FOOD ON THE FOOD

Chi v. Cheesecake

Now that the kids are back in school, I really need to get going on this manuscript of mine. According to the schedule I drafted for myself, I need to develop 10 awesome dessert recipes each month to meet my deadline. That's 2-3 recipes finalized per week. *gulp*

I'm not panicking. It'll be a piece of cake. One hundred and twenty pieces of cake each month, if my calculations are correct, and that's not including pie and cookies! Which brings me to my next important goal: exercise. If I am to maintain my girlish figure in the face of constant sugary temptation, I need to do more than run once a week for a few months out of the year. I need a routine. Peer pressure, if possible. Hence, I've rejoined the YMCA after a 6-year hiatus.

I've made good use of the pool, so far. TeenNiece, who has returned to her island state, gave me lots of good pointers this summer. My strokes aren't breaking any speed records, but it's how I feel that counts, right? And, frankly, I feel like a goddamn mermaid. (Swimming laps adjacent to water aerobics for the elderly does a lot to boost one's self-esteem.)

I've also been tempted by several aerobics classes (non-aquatic) listed on the fall schedule. Zumba, for example, seems like just the kind of embarrassing dance- based workout I can really get behind. The more embarrassing, the better, I say! Then there's Pilates. I still don't know what that is, but I guess now would be a good time to find out. My friends think I should take yoga. Ninety-nine percent of them think yoga is the best thing ever. What kind of a person ignores the advice of 99% of her friends? A mule-ish one, I suppose. What can I say? Yoga goes against every fiber of my being with its core components: breathing, stretching, and peace of mind. Whenever I'm in a painfully awkward yoga pose, instead of maintaining a clear and focused breath, I wonder who invented this excruciating torture and how much I'd like to punch them in the face. That possibly defeats the purpose of yoga.

No, I've always been more of a martial arts kind of girl. Karate. Kickboxing. Kung fu. Controlled thrashing, but thrashing nonetheless.

Wait, what's this I see? Tai chi on Wednesdays? Slow, controlled thrashing in the form of an embarrassing dance routine?

I think we have a winner!!

 

P.S. The recipe for that cheesecake in the photo above (almond cheesecake with fig confiture) can be found here. You can bet that one will be in the cookbook!

Kind of Blue

On vacation last week, we got a hot tip that there were pick-your-own blueberries nearby. I was expecting a few neglected bushes in someone's yard well picked over by birds or maybe a row of anemic branches covered in netting. But, I tell you, these were the most beautiful blueberry bushes I have ever seen. More than 30 years old and two dozen strong, the bushy branches were dripping with fruit and raindrops, full of the wild flavor I remember from canoeing in New Hampshire as a kid, picking berries along the pond's edge. 

We picked five pounds of blueberries, and then we came back a few days later and picked five more! At $1.50/lb., you'd be a fool not to. Back at the lake house, I made blueberry pie, blueberry cobbler, and, now that I'm back home, blueberry cake. It seemed excessive at the time, but I could use another 10 lbs. right about now. Call me greedy.

If you're inclined to make impromptu pie in an unfamiliar kitchen with whatever ingredients are on hand, here's what I did: Mixed 2 cups flour with a tablespoon of sugar and a teaspoon of salt. Cut in 12 Tbsp. unsalted butter. Diluted buttermilk with ice cubes and a little cold water, and added a little over 1/2 cup, until the dough was just moist enough to hold together but not wet. I divided the mixture into two slightly uneven parts, kneaded them a few times, and formed them into two disks. Then I wrapped them in plastic wrap and refrigerated them for a couple of hours while I went for a swim.

Later, I preheated the oven to 425°F. I scooped out a heaping-pie-dish-worth of blueberries and dumped them into a large bowl with 1/2 cup sugar, a tablespoon of cornstarch, a few shakes of cinnamon, and a few squeezes of lemon juice strained through my fingers to catch the seeds. I stirred that gently, and then rolled out the larger disk of dough to fit the pie plate. I dumped in the blueberry mixture, rolled out the smaller dough disk, and draped it over the blueberries. After tucking the edges underneath, crimping them, and cutting steam vents, I brushed the top with buttermilk. Into the top third of the oven it went for 20 minutes, then I reduced the heat to 375°F for about 20 minutes more. Maybe less. I always forget that pies with top crusts cook quicker than those with drafty lattice crusts.

We ate our slices warm with vanilla ice cream and at least one child licked his bowl clean, the ultimate compliment. Not my kids, though. My kids won't eat pie! Can you believe that??

Anyway, there aren't any pictures of the pie. I was on vacation, goddamnit!

Opportunistic Mushrooming in New York

We just got back from our last vacation of the summer at our friend's lake house on the New York-Pennsylvania line. There was some rain, some lightning, a little hail—but not for the whole week like last year. We were very grateful to see the sun for most of the trip, and the rain offered a side benefit for at least one of us:

Mushrooms by the dozens! They were EVERYWHERE. Giant, storybook mushrooms that could shelter several small creatures underneath at once. See those brown oak leaves under there? Those are normal-sized oak leaves. It's the mushroom that's super-sized. Here's another view:

Notice my friend standing back there? That's the scale we're talking about for some of these. I was in mushroom heaven.

Some had warty, spotted caps:

These look like some kind of poisonous amanita.

Some had smooth caps:

I kind of wonder if this is an edible king bolete (Boletus edulis), also known as porcini or cep. It was growing under conifers and had pores instead of gills. I love porcinis, but they make me ill, so I wasn't about to take any chances even if I was sure I identified it right (which I wasn't).

There were tiny ones, too.

I have no idea what that is, but I think the next one is the famous reishi mushroom, so well regarded in Eastern medicine.

There were tons of these deep red mushrooms jutting out of the tree trunks like lacquered shelves.

This next one, though, I'm almost positive is a Destroying Angel (Amanita virosa):

If so, it will kill you. It will kill you dead. If you stop vomiting for even one second over a five-day period, it's only because the complete and utter destruction of your liver is well underway. Seriously, guys, there are better ways to get attention. One of the identifying characteristics of this mushroom is a swollen cup-like base, also known as a volva (not to be confused with a similar-sounding word). You need to dig around down there to see it, but it's there. This mushroom often has a ring around the upper stem, though this one did not. I don't mess around with dangerous mushrooms like this one, but I think it's important to be able to recognize them. Know thy enemy.

Other mushrooms I found: a tree volvariella, which looks just like a destroying angel but grows out of a wound in a tree trunk instead of the ground. We also saw what looked like some oyster mushrooms growing just a few feet above it on the same tree. This was interesting to me because I thought only one fungus would fruit on a single tree trunk at a time. For example, I count on only shiitakes growing on my shiitake logs for several years. This is another reason why I feel it's important to know about wild mushrooms.

Am I boring you?

Okay, we'll stop here for now. FYI: I'm a little behind on my e-mails and comments, but, yes, I'm still collecting recipe-testers for my cookbook.  If you're offering, I'm accepting. I'll be in touch soon!

Marriage Bonds

For our 11th anniversary, Husband and I went out for a lovely meal at Bondir, Jason Bond's farmhouse-chic restaurant in Inman Square, Cambridge. By mid-meal, Husband and I were engaged in a semi-heated discussion about the definition of stubbornness. Husband likes to call me stubborn and I like to take it as a compliment.

Him: Stubbornness is not a compliment. It has a negative connotation.

Me: Yes, but in certain circumstances it can serve you well. Like if you're working against the odds to get something done. If you don't possess a certain amount of stubbornness, you give up long before it takes to succeed.

Him: No, that's persistence. That's different.

Me: They both come from the exact same place.

Him: Persistence is a positive trait and stubbornness is bad.

Me: You can't have one without the other.

Him: They're two different sides of a coin.

Me: Then we agree. Two sides of the same coin.

Him: You are so stubborn.

Me: Thank you!

Him: It's not a compliment! Do you remember your donkey at the Grand Canyon?

Me: Of course I remember that fucking donkey. Trinity was his name. He kept stopping to munch on the desert grass on the edge of the steep switchbacks, then he'd get way behind and have to sprint to catch up. Donkeys can't sprint. He nearly heaved me into the canyon a dozen times.

Him: See? That's stubbornness. Not persistence.

Me: I'm sure that donkey has triumphed over adversity many a time and now he's retired in Mexico.

Him: Do you see how stubborn you are? I'm going to see if the chef has a dictionary.

Me: Oooooo, a dictionary! I'm sooooo scared!

Him: You refuse to acknowledge I'm right.

Me: But we agree. Stubbornness can be good if you trace it back to its root.

Him: We don't agree!

Do you see any irony here? Any irony at all?

 

Trouble in the Fruit Bowl

On Monday, I went to make lunch for the 5YO and when I reached for a peach from the fruit bowl, I was surprised to find bite marks in not one, but all three peaches. Not human-sized bite marks, if you get what I'm saying.

I proceeded to freak out quietly while calling up the neighbor to come over and help me determine if this was a mouse we were dealing with or something bigger.  We went with mouse simply so I wouldn't lose control of my bowels. I flung the peaches into the compost (painful since they were perfectly ripe and delicious), and then placed an urgent request for Husband to return that evening with mousetraps. We tried to go about our business as usual, but when I returned to the kitchen a few hours later, there was a big bite out of a plum!

I dragged the 5YO out of the house to the relative safety of the mosquito-and-poison-ivy-infested yard. I immediately updated the neighbors. The neighbor boy, also age 5, had a few possible theories about this. One was that one of our cats had come back from the dead with a hankering for the sweet taste of earth fruit. Not impossible, I said, but if it were Mr. Nathan, he would have done it in plain sight, dispensing with any complicated guerilla tactics in favor of guilty looks. And if the zombie cat in question happened to be Sidney, her bites would have been taken out of me. The second hypothesis was that Husband didn't want to go to work, so he hid in the basement all day until he got really hungry and had to come up for a snack. This was actually a very plausible scenario—except for the fruit. No, it wouldn't have been fruit, it would have been a spicy chicken sandwich.

So as not to tip off Husband in case he was indeed the culprit, I snuck off to the hardware store myself to procure all manner of traps and snares, then deployed them on the sly. The next morning, I was very relieved to find no husbands or partially decomposed pets inside. There was, however, a large, plump mouse (not a rat—it had a furry tail). I like to think she died quickly and happily, with a belly full of fruit and the triumph of her unexpected peanut butter discovery still fresh in her mind. I had a harder time reconciling the three smaller ones. : (

But, hey, that's life. Let that be a lesson to the rest of the vermin: Stay out of my fruit bowl. Now I have to go triple-sterilize that thing.

Ratatouille: Summer Vegetable Stew

To continue my series on vegetable dishes that I make all the time but never document, here is my recipe for ratatouille.  There aren't many completely meatless meals that show up on my table—let's be honest—but this is one of them. Basically a rainbow of stewed summer vegetables, this rustic French dish is perfectly homey if a bit homely. Lately, I've been serving it over brown rice, letting the garlicky tomato sauce soak in to temper the whole-graininess, but it can be a side dish, too. Fresh thyme and basil keep the flavors bright. This is "food on the food" at its best/worst. Your CSA zucchini and eggplants will thank you for it, but your kids most certainly will not!

Ratatouille

This takes about an hour and a half from start to finish (if you prep your other veggies while the eggplant and zucchini are draining). A fair amount of that time is at the stove so I wouldn't attempt this during a heat wave, but the nights have been cooling off recently...

1 medium eggplant (or two of those skinny ones you get in your farmshare), cut into 3/4-inch cubes
6 Tbsp. olive oil
2 onions, halved and sliced
2 smallish zucchini, cut into 3/4-inch cubes
2 lbs. tomatoes, halved, seeded, and chopped into cubes (or two medium cans diced tomatoes in juice)
6-8 cloves garlic, peeled and mashed into smallish pieces by pounding on the side of a knife
1 bay leaf
1/2 tsp. chopped fresh thyme
Fresh basil leaves, sliced into ribbons
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Place eggplant cubes in a colander and sprinkle with a few pinches of kosher salt. Set a smaller bowl on top to weigh them down and place zucchini into that bowl, also sprinkling with salt. Let sit half an hour. In small handfuls with a clean kitchen towel, give them a gentle squeeze to dry them (I don't rinse the salt--I just add less at the end).

Heat 2 Tbsp. of olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat and lightly brown onions, about 6-8 minutes. With a slotted spoon, transfer onions to a bowl, reserving oil. Heat another 2 Tbsp. olive oil and lightly brown the zucchini, stirring occasionally. Transfer zucchini to the bowl of onions. Add another 2 Tbsp. oil and cook the eggplant until lightly brown, tossing every few minutes.

Return the zucchini and onions to the pan with the eggplant, and add the tomatoes, garlic, bay leaf, thyme, a few pinches of salt, and black pepper. Simmer 20-30 minutes over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are tender but not mushy. Discard bay leaf. Season to taste with pepper and perhaps a bit more salt. Serve over brown rice and sprinkle with ribbons of basil. Serves 4-6.

Local Sources:

Eggplant, zucchini, onions, garlic, tomatoes, basil: Waltham Fields, Community Farm, Waltham, MA

I Brake for Mushrooms!

Right before I went on vacation, I found my first hen of the woods mushroom!  The formidable fungus was thriving on the grounds of Garden in the Woods in Framingham, a boreal wonderland of native plants run by the New England Wild Flower Society.  I recognized the edible shroom right away.  Once you try something that delicious, you never forget it. The contours are indelibly imprinted on your brain. I couldn't take it home, of course, but it was fun to spot it in the wild nonetheless!

I was still basking in my mushroom triumph on the way to the Cape when TeenNiece, whom I've been unable to convince that fungus is anything but disgusting, made the casual observation that none of the other bicycles fastened to the various vacation-bound vehicles had milk crates strapped to the backs of them.  Only mine.  She complimented me on my uber-stylish "mushroom basket," which I'd never used in that capacity before, but, now that she mentioned it, is a FANTASTIC IDEA!  Then, right on cue, Husband launched into his very entertaining impersonation of me identifying mushrooms, characterized by bold, arrogant pronouncements coupled with a complete and utter lack of care.  He has a knack for coming up with the most unflattering voices that sound nothing like me but are somehow so funny that you simply have to accept them on the basis of their being 100% wrong. 

The mushroom-related torment continued for much of the week, especially since the yard of the cottage we rent was completely overrun with fungus (mostly inedible russulas and poison puffballs by my estimation, and there goes Husband with his voices again).  But the mobile mushroom basket?  That was pure genius.  I'll bring my pocketknife along on bike rides, collect any large mushroom specimens I find, then wheel my way back home distributing spores along the way.  Why didn't I think of that??