A Blithe PALATE

Tis the Season to be Ill

I don't know about you, but illness typically decides to descend during vacation. So here I am with a week of vacation ahead and I'm not feeling so hot. I've lost interest in food. It's been bad enough that I don't want to cook (or eat). But couple that with the fact that watching food tv makes me want to hurl, reading cookbooks or cooking magazines makes me feel nauseous and I've descended into a special section of hell reserved just for recalcitrant foodies. If only I know what praises to sing to alleviate my pain.

On the other hand, the sniffles have produced Mommy pity; she's on a plane up to spend a week with me next Monday and I've already put together a menu of what I want to eat.

I suppose while she's here I should try to learn how to cook some of her dishes as well...

Happy Holidays everyone! Be warm and safe!

Vegas Blog Party: Saffron Crisps, Phyllo Cups with Seared Duck and Blueberry Cassis Reduction, Grilled Lemongrass Beef and Onion Rolls

Stephanie at Dispensing Happiness is hosting another Blog Party! This month's theme is Vegas, Baby!.

I love Vegas. Love Vegas. I didn't always: before I ever set foot in Vegas, I was convinced of its inferiority to my beloved "first rate" cities; I thumbed my nose at what I perceived to be the inherent tackiness of Vegas (Disneyland on steroids for adults?). I'm so glad ignorance can be rectified: who knew that after the first shocking night of my first (and thus far only) trip to Vegas, I would fall head over heels in love with this city? But how can you not love a city which appeals directly to a foodie? Four star restaurants all around. So what if there's a fake blue sky and singing gondoliers? I'm not the there to be amused; I'm there to eat.

For this Blog Party, Cassandra is joining me since Hubby is out of town and we're bringing some high-rolling, high stakes dishes: Saffron Crisps, Grilled Lemongrass Beef and Onion Rolls, and Phyllo Cups with Seared Duck and Blueberry Cassis Reduction. And to wash it all down? A flute of crisp Sparkling Raspberry Lemonade because I can't hold my liquor. Wine, yes; hard stuff, no. But you should feel free to add a splash of Vodka.

I can't wait to go back to Vegas. My next Vegas run isn't until the weekend before Valentine's Day with Hubby. We're already talking about where to eat.

Sadly though, what happens in Vegas doesn't always stay in Vegas: the pounds and the hips definitely came back with me last time. I gotta figure out how to leave them behind this trip.

Pumpkin Butter and Honey Pecan Butter

It's been hectic; last week was a wash as far as attempting anything on the beloved range. Happily, we're closing in on holiday cooking which means fancy, once-a-year, ridiculously fattening dishes to prepare soon. And speaking of fattening...

When we were kids, we were left to our own devices one Saturday morning when Mom took off to make a grocery run. We weren't toddlers and so, reasonably able to take care of ourselves; not that much care needed to be taken when we were happily glued to the tube. At some point, one of my sisters went to make buttered toast with sugar sprinkled on top. Somehow, that led to the group of us (I don't remember how), cutting off chunks of butter and rolling them in sugar and eating Sugar Butter Balls. Can you think of anything more revolting? I mean, I can, but that's also because I'm routinely exposed to Things That Make You Wish Your Brain Were An Etch-A-Sketch So You Can Shake Your Head and Erase the Image. But I should also note that a rather tender age, we were already discovering the joys of a compound butter. That we did it accidentally because we were a bunch of little savages is beside the point.

A compound butter is very simply, a flavored butter. This is seriously easy to make -- simply, unsalted butter and the flavoring agents. You can make sweet, or savory butters, to accompany just about every dish. I'm much more partial to sweet butters, but there are few cooler things than producing a fennel butter or a cayenne butter for a meat dish. I'm disinclined towards herb butters because they require extra work and I'm lazy -- to prevent the herbs (using fresh is best) from going rancid in the butter, you have to steep them in boiling water first. Too much effort for what should essentially be creamed butter.

On a recent trip to Charleston, we ate at the Palmetto Café at Charleston Place (I have the world's most patient boss; he let me photograph the food before he ate anything) where we were served a parfait of three compound butters: herb, walnut and pumpkin. I was so entranced by the color of the pumpkin butter, I decided to make a few batches for holiday gifts. As always, it's not possible for me to make anything uncomplicated (or follow a recipe through to fruition because I think it's too blah and needs more flavoring so I add enough spices to choke a llama [where I got llama is beyond me]). I found a recipe for pumpkin butter, but on the first attempt, it was unbelievably boring to the taste buds, so I did a sweeter version with maple syrup (I swear to God I will get off this maple syrup kick soon), and brown sugar. The final result was a gingery pumpkin butter.

Making a pass through the spice rack to find other flavors, I came across an entire container full of lavender flowers. Lavender is so distinct, so unique a scent, always evoking the memory of being in Aix-Les-Bains with Tata Michelle some fifteen years ago (has time really gone by that fast?). Uncertain if lavender butter even made sense, I scoped the Internet and found mainly savory recipes that quite frankly were uninspiring. Deciding to make another sweet compound butter, I remembered a jar full of lavender sugar -- essentially, sugar that had been infused with the scent after I dumped a handful of lavender into the jar of sugar several months ago. However, I didn't want to use regular granulated sugar because I didn't want a grainy butter, so I used confectioner's sugar. I suppose I could have used lavender honey, but I just didn't want the syrupy flavor of honey in this particular butter. I wanted the lavender to star in the show, so I added lavender flowers to a plastic bag of confectioner's sugar and let it sit overnight. At first, I wasn't sure if I wanted the flowers in the butter; but on further reflection, thought the addition of the purple flowers would impart a far more interesting aesthetic to accompany the olfactory component. I should just keep my thoughts to myself. The lavender flowers are bitter and I don't particularly like picking flower bits from my tongue -- do you? Definitely a failure. Not even gonna post that particular recipe.

The final compound butter was inspired by Becky Morgan, a sweet friend and colleague, who rhapsodized about honey pecan rolls the other night while we were talking about food. Since I'm not a fan of honey pecan rolls and highly unlikely to make them, I thought a jar of honey pecan butter would make a nice cheat. Again, I should keep my thoughts to myself. It wasn't bad...but since I'm still on my maple kick, the honey just didn't hit the spot.

But at least I have the pumpkin butter. It'll go great on scones, warm breads and pancakes (or waffles). Now to actually go make said scones, breads and pancakes...

Sweet Potato Gnocchi w/ Sage Brown Butter Sauce

It's possible I've found a way to like sweet potatoes. I wish I could say I've never met a tuber I didn't like; but in fact, I only like your run-of-the-mill potatoes: fingerlings, Yukon golds, Russets for baked potatoes (the kind you put in the oven for 2 hours, not the vile microwave version), purples, blues, Red Blisses -- the staples, if you will. I've always had difficulty with the odd taste of sweet potatoes.

A few Thursdays ago being Thanksgiving (and finally emerging from exhaustion induced by the back-to-back cooking class & wedding weekends), I felt compelled to make an effort at ingredients relatively traditional to holiday. But a sweet potato casserole with marshmallows (oh God! oh God!) was not going to end up on my table. And it was definitely not going to be smothered in some sort of brown sugar. Scanning the holiday editions of my cooking magazines, I discovered that both Food and Wine and Gourmet featured sweet potato gnocchi recipes. Reading both, I was much more intrigued by the Food and Wine recipe, which called for baked, not boiled, potatoes.

...I have this vivid memory of gnocchi; not of eating it, but seeing it for the first time, hearing it ordered in a restaurant. 1986: Visiting New York with Anna, having dinner with my uncle Mike and two of his friends, a pleasant Brit who managed the Jesus and Mary Chain, and a woman who was kind, graceful, and exotically sophisticated. After a night out at a club where one of his bands was having an after-concert party (and where a much older man kept trying to take my picture until I explained to him politely and firmly that I was uninterested and jailbait), we stopped off at one of Mike's favorite Italian restaurants, a few blocks away from his apartment in Tribeca. At the time, Tribeca was only beginning its DeNiro inspired revitalization, so most of Mike's friends really thought he lived in the boondocks. Her name is long forgotten, but The Sophisticated Woman ordered gnocchi. When her plate arrived at our table, I stared curiously and asked her what it was.

"Gnocchi," she said. "Potato dumplings. Would you like a bite?"

I demurred, much more interested in my ravioli. It was too foreign, too high brow for me to handle. My walnut ravioli in its brown butter sauce was as outré as I was willing to go.

I could probably count on my hands the number of times I've eaten gnocchi. It's partly because there are so few restaurants who offer it on their menu; it's partly because I don't go to the right restaurants (i.e., the ones that serve gnocchi); and partly because gnocchi is indelibly etched in my brain with The Sophisticated Woman. To my very young sixteen year old eyes, she seemed the epitome of New York verve and dash, so adult; a Borzoi to our gawky puppy state. Ordering the same dish I associate with such élan is about as incongruous to me as putting on a YSL frock. So given my disinterest and inability in finding the dish, is it any wonder then that I haven't made it until recently?

But Thanksgiving provided a nice forum in which to try; and I was also looking for a way to include sweet potatoes that didn't involve marshmallows. Bathed in a sage-infused brown butter sauce, the gnocchi did not disappoint. Aesthetically speaking though, I need to work on making them look like gnocchi; it's just hard when you don't have the right tools (or dexterity with substitute tools).

Somehow making the gnocchi took the mystique out of the dish altogether; and now I do not feel the same hesitation when considering gnocchi. Of course, there are setbacks. Last night, Greg and I were at a business dinner and had the gnocchi appetizer with sundried tomatoes. When they brought the dish, I took a bite and paused, utterly confused. I looked at Greg, who had stopped chewing.

"Greg...is it just me..."

"Oh my God," Greg said. "They've brought me mashed potato pills."

"Okay, it's not just me."

Calling what we ate "gnocchi" was definitely a laughable stretch. I do not think the Sophisticated Woman would have approved. But no matter. I'll just make another batch of the sweet potato gnocchi.