What I'm Eating this Week

So, putting aside the Booker excitement, which I think I finally understand after a lot of mucking about, it's time for this week's installment of "What I'm Eating this Week".

What I'm Reading about Food this Week: The Book of Miso:Food for Mankind, William Shurtleff & Akiko Aoyagi

I have no real problem with the kind of glossy cookbooks so much in vogue at the moment. Nigel Slater's Appetite and Real Food are two of my favorite references. But there's a special pleasure in finding something quirky and unexpected in the bottom shelves of a bookstore, or in the forgotten backwaters of ebay. The Book of Miso is a perfect example.

Sure, there's forty pages of crackpot environmentalism at the beginning. Yes, the authors have a zealot's belief in the power of miso to cure every problem from world hunger to obesity. And no, most of the recipes aren't much good. Here's a hint to those planning books on little known ingredients - if we wanted to know how to make enchiladas with miso, we would have asked.

But none of that means that the book is without charm. It's only after the environmental screed, for example, that we learn that the American author spent six months doing a miso apprenticeship with a master in Japan, and only at the end of the book, tucked behind a brilliant history of miso, do we find instructions to do the same yourself. Lost amid the dozens of ludicrous Americanized uses of miso, furthermore, are some amazing, obviously authentic recipes - dengaku, or barbecued tofu brushed with miso; a variety of traditional porridges and gruels apparently typical of Japan; a neat mini-chapter on the art of broiling the miso itself.

I don't suppose that the The Book of Miso has had much staying power since coming out in the mid-70s. But it shouldn't be ignored. Sometimes, out of the unlikeliest of places, you can find some really interesting things to delight and educate. This book is one of those rare exceptions.

What I'm Eating this Week

Rabbit (chicken) stew with green olives - With apologies for the shortened format, the centerpiece of my eating this week was a delicious stew of chicken and green olives. Actually, as the title above indicates, it's supposed to be rabbit, which itself was a replacement for the fattier duck. But my laziness predominates, and much rabbit these days isn't any more flavorful than the better types of chicken anyway.

Put in a stew moistened only by wine, and flavored by large, unpitted green olives, a diced tomato, and some finely diced onions (along with bunches of fresh thyme), chicken really does wonders. The key thing to remember, of course, is to sear the chicken skin side down before doing anything else, making sure to get the skin brown, caramelized, and crisp. I'm sure there are worse things to do to chicken than to stew it while grey and rubbery, but I can't think of them right now, and they're probably inappropriate for this blog anyway. Actually, it's in this searing that the lack of duck is most felt - chicken hardly ever renders enough fat to lend a strong flavor to the onions you saute directly afterwards. But it's a small enough loss compared to the dish as a whole. And the duck can always be saved for roast potatoes later.