I know yesterday was the 4th of July.  Hooray, let’s gather to watch orchestrated explosives that are supposed to thrill us with pretty colors rather than terrify us with their unabashed mimicry of open warfare.  (Fireworks that explode to create peace signs: Fireworks manufacturers mocking our intelligence? I interpret it as such.)

“It’s great to have him back after three years of myopic, egocentric zombies parading themselves in front of our noggins. It’s great to have the killer back. Stack the bodies high.”

More importantly, yesterday was the opening stage of the 2009 Tour de France.  Those who were readers at this time in ‘08 may remember last year’s paen to the Tour, which we watch obsessively every year and which is inspiring me to get off my ass and back on the bike.

In honor of Le Tour, we felt it only appropriate to go to our local French bistro, Madame Claude Cafe, and I will be captioning photos in this post with the bon mots of the wonderfully hyperbolic commentators Paul Sherwen, Bob “Bobke” Roll and the Duke of Delighted Distortion, Phil Liggett (”The man in red has won the day! No, wait, that was a car!”).*

Again I say: I understand that watching the Tour may be boring to many, much the way I am stultified by televised baseball, golf and the Flava of Love.**  But just today there were two crashes, one rider was nearly run down by his own support car and one guy accidentally WENT THE WRONG WAY, rode directly into some people who were attempting to follow the actual race route, caused several others to crash and/or go the wrong way and narrowly avoided a full-on collision with a thankfully nimble French policeman.

*In his defense he can’t really help himself; his excitement and perception have an inversely proportional relationship. He also has to do his commentary from a tiny, windowless room the size of a broom closet, possibly resulting in hypoxia. He does, however, have a prodigious knowledge of every professional cyclist past, present and, I assume, future.

**Okay, I’m more horrified than stultified by that last one.

“The average resident of Montecarlo can cross the country of Monaco on foot in 56 minutes.”

To honor America as well, we ordered an amount of food that would seem like a nice brunch out for a special occasion to most Americans but would horrify the average Frenchperson, so it was really a win-win, or avantageux pour les deux parties.

We sat under a tree festooned with lights and painfully whimsical fabric flowers drinking excellent cafe au lait out of large bowls (which is as it should be), as we primed our brunch engines with toasted croissants - pure butter in pastry form - and homemade jam. The friendly, laid back owners of Madame Claude, which is named after a brothel, are a pair of French expats who do not brook shitty cafe or sub-par croissants.

Luckily, we were there without Brian’s sister Jodi, who is a smart, funny, big-hearted person who loves jam with such an uncontrollable and overwhelming love that last time she ate the whole pot. Note to Madame Claude: this is why you should not put spoons in the jam pots, the spoon is an enabler. Since we were sans Jodi today, we were able to enjoy our jam in a leisurely fashion without the need to constantly monitor jam pot levels.

“He’s dancing on his pedals in a most immodest way!”

While we munched, Brian noticed this mural painted on one of the buildings across the street that wasn’t there during our last visit (the mural, not the building).  I like to imagine that the one on the left is you when arrive at the Cafe, and the one on the right is what you look like after you’ve tried to take Jodi’s jam. She’s small but feisty.

“Today’s time trial is just ten miles, or thirty-six times the height of the Empire State Building.”*

A normal breakfast might just be cafe au lait and croissants, and indeed it might have been this time were we not there in the interests of blogular journalism.  But a bistro cannot be reviewed on croissants alone, so we had to order entrees as well.

I ordered perennial brunch favorite the Croque Madame (re-created at home here).  Madame Claude’s version of this classic sandwich is pared down but no less worthy thanks to quality ingredients: ham, emmenthaler, crusty bread and a fried egg with crisp brown edges.  Rather than the bechamel topping many iterations sport, Claude’s is just more cheese, broiled until bubbling and crusty.  On the side, a mesclun salad with a simple but perfect vinaigrette.

*Never let it be said that the commentary does not combine entertainment and education.

“There’s no reason to rush into hell.”

Brian went with a crepe, an enormous spinach-and-goat cheese stuffed affair that was really more like a burrito with a crepe wrapping than the delicate little triangular picture most of us probably conjure. (Note: This was not a bad thing.)

It was topped with - of course - a fried egg, and served with more of the mesclun.  Again, high quality ingredients, prepared simply and fresh to order.

And the classic: “He’s wearing the mask of pain.”

It seemed foolhardy to order a savory crepe to the exclusion of the sweet, so we finished up with La Belle Helaine, filled with roasted pears and dark chocolate.  Unlike the pound of spinach Brian easily and happily downed, an overfilled sweet crepe would be overwhelming (although I wouldn’t send it back) and Madame Claude knows it.  The ethereal crepe is lightly filled with tender caramelized pear with enough chocolate to cover the fruit and ooze out gently as you hack rabidly at cut into it with your fork.

This certainly wasn’t our first trip to Madame Claude, and I can vouch for the rest of their food: the soupe a l’oignon is truly exemplary, their mussels (available with a variety of sauces/cooking liquids) are uniformly well-done, the Friday-night boulliabaise special has never not been killer, and the duck confit with lardons and white beans in a warm vinaigrette is robust and hearty while still delicate and not overly fatty or heavy.

They’re BYOB but will happily uncork you and put your white on ice and they’re cash-only, so be forewarned. They’re also a favorite of French and French-Canadians in town, so you’ll often be surrounded by French-speakers, momentarily transporting you.  (The decidedly European attitude also means a good-natured but lax service experience, so it maybe shouldn’t be your choice when time-sensitivity is an issue.)

I’ve never been a sports bar aficionado, but if Madame Claude installed a big-screen television to show the Tour or Paris-Roubaix, I’d be there every night slurping down onion soup with a bottle of bordeaux as Phil Liggett yells, “The elastic has snapped!”

Madame Claude Cafe
364 1/2 4th St, Jersey City NJ
201.867.8800
Tues - Wed, 4pm - 10pm
Thu - Fri, 4pm -11pm
Sat 9am -  11pm
Sun 9am - 10pm

ONE YEAR AGO: Dining With Ethel

Some of today’s captions are from yesterday’s and today’s race commentary; the remainder are courtesy of Todd Carrier’s Phil Liggett Fan Page. Thanks, Todd!

Award.  Most Provocative. There are a lot of nominees so you might have to scroll. ONLY YOU CAN MAKE THIS HAPPEN. Did you vote already? You can vote more than once! It’s the American way.

Also:  Remember when I posted about Pistols & Popcorn and her drive to raise money for Livestrong?  And there were fabulous raffle prizes? And most of you didn’t bother to click over? (I can see you, you know. I’m like Santa that way.) And I did, and I donated money?

End result: GUESS WHO’S GOING TO THE RED-CARPET PREMIERE OF THE NEW MARTIN SCORCESE MOVIE TO PAL AROUND WITH MICHELLE WILLIAMS, WHO I BELIEVE IS CONTRACTUALLY OBLIGATED TO CHAT WITH ME, SUCKERS. I’ll let Leonardo DiCaprio and Ben Kingsley know y’all said hi.

I probably shouldn’t gloat like this in the same post where I’m asking for your help, epsecially considering that at some point I’m also going to need your help figuring out what the hell to wear to this thing. But you know, oh well.

The only thing better than failure is failure at 3 in the morning. I mean, in general I prefer my failures to occur at an obscure time of night: all the better to reinforce their obscurity. But when the thing you’re screwing up is meant to be broadcast to the world anyway, it doesn’t really matter when it happens.

It’s just, you know, it’s 3:30am. And I’m cranky.

The Smackdown tonight comes from Gina DePalma’s Dolce Italiano: Desserts from the Babbo Kitchen. I was flipping through the cookbook piles this morning looking for a recipe, because I’m on a mission to see how close I can cut things before I actually end up at the grocery store wandering the aisles aimlessly with no list in hand because I’ve not actually chosen anything to cook. When I’m scrambling, I know I’m not feeling it.

Add that to the fact that I have tomorrow (Friday) off and spent all day thinking today was Friday and preparing myself for Friday night queso dip and frozen sangria - this week, stunted though it is, was a WEEK -  and I’m not feeling anything except that sangria. Especially not a long night of culinary photojournalism, unless it involves drinking frozen sangria while I drunkenly take poorly lit pictures of it with my cameraphone.

When I’m not feeling cooking dinner, that = dessert. In this particular case, zucchini and olive oil cake with crunchy lemon glaze.*

*Made after returning from cheese and sangria night, we both needed it. Hence the hour.

Zucchini bread is one of the few “sneaky” foods I would eat as a child because it still tasted like cake, unlike some eggplant “meatballs” I can think of.

Brian’s parents also tried to trick him into eating eggplant by making eggplant parm and calling it “tiny pizza.”  Nice try; do not underestimate the palate of a 7-year-old.*  Seven-year-olds cannot be fooled into thinking wheat germ on yogurt is ice cream with sprinkles the way 3-year-olds can.  (Stupid toddlers, they wouldn’t know good food if it bit them on the Tickle Me Elmo. And a lot of them will eat dog kibble.)

Anyway, if zucchini bread is good there’s no reason zucchini cake shouldn’t be, especially considering the extra flavor boost from the entire cup of olive oil used as the fat. That the recipe is from Gina DePalma, she who inspired these delightful little donut bites, is gravy.

I creamed eggs, sugar and the oil together, incorporated the dry ingredients (which include nutmeg, ginger and cinnamon) and folded in minced walnuts and a big honking pile of grated zucchini. Which came from a big honking zucchini that was a full 16 inches long and 4 and a half inches in diameter (Yes, I measured.  Also, keep it clean.  I know how you think). For a moment, it occurred to me to wonder what’s going into the water around here that could contribute to such a frightening reimagining of what a zucchini should be; then I remembered where I live and decided that “ignorance is bliss” is an oft-used adage for a good reason.

*Although I think they win in the end, because he now loves eggplant and I remain mildly squicked by it.

Side Rant: If Buitoni can’t be bothered to have its spokesperson pronounce agnolotti correctly in their commercials (”ag-no-lotti”), what hope is there for any of us?  Hyperbolic?  Maybe, but no less true.

I scraped the finished batter into some mini-bundt pans because I didn’t read the instructions all the way through before starting which would have informed me that I needed a 10-cup bundt pan, which I don’t have thought it would be cute to have single-serving cakes.  I slid them into the oven and made the “crunchy” lemon glaze.

The glaze is your run-of-the-mill confectioners’ sugar and lemon juice affair; the crunch comes from sneaking in some granulated sugar. Or doesn’t come, because the granulated sugar dissolves into the juice just like the confectioners’ does.

Really, by 2:30 in the morning, everything is dissolving into everything else.

My unknowing little cakes came out of the oven a little puffed over the tops of their pans but otherwise browned, moist and fragrant.  I let them sit on the cooling rack in their pans - pans which had been assiduously greased and floured - for the specified ten minutes and then tried to flip them out and glaze them.

Operative word: tried.  I flipped.  I shook.  I eased with the tip of a knife.  I prayed over them.  I thumped.

I became ornery.  I shook harder, like I’d do to a crying baby if I were that kind of person which I am NOT.  I left them alone for a few minutes, extrapolating from my standard method of fixing uncooperative electronics: ignore them until they start to work again.  (In extreme cases, you may have to turn the device off and on again.)

I commenced round two of flipping, shaking and thumping.  And then: movement!  Yes, the movement of the top of the cake popping off while the remaineder clung obstinately to the pan.  I may have called the cakes cruel motherfuckers; it’s late and I can’t be held responsible for all my behavior.  Making it extra-sad: I ate the part that popped off, and it was damn good.  The zucchini was a little more subdued than I might have liked - I think the mutant baseball bat zucchini I had was probably not as flavorful as your garden-variety squash - but the spice blend enhanced the nuts and squash without overwhelming them, the walnuts added pops of texture and the grated zucchini kept the whole thing meltingly moist.  At least, the scant morsel I managed to eat was all those things.

I am trying the advanced corrective method of leaving them in the pans overnight; I’ll report back on what happens in the morning.  This is a corrective method, and not just me not wanting to pry out and clean four tiny bundt pans at 4 in the morning.

Good night, and good luck.

ETA: Overnight test = fail. Dig the cake out with your hands and eat it anyway = success.

ONE YEAR AGO: The Great E-Scape…Get it? Because there are scapes in here.

Technorati Tags: dessert, baking, cake, mario batali, babbo, gina depalma, zucchini

Issac, you know I love you, but I’m pissed that your steaming pile of a show is preempting Top Chef tonight and I’m pissed that Bravo thinks that re-running two episodes of Ludo is going to appease me.  I AM NOT APPEASED.

You can try to appease yourselves by re-living some of last season; I know a lot of you didn’t hop on board the train until late in the season.  Relive the hijinks and lojinks!  Links below the jump.

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3

Episode 4

Episode 5

Episode 6

Episode 7

Episode 8

Episode 9

Episode 10

Episode 11

Episode 12

Finale, Part 1

Finale, Part 2

Why is it that you go to therapy to make yourself feel better, you spend an hour talking about horrible crappy things, and then you leave feeling worse?  If I want to feel bad about myself, I could just look at myself naked in a mirror, jump up and down a few times and pocket the $100 bucks.

But then I come home and there’s dinner, thanks to this ingenious new dinner-making methodology. I’ve tried it a couple of times now and I can’t really find a fault, especially on nights where you don’t get home from work and your weekly rehash-your-childhood-traumas session until a quarter to nine.

I highly suggest that you obtain a spouse or partner so you too can begin to take advantage of it.  In this method, which I dub the “Aw, Yeah” method, you:

• Decide what you want to have for dinner
• Send your spouse/partner a shopping list and detailed written instructions
• Come home when dinner is ready
• Eat
• Take a nap

It’s really a win-win, wherein you win and then you win again, because you still feel responsible for the meal since you conceptualized it, but you get to enjoy it without having done the actual work.

You can make your partner feel as though s/he has won as well if you employ the classic Tom Sawyer/fence whitewashing manipulation strategy.  Cooking is really ideal with the 1-2 punch of “Aw, Yeah” and “Tom Sawyer.” If I could train one of the dogs to use the camera and the other to write the posts, this whole blog would become self sustaining, like a perpetual motion machine.

For tonight, I went with a mojo-inflected white chicken chili. I know last week was also kinda Mexican, but I’ve been feeling anything made with chiles and cilantro lately.  White beans, corn, chicken, serranos and hatch green chiles, cumin, oregano, an ass-ton of garlic, adobo and some OJ.  Easy, quick and, I hoped, tasty.  I’ve never actually had white chili, but I had a flavor image in my head I wanted it to match.

I’m usually pretty good at making that happen, except for when I’m really really* not, so I was pretty confident in my concept and instructions. (Of course, I issued them before I went to therapy.)

*My very first month of blogging!  So cute, so young, such an awful blogger.

I issued the following instructions, which are the same I will now issue to you.  As you can see, I make sure to go into a high level of detail to ensure the final product will meet my high standards.

1. Dice 1 small onion, mince lots of garlic and serranos (a couple, 3-4). Saute in olive oil.
2. Add cumin (1 tsp?) and Mexican oregano (1/2 tsp?).  Sauté for another minute or two.
3. Drain corn and beans. Cube chicken (bite size pieces).
4. Add corn, beans, a little stock and some OJ (not enough to make it soupy), some of the canned green chiles in the fridge, and some adobo (1 tsp?) and cayenne (1/4 tsp?). Stir around.
5. Mash it to break up some of the beans and thicken it up (if it ends up too thick, thin out with a little more stock). Taste. Add salt and pepper as needed.
6. Add chicken cubes. Poach until chicken is done. Toss in another 2 cloves of minced garlic a minute or so before serving.
7. Check seasoning again.
8. Serve with cilantro, sour cream, cotija and that green salsa in the jar.

We had everything but the beans, corn and cilantro in the house, so it was perfect for a pair of tight asses with lots of leftover Mexican ingredients from last week.

As it turns out I issue excellent instructions, because this was delicious.  It’s summertime chili, if such a thing makes any sense.  The green chiles have a kind of bright heat unlike the heavier flavor of red chiles (although cayenne brings a nice punch).  The corn added sweetness and crunch; the OJ some additional sweetness and welcome acid.  Mashed white beans are a great way to thicken things up quickly without needing a heavy thickener or having to cook things down for a million years, so you can make this from beginning to end in about half an hour.

Poaching the chicken right in the chili infuses it with some flavor and keeps it tender and moist.  Topping it with some sour cream adds a little fat that balances well with the brightness (avocado would be nice if you weren’t leftover-dependent), cotija adds salt and the cilantro adds a final fresh pop. Plus: garlic. Lots and lots of garlic.

Man, all this eating just wipes me out.

ONE YEAR AGO:  Cheap Ass Monday: Down by the Boardwalk

White Chicken Mojo Chili
Instructions are as written above; I could re-write them all fancy-like, but it would boil down to the same thing. We did futz with quantities a little, so final quantities are:

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 15 oz. can Great Northern beans
1 15 oz. can corn
1 small onion
6-8 cloves of garlic
3-4 good size serranos
1/2 can minced green chiles
3/4 c. chicken stock
1/2 c. OJ
1 tbsp. cumin
1 tsp. Mexican oregano
2 tsp. adobo seasoning
1/4 tsp. cayenne
salt and pepper

Optional Toppings: cotija or cheese of your choice, cilantro, sour cream, salsa of your choice, avocado, fresh limes

Technorati Tags: chile, chili, chicken, stew, corn, recipe, mexican, food, cuisine

Especially if they’re being poured from an overpriced ceramic vessel. You know how I love an overpriced ceramic thingy for which I have neither money nor room in my kitchen.

I especially like it when the ceramics are of questionable functionality.  Like this thing: it solves the age old “how do I blot the artisinal olive oil from my piece of pain de campagne in an effective yet modern fashion?” conundrum. There are cave paintings in Lascaux illustrating this age-old human dilemma.

Luckily, this olive oil platter solves that dilemma with only 75% chance of spilling oil over the side of the plate and all over your favorite pants. Thank god!

But that other pour-y thing, I totally want. At the current Euro-to-Dollar exchange rate, it’s a bargain at $162. You can’t put a price tag on pouring maple syrup over your weekend pancakes in such a sultry fashion.

Non-Bleak Announcement! Bleak Soup winner jkc was thrilled to win, but was so overwrought by Rob’s post-apocolyptic yarn that she has conceded her victory!  Rob, send me your mailing address to claim your winnings, and never suffer the indignity of bleak soup again.

FYI, when you actually do google “bleak soup,” the first entry - and I am not kidding - is a tweet from Mariah Carey reading, “Eating some bleak soup.. Its green and quite putrid: )”

Anyway, WINNER: jck!  Send your mailing address to michelle at thursdaynightsmackdown dot com, and Sunday Soup will soon make its way to you!

Although this was decided via random number generator (we’ve moved up from Brian randomly picking a number to Brian rolling two ten-sided dice and using one number for the 10s column and the other for the 1s), I must give an honorable mention to Rob.  He created this magnum opus before realizing the contest was based on a random number draw.  While there were many excellent examples of bleak soup in the comments, the effort put into this astoundingly crafted tale of an impossibly bleak soup deserves time in the spotlight.

Warning: you may want to be sitting down with a strong drink and/or Valium in hand before reading. Quoth Rob:

Post-Apocalyptic Soup (w/ Rabbit)

After the first wave of the virus hit, my wife and I counted ourselves among the lucky ones. We were wrong. The luckiest were probably those hit before they knew what hit them, before they knew what horrors awaited them.

She wasn’t so lucky in the second wave. The virus mutated quicker than the government could find anything to stop it. It was airborne, waterborne, foodborne and nobody and nothing escaped it. Except me.

Maybe my parents were cousins, maybe I had some glitch in a chromosome, I don’t know. The doctors couldn’t figure it out before the virus took them, too, fear and desperation gripping their scientific minds as the virus turned them to mush.

There was a chance for my daughter, born premature as my wife’s body was ravaged by that godforsaken plague. But without my wife to sustain her, without mother’s milk or a hospital, she was gone, too, and I cursed the atrocities I had committed to pull her from my wife’s dying body.

I haven’t seen anyone for two years now. No living animal except me and Harvey, the rabbit I didn’t have the heart to kill when I snared him in that first clumsy trap. There are mutated, wild things out there, that pervert what an animal once was, but I don’t count them. Anyway, It’s getting to be too much.

I fire up the generator, one last desperate time with the shortwave radio, broadcasting my agony to nobody before I end it all.

I gather the few dismal vegetables I have left. A carrot, cut into halves, Harvey happily munching on his share, the rest going in the pot. A potato, not worthy of the name, as mealy and half-rotten as it is, but I cut away the bad parts and use what’s left. The poison, carried for two years in anticipation of just such a day. The man who’d traded it to me used it on himself as the plague hit the refugee camp, so I know it will work. And finally, tears streaming down my face, I kill Harvey and prepare him to put into the pot. He wouldn’t survive out here, I tell myself, where no vegetables will grow any more, where wild mutated things will tear him to pieces without my protection. He would want this, I think, though I can’t imagine that being true.

Salt, pepper, stir. I go through the motions of cooking. It was a joy, a thing I did for pleasure, and for so long it’s just been pure, bitter sustenance. But now? Now it’s a way out.

I light a last candle, set a place with dirty bowl and bent spoon. Soup’s on.

I ignore the spoon, pick up the bowl and drink it all down in one draught, feeling the warmth in my stomach and a numbing begin to radiate through all my limbs.

I lay my head on the table; my vision begins to blur, and I know I’m not long for this misbegotten world.

I hear the shortwave crackle to life, a voice–god, I’d forgotten what a voice other than my own even sounded like–comes over the radio, “–small community of survivors, hoping to find others. Do not lose hope, we have food and water. Again, we are broadcasting on all channels, do not lose hope–,” but it’s too late, and I can only wonder what they will make of my wasted flesh as what I consider to be my self rises above it and fades away.

Leftovers are AWESOME.  Also ice cream makers.  And wine.

We went out to dinner Friday night and I had a glass of frozen sangria, which is like a slurpee on crack.  The 7-11 slurpee (Coke-flavored only, every other flavor tastes like frozen battery acid) and I have a very special relationship; I’ve always loved them. One summer when I was home from college, I decided to see how many days in a row I could go drinking a slurpee every day.  I think I made it to the mid-60s before I cracked.*  Which is why I now wear a full set of dentures at age 31 and have advanced diabeetus. (TM Wilford Brimley)

We’ve since cooled down our relationship, but we remained fond friends - until the slurpee was supplanted by frozen sangria.  We’ve been going to the same Tex-Mex restaurant for dinner every Friday for a while, creatures of habit that we are, and they have frozen sangria that I’m sure comes from a slurpee-esque mix but dang it tastes good.

*I once also counted the number of licks it takes to get to the middle of a Tootsie Pop and let me tell you, it is NOT three.  It’s 957.  I will remember that number until the day I die, and not just because Joe Marinzoli programmed it into his calculator watch so we would remember. (It was 1989.)

Thursday night, I made the peaches in wine that went with the Indian-spiced fish for the Platter of Figs Smackdown.  And then I finished writing the post at midnight and had to get up for work the next morning, so I ate three peach slices, had a sip of wine and left the rest soaking in the fridge, where it remained until this morning.

I’d been thinking of making some ice cream this weekend, steeping the cream with some mint or lemon balm from the herb garden, when I realized that I had virtually an entire bottle of peach-infused rosé in the fridge and I could be drinking frozen sangria while doing yard work rather than the bottle of water I’d been planning on taking out back with me.  In the “yard work” vs. “tipsy yard work” battle, “tipsy yard work” takes it every time.  I separated the peaches from the wine, and into the ice cream maker it went.

Fifteen minutes later and bam, my own frozen sangria; fresher and tastier than restaurant frozen sangria, and I didn’t have to pay $6.25 a glass. A delicious, delicious slurpee that gives you the giggles and impairs one’s ability to accurately touch one’s finger to one’s nose.

I did not finish this glass because I don’t actually like to GWI*; I find that the gardening is more effective when I can distinguish the plants from the weeds.  I’ve already accidentally ripped out enough tomato plants and potted enough poison ivy.  Instead, I dumped it back into the ice cream maker after the photo and a few (big) sips for sorbietification, so that I could safely eat it post-gardening.

*Garden While Intoxicated

It seemed a waste to get rid of all the wine-soaked peaches, so I pureed them, strained out the larger skin bits and stashed the pureé in the fridge to await its ride in the freezer.

The freezer bucket on the Cuisinart (a great little machine if you’re either not ready, too broke or don’t have the storage for an ice cream maker with a compressor) freezes hard enough that I can often do back-to-back batches of ice cream as long as the mixture is really well chilled, so I scraped the sangria sorbet into some tupperware, poured in the peach and let ‘er rip.

Technically, neither of these is quite frozen enough, but we were on our way out the door and I need to have all the pics, so I scooped out a spoonful of each, added my stock mint leaves (the chives of summer) and took the fastest photos in the West before tipping back the bowl to drink the melted sorbet.

So here’s what you need to do:  Purchase or unpack your ice cream maker.  Purchase or pull out your copy of Platter of Figs.  Make the Indian-spiced fish menu, because it’s good and otherwise there’s no reason to use the book because peaches in wine don’t so much require a recipe.  Save your leftovers.  Make this. To clarify: Make it out of the leftover peaches in wine, not the leftover fish.  We’re no Alinea or wd-50 around here.

The wine really is fantastic in slurpee form (for our next party, I think I’ll make a couple batches of sangria sorbet, freeze them, and chuck ‘em in the blender when guests arrive) and equally delicious as sorbet. The pureed peaches are an even lovelier sorbet - fresh and fruity with just enough alcohol still in ‘em that there’s some complexity of flavor but the sharper wine flavor is muted by the cold. Boozy. Sweet. Refreshing.

WIN.

So everyone was all, like, “You have to get A Platter of Figs, it’s the best new cookbook ever, it babysits my kids and re-caulked my bathtub and helped me lose 47 pounds in 7 days without even trying.”  And I was all, like, “I’m not spending thirty bucks on a book with a recipe for tomatoes that is ’slice tomatoes and sprinkle with salt, the end.’”  I’d spend twenty on that book, tops.

Then I bought it anyway, because it was recommended by some very trustworthy people and I like to be able to debunk the formerly trusted.  It’s organized seasonally like Sunday Suppers at Lucques, which has never let me down, and despite the fact that the weather is so effed* up that I’m not really quite sure what season it, is I picked a summer recipe - Indian-Spiced Fish with Raita and Yellow Tomatoes  - and got down to business.

By “get down to business” I mean “accidentally buy $40 worth of halibut fillet because half the slab was hidden under a neighboring hunk of sea bass”; by the time the fishmonger heaved it onto the scale and I saw what was going on I figured what the hell, I’ll freeze it and we’ll eat it eventually.  Sometimes you have to drop enormous sums at Whole Foods in the name of blogging.  At least I noticed before I got to the cash register so I had time to mentally prepare myself, unlike the foie gras incident of April Aught-Eight.

The weather decided to get its shit together today and actually decide to be summery and humid so I was glad to have a picked the correct dinner and gone with a meal requiring minimal cooking, just some spice toasting and fish searing.

*I am not losing my edge or pandering to the anti-F-word crowd; I deliberately went with “effed” rather than “fucked.”  I remain, as always, committed and ready to say fuck. Fuckity Fuck. Fucky McFuck.  See?

I toasted some cloves, cumin fennel and coriander seed, ground them and mixed in some turmeric and cayenne.  I hacked off a few hunks of my side of halibut, pressed them into the spice rub and let them sit.  Oh, and I took this picture which, let’s admit it, is far above average for me and I’m not really sure how it happened.  I don’t question.

I cut the edges of the fillets to make nice rectangular pieces and let one of the scrap pieces “fall” onto the floor for the dogs.  One doesn’t like slimy foods, so the other sucked it down and spent half an hour licking the tile where it had fallen.  The tile there is a slightly different color from the rest of the kitchen now, but I don’t think anyone other than me will notice other than that cohort of people who both visit my home and read this blog, circles that are lined up pretty much exactly on top of one another in the Venn diagram of my existence.

Note that even here I have to maintain the fiction that the fish fell rather than having been purposefully and knowingly dropped, because the dogs aren’t allowed to have any people food except in their bowls and one of them might learn to read and see this and realize that I’m a giant sucker.  You never know who’s reading.

I let the fish sit out to take the chill off and give the spice crust a little time to penetrate while I prepared the side dishes and cleaned out half my freezer to make room for a piece of halibut that is, with no exaggeration, bigger than my neighbor’s cat. (And it’s not some kind of midget cat, don’t get any crazy ideas.)

The tomatoes just got sliced and parked in the fridge.  The recipe specified yellow, and I was able to find some nice-looking heirlooms at Whole Foods even though it’s not really tomato season here yet.  I didn’t see their per pound price, but they clearly were not cheap because I know how much I spent altogether, I know how much the fish cost, and I know the only other things I bought were a loaf of bread and a hunk of cheese.

The raita was slightly more labor intensive; I had to toast some mustard and cumin seeds, quickly saute  garlic and fresh ginger and mix it into some yogurt along with salt, pepper and a finely minced serrano chile.  Then I took a picture of it that was not nearly as impressive as the one of the spice-crusted fish.  It’s probably because I was so exhausted from the complexity of this dish, although if you squint several of the mustard seeds do appear to be in focus.

In the meantime, the cast iron skillet started getting up to speed on the stove.  (The fish was supposed to be grilled, but it’s hard to justify started up an enormo charcoal grill to cook 2 pieces of fish; I was explicitly allowed to broil or pan-sear so the dish remained within the proper recipe parameters.)  I seared the fish off, weighing it down with a pot for the first minute or so to ensure maximum spice crust-to-pan contact and lightly salted the tomatoes.

Admit it, you’re envious of my spice crust.  It’s okay.

Take a hint from this dinner, Keller:  food can be beautiful, flavorful and EASY AS SHIT.  I would gladly eat my hat re: Platter of Figs if I weren’t so full from dinner (I cut some big-ass fillets), and would gladly pay thirty bucks for this book if I hadn’t gotten it for free thanks to an Amazon gift card.

This is a perfectly lovely meal.  I cooked the fish to the perfect doneness level for once in my life - I’m a chronic over-cooker because raw fish squicks me - and the spice crust was right on.  Indian-inspired without screaming “Indian,” spicy without overwhelming the fish, well-balanced so that no single spice dominated the scene.  The raita smoothed it out while also bringing some texture to the party; pops of crunch from the whole spices, crisp little bits of chile and thick, creamy smoothness.

The tomatoes were . . . also on the plate.  It’s not their fault; they’re out of season and were probably jet-lagged from whatever lengthy plane ride the took to get here.  I know they were meant to add both some sweetness and the hit of acid that’s always so welcome with fish.  They failed at the acid completely, although I guess I should be thankful for small mercies; they weren’t at all creepily mealy, the cardinal sin for a tomato.

I couldn’t make the other side dish included in this menu plan because I couldn’t track down any squash blossoms (which: damn it), but I did make the dessert.  Which is one of the “recipes” that makes me look askance at the book, but who am I to turn my nose up at fruit soaking in booze?

In this case, white peaches tossed with a little sugar and soaked in rosé.  I don’t know how the peaches got here, since it’s not peach time here yet either - I assume they flew, but at least they didn’t take the red-eye like the tomatoes - but they had three days to rest on the counter and by this evening they were the perfect juicy peach texture and smelled perfect.  And then they sat in rosé, and ain’t no fruit that never got hurt by sitting in no wine.

So my trustworthy friends remain trustworthy, because not only was this a wonderful dinner, but after flipping through the book there are any number of other dishes I’ll be trying.  You got off easy this time, friends.

UNRELATED: Other people have found my writing worthy of publication. It’s not just me!  Of course, it’s a free magazine, but they are distributed at all the better Jersey City coffee shops and they did pay me.  And there’s an actual printed something containing something I wrote.  Therefore, I rule the school.

ONE YEAR AGO: Guess what this is.  No really, guess.

Technorati Tags: food, cooking, indian food, a platter of figs, fruit, wine, raita, tomatoes

What is the bleakest soup you can think of?  Random Number Generator Brian will choose from your bleak, bleak entries, and one of you will win a copy of Sunday Soup.  Tweet, post or Facebook (and let me know) for another entry.  Comments close Sunday at noon.