Sleeping With The Fishies

A few days ago, Josh came home with a bag of cheddar flavored goldfish crackers. "Look! They're whole grain!"

"They are not whole grain. Look at the ingredients. These just have whole grain in them." Did that stop me from eating them by the handfuls? Nay. Because whatever I might say about you white flour kids, you got all the cool crackers. Snobs like me make do with a few lousy all bran crackers and the occasional box of wheat thins. Life is hard like that.

But since I can't really let anything go, I became obsessed -- obsessed! -- with making my own goldfish crackers. At home, at play, at work, I thought about it.

My boss: God, I wish I were anywhere else right now.
Me: Me, too.
My boss: Like a nice tropical island somewhere.
Me: I'd really like to be at home. Making crackers.
My boss: How in the fuck do you make crackers?

Well, I said, turns out it's not so difficult.


All you really need to make crackers is flour, salt and water. But there are a thousand different variations you can make, too, and I wanted cheddar crackers. Now, all you really need to make cheddar crackers is cheese, salt, flour, and butter (or margarine), but I was already going to the trouble of making crackers. Might as well throw the rest of the kitchen in there, too.


I added basil, garlic, and pepper to my recipe, and a little egg white to make it all stick together that much better.

There are many ways to make crackers; one of the easiest ways is to roll the dough into logs, chill it for a half hour in the fridge, and then slice it into crackers before you bake them. Alternatively, you could roll the dough out (by hand or by pasta maker, if you have one) and use a pizza cutter to make nice square shaped crackers.

Of course, if you're a smart ass, you really only have one option:


I didn't entirely intend to make my goldfish crackers shark shaped, but that was my only choice at the kitchen store, and I thought it was funny.


If you're a purist, you can actually find a goldfish cookie cutter in the right size here.

How are they? Tasty. A little like cheese nips but with a little more oomph. I baked these in batches, because it made a lot of crackers (maybe about 40) and I don't have a plethora of cookie sheets.

The Godfather Crackers

(because my crackers eat your crackers for breakfast)

1/2 cup butter or margarine
2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
3-4 cloves garlic, minced or very finely chopped
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh basil
1 egg or 1/4 cup egg whites

*Mix all ingredients together in a mixing bowl until thoroughly blended.

*Knead the dough until it becomes smooth. Let the dough rest for 10 minutes.

*Now's a good time to preheat the oven to 350 degrees Farenheit.

*Roll the dough out to desired thickness. These do not change shape in the oven, but keep them on the thin side. Use a cookie cutter or pizza cutter to create desired shapes.

*Bake on a foil lined cookie sheet for 16-17 minutes. Watch these carefully, because they will burn very quickly. The thicker they are, the longer they take to crisp.

*Let cool for about 10 minutes before serving.

Oooo! Shiny!

New toy:

It's my present to myself for five hours of ravioli making labor on Christmas Day.

I have all sorts of plans for this thing. Some things less exotic -- like spinach fettuccine. And some things a little odder, like the idea I got from a pasta machine advertisement: artichoke ravioli with salmon filling. (What kind of cheese would go in that? What kind of sauce?) This reeks of possibility.

But for now, I was prepared to settle for ordinary. For simple, boring whole wheat noodles, since that's what comes in the packages I buy from the store. How much better would the fresh ones be? How much more work?


I invited Meghin over for dinner because she is a near perfect food audience. I budgeted myself several hours of prep time, because I was NOT going to repeat my Christmas performance; being SO OVER cooking and still having to make dinner come together. And what I found was that pasta making with a machine is deceptively simple. You get your dough together and then you run it through the rollers a few times to get it thin, and then you run it through the cutting side to get yourself some noodles. Then you hang those puppies out to dry. I used a Wooden Thing of Indeterminate Purpose that I found at Value Village.



That filled up very quickly, so I improvised.


But honestly, next time I'll just lay them flat out on the counter. The ones I did that with turned out the best. Anyway, after about an hour or so I put them in the fridge until Meghin showed. Much later in the day, because this was not the lengthy experience I had feared.

When she showed up, early and hungry, I sauteed a little chicken and made some pesto -- a last minute decision. I almost used some premade pesto I've had on hand for a while. Making my own was a good choice; I never ruin pesto. Ever. (Even the one time I added too much garlic and made it too spicy to eat -- I just added more of everything else and it was good.) It turned out this beautiful, lively green color. Even better was peering in my bowl and realizing that everything except the parmesan was a raw ingredient that I had brought together to make something greater.



It wasn't a gourmet meal, but it was a damn good one.

It's a Wonderful Knife

I am not the kind of girl who buys new.

Probably this is a throwback to the days in which I could not afford new, a pragmatic raised eyebrow at the thought of spending $15 on a mixing bowl when one could be had for $3 at Goodwill. I have a very strong emotional response to not-new; I am more at home with objects that have a past, with things that are weighted with a silent history. New is reserved for things like underwear, and socks, and things that will go out of date five seconds after they leave the store with me, still in their box. And knives. I was very adamant about this with myself: I wanted them new, I wanted them sharp, I wanted to season them with the sweat of my own labor. And so far I have kept to this, buying my knives new, one at a time.

Until today.

Value Village has been kitchen central lately. I've gotten a nice cutting board, a heavy ceramic bowl, and a decent stockpot there in the last two weeks. And today, I hovered over this set of knives. I'm not certain what drew me in, because I. am. not. interested. in a butcher block set of knives. I want a very functional set of knives, and I don't even care if they match. Right now I'm using Forschners, but I'd snap up a Wusthof in a heartbeat. I don't care -- new and sharp, that's all I ask for. And this set was definitely not new, and definitely not sharp. Maybe it was the decorative metal plate. Terribly, terribly interesting.

I pulled all the knives out and looked at them. They look like sturdy, excellent tools, something favored by an angler, maybe, or a small game hunter. They weren't sharp, of course, but they could be sharpened. The butcher knife in particular had a nice heft.

I went home without them.

I searched the internet for a reference about this knife company, but the only links I could find were to eBay auctions. I sat on it. I sat on it for about fifteen minutes, and then I thought, I really want those knives.



I have a feeling I either got an amazingly good deal, or I was just swindled out of twenty bucks.


It was the butcher knife that finally swayed me. The blade is thick. It is, quite frankly, a beautiful knife, and if it alone turns out to be a good find, it is well worth what I paid.

They need, badly, to be sharpened, and I don't have the skills to do that without ruining them. I'll have to wait a while to see if this was a good purchase. I'm excited.

Stir Crazy

Q: What goes into a stir fry?
A: Yes.

Stir fry was one of those things that I never fully appreciated as a child. Now it's my favorite way to cook. It's quick, it's easy, you can throw anything you feel like into it, and it still never fails to impress.

The trick (or, well, my trick, anyway -- and it's not even really my trick, because I stole it from someone else) is twofold. I throw a little fish sauce over the chicken (thighs, because breast is totally overrated) and then saute it at high heat until done -- about four minutes. The result is flavorful and juicy (although the first time I tried it this way I had to eat four pieces of chicken to convince myself that it was really done, and that I wasn't going to give my audience ebola.) Then I take the chicken out of the frying pan and saute the rest of it, the vegetables and the onions and the seasonings.

The second thing I do it add red pepper flakes. I don't even like red pepper flakes. But they add a poppy sort of spark to a stir fry with just the right level of heat, so that your tastebuds all stay intact enough that you can taste what you're eating.

My kitchen

(On this site in 1897, nothing happened.)

This is my kitchen.

One of the women who occupied my apartment before the three of us did was a cook; I know this because I benefited from the dregs of her subscription to Bon Appétit and because she left behind a cookbook – The Best of Gourmet Desserts. At this stage in my life, I have almost virtually no sweet tooth, and I have never been a baker. The likelihood that I will ever use this book is pretty much nil, but I keep it anyway. It smells of powdered sugar and I think of it as a sort of talisman, a good luck charm, a nod to the amount of cooking that has already gone on in this kitchen without me.

I love my kitchen. It has good cooking mojo, probably the best of any kitchen I’ve cooked in (although my heart is always, always perched on a stepstool in my grandmother’s kitchen, watching as she stirs a batch of pancake batter.) It has almost everything I require in a kitchen. Ample counter space. Close proximity between the sink and the stove. Plenty of cabinets. I could use a nice pantry, but we make do. I like to think that it looks better with bottles of oils out and visible anyway. The light is imperfect, but I have a window and I can see what I am doing well enough. And the most important feature, to me, is present: a view out into the living space.

I distrust a kitchen that does not have some view of the dining area. I do not like to feel isolated while I am cooking. So much of cooking is communal. My audience is, at all times, important to me. On New Year’s Eve, my friend Meghin perched on a bar stool in the living room and watched as I made a chicken, asparagus, and cashew stir fry, occasionally commenting on what she saw me doing. And this made the experience so much more wonderful. Because cooking is a spiritual experience for me. Feeding, nourishing, providing for people; I love doing it, and I love being reminded of who my audience is while I am doing it.

As far as kitchens go, it is flawed. It is not pretty. It is humble, and functional. I like that. It is not trying to be anything more than it is – it’s not a show piece. It’s just a kitchen. It allows me to experiment, and it allows me to fail. It’s not a kitchen I have a need to live up to – the counters are not made of marble. They are just counters, durable enough, good enough, large enough, enough.

If I had the opportunity to design my own kitchen, it would not look like this. Of course. That kitchen would have a pantry. It would have more windows, and better lighting. It would be quirky and intelligent, a kitchen made specifically for someone who views cooking as her religion.

But this kitchen? I love this kitchen. It is imperfect, but imperfection holds a certain kind of beauty. It is faulty, but it does not fail me. This is a kitchen I can be good-spirited in; a kitchen I can hold conversations in; a kitchen I can invite friends into; and, most assuredly, a kitchen I can happily cook in.

Even My Mother Thought It Was A Bad Idea

Mother: What are you doing this weekend?
Allycen: I was thinking I'd try making corn tortillas from scratch.
Mother: From scratch? Are you stupid? You know you can get them for three bucks a bag at the store, right?

*

She's right, of course: for three dollars, you can buy a bag of tortillas. But for four dollars, you can buy a bag of masa mix to make your own -- masa mix being ground up corn flour and some lime and nothing else.

And corn tortilla dough is the easiest dough in the world to make: just add water. Mix it together. Knead it together until, as the recipe on the back of the bag says, it has "play dough consistency."

(I follow instructions well.)

Then you separate the dough into about 16 even parts and roll them into little balls, like so.

My balls were uneven. (Mental note: do not say this out loud if there are more boys than girls in the vicinity.) I chose to find this charming. A chef -- a good one -- would strive for perfection and would no doubt have rows and rows of perfectly matching balls. But I am just a hobbyist, and as such, my mental illness has limitations.

At this point, you either break out your tortilla press or your rolling pin, set the dough ball of your choice between two pieces of wax paper, and turn it into a tortilla. You may note that this makes for some exceedingly dull photo ops.

I did this, still feeling smug about how easy this was, and then I realized that I couldn't peel the wax paper off of my tortilla. Or, well, I could, but not without completely destroying the tortilla. Which, for the record, was tiny. Miniscule. Not even remotely the size of the kind you buy for three bucks at Safeway. Not that it mattered at this point, since I couldn't get it to the pan to cook it anyway.

I scraped the dough from the paper and started over, adding one half of another ball and a little more masa to make it less sticky. My next attempt was not much better, but it only tore a little. I threw it in the pan; I was going to cook it, and then I was going to eat it, and if it wasn't completely terrific I was going to hurl the dough balls and the masa mix off of my balcony.

Look: it's misshapen. It looks less like a tortilla and more like a velociraptor. But it was delicious! Dusty and grainy and all sorts of other things that do not inspire salivation, but I loved it. So much better than the waxy things you get from a bag. I continued.

Totally thankless work. Josh's vote is, "Yeah. They're good." In the world's most bored tone of voice. Because "I made my own tortillas" is not sexy.

But they taste good. And maybe in a dozen years, they'll look okay, too.

*

And now for the 2009 Best Purchase Award: my apron. Because seriously, this could have been my shirt.