Ad Hoc at my Mom's House

Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc at Home certainly got a lot of buzz this holiday season. It seemed to get reviewed by every cookbook critic, and make every "top gifts" list.

Come mid December, demand for the book was rampant, and it appeared to be poised for a top-notch holiday run. But apparently the publisher was the last to know—Ad Hoc at Home was out of stock, everywhere you looked.

I ordered one for my brother, wrapped an IOU for Christmas, and the book just arrived this week. It’s beautiful. Coffee table-worthy. So much so that we discussed how we’ll just need to get over its beauty and get it dirty like every other cook book.

And it’s a really great resource—step by step photo instructions on how to piece a chicken, transferrable tips sprinkled in to the recipes.

We tried our first recipe last night for my mom’s birthday—Chicken Mar i Muntanya, or paella. In my family, the best meals are the all-hands-on-deck kind, where everyone’s busy and working together. Someone’s frying chicken, someone’s washing dishes, someone’s chopping parsley, and someone’s holding the baby. And this was certainly an all-hands-on-deck meal.

We loved it. And I’m excited to try some more recipes from the book, which was worth the wait. It was so good that it made up for the disaster of a coconut birthday cake that I made and ruined.

Check out Chicken Mar i Muntanya, and let me know what you think.

Oh, Risotto

Sometimes winter just feels like the time we spend waiting for summer. Maybe if I was a skier I could appreciate it more. Or if Seattle delivered any sort of wonderland, I would find it to be more special. But instead I wait for the days to get longer. The drizzle to let up. The produce to fill out.

As a consolation prize, for the past few years I have tried to really learn a recipe in the winter. Learn it so well that I wouldn’t dream of using a recipe. So I know what every tweak will do to the final dish. I’ve tackled red sauce, and risotto, and this year I am learning meatballs.

I’ve tried my first batch and I have many more to try before I get there. The first round was tasty, but the flavor was a little too bacony. I need to try other meats, like lamb, veal, and pork, and to mess with the fillers a bit. How many bread crumbs give that held-together texture without feeling diluted?

Tonight, I made dinner with my mom and we made very classic mushroom risotto, calling on my lessons from a few years ago. Here’s where I've ended up with risotto.

Risotto

4 T butter

1onion, diced
3 small cloves garlic
6 cups liquid (broth, wine, mushroom water…)
1 ½ cups Arborio rice
1 T fresh herbs
1-2 cups solids (peas, cooked mushrooms, roasted squash, asparagus….)
½ cup parmesan or other hard salty cheese

1. Melt the butter in a large skillet and sauté the onion until translucent, about 15 min.
2. Add the rice and stir to coat.
3. Bring the liquid to a simmer in a separate sauce pan.
4. Add 1 ½ cups liquid to the rice. Stir until evaporated.
5. Keep adding liquid, ½ cup at a time, and stirring until it evaporates.
6. When you add the last of the liquid, add the solids and the herbs as well.
7. Turn off the heat and stir in the cheese.

Bloodhound Gang

I bought a family-sized can of Mentos at the duty free store last weekend. It felt like the right thing to do. It was late, and we had some more time in the car ahead of us until we made it to Whistler, so I thought we needed a boost. They came in special packaging only available at the duty free store (Travelers Only): individually wrapped, fancy pop-top that doubles as a Mento catapult, and two mystery flavors.

 

Silly marketing for kids. Except that my car full of 30 somethings loved it. What are the mystery flavors? Do I like them? Can I find another one? With all the real unanswered questions we wade through each day, there’s something fun about a mystery that can be solved. And is inconsequential. We were the Bloodhound Gang.

 

It’s like the fun of secret ingredients. Usually I am drawn to food that you can see and know what it is--nothing's better than a well composed cheese plate or a caprese salad. But the Bloodhound detective in me still likes a mystery ingredient challenge from time to time. And the rich lore around grandmas’ secret ingredients makes me think I should be building a cache of my own.

What are your favorite secret ingredients?  Here are a two of mine:

• Smoothies: I love to make them with frozen berries and yogurt. Instead of using juice or milk to thin them, use water! You’ll love it. No extra sugar from the juice, no extra dairy from the milk, just yummy drinkable fruitiness.
• Chicken stock: What gives my stock that sweet earthy roundness? Parsnips—my favorite for full flavored stocks.

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.