Back from New York

Took the weekend off from work; this is the second time I returned from New York with a cold. I just finished sieving the chicken soup I made for myself and the water’s on for the noodles (yes, nurses nurse themselves!). I would love to get better naturally and not have to see my nurse practitioner again. This has been unusual year for me as I rarely get sick, I guess there is something in New York that I’m not used to.

This was my third trip to Manhattan in the last four months, I’ve grown to really enjoy the city despite it’s difficulties. I can imagine myself living there, but working as a nurse in New York? I’m not so sure. I hope that this summer I can spend a longer period in the city so I can really feel what it is like as well as to see how well Z and I get on. This is really just the start of our relationship since we don’t get to see each other very often. My feelings for him continue to grow and now when I think of him I ache for the next time we are together.

Z and I had an amazing time. Saturday we put on our fancy-pants and listened to Il Trovatore at Lincoln Center. Walking up the steps and seeing Lincoln Center lit up and glowing is an image I’ll never forget.

I was 19 when I heard my first opera here in Fort Wayne. It was on a whim on a humid early spring day and I received tickets for $12 and attended with a coworker. She and I were not even amature enthusiasists, we walked into the Philharmonic not knowing what to expect. We didn’t even know what we were going to hear, we were that innocent. It was Verdi’s La Traviata. I had absolutely no knowledge of opera and I remember thinking during Alfredo and Violetta’s duet Un di felice, eterea, “Holy shit, this is what the human voice is capable of.” Opera is what made me see that the voice is an instrument capable of such range not just of sound but of emotion. When I hear an aria it is not merely the purity of the woman’s voice that moves me to tears but the part of her soul- and the soul of her character- that she includes in the notes. Opera moves me because I am eternally connected to the composers and singers through what they have given me to listen. Furthermore, I love opera because everyone in the house is capable of having the same experience. You don’t feel opera more fully if you’re wealthy. You may not see as well in the third balcony but you can still hear the power and tenderness. Music is the great equalizer.

Sunday afternoon Snackle

Snackle: that’s what my grandmother called the little treats she gave to me in the afternoon lull between lunch and dinner. Sometimes it was a piece of ham or chicken leftover from the huge Sunday lunches she created seemingly instantly after church, but often times it was a root beer float or ice cream sundae topped with homemade fudge. I miss her snackles, but made one for myself this afternoon: rich vanilla bean ice cream covered with dark, delicious ganache. Pockets of hot fudge and areas of solid ganache: sinful on a Sunday!

Cookay tiem

I sort of love baking. It doesn’t chime my bell like cooking does, mostly because baking has to be precise, which I am generally not. And there are steps. Steps that should be in the right order. But I enjoy chocolate, and I enjoy chocolate in the form of cookies. So it was cookie time. Which should not be confused with business time. Because cookie time last longer than two minutes. And I don’t wear socks when I’m baking cookies.

I made sugar cookies, chocolate crinkles, Andes mint cookies, and sablés filled with milk chocolate ganache. The sablés may have the fanciest name, but they were the easiest to make. The surprise ingredient in these tender “sandy” cookies? Hard-boiled egg yolk.

Hello, we are Fronch.

I used the same goddamned receipt that I use every year for sugar cookies and royal icing and this year they broke and they tasted…blarg. Cloying and flat.

Halp, I am borked.

The chocolate crinkles, a Martha Stewart recipe, were good and relatively easy to make. They surprised me because the batter almost looked like buttercream frosting. After a good chill and roll (which resulted in messy hands that of course had to be licked clean) they baked up into graphic looking black and white cookies that taste like rich brownies.

The Andes mint cookies were the most fun to make because you got to unwrap all the candies and put them on top of the hot cookies and then spread the chocolate after they melted. Fun fun fun, lick the chocolatey spoon. Nom.

The End

All boxed up

Pate de campagne

I’ve been wanting to make a rustic pate for a while, since I had a slice on Cochon’s boucherie plate in New Orleans last Christmastide. I still dream about their quail mousse. Mmm.

I used Molly Wizenberg’s receipt from the Dec 08 edition of Bon Appetit. I followed her recipe to the letter sans the cognac, for which I substituted brandy. I did not detect any taste of brandy in the completed pate, so perhaps I should’ve ponied up the extra cash for cognac. I minced my own pork which made the pate velvety. It’s a very intense final dish, a 1/2″ slice is more than adequate for one person as a meal…the plate above was my dinner and I was very full…I barely had room for cookies!

Sad news

Day was a hard day.  Had the grandparents and great grandma over for dinner and what we thought was going to be a long weekend (their power had been out all day). Grandpa gave us the news this evening that his cancer has returned. Three years ago he had his kidney removed because of cancer. Ever since then his health has been getting worse and worse. I am afraid that this will be the last Christmas I have with him. I am really close to my grandparents; we eat dinner together at least once a week. Obviously I’m devastated that the one man in my life that has always been there for me is really ill. I just don’t know what to do but cry.

Smoke

One of my favorite memories from my time in Italy was the distilled veil of incense that wraps around you when you enter a basilica. The sweet smoke a curtain that envelops you, beckoning you to breathe in the sweet perfume and linger. I would imagine that every wisp was a prayer, the curl of the flame from the candles the memory of a votum uttered in urgency.

New people enter your life every day. Most of them are forgettable; a wisp of smoke drifting in a cavernous room. Every once in a while you meet someone who makes you stand still. You find yourself looking forward, not back. Before long you forget they were ever a stranger. They install themselves quietly in your life. You relax and breathe deeply, you linger and get to know them. With a jolt you realize they’ve become a fixture in your day and you would have a pain in your side if they were removed.

I recently told someone I loved them. I admitted what I felt because I had that jolt of realization that my life would be less rich without them in it. That I am happy to stand still and breathe deeply. While I feel the urge to clasp them to my side I know that’s not right. You don’t love people to keep them in your life, you love them because they’ve made your life better, for whatever reason. This person makes me laugh. I’m funny and wild and ridiculous, I experience the profound and the profane when I’m with him.

Love is a fluid thing, it ebbs and flows and one day this person may drift away, leaving only a memory of their perfume behind. I’m okay with that. I accept that right now, they make me feel this way. I have no expectations or demands.

Of cheetos and Esperanto

Had the family over for Thanksgiving. Well, about half my family- my cousin Brad and his brigade of crotchfruit had dinner with my aunt and uncle. Rather glad about that, to be honest. For some reason, my aunt has taken to toting her dog, Toby, around like a football. I think it’s her version of a safety blanket. This dog is rather rowdy and combined with Brad’s brats chaos obviously ensues. This past June I had a family barbecue, partly to hostess the innumerous June birthdays and partly to inaugurate my new grill. I would say it was mostly a success, except for the tray of margarita glasses that I dropped after tripping over Toby. Brad’s children, in the face of a patio full of sparkling broken glass, gurgled with glee and ran for the shiny objects. It’s very hard physically restraining four children.

Now I have my nephew, Alex, staying with me for the next two days. He’s 18 mos. and he genuinely understands what you’re saying, tilting his head and listening inquisitively. He was trying to put his shoe on the wrong foot this afternoon, and after I explained “no, it fits on this foot” and tapping the right foot, he changed feet and wrangled the shoe on. I am convinced he is a genius and am attempting to teach him Vescere bracis meis (Latin for “Eat my shorts”) before he is returned to his parents. I worry about him. They feed him junk and they listen to Kid Rock. Ugh. I made a Debussy reference at dinner and they just blinked at me.

I wouldn’t be surprised if my brother came to pick Alex up in a white Ford350 with those gigantic tires that come up to my shoulder and a decal in large serif font flourishing the eponymous “Hillbilly De-Lux” on the rear windscreen. I get the feeling sometimes that if Alex were my kid he’d love brussels sprouts, philanthropy, wire-rimmed glasses and would read Tolkien as a six year old, but if he stays with Sean and Danielle he’ll be picking his nose in high school and hold books upside down because he doesn’t know “what those funny shapes mean.” Sometimes I look into his big brown eyes and I see “HALP” written in their inky depths. That’s when I hand him my TI-83 calculator and speak to him in Esperanto for fourty-five minutes. It’s like fiscal offsetting.

Afternoon Nosh

Cooking streak continues, this time an off-the-cuff recipe unvented in response to my grumbling tummy, the cold weather, and my fridge exploding with roasted chicken and mushrooms. I’ve always had an affinity for the Hungarian dish Chicken Paprikash, a goulash filled with stewed onions, sour cream and sweet and smoky paprika. But I couldn’t wait an hour for the dish to stew; besides I wanted something simple to eat with the delicious, seedy whole wheat bread I bought yesterday at the Amish market. So I broke down my favorite recipe for Paprikash into it’s various components: soft, sweet onions, tender chicken, a heady sauce of garlic, sour cream and spices. I had roasted chicken, onion jam and plenty of dairy. I add mushrooms because, well, do mushrooms need a reason?? I love them, they add earthiness and substance to any dish.

I sauteed a shallot with 4 oz. of mushrooms, then added garlic and deglazed with vermouth and dry chardonnay. I reduced then added chicken stock, sour cream, cream and a spoonful of onion jam. I seasoned with sage, thyme, parsely, salt and pepper, mace and plenty of sweet paprika. Finally, I let the sauce reduce before I served it with a lemon wedge, more fresh parsley (a traditional component of Paprikash), and bread and crackers. The resulting dish is redolent with spices: sweet and heady with mace, earthy and complex with paprika I picked up at The Spice House in Boystown, Chicago. It is bright with the addition of lemon and parsley, and the onion jam made the dish taste slow-cooked. I’m satisfied and have leftovers, which I may chill and fold with cream cheese for an interesting dip.

French Food for Friday Night

I have been aching to cook, really cook for weeks. And today, my first day off at home in nearly a month, I got to do it. First I went to the store and stock up and some essentials: aromatics, mushrooms, sherry, vermouth, wine, cream, puff pastry, delicious local apples, smoky-sweet bacon and the most beautiful chicken I’ve seen in a long time. But I digress. Tonight I was going to cook!

I settled, after much ruffling of pages, on some internet recipes I’d spied while reading Lindy’s blog: lobstersquad’s marmelada de cebolla with which I would make Lindy’s onion and bacon pizza and serve with her mushroom and corn soup. Keeping with the casual but indulgent French-inspired menu, I got the two (!) things I needed to make Orangette’s Chaussons aux Pommes from the Nov ‘08 edition of Bon Appetit. Ingredients in hand, I tied on my favorite apron (which I’ve had since age 13, seriously) and got to chopping.

I started my evening by kneading some dough for my pizza. Lindy used an overnight-style dough that I would’ve had to make, er, yesterday afternoon, which wasn’t going to happen (I had 1.5 hours of downtime between school and work, which I used to eat and take a nap. I have priorities.). Instead, I used, of all things, my favorite naan recipe which involves yoghurt to destabilize the flour’s protein structure, producing a tender yet chewy crumb and a sinfully crisp exterior. It worked wonderfully- the dough had just enough fat in it for a cracker-light crispiness that paired perfectly with the toppings. More on that later.

I turned next to the Onion Marmelade, which took much longer than I expected and produced a LOT of jam. I used large Spanish onions, DeSoto sherry vinegar, and a 2002 Cote de Rhone red. You start by slicing your onions in paper-thin half moons and simmering them in butter, olive oil, salt, pepper and castor sugar. After the onions release their juices and stew you add the vinegar, wine and a few tablespoons of a fortified wine, in my case I used a fino sherry.  You then turn up the heat and boil away the liquid until you have a deep, syrupy marmelade. The resulting jam is a deep burgundy-brown and is complex- carmelized, nutty and savory. It is a perfect expression of onions, and even after all the cooking the onion slices still have a little bit of tooth to them.

I sliced and chopped a couple pounds of mushrooms- shiitake, cepes, button mushrooms, baby bellas (whatever those are), rendered some bacon and sliced another onion. I sauted the onions and mushrooms in a couple tablespoons of bacon fat until they were reduced and carmelized. I then made the soup with most of them, and with about a cup of the mushroom/onion mixture added some vermouth and heavy cream and made a sort-of sauce for the pizzas. I hand tossed some dough into 6-8″ rounds (that’s a liberal description for the wonky circles I tossed), and topped with the mushroom mixture, some sage, bacon and the onion jam. Threw it into a smokin’ hot oven for 20ish minutes while I finished the soup, which was nothing more than adding some corn, wine, stock, herbs and cream. Easy and really, really yummy with the addition of bacon on top.
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Speaking of bacon, I was splitting up a pound of bacon for this meal and my mom was standing by drinking coffee. I asked, “Is this enough bacon for dinner?” She said we need more and I added a few more slices to my tidy pile of pork fat. I got to thinking, this isn’t just a practical question but a philosophical one- when is there enough bacon? I have a bacon barometer built into my person, and I can always tell when a meal needs more pig. When you come to one of life’s great impasses, ask yourself, “Does this situation need bacon?” Thank me later.
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Anyway, back to the meal. The pizza came out dark, smoky, crisp, sweet, and savory. The soup was rich but not overwhelming, bright with the addition of lemon juice and parsley. Finally, I baked my chausson aux pomme (literally “slippers of apple”). I’ll be frank with you, they were a lot of fucking work for mediocre payoff. They basically tasted like apple pie but took about four times as much money, time and dishes to wash (the most infuriating part!) than pie. Don’t get me wrong, they were damned tasty with vanilla ice cream, but I was expecting ethereal pillows of apple-y goodness and I didn’t get it. C’est la vie.

I really enjoyed myself tonight. Yeah, it was a lot of work- I got started around 4 PM with shopping and we didn’t eat until 9 PM- but I love to cook and bake so it was really enjoyable. As a bonus, I roasted some chicken for tomorrow, I have another recipe of dough chilling in the fridge, and I have many servings of soup and chausson to eat over the weekend. It’s stuff like this that make life so sweet.

Sedate me

Tomorrow I’m driving up to Chicago to meet someone off the innerweb. I am super nervous and excited. Will he like me? Am I pretty enough, clever enough, sexy enough for him? Will I like him? Is he pretty enough for ME?