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In full disclosure, it’s impossible for me to say I’m totally against mood-altering drugs. I love the way caffeine makes me feel. Today I had a full-caf latte (from my perfectly-sized Bialetti Moka), my first full-caf coffee in several weeks, if not months.
Anything is possible … Maybe I’ll paint that still-blank canvas. I may write a book today. I ought to redesign this website from scratch. I could drive my new car to Orlando to watch the shuttle launch. Or I could probably run there. Who knows? I can do anything!
Inspired by a tasty dinner prepared in Jon & Amanda’s kitchen and the ensuing conversation. Thanks, friends.
- Wustof 8″ chef’s knife (makes a ping-y sound when you pull it out of the knife block)
- Pasta roller (one day I’ll have the extruder, too)
- Mandoline slicer (you’d be surprised)
- French press coffee maker (one of the only two ways to make coffee)
- Bialetti Moka stovetop espresso maker (the other way)
- Pizza peel and stone (yes, you do need both)
My favorite gadgets I don’t own yet:
- Pasta extruder (the aforementioned)
- Burr grinder (if I could find one that was reasonably priced and smaller than a breadbox)
- Citrus juicer (I’m tired of picking out the seeds)
Even in manners. Just one more thing from The Rituals of Dinner …
“In many cultures, two people do not feel they can talk in a friendly way with each other unless they have first eaten together … A corresponding attitude is that which makes it impossible for a desert Arab who has once eaten salt with a man ever to treat him thereafter as an enemy. It is as though reconciliation must never be needed, because it has taken place already; enmity has been overcome in advance.”
I’ve been known to pick up an eclectic assortment of library books.
Exhibit A:
The Rituals of Dinner: The Origins, Evolution, Eccentricities, and Meaning of Table Manners by Margaret Visser
What I’ve learned:
“The Latin word for a hearth or fireplace is focus. [Sorry for not learning that in 10th grade, Mrs. Sullivan.] … The French word for a household is a foyer, literally, a ‘hearth.’”
“[In many cultures, both ancient and modern,] if a woman decides to stop cooking for her man, or if he refuses to be fed by her or insists on cooking for himself, the breakdown is an outward signal of a serious failure in their relationship … In Assam, south of Tibet, if a family member is furious enough to refrain from eating with the household for a whole twenty-four hours, the dissension is extremely grave. If he then decides to cook separately, he is taking an irreversible step; it must be followed by his building a new house and by a splitting up of lands and property. This is a terrible rite of rejection called ‘the throwing away of the cooking pots.’”
“In some African societies … [the husband's] avoiding the food in any particular wife’s dish is a deep insult, ritually suggesting that he suspects her of trying to poison him.”
On Saturday, Mike and I took a class at Whole Foods on grilling beef. Highly recommend it. A few things I learned:
- E. coli is the most commonly-found bacteria in beef, but it only grows in the cow’s intestinal tract. When beef is processed industrially (read: 400 cows an hour for 16 hours a day), the chances of puncturing the intestines are pretty high. When processed on smaller farms at a slower rate, the chances are almost negligible, making it far safer to eat rare beef.
- Assuming you’re eating beef that’s been handled well, much more
flavor is retained when it’s served rare. Next time you cook beef, try eating it one notch rarer than you normally do. Close your eyes if you have to, but it will be much tastier. - Beef should be thawed and brought to room temperature before cooking. This allows the meat to cook evenly, keeping you from having a raw center and charred outside. Do not skip this step. It’s that important.
- I kind of thought the draw of “free range” beef and poultry was just the touchy-feely aspect of happier chickens and cows. Not so. Free-range animals, as the name suggests, move around a lot more than industrially-raised animals in pens, which means they use their muscles, which develops flavor in the final product. It also means they’re leaner since they don’t stand in once place all day.
I came across a recipe for a Muffuletta Calzone last weekend and, in the interest of broadening our culinary horizons beyond Italian and Chinese food, I whipped it out for dinner last night.
Holy virgin. Outstanding.
Thanks to my favorite guy’s pizza dough (ask him about his secret ingredient) and my favorite knife, the whole thing was quick and easy.
Finely chop the following and combine in a large bowl:
- 1 cup mixed pickled vegetables (This was a new ingredient for me, but I found them in the grocery store near the olives. The mix I bought had carrots, cucumbers, cauliflower, onion, celery, and peppers, and I
rinsed them in cold water first to cut down on the saltiness.) - 1/4 cup (or more if you’re a Waldrop) pimiento-stuffed green olives
- 1/2 cup ham
- 8 thin slices Genoa salami
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
Add an 8-ounce bag of shredded Italian cheese blend, and fill your pizza dough with the mixture in calzone style. I could have easily made four calzones that were 6-8 inches along the straight side, but I made two and kept the rest of the filling for sandwiches (and wasn’t disappointed when I stuffed a pita with it today). Grate some parmesan on top and bake for about 20-25 minutes at 425 degrees.
Note: If you have a problem with salt, you should probably skip this one.
I have to confess no small amount of pride (both the sort-of-okay kind and the sinful kind) at the Easter feast my Mama and I put on this past Sunday. It was full of flavor in a way I’ve rarely seen (er, tasted), and all the various herbs and seasonings and sauces came together in a symphony of deliciousness that Mama and I were quite happy with, not to mention Daddy and Mikey.
Sweet-Hot Plum-Glazed Ham Due to a vast shortage of plum preserves in the greater Forsyth County area, I substituted apricot preserves for plum and reduced the red pepper by half. SL likes their stuff slightly more en fuego than I do.
Roasted Potatoes with Green Beans and Creamy Tarragon Dressing Used red potatoes rather than fingerlings (budget cuts, you know), and the whole thing was out of this world. Leftover dresssing was pretty good on a salad the next day, too.
Fruit Salad with Lime Syrup Fresh pineapple, mango, orange sections (with no membranes – very important), and seedless red grapes with a 1:1 simple syrup with lime juice and lime zest. Who needs dessert?
Two-Seed Rolls Originally called for three seeds, but nobody here likes fennel seeds so we stuck with sesame and poppy seeds. Mix seeds and one egg white together and dip uncooked rolls in the mixture (worked quite nicely with frozen rolls which thawed and rose overnight), then bake according to roll directions. Brush with melted butter after they come out of the oven. Swallow tongue.
Double Citrus Tart Holy schnikes this thing was out of this world. Very light orange and lemon tart with ginger snap crust. Wash it down with some sweetened whipped cream.
On the side panel of my cereal box is a recipe for a kind of trail mix. It calls for, among other things, cereal, dried cranberries, and peanuts. It notes that the peanuts are optional. Thanks for that.
This has no relevance; it's just funny.
Unless you’re baking*, I think everything in a recipe is optional. If you hate mushrooms, don’t disqualify a recipe that calls for them. They’re optional. If you don’t like tomatoes, use an alfredo sauce or olive oil on your pizza. If raisins make you cringe, add nuts instead.
*The exception is that if you’re baking, you’re essentially performing a chemistry experiment and almost all the ingredients are necessary. Never omit flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, eggs (unless you use egg substitutes), or yeast in a recipe. You can use chocolate chips in place of nuts, though. Yum.
At the request of my good friend Amanda, here’s a little insight into my taste buds from this past weekend. My love gave me a pasta machine for Christmas and we put it to good use. Here’s the plan:
BASIC EGG PASTA
3 c all-purpose flour (use whole wheat flour if you like, or a mix of both)
3 eggs, beaten
1 tsp salt
1 Tblsp olive oil
Shape the flour into a volcano on a smooth surface (I did it directly on my Corian countertop, but if you have tile or textured laminate, use a smooth cutting board or marble slab). Combine remaining 3 ingredients in a bowl, then pour into the well of the volcano. Make sure the structural integrity of your volcano is sound, lest you end up with a flowing mass of egg lava.
Incorporate flour into egg mixture with a fork until egg mixture takes the form of dough, then begin kneading dough and incorporating more flour. Work about 4-6 T water into the dough, one T at a time. Keep incorporating flour until dough is smooth and not sticky and easily rebounds when you press a fingertip into it. Cover and let dough rest for 30-60 mins, then cut into the shapes of your choice with a pasta machine.
If you don’t have a pasta machine, you can easily roll it out and cut with a pizza cutter, pastry wheel, or shape it into small ropes with your hands. Just remember that it will double (at least) in size when you cook it, so don’t make your noodles too large.
Cook in boiling, salted water until noodles float, 2-3 minutes.
CRAB SAUCE
Start with a thick Bechamel of 3 T butter, 3 T flour, 1/2 t salt, and 1/2 cup skim milk plus 1/2 cup half-and-half. You can use only milk if you like; we were just feeling rich.
Once sauce thickens, add dry white wine until sauce reaches desired consistency (it took a little over 1/4 cup for me). Add 3 cloves minced garlic (I added garlic here so it wouldn’t be fully cooked, giving the sauce a little bite and a more garlicky flavor; achieve a milder flavor by sauteeing garlic in the butter you melt for the Bechamel), about 8 oz fresh crabmeat, and lots of parmesan. Toss with cooked fresh pasta.
Makes enough to feed 2-3 people.
It’s not often that a place or product or experience lives up to the hype. There’s a lot of hype going on in the world and not enough excellence. Imagine, then, my surprise and joy upon finding out that Paula Deen’s Savannah restaurant, The Lady and Sons, was far superior to anything I expected.
The fried chicken alone was a religious experience. The Lady, I believe, 
brines her chicken before battering and frying, because the chicken itself was just as delicious as the crispy outside, and that’s hard to achieve. I can’t find a recipe from Paula to this effect, but I can’t imagine getting chicken this tasty without it.
I don’t have the space (and suspect you don’t have the attention span) to describe everything here, but if you have a chance, go. And try something you don’t typically enjoy – like black-eyed peas – because they just might surprise you.
