btietw: expanded vacation edition

i cannot choose just one best thing from all the good things that we ingested on our vacation. don't ask me to.

1) fayette hero: the cabin that we stayed in up in the maine wilderness was right down the road from the summer camp where stephen spent the first eighteen summers of his life—first as a faculty brat because his dad was head councelor, then as a camper, then, god help those children, as a councelor—and where wile is destined to spend his summers, unless he inherits his mother's profound aversion to any sort of organized group activity, especially ones that involve sleeping on bunks or being made to play "nukem". shudder. my parents finally wore me down one summer by signing me up for what they promised was an arts camp (day camp only, they knew better than to push their luck on a sleepaway camp). the first half of the first day was fine: we painted, threw some pottery, and had some snacks. then after lunch they told us we were going out to the back field to play softball!! when my dad came to pick me up at the end of the day i wouldn't speak to him, then later told him and my stepmom that they were liars and i wasn't going back. of course since i was eight, and the tuition was already paid, i went back. but not quietly. i think the next summer they let me just stay home and read and draw pictures—when i felt like it, not when it was "drawing period"—which is all i wanted to do in the first place. but stephen loved camp, still loves camp, and for his sake i hope that wile will love camp too.

but so anyway, the camp is in a little tiny town called fayette, and in fayette is the fayette store, and at the fayette store you can get a fayette hero. stephen has, in the past, pontificated on the glores of the fayette hero, but i'm pretty sure that the last time we were up there, some years ago, i wasn't eating meat and therefore didn't have the hero. in fact, i'm positive, because this is a hero i would have remembered.... the bun is like a hot dog bun on steroids, and it's chewy without being gummy, just the right balance of dense and light. i got oil + vinegar and mayo, and for my meat i chose ham and salami, and there were about three slices of each, which is so perfect—i hate when delis stuff my sub (hero, whatever) full of meat like they're doing me a favor or something. then there was one slice of white american cheese which i didn't ask for, but i was really glad it was there. i asked for whatever toppings they had except the green peppers, and i got tomatoes, halved kalamata olives (not crappy canned black olives!), and awesome crispy pungent dill pickle chips. it was the most perfect hero/sub/grinder i have ever eaten.

2) lobster cocktail: stephen's family all love lobster, with stephen's love eclipsing everyone else's. when they would have lobster night at camp, stephen would take the bodies from all the kids who just wanted to eat the tail and claws and be done with it and sit out on the dock working on them out until he had scavenged every bit of lobster flesh that he could. me, on the other hand, well....i'm not really on board the lobster trolly. i'd much rather have a good soft shell crab or some scallops. my problem with the lobster is that i don't like the tail—the claws, however, i adore. but it doesn't seem right to order a whole lobster just to eat the claws, so i usually get a lobster roll and enjoy the mingling of lobster meat with mayo and a hot buttered roll, mmmm. but then we went to j's oyster bar, a great dive-y spot in portland (where we spent the last weekend of our vacation), where they offer what they call a "lobster cocktail" and i call "the answer to my prayers". it's five meaty de-shelled claws on a plate with some cocktail sauce. hallelujah!

3) clam chowder: i only had one bite of this chowder, but it still qualifies for a btietw. perry ordered it at the dry dock, another waterfront restaurant in portland. i think i may have to write in to gourmet and see if they can get me the recipe. it was creamy but you could still really taste the seafood stock, the potatoes were red and cut into perfect little 1/4-inch cubes, and there was just exactly the right amount of fresh dill. i'm usually fairly wary of the dill—even the littlest bit too much can cause total havoc. but this was absolutely right. yummy.

here is a picture of perry and wile during that meal, communing with the deeply unhappy, overheated man in the stuffy lobster suit who wasn't too interested in making nice with the baby:



please note the boots.

btietw: the return!

yes, it's been a long...oh my god! i didn't realize it had been that long. wow. okay. let's not waste anymore time, then.

so, but, oddly, if you read that last btietw that i just linked to there, you'll notice that i end it by asking about squash. and if you didn't read it and are too lazy to even just click on the link and skip to the last sentence, i'll tell you what i asked: how can i cook the squash so that i'll eat it? and enjoy it?

why is that odd, you ask? because the best thing i ate this week was: squash! ooo, creepy....

so apparently last week i was having the same thoughts that i was having 15 months ago when i wrote that post, which was that i need to be eating more vegetables but that the selection, in the winter months, if you're trying to eat relatively locally and therefore seasonally, is rather slim. so i just bit the bullet and got a kabocha squash and figured i'd find a way to make it palatable.

this is a kabocha squash:

it's about the size of a volleyball. (not that i ever played volleyball. well, i thought about playing volleyball, in 8th grade, when i was finally allowed to play contact sports after being sidelined for most of my childhood due to an enlarged spleen, which had finally been excavated from my abdomen the summer before 8th grade. but i went to the first volleyball meeting and asked the gym teacher/coach/drill seargent if there was going to be practice every day, since i had ballet class on thursdays, and her way of answering me was to turn to the assembled crowd of volleyball hopefuls and bark "i have just been asked if there will be practice every day and the answer is yes there will be practice every day and it will last all afternoon if you want to play volleyball for me i will need your full commitment there is no being late there is no missing practice there are no excuses!" so i walked out and never looked back, which was really the best decision, since i discovered in gym class later that semester that i am possibly the worst volleyball player in the history of the universe. i don't think wrists my size were meant to make contact with a hard leather ball.)

wait, where am i? okay, right, i bought a big ugly squash. if you're wondering, like stephen was, why i chose the kabocha (besides it's awesome name: kabocha!), it's because it was the only squash that i hadn't ever had before, so it the only one that i didn't know i didn't like. acorn, butternut, spaghetti? yuck, yuck, yuck. kobacha was a blank slate.

the first night, i just roasted it. you know, just to get to know it a bit. i got to use my big cleaver to hack it to peices, which was worth the price of the squash even if i ended up hating every bite. whack! whack! anyway, per instructions from jeremiah tower, we just ate the roasted pieces witha drizzle of white truffle oil. which was, of course......i mean, i would eat cardboard with white truffle oil on it. when i was apprentice chef-ing in the insane italian restaurant, i used to take the misto of truffle oil that we kept on the pass-through and use it like chloroseptic. yum. so, yeah, it was good with the truffle oil, but it was still too....squash-y. i needed to disguise it more. though already i could tell that i'd chosen the right squash for me: it was less sweet than the others, and it wasn't at all stringy.

next i made some squash "pizzas" on a couple of little multi-grain ciabattas. they were good, but it was almost too much disguising. wile liked them, though! and getting him to eat any vegetables is even more of a challenge than getting me to eat squash.... (though last night i made chicken and mushrooms and gave him a couple pieeces of chicken that i meticulously cleaned the mushrooms off, and what did he want? of course. he ate all of the mushrooms off stephen's plate (i'd already eaten mine).)

then, i found it. the answer. a panade! obviously!

yeah, i'd never heard of a panande before either. but if alice waters says to make it, i make it. here's the recipe i (kind of) used:

5 onions, sliced thin
olive oil or duck fat (duck fat! duck fat!)
6 cloves garlic, sliced thin
2 bay leaves
12 sprigs thyme
1 cup red wine
3 quarts chicken stock
2 lbs squash
1 lb chanterelle mushrooms
salt + pepper
10 slices stale country-style bread
approx. 3 oz. reggiano parmesan cheese

(those are the amounts if you're making enough for 8-10 people. since i wasn't, and since i only had what i thought was about 1 lb of squash, i cut it in half.)

preheat oven to 375.

stew the onions in 1/4 cup of duck fat (seriously, it is worth taking the time and effort of browning a serious number of duck legs to end up with a pint jar of duck fat, such as the one that used to live in our fridge until i finished it off with this recipe) over medium heat, adding the garlic and herbs once they've begun to soften. cook until onions just begin to brown, about 20-30 minutes. add the red wine and reduce by half. Add the stock and simmer 30 minutes.

prepare the squash: if you have pre-roasted chunks, as i did, peel them and slice them up. if you have raw squash, cut it open (whack! whack!), peel it, seed it, and slice it into 1/8"-thick pieces. meanwhile, saute the musrooms (our farmer's market only had cremini and shitake, so that's what i used instead of chanerelles, and it was just fine) in some olive oil until brown. salt and pepper them, and add to the stock mixture. then throw some duck fat into the mushroom-browning pan and toast the slices of bread in it until light brown.

assembly: cover the bottom of a casserole dish with a layer of bread. ladle in some of the stock mixture to cover (note: alice doesn't say so, but in the future i will take the thyme stalks and bay leaves out of the stock mixture at this point, rather than picking them out of my esophogus later. lazy cookbook editing....), then throw on the squash in a single layer. top with more bread, ladle on the rest of the stock mixture, then grate on the cheese. bake it for 40 minutes covered and 40 minutes uncovered (i cooked mine for less time since my squash was pre-roasted).

the recipe then says to serve it in bowls with excess broth from the casserole dish ladled around it. i was in the middle of cooking the damn thing and reading that part of the instructions for at least the fifth time when it finally dawned on me: "am i making soup here?" according to the food network, yes, i was. but i didn't want to be! so only used 3/4 as much stock as the recipe called for. the way i made it, it came out less like a stew/soup and more like a really amazing stuffing without any of the disgusting squishy raisins and celery that keep me from eating the stuffing at every thanksgiving at my in-laws' house ew ew ew gross. ahem. so, adjust the amount of broth you use according to what you're looking for, a soup or a side dish.

and this was the best thing i ate this week not only because it was totally delicious, but because it's a new preparation for me. when i can't think of a way to pull something together from what i have in loitering in the fridge, i usually fall back on a pasta-based concoction. now i can start experimenting with this panade concept. goodbye orecchiette, hello stale bread. very exciting.

btietw: queens edition

so, the inevitable has come to pass: the previa, she is no more. sometime last week, the alternator stopped....alternating? see, i almost sounded like i knew what i was talking about for a second there, and then the truth came shining through. anyway, the car done wouldn't start. every time stephen had to move it for alternate side parking, he had to use my dad's christmas gift. oh, and the inspection was about to be up. so when the weekend rolled around, i let any hope of getting some non-wile time go, and focused instead on finding an activity that would get us out of the house. we hit on this plan: wile and i would go to the queens zoo (pumas!) while stephen tried to find somewhere to try to answer the question: will a car that won't start independently pass inspection? and possibly test-drive some cars.

we were the only people at the zoo, since it was f-ing freezing out, but wile loved it. on the way there he kept saying he wanted to see "lions and hoshies", and i kept trying to prepare him for a letdown. but as we pulled up to the zoo, there were some big old hoshies, out in the paddock. hot damn. the hoshies were in the "farm" end of the zoo, along with really amazing hairy steer:

and the biggest white mutant rabbits i've ever seen. they might have had big fangs, i didn't get close enough to see.

over on the non-farm side of the zoo, there were a buttload of birds, hibernating bears (aka fuzzy rocks), an m.i.a. lynx, coyotes howling at a passing firetruck, and pumas who wanted to eat wile. i swear. we went down to their area and checked them out, they were walking around, everything was cool, wile liked them. then as we were walking away, i sensed a movement behind me, turned around, and saw that one of the pumas had come right up to the glass and had a bead on wile. she was watching him like he was a tenderloin with legs. the look on her face was kinda like the one on the puma on the left in this pic:

in.tent. her head followed wile's every move. i hustled us over to the aviary to see the nice birdies.

stephen returned from his errands (answer to the question: no, a car that needs outside help to start will not pass inspection, and so must be taken off the street and put out to pasture in stephen's parents' driveway....), saw a few animals with us, and we jump-started our way back on to the road. on the way in to the zoo, we had passed a couple of empanada places—one was more crowded, but looked less interesting. so we went to the less-crowded one, empanandas del parque, which i just had a feeling about.

apparently my radar was working. the menu was nothing but empanadas, your choice of corn, organic whole grain, or flour shell. corn seemed to be the right choice. i put together a meat sampler: beef, chicken, pork, shrimp, fish.

the shrimp was my favorite, with little rock shrimp that popped like caviar in the potato filling. the pork was a close second runner-up, the beef was good but too salty. the fish was the weakest, bland. they came with this fantastic housemade hot sauce that wasn't too hot, all garlic and scallions and cilantro and vinegar. delicious. and they cater with mini empanadas, hello wile's 3rd birthday party menu! i also see a sack of empanadas picked up on the way to shea in my future sometime this summer....

btietw

even before i got a jewish best friend and a jewish husband, i had been to my fair share of passover seders. when i was little, my stepmom's friend judy kesselman would throw these enormous seders every year and we'd go and eat all the good food and ignore all the god talk (not that there was much; these were, after all, my stepmom's hippie jewish friends). so since my youth, i've loved me a good seder. and the best part of seder is the charoset (alternately spelled haroset, charoses, charoseth, haroses, and probably a dozen other ways).

i love it so much that in the last few years i have volunteered to make it for our seders with stephen's family so that a) i can make extra to hoard all to myself, and b) i can guarantee that it's going to be good.

so what the hell is (c)haroset(h)(ses)? ritual-wise, it's supposed to represent the mortar that the enslaved jews used to make the bricks that they built the pyramids with back when they were enslaved by the pharoah in egypt, before moses came and did his thing with the plagues and the parting of the sea and all that jazz. culinary-wise, it's a pitch-perfect mixture of grated apples, nuts, honey, wine, lemon juice, and cinnamon.

you can tweak the proportions to your taste, but the formula i follow is: about 6 cups grated apples, 1-1/2 cups finely chopped nuts, 1/3 cup honey, 1/4 cup wine, juice of two lemons, 1/2 t cinnamon. i use granny smith apples or a mix of grannies and another tart red apple like a winesap. for the wine, you want a light red, a little spicy is nice. this year i used a tinto roble. for the love of all that is holy do not use manischewitz.

i used to grate the apples by hand, but went for the food processor this year because i was making a double batch, and....well, i prefer the texture that you get when it's grated by hand, but if you're making a lot—and are looking for a way to involve a 2-yr. old—the f.p. does just fine. and if you've already got the f.p. in use, you can chop the nuts in it. then just throw all the ingredients together, and mix it all up with your hands. microwave the honey for a minute on low before mixing it in, makes it easier to disperse. then throw it in the fridge and wait.... it's better the next day, and will keep for a good long time (2 weeks? who knows. it doesn't last long in my fridge).

i've already bought more apples to make another batch....

sucks, because i have some killer dog photos, and was finally going to do last week's btietw. maybe blogger thinks i should go fold the laundry or do

btietw

this week's winner is the aforementioned pasta with beets.

i had roasted some beets the night before but not eaten them, and wasn't feeling too psyched about just eating sliced roasted beets. i considered going out to get some goat cheese to slather them with, but this was day 4 of last week's monsoon season, and i pretty quickly decided it wasn't worth it. then i remembered that alice waters had a recipe for pasta with beets in chez panisse vegetables...which turned out to be a recipe for pasta with beet greens, which sounded good despite the golden currants (gick!), but didn't solve my problem of what to do with the beets themselves. and i knew that somewhere, somewhere, i really had read a recipe for pasta with beets....

finally i remembered where: in more home cooking, sequel to home cooking, by laurie colwin. of course. i should know by now that those two books are where i should always look first when i'm in the throes of culinary indecision/uninspiration. laurie colwin was a novelist (who sadly died about ten years ago at age 42) who also loved to cook and eat and wrote for gourmet fairly regularly, and hc and mhc are collections of those essays and transcripts of talks she gave (the recipes are worked in to the essays). she's funny, quirky, unpretentious, and the recipes are simple and unfailingly successful.

so what i ended up making was a combination of laurie's recipe (she uses angel hair pasta, which i find annoying, and chicken broth, which i didn't have in the house) and alice's recipe (yes to the greens, which i had in the fridge; no to the nasty currants):

chop up as much garlic as you like (i used two big honking cloves), saute with about 1/4 cup olive oil. dice your roasted beets and throw them in for a minute (you can also start with diced raw beets, just saute them for longer). wash and chop the greens and throw them in with some salt and pepper, rosemary, and a dash of cayenne or red pepper flakes. saute quickly until greens just wilt, then throw on a splash of vinegar (red wine, balsamic, whatever). mix with pasta (i used spaghetti), adding more olive oil and/or a spalsh of pasta water to coat if you need to.

and look how pretty!



that was actually batch two, made a day later without greens (i used them all up in the first batch).

wile recommends it be eaten with your hands. beet chunks may be grasped between thumb and forefinger and inserted into the mouth, or taken from mama's hand with the mouth. for the pasta, grasp strands at each end firmly in your fists, pull taut, and bite from the middle.

btietw

though i'm very happy that summer seems to be packing up and leaving and taking the humidity and heat rash with it, it does make me sad when i think about what the farmer's market is going to look like in a month or so: squash squash and more squash. so i'm savoring the last days of the summer harvest, especially the heirloom tomatoes. i like all the varieties: the firm, savory, virtually seedless italian hearts; the tangy green zebras; the meaty brandywines.... but my favorites are the ridiculously sweet yellow ones, the hawaiian pineapples and orange strawberries. i'm not sure which one it was that we had this week, but stephen and i ate it sliced and sprinkled with fleur de sel that susie brought us from paris and it was not only the best thing i've eaten this week but one of the best things i've eaten ever. i didn't want to eat the last slice becasue i didn't want it to be over. if you can get to a farmer's market and get your hands on one of these babies before they disappear, do it. yes, they cost like 4 times as much as regular tomatoes. and they are absolutely worth it.

btietw: in + out

before the cali readership gets too excited, let me tell you that the title is not referring to in + out burgers. though they are right at the top of my list of things to eat when i finally do get out to the other coast, just below chez panisse and the french laundry....

no, i mean "in + out" as in "of my house".

the best thing i ate in my house was a batch of the much-requested muhamarra. remember when i said that the hearts of palm dip is the most crowd-pleasing thing that i make? i may have to amend that statement. when i served the muhamarra at my birthday party, it inspired such a feeding frenzy that susan and i had to whip up another batch during the party. as stephen says, it's the perfect combination of flavors: sweet (pomegranate syrup), tangy (lemon juice), bitter (walnuts), earthy (olive oil), spicy (hot pepper), garlicy (garlic).... i can only make a double batch at this point, a single one goes too quickly and makes us sad. so without further ado, the muhammara:

2/3 c breadcrumbs (i think it works best when i use slightly stale slices of bread)
1 T garlic
2/3 c walnuts
2 lg. red peppers, roasted (or the equivilent thereof from a jar/can)
2 t cumin (i use less, but i'm not a huge cumin fan)
1/2 t red pepper flakes
2 T lemon juice
2 T pomegranate syrup
1 T water
1/4 c olive oil

whip up all of the ingredients in the food processor, in the order i listed them, drizzling in the liquids through the hole in the lid with the motor running. serve with pita chips, blue tortilla chips, ak-mak, or a spoon.


the best thing i ate out of my house was my meal at la lunchonette (18th + 10th) with the f.i.t. ladies. i was going to pick one dish to write about, but the meal as a whole really was wonderful, there was no standout, everything just worked together perfectly and seamlessly. we did my favorite thing and got lots of small plates: artichoke vinaigrette; beet salad; goat cheese is puff pastry; seared scallops with a chunky tomato-y sauce; sweetbreads (okay, i was the only one eating those...); escargot in a cognac and garlic sauce; a cheese plate with a smoky cow's milk cheese, a cheddar-y cow's milk cheese, a boucheron-esque goat cheese (crumbly in the middle, brie-like on the edges, one of wile's favorite foods, of course, at $13/lb....), a triple creme, and a bleu (gay will be posting the names of the best ones on savortooth soon. ahem.); and a creme caramel to finish things off. it was all very simple and french, perfectly executed. nothing fancy, nothing surprising, just great french comfort food. and the place itself is so utterly charming—brick walls, low ceilings, wide-plank wood floors, a worn-in feeling—that you just can't help but love it and feel at home. that all said...the hostess/perhaps owner woman was a leetle intense/insane. the whole time we were there she was scurrying around like a ferret, leaving a trail of tension in her wake. but besides that, it was just lovely.

btietw

due to the soul-crushing humidity, i actually haven't eaten all that much in the past week..... i've been living mostly on seltzer-and-juice. i'm not kidding. if you live in new york, you understand. if you don't, well, i don't want to hear about it if it's not 170% humidity where you are. (as i'm writing this, the cats are looking at me like "cry me a river, fleshy. try dealing with this wearing all this fur. there's a reason that we lie on the floor like road kill all day." to which i say, "well, then maybe you shouldn't try to wriggle away and/or claw me when i'm trying to brush some of that fur off of you, hmmmmmmmm?")

where was i? oh, right, food. so of the bare minimum of caloric intake that i managed this past week, i'd say the best thing i had was an old favorite: hearts of palm dip. i got the recipe from the times a few years ago, and fell head over heels in love with it the first time i made it. it's barely even a recipe: you take two cans of hearts of palm and throw them in a food processor with a clove or two of garlic (do the garlic on its own first for more even distribution), puree till chunky/smooth, and then pour in 1/3 cup good olive oil while the motor is running till it gets fluffy (honestly, it gets fluffy. cloudlike. like puffy cumulous clouds). the recipe calls for chopped scallions, but after the first couple of times, i decided to skip those. oh and stir in a pinch of salt just before you serve it. it's the easiest and most crowd-pleasing thing that i know how to make (though not universally crowd-pleasing.... just after i first made it, stephen's grandfather took us out to peter luger for his birthday, and i started to talk about the dip—i believe i said something like, "i just found the best recipe for hearts of palm..." and stephen's granfather said "jane [his ladyfriend] got some hearts of palm last weekend...and she ruined them with all this garlic!" at which point i decided to move the conversation in another direction....). it's best on crostini, i think.

bonus: the most disappointing thing i ate this week (well, actually, drank): the new green tea frappucino from starbucks. what can i say, i was intrigued, i hunted it down. it tastes basically like melted green tea ice cream, which isn't shocking, and which is actually god for the first few sips. but by the time i got to the middle of the cup, i was completely over it. too sweet, too glutinous. ick. this sounds much better.

p.s.: i don't know why there are so many parentheses in this post, so don't ask me.

btietw

the best thing i've eaten this week was the dessert at meg's birthday dinner, on friday. we took the birthday lady to miracle grill, which was great—the much-hyped garden is as fantabulous as everyone says it is; the service was great; the peach sangria was yummy; and my grilled shrimp, mango, jicama, and toasted pumpkin seed salad was the perfect dish for a summer night out. but, no offense to miracle grill, the best thing that i ate that night wasn't from their kitchen.

for dessert, liz (aka icebox) brought cream puffs from choux factory, a japanese-owned cream-puff store near her apartment. when we talked about her bringing them, she said how hard it is to not stop for a cream puff every single time she walks by this place. now that i've had them, i can absolutely sympathize. these things were so unbelievably luscious and perfect. they were rich but not too rich, sweet but not too sweet. the inside was gooey, the pastry was flaky, the sugar on top was crunchy. plus they looked like little cauliflower (choux), which means many bonus points in my book.

i took the leftovers home and gave one to stephen....i think if i brought home cream puffs every time i went out, he'd be willing to babysit whenever i wanted. i may have set a bad precedent here....

btietw

as you already know if you live on the east coast, it rained on sunday. no, i'm sorry, that's wrong—it motherfucking rained on sunday. as stephen said, "i've seen it rain harder, and i've seen it rain longer, but i've never seen it rain this hard for this long." pouring, pounding rain for at least 12 hours straight. so i decided that it was the perfect day to cook up the short ribs that i bought at the farmer's market a couple of weeks ago and that had been lingering in the freezer ever since.

i'd never cooked short ribs before, but i was prety sure i should just braise them. i looked on the interweb, and got confirmation of my hunch, plus some hot tips. so here's what i did:

1) browned the ribs. which is absolutely necessary when braising any kind of meat, but a pain in the ass, what with the spattering oil and the entire house ending up smelling like fried. but i found a new method, from james beard, via jeremiah tower, by way of regina shrambling. throw them in the broiler! so much freakin easier! just brush or spray the meat with some olive oil, salt + pepper it, put it in the broiler, and turn it turn it turn it so that each side gets some flame. granted, i had to clean the greasy broiler pan, but i think if i had used heavy duty foil i wouldn't have even had to do that. so. much. better.

2) put them in a deep ovenproof pot/pan/dutch oven along with a quart or so of beef stock (enough to cover them almost entirely), a sliced-up onion, some fresh herbs (thyme, sage, rosemary), and a couple of splashes of sherry vinegar. then i stuck it in a 300˚ oven for about 3 hours.

3) made a sauce. i took the meat and bones (which the meat had fallen off, yum) out of the pot and set them aside. then i de-greased the stock, which could have been a much easier process if we owned a dang baster and i could have just sucked the layer of grease off the top. as it was, i had to pour the stock through a strainer (to weed out the onions and branches of herbs) into a gravy separator, then pour it back out into a different pot (because i had to do it in batches, since there was about 4 cups of stock and the gravy separator holds about a cup and a half). which was a whole lot of effort, and a whole lot of implements that needed to be washed. don't let this happen to you! go forth, procure a baster! also, tie up your herbs with twine or wrap them in cheesecloth so that you can just pluck them out in one fell swoop.

anyway, once it was all de-greased, i threw it back in the original pot, threw the bones back in, and put it on the stove on high heat to reduce. i also splashed in a litle more sherry vinegar, like the internet had told me to do. which, when i tasted the sauce a little later, i thought was a big mistake; it was really vinegary. but once it went on the meat, it was perfect. the meat is so rich, it really needs a sauce with bite to balance it out. then i made a quick faux-roux, by melting a couple of tablespoons of butter in the microwave and whisking in a couple of tablespoons of flour, which i whisked in to the stock when it was just about reduced as far as i wanted it. it's right when it will coat a spoon like cough medicine. then i took out the bones, turned off the heat, and put the meat back in for a couple of minutes to warm back up.

all done! it was warm and delicious and just the right thing for a rainy, gross day.

oh, and i made some swiss chard to go with it, which was delicious. i used to go through a totally annoying blanch-then-saute song and dance with greens like swiss card and spinach, becuase somewhere along the way some cookbook or food show or something told me that you couldn't just saute the greens without blanching them first or they would get too oily by the time they were done. or too soggy. or something. i don't even remember anymore. i just did it, like looking in the bathroom mirror while i brush my teeth, another unnecessary habit of mine that i have absolutely no good reason or justification for. anyway, when i was down in sunny port st. lucie, my mom just threw her spinach in the pan with a little olive oil, sauteed it for a couple of minutes, and it was perfect. huh. so i did that with the chard, sprinkling in a little water and salt too, and it was the best chard i've ever cooked or eaten.

btietw

i am currently the kind of tired where my eye sockets are burning. wile was up at 5 this morning, carrying on, and we ended up downstairs making toast at 5:30. he, with that wise toddler intuition, asked to watch bob the builder after he ate his toast, so i got some sleep on the couch for a couple of hours (two bob episodes, one firetruck dvd, and some playing with his wooden food that i only know about because i woke up with wooden carrots and bread and apple slices strewn about my head), but it wasn't the good kind of sleep, it was the kind of sleep where i woke up feeling more exhausted than when i started. and now wile is napping, and i should be too, but i can't fall alseep. so, let's talk about food.

my favorite meal this week was the one i made on sunday night. yes, i made dinner on mother's day. the horror! except not, because 1) i like to cook, 2) stephen took wile into the yard to play baseball so i got to cook alone, which is a rare and beautiful thing these days, 3) stephen did the dishes, 4) i knew what i wanted and if stephen had insisted on making it just because "it's mother's day and mothers don't cook on mother's day" or some such nonsense, he would have had to ask me questions and checked in with me a bunch of times and it would have been not at all the "break" for me that it would seem, and 5) we had gone out to a great dinner the night before.

i made pork chops and a salad, which sounds pretty boring, no? except. i've discovered, thanks to cook's illustrated, the perfect way to cook pork chops. it's a little wacky, but you really honestly do end up with the juiciest pork chops ever. here's the deal:

take your pork chops (bone-in or bone-out, but bone-in is better; either way, try to get them at least 1" thick) and rub them all over with some vegetable oil, then salt and pepper them. on one side, sprinkle with a pinch of sugar. if there's a lot of fat on one edge, make a couple of cuts into it, just down to the meat, so that the chop doesn't curl up in the pan. then grab a non-stick pan and put it onto a cold burner. yes, cold. take the chops and put them in the pan sugar-side down, pressing them into the pan. (i've used two kinds of pans for this technique, a calphalon and a cast iron pan. with the calphalon, i found that i needed to put a little bit of oil into the pan, in addition to the oil that i rubbed on the chops, to keep then from sticking totally. with the cast iron pan, not so much. so, see how it goes with your pan.) turn the heat on under the pan to medium high, and don't go far away. the chops should start sizzling within 2 minutes; if they don't, turn the heat up. let them cook for somewhere between 2-1/2 and 7 minutes, until they're browned on the one side (that's why you put the sugar on, to help with the browning). then turn them over, turn the heat down to low, cover the pan, and find your meat thermometer. i usually start checking them after about 3 minutes, 2 minutes if they're on the thinner side—you want them to come up to 140˚ in the center. this could take up to 10 minutes, depending on your pan, what "low" means on your stove, the meat itself, etc etc. when they've reached temp, take them out and throw them on a plate, tented with aluminum foil.

then make a sauce in the pan. my favorite thing to do is saute some shallots in the residual pork fat, then throw in some brandy, let it cook down, and finish it with a tablespoon or so of butter. i've also made a good one with just a 1/2 cup of vegetable broth and a couple of teaspoons of mustard, boiled down a little bit. last night i wanted the brandy sauce but we were out of brandy and shallots, so i used some slices of garlic and medium-dry sherry instead, and it was delicious. when the sauce is made, turn off the heat and throw the chops back in the pan for a second the coat with the sauce and warm them up, and serve.

and for our salad, we had some baby swiss chard that i got from the crazy hydroponic organic people at the farmer's market. it was really tender but a little bit bitter, so i made a honey vinaigrette (1t honey, 1t mustard, 1t white vinegar, 1/3 cup walnut oil) to go with it. it was a great salad, much more interesting than any lettuce, but the best thing about it, and the reason that this was my favorite meal of last week, was that wile ate 7 helpings of it. he went to bed 45 minutes late becaue he kept asking for more salad, and there was no way in hell i was going to say no.


ps - one of my tag-ees has risen to the challenge.

weekend edition, a day late

okay, so i didn't post over the weekend like i said i would. but here i am now! and you should savor this one, because i seem to be coming down with a cold, probably caught from mr. baby man and all those other snotty-nosed little punks at the playground, and i may not have the energy to post for a few days.

so before i get to what i originally had to say, the BIG NEWS: there was unassisted steppage! saturday, 4 steps, stephen and i were both there to see it. since then...well, not so much. a step here and there, but mostly he wants to hang on to my fingers and walk (just my index fingers, pointed in and angled injust the right way, and he gets totally indignant if i do it wrong). but, all in good time; i'm not rushing the walking. excuse me, what was that? oh, my lower back says "rush it, bitch! i'm dying down here with all the hunching over!"

okay, now to what i originally had to say:

1. only four months to spring training (if you don't like/care about baseball, you can skip ahead...)

the 2005 season, she is officially over. the best team won, and yes, it was a 4-game sweep, but they were awesome, close, exciting games, every single one of them. the only reason that i'm not 100% glad that the white sox won is that my mom picked the astros to win it all at the beginning of the playoffs.

but more importantly, how ' bout them mets? we finished 4 games over .500, and in third place. after the past few years, that's as good as winning the freakin pennant to me. and jose reyes led the league in triples and stolen bases. wile has a dollar bill signed by jose that his nana procured for him last spring, and the value just keeps going up.... now all we need to do is ship kazuwalt (aka kazuo matsui—my mom was listening to vin scully call a dodgers-mets game last year and scully pronounced his name "kazuwalt", which of course is so much better than "kazuo") back to japan and get a real second baseman. oh and find a closer. and probably another outfielder who can hit for power. and a catcher. and some more relief pitching. okay, fine. we're probably not going to make the playoffs next year either. but will you look at the left side of our infield?

works for me.

2. sayonara, milk diapers* (if you don't like/care about boobs, you can skip ahead)

it seems like all you ever hear about is women not having enough milk and having to give up breastfeeding. okay, maybe you haven't heard that much about it, unless you're also a mom...or read a lot of books/blogs/articles about momming...or just talk to a lot of moms. in any case, lack of milk seems to be a fairly common problem, with large sections of all the baby/parenting books devoted to ideas for stimulating milk production and support for women who end up throwing in the burp cloth and going with formula. you don't see or hear too much discusion of/support for my situation: having more milk than me or mr. baby man knew what to do with.

and i know i can't really complain. it's like when i bitch about my legs being too skinny and i get the "how dare you use the words thin legs and bad in the same sentence" glare from other women. believe me, i realize that not having enough milk is a problem of a completely different nature than having too much milk. not having enough milk leads to all sorts of emotional upheaval, which i respect—if i had had to give up the breastfeeding, i would have needed truckloads of those anti-post-partum-depression vitamins from tom cruise. having too much milk just leads to wardrobe and personal hygeine upheaval.

i spent the first four months of wile's life covered in milk. no, literally. the leaking was beyond prodigious. it was hoover dam–esque. they tell you that if you leak from one boob while the baby is feeding on the other, it means you have enough milk. yeah, well i think that my hormones sent my mammary glands the wrong message or something, because they seem to have thought that i was having triplets! i didn't leak, i spurted. like a spray gun. when i went shopping for nursing bras, the first thing the salesgirl gave me was this nice comfy cotton model that she said would be great as a "sleep bra", and i remember thinking "huh? why the hell would i wear a bra to sleep?" oh, maybe because if i didn't have some way of keeping the breast pads in front of the boobs, we all would have woken up in a pool of breastmilk every morning!

now, some of you might be going, "what the hizzel is a breast pad?" it's a little absorbant puck that you put in your bra to soak up the milk leakage. observe. i bought them by the 100-pack. for the first six months, i would burn through two per boob a day, no problem. one day i went out for the afternoon without mr. baby man and leaked through the pad, the bra, an undershirt top, and a wool sweater. there were droplets of milk clinging to the boobal region of my sweater.

but for the most part, once i got past the first few months of milk milk everywhere, the pads have done their job. so what's my beef? just this: they don't make for a real smooth silhouette. in fact, they make your boobs look at the same time flat and lumpy. so every outfit i put on in the past year has had to pass the "does it camoflage the breast pads?" test. let me tell you, it puts a damper on the wardrobe. the maternity clothes are finally a thing of the past, your beloved regular clothes are waiting for you...and now you have to contend with the breast pads. curses!

one time i tried to use these silicone breast pad alternatives, which are supposed to work by putting pressure on the nipple and slowing down the flow. ha! really, i should have known better. i was nursing the boo on the right side and the stream of "leakage" from the left side literally blew the little silicone jobby right off the left boob.

but now that mr. baby man is growing up and moving on (slowly, slowly) to the solids, the flow is decreasing. yes, i'll still leak a little bit from the other side when he feeds, but for the most part the milk is still in there but it's not rushing for the exits. so a couple of weeks ago i dared to go breast pad–free. and i haven't gone back. and it's fabulous. there was one incident at the playgorund when a little girl was crying and my left boob was all "here, here, i can help!", but besides that i have remained leak free.

any ideas for a good use for 50 unused breast pads?


* tm binky


3. btietw...

...is gonna have to wait. i need to go drink more tea and go to bed and fight this oncoming sick. hopefully my preventative measures will work and i'll be back soon.....

btietw

or, should i say, btietm. i've been a little delinquent on the btietws....

usually fall at the farmer's market is all about the apples for me: the macouns, the winesaps, the occasional jona gold. i make boatloads of applesauce, and eat apple slices dipped in peanut butter at least every other day. but for some reason this year i'm not feeling the apples. i've enjoyed a couple great ones, but i've been much more into the pears: specifically the golden boscs and the little sugar seckles. (hee—i had some seckles out last night, along with some lady apples and clementines, for snacks before our dinner party, and hayes picked one up and said "what is this, toy fruit?" so i told stephen that ryan was making fun of our little fruit and he said, of course, "hayes is a little fruit." i feel a new song coming on....) i haven't done a damn thing with them but slice and eat them, which is partially due to them being so good they don't need any help, and partially due to the young man attached to my hip/leg. but if you get your hands on some and want to do something with them besides the old slice 'n eat, try this recipe. i know, technically it's not something i ate this week (or month), but it's a fantastic recipe.

fall at the market also brings the cauliflower. oh, do i love the cauliflower. my never-fail cauliflower preparation is roasting: cut up the cauliflower into ~1" chunks; toss with olive oil, salt, pepper, and paprika; turn out onto a baking sheet and roast for about 30-40 minutes at 400˚. you want the cauliflower to get good and brown, really carmelized on the bottom. do not be afraid of the oil. if you don't use enough, the cauliflower might start to dry out partway through the roasting process. don't despair—just spray or brush it with more oil and shove it back in the oven. i can eat a whole head of roasted cauliflower myself. no problem.

a little more (okay, a lot more) work but also fabulous is cauliflower fritters. take the whole head and steam it till tender. if you have a big pot and a not-huge cauliflower, you should be able to just cut out the core and plonk it into the steamer. i get gargantuan cauliflowers from farmer ted at the market, so i have to hack mine up into a couple pieces to fit it into the pot. anyhoo, when it's tender take it out and run it under cool water till you can handle it. then pull it apart with your fingers, breaking up the florets into thumbnail-sized pieces into a big bowl, and putting the stems on a cutting board where you'll then cut them up into pieces of similar size and then add them to the bowl. now, every time i make these i use slightly different ingredients (depending on what i have in the house) in slightly different amounts (depending on the size of the cauliflower and my mood), so the "recipe" is going to get a little vague here. you'll definitely need at least 2 eggs to keep things together—just break them into the bowl, making a little well in the center of the cauliflower pieces, and beat them a little bit in there before mixing them in. then you'll need some mayo (hellman's, of course). i know, mayo on top of eggs seems like overkill. but it makes them incredibly creamy, and you don't need a lot. maybe 1/4 cup for a medium-sized cauliflower. then you need some starch: i've used flour, bread crumbs, cornmeal, and various combinations of all of these things. you need just enough to make it hold together—it should be kinda sticky/gooey. let's see, maybe 1/3 of a cup for a medium-sized cauliflower? i usually just season it with pepper and sprinkle them with coarse salt when they're cooked, but you can get crazy with the herbs/spices if you want—dill, paprika, cayenne pepper, whatever. i'd say no to thyme, though; it didn't mesh with the cauliflower flavor very well (not that that stopped me from eating the whole batch). so once you've got the batter all set, heat up a big saute/frying pan with about a 1/4-inch of oil (peanut's the best) in the bottom to medium-high heat. drop the batter in by the spoonful (i use a ceramic chinese spoon), flattening the mounds down with the back of the spoon, and fry until golden on both sides, drain on paper towels or a wire rack. they're totally fine plain, but they're awesome with a little sauce—i like mayo thinned with a little water and flavored with lemon juice or hot sauce (crystal, of course). and you can make them one day, let them cool, store them in the fridge, and heat them on on a baking sheet in a 350˚ oven another day and they're just as good. i did this when i served them at sydney's post-marathon dinner, and everybody seemed happy with them. even though they were a teensy bit mushy because i didn't let them cool all the way before putting them in the tupperware and into the fridge....

unlike the cauliflower, which i love unconditionally, i have a more complicated relationship with greens. i want to like them, i know how good they are for me, etc etc, but i've never found a way to prepare them that made me really love them. stephen makes kick-ass collard greens with bacon, vinegar, and brown sugar, but that's a big prOcess, and mine never turn out as good as his. but this fall i've figured out what the problem has been in the past: i wasn't buying my greens from farmer ted. i don't know what this man does to his kale, but it's so freaking sweet you can almost eat it raw. i would steam it for five minutes and eat it with absolutely nothing on it and love it. then the purple kale appeared, which is just as delicious, even more tender, and gorgeous.

i used both of them in frittatas a bunch of times, which is simple and delicious: saute some onion and/or garlic in an oven-proof pan, add the chopped-up kale and cover to let it steam on low heat for a few minutes, then uncover and turn the heat up and saute to cook off any liquid. season with salt and pepper. beat up some eggs then fold in some grated cheese—i used parmegiano reggiano (the king of cheeses) and dry vela jack (amontereyonteray jack from cali)—and pour over the greens. at this point you can either a) let the egg cook mostly on the stovetop, over lowish heat, throwing it under the broiler when it's still liquid just on top, or b) throw it in a 350˚ oven for 10-15 minutes, till it's just set on top. i prefer the 350˚-oven method, which requires less attention.

i have auntie syd to thank for inspiring me to get into the other kale preparation i've been loving: kale, white bean, and sausage mess. saute onions and garlic slowly slowly over low heat in olive oil in a saucepan/dutch oven/what have you. i use this. when the onion and garlic is nice and soft and golden, add the sausage and a couple of cans of beans. i prefer the duck sausage that i get from fresh direct, and navy beans from eden organic—i used to use goya beans all the time, but i started getting annoyed and kinda grossed out by how the beans at the bottom of the can would be almost total mush, so i tried the organic beans and there was no mush and i'm happy. you can throw the sausages in whole or cut up, whichever you'd like. then throw in some stock—chicken, veggie, beef, whatever you have. how much you throw in is up to you. you can use a whole can/carton and make it soup, you can use very little and make it a dish yowith a eat witha spoon, or you can use an amount somewhere in between the two and make it how i like it: soupy enough that you can eat it with a fork but you have plenty of broth to sop up with good bread. so whatever you do, let that all cook until the sausage is cooked through, then throw in the kale, cook for a few minutes to let it wilt, and serve. this is great even if you can't get kale as sweet as what farmer ted grows, just let the kale cook longer.

now, can someone tell me how to make squash—the featured product of the winter farmer's market—so that i like it?