Soup for dessert, skewer savvy, Western barbecue sauces, and burger wines - includes recipe

Sunset, July, 1994 by Jerry Anne Di Vecchio

A true artist uses many media, but Elka Gilmore's favorite is food. Her approach to design focuses on the plate as a canvas, but it is also reflected in the imaginative, eclectic detail of her San Francisco restaurant, ELKA. When I first saw her version of fruit soup, thoughts of Swiss expressionist Paul Klee popped into my head. Thin squiggles of nectarines, squares and dots of kiwi fruit and plum, bumpy rounds of berries, and other colorful bits were floating with modern flair in the pale, tea-color broth.

But this dish has more than superficial beauty. It's simply delicious and looks more complex than it is. The soup base is nonseasonal--sweet water intensely infused with a complex blend of fresh ginger, citrus peel, aromatic seasonings, and fresh herbs. Once made, it keeps for weeks in the refrigerator.

The seasonality of the soup depends on what's ripe. Practical Elka points out that you can use the soup base in fall with persimmons, pomegranates, apples, and pears, and in winter with citrus and tropical fruit.

Serve fruit soup for a party, using the full recipe, or make by the bowl with any summer fruit you have on hand. The zingy flavor comes from the pulpy, edible seed of ripe, wrinkled passion fruit. Occasionally, I've come across canned or frozen passion fruit pulp; 2 tablespoons of either equals 1 whole fruit.

BACK TO BASICS

Doing skewers right

Skewers make some foods much easier to handle on the barbecue grill. With them you can:

* Control small bits of food. Threaded onto skewers, the pieces become a single unit to lift and turn--no more rescuing your dinner from the coals.

* Keep foods flat. Whole birds--chicken, pheasant, quail--that have been split and pressed open have less tendency to pull back when a skewer is threaded through the bird from shoulder to shoulder. A skewer through split lamb or veal kidneys keeps them from curling as they cook. Parallel skewers through floppy pieces of meat, like boned leg of lamb, make them easier to manage.

* Weave foods together. Ripple a long skirt steak onto a skewer and secure sprigs of herbs against the meat. Weave bacon strips between pieces of food for self-basting.

When loading skewers, keep in mind that meat, poultry, firm-texture fish like swordfish, and shellfish shrink as they cook, tightening their hold on the skewer. Most everything else gets softer or more fragile.

Vegetables and fruit, in particular, tend to soften as they cook and lose their grip. Parallel skewers in these foods give them support and keep them from spinning or flopping. You get maximum control by pushing 2 skewers perpendicularly through foods, each about 1/3 of the distance in from opposite ends of the food.

Crisp or firm vegetables and fruit tend to split when pushed onto thick skewers; slender, sharply pointed metal or bamboo skewers work best for these foods (to keep bamboo skewers from charring, soak a few minutes in water before using).

Foods that fall apart when cooked (such as sole or other flaky fish) are not suitable for skewer cooking.

GREAT TOOL

Poultry shears

My poultry shears probably work just as hard at the dinner table as they do in the kitchen. There is no faster way to reduce a whole duck, chicken, or any similar-size or smaller bird into pieces than snipping it apart. The same is true for pork or lamb ribs, rabbit, and any other meats with bony parts--and not much meat to carve--that are tough to cut with a knife. Poultry shears look like scissors, but their design makes them more powerful. The power is multiplied if the hinge has a mechanical advantage--such as a built-in tension spring--like mine do. Typically, the tips of the long blades are curved slightly upward so they can be poked into difficult-to-reach crevices.

Like any cutting tool, shears' quality and design vary widely. Prices start around $10; a serviceable pair will be $40 to $50, but can be much more if materials are costly and detailing elaborate (bone or fine wood handles, engraving, inlays).

Try on shears before buying; the handle should feel comfortable, the grip easy to manage, the design sturdy, the material suited for the uses you anticipate (fancier for table, utilitarian for kitchen). I bought my stainless steel pair years ago at cook's heaven, E. Dehillerin in Paris, and they're still good as new. But anywhere good knives are sold--cutlery shops, cookware stores, department stores--you will find poultry shears.

MARKET REPORT

Comparing barbecue sauces

While wandering down a grocery aisle recently, I was struck by the staggering number of barbecue sauces. I wondered how different they could be. A tasting seemed in order, but some practical editing was needed. So I gathered everything that was made in the West and had "barbecue sauce" written (not just implied) on the label. If a brand had flavor variations, I picked the original. I also imposed on friends in Southern California and the Northwest to send me what they could find in their supermarkets. In the Sunset kitchen, we tasted each sauce on beef patties; the meat was turned in the sauce before grilling, and then served with more of it.