Muffin Top

Rose is a Foodhist. Worship Buddha, Buddhist; worship Food, Foodhist. She made that up, I can’t take credit for it.

“I’ll teach you to make homemade mac and cheese,” she told me. “I just take whatever cheese I’ve got - I clean out my fridge!” Last night she offered some aged smoked gouda to her husband and my bf as they snacked on wasabi peas and $4.99 red table wine from Trader Joe’s (hey, it was from Spain!) and solved the world’s problems. Then, while penne boiled on the stove, Rose brought out more cheese, a plateful, which if I remember correctly consisted of

“These didn’t look so good before you got here,” she whispered, “but I just cut all the bad parts off and it’s fine!”
“Oh, I’ll eat it,” I replied, remembering a 9th grade science presentation that mentioned it was ok to cut mold off hard cheeses. What’s cheese without mold, right? Plus, when I’m hungry, I’ve been known to put my immune system to the test.

Into her blue Le Creuset pan: butter and flour, then whole milk. Then, the cheese, shredded, which came out to about a pound. (No, we didn’t weigh it.) Tomatoes and onions, then the pasta. We mixed it all up, covered with grated parmesan, and popped it in the oven.

“Oh wait!” Rose clapped her hands. “I know what we can add!” She grabbed a tin of paprika from a high shelf and instructed me to stick my fingertip in and taste. “It’s smoked,” she said. I tried it. It was hot and tasted faintly of hickory. We took the mac out of the oven and Rose rubbed the red spice from her hands with a sorcerer’s flourish, like this was Fantasia with fromage.

After administering the paprika, Rose seemed content.

As the oven timer ticked away, Rose and I and her sister Marilyn, also there for dinner, went outside and picked tomatoes, plants with names like Sweet 100’s, Ping Pong, and Early Girl. We made salad with homemade vinaigrette. We sliced up collard greens and sauteed them with olive oil, pancetta, and chopped garlic.

When the mac and cheese was done, it was amazing! The parmesan had baked to a crumby perfect crisp, and the cheese-laden penne looked like a pan of sunshine, golden and full of promise. Rose had amended the recipe from a cookbook called The Silver Palate (?) - it was Quattro Formaggio something or other, but at my count we’d used six or seven cheeses, not four. So much the better. “What I love about the way I cook it is I’ll never know exactly how it’ll come out,” she smiled. “It’s like art!” I said. Rose agreed. You go in with an idea, keep taste-testing, and in a way let the work guide you just as much as you it.

The table was set. We started with bowls of romaine, red onion, those sweet 100’s, and little hunks of ripe avocado. We’d finished the Bardolino red stuff, so more cheap wine was in order; Rose’s hubby broke some Smoking Loon chardonnay out of the fridge, and anything featuring water fowl with a cigar in its mouth was totally fine by me and Marcus. The mac and cheese was DIVINE, and the greens proved the best way to intake vitamin A is flavored with bacon. Mmm, yeah. Dessert was homemade strawberry shortcake - the biscuity kind, not the spongy kind - with organic strawberries (both sliced and smushed) and whipped cream. I was full, I was totally muffin-topping, but I ate every. last. bite.

While cooking, Rose and I had talked about the history of macaroni and cheese and greens, their Southern roots well-known, from soul food restaurant to KFC. “Weren’t collard greens sort of a cast away food?” I asked, thinking of tripe and pig’s feet and other things people ate partly because they were the things wanted least and thus the easiest to get. Collard greens are cheap to grow, Rose informed me, and slaves weren’t allowed any meat but salted pork. As for mac and cheese, I already knew pasta and cheddar and milk were all kitchen fundamentals, and anything of the casserole variety practically screamed to be served at a potluck or on a table for a family of four or more.

So though mac and cheese or collard greens might be linked to slaves and not kings, I have to say it fed us in a way not many foods can - I was not only satisfied, but I had to resist the urge to lick up every last bit of cheese sauce and pancetta juice (it’s probably bad guest behavior to molest one’s empty dish in front of the hostess). Some meals make you feel rich, even when you aren’t. Rose’s dinner was magic. Soul food, indeed.

Originally uploaded by c(h)ristine.

I was still cooking the contents of our freezer a couple weekends ago. Part of my tactic was cooking the larger beef packages first–one of which was some osso buco (veal shanks).

It’s fortuitous how ingredients come together…sometimes they arrive as if choreographed, naturally culminating into a meal. I went to the farmer’s market and randomly bought some artichokes (”Honey,” I said to my husband, “We haven’t had artichokes in awhile have we? Let’s buy some.”)…then days later I hit the Made in France warehouse sale and encountered some farro.

I’d heard of farro once before–was it mentioned in Reichl’s Garlic and Sapphires? I don’t remember, but I was left with the indelible imprint of this grain as an underappreciated yet delicious treat. It is “pearled spelt,” a rather tough grain that requires some cooking and seems to hold up well in stews and soups. I bought some.

Hrm. Artichokes. Farro. And osso buco. Sounded like a meal to me!

I was inspired by Mario Batali, given my recent reading of Heat for the ReadCookEat Book Club (btw, that book and Buford’s writing kicks.ass). So I used an osso buco recipe out of the Babbo cookbook (have I ever mentioned that I wince whenever I hear the word “Babbo?” Babbo means “idiot” in Korean).

I steamed the artichokes in a bath of water, lemon juice, garlic, and olive oil.

And the farro? I made a risotto out of it! The extra texture of the farro makes for a unique version of risotto, one I really enjoyed. And what’s more, unlike arborio rice which can get “mushy” with too much abuse while being cooked, farro is more forgiving under heat and stirring.

OSSO BUCO WITH TOASTED PINE NUT GREMOLATA
From the Babbo Cookbook by Mario Batali, reprinted at epicurious
There is probably nothing more dramatic — or better to eat — than a whole veal shank. It’s a showstopper; when we bring this out from the kitchen prior to carving it tableside, every head turns, and for good reason. The succulent meat and the delicious marrow are truly impressive.
1 whole veal shank, 3 to 3 1/2 pounds
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium carrot, cut in 1/4-inch-thick coins
1 small Spanish onion, diced
1 celery stalk, cut in 1/4-inch slices
Leaves from 1 bunch of fresh thyme, chopped
2 cups basic tomato sauce
2 cups brown chicken stock
2 cups dry white wine

Gremolata
Leaves from 1 bunch of flat-leaf parsley
1/2 cup pine nuts, toasted at 400°F. for 2 minutes
Zest of 1 lemon
1/4 cup freshly grated horseradish
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

1. Preheat oven to 375°F.

2. Season the shank all over with salt and pepper. In a heavy-bottomed, 6- to 8-quart casserole, heat the olive oil until smoking. Place the shank in the pan and brown all over for 12 to 15 minutes, turning with long-handled tongs to sear every surface. Remove the shank and set aside.

3. Reduce the heat to medium, add the carrot, onion, celery, and thyme, and cook, stirring regularly, until golden brown and slightly softened, 8 to 10 minutes. Add the tomato sauce, chicken stock, and wine and bring to a boil. Return the shanks to the pan, making sure they are submerged at least halfway; if not, add more stock. Cover the pan with a tight-fitting lid of aluminum foil. Braise in the oven for 2 hours, then remove the cover and cook another 30 minutes, until the meat is nearly falling off the bone.

4. Just before the meat is done make the gremolata. In a small bowl, combine the parsley leaves, pine nuts, lemon zest, and horseradish and mix well by hand. Sprinkle with a little salt and pepper and set aside.

5. Remove the casserole from the oven and let stand for 10 minutes before carving the shank and dividing among four warmed dinner plates, topped with the gremolata.

***
FARRO RISOTTO
Farro Risotto
1 cup farro
8 cups water
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon olive oil
2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) butter
1/4 cup chopped shallots
2/3 cup dry red wine
2 cups low-salt chicken broth
2 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan cheese

For farro risotto:
Soak farro in cold water 20 minutes. Drain; rinse. Bring 8 cups water to boil in medium saucepan. Add 1/2 cup oil and farro. Simmer 20 minutes. Drain in strainer and rinse. Melt 1 tablespoon butter with 1 tablespoon oil in medium saucepan over medium heat. Add shallots; sauté 1 minute. Add farro and wine. Simmer until almost all liquid evaporates, stirring frequently, about 5 minutes. Add chicken broth 1 cup at a time and simmer until liquid is absorbed and farro is just tender, stirring frequently, about 14 minutes total. Stir in cheese and 1 tablespoon butter. Season with salt and pepper.

I don’t know what came over me. When I do my weekend grocery shopping, I usually let the items in season dictate the menu, but once in a while, my curiosity takes over. I’ve come home with some pretty odd things - barnacles, razor clams, sea beans, fiddlehead ferns and wild asparagus are some recent purchases. (Luckily, my non-foodie husband is pretty tolerant and open to my experiments.) Yesterday, I wandered into Magnani Poultry and picked up a rabbit. I’d meant to get some kind of fish from Monterey Fish, but when I saw it under the glass butcher case, I had to try to cook rabbit. Maybe it because I’ve been reading Heat, and his description of a rabbit dish, done three ways (confit, sauteed and grilled) on top of dandelion greens titillated me. However, I had no inkling of what sort of recipe I would use, and when the butcher asked me how I would like it carved up, I didn’t know what to say. “Uh, four pieces,” I said, guessing. As it turns out, rabbit is usually cut into six pieces. Judy Rodgers, in the Zuni Cafe Cookbook, lays out a complicated method of separating the cuts, because they have “very different types of muscle” that cook differently. It was too late for me - my rabbit was already quartered into bony chunks. Rabbit is very lean, and has no skin to prevent the flesh from drying out, so I decided a simple braise would work the best. Though I don’t have the Babbo cookbook, I have the next best (or possibly even better) thing, Lidia Bastianich’s recipe for rabbit braised in balsamic vinegar. I decided to marry some of Judy Rodgers’ methods with Lidia’s. Judy says to briefly cure the rabbit by sprinkling a pretty generous portion of salt on it (plus thyme and crushed black peppercorns) and leaving it at room temperature for an hour, then rinsing off the salt and soaking it in milk for another hour. You can cure the meat a few days ahead of time; just make sure you rinse off the milk before storing it in the fridge. I cured it yesterday. When it came time to cook, (per Lidia) I blotted the moisture off the rabbit, and dipped it in flour. I browned the pieces on both sides in olive oil w/garlic cloves, about eight minutes total, then added a couple tablespoons of butter, thyme and half a chopped onion (Lidia says to use sage and omits the onion), turning the pieces of meat in the butter for a few minutes. I poured a couple of tablespoons of balsamic vinegar in the pot, and allowed it to reduce until nearly evaporated, then added about a cup of pilsner beer, and let it reduce for ten minutes. Then, I added enough stock to barely cover the pieces, and let it simmer for about 40 minutes. During the last ten minute, I removed the lid to let the sauce reduce and thicken. I served this on top of mashed potatoes with sauteed stinging nettles, and poured the sauce on top. Mmmmm. My dinner guests are now rabbit converts.

chicken adobo
Originally uploaded by c(h)ristine.

This week, I was able to close my freezer door without shoving the weight of my body against it. Yay! Aside from keeping a sealed subzero environment with ease, this now means I am now “allowing” myself to buy fresh meat again. And that I can now eat chicken instead of all that frozen beef!

So what’s on my list? Chicken adobo, of course! Melanie my friend and another writer on this blog gave me her mother’s adobo recipe, and I’ve been dying to try it.

It’s not like I hadn’t eaten adobo before, but having grown up on my Korean mother’s chicken adobo, I was curious as to the authenticity of the adobo of my childhood. In our Korean household, my brother and I referred to my mother’s chicken adobo as “yummy chicken” (moniker is self-explanatory). She herself had discovered “yummy chicken” from her FIlipino nurse coworkers during one of the many shared lunches.

The stuff was sour, it was sweet, it was salty, and it was savory. Everything except bitter (well, unless you bit into a whole peppercorn). It’s a dish that satisfies all the tastebuds on your tongue! My mother’s chicken adobo had onions, potatoes, and carrots in addition to the chicken and other traditional ingredients (vinegar, soy sauce, sugar, garlic, bay leaves, and peppercorns).

And Melanie’s mom’s recipe? It was delicious. I added the carrots, because I can’t help putting my own personal stamp on recipes. With a big pile of rice, it brought me back to my childhood. “Yummy chicken” indeed. And call me a bit weird, but I like cutting up a whole chicken. (it tastes better with a whole chicken, because of the bones).

p.s. Melanie gave her mother’s recipe to a coworker of ours. He made and said, “The soy sauce is so salty.” Don’t drink the sauce, dude. You want to eat it with a big mound of white sticky rice which offsets the rich sauce. But focus on the chicken. It’s the (ahem) shiznit.

Sorry no recipe here–it’s a secret recipe…but google “chicken adobo recipe” and you’ll be rewarded.

I can’t really help myself with the French titles, what with having heard a massive amount of French over the past little while (which is what happens when your partner, his family and most of his friends are French Canadian). What the title really refers to is the same saying in English, “the more things change, the more they stay the same…” What I’ve noted this evening, however, has both to do with food and lifestyle. The more things changed, well in this case - they’ve changed.

I realized tonight that a year has gone by since perhaps one of the best summers of my life. I spent it out socializing with a terrific group of guys - all of us single, happy, free, unencumbered. We partied till the wee hours - drinking, dancing, carousing, eating, playing, flirting - until we collapsed back in our respective homes until the arrival of another weekend.

Boy, things have changed.

I spent the day running from shopping to coffee to more shopping to home to send the boyfriend off on his merry working way so I could get down to the business at hand. Making jam. Peach jam. One plain, one with ginger. Making gougeres to test a recipe for Christine. Filling them with smoked salmon and capers for a midnight snack. Freezing the rest to make for company as appetizers. Prepping ingredients for tomorrow’s dinner - Japanese curry rice. Taking pictures of coffee and my Italian ingredient centre of my kitchen. Listening to music blaring from iTunes in a somewhat disturbingly psychic awareness of my mood, playing Tori Amos when needed and Madonna (”Push”, from Confessions) just after Christine emailed to say, “Enough with the Tori!”

Yep, I’ve hit my Carlsberg years. I’d rather stay in on a Saturday night cooking cheese puffs and skimming foam off jam and drinking Illy espresso than quaffing cheap pitchers of beer and getting annoyed by the silly drag queens who insist that blue is a good colour for eyeshadow. The venue has changed, the company has gone its separate ways - but I’m still having a good time in my own little way; the best summer I’ve ever had in so many ways. Plus ca change…

Connie’s sent me her impressions of the watercress puree recipe as well as some really very insightful foodie info. Feel free to pop by Read.Cook.Eat and check it out here!

It’s happened to all of us. You go to a restaurant, the maitre d’ or hostess, after derisively perusing your attire reluctantly grants you a table, the diners pause mid fork to check out what kind of unrefined hick has entered their presence, and the menu is completely unfamiliar. And don’t get me started on the sommelier. Now, I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve gotten older, or because I’ve gotten more food/restaurant savvy, or it’s simply because I’ve grown a thicker hide, but I’ve learned not to let *them* bother me. Though I haven’t quite mastered the wine list, I’d thought I had a pretty secure grasp on getting the kind of service (or at least deluding myself into feeling like I was getting) I appreciated. Until Pierre Gagnaire..

After a tireless campaign by my BFF Justin, I went to visit him in Paris (I was convinced it would be impossible, but he knew how badly I wanted to go, so he convinced me to make it possible) Lots of people say that Paris is overrated. If you’re reading this blog at all, it won’t be for you. Parisians really love food, and not just French food. Korean, Vietnemese, Chinese, Thai, Italian, Spanish, Morrocon, Indian, Russian… they’re all highly popular. (They make a heartfelt attempt at Mexican, but fail miserably). So if you like food at all, you’ll like Paris. Just don’t go during July or August - everyone goes on vacation while the tourists descend so the people who are left over have to deal with them and they wind up hating everyone. Anyways, enough about that. Since Justin was doing me a huge favor and saving me a bundle on hotel and lodging fees, I proposed to take him to a 3 star Michelin rated restaurant. Legendary restaurants like Guy Savoy, Taillevant, Alain Ducasse, Joel Robuchon and Le Cinq were on the list. We even pondered taking the pilgrimage to Barcelona to visit El Bulli, but my visit was during the wrong six months of the year. Besides, I’d booked my trip only one month only one month ahead, and the waitlist is one year long. We wound up at Pierre Gagnaire.

We’d made reservations towards the end of my weeklong trip. By then, my very rudimentary grasp of the French language had strengthened to the point where I could make basic transactions with salespeople, waiters, ticket takers, etc. Justin’s form of French tutoring involved ditching me (but keeping close watch) whenever we walked into any kind of establishment that would require interacting with other people. And the first item that I mastered was the menu. It was pretty easy - I sure as hell knew most of the foods listed in bistro menus. The only tricky thing I’d found so far was that “entrees” on a French menu is actually an appetizer, or first course. Nevertheless, I was still a little anxious when we walked up to the restaurant. It didn’t help that the neighborhood (1st arrondisement/Madeleine - Champs Elysee near the Arc de Triomphe) was rather hectic, and that we couldn’t find the restaurant at first. But as soon as we walked in, it was dead silent and we were easily the youngest people in the room, by at least 20 years. The people here were very, very serious about food. It made French Laundry seem like a wacky sitcom. As soon as were were seated, we received our menus with an amuse buche. I began reading the menu, and I was thoroughly confused. The dishes were grouped together in paragraphs, with flowery descriptions that made it unclear where one dish ended and the next began. There were multi-dish supplemental tasting menus to be ordered in conjunction with the prix fixe menus. And there was supposed to be a 90 Euro 4 course lunch prix fixe special, and it wasn’t readily apparant which one it was (everything everything else appeared to be 3, 5, 7 and 9 course menus). And finally, I couldn’t find a single number or price listed anywhere on the menu, other than vintages (1989, 1997, 1953…) for the wine pairings. I only knew it was expensive - the themes to the supplemental menus were white truffle, caviar, goose foie gras, and languostine. I freaked out - my heart was racing, I was pale and shaky, and I all I could think was, “I hope I don’t max out my credit card!” When the waiter offered a glass of Krug champagne, I snatched it and downed half of it before making myself stop to enjoy the best champagne I’d ever tasted. Justin, sensing my distress, shot me a sympathetic look and discreetly said “I’ll just order the prix fixe. It seems to be the best value,” as he pointed to the entry. I glanced at it and was all “??!!???” Written in pencil was “230E” It wasn’t the amount, but “Hey! I don’t have that written on my menu! I don’t have any prices written on my menu!” He showed me his, and to my surprise, all the prices were listed. Mine had none. We switched, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. “Wait, they just assumed you were paying? How sexist! And where’s the lunch special?” Justin pulled out the card that our waiter had propped up against the vase. “Oh! Here it is.” We had assumed it was the description of our amuse bouche and champagne. It did, but it also listed the lunch special. And it listed the price. Now that was a nervewracking experience, but once we got started on our bottle of wine, it was all good. We ordered the languoustine tasting and the lunch prix fixe.

How was it? It was very good, but much more avant garde than the comforting bistro dishes I’d been enjoying. If Taillevent is Chanel, then French Laundry is Marc Jacobs and Gagnaire is Alexander McQueen (Which makes El Bulli… Imitation of Christ?). I can’t exactly describe the dishes, because with one or two exceptions, they were unlike anything I’d ever tasted. It made me rethink flavor combinations. And despite the traumatic first fifteen minutes, the service was actually very gracious and smooth.

Aushak
Originally uploaded by c(h)ristine.

Continuing with RCE’s Book Club selection of Garlic & Sapphires…my aushak recipe review is up at ReadCookEat. It’s the other half of the dumpling day I had a couple weeks ago!

A link to a great interview with Anthony Bourdain on bookslut. I love his irreverence and candor and well, we’re reading him for this month’s ReadCookEat Book Club…!

I love him on TV too–”A Cook’s Tour” on the Food Network hooked me, and then I followed him over to the Travel Channel for “No Reservations.” I love that he doesn’t always take the well trodden Western Frenchified food paths (even though that’s been the core of his own cooking) and gives more than just a nod to other world foods. In particular I learned and liked reading just WHY he moved over to the Travel Channel (I always wondered but never investigated on why that happened):

When the Food Network asked him to stop going to Asia because “they talk funny” there, he took his show to the Travel Channel where they let him make all of the decisions.

Yes!

And Bourdain’s 3rd season of “No Reservations” includes a trip to Korea, a sorely overlooked food and travel destination (just ponder the lack of travel guides South Korea). Dude loves Asia and Asian food and not in a stupid “Rice King” sort of way, either. Can’t wait to watch it!

Ever since tea and cookies mentioned the lemon sorrel soup she made for her mother back during the rains of March, I’ve been meaning to try and make some for myself.

I love lemon and have, in the last few years, developed a liking for sour flavors. That, and I like soup a lot. That, and I like soups with greens in them. But sorrel is not too commonly sold in stores, and I shelved the soup for a future date.

When I went to the San Francisco Ferry Building Farmer’s Market last week, I made a few pleasant discoveries, not the least of which were some brilliant swiss chard and…sorrel!

I made a few adaptations to tea’s original sour lemon and sorrel soup recipe. I added swiss chard early, to the sauteed onions…and I added rice along with the chicken broth (I substituted the vegetable broth for chicken broth) for a heartier soup (I really like rice in soups). I also left out mushrooms, simply because I didn’t have any on hand. I garnished my bowl of soup with a small dollop of creme fraiche (just because I like creme fraiche). The creme fraiche gave the soup an even tangier edge.

This makes for a very sour, unique soup. If you like lemons and sour flavors, you will really devour this soup. On a cold and foggy day (and there are many mornings like that in the San Francisco bay area in summertime), this is such a pleasure to eat. Thanks, Tea!