MIA

Hi Anna,

I just decided to check the blog and have come to realize that for the last 3 weeks, you were having a fascinating, articulate conversation on food...with yourself. School has been crazy lately. I have 5 papers due in the next 2 weeks, on top of prepping for internship interviews for the fall.

Do you remember certain times in your life where at some point in the day, you go - "Oh yeah, food!" Or you're so busy, you don't realize what you're eating? That's been me.

I'm sorry to hear about your troubles with bread. I'm not the breadbaker, Rob is, but all of his stuff has turned out scrumptious. I've heard of The Bread Bible, but you might also want to look at The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart.

Also - check out this link: http://steamykitchen.com/168-no-knead-bread-revisited.html

This was our first bread back in California. A successful, no fuss bread ought to make you feel better. Put on extra butter for me.

Back to researching suicide statistics in the elderly. What fun, eh? I'll talk to you soon!

Becky

Eat Your Heart Out... or Work Your Ass Off...

Ok Becky- the meal I just made topped Thanksgiving. Seriously. I cooked for 8 hours and ate for 6, and now I can't move. Matt's family stopped by for dinner and requested seafood pasta, so what do we do? We make (in no particular order): grilled calamari with aioli, bruscetta, a parade of Trader Joe's appetizers, salad, *the* seafood pasta, and a ricotta cheesecake.

The most difficult part of the meal? Nope, not cleaning the clams or cooking the calamari. It was the caramel orange sauce that topped the cheesecake- literally an hour segmenting oranges, simmering sugar water, cursing over broken food processors and hardened caramel... all for 3/4 cup of sauce that was, while much appreciated, admittedly a disposable part of the meal.

Surprises?
1) The cheesecake survived in the the oven without a water bath- you know, I sometimes think that recipes are designed to scare people away. "Don't bake this without a water bath, or it will most definitely be dry." Well, we hesitated for a minute, after realizing that we didn't own a roaster pan- but what the hell are you supposed to do with a half finished cheesecake filling? Replace the water bath with a small pan of water on a lower rack, and reduce the cook time 15 minutes. Voila, moist cheesecake.
2) Matt has mad pasta rolling skills- pounding the daylights out of semolina pasta ain't easy, and he slammed 1.5 pounds into submission in 15 minutes flat. I actually felt like a jerk feeding the already rolled dough through the automatic press, me standing idly against the hum of the machine, while sweat glistened across Matt's forehead.
3) Bread flour is evil, and I will never bake another loaf with it again- another failed, entirely too dense loaf of French destined for croutons.

How's your weekend going?

Life Moving On

Hey Becky-

Was great talking to you tonight :) After this weekend, I feel like life moves really fast for some people. Take my grad school friend as an example. In 3.5 years, she met her husband, got engaged/married, moved to Canada, and is about to have a baby. I know her life is an odd benchmark, but it's really starting to feel like a long time since we've lived in the same city- we both still watch Lost (for 7 more weeks) and I think we both still nosh at night. Food, even then, was such a huge part of our friendship... the more I think about it, food was our excuse to get together- hardly ever a meeting without a pan of brownies, a pint of ice cream, or a brunch. There was good conversation and the occasional study session, of course- but always with an accompaniment. I haven't changed much- am still attached to popcorn- total comfort food, reminds me of Sunday nights at my grandmother's house when we used to replace dinner with home-made popcorn and a movie. Just had a bowl tonight- like a replacement friend, in a way. What are you up to?

Little Italys

Hey Becky-

Did you see the basketball game last Thursday? I was so excited the first 3 minutes, then downhill from there... at any rate, a highlight for Cornell :)

Was in Toronto for the weekend for a friend's baby shower and ventured over to Little Italy for dinner. I know- Italian two weekends in a row- ridiculous. In Atlanta 2 weekends ago, we celebrated my sister's birthday at a restaurant my dad worked at for 10 years... I remember playing tag and coloring pictures in the courtyard as a little kid, between parent shifts. Anyway, the place looked the same as it did when my dad left in 1996 (and probably when it opened in the early 80's). Purple walls, dim lighting- felt like I was starring in the Godfather. Good food, choked down an entire plate of beef carpacio- note to self, never order that dish for one.

So- Toronto- Little Italy- Marinella. The maitre d' owned the restaurant, and his mother was the chef. The food was amazing because it tasted like it should- perfectly seasoned sauces, nothing overly greasy. I ordered lamb 3 ways: 1) braised lamb shank that tastes just like when I braise at home but with the added benefit of a spicy sauce that I can't figure out how to re-create, 2) grilled lamb chop- juicy, seasoned with salt and lime, 3) hand-made lamb tortellini, stuffed with ground lamb and topped with mild tomato sauce. Restaurant had a simple design, great service. The house marinella sauce (tomato sauce, cream, white wine sherry, bruscetta tomatoes) was really a show-stopper... friend ordered it with handmade fettuccine with lobster tail. Something about the sauce- it was creamy, spicy, punchy- so well-balanced and smooth! Hate to say it, but I might have enjoyed the Toronto meal a bit more... then again, I'm a sucker for cream sauces and absolutely anything braised...

The Sweetest End

Chocolate macaron with chocolate ganache, espresso gelato, and port soaked cherries. The macaron itself would have been a huge treat- the good ones are practically impossibly to find outside of Paris (sometimes even inside Paris). Crispy exterior set off by a moist, chewy interior that sticks and simultaneously melts to the roof of your mouth... all made even more insane by the rich creaminess of the ganache and the milky bitter gelato- set off by the sweet tartness of cherry. We ate this like greedy children attacking a box of chocolate- no mercy, no survivors... the pretty macaron was crushed and the gelato smeared into submission 1.5 seconds after this photo was taken... and we savored every bite :)

Moo

This was my favorite dish- officially called Beef Stracotto with Tomato Concasse, Seasonal Mushrooms, and Sage Butter. More like a beef symphony in a creamy, earthy buttery explosion. The raviolis were impossibly delicate, encased in a transparently thin pasta shell. Seriously, when I roll pasta at home, setting 4 out of 8 is as thin as I go... any thinner, and the dough shreds in my fingers. This dough was at least a 7 out of 8. The filling itself, I know, must have taken hours to prepare. It wasn't just braised beef- it was the marrow bones and overtones of veal stock... rich, deep, complex with a superfine texture that resulted from shredding and pureeing. All finished with the light (but oh so heavy) sage cream sauce and salty ricotta salata.



This one was the boy's favorite- caramelized so well that he called it "beef candy." I honestly don't like filet usually... too tender, lacks flavor. But this one was so well marinated and seared- and the demi glace enhanced the natural flavor of the beef, which was meaty, deep, and soft as butter. Beneath the steak are asparagus and spaetzle. Nothing like a doughy, buttery spaetzle to complement a melty slab of beef. Yum.

St. Louis part 2

I've always wanted to try salmon on blinis with creme fraiche... well, here we go: House-smoke salmon with caviar on buckwheat crepes with craime fraiche and pickled onion. Alone, the salmon was like a bite of salt water- but together, all the ingredients combined and flavors melded, and the coolness of the craime fraiche cut the saltiness of the salmon.