Mutiny Over Mac and Cheese

I couldn't believe it. This incredible macaroni and cheese, a dish even finicky The Husband named the best ever, was snubbed by my own flesh and blood.

"No," The Girl declared, "it's not really the best. I like Arthur pasta better."

That stuff in a box with orange cheese powder? How can that compare with this dish that is full of butter, whole milk, and two different kinds of cheese?

She ate a few bites. I had six servings.


Hey, they were small!

Performance Anxiety

We went over to Mark’s house for dinner tonight. Few things are as wonderful as somebody else serving you a home-cooked meal. All you have to do is sit down and enjoy. He made a salad of escarole and then some penne with a Bolognese. Desirée (his sister / our friend) and her daughter Sarah were there, and we talked about the up-coming Oscar awards, UAE managing of US ports, and the advantages of having a Lexapro prescription. The girls regaled us with skits from the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie (“Dadee, I whant a new pohny”) and then we discussed the Olympics and the complexities of computers and cable. It was a wonderful evening, and I couldn’t help but ask myself why we didn’t do this more often.

This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot: why does it make me anxious to invite people over for dinner? If it’s a spur of the moment thing it’s not problem at all. I’m just roasting up a chicken and Mark or Jim should come over and join us. No sweat. I’m okay with Dorte coming over any time. She does kitchen duty too, so it never feels as if I have to put together a meal to impress or satisfy.

The trouble sets in when I have to start thinking about what will make people happy. How clean does the house have to be? Do all of the Polly Pockets have to be picked up? What should the menu be? Should I try something new? Sometimes when I’ve tried a new recipe for dinner I’ll ask The Husband, “Is this good enough for guests?” Invariably he says yes, and still I never get that dinner party going.

I was talking this over with Chrystèle the other day. She’s always having people over for dinner, so I consider her a pro. “You just can’t worry about not having it perfect. People are just happy to be at your table.” She sounded so convincing in her French accent that I think I believe her.

I’m going to invite the next door neighbors over. I’ll make flank steak or macaroni and cheese. Maybe I’ll do fish filets in parchment with an endive salad. I’ll think of something.

Promise Keepers

I have so wanted to go out to dinner the past two nights, but our new austerity plan forbids it. Only our vow to stay within our budget (and my work’s inability to pay me in a timely fashion) has kept us at the table here at home. Last night was Valentine’s Day, so even though I just wanted someone to take my order, I whipped up a paste of rosemary, parsley, garlic, olive oil and salt to spread over some luscious Costco lamb chops. Mashed potatoes and carrots did the rest. But what really irked me was my lack of foresight. We had a bottle of champagne in the fridge, and I volunteered that we open it on Sunday night to celebrate the blizzard. So here it was Valentine's Day and no champagne.

Tonight was hardly different. The Girl and I drove to the Hastings station to pick up The Husband, and all the way there I kept thinking how nice it would be to just pick him up and go to Ardsley for some Thai food. We could be there in a flash, and I was already so hungry from only having an economical peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a banana for lunch today. When The Husband got in the car I tested him out: "How about going out for dinner tonight?"” He agreed without hesitation, and that, somehow, made it easier for me to confess that the dinner I had at home would be a snap and would take less time than going anywhere else. I mean really, how long does it take to heat up some smoked pork chops, boil up some egg noodles, and steam some broccoli?

And in the long run it all worked out for the best. The Girl was full of stories about her first 100th day of school, which she reported was the greatest day she's had at school yet. And then of course there's the issue of tomorrow night. The Husband will be at his studio to paint, and The Girl and I have an invitation to meet Desirée and her daughter Sarah for dinner at Haiku in Bronxville. I have already said "yes."

Just Like Mom Used to Make

Just when I needed it most, my daughter came over and gave me a kiss. She got up from the dinner table and came around for a mid-dinner smooch. I've been kind of down in the dumps, what with work and all (read: my job sucks), so I was really on the lookout for any hint of positive reinforcement.

I had been feeling really bored with my dinner repertoire and completely uninspired for my foray to Fairway Market, so I started going through my collection of recipe clippings to find something new. Who knew? Back in December 2000, Mark Bittman shared a recipe for black-eyed peas in his Minimalist column in the New York Times. As The Girl said at dinner tonight, "I love black-eyed peas," and she comes by it naturally.

Her Great-Grandma Gertrude, The Husband's Grandma —who unfortunately she never met, introduced me to black-eyed peas when I first had Christmas eve dinner at her house about 20 years ago. For a while she grew her own, then later she got them, pods and all, at a farmer's market. Eventually I tried to reproduce her recipe and had a heck of a time tracking down her secret ingredient:Liquid Smoke. I also had to substitute green beans for the black-eyed pea pods. Even though it wasn't absolutely authentic it was pretty good.

Tonight's blackeyed pea recipe hit the spot from a number of angles. It was easy—very few ingredients. It was cheap, if you (like me) happen to have some kind of ham, lying around your fridge.

To round things off, I pulled that cute little box of Jiffy corn muffin mix out of the pantry. This is what my mom made when she was really cooking something good. Looking at the box, you wouldn't think it could possibly taste as good as it does. Add a third a cup of milk and an egg to the mix and you've got a sweet little corn bread muffin.

And it not only got me a hug and kiss from The Girl, but The Husband even reached over and planted one on me too. I know I've been kind of pathetic lately, what lamenting about work and all, but I really think it was the black eyed peas and corn bread.

Here's how to make Bittman's Black-eyed Peas, which he calls South in a Soup.

Quickly sauté 2 oz of ham in 1 T of olive oil. Throw in a chopped medium onion and cook until it begins to get a little golden. Add 2 C of black-eyed peas. [He recommended frozen, which only took 30 minutes to get nice and tender.] Cook them with 4 C of water until tender. I let the water drain down a bit so that it was a bit thicker. Add in 2 C of greens. I used watercress, so that didn't take very long at all to wilt and cook down. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Dash with Tabasco. Serve.

Charge It To My Room

There are times when this whole dinner ordeal is a burden. Take tonight. I have the dinner all planned, and it’s not too involved or anything: grilled swordfish, some rice, and some kind of vegetable that’s in the crisper and that I bought today, but I’ve completely forgotten. Granted, I genuinely enjoy having dinner with my family. Tonight, however, I want room service. I want to be in a hotel ordering something that will taste good from a cart and that comes with a metal cover. I want to stay up late and watch Charlie Rose.

Why Charlie Rose? He’s having a tribute broadcast to Wendy Wasserstein tonight. That shouldn’t make any difference in a family dinner blog, but it does make a big difference to me. I feel so completely sad about her death. I’m a huge fan of her play “Uncommon Women and Others,” but I never saw anything else she ever wrote. Still, she always impressed me as somebody who enjoyed life, approached it with a great sense of humor, and (it seemed) knew how to be a friend. The thing we have in common is that we both gave birth to baby girls in the winter of 1999. She wrote about the birth of Lucy Jane in the New Yorker and then in her collection of essays Shiksa Goddess, and it’s such a compelling story of love and faith (in her doctors, in her daughter’s will) that it moves me no matter how many times I have read it.

Work isn’t exactly a piece of cake these days either, but I won’t go into that right now. Can I add that the hot water heater broke down over the weekend, the roofer came last week, and the washing machine repair man stopped by too. Such a klatch of home improvements experts (no matter how friendly) don’t brighten my mood. And to make matter worse, I just had a birthday, inching my way toward the unspeakable.

So perhaps I’ll get in a better mood by the time I start making dinner or by the time I sit down at the table. Maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll at least break one rule and have a gin and tonic before Memorial Day.

Sunday Night Turkey Meatloaf

Fast, Cheap, Easy & Good

Most times I cook where I follow a recipe. Sometimes it’s a recipe that I’ve made many times before, so I can improvise a little bit and fool around some (a little more of this, some of that instead). There are very few dishes that I can put together without consulting anything. Even when I grill a steak I have to look up every time how many minutes for how thick a steak. But there is one dish that I have learned to do by heart: bucatini all’amatriciana.

It sounds fancy, doesn’t it? Well it’s easy! It doesn’t take a lot of time or ingredients, and it’s good enough to serve to guests.

The first thing you have to know is that bucatini is a long, narrow tubular pasta—kind of like a hollow spaghetti. Find something close enough and you’ll be fine. Boil up a pot of water with a tablespoon of olive oil in it (keeps the pasta from sticking together).

While you are waiting for it to boil, dice about a third a pound of pancetta (Italian bacon) into pieces the size of a pencil eraser. Pour 2 tablespoons of olive oil into a good-size sauté pan and sauté the pancetta until it is nice and crispy. Then let it drain in a bowl padded with paper towels, keeping the olive oil in the pan.

Now your water should be about ready to boil. Add some salt (adds flavor to the pasta) when it’s at a rolling boil and add the pasta.

Add 2 cups of canned diced tomatoes (almost all of one of the big-size cans) to the olive oil in the sauté pan. Cook it for a few minutes (about 5-7) to let it thicken up a bit. Then lower the heat and add 4 tablespoons of freshly grated romano cheese and about 1 teaspoon of crushed red peppers. Stir on low heat for a little bit, and then add in almost but not all of the crispy pancetta.

Drain the pasta (it should be just about al dente by this time), and mix the pasta and sauce (to make it so that there is a nice coating of sauce on the pasta, but not like it’s swmming in it). Top the dish with the remaining pancetta and some more romano. And that’s it!

That’s what we’re having for dinner tonight. I’ve already crisped up the pancetta, and I’m going to stop at the market the romano and some broccoli rabe as a side dish.

I have made this pasta so many times that I could (almost) make it with one hand tied behind my back. It’s what I’d cook if I was nervous about having people over for dinner, and it’s what I’d make if I was on vacation in some strange house without a cook book.

Grilling in Winter

When we moved to Hastings from our apartment in the city last year I knew that I wanted a grill. My heart rate would quicken every time I stumbled upon a July issue of a cooking magazine outlining all the fun other people were having with their grills. They were making sublime vegetables with beautiful lines across them. They were flipping steaks and chicken parts to their heart’s content. Back in the apartment, I had thought about using one of those stove-top grill pans on our little gas range, but without a range hood I knew that I was only asking for trouble. So the first warm day in May last year, The Husband, The Girl and I trekked over the hill to Home Depot and got ourselves a grill.

When I lived in California I had a Weber kettle charcoal grill, which I used mostly for marinated chicken pieces. I was ready to put a grill to a lot more use now. I didn’t want to be limited to only cooking in warm weather and I didn’t want to come home from work and wait 45 minutes for the coals to get just right. That’s why I got a gas grill. And even though I miss that wonderful carcinogenic flavor from the coals, I use the grill rain or shine (well, to be honest—sprinkling or shine, and snow has been a deterrent too). There are two problems with grilling when it’s cold 1) it takes a lot more gas to keep the grill hot, and 2) the cold air drifts into the house every time you go in and out. Another negative is that you can’t really cook dinner in your pajamas.

So last night, even though it is winter, I fired up the grill to make dinner. First I wrapped some baking potatoes in foil, and set them up on the shelf, a bit aways from the burners. I let them sit there as the grill got hot and hotter. In the meantime, I made up rub (from the Cook’s Illustrated Best Recipe cookbook that I got for Christmas) for the flank steak. It was basically a couple of tablespoons of ground cumin and chili powder. About half of that of ground coriander, some pepper, a little bit of cinnamon, some dried chili flakes and some salt. I did those puréed parsnips, but also made some steamed carrots as insurance.

With about 15 minutes left for the potatoes I put the flank steak on the grill. Turned it after seven minutes and then let it cook for about 5 or so minutes more. The potatoes continued cooking while the steak “rested.” And that was dinner. The Husband and The Girl took doll-sized bites of the parsnips, but the flank steak and potatoes were a hit.

Only Connect

I might have made a big mistake the other night. I answered the phone during dinner. At the moment it didn’t seem like such a big deal. The phone rang as we were having the leek and potato soup, and I automatically leapt out of my chair like a teenager. We have an interesting division of labor around the phone in our house. It’s basically this: I answer the phone. It’s not that the phone calls are always for me. It’s not because I am always rushing for it; sometimes it will ring and ring and ring until I get it. I usually answer it. Evan usually doesn’t.

So this was just one of the many times that the phone rang, and I looked (yes, we have caller ID) to see who it was and made the snap judgment that I needed to talk to that person more than I needed to have my leek and potato soup.

The truth is that it was a kind of “important” call in that the person was a neighbor that I don’t know too well, that there is an issue of a shared fence that the wind blew down, that she, too, works and has children and has a busy schedule. We talked and made a plan for the poor, lopsided fence. We talked about our kids, our work, and both (I think) felt that it would be great if we were to talk in person sometime soon. I hung up feeling glad to be a neighbor, even if we have to deal with problem fences.

When I returned to the table The Husband and The Girl were eating the chicken and the spinach in silence. The chicken (which I bought already roasted) was pretty dry, and something was clearly lost from the mood while I was up and talking on the phone.

I’m not trying to scold myself; given the same situation I might take the call again. But what the experience did remind me of is how precious and tenuous those moments at the dinner table can be, how much they connect me to the people I care about, and how hearing about what The Husband did for lunch and who The Girl played with at recess really matters to me. Maybe I don’t have to be so hard on myself to produce a terrific meal, maybe showing up is more than half of the work.

Trying to Please Everyone Some of the Time

Via Quadronno is just about my favorite restaurant in Manhattan. I came across it one day when The Girl was almost 1 year old and I had gone to Zitomer on Madison because I was convinced she needed more duplo. We turned the corner on 73rd Street and there were a couple of little tables and chairs set out in the sun. I sat down (with The Girl in her stroller) and ordered an Il Toast sandwich (grilled ham and cheese) and a bottle of Moretti. I was in heaven, and have returned, (with The Husband, bringing along a friend or having a great cappuccino all by myself) again and again. The Girl used to know it as The Fancy Schamncy Sandwich Shop, but now knows the place by name. The Husband is a fan of their sandwiches too, but I’ve noticed that when he’s in particular need of comfort and cheer he orders their Lasagna Bolognese.

You should see how happy he is when the bubbling hot au gratin dish is brought to the table. It’s a special treat and it comes with a hefty price. That wonderful, rich lasagna goes for $22.00. I’m not kidding. It’s that expensive, and it doesn’t come with a salad or anything—just a little basket of toasted bread slivers. Is it worth it? Well, there are times that Evan would say “yes,” because it is just that good, but you have to really, really want it.

We’ve been trying to live more within our means and are hunkering down with a new austerity plan. Fancy Schamncy East Side cafés cannot be rationalized easily into this scheme. That’s why I decided that I was going to make Lasagna for dinner.

It took about two days. The first day I made the sauce. I decided to go for a modified Bolognese, substituting turkey instead of the ground beef (which I mostly avoid because of food fears), ground veal (which I avoid because I used to live in Berkeley) and ground pork (which I’d buy if I’d thought of it). I haven’t made lasagna in years and years, the last version being a vegetarian edition (I made it in Berkeley over 14 years ago) that called for 21 ingredients. I wanted a much more basic sauce for this lasagna: onion, garlic, the turkey, some mushrooms, a couple of cans of tomatoes (one whole and one crushed because that’s what I had on hand), some oregano, a little thyme, and some salt and pepper. I let it simmer for hours and hours, filling the house with the promise of something good—later.

The next night I assembled and cooked it. Having cut back on the interesting meats, I decided to go for the cheese: fresh whole-milk ricotta (mixed with grated parmesan, fresh basil and an egg) and fresh mozzarella. I found some lasagna pasta like they use at Via Quadronno too. It’s flat and thin, almost like construction-paper thin, so it doesn’t monopolize the whole thing.

I did the layering thing, and baked and baked and baked it, almost 50 minutes in all. In the meantime I blanched and sautéed some broccoli rabe, adding a clove of garlic to the hot oil to add some zing.

Here it was, my gorgeous lasagna! Days in the making! A synergy of economy and epicurianism. Let the compliments begin! The Husband did exactly what a dear partner should do when someone makes something so layered, so time-consuming, so delicious. He savored it, had seconds, and was openly appreciative. The Girl on the other hand…

Who would have guessed that a kid would refuse to eat lasagna? She picked some of the pasta out of it, separating as many of the ingredients on her plate as she could: tomatoes in one section, cheese in another, mushrooms way over there. She did have a good serving of the veggies, but her dissatisfaction was evident. Two thoughts crossed my mind: I’m glad she didn’t order this at Via Quadronno—and poor kid, we’re going to be eating this for days!

La Tarte

All successful dinners are alike, but every unsuccessful dinner is a disaster in its own way. We hardly give it a thought if a meal plan goes well, but there are so many little ways that things can fall apart, so many mistakes to be made.

To understand why the meal was a failure you have to first understand what it was I was trying to replicate. I had a very simple meal at our friends Chrystèle and Pierre’s house. It was something Chrystèle whipped up while The Girl was playing with their daughters. Do you see how inconsequential this meal must have been for her? She had four children in her house (ages from about 18 months to six) and she served me an amazing dinner when I came to pick up my child.

The meal was basically this one, perfect savory tart. It had the bite of Dijon mustard; the tang of Gruyère cheese; squishy, baked tomatoes, all on a crisp little crust. It was incredible, and I had to stop myself from eating more than my share. And this part is especially neat: she served it with a plate of proscuitto and some cornichons. Brilliant, right?

As a cook, a hungry person, and a francophile, I found myself with two important goals: 1) I wanted to eat more of that tart and 2) I wanted to be the kind of cook who could whip up something so delicious and with so little effort.

My first mistake was to not write down the recipe. I wanted to be someone who could just get the gist of the recipe and then rely upon my years of experience and instinct to replicate it. I asked Chrystèle how to make the tart about three times over the course of a month or so, thinking about trying to make it. Once I went so far as to buy the tomatoes, but I still didn’t have the confidence and ended up using them for something else. After days and days I finally felt I was ready.

I made the tart; things went downhill from there.

It looked great when I put it in the oven. The tomato slices looked bright, making a nice contrast with the chiffonade of basil and drizzle of olive oil. But my certainty began to falter when the cheese started to melt out onto the baking sheet and the pie crust wasn’t really browning. I fiddled around with the temperature (lower? broil?), but the cheese kept oozing and the crust kept looking rubbery.

Finally, after about 25 minutes I called it done, slid it on to a beautiful plate and brought it to the table.

First bite: “How much mustard did you put in here?” asked The Husband. Yes, there was a really powerful wallop of mustard. I had slathered it on pretty thickly, but I like mustard. The French like mustard. Mustard is good.

Second bite: “What kind of cheese is this? Gorgonzola?” The Husband isn’t a big cheese fan, and I’m happy to say that our marriage survives despite this huge character deficit. I sneak cheese into food, and he always imagines that it’s Gorgonzola.

Neither The Husband nor The Girl ate any more of the tart. I slogged on with another slice or two out of pride. The Husband brought out a couple of containers of yoghurt.

As soon as dinner was over I got on the phone to Chrystèle. She said first you prick the pie crust (oops), then you spread a thin layer of mustard on the pie crust (oops). Then the tomatoes (oops), then the cheese (oops), then drizzle some basil and garlic (oops) in olive oil. Bake at 350F for about 30 minutes or so.

I’m not giving up. I’m going to try again, perhaps with some goat cheese though because that will go over better in my house.

Just Us Girls

It’s curious to me how some food splits along gender lines. In her wonderful book, Home Cooking, Laurie Colwin notes that men don’t seem to like bitter greens like Broccoli Rabe, but I think the list stretches further. Maybe it’s because women need more iron or folic acid or something, but there are certain foods that conjure up deep groans of enjoyment in my girlfriends while men politely pass the serving plate or even protest. When I took the brussel sprouts out of the oven on Thanksgiving the women gave nods of gratitude. I felt smug because The Husband had promised that if I made them he wouldn’t eat them. [They were terrific, by the way, roasted with salt, pepper and olive oil along with julienne slices of proscuitto.] I have never cooked liver or lima beans (foods I think of women enjoying more than men) in the 18 years I’ve been with The Husband, which is a loss for me. Still, The Husband takes such obvious enjoyment in the meals I prepare that, for the most part, I'm content to make dinners that we will all eat.

If I had said to The Husband “What do you think about trying some pureed parsnips tonight?” his face would have screwed up into something meaning “bleh.” But I was shopping for dinner at Trader Joe’s with my good friend Dorte on Saturday, so it was a different outcome altogether. Parsnips have intrigued me for years, ever since my analyst (who rarely says much to me) voiced shock and outrage when I made an uninformed disparaging remark about the vegetable. Then I recently came across a parsnip recipe, so parsnips were ready to happen in my life. But on this night, Dorte’s husband was out in Santa Barbara for work and The Husband was working in his studio. It was just us girls, and we were ready to do some cooking.

Parsnips look like albino carrots, but they give off a strong sweet scent as you get a blade to them. We peeled, chopped and boiled them to tender perfection in about 15 minutes. We threw in a couple of carrots for fun, and to hedge our bets against having them turn some vile shade of grey. Then we put them in the Cuisinart with some salt, pepper, a bit of butter, some parsley, and a little bit of the water from the boil. My thinking was that though potatoes don’t do well in the Cuisinart (they become gummy), the parsnips should be okay—and that was true.

I had some beets lying around (another vegetable that makes me swoon), so I dashed some salt and pepper on the beets, wrapped them each in a little foil, and put them on the grill for about 30 minutes. My only mistake there was that I didn’t turn them while they cooked, so one part got a little burnt. I didn’t say anything about that (lesson learned from Maurice), and just cut that part off while I was peeling the hot little devils.

We had them with some beautiful 2” lamb chops from Costco, that we rubbed with salt, pepper, olive oil and rosemary before putting them on the grill, 8 minutes a side. You might think that such chops would overshadow the poor little parsnips. Not true! There were lamb chops left over, but I ended up scraping the bowl of parsnips with a chunk of bread.

The Girl didn’t take to the parsnips in a big way, even though we described them as being French, like her best friend. But that's okay, she's only six. She always has been a big beet fan though, and her second helping of those was enough to warm any mother’s heart.