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.

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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.

Oregano and Romano Focaccia

Saturday turned into one of those days. You know the kind. They start out a little shaky to begin with, and then a few things go a little bit wrong, and then, all of a sudden, everything starts to go really wrong, and then you find yourself sitting at the kitchen table, looking out the window and shaking your head. Not just a quick shake-it-off kind of headshake, more like a bobblehead kind of thing whereby your head continues to shake side-to-side, wobbling a bit on each revolution.

But maybe you have your own ways of coping.

We have this beautiful, really large bay window in our kitchen where we tucked our over-priced vintage 1950’s dinette set. And now, with two young children and virtually no chance that I will be left alone long enough to sit in my office, I have resorted to parking my laptop on the kitchen table where I can (pretend to) work while keeping the kids (reasonably) happy and the household running (not very) smoothly. I spend a lot of time staring out that window. When I plan the dinner menus, I stare out the window. When I find myself stumped with my work, I stare out the window. If I’m writing and I can’t quite catch the particular word that I’m looking for, I stare out the window. I love that window.

We live out in the country and the view is nice. I can see two birdfeeders, our little frog pond, one of the wind chimes, and a tangled, glorious, woody mess of wisteria vines all from my little perch at the kitchen table. Mostly I watch the birds. The Carnivore has an obsessive habit of hanging and filling birdfeeders and studying which particular brand of birdseed is the preferred dinner of our outside squatters. I was fascinated all winter by the sight of the brightly-hued male cardinals posing on the bare branches and vines in the bleak cold-weather landscape. Now that spring is coming, our lantana is already sending up shoots from the ground and we’ve had our first hummingbird come by to check on its progress.

I didn’t think I was going to take so well to living so far from town. Before we moved here, I had spent the previous six or seven years in an in-town neighborhood within walking distance of campus and downtown. I had been very happy there. Friends dropped by all the time, and we knew all of our neighbors. I could walk to my then-favorite restaurant, and virtually everything I needed was within three square miles. So it was with some trepidation that I agreed to move out here to this dirt road.

A lot has changed since then, not the least of which was the addition of two small children to our family. Now I think I would get claustrophobic if I had to live in town with a tiny little yard. And I would sorely miss this view out my dining-nook window. Watching the birds (and those dang birdseed-stealing squirrels) is my therapy. Which brings me back to Saturday…

Like I said, Saturday was one of those days. We got up at the crack of dawn to get The Big Boy ready for his very first soccer game and rushed out of the house at the most annoying hour of eight o’clock only to get to the field and find out that the game had been cancelled. And if you think you know sadness and disappointment, you’ve never seen a four-year-old dressed proudly in his cleats and brand-new team jersey find out that his debut game wasn’t going to happen after all. My heart broke a little bit.

And then, since it was, you know, April 12 (!), and I had put it off long enough, I decided to finally knuckle down and tackle our income tax return. I knew it wasn’t going to do much for my mood, but there was no escaping it any longer. So I handed Little Miss Piggy (the baby that refuses to take naps) to The Carnivore and hunkered down at the kitchen table to wade through the inner circle of hell. Two hours later, I came to the disturbing conclusion that even though we had sent the Infernal Revenue Service umpteen dollars already with our quarterly estimated tax payments, we still owed an additional half-umpteen.

It was not shaping up to be the best of days. I stared morosely out the window for a little while and then, shortly after lunch, thought to check the menu to see what I had planned to cook for dinner. Unbelievably, I had chosen a new and scary recipe for that particular day. How completely and utterly absurd. I was sabotaging myself.

I’ve mentioned it before, and I’ll say it again. I don’t do bread or bread-like substances. I don’t like working with yeast. And every time I have tried baking said items, I’ve screwed it up. Or, if I haven’t screwed up, I’ve gotten nothing more than satisfactory results after spending an entire day on the project and ending up with a trashed kitchen and dough stuck semi-permanently under my fingernails.

And yet, here I found myself, on an already challenging day, with an unproven recipe for focaccia bread. I didn’t even have a fall-back plan. The entrée was one of my favorite pasta recipes, farfalle with asparagus, roasted shallots and blue cheese, and normally I would serve it with lemon basil bruschetta using one of the bakery breads from Publix. But a few days prior, I had decided that I needed to cease and desist that practice, mostly because I often found myself having to make an extra trip to the store so that we would have fresh bread for dinner. This was going against all my best-laid plans to reduce unnecessary trips to town. That needed to change, which clearly meant I needed to change.

Which meant I had to get over my fear of yeast. And I might not even have aspired to this lofty goal except that Orangette had written in a recent issue of Bon Appetit about her own previous yeast-phobia and how she had faced her fears head on and gotten over them. Clearly, I find her inspiring. Or at least I did on the day that I had planned the menu and done the grocery shopping.

Besides, this recipe didn’t look so difficult. And it used a spoon for mixing, which meant I wouldn’t have to pry the dough out from under my fingernails. So I took a deep breath and got my ingredients together on the kitchen counter and figured that the day had already been ruined, so what was the worst that could happen, right?

I rubbed a large bowl with olive oil, and in a separate bowl, poured in my carefully measured flour. Then I chopped up some fresh oregano and put it in the bowl with the flour, adding the sugar and the salt and the – uh oh – I had failed to purchase enough yeast. I just stood there for a minute, too mad to cry. A normal and well-adjusted woman might have taken this as a sign. She would have dumped the contents of her bowl into a compost bin and moved on with her life. She would have simply made her entrée and done without bread. Or, she would have figured that if she had to go to the store to buy yeast anyway, she may as well just chunk the whole ill-conceived plan, buy some pre-made bakery bread and call it a day.

I am neither normal nor well-adjusted. I dumped the baby in her car seat, snarled at The Carnivore and The Big Boy, who were having a swell time riding around on the lawnmower, and drove to Publix. I marched right past the bakery with nary a glance and picked up another couple of packets of yeast, because now this was personal, you know?

I also got some Ben and Jerry’s. Just in case.

I drove back home and went back to work. There was just no time to waste now. These bread-like substances all require time to rise, and then (inexplicably, I feel) even more time to rise. And then they still have to bake and, for heaven’s sake, we eat pretty dadgum early now that we have young children, so there was NO TIME TO WASTE.

So I followed the directions in the recipe. To. The. Letter. Well, that isn’t entirely true. I was substituting a different cheese in order to use up some of the scraps in the cheese drawer of our fridge, but other than that, I was seriously following instructions. While normally I feel confident enough to improvise, bread-making isn’t one of those instances.

I let the dough rise until doubled in bulk (for real: I literally measured it to be sure), and then I followed the next step, and let it rise again (for precisely the amount of time specified). And then, with much trepidation and hand-wringing, I put it into the oven to bake while I finished cooking our pasta. Twenty-five minutes later, when the bread was “golden brown on top and bottom” as dictated by the recipe, I pulled the bread out of the oven and set it aside to cool for the requisite period of time. Then, because it was killing me, I reached out and broke off a piece to take a little taste. Because I just HAD to know how it had turned out.

Take a wild guess how it turned out. Just a shot in the dark, if you will. I mean, what would you expect after a day like this, right?

But, oh, sweet saints of all that is sainted, it was a success. Something had actually gone right. We loved it. The Big Boy loved it, The Carnivore loved it, The Houseguest loved it. The heavens were smiling down on me.

And, because I just can’t leave well enough alone, this weekend I plan to try a bread recipe that involves actual kneading. Hell hath indeed frozen over.

OREGANO AND ROMANO FOCACCIA (adapted from Vegetarian Times, makes 12 squares)

• 1 1/2 Tbs olive oil, plus more for greasing bowl
• 4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3 Tbs finely chopped oregano, plus 1 Tbs whole leaves, divided
• 2 Tbs sugar
• 1 1/2 Tbs salt
• 1 1/4 oz rapid-rise yeast
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 1/2 cup grated Romano cheese

1. Rub large bowl with olive oil.
2. In a separate large bowl, combine flour, chopped oregano, sugar, salt, yeast and dried oregano.
3. To the flour mixture, stir in 1 2/3 cup warm water, and continue to stir for 2 minutes. The original directions say that the dough will seem wet and sticky - mine did not. I agonized over that fact, but it turned out fine. Lesson: do not agonize.
4. Transfer dough to the other bowl (the greased one), cover with plastic wrap, and let rise in warm place for 1 to 1 1/2 hours, or until doubled in bulk.
5. Line large cookie sheet or jelly roll pan (approximately 11x17 size works well, but an inch or two more or less isn't going to be a big issue) with parchment paper and spray with cooking spray.
6. Stir cheese into dough.
7. Transfer dough to baking sheet and spread to sides with wet fingers. Don't get terribly stressed out about this step (like I did). It is perfectly fine if the dough is a little unevenly spread and if it rips in a place or two. Matter of fact, it adds character.
8. Brush top of dough with 1 1/2 Tbs olive oil, and sprinkle whole oregano leaves on top.
9. Let rise one hour
10. Bake 20 to 25 minutes at 450 degrees, or until top and bottom are golden brown.
11. Cool for about 15 minutes, unmold from pan, and cut into squares.
12. Drizzle with a little more olive oil, if desired.

Penne with Caramelized Cauliflower

I try not to be puritanical. Really, I do. I mean, sure, clearly I’m more than a little focused on eating whole foods and obviously I would prefer to shelter my children from high-fructose corn syrup and artificial growth hormones and all of the other processed nonsense that is being packaged to look like food these days, but I'd rather not make a religion out of this.

I’m a realist, though. While I only buy organic milk for my son, I do not panic when we are at someone else’s house and they only have conventional milk. And though I’ve noticed that The Big Boy has his most spectacular temper tantrums after ingesting those bizarre overly-sweetened and brightly-colored children’s drinks, I just don’t have the heart to make him stand to the side and drink water when he is at a gathering in which all the other kids are sharing drinks-in-boxes. The kid is four years old. I don’t want to be one of those mothers, you know?

So I let some things slide every now and then. Against my better judgement, of course.

But see, then I went and read an article on that British study regarding the effects of artificial coloring on the behavior of children and suddenly I find myself considering buying a large bubble in which to raise my children.

Artificial coloring was barely even on my radar until I read this study. I wasn’t crazy about them to begin with, per se, and I have grumbled about it in the past when I have wondered why they were even necessary, but I wasn’t pulling a Michael Pollan about the whole thing either. I mean, I like beautiful colors as much as the next person. Part of the allure of beets and cherries, after all, is their rich and vibrant hue. Heck, my kitchen is red, my last office was painted orange, and nothing can bring a smile to my face quite as quickly as the sight of a giant, nearly-neon sunflower. ‘Course I mostly dress myself in black, but since black is actually created by the presence of all colors, then I feel I can kind of skate by with that one. But I don’t ONLY gravitate toward colorful foods. I adore cauliflower, after all. And my whole-wheat pasta addiction is nothing short of beige. Same goes for potatoes, mushrooms, capers, garbanzo beans and Vidalia onions. Not exactly a rainbow in there.

But why must any food find itself artificially colored? Do natural colors not occur in a large enough quantity? To be sure, after reading about that study, I did what any other paranoid consumer would do: I ripped open the pantry door and started scanning labels. And lo and behold, I came to the abrupt realization that I must have, in fact, become as puritanical as I was trying to avoid becoming, because with the exception of some leftover candy in The Big Boy’s Easter basket, there isn’t a single food item in our pantry or refrigerator with artificial colors. Even The Big Boy’s yogurt, which I had assumed would be at least slightly offensive, contains only organic carrot and black currant juice for color.

I’m not sure whether I should pat myself on the back or enter myself in some support program for people who were raised by hippies.

Since this isn't the best time of year to find fresh, naturally brightly-colored produce, I think it's only fitting that I share my favorite beige recipe for Penne with Caramelized Cauliflower. The flavor combinations are unusual in this dish, and I don't believe I'd ever had a pasta dish in which cauliflower had a starring role, but this has ended up becoming one of our new favorites. Even The Carnivore enjoys it, though I made sure not to mention it's Vegetarian Times provenance until after we'd eaten (I find the carnivorous types to be a little sensitive about liberal vegetarian publications

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PENNE WITH CARAMELIZED CAULIFLOWER (adapted from the Nov/Dec 2007 issue of Vegetarian Times, serves 4 or so as an entree)

• 4 Tbs olive oil, divided
• 1 head cauliflower (about 1 lb), cut into 1/4-inch slices
• salt and pepper
• 1 cup fresh flat-leaf Italian parsley
• 1 Tbs lemon zest
• 1 Tbs capers
• 1 lb whole-wheat penne pasta
• 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
• fresh grated Parmaigano-reggiano

1. Toss cauliflower with 2 Tbs olive oil, salt and pepper, and roast in a single layer on a baking sheet at 475 degrees for 15-20 minutes, until browned.
2. Pulse parsley, lemon zest and remaining 2 Tbs olive oil in food processor until chunky sauce is formed. Add capers, and pulse until capers are coarsely chopped.
3. Cook penne in well-salted boiling water until al dente. Drain, and reserve 1/2 cup cooking water.
4. Toss pasta with cauliflower, parsley sauce, and red pepper flakes, adding reserved cooking water if sauce is too thick.
5. Top with grated Parm-reg.

The Only Thing a Microwave is Good For

There are some things I really should be attending to today. I have a mountain of paperwork on my desk that has grown to a point slightly to the right of comical. And my desk chair is filled with a precariously balanced tower of hand-me-down baby clothes that need to find a home in, say, a dresser or a closet. I haven’t even begun our 2007 income tax return yet, and now that I think about it, I have some ugly, bulging files from a couple of clients who are waiting for me to prepare their returns as well. And it's not that I'm procrastinating...

But, you know, Monday on Bitten, Mark Bittman’s blog on the New York Times website, he put out the call for readers to tell him their microwave cooking tips/experiences. Actually, what he asked was, “Are you using the microwave for more than coffee and popcorn?” Now, I’ve been reading his blog since it began a month or so ago, and I haven’t yet commented, but I couldn’t let this moment pass quietly by after I so recently knelt down and begged for forgiveness for having eaten microwave popcorn for the past 20 years or so. And the thought of using my nuker for coffee is stomach-turning. As a matter of fact, I kind of have a fear of the microwave and I’ve been contemplating chunking ours into the nearest landfill. Remember that scene at the end of Poltergeist when the character rolls the TV outside and shuts the door? Yeah, that's kind of an accurate portrayal of my microwave issues.

So, what is a microwave good for then? Well, I'm glad you asked. When Bittman posed this question on his blog, I had a flashback that cracked me up. See, there was this old boyfriend, back in, oh, maybe 1994 who had the bright idea to microwave some CDs. You remember all those annoying AOL CDs that came in the mail every couple of days, right? After a while, I got bored with just throwing them away, and so I saved a small (yet ever-growing) stack of them while I waited for inspiration to put them to some good use. I mean, yeah, I realize some people used them for art, and, you know, good for them.

To be honest, I thought everyone had microwaved a CD at some point. Isn’t it common knowledge? Some sort of rite of passage? So when I commented on Bittman’s post about using the nuker for a CD pyrotechnic show, well, I thought I would just be re-igniting the flame, so to speak, in other’s minds.

Then I woke up yesterday and turned on the computer to find an email challenge from Bittman: “Come on send me a video of nuking a CD!” (exclamation point his).

Well, okey dokey.

This was take 18. It's my story and I'm sticking to it. This turned into a 36-hour obsession that involved much frustration on my part, actually reading the manual that came with my digital camera (pffft), keeping not one, but two, fire extinguishers at the ready, and ended with my little brother bailing me out with a real videocamera.

Kids, don't try this at home.

Videographer: Daniel Bodie

Cake Drama (with a recipe for a large birthday cake)

If you’re just looking for a recipe for a birthday cake that will feed a large family, feel free to skip to the bottom of this post. If you like a little side of neuroses with your recipes, read on:

Birthday cakes traumatize me. I’m not entirely sure where the root of this problem came from, and I can’t recall a particularly bothersome birthday that would have had an effect on the way I view cakes, but for some reason, I get hinky when birthday cakes are around.

Part of it, I think, is that I utterly despise store-bought birthday cakes. They’re just so depressing. Overly sweet, with very little actual flavor (other than sugar – which isn’t a flavor), and the decorations always seem so sterile and, well, store-bought. And of course I’m not a big fan of box cake mixes either, though my sister Carolina knocked my socks off with a Tres Leches cake that started with a mix.

Now that I think about it, I don’t remember cakes being a big part of the whole birthday thing when I was a child. I mean, I’m sure there were cakes at times, especially on those birthdays in which I had a little party, but for the most part, since our family was so small at the time, I would bet most birthdays were spent eating divine desserts at The Flamingo Room or Sweet Indulgences, two long-closed local dessert parlors.

I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, if that’s how I’m coming off here. I had an unconventional childhood, for which I’m sincerely grateful as a matter of fact, and the birthday “cake” that has stuck with me over the years is the banana bread with cream cheese icing that mom brought to school for my seventh birthday. Slightly non-traditional, sure, but at the time I was attending a most non-traditional school and the whole thing just worked for me, if you know what I mean.

But see, then I went and grew up and had kids of my own. And my family is MUCH larger than it used to be, so it was clearly time to create some traditions that would fit for this time in our lives. When The Big Boy turned one, I didn’t intent to have a party really, but a few other family members stressed the relative importance of a first birthday to me, and so I acquiesced and I was glad that I did. Because honestly, there are few things cuter than a one year-old stuffing his face with cake, even though the cake that year was one that my in-laws purchased from a store. I can hardly complain though, since the poor kid would have most likely done without a cake entirely if it weren’t for them.

The Big Boy’s second birthday followed only a few short weeks after an awful tragedy for our family, and we weren’t in any mood to have a party. Or a cake. Instead, we packed up our little fella and his then-five-year-old Uncle Jack and took them to the new Atlanta Aquarium. Even last year, when The Big Boy turned three, he still didn’t have much of an awareness of birthdays, so I didn’t make much of a big deal out of the whole thing. I flipped through a couple of cookbooks, found an adequate recipe for chocolate cake and chocolate frosting and quickly made two of them (it takes a lot of cake to feed our family) and took the cakes and a piñata to Big Mama’s house for an impromptu low-key little celebration.

But this year was much different. And the cake trauma began about two months before The Big Boy’s actual (fourth) birthday. He paid enormously close attention to a few of his cousins’ recent birthday parties, and he started hounding me back in December about what he might want on his birthday cake. I might not have minded, because I think he’s awful cute when he gets obsessed with something, but like I mentioned, birthday cakes traumatize me. And I knew this would be a big year anyway, since The Big Boy was a Leap Day baby and this was going to be his first TRUE birthday. Ack, the pressure.

There were a number of issues with this cake, not even counting the unexplainable trauma facet. First, of course, is my aversion to store-bought cakes, which meant I was obviously going to have to make this cake myself. And, where I would have been perfectly happy to make icing from scratch, The Big Boy wanted complicated decorative elements on his cake as well and, er, I’m a BIG sucker for this kid and I wanted to indulge him.

But the biggest problem had a lot to do with two major factors that were at war with each other: the size of my family and my obsessive-compulsive insistence on perfect math. See, if I were going to decorate this cake with the dinosaur of my son’s dreams, and if this cake were going to be big enough to feed my excessively-large family, then I was going to need both a very large cake pan and a calculator to resize the recipe accordingly. And I don’t have much experience with cake-making, so it was going to be absurdly difficult for me to tell the merits of a recipe just by reading it. Not to mention, since I’m not a big fan of cake-eating, I didn’t want to spend a lot of time and energy on test runs.

So I did what I do best, I panicked for about six weeks while not actually doing anything, and then, the week before The Big Boy’s birthday, I pulled down fifteen cookbooks and ended up having to put my head between my knees to avoid an anxiety attack. Nearly all of the recipes that looked trustworthy (read: came from reputable cookbooks, like Betty Crocker, and seemed innocuously-enough flavored for children) were for round cake pans or, worse yet, didn’t even specify what size pan would be needed. See, I walked into this knowing I would need to super-size whatever cake recipe I was using, but I assumed I would be able to go by square-inchage. You know what I'm talking about, a recipe for a 9x13 pan would yield 117 square inches, but the pan my mother-in-law was lending me was a 12x18 pan (perfect size for my family) and would yield 216 square inches. Now, the 12x18 pan was only 16 square inches too large for a simple doubled recipe, so I would need to discard approximately 7% of the batter before pouring into the pan, or I could run with the reasonable assumption that an extra 7% of batter wouldn’t cause me any major problems with the baking of this enormously traumatic cake. No problem, right?

Well, heck yeah, there was a problem. I wasn’t expecting the curveball thrown to me by the recipes for round cake pans. I had finally found what looked to be the perfect cake recipe and it needed a 9-inch round cake pan and there I was, holding a 12x18 rectangular pan, thinking my math skills were ALL THAT. I looked up in abject horror from my cookbook and virtually hollered at The Carnivore, “How do you figure out the square inchage of a circle? Is that where all that pie-r-squared stuff comes into play?”

The Carnivore looked back at me with a look of priceless astonishment on his face. “Uh-oh,” he exclaimed, and I swear I heard an exclamation point in his voice, “They always said we were going to need to know how to do that later in life.”

Now, I took countless math courses in college, and with the exception of that blasted integral calculus class that nearly killed me, I made A’s in everything. But this was kicking my butt. And yeah, I know I could have gotten online and made short shrift of the whole thing, but I was having a most difficult time admitting my high-school geometry teacher was right.

So, really, the whole point of this Cake Trauma-Drama post is to save other big families from having to face this same sort of life-altering moment when you must come to the horrifying realization that you should have paid better attention in ninth grade. I mean, really, who’d have thought? And besides, big families have enough stress as it is...

After a little bit of internet searching (that resulted in finding a recipe that was actually designed for a 12x18 cake pan), two days of cake baking, an extra unplanned trip to the grocery store for more butter, three batches of butter cream (hence the extra unplanned grocery store trip), and a surprise batch of chocolate frosting, I present to you the following recipe for a two-layer very large (about 60 servings) cake with chocolate frosting between the layers, vanilla butter cream icing for the top and the sides, and an extra batch of butter cream with which to do some decorating.

Before you look at the recipes though, there are, of course, some caveats. First, I used organic flour, organic sugar that was less refined than normal sugar, organic confectioners sugar, free-range eggs, organic butter, and so on. When I made the cake, which was supposed to be a one-layer cake that would be adequately-sized, we realized that it looked entirely too short and stubby. This could have been because of the organic ingredients, or it could have been the recipe itself; we have no way of knowing, because I have no intention of making this cake with conventional ingredients. Thus, we ended up making the last-minute decision to bake a second layer. And, probably the most important caveat of all: my sister-in-law and my mother-in-law, who both have mucho experience with cake decorating, voted me off the island after they heard my plans for the dinosaur, and thus they decorated the cake for me. So I give zero advice on cake decorating, and I hope it remains that way forever because all that stuff they did to it looked much too intricate and annoying to me.

12x18 SHEET CAKE (from Barefoot Contessa, yields one layer)

• 18 Tbs unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 3 cups sugar
• 6 eggs, room temperature
• 8 oz sour cream, room temperature
• 1 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
• zest of one lemon
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup cornstarch (interestingly, I found a non-genetically-modified version in Publix)
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 1 tsp baking soda

1. With an electric mixer, using the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes.
2. On medium speed, add the eggs, one or two at a time; then add the sour cream, vanilla and lemon zest.
3. Sift together the flour, cornstarch, salt and baking soda.
4. With the mixer on low speed, slowly add the flour mixture to the butter mixture. Do not overmix. Finish mixing by hand.
5. Pour batter into a highly-buttered and well-floured 12x18 sheet cake pan (this butter and flouring step is crucial to be sure the cake will turn out of the pan without sticking).
6. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-30 minutes, until a toothpick or blade of a knife comes out clean.
7. Cool cake in the pan for 5-15 minutes, until top is room temperature to the touch, but not yet fully cooled. Loosen edges of cake with a knife and place a cake board (or piece of plywood) over the top. Turn over, pat bottom of pan all over, pray mightily, and lift the cake pan off. If all went well, the cake should be sitting on the cake board now. If pieces of cake are still stuck in pan, pull them out and lay them like puzzle-pieces on the cake where they should be, and remember that icing can cover a multitude of sins.

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CHOCOLATE FROSTING (from Barefoot Contessa, makes enough to cover one layer of the cake)

• 24 oz semisweet chocolate chips
• 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
• 2 Tbs light corn syrup (I used brown rice syrup instead and was tickled to death with it)
• 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 4 Tbs unsalted butter, room temperature

1. In a double boiler (or the microwave), heat the chocolate chips and cream, stirring occasionally, until chips are completely melted.
2. Remove from heat and add the corn syrup and vanilla.
3. In an electric mixer, whisk the chocolate mixture and the butter on medium speed until thickened, 2 or 3 minutes.

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VANILLA BUTTERCREAM FROSTING (from Gale Gand, one batch will cover one layer of 12x18 cake; two batches will cover sides and top of two-layer 12x18 cake)

• 3 cups confectioners sugar
• 1 cup butter, room temperature
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 to 5 Tbs heavy cream

1. In an electric mixer, whisk the sugar and butter on low speed until blended. This takes about 5 minutes and is a bit nerve-wracking. My advice is to walk away. If you stand and watch, honest to goodness, you will be sure it is never going to look like frosting.
2. Increase speed to medium and beat for another minute or two.
3. Add vanilla and 2 Tbs cream; beat on medium speed for one minute.
4. Add cream by the tablespoonful until desired consistency is reached. A thinner consistency is needed for frosting purposes. If making a third batch for decorative purposes, a slightly thicker consistency will be needed.

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SARAH'S BIG FAMILY CAKE FORMULA

• The cake recipe is for one layer. Make two separate batches for a two-layer cake, which I think is necessary for a beautiful birthday cake.
• I used one batch of the chocolate frosting between the two layers. Alternatively, you could use one batch of the buttercream between layers as well., but where is the fun in that?
• If making a two-layer cake, it will take two batches of the buttercream frosting to cover the sides and top of the cake. One batch would suffice to frost the top of a single layer cake. I would not try to mix more than one batch of buttercream at a time. It's just too stressful on the mixer, the chef, and any other people within shouting distance.
• It took an additional (third) batch of buttercream to do the decorations shown in the picture above. My sister-in-law mixed small amounts with food coloring in individual bowls and used a pastry bag with all sorts of complicated torture implements to "star" the dinosaur. Good luck with all that.

Ruthless

There was a time, early in our marriage, when we subsisted on no more than a handful of meals. The Carnivore specialized in spaghetti and quesadillas. My repertoire included bean & rice burritos and baked macaroni and cheese. When we were feeling really decadent, The Carnivore might whip up a mean gumbo or a vegetarian chili, but for the most part, we had a short, easy-to-memorize grocery list and an even shorter menu from which we picked our meals. It suited us. At the time, we had other things on our mind and often we forgot to even eat dinner.

Our dismally slim cookbook collection consisted of the annual Southern Living hardbacks that my mother picked up for us at yard sales, and one or two of them had sticky notes flailing out of the top to denote a recipe or two that The Carnivore, who was by and large the family chef, had attempted with good success. And I had a tiny little single-pocket manila folder that held the four or five recipes I had clipped from magazines or newspapers. It was kind of sad really, now that I'm looking back on it.

When we first moved into our dream house, six weeks after The Big Boy was born, and I began to get used to my new role as more-mom-than-businesswoman, I started testing the waters as the head chef in the family. The Carnivore had designed and built a spectacular kitchen, with appliances that were smarter than me and a floor plan that had the living room and kitchen completely open to one another. The space is vast, airy, and colorful, with high ceilings, stained glass windows and a big bay window, hardwood floors, and even a fireplace. Really, it would have been hard to NOT get obsessed with cooking.

I began to madly clip new recipes, eager to expand our rather boring and completely uninspiring meal rotation, and over time, my folder of recipes started to bulge and split its seams; there were so many that I would often forget what was in there and would have to pull every single piece of paper out in order to find anything. And since we had started with such a limited set of meals, we were voting nearly all new recipes to be keepers. So, in true obsessive-compulsive fashion, I finally spent a weekend organizing all of the recipes into a binder. I made copies of each recipe on a single sheet of paper so I wouldn’t be stuck with all the scraps of paper, and I categorized all of them, even going so far as to provide an index for each category. I know, it’s a little sick, isn't it? I can’t help it. I blame my father. He’s the same way.

Recently though, I realized the binder had gotten out of control. There are maybe 150 or so recipes in there now, and our standards have changed drastically in the past four years. Whereas before, any old edible pasta dish would easily earn its place in the book, we recognize now that in those days, we were just trying to avoid starvation. I mean, the first pasta salad recipe that moved into the book is truly a very middle-of-the-road, pedestrian kind of dish that I clipped from the newspaper. I will probably never make it again now that I have added the Pasta Salad with Corn and Spinach that we fell in love with from Fine Cooking.

It’s clearly time to do some culling. We’re just a lot pickier than we used to be. And I don’t want to waste valuable real estate in The Book with white-bread fare, if you know what I mean. So we’ve gotten ruthless. Unless we get overly frustrated with the process, we’re not having any new recipes for a few weeks until we have gone back and eaten our way through some of the pages that we haven’t even turned to in recent memory. Last night, I made a goat cheese and sun-dried tomato pasta dish that we only ate once, maybe a year ago, and neither of us could even remember much about it, much less why we had decided to add it to our permanent cache. This time, we each had no more than a couple of bites before we put our food critic hats on and began to nit-pick the dish into oblivion. It just wasn’t earth-shatteringly tasty. And it didn’t pull our heartstrings or comfort us or excite even a single taste bud. I wish I had a buzzer on the kitchen table. Or a gong. At some point, we obviously felt this dish was an important addition to our menu book, but neither of us were particularly moved by it any longer.

So I marched to The Book, unceremoniously yanked the page out and escorted it straight to the recycling bin, scribbling over it’s entry in the index. Call me ruthless. I just love the sound of it.

Oh, it isn’t like we’ll run out of recipes. We can afford to be remorseless about this process. I mean, I’m threading my way amongt bookshelves that are groaning under the weight of cookbooks, I subscribe to a slew of cooking magazines (though that amount could rise at a moment’s notice), and the internet is a resource to be reckoned with here. Almost every day I print out a new recipe that I want to try from one of the food blogs (see sidebar at right) that I regularly follow.

The only issue we’re running into is when we disagree over a recipe’s rightful home in The Book. A couple of nights ago, I made a spinach, goat cheese & chive quiche that I truly enjoy (my sister-in-law showed up with a sizeable block of goat cheese last weekend so we’ve been on kind of a goat cheese kick around these parts lately). Though The Carnivore and I are usually on the same page with recipes – with the obvious exception of, um, meat – we butted heads on this one. In the interest of making meals that we are all happy with though, and since this is a rare occasion to begin with, I reluctantly recycled the recipe and took the leftovers to mom’s house. I’m still feeling a little sadness over this, like it’s a puppy my parents won’t let me keep and I need to find a good home for it.

I am a giant fan of eggy main dishes anyway, and The Carnivore most certainly is NOT. Quiches and frittatas are such beautiful vegetarian entrees, and can be loaded with all manner of seasonal veggies and herbs, and since goat cheese can even be found relatively locally here, well, I’m just downright downcast to see this recipe move on to a more agreeable audience than it found in my kitchen.

So here it is, free to a good home. Please take good care of it for me. I will miss it terribly.

SPINACH, GOAT CHEESE & CHIVE QUICHE (adapted from Fine Cooking, serves 4 as an entree, or 6 as a side dish)

• 10 oz fresh spinach
• 2 large eggs
• 2 large egg yolks
• 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
• Salt & freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 cup crumbled goat cheese
• 2 to 3 Tbs finely snipped fresh chives
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• 1/3 cup freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano
• 1 partially baked tart shell (or pie dough or even puff pastry - whatever you like)

1. In a large saucepan, bring 1 cup water to a boil.
2. Add spinach to boiling water and cook until just wilted (2 to 3 minutes).
3. Drain spinach and set aside to cool.
4. In a bowl, combine the eggs, yolks and heavy cream. Season w/ salt & pepper and whisk until well blended.
5. Add the goat cheese, chives, thyme and Parmigiano to the egg mixture.
6. Squeeze excess moisture from spinach; and mince.
7. Add spinach to egg mixture and mix well.
8. Pour mixture into prepared, partially baked tart shell.
9. Put tart shell onto a baking pan (because it will overflow and make a terrible mess of your stove) and bake at 375 degrees until the filling is puffed and brown (about 50 minutes) and interior no longer runs all over the place when poked with a knife.

Nerd (recipe for Leek and Asparagus Frittata)

This cooking hobby is getting expensive. Well, maybe that is too strong a statement. We have to eat, after all, so I suppose if I had to pick anything for a hobby, cooking is certainly the most useful. And since we would have to buy food no matter what, then I can even kind of cheat and consider that not all of the money I spend on this little venture really goes to the hobby itself. Maybe I should come up with some sort of formula by which I take all the money spent on groceries and cooking magazine subscriptions and the cookbooks I’m trying real hard not to buy, and then allocate a specific portion under the heading of ‘hobby’ and funnel the rest to the ‘groceries’ line item on my budget.

It's the accounting degree talking here. You know how you’ve heard all this talk for the past five or ten years about misstated financial statements and important documents being shredded and, you know, Enron. I bet those problems started just like this, with the accountant making twisted justifications about expenses.

Even though I tend to pinch my pennies until they bleed and cry out for mercy, and I bargain shop and try to get the most bang for each buck, I’m pretty reckless when it comes to the food portion of the budget. Because honestly, we DO have to eat. And if I’m going to have to cook every single doggone day for the rest of my dadgum life, then by golly, I’m going to get good at it and I’m going to like doing it. So I buy expensive cheese without even checking the price tag. And we’ve joined a CSA and shell out a pretty sizeable check to the farm at the beginning of the season. And I spend twice as much on organic produce and dairy products without batting an eye, and I go to the weekend farmer’s markets and pay a premium to both support local farmers and to know that my vegetables were grown just a couple of miles down the road and were picked that morning.

So it is what it is. When cash flow gets tight, I do not try to trim our grocery budget. We can cut corners in everything else, but not with our food. I track all of our expenses – even to the point of grumbling at The Carnivore about the $20 in cash he takes out of the ATM once a month or so (it must be hard being married to me), because then I’m unable to allocate that money on the spreadsheet. So it shouldn’t come as any surprise to me at the end of the year, when I print out the annual income and expense detail reports for us to go over as a family, that we spent an exorbitant amount of money on groceries. I’m the one who does the shopping. I know what is spent each week, and I can do the multiplication in my head fairly easily.

But it was still a shock. I printed out the 2007 report and read through it line by line so that I could pat myself on the back for, you know, barely spending a dime on clothing, for ponying up hardly a pittance on dining out, for paying off the vehicles this past year. And then I got down to the grocery section.

Oops. My bad.

Even The Carnivore, who leaves the financial stuff completely up to me, and who has never complained about the decisions I’ve made about our money was brought up short in his tracks when he got to that line.

Clearly, I was going to have to put things into perspective.

I'd recently read The Amateur Gourmet, a witty and delighfully un-elitist guide for aspiring foodies written by Adam Roberts, a food blogger I adore, and I remembered a Ruth Reichl quote from the book about food costs: “Food isn’t cheap. People used to spend half their income on food. Now they spend six percent.” The quote confused me the first time I read it, and it’s still picking at me. If, like she says, food isn’t cheap, then how is it that people are spending so much less on food than they used to? Obviously, due to the industrialization of agriculture, food has gotten much cheaper over the past 50 years, but that is only if you’re talking about buying straight off the supermarket shelf, rather than buying organic or local. And is she talking about groceries, or is she including the cost of eating out? Because I could swear I’ve read some staggering statistics on how many meals are eaten outside of the home now…

So I gave up and commenced Googling. According to a USDA Economic Research Service report, Americans spent 9.5% of their income on food in 2004. From what I read in another USDA report (which included numbers from 1997, which were obviously slightly different), it looks like the numbers used by the USDA in these reports do include both groceries and restaurant meals, and the income amount they use is after-tax income.

I’m such a nerd. OF COURSE I grabbed my adding machine. And OF COURSE I ran the numbers. Now, we’re self-employed, so we lose a higher percentage of our income to taxes due to there not being an employer to pay half of our FICA, and I’m still procrastinating on preparing our income tax return for last year, so I can only go on the amount that I paid with our quarterly estimates, which should be relatively close (due to nerdism). From what I came up with, it looks like we (argh – I suppose ‘I’ is the operative pronoun here) spent approximately 13% of our estimated after-tax income on food. And no, that doesn’t include the money spent on new cooking gadgets or the afore-mentioned cooking magazines, etc.

I was really hoping we’d be closer to the curve here. Then I wouldn’t have to spend the rest of the day trying to come up with excuses, especially when I have some cooking projects I really want to work on. For quite some time now, I’ve justified our high grocery expenses with assuming we were still spending less than those people who ate out all the time – and I do hate having to admit that I was running on mistaken assumptions there. And I’m sure my mom (bless her) will read this and still find a way to help me devise further justifications – because, you know, I don’t have car payments, so maybe I SHOULD be able to spend more on food…

Or maybe I should just admit I have a problem.

Exhibit One: the following leek and asparagus frittata recipe which has become one of my new favorite vegetarian entrees.

We gushed over this recipe and have fallen back in love with frittatas again. The Parmesan crust adds fabulous texture and delicous sharp, salty flavor. The asparagus is cooked until barely tender, and the sauteed buttery leeks are rich and delicate. Even The Carnivore considers this fritatta worthy of entree status, always my biggest goal when serving meatless proteins to a beef-loving man. And The Big Boy ate a few bites of it himself before he lost interest and wandered off to have an imaginary sword fight. I love it too (the frittata, that is), and will be making it for dinner again tonight, along with Spicy Couscous with Chickpeas and a mixed green salad.

But, more to the point, I shudder to think of the actual cost of this dish. I use free-range eggs ($2 worth in this recipe) and fresh Parmigiano-Reggiano (there goes another $2 - $3). The cup of Fontina cheese adds another $3-$4, and I'd just rather not dwell on the cost of organic asparagus, mushrooms and leeks. And, oh, I almost hate to admit this, but I even buy organic butter now. It's all so mind-boggling. I mean, SURE, I could scrimp on the quality of ingredients and use eggs from abused chickens. And I could get my Parmesan from a can. Instead of Fontina, I could use mass-market mozzarella. But then I'd be sacrificing on taste, and what would be the point of cooking at all?

LEEK AND ASPARAGUS FRITTATA (adapted from Bon Appetit, 4 main-dish servings)

• 2 Tbs butter
• 1 cup chopped leeks (white and pale green parts only)
• 12-oz asparagus, trimmed, cut on diagonal into 1-inch pieces
• 1 cup chopped mushrooms
• 8 eggs
• 1 cup shredded Fontina cheese, divided
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt, plus a pinch more
• 1/2 tsp finely ground black pepper
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1. Preheat broiler.
2. Melt butter in heavy oven-proof skillet over medium heat.
3. Add leeks to pan, and saute for 4 minutes.
4. Add asparagus and mushrooms to leeks, sprinkle slightly with pinch of salt, and saute until asparagus is just tender, about 6 minutes.
5. Whisk eggs, 3/4 cup Fontina cheese, 1/2 tsp salt, and 1/2 tsp pepper in medium bowl.
6. Add egg mixture to skillet; fold gently to combine.
7. Cook until almost set, and top is only slightly runny, about 3 -5 minutes.
8. Sprinkle remaining Fontina cheese, and Parmesan cheese over the top.
9. Put skillet in oven and broil until frittata is puffed and cheese has turned golden, about 3 minutes.

Macadamia Double-Decker Brownie Bars

Oh, my stars. I’ve been dying to get a chance to blog for the past few days. I wanted to tell you all about the cauliflower recipe that I tried from the February issue of Bon Appetit. It is just the most divine side dish in the world and I want so badly to share it with you. But you know how it goes. I’ve had work to do all week, and two clients kind of breathing down my neck about it all. Even getting the work done was practically an exercise in futility though because Little Miss Piggy isn’t much for napping, which really gets in the way of getting, you know, ANYTHING done.

So, of course, writing took a backseat. Not just a backseat, more like a way-in-the-back-of-the-bus-seat. The list of priorities that comes before writing is a long one: family, cooking, exercise (gotta work all those desserts off), work, house-cleaning, and so on. And life happens, of course. But there is just so much I wanted to write about from that issue of Bon Appetit…

It was The Green Issue, you see, so pretty much every article in the whole doggone magazine was a sermon I wanted to hear. A cooking magazine focusing on environmental concerns – what more could I ask for, right? To top it all off, Orangette, one of my very favorite food bloggers had her inaugural column published in this issue (the reason I bought it in the first place) and it was worth the price of admission all by itself. See, I really like her, and the article, titled “Why I’m Not a Vegetarian,” was really, really funny. Mostly because, um, I am a vegetarian.

I tried four of the recipes from this issue over the past week, and two of those were enormously successful for us (read: both the vegetarian and The Carnivore liked the recipes, AND the cook had no trouble getting the recipe right, AND ingredients were easily obtained even out here in the boonies). So of course I wanted to write about at least one of those. The decision wasn’t that big really – I could wax poetic about the cauliflower (which was so unusual, yet so incredibly flavorful) or maybe the asparagus frittata (be still my beating heart…). But then a little tiny bit of time passed, and I never made it to the computer, and then the March issue came out. And all I can think about now is that I really want to get that issue so I can read Orangette’s new column. She only blogs once a week, and I KNOW that, but still I check her website every day, just hoping she has posted something new.

I’m trying really hard to NOT subscribe to Bon Appetit, because with my schedule I can barely keep up with my reading as it is, but just the thought of not reading one of Orangette’s columns makes me cranky. And I know I get hung up on the economics of virtually everything, but if I were to purchase six of these issues at the newsstand (which I would probably end up doing), I would have paid the same price as if I had subscribed for an entire year. And I do hate to waste money…

So here I am, all side-tracked (as usual), worrying myself over budgetary concerns and still I haven’t shared either of those two wonderful new recipes. And I’m pretty sure I’m not even going to now, because something wonderful happened this morning that overshadowed all that luscious cauliflower. And that pretty little asparagus, too.

I would love to build up the suspense for a while, because I just love to make people squirm, but I can’t hold it in any longer: I WON FIVE COOKBOOKS. Not just any cookbooks, but FIVE CHOCOLATE COOKBOOKS. Oh, hold on for just a moment while I wipe the tears of joy from my eyes. I’ve danced around the stove, I’ve called my mother, I’ve shouted out of all seven of our exterior doors trying to find The Carnivore and The Big Boy (who have vanished with the wheelbarrow and are totally unaware of this life-changing bit of news), and I’m still excited. I never win anything. Oh sure, a million dollars would be fabulous to win (but I would invest it and probably wouldn’t spend a dime). And I guess I could have won a car, but that would have only irritated me, because I would have sold it (at a loss, most likely) in order to pay the taxes on the prize. And I don’t really need a car anyway.

But cookbooks? Oh. My. Goodness. Serious Eats gives away at least one cookbook a week, and I enter every single time. I mean, I’m there at Serious Eat two or three times a day anyway. It’s the first place I go when I turn the computer on each day, and it is the last site I check before I shut down for the evening. I love the writing, the recipes, the food news, the irreverent tone. I love it all. It’s like the sorority I never rushed. Or the club I never joined. Or the family I never had (work with me here).

So forget the cauliflower. Don’t worry about the asparagus. All this talk (and dancing and singing and shouting) about chocolate has taken me into a whole other direction. Because the other recipe I tried this week was a macadamia brownie recipe from the December 2007 issue of Fine Cooking. And even though I’ve never met a brownie recipe I didn’t like, this particular gooey, sticky, fudgy, over-the-top, hunka-hunka burning love brownie is so scrumptious I’m going to make another batch today even though we haven’t finished eating the first batch yet. I just don’t want to run out – it’s THAT good. And then I’m going to take the whole pan of them, and I’m going to get my lawn chair and a bottle of water, and I’m going to park myself down by the mailbox and wait for my new cookbooks to arrive.

MACADAMIA DOUBLE-DECKER BROWNIE BARS (yields 48 bars - if you exercise considerable restraint, adapted from Fine Cooking)

• BROWNIE LAYER:
• Cooking spray (to grease the pan)
• 12 Tbs unsalted butter, cut into large chunks (don't try to use margarine or some other butter substitute - when the recipe calls for butter, use butter - real butter, amen)
• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/4 tsp table salt
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• MACADAMIA LAYER:
• 1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
• 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 2/3 cup light corn syrup (no, this isn't nearly as evil as high-fructose corn syrup and it has a rightful place in my baking supplies cupboard)
• 3 Tbs unsalted butter, melted
• 1 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs
• 1 1/2 cups roughly chopped salted macadamia nuts
• 1/3 cup sweeteened coconut flakes

1. In a medium saucepan over medium heat, whisk 12 Tbs butter until melted.
2. Remove the pan from the heat and add the granulated sugar, cocoa powder and salt. Whisk until well blended.
3. To the pan, add 2 eggs and 1 tsp vanilla and whisk until smooth.
4. Add the 3/4 cup flour and stir with a rubber spatula until blended.
5. Spread mixture evenly in a greased 9x13-inch baking pan, and bake at 325 degrees until the top is shiny and dry-looking and the brownie springs back very slightly when pressed with a fingertip (about 20 minutes). The brownie should NOT be completely baked - it will be going back into the oven with the next layer. Remove pan from the oven.
6. While the brownie layer is baking, combine the brown sugar and 1/3 cup flour in a large mixing bowl, and whisk until well blended.
7. To the mixing bowl, add the corn syrup, melted butter, and 1 1/2 tsp vanilla. Whisk until blended.
8. Add 2 eggs and whisk just until combined. Do not overmix.
9. Add the nuts and coconut and stir with a rubber spatula just until combined.
10. Evenly (but carefully) spread the macadamia topping over the still-warm brownie layer.
11. Return the pan to the oven and bake until the top layer is golden brown (35 to 40 minutes).

Golden Winter Soup

I have rather vehement opinions about most vegetables. Maybe it’s a vegetarian thing. After all, I would be hard-pressed to have virtually anything to eat if I weren’t at least a little adventurous in the produce section. But when it comes to how I actually feel about individual vegetables or even herbs for that matter, I’m not one to be all wishy-washy. As a general rule, I love them or hate them.

Turnips and fennel get most of my hate mail, but they belong to a very small minority. I swoon over fresh beets, and I get positively misty-eyed over asparagus. I can’t get enough basil and flat-leaf parsley in my life, and I’ve never met a green I didn’t like. I’ll eat zucchini and summer squash until I pop, and I’m sure most people would agree that you can’t go wrong with anything potato. Oh, and cauliflower and broccoli and Brussels sprouts, yum, yum, yum.

But, and here comes Embarassing Admission Number 97, there are still vegetables that I’m not well-acquainted with. I have an uneasy relationship with radicchio, but I haven’t given up that we will find common ground eventually. Eggplants have caused me some consternation, but I still have hope there as well. And I’m still trying to find a local source for broccoli rabe as it is something I’ve never even had the pleasure of meeting (and I’m a little cranky on this since I really needed some for a recipe I wanted to try tonight).

When it comes to the dizzying variety of squashes out there though, I get a bit flummoxed. I’ve got a myriad of delicious recipes for yellow crook-neck squash, but then there is acorn squash, butternut squash, delicata squash, kabocha squash, spaghetti squash, turban squash – oh, you get the idea. I stumble across these at the farmer’s markets and the supermarket and I just stand there with my head cocked to the side like a dork. I mean, sure, I’ve read about many of these different varieties, but I have zero intuitive knowledge when it comes to these things. And I can’t just pick one of them up and bring it home and then do an internet search for an appropriate recipe to go with that night’s menu. Because remember, I’m the only vegetarian in the house. And The Carnivore has been known to openly mock me when I serve something that strikes him as a little too hippie.

I walk a fine line here.

But I will not be bested by a gourd. And it was with that in mind that I felt urged on by forces stronger than me when, within the span of two days, I came across both a delicious sounding recipe for butternut squash in Cooking Light and handy instructions for peeling and cutting them in Bon Appetit. It’s as if all the stars were aligned just so…

Alright, so I felt the teeniest bit of trepidation. After all, I was planning to serve a squash soup to The Carnivore for an entrée, and I didn’t have the slightest experience with what butternut squash even tasted like, but I’ve been feeling rather snarky lately anyhow, what with being cooped up in the house with small children all winter, and I was craving, even lusting, for a little challenge to wake up the senses.

And soup just made sense for yesterday’s dinner anyway. The Carnivore had no idea how late he would be working, Little Miss Piggy has been fussier than usual lately, and The Big Boy has a bit of a cold, so clearly I wasn’t going to be able to pull together a fancy meal in which timing would be critical. I needed something that I could tinker with ahead of time a little, and then be able to keep warm for as long as necessary without compromising texture or flavor.

So I gave it a shot. The recipe was featured on the cover of the January/February issue of Cooking Light and it just looked divine. And, oh my stars, it did not disappoint. This was the most luscious, the most creamy, yet still light and delicate soup I’ve had in ages. You could taste all the flavors in each glorious slurp, and the butternut squash added such an interesting sweet note without being cloying at all, if you know what I mean. Even The Carnivore groaned happily over it, and The Big Boy greedily took a few spoonfuls before he, like all nearly-four-year-olds forgot what he was doing and ran off in a different direction. As for me, well, I woke up craving the leftovers for breakfast.

Such a winner, this soup – I can’t recommend it enough. I didn’t change a thing in the original recipe (other than substituting vegetable broth for chicken broth, of course), serving it with Gruyere toast, as recommended, and a salad of mixed greens with a quick, homemade vinaigrette.

GOLDEN WINTER SOUP (from Cooking Light, serves 5 or 6 as a main course)

• 2 Tbs butter
• 5 cups (roughly 1/2-inch) cubed peeled butternut squash, about 1 1/2 lbs, seeds scooped out and discarded
• 2 cups (roughly 1/2-inch) cubed peeled russet potatoes, about 12 oz
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 1/2 tsp finely ground black pepper
• 2 cups sliced leeks, about 2 medium leeks (white and light green parts only)
• 4 cups vegetable broth
• 1 cup half-and-half
• 3 Tbs chopped chives
• Baguette or French bread, sliced on the diagonal
• 3 oz shredded Gruyere cheese (eh - I actually doubled this, I think - I really love cheese)

1. Melt butter in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat.
2. Add squash, potato, salt and pepper to pan. Saute for 3 minutes.
3. Add leek; saute 1 minute.
4. Stir in broth; bring to a boil.
5. Reduce heat and simmer 20 minutes or until potato is tender, stirring occasionally.
6. Puree the soup, either using an immersion blender in the pan, or whirring 1/2 the soup at a time in a regular blender (removing the center piece of the lid and covering with a towel to let steam escape without splattering the entire kitchen). I chose to only slightly blend the soup, as I prefer a little bit of chunky texture - to do this, I put all of it through the blender in a couple of batches, but I only pulsed it a few times so that each piece of vegetable was broken up, but was not completely pulverized.
7. Return soup to pan; stir in half-and-half. Keep warm over very low heat.
8. Arrange bread slices in a single layer on a baking sheet; sprinkle with cheese. Broil bread for a minute or two, until edges are golden and cheese is melted.
9. Top each serving of soup with a little chopped chives.

A Simple Snack. Made Simpler.

I have a confession to make. This is slightly embarrassing to admit, especially since I try so hard to be the poster girl for all things homemade. And of course I strive to buy as few packaged items as I can in an attempt to reduce both excessive waste (why, oh why, does everything have to come in blister packs these days) and unnecessary food miles. Because, obviously, anytime I buy a pre-made item like, say cookies, I have to confront the fact that each of the ingredients are grown or processed in different places, and then they are each trucked in to the final processing plant, and the packaging materials are trucked in, and then the finished packaged product is trucked back out to stores. And even then, we haven’t yet dealt with all my other neuroses about whether the product is made from organic ingredients, if high-fructose corn syrup is involved, and if there are ingredients I cannot pronounce.

Truly, it all gives me a headache. And God only knows what they put in Motrin.

But what about that confession, right? Well, here is the thing. For years, when I’ve craved popcorn, I’ve opened a box, ripped off the plastic wrapping, and put a bag of popcorn in the microwave. Truly, it is the only reason I even have a microwave. The Big Boy refers to the microwave as the popcorn maker and was aghast when I used it to reheat some pasta for lunch a few days ago. And what started this whole popcorn dialogue in the first place was a recent Amateur Gourmet post about microwaves, popcorn on the stove, and (oh, for pity’s sake) a discussion regarding the structural integrity of food that is reheated in microwave ovens.

Now I’m not one to bandy about architectural terms when it comes to warming up some leftovers for lunch. But it did get me to thinking because there are a number of issues with relying on microwave popcorn, and here is a short list that I have compiled:

1. On the ingredient list of the most pure, organic microwave popcorn, there is an item called “color added.” I don’t feel like complaining about the rotten English there, and besides, Big Mama already had to listen to a diatribe from me on the subject, but why is color added to popcorn? And white isn’t a color anyway.
2. The list of ingredients includes “natural flavor.” Um, what flavor? Popcorn flavor? Did the popcorn itself not come with its own flavor?
3. The afore-mentioned over-packing issue.
4. That whole food miles thing too.
5. It doesn’t even taste that great.
6. You have to use a microwave to make it.
7. There is a nasty chemical in the bags the popcorn is popped in called PFOA (short for something I can’t pronounce, which means I don’t want it near my food) that has been deemed a likely carcinogen.
8. Little kids get a BIG kick, and I mean a B.I.G. K.I.C.K. out of making popcorn on the stove.

Know how I found about number eight? Yep. I decided to go old school. When I went grocery shopping I purchased a bag of organic popcorn kernels and I popped it myself. And, because I’m in a list-making mood today, here is what I found out about popcorn that is popped on the stove:

1. It tastes better. A lot better. Big Mama came over and polished off what I didn’t eat. And she kept making noises like “yum” and “wow.”
2. Three-year-olds break out the big belly laughs when they hear the popping sounds in the pan.
3. The ingredient list on the bag only has one ingredient listed. And I bet you can figure out what that ingredient is. And I’m sure you can pronounce it.
4. It costs much less than microwave popcorn. Much, much, much less.
5. There is far less packaging than microwave popcorn.
6. It doesn’t take any more time than making it in the microwave. Okay, maybe it takes an extra 60 seconds. And you have to wash the pan. But is that really such a sacrifice?
7. It reminds me of my childhood.

Who would have thought that such a simple activity would turn into such a moment of reminiscing? When I called The Carnivore to tell him of our latest cooking project, he waxed poetic about his own childhood popping-on-the-stove adventures. Mom and I started in with one of our “Remember when…” conversations, and the whole thing just made my day. A bowl of popcorn that was rife with profundities. Really, who'd have thought? And did I mention that it tastes great? Oh, yum. I want more right now just thinking about it.

Wanna try this at home? Just imagine, we could start a revolution. A popping corn revolution. I'm getting so excited...

POPCORN

• 3 Tbs cooking oil
• 1/3 cup popcorn kernels
• Sea salt

1. Pour oil and popcorn kernels into a really, really big pan.
2. Put a lid on the pan. This is probably the most important step.
3. Heat over medium-high heat.
4. When the popping starts, begin to gently shake the pan.
5. When popping slows to a near-stop, turn off the heat, wait a couple of seconds before lifting the lid to be sure popping has stopped.
6. Get broom out anyway because you didn't wait and now there is popcorn on the floor.
7. Toss the popped corn with salt.
8. Join the revolution.