The Kitchen Troll

I had my gallbladder removed last Friday, and bounced back from it surprisingly pretty quickly.  I didn’t cook at all last weekend, actually really not until Tuesday…but I’m not really counting that night.  The downside to the surgery is that I have to really watch what I eat now, but the upside is that I get full much more quickly than I used to.  I’m super nervous about the effect this is going to have on my French cooking.

This was the second week of our farm share through Potomac Vegetable Farms, and I’ve been getting some really fun veggies.  Last week I ended up with lots of salad greens, snow peas, Japanese turnips, and delicious garlic scapes.  I also got dill, and I forgot that I don’t really care much for dill.  I made omelettes one evening and tossed some in mine, then couldn’t eat most of it.  Blech.  The turnips were super yummy – I sauteed them and they got all caramelized and sweet.  This week was more salad greens, kale, zephyr squash, sugar snap peas, cabbage, more garlic curls, and tarragon.  Now, I really really like tarragon – which is kind of weird because I detest the taste and smell of licorice – so I made a garlic tarragon cream sauce on Wednesday to drizzle over sauteed chicken breasts.  My epic fail this week was the kale pie I made on Thursday.  It wasn’t horrible, it just wasn’t very good.  I’ll have to figure out another way to use kale….or hope that I don’t get anymore this week.  Last night had an Asian slant – I marinated a flank steak with some soy sauce and garlic, then shredded up the cabbage into an Asian coleslaw, and sauteed the peas with some peanut oil and garlic.  My epic win this week?  I whizzed up those garlic scapes (in my still-adored food processor!) into a fabulous pesto, then put smeared it onto some pizza dough, added a little Italian sausage and sauteed red onion for homemade flatbreads.  And I had leftover pesto, so I popped that into the freezer for another time.

On the topic of my food processor – it’s a complete beast, and absolutely reminds me of my Jeep Wrangler when it’s running.  It just sounds like it’s going to mow someone down.  I can’t believe how much I love it!  Admittedly, it’s a bit of pain in the arse to clean up once you’re done.  But there are so many things I wouldn’t be able to make without it.  Like my new favorite pesto.  Too bad garlic scapes are only in season for about another week.

Here’s the pesto recipe:

Garlic Scape Pesto

1/2 cup garlic scapes, roughly chopped

3 Tbsp lemon juice

1/4 cup pine nuts

1/2 cup olive oil

3 cups Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, shredded

1 tsp salt

Put garlic scapes, pine nuts, and lemon juice in bowl of food processor, with chopping blade, and process until scapes are finely chopped. With food processor running, add oil through the feed tube and process for 1 minute. Add half of cheese and process for 1 minute, then add remaining cheese and salt and process 1 minute more.

I picked up my first CSA share of the season today – I’m signed  up with Potomac Vegetable Farms – in the pouring rain.  Don’t care, I’m so freakin’ excited!  In additon to the above mentioned goodies, I also received Japanese turnips, a couple of varieties of salad greens, snow peas, dill, and a half dozen eggs.  I picked up a whole organic chicken at the market and roasted that slathered in oil and Herbes de Provence.  I chopped up one of the scapes, diced an onion, and sauteed those with the sliced up turnips.  I also picked up some blackberries, which were shockingly sweet considering they aren’t really in season yet here in Virginia.  I tossed those with some of the salad greens for a starter to our dinner.  This sounds so stupid, but it’s really unbelievable how much better lettuces taste when they’ve just been picked at the farm up the road.  They really just don’t need much added to them at all.  And I can’t wait to whizz up the rest of those scapes with some olive oil, cheese, and lemon juice for a really tasty pesto that I can freeze and use all season!  SQ grabbed a bottle of 2008 Keswick Viognier to enjoy with my super yummy dinner…we drank the whole thing (shocker, I know), so now I just want to go to sleep.

I think tomorrow night I will do something simple – I’m having gall bladder surgery on Friday morning (hint: once again, I won’t be in my kitchen for several days…grrrrr).  I already have some sharp cheddar and tomatoes, so I’m thinking omelettes (using some of that fresh dill), and maybe sauteed snow peas with sliced almonds.  Any other suggestions?  I seriously have no idea yet what to do with that kohlrabi….

I signed up for  a class at the new cooking school at Dulles Town Center – Cookology – which I attended last Thursday.  It was called something like ‘Mind of a Chef.’  I’ll admit I was somewhat skeptical about going to a cooking school in a mall.  Seriously….a mall??  After the all the great classes I’ve taken at L’Academie up in Bethesda?  I wasn’t blown away with it, and I didn’t really learn anything new, BUT what I did take away from it was a bit more confidence to cook without a recipe.  I feel like I’ve got enough technique under my belt at this point.  So I stopped by Wegman’s on the way home from the office today and just looked for something good in the produce section.  The oyster mushrooms looked fantastic, but there weren’t many left.  Clearly, there were some other shoppers who felt the same way, so I had to supplement with some Hen of the Woods mushrooms, which I’ve never used before.  Seemed like fun.  I did find it weird that there would be that many people buying oyster mushrooms in Leesburg, VA.  I picked up some baby spinach, a couple of shallots, fresh sage, and a lemon.  I originally intended to use some bacon with this, but then decided against that.  I changed my mind after I made the dish.  I sauteed the mushrooms in some butter, and popped a couple of sage bunches in the pan with them.  Once those were cooked, I pulled out the mushrooms and then dumped about 5 oz of spinach in the pan to wilt for about 3 or 4 minutes.  I then put the spinach on plates, topped with some mushrooms and minced shallots (that I sauteed separately), and grated Parm Reg cheese, squeeze of lemon.  Syd called it a hot spinach salad.  OK, that works for me.  Lesson learned:  I should have salted the mushrooms before adding them to the pan, and you need a LOT more spinach than you think when wilting it in a pan.  See what happens when one is rushed to get food on the table?

So, on top of continued cooking education, re-learning French, researching locations in France, AND my day job (which has somehow also become a night job over the past few months), I am also studying for some technical exams to become certified.  This is to help out SQ’s business – would be nice not to have to bring in another partner.  And Syd has started up with golf again…when am I going to find time to shuttle her back and forth for lessons and tournaments??  Yeah, it’s a lot.  I’m tired.  Especially right now as I’ve recently polished off a bottle of Cahors with SQ, which went really, really well with the mushrooms.  And I discovered I don’t really care for the Hen of the Woods, but those oyster mushrooms…wow!  Really earthy and kind of zingy on the finish.  I think not bad for my first real attempt at cooking without a recipe.

Yesterday was my birthday.  It rarely falls on a weekend – it often falls on spring break and we are out  of town.  It’s just tragic that I’ve had to spend some of my birthdays in places like Costa Rica, Mexico, and Hawaii.  All kidding aside (along with that spoiled brat comment), I was so excited that this year my birthday was on a Saturday and I could spend it with friends.  On my actual birthday.  But I wanted to really visit with them, and not have to pay so much attention to a fussy dinner, so I decided something easy would have to figure prominently in my plans.  I spent most of the day cleaning my ridiculously messy house (well, messy for me…I have a problem ‘letting it go’), and resenting SQ for being sick on my birthday and not being able to help me out.  I threw a bit of a tantrum around 4pm and almost just called the dinner party off.  Yeah, moment of complete selfishness…but it was my birthday!

It rather oddly came together as kind of an Italian-theme dinner.  I snagged some really pretty asparagus from Potomac Vegetable Farms on Friday evening, and a huge pork loin roast from Wegman’s.  Perfect – that could roast in the oven with little for me to do other than grill some veggies.  I made a salad out of the asparagus; tossed it with some lemon juice, extra-virgin olive oil, Parm-Reg cheese, salt, and pepper.  I roasted 4 bulbs of garlic along with the pork, then made that into a vinaigrette sauce.  I was really trying to work from memory of a presentation I saw Giada De Laurentiis give at a cooking show here in DC last November.  It was easy and it made a knockout presentation.

Dinner was perfect, but the real fun of the evening for me was that it turned out to be more of a cooking lesson with my girlfriends.  I also had a new TableTopics card set…absolutely helps to keep the conversation going, and you learn a LOT about people.  I finally admitted to them what ‘The Plan’ is for us after a bunch of questions like ‘Would you ever live in another country?’ and ‘What is your dream job?’  Dream is really the operative word there.  After all the questions it hit me that it still feels like a million years away.  I get a bit verbose after I’ve had a drink – and the cocktail Shayne put together for me hit me like a freight train after not really eating anything all day but cake batter and frosting.  I stumbled across some recipe called a Galliano Breeze, which seemed sort of like an Italian martini.  I’d never had any drink made with Galliano, and it turns out that I don’t really care for it.  We moved on through a couple of bottles of wine, which was a safer bet at that point, but just not as much fun.  I did get the chance to use my ‘new’ martini glasses that I picked up in Mexico a couple of years ago.  The wine glasses get a lot of use….cocktail glasses not so much.  I don’t usually make New Year’s resolutions, but I’m thinking that this year mine should have been ‘drink more cocktails’.

Oh, I almost forgot about my red velvet cake.  The frosting was perfect – just like my Grandma’s.  The cake was good, but should have been pulled out of the oven a couple minutes earlier.  I’m working on that baking thing.  I don’t like it, but I’m working at it.

I’m exhausted…what’s new with me these days??  Cook something new, or go with a tried-and-true recipe?  I opted for the latter as my brain just wasn’t functioning by the time 5pm rolled around.  I can’t remember where I found this recipe, it’s been several years.  I’ve tweaked it and altered it quite a bit, so here’s the current version I’m working from:

• 3 tsp olive oil, divided
• Four 4-oz chicken cutlets (thin-sliced chicken)
• 3 Tbsp flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/8 tsp pepper
• 1 cup chicken broth (I like Swanson Organic chicken broth best)
• 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
• 4 Tbsp tomato paste
• 2 Tbsp yellow onion, finely diced
• 1 Tbsp fresh thyme
• 2 Tbsp butter

1.  Heat oven to 200 degrees F.  Mix the flour, salt, and pepper in a shallow dish; coat the chicken.  Heat 2 tsp of the oil in a large skillet.  Panfry the chicken for about 1 1/2 minutes per side or until cooked through.  Remove to a platter; place in oven to keep warm.

2.  Add remaining tsp of oil to skillet; add onion and saute until translucent and soft.  Add chicken broth, balsamic vinegar, tomato paste, and thyme to skillet; if you can, add any accumulated juices from plate where chicken is resting.  Bring to a boil, scraping up bits on the bottom.  Simmer for 1 minute or until slightly thickened.

3.  Remove skillet from heat and stir in the butter.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.  Spoon sauce onto chicken and serve. (This makes perhaps more sauce than necessary…but I love sauce, so this is what I go with)

I love that it’s also asparagus season right now, and I found a really nice bunch at the market.  I wrapped 5 or 6 spears in prosciutto, then made 2 more bunches like that for Syd and SQ.  I grilled them for about 10 minutes, until they were nicely crisp-tender.  The whole meal was done in about 30 minutes, and it didn’t take up too much focus or brainpower on my part.  I didn’t drag out a bottle of wine, however, or I’d be asleep right now.

I have, very inexcusably, not updated in a while.  Honestly, my day job has been just kicking my butt over the past several weeks.  I wanted to cook Easter dinner so badly yesterday, but my mother-in-law insisted on cooking.  I was really, really worried about the outcome of that meal, so I weasled my way into her kitchen and played uninvited sous chef anyway.  Not in a mean, belligerent way…but when she asked I was willing to give guidance.  I also insisted on bringing dessert since I couldn’t wrestle the whole meal from her.  I made a Strawberry Cream Cake recipe that I found on Cook’s Illustrated.  I’m sure I’ve said this before – desserts are my downfall in the kitchen if there’s baking involved.  But this turned out seriously divine.  We are still finishing it off today.

So, Saturday is my birthday and I’ve decided to have a party at my house.  I never get to spend my birthday with my friends – booooo – but this year I get to do that AND cook for them – yeah!!  Still not sure what I’m making for dinner, but I definitely want caipirinhas to drink and my Grandma’s red velvet cake for dessert.  She used to make them for me, but we don’t live in Ohio anymore, and she’s not doing so well these days.  Mom emailed the recipe to me – cant’ wait to make it!  I need to remember to tell SQ he’s only allowed to play music I like….  Well, I can’t give away my grandma’s recipe just yet.  I need to try it out to make sure it’s just as wonderful as my memories think it is.  You know how those things can go.  I’d like to cook something French(ish) for dinner on Saturday, but I fear none of the kids will eat it.  Well, except mine…but, anyway, I guess that would be selfish.  I’ll have to plan something like that for another night as I am celebrating birthday MONTH this year.  It’s the last year of my 30′s, so I need to go kind of big.

I waited until I could get to Wegman’s today to get my scallops.  I haven’t had them in a while, and have really been in the mood for them.  I sometimes wish we lived in DC, or at least a lot closer, so we could take advantage of the fresh fish markets.  But, we don’t, so I have to make do with the options out here in the country.  You want fabulous cow, chicken, lamb, or pork…no problem.  We have farms all over the place.  But really fresh fish?  So, Wegman’s is my vendor of choice for that.  I’ve purchased scallops from Wegman’s before, but the ones I got today were just in a whole other class.  I made a really butter-y Riesling sauce, then I pan-seared the scallops in a little oil, after sprinkling them with some sea salt and fresh-ground black pepper.  I actually intended to get a bottle of Pinot Gris for the sauce, but I passed by the French Rieslings…and the bottle of ’07 Trimbach (with the nice Wine Spectator 91 rating) jumped out at me from the shelves.  It was earthy and mineral-y, and completely French – really nice in the sauce, and to drink.

So, I know I’ve been absent for a while.  I did a LOT of cooking over the past week.  There’s nothing else to do when you are forced to stay indoors because the streets, and your freakin’ long gravel driveway, aren’t plowed out after 4 feet of snow fell between two blizzards in less than a week.  I attempted pizza dough one night.  Baking is still seriously my Achilles heel.  The dough wasn’t bad…but it didn’t have the texture it should have.  And it didn’t really puff up in the oven.  It’s a work in progress.  My homemade pizza sauce, however, was fabulous.  And I love that I can throw anything on a pizza and my daughter will eat it.  We busted out of the house last Friday, and then I didn’t cook all weekend.  Back to my fun this week!  And I have Brasserie Beck to look forward to on Saturday.  My daughter’s 14th birthday is coming up next week, and this is her pick for birthday dinner.  And Kirstin is flying in on Saturday night!  She’s on her way back to London from New Orleans….can’t wait to see her!

The snow started on Friday morning and didn’t stop until yesterday around 4pm.  Final total for Loudoun County, VA – 33 inches on average.  That’s what we have at our house.  This is seriously the most snow I’ve ever seen, and I grew up in Ohio.  We lost a giant tree in our backyard and I don’t think the plows will come down our road for another day or so.  SQ was already losing his mind yesterday.  But I have food!  The grocery stores were insane on Thursday, people grabbing things off the shelves as if they would be trapped for weeks.  Watching my daughter slog through the snow yesterday, which was up to her waist, to get to the neighbors’ house was hilarious.  The one-minute trip took her about 15 or 20.

So, what did I make?  I slow-roasted a brisket on Friday, kind of Southern-style, along with some garlic mashed potatoes.  This was kind of a no-brainer dinner – I did have to work on Friday.  And no, not in an office…I do have a laptop and a wireless connection, even out here in the country.  My daughter loves pasta, and if I haven’t mentioned it before, she could and would eat it every day.  She poked around and found a recipe for Baked Rigatoni with Sausage and Mushrooms on epicurious.com, and pleaded with me to make that.  Not a complicated recipe, but it just takes a while as you have to keep reducing things down.  It takes about 1 1/2 hours or so from start to finish, but it was SO worth it.  We popped open a bottle of ’05 Chianti Ruffina, which was really delicious after it opened up a bit in the glass.

Today is now Super Bowl Sunday.  Not that I give a crap about football, but I was feeling the need to make chili today.  Isn’t that what people normally do on this day?  I’m making a white chicken chili and some homemade cornbread.  I’ve played around with how to cook the chicken, and settled on poaching it in stock before adding to the hot stew.  I also add a lot of cheese to it – I like the Kerrygold aged cheddar for this.  It’s pretty easy to find and doesn’t overpower the other flavors.  I still can’t quite get my cornbread balance right.  I love the cake-y, kind-of-sweet cornbread, which I know is not very ‘southern’ of me, but I don’t care.  I will attempt again today, and let you know how it turns out tomorrow.  I don’t really care much for baking, and this is no exception for me…probably explains why I can’t easily find the fix.  I’ve also got some Granny Smith apples and a couple of boxes of all-butter puff pastry.  I think an easy apple pie is also in our near future.

I’ve got a pot of French press Mayorga coffee right now and the sun is shining, but it is really freaking cold outside.  Tomorrow may be interesting…I will getting very creative with meals.  I hope we get plowed out by Tuesday, but there’s also another snow storm in the forecast for that day.  It could be a very long week…

It was just sitting there, calling to me as I was getting some sliced London Port at the deli counter.  Very expensive, but really worth it kind of Gouda cheese.  Syd (yes, my daughter) consistently proclaims that she doesn’t like ‘cold’ cheese, but she gobbled this up.  It was all crumbly and had great flavor.  I could have just eaten that for dinner with some crackers and a bottle of wine.  I may go back and get some more tomorrow once VDOT plows the snow off the roads.  Syd’s counting on being off school again tomorrow.  I’m just irritated at having to watch it come down and cover everything up again.  Whatever – I made another yummy pork tenderloin for dinner.  I marinated it in some balsamic vinegar and garlic, then roasted it with some chopped up leeks.  And I keep trying to copy the highly memorable salad I had 2 years ago in Edinburgh, at a restaurant called Fisher’s in the City.  It took me a couple of months after we came back to figure out that ‘rocket’ and ‘arugula’ are the same thing.  It was the simplest salad – just the rocket tossed with some lemon juice and olive oil, homemade garlic croutons,parmesan shavings, and pepper.  I haven’t been able to find parmesan that good, but I’ve come really close.

I also got a Red Velvet Cupcake mix from Williams-Sonoma as a gift last week.  I made them last night, and though the end product was a bit dry we have successfully finished off all 12 cupcakes in 24 hours.  I don’t care much for baking, it’s my Achilles heel.  But these were pretty easy to make, and I cheated and used store-bought frosting.  SQ has stated a couple of times that maybe he should take up baking so we could be a great kitchen team.  I said I think that’s a great idea, but I secretly think that he doesn’t have the patience for it, or the time.  OK, I guess not a secret now…  Maybe someday, after he makes enough money for us to sell our house and move to France, he can take up baking and hone his photography skills.  Then we could do something crazy like sell sliders and cupcakes out of a trailer.

Well, pretty much everything except liver…yuck.  I made beef short ribs for dinner tonight – braised in a mix of Cabernet Sauvignon and balsamic vinegar, with a little garlic and rosemary.  I perched them on top of Gorgonzola polenta (one of my favorite cheeses to make sauces with and mix in things), and it was almost too pretty to eat.  I love the smell of beef cooking in my kitchen, and these were no exception.  My daughter doesn’t much care for beef, and I’m beginning to question whether she’s really related to me.  I guess living on the East Coast since the age of three didn’t instill a love of beef in her like it did for me.  They were so good – one of those things you eat that you can still taste even an hour or more later.  If you’ve never made them, give it a try…SO easy, and almost impossible to screw up.

I was in Cleveland for several days for my day job, and have been going through major kitchen withdrawal.  I intended to cook last night, but then got an invite to get together with friends at Magnolia’s.  And I never pass that up.  The time with these particular friends or this particular restaurant.  SQ and I split the veal osso bucco, and it was really good, but not ‘stratospheric great’.  And that’s OK.

I feel like I’ve been so unproductive today, but I did get several new entries pulled into my Mac Gourmet database.  For anyone who owns a Mac and likes to cook, this is such a great tool.  You can pull in recipes from several websites with one click, and from others with just a bit more effort.  You can create smart folders and even wine notes.  I love to try different kinds of cuisine, so it really helps me categorize so I can find things.  I can tag what I’ve already made and rate it…it’s fabulous.  And no, I’m not getting paid to say these things…kinda wish I was.  Yikes, I’ve also got a stack of lonely food magazines piling up and waiting for my perusal.  I’m still not sure where the hours went today.