Chez Alice

Last week my boyfriend and I went to California to visit his family. I gave considerable thought to not coming back.

We called upon many of Jonathan's old friends, and visiting tends to involve eating together. So we ate. A lot. The highlight: Chez Panisse, of course! Well, the cafe, anyway. But I would never have known that we were sitting in the little sister.

{Me: Zucchini salad with squash blossoms and pecorino}

{Jonathan: Avocado and beet salad with purslane and chili flakes}

{Me: Sea bass with Indian spices, mint & cucumber raita, and tomato & eggplant}

{Jonathan: Goat's leg (!) and potato gratin with roasted heirloom tomatoes & salsa verde}

{My cookbook-cover shot with desserts (1) Rhubarb tart with strawberry ice cream & (2) Creme Panisse with raspberry coulis....}

{...and (3) Chocolate pavé with espresso cream & chocolate sauce & (4) Mulberry ice cream with peaches and creme chantilly!}

{Mm, pretty Barbera and Rosé. The colors just looked so pretty with all that natural light.}

Thank you, Alice, who started it all.

Patience, or How to Make Caramel

When one hosts a large-ish party with an impressive main dish, one earns the right to erase silently an entire item from the intended menu. I was giddy at the prospect of trying something that goes with the transcendent bread pudding at my restaurant: bourbon-spiked caramel sauce.

Wilting over the heat, I watched as a promising tint of gold formed a lacy edge to cup after cup of bubbling sugar. But just as I would begin to feel hopeful, the entire mess would flare up like seafoam and shrink into a spiteful white clump.

Guests began to arrive, and I pretended to myself that I had never planned on serving dessert and ignored the drawerful of ripe peaches huddling in the fridge.

Monday was a new day, so I prepared myself to waste another box of sugar and possibly the better part of a hot afternoon over a hotter stove because these guests would have caramel and peaches, damnit.

Five cups of sugar and several episodes of Planet Money later, I decided to listen to the advice given by only a few of the recipes I came across (the others provided suspiciously few steps and an "it's-so-easy!" attitude I deemed untrustworthy): You must let the sugar dissolve completely before the mixture comes to a boil. I had been a little loose with terms like "must" and "completely". I mean, can syrup ever be completely clear?

As a child, I never understood why Patience had such a good reputation. Anyone can wait for something, I thought. But to watch a pot of sugar and water is to confront again and again feelings of discomfort (at not being in control) and fear (of things not turning out right) and to quiet those feelings.

At its heart, home cooking is about inviting friends into your home so you can validate a slightly obsessive need to turn something simple that everybody likes into something complicated and stressful. And so it was terribly gratifying to spoon up the thick stuff over soft grilled peaches and hear the most beautiful phrase in the world: "You made that?"

Do-Over Dinner

We set for ourselves a challenge this week: two dinner parties, a day apart, with almost no prep time with both of us in the room. Dinner #1: A Saturday night BBQ with lots of folks. Dinner #2: a quiet evening with another couple. Turns out the same menu works for both: pizza on the grill!

Dinner #1 was a bit chaotic and really festive. We bought dough from the pizza place around the corner and prepped as many toppings as possible, but there was still a lot of assembly while guests looked on. One friend remarked that it was like Grimaldi's, where half the fun is watching the guys flip the dough while you wait.

Dinner #2: Monday was a whole new mood. I did exactly what we had planned for the party dinner, but the chaos of the first run-through gave way to a peaceful afternoon stirring a little circle around the kitchen: caramelize onions, simmer sauce, knead dough -- stir, stir, knead.


The result of a questionably planned couple of nights spent entertaining was the rare opportunity to do it all over, recollecting recipes in tranquility.

If you can remember not to go nuts with toppings (three per pie should suffice) and keep the rest simple, you won't have to make a fantastic but debilitating, leftover-using, morning-after breakfast like this one following Dinner #1:


I used 101 Cookbooks's tomato sauce (lemon zest!), and made three varieties of smallish, semi-personal pizzas. Make sure everything is chopped and pre-cooked and organized in little bowls, and have a post-it with each pizza topping combo handy.

Ours:
Mozzerella - tomato - basil
Asiago - grilled peppers
Gorgonzola - caremelized onions - sausage

Next time I would like to make the dough, but I find no shame in buying a ball of dough from around the corner. Guests seemed equally impressed by the fact that they sell it to just anyone ("You just ask? Do they look at you funny?") as by homemade dough. The pizza is fabulous, cheap and impressive. We don't ever order pizza at home, but now I know we never need to.

4th of July Weekend Part II: Portland

I have a new favorite bookstore: Rabelais! Not just cookbooks, but food books. And how have I never heard of the eponymous Rabelais (novel-inventer, Swift-influencer, tosser-off of deathbed witticism)? The owners are husband-and-wife Brooklyners who seem to have set up shop partly so they could defy those who admire photos of elaborate dishes but exclaim "No one cooks like that at home!"

Portland has become a destination foodie city in the past few years and even reminds me a little of Brooklyn with its passion for sustainable but fancy ingredients and a casual vibe. Duckfat fits this description.

The main attraction is french fries fried in... duck fat. We forwent the Poutine, which is like a parfait with layers of fries, cheese curd and duck gravy, and tried a few of the sauces: truffle ketchup (Heinz + truffle oil!), Thai chili mayo and my favorite, horseradish mayo.

However, I was equally ecstatic to see a yummy version of my favorite kind of salad: greens + cheese (ricotta) + fruit (strawberries) + texture (fennel). Fresh, bright and the perfect antidote to bad-for-you, ducky wonderfulness.

I couldn't resist the sweet potato curry soup, which I thought might be too wintry but was the perfect spicy counterpoint.

Now that I'm back I'll have to start cooking from some of the books J bought. Maybe I'll finally try a souffle....

4th of July Weekend Part I: Waterford

The 4th of July in my hometown:

7:30 am. Town breakfast at the Wilkins House followed by rummage sale in the basement and book sale at the library. J found a funny little card game called Filch that no one knows how to play.


11 am. Parade through the Village Green (followed by bonus parade when everyone has to turn around and come back because there is only one road).

2 pm. Wait for the rain to stop so we can grill burgers. Eat with potato salad, beer, and homemade ice cream. Play lots of cards. Nap.


Sunday: Remember how to drive. Stop for as many lobster rolls as possible. Debate worthiness of lobster premixed with mayonnaise vs. anadulterated lobster meat.


I no longer get to ride in the fire truck, family members are farther flung, and it is difficult for me to reconcile the relaxed mood of family downtime with the get-up-and-go that is J's and my usual vacation mode. But the air and the trees and the cards (even the rain, which I vocally oppose but secretly love) are still restorative.

Country Fantasies

There has been talk at our house of late regarding the acquisition of a country house. A recent crush on a tiny, septic-less house on an adorable little property led to bucolic fantasies of collecting berries to sell at the market.

For now, I am content to forage in my backyard.

In the meantime, I turn to my Allison "Magnolia Bakery" Torrey cookbook to restock my mental lookbook of country living. The audaciously simple recipes have yielded not a few weeknight favorites. Check out the horseradish-crusted halibut: absurdly easy.


This time I turned to one of the many dishes that are so simple and obvious as to inspire indignation this woman was paid to type it into a "recipe" and yet, once you have tasted it, can't believe you didn't put it together yourself. Whole grilled chicken, a pretty little caprese with backyard basil, some tea lights on the back porch, and who needs the country?

And, just to assuage any lingering wishes for a life as professional berry farmers:


Backyard-grown blueberries with fresh cherries brushed with homegrown lavender syrup, topped with vanilla ice cream and shaved chocolate!


Lavender Syrup
(taken from Summer Fruit Tart with Lavender Syrup Recipe from Martha Stewart Baking Handbook)

1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup lossely packed fresh lavender leaves (0r dried organic lavender)
1 tsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice

In a small saucepan, combine sugar witha 1/4 cup water, lavender, and lemon juice. Bring mixture to a boil, then turn off heat. Set aside to steep, covered, for 20 minutes. Strain syrup into a bowl and set aside to cool.




Red Potato, Haricot Vert, and Cherry Tomato Salad
(from At Home with Magnolia)

1 lb. small red-skinned potatoes, uneeled, cut into 1-inch pieces
1/3 lb. haricot verts, trimmed
1 cup halved cherry tomatoes
1/2 cup finely chopped red onion
5 tbsp. mayonnaise
1 tbsp. tarragon vinegar
1 tbsp. white wine
2 tsp. white wine
2tsp. Dijon
1tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

Put the potatoes in a large saucepan and cover with cold water by about 1 inch. Bring to a boil, cover the pot partially, and lower the heat to maintain a steady simmer. Cook until the potatoes are tender when pierced with a fork, about 10 minutes. Drain the potatoes in a colander, and allow to come to lukewarm temperature.

Bring a large saucepan of cold water to a boil. Add the beans and cook until crisp-tender, about 1 minute. Remove from the heat, drain, and rinse under cold water,

In a large bowl, comine the potatoes, beans, tomatoes, and red onion. In a separate small bowl, whisk together the remaining ingredients and toss with the potato mixture until well blended. This salad is best served at room temperature.

Renegade Craft Fair

Sycamore Street Press

Flora pointed out how these graceful petticoats and night-gowns depended upon their pure line and delicate embroidery for their beauty; how all gross romanticism was purged away, or expressed only in a fold or a flute of material. She then showed how the same delicacy might be found in the style of Jane Austen, or a painting by Marie Laurencin.

'It is that kind of beauty,' said Flora, 'that you must learn to look for an admire in everyday life.'

-Cold Comfort Farm

That pretty much sums it up for me: my philosophy of aesthetics in general and of crafting in particular.

Last weekend we made our second annual trip to the Renegade Craft Fair in Williamsburg.

Something's Hiding in Here

As my generation has continued to embrace the handmade arts, I have noticed a trend toward taking perfectly simple articles such as t-shirts and tote bags and stamping on them pictures of birds and bicycles and the like. While this is a great way to recycle old or salvaged stuff, it seems to me beside the point of crafting to buy a bunch of Am App tees and embellish them.

Like Flora, I admire a flourish achieved with an economy of means, not with a tacking-on of frippery.

Up in the Air Somewhere

Something's Hiding in Here

Heart Pump Arts

I made out with the above print for $5 (discounted as part of a very slightly distorted batch) by Justin Durand and visited jezebel, where I bought wonderful thank-you cards last year (below) and whose magical blog I just discovered.

jezebel

We followed the fair with 2-for-1 beers, which we were able for some reason to drink on the sidewalk (it's like the Old West up there; those people are lawless),


then terrible cocktails at an adorable bistro with a roof, then cheap Mexican food on Bedford. Most agreeable.