Hey Dude!!

So it is a cardinal rule of hosting parties is you should never try out a recipe at a party. Well readers rules are meant to be broken (Assert your Independence and fight the system!!!!)

The past week my friends and I attended an outdoor concert here in town. OK we actually sat outside the immediate parameters of the concert in lawn chairs effectively doing the live version of illegal downloading. We are young, broke and beautiful...what can I say.

Well before our shameless concert stealing, we had a nice light dinner. I wasn't sure what to make and deferred to the preference of some of my friends (this is rare as I just usually make whatever I want and you WILL LIKE IT!!! I hope they took full advantage). Pasta was suggested, followed by an adamant request for fresh tomato pasta (as we then recalled was last served one night when my parents were away with three gallons of Cape Codders and some exciting digestive pyrotechnics). The only other suggestion I had was to make a salad with some avocado.

So in light of this I decided to make the aforementioned fresh tomato pasta and a garden salad with Avocado Ranch.

I've seen avocado ranch advertised on restaurant menus, have never had it and have absolutely no idea what it tastes like....BUT I love ranch dressing and had the crazy idea that I could make a version both healthier and more delicious by replacing the mayonnaise with pureed avocado. My thought process was mayonnaise provides the fat and therefore flavor in the original, and since avocados are very high in monounsaturated fat (which can help to ward off threats of heart disease and breast cancer as well as contribute to a less santa-like midsection then high carbohydrate diets) it would be an adequate replacement to the mayonnaise without substantial change to the texture and taste of the dressing. Well folks I was right and though I did break the well established rule to never take on the stress of a new recipe whilst you have company, I was confident that it would be good enough to take this risk. I was correct (as usual….it’s so hard to be right all the time let me tell you)

Here is the recipe:
Combine in a bowl 3-4 tablespoons each of chopped parsley, and chives (this is approximate). Add ¼ teaspoon of cayenne pepper, ¼ cup of sour cream and one ripe avocado, pureed. Whisk together till creamy. Add skim milk, one teaspoon at a time then whisking until the desired consistency is reached. Season. Serve immediately.
Enjoy!

This Poaching Should be Illegal

So last night I endervered another Top Chef inspired adventure, only this time from the Top Chef Tour. One of the contestants, Ashley Merriman, made a Poached Salmon with a warm german potato salad (AMAZING). So my aunt decided, as we were preparing our weekly grocery list, that we should get a piece of salmon and try it.

Well this is easier said then done. I found this recipe from the NY Times and within the first few lines there is talk of obsessively regulating the temperature to make sure the salmon cooks perfectly. I am already intimidated. But I remember that I am awesome and proceed to rig my meat thermometer in the pan (I am not Martha guys, I only have one thermometer). Then I add the olive oil. This shouldn't be a big deal (the recipe calls for three cups of olive oil) as we have that huge tin of it at the bottom of the pantry. yeah, actually we don't and I panic. Well luckily Marilou had just bought some cheap olive oil (for food projects such as this) the other day and I literally had just enough.

And kids, it was so worth it. The fish was delicious and rich but not heavy. I served it with a quick Dijon Potato Salad:

Boil new potatoes (I did about 7 new red potatoes) for about 15 mins
in bowl, toss 1 tbsp white wine vinegar with 1 tbsp Dijon mustard.
Add potatoes. Toss.
Let cool slightly and toss again
Add 2 tbsp olive oil, chopped parsley, and salt and pepper.
Serve

All in all it was yet another successful Top-Chef-Adventure and I highly recommend you try it. Just make sure you have enough Olive Oil first.

Oh and in honor of my seeming inability to check my ingredients here is a Catherine Tate Sketch from the Catherine Tate show
(I in no way own this video, blah blah blah, limit liability blah blah)

Faro and Why It Reminds Me of My Deck

With this blog I have to own up to some deplorably Polish behavior. I had a Greek Orzo salad from Whole Foods the other day and it was delicious. Well actually it was delivered by my study-buddy (a phrase I abhor btw) along with a Starbucks (jealous? You should be!). So naturally I had to make it myself. Could it easily be purchased from Whole Foods? Yes. Would that be less work then procuring all of the ingredients to make it? Yes. Does that mean that I will not endeavor to make it myself when it is so easily available? Yeah no.
See this is a hallmark of the Polish-American tradition. Having to make things when they can easily be made by someone else. We are similarly stubborn about scarfs, and other knit wear, furniture, home repair, concrete decks. Case in point: our deck, due to some negligent building, rotted out after a few years of rain pooling by the house, rotting the sill, and causing massive flooding in out basement. The solution: replace the sill, break-up and remove the concrete, and rebuild the patio. And did we have any outside help, NO. This is the Red and White cross I had to bare.
But I digress, this inability to purchase food that has already been prepared lead me to make my own Greek Orzo Salad. I substituted the Orzo for Faro (healthier and lower calorie) and opted to not cook the spinach and instead use fresh baby spinach.

“I’m a Polack” Greek Faro Salad
½ Cup Faro
- Boil 3 cups of water with 1 tsp salt. When it boils, stir in the faro. Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 45 minutes.
In a large bowl combine Red Wine Vinegar, salt and pepper, and whisk in Extra-Virgin Olive Oil.
Add: 1 cup baby spinach, chiffonade
½ cup diced feta cheese
½ cup halved cherry tomatoes
1 tbsp fresh thyme
1/3 cup pitted, diced kalamata olives
And all the cooked faro.
Toss and serve.
It came out pretty good, albeit different than the original.

One Week of Danger

So there have been a few interesting developments this week.

The first of which is the overall tone of CHOW this week. They are being so rude as to make me look polite. First they discuss the horrendously off-putting audacity of most vegetarians who dare to ask "is it cool for me to pass on the meat?"... bastards.

Next they discuss how shopping makes you basically a moron. How dare you!

Maybe the air conditioning has failed at the offices but any food blog that makes me look pleasant is pretty sad.

Top Ten Signs That Something Evil This Way Comes

So recently I read an interesting article on Chow about The 10 Signs of a Bad Cook. I agreed with most of their statements but it still made me want to come up with a list of my own. These are not wholly conclusive factors and may merely indicate a good cook in bad cooks clothing. Please Take care to read these as warning signs and not as me being the most judgmental guest on the planet (Though I may be). Also should you see multiple of these factors as you wait to be served, please text your mom, ask her to call your cell phone and pretend she's having a heart attack so you can leave.

So here is what I think are the Top Ten Signs of a Bad Cook….or rather Top Ten Signs You Are About To Eat Something Gross:

1. “I’m sorry, can you leave the flavor out of mine?”
ie Anyone who claims to not use salt. I agree with Chow on this one 100%. I knew someone (no names) who while I was cooking him/her a delicious meal asked “is there any chance you can leave out the salt?”. Trying to keep my Bitch-slap reflex in check and refrain from asking if I should also add dead baby eyes, he/she explained to me that salt was soooo unhealthy and surely the meal would be better without it. Two points here:
One: Salt brings out the flavor of food so when you advertise that you don’t use it you simultaneously advertise that you don’t use flavor in your food (yum!! Can’t wait to try dinner now). It is also a misnomer to some degree as most people that claim to use “no salt” do in fact use a ton because of the ingredients they use.
Two: going along with Chow’s feelings on this, if you have ever eaten anything processed in your life….ever, you have ingested more salt then the average cook uses in any given meal provided they are not also using prepared ingredients. This person enjoyed a plethora of home-cooked meals that contained jarred salsas, spice mixes, and bottled salad dressings all of which contained more salt then what I was making right then. And I tried as nicely as I could to explain this to him/her and hopefully that message was received.

End note: salt=flavor, and if you are concerned about sodium levels make the transition of fresh foods, rather then cut out the seasoning process.

2. My Recipe For Disaster.
This is a testament to the power of the possessive pronoun. Whenever I hear my pending meal announced as “My..*insert food here*” I know I am in for something that tastes like brick, ass and toothpaste. MY tuna casserole, MY waffles, and my all time favorite MY tomato sauce are practically translated to MY contribution to your gastronomic discomfort. Why? It seems crazy, but years of anecdotal evidence have taught me to hear this phrase with an appropriate amount of horror. I have a theory as to why: I think it comes down to intent. When you advertise your cooking with the possessive MY what you are saying to me is really: “I tried a recipe once, tweaked it a little to make it my own, then kept making it when people liked it” The object here was the glory not the quality. The end goal was to have a recipe wholly their own that they could use to advertise their skill. To me a truly sound cook instead says things like “I have a great recipe for…” or “I make a mean…”. The second ownership is out of the equation you can bet you are dealing with someone who aims to make the best version of whatever dish they can, rather then simply stamp their name on it. And for the record, I am all for recipe tweaking (see the potato salad rule) but if you are committed to making the best food you can, that minor tweet will evolve until it is perfect, and to date I have never seen this in a MY recipe.

3. The Potato Salad Rule:
This is when a cook doesn’t make things they way they like to eat them. Let’s start with a story. Five or so years ago my mother gave me her potato salad recipe. It was handwritten on a piece of graph paper, lovingly titled Momz Tato Salad, and was one of the first ever entries into my now monstrously sized recipe book. I loved hers and made it over and over. Well a few years pass, and now my mother and I can both make potato salad, put them side by side, and it is clear that they are different. This is because we make them the way we like to eat them. My mother’s has a lighter sauce, with more aggressive herbaceous flavor (she uses lovage instead of celery) and mine is more mustardy and peppery (two things in life that I love). And they are both delicious. In fact one of these days we should both make it just to have a laugh about the Tato Salad Darwinian Evolution.
And this story leads to my point. You cook by taste. And if you cook by someone else’s taste you effectively cook for no ones taste. So if I hear the phrase “I tried to make it the way you like it” I brace myself.
Note: this rule does not apply to mom’s as they have magic ninja abilities to make everything the way you like, especially when you are sick.

4. The Clean Kitchen Rule
I won’t name names but I know more than a few people who have kitchens that advertise “I can’t flippin cook”. You know the ones. Perfectly clean, nothing on the counters, pristine stoves, microwaves, organized fridges. You might as well post a sign on the door that says “I live on take-out”. Not that a kitchen shouldn’t be clean. In fact the kitchen is the one place in the house that I am fastidious about. But when I cook I need things: salt, oil, pepper, tongs, spoons, a dish towel, a bowl, a cutting board etc. all at a reasonably accessible distance. If you’ve ever tried to cook in a “show kitchen” you know how must of a pain in the ass it is trying ot cook when nothing is out. Your digging around cabinets, going through drawers and the simple task of seasoning your now burning pot of whatever has turned into a 10 minute game of Where in the World is the Salt Shaker. It’s annoying but the people who live there don’t realize it because….they can’t cook.

5. The Messy Kitchen Rule
Almost as bad as the show kitchen in the messy kitchen or more notably, the messy cook. This is someone who doesn’t make dinner so much as dinner explodes in the kitchen,. Pots are boiling over, the paper towel role is empty, while sheets of used towels lay strewn all over the counters soaking up all manners of grossness. Makes me crazy.
It is important to note though that this is not an automatic indicator so much as a warning sing. Some people can contain the chaos. My aunt for example is both a good cook and a notorious paper towel terrorist. (our favorite is Thanksgiving where we find at least 5 of them soaked in turkey juice……delicious) And the food is still amazing. Don’t ask me how they do it.
But for as many competent chaos cookers as there are there are more unorganized, hotmesses. A messy kitchen for them is almost always a surefire sign of a lack of organization, preparation and serenity. So be on guard.

6. The Dull Blades
Dull knifes= I clearly don’t cook well. The duller the knife the harder the work and the higher likelihood of bodily injury. So this is almost always a sure fire sign

7. People Who Don’t know How to Use Their Shit Rule
This applies to both people who don’t know how their many kitchen gadgets work and those that use their equipment with no regard for their upkeep. Ex: The second you see someone stir sauce in a nonstick pot with a fork….turn and run

8. The Stop and Shop Rule:
It is summer, there are many beautiful things in season, and any meal that utilizes more then one of them and were purchased at Stop and Shop rather then the many (and might I add cheaper) farmers markets/farm stands that litter this part of CT like a venereal disease breakout, I try to hold back to the tears of longing for the flavor that apparently won’t be joining us for dinner

9. Garlic Salt Rule
This is less an indictment of the “spice” as much as it is a general rule concerning the use of pre-mixed, freeze dried spices rather then the real deal. You have garlic, you don’t need garlic powder (in fact I’m dubious if you ever need Garlic Powder ever) Further, any premade mix effectively does two things, adds unnecessary salt and prohibits you from controlling your flavor effectively.
Exception: Herbs de Providence

10. The Misguided Health Rule
This is basically and extension of the salt rule. Any time I see someone labor over a “healthy version” of whatever I brace myself. There are many cooks who can successfully make a healthy meal low in trans fats, calories, gluten what have you. But those folks who make misguided attempts at “healthy cooking” by using margarine, Pam (instead of butter or Olive Oil) , no salt and whole wheat flour indiscriminately usually are only making flavorless food with the consistency of sand and loading me with chemicals I would rather not be eating. So do me a favor…..Practice your “healthy” meals at home.

Holy Sexy Salad Batman

Reader I have been absent a long time. Sorry. You haven’t missed too much. I grilled Chicken breasts on the grill for the first time as well as made a recreation of Cool Britannia Ice Cream that basically ate shit. But I promise a more conclusive write up of that when I make it again, hopefully working out the kinks.
So I have decided to take a mini break from “condensing “my notes to write this quick entry about a rather inspired spin of veggie sides. I was watching Martha Stewart (of course) and she made a crab salad that looked fantastic. But what is more important for this story is the vegetables it was served with. The guest chef (I regretfully proclaim ignorance on his name as I caught this segment half way through) prepared this fantastic looking crab salad and served it with blanched asparagus, blanched zucchini, and fennel (to name a few). Well this inspired me to create my own blanched veggie salad with shrimp. Well let me re-phrase: I hate zucchini and am not a huge fan of fennel (unlike a certain Italian Food-Network chef with a great rack and bobble head. Along with her unwholesome love of lemons (“lemon’s again?! I don’t live in CA Mrs. Delorentis and those don’t actually grow on trees… in this climate”) she uses Fennel I swear once and episode.

Ranting aside though, I decide that I want to try to incorporate this blanching technique, which I love, to a different, more colorful salad. Blanching, if you don’t already know, is the process of boiling a vegetable in water for a few minutes, then “shocking” it in cold water to promptly stop the cooking. See this Martha Instruction if you want more information.

Basically, what this process does is take out some of the “crunchiness” of your veggies, while preserving their fresh from the garden flavor. I personally don’t think there is anything more fabulous then blanched green beans for example which lose a lot of their, for lack of a better word” harshness and crunchiness, but are still as fresh tasting as they were fresh out of the ground. In fact as I write this I am sad that I didn’t have fresh green beans when I made this recipe and I am resolved to replace the frozen peas when them the next time I make this.

The recipe as made is as follows:
Peel 2-3 carrots, and then “peel” them until you are at the very center of the core, producing long linguine-like strands of carrot. (imagine when you are done peeling, and have discarded the outer skin, that you are going to continue peeling until there is nothing left of your carrot)
Remove the hard, tough bottom ends of 4-5 asparagus and do the same as to the carrots (I found it was helpful to start at the bottom and end at the tips though feel free to also trim off the tips and throw them in with the asparagus “noodles” when you are blanching)
Also prepare 3 radishes but trimming the end and slicing thinly ( I did mine on a mandolin) and some peas and corn

[a side note about the corn; I froze it last year when it was in season the last time and forgot about it, but man was it good. Vowing to freeze a whole ton this summer]

Place peas and corn in boiling salted water. Cook for a few minutes until bright but softer. Place in ice bath. (I found it helpful to place a strainer in the ice water so I could easily spoon in the hot veggies and remove them with minimal effort) do the same for the carrots (these take a lot longer…maybe 4 minutes). Finally do the asparagus (it should take only a minute or two). Place all the cooled drained veggies, as well as the radishes in a bowl and toss with a light vinaigrette and salt and pepper (here is a good place to try something like a champagne vinaigrette and the taste will stand up well to the vegetables)
Toss and serve with sautéed shrimp.

Promises, Promises

So kids I, and this is likely the first time in the history of this blog, have made you a promise and kept it. I made both my Paletas, and my Corn Vicyssoise. And I made both successfully and in a timely fashion after my initial promise to make them a mere blog-post ago. Go me!

The Paletas were AMAZING! My only gripe is they could be hair spicier. But they are the perfect balance of sweet, spicy and refreshing.

The Corn Vicyssoise is less exciting. It's good but not amazing. I am reserving a final judgment for when I actually sit down with a bowl of it, with the proper "fixins". But so far my thoughts are: good but I have better uses for an ear of corn. (upon review this sounds obscene...my apologies)

I also wanted to tell you about an exciting development in the world of car shows. See my dad is a "car person" and has recently, as in within the last few years, restored an Austin Healey Sprite. Well being the dutiful car daughters we are, my sister and I have been to quite a few car shows. But my favorite one is British by the Sea in Niantic. We went this past weekend, and as we admired our fellow crazy car folks various period car-picnic sets and other accouterments, we were informed that at Stowe they actually offer a prize for the best picnic. Well you better believe we are going to win that bitch!!! So you heard it here first: Peanut and I are taking up competitive picnicking. We're talking full china, elaborate tea sandwiches, fireworks, an elephant, a dead hooker. If you do any trial runs I'll let you know.

A random post to be sure. But to fulfill my obligations to you fills my heart with pride, especially in the light of how much time my bar prep takes up. I think in these times to a conversation I had with my sister a few weeks ago that went something like this
"Ugh I hope I pass the bar"
"whatever, you pass the bar ever night!"
"Lauren?!"
"that's right I'm sorry. You don't pass them, you go in and get drunk"