A Finger in Every Pie

Farewell to the Cooking Elective

The semester draws to a close, and alas, so does our cooking elective.  It's been a real joy to work with this group of 9th and 10th graders -- and also a serious challenge.  There was so much that we couldn't do within the constraints of a half-hour class and no real kitchen.  People would ask what I did with them, and I would wryly reply that we "made a lot of salads", among other things.  Which is true.  But they've developed a taste for homemade salad dressing, at least -- as well as broadening a few horizons.   

Too often, our classes were based on my bringing them fruits and vegetables to taste and discuss, rather than doing any real cooking.   Or I'd bring in baked goods I'd made at home, and in lieu of actually cooking the treats with them, I'd simply give them samples, share the recipe, and we'd talk about food and nutrition.  They loved this, but I felt unsure as to how much they'd really learned over the course of the semester.  So I asked them.

"What did you learn in cooking this semester?" I said.  "We learned that organic food is much better for you than non-organic," said Amber.  "Why?"  I asked.  "Because it doesn't have pesticides and chemicals that go into your body and cause you diseases and problems later down the road in your life," Alyssa said. 

"Don't make things from boxes and mixes and frozen food and cans," Deisy said.  "Homemade food is much better for you, cheaper, and tastes WAY better."  "Yeah, food 'from scratch'," said Manny.  "That's the good stuff, the real stuff." 

"We learned that eating too much junk and fast food is really bad for your body and your health," Mirlenys said.  "You should eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, and not too many sweets and things with lots of fat." 

"Eat seasonal!"  Eddie said.  "What does that mean?" I asked them.  "Ummm...it means, like, no strawberries right now," Jocelyn said.  "Right," I said.  "What else?"  "You should try to eat what grows at that time of year, and maybe close by to you, not from far far away," Ashley answered. 

"Oh yeah, and colors," Amber said.  "What about them?" I asked.  "You can sometimes tell what vitamins you're getting by the colors of the food you eat."  "Give me an example," I said.  "Squash or carrots, yellow and orange vegetables, are good sources of vitamin A." 

I was pretty satisfied with this pop quiz.  But even better was what happened next.  We decided on a celebratory ending for our penultimate class, and went out to lunch together at a Japanese restaurant -- their choice.  I was quite proud that no-one wanted to go to McDonald's or other more familiar options, but that they all wanted to "try something new."  Some of them were familiar with sushi -- and Manny suggested that we "go to one of those places where the chefs do tricks."  Since hibachi cooking no longer enjoys the vogue it once had in NYC, our only option for that was Benihana, which fortunately offers lunch specials.  Otherwise it would have been too costly.   

Our kids are brave tasters.  I ordered sushi for the table.  Playing it safe, I went for California Rolls, but Samantha, a sushi veteran, ordered Spicy Tuna Rolls, which she passed around.  Everyone ate some -- and, for the most part, liked them too.  They were suprised by the kick of wasabi, and wrinkled their noses at the pickled ginger.   They liked the ginger dressing on their salads, however, and enjoyed trying the various dipping sauces made with miso and other unfamiliar ingredients.  I ordered them some tempura too, which was rapidly gobbled up by all.   

They loved the theatrical aspect of Benihana -- which are the same things that make me, of course, scoff and dismiss it as a tourist joint.  But it's actually perfect for adolescents -- and epecially for a cooking class, since they could watch the food being prepared.  We all sat around a big communal table, passing food around, sharing everything.  They adored it when the "chef" for our table tossed shrimp tails into his big red toque with the tip of his chopping knife.  They clapped when he made a smoking "volcano" out of onion rings, and laughed when he shaped the fried rice into a beating heart right on the grill. 

They liked their grilled hibachi entrees and their yakisoba, which was compared favorably to lo mein, as well.  There were no complaints about the food -- and it was truly a joy to take this group out to lunch.  Teachers spend so much of their time in school feeling despondent about students' bad manners and insulting behavior.  My cooking group really knows how to clean up their act, however.   Not only were they well-behaved and easy to be with in public, they were also clearly relaxed and having a good time. 

They wanted to chat about one of their current favorite topics:  my strange desire to have an un-wedding.  "I don't know about this cupcake idea of yours," Ashley said.  They had asked about my "wedding cake" -- they are all, of course, quite desperate to be invited to the "wedding", not quite getting that I'm going to be married privately and have a couple of low-key parties for family and friends. The idea of no poufy white dress, no ceremony, etc., dies much harder for them than it does for G and myself, fortunately.  I had shared with them that G and I were probably going to have the somewhat hackneyed but extremely economical tower of cupcakes at our family party, rather than a traditional wedding cake.  They had never heard of such a thing.   "No knife?" Manny said, pouting.  "No ceremonial cutting of the cake, and keeping the special knife?"  "Don't worry," I said.  "We can cut a cupcake, and feed that to each other."  "Mmmm," said Ashley, disapprovingly.  "I think you deserve all the good traditional stuff."  What I actually want doesn't seem to be an issue. 

So I will miss them -- and I daresay, they'll miss me too.  But not too much.  One of the joys of working in a small school is that I see kids, all the kids, every day in our common space/lunchroom and in the halls.  "Miss!" Eddie will cry, running after me as I'm on my way to a meeting.  "I made the cookies -- the ones you made for us last week."  "How did they turn out?" I'll ask.  "Mmmm," he'll say.  "Not so good.  I didn't have any chocolate chips in the house, and I baked them kind of a long time."  But someday his cookies and everything else will turn out well, because he's giving it a shot.  He's trying, experimenting, seeing what works, what you can leave out, what you can't, how long your particular oven takes for a certain recipe.  "Miss Julie!" Alyssa calls.  "I"m gonna make the pumpkin bread recipe you gave us next week, for a family party."  "Good!" I say.  "Let me know how the family likes it." 

"If you don't do cooking, what are you going to teach next semester?" Samantha asks.  "The principal has asked me to do a blogging elective," I reply.  "Do you want to take it?"  A large number of them nod "yes."  "Yeah," says Manny.  "Especially if you keep bringing us the treats you make at home." 

Be Still My Beating Heart

Lest you should think that all of my culinary headspace is now filled with visions of sliced apples in peanut dip, fruit salad, fruit smoothies (this week's classroom adventure; I'm bringing in the blender, lord help me), and whatever else I and my hungering students can manage to cook with no kitchen, no budget and no time,  let me hasten to assure that it is not so.  I have been cooking at home. 

Cooking quite a lot, as a matter of fact.  I wouldn't exactly say cooking with a vengeance, but there's just something about nascent fall weather, even when it's by turns humid and strange and rainy and brilliant.  It makes me want to cook.  Recently our kitchen has been graced with goodies such as chili-lime chicken, baked ziti, apple cobbler, buttermilk-brined pork chops, chicken with forty cloves of garlic (more like 60, really), orzo with peppers and cheese, chili-cheese meatloaf and fresh cornbread, apricot-almond coffee cake, braised lamb shanks with mashed potatoes, Coca-Cola ham and fresh corn pudding, chicken enchiladas, brownies, and cheesecake squares -- and lots of sliced tomatoes, vegetables and salads, too.  That's about the last three weeks' worth, since most cooking happens on weekends, while during the week we eat the pickings of our weekend meals.  And baked goods mainly get taken in to staff meetings or students.  Just so you shouldn't think we're big as houses, 'cause we're not.  Not yet, anyway.

I forewent making a Rosh Hashanah dinner for extended family this year, since the holiday didn't afford us a three-day weekend, and I generally need the extra lead time to shop, cook, and lug it all up to my dad's house.  But I did make plum cake today, just so that we'd have a sweet new year.  I often make the famous and much-published Marian Burros' plum torte, but I usually create variations.  Sometimes I add sour cream and lemon zest; a year or so ago I made something quite like it with nectarines and beurre noisette.  Today I wanted to add almond to the plum, so this year's variation has almond paste along with the beurre noisette.  Quite nice -- the marzipan flavor is perfect with the tangy plums.   Just follow the linked recipe above, but brown the butter first, and let it cool before blending with the other ingredients, and whiz 2 ounces of almond paste in the food processor to blend it with the sugar before creaming it with the butter and eggs.  Oh, and I added some Fiori di Sicilia along with the vanilla.  Lovely.

This weekend has also inspired me to make some other usual autumnal suspects: a huge vat of my mom's minestrone and two loaves of rice bread.  New to our dinner plates, inspired by a lovely crop of party-colored peppers, was a batch of stuffed peppers.  They were made with ground lamb, basmati rice, fresh herbs and lots of cumin and garlic and tomato.  G's comment when he saw the tomato-drenched meat-filled heart-shaped peppers inspired the title of this post.   But they did taste mighty good, and will provide us with a few more meals during what promises to be a very hectic week.

The cooking itself isn't new to me, of course.  I almost always cook on the weekend, making meals for the week to come.  What's different now is that somehow the kids in my cooking elective are always on my mind.  "Would they like this?"  I think to myself.  "Would  they even try it?"  And I wish for a kitchen at school, and a class more than half an hour long and with sufficient prep time to make something more complex than fruit salad.  What I find is that everything we make proves a revelation in some way, no matter how simple.  Take the fruit salad.  We made and ate it on Wednesday and had a little chat on Thursday about making appetizing-looking food.  It had never occured to me that if four different groups cut up fruit, all the pieces would be different sizes and it would all look, well, kind of unappetizing.  The mangoes were in tiny dice and the nectarines were big ol' chunks.   It was all good enough and was eaten down to the last scrap. But for me, the best part of the experience was the raspberries.  None of them had ever tasted a fresh raspberry, so instead of putting them in the salad we ate them, one by one.  "They're fuzzy," Rodney said.  "Tart!" exclaimed Rashida, sucking in her cheeks.  "But I like it."  I can't describe to you the sheer pleasure of providing kids with experiences they've never had -- even something as tiny as a raspberry.

Tomorrow we'll devise our own smoothie recipes, given a list of ingredients (based on the fruit, juice and yogurt I already purchased this weekend).  Tuesday I'll bring in the blender, and let's just hope the walls are not Jackson Pollacked with smoothie ingredients by the time we're finished.  The smoothies, like everything we've made so far, will come with their very own hidden agenda.  Our students are always complaining that they're hungry in the morning and that they didn't have time to eat breakfast.  If even a few of them decide that this is a worthwhile effort, they'll have one more quick breakfast option.  They all like fruit, and several of them are pretty fond of yogurt too, so I'm hoping this will be a keeper -- despite the fact that when I said "smoothie" last week, several of them asked if we could make "chocolate smoothies".   They also commented that the fruit salad would have been REALLY good with whipped cream and chocolate sauce(!)  I've been visited with the teachers'/mothers' sacred curse: "You should grow up to have children just like you."  They want chocolate on everything;  they couldn't be more my children if I'd given birth to them.   Of course, I've promised myself that this wouldn't become a blog about my cooking class at school.  Hmmm.  I'm wishing myself good luck with that promise.  Be still my beating heart.

Later this week I'm off to Missoula, Montana for a work task sponsored by the national office of my organization.  I have a great opportunity to work with a brilliant Native American activist to frame a workshop for a national conference in November.  What's especially good to eat in Montana this time of year?

Meme: You Are What You Eat

Once again, I find myself in the special self-flagellating bloggers' hell of mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I don't have any particularly interesting excuses for almost three weeks (!) with no new post -- just the mundane stresses of combined family and work crises.  This post has been in the works for a while, and although I do have other subjects I've been dreaming of, this will do to ease my passage back into the blogosphere.

BNA of the delightful blog Peanut Butter and Purple Onions has tagged me for the You Are What You Eat meme (which was started by Ruth of Once Upon A Feast).  The rules are simple -- it's just a matter of listing ten favorite foods.  While still not enough for a confirmed food lover, ten is a great relief.  It's just so difficult when someone tags you for one of those "three foods you'd take to a desert island" memes.  That's too difficult for me.  I know myself, you see.  I like variety a lot, and would become extremely tired of three foods.  This would hasten my desert-island demise in an untimely fashion by causing me to throw myself off one of the proverbial island's cliffs due to culinary boredom.  Here are my 10, with which I took a fair number of liberties.  They're not consistent -- some of them are raw ingredients, some of them categories of food, some of them preparations.   

1.  If I am what I eat, that apparently makes me a sweet little baby lamb, since that is perhaps my favorite of all meats.   Ever since the advent of possible mad cow, G and I (confirmed omnivores both) have limited our beef intake to organic cuts, which are rather pricey.  So we eat less beef, and more poultry, fish, pork and most especially, more lamb.  We love lamb chops, rubbed with garlic and thyme and rosemary, grilled to crisp succulence outside and juicy pinkness within.  Moroccan-style leg of lamb (rubbed with a paste of fresh cilantro, garlic and ras-el-hanout) is another favorite.  Tagines and stews made with shoulder and stewing cuts are always good, as is the wonderful, rich and nourishing lamb soup harira, created to break fast during the month of Ramadan.  We're fond of highly seasoned, slow-cooked lamb shanks too.  Ground lamb often finds its way onto our menu in the form of kofte kebabs, Indian-style keema with green peas, or as a delectable cumin-spiced pasta sauce, topped with toasted pine nuts.  Almost anything made with lamb (and other meats for that matter) benefits from a rub or a sprinkle of Penzey's Turkish Seasoning. 

2.  I hardly think that I would be at all unusual in adding chocolate, particularly dark chocolate, especially very dark chocolate to the list of can't-do-without-it foods.  My chocolate mania is not quite as pronounced as it was in childhood, when forces beyond my control (known as my family) conspired to restrict my chocolate intake.  Since becoming an adult, I've even been known to choose a non-chocolate dessert in a restaurant on occasion -- especially since I know there's chocolate at home if I start jonesing later.  Yes, there's chocolate in the house.  Like my favorite cousin, I always have a stash somewhere -- if I'm lucky, something delectable from La Maison du Chocolat or Jacques Torres.   After all, one never knows when disaster may strike, and it's wise to be prepared.

3.  Bread/Toast might just be my favorite comfort food.  I've already talked about my late-night toast habit here.  We're also very fond of pasta, rice, and potatoes.  As a matter of fact, I hate to think of the ensuing mayhem if either of us were told to go on a low-carb diet.  But back to the subject at hand.  Toast (and even many kinds of untoasted bread) can provide contrasts of soft pillowy crumb and crunchy or chewy crust, a variety of grainy or other flavors or just a simple wheatiness.  And as we know, it's the perfect vehicle for my next favorite food,

4.  butter.  What is better than butter?  Let's not pretend.  You know you love it too.  I sometimes wonder if I'm actually French and was accidentally switched into my family at birth, since the French in general are known to recoil in horror if they spy margarine in someone's refrigerator -- exactly how I feel.  I am often guilty of having three different kinds of butter in the house at any given time:  stick butter for baking, whipped butter for easy spreading, and French butter for pure gluttony.  I'm also extremely fond of butter's sensual parent cream, which has a permanent place in my fridge along with its cousins creme fraiche and sour cream.   

5.  Despite the seeming richness of our diet, we do love our greens.  Salads with a good homemade vinaigrette, spinach, green beans, zucchini, broccoli and green vegetables of all kinds are very popular with both of us.  A perennial favorite is broccoli rabe, lightly steamed and then sauteed in good olive oil with copious amounts of garlic and crushed red pepper.

6.  If it weren't for our mutual love of soups and stews, we might never make it through the work week.  During cold weather, I generally cook either a large pot of soup, stew or chili over the weekend, and we then have it a few more times during the week.  On a night when I come home late and tired from teaching my grad seminar or other evening commitments, we put the already-made soup on to heat and get out our big sturdy white soup bowls with great anticipation.  There's little that either of us find more satisfying than a meal in a bowl.

7.  G's not as much of a fan, but I truly love all varieties of fruit.  He's basically loyal to apples, with some fondness for pears as well.  I, however, flirt with seasonal fruit, adoring the ripe spill of berries and lusciously runny stone fruits and melons in summer, snapping apples and melting pears in autumn, and the acid tang of many kinds of citrus throughout the winter.  My lunch bag includes at least one piece of fruit each day -- right now clementines are much in favor.   I also love baked fruit, dried fruit, fruit sauces and preserves, and including fruit in baked goods -- sour cherry streusel cake, apple muffins, pies, fruit tarts, all of which bring me to my next category,

8.   pastries.  Back to the rich stuff.  I love to make, buy and eat pastry and baked goods of all kinds.  It's virtually impossible for me to pass a bakery that has anything remotely interesting in the window, unless I've just eaten a very full meal.  My saving grace is that although I'm greedy, I actually have a rather small capacity and don't eat large quantities of anything.  I go through phases in baking.  For a while I was doing a series of streusel-topped coffee cakes filled with everything from raspberries to dark chocolate and toffee.  Then I had a sticky-bun/schnecken phase, when I made apricot schnecken and sour cherry-walnut sticky buns and luscious pecan currant rolls.  I'm looking forward to making a classical rich chocolate cake for my cousin's Christmas Eve party, by request (I'm not the only chocolate and pastry-lover in the family, obviously).  And Molly's scone recipe looks like a must-try to me.

9.  The cheese category is at least as much for G as it is for me.  There are few dishes that include cheese that are not a friend to my life-partner.  It's a rare trip to G's folks inVermont that doesn't see us home with anywhere between 6 and 10 pounds of good aged cheddar.  I tend to like imported and/or smelly cheeses more than he does, but both of us can easily make a meal of good cheese and bread (with a piece of fruit for me). 

10.  I know I already mentioned baked goods, but I feel that cookies deserve a mention all their own.  Whether they're Mallomars from a box, Sarah Bernhardts from a now non-existent bakery or my own pecan sand-tarts or oatmeal, triple-ginger or chocolate mint or espresso shortbread, cookies are always a friend in a time of need.   I've made eleven kinds this holiday season, most of which will be given as gifts, brought to work and to parties.  More on the delights of cookies later.

I'm going to tag the lovely ZarahMaria of Food and Thoughts, a wonderful blog by a wonderful blogging buddy who, incidentally, was one of those who encouraged me to start this blog.  She's been on hiatus even longer than I, so perhaps a meme will be an inducement to her as well...

In Defense of Maligned Vegetables: Velvet Cauliflower-Leek Soup

Who determines, and for what strange reason, the social status of a vegetable?
        -- M.F.K. Fisher

So begins the section entitled "Selected Vegetable History" in the back of Claudia Manz's darling chapbook of vegetable poems, "The Last One Eaten: A Maligned Vegetable History".  Imagine my surprise when about a month ago, I received an email from a blog reader in Colorado, requesting my address so that she could mail me a copy of her book.  And then (having forgotten about it and certainly forgotten that I sent her my work address)  imagine my further surprise upon receiving this dear gift in my mailbox at work, no less. 

In addition, I received a beautiful letter from the author, which I won't share with you since she says too many nice things about this blog and I'm going to struggle against shameless self-promotion, at least here at home.  Suffice it to say that she mentions apricot curd, ratatouille and roast cauliflower.  This delightful person is not only a poet, but also cooks for people recovering from illness or chemotherapy.  Hence her use of many vegetables (all those yummy anti-oxidants).  It seems Claudia's friends and acquaintances have at times turned up their noses at her concotions of roots, tubers, seedpods, fungi, and our friends the sweetly cruciferous flowers, so she penned these verses in defense of her vegetable loves.  I'm sure her cuisine serves the same purpose, since she speaks in her letter of having both her culinary clients and friends at dinner parties come to the realization that they actually like vegetables. 

Although G is one of those who has a fair list of vegetable loathes (onions, avocado, eggplant, mushrooms, olives, beets), fortunately there are also many that he does love -- and some that he has been persuaded to like.  Strong in the first category is cauliflower, and a front-runner in the second would be leeks, both of which composed the backbone of yesterday's soup.  So here is a new recipe:  Velvet Caulflower-Leek Soup.  Claudia, this one's for you. 

Velvet Cauliflower-Leek Soup

1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 Tbsp. butter
2 large leeks, washed, trimmed and thinly sliced
4 shallots, finely chopped
2 medium potatoes, peeled and sliced
1 large head of cauliflower, cleaned and broken into small florets
2 cups milk
3-4 cups water
1 tsp. cumin
1/2 tsp. smoked paprika
1/4 - 1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
1 tsp. dried dill weed (or fresh dill, should you happen to have some)
grating of fresh nutmeg
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 - 1 cup heavy cream (optional, or may be replaced with light cream or half-and-half)
Snipped fresh dill for garnish

Heat the olive oil and butter in a large soup pot, and saute the leeks and shallots until tender and translucent.  Add the potatoes and cauliflower, cumin, paprika, and cayenne, and let everything fry up gently for a couple of minutes.  Pour the milk into the pot with the vegetables, and add just enough water to barely cover everything.  Add the dill, and cook until everything is quite tender, about 15 minutes.  Grate in some fresh nutmeg.  Puree about half of the soup in the blender.  This puree will have a perfect, velvety texture.  You could puree all of it, if you wish, but I like both a creamy and chunky texture, so I puree half of it and mix it through the remaining chunky soup.  If you have fresh dill, you can toss some more in the blender at the end of pureeing, and just pulse it through till finely chopped.  At this point you can add cream if you wish.  Cream is certainly very luxurious and delicious, and even though we used it, I'm sure it's not absolutely necessary; the soup is pretty creamy and rich-tasting on its own.  If you do add the cream, wait until it's mixed through to adjust seasoning before serving. 

This is especially delicious with homemade parmesan cheese croutons.  And a grilled cheese sandwich alongside wouldn't go amiss either. 

Start Spreading the News

I don't mean nothin' by it, but did you notice that all three winners of Moira's Comfort Me contest are New Yorkers?  The lovely borough of Queens carried the event, with both Bakerina's Grand Prize and  Dawn's Third Prize win.  But I'm here to tell you how proud I am to have placed at all among such fine entries -- and to represent for Manhattan and especially Spanish Harlem with Second Prize.  This definitely puts springtime's spring into my step. 

Of course, the regional thing is a mere coincidence -- or else it just signifies that we New Yorkers are in greater need of comfort than anyone else.  That would be part and parcel of living in the City of Undue Stress, a place where everyone is always busier than everyone else if they can possibly help it.  Some of us, however, have decided that we're not too busy to cook, eat, remember, seek comfort or give comfort -- and we'll even make time to blog about it.  Many, many thanks go out to charming hostess Moira of the delectable blog  Who Wants Seconds?  I had a great time writing my entry and reading everyone else's.  I know that sometime in the near future I'm going to want to make a gravy like Dawn's, give Nupur's Khichi-Khadi a try, and cover some meat-loaf with a luscious mashed potato crust a la Dr. Biggles.  And a cheese and mustard sandwich Bakerina-style is certainly in my future.

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

As part of the birthdays-that-go-on-without-end celebrations, I took my brother out for his (January!) birthday last week.   You'll remember that I made him a duly documented birthday dinner early in the life of this blog, but I hadn't yet fulfilled our ritual in which we take each other out solo, no others, for our birthdays.  In recent years, rules have been relaxed enough that we occasionally allowed significant others to join us...for dessert. 

This year we went to Chinatown, first to the eponymous Fried Dumpling for what I have to say I think are NYC's best all-time dumplings.  This hole-in-the-wall on Mosco Street was made famous by Calvin Trillin in his book Feeding a Yen.  It's one of the best quick meal/snacks you can get in these parts:  5 perfect, freshly made dumplings (and the women behind the counter are making them even as we speak), meaty and bright with scallions, fried crisp on the outside and eaten while walking around Chinatown or standing at the counter with vinegar or hot sauce for yes, ladies and gentleman, a dollar.  One dollar.  And you can buy a big gigantic bag of them for 5 dollars and put them in your freezer and fry them up yourselves, which I pretty much always do when I go there.   

So even though we knew we were going up the block for duck, rather than pay 5.95 for an order of mediocre dumplings anyplace else in Chinatown, we decided to do the two-stop dinner, and have a stand-up appetizer course at Fried Dumpling, and then go sit like a proper lady and gentleman with tablecloths and all at Peking Duck on Mott Street, a very civilized experience...where your duck is roasted complete, head and all, and then expertly sliced by a guy in the tallest chef's hat I've ever seen.  I know that my vegetarian friends and readers are very grateful that I didn't take pictures. 

I almost had a disaster on the way to meet my brother.  I was carrying all the things you see in the above picture plus some other things as well, wrapped up and in two shopping bags.  And as I crossed Lafayette Street at Canal, one of the shopping bags burst and all the food items, in their lovely glass bottles and jars, fell into the street, just as the light changed and the traffic roared toward me.   Some force of nature took me over and I simply stayed in the street, collecting my items which were miraculously unbroken, stuffing them in my purse and the other shopping bag, accepting the help of a good samaritan who came back across the street to help me.  I made it to Mosco Street and we went and found another shopping bag at a souvenir shop to relieve our troubles. 

I had decided that G and I would give my brother, who is a wonderful cook in his own right, some of my favorite food-related things.  After our dinner, we went back to his apartment where he opened his sack of booty amid exclamations of delight.  First there were books -- the wonderful Toast, by Nigel Slater -- a read that pulls at the heartstrings and also makes you nod with your own reminiscences.  In addition, two of Jeffrey Steingarten's: The Man Who Ate Everything and its sequel, It Must Have Been Something I Ate.  These are uproariously funny as well as frighteningly obssessive -- and they have some pretty great-sounding recipes for those who are willing to be as meticulous as Steingarten.  Then came kitchen tools.  My brother had let it slip that he actually doesn't own a Microplane grater, which I found a shocking and saddening state of affairs for someone who actually does cook dinner at least a couple of times a week.  I found him one of the ones that has interchangeable blades, which I own and love.  On my excursions in the world, I kept coming across "favorite things" -- a tiny Microplane clone for grating spices (says it grates cinnamon as well as nutmeg -- gotta try this), one of those rubbery tubes (green in the picture above) for peeling garlic (it's amazing), little muslin spice sacks for bouquet garni, and my favorite "spoonulas", spoon-shaped rubber spatulas for scraping every last bit out of the bowl.  And finally there were the lovely food items, so recently saved from the onslaught of Chinatown traffic (we also had a couple of CDs of music that I often listen to while cooking -- but since I never fulfilled my "Music for my Kitchen" tag I won't go into that here...)  Maldon salt, of course -- is it true that this salt is lower in sodium?  or maybe it's just more flavorful and so you need less?  Anyone know?  Please share your knowledge with us.  And another salt -- this delightful Provençal herb salt from a company called Solleilou (no link, sorry).  I picked it up at Fairway on a whim, and it's now become one of those seasonings that I throw into many, many dishes.  There was a tin of my favorite Bed of Roses Middle-Eastern-inspired spice rub; a beautiful square, corked jar of smoked Spanish paprika, a bottle of Chipotle Tabasco sauce (I can only say yum), and one of my current loves, Cuisine Perel's Blood Orange Vinegar.  The vinegar was the only thing to suffer in the crash -- and its only damage was the cap, which got cracked.  No matter.  This stuff is so incredibly delicious.  You know that trick of sprinkling a little balsamic on strawberries?  Try this divine elixir -- on berries, mangoes, pretty much any fresh fruit.  Unbelievable.  It also makes for a luscious roast chicken marinade, great sparkly salad dressing and it's not bad on fish, either.  I think summer is going to find many fruity dessert uses for it, however. 

So that ends this little interlude.  But the birthdays-without-end debacle is not yet at an end, as next week, brother-about-town and I hotfoot it over to the Modern Bar for dinner.   Not to worry, I'll tell you all about it.   

Up and Coming to a Blog Near You!

Whereas I notice that other bloggers sometimes take the weekend off, that's often my best time for posting.  During the week can be a bit difficult, what with the day and evening jobs and all.   I'm still finding my way with this baby blog;  I suppose it takes time to slip into the perfect blogging rhythm.

I'm going to have to figure out some time management, as there'll be good bit to post about in the next couple of weeks.  I've been dying to write about one or several of Danny Meyer's beautiful NYC restaurants, since I love them all -- and tomorrow night I'll be out with some wild women at one of my great favorites, the Bread Bar at Tabla, in honor of my friend the lovely Marcela's birthday.  Then my debonair brother-about-town and I have a couple of eating excursions planned.  The-birthday-celebrations-which-never-end are going to necessitate a trip to Chinatown and a visit to the Modern, Danny Meyer's newest creation. 

And then of course there are the cross-blog events.  Debbie from Words to Eat By is hosting Sugar High Friday #6, "Stuck on You", with the enticing theme of Caramel.  Entries are to be posted on Friday, March 18th.  Shortly thereafter, on or before March 21st,  entries for Moira's Comfort Me Competition (details to be found at Who Wants Seconds?) will be posted on participating blogs.  Directly on the heels of these two thrilling events is Is My Blog Burning? #13, entitled My Little Cupcake (or muffin), hosted by Maki at I was just really very hungry.   I think it's reasonable to expect that there will be a plethora of all kinds of lovely little cakes on our fave blogs on or around March 24th.    Sounds like there's going to be lots to cook, eat, and read in our food-blogging futures.  Stay tuned.