ridiculousness

The problem with a cleanse month is always when there is no control over a menu.  At least with our local favourite places, I know what I can eat in order to meet the restrictions that I have set on myself.  A work function at the college?  Not so easy.

Yesterday was Opening Day, and for the first time in a handful of years, we were all live and in person, enjoying the buffet lunch and celebration in one of the gyms.  I attended because I thought it would be a good to be visible, especially with a new librarian in tow.  I knew that I wouldn't have great choices for lunch, and I was right.  So here you have it:  my lunch.  Roasted summer squash.  A bit of a mango salsa.  A serving of spinach salad that probably had some sugar in the dressing, but I decided to get it for a little substance (and eat around the bits of feta).

Sigh.

Day 19 today.  A little less than two weeks to go.  Some days it's just boring eating, right?

more old stand-by recipes

Conrad and I haven't done much entertaining lately.  Let's blame it on two things:  our combined travel schedule and our disaster of an apartment.  The two of those aren't unrelated, come to think of it, though I am certain all that Fiestaware in the kitchen is dusty for reasons other than him and me flying off hither and thither.

It's been a while, though, as I said, so it was nice to have a casual little dinner in the kitchen last night with Michael, a PhD student from my university and someone I've known from his time working in the Special Collections department.  Conrad hadn't met him before, but Michael and I have been talking for some time about sharing a meal or two, especially since enjoying tapas together in Philadelphia last year.  His partner, Jenna, is out of the country right now doing some research, so it was a good time to have him over and make sure he's getting fed properly.  Starving grad students, you know.

It's dinners like last night where, rather than attempting something new and unknown (and I know I keep meaning to do more of that, culinarily), it just makes more sense to go back to the familiar, the stand-bys from my days at the restaurant.  Gosh, it's hard to think that it's 14 years almost since I stopped working there.  I'm sure these recipes are anything but cutting edge (if ever they were).  Still, they result in food I can feel reasonably confident will be enjoyed.  And that's the point:  that our guest enjoy dinner.  I think we succeeded.

We started off with some wine and cheese and olives and caper berries and nuts.  

Dinner wasn't yet out of the oven - we were running a bit behind, I admit, and that Michael came late was actually a good thing as it meant we got caught up on the dishes.  The wine done, I steered us to a richer wine than a Pinot.  I was feeling chilled somehow and wanted something a bit fuller to drink so that I might feel it warm me up.  A new wine poured (a Cab from the Oliver Winery in Indiana, a nice choice and a wine that will convince anyone that there are good Midwest wines).  I dished up dinner after letting it set up a bit following its removal from the oven.

Lasagna!  We so seldom cook pasta at home or opt for it when dining out (and even then it's usually only me and usually only Thai).  I'd had the recipe in mind for a few days, ever since a conversation TK and I had that led to the realization Evan Kleiman had closed Angeli Caffe in LA earlier this year and before I could go dine there (foolish me, I canceled a reservation for the place last summer).  Her Pizza, Pasta, Panini cookbook is really quite excellent, and the spinach and caramelized onion lasagna would make for a good vegetarian dinner, I thought.  I tossed salad greens with some white balsamic and white truffle oil, salt and pepper as a side dish.  Simple as that.

Michael went home with three servings of the lasagna, which is a good thing - in my experience, it's great the next day, even cold.  I just had a small bit as a late lunch.

Of course, there had to be dessert (and a third bottle of wine started but not finished).  Back to the restaurant days for the brown butter tart recipe.  It's not simply an easy dessert to make, it's one I like immensely.  The brown butter is a marvelous flavour in the tart filling, and a hint of salt adds dimension to the sweet.  The recipe actually calls for blueberries, and while I like that version, I think that more acidic fruit works better.  It's mango season at Whole Foods, so I decided to go with them.  They turned out sweeter and less acidic than hoped, but they still worked nicely in the tart.

Michael went home with four pieces.  Dessert for his lasagna, plus an extra tart slice.

Next Friday we're supposed to have Brad over.  We have a bottle of BC wine to share with him, and I'll again be pressed to come up with a vegetarian dinner.  Oh, it's not tough to do.  I'll start thinking now on which restaurant stand-bys to ply him with.

chilled dinner

Temperatures well into the 90s? Look, I love Chicago and all, but this is stupid. It's not yet the middle of June. Honestly? Bring on the winter weather - I can just pile on a nice thick sweater.

Jeepers!

I did not want to cook tonight, but I had some vegetables and fruit to use, and I dislike wasting them. I stopped at Whole Foods for a few more items, then came home and put this simple meal together:



Shrimp, barely poached, cooled, chopped. Toss them with chopped mango and red onion and red pepper and cilantro and jalapeno. Add lime juice, salt, and pepper. Let sit in the fridge while enjoying a bit of rose wine. Plate atop a bit of arugula, take photos, then toss it together to make a juice, messy salad. A nice chilled meal for a warm evening.

It was either that or pick up sushi again for a second night in a row!

easy dinner

I feel like I'm a real throwback tonight, waaaaay back to the 80s or 90s when fruit salsas with proteins were the rage. We did that often at the restaurant, I can recall. And yet, there's something about it in warmer weather that is really appropriate.

I picked up a bunch of mangoes on the way home tonight, some fish, some other things. The mangoes have been good (and well-priced and plentiful) this season, I'm happy to say. I opted for some harder ones to give me time to figure out what I want to do with them all, but one was ripe enough (though still a bit hard and crispy, still somewhat tart) for me to cut into pieces, mix with red onion and pepper, jalapeno, cilantro, salt and pepper, and lime juice and call it all a salsa. It had zip to it, and if the knife skills were terribly imprecise, it still tasted fine. Some acid to cut against the sockeye and the sweetness of the corn I cooked.



We had this simple dinner in the kitchen - too cool outside to sit, though we hope to have balcony dinners soon! Just a nice, easy dinner together, a good way to return from vacation.

brown butter tart

Look, I know that I can be a very harsh critic of my own food. I think that anyone who pursues an interest of any sort often finds things to nitpick over. We do that because we love what we do, right? And think of it this way: how much sweeter it feels to really nail it.

The first time I was ever truly pleased with food I'd made myself (not food I was making at the restaurant) was around about New Year's Eve 1997. Something like that, or so I recall. I had made a pot of tomatillo braised country style pork ribs and some biscuits, and as I ate (with my parents, who were visiting), I was actually exclaiming out loud. It was good. I was pleased.

Moments like that are few and far between, but never think that I am on the verge of throwing every meal into the garbage or having to hold my nose when I eat my food. No. Mostly it's thinking to myself, "Hmmm... next time try tweaking XX a little." Or, "Maybe a little more precise measurement next time." Nothing too down on myself. Just wanting to do better.

Yesterday, though, I hit on happiness with my cooking. Daniel came for dinner, and I made us ribs with some broccoli on the side, and they were tasty - I usually like how my ribs turn out. But no, that's not what I'm talking about, and I didn't snap any shots of the ribs anyway. Instead it was dessert: brown butter mango tart.



Brown butter blueberry tart was a standby at the restaurant for at least a few years. I think Helen may have grown bored with it in the end, and after many iterations, that's understandable. I always liked it, though, for its somewhat cakey-filling that had that intriguing brown butter flavour and for how easy it was. Swap out the blueberries for other fruit, and you had a versatile dessert foundation to deploy on short notice. I got in the habit over the years of having some frozen berries in the freezer just in case. Tart fruits like raspberries work especially well in the dessert, I think - they cut against the sweet filling all the better.

With Daniel set to come over, I dashed through Whole Foods after brunch yesterday and grabbed a wedge of a triple-cream cheese and some nice crackers. I thought I could make a quick fruit relish to go with that, and we'd call that dessert. When I got home, though, I realized I had some mangoes purchased earlier in the week. They were still slightly underripe, but I decided that was to my advantage - a bit more sour, some acidity to balance sugar. My favourite standby popped into mind.

The recipe is one from The Ma Cuisine Cooking School Cookbook by a chef named Roy Yamaguchi. I don't know why I'd never put two and two together before today, but the chef is, of course, Roy of Roy's fame. The recipe isn't a Hawaiian one given the blueberries, but the mango takes it back there a little.

Anyway, mid-afternoon I set to work on the tart, creating a crust of shortbread-like crumbs to press into the pan. I am often a bit cavalier with this step and end up with a thick and/or hard crust. This is the part I was most delighted with last night: a nice crust that was buttery rich and fairly tender. Over the crust I scattered the pieces of mango and some toasted slivers of almond. Over top the fruit and nuts went the brown butter filling - I add a hint of salt to it to give a bit of edge to the sweet. Into the oven on 350 for 50 minutes, and later that bright, sunny Saturday afternoon we had dessert ready.



The funny thing about making dessert for a dinner for only a few people is that it can mean a lot of dessert leftover. I'm half tempted to eat a sliver for breakfast, but I think it might be wiser to send the remainder into Conrad's office tomorrow. They should enjoy it there. But for one dinner, for one evening, I was genuinely pleased with what I'd made, finding no fault, and lifting forkful after forkful to my own appreciative mouth.