Eat Me: Gloppy Joe

Couldn't do it, couldn't subject you to a picture of Kenny Shopsin's ignoble chili burrito which, however tasty in its thrown-together way, was not a proper burrito. Plus, hideous, at least as executed by me. 

Instead I bring you this handsome photograph of La Taqueria where they make world-beating burritos and know how to wrap them. If you are ever in San Francisco: 2889 Mission Street. Order the carnitas and a cantaloupe drink. 

I'm not sure I have the mental stamina this morning for an essay on culinary integrity, and I realize I'm reversing myself, because while I'm fine with Shopsin dumping sugar in his marinara and omitting chili powder from his chili, I'm deeply offended by his burrito.  

So take this for the personal bete noir that it is: While I admire and enjoy Kenny S., he has no business with burritos, which he uses as a vehicle for his leftover black bean soup and (some would argue) fake chili. He instructs us to "plop" leftovers in a pan with some pre-shredded cheese, heat, then mix with a spatula until "homogeneous." After this: "Pick up half of the glop and lay it down in a line down the center of one of the tortillas."

Glop it is.

Chocolate & Pumpkin

Going off-book today. Some delicate flower told me that my descriptions of Kenny Shopsin's food make him queasy, so I'm foregoing full write-ups of the noisome Senegalese soup (chunks of apple and chicken floating in curry-flavored cream) and Carmine Street enchiladas and taking a short time-out.

A few weeks ago I bought a copy of a dessert book called Baked after a friend described its recipe for Sweet and Salty cake. While I haven't found the occasion for S&S cake, I made the chocolate chip pumpkin bread last night with canned pumpkin left over from slutty cakes.

As I've said before, I don't like chocolate, the Bea Arthur of flavors. Its bossy personality and booming voice drown out everyone else at the party -- butter, vanilla, brown sugar. Only mint can overpower chocolate, and that's because mint is so freaking mean.

So I hesitated before introducing chocolate chips to pumpkin bread, but being a compulsive recipe-follower and cookbook worshipper, finally threw in the whole bag. 

You'd think dominatrix chocolate would mop the floor with pumpkin, who is hearty and fat and jolly and dull. Except pumpkin's fellow travelers are cinnamon and allspice, powerful little operators with a streak of cruelty. . .

Anyway, enough of this nonsense. Upshot: pumpkin bread is amazing with chocolate chips. 

Eat Me chronicles resume tomorrow.

Eat Me: Without Chili Powder is it Chili?

Man, that's a beautiful picture. How does she do it.

Melvil Dewey and I both recently made Kenny Shopsin's Chili Mac. Here's Melvil's report: 

Shopsin's recipe for chili is one of the simplest I've ever seen. It's essentially chopped up beef with marinara and, interestingly, some coffee. But I found it, cooked as written, a little bland and overly dominated by the marinara. The recipe notably omits chili powder which I would have thought was as fundamental to the dish as meat is to meatballs (The Joy of Cooking's recipe for chili con carne, for example, is about the same size as Shopsin's and calls for a half cup of chili powder.) Shopsin admits in the headnote, "My chili changes from day to day." I took this as license to add a couple tablespoons of chili powder, as well as some of Shopsin's GA Barbecue Sauce, and the result was much more pleasing. One of my children really wished he could have his chili straight up, without the macaroni, but the other two seemed to enjoy the combination, as did I. I served it with shredded cheddar cheese, avocado slices in lime juice, cilantro, chopped sweet onions, and sour cream as optional additions. Really yummy, and a dish that will be making a return appearance in the Dewey family meal rotation.

Like Melvil, I was shocked by the lack of chili powder. But unlike Melvil, I LOVED the chili exactly the way it was -- sweet, rich, orange, a little oily. Much like the zero-alarm chili my grandmother made. Not sure what the coffee added, though it's fun to imagine it supplied a certain je ne sais quoi.

Melvil, did you make Shopsin's marinara recipe, or use something from a jar? I made his marinara, added the full 2 tablespoons of sugar, and though Marcella would have a stroke, thought it was swell. Why does everything have to be austere and authentic?

"Traditionally, Chili Mac is made without cheese because it is a poor man's dish. . . " Shopsin writes. Screw that. I covered the casserole with shredded cheese, baked until bubbly. Served with salad. 

Verdicts, condensed:

Isabel, picking off cheese: "It's not that flavorful."

Mark: "Elementary school cafeteria food. Mediocre."

Tipsy: Silence. Intently eating.

Owen: Silence. Intently eating.

I asked Owen this morning if Chili Mac is now his favorite dinner. He hesitated, then said no, he prefers steak.

The boy's going to have a shock when we really do start topping everything with breadcrumbs.

Eat Me: Enchiladas

Kenny Shopsin's wife, Eve, died in 2002 and he dedicated Eat Me to her. Here's how Kenny introduces his recipe for pecan chicken wild rice enchiladas:

"This was Eve's favorite dish at Shopsin's. . . . Eve liked to recommend it to her customers so she could eat whatever they left on their plates." (Tipsy emphasis.)

I made these enchiladas last night and they were good. But holy hell, not THAT good. Shopsin is eccentric in ways that can not be faked and apparently Eve was too, though to be fair, she's not here to defend herself. Even if she did eat leftover scraps off customers' plates, would she appreciate Kenny writing about it in his book? Thoughts?

I just asked Isabel to help me describe the enchiladas:

Tipsy: So what did you think of those enchiladas last night?

Isabel: They were fine. 

Tipsy: What did you like about them or not like about them?

Isabel (shrugging): I don't know. 

Here's what they were like: Creamy, a little crunchy, super-rich.

 I also made hamburgers for the kids. Stella polished off her own hamburger and then ate what Owen left on his plate. 

Eat Me: Indefensible Food

There are recipes in Kenny Shopsin's Eat Me that I'm convinced he only included to show off how contrarian and bohemian he is, how unconcerned with all our prissy, bourgeois rules of diet and tastefulness. Go for it, Kenny! I'm never going to make your chicken-fried hamburger, but I admire the spirit.

That said, last night I cooked something only marginally less horrifying: Shopsin's taco fried chicken, which sounded like an exotic twist on chicken fingers, the favorite food of my younger child.

Here's how you make taco fried chicken: Take chicken breast fillets, dip them in a mixture of heavy cream and eggs. Roll them in crushed tortilla chips then deep fry in peanut oil. Serve with a sauce made of equal parts Tabasco and melted butter.

Got that? Poultry dipped in dairy fat, coated in crispy fat, fried in liquid fat, doused in spicy fat. 

Quite tasty, but I hold crass junk food to a higher standard of deliciousness than I do steamed broccoli. I have tried calculating the calories in taco fried chicken and am stumped by how to account for the oil absorbed in frying. Supposedly it is less than one might think, but who knows. So I'm going with the intuition of one who has been dieting since Herman Tarnower recommended dry toast and lamb chops. My guess: A serving of taco-fried chicken is roughly equivalent to one-and-a-half amusement park corn dogs.

Corn dogs are better.

Irrational Exuberance

Robustly caffeinated and the only person awake in the house, I've been plotting various projects I will finally have the time to pursue once I am officially unemployed and never again have to slog through another crummy James Patterson or Stephenie Meyer novel. Many and varied writing endeavors, an ambitious high-minded reading program, more piano, contemplative nature walks, deeper involvement with community, cleaner house, catch up on Mad Men, skinny, etc., etc., etc.

Obviously I'm ignoring the no-money part of this equation, but shut up! Don't rain on my parade. 

Since this is a cooking blog I'll only list upcoming food-oriented projects:

1. Build an earth oven. Don't know if this is exactly the model of what we'll end up with, but I've wanted an outdoor wood-burning oven for many years.  I hope it's not against the law. I'm recruiting my engineering-genius/ceramicist mother, to help me. Are you reading this, Mom?

2. Backyard orchard. We have a decent start (thriving apple, thriving plum, two moderately healthy figs, moderately healthy Meyer lemon and Bearss lime, languishing persimmon, deer-ravaged baby loquat, and pathetic Babcock peach that I will uproot this winter. Done with peaches.) Goal: more figs in deer-accessible areas, two healthy persimmons (one hachiya, one fuyu), one apricot, a pear (espaliered?), a kumquat, a Kaffir lime, a quince, maybe more plums because they love it here, maybe another variety of apple, and what else? Grapes all along the fences. Trying gooseberries again, plus raspberries. Currants? I'm recruiting my horticulturally-gifted father to help me. I hope you're reading this, Dad.

3. Vegetable garden. Okay. Boring. But going to happen again when they restore the gravel pit to its natural dirt state. 

4. Curry leaf plant. Do not know where I can find one of these, but want one.

5. Bees. Thinking about it. The only problem is that I am really scared of bees. So maybe not, unless Mark wants to take charge.

6. Chickens. Thinking about it. Too Clampett-like for Mill Valley? Should I care? Must check the county ordinances to see what we're allowed. Are we really chicken people? Are eggs expensive enough to merit the hassle of building a chicken coop? How do you build a chicken coop?

I may erase this post later when I am feeling less irrationally exuberant. I am also concerned that my spouse will read it and have a small heart attack. So enjoy while you can.

Some Big News

Waiting for my flight from Portland back to California, I bring you my "big" news. See arresting graphic at left.

I've been going around for the last week or so saying I've been "fired" because it sounds dramatic and I don't like mealy-mouthed euphemisms: pink-slipped, down-sized, laid off, etc.

But I should probably resist this exciting conversational bombshell as it suggests I was caught stealing company Steno pads or copying dirty pictures on the Xerox machine. The truth is much more depressing and mundane. The financially ailing magazine for which I have worked for the last five years laid off a quarter of its employees last week, and I was one of them.

Surprisingly, I haven't felt much anger or bitterness, two of my emotional specialties.

What I feel is relief. I had a wonderful job and I never, ever would have quit. But it had become an oppressive weekly grind, I was completely burned (burnt?) out, and I am not sorry it's over. I'm happy.

There. I typed the awful words. Zeus will now strike me down. Sacked in one of the worst economic crises in 70 years, and she's happy?

Foolish woman.

But there we are.

I work for another month, then I'll probably start posting on Tipsy Baker fifty times a day and you can watch me eat crow.

Eat Me: Slutty Cakes

This morning we made "slutties" -- one of the Shopsin family's more amusing pancake fantasias.

"Slutty cakes were my daughter Melinda's idea," Shopsin writes in Eat Me. "She wanted to achieve that dry, crumbly consistency of the peanut butter in a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup inside a pancake, and she discovered, surprisingly, that she could get close by mixing canned pumpkin with peanut butter."

Did she? I didn't experience that "dry, crumbly consistency" from my "slutty." What I experienced was a nice pancake with a moist blob of pumpkin-flavored peanut butter in the middle. Or was it peanut butter-flavored pumpkin? 

Eat Me: Tortilla Soup

Just when I thought I had my take on Kenny Shopsin -- admire his philosophy but his recipes are kind of disgusting -- last night I made his chicken tortilla avocado soup.

Shopsin writes at length in Eat Me about his contrarian soup-making technique. He doesn't believe in long-cooking to meld flavors. In brief: "My soups are actually sautes floating in broth." 

Sautes floating in broth. 

Scraps floating in dishwater?

I don't know. I did not find this concept appealing.

I made fresh chicken stock to give Shopsin's soup the best possible start in life. (And I really, really hate making chicken stock, an aversion bordering on repulsion.) 

Then I grilled a couple of chicken breasts, cut them into strips, and added them to a pan in which I'd fried some cabbage, onion, and peppers. Put in some black beans, cilantro and the broth, simmered for a couple of minutes and poured over a bowl of tortilla chips. Adorned with avocado. 

Sensationally delicious. 

Here's Shopsin: "I stole the idea for this soup from the Mexican restaurant at Epcot Center. Surprisingly, the food there was pretty good. I guess you could say that is my specialty: taking pretty good food and stealing it under the assumption that if I were to do a few things differently, it could be really good." 

It is.

Ugly, though.

Eat Me: Why should I?

That's Patsy's cashew chicken from Kenny Shopsin's Eat Me, the most ornery, odd, charming, and disarming cookbook I've read in ages. I love the curmudgeonly voice; I love the unglamorous and unflattering food photography. Most cookbooks, aspirational by nature if not definition, take pains to show us how we should be living and eating and cooking and what darling vintage china we might consider keeping on hand for serving our grass-fed Angus tenderloin with organic Blenheim apricot beurre blanc. 

None of that in Shopsin's book. Again and again, he tells us, with words and pictures: I'm schlubby and slobbish and eccentric and lazy and I favor Aunt Jemimah pancake batter and pre-shredded cheddar cheese and plastic dishes I bought on eBay. Take it or leave it. Now, go figure out how YOU like to live and eat and cook, and do that. 

Excellent advice. 

The recipes? 

There are two ways a recipe can be awful.

1. A recipe can contain an obvious mistake, in which case it is truly a "bad" recipe. Examples: Shopsin's tragically oversalted coleslaw, or the failure to account for the potato in the huevos rancheros, per Melvil Dewey's writeup. 

2. A recipe can make an awful dish. In which case it's technically a "good" recipe for something that one does not want to eat.

 

Patsy's cashew chicken, for instance is the crudest interpretation of a Chinese stir fry I've ever encountered. Chicken + soy sauce + cashews =  stir fry. I'm all for shortcuts, but eating this was like trying to ingest a plate of Kikkoman. 

But I'm pretty sure this is exactly what Patsy's cashew chicken is supposed to taste like. And I believe Shopsin enjoys eating it. Good recipe for what is, in my humble opinion, a crappy dish.

I'm okay with that. Shopsin and I may disagree, but at least we're communicating. 

Eat Me: Huevos Rancheros

Melvil Dewey and his wife have also been working their way through Kenny Shopsin's Eat Me, and Melvil sent this report:

There is an emerging consensus among the adults in our house that while Kenny Shopsin's cookbook is immensely entertaining, his recipes could stand to be more detailed and more carefully vetted. I have to assume one of the problems is that it's challenging to scale recipes down to normal family size when you've been making everything in restaurant size batches for years. Fortunately, Shopsin, like Mark Bittman, gives his readers the freedom to tinker with the recipes as much as they wish, so one can use the recipes in the book as a template or starting point.

First example of the problem (and the solution):

Huevos Rancheros. The end-product of this recipe was delicious (and maybe that's all that should really matter), but the production process (for my wife, who made this dish) was fraught. First, the list of ingredients calls for a diced potato, but the text of the recipe doesn't mention the potato. One can fairly easily figure out what to do with the potato, but this kind of ingredient discontinuity can be disorienting (and occasionally disastrous.) 

Second, the recipe calls for no seasoning at all - not even the obligatory "salt and pepper to taste." I have to assume Shopsin himself would add salt and pepper to the dish. 

Third, Shopsin's method for cooking the eggs separate from everything else in the dish did not turn out well. Ms. Dewey, who (unlike me) has made huevos rancheros before, much prefers the Cook's Illustrated method in which you just crack the eggs into the top of all the other stuff, cover the pan, and let the heat and steam from the other ingredients cook the eggs. After Shopsin's method resulted in a jumble of broken yolks and egg whites arc-welded to the bottom of the frying pan, Ms. Dewey defaulted to the Cook's technique, and everything turned out beautifully. As she summed it up afterwards, "I think Kenny Shopsin probably would benefit from a little Christopher Kimball, and maybe vice-versa."

Eat Me: Okay, I will

I hope you're reading this, Kenny Shopsin. Do you have a Google Alert set up with your name? Awesome. Your coleslaw recipe sucks. A full tablespoon of salt for half a head of cabbage? Are you fucking with us?

I'm not generally a profane person, but 

a. Kenny Shopsin is, and I spent three hours last night rereading his fantastically entertaining book.

b. He ruined my coleslaw.

I halfway rescued the coleslaw by adding more cabbage and gobs more mayonnaise, then moved on to the Gulf Pride sandwiches. (That picture up top? Intentionally ugly a la Eat Me, which is full of grubby snapshots, food-styling courtesy of a chimp. Which I kind of love.)

The Gulf Pride sandwiches involve cheesy garlic bread (incredibly delicious)

topped with spicy shrimp

plus chunks of avocado. Tasty, but not as tasty as my fried-green tomato sandwich. I'm just saying.

But here's the kicker. I had a few big glasses of red wine last night and what with the wine and the supersalty coleslaw, I woke up at midnight with a bit of a thirst.

So, I made one of Shopsin's egg creams. Drank it down. Made another. Worth the price of the book. 

Eat Me: An Introduction

This is one demented book. I mean that in the nicest way.

The notoriously irascible author, Kenny Shopsin, has for many years run an idiosyncratic downtown Manhattan restaurant that became widely famous after Calvin Trillin wrote about it in the New Yorker.

A lot of Shopsin's recipes (banana guacamole) and photographs (the naked butts of his children when they were small) are kind of unappetizing. Though I warmly reviewed this book on its "literary" merits a while back, I wasn't highly motivated to test-drive the recipes. 

The hyperarticulate Melvil Dewey persuaded me to give it a try. Here's a transcription of Melvil's recent email:

I'm into Kenny Shopsin's book up to my hips. And I love it. He combines Mark Bittman's relaxed attitude with a consistent preference for strong flavors, a very funny authorial presence, and an irreverent, sort of 'Fuck it!' attitude. And he clearly loves the food he makes, which is inspiring. The lack of an index notwithstanding, the book is so GENEROUS -- generous headnotes, generous helpings of photos, generous dispensing of lore and advice. I really wish now that I had talked to him when I went into his place in the summer of 2006, but based on reading Calvin Trillin's article I was scared shitless of him. But really, how would it go if I tried to talk to him?

Me: I just wanted to say I love your cookbook. My kids love your mac n' cheese pancakes. So do I.

Kenny: Get the fuck out of here, you little yuppie.

Me: But wait, I'm a big fan of Calvin Trillin! I like Chowhound too!

Kenny: Don't let the door hit you on the way out, dickweed.

So far I've made: 

1) The GA BBQ sauce, which is really just a very hot, yummy hot sauce. (Kenny Shopsin can call his sauces anything he wants to, but when you put two hot sauces together with an assload of ground pepper and a smidgen of cider vinegar, that's not a BBQ sauce -- that's an augmented hot sauce.)

2) An adulterated version of his egg guacamole (delish!)

3) The "Auntie" scramble: avocado, blue cheese, and spinach (related in its DNA to guacamole, I think)

4) The mac n' cheese pancakes, which are sublime. Joseph and I loved them. No one else would try them. Losers.

I hope Melvil will stand by his promise to contribute to the blog during the Kenny Shopsin phase. And I hope this "Joseph" person -- apparently the only non-loser in Melvil's orbit -- will weigh in as well. 

Yes?

Fried Green Tomato Sandwich

The kids were out, so Mark put some cheese and bread on a cutting board, reheated three pitiful fried green tomatoes he'd saved from the other night, and brought this strange melange to the table for our dinner. 

What happened next wasn't quite a Ruth Wakefield-invents-the-chocolate-chip-cookie moment, but close. I put a warmed-over fried green tomato on a piece of baguette spread with goat cheese. Took a bite. Wanted to call Mario Batali and tell him to get Tipsy Baker bruschette on the menu at Babbo, stat.

Today at lunch I fried some more green tomatoes and repeated the experiment. This time I made a true sandwich and added some apple chutney for "zing." 

It was indeed  "zingy," and molto delicious.

If you can call this a recipe, here it is: 

1. Take green tomatoes that have been fried using any formula that results in a crispy, salty-peppery cornmeal crust enrobing a tart, juicy tomato. If they're cold, reheat them. 

2. Split a baguette and toast.

3. Spread baguette with soft goat cheese.

4. Spread a super-thin layer of chutney (I used homemade apple chutney, but storebought mango or any other kind would work) on the goat cheese. You don't want a dominant chutney thing going on here, just a hint of fruit and spice. Ignore the picture above; I put on too much.

5. Top with green tomatoes.

6. Top with lid of bread.

It's not worth frying green tomatoes just to make this sandwich, but if you have fried green tomatoes leftover, it's worth saving them.  

Garden Plans

Isn't it lovely, my bountiful garden? 

If I think about it too much, I will cry. When we came back from vacation a year ago July the construction crew had bulldozed our garden. Gooseberry bushes, raspberries, artichokes, a pink lemon tree (yes, there is such a thing), sorrel, epazote, all kinds of herbs, rhubarb, rose geraniums, strawberries, miniature roses, a dwarf orange tree, and much more, all of which I planted myself, had been smothered, crushed, or ripped up by the roots. In its place, there were trucks, crumpled Subway wrappers, empty 7-11 cups, and several tons of gravel. 

But, like they say, spilt milk.  

I'm paying someone to turn that grim parking lot back into a patch of dirt, in which I'm going to replant our garden. In anticipation, I started some herbs in a pot on the deck. 

They're cute. I try to be philosophical. This is the cycle of life and construction projects. But thinking about that old garden really does break my heart.

Persimmons

Such a ravishing and voluptuous fruit, even (especially?) when tired and bruised. With their golden leaves and flame-colored fruit, persimmon trees are one of the glories of Mill Valley in the fall.

I planted a persimmon tree a few years ago, but it appears destined to become kindling this winter. The trunk is still roughly the circumference of my ring finger and it hasn't borne a single persimmon. 

Though I haven't resigned myself to a life without a persimmon tree of my own, I probably don't need one as we get pounds and pounds of fruit from family and friends every autumn. Don't really love to eat persimmons out of hand, but they make fabulous ice cream and a wonderful pudding. 

I wish I could type in the pudding recipe I tried the other day from Heirloom Baking with the Brass Sisters because it was so damp and nutty and delicious, but there are those irksome copyright laws. Having said that, I've made a lot of persimmon puddings, they're all pretty similar and you can find dozens of recipes online. My only recommendations, should you ever want to make persimmon pudding: 

1. Forget about flaming. Overrated.

2. Use yellow raisins, which are juicier and tastier than the dark ones

3. Serve warm with a lot of whipped cream. Hard sauce: bad.

Charleston Cuisine: The Earnest Summation

I don't know Louis Osteen. I've never eaten at one of his restaurants (though I've tried), and given that the last one standing (Louis's Las Vegas) just closed, I may never do so. 

But I really like the guy. Just look at him. If you walked into a restaurant and saw him behind the stove wouldn't you grab a seat? The man clearly loves food, a gusto that comes through in some of the nostalgic headnotes to his recipes. 

 

That said, he's not a great cookbook writer. Charleston Cuisine feels contrived, like an agent or editor spotted an amiable semi-celebrity chef and decided to cash in on the Low Country mystique. 

Or maybe Louis looked in the mirror one morning and said, hey, Mario and Wolfgang and Charlie and Alice all have cookbooks, why shouldn't I?

Well, I can tell you why, Louis: Because you're a smiley, intuitive chef, not a miserable ink-stained wretch. And you didn't hire one to ghost your book. Mistake! We do have our uses.

I've pointed out some of the volume's shortcomings in earlier posts, and there were others I didn't record. There were peanut-molasses cookies that would have been infinitely better (maybe even too delicious) if the recipe had called for a teaspoon of salt. There was a bean soup that lacked any kind of zest. And there were ridiculously calibrated portion estimates that left you with either far too little, or far too much.

 

To be a brilliant cookbook writer you have to be slightly compulsive. You have to care about every detail of every recipe. You have to care about translating the ephemeral experience of cooking and eating into a permanent, precise, and possibly even poetic, document. 

Which Charleston Cuisine is not.

I made 29 recipes from Charleston Cuisine:

Worth the Price of the Book: 0

Great: 5

Good: 17

So-So: 7

Flat-out bad: 0

Not a disastrous tally, but not distinguished, either. Keep in mind that it's not that difficult for a recipe to be "good," and that of those 17 "good" recipes there's not a single one that I feel compelled to make again. 

But I devoutly hope Louis opens a new restaurant one day, and that I can go eat there. 

Charleston Cuisine: Fried Green Tomatoes & Grits

"It's hard to imagine a better introduction to one of our region's most cherished staples than these fried grits, " Louis Osteen writes in Charleston Cuisine. "Crispy on the outside and creamy and succulent on the inside."

Also, bland. For this I blame Louis's slapdash recipe-writing. I'm convinced that the qualities that make a great, intuitive chef do not overlap with those that make a great cookbook author.

Just looking at Louis's image on the cover of his book -- fat, beaming, and holding heaping platters of biscuits and something yummy-looking with bones -- I can tell he's not the kind of man to obsessively pore over a notebook worrying about teaspoons of salt and pepper. 

I served the bland grits with the last of the preserved duck. This is how much duck Louis suggests serving eight people:

Fortunately I was only serving three people, so there was almost enough.

 

Per the excellent suggestion of Layne, I also made Louis's fried green tomatoes. "Crispy-on-the-outside" -- and tart and juicy on the inside. Fantastic.

 

A few weeks ago I decided I would no longer fight about food with Owen. So when he set up a howl at the prospect of the meal described above, I shut him down by saying he could fix himself whatever he wanted. . . .

Am I on the right path here? Is he ever going to come around on his own? Is he going to end up with scurvy or rickets or something? 

It's Over. Thank God.

Well, that was cool. That was really awesome. The last eight years have been pretty lonely and sad for us latte-sipping, arugula-eating Blue State types. But we're one with the "real" Americans again! We're on the same page with Indiana and Virginia and (probably) North Carolina! I feel like whipping up some biscuits and gravy to celebrate, except I still don't have a recipe.

Oh, and we're back together with Nevada. Despite the gambling and hookers and Las Vegas, I have always had a soft spot for Nevada. And New Mexico! Thank-you, New Mexico. I love blue corn anything. And fry bread. Or is that an Arizona thing?

Much mental energy now freed up to worry about other stuff. Like the fidgety nocturnal animal that has taken up residence inside the wall beside our bed. Like the fact that my favorite Lucky jeans are falling apart but I don't want to buy new ones until I lose ten pounds. Like the fact that I think I'm about to lose my job. Like what to do with all those green tomatoes I told my father to bring me from his garden.

Charleston Cuisine: Birthday Dinner

Okay, that picture is staged all wrong. It looks like baking soda played a role in the cocktail, which it did not. 

But that cocktail (the newspaper featured recipes for political drinks; this one's voting Obama) definitely played a role in today's lousy mood and bleak outlook on life. 

Had a little birthday party for my father last night. Served Louis Osteen's BBQ pork rillettes in which this

 becomes this

and then you spread it on rounds of baguette to make appetizer toasts. I'll turn it over to Osteen himself: "Rich and spicy, they stand up to all drinks and at the same time add a little fuel to the belly, lessening the possibility that the next drink will sneak up on you."

Liar.

During a break from the rain we fired up the new Weber barbecue for the very first time

 and grilled a tasty marinated flank steak.

On the side, I served Louis's spoonbread (cornbread meets creamy pudding; grotesquely fattening; popular) and his rich, homely, and clumpy grilled pear, spinach, and blue cheese salad. 

Louis's cakes weren't quite right for this event. I was tempted by his rum cake with caramelized bananas but it calls for almost three cups of rum. Stella is still in pre-school and a bit too young to start down the road to ruin. So I made the double-apple bundt cake from Dorie Greenspan's Baking, which was brown and cinnamony and fine. Only fine.  

Overall, a very sweet birthday party despite my father's repeated attempts to goad me with his cynical political commentary. 

Trudging off to vote. 

Let them Eat Chutney!

That's our apple tree this morning, washed clean by the rains. 

And that is apple chutney, made with some of its fruit. 

I love to can. I pretend like I'm being practical and frugal, but it's mostly just fun, and I guess part of the fun is pretending I'm being practical and frugal. Does this make me a 21st century Marie Antoinette in her shepherdess outfit? 

 

Horrible thought.

Open "Farmhouse" Kitchens: A Grouchy Dissent

It's raining. It's been raining heavily for three days. Monsoon-like rains pound the roof, sluice down the windows, pool in every little muddy depression on our front walk. Water drips from the leaves of the oaks whenever the storm takes a break.

And no one goes outside. At first it was cozy and fun, but after about 24 hours, not so much.  I was going to put on an apron and do some apple canning yesterday.

But I didn't. Because we have an open kitchen. 

Everyone seems to think they want an open kitchen where Mom can whip up a pumpkin pie while keeping an eye on the little ones as they do their homework or peacefully play Monopoly (ha!) at the handsome antique farmhouse table. Dad can be watching football in the adjoining "great room." Guests come and go, stand around the center island and pitch in with the chopping, joke with the merry cook. The kitchen is the warm, inviting center of the house.

 

In our old house we had a dowdy little kitchen that was off to the side of everything. It had countertops made of whatever it was they did before formica. You know, the hard plastic surface with an amoeba design and metal rims. The kitchen had no center island, no dishwasher and one of the world's most pitiful stoves. It offered a view into our chilly, eccentric neighbor's living room.

But I loved it. That frumpy, out-of-the-way kitchen had something that our infinitely nicer current kitchen does not: a door. Being in the kitchen was a choice. It wasn't the default setting of the whole house.

Our kitchen is the center of the house, which is to say, it is loud, messy, and chaotic. You can hear every touchdown in the Texas Tech game or the fiftieth screening of Transformers.  You get to witness every shrill fight over filched Halloween Twix bars. Each time someone crosses the threshold they drop a Comcast bill, a plastic Batman lunchbox, the keys, a 6th grade book project, or a copy of Henry Huggins on the kitchen's center island, which, I should add, is quite petite. I have considered making a rule about this, but that would mean I couldn't do it either.

I would go on about the drawbacks of this trendiest of kitchen designs. About the way you can never pretend you don't notice dirty dishes. About the way you can never really escape during a party. And so on. But I know how curmudgeonly I sound.

Anyway, I didn't can apples yesterday. I made popcorn and watched Cloverfield and The Host with Isabel and Juliet. We wanted to be scared, but the movies weren't that scary.

 

Trying again with the apples today. Will also try to be a better person, the kind of nice person who actually belongs in a friendly, fashionable open kitchen.

Crabby rant over. 

Charleston Cuisine: A Heavy Dinner

Here's a line from Louis Osteen's recipe for herbed dumplings: "Add the chilled butter, working it into the flour with a pastry cutter, a fork or your fingertips until the butter pieces are a little larger than an English pea, but smaller than a lima bean."

That's a line that makes me fawn over a cookbook. The dumplings themselves were mediocre, but maybe that's the nature of dumplings.

In Marilynne Robinson's new novel, Home, there's a passage about dumplings that I just spent the last 20 minutes trying to find so I'm going to quote it:

"The dumplings were tacky on the outside and doughy on the inside, but that might just be how they are, she thought. How they have always been. Her father said, 'Excellent,' and ate one.

Jack said, 'There's really nothing like a good dumpling.'

'Except a bad one,' she said.

He laughed. 'True, they are pretty similar.'"

Here's a picture of my wicked-ugly rendition of Osteen's dumpling-like herb dumplings:

My father-in-law, David, arrived for a visit yesterday and the rains started for real. I made a huge dinner. In addition to dumplings:

-Osteen's short ribs. Usually you serve short ribs straight out of the braising pot, but Osteen has you remove them from the sauce, let them dry a bit, then top with a puree of braised onions and egg yolks. Broil until crusty. Fabulous. 

-Stewed apples. See top photo. Painfully sweet, but kind of great. Reminded me of something. I lay in bed later trying to figure out what it was, and finally got it: the apple cobbler that came in fried chicken TV dinners circa 1978.

-Butterscotch pudding. Rich.

David asked to be in the blog. I guess he wants to be famous. So here he is.

Charleston Cuisine: A "Light" Dinner

My mother told me she wanted me to make something light for our weekly Wednesday night dinner, which was to include our cousins Luis and Ana Maria who are visiting from Guatemala.

Light. What does that mean exactly? And was my mother trying to tell me something? Has my cooking become overly rich? Has she been leaving my home feeling bloated and ill? Is she on a diet? 

Louis Osteen isn't really about light, but I finally settled on his preserved duck and lentil salad as the lightest option in Charleston Cuisine. First I "preserved" the poultry which meant marinating two duck legs overnight in an elaborate spice mixture, then simmering them in peanut oil for an hour and a half. This is duck confit and if it doesn't sound very light, rest assured: two duck legs, even if simmered in oil, constitute decidedly light fare for a party of six.

After the duck was preserved, I cooked lentils, chopped a lot of vegetables (turnip, tomato, mushroom, carrot, etc.), shredded and crisped the duck meat, and tossed it all together with a vinaigrette.

That was it. Everyone got two shreds of the excellent, salty duck, several lentils and a few vegetables. I noticed people cleaned their plates. My mother kept reaching for the cheese platter that I put together at the last minute after I realized how very light this dinner actually was.

For dessert: Osteen's lemon-mint ice cream. Mint + lemon = refreshing = light. Correct? No cookies because they are not light. It was wonderful ice cream, and even after a bowl of it I felt energetic and light and kind of skinny!

But just before the party broke up, I took a group portrait and I thought everyone else looked a little hungry and heavy-hearted. No, I didn't tell them to pose like that for laughs.

Charleston Cuisine: Buttermilk Biscuits

"Buttermilk biscuits have always been the staple breakfast bread of the South," Louis Osteen reminisces in his Charleston Cuisine. "I remember my grandmother, up early on her farm, gently kneading the lard into the flour. . ."

Biscuits have recently become the staple breakfast bread of a household in Northern California. I will always remember my daughter, up early in her suburban home, gently kneading lard substitutes into flour. . . 

 

Isabel's biscuit-making began this summer with the 1-2-3 biscuits (fat: vegetable oil) out of Best of the Best from Alaska, which we loved. Then she moved on to the cream biscuits (fat: butter) from Alice Waters' Art of Simple Food, which we loved even more. I would describe Waters' cream biscuits as possibly too delicious.

Today Isabel baked Osteen's buttermilk biscuits (fat: butter; what happened to granny's lard?) which were tall and fluffy and tasty, though probably not too delicious. I consider this a point in their favor.  

Too Delicious?

I love cardamom cake because it is delicious. But I love it even more because it is not too delicious. By which I mean, you eat a slice and it's wonderful, but you don't need another slice right away. It's perfect, and it's enough, and you can move on to other things. 

Then there are those desserts that are too delicious. Like Rice Krispie treats. Like the chocolate chip cookies I baked last night (recipe source: Dorie Greenspan's Baking) and which are ruining my life. I don't even like chocolate, and I can't stop eating them. It's not just me. Isabel -- the most restrained eater I have ever known -- had six of them for breakfast. (Yeah, I know. Wrong. Whatever.)

And so I have a new theory: This is why Americans are fat! Our desserts are too delicious. Cardamom cake is a Swedish dessert, and aren't most Swedes pretty fit and healthy, skiing all over the place and jumping in and out of saunas? The Italians are skinny because. . . biscotti. Has anyone ever been tempted to eat too many biscotti? And French desserts -- mousse, fruit tarts, macaroons, fruit jellies. Lovely! But not more-ish in that demonic way of homemade chocolate chip cookies.

Along with the moderate wine drinking and modest portions, those wily Europeans really do have it all figured out: Make sure your national desserts aren't too delicious.

Ugh. Can not bake these cookies ever again.