Another Adventure

I'm writing this night before setting off on the last big adventure with Home & Away. I'm really going out with a bang here: Tomorrow I fly to Lima, Peru, to see Macchu Pichu and the Sacred Valley. Who gets that in life? Not many. And I choose to leave it all. I quit my job earlier last week to go to culinary school full time in September. It's scary, even scarier writing it. Now it's out there to be judged by all these people. I love cooking. I love writing. I've done the writing; I still want to do the writing. I still will for The Reader.

Talking to friend, I worried today that I might be one of those people who can't be pleased. I hope not. I feel more content with me, myself than ever before. I want to take a crack at it though, the bakery/pastry thing. I want to add to what I already know. More than what I know in my head, I want to add to what I know in my hands. It's scary. I could mess up. I could hate it. I might never get health insurance ever again. But I don't think so. Nothing gets me excited like cooking.

New Music

I've been working on a new mix of music for at least a month or so. Here it is.


1. We're Going to Be Friends by the White Stripes
2. I Still Remember by Bloc Party
3. California by Rogue Wave
4. Wash Away by Matt Costa
5. Maps by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs
6. Islands by the Xx
7. Is This It by the Strokes
8. Too Afraid to Love You by the Black Keys
9. Peach, Plum, Pear by Joanna Newsom

Outstanding in the Field Iowa

July 27, I had the chance to head to this thing called Outstanding in the Field, which is a farm-to-table meal held in Waukee, Iowa, to cover the event for The Reader. You can check out the full story here, I just had some extra images that I wanted to share.

It is sort of funny to think about people paying to go eat dinner in the middle of July at a farm. People traveled from all over just to attend this meal. There were folks at my table from nearby Des Moines and West Des Moines, Iowa City, and Orange City, Iowa. Then there was me, from Omaha (and a few others who wisely got a hotel and stayed the night), some ladies from South Dakota and people from Minnesota. I drove two hours to eat dinner on a farm, y'all. That's something I'm sure Nebraska farmers would balk at, but there it is and it was really a beautiful event.

The food (four courses plus hors d'oeuvres) all came from local farms and was cooked by a local chef Andrew Meek of Sbrocco. Wine was provided by Calcereous Vineyard in Paso Robles, Calif. Below is the first courses: a salad of tomatoes and melons served with basil and a citrus-honey vinagrette.

Second course was Mediterranean vegetables (zucchini, tomatoes, fennel, eggplant) with roast lamb and bagna cauda. I don't know exactly what it was, maybe the skin, but there was this cripsy, bacon-like meat that I was just making love to on the table. This courses was by far my favorite. The lamb was so tender. I loved the addition of the fennel just slathered in salty olive oil.

Meals were served family style, which was nice because I went alone and made friends with my table, particularly Madison and her mom Marilyn. In this photo, there's a good shot of the rainbow Swiss chard growing in the background.

Marilyn took this photo and emailed it to me that night (very nice!). I like it even though my attention is immediatly drawn to my teeth--holy crap, you can see all my gums. But I'm obviously having such a great time, who cares what I look like.

Slop

I suppose it's usually a good thing when I don't have enough time to put up another post. I've probably been keeping myself busy on purpose because my roommate is in and out and my parents are out of town, so it's just me and the dog in the apartment exactly one year after our scary break in. I just don't want to deal with lonely right now, so I'm making myself so busy I can barely think. I never thought I would ever get to this point and especially not after a year, but I'm actually glad the break in happened even though the whole ordeal was awful. Meg and I did end up very lucky in the first place; I doubt I'd be singing the same tune if things had been more traumatic. And I finally learned something about justice and mercy that I don't think I would have.

This time around, I've been having a lot of summer fun with friends cooking, swimming, going to concerts and whatnot. This meal, which I shall title chickpea-bacon slop, was just a bunch of stuff I had lying around that ended up being quite good together. I am quite the lucky genius you know, just tossing a bunch of plump-sweet corn and garbanzo beans in a pan. I wish the things worked out this weel every time I try this. The chili smoked things up a bit for the plain old corn-and-garbanzo combo. And then who could live without bacon and cheese? The choice was obvious.

Chickpea-bacon Slop:

olive oil

lime juice

2 ears of corn

1 15-ounce can chickpeas

1 clove garlic, minced

3 spring onions, chopped

2 teaspoons chili powder

salt and pepper

bunch of fresh cilantro

grated parmesan cheese

bacon, cooked and crumbled

Heat olive oil in a pan until it's warm. Add the garlic and onion and saute for a minutes until they have tanned slightly. Break the corn cobs in half and add them to the pot. Drain and rinse the chickpeas, toss them in as well. Season well with salt, pepper and chili powder, turning the corn so it cooks all the way around. Once the garbanzo beans have split, transfer to a serving bowl. Squeeze the lime juice over the top, sprinkle with parm, chopped cilantro and bacon. Serves two nicely.

Family Dinner

Midway through a droll Tuesday, I got word that a friend was back in town after a month's hiatus from the steamy Nebraska summer. Small dinner plans grew to incorporate seven people and lots of pretty vegetables. I don't think anyone saw these eggplants before they became the brilliant mush that is ratatouille.

I pulled these carrots myself from my mom's garden. I must say, it was intensely gratifying even though I did nothing to care for these miniscule carrots before they went into the pot. I even improvised a tomato-cucumber-feta cheese salad that was by far the best use of backyard cucumbers yet.

Thai Cucumber Salad

I love change. People complain about Midwestern weather: extreme heat (right now) and extreme cold. I adore when it gets so hot you can't wait for the crisp cool of autumn, you're sick of cucumbers (though never tomatoes) and anticipate fall bonfires, hooded sweatshirts, crunchy leaves under the feet and soup. Then, wonder beyond wonders, you find yourself eager to see the first dancing flakes of snow to cover the trees. You want roasts and furry boots and snow angels more than anything until it's mid-February and minus 20 and all you can think about is something green. And before you know it, there you are again, longing for summer dresses and heat so all-encompassing you can barely breathe in.

I complain halfheartedly these days about having too many cucumbers. Too many cucumbers! What a blessing. Nothing could be more appropriately cool and crisp when it's 95 degrees outside. I've been forced to get creative with salads, and as of last night, I'm fresh out of produce. It helps when there are barbecues and "family" dinners to bring salads to. With this salad, I was hoping for something akin to this cucumber relish served alongside pretty much everything in Thailand. It's not quite right. The true Thai version is more syrupy and sweet. This was salty and sour with soy sauce and lime. Still good if not quite on target. The heat sated and the buzz of cicadas dulled enough to allow us enough relief to eat al fresco to say goodbye to Casey and happy birthday to Sean (who got a new smoker!).

Thai Cucumber Salad: from Chez Pim

2 large cucumbers (or 1 American-size, ginormous cucumber you neglected to harvest for a few days too many)

3/4 pound shrimps

bunch mint

bunch cilantro

green onions

for dressing:

1/4 cup fish sauce

3 tablespoons lime juice

2 tablespoons white-wine vinegar

1 teaspoon sugar (add extra to taste)

1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

Quarter and seed the cucumber and slice into discs. Add already cooked shrimps. Chop the cilantro and mint and toss with the cucumber and shrimp. Chop the green onions and fry in vegetable oil or sesame oil (because I'm fancy and have that) until crips but not burnt. Set aside.

To make the dressing, combine all the ingredients and whisk together. I let the dressing sit for a couple hours so the red-pepper flakes could infuse with the dressing. Then toss dressing over the salad and serve chilled.

Pickle Love

Years ago, if you asked me to name my favorite food, I would have said dill pickles. I still love the sterile and jarred cucumbers quite a bit. (I was at the Old Market's La Buvette a week or so ago and ate all their pickled mini gherkins before anyone else had the chance.) In fact, it's been four years now, but my 16-year-old sister Emily and I had our biggest and only fight over a pickle.

One of her friends gave her a big jar of whole dill pickles for her twelfth birthday. Whole pickles. The good kind. We only ever got kosher spears or chips in our house, so these were quite the treat. I got hungry for a snack one day while she was at school. Surveying the fridge, I went straight for the goods, thinking she wouldn't notice, and truthfully, she didn't say anything until the moment was right.

Later, we were arguing with my mom over who should get the cell phone the next day. Never had I ever had to share something with this sister 10 years my junior until I came back from Thailand and she had hajacked my phone. (Indeed, she was erasing my address book on the drive to the airport.) I came home early from Thailand, and she, the only (and thus coolest) sixth grader with a cell phone, found herself in joint custody of the electronic.

We were debating about who needed the phone more. Me: I need it in case someone calls me for a job interview. Emily: Brian asked if he could use my phone today, and I couldn't give it to him. Mom and I probably both laughed at that response and out of desperation she cried out, "You stole one of my pickles, too!" We argued on for a moment, and as mom says, I backed her into a corner with my superior wit at which point she shouted, "I hate you!" ran upstairs, slammed her door shut and wouldn't talk to me.

I ended up buying her another jar of pickles as a peace offering, and my dad went out and got her a new cell phone (insert comment about spoiled youngest children here). And that is the argument we still talk about today.

At the moment my garden is a hot freaking mess. There are uncontrollable weeds hiding behind a wall of thorns from a rose bush gone wild. The tomato plants are falling over on top of themselves and each other and everything (including that hideous gargoyle). The cucumber plant has grown into places I can't even reach and there is fruit hidden under practically every leaf. This week will be an exercise in the creative use of the cuke. One harvesting of cucumbers produced 10 pints of beautiful vinegary, dilly, salty pickles.

These pickles are actually supposed to brine for six weeks, but after a mixup with the proportions of vinegar and water and salt, I went ahead a sampled the pickles just to make sure. Once I sampled, oh, I just couldn't stop. There's an audible crunch when biting into the chips; they just reak of freshness. And I just love the pucker of the vinegar. My mouth is starting to water just thinking about it.

Pickles: recipe thanks to my friend Caitlin O'Hare
quart jars
cucumbers (the pickling variety have thinner skin, great for soaking in the brine)
1 scant teaspoon dill weed
1 garlic clove, peeled
3/4 cup apple-cider vinegar
2 tablespoons fine kosher salt (or pickling salt)
1/8 teaspoon alum

Arrange half the cucumbers in the quart jars. Add the dill and garlic clove (I chopped them into a couple smaller pieces). Fill the jar the rest of the way with cukes. Pour in the vinegar, salt and alum, which serves to keep the cukes crispy. Fill the jar the rest of the way with cold water. Put the lid on and shake it up, making sure the salt dissolves. Brine in the fridge for six weeks (or you know, a week--I chopped mine so I figured the flavoring didn't have to go through the skin before soaking the cucumber with goodness). These pickles need to stay in the fridge because they are sealed or properly sterilized for that sort of thing.

Food Porn

It has been blazes hot lately. Fortunately, by the time you all are reading this, I'll be wearing a fleece in Juneau, Alaska. It's days followed by days followed by days like these that make me appreciative of pools and air conditioning. We didn't have the ac on in the apartment until I caved last Tuesday. I was making dinner with some friends right before Simon left to go home to Innsbruck, Austria. It had to be hotter than 100 degrees in my apartment with the stovetop fired up. Dan popped the window open as wide as it could go, I grabbed another fan and the three boys took their shirts off. Let me repeat that last part: The boys took their shirts off to reveal their sweating not-at-all-unattractive bodies. That's enough to raise the temperature a few degrees itself.

I recreated a pasta dish that my friend Amy had made for a potluck, teaching Justin some basics of cooking (like using whole, fresh garlic and salting pasta water). My pasta didn't turn out as good as Amy's, but the watermelon-tomato salad was just as good as it was last year. I have some more pictures from the evening, but it feels like I'm exploiting my friends' bodies to get attention to my blog, so I'll just post one picture. The sun was going down and we hadn't yet turned on any lights (but had flicked on the air). All I could see were dark silhouettes of glistening bodies in the glare of the sun.

Pasta with Garlic Lemon Sauce: from Cooks.com

1 pound penne, linguini or larger pasta (spaghetti was not the best choice)

2 cloves garlic

2 zucchinis or yellow squashes, diced

zest of a lemon

4 tablespoons butter

1 cup heavy cream

salt and pepper

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1 cup parmesan cheese

juice from a lemon

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Cook pasta according to instructions. Drain.

Melt the butter in a pan on medium heat. Saute the garlic, squash and lemon zest until vegetables are softened. Add the cream, salt and pepper, and nutmeg. Reduce heat and saute until cooked through--3 to 5 minutes. Throw in the noodles and toss to coat with sauce. Add parmesan and lemon juice, stir to combine and serve.

Baguette Success

Despite all self-sabataging efforts, this baguette came out just barely shy of pefection. (This picture is bad and I couldn't get those beautiful slits in the top of the loafs--that is all.) It was crispy on the outside, soft on the inside and salty. The French are genius, and apparently, I am too. I have tried my hand at making bread countless times. Countless. The only time I've ever made yeast bread that was even edible was this idiot-proof bread from Sullivan Street Bakery in New York. Other times I've burned them, but most often they refuse to rise and end up more akin to a cement block. This French baguette, my friends, is a true success. I have been trying for literally years (seriously--I used to make yeast bread weekly when I lived with my parents) to achieve this, and I can't even believe it happened because I did not follow the directions. 

They say that's the rule with baking: There are rules and they must be followed. Cooking allows much more improvisation (and room for error). But substitute olive oil for butter in a cake and you're screwed. The problem with bread is waiting. The bread has to rise (in the right climate) for a certain period of time. Well the World Cup and the rest of my social life took precedence over kneading bread after it had risen one hour. And when I did end up kneading, the dough was so gummy and gooey I thought for sure it would just melt in the oven. I obviously know nothing about proper bread making because I thought all those other times would work out, and they ended in complete and utter failure. It felt imminent this time. Certain death of good yeast. I guess I know a lot less about life and love and bread than I thought I did.

Baguette: from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook

(to come)

Rustic Tea Cake

List of awesome things that happened this weekend:

dancing in the park with Justin, James and Katie

watching boys climb trees and Celtic crosses

running through the sprinklers after Shakespeare on the Green

going to the farmer's market with Dan

sipping lemonade on the curb while watching a zydeco band

baking and cooking all afternoon

pool parties

yard games

Amy's pasta with garlic and lemon sauce

sitting on the back porch

learning to lead climb

Espana gana!!!!

I barely woke up in time to make it to the farmer's market on Saturday. I hadn't planned on going, but it just felt right. Thankfully Dan agreed to go with me--it's much more fun with friends. We wandered around while I tried not to buy more vegetables than one person would be able to eat. This adorable French man was selling plums hardly larger than a grape for $3. I couldn't resist them or his accent. He threw in some chives and peppery parsley.

Dan had never tried plums--can you believe it! I love trying new things and especially introducing others to new things, but had I known it was his first I would have picked a different plum. These were more tart than usual and the skin was a touch bitter. The bitterness really came out in the tea cake I made later. Not enough to ruin things. In fact, I love the recipe for this batter. I dug through a dozen old issues of Gourmet to find the right one filed under rustic fruit desserts. The cake was really dense, almost crusty but not dry. I don't even know what to compare it to.

Stone Fruit Tea Cake: from Rustic Fruit Desserts

2 1/4 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup sugar

3/4 cup butter

3 eggs

1 tablespoon vanilla

2 1/2 cups coarsely chopped stone fruit

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt. Set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar until fluffy. Add the eggs and mix, one at a time. Add the vanilla, mix. Blend in the flour in two batches and mix until it is just combined. Lay out batter on a piece of plastic wrap and form into a gooey circle about 1/2 inch thick. Throw into the freezer for 30 minutes just so it's not so melty--you don't want or need it to get completely frozen.

Remove from fridge and preheat oven to 350. Divide the batter in half and press the larger half into a 9-inch fluted tart pan. Arrange the stone fruit on top of the batter. Then rip off bite-size chunks of batter from the other half and arrange on top of the stone fruit. Bake for 30 minutes until the top is golden brown and hard.