Cold comfort.

Thai curry salad, three ways. © Ryan Schierling

The salad days of summer are here, and it's been a lengthy and hot season this go around. This week, in fact, Austin broke a record for consecutive days over 100º F – seventy days straight – beating the old record set in 1925.  So what do you do when you are suffering through Thai curry withdrawals and it's just too bloody hot outside to eat it the traditional way?

Well, we made salad.

Oh, but we didn't just make one kind. No, we had to try three different kinds... 

It's been a month turbocharged with ideas, but we seem to have suffered from insufficient time for setting all those creative impulses into motion. So, when we committed to making salads Thai curry-style, we didn't mess around; we just made them all. The red, green and yellow standards that are familiar in our home, just a little... cooler.

I tend to associate "comfort food" with hot food. Something that warms the belly and coddles the senses, and this was admittedly a wide swing in the opposite direction of my huge crush on the hot, hot deliciousness that is Thai curry. But, no matter! Sometimes one's source of inspiration gets tantalizingly trumped by curiosity and an inventive tangent.

Now, we stayed as true to the traditional elements used in each of these curries when served hot, but adapted as necessary for the freshness and texture we expect of a salad. In lieu of jasmine rice we used a delicate rice vermicelli. We decided to limit it to three basic ingredients in addition to the vermicelli, a traditional curry sauce and the amazing fresh Thai basil we are blessed to have happily at hand in our herb garden. Our other criteria was that each salad had to have something with a little crunch and be able to feature a starch or protein nicely. We chose vegetables that are as good fresh as cooked, and passed on the tofu – just this once. (Curry and tofu are most excellent companions, though, so we will totally try this with fried tofu one day soon.)

TGICFS.

CFS w/ eggs and potatoes @ Dart Bowl. © Ryan Schierling

I learned a few things this Sunday.

I learned that the chicken-fried steak and eggs at Dart Bowl runs an anemic, distant third place to the blue-ribbon Tex-Mex cheese enchiladas (topped with proper chili-gravy and over-easy eggs) they are wildly famous for. Runner-up goes to the basket of homemade Texas toast with tiny paper condiment cups of butter already flipped over upside-down and melting onto the toast. Bringing up the rear sadly, a scrawny, wheezing, flat-footed CFS.

I learned that Julie didn't know the bowling terminology "turkey," where someone bowls three strikes in a row and a round of Wild Turkey shots is purchased. Even if it's only 11 a.m.

I learned that drinking Wild Turkey in the morning is even less glamorous when the 1 oz. shot is served in an 8 oz. plastic cup, but that $2.25 cans of Pearl are a dandy chaser.

I learned that I can throw a 14-pound bowling ball 23.62 miles-per-hour down the lane.

Hey François, look what I done to your 'taters!

Potato pavé w/ bison Texas red chili and smoked cheddar. © Ryan Schierling

On a preparation scale of one to ten, a baked potato is... a one. You bake the whole potato. On that same scale of one to ten, potato pavé is a ten. It is French fussy, and requires uniformity and a strict adherence to procedure. It is most famously a Thomas Keller recipe from the wildly-popular Ad Hoc at Home cookbook.

Just about every food blogger worth their fleur de sel has already proudly pooped out a proper potato pavé post, per the recipe, and I'm sure they were delicious – but it's all just a little repetitious. It is an exceptionally visually-pleasing dish, spare in its ingredients and simple in its presentation. But I felt like there was more that could be done with these fancy 'taters, something a little more grandiose, something a little more Texan.

So once the pavé was baked, cooled and pressed, I sauteed the cuts in jalapeño-infused olive oil and topped them with a bison Texas red chili, Tillamook smoked cheddar cheese, and a toss of garlic chives. Sometimes you just shouldn't leave well enough alone – you might end up with a dish that is stupides américains, but above and beyond what it was ever intended to be.

Potato pavé

1 cup heavy cream
Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 pounds russet potatoes (three 1-pound potatoes if possible)
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, 1 tablespoon softened and 4 tablespoons cut into 1/2-inch cubes
Olive oil

(These are just the ingredients for potato pavé. Googly instructions for potato pavé are all over the internet. Everywhere. There are videos, some of which may include both Thomas Keller and Martha Stewart. I am not reinventing wheels here, I am only showing you how to the rock the ridiculous deuce-deuce chrome ones. See every other food blogger for how to assemble proper potato pavé. Just be aware that it takes about two days since you're baking, then compressing the brick of potatoes in the refrigerator. Might as well start your long-simmering chili to go with it.)

Potato brick. © Ryan Schierling

Bison Texas Red

1 lb. ground bison
1 1/2 lb. bison steak, cut into 1/2" pieces
1 whole white onion, diced
6 large jalapeño peppers, seeded and diced
3 dried ancho chiles, soaked in water until tender, seeded and pureed with 1 c. of the soaking water
1/2 c. black coffee
1/8 c. ground piloncillo or brown sugar
3 tbs. chile powder
2 tbs. kosher salt
1 tbs. cumin
1 tbs. Mexican oregano
1 tsp. cinnamon
juice of 1 lime

Soak three dried ancho chiles in water until they are pliable, like delicious soft leather gloves. Remove the stems and seeds and put the chiles into a blender or food processor, adding one cup of the soaking water. Puree.

In a cast iron dutch oven or heavy soup pot, grey the bison steak chunks in a bit of vegetable oil over medium heat, or if you're feeling really randy, use a bit of beef suet. Add the ground bison, the onion and jalapeño peppers and cook until the ground bison is no longer red. Add the ancho chile puree, the black coffee and the piloncillo or brown sugar. Stir well, then adjust the liquid level if needed - if it's too thick, add a bit of water or beer. If it's too thin, don't worry, it'll reduce. Add the salt and rest of the spices. Cover and simmer over low heat for... a long while. About eight hours.

Check every half-hour or so to stir and make sure the consistency is good. If too thick, add a splash of that beer you're sucking on. If too thin, well, it's really never too thin after hours of cooking. Taste it every once in a while, adjust salt if needed. When the chunks of bison steak are finally falling apart, you're ready to add the juice of one lime, and start prepping your pavé.

Per that perfect pavé recipe you found, pull it out of the pan and square the edges off with a knife. Slice it into however many servings you're looking for (I did eight servings from a roughly 10 1/2" by 5 1/2" bread pan), and heat up some oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat.  Saute the pavé blocks on all four cut sides, until browned and just a bit crispy, then remove to a rack with a couple paper towels on it. Plate pavé, top with chili, garnish with slices of smoked cheddar and finely-chopped chives.

Little Boxes

Grandma's recipe card files. © Ryan Schierling

"Never hurry; take plenty of exercise; always be cheerful, and take all the sleep you need, and you may expect to be well."   - J.F. Clarke

This wisdom found among the recipes cards, penned in the loveliest cursive script.

A very special package arrived in the mail a few days ago. We excitedly, but reverently, removed it from the tissue paper wrappings. Ryan's aunt surprised us by sending all of Grandma Schierling's old recipe boxes.

A couple of months ago I had the honor of eating Grandma Schierling's potato salad for the first time. It was like getting an impression of a person from seeing them move across a crowded room. A clear impression, enough to make you want to meet them. But when those beautiful wooden boxes were lifted from their bed of bubble wrap, I suddenly felt as if we had been properly introduced.

These simple and beautiful little boxes say so very much about her. Beautiful, elemental, and practical. There is nothing extravagant here, but a straightforward appreciation of craftsmanship and a certain sense of simplicity and order that speaks to you immediately.

It's one thing to peruse the spiral bound recipe books produced by the local Kiwanis Club and the other organizations they were involved with in rural Kansas, it is wholly another to see how an individual has organized their personal recipes, the style of the recipe box and tabs they have chosen, the artifacts of early recipe accumulation. On first review we were immediately drawn to the cards with the most stains – certain signs of repeated use.

Let me tell you what I know about Grandma Schierling from her recipes. She was a resourceful lady. There are plenty of recipes from acquaintances, and some from family, but she seemed to have a penchant for gleaning new recipes from the local newspapers. Many recipes are clipped and carefully glued to recipe cards. More often than not a note is hand written indicating an alteration she may have made, or to note indicating that it was "good!" or that Harry (Ryan's Grandpa) deemed it "only so-so."

It is also quite clear this recipe box witnessed an era when casseroles were made using condensed soups and salads were likely to included marshmallows, Jello, or Cool Whip. It was an era which embraced the Tupperware™ gelatin mold with certain impunity.

Yeah, this stuff makes me all kinds of saccharine sentimental. But, I won't lie. Among the family recipes from previous generations there are a few doozies. We are certainly more intrigued than anticipatory about the recipe for Pickled Wieners she somehow procured. But, I mean, who doesn't have a "collected" recipe in their box that was acquired as more of a compliment to the cook rather than for reasons of legitimate desire to recreate – right?

There is a lifetime of adventure is in these little boxes... multi-generational recipes that are loved today, carefully typed recipes dated from the 1940's bearing her maiden name and even one titled "Butterscotch Pie (Home Ec.)." Recipes that we will try.

It is the notes that stay with me, though, because they are such a lovely documentation of her intention and thoughtfulness in the kitchen. "Harry liked this with cold meat." "Harry thought it would be good with peaches." Cuts right to the heart of it, I think. It doesn't matter if it's an aspic or a chiffon pie, what matters is the love and pleasure extended to those you hold dear.

It's exactly the kind of legacy I can wrap my head around and I'm so very grateful to be a part of it.