(M) easy peasy

(or, "easy queasy," depending on who you ask...)

there are a couple boys in the kitchen at work who started a little after i did, and have never had the chance to learn any of the prep for the restaurant--they just deal with the finished product. basically, that's because they were hired to replace people, and it was the middle of summer, and we needed them RIGHT NOW. it's not their fault that they didn't have the time to chop 6 quarts of jalapenos for the week, and then--hands burning--bite their lips as the lemon juice from 2 cases of lemons forces itself into the cracks in their hands where the capsaicin from the jalapenos now lives.

i'm not at all bitter. i know that they both have worked in restaurants before, and know exactly how to slice radishes or make lemonade according to recipe. and even if they didn't, they're boys, and boys seem to have less of a hard time being nervous about doing something new. i just feel grateful that i got my first couple of months at the restaurant dedicated to prep--now that i'm working different positions in the kitchen, i know exactly where everything i'm working with came from. and, when there's a lull, i know which prep i can grab, bring to my station, and zone out with. guilty as charged, i go for the easy prep.

M. (kitchen manager), said to me yesterday, "M?? you are deeeeep in it. where the hell are you??" apparently he had been standing next to me, and had asked me the same question three times, and i had shown no response. reason? i was peeling garlic--one of my faaavorite (no joke) things to do. i like that it's like peeling wallpaper--there's a system to it, and when the skin comes off in one big piece with no damage to the clove, it's a good day. it's also the best for pondering. have anything to work over in your head? grab some garlic. what the hell am i making for dinner tonight? get the garlic. why does this one cook seem to hate me? garlic.

because we were lullin it for a good two hours after the lunch rush yesterday, i spent the whole time in my head, attempting to peel eight quarts of garlic (i only made it to one), thinking about what fish i was going to buy at coastal to cook with a cash tip i got from a yuge[huge] take out order. i of course didn't spend the whole time thinking about just that, but that's about all i remember. as soon as the prep is put away, everything is settled. if there were problems, i now have a plan of action. if i need groceries, i have a Seward list memorized to the tune of "gangsta's paradise." (actually, that was just a joke but it sounds like something i should start doing, especially to that song!)

the boys let me do that easy prep, too, because they're all more interested in wielding their sharpsharp knives and chopping vegetables too small. i'm not saying that i don't do that stuff too, but, like yesterday, if all the prep for the evening shift is basically done, then garlic it is.

one thing that's driving me nuts is waiting for goddamn springtime. it happens every year--at about this point, even those who claim to LOVE winter for its winter sports and cold weather are in the corner, rocking themselves and crying when it's time to put their parkas on, AGAIN. it gets worse when we get a taste of the warm weather, like a saturday that gets up to 37 degrees, and we're all outside, walking around, light coats on, and next thing you know it's snowing 5 inches. f. (related sidenote: i just asked a still-sleeping D what he'll make me for breakfast this morning. his croaked response? "snow." nooooo!)

i can't help but start cooking spring food. my system is tired of me pounding it with butter and cream and starch. no more root vegetables, either. root vegetables, in the fall, remind me of wise, stately gentlemen. now, when i'm ready for spring, they're more like the noisy, punky dressed preteens whose parents think they're old enough to be dropped off at the library in swarms all day. i've gotta get away from them.

what's one of your favorite ever spring foods? that is a question that soo many people have never asked me. and they never will. because likely, no one cares. well, SHUT UP.
they happen to be fava beans--the greenest bean, i think. big, grassy, and if you cook them just right, melty-tender. they also call for the most prep to get to the cooking stage, and unless you buy a lot, there's little yield. they're quite a punishing vegetable (actually, legume, but you wouldn't catch me ever calling them that--what an unnatural name, legume).



now is the time to go to Holy Land grocery every saturday and buy up a few pounds of fava beans. beyond the flavor, one of the reasons i buy them a lot is to remind me that spring does exist, and because they're reminiscent of the slow, consistent prep i'm so fond of at work. first stage: remove beans from pods. second stage: remove skins from each individual bean. it takes a lot longer than you'd guess. if you get that far, you just might experience the garlic-peeling nirvana that i do with a plate full o' peel favas.

(M) does pear tart count as a vegetarian entree?

how did a vegetarian ever get hired to be a professional cook? you ask. well screeeeew you. just kidding. the most important thing i did to get hired at a restaurant whose cooler is dense with meatstuffs was...lie. actually, technically, you'd call it a lie of omission. the owner/exec. chef of the place didn't even find out until about a month ago, and i've been working there since may. booyah!

it wasn't easy at first. especially in that first week, when they wanted me to taste everything so i could start to learn the menu (the first day, when i was filling up a to-go box of food to take home, i basically pulled a "hey, what's that over there??" and when everyone looked away i closed up the box, sans meat, and quickly ambled to the exit). since i was new and only prepping for the first month, it wasn't completely necessary to taste all the meat. learning to cook all the food for the menu was surprisingly pretty easy...coming to terms with deliberately tasting your first piece of meat in thirteen years is where the rocket science comes in. the panic only lasted for half a second (.0003 dog years), and i think the kitchen manager, an old friend who by that point had found out about my no meat deal, was more hesitant than i was. it came down to me wanting more than ever to be a good cook, and if that meant M the vegetarian getting second chair trumpet, then so be it. i like to tell people that i've been bought--"they're PAYING me to eat meat!"

the strange thing that has happened, however, is that i've become kind of verrry interested in cooking meat at home. i don't know if it's (1)because of the chemistry of it (something i read about and will probably never really understand because science hates my brain), that (2)i'm preparing myself for my next cooking job (when they ask "have you cooked this before?" i want to be able to shout "duh of course i have, what do you think i'm some kinda idiot??!"), or (3)that everyone around me eats meat and most of them know at least a little bit about cooking it, and i'm just trying to catch up. i have a sneaking suspicion it's bachelor number three.

so for awhile now i've been cooking my little heart out, every week trying to make protein-centered dinners for E and D(boyfriend). i had a small sad moment some time last week when i realized that i had managed to make dinner for everyone else, and had forgotten, once again, to make something that I wanted to eat. it seems like it's been FOREVER since i have cooked for myself. seriously, like 2 dog years. a COON's age. i also feel like i haven't baked something worthy of being proud of for awhile. i'll make something chocolate every week just so D doesn't whine about not having dessert with his bag lunch, but it hasn't been something i love for...1/3 of a dog year. i'm envious that E craves something so hard that she makes it and then gobbles it up, where i've become accustomed to eating chunks of bread and cheese. that's not a complaint, mind y'all, but that sort of diet has turned my work amble into sort of a waddle. vegetables are missed.

scouring the worldwide online intraweb last week, i settled on a few things i wanted to try. surprisingly, it was harder than i thought. i felt like a snob artist turning my nose up at my muse--no inspiration whatsoever. eventually i was won over by the promise of fava beans and basmati rice. i made such a dish last night for the olympic opening ceremonies, while D and his brother got a cute, crusty chicken pot pie (i couldn't help myself!). alas, because E and i are suffering succotash from headcolds this week, the fava bean deal was pretty good, but i'd put in too many spices because of my clogged tastebuds. nothing to write home (or on a blog) aboot.<--holy canadian reference! olympics, anyone???

i've been focusing all week on cooking for myself, and having others partake. i was also inspired by a slam dunk (olympics!! ...ok, summer olympics...) lunch i had at one of my FAVORITE PLACES EVER to visit, the 318 cafe in excelsior. quite a hike, but the staff and grub are soo worth it. case in point: two o'clock in the afternoon, Tom, one of the proprietors says "M, what can i get for you? glass of wine?" i was floored. what a genius! why hadn't i thought of having a glass of wine with lunch ever? it was my day off, so OF COURSE i had the glass of wine. i told him to bring me a red he liked, and he chose a spicy malbec. winner chicken dinner!

relaxed, i was buzzy from wine and shop talk (Tom's other place, the Green Room, in waconia, has unjustly closed), and asked for their pear tarte tatin for dessert. as Tom came back to clear my licked-clean dessert plate, the only word i could manage was "anotherrrr..!" small slices of d'anjou pears with their tender skins left on were deeply, DEEPly caramelized with a sweet, burnt-sugary, buttery sauce pooling around the flaky crust. somehow, they had managed to produce a pretty fluted edge to the crust, even though that part is baked upside-down. two slices of the tart PLUS lunch PLUS that beautiful daytime glass of wine, and i was coma-style drooling from happiness.

two things i made this last week that i'm willing to share were a pear tarte tatin, and a simple flatbread i made for myself when i got home just to stave off my appetite when i was getting ready to cook. it turned out to be the week's winner, and it's plum-easy: just grab whatever flat, bready thing you like (mine = two slices of sourdough), and melt fresh mozzerella cheese (in my case, some GORGEOUS Comte-->see post #1), and then put toasted pine nuts and arugula on top. it's an herby, nutty, meltingly easypeasy flatbread (and vegetarian!)



here's the pear tarte tatin, as well:


Pear Tarte Tatin
Adapted from Orangette

5-6 large d'anjou pears (i used red and green ones)
Juice and zest of one lemon
1 1/2 cups sugar
6 T. butter, divided
1 sheet of puff pastry

Peel and quarter the pears, removing the cores such that each quarter has a flat inner side. Toss the pear quarters in a large bowl with the lemon juice, lemon zest, and ½ cup of the sugar. Set aside for 30 minutes.

In a skillet (mine's 12 inches) set over medium heat, melt 4 (or 6, if you're me), tablespoons of the butter. Add the remaining 1 cup sugar, along with a few tablespoons of the apple-lemon juices. Stir to mix. Cook the mixture over medium-low heat, stirring regularly with a wooden spoon, for about 15 minutes, or until the mixture is a smooth, bubbly, pale caramel color.

Remove the pan from the heat and carefully add pear quarters, arranging them rounded-side-down in a decorative pattern. Arrange a second layer of pears on top wherever they fit. Top the pears with the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter (or more!), cut into dice.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

Cook the pears over medium-low heat for about 20 minutes, occasionally spooning the bubbling caramel liquid over them. Shift the pan as necessary so that the pears cook evenly. They are ready when the liquid in the pan has turned to a thick, amber ooze. The pears should still be slightly firm. Do not allow them to get entirely soft or the liquid to turn dark brown. Remove the pan from the heat.

On a floured surface, roll the puff pastry out to a thickness of about 3/16 inch. Using a sharp, thin knife, trace a circle in the pastry about 1/2 inch wider all around than the skillet, and trim away any excess. Carefully lay the pastry circle over the apples in the skillet, tucking the overlap down between the apples and the inside of the pan.

Place the skillet on a rimmed baking sheet, and bake for about 30-35 minutes, until the pastry has risen, and is dry and golden brown. Remove the skillet from the oven, and let it to rest for a minute or two. Tilt the pan and look down inside the edge: if there is a lot of juice, pour most of it off into a bowl, and eat it like it's soup, when really it's a bowl of hot buttery caramel sauce. [Do not pour it all off, or the apples may stick to the pan.] Place a serving platter upside-down over the skillet and, working quickly and carefully (it’s hot!), invert the tart onto the platter. Rearrange any pear slices that may have slipped or stuck to the skillet.



mine turned out a little less burnt-sugary than i'd like, only because i pulled it early from the oven, afraid of it burning. be fearless, let it caramelize, pour a glass of malbec. them's the orders.

(E) fool's puddin', or, a puddin' fool

M and i have a sort of unofficial agreement when we cook at home. she has very good and well-planned ideas for dinner. she makes menus and lists and i can see things churning up in her head as she pinballs around the kitchen. it’s nice, and it means I reap the rewards close to once a week.

but me, i do dessert. and i do it by basically craving something so badly that i will do whatever it takes (resources be damned) to magic it onto a plate. this kind of magic often requires a certain amount of recklessness, which happily, i have freakin’ tons of. and by recklessness, i also mean impatience. and clumsiness. also some idiocy. i am so lucky.

the proof is in the caramel pudding i made on Friday night. M wound up with some nice, thick, first-attempt-at-pasta linguine, lounging in a good mushroom and tomatoey cream. hot medicine for a 10pm hunger. we ate that first, and quick, and then followed it with dancing and lots of yakking about potential boy pals and missed phone calls and hypotheticals. we swayed, and some people headed for home. last to retire, M and i perched on mismatched chairs and broke the seals on two ramekins of pudding to see what my experiment had wrought.



it wasn't a new recipe. the first time i made it, the result had a too-thick cornstarch quality once it had chilled. the color was deep and the flavor on-track, but I wanted something looser and less like half-dried Elmer’s. glue is very unromantic and never crave-able. my plan was to first, reduce the cornstarch by a few tablespoons and second, add a little extra salt, to make the caramel shine.

my plan was not, however, to accidentally reduce the milk quotient by almost half. what the crap, right? i could blame this blunder on the measuring cup (which wouldn’t hold all of the liquid at once), but that would be unfair, especially knowing that this sort of mishap is bound to reoccur. and, also, i am kind of proud of the outcome. M and i agreed that the extra-potent pudding was a hit. it was a lovely copper custard that balanced flexibility with the natural viscosity of straight caramel. while the grey salt i sprinkled on top was almost too much, the rest struck a pure and intoxicating chord. one serving was enough (and dude, this is not my motto).



so three cheers for blunders, really. and also for recognizing when something needs a bit of work. my pudding escapades are nunca few and far between, so i hope to happen upon other bits of golden in the future. sometimes you end up making lemonade out of lemons you didn’t even know you had. or whatever.

--E

Caramel Pudding
Adapted from Food & Wine

3 cups whole milk (preferably no other sort--in my opinion, non-fat pudding defeats the purpose)
4-5 tablespoons cornstarch
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/4 heaping teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon of butter

In a small bowl, whisk together 1/2 cup of the milk, the cornstarch, vanilla, and salt until smooth. In a medium saucepan, bring the sugar and 6 tablespoons of water to a boil over medium-high heat. Cook, without stirring, until the sugar becomes a deep amber color (about 8 min). Remove from heat and whisk remaining 2 1/2 cups of milk into caramel. Careful--it will probably bubble and sputter a bit, but that's fine.

Return to stove and whisk until the caramel dissolves into the milk. Simmer over moderately low heat until the mixture thickens a bit and the color begins to deepen (about 10 min).

Remove from heat and whisk in the cornstarch mixture. Return to stove once more and simmer, while stirring, over medium heat for about one minute. The pudding should now become very thick. Remove from heat and stir in the butter.

I don't find any need to strain this pudding, so plop it into small dishes and chill thoroughly. Or, eat it warm right from the saucepan, as I am wont to do. The best!

(M) saturday grocery shopping kills me

yesterday was the big fat jerk experiment. that's what i called it in my head, anyways. what it really was was my brother and me comparing four different homemade jerk sauces and two jerk rubs on all sorts of chicken, so the boy could figure out what he likes in a jerk sauce and then have his own "signature recipe."

i had spent all day last week at my non-restaurant job on the computer researching jerk and hunting down authentic-sounding recipes. at this point, i could describe in detail jerk sauces and what i've learned they usually contain, but to be honest, big fat jerk sauces don't get me all that excited. sure, they're complex and oniony and savory and tart and spicy and hot, whew. but the whole thing was to get my brother's cooking rolling. and i showed him how we dice our way through 60 lb. bags of onions at work, which, in my pretend-world, blew his mind, but probably just bored the crap outta him.



in the end, we had 14+ individual pieces of chicken to try, so all of us (E, my brother, E's sister/our roommate, my boyfriend, and me) huddled around the table, gnawing ferociously like cavemen, only occasionally coming up for air to point at the one we liked. except for me--i tried a few, but i'm basically a vegetarian, so i wasn't gnawin'. there were two winning recipes according to the cavemen (and caveladies), "sauce 2" which was thick and allspicey and molassesy and reminded me so so much of Gandhi mahal's tamarind chutney, the best tamarind chutney around if you ask me. "sauce 3" was thinner on a account of a higher onion content, and also had some vinegar, lots of garlic, and was seasoned with soy sauce. if i were president, more things would be seasoned with soy sauce than plain salt--why wouldn't you want mushroomy, meaty, deep flavors along with your salt???
all that jerk business yesterday just means that i had to swing by Seward Co-op and bring home some beauuutiful Kadejan chickens. i had my brother buy everything else so i wouldn't have to.

the problem / amazo thing about living in our neighborhood is being surrounded by damn good grocers. i can't go a saturday (my day off) without visiting each one, stop by stop spending more and more of my measly paycheck. so, while i didn't have to buy all the jerk sauce ingredients besides chicken, i DID invest in some crusty, salty olive bread, Comte, tons of Larry Schultz eggs, stupid organic produce (organic isn't stupid--but sometimes i buy it just for being pretty, and THAT'S stupid), and, oh yeah, a fish.

i've recently decided to try to become a pest at Coastal Seafoods. that's why i end up there twice a week, smelling the clean, fresh oceany fish smells, and holding my chin, trying to look cool while on the inside i want to jump into the cooler and roll around in the fillets. ew. not really.

two weeks ago, on my usual saturday trip to Coastal, they happened to have HUGE (that's "yuge" for our new york readers) gorgeous prawns that told me to bring them home and roast them with just salt and pepper, have D (boyfriend) suck out their brains, and then use their shells for stock. every time i go back, i'm looking for prawns. any normal person would keep their distance and call, asking for when they usually have or expect to have prawns. that's not a pest's style. i amble in, take a quick look in the prawn's usual spot, and do a "oh no they're not there, nowwhatelseshouldiget???" D pointed at one of their whole fish yesterday, a big ol' striped bass, to be exact, and looked at me. my first reactions were "that's too big for just you to eat" and "there isn't a special occasion for this fish tweeday," but 10 minutes later i was gently placing the giganto fish into its carseat and speeding back to Seward to buy more ingredients for the damn thing.

at 10 pm, after all the jerk business was taken care of, i wrangled the bass into the oven along with lemons, capers, olives, thyme, red pepper flakes, and some of my fake dicing lesson onions. half hour later, it was pure dead (white eyes and all), but briny, spicy, and gooorgeous to serve--flaky, but not so flaky that it fell apart when you poked it, so it came off the bone in generous fillets. thing was, i was only serving D (and he wasn't there when i plated it, so i said "tah-daaaah!" as i did). everyone else had left after demolishing the jerk chicken. pfff i TOLD them that it was only the first course!

(M&E) we're new

there are two of us here. we are M and E, and we cook and serve, respectively, at the same restaurant in minneapolis. our city is full of good things to eat.

there's no need to be real wordy yet. we'll just start tinkering and rummaging and stay in touch. go!