a sampling of some fresh picked wine berries, huckleberries and wild blackberries – a gift from my friend jack on my birthday last month

it’s not that i’m not cooking. because i am. there are gatherings of friends and just plain hungriness resulting in well, dinner. i even sometimes whip out the nikon and snap a few lame shots but these days not so much. and i’m not sure what’s come over me. but just the thought of posting on ceF was beginning to feel like ‘work’ and god only knows we wouldn’t want that to happen to a nice woman like me… after all, my lack of ambition is my greatest luxury. (i stole that line from my friend emily and have been using it ad nauseum but only because it is SO TRUE.)

but we’ve been to chicago and then i went to cleveland. dallas is this week and seattle comes next. i’m doing the 4 day cooking gig again come the first of october and then i’m off to nyc…  and all i want is to go back to italy. is that asking so much? IS IT? but honestly, i’m not complaining. it’s a charmed life. the past week or so has pretty much revolved around trips to the park in much appreciated cooler than normal temps, so after a 9 week hiatus i’m back on the bike and fighting the fat (albeit somewhat of a losing battle).

but mostly – if i could just say, i’m so deeply grateful for this amazing life that i get to live that i could cry. for those of you that read the sunday ny times magazine section yesterday, we are the fortunate ones…

ok – back to food…

presenting… a summer dinner. grilled corn with flaky maldon salt and a squeeze of lime. grilled tomatoes with thyme and a farro salad with a slightly overcooked poached egg on top. i’ve got just a vague recollection of what was in the farro salad but i’m thinking it was pequillo peppers and goat cheese – and something else but remembering is difficult…

best beans ever. rancho gordo cannellini’s with grape tomatoes, basil, thyme, lemon zest and juice, some potlikker, finely minced anchovy, a very good olive oil, salt and pepper. i think that was it but i’ve no idea because i can’t recall a damn thing.

lamb meatballs with a cherry sauce over whole wheat couscous finished with mint leaves. a lot of ingredients went into that sauce until it was nicely balanced and pretty damn impressive tasting. but i’m not sure exactly what i did – because of my memory…

all cary ever really wants for his birthday are two (2) angel food cakes with his grandmother’s ’7 minute boiled icing’. the icing becomes slightly hard on the outside and then yields to a slightly marshmallow like goo on the inside. ruhlman’s angel food cake from his bestseller ‘ratio‘, takes this cake to where it needs to go – from spongy and boring to totally delicious. in my opinion it’s all in the weighing of the flour and then using both lemon juice and vanilla. for your viewing pleasure i give you 4 pictures as they were all so awful i just couldn’t choose… this is the whitest cake in america and despite the absence of any fats and the overabundance of sugar, somehow it just works.

my icing technique is legendary. obviously.

moving on…

i phone pics before i bought the 3Gs. but this is the wonderful donnie madia pictured at his flagship restaurant blackbird. for my money, he and eduard seitan are the best restaurateurs in chicago with blackbird, avec, the publican and the newest addition, a tacqueria opening very soon. donnie’s attention to every detail is second to none with a modern sensibility that slays me, as i am highly susceptible to such things. with executive chef and partner paul kahan at the helm of the kitchen, it continues to be a recipe for greatness. we were in chicago for only 4 nights and ate at avec, then publican and then blackbird – finishing up with an anniversary dinner at tru, a gift from my mother. and for a whopping $425 that included only one glass of wine, it paled in comparison by such a long shot that i can’t even begin to explain the differences in the food except to say that in the end, blackbird kicked tru’s ass – big time. tru is supremely elegant and the room is lovely. it’s quiet and serious and the servers are ON IT. but dinner at blackbird was once again phenomenal. oh AND best negroni ever – hands down.

so, a few things… and please again – forgive the poor photo quality.

salad of endives with crispy potatoes, basil, dijon, pancetta and poached egg = sheer perfection. not kidding. this salad was incredible in every way.

chilled cuttlefish noodles with green garlic, red onion jam, trout caviar, nasturtiums and buttermilk = amazingness. i loved it.

wood-grilled california sturgeon with english peas, braised peanuts, crispy bacon and bourbon caramel = seriously impressive.

cary had the organic pork belly and crispy sweet shrimp with chinese broccoli, preserved green tomato and black pepper. he started with the pistachio gazpacho with ahi, watermelon confit, sea beans and cocoa. both were smashing.

this was my idea. sorry.

desserts were wonderful. donnie brought us three and each one was greatness. ricotta fritters with compari, rhubarb and pine nut ice cream, pistachio panna cotta with a raspberry consommé and brown butter ice cream and a torn black sesame cake with pineapple that looked a little something like this that was  – out. of. this. world…

avec, a bit more down to earth, is my favorite restaurant in all the land. and at the publican, albeit a bit on the loud side, we had an abundance of seriously excellent food. beer, oysters, fish and pork. just splendid.

chicago is such an extraordinary food town… thank you donnie.

south west of chicago. mies van der rohe’s masterpiece – the farnsworth house. i wept in its presence. it is genius if not impractical.

no tinkering with picassa was going to help this photo taken through the door of my oven. it was shredded zucchini and yellow squash with minced garlic, chiles and ricotta. i stole the idea from city house restaurant here in nashville. their’s was far better and i’m going to work on this because it was frustrating that i couldn’t replicate it. i need to call chef tandy wilson and ask for help. plus my chiles were so strong that they almost hurt. so, fail, although not in an epic way…

the project – buy 20 lbs of balaton cherries from earthy.com and use 10 to make some cherry bourbon hooch. i’ll get back to you in 6 weeks on how it turns out and if you’re on the short list, it’s what’s for christmas, so no surprises here. the other 10 lbs. became a salted cherry vanilla bean balsamic compote.

oh, and jack’s arm after blackberry picking. the things friends do for friends…

so let’s talk pizza.

in the usual fashion of me watching the calories, i starved myself all day – and then began making mario batali’s pizza dough recipe. or at least the one from ’03 that i found over at food & wine. and in keeping with the magazine/website concept, the dough actually had wine as an ingredient (mario you sly fox you) – and i quite liked that idea. because i like a pizza dough with character – as in flavor and i’ve not been having the best luck finding the dough of my dreams.

mario not only uses wine in his dough, but also chooses to use cake yeast which i converted to 18 grams of active dry yeast using my trusty yeast calculator. as called for, i used mostly 00 flour, the perfect flour for pizza making insuring a crisp crust and a soft crumb. but it’s a very soft flour, making it hard to manuever the dough, so a bit of all purpose gets added – if only for insurance. judging from the above photo, the 1:6 ratio was not enough… at least for me. next time i’ll add a bit more ap flour. the pie got mangled upon being placed onto the 550 degree pizza stone. but hey, looks aren’t everything…

really the story goes something like this. chris was coming over with some of his home-cured venison prosciutto and i had one fennel bulb and a big bunch of shitakes in my fridge. for some reason i felt unsure of the vegetable combo so i called my friend laura wilson, formerly the chef at ombi restaurant and she said – pizza. and i thought to myself, why did i not think to make pizza? and then i realized it’s just that well, i don’t think of so many things…

i caramelized the fennel and shitakes in some olive oil along with about half a dozen roughly chopped garlic cloves, then chris showed up with the prosciutto (check out his december 2 post about the doe that he butchered) which got sliced and added to the top. the pie was then hit with a generous amount of fresh thyme and at the last moment i thought EGG and well, maybe i do think of things sometimes…..

sadly, the pie got folded onto itself which affected nothing but my pride. and the yoke broke too but you know, it was all really just so much more than good.

did i mention that the prosciutto was AMAZING? the smell alone was absolutely intoxicating.

meat + salt + patience = delicious. my kind of math.

a wonderful cheeseless pizza. it can be done.

just simply fabulous stuff…

i made this a few weeks ago and now the heirloom tomatoes in nashville are all but gone. perhaps some of you way up north are still harvesting the tail end of your crops, but it’s OVA here in the south. and it is indeed sad. but this is how the world works and i have been able to buck up and let it go because i am - mostly – a mature adult. and really, if ever a tomato was going to get a good send-off, this dish right here would be a preferred way to go.

on a brighter note, ‘the fresh market‘ a national chain of specialized grocery stores, catering to yuppies and the like who can now shop while being soothed to the tunes of bach, mozart and chopin and in flattering light, carries a surprisingly decent version of the heirloom all year round. so ok, get this – they’re grown in canada. and yes, they are pricier and not exactly replicas of what gets pulled from the ground on an dewy august morning – but they taste really good and if you’re willing to pay, it puts an end to all the whining about "winter tomatoes". (i’m quite sure i just heard the sound of all the die-hard locavores collectively groan.)

i saw this on chefectomy and knew i had to try it. the recipe is listed below, but it is all his. i take no credit whatsoever except to say that i did a damn fine rendition and when we sat down to dinner we were absolutely and collectively awed.

heirloom tomato risotto
adapted from chefectomy

5 – 7 heirloom tomatoes (depending on size)
fresh thyme sprigs (i used
2 T plus 1/4 C olive oil
salt and pepper
1/2 white onion, chopped
1/2 C dry white wine
1 C arborio rice
4 C vegetable stock or broth
1/4 C cream
6 T freshly grated parmegiano with more for serving
2 T fresh basil, julienned

place tomatoes on a baking sheet and toss with 2 T olive oil.  sprinkle with salt and pepper. cover with thyme sprigs. roast at 325 for 35 minutes or until the skins begin to wrinkle.

in a saucepan, warm the broth. heat another saucepan over medium heat and add the remaining 1/4 C of olive oil and then add the onions, cooking them until translucent 3-4 minutes.

add the arborio rice stirring to coat each grain with the oil – 2 minutes. add the wine and cook until evaporated – 1 minute.

add enough stock to rice until just covered. stir occasionally. rice should cook but not boil. continue to add stock every few minutes as it cooks off. maintain enough stock to cover rice until the liquid cooks down slightly – then add more. continue to stir occasionally. you do not want the rice to stick to the pan. the rice is ready in 16-18 minutes and should be a creamy consistency. if cooked properly the rice grains will have a very suitable hardness when you bite it.

turn off the heat and stir in the cream and parmesan cheese. add salt to taste. chop the roasted heirloom tomatoes and add to the rice. to serve ladle the rice into a warmed bowl and top with fresh basil and the parmegiano.

as a perfect accompaniment to the risotto, i made jim lahey’s (of the revolutionary no-knead bread) pizza bianca. it’s a perfect recipe except i felt it needed less water, as is reflected in the recipe below which was found on marthastewart.com. martha’s people called for 1 3/4 cups water, but this is most certainly not the case proving once again that martha is in fact quite fallible.

i think many people equate pizza bianca to a ricotta cheese based pizza, even adding mozzarella on top of that. but this is pizza bianca in its purest form and quite frankly it needs nothing else because despite its nakedness, this pizza was literally devoured before my eyes – like in a ravenous way that was almost a bit disconcerting.

jim lahey’s pizza bianca
adapted from martha stewart.com

makes 2 zen shaped pizzas – let the pizzas be what they were meant to be, not forcing them into any preconceived shapes…

3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt plus more for sprinkling
3/4 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon instant dry yeast
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 sprig fresh rosemary

combine flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, sugar, and yeast in the bowl of an electric mixer, and slowly add 1 1/4 cups cold water. mix on low speed until ingredients begin to combine, increase speed to medium-high, and continue to mix for about 10 minutes until the dough is smooth, elastic, and cleanly pulls away from the sides of the mixing bowl.

place dough in an oiled bowl, and allow to rest for 2 to 4 hours until it has doubled in size. split the dough into halves, and form each into a log. place each log on a generously floured surface, and allow it to rest until the formed dough doubles in size again, at least 1 hour.

put dough on a lightly floured baker’s peel. dimple dough by pressing it down with your fingertips. work the dough outward toward the edges of the peel until you reach your desired size and thickness, about 1/4 inch. drizzle with remaining olive oil, and sprinkle with extra salt (i suggest a good flaky salt here).

place a baking stone, sometimes known as a pizza stone, in the oven. set oven to broil, about 520 degrees. slide pizza onto baking stone with the baker’s peel. bake until the bubbles range from golden to deep brown in color, 10 to 12 minutes.

again, the perfect italian dinner, if not perhaps a bit on the carb heavy side. but that’s easily rectified - just have bacon and eggs the next morning – preferably on top of any leftover pizza bianca.

but this will be unlikely…

              

my rss feeder broke.  and i didn’t realize it for 3 months.  mostly because i (still) don’t even understand what exactly an rss feeder is, or what it does – talk about being oh so techno savvy… but my stat’s were dropping off and well, try as i might to just ignore the cold hard numbers, i started to take it personally.  was it something i said?  something i cooked?  where did so many of my bleaders go and why would they leave me after all we have meant to each other? 

but before i called my therapist, i called mark from simpler computing! and he quickly came to my rescue – again.  thank you mark.  you solved the mystery and now once again you are so totally my blero. 

so listen up – all you techno losers out there that just like to cook and write and take a little photo here and there, but do not want to bother your pretty little heads with html and templates and embedding and wordpress editors that suck and the like, call mark.  today.  he can tweak your blog into submission.  AND he likes to cook… (btw – ceF is still under construction as i type so please bear with…)

speaking of liking to cook… here’s the deal.  i cook a lot.  but sometimes it’s just dinner.  and sometimes it’s not my idea of a blog worthy post.  and usually it’s just that i’m too lazy to write.  but it’s totally me, not you.  you, i adore.  you make my life better, adding an entirely new fangled dimension that did not exist just 16 months ago. but still, i am often unmotivated, or perhaps even more often than that, i’m just reading OPB’s…

so what happens is that some of these dishes fall by the blogosphere’s wayside.  but i thought since we were dealing with feeds and feeding, i’d show you what gets fed around here to my immediate world.  so i’m going to hit you with a fair few of what i’ve not bothered to bother you with until now, along with some pictures. take a deep breath – here goes…

look familiar?  this one was made with the half and half, as per ripert’s recipe.  was it better?  yes.  did i LOVE it?  not so much.  it’s ok.  kinda brunchy, not desserty.  i like custard.  life is good.  and eric, you’re totally cool and sexy and hot and all those things.  but my tony still has you beat, big time. i hope you can understand…

ok so i realize i am blogger #4721 to make jim lahey’s no knead bread.  but i did it.  quietly.  and it was a good and crusty loaf of bread that if nothing else looked very, very impressive. 

i baked it in my romertopf that i dug out and dusted off.  although it stays unused and because it looks so beautiful – i keep it.  i’m sure you understand such things.  so, i soaked the terracotta in water and then baked the bread as per the direction for a dutch oven.  i felt my dutch oven was too big and i didn’t want a 2" high bread.  somehow, this worked out quite nicely.  so take a chance, dear readers – bake no knead bread.  oh, and have i made this again since?  nope.  will i?  maybe, probably not.

this was made quite awhile ago.  it was panko encrusted chicken livers served over what i think was swiss chard and finely sliced ‘delightful tiny purple potatoes’ and shallots sautéed with pimm’s and port.  what?  you think they may not have been tiny and delightful?  you are sooooo wrong….

i present to you… delightful. tiny. purple. potatoes.  i only wish i could have been in the room when the marketing team thought of that.  can you imagine what the discussion would have sounded like?  i only know they were republicans with bad haircuts.  after that, i know nothing.

so now you ask, what the hell is that?  that, my dear readers is a watermelon salad with mint leaves, chili oil and feta – topped with a very anti-locavore piece of barramundi from costco via australia.  in a previous life i lived down under (husband #1) and ate this fish regularly.  perhaps i didn’t need to sit the barramundi on top of the watermelon, but it seemed like a good idea at the time… and it was our dinner that night and we were happy enough.  so stop smirking.  thank you.

i made this last weekend and it was good and rich and saucy and chicken thighey – all that with trofie pasta thrown in for very good measure.  it’s what patricia wells eats when she’s at home in provence, a recipe that i picked up from feeding groom.  oh and it’s got sherry vinegar and garlic cloves and dijon mustard and lots of tarragon and minced sundried tomatoes… it’s more wintry than it is septembery in nashville, but i had 4 chicken thighs in the freezer and suddenly this just happened…

ok are you ready to hear what this was supposed to be?  what it almost was… what i wished it might have been and what it could be if i ever decide to take it on again?  salted butterscotch pudding with chocolate covered bacon.  thank you and goodnight.  the end.  by claudia. 

except it never really thickened properly.  and benton’s bacon is crazy salty.  so salty that i forgot just how salty it was therefore making it an out and out wrong bacon choice.  because it seems that is actually possible.  to make a wrong bacon choice.  you’d think not, but what this dessert needed was a thin cut good bacon that crisps up in a curly, artsy strip, and only then could it be dipped into lindt chocolate and put into a pudding recipe that WORKS.  because this recipe did not.  and another blogger tried it and it didn’t work for her either.  so. oh well,  we all drank our pudding and chucked the wayyy too salty pork.  seemed sinful but we got over it.  we lived and learned, moving onwards and upwards – with the comforting knowledge that bacon rarely ever lets you down…

so not even a little pretty.  AND the wrong color bowl.  but it was just a simple dinner of fresh crowder peas with bacon.  the bacon did just as it should, redeeming itself from the previous mishap.  there was something else served with this but really, i have no idea… i think it was grilled tilapia.  unexciting, quick and easy and not exactly memorable – but hey, not every night can be foie gras…

OK – EVERYBODY STAND UP AND STRETCH.  NO REALLY.  BECAUSE I AM NOT DONE.  BATHROOM BREAK?  GO ON.  I’LL WAIT….

oh, hi, you’re back.  wonderful, because i was worried… ok, just a few more…

this was lazzaroli’s sweet potato and ricotta ravioli.  i dressed it up with a side of kale, done in a sauce of olive oil, cream, honey and sage, and then dusted the pasta with nutmeg and parmegiano.  again – super fast and easy.  (tommy noodles, you are a nashville godsend… thank you for giving me an option that is first rate and still allows me to get creative.)

yes, i too jumped on the bandwagon thanks to michelle from thursday night smackdown and all the rest of you that grilled the hell outa a bunch of pizzas…  except michelle was the one who took my call on a saturday night so i could get very specific information about the whole pizza grilling process.  this particular pizza was taken from her post and it was damn fine.  i cooked down some swiss chard in a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper, and used copious amounts of minced garlic and ricotta.  i also sliced up a big ripe yellow tomato with red stripes running through it (we will miss you beautiful heirloom tomatoes),

awesomeness, no?  well yes – but… from here on in i’ll stick to the pizza stone with my oven set to broil and 550f… because grilled pizza is too damn white on top.  and flipping it before the toppings go on doesn’t allow the cheese and sauce to bake into the dough and well, my grill runs hot (it’s infrared) so even on the lowest setting it never got the top brown and i kept having to turn the flame on and off so as not to scorch the bottom and was nervously moving it to the top rack and well, i like my pizza stone in my oven.  so if i had a real charcoal grill which i don’t and do not plan on getting because it’s too much work and i am not willing (go on – think of me what you will but there are extenuating circumstances… like a boyfriend who is also happy with oven baked pizza’s), maybe that would be better.  but as it stands, and i repeat – i am a pizza in the oven kinda gal – set to broil on super high heat with the stone on the very bottom rack.  but i made the obligatory grilled pizza.  yes i did.

i present to you… voodoo mac and cheese

do you read gild the (voodoo)lily?  if not, you need to read gild the (voodoo)lily…  heather is very smart and very funny and this bitch can cook.  and i mean that in a good way.  heather is another one of those foodcentric people that seriously knows how to put ingredients together.  like if you turned your pantry over to her, she’d blow your mind.  and you’d be thinking all, why didn’t i think of that?… and the answer is because she KNOWS MORE THAN YOU DO.  plus she’s a botanist.  a freakin’ botanist... so she’s always growing and foraging and well, it’s a little bit intimidating.  heather could totally kick your ass and never even touch you…

anyway, back in july she made something called garden mac.  for her it was merely a ‘clean your fridge out’ kinda dinner, and i’m thinking – mac and cheese with roasted tomatoes in a bechamel base?  sign me the hell up. 

the ingredients i used were as follows; mostaccioli pasta, the 4 cheeses were – asiago, parmigiano reggiano, st jerome and fontal.  and for the garden part – fresh thyme and heirloom tomatoes, kale, onion, squash and zucchini.  i drove all the ingredients about an hour south, down to my friend shannon’s house and we spent the day cooking and drinking wine and talking and laughing and then we sat out on the porch overlooking her farm and had a late lunch…

and for the grand finale i give to you an extremely abbreviated version of my veal stock mission…

bones arrive from snook’s.  i tried for weeks to find a local source.  nada.

20 lbs.

because i am awesome…

i made brown and white stock.  i followed the ruhlman way.  it is the only way. (great version here)

otherwise when you die, you go to culinary hell where you are forced to live on nothing but shoney’s buffets. (please click on the shoney’s link.  there are no words…)

and hey, thanks so much for reading.  i realize this post was a commitment. 

you can go now…

there was a little birthday gathering at my house last night for one of my very closest friends.  after considering a pasta dish that i’ve been dying to make (happening late next week due to a special order ingredient), i decided to do pizzas - with skewered tiger shrimp and spicy chorizo to kick it all off, and homemade blueberry cake and ‘sweet cream’ ice cream to wind it all down.  there was also going to be my simple but perfect toss of romaine, walnut oil, garlic and guerende salt – but quite honestly by the time i went to throw it together, no one cared.  i mean, i did ask.  but everyone was too busy jamming crusty hot triangles of melty cheesy goodness into their mouths to think about anything like salad.  so we sat in my kitchen with no less than 3 ovens set to 500+ degrees on a very balmy hot july night, the a/c barely able to penetrate the heat – and we ate pizza – 3 ways. 

yukon gold potato, pancetta and taleggio
(with parmigiano, rosemary and thyme)
gorgonzola, pear and arugula
(with parmigiano and cracked black pepper)
fresh mozzarella, heirloom tomato and basil leaves
(with – parmigiano…)

pre pancetta and parmigiano

this pancetta?  eaten raw it is equally sublime… go lardo.

gorgonzola and pear – pre-arugula

just absolutely excellent…

 
it’s total pizza porn, i know…

the inspiration and the recipe source for the ‘potato taleggio pancetta’ pizza came from ’dolce & nutella‘.  i love this blog.  LOVE this blog.  it’s smart – and beautiful on many levels and i think she’s a wonderful writer.  there’s even a 4 part series on gelataria’s in rome (start here) - which is certainly the most definitive, if not exhaustive piece on the subject. 

the pancetta was a generous gift from ‘on the kitchen steps‘.  this blogger has threatened to salt, cure and smoke his way through ruhlman’s ‘charcuterie‘, and the recipe came straight from those hallowed pages.  the final product was, as one might expect – excellent.  it did the pizza proud. 

the starter of the evening, the colossal tiger shrimp (whole foods – 15 shrimp for $35 – and actually worth the money) were meaty and flavorful, skewered alongside some very good chorizo.  the idea for this wonderful combo was brought to my attention by kalofagas.  i didn’t skewer them all nestled together and cozy like he did (rush rush) but damn, they were good.

now, i know what you’re all wanting to ask me.  and i absolutely refuse to have any serious guilt over not making my own pizza dough, especially since i can make a pretty fine version that’s been meticulously researched and honed over the years.  but since you are relentlessly insisting on full disclosure, i bought my dough in a refrigerated baggy from PUBLIX.  ok?  are you happy?  dear readers, i am only one woman.  and i had shopping to do, a cake to bake and prep work and well, i don’t get started until at least 11 am most mornings.  so something had to give.  and it was the dough.  which was a solid B. 

but – the pizza dough used for the margarita pie was made by my friend, brad.  his wife joanna brought some over from their freezer stash and it was quite good.  i think.  because that pizza was the last from the oven.  and by then a few bottles of wine had been downed and i had eaten my way past the point of diminishing returns – with dessert on the horizon.  still, brad’s a fine cook so i trust that his dough was far superior to the supermarket version… or was it?

happy birthday rick. 
i absolutely adore you both in and out of the kitchen…