Feed a fever, starve a fool

I hate the reality of being sick. It's easy to romanticize in my mind - staying home from work, lay on the couch all day, covered in thick, soft blankets, drinking plenty of water and juice, sipping broth from an oversized mug, watching my favorite DVDs. Of course, in my mind, my apartment is clean, not the cluttered and dirty mess I'm wallowing in right now. I would also be able to watch the TV without having to root around behind it to connect the VCR with coax cable. And sickness wouldn't with a side dish of depression. Oh well. At least the broth is good.

I highly recommend that if you find yourself stuck home from work sick, you make a batch of this broth to pour over some parboiled curly noodles. Here's how you make it:
While your noodles are boiling, start by sauteeing a minced onion in a little bit of olive oil until they look translucent and soft. Add a couple of minced garlic cloves and stir for a minute or two. Then add four cups of chicken stock, and bring to simmer. While that's coming to a simmer, thinly slice three or four garlic cloves, and about two inches of peeled fresh ginger. Stem and seed a couple of jalapenos, and slice them into very thin strips. Put all those in the broth to steep for a few minutes. To serve, put some of your noodles in a deep bowl, and pour some broth over them. Good garnishes? Lemon zest, fresh squeezed lemon juice, Frank's Red Hot, flat leaf parsely. The best way to eat this is to huddle over the bowl so the steam can clear your sinuses. I actually felt it loosening the congestion in my chest as I ate it, and it's packed full of stuff that stimulates your immune system. I honestly feel a million times better after a bowl of this stuff.

Mother's Day!

I cooked Mother's Day brunch for my mom and her mom. On the menu:
Maple cinnamon sticky buns...

...with an asparagus and ham frittata
Sliced strawberries on the side. So good!







Mom baked a chocolate cake for her mom that baked while we were eating brunch. When she went to cut it later, she asked me what size piece I wanted, and I told her I wanted a PI sized piece. My brother took it upon himself to cut me a PI shaped piece instead. Is it cake... or is it PI?

ouch

...if you decide to make chocolate martinis with your best friend, it is perhaps a good idea to remember that they are made entirely of alcohol, before having a third or fourth...

...this has not been a fun morning...

I gave in to my cast iron skillet

Like I said, the thing was sitting on my stove, all slick and beautiful. So I gave in. I bought my skillet a 12 oz ribeye, and cooked it using Alton Brown's method - olive oil, salt, pepper, into the very very hot skillet, 3 minutes per side, 5 minutes in a 350 degree oven. Then I let it rest and made a sauce with a little dry red wine, some shallots, and a pat of butter. Served with some sourdough toast and homemade roasted garlic butter.

This was seriously the best steak I have ever tasted (although it only beats out Dad's grilled t-bones by a very slim margin). This was so good, I finished it before I even started on my beautiful strawberry spinach salad. I had to stop and smoke a cigarette after this bad boy.

The salad was wonderful too, and given any other main dish, it would have been the star of the meal. Spinach, cold fresh ricotta cheese, strawberries, freshly ground black pepper, hot toasted walnuts, and a drizzle of cheap balsamic vinegar.

As it was, this provided a nice sweet/tart/creamy finish.

I hope my cast iron skillet leaves me alone for a while. I'm not sure I have the budget (or the waistline) for continued adventures in steak.

This cast iron is calling me

This is the old cast iron skillet my grandma gave me a few months ago. It had been sitting in her cabinet for years. Up until today, I'd been sort of afraid to cook in it, because I've never used one before. But, bolstered by good advice from the internet, I finally broke it in. I fried some bacon for breakfast, and then fried eggs in the bacon fat. The eggs didn't stick like I had feared, and they tasted so good, I may never go back to eggs in a Teflon pan. After breakfast, I cleaned the skillet by heating some excess bacon fat, dumping in some kosher salt, and scrubbing around with some paper towels held in tongs, and then just wiping it clean. Since then it's been sitting on the stove, all black and slick and shiny, calling out to me to cook something else in it. I think I may have to give in and go buy a steak for it.

A spring omelette

Weekend breakfasts are supposed to be kind of indulgent, I think. This one was inspired by the giant mess of spinach I got yesterday. More spinach than I really know what to do with.

The filling is made from diced fried bacon, onions, toasted pine nuts, paper thin fried slices of new potatoes, 3 huge handfuls of wilted spinach, and some fresh ricotta cheese. It was more than I could reasonably eat in one sitting. But I ate it anyway. Moderation is for weekday breakfasts.

Saturday at the Farmer's Market

It's Farmer's Market season! I went yesterday with Mom to the City Market. They have an amazing weekend market, plus tons of cool physical stores for food, wine, plants, and knick-knacks. We had breakfast at Succotash (cool atmosphere, kind of disappointing in that the food was only average), and then shopped for produce.

I snapped some pictures as we wandered, including baskets of the largest asparagus I have ever seen, a bewildering display of greens and green onions, and a display of adorable wooden planters in the shape of little chairs and buildings.
















I made out like a bandit from this trip - giant bunches of fresh spinach and baby lettuce, radishes, green onions, Andouille sausage, strawberries, grapes, zuccini, and fresh ricotta from Carollo’s Italian Gourmet Grocery. I had a wonderful morning with Mom, plus I'm going to eat very well this week. I can't wait to do this again next weekend, and I'm looking forward to adapting my diet based on what's in season. It's a win-win-win situation to buy and eat like this: local, seasonal food, directly from small farms.

Off the topic of bread for a minute

I know this is a bread baking / cooking blog, but please permit me to stray from that for a moment.

I went to see United 93 on Wednesday night. This film blew me away. It was difficult to watch, but it was an amazing film. I was not expecting to see such a respectful, dignified treatment of that day. I feel strange recommending it, but I want to tell everyone I know to see it. It's extremely well crafted, and avoids politicizing or romanticizing, and simply lets the events unfold. I was crying as the credits started rolling, and so was everyone else in the theater with me. That was two days ago, and I still feel impacted by it. So if you're on the fence, go see this film.

And now back to my regularly scheduled blogging...