Pink of Perfection

Because I have spent this week utterly unimpressed by food, drifting from toast to salad to sandwich with little passion and even less desire, it’s hard to imagine that it was only last week when I swooned over a pork chop. The entire experience of this dinner was worthy of a French Friday: I went to the fancy market and bought thick pork chops wrapped in butcher paper from a man in a paper hat. I selected a slim baguette with a crisp shell and airy insides. I visited the wine store and explained what we were eating — in great detail — and was paired with a truly heavenly accompaniment. I came home, turned on some blues, and set about making a dinner that was ready mere moments later.

In my experience, there aren’t a lot of recipes like this — ones that tap into your best vision of yourself, that are elegant, special, and ready in a flash, that make your dining companion think you have some unmatchably magic touch when you come into contact with a cast iron skillet and tongs. Perhaps I should spend less of my time making chili and more of my time seeking out food that elevates not just dinner itself, but (not to sound heavy handed) the way I feel about my life. Because there I was, on an ordinary day, making it all look so easy (and truly, it was), sitting down to the sort of supper that would be ideal if you learned Jacques Pepin were coming over in 20 minutes, or if you just feel that you deserve a fine chop, a simple sauce, and a cold glass of wine. And here I am, a week later, without a twinge of gastronomic interest in my stomach or fingers, still feeling great about that dinner.

More pork chop recipes:

Continue reading “French Friday: Pork Chops with Mustard and Cornichons” »

I have realized in the past several months that so much about the economy of cooking at home is about volume and frequency. With a constantly rotating list of ingredients in the household (leftover parsley from one recipe, leftover ginger from another), you have at hand a greater array to work with (and to experiment with) than if you are always buying ingredients for one or two recipes a week. Unfortunately, it seems to me one would have to eat a lot of chickens to have the means to make stock for all the recipes that call for it. That’s why I’m not a purist when it comes to stock. If a recipe calls for a cup or less, I use Better Than Bouillon, but if I’m making a stew or soup, I”ll use up the homemade stock I have frozen in 4-cup portions.

Growing up it seems like there was always a chicken carcass simmering away (the Silver method below) in a tall stockpot on the Russian fireplace. And as children often do, I kept making stock just the way my mama taught me until I learned how to cut up a chicken. Turns out, making stock from the leftover backbone (Gold) makes a super flavorful broth and is now my favorite method.  I’ve never made stock from whole chickens (Platinum), though I hear it is irrefutably the best. Each household just has to find the method that’s just right for them. But undoubtedly, the best tip I ever got about the process beyond the chicken itself came directly from all of you: keep a stock bag in the freezer and stuff it with papery onion skins, carrot nobs and peels, and odds and ends of vegetable scraps. Since I can’t compost in my little apartment, this achieves that prairie girl desire to have zero-waste.

Do you make stock with one of these methods below, or some other way? Do tell!

Continue reading “4 Ways to Make Chicken Stock” »

Lately, most people I know have been hunkering down with a big bowl of noodles at least once a week. And rightfully so: the indignities of making our way through the cold and muscling into boots calls for dinner in a bowl, and preferably one that will leave you in a blissed-out carbohydrate haze. Sometimes, though, those of us who do not excel in the ways of moderation end up regretting it afterward. I like to think that if a healthy dose of cruciferous vegetable gets folded in with a wheaty tangle, the same comfort level can still be achieved and the bloated guilt diminished. At least, that’s the idea.

It wasn’t until recently that I began to explore cauliflower’s charms. I’ve always loved it as a crudité, but when it came into my life as a gratin, a soup, and most recently in Sebastian’s off-the-cuff red vegetable curry, I could feel myself falling in love. I doubt that cauliflower will stir the passion nor the vitriol sardines recently did, but that’s okay. Cauliflower is cool — a laid-back, mellow, vegetable that hangs around in the background until you need it to take center stage. It doesn’t need to live in the spotlight, but when it does, it really steals the show. And in a quietly confident way I sort of love.

Continue reading “$5 Dinner: Sweet and Spicy Cauliflower and Penne” »

Allow me to introduce you to a new very special someone in my life…

To answer your unasked but anticipated questions: yes, it is as wonderful as they say; yes, it is absolutely the heaviest item in our entire household; yes, I feel rather lucky and pretty spoiled to be the recipient of this thing. But guilt aside, having this mixer on my counter feels like crossing a sort of threshold. I think I have just entered the realm of Fancy Baker Type. More importantly, if I ever needed a push to whip up more cookies and cakes (I didn’t), this is it. I’m positively chomping at the bit to feed people desserts.

Which is why last weekend you could find me in the eye of a floury storm. First up was banana bread. Now, I know people have staunchly held beliefs about what they want from their banana bread, and I wouldn’t dare to call this the best banana bread. But in terms of what I’m looking for — a tender crumb but not cakey, a pronounced banana flavor without other distractions, and a relatively healthy composition — this is it.

I served this to a highly discerning friend (the type who can actually identify notes of cassis and butter in the wine you serve her) on an overcast Saturday afternoon. She came over wearing a plaid shirt and suede boots, tucked her legs under her on the couch, and declared this banana bread delicious. That out of the way, we poured the tea, and the real talk could commence.

Continue reading “My Best Banana Bread” »

Sometimes the mythology of a thing is more prevalent than the actual experience of it. Take, for example, running a marathon: hard, really hard. You and I both know that. In fact, even if we can’t run more than a few miles, we are convinced of its difficulty to the point of impossibility and have a feeling it’s not in the cards for us.

On one hand, this is great: word gets around in our gossipy little world with its love of quickly boxing and defining experience, and we are able to make shorthand decisions about what’s worth our time without even having tried something ourselves. We give a quick no thanks to War and Peace (too long), childbirth (too laborious), Antarctica (too cold, too desolate).

This is where I stood with puff pastry. If Mark Bittman said it wasn’t worth making from scratch, then Pepperidge Farm it would be. Enter book 5 of my Grand Diplôme program, and there it was in black and white: puff pastry. My heart sank. My contrarian side rose up. I resisted for weeks, ignoring the lesson. “Why not skip it?” a friend suggested. Tempting, but what kind of student would I be if I just skipped the lessons that seemed too hard?

And then last night, as I had courage enough and time, I went to the grocery store for butter. Then my phone rang, and it was my mom. “You’re making puff pastry? Oh, I’ve heard that’s really hard.” It is a credit to her mothering, I suppose, that I did not respond, “I know. You’re right,” shelve the butter and head back home for some pasta. I soldiered on, like, well, a marathon runner.

When I stopped long enough to look at the actual recipe I was deeply encouraged by this:

Rough puff pastry originated in farmhouse kitchens where lard from home-butchered pigs and homemade butter were readily available.

Haute cuisine makes me shake in my clogs a bit, but farmhouse cooking? Farmhouse cooking is in my bones. And can you feel what’s coming next?

I could hardly believe how simple puff pastry was. I didn’t struggle with the dough, I didn’t wipe away tears from a flour-streaked face. I pulled out the food processor, measured a little of this and that, rolled and turned and rolled and turned and rolled and turned the dough, and then thought, is that it? It was. Feeling a little too pleased with myself, that doubting voice of mythology was heard saying, “yeah, but just wait to see how it comes out once it’s cooked.” The happy reply was flaky and buttery and as puffed up as I was.

This triumph is exactly why I set out to cook from these booklets. So often we take on expert account what is and is not worth trying for ourselves. But if we have the time and the inclination and the will, we may find that our own opinions differ from those heavyweights of the cooking world. This amateur, for one, thinks puff pastry is more than worth the effort to make at home, if only for the wild sense of triumph from accomplishing what others deem too troublesome.

Continue reading “Homemade Puff Pastry & My First Chicken Pot Pie” »

My first attempt at making yogurt fell somewhere in the middle realm — not an epic fail of soured milk, but not thick and creamy either. (At least it was more successful that my attempt with homemade peanut butter, which came out more like peanut paste.) My yogurt was a little on the runny side but had the most amazing sour tanginess. With maple syrup, a chopped peach, and my mom’s granola, I was in breakfast heaven.

There are more detail oriented recipes for homemade yogurt, but the lazy way seemed to work just fine for me. If you don’t have a thermometer, don’t fret — all is not lost. I used the “thermos method” which involves simply pouring the ingredients into a thermos rinsed with hot water. If you have a yogurt maker, you’re obviously in business, but you can also make yogurt by placing it in a warmed oven overnight — instructions here. For having totally winged it (couldn’t find a thermometer), I thought this turned out admirably well and was a cheap way to make a lot of organic, low-fat yogurt.

Have you ever done this? Would you ever do this? Are you not into kitchen science experiments? Or does this seem like the kind of simple DIY project that’s right up your alley?

Continue reading “The Winging It Way to Homemade Yogurt” »

The first time was on a sunny, Saturday morning, sitting on a green window seat cushioned with tapestry-covered pillows. The restaurant was at the crossroads of two meandering county highways. The floors creaked. I had an omelet filled with pesto and heirloom tomatoes, but it was the strawberry jam that really had me. I spooned it out of the glass jar and spread it thick on my sourdough toast. It was so sweet, a salve to wounds of other disappointments I had that morning, a bright spot in a teary breakfast.

The next time was the following Saturday, and by then I had a taste and was happier. After browsing a used book store, we settled in to a little table set next to the wall in a little bistro. The walls were painted a pale yellow the overhead fan were whirring wildly, and I feasted on toasted baguette with strawberry jam. For the cool air on a sticky day and the sweet jam, I was in heaven.

The big surprise here is that I always thought of myself as a bigger fan of the orange preserves: marmalade, apricot, peach. But sometimes just what you need presents itself to you, like discovering a cookbook author with the kind of frank, witty voice that makes you swoon, or a glass pot of strawberry jam, ready to sweeten your morning.

Continue reading “Quick Strawberry Jam” »

As I sit typing this, directly in front of a fan with a glass of ice water at my side, it is hard to imagine that the temperature was ever below 90° and that when it was, I made soup. But stranger things have happened and besides: when vegetables are practically sighing under the weight of their own ripeness and there are more of them than you know what to do with, what else is there to do with them. I loved the idea of opening the freezer door three months hence and grabbing a relic from when the sky was bright and the air was fragrant with growth and living things: the scent of basil, the ripe red tomatoes, frozen in time.

But we ate the reserves within two weeks. Whoops. Guess it’s time to make another pot, just as soon as I can move freely around my apartment without breaking a sweat, I mean, glowing.

First, a word about beans: The dried ones and I are having a moment. So much cheaper than the canned varieties and with a more pleasant texture to boot, cooking up a pot of dried beans is not as much trouble as you think. When you are sitting down to an afternoon with the new Ruth Rendell, just set a pot of beans on to boil. By the time you’re ready for a snack, the beans will be tender. Unlike a pet flying squirrel, they don’t need much tending to.

Continue reading “Basic Beans and Summer Minestrone” »