Wait, sorry, it's the other way around...You see how rumors start. And really who sits around reading this drivel about celebrity chefs?!! Oops, I do.
This first story is so dumb, it must be true. Jamie was having a bit of a chat with the Angelina Jolie and he referred to their child as Piloh Sh__, screwing up her Shiloh Pitt name. Wait, I only just got it this second. HE CALLED THAT BEAUTIFUL BLONDE LITTLE GIRL A PILE OF SH__??? THAT is funny.
Listen, if you're going to name your kid a weird name, then you can't get mad when people get it wrong.
The truth is Jamie is hardly one to talk about weird names with his little Poppy Honey and Daisy Boo. Actually, except for Boo, those ARE completely adorable names. I know the English have a thing about fruits and flowers, but naming your kid after a seed IS kind of different.
Nigella's story is rather interesting. She's decided not to leave any of her growing fortune to her children and she doesn’t think that multi-millionaire second husband Charles Saatchi should either. She thinks it will impede their desire to work for a living.
Warren Buffett certainly agrees with her, although not to such an extent. He says, "I want to give my kids just enough so that they would feel that they could do anything, but not so much that they would feel like doing nothing".
What do I think? I think I WISH I had that problem.
It’s fine that Nigella feels that way, but she had money as she grew up and worked ANYWAY, so why does she think her kids won’t? Remind me not get adopted by Nigella.
Hey, I wonder what the Jolie-Pitt's philosophy is on inherited wealth. Maybe Jamie could ask the next time he phones.
ADDENDUM:
Here's Nigella's response to all those nasty comments:
You might have noticed in the press that I have (apparently) cut my children out of my will, cruel mother that I am. Of course I have no intention of leaving my children destitute and starving - rather, this is a story that came from a comment I made about my belief that you have to work in order to learn the value of money.
I think next time I'LL refrain from commenting.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
The Most Clicked On Recipe On Epicurious Is...
THIS chocolate cake, we learned this morning on The Today Show. It has everything a chocolate cake should have: big high layers, LOTS of thick sweet icing and a moistness from the buttermilk in the batter.
It IS an interesting recipe. There's a lot of chocolate in it. 3 oz. of chocolate get mixed in with quite a bit of coffee (1 1/2 cups), which Tanya Steele, Editor-In-Chief of Epicurious.com, says adds a complexity to the cake. (Ina always adds coffee to chocolate.)
Plus it uses unsweetened cocoa powder, NOT Dutch process. Dutch process cocoa is less bitter, but less rich tasting, so for a really deep dark rich cake, you want a good quality NON Dutch process cocoa.
No everyday buttercream for this cake either. It's iced with a rich ganache that has a not-everyday addition of corn syrup.
The baking temperature and time are unusual, as well. It's cooked low at 300°F. for 60 to 70 minutes.
It looked good. The Today folks, crew AND hosts, were practically salivating over the cake. The next time a chocolate cake is called for - maybe a sunny Wednesday afternoon - I will definitely be making it.
AFTERWORD:
After reading Rachel's comment, I want to know what is YOUR most used Epicurious recipe? OR if you didn't get it from Epicurious...your most used downloaded recipe?
As with Rachel, for me the Triple Pudding Pie is up there, but I think I got that from Bon Appetit first, not the website.
I guess my most used recipe from Epicurious is this Sun-Dried Tomato Tapenade on Polenta Triangles. I never make regular tapenade anymore, I always make this one. And whenever I need polenta as a base for something, I use this recipe.
But to be honest, THIS is my go-to recipe for any occasion. It IS AWESOME.
It IS an interesting recipe. There's a lot of chocolate in it. 3 oz. of chocolate get mixed in with quite a bit of coffee (1 1/2 cups), which Tanya Steele, Editor-In-Chief of Epicurious.com, says adds a complexity to the cake. (Ina always adds coffee to chocolate.)
Plus it uses unsweetened cocoa powder, NOT Dutch process. Dutch process cocoa is less bitter, but less rich tasting, so for a really deep dark rich cake, you want a good quality NON Dutch process cocoa.
No everyday buttercream for this cake either. It's iced with a rich ganache that has a not-everyday addition of corn syrup.
The baking temperature and time are unusual, as well. It's cooked low at 300°F. for 60 to 70 minutes.
It looked good. The Today folks, crew AND hosts, were practically salivating over the cake. The next time a chocolate cake is called for - maybe a sunny Wednesday afternoon - I will definitely be making it.
AFTERWORD:
After reading Rachel's comment, I want to know what is YOUR most used Epicurious recipe? OR if you didn't get it from Epicurious...your most used downloaded recipe?
As with Rachel, for me the Triple Pudding Pie is up there, but I think I got that from Bon Appetit first, not the website.
I guess my most used recipe from Epicurious is this Sun-Dried Tomato Tapenade on Polenta Triangles. I never make regular tapenade anymore, I always make this one. And whenever I need polenta as a base for something, I use this recipe.
But to be honest, THIS is my go-to recipe for any occasion. It IS AWESOME.
Just In...Another Baby For Tyler
At the end of Tyler's charming appearance on Regis and Kelly minutes ago, he announced that he and his wife, Tolan Clark, were expecting another baby - baby number 2 for the couple. (Hayden was born on May 23, 2007.) He also has an older son, Miles (b. 1996).
Tyler prepared 2 clam chowders for Super Bowl Sunday: a Manhattan one commemorating the Giants, and, of course, a New England clam chowder for Tom Brady's buddies. Tom IS sorta cute, but give me Tyler in chef's whites anytime.
Tyler prepared 2 clam chowders for Super Bowl Sunday: a Manhattan one commemorating the Giants, and, of course, a New England clam chowder for Tom Brady's buddies. Tom IS sorta cute, but give me Tyler in chef's whites anytime.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Jamie Oliver - Great Food, Great Controversy And Get Your Recipes HERE…
Jamie at Home with Jamie Oliver
Peppers & Chilies
Hot Smoked Salmon with an Amazing Chile Salsa
Spicy Pork and Chili-Pepper Goulash
Here's Tyler, serving up a man-sized bowl of the best looking chili I've ever seen. "Meaty and thick. Just the way Texas loves it." In fact, he tells us that if we enter a chili contest with this recipe we'll bring home the blue ribbon… I'd settle for the chef.
On to Jamie standing in a greenhouse, surrounded by his precious peppers. Apparently, he has quite a relationship with them. In fact, he tells us he was addicted to them. He’s not the only one I’ve of heard with that problem.
Jamie’s picking chilies off the plants and he says he’s getting really excited and that his endorphins are going wild. Okay, that IS addicted.
Back to the “kitchen”, shed, barn (as far from Ina’s barn as you can imagine), hut, whatever…Jamie cuts red and yellow peppers in half. Now this is interesting. He cuts them down the center in half, instead of cutting the top off and filling THAT. He’s smart because a smaller flatter piece of pepper will cook more evenly than a big dome-shaped pepper that’s always kind of underdone.
Jamie cuts out all the white membranes to make “a dish within a dish” and puts them in a rustic looking earthenware baking dish. Then he tells us that “Mr. Pepper loves Mr. Tomato, who in turn loves to have a party with Mr. Garlic.” I don’t think that’s strange, I think it’s endearing how he talks about and TO his food.
He mixes cherry tomatoes (halving when large) with Mr. Garlic (sliced). Then he slices various hot peppers - beautiful apricot colored ones, a long green one and a little bell shaped red one. They go in along with capers, basil, salt, 2 tablespoons of red wine vinegar and 3 tablespoons of olive oil.
He squeezes and scrunches up 5 or 6 olives in to get every last bit of flavor from them. He mixes the mixture well and packs it into the pepper halves, making sure to pour over all the juices. He says you can cook it as is or lay over slices of pancetta, which Jamie does. He covers the dish with foil and cooks it for 15 minutes to get the peppers soft. Then he uncovers them, so they get browned and kind of crispy. I’m guessing the uncovered time is 15 minutes. (No recipe.) He pinches the peppers to see if they’re done.
Jamie toasts country bread and tops with the peppers. With a sharp knife, he pierces through the peppers into the bread to release some of the juices. He places a little mozzarella and rocket on the plate and throws over some finely sliced raw chilies. Lastly, he drizzles over a bit of extra virgin olive oil. It looks awesome.
I’ve said before stuffed peppers don’t really do it for me. The fillings are always yummy, but I could do without the pepper part. I like this idea of cooking them first covered and then uncovered to get them browned. That’s pretty smart. He always seems to do the best by his impeccably fresh ingredients.
A shot of his bucolic farmhouse followed by a pork recipe. (Are we going to meet the piggy too? I kinda hope not.)
There is a bit of a controversy (actually kind of a huge one) that I really have to address. Actually you can’t really talk about Jamie without talking about his tremendous efforts to bring attention to the horrors of big business poultry raising.
He’s involved in a battle against giant producers of poultry and eggs in a campaign to get better treatment for animals. He caused a sensation on British television when he (actually I can hardly bear to even talk about it) killed a chicken on television in order to highlight the issue.
Apparently the next day, free-range chickens sold out all over Britain and he made great strides towards convincing folks to consider more humane treatment of the animals. His point is that it would benefit not only the animals, but the farmers and consumers as well. We could discuss this forever, but suffice it to say, whether he’s cooking a pepper or a pig, Jamie has enormous respect for its life and treats it as well as it can be.
Whew! Can we even go back to the show after all that? I’ll try.
He places a 2 kilo shoulder of pork on the work surface. He scores the skin and seasons it with salt and pepper. He puts it in a hot pan skin side down to render the fat. He adds a bit of olive oil to the pan.
Jamie cuts off the ends of yellow and red peppers. He even uses the bit of pepper around the stem. He takes out the seeds and veins and then he slices them thin, thin, thinly. But look here. I’m not sure why, but he cuts them sideways, not up and down. Gosh, what knife skills he has!
He turns the pork over and removes it from the pan. (The recipe says to take it out after cooking just one side.) He adds his magnificently sliced peppers and 2 heaped dessertspoons of paprika. (That’s SUCH an English measurement. I remember the first time I saw that. It’s because they eat these nursery type “puddings” with custard on them and they want a big spoon to stuff in their grill).
Jamie likes the interesting mix of paprika - which is, after all, dried pepper - with fresh ones. He adds salt and pepper, caraway seeds, chopped up jarred red peppers and 2 finely sliced red onions. (Jamie chops and slices like a machine.)
He pulls the leaves off the stalks of fresh marjoram and adds those with “tinned” tomatoes. He puts the pork in and pushes it down to the bottom of the pan and surrounds it with the peppers and other stuff. He adds 4 tablespoons of red wine vinegar and brings the pan up to the boil. He puts it in a 350°F. oven for 2 ½ to 3 hours, or until the meat pulls apart easily with 2 forks.
Look what I just saw at the FN website:
"Our agreement with the producers of "Jamie at Home" only permit us to make 2 recipes per episode available online. Food Network regrets the inconvenience to our viewers and foodnetwork.com users".
Harrummmmph! I’m sure if Jamie understood how pathetic we Americans are as cooks, he would understand that we need our recipes, even if just as a hand-holding tool. Kidding. We’re amazing cooks, but it’s nice to have a bleepin’ recipe.
Next Jamie boils basmati rice for 10 minutes in plenty of boiling, salted water. He drains it, reserving some of the cooking water. He places the rice in a colander over the reserved cooking water and continues steaming it, covered, for another 10 minutes.
He takes the pork out. It’s so tender, he can pull it apart with a SPOON. He tastes it and is really excited by how good it is. He puts a hunk of it in a soup plate, serves rice on the side and accompanies it with sour cream to which he’s added lemon zest and parsley. He puts a wadge of the sour cream on top of the meat with one more spoonful of the sauce. The sour cream melts in. The dish looks completely tantalizing.
Now Jamie is going to smoke salmon himself. Of course he is. He readies a “biscuit tin”. Do we even have biscuit tins here? Don’t our cookies come wrapped in cellophane in cardboard boxes? He puts wood chips on the bottom, and then fresh sage and rosemary. Then chicken wire goes on top.
He pats salt on both sides of the salmon fillet and rubs over roasted chili oil. (He made the oil by roasting dried chilies for 15 to 20 minutes at 150°F. and adding them to olive oil.) The website says to use olive oil. He places the salmon on the wire. He punches 5 or 6 holes in the tin lid and covers the tin. He cooks it on top of the stove for 4 to 5 minutes. (The recipe says 8 to 10 minutes.) Remember you’ll get a lot of smoke, so be prepared…
The key to a salsa (sow-sa) starts with a chili, says Jamie. He grabs a couple of tomatoes and squeezes the seeds out of them. He chops them (beautifully) and then chops (again beautifully) 3 chilies (red, yellow and green) laid out in a pretty little line. He tells us he loves the crunchiness of cucumber and dices them into perfect little squares and adds them.
Then he deals with “Mr. Spring Onion”. “Once you’ve chopped it up, run your knife through it” again. He rolls up fresh coriander and chops that including the stalks, warning us not to add too much. He adds salt and Mr. Avocado. He halves the avocado, twists it and removes the pit. He removes the flesh from the skin with a big spoon in one piece. He chops it and adds it to the salad. He drizzles in a bit of olive oil, remarking “Not so classic, but (it) brings it together. Not too much, you want it to be quite clean.” Jamie tastes and loves it.
He checks the salmon. “Please work, otherwise I’ll look like a plonker.” He puts some salsa on the plate, the salmon goes on top of that. He spoons a bit more salsa on top with a little olive oil. He squeezes half a lime as he presents the dish to us. He tastes it and dances with happiness. Me, too.
Am I bad to focus on just the food? I know he didn't mention the whole issue here, but it's hard not to think about it. I DO want to see how the animals are raised, but I have to admit that seeing how they make it onto the plate might be a bit much for me.
Oh, no, I gotta get the television off quickly. Wait, is that Aunt Sandy in a cheerleading outfit? OMG!
Her cherry cobbler looks like beans on Bisquick. The tomato she’s slicing is the most perfectly shaped one I’ve ever seen and also the palest, waxiest, most fake looking one as well.
Jamie's respect for his ingredients is evident and even awe-inspiring. He is the perfect combination of superlative chef (with his knife handling, particularly) and casual (or so he wants it to appear) home cook. HE is naturally superb.
Peppers & Chilies
Hot Smoked Salmon with an Amazing Chile Salsa
Spicy Pork and Chili-Pepper Goulash
Here's Tyler, serving up a man-sized bowl of the best looking chili I've ever seen. "Meaty and thick. Just the way Texas loves it." In fact, he tells us that if we enter a chili contest with this recipe we'll bring home the blue ribbon… I'd settle for the chef.
On to Jamie standing in a greenhouse, surrounded by his precious peppers. Apparently, he has quite a relationship with them. In fact, he tells us he was addicted to them. He’s not the only one I’ve of heard with that problem.
Jamie’s picking chilies off the plants and he says he’s getting really excited and that his endorphins are going wild. Okay, that IS addicted.
Back to the “kitchen”, shed, barn (as far from Ina’s barn as you can imagine), hut, whatever…Jamie cuts red and yellow peppers in half. Now this is interesting. He cuts them down the center in half, instead of cutting the top off and filling THAT. He’s smart because a smaller flatter piece of pepper will cook more evenly than a big dome-shaped pepper that’s always kind of underdone.
Jamie cuts out all the white membranes to make “a dish within a dish” and puts them in a rustic looking earthenware baking dish. Then he tells us that “Mr. Pepper loves Mr. Tomato, who in turn loves to have a party with Mr. Garlic.” I don’t think that’s strange, I think it’s endearing how he talks about and TO his food.
He mixes cherry tomatoes (halving when large) with Mr. Garlic (sliced). Then he slices various hot peppers - beautiful apricot colored ones, a long green one and a little bell shaped red one. They go in along with capers, basil, salt, 2 tablespoons of red wine vinegar and 3 tablespoons of olive oil.
He squeezes and scrunches up 5 or 6 olives in to get every last bit of flavor from them. He mixes the mixture well and packs it into the pepper halves, making sure to pour over all the juices. He says you can cook it as is or lay over slices of pancetta, which Jamie does. He covers the dish with foil and cooks it for 15 minutes to get the peppers soft. Then he uncovers them, so they get browned and kind of crispy. I’m guessing the uncovered time is 15 minutes. (No recipe.) He pinches the peppers to see if they’re done.
Jamie toasts country bread and tops with the peppers. With a sharp knife, he pierces through the peppers into the bread to release some of the juices. He places a little mozzarella and rocket on the plate and throws over some finely sliced raw chilies. Lastly, he drizzles over a bit of extra virgin olive oil. It looks awesome.
I’ve said before stuffed peppers don’t really do it for me. The fillings are always yummy, but I could do without the pepper part. I like this idea of cooking them first covered and then uncovered to get them browned. That’s pretty smart. He always seems to do the best by his impeccably fresh ingredients.
A shot of his bucolic farmhouse followed by a pork recipe. (Are we going to meet the piggy too? I kinda hope not.)
There is a bit of a controversy (actually kind of a huge one) that I really have to address. Actually you can’t really talk about Jamie without talking about his tremendous efforts to bring attention to the horrors of big business poultry raising.
He’s involved in a battle against giant producers of poultry and eggs in a campaign to get better treatment for animals. He caused a sensation on British television when he (actually I can hardly bear to even talk about it) killed a chicken on television in order to highlight the issue.
Apparently the next day, free-range chickens sold out all over Britain and he made great strides towards convincing folks to consider more humane treatment of the animals. His point is that it would benefit not only the animals, but the farmers and consumers as well. We could discuss this forever, but suffice it to say, whether he’s cooking a pepper or a pig, Jamie has enormous respect for its life and treats it as well as it can be.
Whew! Can we even go back to the show after all that? I’ll try.
He places a 2 kilo shoulder of pork on the work surface. He scores the skin and seasons it with salt and pepper. He puts it in a hot pan skin side down to render the fat. He adds a bit of olive oil to the pan.
Jamie cuts off the ends of yellow and red peppers. He even uses the bit of pepper around the stem. He takes out the seeds and veins and then he slices them thin, thin, thinly. But look here. I’m not sure why, but he cuts them sideways, not up and down. Gosh, what knife skills he has!
He turns the pork over and removes it from the pan. (The recipe says to take it out after cooking just one side.) He adds his magnificently sliced peppers and 2 heaped dessertspoons of paprika. (That’s SUCH an English measurement. I remember the first time I saw that. It’s because they eat these nursery type “puddings” with custard on them and they want a big spoon to stuff in their grill).
Jamie likes the interesting mix of paprika - which is, after all, dried pepper - with fresh ones. He adds salt and pepper, caraway seeds, chopped up jarred red peppers and 2 finely sliced red onions. (Jamie chops and slices like a machine.)
He pulls the leaves off the stalks of fresh marjoram and adds those with “tinned” tomatoes. He puts the pork in and pushes it down to the bottom of the pan and surrounds it with the peppers and other stuff. He adds 4 tablespoons of red wine vinegar and brings the pan up to the boil. He puts it in a 350°F. oven for 2 ½ to 3 hours, or until the meat pulls apart easily with 2 forks.
Look what I just saw at the FN website:
"Our agreement with the producers of "Jamie at Home" only permit us to make 2 recipes per episode available online. Food Network regrets the inconvenience to our viewers and foodnetwork.com users".
Harrummmmph! I’m sure if Jamie understood how pathetic we Americans are as cooks, he would understand that we need our recipes, even if just as a hand-holding tool. Kidding. We’re amazing cooks, but it’s nice to have a bleepin’ recipe.
Next Jamie boils basmati rice for 10 minutes in plenty of boiling, salted water. He drains it, reserving some of the cooking water. He places the rice in a colander over the reserved cooking water and continues steaming it, covered, for another 10 minutes.
He takes the pork out. It’s so tender, he can pull it apart with a SPOON. He tastes it and is really excited by how good it is. He puts a hunk of it in a soup plate, serves rice on the side and accompanies it with sour cream to which he’s added lemon zest and parsley. He puts a wadge of the sour cream on top of the meat with one more spoonful of the sauce. The sour cream melts in. The dish looks completely tantalizing.
Now Jamie is going to smoke salmon himself. Of course he is. He readies a “biscuit tin”. Do we even have biscuit tins here? Don’t our cookies come wrapped in cellophane in cardboard boxes? He puts wood chips on the bottom, and then fresh sage and rosemary. Then chicken wire goes on top.
He pats salt on both sides of the salmon fillet and rubs over roasted chili oil. (He made the oil by roasting dried chilies for 15 to 20 minutes at 150°F. and adding them to olive oil.) The website says to use olive oil. He places the salmon on the wire. He punches 5 or 6 holes in the tin lid and covers the tin. He cooks it on top of the stove for 4 to 5 minutes. (The recipe says 8 to 10 minutes.) Remember you’ll get a lot of smoke, so be prepared…
The key to a salsa (sow-sa) starts with a chili, says Jamie. He grabs a couple of tomatoes and squeezes the seeds out of them. He chops them (beautifully) and then chops (again beautifully) 3 chilies (red, yellow and green) laid out in a pretty little line. He tells us he loves the crunchiness of cucumber and dices them into perfect little squares and adds them.
Then he deals with “Mr. Spring Onion”. “Once you’ve chopped it up, run your knife through it” again. He rolls up fresh coriander and chops that including the stalks, warning us not to add too much. He adds salt and Mr. Avocado. He halves the avocado, twists it and removes the pit. He removes the flesh from the skin with a big spoon in one piece. He chops it and adds it to the salad. He drizzles in a bit of olive oil, remarking “Not so classic, but (it) brings it together. Not too much, you want it to be quite clean.” Jamie tastes and loves it.
He checks the salmon. “Please work, otherwise I’ll look like a plonker.” He puts some salsa on the plate, the salmon goes on top of that. He spoons a bit more salsa on top with a little olive oil. He squeezes half a lime as he presents the dish to us. He tastes it and dances with happiness. Me, too.
Am I bad to focus on just the food? I know he didn't mention the whole issue here, but it's hard not to think about it. I DO want to see how the animals are raised, but I have to admit that seeing how they make it onto the plate might be a bit much for me.
Oh, no, I gotta get the television off quickly. Wait, is that Aunt Sandy in a cheerleading outfit? OMG!
Her cherry cobbler looks like beans on Bisquick. The tomato she’s slicing is the most perfectly shaped one I’ve ever seen and also the palest, waxiest, most fake looking one as well.
Jamie's respect for his ingredients is evident and even awe-inspiring. He is the perfect combination of superlative chef (with his knife handling, particularly) and casual (or so he wants it to appear) home cook. HE is naturally superb.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Ina's Barn - Beautiful, But Stlll A Mystery
Barefoot Contessa with Ina Garten
Barn Warming
Pear, Apple and Cranberry Crisp
Open-Faced Tomato, Mozzarella and Basil Sandwich
Ribollita
Smoked Salmon and Herb Butter
Barn Warming
Pear, Apple and Cranberry Crisp
Open-Faced Tomato, Mozzarella and Basil Sandwich
Ribollita
Smoked Salmon and Herb Butter
FINALLY, Ina acknowledges that she has a new barn. She’s giving a party to thank all the folks who worked on it. Great, this is just what we’ve been waiting for. I’m sure we’ll get a really good look. Maybe we’ll get to see the floor plans and designs. Maybe there will be an interview with the architects, who can talk about the vision they had for Ina’s new barn.
Oh, lookie here, she IS making smoked salmon. Sorry, Rachel, you may have been right.
We begin with a visit to Pike’s farm stand for the ingredients for the ribollita. What we want to see is the barn and she just keeps buying more fruits and vegetables and flowers.
She chops lots of onions and puts them in “a very big pot” (she isn’t kidding!) with ½ cup of olive oil. She appears to be doubling the recipe that’s on the website. She adds ½ lb chopped pancetta and cooks it until the onions are translucent and the pancetta starts to brown.
She shows us the beans that she’s soaked overnight and begun to cook for 45 minutes. She adds salt and cooks them for another 15 minutes. (By the way, if you have trouble with beans, read this.)
Ina chops up more vegetables - 2 cups each of carrots and celery and 12 cloves of garlic and adds that to the pot. Then she adds 2 TABLESPOONS of salt (I KNOW it’s a big pot, but yikes!), 2 teaspoons of pepper and ½ teaspoon red pepper flakes. Ina stirs well (that isn’t easy) and cooks it another 7 to 10 minutes.
She slices up 8 cups of Savoy cabbage and 8 cups of kale and adds that to the pot with two 28 oz cans of tomatoes in purée. A beautiful bunch of basil gets chopped and a cup of that goes in.
Ina drains the beans, saving the liquid. She purées half of them and adds that to the soup to thicken it and the other half go in as they are with the cooking liquid. She also adds 12 cups of chicken stock. She continues simmering for 20 minutes.
Wait there’s more to add to the soup. She slices sourdough bread into 8 to 10 cups of cubes and adds THOSE, as well, to thicken the soup. She cooks that for 10 to 15 minutes. Hey, Ina, while the soup is cooking, why don’t you show us around a bit? Maybe she’s saving it for last.
She gets started on dessert – a pear and apple crisp with fruit from the fruit stand. She peels 2 lbs. of Macoun apples and 2 lbs. of Bosc pears and cuts them into pieces. She adds ¾ cup of dried cranberries and a teaspoon each of orange and zest followed by 2 teaspoons of their juices. Then ½ cup sugar and ¼ cup flour go in to “create a delicious goop in the middle.” Lastly 1 teaspoon cinnamon and ½ teaspoon (jarred) nutmeg are added. Ina stirs everything together and fills 12 small ramekins rather full, about 1 cup in each one. She tells us how she loves the smell of the apples and spice in the air when guests arrive…That would be a nice to smell as we looked around the new digs…
For the crumble part, she mixes 1½ cups flour, ¾ cup light brown sugar, ¾ cup white sugar, a bit of salt and 1 cup oatmeal together in mixer, adding ½ lb diced room temperature butter. She piles that on top of each ramekin, remarking how special it is to have individual servings. Those go into the fridge and then into a 350° F. oven for 45 to 50 minutes.
Ina attends to the serving table. She loads on huge pumpkins, sunflowers and a big bowl of apples. She gets a cheese tray ready, which she always serves with 3 cheeses: blue, cheddar (to go with the apples) and a soft brie. Now would be a good time for a look-see, wouldn’t it?
Ina is making an herb butter to go on bread with the aforementioned smoked salmon. She smashes ½ lb unsalted butter in a bowl and adds ¼ teaspoon of minced garlic (why not just use a garlic press?) 1 tablespoon of finely chopped scallions (why not use a food processor?) and 1 tablespoon each of chopped dill and chopped parsley (ditto about the food pro). Then Ina stirs in 1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice, 1 teaspoon of salt and ¼ teaspoon of pepper.
I guess it DOES look better when chopped by hand, than pulverized in the processor. But I would still use a garlic press. On the topic of garlic, when I’m using it raw, in salad dressings or a flavored butter that isn’t getting cooked, I always remove the green stem in the center of the garlic clove. (It’s still white if you have relatively fresh garlic.) It may be a wife’s tale (I refuse to say OLD) that that’s where the particularly strong aftermath of garlic flavor comes from, but if it’s even 1% true, why not just remove it?
Ina slices nice whole grain bread pretty thinly. She takes out an Atlantic salmon “done in the Scottish style”. Prior to smoking, all salmon are brined with a cure of salt and sometimes sugars and spices. There are two common methods of brining. The first method is "dry brining," also referred to as Scottish style. It consists of using a mixture of salt and sometimes sugars, spices and other flavorings applied directly to the meat of the fish. Once the fish is dry brined for a period of time, the brine mixture is then rinsed off, and the fish is ready to be smoked. Brining times will vary depending upon the species and size of the fish. The second type of brine is called "wet brine." Wet brined fish is placed in a solution of water, salt and other sugars and spices prior to smoking.
Ina slices long thin slices off the end of the salmon. As she slices, she lays them upside down overlapping. She leaves a bit of the fish intact to act as a strong base for the thin slices. Now, she replaces each piece back on the fish in the reverse order that she sliced them. Are you with me? Basically, she’s putting the fish back the way it was. She decorates it with fresh dill, lemon and plenty of black pepper. It goes on to the table with the bread and herb butter. Could we have a wider angle please, to see exactly how the room is situated?
For sandwiches, Ina slices tomatoes and fresh mozzarella about 1/8 inch thick. She’s using cow’s milk mozzarella, rather than buffalo, because she says it’s a bit firmer and better for this purpose.
She slices ciabatta in half lengthwise and spreads STORE-BOUGHT pesto on each half. (C’mon, Ina, you didn’t have a batch in the freezer? Now that you prob’ly have 5 freezers, it shouldn’t be a problem. See how nasty I’m sounding, because we haven’t gotten our tour?) She arranges the tomato and mozzarella slices over and tucks in pieces of fresh basil. She seasons with salt and pepper and places the sandwiches on wooden boards, to allow her guests to cut whatever size pieces they wish. Everything looks gorgeous.
Ina heats up the soup, puts the crumble in the oven and gets out a big bowl of parmesan and a bottle of olive oil to sit alongside the soup.
It’s party-time. The champers are opened, folks are eating heartily. That looks like a lot more than 12 people. The space does create a cavernous sound. The camera is kept tight on the food and the people, never allowing a good glimpse of the interior.
The soup is served in white mugs. “Thank you so much everybody. I love it! We’ll be partying here for a long time,” toasts the Contessa. We wish you well, too, Ina, but please, PLEASE can we see, in close-up, this amazing space that everyone has worked on so diligently??? Not this week, I guess.
Friday, January 25, 2008
Food Is Good For More Than Just Eating
I knew that peanut butter was good for getting gum out of a kid’s hair, but I never thought about using it on a CARPET to get rid of gum. There are some other great ideas here (click on Weird Household Uses For Food) for using food in unusual ways:
Add black pepper to laundry to keep clothes from fading.
Pour a bottle of soda down the drain to clear it, instead of using Drano. (I knew soda was poison, but I didn’t realize it was THIS bad.)
Vegetable shortening helps sooth diaper rash.
Table salt can be worked into grease stains to help remove them before washing.
Soak an ink-stained shirt in milk to loosen the stain.
Sprinkle cornstarch on a tangled shoelace to help untie them.
Here are my two favorites:
Use a piece of bread to pick up broken glass off the floor and to clean fingerprints off the wall. (It’s probably the only good reason to have Wonderbread in the house.)
Rub butter on a tangled necklace and then use a sewing needle to work out the knots. (Add a bit of chopped garlic and rub off the butter with French bread and you’ve got a nice snack!)
Jamie Sure Is Dishie; But Finding His Pie Dish Is No Easy Task
Some folks have been asking about this nifty pie plate that Jamie used last week. He probably got his at Oxfam (which IS a great place to shop), but I did find a few similar ones online.
Unfortunately, this one is already gone and it was only 99 cents on Ebay!!!
The one that is probably the closest in SHAPE is this apple-patterned Polish pottery pie dish:
Another one with a similar shape is on Ebay:
Not exactly the same fluting, but here's a stunner from Frankoma:
And there's this basic plain white one from Amazon:
Now if we could just find his recipes online...
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Ina Makes Herself At Home
Barefoot Contessa with Ina Garten
Home Comforts
Creamy Vinaigrette
Grown Up Mac and Cheese
Mussels in White Wine
Lemon Curd Tart
Jeffrey's coming back from a long trip. Ina wants to get the cooking out of the way, so that they can spend the entire weekend...... WHAT is she about to say?......oh, relaxing.
For the macaroni and cheese, Ina gets the milk bottle out of her new panel-covered refrigerator. She cooks bacon on a rack at 400°F. for 15 to 20 minutes until crisp and browned. There's definitely more of an echo in this new kitchen. I guess the sound is bouncing off the much higher ceiling.
Ina cooks the pasta for 10 to 11 minutes and starts the white sauce. She heats 1 1/2 cups of milk in a saucepan. In a separate pan, she melts 2 tablespoons of butter and whisks in 2 tablespoons of flour. She cooks the roux over low heat for 2 minutes. (I cook a roux over the lowest heat possible for THREE minutes.) She pours in the hot milk all at once, whisking all the time, and continues to cook it over low heat until thick.
Ina readies 1/2 cup grated Gruyere (she likes the nutty flavor), 1/3 cup grated cheddar cheese and 2 oz. of crumbled Roquefort. She cooks the white sauce until it just coats a spoon. Off the heat, Ina stirs in the cheeses.
She drains the pasta and adds it to the sauce. She pours it into 2 individual eared dishes. She takes the crust off 2 pieces of white bread (does ANYONE really have white bread around anymore?) and processes it with some fresh basil to make a crumb topping. That goes on top of the macaroni and cheese and it goes into the fridge until the next night.
For the lemon tart crust, she mixes 12 tablespoons of “absolutely, positively” room temperature butter with ½ cup sugar and ½ teaspoon of vanilla, which Ina tells us is basically a shortbread recipe. Isn’t that highly unusual that the butter is at room temperature? I have NEVER made pastry, even pâte sucrée, with anything other than cold butter. But, of course, if I were making shortbread or sugar cookies, THEN the butter WOULD be at room temperature. HMMM, very interesting, Contessa.
She mixes in 1¾ cups of sifted flour and a pinch of salt. She PATS it into the bottom of a removable-bottomed tart pan and presses a metal 1 cup measuring cup against the inside edges to make it all nice. She refrigerates it until firm.
Ina puts the lined tart pan on a baking sheet. She greases a piece of foil and puts it greased side down, on top of the pastry. I just use wax paper and don’t bother with greasing anything. She fills it with beans that she uses just for baking. (Some of us are fancy and use metal pie weights.) She bakes it at 350°F for 20 minutes.
Now we’re out in the garden. (How did she get to Versailles so quickly? Oh, that’s HER garden). She picks beautiful pinkie-purple and white dahlias. They go in a vase on the table.
Ina takes the tart out of the oven and removes the beans. She pricks holes all over the bottom of the shell and puts it back in the oven for another 20 minutes until nicely browned.
For the lemon curd filling, Ina strips off the peel of 4 lemons, using a vegetable peeler. That goes into a food processor with 1½ cups sugar and is processed until the lemon is finely chopped. Ina adds one stick of butter to her mixer bowl and creams it with the lemoned sugar. She adds 4 eggs, one at a time, and reminds us to scrape down the sides of the bowl.
She adds a pinch of salt and ½ cup of fresh lemon juice. ”Don’t even think about using the stuff in the bottle.” The mixture goes into a saucepan and she cooks it until thickened, being careful to cook it slowly so it doesn’t curdle. The recipe helpfully says to cook it to 175°F. It’s not a bad idea to use a sugar thermometer, because the mixture can curdle in a second.
The pastry shell comes out of the oven and she leaves it out overnight to completely cool. Are you allowed to cover it, I wonder? I guess that would make it soggy. Just don’t dust the room or start vacuuming, while it’s hanging out in the kitchen. She pours the cooled lemon curd into a container and into the fridge it goes. “It should be just the right amount for the tart shell, but I won’t be disappointed if there’s any left over.”
“No chicken tonight” for Jeffrey. Instead, Ina is making one of their French favorites – Moules Marinière. She rinses 3 lbs of mussels for the two of them. She fills the bowl of mussels with water and puts a little flour in. It “gets the mussels to give up any sand that’s in them.”
For the wine broth that the mussels cook in, Ina heats 2 tablespoons of oil with 2 tablespoons of butter. She chops up a lot of shallots, one cup, and stirs those in with 5 or 6 cloves of chopped garlic. She cooks them for a few minutes until the shallots are translucent and then adds ½ teaspoon of saffron with ½ cup of canned whole tomatoes, which she chops IN the measuring cup. The Contessa adds some chopped fresh herbs – 1/3 cup parsley, and 1 tablespoon of fresh thyme (just the leaves). Lastly, 1 cup white wine goes in.
Ina checks the mussels to make sure they’re closed. She tosses them into the broth. 8 to 10 minutes and “dinner’s ready.” Jeffrey arrives at the new barn with his bag (as if it’s their main house).
Ina spoons out the mussels and breaks off big pieces of French bread. Jeffrey loves it. They make plans for the next day, but Jeffrey is worried that if they’re out all day, how will she be able to cook dinner? UH, have you ever heard of restaurants, Jeffrey? Doesn’t your Contessa deserve a night off? But not to worry, she (and we) know she has it all covered.
J and I are in Sag Harbor, walking around, laughing, having fun. But there’s something on Jeffrey’s mind. “I just don’t understand how you’re going to make dinner.” Ina reassures him, “That’s my purpose in life, making you a good dinner.” “I like that purpose,” he says.
Back home, she puts the macaroni and cheese in a 400° F. oven for 35 to 40 minutes. She heats up the lemon curd just a bit to make it easier to spread in the pastry shell. It’s all ready in minutes.
She makes a quick salad dressing with ½ cup (!!!) olive oil, 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar, 1 tablespoon mustard and a “drop” of honey. Ina adds some shallots and whisks well. She adds just enough dressing to moisten the mesclun mix. Thank goodness. I honestly thought she was going to add it all.
“Honey, dinner’s ready.” Jeffrey wonders how Ina pulled it off. Has he learned nothing from all his years with the Contessa?
She serves the lemon tart and they pronounce it a perfect end to a perfect day. AND I pronounce it a perfect show.
Home Comforts
Creamy Vinaigrette
Grown Up Mac and Cheese
Mussels in White Wine
Lemon Curd Tart
Jeffrey's coming back from a long trip. Ina wants to get the cooking out of the way, so that they can spend the entire weekend...... WHAT is she about to say?......oh, relaxing.
For the macaroni and cheese, Ina gets the milk bottle out of her new panel-covered refrigerator. She cooks bacon on a rack at 400°F. for 15 to 20 minutes until crisp and browned. There's definitely more of an echo in this new kitchen. I guess the sound is bouncing off the much higher ceiling.
Ina cooks the pasta for 10 to 11 minutes and starts the white sauce. She heats 1 1/2 cups of milk in a saucepan. In a separate pan, she melts 2 tablespoons of butter and whisks in 2 tablespoons of flour. She cooks the roux over low heat for 2 minutes. (I cook a roux over the lowest heat possible for THREE minutes.) She pours in the hot milk all at once, whisking all the time, and continues to cook it over low heat until thick.
Ina readies 1/2 cup grated Gruyere (she likes the nutty flavor), 1/3 cup grated cheddar cheese and 2 oz. of crumbled Roquefort. She cooks the white sauce until it just coats a spoon. Off the heat, Ina stirs in the cheeses.
She drains the pasta and adds it to the sauce. She pours it into 2 individual eared dishes. She takes the crust off 2 pieces of white bread (does ANYONE really have white bread around anymore?) and processes it with some fresh basil to make a crumb topping. That goes on top of the macaroni and cheese and it goes into the fridge until the next night.
For the lemon tart crust, she mixes 12 tablespoons of “absolutely, positively” room temperature butter with ½ cup sugar and ½ teaspoon of vanilla, which Ina tells us is basically a shortbread recipe. Isn’t that highly unusual that the butter is at room temperature? I have NEVER made pastry, even pâte sucrée, with anything other than cold butter. But, of course, if I were making shortbread or sugar cookies, THEN the butter WOULD be at room temperature. HMMM, very interesting, Contessa.
She mixes in 1¾ cups of sifted flour and a pinch of salt. She PATS it into the bottom of a removable-bottomed tart pan and presses a metal 1 cup measuring cup against the inside edges to make it all nice. She refrigerates it until firm.
Ina puts the lined tart pan on a baking sheet. She greases a piece of foil and puts it greased side down, on top of the pastry. I just use wax paper and don’t bother with greasing anything. She fills it with beans that she uses just for baking. (Some of us are fancy and use metal pie weights.) She bakes it at 350°F for 20 minutes.
Now we’re out in the garden. (How did she get to Versailles so quickly? Oh, that’s HER garden). She picks beautiful pinkie-purple and white dahlias. They go in a vase on the table.
Ina takes the tart out of the oven and removes the beans. She pricks holes all over the bottom of the shell and puts it back in the oven for another 20 minutes until nicely browned.
For the lemon curd filling, Ina strips off the peel of 4 lemons, using a vegetable peeler. That goes into a food processor with 1½ cups sugar and is processed until the lemon is finely chopped. Ina adds one stick of butter to her mixer bowl and creams it with the lemoned sugar. She adds 4 eggs, one at a time, and reminds us to scrape down the sides of the bowl.
She adds a pinch of salt and ½ cup of fresh lemon juice. ”Don’t even think about using the stuff in the bottle.” The mixture goes into a saucepan and she cooks it until thickened, being careful to cook it slowly so it doesn’t curdle. The recipe helpfully says to cook it to 175°F. It’s not a bad idea to use a sugar thermometer, because the mixture can curdle in a second.
The pastry shell comes out of the oven and she leaves it out overnight to completely cool. Are you allowed to cover it, I wonder? I guess that would make it soggy. Just don’t dust the room or start vacuuming, while it’s hanging out in the kitchen. She pours the cooled lemon curd into a container and into the fridge it goes. “It should be just the right amount for the tart shell, but I won’t be disappointed if there’s any left over.”
“No chicken tonight” for Jeffrey. Instead, Ina is making one of their French favorites – Moules Marinière. She rinses 3 lbs of mussels for the two of them. She fills the bowl of mussels with water and puts a little flour in. It “gets the mussels to give up any sand that’s in them.”
For the wine broth that the mussels cook in, Ina heats 2 tablespoons of oil with 2 tablespoons of butter. She chops up a lot of shallots, one cup, and stirs those in with 5 or 6 cloves of chopped garlic. She cooks them for a few minutes until the shallots are translucent and then adds ½ teaspoon of saffron with ½ cup of canned whole tomatoes, which she chops IN the measuring cup. The Contessa adds some chopped fresh herbs – 1/3 cup parsley, and 1 tablespoon of fresh thyme (just the leaves). Lastly, 1 cup white wine goes in.
Ina checks the mussels to make sure they’re closed. She tosses them into the broth. 8 to 10 minutes and “dinner’s ready.” Jeffrey arrives at the new barn with his bag (as if it’s their main house).
Ina spoons out the mussels and breaks off big pieces of French bread. Jeffrey loves it. They make plans for the next day, but Jeffrey is worried that if they’re out all day, how will she be able to cook dinner? UH, have you ever heard of restaurants, Jeffrey? Doesn’t your Contessa deserve a night off? But not to worry, she (and we) know she has it all covered.
J and I are in Sag Harbor, walking around, laughing, having fun. But there’s something on Jeffrey’s mind. “I just don’t understand how you’re going to make dinner.” Ina reassures him, “That’s my purpose in life, making you a good dinner.” “I like that purpose,” he says.
Back home, she puts the macaroni and cheese in a 400° F. oven for 35 to 40 minutes. She heats up the lemon curd just a bit to make it easier to spread in the pastry shell. It’s all ready in minutes.
She makes a quick salad dressing with ½ cup (!!!) olive oil, 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar, 1 tablespoon mustard and a “drop” of honey. Ina adds some shallots and whisks well. She adds just enough dressing to moisten the mesclun mix. Thank goodness. I honestly thought she was going to add it all.
“Honey, dinner’s ready.” Jeffrey wonders how Ina pulled it off. Has he learned nothing from all his years with the Contessa?
She serves the lemon tart and they pronounce it a perfect end to a perfect day. AND I pronounce it a perfect show.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Monday, January 21, 2008
Hold On For The Ride...It's Jamie Oliver
Gosh, he's fantastic, but, boy, would it be easier if all of his recipes were online.
Jamie At Home with Jamie Oliver
Pastry
Old-Fashioned Sweet Shortcrust Pastry
Blackberry and Apple Pie
Steak and Guinness Pie
Italian Ham, Nettle & Spinach Tart
One good thing about making sure I was in front of the television at 9:30 am promptly was watching the last 4 minutes of Tyler. He sure has a lot of manliness riding on those broad shoulders. Oh, sorry, I mean his lasagna looked amazing (it really did) and that semi-freddo! Just the thing to have before curling up with the chef...I digress.
Jamie...Ok, seeing the show from the beginning this time didn't really inform me about what the heck he's doing in that shed...but, really, I don’t care. I love him. Jamie is a real, true cook using real, true ingredients, many of which we’re given to believe he has grown or raised in his own backyard. I don’t doubt it for a second.
Homespun opening. Hand-written, food stained notebook or journal pages...He's showing us two pastry crusts one sweet and one savoury (I will be adopting British Spelling and the Queen’s weights and measurements for the rest of this post). He’s making one by hand, the other in a Magimix. (Ok, I won’t go that esoteric. Magimix is the company that invented the food processor, way back in the last quarter of the 20th century and, although it’s French, many Brits still refer to a food processor as a Magimix.)
Working a pretty breakneck speed, Jamie tells us that the rule of pastry is using half fat to flour. That’s not that useful for us Yankees, because he talking about weight - 500 grams of flour to 250 grams of fat. In the recipe on the website (ONLY the sweet pastry and apple pie are there…that is sooooooooo irritating) he says 3½ cups flour to 1 cup of butter. (Oops, I said only Imperial measurements.)
He makes both pastries at once and it IS a bit hard to follow. He’s sifting flour for sweet pastry and pours into a food processor. He sifts flour again for the savory crust, which goes into a bowl (a rustic earthenware one). Butter goes into the sweet one, lard and cheese into the savoury one. Icing sugar (that’s unusual) into the sweet one.
Then he says to use any flavourings you wish. Lemon zest can be added to the sweet pastry, herbs to a savoury one. He adds 2 beaten eggs and a bit of milk to each and stirs it until “claggy and (it) gets thicker”.
Jamie mixes the savoury one by patting and pushing it until it comes together into a nice cake. He whirls the sweet one in the food processor until it is just mixed and pushes it into a flat ball (is that a oxymoron?). He refrigerates it (in an ICE BOX, I wonder?) for 30 minutes.
For the apple filling, Jamie slices 500 g apples, adds a handful of unrefined sugar, 3 pieces of ginger in syrup, chopped, plus a little of the syrup and a handful of blackberries. He stirs it gently together, noting how the blackberries “stain” the rest of the mixture. He washes his hands. Oh, there must be a sink somewhere.
He rolls out the pastry, 3mm thick, between 2 sheets of greaseproof paper (remember, all English-isms today). He “sags it in” a pretty fluted pie dish. He puts the filling in and rolls the top with a rolling pin to remove excess pastry on the edges. Jamie dots 3 oz. of butter on top. Then he brushes the edge with egg (I don’t call it an egg wash, since he didn’t add water to it. I would…a tablespoon.)
Ah, apparently he’s divided the pastry into 2 pieces, because he’s rolling out the other piece (I would say 1/3 of the dough) into a round. He lays the pastry on top of the apple mixture, brushes it with more egg, sprinkles cinnamon, then sugar, on top and cuts a few slits in the top. Not in a pretty circle in the middle, just random slashes all over the top. He bakes it in the bottom of the oven at 180°C. for 40 to 50 minutes. (Alright, you Amurricans, he actually says 180°C or 350°F.)
Commercial for RR’s vacation show. OMG, imagine going to Lisboa and running into RR.
Back to Jamie. Really smoky kitchen. The juice ran out and burned on the bottom of the oven. Perhaps it would be better to bake the pie on the next-to-bottom shelf and put a baking sheet lined with foil underneath on the bottom shelf. Just a thought.
He puts custard from the supermarket (it wasn’t Bird's Custard Powder that he cooked himself, it was already made) in the bottom of a big bowl and places a nice big steaming slice of pie right on top. Yum.
Next is a Steak and Guinness pie (you won’t see the recipe on the website. ANNOYING!) Jamie cooks 3 red onions until they are soft, soft, soft, but he says he only cooked them for 10 minutes. I think it would take more like 20 minutes. He adds rosemary, 3 cloves of garlic, a “nice knob of butter”, 2 sticks of sliced celery, 2 sliced carrots and sliced mushrooms (NOT button, but “field” or Portobello mushrooms). He pours in a can of Guinness, pronouncing the combination “genius”. He sprinkles in flour and a bit of water or stock to just barely cover the meat. He cooks it in the oven at 180°C for 2 hours.
The filling can be used as a stew or a filling for a pie. As a filling, the mixture should be reasonably dry, Jamie tells us. He’s using store-bought puff pastry, because making it can be “a ripe palaver”. His puff pastry isn’t in sheets like ours. It’s in a thick rectangle that has to be rolled out. He cuts off one third and rolls it, instructing us to always roll forward and to keep the dough lightly dusted with flour. He lines a pudding basin shaped dish with the pastry.
He puts 100g of cheddar cheese into the bottom and spoons in the steak mixture. Then another 100g of cheese goes on top which will makes “a little cap on top”. He beats an egg and brushes it around the edge. (I still like adding a little water.)
He rolls out the remaining pastry for the lid. Then he scores it in long lines, which means that he runs his knife down the length of the lid in parallel lines, just barely marking the pastry. He puts it over the top and brushes over more egg, ruching the edges. He bakes it at 180°C for 40 minutes until bubbling on top. Jamie serves up a big piece with frozen peas on top. (I used to do that when the kids' food was too hot.)
Oh that’s nice…a shot of his farmhouse. It does look like a farm.
Jamie takes the savoury pastry and rolls it out to a centimeter thick into a rectangle (a little bigger than an 11 by 15 inch baking sheet, it seems. Remember there is no recipe anywhere…AAARGGHHH!). He lines it into the baking sheet, making about an inch high crust around the edges. (It has to be able to hold in the filling.) He stabs it all over with a fork, so it doesn’t rise. Jamie bakes it blind for 6 to 7 minutes at 180°C.
He sweats 2 chopped red onions in olive oil for 10 minutes (or longer). He adds spinach from the garden, which definitely didn’t look like baby spinach and leaves of “stinging nettles”, which look like weeds with poisonous berries attached. He adds just the leaves and berries…no stems.
That all cooks down for a bit with a knob of butter and salt and pepper. Oh, and he adds ONE THIRD of a nutmeg. Now, I love nutmeg, but wouldn’t that be a wee bit too much? Jamie chops up some fresh marjoram and adds that stems and all.
He beats 3 eggs with 500g crème fraîche, a handful of Parmesan, salt and pepper. That’s his basic recipe to which you may add all kinds of flavorings: sun-dried tomatoes, tomatoes, basil, whatever.
Jamie puts the spinach mixture into the baked shell and adds some chopped smoked boiled ham on top. He pours the crème fraîche filling into the middle. If you’ve made the edges high enough, the filling will stay in; if you haven’t, grab some towels. He sprinkles some extra Parmesan on top. Add a little more marjoram and some little “lugs of olive oil”. He bakes it at 180°C for 12 minutes. He takes out the quiche. “Oh, I’m so pleased with that. He’s a good looker, isn’t he?”
Jamie adds a bit of watercress to the top that he dresses with olive oil, lemon juice and salt. “Have you ever seen a tart look so deeply appealing?”, he wonders. No, Jamie, nor a chef. Bravo, what wondrous things he comes up with.
OMG, lookie here. Sandy is on right after. That’s just not right. Could there be a greater difference between a chef cooking with the earth's natural bounty and a promoter of all that is unnatural and processed?
Jamie At Home with Jamie Oliver
Pastry
Old-Fashioned Sweet Shortcrust Pastry
Blackberry and Apple Pie
Steak and Guinness Pie
Italian Ham, Nettle & Spinach Tart
One good thing about making sure I was in front of the television at 9:30 am promptly was watching the last 4 minutes of Tyler. He sure has a lot of manliness riding on those broad shoulders. Oh, sorry, I mean his lasagna looked amazing (it really did) and that semi-freddo! Just the thing to have before curling up with the chef...I digress.
Jamie...Ok, seeing the show from the beginning this time didn't really inform me about what the heck he's doing in that shed...but, really, I don’t care. I love him. Jamie is a real, true cook using real, true ingredients, many of which we’re given to believe he has grown or raised in his own backyard. I don’t doubt it for a second.
Homespun opening. Hand-written, food stained notebook or journal pages...He's showing us two pastry crusts one sweet and one savoury (I will be adopting British Spelling and the Queen’s weights and measurements for the rest of this post). He’s making one by hand, the other in a Magimix. (Ok, I won’t go that esoteric. Magimix is the company that invented the food processor, way back in the last quarter of the 20th century and, although it’s French, many Brits still refer to a food processor as a Magimix.)
Working a pretty breakneck speed, Jamie tells us that the rule of pastry is using half fat to flour. That’s not that useful for us Yankees, because he talking about weight - 500 grams of flour to 250 grams of fat. In the recipe on the website (ONLY the sweet pastry and apple pie are there…that is sooooooooo irritating) he says 3½ cups flour to 1 cup of butter. (Oops, I said only Imperial measurements.)
He makes both pastries at once and it IS a bit hard to follow. He’s sifting flour for sweet pastry and pours into a food processor. He sifts flour again for the savory crust, which goes into a bowl (a rustic earthenware one). Butter goes into the sweet one, lard and cheese into the savoury one. Icing sugar (that’s unusual) into the sweet one.
Then he says to use any flavourings you wish. Lemon zest can be added to the sweet pastry, herbs to a savoury one. He adds 2 beaten eggs and a bit of milk to each and stirs it until “claggy and (it) gets thicker”.
Jamie mixes the savoury one by patting and pushing it until it comes together into a nice cake. He whirls the sweet one in the food processor until it is just mixed and pushes it into a flat ball (is that a oxymoron?). He refrigerates it (in an ICE BOX, I wonder?) for 30 minutes.
For the apple filling, Jamie slices 500 g apples, adds a handful of unrefined sugar, 3 pieces of ginger in syrup, chopped, plus a little of the syrup and a handful of blackberries. He stirs it gently together, noting how the blackberries “stain” the rest of the mixture. He washes his hands. Oh, there must be a sink somewhere.
He rolls out the pastry, 3mm thick, between 2 sheets of greaseproof paper (remember, all English-isms today). He “sags it in” a pretty fluted pie dish. He puts the filling in and rolls the top with a rolling pin to remove excess pastry on the edges. Jamie dots 3 oz. of butter on top. Then he brushes the edge with egg (I don’t call it an egg wash, since he didn’t add water to it. I would…a tablespoon.)
Ah, apparently he’s divided the pastry into 2 pieces, because he’s rolling out the other piece (I would say 1/3 of the dough) into a round. He lays the pastry on top of the apple mixture, brushes it with more egg, sprinkles cinnamon, then sugar, on top and cuts a few slits in the top. Not in a pretty circle in the middle, just random slashes all over the top. He bakes it in the bottom of the oven at 180°C. for 40 to 50 minutes. (Alright, you Amurricans, he actually says 180°C or 350°F.)
Commercial for RR’s vacation show. OMG, imagine going to Lisboa and running into RR.
Back to Jamie. Really smoky kitchen. The juice ran out and burned on the bottom of the oven. Perhaps it would be better to bake the pie on the next-to-bottom shelf and put a baking sheet lined with foil underneath on the bottom shelf. Just a thought.
He puts custard from the supermarket (it wasn’t Bird's Custard Powder that he cooked himself, it was already made) in the bottom of a big bowl and places a nice big steaming slice of pie right on top. Yum.
Next is a Steak and Guinness pie (you won’t see the recipe on the website. ANNOYING!) Jamie cooks 3 red onions until they are soft, soft, soft, but he says he only cooked them for 10 minutes. I think it would take more like 20 minutes. He adds rosemary, 3 cloves of garlic, a “nice knob of butter”, 2 sticks of sliced celery, 2 sliced carrots and sliced mushrooms (NOT button, but “field” or Portobello mushrooms). He pours in a can of Guinness, pronouncing the combination “genius”. He sprinkles in flour and a bit of water or stock to just barely cover the meat. He cooks it in the oven at 180°C for 2 hours.
The filling can be used as a stew or a filling for a pie. As a filling, the mixture should be reasonably dry, Jamie tells us. He’s using store-bought puff pastry, because making it can be “a ripe palaver”. His puff pastry isn’t in sheets like ours. It’s in a thick rectangle that has to be rolled out. He cuts off one third and rolls it, instructing us to always roll forward and to keep the dough lightly dusted with flour. He lines a pudding basin shaped dish with the pastry.
He puts 100g of cheddar cheese into the bottom and spoons in the steak mixture. Then another 100g of cheese goes on top which will makes “a little cap on top”. He beats an egg and brushes it around the edge. (I still like adding a little water.)
He rolls out the remaining pastry for the lid. Then he scores it in long lines, which means that he runs his knife down the length of the lid in parallel lines, just barely marking the pastry. He puts it over the top and brushes over more egg, ruching the edges. He bakes it at 180°C for 40 minutes until bubbling on top. Jamie serves up a big piece with frozen peas on top. (I used to do that when the kids' food was too hot.)
Oh that’s nice…a shot of his farmhouse. It does look like a farm.
Jamie takes the savoury pastry and rolls it out to a centimeter thick into a rectangle (a little bigger than an 11 by 15 inch baking sheet, it seems. Remember there is no recipe anywhere…AAARGGHHH!). He lines it into the baking sheet, making about an inch high crust around the edges. (It has to be able to hold in the filling.) He stabs it all over with a fork, so it doesn’t rise. Jamie bakes it blind for 6 to 7 minutes at 180°C.
He sweats 2 chopped red onions in olive oil for 10 minutes (or longer). He adds spinach from the garden, which definitely didn’t look like baby spinach and leaves of “stinging nettles”, which look like weeds with poisonous berries attached. He adds just the leaves and berries…no stems.
That all cooks down for a bit with a knob of butter and salt and pepper. Oh, and he adds ONE THIRD of a nutmeg. Now, I love nutmeg, but wouldn’t that be a wee bit too much? Jamie chops up some fresh marjoram and adds that stems and all.
He beats 3 eggs with 500g crème fraîche, a handful of Parmesan, salt and pepper. That’s his basic recipe to which you may add all kinds of flavorings: sun-dried tomatoes, tomatoes, basil, whatever.
Jamie puts the spinach mixture into the baked shell and adds some chopped smoked boiled ham on top. He pours the crème fraîche filling into the middle. If you’ve made the edges high enough, the filling will stay in; if you haven’t, grab some towels. He sprinkles some extra Parmesan on top. Add a little more marjoram and some little “lugs of olive oil”. He bakes it at 180°C for 12 minutes. He takes out the quiche. “Oh, I’m so pleased with that. He’s a good looker, isn’t he?”
Jamie adds a bit of watercress to the top that he dresses with olive oil, lemon juice and salt. “Have you ever seen a tart look so deeply appealing?”, he wonders. No, Jamie, nor a chef. Bravo, what wondrous things he comes up with.
OMG, lookie here. Sandy is on right after. That’s just not right. Could there be a greater difference between a chef cooking with the earth's natural bounty and a promoter of all that is unnatural and processed?
Sandy
Fake
Sold curtains
Made up to within an inch of her life
Artifice and anything artificial ruleJamie
Real
Trained CHEF
Rolled out of bed minutes before shooting
Natural ingredients and presentationFYI:
1 centimeter = 0.393700787402 inch500 grams flour = 4 ½ cups flour (The recipe on the FN website says 3½ cups flour. I guess I’d go with that, even though Jamie said 500 grams…but presumably they tested it.)
Greaseproof paper – wax paper without the wax. Use parchment. (I use plastic wrap to roll out my pastry.)
180°C = 350°F
3 mm = 1/8 inch
100 g = 3 ½ oz. cheese, which is a little less than a cup of cheese.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Nothing To Do With Food, But Very Cool - People Aged One To One Hundred...
Especially when you see the person representing your own age. YIKES!
The 99 year old has a real twinkle in his eye.
The 99 year old has a real twinkle in his eye.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
The Wine Isn't Always In The Tasting...Plus We Meet Umami Again
Hurry over to The Wall Street Journal and read this article (before they yank it away) on Tim Hanni. He has an unusual story. An entrepreneur and Master of Wine, plus a top advisor to large restaurant groups, Hanni is a recovering alcoholic, who hasn't touched a drop in 14 years.
Actually, they're careful to say in the article that he "RARELY even sip(s) and spit(s) wine to taste it", but does, occasionally, at wine tastings.
Anyway, he's an anti-establishment wine professional, who hates it when normal folk are made to feel inferior for liking so-called tacky wines like White Zinfandel. He doesn’t use the commonplace system of flavor notes to compare wine to chocolate or berries or herbs. He instigated the "progressive wine list" method of marketing wines, which arranges wine lists by factors such as "sweet"," light" or "full intensity".
The amount of taste buds an individual has also affects what kind of wine one likes. He takes an individual’s food preferences into account (how they like their coffee, for example) and uses that to select a wine. He also delves into flavor pairings, which brings up the umami link. Wines taste different when served with certain foods.
H and I learned about this at Copia last year. We tasted rosemary then drunk a glass of cabernet (I think it was...I was so sloshed, I suppose it could have been Kool-Aid). The wine tasted bitter and metallic. Then we had a potato chip and then more wine...heavenly. That is certainly one reason why restaurant food is often heavily salted. It makes the wine taste better.
Tim Hanni has come up with a flavor potion that is boomingly umami - Vignon - for chefs to use on food to boost its wine pairing capabilities. Vignon is made up of umami rich ingredients: shitake mushrooms, Parmesan cheese, soy sauce. Interesting.
I'm still not sure HOW he can do all this without actually tasting most of the wines, but it seems as if he's more on the mark than some of the folks who drink hundreds of bottles a year.
He has developed a test called a “budometer” (for taste buds, not Bud beer) for choosing which wines a consumer would like. You can take a mini-version here. Again hurry, it may not be there long.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
10 Minutes Of Jamie Is Better
Than Nothing
Jamie at Home with Jamie Oliver
Pumpkin and Squash
Superb Squash Soup with the Best Parmesan Croutons
Butternut Squash Muffins with a Frosty Top
Jamie Oliver could fish an olive out of a jar and I would watch him. I love his enthusiasm, his kitchen skills and his engaging manner. And let’s face it, he’s a young(ish) guy who’s hot. What IS it about English chefs and their jaggedly cut heads of blonde hair? They’re so darned cute.
I was really looking forward to Jamie at Home. I turned on my tape and I was a bit confused. There were no credits. There was no intro. He just launched into a recipe. Finally, I realized that SOMEHOW I had only taped the last 10 minutes!!! That’s a real shame because they seem not to be showing repeats AND for some reason, the duck salad that he supposedly did is not on the website.
What I DID see was pretty fantastic, food-wise, but I have to admit I was a bit confused about the set and his wardrobe. His cutting board looked SO rustic that I was searching for splinters. And it looked like he was in garage with a shelf of dangerous chemicals behind him. His winter hat didn’t help the picture.
But the thing about the British is that they’re much less spoiled than we are. They’re used to being cold and they’re not used to unlimited hot water, gasoline and the other finer things (made in Japan or not) in life that we insist upon. I suppose then that it’s not surprising that they go around wearing all manner of woolly things…on their heads, feet, arms, wherever. And, anyway, the sheep are right in their back gardens, so why not get something from them?
Jamie is in this place - a barn, hut, shed, maybe?...and he hacks away at a gigantic pumpkin, which is actually a musque de Provence squash. He slices it into “big old flabs”, as he calls them.
He chops celery roughly, because he’s going to “whiz it up” with an immersion blender. Then he chops red onions and puts the two in a hot pan with olive oil to start “sweating off.” He adds chopped carrots, garlic, rosemary and salt and chops the squash into smaller pieces.
The squash goes into a pressure cooker with 2 liters of stock and is cooked for 6 minutes. The recipe tells us, if cooking it normally, to simmer it for 30 minutes. The interesting thing is that he doesn’t peel the squash. Perhaps he mentioned this at the beginning of the show, but I know that many folks do NOT peel butternut or spaghetti squash particularly when it’s organic. In the butternut squash muffin recipe on the website, he says it’s not necessary to peel the squash, because it gets soft when cooked.
For croutons to accompany the soup, he cuts a ciabatta into slices. He heats a bit of olive oil in a nonstick pan and adds sage leaves. He cooks them for about 40 seconds until crispy and then lifts out the sage, reserving the nicely flavored oil. He turns the bread slices around the oil, lightly coating both sides. The oil gets discarded.
On his board, Jamie grates Parmesan cheese right over the bread. He pats the cheese into the bread, turns it over and repeats it on the other side. Jamie puts the bread into the dry pan and cooks it for one minute on each side until golden brown, “It’s like croutons with a bit of an attitude, you know?”
The squash is done and he releases the steam from the pressure cooker and removes the lid. The squash is really mushified, so the skin must have completely disintegrated in the pressure cooker. If I were cooking it conventionally, I would remove the skin.
Jamie purées the soup with an immersion blender and tastes it. “Needs work.” He adds salt and pepper and tastes it again. “Tiny, tiny little bit more.” He adds more pepper and, now, he’s pleased. I’M pleased that he showed us that and didn’t pretend that it was perfect right out of the pot.
Jamie presses one crouton (it’s really more of a croûte than a crouton) into the bottom of a soup bowl and another one at an angle. He ladles the soup over. He tells us that people are going to go crazy for those “croutons”, “so you better make double”.
He adds a final garnish of sage leaves and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. Just beautiful. Maybe the funny hat and odd surroundings don't matter when the food is this good.
Jamie at Home with Jamie Oliver
Pumpkin and Squash
Superb Squash Soup with the Best Parmesan Croutons
Butternut Squash Muffins with a Frosty Top
Jamie Oliver could fish an olive out of a jar and I would watch him. I love his enthusiasm, his kitchen skills and his engaging manner. And let’s face it, he’s a young(ish) guy who’s hot. What IS it about English chefs and their jaggedly cut heads of blonde hair? They’re so darned cute.
I was really looking forward to Jamie at Home. I turned on my tape and I was a bit confused. There were no credits. There was no intro. He just launched into a recipe. Finally, I realized that SOMEHOW I had only taped the last 10 minutes!!! That’s a real shame because they seem not to be showing repeats AND for some reason, the duck salad that he supposedly did is not on the website.
What I DID see was pretty fantastic, food-wise, but I have to admit I was a bit confused about the set and his wardrobe. His cutting board looked SO rustic that I was searching for splinters. And it looked like he was in garage with a shelf of dangerous chemicals behind him. His winter hat didn’t help the picture.
But the thing about the British is that they’re much less spoiled than we are. They’re used to being cold and they’re not used to unlimited hot water, gasoline and the other finer things (made in Japan or not) in life that we insist upon. I suppose then that it’s not surprising that they go around wearing all manner of woolly things…on their heads, feet, arms, wherever. And, anyway, the sheep are right in their back gardens, so why not get something from them?
Jamie is in this place - a barn, hut, shed, maybe?...and he hacks away at a gigantic pumpkin, which is actually a musque de Provence squash. He slices it into “big old flabs”, as he calls them.
He chops celery roughly, because he’s going to “whiz it up” with an immersion blender. Then he chops red onions and puts the two in a hot pan with olive oil to start “sweating off.” He adds chopped carrots, garlic, rosemary and salt and chops the squash into smaller pieces.
The squash goes into a pressure cooker with 2 liters of stock and is cooked for 6 minutes. The recipe tells us, if cooking it normally, to simmer it for 30 minutes. The interesting thing is that he doesn’t peel the squash. Perhaps he mentioned this at the beginning of the show, but I know that many folks do NOT peel butternut or spaghetti squash particularly when it’s organic. In the butternut squash muffin recipe on the website, he says it’s not necessary to peel the squash, because it gets soft when cooked.
For croutons to accompany the soup, he cuts a ciabatta into slices. He heats a bit of olive oil in a nonstick pan and adds sage leaves. He cooks them for about 40 seconds until crispy and then lifts out the sage, reserving the nicely flavored oil. He turns the bread slices around the oil, lightly coating both sides. The oil gets discarded.
On his board, Jamie grates Parmesan cheese right over the bread. He pats the cheese into the bread, turns it over and repeats it on the other side. Jamie puts the bread into the dry pan and cooks it for one minute on each side until golden brown, “It’s like croutons with a bit of an attitude, you know?”
The squash is done and he releases the steam from the pressure cooker and removes the lid. The squash is really mushified, so the skin must have completely disintegrated in the pressure cooker. If I were cooking it conventionally, I would remove the skin.
Jamie purées the soup with an immersion blender and tastes it. “Needs work.” He adds salt and pepper and tastes it again. “Tiny, tiny little bit more.” He adds more pepper and, now, he’s pleased. I’M pleased that he showed us that and didn’t pretend that it was perfect right out of the pot.
Jamie presses one crouton (it’s really more of a croûte than a crouton) into the bottom of a soup bowl and another one at an angle. He ladles the soup over. He tells us that people are going to go crazy for those “croutons”, “so you better make double”.
He adds a final garnish of sage leaves and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. Just beautiful. Maybe the funny hat and odd surroundings don't matter when the food is this good.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Bistrot Lepic: Being French Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry
Admittedly, we hadn’t put too much research into our choice of restaurants in Georgetown. We had taken Citronelle off the list, because H didn’t have a jacket with him. Oh well.
We found this well reviewed French bistro, Bistrot Lepic on Wisconsin Avenue. We got there after a bit of a hike. We walked into a narrow hallway with a flight of stairs straight in front of us (up to the winebar). We entered the restaurant which opens right into the dining room of tightly packed tables. Luckily, we got a slightly larger table further back in the restaurant.
We found this well reviewed French bistro, Bistrot Lepic on Wisconsin Avenue. We got there after a bit of a hike. We walked into a narrow hallway with a flight of stairs straight in front of us (up to the winebar). We entered the restaurant which opens right into the dining room of tightly packed tables. Luckily, we got a slightly larger table further back in the restaurant.
Our server came right up and gave us our menus. He didn’t come back again until he took our order...and THAT was a bit longer than it should have been, so no drinkie to help us decide.
H started with the black trumpet mushroom risotto with snails. Very flavorful, very rich. I had the mussel soup with leeks and potatoes. It was rich and tasty, but a little too thin. Very nice warm crusty bread (with cold butter) was offered... piece by piece...I guess that's why the French are so thin.
Our entrées didn’t come…and didn’t come…and still didn’t come. And our table was completely ignored by any type of waitstaff. Anyone that came near just rushed on by with nary a word of explanation.
Finally, when every single other table had been served, even later arrivals, the waiter stopped by quickly and said it will be soon. Still waiting, more waiting. Then a higher-up person and said in a very thick French accent something about the tickets being confused. No apology, no trying to smooth over things…just a quick word. He did offer H another glass of wine. I was being passive aggressive, so I said no to another flute of the house champagne. Our entrées still didn’t come.
I wasn’t hungry anymore, I wasn’t happy anymore and I wasn’t interested in whatever I had ordered half an evening ago. Just then, of course, the food came.
My scallops were sautéed and sitting on top of a broccoli purée surrounded by ginger butter with pretty speckles of chives and sprinklings of paprika. The ginger flavor was repeated in the broccoli to good effect. H’s medaillons of beef with polenta and an old time shitaki mushroom sauce were good he said, but I thought the dish looked a little dowdy. The polenta WAS delicious.
After the table had been cleared and crumbed, a selection of desserts was shown as I said, "You must be kidding." "You think I’m going to spend one more second in your lousy bistro and wait for you to get a dessert order right, sometime before sunrise? You are joking!” Oh, wait, that’s just what I said in my head. To the server I said, JUST the check. I got my coat on and we left as quickly as we could.
It was a shame. As I’ve said before, I don’t go to restaurants to fight and moan. The FOOD at Bistrot Lepic was wonderful. The service was worse than unfriendly. It was inefficient and unprofessional. You don’t leave a table just hanging there, when you KNOW there has been a problem in the kitchen. That’s what’s so hard to understand.
If the loss of the order had been acknowledged (at all) and the staff had been at all interested in making us happy, I probably would have thought, oh, they made a boo-boo, but weren’t they nice to bring us a salad while we waited or whatever…As it was, they ignored the problem AND US and ruined an day that had been so gloriously started by my brush with reality television royalty.
Why does every discussion of a restaurant degenerate into a discussion of the service? No matter how good the food is, bad service casts a pall over the entire meal. Good food means nothing if it’s brought 40 minutes late and without apology or redress. I guess the truth is you don’t have to be French to stink at service, but it’s way more disappointing if you are…
Monday, January 14, 2008
A Walking Tour And A Brush With Greatness
Okay, that may be exaggerating a bit, even for me...You be the judge.
Guess where H and I were this weekend. Here's a clue...
Need another one?
Ok, NOW you know...
For real...
We decided to go to DC for a night, before we had to be in Maryland on Sunday morning. I hadn't been there in a long time. I don't know Washington well at all, but I think we must have walked about 50 miles.
We stayed in Georgetown, which has a kind of Newbury/Boylston Street/Boston feel to it. I wanted to see the Jefferson Memorial, so H and I started out walking down M street, which might mean something to you Washingtonites. We kept walking and walking.
I guess we turned somewhere and smack in front of us was the Lincoln Memorial, which we stopped by to say hi to. Gosh, it's magnificent. I could have stared into his face forever.
Then we walked through the Mall and kept trekking along. Park stuff was on our left, water was on our right. And THERE was the Jefferson Memorial. Except it was on the other side of this Great Lake-sized body of water! What was that about? Couldn't there have been a little pathway straight across? I guarantee more people would go.
We looked left and we looked right, trying to gauge which was the shortest distance to the JM. It was hard to tell. We went left (always a good choice in most decisions) and kept walking and walking.
The closer we got, we realized how FAR it really was. We took a little detour to the bar of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel and refreshed ourselves. (We didn't actually make it to the Jefferson Memorial until the next morning.)
As we walked out, I saw a stunning woman in a beautiful gown, surrounded by many large fierce men. I said to H,"Oh, that's Tyra Banks!" He said, "Who?" "TYRA BANKS!" I squealed. I took my camera out to get ready and then I had a momentary hesitation. A woman who looked to be in her party was leaving and I said, "Is that Tyra Banks?" She said, "I think so." I said "OOH, I just love her. What would she do if I went up and said hello?” My new friend said,” You go girl! You may never have the chance again.”
So I handed off the camera to H with instructions to get ready to shoot. With a demeanor, I thought, of great devotion, I began to walk up to her. As I got near...but not that near...one of her big men got directly between me and Miss Tyra.
I looked around his largeness and said to Tyra, “I just love you. I love your show. (I’ve actually never seen either of her shows.) And I think you’re beautiful. And I don’t think you’re THAT fat, at all.” Ok, I didn’t say that last part. She smiled regally and said thank you.
For a split second I thought about requesting a photo, but I just couldn’t bring myself to that level of fan-dom. SO I told her again how much I loved her show and I backed away from her and her phalanx of protectors. As we left, H said, “I don’t think she was SO nice.” In the afterglow of having been in her presence, I insisted, “YES, she was. She said thank you when I complimented her. What did you expect?”
And for the record, she WAS slim, gorgeously outfitted, beautifully coiffed and magnificently made-up, which meant that she actually really was camera-ready…and so it was even more of a shame that I didn’t grab the opportunity. Ah well…stay tuned to hear about dinner…
Guess where H and I were this weekend. Here's a clue...
Need another one?
Ok, NOW you know...
For real...
We decided to go to DC for a night, before we had to be in Maryland on Sunday morning. I hadn't been there in a long time. I don't know Washington well at all, but I think we must have walked about 50 miles.
We stayed in Georgetown, which has a kind of Newbury/Boylston Street/Boston feel to it. I wanted to see the Jefferson Memorial, so H and I started out walking down M street, which might mean something to you Washingtonites. We kept walking and walking.
I guess we turned somewhere and smack in front of us was the Lincoln Memorial, which we stopped by to say hi to. Gosh, it's magnificent. I could have stared into his face forever.
Then we walked through the Mall and kept trekking along. Park stuff was on our left, water was on our right. And THERE was the Jefferson Memorial. Except it was on the other side of this Great Lake-sized body of water! What was that about? Couldn't there have been a little pathway straight across? I guarantee more people would go.
We looked left and we looked right, trying to gauge which was the shortest distance to the JM. It was hard to tell. We went left (always a good choice in most decisions) and kept walking and walking.
The closer we got, we realized how FAR it really was. We took a little detour to the bar of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel and refreshed ourselves. (We didn't actually make it to the Jefferson Memorial until the next morning.)
As we walked out, I saw a stunning woman in a beautiful gown, surrounded by many large fierce men. I said to H,"Oh, that's Tyra Banks!" He said, "Who?" "TYRA BANKS!" I squealed. I took my camera out to get ready and then I had a momentary hesitation. A woman who looked to be in her party was leaving and I said, "Is that Tyra Banks?" She said, "I think so." I said "OOH, I just love her. What would she do if I went up and said hello?” My new friend said,” You go girl! You may never have the chance again.”
So I handed off the camera to H with instructions to get ready to shoot. With a demeanor, I thought, of great devotion, I began to walk up to her. As I got near...but not that near...one of her big men got directly between me and Miss Tyra.
I looked around his largeness and said to Tyra, “I just love you. I love your show. (I’ve actually never seen either of her shows.) And I think you’re beautiful. And I don’t think you’re THAT fat, at all.” Ok, I didn’t say that last part. She smiled regally and said thank you.
For a split second I thought about requesting a photo, but I just couldn’t bring myself to that level of fan-dom. SO I told her again how much I loved her show and I backed away from her and her phalanx of protectors. As we left, H said, “I don’t think she was SO nice.” In the afterglow of having been in her presence, I insisted, “YES, she was. She said thank you when I complimented her. What did you expect?”
And for the record, she WAS slim, gorgeously outfitted, beautifully coiffed and magnificently made-up, which meant that she actually really was camera-ready…and so it was even more of a shame that I didn’t grab the opportunity. Ah well…stay tuned to hear about dinner…
Friday, January 11, 2008
Ina Makes Lunch; Ina Makes Lunch
The Barefoot Contessa with Ina Garten
Weekend Lunch
Blueberry Crumb Cake
Chocolate Sorbet
Butternut Squash Risotto
Warm Duck Salad
This should be good. Everyone on The Food Network seems to be doing spa meals. Let’s see what Ina’s interpretation of that will be. She’ll probably just serve sparkling water with a slice of lemon alongside creamy cheesy linguine, accompanied by lots of “good” butter and bread, followed by an entire half of a sheet cake, which repeats the healthy lemon flavor…
But, oh no, our Contessa doesn't even bite. No spa meal for her...Pshaw! What was I thinking? In fact, she’s giving 2 different lunch parties on the weekend and, though, she’s keeping things simple, she never says anything about keeping them light.
She begins with the first dessert. (Ooh, I think we’re in the new kitchen.) She butters a 9 inch cake pan and flours it. (The room DOES look airier with more natural light.) She beats together 6 tablespoons of softened butter with ¾ cup sugar. She sifts together 1 1/3 cups flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder and ¼ teaspoon baking soda. She beats in 2 (guess what size) eggs at room temperature, one at a time. Then she beats in vanilla, lemon zest and 2/3 cup sour cream. On low speed, Ina beats in the flour mixture until just mixed. She tells us to make sure the batter at the bottom of the bowl is mixed in. She stirs in the blueberries carefully and pours the mixture into the prepared pan. She smooths out the top.
Ina tops the batter with a streusel. Definitely no spa dessert here. She mixes ¼ cup sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg (from a jar) with a stick of melted butter and 1 1/3 cups flour. She crumbles it together with her hands and sprinkles it over the top. It goes into a 350° oven for 40 to 50 minutes.
Back to Iacono Farm (like last week)...Today, it’s the son who helps her. In a statement noteworthy for its understatement, Ina says “You see the ducks outside, you know it’s as fresh as fresh can be!”
Back in the kitchen, Ina cooks the duck breast at 400° for 20 minutes. She whisks together ½ cup oil with 2½ tablespoons sherry vinegar, 1 teaspoon orange zest and 1 tablespoon of shallots. Ina tells us that duck can take a strongly flavored vinaigrette. She toasts pecans in a dry pan for 5 minutes. The duck comes out and she covers it with foil for 15 minutes to rest.
For the salad portion of the duck salad, Ina mixes mache or lamb’s ears with sliced endive (not my favorite). She peels and removes the pith from an orange and cuts the sections out into the salad bowl, leaving the tougher membrane behind. She squeezes every last bit of juice over and adds raspberries and 1 cup of pecans with the vinaigrette. She tells us to toss the salad together at the last minute. She arranges it on a serving dish.
Ina slices the skin off the duck and cuts the breasts on the diagonal into thick pieces, which get laid over the salad.
She sprinkles icing sugar over the…Oh my, I thought it was going to be the duck for a minute…no, it’s the cake, thank goodness. She serves her guests as she remarks that a salad gives you a rich dessert opportunity...I love her. After lunch, we see her loading the dishwasher. (Oh, come on.)
Oh, good, instead of commercial for disgusting household cleaners, that same guy is selling a knife sharpener that looks like a switchblade. Just what every kitchen needs.
Ina shares a cuddly moment with Jeffrey. I love them.
(I should be a paparazzo.)
She goes into her new pantry and picks up some ingredients. (Unlike Sandy’s Sem-Eye pantry, this one has real food in it)
Ina starts on a chocolate sorbet. I LOVE chocolate sorbet. You would think it would be unsatisfying and make you wish for something more elaborate. A good one actually concentrates the flavor of the chocolate so well, that you don’t need the distraction of the richness that comes from cream or an egg custard.
She mixes together 1 cup of sugar and ½ cup really good cocoa powder with cinnamon, 2 cups of water, a pinch of salt (not for me) and a ¼ cup espresso. Ina has a good idea here. If you can’t be bothered to make the espresso, just bring one home and use that. (I would suggest not slurping from the cup, if you’re making this for company). She puts this in a container with 1 ½ teaspoons of coffee liqueur and then into the fridge to chill.
For the risotto, Ina peels a butternut squash. There is no great secret here. Just use a really sharp peeler. She uses the Swiss type. She cuts the butternut in half separating the rounded part from the neck. Then she peels each piece and cuts them into thick slices (removing the seeds from the bottom piece first) and then into large cubes. She tosses them with a little olive oil and salt and pepper. They get cooked in a 400 degree oven for 25 to 30 minutes.
The chocolate sorbet mixture goes into an ice cream machine for 30 minutes. (I’ve said it before, if you have the space and opportunity for an ice cream machine, go for it. Don’t spend your whole life seeing ice cream recipes and saying “I can’t make that”. Get one and THEN USE IT.)
Next, we see an annoying “Poohbah of Pasta” commercial for Glad bags…I’m buying Zip-loc next time…
Ina pours 6 cups of chicken stock into a pan. She dices pancetta and cooks it in a pan with 6(!) tablespoons butter. She adds 2 large chopped shallots, 1 ½ cups of arborio rice. (I think carnaroli is even better) and ½ cup white wine. She stirs in the stock 2 ladles at a time. The Contessa reminds us that if we add it too fast, the rice cooks on the outside and not on the inside. If you add it too slow, the risotto gets mushy. The total cooking time should be about 30 minutes.
She adds saffron. The recipe says to add it in the beginning. Do that.
She takes the sorbet out of the ice cream machine and puts it into a container and into the freezer.
Ina adds the cooked butternut to the risotto and stirs in 1 cup of grated Parmesan. Lunch is ready. She serves it with more Parmesan to her willing guests. They’re happy.
She brings out the chocolate sorbet in low ball glasses. It goes over well. Jeffrey, in particular, raved about the entire lunch. “I love the risotto, I love the chocolate sorbet.” “Do you love ME?” Ina asks. “I love you”.
Ahhh, I’m such a sucker. She probably could have made the most Spartan of spa meals, and their touching rapport would have provided all the sweetness we needed.
Weekend Lunch
Blueberry Crumb Cake
Chocolate Sorbet
Butternut Squash Risotto
Warm Duck Salad
This should be good. Everyone on The Food Network seems to be doing spa meals. Let’s see what Ina’s interpretation of that will be. She’ll probably just serve sparkling water with a slice of lemon alongside creamy cheesy linguine, accompanied by lots of “good” butter and bread, followed by an entire half of a sheet cake, which repeats the healthy lemon flavor…
But, oh no, our Contessa doesn't even bite. No spa meal for her...Pshaw! What was I thinking? In fact, she’s giving 2 different lunch parties on the weekend and, though, she’s keeping things simple, she never says anything about keeping them light.
She begins with the first dessert. (Ooh, I think we’re in the new kitchen.) She butters a 9 inch cake pan and flours it. (The room DOES look airier with more natural light.) She beats together 6 tablespoons of softened butter with ¾ cup sugar. She sifts together 1 1/3 cups flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder and ¼ teaspoon baking soda. She beats in 2 (guess what size) eggs at room temperature, one at a time. Then she beats in vanilla, lemon zest and 2/3 cup sour cream. On low speed, Ina beats in the flour mixture until just mixed. She tells us to make sure the batter at the bottom of the bowl is mixed in. She stirs in the blueberries carefully and pours the mixture into the prepared pan. She smooths out the top.
Ina tops the batter with a streusel. Definitely no spa dessert here. She mixes ¼ cup sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg (from a jar) with a stick of melted butter and 1 1/3 cups flour. She crumbles it together with her hands and sprinkles it over the top. It goes into a 350° oven for 40 to 50 minutes.
Back to Iacono Farm (like last week)...Today, it’s the son who helps her. In a statement noteworthy for its understatement, Ina says “You see the ducks outside, you know it’s as fresh as fresh can be!”
Back in the kitchen, Ina cooks the duck breast at 400° for 20 minutes. She whisks together ½ cup oil with 2½ tablespoons sherry vinegar, 1 teaspoon orange zest and 1 tablespoon of shallots. Ina tells us that duck can take a strongly flavored vinaigrette. She toasts pecans in a dry pan for 5 minutes. The duck comes out and she covers it with foil for 15 minutes to rest.
For the salad portion of the duck salad, Ina mixes mache or lamb’s ears with sliced endive (not my favorite). She peels and removes the pith from an orange and cuts the sections out into the salad bowl, leaving the tougher membrane behind. She squeezes every last bit of juice over and adds raspberries and 1 cup of pecans with the vinaigrette. She tells us to toss the salad together at the last minute. She arranges it on a serving dish.
Ina slices the skin off the duck and cuts the breasts on the diagonal into thick pieces, which get laid over the salad.
She sprinkles icing sugar over the…Oh my, I thought it was going to be the duck for a minute…no, it’s the cake, thank goodness. She serves her guests as she remarks that a salad gives you a rich dessert opportunity...I love her. After lunch, we see her loading the dishwasher. (Oh, come on.)
Oh, good, instead of commercial for disgusting household cleaners, that same guy is selling a knife sharpener that looks like a switchblade. Just what every kitchen needs.
Ina shares a cuddly moment with Jeffrey. I love them.
(I should be a paparazzo.)
She goes into her new pantry and picks up some ingredients. (Unlike Sandy’s Sem-Eye pantry, this one has real food in it)
Ina starts on a chocolate sorbet. I LOVE chocolate sorbet. You would think it would be unsatisfying and make you wish for something more elaborate. A good one actually concentrates the flavor of the chocolate so well, that you don’t need the distraction of the richness that comes from cream or an egg custard.
She mixes together 1 cup of sugar and ½ cup really good cocoa powder with cinnamon, 2 cups of water, a pinch of salt (not for me) and a ¼ cup espresso. Ina has a good idea here. If you can’t be bothered to make the espresso, just bring one home and use that. (I would suggest not slurping from the cup, if you’re making this for company). She puts this in a container with 1 ½ teaspoons of coffee liqueur and then into the fridge to chill.
For the risotto, Ina peels a butternut squash. There is no great secret here. Just use a really sharp peeler. She uses the Swiss type. She cuts the butternut in half separating the rounded part from the neck. Then she peels each piece and cuts them into thick slices (removing the seeds from the bottom piece first) and then into large cubes. She tosses them with a little olive oil and salt and pepper. They get cooked in a 400 degree oven for 25 to 30 minutes.
The chocolate sorbet mixture goes into an ice cream machine for 30 minutes. (I’ve said it before, if you have the space and opportunity for an ice cream machine, go for it. Don’t spend your whole life seeing ice cream recipes and saying “I can’t make that”. Get one and THEN USE IT.)
Next, we see an annoying “Poohbah of Pasta” commercial for Glad bags…I’m buying Zip-loc next time…
Ina pours 6 cups of chicken stock into a pan. She dices pancetta and cooks it in a pan with 6(!) tablespoons butter. She adds 2 large chopped shallots, 1 ½ cups of arborio rice. (I think carnaroli is even better) and ½ cup white wine. She stirs in the stock 2 ladles at a time. The Contessa reminds us that if we add it too fast, the rice cooks on the outside and not on the inside. If you add it too slow, the risotto gets mushy. The total cooking time should be about 30 minutes.
She adds saffron. The recipe says to add it in the beginning. Do that.
She takes the sorbet out of the ice cream machine and puts it into a container and into the freezer.
Ina adds the cooked butternut to the risotto and stirs in 1 cup of grated Parmesan. Lunch is ready. She serves it with more Parmesan to her willing guests. They’re happy.
She brings out the chocolate sorbet in low ball glasses. It goes over well. Jeffrey, in particular, raved about the entire lunch. “I love the risotto, I love the chocolate sorbet.” “Do you love ME?” Ina asks. “I love you”.
Ahhh, I’m such a sucker. She probably could have made the most Spartan of spa meals, and their touching rapport would have provided all the sweetness we needed.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Giada's Spa-cial meal
Everyday Italian with Giada De Laurentiis
Giada's Spa Weekend Brought Home
Whole-Wheat Spaghetti with Lemon, Basil, and Salmon
Pork Chops Stuffed with Sun-Dried Tomatoes and Spinach
Artichoke and Tomato Panzanella
Saturday was obviously spa day at the Food Network. Giada was looking gorgeous lounging at Kinara. Unfortunately for her Y chromosome-d viewers, they didn't get to watch her actually getting a massage. Oh well, back to the kitchen for a spa meal. Let's see if she does any better than Ingrid.
Giada starts by adding 1/2 lb. whole wheat pasta to salted boiling water. It will cook for 8 to 10 minutes. She heats a skillet and adds 2 tablespoons oil. She seasons wild salmon fillets (4 oz. apiece) with salt and pepper, and adds them to the pan to cook for 2 minutes on each side.
After chopping 2 cloves of garlic, Giada tells us that instead of cooking it, she's going to add it to the dish at the end. (Let's hope all parties will be eating the garlic equally.) She adds lemon zest and juice to the garlic and then turns the salmon. 3 tablespoons of capers go in next. She chops basil as she tells us that herbs are a great way to flavor food without fat.
She lifts the pasta out of the pot and adds it to the bowl with the garlic mixture, adding a bit of the pasta water as well. She NEVER drains her pasta. I never don't. If I need a little pasta water, I put a measuring cup or pitcher under the colander.
GDL adds a little oil to the pasta - the recipe says 1 tablespoon and to add it earlier to the garlic. No difference really. She tosses the dish with salt and pepper. A handful of arugula (of course) goes on a plate (the recipe says spinach), and she places the pasta on top and the salmon on top of that. Looks good, if a bit bland.
Next she makes a stuffed pork chop. That doesn't sound very spa-ish. She chops 2 cloves of garlic and gives us kind of a dull riff on bringing the spa experience home. She adds a little olive oil to a pan and adds garlic, chopped sun-dried tomatoes (NOT in oil) and frozen spinach, which has been thawed and squeezed out. She adds salt and thyme. I would have sweated an onion in there too. She adds the mixture into a bowl and stirs in 1/3 cup low fat cream cheese and a 1/4 cup of goat cheese.
Giada is using center-cut pork chops 1 inch thick. She cuts a pocket in the center of each one, telling us that, as a kid, in Italy she ate a lot more pork and lamb than beef. I ate a lot more candy corn than broccoli, but how is that germane to the meal at hand? She adds a tablespoon of olive oil to a pan and she fills each pocket with the spinach mixture. She places them in the hot pan cooking them 4 to 5 minutes on each side.
Oh, goodie, a commercial with crusty stains in a bathroom. The pork chops smell good, GDL tells us. She plates them. She covers them with foil to stay warm. She says to TENT them, but she has actually blanketed them.
She turns up the heat on the pan and adds 1 1/2 cups of low sodium chicken stock and scrapes up all the browned bits from the bottom. She adds the zest of half a lemon and adds 2 tablespoons of fresh lemon juice with 2 teaspoons of Dijon, which will thicken the sauce. She reduces it for a few minutes and pours the sauce over the pork chop. She serves herself one with a bit more sauce. "It's so lemony... so good."
THAT is an excellent brief demonstration in deglazing a pan. I almost always finish off a sautéed meat or vegetable dish with a little sauce. Many times, I deglaze the pan with red wine and then add orange juice, or just oj alone.
Next is Giada's spin on panzanella. She cubes whole wheat bread into 1 inch pieces and places them on a baking sheet with thawed artichoke hearts. She drizzles them with oil and puts them on a hot grill pan in one layer.
That's interesting. I would never have thought to add artichoke hearts to a panzanella in the first place and I wouldn't have grilled them at the same time as the bread cubes. While they're cooking, Giada cuts black olives in half and puts them in a bowl. She cuts the tomatoes into wedges. That IS a bit odd, because she's just told us to make everything the same size. (I would have cut each wedge in half). The tomatoes go in the bowl with the olives. She adds parsley and the grilled ingredients. The heat will bring out the flavor of the tomatoes and olives.
She whisks wine white vinegar with extra virgin olive oil and salt and pepper. She pours dressing over and tosses the salad. She serves herself some. There are definitely lower calorie salads in the world, but that does look good.
Giada did make a few interesting choices in her spa menu, but the overall point, I guess, is not to deprive ourselves. We should make what we eat interesting enough, so that we don't need a mountain of it to feel satisfied.
Giada's Spa Weekend Brought Home
Whole-Wheat Spaghetti with Lemon, Basil, and Salmon
Pork Chops Stuffed with Sun-Dried Tomatoes and Spinach
Artichoke and Tomato Panzanella
Saturday was obviously spa day at the Food Network. Giada was looking gorgeous lounging at Kinara. Unfortunately for her Y chromosome-d viewers, they didn't get to watch her actually getting a massage. Oh well, back to the kitchen for a spa meal. Let's see if she does any better than Ingrid.
Giada starts by adding 1/2 lb. whole wheat pasta to salted boiling water. It will cook for 8 to 10 minutes. She heats a skillet and adds 2 tablespoons oil. She seasons wild salmon fillets (4 oz. apiece) with salt and pepper, and adds them to the pan to cook for 2 minutes on each side.
After chopping 2 cloves of garlic, Giada tells us that instead of cooking it, she's going to add it to the dish at the end. (Let's hope all parties will be eating the garlic equally.) She adds lemon zest and juice to the garlic and then turns the salmon. 3 tablespoons of capers go in next. She chops basil as she tells us that herbs are a great way to flavor food without fat.
She lifts the pasta out of the pot and adds it to the bowl with the garlic mixture, adding a bit of the pasta water as well. She NEVER drains her pasta. I never don't. If I need a little pasta water, I put a measuring cup or pitcher under the colander.
GDL adds a little oil to the pasta - the recipe says 1 tablespoon and to add it earlier to the garlic. No difference really. She tosses the dish with salt and pepper. A handful of arugula (of course) goes on a plate (the recipe says spinach), and she places the pasta on top and the salmon on top of that. Looks good, if a bit bland.
Next she makes a stuffed pork chop. That doesn't sound very spa-ish. She chops 2 cloves of garlic and gives us kind of a dull riff on bringing the spa experience home. She adds a little olive oil to a pan and adds garlic, chopped sun-dried tomatoes (NOT in oil) and frozen spinach, which has been thawed and squeezed out. She adds salt and thyme. I would have sweated an onion in there too. She adds the mixture into a bowl and stirs in 1/3 cup low fat cream cheese and a 1/4 cup of goat cheese.
Giada is using center-cut pork chops 1 inch thick. She cuts a pocket in the center of each one, telling us that, as a kid, in Italy she ate a lot more pork and lamb than beef. I ate a lot more candy corn than broccoli, but how is that germane to the meal at hand? She adds a tablespoon of olive oil to a pan and she fills each pocket with the spinach mixture. She places them in the hot pan cooking them 4 to 5 minutes on each side.
Oh, goodie, a commercial with crusty stains in a bathroom. The pork chops smell good, GDL tells us. She plates them. She covers them with foil to stay warm. She says to TENT them, but she has actually blanketed them.
She turns up the heat on the pan and adds 1 1/2 cups of low sodium chicken stock and scrapes up all the browned bits from the bottom. She adds the zest of half a lemon and adds 2 tablespoons of fresh lemon juice with 2 teaspoons of Dijon, which will thicken the sauce. She reduces it for a few minutes and pours the sauce over the pork chop. She serves herself one with a bit more sauce. "It's so lemony... so good."
THAT is an excellent brief demonstration in deglazing a pan. I almost always finish off a sautéed meat or vegetable dish with a little sauce. Many times, I deglaze the pan with red wine and then add orange juice, or just oj alone.
Next is Giada's spin on panzanella. She cubes whole wheat bread into 1 inch pieces and places them on a baking sheet with thawed artichoke hearts. She drizzles them with oil and puts them on a hot grill pan in one layer.
That's interesting. I would never have thought to add artichoke hearts to a panzanella in the first place and I wouldn't have grilled them at the same time as the bread cubes. While they're cooking, Giada cuts black olives in half and puts them in a bowl. She cuts the tomatoes into wedges. That IS a bit odd, because she's just told us to make everything the same size. (I would have cut each wedge in half). The tomatoes go in the bowl with the olives. She adds parsley and the grilled ingredients. The heat will bring out the flavor of the tomatoes and olives.
She whisks wine white vinegar with extra virgin olive oil and salt and pepper. She pours dressing over and tosses the salad. She serves herself some. There are definitely lower calorie salads in the world, but that does look good.
Giada did make a few interesting choices in her spa menu, but the overall point, I guess, is not to deprive ourselves. We should make what we eat interesting enough, so that we don't need a mountain of it to feel satisfied.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)