The Sunday after the Haitian earthquake, I am stomping around the old dining room, whining at my husband about my lack of income and how this prevents me from doing anything for Haiti.
"All I can do successfully, apparently, is cook. What am I supposed to do: fly to Port-au- prince and start cooking grits?" Then I listen to what I just said: All I can do is cook. And I think: Well, cook already, woman.
"I wonder if I cooked a dinner whether I could get people to buy tickets, and then I could send the proceeds to Haiti? Could we afford to do that?" Sure, says my dear husband Hugh, we can do that. "Fifty people came and sang on Boxing Day; I bet 50 people would pay $25 to eat a good dinner with a real napkin, to support Haiti. I'm going to do it. I could feed 80 people, no problem."
I plan a menu that night: appetizers, Caribbean pork, black-eyed peas and rice, collard greens, onion relish, grapefruit and mesclun salad, Key lime pie. I can do that for 50 people, no problem. No fancy finishing, no split-second timing.
First thing Monday I call the church office and ask whether I can borrow the church hall for my little party: Sure, just make it clear that this is your benefit party, not a church do. Absolutely, I say.
Then I call Roy's Market and talk to Peter Robinson.
"Peter, I'm doing a benefit dinner for Haitian earthquake relief and I'm going to want to order pork butts. How much lead time do you need if I want them on a Tuesday evening?" Peter tells me he can get the meat in plenty of time, and then asks what he can do to help me in my project, since he has been wanting to do something for Haitian relief, too. "Could you sell to me at cost?" "I'll do better than that, Ivy, I'll give you all the food." Oh, my goodness. How fabulous, how generous.
I create a Facebook event, email everyone on my address list. Responses start pouring in. I wanted this to be affordable and apparently I hit the sweet spot. By Friday I have sold close to 90 tickets. By Monday next, 105. "Mom, you said you were going to do this for 80 people and how many do you have now? 100. You have to tell the people NO," says Frankie-my-daughter. I hate telling the people no.
In the meantime, Frankie organizes a squad of high school students to help serve. Hugh says he will come home early and help serve. My good friend Bridget offers to spend the day helping me cook, my mother-in-law Molly offers to do the flowers. This is getting to be fun.
Since I am not buying food, only wine, I figure I can spend a little dressing up the hall. I have enough napkins for more than 100 people; I have almost enough tablecloths. I make new tablecloths for the round tables, in cheerful approximately Provencal colors. I wash all the tablecloths and iron them, and I iron all the napkins during my Friday afternoon at home. It reminds me of being a Waldorf nursery school teacher, sitting and ironing and talking. I get 48 little glass vases and candles to put in them; I get Mason jars for the tulips Molly is getting. Now it's really fun.
I go to Market Basket, home of rock-bottom prices, to buy wine. How much? I call my sister Holly (who is an experienced benefit organizer) from the wine aisle: how much wine do I need for 110 people? "Well, you figure 80 percent will drink, and if you figure two glasses per drinker, which I think is generous, you've got 110 people, that's 85 drinkers, four glasses to the bottle." I'm getting the double bottles, so eight glasses to the bottle. "Okay, eight glasses to a bottle, 170 glasses, you need 24 bottles." I buy 24 red and four white and hide them in the closet at church. My fantasy of having a footman to move stuff in and out the car recurs.
What shall we wear? people ask. What are you going to wear? I suggest that guests take this as an opportunity to get a little dressed up, here in the fashion-free zone. But what was I going to wear? A little black dress was wrong for the kitchen, kitchen slops were wrong for the dining room. There's a reason uniforms exist: I buy a good looking chef's jacket.
I make a schedule for cooking: pies on Monday, regular community supper cooking on Tuesday, put the pork to marinade after Tuesday supper, everything else starting at 9 a.m. on Wednesday. Monday went to hell in a hack, so my friend Nancy and I made pies on Tuesday after dinner. Wednesday morning Bridget and I start in. We peel and chop onions for relish, peel and section grapefruit for salad, wash and stem and chiffonade collard greens. In the middle of all this, I go home to sell a non-functioning car and pick up a few last things. It is a scary moment when I go to pick up the salad greens and no one at Roy's can find them. Peter knows where they are, of course. I make 14 loaves of bread. Molly makes 14 bouquets of tulips for the tables; Bridget and I arrange the tables; dress them with bright tablecloths and napkins, tulips and hurricane lanterns. The floor gets swept, the chairs arranged. It looks like a party in here.
Okay. Meat's done, peas are done, salads ready to assemble, collards ready to sear. Frankie and her friend Cody show up and finish setting the tables. Hugh calls and says he will be there looking like a waiter by 5:45. Bridget and I each dash home to change, Bridget is going to pick up plain votives for the lanterns because one of the boxes I bought turned out to be vanilla scented (yuck). I shower and leap into black pants, white tee shirt and chef's jacket, cram my already aching feet into black Dansko clogs (the preferred shoe of barn managers, line cooks, and school teachers everywhere). I meet Hugh at the bottom of the drive. "Get some ice, please," I holler out my window in passing.
"Ivy, I'm at Job Lot and there aren't any plain votives." Go by my house, there's a box of Shabbat candles on the pantry cupboard. We'll use those.
"Mom, there aren't enough glasses." Go home and get some, please. "What do we do about the forks?" What about the forks? "There aren't four for every place setting." Take away the dessert fork, we'll wash salad forks and return them as dessert forks with the pie. I hang up my white jacket and throw on an apron and start searing collards. There are a lot of collards.
I make table cards. Oh, fork. Oh, shit. Oh, damnation. My seating chart was arranged predicated on FIVE tables of single tickets; I've only got four set up and I don't have enough stuff to set up another one. I recount; I re-shuffle; I slip a few singletons into tables of eight that are only six. There are enough seats, I know there are. Seven tables of eight is 56, plus the High Street twelve is 68, plus four tables of 10 is 108. That's enough. I'm pretty sure that's enough.
I teach the wait staff to make salads. They start plating 100 salads. They are great girls: Katherine, who is only 10; Elspeth and Lucy and Maggie, who are 14; Emily and Frankie and Fern and Olivia and Sadie. They're all spruced up and energetic and having fun. Bridget is soldiering on; Hugh arrives in his tux. "Waitrons," he says, "please listen. We're going to serve each person at a table at the same time. We'll send you out in groups so that everyone at one table gets a plate at the same instant. Organize yourselves into squads, please." He looks fabulous; and I would never have thought of that detail of making sure that the tables got served that way.
We start rice, we slice meat, we make salads, we cook collards. We light candles, we fill water glasses, we open wine bottles. It's chaos, but everyone is having a terrific time.
Two guests show up at 6:30 p.m. and stroll into the kitchen: What can we do to help? I want to scream "You can get out of my bloody kitchen, that's what you can do! This party starts at 7 p.m., not now!" What I actually say is, "Oh, gosh, thanks, but we're a little crowded, so if you wouldn't mind just waiting in the entryway. There's a bench to sit on." I shut the kitchen door and the double doors into the hall to prevent further incursions.
Bridget and Sadie light a fire in the fireplace. For a terrible moment the hall starts filling with smoke; Richard, father of Elspeth and Catherine, takes over fire duties so Sadie and Bridget can return to the kitchen; the smoke clears, the fire lights (after Richard sacrifices some wineglass boxes and my unread newspaper); all is well.
6:55. I shut the hatch doors from the kitchen into the hall. I warn the wait staff, I put on my jacket and my friend Sage buttons the little knot buttons for me and tells me to breath. Catherine strokes my arm and says "It's all right, Ivy, just breathe." I breathe.
I open the doors into the hall and start welcoming people, collecting money, directing people to tables, shuffling madly when several people who were not on my list want to know where they should sit. I set up a two-top for the last two incomers (although later I discover their empty seats at other tables) and circulate and let people know that the blue napkin contains a loaf of fresh bread.
Ready? asks Hugh. Give 'em 5 more minutes, I say.
7:15. I ring the bell and thank people for coming. I do not cry. Hugh organizes the first flight of servers. "Okay, girls, one plate in each hand. Table one, go." The girls roll out of the kitchen and start serving. Oh, blast, I forgot to remind them about serve from the right, clear from the left. Well, the tables are too tight for that to work, anyway. "Table two, go." Salads are out. We start making bowls of rice and beans and greens and onion relish for each table. Fern plates meat since she's one of the few non-vegetarians on the wait staff. Hugh stalks around the hall, watching the service, timing the next course.
Ready to clear salads. The girls swoop out. Ready to serve the main course. Four girls take out the sides, four take plates. Plates with meat come back for empty plates for the vegetarians. The girls and Hugh are having a blast. I circulate and talk about the food and do a little serving. Tiny Catherine circulates with a pitcher of water and refills water glasses. A few latecomers appear and are squeezed in somewhere. People appear to be having a great time.
Refills of beans and rice and collards go out. I start another rice cooker full of rice, which of course, is ready about the time we're ready to serve pie.
Frankie is managing the dishwashing with great good humor. Fern whips cream. I get pies out of the fridge. "You're going to plate those pies, aren't you?" Hugh says. "They're pretty fragile." I plate pies, Fern dollops whipped cream. Later we discover that the plates just out the dishwasher are making the pie melt a little. Oh well.
"Table nine is out of wine." Take the bottle from the two-top. "Unh-unh. Andrew already took it for his table." Hugh shuffles wine bottles.
Ready to clear? The girls clear and take orders for coffee. "Someone wants to know can they have tea?" NO is my first response, but of course they can have tea. Flights of pie-serving girls swoop around. Maggie and Catherine serve coffee. "Ivy, the pot is empty and we need eleven more cups." Tip it, fill 'em only half full, steal some from already poured cups. Bridget performs the miracle of the loaves and fishes and somehow produces eleven more cups of coffee.
The dishwashing team is running at full speed. I circulate and almost cause a table to get two servings of pie. We find two tables who still don't have pie -- no more whipped cream, but the pie is still good.
Table 10 wants to know whether they can buy another bottle of wine. They could have another bottle of wine if I had one. I take them a bottle of white -- no more red. Next time, I keep control of the wine bottles and have the wait staff pour, because at the end of the evening some tables have drunk all their wine and part of the next table's, and some tables still have half a bottle.
It sounds wonderful out there. Everyone chats away to their tablemates, people compliment the food, people admire the servers.
A few of the candles begin to burn out. People begin to gather up to leave. I ask Lucy's Sam and the Corwins and the Hulberts whether they can stay and help stack chairs. I have to leave the hall totally cleared, ready for exercise class at 9 a.m. the next morning.
The party's over, but the work is not. Olivia's mother gathers hurricane lanterns, napkins and tablecloths; the wait staff clears the 200 glasses and 100 plates and who knows how many pieces of silverware; Frankie bosses the dishwashing; chair stackers stack chairs. Even Sebastian, our shy and diffident exchange student, starts clearing. When I mention this, Frankie giggles and says that Olivia told him to. "She said she was practicing her Spanish commands."
Hugh and Sebastian and Lucy put away tables. Hugh sweeps. We wash and dry, wash and dry, wash and dry. We sing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" in several different keys, all at the same time. We keep washing and drying.
10:30 p.m. Olivia's mother and Olivia head home. Bridget and Sadie and Maggie and Frankie and Lucy and Hugh and I keep washing and drying. Everyone gets the giggles. I pack up dirty table linen and start loading the car. We sing "Both Sides Now."
11 p.m. We can see bottom. I send Bridget and Maggie and Sadie home along with two buckets of compost for some pigs they know.
11:30 p.m. Frankie and Lucy and Sebastian head home. "Mom, just so you know, we're not going to school tomorrow." We'll talk about that in the morning, I say. I know they're not going.
Midnight. Hugh finishes loading all our stuff and heads home to make coffee.
12:15. I wipe out the sinks, sweep the filthy floor, wipe down the counters one last time. Turn out the lights and head home.
We raise $3775 for Partners in Health. We have a good time.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Oh yeah, forgot. (DH here again.)
Easy dad dinner #1--I've been cooking this one for 20 years.
Cheese souffle--3 tbsp butter melted in a 4-cup measure in the microwave; 3 tbsp flour whisked in and nuked for a minute and a half or so; 1 1/2 cups milk whisked in and nuked for 3 minutes; remove, whisk, and run for 3 minutes more. This makes a perfect white sauce every time. This time I got over-excited and I think used too much butter and too much flour and then maybe too much milk and the white sauce set after the first nuking with milk, but it was fine. A bay leaf or three and salt and pepper is good.
Whisk in enough grated cheese. Enough might be 1/2 to a full cup of grated cheese, depending on how cheesy you like your souffle. Don't use cheddar--it melts very badly and leaks whey all over the place. I used fontina which was good but surprisingly salty. Whisk in 3 egg yolks.
Take the whites from those eggs and 2 more and whisk them up separately to shaving-cream consistency. (Julia says "soft peaks" which is fine as a technical description if you know what that is. Think shaving cream.) Fold the egg whites and white sauce mixture together gently (I do it right in the bowl I whisked the eggs in) and pour into a prepared souffle dish. Save the extra egg yolks for the pudding you'll make tomorrow.
I'd gotten away from flouring my souffle dishes, but I did it this time (butter the bottom and sides, sprinkle in some flour, roll it around, knock out the excess) and I am reminded why it's worth doing. It turns into a lovely crust all around the custardy interior and makes for more happiness for the fans of BCBs (Burnt Crispy Bits).
Cook the whole thing at 375 for 20-30 minutes, until it's got some nice toasty brown on top. Ideally it should be crusty on the outside and like custard in the center. These were perfect. I say "these" because my aformentioned over-enthusiasm with the white sauce led to more souffle than would fit in one dish so we had the dual souffle option.
With the souffle went chard from the freezer, put up by the Delight of my Life, and cooked with onions. (Caramelize the onions first, then put the chard in. They're so good they don't need anything more than that. Maybe a little cider vinegar. They'll stand being cooked for a bit, too.)
We also had carrots julienne. This is something I first had in France (dreamy look... where was I? Oh yes) but it's one of those recipes that has sort of evolved over the years. The only problem with it is getting those julienned carrots. You can sometimes buy carrot slaw in the grocery these days (I love these days) and I wouldn't disdain them. You can also get a mandoline at great expense from the French or at very little expense from the Japanese. (The teeth of ours, from the Japanese, have gone astray, so that wasn't an option.) Or you can get a julienne blade for your Cuisinart if you want to go to the trouble of setting it up and cleaning it. What you can't do is use a grater. You want matchsticks, not flat slips of carrot.
So this time, with the souffle in the oven and nothing to do for ten minutes, I julienned by hand. Cut your carrots to 2" lengths; cut those in half and put the flat side against the cutting board; make thin lengthwise vertical slices of those; stack up the slices and slice lengthwise again to make matchsticks. Pretty much fun on a slow day. I worried my matchsticks were too thin, but hah, that's not happening.
Finish with a enough olive oil and good mustard to coat the carrots thinly.
So that's it. Even the dad, who's a slow cook, can do that in 45 minutes from a standing start. And the four of us gobbled up one whole souffle and half the other in a sitting.
Easy dad dinner #1--I've been cooking this one for 20 years.
Cheese souffle--3 tbsp butter melted in a 4-cup measure in the microwave; 3 tbsp flour whisked in and nuked for a minute and a half or so; 1 1/2 cups milk whisked in and nuked for 3 minutes; remove, whisk, and run for 3 minutes more. This makes a perfect white sauce every time. This time I got over-excited and I think used too much butter and too much flour and then maybe too much milk and the white sauce set after the first nuking with milk, but it was fine. A bay leaf or three and salt and pepper is good.
Whisk in enough grated cheese. Enough might be 1/2 to a full cup of grated cheese, depending on how cheesy you like your souffle. Don't use cheddar--it melts very badly and leaks whey all over the place. I used fontina which was good but surprisingly salty. Whisk in 3 egg yolks.
Take the whites from those eggs and 2 more and whisk them up separately to shaving-cream consistency. (Julia says "soft peaks" which is fine as a technical description if you know what that is. Think shaving cream.) Fold the egg whites and white sauce mixture together gently (I do it right in the bowl I whisked the eggs in) and pour into a prepared souffle dish. Save the extra egg yolks for the pudding you'll make tomorrow.
I'd gotten away from flouring my souffle dishes, but I did it this time (butter the bottom and sides, sprinkle in some flour, roll it around, knock out the excess) and I am reminded why it's worth doing. It turns into a lovely crust all around the custardy interior and makes for more happiness for the fans of BCBs (Burnt Crispy Bits).
Cook the whole thing at 375 for 20-30 minutes, until it's got some nice toasty brown on top. Ideally it should be crusty on the outside and like custard in the center. These were perfect. I say "these" because my aformentioned over-enthusiasm with the white sauce led to more souffle than would fit in one dish so we had the dual souffle option.
With the souffle went chard from the freezer, put up by the Delight of my Life, and cooked with onions. (Caramelize the onions first, then put the chard in. They're so good they don't need anything more than that. Maybe a little cider vinegar. They'll stand being cooked for a bit, too.)
We also had carrots julienne. This is something I first had in France (dreamy look... where was I? Oh yes) but it's one of those recipes that has sort of evolved over the years. The only problem with it is getting those julienned carrots. You can sometimes buy carrot slaw in the grocery these days (I love these days) and I wouldn't disdain them. You can also get a mandoline at great expense from the French or at very little expense from the Japanese. (The teeth of ours, from the Japanese, have gone astray, so that wasn't an option.) Or you can get a julienne blade for your Cuisinart if you want to go to the trouble of setting it up and cleaning it. What you can't do is use a grater. You want matchsticks, not flat slips of carrot.
So this time, with the souffle in the oven and nothing to do for ten minutes, I julienned by hand. Cut your carrots to 2" lengths; cut those in half and put the flat side against the cutting board; make thin lengthwise vertical slices of those; stack up the slices and slice lengthwise again to make matchsticks. Pretty much fun on a slow day. I worried my matchsticks were too thin, but hah, that's not happening.
Finish with a enough olive oil and good mustard to coat the carrots thinly.
So that's it. Even the dad, who's a slow cook, can do that in 45 minutes from a standing start. And the four of us gobbled up one whole souffle and half the other in a sitting.
Another post by the DH. I have to get it in quick before the Delight of my Life and Desire of my Days posts tonight's dinner, which was a corker.
So: Seafood risotto. In France (and how many sentences around here begin "In France..." accompanied by a slightly dreamy expression), you can get salade au fruites de mer, which generally includes whelks and cockles and things with too many legs. In Italy, you can get risotto ai frutti di mare, which has clams and shrimp and things with too many legs. Here, well, I thought I'd see what I could do.
I'd made risotto before but never a seafood risotto and I wasn't following a recipe because none of them would be what I had in Italy, so why bother? and this is what I got:
Asparagus because they were at the grocery and looked good; scallops ditto; shrimp from the freezer, jumbo and I would have preferred smaller, but that's what they had; bluefish because it was in and I love bluefish; carrots chopped square for color, mushrooms because why even bother be in the kitchen if you're not cooking mushrooms?
So chop an onion and a few cloves of garlic and saute until limp. Add mushrooms and cook till they've given up their water and re-absorbed it. Then the real cooking begins.
2 cups arborio rice, added straight to the onions and mushrooms. I've used sushi rice too, and it's okay, but the truth is arborio rice is better and is generally available at a reasonable price. The sushi rice tends to cook down until there's a tiny little grain of sand at the center of each kernel, and then from there it goes immediately to mush.
1/2 cup of dry white wine added to the rice after you've stirred it around once or twice. Then keep adding water and stirring to maintain a sort of slurry in the pot--wet but not swimming. I do this in a wok, by the way, because it's got the best cure in the kitchen.
While that's going on, I pre-cooked the other ingredients in the microwave. I wasn't sure how long they would take to cook, so I nuked them until they were almost done. Once the rice was almost done I tossed the other ingredients in to finish.
Final touch was a few pats of butter. No cheese for a seafood risotto, but nothing ever was hurt by monte au beurre.
Vegetable was a salad. Enough already with complications in the kitchen.
Enough for the whole (reduced) family of four plus the two grandparents, and it kept even the picky vegetarians at the table. I might not use bluefish next time. The taste was fine but the texture was a bit odd in combination with everything else. Swordfish would go well.
So: Seafood risotto. In France (and how many sentences around here begin "In France..." accompanied by a slightly dreamy expression), you can get salade au fruites de mer, which generally includes whelks and cockles and things with too many legs. In Italy, you can get risotto ai frutti di mare, which has clams and shrimp and things with too many legs. Here, well, I thought I'd see what I could do.
I'd made risotto before but never a seafood risotto and I wasn't following a recipe because none of them would be what I had in Italy, so why bother? and this is what I got:
Asparagus because they were at the grocery and looked good; scallops ditto; shrimp from the freezer, jumbo and I would have preferred smaller, but that's what they had; bluefish because it was in and I love bluefish; carrots chopped square for color, mushrooms because why even bother be in the kitchen if you're not cooking mushrooms?
So chop an onion and a few cloves of garlic and saute until limp. Add mushrooms and cook till they've given up their water and re-absorbed it. Then the real cooking begins.
2 cups arborio rice, added straight to the onions and mushrooms. I've used sushi rice too, and it's okay, but the truth is arborio rice is better and is generally available at a reasonable price. The sushi rice tends to cook down until there's a tiny little grain of sand at the center of each kernel, and then from there it goes immediately to mush.
1/2 cup of dry white wine added to the rice after you've stirred it around once or twice. Then keep adding water and stirring to maintain a sort of slurry in the pot--wet but not swimming. I do this in a wok, by the way, because it's got the best cure in the kitchen.
While that's going on, I pre-cooked the other ingredients in the microwave. I wasn't sure how long they would take to cook, so I nuked them until they were almost done. Once the rice was almost done I tossed the other ingredients in to finish.
Final touch was a few pats of butter. No cheese for a seafood risotto, but nothing ever was hurt by monte au beurre.
Vegetable was a salad. Enough already with complications in the kitchen.
Enough for the whole (reduced) family of four plus the two grandparents, and it kept even the picky vegetarians at the table. I might not use bluefish next time. The taste was fine but the texture was a bit odd in combination with everything else. Swordfish would go well.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Fish story
Winnie returned from northern Ontario last night, calling for fresh corn, a request I am always happy to grant. I had already bought swordfish from the general store in Dublin first thing in the morning (they only have fish once a week but it is prime when it arrives -- I often make special plans to go up there on fish day) and I had leftover roasted potatoes from Sunday.
We had potato salad, fresh corn, and grilled swordfish. I slather olive oil on my swordfish (and also on tuna) about an hour before I plan to grill it -- it seems to help keep it from drying out. Normally I choose steaks (fish or other) to be all the same thickness, but I realized last night that in fact having variable thicknesses makes it easier to grant everyone's desires vis a vis doneness. Goody likes her fish cooked quite done and everyone else wants it a little underdone. Voila' all fish were ready to eat at the same time.
I dressed the potatoes with two tablespoons of dijon mustard, two tablespoons of olive oil, three tablespoons of balsamic vinegar and a little mayonnaise all shaken up together. If you are dressing leftover potatoes it helps to reheat them before you dress them -- they absorb the dressing better.
All in all, an easy, pleasant weeknight meal. Tonight I we're having a dinner party and I think I'll make blueberry cobbler.
We had potato salad, fresh corn, and grilled swordfish. I slather olive oil on my swordfish (and also on tuna) about an hour before I plan to grill it -- it seems to help keep it from drying out. Normally I choose steaks (fish or other) to be all the same thickness, but I realized last night that in fact having variable thicknesses makes it easier to grant everyone's desires vis a vis doneness. Goody likes her fish cooked quite done and everyone else wants it a little underdone. Voila' all fish were ready to eat at the same time.
I dressed the potatoes with two tablespoons of dijon mustard, two tablespoons of olive oil, three tablespoons of balsamic vinegar and a little mayonnaise all shaken up together. If you are dressing leftover potatoes it helps to reheat them before you dress them -- they absorb the dressing better.
All in all, an easy, pleasant weeknight meal. Tonight I we're having a dinner party and I think I'll make blueberry cobbler.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Hot night
It's the hottest it's been this summer, tonight, and thankfully the corn is in. Locket, Goody, CB, Miss Bee, and I had fresh corn, steamed; Asian slaw; and grilled salmon tonight. We drank up all the white wine last night so we had iced tea. I've been making a gallon every day for the last few weeks -- and every day I need to make a new gallon.
The slaw is one of my current favorite side dishes: shred cabbage and maybe some red onion and some cucumber if you have it. Make a dressing with rice vinegar, a little soy sauce (tonight's was a little salty), umeboshi plum paste, toasted sesame oil, one clove of garlic, and a tablespoon of pickled ginger. Whizz it all up in the blender and pour over vegetables. It's best made an hour or so ahead and allowed to marinate at room temp.
We ate late, because I had a planning board work session. We spent the meeting talking about how to encourage affordable housing and infill development. Pretty much the same meeting we had in January. The good news is that we're still trying to do the right thing.
Oh, my gosh, it is hot. I may take a leaf from CB and Miss Bee and go over to the pond and sneak in for a late night swim. See you tomorrow.
The slaw is one of my current favorite side dishes: shred cabbage and maybe some red onion and some cucumber if you have it. Make a dressing with rice vinegar, a little soy sauce (tonight's was a little salty), umeboshi plum paste, toasted sesame oil, one clove of garlic, and a tablespoon of pickled ginger. Whizz it all up in the blender and pour over vegetables. It's best made an hour or so ahead and allowed to marinate at room temp.
We ate late, because I had a planning board work session. We spent the meeting talking about how to encourage affordable housing and infill development. Pretty much the same meeting we had in January. The good news is that we're still trying to do the right thing.
Oh, my gosh, it is hot. I may take a leaf from CB and Miss Bee and go over to the pond and sneak in for a late night swim. See you tomorrow.
Formal family dinner
CB and his girlfriend, Miss Bee, are visiting from Santa Fe this week and we had the additional good luck to have her parents and sister spend a couple of nights with us over the weekend. We only had one sit-down meal together so I was determined to make it a good one.
I roasted some of Tim the farmer's new banana fingerling potatoes with a little olive oil and salt; roasted green beans also Tim's) dressed with tamari, minced garlic and rice vinegar; bunny mix (little new lettuces from Tim) with blue cheese and craisins; grilled chicken; and chocolate cake with my new old favorite frosting.
The festival cake of my childhood was red velvet cake, and it always came with a wonderful, rich, creamy, not-too-sweet frosting which I was never able to replicate. It had the consistency of butter and confectioner's sugar frosting, but was nothing like as disgustingly sweet. I have a new-fangled recipe for red velvet cake (from the NY Times and excellent) that calls for a frosting made with cream cheese and marscapone and whipping cream which is just as fabulous as it sounds but it is not the frosting of my childhood. Earlier this summer I googled red velvet cake on a whim and there it was: cooked frosting. I tried it and it was the frosting I remembered and it is not only delicious but really easy. Here it is: Cook 1 cup milk (whole milk, it's frosting for god's sake) with 1/3 c. white flour until it is very thick. Set aside to cool. Meantime, beat 1 cup butter with 1 cup granulated sugar until fluffy. Beat in the cooled (that's important) milk/ flour mixture and 1 tablespoon vanilla. Add a big pinch of salt if you used unsalted butter. Chill until ready to frost your chilled cake.
I put this on my standard chocolate cake and it was really good. Even better if you refrigerate the frosted cake for 6 or 8 hours before serving. Bring it out of the fridge about an hour before you want to serve it.
It was interesting to meet Miss Bee's parents; they were just as congenial and pleasant and cheerful as I had expected. When I mentioned at Salon, my Friday women's group, that I had invited the Bs for the weekend and that Miss Bee was not sure she wanted that much togetherness (or at least that's what Mr. Bee, her father emailed to me) to a woman the group declared that they would never have allowed their parents to visit their boyfriends' parents and many declared they would have prevented that degree of coziness even after they were married.
I have to admit the idea of my parents overlapping with my in-laws makes me feel a little crazed, even now that both my parents are passing judgment on me only from on high. I adore my mother-in-law and always have, since long before she was my MIL, so there was the jealousy problem, and additionally there just wasn't much overlap between the two couples. My mother and my MIL could have talked about teaching school, since they both did, but I don't think there was anything my FIL and my father could have talked about. It was a constant struggle for me to figure out how to balance those relationships and stay fair and honorable and cause the least amount of trauma, and I don't think I was very good at it.
Who knows how long CB and Miss Bee will be partners (although it's been close to two years and the family pattern on both sides is pick 'em young and stick with 'em) but for the duration the two families had a fine time together.
Oh, about the rest of dinner -- really fresh beans only need to roast for about 30 minutes and they cook down to nothing. I cooked 5 pounds for 11 of us and there're only about two servings left. The new potatoes should be started covered -- I use a 11 x 13 pan covered with tin foil -- for about 25 minutes and then uncover them until they are done. Last night I wasn't so clever about starting things in the right order so I just took the beans out when they were done and served them at room temp (which was about 92 degrees) and let the potatoes finish cooking.
For the chicken I cooked two 5 pound free-range birds that I had the butcher spatchcock -- my butcher does it for me or you can do it yourself with a sharp knife. It just means removing the backbone and flattening the bird. Google it if you're confused. I once sent CB to the local market to get a spatchcocked bird and when he asked for it to be done the butcher looked up at him and said "You must be Ivy Vann's son. She's the only person who ever asks for that." Why I don't know, because it makes the birds easy to cook and easy to carve.
I brine my birds for at least an hour and as long as overnight before I cook them. If I'm grilling them (yes, the fire lit for me -- I think DH wasn't holding his mouth right the other night. Or maybe he just dried out the charcoal so it would light yesterday) I precook them in the microwave for 8 or 10 minutes first. It ensures they will cook evenly and relatively quickly and seems to reduce flare-ups, too.
We drank 3 bottles of Salmon Run Riesling with this meal -- some of which went to Kirs beforehand -- and it was pretty tasty all around.
I roasted some of Tim the farmer's new banana fingerling potatoes with a little olive oil and salt; roasted green beans also Tim's) dressed with tamari, minced garlic and rice vinegar; bunny mix (little new lettuces from Tim) with blue cheese and craisins; grilled chicken; and chocolate cake with my new old favorite frosting.
The festival cake of my childhood was red velvet cake, and it always came with a wonderful, rich, creamy, not-too-sweet frosting which I was never able to replicate. It had the consistency of butter and confectioner's sugar frosting, but was nothing like as disgustingly sweet. I have a new-fangled recipe for red velvet cake (from the NY Times and excellent) that calls for a frosting made with cream cheese and marscapone and whipping cream which is just as fabulous as it sounds but it is not the frosting of my childhood. Earlier this summer I googled red velvet cake on a whim and there it was: cooked frosting. I tried it and it was the frosting I remembered and it is not only delicious but really easy. Here it is: Cook 1 cup milk (whole milk, it's frosting for god's sake) with 1/3 c. white flour until it is very thick. Set aside to cool. Meantime, beat 1 cup butter with 1 cup granulated sugar until fluffy. Beat in the cooled (that's important) milk/ flour mixture and 1 tablespoon vanilla. Add a big pinch of salt if you used unsalted butter. Chill until ready to frost your chilled cake.
I put this on my standard chocolate cake and it was really good. Even better if you refrigerate the frosted cake for 6 or 8 hours before serving. Bring it out of the fridge about an hour before you want to serve it.
It was interesting to meet Miss Bee's parents; they were just as congenial and pleasant and cheerful as I had expected. When I mentioned at Salon, my Friday women's group, that I had invited the Bs for the weekend and that Miss Bee was not sure she wanted that much togetherness (or at least that's what Mr. Bee, her father emailed to me) to a woman the group declared that they would never have allowed their parents to visit their boyfriends' parents and many declared they would have prevented that degree of coziness even after they were married.
I have to admit the idea of my parents overlapping with my in-laws makes me feel a little crazed, even now that both my parents are passing judgment on me only from on high. I adore my mother-in-law and always have, since long before she was my MIL, so there was the jealousy problem, and additionally there just wasn't much overlap between the two couples. My mother and my MIL could have talked about teaching school, since they both did, but I don't think there was anything my FIL and my father could have talked about. It was a constant struggle for me to figure out how to balance those relationships and stay fair and honorable and cause the least amount of trauma, and I don't think I was very good at it.
Who knows how long CB and Miss Bee will be partners (although it's been close to two years and the family pattern on both sides is pick 'em young and stick with 'em) but for the duration the two families had a fine time together.
Oh, about the rest of dinner -- really fresh beans only need to roast for about 30 minutes and they cook down to nothing. I cooked 5 pounds for 11 of us and there're only about two servings left. The new potatoes should be started covered -- I use a 11 x 13 pan covered with tin foil -- for about 25 minutes and then uncover them until they are done. Last night I wasn't so clever about starting things in the right order so I just took the beans out when they were done and served them at room temp (which was about 92 degrees) and let the potatoes finish cooking.
For the chicken I cooked two 5 pound free-range birds that I had the butcher spatchcock -- my butcher does it for me or you can do it yourself with a sharp knife. It just means removing the backbone and flattening the bird. Google it if you're confused. I once sent CB to the local market to get a spatchcocked bird and when he asked for it to be done the butcher looked up at him and said "You must be Ivy Vann's son. She's the only person who ever asks for that." Why I don't know, because it makes the birds easy to cook and easy to carve.
I brine my birds for at least an hour and as long as overnight before I cook them. If I'm grilling them (yes, the fire lit for me -- I think DH wasn't holding his mouth right the other night. Or maybe he just dried out the charcoal so it would light yesterday) I precook them in the microwave for 8 or 10 minutes first. It ensures they will cook evenly and relatively quickly and seems to reduce flare-ups, too.
We drank 3 bottles of Salmon Run Riesling with this meal -- some of which went to Kirs beforehand -- and it was pretty tasty all around.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Friday: EZ Dad Dinner #4
This isn't actually Ivy, it's the DH. Today I said to the Light Of My Life and Desire Of My Days (LOML for short) that if I made the dinner I didn't see why I shouldn't post to the blog, and she said she didn't either, so here I am.
Last night's dinner was the dad special, i.e. hamburgers made indoors on the stove instead of outdoors on the grill because the newspaper wouldn't light, which tells you something about the weather we've been having. The hamburger was from Roy's, the buns from the Kernel Bakery and both were good. They were shared by me and the Light and our horsey daughter, the Lockmeister having pledged every evening of her life (two weeks of it anyway) to running the light board at Andy's for their performace of Phantom of the Opera. I'm not exactly sure what she had for dinner--she seems to live on starlight and dew. And protein bars.
Oh, we had salad too, just so there was something green on the table. The mom special: baby lettuce mix, craisins, blue cheese crumble, balsamic vinegar, olive oil. I might have made those french fries if the Light were sharing her recipie but she's not.
For dessert we had Bread Pudding Chez Hélène topped with Crème Angalise--or maybe it was just vanilla custard. Either way it was... okay. Normally Bread Pudding Chez Hélène is what Hera feeds Zeus when she wants to get him in a good mood. It uses a can of evaporated milk, lots of vanilla, and halfway through the cooking you stir it up so all the carmelized bits from around the edge get mixed all through and its all unctuous and caramelized and wonderful.
But I think if you're using frozen bread (I was) you need more liquid... and if you're using unsalted butter (I was) you have to add a bit of salt even if the recipe doesn't call for it. Ah, well. They say that the original meaning of "sin" is to miss the mark; forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.
Last night's dinner was the dad special, i.e. hamburgers made indoors on the stove instead of outdoors on the grill because the newspaper wouldn't light, which tells you something about the weather we've been having. The hamburger was from Roy's, the buns from the Kernel Bakery and both were good. They were shared by me and the Light and our horsey daughter, the Lockmeister having pledged every evening of her life (two weeks of it anyway) to running the light board at Andy's for their performace of Phantom of the Opera. I'm not exactly sure what she had for dinner--she seems to live on starlight and dew. And protein bars.
Oh, we had salad too, just so there was something green on the table. The mom special: baby lettuce mix, craisins, blue cheese crumble, balsamic vinegar, olive oil. I might have made those french fries if the Light were sharing her recipie but she's not.
For dessert we had Bread Pudding Chez Hélène topped with Crème Angalise--or maybe it was just vanilla custard. Either way it was... okay. Normally Bread Pudding Chez Hélène is what Hera feeds Zeus when she wants to get him in a good mood. It uses a can of evaporated milk, lots of vanilla, and halfway through the cooking you stir it up so all the carmelized bits from around the edge get mixed all through and its all unctuous and caramelized and wonderful.
But I think if you're using frozen bread (I was) you need more liquid... and if you're using unsalted butter (I was) you have to add a bit of salt even if the recipe doesn't call for it. Ah, well. They say that the original meaning of "sin" is to miss the mark; forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.
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