish I want to live on all winter, along with mache salad and maybe an orange to keep scurvy at bay.  Essentially, this is nothing more than a variant form of beans and rice, so I should not be patting myself on the back for it, but every once in the while I need to discover how good simple things are, and this is as simple, and as good, as they come.  You can make this as rich or as lean as you like.  If you’re a vegan, you can substitute a cold-pressed, fragrant nut oil; if you’re watching your fat intake, you can omit the fat and still have a rich, filling dish.  You can use another vinegar in place of balsamic, although I’d stay with a lower-acidity vinegar.  Aged sherry vinegar is a nice choice.  If you want to fancy it up, you can melt the butter in a skillet and add some spices, frying them gently until they give off their aromas with vigor.  If you want to gild the lily a bit, you can add a little soft crumbly cheese like feta or ricotta salata.  (I’ve not tried it with Caerphilly, but now I’m curious to do just that.) About the only drawback to this recipe is that the rice does not stay as green in its cooked state as in its uncooked, nor do the lentils stay as black.  They do, however, look good in the bowl together, and they taste like a world of goodness.

Bamboo rice with beluga lentils
serves 6-8, depending on appetite

In a 2-quart saucepan, bring water to the boil.  Add the butter and salt and stir briefly to dissolve.  Add the rice, stir, return to the boil, turn the heat down to low and cover the pot.  The rice should be cooked through in about ten minutes; it will look wet but should not be soupy—if it is, cook for an additional minute or two.  Turn off the heat and let rest for 5-10 minutes.  Fluff the rice lightly with a fork, add to the bowl of lentils and stir.  Serve with a little feta or ricotta salata if you want it.

An artsy shot of the underside of the rice bread, just because I love the crust so damn much.

Beluga lentils and bamboo rice in their uncooked states.  Mmm, pretty.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.