The Kitchen Troll

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.

I finally made the pan of lasagna tonight for dinner.  I woke up in a panic because I don’t own a pan big enough to cook lasagna in, and I really wanted to make it for SQ because I’m going to be out of town for the next 4 days.  On a business trip.  In Cleveland.  In January.  That’s all I have to say about that.  I drove to the Le Creuset outlet store in Leesburg – with a budget in mind – to get a larger baking pan.  My choice was the less expensive stoneware for $59 or the cast-iron for $155.  Yikes….no money as it is, so I went with the stoneware rectangular baking pan.  SQ talked me into the signature ‘Flame’ color.  I think I like it.

I made Giada’s classic lasagna, and followed the recipe exactly. Except I swapped fresh spinach for the frozen chopped spinach the recipe calls for.  My first crack at lasagna – ever.  This is a very rich recipe, and I have several tweaks I would make next time.  It’s quite time-consuming if you make the homemade tomato sauce, but SO worth it.  And you end up with extra sauce that you can freeze for another day.  I also should have used non-stick foil when I covered the pan to bake in the oven.  A lot of the cheese stuck to the foil, which makes it less pretty, but it still tasted divine.  Hmm, I think it tasted divine…I was too busy shoving it in my mouth so I could make it out the door in time to meet Stacey for a movie.  We went to see ‘Leap Year’ – not a bad movie, silly romantic comedy.  But the scenery of Ireland was worth the $10.50 admission.  I also think SQ may need to pick up an Irish accent now.

Well, I’m over and out for the next 4 days.  Yep, in Cleveland.  In January.  I guess I did have more to say about that.

Dinner two nights ago was a major bomb.  Long day at work, and I was very crabby.  I should have known better than to try anything new.  And I should have taken it as an omen that the grocery store was out of rotisserie chickens.  I was just not in the mood to make anything too  lengthy or complicated, so I was planning on shredding a rotisserie chicken for a tropical chicken salad.  I had to cook up the chicken as part of the seemingly never-ending prep work to mix this up.  I completely underestimated the time it would take to make this, and really overestimated the end product.  It was what SQ would call ‘meh’.  There was potential, but the time involvement was SOOOO not worth it.  However, dinner last night was almost nonexistent – I barely made it home from work in time to grab some sandwiches and get Syd over to the high school for ‘Course Selection Night’.  It still hasn’t really hit me that my daughter is going to be in HIGH SCHOOL in the fall.  I think I’ve been too busy trying to help her figure out her life after high school.  It was a long night, and we were both exhausted before we ever got there.

So, tonight I made chicken with a white wine/cream sauce.  I also fried up some potato wedges.  My French summer-mother from high school would have been proud.  In her quest to continually cook what she considered to be ‘American’ dishes, she was constantly making homemade french fries.  I guess she didn’t realize that most Americans buy them frozen at the grocery, or get them in the drive-through from McDonald’s.  I didn’t have fries that good again until I went to St. Martin with my husband 20 years later.  I pan-seared the cut-up chicken pieces, then cooked them with some stock, Chardonnay, and vegetables for about 20 minutes.  I pulled out the chicken, strained out the vegetables, and reduced the sauce down pretty heavily.  Whisk in some butter and creme fraiche, salt and pepper…and you have a pretty amazing sauce for chicken.  I minced up about 4 cloves of garlic to toss with the potatoes, and grated up some Parmesan cheese over the top.  SQ pulled out a bottle of Vouvray for drinking – good, but too sweet for this dish.  The wine would have been better with a cheese plate.  Which is probably what I need to have for dinner tomorrow.  I’m still in an indulgence funk from the holidays that I can’t seem to break.  I also knicked my hand up a bit with my new knife tonight.  I really think I could take a finger off with this knife and not even know it for several minutes.  I burn myself constantly in the kitchen, but I never cut myself with knives.  Except two years ago at Christmas when I was using my mom’s Cutco chef’s knife, which is also a beast.  I sliced my hand twice and never felt a thing.  A 10″ knife takes some getting used to, and I’m still not sure how to hone a Japanese ‘hybrid’ knife, but I love the way it cuts and slices.

Overall, happy with the dinner end-product tonight.  The music selections didn’t hurt either – thank you Radiohead for making my night less crabby.  Yeah, thank you SQ for being my nightly food DJ…your lineup was a winner tonight.

My daughter loves pasta so much that I try to indulge her sometimes.  She would eat pasta every night if she could.  I made this linguini carbonara-like dish tonight – a creamy, egg-y sauce along with bacon, spinach, red bell pepper, and a pinch of crushed red pepper for some kick.  It wasn’t bad…very edible, but not the pasta I’ve ever made.  No wine tonight.  I meant to make lasagna but forgot that’s what I was supposed to make.  It’s SQ’s favorite, what he calls ‘his kryptonite’.  My mom makes a pretty good lasagna, which is surprising since they are mostly from the South and Southwest.  I poked around online for a while, and found a Giada De Laurentiis recipe that seemed particularly good.  I have really mixed feelings about the Food Network – I really despise the channel, but if it gets more people cooking real food instead of the pre-packaged crap at the grocery, or McDonald’s, then I guess it can’t be all bad.  I’ll save my rantings about most of their personalities for another time.  So, I’ll try to remember to make the lasagna for SQ this coming weekend.

And while I’m plotting my course to France (countdown: 4 years, 5 months), I did come up with a really cool backup plan in case the housing market doesn’t cooperate and we have to stay stateside. On a sad side note, the fabulous farm that was for sale, and that I drive by with moderate frequency, is now not for sale.  I was in no way serious about acquiring it, nor would we be able to if I were…but it was sometimes nice to fantasize about having a ‘country cooking school’ right here.  C’est la vie.

I seem to be typing up these posts while slightly tipsy lately.  It’s hard for two people to drink an entire bottle of wine and not feel a little tipsy.  OK, maybe there are some of you out there who can do this and NOT feel effects…but I say that maybe you drink too much.  Anyway, I decided to practice with some techniques I learned at my last French cooking class at L’Academie de Cuisine.  The class was taught by the school’s founder and owner, Francois Dionot.  He taught us how to make Duck a l’Orange, along with Braised Apples and Fennel.  He also made French Onion Soup and French Cheesecake, but it’s a weeknight so I was not going that far.  And I’ve made fabulous French Onion Soup before….just like Chef Dionot makes it.  I had duck breast from Maple Leaf Farms – purchased at Wegman’s – a large fennel bulb, and two Granny Smith apples.  I’ve never cooked with fennel at home…..I had to Google how to cut the darn thing up!  I’m still in desperate need of a Le Creuset dutch oven, but my All-Clad worked just fine to cook the diced apple and fennel.  The instructions Chef Dionot gave us to make the l’Orange sauce were very vague, so I was nervous about it, but boldly drizzled it all over the seared duck breast anyway.  I’m nothing if not confident, but with disclaimers, to my family and friends when I cook.  The duck was SOOOO perfect, and the fennel/apple side was completely buttery and yummy.  This was a perfect combination all the way around.  Is it totally wrong to gush over one’s cooking successes??  Anybody out there?  Yeah, this was a Top Ten for me.  Along with my sea scallops and saffron sauce.  And that seared rare tuna I made a few months ago.  We washed it all down with a 2008 Ferraton Pere & Fils Cotes du Rhone (why can’t I figure out how to add symbols and accents??).  The wine could/should have had more shelf time, but it was quite drinkable right now – decent structure, not too throaty, and very nice with the duck.  Honestly, this was a great dinner to make to both impress others AND get dinner on the table quickly.  Mmmmm, I’ll be thinking about this for several days to come….

So, I was discussing the professional certification course that L’Academie offers for people like me – day jobs, must take classes at night.  It’s expensive and we have no money right now but I really really want to go through this.  I think it’s important for my credibility down the road, and I’m so excited about it.  It’s a 20-week program so I have to work it in when we don’t have anything else planned.  I think I can start putting aside a bit of money each month now so that I have most of the tuition by next January.  They offer it twice a year, but there is no way we will be able to swing it when the next session starts up in July.  So my goal is January 2011.  And I’ve just put that out there for the whole world to see, so I HAVE to stick with it.  Maybe I’ll be ready to give public notification of my goal on re-learning French by next posting?  We have to move to France now (well, not RIGHT now…Syd stil has to make it through high school…only 4 1/2 years to go!) – the farm that was for sale about 3 miles from our house, and that I might have considered, is no longer for sale.  Uhm, yeah, right…in my wildest dreams we could not have afforded that property.  It might take me a couple of days to write again…I don’t know if I can get past my success with the duck breast anytime soon.

I had a great day at my ‘regular’ job, albeit quite busy.  I was driving towards home, planning to stop at the grocery to pick up dinner, and feeling like freakin’ superwoman.  I can work all day (a long day!) and still buy items from the market, then put a quasi-gourmet dinner on the table.  Maybe I’ve been exposed to the suburbs too long, and more people actually do this in the cities.  I suspect that’s the case.  There’s way too much shopping for prepared foods at Costco and Wegman’s that goes on out here.  Anyway, I grabbed some lamb chops and gorgonzola cheese for the polenta, and got dinner on the table in about 45 minutes.  SQ and I plowed through a bottle of ‘meh’ 2006 Cabernet Franc from CrossKeys Vineyards (Virginia) with dinner while carrying on a lively debate about why people in China eat the crazy things they do.  Then, after cleaning up the dishes, came the boom – Syd hands me a total crap Science test score that she needs signed by a parent.  I was so angry I couldn’t see straight (also not helped by the two glasses of wine I’d consumed).  And she’d been sitting on it for a few days!!  So I’m just pissed off right now, and I don’t know what to do about her attitude.  It’s not the teenage thing either.  The roller coaster grades have been happening for several years.  I’ll work on it tomorrow, but tonight I’m going to consume some peanut butter Whoppers in large quantities – just because they taste good.  Which will probably make me feel sick.  Whatever.

Ashamedly, I haven’t written anything for a while.  I really haven’t cooked for several days – absolutely no motivation since Christmas break, for whatever reason.  It’s been so cold I just don’t even want to go out to get food.  Very unusual weather for Virginia to be in a deep freeze for this long.  My daughter had a Creative Cooking camp this weekend through Girl Scouts, and I volunteered (yes, glutton for punishment) to help supervise.  I was in charge of teaching knife safety.  I wanted to teach knife skills as well, but that wasn’t in the cards, as the camp was set up to be more of a ‘figure out what you want to cook, figure out how to cook it’ situation.  There were around 60 girls between the ages of 13 and 15 – yikes! – to be taught.  I brought all my various knives, but didn’t think in advance to get a case of some kind to carry them in.  I’ve never had to cart my stash of knives anywhere.  I did take my gorgeous new Misono, and they were duly impressed.  But, being the sassy age that they are, they wanted no individual knife instruction, and insisted they knew how to dice an onion, or any of the other various vegetables on hand.  We were there for two nights, probably too long, and they had 3 cooking competitions.  Two nights in a chilly cabin, no showers, and sleeping on an air mattress that had a slow leak was the not-so-fun part.  But at the end of the weekend, my daughter’s group took home the grand culinary prize.  I’m so proud!!!  Of course they were one of only two groups that asked for my help and asked a lot of questions.  That other group came in second place.