Sara Bir

A Recipe Tester's Guilty Secrets

February 21, 2014

We might work on the 24^th floor of a skyscraper with a dozen other testers. We might work solo, in our own moderately appointed home kitchens. We might wear crisp chef’s whites. We might wear tank tops and cutoffs. The recipes we develop or test may appear between the red gingham covers of universally embraced cookbooks, in glossy magazines, on the backs of cereal boxes, or posted on your favorite food blog. Wherever we are, whatever our qualifications, we take recipes more seriously than anyone else on the planet. Not only do our reputations depend on it; our sanity does, too. We are proud of this. We love what we do. But we don’t cook in a vacuum. Certain issues keep us–or me, they keep me–up at night.

1. The recipe says it will keep, tightly covered in the refrigerator, for two weeks. I kept eating it for two months and didn’t get sick, but there’s an unspoken two-week rule, a.k.a. When in Doubt, Round Down.

2. My knife skills are probably way better than yours, my knives’ blades sharper. After all, I’ve been doing this cooking thing pretty intensively for years. Sometimes I forget that. So if the recipe says the prep time is half an hour and you’re scornfully 45 minutes into making dinner, that might be why.

3. In one test kitchen, the preferred method of measuring flour was to dip and scoop. In another, it was to spoon and level. In yet another, there was no preferred method. When you made that strawberry cake and it was not light and fluffy, the reason might be Flour Measurement Standardization Chaos. (P.S.: Measuring cups suck; we just use them because we have to. Scales rule.)

4. After over a dozen re-dos, the deadline was approaching and everyone—the editors, the testers, our families—were sick of Speedy Hot Cross Buns or Kasha Cauliflower Toss or Apricot Frangipane Tart, and we lost our ability to taste the thing with any sense of pleasure or critical thinking, and the recipe that got published may not be worth it. This is our nightmare.

5. Some cloves of garlic are really big, and some are really small. When the ingredients ask for “5 cloves of garlic, peeled and smashed with the flat side of a knife blade”, we may ponder if your garlic cloves will be the appropriate size, and we also marvel at how dorky “5 medium-sized cloves of garlic” sounds, and so we do not write it into the recipe. By extension, what is a medium carrot? Or a medium onion? We can only hope that you, dear reader, know how much you like garlic and will interpret the 5 cloves thing as you like, adding or subtracting accordingly, and that as much as we’d like list the ingredients called for in the most exact amounts possible, we do not want you to have to pull out a caliper when you get the urge to cook.

6. All-Purpose Flour is all-purpose, sure, but its protein content varies from brand to brand: King Arthur, Pillsbury, White Lily, Martha White, Gold Medal, Store Brand X. We have no idea which one you use at home. But if your cornmeal sablés or pancetta gougères don’t turn out quite right, all-purpose flour might be why.

7. Yes, it says it serves six. I actually portioned out six servings of the finished recipe. But I don’t know how much you eat. Sometimes, after a long day of testing and re-testing recipes, I have no concept how much I eat, or what a reasonable serving size looks like. And that’s when it’s time to take a head-clearing little walk, except there’s a sink full of dirty pots and a dishwasher laden with steaming, clean bowls and silicone spatulas that need to be put away.

8. Turns out our tin of cayenne pepper was older than we thought, so it took an entire ½ teaspoon to make the rub for the flank steak as peppy as it needed to be. But if you use fresh cayenne pepper, wow. It might be different. So we’re dating our spice tins now. You should toss ground spices that are over a year old, and we promise to do that now, too.

9. It’s colder in here than you might guess, which is why this effing bread dough is taking forever to rise. When it’s doubled, it’s doubled, but we need to give you a time frame anyway, and 2-12 hours is a ludicrous time frame, we know, and there’s not enough column inches to allow a hednote about rigging up a proofing box. This is why so many recipes call for more yeast than they actually need.

10. Sometimes, the result of a recipe is so bad, not even the newsroom staff will eat it. Sometimes, we stash things we’ve made in the fridge because we don’t want to deal with them and then forget, because the next day there’s another clutch of recipes going on. This forgotten stuff in the fridge starts growing green beards of mold. And then, sigh, we throw food away because it is inedible. We don’t even compost it.

Despite this, our jobs are pretty great. That we are not guilty about.

This post originally appeared on Food Riot, where I contribute regularly.

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7 Keys to Killer Oatmeal

February 17, 2014

I’ve cooked oatmeal six ways from Sunday. Every winter I eat it for breakfast, day in and day out, and never tire of the stuff. Bonus: my kid loves it, too. Bonus bonus: it’s affordable, healthful, soul-satisfying, and a fantastic vehicle for maple syrup. After years of oatmeal-cooking, I sussed out the key factors in making oaty morning repasts as quick, wholesome, and flavorful as possible. If the prospect of a steaming bowl of oatmeal can entice you out of bed on a cold, dark morning, I suggest you read on.

1. Use great oats. Rolled oats are great for cookies, but to me, they have the mouthfeel of horse fodder when made into porridge. I prefer steel-cut oats because of their nutty flavor and versatile texture: cook them in a less liquid for a little toothiness, or for a longer period with more liquid for creaminess. Bob’s Red Mill makes my favorite steel-cut oats, but Bob’s also offers Scottish oats, which are cut into smaller, irregularly-shaped bits that cook faster. Of course, cooking times for steel-cut oats are not a problem if you…

2. Soak your oats overnight. Not only does this speed up your morning whole-grain fix, some experts claim it makes the oats more digestible. It’s win-win. I soak 2 cups of steel-cut oats in 4 cups of water, and then add 2 more cups of water or other liquid the following morning, when I cook them. (By volume, 1 part steel-cut oats to 3 parts liquid is a handy ratio.) My oats simmer as I grind the coffee and take the dog out to do his business, and after ten largely unattended minutes, breakfast is ready. Not just for that day, but the whole week. Because I…

3. Cook multiple servings of oatmeal at once. Two cups of dry steel-cut oats will yield at least four days of breakfasts, and up to six; it all depends on your appetite. Cool the cooked oats and then pop them in the fridge in a covered container. The following morning, depending on how lazy you feel, either microwave the oatmeal or boil it in a small saucepan. Whichever way, it’s helpful to add a few tablespoons of water per serving, since oats stiffen as they refrigerate. Cooked oatmeal will keep in the refrigerator for about a week and a half.

4. Don’t neglect to add a fat pinch of salt to your pot of simmering oats. Even though you may not be serving your oatmeal in a savory style, a bit of salt is essential; I find the porridge tastes tinny and flat otherwise. Some people like to garnish oatmeal with melted butter and good, flaky salt like Maldon—which is fine, too. But I still think the entire pot needs a tiny but crucial seasoning with salt first.

5. Choose your cooking liquid wisely. Plain old water lets the oaty flavor come through best. However, if you drain yogurt and have whey on hand, try using use a cup or two as part of the cooking liquid. It adds a lively acidic tinge and also helps the cooked oats keep longer in the fridge.

6. Enrich it with nutty protein. My husband eschews oatmeal, saying it never tides him over until lunch. That’s because he does not add a heaping spoonful of almond or peanut butter, as I do. The rich nut butter imparts a luxurious flavor and gives my body the good fat it needs to tackle the tasks of the day head-on. Greek yogurt is also a tasty addition (though if you’ve cooked your oats with whey, you may want to just stick with the nut butter). I’ve talked to people who even stir in miso or tahini, but I’m too attached to my drizzle of pure maple syrup to investigate those savory routes yet.

7. Sneak even more nutrients in there with freshly ground flaxseed. I like to stir about ¼ cup of ground flaxseed into my big pot of porridge so don’t have to fuss around with it every morning.

Look here for a master oatmeal recipe (it predates my discovery of the overnight soak). What are your favorite oatmeal tricks and tips?

This post originally appeared on Food Riot.

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I Love Cutting Up Dead Cows

February 14, 2014

There’s a sound, a wonderful subtle sound, that a sharp knife makes when it slides between lobes of cow muscle. It’s not gory or cartoonish at all, like the amplified sound effects in a zombie flick, but closer to the trickling of a narrow, shallow stream over rocks.

Cows, as we know, are really big. It takes a long time—days, if you are working alone–to separate a slaughtered cow into its various primal and sub-primal cuts. Very few of us ever get to do this. The meat we buy at the grocery store is usually fabricated into cuts for us. You unwrap it, discard the Styrofoam tray and that gross bloody diaper thing, then simply toss the ground or cubed flesh into a hot skillet. Actually butchering meat is tedious work, elemental and too often unfamiliar, but it’s also one of the most thrilling things a person can do.

I got the chance to do a little butchering recently, when my friend Kyle and his father killed their cow, their first in years. Slaughtering a cow on a small family farm is not the sort of thing you can cross off your to-do list in a fraction of an afternoon. There are all kinds of factors to consider: the weather (cold is good, warm is not), the strength of the help you have available, the following days of operating meat saws, vacuum sealers, pulleys, hooks.

By the time I arrived at the farm, June the cow’s carcass was split into four parts; her salted hide was spread in the loft of the barn, her nose and udder still identifiable. Kyle was cutting up the neighborhood around and including her front leg (highlights: chuck, brisket, shank). Did I want to help out for a while? Yes and yes.

What followed was one of the best mornings in my life. I reconnected with that rarified, unexpectedly refined art of butchery. As a lazy vegetarian, a sausagetarian, I’d forgotten this truth. When I was in cooking school in the late 1990s, the first class we actually got to use our knives was Meat Identification, usually shortened to Meat I.D. On Day 1, we all took turns breaking down a gigantic round of beef (a primal) into more manageable sub-primals: top round, bottom round. Sinking my knife into that maroon-hued mass of meat—which hung from a sturdy hook like a bulky winter coat or tire swing—and the crumbly adipose fat surrounding it produced an adrenaline rush, startling and powerful.  Instantly I gave myself over to that round of beef and the many different animal parts followed: loins of lamb, shoulders of veal, sides of pork. The poultry, with its flaccid flesh and droopy, pimpled skin, didn’t have the same emotional potency.

I think it’s because of the kinship we more developed mammals have with other, seemingly less developed mammals. The parts are familiar, intimate, immediate. Kyle, who in his non-farm life is a massage therapist and practitioner of Tibetan medicine, kept on pointing out different highlights of June’s anatomy as we disassembled her into increasingly less cow-like parts. “There’s her tibia and fibia,” he said after I’d coaxed her elbow and front leg bones away from the muscles surrounding them. And, like massage, the craft of butchery is not crude; we there to separate, not beat up, June’s body. A true butcher lets the meat speak to her. She looks carefully at the connective tissue and the grain of the muscles and follows those like a hiker follows a creek. Charts and diagrams help, but when it comes down to it, it’s just you and a dead animal. If you listen, the animal will tell your knife where to go.

In the midst of all this new age yahooism, we were having what felt like an impromptu party in the farm’s meat room. There was little talk, much concentration, and an abundance of intoxicating purpose. My friend Kelly, who assisted at June’s still-fresh methodical demise, plugged an iPod into the heavy-duty meat room boom box and, low and behold, Echo & The Bunnymen’s “The Cutter” popped right up on the shuffle.

This sort of boutique-minded foodie day-tripping is an easy target for eye-rollers and detractors, as well as PETA members. But we’re all part of the same team, here to learn, not to shock. Here because we respect the lives of animals and pay homage to them in our own, very different ways. We’re all disgusted and disappointed in the realities of industrially-raised meat. We’re all tired of being isolated from the things we put in our mouths. We all want a feeling of control, an illusion of control.

I had engagements to attend to, and was not able to assist Kyle and Kelly for more than an hour. We’d barely made much headway with the shoulder when I drove down the long, rambling gravel farm driveway to get back onto the highway, then the Interstate, then my unexceptional life of shrink-wrapped meat chunks atop bloody diapers. If June has a successor arrive on the farm this spring, I’ve resolved to clear my calendar for slaughter, that demanding and logistically boggling time when life becomes meat and the life we take from the farm nourish our souls.

Again and again we hear talk about how disconnected we are from our food sources, how that translates into regarding food as a product rather than once-living things that required resources and attention. But no one mentions how we miss out on the pleasures of breaking down those animals into usable bits. It’s not for the squeamish or impatient, but for the curious and determined, it rivals a trip to the spa.

 This post originally appeared on Food Riot, where I contribute regularly.

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The Great Big Book of Hot Dogs: A Eulogy

February 12, 2014

Once upon a time, I dreamed up a book. A big book. A colorful coffee table book. About hot dogs.

The Great Big Book of Hot Dogs takes a brainy, lively, and in-depth look at America’s favorite food. Written for pop culture junkies, food historians, culinary travelers, and Americana fans, The Great Big Book of Hot Dogs traces the origin of the hot dog from the birth of the frankfurter in Frankfurt, Germany (or is it the wiener of Vienna, Austria?) to the fateful and happy collision of frank with bun.

The Great Big Book of Hot Dogs was my thing. I’m sure you had a thing once: a rock band or an indie movie or an organic farm or a bakery-café, a thing that existed completely and beautifully in your mind. A thing sure to charm the world; all you had to do was release it. That release is tricky, because it makes the sweet, sure thing suddenly vulnerable.

Since no other definitive source on hot dog culture and lore exists in the American marketplace, The Great Big Book of Hot Dogs, with its extensive bibliography and index, will be a valuable, unique reference.

I’d travel the world on my hot dog odyssey, visiting diners and street fairs and libraries. I’d thoughtfully sample hot dogs in a thousand variations. Then, exhausted but giddy, I’d return home, notebooks erupting with details scribbled in a nitrate-induced  frenzy, and weave that research into a cohesive, lush volume, an ode to hot dogs more poetic and universal than anything ever created.

Why Sara Bir Is the Best Person to Write this Book: Sara loves hot dogs. Even bad ones. Sara takes hot dogs seriously, but recognizes that innocence and simplicity part of their appeal. The Tone: Fun and smart, showing reverence and respect for hot dogs, not kitsch and disdain.

Who doesn’t love hot dogs? A lot of people, it turns out. Like editors and literary agents and publishers, or at least the ones I spoke with. Everyone I shared my special secret dream idea with was the wrong person, the person who happened to not adore frankfurters. The person who though a great big book of hot dogs was…odd. Useless.

The Great Big Book of Hot Dogs will contain sidebars with hot dog-related quotes, descriptions of exotic international variations on hot dogs, and listings of “Almost a Hot Dog”—specialties such as Chinese sausage buns, corn dogs, veggie hot dogs, Vienna Sausages, and Pigs in a Blanket.

But I kept at it, carefully writing impressions of the different hot dogs I ate in a tiny journal when I was out and about. I even got a job at a sausage cart in New York City to imbue my pet project with firsthand richness and texture. Technically, it was not a hot dog cart, but oh well. Also, I just needed a job, any job, and the sausage cart people were the ones that called me back.

With colorful photographs of hot dog hot spots across the globe and vivid vignettes of hot dog history, The Great Big Book of Hot Dogs will appeal to home cooks and don’t-cooks, seasoned travelers and armchair travelers. Laden with amusing sidebars and mouth-watering visuals, The Great Big Book of Hot Dogs will be luscious enough for coffee tables and compelling enough to keep bedside for late-night reading.

It was the early 2000s, when food blogs were picking up steam. Why publish a lavish hot dog book when dozens of websites offered newly uploaded hot dog tidbits in real time? I didn’t want to create a hot dog blog; I wanted to write a book. But I did blog about my sausage cart experiences; as time passed, my posts displayed an absence of the joy and rapture that to me, was the whole point. Business at the cart was slow. On the blog, I rarely even mentioned sausages.

navy suit man
loud on cellphone
businesstalk in park
under bricked-in trees
shiny shoes step away
just as pigeon shit falls
misses him
damn

“What’s going on with your hot dog book?” my husband used to ask, and I’d mumble a weak non-reply. Then the question became “What happened to your hot dog book?” It dried up, the dream deferred, the raisin the in the sun that did not explode. The phrase he says now is “Remember your hot dog book idea?” Had it come to fruition—the book tour, the appearances on call-in radio shows, the occasional guest columns in splashy food magazines—I doubt my life would be very different now. I sometimes imagine running across a fully realized Great Big Book of Hot Dogs and delighting in its pages, a ghost book by the ghost me. The real me has continued moving forward, pursuing new dreams and admiring the old ones, arranged neatly and lovingly on the mind’s bookshelf, perfect vapors of a perfect idea.

This post originally appeared on Food Riot, where I contribute regularly.

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11 Ways to Party Like It's 1973

February 05, 2014

We initially brought out the book to get an idea for my daughter’s birthday party.  (A doggie theme, we quickly decided; she’ll be turning four, and if a low-key doggie cut-up cake and an offhand game of Pin-The-Nose-On-The-Doggie will make her happy, so much the better.) But we kept looking at the book long after we’d settled on doggies.

Called The Beta Sigma Phi International Party Book, it offers “hundreds of proven party ideas”, as the cover puts it. I scored this spiral-bound beauty (publication date: 1973) at a huge thrift sale last winter in the cookbook section. But the Party Book is not a cookbook. It’s an anthology of Beta Sigma Phi members’ parties, and even though it’s nearly devoid of graphics, it reads very Pinterest-y.

Beta Sigma Phi was a women’s non-academic sorority, and it still exists. (My own mother, as it turns out, was a member herself; at the time, she was a stay-at-home mom who was new to town, and it was an important way for her to get out of the house and connect with other women). The Party Book fêtes that members recap in their own words are not as racy as the key party or hot-tub clichés we default to with the 1970s, but there is evidence in its pages of high-concept get-togethers that put my tepid hummus-and-carrot-sticks affairs of today to shame. Next time I start acting like I’m all fun and edgy, just smack me in the face with the Party Book. I wonder if my mother, with her succinct account of her time in Beta Sigma Phi, is withholding details of puckish lady shenanigans.

Here are excerpts of my favorite Party Book parties. Really, I did not make them up.

SUPPRESSED DESIRE PARTY: “Held in an unfinished basement we called the ‘spook cellar’. Costumes worn to depict something each person always wanted to be or do but kept suppressed. ” Then what? They brought out the Gimp?

MEN’S BABY SHOWER: “Baby shower for the ‘second’ baby. The men played games like how many nursery rhymes you can name in one minute? (You would be shocked at what they termed a ‘Nursery Rhyme’.) Prizes for the games were bar accessories.”

GYPSY CARAVAN: “Used bales of hay for a ring around the campfire. Goulash was served from a big pot. ‘Game of Thievery’ was played throughout the evening. Everyone stole items from each other such as jewelry or anything you could. At the end of the party the best robber was awarded a pair of earrings.” The Party Book is free of political correctness. This stealing gypsy affair is a milder example.

COME AS YOU ARE SNATCH BREAKFAST: “5 AM at my home. We just went and picked up the girls and surprised them. They had to come just as they were dressed when they opened the door. We served bacon, pancakes, eggs, juice, and coffee when they all arrived. The fun of the party was seeing how guests looked when they woke up in the morning.” This party sounds alternately terrifying and terrific.

‘HAIRY’ PIZZA PARTY: “We invited a local beautician who used guests as models for wig and makeup demonstrations. Each girl was asked to model one or more hairpieces. Menu: Pizza, beer, punch, and coffee.” Wigs? Sure! Pizza? Why not! Beer, punch, and coffee? An unusual combo, yes, but it’s the party’s name that needs work here.

HOBO PARTY: The Party Book lists no fewer than six Hobo Parties. Baked beans, logs for seating, and invitations written on torn brown paper bags seem to be a common thread with this theme. They all manage to strike me as wholesome gatherings, but I can’t imagine them translating to our times. A homeless party or a crusty-punk squatter party sounds like, at best, a huge drag.

ORIENTAL KARATE PARTY: “After the karate practice, we awarded throat lozenges to the guest with the loudest yell and a broken brick to the least adept participant.” More parties should incorporate a karate practice.

ROMAN HOLIDAYS PARTY: “Invitations were written to husbands; women were their slaves that night. The women ‘babied’ their husbands, fed them grapes, etc. This was an uproarious good time and everything was taken in good spirit.” God, I hope so. Call me when you throw a man-slave party.

POT PARTY: “Special dress: Hippie. The menu consisted of cheese and chocolate fondues—thus the ‘pot’. Through secret prearrangement with the local and state law enforcement officer, the party was ‘raided’ with each guest being frisked for dangerous drugs. Officers then gave an informative talk on the dangers of drugs and displayed various types of narcotics. Other prizes were bubble pipes and bubble gum.” Nice to know the law enforcement had the free time to do a drug education talk to a group of buzzed suburbanites, all in the form of a very clever prank.

POVERTY PARTY: Thrown the weekend after taxes are due, this party is similar to a Hobo Party, only with a worse name. It also appears in the guise of a “Poor Taste” party, which I think we would now call a White Trash party.

COME AS A DRINK PARTY: “Each guest received an invitation placed in an empty liquor bottle or wine bottle and left on his doorstep. Everyone was asked to come as a mixed drink.” Brilliant! I have dibs on the Angel’s Tit costume.

Obviously our little-girl Doggie Party is not in the same league as the parties above, but I am now inspired to make it both as memorable and as free of stress as possible. Loosen up! Be silly! Let people wear bathrobes or dress up like a cocktail! Because that’s the connecting thread of all the ­Party Book occasions: a party is only as fun for the guests as the enjoyment had by the people planning it. There’s a surplus of goofiness and a refreshing lack of stuffiness. Throw in a little cultural sensitivity and its content is both inspiring and timeless.

This post originally appeared on Food Riot, where I contribute regularly.

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Sugar Spun Sister

January 16, 2014

All of the best-dressed desserts of 2014 will be decked out in spun sugar. This will be a huge pain in the ass, because spinning sugar takes a long time, makes a giant sticky mess, and can’t reliably be done in advance.

But guess what: it’s totally worth it. You start out with sugar and water and end up with golden gossamer filaments, and the process is so impossibly magical you decide to overlook the shards of caramel and blobs of sugar syrup that cling to the counter.

My journey with spun sugar all happened because of Sparkly Ladies’ Night, an event my friend created so she’d have an excuse to wear the fabulous glittery outfits she never got to wear otherwise. It’s a dress-up party for grown women that begins with a wine party and ends with a late dinner at a neighborhood spaghetti-and-meatballs Italian restaurant. In between, we teeter through the snow and up narrow steps in our assorted ridiculous heels to check out the annual Holiday Loft Tour, in part so we won’t get drunk too fast.

I offered to bring dessert. As the loudmouth chef of the group, I felt dessert was an extension of my outfit, of my persona—a persona that, for once, would not be shod in homely black Dansko clogs, but shapely silver sequin cowboy boots. No tomato-spattered apron or hair tied back with a flour-dusted do-rag. I was going to look like a woman, for once, damn it, and the dessert had to be sparkly, sparkly in a splendidly edible fashion. No creepy isomalt rhinestones or Wilton Goes to Las Vegas bullshit. This dessert had to taste amazing, foremost. Secondly, it couldn’t clash with my cowboy boots.

Initially I planned on making kir royale gelée shots in star-shaped aspic molds, but I couldn’t find any decent cassis (ah, the travails of living in a small town). And—sorry, gelatin—if I’m going to pop open a bottle of Champagne, I want to drink my fizzing kir royale, not eat it.

I had about a dozen egg whites in the fridge, left over from a flan I’d made the prior week. So I decided to bake those into an angel food cake run through with pinpoints of white chocolate like buckshot and studded with citrus zest. Then I made an orange mousse filling, and burned up even more egg whites in the icing: seven-minute, to be exact, although I stepped away from my boiling sugar syrup right at the crucial moment when its temperature rocketed from soft-ball to above soft-crack in seconds, so the billowy marshmallow effect I’d dreamed. No once cared but me, of course: the cake was delicious, festooned with needly, scene-stealing little nests of spun sugar.

The spun sugar was a last-minute inspiration, requiring only sugar and a cheap whisk purchased at the grocery store with the express purpose of snipping off the rounded ends to make violently claw-like tines: the prongs to dip in the molten caramel for spinning. There is an art to spinning sugar, and I have yet to refine it. There’s a deftness of the wrist and a zen-zone, a necessity for keeping a keen eye on the temperature of the caramel, which, if it cools too much, will not spin, but pool. With practice, a person can weave up airy towers that would make Arachne jealous. My spun sugar looked like it went to bed hung over and woke up without a comb, but it was still magnificent by default.

Cooking is dirty work. Frenching a rack of lamb or filleting a salmon can make a girl feel badass, but sometimes she yearns to be fabulous. To not have the stench of feta cheese and bleach water clinging to her chapped hands. “Sparkle comes from the inside,” we sparkly ladies purred in our lamé and tulle, and it’s true, but sometimes you have to bust out the fakey-fake sparkles before the real, inner ones, can shine. Next year, for Sparkly Ladies’ Night, I hope to make a croquembouche and the kir royale geleés, and I’m going to find silver platform space boots so I can get all Ziggy Stardust on the Holiday Loft Tour’s unsuspecting ass, and I’m going the be the only girl in the gang positively rocking feta-scented hands.

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Food Trends I Wish for in 2014

January 09, 2014

There are food fads and there are food trends. Fads are meaningless, as useful as Pop Rocks. Trends are meaningful critical masses of attitudes and actions–a quarry of Pop Rocks built into a mighty structure. There are some silly fads I fancy, and some powerful trends I yearn for. Friends, let’s pretend the next twelve fabulous months of eating and cooking will play out like this:

No one mentions cronuts very often. However, pepperoni rolls—the good ones, with quality pepperoni and dough that’s light and airy but not insubstantially so—gain a following beyond West Virginia.

Consumption of gluey, mass-produced cheese plummets, as does demand for overly sweet, doughy pizzas created as vehicles for said cheese-like substances. Instead, people opt to indulge every now and then in moderate amounts of small-scale, high-quality cheeses with outstanding flavor to justify their caloric density.

The sorry excuse for a brewpub in my small town properly cleans out their brewing equipment, resulting in beer that’s not only drinkable but occasionally pleasant, instead of the murky-tasting, foul swill they once passed off as beer.

The otherwise excellent preschool my daughter attends decides to stop serving Fruity Pebbles and canned cinnamon biscuits for breakfast, instead making the fairly effortless switch to Cheerios and whole-grain toast with sunflower seed butter. When I come to collect my daughter from school, she is even-tempered and generally agreeable, not on the ugly end of a carb-sugar comedown.

For once, I plant carrot seeds and they actually grow into carrots.

Paula Deen loses cooking show slots and deals as a product spokesperson not because of a scandal, but because everyone simultaneously agrees she’s really annoying.

 I locate a quince tree here in Ohio to replace the one we left behind when we moved from Portland. Not only am I able to harvest, for free, bushels of quince; I also magically have the many free hours needed to make quince jelly, poached quince, oven-candied quince, quince tatain, membrillo, and quince sorbet. Then I meet a bunch of people who love quince as much as I do, and I give them the many jars of quince I put up, and we begin a weekly board game night together.

Everyone realizes the glory of full-fat dairy products, especially yogurt (and especially especially if it’s topped with poached quince). They discover that a few creamy spoonfuls satisfy the appetite so much better than a tub of the lean stuff that’s thickened with some seaweed derivative. And all of those 1000-plus varieties of artificially-flavored, 0% fat yogurts disappear from the dairy case, making room for a vastly superior selection of actual real food dairy products.

No one asks me, upon discovering I am a chef and a food writer, if I’ve ever made turduckeon, because they intuitively sense that 99% of food professionals don’t give a crap about turduckeon. Instead, they ask me about a porchetta or duck confit, and our conversation is animated and cheerful instead of stilted and awkward.

Kale and quinoa continue to be popular, not because they are trendy, but because they are delicious and healthful. Conversely, poseurs stop referring to quinoa and kale as some kind of food fashion accessory.

Copy editors across the nation ban together to get proper use of “healthful” and “healthy” back into our national lexicon.

Produce distributors don’t put “locally grown” stickers on herbs cultivated in Michigan when they are destined to be shipped 7 hours away, to southern Ohio.

A very clever person develops chipotle pepper paste that comes in a tube, like tomato paste and anchovy paste.

Another clever person markets frozen caramelized onions.

Bacon remains well-loved, but no one again utters the phrase “everything’s better with bacon”.

I bake a batch of canneles and not a single one sticks to the cannele mold.

The food-gleaning nonprofit I work for ceases to exist, because everyone is suddenly able to afford wholesome, fresh food, and no one is hungry, and we all hold hands and sing under a big rainbow and harvest carrots together, and I think about how great 2015 will be.

[Comments]

Tool of the Year Acceptance Speech: Sharpie & Masking Tape

January 08, 2014

Sharpie: Gosh, this is so unexpected. I’ve been in this industry for so long, and I didn’t figure anyone would ever notice me…that is, until I paired up with Masking Tape.

Masking Tape: There’s something so inspired about our partnership. All those grade-school art projects and moving carton jobs filled my time, but my creativity just surged when Sharpie came along.

Sharpie: Despite our longtime presence in the industry, we’re not synonymous with cooking—for us to receive this award is just so significant to us. Masking Tape and I have known each other for decades, but in 2013, somehow everything clicked.

Masking Tape: We’d like to thank Mason Jar for providing us with so many opportunities to label things this year. We worked together in the refrigerator, in the pantry…

Sharpie: And don’t forget Natural Foods Co-Op! All of those bulk foods that went into Mason Jar came from there. Labeling you was great!

Masking Tape: A shout-out to Sandor Katz for really getting the fermentation craze going. After those dark pantries and cold refrigerators, hanging out on crocks on the countertop was been a breath of fresh air. Ha! Even when the sauerkraut went off and smelled like rotten death.

Sharpie: I remember when I was just one of many Sharpies in the law firm’s supply closet, until Joe brought me home. And then Joe got Masking Tape at the big-box store…

Masking Tape: …and then Joe’s wife moved us to the kitchen. Why it took so long beats me! Like she didn’t have anything to label before?

Sharpie: Well, there were those Ziplock bags, and the old yogurt containers she used to freeze soup in until she got freaked out about toxins leeching into food. Then came Mason Jar.

Masking Tape: Yogurt containers and zippy bags? You never mentioned them before.

Sharpie: Uh, because, I uh…I’d also like to thank Spice Jar for the big re-organization project we have down the pipeline. My little sister Fine-Point Sharpie will be joining us for that one.

Masking Tape: Knock it off, Sharpie. I know about your sordid past, scrawling all over those “Label & Date” stickers in the restaurant walk-in.

Sharpie: Those days are gone now, and I’m so glad. Masking Tape, you help us keep everyone informed. We make a great team. I honestly thought Sous Vide Machine was going to win this year, that arrogant snob. We’re not even cooking tools, but know what? We did it. You and me.

Masking Tape: I can’t wait to grace Mason Jar of fermented cranberry relish. Thanks, cooks across America, for making us your most valued tool this year. We promise to keep working hard for you!

[Comments]

New Full Grown People Essay, plus a short baking history lesson

January 02, 2014

Yay, I have a new essay on Full Grown People!

But first, let's discuss German chocolate cake, which makes a cameo appearance in my sordid story of alcohol, estrogen, and prom dresses. 

German chocolate cake? It's not really German, meaning its origins have nothing to do with Germany. It's named after a certain Sam German, which is why it was originally known as German's chocolate cake.

Sam German worked for Baker's Chocolate. He developed a milder, sweeter baking chocolate that Baker's called Baker's German's Sweet Chocolate. The famous cake recipe, however, hails from the 1950s. It features a topping made with sweetened condensed milk and toasted coconut.

I'm not a big fan of German chocolate cake, because it's goopy and overly sweet without being very chocolatey. Also, Baker's makes very shitty chocolate.

However, should you read my Full Grown People essay, "Bachelorette", you may be inspired to look over these photos of projects to make with a penis-shaped cake pan. Because you might get an itch to make German chocolate cocks. Here's that essay, and while you are at it, sign up for Full Grown People's newsletter. You'll get three jaw-dropping essays a week. Some of them are about heavy stuff like cancer and divorce. Others are about penis cakes.

[Comments]

Super Easy Cookie Mushrooms

December 20, 2013

Step 1: Get cookies. These are “wafer rolls” from Aldi.

Step 2: Get other cookies. These are pfeffernüsse (glazed), also from Aldi.

Step 3: Cut a little divot in the bottom of the cookie with a sharp paring knife.

Step 4: Stick the cream wafer roll in the divot. Be firm but gentle. (Like you haven’t heard that one before).

Step 5: Sift a little cocoa powder on top. Just a teeny bit’ll do.

Step 6: Decorate away!

[Comments]

Totally Awesome Vegan Baking

December 16, 2013

I have a new class on the horizon: vegan baking for everyone. In this three-hour, hands-on workshop, we'll learn to bake both sweet and savory treats with wholesome, easy-to find ingredients. Plus we'll explore alternative sweeteners, compare shortening and coconut oil, and learn the tricks for egg- and dairy-free desserts that aren't gummy or gluey.

Here's the menu:

• Chocolate chip cookies

• Pumpkin bread

• Cranberry streusel bars

• Fudgy brownies

• Spanakopita (rich and flaky greens-filled pastries)

Join me at the Thomas Educational Center in Thomas, WV on Saturday, January 11 from 2-5 for an afternoon of baking and shared learning. To register, contact Kimmy at phffi@frontier.com or 304.259.5388. This will be my third class with the Potomac Highlands Food and Farm's wonderful series focusing on accessible, nutritious cooking. Remember: it's about good food!

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10 Christmas Gifts to Avoid Like the Plague

December 16, 2013

I’ve spent plenty of holiday seasons on the other side of the register. Sure, the pay stunk, but it was fun in its manic way. The many shots of free espresso we brewed with the automatic coffee machines and the ceaseless soundtrack of peppy Christmas standards kept us alert and full of…well, it wasn’t cheer, really. Let’s just call it adrenaline.

Often I was not really behind the register at all, but slowly circling the between metro shelves laden with specialty serving pieces and larding needles, seeking fresh customers zero in on (there’s no selling like hand-selling, folks!)

I also handled scores of merchandise returns, especially in January. Sometimes people exchanged things because they wanted a Dutch oven in eggplant instead of cobalt, or a knife with an 8-inch blade instead of a 6-inch blade.

Other times it was because the gifts they’d received just plain didn’t work. The things listed below? I highly advise you not buy them for yourself or those on your care about, but don’t take my word for it. Trust the sad sight of the returns shelf in the stockroom, sagging with busted crap.

Whatever you do, save your receipts and buy things from a store with a good returns policy. It pays off.

1. Peugeot Pepper and Salt Mills: This French company makes luxury automobiles, bikes, scooters…and pepper mills. Their mills are not cheap, and they are oftentimes handsome to look at. Too bad they don’t work. What to give instead: I like Mr. Dudley mills, but, to be honest, my favorite mill was some off-brand acrylic thing; it still works great. Vic Firth (specialty: drumsticks, rolling pins) mills are well-done, too.

2. Battery-Operated Milk Frothers: These little wands seem like such a great solution: froth milk at home for cozy, fancy coffee drinks. Save money all year long! But they’re fragile and, oftentimes, junky; many have life spans of less than a year. What to give instead: The much more expensive Nespresso Aeroccino works exceptionally well, until it stops working. I’ve seen dozens of frothing gadgets, and there’s no single one to recommend unequivocally. That’s why I like to leave it to the pros. How about a gift card for the recipient’s favorite coffee shop?

3. Silicon Bakeware of Any Kind: I’ve used this stuff, and it’s awful: floppy, challenging to store, impossible to get clean, and (most importantly) useless at browning things in the oven. What to give instead: Aluminum baking pans are moderate in cost, and they often outperform their more expensive, heavier counterparts. Steer away from nonstick lining if you can; it wears out, also interferes with browning, and still needs to be greased, anyway.

4. Expensive Knife Block Sets: A hefty wooden knife block packed with a dozen different knives is visually impressive, especially if those knives are made by one of the big-name players: Wusthof, Shun, Henkel. Of the seven knives I keep in my kitchen, I use three in regular rotation: the chef’s knife, the serrated knife, and the paring knife. There’s no reason to have a massive knife block using up a bunch of counter space when you’re usually going to use only three or four of those knives. What to give instead: An empty, smaller knife block with a gift certificate. This way, the recipient can go pick out the knives they want (make sure it’s a well-informed store where they will let you handle the knives first). Real knife geeks don’t covet knife block sets; they covet individual knives.

5. Stupid Cutting, Pitting, and Dicing Gadgets: The mango pitter. The avocado slicer. The melon gutter. Useless. This is the junk that’s appealing for a month, until you discover it’s actually not helpful at all, and then it languishes in the back of some overcrowded drawer until it goes to the Goodwill or garage sale. What to give instead: A gift certificate to a knife skills class, where it’s possible to learn to pit mangos, slice avocados, and dice onions with one handy tool: a decent knife.

6. Boxed Gourmet Baking Mixes: We’re talking Stonewall Kitchen and Barefoot Contessa. At 8 to 12 bucks a pop, you are buying a box full of flour, sugar, and baking powder at a 500% markup, plus the baker still has to furnish the eggs and butter. What to give instead: A good baking book (I’m really fond of John Barricelli’s The Seasonal Baker), or a decent electric kitchen scale.

7. Gravy Separators: I used to think these were a Thanksgiving lifesaver—they are supposed to make it easy to pour the fat off your roasted bird’s pan juices—but after a few frustrating annual gravy-making sessions, I’ve decided it’s just as easy to skim off the fat with a big metal serving spoon, and most people already have one of those. Plus gravy separators are a bitch to get clean. What to give instead: Martha Holmberg’s excellent Modern Sauces. Honestly, I don’t recall if she recommends using a fat separator or not, but in that book, she offers home cooks tips culled from a lifetime of savvy sauce-making. She’s got your gravy covered and then some.

8. Digital Probe Thermometers: This is the kind of thermometer that has a probe connected to a digital command center by a cord. You stick the probe in your hunk of roasting meat, pop it in the hot oven, and conveniently look at the digital display on your oven door or countertop, thereby getting up-to-the-second temperature readings of your cooking beast without even opening up the oven! What a great idea, right? Yeah, if the thermometer wasn’t made to break. These things quit working if you even look at them the wrong way. Besides, I’m a fan of poking and prodding and examining. How are you ever going to be familiar with what properly cooked meat looks like or feels if you don’t, you know, look at it and touch it from time to time? What to give instead: Instant-read thermometers, the cheap ones. I prefer the dial kind over the digital kind, because you can easily calibrate them. I have two, and I usually cross-check if I’m cooking up a very expensive piece of meat I don’t want to ruin.

9. Crappy Mandolines: A crappy mandoline is worse than no mandoline. I’ve used a bunch of ones that are hard to store, flimsy, and give inconsistent results. And the more rickety a mandoline, the more likely you are to cut yourself. OXO, Zyliss, Swissmar, Chef’n: suck, suck, suck, suck. What to give instead: A decent mandoline does not have to break the bank. There’s a reason chefs always gush over those Japanese Benriner mandolines: they work. And usually start around $25. 

10. Waring Pro Blender: Waring is the granddaddy of blenders, dating back 60-some years. And they are fine if you want to whirr up a smoothie or have a margarita party now and then. But they are not very powerful, and therefore less versatile than other, more modern blenders. What to give instead: Santa, I have been, at times, very, very good. I could ask for a Kitchen Aid or a Breville, but I’m an all-or-nothing kind of gal. So yeah, a Vita-Mix, please. If not this year, then next, or the one after that. Until then, I can always use an extra instant-read thermometer.

This originally appeared on Food Riot, where I contribute posts from time to time.

[Comments]

Fear and Self-Loathing in Candyland

December 04, 2013

Do you have close relatives who express their love through making rich, carb-laden holiday recipes that rely heavily on processed foods?

Does the word “potluck” evoke feelings of massive ambivalence?

Does the seemingly universal consumer embrace of pasteurized, artificially flavored, fat-free “holiday nog” weigh upon your soul like a brick?

Do you feel like an asshole for being such a downer food snob in the face of heartfelt goodwill and cheer?

Has vomiting or contemplating vomiting ever been an annual tradition for you in the throes of these wintery grey months?

Welcome, friend, to Food Fear and Self-Loathing in Santaland! Pull up a chair with me by the fire, and feel free to skip the eggless holiday nog; tonight, it’s whiskey, neat, in a cut-glass tumbler.

This is the time of year when abundance and dread bleed together ominously under shiny paper wrappings. This is the time of year when gentle people put giant platters heaped with exactly the kind of food we try to avoid in front of our faces at every turn. This is the time of year when demons dance jigs in the hearts and gurgling bellies of people with eating disorders, and since you are still reading this, I’m betting you are in that club with me. High-five!

I want to be a good sport, but I also just want to be good.

I love Johnny Mathis, I love baking cookies, I love playing board games post-Thanksgiving dinner. Succulent meat picked off the turkey carcass, sparkling wine aperitifs, nibbles of dates and fine chocolates, port wine cheese balls, plump and petite clementines, eggs benedict on Christmas morning, anything made with cranberries: I love love love these things.

I don’t love the canker sores and swollen taste buds that break out in my mouth from overindulging in sweet and acidic foods. I don’t love sleeping badly because I couldn’t help myself from having a giant wedge of flourless chocolate torte at midnight, straight from the fridge, when no one was looking, in about thirty seconds. How many calories is that? Will we even do that family hike tomorrow everyone was talking about before the freezing rain started falling? Do I have parched eyeballs and a pasty tongue because I’m hung over, or because I drank seven cups of coffee while we leisurely extricated all of our tiny presents from our stockings, or because I skipped breakfast and proceeded directly to the slow, endless march of empty-calorie grazing that began at the close of November and won’t stop until well after the second hand sweeps past twelve on New Fucking Year’s Eve.

We just do the best we can do. I try to allow myself a few slip-ups, even though the emotional lacerations of those slip-ups can ruin an entire day. Not to being too hard on myself seems like a good idea, but being hard on myself is, twenty years ago, what helped me triumph over this eating disorder in the first place. It took an elaborately constructed regimen of reasonable portions, sit-down mealtimes, and freshly-prepared, healthful food to keep it at bay, and eventually weeks or even months could go by without even thinking about it.

But every year November comes, and, like Scrooges’ ghosts, the Past, Present, and Future specters of my ugly food binges materialize to haunt me. It fills me with this crackling, frantic, unfocused bad energy, and then Johnny Mathis rings hollow; the act of baking cookies, futile; the invitations to buffets, terrifying. Another goddamn buffet. Ugh. It’s like inviting a junkie to an all-you-can-shoot heroin spree.

What I need to do is find one of you people who get so full of seasonal despair you can’t even move, let alone rally to eat peanut brittle. Give me a bell. We can hang out, and my spazzing will neutralize your lethargy.  I’ll be the acid and you can be the base, just like Pepto-Bismol soothing indigestion. I’m experienced at drinking Pepto. I do it straight from the bottle, in shots. It’s soothingly pink and just slightly minty, almost Chritmasy.

But I hope I won’t need it. There’s always hope. This is a season of hope, right? And giving. This year I’m going to give myself the benefit of the doubt. They don’t make that in Santa’s workshop. You have to craft it yourself. I’m going to heap a ton on my plate, because for most of us, there’s no harm in binging on self-confidence.

[Comments]

Join Me for a Knife Skills Workshop

December 02, 2013

Bring me your dull, your time-worn, your discount blades! Bring me your chopping, your hacking, your unrefined slicing! Mainly, bring yourself to my upcoming Knife Skills Workshop at Jivaka Wellness Center in Elkins, West Virginia on Saturday, December 14! It's part of the shimmery and stupendous Potomac Highlands Food and Farm cooking class series.

[Comments]

Use a Scale, Dummy!

December 02, 2013

Holiday time! You've got new recipes to try and dozens of cookies to bake for that exchange party. Hours and hours in the kitchen to look forward to. Want to make it fun and easy?

Use a scale, dummy!

But isn't that what measuring cups are for? For all these years we've been getting along just fine using those dinky cups and spoons, right. Why start now?

Just use a scale, dummy!

A digital kitchen scale pays off with speed, accuracy and greatly reduced dirty dishes. Don't be afraid of it. Especially if you bake. Because dry ingredients and volume measurements are as inconsistent as the latest Katy Perry album. Lightly spooning sifted flour into a one-cup measure might get you 3 ounces, while heartily dipping the cup into the flour and leveling it could result in as much as 5 ounces of flour. That's a 2-ounce difference. That's significant, enough to ruin an otherwise great recipe. Enough to affix that annoying #fail to. You don't want to join the #fail club.

Use a scale, dummy!

Oh, but why get another kitchen gadget when you have a perfectly useful set of measuring cups and spoons? First of all, you can keep your cups and spoons. I still use mine, sometimes, though usually because I'm dumping volume measurements into a bowl on my scale so I can convert all of my favorite baking recipes to grams. Second, a decent digital scale is cheap. Mine, a Salter, cost about twenty bucks. It's lasted ten years, with very frequent use (I've changed the batteries twice). A nice set of stainless-steel measuring cups can cost more than that.

Just get a scale, dummy!

People in the know use scales: Chemists. Pharmacists. That hottie who works in the boulangerie. Do pot dealers use measuring spoons when they sell weed?

Right. I'm talkin' scales, dummy.

And don't even get me started on pounds and ounces. Metric all the way. Because if there's anything as annoying as a recipe that calls for 2/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons of an ingredient, it's a recipe that calls for 5-5/8 ounces of something. Know what tool will convert to weights to metric? Yup.

Your digital scale, dummy.

But let's not put the cart before the horse. What, dear foodie person, will you ask Santa for this Christmas? Or hell, what are you going to march to the store and just buy for yourself outright?

A scale. Because, smarty, you're worth it. Love, Sara.

Try your new scale with this colorful cookie recipe from The Sausagetarian. I promise your scale will make you feel powerful and capable. "You have more confidence in yourself as a cook when you do things directly in the professional manner rather than using subterfuges," a wise woman once said. Her name was Julia Child. She didn't say "use a scale, dummy," but I wouldn't put it past her.

This originally appeared on Food Riot, where I contribute weekly.

[Comments]

Cook Up Adobo Aid for the Philippines

November 14, 2013

Food and travel writer (and Filipina) Maida Pineda came up with Adobo Aid as a way to raise funds for emergency relief in the Philippines. It's a brilliant idea: cook adobo in your home, invite friends over to share dinner, and pass a hat. It's not just about money. It's about healing, a hemisphere away, across a table, over a meal cooked with love.

You can join people all over the world in cooking up Adobo Aid on November 23. Look at Maida's Touch for suggested charities, and for Maida's pork and chicken adobo recipe. 

Sacrilegious Chicken Adobo

Serves 4-6

Since I'm not of Filipino heritage, I don’t feel guilty about imposing my stuffy, classically French-trained cooking methods on a culture’s signature dish. In a classic adobo, you throw everything together, let the sauce evaporate, and then the chicken browns; it’s like a backwards braise. Since I like a lot of sauce and a controlled sear, I do it all Euro-style. There are a million adobo recipes online if you are looking for something different. 

You can purchase adobo mix in envelopes. Don't.

1 whole 3- to 4-pound chicken, cut up as you like (make sure to include the wings for a silky, unctuous sauce)
2 to 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 head garlic, peeled, cloves smashed a bit with the side of a knife
1 two-inch piece of fresh ginger, sliced into coins
2 bay leaves

2 whole pods star anise, optional but highly recommended
1/2 cup rice vinegar (You can use white vinegar, but as a wise chef friend once told me, “That shit’s for cleaning floors.”)
1/2 cup soy sauce

1 teaspoon granulated sugar

Salt to taste

Sprinkle the chicken pieces very liberally with salt on both sides. Heat a heavy-bottomed 12” skillet or large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add the oil and heat for a few seconds, then add the chicken pieces skin-side-down (ideally, this step should be done in two batches, but crowding the skillet won't kill anyone, either.)

Put the garlic, ginger, bay leaves, peppercorns, and (if using) star anise into the pan and shuffle everything around. (You may tie them up in a cheesecloth bundle first, but I prefer to be rustic.) Add the vinegar, soy sauce and sugar, plus enough water to immerse the chicken halfway in liquid.

Reduce the heat and simmer gently until the sauce is reduced by at least one-third and the chicken is cooked through and tender, about 20 to 30 minutes. Taste and adjust seasonings (you may need to add more salt, soy sauce, or vinegar--the flavor should be bright, but the tartness should not be harsh or overpowering). If the sauce reduced too much, just add a little water back to it.

Serve with hot white rice and cold bottles of San Miguel beer. We usually have steamed broccoli with chicken adobo; the florets are perfect for drinking up lots of that delectable sauce.

about 10 peppercorns

[Comments]

Sweet California Fennel

November 14, 2013

Toasting those seeds is what did it. “It smells like the Bulb in here,” Mr. Bir Toujors said wistfully when he came into the kitchen. I stood at the stove, gently rattling the seeds in the skillet so they wouldn’t burn. He was right.

They were fennel seeds, but he was not talking about a fennel bulb. Mr. Bir Toujours was talking about the Bulb, the Albany Bulb. There we were in a small Midwestern town, but the aroma of those seeds was pure California summer afternoon, so brightly sunny the burnished golden hills hulking over the Bay stood in crisp relief, impossibly tangible in the early Ohio evening of our reality. I didn’t expect to journey across a continent and an era via the preparation of a simple pasta dinner.

California is where we met, Mr. Bir Toujours and I.  We were in the San Francisco Bay Area, a million moves and failures and successes ago. We each had apartments decorated with flyers from rock shows, jobs that easily covered our modest expenses, and our lives open and free at our feet. We blithely went to indie movies late on Friday nights and groggily out to diner breakfasts the morning after. We walked through our neighborhood and out to the Bulb, together and apart.

The Bulb began as an industrial waste site, a watery grave for untold tons of jagged construction rip-rap that piled up and up until they fused into a bizarre little peninsula with a mind-blowing view of San Francisco Bay.  Scrubby plants sprung up, king among them fennel.

Fennel–Foeniculum vulgare–is an assertive plant. It pushes through cracks in the pavement in parking lots; it thrives on a huge mound of rebar and busted concrete that rises, defiant, from the saline depths opposite one of the world’s loveliest cities. Its sweet musk dominates the Bulb, where nature’s more tenacious species–bums ,seagulls, renegade art collectives, eucalyptus trees—have triumphed.  Fennel, invasive and intoxicating, is the emblematic plant of the Bulb, the no-man’s-land for all people.

That prolific, wild Bulb fennel of memory isn’t even in the same cultivar group as the vegetable we cook with. Florence fennel—what I’d call grocery store fennel—is the kind with the swollen white and green bulb at its base (it’s actually the plant’s inflated leaf base). Their smell, though? Identical.

Foods transfer us to a long-ago places and mental states, but this was the first time I past-tripped on something I’d never before eaten: an improvised pot of pasta, beets, and fennel tossed together under darkening November skies in the cultural subduction zone where Appalachia meets Midwest. There are enough rewarding things here, where we live now, that I stay very much in this unremarkable middle-aged present in Mid-Ohio Valley, perhaps too much so. Those times that formed who we are now were too splendid to toss aside in a dusty jumble of memories.

Our eternal fault line is where our yesterdays grind against our tomorrows. It’s a different kind of fault line than the San Andreas, the one I gaily trod upon and around in heady air perfumed with the sublime stench of fennel friends bronzing in the sun. Often beside me was Mr. Bir Toujours, destined to become a lifelong displaced Californian, the father of our daughter, and a miraculously trim devourer of fatty, carb-rich dinners laced with fennel.

Grab your skillet and some fennel seeds. Boil some pasta. Come to the Bulb and past-trip with us. (No, really. Make this beety fennel pasta recipe and brighten up a dreary fall night.)

This piece originally appeared on Food Riot, where I contribute from time to time.

[Comments]

Beety Fennel Pasta

November 08, 2013

Fennel seeds are something we mainly encounter in Italian sausage. And they are fine there, but fennel seeds are too great of a flavor asset to leave it at that. I like to pair them with other strong flavors, like...other parts of a fennel plant, the fronds and the bulb. This is triple-fennel pasta, not for those who detest savory anise flavors. It's a play in the pasta-vermouth-green veg combo I'm fond of.

This is a robust, rib-sticking dinner. The creamy, rich mascarpone is a nice foil for the fennel, but you can leave it out for a leaner, brassier dish. In the past, I’ve omitted the beets and increased the peas.

Serves 2-3

1 large or two small bulbs fennel
2 medium beets, peeled and cut into ½-inch cubes
2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 teaspoons fennel seed
8 ounces orecchiette or penne pasta
¼ cup dry white vermouth or white wine
1 cup frozen peas, optional
1/3 cup mascarpone cheese, optional
½ cup finely grated parmesan or asiago cheese

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Trim the brown root end of the fennel bulb(s). Pluck off the nice-looking green fronds from the top of the bulb. Rinse them off, pat them dry, and chop them. Reserve ½ to ¼ cup of chopped fronds for garnishing the pasta, and do whatever you like with the remaining fronds.

Now, dice the fennel bulb into 1/2 –inch pieces. Discard any of the little green shoots, which will turn bitter after roasting. On a large rimmed baking sheet or roasting pan, toss the diced fennel bulb and beets with the olive oil and salt and pepper to taste. Roast until the beets are a little shriveled and can easily be pierced with a fork, about 20-25 minutes.

Meanwhile, toast the fennel seeds in a small skillet over medium heat, stirring frequently, until the seeds are aromatic, about 5 minutes. Transfer the seeds to a cutting board and chop them a bit with a sharp knife. (You can also do this part with a mortar and pestle, but I’ve always found it easier to chop them, because the seeds jump out of the mortar. If this whole bit is too challenging for you, just skip it and use the seeds whole. But don’t skip toasting them! Your finished pasta won’t taste nearly as robust.)

Bring a large pot of generously salted water to a boil. Add the pasta, stir, and lower the heat a bit. Cook until it’s just a half-hair shy of al dente. Before draining the pasta, reserve 1 cup of the cooking water. Let the drained pasta sit in the colander for a bit.

Return the now-empty pot you cooked the pasta in to the burner and increase the heat to high. Add the vermouth or white wine and cook until it’s reduced to a few tablespoons. Add the frozen peas, if using, to the pot, along with the roasted beets and fennel. Add the mascarpone cheese and drained to the pot, along with a third of the reserved pasta-cooking water. Stir until the mascarpone cheese is creamy distributed well, then stir in the parmesan or asiago cheese. Add more of the pasta-cooking water to smooth out the sauce so it’s a bit loose and not sticky or stiff. Taste and adjust the seasonings with salt or pepper. Stir in half of the fennel fronds, divide the pasta between serving bowls, and garnish with the remaining fronds.

1. 

[Comments]

Pâté: A Grownup Love Story

November 08, 2013

Nothing smells as pungent as sizzling liver. Some may call it a stench; the vapors of cooking liver will overrun a kitchen and bleed into other part of the house we prefer to be liver-free: boudoirs, linen closets, living rooms. You either think liver is worth stinking up the house, or you think liver is worth sending away on reeking, garbage-laden barges for an elated flock of pesky seagulls to peck at. Liver is polarizing that way.

When I was a small child, the smell and a taste of liver struck me as a perfect distillation of the most boring, excruciating qualities of adults. There must have been a dinner party at our house, the kind that dragged on hours after I got tucked in bed, the kind with bottles of wine and the gustatory, obnoxious laughter of big people enjoying the warmth of that red wine in their bellies. Even the desserts served at such parties—tarts or mousse with bitter chocolate and dry flaky, crusts—were of tiny appeal to a kids, and maybe I gamely took a few bites anyway because hey, it’s dessert. At one of these parties, there must have been pâté, pâté with liver that stunk like the wretched brown-pink braunschweiger my dad smeared on his pumpernickel toast in the morning. A grownup must have designed pâté specifically out of hatred for young people.

At some point, I grew up. Several million of my once-tender taste buds shriveled up from overuse; major life events and the reality of this sad and beautiful world left me wanting to embrace what is baffling and super-intense, the faces so ugly only a mother could love them. I started drinking coffee and listening to weird instrumental Sonic Youth records and sprinkling seaweed flakes on my pizza. Smoking cigarettes was, at times, alluring. I understood the smell of what’s between a naked adult’s legs, strong but clean and full of life. The stench of cooking liver is the life force of the slaughtered animal echoing from it. A liver is one of the most nutrient-rich parts of an animal you can eat.

Then you add eggs and cream and white bread to it and call it pâté, and it’s not very nutritious anymore. Pâté is to meatloaf what chocolate mousse is to chocolate pudding. As a kid, I loved meatloaf; as an adult, I enjoy meatloaf, but adore pâté. You nibble a little slice slowly with smears of food that are likewise pungent, forceful mustards and tart, pickly things. Then maybe you read James Joyce or Virginia Wolf or Dante and put on Metal Machine Music. You speak with a dear old friend and let out peal of gustatory, obnoxious laughter. You drink red wine to the lees and it stains your lips, the same lips you kiss the top of your little girl’s head with when you tuck her into bed.

I made pâté for the first time in years last week, using pork liver I’d bought from my hog man at the farmer’s market. He sold me a pound for two bucks. “You’re doing me a favor,” he said. “No one wants this stuff.” I ground it up with other strong-arm ingredients like shallots and brandy and parsley, and then I cooked it slowly in the oven so that once it cooled, the gelatinous ooze left in the loaf pan was succulent and almost clear. I asked my daughter if she’d like a taste of the pâté, and she amazingly said yes, and then she amazingly ate two bites before she said she didn’t like it. This is a girl who has spat knobby half-orbs of grapes into my hand. She can go on spitting out grapes and shrugging off pâté as long as she likes. The years I spent loathing dinner parties and loving picture books and playgrounds were some of the happiest in my life. Then you grow up, and in exchange for your lost innocence, you can decide what you like and when you want to have it. Your daughter wants meatloaf, but because of that, you can have your pâté and eat it, too.

Look here to make your own pâté. It’s easy.

This post originally appeared on Food Riot, where I have been contributing from time to time.

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Chemistry! Bacon! Mid-Career Epiphany!

November 07, 2013

Once again, I am so pleased to share a new essay from Full Grown People with you. This one is about a test, or rather multiple tests. One is the kind you can study for (I didn't). The other is the kind no one can study for. Home-cured bacon makes a few cameos.

Full Grown People is a fantastic site, offering meaningful essays by talented, knockout writers. I heavily encourage you to sign up for the FGP newsletter.

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Five Surprising Drugstore Kitchen Tools

November 01, 2013

Like most people, I oil my wooden cutting boards and kitchen utensils with a laxative. Don’t you? It’s called mineral oil. You can pay about six dollars for it at the fancy cooking store, or you can pick up some at Walgreen’s for less than two bucks. It’s the exact same thing (trust me, I’ve worked at fancy kitchen stores), but they keep them in different spots, since most fancy cooking stores don’t carry laxatives.

Drugstores aren’t just for photo prints, nail polish, and condoms. You can get useful kitchen tools there, but they are not shelved with the jenky drugstore kitchen tools like $5 nonstick skillets that that fall apart of you look at them the wrong way. These tools are incognito.

Floss: Our home economics teacher—because yes, I went to school back in the days when they still offered home ec—taught us to slice sheet cakes with dental floss. Since floss has minimal surface area, there’s no way sticky cake gunk can build up and clog the blade as it would on a knife (I happen to love slyly eating that cake gunk, by the way, but it is messy and inefficient). You can also slice through soft, crumbly cheeses like chèrve with dental floss. Just don’t be like Bridget Jones and use blue floss, or any flavored floss.

Drinking straws: I use drinking straws instead of wooden dowels to support stacked tiers on a wedding cake. In fact, they support the cake better than dowels; it has something to do with cake displacement and load-bearing, but mostly I know that plastic straws work, and I like how easy they are to cut.

Tweezers: Cheap tweezers never cost more than a dollar. I deliver them with wedding cakes so the people serving the cake can easily extract the drinking straws before they cut the cake. Yes, I know, hardly any of you make wedding cakes. However, tweezers are also useful for times when you want to futzily arrange flowers or micro-greens on top of fancy plate presentations. Or you might get a splinter from a skewer, or find a pin-bone in your salmon fillet that the fishmonger overlooked. You never know.

Knee-high nylons: In Nigella Bites, Nigella Lawson recommends using a “knee-high hosiery sock” in lieu of cheesecloth to make a sachet for soup and stocks. “I am just not one of those efficiently traditional domestic types that keep cheesecloths and muslins on hand,” she writes. Once again, avoid the Bridget Jones blue floss fiasco by skipping the tie altogether and folding the lip of the stocking over the opening to make a pouch. This substitution only works one way. Alas, I must be an efficiently traditional domestic type, for I keep no hosiery of any kind on hand, and cheesecloth is a terrible stand-in for a night on the town.

Mineral Oil: Yes, it is a laxative, and that’s why you find it at the drugstore. But I hope you only have need for it in the kitchen. Do your cutting boards have that whitish bloom on them? Do your wooden spoons feel fuzzy? Your utensils need a good moisturizing, and not with cooking oil, such as olive oil, because it can go rancid. Mineral oil doesn’t. Cut a piece of an old, clean t-shirt and pour a few good glugs of mineral oil on there. Then rub and rub and smooth. I start with my cutting boards and finish with spoons and spatulas. It’s a 5- minute investment of time that will prolong the life span of your tools, keeping them from smelling gross and splitting. I do it about once a season. Also, your own hands will be so soft afterwards.

I like a top-quality cooking vessels and tools as much as anyone. I’m just in favor of skimping when possible, hopefully so I can later invest in a foxy new piece of Le Creuset. What are your favorite incognito tools for cooking?

This originally appeared on Food Riot, where I contribute from time to time.

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Meatloaf in Black Pumps

October 29, 2013

Everyone loves meatloaf, and some people like pâté. Then there are people who love pâté. The difference between pâté and meatloaf is probably liver, and maybe a glass and a half of Petite Syrah; meatloaf does not have liver, and pâté usually does. Meatloaf is also baked at a higher temperature, and its texture is coarser.

Making pâté is involved, but not difficult. It's the sort of thing that impresses people, including yourself, and if you are okay with having liver breath, you should make pâté at least once. My loaf was both delicious and very professional-looking, and for about a minute I dreamed of starting up a mail-order pâté business, because pork liver is really pretty cheap, and I could charge a ridiculous amount for 4 skimpy ounces. And then I realized making pâté was so very fun because I wanted to do it, not because I had to.

Pâté Grandmère
Serves 12-24
This began as the pâté grandmère recipe in Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn’s Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing. Life presented me with different quantities of pork butt and pork liver from their recipe, so I did the ultimate grandmère thing and improvised to use up what was on hand.

That is what you should likewise do, if you feel comfortable doing so. The pâté you get at a restaurant or in shrink-wrapping from the fancy food producer is all about sticking to the formula so the customer gets a consistent product. Pâté de maison is all about what’s happening in your maison at the moment. It’s about using sherry instead of brandy, if you don’t have brandy. It’s about using a hot dog bun for the breadcrumbs or an onion instead of shallot, or omitting the allspice because, hey, not everyone has allspice! (In which case I’d say add more black pepper to go in a different flavor direction).   

• 14 ounces pork or chicken liver
• 1 pound 6 ounces boneless pork shoulder butt, cut in 1-1/2 inch cubes (if you don’t have a meat grinder, you can use ground pork, but make sure it’s good and fatty)
• 25 grams kosher salt (about 1-1/2 tablespoons)
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 2 bay leaves, crumbled
• 2 sprigs thyme
• about 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• ¼ cup sliced shallots
• 3 tablespoons brandy (or red wine or white wine)
• 2 large eggs
• 2/3 cup fresh breadcrumbs, from about 2 slices of crustless white bread
• 3/4 cup heavy cream or half and half
• 1/3 cup minced fresh parsley leaves
• 1/4 teaspoon mace or freshly grated nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon allspice 

1. If using pork liver, either slice it or cut it into large chunks (chicken livers can stay as-is). Toss about half of the salt, black pepper, bay leaves, and thyme with the livers in a non-reactive bowl or zip-top plastic bag. Toss the pork butt with the remaining salt, pepper, bay leaves, and thyme and place in another bowl or zip-top plastic bag. Refrigerate for about 8 hours, or overnight. (You can even skip this step entirely, if you are pressed for time, but it’s not very fun to make pâté when you are pressed for time, so make sure not to rush through the other steps.)
2. Freeze the pieces of your grinder.
3. Discard the bay leaf and thyme sprigs from the cured meat. Heat a 12-inch skillet over high heat. Add the vegetable oil, then the liver, taking care not to crowd the pan. Cook on all sides until the liver is deeply browned. This part is kind of stinky, so make sure you have the vent on. Tansfer the seared liver to a pan a plate. Add the shallots to the hot pan, reduce the heat and cook until the shallots are translucent and limp, about a minute or less. Add the brandy and cook, scraping the bottom of the skillet with a wooden spoon to loosen all of the tasty, flavorful bits. When most of the brandy has evaporated but the shallots have a glossy, jammy look, scrape the shallots to the plate with the liver. Stick the plate in the freezer.
4. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F.  Beat the eggs in a large bowl, then add the breadcrumbs and cream or half and half. Stir until the crumbs are moistened, then set aside.
5. Line a pan with a 1-1/2 quart capacity (I used a standard-size loaf pan) with plastic wrap, leaving an overhang on all sides.
6. Grind the cured pork butt (you removed the thyme and bay leaf, right?) though the fine or medium die of the grinder. Then grind the cooled, cooked liver and shallots. (If you don’t have a grinder and are using pre-ground pork, puree the liver in a food processor fitted with a steel blade.) Combine the ground meats with the breadcrumb mixture, parsley, nutmeg, and allspice. Mix on low speed in an electric stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment for about a minute, until the whole works begins to get sticky. (You may also do this by hand with a strong wooden spoon).
7. Pack the lined loaf pan with the ground mixture, taking care to get the sticky mixture into the nooks and crannies of the pan. You want to avoid air pockets in your finished pâté. I like to wet my hand with cold water and press down on the top so I can smoosh it down and smooth the surface. Fold the excess plastic wrap over the pâté so it’s completely covered. Cover the filled loaf with aluminum foil and set it in a roasting pan. Add enough hot tap water to come halfway up the sides of the loaf pan. Set the pan in the center of the oven.
8. Cook until an instant-read thermometer inserted in the center of the pâté reads 150 degrees F if using pork liver, 160 degrees F if using chicken liver. Carefully life the pâté out of the water and set on a wire rack to cool completely. The pâté will have shrunk a bit and pulled away from the sides of the pan. It’s okay; don’t freak out. For the optimum pâté-eating experience, refrigerate overnight to let the flavors mingle and mellow. Slice the pâté and let the slices come to room temperature before serving. I like to eat my pâté on toasted coarse German-style rye bread that’s smeared with whole-grain mustard and a little something sweet, like cranberry ketchup. I know, I know, who has cranberry ketchup sitting around? The pâté will keep for about a week in the refrigerator. You know what’s really fun? Having a slice or two for breakfast.

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