Catching up

I haven’t been doing a very good job at writing lately.  There are a few reasons for that.  Mainly, it’s that all of a sudden I’ve gotten a lot busier.  And going hand in hand with that, I haven’t been doing much cooking… or, at least, I haven’t been doing much cooking that merits any particular notice.  Here’s what I have been up to instead:

1. Remember how, a few weeks back, I mentioned I was looking for employment?  Well, I am pleased to say I am no longer looking.  As of last week, I am once again a productive member of society.  Suddenly I have somewhere I need to be and something I need to do for eight hours at a time – it's pretty crazy.  Unfortunately, my new schedule sometimes requires me to work evenings, which, when you add that to the two to three evenings a week when I’m swimming, leaves me few evenings for cooking big dinners. 

2. For the last two weeks, I’ve been dogsitting for a family who is out of town on vacation.  Or I could say, for the next two weeks, I will be dogsitting for a family who will be out of town on vacation.  Two different families, two different (elderly) dogs, two different houses with unfamiliar kitchens and nearly-empty refrigerators and pantries, making for almost a full month of not living in my own home, but not exactly being on vacation, either.  It leaves me in a kind of culinary limbo, trying to find the pans and pantry basics I’m used to having on hand in my own kitchen.  At this point, I’m much more likely to steam some broccoli, boil some pasta, open a jar of pesto and call it a day than to try to cook anything too complicated.

3.  I turned 23 last weekend.  That means I made another chocolate cake (hooray!), but how many times can you really write about the same chocolate cake in one month?  (Note: the answer to this question is NOT the same as the answer to the question, “how many times can you eat chocolate cake in one month?” which is, in my experience, roughly equal to the number of days in the month times two.)  For dinner on my birthday, I went out to Paesano’s for a punchy salad of arugula, raddichio, and endive with a rhubarb vinaigrette, a light ravioli dish filled with asparagus and topped with delicate seared scallops, and a delicious slice of warm polenta cake to finish.  A very satisfying meal, but sadly, one without pictures or recipes to share.

4.  So that family I’ve been dogsitting for the past couple of weeks?  They’re on vacation in Thailand, visiting palaces and temples and old stomping grounds, and eating mouthwatering Thai food for two beautiful weeks.  Ten years ago, they used to live in Thailand, and once in a while, when I’m very lucky, they’ll invite me over for dinner when making some Thai dish.   Over the last couple of days I’ve been perusing their Thai cookbooks, but even the most basic recipes call for things like shrimp paste and galangal root – not exactly familiar territory for me.  But that doesn’t stop my Thai food craving, so I decided to head down to the local Thai restaurant and take out some green curry.  Twice.

Sweet and spicy with luscious eggplant, bell pepper, and tofu atop fragrant jasmine rice, I just can’t stop eating it lately.  And since one order makes for at least two meals, that means that much less cooking.

I don’t expect I’ll be cooking writing much in the next couple of weeks, either, so thanks for your patience until I’m back in my own kitchen.  Until then, here’s to hoping you’ve found your own green curry-type craving to keep you busily and happily eating!

A boy named Chico, a llama, and a rhubarb crumble

Last fall, I was asked in a job interview what my favorite food was.   For a moment, I was stumped.  There are so many favorites, how could I pick just one?  I ended up answering that I had a big sweet tooth (which, if you've been reading regularly, is probably not much of a surprise), but that my favorites varied by the time of the year.  In October, apple pie and pumpkin custard top the list.  In April, though, it's all about the rhubarb crumble.

Unfortunately, no one told Michigan that, and our rhubarb crop didn't show up this year until the middle of May, which is, of course, chocolate cake month.  Luckily, however, rhubarb shows up right in time for April crumbles in Baltimore.  Even more luckily, Kate keeps sugar, flour, butter, and oats on hand and continues to be indulgent when I'm in the mood to bake.

I'll get back to the topic of rhubarb crumble soon, but first, I've mentioned Kate a few times now, and seeing as she's about the greatest person I know, I think it's time I properly introduced you to her.

Kate was one of the first people I met when I started college.  We were both incoming freshmen on the swim team, so I saw her at practice and social functions almost daily.  It was a few months, however, before we really became friends.  In December of that year, when I was miserable in a self-imposed exile, alternately crying, sleeping, and moping through mononucleosis, Kate and another teammate, Elissa, brought me a batch of chocolate chip cookies, still warm from the (toaster) oven.  I had the worst sore throat of my life - it was a struggle just choking down Gatorade, let alone solid food - but it was such a kind gesture, and I was so touched that they thought of me.  As I got to know Kate better, I would find she was one of the most thoughtful, caring people I had ever met.

In the coming months, Kate and I began to spend more and more time together, especially after we discovered our mutual penchant for watching ridiculous musicals and making peanut butter cookie dough without ever baking any cookies.  Soon we had decided to live together during our sophomore year, and though other roommates came and went over the next three years, Kate and I stayed together until we graduated.  

Those three years were filled with long late-night chats, countless banana muffins, and weekly dinner dates.  Every Monday, Kate and I would cook and eat dinner together, sharing family recipes and trying out new ones.  Some of our meals didn't turn out so well - a mango chutney so spiked with vinegar that it practically burned the inside of your nose stands out in my memory as one of our poorer efforts - but most of the time, we did pretty well.  I think it was at one of those dinners - probably in April - when I introduced Kate to rhubarb and, of course, rhubarb crumble.  Kate, being very sensible, immediately recognized what a superior dessert a rhubarb crumble is, the tartness of the rhubarb tamed by a heaping dose of sugar, blanketed with in a crisp, buttery topping.  Toss a scoop of homemade vanilla ice cream over a slice of crumble still steaming from the oven, and you have my perfect spring evening.

Sadly, all good things must come to an end, and when we graduated from college, Kate and I moved out of our apartment and on with our respective lives.  Kate still lives in Baltimore, and though we chat semi-regularly, I don't get to see her all that often.  When I do get to see her, though, we make up for lost time.

During my last trip to Baltimore, after dinner at Iggie's Pizza, I spent the night at Kate's apartment.  I think I intended to leave the next day some time around noon, but I just couldn't bring myself to go.  The television was left on TCM, and I stayed through A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and then All About Eve, and then Key Largo, and then whatever came on after that.  Meanwhile, Kate napped and I made a crumble, and then we made vanilla ice cream* to dish spoon over the top for the perfect mid-afternoon snack.  Later on, Kate planned her lessons for her high school Spanish classes the next day, and I helped her by writing a story about a boy named Chico and his dream of owning his very own llama.  In the evening, we revived our dinner date tradition, making a Moroccan stewed chicken dish, served with couscous, which we ate with Kate's husband Dan.  It was a pretty perfect day.

I've got some more rhubarb in my fridge now, and I'm considering making another crumble tonight.  I wish Kate were here to share it with me, because really, my favorite food is whatever I'm eating with her.

*The first attempt Kate and I made at making ice cream, maybe three years ago or so, is another good story, involving a good work-out and a cut on my chin which, according to my nurse roommate, was big enough I could have considered getting stitches for it.  Perhaps I'll come back to that one another day.

Rhubarb Crumble

I try to always get my rhubarb from the farmer's market, although I've noticed it popping up at the grocery more and more in the last few years.  Grocery rhubarb is usually much redder than the stuff you'll find at the market, which is greener and pinker, but both are ripe and ready for baking.  Select firm stalks.  Rhubarb will last about a week in the fridge, but the longer you wait, the limper it will get.  Make sure you trim off any leaves and discard them, as they are poisonous!

6 cups rhubarb, ends trimmed and diced into 1/4-inch slices
1 cup sugar
3 tablespoons flour
1/8 tsp sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Mix together all ingredients in a large bowl until well combined.  Pour rhubarb mixture into a large pie pan, spreading evenly.  Sprinkle crumble topping (see recipe below) over the rhubarb.  Bake for about 45 minutes, until the rhubarb is completely soft when poked with a fork.  Serve immediately with a large scoop of vanilla ice cream.


Crumble topping

This is great over any fruit dessert - raspberry crumble, apple crumble, cherry crumble... basically, any fruit pie that would have a top pie crust can have a crumble topping instead.  It's much quicker and easier to make, there's less fat, and the topping is made with oats, so clearly it's totally heart healthy.  If you have more than you need, the rest can be bagged and frozen until you make your next crumble.

1 cup oats
1 cup flour
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
1/3 cup brown sugar, packed

In a medium bowl, mix together all ingredients until thoroughly combined.  Sprinkle over fruit filling until well covered.

Serves 4-8, depending upon your willingness to share.

Baltimore, hon

I promised you stories about Baltimore, and so far I have been derelict in my duties. So let's tackle that straight away.

I visited Baltimore last weekend for a college alumni reunion. I had debated long and hard about going. I was feeling uncomfortable trying to answer the question, “so what have you been up to lately?” It's easy when you have a straight forward answer to that question, because you're a nurse or a teacher or you just spent two years saving the world in the Peace Corps. But in my case, I felt my answer would be unforgivably lame: “Um, well, I haven't been working for a few months now, so I read books and watch TV? And I cook dinner? Oh, and, uh, I write a food blog?” It's funny; though I will say all of these things online for the world to see, I wasn't sure I could handle telling my peers.

Finally I did decide to go, and then, the day before heading down there, I got a job offer, so my story didn't seem nearly as unfortunate as I had feared. That was a relief, because it freed up my attention to focus on the more important things, like tulips, and dinner.

Of course, I went to see old friends, but I also went to see my old haunts.  Those familiar streets are as much old friends as any of my former classmates.  I was a week or two too late to see the trees blanketed in pink and white blossoms; by now, the sidewalks and streets were littered in their fallen petals.

I was just in time, though, for the height of tulip season.  About a fifteen minute walk from where I used to live, the "tulip garden," as we called it, was in the height of its glory.

What a joy it was to walk barefoot through the lush grass, soaking in the rays of evening sunshine and admiring the stunning beds of thousands upon thousands of tulips of all colors, shapes, and sizes.

Of course, I couldn't spend my whole weekend in the garden.  Sometimes, I had to leave, and then I got to eat.  Some meals were more memorable for the company than the food: lunch from the library coffee shop or at the dining hall featured great conversation and mediocre eating.  But other times, the food was every bit as good as the company.  Freshly baked bread, goat cheese, and juicy red grapes made a perfect light dinner my first night in town, especially when paired with a margarita, courtesy of Kayla and her sisters with their Chipotle burritos.  Blue corn cakes from One World Cafe, the local eclectic nearly-vegan eatery, were nearly crunchy from the blue corn meal, and delicious when drowned in syrup, served in an Absolut vodka bottle.  Ripe, succulent Virginia strawberries bought at the farmer's market Saturday morning were dripping with juice, ready at a moment's notice to jump out of the crepes I made and onto my shirt, leaving a legacy of bright red stains. 

But most of all, I want to tell you about dinner on Friday and Saturday night.  Friday, I cooked with my friend Victoria.  We met my second day on campus, when we were both involved with a pre-orientation Habitat for Humanity project.  At some point during the first semester, we started cooking dinner together once weekly.  In February of my freshman year, when I got hooked on Grey's Anatomy with the episode that followed the Super Bowl (how could they leave us hanging with Meredith's hand on a bomb inside a patient???), we started cooking our dinners on Sunday nights before we watched Grey's.  When, a couple years later, Grey's got moved to its current Thursday evening slot, so did our dinners.

For the better part of five years, nearly every week we got together to cook dinner and watch Grey's and, when it came along, Private Practice.  Since I moved back to Michigan last fall, we hadn't had the chance to cook together for about eight months - not since we happened to overlap on visits to Paris last September.  Clearly, we were long overdue.  We whipped up a salad and some herb-and-goat cheese stuffed chicken breasts, sopping up the juices with hunks of baguette.  We chased everything down with glasses of a mediocre rosé, and finished with slices of leftover chili-chocolate birthday cake, soaked in chocolatey evaporated milk, just for good measure.  It felt so right to be there, eating dinner and watching Grey's together, almost as if no time had passed at all.  Watching Grey's by myself at home the next week, I was struck by just how sad that felt.

Saturday evening, I went out to dinner to a spot I've been meaning to get to for over a year: Iggie's Pizza.  It's a fun place, friendly, informal, BYOB, in the heart of the Mount Vernon neighborhood.  But most importantly, I had heard some terrific things about their pies, and I wasn't disappointed. 

I went to dinner with Annie, with whom I was staying for the weekend, and the inestimable Kate.  Between us, we ordered two large pizzas: the Cipolla, topped with onions confit, fresh mozzerella, fresh ricotta, and pancetta, and the Alice, covered with pesto, fresh mozzarella, fresh tomatoes, garlic-sauteed spinach, goat cheese, and a little parmigiana.  The Cipolla was good: the onions preserved onions nearly winey, a perfect tart foil to the rich, creamy, luscious ricotta.  The pancetta brought a new dimension with its salty bite in contrast to the sweeter elements.  The Alice, however, was fantastic.

The pesto was rich and fresh, the spinach perfectly sauteed.  The three cheeses played off each other nicely.  The tomato wasn't great, but then it wasn't in season, so that's no surprise.  The layers of fresh and bright and savory flavors played off each other perfectly, and the thin, crisp crust brought a satisfying crunch to the bite.

There are a number of great spots to eat in Baltimore, and Iggie's certainly makes the cut.  Highly recommended.

After dinner, I went to Kate's apartment for the night and didn't end up leaving until nearly 10 pm the next evening.  But unfortunately, that story will have to wait for another day.  In the meantime, I'll leave you as I am: dreaming of tulips:

Cakes for Kegs (and Dad)

This weekend I was in Baltimore for a few days for a college reunion.  It was fantastic to be back, and I'll have more to say about what I did - and ate - soon.  But for me, visiting Baltimore is about so much more than what actually happens.  There are memories just waiting to be remembered on every street corner: the lazy afternoon spent roasting a whole goat on the grill on the freshman quad; the frigid night the local Chipotle opened, when I waited in line for an hour on the street - in flip flops, as the first snow of the season fell - to get a free burrito with a group of friends; the convivial dinner parties held in a tiny efficiency apartment, with waste baskets flipped upside down to provide additional seating.  There are so many good stories, but the one I want to tell you today is about cake.

It seems to me that everyone has their own chocolate cake recipe that they swear by.  Mine once got me in a cake-off. 

My sophomore year of college, I won the love of the sophomore guys on my swim team by dropping off the excess of my nearly weekly cookie baking sessions at their dorm room suite.  At some point in the spring, my friend JR, one of the lucky, cookie-engorged inhabitants of that suite, told me he made a mean chocolate cake.  Having been baking chocolate cakes for every birthday in my family since about age 14, I countered that I made a damn fine chocolate cake myself.  You might think that, given my evident frequent baking practice, JR would have been intimidated.  But he wasn't going down without a fight - his cake had chocolate pudding in the batter, he told me, and that made it extra moist.  What's a girl to do?  Clearly, we needed a cake-off to decide whose chocolate cake was best, once and for all.

It just so happened that he and five swimmer friends were about to move into brand-newly rented row house that boasted not one but two kitchens, both complete with ovens (after two years of baking in a toaster oven in the dorms, that was the ultimate essence of luxury to me).  And then it just so happened that one of those soon-to-be-roommates, an affable guy who went by the nickname "Kegs" (an abbreviation of his last name, not an inference to his affinity for beer), had a birthday coming up in a few weeks.  So the stage was set: we would break in the kitchens and bake our cakes in honor of Kegs' birthday.  We would make an event of it, inviting our teammates over to eat and judge.  And the event would be called, of course, Cakes for Kegs.

It was kind of a pain cooking in an empty kitchen in a house soon to be occupied by six college boys (though considering the layer of perpetual grime that would cover every surface of that house just a few months later, much better to bake at the beginning than the end).  Every ingredient and tool had to be carefully considered, packed, and carried over before the competition could start.  But nothing would deter us - not even the need to study for the finals coming up in a week or two.  And so it was that on a warm day in early May, I lugged overstuffed bags of bowls, cake pans, a hand mixer, eggs, butter, and mismatched tupperware containers holding carefully measured quantities of flour and brown sugar down the sunny, verdant street to the house.

As I set up shop in the second floor kitchen, JR's sous-chef David kept creeping up the stairs to poke his nose in and "check on how I was doing."  I was too discerning for his veiled attempts at espionage; I let no secrets slip, beating eggs and sugar and melted chocolate together like a spy on a secret culinary mission.  It was pleasant work, and became even pleasanter when those luxurious ovens were filled with five layers-worth of cake, blanketing the house in a thick, rich chocolate aroma.

JR's cake was done sooner than mine was - he used canned frosting, and only had two layers to cover - but when I caught up, we let our teammates know it was time to eat.  They descended upon the cakes like locusts on a field of grain, and it didn't take long before we were scraping the serving platters for the last remaining smudges.  There was no formal voting - actually, I think most of the team thought they were just there to eat, not to judge - but a number of people (including, I might add, JR) came up to me to tell me they preferred my version.  But really, espionage and friendly banter aside, it was less of a competition and more of an excuse to eat cake.  (And anyway, I totally won, but I don't like to brag.)

Kegs' birthday is coming up in a few days, and though I haven't seen him in a couple years now (not since he moved out west to start his PhD at Stanford - what a slacker), I wish him well.  But the cake I made today isn't for Kegs.  Today is my Dad's birthday, and this cake is for him.

Happy birthday, Dad!  Sorry I only baked you one cake.  Maybe next year we'll go to Baltimore for your birthday and have a competition.