Dinner at the Country House

Spicy

Posted on September 21, 2014 by Him | 1 comment

She chose the fish for Friday dinner. Well, she and the fishmonger chose together. She named a price point and asked what was freshest. “You like spicy?” the fishmonger replied. She said yes, and came with two beautiful catfish filets, practically sparkling with paprika, cayenne, and who-knows-what-else.

The fishmonger was not kidding. This was some seriously spicy fish. The fragrance it gave off while I cooked it was remarkably pungent. I made some tartar sauce from sweet and dill pickles, sour creme and mayonnaise to balance the heat. I went back for seconds–of the sauce.

We trust our fishmonger a lot. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t buy pre-seasoned fish; it would be too easy for an unscrupulous merchant to use strong spices to disguise fish that was a little past its sell-by date. Even so, I think I’ll suggest we season our own catfish next time.

We drove into New York on Saturday evening, but this wasn’t Date Night. She went dancing with some old friends. They weren’t out clubbing–this ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco, this ain’t no fooling around–but instead attending a big folk dance gathering in a church hall. (Yes, there are church halls in New York City.)

Meanwhile, I was helping to host an evening celebrating the impending wedding of a friend and collaborator. Our evening wasn’t wild and crazy, either: we went for dinner at a great Indian restaurant (the groom-to-be’s favorite cuisine), then to an all-you-can-play pinball center.

Although it wasn’t a bachelor party at some strip club, the evening had plenty of spice. One variety of curry listed on the menu was called phall; it came with the following description:

An excruciatingly hot curry, more pain and sweat than flavor!

So, of course, we had to try it.

For our customers who do this on a dare, we will require you to state a verbal disclaimer not holding us liable for any physical or emotional damage after eating this curry. If you do manage to finish your serving, a bottle of beer is on us, as is a certificate of completion and your picture in the (P)hall of fame.

Nobody in our party was crazy enough to attempt a full portion of phall; we just asked for a side-order to share. Even so, we left far more in the bowl than we ate. As with the fishmonger, this description was true to its word. It was painfully hot. Unpleasantly hot. Ridiculously hot. According to calculations done by a blogger specializing in Indian food, phall is 500 times hotter than tabasco sauce. (By my quick math, that’s 498 times hotter than any food needs to be.)

Having tried a little phall with a great deal of rice and some nan and knowing I’d not want to do that again, I wondered if it might be more useful as a condiment than an entree. A few drops added to some of my goat saag did indeed make the spinach-based curry sing with warmth. I was careful: more than a few drops, and the song would have been a scream.

The boys finished the evening with milkshakes at Baskin-Robbins. Dairy helps extinguish the burn from spicy foods. We maybe should have gone for ice cream before pinball. (She had a shake, too, after dancing for three hours, on the same principal as a runner uses chocolate milk as a recovery drink.) None of us made it into the “(p)hall of fame,” but none of us cared. Sometimes, knowing when to walk away is the smartest thing anyone can do.

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Tagged Dairy, Dancing, Fish, Friends, Spice

To Be or Not to Bibimbap

Posted on September 19, 2014 by Him | 1 comment

She likes rice. A lot. A bowl of rice with butter, salt, and pepper would be a perfectly acceptable dinner for her any night of the week. I like it well enough, though I prefer mine as an accompaniment to vegetables and protein, or at least custard-ed up and baked into pudding. Still, we haven’t had any in a while, so I made a batch and plated some up with a pork chop and some green beans, covered the plate with plastic wrap, and left it for her in the refrigerator. Having two choir rehearsals scheduled with a little break between, I packed yogurt and fruit for me.

Maybe it was the second choir rehearsal that did it; maybe it was the quite-fast run I’d gone on earlier in the day, or the run and two walks I’d taken on Wednesday; maybe lunch had been insubstantial, or the fact that I’d forgotten the granola that usually accompanies the yogurt and fruit. Whatever it was, it was 10 PM and I was hungry.

And there was rice in the fridge.

Bibimbap.

It’s a traditional Korean dish: a bowl of rice, protein, pickled vegetables, and a fried egg on top. If you’re a purist, bibimbap is made by adding rice to a very hot stone dish. I am not a purist. Especially not at 10 PM. I shredded some carrot, chopped some parsley and dill pickle (kimchi is traditional, but not something I keep on hand), and microwaved a bowl of rice while frying an egg whose runny yolk would, along with a drizzle of soy, a couple drops of sesame oil and sriracha, become an intensely flavorful sauce.

It surely isn’t as simple as a bowl of rice with butter, salt, and pepper, but it was maybe six minutes from idea to first bite. I had my late semi-simple supper with a glass of ginger ale, and a conversation about a lunch we’d had, maybe five years ago, at a Korean restaurant down the block from her office—long, long before it occurred to either of us that we might one day be sharing the Country House.

I can’t remember having bibimbap since that lunch, but it won’t be five years before I have it again.

In slightly more than the time it takes to fry an egg, a few scruffy vegetables and some leftover rice can become this.

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Tagged Eggs, Rice, Simple, Thursday, Vegetables

Tag Team

Posted on September 18, 2014 by Him | 1 comment

Sometimes we cook together, start to finish. Sometimes one of us is on dinner duty while the other handles other chores, or isn’t even home yet. Or it’s some combination of the two.

Knowing there would be tomatoes in this week’s CSA distribution, and realizing we still had a pile of tomatoes from last week’s share, we decided on a simple sauce to serve with pasta. While she was at work on Tuesday, I chopped the tomatoes, diced an onion, and baked some bacon. Upon her return, she sautéed the onion, added tomatoes and capers, and cooked them until the tomatoes were soft and their juices reduced; also, she made a batch of penne. Everything was cooled and tucked away for Wednesday dinner.

We met at the terminal for a companionable train ride home in the Quiet Car; I worked on lyrics for a new project, she read an Agatha Christie novel. Home at the Country House, we divided labor: she cleared the laundry closet for the painter who’ll arrive this morning; I fixed dinner. I heated the sauce, gave the pasta a hot-water dunk to warm and separate, snipped some basil, crumbled a slice of bacon, sprinkled some cheese, added a little salt and pepper, and bowled it up, along with a couple ears of late-summer corn. She finished the closet in time to prepare croutons (small pieces of bread we use to butter ears of corn), and we settled down to enjoy the result.

It isn’t just cooking; maybe she’ll sort and start a load of laundry, and I’ll switch it to the dryer and fold it, or the other way around. Dishes are washed and dried; the dishwasher is loaded and emptied; the cats get fed and the litter box scooped. We don’t have “assigned” chores, but everything gets done.

Sharing. Nothing fancy. But simple. And wonderful. Like a bowl of pasta and an ear of corn.

Pasta and corn. Lots of basil, in place of a salad. I forgot the mozzarella cheese we’d planned to cube into this dish, but that means the leftovers will be different!

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Tagged Chores, Corn, CSA, Pasta, Simple, Tomato

The Well-Traveled Salsa, and the End of the Road

Posted on September 17, 2014 by Him | 3 comments

Community Supported Agriculture is a system of supporting farms based on the recognition that small farmers need an influx of cash before they have a crop to sell. Members pay in advance for a share of a local farm’s produce, then meet once a week during the harvest season when the crop is delivered, sort of like buying a magazine subscription. The produce is of a higher quality than most supermarket fruit and vegetables–and much tastier than Time or Car and Driver.

At a farmer’s market, customers can pick and choose, or walk away without buying anything. In a CSA, you don’t know what will be offered on any given week until an email arrives the night before distribution; but since you’ve already paid for the produce, there’s an incentive to try everything, even when it’s unfamilar. It’s Vegetable Roulette!–oh, wow! What can we make with eggplant, radishes, and chili peppers?

When she lived in upstate New York, she bought produce from Windflower Farm at farmer’s markets, so she was delighted to continue supporting them as a New Yorker. She’s been a member of Windflower’s CSA for several years, and we’ve enjoyed virtually every bite. (Okay, bok choy not so much, but that’s just a personal preference; everything else has been dandy.)

Lately, though, her “local” vegetables have been making an odd and circuitous trip: they’re trucked from upstate to NYC, where she takes a subway train uptown to pick them up, a long walk or cab ride across town to the train station, and another commuter train home to the Country House. Because it is a peak-hour train, she and her many pounds of produce are unlikely to find a seat. As autumn vegetables start arriving (potatoes and squash replacing airy kale and cherry tomatoes), the trip is starting to, well, weigh on her. What used to be a 15-minute subway ride followed by a 15-minute walk to her kitchen is now a 3- or 4-hour trip. The produce is every bit as flavorful, but exhaustion is leaving a bad taste. It’s sad to think of resenting such good food, so we’re looking for someone to take over the remaining 7 weeks of this year’s season.

We’ll eventually find a farmer’s market here that we can get to regularly; meanwhile, we’ve got a pantry full of applesauce, pickles, and salsa to remind us of the well-traveled route that fruits and vegetables–even relatively local ones–can take.

Dipping Kind-of bars in spicy tomato salsa is not recommended

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Tagged Commuting, CSA, Vegetables

When Delays, Doubles, and Failed Plans are Just Right

Posted on September 16, 2014 by Her | 1 comment

Things don’t always go as planned.

Boxes are unpacked right away, but then piles of indecision clutter the surfaces. Items are carefully re-boxed and placed for the local thrift store to collect, but then they don’t want your extra sofa after all. Contract painters show up four days early and do a lovely job, creating an unexpected construction zone for weekend entertaining.

He was a saint on Friday night, when the long hours, longer commutes, and lack of order finally took their toll on my good humour. The unplanned meltdown was ugly. The picking up and going on was beautiful – suffice it to say that the bedroom, guest room, and living room are all finally pleasant spaces to relax in.

On Saturday afternoon, we put together a stew for our guests – friends stopping over with us on the sad occasion of traveling to a funeral. Comfort food seemed called for.

A three-pound rump roast was cubed, dredged in flour, and seared. A trio of red onions were diced and cooked in the half-drained drippings, collecting the flavorful leavings and warming their bite. A few ribs of celery, a handful of carrots, and a minced bell pepper were added then the beef was tossed on top. Seasoned liberally with oregano and bay leaf, with two dozen whole peppercorns thrown in for good measure. A palmful of kosher salt. Half a bottle of dry red wine.

(He drank a glass, proclaiming it “good” and “very dry”. I can’t stand the stuff; I take my grapes in a sugary cocktail, thanks.) Four cups of well seasoned mushroom stock were poured over all, then the lid went on and the Dutch oven went into the actual oven while we got back to work.

Six hours later, the beef was tasty but the broth was inconsistent in appearance and flavor. We set the oven to “warm” and left the pot alone overnight.

By Sunday morning, the meat and vegetables were fabulous, but the broth was still a mess – so I set out to repair it.

Solids were scooped from the first Dutch oven, drained, and placed into a second one. The liquid was painstakingly ladled into his grandmother’s gravy strainer, one cup at a time, and left to rest for twelve minutes.

When the oily bits had risen to the surface, every speck of fat was discarded and the good stuff was saved into a saucepan. Two hours later, with “the good stuff” fully assembled, the now fat-free broth was brought to a low simmer and thickened with corn starch – then poured over the meat and vegetable bits. The whole lot was brought back to temperature, covered, then placed back in the 200 degree oven to stay happy until our (delayed) guests arrived.

When they did, baked red potatoes were roughly chopped and placed into shallow bowls. Stew was ladled over top. Seconds were served, along with still and sparkling wines, ginger ales, and plenty of ice cream at dessert.

It couldn’t have been better if it had gone according to plan; there aren’t any leftovers to photograph.

I’m glad to have kept both Dutch Ovens – one enameled, one not.

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Tagged Beef, Comfort Food, Friends, Saturday, Stew, Sunday

Acquired Tastes

Posted on September 12, 2014 by Him | 1 comment

Thursday is choir night, and we still haven’t worked out that load-the-slow-cooker-at-noon thing such that dinner is ready when she gets home. She picked up something called “chicken fries” when she stopped at the market for the milk we needed for breakfast. I’m not sure if “chicken fries” are as closely related to McNuggets as they sound, but I’m not going to worry about it now.

I had the same choir-night dinner I’ve had for ages: after the choir room is set up and the night’s music has been practiced, I have a half-cup of yogurt, whatever fruit is handy, and some of our Really Good Granola sprinkled on top. It’s easy to fix, it’s light, and since there’s as much fruit as yogurt, the combination isn’t too gloppy on the vocal cords.

The thing is, although this has been my Thursday quick-supper for a long while, I can remember when I didn’t even know what yogurt was. And then I knew, but I hated it. (My first taste of yogurt was in the college cafeteria. I thought it was pudding. I nearly did a spit-take. I did not try it again for years.)

Apparently it was an acquired taste. I don’t remember when I acquired it, but I did. Along with lots of others.

Steel-cut oatmeal. (Hated oatmeal growing up.)

Fish tacos. (What on earth is a fish taco?)

Cheese (the kind that isn’t pre-sliced and covered in plastic).

Beets. Tomatoes. Coffee.

These things aren’t just acquired tastes, they’re positively comforting to me now. (Well, maybe coffee isn’t so much comforting as a requirement for consciousness some mornings. And afternoons. And the occasional evening.)

I wouldn’t combine them all in one meal, but if I had to plan a month’s worth of meals, they’d all be listed. Chicken fries might not make the short list, but if choir rehearsal runs a little long and there are leftovers when I get home, who knows?

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Tagged Breakfast for Dinner, Comfort Food, Thursday, Yogurt

Very Meta

Posted on September 11, 2014 by Him | 1 comment

We didn’t have dinner at the Country House last night, but we did have dinner near the Country House. Or, rather, near The Country House.

I finished teaching and walked downtown; she finished at the office and walked north; we met in the middle for the fall’s first “school night” trip to the theatre.

Theatre-date dinners require some strategizing. When a show has an 8 PM curtain, there’s time for a relaxed meal before; an intermissionless play with a 7 PM curtain means it won’t be too late for dinner after; but a full-length play starting at 7 leaves just enough time to grab something nearby.

A respectable pizza-and-sandwich shop awaited us at the corner of 47th and 8th. There were two stools at the counter by the window from which we could people-watch while eating. (After she took a photo of our dinner, she realized she hadn’t been mindful of the passers-by. “That could have been Alec Baldwin!” I’m pretty sure it wasn’t.)

My pepperoni-spinach-and-onion slice was remarkably tasty, a little like getting a salad along with the pizza. She went with the cheese-only variety; a purist. Thin but pliable NYC-style crust, hot and quick. It wasn’t the most luxurious meal we’ve ever had, but it was just right.

Dinner, near…

…THE COUNTRY HOUSE

(The Country House is a new play about a theatrical family–actors and a playwright-to-be–and contains lots of literary references, as well as a “reading” of a new play. Since last night was only the second preview, it wouldn’t be fair to discuss the performance in detail. The play is very self-referential. But then, so is writing about it in a blog about dinner.)

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Tagged Pizza, Quick, Restaurants, Theatre, Wednesday

Timing Is Everything

Posted on September 10, 2014 by Him | 1 comment

The late afternoon stretched before me like a blank sheet of staff paper. But one little technological glitch after another kept me my progress slow; between 4 and 6 I got maybe 15 minutes of work done. So when she pinged to say which train she was on, I realized my plan to have dinner ready upon her arrival would need revising.

The idea was chicken with mushrooms over farfalle pasta, but there would have to be more to it than that. I diced an onion and sautéed it with some garlic to get the party started. A pot of water was salted and set to boil. I looked up to see a can of artichoke hearts on a cupboard shelf; it was easy to see, since all the cupboard doors have been removed for refinishing. I drained the artichokes, filleted the chicken, heard the water boiling, and tossed the pasta in. And saw the clock: it was time to leave to meet her train. I took the pasta pot and the sauté pan off the heat, put the chicken back in the fridge, grabbed my keys and ran.

We got home, and the pasta was perfect. Who needs 10 minutes of boiling when you’ve got carryover heat to take care of business?

The convergence of sautéing chicken, answering a house painter’s phone call, and assisting with first aid for a neighbor who’d fallen while running nearly derailed the whole thing, but not quite.

Dinner was splendid. And, for us, served early.

Timing is Almost Everything. (Good ingredients help, too.)

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Tagged Chicken, Pasta, Timing, Tuesday

Manhattan Pancakes

Posted on September 9, 2014 by Him | 1 comment

She’d had a rough morning, I’d had a rough afternoon, and breakfast-for-dinner seemed the only way to go. She replied to my iMessage asking what she’d like:

Ooh! Pancakes? Plain, topped with peanut butter and butter?

I agreed. It was, in fact, what I was hoping she’d choose.

Meanwhile, knowing that comfort food was on the horizon, I posted jokingly to Facebook that I was having pancakes, and wondered

…what’s an appropriate wine to pair with them. Or perhaps the best hard spirits. Or both.

My friends enthusiastically rose to the challenge. Suggestions included hard cider (apple or pear), moonshine, beer, various German wines and a couple of sparkling wines, blueberry schnapps, and “honey-infused rye whiskey.” This bunch clearly takes their pancakes-and-drinking seriously. Or maybe they were just ready to help a friend in need.

The comment stream amused her as much as it had done for me, but that “infused” comment made her sit up and take notice: “We could just pour bourbon over the pancakes.”

All of a sudden I was in the act, too. “Wait–what if we made some simple syrup…”

“…and added bourbon!”

Now, neither of us is really a drinker. I can mix a Manhattan, split it into two glasses, and there’ll be some left in each glass at the end of the evening. But, as with the one-spoon-sundae that has become a favorite dessert, sometimes just a little taste is enough.

There was no bourbon in the cupboard after all, so she flavored the syrup with rye and a splash of scotch. I mixed batter and heated the griddle. One pancake got the last of a batch of homemade maraschino cherries (the kind where real cherries have been infused with maraschino liqueur, not the candied-and-dyed fakes). We cooked some sausage, deglazed its pan with a little more rye and thickened it with a bit of butter, and drizzled that sauce over the sausage. All the while, she sang Don McLean’s “American Pie.”

“…drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry,
and good old boys were drinking whiskey and rye…”

Nobody got over-served. We each had just a bit of the sort-of-cocktail syrup over very fluffy pancakes. Even so, neither of us was driving anywhere. The miserable parts of our days faded away in the giddiness of doing something silly in the kitchen, and in its unusual and tasty result.

“Who needs ‘American Pie,'” she asked, “when you’ve got cake!”

There’s quite a lot of the syrup left, but we’ll probably save it until we’ve both had a really good day at work.

Breakfast-for-Dinner for Grownups

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Tagged Breakfast for Dinner, Cocktails, Comfort Food, Friends, Monday, Pancakes

DIY, Kind-of

Posted on September 8, 2014 by Him | 2 comments

Home cooking is pretty much the definition of “do it yourself,” and we do that nearly all the time. Usually our cooking is done one meal at a time–though often in larger batches so as to have leftovers for lunches.

Our DIY-ness isn’t confined to the kitchen, though. I’m used to her knitting (or “making clothes from string,” as one of our friends called it, awed at her skill as if it were alchemy). She came home the other day and was delighted by the jewelry keeper I’d fashioned from some screw-in hooks and an antique wooden coat hanger.

This weekend, we were back in the Country House kitchen to make batches of non-meal DIY projects–saving a shekel or two over store-bought, relishing the satisfaction of doing something not everybody else can or would do, and knowing that we are well-stocked for the future.

She’s been enjoying Kind Bars as an afternoon office snack. I’ll admit they’re tasty, and not full of chemical nastiness, but a little “spendy.” She picked up a box at the market the other day, thinking economies of scale would help matters, and, after doing math in her head decided the bars were still an extravagance. Sure, we can afford a snack, but we’d rather go to Paris. (And eat really well when we get there.)

“I bet we could reverse-engineer those,” I said. And realized it might be even easier than that. A quick search proved that another home-cook/blogger had already done the work. We had most of the ingredients on hand; the few we didn’t were items we usually stock–except for flaxseed meal, which she assures me we will be able to use in many other recipes. As for the extra puffed-rice cereal, as I’m concerned it’s nothing more than an excuse to make marshmallows.

Toast some nuts, add cereal, heat some syrup, spread in baking pan, salt, cut into bars, drizzle with melted chocolate, cool, wrap. It could hardly be easier. Further refinement come with future attempts, but for now we’ve got “Kind-of” bars to last a few weeks.

Her story of the well-traveled salsa will wait for another post.

Dipping Kind-of bars in spicy tomato salsa is not recommended

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Tagged Snacks, Sunday

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