The Kitchen Troll

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.

I cooked dinner last night – technically, Christmas Eve dinner – for 27 people…my largest crowd so far.  This is my third year cooking for the family, and my mom makes a superb sous chef.  A standing rib roast is tradition, and we got a huge 18-pounder this year.  I smeared a horseradish-herb-butter crust all over the top and put it in the oven for about 4 hours.  It was absolutely perfect.  I also repeated the homemade cranberry sauce and green beans with herb butter from Thanksgiving (at Sydney’s request), and added in a huge potato gratin and salad.  I didn’t realize it until we had purchased everything, but the food colors were right in season.  I did as much prep as I could on Wednesday night, but we still had a lot to pull together to get dinner finished up.  And too many people milling around in the kitchen once they all showed up…makes me very crabby.  I start scowling and talking in a very snippy tone of voice.  We cracked open a bottle of 2005 St Emilion – SO perfect with the beef.

SQ and I already got our Christmas presents back at Thanksgiving (a new Kenmore Pro refrigerator and Bosch dishwasher), so I wasn’t expecting anything additional this morning.  Mom surprised me with the new Misono chef’s knife I desperately wanted and an All-Clad fry pan/basket combo.  It was a good Christmas – I got to cook and I got new toys.  What more could a girl want?  Merry Christmas.

I made Julia’s Boeuf Bourguignon today – the one from MTAOFC.  Five hours in the kitchen and 2 rounds with the dishwasher, using pretty much every dish/bowl/pot/pan I own.  And the constant mess of grease I was cleaning off the stovetop and counters.  But it was SO worth it for the 20 minutes of blissful eating.  I was going to make some mashed potatoes but then realized that both of the pots that would have been large enough to boil the potatoes were already taken.  So I made some roasted potatoes instead, which weren’t amazing but they worked.  I followed the recipe exactly with one minor exception – I couldn’t find a slab of bacon with rind at the market.  So I used my regular thick-cut bacon, and I’m sure the overall flavor suffered a little bit but it was still wonderful.  I also learned today that if you heat some oil along with butter in a pan – for a saute – that it keeps the butter from burning.

I won’t be writing tomorrow, as we will be en route to Ohio for Christmas.  And I won’t be cooking again until Christmas Eve.  I offered to start cooking dinner a couple of years ago and I’ve been roped in ever since.  Not that I mind, and this year I get to cook for 26 of my family members…my biggest crowd so far.  Mom’s doing some pre-shopping, and we’ll finish it off on Wednesday.  I hope we can make it out tomorrow after the 22 inches of snow that buried us yesterday.  Two days of being stuck in the house is starting to give me cabin fever.  I think the Wrangler should be fine if we can get out of our neighborhood.  Speaking of the Wrangler…I’m absolutely taking it with me to France.

I’ve done very little cooking this week – should I feel bad?  And I discovered I am less productive when I have hours of time on my hands.  I had very good intentions of making ‘Julia’s’ Boeuf Bourguignon for dinner today.  I braved the grocery store yesterday with the masses of people shopping like they would be snowed in for weeks to get my provisions (have I used that word before?  do I say it too much?).  The weather forecast went from calling for 6 inches of snow to 18-24 inches of snow for today.  Yeah!  A whole day forced to be at home – which is difficult, for those of you who know me – and I would be so productive.  I made a big breakfast, but we got started a bit late as my daughter is prone to sleeping in until 10am on the weekends.  I had been up for four hours at that point, full of coffee and shaking like Tweek from South Park.  Not very helpful when you then try to cook bacon, pancakes, and scrambled eggs while talking to your mother on the phone about roasting pans and Christmas dinner menus.  I had no motivation to do anything after that except watch the snow and more back episodes of Big Bang Theory.  Around 5pm I decided it was too late to attempt the stew since I do have others to feed besides myself.  I ended up cooking some hazelnut-crusted chicken breasts with a raspberry sauce.  I also learned that coarse sea salt doesn’t really melt properly after only being in the oven for 20 minutes.  SQ, on the other hand, loved the salt surprise in the chicken crust.  I also need to figure out a way to get the crust to better stick to the chicken.  It kept coming off in pieces while I was browning it in the pan.  It tasted delicious, but it wasn’t as pretty as I had hoped.

The BIGGER news is that I am now the extremely proud owner of the mac daddy Cuisinart food processor!!!  Even if no one else is reading this, my husband is, and he drove all the way to Williams-Sonoma on Wednesday to buy it for me as an early Christmas present.  I did spend some time today pulling it out of it’s packaging and petting it.  Now I have a really nice, gently used, two-year old 11-cup Cuisinart food processor that needs a good home.  I could post that on my Facebook page, but I need to make sure it’s new owner will care for it the way I do.  Why am I talking about my kitchen tools like they are pets?  Probably because it’s after 11pm and I really need to go to bed.  I will make the Boeuf Bourguignon tomorrow – my first attempt at Julia’s version.  Wish me luck.

There’s a new Cuisinart food processor that I’m just DYING to get!  I have a really nice one now, and I’ve only had it for a couple of years so it’s still in really good condition.  But this new version – the ‘Elite Die-Cast’ – really is the mac daddy, nay, the queen mother of all food processors.  It has 3 different bowl sizes which can be switched out without making a mess, a retractable cord, and storage cases for all the parts (a major problem for me now…I have to move gingerly around the pieces lest I slice off a finger), along with several other features.  Maybe someone would buy mine from me so I can get this new one!  Williams-Sonoma is selling the 16-cup version for $300, and Sur La Table is selling a 14-cup version for the same price.  Hmmm, wonder which one I should get??  If you have never used a food processor they can make your life so much easier in the kitchen.  Granted, the cleanup is a bit involved, but it’s so worth it.  I’m not putting this on my Christmas wish list as there are so many other kitchen ‘things’ that I think I want, and I don’t think anyone is going to fork over $300 to purchase this for me.  And I’ve already hit up my husband for a totally useless and expensive, but gorgeous, bracelet.

I completely intended to cook dinner tonight, but forgot that Sydney has a choral concert at school.  So, ashamedly, it was a fast-food kind of night.  And we live in a very small town, so the options are quite limited.  I won’t be back in the kitchen until Thursday – I have a holiday dinner party with my office colleagues at Clyde’s Willow Creek Farm tomorrow night.  Beautiful and historic building, but the food is unpredictable.  They do have really great brunch.