Can she cook?

This is the question I've often imagined a man's mother asking about me.  Or about any of us, really.  So you met a girl?  She's a nice girl?  She's from a nice family?  Can she cook?  Yes, something like that.  A sort of make-shift version of My Big Fat Greek Wedding happening in the homes of a man when they tell their mothers that they have met a woman.  There is no shame in it, really; we all have questions, excitements, raised eyebrows, skepticisms, etc, when we hear of a family member meeting a potential mate.  One of my dearest, although anonymous for these purposes, friends has a new man in her life.  So, naturally, they came over for dinner.  And, as I got ready for, cooked and hosted, I found myself trying to impress him.  As if my friend has brought this man to my house for a home-cooked meal in order to answer his mother should she ever ask "Can she cook?"


Menu:
Chicken Provencal (#172)
String beans with sauteed radishes (#173)

yum.

Much effort went into a simple menu, - not too showy and difficult, and yet, chicken breast always seems to go over the line in my kitchen between perfect and too dry.  This time, my dear friends, for I think the first time, it worked.  It was cooked through and as moist as could be.  But that isn't even the best part.


Cooked radishes are a revelation.  Yes, they are.  And the easiest thing to make ever.  Follow these steps and discover your newest favoritest vegetable:
1.  Buy, wash and slice ends off radishes.
2.  Cut into quarters.
3.  Blanche in boiling water until the red skin turns pink.
4.  Saute in a tablespoon of olive oil until soft and the slightest browned edges.
5.  Enjoy.


I think the evening went well for impressing the new man.  Then again, he impressed me too.  Obviously he must be someone extra special to get to hang out with she-who-shall-not-be-named.  


127 to go...

Booking and cooking.

I absolutely love this time of year.  Every store has stacks of clean notebooks and packs of 50 pencils.  School is right around the corner.  Life without the academic calendar is very foreign to me.  I haven't lived without this special anticipation and excitement during the last weeks of August since, well...I was three.  In the pre-pre-school days.  Clearly I am in the right field.  That is the student-turned-teacher-turned-student field.  Classes start Monday, and there is already lots of reading to do and notes to go over.  I've assembled binders and sharpened pencils. I am ready.  Thus, these days, I am doing a lot of booking and cooking.  And, looks like this will be plan for awhile.  

purple and white eggplant slices

tomato menagerie

Menu:
Mixed Eggplant and Tomato Tart (#169) with Chickpea Crust (#170)
Summer Sangria (#171)


A colleague of mine came bearing gifts one morning of big beautiful eggplants and a pile of grape tomatoes from her garden.  Isn't that the sweetest?  Immediately I got to thinking how I could use these in the kitchen.  Knowing Schaeffer, Amalie & Beth were coming over for some pre-Friday night dancing supper, I thought a tart was in order.  I've been trying to lighten things up in my kitchen these days.  Now, don't misinterpret me, that's not to day I'm bidding farewell to butter completely. Just trying to keep things on the somewhat healthier side here and there.  
This causes problems when making a tart crust.  Usually I would mix flour and butter and a dash of salt in the food processor until it tasted like the heavenly mixture that it is.  

Reading the Cake Batter & Bowl blog, I saw Kerstin's idea for using a can of chickpeas in tart dough in lieu of butter.  Initially this seemed incredibly sacrilegious to me.  But, I gave in and tried it.  (Minus the protein powder.  That just is sacrilegious.)  I pulled some oregano and thyme from my garden, added flour, the can of chickpeas and some olive oil.  It pulsed into a dough well, with some added flour.  

The herbs were a great addition to the crust, although I'm not sold on the chickpea substitution.  However, in all fairness, I knew that from the outset.  I layered the crust with eggplant that had been roasted at 350 degrees for 20 minutes, sliced tomatoes and about a cup of shredded mozzarella and parmesan.  Bake the tart at 375 degrees until the contents bubbles a bit.  

sangria mixture

cooked sangria mixture

I don't do a lot of fancy things with drinks.  I open beer can tabs on Bud Light or PBR.  I uncork wine bottles.  Sometimes I add St. Germaine liquor and club soda and a lime.  But that is it.  When I saw Rachel's sangria on her blog Heart of Light, I wanted to try it right then.  There is something really special about having to 'cook' ingredients for a drink.  Does that make sense?  Maybe not.  But it was delicious.  

empty tart plate...good sign

what shall we do without fresh local flowers come winter?

Ok, back to the booking.  


129 to go...


p.s.  kristen, thanks for the eggplants!  

Peter Piper picked a peck of...

purple peppers.

Ok, actually, Kimmi picked a peck of purple peppers.  Ok, ok, actually, Kimmi picked up a peck of purple peppers.  Either way, they were beautiful and the newest vegetable on my list of new things.  Going to the farmer's market is just the best.  People are everywhere trying to sell their precious homegrown things and others are trying to fill their bags with as much freshness as they can.  It is certainly a place I find a bit of good clean dust and dirt in the middle of a city that can sometimes feel just plain dirty.  


Menu:
Purple Pepper and Heirloom Tomato Salad (#168)
Roast Chicken

purple peppers.  and other treasures.

I found these purple peppers at the market, and they had me at hello.  When I say, err...type, that I spent the 5 hours between buying them and making dinner cutting and re-cutting and assembling and reassembling the salad in my head, I am serious.  As ridiculous as that might sound.  Oh stop rolling your eyes.  Can you blame me?  Look at how beautiful they are just sliced, - purple skin, whitish flesh.  

The salad really needed to be the focus for me here.  I sliced everything up and tossed it with the slightest bit of olive oil and vinegar, a dash of salt and pepper, et c'est ca.  I find store bought roast chickens to be delicious, and have no shame putting one up on this blog.  It was the perfect Saturday evening supper.

Are these not the absolute most adorable flowers you have ever seen?  I knew we'd agree.


132 to go...


p.s.  in other news, regina jumped the pond for a year in maastrict, netherlands.  miss her already.  sniff sniff.

Pollo y Platanos Fritos

These days I have been thinking a lot about Nicaragua and missing, well, everything.  The people, the vegetation, the food, the language, the food, the food and especially the food. Especially the plantain chips.  There exists a little green snack bag of salted plantain chips in Nicaragua that I simply cannot resist. Every little market I walk by, I check for them when I am down there.  The biggest problem with this little love affair with all things crispy and salty and plantain-y is that I have yet to find that wonderful little green bag in the District.  And, so, with Nicaragua on my mind, Libby, Amalie, Beth & I had dinner.


Menu:
Fried Plantain Chips (#166)
Jerk-Style Grilled Chicken (#167)
Simple Salad with Yellow Tomatoes

Handheld mandolin impresses every time.

My thoughts about making the chips were simple: buy plantains, peel plantains, slice plantains, brush with olive oil, sprinkle with salt & bake.  In the end, this turned out to be a perfect plan, however, step two yielded the only major speed bump.  As it turns out, plantains do not peel like bananas.  The skin is much tougher to pull from the fruit flesh, and so I quickly resorted to some help, found by Amalie (o Amalia, cuando estamos en Nica).  

Oiled, salted & ready to go.

I cooked the plantains at 375 degrees for about 12 minutes, and then watched them closely.  They ended up taking around 18 minutes or so.  Verdict: close enough to the little green bag to keep me happy.  Not close enough to mean I am still not wanting to get back to Nicaragua as soon as possible.

Hi, my name is Kim.  Will you be my friend?

Wouldn't you want to just buy this and figure out what you could do with it once you saw the endearing bottle on the bottom shelf at Whole Foods, looking something out of The Help by Kathryn Stockett?  Well, I sure did.  


Things I knew about molasses pre-menu:
1.  It is very thick.
2.  It is in brown sugar.
3.  It is in cookies sometimes found at Starbucks that next to a nonfat latte make you think you have died and gone to coffee-house heaven.


Things I learned about molasses post-menu:
1.  It makes chicken taste like it has died and gone to heaven.  


Short list, perfect lesson learned.  

I let the chicken marinade longer, as in about four hours, prior to cooking it on the stove. Paired with a Red Stripe, compliments of Amalia, and a bright napkin, it was close to perfect.  

Some palm trees would have brought us right to that line of perfection.

133 to go...

From blossoms.

In college I discovered Li Young Lee, and thus his poem From Blossoms.  Since that first year in college, this poem cycles through my brain in so many circumstances, not unlike the rainy day mantra of Paul Verlaine.

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

- Li-Young Lee

I've wanted to cook a good Southern meal for Schaeffer's Dad, Mr. D, for a number of reasons.  He's from Montgomery, Alabama.  He's a Southern gentleman who opens every door, insists the lady sit in the front seat and stands when one approaches the table.  Needless to say, to this Jersey girl, he might as well be another species of man.  So, on our last night in Tennessee, after wandering around the most wonderful farmer's market in Franklin, I summoned the Southern gal tucked way, way down inside myself and cooked up some fixins' I hoped would please even the most Southern of the group: Mr. D.  

†The glorious Franklin Farmer's Market.

Menu:

Southern Fried Chicken (#160)

Cornmeal Fried Okra (#161)

Broiler-Cooked Corn on the Cob (#162)

Heirloom Tomato Salad (#163)

Buttermilk Biscuits (#164)

Peach Pandowdy (#165)

dusty skin and all.

Odd as it may sound, I had the morning to myself at Mrs. D's, so I got to making my peach pandowdy.  (Which, I should say, I didn't actually know was a pandowdy until Mr. D informed me that's what they call it down South.)  The morning was spent with coffee and the most beautiful box of peaches I have ever seen.  It had me mulling over lines from Lee's poem almost instantly and subconsciously..."peaches we devour, dusty skin and all".

They were the butteriest of peaches.  The kind your knife slides right through without effort, juicy and bright.  The kind you eat more than a slice or two as you are preparing a pandowdy.  

I've never eaten okra, but the thought of those little green, and as it turns out, slimy, monsters being coated and fried and put on the plate next to fried chicken seemed absolutely right.  There were many hands in the kitchen, which was a good thing since I needed as much Southern-by-association as possible.  

Schaeffer handled the okra.  At one point, he turned to me and said (and I quote), "Do you want me to dip these in the liquid and dredge them in flour?"  Pretty much everyone stopped what they were doing and looked up.  Then, after a moment of astonishment, smiled and laughed.  And so, he dipped and dredged.  

And then he fried.

Frying chicken on the stove was quite the endeavor.  As I already seemed to have wreaked havoc on this kitchen, what with the oven never having been so hot as when I cooked the cheesecake, the place filling with smoke when I broiled those chickens and the smoke alarm going off every five minutes throughout each and every time I come to Nashville, - I figured, what the heck?  Why not bring boil 4 quarts of oil and try to fry whole bone-in chicken drumsticks and breasts?  

It worked!

To my absolute 100% surprise, it worked!  And it looked just like I wanted it to look, - all crispy and tempting.  And, I think it is safe to say...it passed the test of Southern approval. 

I think this says it all.

Couldn't resist my dash of mozzarella cheese.  C'mon, we needed a tinge of Italian.

Talk about comfort food.

The whole evening was wonderful.  The biscuits were sub par in my opinion, but I didn't fret.  Having everyone out on the back porch, eating that good ol' Southern meal, just chatting and eating, it was the most perfect way to end the trip.  I can hardly wait to get back to Nashville.  

Peach Pandowdy a la mode

Mr. D, thanks letting this Irish-Italian Jersey gal in the Southern club, if only for just a night. 

"O, to take what we love inside,
To carry with us an orchard."

135 to go...

The Devil Went Down to Georgia....er, Tennessee

Yes, indeed, another trip down to Nashville was had for some good ol' DeArmond Clan fun.  Don't worry, no soul stealing was part of the trip.  Mrs. D had a big birthday and wanted nothing more than to be surrounded by her family and eat some of her favorite foods.  How can you say no to that?  She told me that some of her favorites include filet mignon (certainly a woman after my own heart), salmon and cheesecake.  I got to planning the birthday celebratory meal pronto.  

Menu:

Salmon with Lentils and Mustard-Herb Butter (#152, 153 & 154)

Porcini-Crusted Filet with Fresh Herb Butter (#155 & 156)

Asparagus with Baby Portabellas and Tarragon (#157)

Cheesecake with Blackberry Sauce (#158 & 159)

A great group of family was in town, which makes me feel instantly at home for reasons which I've shared (and bored) you with, I am sure.  This time I made certain not to have any salt and sugar mix-ups, and more importantly, I made certain to bring more people into the kitchen for the cooking.  You and I both know that is where all of the fun happens, anyway.  David Ian, Schaeffer's cousin, was my right-hand man for the cheesecake.  Which was especially nice so I could shoulder the blame with someone else if it turned out terribly.  Ok, ok, maybe not.  But, thankfully, it did no such thing, and the Meyer lemons we choose were just perfect for both flavor and mellowy yellowy color.  We choose a shortbread crust in lieu of the graham cracker one, and frankly, I think it was an excellent choice.  

David Ian gettin' his zest on.

Odd as it sounds, I have probably only eaten salmon four times or so in my life, so needless to say, I've never cooked it.  My family, huge fans of seafood, always stayed to the white, flaky variety when I was going up, and, thus, so have I.  Silly redhead I am, I know.  For this gorgeous color alone, you should buy a big piece for supper.  Isn't it beautiful?

 Looks good, smells not so good.

The dried porcini mushrooms, with pink, black and white peppercorns, made a very well-flavored crust for the filets, although I must admit, those dried porcinis were smelly.  I was quite relieved that didn't translate as flavor.  Not one bit.  

Leeks for the lentils.  Tomatoes for the salad. 

There was surf & turf, surf & surf and turf & turf.  Yes, I think I've found quite the answer to a big group with different palate preferences and needs.  Nothing like seeing everyone pleased, and hearing little talk around the table for the first few minutes, no?

Around that table there was such much laughter, and really, that is all Mrs. D wanted for her birthday.  When I first went to Nashville earlier this summer, she took her three (adult) children and I out to Waffle House for breakfast, and I learned something very important about her.  That booth in the Waffle House, covered in what seemed like dozens of plates with tons of food, with five people smushed into the seats, is all Mrs. D needs.  Don't you love her already?  I certainly do.

Happy birthday, Mrs. D. 

Oh, and we ended the night with some do-si-do-ing at Robert's Western World.

Possum (S' brother-in-law), Megan (S' sister), S & Momma DeArmond

Two loves.  Ok, three.

141 to go...