Food Torture

It was difficult.
Sometimes you've got to do something difficult, because it's worth it in the end and you'll always be able to brag about it.
I climbed Half Dome. To the summit, and didn't fall off.
I ate a bowl of duck tongues and cocks' combs, and didn't throw up.
I bought a fiddle, which I still can't play but I really want to.
Oh. This? Anchovies and parsley on bread. "Interesting" bruschetta.
And here's the difficult-but-brag part. I sliced up and chopped a fresh Meyer lemon (unpeeled), and cooked it into sticky, gooey brownness with a minced fat clove of garlic. My new favorite flavor is "burny," and we all know lemon rinds are bitter. There was a lot of difficult flavor there.
And the anchovies were fishy (wouldn't you think?) and salty. The parsley was the mitigator! (Flinks of hot, smoked paprika, too.)
This was bite-after-bite difficult and so good. Hard to explain.

Oscar Meyer Wiener

I am SO-O dubious about this pairing of hosts for tonight's Oscars spectacle. Love her, hate him. Arrogant, conceited, mysogynistic little zick. (Rhymes with everything else I want to say about him.) He's a coyote date: If I woke up in bed with him lying on my arm, I'd chew it off.
Of COURSE we're watching! I've got my menu all planned:

The Black Squab, with True Grits
The Sushi Network
Winter's Marrow Bone
The King's Peach
and
127 Whiskey Sours

Hearty Food, Me Hearty

This is a painting. If I could paint, this is the one I'd do.
That vegetal cumulus cloud back there, and the planks of cured meat in front. Color, contrast, composition. Lighting — pale, wintry light on the day before it might (but probably won't) snow here in suburban tract-home (mid-century! that counts for cool) Marin County. Pure art.
Yet it was lunch, and we ate it.
My friend Zoomie confessed to embracing winter and not fighting it. "It just wears you out and it doesn't change the weather one iota." Agreed.
So for the past few days we have been embracing warm comfort food. Simple stuff; nourishing. Fun. Fun is always good with food, even if it's just fun soup or fun bowls.
Man, it sounds like I am really trying to amp up the noble, humble loveliness of the food here.
It was just mashed potatoes and bacon!
But the mashed potatoes were actually champ, filled with sauteed scallions, spring onions and leeks. Goat butter. Buttermilk. You cannot eat a better plate of mashed potatoes.
And the pretty rashers were from Niman Ranch (sustainable, humane, tasty, yadda).
I loved this meal. I'd have it again in a Dublin minute, but we've got other comforty, warm, braisy plans for tomorrow, the coldest (predicted) day of the year.

When Things Go (Not Horribly) Wrong

Looks good, doesn't it?
But what is it? It's dull comfort food, the type that's supposed to photograph so badly. Boring, brown, jumbly.
I got a nice, well-lit shot, though, and I should just shut up and end this now.
However. The food didn't work out, exactly. Looks good, tastes fine, eats weird.
It is a humble mix of eggs and (precooked) rice, flavored with mushrooms, spinach and other savories. Loaded into the wrong casserole and baked to almost scone-like rigidity.
And here comes the lesson: It needed a lid. And it probably needed to be in pottery, not cast iron. I've loved baking things in this very same dish, but not this stuff.
Does cast iron cook hotter?
Lid. It needed a lid.

Cute Little Food

Sure, the intention was to make a little bit of good food. But we are increasingly falling for presentation as an appetizer.
Sometimes I'm afraid I'll fall victim to cute. I like little dishes, and I like little food.
But I'm safe. I don't buy little cute dishes unless they are rugged and useful, and that usually precludes pink, shiny, fluffy things. These small, cast-iron baking pans are my latest, best example. Macho! And petite.
Anyway, back to the food. Little root vegetables this time. Really little. Peeling the tiny carrots was like peeling a pencil. The rest are radishes, turnips, parsnips, bathed in a touch of oil and salt, and gently roasted until you can't stand it anymore!
Utterly adorable, methinks, and yet not airhead prissy. No frosting, no cheese curls, no chocolate jimmies. Just real, earthy, little food in real, earthy, little pots.
The problem was, there was too little.

No One's in the Kitchen with Cranky

As recently as five years ago or so, I got twitchy if Cranky wanted to cook the food. He likes the kitchen and he has good ideas, but he had a bad habit of overdoing this ingredient or that, just because "there was still some left" or "I thought it would be better if there was more."
I couldn't get him to stop dumping the kitchen sink into the soup kettle, because he believed his behavior was beneficial. Using up the rest of the mustard, because the jar was almost empty at that point, so why not? Dumping in the entire sausage instead of "just right," because he likes sausage, so... why not?
This resulted in imbalances. We still talk about the over-garlicked vegetable pie. Gah! A family joke now... And yet he continued to overdump.
He's uncertain about his ability to judge flavors, and we both modestly acknowledge that I'm pretty good at it.
But the guy deserves kitchen time, and I shouldn't be such a suspicious, controlling spectre.
And so he began cooking ambitiously (without recipes) and I tried not to fret. He really got the hang of it!
He still discusses his ingredients with me and asks for advice. Usually, he'll have me come and taste something and do some fine tuning.
But he is suddenly (gradually?) a rockin' home cook!
Yesterday he dared to make soup. I MAKE THE SOUP AROUND HERE. But he made the soup.
Fresh chicken stock, scads of spring onions and one small leek, a load of white button mushrooms. Really nice! I had no complaints at all, but suggested he add a glug of red wine when he was finishing the soup with a dollop of cream.
He sneaked in a little sherry, too.
So good. And it didn't taste like my own cooking. It tasted like his.

My Heart Melted

This was based on a coeur à la crème, savory version.
I used one of those cute heart-shaped molds with the perforations in the bottom, lined with damp cheesecloth, and scraped in this mixture of cream cheese, cream (infused over heat with thyme and bay leaves), and truffle salt. I'm afraid it didn't drain overnight (only a few hours), but it's probably just as well.
It was gooey! I don't think it was ever going to firm up. And that turned out to be great.
The cheese stayed spreadable. It was so good, smeared on baguette slices. And I mean smeared, really.
The radishes were mainly for color, but they added a fun, peppery crunch.
Kinda nice with heart-shaped raw meat.
That was a lot of love for one evening.
Now can I go back to being nasty?

(Has Enough Time Gone By?)

I guess I can talk now about some of the food we prepared for St. Vallie's Day. I just hate to get caught up in all that timely, trendy blogging, so I waited. Heart-shaped cookies, heart-shaped cakes, heart-shaped hard-cooked eggs. Yeek!
This is much more sophisticated. Heart-shaped raw meat.
OK, you probably know it as steak tartare. Ground red muscle seasoned with traditional European flavors of mustard, shallots, Worcestershire, capers. Raw egg for that gluey, patted-together congeal-iness. I've had that, and I've liked it. But I was looking for something different.
Last year, we were totally skunked on some raw beef. It was unchewable. Didn't even taste that great cooked (which was our last resort).
This year we got a small, aged rib-eye steak. I didn't know for sure if it would be too fat, too tough... It wasn't. Recommended.
First rule of Steak Tartare Club: Don't let your butcher grind the meat. This protein should be minced with a good knife, at home, by you. It's actually very satisfying to mince a good steak, and it works.
Second: What if you seasoned it some other way? I immediately thought of minced green garlic, which is in season. Then my mind wandered to a couple of dribbles of soy sauce, for sodiumami™. Finally, I wanted a kick. Chile oil! From that Chinese stuff in the jar; it's in the door of your fridge.
Third: Hold off on the oil. Shape the meat (and shoyu and garlic) loosely in some romantic, silly design. Bird? Daisy? Hah, no. Heart. Dude.
Fourth: OK, now drizzle a little chile oil over your confection. A little is good; a lot is probably not.
Serve with baguette rounds and some other heart-shaped fabulousness, which I will tell you about soon.

What Do You Call a Chicken Shepherd?

Cooptender? Hensman?
Well, whatever it is, we made a "shepherd's" pie, but with chicken instead of lamb. (It was an original idea with me, but as soon as I Googled it, I discovered I was not the first to sub chicken for lamb.)
It was as easy as pie. Easier, because of the mashed potato topping replacing floury crust.
Take that, floury crust! Don't need you. (I like floury crust, but this is my story, and I'm sticking with it.)
Oh, yes, and no recipe. You just cook some vegetables al dente in a skillet with butter or oil. We used carrots, celery, onion and bits of broccoli. UPDATE: and mushrooms! Then make a gravy or sauce with some chicken stock and roux. A splish of milk. Cut up your leftover cooked chicken, and stir it, and the veggies, into the gravy. Salt and pepper. Herbs, if needed, but our chicken and stock were very herby. Pile this nice mix into a baking dish, top with mashed potatoes, bake for half an hour.
It's hard to tell you how happy this made me. I'm still happy, because we still have a couple more servings for supper tonight.
Yeah, let's call it Cooptender's Pie. I just Googled it; I'm first.

♥It's All About Love♥

We brought Bean Sprout home on Valentine's Day, seven years ago. Poor little fellow didn't even make it to his sixth birthday.
But boy, could he pose.
I don't think I'm being unfair to Bartlett by remembering El Fluffo. Bartlett fills our hearts. She's getting nicer by the minute. Smart. Pretty. A daily wonder.
Still, I guess you don't forget your old, gone puppies. And today happens to be a day when I think about Bean Sprout. He didn't like me much, but I liked him.
All this mourning and nostalgia, though... Just makes me so happy about Bartlett.
And, so you know, there is heart-shaped food happening at our house today.

Chicken Happens

For whatever reason, I'm all about the chicken these days.
There's a wonderful purveyor of spit-roasted chickens of the desirable type (local, free-range, tasty) at our farmers market, so we often get a whole or a half bird and save ourselves the trouble (and frequent doom) of roasting it ourselves.
But I'm getting my chicken mojo. I am. Chicken wings.
Nothing new here; I've talked about them before. But I discovered the amusing thing about roasting teeny, petite wings: They take as long to cook as a whole bird!
Anecdote: I once interviewed a marvelous artist for a story. She makes miniature ceramic vessels (teapots, urns), as detailed and fabulous as "real" pots. I made the stupid assumption that, because of their diminutive proportions, they would spend a lot less time firing in the kiln. No! She said that it's a physical process, that the porcelain "takes as long as it takes" to get done, no matter how small.
And so with the wings. They are teeny, but they need oven time.
OK, here's what we ate. Wings coated with grated Parmesan mixed with Dijon mustard. Baked, 350ºF for an hour. So yummy. In an homage to Buffalo wings, we served celery sticks, and since there was no hot sauce on the chicken, the blue cheese dip was mixed with Frank's RedHot sauce. Wow, that worked.

Congratulations, Egyptians

What a difference a day makes.
More importantly, what a difference an 18-day revolution makes. Is this possible? Days of energetic, indefatigable gathering, organizing by social media, tireless determination. There were casualties.
But, 18 days? Well done, Egyptians.
Now, as long as we've got Republican legislators who want to take this country, America, down to some fundamentalist Dark Ages, with cruel disparities between rich and poor, and total disrespect for women, remember: We can build a Tahrir Square.

I Don't Know What Just Happened

But it ain't over yet.

See, THIS Is What I'm Talking About

Arrest the buttheads.
And feast on this.

Is Everything Green and Yellow Right Now?

I'm not actually fond of the color yellow. I like lemons and I like 24 karats, but I don't seek out this naive, primary color.
I think I had a yellow dress in high school. But I've never had yellow furniture, dishes or anything else.
No, I might have had a yellow hat. In high school. I probably wore it with the dress.
So I don't actively seek out yellow plantings for my garden.
Every daffodil I've ever had was left behind by the previous tenants.
I will claim proud ownership of the Meyer lemon tree, though. Yeah, lemons are yellow, but what can you do?
We've had iffy luck with the lemon tree (a dwarf that lived its first three years in a pot). One season we got eight lemons. Last year the whole crop froze.
This year... oh, I can't even count them. Twenty or more? Every one a damn, eye-scorching yellow.
Gotta admit, it's kind of cute in such close proximity to the damn, eye-scorching yellow daffodils.
And all that green surrounding them.
Speaking of which.
We had a simple, charming, humble meal a couple of days ago. Jacques Pépin's grandmère would approve of this.
It was a platform of sauteed cauliflower "steaks" (can we even confess to still eating this 2008 anachronism?), topped with a gently fried egg, showered with grated Parmesan cheese, and drenched with Oregon white truffle oil. Domestic!
That little spinch of parsley, green, makes this post thematic. You know, with the yellow egg yolk.

Pretty Is as Pretty Does. It Does.

Hurry up and hold your ugly food contest, Zoomie! I'm going to win.
Even though I lovingly shot this dish in sweet light, at a jaunty angle, and yadda yadda, nothing could make this food look beautiful.
Until you had a bite. Then it was beautiful, and your eyes told you so, as well as your mouth.
It's basically a cock-up of colcannon and clapshot (more like what we call "cannonshot"), with a couple of mashed parsnips and carrots in with the taters and cabbage (red and green).
Really nutritious, and simply killer with the addition of goat butter. Goat butter is butter squared. Get some.
It made a great lunch, all by itself...
And the leftovers made an insane topping for shepherd's pie. Insane!

Gung! Hey!

Happy Chinese New Year.
I will steal the cuisine from any culture if it appeals to me. Especially on holidays.
I'm not a native Jewish cook, but I do love some latkes. I have no Latino heritage, but I'm making burritos, quesadillas, pozole all the time. Fake, I guess, but tasty.
As for Chinese cooking, I've always found it daunting. Until we cracked the Ma Po Tofu code. And the fried rice.
Oh, yeah. I've got my chops. Chop chops.
So today I made a few little vegetarian egg rolls. Jean-Georges Vongerichten ran a recipe for some in the New York Times yesterday, and it gave me an idea. (I hate Vongerichten's food, by the way, so I didn't take most of his suggestions... like putting grated lemon zest in there!)
Here's the deal. I winged it. I cooked up enough filling (two kinds of mushrooms, cabbage, carrot, ginger and green garlic) for four rolls. How much is enough? I don't know. I winged it. It was perfect.
And instead of frying them in three cups of oil (come on!) I sauteed them, hot, in just a few tablespoons.
The dipping sauce was a blend of sambal oelek (thank you, Jean-Georges, I finally bought some), sherry and sherry vinegar. Oh!
I am also happy with the turnip cake we bought at the Asian market. Cut it into slices and fried them. They're very fragile. But blobby and cute.
Am I proud? Is it OK to be proud on Chinese New Year?
I feel a little like a Tiger Mother. But that's so last year. I must be a Rabbit Mom.

Weekly Mushrooms

I love marinated mushrooms. I've tried a million recipes, and there are usually problems, but you can tinker and eventually you will get your beloved, velvety globes.
But why do I keep trying recipes that aren't right?
A few months ago I just poured what I thought would be a good marinating liquid — oil, vinegar, water, salt, herbs — into a pot and gently cooked the cleaned mushroom caps right in it. I didn't let them cook for too long (and this is a great opportunity for the chef to sample the food; after all, you're testing for perfection). You need enough liquid to nearly cover the mushrooms, but not more, because they will shrink and be adequately bathed at the end.
Wow, that was easy!
I did it again the other day, and while I think there may have been too much olive oil (it's surprising to know that water is good here, because too much vinegar would be gacky), it still resulted in a dreamy batch of fungal snackitude.
I used a sprig of rosemary, a sprig of thyme and a fresh (bruised) bay leaf for about 20 little (but not tiny) white mushrooms. You'll probably want to remove the herbs when the mixture has cooled; I thought the flavor was just right at that point.
Put 'em in a jar and wait a day or so while ideas come to mind.
Raclette. Yes, that came to mind. I believe we will serve these babies instead of the traditional cocktail onions. Or maybe with.
And I'm thinking, "Why did I wait so long to try this again? Would it be wrong to marinate mushrooms on a weekly basis?"
No, it would not be wrong.