divine angst

I made pho Saturday night because I really wanted pho, but didn’t want to wait for delivery or go get it myself. Here’s the (relatively easy to make) recipe.^[1]

Start with:

6 cups beef broth
1 cinnamon stick
2 star anise
1 quarter-inch thick slice ginger root

Bring these to a boil in a large pot. Once it comes to a boil, reduce to a low simmer for 15 minutes.

While the broth is simmering, soak 3 to 6 oz. of flat rice noodles in hot water.

While the noodles soak, slice a half pound to a pound of trimmed sirloin into thin slices, against the grain.^[2] I actually couldn’t find any sirloin that looked decent, so I bought a London broil instead (it was a top round cut—London broil can be any variety of cuts). I didn’t do this because I was impatient, but one of the best ways to cut beef thin is to freeze it first. Next time I’ll do that—my slices were a little too thick to eat easily.

Once your beef is sliced, put a pot of salted water on to boil. Once it boils, drain the soaking noodles and throw them in the boiling water for about 45 seconds, then drain. Set aside.

Your broth should have been simmering for about 15 minutes now. If you feel like it, strain the broth into another pot; if you don’t, just fish the ginger, cinnamon, and star anise out. Put the broth, strained or not, over medium to low heat.

Time to add the last ingredients to the broth:

1/4 cup fish sauce
1 cup cleaned bean sprouts
Sliced beef

The beef will cook in the hot broth. Don’t let it overcook, though! It’s ready to serve as soon as the beef changes color.

To serve, divide the noodles among your bowls (this recipe makes 4 smallish portions or 3 restaurant-sized portions), then ladle the broth (with the meat) over the noodles. Serve with basil, cilantro, sliced Asian chiles, sliced scallions, and more sprouts.

This turned out OK. Next time, I’ll use a different kind of beef broth—or I’ll make my own—since it was way too salty. (I used regular Swanson broth, since the store didn’t have the low-sodium variety. I also added some salt at the end of cooking, thinking the addition of the beef would dilute the flavor some; I won’t do that, again, either.) Also, since my local, walking-distance grocery store didn’t have star anise, I used anise seed instead. If you use anise seed, you might want to strain the broth; I did not, though, and just avoided scooping into the bottom of the pot when I served the soup to avoid getting any seed into the bowls. It was fine. I have leftovers; we’ll see if the anise seed makes the broth inedible after reheating, though.

1. Pho, for those who don’t know, is Vietnamese soup made with a fragrant broth and rice noodles. It usually contains some variety of meat, usually thinly sliced beef. ↩
2. This is really important—if you don’t cut it across the grain, it will be impossibly tough when cooked. ↩

I like spaghetti squash. But all that bunk about being able to treat spaghetti squash just like pasta is just that: bunk. It tastes like squash, therefore it is not good with red sauce, olive oil and basil, or anything else I’d sauce pasta with. But it’s tasty, pretty good for you, and doesn’t require a lot of fussing—you apply heat in your favorite form (steam, bake, microwave steam, whatever), chop in half (or you can do those two things in the opposite order, depending on how you are applying the heat), and use a fork to pull the threads out into a big pile.

But still, it’s not a pasta replacement. And I always struggle with how to prepare it because of that. Until I found this recipe. This looked really good, pretty easy, and we had a spaghetti squash sitting around, so I made it.

OMG. SO GOOD.

Of course I had to adjust it a bit. I added about a teaspoon of garlic powder because I like garlic, and I cooked the pancakes in butter in my cast-iron skillet. Make them relatively thin or they’ll be too soft and mushy. I served them with low-fat sour cream and some leftover spiced apples we had. (No applesauce, but the spiced apples were probably better.)

MMMMMMM. YUMMY.

Super Bowl Sunday is nothing without the right food. My necessary Super Bowl food is brisket. Here, my dears, is the recipe.

1 8-12 lb. brisket, trimmed but not too much (you need some fat for flavor!)
2 tbsp minced garlic or 2 tsp. garlic powder
Cavender’s Greek Seasoning
Season salt
Kosher salt
Fresh ground pepper
1 can of Coke (must be COKE, not Diet Coke or Dr. Pepper or any other brand)

If you can’t get a whole brisket that’s 8 lbs. you can do two 4 pounders. This will probably also work with a 5-7 lb. brisket, but you’ll want to adjust the cooking times a bit.

Place your brisket in a roasting pan and season liberally on both sides with kosher salt, pepper, Cavender’s, and season salt. Turn fat side up and, using a sharp knife, slice small pockets in the brisket through the fat. Fill the pockets with minced garlic. If you don’t want to take the time or effort, you can just season liberally with garlic powder.

Heat the oven to 450-500°. Let the brisket sit at room temperature while the oven heats. When the oven is hot, put the brisket in for half an hour. After that half hour, pull brisket out and reduce the oven temperature to 325-350°. Pour the can of Coke over the brisket, cover the roasting pan with a lid or with foil, and return to the oven. Cook for 2-1/2 to 3 hours or until very, very tender.

Pull out and let sit under the foil for half an hour or so before slicing the brisket thinly against the grain.

Serve with barbecue sauce, white bread, pickles, beans, or whatever else you want.

Today I:

• Spilled my breakfast shake all over the kitchen.
  • I had my stand mixer in the accompanying mixing cup, when I left the two of them, upright, on the counter to grab a little more milk—my shake was too thick. I poured the milk, put it back in the fridge, and heard a thud. I turned around to discover the top-heavy combination of mixer and cup had tumped over, distributing shake-splatter all over the floor and on the wall. AWESOME.
• Roasted a chicken.
  • Verdict: Pretty good. Next time I might do the herb-mixture-under-the-skin thing, since it was just pretty chickeny tasting, without much else going on. Also, I am still trying to figure out how to roast a chicken without ending up with a half-inch of chicken-jelly on the bottom of my roasting pan. None of the recipes ever talk about the collagen in the chicken leaching out, nor about the vast amounts of chicken fat that renders down into the pan. EWWWW. Thank goodness I have a carving board with a channel.

That’s two food-related things I did today. I did some other stuff, too, but none of it seems very interesting compared to those two things.

If someone will remind me later, I’ll post my breakfast shake recipe.

I dashed to the store earlier to get my last minute items—condensed milk, cilantro, rum, bourbon, and some household stuff, like bread.

The cilantro, obviously, was for the salsa I made last night. I rough-chopped it and stirred it in; I hope it’s OK. I’m letting it sit in the fridge for now.

The condensed milk is for a fudge recipe I found in Nigella Express. I guess it’s not technically fudge, since it doesn’t involve the use of a candy thermometer—and thank goodness for that, since I don’t have one! I modified the recipe, which calls for shelled pistachios, which I could not find, and used almonds instead. It’s pretty simple—I hope it’s as good as Nigella claims it is. You toss a 12 oz. bag of chocolate chips (or 12 oz. of chopped semisweet chocolate) into a heavy-bottomed pot with a 14 oz. can of sweetened condensed milk, 2 tbsp. of butter, and a pinch of salt. Cook over very low heat till everything melts together, then stir in your nuts. (If using pistachios, pecans, or walnuts, I’d break them up into smaller pieces; I did not do that with the almonds. I hope that doesn’t cause people problems. Eeek.) Pour into a 9″ square dish, preferably metal (a disposable one would be great, but I just used a metal cake pan). Cool on the counter, then slide into the fridge (or freezer). Slice into squares and serve. Nigella says to make seven cuts each way—I gues that’s 8 x 8—for 64 pieces total.

The only other thing I’m making is eggnog, and I don’t need to get started on that for a while. I make it by first mixing 3 egg yolks with 1/8 cup sugar until it “forms the ribbon.” That gets blended with 1/8 cup rum and 1/2 cup bourbon. I set that mixture aside and whip the egg whites till stiff (with just a pinch of salt and another 1/8 cup of sugar). The whites get folded into the yolks-and-liquor mixture. Finally, I whip 1/2 cup of heavy cream, and again fold into the egg mixtures. If it’s too thick, I’ll thin with some milk. It’s pretty stout stuff, but absolutely excellent.^[1]

1. Yes, this is similar to a 50-year-old recipe that appeared in the New York Times Magazine a few weeks ago. I have been making this nog recipe for years, but I got it from a family friend, so maybe he’s been making this since 1958! Or got it from someone who’s been making it since 1958—I don’t know that he’d thank me for assuming he’s been making eggnog that long, since I don’t think he’s that old. ↩

I like to work in advance, so I got started on my salsa.

First, I roasted 8 small tomatoes, five seeded and halved jalapeños, one quartered red onion, and five cloves of garlic, at 400° for about 40 minutes. I pulled them out, dropped everything but the tomatoes into the food processor and pulsed a few times till it was roughly chopped. Right about then I realized I didn’t have cilantro—my bad for not checking the recipe before going to the store. What to do? I decided to continue with the recipe, and get cilantro later. So in went the tomatoes, and I turned the food processor on, to process the heck out of it. In went the juice of one lime and 2 tablespoons of olive oil. I finished it by seasoning it with salt and pepper, poured it off into a plastic container, and dropped it into the fridge. Mental note: go get cilantro! I guess I’ll just rough chop it, stir it in, and hope for the best. Preliminary verdict: it’s a little sweet from the roasting, but very yummy, and the cilantro will definitely give it the right balance.

Then I got started on sausage cheese balls. These are a childhood staple for me, and I love them a lot. But I’d never made them, and I was also concerned about the food at the party not being very vegetarian friendly. That’s where the Gimme Lean comes in. The stuff tastes pretty much exactly like breakfast sausage, but is made of vegetable protein. (I’m not sure if it’s vegan, but the cheese pretty much makes this a non-vegan recipe anyway, so I don’t think it really matters.)

This recipe is actually not as easy as it sounds, and I am still not sure I did it right. They taste right, but they don’t look right, and they are a little doughy and puffy. So we’ll see what the verdict is with the guests.

Here’s how you make this: mix 4 cups of shredded cheddar, 1 pound of sausage (or sausage substitute), and a scant 3 cups of Bisquick with 1/2 cup or so of milk. I think there’s probably an easier way to do this than just dumping it all in a bowl, and the next time I make these, I’ll start by tossing the cheese with the flour, then cutting the sausage in the way I would cut butter into flour for pastry. Then I’d mix in the milk until it was all just moistened. I might use less Bisquick, too. I will also wait till the sausage is a little closer to room temperature—my hands were freezing!

Anyway, you get everything mixed, and then press the dough into walnut-sized balls. Mine were too big—once you get to ping-pong ball size, you risk them drying out before the sausage is fully cooked. Luckily, I was using Gimme Lean, so I wasn’t as concerned about them being fully cooked. Lay the balls out on a greased or lined baking sheet (I used a Silpat) and bake for about 18 minutes in a 350° oven. You can pump the temperature up a bit at the end to brown the tops if you want.

So that’s what I cooked tonight.

Tomorrow: Last minute shopping! And cooking, part 2.

Mr. Angst and I are having a little last-minute holiday bash tomorrow night (bash might be a strong word, but hey, it’s my party, I’ll call it what I want to) so I have been in full-on prep mode today.^[1]

So this will be the first of several food-related posts. This one is about the shopping.

Because this party is a pseudo-New Year’s celebration, I insisted that we must have tamales. Mr. Angst and I always have tamales on New Year’s; this year, however, we didn’t, because we didn’t quite know where to go that was close, the weather was wretched, and we were planning on having them tomorrow. We contemplated ordering some from a place back home, but they wanted to charge me fifty-four dollars for delivery, on three dozen tamales costing approximately $15. So I did some research and figured out where to go here in town for good tamales.

Since I was going to have to get a Zipcar, I just planned to get all of my shopping done at once—go get the tamales; then go to the big supermarket instead of the one a few blocks away, in the hopes that they’d have more of a selection; then go to Target and get a new baking sheet; and then go to Whole Foods for kirsch and cheese.

I started out by driving down to the neighborhood where the tamale place was. I had called earlier to make sure they could accommodate me—I wanted three dozen pork tamales—and they said they had them. But when I got there, they had no pork tamales left, only cheese and chicken. (Who eats cheese tamales??) I went down the street to a little supermarket, thinking they might have some, but no dice; and I went into the taqueria next to the little supermarket, but didn’t see tamales on the menu (and the line was out the door). I was one hour into my three-hour reservation on my Zipcar, and had no tamales to show for it.

Off I went to the supermarket, where I got everything I needed except rum, bourbon, and Gimme Lean vegetarian sausage. (More on that later.) However, the grocery store did have baking sheets, so I picked up one there instead of Target, cutting one stop out of my day. I also wanted to pick up some air filters for our HVAC unit and, back in Texas, always got those at the H.E.B. But they don’t sell air filters at the grocery store here, so I left without those.

Luckily, there’s a Home Depot by the supermarket, so I dashed in there and got air filters. They didn’t have the size I needed in the cheap kind, so I spent $2.75 each on two filters. (Our unit requires two filters.)

Now I had a car full of groceries, two air filters, and no rum, bourbon, or Gimme Lean—or tamales.

I had already decided that I didn’t need kirsch, and the supermarket had good Gruyere, so I wasn’t planning on going to Whole Foods at all. But I still needed Gimme Lean, and the Whole Foods is just up the street, so decided to make the stop anyway. Sure enough, they had Gimme Lean veggie sausage. I grabbed some fresh tortillas while I was there, and looked around fruitlessly for tamales. (Hey—back in Texas the gourmet grocery I preferred had tamales. As did the regular grocery store. Clearly, I am not in Texas.)

I had killed another hour of my reservation, and I still had a car full of (perishable) groceries, so I zipped home (hah, see what I did there?) and unloaded everything. But I still had no tamales!

After unloading, I still had half an hour—probably just enough time to get back down to the neighborhood where tamales can be found, if I could find a place that had them. So I did a quick Google search on my Blackberry. (Days like this are why I have a Blackberry, I tell you.) It gave me the name of two places, one which I knew I’d passed on my way back from the area. So I called and asked if they had three dozen pork tamales for me, and would they hold them. The lady told me they just had them and didn’t need to hold them. I flew down there in record time, ran in—and they looked at me like I was nuts. Turns out crazy lady assumed I asked for corn tortillas instead of pork tamales. I guess the gringa accent doesn’t get you much attention, because when I said, “I just called and you said you had tamales,” she said, “No, you asked for tortillas.” Um, I know the diff between tamales and tortillas, and I definitely did not ask for tortillas.

Sigh. Back in my car, I pulled my Google search back up and called the other place. “Yes, we have pork tamales.” “I’ll be right there!” A quick check of Google Maps (again, on the Blackberry, which really earned its keep today) and I knew how to get there. I pulled up and discovered . . . it was the taqueria I had dashed in and out of two and a half hours earlier. Sigh.

But they had my three dozen pork tamales, were super friendly, and didn’t make fun of my pathetic attempts to revive my college Spanish.

Next: Cooking, part 1.

1. By the way, if I know you in real life and you did not get the Evite, you are invited! I’m bad about getting everyone. ↩

I just finished chopping up some jalapeños and onions to be roasted for salsa. I was very careful—I scooped all the seeds and leftover bits into a plastic bag for disposal, didn’t touch my eyes at all, and when I was done, I washed my hands.

But apparently not well enough. Because I rubbed my (slightly drippy) nose a few minutes ago and now my whole left nostril is on fire.

Boo.

That just makes me sound lazy, doesn’t it? That I’m only on my second day of outlining? I’m not lazy, I just had a bunch of (non-exam-related) stuff to catch up on after finishing a big round of journal stuff last weekend, and my exam isn’t until next Thursday.

Day 2 is much like Day 1: I am ensconced on the couch with my casebook, a Legalines keyed to my casebook (this is the book that smells like Raid), and an E&E for the first few weeks of the course. That’s right—I have TWO E&Es for this course. I love the E&E books, but there isn’t a “Business Organizations” or “Business Associations” E&E. So I had to get the Agency, Partnerships & LLCs E&E as well as the Corporations E&E. This is way more E&E than I need—I kind of flipped out as I was reading through part of the agency stuff yesterday and wondered if I really missed all this stuff on ratification and multilevel agency relationships. And then I calmed down and realized that I didn’t take Agency, I took Business Associations, and we didn’t go over that stuff. See? This is why, even if I zone out in class, the fact that I go to class is important. I know we didn’t go over ratification in any detail and I KNOW we didn’t talk about multilevel agency relationships in any detail. I hope. No, I’m pretty sure we didn’t. I’m good.

Anyway, today is Partnerships. Maybe a little on the formation of Corporations, if I get that far.

Oh, I also have a big cup of coffee next to me, and a batch of no-knead bread doing its second rise (having done its first, 22-hour rise yesterday and overnight). I can study like this—it’s almost leisurely, and leaves time for relishing the Christmas season (my tree is up).

I am a bit ashamed that I’ve become the kind of person who can’t order at Starbucks in fewer than 10 words.

At least my drink only costs $1.60.

The weather is gross.

I had five overripe bananas in the freezer.

So I made banana bread.

Grandmother’s Banana Bread

1 cup shortening
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
2 tsp baking soda in 1/2 cup hot water (stir)
3 cups flour
2 cups mashed banana
1 tsp salt
1 cup nuts (optional)

Mix ingredients in order.^[1]

Pour into three greased coffee cans. If you don’t have coffee cans (I don’t) baking crocks will work fine. I have two crocks that are slightly larger than a coffee can, so I only make two “loaves.” You can use loaf pans—I think the recipe makes about 2 loaves, but I’m not sure, since I haven’t made this recipe in loaf pans in about 15 years. I highly recommend using coffee cans if you can—the ridges on the sides of the can make an excellent slicing guide, for perfectly round, 3/4″ thick slices.

Bake 1 hour at 350˚ if doing three cans; 1 hour and 15 minutes if using two crocks, and probably an hour or so for loaves.

My grandmother has been making this banana bread forever‚ and everyone in my family makes this recipe, too. It’s foolproof and excellent and it is so quick and easy to make. Start the oven preheating, then get to mixing, and by the time the batter’s done, the oven should be hot.

The only problem is letting the loaves cool enough to eat them.

1. Beat shortening in stand mixer.
   Cream sugar with shortening.
   Mixing on low-medium or so, add eggs, one at a time.
   Add vanilla.
   Turn mixer to low. Heat 1/2 cup hot water, then add 2 tsp soda and stir; pour into the batter. Batter will be runny.
   With mixer still on low, add flour, one cup at a time.
   Add mashed banana.
   Add salt.
   Stir in nuts, if using. ↩

In an attempt to feed the cold I’ve come home with, I ordered approximately five times as much Thai food as any human being—or two, in this case—could ever consume. Each order of pad thai was enough for a week; my beef noodle soup was also NOT, apparently, an appetizer. Heh. It’s a good thing I like pad thai and beef noodle soup.

People who are not from Texas just don’t get it.

They say, “Well, Chipotle is pretty good, right?” And they say, “Have you tried [pick the good Current City Mexican restaurant]? It’s amazing! You should try it!” And then they rave about how good this or that Mexican place is . . . without ever realizing that It Is Not The Same.

Tex-Mex is Different.

The New York Times, of all publications, though, has saved me from having to explain.

Because queso fundido is NOT the same as chili con queso (or, just queso, where I’m from). Enchiladas suizas? NOT the same. I love queso fresco, but no one in my hometown has ever even so much as thought to drop it on top of beans. And, speaking of beans, as much as I love both black beans and refried black beans, they are most certainly, indubitably, NOT the same as pinto beans simmered all day with bacon and then fried up in lard.

So the next time you think “Taco Bell” when someone says “Tex-Mex,” think of this article. Remember that “Tex-Mex” is its own regional cuisine—the tortillas are mostly flour (though sometimes corn), the cheese is always yellow, and the meat is (almost) always BEEF rather than pork. Sour cream is a condiment, not an ingredient, bell peppers are ONLY (and I mean ONLY) a vessel for a chili relleno (which, by the way, I despise—bell peppers are disgusting), and the sauce? Is always brown. No ranchero sauce, no verde sauce, no suiza. BROWN. GRAVY.

Mmmmm. Tex-Mex.

Yesterday was not my best day. I don’t think I’d want the outcome to be any different, but how I got there was uncomfortable and hard and exhausting.

Of course, therefore, today would be the day I needed to get started on the next wave of journal duties. This, actually, is good—it takes my mind off of things and lets me do work I am good at, thus building my confidence back up. So, yay! Of course, the things I am doing today are the most tedious things, so, boo.

As a consolation to myself, I decided to make some chicken noodle soup. From scratch. (OK, I didn’t make the noodles from scratch. That would be silly. Sillier than making chicken noodle soup from scratch.) I’m using a recipe from Cook’s Illustrated that lets you make a whole pot of goodness in about 90 minutes with stuff you probably already have (as well as a whole chicken, which you might have to pop into the supermarket for).

The basic idea is this:

By sauteing chicken pieces until they release all their natural juices and goodness, you can make a flavorful and rich stock without standing over a pot all day, skimming off nastiness. You then use the meat from the chicken in the soup, and it all gets cooked in one pot. There are a number of steps, yes, but overall, it wasn’t tough to make at all.

First, you have to chop up your chicken. Remove the breasts, skin and bone, split them, and reserve them. Also remove the wings and leg/thighs. Now you should have two breasts, two wings, and two leg/thighs, as well as the back of the chicken. Chop the back into three or four pieces crosswise, then chop those pieces in half. A good cleaver is probably necessary for this. Chop the wings at each joint, then chop the two larger pieces (not the wing tip, in other words) in half, again probably with a cleaver. Separate the leg from the thigh, and chop both the leg and the thigh into two or three pieces, depending on how big your chicken is. A cleaver is almost necessary for this because the bones are so sturdy in the legs/thighs.

Now you should have a big pile of chicken parts, plus the two breasts. Pull out a big pot. I used a 5 quart Le Creuset dutch oven. Put a tablespoon of oil in the bottom, heat it till smoking, and brown the chicken breasts on both sides for about 5 minutes total. Remove. Then add one chopped onion and saute until slightly colored and tender. Remove to a bowl. Don’t put the onions with the chicken breasts. Then add half the chicken pieces to the pot and saute until they aren’t pink. (That doesn’t mean you have to cook them through; just get them nicely browned on all sides.) Remove, and add to onions. Do the rest of the chicken pieces.

Now add the other chicken pieces and onions back to the pot. Turn the pot down a bit, cover it, and let the onions and chicken cook together for about 20 minutes. The chicken will release its juices and start to smell amazing.

Put a pot of water onto boil with about 2 quarts of water. When the chicken has cooked and the water is boiling, add the water and the chicken breasts to the pot along with some salt and bay leaves. Turn the heat down to low and simmer, covered, for about 20 more minutes, until you have a lovely, fragrant and flavorful broth.

Pull the chicken breasts out of the pot, and set aside to cool. Strain the broth. Set it aside to separate. If you have a defatter, this would be a good time to use it, since you want to skim the fat from the broth. Reserve about 2 tablespoons, though.

When the breasts are cool enough, remove the skin and bones and shred the meat into bite size pieces. Here, you have a choice: you can either discard all the other chicken pieces or you can pick through them for the meat. I did the latter.

Add the reserved chicken fat back to the pot and turn the heat to medium-high. Add another chopped onion, a large carrot, chopped into quarter-inch pieces, and a rib of celery, also chopped into quarter-inch pieces. Cook till they start to soften. Add the shredded chicken and broth back to the pot, and simmer for about 15 minutes, or until the flavors come together. Throw in a bit of dried thyme, too.

The last step is to add about 2 cups of wide elbow noodles. Cook them about five minutes, or until they are just tender. Serve with fresh chopped parsley (which I did not have, so I used dried).

Enjoy!

A few weeks ago, I read an article somewhere (yes, I know this is terribly non-specific, but I really don’t remember) about cold sauces for pasta. About a month ago, I actually HAD a pasta with a cold sauce. The article made me hungry; the pasta I actually ate was one of the best dishes I’ve had in a while.

A cold pasta sauce is made by mixing ingredients together, then letting them “cook” over hot pasta. Simple, fresh ingredients are best. I made my own cold sauce today, and it was fantastic. Here’s the recipe:

1 medium tomato, very ripe and juicy, but not overripe and mealy, diced. Don’t seed the tomato first.
1 medium to large clove garlic, minced or pressed.
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil.
2 teaspoons kosher salt, or to taste.
1/3 or so cup baby spinach, torn.

Put a pot of water on to boil.

Mix the tomato and garlic with olive oil and salt. Toss with the torn spinach.

Let the sauce come together at room temperature (the salt will pull the juices from the tomato, which will mix with the olive oil, yum) while you cook your pasta. I used wide egg noodles.

Drain the pasta and immediately toss with the cold sauce.

Variations: add small cubes of fresh mozzarella to the sauce just before tossing with the pasta. Toss a little more thoroughly to allow the fat from the cheese to coat the noodles.

I made my first pastry crust in our new apartment today and it went MARVELOUSLY. For some reason, the actual pastry turned out better than it ever seems to have in the past. No cracking, no pulling, a nice smooth texture—it even came together in a nice ball in the food processor without any addition of ice water (my pastry dough is supposed to be made with flour, butter, and an egg, plus an egg yolk instead of any liquid). And the benefit of our new kitchen is that we have this great big island with lovely, smooth Corian countertops, so I had a big space to roll out the dough as well as a big space to assemble my tartlets.

I’ll be taking my tartlets to a friend’s this evening for movie night. I hope everyone enjoys them!

Our neighborhood has a new Whole Foods, so Mr. Angst and I decided to stroll down there this afternoon and see what special “neighborhood” stuff they have.

Never mind that the store is very spacious, that they have an in-house smoker for all kinds of yummy and different sausages, that they sell wines by the glass, or that they have a really normal floor plan/layout (more like a regular grocery store than a Whole Foods, actually). Forget all of that.

They have the best store-bought flour tortillas I’ve found in this city.

Where I’m from, flour tortillas are easy to come by, usually cheap, and almost always good, even when made in and bought from a grocery store (though the best are always purchased at a taqueria or from someone’s abuela). Here, though, I’ve had trouble finding good tortillas, outside of the Dallas-based chain Mexican restaurant we occasionally eat at. Certainly I’ve never found good tortillas at the grocery store. The best I’ve found were more like the burrito tortillas at Chipotle—serviceable, but nothing spectacular, more a medium for conveying food than a food to be enjoyed for its own flavor.

And that’s the thing. Tortillas should be enjoyed for their flavor. No, they don’t have to be made with lard (as the very best ones are), but they should at least have some texture, some savoriness, some intrinsic yum of their own, separate from whatever deliciousness goes inside them.

Mr. Angst and I have already each enjoyed a warm tortilla with butter. Tomorrow morning (his first day at his new job), I’m planning to get up, make some bacon and scrambled eggs, tossed with some cheese, and assemble the first proper breakfast tacos (or, as they are known in my hometown, taquitos^[1]) we’ve had in this city. And I am really looking forward to it.

1. I have never understood why anyone calls those rolled-up fried things tacquitos….I always called those flautas… ↩

Last week’s lamb kept pretty darn well. Mr. Angst and I finished off the last of it for lunch today and, YUM.

Was that only a week ago, though? Wow.

Mr. Angst and I hosted some friends for a FABULOUS Easter dinner, complete with roasted leg of lamb, parmesan mashed potatoes, arugula salad with raspberry balsamic vinaigrette, bread pudding, white chocolate raspberry cheesecake, and some fine port. (I didn’t make the desserts, nor did I provide the port. Good guests!) It was a terrific evening, with lots of good conversation (and a general avoidance of law school talk, thank heavens).

But every good thing has its downside. In this case, while it’s fun to have a great dinner party, all the cooking and eating and talking make it difficult to get any schoolwork done. I finished up some journal duties after our guests left, but did not manage to get to tomorrow morning’s reading. I’m going to skim through the hornbook treatment of tomorrow’s topic, but who knows how much I’ll absorb. Other things, like the Law School Roundup, also fall by the wayside; I’m hoping to get to that tomorrow morning.

Anyway, happy Easter, everyone!

It turns out the exact right number of hard-boiled egss needed for an egg-salad sandwich on regular sandwich-sized bread is one and a half. It’s sort of hard to boil half an egg, so I ended up eating half an egg’s worth of egg salad off the plate, where it unceremoniously fell out of my sandwich.

In other news, I’ve been writing all day, doing pretty well at it, and now I’m ready to take a little break. Take one with me! Enjoy, on your break, these photos of Himself.

Watching the street:

Giving me the eye:

Enough with the pictures!

Mr. Angst has this periodic craving for arrabiata, but not real arrabiata. See, real arrabiata is a tomato sauce, traditionally served with penne and chicken. But Mr. Angst first tasted “angry pasta” at a little place in Our Old Town, and their arrabiata was made with a white wine cream sauce, prociutto, and shrimp, with some diced tomatoes scattered in.

So I’ve tried a variety of arrabiata recipes over the years and never gotten it right–mostly because Mr. Angst doesn’t want real arrabiata. Tonight, we decided that I would try regular arrabiata again, since we didn’t have any white wine, or cream, or proscuitto, or tomatoes.

What I made was this, but modified. Basically, I diced several cloves of garlic, threw them in a saucepan with a little less than a quarter cup of olive oil and a heaping teaspoon of red pepper flakes. Then I poured in about two cups of red sauce I made a couple of days ago, not having tomato paste or whole peeled tomatoes on hand, either. I cooked the sauce in the oil and garlic, and discovered there was a little too much oil, which I promptly poured off into another skillet, for the chicken.

I pounded the chicken, dunked it in one beaten egg then in a cup of bread crumbs laced with salt and pepper, and browned the chicken on both sides in the peppery, tomatoey oil–to which I added a little more regular oil because there wasn’t enough. Four minutes for each side of the chicken later, I pulled it from the pan, sliced it, and threw it into the sauce. Ten minutes later I threw in about 8 oz of cooked egg noodles (you guessed it, no penne around).

I have to say, this was a pretty good recipe. Easy to make, super tasty, and plenty left over for tomorrow’s lunch. I highly recommend, especially because it’s super adaptable–I think you could do whatever you wanted with the base and it would be good.

I’m dealing with a particularly ugly bit of work right now, one of those picking-up-after-people kind of things, and it’s pretty frustrating. I mean, I signed on for this particular duty and I knew I’d have to deal with these sorts of things, but that doesn’t make me any happier when I open a document that’s supposed to be one way only to find it’s totally not.

So to cope, I made these cookies and boy, are they good. I’ve had three or four now, and that’s WAY too many, but they’re too tasty not to. Because they have maple syrup in them, they get all crnchy and caramalized, but they are also kind of gooey, and they are Teh Yum.

I encourage all of you stress bunnies out there to make cookies when you need a break. That way, when it’s time to get back to work, you’ll have snackies.

I keep screwing up when I make cookies. Tonight, it was totally my fault–I halved the recipe, but forgot that I halved it when I added the eggs. So I added one egg and one yolk when I should have added half of that. I’m not sure how I would have added half…how do you halve an egg or an egg yolk?

So my cookies spread out all over the cookie sheet and they’re all weird looking. They taste good, but they look crappy. Ah well. Dinner was yummy–baked pork chops, buttered rice, and wilted spinach–so I think that makes up for it.

But all the cooking can’t make all the work go away. So I have to read some articles tonight, maybe draft a little more of the brief I’m working on in clinic, and finish my reading for Admin. Oh, and maybe read my opponent’s brief for tomorrow night’s oral arguments. Yeah, that’s a lot to get done before bedtime–and I have to get up early, so it won’t be a late night, either.

Off to get something done. SOMETHING.

I’ve been tagged at Unblague with a food meme. I like food. So I’ll do this one. Also, I feel bad for never getting around to the Christmas song meme.

1. If you were stuck on an island and could only eat one cuisine (e.g., French, Italian, etc.) for the rest of your life, what would it be? Why?

Um. Cheese and bread? Cheese and pasta? Cheese and broccoli? Is “cheese” a cuisine? It should be. No, seriously, I’d have to say Italian, but that would have to include the whole boot. So not just the standard Southern Italian red-sauced pastas, but also the clean, fire-grilled meats and veggies from Tuscany, and the seafood from Tuscany, and the clean flavors and simple palette of Roman food. I could live on that. Plus, the coffee and the wine are almost unbeatable.

2. What is the most unusual food you’ve eaten?

I honestly have no idea. I’ll eat just about anything without thinking twice, and I don’t tend to keep track. It’s likely the most unusual thing I’ve eaten was consumed in a sushi restaurant, where I am in the habit of asking for the chef’s special–I love the surprises! I’ve also eaten menudo (though I started refusing that many years ago) and that’s pretty unusual. (For those not in the know, menudo is a soup whose primary ingredient is tripe.) I’m not sure tripe is “unusual” but it is gross, so maybe it counts.

3. What is the most unusual food you’ve eaten and liked?

Again, probably some form of sushi. I also like those little baby octopi you sometimes find in seafood restaurants or in paella.

4. What foods will you avoid eating (either because of a dietary choice or allergies or just plain don’t like)?

Tripe. Duh. Also, even though they are such an “in” veggie right now, I still can’t stomach brussel sprouts. There are certain flavors in Thai food I can’t really handle, too–usually something like Lard Nar. I don’t particularly care for mayonnaise in excess. But for the most part, I will almost anything you put in front of me. Not often, perhaps, but I’ll eat it at least every now and then.

5. Do you cook (and by that, I mean prepare a meal that you’d serve to friends)?

Um, yeah. See?

6. If yes, what is your favorite dish to prepare to impress someone?

There’s this great salmon recipe I got from Emeril–panko and wasabi crusted, pan-seared, served with a ginger-orange beurre blanc. That stuff kicks butt. I’ve also done a really good leg of lamb. Pork tenderloins are good for crowds, since I slice them into medallions. And I’ve made really yummy, flavorful savory vegetarian red beans and rice. I’m good at lasagne and any variety of other Italian foods, and I make a really good osso buco. Just for a few of the things I make.

7. When you go to a restaurant, what’s your ordering strategy/preference?

I’m not sure I understand this question. Strategy? Preference? I try to order things the restaurant is known for or good at–so, if I’m at a steak place (and in the mood for steak), I will order a steak. I also try to order things I can’t make or don’t make well. That prevents me from criticising the food too much. In that vein, I also try to order things I’ve never tried, if that’s possible, and if those things don’t have flavors I don’t like. (Like green olives in food. I really don’t like green olives in food.)

8. Have you ever returned a dish or wine to the kitchen at a restaurant? Why?

Yes–I’ve returned pasta with chicken for lack of chicken; steak for being overcooked; steak for being undercooked. I myself have not returned wine, but have been at the table when others have returned wine. I WOULD return wine, though.

9. How many cookbooks do you own?

Six or seven? Maybe a few more? I also have stacks of printouts from online recipe sites, a book of my own recipes, a book of recipes from my best friend, and a folder of recipes on my computer.

10. What is one food that you wouldn’t want to live without?

Cheese. Chocolate. Wine. Steak. Varieties of shellfish like Gulf shrimp, scallops, and lobster. Why are some of these questions so hard??

OK, back to my risotto. That’s cooking, on the stove.

I have been on a major cooking tear this break. Of course, that’s not really anything unusual, since I always want to nest when I have free time and the weather is cold (or at least chilly. Seriously, it’s been a pretty pathetic winter around here. Notwithstanding the big storm at the beginning of the month, of course).

Tonight, I wanted stew. I have the new dutch oven (thanks, brother!) and had all the supplies–you know, the potatoes and carrots and onions and celery and wine and broth. I bought stew meat the other day when we got home, too. So I pounced right in with a terrific Cooks Illustrated recipe, halved, of course, because I am not making stew for eight.

But as I jotted down the instructions earlier today, I thought to myself, Hey, self, what goes good with stew?? And myself answered, Well, self, HOMEMADE BREAD goes well with stew.

Problem: the dutch oven for the no-knead bread would be in use for the stew. And I did not have even eight hours to let the stuff rise, much less the additional two for it to do the second rise and bake. So I pulled out the stand mixer and did regular old kneaded bread. It’ll go in the oven right after the stew comes out. (Yeah, the stew braises in the oven. MMMMMMM.)

So I’ve been nesting today. Nest nest nest. I also did some writing. Yay, me! But mostly, I’ve been nesting.