a new season

What is this blog now? That's a really good question.

While looking around here a couple of days ago, I realized that I need to go in and change my profile section because it's no longer current – though, of course, it is part of my past. I no longer have a fiancé. It's been seven years since I lived in New York. I've changed teaching jobs twice since I first drafted that "about me" paragraph. All of which is to say, it will be updated soon to reflect where I am now – or at least the thumbnail sketch version of it.

But condensing where I am to a single paragraph is more difficult than it might sound. When I first began posting, the accidental kitchen represented something similar to what running and crafting and thrifting and photography were in my life: it was an activity that gave me confidence, that allowed me to play and experiment and create. I still want to do all those things, but their significance for me has changed dramatically in the last year or so. 

I'd like to explore that change here, and that means the way I do posts might change, too. So, some might end up being shorter. I imagine I'll still have a long, circuitous, generously hyperlinked meditation every now and again. However, I can tell you that for months now, at least two or three times a week, I've been making some delicious food and drink, and I want to share these inventions and experiments, more frequently and in a briefer format. Never fear: there will still be odd stories and rabbit trails and digressions – it's me, after all. 

I'm happy to have anyone along who's game for the ride. 

So: what better time to begin this new chapter than now, I figure. 

As of tomorrow, I will have been finished with grading for exactly two weeks, and unlike the beginning of every other summer break in my recent memory, this one found me immediately relaxed and chilled out and ready to cook and read and play.

Last night N and I fired up the grill for the first time this season. We needed a couple of grill-friendly recipes, and between us, we came up with a really delicious combination of dishes.

I went looking through the folder full of recipes on my computer and found this one, an old recipe that I first encountered on Good Deal with Dave Lieberman, a Food Network show that aired in 2005. I'm not even sure whether it had a second season or not. I made the recipe ten years ago this summer, and as far as I can recall, I really enjoyed it. That first time, however, I made it on a cast-iron grill pan on the stove, and I do remember that it smoked up the kitchen pretty good, so I thought taking it outside to the charcoal grill might be a good idea this go around. I have adapted the recipe a bit by doubling the marinade, which makes for a lot more creamy goodness to serve over the rice and the shrimp. I also added some fish sauce at the end, which deepens the funkiness a little. You can omit it if you really don't like fish sauce, though I have to tell you, a little dash of it is very subtle and yummy in the sauce.

N suggested we make some Pod Oeng (Coconut-Grilled Corn), which he had made before, but I'd never tried, and all I can say is lawzy. It gave me yet another reason – as if I needed any more reason than this recipe or this one – to adore corn's sweet summer goodness. Bonus: between the shrimp, the rice, and the corn, you'll use up a single can of coconut milk. 

We also had a big bowl of leftover Roasted Beet and Feta Salad with Orange Vinaigrette (the recipe for which I'll be posting soon), and that added some nice color to the meal.

Hope y'all are enjoying these warm evenings as much as I am.

Cheers,

H.

grilled spicy coconut shrimp with coconut jasmine rice
recipe adapted from an episode of Good Deal with Dave Lieberman (Food Network, 2005). It's also apparently in his book, Dave’s Dinners: A Fresh Approach to Home-Cooked Meals, if you can get your hands on a used copy.

• 2 good-sized fresh jalapeños, sliced (I left the seeds in for extra heat)
• 5 or 6 small garlic cloves, thinly sliced
• 2-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and grated
• 4 tablespoons dark brown sugar
• 4 tablespoons soy sauce
• zest of one lime
• 1 can unsweetened coconut milk
• large handful basil leaves, torn
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• generous ½ teaspoon salt
• 20 grinds fresh black pepper
• 1 pound peeled, deveined shrimp
• 10 or so wooden skewers, soaked in water for at least 30 minutes
• 1 to 2 tbsp. fish sauce
• 1 cup jasmine rice
• 1¼ cups reduced-sodium chicken broth

In a mixing bowl, combine the jalapeños, garlic, ginger, brown sugar, soy sauce, lime zest, ½ cup of coconut milk, basil, vegetable oil, salt, and pepper. Add the shrimp and marinate at room temperature for at least 30 minutes and up to 4 hours refrigerated.

String 4 to 5 shrimp onto each wooden skewer (make sure they’ve been soaked in water for at least a half hour), and put them on a large plate. You can thread on some of the jalapeño rings, as well, if you like.

Add chicken broth, ¼ cup of the coconut milk, a sprinkling of salt to a medium saucepan. Taste mixture for saltiness. Stir in rice. Bring to a boil, then cover tightly and lower heat. Simmer, tightly covered, for 15 to 20 minutes. Turn off heat and let rice sit, still covered, while you prepare everything else.

Add the reserved marinade to a small saucepan. Bring to a boil for a couple of minutes, to cook any of the raw shrimp juices and so it can thicken, then turn off the heat and stir in the fish sauce. Taste and more coconut milk and/or soy sauce and/or salt if desired. Keep warm.

Prepare charcoal briquettes. Let them get very hot, and then spread them in the bottom of your grill. (Or, if you’re doing this on a stove, heat a grill pan over high heat until smoking hot, about 5 minutes.) Put your grill on, let it burn off some of the crud, and then scour it well with a crumpled piece of aluminum foil. Brush some oil on it.

Grill the skewers until the shrimp are well browned on each side, turning once, about 3 to 4 minutes total. Transfer the cooked shrimp to a clean serving plate. 

Fluff rice.

Pour the reduced marinade into a small serving bowl and serve alongside the grilled shrimp and rice.

wilted salad

Hear me out. In this case, the phrase “wilted salad” is a recipe title, not a criticism. You actually wilt this salad on purpose. Full disclosure: it doesn’t turn out pretty. But it does turn out yummy.

This is my paternal grandmother’s recipe, and she taught it to my mother, who made it often when I was younger, so this tastes like childhood to me. But even if I were trying it first as an adult, without the added attraction of nostalgia, I think I would still enjoy it because it’s vinegary, salty, and bacony, three of my favorite flavor profiles.

So, without further ado, here it is. Super easy.

wilted salad

3 slices of bacon
a head of iceberg lettuce
a bunch of scallions
1 tsp. sugar
2 tbsp. apple cider vinegar (or to taste)

Fry bacon slices until crisp. 

While bacon is frying, remove core from lettuce and tear the rest of the head into pieces, separating the leaves as you go. Chop scallions, including the green tops.

Remove bacon from skillet and drain on a paper towel.

Dip out some of the bacon drippings until you have a couple of tablespoons left in the skillet. Add sugar and vinegar to the drippings and stir until sugar is dissolved. Add lettuce and scallions to the hot pan, turning them so that they get some of the dressing. Add a good pinch of salt and some pepper. Continue turning the greens until they are barely wilted. Crumble bacon and add to the pan. Taste and adjust seasonings, if needed.

I’ve never added hot sauce to this, but I bet it’d be fabulous.

a brilliant disguise

I moved to Louisiana around the new year, just in time for the start of crawfish season. My second week here, D's colleague A and his wife J, natives of the region, invited us to go out for boiled crawfish at a place in town called Louisiana Crawfish Time. They said that this early, the crawfish tended to be younger, sweeter, and smaller than they get later in the spring. Plus, they speculated, it had been a mild winter. The crawfish hadn't had to molt, so their shells would be softer and easier to get into.

When we walked into the restaurant, we were greeted by a cloud of brine- and spice-scented steam. Our server seated us at a table with a rough hole cut into its center. Underneath was a garbage can where we would discard our shells as we ate. I deliberated over the menu and asked questions (A three-pound order sounded like a lot. Was it meant to be shared? Absolutely not.) and finally settled on two pounds of crawfish, a half-pound of shrimp, a boiled whole onion, and an ear of corn. When the large, round tray laden with steaming goodness finally arrived at the table, I asked our seasoned friends how to do it. A said to twist the head from the body, loosen the shell a bit from underneath, and then pull gently to remove the tail meat. If you weren't squeamish about the yellow "fat" in the head (what I've since learned is the hepatopancreas of the critter), you sucked or scooped it out and ate it before pitching it into the garbage pail.

Well, when in Rome, as they say. A few minutes later, I looked up from my peeling, eating, and sucking to find D, A, and J smiling bemusedly at me, my Zatarain's-stained fingernails, and my already half-empty tray.

red cabbage salad

So! I'm working on several different posts. Who knows which one will be finished first, or when. In the meantime, I offer a little something to whet your appetite, plus a summer-reading recommendation.

When it gets hot outside, all I want are crunchy, leafy, generally vegetal things. Corn. Tomatoes. Basil. Chives. Lettuce. Zucchini. Half the time, D calls me a rabbit because of my inordinate love for a vegetable plate. (Other times he calls me a hobo because of my inordinate love for sardines.) The truth is, I suspect I would be right at home, crunching on illicit produce all day long in Mr. McGregor's garden.

to do it justice

For as long as I can remember, I've felt an obligation to testify, in the most basic sense of the word: to make a statement based on personal knowledge or belief : to bear witness. When I was a little girl, I wrote poems about the things that happened in my small world—seasons, teachers I admired, friends and relatives who died, holidays. As a second grader, I composed a letter to my Aunt Sherry telling her about how my friend had gone to the doctor and found out her breast was growing. "And I found out I had the same thing!" I explained, as if the breast bud were a tumor or an infection. This was no coincidence; for weeks I'd noticed that I could no longer lean my chest against the dash of my mom's van without wincing, which I saw as a sure sign that something malignant was growing inside my body. Then, as now, I always assumed that it was only a matter of time before I contracted the terminal disease that was coming to me. When I got my first period, even as an eleven-year-old, my first thought ran like this: Of course. Cancer. Even though the secret ate me up, it still took a full 36 hours before I could tell my mom. I don't know why. I think I believed I was really dying this time, and I felt ashamed, because I knew I must have done something terrible to deserve it.

the mess was delicious

A few years ago, when my girlfriends and I went on our annual beach trip, we ended up having dinner at the house of a friend of my Florida pal Stacy's. The friend was newly divorced man with a small toddler. At one point someone spilled a glass of red wine on the floor, and the adults began cleaning it up. The little boy, meanwhile, stood a couple of feet away, riveted by the dark splotch on the carpet, repeating as if mesmerized, "It's a mess. It's a mess. IT'S A MESS." Watching his rapt incantation, all of us shot a wide-eyed look at each other: Dang. A mess really upsets that kid. Bless his heart, and Lord help the person he marries. 

I really shouldn't make fun, though, because messes make me nervous, too. Recently, I brought in one of my recent dreams to talk over with my analyst. In the dream, I had assigned my first-year writing students to prepare homemade mushroom soup. Each student had to make his or her own version and turn it in. I would taste it, evaluate it, and give it a grade. On the due date, the students showed up, each with a pot containing his or her batch. Some of the soups had whole mushroom caps in them, and others had been completely pureed, but it was clear that each of them had gotten the broth base right, because they were all various shades of dark, rich brown. I walked down the line of pots, ladling a scoop of soup from each into my bowl. Then I realized that I was putting all the students' versions in the same bowl, and I felt foolish and a little panicked: there was no way I was ever going to be able to distinguish among the batches in order to assign a grade to each one.

six hundred dollars' worth

Poems I keep thinking about lately: Kay Ryan's "That Will to Divest" and Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art." That section in Robert Hass's "Regalia for a Black Hat Dancer" where he talks about his divorce from his first wife, how during the whole process he imagined the moment when he would finally, deliberately, and ceremonially declare it finished. He visits a Buddhist shrine in Korea and considers leaving his wedding ring there but then decides not to.

In the months we were apart, I had endless fantasies
about when I'd finally take it off and how. And then one day,
I was moving, lugging cardboard boxes, I looked down
and it wasn't there. I looked in the grass of the driveway strip.
Sowbugs, an earwig. So strange.
............................................................
I was searching in the rosebed of a rented house
inch by inch, looking under the carseat where the paper clips
and Roosevelt dimes and unresolved scum-shapes of once
vegetal stuff accumulate in abject little villages
where matter hides while it transforms itself. Nothing there.
I never found it.

He ends with a statement of baffled resignation: "Apparently I was supposed to wait / until it disappeared." In her poem, Bishop is similarly breezy, but of course she's whistling through the graveyard as she names things she's lost, from little to big: "And look! my last, or / next-to-last, of three loved houses went."

Well, Elizabeth, by summer, I too will have lost three loved houses.

maïs, je t'aime

Which translates: "Corn, I love you." When I typed it, though, I realized that if you omitted the umlaut over the "i" in the initial word (hence altering its pronunciation slightly), you would have this sentence instead: "But, I love you." Ah, the knotty and fascinating problems of translation.

I've always studied French as my foreign language. This, I think, is a perfect example of the wide impractical streak that, à la Pepé Le Pew, runs the entire length of an otherwise fairly down-to-earth person. (Maybe it's my Pisces moon?) If I had really set out to navigate the actual linguistic terrain of the modern United States, I should have studied Chinese, and certainly way more Spanish than the bare-minimum, single semester of "Reading for Spanish Knowledge" required by my doctoral program. (We had to have "familiarity" with two foreign languages—i.e. just enough to be able to grasp the gist of an academic article or, more likely, just enough to get us into trouble abroad.)

a bouquet of cauliflowers for mother bear

It's Mother's Day. Today I'm reminded of Billy Collins's poem "The Lanyard." Go on, click play and listen. I'll wait right here for you:

I had the pleasure of hearing him read this live a couple of years ago, and I was struck both by how funny and how heartbreaking the poem was. Collins calls it an "archaic truth: that we can never repay our mothers." All right, it may be archaic - but it's still the truth. 

I mention my mom so often that when she said, "Well, are you writing a post about me for Mother's Day?" I sputtered, "Mo-om! I have to work hard not to quote you every other sentence." 

But she's right, as usual. There are still some things to say.

a bewildering question

If you can hang with me, I have a stir-fry recipe waiting for you at the bottom of the page. But first I want to talk for a bit.

Here is one of my favorite poems by Marie Howe. The Billy in the poem is her brother, who died of complications from AIDS.

I ask a lot of questions of myself. Most of them are not as weighty as the ones Howe mentions. Sometimes I write my questions down. What follows are a few recent examples.

haiku + quick pickles

Early in Salman Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children, the main character Saleem Sinai explains that as he feels himself getting older, his desire to tell his own story grows more and more urgent. Identifying himself as a man who has "dedicated [his] latter days to the large-scale preparation of condiments," he declares:

            Rising from my pages comes the unmistakable whiff of chutney...
            And my chutneys and kasaundies are, after all, connected to my
            nocturnal scribblings--by day amongst the pickle-vats, by night
            within these sheets, I spend my time at the great work of
            preserving. Memory, as well as fruit, is being saved from the
            corruption of the clocks.

Warming to his theme, Saleem lectures Padma, his long-suffering wife-to-be: "Things--even people--have a way of leaking into each other... like flavours when you cook... the past has dripped into me... so we can't ignore it..."

I always liked this metaphor. Rushdie uses it to suggest that we are all like pickles, each of us a separate piece of vegetal matter that can be distinguished from another piece. If we are born into the same family or country (or, in the case of the novel, if we are born during the same midnight hour of that country's day of independence), we might find ourselves pickled in a common brine. Over time our shared history, the liquid that surrounds and preserves us, may begin to give us all a similar flavor and color. Nevertheless, each of us is still our own completely distinct, separate chunk of cucumber, beetroot, or watermelon rind.

This also resonates with me because I have a refrigerator door literally crammed full of every kind of condiment and relish you can imagine.

the green flash

An early Happy St. Patrick's Day to all you lads and lassies. No, guacamole is not Irish, but it's green, and I love green food. You can skip to the recipe at the bottom now, if you just want the how-to. Grab a seat. I'll be there in a minute or two. 

For the past four years, D has attended an annual meeting in Pacific Beach, California, and I've tagged along, feeling lucky that I get to spend a few days gazing at the ocean, eating delicious sushi, wearing white jeans in February, and running on the boardwalk in the sunshine and the low humidity. Pacific Beach is also famous for its sunsets, which frequently feature something called the green flash. Residents of the town and of nearby La Jolla describe this phenomenon with varied attitudes. Some people are openly skeptical or derisive, while others avow that they've seen the green flash numerous times. D himself swore that he had glimpsed it, a couple of years ago, but I could never tell whether he was just teasing or not.

He's not the only one caught by the fascination of this odd natural phenomenon. In 1882, Jules Verne published a novel called The Green Ray, in which a young woman sets off on an adventure with two very different would-be suitors to find the elusive green flash, which according to Scottish legend "has the virtue of making him who has seen it impossible to be deceived in matters of sentiment; at its appearance, all deceit and falsehood are done away, and he who has been fortunate enough once to behold it is enabled to see closely into his own heart and to read the thoughts of others." The opening paragraph in the second chapter of the novel gushes: "If there be green in Paradise, it cannot but be of this shade, which most surely is the green of Hope!"

little polished gold nugget poems + greek salad salsa

I often say that my cat is a bottomless pit of emotion: extreme highs and lows. In fact, D has said before that Esme has the same quality in her facial expression that my mom and Steve Spurrier have: even when they're happy, their smile looks kind of like a grimace. Esme is easily spooked, loyal to D and me to the point of insane hatred towards all other people, and often oscillates from vicious hissing to trilling and cooing (and back) in a matter of seconds. Her moods ebb and flow like the ocean. When Esme is upset, here is what she does:

My response to being upset is a bit different, but not much. When I am sad, angry, or otherwise angsty, instead of kneading biscuits like Esme, I chop things into little pieces. Hence the recipe at the end of this post.

noodle bowl with green curry broth

Every semester in English 102, I teach a unit on food. Every semester I assign Perri Klass's delightful article, "How to Invent a Family Recipe," for my students to read. And every semester, when we discuss the article in class, my mouth starts watering so much I can hardly talk, at the thought of spicy broth and noodles.

As I often do, yesterday I was craving some noodles in broth with maybe some chicken and vegetables. To put it another way, I was hankering for what I've recently nicknamed "slurpy pasta" (as distinguished from, say, "cheesy pasta").

For the broth, I took my inspiration from Heidi Swanson's vegetarian recipe blog, 101 Cookbooks, which I've followed since late 2007, when I had just moved to Manhattan and was trying to cook more adventurously. Swanson takes the most alluring photos of her food, and the woman loves interestingly flavored broths and vividly colored vegetables - also some of my favorite things to eat. She often does slurpy curries, and they always look so prettily yellow or red or green in the pictures that I've long wanted to try my hand at one of my own.

creamy curried shrimp + brown rice + vegetables

This week in my world literature class, I taught an excerpt from Marcel Proust's seven-volume novel, Remembrance of Things Past. I had been looking forward to it because a couple of months ago for my birthday D made me a present of Alain de Botton's book, How Proust Can Change Your Life. I have loved taking my time, reading it a chapter at a time, because de Botton so skillfully distills the wisdom and insight of Proust into this wonderfully wry, nerdy self-help manual for how to live, and I like to digest its lessons slowly.


So, I was excited to get to discuss an excerpt from Proust's actual work. In one section of the novel, the narrator Marcel recalls one evening when he experienced his usual overwhelming longing for his mother to come up to his room and kiss him goodnight, but also felt a simultaneous panic at the knowledge that this would not happen: he had been sent to bed early because the family friend Swann had come to dinner, and Marcel's parents were busy entertaining their guest. At the end of the excerpt, the narrator abruptly transitions to a recollection of having come home with a cold several years earlier. Though at the time he was a little too old for it, his mother coddled him by giving him a cup of lime-blossom tea and a madeleine to make him feel better. As he describes it, at the moment when he dipped the cookie into his drink and tasted it, his entire childhood world at Combray suddenly reappeared in his memory and, "taking shape and solidity, sprang into being, town and gardens alike, from my cup of tea." In a flash of insight, he comes to the realization that he associates the taste with Sunday mornings as a child, when his Aunt Léonie would offer him a bite of a madeleine that had been dipped in her tea.


Olfactory and gustatory memories, I would argue, are some of the most underestimated of all sensory recollections. They can overcome us so suddenly and powerfully when we bite into, sip, or smell something that makes us remember being children. These "involuntary memories," as Proust calls them, are far more potent than our voluntary attempts to remember things, precisely because they are so deeply buried and so often take us completely by surprise.


Back to the recipe at hand. One evening this week, making a quick stop at Publix on my hour-long commute home from teaching in Tuscaloosa, I was trying to come up with some plan for dinner on the fly as I wheeled my cart efficiently (read: get out of my way) up and down the aisles, grabbing stuff left and right as I went. We hadn't had shrimp in a while, so I ordered some, pre-cooked and peeled, from the seafood counter. But what to go with it? Suddenly I had an idea.

      

My mom used to make a version of this recipe when I was a little girl, and it was one of my very favorite dishes. It was pretty plain the way she made it, but that was exactly the way I liked it: tiny salad shrimp, white rice, almonds, and a mild, creamy curry sauce. Often she would use diced chicken instead of shrimp, which was equally wonderful. I used to dream about eating a big plate of it all by myself.


Since it was kind of exotic, she usually only made it for company, so we didn't have it very often. Hence, the taste of curry powder is forever linked in my mind with the mingled excitement and dread I felt, as a painfully shy kid, whenever guests came to the house for dinner. Guests also meant, of course, that there would be fewer leftovers, since there were extra mouths to feed besides the five of us and it wasn't always easy for my mother to judge beforehand how much food would be sufficient. Therefore, I also associate the taste of shrimp curry with a sinking suspicion that there might not be enough left for me to have a second helping, either that evening or at lunch the next day - as well as a selfish fear that even if there were enough, I would probably have to share, which would likewise mean a smaller portion.


Don't we all have some dish like this? One of the great things about being an adult is that you can do what you couldn't when you were a kid: make a big batch of something that you used to have to share with everyone else and eat as much of it as you like, and then get up in the middle of the night, warm it up, and eat the rest of it. You can bake a whole package of cookies and eat them yourself, or even, hell, omit the baking entirely and just sit there all evening surfing on your computer, eating blobs of cookie dough, and drinking a glass of wine, instead of sitting down at the table and having a proper dinner. (Whoa. Grad school flashback.) But a childhood dish never seems to taste quite as satisfying as you remember - there's a kind of melancholy about it because it reminds you of a time and of relationships that, if they aren't forever gone, have at the very least been irrevocably transformed into something more adult. Which is, in itself, not entirely a bad thing - just a bittersweet one.


At any rate, on Tuesday evening I made this tribute to a favorite childhood dish, and D ate it and thought it was delicious, too. As everyone knows, this doesn't always happen when you enthusiastically try to introduce a loved one to some food that you thought was sublime when you were a kid (I'm looking at you, Vienna sausages), so when he said I should post it, I figured it meant that others might like it, as well.


What's funny about this is that it also reminds me of my brother Jeff, who has the opposite response to curry powder: he despises not only the taste but also the smell of it. Maybe it's linked in his mind with some unpleasant memory, or maybe he ate it and later got sick. I'm not sure. All I can say is that my parents won't even cook with it in their own house if there's a possibility that he might be coming over in a day or two. It's a joke in our family that usually involves one of us facetiously saying something along these lines: "Hey, Jeffy, want some dinner? You'll like it! I put a big scoop of curry powder in it." (To be fair, these days he does actually like other kinds of Thai and Indian curries.)


All of that's to say: I hope you enjoy this dish, which tastes like all the fears and desires of my childhood. ;)


creamy curried shrimp + brown rice and vegetables
for the sauce:
1/4 c. olive oil mayonnaise
1 small (5 or 6-oz.) container nonfat Greek yogurt
1 tbsp. curry powder
1 tsp. ground ginger powder
1/2 tsp. ground mustard powder
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. onion powder
1/4 tsp. ground black pepper
juice of a couple of lemon wedges


1 tsp. olive oil
1 tsp. butter
1/2 c. frozen peas, thawed
1 small zucchini, quartered or sixthed and then sliced
1 small carrot, finely diced
1/2 c. celery, finely diced
3 green onions, finely chopped (white parts and green tops kept separate)
3/4 lb. cooked shrimp, shelled, deveined, and de-tailed
2 small containers pre-cooked brown rice, warmed in microwave for 60 seconds
2 tbsp. slivered blanched almonds


Whisk together mayonnaise, yogurt, curry, ginger, mustard, garlic, onion, black pepper, and lemon juice in a bowl. Mix in green onion tops. Allow it to sit at room temperature for at least 10 or 15 minutes so that the flavors blend.


Heat olive oil and butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add vegetables and sauté for a couple of minutes, just until a little soft but still crisp and green. Crank heat down to low. Stir in shrimp, dressing, brown rice, and almonds. Heat until it’s all warmed through. Serve with a sprinkling of Parmesan on top.


Note: When I made this, there was a bit too much sauce for the amount of rice, shrimp, and veggies I had, so I stirred in a little at a time at the end and ended up having some left over. Feel free to use as much or as little as you like. It would also be fine to thin the sauce with a little water or lemon juice, if you like it less dense. Also, I sprinkle Parmesan on well nigh everything, so you are welcome to omit it if you're not as crazy for cheese as I am.

happy (belated) thanksgiving!

the spread

I love Thanksgiving. To be frank, ever since my sister died on the day after Christmas fourteen years ago, my family has always, to some extent, tended to limp a little through the holidays. You have to admit that even without those memories, Christmas is already a bit loaded: if you look forward solely to the presents, the holiday always tends to be anticlimactic. If you focus on being with your family, things turn out much better, but you still can't really avoid the profound case of the blues that sets in the day after. These days, I'm practicing being in the moment more, something that my brother Jeff has always been good at; that tends to pan out more happily than borrowing trouble, which I'm excellent at doing. :)  Anyway, Thanksgiving is so different from Christmas. It's about the food, sure, but it's also a time when all you have to do is hang out with your family and friends, eat, and feel grateful. I can get behind a holiday like that.


This was the first year I ever cooked for more than just D and me. We invited my parents, Jeff, D's parents, and his Grandma down for Thanksgiving dinner so that they could all see the new house, some of them for the first time.


The first Thanksgiving meal I ever cooked was three years ago when we lived in NYC, and I made a whole feast for just D and me in our tiny studio apartment kitchen, which was so small that I had to open the refrigerator door in order to get the oven door open. We were both terribly homesick, knowing that we wouldn't be able to go home until Christmas. D's parents were kind enough to transfer some funds over to his account so that we could go out to eat for our Thanksgiving. We got dressed up and went to Orsay, a French restaurant on the Upper East Side that had a prix fixe menu. The plates that arrived at the table had beautiful, harvest-colored daubs of turkey and vegetable on them in various combinations - very French and fancy. While we were walking home, we stopped in a little newsstand and petted a skinny, elegant black cat with a heart-shaped charm on her collar that, appropriately, had "Paris" engraved on it.


Still, it didn't seem quite right not to have some of the specific dishes we associated with our families - sage-heavy cornbread dressing, standard roast turkey, broccoli casserole, pumpkin pie, et cetera - so I made a meal for us, too. And I wheeled our 13-pound turkey home to our apartment, a dozen blocks down Fifth Avenue, in my "bag lady" cart.


That was a great Thanksgiving, if a bit lonely. This one was bittersweet in its own way: we've lost some important people this year, but I'm so happy that we got to spend Thanksgiving with our families.

just look at that pretty bird!

As for food, this year we decided to do Alton Brown's recipe for turkey because I'd been seeing commercials for it all month. Apparently, it's the most popular Thanksgiving recipe on the Food Network website, and when I looked it up, it had over 2500 reviews and ratings. That's a crazy number of people all making the same kind of turkey.

So, it's wonderful. If you have the time, energy, a few obscure ingredients like candied ginger and allspice berries (plus the extra refrigerator space for a brine-and-turkey-laden 10-gallon bucket), it is so worth it to make this turkey. The guy has figured out how to cook an entire bird so that it hits its various recommended internal temperatures simultaneously and thus stays moist, not to mention making sure the skin gets beautifully fried and golden brown. 

Anyway, here is the rest of the menu from Thanksgiving:

      Paula Deen's Mushroom Canapes (also delightful with some artichoke hearts thrown in)
      Alton Brown's Roast Turkey and gravy
      Claire Robinson's Add Thyme for Whipped Potatoes
      classic Campbell's Soup green bean casserole
      my Nana's broccoli casserole
      Sîan Griffiths's sweet potato soufflé
      my great-grandmother's cornbread dressing

      D's Granddad's cornbread dressing

      roasted brussels sprouts with bacon and balsamic reduction

      D's mom's pecan pie

      apple stack cake

      pecan pie


Happy holidays, y'all.


Cheers,
H.

barramundi with noodles in miso broth + caramelized shallots + steamed bok choy

D and I did P90X in the fall of 2007 while we were living in Manhattan. All of the workouts. And the meal plan. In our 450-square-foot studio apartment. And survived. Without destroying furniture, windows, bones, or each other. Oh, how I grew to despise Tony Horton's voice. I still have nightmares about him chanting ominously, just towards the end of the warm-up for the Plyometrics workout, "Get reeeady... 'cause it's comin'...!"

I lost around 15 pounds in those three months. That sounds like a modest amount, so let me clarify. I got very slim and cut, my physique completely changed, and my net weight loss didn't exceed 15 pounds because so much of my body turned to muscle, which is heavier than fat.





Anyway, lately - and I admit that it's largely my fault because I've been cooking so much decadent food - we've been talking about how we should do P90X again. It can be a little tricky making time for the workouts - and the excruciatingly sore muscles you have for the next several days - but the meal plan isn't so difficult or weird. So here's a less indulgent recipe that I think even Tony Horton would approve of: big protein, high fiber, low fat and carbs, and a pile of greens. The only potentially iffy aspects are the pasta and the sodium content contributed by the soup mix, but you can leave the noodles out, and if you spoon less of the broth into your bowl at the end, you can cut the salt, too. (And to be fair, given their menus, P90X doesn't worry overly much about your sodium intake.)

Two notes about ingredients: I want to say outright that I made a version of this with sea bass when we were living in NYC that actually used authentic miso paste from Gourmet Garage, and it was fabulous. However, if you're working on a schedule and/or a budget, know that Kikkoman makes a lovely, cheap powdered miso soup mix that tastes exactly like what you'd get in a sushi bar, complete with rehydrated tofu cubes, seaweed, and green onion tops. I get it at Wal-Mart (I know, I know - if I could quit it, I would), and I keep packets of it in my office so I can make myself a cup of soup on particularly long days when I need something on my stomach to tide me over until dinner. This tastes much nicer than a plain glass of water - and requires almost as little caloric commitment.

Secondly, Dreamfields pasta is a recent Publix discovery that I highly recommend, while simultaneously divulging that it has lots of questionable (i.e. possibly genetically-engineered) "indigestible" carbs, as well as tons of fiber, along with - ahem! - the digestive consequences of that extra insoluble material.

Thirdly, we also recently discovered barramundi ("Australia's favorite fish!" declares the package) because Whole Foods carries it in their frozen seafood cooler. It's excellent, inexpensive, easily thawed in cold water, and not watery and wimpy textured like flounder or cod. In fact, it actually reminds me a little of sea bass (or a Real Housewife, I guess): rich and thin.

As a final note, let me just add: this dish would probably taste obscenely delicious just after a grueling round of Legs and Back followed by Ab Ripper X.

barramundi with noodles in miso broth + caramelized shallots + bok choy

3 thawed barramundi fillets
2 envelopes Kikkoman miso soup mix
1 cup water

2 green onions, green tops chopped and white parts cut into thirds
1 small piece of fresh ginger, peeled and cut in half
1 garlic clove, smashed and peeled
1 head bok choy, washed well and sliced into one-inch ribbons

2 good-sized shallots, halved and sliced into rings
2 tbsp. dry white wine
1 tsp. unsalted butter
3 tsp. olive oil, divided

4 oz. Dreamfields linguine

Cook linguine according to package directions. Drain, rinse, keep in water, and set aside.

Heat one teaspoon each of butter and olive oil over medium-high heat. Add shallots and cook until they are beginning to brown. Add wine and cook until almost all liquid has evaporated. Set aside.

Boil water in microwave and combine it with miso soup packets in a bowl. Let it reconstitute. (It will be twice the usual concentration of mix to water.)

Grind some black pepper over the patted-dry barramundi fillets. Heat a teaspoon of olive oil in a heavy skillet over medium-high. Add fish to pan and sear on both sides until lightly browned. Add miso soup concentrate to the skillet and turn fish gently to coat. Cover tightly and cook over the lowest heat setting for 10 minutes, carefully turning fish again halfway through.

Heat the last teaspoon of oil over medium. Add green onion white pieces, ginger, and garlic and cook for a few seconds. Add bok choy and 1/4 cup water. Cover and steam for 4 to 6 minutes. Uncover and let water evaporate. Add chopped green onion tops and stir. Remove ginger pieces.

Mound pasta in a shallow bowl, followed by bok choy. Perch fish on top of the pile, and pour broth over it. Garnish with a teaspoon or two of the caramelized shallots.

butternut squash ravioli with sage brown butter + crispy country ham

This recipe is the amalgamation of several I've seen on various menus, both local and far-flung. I've never seen it garnished with country ham, though, and somehow, I think it's what gave this dish a little je ne sais quoi (or, in my own native tongue, a little salty awesomeness).


So, if there's one thing I've learned from TV show cooks, it's that wonton wrappers are your best friend if you want to make quick gourmet-style ravioli. In fact, I just saw a recipe for edamame and ricotta ravioli in the latest issue of Rachael Ray's magazine (she calls it "Green Alien Ravioli," in a Halloweeny attempt to get kids to eat veggies) that I would really like to try. However, in the meantime, I'm trying to use what's fresh, and the only things in my pitiful, dried-up garden that seem to be happy are the sage, the oregano, and possibly the romas. The sage in particular looks crazily robust, though we haven't had rain in forever. Maybe it thinks it's in Italy.

Anyway, while D and I were both cutting into the first test ravioli, neither of us spoke. We each tasted it, and then we looked at each other, and I said, "I like this." D said, "This may be the best thing I've ever eaten." Right after dinner, he was called back to the hospital to see a patient - which makes me happy for the patient but regretful for D, who has been on call all weekend - but before he left, he cast a glance back at the leftovers and said, "Please don't put this up. I want to finish this with you later, when I get home."

For my part, I openly confess: if someone fixed this for me, I really might consent to being his or her slave forever. You should make this for someone you adore, like I did.


butternut squash ravioli with sage brown butter + crispy country ham

1 medium butternut squash, cubed
1 to 2 tbsp. olive oil
1/2 tsp. dried sage
salt and pepper


1/2 stick + 2 tbsp. butter, divided
1 medium shallot, minced
1/4 cup dry white wine
2 tbsp. raw turbinado sugar
15 square wonton wrappers
1/2 cup half-and-half

1/2 slice Smithfield country ham, chopped

small bunch of sage, chopped

a few tablespoons Parmigiano-Reggiano

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Toss butternut squash with olive oil, and spread it out in a single layer on a baking sheet. Sprinkle with dried sage, salt, and pepper. Roast for 30 minutes, tossing once, until golden brown. Cool completely and mash well into a paste. (Note: at this point, I refrigerated the roasted butternut squash for several days, so this step can be done way ahead of time.)


Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil and 2 tablespoons of butter over medium heat. Add minced shallot and cook for a couple of minutes until it's beginning to turn golden brown. Add white wine and cook for a minute. Add mashed butternut squash and mix into the shallots. It should be fairly dry. Cook for a couple of minutes over medium-low heat. Sprinkle with turbinado sugar, grind a little pepper over top, and stir. Cook for another minute or two. Add half-and-half and stir for yet another couple of minutes. Let mixture cool completely. 

Heat a teaspoon or so of olive oil over medium-high to high heat. Fry chopped country ham until it's browned and crispy, about 3 to 5 minutes. Remove to a paper towel to drain.

To make the ravioli: take a wonton wrapper and put a generous teaspoon-sized ball of the butternut squash mixture onto the middle of it. Dip your finger into a cup of water and run it around the four edges of the wonton until they're all wet. Fold it over into a triangle shape, working from the center by molding the filling into the very middle of the ravioli, squeezing out any air bubbles, and sealing the edges well. Remove to a large plate and lay them out carefully in a single layer, not touching one another, if possible. Repeat for remaining 14 ravioli. (I had about half of the butternut squash mixture left over. If this happens to you, too, you might want to freeze it for a future batch of ravioli.)

Boil a medium saucepan full of salted water. Working in three batches of 5 or 6 ravioli, boil them for 2 to 3 minutes, and then remove to a colander with a slotted spoon. Sprinkle salt on each batch and then continue with the next one. 

In the meantime, melt remaining butter in a large skillet over medium to medium-low heat. Add fresh sage. Cook until it begins to smell a little nutty (and utterly wonderful). Add drained ravioli to the pan and toss gently with the sage butter. Remove to a large platter and sprinkle with crispy country ham and Parmigiano-Reggiano. 

lady peas in country ham and thyme broth

Yes, sir - it's officially fall. Happily, despite the cooler weather, there are still field peas to be eaten. I had never made lady peas or, truthfully, even heard of them until I came to live in Alabama. I've seen them often enough on local menus, and Frank Stitt spends at least a page in his gorgeous cookbook, Frank Stitt's Southern Table, explaining the delicious nuances that distinguish various kinds of beans and peas, including a mention of this particular legume. 


Anyway, there's a vegetable stand on Rocky Ridge, and after my run on Friday I stopped by to see what they had. I left with a bag of okra, a ziplock of homemade boiled peanuts, and a couple of pounds of already shelled lady peas. I saw them and thought, hey, they have to be something like black-eyed peas, right? Which are awesome, by the way. 





Now for the second part of this recipe idea. Last fall, D and I went to see U2 play in Atlanta, and we ended up making a short vacation of it and spending two nights at The Mansion on Peachtree, which is entirely lovely - probably because it's also an apartment building in addition to being a hotel. P.S.: any hotel where you can order middle-of-the-night hot fudge sundaes and freshly baked chocolate chip cookies from room service is all right by me. 


We had read that Craft, one of Tom Colicchio's restaurants, was next door to our hotel, and as longtime Top Chef fans, we really wanted to try it. (I have loved Tom Colicchio ever since, in an earlier season of the show, he roundly lectured a contestant who had made some terrible fish concoction, and his most pointed criticism was that she had not shown sufficient respect for the creature who gave its life to make that dish. That profound gratitude and reverence for ingredients, particularly animal-derived ones, is one reason why I am also a huge fan of Eric Ripert.) We didn't arrive early enough on the first night for dinner at Craft, which ended up being fortuitous, because the lunch we enjoyed instead the next day was one of the best meals of my life so far. I had perfectly pan-roasted trout with gnocchi that were like pillows of mashed potato souffle, served over a succotash of fresh corn and beans, and swimming in a shallow bowl of (miraculously!) perfectly seasoned country ham vinaigrette. D's lunch was no less amazing: short rib cannelloni baked in béchamel sauce, possibly the richest thing I'd ever tasted. 



Yesterday I looked at my huge pile of fresh lady peas, and I thought: these want country ham. This recipe does take a little time and effort - like everything else I seem to make - but it's worth it. Two bits of advice: firstly, think carefully before adding any additional salt to this recipe. Believe me, I know it's second nature to season as you go, but the country ham broth, while tasty, is very salty already. You may find that you taste the final result and don't need to shake anything on top of it - this recipe was one of the few times that has ever happened to me, and I really like salt. Secondly, when you serve yourself up a bowl of this, make sure that you get plenty of the pot liquor. It is like liquid gooold.


lady peas in country ham and thyme broth

for the broth:

1 tbsp. unsalted butter

1 tbsp. olive oil

3 slices Smithfield country ham, cut into one-inch strips

about 4 cups water

6 to 8 stems of thyme

2 green onions, chopped (including green tops)

1 tsp. whole black peppercorns

for the peas:

1 tbsp. olive oil, divided

1 tbsp. unsalted butter

1/2 white onion, finely chopped

8 to 10 stems of thyme, half of them stripped

3/4 cup dry white wine

country ham broth

2 lbs. shelled fresh lady peas, picked over and rinsed

1 slice Smithfield country ham, roughly chopped

Make the broth: Fry country ham strips in a couple of teaspoons of olive oil, turning once, until they’re browned some on both sides. Add ham and any remaining pan juices and bits to a medium saucepan filled with about four cups of water. Add a pat of butter, thyme stems, green onions, and peppercorns. Bring to a boil and then lower heat and simmer for at least 30 to 45 minutes, until you have about a cup to a cup and a half of liquid remaining.  Strain broth and reserve as much of the ham and green onions as you can. Chop them roughly. Discard thyme stems and peppercorns.

In the same unwashed saucepan over medium heat, melt butter and olive oil. Let butter sizzle a little until it smells slightly nutty, and then add chopped onion. Sauté for 3 to 5 minutes until onions are somewhat caramelized, adding thyme leaves midway through so that they infuse the butter and oil. Pour in white wine and crank up the heat to high. Reduce until there’s about 1/4 cup of liquid remaining.

Pour in country ham broth, chopped country ham and onions from it, lady peas, and 4 to 5 whole thyme stems. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat to a simmer. Skim foam as it rises to the top, and continue until the peas stop foaming. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes or so, just until they’re tender. Remove thyme stems.

While the peas are cooking, heat another teaspoon or two of olive oil in a pan over high. Fry chopped country ham slice until it’s browned and crisp. Drain on a paper towel.

Serve lady peas in a small bowl with a generous scoopful of broth and a sprinkling of crispy country ham on top.

Enjoy!

Cheers,

H.

sautéed corn with garlic, basil, and parmesan

This recipe was inspired by a Saturday trip to the East Lake Farmer's Market last month (following our visit to Ruffner Mountain for "Breakfast with the Animals," where we were the only adults present who didn't have children in tow, and where we got to meet and pet a possum, a screech owl, a box turtle, and a corn snake). We came home excited, tired, and laden with a huge bag of local produce, which I ended up making into a vegetable plate - incidentally, one of my favorite things to have for a summer supper - including sautéed corn, quick pickles, oven fried okra, and black-eyed peas with onion and bacon.


I have made this dish on a half-dozen occasions since, always to rave reviews, and I can't help but feel a little guilty because it was totally serendipitous, simple, and thrown-together. But it ends up being surprisingly elegant and impressive looking. 


A couple of tips: it's fine to let the corn and onions get a bit golden and even a bit golden-brown, but do yourself a favor and don't let the garlic brown. Just clear a little space in the pan, melt a tiny pat of butter there, add the finely minced garlic, stir it a little into the pool of butter, and let it sit and cook for just a half-minute before you work it into the rest of the corn/onion mixture. It will be buttery and garlicky, and between that and the lemon zest and the basil, your kitchen will smell like heaven. Tip number two: be sure you use a very sharp knife when you cut the corn off the cob. Finally, it can be messy work, so if you have a porch, I recommend doing your cutting outside so that you can just let the kernels fly.

sautéed corn with garlic, basil, and parmesan

4 fresh ears of white corn, cut off the cob
2 or 3 tbsp. butter, divided
1 to 2 tbsp. olive oil
half of a white onion, minced (a couple of small shallots will work, too)
1 medium clove garlic, minced
5 or 6 large basil leaves, finely chopped
zest of one lemon
1/4 cup shaved Parmesan
coarse sea salt and freshly ground pepper


Melt olive oil and 2 tbsp. butter over medium to medium-high heat. Add onion and sauté for 2 to 3 minutes until it's softened and light golden.

Add corn and toss in the butter, oil, and onion mixture until it's completely coated. Sauté corn and onion until it’s golden and caramelized, about 5 to 8 minutes.

Make a little space in the pan and melt the remaining 1/2 tbsp. butter, and then add garlic. Sauté just until fragrant, about 30 to 45 seconds.

Remove from heat and stir in the basil and lemon zest, as well as salt and pepper to taste. A minute or two before serving, add the Parmesan and toss just a little bit, so that it doesn’t melt too much and stays in little chunks.

P.S. For my vegan friends, I have a suspicion that this would be perfectly wonderful with just the olive oil and without the cheese. 

My dad says this corn should be illegal.

And a pic of the whole shebang:

I love me some vegetable plate.