Dirty Sugar Cookies

Where's Ayun?

2012-02-27T05:55:00.003-08:00

Did you check Ayun Halliday dot com?

I've retired from blogging because I prefer zines, particularly my zine, the East Village Inky!

Monkfish McNuggets / Black Bottom Pumpkin Pie

2007-12-19T11:29:00.000-08:00

I know it’s been a while since I hollered at you. I’ve had a pumpkin pie dogging me since the day before Thanksgiving, when I figured, “Hell, woman, you think these people be hurting for your pie recipe now? Them forward thinkers been pied up since Martha Stewart started polishing her ceramic turkey-shaped place card holders, mid-October. Besides, don’t you have something better to do than type out the back of the Libby’s canned pumpkin can with the minor addition of some bittersweet chips? You can't declare a new Malibu Stacy when all she's got is a new hat!”

And if an extra-guilty pumpkin pie hanging over my head and clogging up the works isn’t enough, I’ve been struggling to pump out a novel in a windowless basement, a task that’s going so well, I spent all of last Friday watching a skip-prone DVD of The Wire, praying that Greg wouldn’t arrive home unexpectedly to discover my shameful secret. (My newfound allegiance to The Wire may explain the attempt to tap into some street lingo a la your average HBO drug dealer...)

Sounds like an ideal time to indulge in some fast food.

Monkfish McNuggets

Purchase a couple of orders of Chicken McNuggets, carefully trace their outlines, scan this pattern into your home computer and print several copies of the template onto sturdy cardstock. (Hint: Look for festive holiday colors!) Reserve one of the templates for cutting your monkfish filets to regulation size. Customize the others using scallop-edged craft scissors, rubber stamps, and photographs from your summer vacation, and use them as gift tags for the home-baked goodies you’ve wrapped in raffia and bright dishtowels as seasonal surprises for neighbors, teachers, personal assistants, and other “helpers”.

Or, skip that step, and hack a half pound of the world’s most unsightly fish (poor man’s lobster!) into morsels of iconic size.

Dump them in a bowl with a tablespoon of olive oil, a tablespoon of melted butter and a fistful of bread crumbs. Give it a preliminary stir and then…

Chop up a couple of cloves of garlic and a quarter bunch of Italian parsley. Chuck that in there too.

Hit ‘em with a couple flourishes of the pepper bunny and line 'em up on a foil lined broiler pan.

Broil them for four minutes. Turn them over. Broil them for another four minutes.

If you think your children could be fooled into eating such a thing, double the recipe. If not, it’s Salmon a la Sven Holmberg and no complaining.

∞

Damned if that pumpkin pie isn’t still hanging over my head like a butterfucking anvil.

Listen, I’d be much obliged if you’d absolve me of this crushing ain’t-posted-nearly-as-much-as-I-said-I-would guilt by making my chocolate bottomed pumpkin pie for Christmas. Just think, if you like the recipe, you can make it again come Thanksgiving.

Anyhoo, today, you’re getting a bonus recipe. Think of it as a tagless Christmakkwaanzukkas treat wrapped in a metaphorical dishtowel and a whole slew of high calorie New Year’s Resolutions*.

Chocolate Bottomed Pumpkin Pie

Buy a can of Libby’s Canned Pumpkin.

Make a homemade pie crust.

Follow the pumpkin pie recipe on the back to the letter except where it calls for evaporated milk, substitute sweetened condensed milk, preferably Longevity Brand. (It has the best label and any excuse for a trip to Chinatown…)

Scatter a generous handful of bittersweet chocolate chips over the piecrust before pouring in the pumpkin mixture.

Bake according to corporate standards.

∞

* I resolve to be a more faithful blogger starting in January, when I will again find myself with time on my hands in some parental holding pen whilst the children participate in officially enriching after-school activities.

Also to write a novel, play the accordion, and polish off the children’s Halloween candy before 2008.

[McNuggets] [Fish Recipe] [Monkfish]
[Pumpkin Pie] [The Wire]

Chicken Wings (the next best thing to Wild Boar)

2007-10-31T06:49:00.001-07:00

Man, I been sitting on these wings since July, but don't worry! They're still good! Spoiled meat is no treat, not even as a Halloween trick. Actually, I once heard Inga Muscio tell a roomful of aspiring activists how a carefully placed piece of raw chicken can wreak time released havoc in an objectionable corporate chain store, but do you really want to fight your way through those crowds on Halloween? Go tomorrow when the candy's all half-off...

Obelix, here, has asked me to tell you that he does not consider chicken wings food. Wild boar is food. Whatever you say, boy. Why don't you go take your plastic pumpkin and see if you can hunt one down on Atlantic Avenue...-
Now then.

Chicken Wings

Way ahead of time, like the day before or, if you think a pan of these with all the homemade blue cheese dressing you can drink will be just the ticket after escorting a passel of jacked-up, candy-crazed kids around the neighborhood, right now, boil up your marinade:

1 & 1/4 cup of soy sauce
1 cup of water
12 scallions, brutally clubbed for maximum flavor and pre-holiday stress release
10 cloves of garlic, ditto (get those homemade costume-related aggressions out while the kids are in school!)
10 slices of ginger, ibid (Watch your fingers. You'll need them to fasten those emergency safety pins)
and 1 & 1/4 cup of sake (or white wine. Maybe even cooking sherry. Honey, how are you going to have time to run to the liquor store when you haven't finished hot gluing the feather to Paula Revere's hat? (photos to follow) Use what you got.

Simmer this for ten minutes.

Meanwhile, rinse, drain, and separate 4 pounds of chicken wings. Good lord, that's a lot of flying power. If you've never separated a chicken wing into the miniature drumstick / V-shaped combo, perhaps you would like some advice from an erstwhile massage therapist. Use a big heavy knife, the kind young Michael Myers used to whack his parents in Halloween, and crunch down right at the joint where the drumstick joins the V-shape.For some reason, it's easier if the bulge-y side is facing up. You'll get a feel for it after one or two, after which it's just another gross-out serial procedure.

Arrange your wings in a shallow vessel, pour the slightly cooled marinade over them, cover with cling-wrap, and place in the fridge for poor, freaked-out Jamie Lee Curtis to find. She's probably used to it by now. Who would've thought she'd turn into such a good role model? Unlike the majority of her Botoxed-out-the-bahooty celebrity peers, I can totally see her shambling along behind her kids, carrying cast-off Obelix wigs, and then collapsing on the couch with a bucket of blue cheese dressing and a six pack of Magic Hat. Uh...she's not in recovery or anything is she?

When you can wait no longer, preheat your oven to 500☠ (sorry, it's been so long since my last post, I forget where the degrees symbol is).

Line a cookie sheet with foil, and arrange the marinated wings in a single layer.

Roast em for 40 minutes, turning halfway through. You can even baste them with the marinade, unless you think that's unsanitary, exposing them to something their raw bodies have been soaking in, when they're well on their way to being cooked. It doesn't bother me, but then I'm the type who bastes with whatever paintbrush the kids used the last time they were assaulting our dining table with their ill-conceived crafts. (Also, where is all this red synthetic hair coming from?)

You can eat them right out of the oven as is,but I'm a traditional sort, and I flew without wings for a long time, so now that I'm back to crunching the (humanely farmed) bones, I want my wings served proper, i.e. with cut-up celery stalks and blue cheese dressing. You can whip this up in five minutes, and now that you know what's in it, you'll probably never order blue cheese dressing again. Might as well eat a can of Crisco:

1 cup of mayonnaise
1 cup of sour cream
6 ounces of blue cheese
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
and a 1/ 2 teaspoon of fresh ground pepper

Whisk it all together, but be prepared to have your whisk all gobbed up. Have a poking implement on hand. Speaking of hands, I can't think of anything more finger licking good than big old bowl of blue cheese dressing! Come on, you're too big to be scared of a little stink.

∞

Oh by the way, for those who were following along on my Diet-to-Go, I got a nice letter from one of their employees asking me to "play nice". Don't worry, not in the legal sense. I reckon I got my point across though, so rather than continue beat a flat, indifferently assembled sandwich and wormy, air-freighted apple to expense-justifying death, I'm going to take it out with a few photos. If they'd valued me any more, they probably would have slipped a razor blade in there...

[Halloween] [chicken wings] [Jamie Lee Curtis] [Obelix] [homemade costumes]

Mortifications of the Flesh: Dieting By Mail II

2007-09-27T12:00:00.000-07:00

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I find myself harboring a vegetable bin full of imported bottled beer, a bunch of cookies, and a far too tempting assortment of delicacies from Sahadi's. The only way to stop myself from doing something I'll regret is to remind myself of what I went through on Diet-To-Go.

Some of the more the more sensitive-stomached among you argued strongly that I should give it up after that odious Cioppino Seafood Medley, but I was not only determined to see it through, I promised that I'd drag all of you down with me. Welcome to hell.

I can't express how pampered I felt when I saw that the anonymous Diet-To-Go worker who prepared my turkey sandwich had apparently gone to the trouble of lowering her ass on it before flash freezing it. That's the sort of attention to detail Diet-To-Go prides itself on. They're too modest though! They shouldn't call it Turkey Sandwich! They should call it Ass Panini!

Look at that. The last time I saw that, I was kneeling on the bathroom floor, holding my hair back, and there was no broccoli.

That broccoli was like eating a goddamn dowel, its stalk ends were so woody. My children had been served broccoli that night too, tender, non-shitty broccoli that had never been inside of a freezer or a UPS truck. Rather than appreciate her comparative good fortune, Inky tried every trick in the book to get out of eating her portion. Milo ate his without complaint, but also made a point of screaming that my dinner smelled disgusting.

Which yeah, it did, but, really, the visuals were so much more repellent. That belongs in a toilet bowl, not my good china from Target!

That yellow mess is "creamy polenta", and given that there's no attempt to divide the various components of the frozen entree-n'-sidedish brick, it ended up being more of a creamed corn sauce. I was so demoralized that I thought I loved it maybe a little bit.

Also, I was pissed because I had misread 'snapper' as 'salmon' and when I saw that firm, white, and definitely far from fresh flesh, I felt like I'd been had not once but twice! The first time was when I signed up and the second time was up the heiner with no grease. Everyone knows salmon isn't white. Even, as it turns out, the fine folks at Diet-to-Go.

Ah, now here's some salmon, in burger form. Anything that shitty should really come with a Happy Meal type toy. That way you'll have something to play with in the hospital, other than the tube in your stomach. Assuming you don't die in the ambulance, that is.

On a related note, how much did I pay to have that can of V-8 overnight air freighted? I was so mad, I nearly substituted a tall glass of complimentary New York City tap water. I was all like, "I'll show them! I'm not going to eat their stupid chips. What kind of nutrition expert puts potato chips in a diet meal? I'll pack them in Milo's lunchbox to show my contempt."

Except that while these vengeful thoughts were taking shape, I accidentally managed to eat them all. I didn't realize what I was doing until they were all gone.

Has anybody else seen Shortbus? I loved everything about that movie, but one of the things I loved most was the way the decadent, deep-as-a-dingleberry model boy was shown breaking tiny shards of a single potato chip and eating those as casually as the rest of the general populace horks down our great honking fistfuls .

I know you're getting stomach cramps, so I'll take it out on a high note. It looks like French Toast, but it's really turkey-ham (I'm beginning to suspect Diet-to-Go is a front for the American Turkey Lobby) and cheese. I'm so ashamed that I'd never realized the nutritional value of processed American cheese. It's like celery, apparently. It actually takes more calories to burn than it contains. Were you aware of it? Neither was I.

Tell, you what, though, that apricot pudding wasn't the worst thing in the world. If I was going to sign up for another week of this hell, I'd request that they substitute extra helpings of that for everything else they were planning to send me. And then I'd eat it all in one sitting.

∞

Can you stand one more round? Because the finale was really gnarly. Stay tuned.

[Diet-to-Go], [weight loss], [regrettable food], [barf]

(UPDATE - the original title of this post has been changed at the increasingly desperate requests of the fine folks at Diet 2 Go, who didn't want the nasty opinion of some blog-on-ice to be the second thing search engines reached for when telling potential customers about their services. No key money (or thank Christ, Key Food) changed hands, and since they weren't asking me to alter the content, I figured I could be a sport.)

Danger and The Amateur Gourmet

2007-09-25T00:00:00.000-07:00

A little over a year ago, around the time Dirty Sugar Cookies came out, The Amateur Gourmet, (also known as Adam Roberts) and I threw down some vegetarian dim sum in Chinatown so he'd know who the hell I was when he hosted a pitstop on the Dirty Sugar Cookies Virtual Book Tour. In between assorted treasure balls and monk dumplings, he told me how he was writing a book. Then we went to my favorite restaurant supply store and looked at rat traps and a wok big enough to stir fry a toddler.

Well, now that book has been published and it's a real corker, complete with recipes, celebrity appearances and, the author takes care to note, Asian lesbians! It's titled The Amateur Gourmet, after his blog and I'm thinking a tv show and a line of salad dressing can't be too far behind! Read it to relive the sensual, saucy, fire-fuelled awakening that laid waste to your culinary virginity, then pass it on to a friend who can't tell the difference between a kitchen timer and a vibrating egg.

Lest I mislead you, this book is also clean enough to lay on your Lutheran granny, Asian lesbians and all. (As far as I can tell, Adam has nothing but respect for them, in a chaste and non-objective sort of way that acknowledges their individual strengths, weaknesses and kim chi preferences.) Especially if you're granny's a timid-in-the-kitchen type who needs to bust out a bit. Right off the bat, Adam airs his numerous failed dishes, as if they're nothing to be afraid of! Rock on! The man's got a good handle on the the kinds of things that can freak even an experienced amateur way the fork out:

Knives. Farmer's Markets. Cooking a big holiday dinner for parents who are accustomed to dining out every night.

I decided that rather than discuss the perils of publishing, I'd ask Adam to delve deeper into the dangers lurking in the average home kitchen. This approach unleashed a bloodbath of traumatic memories that won't get me hired as an interviewer any time soon (mostly b/c the lion's share of the memories are mine...)

Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for Adam Roberts, The Amateur Gourmet!

DSC: You devote an entire chapter to knives and I must admit, I do fear my uneducated knife work may lead to injury. My worst gash thusfar came from a tomato juice can. I couldn't tell what was blood and what was juice and it was spraying all over the place.

I also have fond memories of the time one of Greg's predecessors had bought himself a new set of cheap knives that came glued to a sheet of cardboard. He was trying to pull them off the cardboard and one of them flew off and gouged his finger pretty good, just as the pizza delivery man rang the bell. It was quite a frenzied scene, and in retrospect, I probably looked like some sort of spattered, wild eyed lunatic when I yanked the door open for the delivery guy, who took his money and fled. After the wound was bandaged and the blood mopped up, we sat down to eat and I was like, "Damn, he forgot the beer!" So, I call the restaurant and tell them that their delivery guy forgot the beer, could he please bring some more? About twenty minutes later, the doorbell rings. I open the door and there's nobody there, just a six pack on the door mat. I bring it inside and that is when I see the original six pack on the floor, where the delivery guy must have abandoned it in his haste to flee the murder scene.

How about you, Adam? Any bad knife stories? What should we look out for besides tomato juice lids?

TAG: It's really hard to one-up that story!! Luckily, I haven't impaled myself with a knife just yet. Like you, I did cut myself on a can just the other day. I was making a coconut cake and I opened a can of cream of coconut and cut myself on it. Not too bad, though, the Band-Aid stopped the bleeding. And the blood gave the cake a nice beefy flavor.

DSC: Let's talk about scaldings. I have a fear of that too, but thankfully no first hand experience. The closest I've come is a friend from college who caught her nightie on a pot of boiling water and it spilled all over her and the wet flannel wrapped itself around her and... oh man, I don't want to go on, but that just reminded me of another friend from college who was making spaghetti with her pet bird on her shoulder and her best friend, who was kind of loud and theatrical said something in a loud and theatrical way, startling the bird, who fell to his death in the pot of boiling spaghetti water. What a way to go, even for a pasta lover. Have you ever scalded yourself?

TAG: Ayun, following these stories is like following The Beatles! A bird boiled in spaghetti water?? My God. I haven't really scalded myself either. But I will tell a story about killing pets. When my family moved to Florida from New York in 1990, the coolest thing about our new house was there was a beautiful aquarium in the kitchen. Without question that was the new house's best feature and I was stoked to fill it up with fish. So, once we moved in, I dragged my parents to the pet store where we bought all these cool looking fish, plopped them in the tank and my brother and I delighted at our first and only pets. Then, after a week or two, it started to smell. Really bad. We cleaned the tank but it didn't matter. Our kitchen smelled like a sewer. So dad, an enterprising spirit, did what any college-educated dental professional would do: he poured a tablespoon of Chlorine into the tank. "It won't hurt the fish," he promised us. "It'll just get rid of the smell." We watched as the syrupy blue substance permeated the tank and then we started screaming: the fish's skin started melting off, and other fish flipped upside down and started zooming to the surface. It was a great fish massacre--fish around the world still talk about it--and my brother and I were forever traumatized.

DSC: No hot oil mishaps, I hope. When I was 3 or 4, I was helping my grandmother make pancakes and before she could stop me, I reached in to flip one the way I'd seen her do with a spatula, except I had no spatula. I still have a small circular scar on my back of my hand, though in full disclosure, it's sort of like my invisible friend. It exists but very few people besides me can actually see it. Tell me about yourself. Any burns? Any scars?

TAG:Same kind of story (and I tell it in the book). My mom was making eggs with me when I was very little and I stupidly reached up and burned my knuckle on the side of the pan. It all happened very fast but I remember how freaked out I was. Years later--in fact this very year--I was making onion rings and I added too many at once and the oil started to boil over. That was FREAKY: I remember Mario Batali saying on TV that was the most dangerous thing that could happen because the oil could ignite as it spills all over your kitchen, burning everything down. But I quickly moved the pan away from the flame and carried it to the other side of the counter saving the day and earning the title: Apartment Hero.

DSC: Ever had a kitchen fire? I've had a bathtub fire, but the only time I had the kitchen in flames was when I left a popcorn pot unattended and that wasn't too tough to get a lid on. (And once I was a bit hasty in calling 911 when the neighbors' barbeque grill reflected off their second story sliding doors in such a way as to make it look like the whole building was on fire. I think I may have lay on the floor until the firemen went away.)

TAG:No kitchen fire to speak of, except the one I mention above. I do, however, remember going to the Hard Rock Cafe with my high school debate team and one of the girls on the team had long frizzy hair with lots of spray in it and it was her birthday. We got her a cake with candles and as she was leaning over to blow them out, her hair ignited and we all enjoyed smacking her on the head to put out the flames. That's a fond memory.

DSC: Let's move on to food poisoning. Those who've retained their Dirty Sugar Cookies know I had listeria while I was pregnant with Milo, thanks to my good friends at Boar's Head, as best I can figure. I don't think I've ever gotten sick off of something I actually cooked myself. You?

TAG:No! And it's pretty incredible. And I don't want to jinx myself, but isn't it crazy that in almost four years of food blogging---eating all kinds of weird food in weird places and cooking things I don't know how to cook--I haven't gotten sick? Ok, now I'm giving myself what Jewish people call a kanuhura. I'll probably barf up the sushi I just had for lunch.

DSC: Have you ever lost a friend because of something you did in the kitchen?

TAG:Remember that story I told about my dad and the fish? Well I had a really dirty friend and I put some chlorine in her sherbet. I'd tell you more, but I don't want to incriminate myself further.

DSC: Thanks for giving all us dirty folk nightmares!

TAG: Thanks for having me!!

[The Amateur Gourmet] [food poisoning] [kitchen fires] [knife accidents] [chlorine] [blog tour] [kitchen mishaps]

Dieting by Mail - Cioppino Seafood Medley

2007-09-12T17:37:00.000-07:00

Many women resolve not only to shed a few pounds in anticipation of bikini season, but to keep them off until Labor Day, when the pools and beaches officially close. I, on the other hand, start bikini season bulging like dough that will just keep rising until I am tan enough to enter myself in the bread competition in the Indiana State Fair's Homemaker's Barn.

I spent the first six weeks of summer living it up at the summer palace (mojitos, s'mores, ice cream, beer and all sorts of grilled recipes that I will endeavor to share with you once your grill has been mothballed for winter).

Then we went to Alaska and that was mighty good eatin' too, because in addition to all the salmon (which ain't all that appetizing once you've seen 'em spawning), there's an abundance of cheap Asian food in restaurants catering to the cruise ships crews.

I was bustin' out all over by the time the kids and I returned from Juneau. Greg stayed behind to midwife his new musical, Yeast Nation. I decided that given my temporarily husband-less status, I could kill many birds (you know, in that lapsed semi-vegetarian, responsibly farmed, metaphorical way) by signing up for this diet meal service a friend of mine recommended. (No, not The Zone. Though the friend may or may not have been Jennifer Aniston.)

Let's review my thinking:

1. I've got a lot on my plate given the ratio of little monkeys to big monkeys from September 1 – October 15.

2. The kids don't like to eat what I eat and the feeling is mutual. What I wouldn't give for one of those wonder children who's like, "Mommy, mommy, let's eat in Chinatown every night! I love chipotle peppers!" If Greg were here, I'd be cooking for 2 and 2, which, of course makes four, but I'm not really into cooking for one, when all things considered, I'm cooking for three.

3. My pants don't fit anymore.

4. Jennifer Aniston said Diet-To Go's food was good! She started sampling her husband's portions and liked them enough to order some for herself. No, her husband isn't Brad Pitt. That's Angelina Jolie's husband (by Hollywood standards anyway.)

5. If I pay for it, chances are good that I'll eat it, not cheat it. (Hey kids, let's all lose some prepositions along with some weight!)

Now before I introduce you to your meal plan for the next week or so, let me state that I'm all for a big, juicy woman, size-proud, sexy and sassy! But, I'm in no position to buy a whole new wardrobe, and even my bras were starting to pinch dewlaps into my back. If you don't feel good, you don't look good.

Interestingly, I often feel good when I don't look good, but this wasn't one of those times.

So, I went on Diet-To-Go's website and ponied up for a week of flash frozen meals. They're shipped from Virginia in a big Styrofoam cooler packed with dry ice that I always wanted to give to the kids' science teacher, because my science teacher used to do nifty things like dry icing bananas until you could use them as hammers and hurling dry-iced hoses at the wall to watch them shatter. I think her dry ice was liquid though, and mine was a big chunk that came in a plastic bag printed with warnings about touching, tasting or otherwise handling the contents.

I realize that not everyone has hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on weight reduction, the way the Anistons and I do. Rather than fan the fires of class envy, I thought I could share a week's worth of celebrity meals with those less fortunate than myself.

So without any further ado, let's put our hands together for Cioppino Seafood Medley!

Doesn't it look delicious, folks?

It's accompanied by a "petite grain roll", some suspiciously "lite"-tasting chive cream cheese and a Dixie cup's worth of chocolate pudding! Yum! Chocolate pudding, unlike banana pudding was always a favorite of mine in the school cafeteria. (For more on banana pudding, read Dirty Sugar Cookies, the book. Amazon's got it priced to move.)

Here's what it looks like after I heated the roll in the toaster oven and the cioppino in a pan. You're really should have a microwave when you're dieting-to-go, but for the appliance-challenged among us, the alternate heating method is on the right side of the label: Pre-heat conventional oven to 325, remove meal from plastic tray, and heat for 15 - 20 minutes if defrosted in the refrigerator, 40 minutes if still frozen. The directions for heating never vary, though I might humbly suggest that they should.

Mmm! Tastes just like something you might have gotten on an airplane, back when the airlines actually comped their ticketed passengers meals. If I was on an airplane, I would have given up after a couple of bites, but given that this was actually my second week of Diet-to-Go, I ate every morsel, because I was so damn hungry. Also, I knew that a half bag of chocolate chips was not the option it used to be. If in a moment of weakness, I horked some down, I'd be squandering my girlish figure, along with the family fortune.

Speaking of chocolate, I bet you want to hear about that pudding! All I can say is, the experience was greatly enhanced by eating it whilst reading Judith Thurman's New Yorker article about her visit to a fasting spa. Now, I'm a fast reader, but obviously, any New Yorker article is much, much bigger than a tiny specimen cup of pudding. The part of the article that I was reading while actively engaged in eating the pudding was the part about colonics. Ah, delicious irony. You want to know the worst part? Judith Thurman makes sure to tell her readers that she is naturally skinny. Her only reason for visiting this super deluxe-o fasting spa was that she was on assignment for the New Yorker. That irony is not quite so delicious.

And that's just the beginning! Are you ready for a Turkey Sandwich and a Mexican Style Burrito? mmm-MMM!

[weight loss], [Diet To Go], [Judith Thurman] [Jennifer Aniston] [seafood cioppino]

(UPDATE - the original title of this post has been changed at the increasingly desperate requests of the fine folks at Diet 2 Go, who didn't want the nasty opinion of some blog-on-ice to be the second thing search engines reached for when telling potential customers about their services. No key money (or thank Christ, Key Food) changed hands, and since they weren't asking me to alter the content, I figured I could be a sport.)

Watermelon Basil Margaritas

2007-09-11T11:10:00.000-07:00

With the possible exception of Butternut Squash Plugged With A Bottle Of Grain Alcohol, I really can't think of a more perfect fall cocktail. Because I don't know about where you are, but back here in Brooklyn, it's as humid as the inside of a dog's mouth, and seedless watermelon remains widely available, if not in the farmer's markets, at least in some of the less discerning bodegas and fruiterias. Can we, in the name of refreshment, agree to temporarily forget about what that long-distance trucker once told me about the horrorshow inside his rig after 3 days of hauling strawberries coast to coast? Because it probably applies to watermelon too. I should've posted this back in July, when I was at the summer palace, but I was too busy drinking Watermelon Basil Margaritas and overlooking the fact that Inky was doing her mandatory homework packet. (I thought it was one of those optional mandatory type of deals.) Any parent who makes their kid do homework in the summer is either way more compliant than I am, or severely lacking in the Watermelon Basil Margarita Department... Anyway, if I delay this recipe until next summer, I'll forget to publish it at all, and then I'll owe myself a kill fee, which, however large it is, will not be sufficient to cover the price of a seedless watermelon in Cape Cod.

Watermelon Basil Margaritas

Rather than coming home from the grocery store in a timely manner, push it by swinging by a nearby thrift store you had somehow never noticed before, in the 15 years you've been coming here. Your choice will be justified by a barely used electric juicer, still in its original box, priced to move at a mere 5 bucks. Arrive home an hour later than expected. Remember, if you want to find that juicer, it's essential to leave the children at home with their father. Don't forget to buy an armload of dying plants for a dollar a pop, and schlep them and your new juicer down route 6A on foot. (Given your conviction that you will accidentally manslaughter someone every time you get behind the wheel, it's best to leave the automobile in the grocery parking lot, and only drive it when you absolutely have to, like when you have to get $230 dollars worth of groceries home. Told you them seedless watermelons ain't cheap)

Denude the basil plant you've been babying since your first trip to the grocery, the day after you arrived. If you did not bother to transplant it to a bigger pot, you will have just enough. If you are one of those who immediately moves your basil to a cast-off bathtub or an abandoned truck tire so that it will bush out, 30 or so leaves should do you.

Put the leaves and 2 teaspoons of sugar in the bottom of a pitcher, and muddle the holy pesto out of them with a wooden spoon. I feel you that 2 teaspoons of sugar seems a tad on the skimpy side when you've spent half the summer drinking mojitos at four tablespoons a pop, but don't worry. You'll still manage to pack ten extra pounds into your bikini by summer's end.

Bravely pour three quarters of a cup of tequila, and one quarter cup of triple sec into that pitcher, even though you generally oppose Sarah Jessica Parkered-up takes on classic cocktails. I swear on a stack of Bibles, this is an entirely different animal than a chocolate martini or a green apple Rob Roy.

Now, haul out the juicer and feed that watermelon, rind and all, into its freshly assembled maw. Just kidding about the rind. Reading instructions all the way to the end is an important part of comprehension and compliance, or so Inky told me. She redeemed herself after the Summer Homework Debacle by being one of the two kids who turned her paper over instead of starting to follow the elaborate instructions outlined in an earlier step of a 10-step "quiz", the 10th step of which was "Do not follow any of the instructions in steps 1 – 9. Turn your paper over and wait quietly for your teacher." She was rewarded with a piece of candy, and, maybe even the possibility that her mother will forget to make her do next summer's homework as well.

Don't despair if you don't have a juicer. Your child can still do well on a 10-step faux quiz and you can still have Basil Watermelon Margaritas! The thing about the blender at the summer palace is, it's only good for using as a pitcher. If you plug it in and turn it on, the only thing that happens is it smells like burning. Those of you without juicers must have blenders, yes? If not, the thrift stores are full of blenders! Or go to the discount store and get a cheap one. You don't need to spend a hundred bucks on an Oster Contemporary Classic Beehive unless you're married to me and it's my birthday and I want it in orange. It's too overqualified to liquify watermelon. I could liquefy a watermelon with a marshmallow! However you do it, if you're not using a juicer, you'll need to strain it through something – a strainer, some cheesecloth, your husband's pantyhose – in order to have that Shirley Temple pink, sweet, clear juice.

Moisten the rim of four glasses – one if it's just you, Billie Holiday and your loneliness – with something, a rag dipped in watermelon juice, your tongue, your husband's pantyhose... I would say a lime, but these margaritas don't call for lime juice! That's great news because the only thing more expensive than seedless watermelon out there on the Cape is limes – 2 for a buck at the Orleans Stop N Shop. This is why all visitors to the summer palace must bring me limes and lots of them.

Pour the watermelon juice into the pitcher.

Dip the rims of the glasses in a saucerful of decent salt, not Mortons or those little packets you take home from the airplane. Add some ice, and divide the contents of the pitcher between them.

Promise your friend, Mrs. Big Sarah X, that you will not scandalize her Waldorf community by publishing a photo of her drinking alcohol while her children are Angelic Forest Sprite In The Moss knows where!

Next up: The chicken wings devoured by a certain Waldorf parent, who shall remain not only nameless but pseudonymless as well. (Photos available on request.)

Got any good ideas for my juicer? Lay 'em on me!

[ juicer], [ margaritas], [margarita recipe],
[Sarah Jessica Parker]

Your Pancakes Are Coming!

2007-09-09T06:03:00.001-07:00

Thanky kindly for your patience while I took the long, hot summer off.
(Actually, I was in Alaska. It was cold and rainy, but I did inarguably take it off)

Anyhoo, in between purloining my children's rubber food to sew on my red 40th birthday dress and trying to see this novel I'm writing all the way through to the end (spoken like someone who's on chapter 4), I'm reckoning it'll be a recipe or two a month, starting with the greatest hits of summer. And please be sure to reserve a table on September 26, when The Amateur Gourmet swings by on his virtual book tour. (If you've got a question for him, lay it on me now).

Who wants a watermelon basil margarita before the second week of school???

Who wants pie?

2007 art parade
Originally uploaded by editrrix

Slivered Snowpea and Chicken Salad

2007-05-25T06:39:00.001-07:00

Milo’s teacher thinks there may be a chance that the little mule will do his homework if I set a timer and ignore him, saying that I have work to do too. We both get a half hour. Unfortunately, it’s the half hour in which I was planning to sprawl on the couch with a good book, but once a temp, always a temp. I still remember how to fake it. Milo doesn’t even bother. He just hopped up and wandered away, bitching to beat the band. I’m afraid if I look up, I’ll see that someone else has helped himself to my couch. Oh wait, he’s back. Better look busy before Big Daddy comes and yells at us both.

Slivered Snowpea and Chicken Salad

Poach a pound’s worth of boneless, skinless chicken breast in half a box of organic chicken stock. Does anybody else think that seems a tad cannibalistic? Like serving Titus Andronicus a stew seasoned with his own chopped-up children? Oh well, steer the course. You too, Milo. Ten minutes ought to do it for the chicken, and I’m sure there are certain high-achieving little girls in his first grade class who could bang out all their Word Wall words in half that time, but my boy appears to have skipped ahead and is now cutting something out with scissors.

Idle hands are the devil’s work, so let’s quit staring into space and wash and string a pound of snow peas. This is probably what those mainstream family magazines have in mind when start in to yakking about fun kitchen activities in which the whole family can be involved. Unfortunately, I’m not much of a one for unsolicited advice…and by the time I go begging for it, it’s usually too late. Say, has anyone else noticed that those mainstream family mags are starting to tank at an alarming rate? I just received obituaries for both Child and Nick Jr. Family Fun. (Uh, anybody want to buy a service article about Six Super Ways to Keep from Killing Your Kids in the Former Yugoslavia?) What could this signify? Is it time for the freaks to take over the world? Because my timer hasn’t gone off yet.

Let’s look at this problem another way.

Q: If Mommy’s kitchen is three feet wide by six feet long, and she has zero helpers, how long will it take her to string a pound of snowpeas without drinking half a bottle of wine and turning into a creature that’s two-parts Bitchmother, three-parts Grounds for Divorce?

A: Back to that bed of nails, you!

If you’ve followed instructions carefully, you should be ready to drain the chicken. Reserve the stock for another purpose. (Other than that, Mr. Andronicus, how did you like the stew?)

Don’t feel bad if you’re still stringing snow peas, because we’re ten minutes shy of resetting that timer for our third time. If you finish before we do, stack them up, and slice them into matchsticks. It’s a mindless activity, but one I find oddly therapeutic. Also, that’s the way you’ll need them later on, so might as well get a jump on it.
Speaking of which, this salad isn’t going to dress itself. No, I’m not going to dress it for you. It’s your salad. You dress it. And don’t whine. For all the time you just spent whining, you could have been done by now. What do you mean you don’t what the ingredients are!? Oh, for the love of…here!

3 tablespoons of rice vinegar
3 tablespoons of soy sauce
2 teaspoons of sesame oil
and 2 tablespoons of your favorite nut or seed butter. (My favorite’s whichever one the kids refuse to eat, before it goes rancid and I have to throw it away. Almond butter worked great. Sunflower Seed butter was nice, too, even if it was a couple of warm days shy of joining Child and Nick Jr. Family Fun.)

Mince a couple cloves of garlic and a tablespoon’s worth of ginger, and stir fry them in a teaspoon of sesame oil in a big pan or wok.

Sorry to veer off topic, but Heaven help me, I’m on the verge of biting my tongue in half, that’s how dearly I’d love to feed this child the answers. Anything to put an end to this hellish exercise! Just between you, me, and the snowpeas, it’s the Cat in the Hat.

Oh right, the snowpeas. Throw them in the wok now, before the garlic has a melt down on you. Stir them around for the minute or two it will take Milo to write the letter C. You don’t want to be serving dinner at midnight, after all.

Throw the snowpeas into a bowl with the dressing and the shredded up chicken breast, toss in a couple of slivered almonds or whatever and let’s eat before that infernal timer goes off a fourth time. There’s no reason why this should have taken you more than thirty minutes.

∞

In other news, doesn't THIS look delicious? I'm not sure how long it will keep, though, so if anyone has any suggestions on how to cook it...

[mouse problem] [homework problem] [homework solutions] [chicken salad] [snow pea]

Long Time Comin' Chipotle Chicken Quesadillas

2007-05-11T06:16:00.001-07:00

If you’re at pains to understand why anyone would drag a can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce all the way from Brooklyn to Budapest, bang out a couple skillets of these fuckers and you’ll have your answer.*

Chipotle Chicken Quesadillas

Take one of those big knives they won’t let past security anymore, and work out your aggression on a bunch of scallions and an innocent clove or two of garlic. Goddamn! Every time I try to type “clove or”, this melon farming laptop changes it to “clover”. Which would probably taste just fine, but it’s a little too close to the recipes in the The Sarajevo Survival Guide, an amazingly defiant, hilarious, and sad-making document of what came to constitute “ordinary” life during the three year siege. Pray you never need your clover, and don’t ever let me catch you taking the availability of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce for granted.

Heat a tablespoon of olive oil over medium heat, dump in your scallions and garlic, and season with salt, pepper, and a half-tablespoon of oregano. I know you won’t let them burn after that guilt-making reminder of the privilege and plenty in which we – or at least I – all too often forget we dwell.

After four minutes or so, you can add a pound of boneless, skinless chicken titties and two cups of chicken stock. All hail America, where it comes in a box! Throw the lid on and simmer for ten minutes. Remove the chicken to a plate, let it cool and shred it into reasonable pieces with your super sanitary fingers.

If you really want to wallow in no-war-here convenience, you can skip that step by snagging yourself a pre-cooked bird off the grocery store’s rotisserie! Or hell, give yourself a break and use last night’s leftovers! You’ll still need some chicken stock, but not so much. How much? Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh… I’m sorry, I’m still getting reacquainted with these American keyboards. In Croatia and Bosnia, the Y has been relocated to what we in the Land of the Free think of as the Z position, which is kind of discombobulating where your name contains two of them. I’m not even going to discuss the lengths to which I had to go to make the @ symbol. Suffice it to say that I really hate coming off like a dithering, technically challenged matron in front of the cool expat boys who know how to do things like set themselves up with live video feeds of their hometown hockey games and get their Internet bar a glowing plug in the New York Times...

So, let’s say, like, a cup and a half.

Dig around in your backpack for that can of chipotles, crack her open, select two fit-looking specimens, and chop them up fine.

These go into the stock along with a cup of canned tomatoes, and by canned, I mean canned and diced, because, what is this? The Dark Ages? (Did I mention that I spent the last three weeks doing our laundry in the sink, like some old hippie woman hunched over her tailgate in the parking lot of a Grateful Dead concert, cutting potatoes into a hot pot plugged into her cigarette lighter? Actually, that woman was probably a decade or so younger than I am now…I wonder what she’s up to now.)

Let that simmer for twenty minutes or so unless you want your quesadillas to have the consistency of gazpacho.

Add the shredded chicken and let the simmering continue unabated. Crack open a beer and thank your lucky stars for the relative peace and prosperity in which we live, where protein and delicious, smoky peppers can be procured on the free market with the local currency by those with a hankering to recreate the plate-licking dish they ordered the last time Rolf Potts breezed into town, always a happy excuse for local travel writers to flock to the Half-King for brunch. (Hell yeah, I’m a travel writer! Or I will be when Gourmet sends me to Serbia to do a story about that seventh generation bee keeping wine maker!) Those of us who can’t be bothered to cook it ourselves can live secure in the knowledge that no one will try to shoot us as we stroll toward 23rd and 9th to satisfy our cravings. Or if someone does, that’s just proof that no matter how many Disney stores you put in Times Square, it’s still New York Fucking City!

Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Dios mia, we almost forgot the guacamole. This you must make fresh. That green paste next to the sour cream in the refrigerator case tastes like what I imagine military meals-in-a-pouch must be. Do swing by that aisle for a tub of sour cream though. My paternal grandmother, after she moved to Arizona, made a point of taking a drink from every water fountain she passed. I try to make it a point to never pass the dairy case without picking up some sour cream. I think it’s important to honor our ancestors in whatever way we can.

So, you know how to make guacamole right? Good. Let’s see you put your money where your avocadoes are.

Right, then, Henry Ford, let’s fire up the production line. You will need a package of queen-size tortillas, your prepared chicken mix, sour cream, the guac’, and 12 ounces of pale grated cheese (You’re sitting pretty if the label says Queso, but if Monterey Jack’s as Mexican as your grocery gets, es no problema, Gringo, Hombre!

Don’t forget a cookie sheet, a big skillet or griddle, a spatula, a couple of plates, and plenty of counter space.

To make one unit, you’re going spread less chicken filling than your big eyes are telling you you want on a tortilla, sprinkle it with cheese, top it with another tortilla, and carefully slide it into the hot skillet you’ve got fired up on the stove. Press the spatula on top of that sucker and pray that you’re not going to have a situation on your hands come flipping time. You’ve got two minutes to gird your loins, and then you’re going in. Do the best you can. If some filling leaks out, harness whatever potty-mouthed self-loathing rises to the surface and use it to push that filling back in. Don’t forget to smash this side with the spatch too. It activates the cheese’s adhesive properties. Take a minute to compose yourself, and then slide it out onto a plate with a big, Second-One’s-Bound-To-Be-Easier grin. No matter what it looks like, it’ll taste best warm, so put it on the cookie sheet, and slide it into a 200˚ oven.

Repeat, repeat, repeat (don’t rinse, just repeat.) When you’ve got a big old stack, get out the syrup, wait, don’t, that’s pancakes…

When you’ve got a big old stack, cut it into wedges with a knife, or more impressively, a pizza cutter! Fan a tortilla-and-a-half’s worth on every diner’s plate, along with the generous blorps of guacamole and sour cream that are the key to winning hostessly accolades.

∞

*Sorry. Jet lag makes me terse. I should be over it by now, but Milo keeps sneaking into my bed at two in the morning, and when I relocated to his recently vacated bottom bunk, so I won’t wake anyone up during my insomniac perusal of the four New Yorkers that piled up in my absence despite a vacation hold order, the little maniac somehow gets wind of it, and tails me there, arriving just as I’m beginning to drift off. It’s taken me nearly two weeks to type this up. But in the meantime, I’ve started writing a novel! I think I may even finish it! But even if I don’t, it’s a helluva lot more fun than teaching the kids how their brand new heelies are supposed to work. There’s probably a tutor for that, right? Oh that’s right, I spent all my money on sour cream.

[Quesadillas] [jet lag] [chipotle recipes][Deadheads] [Balkan conflict] [Western Privilege]

Back from Whogoslavia

2007-04-29T06:52:00.000-07:00

Doberdan, my fellow eaters!

We're back from Whogoslavia? and slowly leaving jet lag behind for my customary state of regular old lag.

I'll be back in the kitchen tomorrow, but first thought I'd share some culinary memories from a month in the Western Balkans:

Best eats: Cevapcici at Konobo Sadrvan in Mostar,Herzogovina

Runner-up: the little fried fish at the place next to Pizzeria Castro in Gunduliceva Poljana, Dubrovnik Croatia

Loveliest setting for eats: Inat Kuca (House of Despite, Sarejevo, Bosnia

County with best pizza: Croatia

Country with worst pizza: Everywhere else

Most disturbing pizza description: "Pizza sauce, cheeze, maize, brussels sprouts", Legenykert Restaurant, Budapest, Hungary

Reason we ate so much goddamn pizza:

Best supermarket name: The Croatian chain Konzum

Best ice cream flavor: Chestnut

Best unexpected discovery in a bar: The newborn kittens in a crevice of the rock outcropping above Buza, Dubrovnik, Croatia

Thing my brother-in-law ordered that I then wished I had ordered: Squid stuffed with ham and cheese, Lobran, Croatia

Best picnic food: Prsut from the little grocery in Stanjel, Slovenia

Most awesome-looking snack: Bobi Party Mix

Best unclaimed porn star name: Bobi Party Mix

Restaurant I wished we weren't eating in when I saw the prices, but then liked because Milo ate a complimentary tuna bruschetta and my salad (spinach, prsut, funghi, and olives) was good enough I'm going to try to recreate it here in Brooklyn:
Trattoria Fellini, Sarajevo, Bosnia

Best Orange Fanta Knock-off, from a packaging standpoint: Pipi

Best cooking implement provided by a self-catering apartment: Cappuccino Machine, Apartment Silak, Ptuj, Slovenia

Essential cooking implement most frequently missing in self-catering apartments of the Western Balkans: Dishtowel

Best complimentary breakfast: Guest House Halvat, Sarajevo, Bosnia

Complimentary breakfast engendering such a positive response from the picky-eating set that it somewhat redeemed an otherwise shitty hotel experience: Hotel Tabor, Sezana, Slovenia

Complimentary breakfast that was every bit as shitty as the hotel in which it was served: Hotel Putnik, Novi Sad, Serbia

Best Communist era hotel dining room, especially the mod-for-1974 chandelier: Hotel Putnik, Novi Sad, Serbia

Most endearing logo: Zdenka Cheese

Best Museum of Beekeeping and Wine Cellar: Family Zivanovic's Museum of Beekeeping and Wine Cellar, Sremski Karlovci, Serbia

Place I'd love to visit on Gourmet Magazine's nickel: Salas 137, Fruska Gora, Serbia

∞

All in all a glorious, grueling trip, even if I did eat too much freakin' pizza. Send me your cevapcici recipes!

And if you find yourself at loose ends in NYC this Thursday, May 3, with 35 bucks burning a hole in your pocket, skip dinner and come to The Decameron a food-and-trickery themed benefit for the Debate Society, featuring me and nine far-worthier readers and storytellers. Hear some hot Betty Crocker Boys and Girls Cookbook action. Buy a raffle ticket and you may just win yourself an autographed copy of Dirty Sugar Cookies to supplement the one you already own!

Grateful Coconut Pork

2007-03-15T04:20:00.000-07:00

Holy fucking cranberries, Batman! I just sort of assumed nobody was reading this rag, because I never got any comments. I must confess, it monkeyed with my momentum, especially lately – my gentleman friend’s been in Alaska and we’re scrambling to get our heiners to Budapest in two weeks, without leaving anything essential un-turned in, un-packed, un-paid, and/or un-purchased.

Last night, I got around to setting up a blog upon which the kids can chronicle their upcoming Balkan adventures and lo and behold, I see something I never noticed before, a little dingbat that implied I had hundreds of comments awaiting approval. Say what? It was like finding one of those bushels of undelivered mail that were discovered in 1990’s Chicago, tucked beneath postmen’s porches and burning in wooded backlots! Most of my admirers wanted me to introduce me to hot underage sluts or improve my penile performance (I’ve been making do with what the good lord gave me…), but a few of the comments implied that a small portion of my fellow Americans are breaking out the fish sauce and taking these recipes for a test drive!

So, thank you! Thank you all! I’m sorry I never responded to your kind wishes on my blog tour and nice words on the book and queries as to whether it’s acceptable to peanut butter for peanut oil! I didn’t know! I’ll never let you languish like that again!!! (Unless I spend another year forgetting my log-in name and password…)

Brothers and sisters, I feel the spirit of momentum a-buildin’ again, especially since Greg’s taken it upon himself to fix dinner on those rare Wednesday nights when he’s not in Alaska. (He leaves for Pittsburgh on Sunday. It’s okay. He packs well under pressure. Wait, no, he doesn’t! When Uncle Stephen and I showed up at his studio apartment in 1992, to help him haul his worldly possessions into the one-bedroom lovenest in which we would live in sin (which suited Jambo just fine), he was sitting on his unmade bed, eating cereal and reading the newspaper! He hadn’t even unscrewed the dang futon frame…)

Wait, the momentum, it’s building again! Your momentum, I mean. Drop that take-out menu! Homemade coconut pork’s what's in the stars for you tonight, baby.

coconut pork

Coconut Pork
Since the butcher’s still giving you the hero’s welcome he accords all lapsed vegetarians, might as well toddle over and tell him to slice you up a pound of pork tenderloin. Tell him you like it thin, so he won’t get any ideas. (If he himself is thin, cart it home to slice yourself.)

Mince four cloves of garlic! Come on! Small and wild! Get all Benihana on it!

Now without slicing your thumb, or starting a fire, slice a thumb-sized hunk of ginger into matchsticks.

Cast the contents of your cutting board across the 2 tablespoons of oil you’ve set to sizzling in the wok. Fling 3 dried chili peppers in after, the little Thai kind if you’ve got ‘em, though their been-sitting-on-the-shelf -so-long-you-could-rub-em-on-your-eyeballs-if-you-wanted-to Mexican cousins will certainly do in a pinch.

I know, seems like only yesterday you were heating the oil and already it’s time to throw the pork in there too. If you wanted a rest, you should have applied for a job at that Kentucky Fried Chicken in the West Village.

Stir-fry the pork until it turns white or some other shade of cooked.

Add 1 teaspoon of salt
4 teaspoons of sugar
and 1 teaspoon of soy sauce.
(By the way, I recently wrote the good people at Kamada International to tell them how much I love their Dashi soy, how I pimp it all over the blog and even mentioned their website in my recently published book, thinking they’d email back something to the effect of, “You know the two cases you just ordered to the tune of nearly forty bucks? It’s on the house.” Instead, I got a little message telling me that they appreciate customer feedback! Like I don’t know that feeling! You think they’d at least slip me a bumper sticker or something…)

Now add a can of coconut milk. Not that suntan-lotion flavored cartilage they make Mai Tais out of! You know better than that. Actually, that would probably taste pretty good in a Hawaiian Tropic, Spring Break in Fort Lauderdale, Paris Hilton kind of way.

Snap yourself out of it with some single-malt Scotch while the pork simmers for twenty minutes.

Serve it over rice, with some sliced mango which makes it look less like something you’d feed the dog and more like something you’d want to comment on before you’ve even tasted it!

∞
I don’t know how much more I’ll be posting in the next six weeks, but if you haven’t already, why not subscribe to my Dirty Feed there, so you won’t miss a single opportunity to comment ? And while you’re at it, hop on over to Whogoslavia, and subscribe to that too. You know how kids get a bang out of comments, especially when their parents are dragging them around Bosnia and such.

[coconut milk] [Paris Hilton] [Vietnamese food] [Spring Break] [How to approve comments on blog posts]

Popcorn Cauliflower (Tastes Just Like Popcorn!)

2007-02-23T08:00:00.000-08:00

A paying market that’s a bit more mainstream than my usual beat asked me to submit some tips on making vegetables palatable to children:

Tip #1: Don’t knock yourself out.

Tip #2: Swap your existing children for some of that mutant strain, the ones who eat everything on their plates without bitching, whining, weeping or entering a manic Robin Williamsesque state.

Tip #3: Take a bite yourself, exclaiming, “Wow! Tastes just like popcorn!”

Having tried this dish (under duress), my nine-year-old daughter wishes to inform you that it tastes nothing like popcorn.

Her younger brother gave it a thumbs up, though, once he'd succumbed, consenting to an exploratory nibble after half an hour's goading, in which the suspect vegetable was compared to broccoli’s albino cousin, an alien being that must be conquered, Popeye’s other favorite food, and, of course, popcorn.

Tip #4: When spawning finicky children, choose a playwright mate with a background in improvisational comedy. Make sure he (or she) sticks around for the rearing part.

Popcorn Cauliflower

Chop up or smash four cloves of garlic, depending on whether or not your kid goes apeshit over unidentifiable brown flecks on his or her food. Smashed cloves can be removed before serving. My nine-year-old daughter wishes to inform you that cauliflower could also be removed before serving.

Core a head of cauliflower and make sure the children see. This is what happens to boys and girls who don’t eat what’s on their plates.

Chop it into florets, cast them into a kettle of boiling water fortified with one tablespoon of salt, give them a couple of minutes to get tender but not mushy, then strain.

Fire up your wok, add two tablespoons of vegetable oil, and fry the garlic for thirty seconds.

Add the florets and spend a couple of minutes stirring them around, pressing them gently against the sides of the wok to sear in that popcorn flavor.

Add half a teaspoon of sea salt. Swear to god, I feel like we’re at the movie theater, that’s how close it is to popcorn.

Eat it if you want dessert.

∞
[cauliflower], [popcorn], [picky eater]

Commune Cookies

2007-02-21T11:10:00.000-08:00

Another thing about a small apartment, when the older kid’s having a flute lesson at one end of it, it’s imperative that the jacked-up younger squirt be creatively corralled, if one’s to get one’s money’s worth. Usually, I spirit the little devil off to the Boerum Hill Food Company for hot chocolate and a cookie, but he’d already observed President’s Day by sending a cup of cocoa flying at Housing Works Used Book Cafe (just missing a fellow patron and a display of brand new hardbacks). Plus, there are a lot of brass monkeys out there today wishing they’d had the sense to stay home where it’s warm. Inky and her flute teacher were in the bow. Figured I stood a chance of keeping Milo in the stern if I let him crack eggs, hork down some chocolate chips and fool with the brand new digital timer I bought to replace the one he dropped to its death.

Like that wasn’t home-fucking-schooly enough, I adapted the recipe from a 1970’s kids’ cookbook, Kids Are Natural Cooks, by a Cambridge, Mass collective known as the Parents’ Nursery School, with illustrations by Lady McCrady. It’s my total hippie fantasy. Three-year-olds making their own cheese, butter and pretzels. What am I saying? That sounds like a total nightmare! Anyhoo, I snuck a little white flour into the original recipe, substituted Triple Sec for vanilla (we’re out) and changed the name from Crunchy Cookies to

Commune Cookies

Preheat the oven to 350˚.
Put a stick of butter on the counter.
Read The Boy Who Looked Like Lincoln twice, The Lorax once, and reinstate martial law with regard to those who seek to create a public disturbance in flute territory,

Place 1/3 cup of the now-softened butter in a bowl with 1/2 cup of honey. Begin the stirring process.

Suspend the stirring process to ask the cabin boy if he has washed his hands since disembarking from the subway. Wait while hands are (allegedly) washed. Resume the stirring process.

Add one egg and one teaspoon of Triple Sec or some other calming substance like the pot juice the Parents Nursery School cooperative no doubt substituted when they ran out of vanilla. Stir that up while waiting for your summons to arrive.

Sift in:
1/2 cup of white flour
3/4 cup of wheat flour
1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
3/4 teaspoon of sea salt
and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon.
Continue stirring. You’ll wind up with something resembling the Peanut Butter Playdough on page 25. Always makes me feel a little woozy, thinking of those little cooperatively-run fingers moistly exploring the nether reaches of nostrils and oral cavities before probing that edible playdough, some of which will be eaten, but some of which will be packaged up for another round of playtime fun.

Prissy, my smelling salts!

When the color returns to your cheeks, you may stir in one cup of chocolate chips and one cup of chopped nuts. I used walnuts. Apparently, there were no nut allergies in 1972. I’d love to see the public outcry that would greet the parent who dared bring in a batch of homemade granola, Chris and Jody’s Nut Bread, or, for that matter, Peanut Butter Playdough to snack time today. Make sure you have clearance before unleashing them on the possibly susceptible (and litigious!) young. Eat them all yourself, if that’s what it takes. But first ------> Bake for 9 minutes on an ungreased cookie sheet and cool on racks. I’m all about the racks these days, another sure sign that it’s 2007, and not some mythical, hippie-dippie, Montessori past.

∞
[cookie recipe] [nut allergy] [hippie fantasy] [flute lessons] [peanut butter playdough]

Recovered Chicken Liver and Sage Salad

2007-02-19T10:36:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, I bought this jive ass salad cookbook in a used bookstore. I think my rationale was that increased access to creative salad recipes would induce me to eat more greens, but all it did was up my annual chicken liver consumption by ten pounds or so.

So when, after a three year hiatus, I again started shacking with Matthew Mugg the Cat’s Meat Man*, one of the things I was really looking forward to was a reunion with my beloved sage and chicken liver salad. Only thing was, sometime in the last three years, I must have unloaded that crappy cookbook in a stoop sale. It was nowhere to be found and I know, because I looked, sort of. I could have lost it, could have thrown a tantrum and ordered in thirty bucks’ worth of sub par Thai food, but like hell was I going to waste a pound of chicken livers from Los Paisanos at $1.99 a pound. I unzipped my baggie of fresh sage, huffed deeply, and dusted off my background in improvisation.

What I wound up with wouldn’t win any beauty prizes, but there’s nothing wrong with being Ms. Congeniality, especially if you’re loaded with iron.

Recovered Chicken Liver and Sage Salad

Wash, dry, and tear a head of Bibb lettuce. Boston lettuce? I always. That hydroponic stuff with the root ball dangling off the end like those scary lady-ghosts from Thailand. Oh my god, they’re so freaky. Just this pretty smiling head trailing a mess of internal organs like gnarly sausage links. The stuff one learns reading Giant Robot, I swear.

Slice a shallot.

Chop up some sage. Like a sprig. I don’t know. There were four sprigs in my baggie, one decidedly larger than the rest. I denuded that one of its leaves and chopped them up. Use your discretion, not your measuring spoons.

Melt a tablespoon of olive oil with a tablespoon of butter. Fry the sage and the shallot over medium heat for five to ten minutes.

Remove the goodies, as much as you can. Freshen the pan with another tablespoon of butter and another tablespoon of oil.

Brown the chicken livers. If you’re worried about whatever it is people worry about with undercooked organ meats, think about that scene in Notes on a Scandal where Dame Judi Dench snaps, “Don’t, let’s.” You want them brown on the outside, but not on the inside.

Add
1/4 cup of wine
1/4 cup of orange juice
several big pinches of salt
a big pinch of freshly ground pepper
and restore those goodies.

When everything’s heated through, make like you’re some sort of demented Easter Bunny, tucking chicken livers amongst those tender new greens. So good! Wilt it up a bit by pouring the sauce over everything.

Sprinkle with a bit more fresh sage and a splash or two of sushi vinegar.

∞
*
It’s a metaphor and a literary allusion!

[chicken livers] [phi pob][Dr Doolittle] [sage] [salad]

Adobo Chicken

2007-02-12T09:01:00.000-08:00

This dish is “the hotness”, a superlative I picked up from the celebrity gossip blog, D-Listed, where it is most frequently applied to Charlize Theron (and very little else). The only thing that kept it from being entirely perfect was that midway through the cooking procedure, my six-year-old son received a visitation from the Muse of Craft, and in his fervor, could not rest until four paper lunch sacks had been fetched from the cabinet over the stove, dislodging the glass coffee pot, which exploded all over the counter while simultaneously sending a Pyrex measuring cup to its death. Also, about three hours after my second heaping helping, I started blowing chow like a freaking firehose, but the forensics team has determined that it was a case of the stomach flu that ate Brooklyn, not salmonella, listeria, or some other delicious food borne bacteria. So eat up, secure in the knowledge that it wasn’t the hotness’s fault.

Adobo Chicken

Scrounge around in the cabinets until you come across the store-brand white vinegar you use for infrequent cleaning and Easter egg dying. Combine:
1/2 cup of that
1/2 cup of soy sauce
3 bay leaves
5 cloves of garlic, minced up pretty
A dozen or so hand-strengthening grinds of pepper
& 8 chicken thighs. (I foraging at Han Ah Reum Market and ran across a big package of boneless thighs - as opposed to Charlize’s thighless bones. I’m so glad they didn’t give me food poisoning because they were so cheap and convenient, I’ll pick me up a package whenever a frozen eel run sends me to 32nd street.)

Dump this gloop into your big non-reactive saucepan (or the tattered remains of your big reactive saucepan) , bring it to a boil, then simmer for half an hour, turning those thighs every so often, to ensure that you won’t be having an audience with King Ralph.

Remove the chicken to a plate.

Strain the cooking liquid over a mixing bowl. My condolences on your Pyrex measuring cup. (The forensics team’s latest findings indicate that the four paper bags that started the lethal chain reaction were not needed for a craft project, but rather, for “boxing gloves” for a couple of pre-dinner rounds, father vs. son. No news on whether the champion retained his belt.)

Wipe out the saucepan better than I did, or better yet, break out a new one, fire it up on high, and add 1 tablespoon of peanut oil (vegetable oil, massage oil, whatever).

When the oil is hot, add the chicken, and fry it up on all sides to give it some nice brown polka dots.)

Add the strained cooking liquid and simmer for five minutes. Serve with rice, and don’t blame the chicken if you start feeling barfy. Forget to take a picture. So? It's for eatin', not for show.

∞

[Filipino chicken] [chicken recipe] [Charlize Theron] [food poisoning] [Pyrex measuring cup] [the hotness]

Chinese Ginger Beef

2007-02-09T16:29:00.000-08:00

A couple of years ago, I was browsing in a remainder store called Non-Imperialist, Unoppressive Books and could not resist blowing a fin on this ridiculous little giftie item, thinking it would be a good thing on hand for one of those last-minute invitations to celebrate the birthday of someone I know insufficiently well to determine if her insistence on “no presents” is sincere. How thoughtful of me! Unfortunately, no one in New York City would have any context for appreciating this gift, a Chinese restaurant experience for two, served up in a carry-out container. Presumably, any New Yorker who craves a pair of fortune cookies, a Chinese menu, and some informative paper placemats, can just toddle to Chinatown, or one of the ill-tempered neighborhood take-aways and TCB with a minimum of fuss. Maybe I should send it to my friend Andrea, who, last I heard, was living in a broken-down school bus in a field in northern Vermont. Or better yet, “the troops”, especially if the care package they’re gunning for would contain foot powder and a subscription to Maxim.

Anyway, even those of us with a healthy folder of active Chinese menus sometimes find the craving to dirty our own pans is nearly as great as the one for some:

Chinese Ginger Beef
Get out your non-reactive bowl , or perhaps a bowl-sized, formerly-anondized Calphalon stockpot whose lifetime warranty has been voided due to flagrant repeat abuse.

Add:
1/4 cup of soy sauce
1/4 cup of vermouth (the ill-stocked liquor cabinet’s sherry!)
1/4 cup seasoned rice vinegar
Many healthy grindings of fresh ground black pepper
1 teaspoon of sugar
and 3 cloves worth of finely chopped garlic

Slice1 pound of beef steak across the grain into thin strips, such as you might find in a dish ordered in a Chinese restaurant. Slide them into that boozily aromatic soy bath. Massage them a bit with your fingers. If it helps, pretend that they’re paying you a hundred bucks an hour for this exotic spa treatment. Then excuse yourself, telling them to concentrate on their breathing, and that you’ll check back in 30 minutes. If you’re really digging on this game, you can spend that half hour bitching about your “client” to the delightfully cynical Polish manicurist. You can do this lolling on your back, or you can curry favor by accomplishing some side work you’re going to have to do anyway, specifically:

Peeling and slivering a couple thumbs’ worth of fresh ginger
&
Slicing six scallions into inch-long sections of pipe. (No scallions? No sweat. Brocolli smells better anyway, at least going in...)

Ding! Time’s up. After a brief squeezing for maximum lymphatic drainage, help the beef up out of its bath and into a terry cloth robe. Give it a magazine to browse while you set up for the next phase of the treatment .

Naturally you will have reserved the marinade, now fortified with your client’s personal juices. To this add:
2 teaspoons of cornstarch
2/3 cup of chicken stock
and 1&1/2 tablespoons of that oyster sauce that’s been hanging out in the back of the cabinet since before the birth of your youngest child, now six.

Retrieve the largest of your battered Calphalon pans, or better yet, your wok, fire up 2 tablespoons of peanut oil to a temperature most infernal, dump in the ginger and the beef and stir like hell.

30 seconds later, add the scallions and the fortified marinade and cook for two minutes, stirring all the while.

Oh mercy, I’m powering down and catching the F train to East Broadway because I can’t wait for the time it’d take to cook me up a batch of this wonderful dish. Or maybe I’ll just stay home and figure out a use for the rest of that vermouth. You, on the other hand, can serve it up over rice, with a twinkling of toasted sesame seeds.

∞

[Ginger Beef] [stir fry] [Chinese Food] [uses for vermouth]

Vietnamese Spare Ribs with Caramel Sauce

2007-01-21T14:07:00.000-08:00

Vegetarians may want to avert their eyes. I’m back in the barnyard, and boy, is my butcher psyched.

Why? When? Because of Thing One, a picky eater who hates fish and orders burgers in restaurants every chance she gets. It occurred to me as the tears streamed down her cheeks, a lump of pecan crusted catfish turning to ashes in her mouth, that she’s barreling toward that age where young girls can become very psychotic about food.

It occurred to me that maybe if I was eating the red stuff too, I’d be more inventive in my preparations, and perhaps that would limber up her stubborn palate.

It occurred to me that Greg had encountered plenty of responsible, humane farmers while researching Pig Farm, people who treat their animals well. I swore off of meat and poultry because an interview with the artist Sue Coe convinced me it was immoral to support the industry known as “factory farming”. Click that link and the creators of the Mootrix might have themselves another convert. While you do that, I’ll march my drumsticks on over to Staubitz, Los Paisanos, Perelandra, or the farmer’s market, all reliable sources of responsibly raised meat.

Oh Christ, these ribs are good!!!! But you know, I bet this caramel marinade wouldn’t be half bad on tofu, for those wiggly vegetarians who have no moral qualms about overlooking a quarter cup of fish sauce.

Vietnamese Spare Ribs with Caramel Sauce

Put on your coat, open the windows, and dig the fan out of storage. I don’t want to scare you, but neither would I want you to stink up the joint and set off the fire alarm. This caramel sauce has a tendency to smoke. So do doctors. Just take a look under the awning of your local medical professionals building, if you don’t believe me.

Still with me? Okay, then, Tough Monkey, let’s see you caramelize some sugar!
Put 1/3 cup of white sugar in a thick-bottomed little saucepan over low heat, stirring and shaking all the while so it doesn’t burn. Look alive when it starts to brown up. Turn your back for a second and you’ll have Pompeii in a pan.

When your white sugar could pass for brown sugar, remove the pan from the heat and stir in 1/4 cup of fish sauce. It’ll bubble and spit like evil incarnate, but that’s okay. Don’t feel like a failure if it starts solidifying into chunks of fish flavored rock candy. They’ll dissolve when you throw that pan back on the burner. Try one. They’re compellingly addictive, in an obscure corner of Chinatown kind of way. Better fire that pan back up, lest you’re tempted to eat them all. Three minutes over low heat should return things to a sticky sauce-like consistency.

Remove the pan from the heat and add 4 thinly sliced shallots and a few grinds of black pepper. Voila. Caramel Sauce. Invite a child who annoys you over for sundaes!

Moving on to the red blood cells, tell your butcher man to put his knife to good use by carving that two pound slab of lean pork spareribs into individual ribs. Wait until all the other customers have cleared out before asking him if any of his providers are known for raising and dispatching their stock humanely. The big mook at Paisanos patronized me in the nicest way, and Mr. Staubitz revealed that one of his daughters is a vegetarian!

Treat those ribs like the sacrifice they are by anointing them with a perfumed elixir. There’s no way of telling how such good-smelling anoinment affected the innumerable virgins who’ve gone down the hatches of the world’s volcanoes over the years, but as far as spareribs go, we’re looking at a real finger licker:

The finely chopped lower halves of 2 stalks of lemongrass
4 roughly chopped shallots
4 roughly chopped garlic cloves
2 small, roughly chopped, seeded jalapenos
Grind them into a rough paste in the grinding mechanism of your choice (a pig-shaped mocajete works good).

Stir the spice paste into the cooled caramel sauce and pour it over those pampered ribs, who can spend anywhere from an hour to an entire, romantic night basking in it in an appropriately refrigerated chamber.

As the dinner hour approaches, line your broiler pan with foil and preheat the oven to 350˚. If I was at the summer palace, I’d fire up the grill and skip down the hill to pick mint for mojitos, but actually, the broiler, though less picturesque, is also less hassle.

Scrape the marinade off the ribs, but don’t throw it away, as you’ll be painting that sizzling flesh with it several times before you start gnawing at them bones like Fred Flinstone working his way through a family-sized rack of extra-lean brontosaurus.

Line the ribs up on the broiler pan, but don’t stick it in the broiler right away. Instead, give ‘em 30 to 35 minutes in the oven, basting with the reserved marinade every ten minutes or so.

Then, ten minutes before serving, transfer the pan to the broiler and crank the heat as high as it will go. Flip the ribs at the five minute mark, to give both sides that mouth-watering , fresh-from-the-barbeque-pit glaze.

∞

Too damn good to waste time taking pictures. Just imagine me smiling as I gnaw on a big ol' bone, heedless of a mounting need for napkins and a half dozen toothpicks.

[barbeque] [spare ribs] [lapsed vegetarian]

Bloody Mary!

2007-01-11T09:15:00.000-08:00

I always associate Bloody Marys with New Year’s Day. Like lemon squares, toffee, smoked almonds, incredibly stressful preparations and eggnog, they were an indispensable part of the menu for my mother’s annual New Year’s Day open house.

I also associate them with Buddy’s, a defunct Chicago gay bar, that leavened many a brunch-time hangover with the ridiculousness of the garnishes crowding its Bloodies – boiled potatoes, pepperocini, cross-sections of sausage, big ol’ leafy stalks of celery.

But I wasn't taking three of my college friends, two husbands and seven children to a defunct gay bar, now was I? Not that it would have been any less logical than hosting a crew of that size / age for a New Year’s Day brunch in my 800-square-foot apartment… Fortunately, Gary and Amanda don’t drink, which left more for the rest of us, especially me and Greg, who managed to stretch that pitcher well into the night.

This is my mother’s recipe, tailored to fit the idiosyncrasies of my panty.I mean pantry. What is wasabi, after all, if not green, Japanese horseradish paste?

Bloody Marys

(They’re the girls I love, boom, boom, boom, boom)

See? They’re so easy, I can sing show tunes while I mix them up! Perhaps I’d do well to try something a little more challenging…

Get out your pitcher!

Dump in one 46-ounce can of tomato juice!

Add
2 teaspoons of wasabi
4 tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce (now there's a word to f you up in the final rounds of the Nat'l Spelling Bee...)
2 teaspoons of hot sauce
1 teaspoon of sea salt
3/4 teaspoon of fresh ground pepper
and the juice of 3 limes.

Recovered alcoholics and nursing mothers can hang it up right here, but those with a taste for vodka (and adventure!) should keep going.

Now here’s a little trick I picked up recently, over dinner with Sam and Nelle, the cultured palates behind Lunch for Two, a project that strikes me as way too classy for this gutter tip! I don’t know if either of them has actually tried it, but you bet it made my to-do-immediately list. First day of the new year, there I was, pouring cheap vodka into my Brita pitcher, eager to see if it would make it taste all expensive.

And you know? I think it did. I don’t know if it’s because I was so desperate to believe, or what, but I did a little before and after taste test and after seemed much less harsh (possibly because the second sip just naturally goes down smoother at 10am…). Anyhoo, I’ll do it again, especially if some bartender friend is willing to slip me an empty Grey Goose bottle into which I might decant my homemade shine. It’s good to know I can always fall back on bootlegging if this writing thing doesn’t work out.

(Hint: don’t forget to rinse the Brita pitcher and run a couple of quarts of water through the filter after you’ve worked your magic, unless you want the kiddies getting an unexpected bang from their Kool-Aid.)

Back to the Bloody Marys (boom, boom, boom, boom), a couple of minutes before you’re ready to serve them, empty the ice cube trays and as much “Grey Goose” as you see fit into the pitcher, stir ‘em up with a handy, long-armed implement, and don’t pull a Buddy when it comes to the garnish.

∞

In other news, issue 33 of my zine, The East Village Inky is back from the printers and ready to take its rightful place on the back of your toilet tank. Why not subscribe? You'll be glad you did, especially if your bra's been giving you trouble of late.

Hash Brown / Latkes Good To Eat

2007-01-03T23:15:00.000-08:00

Seems like most people who a) celebrate Christmas and b) like to cook plan their Christmas dinners in advance.

By the time we’d unhusked the gifts, gotten dressed and stumped around the misty schoolyard on the wooden stilts that Santa laid on the kids, we were powerful hungry, but wouldn’t you know it? The pantry was bare and the chef felt semi-embalmed.

Many would consider this a neon-sign urging us to honor the Jewish side of the family with a trip to Chinatown, but some stilt-related father-son tension had put a lien on Big Daddy’s limited reserves of holiday cheer. Given Inky’s finicky palate, Milo’s capacity for whining, and Greg’s aversion to crowds, I reluctantly admitted that pushing for this could be a mistake.

But what the hell do you do with a bunch of dried legumes, some frozen shrimp, an elderly head of lettuce, and four Idaho spuds?

As long as no mold has formed in the half-empty containers of sour cream and applesauce quietly living out their shelf lives in the back of the fridge, LATKES, that’s what! The children’s Polish rabbi great-great-grandfather would have been so proud of his godless descendant’s shiksa wife. (Dude, I could just have easily served shellfish.)

I decided to go with the recipe on the last page of Latkes, Latkes, Good to Eat,which a friend of my mom’s picked out for the children one year, to balance out Merry Christmas, Strega Nona, which has enough Baby Jesus talk at the end to make Greg's horns curl up. See? Even a faithless interfaith marriage like ours can present etiquette dilemmas! (And then we’ve got to browbeat the young into thank you notes. Thanks … for NOTHING!!!)

No, no, no, I very much appreciate such fairly weighted gift-giving, even if the Greg half is poorly illustrated and not nearly as engaging. That latke recipe’s a keeper, anyway! I modified it a bit because we didn’t have parsley, and even if we did, the goal was to get the children to eat the damn things, not turn their noses up at them. I would never have made latkes at all if Inky hadn’t had some at a party and hated them, but then later sampled a batch that she claimed to have loved (possibly because they were brought into class with much fanfare by the friendly mother of the well-liked new girl).

Mine weren’t quite as big of a hit, but I done my duty. She ate the side of applesauce and that’s saying something. I wonder if she’d give them another whirl if I served some for breakfast, billed as hash browns…

Latkes

Peel three big Semitic Idaho potatoes. I don’t know if today’s child would have much connection to the image of k.p., but I clocked enough Gomer Pyles and Sad Sacks growing up to feel like a genius for realizing I could make light work of this by deploying a vegetable peeler. You’d think the military would spring for a couple hundred of those devices, instead of making our boys hunch iconographically over with paring knives.

Grate them taters then, quick, run some cold water over them so they don’t turn an unappetizing shade of slug. Man, for something so rustic and dumpy, potatoes sure know how to rock the diva behavior. When my friend Martha was volunteering in Columbia under the auspices of the Episcopal church, she conceived of an inexpensive holiday craft project whereby her child charges would carve candleholders out of raw potatoes. Apparently they were adorable, until a few days later when they started to stink like all seven stages of hell. Good thing she wasn’t trying to convert anybody.

Chop up enough onion to yield a quarter cup. Reserve the rest for another recipe, or a candleholder or something.

Beat 2 eggs in a large bowl.
Add 1/2 teaspoon of salt
3 tablespoons of flour
& one crack of pepper for every candle in the menorah. (That’s eight for those of you non-Jews who didn’t marry into the tribe or study Chanukah in Episcopal Sunday School, like I did.)

Use your hands to squeeze the infant beejesus out of the grated potatoes. When they’re nice and dry, dump them into the bowl and give them a stir.

Fire up some vegetable oil in a skillet set over high heat, then spoon in some potato batter. It’s much firmer than your average pancake, so you can fool with the shape, give ‘em some Goyishe Mouseketeer ears or whatever it is that helps you gain purchase on the tastebuds of the picky young. Brown one side and then the other.

Serve with applesauce and sour cream on the bed, if you’re an adult, or, if you’re a spill-prone kid, that paint-stained Ikea parson’s table that was too small for you last Christmas. (Who cares, as long as it’s in front of the TV!)

∞

[latkes] [hash browns] [potato pancakes] [interfaith marriage]

PEACE ON EARTH, GOODWILL TO ALL.

2006-12-24T08:15:00.000-08:00

Compliments of Kotis, Kotis, Kotis & Halliday

Ring of Fire Dirty Chocolate Chipotle Cookies

2006-12-21T10:00:00.000-08:00

Thanks to all who attended last week’s Dirty Sugar Cookie Swap at Vox Pop! One of the best things to come out of it, besides the formation of a brand new bookstore / coffeehouse band and a heightened resolve to get my recently completed, but as yet unpublished children’s book Always Lots of Heinies at the Zoo into the hands of discerning tots, was the recipe for these Chocolate Chiptole Cookies. It's true that the slow-blooming, fiery flavor took a couple of unsuspecting, young sweet tooths by surprise. I do hope, for their mother’s sake that the discomfort was confined to one orifice. Let that be a lesson to those who can’t stand the heat to keep their hands out of my cookie jar.

Ring of Fire Dirty Chocolate Chipotle Cookies

Throw a couple of sticks of butter on the counter when you wake up to pee in the middle of the night, otherwise you’ll forget to factor in the time it needs to soften up.

Whenever you’re ready to take it up a notch, melt a cup and a half of bittersweet chocolate chips in a double boiler, or whatever jive-ass rig you can think to improvise after selling your grandmother’s double boiler for like, a dollar, when you were leaving Chicago. It’s okay. I’m sure that dollar is continuing to give you endless amounts of pleasure! Well done! You can proceed with the recipe while the chips melt and cool, unless you’re in one of those maudlin moods where you’re actively seeking spilled milk to cry over.

Remove the butterwrappers, toss the butter in the bowl, and give it the old in-and-out with your electric mixer. Add two cups of packed brown sugar and one and a half cups of white sugar. Whip that up.

You really need go no further if low-maintenance dessert is what you seek, but those who’ve signed up for the full course should add two teaspoons of chipotle powder and then sift in a cup of chocolate drink mix. When I got the idea to replicate the spicy Mexican hot chocolate I so love in cookie form, I was thinking I’d grind me up a canned chipotle in the blender, but everything I dredged up on the Internet supported the use of powdered chilis. Odds remained good that I’d be the maverick who ruined a half-pound of butter and two packages of chocolate chips with her pig-headedness and a canned chiptole, but then lo and behold, Met Foods has started stocking the powdered stuff. Management no doubt fears that they’ll be shut down and replaced by a combination Starbucks-American Apparel if they fail to keep up with the tsunami of trendiness that has engulfed Smith Street. (Speaking of powder, I’d forgotten to check if I had any cocoa powder before hitting the grocery, which is how I wound up using the store brand Quik I unearthed at the back of the cabinet, behind a jar of ghee I bought in the East Village (before Milo was born, from a store that no longer exists). Now I’m out of store brand Quik, which probably means next time I’ll use cocoa powder. I leave it to your discretion. Just don’t buy Nestles.

Okay, crack in four eggs! How’s that for holiday excess, Senor Fezziwig?

Add a tablespoon of water and a tablespoon of vanilla.

Here’s the part where the cheapo electric mixer you publicly claimed would never break breaks. Good thing you didn’t toss all your wooden spoons on the bonfire when you brought that thing home.

Add the melted chocolate and stir, even if you have to use one of those cardboard things from the bottom of a wire hanger. (So crafty!)

Ciombine (that’s a typo, but it looks kind of Italian and foodie-ish, so I’m leaving it as is)
4 cups of flour
1 tablespoon of baking soda
and 1 teaspoon of salt.

Then dump it into the sweet chocolate mixture and honey, don’t go blaming me if your bowl’s not big enough. Use your wok. Use that chamber pot you picked up at the swap meet. (Hey, has anyone tried that litterbox cake from Dirty Sugar Cookies, yet?)

Once you’ve married the moist to the dry, you can throw 2 cups of bittersweet chocolate chips at the happy couple and stir briefly to ciombine. If like me, you’ve got the hots for the hot stuff, sprinkle another 1/2 teaspoon of chipotle powder over the dough before giving it an hour’s respite in the refrigerator.

Is this really necessary? (The chilling, not the chipotle.) I don’t know. I dutifully chilled my dough and then, the second I pull it out, I get a phone call and before I knew it, forty-five minutes had been been sacrificed to my big yapper. Never much of a one for delayed gratification, I decided to forge ahead. It’s not like I was intending to cut them into festive shapes. Just bloop ‘em out at regularly spaced intervals on a parchment-lined baking sheet.

Look at them! You know what they remind me of? A zine I saw reviewed in my first ever issue of Fact Sheet Five, called We Like Poo. Just because I never ordered it doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten it. The reviewer classified it as “fringe interest” and noted that it had smelled awful.

Yum yum! Hope you remembered to preheat the oven to 350˚.

Bake them for eight minutes, which is four minutes shorter than anything I found in my online research. They should be crusted on the outside, but kind of goopy with all those melted chips oozing through the fissures. Slide them onto the baking racks you purchased the day after a trenchant and public observation that you would do no such thing and then spring them on Hansel, Gretel, Little Red, and others of their trusting, chocolate-crazed ilk.

∞

A frozen little bird told me that these cookies have become a great favorite of the slow loading, corporate sponsored, but absolutely-adorable-in-a-disturbing-sort-of-way elves

Thanks to Lynn, the Wicked Witch of Publishing for turning me on to the possibilities of this corporate-sponsored, slow-loading, but oh so gratifying elfin transformation.

[chocolate] [chipotle] [cookies] [ring of fire] [zine history]

Dirty Sugar Cookies - the recipe!

2006-12-16T05:32:00.000-08:00

To-ni-ight's the night......izzzzzgonna bee-ee alllllllright......

Keep it in your tartan, Rod, I meant the final Dirty Sugar Cookie Swap and Reading of the 2006 Holiday Season. With special (and shy!) musical guest, Reticent Devils, and a possibly ill-advised unveiling of my just completed, available to be published children's book, Always Lots of Heinies at the Zoo.

WHAT: Author Reading, Signing and Dirty Sugar Cookie Swap

WHEN: Saturday, December 16, 2006, 7pm

WHERE: Vox Pop
1022 Cortelyou Rd.
Brooklyn, NY
718 940 2084

Each Dirty Sugar Cookie purchase will earn you a free Six Points Craft ale, courtesy of Vox Pop! Sweet! Score a six-pack's worth, why don't you?

And don't forget to bring cookies! It really is a cookie swap...

When I get home from aikido (don't ask) I'm going to rustle up some bittersweet chocolate chipotle something or others, and if they work out I'll post the recipe here tomorrow, but just in case you're at a loss as to what to bring, here's my grandmother's Dirty Sugar Cookie recipe, straight from the pages of book of the same name.

Dirty Sugar Cookies
Preheat the oven to 350˚ except not yet, because the dough's going to have to chill for at least an hour.

Put your Bromwell's Measuring-Sifter (Pat. No 1,753,995) onto a salad plate then pour in:
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cup sugar

Position the sifter over a big mixing bowl, lose the salad plate and crank away.

Alternatively you may chuck your dry ingredients directly into the mixing bowl and give them a couple of twirls with a meat fork.

Add 1 cup of shortening (or 2 sticks of butter if you're some sort of health nut)

Next, crack 3 eggs directly into the bowl. Do not beat them first. This is how my grandmother did it and quite possibly how they did it in Colonial Williamsburg, as well.

Then add 1 teaspoon vanilla. Knock yourself out with the aforementioned meat fork.

Cover the dough with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge. If you want to pretend it's Pillsbury Slice and Bake, you can roll it into a cylinder before you wrap it up.

At some point, cover your work surface with wax paper. Sprinkle some flour on both the wax paper and your rolling pin. Roll out the dough. Dip the cookie cutters in some flour. Line the unbaked cookies up on a metal baking sheet. Preheat the oven you forgot to preheat earlier. If you want to go for the minimalist raisin eye look, now's the time to press them into the dough. You can also festoon them with colored sugars.

Bake each batch for 8 to 10 minutes. Cool. Transfer carefully so as to avoid limb loss.

Ice as you dare.

Nothing's Cooking but the BUST Craftacular!

2006-12-08T17:30:00.000-08:00

My stapling hand... she is very sore. Tell your friends to hither their heiners unto Warsaw (no, not Poland, you sassypants!) so that I will not have to haul 3 suitcases of books, zines, t-shirts, onesies, magnets and mini-notebooks home on the subway tomorrow night. And don't forget to swing by yourself! I'm going to need beer and bathroom breaks.

I'm too busy rigging a teddy in a Dare to Be Heinie onesie to think about cooking tonight. We'll be having banh mi courtesy of Little Nicky on Atlantic Ave.

Thank you and spank you!

2006-12-05T14:45:00.000-08:00

I honestly thought that I was going to be the only person to show up at Bluestockings bearing baked goods for last night's Dirty Sugar Cookie Swap. I thought I was going to look like the biggest jackass on the planet. Instead, I'm just going to have the biggest ass on the planet because who could resist this spread!?

Here we go, five minutes before the starting gun sounded.Lots of cookies, a pumpkin pie, some Cool Whip and some Diva Menstrual Cups in the background...

Anna Lappé tested our eating IQ with a test that proved both sobering and hilarious. And she didn't even have to beg too hard for audience partipation before attendee Nina bravely took the bait!

Goddamn! I just realized that Anna's mother wrote Diet for a Small Planet! She didn't brag about it or nothing! And she was unduly critical of her scones, which were delicious and still warm from the oven! Dang! She doesn't know what nasty is! (Hint: try the bluefish with apples and potatoes I served last Tuesday night, which caused my friend, Delta, to remark, "Well, Ayun, not one of your best...")

Look at that bounty!!! Look, that's Rachel Kramer Bussel in the cupcake pink sweater! Shoot, from now on, I don't do a reading unless everyone gets cookies!!! Don't believe me? See you at Vox Pop on the 16th! I'm hoping Anna and her quiz will be able to join us too, and a very special, but as-yet-unnamed musical guest has just intimated that he will be lending his stylings to the festivities too. Hot damn.

I'm too stuffed to think about recipes, so I will direct you to A Good American Wife who laid some hot Chocolate Toffee action on us last night that nearly blew my mind! oh HELL yeah!