A Finger in Every Pie

Mostly Martha and Mac 'n' Cheese: It's A Good Thing

As anyone who is a regular consumer of available news media is doubtless aware, there was a bit of confusion over just when Martha Stewart was actually going to be sprung.  By the time you read this, it will have happened.   We were told it would be sometime this week, but there was some obfuscation over the exact date and time.  My own experience (and no, I haven't yet had any long-term incarceration at Rikers, just that one civil-disobedience rap, your honor) stems from having known someone who was released from prison a while ago.  The authorities kept changing the date of the release.   I think they do that either to throw the press off the scent, or maybe to keep the rest of the institution's population quiet.   

Think about it.  If there's this much furor among those of us on the outside, can you imagine what's happening with the inmates of Alderson?  They must be in an uproar.  Martha's leaving? Who's going to make them crab-apple jelly from fruit stolen on a grounds walk?  Who's going to up their vegetable intake with wild dandelion greens?  Who'll teach morning yoga class, and help them with decorative stencils for their cells?  Okay, the other stuff is more or less true (or at least reported in the press) but I made up the part about the stencils.  I couldn't resist.  Long before her current period of infamy, Martha was an easy target for domestic humor.   In the past she has occasionally appeared to be angered by that.  She's mellowed, though, apparently, and perhaps developed a better sense of humor about herself.  I'm sure she's well aware of being the probable subject of even more ragging and roasting upon her release. 

Whatever I personally may think of her crimes (and I do think harshly of them; I'm not a fan of insider trading), I must say that I have long thought her punishment absolutely ridiculous.  Why incarcerate this woman at the taxpayers' expense?  Here's a person who's not an immediate danger to society (unless the population at large takes to eating the macaroni and cheese referenced below at frequent intervals, since if they do so they will collapse from carb/dairy/fat overdose).  I also didn't think it likely that she would be "rehabilitated" by a prison stay.  If any rehabilitation were to occur, it would more likely be the result of the sheer humiliation of exposure and bad publicity.  I had a completely different plan for Martha. 

As an education consultant I'm exposed to the evils of public school food on a daily basis.  I'm not going to terrorize you with graphic details of the aromas that emanate from school kitchens, the sad evidence on children's lunch trays, the dreadful waste of it all.  But I will say that it's not a good situation.  The food is at best indifferent, at worst quite inedible and sometimes spoiled, often cold, and dreadfully lacking in dietary balance and fresh produce.   And it is a simply awful reality that there are many, many children, at least in New York City, for whom the school lunch is their one shot at a real meal during the day.  Given all this, I came up with my Martha scheme.  Why not give Martha a community service term instead of a prison sentence?  Harness all her brilliant organizational and considerable culinary talents, and put her in charge of the NYC public school lunch program!  Let her contribute something to a service infrastructure instead of being a financial burden on the public.  I'd be willing to wager that she would have whipped that system into shape in no time.   I'm not saying she would have become Alice Waters or even Jamie Oliver, but she could have been Martha, doing something good for the undernourished bodies and spirits of schoolkids. 

But I was not consulted when Martha's sentencing came due.  It was probably just an oversight.  In spite of that, she's apparently made good use of her time in the clink.  She does indeed have a couple of sweet deals pending her release, and there'll be no lack of work for her.  Not for Martha the depressing case of the released inmate who faces poor odds in the search for a decent and sustaining job.  However, Martha has apparently been sensitized to the plight of prison inmates, and is going to use her celebrity to champion their cause.  If, despite her different social class and situation in life, she doesn't cut,  run and turn her back on her recent mates, perhaps prison's actually been something of a transformational experience.  I still think my plan was the better one, however. 

I've never been much of a Martha fan.  To say the least, my domestic style is pitiably lacking in Martha-ness, and I don't even own a hot-glue gun.  The girl does have some serious recipes though, and a goodly number of them are right out there for no charge on her website  --  a refreshing difference from those pricey subscription recipe sites.  So, in honor of her imminent freedom, I want to share with you my own favorite recipe from the domestic-diva-turned-jailbird. 

I know you can't really tell what this is.  I'm still photographically challenged, especially when I don't notice that my own big head is getting in my light.   But it's an extra-large pan of Mac 'n' Cheese -- Martha's "Perfect" Macaroni and Cheese, to be exact.  Here in celebration of the very idea of "release" is G's and my all-time favorite dish of creamy, starchy, cheesy, crumby, crunchy comfort food.   It's basically a high-carb, high-fat (albeit also high-protein) coronary-on-a-plate, containing butter, whole milk (you could modify it I guess), and lots and lots of cheese in the sauce (I often use a mix of various types). Then there's a layer of MORE cheese on top of the mac 'n' sauce, and then a thick overcoat of fresh breadcrumbs tossed in butter.  This provides excellent browning and serious crunch factor enhancement.  It makes enough for 12 people, so you can cut this recipe in half if you wish.  I never do.  I make the whole gigantic panful for our household of two, and we chow it down blissfully over a period of several days as dinner's main course with a salad, as a side to other mains, and for lunch.  I also freeze lunch containers and take it to work.  I like to side it with sauteed spinach, which gives a good, green-leafy counterpoint to all that creaminess. 

So whether you love her or hate her, raise a fork to Martha, and let's hope that she'll donate some of her well and/or ill-gotten gains and her considerable talent and energy to help those less fortunate, whether in prisons or schools.  As she herself might say, it would be a good thing. 

EoMEoTE#4: Dilled Egg Salad on Prosciutto Bread

I simply have to start working days with a high protein breakfast -- usually an on-the-run sandwich of some kind.  Often it's eggs.  But sometimes I tire of scrambled, omelet, over-easy...and that's when I turn to egg salad.  Yes, egg salad for breakfast.  Or sometimes for lunch.   It's delicious, fast and makes a sort of cool refreshing change from a hot egg sandwich -- and it feels almost spring-like at this time of year.  So here's my entry for End of the Month Egg on Toast Extravaganza #4  -- the brainchild of  witty bloggers Jeanne at Cook Sister! and Anthony at Spiceblog.

The other day (shortly after the crack of dawn when we educatrix-types have to get up) I realized that I had both some lovely dilled egg salad in the fridge and a beautiful loaf of prosciutto bread from Morrone's.   I threw together this little creation, snapped a sadly lacking photo, wrapped it up, grabbed the coffee thermos and ran to work.   You can't really see the quantities of finely snipped dill with which the egg salad is laced, although the camera seems to have caught the generous covering of freshly ground pepper. The sweet little morsels of prosciutto that are snuggled into the toasted hunk of bread are also not apparent.  But they were there.  And they were good.

Dilled Egg Salad

Egg salad is really a matter of taste.  It's great with chopped scallions or finely minced red onion, but when I'm making it as breakfast option, I don't always put those in.  Ditto mustard -- if it's for later in the day, I like a little spoonful of good Dijon in there.  I actually like it with everything at almost any time -- I'm just conscious of trying not to offend my workmates too early in the day.  I save that for when we're all more alert, and can enjoy it better.   I also skip celery in this, although I love it, because I find that it makes the egg salad too watery and my sandwich gets soggy. 

Once you've chopped the eggs, everything else depends on your preferences.   Here are approximations for the way I like it:

4 hard-cooked eggs
4 tablespoons of mayonnaise (and/or sour cream, crème fraîche, yogurt)
2 tablespoons finely snipped dill
juice of 1/4 lemon
salt and pepper to taste

Chop the eggs finely -- a pastry blender is a great quick tool for this.  Mix everything else in, and taste.   Does it need more lemon or salt?  Should it be creamier, pepperier, dillier? Adjust to your liking, and chill.  Make some delicious sandwiches on your favorite bread -- pumpernickel and toasted whole-grain also work really well here.  Eat in a leisurely fashion, or wrap and run. 

Sunday Sampler

I had a pretty busy time in the kitchen yesterday.   We were going to an Oscar party, and I had promised to bring desserts.  Upon finding out that I had said we would attend, G's comment was a simple and succinct "please kill me now." He's not big on socializing in general, and if the truth be known, he loathes the Oscars -- this in spite of  (or perhaps because of) being rather a film aficionado (he'd hate it that I called him that.  But I can't think how else to describe it.  Film buff?  No, that sounds even worse.  Please don't tell him I called him any of these things).  Back to the subject at hand: cuisine.  I woke up early and began baking.

First I made the gorgeous Trianon Cake that Bakerina posted a while ago.  I've been craving the very idea of it, and promised myself that it was next on my "to-bake" list.  Yes, you're right.  Your eyes don't deceive you.  There are two cakes in that picture.  Okay, okay, I made two, figuring I'd take some to the party and then we could still have some at home for our mean selfish selves.  Always a good plan when baking. 

Then I moved on to Pineapple Upside-Down Cake by request of my hostess, Marcela, who refers to Upside-Down Cake as "Bend-Over Cake".  It's a translation thing, I think.  But it's a name that could catch on.   I used fresh pineapple and dark Muscovado sugar for the topping; otherwise it was pretty standard stuff.  Emily over at Baking Beast posted a good recipe.  I thought maybe the fresh pineapple made the whole thing a bit damper than I would have liked, but it seems to have been a great success, judging by the howls of joy which accompanied its consumption.

As I was doing all this baking, it occurred to me that in addition to ensuring everyone else's sugar coma for Oscar night, I might also make some non-dessert food for us to have in the house during the coming week.  Especially since we're expecting a house guest.  So I made what I always make when I need a fall-back -- a soup.  I can once again sing my song about the virtues of soup, but I'll give it a rest and just say that it's a great thing to make when you don't know if and when you'll be home for dinner.   That's because if you are home, then you've got a no-brainer meal with some good bread and cheese, maybe a salad.  And if you're not going to be home, you can stick it in the freezer in assorted size handy-dandy containers. 

This is a soup I haven't made in quite a while, but I recalled loving it and so decided to give it a re-visit:  Yellow Pepper and White Bean Soup with Sage.  It's a beautiful yet simple soup based on the classic Tuscan flavors for white beans -- garlic and sage.   The recipe is from Sally Schneider's delightful book The Art of Low-Calorie Cooking.  This was the first cookbook I ever bought that had literally mouth-watering photos.  That in itself was a revelation -- and then there was the fact that I wanted to try almost everything in the book -- not my usual reaction to anything billed "low calorie". 

Finally, I made a pecan pie -- also  for the Oscar party, also by request.  The wonderful thing about a pecan pie is that most people adore it, and can't believe that you actually made it.  And no matter how many times you explain that it takes about five minutes to assemble if you use a nice, high-quality pre-made crust, they still behave as if it's an act of genius.  And you are not merely the genius that committed the act of piemaking, but also incredibly kind and altruistic to have brought them said pie.   So I just go with it.  Unfortunately, this time I heard the timer go off, told myself I'd go check the pie in a minute, got distracted and forgot about it.  Luckily it didn't burn, but it turned very dark brown and very, well, crisp on top.  No matter.  Despite my apologies, I heard no complaints.

So we went off to the party, shopping bags in hand.  We had delicious Argentine food prepared by Marcela and her family members.  And the awards turned out fine.  The dinner awards, anyway.  The desserts were voted in by popular acclaim, if not by the Academy.  But the real contender was Marcela's Aunt Graciela.  As far as I'm concerned, she was definitely the winner in the category of Best Empanadas in a Starring Role.