recipe time

OK, I am beat. I mean really and truly beat. My lovely assistant and I today spent just over seven hours clearing a season's worth of accumulated snow and compacted came-off-the-metal-roof-in-a-big-icy-lump stuff off a deck. My hands can hardly work. My fingers don't want to type. The flesh on the insides of my hands - the palms and that side of my fingers feels strange. Like it's been smacked several times with the pointy side of a meat tenderizer mallet. Yeah. Like that.

This deck is probably 16 by 16 feet, surrounded on three sides by metals roofs that run the snow right down into the middle. We have dutifully shoveled a path up the center of this thing after each storm, but now there was enough snow and accumulated ice and such to cause some real concern about what that kind of weight might be doing to the deck itself.

So we attacked the twin masses with shovels. And got absolutely nowhere. The stuff was frozen into two solid icebergs, one in either side of the deck. Encased in one iceberg was a gas grill and a plastic watering can. Entombed in the ice on the other side of the deck was a plastic storage container for lawn chair cushions. None of these items were visible when we started.

The icebergs were about five feet high and about six feet deep. They each ran the length of the deck, about 16 feet, maybe a little more. One side got sun and was easier to break up. The other side was not in the sun and required a pick-ax.

Yes, a pick-ax.

I told A that I did not know whether to be thrilled or terrified that she happened to have a pick-ax with her. She simply grunted and swung high. I'd have been lost without her on this job.

The icebergs turned out to be historical things. We could look at the striations and recognize each storm's snow. The really thick layers of ice were from that couple of nasty storms we had in mid-January. The others were less distinct. It had the feel of an archaeological expedition.

I uncovered the watering can in what must have been the Cambrian Era.

We never found any fossils, though. And I dearly wish I had taken before and after pictures. I do have one picture of the deck from that first doozy of a storm earlier in the season. Remember this?


I'll swing over and take a picture tomorrow to show the new and improved snowbanks. You'll be impressed.

Oh, hell. Recipe time. Remember the recipe? This was supposed to be a post about a recipe.

Because I have a first-time commenter who is also a first-class storyteller in her own right, I will post the recipe to yesterday's sticky buns per the request of Gladys. Visit her blog and prepare to be entertained. Very neat site. Family friendly. Way more so than this one. I didn't see any pictures of women tied to equipment on her blog. Doesn't seem like that kind of place. But wicked cool nonetheless. Here's the recipe, straight from the Bread Machine Magic Cookbook, by Linda Rehberg & Lois Conway. Published in 1992 by St. Martin's Press, New York. ISBN 0-312-06914-6 (paperback original) for you book geeks. I think it might be out of print, but it is a gem. Pick it up if you see it at a yard sale.

For a one-pound loaf. I use a bread machine. I am sure real bread-makers will know how to adapt this to by-hand methods. Please feel free to do that. I use the machine.

Dough:

1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup water
1 egg
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons butter or margarine
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons dry yeast

Select dough setting on machine, put all ingredients in the hopper and press start. Now go have a cup of coffee (or two) and read your email while it does its thing. About 10 minutes before it's done, you'll need to assemble the rest of the stuff.

Topping:
2 tablespoons melted butter or margarine
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup light or dark corn syrup
1/2 cup walnuts (I added these, they're not really in the recipe. Pecans would be good, too.)

Filling:

1 tablespoon melted butter or margarine
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (I used waaaay more than that)
1/4 cup raisins

Deal with the topping first.

Brush 1 tablespoon of the melted butter onto the bottom and sides of a 9 inch round cake pan (9 by 9 square would work, too.)

Sprinkle in the brown sugar and nuts, then drizzle the corn syrup over the rest. Set aside. Hang onto that other bit of melted butter. We'll get to it shortly.

When the dough beeps and is ready, turn it out onto a floured board and knead a few times. Roll it out into a large rectangle - about 12 by 10 inches.

Brush with the melted butter, then sprinkle with the raisins, brown sugar and dust vigorously with cinnamon.

Next, roll up the dough along its longest edge and pinch it tightly to seal the seam. Gently mark out 12 or 16 pieces with a knife (but don't cut the dough with the knife - it will be bad!). Cut the pieces using a 12-inch piece of dental floss by sliding it under the roll and then bringing the two ends across the top to slice the dough cleanly.

Place the slices cut side up on top of the topping already in the pan and brush with that other tablespoon of melted butter. (I told you we'd get back to it!)

Cover with a towel and let rise in a warm place for 30 to 45 minutes, or until they double in size.

Preheat the oven to 325 F and bake for 45 minutes.

Remove from the pan and invert on a plate. Let the pan sit for about 2 or 3 minutes to allow all the oozy-goozy caramel to let go of the pan and adhere to the rolls. Lift off the pan and serve while hot.

These are yummy while hot and will break a filling when cold. They don't keep terribly well, but microwave tolerably. When I am awake enough to remember, I add the raisins right into the dough when the machine beeps partway through the second kneading cycle. When I am not that awake, I spread them on the flat dough.

That's it. A daily report of my oh-so-dull life, a shout-out to a new blog buddy, and a recipe. Now I'm going to find a snack and head to bed. 7:30 p.m. is not too early for bed, is it?

recipe time

Today I went and hung drywall while it stormed mightily outside. L has to go deliver newspapers tonight, so I made her a good dinner (breakfast?) from a recipe I have been wanting to try all week. What you see above is roast chicken with brown rice, oven roasted beets and shallots topped with walnuts and goat cheese, all served on a bed of baby spinach. And complicated as it sounds, it wasn't that bad to put together.

Recipe

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

1 tiny chicken (mine was 4 pounds)
handful of whole garlic cloves, peeled
2 tablespoons of mayonnaise
ground sage.

rinse the chicken and pat dry. dust the garlic cloves with the sage and put in the bird's cavity. don't stitch shut - just fold the skin flap back over the opening to keep them from escaping.
Mix the mayo with more of the sage (a half teaspoon, maybe?) and salt and pepper if desired. I also usually add a tiny bit of summer savory, too. Paint it on the bird, tuck his wings so they don't burn and put him in the oven. Turn the heat back to 325.

Immediately get to work on the beets:

Peel and dice three large-ish beets (baseball sized). Toss with olive oil, and a little salt and pepper and put in a shallow baking pan. I used my regular brownie pan. I also sliced up a half-dozen shallots that I had around that were looking like they wouldn't last much longer before they went weird. I tossed them with the beets and stuck them in the oven next to the chicken. They need to roast for nearly an hour or until they are fork tender.

While that's doing its thing in the oven, prepare the brown rice according to the directions on the bag. Ours said to boil the water then add the rice, cover and simmer for 45 minutes.

When all of that is done cooking, take the bird and the beets out of the oven to rest for a few minutes. Remove the rice from the heat so it doesn't burn. Line your plates with a layer of baby spinach leaves. Scoop the beets on the spinach, and top with walnuts and little bits of goat cheese.
Place the rice on the spinach as well, and then the chicken. Because the bird was so tiny, I gave us each a full breast and wing portion. Thigh quarters make better leftovers anyway.

Oh, I put some of the garlic cloves on the plate, but for garnish only. They were still more firm than I wanted to bite into. Wow. But the chicken tasted yummy and was super moist.

That's it. Nothing fancy. Nothing weird. Hardly any spices. But what an elegant meal! (And I saved the beet greens to have tomorrow with my lunch leftovers!

Decadence

Many years ago when I was a newspaper reporter, I worked in a little town that has a summer festival in celebration of the local (now mostly defunct) egg-producing industry. There is a parade and carnival, with the usual rides and crafty things for sale. There is, or at least there was that year, a cheesecake-making contest. Local gourmands compete fiercely for ribbons and recognition. The only requirement is that each cheesecake recipe must include at least three eggs.

It was judged that year by an assemblage of representatives from various media and news outlets. It is an ingenious way to guarantee that your event gets ample news coverage - to feed media members cheesecake.

So the contest was at 10:30 a.m. I was there, the other paper sent a representative, the local weatherman guy from Bangor was there, and a few radio and sales people I didn't recognize. There were something like 20 cheesecakes and they were split up into categories for plain cheesecake, flavored cheesecake, and "special" cheesecakes - the uber-fancy ones.

I had never been a judge in such a contest, but the organizers were very ... well ... organized about it. First we all went though and judged each cake on its appearance. We were given little score cards and golf pencils to mark them. Then a slice was cut from each cake, placed on a small plate next to a cup of plastic forks. We went down the line, taking a new fork at each piece of cheesecake, taking a bite, discarding the fork, and judging the dessert on things like flavor, texture and "mouthfeel" whatever the hell that is.

The fanciest cheesecake was a double-chocolate-raspberry swirled thing that the chef had then decorated with pansies. It was truly a work of art. And it tasted fabulous and looked beautiful and I suddenly understood what "mouthfeel" meant. And I loved it.

By the end of the tasting, what at first seemed like the greatest story assignment I had ever encountered in my still-very-new career had turned into a grim gastronomical endurance test. Twenty bites of oh-my-god-rich cheesecakes before lunch is really not the great idea one might first think. We judges looked at each other with relief in our eyes as we tossed our last forks into the provided trash bin.

Except there was a three-way tie for one of the non-"special" categories. So we had to go back through those three cheesecakes anew, with cards and pencils, offering our opinion. Then there was a two-way tie. Dear god in heaven, is there no mercy?? We barely took a taste of the remaining two offerings, and peeking at each other's cards, conspired for one to win over the other, we really didn't care whose it was, just so we didn't have to eat any more. And only then, having fulfilled our judgely duties, we were mercifully dismissed.

Just in time for lunch.

No thanks, I think I'll pass.

On the up side, the contestants had all agreed to allow their winning recipes to be published, and so I offer you my adaptation of the Double-Chocolate-Raspberry Cheesecake that won the 1994 Pittsfield Egg Festival Cheesecake Contest. I have no memory now of who the creator of this marvel is, only that she was exceedingly proud of herself, and with good reason. It's to die for.

Double Chocolate-Raspberry Marble Cheesecake

Crust:
version A (the original):
1 stick oleo, melted
1 package (10.25 ounce) brownie mix
mix together and press into bottom and up the sides of a spring-form pan.

version B (adjusted to be soy-free):
3/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup sugar
2/3 cup Ghirardelli's baking cocoa (yes, the quality is worth the extra buck a can!)
1 stick butter, melted
Sift the dry ingredients together, then add the melted butter and mix together. Press into the bottom and sides of a spring-form pan.

The Filling:
4 8-ounce packages of cream cheese
6 small or 4 large eggs
1 cup whipping cream
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups sugar

Raspberry Puree:
1/2 cup raspberries
1/8 cup sugar

Chocolate:
version A:
1/2 ounce unsweetened chocolate, melted

version B (because I didn't have any unsweetened chocolate handy):
1 Tbsp melted butter
3 Tbsp cocoa

For filling, beat cream cheese until smooth and creamy. Add eggs one at a time, scraping the sides of the bowl and beating well after each one. Beat in sugar, cream and vanilla until very smooth. Pour all but 1 cup into the prepared pan.

Add 1/2 cup of the filling to the raspberry puree, and the other half cup to the chocolate. Blend each well, then drop spoonfulls of each onto the top of the filling, and swirl gently with a knife until you get the desired pattern.

Bake at 350 degrees F for one hour. After 1 hour, turn off the oven, open the door, and allow the cheesecake to cool slowly until it gets to room temperature. Then place in the refrigerator and chill for at least 8 hours. Garnish as desired with raspberries or chocolate (or pansies).

Now along the right side are the pictures of what it looked like going together:

From top to bottom we have butter, dry ingredients sifted together, melted butter, added to dry, mixed enough, the lined pan and then the crust formed into the pan.

Of course there is a story behind why the pan has waxed paper in it. It got lent out over the summer and came back with its shiny black coating all shredded and peeling. Yeah, ick. So I buttered it and stuck the waxed paper to it and am now shopping for a new 10" spring-form pan.

Oh, here's a tip that never gets explained anywhere: once I got it mixed well, I divided the crust in half and pressed one portion into the bottom of the pan, then set the pan on edge and pressed the rest to the sides, a little bit at a time, all the way around. It was kind of a pain, but it came out looking beautiful. I smoothed it with the back of a spoon, too.

And for the record, I have tried both the package mix and the home-made versions of the crust, and the home-made version is the better of the two, no question.

Below that we've got the beginnings of the filling. Four of the BIG blocks of cream cheese - I use the local store brand, plus eggs and whipping cream. This is not a low-fat thing. It's a cheesecake. You want low-fat, go make yourself a nice salad and leave me the hell alone. Go. Now.

Another thing that is useful to know is that while cream cheese might be smooth when it is still cold, the "smooth" you're looking for in the mixing process is "smooth and creamy and spreadable like peanut butter on hot toast" as opposed to "smooth but still stiff".

The recipe says to add the vanilla after the eggs, but long history has taught me that I never remember to add it there, so I put it in with my first egg. I do this no matter what I am baking. If it frigs with the end flavor, then so be it. If I don't do it that way, it simply never gets in at all.

It's important to make sure you scrape down the sides of the bowl when you add each egg or else you get big lumps of non-whipped cream cheese, which make funky pockets of goo in the middle of the cheesecake. Even in non-elite culinary circles, that is considered bad form.

As you can see, I made the raspberry puree in my Magic Bullet. I love that thing. It is truly one of the most useful gadgets in my kitchen. Oh, when you get berries - if fresh are not available or too expensive out-of-season, make sure to get frozen whole berries that are not packed in any kind of syrup. The recipe depends on the pucker of the berries to counter the heavy sweetness of everything else.

I think this is the recipe that finally killed Old Yeller, my grandmother's circa 1938 Sunbeam Mixmaster stand mixer. Gawd but I loved that mixer. It was sturdy as hell, the base had a little metal spinny thing that allowed the white glass bowl to spin this way and that for easy scraping of the sides or adding ingredients here and there. Oh, man, it was just a marvel. Unfortunately, the motor gave out and even the old guys who fix appliances were unable to do more than clean it up and oil it. The parts simply are no longer available. I think it now serves as a boat mooring. Damned thing weighed a ton!

When the cheesecake has been in the oven for an hour, turn it off and open the door. This time the cheesecake was taller than I have ever made one before! As the cooler air of the kitchen hit it, the center began to sink, but not to black-hole-like proportions. It settled softly, and much of the rest of the cheesecake settled with it. I had to let it cool gently there for a couple hours before putting it in the fridge to set. It is the rapid temperature change that causes the sink-hole in a cheesecake.

By the time it was fully chilled, including a final blast of cold from 90 minutes spent in L's car in a howling snowstorm, the center of the cheesecake had sunk to just over two inches high. Not beautiful, but not horrid, either.

We brought it in from the car and took off the spring form pan, then carefully peeled off the waxed paper from the sides and bottom. It was touchy going, but not impossible. Not a thing you want to hurry through, that's for sure.

We tried to cut off the toasted brown top, but gave up when we realized that we would have to sacrifice some of the wonderful chocolate crust on the outside edge of the thing. Screw that! was the sentiment. It's not the prettiest, but we didn't want to throw away any of the flavor. So we cut it. The crust was nice and firm, sort of with a toasted feel to it (must be that stick of butter!) and the hot knife had no problem slicing through. Per usual, the first slice looked like monkeys had cut it with a grapefruit knife, so we didn't get a picture of that. But you can see how the other pieces came out.

As we cross over from the last dark year of the Bush regime into the promised light and hope of our president-elect, my wish for you is health, happiness, prosperity, peace where you are, and if making a cheesecake will brighten your day, then please take this recipe. It is the best one I have ever tasted. Happy New Year.

Dawn

~enjoy~

recipe time

Oh man.

I got a cookbook for Christmas. Greetings from Maine Recipes from the Maine Kitchen put out by the Cancer Community Center. It's a non-profit kind of thing that does good works. You can get a copy of this cookbook at http://www.cancercommunitycenter.org/. Do it. The organization is cool and the recipes are much better than you usually get from stuff with Maine twice in the title.

First recipe I try is something I am going to post because I know that Jen over at Never a Dull Moment is looking for easy gluten-free recipes and I don't know if Robin at Around The Island might not be able to use it because there is Coconut milk instead of critter milk, and I think she has dairy issues with her kids.

In any case, it is yummy and I found all the ingredients at Hannaford, a Maine-based supermarket chain, so I'm pretty sure anyone will be able to find the ingredients without too much trouble. And don't get freaked out that it calls for mussels. This would work just as easily with boneless chicken breast cut up pretty small or tofu if you are vegetarian.

Thai Mussels

Serves 6 as an appetizer or two as a meal.
Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 10-12 minutes (20 if you make rice)

1/4 cup butter
4 tomatoes, seeded and chopped (I used a 28-ounce can of diced)
2 Tbsp garlic, minced
2 Tbsp ginger, peeled and minced fine
2 cans (14 oz.) unsweetened coconut milk
2 Tbsp Thai Red Curry Paste
1 bunch fresh cilantro, chopped
1 tsp salt (I forgot and never missed it)
3 pounds of mussels, scrubbed clean (ours came in a 2-lb. bag, so that's what I used)

(I used our big wok to cook this)
Melt butter in bottom of a large heavy pot over medium-high heat.

Add tomatoes, garlic, and ginger, saute until garlic is tender.

Add is coconut milk, curry paste, salt and cilantro, reserving some cilantro for garnish.

Simmer 5 minutes to blend flavors. Add mussels, cover and cook until mussels open, about 5 minutes. Discard any mussels that don't open. Transfer to a serving bowl and sprinkle on the rest of the cilantro.

Serve with plenty of crusty fresh bread to soak up the delicious sauce. (Dawn adds: or boil up some rice noodles and serve it in bowls like a large, lumpy soup.)

It was absolutely fantastic. The butter can be switched with margarine or oil according to your tastes, the mussels can be switched for boneless chicken breast, it can be served with bread, over rice noodles or on a plate of steamed rice.

{ASIDE: puppy is fine. Everything is working out. Ahem.}

Party night!

Tonight is the night I celebrate my sobriety anniversary with my home group. I made my own cake this year - it's what I wanted, and yeah, I like my version best. The cake recipe comes right off the back of the box of Hershey's baking cocoa. I used the butter cream frosting recipe, too, only instead of milk, I added come coffee sludge to make it mocha.

What is coffee sludge, you say? Well, coffee sludge is what happens when you can't seem to find the jar of instant decaf coffee reserved for just these occasions, but you do find an old jar of regular instant that is from Hy-Vee.

Now, some of you will know that Hy-Vee is a midwestern grocery store chain. That means this particular jar of instant coffee moved with us back from Minnesota.

In 2004.

That could be why is was a solid block of almost-black nastiness rattling around in the otherwise empty plastic jar.

It was this morning that I was making the frosting, and I had just poured my first cup of the day when I got the idea that adding hot, fresh coffee to that freeze-dried ball of what looked like shit might give me something pretty strong with which to make a killer mocha frosting. [Note to self: do not try to think before drinking that first cup.] I poured some of the fresh coffee into the little jar and swirled it around. The one lump broke apart and a couple of the larger chunks dissolved quickly. I poured off 1 cup of the stuff to use in the frosting. It was thicker than any espresso I have ever made. I did not taste it, but it looked, well, chewy. I was glad I used a glass measuring cup - that shit would have dissolved metal and melted plastic.

The frosting is incredible. I don't think I have ever made frosting that I could describe as "having teeth" but this stuff does. Oh man.

I think I might use a combination of instant and real again another time, but I will be measuring the instant into the real stuff instead. It was almost too strong.

So, the recipe for my killer mocha frosting is:

2 sticks butter, softened (this is a double batch)
1 1/3 cup baking cocoa
6 cups confectioner's sugar
1 cup coffee sludge

Beat the butter to smooth it out and add the cocoa.

Beat gently (it'll poof all over the place if you go to fast!) until the cocoa and butter are good friends.

Add the 10X and beat gently again. It will look sort of loose and crumbly. Now add the coffee sludge and beat until it is all incorporated and looks like frosting instead of something unpleasant.

Frost the cake. I made a half-sheet cake, plus six cupcakes and I still had about a cup of frosting left over. God only knows what I'll use it for, but I've got it.

Gluttony

Sesame-ginger seared swordfish steak with sauteed shitake mushrooms, steamed broccoli spears and lemon-truffle risotto.

When I created this evening's dinner, I commented to L that perhaps I should blog tonight about Pride, one of the seven deadly sins that I am pledged to discuss this month. It is a very pretty plate, after all, and I am quite pleased that I made this whole dinner from my own imagination. (OK, I did have lemon-truffle risotto before at a restaurant, but it wasn't as good as this was, and I had it with scallops and something that wasn't broccoli. I don't remember what it was, but it wasn't broccoli.)

Then she took a bite.

"Gluttony," she mumbled around a mouthful, " because I could eat six of these."

So gluttony it is.

We live in a gluttonous society. Everything around us screams "more!" "Super-size it!" "A huge meal for six bucks!" "And you don't have to get out of the car!"

I am not sure whether I would call myself a glutton or someone who is really, really fond of pleasurable nerve responses.

I love food that tastes good. When I find some, I often eat more of it than I should. Often, my definition of what "tastes good" is perhaps more generous than is healthy for my waistline. Some foods, like this evening's meal, taste good because they hit all of the taste buds in a complementary fashion and leave a marvelous lingering sensation on the palate. Some foods, like mashed potatoes and gravy from KFC just taste good because they are salty, greasy, fast, and consumed hours before my period hits. Other foods taste good because they remind me of happy times or loved ones. I have a recipe for boiled chicken breast meat, potatoes and onions in a gravy made from the cooking stock and toasted flour that tastes not much without lots of salt and pepper, but it reminds me of my old French aunt-in-law from many years ago, and I love it. It makes me remember her love, and that can't be bad. Too bad she didn't love me with salads, though.

Food is probably the first thing I ever used to hide or squash my feelings. Sad? Have some ice cream. Hurt feelings? Have a candy bar or a cookie. Lonely? let's cook something!

As I grew older, I found other things to better stifle my feelings of inadequacy in alcohol and drugs, and those were far more efficient (and usually cheaper) than food.

When I got sober, I ran from my feelings in other ways, most of which I have addressed over the years. But occasionally I still revert to food to stifle things when I get too bad/sad/depressed/overwhelmed/etc.

Is that gluttony? I'm not sure.

wikki defines its origins in Latin as "Derived from the Latin gluttire, meaning to gulp down or swallow, gluttony is the over-indulgence and over-consumption of food, drink, or intoxicants to the point of waste..."

Aha. Waste. That was one of the things that originally hit me in my first consideration of the vast and complex concept of sin. It is wasteful.

I would also be inclined to believe that gluttony is harmful. Not to others, generally, although if someone goes hungry because of another's gluttony, that is bad, but gluttony hurts the glutton. We know all too well the price obesity takes on the human body. We also know how costly it is to society when you factor in health care costs, preventable diseases and everything else. It is bad, bad stuff.

But am I willing and ready to give it up? I don't know.

I suppose I can be ready to moderate things a bit. This evening's meal may have looked decadent, but each plate had an 8-ounce piece of fish, maybe a cup of risotto (rice and broth) a cup of steamed broccoli and an ounce of mushrooms. It was low in salt, low in fat and high in those good fish oils that doctors are always talking about. All of the portions are reasonable, and there were no seconds. The fact that it tasted so good made it feel like a forbidden pleasure, but really there was nothing to regret in the whole thing. And it was filling. I ate mine and was full. L ate most of hers and declared herself full. I call that a win.

Is tasting good a sin? Does pleasure come into this, or is gluttony just shoveling food in as fast as possible? I'd like to think that my enjoyment of food, even when I consume too much, is not about gluttony so much as it is about enjoying flavors. I enjoy pleasurable sensations. I like good flavors, I like nice smells, I like a good backrub, I like a beautiful sunset. Those things don't seem sinful. They are using the senses that nature equipped us with.

Who knows. This may all be one grand and complicated justification trip to keep me from attending Overeaters Anonymous meetings. I've been to those meetings, and I kind of liked them. They often just irritated me, though. I know what it feels like to have food run my life, to have food make my decisions and all that stuff like alcohol did all those years ago. My food does not control me today. Notice that I did not say "any more." Today. For today, I have a reprieve. How or why I don't know, but for now I am ok. I will do the normal recovering drunk thing tonight and thank my higher power for another day of sobriety, and I'll thank him for not letting food run my life today too. It is a gift I didn't work to get, and I am aware of that and am extra grateful. For today I ate mostly reasonable portions of mostly healthy food (ok, lunch was a bust, but supper was fantastic!).

Gluttony has been avoided, though through no real effort of mine. I am grateful.

And now, before I forget what I did and someone asks for the recipe, here it is:


Lemon-truffle risotto
takes 30-45 minutes or so
1 cup aborio rice
2 tablespoons white truffle flavored olive oil
1 cup chopped onion
3 cups chicken broth
juice and most of the zest from 1 lemon

Oil and onions in a heavy-bottomed pan, medium heat to sautee until onions are translucent but not brown. Add the rice and stir for a few minutes. You want the rice to be coated with oil and a little toasted from the heat, but not burned.
Add 1 cup of the chicken broth, making sure none of the rice is sticking to the bottom. Stir frequently until the liquid is mostly absorbed. Add the second cup of broth and keep stirring. Before you add the third cup of broth, grate the zest into the pot and squeeze in the lemon juice (watch to keep the seeds out!). Then add the last of the broth and stir until it is all absorbed. I started cooking the swordfish when I added the last of the broth. I started cooking the broccoli around then too. If you need directions on how to steam broccoli, you have no business trying any of this. Print out the page and hand it to whomever cooks in your home. And stay the hell away from the stove.

Ginger-sesame-crusted swordfish steak with sauteed shitake mushrooms.
takes about 10 minutes
two 8-ounce swordfish steaks
2 ounces shitake mushrooms, stems removed and sliced.
1/2 cup raw sesame seeds
2 teaspoons powdered ginger
1 teaspoon powdered garlic
toasted sesame oil
soy sauce
1/4 cup vegetable oil

In a shallow bowl or a plate, combine the sesame seeds, garlic and ginger. Make sure they're mixed around well.

Put the vegetable oil in a large frying pan and turn the heat to medium-high-ish (you don't want the oil to smoke, but you do want the fish to sizzle.)

Rinse and pat dry the swordfish steaks. Drizzle with a tiny bit of the sesame oil, rub it around to coat lightly and dip both sides into the sesame seed mixture and place immediately into the heated pan.

After about four minutes, turn the steaks and put the mushrooms in the pan to cook in the yumminess there. My stove is not level, so I have a convenient corner of the pan where all the liquid goes, so that's where I put the mushrooms. Drizzle some soy sauce (not much - maybe 1 tablespoon per steak and another for the mushrooms) and stir around until the mushrooms are soft and coated in the soy.

After four more minutes, flip the steaks one last time to re-sizzle the part with the soy sauce on it and get ready to serve.

I put the risotto in the bottom of a large pasta bowl dish and placed the steak on top with the mushrooms across it. I then drizzled a TINY bit of the toasted sesame oil over it, arranged the steamed broccoli and called it good.

It looks absolutely elegant, but was really pretty easy. Even cooking the risotto, which takes between 30 and 45 minutes and does require some watching ad stirring, it was not a lot of work. I was able to do some dishes in between the prep steps, and it all came together pretty well.

When dinner was done, Quinn the wonder dog helped with the dishes. Sometimes they like to get up and run off so she has to hold them down to make sure they are scrubbed thoroughly.

Breakfast of champions

I helped out a friend this week by preparing a tray of nibbles for her to take to a fancy-schmancy function. It is one of my favorite easy and impressive recipes. I made up a platter this morning, and had just enough left over to have a few of these delightful little rolls for breakfast.

First, you take thin sliced roast beef and lay it flat on a prep board. Then you break a piece of chicory (endive is ok too) in half and lay it on the beef. Then you put a few little crumbles of bleu cheese on the leafy stuff, and roll the whole business up into a tidy little roll. I cut them in half and stab a toothpick through them for easy handling by circulating guests. For breakfast I skip the toothpick and just pick 'em up with my fingers.

Bleu cheese and roast beef for breakfast. That's a guaranteed good start to the day. Yum.

Oh, and a word about bleu cheese. L hates it. Won't even eat anything off a plate that has any bleu cheese anything on it for fear of contamination. I have only developed a taste for it in recent years. I like a brand called St. Pete's Select, produced by a company called Amablu. It is available at my local Hannaford grocery store and it is aged in natural limestone caves in the riverbank in Faribault, Minnesota. The temperature and humidity are perfect and constant, and it shows in the creamy sharpness of the cheese. Faribault sees temperatures that range from 40 below in the deepest winter to 110 in the heat of summer. The caves don't care. They are just right. All the time. Nature is so freakin' cool!

We lived and worked in the Faribault area for a year and a half. We didn't like it much, and it didn't really like us any better. But the cheese was really good. And it still is. I just glad we can get it here.

Oof.

Dear god. I forget how rich Newburg sauce is until I make a double batch. Damn. It shouldn't be - it is really nothing more than a standard white sauce, made with cream instead of milk and then with a couple of egg yolks mixed in at the end. You wouldn't think that makes such a difference, but damn. I was so full and so tired last night that I was unable to post.

Oh, quick recipe for Newburg Sauce:
2 Tablespoons butter
2 Tablespoons flour
1 cup cream
2 egg yolks, slightly scrambled
pinch cayenne

Melt the butter, stir in the flour and make a roux.
Add the cream and stir until it thickens.
Add the scallops or lobster or whatever you like, pre-cooked, and bring them up to temperature in the sauce.
Add the yolks, stirring to incorporate.
dust in the cayenne.
Serve immediately.

Ours are served in popovers that have been hollowed out, but lots of people use puff pastry shells. Makes no difference.

+++++

The rain let up for a little while yesterday, so we went for a walk to see what we could see. An easy 3-mile loop on the carriage roads sounded easy enough, right? Well, it seems I had forgotten how steep that little cluster of hills was, and we were right pooped by the time we got home. After a day outdoors, I made the scallops Newburg you see above, and all three of us (pup included) quietly slipped into the sleep of the just. Thunder woke me at around two this morning, but I went right back to sleep. I saw no flashes of lightning worth staying up for.

On our walk, I managed to take a few pretty good pictures. This was Quinn's first time on this walk, and she was so excited she could barely contain herself. Here she is being a very small dog in a very big park.



And here is a waterfall we stopped to admire:



And here is a little stepping-stone waterfall that feeds into a culvert that runs under the carriage road. Quinn is very suspicious of it. Note that her ears look a lot like Dobby's. This is her hesitant and on-guard look. It sounded a lot like the shower, and she hates to have her bath.



And finally, here is one of the bridges over Hadlock Brook. The part of Hadlock Brook that you see here - above Upper Hadlock Pond - is closed to fishing. It serves as the hatchery and incubator area for the native brook trout population that wildlife conservation people are trying to encourage to come back. The fishery was greatly depleted for a while and is beginning to come back, in part because of this kind of effort. But it absolutely HURTS that we cannot fish this perfect little stream. Oh, god! How it aches! Anyway, here's the bridge to take the carriage road over the brook.



There was a brief bit of sunshine this morning when I awoke at 7:45, but it lasted approximately 10 minutes and has been replaced by more clouds and drear. This wet stuff has got to stop, or I'm going to lose my mind or go broke, or maybe both. Grr.

Recipe Friday

It's been a cold, wet, rainy day here on the coast and I decided to make some carrot-ginger soup of which L is particularly fond. I also thought I could share the recipe. It is one of about three vegetarian recipes that I have. It is based loosely on a recipe from the Fog City Diner Cookbook, but only loosely. My proportions are different, I skip a couple of things they do, and I add a few things they don't. Oh, and I use a different method at the end as well. I think that is enough to make it my recipe and not theirs. My apologies to any who disagree.

Carrot-Ginger Soup

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 cups onions, large dice
2 cups celery, large dice
5 cups carrots, 1 1/2 inch pieces
1/4 cup minced garlic
2/3 cup grated fresh ginger (piece weighed about 6 ounces to start)
2 cans chicken broth plus two cans water
3/4 cup cream
kosher salt and coarse ground black pepper to taste
chopped scallions (garnish)
Yogurt or sour cream

In a large, heavy pot, sauté the onions in the oil until they become translucent. Add the celery and the carrots and stir around until everything begins to get acquainted. Add the garlic, ginger, chicken broth and water. Cover and let bubble for about 45 minutes until everything is tender.

Remove from heat and blend using an immersion blender (boat motor) until you have a thick puree. You can use a regular blender for this if you want or a food processor, but I prefer the boat motor. I don't have to ladle stuff from one vessel to another and then to a third, working in batches and all. The boat motor lets me use one pot. Taste and add salt and pepper according to your preferences. Add the cream, stir and get ready to serve. Garnish with sour cream and chopped scallions. Makes 8-12 cups. Feeds however many are hungry depending on how you serve it.

We usually serve it over cooked rice to give body to what otherwise looks and feels a lot like baby food.

We also will fry up some extra-firm tofu cubes in toasted sesame oil and a splash of tamari and put those on top of the soup and sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Tonight I made some giant-sized Bakewell Cream Biscuits to go with it. Heavenly...

Noodles

After this weekend, I thought I would finally post my favorite recipe for spicy noodles. These can be eaten hot or cold, mixed with vegetables or not, topped with sesame seeds and scallions or not, and in general, any darned way you feel like. I bet even Darlene could make them. She might learn that butch girls who can cook, even one or two things, are highly prized as date material. No femme wants in on a relationship where she's going to have to become a scullery maid. Screw that. Learn to cook, darlin'. Here's an easy thing to start with:

You make the sauce separate, then cook the pasta and toss together. That's it.

There are a couple of ingredients that might be tricky to find, but in the great metropolis that is Portland, I am sure that these things can be found at any Asian Marketplace. I get the vinegar at the natural foods store in Bangor, but the rest is available at Hannaford's.

Szechuan Noodles

Boil 1 pound of spaghetti in a pot of water. I use regular thin spaghetti, store brand, nothing fancy.

In a non-reactive bowl (translation: not metal!) mix the following ingredients together:

6 Tablespoons toasted sesame oil
3 Tablespoons Chinese Black Vinegar
2 Tablespoons Tamari soy sauce
1 teaspoon Sri Racha (or 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes)
2 teaspoon grated fresh ginger root (paste from a jar is OK)
2 Tablespoons minced garlic (from a jar is fine)

Drain the cooked pasta and toss with the sauce. Top with sesame seeds and chopped scallions if desired. I sometimes will serve with hot stir-fried vegetables, or cold with cooked chicken for a cool lunch on a hot day.

For many years, these noodles were available only at the Common Ground Fair, back when it was in Windsor. There was a booth called "Oodles of Noodles" and they served these things highly spiced and nicely chilled. Then one year, the booth was not at the fair. I went into deep mourning, and a funky haze fell down upon my soul until a few years ago when the fine people at MOFGA printed the recipe in the annual fair booklet. Rejoicing began and has continued steadily. I do not think we have gone more than a month without having these noodles in some form since that recipe was published. It is fantastic. And super-easy, and super-versatile. The hot sauce stuff can be adjusted to allow for wimpy palates or amped up for a sinus-blistering, endorphin-producing blast. The amounts I listed here are pretty mild.

And it's fun to show off.

In other news Sunday

I taught myself how to make Baklava. Honestly, the most difficult part was getting the sheets of phyllo apart. The recipe was pretty easy - not a lot of technical stuff or weird ingredients. For a pastry brush, I use a three-inch wooden-handled paintbrush I got for 69 cents at the hardware store. It works fine.

Wicked Easy Baklava
1 16-ounce package of phyllo dough (the sheets are usually about 9 by 13 inches - imagine that!)
1 cup butter, unsalted (that's two sticks)

1 16-ounce bag walnuts, chopped pretty fine
dash or two of cinnamon


1 cup sugar
1 cup water
1/2 cup honey
splash of vanilla

Preheat oven to 350

Make sure they phyllo is completely thawed and unroll both packages that come in the box. Cover them with a damp, lint-free towel or cloth in between using sheets. It's fussy stuff. If it gets too wet, it'll stick together. If it gets dry, it will get brittle and break apart in a million pieces. (Place a piece of paper on top of the bottom six sheets so you will know when you are getting near the end.)

Chop the nuts and toss with the cinnamon. (I used quite a bit of cinnamon - maybe two tablespoons or so.)

Put the water and sugar in a saucepan and place over low heat. You don't want it to boil just yet - just melt the sugar.

butter the bottom and sides of a 9 by 13 baking pan.
Lay in two sheets of the phyllo and brush the top with butter. Don't soak it, but make sure you get it all. Put in two more sheets, brush with butter, two more sheets, and repeat until you've got a base of about 8 sheets.

Sprinkle about 1/8 cup of the nuts over the phyllo.

Two more sheets, brush with butter, sprinkle more nuts, and keep going like this until you hit that paper marker you put in the pile when you started.

By then you should be about out of nuts. If not, use 'em up.

use up the last six pieces of dough like you have been - two pieces, butter, two pieces, butter, etc. until you get to the end of the sheets. I used a little exra butter on the top to make it nice and crispy.

Make four cuts lengthwise in the pan, then make cuts the short way to make squares. Now make cuts on the diagonal from corner to corner so that you end up with a bunch of triangles.

Try not to cut all the way through to the bottom or the syrup won't fill in the upper layers later. You'll see, trust me.

Bake for about 50 minutes or until top is golden brown.

While that's in the oven, take another look at the pot of syrup. Bring it to a boil, add the honey and vanilla, and let it boil gently for about 20 minutes. Then turn the heat off, but you can leave it on the stove and it will be fine.

When the pan comes out of the oven, spoon the syrup over the pieces. It will make the coolest sizzle sound as it hits the hot metal and bubbles into the layers of dough. Try to get it over all the pieces as evenly as you can.

After it cools about 20 minutes, use a sharp knife to cut the rest of the way through the bottom layers of dough so the pieces will separate later.

Don't try to eat it until you can pick up the pan and put your bare hand flat on the bottom without discomfort. The syrup can burn like hell.

Sunday was not spent in a complete depression. Sometimes cooking can be therapy for me. This was one of those days.

Sunday afternoon

So I saw this recipe the other day, and it looked interesting. Lemon pie.

Not lemon meringue pie, which is wicked complicated; but lemon pie. I think it was in the Portland Press Herald. It was in a story about the Shakers, a marvelously simple community of brilliant engineers. But more on that later. This is about pie.

Seems that lemons were one of a very short list of things that the Shakers actually purchased from outside. Everything else they grew or made themselves.

But this recipe. Oh, man.

Not sweet like the old meringue version, not puckery like rhubarb, but somewhere delightfully in-between.

And the recipe? Shaker simple, baby.

Lemon Pie

Take two large lemons and slice them super thin, SKINS ON!!! pick out the seeds. Put the slices in a bowl with two cups of sugar and mix them around (gently - don't smash the slices). Leave them for a couple of hours, more is better. I sliced in the morning, then baked at night. Stir them around every so often.

Make a regular two-crust pie crust. For god's sake, don't buy one - for this recipe it would be blasphemy.

Beat the hell out of four large eggs. (I whizzed them in the magic bullet.) Mix them in with the lemons and sugar, then put into the pie shell. Make sure the slices lay as flat as you can or it will get weird. Put on the top crust, seal it up and slice a few vent holes in the middle.

Bake at 450 for 15 minutes, then turn the oven back to 375 and bake for about 20 more minutes. You can stick a knife in to check it - when it comes out clean, it's done.

Let it cool before you serve or it'll be soup. We stuck ours in the fridge overnight.

The rinds on the lemon slices get candied after all that time in the sugar and the eggs give it just enough body to be short of custard, but creamier than a gelatin. It is utterly divine.

'tis a gift to be simple.