Ninecooks

Two squash stews

If the picture tells the story, then this photo — yes, it's a pot of orange blobby-looking stuff with green things swimming in it, which is in fact a fantastic stew made this morning by the Wednesday Lunch Group — this photo is why I don't think pictures of food are the best way to tell the story of Ninecooks cooking groups.

It's not about the food.

it's about this:

and this:

and this:

and this.

Oh, I could tell you about the two stews we made, with butternut squash as the common denominator. One was Thai-inspired, with tofu in a coconut base; the other, a Native American adaptation, made with chile peppers and black beans, packed a bit more punch. Served over rice, either one could be the star of a dinner party, but each of these vegetarian stews came together in less than 45 minutes, so they'd be perfect for weekday cooking.

Because our menu was quick to prepare, we had time for a leisurely lunch: seven cooks, two stews, and one apple cake for dessert.

It doesn't get any better than that.

Another opening, another show

Only one more day until the start of the Fall season for all Ninecooks cooking groups.

First up, the Family Cooking Group takes on pasta sauces. Then The #1 Cooking Group takes the cake — well, two cakes, actually. Next, our World Cuisines Cooking Group travels to Senegal for a taste of West African cooking. And the Wednesday Lunch Group travels to the local farmstand for a supply of butternut squash, the key ingredient in two potluck vegetarian stew dishes.

Two weeks prior to cooking day, each group receives a shopping list, parcelled out so everyone brings a share of the groceries. I've stocked the pantry with spices, flours, sugar and salt. The herb garden still promises plenty of fresh herbs, though the cold snap may do in the basil. The knives are sharp and the stove's got gas.

So, let's get cooking!

Happy as clams

What could be better than getting together every few weeks, spending the morning cooking and eating and laughing and, occasionally, learning?

Not a thing, according to the response to the questionnaire I sent to the Wednesday Lunch Group.

I remember the day, two years ago next month, that this group first met in the Ninecooks kitchen to plan our cooking future (the hardest thing was finding a day of the week, and time of day, that fit into everyone's schedules). As each person arrived, he or she discovered with delight at least one other familiar face. In some cases, friendships went back twenty years or more. Nobody knew everyone in the kitchen, but everyone knew someone.

Our first actual cooking date was in November 2004. Today, the same seven cooks have become friends. One was married earlier this year, and invited everyone in the group to the wedding. We've welcomed into the kitchen one daughter and one sister. We've shared tales of woe about our parents, our in-laws, our kids and grandkids, our ex-spouses.

In other words, we've grown into a family, in the best sense of the word.

And we're a pretty happy family, as it turns out. Last Spring, at the end of our cooking season, I asked the group to consider: the frequency of our group cooking; the mix of menus and skills taught; the level of chaos (really!) — do we make too many things at once, too few, etc.; food cost; skills and topics of interest they're like to explore; field trips and ingredient tastings; and willingness to teach.

I didn't hear from everyone, but here's the response to date:

1.    We're cooking every 5-6 weeks, which everyone feels is just right.

2.    Most people are happy with the mix of menu and skills; one person asked that we focus more on method. Will do.

3.    Everyone felt the food cost is reasonable. Each person is assigned a shopping list prior to our cooking sessions; I try to keep the cost between $5 and $10 per person, and I provide the pantry items.

4.    Particular topics of interest: curries and Indian dishes, Mexican, US regional cooking, one-pot, lunches, potluck dishes. Yes, to all.

5.    Most would like occasional field trips, but not in place of cooking together.

6.   One person is willing to teach, and another is willing to consider it. That's great. Meanwhile, they seem happy enough with me (whew).

My favorite feedback nugget? "I use the recipes when I need to 'wow' someone!"

Wow!

Making maki

If you don't believe in magic, you've never cooked in the Ninecooks kitchen. In under two hours, presto change-o, the Wednesday Lunch Group turned chaos (above) into order (below), and into the perfect lunch for our final cooking session before the summer.

This month all four Ninecooks groups have been going to the mat — the bamboo sushi mat called a sudare. Each group starts from scratch, making the rice, mixing it with seasoned rice vinegar, sugar and salt in a traditional wooden tub or wooden salad bowl, toasting the sheets of nori, and prepping a variety of fillings including colorful vegetables, fruits, roast beef, seafood salad, peanut butter, and, today, shredded rotisserie chicken from the supermarket. (Actually we were pleased to discover that every ingredient we needed for making sushi could be found in our local grocery store. Given that we live in rural northwest Rhode Island, this means our markets have come a long way.)

For condiments we sampled hoisin sauce and a praline mustard, plus hot chili paste with garlic. We all fell in love with Gold's Wasabi Sauce, a prepared, somewhat mild alternative to kick-it-up wasabi powder, that we found in our market's seafood department; it turned out to be the perfect accompaniment to everything — chicken, turkey, veggies, smoked salmon. Finding the Gold's a bit tame, Pete decided to kick up his wasabi sauce (in the blue rice bowl in the photo below) with...yes...super-hot wasabi paste (on the little cow plate). Wowie zowie.

By the time we were on our second and third maki rolls, we were experts!

A few fearless flyers tried their hand at inside-out rolls, with a sprinkling of toasted black sesame seeds adding dramatic effect...

...abracadabra! Success! The inside-out mango-strawberry variation was a bit gooey, but we figured out how to stop the fruit from sliding out, and the rolls provided a sweet counterpoint to the spicy veggie rolls.

While Bev regaled us with stories of her recent travels in Peru, everyone — including a five-year-old guest cook — mastered the art of making maki.

We did pretty well on the eating part, too, but we'd made far more than we could eat. Practice certainly made perfect, but it also made way too much sushi for our lunch! My lucky husband Ted will find a bit of leftover tucked away in the fridge for tomorrow's dinner.

Hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to the farm we go!

This morning, at the table where I'm sitting right now, the Wednesday Lunch Group devoured an asparagus and gruyere tart, a serving bowl of soba noodles with asparagus and cashews, an asparagus frittata with mushrooms and thyme, a platter of asparagus wrapped in wontons, and "naked" asparagus that had been charred on the grill. In all, we went through four pounds of asparagus, and that's one big heap o' spears.

Our exploration of all things asparagus really began yesterday, when Marcia, Lora, Charlotte and I visited Falls Creek Farm in Oneco, Connecticut, to select our asparagus and take a peek at the sorting process. Farm manager Laura Pailthorpe (who's also the resident baker, in farmers' market season, of amazing breads and addictive quiches) welcomed us to the sorting room.

It was a kind of slow day at the farm, Laura explained; they'd only harvested 500 pounds (!) of asparagus that morning. The process is extremely hands-on. The spears are placed one at a time on a conveyor belt that sends them through a machine that washes and trims them to a uniform length. Then, the asparagus are sorted by hand into five sizes, from pencil thin to grill-perfect spears half an inch in diameter.

We were mesmerized by the banding machines, in which a stretched rubber band is placed around one-pound bunches of asparagus.

At the farm stand, we selected three sizes of spears: the next-to-smallest, for our frittata; medium, for the soba stir-fry; and large, for the grill. For all of the personal attention each spear receives on its way to market, you'd expect to pay a lot, and this year the Pailthorpes have had to raise the price – to a still-very-budget-friendly $2.25 a pound.

So, we brought our incredibly beautiful asparagus back to the Ninecooks kitchen, and made an incredibly beautiful array of dishes. And a good time was had by all.

End of story, right?

Not quite.

Marcia had a wonderful surprise for us – a selection of garlic scallions from her garden! We had an impromptu show-and-tell and a tasting, and decided to add the garlic scallions to our asparagus and cashew stir fry. Marcia explained how the "scallions" (they're really called green garlic, but they look exactly like scallions) grow, burrowing deep into the ground; how to plant them; and when to harvest, before the individual cloves begin to multiply into whole heads of garlic. None of us had ever tasted something that looks like an onion but has a distinct garlic taste, and after everyone went home, I went online to learn more. Marcia also brought us the gift of garlic cloves, sprouted and ready for planting.

I'll plant my cloves in the Ninecooks herb garden, so in a few weeks, all of our cooking groups will be able to enjoy home-grown garlic scallions.

Asparagus, every which way

On May Day, a not-so-young woman's fancy turns to Spring...and that means asparagus. Here in the hills of northwest Rhode Island (that's agricultural hardiness Zone 5), the locally grown asparagus look good enough to eat, and we're lucky to live near several farms and farmers' markets that provide a steady source of spears of all sizes.

The Wednesday Lunch Group takes on asparagus recipes in its cooking session next week, and the day before we cook, a small delegation plans to visit the sorting room at Falls Creek Farm in Oneco, Connecticut, to choose our spears. We'll make asparagus five ways:

• stir-fried, with cashews and soba noodles
• in a puff pastry tart shell, with gruyere cheese
• wrapped in wonton skins lined with wasabi and hoisin
• grilled naked (well, for modesty's sake, perhaps we'll add a bit of black pepper and olive oil)

My own stand-by recipe for asparagus completes the menu:

ASPARAGUS FRITTATA WITH MUSHROOMS AND THYME
A great weekday brunch, lunch or dinner dish. Serves 4, with a green salad and crusty bread.

1 small onion, sliced
2 Tbsp olive oil
6 asparagus spears, trimmed, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
4 mushrooms (white, cremini, baby bellas, etc.), stems removed, sliced
1/4 cup chopped red pepper
1 heaping tsp fresh chopped thyme
black pepper to taste
6 eggs, lightly beaten with 2 tsp milk or cream
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

In a medium nonstick ovenproof frying pan, over low heat, sauté onion in olive oil for a few minutes until no longer translucent. Add asparagus, mushrooms and red pepper, and cook, stirring occasionally, 2-3 minutes, until mushrooms give off most of their liquid. Add thyme and black pepper, and stir to combine. Pour eggs over the vegetables, and cook, covered, 5-10 minutes, or until eggs are almost set. Sprinkle with cheese and place under the broiler until cheese is melted. Let sit for 5 minutes before slicing. Can be served hot, warm, or room temperature.

The Michigan Asparagus Advisory Board web site answers lots of questions about the asparagus. A member of the lily family, asparagus is nutrient-dense, high in potassium, fiber, thiamin, and vitamins A, B6, and C. It has no fat, no cholesterol, very little sodium, and less than 4 calories per spear.

It does, however, have one amusing side effect. For fun facts about "asparagus pee", read The Skinny on Asparagus Pee, written by Hannah Holmes for The Discovery Channel.

Mushroom dreams

Not mushrooms. I know, and I can explain.

I had it all planned. Marcia, of the Wednesday Lunch Group, took me to Franklin Farms in North Franklin, Connecticut, a couple of weeks ago. We were scouting for a possible future field trip for our cooking group, and she thought this mega mushroom farm, not quite an hour from Ninecooks, would be perfect.

The northeast's largest grower of organic mushrooms, Franklin Farms is an environmentally responsible company that uses organic and recycled materials in a controlled indoor growing and harvesting process. They were the first commercial grower to introduce many varieties of specialty mushroom to the US market, including enoki, shiitake, cremini, and maitake (hen of the woods).

Marcia emailed ahead and received directions and the following: "When you come up the driveway, you'll see a guard shack, and our retail store is right there."

When we arrived, after a lovely toodle through the beautiful countryside, we realized that the guard shack actually is the retail store! It's large enough for exactly one large refrigerator, one cash register, one very nice man, and two customers.

Good things do come in small packages, however, and this is a very fine shack indeed. The prices are astonishingly low, perhaps a third of the price for the same mushrooms in our local grocery store. And, most important, the 'shrooms are fresh fresh fresh! We asked for recipe suggestions, and were each given a 15-page packet of information about the culture and qualities of each mushroom variety, along with recipes, "health" and medicinal uses, and assorted trivia.

SO, on the way home we decided to propose that our cooking group pile into the minivan and head for the Connecticut hills. When the group got together to cook last week, we told everyone about Franklin Farms. Before we could plan our next visit, however, tragedy struck – in the form of a phone call from a friend of Marcia's, who had learned that...gasp...Franklin Farms is closing their Connecticut operation and relocating to Pennsylvania.

We returned to that little guard shack today, though we knew we couldn't buy enough to save the farm (and the 380 people who will lose their jobs when Franklin Farms closes its Connecticut operation). We'll make one more trip in May, but for the cooking group, it's just too late.

Hence, the asparagus. Even as we mourn the loss of locally-produced organic mushrooms, we celebrate the impending arrival of asparagus season. We're already planning a visit to Falls Creek Farm, one of our favorite local asparagus producers, and we'll call to find out if we can bring the Wednesday Lunch Group to visit the farm's sorting room, where fresh-picked spears are sorted by size and packed by hand.

Cooking groups evolving

Last week, something momentous happened here at Ninecooks, something that started as a little pop in the universe, and then another little pop-pop, then pop-pop-pop-pop. By this morning I recognized the phenomenon for what it was — the big bang — the evolution of each cooking group into its own living, breathing, giggling, self-teaching organism.

For their upcoming cooking sessions, both the #1 Cooking Group and the Wednesday Lunch Group will be making recipes suggested by, and taught by, the group members themselves. One group is doing asparagus variations, the other cooking in tagine pots with preserved lemons, but in both cases we're building our menu around recipes provided by the group. I'll add a couple of recipes to round out the menu or ensure that we're using each food in a variety of ways, and I'll create the shopping lists and figure out the budget.

Every few months we do a bit of brainstorming about what we'd like to cook, new techniques to learn, new ingredients to taste, new pots and pans and kitchen gizmos to try (we managed to make an entire soup-to-nuts menu using a mandoline). Most of the time I take an overall theme and create a menu that combines my own recipes with those I find in cookbooks, magazines, TV shows. Now, as the cooking groups evolve, I'm creating cooking sessions around themes the groups choose, and recipes they provide.

Sharing recipes and teaching each other — these happen naturally when generations of families cook together. And when friends cook together, especially when they do it on a regular basis, they become families, with shared cooking history, shared disaster stories, and shared culinary triumphs.

What could be better than that?

Fish dishes from across the sea

Undeterred by a few piddling snow showers, the Wednesday Lunch Group gathered in the Ninecooks kitchen this morning for an Iberian fish feast, featuring one dish from Spain and the other from Portugal, by way of Massachusetts.

Pauline, who taught us how to make her wonderful Clam Boil Stew, hails from a French-Canadian family in the city of Fall River – a heavily Portuguese community midway between Providence and Cape Cod. When she first described this recipe, we were expecting multi-cultural and, as Pauline is a fabulous cook, we were expecting delicious. What we weren't expecting was....hot dogs!

It sounded strange and looked even stranger, but at some point after all of the ingredients were added to the pot, alchemy took over and everything melded into and enriched the broth. The flavors of littleneck clams and mussels, sweet potatoes and red-skinned potatoes, onions, turkey chourico, breakfast sausage and dill combined, and suddenly those hot dogs didn't seem at all out of place. The stew was actually quite light, and, though we often take home more leftovers than we manage to eat when we cook together, everyone had a heaping bowl of Pauline's stew. And this was our second course....

The Spanish side of the Iberian peninsula was represented by Cod with Raisins, Nuts and Apples, adapted from a recipe for a salt cod tapas item. My friend Candy and I made this dish for Thanksgiving, as part of our ongoing project to shake up our traditional holiday dinner. Of course we didn't follow the original recipe exactly; we used fresh cod instead of salt cod, and pine nuts instead of almonds. I'd forgotten to buy raisins, and ended up pulling them, one at a time, out of a box of raisin bran cereal! No matter; the dish was fabulous then, and it was fabulous today (when we actually had raisins, and almonds, too). A bit sweet, with a bit of bite from the white pepper.

We served the cod on slices of crusty rosemary-olive oil bread, which soaked up some of the sauce and melted in our mouths. It was a perfect appetizer, which we enjoyed while the clam boil stew finished cooking and the aroma filled the kitchen. Our Iberian fish feast was a success.

COD WITH RAISINS, NUTS AND APPLES

Adapted from a recipe for bacalao con manzana (salt cod with apples) in Tapas: The Little Dishes of Spain, by Penelope Casas. Serves 6 as an appetizer or tapas dish, served on or with some crusty bread to soak up the sauce, or 3-4 as a main dish with saffron rice and steamed green vegetables.

2 Tbsp raisins
1-1/4 lb cod fillet
Flour for dusting
6 Tbsp mild olive oil
2 1/4-inch thick slices of crusty loaf bread
6 Tbsp finely chopped onion
2 small tomatoes, seeded and finely chopped
2 Tbsp pine nuts
1 cup chicken broth
White pepper
8 blanched almonds, lightly toasted, or additional pine nuts
1/2 large apple, peeled, cored and chopped
Salt, to taste
1-2 cloves garlic, minced

Soak the raisins in warm water to cover for up to 2 hours, or place in a glass measuring cup with 1/4 cup water and microwave on high for 2 minutes. Set aside.

Dry the cod on paper towels and cut into large chunks. Dust with flour. Heat 4 Tbsp of oil in a sauté pan. Fry the bread on both sides until it is golden. Remove bread to a food processor or blender. Fry the cod in the same oil quickly, about 1 minute per side (add more oil if necessary). Remove to a warm dish. Wipe out the pan, but do not wash it.

Heat the remaining oil and sauté onion until it is wilted. Add tomato and cook for 3 minutes. Drain the raisins and stir them in, along with the pine nuts, broth, and white pepper. Cover and cook for 10 minutes.

WHILE THE SAUCE IS COOKING, in the food processor grind the bread with the almonds. With the motor running, add a few Tbsp of sauce from the sauté pan and process until the mixture is as smooth as possible. Add to the pan and continue cooking for 5 minutes. Add the cod, apple and garlic, and cook 10 minutes more, adding a little water if the sauce thickens too much. Taste for salt. Serve hot or at room temperature.

Is frozen fish a good idea?

For four years I've been preaching the gospel of fresh-caught, fresh-bought fish to everyone who comes to the Ninecooks kitchen. I've made the run to our favorite local fish market many times, often early on the morning before a cooking group meets, so that we can cook seafood that hasn't turned googly overnight in the fridge.

So what, you're wondering, is this obviously frozen package of Trader Joe's Alaskan Cod Fillets doing in my kitchen? Why frozen fish? And why cod from Alaska, when I live in New England, home of the bean and the cod?

The answer is that I'm a bit superstitious when it comes to recipes, especially when I'm experimenting. If I've made something once and I like the outcome, I'm inclined to try to duplicate it (which, by the way, never quite works). Yes, I'm curious about how a recipe would taste if I change this or that. But I also want to see if I can make the same thing twice, and that means using the same brand of hot sauce or canned tuna or sausage or whatever.

The Wednesday Lunch Group's next menu features two dishes inspired by cuisine of the Iberian Peninsula, and one of those recipes – cod with raisins and almonds – I've made before, the first time as part of a tapas-based Thanksgiving feast my friend Candy Nartonis – artist, adventurous cook, and recent traveler to Spain – and I prepared last November. The original recipe called for salt cod, but Candy brought a package of TJ's frozen cod that she'd defrosted in the refrigerator overnight; the cod was beautiful, well-trimmed, tender, not fishy-smelling at all. So we adapted the original recipe here and there. And the result was outstanding.

Trader Joe's sells a huge variety of fish (swordfish, mako shark, salmon, tuna, etc.), and the price is right (cod that sells for $5.99/pound at TJ's is $7.99/pound or more at my fish market). The 1-1/4 pound package will make six tapas-size servings, or 3-4 main dish servings. It's important to use the fish as soon as it's completely thawed; if it sits around waiting in the fridge, it will get waterlogged. Though the package says to "remove all packaging" when thawing, we've always kept it in the shrink-wrap, and the instructions below, from the Trader Joe's site, say the same:

Best bet:  Thaw from frozen in package in the refrigerator for 24 hours;  2nd best: in packaging in bowl of water in fridge for 1-2 hours;  Quick thaw: under cold running water.  Cheater thaw: remove from packaging and microwave on defrost until thawed.  Never thaw seafood at room temperature and marinate only in the refrigerator- discard marinade after use.

Until I moved to the country, where the nearest fish market is 45 minutes away and everything we do that involves food and food shopping involves planning ahead, I never used frozen fish. I have tried the tuna steaks, but cooked them as I would have cooked fresh fish – on the grill – and they overcooked in no time. Best to use this frozen fish in dishes that involve a sauce, which will help retain the moisture in the fish.

(Did I mention that the nearest Trader Joe's is an hour away, near Boston? Now, if only they'd put a store in Rhode Island....)