When I signed up for fitness boot camp, I had no idea that I'd also be expected to follow a new eating regimen. Six am workouts sounded rigorous enough, but come to find out, this is about more than sit-ups, squats, and sprints. Alcohol, fried food, and sweets are all outlawed during the 30-day program, and we campers are to eat five to six small meals, each packing some protein and carbs, every day.
Everything in me rebels against depriving myself of any kind of gustatory pleasure, but it really wouldn't hurt to give my heart and liver a break from butter and booze. I do wonder, though, how well I will be able to stick to the 6 meal per day plan.
In theory, this is the part I like the most about the regimen. I can imagine that it would be much easier on the digestive system, and would also curb cravings to some degree. it just sounds so difficult to plan so many little menus. Just after noon on Day 2, I'm three meals in, wondering how I'll segment the other half of lunch and the two halves of dinner. Does anybody out there manage to stick to this kind of routine day after day? I'd love to hear about people's experiences of it.
This weekend, I'm hosting a casual dinner reception following a friend's fiction reading. In the past, I've used Evite and Facebook to create invitations, but the number of responses has been increasingly dismal, so I tried sending an email this time. Out of 40 invitees, only 11 have RSVP'd so far, despite a special request for replies so that I would know how much food to cook.
As a frequent hostess, I find this to be one of the most annoying side effects of the digital age. It's easier to RSVP by email or Facebook than by phone or snail mail, yet most people don't bother. Yet it's still just as wasteful to buy and cook food that nobody eats, and just as embarrassing to run out if extra people show up.
What's a hostess to do? Do I simply delete the incommunicado among my acquaintance from future guest lists? Send nagging emails? Or must I switch back to paper invites if I want to guarantee a courteous reply? Also, I'd be interested to know whether others face this issue, or whether my friends just happen to be particularly ill-mannered.
Last month in the New York Times, Melissa Clark published a recipe for broccoli with shrimp roasted in the same pan and described how bite-size pieces of chicken thighs would cook in the same amount of time, too. I tried the chicken idea with cauliflower, and the results were very nice. Since then, roasting protein and veggies together has been my go-to method for no-fuss cooking.
Recently, I was inspired by two recipes in Gourmet's "Every Day" section: Roasted Pacific Cod with Spring Vegetables and Mint and Provençal Chicken and Tomato Roast. I swiped the cod from the first and the tomatoes from the second and threw in capers instead of the black olives that the second recipe called for. The fish and the tomato mixture were cooked perfectly at the same time. This is a tasty, simple recipe that I'm sure to reprise. The method is after the jump.
Yesterday brought a rare treat to Atlanta: a real, steady, robust snowfall. The flakes were fat puffs, not icy almost-hail, and much of it stuck. Growing up, I missed school only once every year or two for a true snow day, but when I did, my mother did it up right. Our family ate our traditional snow-day breakfast of light-as-air fritters with syrup, and after a day of snowball fights and sledding on a nearby golf course, we were treated to ice cream made from fresh powder.
In case you've known no such delight, I'll tell you how to recreate this quintessential childhood treat. First, you want to gather a couple quarts of untouched new-fallen snow. If you're expecting snow, you can put out a receptacle to gather it for you. Immediately, gingerly mix in about a half a cup of ice-cold whole milk or half-and-half into which you've dissolved a quarter cup of sugar, and stir in a teaspoon of vanilla extract. And that's it: no freezing, no churning. A quick Google search reveals that my mother's recipe is the most common, but Paula Deen offers a slightly different version with condensed milk instead of milk and sugar. That makes good sense to me, too.
You could try some easy flavor experiments, too. If you use chocolate milk instead of regular and add a splash of cold espresso, you've got mocha ice cream. Fresh-squeezed lemon or orange juice would make a lovely creamsicle-like flavor. Cinnamon, ginger, and cocoa also make lovely additions. Snow ice-cream is ultra-light, so I'd caution against heavy mix-ins like nuts or cookies; better to stick with liquid and powdered flavorings. Make the most of this long winter!
Inspired by fellow Slashfoodie Monika Bartyzel's recent post on using ingredients we already have, I decided to cook up a few of the many grains I've hoarded over the past few months...okay, more than just a few months. There's no other kind of food I buy more compulsively. Stone-ground grits, hard red wheat flour, orzo, coarse polenta, pasta in a variety of shapes, fregola sarda - shall I go on?
The starch closest to my heart, though, may be jasmine brown rice. I first learned of this lovely product during a charmed encounter at Bangkok Center Grocery, a jewel box of Thai ingredients in Manhattan's Chinatown. Another customer, a Thai lady, had taken an interest in me because she saw that I was buying ingredients to make my own curry paste and, after I had paid, she, along with her equally winsome Chinese friend, urged me to buy a shrinkwrapped bag of jasmine brown rice imported from Thailand. The price of the rice alone did not meet the credit card minimum, and I had no cash, but the store owner saw my distress at turning down the ladies' recommendation, and he let me take the rice on credit.
"Pay next time," he said. In Manhattan. And I a first-time customer. I thought that only happened to valued clients in tiny towns.
I gave away most of my foodstuffs when I moved from Atlanta to New York, but I did transport a half-empty bag of jasmine brown rice (pictured). Like regular jasmine rice, it cooks up to be fragrant and fluffy, nutty and chewy - perhaps even nuttier and chewier due to its being brown. The method for and a picture of my pilaf - not very Thai at all, mind you - follows the jump.
Put me in a good bagel shop, and my normally adventuresome spirit will take its leave and wait outside for me to finish my perennial order of an everything or egg bagel, lox, and scallion cream cheese. This salty breakfast leaves nothing to be desired, and very rarely do I pass it up for more novel but potentially less reliable fare.
This morning, though, curiosity got the better of me as I studied the menu of Goldberg's Deli and Bagels, by a long shot the best bagelry in Atlanta and probably the best one south of the Mason-Dixon line. The cinnamon-sugar matzoh brei almost tempted me, but I wanted savory, so I decided to try kippers and onions for the first time. I'm so glad I did.
Think of kippers and onions as a more hardcore cousin to lox and scallions - similar flavors, but more concentrated. A kipper is a herring that has been split down the back, brined, and hot or cold smoked (in the photo, the kippers are about to be smoked). At Goldberg's, a few kippers are grilled (probably more like griddled) alongside some diced onions. This is nothing like Scandinavian-style pickled or mustard herring. It's definitely still fishy and briney, but for me, that's hardly a deal breaker.
If you like anchovies on your pizza or your salade nicoise, you ought to give kippers and onions a sporting try. Also, the word "kipper" is pretty fun to say.
Some people daydream about their fairytale wedding, or about competing on American Idol, or hitting a hole-in-one at St. Andrews. Me, I daydream about opening a catering boutique, or a dinner party academy, or a mail-order business selling homemade artisanal something or other. None of these fantasies will come to fruition.
But some of you might really want to do something like this. Market those peanut butter-and-bacon cookies you've perfected, or teach the world to recreate Guadeloupian delicacies in their own kitchens. If the only thing that's stopping you is the (very) high price of tailoring your home kitchen to sanitation-law specifications, you might research whether there is a communal kitchen rental space in your area.
In many cities, there are now commercial-grade kitchens available for rental by the day, week, or month. Most provide some kind of dry and cold storage. Otherwise, the offerings vary; in some, like Mi Kitchen es su Kitchen in NYC, you can teach a cooking class, while at others, like Shared Kitchens in the Atlanta area, you can only cook products that will be packaged and sold (different licenses govern each, and laws vary by state). Commercial Kitchen Rental, a blog, lists a couple dozen all over the country. Depending on the needs of your budding business, this could be something that will greatly reduce your overhead and allow you to launch at last.
Let me first say that I am not proud. I am not proud of having bought a bag of pre-cut broccoli and cauliflower florets in the first place. Broccoli and cauliflower are ridiculously easy to slice up, so I realize that the slight convenience is hardly worth the markup. Next, I'm not proud of waiting until brown spots had appeared on the veggies to cook them up. But I was hungry, so I pared those brown parts right off and quickly disposed of the evidence.
Then it was time to cook, and things were looking up. I decided to douse them with spices and roast them until they were, well, browned again, but in a good way this time. When I shook them around the pan halfway through, I was sure I'd overdone the spices. But once they were finished cooking, the spices had formed a savory partial crust over the florets, making for a splendid side. Redemption was mine.
Here's the method:
3 cups broccoli and cauliflower florets 3 tablespoons olive oil Salt and pepper 1 teaspoon ground cumin 1 teaspoon ground coriander
Preheat oven to 425º. In a bowl, toss veggie florets with remaining ingredients. Spread in a single layer on a sheet pan and roast, stirring halfway through the cooking, about 20 minutes or until veggies have begun to brown and spices form a crust.
I typically use recipes in one of two ways. In the best case scenario, I consult a recipe before I shop so that even if I choose to tweak things a bit, I'm at least starting with all the appropriate raw materials. But then there are those evenings when it's chilly outside or I'm just feeling too lazy to shop, and I need a recipe that makes use of whatever's in the fridge, freezer, and pantry.
Last night was the second scenario. I had a pack of chicken thighs thawing but no plan for them. At first I printed out a recipe for chicken divan, knowing full well that I would have to substitute 2-percent milk for the cream and whole milk. Then I realized that I'd accidentally bought bone-in thighs. The thought of carving up chicken thighs to make a casserole sounded like a major pain. I remembered a recent charmed encounter with lamb biryani takeout, so I looked up some recipes for a chicken version online.
Most had a laundry list of ingredients, but then I found a very simple preparation on Mark Bittman's blog, Bitten. I still didn't have everything on the list: no fresh ginger, no saffron, no basmati. His recipe calls for a whole cut-up chicken; I figured the thighs would substitute nicely.
I added some curry powder in place of the missing spices, and threw in a pinch of fragrant dried spearmint leaves. I think whole cardamom pods are probably pretty integral to biryani (though I think the ten he calls for is a few too many), but then again, saffron and basmati probably are, too. The point is that you can work with the spices, and the kind of rice, and the cuts of chicken you have, and this ambrosial casserole will warm you right up.
In revisiting the classics of food writing, I was reminded recently of a novel idea from that paragon of unfussy good taste, M.F.K. Fisher, whose major works are collected in the volume The Art of Eating, pictured. In a not-entirely uncharacteristically self-congratulatory tone, Fisher recounts a dinner she planned at a restaurant for an eminent epicure and tells of how, to her guest of honor's great approbation, she arranged the entire menu ahead of time instead of spending time at table ordering from the menu. Apparently, this was at one time not uncommon practice. I've certainly never encountered it, though, and while one would be denying one's dinner guests their choice of menu items, there is a certain practical wisdom in it.
I, for one, am always thrilled if a fellow diner, who is knowledgeable about food in general and about what a given restaurant does best, takes charge of ordering for the table. I'm not the least bit fussy as an eater, so it's a relief sometimes to be saved the effort of deciding, and better yet, often I'm pleasantly surprised by something that I wouldn't normally order myself. But even when someone steps in to order everything, there is still the interruption of relaying those wishes to the waitstaff. In Fisher's model for hosting a dinner out, nobody forgets what they were talking about before the waiter interjected with "Have you made any decisions?" The party is saved from that all-too-common problem of saying you need another minute and then not seeing the waiter again for more like fifteen minutes.
The effect, as I imagine it, would be to transform the restaurant experience into something much closer to the atmosphere of a dinner party at home (minus the dirty dishes), when, after all, the host has also determined the menu ahead of time. How relaxing, and how uncommonly pleasant.
Lately, I've been revisiting some of my very favorite food literature, reveling in the beauty of the prose and refreshing my memory of the timeless kitchen wisdom of writers like Richard Olney, Laurie Colwin, and, most exuberantly, Julia Child. Her posthumously published memoir, My Life in France, is a classic after a little under three years on the shelves. If you haven't yet read it, I envy you the delight of your first encounter with it.
The pages are studded with literary gems, but the most resonant (and hard to follow) piece of advice for me is this admonition: No matter how a dish turns out, do not pan (excuse the pun) your own food to your guests. Are you guilty of this? I certainly am.
It's so easy to slip into the habit. "The sauce is thinner than I intended." "You may have to add salt; I never season enough." "Sorry for the burnt taste. This is my first attempt at a Bacon Explosion." When I'm in the guest's chair, I'm fully aware that all this apology and self-deprecation comes off as a desperate plea for praise. But as a cook, it's all too tempting to take every opportunity to remind whomever's eating my less-than-perfect cuisine that I can actually do much better.
If someone keeps telling me that her mouth is too big for her face, eventually I'll probably accept it as fact whereas I never would have noticed on my own. Similarly, if you tell me you used a heavy hand with the cumin, that's all I'll taste. Unless we tell them, nobody but we cooks will ever know what the dish was supposed to taste like, so let's all try to bite our tongues and let our guests enjoy what we've quite generously prepared for them.
Throwing an Oscar party? Need a party activity to keep guests entertained during all the boring awards? How about a movie-themed cupcake decorating contest? For this idea, I'm taking a page from my friends Jamie and Sarah's playbook: For their Super Bowl party, they mixed up buttercream icing tinted with Steelers and Cardinals colors, and during halftime we festooned delicious chocolate cupcakes with helmets, logos, and footballs. Some particularly artistic examples are pictured.
This idea would translate easily to an Oscar party. Options abound: you could ice one with an Oscar statuette, or you could decorate one with a best- or worst-dressed star. Give Mickey Rourke a facelift! Better yet, take inspiration from the movies nominated. Make sure to mix up black icing for the nuns' habits in Doubt (not to mention Richard Nixon's suit). Gooey icing should allow for an evocative interpretation of Two Face in The Dark Knight. And even though the Academy didn't give it the props many think it deserved, Wall-E ought to inspire some stellar cupcake art. One tip I learned from Jamie and Sarah: provide toothpicks for the fine detail work, like getting the Joker's makeup to bleed into his facial creases just so. And then eat up!
You've got just over three weeks left to submit a paper for the next Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery. The symposium was co-founded by Alan Davidson, whose name you may recognize from the spine of your copy of Oxford Companion to Food, which, if you are indeed a budding food historian, should certainly occupy a few inches on your bookshelf. Each year, food experts gather in, well, Oxford, England, to explore from every angle some theme in food history. The theme for 2009 is "Food and Language."
Anyone with a deep interest in food history may submit a paper (no later than March 15). If your paper is chosen, you get to attend this veritable who's who of the food world, with the added bonus of partaking in the culinary offerings of Raymond Blanc of Michelin-starred Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons in England. Oh, and you have to present your ideas and respond to questions.
Check out the website as nothing I could say in this abbreviated space would do justice to the incredible range of scholarship presented at past symposia. And no, I've never been. Nor have I yet divined a topic for this year, even though I couldn't hope for a richer and more personally arresting topic than "Food and Language." But there's still time for me, and for you!
Recipes abound for quick, innovative main dishes. Much fewer are ideas for interesting but not too intensive vegetable sides. I tend to get stuck in a rut, always preparing the same veggies the same way. Often, inspiration comes less from cookbooks or websites than from friends. This was the case recently when I overheard a my friend Isabel's mother, Carol, describe a cabbage recipe while on the phone with her husband. My ears perked up when she mentioned poppy seeds, which I've never seen paired with cabbage, but which immediately seemed to make sense. Part of Carol's ancestry is from Hungary, and there cabbage is sauteed and tossed with more than a dash of poppy seeds. Sometimes apples are in the mix, and often the cooked cabbage is tossed with a roughly equal amount of cooked egg noodles. Carol also explained that cottage cheese is frequently mixed in to make the dish richer and creamy.
Last night, I needed a quick dish to accompany a grilled leg quarter leftover from a Super Bowl party I attended. A few days before, I'd bought a head of cabbage specifically so that I could make the Hungarian dish. I had no apples, cottage cheese, or egg noodles, though, so a healthy dose of poppy seeds (two tablespoons for one head of cabbage) was the primary adornment for the cabbage, which I'd roughly shredded and browned along with a sliced onion in a tablespoon each of butter and olive oil. I also added a liberal sprinkle of black pepper and a tablespoon of sugar, and, of course, salt to taste. The dish is yummy, unusual (for me, at least), and very easy to prepare. I can't wait to try all the variations of this Hungarian delight.
I've never been the type to insist that no two foods on my plate touch each other. Whether it's pancake syrup leaking onto the bacon or cornbread crumbs in my turnip greens, I love for the mingling of ingredients to continue even after the cooking ends. Yet all my life, I ate each piece on a kebab separately. I just didn't know better--until last summer.
At a tiny, unassuming restaurant called Çiya Kebap near the Asian banks of Istanbul, a knowing waiter, kindly sensing our ignorance, took a few moments to show my mother and me how a kebab ought to be eaten. He'd just set before us a tantalizing skewer of ground lamb, charred eggplant and red onion, nearly liquid tomato, and sweet-hot chili--but in less than a minute, he mashed everything together so thoroughly that the components were hardly recognizable. Then he sprinkled a spice blend called baharat over all of it and instructed us (nonverbally, since we couldn't speak the same language) to mop up portions of the mash with the paper-thin flatbread stacked alongside.
Turns out Çiya Kebap, along with two other Çiya restaurants with different menus located just steps away, is world famous. If I'd eaten my kebab in my usual manner, I wouldn't have any clue what the fuss was all about. Instead, I experienced some of the most revelatory mouthfuls in recent memory. The splendor of the combined flavors would be impossible to exaggerate, even with words like "symphony" and "revelation."
Of course, a kebab anywhere, not just in Istanbul, would benefit from such intervention. The key is to glob everything together. Don't be too dainty about it, and don't worry about appearances. Just enjoy the big sloppy mess, and spread the word.
We can change the way we make eggs -- scrambled, poached, fried -- but what about changing the eggs themselves? Mix up your scrambling routine with quail eggs.
When I signed up for fitness boot camp, I had no idea that I'd also be expected to follow a new eating regimen. Six am workouts sounded rigorous enough, but come to find out, this is about more than sit-ups, squats, and sprints. Alcohol, fried food, and sweets are all outlawed during the 30-day program, and we campers are to eat five to six small meals, each packing some protein and carbs, every day. 
Inspired by fellow Slashfoodie 
I typically use recipes in one of two ways. In the best case scenario, I consult a recipe before I shop so that even if I choose to tweak things a bit, I'm at least starting with all the appropriate raw materials. But then there are those evenings when it's chilly outside or I'm just feeling too lazy to shop, and I need a recipe that makes use of whatever's in the fridge, freezer, and pantry. 
You've got just over three weeks left to submit a paper for the next 
Second Helping of Slashfood - June 19
Competitive-Eating Contest to Pit Humans Against Elephants
The Backyard Boom - The Hungry Bride
