Current Obsessions

1.  Homemade Pesto: How did I live 33 years without making homemade pesto? It is so easy and delicious! I've got six or seven basil plants growing in the backyard, and the pesto whirls up in no time in the food processor. I don't follow a recipe with precise measurements. We make our pesto with basil, steamed asparagus, toasted pine nuts, olive oil, salt, garlic, and if I remember, a squeeze of fresh lemon juice. I'd show you a pesto photo... but our pesto is not photogenic. It looks like primordial ooze.

2.  The Rivals for Catan: Nathan and I played this games at least 100 times late last summer, after he sprained his ankle (so badly, he might as well have broken the bone). After a several month hiatus, we are playing it again. It's the best two-player strategy game we have found. Buy it here. Warning: the rules are absurdly complicated and take several hours to master, but your efforts will be well-rewarded.

3.  Oscar Wilde: I just finished reading Oscar Wilde and a Death of No Importance, by Gyles Brandreth. The characters include Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Sherard (grandson of the poet William Wordsworth) and of course Mr. Wilde. This book is part-mystery, part-historical fiction, and both are done really well. I've already downloaded the next mystery in the series to my Kindle, but first, I'm reading The Picture of Dorian Gray,Wilde's only novel. Could Wilde have been more witty? If he lived today, he would have the best damn twitter feed!

My Favorite Cookbook

The Flavor Bible, by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg, is my new favorite cookbook. (Its full title is The Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary Creativity, Based On The Wisdom of America's Most Imaginative Chefs, but like I'm going to call it by its complete name). 

I think of The Flavor Bible as a cookbook, but it doesn't actually have any recipes. Instead, the book has lists of what ingredients and flavor work well together. Its basically The Most Amazing Flavor Index Ever. For example, I recently had some fennel in the fridge. I wanted to roast the fennel and mix it with some pasta, but I thought the dish needed something else. According to The Flavor Bible, goat cheese compliments fennel. The resulting dish - roasted fennel and goat cheese pasta - is one of the best things I've ever cooked; and I didn't even need a recipe.

I used to be a cook who relied heavily on recipes. I was too afraid to just invent a dish on my own. With The Flavor Bible, I have overcome my recipe addiction. Also, The Flavor Bible is great if you just want to know what vegetable goes best with your protein. 

If I have any downtime while I'm preparing dinner, I just flip through this tome for inspiration.  Gruyere pairs nicely with garlic? I had no idea. Leeks work well with mustard?  Interesting. And pork tenderloin works well with artichokes? That sounds like a delicious summer dinner!  

If you have any interest in cooking, I cannot recommend The Flavor Bible highly enough.

It's Like Christmas, But With Produce

Once spring arrives, I have trouble practicing self-control at the farmer's market:

How is a girl supposed to resist all these gorgeous fruits and veggies?  Asparagus!  Cherries!  Avocadoes!  Corn!  Strawberries!  And big fat leeks!  Aren't they beautiful?   I swear, the leeks started to weep when I walked past them, and I could not abandon them.

I tend to go overboard and buy more food than we can eat.  The asparagus gets buried behind a carton of eggs, and a few weeks later, I discover a science experiment in my fridge.  We don't eat all the strawberries and I feel guilty when they turn to mush.  Or there's a heat wave and I can't bear the idea of cooking, even if the leeks are wilting and need to be consumed asap. 

If someone wants to teach a course called "how to buy the right amount of food at the farmer's market," I will register as your first pupil.  (Please.  I need help). 

Kitchen All Stars: Our Toaster Oven

My parents gave us a Breville toaster oven two Christmases ago.  Initially, I resented the gift.  We have an oven, and we already had a toaster - why the hell did we need a toaster oven?  It was so big and was just going to be a useless counter space hog.  I stuck the gift in the basement and ignored it.

After several months, I felt overwhelmed by guilt and hauled the beast upstairs.  I rearranged the counters and set it up, certain it would never earn its keep.  I was going to have to arrange for an unfortunate accident between the Breville and a chain saw.

I've been wrong before, but man, was I wrong about the toaster oven.  He is our Kitchen All Star.  I love to bake, but if I had to choose between my stand mixer and this bad boy, I'd be sending the stand mixer to Goodwill and mixing cakes by hand.

I'm pretty certain the Breville toaster oven was designed by wizards.  It toasts, roasts, bakes, broils, reheats and keeps your food warm.  It even has special settings for bagels and pizza.  I use it for everything: it toasts pine nuts when I'm making pesto; roasts veggies for dinner; and reheats leftover chicken for lunch.  And, of course, it's a damn good toaster, with lots of different settings for different darkness levels. 

Since it's so compact, it reaches roasting temperatures in just a few minutes.  If I'm making multiple dishes for dinner and something is ready too soon, I just keep it warm in the Breville.

With summer approaching, the Breville will probably get more action than usual.  When it's too hot for our oven, I can still use the Breville to bake treats and cook dinner. 

The Breville is the Rolls Royce of toaster ovens - and worth every penny.  If I was a poet, I would spend my days composing sonnets about its beauty and charms.

Adventures In Preparing Holiday Meals

Nathan and I celebrated Thanksgiving with my extended family, and I only baked a pumpkin cheesecake for that gathering.  We are celebrating Christmas with my in-laws in Nebraska, so I will not get a chance to bake or cook for that gathering.  (It's kind of hard to travel with sweet potato casserole as a carry-on.  And I don't even want to think what would happen if I packed it in my checked baggage).  But I wanted to prepare a proper holiday meal, so Nathan and I recently hosted a generic holiday meal for my parents and sister. 

First off, I don't know how professional chefs do it.  I had so much fun cooking all of the side dishes, and I love preparing big meals for my family.  But holy crap, I was so exhausted, I fell asleep at 7 p.m.  I was lying on the couch watching The Muppet Show with Nathan.  At the end of an episode, I said, "I just need to rest my eyes for a few minutes."  Right.  Just a few minutes.  I passed out, only reviving briefly at 9:30 p.m. to devour a Quarter Pounder with cheese.  (We'd eaten the holiday meal at 2 p.m). I ate that burger as fast as I could because I just wanted to crawl into bed and zonk out for the next twelve hours.    

As I prepared all of the side dishes for the Generic Holiday Meal, I vacillated between Serenity and Panic.  My inner monologue went something like this:

- Oh my god, it's already 7 a.m.!  How am I going to prepare all this food!
- This is so freaking easy.  La de da, I'm going to take a break and watch some t.v.
- What was I thinking?  STUPID STUPID STUPID.  There's no time for television!  We'll be lucky if I finish even one of these dishes.
- Oh, why was I so worried?  I am a Side Dish Goddess.  I can make this stuffing with my eyes closed.
- ^#@&*^*!(_*#_(!)*$)(*!)(*!!!!!!!!!

And so on.  I probably passed out at 7 p.m. from emotional, and not physical, exhaustion. 

But the food was delicious and I was so happy to share the meal with my family.  (If anything, my panic probably made the meal tastier and satisfying for me).  If you are looking for some good holiday recipes, this is what we enjoyed:

- Turkey fried with infra-red technology in The Big Easy.

- Sweet potato casserole with a pecan topping, using this recipe.  This thing is criminally delicious.  I was skeptical because I've always loved yams with marshmallows, but this casserole should be on every holiday table. 

- Stuffing using this recipe.  It was very delicious, but I am not ready to sign up for a committed relationship with this stuffing.  I still want to audition some other recipes.

- Balsamic braised brussel sprouts with pancetta, using this recipe.  Oh, so delicious.  I am in a monogamous, committed relationship with this recipe.  Whenever I want fancy brussel sprouts, I'm inviting these guys to the party. 

- And for dessert, nutmeg maple butter cookies, using this recipe.  We really didn't need dessert, but these cookies are delicious and stay tasty for a week.  They manage to be crispy but chewy at the same time.  I'll definitely be baking these cookies again next December.  (Oh hell, who am I kidding?  I'll definitely be baking these cookies again next week!) 

I Hope It's Legal To Make Cranberry Sauce Before Thanksgiving.

Call me impatient, but I couldn't wait for Thanksgiving.  I made cranberry sauce yesterday because I could no longer resist their siren call.

There's another bag of cranberries in the fridge and three more in the freezer.  It's not enough.  I need to go back to the grocery store AND BUY ALL OF THE CRANBERRIES.

I might have some hoarding issues in the cranberry department.

p.s. I will eat the cranberry sauce with every meal until it's all gone.

How Did People Shop For Groceries Before The iPhone?

I recently decided to try a recipe that calls for cippolini onions.  What is a cippolini onion?  Well, to be honest, I have no idea.  But I wrote “cippolini onions – 1 lb” on my shopping list, so that’s what I needed to buy. 

At the grocery store, I could not find any cippolini onions.  I circled the big onion display in the produce department several times, inspecting all the labels:  white onions, brown onions, red onions, pearl onions, shallots, garlic, where are the freaking cippolini onions? 

There were no cippolini onions at the grocery story.  At this point, I had three options:

•           Option One: Go on a Mad Crazy Cippolini hunt and visit all of the grocery stores in a fifty mile radius until I could locate one pound of cippolini onions.
•          Option Two: Consult my iPhone/Google.
•          Option Three: Cry.

I was feeling rational, so thirty seconds later, I learned (a) how to pronounce “cippolini” (it begins with a “ch” sound) and (b) pearl onions are an acceptable substitute for cippolini onions.  Eureka!  I had seen the pearl onions next to the garlic.

Which brings me to garlic.  I love garlic, but I had a very bad experience with garlic when I was first learning to cook.  I was a graduate student and had cooked myself dinner maybe four times in my life (unless microwaving a frozen pizza counts).  But I was on a no-carb diet and desperate to eat something new and delicious.  I thought I had found my no-carb salvation in a recipe for chicken mole that needed two cloves of garlic. 

At the grocery store, I realized I did not know how much a “clove” of garlic is.  I carried an entire head of garlic to the man restocking the potatoes and asked him, “Is this a clove of garlic?”  He confidently confirmed that it was, so I bought and used two entire heads of garlic for my chicken mole.  It was a disaster.  Let’s just say I learned the difference between a “clove” and a “head” of garlic the hard way.  

After the Great Garlic Debacle, I lost my faith in produce department employees.  (I still regard the butcher as a minor deity).  For years, this made me wary of recipes with unknown ingredients.  My iPhone, however, has freed me and now I can always hunt down the most elusive of ingredients. The evil employees of the produce department will never again trick me into ruining a recipe with an unholy amount of garlic.