Cult Following (AKA the 100 hour meal)

So Jim got me the Momofuku cookbook. My sister had warned that it was un-cookable, an unfriendly and over-involved cookbook. Jim has been hot to eat at Noodle Bar for years and since he has not yet had the opportunity and with no trip to New York planned anytime soon he hopped over to the bookstore. He happened to open the cookbook to a page with recipes for refrigerator pickles and thought to himself ‘this is easy’. He brought it home, presented it to me as a gift and got excited about our new project together.

Our project began this week. I’ll start by saying David Chang makes Thomas Keller look like a complete amateur when it comes to the number of sub-recipes you must make to produce a dish. His bowl of ramen = 10 sub-recipes. Not joking. Not smiling either. And we purchased the noodles and the fish cake. So since I spent this week frantically putting in half of the work for the following items: appetizer, entree and dessert I am going to blog about it based on man labor hours. You will forgive me.

Mr. Chang and Ms. Tosi have also managed to create a ripple of emotions as well. We argued at the grocery store about ingredients while trying to translate Chinese based on bottle shape. Disappointment, frustration and good old fashioned anger when the sub-recipe for praline paste (followed to the letter!) seized the food processor. Joy, the smell of bacon, pig bones and chicken bubbling away for 6 hours. Bewilderment, the recipe for the Korean red dragon sauce brought, instead, the red dragon’s less attractive cousin, the Korean brown dragon sauce.

So, just to clarify, that’s 2 people + 5 days = 1 meal. We produced the rice cakes with red/brown dragon sauce, Chang’s legendary ramen and Tosi’s iconic cereal milk with chocolate hazelnut thing. The verdict? I feel like David Chang treated me like an over zealous intern. Was it good? Yes. Was it worth the effort? Hell no. As my friend Kasia, who has eaten at Noodle Bar, put it ‘Heck, you both could have eaten at there 3x for the same expense.’ And there you go. Some things are better left to other people.

While Mr. Chang won’t be figuratively bending me over any surfaces again anytime soon I would make an exception for Ms. Tosi and her cereal milk panna cotta. I found it to be a very special dish, really tasty, certainly something I have never had before and something I want to eat again. It took me two tries to make this thing successfully and I ended up having better success with recipe for dummies on the NYTimes website rather than the one in the cookbook. Now, I realize offering changes for such a thing is heresy but I am simply offering my opinion. Here it is: I would reduce the salt in the panna cotta, offer the addition of a little vanilla and please, don’t try to press the avocado puree through a sieve, it’s like putting a square peg in a round hole.

Cereal Milk Panna Cotta with Chocolate Hazelnut Thing and Avocado Puree - Serves 6

Cereal Milk Panna Cotta

6 cups corn flakes

3 cups milk

2 cups cream

1/4 cup light brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1/4 teaspoon vanilla

1 1/2 packets gelatin powder

Pre-heat the oven to 300. Put the corn flakes on a baking sheet. Toast corn flakes in the oven for 15 minutes or until slightly golden. Combine the milk and cream in a large bowl, add the warm corn flakes and let steep for 45 minutes. Strain the corn flakes by pouring the mixture through a sieve and pressing on the corn flakes to extract as much liquid as possible. Discard the corn flakes (or as Chang suggests, eat them). Add the vanilla, salt and sugar, microwave (yes, microwave) on half power for 1 1/2 minutes until the sugar has dissolved, stir to combine. Remove 1/4 cup of the custard batter and place in a bowl, sprinkle the gelatin on top and let it rest for 5 minutes. Once it has bloomed return it to the bowl and whisk it in until it has dissolved as well, this takes a while. Pour the custard into the 6 bowls (making sure the gelatin gets n to every ramekin or bowl) and allow it to set in the refrigerator over night. To serve top with avocado puree and a chunk of the chocolate hazelnut thing.

Chocolate Hazelnut Thing

1/4 cup praline paste

1/3 cup Nutella

1 tablespoon semi-sweet chocolate

1/2 teaspoon corn syrup

1/4 teaspoon neutral oil (they say grape seed, I used vegetable)

2 tablespoons caramelized cornflakes

Place everything in a bowl and microwave on 10 second intervals, stirring until completely melted and combined. Spread baking sheet with a silpat or waxed paper press the corn flakes in to the warm chocolate and place in the freezer to set. Once set break up into random chunks and store in the refrigerator. If making the caramelized corn flakes is the one step that takes you over the edge then I say skip it and just press in some regular old corn flakes.

Praline Paste

Chang and Tosi say you can purchase this, I have never seen it, but I would advocate buying it, not making it. If you must make it, do not follow the instructions in the cookbook.

1/2 cup hazelnuts toasted

1/2 cup sugar

1 pinch kosher salt

Toast the hazelnuts then put them in a food processor and process until finely chopped. Remove and place in a bowl. Heat the sugar over medium-low heat. Once it starts to caramelize stir it to combine until it has fully turned to carmel. Combine with the hazelnuts, work quickly!

Caramelized Corn Flakes

3/4 cup corn flakes

3 tablespoons non-fat dry milk powder

1 tablespoon sugar

3 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Place the corn flakes in a bowl and break up with your hands, crushing them about 8 times. Pre-heat the oven to 300. Toss the corn flakes with the remaining ingredients. Spread on a baking sheet lined with either a silpat or parchment paper. Place in the oven and bake for about 35 minutes or until golden brown. Store at room temperature.

Avocado Puree

1 ripe avocado, chilled for an hour

1 pinch sugar

1 pinch salt

Juice of 1/2 a small lemon

Combine the ingredients in a blender and process until smooth. Place in the refrigerator with plastic wrap covering and touching the puree until ready to use.

Perfect Couple

Pie and ice cream, a grilled cheese and tomato soup, steamed crabs and beer, ice cold milk and an Oreo cookie, some things were meant to be and their marriage truly endures the test of time. Maybe we forget to celebrate the simplicity? Which brings me to this question? When was the last time you had prosciutto and melon? Been awhile? It’s a perfect combination. It is silly to print a recipe for such a thing, it’s ham and cantaloupe. But if you must know, I usually cut ours away from the rind, sprinkle it with a tiny bit of sea salt, drape it with two pieces of prosciutto and then I drizzle it with about a half a teaspoon of the very Italian agave nectar and half a teaspoon of extra virgin olive oil.

I remember my first prosciutto e melone. When I was 8 my Dad was involved with an Italian woman with the mutually exclusive large Italian family. She always hosted the family Christmas Eve dinner and the menu was always the same. We had antipasto, prosciutto and melon prosciutto and melon, French onion soup in copper pots topped with muenster cheese, ravioli, some sort of meat that obviously I was not interested in, a salad, dessert with coffee and anisette and After Eight mints. She was perennially teased about the salad, due to the number of guests she would run the lettuce through the rinse and spin cycles of the washing machine. Maybe the ham and melon seemed exotic, but mainly the appeal is that it is salty AND sweet, no different than the deliciousness that is a chocolate covered pretzel.

In all seriousness, I’m not just going to give you a recipe for prosciutto and melon, I’ve added a couple more items. This salad came from one of those stone soup moments that really many awesome dishes arise from. We had a delicious cantaloupe, the kind that you consume over the sink because you can’t wait to get it on a plate and it just tastes better when the juice runs down your chin. Also, we didn’t have enough ham for full blown prosciutto and melon and we had a heart of romaine that needed to be consumed and some goat cheese floating around in the meat drawer. I’ll admit goat cheese is cheating. Much like bacon or truffle oil, you could put any of them on a cardboard square and have a tasty, eco-friendly canape. But that’s what we had and mid-bite Jim said ‘Ummm, write this down on the list of things I like.’ So I did before I forgot what went in, which is what usually happens.

Prosciutto and Melon Salad with Goat Cheese and Agave Nectar - Serves 2

1 heart of romaine chopped thinly equal to about 2 cups

1 oz. prosciutto - chopped

1.5 oz. goat cheese - crumbled

1/2 cup chopped cantaloupe

1 teaspoon agave nectar

1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon olive oil

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

Chop the lettuce and dress with oil, vinegar and agave nectar, toss with remaining ingredients.

Watermelon Pickle

It’s amazing how things you have totally forgotten can come back instantly when someone puts the right words together. I immediately was transported straight to the 7th grade today when someone on a food website asked ‘Can you pickle watermelon?’ Yes, you can, and there is a wonderful poem by John Tobias that goes with it and you can’t do one without reading the other. I very much remember the first time I had watermelon pickle.

Miss Seidel was our 7th grade English teacher and she was from the South, Alabama I think, which was foreign enough to us. She was everything cool about the 80s. Our 7th grade class was her first year at our very strict private school. She was in her early twenties, she had an asymmetric haircut, she wore funky clothes and made jewelry. She was confident, educated and too hip for the burgh of Baltimore. She was everything my stodgy all girls school was not. Who hired her? The other teachers shopped from the LL Bean catalog and clearly only refreshed their wardrobes every decade. They looked like line backers in skirts. They had been there for 40 years and would be there for another 40. They lived and socialized in the same snobby, blue-blooded, wood paneled station wagon neighborhood that the school was and is located in.

Miss Seidel was like a beautiful bird in a burned out forest. She was friendly. She was one of those teachers. The ones that inspire you and make you want to work beyond what is required of you. We idolized her, even stalked her to her apartment one day for a surprise visit. She didn’t flinch; she buzzed us in and served us iced tea. Of course her apartment was cool, filled with awesome vintage finds that someone her age should not have had the time to collect just yet. She was like Molly Ringwald and Madonna, combined, only cooler and real.

One day Miss Seidel brought in a jar of watermelon pickle a family member had sent her. She said she had not had any in a while, maybe since she was a kid and was curious about it herself. None of us has ever seen a watermelon pickle before, let alone had any relatives that canned things. She explained its southern provenance, that It is the rind pickled, sour and sweet. She then read us John Tobias’ poem Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle from a Friend Called Felicity. I remember this clearly. Then she passed out chunks of the watermelon pickle on toothpicks. And instantly, John Tobias’ poem became my memory of watermelon pickle. Why hadn’t I had watermelon pickle for this beautiful memory? Well, I did now, and I was not going to let it go. To this day I’ll talk like I’ve been eating watermelon pickle my whole life.

Miss Seidel only lasted 1 year at our school. The bird had to fly. Every time I hear the words watermelon pickle I think of her. The poem she read us sums up how I feel about watermelon, summer and the childhood memories associated with both. Now, after all that, I have to admit, I do not have a watermelon pickle recipe to amaze you with, but, David Chang does. I can offer a you a watermelon salad recipe. But read the poem and pretend you’ve been eating watermelon pickle your whole life.

http://ellemay.wordpress.com/2007/09/07/reflections-on-a-gift-of-watermelon-pickle-received-from-a-friend-called-felicity/

Watermelon Salad (serves 12 as a side dish)

1/2 small watermelon, cubed

1 Kirby cucumber, chopped

1/2 a jicama, cubed

2 jalapenos, minced

2 limes

salt

3/4 cup herbs (I use basil, mint, cilantro and chives)

Combine the first four ingredients, squeeze lime juice on top and toss with herbs abd salt. Serve cold.

Chicken Fingers and Waffle Fries

I would file this under my best child friendly meal. Our kids will eat almost anything but I know many parents are faced with picky eaters. As witnessed at a 5 year old birthday party this weekend; one little girl with plate of fruit salad, watermelon, carrot sticks and cucumber rounds and across from her another young lady with only a hot dog and two meatballs on her plate. I serve this when we have 4+ kids at the house, this way, each child can pick what best suits their palate. The kids love it, they can design their own meal and there is the added bonus of eating with your hands. There isn't much in the way of preparation either. You need some time to marinade the meat but aside from that it's just a lot of chopping and I find the kids like to help with that too.

The flank steak and marinade is my memory of what my neighbor Claudia used to serve me growing up. I quit eating meat at 13 but I continued to eat that flank steak as my only exception for a couple more years. For many reasons I’m lucky Claudia moved in next door. One of those reasons, besides some truly sentimental and personal reasons, is my culinary edification. She introduced me to my life long love affair with Indian food. I had my first Afghan meal with Claudia. Claudia served me my first stuffed grape leaf, my first ceviche and my first flank steak. I ate my first duck beak and fish liver with Claudia and probably a lot of other firsts I can’t remember. She will eat anything; she’s well travelled, has zero food prejudices, a fabulous appetite and a deep appreciation of other people’s cultures. And she grew a fig tree in her front yard, in Baltimore, exotic!

I can remember some epic eating adventures with Claudia. A recent trip to her home in Southern California resulted, accidentally, in a massive binge on about 2 lbs. of bulgogi and 2 refills of the banchan. However, the one that stands out the most is when we went to New York one weekend when I was in high school. She had a conference but we also had a mission to find a prom dress I had seen in a magazine. I remember the trip incredibly well and I still have the dress to prove it; I wore it last month as a matter of fact. While there, Claudia treated us to a six entree meal in Chinatown, including two orders of salt and pepper shrimp. We ate it all. And marveled at the fact that we did.

So below is my version of her flank steak. Eat it as it is alone or serve it as described below. And if you have kids they will love you for it.

Lettuce Wraps - Serves 4

1.5 pounds flank steak

1/2 cup low sodium soy sauce

2 tablespoons molasses

1 tablespoon honey

3 garlic cloves, smashed

4-5 slices fresh, peeled ginger

2 spring onions, sliced

1/2 red pepper, sliced

1 cup bean sprouts

2 spring onions sliced

3 carrots shaved or shredded

1 handful basil

1 handful cilantro

20 lettuce leaves, I use red leaf

1 cup rice cooked with 2 cups water

Notes: You can use any vegetables; I usually just use whatever I have in the vegetable drawer.

French 75

Jim got home the other night from a man-cation of camping in the Ozark’s with his college buddies. We were about 5 minutes past the airport he said ‘Wow, I could use a French 75.’ I guess all the fishing, canoeing, living like pigs, fire and playing war games over saturated Jim in man-funk and he was ready to atone for those 5 days with a tall, pretty cocktail. Although I’m unclear about how manly a trip it was since Jim came home clean and toting a bottle of Jameson’s that was more than 3/4 full.

The French 75, named for the WW1 machine gun because of its potency. This is the beverage for me. It is the Cinderella’s glass slipper of beverages. Look at it, seriously, don’t you want to dive right in? It’s gin, lemon juice, simple syrup and sparkling wine. There is some contention that it should be made with brandy and not gin. My personal preference is gin. However, I had an absolutely amazing one with cognac at The Driskill in Austin. If you have not been to the Driskill and find yourself nearby, and I mean like Houston, Dallas or Oklahoma nearby, go. Actually it was so amazing I had three.

To compromise on the brandy versus gin debate I add a brandied cherry to mine. Who doesn’t want a brandied cherry as a treat for finishing a delicious cocktail? I make simple syrup and keep it in the fridge. I usually have fresh lemons on hand but I have been know to juice lemons getting long in the tooth and freeze the juice. The brandied cherries will keep for months in the fridge, just use a clean spoon or a toothpick when retrieving them.

Have this drink tonight. It’s 97 degrees here. I am going to make some tonight and Jim and I can sit quietly on the porch in front of the fan, sipping our cocktails.

French 75 - Makes 2

3 ounces dry gin - I use Bombay Extra Dry

1 ounce simple syrup

1.5 ounces lemon juice

Lemon zest

Sparkling wine - I use either Gloria Ferrer or Chandon rose or brut varieties

Brandied cherries - optional

Combine the gin, simple syrup and lemon juice in a cocktail shaker and shake over ice, pour into a champagne glass top off with champagne, add in the cherry and using a zester peel off a 2” strip of lemon peel, peel the zest over the glass so the lemon oil from the rind spritzes on to the glass.

Simple Syrup

1 cup sugar

1 cup water

Combine both in a pot and heat over medium heat until both are combined, this takes just a few minutes. Cool to room temperature and store in the fridge.

Brandied Cherries

1 cup water

1 cup sugar

1.5 cups brandy

Juice of 1 lemon

1 lb. cherries, pitted

Bring the liquids to a boil, reduce to a simmer for 10 minutes. Remove from the heat. Put the cherries in a tupperware or glass jar and pour the brandy liquid over top let cool and place in the fridge. The cherries get better with time, store them for at least a month before using. They should stay perfectly fine for several months in the fridge as long as no contaminants get in the container.

** Notes - Do not double this recipe, it certainly can be cut in half. I use the Gloria or Chandon because they are inexpensive but any champagne, sparkling wine or Prosecco will work.

Summertime Memories

Barefoot and carrying a general patina of dirt, catching fire flies, racing big wheels, climbing trees, hailing the ice cream man, eating onion grass and listening to the bees buzz in the magnolia tree outside the bedroom window. Sent outside and probably told to stand in the grass, which you dutifully did and then instinctively bent at the waist to eat watermelon, slurping and trying to avoid the juice and catch it all at once while spitting seeds at the ants as they gathered in the pool of watermelon juice. This was summertime. Summertime before sleep away camps and summer jobs.

When given a slice of watermelon you don’t just eat it and enjoy it, it involves more physical and emotional interaction than a fork and knife can provide. You slurp it, you make ridiculous noises and if it’s particularly good one you may make incoherent commentary. You eat outside half leaning off of the porch, or hunched over the sink. It requires a stance. You don’t slowly savor watermelon, no, you dig in and you eat it with a certain steady speed racing the slice of watermelon as its juices run down your arm. And I bet you think about being a kid.

I don’t spend enough time eating watermelon in the summer as I did when I was a kid. Why is that? Too messy? Too big? Too silly? Perhaps all of those reasons. But I know I love it and I know when September comes I lament its absence in the grocery store. So here’s how we adults can have our watermelon.

Watermelon Slush - Makes 1

1 cup watermelon, cubed and frozen

2 tsps. mint, roughy chopped

1-1.5 oz. vodka (or water for a N/A variety)

Combine the ingredients in a blender on high, blend until smooth.

From Summer with Love

A fresh tomato is just about the best present you can give. Large, ripe and smelling like the yard it came from, homegrown tomatoes are a luxury. They need very little to shine, a sprinkling of salt, maybe a little pepper or a tiny drizzle of olive oil, but that’s about it.

Two summers ago Jim planted a small vegetable garden beside our tiny house. He planted zucchini, squash, various peppers and an okra plant that produced, ironically, a single okra. He also put in five tomato plants of various types (at this point in the story he’s quick to point out someone - me - removed all the plastic identifying placards - just so you know). Jim took the role of gardener very seriously and would spend about an hour everyday after work watering, fertilizing, measuring and admiring his work. Amazingly the squirrels and the birds (and the squatters next door) stayed away and the tomato plants thrived. Jim was very fruitful, extremely so that by the end of August it seemed every lunch consisted of tomato sandwiches, evening appetizers were fried green ones and pasta sauce galore clogged the freezer. By September we couldn’t give enough of them away. I said ‘I know it’s not right, but if I don’t see another tomato until next summer, I’ll be okay’. And I kept my word, for the most part.

This tomato pie has been with me forever, much like the eggplant meatballs or my rosemary salmon. It’s just one of those dishes I do. It is at its best when made at the end of summer with the tomatoes from your yard or someone’s yard and the basil that’s going to seed with big fat leaves. It’s not complicated and the ingredient list might even say ‘duh’ but it never fails to make people happy.

Tomato Pie - Serves 6-8 as a side dish

3-3.5 lbs. tomatoes (approximately 8)

1/2 cup + 2 tbsps. basil torn

8 oz. boccacini cut in half, or a larger mozzarella cubed

3/4 cup parmesan grated

3 tbsps. olive oil

1/2 tsp. garlic powder

salt + pepper

2 sheets pastry for a 9” pie

1 egg

Seed and chop the tomatoes in to 1/2” chunks, dry them on paper towels. Slice the boccacini in half and dry on paper towels as well. You will want to remove as much moisture from the ingredients as possible. Combine the first three ingredients, toss and sprinkle with olive oil, garlic powder, salt and pepper and toss again to coat. Preheat the oven to 350. whisk the egg. Line a pie pan with one sheet of pastry and pour pie filling in, top with remaining pie shell, crimp edges to close, brush top of pie with the egg wash and using a fork prick several times to vent. Place in oven and cook for approximately 45 minutes or until the crust is golden. Cool pie for 20 minutes prior to slicing.