Pete’s making turkey stock and our house smells beyond fantastic, by about thirty feet.
And Sing It With Me
Category Archives: compote something
Many Fantasies Were Learned On That Day
Awhile back, my stepsister Anya was talking and I was sort of half-listening because – shaaaa! – when I suddenly heard something worth hearing. It was like, “Blah blah blah that’s like my aunt says, ‘Why would anybody use a brownie mix when they’re so easy to make from scratch?'” I filed that idea away: brownies are not just easy to make, but super-easy. I almost wish I’d been listening, although that would have involved effort or something.
Still hot, like me.
Today is my birthday and, for my birthday, I decided to learn how to make brownies from scratch. The old Joy Of Cooking has a few pages on brownies and the steps looked pretty simple, so I dragged out the cupcake pan and gave it a go. It’s easy! It’s like suddenly having a new magic power! Why the cupcake pan? you ask. Because with great power comes great responsibility, like knowing to stop eating these delicious things after a modest five or six.
To Someone Who Is Very
What can you do with the last of your holiday leftovers? Make pizza – in this case, ham, spinach, goat cheese and cranberry sauce, which was very damn delicious.
Getting Better All the Time
A few years ago, Pete and I started saving beef bones, chicken, duck and turkey carcasses and all sorts of vegetable ends for stocks. During the winters, when everyone stays home and farts, simmering stocks humidify the house and freshen up stale smells. During the summer, though, simmering stocks and boiling them a second time to jar in New Jersey tends to make a body feel sweaty and homicidal. We needed stocks for good meals and to make the most of our hard-won resources, so skipping the step and moving directly to the cocktail hour was out of the question. We needed a better system.
Shrimp stock, vegetable stock, still steaming.
During the summers, we freeze our ends, bones and carcasses. Once the weather cools off, we make stocks, use some and pressure can the rest. Our house is more humid and smells better. No one is extra-murdery. We make excellent use of expensive foodstuffs, first in a meal, then in leftovers, then in stocks. If the stock is vegetarian, the used vegetables can go into the composter to later enrich our soils and gardens. Today, we jarred three quarts of shrimp and three more of vegetable stock. Our future meals will be better. The house smells far less farty than in other Decembers. It’s a total win-win. Bonus: soup!
The Hot Wind On My Shoulder
Shhh! Don’t tell the poor darling it gets the axe in the morning and tomorrow night: stuffed cabbage feast!
Those Eyes I Wonder
Our red currant vodka is aging gracefully in the cool, dark place where we put it and forgot about it. Yay memory loss!
Where People Play Games With the Night
Jarring simple applesauce for babies, cinnamony applesauce for big kids and spicy stuff for our winter potato latkes and pirogies. Tonight, I finally sat down just before 10. This is how I make December holiday gifts for the grandchildren of those wolves that raised me.
Way Back In the Middle Of
Pete pours the first round of what’s probably the last batch of the season’s tomato sauce. Next stop on our mad spree: apples.
I Like Toast And Jam
Mom called and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and talked and finally, I said, “Okay, Mom. Pete and I will go pick figs.” As I hung up the phone, I immediately forgot about this until after dinner, when the sun was setting. Pete put on his shoes and we took credit cards and ID, in case we were also getting arrested. We drove over to Mom’s house in the dark. Pete brought two flashlights. I brought a colander and lefthanded scissors, because the hometown police would know that – obviously – no one brings lefthanded scissors to a B & E.
The fig tree is as tall as I am, about seven feet wide, with branches low to the ground. I have no attention span, so trying to judge the ripeness of each and every fig was tricky. Pete has even less of an attention span, so he must’ve said, “Look at that one!” half a dozen times, which might’ve been charming if it didn’t leave me totally in the dark. But then his cell rang when I was about one-third of the way around the tree and he put the flashlights under his arm to tell whoever it was that he couldn’t talk. My lefthanded scissors were sticky by then and definitely had my fingerprints on them and no one would have believed we had a terrible fig-picking accident, so Pete remained unstabbed. Naturally, there was no time tonight to write a churlish blog post. You get this picture from our bike ride through Colonial Park on Sunday, where we rode bikes over a Walk Bikes Over Bridge-bridge because: rebels! somewhere in East Millstone that runs into Amwell Road. I was good and lost then; now I have figs. Bon appetit!
It’s idyllic, right? Wish I had a sandwich.
You’re Gonna Shock the Monkey
I learned a whole lot on Saturday afternoon. First: I boiled some of the larger potatoes we grew, slid them out of their skins and – following the directions of Marcella Hazan, Italian food queen – put them through the food mill. Then the learning began. Marcella said to mill them directly onto the work surface. It seemed awkward, but I threw some AP flour on the work surface and started milling. Three potato halves later, I was like, ‘Torturing myself is fun and all, but I need a way to stand this thing above this surface. If only I had a sturdy tube.’ I rested the food mill on top of the empty angel food form et voila! The food mill produced a whole lot more potato than I expected. Marcella’s recipe uses only potato and AP flour. The potato had nice flavor, so I went with it. I kneaded the flour and potato and it became a dough. I cut it into quarters and rolled it into long tubes. I tried out cutting 3/4 inch bits but they seemed large. Smaller turned out to be better. I have a gnocchi form and at first using it was strange, but very quickly I learned a smooth motion. That by itself was very encouraging. I put the formed gnocchi on a 1/2 sheet pan lined with wax paper and dusted with AP flour. The filled tray went into the freezer, for a little extra insurance. Later, we dropped them into boiling salted water and they came back to the top immediately. I expected this to take a few minutes, but no. Steve was concerned about how soft they were so were plated them directly from the boiling water. He mixed the gnocchi with sauce very carefully. The texture was extremely light but too light. Steve remembered that his grandmother would rice the potatoes and let them dry for a few hours or overnight.
I made terrible gnocchi! From scratch!
To summarize:
1. Station the food mill over an empty angel food pan and a base of AP flour.
2. Mill potatoes and let ’em get some air.
3. Add salt.
4. Roll the dough smaller than you want to and cut the little chunks small.
5. You WILL get the forming motion, so quit whining.
6. Some time on a lined, floured cookie sheet in the freezer helps.
I had worried this would be hard to do, but it is not. It is completely easy. Can’t wait to try again.
Poor Impulse Control 