Au Revoir, Gourmet

I was back at work this week after two and a half weeks off, and I feel so lucky to be able to say that it was great. I love my job. It’s busy and challenging, fun, and I work with amazing people.

So let me tell you about what I cooked this week. Nothing. I cooked nothing. If fried eggs count, then put that on the list, but I don’t think they do when the only reason I cooked them was because I was out of bread for toast, milk for granola, and I didn’t feel like eating almonds and a piece of cheese for breakfast—again.

So this weekend I am giving myself an emotional jumpstart—ready to roll on Monday with food in the fridge, a few meals planned, and the intention to cook. Part of my jumpstart is finally putting an end to my mourning period for Gourmet Magazine. I was a subscriber, and now it’s time to move on.

Here are the contenders.

Saveur: I love this magazine. Really interesting articles and cool recipes from around the world. I always learn something, but when I want to read a long article, I’m going to choose the New Yorker. My food magazine fills a different need. Save Saveur for plane rides.

Martha Stewart Living: Those who know me know about my strong allegiance to Martha. I stood by her when she was in jail. But I stopped subscribing when she started giving templates to trace for craft projects. I’m not seven—seriously. But that phase seems to have ended, and this is a really good magazine again. A top contender, for sure.

Bon Apetit: Conde Nast seems to think I should switch to Bon Apetit because they sent it to me for free, but I didn’t want to be swayed.

Cook’s Illustrated: This is a little unfair because I already subscribe to Cook’s Illustrated. I love it, and will continue to subscribe. It’s more of a “teach a girl to fish” than a “give a girl a fish” magazine, and I still remember tips that I read years ago. But CI fills a different need. It is not eye candy.

Food & Wine: Bad design. I can’t even make it to the recipes because there are too many dotted lines, and double borders and weird shapes and pointless graphics. Reading my food magazine shouldn’t be painful.

Fine Cooking: I think this is the winner. A family friend recommended it to my mom, who recommended it to me. I am new to it, so only have 2 months of experience, but I want to try all the recipes, I seem to be in line with their food philosophy, it’s a good mix of easy recipes, harder recipes, tips, and food info. Visually, it’s not as stunning as Living, but it’s way better than Food & Wine, and I think I can live with it.


Am I missing anything? If no, I think I’ll go ahead and subscribe to Fine Cooking.

The Seven Days of Avocado

I blame Costco. It has a way of making me feel like I NEED things. I walk in thinking I’ll pick up a block of Dubliner and some toilet paper, and I come home with a lifetime supply of zip ties and a 1 gallon jug of Jelly Bellies.

And so again, it happened—Costco made me buy a 5 pack of avocados. In December. That had traveled all the way from Chile. That’s a lot of food miles—about 6,500 of them—for those tasty little avocados to make it to my kitchen counter. Had I waited a month or two, I could have found Haas avocados from California.  Not exactly local, but a heck of a lot closer than Chile.

So to assuage my guilt for eating the exact opposite of local, I decided that I was going to make the most out of those darn Chilean avocados.

I am also trying to grow an avocado plant from the pit. We’ll see how that goes.

Seven Days of Avocado

Smashed avocado on toast with salt, pepper and olive oil (maybe my all time favorite breakfast).

Avocado, Satsuma oranges, thinly sliced white onions, roasted delicata squash, cilantro and spinach, tossed with lime vinaigrette.

Burritos with leftover steak, pinto beans, sour cream and homemade guacamole.

Leftover guacamole on toast (I was serious about this).

Avocado with radicchio and garlic anchovy dressing.

Avocado with toasted walnuts, cottage cheese and salt (an idea from my friend Shannon).

There’s still half of an avocado left in the fridge. I’ll probably eat it on toast, or just scoop it out of the skin and eat it with salt as a snack.

A Discussion of Favorites

In general, I am not partial to discussions of favorites—I have enough room in my heart for many good things to be at the top of the list. But if pressed, I would have to say that my favorite food group is charcuterie.

Salami, pepperoni, prosciutto, bacon, sausage, terrine—yes please!

But for being such an avid patron of charcuterie, I have made very little of it myself. The one exception is pate. I make it every December. And usually a few times in between.

For me, pate is a special treat. Like savory frosting—totally over the top, and totally worth it. I like to make it for special occasions. And eat the leftovers for breakfast with toasted baguette and apples.

Warning pate makers: there are quite a few people out there who just do not like pate. So in order to avoid awkward situations and potentially hurt feelings, be careful who you serve it to. Once I brought a plate of homemade pate and cranberry relish to a dinner party, and except for the gluttonous three servings that I had myself, I took it all home with me. On another occasion, a friend gagged after he took a heaping bite full, claiming he thought it was hummus. Pate is not hummus.

But in the right crowd, pate can be the perfect beginning to a celebratory meal.

This is a great country pate recipe that I got from Martha Stewart Living, many years ago. The original recipe calls to serve it with baguette and maple syrup apples. Very good, but I prefer it with something a little tarter, like preserved cherries, or rhubarb compote.

Chicken Liver Pate
2 sticks unsalted butter
¾ # white mushrooms, sliced
½ # chicken livers
1 t paprika
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
1/3 cup sliced scallions
1/3 cup white wine
Coarse salt 

1. Melt 3 T butter in a large sauté pan.
2. Sauté mushrooms, liver, garlic and scallions until the livers are cooked through. About 5 minutes.
3. Add wine, garlic, paprika and 1 t salt. Cover and cook for 10-15 minutes, until the mushrooms are really soft.  
4. Remove from heat and let cool completely.
5. Process in a food processor or blender with the remaining butter and 1 ½ t salt.
6. Transfer it to a serving dish and cover tightly with plastic wrap, making sure the plastic touches the top of the pate.
7. Keeps for about a week in the fridge.

It's Dark Out

Is it just me, or did the holidays come on like a ton of bricks this year? I swear it was just yesterday that I was trying to squeeze in the last swim of the summer, and buying pallets of fresh berries to freeze for the winter.

But sure enough, now I’ve got a Christmas station programmed on Pandora, and I’m trying to figure out the best way to heat my house without taking out a second mortgage. This time of year comes with mixed emotions for me. I’ll start with the bad.

The days. Are so. Short.

So short that they don’t even make a complete sentence. You need to string a few days together for a phrase, and a paragraph may take the whole month. It takes all my strength not to come straight home from work, put on my pajamas, and wait on the couch with a blanket until a reasonable time to go to bed comes around.

On the upside, people come up with so many wonderful ways to make up for the darkness. I love the lights and the candles. Even the flashing ones have a special place in my heart. I just bought some energy efficient LED lights that I am very pleased with.

And the parties. I guess people have decided that we’re all in this together, this short-dayed stretch, so we might as well help each other out. My friends and family have kicked this season off in high form. I have been a willing and grateful guest at not one but two amazing Thanksgiving dinners, a strata brunch, a birthday dinner, a Venezuelan hallaca making party, and an amazing five course dinner. And that’s all in the last week.

Thank you, friends and family, for making this time of year something special.

And because I may not get to cooking for all of you this holiday season, I’ll kick it off with a recipe that is designed, from its very origin, to be shared. It’s a granola recipe that my mom first received from a hippie neighbor back in the 70s. It makes a big batch, so if you make some, you should share a bit. That’s what my mom always does. The only problem with this recipe is that once you have some, you'll learn what granola is supposed to taste like, and you won't be able to eat store-bought granola again.

This time of year, I like to eat it with some frozen berries that I packaged up last summer, which I guess wasn't yesterday.

Granola

2# rolled oats
1 c usweetened coconut flakes
1 c walnuts
¼ c quinoa
1 c raw pepitas
1 c honey
1 c canola oil
½ cup hot water

1. Mix the dry ingredients.
2. Mix the hot water and the honey in a separate container.
3. Add hot honey mixture and oil to the dry ingredients and mix.
4. Spread it out on 2 cookie sheets.
5. Bake at 350 for about 40 minutes, stirring every 10-15 minutes.
6. When you pull it out of the oven for the last time, don’t stir it, and let it cool on the pan. This will ensure that you get some some good clumps, which are the best part.

Steam Cleaning

I just got back from five days in New York, and if I were to sum up the trip in two words, they would be “art” and “food”. Or maybe “looking” and “eating.” And I guess "walking" should probably be in there somewhere too.

We saw some amazing art. David Hockney at Pace Wildenstein, Vasily Kandinsky at the Guggenheim, Enrique Chagoya at George Adams, and Maya Gold at Mike Weiss, to name a few.

And we ate some amazing food. Cavatelli with sausage and sage, Korean bar-b-qued cow’s tongue, duck rillette, horseradish and chili vodka (I know that’s not food, but it was really good), salt bagels with cream cheese, fish cake in garlic sauce, arepas with shredded chicken. 

But after five days of eating my way through New York, and a bumpy flight home, what I really wanted was something clean, healthy and homemade. My tummy was ready for a steam cleaning.

Back in my early vegetarian days, I used to love to make my way to Broadway, sit at the counter of Gravity Bar, and order vegetables and hummus. I was in highschool, was proud to be a vegetarian, and envied the flame colored dreadlocks of the waitress. Gravity Bar has long since closed, and the thought of being a vegetarian sends chills through my spine, but every now and then a big bowl of steamed vegetables with brown rice (or farro) and hummus is just what I need. 

Farro with Vegetables and Green Hummus
1 cup farro
Beets
Brussel sprouts
Carrots
Cauliflower
Other good steaming vegetables
Green hummus 

1. Cook the farro. 5 cups water to 1 cup of farro. Boil for 5 minutes, simmer for about 40. Drain.
2. Steam the vegetables. Beets will take the longest, so let them steam for about 10 minutes before you add the other vegetables for about 7 more minutes.
3. Serve with green hummus.

Green Hummus
1 can garbanzo beans
1 clove garlic
Fresh leafy herbs (I like tarragon, or a combination of basil, Italian parsley and chives)
5-6 T tahini
Juice of 1 lemon
Salt and pepper to taste

1. Drain the beans, preserving the liquid.
2. Puree all the ingredients in a food processor.
3. Add back the bean water until you achieve your desired consistency, usually about half of the water.

Naps, Mugs and R&B

I was mugged twice last week. The first time was downtown. I was standing with my dad, holding my wallet in my hand (yeah, I know), and a guy came up, knocked it out of my hand and ran. My dad and I chased him and did a lot of screaming, but all said and done, the guy ended up with my wallet.

The second time, however, was glorious. A few weeks back I ordered two mugs from Caroline Douglas, and they finally arrived in the mail. They each tell a little story—peach and teal (a phase I'm in), mixed animal bodies, crowns and stripes, women dreaming. They’re amazing.

I wanted something really beautiful to go in them for their debut. So on Sunday afternoon while my apple cake was baking in the oven and Eric was napping on the couch, I turned on a little John Legend and made cranberry tea. It’s a steamy simmer that makes the house smell like fall, and at the end you’re rewarded with tangy, hot pink bliss.

While the first mugging was really unfortunate and a little unnerving, I’d say the second one more than made up for it.

Cranberry Tea
12 oz fresh cranberries
6 cups water
2 cinnamon sticks
5-10 peppercorns
15-20 cloves
8-10 cardamom pods
1 orange
5 T sugar

1. Simmer cranberries, water, cinnamon, peppercorns, cloves, cardamom and the peal of the orange for about 30 minutes, until the berries are mushy and paler in color.
2. Remove from heat and add the sugar and the juice from the orange. Stir until the sugar is dissolved.
3. Strain.
4. Serve hot in a really special mug or cold with seltzer.

Some Assembly Required

It’s been a busy week—month, actually. And as a reward, we spent the weekend at these amazing little cabins in Mazama, WA. They’re situated in a way that make you feel like you have your own set of mountains to look at, specially lighted and framed with aspens for your viewing pleasure. The cabins are little with just enough space. And that space does not include a kitchen. All this means that not a lot of cooking happened for me this week.

 

But it doesn’t mean that we didn’t eat well. 

 

I love the Barefoot Contessa cookbooks. Ina Garten’s recipes are not exotic, or overly creative, but they are tasty and consistent. Every recipe I have tried from her books has come out well. One of my favorite Barefoot Contessa gems is a section in the back of her first book called “Assembling for Parties.” She raises the art of food assembly—or pairings—to a new level, and highlights the fact that picking and matching foods is an important step down the path of being a good “cook.”

I ate a lot of well assembled food last week.

Below is a list of some of my favorite pairings, with an autumn slant. If coffee and cream were considered a pairing, it would be on the top of my list, but I think that’s cheating. And I’ll admit that for a few minutes this weekend I swore that yogurt pretzels and champagne was a great combination, but I think I was a little too into the cabin getaway idea, or maybe the champagne. It’s actually kind of gross.

Fall Assemblies

• Radishes with sea salt and pepper, sliced landjaeger, castelvetrano olives
• Dubliner cheese and apples
• Smoked almonds and pumpkin beer
• Potato chips, oil cured olives, cornichons
• Pickled carrots, smoked black cod, seedy crackers
• Endive, gorgonzola, toasted walnuts (this one’s from Ina)