Salmon with watercress sauce

This is an old recipe from my Bon Appétit days. It's embarrassing, sure. But I like it. And don't even think of making homemade mayonnaise for this. I've tried it. Disgusting. Just stick with Best Foods and don't tell your foodie friends.

Put a hefty scoop of mayonnaise in a bowl. Squeeze in some lemon juice (just enough to make it saucy). Throw in some chopped watercress, add salt and pepper, and eat it on salmon. I also added dill, which might actually have been good in yogurt instead of mayonnaise, but...yogurt on fish? I think I'm still too much of a snob to try it.

Okay, this sounds like one of those cheesey entertaining tips I used to make up for Bon Appétit, but this is actually worth doing. Buy some fresh herbs, stick them in your water. Pour yourself a glass whenever you wish. Because the water isn't hot, the herbs just barely flavor it, rather than making it like tea. In fact, if you let a few of the herbs spill over into your glass, most of the "taste" will come from smelling them while you drink.

I used lemon verbena, mint, and lavender. It makes me WANT to drink water. Something I often forget to do in between my hot beverages. Brilliant for the crazy-hot weather we've been having. I just kept filling the pitcher back up with the same herbs in it. They stayed fresh as long as they were submerged.

Monday, Bloody Monday

What is one to do when he has to use the public restroom, but the stall is occupied? Well, if you are a patron of the Durant library, you might consider crawling under the stall door, throwing the person's belongings over the top, and beating the stall's occupant with a sharp object.

And, should you be attacked in a public bathroom stall, what is the best course of action? Why, to bleed all over the floor, tell a librarian, and then leave before the paramedics arrive.

Pie à la mode

I have discovered a new use for duck fat. (Only about 5 pounds to go in my freezer). This was definitely the best tasting crust I've ever made. I put about 3/4 butter to 1/4 duck fat. The duck fat fried the flour to the crispiest flakiest it could be, but not even my secret taster (co-worker with uncommonly detective taste buds) knew anything was amiss. Better than pork fat, for sure. Anyway, I advise when using frozen berries, more cornstarch or flour or something. The blackberries were delicious, but soupy and, after a good long hour on several buses, I got to work wearing a good portion of the filling . Several people told me I was looking more fashionable than usual.

2 cups flour
3/4 cup butter
1/4 cup duck fat
1 t. salt
1 T sugar
2 T water (about)

Mix together flour, salt, and sugar. Cut in butter, then duck fat. Add just enough water to make it stick together. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour. Roll out dough. Because it's a double crust with a fruit filling, no need to pre-bake the crust.

Filling: blackberries (thawed if using frozen), sugar to taste. Take some of the juice and put it in a jar with maybe...a tablespoon of cornstarch (guessing, but a teaspoon wasn't enough) and shake until fully blended. Add to berries.

Bake at 400 for 30 minutes. If the crust is browning too fast around the edges, turn the oven down and cook 30 minutes more (but check on it sooner, this is only in my oven.) When it's about 20 minutes from being done, brush cream over the top and then sprinkle sugar over the whole thing. This will give you a shiny, slightly hard, shell on the outside. Pretty.

Stewed tomatoes

Tomatoes are on their way back already in the 97-degree LA weather. Actually, tomatoes have been here all yere, but GOOD tomatoes are on their way back. I got a bunch of the little grape tomatoes last week, sliced up some green garlic (any kind you choose, see below), added a red pepper (flakes will do if you didn't buy a bunch to dry over the winter...they'll be back late summer, I think) added lots of olive oil, a sprig of rosemary (whole, so you can take it out) and a bay leaf (same) and cooked it for about 45 minutes over a low heat. The result? Stewed tomatoes that are good on everything. I mostly gobbled the whole pot down on bread, but they're good on pasta, cottage cheese, with meat, even on eggs and they will last for a good long time in the fridge, so make a bunch. The Fantastik is not part of the dish.

Green Garlic, Green Garlic, Green Garlic

From right to left. Or left to right.

The closest one is obviously a little older than the other two, this is actually my favorite stage of green garlic...almost as strong as the dried we use the rest of the year, but without even a trace of bitterness. The middle one is baby elephant garlic, which is always more mild than regular garlic, but very very mild as young as this. I wasn't as impressed with it as I hoped to be. Last is very young regular green garlic. So mild you can put that whole bushel in just one dish.

Dinner

Pour cereal into bowl. Add milk.

Quite the week...

It started out Friday. I parked in the lot where the security guard told me I could. Only to find, the next morning, that my car had been towed away. A kindly ride from a co-worker and two hundred dollars later, I had my car back.

But alas, as I was driving to Santa Monica to work on Sunday, a disappointing clunking noise startled me out of a driving coma. The car didn't want to accelerate and all of those pesky lights on the dashboard started blinking at me.

I hoped maybe the gas gauge was off...it showed about 2 gallons left. So I filled her up. To no avail. She just clunked away.

I made it home but have been taking the bus ever since. Which has been fine, except for last night, when the metro broke down and it took me over 2 hours to get home. I could have walked it in an hour and a half (I have). But I kept getting hopeful that the bus was still coming. Besides, on the way to the metro station yesterday morning, I walked by the body of a girl who had just been killed so walking around after dark wasn't sounding terribly appealing.

Tonight I came home to find someone had tried to break into my house. They almost got the entire door jam off and bent through both of the metal plates surrounding my locks. Luckily, they couldn't get in. But then, neither could I. So, someone came and forced my door open and is, at the moment, rebuilding half my wall. Tomorrow they will give me a metal door outside of my wood one. You know, those doors that immediately make you think "bad neighborhood."

And it's only Wednesday. Sigh.

Green on Green

I like the what-did-you-bring-for-lunch theme, so here's the latest. We have a full kitchen at the library and me and some of my co-workers have been doing lunch time family style. Daniel has been the main source of our Friday meals, but Monday, being the day after the market, I am always loaded up with vegetables. Yesterday, I had chickweed (we decided it tasted like unsour sour grass, or dirt, but in a good way), amazingly sweet sugar snap peas, an avocado, and garbonzo beans. The dressing was shallots, lemon juice, and olive oil. It's hard to tell from the pictures, but all of the different colors of green were very pretty mixed together. And the salad was delicious. Chickweed warning: chop it up. It was a bit like eating spaghetti...all the little weeds were so entangled, the whole bowl tried to jump into our mouths at once.

Daniel's a bit skeptical....

So we take a closer look...



Ah, a smile...it must be good.

Snow upon root
dove against sky
under my window
love passes by

No snow upon root
no dove against sky
under my window
love passes by

The snow will return
as will the dove
and since hope lives forever
so will my love.

-- Charlotte Pomerantz

Whao Nelly

Be warned, there's a lot of food here...the last couple of days seem to have been a complete blur, so I'm just shoving them all together here, in a blur.

I happened to use three ingredients I often get asked about in a single dish: artichokes, green garlic, and fava beans.

Now, in order to enjoy artichokes and fava beans, you have to look at them the right way. Don't think tedious labor. Think shelling beans on your front porch in a rocking chair listening to the sounds of summer and chatting with your neighbors. One of the only manual skills we still acquire is typing. And look how efficient we are at it! If we could be so efficient at cutting artichokes. The way to achieve efficiency is practice. And practice requires concentration. And so, for a few minutes I get to be ONLY cutting an artichoke. I don't have to worry about my bills, or what so and so said at work or if I'm going to be late or what I'm going to wear tomorrow. It's a break from myself. And, believe me, I can be a lot more tedious than an artichoke.

So, there's no one way to do it, but for this dish I wanted little slices. It starts out looking like this:



Then I peal most of the leaves off:



and cut away the bottom leaves and outer part of the stem. Then I cut it around the circumference about half way down (ie chop the top off), then cut it into 8 little wedges. (Sorry, I forgot to take a picture). Then I blanched the slices and put them in the fridge until I was ready to use them the next day. As you are slicing, put the slices immediately into acidulated water or they'll turn black.

On to the favas. They start out in these pods:


You take out the beans:


You blanch them for about a minute:

You peal them:


Now they are ready for the fridge.

Green garlic is really worth buying every single week that you can get your hands on it. It doesn't last long...only a few weeks in the spring before it turns into the bulbs and cloves we are used to using. Green, it has a much more mild flavor. It looks like this:


I cut off the tops and very bottom and cut it in half so it lies flat:


Then I slise it as if it were a green onion.
For this dish I heated up a skillet, added a teaspoon or so of olive oil and immediately a slice of butter and some chopped mint. Then I threw in the beans and the artichokes. I mixed that with some lemon zest and pasta and grated Parmesan over the top.


NOW, this was my Sartorialist moment. I was visiting the bookstore, and there I spied a stylish lunch. Cherry was eating soba noodles with arugula, peas and shitake mushrooms:

Next to that she had a plate of ground chicken mixed with shizu leaves and a few other things I forgot...
Just a typical day at the office for Cherry. Don't you all bring lunch like this?

And just in case I scared you with the labor-intensive fava beans and artichokes...I just wanted to show you this. I came home, called Orin to see if he wanted dinner. He said yes, but he had to leave in 15 minutes. SO, I sliced up some green garlic, cooked it with fresh eggs with cream, scooped that out of the pan and threw in some bubbly heirloom spinach for about 30 seconds, sliced a piece of La Brea Bakery multi-grain bread, and we were done in a flash!

No Kidding

I cooked the clams in about a cup of white wine with some fresh garlic, thyme, and a bay leaf. Throw out any that don't open, of course. In a separate pan, I cooked some more fresh garlic in olive oil (obviously I'm not anticipating any dates until garlic season is over) and tossed the cooked pasta in that and added a bunch of finely chopped parsley. Throw in the clams and eat.



Yum.

OH! And don't throw out the clam stock you just made while cooking the clams. Strain it, add some cream, and have the left-over clams in it later. Or just sop it up with bread.

Thank Goodness I made it to the Market

If there be medicine in this world for me, it is the market. There was green garlic and fava beans and artichokes and berries. And the flowers!Beautiful. I had a lovely walk up to the market feeling safe from sunburn with my wide-brimmed hat. The 98-degree weather did eventually get to me though. In the subway on the way home I suddenly started feeling extremely nauseated. I got off at the next stop and made for the closest bench which was contained by a smaller and smaller circle of light as I drunkenly wavered to and finally onto it. Somehow, I managed to sit down just as the darkness closed in. Talent, I know.

I did eventually make it home with my many beloved bags of fruits, vegetables, fresh clams, raw cream, and eggs. Deciding I needed to be well fed and watered before I attempted afternoon yoga, I made a little wild salmon left over from the cooking school for lunch. I know it's boring, but when you have high-quality fish, cooking it in a really hot cast-iron skillet with salt and pepper seems to be the absolute best way to prepare it. Next to the fish, is an herb salad...mostly chervil, with a few basil leaves cut very fine, some parsley, mint, and chamomile. I made a balsamic vinegar dressing with shallots cut to an almost microscopic size (thanks to my ceramic knife from Antsy Nancy.)

I'm proud to say I got through yoga without blacking out once. For dinner? Spaghetti alla vongole!

Dreams in Perfect Metaphor

Last night I saved you from a crocodile. I heard your terrified scream from the living room of someone else's house. One word, "crocodile." I waited for more. Nothing. Running to the bathroom I found a giant lizard--no, a small dinosaur--half way out of the toilet with your leg, gray jeans and all, in its mouth. You did wheelbarrow on your hands. I screamed a silent scream for help, but none came.

I looked up to find your head in its mouth. With my hands, I pulled its teeth apart. You wiggled free. In my voice that didn't work, I told you to get out. I let go of the jaws and ran toward the door, bumping into you. I tried to slam it shut behind us, but the croc got out and started nipping at my legs. By this time he was considerably smaller. More giant lizard, less dinosaur. Only slightly less terrifying.

The whole time, you never said a word. Not a single word. Except that first crocodile scream.

oops

In case you were wondering what happens to chocolate chip cookies if you forget the baking soda:

The same dough with baking soda added after the fact:



But they tasted more like baking soda than cookies. Gross.

I just discovered that the song my dad sang to us as kids that went like this:

Bone swar my dam, my dumfy my doo

Actually goes like this:

Bonsoir Dame, Madame Fais dodo


Now, I do remember asking what dumfy meant, but I was just told it was French.

As a kid, I dreaded slumber parties. In fact, I think after maybe one or two I pretty much steered clear of them. The staying up late, the bad pizza, the movies I'd never heard of, terrifying torture devices under the guise of "games." I actually thought of never leaving the house again after I heard of spin the bottle. I guess I've always been a little bit of an old woman.

But now that my friends are all old too, it's a different story. We got WILD this weekend. We went out to Thai food and spent a whopping $10 each. We put on makeup (thanks, Jessica). We made brownies (thanks Amanda). AND, get this, we slept in until 8am! We did BRING some wine (Molly's contribution, of course) but nary a bottle got opened.






So for those of you who don't know...I call these "my friends from high school" but actually, we all go back pretty much to Kindergarten or a few years later. All except for Tuxedo, that is. He's new to the group, but he fit right in, especially when he snuggled down to sleep under the covers between Janina and Amanda.






Thanks Amanda and Rico for letting us take over your new house! And thanks for a fun weekend everyone!

This week, random luck

The beginning of the week: you've probably guessed by now that I didn't make it to the market this week. I got a (now rare, yay!) migraine at work the day before and slept for 16 hours...right through the market. Bad luck. I've been reinventing the leftover vegetables from last week (nothing fit for the camera) and officially polished off every last bit of green in my house for lunch today. Sigh.

Even worse, I bought bread. I burned FOUR pieces of toast in the broiler (in two separate attempts) before I managed to give Orin something less than charcoal when he came over to go hiking on Monday.

The hike was beautiful. It was our good luck to find the mustard and black-eyed susans in full bloom, and the hillsides a variation of yellows. There were little paths running through the mustard plants which grew up past our heads on either side. For once, no poison oak was anywhere to be seen and we could let the delicate mustard branches brush carelessly over us as we walked through the maze.

The middle of the week: if you've been to Korea town, you know the biggest pain about living here is the parking. Mainly, because there isn't any. However, I lucked out TWICE this week and found a spot within a block of my house. BUT, what good is finding such a good spot, I ask you, when in the morning before work you still walk four blocks away to where you USUALLY park before remembering what a great spot you got and then walk the four blocks back. Arg. You'd think I was blond.

The end of the week: I'm off to visit Linsey, Janina, Molly, Amanda and Jessica in Carp this weekend. Best luck of all that we could all get together.

So, I'll miss the market again. BUT, to tie you over, I have another great recipe from Molly (I tried it with my leftovers. It was good.)

Cut up some apples, red cabbage, and tarragon. Make a dressing with a minced shallot, some lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper. The apples soak up the dressing and become WAY better than you'd expect an apple to be. Yum.

Dressing tip:
Soak your shallots in the acid (whether this is lemon juice or vinegar or whatever) for at least 10 minutes (while you're chopping up the rest of the salad). Macerating them like this takes away the "onion flavor" so that the shallot adds a depth rather than a harshness to your dressing. Everyone will love your dressing, but no one will guess that there are onions in it. THEN add the oil slowly whisking it in (or just put it in a jar and shake).