The Big Stomach Wave Makes the Love 18 Jun 08

What does it all mean? Hell if I know. All of today’s captions are brought to you by the nutjobs who found TNS via google. This one’s for you, Mr. or Ms. “Upside Down Belly Button.”

Really, what was this person looking for? “The big stomach wave makes the love”? Is it some grody thing that I’m naive for not knowing? If so, I’d like to continue on in my blissful ignorance.

A few weeks ago the New York Times Wednesday food section had a feature article on ricotta that included instructions for making it yourself, and I’ve been brooding over it ever since, wanting to make it. I could resist no longer, so I decided dinner tonight would be ricotta crostini. It’s a win-win-win: I love cheese, I love nibblies, and I love dinner. Success!

I ended up making two savory crostini - one with prosciutto and thyme, one with a sweet and spicy quick tomato compote - and one sweet, with honey, walnuts and cardamom. All were dinner worthy, and all will re-appear on my table. Quoth Brian, “It’s like crack!”

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Ice Cream for a Dead Man 15 Jun 08

Passionfruit, to be specific. But dead people don’t eat ice cream, so it just means more for me.

I just wrote a whole post about this ice cream and my dad. It was really good, filled with humor, pathos, and brilliant photography.

And then Wordpress ate it.

Father’s Day is rough enough as it is and I can’t bring myself to sit here and re-write it, but I don’t want to deprive anyone of delicious, delicious ice cream. So recipe after the jump, and my apologies for the lack of real post.

ETA: Okay, okay, here’s a tidbit. So I have my dad’s high school yearbook from 1951, and each graduate’s photo is accompanied by a painfully wholesome description: “Jimmy is sure to be a great asset to the Army,” “Susan always has a ready smile and a helping hand.” My dad’s? “Rudy is a treat for all the ladies.”

Awww, yeah.

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Cheap Ass Monday: Hot as Hell Cucumber Salad 09 Jun 08

Pretty.

Apparently, I don’t spend ENOUGH time on the internet, because I’m adding a new feature to TNS: Cheap Ass Monday. My grocery bills have, uh, been nudging ever so slightly upward for the past few months; I have no idea why that might be. No matter the reason, I need to figure out a way to offset some of the more obscene Smackdown costs, and I know lots of us are looking for quick, less expensive meals so we can save our money for blowout trips to the French Laundry. Or, you know, to pay the mortgage or utility bill (thanks a lot, heat wave).

So Monday will no longer merely be “Monday” but “Cheap Ass Monday,” where we endeavor to make a tasty dinner for two gluttonous adults for $5 or less. Play along at home! The rules are:

• You (me) have to actually MAKE dinner out of actual whole, fresh ingredients. The Wendy’s 99-cent menu does not a Cheap Ass Monday make. I mean, technically it does, but that’s not gonna fly around here.

• Normal pantry items that right-thinking people should have in their homes (salt, sugar, olive oil, etc) do not count toward the $5 limit.

• I am the arbiter of what constitutes a “normal pantry item” and reserve the right to stretch the definition thereof in order to meet my self-imposed dollar limit.

• Some Mondays may be skipped without prior notice if I am feeling lazy.

Cheap Ass Monday kicks off with a refreshing, raw cucumber and peanut salad. Not only is it too hot in New York to even think about entertaining the idea of considering turning on the oven, it is also too hot for humans to effectively digest complex foods. Also, the knobs on the stove may well be too hot from the ambient temperature to touch; I can’t say for sure because I didn’t want to chance it.

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In which people get the animal fats they want and deserve. 07 Jun 08

All cow fat, all the time.

Let everyone’s collective panties be unbunched: tofu doesn’t live here any more.

I’m not giving up on integrating more vegetarian or vegan meals into my repertoire, but I am giving up on frankenfoods like tofu. It’s still not in the same category as truly unearthly “foods” like quorn, but my kitchen doesn’t need it. Healthy vegetarian foods are easily assembled using whole, fresh ingredients.

That’s not what this is about, though. Well, at least the “healthy” part: this is real deal mac and cheese, the kind made with a classic butter-and-flour roux, milk that has been expelled from a real live cow and not extruded from a bean of some kind, and a shit-ton of cheese. And it feels GOOD, SO GOOD, right up to and including the moment that the final particle of arterial plaque settles in your carotid artery, stopping all bloodflow to the brain.

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Thursday Night Smackdown: Now With 100% Less Pork! 29 May 08

Get ready for a whole lotta beige.

I’m having a very love hate relationship with pork right now. On one hand, pork is unbelieveably delicious, and bacon is one of my major food groups. On the other, exposure to 18+ hours of smoking pig has left every one of my pores, hairs, lungs, bath towels, dogs and pieces of upholstered furniture embedded with immense amounts of microscopic pork particulate. Which is not as much fun as it sounds, trust me.

The week has been pretty meat-free since Memorial Day to give my kidneys some time to recover from protein overload, so it was as good a week as any to bust out The New Moosewood Classics for some tofu mac and cheese and a simple green salad and vinaigrette. Because if I’m going to eschew pork, there should at least be cheese. Lots and lots of cheese.

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Spring Lamb By Way of Italy By Way of My Ass 27 Apr 08

My ass is due east of Suck On It, Tunisia.

If I’m not cooking directly from a recipe or making one of my standby dishes, I’m trying to riff off someone else’s ideas. I can poach a mean egg and I have a decent sense of what goes with what (e.g., bacon goes with everything), but I don’t flatter myself that I’m particularly innovative or have some kind of culinary talentg. I have more of an all-around genius than a specific savant-like gift.

Every once in a while, though, I make up a dish that seems pretty unique (at least to me), an unexpected combo of flavors. I think this dish is one of those, at least until I buy a new cookbook and find out that it’s some kind of classic that I should have already known. Fuckin’ A.

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And this quiche did my taxes. 22 Apr 08

Actually, it didn’t. This quiche had no fucking initiative.

Work is busy this week and Brian is out of town at a conference for work*, and that usually adds up to one thing: cereal for dinner every night. On top of that, part of me doesn’t want to move on to a new post because the feedback from the last one was so lovely and it sparked memories for so many of you; I especially appreciated the universal disdain for pink kitchenware. But eventually you have to move on from the schmaltzy shit and make a damn quiche.

Okay, I’m not quite ready to move on, so this’ll be a short one.

*In New Orleans. And I happen to know that at this exact moment, he’s out at a concert at the House of Blues. I ask you, what kind of “conference” is this? Your tax dollars at work, people.

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Now that you mention it, we DO have some bananas today. 05 Apr 08

Three bananas, to be exact. Oh, did you need more than that? Tough.

You know you have them: excess bananas, malingering on your kitchen counters and gradually outliving their usefulness. Unless you’re one of those locavore people who only eat food produced within 1.3 miles of your Berkeley home*, which you built by hand from local stone carried block by block from your homemade quarry (it was a fun family weekend project!). You can go back to steaming your fresh-picked asparagus in the sparkling spring water little Timmy just gathered from the stream running behind your renovated eco-friendly but historically-accurate bungalow. Great job smelting those pots and pans!

I kid because I love! I’m pro organic, local foods that have not spent three weeks sitting in a refrigerated tractor trailer, and look forward to the start of the CSA season. But you know what else? I also love a frigging banana.

*If you’re a Costa Rica-based locavore, enjoy those bananas guilt-free!

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