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