Summer of Jim

Every other restaurant in this town serves some form of deviled eggs.  I don’t know why these people think their deviled eggs would be better than your grandmas’.   The eggs are free range and the pickled acoutrement is organic and handcrafted but those elements don’t make them taste better than my Granny’s or Aunt Shirley’s and they certainly don’t taste better than mine.  But for some reason someone at your table will insist upon ordering them and pay $8 for three egg halves.  Jaded at this point, I’d rather see a more interesting turn on Southern staples, like deviled ham that tastes remotely palatable, let alone delicious. Hugh Acheson actually does that.  Or a transcendent ham biscuit.

It’s like living a stereotype, so you can imagine my shock when I opened this spring’s edition of the Garden & Gun showcasing a new deviled egg recipe.  I was tempted to roll my eyes but Jim insisted that this was a recipe we needed to do.  So he did.  And he’s worked to refine the recipe and he was right, it’s a real winner.  They disappear faster than the traditional ones.  And dare I say it’s a recipe you need to have, not to replace Grandma’s but as an alternate, a better one at that.  

Deviled Eggs with Sriracha and Smoked Salmon - Adapted from Trevor Higgins - Serves 30

2 dozen eggs

3/4 cup mayonnaise 

3 tsp. whole grain mustard

6 tbs. Sriracha sauce

3 tsp. rendered bacon fat

2 oz. smoked salmon

3-4 sprigs tarragon

s+p

1/4 cup vinegar

Place the eggs in a deep pot and cover with water, add in the vinegar.  Bring the water to a boil, let boil for 1 minute, then turn off the burner and let the eggs sit covered for 12 minutes.  When finished cooking plunge the eggs in to an ice bath for 5 minutes, then peel the eggs.  Halve the eggs lengthwise and remove the yolks.  Combine the yolks, mayo, mustard and bacon fat, season with salt and pepper.  Fill a piping bag or a sandwich bag with a corner cut off and fill the egg halves with the filling.  Top with a small sliver of smoked salmon and a tarragon leaf. 

Summer of Eggplant Part III, Revenge of Eggplant

When I started this blog it was not my intent to feature an eggplant recipe every year.  The story behind the name is a different one than that of an innate love of eggplant.  But it has become expected of me and I guess I can do my best to help a vegetable (fruit actually) out.  This particular vegetable seems to have some pretty bad PR, even worse than the other ones.  This year’s eggplant installment is sponsored by Georgia Tech.  

The other day Jim, the kids and I were dining in the student center at Tech prior to our son’s drama camp play.  Like any food court it had a UN worthy assortment of ‘ethnic’ foods.  I got grocery store style sushi, the kids got some sort of imitation Chinese food swimming in sugar and sodium and Jim, functioning fully out of character, went Middle Eastern.  Now, the gyro or Middle Eastern food wasn’t so out of character, it was the side of baba ganoush that was off.  Stuffed grape leaves would have been in character but not eggplant dip.  He met me at the check out line pleased with himself ‘Tabbouleh and baba ganoush!’  Big smile. Unfortunately it was a truly insipid baba ganoush and I didn’t see any tabbouleh.  It was the sort eggplant dish that encourages people to hate eggplant.  It had the texture of baby food and it was beige except for the flecks of, was it carrots?  

So when I came home to a clean and empty house, save for two very exhausted dogs, I took the opportunity to work on the blog (and do laundry).  I tried to think of items I wanted to blog about but I could not get that bad baba ganoush out of my head.  I knew I had an eggplant dip recipe somewhere and it needed a day out.

Eggplant Dip 

1-1 lb. eggplant

3 tablespoons basil

Juice of 1 lemon

2 teaspoons tahini

2 tablespoons harissa

2-3 garlic cloves, blanched or roasted

3 tablespoons olive oil, divided

salt

Slice the eggplant in to 1” slices, place in a colander and sprinkle liberally with salt and rest for about 20 minutes. Rinse or wipe off the salt and leave to dry on paper towels for about 10 minutes. Meanwhile preheat the oven to 375. Pat the eggplant dry again. Oil a baking sheet and brush the eggplant slices with half of the olive oil. Bake for about 30 minutes or until the slices are golden brown and the the interior is soft. Let eggplant cool. 

Place the eggplant and the remaining ingredients in a food processor and pulse until just combined.  Serve at room temperature with a bland cracker.  I prefer the olive oil variety.

Note:  I use this recipe for harissa, you can use store bought or whichever harissa recipe you prefer.  If you make it, it keeps for about a month in a tightly sealed container in the fridge.  It’s also really good on eggs.

You do not have to blanch or roast the garlic.  If you read this blog with any regularity, you know I cannot tolerate raw garlic, but if you can, by all means go ahead.  If blanching or roasting seems like too much effort there is the microwave.  I’ll deny I told you to do so, but about 8 seconds in the old micro should do it, or so I’ve heard.

Cocktail Surprise

I love cocktail food.  I really don’t think there is a better meal than a bite of this and a bite of that.  One of our favorite date nights is to go to the drive-in and have a one bite cocktail snack  picnic in the parking lot.  We bring meat, cheese, stuffed grape leaves, hummus, veggies, crackers, fruit, assorted dips and wine.  And in the shadow of the largest land fill in Atlanta we classy up that broken down parking lot. 

Now Christmas time is just the best for this type of ‘dining’.  With all the holiday parties I can actually make cocktail food a steady diet for almost a month.  I love it, I totally look forward to it.  Prior to each party I imagine what will be served.  I am secretly gunning for some monument to cheese, a mayonnaisy goop pretending to have sophistication, a seafood assortment (sushi, shrimp cocktail, stone crab claws, I’m not picky) and a surprise.  I do like to be surprised, the same old artichoke dip gets real old after week 1 of the holiday party circuit.  Creativity is important and certainly appreciated, because I am certainly going to rate the cocktail snacks after the party.

I’m alway planning cocktail themed party menus.  They don’t ever happen but dreaming up platters of one bite snacks and dips gives me no end of pleasure.  For instance, let’s just delve in to the archives of daydreaming here.  Chicken mole skewers, tuna croquetas, tortilla espanola (cut in to bit sized pieces) and a crudite with chimmichurri and creamy jalapeno sauces.  Or mini cornbread muffins, ham biscuits with Vidalia onion jam, pickled shrimp, peach/goat cheese/basil crostini and cole slaw spring rolls.  Dear God.  Cole slaw spring rolls?  

For reasons I won’t go in to 1.3 lbs. of ground turkey showed up in our fridge.  I’ve never cooked with ground turkey nor did I desire to, I just didn’t want to waste food.  In fact I’m firmly of the belief that we could all eat something tastier than turkey on Thanksgiving.  Don’t act so shocked.  People act like they are so excited about this bird and a day later bemoan it’s existence. Seems a little fickle.  Not only that, you spend at least 2 days worrying and working with this bird only to get what?  A slightly less than mediocre slice of meat that is more than likely dry?  Even on its best day wouldn’t you rather have a pork chop? I would.  Ground turkey really is tofu for people who are squeamish about tofu.  It’s always pinch hitting for ground pork and ground beef: turkey burgers, turkey meatloaf, turkey bolognese.  Who wants to eat that?  Why bother, just make it vegetarian. 

So back to the box of blandness boring the crap out of the other foods in my fridge.  I’m not sure where this came from, perhaps a Bridget Jones flashback, but I decided to make turkey curry meatballs.  I’ll say this, these are pretty darned good but I won’t be apologizing to this bird anytime soon like I did the chicken. 

Jim was out of town when I made them so I had a cocktail party of one; I ate them standing up in the kitchen with a glass of wine, or maybe two.  Now I’m going to have plan a party menu around my new cocktail snack. 

Curry Turkey Meatballs with Sriracha Mayo - Makes about 2 dozen meatballs

Meatballs

1 1/3 lbs. of ground turkey

2 1/2 teaspoons of curry powder (I use Penzey’s Singapore Seasoning)

1 large egg

3 tablespoons of panko

1” hunk of ginger, minced

1 green onion, sliced lengthwise and chopped

1 shallot, minced

Juice of 1/2 a lime

1/2 red jalapeno, minced

1 tablespoon parsley, chopped
Vegetable oil


Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a pan over a medium-low heat, add the shallot and ginger and saute for 2 minutes.  Add in the onion and the pepper and continue to cook for about 5 more minutes.  The purpose is to get everything soft but not crispy.  Remove from the heat.  Meanwhile mix together the egg, turkey, curry powder, panko and lime juice.  When the onions, pepper and ginger have cooled add them to the mixture and make 1" meat balls.  Wipe out the pan and add another 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil over a medium-high heat.  Working in batches (about 3 so you don't over crowd the pan) cook the meat balls until they are cooked through, about 7 minutes.

Sriracha Mayo (from Midge at food52.com)


1/2 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 teaspoons sriracha sauce


Combine all the ingredients and serve with the meatballs.

Notes:  The mayonnaise recipe is from Midge at food52.com.  She pairs it with her winning recipe for okonomiyaki, which are absolutely fabulous and a regular visitor to our dining table.  You can click here for her recipe.

Road Vittles

One summer in college I shared an apartment with my boyfriend and several of his friends.  Living with 3 college-aged men was not as challenging or disgusting (minus a very contained experiment in the bathroom I will not go in to) as one might anticipate.  For the most part they were all fairly neat, everyone paid their bills on time and all were oddly domestic.  Everyone took turns cooking dinner.  And the dinners were affairs.  We cooked dinner. It took several hours, it involved numerous courses. Thanks to my roommate Luke’s discovery, often we would crawl up a chute, out a window and enjoy those dinners on the roof of our 4-plex over-looking downtown North Bennington, Vermont, which if you have ever travelled to North B know consists of an intersection with a stop sign.  But it is quaint and it looks like Vermont.

Dinner became pretty multi-cultural affairs in that apartment; J.P. grew up in Belguim, Andy’s dad was from Greece, Luke’s parents were from Japan, and then there was me.  Luke, of course, made the most interesting dinners.  It wasn’t sushi and it certainly wasn’t on the menu at Bennihanna.  He made dishes his mother made which I’ll dare to call Japanese comfort food by way of the many other influences of Flushing, Queens, where he grew up.  Luke could cook.  And we became those people, the ones that buy the kitty litter sized bag of rice so large you cannot put it on a shelf; you must stack it in a corner like a piece of furniture.  Luke even took a trip to New York specifically to get the rice and a few other staples.  Oddly he seemed surprised that he missed these things.  I can’t speak for Luke but I know his relationship with his parents was strained at the time.  I suspect that by simply cooking, he was finding that perhaps they had more in common than he thought and actually missed them.  You could see it in his face and you could hear it when he described what we were going to eat.  He wasn’t just cooking dinner.

One weekend Andy, Luke and I decided to take a road trip to Burlington to visit Andy’s sister.  Prior to leaving Luke surprise packed us some snacks for the road.  We started our trip up Route 7.  I remember this trip well.  I drove; Andy entertained us with Bible tales from the perspective of a young man who would eventually get a PhD in folklore.  It was fascinating and Luke passed out snacks from the back seat; onigiri (or rice balls).  Luke’s were a little smaller than a tennis ball and they were fully covered in nori and perfectly shaped.  Luke explained that this is what his mother would pack for road trips; the insides are a surprise but were usually filled with fairly common ingredients, like tuna fish or vegetables with soy sauce.  I don’t think Andy or I had ever been so charmed by a snack.   We ate them all almost immediately, curious to find out what was in the center.

You can put whatever you like in the center and take them on your next road trip.

Avocado Onigiri - makes about 10

4 cups cooked sushi rice

1/2 of an avocado, sliced in to 1/2” pieces, run under cold water and patted dry

2 sheets of toasted nori, cut in to 1/2” strips

2 tablespoons Kewpie mayo

1/2 teaspoon grated ginger

sesame seeds

Stir the ginger into the mayonnaise. Prepare a wide bowl full of salted water, this is for your hands so the rice doesn’t stick to them.  Place a 12” x 12” piece of cling wrap in the center of a small bowl with it. Sprinkle in some sesame seeds. Grab a golf ball sized amount of rice, shape it in to a ball and flatten it and place it in the bowl.  Put two 1/2” avocado slices in the center and a small dot of the mayonnaise.  Grab a tablespoon amount of the rice and put it on top of the filling.  Pull up the sides of the cling wrap and shape the contents into a ball.  Remove.  Get your fingers wet in the water and drip a little on to the nori strip then make a belt around the rice ball with the nori.  Repeat.

Chee Whiz

Everyone has some dirty food secret.  Some processed nastiness they can (or more than likely cannot) admit to liking.  I don’t care what kind of food hipster you are, you’ve got a hang up:  Kraft mac-n-cheese, Hostess pink plastic sno-balls, baloney on Wonder bread, a Taco Bell addiction, something.  Children, however, are less discriminating.

Last summer I promised the kids ‘junk food Saturday’.  If you read this blog regularly you know this is breaking all the rules for me. But the great thing about kids is you get to re-live some of your own childhood and rediscover some of the confections you may have forgotten on your way to middle age.  Jim was out of town on an annual business trip to Chicago and I was looking for a new angle on entertainment.  The mid-summer 98 degree heat certainly did not encourage the kids to get out their bikes and ride around the park.  So ‘junk food Saturday’ was christened:  the kids were each allowed one manufactured snack they are normally prohibited from eating and two movies.   The PJs would stay on and after a heathy breakfast the sloth would begin!

First we had to pick their poisons and these selections did not come easily.  Picking which item of forbidden junk takes an epic amount of time and emotional investment.  Apparently, over the past 30+ years, I had failed to see that the grocery store is nose to tail filled with Vegas style flashy food crap. The kids almost had nervous breakdowns from the pressure.  There was nail biting, bargaining and almost tears.  It was UN negotiation worthy. Finally after the threat of no junk food Saturday decisions were made.  The results: our son picked some waxy brown rectangle imitating a pastry and our daughter selected two tone pop tarts of a flavor not found in nature.  I selected crab chips.  

A couple months ago the kids started trash talking what they were going to eat for junk food Saturday this year.  Our son had even remembered the actual date and placed it firmly on his mental calendar.  The lists started to get long, clearly they had been thinking about this for the past eight months, like a Christmas list, only oddly more detailed than their Christmas lists.  As the train picked up momentum Jim could hold back his inner Ohio no more.  He chimed in, ‘Well, we are going to change the date of junk food Saturday this year so I can participate!  We’ll do it the week before I go to Chicago AND I am going to pick out the best stuff, not that old lady stuff you amateurs select.  Oh yeah!  In fact,’ He was revving up now ‘In fact, this year we are all going to be allowed to get two things instead of just one!  Yup.’  He beamed from across the table with a grin that said ‘I’ll show you who knows how to have a good time’.  He had upped the ante and affectively lost his mind.  Squeals of delight.  

‘Well then, I’m sure you will be happy to take the kids on that trip to the grocery store.’ I guess I got wrapped up in the emotion as well because I continued with ‘And I’ll place my order now: EZ cheez and a bag of Chex mix.  And I plan to take that EZ cheez and squirt it into a ball and roll it in the Chex mix and pop it in my mouth.  That will be my snack.’  Three sets of eyes blinking at me from the dinner table. Finally our daughter offered a very small ‘Ew?’ Followed by our son ‘Yeah, ew.’ and Jim ‘Who are you?’  ‘EZ cheez, it’s delicious.  Kids do you know what it is?  It’s a can and you squirt it like, well, like a whipped cream can and a cheese product comes out.  Some people squirt it on crackers but some people...’ Jim finished my sentence ‘squirt it directly in their mouths.’  Larger ‘Ews’ all around.

EZ cheez was my Dad’s dirty little processed food secret. I can honestly say with the exception of the EZ cheez I have never seen my Dad eat anything more processed than a pretzel.  My Dad is no hippie, he missed that generation by a generation and he certainly doesn’t buy in to all this slow food (as he would say, ‘horse-shit’), but he is the original whole foods man. And it’s probably and quite simply because when he was a kid such things did not exist.  If he wants a snack he eats peanuts or pistachios.  He doesn’t even eat cereal.  But he likes EZ cheez.  He has a traditional pastime of sitting on the couch drinking wine while writing a book about wine and watching Monday Night Football with the cat on his lap squeezing that EZ cheez onto a club cracker, and of course, occasionally straight in to his mouth.  How could you resist?

And the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree.  The other day I made the mistake of going to Trader Joe’s hungry.  I came home with something called ‘Pub cheese’.  It should have been called ‘tub cheez’ because that’s what it was; a tub of EZ cheez with some horseradish.  It was de-freaking-licious.  Jim had a hard time staying out of it too.

So I have a very easy cheese recipe, but it’s elegant and comes with a Jaques Pepin pedigree. I came across this in Food & Wine years ago and it solves many problems.  First; what to do with all those tiny bits of leftover cheese in the fridge.  And second; how to make a ‘wow‘ appetizer in no time.  I find it works best with part stinky cheese, like blue, part creamy, like goat or fontina and a little salty cheese, like parmesan or feta.  But any combination of cheese scraps will work fine.  

Frommage Fort - from Jaques Pepin

1 cup cheeses, shredded or crumbled

3 garlic cloves (I roast mine first because I do not like the sharp taste of garlic)

1/4 cup dry white wine

pepper

Roast the garlic. I place them in a 350 oven tossed with a little olive oil and roast for 15 minutes.  Mince the garlic.  Place cheeses, wine, pepper and garlic in a food processor and process until smooth, about 30 seconds.  Fill two 4 ounce ramekins with the mixture, place on a cake sheet and place in the broiler for about three minutes or until bubbly and browned.  Serve with table water crackers or crostini.

Click here for the original recipe.

Starting Over

I’m back.  Yet another winter delay.  However, even if I had found a way to light the blog I’m not sure I could have found the time; Jim and I have been quite busy the past 6 months.  We have been to Mississippi, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Indiana, Illinois, California, Germany, France, Luxembourg, the British Virgin Islands and Florida. 

And you know we ate our faces off everywhere we went. Hamburgers in Mississippi. Restaurant August and La Petite Grocery in New Orleans. Frogmore stew with the family in South Carolina. Spiny lobsters, snapper ceviche, plantains and the ubiquitous conch fritters in Tortola.  Macarons in Luxembourg.  Sausage this, currywurst that, a pork chop here and a pork loaf there, and, yes, lots of beer, in Germany. 

We also bought a new house in the interim as well.  Moving created some culinary challenges.  Well, to be honest, I created them for myself.  Just to add a little thrill factor to the challenge of moving at some point I stopped going to the grocery store.  I was determined we would eat as much of our existing pantry as possible, lest we have to pack and move it.  Everyone was warned ‘If you bring it in this house you better eat it.’  I also found out in the moving process that apparently I am a condiment hoarder.  My refrigerator door contained exactly 2 tablespoons of condiments from about 30 countries. Of course these condiments were not housed in 2 tablespoon vessels.  I managed to break up with my condiment collection.

Needless to say with all of this going on I haven’t really been cooking like myself.  And I don’t know what that means, I just know I haven’t been doing it.  So I am ready to refocus, or as Jim likes to call it ‘Summer of I have to wait 10 minutes for my dinner to be photographed before I can eat it.’  

So, I started with an old favorite that I have not made in about a year. After Jim patiently waited for the photography he deemed it ‘a tasty little snack’.

Grilled Mango Bruschetta – Makes 16-20 pieces

1 Baguette

2 Mangos

2 Garlic cloves, sliced in half lengthwise

1 ½ cups Fontina, grated

¼ cup Basil, chopped

Olive oil

Honey or Agave Nectar

Maldon, Fleur de Sel or some type of sea salt

Pre-heat the broiler.  Set up a charcoal grill for direct heat grilling.  Oil the grill grate.  Slice the baguette on the bias.  Peel the mango and slice in to large chunks to keep them from falling through the grate of the grill.  Toss the mango with about 1.5 tablespoons of olive oil.

Place the bread slices on a baking sheet, rub them with the garlic halves then brush lightly with olive oil.  Place them in the broiler until lightly toasted, this was 1.5 minutes for my broiler but I recommend checking the bread every 30 seconds to make sure it does not burn.  Remove the bread from oven and set aside.  When the grill is hot, it takes my grill about ½ an hour to get hot (we use a Weber kettle with mesquite briquettes) put the mango on and grill for about 2 minutes per side until nice char marks appear and the mango is slightly cooked but not falling apart.

Remove the mango from the grill and slice in to ¼” slices.  Place 2 slices of mango on each toast, top with Fontina and return to the broiler for another 90 seconds (or whatever it take for the cheese to become bubbly).  Remove from the oven and top with basil, drizzle some honey or agave nectar then sprinkle with a bit of sea salt.  Serve immediately.

CSA Dilemma

Our friends are vacationing for 10 days in London; we are watching their Chihuahua, Roadie. Roadie is not your typical Chihuahua; he's a lover not a fighter. He's friendly, he's ridiculously cute, missing his tail and he does this funny little shake with his left paw when he's walking fast. Roadie is something of, shall we say, a Don Juan. He has no problems sleeping with strangers. I know because he spent the night curled up on Jim's sister's pillow after having met her 2 hours before. The next morning he casually trotted out of the bedroom at 10 AM. If his parents take him to a party my money says by the end of the night Roadie will be situated in a pretty girl's lap and she will be feeding him pinch after pinch of barbecue. The dog's social mores aside, our reward for hanging out with Roadie is that we get our friends' CSA baskets while they are away.

I have been bugging Jim about participating in a CSA for years and he's been hesitant. I suspect based on up front cost, stringent rules and in spite of his title of Mr. Spontaneous, the unknown factor of the basket contents. The first CSA basket arrived chock full of everything, enormous amounts of organic fruits, veggies and popcorn? I could barely carry it. Jim was so excited when he saw this windfall of food he washed everything one at a time and displayed them on our counter Cezanne-like only with 30x more food than Cezanne would have used. He took a picture and posted it to his Facebook. Feel free to check out his still life. He then jumped in and made us dinner making a small dent in the mountain of food.

The next day Jim went to California and I went to New York. When I returned 2 days later the food mountain was still there staring at me. I didn't know where to start, which I suspect, participants in CSAs across the country go through weekly. It was like a Chopped basket except without the cotton candy or the bison sausage, still equally baffling. It had items I cook with often, like butternut squash and sweet potatoes, it also had slightly eccentric cousins to other loved vegetables, like white radishes, but it also had an over abundance of items I rarely use, such as green peppers.

I'm not the biggest green pepper fan; while I don't dislike them and I'll gladly eat them, I don't seek them out either. I find green peppers misappropriated quite often. A giant chunk thoughtlessly plopped on a salad. Or constantly paired with onions, the perpetual wingman. Unlike peanut butter and jelly, who seem to do fine without one another, green peppers don't seem to have much of a social life without onions. I really like other types of bell pepper. Isn't there more for this vegetable? So I thought, well, what about green pepper Harissa? And you know what? It works.

The green peppers also came with Anaheim peppers and jalapeños. Surely you could use any type of pepper that appeals to you.

Green Pepper Harissa

4 small or 2 large green bell peppers

3 Anaheim peppers

3 jalapeños or 1 large

1.5 teaspoons caraway seeds, toasted

1.5 teaspoons cumin seed, toasted

6 +1 tablespoons olive oil

Large pinch of salt

Tiny pinch of cinnamon

1/2 cup cilantro leaves

Juice of 1/2 lemon

Pre-heat broiler. Place peppers and garlic on a baking sheet, sprinkle with salt and drizzle with about 1 tablespoon olive oil. Roast the peppers in the broiler. Time will depend upon your broiler. My broiler is in the top of the oven I placed the peppers about 7" from the flames, my broiler is not particularly potent and it took me 5 minutes rotating the peppers every minute. Keep your eye on anything in the broiler at all times. The garlic may finish sooner.

Place the peppers in a paper bag for about 5 minutes. Making sure they are cool enough to handles peel the skins off of the peppers. Slice them in half and discard the seeds and stem. This should make about 2 cups of roasted peppers.

Put the peppers, spices, cilantro and 2 tablespoons of olive oil in the food processor, process and stream in the remaining 4 tablespoons of olive oil until desired consistency. Finish with lemon juice.

Notes: Use as you would regular Harissa. I'm showing it as a dip but we also marinated and baked chicken in it. It's also great on eggs.

Fall Cloud

Last summer we took the kids to a Braves game. We took our seats in the outfield; Jim and I were happily situated with gigundo $8 water flavored beers and the kids had just finished off nutritious Turner Field pizza and nachos when the cotton candy man barked by. I asked ‘Kids do you want cotton candy?’ Our son said ‘YES! YES! YES! Cotton candy!‘ Singing now ‘Cotton, cotton candy! Oh, I love cotton candy.’ But our daughter looked at me quizzically and concerned. I’d never seen consternation from this 4 year old. ‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘Well, it’s cotton candy. It’s, it’s it’s...Jim - what is it?’ Confused look. ‘It’s, well it’s basically fluffy sugar and... it’s pink!‘ What an odd question; were we bad parents? She looked at us, blinking, unconvinced. There is nothing that that little girl loves more than sugar and the color pink, except maybe pork products. ‘Your brother is having some. Would your brother eat anything bad?’ ‘No.’ ‘OK, we’ll get one and you two can share.’ Trepidatiously ‘Okaaaay’. Jim flagged the man down and big bag of puffy pink and blue was delivered. She was still very concerned about the contents of that bag. She eyed it and cautiously watched her brother open the bag, dig in and eat it. She continued to blink at the bag. At least Jim is always a man with a plan. He peeled off a piece and held directly in front of her, she leaned in and grabbed it with her mouth. Now, I am going to do my best to describe what happened next. As she grabbed and it started to melt (as cotton candy does) the sensation took her by surprise, she literally shook from head to toe, an all over body spasm, then, she squealed with delight, her eyes lit up, she smiled ear to ear and then she opened her mouth wide for Jim to feed her more. Jim handed her the bag, she ate until her tongue and lips were quite blue from artificial food coloring and she had sufficiently sugared herself out. After the game we all headed home with our little girl still clutching the plastic bag containing the leftover puff of cotton candy. I have never seen such delight over a food stuff.

The other day I was making macaroni and cheese with butternut squash, which is really, really awesome, but not the point of this blog. One of the directions for the mac-n-cheese is to combine the cream and the squash using a food processor or blender but the recipe warns not to over whip the cream or, well, you’ll end up with whipped cream. Well I understood why not, but thought ‘Why not?’. So another day I whipped them together. A few moments with the hand mixer and I had a bowl full of a pouffy orange fluff. I dipped my finger in, cautiously. It was delicious. I didn’t squeal but I did utter an expletive. Maybe it’s not as mind blowing as the cotton candy but it’s really good.

What to do with it? I’ll tell you what I did with it but I’d love to hear what you would do with it.

Fall Flavored Whipped Cream with Fried Herbs - Makes 20-24

1 3-4 pound butternut squash, cut in half

1 cup heavy whipping cream

1 baguette

2 garlic cloves cut in half lengthwise

thyme

sage leaves

1 tablespoon olive oil

vegetable oil

salt + pepper

Pre-heat the oven to 400. Cut the squash in half and remove the seeds. Salt + pepper the squash and drizzle with olive oil. Roast for an hour. Remove from oven and let cool. Scrape the squash from the rind and combine with the cream. Add more salt and pepper if needed. Using a hand mixer whip until fluffy and light.

Pre-heat the broiler. Slice the baguette in to 1/4” rounds, rub the garlic on the bread slices, lightly brush the bread with a very little olive oil. Toast in the oven for 30 seconds, leave the door slightly ajar so you can keep an eye on the bread, do not take your eyes off of the bread until it has been removed from the oven.

Fill a shallow pan with 1/4” of vegetable oil, heat, add in sage and thyme, alternating. The sage will take about a quick count to 10 and the thyme a quick count to 5. Be careful when frying the sage, throw it in and stand back, it will sound like fireworks going off. Apparently thyme contains a lot of water.

Top the crostini with the whipped cream and the fried herbs.

Escar-a-go-go

No those aren’t anemic meatballs, they are snails and they don’t make for a sexy picture. I’m sure if I had stuffed them back in to those decorative shells or scattered some parsley around it might look better, this is the ugly but delicious reality.

Escargot are really quite cheap and very easy to make. I guarantee you will impress all of your friends with your gourmand savvy and Francophilia. The snails are found in a can at the grocery store. Most grocery stores carry them, they are in the supermarket Siberia with the anchovies and sardines teetering way above the tuna fish. They usually cost about $5 for a can of 2 dozen.

Warning - they don’t smell so great when you open the can. Once, after I had just cracked open a can, Jim’s daughter flitted through the kitchen and blithely asked ‘Who tooted?‘ And the dogs always swarm my feet in anticipation, I’m not sure if it’s the can opener or the aroma. They also are not the most attractive looking morsel, they are snails after all.

As for presentation you could mess around with the shells and tongs but mine was an economic decision and really it’s the same thing just in a different wrapper. I got these snail dishes for about $5 a piece at the Cook’s Warehouse. I also put two snails per divot so all 24 snails fit in the two dishes pictured. I put them in the center of the table and everyone shares.

My recipe is adapted from, yet again, Thomas Keller. I, of course, add more booze to the recipe. I also feel you can stretch the recipe further than he suggests, the butter is enough for 4 dozen snails, or two cans. So I will use half and freeze the leftover snail butter and, like last night, in an instant make our house in to a bistro simply by defrosting the butter and opening one of the cans of snails in our pantry. Unexpected company? Snails anyone? I have no sympathy for the snail squeamish, you are missing out, and you’re kind of being a baby.

Escargot - Adapted from Thomas Keller - Serves 4-8 as an appetizer

1 can 2 dozen snails

8 oz. unsalted butter, softened

4-5 garlic cloves, minced

2 teaspoons sea or kosher salt

1/2 cup Italian parsley

2 tablespoons shallots, chopped

1 tablespoon lemon juice

2 tablespoons Pernod

Fresh pepper

Open the can of snails, drain and rinse under cold water. Bring a small pot of water to a boil, put snails in water for 1 minute, the water will just have returned to a boil. Remove snails, drain and rinse again.

Place the remaining ingredients in a food processor and hit ‘on’, turn ‘off’ when fully incorporated. Preheat oven to 450. Place snails in snail shells or in a snail dish or really oven proof ramekins, top each snail with 1-2 teaspoons of snail butter. Place in the oven for 7 minutes, remove, let cool for about 3 minutes before serving. It’s that easy.