Calamity Shazaam in the Kitchen

It's April here in the home of the bean and the cod, only you'd never know it because the weather is just complete crap. Today hail and snow, tomorrow sun and locusts, unless it's hail and snow. The only reasonable and civilized way to cope with this rotten weather is lots of wine and things you have to cook in the oven, preferably on high. Roast chicken goes perfectly with wine. The recipe in this lovely cookbook is so easy (you can find it here ), and the only exra step I make is to pop the roasting pan (a cast iron skillet) into the oven to pre-heat. Oh and I borrow a step from the beloved Laurie Colwin and rub the birdy all over with paprika and a sprinkling of coarse salt. Reader, I ate it. Reader, it was delicious. Reader, this weather can just go to suck an egg.

Happy Easter. On account of ONE of us in the family being diagnosed with celiac coeliac (the British spelling makes it seem like a smarter diagnosis) the sacrificial Easter lamb cake is brought to you today by the letters "gluten-free cake mix". As Americans are wont to do, rather than give up gluten, we create gluten-free gluten. I am pretty sure that normal people would be like "oh well, how about berries and sorbet for dessert?" but not us. Also, it's the damn SACRIFICIAL LAMB CAKE, how would Easter be complete without this cake? Without the lamb cake, it's just Sunday dinner. Which would be fine by me since I am not a believer. I know it looks like it's already been slaughtered, but no, it's just taking a lie down. Turns out a lamb cake without gluten is basically like an actual lamb without bones - kinda floppy. I don't want to freak everyone out by serving a headless cake, so a lying down cake it is. Or maybe it will resur...

In April a really sweet man died suddenly. He was a good friend of our family, a man of many diverse talents, and we all miss him terribly still. But life goes on in that awful, inexorable, healing way. Somehow we get past the initial pain, which transforms into a phantom limb, no longer there but inexplicably vividly felt when thought about. Kenny was also a gardener. So I inherited a couple of tomato plants that he'd started. These are no ordinary tomato plants, oh no. They are tomato plants that Kenny had propagated from seeds that he'd been saving from one year to the next year for the past forty years. No pressure or anything. I am really brilliant at growing weeds and the thought of having to nurture these tender plants (when I got them they were only just newborn plants) to full growth was totally stressful. Completely gave me a case of Dontfuckitupitis and fearing a constipated summer, I called in an expert. My good friend ABanana lives near me with her bo...

Since I read Tamar Adler's brilliant book I have been a one-night-a-week cooking machine. Which means I have been eating both well and more or less healthily.  Wednesday is my FTY delivery day so it makes sense to do most of the cooking as soon as I get home with the groceries.  In this week's order I got two bunches of ramps. The taste of ramps sends me back in time to when I was a kid and I spent hours outside down in Hull pulling up small spring onions and pretending to be a survivalist in "the woods" which was really just a wooded lot.  The ramps flavor is far more delicate, but then again, the spring onions I thought I discovered as a kid were probably not really onions at all and I really probably shouldn't have been eating them. But for better or worse, the scent of fresh onion means spring to me.  Oh I am ready for summer already. Anyway, I rinsed the leaves of the ramps and chopped them off. I sauteed them in a little oil to wilt them f...

The ugly secret in my kitchen is that I buy ingredients with more ambition than actual execution. This is something I am trying to change because frankly it is a really sh*tty habit to have. My resolution has been to try to eat everything I buy, a hideously first world resolution, and because it makes me uncomfortable, I am breaking the habit. I will buy dried beans and think "oh I will make a big pot of baked beans!" Or pick up a giant squash and think "ahhh squash and curry soup!". But the fact of the matter is I live on my own and I can only eat the same thing for three days, tops. On the occasion that I make soup, for some reason I make enough for seven people to eat for three days straight, which if you do the math means I am eating that soup for 21 days (I think, I am not great at math and I was drinking wine earlier). This kind of gluttony and waste is getting on my nerves. So no more bullsh*t as La Mamman would say.  Basically this means that...

Today drained the energy totally out of me. I know what I am doing at work, just that some days I have to do everything all at once, oh and it all should have been done five minutes ago.  Five on the clock could not come soon enough. I trudged my sorry self home, until the end when I accidentally bashed my foot off the curb and hopped the last few feet, fueled by pain and f-bombs.  I was just too tired to make dinner and contemplated going right to bed with a cup of tea. Which is a terrible idea in reality, unless you have a sad-faced stomach and then a cup of tea is the best idea. As a compromise I made a dinner that required the same level of effort as making a cup of tea.  As you can see from the photo above, it was just potatoes and an egg. Big whoop. A couple of chopped up potatoes, roasted them with a bit of olive oil in a 375 oven until soft on the inside and crispy brown on the out. Then I poached an egg, which is about the easiest way to...

I like to have my family over on Sunday for lunch. It motivates me to clean my house and to cook for pleasure. Like I mentioned before, I usually get home and just want to park myself on the couch to read Scandinavian murder mysteries and eat popcorn seasoned with Old Bay, garlic powder, salt, pepper, and smoked paprika. If it's been a particularly tough day, I will treat myself to a Miller High Life in a pony bottle. Ahhh life.... Anyway, for lunch today I made "lasagna". The reason I put this in quotes is because there is a world of difference between the lasagna that shows up on a plate in Italy and what you will get in America. According to La Maman all the lasagna here is crap. Sorry, le crap. Noodles, greasy meat, too much cheese, and drowning in tomato sauce - too heavy and fatty for her European sensibilities. And while she and I will just never see eye to eye on the merits of Lucky Charms and of diet sodas, we are in complete agreement here.  Per...

The recent spell of gorgeous summery weather has put me in the mood for salad. Not leafy salad because I cannot make a leafy salad to save my life, but more along the lines of a shredded root veg tossed with a vinaigrette kind of thing. A simple vinaigrette dressing is perfect for shredded fresh carrots and dried cranberries. I make mine with a finely minced clove of garlic which I mix with a spoonful of grain mustard, a large pinch of salt, a few grinds of pepper, and some white wine vinegar. Then I whisk in some olive oil until it looks like, well, vinaigrette. I have no clue about the proportions because I grew up watching my Maman make this and I am just copying her. I will say that you want to put in more oil than vinegar and you can leave out the garlic if your guests have tender digestions. Or add in more garlic if it's just you. This dressing works well with chopped roasted beets, and with leafy salads (if you know how to make them). Made with carrots from Farmers...

I was the most awful kind of American child. My mother is from the South of France so growing up she was all about olive oil, garlic, and eating natural foods instead of processed foods. This was the direct opposite of how I wanted to eat. I wanted Oreos in my lunch, not an apple; I wanted American cheese and baloney sandwiches on soft white bread; I wanted snack sized packs of Doritos and Fritos; in short, I wanted to be just like everyone else in the lunch room at a time when conformity was key to acceptance. Which I just never was able to achieve, but not because of my lunches. But that is a whole other blog post, or something... Summer would roll around and my grandparents would come over from France for three months. Three months of everything made from scratch, catered to our desires and preferences, with no trying to conform to anyone else.  My Meme would ask us every morning what we wanted for breakfast - perhaps un coup de fruit ou peut-etre des crepes? Meme loved my...

I finally, FINALLY, got around to making those Swedish cinnamon rolls ("kanelbullar") that I have been so obsessed with lately. It was totally worth the effort. I used this recipe from the Scandinavian Kitchen which is a shop over in London because a) the recipe is in English, and b) the measurements are metric. Also partly because the recipe called for fresh yeast which I prefer for no other reason than that I love the texture. If you have trouble with the measurements, try the converter at Food.com but also keep in mind that most kitchen scales have an option to measure in grams and most measuring cups have milliliter (ml) marks on the opposite side of the cup marks. Lastly, the recipe tells you to bake them at 220 degrees - this is not the Fahrenheit number. You want to cook them at 425 F and in my oven it took about 12 - 15 minutes to get them to the lovely golden color. As for using fresh yeast, well I love it. I was introduced to it years and years ago when I...

I love kale. For the longest time I thought chard was kale and I do not like chard. Personally I think that this is true for a bunch of people. Between that and the fact that most people think of kale as the limp bit of greenery under the dried up slice of orange that is the garnish on a million diner breakfasts, I can see why so many of my friends are like "eh, meh, kale". But let me tell you, kale is DELICIOUS. I am convinced it is what Grimm intended for Rapunzel to crave like mad, only the word "rapunzel" was more exotic than the word "kale". Here is the excerpt from the Grimm story of Rapunzel: Through the small rear window of these people's house they could see into a splendid garden that was filled with the most beautiful flowers and herbs. The garden was surrounded by a high wall, and no one dared enter, because it belonged to a sorceress who possessed great power and was feared by everyone. One day the woman was standing at this windo...

I have gone way over my line of sleep credit this week and resolved to sleep IN today. Usually Saturdays I am up and at 'em to get everything out of the way for a lazy Sunday. But for some reason I was exhausted last night and decided to make today my sort of lazy day. Let me just say that my idea of sleeping in is usually until 8 or 9am, which is still early to actual sleeper-in-ers, but it's my idea of late. And what goes amazingly well with a lie-in?

The other day I saw a mention of this program called Farmers to You on Universal Hub. The idea of getting food directly from the farm is something a hungry girl in the city dreams of, so naturally I wanted to sign up immediately.  I've previously signed up for Boston Organics, but I am just so American in that I don't like not having a choice. Farmers to You does ask that you spend $30 a week minimum, about the same as Boston Organics, but you get to pick what you want.  Which means I won't be getting any romaine lettuce. Thank god. 

Sometimes I just have to use everything up or throw it out. I call these kinds of dishes "compost salad" while La Maman calls them "plat unique". Last night I found myself in the kitchen with a bag of kale, a pint of cherry tomatoes, and half a container of mozzarella "pearls". The common denominator here was the fact that they were all within inches of their use-by date. And I cannot bear to throw away food, especially since so many people don't even have enough to eat.

One of the best things about having a functional kitchen again is being able to bring my own lunch to work every day.  Usually it's leftovers and it is typically true that things taste a little better the longer they get to sit around together.  This lunch is leftover polenta I made with gruyere, and toasted quinoa, sweet potato, and golden raisin casserole from the other other day.  It was pretty delicious and I didn't feel like rubbish afterwards from all the preservatives and crap that is in most processed foods. 

The kitchen is functional: WHOOH YAH! There are still details to finish: Oh for the love of &^%#*@!! Who gives a crapola about the deeeeetails??  I need more wine.... Fine, how does this compound miter saw work again?  Blerrr....g Seriously, when people tell you that your renovation will take twice as long as you think, my advice is to take THAT number and square it.

If I never eat another bowl of Cheerios for dinner again, that would be fine with me. Some of you might be aware that I am doing a little work on ye old homestead and said project is crawling along at a glacier pace. Which is better than nothing I suppose. Anyway, just before Labor Day the kitchen came apart. All the way down to nothing.

I made socca the other night. Why? Well the other, other , night I went out drinking and then somehow found myself in a fancy food store buying $30 olive oil and $7 chickpea flour. I am nothing if not impulsive. And chronically broke.  Anyway, the one reason I buy chickpea flour is to make panisse and socca. As for the very expensive olive oil.... well that was beyond reason. Except for the fact that it is from Nice which is where La Maman is from and that's good enough for me. Socca is a baked pancake made from chickpea flour. When I was in Nice , I ate it hot with my fingers, dusted with black pepper, sitting outside in the old part of town. I still eat it this way, only now with a glass of red wine.

Looky here, a mulberry tree. Right? I am not totally positive at what point these can be picked, but if the bird poop that surrounded this tree last year is anything to go by, I need to wait until they are a MUCH darker purple. Also, I am not entirely sure what to make with them when I pick them. Maybe jam? Or wine?

Making Rice Krispie Treats with brown butter is nothing new, it is however, new to me. I love RKTs, always have. They are ridiculously fast to make and I've made them with Trix, Fruity Pebbles, Coco Puffs, Fruit Loops... if it's a totally non-nutritive sugary cereal, I will combine it with butter and marshmallows melted together and basically eat it out of hand for the next day or so. Oh and also, all the ingredients can be found easily - my bodega carries them even.  So when someone's Facebook status referenced making RKTs with brown butter my mouth watered immediately. And this weekend I made two batches. To one batch I added cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla bean paste. To the other batch I added vanilla bean paste, extra vanilla extract, and a pinch of salt. To both batches I added rainbow nonpareils for fun. And oh my my my, are they ever delicious! SO much better with brown butter! And have one very vanilla-ey and the other a little spiced makes them even more t...