Aioli. Or, attitdue is everything.

Here are some delightful ingredients:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That’s salt, garlic, egg and olive oil.

In June, two dear friends of mine asked me to help with the food for their wedding reception.  They wanted to serve tapas.

I learned about tapas.  There is this delightful thing served with many tapas: aioli.  Aioli, for the uninitiated, is garlic mayonnaise.  It is delish.  I had never made it.

I was unafraid to try!

Since June, I’ve made aioli, on average, once a week.  I usually make 1.5c at a time.  The ingredients are as follows.

5 cloves of garlic.
pinch of salt (rock salt works best)
1 egg
1c olive oil

You need a food processor.  (I think a blender might work, I don’t know, I don’t have a blender.)

I wish I could tell you how to make this without a food processor.  Because I like cooking things that don’t require engine-powered equipment.  I do not understand why bread takes a mixer when bread has been eaten since, you know, the dawn of agriculture.  I make crappy bread (my bread=doorstop). I don’t care much, because Das eats so much bread that I’d have to be up before sunrise every day of the week and twice on Sundays.  I digress.

Here is how to assemble the aforementioned ingredients.

Use of of these things:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

mortar and pestle.  Of doooom.

I got this at on the international aisle of a Mexican grocery.  It was $15.  It’s not very big.  I don’t need a very big one, because the only things I’ve smashed is garlic+salt and once coriander seeds with peppercorns.

Smash garlic+salt (a pinchish) in mortar and pestle until it’s a paste.  You will know.  It’s like liquified garlic, more or less.

Add egg to food processor.  Process for 30 seconds.

I usually count to 50.

Add garlic paste.

Slowly add 1 cup of olive oil.  Slooooower.  I do not have a sous chef or a photographer, so I can’t show you how the pour looks but I like words so I’ll try it this way: it’s like thinner than a straw.  It’s like a line drawn with a pencil.  that kind of slow.

Once all oil is in the cuisinart, let it go for a moment.  You’ll also know this, because it will look like mayo being flung about by a blade in a round box.

Here’s a cute bowl:

  I include this pic because I think mayo isn’t that pretty.  But the bowl is pretty, right?  All jaunty and tipped?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s aioli

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s much tastier than it’s pudding-like-countenance would lead you to believe.

I would love to say that there’s more to this post than a long winded description of my aioli recipe.  But there’s not much.

Sometimes, though, when I forget to be afraid of things?  I do a lot, a lot better, and a lot more than when I let fear dictate excuses for why I would avoid.  Why I would duck, why I would sidestep.

I have been called fearless by someone who didn’t know me well enough to know otherwise.  I laughed at him.   I sometimes feel like I’m fully paralyzed by fright.  But then, there are some days and nights in which I would boldly cook for seventy-five having no idea that it should have been daunting.

Maybe everything should be cooking for a reception.  Maybe everything could be with a little pinch of salt and a tipped bowl kind of attitude.

xo
mitda.

Biscuits

Here’s some biscuits I just made:

I think they’re only OK.  And here is why: I live in Texas now.  I should get around to accepting this part of my life.  But I’m an Angelena at heart.  And a Torontonian by transplant.  I have a really hard time fathoming that I live in Texas.  In a city that isn’t a million people big.  But one thing they have here is biscuits.  And I really like biscuits.  I just have a fuck of a time trying to get them just right.

Now I hear some of you saying “bisquick!”  I reject this notion nearly as much as I’m in denial about my state of residence.  Bisquick is not as good as from scratch.

Because I say so.

So I’ve tried about nineteen gajillion recipes for biscuits.  I realized 1/3 of the way through that they need baking powder.  I managed to forget twice after buying baking powder that I had bought baking powder, so I have three cans of it in the pantry.  I also don’t have a sifter.  Or nylons to makeshift a sifter.  (If you’re reading this emmie: I also don’t have a good strainer, enough measuring cups and spoons and neither have I enough aprons and bar towels.)  So, right.  The recipe I used:

Biscuits that didn’t turn out quite right:
2c flour
1/2c lard
+ 2tbs butter
1 tbs baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tbs sugar (?)
1/2c milk

They are kind of flat tasting, despite the addition of garlic and cheese.  Rather dense, as well (possibly slightly underbaked??) and not flaky at all.

So

You know how I love the moral of the story, right?

Here’s what biscuits taught me tonight:
It’s ok to ask for help.  It seems simple enough to seek assistance for a biscuit recipe, right?  At the outset, no big deal.  But the bitch of it comes in when it comes to admitting that without aid, I will continue to fuck up the biscuits.

Like a lot of things, right, saying “I don’t do it well enough, can you help me improve?” isn’t the most sweet thing to taste in my mouth.  The words of humility, though, is the building of bridges.  And those are lovely to behold, the architecture of a bridge is fantastic and always shockingly strong.

A wise someone I know has said the following, which relates sort of to the preceding:
“Build a bridge.  Then get the fuck over it.”

And I really love that advice.  I try a lot to get the fuck over things, you know.  Festering and stewing is not comfortable, and it is largely unpretty.

I ask you, gentle readers who may be excellent bakers:

How do you make your biscuits flaky and light?  How can I improve?

XO
mitda

Immersion: doing the being

Immersion looked a bit like separated and unequal.  Which was really just fine with me.

I hope namaste somewhere posts the recipe to the evening’s Signature drink: The Sweet Surrender (from what i can gather it was chilled, shaken 1part vodka to 2parts lemonade -at first (quickly shifting to 1:1)  -  (which you could enjoy bruised (blackberry puree) or welted (raspberry puree).)  We dispensed with the kisses of lemon and sugar on the lips of the old fashioneds. (in the interest of time).  The only one that was delivered as welted-style was the one I made for namaste.  (making some of us in the kitchen giggle a bit– all the M-types wanted their aperitifs “bruised”.  fuckin’ sadists.)

For the evening I prepared a cheese flight consisting mostly of colorless cheeses. (SaintAndre, vermont extra sharp cheddar, muenster, orange extra sharp cheddar and smoked gouda.) I served these with an assortment of crackers and toast (tiny petite toast).)  I also made the salad, which I envisioned as good for at least 20 people.  Turns out it was good for twice that, considering the tiny bowls that we used for the salad.  I am not sure those who occupied the floor had any salad at all.

So.  Salad is one of my favorite things to eat, but I don’t necessarily think of it as an arty thing to assemble.  I would like some day to be very good at dressings, but I have a dressing I get from the market that’s really good, and I don’t know enough, I don’t think, to replicate. (Yet).

I assembled the following for the enormousity of the salad.

3 seeds-removed peeled cucumbers (diced)
pint cherry tomatoes
2 haas avos, diced
5 carrots peeled, cut in half-wheels
1 big purple onion, sliced and diced
2 beautiful red bell peppers, seeded and diced
4 stalks celery
some sliced radishes
ripped up head of red leaf
ripped up baby spinach

I would have doused in lemon juice to prevent the brown of avos in the day following.

We served with selection of peppercorn ranch or balsamic vinaigrette.   I am currently enjoying with champagne dressing.

Other courses included delightful tilapia or salmon (dill) with lemon dill cream sauce (to she who made this– yum).  A roast pork loin and some rotisserie chicken. Unfortunately the starch brought was a small pasta salad.  I would have made a couscous+ butter garlic thing or other small kind of pasta (orzo) or risotto, but hindsight is 20/20, right?

The dessert selections were jars of trifle (rich and delish), and some cakes.  Someone else provided a beautiful fruit plate with a carved out pineapple filled with whipped cream.  (She had also made up a delightful plate of mozza and salami, which we’re most grateful to munch upon!)

The men held court in the garage, smoking cigars and drinking brandies and scotches. We didn’t do a whole formal cigar service, which may have included our bodies as ashtrays.  Just cutting, lighting, and serving drinks.  The rest of us took places on the living room floor, talking and sipping and listening for the chime that called us in to attend.

We did the dishes, too.  A lot of dishes.  By midnight we had run the dishwasher twice and done those dishes that couldn’t go in the machine by hand.  We had packed up the leftovers into bags and put up dishes where we could.

I really loved being so busy, I loved attending to needs as called for.  I am not much for protocol, but a deliberate enforcing of inequality, on the whole, en masse, the lot of our side of things dressed in revealing garb (mine covered everything, but was entirely see-through).  I was comfortable, you know.  I wasn’t super aware of how I looked, it wasn’t important.  My awareness was upon Das’s comforts, Das’s wishes.  I wanted to make things lovely as I represent and reflect him, his will.

When we talk about being, I get hung up on “how do I do your will?”  There are so many words one could type or say regarding this declension of “to be”.  I am and I will.  When “will” is part of “being”, and your Master is one of the leading thinkers in ontology, paying attention to will as noun  and will as verb and nounverb (gerund)  this is all part of the deal for which I’ve signed up.  But, I’m in a different school.  I live in the “doing”.  Bending my own way of thinking into the Being as key, initial, primary, rather than the Doing as most important philosophy/lifeway: this is the crux of my service.

Not necessarily cleaning the kitchen or a list of to-dos.  Being his is the key.  Not “doing what it takes to be his.”

And this is not as easy as it seems.

Let us take the idea of goals and deadlines.

Das does not operate on these terms.  I’m the opposite.  If I have a goal or deadline, whatever it is as sure as shit is done.  I have leave to set my own goals and deadlines, within reason.  For example, I blissed out on counting words for Nanowrimo.  Unfortunately, I also burned out on words for Nano.  I made the goal in 10 days.  I won a 30 day contest in ten.  I then left off the writing, because of the burnout.  Das says to make my goal developing such-and-such idea or character, and leave off the focus on number of words.   He is, of course, right on this count.  It does not serve a novel just to have a lot of words: they mustneeds be delightful, good words.  This doesn’t necessarily come with quantity.

But shifting to this gear?  I have no clutch installed.  How do I do  it, I ask.

And the answer comes back, “just be mine.”

So while I love the activity of service, it is my intention that makes this how I evince the his-ness.  I clean the kitchen or make dinner not because I am told to, but because I am told to be his.  And as his, I provide cleaner kitchens, better dinners, kneeling to say I love you.   Discarding the expectations and ridding myself of any disappointments and potential resentments.

There is an element of suck it up to being enslaved.   If I am disappointed, it is on me to understand that he does not do things solely for my feelings.  He does them for his feelings.  I do not get disappointed because of him, it’s because of my own presentation of expectations that do not get met.  I do not have the luxury of expecting things from Das, this isn’t my place.  And learning that daily is part of the journey.  It’s how the be gets done.

Apple Pie. Or, why today is launch day.

These are apples and pears.

They’re pretty, right?

I know, it’s a phonecamera.  We’ll upgrade to a real camera some other day.

So I surfed for apple pie recipes, because, well, I’ve never made a sweet pie.  I’ve made tons of pork pies, and some cornish pasties, and a few weeks ago I made a crisp, but that’s rather different entirely.

There are like 90 million ways to make the fillings for apple pie.  But only a few ways to make the crust.  So I worked out the necessaries for a crust and then threw in a twist.

The basics of a crust include shortening or butter, (but I used lard + butter,) flour, water, salt.

Here’s my crust, which needs perfecting.  But I’m being honest, so I’ll just tell you

1/4 c almonds smashed to dust (i used mortar and pestle)

almost 1 c lard + 3 tbsp butter

1 3/4 c flour (all purpose, but I’m don’t ken all the differences)

1-6 tbsp water (no one agrees)

1/4 c brown sugar (it took a lot of deciding upon this)

salt

cinnamon

Notes: the rolling of the crust did not work.  I wound up pressing it into the pie dish and i couldn’t get the top right so i crumbled bits upon the filling in order to bake it.   I am a completely novice baker, I admit freely and without shame.  My inclination is that there wasn’t enough flour, but I am happy happy happy to entertain anyone’s actual reason this is the case.

That said, it was fucktastically tasty.  The almonds and brown sugar were excellent additions.
Fillin’

Peel and slice 3 lbs of apples, douse with lemon juice.  (I did this thusly: peel, slice, throw in bowl that has lemon juice awaiting apples and pears slices.)  This way they don’t brown.  But you knew that.

For the filling I browsed and browsed and came up with the following:

3lbs apples (mine included pears)

1/4c flour

1/2c brown sugar

1/4c sugar

some whiskey (i don’t usually have bourbon on hand, but bourbon was in the recipe from which I sprang.)

2 tbs cinnamon

a little milk

mix dry ingredies, add wet stuff, add to apples, toss.
So we talked about the crust.

Here’s how it looked when it was finished:

 

 

And the lesson from this little pie?

 

You have to start somewhere.  If not today, when you have three pounds of apples and pears just sitting there, when?  If not today, when you have the luxury of perusing the interwebz for all kinds of advice on apple pies, which day?

If I don’t start now, when do I?

Does planning really need more than a nod?  Sometimes it doesn’t.

Must a launch date be set in order to get on with life?   Then launch today, haytch. Get your shit together, smear on the eyeliner and mascara, dress up in that bigdaddy suit that epa gave you and fucking go for it.

Or, don the apron, dive in, and fuck it if the crust doesn’t roll so well: it still tastes good.

 

Love,
mitda

Welcome back, me: synthesis and epiphany.

It’s been three years since I posted anything here.  But the blog sticks around, haunting me saying, “but you love cooking, you stupid fuck.  Write me.”

Not that there’s altogether that much cooking going on, but I’m doing what I can.  So I thought I’d add a photo element to this blog, as it’s, you know, about food.  And things.  Future posts will include pictures of what I make.  Also, categories!

I guess it’s sort of a drunk-on-hope kind of thing: we’re waiting on job news and that sort.  I’m burying expectations in deep graves, learning again that expectation only leads me to disappointment.

But I don’t find that with cooking.  With cooking I expect a lot of my food.  I expect it nourishes and delights, warms and satisfies.  I heard once “a chef is only good as her ingredients.”  But I really seek more than ingredients: I seek synthesis and epiphany.

May Hegel and Heidegger find their ways into my kitchen, and Derrida take a seat at this table.

 

A busy 7 days of food food food! Did i mention food?

The december holidays are a day away (if you count advent), and we have kicked off the season with 3 dinners for thanksgiving, and our own tomorrow afternoon.

What started out as a relatively small family get together has morphed into dinner for 13 (yeah, i know the superstition, but i don’t think it will bother anyone.)  So we are having it at e&T’s, which can easily accommodate that many, whereas our tiny abode would not.

In the past, I have made big dinners for Das and the moth that last all day, starting with salads around 11am, and culminating in something sweet around 9p.   One year i served 18 courses, but it took that long to eat them.

This year, i’m going as traditional as i can bring myself to do so, turkey was out of the question, i didn’t talk to many people who really actually liked it other than on thanksgiving, so I’m making game hens and a pork shoulder, with cranberries, sweet mashed potatoes, mashed potatoes, and stuffing.  I’ve never made 3 of those, so im awake and nervous, a little bit.

The only person i really really want to impress is Das, and then after that is the moth.  Ideally, i would like everyone else (starting with the rest of the quad) to enjoy it immensely as well.  For Das’ birthday, i cooked for a lot of the same people, so I know i can do it : )

One thing that is hard is distinguishing a good dish when you don’t really eat it.  I don’t eat cranberries except in juice, and i don’t even like sweet potatoes, so those go by how well emmie likes them.   She was asleep when i made the cran, so let me share my recipe with you for that

4c cran

1c sugar

1c water

1tsp lemon zest

1/2 tsp pepper

Make a simple syrup by dissolving sugar in boiling water.  Add cran and zest and pepper, stir.  Return to a boil then simmer for 10 mins or til cranberries burst.

That’s it!

Here’s the simple steps to the smashed sweetatoes.

5lbs sweet potatoes, baked til they peel easily.

*i have found that this takes waaay longer than an hr at 350: i baked an extra 30 mins on 400, and then they were perfetto*

2tsp vanilla extract

several handfuls of brown sugar

splash of cream (maybe 1/3 cup)
put together and then Mash.   I am hoping to whip them in a food processor if there’s one available tomorrow, but if not, it will be no hardship, they are very soft and not terribly lumpy.

I have been having quite a time figuring out the stuffing.  I didn’t want it to sit all assembled overnight, so i put the chopped veggies in one container and the bread crumbles in another, and will combine tomorrow before baking.  I am thinking about using bacon grease for sauteeing the veggies, to add to the sausage flavours.  I haven’t decided

I am going to refrain from including this recipe til I know how it comes out.  I hope it does well, it’s going up against some serious stuffing competition (m of m & W; Master O, i mean you!)

One of the things i love about this holiday is the tradition of sharing it with friends.  And it means so much to me that so many people have touched our lives in the last year, and that i had a hard time keeping this list reasonable.  The community (and my only vanilla, the moth) has been so supportive of us, and has reached us in so many ways.  Thank you to all of you who will break bread with us, again, and here is to many more meals and warm hearths together.

mitda

Rule Britannia

emmie and i threw Das a surprise party for his 40th birthday.

we started planning it on monday, and by wednesday, he totally knew what was up. Except for the company

and the food.

My darling Das is from England, and once introduced me to the Melton Mowbray Pork Pie. Which i did enjoy, very much. Even one superbowl sunday, that’s what we ate. Forget hot dogs and hamburgers w/ football (american). We had these pork pies. And, if i’m not mistaken, Canadian beer.

So, Das’ birthday approaches (it was on Sunday) and i knew i had it in mind to make Melton Mowbray pork pies. And then, in chatting with someone from the community, to throw him a surprise party. And then discussing with someone else from the community, i realized that we could do all English pub fare.

So, along about Tuesday, maybe wednesday, Das figures out there’s a party afoot. I burst into tears, because i really wanted to surprise him, really a lot.

I can’t keep a secret from him for anything, though.

But i managed (with brave help) to perform this feat:

Melton Mowbray Pork Pie

Welsh Rarebit

Scotch Eggs (thanks to Scarlett)

Bangers and Mash (with thanks to e&T)

with chips and queso, watermelon, and (drum roll) Cheez Whiz on Celery!

Melton Mowbray pies are very weird, and a bit more difficult than Cornish Pasties, but i don’t know how to make those either, and dove into discovering a good recipe, one i could get my head around without too much sturm und drang. My mother aided by preparing the stock the night before, and roasting waaay too much pork (i can’t convert in my head, clearly.)

When i do them again, i won’t roast the pork beforehand, but it was much easier to manipulate already cooked. Here’s the recipe from which i bounced:

Melton Mowbray Pork Pie

And the rarebit

Could be this:

“Rare bit of eating” or

a slur against welsh, who were, by different ideas, either very poor (so no meat) or very poor at hunting.

(i’ve always heard it pronounced “rabbit”, but i heard otherwise sunday.)

I had lots of compliments on the rarebit, which was pleasant, but Das eating two pork pies was enormously meaningful to me, as i have never said i could bake worth a shit.

thanks to everyone who came, and ate, and talked and had a really good time.

love, mitda

Iced Coffee Invitation

There is a simple trick to iced coffee perfection: brew double strength.  To wit: if there is a 12 cup coffee maker, put 6 cups of water with and the normal amount of grinds.  One could just brew twice into same pot in order to have 12 cups of 2x strength coffee.

Simple, right?

Das likes iced coffee, double strength or no, in the afternoons.   If my mint plant had made it, i would have minty water or minty lemonade on hand, i’m sure, but the mint didn’t live, alas, and so for refreshing delicious, there’s a good chance you’ll be offered an iced coffee should you decide to drop by.  Please, do, by all means, drop by.

I remember iced coffee being very popular at starbucks when i worked there, especially in afternoons, especially in the summers.   I hadn’t thought i would like it all that much, but i gave it a try, of course with a little cream and sugar (sweet and creamy in our parlance), and discovered quite a treat.

(Psst: At Starbucks they make their Iced Coffee with Italian Roast, unless they’ve changed it– Italian is nearly as dark as French.)

I have thought about making Sun Tea but don’t have an appropriate vessel on hand so to steep, so haven’t quite jumped on that Southern refresher just yet.  I feel sure that before too long I’ll find something.

potato salad. really?

When i asked the moth (my mother, for future reference) what she would like to eat on Mother’s Day she thought about it for a while and finally said she wanted potato salad.

I was thinking of doing game hens and trappings of that ilk.

Potato salad never appealed that much to me, it was mushy and bland. But, lo, i went hunting up a recipe for potato salad, one i re-did last night to go along with grilled bratwurst and sausages.

Cube 1-2 lbs of potatoes (i use red skinned potatoes because they look better)

-i cut mine into easily bite size bits, not unwieldy chunks. the result is much nicer.

Boil for 13-15 minutes (so they are cooked but firm and not easily mashed)

in large bowl:

3 stalks of celery, very finely cut

3-5 green onions, including green bit

handful of chopped dill

3 cloves of garlic, minced

2 c (or so) mayo

(careful not to overdo it on the mayo. it’s hard, i know.)

when potatoes are done, drain and blanch, mix all together

-mods

adding bacon crumbles. by this i mean not those processed bacon bits, but go through the trouble of making it and crumbling it. Why? because you can then add the fat to the mix, of course.

It occurs to me when i made this the first time, and again last night, that pride can get in the way of a really good dish. Potato salad isn’t fancy, it isn’t showy, but the people around me wanted it, and it was easy enough to make. Being able to create something lovely from what my judgment held to be kind of “beneath” me to make is an exercise in humility, even if it’s just the revelation itself teaching me.

formal variation on informal theme

I don’t have a picture of this.   We were all going to a MAsT meeting and i wanted to take something good for canapes.  One of my biggest downfalls is my pride in my cookery.  That’s a different discussion.
Das and i had found a recipe for “Bacon roll-ups” which involved white bread, cream cheese, garlic powder and, of all things, bacon.

Sort of went like this:

Cut white bread into squares, smear garlicky cream cheese on them, roll a strip of bacon around, stick toothpick through, bake 10 minutes to crisp bacon.

It sounded good in theory, but we thought to dress it up some.  Here’s what we ideated and i eventually prepared:

1 loaf english toasting bread

2 10 oz packages Dry Coppa

2 cubey things of Chavrie (one herby one, one mild)

capers

cut crusts off bread, cut into 2” squares (like a one-bite appetizer).

mix up chavries and smear a bit onto each square

pinch a bit of coppa over the chavrie, so it sticks.  mine were like little bridges

under each bridge of coppa, place a caper

i tried it with 2-3 capers, but they were too strong.  One each was better.

-mods:

you could use prosciutto.  a pitted olive (kalamata, i’d guess).

*

Berries and Brie

I found a recipe using puff pastry to make something like these, but phyllo is sold in already-baked shells!!  i currently suck at manipulating phyllo, so i was quite relieved to see this.  i am told the key to handling phyllo sheets is a whole lot of butter.   no, more than that.

The recipe from which this was derived involved hot pepper jelly.  I don’t know what that is or what it tastes like, but i like berries, so i came up with this.

30 pre-made phyllo shells

raspberry preserves

raspberries

brie (with rind!)

in each shell spoon a bit of preserves, place a small square of brie, top with berry.   This is a very labor intensive bit of appetizing, even with pre-done shells, but it’s really worth it.   i would’ve added a bit of pepper over all of it if i had thought about it.  pepper really makes berry flavor pop.

bake 5-8 minutes.

serve warm.

i took a bunch of these to a small gathering of lifestyle women, in which there was much good conversation and a whole night was talked away.  we didn’t really eat that many, but there was also pizza and cake and cupcakes.

it occurred to me that i’ve always had the kinky bend, since sexuality meant anything to me, as well as a bottomy, if not totally submissive kind of being to the expression of that sexuality.  I was always with men and women who were older and taller, for instance.

In making tiny appetizers which use both hands to create, i find that i am expressing my desire to serve those i love with the very best i have to offer.  Even when not serving Das directly, i indirectly do him honor by presenting a lovely little dish that wasn’t put together begrudgingly.

I like to say that dishes come out better when you add extra love to them.  Even cheese sandwiches.  (Sometimes mayo=love, you see   )

love, mitda