Sunday, February 28, 2010
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Eating the Barnyard
One thing I know is that the twins were always a team. When they were young and thus too short to reach the freezer, Matthew would get on Marc's shoulders so they could reach the popsicles and ice cream. When their mother and sister came home from the grocery store, they'd collectively pour the sugar into the sugar bowl. Not that it was a two-person job or anything, but, you know, teamwork is important, especially when you are born with a built-in teammate. (Matthew likes to be in charge of filling our sugar jar and has deemed it his "favorite household activity.")
One of the trickiest things for these brothers, though, was the race for, well, food. In a household of seven people, you had to arrive in the kitchen as soon as the food was ready or you were guaranteed to get nothing at all. From what I've heard about these experiences, meals were more like a manic and dramatic sprint than a peaceful family gathering. His stories about rushing to the chili pot only to find dregs are funny, but it's so utterly heartbreaking to me that food was so helter-skelter in his house when he was growing up. I suppose it's possible that there's a little bit of exaggeration involved in his stories, but there's also so much truth, and that means a few things were always missing: dinner at a table with conversation, second helpings, and, most importantly, leftovers.
A world without leftovers: good or bad? It's likely that you'll have a very instantaneous reaction to this question. I grew up with this thing that may sound familiar, called leftover night, which I dreaded. I loved all the meals the first time around, and yet something about eating them a second time was upsetting. I think it stemmed from the idea that I was always so excited to see what sort of magnificent culinary creation my mother would think of next, so when there wasn't something new, I was disappointed. I always liked the leftovers better once I was actually eating them, but I couldn't quite get over it, this idea of leftovers.
Once I started functioning in the normal (by this, I mean, adult) lifestyle, I learned to like leftovers for their practicality and function. Having a job, I learned, meant taking a lunch every single day, and when I heard the sweet angelic voices of the leftovers crooning to me from the refrigerator in the morning, I would practically die of happiness. Plus, I learned that many things actually taste better the next day, like chili and lasagna and pudding.
And there's something so much more satisfying about having hot food for lunch than cold food. I used to work at a community center and after-school program that was specifically designed to support the children of African immigrants. I was crazy about the kids, but my supervisor's abrasive, demanding manner left a lot to be desired, and I ended up in tears at least once a day. My mornings would be spent writing up grant proposals and lesson plans, while she loudly moved furniture around, loudly gossiped with the many visitors she had, or loudly interrupted me to hand off piles of insurmountable paperwork.
The most influential she ever managed to be was when she taught me about the power of hot lunch. She would say in her thick-like-honey Nigerian accent, You cannot have strength from cold things. Cold foods for lunch will put your soul in a bad order. Hot food makes you complete. It's funny to me that her personality was so rough and icy but she understood the importance of things not being cold. I always think of her when I eat my work lunches, especially if I am eating something cold, wishing I had something hot that would fill my belly in a way that cold things cannot.
At dinner time, I tend to cook way more than I need to. Having leftovers practically guarantees that I will eat lunch the next day, while a leftover-less meal might mean that I end up going out to lunch (resulting in guilt), not eating lunch at all (resulting in guilt), or eating some pitiful semblance of a lunch, pieced together with nuts, a banana, some cheese, some crackers, maybe some yogurt. While I like all these things, it just doesn't feel as complete, as satisfying, as a meal that is hot and less snack-like.
Besides this selfish lunch-for-me reason, I have a much more important reason to cook inordinately large amounts of food for dinner, a reason that is much more satisfying than my own hot lunch pleasure. Matthew, you see, never had a leftover until, well, me. He spent his whole life dreaming of leftovers, transfixed by the thought of leftovers, praying for just one little leftover. When we started spending more time together, I was startled by his excitement over leftovers. I'd make dinner at his house, and the leftovers wouldn't even last six hours. When we moved in together, leftovers were the sweet bounty he had always wanted. He would actually ask for leftovers for dinner! He would eat leftovers three hours after the dinner itself! He would eat the leftovers for breakfast the next morning! He would take a bath in the leftovers! Okay, so there was no bath, per se, but I learned quickly that he was very, very good at consuming leftovers. He was the perfect match for my reckless and excessive cooking style. There were times that I'd make something that wasn't so great, and I'd sort of dread taking it to lunch the next day, but then imagine my ecstasy when the leftovers were gone when I went back to the fridge the next day! Now that's service. That is leftover love.
I've learned that I should actually cook for twelve people, rather than just two. He loves to tease me endlessly about it, but we both know how happy he is to see the tupperware in the fridge, packed with last night's memories. Between the two of us, we can really plow through some leftovers, and he's taught me about the importance of them. In fact, when there aren't any leftovers in the fridge, I sort of panic, and I wonder, what on earth are we possibly supposed to eat? When I ask him what he wants for dinner, his response is always one of two things: Whatever you're making or Do we have any leftovers? He has never once requested a certain dinner item, because he is so endlessly happy with anything that tumbles out of the kitchen and onto his plate. I used to get a little frustrated when he had no dinner ideas to submit, but it didn't take me very long to realize that I'm immensely lucky. I can churn out anything from the kitchen, put it on a plate, and it will make him very happy. And if that dinner has seen the insides of a tupperware container, then he will be especially elated.
Thursday was Matthew's birthday, which meant that it was also Marc's birthday, and last night we had a birthday dinner. When I asked what they wanted to request for their special meal, the reply was "anything you want to cook," which was both humbling and nervewracking at the same time. After four seconds of deliberation, though, the concept was in place. The theme would be this: eating the barnyard. If there is anything these two men love more than leftovers, it's meat, and if there's anything better than that, it's leftover meat. That, then, was the plan. I set to work, gathering animals (specifically, barn-flavored ones), and we ended up with the strangest assortment of leftover-worthy dinner foods you could ever imagine. The array would have confused company, but to Matthew and Marc, it made perfect sense.
I'll tell you what we ate! The starter was miniature pepperoni and feta pizzas, followed by the actual meal, which was a quadruple meat offering of barbecued beef brisket, lamb/pork/beef meatballs in tomato sauce, jalapeno cheddar bratwursts, and chicken salad with roasted red pepper mayonnaise. We ate all these things on parker house rolls and by themselves, not really needing (or having space for) the salad or starch-fest of potato pie and polenta. The birthday cake was not actually a cake because it was a peach/raspberry cobbler (their collective choice -- very outside-the-box!), and the birthday cocktail was vodka shaken with the Meyer lemon-rosemary simple syrup and mint. There were so many things that it was, quite frankly, ridiculous, and we hardly made a dent in any of it. That, though, was quite the point. To-go boxes were sent home with Marc, and, here at home, we used up almost all of the tupperware collection (and refrigerator space).
When we got up this morning, there was coffee to drink, a few memories to cite from the evening before, and a bit of muddy, slow conversation which resulted from being over-served the night before (by, um, ourselves -- how becoming). The moment his coffee mug was empty, I heard something that was music to sleepy little ears. My Saturday cooking freedom was being declared! I heard Do we get to eat leftovers for breakfast?! I replied, Of course, followed by, and let's see who can eat the most unlikely leftover for breakfast. Grinning ear to ear in only the way that pure, unabashed happiness can manifest itself, he answered, You're on.
One of the trickiest things for these brothers, though, was the race for, well, food. In a household of seven people, you had to arrive in the kitchen as soon as the food was ready or you were guaranteed to get nothing at all. From what I've heard about these experiences, meals were more like a manic and dramatic sprint than a peaceful family gathering. His stories about rushing to the chili pot only to find dregs are funny, but it's so utterly heartbreaking to me that food was so helter-skelter in his house when he was growing up. I suppose it's possible that there's a little bit of exaggeration involved in his stories, but there's also so much truth, and that means a few things were always missing: dinner at a table with conversation, second helpings, and, most importantly, leftovers.
A world without leftovers: good or bad? It's likely that you'll have a very instantaneous reaction to this question. I grew up with this thing that may sound familiar, called leftover night, which I dreaded. I loved all the meals the first time around, and yet something about eating them a second time was upsetting. I think it stemmed from the idea that I was always so excited to see what sort of magnificent culinary creation my mother would think of next, so when there wasn't something new, I was disappointed. I always liked the leftovers better once I was actually eating them, but I couldn't quite get over it, this idea of leftovers.
Once I started functioning in the normal (by this, I mean, adult) lifestyle, I learned to like leftovers for their practicality and function. Having a job, I learned, meant taking a lunch every single day, and when I heard the sweet angelic voices of the leftovers crooning to me from the refrigerator in the morning, I would practically die of happiness. Plus, I learned that many things actually taste better the next day, like chili and lasagna and pudding.
And there's something so much more satisfying about having hot food for lunch than cold food. I used to work at a community center and after-school program that was specifically designed to support the children of African immigrants. I was crazy about the kids, but my supervisor's abrasive, demanding manner left a lot to be desired, and I ended up in tears at least once a day. My mornings would be spent writing up grant proposals and lesson plans, while she loudly moved furniture around, loudly gossiped with the many visitors she had, or loudly interrupted me to hand off piles of insurmountable paperwork.
The most influential she ever managed to be was when she taught me about the power of hot lunch. She would say in her thick-like-honey Nigerian accent, You cannot have strength from cold things. Cold foods for lunch will put your soul in a bad order. Hot food makes you complete. It's funny to me that her personality was so rough and icy but she understood the importance of things not being cold. I always think of her when I eat my work lunches, especially if I am eating something cold, wishing I had something hot that would fill my belly in a way that cold things cannot.
At dinner time, I tend to cook way more than I need to. Having leftovers practically guarantees that I will eat lunch the next day, while a leftover-less meal might mean that I end up going out to lunch (resulting in guilt), not eating lunch at all (resulting in guilt), or eating some pitiful semblance of a lunch, pieced together with nuts, a banana, some cheese, some crackers, maybe some yogurt. While I like all these things, it just doesn't feel as complete, as satisfying, as a meal that is hot and less snack-like.
Besides this selfish lunch-for-me reason, I have a much more important reason to cook inordinately large amounts of food for dinner, a reason that is much more satisfying than my own hot lunch pleasure. Matthew, you see, never had a leftover until, well, me. He spent his whole life dreaming of leftovers, transfixed by the thought of leftovers, praying for just one little leftover. When we started spending more time together, I was startled by his excitement over leftovers. I'd make dinner at his house, and the leftovers wouldn't even last six hours. When we moved in together, leftovers were the sweet bounty he had always wanted. He would actually ask for leftovers for dinner! He would eat leftovers three hours after the dinner itself! He would eat the leftovers for breakfast the next morning! He would take a bath in the leftovers! Okay, so there was no bath, per se, but I learned quickly that he was very, very good at consuming leftovers. He was the perfect match for my reckless and excessive cooking style. There were times that I'd make something that wasn't so great, and I'd sort of dread taking it to lunch the next day, but then imagine my ecstasy when the leftovers were gone when I went back to the fridge the next day! Now that's service. That is leftover love.
I've learned that I should actually cook for twelve people, rather than just two. He loves to tease me endlessly about it, but we both know how happy he is to see the tupperware in the fridge, packed with last night's memories. Between the two of us, we can really plow through some leftovers, and he's taught me about the importance of them. In fact, when there aren't any leftovers in the fridge, I sort of panic, and I wonder, what on earth are we possibly supposed to eat? When I ask him what he wants for dinner, his response is always one of two things: Whatever you're making or Do we have any leftovers? He has never once requested a certain dinner item, because he is so endlessly happy with anything that tumbles out of the kitchen and onto his plate. I used to get a little frustrated when he had no dinner ideas to submit, but it didn't take me very long to realize that I'm immensely lucky. I can churn out anything from the kitchen, put it on a plate, and it will make him very happy. And if that dinner has seen the insides of a tupperware container, then he will be especially elated.
Thursday was Matthew's birthday, which meant that it was also Marc's birthday, and last night we had a birthday dinner. When I asked what they wanted to request for their special meal, the reply was "anything you want to cook," which was both humbling and nervewracking at the same time. After four seconds of deliberation, though, the concept was in place. The theme would be this: eating the barnyard. If there is anything these two men love more than leftovers, it's meat, and if there's anything better than that, it's leftover meat. That, then, was the plan. I set to work, gathering animals (specifically, barn-flavored ones), and we ended up with the strangest assortment of leftover-worthy dinner foods you could ever imagine. The array would have confused company, but to Matthew and Marc, it made perfect sense.
I'll tell you what we ate! The starter was miniature pepperoni and feta pizzas, followed by the actual meal, which was a quadruple meat offering of barbecued beef brisket, lamb/pork/beef meatballs in tomato sauce, jalapeno cheddar bratwursts, and chicken salad with roasted red pepper mayonnaise. We ate all these things on parker house rolls and by themselves, not really needing (or having space for) the salad or starch-fest of potato pie and polenta. The birthday cake was not actually a cake because it was a peach/raspberry cobbler (their collective choice -- very outside-the-box!), and the birthday cocktail was vodka shaken with the Meyer lemon-rosemary simple syrup and mint. There were so many things that it was, quite frankly, ridiculous, and we hardly made a dent in any of it. That, though, was quite the point. To-go boxes were sent home with Marc, and, here at home, we used up almost all of the tupperware collection (and refrigerator space).
When we got up this morning, there was coffee to drink, a few memories to cite from the evening before, and a bit of muddy, slow conversation which resulted from being over-served the night before (by, um, ourselves -- how becoming). The moment his coffee mug was empty, I heard something that was music to sleepy little ears. My Saturday cooking freedom was being declared! I heard Do we get to eat leftovers for breakfast?! I replied, Of course, followed by, and let's see who can eat the most unlikely leftover for breakfast. Grinning ear to ear in only the way that pure, unabashed happiness can manifest itself, he answered, You're on.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
The Sparkle of Poultry
Sunday Project #3About four months ago, ground chicken swept me off my feet. I know that I professed my love for Meyer lemons a mere twenty-four hours ago, but here's the thing. I've had so many incredible ground chicken dishes in Thai restaurants, and so I've had time to form quite a friendship with this seemingly awkward thing, this one meat that seems like it really shouldn't be ground up, ever. It was only recently that I came to realize that I, too, can be a ground-chicken master. Okay, so not a master, but a, um, cook. When I started the quest for the meat, I quickly learned that it's not really all that common at most butcher shops. One butcher always had the ground chicken, but it was always living in his freezer. Another butcher had it but it was strangely expensive -- $12 a pound or something absurd like that. Yet another butcher had it but usually in very small quantities. Okay, so you are now thinking what I was thinking, which is What on earth is wrong with the butchers in this city? But after a fair amount of stumbling along on a rough and rocky path to poultry freedom, I found what I was looking for.
Let me back up a second and say that, no, I don't grind my own meat at home. Do a lot of people actually grind their own meat? Isn't that what a butcher is for? Maybe I'm missing out, what with the sausage endeavor and all. A meat grinder is one of those things that I never actually thought about owning, but these days, every once in a while, I'll think about how it might be exciting to pulverize some meat pieces, maybe even some combinations of meat pieces...in fact, I do believe there was a meat grinder in my house when I was growing up. Mom and Dad, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't there some ham salad grinding going on? Was the grinder purely a figment of my over-cooked little brain? This whole ham grinding bit is especially full-circle-ish, considering that, after the whole egg salad episode the other day, my mom and I ended up talking about the ham salad shenanigans that went on in the days of yore. (I was afraid of ham salad. This could be because I never actually tried it. Hm.)
So I don't grind, and I guess most butchers don't grind on command, either, I've learned. This means that I seek the ground meat, and, naturally, I've found it to always be readily available from my charming friends over at Gene's Sausage Shop (what don't these folks have?, one might ask). I take myself down there, then, and I gather up my chicken, and then usually, accidentally, end up with a basket full of other meat packages. I tend to order lots of ground meats, which is maybe odd -- I just am fascinated by their versatility lately. Or maybe ground meats are for lazy people? Well, anyway, I happily and blindly gather my meats and off I go.
When I get home, I race to the pans and make this dish. It's called Emerald Chicken, not because I am clever and gave it that creative, Wizard of Oz-sounding name, but because it's sort of a take on this delicious and addictive dish at our local Thai spot, which is called Emerald Chicken. Theirs is still the best, still the original, but I am just a mere mortal, after all, and I simply want to make delicious, saucy things. Even if it means stealing their idea and, in effect, their identity.
This is just what happens, though, when you are a restaurant with scrumptious foods. People steal. Those people are me.
Emerald Chicken
my made-up version of a heavenly dish, adapted from Siam Pasta, a Thai restaurant with sort of a funny name, really great food, and really, really nice delivery guys
2 pounds ground chicken
6 T dark sweet soy sauce (you can also use regular soy sauce, but mix it with 2 T brown sugar)
6 T oyster sauce
2 T fish sauce
1 t ground white pepper
2 T rice vinegar
2 C vegetable or chicken broth (stock also works well)
4 cloves of garlic, minced or crushed
red pepper flakes, Sriracha, or any chili pepper sauce that you like
salt and pepper
4 scallions, sliced thinly
1 pound of thin, French-style green beans, cut or snapped into inch-long pieces (use frozen if it's winter, fresh if it's not)
ground peanuts
chopped cilantro
crunchy rice stick noodles or chow mein noodles
Heat a big, deep skillet, dutch oven, or wok to medium high heat and add a tablespoon or two of cooking oil or olive oil. Heat the oil briefly, then add the ground chicken. Use a metal spatula or other forceful tool to break up the chicken as it cooks. Your objective is to get it to look crumbly by the time it's done cooking, so keep that as your goal. As you go, season the chicken with salt, black pepper, and white pepper.
Once the chicken is cooked through and there are no more pink bits, it'll start sticking to your pan. This is a good time to add the broth (or stock), garlic, and scallions. Stir it around, scraping up the pieces from the bottom. Then just keep an eye on it. When about 1/3 of the liquid has evaporated, add the soy sauce, fish sauce, oyster sauce, and hot sauce. Cook, stirring, for about 30 seconds, or until the delectable smells start to waft out of your pan. Add the green beans and cook just a little bit more. You want the green beans to stay crisp and snappy, so don't cook the hell out of them. Their crunch will pair well with the nice, soft chicken. There should be a fair amount of sauce in the bottom of your pan. This sauce is a good, good thing. If it seems like you don't have enough sauce, feel free to add more broth or stock.
Now, what I want you to do next is taste the sauce. It should be a little salty, a little sweet, a little acidic, and a little sour. And it will be garlicky, most likely. This is the part where you get to make Executive Decisions about your chicken. You can add anything you need to at this point -- more soy sauce, more oyster sauce, more heat. You want to definitely taste a little bit of sweetness in it, so you may want to add a little bit of table sugar, or you could mix some more brown sugar into a little soy sauce or broth and add that. Feel the spirit! Make your Emerald Chicken work for you.
Serve with brown or white rice. Top with the cilantro, ground peanuts, crispy noodles, a few scallion bits, and a squeeze or two of lime.
You can also make this with other vegetables, green in color or not.
Off you go, now. Find yourself a yellow brick road and get thee to a butchery. It's Emerald Chicken time!
Monday, February 22, 2010
Marry Me, Meyer Lemon
Meyer lemon, you are so talented. You are so pretty, so shiny, and so tremendously remarkable. You are versatile, sort of fancy, and good for making things taste delicious. You are less sour than a standard lemon, and you are even a little sweet. You are a red-letter fruit, Meyer lemon.
Regular lemon, don't worry. I still love you, too. You are cheaper than a Meyer lemon, and easier to come by. I can buy you year-round, and sometimes you are even available for purchase at the convenience store. If I had a lemonade stand, I would still use you.
Sunday Project #2: PotionOne morning last week, I took a Meyer lemon out of the fridge so it could pose for some portraits on the windowsill. It was a really patient and professional model! After the photo shoot, I had to leave for work, so I spent the day brainstorming about what to do with the lemons when I got home. I had so many ideas, and just couldn't settle on one single idea, so I decided that the lemons could wait calmly while I figured it out.
Then, WHAM! All of a sudden, I received an email from the Meyer Lemon Spiritual Center of America, and my recipe idea suddenly appeared out of thin air. Magic! I will offer this disclaimer: the Meyer Lemon Spiritual Center of America is really just a loving nickname for my friend over at the (sometimes) professional kitchen. She's a stellar idea-haver and brilliant cook (so much so that it's her, um, job), and it was with pure thrill that I received her recipe for Meyer lemon simple syrup, which is surprisingly versatile and incredibly delicious. I've made citrus-infused simple syrups before, but with Meyer lemons, it's a whole new ballgame. There's something so attractive, yet distinctly cheeky, about this simple syrup. It's simple and earthy, yet fancy and almost sort of coy. A bit of a folksy spirit combined with uptown glamour and sophistication.
You can add any assortment of herbs to the mix. My friend suggests any of the following things: cardamom, sage, thyme, bay leaves, marjoram, peppercorns, or even (gasp!) shallots. I have a thing for rosemary, though, especially rosemary-ish cocktails, so I opted for that. I feel like I might go with lavender next time, but the sage and peppercorn idea also fascinates me. Keep in mind that you can totally make this simple syrup with regular lemons (Meyer lemons can be hard to find) or with oranges or grapefruit, or any other citrus fruit (or a combination!), but if you can get ahold of Meyer lemons, then opt for those.
I tend to think of Meyer lemons as an amazing addition to a cocktail, but my simple-syrup-friend recommends a variety of uses, ranging from a soup ingredient to a sorbet addition to even a foil to fatty meats. It's also great in hot tea or iced tea, and it pairs really well with gin or vodka. I've used it in a vinaigrette, and, as recommended, I took a bath in it, which you laugh at now, but believe me, you will soon understand what I'm talking about. This is a seriously magical elixir.
Rosemary-Meyer Lemon Simple Syrup
2 C water
3 C sugar
1/2 to 1 C rice wine vinegar or champagne vinegar*
3 Meyer lemons
1 or 2 stems of rosemary
Slice lemons into 1/8" thick rounds (or thinner if you have a really sharp knife). Take out the seeds, if it doesn't feel like too much of a bother. Set aside. Add the sugar, water, vinegar, and herbs to a deep pot or saucepan.
Warm over medium to low heat, stirring a bit, until it starts to steam and gurgle a little, but it shouldn't boil or even simmer. No bubbles, folks, no bubbles! When the sugar is dissolved, add the lemons and place a round of parchment paper over the mixture to keep the lemons submerged and the temperature stable.
Cook, maintaining warmth but still not simmering, for two or three hours or until the rinds are translucent. Take pan off the heat and let cool for about an hour. Put the whole mixture in a glass jar and refrigerate. Use all the time, in everything.*You can add vinegar if you want to. I had never made simple syrup with vinegar before, and I was a little scared, so I used about 2/3 cup of rice wine vinegar and prayed for the best. I'll tell you this: it doesn't make it as vinegary as you might think. You'll definitely taste the acid of the vinegar, but it's a great addition to the simple syrup if you'll be using it in savory preparations. If you'll be using it for primarily sweet dishes/drinks, you can skip the vinegar and you'll maybe be happier. Experiment around, though, and start with a little vinegar and go from there.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Sunday Was Here
Since it's February in Chicago, that means today A.) started out as gray and B.) seems to be ending in a wet snowstorm which promises to provide us with a sloppy blanket of grayish snow by morning. Mmm. This kind of cruel weather leaves me pacing around the house, trying to focus on something, anything, while stopping by the window every two seconds to see if it has stopped being gray yet. Granted, this past week was beautiful -- lots of sun, mild temperatures that did not require mittens, and I was able to see all this from my window at work. I am thankful to sit near these immense windows all day, semi-exposing me to the outside world, but it is also a bit of a tease. When the sun goes down at 2:00pm (okay, okay, so it's, like, 5:30), I feel terrible about myself, knowing that the only going-outside I've done all day is walk from my car into the building. But I digress.So, Sunday tossed me about in this sea of listlessness, and finally I got so fed up with myself that I created an action plan (okay, so it was a list of errands, actually) and I headed out to accomplish great things. I made my way out to the suburbs (first mistake) to take care of some business (um, it was just Half Price Books, not something cool, like mafia stuff) and then stopped at Lowe's (which, in case you are wondering, there's no such thing as "stopping at Lowe's" on a Sunday), which took approximately eighteen hours. Really? Are there actually three hundred other people who need light bulbs at the exact same minute as me? Apparently so.
Then, I end up at the Whole Foods, where I actually find a parking space (!) and wherein I manage to establish a ridiculous "plan," which entails no basket or cart. You see, I only needed THREE items. Three. So, who needs carrying contraption for only three items? Well, when it turns out to be fifteen items, ME, that's who. Ugh, my balancing act was not very becoming. I did manage to gather this very, very beautiful chocolate bar, though, direct from, um, Iceland. Iceland! You know, where all the best chocolate is born. I will use it to make birthday cookies this week, and I will let you know all about it.
I eventually ended up back at home, mangled and starving, and, since I felt like I had lost so much of the day to traffic and human congestion, I went into overdrive, which was actually quite nice. Better than contemplating the grayness of the sky and the wetness of the rooftops, anyway. I managed to do some normal Sunday things, like vacuum, watch the Olympics, and talk to my mom on the phone, and then I proceeded to create the strangest assortment of foods, ever. I won't spoil the surprise by telling you about it all right now (I can't imagine either of us feels like plodding through six recipes right now), but I am going to tell you very soon about the best part. I cooked some sorts of foods that are intended to be lunches for this week, and then, all of a sudden, it was 10:00 and I hadn't actually eaten any of the things that I'd made, or anything, for that matter. I tend to forget all too often that you can actually stop to eat. But that's not the best part.
The best part of this story is that I had egg salad for dinner. Okay, I know that it's not all that odd to eat egg salad for dinner, but for some reason it amuses me a great deal. It is a thing that I didn't eat when I was growing up, perhaps simply because I was scared of it. Wait. I made that up. I wasn't scared of it. I think it just wasn't around. I definitely didn't feel sad about it at all, in the same way I didn't feel sad about not eating oysters or liver or kohlrabi. I just never thought about egg salad. I do remember deviled eggs appearing every once in awhile, but rarely egg salad. (This will be hysterical if my mother's response is that she actually tried and tried to get me to eat egg salad and I simply don't remember it.) According to my semi-reliable memory, though, I didn't even eat egg salad until I was an adult, so my love for it is actually quite new. I'm still in that falling-for-you, schmoopy, melty love phase. Me and egg salad. Together again, for the very first time. And, in case you were curious, we are very, very happy together.
Egg Salad
not just good for picnics
6 hard boiled eggs
3 T sweet pickle relish
3 T sour cream
3 T mustard (again, I love the Brownwood Farms Kream Mustard)
salt & pepper
Cut up the eggs however you like. (I know that some folks like to sort of mash 'em up, but I like them coarsely chopped.) Put them in a bowl and add the rest of the ingredients. Add salt and pepper to taste. Put the egg salad on good, thick toast and serve open-faced.
Sort of important notes:
You can use mayonnaise if you want, but I find it too cloying, heavy, and, well, eggy. I like for the eggs to be the egg-star, so I use sour cream. I opt for sweet pickle relish (you probably coulda guessed), but feel free to use dill pickle relish instead. As far as the mustard goes, you can use another kind of mustard, but cut the amount in half if you're using a stronger, less sweet mustard. Beyond that, just adjust the amounts of things to your liking. You can use more eggs, or less, and you can add finely sliced scallions of you like things a little oniony. I seem to like my egg salad sort of sweet, but I know some traditionalists swear by mayo and salt only. Whichever way you make it, just be sure to have some really good bread on hand, because really good bread makes for really good toast. And there's something so utterly perfect about the crunch of toast and the silkiness of the eggs. It's also not too bad on top of crackers at midnight, right after you finish writing all about it.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Things That Glow
Weekend mornings are a force to be reckoned with.
There's something so sacred and pure about Saturday and Sunday mornings, and I've always anticipated them in a way that both settles me and spins me around. I'm giddy with excitement when I feel them coming. It doesn't take a lot, in fact, to impress me on a weekend morning. Elaborate morning routines need not apply! All it takes is that sweeping air of freedom to scoop me up and settle down with me, preferably very close to a coffee pot and a crossword puzzle.
There have been several periods of time in my life when I worked regularly on Saturday mornings, and Matthew has almost always worked weekends. Even when I was a slave to the alarm clock on those mornings, I'd still relish them. They just aren't like weekday mornings, not in stature and not in spirit. For one, there's much less traffic. People act a bit more civilized, perhaps because they're calmer and able to actually be in the moment. Even when you're working on a weekend morning, you feel the tranquility, the stability of well-rounded freedom. It's quite like the world's on vacation -- after all, vacations are good simply because every day feels like a weekend.
I wish that I had the ability (by this, I mean the desire) to wake up early on weekend mornings so I could get out into the world as the sun is coming up, bathed in a glow of the morning light and the waking earth. But, on the contrary, I am one who sees sleeping in as the most incredible and powerfully intoxicating things on the planet. My father is a very early riser -- so early, in fact, that I think he could have a whole extra career, just to take place in all of his morning hours, when he is so alert and, well, with it. And every time I'm with him, either at my parents' house or on vacation, I wish desperately that I could get my sad, pitiful body out of bed so that I could venture out with him, collecting coffee and newspapers and breakfast at a diner. I've always wanted to be one of those people, those morning people, but at the same time, I feel such a vast, indescribable pleasure from sleeping in on weekends that I can't imagine waking up early by choice. To wake up at seven a.m. and realize it's the weekend, then to roll back over and fall back into sleep, that is one of the best feelings I know of.
The really good thing about living with people who get up early is that sometimes they spend all that morning time making you something special to eat. Or, sometimes it just means that they wake up early and go to breakfast without you. Depends on what kind of folks you're running around with. Now, it goes without saying that one of the very best things about weekend mornings is, truly, the breakfasts. There is a reason that this whole "breakfast all day" thing actually became popular -- it's sort of brilliant. And by "sort of brilliant," I mean that breakfast all day should, for crying out loud, actually stop at some point. There comes a time in my weekend day when I really just want to move on to the next meal, you know?
But, about the popularity of breakfast, brunch, what have you -- have you seen these lines outside of restaurants for brunch? They loop like languid snakes down the sidewalks, featuring not only stilettos, but also pajamas. (This is another story altogether, this thing about pajamas in public. I'll spare us all the pain by not talking about it right now.) Then you get in to the restaurant, and people sit too close to you, and everyone is either recovering from being drunk or trying to get drunk, or sometimes even both, and the coffee is usually cold and the servers are praying for death, and you feel rushed and there's no space for your newspaper and that's when you (okay, that's when I) wish to be at home. Where you belong. Solitude. Space. Hot coffee. Nary a fancy shoe or a Bloody Mary in sight. Ahhh.
I suppose I might be a bruncher if I didn't like to cook so much, or if I was comfortable in crowds, or if I liked vodka in the morning. There are some breakfast outings that I like to have, though, so don't get me wrong. I'm not a total breakfast-time curmudgeon. Meghan and I used to have incredible breakfast-snack tours when she lived in Andersonville, which is the perfect strolling-around neighborhood. I loved meeting her there, the New York Times nudging out of her big leather bag, sometimes sunglasses, sometimes raincoats. We'd drink good coffee outside, shielding our eyes from the sun with the newspaper more than actually reading it. Then, breakfast sandwiches at the Italian deli, cinnamon rolls at Ann Sather, Swedish pancakes with lingonberries at Svea, where we'd get terrible service because we arrived too close to (their strange, early) closing time. We'd go antiquing around, poking around at furniture stores and books, sweating through our shirts on the day we bought slabs of marble and carried them back to her house.
Strolling-around weekend mornings are good, and stay-at-home weekend mornings are just as heavenly, but in a different way. It's perhaps all my weekend mornings from growing up that created my allegiance to the latter, though. There were things happening on the breakfast front, first of all, and not just the beloved burnt toast and English muffins. There were the Smurfs, of course, and all the other 80's cartoons, which were a perfect accompaniment to all sorts of breakfast treats. There were doughnuts from Mel-O-Cream sometimes, and everyone had their particularities. Mom liked the old fashioned, my brother liked the long johns with white icing, and Dad either really did like all of them or else he just told us that so that we'd get to pick first. Just to note, though -- I don't think my dad has ever met a doughnut he didn't like. He's sort of a connoisseur in that department. Oh, and one of the greatest photographs of all time is me in a high chair, bib on, eating a doughnut with a fork, and my brother, just three years older, approaching from behind, struggling under the weight of the gallon of milk that he'd bringing to the table. Is it likely that I truly remember the streaks of sunlight on the faces of my family that morning, or is it just the photograph that chased my memory to that place?
There were pancake mornings, when our plates would be graced with the letters of our names, flapjack style. There were French toast mornings, waffle mornings, and egg mornings. There were definitely biscuit mornings, which came with not only jam, but also (okay, whose good idea WAS this, anyway?) icing. Yes, delicious icing. It sounds odd at first, biscuits and icing, but, when you think about it, it's really no different than doughnuts or pancakes -- it's just that the sugar wears a different costume. There were muffin mornings, which were my favorite, because they featured the most incredibly tiny blueberries that came in the tiny, tuna-can-sized tin that were in the box of muffin mix. I had a love for those muffins, and I loved to help make them, carefully, carefully folding in the blueberries to the batter so it wouldn't stain it purplish-blue. It was with that experience that I learned what it meant to fold with a spatula, and it is the memory of that slightly acidic, yet sweet, taste of the batter that shapes all of my muffin-making experiences that I have now.
The things that I love about weekend breakfasts now are all the foods that I don't have time for during the week. I'm one of those chronically under-breakfasted people who tries so, so hard to eat in the morning before work, but finds it to be so, so difficult. So, when weekend mornings come, I'm elated. I actually end up eating breakfast on these days, not just wishing I had. Saturdays and Sundays around here mean bagels sometimes, always from this divine bagel shop in Evanston, or sometimes muffins or monkey bread. Sometimes it's biscuits and gravy, or biscuits and icing, or sometimes waffles or pancakes. More often, though, it's eggs. Frittatas, or egg sandwiches, or just scrambled eggs. Sometimes eggs on top of dhal and rice, with lots of hot sauce. Sometimes omelets with ginger, garlic, and carrots, just like the ones at this unbelievable Korean diner down the street from us.
Matthew's easy, because he will eat absolutely anything for breakfast. Leftovers are the greatest gift to him in the mornings, and he practically swoons for chili or pizza or chicken when he rolls out of bed. I'm a tougher customer, though, if you couldn't have guessed. I feel awkward eating lunch- and dinner-foods in the morning -- almost guilty, even. I need things that scream breakfast or, at least, call it out in a reasonably loud, outdoor voice. Recently, he stopped working Saturday mornings, and we spend them together now, casting ourselves around in slippers and plotting our day, plotting our meals. The good thing about him (well, one of the good things about him) is that he'll always wait around while I figure out the perfect breakfast thing. Of course, I have this, um, methodical streak in me, so we're lucky if we even see the breakfast before noon. But, really, if there's coffee in the pot, cartoons on the television, and a newspaper to be found, then we've got all the time in the world.
There's something so sacred and pure about Saturday and Sunday mornings, and I've always anticipated them in a way that both settles me and spins me around. I'm giddy with excitement when I feel them coming. It doesn't take a lot, in fact, to impress me on a weekend morning. Elaborate morning routines need not apply! All it takes is that sweeping air of freedom to scoop me up and settle down with me, preferably very close to a coffee pot and a crossword puzzle.
There have been several periods of time in my life when I worked regularly on Saturday mornings, and Matthew has almost always worked weekends. Even when I was a slave to the alarm clock on those mornings, I'd still relish them. They just aren't like weekday mornings, not in stature and not in spirit. For one, there's much less traffic. People act a bit more civilized, perhaps because they're calmer and able to actually be in the moment. Even when you're working on a weekend morning, you feel the tranquility, the stability of well-rounded freedom. It's quite like the world's on vacation -- after all, vacations are good simply because every day feels like a weekend.
I wish that I had the ability (by this, I mean the desire) to wake up early on weekend mornings so I could get out into the world as the sun is coming up, bathed in a glow of the morning light and the waking earth. But, on the contrary, I am one who sees sleeping in as the most incredible and powerfully intoxicating things on the planet. My father is a very early riser -- so early, in fact, that I think he could have a whole extra career, just to take place in all of his morning hours, when he is so alert and, well, with it. And every time I'm with him, either at my parents' house or on vacation, I wish desperately that I could get my sad, pitiful body out of bed so that I could venture out with him, collecting coffee and newspapers and breakfast at a diner. I've always wanted to be one of those people, those morning people, but at the same time, I feel such a vast, indescribable pleasure from sleeping in on weekends that I can't imagine waking up early by choice. To wake up at seven a.m. and realize it's the weekend, then to roll back over and fall back into sleep, that is one of the best feelings I know of.
The really good thing about living with people who get up early is that sometimes they spend all that morning time making you something special to eat. Or, sometimes it just means that they wake up early and go to breakfast without you. Depends on what kind of folks you're running around with. Now, it goes without saying that one of the very best things about weekend mornings is, truly, the breakfasts. There is a reason that this whole "breakfast all day" thing actually became popular -- it's sort of brilliant. And by "sort of brilliant," I mean that breakfast all day should, for crying out loud, actually stop at some point. There comes a time in my weekend day when I really just want to move on to the next meal, you know?
But, about the popularity of breakfast, brunch, what have you -- have you seen these lines outside of restaurants for brunch? They loop like languid snakes down the sidewalks, featuring not only stilettos, but also pajamas. (This is another story altogether, this thing about pajamas in public. I'll spare us all the pain by not talking about it right now.) Then you get in to the restaurant, and people sit too close to you, and everyone is either recovering from being drunk or trying to get drunk, or sometimes even both, and the coffee is usually cold and the servers are praying for death, and you feel rushed and there's no space for your newspaper and that's when you (okay, that's when I) wish to be at home. Where you belong. Solitude. Space. Hot coffee. Nary a fancy shoe or a Bloody Mary in sight. Ahhh.
I suppose I might be a bruncher if I didn't like to cook so much, or if I was comfortable in crowds, or if I liked vodka in the morning. There are some breakfast outings that I like to have, though, so don't get me wrong. I'm not a total breakfast-time curmudgeon. Meghan and I used to have incredible breakfast-snack tours when she lived in Andersonville, which is the perfect strolling-around neighborhood. I loved meeting her there, the New York Times nudging out of her big leather bag, sometimes sunglasses, sometimes raincoats. We'd drink good coffee outside, shielding our eyes from the sun with the newspaper more than actually reading it. Then, breakfast sandwiches at the Italian deli, cinnamon rolls at Ann Sather, Swedish pancakes with lingonberries at Svea, where we'd get terrible service because we arrived too close to (their strange, early) closing time. We'd go antiquing around, poking around at furniture stores and books, sweating through our shirts on the day we bought slabs of marble and carried them back to her house.
Strolling-around weekend mornings are good, and stay-at-home weekend mornings are just as heavenly, but in a different way. It's perhaps all my weekend mornings from growing up that created my allegiance to the latter, though. There were things happening on the breakfast front, first of all, and not just the beloved burnt toast and English muffins. There were the Smurfs, of course, and all the other 80's cartoons, which were a perfect accompaniment to all sorts of breakfast treats. There were doughnuts from Mel-O-Cream sometimes, and everyone had their particularities. Mom liked the old fashioned, my brother liked the long johns with white icing, and Dad either really did like all of them or else he just told us that so that we'd get to pick first. Just to note, though -- I don't think my dad has ever met a doughnut he didn't like. He's sort of a connoisseur in that department. Oh, and one of the greatest photographs of all time is me in a high chair, bib on, eating a doughnut with a fork, and my brother, just three years older, approaching from behind, struggling under the weight of the gallon of milk that he'd bringing to the table. Is it likely that I truly remember the streaks of sunlight on the faces of my family that morning, or is it just the photograph that chased my memory to that place?
There were pancake mornings, when our plates would be graced with the letters of our names, flapjack style. There were French toast mornings, waffle mornings, and egg mornings. There were definitely biscuit mornings, which came with not only jam, but also (okay, whose good idea WAS this, anyway?) icing. Yes, delicious icing. It sounds odd at first, biscuits and icing, but, when you think about it, it's really no different than doughnuts or pancakes -- it's just that the sugar wears a different costume. There were muffin mornings, which were my favorite, because they featured the most incredibly tiny blueberries that came in the tiny, tuna-can-sized tin that were in the box of muffin mix. I had a love for those muffins, and I loved to help make them, carefully, carefully folding in the blueberries to the batter so it wouldn't stain it purplish-blue. It was with that experience that I learned what it meant to fold with a spatula, and it is the memory of that slightly acidic, yet sweet, taste of the batter that shapes all of my muffin-making experiences that I have now.
The things that I love about weekend breakfasts now are all the foods that I don't have time for during the week. I'm one of those chronically under-breakfasted people who tries so, so hard to eat in the morning before work, but finds it to be so, so difficult. So, when weekend mornings come, I'm elated. I actually end up eating breakfast on these days, not just wishing I had. Saturdays and Sundays around here mean bagels sometimes, always from this divine bagel shop in Evanston, or sometimes muffins or monkey bread. Sometimes it's biscuits and gravy, or biscuits and icing, or sometimes waffles or pancakes. More often, though, it's eggs. Frittatas, or egg sandwiches, or just scrambled eggs. Sometimes eggs on top of dhal and rice, with lots of hot sauce. Sometimes omelets with ginger, garlic, and carrots, just like the ones at this unbelievable Korean diner down the street from us.
Matthew's easy, because he will eat absolutely anything for breakfast. Leftovers are the greatest gift to him in the mornings, and he practically swoons for chili or pizza or chicken when he rolls out of bed. I'm a tougher customer, though, if you couldn't have guessed. I feel awkward eating lunch- and dinner-foods in the morning -- almost guilty, even. I need things that scream breakfast or, at least, call it out in a reasonably loud, outdoor voice. Recently, he stopped working Saturday mornings, and we spend them together now, casting ourselves around in slippers and plotting our day, plotting our meals. The good thing about him (well, one of the good things about him) is that he'll always wait around while I figure out the perfect breakfast thing. Of course, I have this, um, methodical streak in me, so we're lucky if we even see the breakfast before noon. But, really, if there's coffee in the pot, cartoons on the television, and a newspaper to be found, then we've got all the time in the world.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
A Brisket A Brasket
I've spent a good deal of time thinking about brisket. Well, that is to say, thinking about preparing brisket. Up until very recently, I had eaten brisket, but I had never actually cooked it. I know, I know! What have I been waiting for? It's just a brisket. Nothing to be scared of. Just a little (er, big) piece of cow. That's all it is.
I feel like I hear a lot about brisket and, for some reason, it seemed like cooking brisket was a huge endeavor. I found out that it's quite the opposite, though. In fact, I was astounded at how easy it was to prepare. If you have a dutch oven and 3 hours, or a Crockpot and 8 hours, you're all set. I found that it's really not unlike baking bread -- most of the process is just waiting around, not actual labor. So if you'll be at home, cleaning the pool or weaving a basket or whatever it is you do in your house, then this is the perfect thing to have going in the meantime.
The basic concept for this dish (or at least what I had pictured in my mind) is my mom's hot beef sandwiches. I can't even remember the last time I had one of them. For the sake of background information, here you go: I was lead astray into a vegetarian life for about 14 years (whuh? huh? yeah.) of my life, a few of which were actually vegan years, which, henceforth, I shall refer to as The Dark Years. All of this crazy monkey business is a story in itself (or a hundred stories, really) and I will remain focused on the sheer joy and riotous pleasure that meat has brought me since I got back on the wagon a few years ago.
In some ways, I understand why vegetarianism made sense to me for so long. I got through it pretty effortlessly because I really, really love a lot of non-meat things. I'm not talking about pseudo-bacon here, or soy chorizo. I'm talking about, you know, vegetables, fruits, legumes, bread. I still find myself cooking a lot of non-meat sorts of things, and I have to remind myself sometimes that meat exists. I think I got so used to cooking without it that I now consider it sort of a luxury item. Granted, meat is not cheap, especially when you take the organic, local, free-range, happy-and-stressfree-homes-make-tasty-meats route. Sometimes it feels worth it to me, and, honestly, sometimes it just doesn't. Either way, if it's a decent piece of meat, and some real love goes into its preparation, it can be quite a transcendental experience, this whole meat eating thing.
The thing I really like is going to the butcher shop to buy my meat. In fact, for me, most of the pleasure of meat is sucked away by going to a grocery store and poking at shrinkwrapped, scrunched-up meat pieces, all cowering in their styrofoam trays, each one trying to look unassuming so that it doesn't get picked. But when I go to the butcher shop, oh! it's another story entirely. I love to see all the fresh meats, lined up in their neat rows, all ready to serve and vying for my attention. The chicken thighs call, Me, me! The sausages announce, It's me you want! The beef tenderloin coos, I know I'm expensive, but I'm worth it! Everything just looks happier in those cases (as happy as dead meat can look, that is -- and, yes, "dead meat" is redundant, but it just sounds so good) and I love the process of taking a number from the number-machine, then peering through the cases as I wait my turn, then discussing my dinner plans with the butcher when my number is called. I like to have a meat connection, I suppose. I love to pick the bits I want, see it on the scale, then say Yes, that's enough, or Go ahead and give me the rest of that. I like to see it get wrapped up in the butcher paper (oh, I am madly, madly in love with butcher paper!) and the package sealed with a sticker (my favorite ones are at Gene's, and they say, You Can't Beat Our Meat! in this adorable, old-fashioned font). I love to scoop up my packages from the metal counter and carry them like tiny babies through the shop, stopping to look at spices or the mustard collection on my way to check out.
Oh, so I was saying. The concept is these hot beef sandwiches that I have honestly not had since I was in grade school (is that really true?!). I do remember loving them though, laced with black pepper and topped with yellow mustard, all on a sturdy sandwich roll. So that is what I had in mind. That kind of deliciousness, preferably with something hot dripping down my chin while I ate it. My approach combined mama's skills with a sort of barbeque method, because I am simply mad about barbeque brisket sandwiches. My mom uses a beef roast, or shoulder, or butt, and one day I will actually learn the difference between those three things, if there happens to be one. (Somehow I think it's sort of impossible to memorize animal body parts and meat cuts when you haven't actually broken down the whole animal before. Which I haven't. But I will get my hands on a cow of my own one day, and, believe me, you'll be the first to hear about it!) I opted for brisket, as you know, and it was sort of entertaining, just tossing things into the pot and wondering what it would all look like after it was sent to its brutally hot room for three hours.
I think you will become sort of infatuated with brisket after you have this experience. I think you may end up with a new favorite thing. If you're a vegetarian, I suggest this brisket as your gateway drug.
Long-Time Brisket
Serves 5 or 6 as sandwiches
3 lbs beef brisket, cut into slabs 1 1/2 to 2" thick (keep the fat on)
olive oil
8 cloves garlic, smashed
2 1/2 C water
1/4 C apple cider vinegar
4 bay leaves
1 hot pepper (any variety -- whatever you can handle!), seeded and chopped
2 t cayenne pepper (optional)
3 T chili powder
3 t ground cumin
3 t ground coriander
5 cloves
2 T fennel seeds
3 T balsamic vinegar
2 t paprika
32 oz. can pureed tomatoes
1/4 C molasses
Season brisket pieces generously with kosher salt and pepper. Try not to be afraid to coat them pretty much completely!
Heat two cast iron skillets to medium and add a tablespoon of olive oil to each pan. Add meat pieces and sear for 5 minutes on each side, or until they start to get some nice color.In the dutch oven, combine all the dry ingredients. Heat for a minute, stirring constantly, just to get things going. Add the vinegars and cook at a high temp (boiling, even!) until most of it disappears. (It'll start to smell less and less like vinegar.)
Add all the rest of the ingredients, and whisk or stir to combine well. (I know! This is crazy! It's like making creations in the kitchen as a kid, putting in some of everything.) Add the brisket pieces and put on a lid. Now, pop it into the oven for 3 hours. (If you are doing the Crockpot thing, just put it all in and cook on low for 8-10 hours.) You can check on it every hour or so if you'd like, but it will probably do just fine without you. At the end of the time, take it out and inspect your work. It will have reduced a bit, and the meat will be very soft and nice and should pull apart with a fork very easily.
Take the meat pieces out, one at a time, to a cutting board. With a fork stabilizing it, use another fork to pull the fat off. Discard all the fat. Now, shred the meat with the two forks. It should be quite easy and painless, and it should look so delicious that you want to eat it all up, right off the cutting board. Once your brisket is all shredded, you will need to strain your barbecue sauce. Use a mesh strainer (or one with very small holes). Pour the sauce in and press with a spoon to extract all the sauce, leaving all the strange bits in the sieve. You can either mix the strained sauce back into the brisket pieces, or you can serve it on the side.
Serve brisket on sandwich rolls. (If you can get a hold of pretzel rolls, please do -- if you're in Chicago, Turano's makes really mind-numbingly incredible ones.) Your sandwich should have company! Serve with roasted potatoes or macaroni and cheese, plus coleslaw. I made a blue cheese coleslaw that was pretty great with the barbecue flavors, using red and white cabbage, shredded carrots, scallions, cilantro, blue cheese, sour cream, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and mustard (I am terribly partial to Brownwood Farms Kream Mustard. If you haven't had this mustard, then you desperately need to git yerself some, straight away).
So that is the story of my first brisket. I hope that brisket enters your life soon (if it hasn't already), and I hope that you become so attached that you open a boardinghouse or orphanage for briskets, and you spend the rest of your days swooping them up in your arms and stroking their little chins, whispering in their ears that you'll never let them go.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Eat The Love
It's important to talk about yesterday. It's important to tell you about my quest for a quivering little bit of my past, and it's important for you to keep in mind that I truly have a special little spot in my heart for Valentine's Day. In fact, I will tell you that I do indeed have approximately one cubic centimeter of my heart reserved for romantic notions and their corresponding holidays. Now that you know I truly mean business, here we go.
Picture first that aforementioned cubic centimeter of my heart. Already did that? Great. Do you see it as red, and sort of firm but wiggly? Okay, good. When you picture it, does it look sort of familiar, like, oh, say, Jell-O? A-ha! Together, we are right on track. Sort of a gross track, but we're together, and that's what matters.
Back in the day, there was this neat little thing called Knox Blox. Later, they came to be called Jell-O Jigglers, which, if you ask me, is a terrible name. Jiggling just isn't a good thing. Have you ever heard it used in a positive way? Bodies aren't supposed to jiggle, furniture isn't supposed to jiggle, and, for crying out loud, food should certainly not jiggle. And, if for some odd reason it does jiggle, we should certainly not speak of it. So, here, henceforth, we shall call it not a jiggler. We shall resort back to its former name, the one in which the second word is actually spelled wrong. If there's one thing I hate more than words like "jiggle," it's words that are misspelled so that they'll look cute. You know, Kid's Krazy Korner, Olde Tyme Shoppe, Ruff n' Tuff Stuff. And, falling into this same category, of course, is Knox Blox. Somehow, though, I have overlooked this verbal atrocity in the name of childhood memories.
Growing up, Valentine's Day wasn't lame. In fact, it was terrific. Maybe a tiny bit nerve-wracking, but, all in all, something I really looked forward to. Oh, the magical things! The valentine mailboxes that we got to spend actual class time working on, the valentines themselves, carefully crafted for weeks beforehand, and, best of all, the Valentine's Day party at school. I. Loved. That. Party. The other school parties were always exciting, but none of them could even hold a torch to the Valentine's Day party. I was giddy with excitement as I attached my mailbox to my desk, and ecstatic when it was time to deliver everyone's mail. For several years, we could give them to anyone in the class we wanted, but then came a School Rule, stating that we were required to give everyone a valentine, so there was no picking and choosing recipients for your cards. This made me so nervous, because I had to figure out what to say on everyone's cards. I remember being so worried about it, trying to figure out what to say on a card for someone I wasn't really friends with, and I was shocked to hear my parents' suggestion that I could simply sign my name. What?! I hadn't thought of that brilliant possibility! I didn't have to write a ten-page letter to everyone in the class! Phew. Relief. If I wouldn't have had that particular guidance, I would probably still be writing out my second-grade valentines.
Still, though, it was exciting! Some teachers underestimated the amount of space that the mailboxes had for card storage, and they'd burst at the seams with cards, or a pile would need to be started on each desk for the extras. In some classes, we were allowed to open our valentines right then and there, and sometimes there just wouldn't be enough time in the school day, so we'd have to take them home. If time allowed, I'd open some at school, but I always saved the fanciest ones to open at home. I liked to be there to open my valentine mail, where I could focus on savoring the best ones. As an adult, I still need to read letters and cards when I am completely alone, preferably sitting on the floor (for maximum concentration purposes).
Fancy correspondence aside, let's not kid ourselves -- the party treats were pretty important, too. Being sort of a cuisine-obsessed kid, I took it all pretty seriously. I'm surprised that I didn't have aspirations of becoming an event planner or a food critic, considering that I was probably the only kid who kept track of all the room parents' treat-bringing history. (Not on paper, just in my head, of course. Do you take me for some sort of total freak or something? Sheesh.) I knew who brought the best cupcakes, and who would bring the best cookies, or who had the savory snacks under control. I knew who would cop out and just bring store-bought cookies, and who would bring warm 2-liters of soda (ick) rather than juice. I knew who would bring the most well-decorated treats, and which ones would actually taste good. Since I had all of this information stored in my young, terrifically-obsessive brain, it's shocking that I was actually ever able to enjoy myself at the school parties. But, who knows? Maybe I was over in the coatroom, tucked away in all the rows of quiet snowsuits, scorecard in hand, sampling tiny bites and taking copious notes, the Shirt Tales binder balanced on my knees as a desk. Maybe. Maybe all this, and I've spent years blocking it all out. Anything is possible.
Despite my love for the perfect pink cupcake, or the rare-but-welcomed party carrots and dip, I held one party treat on the highest of pedestals. This was, of course, the Knox Blox. For Valentine's Day, red ones, in heart shapes. Wiggly, silly little colloids! How unbelievable that this item, which seemed so toy-like, was actually a food! Simply brilliant. I loved it when they showed up at the party, but my favorite was when my own mother was in charge of bringing them. This meant that I, the self-proclaimed control freak (I'm getting better, I swear!), could have a hand in the actual production process. I'm not sure I actually ended up doing much, because A.) my mom made the best Jell-O anything, ever, so there! and B.) making Jell-O really only consists of pouring and stirring boiling water, anyway. But I remember we'd shop for the boxes of red Jell-O, dig out the red plastic heart cookie cutter, and go at it. My mom gave me a lot of freedom in the kitchen, but it was because she taught me the proper ways to do things first. Then she'd trust me to do things like stir the pool of boiling hot, stain-making red ooze when I was only three feet tall. And see? Not one single Jell-O burn wound on my body yet!
So, the Jell-O would glisten in its Pyrex pan, and we'd clear a space on a refrigerator shelf. In it would go, and I'd be an excitable wreck for the hour that it took to firm up. I'd open the refrigerator door, peek in at it, and sometimes (quickly, slyly) poke at it to see if it was done yet. I'm not sure if I actually drove anyone crazy while I waited for the Jell-O, but it's possible. When the pan came out of its hibernation, it was a different animal! All smooth, melted rubies, perfect for carving. And we'd make the hearts as carefully as we could, each one more precise than the last. The leftover bits, the negative space of the hearts, was alright to snack on, but it wasn't the same. The hearts were what mattered. The night before we took them to school was a restless one -- somewhere along the lines of waiting for Santa meets waiting for the President to taste the soup you made him for dinner. Agh, the plights of childhood!
The funny thing about Jell-O is that I really only ever had it at a school party or when I was sick (although it would come to my bedside in much more ordinary form on sick days), so my memories of it are strange. They seem to straddle the line between the pure pleasure of parties and the sheer distress of illness. I hated being away from school, and sickness meant I was trapped in a den of non-education, which made me miserable. Once Jell-O became available in the individual plastic cups, we got to have them in our lunchboxes sometimes, and I liked it, I think, but I remember wondering, is this really, actually food?
In homage to this non-food Knox Blox of my youth, I crafted some yesterday. They were sort of fun to make (okay, so not really). They were pretty at least. Red, like the rubies, and smooth as the skating pond. They were, though, much stickier than I remember, sort of leathery, and a total pain to cut into shapes. (There is totally a reason that my mother would sometimes insist on just cutting them into squares, rather than making heart-shapes.) I think I added too much gelatin, or maybe I didn't mix it all in well enough. Or, as my mom suggested (upon hearing this tale last night on the phone), maybe they were never actually good. We laughed then, like we do together, and we both thought, I know, of all the things that aren't good because they are good, but are good because they are special, because they bring us together and shape us into who we are. You know, shapes. Wiggly, shaky shapes. Like Knox Blox.
Valentine Treats for the One You Love
aka Knox Blox
4 small boxes of red Jell-O (Or blue! or green! Go crazy!)
2 C boiling water
2 packets gelatin
Boil the water! Add all the Jell-O and gelatin packets. Stir really well with a whisk, until it all dissolves. Add 1/2 C crushed ice and stir until it dissolves. Pour into a 9"x13" pan (Pyrex if you have it). Cover with plastic wrap and put your little darling into the refrigerator. Pace, or knit, or make some valentines for 45-80 minutes while it all firms up. You may poke at it to see if it's done, but make sure no one's looking. Cut into shapes. Try to figure out something to do with the scraps, like maybe make something nice to wear? Now, eat the shapes and don't forget to give some to your valentine.
Picture first that aforementioned cubic centimeter of my heart. Already did that? Great. Do you see it as red, and sort of firm but wiggly? Okay, good. When you picture it, does it look sort of familiar, like, oh, say, Jell-O? A-ha! Together, we are right on track. Sort of a gross track, but we're together, and that's what matters.
Back in the day, there was this neat little thing called Knox Blox. Later, they came to be called Jell-O Jigglers, which, if you ask me, is a terrible name. Jiggling just isn't a good thing. Have you ever heard it used in a positive way? Bodies aren't supposed to jiggle, furniture isn't supposed to jiggle, and, for crying out loud, food should certainly not jiggle. And, if for some odd reason it does jiggle, we should certainly not speak of it. So, here, henceforth, we shall call it not a jiggler. We shall resort back to its former name, the one in which the second word is actually spelled wrong. If there's one thing I hate more than words like "jiggle," it's words that are misspelled so that they'll look cute. You know, Kid's Krazy Korner, Olde Tyme Shoppe, Ruff n' Tuff Stuff. And, falling into this same category, of course, is Knox Blox. Somehow, though, I have overlooked this verbal atrocity in the name of childhood memories.
Growing up, Valentine's Day wasn't lame. In fact, it was terrific. Maybe a tiny bit nerve-wracking, but, all in all, something I really looked forward to. Oh, the magical things! The valentine mailboxes that we got to spend actual class time working on, the valentines themselves, carefully crafted for weeks beforehand, and, best of all, the Valentine's Day party at school. I. Loved. That. Party. The other school parties were always exciting, but none of them could even hold a torch to the Valentine's Day party. I was giddy with excitement as I attached my mailbox to my desk, and ecstatic when it was time to deliver everyone's mail. For several years, we could give them to anyone in the class we wanted, but then came a School Rule, stating that we were required to give everyone a valentine, so there was no picking and choosing recipients for your cards. This made me so nervous, because I had to figure out what to say on everyone's cards. I remember being so worried about it, trying to figure out what to say on a card for someone I wasn't really friends with, and I was shocked to hear my parents' suggestion that I could simply sign my name. What?! I hadn't thought of that brilliant possibility! I didn't have to write a ten-page letter to everyone in the class! Phew. Relief. If I wouldn't have had that particular guidance, I would probably still be writing out my second-grade valentines.
Still, though, it was exciting! Some teachers underestimated the amount of space that the mailboxes had for card storage, and they'd burst at the seams with cards, or a pile would need to be started on each desk for the extras. In some classes, we were allowed to open our valentines right then and there, and sometimes there just wouldn't be enough time in the school day, so we'd have to take them home. If time allowed, I'd open some at school, but I always saved the fanciest ones to open at home. I liked to be there to open my valentine mail, where I could focus on savoring the best ones. As an adult, I still need to read letters and cards when I am completely alone, preferably sitting on the floor (for maximum concentration purposes).
Fancy correspondence aside, let's not kid ourselves -- the party treats were pretty important, too. Being sort of a cuisine-obsessed kid, I took it all pretty seriously. I'm surprised that I didn't have aspirations of becoming an event planner or a food critic, considering that I was probably the only kid who kept track of all the room parents' treat-bringing history. (Not on paper, just in my head, of course. Do you take me for some sort of total freak or something? Sheesh.) I knew who brought the best cupcakes, and who would bring the best cookies, or who had the savory snacks under control. I knew who would cop out and just bring store-bought cookies, and who would bring warm 2-liters of soda (ick) rather than juice. I knew who would bring the most well-decorated treats, and which ones would actually taste good. Since I had all of this information stored in my young, terrifically-obsessive brain, it's shocking that I was actually ever able to enjoy myself at the school parties. But, who knows? Maybe I was over in the coatroom, tucked away in all the rows of quiet snowsuits, scorecard in hand, sampling tiny bites and taking copious notes, the Shirt Tales binder balanced on my knees as a desk. Maybe. Maybe all this, and I've spent years blocking it all out. Anything is possible.
Despite my love for the perfect pink cupcake, or the rare-but-welcomed party carrots and dip, I held one party treat on the highest of pedestals. This was, of course, the Knox Blox. For Valentine's Day, red ones, in heart shapes. Wiggly, silly little colloids! How unbelievable that this item, which seemed so toy-like, was actually a food! Simply brilliant. I loved it when they showed up at the party, but my favorite was when my own mother was in charge of bringing them. This meant that I, the self-proclaimed control freak (I'm getting better, I swear!), could have a hand in the actual production process. I'm not sure I actually ended up doing much, because A.) my mom made the best Jell-O anything, ever, so there! and B.) making Jell-O really only consists of pouring and stirring boiling water, anyway. But I remember we'd shop for the boxes of red Jell-O, dig out the red plastic heart cookie cutter, and go at it. My mom gave me a lot of freedom in the kitchen, but it was because she taught me the proper ways to do things first. Then she'd trust me to do things like stir the pool of boiling hot, stain-making red ooze when I was only three feet tall. And see? Not one single Jell-O burn wound on my body yet!
So, the Jell-O would glisten in its Pyrex pan, and we'd clear a space on a refrigerator shelf. In it would go, and I'd be an excitable wreck for the hour that it took to firm up. I'd open the refrigerator door, peek in at it, and sometimes (quickly, slyly) poke at it to see if it was done yet. I'm not sure if I actually drove anyone crazy while I waited for the Jell-O, but it's possible. When the pan came out of its hibernation, it was a different animal! All smooth, melted rubies, perfect for carving. And we'd make the hearts as carefully as we could, each one more precise than the last. The leftover bits, the negative space of the hearts, was alright to snack on, but it wasn't the same. The hearts were what mattered. The night before we took them to school was a restless one -- somewhere along the lines of waiting for Santa meets waiting for the President to taste the soup you made him for dinner. Agh, the plights of childhood!
The funny thing about Jell-O is that I really only ever had it at a school party or when I was sick (although it would come to my bedside in much more ordinary form on sick days), so my memories of it are strange. They seem to straddle the line between the pure pleasure of parties and the sheer distress of illness. I hated being away from school, and sickness meant I was trapped in a den of non-education, which made me miserable. Once Jell-O became available in the individual plastic cups, we got to have them in our lunchboxes sometimes, and I liked it, I think, but I remember wondering, is this really, actually food?
In homage to this non-food Knox Blox of my youth, I crafted some yesterday. They were sort of fun to make (okay, so not really). They were pretty at least. Red, like the rubies, and smooth as the skating pond. They were, though, much stickier than I remember, sort of leathery, and a total pain to cut into shapes. (There is totally a reason that my mother would sometimes insist on just cutting them into squares, rather than making heart-shapes.) I think I added too much gelatin, or maybe I didn't mix it all in well enough. Or, as my mom suggested (upon hearing this tale last night on the phone), maybe they were never actually good. We laughed then, like we do together, and we both thought, I know, of all the things that aren't good because they are good, but are good because they are special, because they bring us together and shape us into who we are. You know, shapes. Wiggly, shaky shapes. Like Knox Blox.
Valentine Treats for the One You Love
aka Knox Blox
4 small boxes of red Jell-O (Or blue! or green! Go crazy!)
2 C boiling water
2 packets gelatin
Boil the water! Add all the Jell-O and gelatin packets. Stir really well with a whisk, until it all dissolves. Add 1/2 C crushed ice and stir until it dissolves. Pour into a 9"x13" pan (Pyrex if you have it). Cover with plastic wrap and put your little darling into the refrigerator. Pace, or knit, or make some valentines for 45-80 minutes while it all firms up. You may poke at it to see if it's done, but make sure no one's looking. Cut into shapes. Try to figure out something to do with the scraps, like maybe make something nice to wear? Now, eat the shapes and don't forget to give some to your valentine.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
How To Turn Forty
Yesterday, my friend Dawn turned 40. I made these cookies for her.I also made these cookies in September for Susan's 30th birthday, and mailed them to her in Boston. In case you are wondering, they do travel well (that's actually true, right, Suz?) and they have enough moisture content to keep them fresh for awhile. So, anyway, it just so happens that this cookie has made its way into two birthday parties. And, really, who really refuses a cookie of any kind at a party? Especially when you can choose your favorite number and gobble it up?
The idea for these cookies comes from the bakery in Lincoln Park called Sweet Mandy B's. This place has stellar cookies and cupcakes and loads of other sugary goodness. Suz and I go there when she's in town, and the molasses cookie is one of her favorites (although she most certainly is impressed by most cookies, which is why I'm friends with her). It's frosted with a dreamy, mile-high, sugar-spasm-inducing layer of frosting. And it's just really good.
Now, Dawn, she is a smart cook, and she has a wise and discerning sweet tooth. I also happen to know that she loves a cookie, too, and she especially loves ginger (she's been known to create some really unbelievable ginger cupcakes in her day), so these cookies seemed a good fit for 40.
You can put numbers on them or not. I used cream cheese icing, but you could use any kind you want. This cookie is sort of a fall/winter cookie, given the molasses and all, but Sweet Mandy B's serves them year-round, so you can, too!
Ginger-Molasses-Chocolate Cookies
based really loosely on a recipe from the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook, and based not at all on the actual SMB recipe (just based on how I think they taste)
4 1/2 C AP flour
4 t ground ginger
2 t baking soda
3 t ground cinnamon
1 t ground cloves
1 t ground nutmeg
1/4 t salt
1 1/2 C unsalted butter, softened
2 C sugar
2 eggs
3/4 C molasses (if you feel nervous about molasses, you can reduce this to 1/2 C)
1 or 2 C semisweet chocolate chips or chocolate chunks
1/2 C finely chopped crystallized ginger
In a medium bowl, mix first seven ingredients. Stir in the chocolate and crystallized ginger bits. In a large bowl, beat butter until creamy. (You can use an electric hand mixer or you can put it in the stand mixer, if you have one.) Add sugar and beat until combined. Add eggs and molasses and beat, scraping down sides. Beat in as much of the flour mixture as you can with the mixer. Stir in the rest by hand.
Shape dough into balls. You can make them smallish by rolling 1" balls, or you can make bigger cookies by rolling 2" balls. For this project, my dough balls were about 1 1/2". (At this point, you can roll the balls in coarse sugar, if you like. This will make them look really pretty and they will glisten in the winter sun. I skip this step if I am adding icing. Also, consider perhaps reducing the amount of sugar in the cookies by 1/3 C if you are going to roll them in sugar, unless you like things really, really sugary.)
Bake in a 350F oven for about 11 minutes for smaller cookies, 13 minutes for larger ones. You'll be looking for cracked, puffy tops. Cool on the cookie sheet for 2 or 3 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack (or to the surface of your red table) to cool completely.
Once they are cool, you can decorate them with fancy birthday numbers. I used a quart-size ziploc bag, one corner snipped, with the smallest pastry tip that I had, but I think you could just use only the bag, and snip off the tiniest little bit in a corner. Or, if you, unlike me, can actually find your pastry bag in all your kitchen cabinets of stuff, then you can use that.
This recipe makes enough 2 1/2" cookies for a 30 year old or a 40 year old. If you make them a little smaller, though, you could easily make enough for a 50-, 60-, or a 70-year old. If someone is turning 80 or 90 or 100, I'd suggest making 2 batches just to be on the safe side. See, the good thing about getting older is that you get to have more cookies.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Put It In the Pot
I'm sort of in love with my ramekins. They are deep, oven-safe, durable little wonders that have been housing all sorts of things lately. Most recently, I made these funky little pizza pot pies -- kind of a wacky riff on the standard pot pies (which have certainly had their own turn in the ramekins). The idea, I'm sorry to tell you, was not my own. I wish that I had thought up this insanely, oddly delicious pocket of love, but, unfortunately, the creator was someone else. A few months ago, I first tried them at the Chicago Pizza and Oven Grinder Company, which is this little restaurant on Clark Street near the zoo. We had just been to see the monkeys, and perhaps I was just in monkey delirium, or simply starving from traipsing around the zoo at night in the middle of winter, but the pizza pot pies we had at this place were amazing. Really unusual, but really incredible.First, let me set the stage. This restaurant is old and quirky. It's in the narrow garden unit of a brick walk-up, so it's a bit like going into a basement. The ceilings are low, and everything is made of the same honey-colored glossy wood -- the tall-backed booths, the ceilings, the bar, the walls -- nearly everything. This makes it feel both cozy and like a really crowded tree house. There are even wooden shingles around the periphery of the ceiling, so you can never figure out if you're inside or outside. The walkways are narrow in this place, and there's just not a whole lot of, well, space. Which makes it quaint but also can make a diner feel sort of panicky and claustrophobic. The restaurant has been around since the early 1970s, and was, wonderfully enough, opened by a lawyer whose last name was Beaver. At the time, it was decided that this establishment would be "Chicago's most exciting restaurant concept in many years." The concept is, in this day and age, not the most unusual, since pizza places are a dime a dozen around here, but the way they make their pizza is the truly exciting part.
It's called a pizza pot pie. It's an individual serving of either a half pound (certainly adequate) or a full pound (yikes). Into a ramekin goes an Bible-sized slab of mozzarella cheese, then sauce (with or without sausage, but it all has whole mushrooms), then the crust. As it bakes, the crust poofs up all around and over the ramekin edges, and creates a dome, like the roof of a Smurf house, minus the red and polka dots. When the top has poofed, and the innards are cooked, the friendly server forges his way through the narrow aisles to bring it to you. This is what happens: the server puts a plate down, slides a knife around the inner edges of the ramekin, and then inverts the pizza onto your plate. It ends up like a cup of crust with cheese for a lid, and the sauce is all inside. Get it? Pizza. When your knife and fork go in, the sauce starts to slowly seep out and onto your plate, just like hot, tasty lava.
I set out to make these the other day, and, honestly, they ended up looking not very much like the ones at the restaurant. They were, however, incredibly palatable (perhaps, dare I say, even better than the restaurant's version?!) and successful. I started with my trusty ramekins, a hot, hot oven (gosh, maybe 475 F?), and the rack in the lowest position. I made a batch of pizza dough (the kind I told you about recently) and I made a sauce to serve as the lava. Remember the magical red sauce? It was one batch of that sauce, plus some garlic and oregano. (The dough was rising while I made the sauce.) Once the sauce was nearing the end of its cooking time, I added quartered cremini mushrooms and half a bag of frozen spinach, and cooked it down a little more until the mushrooms had softened a bit.
Then, the ramekins were greased with spray oil (this helped them slide out later) and shredded mozzarella went in. I put the whole tray of ramekins into the oven for about five minutes to melt the cheese a little, but you could certainly skip this step, I think.
Once the cheese was melty, I pulled out the tray and added the special sauce.
Then each one was topped with a piece of dough. If you are so inclined, you could certainly divide up your pizza dough into six balls and then roll each one out so that they are all actually round. I settled for odd rectangle shapes, but they were kind of cute in their irregularity. Then each piece was folded onto the top of a ramekin, and into the oven they went, for about 12-15 minutes or so.
Keep an eye on them, and when the crusts are browned and the insides are gurgling about, then it's time to pull them out. NOW comes the fun part. Inversion. The flipping of boiling hot foods with your bare hands! Just slide a knife around and flip it over onto your dish. My cheese decided to stay inside the ramekins sometimes, so I just scooped it out. Since they were on the bottom oven rack, the cheese got nice and brown.
There she is! Golden perfection. Sort of sloppy, but really quite good. Sort of a party trick, and sort of a throwback to your tree house childhood, minus all the wooden surroundings and tin-can telephones.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Where It Began
Think about this: once upon a time, cheese was born.
Okay, so really. Can you imagine being the one to have invented cheese? For crying out loud, that's like inventing clothes, or elbows, or walls. It's really, really important. It's an extremely incredible invention. And not only did someone invent the very first cheese, but many people invented all the different kinds of cheese. What's more is that there are folks out there right now, right this very second, inventing more kinds of cheese. Here are my questions: Who are these people? How can I become one of them? My request is: Quick, bring me these trusty cheese-makers and allow me a cheese apprenticeship! Let me please learn to create this thing that I love so much. Or, let me be in the room with the cheese masters while they make it. Or, at least just let me have cheese, both in my refrigerator and in my heart. That, I think, will suffice. For now.
The only time I ever made cheese was several years ago, when I made paneer, the white blocks of un-aged, non-melting Indian cheese that is common in my favorite of all Indian dishes, aloo matar paneer. This dish is pure divinity, when done properly (and sometimes even when it isn't), and it consists of peas, potatoes, and cubes of paneer, all in a tomato-based sauce. (Sauces, on Indian restaurant menus, tend to be called gravies, which makes me nervous. To me, a gravy means Thanksgiving, and I have trouble fitting my idea of brown turkey-gravy into any other context. Nevertheless, I love the Indian gravies, especially when they have swallowed up those stark-white cubes of perfection.) Why this cheese is delicious, I have no idea. It contains no salt or rennet (a coagulant common in most cheeses), yet it's kind of magical. Since it is such a simple cheese, it's really not too much of a pain to make. You really only need milk, lemon juice, cheesecloth and some patience. The trouble that I got into was that after I had been through the whole cheese-making process, the last thing on earth I wanted to do was boil potatoes, develop some sort of "gravy," AND cook rice. Considering that I am also obsessive-compulsive, I wouldn't let it go until I had also made the naan, mango lassi, masala tea, samosas, chutney, and forty-eight other components. Long story short, one date was enough for me and paneer. Now, we both see other people for our Indian cuisine needs, and we're both pretty comfortable with it.
I almost feel like there should be multiple food groups within the group called cheese. (Not that cheese is even a food group by itself, but stay with me here.) Just think -- there are so many kinds of cheese that are good for so many different things. There's cheese that's best for sandwiches, and cheese that is best for sauce. There is salad cheese, and gratin cheese, and cheeseburger cheese. There are the kinds of cheese that are good for grilled cheese, and very certain kinds that work best in macaroni and cheese. There's hard cheeses, and soft cheeses, there's cow and sheep and goat cheeses, not to mention all those "alternative" cheese made with the milk of, ahem, other animals. There are cheese platters and cheese boards. There are so many kinds of cheese in American culture, and so, so many more in nearly every other culture.
The thing with cheese is that it showcases well (did I seriously just use "showcase" as a verb?) in so many different settings. It is standard fare in many situations, but, I must admit, there are some places that cheese doesn't belong. It needs to try and stay out of sushi, for one. I don't want cream cheese on my maki. That's all there is to it. Let the cream cheese continue its steamy love affair with the bagel, and leave maki out of it. Cheese also has no place on cereal, on Thai food, or on pancakes. It should never be combined with sugary things, unless it is chocolate, which, for some reason, loves to have a special rendezvous with cheese every now and then. Long story short, cheese is so good at doing so many things well, and I just want to tell it what a good job it has been doing all these years.
The quintessential cheese dish is the one that has shaped many a childhood here in America. It is, of course, macaroni and cheese, often lovingly called just mac n' cheese, so as to suggest the casualness and joy involved in the consumption of this dish. There are a lot of ways to make macaroni and cheese, and everyone has a special process that they swear by. There are also others who swear by the kind in the box, the kind that serves as a maraca before it is opened up. Even in this realm, there are so, so many types to choose from. Different shapes, different sauces, organic, not organic, whole wheat, powdered cheese, squeeze cheese. In my adult life, I am partial to Annie's, although sometimes, every once in a while, I'll get a hankering for the Kraft kind, and I'll tell you why.
When I was in grade school, I had a friend named Lisa. I'd go to her house, where there was a Pomeranian named Brandy who barked loudly and constantly in that horrible, yipping, nerve wracking, blood-tangling way that only Pomeranians can bark. Brandy was usually in a crate in the living room, and sometimes the family would take her out to "play" with her. She wasn't all that friendly or pleasant, though, so they usually ended up getting bitten by her. As soon as I heard the crate door open, I made myself scarce, creeping off to the bathroom where I could have a bit of peace and avoid bodily injury during my play date. When I didn't scoot off fast enough, they'd ask if I wanted to hold her, and, honestly, I must have looked at them with crazy eyes. Who on earth would want to willingly reach out their arms to their attacker? Um, not me.
Besides suffering through the emotional and mental exhaustion of these play dates at Lisa's, I did manage to enjoy myself. No, it wasn't in Lisa's refusal to share her new toys with me, or the way her father scolded me for touching the wallpaper as I walked down their hallway, but in something that apparently trumped all (and this apparently wasn't hard to do). It was the reason for my play dates at Lisa's, or, at least, it was the thing I remember best. It was the macaroni and cheese. You know, the Kraft kind in the blue box. This was way before Kraft started experimenting around with different varieties of their boxed macaroni and cheese. (Oh, I'm sorry, that's Kraft cheese and macaroni.) This was before the spirals or the Sponge Bob shapes, before anyone cared about whole grain or yellow food dye, before Kraft attempted to join any sort of revolution. Just the regular shape, and the regular box.
The most important part about mac and cheese at Lisa's was that Lisa liked -- get this -- to have her macaroni without the cheese. Um, yeah. No allergy to claim, just preferences. She would have noodles with butter. That's all. If even a drop of cheese powder reached her noodles, she would scream bloody murder, which was more than enough to make that Pomeranian chew its way through a metal crate door and a wall or two. This meant that Lisa's mother would make us the macaroni and cheese and Lisa's would be plain. My half, though, would have all of the cheese, so it would be especially full of orange cheese deliciousness. And when I was sitting at the high counter on a tall chair, having that macaroni and cheese out of the blue bowl, I could, for a few minutes at least, manage to forget that a crazed ball of fur was gnawing its way through my tiny little leg.
The other thing that I always loved about macaroni and cheese at Lisa's (besides actually eating it) was my own mother's story about eating macaroni and cheese with one of her best friends when she was young. They'd have macaroni and cheese out of can together, and it was a really special and important part of her childhood. One time when I was a little bit older and my mom and I were grocery shopping together, we came across some of that mac and cheese in a can and we took it home to give it a try. I was so distracted by the fact that the noodles were all very, very long that I can't even remember if we liked eating it. It was, I suppose, one of those things whose defining moment was the discovery, not the experience itself.
The best macaroni and cheese is, of course, the homemade kind. My mom always made macaroni and cheese with elbow macaroni, which is the way it should be, if you ask me. Granted, I have been known to try many a pasta shape in my mac and cheese, but I always go back to the elbows. They just make sense to me. I tend to vary the cheeses that I use, although I do always integrate some kind of cheddar. So, let's move right along then, shall we?
Macaroni and Cheese
good for a queen or king or for just a regular person
2 C elbow macaroni (or other shape, if you're so inclined)
1 lb. of good cheese, shredded (I like a combination of sharp white cheddar, American, fontina, and gruyere, but I try something new every time I make it, and you should, too!)
2 C milk (or half & half, if you're feeling decadent)
1 t salt
1/2 t pepper
1 t dry mustard powder
2 eggs
Preheat oven to 375 F. Cook the 2 cups of macaroni, but for only about 2/3 of the suggested time, as you will want the pasta to be a little firmer than al dente. It will cook more when it is baking in the oven.
In a big bowl, whisk eggs, salt, pepper, and mustard. Add milk, then add the cheese. Add cooked pasta to the mixture and stir it up!
Butter a casserole dish and pour in the cheesy goodness. Bake for about 25 minutes on the middle rack.
Then broil for 5-8 minutes more so the top gets nice and toasty.
*Since this recipe doesn't use a lot of fancy schmancy ingredients or spices, it is necessary to use really good cheese! Don't settle for cheap cheese, or the mac n' cheese will be bland. Use cheeses that you like to eat out of hand. If you don't like to eat the cheese plain, chances are good you won't like to eat it in melted form.
That's it! You did it. You made macaroni and cheese! Serve with peas or cooked cabbage and carrots. Also consider serving pickles and/or beets with your creation. Oh, or ribs. Or brisket. Or barbecued chicken. Or anything, really. Anything except violent lap dogs.
Okay, so really. Can you imagine being the one to have invented cheese? For crying out loud, that's like inventing clothes, or elbows, or walls. It's really, really important. It's an extremely incredible invention. And not only did someone invent the very first cheese, but many people invented all the different kinds of cheese. What's more is that there are folks out there right now, right this very second, inventing more kinds of cheese. Here are my questions: Who are these people? How can I become one of them? My request is: Quick, bring me these trusty cheese-makers and allow me a cheese apprenticeship! Let me please learn to create this thing that I love so much. Or, let me be in the room with the cheese masters while they make it. Or, at least just let me have cheese, both in my refrigerator and in my heart. That, I think, will suffice. For now.
The only time I ever made cheese was several years ago, when I made paneer, the white blocks of un-aged, non-melting Indian cheese that is common in my favorite of all Indian dishes, aloo matar paneer. This dish is pure divinity, when done properly (and sometimes even when it isn't), and it consists of peas, potatoes, and cubes of paneer, all in a tomato-based sauce. (Sauces, on Indian restaurant menus, tend to be called gravies, which makes me nervous. To me, a gravy means Thanksgiving, and I have trouble fitting my idea of brown turkey-gravy into any other context. Nevertheless, I love the Indian gravies, especially when they have swallowed up those stark-white cubes of perfection.) Why this cheese is delicious, I have no idea. It contains no salt or rennet (a coagulant common in most cheeses), yet it's kind of magical. Since it is such a simple cheese, it's really not too much of a pain to make. You really only need milk, lemon juice, cheesecloth and some patience. The trouble that I got into was that after I had been through the whole cheese-making process, the last thing on earth I wanted to do was boil potatoes, develop some sort of "gravy," AND cook rice. Considering that I am also obsessive-compulsive, I wouldn't let it go until I had also made the naan, mango lassi, masala tea, samosas, chutney, and forty-eight other components. Long story short, one date was enough for me and paneer. Now, we both see other people for our Indian cuisine needs, and we're both pretty comfortable with it.
I almost feel like there should be multiple food groups within the group called cheese. (Not that cheese is even a food group by itself, but stay with me here.) Just think -- there are so many kinds of cheese that are good for so many different things. There's cheese that's best for sandwiches, and cheese that is best for sauce. There is salad cheese, and gratin cheese, and cheeseburger cheese. There are the kinds of cheese that are good for grilled cheese, and very certain kinds that work best in macaroni and cheese. There's hard cheeses, and soft cheeses, there's cow and sheep and goat cheeses, not to mention all those "alternative" cheese made with the milk of, ahem, other animals. There are cheese platters and cheese boards. There are so many kinds of cheese in American culture, and so, so many more in nearly every other culture.
The thing with cheese is that it showcases well (did I seriously just use "showcase" as a verb?) in so many different settings. It is standard fare in many situations, but, I must admit, there are some places that cheese doesn't belong. It needs to try and stay out of sushi, for one. I don't want cream cheese on my maki. That's all there is to it. Let the cream cheese continue its steamy love affair with the bagel, and leave maki out of it. Cheese also has no place on cereal, on Thai food, or on pancakes. It should never be combined with sugary things, unless it is chocolate, which, for some reason, loves to have a special rendezvous with cheese every now and then. Long story short, cheese is so good at doing so many things well, and I just want to tell it what a good job it has been doing all these years.
The quintessential cheese dish is the one that has shaped many a childhood here in America. It is, of course, macaroni and cheese, often lovingly called just mac n' cheese, so as to suggest the casualness and joy involved in the consumption of this dish. There are a lot of ways to make macaroni and cheese, and everyone has a special process that they swear by. There are also others who swear by the kind in the box, the kind that serves as a maraca before it is opened up. Even in this realm, there are so, so many types to choose from. Different shapes, different sauces, organic, not organic, whole wheat, powdered cheese, squeeze cheese. In my adult life, I am partial to Annie's, although sometimes, every once in a while, I'll get a hankering for the Kraft kind, and I'll tell you why.
When I was in grade school, I had a friend named Lisa. I'd go to her house, where there was a Pomeranian named Brandy who barked loudly and constantly in that horrible, yipping, nerve wracking, blood-tangling way that only Pomeranians can bark. Brandy was usually in a crate in the living room, and sometimes the family would take her out to "play" with her. She wasn't all that friendly or pleasant, though, so they usually ended up getting bitten by her. As soon as I heard the crate door open, I made myself scarce, creeping off to the bathroom where I could have a bit of peace and avoid bodily injury during my play date. When I didn't scoot off fast enough, they'd ask if I wanted to hold her, and, honestly, I must have looked at them with crazy eyes. Who on earth would want to willingly reach out their arms to their attacker? Um, not me.
Besides suffering through the emotional and mental exhaustion of these play dates at Lisa's, I did manage to enjoy myself. No, it wasn't in Lisa's refusal to share her new toys with me, or the way her father scolded me for touching the wallpaper as I walked down their hallway, but in something that apparently trumped all (and this apparently wasn't hard to do). It was the reason for my play dates at Lisa's, or, at least, it was the thing I remember best. It was the macaroni and cheese. You know, the Kraft kind in the blue box. This was way before Kraft started experimenting around with different varieties of their boxed macaroni and cheese. (Oh, I'm sorry, that's Kraft cheese and macaroni.) This was before the spirals or the Sponge Bob shapes, before anyone cared about whole grain or yellow food dye, before Kraft attempted to join any sort of revolution. Just the regular shape, and the regular box.
The most important part about mac and cheese at Lisa's was that Lisa liked -- get this -- to have her macaroni without the cheese. Um, yeah. No allergy to claim, just preferences. She would have noodles with butter. That's all. If even a drop of cheese powder reached her noodles, she would scream bloody murder, which was more than enough to make that Pomeranian chew its way through a metal crate door and a wall or two. This meant that Lisa's mother would make us the macaroni and cheese and Lisa's would be plain. My half, though, would have all of the cheese, so it would be especially full of orange cheese deliciousness. And when I was sitting at the high counter on a tall chair, having that macaroni and cheese out of the blue bowl, I could, for a few minutes at least, manage to forget that a crazed ball of fur was gnawing its way through my tiny little leg.
The other thing that I always loved about macaroni and cheese at Lisa's (besides actually eating it) was my own mother's story about eating macaroni and cheese with one of her best friends when she was young. They'd have macaroni and cheese out of can together, and it was a really special and important part of her childhood. One time when I was a little bit older and my mom and I were grocery shopping together, we came across some of that mac and cheese in a can and we took it home to give it a try. I was so distracted by the fact that the noodles were all very, very long that I can't even remember if we liked eating it. It was, I suppose, one of those things whose defining moment was the discovery, not the experience itself.
The best macaroni and cheese is, of course, the homemade kind. My mom always made macaroni and cheese with elbow macaroni, which is the way it should be, if you ask me. Granted, I have been known to try many a pasta shape in my mac and cheese, but I always go back to the elbows. They just make sense to me. I tend to vary the cheeses that I use, although I do always integrate some kind of cheddar. So, let's move right along then, shall we?
Macaroni and Cheese
good for a queen or king or for just a regular person
2 C elbow macaroni (or other shape, if you're so inclined)
1 lb. of good cheese, shredded (I like a combination of sharp white cheddar, American, fontina, and gruyere, but I try something new every time I make it, and you should, too!)
2 C milk (or half & half, if you're feeling decadent)
1 t salt
1/2 t pepper
1 t dry mustard powder
2 eggs
Preheat oven to 375 F. Cook the 2 cups of macaroni, but for only about 2/3 of the suggested time, as you will want the pasta to be a little firmer than al dente. It will cook more when it is baking in the oven.
In a big bowl, whisk eggs, salt, pepper, and mustard. Add milk, then add the cheese. Add cooked pasta to the mixture and stir it up!
Butter a casserole dish and pour in the cheesy goodness. Bake for about 25 minutes on the middle rack.
Then broil for 5-8 minutes more so the top gets nice and toasty.
*Since this recipe doesn't use a lot of fancy schmancy ingredients or spices, it is necessary to use really good cheese! Don't settle for cheap cheese, or the mac n' cheese will be bland. Use cheeses that you like to eat out of hand. If you don't like to eat the cheese plain, chances are good you won't like to eat it in melted form.That's it! You did it. You made macaroni and cheese! Serve with peas or cooked cabbage and carrots. Also consider serving pickles and/or beets with your creation. Oh, or ribs. Or brisket. Or barbecued chicken. Or anything, really. Anything except violent lap dogs.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Your Italian Grandmother
Did I remember to mention that I have tonight's dinner all planned out for you? Well, I do! Now, if you are partial to take-out or restaurant adventures on Friday nights, by all means, go right ahead. You can store this little gem in your arsenal and whip it out on an unsuspecting weeknight. Ha! We'll show you, you sneaky little weeknight! We'll make the best darn weeknight supper, and you'll see who the sly, clever one is around here! Just you wait and see.If you are the type who has always wished for an Italian grandmother (and, really, who hasn't?), then this is the meal plan for you. It contains two important parts. While most Italian grandmothers are good at cooking and serving up lots of traditional fare, like braciole and zabaglione and stracciatelli (don't worry, I've never made any of those things, either), the thing that I really wanted an Italian grandmother for was the pasta. If you've seen in real life or on the television (um, that's real life, too, right?!) an Italian woman hand-crafting pasta, bent over a worn and loved chopping block or farmhouse table, expertly rolling out piece after piece of perfectly matching pasta, yellow with egg yolk and smooth as the moon, then you know. You know what it is you want. You want to be the little girl, standing between her grandmother's apron and the rounded table edge, small hands on the rolling pin ends, with those kitchen-wise hands cupped around yours, rolling together, with the lull of avanti e indietro, avanti e indietro, reminding you what is most important in life. After the rolling, then the cut-shape-toss, cut-shape-toss of the just-born pasta onto the pan that has been in the family for at least thirty-two generations, the little shapes all begging for a scalding bath and a new warm coat of rich, shining scarlet.
If you have ever wished to be this child (or even, for that matter, the non-Italian who marries into the Italian family) then you understand. If you are a boy or a man, or even in between, then I am sorry that you probably haven't seen too many Italian grandfathers and fathers shaping pasta, leading by example. But this, then, is to remind you that you, too, can do it. It's never too late. Ever. I am here because I want to tell you that you can make pasta. Yes, you. Without an Italian grandmother. Without special equipment. Without Italy, its rolling, lush green fields sweeping you up and the panna cotta calling your name. Without being the Italian granddaughter, or grandson, or son or daughter. In fact, this method is so simple, the process so undeniably fluid, that if you are even just a regular old American housecat with a dream, you can do it.
I didn't make pasta for a long time because I thought I needed (besides an Italian grandmother) lots of special equipment, metal rolling parts and cranks and special clips to hang it from the ceiling to dry. That is, until about four years ago, when I read an article in a magazine about handmade pasta, the kind that requires no more than a few simple ingredients and a few common kitchen vessels. I was sold! If it could be this easy (oh, and it IS) then my life would change forever!
I'm not sure that my whole life changed when I started making pasta, but I will tell you that every time I learn how to do something new, something on my own, I feel stronger and wiser and more prepared for the world. And this, I think, is what makes us better people -- the every day learning, the little (and big) pieces of ourselves that we pick up throughout the day and take home to sort out, like smooth stones or sea glass. This, plus, when I taught myself how to make pasta, I fulfilled a dream, and it felt like I had found one more piece of myself, one more smooth stone had found its way into my pocket. After all, I suppose that there's no way to get to our big-dreams if we don't make the little-dream steps. So, here we go. Here is your little dream, your piccolo sogno.
Come with me.
Okay, okay, first a disclaimer, before you get nervous about making pasta on a weeknight. I assure you that that last thing I want to do on most weeknights or Friday nights is make pasta. When I get home, and it's cold and already dark out, and I'm not sure that I even have it in me to crack an egg, let alone 10 of them, all I want to do is have something simple, and the crinkle of plastic as I open the gemelli or spaghetti is the best sound ever. But what I do want on these sorts of night is sauce. Good sauce. And I love things that can go into the pot, simmering away, while I go off and go something way more important, like, um, take pictures of it cooking, or have a glass of wine, or watch some Bones episode for the ninth time.
So, first I will tell you about this sauce, because it is easy and amazing. It will knock your socks off. You will serve it with any kind of pasta you like. If it is a weeknight, you may opt for a package of something (I've been partial lately to the long, thin tubes called bucatini, "little holed ones" -- there is also a wider version called perciatelli, from perciare, or, "to hollow"). The perciatelli is what's pictured above at the top. Most chain grocery stores carry so many kinds of pasta these days that it's usually not necessary to visit an Italian market, unless you want the artisanal stuff. If it is a weekend, you will feel more like making the pasta. If you make a few batches of the pasta, you can freeze it in plastic freezer bags, and then use that on your weeknight pasta night. Ha! Sounds like victory to me.
Perfect Red Sauce
adapted from various recipes from all the folks out there who adapted it from someone else's recipe (Still with me? Good.)
Okay. What you'll need to do now is either go to the grocery store or not. Confirm that you have the following five items:
+salt
+one small yellow onion or half of a medium one
+6 tablespoons of butter (unsalted or not)
+one 32-oz. can of good tomatoes (crushed, pureed, chopped, minced, whole -- whatever you like best)
+a pot that fits all these ingredients
By "good tomatoes" I mean that you should just like the flavor of the tomatoes straight out of the can. If they are good before they are cooked, they will be even better when they are cooked. If they start out bad, they will get worse. Some say that you should only use canned Italian tomatoes, but I think that's a bunch of hullabaloo. Sure, a lot of Italian canned tomatoes are really amazingly delicious, but there are also a lot of canned-in-America tomatoes that are just as good. (I like Dei Fratelli, which they usually have at the local Jewel.) Plus, there are some kinds of canned "Italian" tomatoes that are only parading as Italian tomatoes, and are actually produced in the U.S.! Oh, dear! Some varieties of canned "San Marzano" tomatoes are these sorts of imposters, so read your label, unless you don't mind being fooled, which is fine with me!
Now that you have these items, do this:
Empty the can of tomatoes into the pot. Peel the onion and cut it in half. Add it to the pot. (One entire medium size onion is perfect for onion-lovers. If you like the onion flavor to be a little milder, use either a small onion or half a medium onion. You could also probably use a red or white onion without any problem.) Add the 6 tablespoons of butter to the pot, plus a pinch or two of salt. Bring it to a low boil, and then turn it down to a gentle simmer. Keep it uncovered and stir every once in a while. Continue cooking for about 45 minutes, or until the onion has broken apart and little drops of fat on the surface of the sauce. It will smell good and taste good. If it needs more salt, add it now. Remove the onion pieces and either discard or save for a future project. Your sauce is done! Velvety, rich, and oh so pretty. Serve with pasta or just eat it all out of the pot, standing at the stove. If it's a weeknight, have a salad and some bread with it. If it's Friday night, then you are really tired and you are allowed to just have the pasta, all by itself.
Now that you have the first part of the Italian Grandmother Plan, you'll need the second part. The pasta. Here's what you need:
2 C flour
dash of salt
6 T water
1 1/2 T olive oil
5 egg yolks
(This is easily multiplied. I recommend making a double or triple batch. It's the kind of thing that, once you get into it, you might as well really get into it. And it's a really great thing to do with a group of friends or your family. You know, like a party activity for culinary nerds?)
Here's what you do:
Get out the food processor. If you don't have one, don't panic. Italian grandmothers in 1722 did not have food processors, and it's likely that many authentic Italian grandmothers don't even use one now, in 2010. If you have a bowl and a spoon, it will all work out fine.
Pulse the flour and salt together (or stir it). In a separate bowl, whisk oil, eggs, and water. Add this mixture gradually to the flour mixture, keeping the food processor on the whole time. (If you are stirring, just add half of it at a time.) It is done when it the dough makes a clump in the bowl -- it doesn't take very long! Remove dough, knead 5 times on the counter (yep, that's it!) and divide into two balls. Wrap each in plastic wrap and put them in the fridge for at least an hour, or more if you need to.
When you are ready to shape the pasta, lightly flour a few rimmed cookie sheets. Cut each dough ball into 8 pieces, and then roll each one into a long snake, about 1/2" in diameter. You can make any shape you want! For cavatelli, just roll small pieces in your finger for a second or two. For orecchiette ("little ears"), make little balls, then press your thumb down to make little saucers. It may help you to either study the shapes of pasta in the stores, or to research pasta shapes online. You can even make up your own shapes! Keep in mind that it is okay to make a dozen of one kind of shape, cover your dough, and cook your pasta to see if you like how the shape turns out. Experimenting with dough shapes is really the best part.
As you make each pasta piece, toss onto the floured pans, shaking every once in a while so they all get covered with flour and don't stick together. When you've finished shaping the pasta, transfer it to a colander, shaking gently over the sink or garbage can to get rid of excess flour. If you want to use it right away, then you are ready to do so! If you want to freeze it, you will need to transfer the pasta to freezer bags --it should be in single layers. You can also freeze the pasta on the pans, but your freezer will have to be wide enough to accommodate them. If you can cram your pans into the freezer, freeze the pasta for about an hour, or until firm. The, fill up bags or plastic containers with the pasta and return to freezer.
Cook your pasta! Boil a big pot of water. When it boils, add a little salt. Add the pasta. It will be done when it floats to the top (2-4 minutes, usually). Drain. Add the velvety sauce, or any other sauce. (You may want to just add olive oil and Parmigiano-Reggiano, so you can really taste your hard work.) Eat it all up, and then call all your friends. Tell them about how you just became an Italian grandmother. They will be so proud.
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