Tag Archives: Recipes

Duck Duck Improvise

Posted on March 17, 2015 by | Leave a comment

We didn’t have long for dinner between train arrival and when we needed to leave to get to the theatre.  Grabbing sandwiches at a drive-through would have been perfectly justified, but I just didn’t want to do it.  There will be enough days coming when that really has to happen.  I stopped at the market to get half a pound of shrimp, which would take no time at all to steam (and in that no-time-at-all, I could mix ketchup, horseradish, and lemon juice to make better cocktail sauce than we’d find on any shelf). As for what else to serve, I figured I’d find something between the entrance and the fish counter.

The frozen section has a new line of international foods. A box of spring rolls presented itself.  These seemed worth a try. I’d much rather have made spring rolls, but this was a corner I was willing to cut. Cabbage, carrot, bean sprout–the vegetable course was covered.

I didn’t think about the appropriate condiments for the rolls, though. They weren’t packaged with duck sauce and hot mustard–which is just as well, considering the packaged stuff probably would have been full of ethylene this and glycol that.  She looked up a duck sauce recipe for me.

Apricot preserves, orange marmalade, fresh ginger…it was a festival of things I’d like to say were in our fridge, but they weren’t.

But we weren’t bereft.

A-Few-Days-Before-Spring Roll Sauce
2 tbsp ginger marmalade, warmed in a microwave for 30 seconds or so.
Stir in
2 tsp soy sauce
2 tsp orange juice, fresh-squeezed if you have it.
1 tsp Dijon mustard. This terrific mustard is the best I know, but whatever you have.
Sauce will thicken a little as it cools.

The result was not duck sauce, but something that went perfectly well with the spring rolls. It was a little like mixing duck sauce and hot mustard, which is what I would have done anyway. The shrimp probably would have been good dipped in the faux-duck, too.

We ate well, stowed the leftovers, started the dishwasher, and were on our way to a lovely production of a sweet, funny, romantic musical at a theatre built from converted barn. We love New York theatre, but there is something to be said for being able to have dinner at home and still make curtain. Especially when dinner was this good.

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Date Night Fish Tacos

Posted on December 6, 2014 by | 1 comment

“How would you feel about cod?” I asked, looking at the market’s specials.

“Go for it,” she replied.  “Crispy?”

Then, before I’d had a chance to reply, “Oh! Let’s try the cod the way we did that one time with the beer batter and crackers, then break it apart as the base for fish tacos!”

I may have smirked a little. “So batter and bread the fish, and then put it inside a tortilla?”

We were using iMessage, so she couldn’t punch me, but she did stick out her tongue.  Or at least her typing indicated she did.

I liked the idea of fish tacos–I always like the idea of fish tacos–but thought there might be a way to let a little more of the fish’s flavor come through. But lots of Californian fish tacos are made with breaded fish. Many chicken sandwiches are made with breaded chicken. And no Bayou restaurant would serve a Po’ Boy made with unbreaded shrimp. There are mysteries in the universe, I guess.

I picked up the fish, along with a pineapple (also a weekly special) and some other vegetables. If we were having fish tacos, we were going to do it right.

By the time her train arrived, I had assembled salsa and slaw to accompany the fish. We detoured on the way home to look at holiday lights; I would have shown her photographs of them, but my phone had crashed in the middle of the running route where I’d seen them. While she tried on some new clothes that had arrived in the mail, I set to preparing the fish–a bit of a risky proposition, considering that the fashion show was a lovely distraction from a skillet skimmed with hot oil.

The slaw was a little wetter than I meant it to be, and so the tacos were a little sloppier. Still, we both had seconds, so the mess didn’t seem to deter our enjoyment.

A drive to see Christmas lights, a fashion show, and–in her words–“freaking awesome, exquisite” fish tacos. Not a bad night in the suburbs. Continue reading →

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The Problem with Thanksgiving

Posted on November 29, 2014 by | 1 comment

Her mom was roasting a brined turkey, Nana had baked pumpkin and apple pies, and we had traveled with a carful of side dishes: a New York cheesecake, potatoes, asparagus, and construction kits for Waldorf salad and the cornbread dressing I’d make that she assured everyone they’d love.  Drinks were served upon arrival, and while everybody chatted happily we set to work unpacking the cooler and assembling our bits and pieces.

“Does this look right to you?” she asked. I had to admit, the salad dressing looked watery and grey; it tasted like dill and vinegar and not much else. She wanted to try this version for my benefit, since I’m no fan of gloppy salads. She headed for the sink. “I’m going to start over.” I suggested instead that she whisk in a little mayonnaise.  She did; the dressing wasn’t quite where she wanted it, but it was closer.  A little more mayo, and a sprinkling of sugar, and the dressing held together nicely and tasted great.

Dinner was served and enjoyed. Family stories were told and political conversations defused. Many hands made the clean-up light, and the afternoon was a success. There were plenty of leftovers–particularly the cornbread dressing, which had sadly not lived up to its reputation.  “The stuffing wasn’t as good as last year’s,” she said softly to me. Leaving aside that it was dressing, not stuffing, since it had been cooked alongside the turkey rather than in it, I had to agree, but neither of us was sure why. Her mom had baked the cornbread, so we weren’t sure what was in it; I’d used pork sausage, which always seems like a good idea; the spices, such that I recalled, were the same, but the result was different.  Not terrible, but not as we’d remembered.

The problem with improvising is that, unless you have an extremely accurate memory or are meticulous about documentation, it’s nearly impossible to recreate what you’ve done.  Whether creating a piece of music or a Thanksgiving side dish, the pleasure of success is ephemeral.

The problem with following recipes, on the other hand, is that, unless you have a trusted source, it’s nearly impossible to guarantee that what you’ll end up with is what you intend.  Whether cooking or knitting, when the result is different than you expect, the temptation may be to chuck it in the waste bin and start over.

The problem with Thanksgiving–or any big holiday dinner, for that matter–is that a lot of pressure can be put on every component.  Far more than needs to be.   If the salad had been a total bust, there still would have been plenty of food.  If no one had touched the cornbread dressing, there would still have been laughter and joy.  If I had put the cheesecake in the cooler along with the sealed bags of chopped vegetables and it turned out they weren’t as well-sealed as I thought and the cheesecake tasted a little of onion, no one would mention it.

Her parents have accepted an offer to sell their house before beginning a grand retirement adventure, so this will be the last Thanksgiving in the house she grew up in. She was a little melancholy, but it was as joyful a celebration as I could want. I don’t know where we’ll be next November, but wherever it is, if the dressing is perfect or if we burn the turkey and end up with grilled cheese sandwiches, there will be plenty to be thankful for.

I did, by the way, put the cheesecake in the cooler, and it did taste funky. Nobody teased me about it more than I did. But I’ve never enjoyed a Waldorf salad so much. There was a pleasantly chilly late evening walk, and the first holiday lights of the season. And, seriously, Nana’s pies are better than any store-bought cheesecake.

Over the river and through the woods...

Over the river and through the woods…

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A Tale of Three Soups

Posted on October 8, 2014 by | 1 comment

From her train ride home, she sent a message requesting tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches.  I liked the idea instantly, even if it did mean the gravy would have to wait for another day.

We stopped at the market to pick up soup.  They didn’t have any, which was disappointing if not surprising. It’s not a market where you can find everything all the time; it has a great bakery, a garden-fresh produce section, their own coffee roaster, a trustworthy fish counter, and a not-particularly-wide variety of excellent prepared foods, but not aisles and aisle of canned goods. On this day, that not-particularly-wide variety did not include tomato soup. We considered some other dinner options and realized that we did in fact want soup and sandwiches, so moved on to the next-closest supermarket–where our tomato-soup options were nearly limitless.  We chose an organic variety with basil and soy milk instead of cream.

She put the soup in a saucepan, set two cast-iron skillets to heat, and set herself to meticulously prepare sandwiches.  I minced the leftover chicken she wanted to include while she spread molecularly-thin layers of the best mustard and mayonnaise perfectly from crust to crust. I’ve never seen a sandwich made with such precision, much less one I was going to get to eat.

The sandwiches were pressed between the two hot skillets for toasting, the soup was ladled into wide-mouthed mugs for sipping, spooning, or sandwich-dipping, and dinner was served: good soup and wonderful sandwiches. We agreed that the soup was a little bland, more like tomato-flavored soy milk. I heated a little bolognese sauce to be added as we each wished. I know that took the soup out of the realm of simple cream-of-tomato, but I was willing to accept the charge of fussiness.  I suggested that, next time, we make soup from scratch.

She looked incredulous.  “It takes seven hours to make tomato soup.”

I wondered how that was possible. She told me about finding a recipe when she was a girl, and asking the aunt she was visiting to teach her how to cook so as to make it. The good-humored aunt helped her slice many pounds of fresh tomatoes, slow-roast them in an oven for four hours, then skin and seed and dice them and simmer them with stock and gently cooked onions and garlic for another two hours, then puree in a blender, and add sour cream and basil before serving.

I admitted that a roasted-tomato soup was probably better than the one I had in mind, but wasn’t sure it was six hours and fifteen minutes better.

Faster Tomato Soup

2 (1 lb.) cans peeled, no-salt-added tomatoes
1 medium onion
1-1/2 T. butter
1-1/2 T. olive oil
A few basil leaves (or 1 tsp dried)
1/2 cup heavy cream

Set a large saucepan over medium-low heat; add the oil and butter.
Coarsely chop the onion, sauté gently until translucent.
Set a strainer over a large bowl, and drain the juice from the canned tomatoes into it.
Cut each tomato in half, then squeeze gently over the strainer to remove seeds, collecting juice in bowl. Discard seeds. (Or don’t; if you want a little more rustic soup, skip the straining.)
When onion is ready, add tomatoes and juice to saucepan and simmer, covered, about 20 minutes.
Add basil, and salt and pepper to taste, and simmer about 5 minutes more.
Remove from heat and add cream.
Puree, using an immersion blender.
Serve with croutons or, better, grilled cheese sandwiches.

I can’t find her roasted-tomato soup recipe online, and she doesn’t still own the cookbook from which it came.  I believe her, of course, about the long roasting and simmering, but I wonder about investing that much cooking time–especially not with a hot oven in the height of summer when fresh tomatoes are abundant–to get tomato soup. Who knows? Maybe it is that much better. Some night we might consider the relative merits of various grilled cheese sandwich preparation methods, too.  And, maybe, next summer, we’ll have a taste test.

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Confidence Gravy

Posted on October 8, 2014 by | 2 comments

“Do we have any gravy?”

That’s the sort of question you might dread, if the roast turned out to be more well-done than you’d intended.  But that wasn’t the case.  It was 10 PM on a Tuesday and she was in the shower.

“No,” I called back, “but I’m sure I can make some.”

“Right,” she said.  “Because you’re the kind of guy who makes gravy.”

Well, how else would one get gravy?  There are jarred versions sold in stores, I suppose. She had a jar in the City House kitchen for a long while, but I don’t remember what happened to it.

I’m sure I can make some.

I wasn’t sure at all, in fact.  After Sunday’s Chicken Debacle, I wasn’t at all confident about my ability to make toast, much less gravy.  It got me thinking. Gravy was routinely on the dinner table when I was growing up. But somewhere along the line tastes changed, or at least styles of eating did. We have sushi, ratatouille, and sandwiches-on-the-go, but gravy doesn’t happen all the time.  My grandmother and mother could have made gravy without thinking twice about it, but we get it from the supermarket.

Or not.

While Sunday’s chicken was in the oven, I’d cooked the neck and giblets into a saucepan with a cup or two of water, discarded the neck, chopped the giblets and put them aside. I wasn’t sure what to do with them, but it had seemed like the right thing to do.  Once the chicken finally came out of the oven, I reserved and de-fatted the drippings from the roasting pan.  I didn’t dare try to use them at the time; I was happy enough to have food on the table without the possibility of botching a condiment. But it meant that, on Tuesday night, I had in the fridge a ramekin of rich chicken bits and a container of homemade stock. I was most of the way to gravy.

I just had to look up what to do with it.  Something thickens gravy–a roux?  A–what’s that word–a slurry?  Right, that’s it.  (The internet was faster than a cookbook.)

I sautéed some chopped mushrooms in a little olive oil (because: why not?), added the diced giblets to reheat, added most of the stock and brought it to boil. I barely warmed the last quarter-cup of stock and put it into a Mason jar with a tablespoon of all-purpose flour, lidded the jar, and shook it ’til there were no lumps. I added the slurry to the saucepan and whisked.  And magic occurred.  Well, not magic, but gravy. Silky-looking chicken gravy.

In pajamas after her shower, she came to the kitchen to scramble the eggs that would accompany the grits she wanted for her late supper.

“You made gravy!”

I might have grinned a little. “Where would you like it?”

“Oh,” she said. “I was thinking over some of the roasted vegetables for lunch tomorrow.”

Well, of course.  Who puts gravy on scrambled eggs?

Actually, that sounded kind of wonderful.

I put a little egg-and-grits in a tiny bowl, spooned a little gravy over it, and took a taste. It wasn’t the umami-bomb of store-bought, but gentler—not too salty, studded with bits of mushroom and giblets and flecked with a little black pepper. It tasted like home.

I’ll probably screw up dinner again at some point, probably badly enough that we end up ordering pizza.  But tonight, there was gravy.  I’d like to think Mom and Grandma would be proud.  Or maybe they’d just shake their heads and say, “He had to look that up?”

Epilogue: “I don’t need anything for lunch,” she said this morning. “I’ve got things in the office fridge from yesterday.”

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Monkeying Around

Posted on August 27, 2014 by | 1 comment

On Sunday night, we completed the process of unpacking, sorting, and deciding which kitchen possessions to keep. Many hours after the work began, he held the last item in his hands, trying to decide which of two piles to place it in — those that definitely needed a home within the kitchen, and those that would be placed in a storage bin in the garage.

“How often do you actually use a Bundt pan?”

“Not all that often. I only know one recipe that requires it.”

“When’s the last time you made it?”

“Before I started dating the one who was allergic to butter, cream, and milk chocolate.”

He tossed the avocado-green aluminum pan onto the pile intended for storage and started rearranging mixing bowls, muffin tins, cooling racks, measuring cups, and saucepans, while I described this very simple, barely-home-made dessert. Before I was half-through, he had effortlessly convinced me to bake it for him this week, while vacation left plenty of time for peeling 48 pieces of individually wrapped candies.

He’ll be home from work shortly, and will find this cooling on the stove:

Pull Apart Monkey Bread

Pull-Apart Monkey Bread — a little drier than usual, since I skimped on the butter.

My Sister’s Pull-Apart Monkey Bread

  • 2 canisters of crescent roll dough
  • 48 pieces of chocolate candy (she insists on Hershey’s Kisses, I pick through whatever happens to be in the candy dish)
  • 1/2 cup of cinnamon sugar
  • 1/2 stick of butter, melted
  1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
  2. Grease a Bundt pan and set it aside.
  3. Open each can of dough and roll out the pieces. Seal the perforations by dampening your fingers and pressing them together. With a pizza cutter or other sharp, smooth blade, slice each can’s worth of dough into 24 square-ish pieces (3 slices lengthwise and 5 slices widthwise).
  4. Place a piece of candy in the middle of each square of dough, and wrap the dough to surround the candy. Toss each piece in the cinnamon sugar to coat it, then place it in the Bundt pan*. Repeat until all of the candy has been wrapped in dough.
  5. Pour the melted butter over the amassed dough balls, then bake in the oven for 25 to 30 minutes, until crispy and cooked through.
  6. Place a heat-safe plate over the top of the Bundt pan and invert the pan so that the collected nuggets of doughy goodness drop onto the plate; scrape any loose buttery-cinnamon-sugar sauce over the top. Serve warm.

* I like to place the cinnamon-sugar in a coffee mug; tossing a dough ball into the cup, covering the top with my palm, and swirling it on the counter effectively coats the dough while minimizing mess.

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When in Rome, Do as the Australians Do? Or is it the South Africans?

Posted on August 26, 2014 by | 1 comment

She and her dad left early for New York and a day of putting the City House back the way she had found it: white walls, empty rooms, and broom-clean floors. I left for a pre-work run, training for a 20K race next weekend. None of us had quite the day we expected. 

They couldn’t find parking. They needed more paint. The air conditioner wouldn’t come off its mounting. The landlord didn’t show up to collect the keys. There was a 75-minute wait to return equipment to the cable company.  One thing after another.

The complications of my day were fewer: I just got stung by a bee. On the roof of my mouth.  I mean, really. Who gets stung on the roof of the mouth? Pained but with no other symptoms, I made an appointment to see the doctor, finished my run, and went to the office. My doctor, a fellow runner, said I’d done the right thing; he prescribed ibuprofen, ice cubes, and a Benadryl at bedtime.

By the end of the day, nobody felt like cooking.  She likes the barbecue place not far from home, so I passed around the laptop–the 21st century version of a binder full of menus.  Her dad and I chose the pulled pork.  “Can I do something completely not authentic?” she asked. Reminded that she is an adult and fully capable of making her own choices, she opted for the penne pasta with vodka sauce and grilled chicken.  And a cheese quesadilla.

The girl ordered Italian and Mexican food.  From the barbecue place.

The hostess was terribly sorry that she couldn’t deliver the collard greens I’d hoped for as a side dish.  I was only sorry I couldn’t place her accent.  Australian?  South African? Second-year theatre student practicing her dialect-class homework?

The pulled pork was smoky and citrusy. The cornbread was moist and full of actual corn. The cole slaw wasn’t as good as the Colonel’s (or even the reverse-engineered version I make when there’s time), but it was fine. And, apparently, the penne and quesadilla were good, too. I’d ask, but she’s asleep on the couch.

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This Dinner Brought to You by iMessage

Posted on August 26, 2014 by | 1 comment

There are dinners you plan weeks in advance, snuggled on a sofa with cookbooks all around and steaming mugs of tea nearby.  (I’m pretty sure there are such dinners, anyway; the nearest we’ve had have been conversations about Christmas and Easter meals, although I don’t remember the steaming mugs of tea, and in our case “cookbooks all around” means searching on Epicurious.)

There are dinners you plan by opening the fridge and hoping not to find new cultures of penicillin.

Most days, dinner is somewhere in between.

On Monday morning, I received an iMessage:

Car unloaded.

(She had made a trip to the storage unit to retrieve some items from a “miscellaneous” box that should have come into the house.)

Also, dinner sourced.

Oh? I replied.

Tomato and mozzarella sandwiches on bagels. With whatever other veggies we have.

After a successful workday, several hours of unpack-and-sort (cleaning products, hats and gloves were the day’s projects), and guest-room-tidying in preparation for a visit from her dad, it was dinnertime.

Lightly toasted asiago bagels were spread with a molecule-thin layer of mayo, layered with thick slices of ridiculously good tomato from the CSA and dairy-fresh mozzarella cheese, sprinkled with salt and pepper, and a few fried basil leaves, and served open-faced alongside sautéed green beans.

It’s not the sort of thing I grew up eating. I didn’t like uncooked tomato until college, and the only cheese I knew was square, pre-sliced, and wrapped in plastic. It’s a fine and glorious thing to discover things you thought you didn’t like.

Tomato and cheese sandwiches. Who knew?

Yum.

* * *

(No photos last night, particularly not of the leftover burger I offered my breakfast-and-lunch-skipping dinner companion as a protein boost alongside the bagel. It was, as predicted, considerably past well-done. Instead, here’s one of the planned-well-in-advance boeuf bourginnone she prepared for Christmas dinner last year.)

Boeuf

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