Simply Salads

Keeping Up Appearances

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It’s Ann here. Andy is over in Our Little Corner writing his own take on “appearances.” Be sure to check it out.

Shepherd’s Pie at our house; Christmas 2023

Did you know that there are websites devoted entirely to plating food? Obviously, they’re geared mostly for chefs and restaurants, but the suggestions could easily be applied to home-cooking. Appearance is important afterall.

I should have used suggestions from the chef websites when plating our Christmas day dinner. A labor-intensive Shepherd’s Pie was to be the highlight. Yum! Three days ahead of time I roasted lamb shanks, then removed the tender meat and diced it. I made a gravy from the drippings. I boiled and mashed Yukon gold potatoes, loaded them with butter. I peeled and sliced fresh carrots and cooked them till barely tender. And I made a delicious creamed spinach. Then I carefully layered everything, poured still more butter over the top and and baked the “pie” for 1 hour and 15 minutes. And served it. See the photo above.

Yup; the pie was definitely not pretty. Maybe even a little yucky looking.

I’m so sorry my plated “pie” didn’t look like this!

What would have helped? Perhaps a garnish of watercress – or maybe chopped fresh parsley? I should have thought of that! My mother was The Parsley Queen, so much so that one of her grandsons placed a bunch of parsley on her casket, rather than the traditional flowers, for her funeral. I tend to substitute cilantro for parsley (sorry, all of you cilantro-haters). Or I thinly slice chives or green onions. Pomegranate seeds in the winter. Or toasted sesame seeds. Whatever. I’ll remember for the next holiday or dinner party that appearances may be everything, no matter what wonderful flavors may be inside.

This is definitely NOT the kind of garnish that I do or want to do.

It’s funny. After writing that about The Parsley Queen, I found a great article about plating home food on TheKitchn.com. Of their 4 suggested rules for making food look beautiful, this was the cleverly-written #4:

Garnish! (It’s about romance, not parsley).

What is a garnish? It’s a final touch, a little swipe of shiny butter or a green shimmer of pesto to give a dish a tiny extra pop of romance. It’s woo-woo but true: The garnish is the little sparkle of love, like putting on lipstick or straightening your collar before a date with your adored partner. You don’t have to do it — you’re committed and going to have a great time regardless — but the garnish, the last peek in the mirror, shows that you’re excited for this encounter. You care. You choose to add a touch of romance.

So any dish you love and want to romance can and should be garnished. This goes double (triple!) for family-style food that might otherwise look a little heavy — the enchilada casserole (hit it with some fresh cheddar and cilantro!), the radically simple egg casserole (drizzle on some olive oil!), the platter of rotisserie chicken from the grocery store (girl, that’s what pesto is FOR). The days when every single plate had a pile of curly parsley and a bed of lettuce are gone, but garnishes are eternal to food.

This peeler is a nice tool for making decorative strips of veggies or hard cheese for garnishes

Speaking of appearances, you may notice our blog’s appearance has changed. It’s a long (and nightmarish) story. You’ll find Andy’s blow-by-blow account in Our Little Corner today. 

As for a recipe with a lovely appearance AND a lovely flavor, try this Mixed Chicory Salad. Made by our daughter as an accompaniment to my Shepherd’s Pie – and far surpassing my contribution on the beauty scale – it’s oh-so good. Just don’t forget the garnishes!

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It’s SO Random: Joe Pera Talks With You

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I like that 1908 sheet music: “Always Think of Mother.” And I like Joe Pera.

The phrase “It’s so random” has oft been applied to our blog. Rather than rejecting that or feeling hurt, Andy and I embrace it. :). Maybe that’s why we’re so enamored with Joe Pera. His TV series is definitely random.

Admittedly, we’re a little slow to join his fan club. The first episode of Joe Pera Talks With You debuted in June of 2018 – and the final episode of the third season ran in December 2021. You can watch them on Max (fka HBO) or Amazon Prime. Each series is just 11 minutes – perfect for someone like me with a short evening attention span.

Here’s the catch. You may either love it or fall asleep watching it. Yes, it may be polarizing – even though Joe Pera is the mildest, kindest man you’ve probably ever met – or watched on TV. Ringer.com described the series this way: it’s “mellow, joyful, and good-hearted” and it’s “three seasons of funny, unique, thoughtful programming.”

Pera, assuming the role of a dorky 30-ish-year-old middle school choir teacher, talks with us in a monotone; his shoulders stoop and he walks like an old man. But he’s filled with sage advice. Here’s part of one of his talks I love:

When Stephen Hawking cheated on his wife, she must have felt pretty sad. It was a terrible thing to do, and I don’t want to defend him, but try thinking about it from his perspective for a moment. He spends all day thinking about the universe and how big it is. How our star, the sun, is just one of dozens of stars in the galaxy, which is just one of dozens of galaxies in the known universe, all set against handfuls and handfuls of time. If one guy cheats on his wife, what’s the big deal?

Thinking further down the same line of thought however, if we’re so tiny and insignificant, if you’re able to find one person in the entire universe who cares about you, why would you want to disappoint them?

In the episode above – 11:32 minutes long – Pera talks (briefly) about dominoes, sheet music, lightening, water pressure, the sound of whole milk being poured, the Blue Angels, textile fibers, hot tubs, and pineapple. My favorite line: “At some point most stuff becomes obsolete.”

(an aside: we just started watching How To With John Wilson on Max. It’s weirdly similar to Joe Pera – but about NYC. The second episode is all about scaffolding, and “how easily something short term becomes permanent” to quote the NYTimes review.)

Joe Pera adores his Basset Hound, Gus, but I wonder what he would have to say about the 1962 Italian film Mondo Cane (It’s a Dog’s World). That film is as random as Joe’s series – but its gloomy depiction of a world gone to the dogs couldn’t be more of a polar opposite to how Joe sees the world. Andy, in today’s Andy’s Corner, argues that the world really has gone to the dogs, but not as you may expect. I wonder what Joe Pera would say about that?

Our pole bean crop is just starting to produce, so when Joe Pera talks about growing beans, I perk up. He shows us the arch he constructed and remarks that now he doesn’t have to stoop to pick a bean and can simply and easily reach up to get the hanging beans.

“Joe Pera Talks With You About Beans” – Season 2, Episode 1
Re-thinking our bean planting

We have always grown our pole beans in 3′ high galvanized water tanks – with cages or poles for the beans to climb up. And then we wonder why we have trouble reaching them. I think a bean arch, starting at ground level, is our project for next summer’s crop.

And while I’m talking with you about beans, I’ve got the perfect recipe to enjoy your bean crop. I can almost hear Joe – in his soft, sweet voice – going on about how much he misses the meatballs and the green bean salad his Nana used to make. Did she watch Julia Child, Joe? Maybe this green bean salad will be almost the same as Nana’s.

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Philosophical Figs

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My dad was a poetry lover. When I look back now at some of the poems he loved to recite (in his most demonstrative voice), I wonder if they (and he) would pass the “PC” test. I can still quote the final lines of “Gunga Din” by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) because I heard them so often from my dad:

Though I’ve belted you and flayed you,
      By the livin’ Gawd that made you,
  You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna St.Vincent Millay (1892-1950), another of my dad’s favorites, was “a sexually adventurous bisexual…and a morphine addict” (though I would bet my bottom dollar that my dad didn’t know that about her). Her point of view – for many reasons – may not always be well received. Take, for example, her poem “Second Fig”:

Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!

Contradicting a familiar edict, “Don’t burn your candle at both ends,” Millay’s poem “First Fig” is short but memorable:

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light!

My dad even went so far as to write his own take-off on that poem:

My candle burns at neither end,
Heat bent it to a “U,”
So now it has two bottoms.
The whole damn thing’s askew...
T’will light no other’s candle
Nor guide them through the dark.
Tis my own fire department
Which smothered out the spark.

These two fig poems come from an anthology which Millay entitled A Few Figs from Thistles – which must refer to the Bible’s Matthew 7:16: Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?  Was her title meant to be ironic?

Andy’s Corner offers up a poem today too – but it’s not a Millay poem and it has nothing to do with figs. It has a little bit to do with birds. And a lot to do with lies.

Until I started this blog I was oblivious about the amount of fascinating history that accompanies figs. The Smithsonian Magazine has a nice summary of its ancient and religious connections, including this:

The fig tree may have been the first plant cultivated by humans and holds a prominent place in religious history. Some rabbinical scholars even suggest that the tree of knowledge that sent Adam and Eve on the path to perdition may not have been an apple at all, but a fig. The Buddha is said to have gained enlightenment in India under a fig tree.

Odysseus pulled himself from the whirlpool of Charybdis by grabbing onto an overhanging fig anchored to a rock.

Since I’m always interested in the gardening and farming and health aspect of fruits and vegetables, I did some quick research and discovered this tidbit: In California 50,000 acres were devoted to fig trees in the 1930’s, but today a mere 9300 acres are devoted to figs. Is that because our tastes are changing and we no longer appreciate figs on the table? If so, that’s a shame, especially given that figs have a lot of health benefits.

It didn’t take long for me to decide we needed a fig tree – but one that could grow in a pot. It was hard to bypass the LSU Purple Fig Tree but I ended up with a Penache Tiger Stripe fig.

Penache Tiger Stripe Fig

Just down the road from our house in Glen Ellen is the spot where the popular “the girl & the fig” restaurant began. “the girl & the fig” has now moved to Sonoma, but “the fig cafe” remains. One of “the fig’s” much-beloved menu items is the Fig & Arugula Salad. We’ve got that recipe for you and we’ve also linked a recipe from SouthernLiving.com for a 2-ingredient delicious appetizer – which combines fig preserves with goat cheese. Even if you don’t think you’re a fig fan, I’ll bet you’ll love both recipes.

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