Princeton Junk Food: Chicken and Waffles

Now, this is not for the faint of heart but I have to mention that Ari made chicken and waffles for us as a special treat the other day. It was to die for. Here are the secrets:
-soak your chicken in buttermilk for 10-24 hours before breading
-breading need not be fancy: flour, paprika, pepper
-whipping the egg whites until soft peaks form but not glossy, then folding that into your waffle batter mixture gives you light delicate waffles
- THE KEY: you need to eat your chicken in tandem with your waffle and you need to dot both with high quality maple syrup and plenty of Texas Pete (or like) hot sauce. You want sweet and spicy crunchy spongy. It's so delicious you can't even handle it. Mike ate too much and had to watch television in a darkened room for 2 hours afterward.

Pasta with shrimp peas and bacon

This is one of my mother's favorites. Light but substantial, and makes your home smell like bacon for days.
-I package best quality bacon
- 1/2 lb to 1 lb shrimp depending on your numbers. I did 1/2 lb for the two of us and we had enough leftovers for lunch the next day.
-half bag of frozen peas
-best fresh pasta you can find
-1 cup grated Parmesan

1. Cook your bacon until dead crispy and set out to dry on paper towels. Drain off almost all of the grease. If someone is hanging out having a beer in the kitchen with you, tell them at this time not to wash the bacon pan you just put down.
2. If your bacon pan got washed, grieve, then add 1 tbs olive oil and cook shrimp until done through, adding peas halfway and covering. Preferably, do all of this in bacon pan not adding any additional oil.
3. Cook pasta separately, reserving 1/2 cup cooking water.
4. Combine all ingredients-shrimp and peas, parm, crumbled bacon, pasta water, some fresh ground black pepper. Only problem with this dish is that it does not plate very nicely, but it tastes delicious and is, in my opinion, just as good cold.

Alice's Birthday-plum theme

The Menu:

Broiled Redfish filets on a sauce of leeks, butter, and cream.

Asparagus boiled, shocked, and broiled with parmesan cheese.

Meringue with plum sauce, plum ice cream (Pavlova+)

We bought great plums at the farmer's market to make ice cream. I used a recipe from Friberg, The Professional Pastry Chef) with the idea of putting it on a Pavlova (baked meringue topped with a fruit syrup). Meringue is a perfect complement. The ice cream calls for 10 egg yolks, and meringue is mostly whites. It's like having scrambled eggs. Plus, when you form the meringues for baking you can shape a bed for the ice cream.

This is what happened:

2 lbs. plums, 1/3 diced and macerated in cognac, 2/3 stewed in a spiced simple syrup

You could use another liqueur for the cognac if you prefer. I would have used Grand Marnier if we had had any, orange and plum sounding like a nice pairing, but we were out. The cognac was plenty good. Macerate for a few hours, or overnight.

For the syrup bring to a boil:

1 quart water

2 cups sugar

1/2 lemon cut into wedges

6 cloves

1 t. vanilla

one cinnamon stick

Add the plums and simmer until soft. Fish them out with a slotted spoon and allow to cool. This is what it looks like:

What remains of your syrup is basically a soupy plum jelly. Reduce it by half and it will be an intensely flavored sauce for the ice cream pavlova. It will also turn into a jelly when chilled. Warm to re-use as sauce--good in all its forms!

For the ice cream:

Whip 10 egg yolks with 5 oz. sugar until the mixture forms a ribbon.

Scald 1 quart half and half and add slowly to sugar egg mix whisking rapidly

Put the custard into a double boiler and whisk over heat until it covers the back of a spoon.

Stir in macerated plums and allow to cool.

Add the stewed plum to the custard.

Process in whatever kind of ice cream maker you use, then remove to freezer in a covered container.

For the meringue:

1 cups egg whites

2 cups sugar

1 t. cream of tartar

Beat whites with cream of tartar until thick and foamy (small bubbles, 1-2 minutes)

Add sugar slowly while whisking.

Beat at high speed until stiff peaks form (about 3 minutes). Don't over beat!

At this point I took a spatula and

put the whole mess in a plastic bag, cut off a corner and used it as a pastry bag, piping meringue "dishes" onto a baking sheet covered with parchment. You could spoon it on but it is pretty sticky. Leave a depression in the unbaked meringue for the ice cream ball.

Bake at 210 degrees for abount 50 minutes until dry. Try not to let them turn light brown. Lower the heat if it looks like things are heading in that direction. Here's what mine looked like:

Once everything is cool assemble the three ingredients. Garnish as you wish. We used mint. I made the ice cream mixture a day ahead and got it into the freezer early the next day. I did meringues in the afternoon and they were good to go by dinner.

It was an intense dessert. Not for every night cooking, however

BLT Challenge

The whole challenge has kind of snuck up on me. I have had the Nature's Harmony pork belly curing in the fridge with the expectation that the tomatoes would be a while on the vine and that I could still experiment the get the best bread style, and have time to choose the right mayonaise formula.

Tempus fugit. In fact, the cherry tomatoes are now ripe. There's T. The cured pork belly is now roasting in the oven and will be soon ready to be sliced for bacon. That's B. The lettuce, or the lettuce substitute (chiffonade of malabar and basil): L, or L*, if you prefer.

Homemade Junk Food

I wouldn't want our dear readers (all three of you) to think that the Athens kitchen is all homegrown vegetables, fresh baguettes, and demi-glace. Would that it were, but in that case we'd need a live-in sous chef and gardener.

In the absence of those, we depend on processed foods to fill out a week's menu. Among the indispensable items are canned beans -- flavorful, nutritious, and cheap. And, in my view, given their cheapness, it's worth paying the premium for organic canned beans, especially since big-box grocers, such as Kroger, are making organic canned vegetables available at pretty reasonable prices.

So, if you're hungry for nachos, you can make a very respectable batch of refried beans from canned beans in almost no time. Here's what you do:

Open two cans of brown beans (pintos or kidneys) and drain them. Heat about 1/4 cup of canola oil in a skillet at a medium heat until hot. Chop up an onion and a jalapeno or other hot pepper and add it to the oil. Cook until the onions are lightly brown, about 10 minutes or less. Add some ground cumin (2 tablespoon works for me) and about 1/4 tsp of cayenne. Cook, stirring constantly, for a minute. Remove from heat. Put the onion/pepper mixture into a food processor with the beans. Process until smooth. Season with salt and pepper.

Load this onto tortilla chips and top with some grated cheddar cheese, heat in a 350-degree oven for 10 minutes or so, and you have fed your family.

Peach Pie

Last night Ari made Mexican style pulled pork tacos that were out of this world. I wish I could post that recipe, but I can't. All I can say is that I made the peach crumb pie we ended with, and it was, if I may say, pretty delicious. I used, more or less, a Joy of Cooking recipe, although this is so simple you don't really need a recipe:
For the filling:
-about 2 lbs sweet peaches, ripe as possible. (In fact I look for the little ones that might even be a too soft and really need to get used that day. This is nice for them because otherwise nobody will buy them and their lives will have been for nothing.)
-3 tbs cornstarch
-Sugar to taste, or none, depending on how sweet your peaches are
-dash of almond extract
-two teaspoons fresh lemon juice

For the crumble:
-3 tbs butter, melted
-1 cup flour
-1/4 cup sugar

-Pie crust, enough for two pies because you're going to make a lattice top

1. Combine indgredients for filling, let rest. Mixture will thicken somewhat.
2. Combine ingredients for crumb adjusting four level so that you have a nice crumb consistency that's not wet.
3. Butter and flour your pie dish, roll out your dough and place bottom layer in dish.
4. Spoon in a layer of filling being careful to bring some of the peach liquid, but not all of it. Alternate layers of crumb mixture, peach mixture, finishing with a light crumb mixture for crunch.
5. Roll out the remaining pie dough and cut into strips. Lay strips in one direction all the way accross pie. Then, fold every other strip halfway back on itself:


6. You can then lay a strip perpendicularly across the middle, and unfold the strips currently bent backwards. This gives you your first woven section and you simply repeat this process on the side you are working, and then move to the other side. In the picture to the right, the three strips that are currently lying down will in the next step be the ones folded back on themselves.

7. Bake at 425 for 25 minutes, then slip a baking dish under pie and continue cooking for approx 25 minutes more or until pie is bubbling, top is browned, and the neighbors start coming over asking what smells so good.

Mushroom picking

We've had nothing but cool weather and rain for weeks which has made the usual summer menu a challenge. Mike pointed out last week that wet cool weather is perfect for mushroom growing and so we set off in search of whatever we could find. Our harvest was plenty, and once home, the identification process began. Here's Mike on the phone describing the three varieties we found to his family, as manyRussians love picking mushrooms and can readily identify various types:

Mushrooms are totally fascinating. We now have an Audobon guide and are learning a lot more about them and how to tell them apart which I highly recommend for any budding mycologists out there. As you know, many mushrooms are poisonous or can make you grow taller or shorter, so one must be very careful. You can go quite a ways identifying your mushrooms via internet or book, but many times a small taste test is necessary- any sign of bitterness and you want to discard. One kind we picked had a spicy flavor, very odd, also not safe to eat. Your best bet are to find Chanterelles which we now hunt:

Chanterelles can be identified by their gilled underside, attached stem, and unifrom ochre coloring. Our only edible find, "Slippery Jacks," were edible but required fussy handling and some among us experienced gastrointestinal antics as a result of eating them. So! Go boldly but carefully.

It's Too Hot to Cook

Greek salad

Bread with butter

Rose cava

The Athens kitchen is suffering from a heat wave. Yesterday was, according to the calendar, the last day of spring. Nevertheless the thermometer hit three digits. It was a good day not to heat up the kitchen.

I found this recipe at Epicurious and followed it pretty closely, with a couple of adaptations and additions based on what we had on hand. The addition of a couple of hard-boiled eggs added a jolt of protein that helped push the salad to the level of "meal" rather than "side." The proportions I give below are what I used last night, which is about half of the recipe you'll find at Epicurious. This was just right for a fairly hearty meal for two.

Mix in a medium bowl:

1 medium tomato, seeded and diced

1/2 large cucumber, seeded and diced (remove the peel, too, unless it's really fresh)

1/2 cup sweet pepper (bell is traditional, but I substituted one banana, from my friend Elizabeth Fuller's garden, and a small poblano from our own)

1/4 cup, or more to taste, diced onions (again, red onions are traditional, but use whatever you have; I used some from our garden that are similar to shallots)

2 radishes, thinly sliced (this is my own addition; we've been getting some beautiful Red Rover radishes from the Athens Farmers Market)

2 hard-cooked eggs, chopped (also a departure from the recipe, but why wouldn't you?)

1-2 tablespoons fresh Italian parsley

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon red-wine vinegar

Fresh oregano and/or mint to taste (I think I used about a tablespoon)

Salt and pepper to taste

At this point you have a mixture that can hang out on the counter for up to two hours, which is very nice if you will be using it as a side dish or taking it to a pot-luck.

When you are ready to serve, add about 1/4 cup crumbled feta, or more to taste. Gently mix the cheese in, then add the entire mixture to a bed of lettuce or other greens (I used mix of local lettuces and sorrel). Add more oil and vinegar to coat the greens.

For the bread, we relied on the folks who get paid to heat up their ovens on hot days, Athens' own Luna Bakery. We like their ciabatta loaves, which are nice and airy and a great vehicle for a good-quality butter.

Except for the butter and the wine, everything originated from within about 50 miles of home.

We are in!

Just a quick note to say that we have officially accepted the Ruhlman Challenge to make a BLT from scratch. Now there is scratch and there is scratch. We are not going to grow the pig for the bacon. That comes from our friends at Nature's Harmony We are not growing the wheat for the bread, raising the chickens and pressing oil for the mayo, or anything like that. Once and for all--we have limits here.

Here's how far we are willing to go:

1. home-cured pork belly (it is working in the fridge now--photos to come).

2. tomatoes from the garden (right now the cherry tomatoes are looking like the most likely contenders)

3. "lettuce" in Georgia in the high summer is a challenge. We will substitute Malabar, which tolerates the heat well

4. mayonaise (with locally produced eggs)

5. home-made bread

Pierogi

It's difficult to live with a Russian person and try to make mostly vegetarian food. Even if it's the most delicious vegetarian food you can imagine, they eventually catch on. One thing I know pleases even the most voracious meat lovers is pierogi, however. Long a favorite of mine, especially made by the hand of Chuck Platter. He has spent many devotes years as a student of the wares at Odessa, the beloved East Village Russian diner famous for its non-ambiance and best of the Soviet Union delicacies. With my fractured foot, I tonight ordered Mike to the supermarket for the various components of this dish, and our conversation over dinner wandered to how we could improve upon the basics. Our method was simple:
1. Brown in olive oil to the point of even burning a little (rather than caramelizing) one large onion.
2. Add pierogi to the pan and brown evenly as possible. We bought just a store bought package, which I actuallly love for their noodle consistency skin
3. toss in two big handfulls of fresh spinach, some diced garlic, salt and pepper (pan should have enough oil in it to deal with this addition nicely)
4. Serve with sour cream!

It was great, comforting, satuasfying, but I ask you, friends, family, what else can one do with this dish? Here were a few of our thoughts:

-make compound sour cream (is that a thing?) with herbs such as dill, or take it in a south Asian direction with curry powder and chile oil?
-make a spiced/baked apple topping that would provide a more complex sweetness
-beets?
-what else?

Leftovers

I didn't take a picture of it, but this particular dish was too successful to let it pass without a mention.

Last night we had a vegetable dinner, although no pure vegetarian would have come near our table, what with the gravy made with a dash of that demi-glace Chuck just wrote about.

As an aside, I made biscuits a la Joy of Cooking and finally took my mother's advice (Chuck's, too) and used the food processor to mix the dough. So easy, and they were by far the best biscuits I have ever made.

But the point here is leftovers. We had a two- or three-serving portion of steamed squash and green beans left over from the poulet frites dinner a couple of nights ago. To recall,both vegetables, along with the fresh herbs they were cooked with, came from local gardens, the green beans from our own and the squash from one of my constituent's (monetary value --well within the acceptable range of gifts that don't rise to the level of bribe; real value -- umm, I haven't been tested yet). So these were super-fresh when we had them on Wednesday, and they were well worth a second round on Sunday.

Also on hand were some homemade croutons and a generous 1/4 cup of good-quality Parmesan cheese. I think you can see where this is going. I used the food processor (my new best friend) to grind the croutons into a fine crumb, stirred in the Parmesan, dumped the vegetables in a Pyrex pie dish, and topped them with the ground crouton/Parmesan mixture. This got heated in a 350-degree oven until the vegetables were warm, then finished under the broiler. Perfect.

So perfect, in fact, that I'll probably have the leftovers of the leftovers for lunch tomorrow.

Stock

Yesterday we went to the Athens Farmer's Market. A lot of good stuff there: leeks, fennel, chard, first tomatoes of the season, and a lot more. We also stopped by Nature's Harmony truck. Tim and Liz Young had driven down from Elberton with meat and eggs. Check out the link to their website. We are huge fans of them and their approach to sustainable agriculture.

We bought all the beef bones they had (about 10 pounds) to use for stock, demi-glace in particular, an intensely flavored, highly reduced stock about the consistency of thin syrup. I freeze the demi in ice cube trays, and use the cubes in sauces--basically any time a dish is on the edge, and we need to ramp it up to 11.

There are some good discussions of stock in cook books nowadays. I take my basic approach from Anthony Bourdain's amusing riff on the topic his Les Halles cookbook. Here's how I did it. Note that there is an opt-out at step 8 if you just want to cut and run with a superb batch of beef stock.

1. Put 10 lbs. of bones on one or two baking sheets that have been lightly oiled. Take 2 Tbs. tomato paste and work it into the bones with your hands. It is messy.

2 Preheat oven to 350.

3. Peel and rough chop onions, carrots and celery in a 2:1:1 ratio. I use a big quarter sheet pan and to cover that I used about three medium onions, 4 carrots, and about 4 stalks of celery. Lightly oil and spread on pan

4. Put both sheets in the oven. Check regularly to make sure that nothing gets blackened. If that starts to happen dial back the oven temp to 325 and watch it. Stir occasionally. Remove vegetables when they have begun to brown.

5. Take the biggest pot you have, or use two. Put the roasted bones and the vegetables into the pot. Add water near the rim. Add a handful of thyme.

6. Turn up the stove. With all those solids in the pot it will take a long time to heat them up. Simmer, but do not boil the mixture for 6-12 hours. I often let it go all night. Skim off the foam as necessary.

7. Remove the bones and vegetables. Strain the stock with a strainer through cheesecloth. Rinse and repeat. You can reuse the cheese cloth. Just rinse all the goop out of it and spread it out on the strainer. I like to use a big conical strainer for at least the first part of this, when there are still a lot of solids lurking around the stock. They for a bed at the end of the cone and help to filter out even more stuff. At some point you may want to take a spoon and remove fat that had risen to the top.

8. You are now in possession of 1/2 gallon or so if high-quality stock. Strain it one more time, especially if you are thinking of bagging the rest of the operation. Portion it out in various size containers and freeze. Use as needed. Each time you do you will be happy.

8a. If you want to go for the glory take a couple of cups of stock for your own purposes. Keep the rest of the now well strained stock in the pot. Hopefully it is still morning. If it's not you might want to put your stock on ice until you have the time to bring it off. We still have another 6 hours or so to go. If there's time, just hang in there. It is going to get really good soon.

9. Estimate the volume of stock you have remaining. Divide by 4 and measure out that much red wine. Chop some shallots if you have them but don't get bent out of shape if you don't. It's not worth a car trip. Just get an onion and do the same. Boil wine in pot with shallots/onions until it is reduced by one half. Add to stock mixture.

10. Reduce the mixture at a simmer for 4-5 hours. The end volume will be maybe one tenth of what you started with and will cover the back of a spoon. Think light pancake syrup--only dark brown and glossy--and you will be able to recognize the finished sauce.

11. Taste. If you haven't made this before, you might want to do the tasting sitting down--it's that intensely good.

12. Take an ice cube tray and spray it with oil (cubes easier to remove that way). Spoon demi-glace into the depressions. Freeze and store in a freezer bag. Use frequently, but not too frequently. After all, it does take a long time to make. You don't want to do it every month. On the other hand, there's not a lot it doesn't improve. Experiment.

Poulet Frites

Poulet-frites reminds me of Lisbon more than anything else. On a couple of occasions we went to the Rei dos Frangos (The Chicken King) on the Travessa de Santo Antao near Restauradores. I remember getting hit with a blast of heat on the way in and sitting down to roast chicken and piri-piri sauce with huge piles of fries.

This was our menu a couple of days ago

Roast chicken (from Athens Locally Grown)

French fries

Steamed zucchini

Cucumber vinaigrette with dill

I am going to concentrate on the frites part of the menu here so I won't discuss the entire menu in detail, as great as it was.

The zucchini came form a garden of one of Alice's constituents. It was excellent. In addition she brought back dill which we combined with a vinaigrette and served with sliced cucumbers, a dish that reminded us of Polish food. For the roast chicken I use Thomas Keller's recipe which is almost a non-recipe. In fact, it is mostly devoted to which parts of the chicken are reserved for the cook as s/he is carving it. Keller's restaurant is the French Laundry north of San Francisco. It was also used to develop the kitchen animation for the movie Ratatouille. I will go through the roast chicken prep another day, however.

Who doesn't love good French fries? I mean really good ones. I double fry mine. Here's how it goes down:

Cut potatoes to the size you want. It's easier if you have a mandoline, but hardly necessary. In fact I always cut by hand the potato ends that I can't do with the mandoline without shaving off a finger or two.

Heat your oil to about 350 degrees. You will need a big pot with several inches of oil. Peanut oil works well because it doesn't deteriorate so easily when heated. I use a fryer with a small basket. You can buy your own for 40 bucks or so. I store the fryer with the leftover oil in the reservoir and change it only occasionally.

Soak cut potatoes in ice water for 45 minutes. Drain and dry. A towel works well for this, but I use a salad spinner. In any case you want to get rid of as much water as possible.

Fry for 3-4 minutes in small batches until they begin to brown a little.

Remove fries to drain on newspaper and let cool.

Refry in small batches at 350 until brown.

If you are doing a lot--and there never seem to be leftovers--heat the oven to 275. Put a quarter piece of newspaper at the bottom of an oven-safe bowl. When the first batch comes out dump it in the bowl and salt. Put bowl in oven to keep fries warm and do the next batch. Use another sheet of newspaper for that one, salt, return to oven, etc. until you have fried and salted the whole mess. Remove the newspaper sheets and dig in!

Caution: it is really easy to forget that your French fry bowl is hot, especially if you are doing several things at once. Having learned the hard way (ever see Raiders of the Lost Ark?), I balance a potholder on the handle of the oven door so that I remember to use it whenever I open the oven

Roasted garlic

I forgot how good this is! We had this last night, roasted garlic in its husk spread like butter onto slices of a rustic, chewy boules. The recipe is simple - slice off pointed end of bulb, soak cut end in several tbs of olive oil for 5 minutes, bake at 400 degrees for about an hour, go nuts. we ate this with a delicious intensely spiced North African style lamb and the sweetness of the garlic was a great accompaniment. I remember begin served this at my very elegant friend Allison's house on a board with a creamy brie, some spiced nuts, and dried apricots which , in addition to making a very pretty tableau, was also a wonderful combination of flavors.

More Pizza

I still had a few baguettes in the freezer from last week. Add to that the cinnamon rolls and the fact that I was also making Anadama bread yesterday, and you might wonder just how many baguettes a person needs on hand. Granted, we give some away, and idly will snack on another left on the counter in the course of a day but as Pindar says about the Pillars of Heracles, "Beyond that the wise cannot set foot; nor can the unskilled set foot beyond that" (Olympian Odes 3.45).

The moral is that when life gives you a too many baguettes, use half of your dough to make pizzas. This is again from the kitchen of Peter Reinhart I have been using the cold-fermented pain a l'ancienne for baguettes, and the dough is extremely relaxed on the second day. In fact, one must excercise great care to make sure your prospective

pizza doesn't end up looking like something out of Salvator Dali. If you can avoid this you should have some spectacular pizzas cooked on a baking stone at 500 degrees

Sorrel soup
Steamed asparagus with fried egg
Baguette

Domaine du Tariquet Chenin/Chardonnay, Gascony, France, 2006

A few days ago, Chuck observed that if you cook a lot you repeat yourself. True, and the other thing you do is imitate.

Last night's menu, which was inspired by the contents of our vegetable bin, took a cue from the vegetable plate that I enjoyed the other night at Five and Ten. This involved a comforting risotto with porcini mushrooms, a beet-and-carrot roast, and a nice helping of steamed asparagus topped with a fried egg. The egg was a perfect addition, giving the meal some heft, and functioning as a sort of stripped-down hollandaise.

Thanks to the season, the bottom third of our refrigerator is currently full of fresh, local spring vegetables -- greens, carrots, radishes, zucchini, cucumbers, and the most local of all, green beans from our garden. From that bounty, I chose to work with the two vegetables that had been in there the longest -- a bunch of sorrel purchased last week from the Athens Farmers Market (Lazy Willow Farm, if you're keeping score) and some asparagus left over from Chuck's crostini last week (from Sundance Farm).

To my mind, sorrel is the ultimate greens-lover's green. Some might find the flavor to be a little bitter, but I experience it as rich and lemony.

For the soup, I used Bittman (How to Cook Everything), and it is as easy as it gets. Chop the greens and throw them into a saucepan in which you have melted some butter. Stir them until they've wilted nicely, which won't take much time at all. Add some good-quality stock (I used chicken, about a cup for each two cups of chopped greens), let it come just to a simmer, and then cook for a couple of minutes. Transfer to a blender and puree. At this point the soup can hang out if need be. When you are about fifteen minutes out, return the puree to the pan, add some half-and-half (again, about a cup per two cups of uncooked greens) and heat very gently. Don't let it boil, of course. Season with salt and pepper; it won't need anything else. (It's worth noting that this recipe works equally well with other tender greens, such as spinach or watercress.)

I put the asparagus in a skillet, covered it with salted water, put the lid on the skillet, and steamed it for a few minutes until it was bright green. Then I drained it, dunked it into an ice bath, then drained it again. This is another Bittman trick, and it allows you to let the cooked vegetable hang out while other things are happening.

At the start of this process, I had pulled a couple of baguette halves from the freezer. Chuck's baguettes freeze extremely well, and they defrost fairly quickly at room temperature. If I ever need immediate defrosting, I use the microwave, but only at the lowest power.

When everything was ready (table set, wine opened, soup back in the pot), I put Chuck on egg-frying duty. He has the true short-order cook's knack with this task, and one of my goals is to learn how to fry an egg as fearlessly as he does. He claims that all you need is about five dozen eggs, a couple of hours, and plenty of doggedness.

And speaking of eggs, I will never go back to factory-farmed eggs (well, except perhaps on the day I actually do try to learn how to fry an egg a la Chuck). The eggs we get through Athens Locally Grown (last night's came from Nature's Harmony Farm) are about as different from the ones you get in the grocery store as Wonder Bread is from Chuck's baguettes.

Anyway, while Chuck was frying the eggs, I reheated the asparagus in the skillet with a little butter and then seasoned with salt and pepper. The plate looked nice at the outset, but the true glory of the meal came when the eggs yolks broke over the asparagus. As my plate emptied, I was especially glad for the bread as a means to mop the last of the yolk -- and the dregs of the soup.

A final note about the wine: this was the wine of the week at Gosford Wine last week, and it was a bargain at the per-case price (under $11 a bottle). It has a nice, bright taste up front, but it leaves you with a little to think about as it goes down. If you like good wine and you like bargains, you should sign up for Gosford's weekly emails.

Cinnamon Rolls

Here is how my memory works: I was getting baguette dough ready last night and remembered that last week Mary Louise had done a little cinnamon sugar and dough production. I wrote last week about packaging the same thing rolled up cinnamon roll-style. Cut to Saturday night, and since I was making doughs anyway (more on that later) I thought I would go ahead and make some cinnamon rolls with a sweetened dough, enriched with buttermilk and a little half and half. They have a fondant glaze made with powdered sugar, milk, and orange extract. I finished about 1 AM but they are really good.

Fried potatoes with poblano pepper, onion, and feta

I like potatoes. When we lived in Krakow I had potato pancakes and mushroom gravy every day for lunch when I wasn't having Pierogi Ruskie (Russian pierogies), which are dumplings filled with mashed potato sprinkled with crispy onion. The name is not universal, however. I used to go to a Ukrainian restaurant sometimes where they insisted that the proper name was Pierogi Ukrainska.

Anyway, I am often perfectly happy with a fried potato breakfast. Never more so than now, as peppers begin to be harvested. Pictured is our first poblano pepper minutes after it was summoned from the garden. Here's what happened:

1. I peeled one idaho potato, then sliced and cubed it into half-inch pieces. Be careful doing the slices! You might want to slice a bit off one side first and use that as a more stable base. Fry in 2T. olive oil, flipping them in the pan--or turning with a spatula, if you must--to get them nice and crispy on the outside, and to allow most of the water inside to evaporate. Season with salt and pepper.

2. Meanwhile, prep a your favorite pepper variety and half a medium onion. Dice onion into 1/2-inch pieces. The peppers are a judgement call. If you have thick-skinned bell peppers dice them as small as you want. If they are thin-skinned like my poblanos make the pieces a little bigger so they don't burn as easily.

3. When the potatoes are about half-way toward being done add the pepper pieces and the onion. I like to remove the potato pieces from the pan actually, so they don't get steamed as the onion pepper mix is cooking down, then I add them back at the end. Your call. Let everything cook until there is no more steam coming up and the vegetables have caramelized some.

4. I finished it with a quarter of a cup of crumbled feta. Other cheeses of a similar consistency would be good too. Season with pepper and serve.

I just eat this straight, for breakfast, but obviously you can do some serious improvising here. Add chorizo. Add frozen peas, lightly cooked asparagus, or other vegetables. Add a scrambled egg. Any of these would make a great filling for some breakfast burritos.

I haven't posted so much this week because we have been patronizing the local establishments. We have a new restaurant/pub down the street called The Royal Peasant. They have been oven a couple of weeks and appear to be perfectly matched to the location in between Earthfare and Five and Ten. Speaking of Five and Ten, we stopped by for the prix fixe a couple of nights back. The food was excellent and full of surprises. I started off with a watermelon arugula salad and a jalapeno vinaigrette. The second course was a chicken bog, a South Carolina specialty. This particular bog has made the big time lately, featured in the New York Times. Really good.

The third course is a Zingerman's candy bar. It's no joke though. They are that good. The one I had, however, was a brilliant reinterpretation of a Snickers bar, the nougat, the nuts the caramel, all excellent quality, finished off with an intense dark chocolate coating. As we always say, we are happy that we can walk home from Five and Ten to get a head start on working off the many calories we so enjoyed.

Steamed artichokes with leek butter dipping sauce

Sorry to post like a madwoman but I just wanted to feature one of the lovely things our friend Ari made for us last night-- Steamed artichokes with a leek butter sauce to die for! Here are the instructions, in his own words:

it was:
1 large leek, halved lengthwise and sliced.
1 stick of butter
salt, pepper crushed red pepper
about a 1/8 of a nut of nutmeg
lemon zest and about 1 lemon worth of lemon juice

lowest heat for about an hour so as not to brown but coax some sweetness from the leeks.

Please note presence of Mark Bittman's no knead cast iron Boule. Also, steaming artichokes took a long time, well over an hour. We weren't sure why this was. Dad?

Spring Vegetable Chowder

We've had a spate of cold rainy days here in New Jersey and I was craving a chowder of some sort, but not the rib-sticking-Sunday-night-in-December type...choosing the best looking spring vegetables I came up with this take, and the addition of tarragon and lemon peel give it a brightness that also lightens the whole affair.

Ingreds:
1 Leek, white part only
1/2 sweet onion such as Vidalia
1/2 bag of frozen sweet corn, best quality (aka not Richfood brand which falls apart)
1/2 bag of frozen sweet baby peas
2 carrots
1 bunch asparagus
about 10 mini red bliss new potatoes, blanched
1 quart vegetable stock
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 tbs all purpose flour
pinch of tarragon
pinch of rosemary

Saute the chopped leek and onion in 1 tbs butter, 1 tbs olive oil until onion is translucent but not brown, about 15 minutes on med heat.

add chopped carrots, let sautee a few more minutes,

Add all other ingredients save asparagus and simmer until everyone is tender. Add asparagus last so that it simmers until crunch is gone but not wilting or crumbling. Season with kosher salt and fresh black pepper.

Use measuring cup to scoop out some of the broth and whisk in 1 heaping tablespoon of flour. Return roux to pot and stir. When you're ready to serve, stir in about a 1/4 cup of heavy cream, the pinches of tarragon and rosemary and the zest of about half a lemon (but taste about halfway through because too much lemon isn't what you're going for. You want the brightness but not a discernible lemon taste.)

Voila! this serves about 3 as a min course. I couldn't think of a garnish. Parsley? zzzzz.

Pizza! Huzzah!

Saturday we had friends over for our beloved Taira's goodbye party and another friend's birthday and I wanted to serve our meal in our garden. Problems immediately presented: 1. What can we make for a crowd that's easy to get all the way down 3 flights of stairs and outside and around to the back garden? 2. What can we make period considering the fact that our oven is miniature? In the end we decided to make pizzas and this actually worked fantastically. Our oven only holds only one baking sheet at a time which meant pizza had to queue until space was available, but the resulting pattern of one in-one out made the pies function like courses, and someone just kept zipping back upstairs every 20 minutes or so to take out the piping hot one and pop another in. Just make sure you get your lineup in an order that progresses the meal nicely, and serve a big salad throughout. For example, we started with a white pizza with artichokes, cured olives, fontina cheese and olive oil and went on to a margarita with tomatoes, basil and tons of fresh chopped garlic. Next time I'd like to try a meat based one too and then perhaps add another fruit/cheese white at the end. We have difficulty getting dough stretched out. Mike, newly minted architect, here coaxes a batch into structural submission:

More bread

 If you cook regularly you will inevitibly repeat yourself a lot.  Of course, there will be occasional flights of inspired experimentation, but generally you are shooting for quality above innovation. Hopefully, then, you will develop some standbys that are worth repeating.  

Alice is doing one now, a chili recipe (yes, the temperature is above 90 degrees here in Athens)  much beloved by Louise, and one from which no deviation is permitted.  In fact, I am generally not allowed to touch this chili while it is being made since I live under a cloud of suspicion that I will try to "improve" it.

I made bread yesterday.  It was a lot like the bread I made last week because it is very good and worth doing often: I mixed up dough on Saturday and baked midday Sunday.  One great thing about this dough is that it is also versatile. I cut off one piece, shaped it, and made a pizza.  Louise took another and made a cinnamon vanilla sugar  mix to bake on top.  Next time we will add butter and roll it up like a cinnamon roll.