Pickled Onions with Cheese and Thomas Keller's Roast Chicken

I'm a fickle lover when it comes to roast chicken recipes. Sometimes I rely on Nigella's lemony roast, while other days Julia Child's buttery, basted bird appeals to my mouth. Once in a while, I remember to make Gourmet magazine's amazing paprika roasted chicken, which is rich in flavor, bejeweled in color, and a lot healthier than Julia's buttery cuisine. (It also makes the most fantastic base for chicken stock. I've started adding paprika every time I make stock for the golden color and resonant flavor.) My standby chicken is a Nigella-Julia hybrid that gets rubbed with a bit of butter or olive oil, sprinkled with coarse salt and pepper, and stuffed with a pierced lemon and a sprig of rosemary. I baste at the end and serve with the jus. Simple but effective, and it leaves the house smelling lemony savory.

Well, my philandering days may be over. Like a 45-year old bachelor finally realizing the simple appeals of domesticity, I have been won over by Thomas Keller's roast chicken recipe (suggested, of course, by Shauna and Dan, who I wish were my friends). It is simple as salt, and positively golden. The only changes I made were to resist "slathering" the cooked meat in butter (unnecessary) and to leave the bird untrussed. I wanted to try trussing it, but I couldn't find any twine and really, the chicken's still pretty in its free form state.

The roast came out with a crispy, salty skin just laced with thyme and pan juices. We spooned the extra jus over oven-roasted parsnips and completed the meal with a salad of butter lettuce, blue cheese and red wine vinaigrette. I do insist that you try this recipe with a free-range organic bird. Is it pricier? Yes, by a dollar or two per pound (my four-pound chicken cost $14 at Whole Foods). But I promise you, you will not get such a clean, rich flavor from one of those flaccid ghost-white hens grown in a pitch-black poultry house. The carcass will not yield a deep golden broth, and your tummy will be full of hormones and antibiotics. Also, remember that one chicken yields at least one meal of roast meat and at least two as a soup. So the monetary breakdown's not bad. I plan on using leftover chicken in tacos tomorrow, with sour cream, home-pickled onions, cilantro, and beans.

Which brings me to the pickles.

These are the pickles in an early stage of development. Now in the jar, they are fuchsia and glistening, begging to be tucked into a sandwich with sharp cheddar cheese or used to add a piquant note to tacos. They have a surprisingly mild taste, sweet with lingering notes of the cinnamon, cloves and cumin I soaked them in. I got a yen for them on Saturday night, when we had our friends over for a late supper of tomato soup and grilled cheese, hard cider, and a game of Munchkin. I remember eating cheesy, pickley cold sandwiches when I was a student in London, and the appealing contrast of rich and tangy has stayed with me. I knew I could do better than the mysteriously black London relish, however, and started trolling the net for recipes.

I found David Leibowitz's recipe (his blog is great by the way) and altered it to fit my spice selection. The onions were a big hit, even with Melissa, who hates onions. Our husbands ate them plain, like a salad. And now they sit pretty in the fridge, tempting me with all kinds of culinary possibilities.

Baby's Got a Pretty Face

Tom's birthday meal was so lavish and so beautiful, I had to post a few photos here.


These are oysters, cured in a bit of lime juice and some other unidentified, yummy stuff. Courtesy of our friend Carrie, who's a wonderful chef.

My winter slaw, stolen from Shauna and Chef of glutenfreegirl.com. Broccoli, savoy cabbage, raw brussel sprouts, and a tangy dressing starring homemade mayonnaise.

Again to Carrie, whose dishes were indisputably the prettiest. Here, a prawn ceviche featuring a creamy cilantro sauce.

What 30-course BBQ-themed meal would be complete without a mini serving of homemade buttermilk waffles topped with a piece of cruncy bacon and finished with a drizzle of syrup? These addictive morsels were my mom's doing.

My dad is king of the homemade onion ring. Look at these golden, fluffy rings and try to deny it.


The rest of photos can be found on facebook.

Parmesan Crumb Calamari

I had one of those long days today, where the march until lunch seems interminable and the post-lunch doldrums extend to 5pm. The quality of the day was so grey and dull that I had to make something colorful and rich for dinner.

T and I have been living off the leftovers of his 30-course birthday feast all week, which means we have practically no groceries, so tonight I indulged in a stroll through the Whole Foods meat and seafood departments, waiting for dinner to call out to me.

I examined the whole dungeness crabs, the beautiful strip steak, the organic chicken breasts. But what called out to me was the humble tub of raw squid, all tiny purple tentacles and smooth, creamy tubes. By itself squid isn't much to write home about, and I know it makes a lot of people squeamish. But fried up with spices and lemon juice, it becomes a delectable treat that's easy and cheap.

To my mind, homemade calamari is a lot like risotto: ridiculously easy to make well, and yet so rare in the home kitchen that people think it's restaurant fare. I have to admit I rarely make it myself, but that has a lot more to do with the amount of oil calamari requires than the difficulty of making it.

I don't use a recipe per se, but draw inspiration from Nigella Lawson's ridiculously fun Nigella Bites, which has a recipe for salt and pepper calamari (listed under "TV Dinners," which should tell you how easy this is to make). Instead of using her cornstarch, salt and pepper mix, I tossed the calamari rings and tentacles in a Parmesan bread crumb mixture left in the fridge from last week's mac and cheese. I fried the crumb-coated squid in a generous amount of extra-virgin olive oil in a cast iron skillet, and then finished them under the broiler for three minutes for crunch and color. Once cooked, I tossed the calamari with red sea salt, pepper, and lots of lemon juice. T and I ate the golden rings with extra lemon and a creamy-tangy cabbage and apple slaw.

There are even leftovers for lunch tomorrow. Which is Friday. Suddenly, I'm feeling sunny.

The Portobello Project

Sing, O Muses, of the sporous wonder of the edible fungi!

Look at these little beauties! Such globular tops, such sturdy stem legs, umbrellas branching out to shade the surrounding compost. And they're three times the size today than they were when I took this picture. Now the cluster in the corner crowds the box with magnificent brown crowns.

Sure, the mulch, with the myceleum poking through (that's the white, mouldy looking stuff) appears disgusting, but it hides a treasure trove of mineral rich fungi waiting to be turned into a lasagna (something like this, though with a layer of creme freche instead, fried sage and no chicken: http://www.gourmet.com/recipes/2000s/2009/03/cheesy-chicken-and-mushroom-lasagne). Or, if the crops yields more than currently promised by the five mushrooms in the box, I'm going to try drying them for risottos. What could be better than your own home-grown dried mushrooms, sitting in the pantry like a promise of self-sufficiency and comfort meals to come? (So many people think of risotto as a company meal, but it's just a savory rice pudding; stir until creamy and indulge. T and I love it at the cold beginning of spring, thick with asparagus and lemon juice.)

I'm teaching a class on dystopian literature, so the ideas of gardening, foraging and drying, canning, pickling, etc. are on my mind. (Of course the apocalypse makes me think of food. Other people are hording guns and machetes, and I'm wondering what's for lunch.) I'm reading Into the Forest with my class, and while I'm not sure I find Hegland's essential argument of returning to the hunter-forager lifestyle appealing, I do like all of the narrative about home canning and the like. It's inspired me to at least three projects this summer:

1) Can my own tomatoes. Sure, I'll have to buy them by the bushel at the market, but what the heck? It's the only time of year you can buy that many organic tomatoes without going bankrupt. I might even be able to convince Whole Foods to sell me their banged up, mushy tomatoes at a lower price at the end of the day.

2) Make some fun pickles. Pickled carrots? Okra? At the very least, I'll be stocked for cold weather bloody marys.

3) Create a sourdough starter. Or, even better, attract my own yeast from the local environment. By this summer, Kate, Glenna, Jonathan and I will have completed our informal course in artisan bread baking (courtesy of Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice) and I'll be ready to start a yeasty science project.*

*By the way, we invite you to follow our bread making travails at http://www.themerrybakers.blogspot.com/. No posts as of yet, but we're making our first bread this weekend!

Damn. When did it get to be 8:09am? I better water the mushrooms (in the instructions, I am told to sprinkle them like the morning dew) and get to work.

Wouldn't it be lovely to cook and write all day?

ihatemyjob.com

We're switching to a new computer network at the bookstore, which is a massive undertaking. Basically, we have to rewrite every buying, selling, storing, transferring, reporting and accounting process that the store utilizes, and there are a lot, because I work for a giant company. As part of this procedure, we have to wean every employee off of our antiquated system and train them to use a Windows-based operating system with entirely new rules. It is expected that management and trainers (that's me!) will locate bugs in the new system and invent ways of utilizing the current system regardless of dysfunctionality. It is also expected that managers and trainers will do this without one iota of formal training themselves; as I noted to my boss this afternoon, this kind of technological autodidacticism isn't in my job description. He wasn't happy.

Maybe he doesn't understand the word "autodidacticism."

I hate my job today. I'm never entirely thrilled with it--the pendulum swings from complacent to bored--but never before in my life (excepting student papers) have I been confronted with such illogicality! In one week I'm to train people to use a system that I haven't been trained on. And when I had the audacity to politely express my discomfort to the powers that be, I was hit with a barrage of the following:

1. You're a trainer. (Oh really? Is that why my job title is "trainer?" Thank you so much for enlightening me. I can cancel my visit to the Dalai Lama now.)
2. You're supposed to know this stuff. (Yes. I realize the discrepancy between your expectations and my reality. That's why I'm here requesting training.)
3. If you don't know something, ask me. (Hm. I'm in the process of following this directive, and it isn't going so well.)
4. You're supposed to be finding bugs in the system. (Yes, but how do I differentiate between a bug and the limitations of my own knowledge when I haven't been trained to use the system?)
5. We don't expect you to locate bugs in the system. (DO YOU LISTEN TO YOURSELF?)
6. I'm really nervous about your network abilities. (Yeah, me too. That's why I want some more f**king training!)
7. I think you do an amazing job. (I hate you.)

When I mentioned to my boss--again in a polite, controlled manner--that I was feeling nervous about asking questions because each time I do, I'm met with a wall of hostility and impatience--he defended his anger and then apologized. I think my boss was having trouble being decisive today.

Maybe he doesn't understand the word "hostility."

He's not a bad man. I kind of like him most of the time. He has sparkling green eyes and a nice smile. And he's smart, despite my snarky comments about his vocabulary. And no one taught him how to use the program, either. He's just had a year to play with it. I have two weeks. Somehow the discrepancy between his readiness and mine has been overlooked in his zealous desire to make me feel like an ass. Plus, his apology was insincere. He feels as angry as I do--the difference is that a) I tactfully hide my feelings and b) my anger is valid and his is a retarded response to the even more retarded company decision not to train trainers.

I know. Next week, when I meet with my class, I'll quiz them on the end of the novel, even though they'll only have read the first 80 pages. They're supposed to know that stuff. They're students. I think they do an amazing job.

Going Rogue (you knew I had to write about it)

Tonight I'm presented with two options: clean the bathroom or write on my blog. Difficult decision there. The way I'm justifying this arguably lazy decision is that, one, writing is edifying, and two, my book group's coming over on Sunday and the bathroom will just have to be cleaned again. (I'm omitting the fact that I could also be grading papers tonight, but somehow managed to avoid that task by cleaning the kitchen and living room, buying 3 songs on iTunes, making tamale pie in the slow cooker, and checking my email.)

So, Going Rogue, otherwise known as The Longest Campaign Message in American History. We listened to 3 hours of it today at work out of a collective perversity for bad literature. First of all, Sarah reads it herself, making for a peppy and gosh-darnit authentic Palin experience. Her perkiness is as eerie and disingenuous as a Stepford wife; this vocal tone is particularly disturbing when she chirps her way through an account of her miscarriage. But more irritating than Palin's cheerleader delivery is the superficiality of her memoir. This is a woman with a potentially interesting life story. She was raised in Alaska just a few years after it gained statehood, and probably did have an unusual childhood compared to most Americans; after all, few of us hunt and eat bear or have parents who were modern pioneers. She could have written in detail about life in early Alaska: relationships between Native Alaskans and settlers, domestic hardships, natural wonders, what it was like to be a member of an tiny gender minority, etc. Instead, what we get is a Little Igloo on the Tundra, snow globe fantasy of life in America's coldest state, where all the men are men, all the women are men, and the children are named after motor vehicles.

According to Sarah, life in Alaska is big, fat snowflakes and pink, fat babies. It's also the locale for her heroic battle against "politics as usual" (the repetition of which phrase could inspire a drinking game). Despite the hundreds of pages in Going Rogue, all the reader gets is the old campaign mantra of a maverick soccer mom. If the memoir reveals anything new, it's Palin's inability to accept criticism and her predilection for thinly veiled character assasinations of people who think critically about what she says and does. She uses her book to lambast Wasilla critics, campaign critics, and any government official who ever made it difficult to get her way. Apparently Sarah is of the Cheney-Bush camp, which reviles the checks and balances process as obstructionist and views independent thought as tantamount to treason.

Perhaps actual autobiography was too much to expect from Palin, but as my friend Katie noted, the book has no depth. There is not one iota of frailty, or bildungsroman failure and growth. Judging from Going Rogue Sarah Palin came out of the womb the wolf-shooting, glasses-wearing, grammar-eschewing, baby-producing cowgirl she is today. And every step along the way was idyllic. (If a little bit chilly, gosh darnit.) Sarah Palin represents herself as the least likable character an author can create--one who is perfect and therefore unrelateable. Her reduction to political ideologies of real-life hardships like miscarriage or having a baby with Down Syndrome (in this case, both anti-abortion messages) made it hard for me to care about her. And her sunny gloss of life in Alaska made me want to puke.

Nothing is that perfect, and no ideology is that cut and dry. The utter absence of difficulty and emotion in Palin's memoir should make any reader suspicious.

But it won't, and that's the hardest part of her story to digest. Right now millions of men and women are reading Sarah Palin's memoir and agreeing with all of her simple, cheery pronouncements. Despite the fact that every sentence in Going Rogue can be re-written more concisely as "I'm a maverick, vote Sarah for president!," this book has generated over 200 million sales.

I'd rather get a lump of coal in my stocking. At least coal, given time, becomes a diamond, whereas Palin will always be a sack of scat.

Thanksgiving

Orange Pumpkin Clover Rolls

The rolls were a little dry, to be frank, as I had to bake them several hours before the feast, and had no oven in which to warm them. But the fresh ones, the ones I rolled with butter, cinnamon and brown sugar, which we ate warm from the oven at 10 in the morning...those were marvelous. Heady with orange zest and cinnamon, and tender as silk. I realize now the rolls need to be eaten immediately, or toasted with some extra butter and honey.