Category: experiments

Hangover Sex: A Menu

leg

Coming hard on the heels of the last post about a particular vegetarian, one might be tempted to interpret this post.

Do as you like.

However.

It’s nearly Valentine’s Day, that most commercial of Hallmark holidays, and I prefer mine a little grubby.

A little gritty.

Don’t get me wrong: hearts and flowers and romance are all exquisite. Expressions of love in any form are always welcome and definitely needed in the world, at the mico- and macroscosmic levels.

#OM

But there is something…raw, vulnerable, visceral…about waking up feeling the previous night’s whiskey and then…feeling the previous night’s date next to you, warm. If you are lucky enough to be unencumbered by children or dogs or any type of responsibility for the day, the possibilities of how to spend that sharply fuzzy morning time together are…endless.

But you’re going to need some food.

When I am feeling the effects of overindulgence, my breakfast usually consists of an anti-nausea pill and some coffee, followed by a long nap and some Gatorade. This has been my MO of late also because I have not had a sleepover in, well, FUCKING FOREVER.

In theory, though, slumber party friend or no, when dinnertime rolls around, it’s on. I need fat, I need carbs, I need strong flavors and lots of them.

Lucky folks in Hampden might convince their sleepytime partner to trot up the The Corner for some kimchi fries to go. If I am being honest, which I always try to be, that place is hipster as fuck, annoyingly so, but I could take a bath in their kimchi fries. They are the perfect combination of salty, spicy, and not too greasy (but still), and one order is never enough.

If I can’t have fries, and I have very little food in the house (which is usually what happens), pasta is the business. But not just any pasta: cacio e pepe. Pasta with pepper and cheese.

Simple. Lusty. Roman peasant food.

The sauce, if you can call it that, is simple:  pecorino Romano,  freshly cracked black pepper, a little pasta water, and pasta.

In a recipe this basic, ingredients are important. The pasta is important.

Sure, you could go for dried pasta. This is a respectable option, especially when you may possibly be just a little bit drunk still. Fresh pasta from the refrigerated section of the grocery store is another way to go.

But.

FRESH PASTA.

That. Yes, there. THAT. 

Fresh pasta manages to somehow be an everyday staple food but still sexy as hell. It is simple to make, delicious, not time-consuming once you can figure out how to work the pasta machine (or eliminate that altogether by rolling out your pasta and hand cutting it), and infinitely satisfying in a recipe with such a simple sauce.

Infinitely satisfying, as in how all things should be the morning after the night before, yes?

Hmmm.

HangoverPasta

Fresh Pasta

Ingredients

10 ounces (about two cups) all-purpose gluten-free flour (regular works fine, too)

1 T xanthan gum

1/2 t. salt

4 eggs

2 T olive oil

Method

Combine dry ingredients in food processor and pulse to combine. Add eggs and olive oil and mix until dough forms. You can also use a big bowl, a fork, and some muscle. Or have your lover do this while you watch.

Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until it feels a bit smooth (you aren’t developing gluten, so don’t overdo it. Just really incorporating all ingredients). Shape into a six-inch roll, then cut into six pieces.

Work with each piece individually to either hand cut, or use your pasta machine.

Pro tip #1: Dust pasta with flour before sending it through the pasta machine.

Pro tip #2: Send it through two times on each setting, starting with the widest and stopping when you can see your hand through the pasta.

Technically, cacio e pepe is for spaghetti, but I like linguine, so I use the linguine cutter on my pasta machine.

After you cut your pasta, you can freeze it in little bundles and drop into salted, boiling water for two or three minutes wheneverthefuck you want some fresh pasta, or you can let the little bundles sit around until you’re damn good and ready (about two hours before you need to make a decision about those little bundles).

Damn good and ready?

Bring a pot of salted water to boil. While you are waiting, grate about two cups of pecorino Romano. Boil your pasta for two minutes, reserving about a cup of pasta water. After you drain the pasta, add it to the cheese, and gradually add pasta water, a little at a time. If your sauce is too wet, add cheese. Too dry? Add water.

Salt to taste (even though the cheese is salty you will need more) and grate a TON of black pepper into the bowl. You can finish with a drizzle of best-quality olive oil if you like, then eat it off your fingers (or each other) when you head back to bed.

Buon appetito!

What’s your favorite hangover menu?

 

 

 

Cream Cheese Tarts With Lemon Marmalade

It’s winter. Not the depths of winter, technically, but we are supposed to get a foot of snow in three short days, so here in Baltimore, we are IN IT.

I love winter. It’s annoyingly true. While others grumble about snow days and kids staying home, I like nothing better than to have The Teenager all to myself for the day. Last year at the height of the storm during the Blizzard That Shut Down Baltimore we hiked down to Golden West for the Lisa Marie (a pancake with a strip of bacon fried in it, topped with peanut butter butter – not a typo, a real thing -and served with maple syrup), plus hashbrowns for good measure. We let the dogs run up and down the alley, off leash, until they found a kitty and chased it, then we made snow angels in the middle of the road.

So snow days are my thing.

Especially when you have this just lying around in your cabinet:

Marmalade

This is a jar of epic, three-day organic lemon marmalade that I made last week. It is tart and sweet and faintly bitter from the pith that gives it the pectin to set up all by itself.

I have five of these. That’s a lot for two people to eat, one of whom doesn’t actually like lemon marmalade. Logical choice, for me, is a lemon cream cheese tart. Individual tarts because a whole tart is too much but maybe individual ones will be more manageable.

An easy, gluten-free pie crust, a luscious, creamy, whipped cream and cream cheese filling, and a thin layer of juicy lemon marmalade. Drizzling it with chocolate may be overkill, but I am going there.

Come with me.

Cream Cheese Tarts With Lemon Marmalade

Crust Ingredients

5 tablespoons butter (softened)

1/4 cup sugar

1 room temperature egg

1 cup AP flour (I used gluten-free)

1/2 teaspoon salt

Method

Cream butter and sugar with a hand mixer until smooth. Add egg and incorporate thoroughly. Combine flour and salt in a small bowl and then add into the wet mixture a little at a time until it is just mixed. Shape dough into a ball, then wrap in plastic and flatten. Pop in the ‘fridge and chill for an hour.

When it’s chilled, remove from ‘fridge and flour your work surface. Turn out dough and roll until it is between 1/8″ and 1/4″ thick (I use a wine bottle to roll, but I suppose a regular old rolling pin would work as well). For individual tarts, you could rush out and spend lots of cash on individual tart pans, or you could grab some wide-mouthed Mason jar lids and flip the lid so the metal faces up in the center of the ring (instead the white underside).

MiniTarts

Place your tart dough in the lid, pressing lightly into and up the sides of the ring. Make sure you make your dough circles just a bit wider than the ring so that there is enough dough to go all the way up to the top of the metal ring.

TartCrust

This recipe made eight of the wide-mouthed lids and three of the regular lids. Perfect if you have small children who need an even smaller tart. Chill in the freezer for half an hour (wrap lightly in plastic wrap).

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake mini crusts until lightly browned and dry, about 15 minutes (about 30 minutes for a full-sized tart). Keep an eye on them. If they start to bubble up, you can prick them lightly with a fork, or you can line each crust with aluminum foil and use pie weights to prevent bubbling (or just use rice. I use the same rice over and over. I let the rice cool after each use then store it in a jar for the next time. This lasts indefinitely, or until you move and decide to throw it out.). Your crust should be a lovely golden brown color. If you are using pie weights or rice, remove them in the last few minutes so the whole crust can brown.

Let crusts cool completely while you make the filling.

Filling Ingredients

1 8-ounce bar of cream cheese, softened

1/4 cup of sugar

1 cup of whipping cream, whipped until it forms peaks

optional: 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract and one tablespoon of sugar to add to whipping cream

Method

Cream the cream cheese and the sugar together until fully mixed. Whip the whipping cream (and optional sugar and vanilla extract) in a separate bowl until the cream forms stiff peaks. Beat the cream cheese and the whipped cream together. Spoon into cooled crusts and chill for at least an hour.

Tarts in waiting

Top with your topping of choice and chill for another 30 minutes. I am using lemon marmalade, about a tablespoon per tart, but guess what? Jam of any sort would be delicious, or slather the tops with hot fudge sauce. If you do that, be sure and finish with a bit of fleur de sels.

Tarts

To serve, unmold from the Mason jar rings. You should be able to slide the tart off the lid, but if not, serve it with a dollop of whipped cream, a smile, and a strong cup of black coffee.

Spring is just around the corner.

The 10 Most Important Things That Happened In My Kitchen This Year

Baltimore Museum of Art, September 11th. Friday field trips, a lovely tradition from this year.
Baltimore Museum of Art, September 11th. Friday field trips, a lovely tradition from this year.

I won’t lie: I am a sucker for a listicle.

Perhaps it’s because I am myself a prodigious maker of lists. Or maybe it’s because I am old and have the attention span of a fruit fly these days. It’s hard to focus on big words and long sentences sometimes, and yet this blog is filled with them.

Ah, well.

But lists.

I love them.

And I especially love lists that apply to cooking, kitchens, food, or anything otherwise involving comestibles and their preparation.

And now is the time of year when everyone puts out their top ten lists of everything (movies, songs, celebrities, etc). While I won’t lie and pretend that I haven’t ever read a tabloid in line at the supermarket (or on an airplane, or while at the beach. Ahem.), I will say that in general I couldn’t care less about those sorts of lists.

However.

I love top ten lists of cookbooks, like the one from Bon Appetit or this one from Paste.

I love a solid how-to list for ingredients or supplies of a particular cuisine (hello, Korea! You are happening in my kitchen in 2016!).

I especially love lists about stocking a bar (although I would swap out the absinthe in this list and add in a very expensive bottle of sipping whiskey of your preference. Mine is bourbon, and it’s a bottle of Pappy. What else is there?).

Lists create order out of chaos. They gather, organize, and distill crucial information. While I still enjoy reading a page-long sentence every now and then (hello, Kerouac!), and I very obviously enjoy writing them, lists have become a crucial part of my writing, cooking, and daily life.

So. To that end, it only makes sense that I end the year on this, my very new food blog, with a list. I will call it The Ten Most Important Things To Happen In My Kitchen This Year. In no particular order, here they are.

1. I actually got a kitchen

Call it the rehab that never ended, but we bought the house in October and didn’t move in until mid-May. That’s SEVEN MONTHS ON AN AIR MATTRESS. But who’s counting? I am tremendously grateful to be in this house, in this kitchen I designed, regardless of how long it took.

2. Shared my expensive bourbon with a gentleman caller

Because my friend Mark has a lovely liquor store connection, he was generous enough to snag me a bottle of 15-year Pappy Van Winkle. On the interwebs, these bottles are going for upwards of $800. Although I didn’t pay nearly as much as that, I sip it with reverence, and I am not prone to sharing. I shared a wee sip with a gentlemen. It is both the sharing itself and the person with whom I shared that makes it an item on this list. #Standby

3. Acknowledged the importance of vulnerability. Using cake

I decided that moving forward would become impossible and fruitless were I to continue in the manner in which I was traveling prior to death of my spouse. SO. Time to open up to the possibilities. Cake teaches lessons.

4. Got to know a candy-apple red stand mixer

This is my first stand mixer, and it was my Mother’s Day gift to myself. I LURVES it. It marked a new era of spending money on myself, something that I have previously had difficulty doing, and it allows me to make ALL OF THE THINGS.

5. Reaffirmed my love of mise en place

I am mise en place-ing like a boss these days. It just makes life in the kitchen easier. Turns out, having everything in place makes the rest of life easier also. #KitchenLessons

6. Learned how to sharpen my knives (and actually sharpened them)

Yeah, turns out this makes a huge difference. I knew, but lazy took over, then crazy took over, and finally we settled down in Baltimore, and I did it.

7. Mounted my own magnetic knife rack

I dug my standard Ikea magnetic knife thing out of a box when we finally moved in to our permanent house, kicking myself for not having the contractor install it. So it languished in the box for awhile until I couldn’t take it anymore, and I mounted it myself. With a level. #LikeABoss

8. Decided to dig into the shadows 

In keeping with the trend of #3, shadow work has become a focus over the past six months. Uncovering the darkest parts of my experience, examining them, and letting them go has made a profound difference in the quality and depth of my ability to grieve and then move forward. Not nearly done, but the process has been eye-opening.

9. Made a cooking video

But guess what? It was crap, so I am not posting it. I am okay with showing the process, but this was just not even close to what I was going for. So maybe this time next year.

10. Re-designed this website

I said I would not do another website ever again, but I bit the bullet and did it. While it is not exactly what I want yet, it does represent a certain amount of tenacious ferocity that I have learned lurks deep within me. So there’s that.

These go to 11: Got to know The Teenager better

So The Teenager and I are at this amazing place in our relationship where we are transitioning from a straight mother-daughter thing to more mother/daughter friends. This can be very difficult for both parties, as The Teenager sometimes struggles with understanding that I am still her mother (and as long as you are living under my roof….), and I may have difficulty believing everything that comes out of her mouth (the working motto: Trust but verify). In the end, she is becoming a strong, intelligent, opinionated, passionate human who is an excellent friend and an all-around good person. I have realized that it is up to me in many ways to treat her in such a way that allows her to continue on that road, and I did it during one of our long, after-school chats. That she still wants to have them is such a gift.

So that’s my top ten list for 2015. What’s yours?

 

 

Chocolate Salami

I maybe should have taken more pictures, but I couldn't wait to get this in my face. DELICIOUS. Indulgent, but there's nuts and fruit, so GOOD FOR YOU
I maybe should have taken more pictures, but I couldn’t wait to get this in my face. DELICIOUS. Indulgent, but there’s nuts and fruit, so GOOD FOR YOU

You heard me.

Chocolate. Salami.

I had a sleepover with my very best friend in all of the land, Kerry, this past Friday. An earlier post on this blog had a picture of us in college, standing by the coffee pot, both quite the worse for wear. She’s the one that looks perkier than she perhaps ought to be, and I am the giant who looks like I might kill someone. We have known each other forever, through moves and tragedy and joy and everything else that happens over 30+ years.

This Friday I took the dogs, myself, and some chocolate salami over to her house to sit around, drink too many bourbon cocktails expertly prepared by her husband Mark, and to work on a puzzle.

You heard me. A PUZZLE.

Livin’ la vida loca.

But it’s not the puzzle. It’s the company.

When you are young and unencumbered by children, real jobs, and mortgages, you think nothing of sitting around in your pie pants all day, doing nothing. You have nothing really to do and all day to do it, and much of this lounging about is done in the company of good friends. As an adult, although I see Kerry often, I miss those days.

Plus, I need to tell her about a boy.

So it seems that chocolate salami is the thing to do, especially since my girl Kerry lurves her some white chocolate.

I used this recipe, with some modifications.

  • Gluten-free animal crackers took the place of shortbread, and crispy rice was also gluten-free
  • I used unsweetened dried cherries from Chukar Cherries in Washington. I could take a bath in these things.
  • I have a kitchen scale so I utilized the weight measurements, but if you don’t they translate into about a cup each of the fruits and nuts
  • Mise en place makes the recipe come together very quickly
  • In hindsight, I would make two salamis. One was awfully big and difficult to handle.

(Insert off-color sexual innuendo here)

Serves 1-? depending on how long the conversation goes, how freely the drinks flow, and how many like white chocolate. Next variation will utilize dark chocolate and a different variety of fruit and nuts and be equally delicious.

What do you bring to the table for long conversations with old friends?

Experimenting: Gnocchi

I am more excited about this potato ricer than perhaps I should be.

True confession time: I have only had gnocchi once.

It was at a restaurant in Little Italy in Baltimore, a place that shall remain nameless but based on reputation alone should have had someone’s nonna in the back making delicate little puffs of potato. 

They certainly charged cash money like they flew Nonna over first class.

Turns out, their gnocchi was less than stellar. They were lukewarm and gummy, served in a quickly-cooling butter sauce with fairly tasteless Parmesan that may have seen the inside of a green can. It was not a good showing, and for years I ignored the presence of this dish in favor of anything else.

Flash forward to gluten-free years, a chilly fall in Baltimore, and some gorgeous and delicious organic russet potatoes from the local market. Turns out gnocchi is a great pasta dish for those avoiding gluten, and some recipes don’t require the use of eggs (although Tom Colicchio’s does, and his is on the list for testing).

I have no idea what I am doing, but tonight is the first experiment with the recipe from Mark Bittman’s book How To Cook Everything. All it requires is russet potatoes, salt, pepper, and flour (I am using my gluten-free all-purpose flour blend, so we will see). 

I have a newly-acquired potato ricer, a bowl that is too big for the aforementioned potato ricer, and the will to dive in.

I also have a four-hour Sunday sauce that I made on Monday (details, details), and I figure the gnocchi might like to rest on top of that when all is said and done. 

So help me out before I judge my initial effort (which Tom Colicchio insists will be unsuccessful on the first attempt): describe the texture and taste I am aiming for. What is the goal?

I plan on trying several different recipes before reporting what actually happen. I may need volunteers to taste. Any (local) takers?