Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Kennedy: Udderly delicious

Author: Diana Kennedy
Book: The Art of Mexican Cooking
Recipe: scrambled ricotta 

Scrambled ricotta with chopped onions, serrano peppers, tomatoes.  One of the few dishes from this particularly scary Diana Kennedy book that I can actually bring myself to attempt.

Some choice excerpts:

blood sausage: "If you are not using commercially packed blood (which will come strained), you will need to pass the blood through a coarse strainer. Discard stringy blood tissue and fat and break up the coagulated blood. . . "

brothy beef stew: "Put the meat, bone and udder into a large soup kettle. . . "
 
Scrambled ricotta seemed do-able, was actually stupidly easy, very yummy, and reminded me of South Beach breakfasts, which I sort of enjoyed. I also baked a raspberry streusel coffee cake from Dorie Greenspan's Sweet Times.

Can you see it's actually pink? From raspberry jam.

What a domestic goddess. Ha! Lie. Owen came downstairs and sat playing with a Transformer at the table instead of eating coffee cake, dawdled, fussed, eventually made himself tardy. I got so frazzled and impatient that, to quote my friend Stephanie, if I had had a nannycam, I would have fired myself. A Pop Tart in the car would have been preferable to this morning's well-catered circus. The symbols of domestic happiness are not domestic happiness. I need to write that on an index card and tape it to the refrigerator.

The banana vinegar: not looking so hot. The bananas have turned completely black, collapsed upon themselves, and are growing mold. Can anything good come of mold? Aren't we supposed to avoid mold at all costs? 

6 comments:

  1. At most costs, I think, cheese being an exception. Bananas, on the other hand . . .

    Children will always spit on your gift. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly.

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  2. Hmm, if it's a choice between maggots and mold, I know which I'd choose. But I agree with Layne that cheese may be the only exception to the mold=bad rule.

    Your coffee cake looks so pretty. Maybe I'll bake one tonight. We'll just disregard the fact that I baked one last night... but it wasn't raspberry, and I love that pink.

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  3. Cheese and penicillin are the only exceptions, I think. I saw this great episode of Alton Brown's show on food network all about cheese. The makers have different rooms each type of cheese, some with bateria added to the air to aid in development of veins of coloring, like stilton. It was very interesting.

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  4. I wish there was more detail in Diana Kennedy's recipe because the fluid emanating from the bananas smells like vinegar, but the bananas themselves are furry.

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  5. Can we get a picture of the banana mold/vinegar? Hairy or colorful mold is the most photogenic.

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  6. Love it! I always enjoy reading about your trips;)


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