Pensieri di un lunatico minore
This morning, perusing the intertubes, I came across an article on a food blog I read about dining out alone. The question he posits is this: “Why is that? Why are we so terrified to dine alone?” It’s one I’ve had more opportunity to think about than one might care to contemplate.
With the absurd travel schedule I keep, and the fact that I get tired of the same routine over and over and over and over again, I have had ample moments to dine alone. Now, I could certainly order in to my room and hide, but that just seems pathetic. Instead, I try to go out some and I realize that there’s some deep seated aversion to sitting alone in a restaurant. Perhaps it’s the fact that generally, I’m the only “single” person in the restaurant. Perhaps it is, as the original author opines, the look of sad pity from the server. Perhaps, however, it’s all me and not anyone else.
As Americans, we pride ourselves on talking about how independent we are, and yet, we fear being alone with nothing but our own thoughts to entertain us. Even when I do go out alone, and I never take a book, I find myself fiddling with my iPhone—reading blogs primarily—or staring out the window; anything to avoid what I perceive is the icy glare of those who aren’t alone.
This is not something that is limited to eating out, but also going to movies alone, etc. Some places, it seems, are more attune to the needs of the solo traveler, but most are not. Even when I’m home and want to try a new restaurant, I will ring up a friend to invite them to join me. If they are busy, rather than going it alone, I’ll reverse course and choose something less intimidating.
I don’t have an answer, but I do share the feeling, and wonder what we can do to better deal with it.
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This is based on a recipe from Shirley O. Corriher’s brilliant tome of food science Cookwise. I’ve adjusted a few bits to better reflect what I grew up with, but basically works like a charm.
Note that this is a much wetter dough than many people are used to, but the biscuits are very light when done.
| 2C |
|
self-rising flour1 |
| 1/8tsp |
|
baking soda |
| 1/2tsp |
|
kosher salt |
| 1/3C |
|
sugar |
| 4Tbsp |
|
shortening2 |
| 2/3C |
|
half-and-half3 |
| 1C |
|
buttermilk4 |
| 1C |
|
all-purpose flour for shaping |
| 2Tbsp |
|
unsalted butter, melted |
- Preheat the oven to 425F and spray a 9” round cake pan with non-stick spray.
- Combine the self-rising flour, salt and sugar in a mixing bowl. With a pastry cutter (or your fingers), work in the shortening until there are no pieces bigger than a big pea. It will look like course gravel.
- Stir in the half-and-half and buttermilk and let stand for 2-3 minutes. This dough is very wet and after 2-3 minutes it will look like cottage cheese.
- Pour the cup of flour onto a pie tin. Flour your hands well. Spoon biscuit-sized lumps of wet dough into the flour and sprink some more on the outside. Pick up the dough and shape it roughly into a soft round.
- Shake off the excess flour and place into the pan, pushing slightly against each other.
- Repeat until all dough is used (about 10 biscuits).
- Bake just above the center of the oven until lightly brown (approximately 15-20 minutes), then brush with melted butter.
- Cool for 1-2 minutes in the pan, then dump them out and eat them all.
1 I use White Lily.
2 I use Crisco.
3 The original recipe calls for heavy cream, but I didn’t like the texture, so I’ve shifted to half-and-half.
4 I use spray-dried buttermilk that I mix with water per the instructions on the container.
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I was reminded last night that the idea of “going out to dinner”, or any meal for that matter, is a relatively modern phenomenon. Growing up—even when my parents were still together—going out to dinner was an Occasion, and something that happened perhaps 3-4 times annually. Today, it seems like I eat out more than I eat at home, and regardless of the merits of having access to a plethora of cuisines to chose from, I find something missing when I’m not home. That means I’m going to try eating at home a lot more and while it comes with the primary satisfaction of my own cooking, it also comes with a secondary bonus: less money.
So in my continuing saga of cooking for myself again, I bring you … breakfast.
My mom is from Kentucky, and for those without a bit of history, Kentucky is most certainly the South. As such, any weekend breakfast invariably involved biscuits and something. There was never a question about the biscuits; forgetting the biscuits would be no better than forgetting your manners. Now that I am back home more, I intend to get back into making biscuits more regularly, and eating at home more. For me, nothing could go better with biscuits than sawmill gravy. A simple thing, but ladled over fresh biscuits and you can just see the result:
Little more than the result of sausage, flour, milk and a hefty amount of fresh pepper. If you can make a roux, you can make sawmill gravy. And, since you can’t make just 2 biscuits, I had to have a little something sweet:
The world’s best apricot jam on some pretty decent biscuits. I’ll post the biscuit recipe in another post.
Breakfast is served.
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Last weekend, Kristen and I went peach picking, and while the peaches at our
intended destination were better suited for a game of bocce ball, we happened across another place just down the road—whose name escapes me, and whose card I’ve forgotten. Regardless, they had beautiful fruit, and I picked up a couple pounds.
After eating a few (dozen) it dawned on me that as summer draws to a close, and the weather has already shifted to fall, what could be more perfect than a bowl of peach ice cream? Drawing out the bible of ice cream, David Lebovitz’ The Perfect Scoop, I found a wonderful recipe of peach ice cream, but made with some sour cream. Approximately 24 hours later, this was the result:
What’s on top? A bit of molasses whipped cream. Yum! My only complaint, if one can have a complaint about peach ice cream, is that the texture is a bit crumbly. I am not sure whether it’s an artifact of the recipe, or my freezer. Regardless, given a minute to soften, it’s lovely, and the tang of the sour cream really offsets the natural sweetness of the peach.
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I have been fascinated by the technique of sous vide ever since I first heard about it many years ago after a dinner at the Restaurant Troisgros. The technique, pioneered there, was a revalation, however at the time, little to no information was available about it. That has changed recently, and the technique has taken on a new interest in both chefs and home cooks.
Given my travel schedule, it’s been hard to cook, so I’ve not delved into the technique until today. Since I don’t know whether I’ll follow through, investing substantial sums in an immersion circulator seemed silly. By focusing on things that are cooked in relatively short periods (under 30 minutes), I could instead wing it using a Reynolds Handi-Vac kit, a very heavy enameled iron pot and some careful attention.
First, I prepared the “packet” to go into the water. I put some huge Gulf shrimp, a few lumps of butter, crushed garlic and some rosemary into a quart vacuum bag and sealed it:
That, then went into the water at approximately 138F (59C) and was held as close to that temperature (give or take 2-3F) for 25 minutes. During that time, I carefully monitored the temperature of the water and kept it moving so that no hot spots would develop.
At the same time, I brought 2 gallons of water up to boil for pasta, and placed another clove of crushed garlic and some crushed red chilis into a 1qt sauce pan with some olive oil and put it over low heat to sit for 25 minutes. This would steep the garlic and chilis and draw out their flavor and color.
Once the shrimp were done—their color had changed to a beautiful translucent white after 15 minutes or so—and the pasta was ready, I plated:
So how was it? The shrimp were amazing, juicy and fragrant with the garlic and rosemary. The pasta had a hint of heat and matched well. Overall, a rounding success. A few more attempts, though, before I invest (or build) any contraptions.
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Since I left Austin, one of the business I miss most is Good Flow Juice Company. They were a small local company that supplied very fresh juices that were unpasteurized to local restaurants and some of the more crunchy-granola grocery stores. Their product was oustanding quality, and more importantly tasted exactly like what you think it should, without that cooked metallic aftertaste of the mass-market brands.
Well, it seems finally the FDA has taken legal action against them, demanding they pasteurize their product, even though it has a big warning label on it that it’s unpasteurized and they make deliveries every day—sometimes multiple times per day.
Seriously, I’m beginning to think in the food world that the FDA is more dangerous than helpful. Have all the mercury you want, but don’t you dare drink fresh-squeezed orange juice. Bunch of tools. The warning label was more than enough.
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Tonight’s dessert: heather honey gelato with balsamic vinegar
Smooth, fragrant and sublime.
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There are many precious things in life, but in the food world, there are few more precious than fine balsamic vinegar. I’m not referring to the cloyingly sweet mechanized chemical experiment that most people have had in some dreadful “balsamic vinaigrette” but a dark, viscous elixer of both sweetness and complexity.
The real thing (Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena) is insanely expensive, and something that quite honestly I can’t rationally justify purchasing. I love it, don’t get me wrong, but it’s just simply more than I can consider having in the house. Having said that, when a friend observed a bottle of Cavedoni Botte Piccola for what was an insanely reasonable price, I pounced on it. I did not regret it.
Make no mistake, this is not a Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena D.O.P., with all of it’s required supervision, certification, numbering and jaw-dropping price. It is, however, a vinegar made in the same style and technique of the original, but simply seven years old instead of the requisite 12. It is still aged in the same seven reducing-size barrels of Trebbiano grapes, and comes with a majority of the complexity of the “real” stuff at a fraction of the price.
Fortunately, the Cavedoni family, who have been making fine tradizionale vinegars since 1860, have seen fit to begin importing it into the US at a fair price. If you can find it, buy it. But whatever you do, don’t mix it with olive oil and call it a salad dressing. Use it sparingly over strawberries or ice cream. Sprinkle it over good Parmesan-Reggiano and breathe deep. Or perhaps drizzle some over the last of the summer’s fresh ripe tomatoes and some good mozzarella di bufala_ on some nice crusty bread and call it dinner.
If you’re feeling truly decadent, pour it into a small aperitif glass and drink it straight and sample a complexity that equals any port in the world.
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Yesterday, I decided to try my hand at a panang curry. Thai food has always been one of my favorites, and I figured it was about time to start learning. The pieces/parts weren’t hard to find in the DC area—though they might be in some areas—and the technique is pretty simple. In order to justify all the effort, though, I made 2-3x the amount of curry paste as needed so that I can store it away for later. From what I’ve read, it’ll keep a very long time in the fridge, so it should survive the couple weeks I might allow it.
The taste? Excellent, actually. It was a good bit hotter than most restaurants make it, which is not surprising, but I found that the palm sugar cut down the heat to a level that felt very balanced. I have to admit, I ended up using a bit more fish sauce than the recipe called for, and made it with chicken and mushrooms, rather than the traditional beef. Still, yum!
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With my insane travel schedule, one of the things I miss more than anything else is being able to cook. As much as I enjoy going out to eat—and I didn’t get this body eating at McDonalds—I still will take a home-cooked meal over almost anything. There is something about the process involved that is cathartic and pleasurable, regardless of the outcome.
Last weekend, I had some friends over for dinner for the first time in, well, nearly forever. It wasn’t anything fancy, but I was in the mood to bake, so I made a coconut cake with a seven-minute icing:
Tonight, even though it was just me, I decided to do something my friend David had recommended, and that was to cook together (sorta) chicken thighs, portabella mushrooms, rosemary and some chicken stock. There’s a bit more to it than that, but it turned out well, and I served it to a table set for one with some fresh corn-on-the-cob and brown and red rice:
All that and a glass of flinty New Zealand Riesling.
Next to my sanity, cooking is what I miss the most.
3 thoughts
I don’t know what else to call the site but what it is: Cake Wrecks. While I have been known to encourage people to explore their creative side culinarily, there are limits, ok? Just stop.
2 thoughts
One of my favorite things, which I’ve written about before is French toast, or pain perdu. Not some cloying sweet creation, or something so over done that it loses the essence of its character: bread. So this morning, to celebrate the sun rising, I made some more and some yummy scrambled eggs with chervil, shallots and tarragon.
A great way to start the day. Simple; yummy; don’t scrimp on the bread. This is not for Wonder Bread, which, as everyone knows, is neither.
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I grew up in Texas. While this can have a lot of meaning for various people, what it means for me is that I love BBQ. Not just any BBQ, but specifically the intense blending of Carribean barbicoa and German influences that begat what I still consider the finest destiny of a cow on the planet: Texas BBQ. Unsullied by a complicated “rub” or cloying sauces, it is simply meat and smoke and time; perhaps a little bit of magic as well.
Texas is blessed with perhaps the largest number of just damned fine, and sometimes nearly religious—even for me—BBQ joints in the country. Texas Monthly even surveys them every few years and can’t limit it to less than 50. Heck, I’ve been to 4 of the top 5 that they list, and they’re all temples of BBQ. A trip home is just not a trip home to Austin without BBQ, whether it be Rudy’s, The Iron Works, or a afternoon drive out to Lockhart to partake of the mecca of BBQ: Smitty’s Market or Kreutz’s Market.
This time, unfortunately, time ran out and we were “forced” to turn to another old stand-by: The Salt Lick, which is about 30-45 minutes from my mom in Driftwood, TX. I was lucky enough to go with my sister, Kim, and a friend, Brettany, and we decided, after much contemplation, to partake of the “family style” meal, with a little extra chicken:
What’s that? Well, it’s brisket, sausage, pork ribs and smoked chicken. The sides are yummy smokey baked beans, cole slaw (mediocre this trip), real German potato salad, pickles, onion and a jalapeño—just in case. We refilled the plate, part of the family style tradition, once, but then that was enough. While normally they don’t let you take anything home if you order this way, the waitress was nice enough to let us pack up the little remaining that my sister thoughtfully saved for my brother-in-law.
That was my last evening in Austin, but all in all, not a bad way to end it. Sadly, even the best BBQ in DC, MD and VA is a pale imitation of what you can get in NC, much less TX.
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When summer arrives, the time comes to make salads. A friend’s partner’s birthday was this weekend, and I was asked to make a few salads for the event. I love cooking, and since I’m on the road all the time, I don’t get much of an opportunity. Knowing that, I took it. Salads aren’t my strength, but why not? To make sure I had my bases covered, I chose two different salads. One built around peas and the other built around tomatoes and cucumbers—all perfect summer ingredients.
So, the first salad I made this way. Last night, I chopped up some English cucumbers after deseeding1 them, slicing them on the bias. Then, I shoved them in a brine of equal parts sugar and salt. I also added some cider vinegar, pickling spices and crushed red chilis. I then let these sit over night, lightly pickling them. This morning, I cut up a few types of tomatoes, including some heirloom varieties, frenched some Vidalia onions and tossed the whole thing with olive oil, sweet pickled garlic, dill, parsley and course sea salt. The result:
The next salad is one that I was inspired by my friend Kristen to create. It isn’t particularly from a recipe, but more just some ideas thrown together. I started by blanching and shocking some petite spring peas and some regular spring peas (to provide textural contrast). They were frozen, I admit, simply because summer peas aren’t really up to snuff yet, and the frozen are better. I blanched them in salty boiling water for 1 minute per batch.
While I was doing that, I also sweated down a large onion diced into small bits in a little olive oil, and bloomed a pinch of saffron in hot water (recovered from the “pea broth”). Once the peas were finished and the onion sweated down, I added the saffron to it and let some of the water evaporate.
In a large bowl I combined them together and mixed with a healthy amount of mint, a very light vinaigrette—heavy on the oil, light on the mustard—and then diced up some ricotta salata into 1/4” cubes and tossed it all together. Finally, I added some pistachios for texture. This was all set aside to meld for a few hours before the party, and here’s the result:
All in all, a success I think. Now to reverse engineer my own recipes for future use. I didn’t bother to write anything down.
1 I didn’t remove the skin as it’s quite thin on these.
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For my birthday, a very wonderful person took me out to dinner at 2941 as an early birthday present. We decided to do the tasting menu, which changes weekly, and it was composed of the following:
Maine Peekytoe Crab Salad
w/cherry tomato, mango, basil
Domaine Lauverjat Perle Blanche from Sancerre (Loire Valley), France, 2006.
Slowly Cooked John Dory
w/fingerling potato, fava beans, tomato compote
Weingut Köfererhof from the Alto Adige, Italy, 2006.
Pan Seared Sea Scallops
w/yellow corn, lobster broth, celery
Domaine du Chêne Viognier from Condrieu (Rhône Valley), France, 2005.
Hudson Valley Foie Gras
w/apricot chutney, spinach, almond
Château Pajzos Tokaji Aszu 5 Puttonyos from Hungary, 1999.
Milk Fed Suckling Pig
w/fiddlehead firn, ramps, pickled salad
La Rioja Alta (Tempranillo) from Rioja, Spain, 2001.
Westmoreland Farm Strawberries
w/almond pain de Gênes, calisson ice cream, rhubarb marmalade
Brachetto d’Acqui from Pineto (Piedmont), Italy, 2006.
I can only say that it was amazing. Truly amazing. Several of the dishes were the finest examples I’d ever had in their “area”, and the wine pairings were uniformly great. It’s not a cheap place to eat, but the effort shows. Add to that the best carrot cake I’ve ever managed to eat, and not by a small amount.
It’s a good thing the place didn’t burn down with all those candles.
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