A Blithe PALATE

Boo!

Isn't he cute?  A white chocolate ghost with a hazelnut chocolate truffle interior.  He arrived in the mail along with four other cohorts on Friday, compliments of Vanessa.

His buddies didn't make it past Saturday.

This little guy is now sitting at Jules' house.  He probably won't survive Halloween.

But it's easy to stock up on more at Burdick's Chocolates.

Sundried Tomato Pesto Tarts

Jules' housewarming party was this weekend.  After years wandering from one home to another, Jules has finally settled in a gorgeous 1950's home in Richardson, Texas.  The house came with a Viking range -- an irony considering Jules is anti-kitchen.  This is not to say that Jules is anti-food; she most certainly is not:  she appreciate excellent food. She just doesn't enjoy the process of cooking.  "It's like taking a beating," she tells me.  She claims not to be able to boil water and goes into full-fledged Beaker panic mode when confronted with the idea of entertaining.

After it became obvious that Jules was planning to gloss over the big move into her new home, I and several close friends browbeat her into hosting a housewarming party. Jules, notorious for finding such events stressful, consented only when I promised to fly in for the party and to cook.  This was not completely altruistic; there was a Viking range to be enjoyed, after all.

Twenty guests were expected over a three hour period and I decided that it was in our best interests to make relatively stress-free appetizers and dishes that could be rotated out easily.  We settled on a rotini pasta salad tossed with pesto, a baked salmon in a honey-balsamic marinade, and several little appetizers:  rosemary-gorgonzola gougères, baked Brie, crackers, baguettes rounds and cheeses, and these little sundried tomato pesto tarts.  For sweets (because I can't resist any occasion in which we can produce four or five desserts!) we used more mini tarts and piped in chocolate mousse; pastry cream in puff pastry shells topped with raspberries, mini pain au chocolat, and chocolate dipped strawberries.

These tarts were wildly easy - simply cream cheese beaten with a prepared sundried tomato pesto and then piped into blind baked pastry shells (made by cutting store-bought pastry and lining them in a mini-muffin tin) and topped with fresh rosemary from Jules' garden.  Extra shells were used for the chocolate mousse -- making it a versatile appetizer and scrumptious sweet bite.  I'm all about ease and bloodless entertaining.  Plus, Jules could easily replicate this two-in-one combo for other occasions.

Personally I'm convinced that she'll start enjoying the domesticated stuff more now that she has wonderful tools at her disposal -- a Viking gas range, a sunny kitchen, and a home meant for entertaining.  In fact, I've already informed her that she will be hosting a Christmas tea party for her girlfriends -- and this time, no Beaker squealing or waving of the hands.  I take this as a good sign.

The Bad Mood Salad (Arugula Salad with Parmagiano and Lemon Zest)

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said: “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;
“But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart.”

-In the Desert (Stephen Crane)

It's a simple salad.  Three ingredients the way I make it.  Fresh arugula -- and these are so baby crisp, so darkly green and tender, plucked from the farm only last Saturday.  A good aged Parmiagiano, a hardy, hearty block slightly oily in my hands, its scent familiar and comforting if not as mephitic as I normally like my cheeses; and a simple little lemon, bright canary yellow, firm and plump.  Toss the arugula with the zest and juice of half a lemon.  Shave Parmagiano on top.

The arugula is peppery.  The cheese is tangy, hard to cut through, with little give.  The lemon zest and juice are tart and acidic.

This is a Bad Mood Salad.  Chew.  It's bitter.  Chew chew chew.  Sharp and wince inducing.  Chew and swallow.  It prolongs and teases out the things that enrage you, fills you with a sense of futility, makes you ponder, "What's the point?!"

Bitterness.  Taste.  Figuratively or literally?

A family friend recounts the night he realized that he and his fifth column had failed in an attempt to overthrow a corrupt and unstable government; and realizing he was alone at the rendezvous point, he recounts:  "All I could taste was that bitterness throughout my mouth."  And then from outside the safehouse, the stentorian tones of the men who had come to arrest him telling him that he was alone and that his friends had not come.  "Bitterness."

"I feel so bitter," says a friend after the throes of a marital spat, her voice catching.  "Why can't he understand what I want?"

Oh.  We've all felt that sting before. 

Her husband (and other husbands like him) probably wonders what it is she actually wants; the answer is not always clear in the laundry list of complaints and criteria that are hurled at him (them) when the internal hot springs of frustration and anguish finally boil over and overflow.  The answer, in all its variants, comes down to this one simple requirement: 

We yearn to be the sun in your Copernican universe. 

Knowing we are loved is not the same as feeling we are loved.  If you can set aside the Ptolemaic principle in which you are the Earth, we can give you a warm sun around which to revolve.  It's much more pleasant than a blazing, blistering satellite intent on burning you to a crisp.

Bitterness is tasted in the back of the tongue.  Is this why you swallow bitterness?

Every night I cut out my heart.
But in the morning it was full again.

-The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)

Sometimes I get fancy and melt the Parmagiano to make a cheese crisp.  Then I'll find some bacon and throw that in.  And by that point, I'm not really in a bad mood any more. 

Chicken Pot Pie

"No Kitty, that's my pot pie!"

I did not grow up eating pot pies.  My mother, accomplished at French cuisine, and a smattering of Italian dishes in addition to her stellar Vietnamese repertoire, wouldn't have known what it was or how to make one (she never consulted the red and white checked Betty Crocker cookbook someone had given her) so my first introduction to chicken pot pie was at age 25, at the home of a friend of a friend; and the soupy hunks of chicken, mushy peas and carrots, topped with soggy biscuits, did little to make the first impression a good one. I'm probably not wrong in guessing that the pot pie was constructed from cream of chicken, frozen peas and carrots and Pillsbury biscuits.  Enchanté I was not (an experience not unlike my foray into packaged Mac and Cheese at age 24; should I mention the horror that I could not hide when my college classmate pulled out the foil package of orange cheese by-product and poured it into the noodles?).  So I had no reason to eat or want to make a chicken pot pie. Or any pot pie for that matter. Until an episode of South Park.

Cartman snaps at Kitty to stay away from his pot pie with such ferocity that I felt compelled to ask, "How good can a pot pie be?" My then-significant other began waxing lyrically about how much he loved pot pies. So much, in fact, that he got up, left and went to the grocery to buy himself a frozen pot pie to eat. I did not give his taste buds much credence; the fact is, he grew up eating packaged foods at home (his mother's acquaintanceship with a stove did not begin until long after her children had left the house) and then later, institutionalized food at college and during his stint in the Navy.  How bad were his taste buds?  Well, he once attempted to boil a steak because:  "The Navy boils everything." 

Shortly thereafter, I decided to try my hand at a pot pie and consulted a copy of the revised Joy of Cooking which I had been given as a housewarming present. Right after the recipe for Chicken or Turkey a la King was the one for Pot Pie. It first required a batch of creamed chicken (a roux, stock, cream and cooked chicken), with frozen vegetables added to the mix, a few teaspoons of fresh thyme, and then drop biscuits baked on top. Having no visual clue as to what a pot pie should look like, I could only operate on the previous experience -- my friend's friend's casserole dish. So I served the pot pie in the casserole dish and after he finished his first plate, He-Who-Lacks-Taste(buds) exclaimed, "This is excellent! It tastes store bought!"

It was the highest compliment he was capable of giving me. It did not bode well for our relationship and indeed, we did not last too much longer thereafter.  But of course it made sense -- the recipe was heavy on cream, overly salted and a perfect proxy for processed chicken pot pie. It lacked subtlety or genuine flavor.

The recipe itself was good for technique -- but I didn't like the heaviness of the creamed chicken or the blandness of the vegetables accompanying it.  And I certainly didn't like the biscuits on top. So I revamped the recipe to include my own preferences:  pastry dough for a crumbly crust and top; diced carrots, peas and potatoes (or other vegetables as strikes my fancy) and creamed chicken made with 1% milk (so it's not so heavy) that owes its flavor to a nice hearty stock that's made while the chicken's boiling.

And I promise you this so does not taste store bought!  I know this because Hubby offered this compliment when a friend recently wolfed down a third helping:  "Yeah.  My wife's pot pie is no !@#$."  Pithy.

Saturday surprise...

This book arrived in the mail on Saturday:  Justin Quek's new cookbook, Justin Quek, Passion & Inspiration, compliments of the lovely S., Chubby Hubby's wife. 

Justin Quek is one of Singapore's most famous chefs specializing in French cuisine. Currently based in Taipei, he is planning to move to  Shanghai by year end where he hopes to open a restaurant.  S. helped to write this book.  I can't tell you how exquisite it is --a big, gorgeous, heavy cookbook with plenty of knockout pictures that make me drool. 

How utterly perfect that the book's arrival coincides with my schedule returning to ... "normal."  I can't wait to read and pick out recipes to try. 

There's one for wild blueberry crème brulée that I must make...if it tastes anything like how it looks, I'll be in heaven...

Tag I'm It?

Ah darn it.  Neglect the blog, neglect the web, and almost miss being tagged by lovely people for cool memes.  Sherri at Braude's Bites tagged me to join the MEME started by Melissa from Traveler's Lunchbox.  Update:  Thanks to miracle of spam filters (ack!), I just discovered that Fanny from Foodbeam had also tagged me earlier but I didn't see her email until today.  See?  Lovely people.  Neglect the blog, neglect the web, deal with fallout...

Our task?  List the 5 foods you'd eat before you die.  Seriously, how is a glutton like me to choose 5 items -- out of the myriad thousands of things I adore? 

But...having said that...

1. A big bowl of my mother's Bun Bo Hue, a spicy Hue pork noodle soup that no one on earth makes as good as Mom's.  And on the subject of Mom, I allowed myself only one of her dishes to allow for variation -- otherwise my mom would be making all my last meals...

2.  The langoustine risotto I had in Paris at Les Bouquinistes

3.  Sushi.  Without a doubt.  And there better be lots of uni and chu toro on that plate.

4.  Lengua tacos from El Taco Veloz on Buford Highway.

5.  The French Laundry's Oysters and Pearls.

Could I die happy after those five dishes?  Maybe.  I'm sure I've forgotten something I couldn't live without.  But I'd sure be satisfied with this list.  Now I'm sending this to Stephanie at Dispensing Happiness...

Duck Ragu Risotto

It's fall again but the Georgia weather isn't cooperating.  Summer's lingering, a little too long; I'm ready for my comfort foods but it's hard to fathom making a stew when it's 91 degrees out.  Still, the needs of some tastebuds outweigh the dictates of meteorological convention.  Friday night finds me de-fatting a duck for one of my favorite autumn dishes:  duck ragu risotto.

Scanning the recipe, I chop ingredients for a mirepoix and pull out containers of freshly made stock from the fridge.  The  original recipe calls for portions in gallons and quarts.  Next to the original measurements, I have scribbled my conversions for making a dish that can serve four hearty portions -- and not forty people.  I haven't copied this recipe to my personal cookbook yet.  I should: my copy is a printout given to me by Heath Miles, then the chef at La Tavola, where I first encountered this dish, almost seven years ago.  It is wrinkled, faded and stained with six seasons of food smears.  It also bears copious marginalia.  That's the main reason I won't throw this copy away.  Not only are there notes referring to variations that have worked (and many that didn't), there are also personal comments.  Some notes are pointed ("Peggy prefers Sangiovese with this") and others are abstruse (what the on earth is "I live in infinite sand" supposed to mean?).

We eat this dish frequently in the fall and by winter's end, I am proficient enough to make it from memory; right now I feel as though I'm moving slowly, stretching out mental kinks and relearning how to cook my fall repertoire step by step.  The cobwebs in my head are harder to shake:  the last month and half has been spent in retreat, recovering from the punishing August schedule, and nursing myself through the inexorable cycle of accepting that some losses are inevitable:  I am without a grandparent for the first time in my life; and other losses are unexpected but no less painful:  the end of a familiar's marriage took with it an ancillary friendship.  I can't muster ill will or sadness any more; as I noted to Jules recently, "Some friendships are not meant to last." 

This is really the first time in two and a half months that I've actively cooked and I am clumsy.  I find myself constantly referring to my recipes, unable to find my groove and cook instinctively.  I feel lethargic in the kitchen, stumbling over what has hitherto been familiar and making tyro mistakes.

In preparing the ragu, I measure out two cups of stock and pour it into the pot.  Opening another container of what I assume to be stock -- it is also clear and tinged with yellow -- I pour in a half cup before I realize the liquid's viscosity is too thick to be stock -- and with horror, I shriek when it becomes apparent that I have just poured in egg whites.  I don't need a raft since I'm not making consommé -- which means the stock gets dumped out, the pot washed, and I start over. 

Chopping, stirring, adding, tasting  -- herky jerky initial movements slowly smooth as the muscles remember and take over what my brain can't process.  It's soothing.  A new meaning for comfort food?