It's not like we haven't been eating dinner...

I'll be getting 66 essays from my students next week. You can bet I'll find time to write a blog post then.

Thanks for being patient.

The Other White Meat

Usually dinner is all planned out in my head, if not on a shopping list, by the time I get to the grocery store. Sometimes, out of necessity and panic, I get to the market without even an idea of what to cook for dinner. The pressure of the hour and my expectant family can get the synapses firing, and I’ll come up with something. It may not be inspired (grilled chicken pieces, a steak), but it will be dinner.

Once in awhile something near magic happens when I’m suddenly hit with a flash, a combination of my personal cravings and what looks good in the market. That’s what happened the other day when I stepped into Whole Foods; suddenly I knew that I wanted to braise some pork shoulder for dinner.

Pork shoulder is succulent and satisfying. As they say in Babe, “Pork is a nice sweet meat,” and a braised pork shoulder doesn’t get a chance to dry out. The only problem with my situation was that I hadn’t ever braised a pork shoulder before. I needed a recipe, and quick. I was lucky because Whole Foods is one of those schmancy markets with a shelf of cook books for sale—and not all of them were by Mollie Katzen! One was from Chez Panisse, and Alice Waters offered a recipe for 3-4 lb pork shoulder braised with tomatoes, onions, garlic, fennel seeds, fresh thyme, and olives. I decided to go for it (except for the olives), and set about making a mnemonic device to help me remember the quantities and procedures.

Here’s how I made it:

1. Preheat oven to 325.

2. Sauté 1 medium onion in a large dutch oven. Add in 2 stalks of diced celery and 2 diced carrots. Add in 4 medium tomatoes. [Note: Waters called for fresh and wouldn’t make this recipe in winter because tomatoes aren’t in season. I used canned and would braise a pork shoulder two hours in August in New York.] Add in 1 teaspoon crushed fennel seeds and 1 teaspoon of fresh thyme.

3. Dry the roast and stud it with garlic slivers. Put it in the pot with all of the sautéed ingredients. Add more liquid to cover about 1/3 of the roast. Put the lid on the pot and put it in the oven.

4. Check it in about an hour. My automatic thermometer indicated that it was done at 145, and I will never tell you to cook your pork so low. USDA says to cook it to 160. That’s all I’m going to say about it.

5. Take the roast out of the now amazing broth and let it rest. In the meantime, pass the brothy mixture through a Mouli food mill (aka just about my favorite cooking tool). Cook the liquid down until it is pretty thick. Skim off any foam and as much fat as you can.

6. Slice the roast and serve with the sauce.

7. Wait for the next inspiration.

Fruitcake Weather

Truman Capote and his cousin Sook

I got an e-mail from a friend gently inquiring about fruitcake. Some people think of fruitcake as holiday doorstops, but they haven’t tasted mine. I really can’t boast or really call the fruitcake “mine” because it’s truly Aunt Pearl’s Fruitcake. I never had the pleasure of meeting Pearl. She was the relative of a friend of mine, and every Christmas I would find myself sniffing around their house to see if the mysterious Aunt had forwarded a loaf of heaven their way. Eventually Aunt Pearl wrote down her recipe and my friend gave me a copy. The sad fact is that we are no longer in touch. In fact, we had a bad break, but I do think of Leesa and thank her every time I make a batch of fruitcakes.

Es and I read Truman Capote’s beautiful “A Christmas Memory,” which describes his elderly cousin declaring: "Oh my,....it's fruitcake weather!" I don’t think it was actually fruitcake weather yesterday, but that didn’t stop me from getting all Christmassy in the head. There was a pocket of free time and fruitcakes to be made. We assembled all of the ingredients, cracked a few eggs (The Girl's first on her own!) and at the end of the day had the great satisfaction of seeing the beautiful bumpy loaves lined up on the kitchen counter. Capote’s cousin, according to the story, sent one of hers to Eleanor Roosevelt. I can’t think of a politician today worthy of these cakes, but I suppose if Eleanor Roosevelt were around I’d offer her one.

For years I never shared the recipe, being faithful to Aunt Pearl and keeping the fruitcake as a special holiday gift. Then one year I acquiesced. I gave the recipe to a friend and then…a while later our friendship collapsed. Isn’t that interesting? Is the recipe jinxed? I’m not going to mess with it; I’m keeping it for myself, and if you’re lucky you’re on my list for a little fruitcake this year.

Pasta and Prose

Here's a book recommendation for young readers and people who just like good books: Granny Torrelli Makes Soup, by Sharon Creech. It's a charming story about friendship, love, family, and food. I read it aloud to my 6th grade classes, and they were enthralled the by story and the complicated emotions. Our family listened to it on tape over a long car ride this summer, and there were parts that were so beautiful they made me cry. Granted, I cry easily, and no, I wasn't driving.

Most of the story takes place in the kitchen, and Creech lovingly describes Granny Torrelli making a chicken and pasta soup, homemade cavatelli, meatballs, and spareribs. I've never made homemade pasta, but this book got me as far as buying the semolina flour. It's still in my cupboard, but hey, that's the closest I've ever been to making homemade pasta. Pretty inspiring, hmmm? There's also a simple salad of oranges, olive oil, salt and pepper, and parsley. Doesn't that sound refreshing and easy?

Confessions of the Anonymous Dinner-Slave

Oh that’s not true. Well, the title is not completely true. I have been overwhelmed and feeling like all working people (moms and dads and grandmas and everyone) who serve a family dinner nearly every night should get some kind of merit badge. It’s tough. And as I’ve written in here before, it’s not just the making and the serving. No, it’s the thinking about it, what used to be called “meal planning.” It’s the psychic energy extended to the whole idea of what to cook for dinner. Then there’s the shopping, and the actually lugging of groceries into the house. Then you have to put all that food away, and somehow it seems like it was much easier to put it in the cart and even organize it onto the conveyer belt at the checkout than to put it all away in the right cupboard or fridge shelf.

It’s not that my family hasn’t been having dinner (or that I haven’t been cooking it). I haven’t been writing on the blog because having a new job is just so taxing, so many transitions to make, and things to get used to, and on and on. Sure, we’ve had more dinners out than I care to admit, and our neighbors have had us over much more often than they’ve been to our house. It has seemed that it took every ounce of my creativity and energy to get the meal on the table; there wasn’t much let to spend on reflection and creative writing.

But tonight I made an old stand-by. I have grade reports to write (pages and pages about how my students are doing in my classes), so I needed something easy and quick. I call this dish pasta with broccoli rabe and sausage; that’s pretty much it.

You have to start off boiling a big pot of water for the broccoli rabe. Get that going first. In the meantime, wash up the broccoli rabe and cut it into one to two inch pieces. Get the water going for the pasta too. I believe it’s supposed orecchiette, so that’s what I use, little ear-shaped pasta.

After the big pot of water is boiling, blanch the broccoli rabe for about 3-4 minutes. You can tell when it’s done because you’ll begin to smell the greens. Take them out and into a colander, shock them with some cold water to stop the cooking and preserve the green color.
Slice up some Italian or Italian-like sausage. I used D’Artagnan Mediterranean chicken sausage tonight. It wasn’t as heavy as the Aidells chicken sausage, so it made the dish lighter. Sauté the sausage slices in a skillet with a little bit of olive oil if you’re using a chicken sausage. Let them cook through.

Once the water in the other pot is boiling you’ll be ready to cook the pasta. It will take about 11 minutes for orecchiette.

Put about a tablespoon and a half of olive oil in the empty big pot that cooked the broccoli rabe. Toss in a peeled garlic clove, and turn on the heat so that the olive oil warms and is infused with the garlic. Throw in the cooked broccoli rabe, and let it sauté for a couple of minutes. I add salt, pepper, and a dash or two of hot red pepper flakes.

When the pasta is done, drain it, reserving some of the cooking liquid. Combine the pasta with the broccoli rabe, the sausage, and some freshly grate romano cheese. Serve and be thankful that you get to sit down.

Flash: Working Mom Tries to Keep it Together: Buys Crock Pot

Technically the word to use today is “slow cooker.” That keeps us "highly educated" "too much time in therapy" types from acknowledging that we are actually in some ways like our mothers.

My mom was not a big fan of many kitchen appliances, but that was mostly because she was not very interested in cooking. But she did have a crock-pot. It was avocado green, tall and round, and I can’t remember a thing that she made in it. Maybe we used it to keep cider hot at a Halloween party.

Cuisinart saved me from the ‘70’s style appliance. They’ve produced a sleek, professional looking contraption of polished chrome that fits perfectly with my Russell Hobbes electric teakettle. My plan is to find “some other place” for it, but for now it boldly hogs a good section of my kitchen counter. I’m compelled to use it to justify the amount of space it takes up.

Design wasn’t the only criteria for choosing the Cuisinart crock- pot (I mean slow-cooker). I did a thorough search on line, reading lots of Amazon reviews, until I came across an article by Jill Hunter Pellettieri in Slate that actually gave a rundown of some of the crock pots on the market. According to the Pellettieri, the Cuisinart “wins the prize” for cooking, ease of use, design, taste, and value. That clinched it.


So far I’ve had successes and failures. The Husband insists that the soups have been the best. I made a split pea soup that came out rich and delicious. I made an Italian White Bean Soup from Marcella Hazan that was pretty good (though some of the beans were more tender than others). I’ve also made an okay chicken with wine and a pretty good pot roast (though I will definitely use chuck next time).

The biggest problem for me seems to be figuring out how much liquid to add, how long to set the timer for, and what level of heat to set it at (low or high). According to the directions, if you set the thing on “high” it will cook the food to some safe temperature and then continue the rest of the time on “low.” After the timer is finished it will then automatically set itself to warm, keeping the food hot until you come home hungry.

I tried to make a lentil soup, but the minute I came in the door I could smell that the poor things were running out of water. Some were crunchy and it was even crispy around the edges. Then there was the second attempt at pea soup, a sad, sad story. I thought I would cook the pea on low all day, to make sure there wasn’t a repeat of the lentil saga. We all came home hungry, but the hard little pea pebbles were still sunk in a big puddle of water. I took the peas out of the pot and tried to cook them over the stove. Two days later they still weren’t done. You can only imagine the frustration.

On Monday, however, the thing redeemed itself. I sautéed some onion, celery and carrot, threw that in with some smoked, sliced ham shanks, black-eyed peas and water. I started it out on high and let it cook for hours and hours. I wasn’t trusting it with legumes, so I had already decided that this meal was going to be for the next night. For the next few days we ate the most scrumptious black-eyed peas over rice. The vegetables had cooked into an incredibly tasty sauce. The smoked shank meat fell off the bone, giving nice chunky pieces of ham to go along with the incredibly tender peas. It was a triumph.

My Obsession

Although I mostly write about dinner, I have a different obsession. Cookies. Well, not exactly cookies (though I’m rarely known to pass up a chocolate chip with walnuts), I’m talking about what Europeans might call biscuits (beece-kwee).

Part 1 Le Petit Beurre
I was fortunate enough (and I mean really, really lucky) to study in France for a year in a town that had a Brun factory. Brun is a brand of cookie, kind of like our Nabisco, I suppose. And because the dollar was so incredibly high at that point, I could buy these sumptuous and delicate little cookies for about 20 cents a pack. They’re called Petit Beurre Extra. It’s the Extra that’s important; otherwise you’ll end up with something LU (French cookie company who makes those lovely little schoolboy cookies) calls “veritable,” which means “the real thing.” No, the perfect cookies, the most amazing little wafers that have the right amount of crunch and butter are the Extras. And here’s the truly sad part: I’ve never, ever seen them for sale any place but France.



Part 2 Stella D’Oro Breakfast Treat Minis
Don’t go for the regular size Breakfast Treats; they have much more crumb and are higher in saturated fats than the Minis. Look for the crunchy little Minis (of course neither Fairway nor my local Food Emporium sells them) and dip them in your coffee or tea.






Part 3 Mulino Bianco i Rigoli
These are little honey flavored cookies from Italy, and they are so amazingly perfect that I am very particular with whom I share them. They look like a big Petit Beurre, but the honey flavor gives a zing that takes it to another level. Again, what adds to their specialness is that they are so incredibly hard to find. I first had them in a little Italian food shop near Friends Seminary on East 16th Street. They had a glass canister of them on the counter and you could take a couple with your coffee to go. That place didn’t last very long because Starbucks was moving in a few doors down and part of their deal was that the little Italian competition had to go.

Now I sometimes find them at Buon Italia at Chelsea Market. I buy about 3 packages at a time, but at $4.00 a box it adds up pretty fast.




Part 4 Polaîne’s Punition
Imagine that you walk into a bakery and there in heaps and mounds on the counter are teeny little butter cookies for you to snack on while you wait your turn. They are like crunchy butter that just melts in your mouth. That’s what it’s like at Polaîne in Paris, and you can order them online (4.4 pounds of cookies that will keep for “at least a month”) for $64.10 (including tax and delivery) from www.polaine.fr I suppose that might work if you ate a lot of cookies and had a lot of money. But if I had a lot of money, I'd go get them myself in Paris.

Stand Up Dinner

I can’t really say that I made dinner tonight. The best way that I can put it is that I “opened” dinner. The Husband is at his studio, so it was just The Girl and me. We were sitting there at 6:30 going through all of the extras in her new Angelina Ballerina video (Choreograph your own dance! Find the cheese to feed the castle ghost!), and that took about all the enthusiasm I could muster.

School starts next week (and I’ll be starting a new teaching job), so these waning days of leisure and summer need to be embraced. Making dinner didn’t really seem like a priority. With nothing planned and nothing even leftover, I padded over to the pantry shelf to see what I could find. The Girl stayed glued to the opening credits, anticipating yet another viewing of the dancing mouse. I came back with a box of crackers and asked her how she felt about hummus.

She was game, so we went upstairs, peeled open the box of whole-grain crackers, sliced up some apple, opened up a tub of hummus (it still had 28 days before the expiration), and found some pickles that we got at the Farmer’s Market last Saturday. We sat at the counter and dipped crackers and such into the hummus, chatting and making jokes.

I have to admit that though the meal wasn’t much, some would call it a snack, it still gave that opportunity for connection that the meat and potato meals provide. There was actually a closeness there at the kitchen counter, taking turns dipping, comparing what tasted best, discussing the pronounciation of her name, my teaching her that there is actually a country called Djibouti (Eastern Africa, near equator).

Then I had a brainstorm of an idea: “Would you eat hummus for lunch at school?”

“I like it here, but I wouldn’t eat it for lunch,” she said.

“Is that because hummus is kind of weird and kids might make jokes about it like they did when you had tacos?”

-silence-

“What if we called it ‘dip’? Would that work?” I pressed, hoping to add another possibility to the lunch list.

“We could call it ‘cracker dip,’ and it would be okay.”

"I'll put it in a little round plastic container and then you could have crackers too"

So that is how one overwhelmed mom exhaled a bit by not having to fix dinner, enjoyed herself, and added another easy solution to the lunchtime dilemma.

Not bad.

It's 5:30-Do you know what you're having for dinner?

I’m wondering how long does it take frozen shrimp to thaw? What am I going to do with the shrimp after they thaw? Will Es and the boy from next door eat them with curry?

I’m guessing 30 min. in cold water, grill on skewers, no way!

Lunchables

School is coming up on me, and I just got that letter home telling us we can’t send any nut products for lunch or snack. The Girl was just about doing a happy dance when she heard the news. Last year I gave her PB&J sandwiches for about a month, and I finally got sick of making them and then throwing them away every day. She has refused them ever since.

Still I was hoping that I could get away with a month of slathering bread with spreads with I waited for the coffee to kick in. No such luck.

So here’s an attempt to come up with a list of possible lunches that can survive without refrigeration but may require a hot thermos.

1. Some kind of pasta

2. Edamame

3. Sliced apples

4. Cheese and Apples

5. Fruit – all kinds

6. Red pepper strips (or orange, yellow, green)

7. Carrot sticks

8. Hummus and carrot sticks (or celery) or pita

9. Did I mention pasta?

10. Crackers and Cheese

11. Dried Fruit (esp. cherries because she’ll eat them)

I just asked Es what she sees other kids eating that she likes to eat. She said “pasta.”

12. Beans (esp. black beans)

13. Ravioli – oh right, that’s pasta

14. Tea Sandwiches: cucumber? Smoked turkey? Apple and cheese? [For mornings when I’ve already had a lot of coffee.]

15. Soup

Okay, so that’s my starting list. I’m going to keep adding to it…and suggestions are always welcome. What I don’t want to hear is how horrible dried fruit is or how bad anything else is on this list. I already left yoghurt off because of SFMom. And I’m telling you right now, chocolate milk is going to qualify as a snack in this house and that’s it!

And I'm also laying down the gauntlet to any folks from the nabe who scoff at Pizza Friday. They can start making lunch for my kid every Friday if they vote that little weekly reprieve down—and that goes for the little Anti-Pizza Friday contingent in my own house too!

The Amazing Woman Juggler

The summer is winding down, and I’m getting kind of jittery. The big question that every working Mom (and some working dads? …maybe) asks herself: How am I supposed to fit everything in to my schedule?

Even as I’m writing this, The Husband is informing me that The Girl wants a play date with a friend and that she told him that I “forgot.” I’m home more, so it makes sense that I be the one to schedule it. Okay, that’s true. But still…

What is it about trying to fit everything into place, like a jigsaw puzzle that has too many pieces, that makes me want to run from the room pulling my hair?

And on top of The Girl’s dance lessons and piano lessons, my seeing friends when I can, going to therapy, doing laundry, shopping for groceries, keeping up with regular doctor appointments, sewing for fun, keeping the garden watered, scheduling repairmen when necessary, getting the car tuned up, going to work…I have to fix dinner. How is this supposed to work?

And the Livin' is Easy

Maybe it’s practice. Maybe it’s a new mindset. I don’t know. I put together a lunch party and didn’t even break a sweat.

Jim and Vika were coming over at 2:00 pm, and here it was 9:00 and I hadn’t even thought up a menu. So rather than panic (regular mode), I sat at the table with a cup of coffee and some cook books and went through the possibilities (new and improved). I opted for:


Poached Salmon with Yoghurt Dill Sauce
Black Bean and Orzo Salad
Grilled Asparagus
Peach and Blueberry Crisp

I did the grocery shopping and preparation in 4 hours! It was as if my brain went on autopilot and I just knew what to do and when to do it.

First off: poach the salmon (in water, white wine, peppercorns, lemon, salt and dill. Cover the salmon with the liquid. Cover and bring to a boil. When it boils turn off the heat and let it sit for 30 minutes or so in the hot bath.

Peach and Blueberry Crisp – Peel and quarter 2.5 pounds of peaches. Combine peaches with 1 C of blueberries,1/4C white sugar, 1T instant tapioca, 1/2t lemon zest, 1-1/2T lemon juice. Grind up the topping in a Cuisinart until coarse: 5T chilled butter, 1/4C brown sugar, 1/4C white sugar, 1/4t nutmeg, 1/4t cinnamon, 3/4
c nuts (I chose pecans). Put the fruit in the bottom of a glass square-ish baking dish (so you can see how it’s cooking inside), and coat with topping. Bake for 30 minutes at 375, then pump the heat up to 400 and bake for about 10 more (not letting it burn). This recipe is from Cooks Illustrated.

We sat out on the deck talking about vacations and work, and even a pesky, determined yellow jacket couldn’t get us out of our summer mood.

The Peach Blueberry Crisp was by far the highlight of the meal. The peaches were soft, sweet, and melted in your mouth. The topping gave a gratifying crunch that made you want to scrape the sides of the pan for the crispiest bit, something I indulged in after our guests had left. The Husband was much less cunning. He unapologetically plopped the remaining helping into a bowl all for himself.