My Michael Jackson Story

It was 1983 or '84. The Jackson Five was doing a reunion tour.
Cranky and I lived in Florida at the time, and I had a freelance job as a rock video reviewer for the local paper. Really. I was totally attuned to the MTVideos, 24/7. Michael Jackson was huge then, and I was not going to miss this show, even if we had to drive up to Jacksonville. ("Jacksonville!" Cute.)
The show was great. Michael got star billing, and he did a wicked moonwalk.
When it ended, they set off fireworks. Ooh. That meant as soon as the fireworks were over, there'd be an encore! You'd think.
We didn't think.
Cranky and I bolted out of our seats and dashed out into the completely deserted streets, on our way back to where we had parked.
Just then, a big van careened around a corner, Hollywood movie style, all tilty and weavy and speedy.
We were doomed.
But it missed us, by inches. Zoom.
You know what? We believe, to this day, it was carrying the Jacksons away from the arena, before the fans figured out they had Left The Building.
And we also believe that if the van had hit us, it would never have stopped.
Oh, and the picture? Lobster risotto for our 28th anniversary lunch today.

Nothing New Under the Sunnyside Up

This is an old, old dish from my childhood. I thought I'd make some, and trot it out to jog your memory.
These are eggs cooked in bread that you cut (or tear) a yolk-sized hole out of. Did you eat these as a kid? What did you call them? I can't even remember what we called ours, but at some later point I learned the name Cowboy Eggs, and it stuck.
Any time you do something silly with food, like putting faces on it, or chopping the green beans into inch-long segments, kids are supposed to get over their usual avoidance, and give it a fair and square try. Especially if you give it a cool name.
And then you outgrow it. You eat beans at their natural length, and your toast intact.
But I wanted Cowboy Eggs. Cranky was not treated to this non-novelty growing up. Never encountered it. So the first time he tried to make some on his own, he cut a hole in the bread large enough to hold the entire egg.
Wrong, wrong, wrong! Unless, of course, that is they way you always had it. Results may vary.
This time he attained perfection, including the use of clever grown-up bread instead of those soggy white squares from the plastic bag.
The secret, we believe, was that the pan was a leetle hot, and the butter browned a bit. The bread toasted right in the pan, melding with the butter. Toast the first side, flip, drop the egg in the hole, and wait until the bottom of the bread gets toasty.
This was nothing like what you'd get from using a toaster and smearing the results with butter. Nope, you want that fusion in the pan. Intimate artistry.
And toast the pieces you tore out of the bread. You can pop them on top of the cooked eggs like a... cowboy hat!

Grilling, Indoors

We've been meaning to make this smashed potatoes dish since the recipe ran in the NYTimes last month.
You can cook the potatoes on a grill outdoors, but even so, you're supposed to use a griddle over the heat.
Instead of wasting charcoal (is it ever really a waste?) we cooked indoors, using an antique griddle that just keeps getting better and better the more we use it. (I think it used to belong on top of an old stove, one with a cut-out you can set the griddle into. I'll photo it some time.)
Basically these are boiled potatoes that you squash slightly, and then smear olive tapenade on them. Over to the hot-hot griddle you go, where you sear the bottoms of the taters for a while, and finally you flip them and sear the tapenade side.
They tasted smoky! Like they'd been cooked outdoors.
Turns out the tapenade burned a little, in a very good way. This might be part of the plan; I don't know. But I wouldn't do it any different from now on.

Braised Goat Shanks

First of all, what? You can buy goat meat and cook it and eat it? Well, probably not everyone can. But we are lucky to have a purveyor of fine, young, succulent goat from Marin County.
Second of all, succulent? Isn't goat meat like Charlie Chaplin's boiled shoe? "No, my goats are tender," says their shepherdess (goatherdess?), Julie. And they are.
So just what exactly did I want to do with a couple of sinewy, meaty leg bones? Braise, of course, to coax out all that sticky collagen. And the resulting liquid in the pot is pure gold.
But. I had this sort of chile verde thing in my mind.
So after the initial browning in oil, and about an hour of simmering in a bottle and a half of Pacifico cerveza, I tossed in a chopped melange of tomatillos, mild green Anaheim peppers and some unripe green tomatoes out of the freezer (from when last year's crop finally refused to ripen). A little cumin, diced green garlic, dried Mexican oregano, salt... that's it.
The fantastic juice that leaks out of braised meat went straight into the green stuff. This simmered for maybe another hour, hour and a half. I didn't want to cook the hell out of the green stuff; I wanted natural texture.
And the flavor was insane.
I kept thinking, "Should I add jalapeños? Heat it up a little?" And I kept thinking, "No."
My initial plan was to serve this with dried hominy from a vaunted, legendary, local proprietor of dried beans. After soaking and a little time on the stove, though, it became obvious that the hominy was horribly rancid. I wasn't going to put that on the plate with the beautiful goat verde.
So we got some perfect corn tortillas. Which was cool, because we made impromptu burritos at the table.

Is This Junk Food?

It looks like I've been on a goofy food kick lately. I'll blog about something, and then get a wacky suggestion in comments, and — boom, I've got to eat that, too.
My post on Trader Joe's pot stickers led to an attempt at tortilla-wrapped hot dogs. Which led to a couple of suggestions for sandwiches, one of which I haven't tried yet. (Oh, but I will.)
This is the Chip Butty. I am like a blind person with a cookbook I can't read, assembling a dish I've never tasted.
I didn't even know what a "butty" was until two pals steered me toward the light. A butty is a sandwich. It's a locution from northern England, but you are welcome to pronounce it in the south, the southern hemisphere, and even over here in the far west.
(Oh, and a "chip," of course, is a French fry.)
Jeez. French fry sandwich? It sounds frightening!
Naturally I had to have it.
Did I get anywhere close to the real thing? I don't know. I kinda think so, but I'd be just flattering myself.
Cranky procured some HP sauce, and he stoically crafted French fries in a skillet, with a minimum of oil. None of that twice-fried in horse fat stuff. These were crisp, golden, and creamy on the inside.
Our bread was a bit stale so we toasted it lightly.
Piled on the chips. Salted 'em. Great lashings of butter. That sticky dribble of HP.
Slapped on the top layer and munched away.
Let me say, this is very filling. It is a carbohydrate sandwich with sodium.
Kind of like carnival food: a savory funnel cake or something (which, to my off-shore friends, I am not recommending.)
It made me happy. It made me wish I'd had a hangover that needed stuffing.
Urp.

First Tomato, Yah!!

Mid June. Tomato plants have been in the ground for about a month.
They must have really wanted to grow, because look, this is the earliest first tomato I've ever picked (from the mouth of a miniature dog who wanted it for himself).
It's a teensy-weensy tomato, grown on a midget plant called Tiny Tim. The plant has attained, oh, maybe eight inches in height. And yet it is already covered with little globes. It's a toy plant; it will probably poop out if I forget to wind the key or change the batteries.
But it's always fun to get your first tomato, and your first tomato is always a cherry tomato.

Shepherd's Pie, For Realz

I think this is the first time I've ever made what can be authentically called shepherd's pie. Because shepherds herd sheep. I used lamb.
When you use beef, you have to call it "cottage pie." Whatev. Why can't you call it cowboy pie? Oh, too American.
But this was lamb, truly.
We braised a couple of lamb shanks a while ago when the weather wasn't behaving in a temperate manner, and saved the leftovers in the freezer.
Sure enough, the weather is still misbehaving. We felt entitled to warm, comforting, stew-y food.
I don't even think I need to tell you how easy this is. How bracing. How nice.
(OK: Make a gravy. I used leftover lamb goozle from the braise. Lightly cook some vegetables: onion, carrot, peas. Stir the gravy, vegetables and meat together in a baking dish. Top with mashed potatoes. Roast for half an hour.)
Since I've quit drinking milk, this was the first time I've made mashed potatoes without a good glug of buttermilk. They were great! Their intrinsic potato-ness was not smoothed out of existence by a dairy flavor. Though we did use butter, heh.
I've just made myself hungry, and it's only a couple of hours since I ate lunch.
It's so great to have an appetite again!

Yo, Dawg!

Can a food be a guilty pleasure if you've never eaten it before, and then you try it once and...? Ya know what I mean?
The other day I was talking about some famous chefs' guilty pleasures. It fomented a bunch of confessions in the comments, some of which appealed to me a lot.
Ready for this? A hot dog wrapped in a tortilla.
I heard from TWO readers that this was the bomb, and... I had to try it.
I succumbed to Kate's version: A hot dog rolled in a tortilla with decadent garlic-cream sauce.
She didn't tell me how to make this evil sauce, so I improvised. First of all, I'm avoiding cream. Second of all, I was steeping a mince of green garlic in olive oil on the stove, for a soon-to-come artichoke dip.
So I swiped a little of the garlic-oil, and blended it (with a fork, not a blender) with a little mayo and yogurt. Hefty crack of black pepper, some salt.
Now, look. I would never, in a million years, think of wrapping a hot dog in a tortilla (I assume Kate meant flour tortilla; that's what I used). If I was desperate for a hot dog, but didn't have any buns in the house, I would NOT have thought to use tortillas. Dumb me.
But we had to go there.
Cranky was all, "This will keep the junk you stuff in there from falling out!"
I said, "We owe it to the originator to do the original version."
And we did.
We are still talking about it. Craving it.
So silly.

More Tofood

Asparagus is already out of season where I live.
I kept one final bunch in the fridge a little past its shelf-life — stalks still vibrant, but the bud tips were beginning to get soft.
And, since I happened to have half a tub of silken tofu left over from the chocolate-tofu pudding, I employed an old Mollie Katzen trick, and made a "cream of" soup without cream.
Let me make this as simple as can be.
You cook your vegetables. I cooked the asparagus in an oiled pan with minced green garlic, adding a splash of liquid to help soften things. You could put your aromatics in the pan at this point, too. Bay leaf, salt, whatever you like. A bit of dill is surprisingly good with asparagus.
You put your cooked vegetables into the blender (I cut up the asparagus spears into handy pieces) with a big splat of silken tofu.
You blend. Really, you should blend really hard. I never got past the first button on the blender, and there were actually still chunks of asparagus. I should have set it on "cement mixer." (And I think that's why the tofu looks a little curdled in the photo. It's not curdled; it just wasn't blended hard enough.)
You return this mixture to the stove, heat it, and adjust the seasonings. I added lemon juice and I forget what all. Definitely some liquid to get the texture right.
Put the soup in bowls. I topped mine with a dab of Greek yogurt; Cranky is responsible for cleaning out the fridge of dairy items I can't eat, so he got a dab of sour cream.
My point is just that making a cream of vegetable soup is really easy, and you don't need cream.

What's for Pudding?

I'm not a big fan of desserts, but I had to try this one.
It's a chocolate pudding made without any eggs or dairy.
It surged into my consciousness at exactly the same time I decided I'm probably lactose intolerant.
All credit goes to Mark Bittman for inventing it (and if he didn't invent it, he ain't talking).
And extra credit goes to Zoomie for following this recipe and blogging about it. I was tempted.
In case you haven't stumbled across this pudding yet, it's made with... gasp... tofu. Silken tofu.
OK, ick, right?
But, no.
Yum.
It's smooth and creamy and smooth and creamy. And chocolatey.
Use the best silken tofu you can find. We are lucky to have a local artisan tofu maker (even if the soy beans are not local), Hodo Soy Beanery, so we were certain to have a fresh, luscious batch to work with (though the shelf-stable kind in the cardboard box is perfectly decent).
Also, use the best bittersweet chocolate you can find. Mine was a Scharffen Berger 82% bar.
Bittman's recipe incorporates cinnamon (I used Mexican canela) and chili powder. It was fine, but not my favorite taste, so I might tinker next time. I'm thinking rose and white pepper. (You melt some sugar in water; I would sub a little rose water in that step.)
Also, there is no salt in the recipe.
So, I sprinkled these with a teensy pinch of crunchy Maldon salt flakes. Not sure I would do it again, but it was pretty.
Here's the deal, though. This recipe is Dead Easy. If you can nuke a candy bar for a minute or two, you've got the skills to make this.
One more thing. As Zoomie pointed out, the recipe makes an awful lot of pudding, far more than the four-to-six servings specified. I simply reduced the ingredients proportionally, based on the weight of one Scharffen Berger bar. Roughishly. It came out fine. Trust me, even though there's no cream, you can't really eat more than a little dab of it.
If there's a downside at all, it's that this pudding doesn't form a skin.
I call that an upside.

Gary Danko, Gummy Worms, and Me

So I figure if Gary Danko can own up to gobbling gummy worms as a guilty pleasure, I will not be struck by lightning if I admit I like the frozen pot stickers from Trader Joe's.
Come on! Do you cook every single meal you eat from organic, local scratch? Sometimes you just need some nourishment, pronto, and it wouldn't hurt if it tastes good.
This is a recommendation, I guess, then. You buy a bag or two (we tried chicken first, but I like the pork better) and toss them in the freezer for emergencies.
Open the bag, take out as many as you want, and reseal the rest.
The label suggests two ways of heating the dumplings; we've tried both, and the microwave version is meh. Go to the extra trouble to sizzle them in oil on the stove, and then dump in some water, cover, and steam for a few minutes. Nice browned crunch on the bottoms (they're called pot stickers for a reason) and softened wrappers on top.
You would be prudent, industrious and clever to serve some rice and vegetables on the side (something Asian-y would be perfect). And you would be forgiven if all you ate for your meal was the pot stickers.
Do NOT omit a lovely dipping sauce, though. That would be bad.
What would be good is a mixture of half soy sauce and half rice vinegar stirred with a teeny dribble of chile oil. And what would be better would be to sprinkle the sauce with sesame seeds and minced chives. This little touch ramps up the magic in your mouth, without adding any unwanted flavor-skew.
I could also say that the chives are organic and local. I picked them in my backyard. Am I redeemed, just a little?
Anyway. TJ's pot stickers are not a guilty pleasure, because I don't feel guilty about them.
I don't feel guilty about my occasional ingestion of gummy bears, either.
But gummy worms? That's crazy, Danko.

Salad, Ha, Ha

I'm still here. I'm mad as hell, but there's nothing blogging is going to do to help out.
And I eat.
But nothing fancy.
The other day I razzed Heather for posting about the salad she had made. Salad.
But see, she's busy with other things. Like growing a baby inside her body. I imagine a lot of that's pretty passive work, but still, we forgive her for not banging out an entire feast for twelve, the way she has done in the past. (And there's still that pig roast coming up.)
Me? No excuse. Whatsoever.
Just passive. Lazy. Yearning for perfect weather, and instead getting the threat of rain.
Well, the eight little seedlings I planted in the garden yesterday morning would like the rain, so bring it on. (Or did Bush so irretrievably taint that phrase that we must retire it, along with the surname Hitler?)
Anyway. This "salad" is modeled on tabouleh, but it's made with brown rice. The rice adds a wonderful flavor. The onions, parsley and mint are from the yard. The tomatoes are hothouse from the market, and probably the cukes too.
What a maddening season.