You Are What You Eat

Oh, it was one of those weeks. Things started off so swimmingly last Monday, with me knocking out most of my weekly errands there at the onset, and getting through most of the paperwork that I had designated as imperative. Then, on Tuesday, as the kids and I were driving back from the farm with our weekly CSA box of produce just brimming with basil and parsley, Swiss chard, tomatoes, potatoes, squash and zucchini, eggplant, cucumbers, onions and garlic, The Auto From The Inner Circle of Hell overheated. Not just a little, mind you. The kind of overheating that involves turning on the heat full blast so as to bleed the heat out of the engine, in no less than 90 degree weather. And even then, the needle went into the red and so I searched for a safe place to pull off the road with my precious cargo of children and produce. Before I could make up my mind about what to do (and one of the options included moving back to town where a car would be a less necessary part of our existence), there was a loud explosion and fluid sprayed out from under the hood. It was turning into one of those days.

I pulled over in front of an assisted living facility, calmly climbed out of The Auto From The Inner Circle of Hell and furiously dialed The Carnivore on my cell phone. When there was no answer, and Little Miss Piggy started to cry (no doubt from the heat) and The Big Boy started to fuss (because he wanted me to “take the car to the hospital”), I lost my cool. All of it. Every last shred. I jumped up and down in fury and kicked a tire, and then I called my mommy.

My chagrin was palpable when I saw all the retirees sitting in rocking chairs on the porch of the facility, quietly watching me pitch a big fit.

In the days that have followed, as The Auto From The Inner Circle of Hell sits in front of my house, in the same spot the tow truck deposited it, with its unrepentant hood up and its bumper splayed out upon the ground beside it, I have done little more than fume. It was paid for, you see, and I do not relish the thought of getting a new vehicle even though it is painfully that this might be my only option.

I wanted to spend my week playing around with all the beautiful vegetables from the farm, trying some new recipes and putting up sauces for the winter, but everything has been overshadowed by the glowering hunk of metal taking up space in my yard. When I should have been finding new uses for squash, I was running amortization schedules in my head to see how much I was willing to spend on a new(er), less offensive automobile. And when I would have rather been turning those beautiful onions into sinful fried rings of glory, I was comparing the gas mileage and cargo space of different vehicles.

We did eat, of course, but there were no spectacular new recipes last week. I sautéed slices of squash with garlic and onions, and I made more of those crazy-addictive crispy flattened potatoes, and I froze some more batches of pesto to get us through the long, hard (4 ½ weeks) of winter we will have to endure in a few months, but I have no breakthroughs in cooking to share.

This is such a lonely feeling. I love to share recipes, and yet here I am, and I have nothing. Nothing but a broken down, fully useless Auto From The Inner Circle of Hell to grumble about.

I reached a new low on Friday when I realized I had no transportation with which to get to the Saturday morning farmer’s market. I flopped on my mother’s sofa in abject misery (after she came to pick me up, of course) and contemplated borrowing my grandmother’s car. The market would cheer me up, for sure, especially since I knew there was going to be live music (something I have heard far too little of since becoming a family woman), and I was feeling most desperate for more potatoes – because one can never have enough of those Crispy Flattened Potatoes.

My mother raised no dummy though (in my case, at least) and when I saw an opportunity for redemption, I jumped up and wrapped myself around it. Mom was trying to coerce my visiting uncle into joining her and Grandma at yard sales on Saturday morning, and Uncle Jim (God bless him AND the horse he rode in on) made entertaining little scoffing noises at Mom before saying, “I’d rather go to the farmer’s market with Sarah.”

Yes, yes, yes. THAT is how one erases a perfectly annoying week.

My Uncle Jim is only about 13 years older than I am, and I have always adored him. I knew he would be, without a shadow of a doubt, the ideal farmer’s market date. He’s hip, he knows food, he already understands why I’m so infatuated with the farmer’s market, he’s well-versed in what goes on politically, and he’s a lot of fun. He has always been fun. Mom and I shared a house with him in New Orleans for a few months when I was a wee thing, and there were always delightful impromptu visits when he would pass through Georgia in the years before and since. Even more than usual, I was excited in my anticipation of our trip to the market.

Truly, I look forward to the market every week now. We have had other incarnations of farmer’s markets in Athens over the years, but this spring a very well-planned and eclectic market came together at Bishop Park and was an instant success. There are maybe 10 or 12 stands of organic produce, a truck with eggs (that always seem to – grrrr – sell out within 5 minutes) and grass-fed meat, a couple of tables piled with fresh breads and other baked goods, Free Trade coffee that is locally roasted, and some crafts as well. It is beautiful and friendly and not the least bit elitest. You don’t have to be a card-carrying hippie, you don’t need to be able to converse on the merits of The Farm Bill, and you aren’t required to sign a statement that you will never eat anything grown out of state. The farmers at the stands are more than willing to answer questions about their goods, and you’d be hard-pressed to not find smiling people on every side. It would pain me greatly to think that anyone isn’t shopping there because they are intimidated by it in any way.

Everything is grown (or raised, in the case of the meat and eggs) organically and sustainably, within 100 miles of Athens, and there is even a table with information about PLACE, an organization that works to promote the idea of eating locally. The variety of produce is just lovely to behold, which, of course, is the best draw of all.

Uncle Jim, Little Miss Piggy and I arrived at the market only a minute or two past 8:00 this past Saturday morning, and my dour mood improved considerably before we even had his car parked. The weather was pleasant, the music was a great addition to the ambience, and Jim happily ambled off, scoring some blueberry juice and some hand-made soaps. There were people milling around everywhere, tote bags bulging with their purchases, and, even though the egg people were, of course, already out of eggs again, I gleefully filled my bags with potatoes, green beans, a gloriously fragrant cantaloupe, yellow onions, and two bags of dried tomatoes. The dried tomatoes were a particularly pleasing find, since I usually buy mine in jars from the supermarket, and I can’t wait to cook with these. I was also thrilled to the top to come across some fingerling potatoes. I have been trying to find some in the stores for a couple of years, and always came up empty before now.

For so long, one of the loudest arguments against local, organic food was the exclusionary high prices, but with the inflation at the supermarket checkout, I’m finding the costs of my summer CSA subscription, along with my weekly farmer’s market purchases, to be only slightly more than what I had formerly paid in the stores. Naturally it is all a matter of priorities, and since I’m vegetarian, well, it isn’t a big leap for me to buy my groceries locally and to be willing to spend a little more on them.

It can be daunting, I know, to go from buying processed food at the supermarket to joining a CSA or getting up at the crack of dawn (on a Saturday, no less) to get to the farmer’s market before everything is gone. The thing is though, it isn’t necessary to change one’s whole life in one fell swoop. If anything, that would be a recipe for disaster. But you have to start somewhere, and the benefits of eating locally and seasonally are too many to name. The flavor is the biggest and most obvious difference, but there is also a lot to be said for keeping your money in the local economy, for supporting small local farmers, for really knowing where and from whom your food truly comes from.

Start small, if it seems easier: go to the farmer’s market even just once a month, or make a pact to only buy produce at the supermarket that is grown in this country (hey – it uses less energy than transporting veggies from Chile), visit a pick-your-own-berry farm, read that Barbara Kingsolver book that brought local eating to mainstream America. Just do something. Food should be a source of joy, eating should be a thoughtful experience. It just makes sense that dinner should come from somewhere other than a box or a can.

After all, you are what you eat.

Southern Summer Delicacy

Green tomatoes are one of those fleeting joys, one of the last of the seasonal items that you must learn to grab while you can, unlike the artificially year-round availability we have grown accustomed to with so many other fruits and vegetables. I can find a tasteless, perfectly round, evenly colored red tomato in the supermarket any old time. Green tomatoes, on the other hand, are available around these parts only to those who grow their own tomatoes, or who belong to a CSA or shop at the farmer’s market (though I came up empty-handed when I tried to obtain more of them at this morning's market).

Don‘t get me wrong. This isn’t a complaint letter. I like having something to look forward to. Green tomatoes are really nothing more than plain old-fashioned unripe tomatoes - perfect for those of us who get wildly impatient waiting for produce to ripen. If left to their own devices, they’ll turn red and get softer, but frankly, I like them just the way they are. Firm, almost to the point of crispness inside, with very little in the way of seeds and gel, and a tart flavor akin to wild apples, they have rightfully earned their place in Southern cuisine. But you already knew that, right? Everyone has read Fried Green Tomatoes, or seen the movie, or (come on) at least heard of them, though from what I understand, entirely too many people have never had the pleasure of enjoying this unexpectedly addictive dish.

Truth be told, I’ve only had them twice, and I'm firmly ensconced in the Deep South here. When The Carnivore and I were dating, he showed up after work one afternoon with a bag of vegetables from the garden of a mutual acquaintance of ours. When he reached into the bag though, and pulled out a succession of green tomatoes, I winced and reached for the Chinese take-out menu hanging on my fridge. “I’ll fry them,” he said. “I don’t know about all that,” I replied warily, wrinkling my nose up at both the thought of the tomatoes themselves and fried food in general. An hour or so later, of course, I was munching happily and wiping my greasy fingers on my jeans.

Last summer, when I discovered a couple green tomatoes in our weekly box from the farm, I excitedly lined them up like little toy soldiers on the kitchen counter, vowing to learn how to fry them. Two days later, when I finally had the time, I saw that an evil ripening ghost had snuck in and turned my green tomatoes red. So I made a batch of salsa with them instead and consoled myself with Mexican food for dinner.

And then a whole ‘nother year passed. See, green tomatoes are like that. Out of sight, out of mind, or some such cliche. Since I don’t pass them at the grocery store every week, I just don’t think about them, and then lo and behold, poof, suddenly there they were again. I was crouching in the big walk-in cooler at the farm, transferring my box of goodies to some bags when I came across something like eight or nine big, fat, firm-as-could-be green tomatoes. The Big Boy eyed them a little suspiciously at first, but caught on in a hurry when I told him I was going to fry them up into tomato chips. It’s all in the way you talk to a kid…

I mentioned my plan to my adventurous sister who had never had the pleasure of fried green tomatoes and she cheerfully invited herself to dinner as well. She and I both dug around for the right recipe, and I finally settled on one that I had clipped from the July 1997 issue of Fine Cooking. I can only assume that my mother must have found me some old issues at a yard sale, and that I hadn’t been holding on to this recipe clipping for eleven years, but honestly, there’s just no telling.

Now that I think about it though, I wasn’t even involved with The Carnivore yet in July of 1997, and I certainly wasn't reading cooking magazines in my spare time back then. I did run into him at a party Aviso played at in Normaltown late one night during the summer of 1997, and we did start dating a few months later…

Anyhow, that being neither here nor there – the recipe was so simple as to be nearly comical, and called for ingredients I already had on hand (unlike many of the ones which required buttermilk). I called The Carnivore to see if he had any tips for me: “salt the p-turkey out of the breading,” is, I believe, an exact quote, and then I commenced to frying.

Frankly, the biggest lesson I walked away with is that it takes more patience than I have to wait until the heat has dissipated before popping the fried slices of heaven into my mouth. I’m telling you, these things are flat-out addictive and since the ideal way to eat them seems to be standing by the stove and snacking as they come out of the skillet, the chef gets the biggest share (and ends up with a burnt tongue, or so I've heard).

I served them for dinner that night alongside a frittata made with leeks, kale and garlic from the farm, and a potato salad supplied by my brother-in-law who, for some reason, did not accompany my sister to dinner, though that was just as well, I suppose, because there were only two slices of tomato left over.

As Jamie Oliver said about something completely unrelated to tomatoes, “This is not Michelin star food. This is proper food. This is dinner.”

*****

FRIED GREEN TOMATOES (serves four as a side dish, adapted from Fine Cooking)

• 4 green tomatoes (about 1/2 pound each) sliced 1/2 inch thick
• 4 tsp kosher salt, divided, plus a little more for sprinkling
• 2 tsp freshly ground black pepper, divided
• 1 cup stone-ground cornmeal
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 2/3 or so cup of olive oil, divided

1. Season the sliced tomatoes generously with 2 tsp salt and 1 tsp pepper.
2. Combine the cornmeal, flour, and remaining 2 tsp salt and 1 tsp pepper in a small bowl.
3. In a large cast-iron skillet, pour about 1/3 cup of olive oil, so that the oil is about 1/4-inch deep or so in the pan. Heat over medium heat.
4. Dredge the tomato slices in the cornmeal mixture immediately before putting them in the pan (don't do this too far ahead or everything gets soggy), and yes, there is no need for an egg mixture - the cornmeal/flour mix clings wonderfully to the slightly moist tomatoes on its own.
5. Carefully (to avoid getting splashed with hot oil) place a few tomato slices in the pan, leaving plenty of room between them, and cook in batches, until well-browned on the bottom (2 to 3 minutes). Flip the slices over and cook the other side.
6. Drain finished slices on paper towels, and add more oil to the pan as needed.
7. Serve warm, sprinkled with extra salt.

The Problem of the Bitter Berry

I am a recent convert to the cooking with fruit concept. For the longest time, I thought people to be quite batty when they would take perfectly good fresh-picked berries and run off to bake a pie. Honestly, it seemed quite wasteful. If I wander around picking blueberries, even if I come home with three bucketfuls, I will sit and eat them out of hand until I get sick. And sick I have gotten. Same goes for blackberries, which grow all over our property and which can stain one’s clothing beyond repair (as I’ve found when Little Miss Piggy stuffs them into her mouth with her less-than-coordinated fingers).

There are just very few pleasures in life that can compare to the flavor and texture of sun-warmed berries bursting in your mouth. And it is such a short-lived season that you don’t even have time to get sick of them before, poof, they’re gone.

Now don’t get me wrong. I plan to have too many berries someday. We have five blueberry bushes planted now, and I intend to add to our little orchard. If things go well, we shall be so inundated with berries that we’ll be able to freeze some for use in smoothies when the dark and dreary days of January arrive. But we are years away from that goal, and my little four-year-old gardener son can easily eat his weight in blueberries, so sharing is a bit of a problem.

I understand the appeal of fruit-based desserts, really I do. Cobblers and pies have their place in life, and it would be a rare day indeed for me to pass up one of these delicacies at a true Southern meat-and-three restaurant where the cobblers tend to be made with old family recipes. Hot, gooey fruit, covered with a crisp topping and then drowned in cold vanilla ice cream? Please. Pretty please.

But, see, given a choice of fresh-picked berries and a dessert baked from the same, I would choose the unadorned fruits every time. Maybe you’ve never tried produce that was picked moments ago. Those refrigerated fruits in the grocery store, picked days (or weeks) ago clear across the country (or the world) aren’t what I’m referring to. Those are not fresh. And they usually don’t even taste like real fruit. Peaches that taste like dry cotton, humongous strawberries with firm white insides, mealy blueberries, well, those just don’t count.

A week or so ago, I was flipping through my grandmother’s current issue of Southern Living when I ran across a very simple recipe for blackberry cobbler. After some histrionics on my part about nobody loving me when I could find neither pen nor paper, my usually oppositional little sister came through for me and I scribbled down the recipe and stuffed it into the nether regions of my giant bag.

The recipe seemed so ideal: local, seasonal fruit; idiot-proof baking instructions, a short list of ingredients. But I just couldn’t quite see past the stumbling block of having to waste perfectly good berries in a dish that would mask their true flavor. Then, last Saturday, The Carnivore and The Big Boy went traipsing through the woods and down the driveway and returned with a handful of the smallest, the tartest, most pathetic-looking blackberries I’ve ever seen. Apparently, two years of drought have taken their toll. I tried to keep my game face on, but the berries were bad. There was no sweet flavor, there was no juice dripping down my chin, there was no burst of plump skin. There was only tart, only bitter.

I have this one recalcitrant eyebrow that goes up when I'm mulling over an idea. It is an involuntary tic that I have very little control over and which has driven a few of my friends mad, and it shot up quickly over the problem of the bitter berries. “Can you go back and find four cups of these for me please?” I asked The Carnivore, trying vainly to hold the eyebrow down with my index finger. Without a single complaint, off they went, The Carnivore and The Big Boy, back to the thorns and the brambles, eager to help in the hopes that they would be rewarded with dessert.

I wasn’t sure it would even work, but it just seemed so logical. It makes sense to me that it was exactly for this problem that cobblers were invented in the first place. After all, what can you do with the most inedible berry harvest but add sugar to it and wrestle it into submission? Regardless, we were inundated with these miserable excuses for fruit and I couldn’t stand for them to go to waste. And that recipe was just lolling about in my bag…

But work, it did. The sugar tamed the tartness of the berries and created this perfect synergy of flavor. A little sweet, a little tart, with a crisp crust and just enough juice to muddle the color of the Haagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream that I topped it with. I loved it. The Carnivore loved it. The Big Boy wanted to swim in it. If I get my way, they’ll pick another four cups this weekend. And the one after that.

*****

BLACKBERRY COBBLER (from Southern Living, serves 6)

• 4 cups blackberries
• 1 Tbs lemon juice
• 1 large egg
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup flour
• 6 Tbs melted butter

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Place blackberries in lightly greased 8-inch square baking pan.
3. Sprinkle berries with lemon juice.
4. In a medium bowl, stir together the egg, sugar and flour until mixture resembles coarse meal.
5. Sprinkle flour mixture over fruit.
6. Drizzle melted butter over the flour topping.
7. Bake for about 35 minutes, until topping is crisp and lightly browned.
8. Serve hot.

Know Cukes

I have a love-hate relationship with cucumbers. There is no real drama behind the story; its actually very simple. In June, I love cucumbers. By the end of July, I am much less fond of them. Or, put another way, I love the first 149, but I feel considerable angst about the 763 that follow.

Cucumbers are just one of those things for me, for our whole family actually. They are beautiful and refreshing and deliciously delicately-flavored when they’re crisp, cold, and of a normal size. It never seems to be long though before I find myself with a pile that are going soft in the peel, have grown to annoying proportions, and are more seedy than I would like.

I try not to hold it against them. After all, most things grow old after a while, especially vegetables that just won’t quit. Everyone in the South gets grumpy about yellow squash by the end of the growing season, you know, and most of us have no trouble admitting that there are only so many ways to enjoy a zucchini. Tomatoes are never a problem, and I’ve never heard a complaint about too many blueberries or too many strawberries. Remember last year when the entire peach and blueberry crops in Georgia got killed by the Easter freeze? While we never run out of ways to celebrate a fruit, we can feel a bit differently about some of the vegetables.

But, really, what can you do with a cucumber? Well, let’s count: you can make pickles (yum), you can slice them and put them in a bowl of vinegar in the fridge (one of my favorite summertime treats), you can eat them out of hand, you can put slices in a sandwich, and you can chop them and throw them in a salad. That’s it. Oh, sure, you’ll find cookbooks that claim you can sauté them, but that’s just whacked. I know. I’ve tried. And I don’t really want to talk about it.

Whacked, I tell you.

I suppose this is where I should admit that I don’t know how to make pickles. I know it can’t be all that hard, but I just, oh, I don’t know, get BORED before I finish reading instructions on pickling and I just move on. There are some things a girl feels like doing, and there are some things that just feel like a colossal waste of time when I have so LITTLE time to start with. Maybe when the kids are older…

In the early years of our marriage, when we still lived in town in that cute little pink rental house that didn’t have air conditioning, we were cucumber fools. The Carnivore made sure we never ran low, and would always have a giant casserole dish in the fridge filled with slices of red onion and cucumbers swimming in vinegar and cracked black pepper. During those steamy months when we would open the freezer door just to stick our heads in so we could stop sweating for a brief moment, we lived on those cucumber slices. They were bracingly cold and acidic, the ideal refreshment to sate our short-lived hunger (who can eat when it’s that hot?) and to make our lips pucker.

But then, you know, we grew up. We moved out to the country, restored an old house and added central air conditioning. Three separate units to be exact, with programmable thermostats and crazy energy-efficient systems that mean we can keep this entire house cool without batting an eye at the electric bill. Granted, The Carnivore owns a heating and air business, but still…

The thing is though, we have since tried filling our refrigerator with those lovely vinegar cucumbers, but, well, it just wasn’t the same. Maybe it’s because we aren't hot and sweaty anymore, or maybe our palates have, dare I say it, become more mature, but we just weren’t interested in them anymore. I was a little disheartened. It was a little like giving up yet another part of our youth. No longer did we sit on the front porch in the evenings, talking with neighbors as they walked by. No more did we lay around languidly on sweltering Saturday afternoons, talking and laughing and drinking iced coffee because it was too doggone hot to enjoy it any other way. Gone were the days of living on vinegar-soaked cucumbers for dinner followed by frozen fruit cocktail for dessert.

Woe.

Needless to say, I guess, when I picked up the third or fourth box from our CSA this summer, I was more than a little chagrined to see the first cucumbers show up. Even though I knew I had actually been craving some cukes, I was already feeling a bit negative about the whole thing because I was wary of getting to that point when I would shudder to find them in the bottom of the box. I did what I always did with the first one though: I cut it in half right down the long side, dribbled it with coarse salt and balsamic vinegar and ate it out of hand, fighting The Big Boy for the last bite, but I chomped away a little half-heartedly and then I tucked the rest of them in the crisper and moved on to the beets (something I will never tire of).

But then I pulled out my binder of recipes that I had clipped in anticipation of the new CSA season. All year long, when I came across recipes that seemed to be intriguing uses for eggplant or squash or any of the other summer veggies, I put them in this binder, knowing full well that as the glow of June waned, I would be desperate for new ways to cook kale or turnips or eggplants or any of the other stumpers that the farm would throw my way.

It was one of those fabulously serendipitous moments as I opened the binder to find a teeny-tiny little piece of paper, no more than one column-inch in length and in a pale, hard-to-read font, for an Asian twist on the good, old-fashioned Southern marinated cucumber. This one called for rice vinegar and sesame oil and crushed red pepper. The idea was the same, but the flavors would clearly be vastly different.

Having nothing to lose, I gave it a shot. All the ingredients were ones I keep on hand anyway, and goodness knows I wouldn’t be lacking for cucumbers through the summer so even if worse came to worst, I could toss the whole thing into the compost heap without shedding more than a tear or two.

Ah, but there was not only no ‘worse,’ there was no ‘worst’ either. We all loved the results, even Little Miss Piggy, who likes to suck out the vinegar and the seeds and then throw the sliced cucumber carcasses under the kitchen table where they end up sticking to our poor little dog.

These flavors are unexpected in marinated cucumbers, but not so unusual that they qualify as a kitchen experiment, and all the blessed qualities of the traditional recipe remain the same, namely the crisp texture and the refreshing acidity. The scant bit of oil balances the vinegar though, and adds a nutty tone that I love.

NOTE: there is a little bit of sugar in this, mom, so you will need to bear with me – remember that there is sugar in bread-and-butter pickles as well, and keep an open mind.

*****

MARINATED CUCUMBERS (from Cooking Light)

• 2 cups sliced cucumbers (as thinly or thickly as you like)
• 3 Tbs rice vinegar
• 1 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp sesame oil
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp crushed red pepper

1. Combine all ingredients in a bowl with a tight-fitting lid. Cover and refrigerate for at least two hours.
2. Shake bowl to redistribute marinade before serving (or before reaching into the fridge to grab a slice or two for a quick snack).

Ode to a Potato

It is a relatively rare occurrence for me (lo, the entire family) to get so excited about a new recipe that I end up making the same dish multiple times in one week. I mean, sure, there has been the occasional dessert recipe that has knocked our socks off and been cooked back-to-back, but that hardly counts.

I try a lot of new recipes, and we have long since grown accustomed to the nightly meal evaluation in which we pick apart what we’ve eaten and decide whether or not to add a new dish to our repertoire. So of course there are evenings around the dinner table when we all smack our lips with delight and declare a meal delicious and lick our plates clean, but these times are tempered by the other suppers that make us shrug with boredom. Even with the recipes that we fall madly in love with, the most those winners can hope for is that I will cook them again in a few weeks or so. With so many new recipes waiting in a stack on my menu desk, and with a binder bulging with tried-and-true recipes, and two bookcases groaning under the weight of too many cookbooks, we can go weeks without duplicating a recipe.

Of course, it is summer now, and the vast majority of our produce comes from the CSA we subscribe to (supplemented by my mother's and grandmother’s gardens), so the ingredients I’m cooking with are fairly constant. Like the summer squash, obviously, and kale for the fifth time in as many weeks, just to name a few of the standards. Needless to say, I have scoured my cooking resources for variations on these themes.

Oh, but then there is the magical potato. As much as I love a good beet, and as excited as I get to eat just-picked fruits, very few things can make my heart flutter like a potato. Good old boring potatoes. You know you feel the same way. Even if you’re the type to shun a real potato, I bet you can eat a French fry or a potato chip with the best of them, right?

In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that I too love those bastions of ill-health. While I’d rather starve than eat a typical convenience store potato chip, I’ll knock you (and your mother) over to get to a bag of Mrs. Vickie's. And then there’s the French fry. I do love a good French fry. I have a recipe that we use fairly regularly for baked fries, but if I’m totally honest with myself, I have to admit that nothing compares to a deep-fried French fry. There is just no way around it. Baked is to adequate as deep-fried is to delicious.

Normally I’m not one to deny myself a guilty pleasure. I might not tell anyone about it – that is why they call it ‘guilty,’ after all – but if a girl needs a French fry, a girl needs a French fry, right? The problem is that I made a fatal mistake in my reading recently, and I read Fast Food Nation nearly back-to-back with Don't Eat This Book. I haven’t been able to bring myself to eat a fast food fry since.

But enough of the moralistic stuff. It is the potato itself that is my object of affection, and I’ll take a potato any which way. I like them baked, I like them roasted, I like them grilled. I will eat them on a train. I will eat them in the rain. I love potatoes. Yukon golds are beautiful and baby reds are sublime. In a pinch though, I wouldn’t even dream of turning my nose up at a good, old-fashioned Idaho clunker.

A while back, I ran across an intriguing recipe in Fine Cooking for Crispy Potatoes. They sounded scrumptious, and I cut the recipe out and then promptly lost it in the towering stack on the menu desk in my kitchen. I would run it across it sporadically, but frankly, the recipe looked a little fussy, and I rarely feel like knocking myself out on a side dish. Time constraints, teething babies, hungry husbands, houseguests and preschoolers – well, the list of reasons to not bother was endless. But I couldn’t stop thinking about that recipe.

Then, a few weeks back, Pioneer Woman, in one of her hilarious and highly-entertaining step-by-step photo recipes, made a version of the Crispy Potato that she called Crash Hot Potatoes. And she made it look easy. My interest was more than a little piqued. So I rummaged and made a big mess and pushed a lot of paper around and finally got my hands on that Fine Cooking recipe again. The recipes were strikingly similar, except that Pioneer Woman didn’t bother with the fussy steps that had been repelling me. So I did what I often do: I took the two recipes to the counter next to my stove and I just decided to go for it.

Oh. My. Stars. I am SO glad I went for it. I must warn you that this recipe is highly addictive. I made it two nights in a row. And then I made it again. And again. I think we’ve had these four or five times in the past two weeks now. We all love them, even the vegetable-averse houseguest. See, the potatoes are boiled until tender, and then you lay them out on a baking sheet and flatten them. Then, and this is my favorite part, you smother them in olive oil and salt. What could be wrong with that, right? Then, oh maybe THIS is favorite part, you put them in a hot oven until they – dig THIS – get brown and crispy on the outside.

They’re really as easy as can be. Total time is about an hour and a quarter, and that alone can be daunting, but truly, the hands-on part is only about 10 minutes. My-oh-my, they are worth the wait of the cooking time. The end result is somewhat of a cross between a potato chip and a French fry. Honest.

I think I might have to make them again tonight. Just thinking about these babies is making my heart go all pitter-patter.

*****

CRISPY FLATTENED POTATOES (adapted from Fine Cooking and Pioneer Woman, serves 4 as a side dish)

• 1 1/2 lb small red potatoes, golf-ball sized or smaller work best
• Kosher salt
• Olive oil
• Black pepper
• Italian seasoning dried herb blend (McCormick's makes one that I like that has thyme and rosemary in it)

1. Put the potatoes in a large pot, and add water until water rises at least an inch above the potatoes. Add 2 tsp kosher salt to the water, and bring water to a boil. Boil the potatoes for about 30 minutes, or until fork tender.
2. Drain the potatoes.
3. Grease a large, rimmed baking sheet with a good amount of olive oil. There should be enough so that the oil sloshes just a wee bit when the pan is tilted.
4. Put the potatoes on the baking sheet, a few inches apart.
5. With a potato masher, press down on each potato individually to flatten. You don't want pancakes here, you just want a messy, smashed-up-looking potato. The skin will break and be the best part of the potato, so try not to lose any of it in the tines of the masher. (Check out this photo to see the effect you should be going for). Perfection is not the goal.
6. Drizzle a fair amount of olive oil over each potato. Then, to make sure every glorious inch is covered, use a pastry brush to further oil up the tops of those taters. As a general rule, I use about 1 tsp of oil for each potato (more if the potatoes are larger).
7. Sprinkle salt over each potato (be very generous with the salt - this is not the time to be shy). I use a pinch per potato.
8. Depending on your taste, sprinkle just a little finely ground black pepper, and Italian seasoning (or whatever dried herb you prefer) on top of each potato.
9. Roast the potatoes in a convection oven at 400 degrees (or a regular oven at 450 degrees) for about 30 minutes, until brown and crispy on top. Convection ovens will yield crispier results.

Seafood Angst

I’m feeling no small amount of seafood angst. And what’s up with that anyway? Food is one of my greatest hobbies, and yet it is causing me anxiety again. I’ve learned to simmer down a little bit about food politics, at least where my grocery shopping is concerned. The Farm Bill and its ramifications still push my buttons, and I try to make the best decisions I can, within my geographic and financial limitations, but I no longer flog myself if I break down and buy a banana. This is progress.

But like I said, I’m stressed out about seafood. To be fair, this is a subject that has pained me for years. Seafood is the only ‘meat’ I eat, and I’ve often wondered if I shouldn’t just give it up and go full vegetarian. After all, there have been countless times in my life when I’ve gone months at a time without a bite of fish – for no other reason than I hadn’t craved any. But then I would go to the beach on a vacation and I would eat my weight in shellfish within the first 24 hours. Hey, you try and sit on the balcony of an oceanfront restaurant without ordering the lobster bisque, alright?

It isn’t just the personal decision regarding how far to take my vegetarianism anymore though. I mean, have you read a newspaper lately? Between sustainability issues, the problem of mercury (especially since I have been either pregnant, trying to get pregnant or breastfeeding for the past five years), distrust over Chinese food safety, and the nutritional questions regarding farmed vs. wild, well, I’m so stressed out that I get paralyzed at the fish counter.

Frankly, this is a difficult time to be a food lover. I read everything I can get my hands on about seafood issues, but truly there are so many different concerns to address, I find myself overwhelmed. And so I stand there with my mouth slightly agape, trying to ignore The Big Boy while he counts the lobsters in the tank, and pretending like I don’t see Little Miss Piggy rubbing Cheerios slobber into her hair. I discount the tilapia because it comes from Chile and that causes too much dissonance with my attempts to reduce my food mileage, and I look away from the salmon since its farmed and thus has a compromised texture and nutritional benefit. The tuna steaks are tempting, but didn’t I read something about the sustainability problem? Or was that an article on grouper?

So I close my eyes and rub my temples because I’ve given myself a headache again, and I tell The Big Boy to say goodbye to the lobsters while I try to spit-shine Little Miss Piggy’s head and push the cart to the dairy case where I will almost certainly suffer a breakdown over which organic milk comes from a company owned by Monsanto. But that is an entirely different problem.

I was born 50 years too late. Might it not have been easier Back in The Day? Back when everyone grew their own veggies and was fully accustomed to having access to only the fruits that would grow in their backyard; before eggs came from caged chickens that were fed antibiotics as a matter of course; when a fish dinner resulted from nothing less than a couple of family members with fishing poles?

There are ways to navigate this seafood terrain, of course. I’m dying to read Fish Forever, as is The Carnivore, who actually spent his late teen years on commercial fishing vessels in The Gulf and The Atlantic and whose father is a crabber to this day. Gourmet magazine recently published a Guide to Buying Sustainable Seafood, which meets my angst head-on and gives me some guidelines by which I can hopefully avoid a prescription for Xanax, and there is also a pocket guide put out by the Environmental Defense Fund that I have finally printed out and put into my giant purse-diaper bag-briefcase.

You wanna know the real rub though? I not only don’t like being told what to do, but I feel like a sheep when I blindly follow a list of rules compiled by a political lobby.

Here I am again, closing my eyes and rubbing my temples because I’ve given myself another headache. Ignorance truly would be bliss. Then I could just waste some good old-fashioned natural resources and drive to the nearest food court and order a BK Big Fish without a care in the world beyond which flavor of “milkshake” I should wash it down with.

To make matters worse, I went into full revolt earlier this week and stood at the fish counter with a recipe in hand that called for halibut or red snapper. I had never cooked with either of these fish and the dish itself sounded truly intriguing. I had a warm potato salad with beer and mustard vinaigrette planned for a side dish and, dadgumit, I was really craving fish. I knew Pacific halibut had been deemed acceptable by the fish police, but I was clueless about snapper and I had forgotten to do any research before we left the house that morning to run errands. As it happened, my grocery store was out of halibut and so I pinched my nose and bought the snapper in full ignorance. And then I went to the farm to pick up my weekly CSA box.

I later found out that red snapper is on the “worst choices” list. More dissonance. There’s just nothing quite like eating produce that is locally-grown and purchased directly from a farmer, while on the other side of my plate there squats a fillet of environmental disaster.

Maybe I should try yoga AND Xanax.

Though the snapper was clearly not the best whitefish I could have selected for this particular recipe, the dish turned out delightfully. I love firm fish to begin with, and since spicy food tickles our fancy, we fell in love with the results. It couldn’t be easier really, you rub some dry spices on the fillets, bake them for a short time, and then top the cooked fish with a chipotle-butter mixture. And of course you can vary the amount of chipotle depending upon your own threshold for food that makes your nose burn. Just be sure to use Pacific halibut rather than red snapper. Your conscience will thank you.

*****


SPICED HALIBUT WITH CHIPOTLE BUTTER (2 servings, adapted from Cooking Light)

• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp paprika
• 1/4 tsp kosher salt
• 1/8 tsp finely ground black pepper
• 2 (6-oz) halibut fillets
• 1 Tbs melted butter
• 1 or 2 canned chipotle chiles in adobo sauce, minced (these have quite a kick, so err on the cautious side if you're a wuss)

1. Educate yourself about fish.
2. Combine cumin, paprika, salt and pepper in a small bowl.
3. Rub spice mixture into the fillets.
4. Transfer the fillets to a baking sheet coated with cooking spray.
5. Bake fish at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes, until fish flakes easily when prodded with a fork.
6. In a small bowl, stir together the butter and the chiles.
7. Brush the chipotle butter mixture onto the cooked fillets and serve immediately.

Get Your Own Frittata

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: wasting food makes me cranky. Food is not cheap, for one thing, and I hate wasting money even more than I hate wasting food; when the two go hand in hand, I become apoplectic. And then there’s the environmental cost of food that doesn’t get eaten – it’s enough to give a girl a headache.

To avoid unnecessary trips to the compost heap, I obsessively take stock of the refrigerator to see what needs to be used up. I often get myself into this mess, of course, by buying unusual ingredients for recipes that I want to try, but then having small leftover quantities of said ingredients that end up languishing in the refrigerator while I scrounge for another use for them.

Yesterday though, it wasn’t entirely my fault that I found myself with a head of bok choy from our CSA box that was entirely too small to really do anything with. I desperately wanted to use it, and I’d never used bok choy before, but seriously, this thing had about 10 palm-sized leaves on it, and I had three adults and a midget to feed. Plus there was one lonely miniature organic bell pepper rolling around in the bottom of the crisper drawer, the lone unused member of a three-pack that I had purchased a week or so ago.

It is at times like this that I rely on one of my clean-out-the-fridge-recipes. These instances are perfect for pizzas, calzones, pasta salads, frittatas or quiches. And since I had no time for pizza dough or pie crusts, I stuck my entire torso into the nether regions of the fridge and started digging for more frittata fillings.

A frittata is essentially a quiche without a crust, or an omelet that isn’t folded. I love these things. They are the perfect meatless entrée, marry well (unlike my mother) with all manner of side dishes, and best of all, any recipe for a frittata is essentially just a framework by which you can make do with what you’ve got. I come from a long line of women who say things like, “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without,” and “Waste not, want not.” Frittatas were made for people like us.

To make a perfect frittata, you need 8 eggs, a little bit of cream, half-and-half, or milk; two cups of cooked vegetables, a pinch of aromatics, a small handful of herbs and some cheese. In my experience, no combination is a bad one. Yesterday’s fridge-diving quest yielded the afore-mentioned bell pepper and bok choy, along with some blue cheese, flat-leaf parsley, and leeks that were on their way to becoming casualties. I wasn’t entirely sure these ingredients were going to play well with each other, but our options were few, and besides, I also had a giant head of lettuce from the farm and I was going to be serving a large salad alongside the frittata, so my bets were safely hedged.

Of course, if it hadn’t turned out fabulously in the end, I wouldn’t be sharing it here. But there were some bumps in the road. First, I wasn’t entirely sure how to cook the bok choy and I hadn’t a clue as to how much of the base of the head should be used. Normally, I would check online, or peek through one of my cookbooks, but I felt like living dangerously. And this is about as reckless as I get these days. So I lopped off only the bottom-est part of the bottom, where the leaves are attached, and kept the thicker, white part of the base of the leaves (which ended up being a good decision, thankfully).

Then, I had decided to cook the frittata differently than usual. Where I would normally sauté the veggies and the aromatics, then pour the egg/dairy mixture over the top and cook for a few minutes on the stove, finishing the whole thing under the broiler, I had been running into some difficulty with the interior not cooking fully, so I tried a quick baking method that I had read about in Fine Cooking some time ago.

But the real rub was at the absolute end, when I poured some grated Parmesan on top of the whole thing and ran it under the broiler for 30 seconds or so to brown the cheese. See, the grated Parm turns into this incredible crispy, salty crust and provides great texture to what would otherwise be mostly a soft dish, and I’ve tried that particular technique numerous times with perfect results. Then again, I didn’t burn the crap out of it all those other times.

I don’t know what happened. Everything was going swimmingly, and then I popped the pan under the broiler for a few seconds and turned my back and inexplicably decided that was a good time to re-arrange my recipe binder. So I indexed a few new recipes, walked into my office to grab a pen and a hole-puncher, drank a glass of water and then, I guess, pondered the meaning of life for a bit until suddenly I wondered why, oh why, the room was filling with smoke.

Utterly absurd.

Twenty-foot ceilings in the kitchen and yet I still managed to fill it with smoke. With total calm, I turned the oven off, put on a pot holder, and retrieved my fully-blackened entrée from the stove. After a wee bit of head scratching and what may have sounded like a curse word or two (you would have to ask the four-year-old who was hanging on my every word), I called The Carnivore and put him on alert that he might have to pick up a pizza to bring home for dinner. But then my inner Grandma kicked in and I narrowed my eyes at the offending dish. So I poked. And I prodded. And lo and behold, I discovered that only the Parmesan crust was burned. The rest of the frittata was salvageable. Maybe with a quick haircut…

So I shaved the top layer off of the frittata with a paring knife and then dumped on a new topping of Parmesan. And, naturally, ran the newly shorn dish back under the broiler (because I just really didn’t want to give up on a good crust). This time I didn’t move from my position in front of the stove, and when I pulled the pan out after maybe 45 seconds, it was perfect. Well, as perfect as it could be after undergoing emergency surgery. I mean, it did look a little uneven there on top.

But what about the taste, you ask? We all agreed it was my best frittata yet.

******

DESIGN YOUR OWN FRITTATA (serves 4 as an entree)

• 8 eggs
• 1/2 cup milk, half-and-half, or heavy cream
• 1 Tbs all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 2 cups cooked vegetables, exact quantities unnecessary - but no more than 3 different things (steamed chopped asparagus, roasted or sauteed chopped bell peppers, sliced sauteed leeks, boiled or sauteed hearty greens (drained & chopped), chopped sauteed onions, or whatever else you might fancy)
• 1/4 cup fresh herbs, chopped or thinly sliced (flat-leaf parsley, basil and chives work with almost anything)
• 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes, or 1 tsp minced and sauteed garlic, or 1 tsp lemon zest
• 1/2 cup shredded cheese (feta, fontina, goat cheese, ricotta, or blue cheese - again, use what you like)
• 3 Tbs grated Parmesan

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk the eggs, the milk or cream, flour, salt and pepper.
3. Into the egg mixture, fold the cooked vegetables, the aromatics and the shredded cheese (but not the Parmesan).
4. Heat 2 Tbs olive oil in an oven-proof skillet (this is where cast-iron really comes in handy). Add the egg mixture to the pan, making sure it is evenly spread.
5. Reduce the heat to low, cover the pan, and cook the frittata on the stove for about 10 minutes. The top will still be quite runny, but you should be able to see the bottom of the frittata looking opaque underneath the runny part.
6. Uncover the pan and put the skillet in the oven, cooking for about 15 to 20 minutes. It is finished when the whole thing looks puffy and the eggs are completely set in the middle.
7. Remove skillet from the oven and preheat the broiler.
8. Dust the top of the frittata with the grated Parmesan, and put the skillet under the broiler for 30 seconds to a minute, until the cheese is browned (but not black).
9. If you have burned the frittata beyond recognition, see instructions above about how to hide your moronic mistake (not that I would have any experience in that).

Out of Season

Honest to goodness, it has been with much effort that I have not been sharing dessert recipes lately. Now especially, with it being late in Spring, and with the opening of Farmer’s Markets and the start of the CSA season, it would be irresponsible of me to not be putting pen to paper about all the recipes I have found for Swiss chard and kale and collards and all of the other lovely greens that are so fresh and flavorful right now. I mean, look, eating locally and seasonally is one of the best things we can do for the environment, and it certainly makes additional sense with food costs rising all around us.

Seriously, everyone has a good recipe for pie, or for cookies or cakes and all of that other sweet unnecessary nonsense, right? You definitely do not drop by here to read yet another post about brownies. Recipes for green garlic, spring onions, these are the items everyone is struggling to find a use for. Not cookies.

And, after all, bathing suit season begins NOW. This is a time for diets, for salads, for cold finger foods. Not. For. Chocolate.

On Tuesday, the kids and I drove out to the farm to pick up our first CSA box of the summer. I was downright joyful about the whole thing, especially the unexpected early start to the CSA season, and The Big Boy was fairly vibrating out of his carseat with glee. Nine months after our last trip to the farm, this four-year-old had not forgotten a single detail. He noticed the new gates at the top of the driveway, the new sign, the fact that there were more cars parked than usual. And – my favorite part – he marched right up to the farmers with determination, ready to see what was in our first box. He and I both stuck our heads straight into the box, fighting for the first sniff before pulling out random leaves and taking nibbles. I love that kid.

Well, I say I love him, but truth be told, when I saw the bag of fresh-picked strawberries tucked into a corner of the box, I (oh, the shame) hid them from him. I probably even shouldn’t admit it, right? Wouldn’t a good mother share her fruitful bounty with her first-born son? Yeah, well, I didn’t. I waited until he went to sleep that night and then I ate every single one of them all by myself.

I have no doubt my own mother has done that very same thing to me.

But even though I have enjoyed some fabulous salads this week, and the first CSA meal I cooked was my favorite greens recipe from last summer, the Bitter Greens with Sweet Onions and Tart Cheese (using farm kale and farm onions and some leftover goat cheese I had in the fridge), and even though it was utterly delicious and I nearly swooned with delight, this isn’t at all what I want to tell you about. All those wonderful, deliciously healthy fruits and vegetables just weren’t the culinary highlight of the week.

I’m gonna have to go to the altar on Sunday. First I deceive my own son about the presence of strawberries and now I’m going to make everyone fat.

It’s just that I had a sweet tooth a few days ago (big surprise, that) and the last dessert recipe I had attempted had been an abysmal failure and my ego was still smarting. And it just so happened that the only recipe I still wanted to try in the last issue of Bon Appetit was one for dark chocolate cookies. I had already cooked my way through much of the magazine with great success, and if you happen to be sitting on the June issue and you haven’t tried the ricotta pancakes, I can’t speak of it highly enough. Oh, and make sure to not overlook the grits and onion soufflé, and the orzo salad with chickpeas and goat cheese which I also recommend, though not nearly as highly as those afore-mentioned cookies.

For pity’s sake. These cookies were a revelation. You know how everyone has their favorite cookie recipe of all time? These are better than that. With a chocolate batter, dotted with dark chocolate chips, and rolled in powdered sugar, how could they not be? They were like miniature little chocolate pies, dense and fudgy and chewy on the inside, and just a little crackly on the outside, sending out little puffs of sugar dust into the air with each bite. Oh, my. The Carnivore and The Houseguest and I ate them greedily, moaning with pleasure and leaving a trail of sugar everywhere we went (including all over Little Miss Piggy who was sleeping in my arms at the time). They were even just as good, if not better, the second day. I had been a little nervous that packing the leftovers into some plastic containers would affect the texture which is part of the allure of these little calorie bombs, but the worry was in vain. Our eyeballs still rolled back into our heads when we attacked them again the next night.

These will be worth the repentance. They are even worth the added exercise that will be necessary if I’m to continue to fit into my bathing suit. Maybe if I eat kale every night for the next week…

***

DEEP DARK CHOCOLATE COOKIES (from Bon Appetit), makes about 24

• Nonstick spray
• 1 1/2 cups bittersweet chocolate chips, about 9 oz, divided
• 3 large egg whites, room temperature
• 2 1/2 cups powdered sugar, divided
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 Tbs cornstarch
• 1/4 tsp salt

1. Spray 2 baking sheets with nonstick spray.
2. Melt one cup of chocolate chips in microwave, stopping to stir every 30 seconds. Set aside to cool slightly.
3. In a large bowl, beat egg whites in an electric mixer to soft peaks.
4. Gradually beat in 1 cup sugar. Continue beating until mixture is creamy and has thickened.
5. In a separate bowl, whisk together one cup sugar, cocoa, cornstarch and salt.
6. On low speed, add the dry ingredients to the egg white mixture.
7. Stir the melted chocolate and remaining 1/2 cup of chocolate chips into the mixture.
8. Place remaining 1/2 cup sugar in a small bowl.
9. Roll rounded tablespoon of dough into a ball (does not have to be perfect) and then roll it in the sugar.
10. Place on prepared baking sheet. Repeat with remaining dough, putting balls about 2 inches apart on sheet.
11. Bake at 400 degrees (convection ovens will give best results) for about 10 minutes, until dough is puffed and the tops have cracked.

A World Without Carnivores

I would not trade my life for anything. As a matter of fact, I’m hard-pressed usually to even imagine my life being any different than it is right now. Motherhood suits me (though it wasn’t that many years ago that this would have seemed entirely alien) and marriage to The Carnivore is, in fact, all it’s cracked up to be. I like it out here in the country, and I would rather stay at home with my children than go to the office every day.

But (you knew there would be a ‘but’, didn’t you?), I have my moments. When Little Miss Piggy is weaned, don’t think for a minute that I’m not going to get dressed up and go out on a date with The Carnivore, sans children. And there have been many times when I’ve packed an overnight bag in my imagination and gone to the beach for the weekend. Without the husband OR the kids. A girl could use some peace and quiet.

As much as I enjoy meal-planning and food shopping and cooking, I have wondered what life would be like if I didn’t actually HAVE to put dinner on the table for the family. Would I just make less elaborate meals or would I even bother cooking at all? Or, God forbid, what if I had married a fellow vegetarian? Would we just sit around congratulating ourselves for being so politically correct, living on tofu and dirt-covered vegetables from the garden?

Look, I stopped reading fiction and I never watch movies anymore. My imagination is all I’ve got left. And these are things that go on in my mind.

Last week, when The Carnivore announced he was going to go on a three-day fast, I side-stepped right into an alternate universe. I told The Houseguest he was going to be on his own for meals for the next few days (he has all sorts of packaged crap in the freezer anyway), and I scrapped the menu for the week, avoided the weekly trip to the grocery store, and gained, I swear, an extra five hours of free time.

At first, I planned to use the time to finish up some leftovers and get the refrigerator good and cleaned out. There always seems to be six or seven containers of dinner leftovers that The Big Boy and I use for our lunches, and try as we might, we still end up having to toss some things into the compost bin at the end of the week – and wasting food makes me terribly grumpy. But then, on Tuesday – day one of the fast, I was at my mother’s house and she offered me a bagful of Swiss chard straight out of her garden. I think I swooned. It wouldn’t have been enough to even serve as a side dish if we had all been sitting down at the dinner table that night, but since that wasn’t an issue, I jumped at the chance to serve myself what only I would want.

I went home, pulled out the skillet, tossed in the chard with some crushed garlic cloves and some olive oil and sautéed myself the quickest dinner in history. The Houseguest looked on with no small measure of alarm and put a frozen meatloaf in the oven. The Carnivore wasn’t even tempted to break his fast, and The Big Boy ignored me and slurped up some leftover pasta. “This is living,” I said, greedily chomping away on my bright green dinner.

On Wednesday, my grandmother handed me a bag of just-picked veggies from her garden: a head of butter lettuce, a head of broccoli, and a handful of spring onions. I grinned at The Carnivore when he came home from work, swung my bag of goodies in his direction, and said, “Now I know what my life would be like if I were single.”

I didn’t mean to hurt his feelings.

The lettuce and some of the onions went straight into a big bowl where I drizzled them with a quick homemade vinaigrette; I chopped up the broccoli and steamed it for a couple of minutes, just long enough to make it fork-tender, and then I tossed it with some olive oil, salt & pepper, and a dash of parmesan cheese. The Houseguest sat down at the table with me and watched with disgust as I chatted happily and exclaimed over the fresh flavor of the broccoli. The Big Boy ate an ear of corn left over from a few nights prior.

By Thursday, I started to get a little worried. I had run out of gardens to raid and the farmer’s market wasn’t going to open for the season for a few more days. And since I had been a little late on the uptick with our CSA membership this year, I had missed out on the four-week spring season and was still two-and-a-half weeks away from the first pickup of the summer session. At this point, leftovers weren't going to cut it for me. I was really enjoying myself.

Mom came through again though. As I squatted in her garden late on Thursday afternoon, picking strawberries with my back to The Big Boy so I wouldn't have to share, she off-handedly mentioned that she had some collards that needed to be picked. I pulled an empty tote bag from my diaper bag and handed it to her. “Dinner,” I grunted.

While The Carnivore bustled about the kitchen, planning what snack food he would break his fast with later that night, and The Houseguest grumbled about starving to death, I pulled the skillet back out, and chopped up the last of the spring onions from Grandma’s garden. This time, I sautéed the collards with the onions and a little bit more garlic, along with a pat of butter and a pinch or two of crushed red pepper. When the greens had wilted in the pan, I drizzled in some balsamic vinegar and a couple of crumbles of feta cheese. The Carnivore took a small nibble and said it tasted a little like dirt. I thought it was spectacular and wished I had enough for a second serving. The Big Boy ate half a quesadilla and still, after three days, didn’t question why he and I were the only ones eating dinner.

So now I know. Without a family to cook for, I would eat what I could con out of my mother and grandmother’s gardens. I would cook without recipes. I would have to go to the grocery store much more seldom, and then only for staples. But the dinner table would be mighty lonely.

Pasta with Vodka Cream Sauce

I like to cook with alcohol. There. I’ve said it.

This fact embarrasses me a little. Not the cooking with it aspect, per se. More, it is the act of having a fifth of vodka in my freezer that I feel needs to be explained. I actually hide it, but it’s there, back behind a stack of frozen vegetables and buried underneath a couple other things. And I don’t actually go to the liquor store to buy it myself. I send The Carnivore. I have only been to a liquor store once since The Big Boy was born, and I was positively mortified to walk in with him on my hip, but I desperately needed some coffee liqueur for the tiramisu that I was craving. I loudly announced to the clerk that I needed the liqueur for a dessert, and I’m sure he thought that the lady doth protest too much. When I walked out, and realized I had chosen to go to the store on quite possibly the busiest street in town, and I saw my brother-in-law drive by, and there I was with an 18-month old on my hip and a brown paper bag in my hand, I swore I would not do that again. Not with a kid. No way. I live in The Deep South. People will talk.

But since I’m not at all willing to stop cooking with alcohol, I send The Carnivore in my stead. It’s all a matter of priorities. Well, that and I don’t care what people say about him. Matter of fact, I need some rum for an ice cream recipe that I found on David Lebovitz’ website months ago, so I may need to send him there today.

I use cooking wine in a number of recipes, but those are the "wines" people don’t actually drink, the ones sold in small bottles next to the vinegars and oils on the pasta aisle in the store. And while they add depth to soup recipes and they’re necessary in deglazing when making pan sauces, these cheap little bottles are nothing to write home about (and certainly nothing to hide from the Sunday School teacher, you know?).

A few years ago though, I read an article about using vodka in tomato sauces and I just couldn’t stop thinking about it. As odd as the concept seemed to me and my neophyte cooking ways, the description the writer gave of the slow burn from the vodka and the velvety smoothness of some added cream, well, it pushed all my buttons. So I cut out the recipe and quietly asked The Carnivore to pick up a very small bottle of vodka on his way home from work. He was dubious, especially when he heard I planned to use it in a pasta recipe, but he came home that day with a brown paper bag in his hand and I thanked my lucky stars that my mother didn’t just happen to drop by that afternoon.

I was a little nervous about the recipe. Neither of us had partaken of a drop to drink in a few years at that point, but since I was neither pregnant nor breastfeeding at the moment, I figured we didn’t have much to lose here. So I followed the recipe to the letter, and withheld a few unsullied penne noodles for our then-Odd-Toddler (because I was pretty sure he didn’t need any vodka sauce in his diet) and we sat down to eat. I hesitantly brought a forkful of heavily sauced pasta to my mouth and chewed thoughtfully. The sauce had a rich and luxuriously soft mouthfeel. The taste was, at first, not unlike any other well-prepared tomato and cream sauce, but then, as I swallowed, I felt that slow burn that the author had written about in the article that started this whole experiment.

We loved it. What we didn’t expect, however, was that after we had each finished about half of our dinner, we started to, um, feel the vodka, if you know what I mean. This was the first time I had cooked with real alcohol, you see, and I didn’t realize that this recipe I was using was lacking in technique. As I later realized, the point is to let the alcohol cook off so that the taste remains (but the tipsy-factor does not). This particular recipe had added the vodka towards the end of the cooking so we were getting all the alcohol with our dinner.

I pushed my plate away, out of fear, before I had finished. The Carnivore finished his, but muttered, “I’m still hungry, but I’m afraid I’ll get drunk if I eat any more.” We made some popcorn, tossed the rest of the pasta onto the compost heap, and pushed the bottle of vodka to the very back of the bottom shelf of the freezer.

Then, oh, months later, I saw an article in Cook’s Illustrated on vodka sauce and I happily dug around in the freezer until I got my hands on that bottle again. Because, of course, I really didn’t want to waste the rest of that bottle, but obviously I wasn’t spending a lot of time making martinis. And, let’s face it, I wanted to taste a proper vodka sauce.

The writer wrote of trying to develop a less boozy sauce which was exactly what we were after, and happily, their recipe worked. Of course it did though, right? It was Cook’s Illustrated after all. But, as with most Cook’s recipes, it was long on ingredients and technique, and the whole thing kind of stressed me out. I made it a time or two, and while we were pleased with the results, I wasn’t head-over-heels for it and besides, I lost the issue that the recipe came in and their website isn’t big on sharing. Unless you pay for it. Which I didn’t want to do.

So we went without for a time, even though we now had a large bottle of vodka languishing in the nether regions of our freezer and I kept my eyes open for other uses (ignoring the temptation to make jello shots when the kid was driving me batty).

Finally I came upon the right recipe in the September 2007 issue of Cooking Light magazine. It is a simple vodka sauce that can be made with ingredients I keep on hand at all times (perfect for when things have gone awry and I can’t stick to the menu for which I have shopped) and yet it is easy to embellish upon if I feel so inclined and have the time to leisurely go about dinner prep. Oh, and it won’t get me tipsy.

***

PASTA WITH VODKA CREAM SAUCE (adapted from Cooking Light, yields about 4 cups)

• 1/2 pound penne pasta
• 1 Tbs olive oil
• 1/2 cup finely chopped onion
• 1 tsp salt, divided
• 1/4 tsp crushed red pepper
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1/2 cup vodka
• 1/4 cup vegetable broth
• 1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes, undrained
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 3 Tbs thinly sliced fresh basil

1. Cook the pasta until al dente. Drain and keep warm.
2. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat.
3. Add onion to pan; saute for 2 or 3 minutes, until tender.
4. Add 1/4 tsp salt, pepper, and garlic. Saute for 1 minute.
5. Add vodka and bring to a boil.
6. Reduce heat and simmer until liquid is reduced by half (this can take anywhere from 4 minutes to 10 minutes, and it isn't crucial that you're terribly exact about it).
7. Stir in 1/2 tsp salt, broth, and tomatoes. Bring to a boil.
8. Reduce heat, and simmer for about 8 minutes.
9. Puree the sauce using an immersion blender in the skillet, or by pouring everything into a blender and removing the center piece to allow steam to escape.
10. Pour sauce back into skillet and stir in cream.
11. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until cream is incorporated.
12. Remove from heat. Stir together with pasta, remaining 1/4 tsp of salt, and basil.

When I'm feeling decadent, I stir in a Tbs of cream cheese to the sauce at the end. Or, if I'm feeling feisty, I'll use more crushed red pepper than the recipe calls for. The recipe feeds four when served with fresh, crusty bread and a simple green salad. This week I served it with another batch of the focaccia bread that I wrote about recently - this batch was made with basil and Pecorino-Romano cheese in place of the oregano and Romano in the original recipe.