food

The Things That Go Together

/ wvfurandroot / 4 Comments

Chef Boy ‘R Mine left today to return to his life in Charlotte. We had a nice, low-keyed visit. For once, he got out of here without having to cook for me. I served him a bad breakfast (unintentional), but one that involved champagne. I also had a dozen, fresh Jolly Pirate donuts on hand and some homemade bread, so I don’t think he felt unloved.

The Boy can wax poetic about Jolly Pirate donuts.

While I’m slowly returning to a past hobby of cooking, I spent this holiday largely outside the kitchen. But as last night was The Boy’s last night in town, I rummaged around in the cabinets and freezer and collected food for a late night repast. A wonderful one.

Last Christmas, Chef Boy ‘R Mine rolled into town bearing my gift. It was a gift of labor, love, food and luxury. It was a gift from Super Foodie to Regular Foodie. It was sublime.

It was a torchon of foie gras with the appropriate accoutrements – port, kumquats and maple syrup.

Foie gras is very controversial.  I loved it before I knew how it was made. (In fact, while not the same thing at all, by any means, I loved Armor potted meat as a child. People think that’s gross and, what can I say, apparently I love spreadable organ meats.)

Foie gras is the super fatty liver of a force-fed goose. It’s the texture of soft butter and just melts in your mouth oozing the most astounding flavor considering we’re talking liver. It’s sweet with a hint of salty. It doesn’t taste like meat. It doesn’t taste like anything else on the planet. Wittgenstein might as well have said, “Describe the taste of foie gras” instead of “Describe the aroma of coffee.”

As a visual aid in explaining the process of making the torchon, my son showed me a video by Swedish Chef Francois Xavier which is a hoot and a holler and said video also pretty well sums up my feeling on the foie gras controversy, to wit:

If you are a person who does eat meat, a person who does wear leather shoes for your feet, or perhaps have a leather wallet, in that case, I think, before judging people who eat foie gras you might visit your local slaughter house to see how the other animals you are eating are treated. I think you are in for a very bad surprise.

[I had a hard time capturing all of his words, if the quote is not exact, well then, piffle. I’ve captured the spirit of his thought, if not his quirky, musical voice.]

Watch the video, but bear in mind, he’s making a terrine, not a torchon.

Another blogger has detailed 70 steps to a torchon.  Seventy steps might be an exaggeration.

In the United States, it’s more difficult to buy foie gras. That which is available either comes from the Sonoma Valley or the Hudson Valley. Chef Boy ‘R Mine maintains that the Sonoma liver is far superior. Of course, he chose the Sonoma for his mama’s gift.

Over the course of days, he deveined the liver, soaked it in milk, cured it with salt and sugar overnight, rolled it into a cylinder, poached it, re-wrapped it and hung it to dry for 3 days. He then individually packaged it in vacuum sealing gifting me with enough to last a year.

So, last night I pulled out the last little torchon. I pulled out the bottle of Krupps Brothers Black Bart Syrah Port (2007) which is a more than respectable port. I pulled out the Blis Maple Syrup which is big deal and not something you drown Hungry Jack pancakes in. [

Per Se and The French Laundry drizzle this stuff on tasty little morsels they charge huge money for.  Part of the cost is for the syrup.  This stuff comes from old-growth forests and sold in numbered bottles.  I keep it hidden in the back of the fridge lest HMOKeefe accidentally drowns a Bisquik biscuit with it.]

I had a boule of crusty bread, which wasn’t ideal but it was fresh out of the oven. To perfectly complement a torchon of foie gras, a sweet-ish bread such as a brioche is best.

[I had a brain freeze for a minute and couldn’t summon the word brioche. I was astounded and tickled to find that Wikipedia has a list of breads. Go look at it – it’s wonderful! With pictures! Don’t go hungry.]

HMO’Keefe has not partaken of the foie gras before and, like I was the first time, taken aback by the thought of drizzling maple syrup on liver and washing it down with port. I believe he liked it, but I couldn’t much catch him with his mouth empty to get an exact quote.

After scarfing it all down, we settled into a bottle of a nice Zin and talked. It was a nice end to a nice visit together.  HMO’Keefe remarked on how charming my son is.  Well, duh.  The kid takes after his mom.

I’m not sure if my son’s foodie gifts to me explain my return to the kitchen, but after not cooking as a hobby for a long time, I find myself in the kitchen more and more.

I’ve been dabbling with Thai and Indian here lately and thus gifted by Mr. Charm with a beautiful French curry powder and other spices as well as some kick-ass plates to serve the finished product on.

But HMO’Keefe loves Mexican cuisine as do I. So I’ve been fooling around with a pozole recipe for two days as well as playing with the new tortilla press and the 5 lb. bag of masa harina. Tonight’s Pork and Pozole Stew was lick-the-bowl good and handmade corn tortillas are a gift from a loving deity. The stew changed direction three times and what ended up in the bowl was not what was intended, but what was intended proved to be uninteresting. So after adding this and that, a bottle of beer, and some buttermilk masa dumplings, culinary satisfaction was achieved. Damn good stew.

Other than wandering into the kitchen to dump something else into the stew pot periodically, I’ve done nothing but sit on this couch and watch thoughts bobble in the sludgy creek of my mind.

So. Today was a good day to be me. A few more days like this in a row and my creek might run clear. I haven’t thought of a catchy phrase for 2012. Maybe after I get the sludge out of there.

 

Don’t wash your self with it put it on top of the toliet.

/ wvfurandroot / 3 Comments

It’s Christmas afternoon and there’s a lull in the action. We had a Christmas breakfast here in the fancy eating-room. My child toddled off to a nap and HMO’Keefe did the dishes and I think he’s now snoozing. I’m reminiscing and finishing off the mimosas. Besides the fact that it does involve champagne, the lovely libation is in a hollow flute and I love watching the column of bubbles.  There’s no way I could just abandon it.

The weeks leading up to this holiday have been busy, yea, verily, frantic! And there’s been some drama. And I’ve been so very worn out and emotionally at the end of my tether. After leaving the office on Wednesday afternoon for a badly needed vacation, I’ve been a whirlwind. Nothing had even begun to be readied for the holiday and overwhelmed was the word of the week. The month. The year.

This is a stay at home vacation. I love having time off this time of year to hang around the house. I clean a little. I organize a little. I sleep. I write. I re-charge and gird my loins for the mayhem of January and February and March.

But before I could wallow in time off, Christmas had to readied. Against all odds, and with a fare amount of shouting, it came together. The house is not at its festive best by a long shot, but it’s so much better than it has been.

There was a whirlwind of shopping – most of it online. I generally refuse to order from any online establishment that will not provide free shipping, but when one waits until Christmas week to even begin, well, one, must make peace with shipping charges. Everything arrived.

A friend of mine has a long-standing tradition with her sister. For the holidays, they go on a shopping expedition together each spending on herself what she had intended to spend on the other. At the end of the outing, there’s a ritual exchange of “Here! Look what you got me!”  When I was younger I would have hated this.  But I’m an old woman, now.  I have what I want, seldom really want anything, and for Christmas I’d really just like to spend a little more time with my mother.

My mother and I thought this sounded like a fine, fine tradition. We decided such an outing required the exotic locale of Columbus, Ohio. So, off we went. My mother “gave to me” some wonderful sweaters. And I gave to her some equally wonderful duds. It was a wonderful time and the First Mother-Daughter Christmas Shopping Expedition is now an annual event.

I spent the next day wrapping and finishing the trees. And cleaning. In the course of such, I found an old Christmas card from my son. This card had accompanied my gift of bath salts lovingly nestled in a baby-food jar and adorned with a fabric topper. The card is a dandy.

Merry Christmas

Mom I Love you

The soap Please Don’t

wash you self with

it put it on top of the

toliet.

Well. You can’t argue with that. For years, it was on the toilet, but now it is on the beloved dressing table.

He was such a cute kid. He still is. He got into town about 9 p.m. Christmas Eve. We unwrapped gifts with the folks and came back here where he, I and HMO’Keefe killed two bottles of wine and talked food until 2 a.m.

Considering we were up until the wee hours, we woke fairly early and the three of us opened gifts. It was nice. HMO’Keefe prefers Christmas morning to Christmas Eve and joining lives is all about meshing traditions. After the spectacle of rampant materialism, I prepared French toast with didn’t turn out well, but if you serve anything with champagne, it becomes memorable.

We’re all pretty tired. I should be napping, but the sun is pouring through the atrium doors and there’s still champagne. I don’t spend much time in this room and I don’t know why. The light, particularly at this time of year and this time of day, is a balm to the spirit.

I’ve caught up with myself.

I was gifted with some very special presents which will merit another post another day, but I also received, because I asked for it, an all-in-one art box. For years, I’ve said I didn’t get the artistic gene that runs rampant through the rest of the family. I’ve also never been particularly interested in painting. I’ve quipped that if I had grandchildren (inserting an evil glare at Chef Boy ‘R Mine at the time), I could be the next Grandma Moses. I have no illusions that I’ll be any good. I don’t even care that it will be dreck. I’m looking forward to tossing paint around.

As for my son, the gift I gave to him that makes me smile the most is the pair of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sleep pants. In size Men’s Extra-Large. He’s wearing them. They’re, um, colorful. The little boy that gave me bath salts was a Ninja Turtle groupie. It was all Turtles, all-the-time, for a number of years. I chortled at the Wal-Mart when I saw them. He grinned when he opened them. Sometimes the best presents are the least expected ones which brings me to the gift from my father – a year’s worth of journal entries about his life. I haven’t looked close at it.  Not yet. I want uninterrupted time to sink into it, but I’m tearing up at the thought of him giving me that window to his heart.

Christmas dinner, which my Dad is preparing, is in a few hours. I should be straightening the house and dressing, but the sun is still streaming into this room and there’s still champagne. Dad’s not going to throw me out if I show up in dirty jeans and a sweatshirt. Such is the acceptance of a loving family.

Those Weenies at Coke

/ wvfurandroot / 1 Comment

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srr47rI_i8g&feature=related

I mentioned the other day I was guzzling Coke Classic.

I’m not much of a soda drinker. Coffee is my beverage of choice and I drink copious amounts daily, year round. Theoretically, Alzheimer’s Disease will never affect me nor will I develop prostate cancer.

However, several times a year I have to have a Coke. Have to. Have to, have to, have to. Like The Borg, resistance is futile.

Except for the occasional Vernor’s Ginger Ale, no other carbonated beverage holds any charm for me. If for some reason there’s a soft drink emergency and I’m faced with Pepsi and no option for Coke, water, coffee or iced tea, I cut it with Sierra Mist. Otherwise it’s like drinking liquid sugar.

I think it’s the sweetness of soft drinks I dislike. So, yes, I was one of the folks upset when Coca Cola changed the formula to try and beat Pepsi out of 1st place in the soft drink wars.

Boy was I mad. Not infuriated, but aghast that bazillagillion dollars a year in profits weren’t enough, Coke was in a pissing war with Pepsi over 1st place and Coke purists like myself were thrown under the bus.

Now I didn’t set myself on fire or switch to Pepsi or even talk about it much, but I silently wondered what was going to happen when the shakes started and I needed a Coke.

Other folks, however, got all kinds of upset. Boycotts and public cries of displeasure and yada yada. I have a relative, a serious Coke junkie, who got so mad that to this day she still drinks Pepsi in boycott.  Coke relented and for awhile we had New Coke and we had Classic Coke. Pretty soon, New Coke died a quiet death and that was that.  My Aunt is still drinking Pepsi.  Vitriol can take a long time to shake off.

If I were going to get upset about Coca Cola, I would rant and rave about the high fructose corn syrup. In Spring, it’s possible to buy kosher Coke which is made without the HFCS.

And purportedly there’s a “Mexican Brown” – Coke sold in Mexico uses cane sugar – that I’ve been on the lookout for. I love the crispness of cane sugar, but I don’t fire off a letter to Coca Cola to complain. (Perhaps, I should. Apparently they respond to consumer whining.)

This year, to bring awareness to the plight of polar bears, Classic Coke was packaged in white cans for the holiday season. I think they’re quite festive.

But legions of Coke fans have their panties twisted into origami whiny vipers. Apparently, they’re confused by the white cans and find it hard to purchase Coke if it’s not in the familiar red can. And the Coca Cola Corporation cried uncle and is ceasing production of the white cans.

Seriously. You can’t make this stuff up.

Facebook changes the user-interface every 12 seconds. Apple releases a new must-have product every few months. Betty Crocker got a face lift. Car makers change body styles nearly every year. Yet the fragile little darlings addicted to Coke can’t cope with a different colored can? For a few weeks? And Coke gave in?

Now if Coke had changed it just because Marketing Departments are expected to innovate something now and again, I might be a little more sympathetic. But the powers-that-be did it to bring white light to the problem affecting the animals that Coke has more or less adopted as its mascot.  Note the similarities and differences of the two videos.

They could have pointed out that distinguishing a white can from a red one is a hell of a lot easier than getting stranded on an ice floe.  In the former, one merely needs to pay attention.  In the latter, one is likely to die.

So if I were to write a letter to Coke, it might read like this:

Dear Coke:

You weenies.  You could have handled this better. This was a teachable moment.  You blew it.

Sincerely,

Me

P.S.  Cane sugar.  Please?

Out of sheer perversity, I bought a case of white-canned Coke. Perhaps they’ll be a collectible someday.

Mmmmmm Co’Cola

/ wvfurandroot / 7 Comments

There is nothing I like better than an icy Classic Coke when my throat’s as dry as unbuttered toast. So here it is after 10 p.m. and I’m sucking it down as fast as the straw will deliver.

Why am I so parched? Well. There’s a story.

It begins with bread baking.

Well, now. No. That wouldn’t be true.

It begins with the Boorish Ass (who has since gone out of business) that flimflammed me on flooring installation. It’s taken me several years to get around to undoing the travesty inflicted upon my floors.

Boorish Ass convinced me that I could indeed have sheet linoleum in places that several contractors have said no way. Foolish Me wanted to believe and plunked down the cash. Boorish Ass took the cash and then discovered he could not lay linoleum in the Barn due to the composition and construction of the subfloors. Now I had mentioned, indeed explained at length, what professionals had said about the state of the Barn’s subflooring to Boorish Ass.

Boorish Ass insisted it was doable. I insisted Boorish Ass come look at my floors. He did. He pontificated upon the improvements of flooring technology. Blah blah blah. I have witnesses.

Boorish Ass abandoned the installation with the attitude of “Listen, Lady, I told you this couldn’t be done.” [Truly, I don’t know how he got out of here alive.]

What Boorish Ass left in my house was badly installed underlayment which I have been trodding upon for way too long. Each time I look at it, I want to jump in my car, do bodily harm to him, and hang some of his body parts from my rear-view mirror. I imagine you can guess which body parts.

So, it’s pert near 2012 and this nonsense and I have co-existed way way past what any sane person would regard as too long.

Which brings us to bread. (Kind of.)

I’ve been a wee bit stressed lately. Upon the advice of myself and those in the “helping professions,” I decided to take up a hobby. There was a clear and present need for fun in my life.

Learning to make scrumptious, earthy (ahem) “artisan” bread sounded like a peachy idea. I like bread. HMO’Keefe likes bread. Everybody likes bread. It’s inexpensive (hah!) and I could do it in the comfort of my own home (whichever of the two I happened to be in).

I’m no bread-making virgin. I’ve been a competent baker for a good 30 years. However, I’ve come across one-too-many website and way-too-many cookbooks that detail recipes that take days and sometimes weeks to produce a finished loaf. In short, I took up the kind of bread baking that makes what I used to do akin to the difference between tomato plants bought at a discount store and tomato plants grown from heirloom seeds in a painstakingly built home greenhouse with strict climate control features.

[There was an interlude with “Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day” which will someday be a blog post of its own.]

The bread-making thing GOT TO BE OUTRAGEOUS quickly and after out-growing every pair of pants I own, I reconsidered this hobby. It was a peachy for stress relief, but I’m mightily stressed and three or four loaves of bread every other day or so for months, well, you can see the problem.

This led me to join the gym. Everybody says exercise is a wonderful stress reliever.

Well. It is. Sort of. But I can make bread (1) at home, (2) at any hour of the day, (3) even if I’m tired and (4) I don’t have to make polite chit-chat to dough.

Flippin’ everybody I know goes to the gym. It’s hard to smile and say, “Well! Hi! And how are you?” when you’re trying to inflict all the indignities of the day on an innocent treadmill. Or worse, while hiding unshaven legs behind a meager towel while waiting for a swimming lane.

So, while still going to the gym but less frequently, I returned to bread which led me to a new super-discount store (Ollie’s) in search of affordable bread pans. (Contrary to the above, bread-making is not cheap if you’re a personality type that tends to over-do.)

[BTW, Ollie’s started the whole bread-making thing in the first place when they sold me The Culinary Institute of America’s At Home Series bread making cookbook – which is riddled with errors and not much good for anything other than some nice photos.]

I’m wandering around too-narrow aisles just browsing after discovering a dearth of bread pans when I happen upon peel’n’stick floor tile that would look great in the Cow Bathroom. I pondered. I looked at the price, looked again, and hollered, “What the hell!” after ciphering it would cost $20 to cover the hideous underlayment left by Boorish Ass.

I blew another $20 at Lowe’s for various accoutrements. After a couple of hours of very easy work, I had a splendid floor in the half-bath. It’s cheap tile. It won’t last but a few years, but it makes me happy. That $40 floor did more for stress reduction than bread and squats did. I am woman, hear me roar.

After the pie-making, bread-making extravaganza that was Thanksgiving, I found myself in the flooring aisle of Lowe’s. There was this nifty peel-and-stick tile in 6” x 48” planks that offer a textured wood finish to mimic hardwood floors. I pondered and ciphered. To do the kitchen, hallway and laundry room to cover the underlayment Boorish Ass left behind was a Big Number. While it was a much better grade of flooring than the $20 Ollie’s marvel, I can’t afford it right now and I wouldn’t afford it even I could without a test run.

The floor in the master bath is an utter travesty that harkens back to the Ex’s and my days of do-it-yourselfing. This old-time era did not include professional advice, the reading of instructions, or proper tools.

I hauled out of the Lowe’s enough faux-wood plastic planks for the master bath floor. According to the instructions, I could clean that old floor, peel’n’stick and enjoy the view from my bathtub in a matter of hours. Since that jibed with the Ollie’s/Cow experience, I drank the Kool-Aid.

[I’ve been doing stuff to this Barn for 25 years. You’d think I would have learned by now. Ancient Burial Ground.]

The first thing that went wrong was the cleaning of the floor. Between paint spatters, scuffs, this and that, a heavy-duty cleaning was required to ensure maximum adhesion.

One heavy-duty cleaning was more than that old floor could take. It gave up the ghost, shriveled, unstuck itself from the subfloor (in parts) and crumbled (in other parts).  After a stream of profanity and the lobbing of a coffee cup, I resigned myself to pulling up the old flooring. Of course, only parts of it would pull up. The remainder was stuck to the floor like bread calories on my hips.  Fused.  Welded.  Married.  Not-to-be-divorced.

Out came the scraper. No good. More profanity. Out came the steam cleaner. Nope. Out came the sander. Some progress. If I peeled the thin plastic layer off the top and then scraped and sanded, the subfloor would appear.

This was very slow. And I couldn’t really get into the Zen of peel, scrape, sand, repeat, because what I really wanted was a long bubble bath with a glass of wine and the glorious vista of faux-wood planks.

I went to the Lowe’s and returned with super-duper, silly-expensive sandpaper. (And a cute, tiny shop vac.)

[I’ve left out the part about removing molding, the sides of the whirlpool, the toilet and the sink pedestal. My boudoir is one tremendous mess as well as a study in contrasts.]

At 9:55 p.m., the floor was finally removed and the sub-floor ready for the primer I bought to ensure those peel’n’sticks stick. (I do, sometimes, do the prudent thing.)

I started at noon yesterday and worked until 8 p.m. I started again at noon today and worked until 9:55 p.m. The last 7 hours of today’s adventure included me, a mouse sander, sandpaper so expensive we must import it from Kuwait, and heaps, myriads, plethoras, mountains, stacks and whirlwinds of dust.

There is dust in my hair, my ears, my eyes, my wrinkles, and wedged into the dimples of my cellulite (dimples greatly increased by bread to the point of craters.) There is also dust between my teeth, coating my tongue and wall-papering my throat.

Mmmmmm. Co’Cola.

(Provided I can stand upright, I plan on peel’n’sticking tomorrow evening.)