The Theme is Discoloration

How do you cook for good friends you doesn't often see? Is it better to wheel out an old stalwart-- and thereby devote more time to socializing-- or to throw caution to the winds and tinker out something new? The conclusion seems foregone. Throw something in the oven and join 'em.

The logic certainly stacks up. The well-oiled machine produces fewer anomalies. The new, after all, is not necessarily the good. Why risk the suddenly sated appetites and delicate words that follow a failed experiment: "so— you're still cooking these days, I see. I guess you enjoy it?"

There's a social component here, too. When old friends come to visit, there's far more to an evening than simply the display of competence. To fritter away all one's time in the kitchen would be a disaster far more grave than any undercooked chicken or underwashed salad.

All the same, Saturday night found me spurning my own better judgment. I cast my lot with the new. Is there not something in friendship that refuses to be measured in terms of either aesthetic quality or, for that matter, time spent? Is not the very thing one enjoys about one's friends a certain élan, a flair for excitement and experiment? To fall back on practiced efforts risks reducing one's friends to mere company: it presumes that aesthetics precedes intentions.

With B. and L. visiting from Lower Appalachia this weekend, we made a meal whose theme was, however, based on an aesthetic glitch: the theme was discoloration. This was not a design realized in the planning phase. The theme, shall we say, emerged.

First came a salad with tiny beets from the season's final CSA box. The beets added a much-heralded purple hue to the lettuce and bacon they accompanied. A royal stain.

The theme continued with the side dish of "Turnips Anna" we served. (The title is a double homage: it is, first of all, a regular old shout-out to Potatoes Anna, which it mimics. Second, it is an homage to L's and B's friend Anna, whose casual remarks last December inspired this blog). Turnips Anna was made cheese-free for H's benefit, with a touch of mustard added to the Béchamel sauce for piquancy. And there was a stain, too, if ever so faint: amid the sliced turnips was a layer of purple potatoes— the vestiges, again, of the season's final CSA box. I thought the purple potatoes might dye the otherwise lily-white dish a garish blue. Yet the effect was subtle, even slight; just enough to continue the theme.

The true engine of the meal consisted of cod fillets braised in a red wine reduction. The recipe, which was adapted from James Peterson's Fish and Shellfish book, calls originally for salmon. I was in the mood for something less particular in flavor, however, so I used cod instead. And the cod stained triumphantly. The fillets were so purple that they might as well have been salmon. Nobody would have known the difference.

The preparation, which I will certainly use again, is simplified from the original recipe: combine 2 cups of fish stock with a bottle of red wine in a large saucepan, and add 2 cloves garlic, 2 bay leaves, a bouquet garni, and some chopped onion and celery, and reduce until you're left with about a cup of liquid. Then pour the strained liquid over 4 fillets in a roasting pan, and cook at 375° for 10 minutes per inch of thickness. When the fish is cooked, remove and keep warm; then, in a saucepan, reduce the sauce even further at high heat, adding 2 tablespoons of red wine vinegar and a dose of parsley.

We served this with the turnips and a side dish of roasted asparagus and red onions.

Now, really, none of this was especially experimental: it's basically beef-n'-two-sides with fish standing in for the beef. And the discoloration was strangely accidental, though at some point I must have noticed all the purple ingredients. And there was even time to chat with the friends. For the best part about braising and roasting— and this is precisely why such preparations are stalwarts in our kitchen— is that they require remarkably little oversight. And thus we could direct our attention elsewhere, where it belonged.