pease porridge

How To Kill People With Food Part One: Strategy

I don't know about you, but I don't actually have what I would consider to be dinner parties very often, if ever.  You may not have noticed this, but I'm not much for fussy food.  I don't plate food, I don't agonize over my presentation, I don't set the table with china and starched napkins.  I don't do any of that stuff, because, well, probably because I'm lazy, but possibly also because I don't find that sort of meal very fulfilling.  I don't generally prefer restaurant food to home cooking, and so I don't feel a need to try to emulate the restaurant experience at home.

I do, however, have friends and family over for dinner with astonishing regularity, and, for those occasions, though they are usually family-style affairs with big platters of food and mismatched dining room furniture, I do like to make a meal that will be delicious, memorable, and something that I don't cook everyday.

Tidbit: Comfort Links

I'm pleased to say (er, write) that my article for Manzo alla California is a featured post today at www.gather.com.  If you've never been there before, you ought to go ahead and check it out, if for no other reason than Lynne Rossetto Kaspar (author of The Splendid Table and The Italian Country Table and one of my favorite cookbook authors ever), who seems to post there fairly regularly.

World Spice

Back in December, friends of mine went on a two-week whirlwind tour of India; for a little background, they are married, and her family is from India.  They went with both sets of their parents, and toured around the country with them and other family members in a little van.  I personally think it's incredible that they didn't end up divorced or dead by the end of it, but they did have a lot of amazing stuff to distract them along the way.

This morning I'm finishing off the last of the coffee that they brought back for me, along with black peppercorns, cinnamon, and these incredible nutmegs.  They got them at a spice plantation in Kumily, which is in Kerala in southern India.  Apparently it's an area known for its spice growers, and its tiger reserve!

Now, unfortunately I can't give you all a taste of these wonderful spices, but I can provide a handy visual metaphor:

To the left we have my supermarket-bought, anemic-looking nutmegs, and to the right we have the robust, Indian, organically-grown nutmegs.  These are spices with character, body, and depth.  I'm almost sad that it's not eggnog season, because these are nutmegs that would do some justice to my (in)famous family recipe.

The coffee is similarly strong, very bright, with a butterscotch-y aroma.  The beans were smaller than the Raven's Brew that I currently have at home, and a slightly lighter roast.  It's totally making my morning.  It, and the thought that I have friends out there who, no matter how far away they are, see good food and think of me.

Collards

You may be thinking 'peaseblossom, when last we met, you were talking about how much you hated vegetables growing up.  What's up with the greens?'  Well, I'll tell you:

When my husband and I first met, and for the first several years we were together, he was a vegetarian.  Quite apart from my asparagus epiphany, I had to learn to love my veggies and fast if I was going to make our relationship work.  With the steadfast devotion of any convert, I tried any and all vegetables that came my way, and, (somewhat to my surprise) discovered that I actually liked a great many of them.

(My husband, in many ways my equal and opposite, was in a similar position when, several years later, he stopped being a vegetarian and soon thereafter found himself scarfing down everything from wild boar to raw fish.)

As it turns out, I love, love, love greens of all stripes.  I love cooking them, I love eating them, I love sharing them with the many deprived people who have never tried them.  This collard recipe (if you can call it that; I'm really only including it because one of the friends that recently ate these at my house said they were the best she's had) is the sort that'll probably get me in trouble with any readers I may have of the Southern persuasion; I like my greens not overcooked and mushy, thank you very much, and I like them simple and mostly unadorned.

Green Beans with Basil

I hated vegetables when I was growing up.  Hated. Them.  The only vegetables that I would eat between the ages of, say four and eighteen were: tomatoes, corn, peas, and iceburg lettuce.  I don't really know why I was so incredibly picky, although I have a few guesses.  Sometimes I blame the media, because kids aren't supposed to like vegetables, right?  Sometimes I blame my parents, who didn't actually cook a wide range of vegetables, and usually cooked them past the point of smooshy (and I can't stand smooshy vegetables, right up to today).  Sometimes I blame myself, for just being plain picky and stubborn and not wanting to try anything new.

I have a friend who related the first time he (who was also resistant to all things green) honestly tried broccoli: "I was like, how could I possibly not have liked this?  It tastes like butter."  For me, it was asparagus.  Sometime in my twenties, my then-boyfriend cooked asparagus for me, and I ate it because I felt I had to; I went from grudging to gorging in less than five seconds flat.  There were a lot of things wrong with that relationship, but that asparagus -- that slightly crisp, slightly melty, green and, yes, buttery taste of love -- I'll always remember it fondly.

This post isn't about asparagus, but it is about another vegetable that I just can't imagine anyone not loving.  Green beans can be just awful in the wrong hands, but cooked quickly and sauteéd with a little seasoning, they're always great.  This dish pairs them with basil, which I have to admit I hadn't thought to try before; I usually use thyme, or tarragon.  It's a great combination, and I have to think that it's going to be absolutely killer in summertime when I can get both in season, as opposed to the supermarket workhorse varieties.

Choco-Bear Birthday Cake

Yesterday my daughter turned two, which was an excuse for me to make yet another silly birthday cake.  In the past I've made: a kitty, a Death Star, Thomas the Tank Engine, a sea turtle, a birthday train, and a flower pot with bug cupcakes.  I don't think I'd ever be confused with a professional cake decorator, but I have a lot of fun doing them, and my kids have a lot of fun eating them, and that's really good enough for me.

Actually, that's not quite good enough for me.  In my book, though presentation is important, a cake has got to taste good, really good, for me to be happy with it.  This particular cake was made using one of the easiest, tastiest chocolate cake recipes that I know of.

This is not an uber-dark, uber-chocolate-y cake; it's just very moist, simple, and uncomplicated.  Regan Daley writes of it, "the result is nothing short of your childhood memory of real chocolate cake," and I think she's right.  If you don't frost it, it has the added benefit of having no dairy ingredients, which means it's great for vegans and kids with milk allergies.

Although I referenced the recipe from In the Sweet Kitchen, I've also seen it many times in other cookbooks and cooking magazines. It's always credited to an older, female relative, and I think that it would be an interesting project to try to find out where all these women originally got the recipe, way back when.

Roasted Rack of Lamb with Garlic and Thyme

Valentine's Day is the one day a year that my husband cooks for me; well, he often 'cooks' things like veggie burgers and tunafish sandwiches and the occasional quesadilla, but today he is in the kitchen cooking a full meal from scratch using real recipes and ingredients and everything: Cheese (Romao, Campo de Montalban, and Mt. Sterling Goat Milk Cheddar) and Crackers, Pan-Roasted Quail in a Port Wine Reduction (except he couldn't find quail at the market, so it's game hens), Mushroom and Goat Cheese Strudel with Balsamic Vinegar, and Green Beans of some kind.  It smells wonderful.

Lots of people post chocolate recipes today, but who wants to compete with the best and brightest of the blogosphere?  Not me; anyway, I think the rest of the meal is just as important for setting the tone and mood of the evening.  This lamb recipe is elegant, and delectable, and don't worry! the garlic is cleverly mellowed out by boiling it first.  The chops were served atop a bed of Onion and Pepper Confit, with a splash of the garlic sauce, along with Bay-Scented Potatoes and Green Beens with Basil.

A menu like that ought to be enough to get anyone excited.*

Perfect Pancakes

If you were on the East Coast this weekend, chances are you got stuck in a mighty snowstorm.  If you were lucky, you were someplace warm and comfy, and you didn't have to go out all day unless you wanted to make a snow fort.  We stayed in our pjs until very late into the morning, made pancakes and breakfast sausages, and what did we care how much it may storm?

These really are the perfect, Platonic pancakes.  They're not at all cakey, which I hate; they're tender and light and really just supurb.  They're also ridiculously easy to make, so throw away that crappy ol' mix, would you?

In our house, there's really only one way to have pancakes: with real butter and real maple syrup.  I'm the sort who always orders the real stuff, even in diners, no matter how much extra it is.  In fact, on occasion, I've brought my own bottle when I knew there would only be that horrible fake 'pancake syrup'.

Tidbit: Last Minute Choco-links

Some old, some new, some borrowed, and um... well, most of them are brown, actually.  Here's a little last minute-chocolate inspiration for you:

Bridgewater Chocolate
Callebaut
Chloe Chocolat
Dagoba
Donnelly Chocolates
Green & Black's
Knipschildt
L.A. Burdick
Lake Champlain
La Maison Du Chocolat
MarieBelle
Payard
Richart
Scharffen Berger
See's Candies
Sweetriot
Valrhona
Vosges

Pappardelle with Grecian Tomato Sauce

I take tomato sauce fairly seriously.  Yes, I do call it sauce; gravy is something you make at Thanksgiving.  I use fresh tomatoes when I can get them, but since that's a small window around here I usually am stuck with canned. 

Like many enthusiasts I have fierce canned-tomato brand-loyalty; I use Muir Glen exclusively, because they're a. organic and b. delicious.  When they're on sale, I buy a case.

This tomato sauce is pretty damn divergent from your typical red stuff (which, don't get me wrong, I love).  It's bright and bold, like all my favorite sauces, but because it's got honey and red wine, it's got a sweet and sour thing going on as well, and because it's got cinnamon and mint, it's got both earthy/spicy and fresh components.  It's well-rounded, in other words, with the bonus of being somewhat familiar to your taste buds, and yet also different and new.

You can serve this sauce over pasta, like I've done, but it would probably also be great with meat, or even a meaty fish like tuna.  The pappardelle shown here was a gift from my aunt, who got it in Providence's Italian section (well, really just a street), and it was really well done; I generally don't notice too much of a difference between one dried pasta brand and another, but this was definitely a distinct improvement.  Pappardelle, by the way, is from the Italian pappare, 'to gobble up'.