Church Avenue Chomp

wow, this is a pretty one!

These are five things that make my life in the kitchen BETTER. Plus a bonus! As always, leave a comment to tell me what some of yours are, cooks!

1. Butter bell

Once, on the subway platform, my then-fiance hugged me.
“Who knew?” he said, dreamily. “Who knew what?” I countered. “I don’t know,” he went on, as the train roared into the station. “Who knew that I would marry someone who loves butter so much?”

Well, it is nice to be appreciated for one’s details, isn’t it. Still, when I told him that I wanted a butter bell for our kitchen, he was skeptical. “It seems like makework,” he said, when confronted with the idea of stuffing cold butter into a dome that would fit, hanging, into a slightly larger glass canister with water in the bottom.

The purpose of a butter bell is to keep some of your supply at room temperature or easier spreading. With a slight vacuum seal, it doesn’t have to be refrigerated that way.

It actually doesn’t have to be refrigerated even if you don’t have a butter bell, sayeth many Europeans and other people like my friend Heather’s family. But a butter bell keeps it safe from the flies. And the wives.

Oh, until the catsitter, I mean the cat, broke ours. The catsitter is the person who cleaned it up and wrote the note. We need another one. Butter bell, not cat sitter. We’ll get it after we move so we don’t have the pack it and pay someone to move it 5 blocks.  Maybe a gorgeousy pottery one like the one in the picture!

2. Salt pig

If you cook a lot, you know what a pain to be constantly dragging the salt out of the cabinet. And a shaker doesn’t let you pinch or dash or measure. We have some tiny bowls that we got in Turkey that we can grab (or spoon) salt from, and that is great for the table. But we finally got a salt pig, which looks like a submarine scope, and lets a cook just reach in and grab some salt and toss it in. It’s a super thing. It’s apparently shaped that way to resist moisture. It does do that, in a way that the tiny Turkish bowls do not.

Why it is called a pig, however, is a mystery.

3. Cast Iron Skillet

It needs to be seasoned. You’re not supposed to wash it with soap. You have to dry it after washing it so it doesn’t rust. You can (and will) burn the hell out of your hand on the handle. You don’t want to drop it on your foot, or get all livid and brain someone with its heft. See, it has a lot of quirks and you need to take special care of it.

But like many of the best friends, it is worth every quirk. This $8 pan sits among many fancier ones that get passed over daily, and it gets chosen, always. I’ll own it forever, and it never lets me down. Puts a wonderful caramel coating onto meat or mushrooms or french toast.

4. Anything Cast From Iron and Then Enameled

I’m in love with my Le Creuset teeny white pan, and my huge red sauce pan, and my white ovular Mario Batali enameled gratin pan which is now my go-to fish cooker and asparagus cooker and parsnips roaster. Why? Anything that can withstand whatever heat you can muster in the oven and simply use that heat to cook food evenly and calmly and still look adorable is worth its considerable weight. And price. (If cast iron is so cheap, why is cast iron with some enamel on it so expensive?)

Also, these items can go under the broiler. Also, enamel comes in a range of fully excellent colors. If you ever get a yen to buy me something really pricey, enameled cookware is a good choice. Thanks in advance! I love you, too!

5. Coffee Grinder That Turned Into a Spice Grinder

Coriander, cumin, cardamom, née coffee. It’s a wonderful thing to be able to grind these things whenever necessary. But be warned: it’s okay to have coffee that tastes like cardamom. It’s less okay to have it tastes like coriander. But even that is preferable to coffee that tastes like cumin, which is what makes meat taste pungent and like man-sweat but in a good way.

6. Bonus Round: Dishwasher

I don’t have one. But soon I am going to, and it is going to change my whole entire life. Just imagine: everything will be perfect!

Thanks to D’Arcy Norman on Flickr for use of this Creative Commons-licensed photo!

At the moment I only want things that are fast and easy to do. In terms of starch, I am cutting corners. Cutting corners like I am cutting corners with this blog post, just making a list of top 5 starches! At the end, give me a list of your own.

The contenders:

Uncle Ben’s Instant Brown Rice

I did not grow up eating rice, and in fact mistook it for the worst possible shape of pasta. I like it now, though. I really do: as long as I don’t have to cook it.

A friend with a fabulous kitchen has a machine that says NEURO FUZZY. It’s a kooky Japanese rice cooker but she told me that even the N/F takes like 40 or 50 minutes to do brown rice. We don’t even HAVE a neurofuzzy, so we go through a lot of instant brown rice. I can even assert that we would never manage to eat brown rice if it weren’t for this.

A chef friend suggests that I parcook a huge batch of brown rice myself early in the week, and then do the finishing as needed. But I’d have to plan and store the rice, and I just can’t, even if that means I am a bad person. The orange box, I can manage.

Couscous

Boil broth or water or a combo with a bit of salt in it. Maybe butter. Add couscous, turn off the heat, cover, and wait 5 minutes. “Fluff with a fork.”

Serve with anything, though preferably something with a soupy quality, so you don’t feel like you’re somewhere in the UAE, choking in a sandstorm. Though come to think of it I actually serve it most with a roasted shrimp and broccoli recipe, which is wholly unsoupy, and one of our favorite go tos. (I’m all for cutting corners but do try to use whole cumin and coriander seeds: it’s worth it. And you can switch carrots in for the broccoli or supplement the broccoli to good effect.)

Polenta

I have made the sort from scratch that Bill Buford talks about in Heat, stirring and stirring, to no great acclaim, and in fact, to a request that we expunge polenta from the roster. However, I gave up recently and bought the sort in a pressure-packed tube. You know, the sort that pops like a Pillsbury thing when you open it? Thuk.

Then you just cook it in a pan in butter or oil or a combo and add what: cheese? sauce? mushrooms? salt? nothing? It’s really pretty good, and really pretty popular. Even the baby will deign to eat the little golden frisbees.

What makes me laugh is the suggestion on the package that you can use tubed polenta in lasagna. Like I want to make lasagna, which is ridiculously easy, difficult by cutting a tube of short round stuff into regulation size of flat noodles. No, please. No no no. That is the very definition of what I do not want to do.

Beer Batter Bread

“Yeast frightens me,” my sister once confessed. What else do you buy at the grocery store that is actually alive? Maybe yogurt, but still. Yeast is dormant in a package, waiting to be “activated.” Waiting to take over your whole house!

I can’t bother to keep it around but I do usually have a bottle of beer, or a spouse who is willing to pick some up. Making bread with a bottle of beer tastes slightly malty but it will definitely do in a pinch! And if it’s snowing and you have nothing to eat your butter on, you could just make some. This recipe is good because you can even mix it in the pan you will cook it in.

Wait, if you did a bit of advance planning, or had a servant, you could probably do all of this from the couch. Or from bed.

It does yield a bread that’s good with savory rather than good with sweet. Great with soup or chili or a roast chicken.

Pasta

Duh, it’s one of the best treats around. I take any chunky shape at all and toss with an artichoke or truffle or walnut sauce that I keep in the door of the fridge, or oil and garlic and pepper or butter and grated cheese — whatever will complement whatever else is on the roster.

You might know this already, but I’m just going to describe the last few weeks in broadstrokes detail in case you don’t, so that you can marvel, wide-eyed, at my relative calm. And so that if I refer to some life events that you didn’t know were happening, you will be prepared.

Purchase of a Home

In April, twelve days before the first time homebuyers tax credit expired — well, the part where you have to get into contract on the home you are buying — Matthew and I walked into the first for-sale apartment that we both really thought we could make our own. (We’d love to buy the place we live in now, but since it is part of a million dollar house that both has some crumbly aspects and is also not at all for sale, we’ve given up on that dream.)

Ironically, our friend Andrea was with us that day. Andrea is the mutual friend who introduced us six-ish years ago, and the fact that she happened to be traipsing around with us that Sunday was easy to construe as some sort of sign. And she is very discerning, and she loved the apartment as well.

We had nothing lined up: no mortgage broker, no other kind of broker, and it was being sold by the owners. So we had to figure a bunch of stuff out — STAT! We quickly made a bid, and then haggled and haggled around until we found a price that we fear is too expensive and that the sellers fear is too cheap but we are both going to try to live with.

We, two writers who depend hard on deadlines so that we can just miss them in order to get our work complete on sort of time, had to make a real and actual deadline of a contract. Somehow, we did it with 5 hours to spare. For that, we felt pretty smug.

Yay being in contract! The next step is that we need to close by 6/30, another ridiculous deadline to make. Ehh, no problem, suddenly, we are great with timing and deadlines.

Travel

The morning after we’d settled the contract we had to leave for vacation in Austin, and getting ready for that had fallen by the wayside, since the time we should have been spending packing and planning had been spent sweating and squinting at tiny legalese. But somehow, we got ready. For the first time ever, M and I were standing around and waiting 10 minutes before the car service was scheduled to arrive. He started to gloat and I started to moan, fearing he’d jinxed us.

And then, the car did not come. And then, the driver called and said he’d be there soon. He was there soon, but he drove us straight into a very large pile of unmoving traffic. The Belt Parkway was like the Belt Parkinglot. Finally I had to call Jet Blue and— what, ask them to keep the plane on the ground because I really wanted to go on vacation?

I got someone on the line. She assured me that we’d miss the plane, since it was slated to leave in 26 minutes and we were still 5 exits from the airport and the car was not moving forward. She also assured me that there were no other flights until the next day. We could arrive the next day, midway through the brunch that had been planned in honor of us. I handed the phone to Matthew so I could switch my attention to crying and he could listen to the end of the spiel.

At one point, while on the phone with her, he said “wonderful,” in that way that you do when you are talking with someone who is being vaguely helpful. Channeling my inner kittycat, I hissed at him. “This is not wonderful! Don’t say that it is WONDERFUL under any circumstances!”

At that point he fed our baby another piece of puffed corn, the baby’s 9,000th kernel that morning, and, envisioning the scary corn blowout that was apparently going to dominate my afternoon in stead of my flight, I switched modes from sulking to pragmatic to suggest that he switch snacks. Mightn’t we add some cheerios to the mix? Then Matthew blew up at me. I sobbed. The driver looked nervous. The baby looked around for corn. Matthew looked at the heavens.

We finally arrived at the airport, where we’d decided to go in order to change our plans for the next day. The driver waited for us in the parking lot. Matthew kept asking Jet Blue employees if there was any hope, and they kept saying no. I kept sobbing, and text our friends that we had, with 100% certainty, missed our flight. After I exacted a promise from Matthew that he would buy me two margaritas that night, even if it was in Brooklyn, I toned it down and we had a sort of truce.

Finally it was our turn at the counter. Matthew explained the situation. The Jet Blue guy asked for our IDs, and looked at our bags. “You can try to gate-check them,” he advised, and when we just looked at him, and explained “there’s been a slight delay because of engine trouble. Run!”

You’ve never seen 2 people so eager to put their progeny on a jet with engine trouble. I asked if we could cut in the security line, and everyone moved aside so we could rush through. Suddenly, the world was on our side yet again. We were whooping and laughing and in love again, stomping and tears and corn fight forgotten.

When we arrived at the gate, we were ushered straight onto the plane, since they had just started to board people with children. This may have taught us the wrong lesson about being late. (“See, when you’re late, you don’t even have to wait around!”)

I retexted my friend in Texas that we had somehow unmissed the plane. They’d pick us up. We’d get the hot blast of Austin air. I could show a place I love to a man I love.

We hugged and kissed. We were on vacation.

Vacation

It was great, for a while. Well, we might have been a little stressed. Can you blame us? Our child would not sleep at all for the first several days we were there. And unfortunately, he requires chaperoning when he is awake. But we crammed bat viewings, Barton Springs, other swimming, lots of Mexican food, barbecue though not my favorite barbecue, fun with friends, and walks into a few short days. Matthew returned home on Tuesday evening. Wednesday I just played with a nude Henry in a babypool, which might sound boring but was basically the most fun I’ve ever had.

Thursday morning I received an email that my sister, who I’ve written a lot about here, had been hospitalized for pneumonia. I rescheduled my return flight to later that day.

Pneumonia (and Car?)

Regardless of what I thought I was ready for, suffice to say I was not prepared to see my sis in an oxygen mask with a nebulizer. She could barely open her eyes, and if you imagine a terrible cough, imagine a terrible cough when you cannot move your body to optimize it.

I can’t write too much about it here but I feared the worst. We all did. I spent as much time as possible at the hospital with her until Wednesday when I left for Brooklyn for a few days. With Henry, in my car.

Someone smashed into the car. We’re ok, but I’m still stiff and achy.

Beth did well in her recovery and is ready to leave the hospital but could not be fully cared for at home at this time — so she has been discharged to a “skilled nursing facility.” How do you like that euphemism? We’re hoping she will only be there for one week before she can return to her own home, where she’s been cared for very well by family and a group of caretakers.

We’re awaiting a mortgage, getting the car fixed, planning to get back to Connecticut as soon as we can.

donut trailer shining in the night

This was written while I was on vacation, which was a few weeks ago, though it seems like an eternity ago. Just getting around to posting now.

I’m on vacation! It would be hard to explain the vacation or what led up to it concisely, so instead, I will just give you some broad strokes information, and tell you about the donuts. (They’re not donuts!)

We are staying at the casually elegant home (compound?) of Jen and Joseph, owners of Home Slice Pizza and old friends extraordinaire. (I used to live in Austin and it was the first place I ever really loved.)

Monday is J & J’s typical date night so we were able to glom onto their childcare situation and leave all of our children together with their sitter and go out on the town.

Finally!

First we went to La Condesa, a James Beard award nominated restaurant whose owner was, among many other things, Executive Chef of La Esquina in NYC. My dinner was amazing: lamb barbacoa and lamb chop with a mint infused silky smooth sauce. Holy yum. Also, a triple threat margarita with spicy salt.

My husband has never been to Texas so the plan for after was to go see Dale Watson at the Continental Club and do some *dancing* but we were too wiped out. Not to wiped out for donuts, though! I mean, who ever is? Joseph suggested stopping at Gordough’s, a food trailer hawking, as you can see above, big fat donuts, on the way home.

I’d heard about the proliferation of Austin food trailers but it has been a long time since I’ve been there: 5 or 6 years. I could not resist the idea of a late night donut. Plus, I did a feature for the Austin Chronicle once on Austin donuts and considered updating my knowledge base some sort of professional development. But every time someone mentioned the donuts, Jen wailed “They’re not donuts!”

Her belief is that these things are too big to be donuts. Also, being freshly fried, they exude a bunch of heat that can make the toppings—and these donuts are all about the toppings—get somewhat slidey and sloppy.

In addition, they are yeast rather than cake. In my community, this can spark a ten-hour long debate, so I will leave it at that.

It seemed like there were a lot of reservations about the donut trailer, but they seemed to want to show it to us, anyway. Could this have been because in New York, we have a lot of things, but we do not have donuts with meat on them?

We parked and wandered up to some blasting Phil Collins music. First, we decided that we would split a huge donut four ways.

It was argued that they were drizzled with pure butter.

Then we looked at the menu. There are donuts with chicken on top. There are donuts with bacon. There are blue donuts, ones with peanut butter, habaneros, do you want yours with ice cream . . . Then suddenly, everyone, with the exception of Jen, was getting their own. And Jen would just snack on ours.

Joseph got a pile of cream-filled donut holes with coconut goo on the top, and fresh coconut shavings. I got a one with cream cheese frosting and chopped up heath bar. Matthew got the sundae model, with fudge sauce, grilled strawberries, and ice cream.

Crazy toppings and hub-cap circumference aside, what they reminded me of was the frozen-until-baked donuts of childhood, back in a time before meat might deck your donut. Did you ever have those? They were yeast donuts with sugary glaze. They were a fantastic part of childhood, and these seemed most like those. Maybe it was just the warmth. Maybe cake donuts are good always, and yeast donuts are good if they are still warm. I like donuts.

help with the poem, please

I’m in the thick of it.

What it is, I don’t know. But my sister has been scarily ill with pneumonia this week and is still in the hospital, though she may be released to go home tomorrow. (She still has debilitating ALS and is by no stretch of the imagination, better in any sense of the word that connotes “okayness.”)

Last week I left a vacation to go and be with her in Connecticut as much as was humanly possible, so one of the minor consequences of the pneumonia is that I’ve been out-of-town forever and ever and I can barely even remember where the vacation was, at this point.

I needed to come back to Brooklyn for a few days. But on my way back, before I was even on the stupid highway and had at least 2.5 hours to go in the drive, someone drove smack into the back of my car. That my son was in.

We are fine, though I am achy and disheveled and now forced to deal with thousands of insurance related phone calls. Oh, and my car is rather fantastically smashed, though “driveable,” according to the police.

When I finally arrived on my street in Brooklyn, I had to park on the street and carry in my belongings (and child) from the trip including the stroller which was in the trunk. But once the trunk was opened, it was clear that there was no way it was going to close again. I stood there and looked at the car. It now has a very pronounced underbite. Overbite? The trunk does not close; you tell me. I did a little stint of yoga breath.

You know what is really helpful in the world? Yoga breath. Whichever skinny, wizened, sinewy Indian invented it is a full-throttle genius, because it makes everything easier: from yoga; to dental procedures; to not winging the cat’s pretty little glass food bowl across the room when you really want to; to pausing while you figure out what to do with your car, whose jaw is dropping as much as yours is.

Then I called my landlord, who is an 87ish year old artist who lives upstairs. One of the great things about 87 year olds is that they are almost always at home when you call them, and this one is really handy, too. As well as nice. I told him that the trunk of my smushed up car wouldn’t close, and that I really couldn’t figure it out, and could he could just please come outside and figure something out for me.

And he did, and I love him.

Meanwhile, I am trying to get work done, play with Henry, and take it easy. Have you ever been really sick but forced to be at work? I have, and I’ve experienced it this way:

All I have to do is sit at my desk slash attend meetings and blah until six something, at which point I can go home and rest.

And thinking of things in that way sort of does work. So this week, all I need to do is call the insurance company and make some dinner and put the baby to bed and do my job and then rest, until we go back to Connecticut.

When things are grim, things that aren’t grim can either seem 1) grim or 2) amazingly bright and shiny in contrast. To play to this second option, I have started to read Tom Jones in the bathtub during Epsom salt soaks. I have granted myself full short-term permission to watch Mad Men in the afternoon if I feel like it. (Okay, I only watched 20 minutes of it during an afternoon, once, but it really did wonders for my “I’m doing whatever I want” attitude, since it was such a departure from my world.) And I’m thinking up things that embody a sense of delight.

Which brings me, finally, to the Mangosteen question. Fruit, as you might know, is in general such a crazily magic invention that it goes neck-and-neck with the Ujjayi breath. Ah, who are we kidding, fruit wins. But it can be easy to take the bright, juicy, sweet and tart magic of an orange for granted if we have one every day.

There is a poem about a fruit so wonderful, so mythical, so rare . . . the mangosteen. I thought it was by Lewis Carroll but I can’t find it. Lewis Carroll: also magic. Do you know the poem? Can you help me out? I would like to see this poem. I would like to share it with everyone who reads this blog.

It would make us all happy.

Have you had mangosteen? I had some mangosteen juice a few weeks ago at the Purple Yam on Cortelyou. Along with something called “sugar-cured pork steak,” or something, which is just what it sounds like. Oh, and there were some eggs on the plate, so we could pretend that it was actually a viable meal, rather than a playmeal of pigmeat soaked in sugar capped off by mythical juices — because no one would believe that meal.

That meal would be like watching TV in the afternoon. Hence, the eggs.

Anyhow the mangosteen tasted like passionfruit. Which is basically the most delicious fruit ever, but the description of mangosteen was so otherworldly that I figured we’d be going somewhere else on the spectrum of deliciousness.

Sometimes I would like to be able to draw the arc of a flavor. Drawing is not a thing that falls within my purview but I wonder if there is a system anywhere set up for that.

Pointy, round, fizzy, salt, can we communicate with shapes and color?

This post is all over the place. Honestly, can you blame me?