"Please tell [Kea] she has taught the Food Ninja the all important lesson in life that is to savour good food. The ass kicking cookies proved to be so ass kicking the Ninja couldn't finish them in under 2 seconds; he had to savour each and every one of them. Thank you, they were beautiful."
In a curious exchange of roles, I always worry that my parents, particularly my father, aren't eating properly. Just because dad is relatively healthy for his age, he insists on eating like a boy of twenty; beef, heavy sauces, tonnes of sugar in his coffee, and sweets. (I know where I got my sweet tooth from!) And then, when it's just the two of them, it's easy to get into a rut and eat all sorts of unhealthy and/or unimaginative (!!) things.
A and I have been spending Christmas and New Year's at home in Oregon with my parents. We had dinner on Christmas Eve at my uncle's house so, apart from A making some mashed potatoes to bring over, we didn't cook too much. For New Year's, we had my uncle's family over, and I was in charge of making dinner. After the excesses of Christmas Eve, I wanted to be sure that we had a slightly healthier (though still delicious!) meal for New Year's. I started early in the morning, marinating the chicken, baking dessert, and working on the cobb salad.
This was my first time making a cobb salad (a little too much trouble, wouldn't you say, for one person?), but I absolutely adore eating them; everything is perfectly bite-sized so that you don't have to have bits of salad green hanging out of your mouth. I roughly followed the recipe from Cooks Illustrated, making the dressing, but approximating all the other ingredients. I used turkey bacon instead of pork bacon, too. There was so much salad, and no big serving plates in the house, so I rubbed our wok with oil (to prevent rusting) and used it as a serving vessel; it was perfect. Everyone really enjoyed the cobb salad, and it was pretty much demolished.
In order to encourage everyone to have more vegetables, I also made a simple Asian salad, with mesclun mix, sliced almonds, dried cranberries and mandarin oranges. I also made an Asian-inspired dressing to go with it, mixing together balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, olive oil, salt, pepper and a dash of sesame oil. This salad quickly disappeared, as well.
A was responsible for marinating and cooking the steaks. My family is not fond of sirloin, and normally goes for rib eyes. However, we've found that flat-iron steaks are excellent, too. Moreover, they are conveniently sized in approximately single-person portions, so we decided on flat-iron steaks, which were a success. Really, I think porterhouses and T-bones are over-rated.
My uncle brought over two fresh Dungeness crabs, which we steamed Cantonese-style with ginger and scallions. These were served with dark Chinese vinegar. I'm a very lazy crab-eater, meaning I can't usually be bothered to eat more than a piece or two. With my added handicap of braces, I only had one piece, which was enough to satisfy me.
For dessert, A had requested key lime pie. This request, coming from him, surprised me, since he dislikes sour things almost as much as our father does. It turned out to be an excellent choice, however. Even dad went back for more, and it was deemed very refreshing after a large meal.
The only thing that didn't really get eaten was all the rice we had made, for the eight of us! We had so much rice left over, A made fried rice today (by himself, for the first time). I won't embarrass him with the telling of it (ask him yourself!), but the rice is all gone now, too.
Andrea's Mandarin Oriental Tiramisu
Directions:
We had them with the HUGE grass-fed steak Lana's advisor gave her when he was cleaning out his freezer. It was literally enough to feed a family of four. Anthony gave us a break and whipped up this classic steak dinner for us the day after Thanksgiving, and learned how to roast brussels sprouts during the same meal. The spices he used on the steak made the house smell good for two days after. With luck, next year he'll be making a standing rib roast for us.
As there was a LOT of chard, I had to figure out another way to use them. Ironically, that was even harder as I discovered that I did not like chard very much either.
It's been freezing cold here and as we'd been making a lot of barley-based soups, we had some barley on hand. Instead of putting the chard in a soup though, I came up with this barley, sausage, onion and carrot dish that was actually very quick to prepare. Start boiling water for the barley and let the barley simmer away while chopping and sauteing the other ingredients. By the time that's done, the barley is ready to be tossed with the rest, making a very warm, satisfying meal in itself. I used this to stuff some roasted red peppers, which made for a pretty presentation, but taste-wise wasn't really worth the effort.
Even I didn't mind the chard in this dish.
Lastly, I used all the rest of my chard in another recipe from 101cookbooks, the Chickpea Hot Pot. I had a giant cauliflower hanging out in my window sill, and a carton of brown rice left over from a meal at P.F. Chang's, so I threw everything into a pot and had a lovely soup for three meals. I have to say though, that after 8 meals featuring it, I was glad to see the last of my bouquet of chard!
Like all shortbread recipes, this one does not contain any liquid. The most basic shortbread recipes contain only butter, flour, and sugar, but that's very basic, not containing even any salt. A pinch of salt is desirable though as it adds depth and complexity any cookie. The Hearst Castle recipe uses salt, all purpose flour, butter, and confectioner's sugar, and - the surprise ingredient - a touch of baking powder. Many traditional recipes use rice flour to achieve that delicate crispness that the best shortbreads offer, but I had never seen a recipe calling for baking powder before. My curiosity was piqued as most of the shortbread recipes I'd tried over the years yielded heavy, greasy cookies.
Half an hour before "A" arrived, I patted the dough together and wrapped it up. By the time we came back from our stroll around the Old Town historic district, it was properly chilled and we were ready to start cutting out our cookies. I showed "A" how to pound out the cold, stiff dough evenly with a French rolling pin. She took to it like a natural, clobbering the thing into a nice, even round. I also shared a pastry school secret to using minimal flour while preventing the dough from sticking to the counter - pick up the dough with a bench scraper and move it in between every roll so that it doesn't have a chance to be rolled right into your surface. We cut out pumpkin and ghost shapes and, looking at the amorphous ghosts, "A" joked that they could double as snowmen in two months. The cookies were shoved into the freezer for half an hour and 11 minutes in the oven later, we had ourselves these lovely bite-sized treats. The cookies are barely sweet, delicate, and with that elusive tender crispiness. I think I would like it a teensy bit sweeter next time, but otherwise it's the nicest shortbread cookie I've made. I was going to decorate them with orange icing, but they taste so lovely on their own, we left them alone. "A" is on the train back up to NYC as this is being written, maybe making a dent in the little bag she took with her.
I've been drooling over sweater patterns for years, but it has taken me a long time to screw up the courage to actually attempt one. When I finally did, I was cautious and decided that a baby sweater would probably be a smart and manageable first project. This was especially daunting as it would be the first big project I would start without my knitting coach, Lana. Eventually (with some online help from Lana) I settled on this simple pattern that is knit in one piece from the top down. As a bonus, it also served as my intro to lacework. As with every new project, it started with the best of intentions and lots of excitement, but because of a pattern error I ended up doing and undoing the sleeve 6 times (yes....SIX). To say that was frustrating does not give the statement enough color. It also slowed me down considerably and made me very unenthused about the project for a good three months.
Last night I finally blocked it and sewed on the little red buttons. It's done! I'm glad I stuck with it, because it's quite lovely. I used a cotton/merino wool blend on a large needle so it's super soft and drapey. Hopefully the recipient and her parents think it's nice, too.
Now that I look at it, the arms look a little long, but then, what do I know about baby clothes?
