Diane Morgan

Even folks who never complain about the weather in our corner of the country are grumbling. The weathermen are saying this is one of the wettest Mays ever, with over four inches of rain.

But I’m not one of those people who never complain about the rain. I grouse plenty. I kvetch. I fret. I gripe and sigh. I’m one of those people who delay errands for another day, standing at the window like the kids in The Cat in the Hat, saying to myself: I don’t really need to run to the grocery store, I’ll pull something from the freezer or scavenge through the pantry to create a meal. I’ll find something fun to do inside and leave the soggy, bone-chilling, guaranteed-bad-hair day to everyone else.

This is a good climate to be a writer! During these stretches, I get my sunshine from the bright light of my big Apple monitor. I may gaze out my study window and see raindrops, gray skies, and puddles, but when I turn back to my keyboard, my screensaver treats me to images of my children mugging for the camera on a crisp, sunny day in Istanbul. I see that sunshine and imagine the possibilities – and then I write.

My editor and I were discussing recently how little TV we each watch. He is busy reading and I’m busy cooking and writing. As a freelance writer I dictate my own hours, and they are odd. I try to have a rhythm but it is hard to capture and quantify. What about always. What I do isn’t really a job, (though I get paid for it). It is a passion. And when you are passionate about something, you live it, breathe it, discuss it, eat it, and for me, cook and write about it.

My husband and I were just in New York City for our daughter’s college graduation. I was planning and booking our dinner reservations and thinking about where we would have lunch. She begged me not to plan the entire trip around food. Really? Why not? We’ll find plenty of great activities to do between meals, but good meals are not to be missed. Can you imagine wasting calories on mediocre food?

It was warm and gloriously sunny in New York, a welcome respite from Portland’s weather – until the day of the big graduation ceremony. And then it rained. For nearly three hours we sat outside in the cold rain, tucked under an umbrella, part of the canopy of umbrellas that surrounded us. We could hear, but not really see, the graduation ceremony.

Waiting for the ceremony to start, I was busy writing. I texted my daughter to say: We are in row five under the big black umbrella. See us? I wrote a memo with tasting notes about the previous night’s dinner, and then I e-mailed a friend back home, grumbling about the soggy weather—just can’t escape it this time of year.

I just returned from a week of teaching cooking classes at Rancho la Puerta in Tecate, Mexico. What a wonderful opportunity to teach healthy cooking techniques using just-picked produce from the huge organic garden steps from the cooking school door. It’s one thing to shop at a farmers’ market and another to harvest vegetables and have them plated and ready to eat in less than an hour from being pulled from the soil. I can’t replicate that at home, except for fresh herbs and arugula, however I can dream about my week away and relish the daily rhythm of the Ranch.

Bourbon Brown Sugar Crusted Ham

My Featured Recipe this week, Bourbon and Brown Sugar-Crusted Ham, anticipates Easter and the tradition of serving this showy main course as the centerpiece of the meal. My Featured Video provides the step-by-step techniques for preparing and baking the ham. Finally, more daylight and a sense that spring is really in the air.

This is always a hard time of year for me. I’m tired of all the rain, I’m waiting for the trees to start flowering, ready to take after-dinner walks, and, foremost, waiting for the re-opening of the Portland Farmers Market. That will happen on March 20th.

I’ve seen some glimmerings of early spring produce on restaurant menus—sorrel pesto with pan-roasted halibut, green garlic with braised lamb, panna cotta with rhubarb compote, stinging nettle risotto, and roast chicken with baby carrots and dill. It all makes me hungry in a lighter sort of way. It’s the buds, the shoots, and tender greens—all delicate and fresh—ready to wake up the palate for spring flavors.

Stepping out the kitchen door to check my container garden, I see it still in a barren state with a few hearty survivors. The rosemary, thyme, and chives are managing to grow without any attention on my part. But, shockingly, there were three-inch tall shoots of tarragon—the one herb I was told was a wimp at wintering over.

I don’t want to get too over eager, I know we will have more cold nights and more drenching rains, but I’m motivated to buy seeds and plant starts. Maybe some early arugula, parsley, and radishes would work. Without a cold frame or green house it is hard to do more and, besides, I’m a better cook than gardener.

However, this coming week, I have the pleasure of cooking from a large organic garden in Tecate, Mexico. I’ll be the guest chef at Rancho la Puerta, teaching three, healthy cooking classes while fully taking advantage of all the fitness regimens. I’ll do my best to inspire the students and get inspired. I’m told the large garden is full of vegetables and fruits, ready for spur-of-the moment menu changes. I’ll pluck, pick, and snip to fill my garden basket and dream about warm, sunny days and the anticipation of spring…up north.

Diane

Let’s reset the scene for a modern and romantic Valentine’s Day dinner. The tablescape doesn’t need to change: I’m all in favor of a candlelit dinner with ribbon-tied linens, fine china, and a touching bouquet of flowers. Whether it’s flea market finds or grandma’s best passed down to the younger generation, a touch of elegance with a wisp of grace is in order.

What seems passé is the meat-focused plate. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good steak or chop. A shared rack of lamb would suit me just fine. But there is nothing inherently romantic in the cooking process. It’s February, after all. In most parts of the country it is cold, even blustery, with loads of snow. The diehards might light the grill, but who wants to be touched with ice-cold hands and smooched with a red, runny nose? There is nothing, absolutely nothing, romantic about broiling, and that leaves stove-top searing as the solution to a perfectly cooked steak. A mess to be left ‘til morning?

Creamy Risotto with Porcini Mushrooms; perfect romantic meal

So my thoughts turn to risotto. Why risotto? Because the cooking process is like a slow dance—a rhythmic motion that is at once captivating and engaging. A slight sizzle softens the onions and garlic. The tempo changes as the hard grains hit the pan and the rice is briskly slicked with oil. Wine is added and a flash of steam warms the face and scents the air. It’s the beginning of the measured steps. A ladle of broth and a turn of the spoon around the pot. A sip of wine as the broth is absorbed. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. For nearly twenty calm, quiet minutes, the ritual continues until the rice is plump, creamy, and tender. The finale is the addition of rich cream, earthy mushrooms, fragrant herbs, a dash of salt, and grind of pepper. Warm bowls are filled, more wine is poured, and the slow dance moves to the table. It’s anticipation and seduction all at once.

Just please bring me a nibble of chocolate for dessert.

Diane

Not-So-New New Year’s Resolutions

Why does it take a new year to begin resolutions? Does January 1st magically signal our psyche to begin anew? Or is it the debauchery and sugar overindulgence of the holidays that forces this reckoning? Knowing that we can’t keep downing the cocktails and champagne, eating the ham and turkey plus leftovers, and lifting yet one more cookie off the holiday tray puts us in a somber, get-it-together mood once the clock strikes midnight and the New Year begins. OK. Maybe we wait until noon on New Year’s Day to strike this peace accord with ourselves and willingly surrender our excesses.

For me, the reckoning began later. I arrived home on January 6 from a two-week family vacation in Argentina. New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, at Posada Puerto Bemberg near Iguazu Falls on the border between Argentina and Brazil, came and went with nary a thought to resolutions. I was having too much fun and it wasn’t going to stop until I arrived home. I didn’t dare step on the bathroom scale until the 9th of January, giving myself plenty of time to lose any water weight I may have retained from the flight home.

The truth hurts, though it could have been worse. An addition of a few pounds on my frame means my clothes are tight and my jeans barely zip. I was sure all that sweating in the northern Argentina jungles was worth a pound or two. Looks like not. I think those thick and juicy Argentinean steaks, along with bottles of Malbec (notice the plural), would require days of jungle trekking, and that we did not do.

So … out comes the big soup pot. This is my diet plan. Using only a couple tablespoons of olive oil, just enough to slick the bottom of the pot, I sweat garlic, leeks, carrots and celery. To that I add low-sodium, fat-free chicken broth along with a large can of peeled, diced tomatoes, including the juice from the can. With the liquid at a simmer, I add one-inch chunks of butternut squash, zucchini, red bell pepper, and green beans. When those are fork tender, I toss in a can of drained and rinsed cannellini beans and a small handful of fresh herbs. After ten minutes of simmering I have a pot full of hearty, nutritious, low-calorie goodness that fills and warms me up, satisfies my taste buds, and keeps me going. It would probably be delightful with a glass of Malbec, but that would require another resolution, and my psyche just isn’t ready for that.

Here is the recipe and how-to video
Holiday Detox Vegetable Soup
Diane

Dianes new cookbook - The new Thanksgiving Table

Every Thanksgiving while I was growing up, my family did go over a river and through some woods to get to my grandparents’ house for Thanksgiving dinner. It was a lively affair with twenty-three around a big, long table, twelve of us being grandchildren. The youngest stared in awe at the big turkey, picked the crusty bread cubes off the top of the extra pan of stuffing, and giggled as we snatched pitted black olives from the relish tray and stuck them on our fingertips. My grandmother noticed every time, and knowingly asked, “So who ate all the olives?” We slyly put our hands behind our backs, shrugged our shoulders, and said, “We dunno, Grandma,” and then raced to the big staircase to nibble away. My childhood memories of Thanksgiving dinner are fond indeed—the flavors, the smells, the long buffet of food, and the big piece of pumpkin pie. It has always been my favorite holiday.

As a hungry-for-home-cooked-food college student, I rallied my friends in the dorm to make Thanksgiving dinner together. The small dorm kitchen had a motley collection of battered aluminum saucepans, chipped Pyrex baking pans, charred wooden spatulas, and slightly melted rubber ones. The dishes and silverware were mismatched, but nobody cared. We borrowed a roasting pan and some big mixing bowls from the college cafeteria. Several of us walked to the supermarket with empty backpacks and came back loaded down with a turkey, fixings for stuffing, sweet potatoes, broccoli, fresh cranberries, pumpkin pie filling, and ice cream. To the music of the Grateful Dead, we cooked and sang, laughed and danced, and ate a candlelit turkey dinner that lasted for hours. Red and gold maple leaves had been gathered and stuck into empty beer bottles for table decorations, and bandannas served as napkins. It was perfect.

Nineteen seventy-eight was the year I got married, and it was also the year of the twelve pound turkey for two. What did I know—I was in my first kitchen, and this was our first Thanksgiving as a couple. We were far from family, missed the holiday traditions, and wanted to start our own. The smallest turkey we could buy was twelve pounds—seemed reasonable to us. So did six pounds of sweet potatoes and two bags of bread cubes for stuffing. No one ever told me that a turkey has two cavities (one is more obvious than the other), or that a packet of giblets could be found in the undiscovered neck cavity. After several calls home for advice and many hours of cooking, we dined sumptuously on enough food for about fourteen. As I recall, we dined for many days thereafter on the remains of that same meal.

As my children have grown and are now young adults living in New York, I think back as to how they have helped shape the Morgan family Thanksgiving traditions. They survived the year-of-endless turkey as I wrote my first Thanksgiving cookbook and were, unfortunately, away at college when I wrote this new version celebrating the regional Thanksgiving traditions. Well, at least from my perspective, it was unfortunate, with so many test batches of holiday foods in the kitchen and so few mouths to feed. I’m grateful my husband has an endless appetite for leftovers.

Braving the hordes of travelers during the long Thanksgiving weekend, my children flew home last Thanksgiving, along with my son’s girlfriend, to join us in celebrating this fall harvest feast. They have just booked their flights home for this upcoming holiday. Nothing delights me more. Last year, I had many helpers in the kitchen, fully engaged in wanting to roll pie dough, learn to make stuffing, and prepare our family favorites—Fennel Gratin, Streusel-Topped Sweet Potato Casserole, Green Beans with Shallot Crisps, and, of course, Blueberry-Cranberry Double-Crusted Pie. In the background old movies played on the little TV in the kitchen, in particular, The Wizard of Oz. It was a day to remember and cherish. Our close friends joined us for dinner and it was a lively evening around the dining room table—as so many Thanksgivings have been. Two weeks ago I lamented the passing of summer, but now, with all the fall produce at the market and the leaves starting to turn, I’m ready to plan this year’s Thanksgiving dinner. I don’t think it’s too soon.

Diane