french tart

so i get sick, then clock my head and see stars.

2011-10-10T12:34:00.002-04:00

So I had a fun weekend (enter sarcasm here). Did you? I normallyhave really good weekends, action packed, bikes to ride, lengthy field trips toWhole Foods, stuff to watch on TV, people to see. So what happened is I got about of food poisoning. And NO, it wasn’t from my food. Let’s just say I’mstaying away from sushi for a while.

Ahem - anyway, so I have that wonderfulness Thursday nightand all through Friday. Saturday morning, feeling better, we decide togo for some phở as it hasMiraculous Healing Powers (it’s also the best hangover cure around IMO). I was diggingaround in the trunk of my car for my sunglasses (because sunglasses belong inthe trunk of your car, don’t you know?), and noticed Roy, our neighborhood straycat ambling by. As I closed the trunk of the car, I looked towards Roy andclocked myself in the head with the corner of the trunk, right smack on my left temple. So let’s just say that Saturday and Sundaywere a wash. I must be the only person on the planet who’s happy that it’s Mondaybecause now all that garbage is over. TheUniverse sent me a memo, trying to tell me something, but it’s in Greek orParseltongue so who the hell knows what that was all about.

In the meantime, I’ve been on a soup kick again since I don’t feellike chewing much of anything. I bought some packaged Thai butternut squashsoup over the weekend, but honestly, it tasted like ass. I was so disappointed,because when you’re not feeling well the last thing you want to worry about isyour food. I was also not impressed bythe amount of sodium in that one little package of it, and even less impressedby the high price of the damn product. I swear this blog isn’t turning into asoup blog (or is it?), but I’ve had a craving for a good Thai-inspired squashsoup since Saturday, so deal with it.

Butternut squash soup with curry and ginger

2 lbs butternut squash
5 (or more) cups veggie broth (*see note)
1 teaspoon curry powder (I use Madras)
1 teaspoon turmeric
½ cup coconut milk
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 piece of ginger about an inch long, peeled and minced
1/3 cup onion, chopped
2 small red chilis, minced
Squeeze of lime juice
Olive oil
Kosher salt
Pepper

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with apiece of parchment paper. Peel thesquash, de-seed it, and cut into 1-inch cubes. Toss the squash on the parchment paper with ½ teaspoon salt, ¼ teaspoonpepper, 1 to 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Place baking sheet in oven for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until the squash issoft and cooked through.

In a Dutch oven or pot, sauté the onion, the garlic, the ginger, and red chilis over medium heat ina bit of olive oil (about 1 tablespoon of it). You want the vedge to get soft, not get browned, so turn the heat downif things are getting too brown. Add theturmeric and curry powder, stir, and cook for another minute or so. Add the squash and the veggie stock, stir, andbring to a boil; reduce to simmer for 5 minutes so that all the flavors meldtogether.

Remove pot from heat. Using a stick blender (or regular blender,in small batches), blend all the ingredients together until there are no morechunks of squash left – it should be smooth. If the mixture is too thick, add abit more veggie stock, a ½ cup at a time. Return pot to heat and swirl in the coconut milk and the lime juice (ifyour lime has been fairly stingy, use the whole lime; otherwise the juice fromhalf a lime is fine). Season to tastewith salt and pepper.

Makes approximately 5 cups. This recipe can easily bedoubled or augmented.

*A note about vegetable broth: you can, and should, makeyour own - see the last paragraph of this post. Or use store bought if necessary. I prefer tomake my own since it can be made in the time it takes to roast the squash; plusyou can control the ingredients (read: sodium level). You can also use chicken stock if you’d prefer– it’ll make for a richer tasting soup.

More detoxin': a bright and perky orange soup to liven up your day

2011-09-09T13:26:00.001-04:00

God I just love thatcolor, don’t you?

Okay so maybe you don’t love that color. Maybe you’re all “I’mnot ingesting anything THAT orange”, but the thing is, That Orange is allnatural and there isn’t a damn thing wrong with any ingredient I used, nothingunhealthy, no garbage; which makes it perfect for detoxing.

I feel a lot better (physically) since returning from CampHedo At the Speedway last weekend - although I do miss my friends whom I don’tsee very often. We had a blast. But since returning to Day Job Activities, workingout, and eating normal food again, my body has thanked me. And after I finished the last drop of thewhite bean and collard green soup, I went rooting around in the fridge to seewhat I could blend up with the boat motor (aka stick blender), and found somevedge that needed to be used up. Half abutternut squash, a red bell pepper that I bought weeks ago, some carrots loungingaway in the Rotter Drawer (aka the so-called Crisper Drawer), and you’ve gotyourself the makings of a soup. Butternutsquash, carrots, and red bell peppers all have boatloads of nutrients, are low incalories, and are powerful antioxidants. Once blended with a bit of liquid (in thiscase, fresh vegetable stock), they create a thick texture that is hearty enoughto sustain me for lunch and through the afternoon.

You could use any winter squash, really. Pumpkin would be good. Any other squash may not have a finished product as orangey, but it would be just as good.

Roasted butternut squash, carrot, and red pepper soup

yield: approximately 4 cups

1 pound butternut squash, seeded, peeled and cut into ½ inchhalf moons
1 red bell pepper, seeded and cut into large strips
3 carrots, peeled and cut into chunks
Olive oil
Kosher salt
Few generous pinches of Madras curry powder
3 cups of vegetable stock (see note that follows)
Toasted or roasted pumpkin seeds (optional)
Plain yogurt or sour cream (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment. Toss the vedge with a tablespoon or so of olive oil, a couple of pinches of salt, and a couple pinches of curry powder. Place the baking sheet in the oven for 40 to 45 minutes (prick the vedge with a fork to see if they're tender).

2. Remove the baking sheet from the oven. If using a stick blender, transfer the contents to a heat-proof bowl and add a little of the vegetable stock at a time while blending until it's reached the consistency you like. taste for seasonings (could use more salt or just a hint of the curry?). If using a blender, you will need to blend the veggies and liquid in small batches so as not to have a veggie volcano in your kitchen (not to mention the burn you'll probably get on your hands and face, not that i have any experience in that, ahem).

3. Sprinkle on a handful toasted pumpkin seeds if you have some. To toast them, do so in a dry pan on medium heat, keeping an eyeball on them until they’rebrowned. Do NOT, for the love of Pete, walk away and go do something else for abit – keep a sharp eyeball on them.

For real decadence (but not exactly detoxy), top each bowlful with a spoonful ofplain low fat yogurt or low fat sour cream and slowly blend that in with yourspoon.

For the vegetable stock:

Save the trimmings and peels from the vegetables you’reusing for the soup; add those to a stock pot along with some cut up celery(minus the leaves – they’re bitter), a couple of bay leaves, couple ofpeppercorns, a stalk or two of fresh thyme and parsley (you can use whatevervedge you want, actually. This is just what I had on hand). Add 6 or 7 cups ofwater; bring to a boil and reduce it to simmer while the vegetables roast inthe oven. Then, strain this, saving theliquid and discarding the solids. You'll have extra for another recipe. And voila, vegetable stock.

detoxin'.

2011-09-07T11:48:00.000-04:00

Lord, what a weekend. I spent Friday through Monday at the sun-drenched then rain-drenched infield at the Atlanta Motor Speedway for our annual “Lets Get Drunk and Make Asses Out of Ourselves Weekend”. This included a PigFest – we ate a lot of pork products and we ate like pigs, if you catch my drift. It was also the boy's 40th birthday, so we whooped it up right.

Want some pictures? Of course you do! I must stress that going to the infield means you’re camping. And every year, there is always some broad or two in the bathroom putting on a full face of makeup and straightening her hair. This year was no exception.

That’s me on the right and I was attempting to do jazz hands. Because that’s what you do when you’ve had 4 beers before noon and are making fun of people. Which I’m REALLY good at.

This is our friend Quinlan. He’s drinking a pickle martini, because why not? This was also before noon (of course).

And this video, this is of Jane. She stays about 3 campsites away from ours, and is entertaining as all get out. Jane is the epitome of what goes on in the infield. Don’t believe me?

Jane, um, “appropriated” a Rascal (one of dem dare fancy wheelchairs) and was dead set on getting our friend Erica to sit on her lap. Her method was to ram the damn thing into Erica, which is why Erica is now limping around and unable to wear shoes to work this week. I can only imagine the conversation Erica had with her boss as to why she’s wearing flip flops with dress pants. You can’t make this stuff up.

I always have a really great time, but I’m always supremely pleased to get home because frankly, there is only so much beer and pig I can ingest. My stomach and brain beg for a break.

So! Now begins the Great Detox of 2011, which I hold every year for the week following this race. When I go all detoxy, I tend to unknowingly gravitate towards Asian food. It’s fresh, refreshing, not particularly unhealthy for you unless you’re ordering take-out Chinese from around the corner; and it tastes good. Namely, it satisfies my taste buds.So yesterday morning, I woke up and began my detoxing by reaching for Terry Walters’ Clean Food. I wanted something hearty to satisfy me after my grueling workout but it needed to be light enough to not make me feel heavy. I adapted her Autumn Harvest Soup slightly, then ate two bowls. It is absolutely what I needed, and very tasty.

Asian-inspired white bean and collard green soup

4 dried shiitake mushrooms
6 cups water
Olive oil
1 onion, diced
3 garlic cloves, roughly chopped (or not – I kind of like having larger chunks for this recipe)
1 inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and diced up, enough to make 1 tablespoon
3 carrots, peeled and diced
4 big handfuls of collard greens (kale works too)
1 can of white beans (Great Northern beans or cannellini work), drained and rinsed
¼ cup of mirin
1/8 cup (or more, to taste) of tamari soy sauce
Couple of dashes (or more, to taste) red wine vinegar
Sesame oil
Black pepper

1. Put the water in a pot with the mushrooms and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer and let it go for 15 minutes. Turn the heat off, remove the mushrooms, chop them up (discard stem if you wish) and return to the pot.

2. In the meantime, in a larger pot over medium heat, sauté the onion, garlic, and ginger in a drizzle of olive oil for a few minutes. You don’t want the garlic or onion to burn, so stir often and keep an eye on the heat (reduce heat if necessary). Add the carrots, stir and sauté for 5 to 10 minutes until the carrots become slightly softer. Add the greens, white beans, mirin; continue to sauté and stir occasionally for 2 to 3 minutes (be careful not to break up the beans while you stir). Add the broth with mushrooms, the tamari, the vinegar and simmer for 5 minutes or so. Taste at this point; if it seems a bit flat, add a dash more of vinegar and tamari until it’s savory enough for you and is no longer flat (it should “sing”). Add a dash or so of sesame oil, a couple pinches of black pepper; stir, and it’s ready.

The sesame oil I use is infused with hot chilis, and I like that extra kick in my soup. If you only have regular sesame oil, that’s fine; just drop a couple of pinches of red pepper flakes to the pot when you add the broth. Also, you shouldn't need salt as the tamari should add enough savoriness to the dish, but feel free to add some if you want - just be careful not to go overboard with it.

i'd kill to eat something with texture right now.

2011-08-04T12:05:00.000-04:00

so I’m over three quarters of the way through a 24-hour juice fast, and all I can think about are hard boiled eggs, grilled cheese sandwiches, and goat cheese. actually, any cheese for that matter. The reasons I’m doing the juice fast are fairly simple: a) I wanted to see if I could actually do it, and b) it’s supposed to be good for you since it gives your digestive system a break. Some people do multi-day or multi-week juice fasts, and frankly I don’t know how they do it. I’m not hungry or anything right now; but I just want to masticate some food. It’s all a mental thing.

Since yesterday, every time I’ve opened the fridge I’m confronted with a slowly dwindling jar of fig preserves that I recently made. I totally missed fig season last year and it bummed me out bigtime as I’d seen a fig jam recipe in an old Food & Wine magazine that I was itching to try. I managed to snatch up some figs this year and I’m glad I did because this jam is good; but it’s even better used as a spread on bread which has been topped with other things (I’m thinking a nice few thin slices of prosciutto would be good here). I love to spread some toasted baguette slices with a honeyed goat cheese and add a good dollop of the fig jam. I have to tell you, it’s heaven.

I thought the figs I bought were Calimyrna but after further research they may be from the Brown Turkey variety. At any rate, they are really beautiful and I did eat a big handful of them, just ripped them up into pieces and ate them. I’m not a big fan of biting into them directly as I’m afraid I’ll end up biting into a wasp, but that too is a mental thing I’ll just have to get over.

It’s taking all my willpower not to lick my computer screen right now. I may just go open up the jar of fig jam and take a nice long whiff of it before settling for some coconut juice for lunch. Oh, the sacrifices I make for my body.

Fig Jam with White Port and Rosemary - adapted from Food & Wine magazine, September 2009 issue

makes 1 and 3/4 cups of jam

1 lb figs, stemmed and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1/2 cup sugar
2 to 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/2 cup white port wine
Sprig of fresh rosemary

1. Mix the fig pieces with the sugar in a saucepan and let stand for 15 minutes, stirring every so often until the sugar is mostly dissolved and the figs seem to give off some juice.

2. Add the lemon juice, port, and rosemary and bring to a boil, stirring until the sugar is completely dissolved.

3. Turn the heat down and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the fruit is soft and the liquid seems to have thickened, about 15 to 20 minutes longer.

4. Turn the heat off and add the jam to a glass mason jar. screw on the top loosely and let cool completely before adjusting the lid and screwing it on all the way and storing in the fridge.

Every man dies. Not every man really lives.

2011-06-25T11:50:00.001-04:00

42 years ago yesterday, my mother’s water broke when she was 6 and a half months pregnant, however she didn’t go into labor or have any pains. She went to the hospital, but the doctors told her she had wait until she went into labor before they could do anything (this was the 60s, after all). They gently suggested that she prepare herself mentally because her baby was probably dead.

She spent a week on the couch, and then finally had labor pains. My aunt Roberte likes to tell the story about how she drove like a madwoman through every red light trying to get my mom to the hospital that day. And then, after many grueling hours, I was born. Alive.

I sometimes wonder why my foray into this world was so difficult, and why I survived. Perhaps there is a greater reason for me being here on this Earth. And maybe there isn’t, but it’s nice to think that there is.

Years ago, my friend Charles gifted me with a charm of the Eye of Horus. I never wore it, but back in January while cleaning out my jewelry box, I found it and felt compelled to wear it around my wrist on a chain. Charles claims the Eye of Horus watches over premature babies. I’m not so sure about that; but I have read that it is a symbol of life and resurrection. And speaking of life and resurrection, the blackberry bush I planted four springs ago flourished this past week. I thought the canes died during the winter (sadly, the golden raspberry cane kicked the bucket), but this morning I wandered across the yard to check on the blackberries and picked all of these:

I’m not quite sure what to do other than eat them immediately or scatter them on a bowl of half-melted vanilla ice cream. There is something enchanting about eating fruit straight from the vine. I remember eating groseilles and raspberries in a friend’s garden in Eastern France. Of all the meals I’ve eaten in my lifetime, the memory of eating those berries is right up there on my top ten list.

Welcome to summer.

*Title is a quote by William Wallace

wanti, wanti, cyan getti, getti, getti nuh want it

2011-06-10T15:54:00.001-04:00

Memorial Day weekend. Our last day in Jamaica. After lunch, we borrow one of those small 4-seater catamarans from the guys at the Watersports shack on the beach. They are clearly bored and look like if they close their eyes they’d be napping in no time. We push off, and as soon as we are safely out of their sight, about 100 yards from shore, we take our tops and bottoms off and tie them onto a rope which is bound to the boat so that we don’t lose them. We keep our lifejackets on but unbuttoned. The skies are overcast, but it’s very warm. Katherine is at the helm. I dip my leg into the water as we glide onwards. The only noise is the occasional sound of thunder in the far off distance. There are short gust of winds. The sea is blue, so many blues, variegated turquoise and lapis and not terribly deep. When I glance overboard I can see coral a few feet under the surface. We three girls are cackling, laughing. I shall remember this bit of sailing for years to come; I love being on the water in the middle of a foreign sea far from home. I don’t want to go home yet. We notice another small sailboat and two jet skiers far away. Patty is smoking cloves she bought online from Indonesia, stubbing the butts out and putting them in a plastic baggie. The wind feels glorious. I tilt my head back and straighten my legs out. I would do this every day if I could; I love it here. Patty takes over the steering, and Katherine leans over to salvage a lone empty milk jug floating forlornly along. I ask if it has a message inside, but it does not. The jet skiers are zigzagging across the water. One of them comes in close and cuts across our path about 50 yards ahead, and we curse him loudly for creating waves (I might have yelled “Vaffanculo!” which is the only Italian word I know, other than culinary words. Why I didn’t yell “Asshole” or “Prick” is beyond me). The jet skier doesn’t hear, he’s going a million miles an hour, and I’m sure he’s enjoying the wind too. When he comes back around to Zorro his way across our course, he glances over and notices that the three women on the boat are totally naked under their life vests. His smile turns into a broad shit eating grin and he slows down, along with his buddy who now comes in closely along the other side of the boat.

Patty: "Uh oh".
Me: "Patty. Patty. Floor it".
Patty (giggling): "This is a catamaran! You can’t just floor it!"
Me: "Dude, then you get to be the one who tells Foster that the last time you saw his wife was when she was on the back of a stranger’s jet ski, and for all you know she’s been sold into slave labor".
Jet skier 1 (who is not American or English or Jamaican): "hey, you girls wan jet ski?"
Us (in unison): "no thank you!"
Jet skier 1: "Ah, you wan jet ski? You ride jet ski? Not far! We breen back!"
Us: "No thanks!"
Katherine: "Just smile and ignore".
Me: "I can’t, I have to pee".

Eventually their smiles fade and defeated, they zoom away. Just because we’re staying at Hedo doesn’t mean we’re THOSE kinds of girls. Sheesh.

We sail towards a little island right off the coast that is inhabited by what looks like a beach shack/bar on one side and by an empty white sandy beach on the other side. We aim for the empty beach. The plan is that I will hop off and wade over to shore and go pee in the trees that cover the island, but as we get nearer, the catamaran starts scraping the tops of the coral and we’re still about 100 yards from shore. Pee break is canceled, and I’ll just have to hold it. We don’t want to go back to our resort, but we do. I shall miss this.

In honor of my latest trip to Jamaica, I’m going to attempt patties this weekend. On my last trip to Jamaica, I noted that the best thing I had eaten while there was a beef patty at the airport. Not to be outdone, on my way out of Montego Bay this last trip I grabbed two patties, one chicken and one vegetable, and a couple of Red Stripes. I have a fondness for handheld food.

I'll let you know how it goes. Maybe.

the year in pictures.

2010-12-31T11:16:00.000-05:00

yeah i know, i've completely sucked of late regarding the whole blogging front. in my defense, i've been busy procrastinating. i'm really good at procrastination. no point in even trying to change that bit of myself and put it on a nonsensical "resolutions" list, because i like to procrastinate as it gives me time to do other things i would not be so inclined to doing, such as sorting laundry, cleaning the toilets, or restacking all of my college textbooks (which I still have; lord knows why i keep that immense volume of Architectural Theory and Criticism since it's the only C i got in college. but every once in a while I like to read about spiritualism in art or the Vitruvian Man - yes, i'm an architecture geek). anyhoodle...

so i'm just going to do the easiest thing for me to do right now before dashing out the door to get some phở for lunch, and that's to recap 2010 in pictures. events and food that were important to me. it's not a comprehensive list, as i've thousands of pictures to choose from, and i don't have too much time right this second to dig through them all.

1. who's that Mountain Man?

why, that would be the boy, who was growing his beard out for the Warrior Dash. the award for Best Beard for Day 1 of the Southeast Warrior Dash ended up going to our friend Ken, so congrats to Ken for winning. and those would be wings on the grill. grilled wings are fantastic; you should try them sometimes.

speaking of Warrior Dash:

2. second from left is Ken and his award-winning beard

award-winning, i tell ya! and apparently itchy as hell. i'll take his word for it.

3. how to prepare a pig butt for the smoker

2010 was full of weekends devoted to the art of smoking various bits of edible animal. in fact, we're smoking a pig butt this weekend because we happened to find one in the bottom of our freezer that we had no idea was there, and i'm all about nice surprises. aren't you?

that pig butt turned into this:

yum.

there was also some Baltimore-style pit beef; and i'll be honest with you, in the 5 years i lived in Baltimore i never even knew they had their own "style" of pit beef. the boy grew up in the Baltimore-Annapolis area, and he didn't even know either. we had to come to the good ol' South to find out! and you know what? it is good. behold:

served with a horseradish sauce. good God, that was good.

4. 2010 also was the start of a project my friend Caprice and I embarked on, which we call "Mangia Più Frutta!" (complete with facebook page). I've known Caprice since I was 19, but she lives in Baltimore and I live in Georgia, so we don't get to see each other very often at all. we figured by eating a bunch of fruit, commonplace and exotic alike and then writing about it that we'd feel slightly closer to each other even though we're physically not. a couple of the things I tried out this year:

the cocktail grapefruit

lychee

i used to eat the heck out of these when i was a kid, although in canned form. when we first moved to France back when i was a wee tot, my parents would take us out to eat Chinese food every once in a while, and i always had lychees in syrup for dessert. fresh ones are good, although they remind me a bit of eyeballs. looks-wise, not taste. i wouldn't even know what an eyeball tastes like.

cheremoya

this was pretty sweet and custardy. i also bought a breadfruit along with this purchase, which i was super excited about because remember that's what the ol' mutiny on the Bounty was all about? Fletcher Christian and all that? i wanted to find out what all the hulabaloo was about, but unfortunately the damn thing rotted in the fridge before I could get to it. apparently it must be cooked (with onions!) to be edible anyway, so that was a disappointment. i would have mutinied too.

5. we also had a trip to St Augustine, which as a whole is a pretty haunted place. take my word for it.

we mostly ate out (i ate a crapton of oysters at this biker bar in Crescent Beach), but we did manage to grill some shrimp with a rum and brown sugar glaze after a morning of people-watching and vodka-lemonade-swilling on the beach.

6. a couple of trips up to North Georgia wine country and our buddies at Montaluce:

in january

and again in july

7. and then there is that drunken camping trip we take every year to Atlanta Motor Speedway to watch people floor it and hang lefts. i joke about that, but i really do like it. don't you roll your eyes at me. something about fast cars and the roar of engines really turns chicks on, i tell ya.

me and Miss Sprint Cup:

isn't she cute as a button? and so slender. bitch. she's really nice though.

of course the infield at AMS is full of the antics you would expect:

my friend Chris went to the infield bathroom and found this in the trash bin. she decided to bring it back to our campsite, because why not? she said it seemed like a good idea at the time. yes, we were drunk. no, we didn't put that ciggie in her; she came to us like that.

i've no idea what happened to that thing. i vaguely recall someone we didn't know coming up and asking for it. she was not defiled in any way while at our campsite, trust me.

ok so this post is getting pretty long, and that Ferrero Rocher i had when I woke up 3 hours ago is not cutting it. headed out for one last bowl of 2010 phở. here's wishing you all a groovy New Year, and let's hope it's just as fun as 2010 was.

traditions.

2010-11-24T09:20:00.000-05:00

There’s something very comforting about tradition this time of year, therefore I understand why people gravitate towards that green bean casserole made with canned cream of mushroom soup. I never had it in my house growing up, but wouldn't dare berate it as I’m sure it’ll appear on millions of tables tomorrow and be happily gobbled up. Who am I to mess with tradition on Thanksgiving?

At our house we enjoy our Thanksgiving meal rather late in the day (between 4 and 6 pm), and I’m really not sure why, although maybe it’s because that’s the usual custom at my mom and dad's house, so it must have carried over to us. We normally host a medley of people, but this year it’s just the two of us. It just kind of worked out that way, plus I have some deliveries to make earlier in the afternoon for the new business. Since there is no real sense of urgency or rush about dinner itself, I plan to lounge around in my pajamas most of the morning while drinking some spiked coffee and making fun of the Macy Day Parade in New York (I know it’s not called that, but that’s what I like to call it). The boy and I have had spiked coffee every Thanksgiving morning for yearsss and I can’t imagine a Thanksgiving without it.

Nutty Irishman. For one serving:

. coffee
. 1 oz Frangelico (hazelnut liqueur)
. 1 oz Bailey’s (or other Irish cream)
. Whipped cream

Pour coffee and liqueurs in cup. Stir, and top with whipped cream. Drink. Repeat. Smooth sailing into the morning.

Since we will be eating the feast so much later in the day, I plan on having some snacky things to munch on. I always have bowls of spiced mixed nuts and caramelized onion dip with chips (one of the only times of the year I’ll eat potato chips). The spiced nuts are easy peasy:

. one of those 11.5 oz cans of unsalted mixed nuts that has cashews in it (if you can only find salted, that’s fine; just be lighter with salt addition later in the recipe)
. ½ teaspoon of cayenne pepper
. 2 teaspoons brown sugar
. 1 teaspoon kosher salt
. 1 tablespoon butter
. 2 tablespoons of finely chopped up herbs like rosemary and thyme

Melt the butter and sugar in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add the cayenne pepper, salt, and herbs; stir together. Add the nuts and stir to ensure they’re evenly coated. Cook them in the skillet for 3 to 4 minutes longer over low heat until they’re heated through and smell good. Spoon the nuts into a bowl and serve.

Tomorrow I’ll also be serving pigs in blankets. I’ve made them the last couple of thanksgivings (and also for any other festive party), and I like them because they are great warm but are equally as good at room temperature, so they can be left out on the sideboard for people to snack on. Put out little bowls of a variety of things to dip them in. I like stone ground mustard and a spicy barbecue sauce myself, but any sauce will do. I’m sure you’ve got plenty of half used bottles of dippy things in the door of your fridge.

Pigs in blankets – adapted from Nigella Lawson’s Nigella Bites

Technically these are “cows in blankets”, as I normally use little beef sausages, but “pigs in blankets” sounds so much more charming than “cows in blankets”; at least, that’s what I think.

. 2 cups flour
. 1 teaspoon baking powder
. 1 teaspoon salt
. 2 tablespoons grated good cheddar cheese (white if you can find it; if not, yellow is just fine)
. 1 cup whole milk
. 1 egg, beaten
. 3 tablespoons canola or vegetable oil
. 1 or 2 packages of little beef smokies (you can find them near the hot dogs and sausages at your grocery store) (I say 1 or 2 packages because I’m not sure how many of these you want to make – each package has about 20 ish sausages I think)
. 1 egg mixed with a splash of milk and a pinch of salt.

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

2. Put flour, baking powder, salt, and cheese into a large bowl and mix with a fork. Make a well in the middle; add the milk, egg, and oil. Mix together. You may need to add a bit more flour or a bit more milk, depending on the humidity in your kitchen. Don’t be alarmed if you do. The dough should come together and be somewhat soft but not too sticky.

3. Roll the dough out onto a floured surface. You can roll it out however thick as you like it. Anywhere between ¼ inch or less is good. Cut dough into strips about 1 ¾ inch to 2 inches wide – this does not have to be perfect at all. You will notice that this dough is very forgiving, so should you screw up cutting one of the strips, who cares? Pat it back together and roll it out again. No biggie. Not the end of the world. Cut the strips at around 2 or 3 inch intervals.

4. Take one of the sausages and place it at the end of one of the strips, and roll it up, squeezing in the end so that it doesn’t unravel. Place it on the parchment lined baking sheet. Repeat with the others until you’ve got a full sheet (you may end up needing another baking sheet). Take that last egg mixed with milk and salt, and using a pastry brush paint the egg wash on the wrapped babies. Put the baking sheet(s) in the oven for 12 to 15 minutes or until they’re golden, brown, and delicious looking. Chuck them on a serving tray along with little bowlfuls of dippy sauces.

Here’s wishing you all a really happy Thanksgiving! and please remember to stop and smell the roses.

pie.

2010-11-23T09:36:00.000-05:00

it's a pie dough kind of day today. this one is going to become caramel pumpkin.

what are you making?

what i'm thankful for.

2010-11-22T11:15:00.000-05:00

Why do geese fly in v formation? Actually, don’t answer that because I already know the answer. Here in Atlanta we seem to have a humongous geese population. I think I’m one of the only people around here who really likes them. They poop all over everything and they scare people in the Perimeter Mall parking lot. But I like them. When I see geese flying in v formation, I deem it a good luck charm. It makes me happy. Makes me realize there is far too much beauty in this world that we take for granted and never acknowledge or barely notice.

This year has been weird, what with getting laid off last winter, then obtaining a new job which has drained me of all my vitality and happiness. I’m studying holistic nutrition, and I’m stressed out because I’m three weeks behind in one of my classes and the Proctor U site is down so I can’t schedule my final exam. I lay awake at night worrying about crap that is out of my control, worry about work issues that I can’t fix, worry that the freezer in my garage will poop out and I’ll have to throw away all those chicken carcasses I save to make chicken stock. And I worry about my family. For as much as I have been a lousy kid, what with me complaining about my mother, I do worry because my parents are getting up there in age and I live so far away. Life is fragile. I take it for granted that my mom will always be there, but one day she will no longer be around for me to bitch about – and that’s devastating. Not from the not being able to bitch about part, but because in spite of it all, I do love her. She’s just kind of nuts, is all.

A month or so ago, I got completely wound up in the whole crappy job/school/death of my uncle/starting new business mindtrap that I had a kind of minor meltdown and got sick. I went to the doctor, and while sitting there all goosebumpy in a white paper gown, I just started crying. Life has gotten me so wound up and I’ve forgotten to pause along the way and enjoy it.

So of course I’m being ridiculous, because I’m employed. Who cares if I hate my job? It pays the bills, and that’s important. I’ve got a ton of things I ought to be happy about. I’ve got a great set of friends whom I don’t see very often, but I hope they know I dig them. I’ve got a doting and loving husband, a nutty family, and a freezer full of chicken carcasses. What more can a girl want?

I promise myself to never lose my passion again. To stop and marvel at the colors of the leaves as they change. To get super excited about a really juicy clementine. To sit and gaze at the flames dancing in the fireplace. To never lose my childish innocence.

Happy Thanksgiving.

french onion and apple soup with cheddar and bacon croutons

2010-11-04T14:25:00.000-04:00

Did we just skip right over fall and into winter? they’re predicting snow flurries here in Atlanta this weekend. Which is a good excuse for me to park my butt by the fireplace; so I’m not really complaining. Much.

So last night we ate dinner on the living room floor in front of the fire, and as I put the dish down in front of the boy, he exclaimed, “Hey! Soup with little grilled cheeses on top!”, which made me happy in a dorky way, because they do look like little yummy grilled cheeses. And it’s definitely been soup and grilled cheese weather.

This soup is loosely adapted from Everyday Dining with Wine by Andrea Immer (now Robinson). By “loosely adapted”, I mean I took her ideas for using apples along with the onions, and topping the croutons with cheddar and bacon instead of the usual Swiss or gruyere. For the broth though, I used my own recipe, which has more booze in it. When the apples break down, they give the broth another layer of flavor, more depth in a way, where I think a lot of French onion soup broths hurt. The addition of apples means that you can omit using flour to thicken the soup, which some recipes call for stirring into the onions prior to adding broth, as the apples break down and their natural pectin helps bind the whole thing together.

When you’re sweating the apples and onions together, don’t walk away too far, even though this process will take a fairly long time to caramelize the onions perfectly (up to an hour). However, the sugar in the apples seep out and could burn the bottom of your pot – while you do want crusty bits on the bottom of your pot, you do not want a burned layer. If you do notice burning, turn the heat down immediately and stir the onions and apples frequently. The apples will for the most part break up into bits. If you do have a layer of burn, do not be tempted to scrub it with a wooden spoon and mix it in, as this will result in a burned tasting soup. And if you’ve somehow walked away and, oh I don’t know, got on the phone with a client and then kind of forgot about what was going on the stove, carefully remove the onions and apples and put them in another pot to continue the process with a little more butter and oil.

Incidentally, do you know how to clean a pot that has a lovely layer of burn on the bottom that won’t come off?

Pour water into the pot until it comes up about an inch from the bottom. Add a few drops of dish detergent. Put the pot on the stove and bring the liquid to a boil. Using a wooden spoon, start scrubbing at the burned pieces. You may have to change out the water a few times. It takes gobs of time to do this and this process sucks, but it’s better than the alternative which is to throw out the pot – which in my case WILL NEVER HAPPEN as it’s my coveted huge Le Creuset.

Make a few extra croutons topped with bacon and cheddar to have on the side, because no one will turn those down.

French onion and apple soup, with cheddar and bacon croutons - generously serves 4.

. 2 tablespoons butter
. 1 – 2 tablespoons olive oil
. About 2 ½ lbs onions, cut in half from root end to top, then sliced into skinny little half moons
. 3 medium Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, and cut into ¼ inch slices
. 2 bay leaves
. Few sprigs of thyme
. Salt and pepper
. 6 cups chicken broth
. 3 cups beef broth
. 1 cup red wine
. One slug of brandy, Cognac, or even apple brandy or Calvados
. A good sharp cheddar, grated (I leave this amount up to you – you want enough to cover the toasts)
. 4 slices of bacon, cooked, drained on a paper towel lined plate, then cut into bits
. Baguette

In a large stockpot or Dutch oven, heat the butter and oil over medium heat. Add the onions, apples, thyme, bay leaves, a couple of pinches of salt, and stir thoroughly. Cook, stirring frequently until the onions are caramelized (if the bottom of the pot is starting to burn, turn the heat down – see my note above). This step can take up to one hour. In the meantime, combine the chicken and beef stock in a saucepot and bring that to a simmer on the stove; turn heat down under that until ready to use.

Slowly add the wine while stirring. Slowly add the chicken and beef broths, at first one cup at a time while stirring, then dump in the rest. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to simmer, add the shot of cognac or brandy, and let simmer for a while – the liquid will reduce down. Stir every now and again for about 30 minutes, and taste for seasonings (salt and pepper).

When the broth has reached a nirvana-like state (when it’s to your liking), slice the baguette on a diagonal into rounds (figure a couple of rounds to cover each bowl you’re using, plus a few extra), and toast them on both sides. Turn the broiler on high. Ladle soup into oven proof crocks, top with the toasts, then top the toasts with a bit of bacon and some cheddar. Put the soup crocks under the broiler (I put mine on a baking sheet first then slide the sheet under the broiler – makes for easy removal) and let the cheese melt and become bubbly and golden. Remove soups from broiler, and using oven mitts, place crocks onto a paper towel lined plate so that they don’t slide all around, and serve.

you go on, eat your cupcake.

2010-10-29T09:10:00.001-04:00

Have you ever noticed that people will turn down a slice of cake but seldom a cupcake? Why is that? Perhaps it’s because the cupcake is already portioned out. Perhaps it’s because you can eat it with your hands. But I’d like to think it’s because people like to lick the frosting off first – which is totally acceptable social behavior - and is what I do.

I don’t eat cupcakes very often, especially since embarking on the whole lifestyle change thing last year; but I have a theory about them which is the same theory I have about mocha lattes. They’re a treat, so treat yourself. I don’t order my mochas fat free and with no whipped cream; it seems blasphemous to even consider that. Then again, I only have a mocha about once or twice a year; I have it, I’m sated, and I’m happy. Besides, I gave up coffee a few months back. No, I’ve not gone crazy. See, my deal with coffee is that I do like it; I love the smell of it brewing, I love the taste. But I realized that I was drinking too much crappy coffee and it wasn’t making me happy. I think in general Americans drink too much crappy coffee and don’t even notice it. When I was in Houston last month, the hotel had one of those two-cuppa coffee makers in the room, but the coffee they provided was what an ex of mine used to call “sock juice”: it looked like coffee; the aroma promised you depth of flavor, but in the end tasted flat and burnt. Yet we seem to keep forking out our hard earned dough for this. So now, I only drink coffee every now and again on the weekend, and even so it’s only about a cup’s worth; but it’s enough to remind me that I’d rather have a quality cup o’ joe than a crappy one that tastes like burnt sock juice.

Anyhoo. Where was I before that rant? Oh yeah. Full fat treats.

And by treats, I mean “occasionally”, which to me doesn’t mean once a week, or even once a month for that matter. But sometimes you just want a good ol’ basic cupcake that isn’t some weird combination of flavors (wasabi and ginger, anyone?). I’m not trying to reinvent anything here. I just want a friggin treat.

So i’ve taken a hiatus of sorts from the blawg, for a couple of different reasons. Well, you all know about reason #1 (my nutty family and the aftermath). Reason #2 is that my day job has become a soul-sucking experience. The 12 to 14 hour days are killing me. Somehow, in the midst of all this, I’m still managing to take two holistic nutrition classes online and start a business with my buddy Ryan (she of the turkey chili – you can follow her on Twitter @realestryan). I’m trying to change my career because I really dislike the path I’ve gone down. There’s a scene in that movie Under the Tuscan Sun (yes, I’m about to get all girly on you), where Sandra Oh’s character is telling Diane Lane’s character about how sometimes you run into some people you haven’t seen in a while and you think, What the hell happened to them? Because they’ve become an empty shell of what they once were. That these people came to a crossroads in their lives and didn’t take the right path. I feel like at some point I may have gone down that path. This soul-sucking job I have is making me an empty shell of a person. I didn’t realize how much I absolutely despise what I do for a living until I got this job back in April, and now I’m trying to change that and I’m no longer going to be a chickenshit at the crossroads.

Ryan and I are doing some small scale catering, mostly on the weekends; and the cupcakes in the photo above were for a baby shower last weekend (we made vanilla and strawberry ones). I have a lot of catering experience, having worked most of my life previous to the corporate life in the food industry. In fact, even when we lived in Maryland where the boy cheffed at a couple of places in Annapolis, I would help him with offsite catering jobs on the weekends and when I wasn’t working the day job. I love that atmosphere, I love being around food and slightly stressed out over time constraints, and I love how I feel a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day. The happiest I’ve been lately was last Sunday when I got home from another gig Ryan and I did and I poured myself a glass of wine and emptied the dishwasher. For the record: I LOATHE emptying the dishwasher. I don’t know why, really; it’s just one of my most detested household chores. Yet I found myself unloading it without feeling any animosity and with a big fat smile on my face.

Change is good. I think.

Vanilla cupcakes - makes 24 cupcakes; frosting recipe to follow

The cupcakes were adapted from a cake recipe in Baking Illustrated. The good folks at Cooks Illustrated have never steered me wrong. And as to all the butter in the buttercream, well yeah. Like I said above, this is a treat. It’s not like you’re going to eat all the darned cupcakes yourself. You’ll have one and share the others, right? Right.

For the cupcakes:

. 1 ¾ cups cake flour
. 4 large eggs at room temperature
. ½ cup whole milk at room temperature
. 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
. 1 ½ cups sugar
. 2 teaspoons baking powder
. ¾ teaspoon salt
. 16 tablespoons (2 sticks) unsalted butter at room temperature, cut into 16 pieces

1. Heat oven to 350 ° F. Put paper cupcake liners in 2 12-cup cupcake tins.

2. Put the eggs, milk, and vanilla in a small bowl and beat with a fork. Measure out 1 cup of this and set it aside.

3. Sift the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt into the bowl of an electric mixer (if you don’t have a stand mixer, handheld will do just fine). Mix the ingredients well with a fork. Turn the mixer on the lowest speed and add the butter one piece at a time; mix until it looks like pebbly sand, with pieces about the size of peas, about 30 seconds after the butter is added. Add the 1 cup of reserved egg mixture and mix on low until incorporated, about 10 seconds. Increase the speed to medium high and beat until light and fluffy, about 1 minute. with the mixer still running, add the remaining egg mixture in a slow stream, taking about 30 seconds. Stop mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Turn the mixer back on to medium high speed until it’s thoroughly combined (it will look slightly curdled), about 15 seconds.

4. Using an ice cream scoop (or a couple of large spoons), scoop the batter into the cupcake liners but only fill them no more than ¾ the way full. You should have enough for exactly 24 cupcakes. Put pans in the oven and bake for approximately 17 to 18 minutes (check at 15 by inserting a bamboo skewer or cake tester into the middle of one of the cupcakes to see if it comes out clean). Remove pans from oven and let cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then carefully remove the cupcakes from the pans and let cool completely on wire racks before frosting.

Rich vanilla buttercream frosting – adapted from Baking Illustrated

. 4 large eggs
. 1 cup sugar
. 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
. Pinch of salt
. 1 pound (4 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1. Combine the eggs, sugar, vanilla, and salt in the bowl of a standing mixer; place the bowl over a pan of simmering water but do not let the bottom of the bowl touch the water, should be above it by a few inches. Whisking constantly, heat the mixture until it is thin and foamy and registers 160 °F on a thermometer.

2. Take the bowl off the water and attach to the standing mixture (can be done with handheld beaters too). Beat the mixture on medium high speed until light and airy, about 5 minutes. Reduce the speed to medium and add the butter one piece at a time. Once all the butter is added, increase the speed to high and beat for 1 minute until light and fluffy.

I would use the frosting the day you make it, because should you put it in the fridge, the butter will re-solidify; it’ll take some time to get back to room temperature and it may split on you, meaning the butter solids will break up. Not good. I speak from experience.

Also, when specified to use products at room temperature, I mean it. If your butter is not at room temperature, you won’t get the best consistency and texture in your frosting.

beans. sausages. eat. enjoy.

2010-09-29T19:08:00.002-04:00

My uncle in Houston passed away after suffering really horribly. All his internal organs failed one after the other and he had gangrene in his stomach. He passed peacefully last Monday evening, with my aunt and my mom by his side. That was the last bit of peace to be had for a while.

So I flew out to Texas to be with family; and all kinds of cousins showed up from California and France, people I hadn’t seen in many years. I’d previously mentioned that my Texas aunt is batshit crazy, and she is. She firmly believes that the doctors killed her husband, and she plans to get an autopsy and sue. My poor uncle had a funeral service this past weekend, but as I type this, he’s still not laid to rest – and probably won’t be for a good long while. I watched my aunt grieve in the weirdest and worst of ways, by being horribly mean and lashing out at everyone. Nothing anyone did for her was good enough. We all left one by one, parting ways with her in an unfulfilling way. I have no idea if she will get through this.

There’s a lot more to this story, so much more, but it’s sad and angry and depressing. I’ve been in a funk since I returned, only to be faced with tedious work issues and perhaps a mid-life crisis of some sort where I just really loathe my current job and am desperately looking for a way out. On the plus side, I came home to Atlanta, where lovely breezes blow through open windows, and the first smell of fall is in the air. It’s so good to be home.

For a number of reasons (change of season, work schedule, depression), I’ve been looking for comfort food that won’t take too long to make apart from a bit of prep work; and right now, a bit of hacking away with knives at things in the kitchen seems to be good therapy for me. I’m also trying to make things that aren’t too unhealthy; although having said that, if someone put a bowl of buttery mashed potatoes in front of me right now, I’d devour it (inexplicably, mashed potatoes are my favorite comfort food. So are bread and cheese). Yesterday I made my friend Ryan’s turkey chili with the last jalapeno from our yard. The jalapeno and the basil are the only things that survived the ridiculous heat we had this summer, and one lone pepper still hung from the plant, waiting to be plucked. For dinner tonight, I’ve made one of my recent standby comfort meals, which is beans and sausage. Sure, you can make your own sausage, but I will not (in the interest of time). Sure you can soak your own beans overnight – but I’m going to go the lazy route and use canned beans for this. Besides, I always have a ton of canned beans in the pantry. The point of this meal is that it’s satisfying, it’s fast, and it’s comforting in a not so comforting moment. It’s not super original, but at times like this, I don’t give a rat’s ass about originality.

Beans. Sausages. Heartily serves 4 (2 sausages per person).

. 8 sausages (you can buy already cooked, or a mix of several. i usually use turkey or chicken sausages)
. 3 cans of beans (I usually get a mix of white kidney, red kidney, and great Northern)
. Olive oil
. 1 small onion, diced
. 3 to 5 cloves of garlic, grated on a Microplane grater
. ¼ cup molasses
. ¼ cup ketchup
. 2 tablespoons tomato paste
. 1 tablespoon dry mustard
. 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
. Hot sauce (to taste)
. salt and pepper

1. Brown the sausages on either a grill pan, or a grill, or a regular skillet heated to medium high. When they’re browned, set aside.

2. If you want to, you can chop up a couple of slices of bacon and sauté those in a heavy bottomed pot or Dutch oven over medium heat until they render all their fat and become crisp. Remove bacon bits and let drain on a paper towel lined plate, and then sweat the onion in the bacon fat left over in the pot. You don’t have to do this, but sometimes bacon makes everything better.

3. Open cans of beans and let drain in a sieve. Heat your pot to medium and add a tablespoon of olive oil (or go the bacon fat route). Add the onion and let it sweat (which means, don’t let it brown; you just want it to get soft) for a few minutes, while stirring every so often. If it’s getting too brown, turn the heat down. Add the garlic and stir until fragrant.

4. Add the beans, and stir. Add the rest of the ingredients, salt and pepper to taste, and a half cup of water. Stir well together and bring to a simmer. Add the browned sausages, stir while being careful not to break up the beans, and clamp on the lid to the pot. Turn heat to low, and walk away for a while and go do something else like answer 15 work related emails about time entry and invoicing. Oh so much fun.

I would say give this a good half hour for the sausages to be cooked all the way through. If you cooked bacon bits in the beginning, add those to the pot before serving, or sprinkle a few in your bowl after you've dished some of the beans and sausages out.

Not remotely food related: A little bit of crazy.

2010-08-12T08:55:00.000-04:00

I’m going to tell you a little story, all of which is true and kind of not funny; but in a way it is ridiculous.

Back in the early 90s, my French grandmother, who had not been in good health for a number of years, went to visit my mom’s oldest sister in Texas. When grammy’s health declined rapidly, she got rushed to the hospital, where Texas Aunt got into several ridiculous arguments with the doctor and nurses, subsequently firing them all and banishing them from the hospital room. When grammy eventually passed away, my mom and her two other sisters were discussing funeral arrangements and transport of the body to California, where the bulk of my family lives (and where grammy wanted to be buried). Texas Aunt did not approve of this plan, went on a rampage and attempted to steal grammy’s body from the hospital.

Sound familiar? It is strangely reminiscent of that scene in 9 to 5 where Lily Tomlin tries to maneuver a gurney with what she thinks is her boss’ body through a hospital and then chucking the body into the trunk of her car. As I wasn’t there at the time, I don’t know how far Texas Aunt got with my poor grandmother’s body; but I’m led to believe by other family members that her presence is no longer welcome at that particular hospital.

When my mom’s youngest sister passed away, I flew out to California; and as soon as I got picked up from the airport, my mom drove straight to the funeral home in Sacramento. My aunt died of cancer; and folks, perhaps this is immature of me but I don’t do well around dead bodies. I was completely unprepared to walk right through the front door of the funeral home and immediately see the gaunt body of what was once my aunt in a casket not 15 feet from me.

I have never been to an open casket funeral before, so I guess in that way I’ve been sheltered (or as my mom puts it, I’ve been living in a cotton ball my whole life). My dad, who was born and raised in the South, told me that it’s fairly common practice in these parts to have open caskets at funerals, and as a child he was forced to kiss the corpse. DUDE. THAT IDEA FREAKS ME OUT. So you can imagine my horror as we walked through the door to the funeral home when my mom rushed over to the casket and threw herself upon my aunt’s body. After hauling her off, my mom grabbed my aunt’s shoulders and shook her.

“Tu dors? Mais, reveille- toi!” (are you sleeping? Wake up!)

Things eventually calmed down, but I’m still haunted by that vision of my aunt’s body in the casket. That is not how I want to remember her. She’s not there; the body is a shell. But it’s still a dead body, and it still freaks me out.

The highlight of that day was explaining to the funeral director that he was to seal the casket as soon as we left, and under no circumstances was he to open it again. Why? he asked with a puzzled look on his face. Because Texas Aunt was on her way there and wanted to steal the body.

Texas Aunt firmly believed that my aunt did not die of cancer. She thought my cousin had slowly and meticulously planned my aunt’s demise by poisoning her to death. And she wanted to snatch the body to bring back to Texas where she would have someone do some analysis to prove her theory right.

She did show up at the funeral home and demand that the casket be opened, but her request was firmly declined.

I’ve been thinking about all of this during the past week because Texas Aunt’s husband had a heart attack and underwent triple bypass surgery. He’s not recovering well. Last night his intestines were failing somehow, so he underwent surgery where he was not expected to recover (he did, thankfully). Texas Aunt then got into huge arguments with the head nurse, banishing her from the hospital room, and then got into it with the doctor. The family is already joking about yet another body to be stolen from the hospital.

I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. Perhaps I want to justify why I live so far away from my family, why it’s a deep desire of mine to live a quiet life. I get a lot of crap from my family for not living closer to them. But when you grow up in this environment, you either turn into one of the crazies yourself or try like hell to distance yourself and be normal. I can poke fun at them because they’re MY family, my people.

Oh, the stories I could tell you. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

it's all about the grapes. the eatin' kind.

2010-08-10T08:09:00.000-04:00

During the summer, Nell's Produce Stand sets up shop in the parking lot at the corner of Nesbit Ferry and Old Alabama Roads. (If you're familiar with the area but unfamiliar with where this is, it's in the same parking lot as The Derby, a bar i was dragged to once or twice when we first moved here by some neighbors who think it's the greatest dive in the world. it's not. take my word for it). i try to swing past the farm stand once or twice a week because a) support your local farmer, people; and b) they've got things like these gems. which are grapes.

i may have squealed with delight when i saw these the other day, because i bought some of the green ones last year and loved them. at the time i thought that they were scupperdines, but a scupperdine is in fact the name of the purple ones, as the guy at the stand told me.

Lesson #1: How to tell I'm not from the South

Me to the guy at farmstand: "So what are these called?" (pointing to the green ones)
Guy at farmstand: "Scuppernongs".
Me: "Scupper.... long?"
Guy: "Scuppernong"
Woman standing nearby points and laughs at me. "She ain't from the South, is she."

So they both taste almost identical, except the green ones (scuppernongs) are slightly more sour. I described them last year as candy, tasting not unlike those grape-flavored Now-N-Laters, except that these are far better for you than chemical-laced candy.

Lesson #2: How to tell I never went to charm school

I'm actually surprised that I made it home with this many, because I eat them on the way home and spit the seeds out the car window, which as we all know is super classy. That's how I roll.

I think I might prefer the scuppernongs over the scupperdines because of the slight sourness. The woman at the farmstand (the one who cackled at my lack of Southernness) informed me that they make great jam. I'll take her word for it. I'll just keep eating them raw.

a day trip to wine country

2010-07-25T19:37:00.001-04:00

ha! i got you there. you're thinking, Now what wine country could she be referring to? why, that's Georgia wine country to you. For those of you (like my mother) who never even knew that Georgia had wineries, who think that Georgia doesn't have what it takes to keep up with the big boys? Well, you've got another thing coming. It’s not just about moonshine anymore. Just what kind of slack-jawed yokels do you think we are anyway? Sheesh.

after totally crashing the party at Montaluce’s first Tweetup in January, I maintained a steady Twitter friendship not only with the Beecham brothers (the owners of the winery), but also with a few of the people we met from the last time. We were invited back last Sunday for a special Tweetup featuring the ’09 Montaluce wines just released. Seeing as there was no NASCAR on that day, the boy came with me (and as Brent Beecham later confided to me, had there been a NASCAR race that day, the TVs on the patio would have been tuned in to it).

For those of you who aren’t in the know, a Tweetup is an event where people who follow each other on Twitter get to meet in person, then Tweet about it live. It’s not nearly as anti-social as it sounds. Talking and tweeting at the same time is not hard to do – we can multitask with the best of them. Mad skills, we have.

Although it had poured down rain about an hour before we were to meet (and I mean, POURED. Trust me. we got caught in it), by the time the party started the oppressive heat had come back in full force. This time, our group was much smaller than the one in January, and it was very pleasant.

We found ourselves gathered on the large patio right outside of the tasting and dining room despite the heat, because for some odd reason the breeze blowing through really managed to cool things down in that one area. So we ended up having our wine tasting out there instead of inside, and it was cozy and enjoyable. I’m going to stop rambling now and post pictures, because that’s really what you want to see, right? So here we go.

2009 Montaluce Ristata. As I was drinking this, the breeze blew through the porch as the new vineyard manager Maria was talking about how this wine reminded her of French rosés; and I found myself drifting off into reminisces (as I always do) of the last time I was in the south of France, drinking rosé all day while on the beach. My extended French family is spread out around Provence; I remember spending summers as a child at a wee small resort called Le Lavandou. Local wineries sell rosé in bulk; you bring empty bottles, and they’ll fill them for you. You quickly learn which wineries have the best rosé and you stick with them all summer, faithfully. I found myself not wanting to stop drinking the Montaluce Risata as it was making me nostalgic for Le Lavandou (where my mom is currently). This wine is light and very drinkeable.

Maria talking about the Risata while Brad (the GM) listens.

The empties adding up. Quickly, I might add.

We also tasted their Primoro (a blend of Seyval and Vidal grapes), the Chardonnay, the Viognier, and the Dolce, which the Beecham brothers described as Montaluce’s answer to sweet tea. Then we moved inside to taste the 2008 Centurio,a reserve from 90% 2008 Georgia Merlot and 10% 2008 French Merlot.

And then, sufficiently fortified and feeling a bit giddy, our group moved outside to take a looky loo at the vines.

Maria explained that they were about 3 weeks out from harvest (2 weeks now, as this was last Sunday), and that they would harvest the Malbec first. Then we sauntered back inside to escape the intensity of the sun.

I know it appears as though I’m pretending to be Atlas in female form, but I was really hugging the barrels. They were so nice and pretty. It was about that point where we decided what a good idea it would be to saunter back upstairs where @WholeMind was pouring out his homemade mead.

Mead? Why yes. Have you ever tried mead? I never had! strawberry and lavender mead is ridiculously tasty, and reminiscent of Belgian lambic. And nothing good can come of that after tasting wine for a couple of hours and standing out in the hot sun.

@EatBuHi, @HelloNorthGA, and @montalucewine (those are their Twitter handles) left by then, and we were planning to leave as well but got strongarmed by the rest of the group to stay for dinner. By “strongarmed” I mean that they football tackled us. Right, whatever; we willingly stayed. and as we drank more wine, got more merry, and the jokes got dirtier, I knew we were having a great time . Present at dinner were (by Twitter handle): @RandomOenophile, @leoghann, @WholeMind, @CassieLorey, @MVineyards, and @Foster404.

Get yourself up to Georgia wine country; as I’ve said before, it’s a mere hour, hour and a half from Atlanta depending on where you are in the suburbs. And you won’t need a passport to feel as though you’ve been transported to another country.

hey blackberry, how you taste so sweet.

2010-07-07T15:04:00.000-04:00

I made strawberry jam several times with huge success last year; and this was a big deal to me because I had tried (and subsequently failed) at making jam for years beforehand. I wanted to make blackberry jam this year because the blackberry cane I planted three years ago has finally started giving off some fruit; however, these don’t usually make it from the yard into the kitchen. There’s a whole lot of eating while standing in front of the bush. Part of this is because I have this idea in my head that my immediate neighbors ,who are a boil on the butt of humanity ( to quote Shirley MacLaine in “Steel Magnolias”), might be reaching over the fence and helping themselves to my loot. They probably aren’t, but we don’t like each other; so my wild imagination can get pretty, uh, wild at times.

Anyway, there aren’t enough blackberries out back to make jam, so I took what I had and supplemented them with some found at the grocery store – the local Kroger had an unbelievable deal on them the other day – normally they’re like $5 a pound but I would like to think they were feeling generous that day. Either that or some poor clerk on the floor mistakenly put stickers on them that marked them down to next to nothing. So I bought some of those.

I based this recipe on several sources. Pretty much everyone out there in Googleland has similar recipes, so I consulted Mes Confitures (which unfortunately I’ve yet to make a successful jam recipe from), then the trusty ol’ Larousse Gastronomique. I don’t have packages of pectin lying around, and I don’t believe one needs stupid packages of pectin lying around just in case you happen to get in the mood to make jam. I used lemon zest and juice instead; and then halfway through the jam making itself into jammy goodness, I remembered that the Barefoot Contessa recipe for strawberry jam calls for half a Granny Smith apple for pectin purposes, so I tossed about a quarter of one of those, diced up really small, into the pot and let it boil away. In the end, the entire stovetop was splattered with ruby colored dots, which I wiped away as quickly as I could lest they harden and be impossible to scour off at a later date.

The smell of the jam cooking won’t perfume the house in the way strawberry or raspberry jam will, as blackberries tend to be less aromatic in strength (well, that’s my opinion). However, when I was hovering over the pot trying to take various pictures with the smell wafting up, I had a brief moment when I was transported back to childhood. The house I partially grew up in until I was 7 – the house where my parents currently reside when my mom’s not gallivanting around France – is in Northern California, and the yard out back is surrounded by wild blackberry bushes. There is a park down the hill with swings and a slide cut into the hillside. The quickest way to get to the park is to take the trail that cuts between other people’s houses, and the trail is surrounded by blackberries. My brother, sister, and I would leisurely take our time going to the park, and come nightfall when our parents would call out for us through the living room window and their voices would echo through the trees, we’d leisurely take our time climbing back up the hill as we would pick and eat those blackberries until we were full and our fingers bled from reaching through the brambles. There are very few times when I wish I still lived in California; however when I do get that urge, I must remind myself that I will never, ever be able to afford to live in Sausalito. Besides, I’m not terribly fond of Californians.

Boy am I going to get crap for that one. Anyway.

The addition of alcohol to this recipe is optional. If you have blackberry brandy, by all means use that. I have the world’s largest bottle of cheap kirsch lying around, so I used that. It just makes the jam more fruity, I guess. Ah, who am I kidding; I’ve no idea. It just seemed like a good idea at the time. And at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I also added less sugar than other recipes called for. I find that the older I get, the less sweets I can tolerate. I made my tried-and-true chocolate chip cookies recently for the first time in a long time; and after biting into one, realized I just can’t eat them anymore. My tastes have changed.

So I’ll call this: Sausalito Blackberry Jam. makes 1 ½ to 1 ¾ cups.

. 18 oz of blackberries (that’s about three of those usual sized containers they come in at the store – usual size meaning around 6 oz)
. 1 cup sugar (and even that might be too much)
. Zest of 1 lemon
. Juice of half that lemon
. 1 or 2 tablespoons of kirsch or blackberry brandy (optional)
. ¼ of a Granny Smith apple, diced (optional)

Stir together all ingredients in a heavy bottomed pot or large saucepan and put over medium heat. Stir as it begins to heat up, then leave it alone to do its thing until the mixture reaches 220 degrees F. If you want a smoother jam, put the blackberries in a food processor or pass through a food mill first before adding to the pot. I like a little texture in mine so I smoosh up the occasional berry or two like so:

Sound effects are optional.

The berries themselves will disintegrate a bit while cooking – it will take between 20 and 30 minutes to get to 220 deg F. Turn the heat off, let cool, and store in the fridge.

this summer.

2010-07-01T08:33:00.003-04:00

A few things to note:

1) Vertigo sucks. And I’m not talking about the U2 song.

2) Not a whole lot has been going on around here due to said recurrence of vertigo. Someone please get me off this damn boat ride from hell (although I will say, now that I’m in week 3 of it, the waters seem less choppy).

3) A pox on my immediate neighbors, who like to blast music from their car parked in their driveway at all hours of the day and night. Right now at 7:10 am, they’re waking up the whole neighborhood. They feel entitled, I guess. As the wife once told me when I asked her to turn it down, “Don’t you disrespect me. I have every right to play my music loud”. Really, honey? Let’s have a chat with City of Alpharetta Police now, shall we.

4) And last but not least, a few (very few) pics of things and stuff I’ve been up to lately.

Banana bread with walnuts.

Slow cooker beef brisket, topped with coleslaw and shoved into hungry mouths.

Actually, this picture is two months old. The boy making gumbo while drinking a mint julep (it was Derby day). The boy is no longer rockin the beard; that came off after we ran the Warrior Dash.

Speaking of Warrior Dash:

Yeah. Covered in mud from head to toe. It took two showers to get me completely clean. That biggie beer mug was filled with Dee-licious Pyramid beer (hi Nick!).

And last but not least:

Today’s birthday self-portrait is brought to you by Ava Gardner and little old man golf shorts. Happy birthday to me, to my friend MA, to my niece Vivi, to the land of Canada, to Dan Ackroyd, Pam Anderson, Liv Tyler, Debbie Harry, and Princess Diana to name a few. Wishing you all a good one. Well, except Princess Di of course, seeing that she’s no longer around and all, but you know.

Here’s to wishing this summer will be a great one, boat ride from hell and all.

summer squash gratin

2010-06-05T09:41:00.002-04:00

So I’m on this summer squash kick, because my friends Ken and MA gave me some that came from Ken’s great-grandmother’s farm in southeast Georgia. They also gave me some Vidalia onions, and I’m not one to turn those down. I love it when Vidalia onions are in season – I use them in everything. In trying to figure out what to do with all this vedge, I made the zucchini bread in the previous post, then turned to The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters. I usually consult that book before attacking any vedge I haven’t made in a while. I came across her squash gratin recipe, and decided to adapt the non-dairy version – mainly because I didn’t have any dairy in the house that day, but also I didn’t want the end result to be too heavy on the stomach.

I have a lemon thyme plant in the yard which has just exploded, and I’m trying to use it in everything. If you’ve never heard of lemon thyme, it’s just a variety of regular thyme that’s been crossed with lemon – it’s pretty wonderful and works great in a lot of fish and chicken recipes. I think it goes well with squash because it brightens the dish up a bit. But if you don’t have lemon thyme (I’ve never found sprigs of it for sale at the grocery store), regular thyme will do, and if you want, you can just squeeze a bit of lemon over the dish before it goes into the oven. But you don’t have to, of course. Use any variety of fresh herbs you have too – I happen to have gobs of parsley and basil right now, so those went into this dish too.

I think the key to squash is to definitely add flavorings – squash likes salt, for example, so season each layer of this dish with a pinch of Kosher salt spread all over. I also add a touch of cayenne because I like the addition of a bit of heat – this actually won’t be too spicy, but you could omit the cayenne if you prefer. But again, I think the squash likes it, and won’t kick it out of bed.

I would let your gratin brown a bit more than I let mine, as seen in these pictures. I should have let this one sit in the oven for a little while longer, maybe 10 minutes, but I was in between conference calls and it was way past normal lunch time. You’re going to want to wait a bit after hauling this out of the oven before you can dig in, since it’ll just be far too hot to eat. Also, it accumulated some watery juices, so I poured some of that off. But all in all, this is a nice pleasant dish, yet another thing to do with the abundance of squash and zucchini this time of year. Prior to baking, you could top with a bit of grated Parmesan cheese, which would definitely aid in the browning, however if you want to keep this vegetarian (vegan, really), omit any dairy and you really aren’t missing anything.

Alice Waters’ non-dairy summer squash gratin adapted a bit
Serves 4, although I ate this for three consecutive meals (3 servings) as my meal and I was happy as a clam. Or a pig, for that matter.

. 6 summer squash (a variety if you’d like, or keep it all one color), ends trimmed and sliced into nearly see through rounds on a mandolin. If you don’t have a mandolin, try very hard to get the thinnest slices possible with a knife, or even try a vegetable peeler.
. ½ of one of those big Vidalia onions (or 1 small onion), sliced into thin half moons
. 2 cloves garlic, minced or run through a microplane grater
. ¼ cup basil leaves, chiffonade
. ¼ cup lemon thyme, or regular thyme if you don’t have any, leaves removed from stems, chopped
. ¼ cup parsley, chopped
. Cayenne pepper
. Salt, pepper
. Olive oil

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

2. Heat a non-stick skillet over medium heat and add a bit of olive oil (maybe a teaspoon or two). Add the onion slices, a couple of pinches of salt and pepper, and one pinch of cayenne. Sauté over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until soft. Let cook a bit longer until caramelized and brown. Add the garlic, half the basil, half the parsley, half the lemon thyme (or regular thyme). Stir it all together and turn off the heat.

3. Put onions in the bottom of a gratin dish (you don’t have to grease the dish). Layer on the squash slices and season with salt, a touch more herbs and maybe a wee small pinch of cayenne pepper in between each layer. When you’re done stacking, drizzle a bit of olive oil over the top (teaspoon’s worth).

4. Cover with a parchment piece, and place in the oven. Cook until the squash is translucent, 20 to 30 minutes. Take off the parchment, press down on squash with a spatula, and bake until lightly browned on top, another 20 to 30 minutes.

a sort-of healthier zucchini bread

2010-06-02T16:50:00.002-04:00

The boy refuses to eat summer squash solely because his mom grew it when he was a kid and he was forced to eat it all summer. Unfortunately, zucchini and squash are neglected vegetables and have a bad reputation. I think this is because when we (we = the world at large) were kids, our mothers cooked the living hell out of them, then salted them abundantly; so all we remember is an unpalatable salty mush, the memory of which sticks with us for the rest of our ever lovin’ lives. But honestly, both zucchini and squash are really tasty when prepared correctly. Raw zucchini sliced paper-thin and tossed with a lemony vinaigrette is excellent and tasty.

So a few years back, about this time of year to be exact, I stumbled upon a zucchini bread recipe. I don’t even remember where I saw it; it might have been on Serious Eats. Anyway, this is that time of year when everyone’s kitchen garden is overflowing with zucchini and nobody knows what to do with all of them, so you find yourself with armfuls of them knocking on the neighbor’s door. So what to do with them? Make bread!

Here’s the thing that people who don’t like zucchini fail to realize: you can’t really taste the zucchini in the bread. So I know your next question will be, then why bother eating it? Well, zucchini is good for you. Chock full of vitamins C and B6 and fiber. Give it a try.

The original recipe for this bread called for 1 ¾ cups of sugar, which seems like a lot. Wait – that IS a lot. My God, I can’t even imagine ingesting that amount of sugar, even split into two loaves. I’m not about to get all High and Mighty on you regarding sugar, because I use it – in moderation – in all its many mutations: brown, molasses, Turbinado, honey (I’ve yet to hop on the agave nectar bandwagon, and probably won’t). I won’t cut sugar out of my diet completely – I will still use it in my cooking and baking and morning coffee, albeit in moderation. But, seriously? One and three quarters cups of sugar?? My teeth ache just thinking about that. So I’ve tried to adapt this recipe to make it include less sugar yet keep it palatable. The end result is good, but be warned that it is not sweet – if you prefer it to be sweeter, by all means add more sugar, I won’t stop you. I’ll just wrinkle my nose and give you the stink eye, but that’s about it.

I’ve also added whole wheat flour to the mix. You could replace all of the flour with whole wheat flour, but I wouldn’t recommend it. A few years ago, when I started using whole wheat flour in my baking, I did some trial runs on pizza dough, and lemme tell you right now: 100% whole wheat pizza dough tastes like cardboard. Don’t believe me? try it. You’ll be playing Frisbee with that pizza crust. My remedy is to mix it half and half with unbleached all purpose flour.

I’m not going to excuse the addition of oil. You need oil in your diet; and I know it seems like a lot, but it’s not like you’ll be eating both loaves of this by yourself in one sitting. You’ll be hacking a slice off for a snack or for breakfast, but not eating the whole thing yourself… right? Right. I’ve also added walnuts (good source of omega-3 fatty acid) and dried tart cherries, which are not only delicious but are a fantastic antioxidant. Plus, I like the flavor combination of the cherries with the chocolate chips. Okay, I also don’t have an excuse for the chocolate included in here, other than it tastes good. Just don’t use milk chocolate; semi-sweet is better for you, and dark is best.

Zucchini Bread adapted from several sources
Makes 2 loaves

. 3 eggs
. 2/3 cup vegetable oil like Canola
. 1 cup sugar
. 2 cups zucchini, grated on a box grater
. 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
. 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
. 1 ½ cups whole wheat flour
. 2 teaspoons cinnamon
. 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
. 1 teaspoon baking soda
. ½ teaspoon baking powder
. 1 teaspoon salt
. ½ cup chopped walnuts
. ½ cup dried tart cherries
. ½ cup semi-sweet or dark chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Line two loaf pans with parchment (or grease and flour them if no parchment available). I only have one loaf pan, so I also use a 6 inch round cake pan, because that’s what I have handy.

3. In a large bowl, beat the eggs with a whisk. Mix in oil and sugar, then add the zucchini and vanilla.

4. In a medium bowl, combine flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda, baking powder, salt, nuts, chocolate chips and cherries. Stir this into the large bowl and mix gently. Divide the batter into prepared pans.

5. Bake loaves for 50 minutes (check it at 45 to be sure – don’t overcook), until a tester inserted into the center comes out clean.

6. Let cool on a baking rack before unmolding and cutting yourself a slice.

Pac Man Zucchini Bread goes in for the kill.

Grilled Jalapeño-Stuffed Pork Tenderloin

2010-06-01T20:43:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I meant to post the recipe for the grilled pork tenderloin which we made at our Foodbuzz 24 x 24 swanky party, but I got sidetracked by 5 hours of homework. And today I got sidetracked by all that worky work busy bee stuff.

The pork was a big hit, as it has a “wow” factor. God, I hate using that term. But it really does. Sigh. I need to get the hell out of Corporate America, because I find CorpSpeak infiltrating my everyday conversation. I won’t drive down CorpSpeak Lane right now because it makes me completely insane, and as much as misery loves company, I won’t let this be a showstopper.

Get it? I used a CorpSpeak Term on you. Showstopper. Get it?? Huh? Never mind. Anyone have an icepick I can shove up my nose with which to mix my brain up?

If you’re doing a small pork tenderloin, like a 1 to 2 pounder, follow the stuffing recipe like listed below. But if you’re doing a big honkin’ hog, like the one we did this weekend which was about 5 pounds, double the stuffing.

Now, if you want to do this right, you’ll need to brine it the night before (or, the morning of, at the latest). Brining isn’t daunting at all, and in fact it’s super simple to do and will ensure that your pork doesn’t dry out when cooking. This is especially important if you’re cooking a big huge tenderloin. I’m going to get completely non-technical on you with this brine recipe: in a saucepan on the stove, combine a couple of cups of water with a handful of Kosher salt, a handful of brown sugar, and a couple of black peppercorns. What is a handful? I don’t know. Two or three tablespoons worth? It doesn’t really matter. Just get it in there. Turn the heat on, bring it to a boil, and let it boil for a few minutes, stirring to ensure that the sugar and salt dissolve. Then turn it off and let it come to room temperature. If you’re in a super big hurry, toss some ice in there to get it to cool down more quickly. Put the pork in a Tupperware-type container with a tight fitting lid, and pour the liquid over it. Add plain water if said liquid doesn’t cover the meat completely. Cover with the lid, and put in the fridge overnight.

A few hours before you’re going to cook, make the stuffing:

. 2 jalapeños, seeded and diced
. 2 plum tomatoes, seeded and diced
. 2 tablespoons cilantro, chopped
. 2 tablespoons oregano, chopped
. 2 tablespoons lime juice
. 2 teaspoons garlic, minced or grated on a microplane grater
. 1 shallot, diced
. 2 tablespoons olive oil
. Salt, pepper

Put all ingredients in a bowl and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Next, take the pork out of the brine and throw the brine away. Rinse the pork under cold running water, washing off all the brine. Pat dry with paper towels and put it on a non-wood cutting board. By non-wooden cutting board, I mean one of those big plastic ones, because you’ll never be able to disinfect the wood one with all the porky germs you’ll cover it with. You’ll want to stuff the pork, so in order to do so, get a sharp knife and cut the tenderloin from one end to the other, straight down the middle WITHOUT cutting through all the way. This will butterfly the pork so that you can open it up a bit. Next, take the flat end of a meat tenderizer/meat hammer/tin can and pound away until the pork is evenly flattened all over. Don’t go insanely crazy with it by taking out your aggressions or anything, but you do want it to be much thinner than before.

Once you have it flat enough to your liking, spread the filling in the middle all the way down the length of the tenderloin. Then, roll the two long sides together and get some butcher’s twine ready. You’ll want to truss it, which means tie it up so that the filling doesn’t fall out. If you’re afraid to truss, just cut a bunch of short lengths of twine and tie the pork up at intervals. But it’s easy to do once you get the first one going; like a brown paper package tied up with string (cue Julie Andrews here). Once you have your pork all bondaged up and ready to go, wrap it in plastic wrap and let it sit in the fridge for an hour or two.

When you’re about ready to cook, get your grill going. Take the pork out of the fridge, unwrap the plastic wrap, and oil the pork with a bit of canola or vegetable oil. Salt and pepper it all over – but don’t go too crazy on the salt, as it will have soaked up some from the brine. When the grill is ready, plop the tenderloin down on the hottest part and flip it around to get some good grill marks every few minutes. After you get some initial grill marks, move the pork over to the cooler side of the grill and put the lid down. Cook until you’ve reached an internal temperature of 155 degrees F (making sure you’re temping the meat and not the stuffing), usually about an hour or so. And this, my friends, is why you need a meat thermometer. How else are you supposed to know if the pork is cooked? You can’t tell if it’s ready by looking at it. Those digital things are super inexpensive these days. If you don’t have one, get one.

Anyway, once it’s reached 155 degrees F internal temperature, pull the meat off to a cutting board and let it rest for at least 20 minutes. The internal temperature will continue to rise during this time, but mainly, the meat will rest which is VERY important. Then, carve and eat.

Man, this was a long winded recipe. Perhaps not necessarily for a school night, but most definitely to be made on a day when you’ve got some time and want to impress people.

Foodbuzz 24x24: A Swanky Outdoor Barbecue Party

2010-05-30T15:17:00.003-04:00

I have different sets of friends. Don’t you?

Do you have friends you socialize with at work, who, come Monday morning, hear all about your other friends that you hang out with on the weekend? Or a group of friends you do a particular social activity with who don’t know the other friends you meet up with for the occasional happy hour? Yesterday I pulled together some people from my various groups of friends to celebrate the unofficial arrival of summer with a backyard bash. I was lucky that Foodbuzz chose my proposal to host a party where the food was influenced by all the places the boy and I have lived, our backgrounds, and our family histories; we ended up with an eclectic menu that tied well together.

As I write this today, as the rain is beating against the windows while I snack on what’s left of the tapenade, I am thankful that we were graced with such good weather yesterday. The rain avoided us altogether which was perfect, as we had both grills (one charcoal, one gas) and the smoker going.

I knew that the boy and I would make the most of using our grills and smokers, but I didn't want the menu to be traditional grilled fare, such as hot dogs and hamburgers, hence the swankiness of the menu.

On the menu:

. Tapenade with toasted baguette
. Roasted red pepper, chipotle, and white bean dip
. Vidalia onion dip
. Grilled clams with prosciutto and Sriracha
. Grilled artichokes with chipotle vinaigrette
. Smoked and grilled wings
. Grilled asparagus and haricots verts, tied with leeks and drizzled with a garlicky balsamic vinaigrette
. Red and yellow tomato salad with buffalo mozzarella and basil vinaigrette
. Beef tenderloin, slathered in roasted garlic, then smoked
. Jalapeno-stuffed and grilled pork tenderloin
. Cedar plank grilled salmon
. Vanilla Pavlova topped with sliced Georgia peaches, whipped cream, and a raspberry-peach coulis
. Chocolate mousse cake
. Signature drink: a pitcher of sweet tea vodka and lemonade (this and vodka mixed with San Pellegrino Limonata are my two go-to drinks this summer. I can't seem to get enough of them!)

In deciding the menu, the boy and I chose some of the foods we like the best. Some of them are influenced by where we currently live, such as sweet tea vodka and lemonade, the Vidalia onions used in the dip, the Georgia peaches used in the Pavlova. I was super excited a few days back to find the first of the season's peaches at Nell's Produce Stand on the corner of Old Alabama and Nesbit Ferry Roads. The peaches sat in a bowl on the dining room table all week, where i've set up my home office, and the smell of them has been intoxicating. I knew right away that i'd have to incorporate them with whipped cream and meringue. Pavlovas seem to be one of my go-to desserts for dinner parties, and this one did not disappoint.

There's a long running joke in this house that the boy would eat chicken wings every single day of his life if given the opportunity. As it is, he makes wings pretty regularly around here. Lately he's been making them on the charcoal grill. He'll smoke them first with some hickory chips, and then give them some good grill marks before moving them to the cooler side of the grill to finish cooking with the grill lid down. While these were doing their thing, he grilled some clams. These take but a few minutes; they are ready once they open up. Top each clam with a bit of prosciutto and a dollop of hot sauce. The briny clams instantly transport me back to the shores of the Chesapeake Bay, where the boy is from, and where we lived together for five years.

The grilled asparagus and haricots verts are a throwback to my French roots. I love simple vegetables grilled then drizzled with vinaigrette. Not only is this a super healthy way to cook the vedge, the grilling gives them good flavor, which is only enhanced by a vinaigrette made with balsamic and sherry vinegars, olive oil, Dijon mustard, minced garlic, salt and pepper.

The beef tenderloin couldn't be easier to fix. Roast a head of garlic, and once cool enough to handle, push the cloves out with your fingers into a bowl and mash along with a teaspoon or so of olive oil and some salt and pepper. With your hands, slather this all over a nice beef tenderloin that has been trimmed of all the fat, and truss it. Trussing is just a fancy name for tying things up with twine. If you do this, you can fold in the tapered end of the tenderloin and tie that part together, as it will ensure even cooking all over. If not, some parts of the tenderloin will be more cooked than other parts. We put this 7 pound tenderloin in the smoker (which had been prepped with a mixture of both hickory and apple chips) and let it smoke to an internal temperature of 145 degrees F, which took about 2 1/2 hours.

We are big fans of spicy foods, which is how Sriracha, jalapenos, and chipotles fit in to the picture. I love the smokiness that a bit of chipotle gives a dish. Take a can of chipotles in adobo from the grocery store (found in the International Foods aisle), and blitz in a blender. This will keep a very, very long time in your fridge in a container with a tight-fitting lid. Use a teaspoon or so to add some depth of heat and flavor to a vinaigrette or a dip.

I would like to thank all of my friends, old and new, who were able to enjoy this wonderful evening with us, and especially would like to thank Foodbuzz for making it all possible. I'm left with great memories and new ideas for our next dinner party.

PS tomorrow i'll post the recipe to the pork tenderloin, which was a bit hit at the party (here's lookin' at you, Darrel).

The fundamentals: garlic

2010-05-26T15:01:00.001-04:00

I decided that every now and again, I’m going to write about one lone food item in all its glory, kind of a back to basics in a way. This idea started because while out at a function recently, I told people I write a food blog and each one of them asked, “Oh! What restaurants have you reviewed?”. Why did everyone automatically assume that I blog about restaurants? When I told them that, No, in fact I write about the food I make (and occasionally gripe about my mother), each and every one of them looked perplexed. It dawned on me that a lot of people either don’t cook or don’t know how to cook.

Which is actually great, in a way. Please go out and support your local restaurants, by all means! And I don’t mean any disrespect towards food bloggers who solely write about restaurant food. There’s definitely a huge market for that out there, and I enjoy reading those blogs. But treading water in the low tide of the economic ebb most of the time, I tend to cook at home a lot since it’s less expensive. The more you practice cooking, the better you’ll be at it.

Garlic has been long rumored to help fight heart disease, but that was debunked by a Stanford University study a few years back. It’s one of the oldest cultivated plants in the world; doctors and shamans have been using it to help cure a variety of ailments over the centuries. I’m not sure whether or not it truly helps heal anything in particular, but it is full of vitamins (B6 mostly) and is very healthy to eat. When buying garlic, choose firm heads that feel slightly heavier than they look, and don’t buy any that are spotty or have the papery hulls falling off all over the place. I enjoy using garlic in my cooking, and it is prevalent in the cuisine of Provence, where my mom’s family is from. I love to grate a raw clove on a microplane grater and add that to vinaigrette for salad. But what I especially love to do the most is to roast it.

Put a head of garlic on a cutting board and cut the top part off, exposing a few of the tips of clove heads. Now, here you can do one of two things. This fancy little clay dish with a lid pictured above is a garlic roaster. I’m not a huge fan of one-trick-pony utensils in the kitchen, but it was a gift, so I use it. Before using it, you must first soak it in a sinkful of water for about 15 minutes (both dish and lid). After you remove it from the water, put your guillotined garlic head on the dish, drizzle it with a smidgen of olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, put the lid on and put it in a COLD oven. Only after you’ve closed the oven door should you turn on the oven heat to 350 degrees F or even 375 degrees F. Leave it in there for 45 minutes to an hour (your house will smell heavenly, and chances are you will too) then remove from the oven and let rest on a trivet, putting the lid to one side to cool.

If you don’t have a fancy garlic roaster, a piece of tin foil will do just fine. Just put the garlic head in the middle of it, give the garlic the same olive oil, salt, and pepper treatment as above, and wrap the garlic not too loosely but not too tightly either in the foil until you have a nice little shiny package.

Place it in a cold oven and roast at the same temperature and for the same time as above. When you remove it from the oven, let it sit on a trivet or plate but refrain from opening up the package, or else you’ll get garlic-infused steam burns. Not fun (trust me on that).

So now what? What should you do with all those cloves of roasted garlic which has scented your house so lovingly? You could mix a clove or two with a bit of mayo for a roasted garlic aïoli. A traditional aioli like my grandmother used to make uses raw garlic, but the roasted garlic will do just fine. Smoosh a clove of it into vinaigrette, or whip some into mashed potatoes. The food combination possibilities are endless. But my very favorite way to eat roasted garlic is to smoosh a clove on a slice of toasted baguette and sprinkle some parmesan cheese on top.

Roasted garlic keeps very well for about a week in the fridge. Leave it as is in a tightly covered Tupperware container, and as you need them, smoosh out a clove from its papery hull with your fingers (and wash your hands really well!)

a letter about envy, and France.

2010-05-16T21:50:00.000-04:00

do you ever find yourself envious, so green it makes you want to scream? back in February, i bought Gael Greene's memoir, and then placed it on the shelf in my room where it just sat. i'm fascinated by what little i know of her, but never wanted to read it out of fear, because what little i know of her makes me kind of jealous.

tonight, may 16, after some wine, i grabbed the book off of the shelf and read the last bit in the book, "Gael Greene on Gael Greene". and it did nothing but fuel my envy. envy is not a pretty emotion. i read these few autobiographical passages and i am upset that i did not write them myself . i could have; they, in a way, represent me, perhaps as i once was, or always wanted myself to be. especially on this particular day when i am so homesick for France that i could cry.

it's not often that i'm homesick for France. in fact, i do love living in the U.S, having the opportunities that i do. but here i am, a month before my 41st birthday and i find myself wanting more out of my life. the need to travel back to Europe. my mom's studio in the very antiseptically clean lower 17th arrondissement, an area nobody loves but which i loved walking the empty streets at night - the best part about living in vanilla-land is that nobody else is around past 10 pm, the streets belong to you. fortunately, you'll never find a soul in the Porte Maillot area late at night.

Dear Gael Greene, when i grow up, i want to be you. isn't that juvenile? i think so. but surely my life is far from over. if i could, i 'd jet off to France like i used to. i've sat in the Deux Magots and soaked it all in, wishing i'd remember every detail. i walked past the Louvre at 7 am on my way to meet a work client (very un-French, that time of morning; but it was necessary), watching the sun rise through the panes of glass of the pyramid. i walked the length of the rue de Rivoli all the way up to the Place de la Concorde, stopping several times along the way for un demi - for the early September heat caused all residents to flee their un-airconditioned rooms and people watch in the cafés.

i will most likely regret this outburst of feeling tomorrow, but so be it.

Dear France, will i ever see you again? The pain i feel tonight seems surreal, naive , and very silly. so be it.

me in the garden at the Hotel Etoile-Pereire, 1998

pastis.

2010-05-07T18:05:00.001-04:00

today is one of those days when I could use a Pastis. So I’m drinking one.

what's a Pastis, you ask? it's what little old Frenchmen drink. It’s anise flavored (anise is similar to licorice, but not in the same culinary family) and refreshing on a hot and humid day, such as the day we are having here today in Atlanta. In the Provence region of the south of France, where my mom’s family is from, it is widely drank. Actually, I’m fairly certain that my grandfather drank it all year round, although it's technically an aperitif, which is meant to be drank before dinner.

Little old men sit in village cafés and town squares and play boules or pétanque, which is the French version of the Italian game of bocce ball, and drink a Pastis or three while the day slowly unfolds. Summer days in Provence are much like the lazy summer days in the American South. People drink in life slowly, nothing is rushed.

Most countries seem to have a licorice flavored alcohol. There’s absinthe, which I once had an icky experience with; the Greeks have ouzo, which my old boss from the Mediterranean restaurant in Florida where I worked drank constantly; Sambuca from Italy; Jägermeister from Germany, which is extremely popular with college kids in the US (Jäger and I are no longer friends since one night when I was 23 – but that’s another story). The people from Provence have Pastis, made from one part Ricard or Berger (two brands of the liquor), two parts water, and a couple of ice cubes.

I usually don’t like it during the rest of the year, but on a hot day, there is something about the cloudy diluted beverage that satisfies and quenches. You can find Ricard in any good liquor store, but the bottle I have was hauled back from Marseille, therefore having special meaning for me. i've had it a number of years, but it only gets touched on hot days, such as today.

you jerk!

2010-05-05T16:43:00.000-04:00

So I went to Jamaica once, but I don’t remember eating anything jerked. In fact, the only food item that I remember eating was the beef patty flaking all over me as I ran through the terminal at the Montego Bay airport, all while chugging a Red Stripe. Hey, I have my priorities (and on that trip, it was beer). The trip wasn’t memorable for the food; it was memorable for the day and a half it took my friend Patty and I to get to our resort due to wonderful Hurricane Gustav; the wallet stealing incident (Patty’s); the never-ending hangovers (both of us); the boatloads of Indian soap operas that I watched on the hotel TV; the Canadian naval officers who were shocked, SHOCKED I say! at American behavior (not ours, for once); and a guy named Ricky or Ronnie or whatever his name was, a swinger from Denver, who insisted on following me around all over the place.

When I read this laundry list over, it doesn’t appear that I had a good time, but I really did. Honestly. Anyway.

I’ve made all kinds of jerk marinades and sauces over the years, and they’ve all had variations from one another. I liked this marinade recipe from Weber’s Real Grilling because I could toss it all in the food processor in the morning and keep it in the fridge until I was ready to use it later that night. My time these days is quite limited, what with starting my new Fancy Corporate Job and all, so if I can spend 10 minutes in the kitchen in between conference calls, I consider that useful therapy. In the past I’ve made the recipe listed on the side of the McCormick bottle of Jerk Seasoning, and that was fine; but these days I’m trying to stay away from putting additives and crap in my food if I can help it.

If you’re using a store-bought jalapeño and you like your food to be spicier, toss another jalapeño in the food processor. If, however, you’ve got some lovely homegrown jalapeños, such as I plan to have later this summer when my newly potted plant starts gushing out fruit, then use only one. It’s been my experience that homegrown hot peppers tend to have a lot more kick than store-bought, a LOT more. Plus they’re better for you (you won’t see me putting chemicals or Round Up anywhere near my plants).

I also think this would be good with some baked tofu instead of chicken (if you’re into tofu, that is). You could marinate cubes of tofu beforehand and either pan fry or bake in the oven. Just switch out the chicken stock for veggie stock if you want to keep it all vegetarian.

A note on the chicken: this is a great use for leftover chicken, if you roasted one up and have bits left over. This last time I made this, I roasted 3 bone-in-skin-on breasts on 350 for about 45 minutes or so, first dabbing them with a bit of canola oil and salting them liberally. You could go the extra step and marinate the chicken first in the jerk marinade, and then either bake or grill them that way. If you are going this route, save some of the marinade or make extra of it; you’ll need some for the sauce.

Jerk Chicken Pasta Toss
This feeds many. At least 5 or 6 people.

Marinade/Sauce:
adapted from Weber’s Real Grilling

. ½ cup (or one small) onion, roughly chopped
. 1 jalapeño pepper, roughly chopped
. 3 tablespoons white wine vinegar
. 2 tablespoons soy
. 2 tablespoons vegetable oil (such as canola)
. ½ teaspoon ground allspice
. ¼ teaspoon garlic flakes (you could use a regular clove of garlic if you’d like)
. ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
. ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
. ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
. 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Toss everything in a food processor and process until smooth.

For the rest:

. 3 or 4 cooked chicken breasts, or about 3 cups of cooked leftover chicken, or 3 chicken breasts marinated in some of the marinade, then grilled/broiled/baked, however method you prefer. Once they’re cooked, either chop up or shred into medium sized chunks.
. 1 green pepper, diced (not too small)
. 1 onion, diced (not too small)
. Olive oil
. 2 to 3 cloves garlic, microplaned or minced
. 1 ½ cups chicken stock
. ½ cup white wine
. Approx. 3 tablespoons to ½ cup jerk marinade/sauce
. ¼ cup chopped cilantro
. Juice of one lime
. Salt & pepper
. ¼ cup heavy cream (hey – you need some fat in your diet. The cream balances the whole dish out. And it’s not like you’re pouring it straight down your throat).
. One package of noodles. I usually get whole grain egg noodles for this dish, but I’ve made it before with linguine and it turned out swell.

1. Get some water on to boil for your pasta. Once it’s boiling, toss in a handful of salt, then your pasta. Cook according to package directions, drain, and keep to the side.

2. Meanwhile, in a large deep skillet over medium heat, pour in about 2 teaspoons of olive oil, then toss in the onion and green pepper. Cook until soft but not brown, about 4 or 5 minutes (if the vedge is getting too brown, turn the heat down). Add the garlic, stir and cook for one minute. Add the chicken stock, wine, jerk, cilantro, lime juice, and stir. Taste and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper. Bring to a boil then turn the heat down and let it simmer for about 5 to 10 minutes. It will reduce a bit.

3. Slowly drizzle in the heavy cream and stir to combine. Toss in the chicken; stir to combine. Toss in the noodles; stir. Turn the heat off and plate up.

Patty at the bar near our gate, Hartsfield Atlanta Airport

a blog post of tasty stuff

2010-05-02T10:09:00.002-04:00

this post is dedicated to the boy, who's been complaining about the lack of so-called "tasty stuff" on this blog. i find my food to be quite tasty, so i don't know what he's bitching about; but nevertheless, here goes. i don't have it in me to type out any recipes, as i'm not yet properly caffeinated this morning, but i'll show you some beauts that we've been eating lately.

pigs. blankets. all golden and delicious. lined up like soldiers waiting for battle against hungry mouths. the mouths won.although, technically, these were cows n' blankets, as i used little beef smokies. those tend to be easier to find than piglettis.

grilled pork chops with a soy glaze. we've been using George, the charcoal Brinkmann grill this year. poor ol' George hasn't been used in a couple of years, due to Some People in This House favoring Fred, the gas grill, a bit more (whoever can figure out why the grills are named the way they are gets a cookie). I'm not going to get into a debate of charcoal versus gas once again; Fred is useful if i want to grill, say, one piece of fish for myself for lunch. But i definitely prefer using lump charcoal. besides, the smell reminds me of cookouts from my childhood.

Smoked flank steaks, which were marinated overnight in soy, Pickapeppa, Worcestershire, red wine, vinegar, brown sugar, and garlic. Delicious.

Pulled pork nachos. i used blue corn chips for these (the contrast in colors is nice), topped with a bit of cheddar (smoked cheddar, if you like), and a slice of jalapeño. toss in the oven on 350 F for a couple of minutes until cheese is melted. If you smoke the pork butt first, you might want to save your money and use a regular sharp cheddar instead of splurging on smoked stuff, as the flavor of the smoked cheese loses when faced up against smoked pork. unless you smoke your own cheese, which is something i've yet to do but have on my list of culinary Things I Want To Make.

Speaking of pork, whether smoking a butt or roasting a loin, always buy a bigger piece to cook. leftovers are fanatastic, and they freeze really well. we either shred or slice it up, freeze enough for two portions in individual ziplock baggies, and defrost for when we need a lunch idea, like cuban sandwiches:

my mom gave the boy an electric grill and panini press for Christmas, and we've been putting it to good use on a regular basis. i never wanted one of those gizmos, always felt it to be a one-trick pony in the kitchen. i ended up using the hell out of it for indoor grilling all winter, and we make a variety of smooshed sandwiches at least once a week.

Smoked wings. Grilled first for marks, then moved to the other side of the grill while apple chips smoked away on the hot embers.

falafel. wait - how did this one get in here? well, this one's all for me, as the boy deems this part of the "crap rabbit food" category. i made a batch of these recently and ate falafel for about a week straight till i could face it no more.

hmm. all the picture-gazing this morning has made me hungry. today's dilemma: what to make for dinner?

hummus.

2010-04-26T18:37:00.000-04:00

In all my years of eating hummus, I cannot believe I’ve never made it from scratch before. I really don’t know why, because it takes all of five wee little minutes if you’ve got the proper equipment (food processor) and are using canned chickpeas. The finished product is so much better than anything you can get at the store – I mean, seriously, until I had an epiphany the other day, I’ve no idea why I’ve never made hummus before.

Years and years ago, I worked for a Mediterranean restaurant in Florida. In our downtime, we picked parsley leaves from the stems for tabbouleh. I ate more hummus and baba ghanoosh than I care to remember. Maybe because I saw it being made by the truckload in the kitchen that in the back of my mind I thought it was a daunting endeavor. Who knows. Here I am telling you that I’ve been missing out in a big way, and I’m betting you have too.

The best thing with this, as with any food you make at home, is that the quality is far superior than any store-bought hummus. Plus it’s about half the price (or even more than half, really). Hummus really isn’t all that expensive from the store, but when you factor in that I can eat a ton of it in a week (at least one big container of that Sabra brand, and that’s about 4 bucks and change), it pays to make it at home. Plus I’m kind of broke these days. I always have canned chick peas on hand, but you’ll get an even better end result if you start with dried and cook them up ahead of time. A bag of dried chickpeas is like 80 cents or something (they were on sale at my local Kroger this week. 80 cents I can do).

This recipe, one of Mark Bittman’s which I found on the epicurious.com site, says that tahini is optional, which I put my foot down and have to disagree with completely. Tahini MAKES the hummus. If you don’t have any lurking around in your fridge already, you might find the cost of one container to be alarming; but you only use a small amount of it and you’re going to be making this again and again. A container of tahini in your fridge is a worthwhile investment. Also, I recently learned that hummus is one of the best sources of protein out there. The combination of chickpeas with tahini makes a complete protein – chickpeas on their own are incomplete.

So break out your food processors – or if you don’t have one, you can always make it by hand with mortar and pestle. I managed a batch of falafel once without the food processor, as we’d temporarily loaned ours out to a restaurant where the boy once worked. Anything is doable and delicious.

Hummus.
adapted from Mark Bittman

• 2 cups drained well-cooked or canned chickpeas, liquid reserved (Note: if you’re starting with dried chickpeas, 1 cup of dried yields a bit more than 2 cups cooked. And it’ll take you a lot longer to cook those, so if you’re on a time crunch, keep that in mind).
• 1/2 cup tahini (sesame paste), with some of its oil
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic, peeled
• Salt (I like a lot) and freshly ground black pepper to taste
• 1 tablespoon ground cumin
• Juice of 1 lemon (you might need more, I like a lot of it)

1. Put everything in the bowl of a food processor and begin to process; add the chickpea liquid until you’ve produced a smooth puree. Taste and adjust the seasoning (do you need more salt? Lemon? Garlic? Add it!)

2. If you’re serving to guests, put in a pretty bowl, sprinkle with paprika and drizzle the top with some olive oil. You can even toast up a few pine nuts to toss on top. Serve alongside some raw vegetables or lavash or pita wedges for dipping. If you’re not serving to guests, plop the whole thing in a Tupperware container and just have it at the ready in the fridge. I’m a big fan of standing at the fridge, doors open, dipping various things in it.

not really food related.

2010-04-17T14:37:00.000-04:00

this must have fallen from one of the tall pines we have out back. we have several bird feeders, and there have been robin and cardinal sightings up the wazoo. this makes me happy.

lentil salad

2010-04-16T15:44:00.006-04:00

Recent conversation with the boy.

Boy: Why don’t you blog about anything tasty anymore?
Me: What are you talking about? I blog about what I eat.
Boy: Yeah but none of that is tasty.
Me: It’s tasty to me.
Boy: No it’s not tasty. And we’ve grilled out and done tons of food in the smoker. Why don’t you blog about that? None of this rabbit food crap. I wanna see something interesting on the blog.
Me: Dude, i eat healthily during the day, so I blog about that stuff.
Boy: Dude, don’t call me dude.

So just for that, Oh Boy, you’re getting a blog post about lentil salad. This is me sticking my tongue out at you. NYAH.

Yes, I am mentally 12.

So moral of the story is, I’m trying to eat less meat and more vedge and grains. I’m home all the time these days - am currently in between jobs if you must know, although the new one starts Monday and fortunately it’s going to be an exclusively working from home deal. During the day, I’m trying to eat better than I used to. As I explained in the last food-related post, I thought I’d been doing okay on the ol’ MyPyramid thing, but turns out my evaluation wasn’t all that fabulous. Sort of a wakeup call, if you will.

A recent clean up of the pantry, brought on by an ant superhighway which forged it’s path across the closet floor, permitted me to evaluate just what we have in there. I found all kinds of things I didn’t know were hiding in there, including various things waaaaaaaaaay past their expiration date. But I also found some red lentils I think I’d bought from one of those big bins at Whole Foods. So I figured I’d do something with lentils for lunch one day this week.

See, I don’t know much about lentils, other than the kind you can get in a package from the grocery store which I usually stew up in the winter. I figured all lentils were alike, except some came in pretty colors. So while adapting the lentil salad recipe from Alice Waters’ The Art of Simple Food, I just unthinkingly poured in some of those red lentils… only to check on it five minutes later to discover a big pile of coral mush. Turns out these here red lentils are great for thickening up stews and soups (thanks for the tip, Patty), but not so great if you want them to retain their shape and texture. Go figure.

So I started over with the regular ol’ run of the mill lentils you can find anywhere, and ran with that.

Since I’m spending the majority of my days outside lately (in fact, I’m sitting out back in a bikini typing this while watching the NASCAR.com live webcast news conference, where they just finished interviewing Tony Stewart – I can multitask with the best of them), I like to eat things that can sit out at room temperature without affecting the flavor too much. This salad falls into that. If you like lentils, that is.

Lentil Salad, for two as a side or one if you’re super hungry - Adapted from The Art of Simple Food, by Alice Waters

½ cup regular Joe Shmo lentils
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar (you’ll probably need more)
Salt and pepper
2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil
2 green onions, both white and green parts, chopped
3 tablespoons parsley
3 tablespoons cilantro
½ teaspoon whole cumin seeds
2 to 3 tablespoons feta, crumbled
Handful or two of arugula leaves

1. In a deep saucepan, add the lentils with enough water to cover by 3 inches. You can add chicken stock or veggie stock if you’d like instead of water, or do a mix of stock and water. Bring to a boil. Turn down to a simmer and cook until done but not mushy (start checking them at the 15 minute mark – it could take up to 30 minutes depending on your lentils). Drain and toss into a mixing bowl with the vinegar and a couple of pinches of salt and pepper. Stir and let sit for 5 minutes.

2. Stir the lentils again; then add the olive oil, scallions, parsley, cilantro, cumin seed. Mix together. Taste; add more vinegar or cumin if you think it needs it.

3. To plate: add a couple of handfuls of arugula (or other green if you want) to a shallow serving bowl and top with the lentil mixture. Sprinkle the feta on top.

This would go really well with some grilled lamb chops or grilled shrimp, if you were to serve it with meat, which I didn’t. I ate the whole thing in one sitting for lunch, along with a glass of wine. Or maybe that was two glasses of wine – ah, who’s counting. I’m in between jobs; I can afford to have wine with lunch.

not really food related.

2010-04-15T17:24:00.002-04:00

a bit of leftover fall on a warm spring day.

the yard is full of these things. some are still clinging to the tree as new leaves emerge and push them off. since i am spending an obscene amount of time outdoors these days, i might post the occasional picture of something not food related.

although if you think about it, this pod from the sweetgum tree is technically a fruit.

cold soba noodle salad

2010-04-12T14:38:00.010-04:00

yippee! Spring is here. And for once, I’m not dying of seasonal allergies. Having said that I’m sure a pox will soon come upon me, as I know many people whose noses and eyes are swollen from the trees going nuts with pollen production. All I have to say is thank God my generic Allegra is working.

So, Springtime means outdoortime. And outdoortime means picnics. Or eating al fresco. Or clumsily forking food into my mouth while trying not to fall out of the hammock in my backyard. I love to eat outside. I love the smells of fresh cut grass, trees, herbs growing, and charcoal burning. And I’m determined to enjoy all that before mosquito season hits, which, unfairly, will start very soon here in the South.

I totally swiped the idea for this salad from a restaurant where the boy once worked. You can serve cold or room temperature, which is great because you can make this in advance and let it sit while you get on with grilling your entrée or whatever you’re doing. I ate some for lunch today topped with some cubed firm tofu, which I lightly brushed with olive oil and baked on 400 F until goldeny and somewhat crisp. The baked tofu idea I totally swiped from my friend Nathan; I mentally took notes as he was describing it to me while we were sitting in a gay sports bar last week – thanks Nathan for the tip, and for the fascinating people-watching at Woofs.

In fact, I should be eating more tofu. I’m taking a nutrition class, and one of my homework assignments last week was to keep a food diary for three days, then analyze my intake via the Food Pyramid (remember the old Food Pyramid? It’s now called MyPyramid.gov and it’s pretty nifty. Go take a looky loo). At the end of three days, I thought I’d done reasonably well even though I’d used up all my discretionary ** calories on wine and eaten the world’s largest burger (with fries!) at the Vortex. That was all fine and grand until I created my report, and it showed that in those three days I’d consumed three times more meat than was necessary for a woman of my age, height, weight and caloric intake. Meh. You live and learn.

You can probably find all of these ingredients at your local grocery store, in the so-called International Foods aisle. I'm fortunate enough to live in the vicinity of a couple of Super H’s, so I just grab all the ingredients from there. You might have trouble finding sweet soy sauce – it’s kind of like a thicker sweeter version of traditional soy, and flows like a thin molasses. If you can’t find any, use regular soy but augment it with a dollop of hoisin or brown sugar. As for the ginger, I tend to not use mine up before it rots, so I store it in the freezer. When in a frozen state, ginger grates really well. If you don’t have a microplane grater, use the smallest grate hole on the side of a box grater. And if you don’t have one of those, just mince by hand.

** Discretionary calories: calories left over in your diet once all the nutrient needs have been met from the basic food groups

Cold Soba Noodle Salad

serves 4 super hungry people, 6 as a decent sized side. will keep for about a day or so before the noodles get mushy.

Dressing:

3 tablespoons sweet soy sauce
3 tablespoons mirin
2 tablespoons tamari
1 teaspoon fish sauce (or more – I’m not hugely “into” fish sauce, so I usually put less than others would)
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
2 teaspoons sesame oil
1/2 teaspoon (or more if you like it spicy) red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon each white sesame seeds and black sesame seeds – or just white if that’s all you can find
2 garlic cloves, microplaned, or chopped finely
2 teaspoons ginger, microplaned, grated, or minced.

Salad:

2 bundles of soba (one package usually holds three wrapped bundles, so I use two of them (unwrapping the paper tape around the bundle before cooking)
2 handfuls of snow peas (about a cup or as much as you’d like)
1 red bell pepper, thinly sliced
4 green onions, white and green parts, chopped
1 cup Napa cabbage, sliced (optional)

1. Mix all dressing ingredients together in a bowl and set aside.

2. Get a big pot of water on, and bring to a boil. Salt it liberally. Get a bowl full of ice water ready and set to the side of the stove. Drop the snow peas into the boiling water to quickly blanch – let them sit in there for a minute or two (no more), then remove them with a slotted spoon and put into the ice water. Don’t dump out the boiling water yet.

3. Next, the soba. One package of noodles usually holds three wrapped bundles of soba, so I use two bundles (unwrapping the paper tape around the soba before cooking). Dump those in to the boiling water, and follow package instructions on how long to cook (around 4 minutes or so). While these are cooking, remove the snow peas and let drain in a sieve. Keep the ice water bowl handy, placing another sieve over that. When the noodles are done, remove them with tongs, slotted spoon or whatnot and place in ice bath to cool.

4. The soba doesn’t need to spend far too long in the ice bath. You dont want the noodles to get waterlogged, so wait a few minutes for the noodles to cool down, then remove them from the water and drain thoroughly.

5. Next, assemble the rest of the salad. You can pretty much put in whatever vedge you want. The reason I put in snow peas is because they have a nice crunch. So into a large mixing bowl, add the well-drained and dried snow peas, some thinly sliced red bell pepper, the chopped green onions, and about a cup’s worth of sliced Napa cabbage if you want (optional - I happened to have some of this in the fridge).

6. Toss in the drained soba noodles (make sure they are super well-drained). Mix gently. Add some of the dressing (you may not need all – pour in some, then mix and see if you need more). Taste for seasoning.

what am i gonna do with all that canned tuna?

2010-02-23T14:44:00.003-05:00

There have been reports this past week about canned tuna containing far more mercury that people originally thought.

it’s the age old dilemma of someone telling you that you can’t do something, therefore you wanting to do it anyway. Like last year, when I gave up French fries for Lent. Laugh all you want, but that was during a time of my life when I was eating French fries about 5 times a week. giving them up was hard – really hard, especially with temptation around every corner. I would wake up in the morning and immediately think of French fries. I know it’s all in my head. So when someone tells me I shouldn’t eat canned tuna anymore, what’s a girl to do with all those cans lurking in the pantry?

[This year I gave up alcohol for Lent for one (or more) days per week, and it’s been a hell of a ride so far. Who knew I depended on those two glasses of wine with dinner?]

When I went to college, my dad sent me a care package. Amongst the odds and ends in there such as a saucepan and some cutlery, he had packed over 20 cans of tuna. I kept digging in the box and pulling out can after can of the stuff. I felt like Felix the cat who’d hit the jackpot. This is especially funny to me because one whole wall of my Dad’s garage out in California is all canned goods, a good portion of it mostly canned tuna. I think it’s a combination of having grown up during WWII when food was scarce and the idea of “The Big One” that may hit the west coast any day now which provokes my dad into stocking up on food whenever there’s a big sale at the store. At any rate, I always have cans of the stuff handy because I sometimes get these mad cravings for a tuna sandwich, and when one gets those kind of cravings, one needs to deal with them. Nothing else at that point will do.

So yesterday I read a bunch of articles on how it’s bad to eat tuna now as the mercury levels are super high, yadda yadda, and all I have to say is, Meh. I’m fairly healthy – in fact, as I type this I realize that other than some wicked seasonal allergies, I’ve not been sick in well over a year (no fever, no flu, etc). So I see nothing wrong with fulfilling my tuna craving right now.

Tuna and white bean salad – a no-shop meal, if you have a well-stocked pantry

One can of white kidney beans (cannellini), drained and rinsed
One can of water packed tuna (if you use oil packed tuna, use less oil in the vinaigrette), drained
Whatever herb you have lurking in the fridge; I used a few leaves of torn basil, but you could use parsley. I guess you could use cilantro, but that seems weird to me. and contrary to something someone once said to me, adding cilantro to a dish does not automatically make it Mexican. Sheesh.
2 to 3 green onions, sliced
A few handfuls of torn romaine leaves
Sliced tomatoes (optional)
1 tablespoon capers, drained (optional – I really wish I’d had some today, as I was craving a pickly bite, but alas, none were to be found)

Toss the tuna, beans, green onions, and herbs into a bowl. Tear up the romaine leaves and put on a serving plate along with some sliced tomatoes. Then make the vinaigrette.

Vinaigrette:

This is all to taste. I prefer a very acidic vinaigrette, so I lean towards less oil and more vinegar, but, obviously, taste as you go and see what you prefer.

2 to 3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
Salt, pepper
About 2 tablespoons olive oil (add more to your liking)

Whisk together these ingredients and, one tablespoon at a time, drizzle over the tuna and bean mixture. Toss well together. TASTE it at this point, as I’ve noticed salads like this like a lot of salt. Spoon it over the romaine and tomatoes.

This should serve two as a light lunch. However, I’m a pig today and I ate the whole thing in one sitting. There could be worse things to eat for lunch, like French fries.

And now, having said that, I’m craving fries. Damn.

get thee up to Dahlonega.

2010-02-03T08:19:00.010-05:00

Years ago, a friend sent me a postcard from a winery out in California, a black and white image of a row of vines in the wintertime. I tacked the postcard up on my home office wall because I just loved its austere beauty – quiet, peaceful, vines at rest in the dead of winter. We’ve moved twice since, but i still have that postcard; it’s floating around in a box somewhere now, but that haunting image always stayed with me.

This past Saturday, the boy and I drove up to Montaluce Winery & Estates in Dahlonega, Georgia, as I’d shamelessly invited ourselves to a food and wine conclave that brothers Rob and Brent Beecham (owners of Montaluce) had put together. Hey, in my defense, I kept seeing all this talk back and forth on Twitter between a few folks I follow regarding the conclave, and I had to find out what all the hullaballoo was all about. The first thing I saw out the window of the upstairs dining room was a row of vines haunting the landscape, and I was immediately reminded of that postcard, the image still lingering in the back of my mind. It didn’t hurt that it was a cold and foggy day outside. Throughout the course of the day, I watched the fog roll in through the trees and envelope the far edges of the vineyard, and it made me feel as though I was someplace magical.

There were about twenty of us, food and wine bloggers, some with their significant others in tow. We were treated to a tasting menu elegantly prepared by Chef Steven Hartman (of Montaluce's Le Vigne Ristorante) and paired with Montaluce’s own wines. I won’t get into a detailed description of the wines we sampled because they’ve been written about so well by a few of the other guest bloggers, and my mediocre attempt would make me look foolish. A few of their musings can be found here:

Random Oenophile
Atlanta Wine Guy
Suburban Wino

I had two surprises. It’s a well known fact around this house that I’m not a fan of Chardonnay, and this is mostly because I just can’t get past its oaky buttery flavors. The 2008 Montaluce Chardonnay is not like that (not having spent time anywhere near oak). I was also pleasantly surprised by the 2008 Montaluce Merlot. I’ve never been a fan of Merlot, it has always tasted rather flat to me. But their Merlot had a hint of spice, and my incredibly untrained palate wanted more. The five courses we had at lunch we well paired with their wines. My favorite flavors from lunch were the coppa di testa (head cheese from Berkshire piglettis), the butternut cup custard which was cleverly served in a mason jar, and the smoked trout. Longtime readers know that we’re big on smoked food around here, and we were totally thrilled with the trout, which Chef explained came from South Carolina (I hope I got that right – he might have said North Carolina but I was caught up in the moment and forgot to write it down).

After lunch, we were indulged with two more tastings that Matt Rosengerg from Avant Partir, and Josh Culbreth from Quality Wine and Spirits engineered, which lasted well into the evening. I’ll be the first to admit that I know very little about wine. When I moved back to Atlanta in 2006, I took an Intro to Wine course at the Atlanta Wine School, which only solidly confirmed that fact. Do you ever find yourself in a situation where you look around you and everyone seems to be speaking Russian, and you’re totally lost and have no idea what’s going on? That's what happened to me when when Matt conducted a blind tasting of an Italian wine while I was sitting across the table from Joe Herrig (Suburban Wino) and David Aferiat (Maison Marcel). Joe and David were trying to figure out what type of grape the wine was made from, and were tossing their thoughts back and forth. That scene was absolutely fascinating to watch. (By the way, the wine in question was a Tocai Friulano from Joe Bastianich; he’s the son of Lydia Bastianich who had the great honor of cooking for the Pope on his last US visit).

If you’re in the Atlanta area and you haven’t been up to Georgia’s wine country, you are surely missing out. It’s not far from Atlanta (a quick jaunt up GA 400N, a mere hour from my house in Alpharetta), and you’re delightfully thrown in to an enchanting atmosphere. Go for a day trip, or stay the weekend, there are some bed and breakfasts nearby. Rob and Brent Beecham’s almost utopian world is a delightful place to spend time.

A few photographs below:

Chef Steven Hartman demonstrating his sous-vide technique, much to the delight of the guests. He used this to create the chicken liver mousse which was paired with that Chardonnay i was raving about.

2008 Montaluce Cabernet paired with the coppa di testa, apple mostarda, cider braised cabbage, and apple.

The winebar, which spans the length of the room, is beautifully lit.

Video of Oliver Asberger, winery manager, who when asked who cleans out the red wine tanks proclaimed, I do! and demonstrated how one gets in and out of the tank.

Thank you to everyone at Montaluce (Rob, Brent, Chef Hartman, Oliver Asberger), for letting us glimpse into your lives.

Guests bloggers were (and these are their Twitter names): @hoplessfoodie, @winetonite, @mvineyards, @frenchtart, @atl10trader, @eatitatlanta, @blacktiebbq, @biskuitatl, @savoryexposure, @suburbanwin0, @atlantawineguy, @chowdownatl, @eatbuhi, @toddjwalker, @mvineyards, @hogballs, Michael Bryan, @foodiebuddha and @randomoenophile.

on yogurt.

2010-01-15T10:28:00.006-05:00

A few years ago I wrote about making my own yogurt. Seeing as we are half way through the first month of the new year, I feel like I need to revisit that topic today.

So many people have good intentions and want to embrace the "New Year New You" philosophy, and i'm all for helping people with that. However, the other day a coworker brought in a yogurt that was studded with Oreo cookie bits. And I have to say, are you kidding me? This is how companies are getting people to buy their product? What gets me is that there are so many inferior quality yogurts out there, and then the manufacturers have to do something dumb like toss in some Oreo cookies to make people think that, Gee if I’m going to be forced to eat yogurt, it might as well have something I like in there; but because it’s mixed with yogurt I feel better about eating it with Oreo/cheesecake bits/chocolate chip cookie. This is wrong on so many levels.

We’ve all seen the ads on TV for yogurt, claiming it’s healthy and good for you and can keep you regular. It’s all true (see probiotics). But one ought to be careful with choosing which yogurt is right for you. Store bought yogurt falls into that category of you get what you pay for. The stuff that is best quality and better for you tends to be slightly more expensive (e.g. Stoneyfield Farms) but they’re really not that much more than a Yoplait, which in my opinion is one of the worst brands out there. Look for products which have live active cultures (should say so on the label). It pays to spend the extra few cents and get a decent product. Or, you could make your own.

The flavor of plain yogurt does take some getting used to if you’ve never had it before. It has a pleasant tanginess that I like. You can add sugar to it if you want (that’s how I used to eat it as a kid when all you could find in the stores in France were plain yogurt , yaourt nature), or add it to granola or some chopped up banana for a really good breakfast or afternoon snack.

The yogurt maker I have is this Donvier one and since I’m the only one in the house who eats yogurt regularly, this works for me. The best thing about making your own is the quality control. For eight portions, I use 4 cups of 2% organic milk and a ¼ cup of nonfat dry milk powder. For the starter, you can use a commercial brand like Yogourmet (can be found in natural food stores or Whole Foods), a yogurt from your previous batch, or a couple of spoonfuls of good quality store bought yogurt. Occasionally i might add a dollop of vanilla extract or a drizzle of honey to the milk prior to heating. However, lately I’ve been making a variety of savory yogurt based sauces, so I’m keeping my current yogurt batches plain in case I need to snag one for tsatsiki or a nice cooling sauce for a really spicy curry.

So all this to say, please be smart about what you're ingesting. do a little homework and make the effort. after all, you want to start this new year off right, don't you?

fruit salsa for fish tacos

2010-01-12T09:38:00.006-05:00

Look, I’ll admit I’m not too fond of this ridiculous cold weather that we’ve been experiencing in the South lately. If I wanted to be cold right down to my bones, I would have stayed in Maryland. However, it seems to be warming up slowly, so I ought to not complain too much.

One good thing about winter is the abundance of citrus at the grocery store. I took the picture above after a recent shopping trip. All those clementines, grapefruit, blood oranges, bananas, and apples will be gone in about a week flat. The boy can eat an entire box of clementines by himself in a matter of days. It’s nice to be addicted to something healthy, isn’t it?

A few months ago while we were browsing the meat and seafood department at our local Kroger, the boy stumbled upon a bag of frozen swai fillets. Neither one of us had heard of swai before, but we bought the bag and went home to do some Googling and cooking.

About swai on Monterey Bay Aquarium's site
What the heck is Swai?

I know they say it’s a catfish, but it doesn’t taste like the catfish I’ve had here in the South (which I’m not particularly fond of). Swai is being touted as the new tilapia, which is fine with me as I’m really not a fan of tilapia, which tastes ‘off’ to me and not pleasant at all. Swai is affordable, abundant and healthy, and has been making the regular rounds on our dinner table, usually in the form of a soft shelled taco.

The lifestyle change we instilled back in September is still going on (after all, it is a Lifestyle Change). I faltered a bit at Christmas – that was to be expected, what with the potatoes cooked in duck fat (aka Fancy Duck Taters) and the abundance of champagne around every corner. I also didn’t work out as much as I had in previous months, but I knew going into December that I would have a hard time towards the end of the month. That was one of the main reasons I embarked on this change. Segue into January, and we’re right back on that wagon. I’ve no time for regrets, no time to moan about how I shouldn’t have eaten that many Fancy Duck Taters and heavy cream added to everything. Regrets are a waste of my time. So lets start this new year on the right note and use some of that citrus in our cooking, shall we?

Fruit salsa and fish tacos

For the marinade:

One swai fillet
juice from one clementine
Salt, pepper
Olive oil

For the salsa:

One ruby red grapefruit
One ripe avocado
Some minced red onion
Some minced green bell pepper
Half a red jalapeño, minced (deseed if you want)
Salt
Olive oil
Cilantro, chopped (optional)

For assembling:

Soft flour tortillas (whole wheat preferably)
Mixed salad greens

1. The swai we’ve been finding has always been frozen, so defrost by placing a fillet in the fridge overnight, or place it in a large bowl and run a trickle of cold water over it until defrosted. When defrosted, remove from packaging and pat dry with a paper towel. For this particular meal, which was my lunch the other day, I put the swai in a bowl, liberally salted and peppered it, drizzled it with a bit of olive oil, and squeezed the juice from a clementine all over it. Turn the fish around in the marinade to coat evenly. I didn’t keep it long in this type of citrus marinade (I only kept it in there for the length of time it took to warm up the oven). Then, cook the fish however you want – if it’s warm outside, by all means grill it. I used our countertop convection oven and baked the swai on a bed of clementine slices in a moderate oven (350 deg F) for about 20 to 30 minutes; it’s done when it’s white throughout (no more milky opaqueness in the middle) and can easily be flaked with a fork. Pull out of the oven, move the fish to a cutting board and set aside to rest while you get your salsa on.

2. Cut the rind off of the grapefruit and cut the segments out individually and into a large bowl. Squeeze whatever’s left of the grapefruit into another small bowl and keep to the side; you may need to add that extra juice to the first bowl later, but it’s likely you won’t need to if your grapefruit is really juicy. Anyway, keep it to the side until needed (and if not needed, tip the bowl’s contents into your wide open mug. Yum).

3. Cut avocado in half, discard the pit, and cut flesh into large cubes and add that to the bowl of grapefruit segments. Mince up some red onion (by “some” I mean about a tablespoon or two – start with the smaller amount, as you can always add more later). Mince up some bell pepper, doesn’t matter the color although green tend to be less expensive. Cut a jalapeño in half, de-seed it if you like, and cut it into wee small dice. You will probably only need a fraction of the pepper, depending on how spicy you like your salsa. I used half of a red jalapeño and kept the seeds, as I’m a big fan of heat. Add a good sprinkling of salt, a small drizzle of olive oil, and gently stir with a large spoon. Taste for seasonings (you’ll probably need more salt), and see if you need to add any more of the vedge or juice. You can add cilantro to this if you want to, and in fact I meant to but forgot.

4. To assemble:

Heat up your tortillas in your preferred way (mine is to chuck them on a plate and microwave for 30 seconds). Move one tortilla onto a plate. Add a liberal amount of mixed lettuce greens. Slice the fish into bite sized pieces and put some of the pieces on top of the greens. Top with a couple of spoonfuls of the grapefruit salsa. Roll up. Eat. Repeat.

A note about whole wheat tortillas. Since we eat a lot of wrap type sandwiches in this house, I made the Executive Decision a while back to switch to whole wheat ones; however, not all whole wheat tortillas are made the same. It pays to take a few moments to read the labels of the different packages of tortillas at the store. Even though something is labeled as “Whole Wheat” or “Whole Grain” or “High Fiber” doesn’t mean it’s low in fat and calories. Some of those can be up to 300 calories PER TORTILLA… I KNOW! Insane. So read the labels the next time you’re at the store, and choose wisely.

on december 23rd and frisee aux lardons.

2009-12-23T17:23:00.005-05:00

So every Christmas Eve since we’ve been together, the boy and I have crab cakes. We’ve also been eating Caesar salad as a side, but this year I think I’m over that. I’m kind of over Caesar salad in general, and I cant pinpoint as to why, but that’s beside the point. I just don’t want to eat it anymore. So I spent some time this week worrying about what side would be good enough for our crab cakes. The boy suggested frites but as we’re having potatoes cooked in duck fat on Christmas Day, I wasn’t keen on that idea either. The other night we were playing the Who Game and I paused the cartoon (you've got to be nuts to play the Who Game along to the movie version) in order to gleefully announce to the boy that I had it! I knew what we were going to eat with those crab cakes on Christmas Eve! And that would be frisée aux lardons. And then I remembered a story about one December 23rd when I was a kid and had frisée aux lardons for the first time. Although it’s not really a story. It’s just one of those memories I have and I’ll open up that window for a bit to let you look at it.

When I was a little kid, we lived on Boulevard d’Argenson in the very upscale but extremely vanilla Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. The apartment had a tremendous amount of light and if you leaned out of the living room windows, you could see the top of the Arc de Triomphe. The elderly woman who lived in the apartment before us died in the living room. Why I remember that, I ‘ve no idea. And what does that have to do with a salad? Nothing. Anyways.

I’m not quite sure how old I was, maybe 9? But it was December 23rd, and my mom’s friend Odette came over with her son, who was a couple of years older than I was (and whose name escapes me at the moment). Incidentally, it was thanks to him that I developed an interest in Tintin comic books, as he had the entire collection (I only had two, and I wish I knew where those copies were now, probably festering in a box in my parents basement). I don’t know why I remember the date of this particular visit, other than I spent the evening with my mom’s friend’s son jumping up and down on my parents bed, which is something that I was never allowed to do EVER – what kid is, really? But my mom was being uncharacteristically lenient that night, so we spent probably the better half of two hours jumping up and down on the bed and having a great time. And I remember what we ate for dinner that night, only because it was the first time I’d ever been introduced to this particular dish. My mom made frisée aux lardons. Frisée is one of those bitter lettuces that looks like it’s had a perm. I love it, but it’s one of those acquired taste lettuces, because of its bitterness. And I remember being thrown off by the fact that the dressing was hot – hot bacon vinaigrette to be exact – and holy cow was it good.

I spent another notable night in Pittsburgh making frisée aux lardons for my friend Caprice, while we danced around her kitchen to En Vogue’s Never Gonna Get It playing at full blast volume. But that was in October 2004, not Christmastime, and what does that have to do with right now? Nothing. Just reminiscing here. Play along with me.

Our friend Charles, he who sends the odd gifts, sent us a hunk of slab bacon and a Virginia ham for Hanukkah (we are not Jewish and he gets a kick out of oddball things like sending us a ham for Hanukkah – don’t ask, I don’t get it either). We’ll be using some of that slab bacon for tomorrow’s salad.

This is one of those recipes I have not a single measurement for. Except for the bacon, and that amount is really up to you. I haven’t made this in a while, and I’m doing it from memory so here goes:

Frisée aux lardons, for two

¼ to 1/3 rd a cup of diced up slab bacon (you can use regular bacon if you like, try to get thick cut if possible)
Red wine vinegar
Dijon mustard
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
A few handfuls of washed and dried frisée leaves, or other bitter greens, or another kind of lettuce that will stand up to heat and not wilt immediately (this is not the time for baby spring mix)

Put leaves in a salad bowl. Put however many leaves you want in there.

In a large skillet set over medium heat, sauté up the bacon bits until golden all over. Remove with a slotted spoon to a plate to drain slightly, set aside. Keep pan on the burner but turn the heat off from under it.

If you have a ton of bacon grease left in the pan, discard some of it. You’re making the dressing out of this. You can add a bit of olive oil to the pan if you want – this is purely up to you. I prefer my dressings to be a bit more acidic than the average person, but normally the ratio is something like a couple of tablespoons of acid (whether it’s vinegar or lemon juice) to 1/3rd cup of oil. I think.

Splash in some red wine vinegar, sprinkle in some salt and pepper, and a dollop of good Dijon mustard (by “good”, I don’t mean store brand, I mean get your mitts on some Maille or Amora brand, or even some Grey Poupon), and whisk together with the fat/oil (this may steam up or smoke a bit; who cares, keep whisking). Pour this over the greens, toss in the bacon bits, toss it all together and serve.
I’ve seen this with a poached egg on top and that would be totally grand as a meal in itself, but as a side dish to the boy’s Maryland style crab cakes (the only kind of crab cake worth having), without poached egg is the way to go.

Merry Christmas to you all.

it's that time of year again

2009-12-10T12:08:00.006-05:00

The boy hitches a ride to work every day with our friend Ken. Sometimes Ken has to leave early or go in late or whatever, which takes some creative scrambling on our part to get the boy around. Yesterday, Ken was leaving work early to go to his kid’s school play, so the boy bribed his boss into letting him leave early as well (it was either that or walk home from Stone Mountain, and I don’t know if you guys who are not living in the ATL know, but Stone Mountain is pretty far away from Alpharetta, where we live). So the boy calls me as they’re driving home to tell me that I need to make a candy apple later that night. And I’m all, DUDE.

You’re probably wondering what the big deal is, since I make these every single Christmas to give away to the Chosen Few (see here, here, and here). But this year I haven’t even begun to think about them yet. I mean, it’s only December 10th for crying out loud. Give me a week or so and I’ll get on it. plus, those things take a fair amount of shopping and mise en place. First, one must pick out The Right Apple. Secondly, one must scour the baking aisles of the grocery stores trying to find a good deal on quality ingredients. I’ve entertained the idea of making my own caramel for these things, but I haven’t gotten around to that yet; I normally buy bags of individually wrapped caramels and use those. But all that planning and shopping and assessing my chocolate stash takes time and effort. Plus I had already been to the grocery store yesterday and didn’t feel like going back out.

Fortunately, while assessing my baking goods stash (sitting on the kitchen floor digging through the right hand side cabinet of the kitchen island) I found three bags of caramel left over from last year. I always have a fair amount of chocolate on hand, as you never know when a batch of chocolate mousse or cookies need to be whipped up. I had a couple of Granny Smiths in the fruit bowl, so when the boy got home, I put him to work peeling the wrappers off of caramels and helping with melting the chocolate in a double boiler on the stove.

An overview of what you’ll need to do in order to produce a fancified candy apple:

1. Wash apple. This is a necessary step or the initial coating of caramel will just slip right off and pool at the bottom, and then you’ll be pissed. Wash with Veggie Wash or rub with a mixture of baking soda and water; rinse; let air dry.

2. Melt caramels in a saucepan with a tablespoon or so of water. Stir often. Do this on low heat and do not walk away. Trust me on this.

3. Those bags of caramels come with popsicle sticks, so use one of those to stick into the top of your apple. Making your own caramel and no popsicle stick? Improvise. Bamboo skewer (a sturdy one) or fork will do. Plunge it into the top of your apple securely. Dip apple into melted caramel mixture, using a spoon or rubber spatula to coat the apple evenly.

4. Place apple on a cookie sheet or plate or whatever flat dish you have that you’ve put a bit of parchment or silpat on. You want that apple to come back off in order to get to the next coating, so the parchment or silpat is crucial. Store in a cool place for a few minutes (fridge, outside, garage).

For this round, since I was only supposed to make the one apple, I double coated it by coating it once in caramel, letting that set in the fridge for a few minutes, then coating it again. Each bag of caramels should evenly coat 4 small apples, unless you’re double dipping. You don’t have to double dip them, but I had the extra, so I did.

5. Put apples back in the fridge/cool place for about an hour to ensure that final coat of caramel stays put.

6. After it’s rested, melt some chocolate chips in a double boiler (pyrex bowl over an inch of simmering water in a saucepan). You don’t necessarily have to use chocolate chips. I found a quarter bag of peanut butter chips lurking in my baking stash, so I melted some of those too in a separate bowl. In order to make the chocolate smooth, you may have to add just a teensy bit of canola or vegetable oil and stir with a rubber spatula. When melted, remove apple from fridge and dip it in the chocolate, coating with a rubber spatula or spoon. You could put the melted chocolate in a squeeze bottle and spray it on the apple that way. I’ve done all kinds of methods. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t look pretty to you, because whoever is the recipient of this apple will think you’re the next coming of Martha Stewart and be totally freaked out by your craftiness.

7. Anyway, once you’ve coated the apple with whatever melted mixture you have, place it back on the flat dish and put into the fridge again until ready to bag and use. At this point, you can also roll the apple in chopped nuts or cover in M & Ms or chopped up candy. I happened to have some silver dragées lying around that I found for cheap at Fresh Market last year (I know! “cheap” is not usually associated with Fresh Market. I was lucky). So I coated the top of the apple with those.

A note about the bags to use. If you go to Party City or Joann’s or Michael’s to purchase the bags, do ensure you pick up the larger size. The regular sized bags that are labeled “treat bags” are too small to fit the apples in. Sometimes these larger bags take a bit of hunting down to acquire. I’ve bought them from the Container Store before, but only as a last resort when I couldn’t find them anywhere else – they are not cheap there. I found some colorful stripey larger treat bags at Joann’s a while back and bought all they had. Once you’ve gently stuck your apple in the bag, set bag upright and tie closed with some decorative ribbon or with the twisty tie that comes with it. keep in a cool place until ready to give.

I ended up making two apples last night since I had so much melted caramel that needed to be used up. One is for the boy’s boss, and the other is going to my friend Ryan who I’m going to see tonight (hi Ryan!) who didn’t know until now that she’s getting one today. She’ll get another later on when I end up making the 18 apples (plus or minus a few) that I originally planned on making sometime next week or the week after. Ryan and I are supposed to write a book together, and we will if I can ever get off my lazy ass and go see her.

above photo is fuzzy cos it was taken with my phone and then i messed with it in Photogene and probably made it too bright.

2009-11-25T13:05:00.003-05:00

you know what i'm going to miss tomorrow? this:

what, you can't see that? let's zoom in, shall we:

aye yai yai. i miss that dog.

are you ready? (or, T Day minus 1)

2009-11-25T09:31:00.005-05:00

are you a list maker? i am. i've got lists all over the place, tucked away in books and in piles on the coffee table (much to the boy's dismay). a few years ago when i discovered Google Docs, my life was transformed. i keep all kinds of random junk up there, lists of stuff to take camping, lists of things i want to do in life; but most importantly, this is where i keep an excel spreadsheet of all the Thanksgiving food that the boy and i have made in the past three years (you can read about our Thanksgivings past here and here and here).

on this spreadsheet i mark down the name of the dish, the source (which cookbook, website, what part of the boy's brain the recipe is stored in), and a high level of the ingredients list so that i can get an idea of what the grocery bill will be before heading to the store. this year i'm also logging a reverse countdown of when dishes need to start cooking - countdown begins around 4 or 5 pm (when we sit down to eat) and goes backwards to yesterday, when i started making a few things like cranberry sauce and pecan pie.

this system works for me. what works for you?

a few weeks ago, we splurged and bought one of those countertop convection ovens, and frankly i've no idea how i got through life without it. i mean, i really don't know how i got through all this marathon cooking in the past without something like that in my life. i could have really used that thing this past summer when running our regular oven was unthinkable because the heat would be intolerable. yesterday i successfully made my first pecan pie in it (used regular bake function, not convection - i was afraid the pie would turn out too browned before its time). for the record, pie crust and i are not friends. i've not had great success with it, but i also haven't been practicing as much as i should have. this time around i think i did okay. i think part of my problem is not having enough patience to deal with it. pie dough is very finicky, it likes to stay cold and not be manhandled. i started the dough last weekend and froze it until the day before yesterday, when i took it out and let it thaw in the fridge. i used a Cook's Illustrated recipe for partially cooked crust, which uses both butter and shortening. the true test will be tomorrow when i bite into it, but so far i think it turned out alright. i need to work on making pretty edges à la Martha Stewart, but this is a good first attempt.

you know what frightens me? most pecan pie recipes call for a cup of corn syrup. the idea of that makes my teeth ache. i found a recipe (Cook's Illustrated) that calls for 3/4 cup of it, but i also figured What the hell, it's Thanksgiving. i've done so well on this Detox Plan, a little glucose won't kill me. Yet.

pecan pie reminds me of my Dad. he used to make it every year when i was a kid, and i believe that the recipe he used was one found on the side of the bottle of Karo Syrup. i never much liked the stuff growing up. in fact, i'll be honest, i don't think i've ever eaten pecan pie before. i made this one in honor of our friend Ken who is from South Georgia. Ken told the boy that he loves pecan pie, so i made him one. i will say that i was pretty happy with myself when i tasted the batter; perhaps that missing quarter of a cup of corn syrup is the key. i think pecan pie and i can be friends.

incidentally, how do you pronounce "pecan"? seeing as this is Ken's pie, i am now pronouncing it "Pee Can" (the South Georgia way), but others pronounce it "P-Cahn". my mom calls it "Pay Can", so i grew up with a distorted way of saying it even though my dad is Southern by birth. which team are you on?

wishing you all a fantastic Thanksgiving.

A blathering dissertation on ... well, I’m not quite sure what (or, T-Day minus 8)

2009-11-18T11:35:00.005-05:00

So I’m sure you’re wondering, especially after that last post, how the whole Great Detox of 2009 is going. Why, thank you for asking! It’s going really well, and I’ve managed to drop a few pounds in the process (the whole working out 6 days a week thing helped the pound loss too). And that whole thing I droned on about regarding not depriving myself, well it’s true. I’m not depriving myself. For example, last Friday night, the boy and I went out to eat someplace swanky, and I had scallops crusted with a layer of Asiago cheese, fresh pasta bathing in a pepper cream sauce, WARM CHOCOLATE CAKE! WHIPPED CREAM! And three glasses of Veuve Cliquot (or was it four? Bah, who’s counting). I had a grand ol’ time. The boy was eating lobster tail and we both dared each other to “do” a shot of butter (the butter in the ramekin which accompanied his lobster). I might have bet him 5 bucks to do it (which he didn’t), and let me tell you I was nearly tempted myself. Alas, the butter stayed put in its wee little ramekin.

I know it sounds as though we are starving ourselves, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m eating roughly every 3 hours or so. Breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner. The snacks have been mostly good quality granola bars and fruit – I’ve eaten enough pears to fill a tree. Thank God for pear season, seriously. Those things are so good, I can’t get enough of them and I’ve been eating them daily (along with apples and bananas) for two months straight. Gone is the white rice, replaced by brown rice, which if you’ve never had it before, tastes a lot better than white. Gone are potatoes – for the most part. I made Brunswick stew the other night with some leftover smoked pork the boy made, and I did cut up a few red potatoes to toss in there, but not as many as I previously would have. I’ve become friendly with all the different squash varieties in the produce aisle, things I’d never heard of before. They beckon me from their bins, all shades of red and orange and brown and green. I treat them all as I would a butternut squash (perhaps boring, but this works for me). Peel (if I’m in the mood, sometimes I don’t peel). Chop into cubes. Toss on a baking sheet with salt, pepper, a handful of chopped herbs (whatever I have available, sage is always a safe bet), and a carefully measured out tablespoon of olive oil. If you’re worried that the oil amount won’t cover it all, toss with your ridiculously clean hands to ensure even coating, or even use a pastry brush. You can even toss in a couple of roughly chopped garlic cloves for a bonus burst of flavor. Bake at 350 or 375, depending on your mood, and test with a fork after a half an hour. It could take up to 45 minutes. You can smoosh these up into a purée, or you could toss in the blender with some stock and call it soup. Or you could serve as a side. It’s pretty damn tasty and very healthy.

So we’re not using butter in our cooking (except for that whole shot dare thing), and we’re not eating cheese, and I’m being very frugal in my doses of oils when sautéing anything. During every trip to our local friendly Kroger grocery store, I have to walk through the cheese department on the way to the produce; and do you know that blue cheese has a wee little pipsqueak voice? It does! You’d never know, seeing as it’s strong in flavor – you’d think it would be all bellowing at me. But it calls to me in its pipsqueak voice, and I ignore it. Because I know when I really want to eat some, I will. Just not right now. Everything in moderation.

Segue into Thanksgiving. Yes, I’m going to eat my Dad’s stuffing. Yes, I’m going to make a big humongous village- sized crème brulée. And pear caramel cheesecake! And DEEP FRIED TURKEY (oh, and a roasted one too, for good measure). and the most buttery, sour creamed, dairy-filled, smoothest mashed potatoes ever. And homemade yeast rolls. Like I’d mentioned in a previous post, part of why I’m doing this whole GD of 2009 is that we’re coming up on the Big Eatin’ holidays. And big eating is about to begin. So next Thursday we’re going to eat like pigs, and be thankful that we can do such a thing. Then we’ll be back to lighter food by the weekend. And I’ll send the boy to work with the remnants of Thanksgiving dessert to share with his people (best not to keep things like that around the house).

This exercise in moderation (or quality control, or quantity control, whatever you want to call it) has been eye opening in a way. It makes me appreciate all the foods that I am not indulging in, such as the taste of butter, or a good ice cream. I savor those flavors even more now that I’m not having them all the time. We took three hours over dinner on Friday; we could have taken less time, but we were totally enjoying the hell out of ourselves, taking pleasure in each and every bite of food. People always envy restaurant critics, but lately I’ve come to realize I could never have that job – I think that my appreciation of food in general would wane. Eating out wouldn’t be enjoyable anymore; it could become trite. I hope I never get to that point in my life.

the above squash, a mix of butternut and red kuri, were blended into tasty soup.

my dad's cornbread and pecan stuffing, or T minus 9 and counting

2009-11-17T15:10:00.007-05:00

Recent phone conversation with my mom.

Me: so what are you and Dad doing for Thanksgiving?
Mom: we might go to Phoenix to see your brother... but, tu sais, I don’t think I weel go. Your brother, he wants to fry the teur-kee. (audible shuddering heard through the phone).
Me: what’s wrong with that? fried turkey is delicious.
Mom: mais, eets so fattening! eets greasy! Quelle horreur! Well no wonder you are fat, you eat that?
Me: yes and it’s not nearly as fattening as you think. If you deep fry something on super high temperature, the oils won’t seep through (enter into scientific monologue)...
Mom: (cuts me off) Non, mais, that ees wrong. Teur-kee is not fried! And where do yoo put the stuffeeng? Eet falls out. You cannot fry the stuffeeng, non?
Me: well, no it can’t be stuffed if you fry it. so just make the stuffing on the side.
Silence.
Me: mom? Hello? Are you still there?
Mom: Mais... stuffeeng ees not made on the side! Stuffing is in the teur-kee! Mais, nobodee makes it on the side! Non, that’s it, I am not going to Phoenix.

I didn’t bother to tell her that for the last 9 years, I’ve been using my dad’s stuffing recipe and cooking it on the side as a dressing instead of in the bird. She already had a mental vision of me chowing down on a whole fried turkey by myself. I am currently the Golden Child, so I’ll milk that 15 minutes for all it’s worth.

I think what’s great about Thanksgiving as a whole is that everyone in the US celebrates it, no matter what other country they’re from. The Vietnamese ladies at the local nail salon I go to were only too eager to tell me about what they would be eating for Thanksgiving the last time I was there and asked them about it (I had a somewhat difficult time keeping up with their chatter though. Also, I found it interesting to note that their husbands or brothers did most of the cooking, daily or Thanksgiving or otherwise). My mom holds on to her French identity quite fiercely, but tends to abandon it somewhat come Thanksgiving. She once told a French-born cousin of mine that she needed to give the traditional Thanksgiving a chance. My cousin is somewhat anti-American, which makes total sense don’t you think, considering her husband makes a fantastic living making money in the US and they live quite lavishly in some swanky house in Palo Alto.

I find it interesting too that people like my mom, who is always on the up and up when it comes to gourmet foods in general, simply cannot fathom cooking the stuffing on the side rather than in the bird. She falls into that Old Guard of cooks, the ones who’ve been making their turkeys the same way since 1950 or 1960 (in the case of the boy’s grandmother, who’s been making hers the same way since WWII, and this year is no different). The side dishes have changed (my mom hasn’t served cranberry sauce from a can since I was a wee tot), but the turkey remains the same. There is something quite comforting about this. I’m all about traditions and have a few of my own, but I’m also all about trying new things. Although frankly, there isn’t anything new anymore about people cooking their stuffing on the side anymore.

This is my dad’s stuffing recipe, which I’ve adapted somewhat from the original because I’ve added a few ingredients (like apple) and switched out the breakfast sausage for andouille and bacon. I don’t use the turkey neck and the giblets like my dad does, nor do I shove the stuffing in the bird cavities. You can if you want to, though. I have no idea where the original recipe was taken from – I want to say one of those Time Life cookbook series that were popular in the early 1970s. My dad faxed me a copy of it with my mom’s scribblings in the margins, and over the years I’ve added my own scribblings.

You can make your own cornbread here, or use those packaged dried bits. They're going to get rehydrated anyway, so in the interest of time, they're not a bad choice to use. my personal preference is to do something in between. This is when those 80 cent packages of Jiffy brand corn muffin mix come in handy. make two packages of cornbread a couple of days before the Big Day and store whole in a zippy lock type bag until ready to crumble up into the stuffing.

Mr. Phillips’ cornbread and pecan stuffing

all this is to taste. you can add less or more of each item.

1 lb breakfast-type sausage, or if you want more of a kick, andouille sausage
couple strips of bacon cut up into bits
1 ½ cups chopped onions
½ cup chopped celery
3 to 5 cups of coarsely crumbled cornbread (start low, add as you go if you want - 5 cups seems like a lot to me)
1 ½ cups chopped pecans
1 chopped apple (Granny Smith holds up well)
¼ cup bourbon or whiskey or cognac or sherry
¼ cup chicken stock
¼ cup chopped parsley
1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme (or 1/2 teaspoon dried)

1. In a large skillet, cook onions over medium-low heat with a pat of butter, a drizzle of olive oil, a teaspoon of sugar or brown sugar, stirring often. it will take a long while for them to caramelize, but you want that tasty good flavor, so start those and do something else in the meantime. when dark and browned and caramelized, remove from pan with a slotted spoon into a large bowl and start on sausage.

2. Remove sausage from casing and over medium heat, brown the sausage, breaking up with a fork and mashing the meat as you go. When no trace of pink is left, remove with a slotted spoon to a paper towel lined plate. Discard most of the oil. You can use the same pan to cook a few strips of bacon or use another pan. When bacon is crispy, remove to paper towel-lined plate.

3. Discard most of the oil in the skillet, but leave some for cooking and flavor. Sauté the celery until soft. Remove from skillet and put in the large bowl.

4. Add the drained sausage and bacon, the pecans, apple, cornbread, bourbon, chicken stock, herbs, salt and pepper to taste. Mix gently. Taste to see if you need to add more of any herb or seasoning. If it's not moist enough, add a touch more chicken stock. If it's too moist, add more cornbread. Place the whole of this into a buttered casserole dish and bake on 375 for 30 to 45 minutes (depending on your oven) until nice and hot. If you're making this the day before, cook for 30 to 35 minutes, and reheat the next day. Toss it into the oven right when the turkey comes out until it's warmed through.

tasty peas (not really a recipe)

2009-10-28T13:41:00.002-04:00

Amazing the things you can find lurking in your freezer. There I was leaning into the deep freezer in the garage, digging around for nothing in particular, when I came across several half-full bags of frozen vegetables. I was looking for a side to go with a seared piece of fish for lunch, so I immediately put on a pot of water to boil.

Tossed that half a bag of peas (about 8 oz) into the boiling water which I’d salted liberally, and let the peas swim around for a minute or two; then drained them and tossed into a bowl. Chopped up some mint I had leftover from a chimichurri marinade I made for last night’s dinner; tossed that into the pea bowl. Used up the half an avocado leftover from last night’s salad; chopped that up and threw into the bowl. Grated in some lemon zest; squeezed in the juice from half that lemon. Salted liberally. Drizzled in a wee bit of olive oil. Gently mixed it all together, and there I had enough for two lunch sides for me (one for today and one for tomorrow).

Really nice and bright, and a great way to use up the random things one can find in the fridge and freezer.

breaking news: this just in!

2009-10-26T18:07:00.004-04:00

drumroll.........

i bought turkey bacon today.

i feel like i'm cheating on my good friend Regular Bacon. do you think Reg will ever forgive me?

the true test is in the taste, so we'll see how that goes when i chop Fake Bake up into bits and toss it into a pot of beans later. we shall see....

ah, who am i fooling.

my friend Ryan's turkey chili, with which I ran off and did my own thing

2009-10-21T08:54:00.007-04:00

A detestable dish sold from Texas to New York City and erroneously described as Mexican.**

Hoo wee! Lemme tell you right now that I am in no way going to add to the controversy over “Which state has the best chili” or “What is authentic chili”. For many years we, in this house, made only Texas-style chili because the boy didn’t like beans. Well, he likes them now – or if he doesn’t, he eats them because they are pretty good for you, plus it gives him endless fodder for fart jokes. And who doesn’t love a good fart joke?

One of the best quotes I’ve found which encompasses how I feel about chili is this one by Carroll Shelby, the race car driver and chili-starter-kit-maker (which I totally borrowed from the International Chili Society site)

The beauty of chili to me is that it's really a state of mind. It's what you want when you make it. You can put anything in there you want, make it hot or mild, any blend of spices you feel like at the time. You make it up to suit your mood.

And that settles that for me.

Over the weekend when the first cold winds blew through Atlanta, we began using our fireplace for the first time this season. I love the change of seasons, and I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I love all the foods associated with the change of seasons. All the lovely fall vegetables, pears, apples, and an endless list of stews and soups. Last Saturday night while I was trolling Facebook, my friend Ryan posted that she was making turkey chili with her stepdaughter, which immediately sparked my interest. I’ve never made turkey chili before. Our chilis are usually beef-centric. In the last month, the boy and I have spent a lot of time really thinking about the food we’re eating, due to that whole Lifestyle Change thing I wrote about in the previous blog post, which has led to less red meat in our diet. I tell ya, healthy eating is not easy. And by that I mean you have to really consciously put effort into meal planning. You can’t just grab a Stouffer’s frozen lasagna, toss that in the oven and call it a day (not that there is anything wrong with Stouffer’s lasagna – I realize it’s a great convenience to have and we’ve eaten our fair share of them when we didn’t have the time to plan anything, but have you seen the list of ingredients?). Here’s the thing: we still may not have the time to plan meals, but we make the time. That’s the thing about Lifestyle Changes, you must force yourself to make the time for working out and planning meals, and next thing you know it becomes second nature. If that means devoting a few hours on the weekend to sitting down and making a list, and cooking big vats of soup that will feed your family all week, well, make that time. Besides, you can cook together, and I find that cooking with people you love is a very harmonious and nice way to pass the time.

So anyhoo – Ryan was busy making turkey chili and I immediately commented on her FB status that I wanted said recipe, which she graciously typed up and sent over. The original recipe was her own creation, so I was really honored that she took the time to put it down on paper for me. She is good people. We are going to start a project together soon, but I’m not going to say much more about that now. It’s still brewing in the dark part of our brains, although we really do need to get on that. Ryan, let’s talk soon!

I took her recipe and ran with it, put my own twist on it. Keeping with Mr Shelby’s quote from above, I think you should do the same. I’d love to hear what variations you made!

My friend Ryan’s turkey chili, with which I ran off and did my own thing

1 lb. ground turkey
1 lb. turkey sausage (hot or sweet, depends on what you like) removed from the casings OR 1 lb. turkey kielbasa (smoked or not, up to you), chopped up into pieces
4 cups chicken stock
1 small can diced green chilies
3 cans of beans, drained (great northern, cannellini, red kidney, black beans, a combo of whichever you prefer)
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 carrots, peeled and chopped up small
2 celery ribs, chopped up small
1 can of corn, drained
½ green pepper, chopped up (you can use a whole pepper. I only had a half left in the fridge)
½ jalapeño, chopped up small (keep the seeds if you want it spicy. Hell, use the whole jalapeno)
½ of a 28 oz can of whole tomatoes
Chili powder
Cumin
Paprika
Dried oregano
Cayenne pepper
Kosher salt
Black pepper

1. Heat a nonstick skillet to medium /medium- high and brown the turkey meat and the turkey sausage together, breaking up with a wooden spoon, until it’s brown. If you are using turkey kielbasa instead of turkey sausage, leave this out for now and just brown the ground turkey. When there is no more pink left, drain the meat and set it aside.

2. In a large heavy-bottomed pot or Dutch oven, add one tablespoon of olive oil and heat it on medium. Add the onion, carrot, celery, garlic, green pepper, and sauté this together, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon and scraping up the bottom as you go along. Add the drained turkey meat and if using, the chopped up kielbasa. Then add (to your liking):

• a tablespoon (or more) chili powder (start with a couple of teaspoons if you want it less spicy)
• a tablespoon (or more) each of cumin, paprika, and dried oregano
• ½ teaspoon cayenne powder (you can always add more later if you want more spice)
• ½ teaspoon of salt (you will probably add more later, so keep the salt to a minimum now and add later on – you can always salt more but you can never take it back)

3. Using half of the canned whole tomatoes, squeeze a few of the tomatoes into your pot to break them up a bit (using your impeccably clean hands!). {Save the remaining tomatoes for another day or for pasta}. Add the can of green chilies. Let this cook together for a bit, stirring occasionally.

4. Add 3 to 4 cups of chicken stock or chicken broth, and stir. Bring to a simmer, and let that cook for a few minutes. You can add more broth if it’s too thick. Then add all the beans (that you’ve drained), stir well while scraping up the bottom, and let the whole thing simmer. Let simmer for however long you want, half hour or so. Taste for seasonings – salt, maybe more chili powder or cumin or cayenne. You can always add hot sauce to your bowl when you eat it.

** Quote from a Mexican dictionary, courtesy of Food Timeline

the D word.

2009-10-13T22:09:00.006-04:00

Things are changing around here. In my last post I wrote about eating enjoyable (read: really fattening tasty yummy stuff) in moderation, as I’m a firm believer in that (moderation, that is). In the past two weeks, the boy and I have embarked on what I’d like to call a “lifestyle change”. I use the term “lifestyle change” as opposed to “diet” – the word “diet” is so negative, don’t you think? In modern times we’ve put such a depressing twist on the word. I remember as a kid watching Dexatrim ads on TV which brainwashed women (including my mom, who as far back as I can remember has always been on a diet) into thinking they could take pills and lose a ton of weight quickly! Almost instantly! And the energy they had! A positive side effect to this is that they’d also have an impeccably clean house.

The word “diet” means a “Habitual course as of living or, esp., feeding; hence, food and drink regularly provided or consumed; fare” (my 1941 version of Webster’s Collegiate never steered me wrong. And yes, I still consult books and sometimes prefer to do that over searching the internet. I find books so much more romantic; so be it). The Latin diaeta came to be associated with the Latin word for day, dies. Which then ran off with ‘day’s journey’, ‘day’s work’, ‘day appointed for a meeting’, hence the modern use of the word diet not only referring to food but to daily conference. Anyhoo.

So for a short while (or maybe a long while) we’ll be engaged into eating lighter meals, as in: lighter in calories and fat. This has, as you can imagine, been a little weird getting used to. I’ve had to rediscover how to sauté onions without a good pat of butter and a nice drizzle of olive oil. I’ve actually been forcing myself to measure out by teaspoonfuls how much oil I’m using, if any. EGAD. I KNOW. THE SKY IS FALLING.

I’ve started to adjust my habits; it will take some time. It’s like learning how to cook again, in a way. It’s also bizarre to be reading every label of every jar and container I put in the grocery cart at the store. You’d be amazed at how much crap we willingly ingest on a daily basis. it's pretty gross.

Part of this lifestyle change has also meant that exercise is a huge part of it. We’re working out 6 days a week, for at least one hour. Part of this is because we are now embarking on what I like to call The Big Eatin’ Months, celebrating food holidays like Thanksgiving and all the office parties and cocktail parties that lead up to Christmas. The other part of this is because I hit 40 this year and I’ve noticed changes in my body – not reacting as it should, not able to drop a pound as easily as I used to, hangovers harder to get rid of – major discrepancies from when I was younger. And also, I recently saw a picture of me from behind, and WOW was that ever disappointing. But I’m not going to bore you all with that melodramatic crap; after all I am here to talk about food. When you think of that old word “diet”, the kind my mother would go on ( is still on, has been on as far back as I remember), you immediately think of deprivation. Here’s the deal: if I want French fries, by God I’m going to have them. I just won’t have any more of them for the rest of the week (or month). If I want French fries cooked in duck fat with a side of crispy bacon dripping with maple flavor, I sure as shit am going to eat them. But I’ll not eat them again for a while. I will feed the craving, and then I don’t need or crave it again for a while.

In order to make lighter food taste appealing, you have to season it properly and use a lot of herbs (this is not a new idea, I’m not reinventing the wheel here, but it makes total sense). The other day while stretching after one of the most strenuous workouts I’ve ever endured, I got to thinking about tomato basil soup. Actually, the guy on the DVD I was following was talking about tomato basil soup, and the idea stuck in my head. And now that we’ve solidly moved forward into my favorite season of all time, soup is welcoming. This particular soup is also a great way to use up the last of the summer basil, mine which is wilting and yellowing outside, not knowing what to make of this weather. I could also make pesto and freeze it for one dark, dismal winter day when I’m needing a bright burst of sunshine; and as much as that sounds appealing, I do not want to tempt myself with gobs of olive oil and parmesan cheese at this moment. I can see myself caving and tilting my head far back, mouth open wide, and dropping handfuls of freshly grated parm into my mug. Not a good idea.

This recipe is adapted from one in the first Barefoot Contessa book. As much as I do love basil, I thought the original amount called for was pretty hefty (four cups worth), but you can always add more if you feel the need to.

This will make 3 to 4 quarts, and I’m thinking it might freeze beautifully.

Roasted Tomato Basil Soup, adapted from The Barefoot Contessa

3 pounds Roma or plum tomatoes, cut in half lengthwise (they don’t have to be super ripe, as the roasting will help bring out their flavor)
3 tablespoons olive oil, divided (2 for tomatoes, 1 for onions)
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 ½ teaspoons black pepper
2 medium onions, chopped
4 to 6 garlic cloves, minced
¼ to ½ teaspoon red pepper flakes (adjust to your spice likeness)
1 28-oz can of plum tomatoes
2 ½ cups (packed) basil leaves
2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves
1 quart chicken stock or vegetable stock

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. On a large rimmed sheet pan, toss together the tomato halves, the two tablespoons of olive oil, the salt and the pepper. Line the tomatoes cut side up and roast for 45 minutes. Remove from oven and move to the side while you get your stock pot on.

2. In a large stockpot on medium heat, heat the 1 tablespoon olive oil and sauté the onions, the garlic, and the red pepper flakes for 10 minutes. You may find that you need more olive oil, but I found this amount to be plenty. Once onions start to brown and caramelize, add the canned tomatoes, the basil, thyme, chicken or vedge stock, the roasted tomatoes and whatever juices that accumulated on the baking sheet. Bring to a boil, stirring frequently and breaking up the whole canned tomatoes, then bring to a simmer for 40 minutes, uncovered. Remove from heat.

3. Blend with a stick blender, regular blender, food processor, or food mill. If you are using a regular blender or food processor, remember to blend very small quantities at a time, lest hot liquid come shooting out, burn the crap out of you and leave you with a nice aromatic mess to clean up. Not that I have any experience in that.

4. Taste for seasonings (salt and pepper); chances are you will need a copious amount of salt, but salt a little at a time, tasting as you go until you are satisfied. If you’re making this to eat at a later date, wait until the soup has cooled to room temperature before salting. Why do I do this? I’m not sure. I probably saw it on TV someplace.

good side effects spoken here

2009-10-03T10:57:00.010-04:00

Remember when WOW chips first came out? Do they still even make WOW chips? I was a student living in Savannah at the time (late 1990s), and my landlady was the first to tell me about them. My landlady, Alice, was a loud Southern character who grew up on an old plantation outside of town. She was very skeptical of foreigners and non-Southerners (once calling a Chinese student That Chinaman), but decided I must okay because my Dad was born in Mississippi. She mostly talked to me about food and dieting. One afternoon she treated her tenants to a cookout and brought over several bags of this new WOW potato chip, then spent the rest of the afternoon yakking my ear off about how wonderful they were because even though she considered them “diet food”, they were just like a greasy potato chip, and Alice was all about the greasy potato chip. So I’m sitting there listening to her and eating WOW chips by the ton, and I started to agree with her. Those things didn’t taste half bad! But as the afternoon wore on, my stomach started to feel a bit odd, and later that evening I found myself in the bathroom a whole hell of a lot. I won’t take you down that visual of a road, but let's just say that it wasn’t until the next morning that I saw the warning label on the side of the bag that announced to no one in particular that said chips could potentially cause you to have a case of what my friend Patty calls The Dire Rear. Good times.

Anyway, all that to tell you that if you want a chip, eat a real chip. I mean, how often does a person eat chips anyway? (Ok don’t answer that question). It’s the same for me at Starbucks. I never go to Starbucks anymore; but if I do, and if I happen to order a Mocha, why on earth would I order it fat free and with no whipped cream? Why deny myself the simple pleasures of life? It’s not like I’m downing Mochas every day. Everything in moderation. You have to balance it all out. Yin and yang. You catch my drift.

Duck fat is one of those things that should be eaten in moderation. It’s also one of those “simple pleasures of life” that I hold right up there with clean sheets, eating an Oreo that’s been dunked into a very cold glass of milk, and riding a bike with no hands (look Ma!).

You can purchase duck fat or obtain your own by slowly cooking a duck on low heat. It’s kind of hard to find a place that will sell the fat raw unless you’re super friendly with your butcher (you can find it rendered and packaged ready to go via Froogle, but frankly i'm a bit skeptical of that finished product). The average grocery store will not carry it. In Atlanta we have this wonderful institution called the Dekalb County Farmers Market, and they sell it there. They also sell pig fat for those days you get a hankerin for some rillettes.

So what exactly is confit? The general definition is a duck (or goose, or piece of pig) cooked very slowly in its own fat, then stored in the same fat used to cook it in. A newer definition of the word describes confit to be a vegetable or fruit cooked to a jam-like consistency; if you watch Top Chef you’ll have noticed the chefs like to throw that one around a lot. But I’m not talking vedge here, I’m talking duck.

Duck fat by itself is a wonderous thing and will freeze beautifully. I’m not sure how long it’ll stick around in the fridge, I’ve seen reports varying from two months to whenever. I lean on the side of whenever. Fats were used as a preservative back in the old days before refrigeration, so I’ve no trouble keeping a container of it around in the fridge to have handy.

Earlier this summer, the boy and I made the pilgrimage to DCFM; since it isn’t exactly la porte à coté, we make the most of these trips and stock up on all kinds of dried goods and spices. The main reason for our trip, though, was to secure some duck fat and buy a duck or two, as we were making duck confit. I could bore you with the details of what we did to render out the fat, but instead I’ll direct you to the Very Excellent blog Sugarlaws, which demonstrates it and shows gorgeous photos of goldeny goodness.

so now we have containers of duck fat in the fridge and freezer to have around for when you need a tablespoon or two of it. To use in what, you say? How about some fried potatoes? Or as my friend Darrel likes to call them, Fancy Duck Taters.

In order to get your taters to be Ducked and Fancied, you will need to start by par-boiling some potatoes until they are nearly cooked all the way through, then let them cool. how many potatoes per person? that depends on your appetite. one medium sized Yukon should yield enough fries to serve one person, but if you're a glutton or just simply really enjoy fries, i would err on the side of More Potato.

Add some of your rendered and saved duck fat to frying pan or large skillet. You’ll need enough to coat the bottom of the pan, plus a couple of tablespoons. Turn the burner on high, then when the fat has melted and is hot enough , kick it back down to medium-high. An old trick to figuring out if the oil (or fat in this case) is hot enough is to stick the handle of a wooden spoon straight down in it, and if bubbles form around the spoon, then it’s ready.

You can do a test run, like we did in these pictures, by frying up a few potato slices to see if the fat is hot enough; and besides it’s nice to have some fries to snack on while the main batch are cooking away. Slide your potato slices into the fat and cook, occasionally basting them with the fat. When they are crispy brown on one side (this should take a few minutes), flip them over to cook on the other side.

When the potatoes are golden brown on both sides, remove them from the fat and place them onto one of those wire cooling racks you use for baking that you’ve placed over a cookie sheet and sprinkle with kosher salt and pepper. If you don’t have one of these cooling racks, you could use a paper towel-lined bowl and toss the potatoes around, salting and peppering liberally.

We ate these with a spatchcocked chicken (otherwise known as butterflied chicken or chicken-under-a-brick, which we’ve made here and here).

We don’t eat this way every day, in fact I’d say for obvious reasons, you shouldn’t eat potatoes cooked this way very often. Remember that whole “Everything in moderation thing”? however, the side effects of these potatoes are quite the opposite from WOW chips: a case of the full and happy belly. No Dire Rear here.

Yeah yeah. i'm about to get all locavore-y on your ass. But just mildly locavore-y.

2009-09-23T18:56:00.007-04:00

Every once in a while, I’ll swing by Nell’s Produce Stand , which is located in the parking lot on the corner of Old Alabama and Nesbit Ferry Roads, across from Mt Pisgah school in Alpharetta. I’d been going to them about once a week all summer, as they carried the best peaches from South Georgia, for cheap too. Looky here:

Look how big this sucker was, and it was full of flavor too! You’d think a piece of fruit this big would be bland and unsatisfactory, but no.

It’s no longer peach season, but I swung by there today anyway as I remember seeing some juicy figs there a couple of weeks ago. However, I was disappointed to discover that fig season is no longer. According to the guy hosting the stand today (I forgot to ask his name), Georgia had a wee small window of fig season, a bit less than a month it seems like. By the time I gathered all the fig recipes I wanted to use (such as the fig preserves from last month’s Food and Wine magazine), the figs were gone. I am sad.

They did have these little babies though.

These are Scupperdine grapes. According to the guy at the stand, they’re cousins to the Muscadine, which I’ve heard of because those type of grapes make a mighty tasty French wine (Muscadet). According to a tiny bit of Google research (ok, I did about 10 seconds worth), American Scupperdine is a cross between Scuppernong and Muscadine grapes, for what that’s worth to you.

So what are they like?

Well, for starters, I always inevitably open up the bag the minute I get back in the car, and I’m hit in the face with an intense grapiness, for lack of a better word. You know what grocery store grapes smell like? Intensify that by 200%. So then you pop one in your mouth, and it’s not at all what you expect. A hard skin easy to break through with your teeth, with a soft milder interior, they’re very much like candy and reminiscent of a grape flavored Now and Later. It’s been probably 25 years since I last had a grape-flavored Now and Later, and there I was experiencing it again – except this stuff isn’t fake AND it’s good for you. The skin gives the fruit an almost sour side, but you soon forget it as your mouth becomes engulfed in an extreme grapiness. I ate about 5 on my way home (and I live less than a mile away), spitting the seeds out of the car window as I drove along. Very classy, I know.

I also bought these skinny Japanese eggplant, provided by a farmer in Rincon GA (Rincon is right close to Savannah). I’ve never seen Japanese eggplant that slender, even at the Super H. I foresee myself cutting these in half lengthwise and grilling them, sprinkling with salt and pepper and drizzling with a bit of olive oil.

Nell’s Produce also has some non-local stuff, but I only buy Georgia-grown there. Why not? Support your local farmer.

Off soapox now.

Definition of locavore can be found here.

comfort food in a not so comforting moment

2009-09-22T10:37:00.012-04:00

The Atlanta area got hit with some major ridiculous weather the past couple of days, which has left roads blocked, damaged, flooded, people stranded and sadly, worse. I myself didn’t go in to work – they evacuated my building yesterday mid afternoon anyway, as it was losing power. I can work just as well from home, and in fact get a lot more work done without constant interruptions from the riff raff at the office.

The boy hasn’t been so lucky, as he’s had to go in to work. I knew that after a long day with a commute from hell that he’d want something warm and comforting for dinner, something that once he walked in the door and smelled the aroma in the air, would make it worth coming home to. So I roasted a chicken.

I’ve mentioned before that roasted chicken is one of my favorite comfort foods, and fortunately it doesn’t take a long time to prepare. i’ve been using this recipe for years, but even I will admit that sometimes I don’t feel like messing with the chicken every 20 minutes, flipping it around and whatnot. You can just throw it in the oven for an hour and 10 minutes and it’s pretty much done.

If you’ve got a v-rack, like the one pictured above, use that. A lot of roasting pans these days come with one. I have an adjustable one, but a stationary one is just fine. If you don’t have a v-rack, you could use one of those grid-like cooling racks used for baked goods and put that on top of a lipped sheet pan, or make a bed of celery stalks/carrots/potatoes, and place your chicken on top of that. I prefer to have the chicken elevated off of the roasting pan because if I don’t, the bottom part of the chicken against the pan will sit in it’s own melted fat; while this is not necessarily bad at all, it makes for a kind of whitish area and flabby skin – unappealing really.

I do a couple of things to the chicken before tossing it onto the rack. Earlier in the day, or even the night before, take a stick (or half a stick – depends on personal preference) of butter out of the fridge and let come to smooshable room temperature. Preheat your oven to 375 F. Put the room temperature butter in a bowl and add things to it, things like dried herbs, herbes de Provence, lemon zest, fresh herbs – it’s really up to you. There are no measurements for this, just add what you have that sounds good. I would watch how much dried herb you put in though, because too much dried herbs can really be too much. Then, mush all this together with your (very clean) hands, or with a fork if you’re squeamish about that stuff. Set aside while you prep your chicken.

Get a small bowl of kosher salt and have that handy, as well as some canola or vegetable oil – you want these separate from their original containers so as to not contaminate them with raw chicken. Remove store packaging from the chicken (the supermarket chickens I get are around 3.5 to 4.5 lbs. in case you’re wondering), reach into the cavities (both ends) to fish out any parts that might be shoved in there – discard parts if you’d like, or save them for another use. Rinse the chicken under cold water then pat dry with paper towels. Set the chicken on a plastic cutting board.

You’ll want to do something about those pesky chicken wings that are sticking straight up in the breeze. I usually bend these back out of the way, like so:

It might need some coaxing, but it’s doable. Get over your squeamishness now – this is not the time for wilting violets.

Next, take a small handful of the compound butter you made earlier and very carefully push it under the breast skin trying not to rip the skin. Put as much of it under there as you’d like on both sides. Shove whatever butter is left into the cavity. You can also shove any number of things in the cavity, such as the lemon used earlier for zest (cut in half), a bulb of garlic cut in half or even just a few cloves, a handful of parsley, etc.

Now, douse the entire chicken all over with the canola or vegetable oil. Make sure all exposed surfaces are coated. Liberally coat all over with the kosher salt.

Put the rack onto a roasting pan. Using spray oil or even just a paper towel folded up and coated with canola oil, grease up the rack you’re using. Place chicken on top of the rack. Dump about a half cup of water into the bottom of the rack. This will prevent flare ups when the chicken fat starts dripping down into the bottom of the pan. Put chicken in the oven for 1 hour and 10 minutes. Check the temperature of the breast, it should be 160 F. I usually cook my chickens anywhere between 1 hour and 10 mn to 1 hour and 20 mn and it’s done. Remove chicken from the oven and let rest to the side. You can wait a few minutes and remove the chicken from the rack onto a carving board (remove from rack using clean kitchen towel or an old pair of oven mitts) and tent with foil.

As an accompaniment to the chicken, I also roasted some onions on the side. You could roast these after the chicken comes out of the oven (or even do it earlier in the day – this dish can be served room temperature). You could do it at the same time but adjust your cooking time, as the original recipe calls for them to be roasted at a higher temperature than the chicken. I will admit that I totally snagged this recipe from The Barefoot Contessa at Home, slightly modified. I absolutely love roasted onions. This recipe makes enough for two to three people as a side.

2 red onions
fresh thyme sprigs
juice of one lemon
1 teaspoon Dijon
2 cloves garlic, minced
1.5 teaspoons kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/4 cup olive oil
1 tablespoon minced fresh parsley

Preheat oven to 400 F. Cut onions in half root to sprout end, then peel each half, keeping root intact. Cut wedges of onion through theroot, that way the wedges stay intact. Put onion wedges in a bowl.

Make vinaigrette by mixing lemon juice, Dijon mustard, garlic, salt, and pepper in a bowl then drizzling in the olive oil all while mixing with a fork or small whisk. Toss vinaigrette with the onions. With a slotted spoon or by hand, move the onions to a baking sheet, and save the bowl with the vinaigrette in it. Put baking sheet in oven and bake for 20 minutes. Remove pan from oven and toss the onions or flip them with a spatula. Replace pan in oven for another 15 to 20 minutes until onions are browned and soft. Remove from oven, drizzle with the remaining vinaigrette, top with fresh parsley, and serve warm or at room temperature.

detox food

2009-09-16T14:52:00.009-04:00

So it’s been a crazy couple of weeks. Camping during Labor Day weekend at Atlanta Motor Speedway was a blast – although the infield has turned into quite the zoo. It’s always been a circus, as you never know what is going to happen. I don’t talk politics on this blog (and I will never talk politics on this blog) but just to prove to you what kind of circus we are dealing with, let me present to you Exhibit A:

We were intrigued, to say the least. Like, What the fuck does that mean? So the boy went over to knock on the door of this guy’s camper, and who should emerge but a slack-jawed yokel with about 4 teeth in the whole entirety of his head. What came out of his mouth is not something I am comfortable with repeating on this blog. I’d like to say that the South has come a long way, but then sometimes you just have to shake your head at the few people left who are like that.

So I did mention we were camping in the infield at Atlanta Motor Speedway, right? Key word: camping.

This is my friend Erica. I made her pose for this just so that I could capture what was going on behind her and cherish this moment forever. These are two female campers in the infield bathroom at AMS. No matter that it was a humid sweatbox in the bathrooms, these chicks were straightening their hair and putting on a full face of makeup come hell or high water! You just never know who you might meet at AMS, possibly catch yerself a future husband, who knows! You gotta be prepared and bring the entire contents of your bathroom! God I love the South.

Erica introduced me to her favorite adult beverage, which she calls Freds. Freds are vodka and Fresca. I became very good friends with Fred on Saturday, probably too good. Picture me in a denim miniskirt and cowboy hat standing atop our friend Ken’s Ford F-150. Not the bed of the truck, atop. I was hooty hooing with the best of them. And then I fell backwards off the truck (what is that, a 5 foot drop?). I remember when it happened, and the only thought that popped into my pea brain was, “Gee, I hope I don’t spill my drink”. I remember the look on a friend’s face as I tipped backwards, and all the people standing on top of the converted school bus camped next to us whose mouths formed Os and eyes got wide. And I fell… and bounced on my ass, and got right back up. Had I been sober, I probably would have tried to break my fall by reaching behind me, therefore breaking my wrist or my arm. However, had I been sober, I wouldn’t have been standing on top of an F-150 in a friggin miniskirt screaming “WOOOOOOOOO!”

I did end up spilling my drink after all.

The rest of Saturday was spent drinking Red Bull while trying to sober up and apologizing to everyone and no one in particular about how sorry I was that I was drunk.

I spent about an hour walking around the pits people-watching. The people-watching in the pits is vastly different than what goes on in the infield. For one, it’s much cleaner and not as dusty as the infield. Secondly, the caliber of women changes dramatically. The pits are full of women wearing ridiculously expensive eyewear all blinged out to hell, and a ton of makeup. The infield is full of women wearing name brand knockoffs, not much in the way of clothing, and a ton of makeup. I didn’t get to see anyone famous there, but it was fun nevertheless.

We ate well (we always do). Steaks, stuffed and grilled jalapenos, smoked pork butt, Cuban burgers, more breakfast than anyone could eat. Billy Ray was handing out cigars, so I smoked one of those. I do love me a good cigar every once in a while.

Last weekend a friend of mine got married. A while back I had volunteered to make her wedding cakes, so I spent the three days before the wedding making 125 cupcakes (in 5 different flavors), the groom’s cake, and another small cake to put on top of the cupcake tree (all while juggling work). The wedding was beautiful, the bride was gorgeous, and everyone was pleased with my work.

But now it’s time to detox. I’ve been overindulging in a bit of everything, plus with all those evenings spent baking, the last thing I wanted to do was cook so we ordered out a lot; pizza, Chinese, whatever. My body started to rebel by feeling sluggish and not cooperating with me. I hate that feeling.

As a reward to myself for a cake job well done, I went and got a professional manicure and pedicure. When they’re done tarting you up, you get ushered to sit at a table that has built in fans under the tabletop for you to place your hands and feet that way the polish dries faster. I kind of hate this part because I am not a particularly patient person when it comes to nail polish drying. i want to get up and go and do something. So I’m sitting there, bored, flipping through a bunch of magazines I would normally never flip through, things like People and Women’s Health, and it was while on the last pages of what I think was Women’s Health that I came across a couple of pages of recipes. They weren’t even written like a normal recipe, just a few lines of text accompanied by a photo. The theme was Summer Recipes, so therefore light fare, and when I ran across this one particular list of ingredients I just knew that this would be the perfect way to start my detox week. i very carefully pulled my iPhone out of my bag so that I could gingerly type notes into it.

This makes an excellent portable lunch. You could dress the seafood in the morning while packing it up if you wanted to, but I kept both the dressing and seafood in separate Lock & Lock containers and dressed it at the last minute. Don’t dump all the dressing in, because you’ll probably only need about half of it; you can always add more but can’t subtract. In these photos I used halibut because it’s what I had on hand at that time, but I’ve since also made it with shrimp and it’s really just as good.

Couple of pinches of 5 spice powder
2 tablespoons soy
1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
2 teaspoons sesame oil
1 to 2 teaspoons grated ginger
1 clove garlic, minced
½ minced jalapeno or one of those spicy thai chilis
1 to 2 tablespoons minced bell pepper
1 to 2 minced scallions
2 cups cooked lobster, crab, shrimp, or other white fish that could stand up to this kind of dressing (I used halibut, which I’d broiled)
Salt and pepper

Mix all ingredients except seafood together. Add to cooked seafood and toss together.

The magazine suggested serving this on rolls or rice cakes. Personally I think rice cakes suck a bunch of ass, but I bought some for this purpose. And I will say I was totally surprised that plain rice cakes turned out to be the perfect vessel for this. The dressing is already rather strong flavored, so you don’t want something competing with it; and besides if you’re on The Great Detox Plan Which I’m Sure To Give Up On Pretty Soon, rice cakes are the way to go. You can always slather peanut butter on them and call it Snack if you’re not sure what to do with the extra.

Suck it, Trebek.

2009-09-03T13:25:00.005-04:00

So I get teased a lot. People sometimes don’t know what to make of me because I grew up in France yet I’m into NASCAR. The two don’t go hand in hand, they say. You don’t seem like the type who likes NASCAR, they say. But you’re not a redneck!, they say. It’s kind of like Chuck Klosterman and his love for Pamela Anderson; you’d never think a guy like him would be into a “girl” like her. But there it is. I like NASCAR and I’m proud to be a fan. If you’ve been a reader for a while, you know that this wasn’t an overnight dealio. It grew gradually, and culminated in a race weekend last October at the Atlanta Motor Speedway.

My mother already thinks that living in the South has warped my brain; she’ll not know what to think once she finds out I watch this crap. Although I need not worry, because she’s probably never heard of NASCAR. Formula 1, yes. Stock car racing? Mais, c’est pour les ploucs**, she’d say.

Tomorrow at 2 pm EST the gates to the infield at Atlanta Motor Speedway will open to campers, and I will be there in Sammy the Ford Escape following the boy and Ken who are towing the 1970s camper which will be our home until Monday. A month or so ago when I called AMS to buy our infield tickets, the lady on the other end of the line told me, in a surprised and pleased tone of voice, that the infield campsites were all sold out – unheard of. This is very exciting news. This means that me and a couple thousand other drunks will be hooty-hooing from our camp spots, and a fun time will be had by all.

Contrary to popular belief, the entire weekend is not just devoted to drunky-pantsing it (although drinking heavily is one of the fun factors, if drinking is your sort of thing). We also eat pretty damn well. This takes some pre-planning, as this year our communal campsites will probably host 25ish people (give or take a few). I’ve had people poke fun at me because I make massive Google docs filled with lists: packing lists, grocery lists, menus, etc... and all I have to say is: SUCK IT. I am a born planner. Camping with that amount of people without some sort of plan stinks. Once I am somewhere, I do not want to budge. I don’t plan on leaving the infield this weekend because I happened to forget something, which will force me to run to the closest Wal Mart. Don’t get me wrong - of course there are times where unplanning is fun, like when two of you are on vacation in the Bahamas or something, and you just want to let life unfold and roll with it. I am a huge fan of surprises. But when one has been unofficially designated the Project Manager for 25ish people camping in the infield, some order and preparation is necessary and vital for my sanity and the sanity of others.

Most of our friends are arriving Saturday, so Friday night will be grilled steaks for the three of us. Saturday is Wingapalooza – wings all day. The boy has been prepping chicken wings for a week or so now, cutting off the wing tips, freezing the wing parts in Foodsaver bags, preparing his spice mixture. All of this is necessary because there is nothing worse than having to butcher wings on a makeshift cutting board while camping, as the boy knows firsthand. The main focus of Sunday’s dinner will be Bobby Flay’s Cuban burgers, which we've made there before and are a huge success. I already have the aioli ready to go. I delegated several people to shop, so that one person wasn’t stuck with the astronomical grocery bill. Everyone is responsible for their own booze.

So here’s to you, whether you’re a NASCAR fan or not, or whether you’re one of those who poops on my planning (therefore not invited to join us, sucks to be you doesn’t it – YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE) . I hope you all have a great Labor Day weekend.

Go #14!

** But that's for hicks!

the barefoot contessa's strawberry jam

2009-08-07T13:23:00.006-04:00

my attempts at running have been thwarted by this muggy heat. there's no way in hell i'm going back out into that for a run after i get home from work in the afternoons - no way. this saddens me as i know it'll hurt when i do get back into running later this year.

i did take a few weeks off after running in the Peachtree Road Race, but being idle does not suit me. i get lazy and then hate the fact that i'm lazy, then beat myself up over it. what's the use of that? so i started using my elliptical machine again, which is inside the air-conditioned house. the boy has named it Sven, so that he can joke about me having a hot date with Sven later on. (side note: Sven??? seriously. what kind of name is that? the tall Nordic boys were never my type. not that i have a type. anyway).

so i'm back to watching a lot of crappy TV while on a hot date with Sven. we recently upped our cable package and now have Showtime, Encore, etc..., but let me tell you, there is usually not a damn thing on anyway. except for one day, while flipping around, i watched Ina Garten make strawberry jam. and as soon as i hopped off Sven (heh), i ran off to get the ingredients for this.

my mom is a good cook, although she tends to never follow recipes at all. she owns a lot of cookbooks but i doubt she's even glanced through a good portion of them. most of them are from places like the Zuni Cafe or Stars, places she's eaten where the food was lovely, so she felt compelled to buy the cookbook. she has handwritten recipes on index cards and the margins of ripped out magazine articles scattered around her kitchen, but when it comes down to following a recipe, she will go with her gut (with more or less success). this is why it's so hard for me to get a recipe out of her. if i've had a good dish at her house and ask for the recipe, she gets flustered and says, "Mais, i don't know, i don't measure, you just pour it in. Tu m'ennuies".

she has never been much into canning or preserving; although having said that i remember one summer weekend spending the day with her and my brother in the forest of St Germain en Laye gathering raspberries which grew wild all along the park lanes. we took every pot and deep bowl in the house we could find, and filled them all up. i remember the sweet smell of raspberries and sugar boiling away on the stove, and the jam she made from them. she never made jam again, preferring to buy it ready-made. but i wonder if that raspberry memory of mine is what prompts me to attempt jam every few years. i had very little success with preserving until i came across Ms Garten's recipe (see here for a ridiculous failed attempt a while back). because the strawberries that are available now are marvelously sweet, i've cut back the amount of sugar in the original recipe to 2 cups (3 cups just seemed like a whole hell of a lot). the end result makes two mason jar pints. Ms Garten says it will keep refrigerated for at least 2 weeks, but mine never does because the elves eat it up before it ever comes near going bad.

strawberry jam, adapted from Barefoot Contessa: Back to Basics

3 pints strawberries
2 cups sugar
2 tablespoons orange-flavored liqueur
1/2 Granny Smith apple, peeled, cored and small-diced
1/2 cup fresh blueberries

1. Wash and hull the strawberries. Cut the larger berries in half or quarters and leave the small berries whole. Place the strawberries in a Dutch oven and toss them with the sugar and orange-flavored liqueur.

2. Bring the berry mixture to a boil over medium heat, stirring often. Add the apple and blueberries and continue to keep the mixture at a rolling boil, stirring occasionally, until the jam reaches 220 degrees on an instant-read thermometer. This should take 25 to 35 minutes. Skim and discard any foam that rises to the top. Allow the mixture to cool to room temperature and then store covered in the refrigerator.

chickpea and kale curry

2009-08-02T17:23:00.006-04:00

the other day when my buddy Caprice and i were busy chatting via gchat about various summertime salads, she passed along this recipe she’d made several times for a type of chick pea and spinach curry that could be done in the slow cooker. to me, this is fantastic, as it adds to my growing list of dishes i don't have to make in a traditional oven. Here in Atlanta we’ve reached that window of mugginess where I refuse to run the oven if I can help it – it will heat up the house indecently, make the A/C run overtime, and generally make me irritable as hell. The only time I’ve not been totally irritated while cooking in the middle of summer in front of an overheating oven was one time when the boy and I were working a catering job in Annapolis, MD a few years back. We had set up a makeshift kitchen in the client’s garage, but the client insisted we lower the garage doors when the guests arrived so that the guests would be spared seeing the hired help at work. The windows had been nailed shut, so there was no fresh air flow coming in. So as we’re plating stacked heirloom tomato and crispy pancetta salads, I looked down at the instant read thermometer in my jacket pocket to see that it was a mere 125 degrees F in that tiny garage (the boy later joked about how we were medium-rare). that sounds totally miserable – and it was, for a moment. But we knew it was temporary, and we knew we had to kick ass and make the food look effortless and elegant, so work our asses off we did. To this day the boy and I still laugh about that afternoon.

Caprice insisted that I use dried chick peas, as the difference between canned and dried is major. I promised I would, planned on making this dish over the weekend. then yesterday I forgot to buy dried chick peas (in my defense, I was thwarted by a hangover). I was kind of irritated with myself this morning when I realized this lack of judgment on my part, so I figured I’d use canned and cook it in a Dutch oven (no need to break out the slow cooker if I’m only cooking this dish for an hour). This is my version of the recipe, swapping kale for the spinach because spinach tends to shrink to about nothing, and I like a bit of texture in my cooked greens. I will make a mental note of trying this again with dried chickpeas.

This will make several lunches for me (3 or 4, depending on how hungry I am), with a nice squirt of sriracha to spice it up – totally untraditional to the origins of this dish, but I pretty much add sriracha or Texas Pete to a lot of things I eat. One day my stomach lining will thank me I’m sure.

chick pea and kale curry

2 15-oz cans of chick peas
1 cup chicken stock (or water, if you want to make this totally vegan)
8 cups kale, ripped into large pieces
2 15-oz cans diced tomatoes
2 teaspoons ground coriander
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 teaspoons garam masala
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
2 tablespoons fresh cilantro, chopped

1. Drain chickpeas, then toss into a Dutch oven with 1 cup water or chicken stock, kale, tomatoes, coriander, cumin, garam masala, turmeric, 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, and pepper.

2. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low and cook for one hour. Sprinkle in remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt, stir in cilantro and serve.

watermelon and feta salad

2009-07-30T16:22:00.004-04:00

okay so variations of this salad are quite en vogue right now, which is great because for the longest time when i'd tell people that the combination of watermelon and feta together was really sensational, they'd look at me like i was nuts or something. which they already do because i have a tendency to blurt out nonsensical things sometimes, as well as the occasional burp, so i get strange looks pretty frequently.

i came across this recipe while watching one of Nigella Lawson's shows when they used to air on the Style Network, eons ago it seems like. during the summer we always have watermelon on hand, as well as a lifetime supply of feta for hippie tacos, which are on our regular menu rotation. this is definitely a summer salad, to be eaten during one of those ridiculously muggy days like we've been having lately. it's a rather light salad, but the combination of the cool watermelon with the salty feta and briny olives doesn't make me feel like i'm missing out on anything. i totally urge you to try this.

if making this for one, you could supplement this with some grilled fish on the side and be totally sated.

watermelon, feta, and black olive salad for one
adapted from Forever Summer by Nigella Lawson

1/8 of a small red onion, cut into thin slivers
1 to 2 limes
1.5 cups of watermelon cubes
2 tablespoons of crumbled feta or one bit hunk of it broken into pieces
a couple of tablespoons of chopped fresh parsley
2 tablespoons of chopped fresh mint
1 tablespoon or so of olive oil
1/4 cup kalamata olives or other black olives (you can use pitted; i grabbed mine unpitted from the olive bar at the grocery store)
pepper

1. put the red onion slivers in a bowl. juice 1 or 2 limes over it and let steep for a while (i would say at least a good half hour before assembling the rest of the salad).

2. place watermelon cubes, feta, parsley, mint, and olives on a plate or in a bowl. dump the limey onions over the top. gently toss with a spoon or your IMPECCABLY CLEAN hands, drizzle on the olive oil (as much as you want). sprinkle on some black pepper and eat.

if you're going to pack this to go, as i did this morning, gently stack all the ingredients (minus the onions, lime juice, and olive oil) in your container, with the watermelon on the bottom. as it was pouring down rain outside, i didnt feel like going to snip some parsley from the yard in my pajamas and slippers, so i swapped the parsley for some baby lettuce. put the onions, lime juice, and olive oil in a separate smaller container and dress the salad when you're ready to eat.