Tapas

M has said in the past that he strongly prefers the standard American "format" for a meal: a meat and two sides, with some kind of carb/starch, all served simultaneously of course. I could eat snacks for dinner all the time, I don't care. But I thought maybe he would go for something like a little tapas spread, where there is at least some meat involved and a variety of small things, still resulting in a balanced meal. Tonight I tried that out with success.

 The nasty burnt-looking stuff on the bread is pesto. I'm realizing the consequences of too little lighting when you're taking pictures of food. The fritters look burnt too but they weren't. You better believe I yanked them out of the scary pot of 375 degree oil as soon as possible...

The Spanish tortilla we had tried before a couple of times, and I felt like it needed something more than Frank's (our favorite sauce for all things egg and/or cheese based). Little wonder, because it's made of four things: potato, egg, onion, and olive oil---all good flavors, but none of them has anything really interesting going on, not to mention the rather monochromatic color scheme. In the CI Best International cookbook, they suggest serving the tortilla with Romesco sauce, a strange (to me) assortment of ingredients including roasted red peppers, bread, almonds, and sherry vinegar. I mixed that up in the blender today, trusting the collective genius of CI, and it was just what we needed. I think I could eat this sauce on just about anything.

The salt cod fritters, also a CI recipe from the Spain/Portugal section of Best International Recipe, were the first thing I've ever deep-fried. I was so scared of starting a fire. I probably should have watched a how-to video first or something, just to get used to the violent reaction that occurs after something is lowered, however gently, into 3" of hot oil. At the risk of sounding indelicate, I truly almost wet my pants when I started putting the fritters in---I thought all the bubbling and foaming was going to rise right over the top of the pot and create all manner of calamity, like a fire. It didn't; the turmoil subsided after the first couple of minutes, when I got up the courage to stir as the recipe instructed (I thought surely any disturbance of the oil would start a fire---noticing a pattern?). Yet I survived six minutes of deep-frying, and it was 110% (just to be cliché) worth it. Light and crispy, and the salt cod tasted neither overtly salty nor like cod. Just like clean, fresh fish enveloped in glorious fried-ness. Thankfully since I am cheap and I needed 1 1/2 jugs of vegetable oil for this (normally you can strain and reuse frying oil, but not when it's been used for fish), we won't be indulging in these on a regular basis. Not to mention the whole pyrophobia thing.

In case anyone has trouble sourcing salt cod as I did, I hear the Dekalb Farmers Market has it, but I had to get mine at Whole Foods, kept (oddly) in the freezer section in a little wood box at $10/lb. For Whole Foods I reckon that's not bad. I still have another half pound for use next week, probably with a Daisy Martinez recipe, because I read through her cookbook and approximately 50% of the recipes call for salt cod (about 75% call for $$$ serrano ham). Slight exaggeration, but come on, Daisy, we're not all TV stars and doctor's wives. I think I should have gotten her previous cookbook if I wanted more homely Puerto Rican food. 

Pre-dinner we had a nice simple drink of 3 parts ginger ale to 1 part dry vermouth, with a little lemon peel at the bottom of the glass. Dessert was the lemon ice cream I made earlier this week from Lebovitz's book, with Delicje cookies (the Polish version of Jaffa "biscuits:" spongey fruit-filled cookies dipped in chocolate). And we are now out of ice cream, which is a sad place to be facing yet another day in the upper 70s...come back, February!

to set the tone...

This is my kitchen on a normal day.

1. Translucent plastic ruler left on a dark baking sheet (it blended in) and left to bake at 350 for about 8 minutes. I though it was going to stick but with some elbow grease I managed to pull it off AND not burn myself. If it weren't hot pink it would look like bacon, right? Kind of appetizing, except not.

2. Today I made Michael Ruhlman's sponge cake recipe (on the two optional elements, baking powder and butter, I used the former and used 5 out of the possible 16 [!!] Tbsps of the latter---I daresay it was the perfect amount). It looked great coming out of the oven, but after I gently poked a toothpick in to check for doneness, it started slowly sinking. And sinking. Until the middle was less than half the height of the rest. You see:

This is to say nothing of the obvious problem I had with the cake sticking to the pan. As a sure sign of growing maturity and patience, whereas maybe two years ago (okay last year) I would have thrown a Kitchen Tantrum upon beholding an hour of careful measuring, mixing, and baking result in that, today I took a deep breath and determined that all was not lost. No need to freak out. After trying a cookie cutter that wasn't tall enough, I started marking circles with it and then cutting them out with a paring knife. This way I got most of the spongey part of the cake---which did not require beating egg whites and is tastier and richer than the previous sponge cake recipe I tried---and they can still be halved horizontally and made into mini Boston cream pies. (The scraps from the cutting and some of the gooey middle part that sunk I crumbled and threw in the freezer in case I get the urge to make birthday cake ice cream or something someday.)

It's honestly good enough that even I, with my compulsion to add more sugar and/or chocolate to most anything cake-like, would eat it plain in a heartbeat. Thanks Chef R. (Sorry if you ever read this and it causes you shame and embarrassment to be associated with the near-disaster pictured above.)

Having my ciabatta turn out perfectly is becoming more and more of a normal occurrence. It's nice to have a constant in one's life when everything else is so uncertain and liable to failure. ;)

week(s) in review

Beef stroganoff

Saturday I made sort of a Russian-French fusion dinner that came out very well. The stroganoff, which I mixed two CI recipes to get, did not look great color-wise but tasted just fine with the egg noodles (and, by the way, now I realize there is a huge difference between real egg noodles and the No Yolks brand...). Probably the star of that meal was the braised leeks, recipe in my ATK 2009 cookbook: I had no idea what to expect besides a vaguely onion-ish flavor, but it was so much more. And so very easy and quick. We loved them. The cheese blintzes for dessert (CI Best International Recipe) were nice, even if I decided after a few bites that I just cannot do sweet cheese made with farmer's cheese (and I'm definitely glad I didn't substitute ricotta as the recipe suggested—it's like the texture of farmer's cheese times 10). The cherry sauce worked pretty well, and I'm just glad I have a good crepe recipe I can fit to any occasion or filling. Also make-ahead by definition.

Leeks to be braised---didn't get a during or after photo because they were so quick, and covered half the time.

 Sweet cheese blinchiki with cherry sauce

One night I pulled some split chicken breasts out of the freezer and pan-roasted them with a sauce. I love the concept of roasting a small amount of chicken and then making a pan sauce while it rests, even if my chicken seems always to take much longer than the original recipe indicated. I made a white wine and parsley sauce that night, then served with arugula salad and mashed potatoes. And bread. I do believe I am close to perfecting my ciabatta. Except for like every sixth time when the dough does that weird seize-up and becomes more like bagel dough, which it did this last batch. I just can't figure it out. I weigh both flour and water now (and realized that both my main liquid measuring cups are off by like an ounce or two if you go by the volume measurement!). But at least I don't do anything so stupid as throw the dough out in frustration...now I know that it still makes beyond decent bread, just not that light and airy delight that comes out when the dough is properly wet.

I made a lemon chess pie complete with a rolled out crust using 3 Tbsp shortening and 4 Tbsp butter, from an ATK cookbook I had out from the library. The filling was pretty good, if guilt-inducing even for me with another full stick of butter, tons of sugar and 5 eggs and blah blah blah. But the crust was not even remotely worth the calories. Don't know what the deal was there. Rachel gave me some lard that I will have to try in lieu of shortening the next time I'm up for pie...which may not be far off.

I made some delectable butter with the expensive but totally-worth-it pasteurized cream from Dekalb Farmers Market last week; put about 2/3 of it in the freezer as salted parsley butter for dishes, and we're about to finish the little roll I salted and put in the fridge for bread. Delicious.

One one class night, I made fried eggs and put them on toasted and buttered English muffins, serving with the warm spinach salad with bacon I've made so many times. It was good, though M does insist on having his yolks runny, which is not the safest...tsk tsk.

Last weekend I made Latin chicken and rice with roasted red peppers. It was okay. The rice was a tad crunchy, as it usually is with that dish when I make it—you'd think I could figure out how to fix that already! Probably should add a little more water and remove the chicken and let the rice cook longer. Duh. I also don't like using dark meat per the recipe because then you have to remove it from the bone, and with the dark red sauce you can't see exactly what you're doing, so inevitably some bits of nasty fat or bone get in and you have to spit them out and ahh, gross. But I used my birthday gift of piment d'espelette instead of paprika and it tasted pretty good in there. I sound like such an unrefined hick, yep. Avocados as garnish were indispensable; probably saved the dish, really.

I had to reheat the leftovers Sunday night but with them made a terrific corn chipotle soup, the only downside of which was having to throw out all the solids after I pureed it with my immersion blender, which maybe didn't get it finely pureed enough? I'll try the regular blender next time. But the strained liquid (i.e. the soup, hah) was extremely good, and went well with the chicken and rice. Recipe here.

Friday afternoon I cooked up beef shepherd's pie from CI's Best Make-Ahead Recipe for a family with a new baby. I thought it came out pretty well. I omitted the small amount of red wine that went in with the broth, because I wasn't sure about the rules on alcohol while nursing. I also used mostly Pacific beef broth, which I had just opened a couple days earlier, rather than chicken broth, since how could beef broth not work with a beef stew sort of dish? While making this I finally learned my lesson about making great mashed potatoes, and it goes like this: 1. Add cream. I never really knew what I was doing when I made mashed potatoes, messing around with sour cream which seeems to make them dry-ish, or adding sissy amounts of milk or maybe half-and-half. Forget it, you only live once. I'm making mine like this from now on. Also they had me mash them over low heat in the saucepan in which I had boiled them (3/4” slices of russets)---maybe that helped the texture be much smoother than mine normally are?  The best part was that I had a little bit leftover of everything the next day so I made it again for us for lunch. M was impressed, said it wasn't what he remembered shepherd's pie to be growing up, however he had it then. I'll definitely try it again following the recipe exactly with wine and chicken broth, though.

Monday after lunch at Emily's I went to the legendary Patak. It was pretty cool. We already polished off the smoked turkey breast for sandwiches, which I think was laced with some sort of green herb and just meltingly tender and tasty. We had half the smoked salmon tonight, which sadly has gone up in price to $10 from $4/lb (which was what their website says), but it was so delicious. With that I made creamed spinach, and it was fine though the last couple times I've made it the sauce has seized up on me before I add the spinach, so it never really blends right...I don't know what that's about.