The Morning After

On Friday night we had an impromtu dinner party with a few close friends. It was a beautiful evening. After a late afternoon downpour, the skies opened up to a pink and pale blue sunset. Of course I forgot to take any picture of all the food we ate and cooked. And most importantly, I forgot to take pictures of the star of the evening--Mojitos! Mint is abundant right now and so were the many limes brought by our guests. The drinks were just delicious to my lips. My mate found them a bit too strong. And the expert mixologist at the table, EM, claimed the first batch too weak. As always, everyone had an opinion.

After a round of drinks and appetizers, we hit the fields for a rousing game of Bocce. I can't, or don't want to, remember who won. All I know is that my team put forth a noble effort, even as it became almost impossible to see the pallina.

Post-Bocce, all the kids pitched in to get dinner on the candlelit table (set by the expert mixologist).

The menu included two kinds of pasta, one with pesto, one with a sausage sauce, roast chicken, salad, and bread. Despite the hearty appetizer offerings and many pre-dinner drinks, everyone ate like they needed a good meal.

The party concluded around 12 am, after we noshed some unbelievably delicious packaged cookies brought by AM and some other sweet things. Luckily for me SM hit the dishes like a professional and put my kitchen in order before she left. God bless her, since I would have had to face those nasty dishes and pots alone, the next morning.

It is my habit, after a night of drinking, to get up pretty early and wander around. And so I did the next day. As I cleaned up the dessert dishes, I got to thinking about,what else??? Food, of course. Perusing the party remnants, I spied a basket of leftover French bread and thought: French toast.

Topped with some leftover blueberry compote and served with a side of turkey bacon. Right on!

Remarkably, even after that satisfying and substantial breakfast, my hungover mate decided that we needed to go to a local bakery for coffee and an after-breakfast snack. Haven't heard of an after-breakfast snack? Nor had I, until yesterday morning. We went to C'est La Vie in New Hope PA.

C'est La Vie is owned and operated by a real French dude. Going into his bakery is really like going to France. There's just something very European about the place. And his croissant, brioche, etc. are f'in good, as is his coffee which is always just the right temperature and flavor. I'm one picky coffee drinker; he rings my bell every time I go.

You might note the prominently displayed travel mug in the photo above. My mate is adamant about not using paper cups. I, as you can see, am not. It is a bit of a religion for him. I am slowly being converted.

After all this eating and drinking, I retired to the couch for the greater part of the day. My mate engaged in some project, I dunno what and really couldn't have cared less. I was tired and well fed.

Pasta Cruda and Garden Friends

Sun of a gun. I just lost a full entry. Don't know exactly how it happened, but anyway here's what I think I said.

Last night was pasta night. I originally contemplated making puntanesca sauce. I like the salty super fishyness of anchovies and olives and capers. But when it got down to cookin', I had only the anchovies, didn't want to go to the store to get the need goods, and wasn't so sure I wanted to cook over a stove. It really wasn't that hot yesterday, wet and warm describes this summer in eastern Pennsylvania, but I thought a raw tomato sauce might be nice. I've made this sauce before. For some reason I didn't love it this time. It was watery, but it's always watery. Too much raw tomato and garlic for my taste. Maybe it just didn't go with the stuffed tubes of pasta I cooked up. Who knows.

My mate liked it muchly, but I can't always trust his opinion when it comes to pasta. The Italian in him loves pasta in almost any form even if served with a sauce of dirt and poo.

I blanched some fresh green beans and tossed with a very little oil and salt. I think I liked these more than the salsa cruda. I must say that I did enjoy the sauce when sopped up with bread. It tasted like the bruschetta I often order at our favorite local eatery, Bell's Tavern in Lambertville NJ.

Anyway, a few of my most favorite little friends stopped by for a visit at the end of the meal. We played and took a wander through my vegetable garden.

Sometimes people are way more fun than food. Happy summer, ya'll.

Falafel and the Garden

Back again with news about food and flowers and other growing things. This week I decided to plan a menu. I cook alot more often and consciously during the summer, because I am less busy (no work for teachers in the summer, it is the absolute benefit of the profession for those who care to take advantage). Here's the menu thus far.

Sunday: Veg and tofu fried rice (a good way to get rid of old vegetables and rice)

Monday: Falafel, homemade tahini sauce, and cucumber, tomato, red pepper salad.

A word about this salad.

I know everyone is talking these days about local and seasonal eating. I read it all the time, in all the food mags I get, in NY Times food articles, on television; it is obviously a fad or a trend of sorts. As a skeptical foodie, my back gets up when food trends start to sound pedantic and utopian. "You must eat local, if you have any morals or conscience!" "Local and seasonal fruits and veg will save the world and fight the corporatization of America!" Ok, everyone needs to take a deep breath and chill out a little. I mean sometimes food is just food, ya know. Good tasting and fun.

But shit, I have to admit, when tomatoes are in season, they are something to behold. The recent batch I bought at Homestead Farm Market in Lambertville NJ were beautifully tomato-eating heaven. And they, along with my homegrown mint, a healthy squeeze of lemon, some olive oil and salt, made this salad so sparklingly bright I couldn't stop eating it. It balanced the richness of the tahini sauce and the fried falafel balls (Near East boxed mix, they make it as good as I could with my own two hands, why suffer?) so well that we really couldn't stop eating it. A truly revelatory meal that made me proclaim several times "why don't I make falafel more often?" I don't know why I don't. Maybe because the fresh-local-seasonal veg salad made the meal and you can't eat local, fresh, and seasonal all year round, right? Do I sound like one of those seasonal devotees, sorry.

Not to brag, but that mint from my garden sure helped those vegetables shine. I, like many folks I know, am vegetable gardening this summer. I have tried my hand at this many times before, but veg. gardening is not easy or predictable. I have always flower gardened.

My flowers are like old friends, they come around every year. They don't need extra special tending: water, weeding, mulch, deadheading. That's it. There are enough of them that if a disease or bug infestion occurs, someone will be blooming if another isn't. I can trust them and they trust me. Vegetable gardens are different. They are emotional, whimsical, and susceptible to predation. They don't return each year, like my predictable perennial flowers. They need the right soil, the right amount of water, protection from bugs and molds. They are high-maintenance friends. I've tried year after year to grow vegs and have failed. Maybe my soil is too acidic or too alkaline, I dunno. But do you see what I'm saying, they ask to much of my brain. I want to only use my body and my heart in the garden, not my head. That's why I love the garden, it silences my analytical tendencies that are in overdrive during the academic year.

But, I heard the siren song of the vegetable garden this summer. Vegetable gardening can be so alluring. You plant the seeds and they actually produce a sprout. Oh,the excitment of seeing a seed turn into a sprout, it's fun people. And then the sprout gets bigger and bigger and hopefully turns into sumthin'. That's when things get tricky, but my hopes are high. Check out the activity.

Thusfar, I planted beets, cucumbers, zucchini, arugula, cantalope, bush and pole beans, broccoli, various herbs, and tomatoes; I think that's it. We'll see what happens. Some critter is lacifying the arugula and broccoli, and the tomatoes aren't progressing at a timely clip, but who knows what the future holds. That' s the thing with vegetables, they keep you in suspense. For those of you who successfully grow vegetables (without chemicals), I would love any advice. I can't say I will follow it, but I will read attentively.

Oh yea, the menu for the rest of this week includes: pasta tonight and fish, veg coconut curry on Thurs. Friday is open. I'll keep you posted.

Coconut Cake

My family was never religious, at least not beyond my early childhood. But we always celebrate Easter as though we are commemorating something. I guess we are just commemorating our existence as a family in this new spring season. It is always a pretty fancy affair, that is our way.

This year I decided to host the event and made a coconut cake for my father, who covets cakes. It took much work and concentration and many eggs.

To be perfectly honest, I made it so long ago, I can't remember from where the recipe came. But I do know that it had three layers...

And a butter cream frosting.

The cake was excessively crumbly, at least from my perspective. But everyone who ate it loved it. It was quite rich and filling...as one often finds with these kinds of butterloaded stacked confections. I took the remains to work the following Monday and my ex-boss told me that it reminded him of cakes his mother used to make--a sweet compliment to arouse maternal nostalgia in another.

Portuguese Night?: Women's Night Part 2

Hard to believe but the second annual women's night convened two weeks ago (maybe it was three weeks ago). Each participant brought a bottle to two bottles of wine; so as far as inebriants were concerned, we were set. Was it an authentically Portuguese nosh, not so much. I mean who really wants to eat salt cod and potato stew? So we interpolated Portuguese to mean Mediterranean:

Cheese with various fruit spreads and cakes and marinated veg.

Lovely scallops, thanks to the lovely Hanna ( you may remember her as as the brownie guest blogger).

And much bread. Every participant brought a loaf of bread with their bottle of wine. Consequently, we each downed at least a loaf dipped and topped with the various dips and toppings. Luckily, I brought a watermelon. After all the cheeses and crab dip and scallops and vegs, we plowed through it like a herd of dehydrated water buffalo (you can imagine how thirsty water buffalo get when dehydrated).

Ok, I admit it. The pictures are crap and this blog is hardly au courant. But what can I say, at least I'm here. It's summer. I am done with school, so you can expect more contemporaneous blogging. At least that is my hope.

I know you are waiting with bated breath to find out the next women's night's food region/theme. Below is a clue (No, this is not a picture of Women's Night 2 participants).

Guest Blog: Hanna's Brownies

Exciting news. I have a guest blogger: Hanna Elliot. Hanna is a great cook and a fun friend. I asked her if she might do a little something for my blog and in a lickety-jiffy, she sent me something. I think this will give you an idea of Hanna's true love for the sweets.

I’ve long been a fan of the ease of the one bowl brownie recipe on the Baker’s Chocolate box, but something about how the brownies tasted was never quite right for me. In search of more pure chocolate experience, I turned to King Arthur Flour and found on their web site what they described as the perfect brownie recipe. They say this recipe creates the ideal balance between fudgy and cakey brownies, which made me realize I never cared before about consistency. I only cared about chocolate flavor. But I thought the “perfect brownie” must have to also taste good so last night my 4-year-old daughter and I gave them a try.

The results were very, very good. These brownies fulfilled my desire for clean chocolate flavor. And, the recipe allowed for a lot of child involvement, which was nice. Recipes that are all mixed with a hand mixer are a bummer for a kid. This one requires four eggs, which gave my girl a chance to do one of her favorite things and break them all into a bowl. Then she had to mix cocoa powder, baking powder, salt, and vanilla into the eggs, which was fun because the mixture became a beautiful deep brown as she stirred. And I knew she could stir as much as she wanted without doing any damage because we hadn’t yet added the flour. That went in at the very end with two big cups of chocolate chips. But first we mixed in a melted butter and sugar mixture that apparently gives the brownies a shiny top crust. Who knew? I really appreciate the chemistry lessons KAF slips into recipes.

The brownies were a bit too sweet, but that may be because in my haste I accidentally added 1 and 1/3 cups sugar rather than 1 and ¼. I think the chips give it plenty of sweetness and I’ll probably leave out some of the white sugar next time. Even so, these taste so much better than the one bowl recipe I’ve relied on for years, and using two bowls is worth it for deep chocolate brownies you might need to eat with a fork.

All Women All Night

Last night the women of my world gathered together for our first of hopefully many all femme dinner events. Since we thought themeing the night would help focus our cooking energies, we chose France (rather randomly with the help a participant's 2 year old daughter and an encyclopedia). French food sounded pretty reasonable and doable, especially for a Francophil like me.

I decided to make a Cooks Illustrated Chicken Provencal recipe. I made this before with good results; it's pretty easy and pretty tasty. Unfortunately, the day of the party I felt dizzy-trippy, tired, scatter-brained, just off my game.

I did fine browning the chicken and prepping the ingredients for the sauce in ample advance of the event. Satisfied with my work, I took a shower and came down to finish the sauce and put the chicken in the oven--you know to have it cooking maybe for the last 30 mins while everyone ate appetizers. Unfortunately, I hadn't re-read the recipe all the way through and realized at 6:00 (about when everyone was supposed to arrive) that the dish needed to cook for 1 1/4 hours. Yikes, I almost had a heart attack; I'm not kidding, my heart was a thumpin. I frantically threw everything in the pot and shoved it in the oven. To make a long story mercifully shorter, everything turned out fine--guests came later than expected, the chicken cooked up in plenty of time.

But enough about me. Here is an overview of all the other delicious dishes from our premier dinner Francais. Anita made a super fantastic French onion soup. It was so good and so beautiful that it had to be the lead image (see top of the page). Anita reminded us several times, while we tucked into her sumptuous soup, that it contained a stick of butter. I believe that Anita could love butter, if it just wasn't butter. All I can say is thank goodness for that stick of butter.

Lauren made this tasty salad with roasted beets, endive, lettuce, green beans and walnuts. It went perfectly with the chicken and contained not even a touch of butter. A respectable French entry, I believe, and refreshing and delicious to boot. Finally, Danyelle did no baking or chopping, but she did have to talk to a former student working at the pastry counter in a local grocery store. That seems like quite enough of a sacrifice to me. The results of her discussions with her ex-student was this very berry tart, a mountain-of-berries tart, really.

These are all the food photos I have, but not all the food at the party. Susie brought a very French appetizer of mashed avocado dip; Amy brought the chips with which to dip it; Annie brought a variety of things. I can't remember them all, but I do recall a bottle of Veuve Clicqout and a bud vase sans les fleurs (she's such a well-raised southern girl, she always brings presents). And last, but not least, Chris brought some cute eclairs. I'm still enjoying them every now and again. Overall, I would say we started this women's night thing off with a bang. Next stop Portugal.