Pink of Perfection

I’ve always loved that friend in French is copain, the person you share your bread with. Kristina Strain of Sweet Fern Handmade and I are breaking bread together today and spreading it with homemade butter.

Like Buttah
from Kristina Strain of Sweet Fern Handmade

Call me an appliance whore. I have a waffle iron, a panini press, an electric teakettle, for crying out loud. My coleslaw takes three minutes in the food processor, my homemade bread takes all the effort of measuring out ingredients and dumping them into the machine. In addition to all this flummery, I also own this, the star culinary workhorse, the venerable KitchenAid stand mixer.

Cakes and Christmas cookies are a snap, a breeze. Meringue is a matter of course, a ho-hum affair. Plug, dump, and turn it on. Wait while the glorious beater works its wonderful magic. I am no stranger to singing the praises of this member of my kitchen team.

Before last month, however, I hadn’t considered it part of the perpetual Appalachian-farmer’s-wife fantasy I’m always pretending at, making my own bread and cheese and canning enough tomatoes to choke a hog. But, behold: now I get it. For that mixer is more than just a whipper of egg whites, a mascerater of pie dough. What that appliance is, friends, is a perfectly serviceable, modern-day butter churn.

Butter making. It’s really this simple: heavy cream, stand mixer, patience. I was so eager to try it out, to experience the beauty of fresh butter, to escape from the drudgery of stoic, indentical, individually-wrapped fat sticks to the world of mellow, halcyon, oleic bliss.

So, here’s what I did. I bought a quart of heavy cream at the grocery store. I brought it home. I plugged in my mixer, dumped in the cream, and turned it on. I kept it on a low setting, since I didn’t relish the thought of wiping thousands of little globby butter-blobs off my kitchen walls. Then, I let the mixer work its aforementioned magic. I washed a whole sinkful of dishes, swept, mopped, and cleared the crumbs out of the toaster before the cream began to coalesce into butter.

Be warned: the cream will begin to thicken. It will get thicker and thicker before your eyes. Triumph and success will be at hand. If you’re me, you might even dance around and shout, “hell yeah!”, scaring the dog. Then, as quickly as the coagulation began, it will dwindle away. The cream will get thin and watery again. You will be downtrodden; you might even say, oh, shit. Perservere, for you are close to the promised land, the splendid moment where the cream suddenly releases its buttermilk, casts off its old life as a liquid, and becomes butter.

Drain off as much buttermilk as you can (squeezing the butter helps), and transfer the solid butter to a big bowl of cold water. Save the buttermilk for pancakes tomorrow morning. Wash the butter in the cold water, squeezing some more. It’ll give up a little additional buttermilk, making the water cloudy. Dump it and rinse the butter in fresh water. You’re done.

The fun part, for me, was adding flavorings. My quart of cream yielded 12 oz (three sticks) of butter, so I made three different flavors.

Continue reading “Ode to Bread and Butter” »

As if the sweet grass-scented air and lake swimming weren’t enough, one of the nicest things about getting away for the weekend with friends is the chance to ask questions that seem either too banal or too large for the span of a dinner date. With two days of open time stretching before you like an unfettered clothesline, it’s easy to bandy back and forth from “what fulfills you?” to “Beatles or Stones?”

I like to comb through the rhythms of my friends’ days, what makes up a dream life, and always, what they tend to make for weeknight dinners. And then when the conversation quiets, it’s time to dive back into the lake, or take a hike by some waterfalls, or drape your legs over the arm of a rocking chair on the porch and sip at a gin and tonic.

This weekend I learned that if all else fails, South Korea may well be the answer when playing the 20th Anniversary Edition of Trivial Pursuit, that laying in the sun on a floating dock until your swimsuit dries is one of life’s greatest pleasures, and that couscous salad makes a great go-to weeknight meal (thanks, Alison). I also got to teach two of my favorite lessons: how to do the electric slide, and why compound butter makes everything better.

Shallot-Lime-Chive Compound Butter

This is one of my favorite things about the summer. This butter makes already fantastic summer foods like grilled corn, potatoes, and steamed green beans even better.

1 medium-sized shallot, minced
juice from one lime
1/4 cup snipped chives
1 stick softened butter

Stir together all ingredients. Turn out onto a square of plastic wrap, then wrap the butter, and roll it into a thick log the very same way you probably used to roll Play-Doh into ropes. Refrigerate until firm, and then slice into rounds to serve.

Couscous-Lentil Salad
Serves 6

I must confess that I adore Near East Toasted Pinenut and Garlic Couscous. I know, it’s probably very “inauthentic” of me to like a food product that comes with a flavor packet, but I think it’s just delicious.

1 cup French green lentils
1 box Near East Toasted Pinenut Couscous
1 shallot, minced
1 small head purple endive, sliced crosswise into thin ribbons
1 1/2 cup shredded green beans
1/2 cup roughly chopped basil

Mustardy Vinaigrette
Makes 3/4 of a cup (tip: shake this up in an old jam jar and use the leftover to dress your salads the rest of the week)

1 teaspoon dijon mustard
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
salt & pepper

In a medium-sized saucepan, bring lentils to boil with four cups water. Reduce heat, and let simmer until tender, about 15-25 minutes. Meanwhile, cook couscous according to package instructions. Drain lentils and rinse with cool water, then shake dry in a colander. Fold together lentils, couscous, shallot, green beans, endive and basil, and serve with some of the mustardy vinaigrette over a tangle of mixed greens.

• High bandwidth

In Texas, women say they’ve got to “put on their face” before they’ll do so much as run to the post office. This could mean they are shellacking on an inch-thick mask, but in general, the sentiment ain’t bad: spruce yourself up a bit before you go out. But I know I am not alone in the land of lazy youth, and I rarely wear make-up on a day to day basis. As for my big night out looks, I’ve been relying on the old standbys of red lipstick and liquid liner for nearly a decade. I need help, and who better to help but a friend?
Continue reading “I Feel Pretty, Oh So Pretty: Five Minute Face and Smokey Eyes Makeup Tips” »