Living in Lucite Land

The sun came out yesterday and made the whole world look like it had been dipped in Lucite. It is blindingly bright and beautiful--even mundane maple seeds look incredible when encased in ice. The more poetic among you might have thought glass, or crystal, but having been raised in the 70s when Lucite was cool, that's what comes to my mind. For those of you who can't get enough of the beauty of the ice, there are a ton of images on Flickr that capture the magic: I like this one, and this one, and this one in particular.

What to do when your world is encased in ice? Well it helps to hunker down in a comfortable chair with a cup of spicy hot chocolate and grade a pile of these babies:

It's composition grading time again!

and then when your brain starts to fog over, why not read a chapter or two of this?

Oooo--the ServSafe coursebook! The English Major in me is offended by the spelling of the title...

This semester I'm taking a Sanitation and Hygiene class out at WCC. The point of this class is to teach you not to poison anyone for whom you plan to cook. Do I all of a sudden have a great interest in bacteria and food poisoning? Nope. But I really want to take some of the cooking classes offered at WCC and this is the prerequisite. Last fall I received an e-mail from Zingerman's Bakehouse about the classes they are now offering which sounded like a lot of fun. I looked into it, passed out from the price (average class is $100 for 4 hours, though some cost more, some less), and realized it was out of my budget. Then someone on the Annarborfood yahoo e-mail group to which I belong tipped me off to the best deal around when it comes to cooking classes. The former manager of the Bakehouse, Carol Deinzer, is now a Professor in the Culinary Arts department at WCC. Her 3 credit hour Baking I or Pastry I classes meet for 10 hour per week for seven and a half weeks (half a semester). That's 75 hours of instruction for $213 (plus textbook costs). Now that is a good deal (and within my budget).

So this semester I'm back in the classroom one evening a week learning how disgusting my kitchen is since I am nowhere near keeping my facilities at a "food safe" level of operation!

"A valedictory chorus to our childhood..."

The title of this post is a quotation from the last page of a novel I just finished. If you told me that a book was "a valedictory chorus to our childhood" my first reaction would be to assume it was pretty nauseating. Usually, when I think back to being a teenager, the dominant emotion I feel is relief that I got through it, a "God that was hell, I never want to go back" rush of thought. Most of my friends today were not the kids in high school for whom those were the "best years of their lives". More of us were geeks and theater or orchestra nerds, the kids who made it through and are most likely much happier today than we were back then.

But then, I have a peculiar memory which, unfortunately, has the ability to render in great detail moments from the past of great unpleasantness. When it comes to good memories, perhaps because they are less dramatic, my brain seems to let them go much too easily. For the last 7 years I have been (thankfully) married to a guy with a remarkable memory who can help me reconnect with good/funny/loving moments from the past. But I met him a little late--there were a good 29 years before Brian during which I know good things happened but which I only sometimes vaguely remember. A photo album can help release some of those memories from the gray matter, but only to a point.

It is an unusual feeling to read someone else's words, and fictional words no less, and feel like you have been reconnected to your own memory. But Lorrie Moore's Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? has done just that and for the past week or so, I've been experiencing rushes of memories of what was also wonderful about being a teenager. I drove past (the now-toxic-from-the-dioxin-plume) First Sister Lake over by Dolph Park and WHAM I had a memory of walking down there on a warm Spring night when I was 16 with my first boyfriend. I remember the frogs peeping, I remember the purple skirt I was wearing, I remember the smell and softness of the air. Nothing dramatic, no eventful happening, just a really nice moment from my past, and something that until I finished this book, I hadn't been able to access.

I read this book before, a few years ago, and liked it enough to put it on my recommended books list. But this re-reading was such an unexpectedly rich experience and it emphasizes in my mind why I re-read books. This time I wasn't reading for plot and so I was able to notice other things. I could focus on how perfectly the intensity of friendship between Berie and Sils is rendered. I was able to see how Moore does something in this book that I think is extremely difficult--she doesn't gloss or romanticize youth; she shows how hard and tedious and complicated and messy it is to grow up. But she also captures the energy and excitement and the bursting feeling of potential from that time.

Here is a statement from the adult Berie that says it so well:
"I longed for a feeling again, a particular one: the one of approaching a room but of not yet having entered it....I associated the feeling with another part of my life: that anteroom of girlhood...anticipation playing in the heart like an orchestra tuning and warming, the notes unwed and fabulous and crazed--I wanted it back!--those beginning sounds, so much more interesting than the piece itself."

I don't mean to imply that life as an adult is a disappointment; being a somewhat high-strung person, the stability and grounded-ness of adult identity is a daily relief for me. But the book is a reminder that life isn't always about being safe and comfortable and there is an exquisite chaotic beauty to that phase of life where you as a person are not yet defined.

I must remember to re-read this book when Fiona is starting high school. I bet by then she'll dislike my presence and be completely embarrassed by me (as any normal teenage girl should be). I'm sure we'll have lots of battles. But I hope this book helps me to step back and see the big picture of the phase she'll be going through, to remember those crystalline moments that occur in the middle of such a messy period of life. The book makes me want to have a generosity of perception, to hope for and be excited about the bursts of transformational energy that appear at this age amidst all the pain-in-the-ass behavior. I don't expect to share any of this with her, but I do hope to be aware enough to notice it.

Gifts that feed my obsessions

When I was a kid, on Christmas afternoon, my sister and I would call up our respective best friends and start the conversation with "whatdidyaget?"

In the spirit of good natured greed, here are a few things I received that will feed my obsessions.
This book:
Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter by Thomas Cahill

My dad, a Greek-ophile if there ever was one, loved it and wants me to love it too (nothing like reading under the pressure of parental expectation...) But seriously, I think if I have a goblet of dark wine on hand, the Wine-Dark Sea and I will get along well.



This book:
Antipasti: Fabulous Appetizers and Small Plates, by Joyce Goldstein

I'm thinking that an Antipasti party might be the perfect antidote to the post-holiday slump. Wouldn't a warm Gorgonzola custard served with pears and arugula cheer you up?



These fun tools:

a stainless steel pasta scooper to replace the crappy plastic one I had. This scooper seems to have it in for the wee kitties on the window sill.



a blow torch from my mother-in-law:

How many Mother-in-Laws give their Daughters-in-law tools that could be weapons? Hello Creme Brulee fest!







I finally finished this and count it as my gift to myself:

Red red red, the antidote to winter gloom! It still needs to be blocked, but I'll get to that later...







And finally:
This item of exercise paraphernalia designed to keep the aforementioned Gorgonzola and creme brulee from settling too firmly on my person:


Unfortunately, there is no snow.








To leave you with a smile, I present the cutest/weirdest present that my kids received:



A tiny froggie pot with grass growing out of his head.




So, whatdidyaget?

If it keeps mice away, I don't want it on my cloth napkins...

Brian and I rarely get to eat out sans kiddlets; usually we have to strategize so that a restaurant has something bland and colorless on its menu to satisfy the little people. But one evening we found ourselves liberated from this restriction (kiddos at Granny's house) so we decided to try a new place that would have some spicy food: Banh Na Laos and Thai Cuisine out on Washtenaw.

The meal we had was of a mixed quality: the Tom Kah Kai soup was one of the best I've ever tasted--rich and thick with coconut milk, perfect balance of galangal and and lemon grass and spicy without searing your throat shut. It really nailed the hot/sour/salty/sweet balance. I'd be tempted to drive across town for a quart of this stuff alone. We also had some decent drunken noodles with chicken, basil and red and green peppers. I'm a sucker for big wide rice noodles and they were generous with the basil.

The other two dishes were not of the same quality: the green papaya salad was actually inedible due to someone's extreme enthusiasm for the dried shrimp. Way, way too many. Dried shrimp, like fish sauce, is not something to be enjoyed on its own, but mixed in the proper proportion with other seasonings like lime juice, it can transform a dish. But overload it and you are left with a fishy mess. Brian took one taste and wouldn't eat any more. I tried to extract some threads of green papaya, but gave up after realizing the taste approximated licking the floor of a fish market.

The other dish was just sorta so so--a Musselman curry. It didn't taste bad--maybe a little too much cinnamon in the sauce and not enough ginger or fish sauce to cut through the richness of the coconut milk, but my big gripe was that it was just butt-ugly. Looking at the ingredients (pork, potatoes, onion, red and yellow apples, peanuts, coconut milk) didn't make me expect a beautiful dish, but unfortunately the kitchen decided to use purple onions which did no favor to the appearance--the purple bled into the light brown sauce to make it Puce colored. (Go on, click that link to see puce and also discover that puce is the official color of the Christian Heritage Party of Canada. Those wacky Canadians!)

Would you want to eat something that color?

The atmosphere of the place is sadly lacking--this was heightened by the fact that we were the only customers in the restaurant and Brian pointed out the fish tank behind my head that was empty of fish and had about 2 inches of stagnant algae clogged water sitting in it.

And the final nail in my decision to keep this restaurant (for its soup and noodles) in my take-out menu file but not on my visit-in-person list were the napkins.

I LOATHE fabric softener and the cloth napkins at the table were soaked in the stuff. They left their stinky fumes on my hands and overpowered the pleasant scent of the dishes we had ordered. Believe me, "Mountain Fresh" scent does nothing for Thai food.

I was just doing a little catch-up blog reading and it turns out that a while ago Kitchen Chick reported that Bounce fabric softener sheets have worked well as a mouse repellent in her kitchen! They also work well as a Kate repellent in a restaurant.

Three or four customers came in while we were there to pick up groaning bags of take out. Whether it was the sight of pond scum or the fragrance of the napkins that turned them off to the in-person dining experience, I don't know. But I do want some more of that soup and I think I'll follow suit and pick some up and flee the premises next time.

Beta

Blogger has changed some of their software and I'm now using the "Beta" version. It seems to have a few more tools and a few less annoyances, but the hitch is that switching to Beta seems to have screwed up the feed (at least in Bloglines). You might need to re-subscribe and delete the old subscription.

Of course, if you depend upon Bloglines which can no longer retrieve said info, you probably won't be reading this....

And the winner is...

Maple Almond Cranberry Granola

I did a little recipe testing over the weekend to decide what to give to Ian's (super patient) teachers and the granola kicked ass. I know you are thinking "how can a woosy, hippy food stand up to the decadence of chocolate peppermint bars, or the savory delights of blue cheese pecan crackers?" It might have been a fairer fight if the recipe for the chocolate peppermint bars was decent, but it sucked. They turned out greasy and chewy and I was pissed that I had wasted good cocoa, and plus gras butter and had upgraded their stated chocolate chips for hand-chunked Ghiradelli. The kids each ate one and then wandered away--if the small sugar fiends aren't clamoring for more, there's probably something wrong. We were so underwhelmed with these that we ended up throwing away 3/4 of the pan.

And the blue cheese pecan crackers were tasty, but very crumbly and they just didn't look very special. I think they'd make a good gift if, say, they accompanied a nice bottle of port, but I'm pretty sure that getting your kid's teachers drunk is frowned upon in this town.

I'm further justifying the granola crunch factor with the detail that my kid goes to the "alternative" elementary school in town; you know, the one where you call all the teachers by their first names, there are big squishy couches in the middle of the class rooms and kids are encouraged to work at their own pace, whatever that pace may be. That should be the kind of audience receptive to a granola gift, yes?

Honestly, I wouldn't be giving this if it wasn't so damn tasty. For such an easy recipe, the payback is really high. All weekend we were grabbing a handful of this stuff to munch (while simultaneously averting our eyes from the icky chocolate peppermint bars), and not just at breakfast time.

Maple Almond Cranberry Granola

2 T ground flax seeds (grind in a spice or coffee grinder, or buy pre-ground)
3 C old fashioned oats, organic preferred
1 C sliced almonds
1/2 C hulled raw pepitas (green pumpkin seeds)
1/4 raw sunflower seeds
1/2 t salt
a little less than 1/2 C canola oil
a little less than 1/2 C maple syrup, grade B preferred
1/2 C dried cranberries

Preheat oven to 325.

In a big bowl mix all the dry ingredients except for cranberries.

Stir in oil and maple syrup and stir until evenly coated.

Spread mixture evenly in a large shallow baking pan with sides. Bake for 15 minutes then take the pan out, stir and re-spread and rotate. Bake for another 15 minutes (30 minutes total). If your oven has hot spots, you may want to break it up into 10 minute increments and stir again to make sure none of it burns.

Cool in pan. Then stir in dried cranberries.

Makes about 5 cups. Doubles easily (so long as you have two pans).

Grrrrr

I just lost a long post. It was all about how bewildered I am by the NYTimes Book Review naming Claire Messud's The Emperor's Children as one of the top 10 books of the year. My feelings about the book are particularly intense as it uses 9/11 as a plot point and I recently finished reading (with my book group) the excellent Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer which shows the impact of 9/11 on a 9 year old boy.

I'm too damn tired to try and recreate my post, so if you'd like a couple of pithy reviews as to the flaws in Messud's book, I recommend the first two reader's reviews on Amazon, the first titled "A narcissist's view of 9/11" and the second titled "The Emperor's Children have no clothes!" I think most of my problems with the book are shared by these two reviewers.

At some point I'll try and recreate what was so special and moving about the Foer book. Right now I am retreating from the fickle world of blog land to a cup of tea (and a three-year-old girl who thinks she is a tree frog...).

Help me out here...

I need some advice. The winter holidays are approaching and I want to thank Ian's teachers with something more than just a card with my heartfelt appreciation for everything they do for my challenging boy (they'll get the card, too.). The school district has a policy that teachers can't receive gifts that are more than "tokens", that is to say, gift-cards are out. If I'd been a little more on the ball, maybe I could have knit something for these hard working teachers, but now I'm left with a gift of some sort of food.

Thankfully, I think that I have the kitchen skills to make something pretty tasty. But I'm left with a few ideas and issues to tangle through. Give me your advice:

1. A tin of cookies. Good ones, not crappy ones. I'm thinking of Chocolate peppermint bars, Lavender shortbread and molasses cookies with raspberry jam (my recipe). If I go this route, do I stick with one kind of cookie, or do I go for a mixed tin? I think the former looks nicer, but the latter is more flexible when it comes to individual tastes (for those lavender, peppermint or molasses haters out there). Also one of Ian's teachers has a weight issue. Is it totally insensitive to give her cookies?

2. Homemade maple apricot granola. Here I'm trying to be sensitive to all of the teachers's health and the fact that they may get bombarded with cookies and appreciate something that isn't going to cause a heart attack. But are they going to open it up and think "yuck"?

3. Something savory (ideas welcome)?? I was born with a salt tooth rather than a sweet tooth and would (personally) prefer a savory gift over a sweet one. But I'm pretty sure I'm in the minority here.

Sigh. I'm leaning towards the cookies, just because I like to spoil people with something a little luxurious.

How to make lentils unhealthy

I've never thought of lentils as being a particularly decadent food, but I recently discovered that it really isn't too hard to make them unhealthy! In the right mood, I like a healthy lentil salad, daal or soup, but on a snowy cold day, sometimes virtuous food just doesn't cut it.

For those days, may I recommend this soup?

Lentil Soup with Pounded Walnuts and Creme Fraiche

I saw this recipe in the NY Times magazine not long ago and, since it was adapted from Deborah Madison whose book Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone I love, I thought I'd give it a try.

It is easy to make and kind of impressive in a minimalist way. The earthy flavor of lentils contrasts with the sharpness of garlic and a half a cup of creme fraiche makes it really rich and decadent. So save the healthy lentil recipes for a sunny day and make this one on a day when you need to take refuge from the cold.

Lentil Soup with Pounded Walnuts and Creme Fraiche

2 C brown lentils
2-4 T butter
1 onion, diced fine
1 bay leaf
6 cups of vegetable or chicken stock
salt and pepper
2 large garlic cloves
2/3 C toasted walnuts
1/2 C plus 2 T creme fraiche*
2 T minced parsley or chives as a garnish (optional)

1. Soak lentils in water for 2 hours, then drain.

2. Melt butter in a large pot over low heat. Add the onion and bay leaf. Saute on medium heat until onion has softened, about 5 minutes. Add lentils, stock and 1 t salt. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat. Simmer, covered, until lentils are soft, about 30 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

3. Using a mortar and pestle (though a small food processor or some persistence with a knife and cutting board would probably work just fine too), pound the garlic with a large pinch of salt. Add the walnuts and work until finely ground. Add 2 T creme fraiche, mixing it in a teaspoon at a time to make a paste.

4. Before serving, stir the remaining 1/2 C of creme fraiche into the soup. Ladle soup into bowls and top each with a large spoonful of the walnut garlic cream, a bit of ground pepper and some chopped parsley or chives.

* To make creme fraiche, take 1 C of heavy cream and stir in 1 T buttermilk. Then let it stand at room temperature for 24 hours until it is thick. If you have a cold house (like me!) you may want to find a warmish place to leave it. My oven has a bread proofing setting that is perfect for creme fraiche. Refrigerate it after it has thickened and cultured.

Sloth bread

I love recipes that require little work and yet achieve impressive results.

Can you believe that this beautiful boule of bread:
came out of my oven and was ridiculously easy to make?

I'm probably the last food blogger on the planet to have tried the No-Knead Bread that Mark Bittman wrote about in the NY Times. It was just hard to believe that sloth-dom could be so incredibly rewarding.

There's a fun video how-to with Bittman that takes all of 5 minutes of your time to watch. (Unfortunately the sound card on my computer has been scrambled, but it is still fun to watch as a mime show!) And really making the bread itself doesn't take much more than that in active time. Zingerman's has got to be bumming about this recipe, since it will certainly cut down on my consumption of their bread. Sure, I'll still go get a loaf when I don't plan ahead 24 hours, but despite my deficits in the organizing department, the reward is so great (house perfumed with hot bread! a steamy hot loaf on which to slather butter!) that it will serve as an incentive to get my act together, at least in the bread department.

Based on the other blogs I've read that commented on the recipe, I added a little more salt (I dislike unsalted bread) and used a smaller 3 qt pot in which to bake the bread. You don't have to have a $200 Le Creuset enameled Dutch oven to make this; my much more humble Emile Henri ceramic covered casserole worked great:
I also found that the recipe is pretty darn forgiving for those of us who need even more than the requested 12-18 hours of rising time to laze around. If, say, you keep your house at a normal temperature, you might want to follow the directions more closely, but as I am part lizard and don't mind a slightly cool house (hey, why do you think I knit sweaters?), bread dough needs more time to rise and cooperate in my chilly environs.

So really, go get out some flour, water, salt and a teeny bit of yeast and mix up a bowl. Then forget about it and come back to it tomorrow and you can have fantastic hot bread with almost no effort. A sloth's paradise!

No Knead Bread

Published: November 8, 2006 in the NYTimes

Adapted from Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street Bakery
Time: About 1 1/2 hours plus 14 to 24 hours’ rising

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
1/4 teaspoon instant yeast
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed.

1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. (I added more than 1 5/8 cups, but then I think I over generously scooped my flour.) Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees. (I let mine rise almost 20 hours at cold room temperature--61 degrees.)

2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.

3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. (I used flour this time; I think I'll try cornmeal next time.) Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. (Again, in my cold house, on my cold granite counter tops, I let it rise for 4 1/2 hours) When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.

4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 3-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats (the original recipe calls for a 6 to 8 quart pot, but pretty much all the food blogs I've read say they prefer the smaller pot which gives you a rounder loaf. If you want it wide and flatter, go for the bigger pot). When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.

Yield: One 1 1/2-pound loaf.