insomnia haiku

Tell Me What to Cook: Crack ... err, Mac and Cheese

A couple weeks ago, I experienced an epic night of bowling that spanned two bowling alleys, five games, several pitchers of beer and one game of pool. (That night, I managed to bowl not quite as suckily as I normally do, and my friend Greg compels me to share that he bowled a 163 in the fourth game of the night, after many drinks. You happy now, Greg?)

As the excursion began and ended at Brooklyn Bowl, it was also a night that included not one but TWO meals of Blue Ribbon fried chicken and mac and cheese. (I told you it was an epic night.) Now, about the Blue Ribbon fried chicken, there isn't much I can say that hasn't already been said. Namely: It's fantastic. But the mac and cheese was a revelation. Being lactose intolerant, I don't tend to eat a lot of mac and cheese, which means that my saying "best mac and cheese I've ever had" may not mean all that much. But still. It was creamy, divine ... the best mac and cheese I've ever had.

Since I've been trying to get back on the Tell Me What to Cook train, I was thusly inspired to tackle Abby's suggestion of mac and cheese. First I had to do some research, so off the Internets I went. And the recipe that people seemed to praise over and over and over again was Martha Stewart's for Perfect Macaroni and Cheese, otherwise known as Crack and Cheese. How could I resist?

As a mac and cheese neophyte, I do not trust myself to judge the dish properly. So I invited over some help: Nomi, Lydia, Annah and McGregor, along with their two-year-old son Adger. (Adger, it must be noted, was not much of a fan of the main course, though he did like the Brillat-Savarin cheese and salami I set out beforehand.)

While waiting for my Fresh Direct order, I decided to make Mark Bittman's Maple Pear Upside-Down Cake. But upon re-reading the recipe, I realized: I don't have a hand mixer. I never bake, and I know I had a hand mixer once -- I still have the metal beater things that attach to one -- but I guess it must've broken at some point and I never replaced it. After hitting the grocery store, I headed to the local discount store that carries everything from Advil to coffeemakers to needles and thread. But they were out of hand mixers, and sent me to the vacuum cleaner store next door. All they had was immersion blenders.

I bought one and brought it home, figuring, better than nothing, right? But no ... one cannot mix sugar and butter together "until light and fluffy" with an immersion blender. I puzzled and despaired, an acrid smell filling the air as I grimly forced the poor tool to tackle a task for which it was entirely unsuited. And then I figured, people were making cakes well before electricity came along, right? If they could do it, I can do it. I flung away the immersion blender and continued by hand. And it came out all right in the end.

And now, to the mac and cheese. The grating of the cheese -- cheddar and Gruyere -- took a prodigiously long time on my puny cheapo grater. It was a LOT of cheese. Grating cheese, I have now discovered, is not my favorite task in the world. I cut myself, but fortunately did not bleed onto any of the cheese. Note to self: Buy a better grater.

Slices of white bread got tossed with melted butter, creating some mighty hefty breadcrumbs.

And now, the bechamel. I had never made bechamel before -- roux, yes, but bechamel, no. It thickens up after you stir it for a really (really) long time. Like magic!

All that cheese got added.

It immediately melted in the most lovely way. Again, magic! Or, you know, science. And then came the macaroni, which for once I actually cooked early enough be able to add at the proper time. (Usually I get to this point in the recipe, go "oh shit," set the pot of water on, and have to halt everything while I wait for it to boil.)

I had wanted to add pancetta to the recipe, because I like a little meat in my mac and cheese. But then I got nervous at all the comments in the blog posts saying they'd made the recipe exactly as is, and it was perfect. Who am I to mess with perfection? Or with Martha, for that matter? (After all, perfection and Martha are just about the same thing.) Therefore, I compromised and made one portion with pancetta, and the rest without.

More cheese went on top, plus the bread crumbs.

Half an hour in a 375-degree oven, and aaaaah. Well, first, we started with a delicious fennel and onion soup that Nomi had come over and made, from the cookbook Love Soup. It was so good, it makes me want to go out and make a bunch of vegetarian soups. Yes, me! And then it was time for the main course.


I served with a simple green salad. Was going to steam some broccoli, but I ran out of time, and with so much food already I figured, why bother?

Verdict: yummy. The breadcrumbs really made it. And I preferred the version with the pancetta, because it balanced out the cheesiness; the plain version was super-cheesy (though if you're a big fan of super-cheesy, of course, that's your way to go).

It just so happened to be national Open That Bottle Night (which, as you recall, we celebrated grandly two years ago, though not on the official date). So Annah and McGregor brought a very nice bottle of Shiraz that they'd been saving for a couple years, and I opened a bottle of Sandeman port my parents had brought back from Portugal. Everything was eaten, and drunk, and enjoyed, and we toasted Abby for the original idea; and people had seconds of the mac and cheese (and thirds of the pear upside-down cake), which made me exceedingly happy; and I sent everyone home with leftovers. I had some of the mac and cheese for lunch today. If anything, it tasted even better.

All in all, the night was a very Good Thing. Thanks, Martha.

Tell Me What to Cook: Borscht

I bet you thought I forgot about Tell Me What to Cook. I didn't. I just stopped cooking for a while.

But now that I'm dead broke, I'm trying to cook at home more. For one thing, it's much cheaper than going out, and I end up with leftovers for the week (see again: cheaper). And I'm trying to be more industrious and resourceful generally. Plus I'm going through a phase where I haven't had much to do on the weekends, besides cook. I can't figure out whether this dovetails conveniently with my "spend less money" plan, or is a sign that I'm growing up, or is just sad.

At any rate, Brian requested borscht, and given the recent cold weather, I thought I'd give it a shot. The problem: I didn't have a definitive recipe. Oh, I found several, including one a dug up a while back on the Internet somewhere -- no idea where -- that read thusly:

Boil beef approx. 1 1/2 hour, in a separate pan boil beets. In a heavy skillet saute thinly sliced carrots and onions, add peeled and thinly sliced beet and tomato paste with some water, cover and let cook for a couple minutes. Remove meet from the brot, add potatoes, salt, 10 minutes later--cabbage, then carrot-beet mixture from the skillet, simmer for a while, add cubed meet. You can add parsley, dill, bay leaves, garlic and pepper to taste, as well ass fresh tomatos and sweet peppers, or use chicken instead of beef. Goes well with sour cream.

I remember thinking, when I found this recipe, that this was the one to use. Any borscht recipe that used the terms "meet" and "brot" had to be authentic, right?

In preparing to cook borscht tonight, however, I dug a little further, and found this recipe, and this one, and this one. Plus I have this Betty Crocker international cookbook with yet another recipe. So I got overwhelmed, and couldn't decide which was THE one I was supposed to use, and then I felt a little lazy about following every single step in each one; so I decided to consult them all, take a deep breath, and wing it. After all, I'm no borscht expert, nor even a big fan -- how am I supposed to know what the real thing should taste like? Faking it seemed like as good an option as any. An experiment! Da?

First, I boiled some chuck steak with a couple of bay leaves.

 
After the water came to a boil, I added carrots, onion and celery.

Meanwhile, the beets. Most recipes call for boiling them, but I decided to roast them instead -- partly because I've lately become obsessed with roasting vegetables, but partly because it's really cold in my apartment (right now I am wearing long underwear, jeans, socks AND slippers, plus three layers on top), and I figured the oven heat would make my place warmer. I also thought this might make the beets easier to peel (it didn't).

First I cut off the lovely greens. I may try to cook them some other time.

Then I drizzled the beets with olive oil and stuck them in the oven at 350 degrees.

After an hour, I took them out, peeled them -- wasn't sure how to do this so I just stuck them under cold running water and pushed at the outsides til they gave way -- and diced them. Pretty!

The meat had been simmering for an hour and change, so I added cabbage and potatoes ...

and the beets, with some tomato paste.

Half an hour later -- borscht, or some reasonable facsimile thereof. I garnished with dill and sour cream.

I may not know from authentic borscht, but it tasted pretty good to me. Not bad for an ol' faker. I had it with sourdough bread (from FreshDirect) and a bottle of cold beer. As they say in the Ukraine, budmo!

Tell Me What to Cook: Judy Rodgers' Piccolo Fritto

Nomi wrote:

Fry the broccoli a la Judy Rodgers piccolo frito. yum. bonus: you can also fry anything else you have in fridge.

Particularly since she was the only one to speak up on behalf of the humble broccoli, I decided that this would be the second Tell Me What to Cook challenge I'd tackle. Hey, I mastered frying chicken, right? How hard could frying vegetables be?

The recipe may be found on page 108 of Judy Rodgers' fabulous cookbook:

I decided to use broccoli, zucchini and onions:

I dunked the pieces in buttermilk:

Then flour:

Next step: The frying. OK, here was the problem. I didn't have enough oil. I didn't think I was going to need as much as the recipe called for, but I used more than a bottle of peanut oil, and in the bottom of my Dutch oven it looked like little more than a wading pool that my broccoli would be splashing around in. Oh well. The frying looked sort of like this (the picture doesn't capture the fry-bubbles all that well):

Despite the fact that the recipe said it would take 1-2 minutes for the vegetables to turn golden brown, mine took a lot longer, and they never got truly golden brown. I guess it was the dearth of oil. Finally I gave up waiting for the brown-ness and retrieved my bounty:

I served with roast chicken:

Verdict: Not having enough oil was a mistake, a rookie mistake. The fry just wasn't as light and crispy as I think it should've been. Also, eating a bunch of fried vegetables with roast chicken ended up feeling too heavy -- though I can't figure out what it would have gone best with. Or maybe I just wasn't hungry enough.

Still, in my botched attempt I could sense how the dish COULD be great, in the hands of an expert. I'm going to Rodgers' Zuni Cafe when I'm in San Francisco for Thanksgiving; maybe I'll order the piccolo fritto and see how it's supposed to be done.

Tell Me What to Cook: Pan-Fried Chicken

When I requested directives as to what I should cook for this blog, skd wrote:

My suggestion as to what to cook/master: pan fried chicken. Been craving it lately.

Hmm. What a hardship, given that fried chicken is pretty much MY FAVORITE FOOD OF ALL TIME. But I'd never made it the real way, that is, the way my mom makes it, with the soaking and the buttermilk and all that. This seemed as good a time as ever.

Once I got the idea in my head, I decided -- since I am the Queen of Getting in Over My Head -- to turn this fried chicken affair into a full-fledged Sunday brunch.

And now, how to make it? This recipe for fried chicken from the late, legendary Southern chef Edna Lewis had long ago caught my eye; and though the prep work and shopping was going to prove a little dicey given that I was going to the Mets game Saturday, the recipe itself didn't seem that hard.

I made a couple of minor modifications. Borrowing from Thomas Keller's buttermilk fried chicken recipe (my mom mentioned it to me; it's apparently in this month's Bon Appetit, so presumably it'll hit Epicurious soon), I added some honey, garlic and peppercorns to the brine, though I didn't want to mess with all those herbs.

Also, like all good Southern recipes for fried chicken, Edna Lewis's called for cooking the chicken in lard, butter and the fat from a slice of country ham. And though I knew in my foodie heart that this was the way you were supposed to do it, I just couldn't. Because if you're going to cook with lard, you have to commit. You just can't blink! And I blinked. Forgive me, Edna Lewis. I went with Keller's peanut oil instead.

Enough with the talky. Here's how it went down.

First, the brine, which I started Saturday morning before the game. I was doubling the recipe and didn't have any bowls big enough to hold all that chicken, so I used my Le Creuset. (Those grill marks are the reflection of my refrigerator shelf.)

Twelve hours later, I removed the chicken from the brine and soaked it in buttermilk overnight. Both the brine and the buttermilk are meant to keep the chicken moist. (Apologies to all those who think the word "moist" is weird. It sort of is.)

This morning, I dredged the pieces in flour, cornstarch, salt and pepper. Things got a little gummy. Buttermilk + flour = a big mess.

The frying commences! I came close to burning a few pieces, partly because I'd never cooked with peanut oil before and wasn't used to how hot it gets, and partly because I suddenly freaked out that I was going to undercook the chicken and horrify my brunch guests.

But it all turned out all right in the end.

I served it with coleslaw, which was quite possibly a bigger hit than the chicken. I made it from this recipe, and added celery seeds, as recommended by others. I had looked for a recipe that didn't use mayonnaise and couldn't find one, but this version ended up being nice and light. Nothing at all like the KFC kind, which I find vaguely repulsive. I'm surprised, as a matter of fact, that so many people seem to love it.

Also muffins. These, I didn't make. For some reason it didn't even occur to me to do so (maybe because I don't own a muffin tin), though in retrospect I might have been better off giving it a go, from a mix.

Annah made bloody Marys. Yum. (Side note: Early this morning I realized I'd forgotten to make ice cubes, so I hastily poured some water in the ice trays. Then I headed to my computer to Google "how long does it take for water to freeze into ice cubes?" When you type something into the Google search field now, it shows you all the popular searches that might be related to your query. So among the top ten searches starting with "how long does" are: "how long does marijuana stay in your system," "how long does cocaine stay in your system," "how long does thc stay in your system" and "how long does it take to get pregnant." I'm not sure whether to be amused or concerned.)

And it all got capped off with a fruit salad.

And how was the chicken, you ask? Well, I thought it was really good -- tender, moist (sorry), crispy, flavorful. The extra effort involved in brining and soaking in buttermilk was totally worth it. But don't take my word for it:

Thanks so much for the suggestion, skd! I thought of leaving some at your work for you, but ... um ... I kind of want that last piece for myself. 

Got more ideas for me? Let 'em fly. Still TK: miso cod, mac 'n' cheese, polenta with vegetables, and fritto misto.

Brown sugar, how come you taste so good ... on brussels sprouts?

Last night I made brussels sprouts on Sean's recommendation, adding a little bit of brown sugar during the saute. Et voila (plated with a lamb chop with a bit of balsamic vinegar, and rice):

The brussels sprouts turned out great, as promised -- the brown sugar caramelized, and since I didn't add a ton of it, it provided just a hint of sweetness, changing the flavor and pulling the brussels sprouts into a roundedness (is that a word?) they didn't have before. I gobbled them up well before I finished the lamb chop.

But more than satisfying me for dinner, the sugared sprouts -- and the great response I got on my brussels sprouts post -- gave me an idea. I loved taking someone's cooking suggestion and making it real; what if I could do that all the time? (I can't wait to buy some almonds and make Sarah's recipe, too.) So I'm launching a new feature* called Tell Me What to Cook. I'm serious. Just tell me whatever you think I should cook, and I'll do it.

I'll give you a topic: broccoli. I actually really dig broccoli. I steam it and saute it all the time, but I don't actually do much to it beyond that. Any ideas? Tell me what to do to it (no matter how bizarre), and I'll post it here. And then all you brussels sprouts haters can breathe a sigh of relief as this becomes a broccoli blog, instead.

*I fully realize that every time I say I'm "launching a new feature," I only do it once. So help me break the streak.

Update: Forget the broccoli. (Poor broccoli.) Any suggestion at all will do. Thanks, Sean! I'm going to look up pan-fried chicken recipes now.