big dirt garden

Like most people during their teenage years, I regularly found myself scavenging the house for something to eat. Invariably, when the pantry and refrigerator were bare, there were always two items I could always count on seeing tucked away, untouched and lonely.

Now I am not a picky eater, but there is one food product that will trigger my gag reflex every time I smell it. I referred to it as a “product”, as I don’t think this qualifies as food. I am referring to Vienna sausages. Specifically, Vienna sausages from a CAN. I’m sure that the lovely people in Vienna enjoy some spectacular locally-made sausages. But once you shove cow parts, shaped like a tube, into a can with some water, all bets are off. I’m convinced there are only two people on earth who enjoy them, my mother and John Thorne. This may have been an elaborate plan by mother to ensure that something, anything, might be left in the pantry after she arrived home from work.

The other item to escape my gaping, teenage maw sat frozen in time, like a fallen wooly mammoth, waiting for freezer climate change to be discovered. Perhaps then, only if it was subject to being thrown out, might it have a chance to show up on the dinner plate. Every time I opened the freezer, I would examine the package, shrug, and toss it back into the cold depths. Often I would study it, staring at the supposedly tantalizing photo of orange sauce and toast, hoping I could figure out what it was. The package read Welsh Rarebit, Stouffer’s style. Now, after many years of devoting most of my free time to learning to cook, I know this is just a fancy version of cheese sauce. I would have totally eaten that. Mom: 2, kid: 0.

So when I served up this latest recipe, a Cheddar Beer Soup, it surfaced the memory of the lonely Welsh Rarebit. Both contain cheddar cheese, worcestershire sauce, mustard and beer. But this is more than just a simple cheese sauce. It is the ultimate comfort food for a cold night. Throw in some crumbled bacon and the requisite toast points, and this cheese sauce sibling is elevated to a meal.

p.s. For reasons that should be obvious, do not use an IPA beer in this recipe.

After numerous calamitous cooking attempts, it was about time I got one right. So I thought “How about some muffins?” Muffins are usually foolproof. Besides, baking muffins always make me laugh when I think of this…

Do you really think we need the exclamation point? Because it’s not top of the muffin TO YOU.

-Elaine Benes; Seinfeld Season 8, Episode 21; here, at 1:40

Call me crazy but that video clip features a cameo, :32 seconds in, by someone who looks exactly like Thomas Keller. Or at least what he might have looked like 15 years ago. Can anyone confirm this or am I creating a convenient coincidence?

So, I turned to Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito’s book Baked: New Frontiers in Baking. A few pages into the book I spotted an easy target — Banana Espresso Chocolate Chip Muffins. The headnote on this recipe reads “You can wake up in the morning, put on a pot of coffee, and have these warm and wonderful muffins ready in under an hour.” That sentence was the catalyst to get me into the kitchen.

You will most likely already have all of the items you need to make this recipe. It does call for instant espresso powder which, if you’ve baked anything super chocolatey before, you might even have some in your pantry, as it seems to keep forever.

I love muffin recipes that call for melted butter. I am too impatient to wait for butter to soften. This recipe is truly mix the wet ingredients together, mix the dry ingredients together, fold in the chocolate chips and bake.

As promised, ready to serve in under an hour.

The planets must have been completely out of alignment for New Years Day 2012. Something was off indeed. I continually dropped shit that day. Crazy people were driving as if they were blind. There was a 48-hour span of weirdness that simply cannot be explained.

New Years Eve was spent cooking what was to be a sublime Lamb Chili with Chickpeas and Cucumber Raita. The plan for the next day was to go to the Mediterranean, if only via the dining table. Lamb Chili, Naan, and a beautiful Orange Tart were on the menu.

The Lamb Chili turned out great. However, with each taste-testing bite, I found bits and pieces of bone. Yes, bone. That is all it could have been. I cooked the chili the requisite amount of time, approximately 2 1/2 hours. By then, all traces of garlic, ginger, etc. would have been as soft as… well you get the idea. Hell, a fingernail cooked that long would have complied. But every bite ended with a disturbing, potentially tooth-splitting crunch. The guy in charge of lamb grinding must have missed a huge chunk of bone. But I can’t blame him. His ch’i was off just like everyone else. Unfortunately, I had to toss the chili and make something else.

As I sat down to write this post, I flipped open Dorie Greenspan’s newest book, Around my French Table searching for the Orange-Almond Tart that I made. Upon closer inspection of the full-page image showing her tart I spotted something that made my heart sink. Her tart had a crust. Hmm… My tart had no crust. I knew something was off when I tried to serve it. The tart stuck to the tart pan and came out in gooey chunks. I forgot the crust. Good grief. This sudden revelation makes me want to throw something. Stupid tart.

Oh, but you can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you!

-Dennis the anarcho-syndicalist peasant
Monty Phython and the Holy Grail

So be ye not so stupid. Make the crust. The tart filling is delicious. With a crust, it would have been perfection.

New toy. No more math!

Well, after carefully studying the new Les Peits Macarons cookbook, I did it. I created beautiful, shiny, and delicious Vanilla Bean and Passion Fruit macarons. The key to success was finding a better recipe.

I decided that I would use the metric measurements provided in the recipe to be super exact. I would leave nothing to chance. These macarons needed to work! However, my analog scale, which easily displays kilogram increments, was not so easy to use for measuring grams.

Using Convertbot and some rudimentary division, this round of mise en place took a bit longer. Is 165 grams, .165 kilograms? Having to count every little hash mark on the scale between .1 and .2 kilograms sucked. .12, .14, .16, .18, wait, take some out. No, add some back in. If I’m honest, I shouldn’t be allowed to do math when I’m in the kitchen. Or anywhere else for that matter.

It was my understanding that there would be no math.
–Chevy Chase as Gerald Ford, Saturday Night Live

But my patience paid off and now I don’t have to go back to Paris. Well, at least not to get some French Macarons.