Mea Gulpa

Broccolini: It Makes The Trains Run On Time

2009-12-20T23:11:00.000-08:00

I do not like broccoli. And I haven't liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I'm President of the United States and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli. -- George H. W. Bush

I feel for you, George, because frankly, I agree: if you get to be the President, you shouldn't have to eat anything you don't want to. You have a hard enough job as it is.

But broccoli is a tough choice for the hateration, because broccoli is the only health food left that hasn't been denounced as something that will kill you. Seafood was okay until it came out that the mercury content in fish can decrease heart health. Spinach was okay until that nasty E. coli outbreak. Broccoli is the last thing to avoid the nutritional blacklist.

It's a good thing that I like broccoli.

Broccolini-Mushroom Pesto Pasta

Confession: I didn't use broccoli for this recipe, although you certainly could; I used broccolini, a broccoli-kai lan (Chinese broccoli) hybrid that has a milder flavor. You'll find that the sauce is surprisingly creamy -- especially if you are generous with the olive oil.

1 lb campanelle pasta, cooked
1 bunch broccolini
5 cloves garlic, finely chopped or minced
1/4 - 1/2 cup olive oil plus 2 Tbsp
8 oz sliced mushrooms
2 Tbsp pine nuts
pepper, salt, red pepper flakes to taste
grated myzithra cheese, to taste

*Roughly chop the broccolini into manageable pieces and steam. (My method is to put a steamer basket in a pot, fill it with water until it touches the bottom of the basket, put the veggies in the basket, cover, and set on the stove on high for 7 minutes.)

*In a frying pan, saute the garlic on medium in 2 Tbsp of olive oil until softened, about two minutes. Add the mushrooms and the salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes and saute until the mushrooms are soft and brown -- about 6 minutes.

*Put the broccolini and the mushroom mixture in a food processor or blender and blend. Slowly add in the remaining olive oil until the texture is at your preferred smoothness.

*Toss with pasta and top with myzithra. Serve immediately, if not sooner.

I Pinto, therefore, Cayenne

2009-12-13T20:34:00.000-08:00

One of the baristas at my favorite coffee shop asked me what my six favorite restaurants are. "I like to ask foodies that. Because sometimes they pick really nice places, and sometimes they pick total dives."

It took me awhile to think of my favorites, and she's right -- some of the places where I like to eat have really fabulous food. And some are total dives. I don't really love eating out; I'm happier at home, because I love to cook and I make food to my precise specifications. Eating out is something I do because other people like it, or because I need to get out of the house.

I realize this is tantamount to blasphemy.

But there are places where I love to go. One such place is La Cocina Santiago on Broadway here in Seattle. I gave up on finding authentic Mexican food back when I left California, and La Cocina hardly brings back taste memories from my childhood. No, this place is largely comfort food for me -- plates with too much cheese, soft flour tortillas. I love the lighting, too, and the waiters who remember me and speak to me in simple Spanish. And there's one thing on their menu that I really do enjoy, one thing that inspired me to come home and make it myself: shrimp tacos.

My shrimp tacos are totally different than the ones you can order at La Cocina. But mine are still pretty delicious.

Shrimp and Black Bean Tacos

makes 6 tacos

2 Tbsps olive oil
10-12 cloves garlic, minced or finely chopped
1/2 cup chopped white onion
1-1/2 or 2 pounds peeled shrimp, tail off
1 15oz can black beans
juice from 1/2 lemon
juice from 1/2 lime
pepper, to taste
salt, to taste
red pepper flakes, to taste
1 small avocado, cubed
1 small to medium tomato, cubed
1/2 cup finely chopped cilantro
cheddar cheese
sour cream
6 soft taco sized flour tortillas

Heat the oil in a skillet on medium. Add the garlic and onions and saute until softened, about 2 minutes. Now add the shrimp and saute until cooked -- the shrimp should be thoroughly pink -- about 5-6 minutes. Turn the heat down to medium-low and add the black beans, the lemon juice, and the lime juice. Season to your liking with pepper, salt, and red pepper flakes, and continue to cook until the beans are warm.

Now assemble the tacos. Spoon the shrimp-bean mixture into the warmed tortillas, and garnish with avocado, tomatoes, cheddar cheese, and sour cream. Serve.

You Can't Always Get What You Want

2009-12-02T08:29:00.001-08:00

"The LORD brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; he frustrates the plans of the peoples." – Psalm 33:10, New American Standard

“Life is pain, Highness.” – The Princess Bride

Thanksgiving, 2008: I made steak, at Jess’ request. He had been living with my husband and I for about five months at that time. I had not been entirely onboard with the idea, frankly, worried that if Jess moved in I’d lose both my husband and my best friend. But by November, I’d relaxed. I loved Jess; I loved living with Jess. He and Josh were getting along famously, and even the cat was coming around.

The steak, on the other hand, was an unmitigated disaster.

After dinner, I caught my husband in the hallway and said, “I’m sorry about the steak.”

And he said, “Forget the steak. Why are you so distant?”

I don’t remember what I said, if anything. I do remember coming into the living room, where Jess and my best girl friend, Meghin, were sitting, and saying “I don’t think my marriage is going to make it.”

I didn’t mean it, not when the words were coming out of my mouth, but then I did. Once I’d said it, I’d meant it. It was the first time I’d really committed to the thought. Until then, I’d thought the elephant in the room was only a rough patch. Surmountable. Temporary.

It was Meghin’s idea to make an Indian feast for Thanksgiving 2009. I trolled the internet for menus, trying out recipes for coconut chicken curries. There would be naan, and handmade paneer, and momo with peanut chutney. It was my kind of challenge – a whole host of things I’d never made, spices with which I was unfamiliar, a cuisine I’d never tried cooking before. I issued verbal invitations to several extra people. A friend of Meghin’s. A coworker of mine. And when I met Lisa, I made a mental note to invite her, too.

Summer. August, actually. Lisa and I were lying on Alki Beach in West Seattle. I hadn’t known her for very long – this was, in fact, only the fourth time I’d seen her. She was telling me about the things that had made her leave Massachusetts to live here in Washington. “This time last year,” she said, “I was planning to buy a house. Probably in Portland. My girlfriend and I were going to move out together. And then I lost my job, and my girlfriend and I broke up. This is not how I planned things.”

“My life didn’t turn out the way I planned either,” I said, surprising myself. “I mean, two years ago I wouldn’t have thought things would end up the way they have. But I like it.”

“What changed?” she asked, so I told her.

“Almost a decade ago, I walked into a job interview in Denver and met Jess. We were unsure of each other at first, but then, like a light switch, we were close. Not best friends, not at first, but siblings. And then Jess moved from Denver to Seattle, and we kept in contact, and two years later, I followed and – isn’t this boring? Isn’t this a terribly mundane story? And it is, it is, it’s nothing at all, except that at this time Jess was a girl.”

I told Lisa, on that beach, things that I’d never planned to tell her. Not right away, not until I could be sure that she was not going to be horrified or judgmental. Not until I was sure of her. But once I’d started talking about Jess, about the girl Jess used to be, I could not stop.

Thanksgiving, 2009: I didn’t make the Indian feast.

One by one, I watched the pillars of my former life fall away. In early October, I asked my husband for a divorce; he took half the stuff and left while I was at work, jarringly and unexpectedly. Meghin and I had a falling out, and she decided not to come over on Thanksgiving. And Lisa – well, I didn’t plan to fall in love. But I did.

It was not the Thanksgiving I planned to have. It was just me, and Jess, and Lisa, and my baby kitty. I made lasagna instead of paneer.

But I liked it.

A Lasagna You Can Plan Ahead

I grew up vegetarian, so I never attached turkey to Thanksgiving. If any one food is emblematic of my childhood holiday dinners, it’s my grandmother’s lasagna. This is not her recipe – but I was pleased with it anyway. I made my own noodles from scratch and prepared the pesto myself; you can customize this in your own way, with fewer or extra veggies and the sauce of your choice. Personally, if I had to do it all again, I’d use more sauce and I’d sauté the mushrooms in something a little more interesting.

Serves 12.

15 lasagna noodles, cooked

8 oz sliced button mushrooms

2 Tbsp olive oil

2 lbs spinach, cooked and well drained

1 cup pesto sauce

½ cup grated parmesan cheese

Pepper, salt, and Italian seasoning, to taste

For cheese filling:

2 lbs ricotta cheese

3-4 cups grated mozzarella

2 eggs, beaten

*Mix all the ingredients for the cheese filling together in a large bowl. Set aside.

*Saute the mushrooms on medium heat in the olive oil. Season to your liking with pepper, salt, and Italian seasoning. Set aside.

*To assemble: lightly grease a 9x13 baking dish. Spread three noodles across the bottom. Spread a thick layer of the cheese filling across the noodles, (approx ¼ of the filling) then top with spinach, then three noodles. Second layer: filling and pesto. Third layer: filling, pesto, and mushrooms. Fourth layer: filling and spinach. Top with the remaining three noodles. Spread the last of the pesto across the top and sprinkle parmesan over that.

*Cover with foil. You can refrigerate the lasagna at this point for up to 24 hours, or bake immediately.

*Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Bake for 30 minutes, unless you’ve refrigerated the lasagna, in which case, bake for 45 minutes. Remove the foil and bake 15-20 minutes more, until bubbling. Let the lasagna stand for about 10 minutes before serving.

Bood, Sweat, and Pasta

2009-11-11T20:00:00.000-08:00

*alternatively titled, So It May Be Obvious That I Lost The Camera In The Divorce

The best part about dating is the food.

The first few months are all bread and wine, ice cream and candlelight dinners. I loved the Indian meal we shared -- I had to order, because she didn't know what anything was. I loved the picnic on the beach, bread and pesto and cheese and grapes. I loved pizza in a corner table.

But some time, you gotta start eating at home.

I don't actually restaurants. All right, that's a lie. It's just hard for me to eat out and not think, I could have done this myself at home, spent less, and had more garlic. And anyway, I love to cook.

And I especially love cooking for people. For people I love.

It can be a balancing act. Jess is lactose intolerant. I hate tomatoes. Lisa dislikes carrots. And last night, I had no idea what to make to feed all three of us.

I was pretty excited about my final choice, my own take on a classic pasta primavera, similar in nature to my favorite green bean side dish. And it started off well, Lisa and Jess having light, comedic conversation across from me as I chopped the basil and then....

Bam. One minute my finger was 6 inches away, and then it was under my knife.

I've never cut myself cooking before. I'm pathologically careful, and I keep my knives sharp. It's not a bad cut, as far as they go. Mostly I was furious. I cleaned myself up, made Lisa open the tomatoes, and my shiny new recipe came off without another hitch.

I just don't normally put this much of myself into cooking dinner.

Blood, Sweat, and Pasta
serves 4

1 Tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup diced white onion
4-5 cloves garlic, chopped
1/4 cup chopped fresh basil
2Tbps chopped fresh oregano
1 16oz can diced peeled tomatoes
3 large zucchini, cut into chunks
1/4 cup sliced olives
1/4 cup pine nuts (optional)
1/2 lb cooked whole wheat rotini
4oz shredded mozzarella
salt and pepper, to taste

Saute the onions and garlic in olive oil in a saute pan until softened. Add the basil, oregano, tomatoes, and zucchini. Cover and simmer until the zucchini is soft -- about 20 minutes. Stir in the pine nuts and olives. Toss with rotini and add mozzarella. Season as desired with salt and pepper.

Food: A Love Song

2009-10-29T08:57:00.000-07:00

It was a bit of romance that made Lisa drive us to Alki Beach – the scene of a particular sort of crime. She parked and I led her by the hand to the beach, to a spot right across the street from a fish and chips shop where’d we lunched a month or two before. “That’s it,” I said, pointing out into the water.

“What’s it?”

“That’s the spot where I fell for you. We waded out into the water together. I can’t remember the last time someone was in the water with me…so it was special to me, rare. And I looked over at you, in the water, and I saw that the water was touching both of us. And I just felt connected to you.”

“Do you know where I fell for you?”

“No. Where?”

“We were eating lunch on the beach together in Discovery Park. You were laying in the sand. And you said, ‘I couldn’t sleep last night. I was too excited.’”

We crossed the street together. A polite and ceremonious waiter served us Pad Thai.

It’s not always a dish that is emblematic of a relationship, of course. Sometimes it’s a piece of music, a whole song or just a line. Sometimes it’s a place. A book. A color. I will never be able to eat an olive without remembering a particular someone, or read a certain John Irving novel without remembering another. And I will never again be able to eat Pad Thai without remembering Lisa.

Pad Thai at the end of a long day perusing book sales. Pad Thai across from the beach at Alki. Pad Thai with a waiter who clearly thought we were a cute couple. And a trip to the Thai restaurant by her apartment where neither of us ordered Pad Thai and I noticed the absence acutely.

Of course this meant I had to make it for her.

I took her to Seattle’s International District, which is a stunning disappointment after San Francisco’s Chinatown, but still well worth it for one reason: Uwajimaya. One of the largest, if not THE largest, Asian grocery store in the Pacific Northwest. I’ve yet to meet the person who hates visiting Uwajimaya, no matter how they feel about grocery shopping in general. Lisa was no exception. She loved the odd selection of foreign pastries. I introduced her to a geoduck, which she felt the need to touch. (“What’s a geoduck?” “You’re staring at one, Lisa.” “Okay, but what is it?”) I had to pull her out of the candy aisle, and even though I had all the ingredients for lunch in my basket, she talked me into splitting one of their Vietnamese sandwiches on the way home.

“I’m nervous about this,” I told her in my kitchen. “I’ve never used a wok before.” Sure enough, I burnt myself while seasoning it, too timid about the sparking oil to be confident around it. “It’s supposed to heat up very fast, to cook the food very fast.”

“I’m sure it will be fine. Everything you cook is fine.”

“Do you know who you’re dealing with here? I won’t be pleased unless it’s perfect.”

I made the sauce first on some unremembered source’s advice, because you want to keep the pan hot and you don’t want to be missing around with getting the seasonings perfectly balanced while the wok is going. Problem number one: I had no idea what perfectly balanced Pad Thai sauce tastes like. Mine tasted like fish sauce, which should have been a tip off but wasn’t enough of one. I tried to even it out with lime, garlic, and brown sugar.

I was too timid with the sugar.

I was too timid with the wok once I started to cook, too, because even though I’ve cooked chicken in the same way I was attempting to cook the tofu, I kept my heat too low. The result was not awful – but it wasn’t golden brown and glorious, either.

And I was too timid with the rice sticks, afraid to overcook or undercook. They were chewy.

There are two places where it’s a bad idea to be timid: in the kitchen, and in love.

“It’s not awful. I’m not completely embarrassed to serve it.”

“I think it’s good.”

“It’s too salty. And the noodles are gummy, and I didn’t get the tofu right. I know how to fix everything, though. That’s a comfort. It isn’t perfect, but I know how to fix it. “

“Allycen? I think this is pretty good.”

No, I’ll never be able to eat Pad Thai again, not without thinking of her.

I Went To LA And All I Got Was This Lousy Food Blog

2009-09-19T20:32:00.000-07:00

You probably think I don't cook anymore.

This wouldn't be entirely untrue. It's been a busy summer; most of the cooking I've been doing has been limited to hitting the "popcorn" button on the microwave. The rest has been a succession of miserable failures alongside only slightly morose failures. When I was lucky enough to have the time to cook at all, mind -- my mother came to visit twice, and then...okay, I can't remember what else. Anyway, I didn't cook much.

And then I went to Southern California to visit my mom (because twice the month before was apparently not enough) and I didn't cook at all.

But I most certainly didn't starve.
I stepped off the plane in Long Beach, 5 hours after a sandwich. I'd had two teensy little cookies courtesy of the airline which did. not. cut. it. I didn't know what I wanted to eat, I didn't know where I wanted to eat, but someone was going to die if I didn't. Modica's Deli in Long Beach didn't thrill me at first sight -- I didn't really know that I wanted another sandwich -- but, well...it was love at first bite.

My sandwich had fresh mozzarella and ultra thin slices of prosciutto, fresh basil, oil and vinaigrette. The bread was perfect -- all air and crust. Enough substance that it never got soggy, but it never overpowered the filling. It was clear that the pesto on my pasta salad had been made from scratch that day; I could taste the ground pine nuts and the basil. It's a rare occurrence that I eat something at a restaurant that makes me say "I could NOT have done any better at home" -- and I certainly never say that about a sandwich. But there's a first time for everything.

Mother didn't fare too badly either:
She had a make-your-own salad option wherein you choose a few items to make up your salad. She chose caprese salad with steamed asparagus, some kind of cucumber feta combination, and a side of sauteed mushrooms. The whole shebang cost her about 10 bucks. Beat that.

I could have eaten every meal at Modica's, but there are certain places you have to go when you visit the Golden State, and Canter's is one of them.

Canter's is a Jewish deli where a lot of famous people go and blah, blah, blah, look at their pastries...

I had two perfect sweet, soft, chocolate macaroons. Finally -- something that tastes as good as thin feels, yo.

Later in the trip, when what I really wanted was an iced coffee and not dinner, my mother dragged me past Bono's, the restaurant owned by Cher and Sunny Bono's kid.

Hey, I'm all for supporting transgendered-owned business, but I wasn't hungry, damnit. Not until I spotted the calamari on someone's table.

It was not, unfortunately, worth it. But it sure looked pretty. As did our meals.

My pesto was runny; my mother's pasta was reminiscent of Spaghetti-o's. Sure, it was edible, but it was uninspiring. It didn't even come close to Modica's; maybe I should have eaten there for every meal.

Who ya callin' chicken?

2009-06-24T20:40:00.000-07:00

And now, for a few words on summer entertaining.

*Despite the advice of every cookbook/magazine/wizened chef on the planet, it is totally no problem to try a new recipe or cooking technique for the first time while you are entertaining guests. Hey, these people are your friends, right? They won't judge you (much) if dinner is a total failure. And anyway, there's pizza down the street and it's pretty good.

*Always make too much food. Not only does this decrease the chance that you will have to think of something interesting to pack in the next day's lunch, but it also decreases the chance of freak out when your spouse comes home with a guest you didn't plan for and says "Hey, is there enough food for one more? I ran into Andre."

*It's not a proper barbecue until you have set dinner on fire at least three times.

*It's not a proper barbecue until you set your grill towel on fire, requiring a guest to stamp out the flames because you didn't bother to wear shoes.

*If dinner is really, really good, nobody except you will notice that you forgot: napkins, non-alcoholic drinks, or dessert.

*If dinner is really, really good, and you're really relieved that you didn't burn the house down, you won't be annoyed that your spouse's extra guest means there aren't enough plates and now you have to eat out of a bowl. Bowls are cool anyway.

Basil-Garlic Grilled Chicken

1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup fresh chopped basil
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped or minced
5-6 chicken pieces, skin on (I like thighs)
salt and pepper, to taste

Mix the first three ingredients together. Rub mixture into the skin of the chicken pieces. Now rain salt and pepper down on the chicken. Put the chicken and the rest of the marinade into a plastic bag and refrigerate for 3-4 hours.

Take the chicken out of the refrigerator about 20 minutes before you cook it, allowing it to reach room temperature before grilling. Grill on medium, moving the pieces around regularly. Chicken is done when the internal temp is about 165 degrees Fahrenheit, or when the juices are clear and the inside is notably not pink. Serve.

Life, Love, and Ligurian Olive Oil

2009-06-06T20:31:00.000-07:00

My dear Turtle,

Welcome to the Dark Side.

When I graduated from high school, your uncle Stefan wrote me a letter. He told me that he had wanted to be a teacher, but he’d gotten the job at BMW instead, and that was okay. And then he gave me a bunch of life advice, stuff he thought I should know – mostly that sometimes, metaphorically speaking, taking the job at BMW instead of becoming a teacher works out better all around. It was a good letter, and I wish I still had it. Maybe Stefan had something to say about life that I don’t.

It was not so terribly long ago that you were just a little slip of a thing, your arms around my neck, saying: “I don’t want to stop hugging you, Auntie Allycen.” And then, six weeks ago, we were two adults in a dressing room discussing the intricacies of hemlines. Both of us changed a lot in that stretch of time; we were children together for a short while, and now we’ll be adults together for a long time. You are sensible and compassionate and a total, utter joy to be around – I think you’ll be good at this whole adult thing.

I was thinking about you yesterday, while I was at work and you were walking across a stage to get your diploma, and I wondered what I could pass on to you, what little wisdom I could tuck into your palm to carry with you. The problem is that a lot of the really useful stuff is what you have to learn on your lonesome: how to stand up for yourself, how to avoid settling for less, when to turn someone down gently and when to tell them off. The rest of it is just handy, like “wear sunscreen.” (For the record, the last time I had a screwdriver in my hand and I thought ‘righty tighty, lefty loosey’ I silently thanked the guy who taught me that, even if he was a jerk in all other respects.)

But there is one thing I can talk about with some confidence, something you might like to hear about: pesto sauce.

I could wax poetic about pesto, because it’s the perfect food. It tastes good, it’s healthy for you, and it never fails to impress – even if you just open up a jar of the stuff, premade. You can make it from scratch, using the best ingredients (freshly picked basil, Ligurian olive oil, an expensive deli Parmesan), pounded by hand in a mortar and pestle, and it will be totally, 100%, worth every minute you put into it. And you know? I recommend that at some point, you make sure that happens in your life. Good food is one of the most primary pleasures that life has to offer, and the primary pleasures are the hardest to top.

But the important life lesson that I can pass on here is: sometimes you take the BMW job. Sometimes you use premade pesto. You do this because sometimes your time is worth more to you that your palate, or because your blender is broken or basil is out of season or you worked all day and you’re tired. Maybe you don’t like cooking – or maybe you do, but the people who are going to be eating your cooking are not going to appreciate it fully. And you should never waste Ligurian olive oil (metaphorical or otherwise) on people who don’t appreciate it, because that stuff is expensive and so is your dignity. In short, know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em.

So go out! Live well! Wear sunscreen! Buy a very sharp knife for your kitchen, because if you love to cook a sharp knife will serve you well, and if you hate to cook a sharp knife will make you hate cooking less. Don’t microwave aluminum foil. Make pesto from scratch when nothing but the best pesto will do, and don’t feel any shame in opening a jar when something else is more important. Congratulations on your graduation.

With much love from your favorite aunt,

Allycen

Turtle’s Pesto

*2 cups fresh basil leaves, washed

*2/3 cup shredded parmesan

*1/3 cup pine nuts

*2/3 cup olive oil

*3 cloves garlic

*juice from ½ lime and ½ lemon

*salt and pepper, to taste

Throw everything in a blender and process until smooth and saucy. Serve over stuff.

Dough is me

2009-05-21T21:30:00.000-07:00

Behold -- the sun, setting on cracker puns. Or is it the cracker of dawn?

No, wait -- it's proof that some things continue to be worth cooking long past the time that I can think of funny things to say about them.

Olive You Long Time Crackers

1/2 cup butter
2 cups parmesan cheese, shredded
2 1/4 cups flour, plus extra for dusting
1 tsp salt
4 cloves finely chopped garlic
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh basil
1/4 cup half and half
2/3 cup chopped olives

*Mix all ingredients until blended. Knead the dough until smooth, and then let it rest in a covered bowl for about 10 minutes.

* Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

*Roll the dough out thinly, adding flour as needed. (If dough is too dry, add in more half and half.) Use a pizza cutter or cookie cutter to create desired shapes.

*Bake on foil lined cookie sheet for 10-12 minutes. Let cool for another 10 minutes before serving.

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Wine Fish, Blue Fish

2009-05-19T21:03:00.000-07:00

Ally: You know, I read all these recipes that call for one or two cloves of garlic. I just don't get it. I mean, why would you do that?

Josh: Some people just want a hint. An essence.

Ally: Oh. *pause* I don't think I could be friends with those people.

A few weeks ago, I started making Chicken with 40 cloves of garlic, which calls for white wine. I didn't have white wine. Which was all right, because I had red wine. And I was changing things up anyway, why not mix things up more? So I made Chicken Drumsticks in a red wine sauce. The smell, the sight -- stunning. Beautiful. I wished that I could record the scent of it cooking, it was so evocative.

The taste, on the other hand, was unimpressive.

Drumsticks continue to evade me. I can't really get them right unless they're still attached to the rest of the chicken, which is totally ridiculous. I ate the leftovers for two days with great hostility, cranky about a perfectly good idea gone bad. And on the second day, I had a breakthrough on how to fix it.

Red wine and salmon is a natural pairing -- tastier, in my humble opinion, than the chicken and red wine pairing. Plus, red wine + chicken = gray chicken, which is way gross.

High up on my list of things I wish I hadn't had to find out for myself is: don't cook with a wine you wouldn't drink. My current favorite is Old Vine Zinfandel, but any red wine will work in this dish.

Pasta with Salmon and Red Wine Cream Sauce

Feeds 4.

1 tbsp olive oil
20 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/2 cup white onion, chopped
1 cup fresh basil, finely chopped
3/4 cup red wine
1 lb fresh salmon, cubed
1/2 cup half & half or whipping cream
1/2 lb fettuccine, cooked
salt and pepper to taste
parmesan (optional)

*Coat the bottom of a skillet with the olive oil. Drain any excess. Add the onions and garlic and cook on medium until softened, about two minutes.

*Add the salmon, basil, and red wine. Cook until the salmon is almost opaquely pink, about four minutes. Slowly add the cream or half and half, and simmer until salmon is completely done -- another 2 minutes or so.

*Season to taste with salt and pepper. Toss with pasta and parmesan, if desired. Serve now!

Strawberry Fields Forever

2009-05-10T11:38:00.000-07:00

Things I Love:

*strawberries
*a clean kitchen
*mugs that function as bowls
*things I can eat with a spoon
*the blender/food processor I inherited from Meghin
*things that are easy, easy like Sunday morning
*bringing all these things together in one delicious moment

Easy Like Sunday Morning Sorbet

This can be more or less guilt free if you use the low fat coconut milk and sugar free syrup. It makes enough for two small servings or one larger serving.

1 1/2 cups frozen strawberries (it works out best if they are slightly defrosted)
1/2 cup coconut milk
2 Tbsp chocolate flavored syrup (like you put in your latte)

Put everything in your blender or food processor. Turn it on. Blend until the strawberries are pureed. (It helps if every so often you stop the blender and mash the berries into bits with a spoon.) Put into a chilled bowl and serve immediately.

No gratzi, gratin

2009-05-03T15:01:00.000-07:00

This was my first two days in a row off since my return from visiting family, and how did I choose to relax? By clearing chard scraps from the sink drain, of course.

I am the only person I know who likes to clean the kitchen. I feel a little guilty about this, like I regularly do the vacuuming in high heels and pearls. I'm that princess next door that is terribly nice but who no one can stand because she says things like "Gosh, I just ADORE cleaning my bathroom every morning!" and "I wouldn't DREAM of serving my family anything that came in a box!" But it's the honest truth -- I love the slip of the sponge across a counter, the splash of warm, soapy water on a plate.

The rest of the house is a total, unmitigated wreck. I don't even pretend to try anymore.

Obviously, I also love to cook. This is regarded slightly less suspiciously, although my roommate -- who has known me for almost eight years -- still tells me how sorry he is that I "have" to do the cooking.

I love to cook. It's right up there with sex and chocolate. There are few places I'd rather be than the kitchen. Even in other people's houses, I want to hang out in the kitchen. They can put me to work. I don't mind.

And it's a damn good thing I feel that way, or I'd have to chalk up this morning's endeavors as a total loss.

Swiss chard gratin sounded so promising. I made my own bechamel sauce, with cow's milk instead of the vegan oat milk suggested. I used the optional egg. I sprung for the fancy Comte in place of a lowly Swiss cheese or parmesan. But the results are...not unappealing, precisely. I mean, I'll eat it. Not even Josh hated it, and Josh is very particular. I'm just not bowled over, and with the amount of work that went into this, I wanted to be a little moved.

I think, frankly, that I used the wrong chard -- red chard was not the way to go -- and it would have been altogether more impressive with spinach instead.

At least the kitchen is clean.

Shot Through The Heart

2009-04-30T18:13:00.000-07:00

I started this blog because I wanted to see how well I could write about food. Sometimes I think I've gotten that just right, that I've captured my delight or horror or confusion in just the right way.

And sometimes, I sit down to write and can't think of anything more poetic than "Dude, chicken was totally on sale" and "this recipe is kinda cool and shit."

This is one of those times.

The Totally Cool Chicken and Artichoke Heart Saute

This would be particularly good over pasta.

1-2 Tbsps canola oil
1 1/2 lbs chicken thighs, cut into bite sized pieces
1/4 cup fresh basil, chopped finely
4-5 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 lemon
1/2 lime
12 oz artichoke hearts
1 can large olives
4-6 oz feta cheese crumbles
pepper, to taste

*Coat the bottom of a skilled with the canola oil, and heat on medium high heat.

*Add in the chicken, basil, and garlic. Squeeze the juice from the lemon and lime over the chicken. Saute until the chicken is just about cooked -- 5 to 6 minutes.

*Stir in the artichoke hearts and sprinkle with as much pepper as you want. Cook until the chicken is completely cooked, with no pink in it.

*Stir in the olives and feta. Serve.

The Changing of the Chard

2009-04-27T16:11:00.000-07:00

"Sometimes you people really make me pissed off." -- my grandmother

Allycen: You know what I hate? Tomatoes.
Nanny: How can you hate tomatoes?
Allycen: I've always hated tomatoes.
Nanny: You know, your taste buds change every few years. Maybe you should just try a little bit, maybe you'll see that you like it.
Allycen: Nope. I tried some recently and I still hate tomatoes.
Nanny: I don't understand how we can be related.

I have this conversation with my grandmother at least once a year, usually just to rile her up, but also mostly out of habit. Occasionally she'll ask me how I feel about ketchup (meh) or I'll tell her that it's her own fault that I hate tomatoes, since she's been insisting to me since I could walk that one day I'll come into the tomato-loving family tradition.

Luckily, there is one vegetable that we have no trouble agreeing on: Swiss chard.

I have memories of being very young, in my grandmother's garden with her as she cut the stalks of chard to serve for dinner. We would take it upstairs in a colander and wash it out -- or anyway, she would, because there were frequently spiders in the leaves and I feel even more strongly anti-spider than I do anti-tomato.

And there, in my grandmother's kitchen, I learned to love not just Swiss chard, but the perfect taste of vegetables fresh from the ground.

I haven't had Swiss chard in a very long time. I'm glad my taste buds haven't changed so much that I don't like it anymore.

Swiss Chard and Pintos

adapted from here

2 Tbsps olive oil
4-5 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 tsp, approx. crushed red pepper flakes
1 bunch Swiss chard, rinsed and chopped
1 small tomato, chopped
juice from 1/2 lemon
juice from 1/2 lime
1/4 cup queso fresco
salt and pepper, to taste

*Preheat oven to 350. Lightly grease a baking dish.

*In a skillet, heat the oil, garlic, and red pepper flakes on medium for about 1 minute. Add the chard, cover, and cook for 4 minutes.

*Uncover, and stir in everything else except the queso. Cover again and cook for another 4 minutes.

*Transfer this mixture to the baking dish and stir in the queso.

*Bake for 15 minutes.

I left my heart there

2009-04-23T09:01:00.000-07:00

I can't go to San Francisco in the same way that I could go to Montreal, or Paris, or Dubai; I can't even go to San Francisco in the same way that I could go to Denver, or to Seattle, should I ever leave here to live elsewhere. That's because San Francisco is home for me; San Francisco is where my blood is. I have the same sort of complicated relationship with the city that most women have with their mothers. (I'm assuming of course, since my mother is totally perfect and beyond reproach, and whenever we spend time together another angel gets his wings.)

San Francisco is one of the great foodie hotspots in the world, and indeed I don't feel right there without going to Boudin and wandering around the wharf with a bit of sourdough in my hand.

San Francisco takes bread very seriously.

There are so many restaurants there, so many opportunities for culinary pleasure, that it can be hard to choose one. Unless, of course, you are me, in which case there is really only one option:

Of all the kitchens that I have called home, this one is the most home to me -- my grandmother's kitchen. It hasn't changed in thirty years, although it has a toaster oven in it now and a different step stool from the one I used to sit on as a child, watching as my Nanny made pancakes or lasagna. This is the kitchen that made me a cook; it is inevitable that now I would want to cook in it.

I have something of an undeserved reputation in my family for being a gourmet cook. This is because I can talk a good game and there are few opportunities for them to make me put my, well, recipes where my mouth is. If they only knew how often I make macaroni and cheese, my cover would be so blown. So when I went to California last week, with the full knowledge that I would go and be able to cook almost every day, I was a little intimidated by the prospect. What if my skills fell flat? What if I couldn't think of a single thing to make for dinner?

I should not have worried. The first day, I made pesto from scratch to please my oldest niece.

There is no easier way for me to please people than to make pesto. It requires no ancient family secrets, no special equipment, nothing more exotic than a bunch of very fresh basil and garlic, and a good olive oil.

And there's no easier way to please my niece than to make pesto for her, as evidenced by how often she asked if she could have some of the leftovers. It's the gift that keeps on being delicious.

After that? It was cheesecake. Turns out my family, like most people, are happy to call you a gourmet cook just for the simple reason that your presence means they don't have to be in the kitchen.

And then I almost died, depending on how strict your definition of words like "almost" and "died" is. I was in the car with my mother and Nanny, going down a hill when the brakes failed. Fortunately, my mother was able to stop the car and pull over, and no one was any worse for the wear -- except that, of course, my mother and grandmother were totally freaked out. Me? Not so much as fazed. I went home and made macaroni and cheese for everyone, the ultimate comfort food.

It was exactly the right thing.

There are a thousand ways to wow in the kitchen. You can set things on fire (on purpose or not), you can spend hours slaving. But mostly all you have to do is turn the stove on, gather a few ingredients, and mix them together. And then bask in delicious.

The Youngest-Sibling-Totally-Has-Issues Shrimp Saute

1 pound shrimp (fresh or frozen is fine so long as they're thawed)
2 Tbsp olive oil
4 or 5 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/2 of a lemon
1/2 of a lime
1/4 cup fresh basil, chopped finely
pepper and salt, to taste

*Coat the bottom of a skillet with the olive oil and heat the pan on medium.

*Add the garlic to the pan. Cook for about a minute.

*Add the shrimp and basil. Squeeze the juice of the lemon and the lime over the shrimp.

*Season with pepper and salt as you like. Cook until the shrimp is pink. Cooking time will vary depending on the size of the shrimp, but it should be about 5-7 minutes. Serve.

Ain't No Fool Like An April Fool

2009-04-01T10:35:00.000-07:00

My father, on the occasion of his 46th birthday:

My father was a funny man who had precious little capacity to be serious, but he hated April Fool's Day. I suspect that he would have embraced it wholeheartedly had he been born a day earlier or later, but as it was, he was fundamentally offended that people celebrated his birthday by playing tricks on him. I went through a phase as a child where I thought that silly pranks were pretty funny, but I grew out of that quickly enough and embraced my father's disdain for the holiday.

So in my family, on April Fool's Day, we didn't play pranks. We had Irish Soda Bread instead.

Why? Because it was my father's birthday, and he liked it. Or maybe he just liked my mother, who liked making it. Either way, every year she would make it for him, and because she added currants or raisins or something ridiculous like that, I wouldn't eat it. (Not very much of it, anyway.) I was confused -- I thought it was a sort of cake that wasn't sweet, and I thought my parents were a little touched in the head.

Which they almost certainly were, but not on this point.

Soda bread is just bread -- a daily bread that doesn't keep long but doesn't take long, either. A hearty kind of comfort bread, and I'd almost say it's better than the kind with yeast in. I didn't know what I was missing as a kid -- but I know now.

I followed this recipe almost exactly, but I skipped the sugar and skimped on the honey. I'll skimp even more next time. It's a little sweet, but that's all right -- it makes up for the day, for the bitter part that accompanies April 1st since my father died. And for the snow we have in Seattle today, Mother Nature's April fools.

Mea Gulpa Tackles Breakfast Doldrums

2009-03-25T08:23:00.000-07:00

I have a long term problem, something I've struggled with since my first bowl of oatmeal as a child: I hate breakfast. Occasionally I can really get behind a french toast or a bowl of raspberries, but most American breakfast fare is sweet or bready, and one can only eat so many eggs before they get discouraged. I'm not really one who says things like: you know what sounds good? An omelette.

But in line for coffee a few weeks ago, I scanned the front page of a New York Times, and saw a blurb about a breakfast pizza with a cornmeal crust, with spinach and gorgonzola on top.

Yum, I thought. I can do that.

It was a perfect chance to try something out, something I discovered when I last made pesto from scratch. The creamy way that crushed pine nuts taste when you dissolve them in olive oil and garlic, before you add the basil.

I added Gorgonzola to this and yum. You could put this on pasta. You could spread it on bread. You could do anything you wanted with it, even what I did, which was layer it on polenta.

I added spinach, and ham, and red onions, but the options are limitless. My only beef is that after a few days in the fridge, the polenta gets a little soggy. So just be sure to eat it all fast.

I finally read the NY Times article after I developed my recipe, only to find out that the two are strikingly similiar. But no matter. Mine has garlic.

Spinach Gorgonzola Breakfast Pizza

Polenta crust
4 cups water
2 cups milk
1 tsp salt
2 cups corn grits (or polenta, or coarse ground cornmeal)
1 Tbsp butter

Sauce
5 cloves garlic
2 Tbsps pine nuts
1/4 cup olive oil, plus some extra
1/4 pound Gorgonzola

Toppings
2lbs spinach, cooked and drained
extra Gorgonzola
sliced ham, 12 slices
1/2 large red onion, thinly sliced

*In a large pot, bring the milk, water, and salt to a boil. Add the corn grits slowly, while stirring, then turn the heat down to a simmer. Add butter. Stir frequently and carefully -- the polenta will bubble and splatter. Use a long spoon. Cook for 30 minutes.

*Spoon the polenta onto a lightly greased cookie sheet. Work quickly to avoid unsightly lumps. Spread the mixture out evenly on the sheet. (Once it cools a little, you can use your hands to pat it out, but for the love of god, don't burn yourself.)

*Cover and refrigerate for 20-30 minutes to set.

*Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Farenheit.

*For the sauce: Grind the nuts very finely using a mortar and pestle. If you don't have a mortar and pestle, they are soft enough that you can probably do this with a spoon, although a blender is also an option. Add in the garlic, finely minced, and then the oil and gorgonzola.

*Bake the polenta as is for about 10-15 minutes.

*Brush the top of the polenta with olive oil and then spread the sauce on it. Add more olive oil if necessary. Cover the polenta with the sliced ham, then add the spinach, onions, and extra crumbly Gorgonzola. Parmesan is nice, too.

*Bake another 10 minutes. Serve. Eat. Enjoy.

The Moon Is Made of This

2009-02-23T12:45:00.000-08:00

Josh: This is my wife. She makes crackers -- that you can eat!
Friend: I prefer the kind you can't eat, myself.

I've heard that money can't buy love, but I've found that it can buy all the ingredients for homemade crackers. And homemade crackers absolutely buy love. I've bought so much love recently that I had to donate some to Goodwill. Maybe it's because people appreciate the effort. Maybe it's because crackers are the kind of thing nobody thinks you can make. Maybe it's because homemade crackers are delicious.

I roll my crackers out and cut them into shapes. I started to do this because it made for fun photographs for my blog, but now I do it because I have mutiny on my hands if I don't. Square crackers, kicking puppies, what's the difference?

But anyway, half the fun of making your own crackers is the variety of options you have at your disposal when you do. Not just shapes, but flavors. I can make cheddar crackers with my eyes closed -- what about blue cheese?

My first attempt was boring.

Ally: This is boring.
Josh: Yeah.
Ally: Maybe they'd be okay with, I don't know, some kind of kicky spice or something...
Josh: Kicky Spice? Is that who replaced Sporty Spice?

You know what tastes really good with blue cheese crackers? Buffalo wing sauce. It's like a match made in -- wait for it -- the heavens.

Man in The Moon Crackers

1/2 cup butter or margarine
2 cups blue cheese crumbles
2 cups whole wheat pastry flour, plus extra for dusting
1 tsp salt
roughly 3/8 cup buffalo wing sauce

*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 Fahrenheit.

*Roll the dough out, on a floured surface, to desired thickness. This dough is on the stickier side, so be sure to add sufficient flour to keep the crackers from sticking to the surface or the rolling pin.

*Bake on a foil lined cookie sheet for about 20 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.

Bread, Alone

2009-02-18T17:41:00.000-08:00

Jane is across the street from me, a bright smile on her face, dressed almost entirely in red. She is folded over a little, in the way very shy, very feminine women always are. Delicate. When I reach her, she doesn’t hug me or shake my hand, but presses her shoulder against my shoulder conspiratorially. She gestures at the shopping bag in my hand. “You’ve been to Sur La Table. It’s a nice store.”

“I love that place,” I say, giddily, guiltily -- my cooking passions are rarely shared by other people. But Jane is not merely being nice.

“What I really love,” she says, slowly, as if savoring her own speech, “is baking bread. I can’t make it in my kitchen now. Section eight housing – the oven doesn’t get above 120. Barely hot enough to cook the bottom crust.” She shakes her head. “I miss really good bread. I love kneading it. I’ve never used a bread machine – it takes all the fun out of the process.”

“I’m not much of a baker,” I admit. “More of a cook. But I love to bake bread. It’s the yeast – because it’s alive –“

“Yes! It’s wild. That’s what makes it intimidating to a lot of people. But it’s easy, once you get the trick to it.” She sighs, laments her kitchen again. “I used to bake a lot of bread.”

I met Jane when Jess – my dearest friend, my roommate, my brother – took me to a transgender support group. Jess had just begun his transition then, had just realized that, despite having been born in a female body, he was not female at all. Those early days of transition were tender for me, raw and chafing, rough and whirlwind, observing Jess as he changed into someone that I did not recognize and had no history with. It was a process that I’d thought I was well prepared for – I’d read all the pertinent books! I knew the language! – but was damnably, demonstrably, not. It was impossible just to be in a room full of transgendered people and not feel a little unbalanced.

In the midst of this, Jane was very easy to overlook.

Jane is shy, soft-spoken, reserved. Health problems have prevented her from starting the hormone therapy that would soften her features and enable her to look more as she would have had her body been female from the beginning. Her face is not feminine; when I first met her, she was homeless. She had no reliable way of shaving, and she wore a full beard. The world is cruel in this way. I stuck by Jess, who didn’t look female but didn’t look male, either, and I stuck by Jess’ friends, who were all very low-key, very easy going and good natured.

And in time, I found it harder and harder to pass Jane by. She is gracious and generous, so quietly so that you have to be watching intently and at the right time to notice it.

“I like Jane,” I told Jess. “I mean, I really like her.”

“Yeah,” he said. “She’s wonderful.” Pause. “I think I’m going to give her all my old earrings.”

“Did you have anything to do with these?” Jane asks, pulling her hair away from her ears and exposing a chain of dangly silver.

“No – that was all Jess.”

“That was so nice of him. I knew, from the moment I met him, that there was something about him. Something special.” I feel warmth swelling out from my chest; there are few ways to my heart that are more effective than this one, loving my family as much as I do.

We cross the street together, board a bus together. Jane tells me how to check the water temperature before adding in the yeast. “Drop some on your wrist – the way you test a bottle, for a baby. It should be about that temperature.”

The conversation turns to gardening, which is just another way to talk about food. “That bright green color of pesto made from fresh basil,” I say. She sighs, happy.

“And tomatoes – bright and firm and red,” she counters. For a moment I find myself as content as I ever have been, talking about cooking with someone who understands what it is that makes it so lovely, so vibrant, so fulfilling.

Jane’s comment is offhand – “I think I might be getting a cold.” It means nothing. It is small talk. The bus is crowded. Someone is standing over us, a woman, and she says something I don’t hear, something I only see as it washes over Jane’s face. Her voice comes into focus, slowly, as if I were drugged.

“I hope you have pneumonia. I hope you die from it.”

The woman moves away from us quickly, before my mind can formulate a meaning to the words. I cannot breathe. Wait! We were only talking about bread! There is nothing worth hating here. I look over at Jane, who is clearly upset. “People say the worst things to me sometimes. One guy said I ought to blow my head off.” She shakes her head, and then, by all appearances, she has recovered. We talk about bread again. I don’t recover. Not really.

Because if it happened to Jane, it could happen to Jess. And if it happened to Jess – this is unspeakable.

Jess’ transition catapulted me into an uncomfortable awareness of a privilege I didn’t know I had. I am cisgendered. I am a woman and so is my body. My own upturned wrist, my demure smile, my hair tucked behind my ear -- each of these things shoots me now with a haunting ache, each seems affected even as I know they are not. They are not affected, because they are natural. They come naturally to me, because I was lucky. I was lucky.

I will never have to tell a potential employer that I used to have a name that they might find is unusual for a woman. I will never have to explain to a new doctor why I’m on estrogen pills. I will never have to question whether someone spurned my offers of friendship because they disliked me personally, or because of something deeper. I will never, never have someone tell me that they hope I die from pneumonia just because I am wearing a dress.

In light of that privilege, all of my other privileges, the ones I have gotten used to having, seem paltry. It does not, after all, seem all that special to have a kitchen in which I can bake bread.

Of Chicken Bondage

2009-02-14T20:02:00.000-08:00

There's a saying that the mark of a very good cook is in their ability to roast a chicken. I think this is wildly untrue, because roasting chicken is so easy it shouldn't even be called cooking. It was one of the first techniques I really mastered in the kitchen, because mostly all you have to do is rub stuff on a chicken and then bake it. Voila. I have done it a million times, so many millions of times, actually, that I rarely do it anymore, because I'm tired of it.

Yet I was intrigued by this article. Why? Certainly the simplicity of it drew me in, and the lovely reminiscence at the end. Certainly I was taken by the bare ingredients, the promise of a lovely, moist chicken.

But mostly it's because I want to marry Thomas Keller and have his babies.

Who is Thomas Keller? Only the best chef in America. And if it's good enough for Keller, it is good enough for me.

The recipe calls for trussing the chicken, which I'd never done before. I read somewhere once that it actually dries out the chicken -- but if Keller says to truss, I'm trussing. If Keller told me rub moose snot on the chicken, I would do it. Unfortunately, I fail at Boy Scout sports, because I am a terrible trusser.

Sorry, honey, I got roped into staying late at the office.

I was so tied up in the bondage puns (ahem) I forgot to mention the singular experience of shoving paper towels into the chicken cavity to dry off the excess water. I have stuffed a chicken with a great many things, but that was a first.

And it was totally worth it. Crispy, golden crust, moist and tender meat. And all of ten minutes in the kitchen, including the time I spent indulging my OCD genes about having had raw chicken on my counter.

And, voila!

In Which Our Heroine Finds Out That Failure Is Delicious

2009-02-10T20:53:00.000-08:00

I hope you all (both of you!) have this image of me in the kitchen as a joyous cook, singing Don't Stop Believin' at the top of my lungs, flipping pancakes with one hand and chopping basil with the other. I really, really hope that. Because the truth is that, more often than not, I'm standing over a smoking pan saying, "Oh, shit."

Not that I have to be in the kitchen to realize that I'm in the weeds. This weekend I was in the grocery store, trying to select a decent Worcestershire, when I realized that I was buying the ingredients for barbecue sauce instead of Buffalo wing sauce. Furthermore, this was not something I could immediately fix, because I had exactly zero idea what-all goes into Buffalo sauce. Further complicating matters was the bottle, at my eye level, of already prepared Buffalo sauce.

Maybe you don't think this would be a big problem.

But for me -- well, nobody who has spent more than, oh, ten minutes in my presence would tell you that I'm the kind of chick that does things the easy way. The Big Deal was not so much about what I made, it was about how I made it. I take a perverse pleasure in that God complex that arises when you take a bunch of raw ingredients and throw them together. I wanted to make Buffalo wing sauce from scratch.

So I went home and consulted the internet.

Buffalo sauce is not a difficult thing, requiring some butter and some spices and a little hot pepper sauce. Of course, this begs the question of: so how do you make hot pepper sauce? And that's not all that difficult either, requiring only some chilis and some vinegar. Of course, you need a jar to store it in, and some gloves, and god forbid if you touch your eyes during this process.

It was somewhere in here that I realized that I was being ridiculous.

And the stuff in the bottle? Has zero calories, beeyotch.

Sometime, when I haven't cooked anything good in awhile, and I want to bore you, I'll tell you all about why I love to cook. What I get out of it. How good it feels, to hold a knife in my hand and feel it pop cleanly through a bundle of asparagus. The sense of accomplishment I get from baking the perfect loaf of bread, from romancing a fickle yeast. Sometime, ask me why I might want to make buffalo sauce from scratch instead of being it premade in a bottle.

In the meantime, go eat this. Because it is really, really good.

Buffalo Style Chicken Pizza

Pretty much everything in this recipe is "to taste." Add as much or as little as you prefer.

Pizza dough, enough for one crust (I used the recipe here, which was lovely, but you can use a Boboli if you want)
Fresh mozzarella, grated
Blue cheese crumbles
Red onion, chopped
Buffalo wing sauce
Chicken thighs, skinless and boneless with the fat trimmed off
olive oil

Prepare the pizza crust according to recipe.

Cut chicken thighs into bite sized pieces. Coat the bottom of a skillet with olive oil, and saute the chicken at high heat, turning over once, until cooked through. This should take about 4 minutes.

Use a pastry brush to brush the pizza crust with olive oil. Then brush the dough with Buffalo wing sauce. Ideally, the perfect coverage is a little translucent -- the dough should be covered, but only very lightly.

Top with mozzarella and the remaining ingredients. Bake according to recipe/package directions.

Tortilla Warfare

2009-02-08T15:31:00.000-08:00

October 17, 1989: That was the night of the great Loma Prieta earthquake, an impressive 6.9 on the Richter scale. I was at my babysitter's house when it hit, maybe 45 minutes before my parents were due to pick me up. That earthquake collapsed an interstate and did some damage to the Oakland Bridge. Some people died, and some were injured. My family was unscathed. I think we lost a couple of glasses.

My babysitter --Marie -- and her family and I gathered with the rest of the neighborhood on the street, being jovial and convival, I think mostly because we had all lived and were pretty happy about it. We traded war stories, exactly where'd we'd been and what we'd been doing. I said I'd tried to duck under the dining room table, but Marie had grabbed me and shoved me into an open doorway instead. Some kid's dad had been in the bathroom, which was pretty funny stuff when you're under 12.

It got late, and dark, and my parents still hadn't come. Marie took me aside and said, "Don't worry. There's just a lot of traffic. I'm sure your parents are fine."

"I'm not worried," I said, because I wasn't. I was an emotionally pragmatic kid. I was worried about being kidnapped, and about giant bunnies amputating my limbs in the middle of the night. But if my parents were stuck in a little post-apocalyptic traffic, that was their problem. Marie shrugged. Then she handed me a warm flour tortilla, with refried beans spread inside -- standard fare at Marie's house.

It's a snack I've had plenty of times, before and after that day, but I've never quite been able to replicate the taste. The tortillas were always soft and pliable; the beans flavorful enough that I didn't crave any other additions. I am pretty sure Marie got her tortillas from a bag and the beans from a can, but the combination has never been quite the same for me.

Until today.

I have two things to thank: the first is Rosarita refried beans. For years I've been buying the non-fat kind, thinking that they were saving me from heart attacks and meaningless calories, but you know what? The difference between regular and non fat beans is...20 calories. 2o. Unless you figure that the difference is flavor is so great that non fat beans require about 120 calories worth of cheese, and possibly 60 calories worth of sour cream, meaning that it's actually calorically more beneficial to get the higher fat beans.

The other thing? This lady, who helped me make my own tortillas today. It's like my childhood, playing out over my tastebuds all over again.

Good evening, Ladies and Lentil Men

2009-02-04T08:25:00.000-08:00

"Are you and your mother very much alike?"

I had to think about it for awhile. My first inclination was to emphatically say no; no woman wants to say that they are like their mother, and I always identified more with my father when I was growing up. At first glance, most people would agree that we are completely different people. But at the back of my head, I had a vision of myself brushing my hair, tossing my head in the exact way she does, or touching my collarbone in the same way she does during conversation. And slowly I came to a precise answer, the brutal and honest truth -- that of her three children, I am both the most like her and the least like her.

"Allycen," my mother said when I told her, "I don't even know what that means."

On some level, I think I'm my mother on a different timeline, a different life path. I am who my mother might have been if she had not had children, or if she had married happily. I am the part of my mother who loved to paint and loved to cook. When she tells me stories about how she used to make graham crackers from scratch for me when I was a baby -- well. I know where I get it from.

And yet, if you could put pictures of our respective living rooms side by side, you'd see two very different women just in our houses. Mine is all mess and color, hers is order and whiteness. My mother vacuums every day. I'm pretty sure I own a vacuum. My mother is a social butterfly, I am a hermit. And my mother -- well, my mother likes to make lentil soup.

I grew up never wanting to hear the words "lentil soup," first, foremost and most specifically in the context of "your mother is making some." There were few foods that inspired more dubiousness within me, and I was a child with a fairly unique palate. I liked tofu, and swiss chard, I preferred nine grain bread over wonder white, but I had no kind words for my mother's favorite dish.

What about it was so loathsome? I couldn't tell you. Maybe it was the celery. Maybe it's that I have never been especially partial to soup. Maybe it was my father's fault, since he hated it too. Quite possibly it was liquid gold. I still hated it, and I shunned lentils until my mid-twenties. And then, as my mother's most-and-least-like-her child, I discovered that I like lentils, too. Just not in soup.

Ham and Lentils

1 lb lentils
1 qt low sodium chicken stock
1 cup chopped white onion
2 Tbsps olive oil
5-6 cloves finely chopped garlic
liberal amounts of pepper, to taste
salt, to taste
2 cups cooked green peas
1 lb cooked ham, cubed

*Wash the lentils and sort through them, removing any dirt, rocks, or damaged lentils.

*In a large pot, combine the chicken stock and the washed lentils. Cover and simmer for about 20 minutes, until the lentils are soft but still have a firm bite.

*Saute the onions in olive oil on medium heat with the garlic, pepper, and salt until the onions are soft. Add the peas and ham to the saute pan and turn the heat down low.

*Drain the lentils of any remaining liquid.

*Combine all ingredients and serve. Garnish with parmesan if desired.

Spanako, no pita

2009-02-02T13:50:00.000-08:00

Making A Crustless Spinach Quiche, the Mea Gulpa Way:

*After spending hours making a family favorite, decide to be selfish and cook something only you would dare to eat. Something that has spinach in it, which Josh hates. And cheese, even though Jess is allergic.

*Chop the onions. Cry. Resolve for the billionth time to look up how to avoid crying over chopped onions.

*Wash and drain the spinach until it is as dry as you can get it. By which I mean, wash the spinach, put it in a tupperware container, drive it out to the Mojave Desert, and leave it sitting there for about six months.

Alternatively, wrap the wet spinach in a towel and beat it with a baseball bat until you scare all the water out.

Seriously. You won't think I'm being funny if you've ever tried to dry this shit by hand.

*Put the onions in a pan with just a little bit of oil, garlic, and a variety of spices and herbs. When the onions are soft, add the spinach and cook. Wax poetic about how it smells so much like the spanakopita your mother used to make, and how it was your favorite food as a kid even though you only ever got it twice a year if you were lucky, and then you had to walk uphill both ways in the snow backward to get any, and maybe it's time for another therapist appointment.

*Take out your aggression on a few eggs. Add cheese, and spinach. Bake in a loaf pan because your 8x8 baking pan is dirty.

*Make a romantic sigh of relief. Look around. Realize that the kitchen is a wasteland.

*Go visit your husband in the next room instead of cleaning up.

*Thirty odd minutes later, pull the pan from the oven and serve.

*Hate it. Eat it with great hostility for breakfast for the next 5 days.

*Rinse, lather, repeat at least six times before finally, finally getting down the right combination and making something delicious. That only you will eat.

Spanako

2 10 oz packages of frozen spinach, defrosted and well drained
Roughly 2 Tbsp of olive oil
1 cup chopped white onions
3-4 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 cup chopped fresh basil
1 Tbsp dill
1/2 tsp nutmeg
pepper and salt, to taste
4 eggs, beaten
8 oz feta, crumbled
just over 1/2 cup shredded parmesan

*Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

*Mix eggs and cheeses in a large bowl and set aside.

*Put oil, onions, garlic, basil, dill, nutmeg, pepper and salt in a skillet. Heat on medium, stirring until the onions are soft -- about a minute or two.

*Add the spinach to the skillet and stir until warm. Add a little oil if it dries out too much.

*Combine the spinach mixture with the eggs and cheese.

*Bake in a lightly greased dish for about 30-40 minutes. It's best to wait ten minutes before serving.

Tip: If you do not own a baseball bat or you don't live close enough to the Mojave to properly dry your spinach, try one of these instead:

It's a potato ricer. It cost me about $8, and while I never ever eat potatoes unless I can help it, I'd say this was well worth the cost.

Sleeping With The Fishies

2009-01-23T21:10:00.000-08:00

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!

2009-01-18T21:54:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-17T20:40:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-13T21:02:00.001-08:00

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

2009-01-07T12:09:00.000-08:00

(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

2009-01-03T19:35:00.000-08:00

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.

Extravagance In the Form Of Dough

2008-12-27T19:24:00.000-08:00

Many years ago, when I was first married, a group of Tibetan monks came to my city to paint a sand mandala. Together, they painted a large and elaborate pattern on the floor of a museum, using grains of colored sand. And when they were finished, they swept it away. At the time I was pained by this, having only a basic understanding of the reasons why someone might go to the trouble of creating something beautiful, time intensive, and intricate only to destroy it.

I had not thought of this for many years. In fact, I'd forgotten it entirely until this Christmas; it came to mind as I was making ravioli from scratch. By the time I'd finished eating, I understood quite clearly.

I do not celebrate Christmas, unless you consider Taking Advantage Of Long Stretches of Time In Which Nothing Is Open To Poison My Family a celebration. And so, I took this particular opportunity to do something I've been itching to do for some time now, which is make ravioli from scratch. Quite possibly I would have felt no burning desire to torture myself in this way if you could find chicken and goat cheese ravioli for sale in the deli case, but you can't, so I did.

I am fed up with store bought ravioli, because it never seems flavorful enough. I wanted to be able to eat them without feeling bored, so I made the filling as interesting as possible without being ridiculous. I sauteed little bits of chicken thigh with basil, onion, and about half a head of garlic. Then I mixed it with goat cheese and a little Parmesan.

Looks uninspiring, no? I was a little worried at this point, because it tasted about as dull as it looked. But the grocery store wasn't open and neither was the pizza place down the street, so I plowed ahead.

I mean it -- I plowed ahead with a rolling pin.

Making dough is simple. You break some eggs, add some water, throw in some (spelt!) flour, maybe a little olive oil, mix it together and *bam.* Houston, we have a shapeless lump. And it must have been quite the tasty little shapeless lump, since my dear friend Meghin ate quite a bit of it. It's nice that this part is so simple, because the rest of the process is nothing short of lengthy, backbreaking, disappointing labor. You roll the dough out until it is very thin, and then you roll it some more, and then you cut out a couple of dough circles. This is bad enough, but half the time your dough gets stuck to the counter, or to another circle of dough, and it's a complete loss and you only get one good circle of dough for all of that.

But eventually it worked out.

Now, at this point, several hours had passed, my will to live was gone, and Meghin was more or less fanning me and feeding me grapes to keep me in the game. And I wasn't finished, because I had to fill all of these things -- which is only slightly less labor intensive than making the dough circles, because you have to put the right amount of filling in, fold it over, and make sure the ravioli stays shut. Which it will refuse to do on general principle. Repeatedly. But in any case, I managed to get through all the dough circles and about 3/4 of the filling and then decided to call it quits. If it wasn't enough, my audience could fill up on garlic bread.

Aren't they adorable?

Right about the time I completed them, my dear, dear, dear Jess wandered into the kitchen, found me frustrated and overwhelmed, and said "I thought you liked cooking." It is a testament to my extreme exhaustion that he still walks.

I went into the living room, sat on the couch next to Meghin, and looked at the clock: 5:30pm. Some unnamed members of the family were making noises about being hungry, and I'd skipped lunch myself. "I just spent four hours making ravioli and I'm still not done," I whined. Dinner was most definitely not served. I didn't think I had the energy to continue. But I did.

Only to find that the raviolis had stuck to themselves in the bowl. I did what I could and then threw the rest in the boiling water and called it a day.

I expected the ravioli to be very heavy and flavored, and I wanted a nice light sauce to compliment them, something that would dance across the tongue. I didn't get that, but I did make a nice lemon basil sauce with olive oil -- too heavy for my dinner, but probably nice on plain pasta. I also made garlic bread and green beans simmered in tomatoes and onions.

How did I do? Not too shabby, not too shabby. The green beans were perfect, the right shade of doneness -- a little snap and a little bounce. The bread was brilliantly buttery. And the ravioli? Definitely good. The flavors were in perfect balance: the spelt made them hearty and earthy, the goat cheese added a pungent creaminess, and I had enough basil and garlic to smooth the whole thing together. It was not quite good enough for five hours worth of work, and the dough had not been rolled thinly enough -- so it was a little too doughy, a little too present. But it was still a hit. (Because really, no matter how much you value criticism, no one will tell a woman who spent 5 hours making you ravioli that it was anything less than completely perfect.)

What did I learn?

Never, ever, under pain of death, use lemon juice from a bottle.
Never attempt to roll pasta out by hand. Buy yourself a pasta maker posthaste.
And while you're at it, get yourself an apron or quit wearing black.

Tabbouleh and Pita

2008-12-14T19:02:00.001-08:00

I didn't realize that parsley was something one could actually eat until I was well into my twenties. I was living in a city I felt completely uncomfortable in, having a business lunch with someone I was less than fond of. She took me to a Lebanese place around the corner from my office and ordered tabbouleh --a kind of Lebanese parsley and bulgur salad -- and made me promise to try it. It came to us in a big bowl with plenty of warm, freshly baked pitas to wrap it in. I took one look at it and said, "You expect me to eat that? Parsley?" I thought parsley was something people stuck on top of their grilled cheese sandwich to make it look interesting. But I tried it. Tabbouleh was one of those foods that surprised me. It was light, and flavorful, and unlike anything I'd eaten so far. At a time when I wanted to be anywhere else on the planet than Denver, tabbouleh and fresh pita let me live in Lebanon for a little while.

I tried making it at home once, but that was before I discovered the wonder that is sharp, quality cooking knives; it is nearly impossible to bungle tabbouleh, since all it requires is for you to chop up a lot of stuff and throw it in a bowl, but I managed to bungle it. My knives at the time were just not good enough to chop the parsley finely. Josh even asked me if I was intentionally trying to choke him. I recently bought myself a decent knife, and the instant I realized what it was capable of, I thought Now I can make tabbouleh.

Tabbouleh is not something I follow a recipe for; to be more precise, tabbouleh is something I follow about six recipes for. Indeed I had at least two cookbooks open on the counter when I made it tonight. It is just a little bit of bulgur, cucumber, tomato, and green onions, and a whole lot of parsley coated in olive oil and lemon juice. I like to add feta, too, but Jess is lactose intolerant and I wanted him to be able to have some, if he chose.

And because tabbouleh is not worth eating without a good pita, I made some of that, too. I didn't have time to wait for a leavened version to rise, so I made an unleavened, pan cooked version instead.

The result is a lovely, soft bread that is a little more tortilla than traditional puffy pita, but oh, yum.

Jess:coming home while the fan is going so I don't set the fire alarm off Why do you have to make so much noise?

Allycen: I don't know, why do you have to be a jerk all the time?

Jess: Oh, c'mon, what would you do if I walked in and said, 'Wow, you're cooking something delicious, thank goodness'?

Allycen: I would cry with happiness.

Jess: And what kind of a friend would I be if I made you cry?

Let Them Eat (Olive) Cake

2008-12-13T11:21:00.000-08:00

Something wonderful happened in my kitchen today: I ran out of yogurt.

I was getting ready to make this: Black Olive Cake only totally different. I made it last week and followed the recipe closely – except I used spelt flour, because I’m a hippie, and we like to ruin things with whole grains. I was not totally impressed. I had been expecting happiness in my mouth, because Olives! And Cake! And what I got instead was something kind of herby and oniony and dense. Jess liked it, but he is mostly bowled over by my cooking technique, by which I mean He Didn’t Have To Do Any Cooking.

But I had discovered that such a thing as Olive Cake existed, and I wanted it to happen, and I was damn well expecting to enjoy it. So I planned on making it again today, only this time it was going to be fantastic. Except that I got home from the store, turned the oven on for preheating, and then realized that I didn’t have any yogurt.

This is not strictly true. I had plenty of yogurt. It was just blueberry flavored. And while I am fairly gastronomically adventurous, I have limitations. I knew I could go back out for yogurt, but…it was cold. I was hungry. The oven was already on. And I once had a really bad yogurt experience and I’ve never been disposed to it since. “Screw it,” I said. “I’ll use milk instead.”

Which goes against just about everything I know about substituting, because if you try to substitute 1% milk for yogurt, you are going to get something totally different than the recipe writer intended. What you cook is not going to taste like what the writer made.

Which means that what I made was totally, totally delicious.

Altogether much lighter than the dense thing I made originally. The crust? Much more flavorful and buttery, thanks to using olive oil instead of solely canola. I also substituted basil for mint and doubled it. I added feta, which is the best idea I’ve had in years. And I still used spelt flour. Because I’m a hippie. If you’re not a hippie, feel free to use white flour. Preferably the finest white flour money can buy, sanded off the wings of angels.

Let Them Eat (Olive) Cake

3 large eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup canola oil
2 cups of black olives, quartered
1 bunch green onions, chopped finely (I only used the firm white part of the onion, because I’m not a fan of the green part, but you can do as you like)
1 cup finely chopped basil leaves
Roughly 6 oz. of feta, crumbled
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
2 cups of flour

* Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. The internet says this is 190.5555556 degrees Celsius if you are one of those heathens that insists on using the metric system.

* Beat the eggs until they cry for mercy. Add milk and oil. Mix well.

* Add olives, green onion, basil, feta and salt and mix.

* Add baking powder and flour.

* Pour in a greased oven dish. I used an 8x8 glass dish.

* Bake for about 50 minutes. I baked mine for 55 minutes and it was perfect. It will bubble a little, which looks ominous, but it’s okay.

Let it sit for at least 15 minutes before you cut and serve. It tastes okay cold, but is much better warm and even better with wine.