Kitchen gadgety gift suggestions

My old high-school friend Scott asked for a little advice about purchasing a kitchen gadget for his wife (well, for his kids to give his wife for Mother's Day--three kids, three gadgets, lucky woman) and since I lost his e-mail address somehow (I thought my e-mail program automatically copied addressees into my contacts list but apparently not...Oops) and figure there may be some other folks looking to please a kitchen-gadget obsessed woman on Sunday May 16th, here are a few recommendations.

These are pretty simple things, folks. I have plenty of stuff that takes up a lot of room in the kitchen and gets used once or twice a year.

Here are some of my favorites:
A Microplane zester. These are the best citrus zesters/nutmeg graters/Parmesan cheese shredders bar none. The Parmesan in particular ends up so fine and light it is like eating Parmesan clouds.

Make sure you get the one with the handle. As the blade easily removes the top most layer of skin of a lemon, so it will remove the top most layer of skin of a human. And if you plan to have your toddler present this to the fortunate woman (seeing a lethal object in the hands of a baby is always a fine way to get mom's attention) wrap the blade part for God's sake and make sure she knows to unwrap it carefully! Mother's Day + Emergency Room = No Fun


An Oxo Mixing bowl. I know, you already have mixing bowls. I have two stainless steel, and a set of those fun glass ones that fit inside each other and range in volume from about a tablespoon to big enough to bathe a reasonable sized infant. And I use them all. But last year I went out and bought myself one of these bowls for two reasons: 1) It has a spout and as I was (and still am) obsessed with making ice cream I was having a hell of a time transferring custard from the bowl into the small freezer canister of the ice cream maker. Much of the custard would end up on the counter or trickling down the sides of the canister and much swearing would ensue. This bowl's diminutive spout makes it a piece of cake. 2) It has a rubber bottom (sounds kind of kinky--yes?) and a handle which makes this the bowl I reach for when I cook with the kids. Three year olds are very good at stirring. They stir so well that sometimes the bowl flies off the counter. We have a much better chance of having the ingredients stay in the vicinity of the countertop if I use this bowl.


Tongs. You can never have too many pairs of tongs. I am a particular fan of these Robinson self-locking tongs since they only take one hand to release the lock (some tongs require the hand not holding the tongs to reach over and press or pull something to unlock them--usually when I use tongs, my other hand is occupied holding a platter, or on good days, a glass of wine). I only have one pair and since Brian doesn't read this blog (probably to protect his sanity since he may already suspect he married a nut-case and doesn't want further proof) I'm going to have to hint heavily that I need another pair of tongs for Mother's Day. My method will probably involve the use of tongs as a pinching tool to get his attention. I use my tongs pretty much every day and often have to wash them three or four times just to make one meal (after you have used them to, say, put raw chicken on the grill DON'T FOR GOD'S SAKE use them to stack the corn on the cob on a platter without washing them in between! Or buy two or more pairs and save yourself the hassle.)


Silicon spatulas. Do you remember the white rubber spatulas of your youth? Man, did they taste nasty. As a child devoted to licking out the bowl after my mom had made cake or cookie batter I have a real hatred of those damn spatulas. You'd get a lovely lick of say, lemon cake batter, and then the taste of nasty rubber would come through and ruin it. I am happy to say that my children need not suffer the hardships that I endured (cue violins). Silicon spatulas are terrific. The examples pictured at left are by Le Creuset and are reasonably priced and so cheerful in kiwi-green, but it seems everyone makes them these days. In addition to no nasty taste, these spatulas can be used to stir stuff on the stove since they can take heat up to something like 600 degrees. That makes them very useful for getting into the corners of pans (where a wood spoon can't reach) and keeping sauces or custard from sticking.

Here's to hoping that these 4 suggestions are useful--if you happen to already own all of the above, allow me to complement you on your good taste! Or drop me a line and I can always come up with a second tier of fun and/or useful gadgets to recommend (does mom like beer? Get her a Homer Simpson talking beer bottle opener!)

Muddled

I recently finished Allegra Goodman's newest novel, Intuition. I can't quite figure out what it was about the book that made me feel a degree of reserve while reading it. I've read and enjoyed two of her other novels, Kaaterskill Falls, and The Family Markowitz, but I found that the character in this novel about whom I was supposed to care the most, a research scientist named Marion, was a void. I think she was supposed to be the ethical center of a novel that has to do with the politics of scientific research but by the end of the book I still could not picture the woman.

Marion is supposed to love research and two other pivotal characters, Cliff and Robin, come to the realization that the process of research is what they love, rather than the thrill of important results. But despite three characters professing this love, all I felt about the time spent in their laboratory was tedium. It has been a number of years since I spent time with experimental mice, but this did not make me want to rush back to that world.

Time for a big digression here: the year after I graduated from undergrad with a degree in English, the only job I could find was working in a lab out in Berkeley that was doing quality assurance potency testing of the Botulism toxin (why they hired me, I'll never know). We got FDA approval while I was there, which meant counting a hell of a lot of mouse bodies on my part to know the kill-rate of different toxicities. Then I got to use regression analysis and graph each batch. Eventually this toxin was used to help people with eye spasms who were effectively blind and the toxin would paralyze the spasming muscles. It also has been used on people like radio host Diane Rehm whose vocal style is the result of spasms in her vocal chords. But hey, why stop with fluttering eyelids and vocal chords? Right before I left to go back to grad school the wee little company headed by a doctor not entirely unlike the character of Sandy in this book (charismatic, good hearted, rich as shit with the annual staff picnic held at his winery in Napa), was sold to Allergan and TA DA they marketed it as Botox. So if you are curious why say, Nicole Kidman has no facial expression any more, well, thanks in part to my injecting mice in the butt with botulism, she has paralyzed her wrinkle-causing facial muscles.

Ok enough of the Botox primer, back to the book. Goodman has said that the book is about belief and I can see this being nicely developed between the different characters' desires. Cliff wants to believe he can cure breast cancer and thus disregards his faulty data, Robin doesn't believe that Cliff is capable of such a discovery. Kate wants to believe that Cliff is the heroic scientist. And there is a layer of Judaic belief (and doubt) expressed by many of the characters. That's all well and good, but rather than having this exploration of the desire to believe be the focus, I felt that the book turned into a "did he or didn't he" fake his data question? And I just didn't think that question was so interesting--either he did or he didn't but unfortunately I didn't care enough about any of the characters to worry about the repercussions. Don't you really need to care if Marion's lab will come crashing down if it turns out Cliff fudged his data? Most of the people in the lab were so miserable that it felt like more of a blessing when much of it dissolved. Do I think this is the happy ending that Goodman intended? Beats the hell out of me.

And the title--it really comes down to the two main women characters, Marion and Robin, suspecting the men of either intentional or unintentional wrongdoing. I couldn't help thinking that maybe I would care more about their intuition if it wasn't about data.

I can see a lot of what Goodman was trying to do, and this is still a much better written book that many I've read, but did it make scientific research a compelling subject for a non-scientist? I can only say, not for me.

Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see?

I see my favorite pancakes cooking in front of me.
I have finally found a whole-grain pancake recipe that doesn't taste like sawdust. This recipe is adapted from one in the current issue of Gourmet--their recipe is intended for camping and uses dried buttermilk; I used fresh and I added a little vanilla. The cakes have whole-wheat flour and corn meal--no white flour at all--but they don't hit your gut like a hunk of lead. Brian thought they tasted a bit too much like corn bread--he prefers the white flour kind of pancake--but I didn't think the corn meal overwhelmed the taste. The whole wheat flour gave them a nutty flavor and the corn meal provided a little chewiness.

The small people in the house dictate the shape. The three pictured above turned out rather well. Some of their ursine brethren looked as though they'd been hanging out near a nuclear waste dump with ears of wildly different sizes hanging off their heads. But thankfully my kids are not perfectionists in the realm of pancake art.

I also made a version of the topping recommended in the Gourmet article:
Frozen cherries and berries warmed up with maple syrup. Yum. (They recommended fresh blackberries and maple syrup but unless you happen to be camping right next to a blackberry thicket, I think that's a waste of fresh blackberries.)
With one over-easy egg (from Sunrise Poultry--Sarah told me about these eggs which have huge orange yolks; you can get them at Arbor Farms) and a cup of black coffee, they made for a fine morning repast.

For once, I made these pancakes before the rest of the household woke up (well, Fiona was awake but I lulled her into passivity with a video of Curious George). My oven has a "keep warm" setting and I put it to good use and made all the pancakes at once rather than our usual method of everyone sitting at the kitchen table, yelling at me that they are hungry and then only getting one small pancake at a time. Three fit easily in a pan so that usually means I don't get any until I have pacified the hungry monsters (I feed Brian so he will deal with all of their butter, syrup, cut-into-small-pieces requests). It was weird to all be sitting down to a cooked breakfast at once, but weird in a good way.

Whole-Wheat Pancakes
adapted from Gourmet, May 2006

1 1/4 C whole-wheat flour
1/3 C fine ground cornmeal (don't use the polenta type)
2 t baking powder
3/4 t baking soda
1 T sugar
3/4 t salt
1 C shaken buttermilk
1/2 C skim milk
2 large eggs
1/2 t vanilla extract
1/4 C canola oil

Mix together dry ingredients in a bowl, then add buttermilk, milk, eggs, vanilla and oil and whisk until smooth. Let the batter sit for 5 minutes--it will thicken up a bit. If it is too thick to pour, add a T water and whisk again.

Bake the way you would bake any pancake--you know the routine, wait for some bubbles and the surface to look a little dry before flipping. My cast iron skillet sprayed with canola oil between batches worked great. If you want to eat with the folks for whom you are cooking, set your oven at 200 degrees and put the finished pancakes on a cookie sheet in the oven until you are done cooking all the batter. If you'd rather not eat with the people for whom you are cooking (there are times when you'd really rather not have to be pleasant at the breakfast table and as you are already being very, very nice making pancakes for everyone, you should have the option of choosing whether you want dining companions or not) go ahead and do them three by three and use that excuse to hide in the kitchen.

For the berry-syrup, mix about 1 C frozen cherry-berry fruit mix with 1/2 C maple syrup and nuke for a minute or so until warm.

Serve the pancakes with lots of butter and syrup.

Yes I do still read, thanks for asking....

I haven't posted about a book in over a month--my usual quantity of obsessive reading has been hampered due to this being the time of year that I earn money reading and grading Greek compositions (compositions written in English, by Greek students; no silly, I don't read Greek!). It is fairly painless work that can be done while still in pajamas but it does crimp my recreational reading style.

So here's a lead in--what do a butler and a clone have in common?

No, this is not the set up for an off-color joke. Rather a lame attempt to write about some very complicated feelings raised by Kazuo Ishiguro's latest amazing book.
Never Let Me Go is told from the perspective of a girl clone named Kathy. Now the words "poignant" and "wistful" usually don't appear in the same sentence as "clone" but Ishiguro has managed to take what is usually the subject of science fiction and turn it into a totally, ironically, human drama. I'm not one to dis Sci-fi as a genre--I loved reading Sci-fi when I was growing up and still like the occasional journey into fiction that makes me think about alternate realities rather than about the complexities of character. Not that all Sci-fi is characterless--Mary Doria Russell's book The Sparrow had a main character as complicated as many other good novels and set him on a planet called Rakaht. But more often than not, I find my attraction to Sci-fi means enjoying the concepts and forgiving the somewhat one dimensional characters (Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy, which I liked a lot, comes to mind.) But Ishiguro approaches the genre with such delicacy that it is almost unrecognizable despite the fact that the main concept of clones and their uses is one that Sci-fi has covered many a time.

If you saw the crappy movie The Island (which I did), consider Never Let Me Go to be the antidote to those who like a little character and complexity with their subject matter. Just like the characters in The Island, the clones in this book were created for their organs. But unlike the film, in which the entire plot revolves around the clones discovering how their keepers plan to use them and resisting this fate, Ishiguro takes on the much more complicated concept of clones who are aware of their reason for being, who accept it and who quietly go to their fate. The clones (called "students") grow up together in a boarding school-like atmosphere. They know that once they graduate they will first become "carers," then "donors" (who are cared for by the carers) until they have donated so many of their organs that they "complete" (die). The words "carer", "donor" and "complete" are really the only terms that Ishiguro uses that indicate that we are in an alternate reality.

If you have read Ishiguro's exquisite novel The Remains of the Day you will quickly realize that book, about a butler, and this book have a great deal in common in that you wait and wait and wait for the main characters to resist their fate, to question the authority figures in their lives and all they have been brought up to believe in and to make a break for it. I remember feeling heart broken that Stevens wouldn't question the people he served despite the fact that he was aware on some level that it was killing his soul and in this book, I kept waiting for Kathy to rebel, to become the clone who decided not to go quietly to her fate, to be the one that gets away. But that would be too easy.

Sounds incredibly depressing, yes? But somehow it isn't. It is wistful and sad but I couldn't help feeling that one of Ishiguro's main points was about the power of community, even if that community seems to support something that turns your stomach. The "students" in this book draw together to care for each other, they help each other to accept their fate and they ease each other's pain. The fact that in playing these roles, they end up supporting the structure that will kill them ("complete" them) is disturbing.

The main characters in this book die before they are in their 30s but the comparison that kept coming to mind was that of a senior citizens home. As people age and die, do you really want to be the last one alive? Rather than feeling horror when they come to the point in their lives when they become donors, the students instead feel relief. In this book, community is what gives meaning to life and when that community starts to crumble life is far less appealing and it is easier to let go (and there we have a further dig in that the title keeps a running reminder that our instinct is to hold on tight). So Ishiguro manages to make a book about clones and organ donation into a meditation on the meaning of life, community and purpose.

All of this is made more poignant by Ishiguro's exquisite writing style--clean, clear, never frivolous. He knows how to insert the one image that will sock you in the gut and I, for one, never saw those punches coming. The last few pages, in particular, were so beautiful and sad that I think I will remember them forever.

Spring cleaning

Spring is definitely here and while I do have the urge to do a little sprucing up around the old homestead, the touch-up caulking and painting at the top of a high ladder will have to wait until this damn cold goes away (visions of coughing myself backwards off the ladder come to mind).

Allow me to propose a fun-ish activity which can be done while lolling on the couch (don't you love chores like that?), has tangible results and is one of the few organizing concepts that I have thought up that actually works really well. Organize your recipes.

If, like me, you are addicted to food magazines (Hi, my name is Kate and I have a subscription problem....) you probably have a teetering pile of magazines each of which has maybe two or three recipes that you might actually attempt to make.

Rather than leave the magazines and the recipes hidden like this:

Photogenic basket, but not terribly practical when it actually comes to making dinner...

I'm going to suggest that you invest in a few affordable office supplies and create one binder and two folders.

Into the binder go recipes that you regularly make and that are tried and true:

You can assign one of your daughter's robots to protect your favorite recipes.

and into the two folders go the clipped-out recipes that you think you might want to cook someday.
I organized mine by Savory or Sweet, but go ahead and develop whatever categories work well for you.

Now before you begin this project here is a list of the supplies you need:

• 1 binder

• 1 large pack of page protectors (so you can slide clippings in--no need to retype anything)

• 1 set of binder dividers

• 2 (or more) pocket folders to put your clippings in

Alternatively, if you are really into organizing, you could have two binders, one with the tried and true recipes and one with the yet-to-be-tried recipes. I'm too lazy to organize this thoroughly.

Now grab a sharp pair of scissors and gather together your teetering pile of magazines. Cut out anything that you might be tempted to make and that falls within the realm of a reasonable recipe (the ethnic stew with 23,000 ingredients and specialized equipment you can pass over) and stick it in its appropriate folder:
Once your folder is as packed to the gills as this one is, you know that you need to spend a little time in the kitchen cooking some of what you clipped and deciding whether the recipe is a keeper or not.

If it is a goodie, then find that little darling a page protector of its very own and sort it into your binder. The page protector keeps cooking crud off of the recipe and it means you can just unclip the specific recipe and don't have to have the whole binder out taking up counter space. For sorting, I divided my binder into the following categories: Soups/Salads/Sides, Main Dishes, Baked goods (non dessert--you know, breads, scones, muffins), Desserts. I've been debating whether I should add another section for cookies, because the urge to make cookies is often separate from my urge to make a proper dessert. But for now the cookie recipes are hanging out with the Hot Fudge Pudding Cake recipes (yes, there is more than one tried and true Hot Fudge Pudding Cake recipe in my binder. Wanna make something of it?)
When you are pressed for time, feeling like you can't think of what to cook or maybe just needing a little self-esteem boost that a successfully prepared recipe can provide, you can turn to this binder and find reliable recipes. And if later a recipe that you thought was a keeper lets you down (some recipes have the first-time-good-luck thing going for them and are disasters every time thereafter) you can easily yank it out and put it through your paper shredder.

And when you feel the itch to cook something new, you can turn to your folders and look at what you clipped out. I just opened up my Savory folder and saw perched on the top of the pile a recipe for Tagliatelle with Creme Fraiche and Arugula (from god knows where. Those of you with sourcing issues might have a problem with my organizing system). As I just planted my arugula seeds in my garden yesterday, I'm going to try this recipe when it is time to thin the rows.

I do this exercise about once every four months to liberate the horizontal surfaces in our house from their magazine detritus. Any magazine that hasn't been cut to pieces (maybe just one or two recipes clipped) I take to either the magazine exchange rack at the downtown library or to the magazine rack at the Y. Personally, I love to read a good food magazine while sweating away on an exercise bike. Call it justification for putting all that effort and sweat into going absolutely nowhere.

The mucus blaster

For those of you not currently expelling green gunk from your nose and lungs, the timing of this post may make you scratch your head. After all it is Spring, right? Time to start waxing poetic about watercress soup and the anticipated first peas and asparagus? But I know there are other folks out there afflicted with the dreaded Spring-cold-of-copious-snot and to you I say this "Spicy Hot Chocolate".

We all know that hot peppers (capsicums) make your nose run when eaten in sufficient quantity. And we all know that a good cup of hot chocolate can comfort even the most miserable sick human (provided that the stomach remains stable and thank god this has not been a vomiting sickness or else I would never hear the end of Ian's discussions that throw up shouldn't really be called vomit but chyme. I really don't like being corrected on picky technical terms when I am sick.).

Unfortunately, dairy products can exacerbate mucus formation and when already drowning in the green goo, hot chocolate made with milk and perhaps topped with a blob of whipped cream doesn't sound like such a good idea. However I think I have come up with the hot-chocolate-comfort-vs-mucus-production-conundrum with an antidote.

By combining the following with hot milk (and a little extra sugar because let's be honest, one needs a little extra sugar when sick)
you get spicy hot chocolate and the capsicum from the cayenne pepper actually cuts through any added mucus production that the milk might inspire! Add enough cayenne and you can blast pretty much any nose open (I know, pretty vision, yes?).

My inspiration for this beverage came from this:
Vosges Red Fire Bar with two kinds of chili peppers and cinnamon mixed in dark chocolate. At $6-7 per bar, it isn't a daily indulgence in these parts.

So I've been making myself at least one and sometimes far more than one cup of Spicy Hot Chocolate every day and it has made being sick just a little more tolerable. You don't have to be sick to enjoy this, and being a bit of a junky for spicy food I suspect I'll be sprinkling cayenne pepper into my hot chocolate whenever I get the chance.

Spicy Hot Chocolate

One mug full of hot milk
One heaping spoonful of cocoa or hot chocolate powder (the Ghirardelli sweet ground chocolate and cocoa is my favorite)
Sugar to taste
1/8 t cinnamon
1/8 t cayenne pepper
big gob of whipped cream

Mix together the first 5 ingredients, make sure you stir well. Then top with a poof of cream. Settle back and grab the Kleenex box and let 'er flow!

Spring green

There are a few new spring-green things around here.

The chives are coming up.

I have a new green bumper sticker (on my green van).

And, unfortunately, there is also a whole lot of green stuff coming out of my kid's nose...

The loaf of meat

The main reason I have never made meatloaf is this:

Gross.

I'm ok when it comes to nasty kitchen tasks when the payoff is worth it, but up until two weeks ago, I had never tasted a meatloaf that justified the gross-out factor of sinking one's hands up to the wrist in squishy meat. The few meatloaves I had tasted were dried out, tasteless hamburger-like constructions. They could have been sawdust loaf for all the good the meat did in the recipe.

All that changed at my book group (a.k.a monthly excuse for gluttony) meeting. We read Empire Falls (terrific book, amazing how Russo manages to incorporate so many depressing subjects into a book that is not at all depressing--and the HBO film version is good, too.) Since a diner figures prominently in the book, the menu was: meatloaf, mashed potatoes, greens, Mexican-ish salad (the kind you might find at a diner), squash casserole, root beer floats and lemon meringue pie. I tell you, we reading women love to eat!

Once again I neglected to bring my camera which is too bad because I would have liked a photo of my transformative meatloaf moment. Halla made a terrific meatloaf from Cook's Illustrated and suddenly sinking ones hands into a bowl of meat gloop didn't seem so gross. Her meatloaf was moist, rich and had a spicy glaze. It wasn't some lame-ass hamburger loaf, but an entity unto itself.

It was so good that last Saturday I decided to clean out the freezer and try my hand at making one my own. I found a half pound of ground turkey thighs and a half pound of ground pork lurking in the back of the freezer so I used them as a substitute for one of the two pounds of ground beef that Cook's calls for. The two lighter meats meant that my meatloaf wasn't as dark and rich as Halla's but it was still plenty flavorful.

After doing the gross meat squishy part, I patted it into a loaf (according to Cook's you want the fat to be able to drain away, so no loaf pan) on a foil covered broiler pan with holes punched in the foil. It went into the oven looking quite tidy:
But did not emerge looking too pretty....

Christ, that looks like something from one of my nightmares.

Some of that ooze in the above picture is the cheese (yes, the recipe has cheese because we all know there isn't enough fat in meat alone...) which seeped out and some of it was just plain meat fat. But you know what? You don't make meatloaf for its looks. After scraping away some of that ooze and putting the tomato gunk on top and broiling it, it was perfectly presentable to be served it on a plate with its dinner brethren--smashed potatoes (lazy person's mashed), broccoli and some greens:

Vintage-style food on a vintage plate--meatloaf really should be eaten off of melamine and this plate boasts my own original artwork circa 1973.

Sarah and Brian and Nicholaus came over to help us conquer the massive loaf of meat and Nicholaus gave it his approval by thoroughly neglecting his broccoli (he's usually a broccoli kinda guy) and having two servings of the loafy meatiness. Then again, we also have a theory that he and Fiona did some kind of weird-ass three-year-old personality switch for the duration of the meal since she gobbled down her broccoli and neglected her meat (and she's usually a meaty kinda gal). We convinced Ian that meatloaf was "a ketchup lover's dream food" and after his usual kvetching he went along with it, particularly with the outright bribe that if he ate it, he'd get some of the fantastic Stroh's Lemon Custard ice cream that the Royal-Pinks brought over with them. (Haven't had Lemon Custard you say? Next time you head to Washtenaw Dairy for a massive scoop of ice cream pass up the chocolate varieties with tons of chunks of stuff in it and go for the purity of the Lemon Custard--believe me, it is fantastic, even for a chocolate lover. Or you can hit Krogers and bring home an entire half gallon of Lemon Custard and stuff yourself silly.)

It is a little late in the season to have discovered a good cold-winter meal, but I do have faith that Michigan isn't going to all of a sudden become weather-friendly and Spring-like. I'm sure it'll throw at least another day or two of surprise snow at us and if it does, I'm ready with the meaty antidote for dinner!

Loaf of Meaty Goodness
adapted from Cook's Illustrated

3 ounces Monterey Jack cheese, grated on small holes of box grater (about 1 cup)
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 medium onion , chopped fine (about 1 cup)
1 medium rib celery , chopped fine (about 1/2 cup)
1 medium clove garlic , minced or pressed through a garlic press (about 1 teaspoon)
1 teaspoon paprika
1/2 cup low-sodium chicken broth
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon unflavored gelatin (powdered)
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
2/3 cup panko bread crumbs (Cook's uses crushed saltines--if you use these instead of Panko, decrease the salt to 3/4 t)
1 1/2 teaspoons table salt
2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley leaves
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 pound ground beef
1/2 pound ground dark meat turkey (thigh)
1/2 pound ground pork

Glaze
1/2 cup ketchup
1 teaspoon hot pepper sauce
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
1/4 cup cider vinegar
3 tablespoons packed light brown sugar

1. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Spread cheese on plate and place in freezer until ready to use. Prepare baking sheet--cover a broiler pan or a cookie cooling rack with two layers of foil and punch holes in it so fat can drain. Then put pan or rack in another pan to catch drips and prevent your oven from smoking you out of the house.

2. Heat butter in a skillet over medium-high heat, add onion and celery and cook, stirring occasionally, until beginning to brown. Add garlic, and paprika and cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 1 minute. Transfer mixture to small bowl and set aside to cool.

3. Whisk broth and eggs in large bowl until combined. Sprinkle gelatin over liquid and let stand 5 minutes. Stir in soy sauce, mustard, bread crumbs, parsley, salt, pepper, and onion mixture. Crumble frozen cheese into coarse powder and sprinkle over mixture. Add ground meat; mix gently with hands until thoroughly combined, about 1 minute. Transfer meat to foil rectangle and shape into 10 by 6-inch oval about 2 inches high. Bake 55 to 65 minutes. Remove meat loaf from oven and turn on broiler.

4. While meat loaf cooks, combine ingredients for glaze in small saucepan; bring to simmer over medium heat and cook, stirring, until thick and syrupy, about 5 minutes. Spread half of glaze evenly over cooked meat loaf with rubber spatula; place under broiler and cook until glaze bubbles and begins to brown at edges, about 5 minutes. Remove meat loaf from oven and spread evenly with remaining glaze; place back under broiler and cook until glaze is again bubbling and beginning to brown, about 5 minutes more. Let meat loaf cool about 20 minutes before slicing.

Rat melon

Brian and I have been checking out Cute Overload a little too often because last week when we went to Arbor Farms we couldn't resist tossing this in the cart:
That may look like a normal melon, but allow me to give you a sense of the scale:
It is about the length of a three-year-old's tibia. Another bonus: it was only $2 and gets along well with Kermit the Frog.

Brian, always one to push things just a step further, then created this last night:

A rabid-red-eyed rat-melon.

Despite the kids' affection for the mini-melon and my fear that they would take mutilation of the rat badly, they ate some of it (yes, even Ian!). Unfortunately, the taste didn't match up with the cuteness factor--full-size melon tastes a lot better. This one was a little bit over ripe and had a distinctly squash-y aroma. I know, melon is technically a squash, but I don't like to be reminded of its savory sibling while eating it.

There is still a good amount left over which will be transformed into rabid-rat-melon popsicles later today (blenderize them with a little juice of your choice and freeze in a popsicle mold).

It may not seem like popsicle season to all of you out there (especially since we woke up today to find a dusting of snow) but to the small people in this house it is never too cold for popsicles.

My new buddy

I've got a new buddy in the kitchen:
I've been a little slow on the uptake here but cast iron is fantastic! About a month ago I bought an already seasoned Lodge cast iron frying pan from Amazon (you can get them locally at Kitchenport, but Kitchenport is far too dangerous a place for me to enter with a three year old). There has been a buzz about the dangers of Teflon among the avian-owning community (of which I am not a member). Enough food freaks have heard about how Teflon fumes can kill a budgie and started thinking twice about frying their eggs in the self-same bird-killer pan. The NY Times magazine had a funny article by Chef Daniel Patterson whose environmentalist girlfriend made him get rid of all his Teflon pans; his quest to make light scrambled eggs finally arrived at a fairly involved process of poaching scrambled eggs and straining them.

I'm too lazy for all that rigmarole before I'm fully caffeinated, so I thought I'd try the old fashioned non-stick pan: seasoned cast iron. It may not be the greatest pan for scrambled eggs (I still risk the Teflon for my slow cooked creamy scrambled eggs), but for pretty much every other cooking task for which I used to reach for a non-stick pan, I now use the cast iron. Fried eggs, pancakes, chicken paillards, grilled cheese sandwiches, so far nothing has stuck to it. I was concerned that the garlic loaded chicken would lead to garlic flavored pancakes the next morning, but a soak in hot water and a soap-less scrub with a brush got out any offending odor or flavor.

The only downside is the weight. The pan lives on my cooktop even when not in use because it is so damn heavy I fear I will brain myself if I keep it up on the high shelf where I store my other pots. I also bought a silicon tube-like thingy to slip over the handle so I don't inadvertently fry my palm when the pan is hot.

Last night my new buddy helped me to make dinner:
I finally got around to making the kafta recipe from January's Gourmet magazine. It was good, though I advise anyone who thinks about making the kafta to abandon the grill and cook the kebabs under the broiler. I started these on the grill and after losing about a third of the quantity of each meat stick to gravity and flames, I very carefully eased them off of the grill (one big spatula and a pair of tongs) and onto my broiler pan. I think if I had stuck with the grill we each would have had one mere morsel of meat and the rest would have fallen to its ruin. How the hell you are supposed to get a ground meat mixture to stick to skewers I do not know. Maybe bamboo skewers would help, but I only have metal ones.

The kafta flavor was really good--the right amount of spice, herbs and pine nuts to highlight the lamb without overwhelming it. I was underwhelmed by the zucchini chunks that the recipe included. They were marinated in a lemon-olive oil mixture and were supposed to be grilled too, but as I had run out of skewers I popped them in my new buddy and cooked them on the stove top. The skillet cooked them up perfectly with nicely browned sides, but the flavor was just too bland next to the assertively spiced kafta.
I altered the yogurt sauce that goes with the kafta and made it more like a tatziki sauce with grated cucumber instead of chopped mint. Mint would be nice when I have a big tuft of it growing in a pot on my deck, but the effort of tracking down mint in March in Michigan I deemed not worth the effort. I also put only a teeny bit of garlic in the yogurt sauce so that a small girl would eat it and eat it she did--she tried pulling the whole bowl over to her place and digging in with her spoon. It took a bit of convincing that the yogurt sauce was to be shared by everyone at the table.

Next time I make the kafta I'll probably skip the zucchini, rice and yogurt sauce and serve it with hummus, good pita bread and a romaine/tomato/cucumber salad tossed with lemon, olive oil, salt and sumac. And hell, maybe I'll try and pan fry the meat tubes in my new buddy and skip both grill and broiler.