Jamie Oliver's MEALS IN MINUTES

I bought the new Jamie Oliver cookbook yesterday: MEALS IN MINUTES.  I could lie and tell you that I got it at my local indie...but...yeah.  I paid full price at Barnes & Noble, guilty as charged.

I can't wait to try the recipes - you'll see some of them here soon (note the tabs I've already inserted for the recipes I want to take on).  I'm particularly excited about this one:

It's Quick Lemon and Raspberry Cheesecake.  You pound gingersnaps and hazelnuts with a rolling pin then, after mixing them with melted butter, you press them into the bottom of individual dishes.  Add store-bought lemon curd.  Sprinkle raspberries over the curd.  Top with creme fraiche (or mascarpone or cream cheese) that has been stirred together with some sugar, vanilla extract, and milk.  Last but not least, grate chocolate on top.

Ladies and gentlemen, THIS is my kind of "baking".  Future dinner party guests can expect to see this one soon.

Eat, drink, and move to the 'burbs to make room for your cookbook collection.*





* Note to self: count how many cookbooks, reference books, and food memoirs I own.  I'll share the number with y'all when I do.

Improvisation

I did something radical last night: I went to the store (Eli's Manhattan) to get ingredients for dinner.  And I had no idea what I was making.  I'm a list-maker and a recipe-follower; I don't generally just show up for the party without some sort of plan.

The key to spontaneous food shopping is to mentally catalog what you already have available at home and, if you can't remember for sure, hopefully you can call someone at home and have them check.  Adam regularly fields calls from me, asking if we have such and such ingredient in the fridge.  For instance, in this case, I knew I had pizza dough from Fresh Direct that I had put in the fridge to thaw just that morning.

So with pizza crust in mind, I went into Eli's.  As I perused, I thought about shrimp - what about a shrimp pizza?  Which then jogged my memory about a shrimp pizza I had at Ramblin Jacks in Olympia, Washington way back in 2000 when we lived there.  In my memory, it had shrimp, Brie, and apples on it; it looks like they're still serving something similar, sans shrimp.

Okay, so shrimp and Brie on the pizza.  Now what?  I was then reminded of shrimp skewers that Amy made when we were visiting them: bread cubes and shrimp tossed with olive oil, salt, pepper, and fennel seeds.  Shrimp and fennel seeds is a sublime combination.  But what about a vegetable?  Maybe baby spinach?  Sure, why not?  So I threw that in my cart too.

I generally like to have two separate pizzas - for variation - when I make them.  I also had two crusts.  Eli's had some gorgeous figs (from California, of course) so I grabbed those.  Blue cheese sounded too rich so I grabbed some ricotta - I thought they would be a good combination.  And I had ham in the fridge at home - maybe I could add that.

And I went home to put it together.

I shared all the above information just to illustrate my thought process.  It's all about thinking about tastes you've enjoyed before, putting them together, interpreting them differently.  And not being afraid to try something.  You might fail, but so what?  I still had cheddar cheese and a loaf of bread at home - if I made inedible pizza, we could always have grilled cheese.

Here's how it turned out:

The fig pizza wasn't great, I have to be honest.  Figs and ricotta?  Great.  But it needed something...  I initially thought about walnuts, but I don't think that was it.  It needed brightening.  Maybe lemon zest.  Maybe red pepper flakes.  The blue cheese might have been the way to go.

The shrimp pizza was absolutely fantastic, though.  Brie and shrimp is a wonderful combination, and the fennel seed added some pep.  You could even add some actual roasted fennel.  I do think that, doing this again, I would add lemon zest to this as well.  I believe it was Mark Bittman who said, "I never regretted adding lemon zest to anything."  I subscribe wholeheartedly to that way of thinking.

I'm not going to regularly experiment like this - I still enjoy the list-making, menu-planning, and premeditation.  But this was fun; I like pulling from my previous memories and experiences of great meals.  Not to mention that, when you improvise like this, you begin to gain more and more successes.  And your confidence in the kitchen grows.

Eat, drink, and step outside your comfort zone.

Fantasy Football Draft Night

I have been a long-time, regular competitor in two fantasy football leagues: one for the last 12 years and another for the last 10.  My team name changes each year and it often has something to do with food or wine - a couple of years ago, I was "Vino Vixens".  This year?  I'm "Pinot She Daaaan't!"  Clever, if I do say so myself!

Adam, Brian, and me - I think I just picked a WINNER!

Highlighters and spreadsheets are de rigeur.

Draft Night is always an event, but even more so this year since Andrea and Brian (aka the Soul Twin and My Other Husband) live just across the river from us now.  My Other Husband, of course, is a player in one of my leagues...and the Soul Twin...well, the Soul Twin came over to drink rosé and heckle us, of course.  And dance to James Brown while we were trash-talking...

Adam and My Other Husband

What?  You didn't think I'd drink a beer while drafting, did you?

So I made BLTs.  I wanted to enjoy the heirloom tomatoes at the market while they're still around, and I figured that we could eat while we were drafting, if needed.  But it was also important to me to punch up the flavor so I created my own Lemon-Garlic Mayonnaise that I thought was just incredible.

BLTs WITH LEMON-GARLIC MAYONNAISE
Serves 4


Ingredients:


Lemon- Garlic Mayonnaise

• 1 1/2 cups mayonnaise 
• zest of 1 lemon
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 4 garlic cloves, sliced thin
• kosher salt and freshly ground pepper to taste (I used about 1/8 tsp each)

BLTs

• 8 slices brioche (I like the counterbalance of the sweet bread with the salty bacon, but any bread of your choice will do)
• 3 large heirloom tomatoes, sliced (ideally, different colors)
• 8 slices of bacon
• 4 large leaves of romaine lettuce

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees.  Cover a baking sheet with foil.  Lay bacon flat on the sheet and bake in the oven for about 20 minutes until browned and crisp (doing it in the oven keeps the bacon flat).


While bacon is cooking, heat a small sauté pan over medium-low heat.  Add olive oil and garlic to the pan.  Keeping a close eye on the garlic to avoid burning, saute garlic for about 2 minutes until softened but not browned.  Set pan aside.


When bacon is done, set aside to cool.  Once cooled, halve each slice crosswide, making 16 half-strips of bacon.


In a medium bowl, combine mayonnaise, lemon zest, lemon juice, garlic (and the oil from the pan), salt and pepper.  Stir.  Taste for seasoning.  Set aside.


Spread 8 slices of bread with the mayonnaise.  Place 4 half-slices of bacon on top of the mayonnaise.  Add tomato slices, then lettuce.  Put the top slice of bread on.  (NOTE: the point of constructing the sandwich like this is that the tomato is the wettest part so you want it in the middle.  That way, your bread won't get soggy as fast.)

Lastly, a note on the mayonnaise: this recipe creates A LOT of mayonnaise.  In fact, you could halve it and quite easily have enough for your BLTs.  But I made extra because you can use this for so many meals.  Here are some ideas:

1. Loosen the mayo with a tablespoon or so of olive oil to make more of a sauce.  Add on top of grilled fish.
2. Boil some new potatoes.  Add some finely chopped rosemary to the mayo and dollop on top of the potatoes as a side dish to eggs for breakfast or roast chicken for dinner.
3. Steam broccoli and use this mayo as a dipping sauce.

The possibilities are endless.  So halve it for the BLTs if you'd like...but I'm predicting you'll want to keep using this for a few days afterward.

So the sandwiches were a success.  But what about the draft?  Well, we'll have to see.  Bring it on!

Eat, drink, and GET READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL!

Comfort Food: Risotto

Major changes going on in the Lutz household lately. Here are a few:

• Hell, just a busy week. We rarely ate en famille this past week. Which definitely wears on all of us.
• Bug is starting a new school this Wednesday: The Neighborhood School in the East Village. It's all been somewhat sudden and, while fabulous, still stressful. She'll be starting 4th grade in a new environment and we're hoping it'll be a change for the better. The bad news? Until our lease is up in March 2011, we'll be commuting an hour each way to get her to school. Wow.
• Planning a vacation. I told Adam that I have one goal - and one goal only, really - in 2010: Leave this country. I went to France in 1993, Mexico in 1996...and then haven't left the country since. And I must. The world is calling me. The three of us have passports so what the hell are we waiting for? So Thanksgiving this year. We initially thought Europe (Dublin or London, perhaps) but, post-Hawaii, we're thinking Costa Rica or Turks and Caicos. Readers, weigh in.
• Recommitting ourselves to Frenchness. Thanks to the excellent Wafels and Dinges, Schnitzel and Things, Joyride Truck, and my lack of self-discipline, I'm failing the zipper test. Trés unsexy.

The good news is that we are on the cusp of autumn. And tonight I was finally able to bring some heat into the kitchen: I made risotto. Lemon risotto, specifically. A montage:

As with any recipe, I always recommend getting all ingredients ready ahead of time. (Ignore the oranges in the glass - that was my Lillet on ice)

The thing I love most about risotto is that I can stand there, stirring and stirring, and read. It must've been something unconscious because I "accidentally" left my e-reader full of manuscripts at work on Friday. Which left me free to read David Lebovitz's The Sweet Life in Paris all weekend which, suffice to say, did not quell my wanderlust. It's lovely in every way (the book, that is. Not my wanderlust, which is rather annoying and expensive).

Reference the recipe I linked to above, which I followed almost exactly. However, I didn't have a full two tablespoons of parsley or basil left on my balcony garden. I did have a bunch of sage in my fridge that was about to go bad. So I used 1 tbsp. chopped parsley and 1 tbsp. chopped sage. Then I fried whole sage leaves in 2 tbsp. of butter for garnish:

Lest you think my tastes are too rich (or fattening) for your blood, I didn't add the the butter at the end that the recipe recommended: I figured the butter I used for the fried sage sufficed.

Adam came into the kitchen while I was stirring and reading. He put his arms around me (as all significant others should while someone is cooking an amazing dinner from which they will benefit) and he said, "I could tell you needed this." "Needed what?" I asked. "Needed to just sit in the kitchen with your music playing, stirring. Reading. Glass of wine." And he was right.

Eat, drink, and feel grounded in the kitchen.

Note: In the great Beer vs. Wine battle that goes on in our house, we decided that tonight was a draw. We agreed that the Hermann J. Wiemer 2008 Dry Riesling was exceptional, as was Adam's Bear Republic Racer 5 IPA.