I can’t handle it. I was thinking about something to write and could only think of writing from the perspective of my cat. While he is a super smarty pants (takes after Z) and loves his dairy (mainly butter and cheese) he also is a very poor typist so all you get is me. He is yowling in protest at my feet and just actually bit me on my kneecap. I came home a bit late after running some errands tonight and more or less the last thing I really wanted to do was make dinner. I did it anyhow. We had cauliflower & gruyere soup and french dinner rolls. It’s supposed to be creamy cauliflower & gruyere soup but I forgot to swirl in the cream at the end. I also ran short of gruyere and supplemented that with white cheddar. We ate it anyway and lived to tell the tale. I even made a batch of rice crispy treats while it bubbled away on the stove.
Category: dinner
dinner #19
two recipes that probably shouldn’t be cooked for dinner in the same night-both with heavy hits of acid to either cut through richness or enhance natural sugars. It turned out to be an interesting thing to cook these two dishes together and eat them side by side. First, the chicken. I actually used a fish piccata recipe that I have often made by Melissa d’Arabian of the Food Network. It’s a simple recipe and I just subbed in pounded chicken fillets in place of the tilapia. The acid in this dish is lemon juice, quite a lot of it, alongside capers which are also brined. Everything becomes super savory with the addition of white wine and a knob of butter. For the side we had sort of agro-dolce Brussels sprouts. My friend Karin made some the other day and it made be want to eat some! She variously roasts them or uses them for an ice pack for her dog. She calls them veggie candy and in one of my favorite oldie but goodie recipes from Martha Stewart the sweetness of fresh brussels is enhanced with sauteed red onions and balsamic vinegar. If you leave them in and let them crispt a bit they are just phenomenal. I sort of combine step 2 and 3 so that everything gets crispy and melds together plus you don’t mess up an extra bowl. If you think you don’t like sprouts, try this recipe. It will change your mind.
dinner #18
sunday dinner. The fine establishment of churchgoers whereby someone puts in a roast or something and gets dressed and heads off to church. You come home, family in tow, to a finished dinner. So, the story used to go. When I was a child, and maybe this isn’t normal, church was different. Our (non)denomination was set up so that every Sunday there where two morning services and by this, I don’t mean that there were two services that were the same and the early birds went to one and the rest of the world went to the second one. There was a ‘worship’ or ‘breaking of bread’ service where you would worship and take communion and also take the offering. Kids would sit and read or color if they weren’t inclined to pay attention. I played a lot of games of dots and tic tac toe with my sister and read Little House on the Prairie books. Then there was the fellowship time (or halftime) where cookies, doughnuts and coffee flowed. For quite a lot of years of my childhood my mom and dad set up the halftime events. Sunday mornings we would arrive early to brew giant urns of coffee and put out cookies on plates. The second service was a teaching service and the time when Sunday School happened for kids. Our church was set up so that this was the one you would bring people to because it was a teaching service and nothing was asked of them from the standpoint of money. An interesting setup and not one I have encountered since. After the second service people would convivially decamp to Ivar’s or Skipper’s for fish & chips (Seattle) or to someone’s home to share Sunday dinner. I never could get why dinner was at lunch but it was always called that. There was usually some sort of roast and potatoes and rolls or a 70’s casserole like lasagna. I miss those days and the hospitality that was so freely offered.
Today, church feels different, in ways I can’t put my finger on. But a big one is how we leave and what we do with our Sunday afternoon. We hustle out after the service to run errands, to Target, for a hair cut, to the vegetable stand. Somewhere in the middle today I said, ‘I just want something really good to eat-something that someone took care to make.’ So Z offered up Cask & Larder. I love their food-the Southern-ness of it all, the finely crafted and careful plates of interesting flavors. So many tastes, textures and ideas all rolled up in one bite. I think there is some amount of sadness and joy in South that comes forward in this cooking. I can’t put my finger on it. I had Nashville Hot Chicken-sweet and spicy sitting on top of pureed bread and boiled new potatoes with a heaving egg on some lightly dressed frisee. A tiny dice of dill pickles on the chicken showing an eye for detail. Z had a hushpuppy corn waffle with charred corn relish and melting pork belly. It all speaks of what is here, using what they have, crafting the food into more than the sum of it’s parts. This dinner was delicious but also a little bit sad. I miss those days of visiting and eating with friends and families and joining new people in their homes-seeing their turf and sharing a meal.
dinner #17
with full intentions of going out for dinner tonight and doing something fun for the evening we couldn’t get it together and ended up staying in. Z is off to pick up a movie now. He made dinner as well-one of my favorites. He first tried it when we were dating and we have made and tweaked it many times so that the recipe now is really to our liking. Bacony and spicy and warm it is a perfect pasta recipe where one recipe easily feeds six people, or two adults with a ton of leftovers! We also rarely eat seconds at dinner time-that’s just our thing. We do eat leftovers for lunch but throw out this attempt to keep it real.
My Urban Pantry 