I used to be a Superhero

For the better part of my adult life, I was "that woman"...the one who earned a pretty nice salary while juggling a demanding career, a marriage, a house and two kids.

It's hard to remember how I managed that. Sure, I have an abundance of energy, I always have. My sister and I were instilled with a strong work ethic by our hard-working, successful parents, particularly our mother. And I am fortunate enough to have a husband who was always willing to chip in with cooking, cleaning and kid duty, particularly when my job called me out of town--which was often.

In addition to my full-time job, I also taught fitness classes a few days a week, and with my daily commute to/from home/work/gym, my schedule was pretty packed. It was sort of a point of pride for me...the ability to juggle all this stuff. It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Supermom! Watch me bring home the bacon, fry it up in the pan...then throw a Martha Stewart-worthy dinner party for 10 friends on the weekend with not so much as a hair out of place. I sewed my daughter's first holiday outfit because the ones in the store weren't elegant enough, and my kids rooms had curtains and dust ruffles that I made myself.

I remember my mother-in-law calling me Supermom. I'm pretty sure she didn't intend it to be a compliment, but I chose to take it that way. It would have been a compliment coming from my own mother.

Some days I felt like I should don a cape over my trendy "I'm a cool advertising chick" clothes before I climbed into my car for my morning commute to my kick-ass office. I'd imagine it flapping behind me as I strode confidently into my office, heels clicking. Other days I'd come home, exhausted from a long day of dealing with clients and deadlines, and wonder who was going to make dinner if I couldn't muster the strength. My house was always a mess and I was usually weeks behind on laundry. But I put those short-comings in the "don't sweat the small stuff" category and focused on being as good a mom as I could manage and always feeding my family home-cooked meals.

And although I loved my cape, I secretly envied my friends who had managed to migrate to "work at home" or part-time careers so they could have more time for themselves and their families. And I looked down my nose at the moms who stayed home every day; the trim MILFs who stood at the bus stop in their tennis dresses or gym togs, then spent the rest of the day at the health club, shopping and lunching with their friends. I could never be "one of those women". Indeed, I reveled in the challenges of my demanding life and took great pride in my juggling skills. It made me a Superhero. Those other women were mere mortals in cute yoga pants with their husband's gold cards.

But now I'm almost an empty nester; one is off at college and the other is a 16 year old who probably still needs his mommy but does a really good job of acting the independent teenaged chick magnet. The kids are still demanding, but now they're depleting the dollars in the bank account not the hours in the day.

I'm struggling to start my own business after a heart-breaking layoff last year from a job I loved. So I now have that "flexible schedule" I always wanted when the kids were young...and more time on my hands than I know what to do with. My crazy schedule and lack of free time had forced me to abandon a lot of my hobbies out of necessity, and so I find my "free time" is spent...well, I'm not really sure what I do with it, other than spend too much of it on Facebook.

And my house is really clean.

When I imagined this stage of my life, I always hoped I'd be doing exactly what I'm doing right now; running my own qualitative research consultancy. When business is good, I travel a lot; not something I could do when the kids were little. But I always assumed I'd ease into it; have time to build my client base before being forced to try to get the business off the ground because I had lost my primary income. In a perfect world, I would have planned for this with a little more operating cash to weather the inevitable dry spells that all small businesses experience.

I took over our fourth bedroom and turned it into a beautiful home office. The allure of "working from home" can be powerful. But the reality is I have lost the stimulation of an uber-cool office with pool tables, impromptu Friday afternoon happy hours in Cubeville and daily interaction with 1,000 interesting, young, creative people every day, and replaced it with the quiet companionship of a furry feline and 750 Facebook friends who think I'm swell. That wasn't something I anticipated, and I don't feel all that "super" sitting in my home office in a pair of flats.

My business is going to take off...I can feel it. I'm good at what I do and more importantly, I love what I do. But there's nothing more ego-crushing than a job loss, even when you know it was a purely economic decision. A year later, I'm (mostly) over that part.

But I miss my cool clothes. I miss my heels. I miss all those ridiculously young, painfully cool people I worked with.

Most of all, I miss my cape.

Mixed Food Metaphors

Mixed metaphors drive me crazy. "She can't hold a torch to you." and "It's not rocket surgery" are two of my favorites. "She's not the brightest bulb in the shed." You get the idea.

The only thing that makes me crazier is mixed food metaphors, a.k.a. Fusion Cuisine. I'm talking Kimchi Weiner-schnitzel and Tex-Mex Curry and other culinary crimes committed against the American public.

While I applaud that our collective palate has grown adventurous enough to warrant this sort of experimentation on the part of some pretty talented chefs, most of the time it's more "miss" than "hit" when multiple cuisines are mixed, particulary at the hands of an amateur.

So color-me-skeptical at the idea of "edamame hummus."

Edamame is the staple of sushi bars, and is, in fact, the lowly the soy bean. Boiled in salted water, dusted with sea salt and eaten from the shell like peanuts (to which they are a close relative) at sushi bars all over the world. They are the essence of the flavor element "umame" and are healthy litttle green gems, loaded with protein. And they are darn tasty with a saketini. (Then again, isn't everything?)

Hummus is now so ubiquitous it's almost become an American food. Middle-Eastern in origin, hummus is traditionally made with chick peas. A luscious puree of chick peas, tahini (sesame paste), olive oil and lots of fresh lemon juice, hummus graces menus and kitchen tables all over America. And although many liberties are taken with the word "hummus", you can't just puree a bunch of beans and call it hummus. Hummus means chick peas. Anything else is just bean puree.

So I more than a little curious last evening when confronted with a bowl of green puree and a few pita chips as part of an appetizer we ordered at a local "Asian fusion" lounge owned by a prominent group of Chaldean (Catholic Iraqis) restaurateurs.

After scooping up some of this mystery puree on the chips, I eventually abandoned the chips and just went at it with my chopsticks. It was rich and creamy...I knew right away it was some sort of edamame puree. I passed it to my husband. "Edamame," he said. Yup. It was. It was also sublime.

"Oh my God," I said to the waitress, "this stuff is addictive!"

"Oh, I know! The edamame hummus, it's insane, isn't it??"

Ah, edamame hummus. But of course, it made perfect sense. A Japanese fusion restaurant owned by Chaldeans. Well, if anyone could pull that off, I guess they could!

"Does it have chick peas and edamame?" I asked. No, the waitress informed me, just edamame and olive oil and lemon. Hmmm. As I scooped up the last bits from the bowl with my chopsticks and momentarily contemplated licking the bowl, I decided not to argue the semantics of calling it "hummus".

Instead, I immediately googled some recipes and planned my dinner around some of that lovely green puree.

(Recipe to come.)

Ambition in a Cup

Repost
Originally posted August, 2007

Life can be pretty hectic. Like many of us, I rely on a daily dose (or two) of caffeine to keep me going. As a culture, we are incredibly reliant on legal drugs; alcohol, nicotine, caffeine. That's not intended as crticism, for I have, at one time or another, used all of those drugs myself. In fact, at the moment I am sipping one...a hot espresso served in a teeny lusterware cup I bought at an antique shop.

I have an espresso maker; it's not one of those gorgeous brushed metal units I lust for at Starbucks and Williams-Sonoma each time I go in. But it is a pump-driven Krups unit that I bought when I was pregnant with my son; when I gave up the other two legal drugs but was allowed by my doctor to keep coffee on my short list of uncontrollable substances. I figured being able to make myself cappucino would be a nice treat and make me feel less deprived; a "fancy" coffee after dinner was hardly a worthy substitute for wine with dinner, but at least it felt like a little indugence.

It's been years since I've used the machine; it's been sitting on a high shelf in my laundry room, with my deep fryer. That's where I keep the appliances are rarely used but don't warrant a trip to the graveyard (a large metal shelving unit in my basement that holds 3 or 4 difference ice cream makers, a fondue pot, an old toaster oven and some "Made in Taiwan" chopping device that never really worked properly.) Items retired to the graveyard only resurface when the Purple Heart calls with their monthly request for donations.

But necessity is the mother of resurrection, and I was out of coffee filters.

So down it came. I ground some of my usual coffee to a powder and packed the little tray in the machine. It took a long time for the machine to heat up and even longer for it to produce steam. For a few minutes, I thought it was broken, but now I think perhaps it was on strike. I think I might consider a labor disruption of some sort had I been made to spend 5 years in the laundry room.

Eventually I heard that satisfying hissing sound and the first few drops of deep brown richness began to drip into my cup. It smelled fantastic.

A reasonable substitute for my usual morning drip? Absolutely. Great espresso? Not by a long shot (sorry, no pun intended). Sadly, it was a little thin and my regular-roast coffee didn't give it that great "bite" that is the hallmark of really good espresso.

I became a woman on a mission. Off to the store I went for some real Italian roast beans, regular and decaf. I spent the better part of Saturday morning figuring out the perfect grind, the right amount of "packing" of the grinds into the basket and the proper length of time for each pull. My daughter's friends, the teenage caffeine junkies, were more than happy to help me critique each shot, and when I finally nailed it; a perfectly black shot of coffee essence topped with a beautiful tan coating of gorgeous "crema", we pronounced our experiment a success.

I have since purchased a box of coffee filters, but I haven't even turned on the coffee pot. My husband's morning drip coffee has been replaced by "cafe Americano"; espresso diluted with hot boiling water. My evening wine is now a decaf with a twist of orange. I found the long-lost foaming attachment at the back of the "junk drawer" (every kitchen has at least one of those) and made making perfect foam my next project.

My espresso maker now occupies a place of honor on the counter next to my coffee pot; they are both black and silver and I like how natural they look together. I can't help but wonder, though...how long before the coffee maker ends up in the laundry room?

The espresso maker is winking its "ready" light. It could be my imagination, but I swear it is smiling. Make it a doppio.

Jewish Penicillin

It is quite possible that there is no other food more authentic to the American Jewish experience than matzoh ball soup. Merely saying the words conjures images of “bubbe” (the Yiddish term for grandmother) standing over a simmering pot of chicken broth.

I often meet non-Jews who have heard of matzoh ball soup but never experienced it. Indeed, they confess, they are puzzled by how a cracker can be made into a ball, and why in G-d’s name it would be served in soup. Those of us who grew up with it never really thought much about the incongruity of this notion because we understand the role of matzoh in our collective Jewish history and culture.

Matzoh is most closely linked to Passover, one of the most important holidays on the Hebrew calendar. The holiday comes from the story of Exodus, wherein the bible says that God inflicted ten plagues upon the Egyptians before Pharaoh would release the Israelites, who he had been holding in slavery. The tenth plague was the killing of firstborn sons, however, the Israelites were instructed to mark their homes with the blood of a spring lamb, and upon seeing this, the spirit of the Lord “passed over” these homes and their sons were spared.

So how does Matzoh fit in here? The story goes that when Pharaoh freed the Israelites they left in such a hurry that they could not wait for bread to rise. As they traveled through the dessert with the unleavened dough in their knapsacks, the desert sun baked the dough into hard, flat bread now called matzoh.

In observance of our people's suffering in the desert and their exodus from slavery in Egypt, no leavened bread is eaten during Passover, and Matzoh is one of the primary symbols of the holiday.

We are a resourceful people, however, and modern Jewish cooks have found a thousand ways to make Passover’s lack of baked goods tolerable, including making matzoh into cakes and other goodies that pretty closely resemble leavened products. Sort of.

This usually requires lots of eggs, even more egg whites, a lot of beating and whisking...and a whole lot of luck. As any cook knows, soufflé-type baked goods are notoriously challenging and unpredictable. To complicate matters further, no flour can be used; only matzoh meal (ground matzoh) or matzoh cake meal (finely ground matzoh).

Which brings us back to matzoh balls. Since noodles are out of the question during Passover (as are dumplings), Eastern European Jews needed something to put in chicken soup. Hence, the mixture of matzoh meal, melted shortening (usually margarine, but more authentically, chicken fat) and eggs, formed into balls, poached in water, then cooked in chicken stock.

I’m sure you are wondering why I’m bringing up matzoh ball soup during the “Festival of Lights” (Hanukkah) instead of Passover. I actually made the soup about 10 days ago, at the behest of my son. Like most good Jewish boys, he has his mamma wrapped around his little finger, and when he came down with a nasty cold just a few days before his birthday, I asked him what he wanted to eat.

“Matzoh ball soup,” he said, without hesitation.

Generations of Jewish mothers have prescribed chicken soup (Jewish penicillin) for colds, a home remedy that has been passed from mother to daughter over centuries. Turns out they were right; scientists have identified an enzyme in chicken broth that has been proven to relieve congestion. Lesson here? “You should listen to your mother!!”

I could have gone to the deli and picked up an order of soup in a cardboard container, and it would have been tasty. After all, making it is time consuming. But my maternal instincts kicked in, and off to my nearest Hiller's store I went for the basic ingredients.

The soup is always best made with home-made chicken stock, but with a sick boy at home, I didn’t have time to stew a chicken or two (or better yet, the bones of a roasted chicken) so I used packaged chicken broth instead.

The recipe calls for seasoning the matzoh meal with just salt and pepper, but I always add parsley flakes, some shallot salt (from Penzey’s, it’s fantastic), a pinch or two each of marjoram, thyme, and rubbed sage and lots of freshly ground black and white pepper. Matzoh balls shouldn’t be spicy – Jewish food seldom is, and this is comfort food, after all – but I’ve eaten enough flavorless matzoh balls to know that some herbs and spices can make a big difference.

This is the chicken fat (also known as “schmaltz” but that’s covered in another blog) in its solid state at room temp. Available already rendered in little tubs at Hiller's. 

Now melted and ready to be mixed with the eggs and matzoh meal....

Mixing the eggs, water, maztoh meal, chicken fat and seasonings.

The mixture then rests in the refrigerator.

There is great debate (but of course) among Jewish cooks as to whether the matzoh balls should be firm and chewy, or soft and fluffy. My family was always of the “soft and fluffy” school of matzoh balls, so although the recipe calls for resting the dough for 30 minutes, I give it a full hour, often more. This is really what determines the texture; how much time the matzoh meal has to absorb the liquid in the mixture.

After the allotted time, use wet hands to shape the dough into 1” balls. I make mine a little bigger than that since the dough is a little fluffier after resting for over an hour.

The shaped balls are then carefully dropped into gently boiling water, making sure they don’t stick to the bottom of the pan before they float to the top.

They simmer, covered, for about 30 minutes, until they are fluffy and have increased in size by about 1/3 or more.

A bowl of finished matzo balls (foreground),

and more waiting for their turn in the stockpot (background).

While the matzoh balls are cooking, I cut up some carrots and celery and put it in a large saucepan with the chicken broth. By the time the matzoh balls were finished, the celery and carrots were tender and had given the packaged broth a sweet, freshly-made flavor.




Comfort…

…and joy.

(Oy! That hair!)

A Shiksa's Guide to Making Latkes

A Shiksa’s Guide to Making Latkes

Hanukkah--the holiday with as many spellings as Liz Taylor has last names--is early this year, meaning you've just barely finished the turkey leftovers and you're now staring down a10 pound bag of potatoes and wondering what you did with that kosher caterer's business card. And if you're anything like me, the product of a Jewish father and a gentile mother (which technically makes you a shiksa...a non-Jewish woman) you're likely paralyzed with fear.

So you have two choices:  Read this article or take a xanax. Or both.


But first, a little background about Hanukkah.  On this holiday, Jewish people celebrate their victory over a tyrant king and the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem. As the story goes, a small quantity of oil to light the Temple's menorah miraculously lasted eight days. So naturally, we celebrate by frying stuff in oil. Get it? You still with me?In the continuum of Jewish holidays, Hanukkah is truly the most fun. After all, we don't have to go to Temple or deprive ourselves of food.  We have spinning dreydels, chocolate coins wrapped in silver and gold, candles to light, gifts to open and, most importantly, pounds and pounds of potatoes and onions to shred and fry. And who doesn’t love a holiday that entails scraping the skin off your knuckles and spending hours slaving over skillets of blistering hot canola?

So in order to prepare us all for this festive occasion, I thought I would share the proper technique for making latkes, with special instructions for the novice latke maker (and any shiksas among us who might find themselves in the unfortunate position of hosting this year’s festivities).

Please note:  It is important that you not skip any of these steps or you'll be the topic of conversation at next week's mahjong game, and it won't be pretty.

Latkes: Preparation, Recipe and Serving Method

Here are instructions and a recipe for real Jewish Latkes; the kind that stink up your house for weeks (especially if you make 90 of them for your family Hanukkah party and leave the next day for two weeks in Boca).

Just ten easy steps.  (What, you have something else to do besides fry latkes for 14 people?)

Preparation:

1) Argue for several months (beginning around Rosh Hashana) over who is making the latkes this year. When you are chosen, passive-aggressively mutter under your breath that yours are better, anyway.

2) Phone all of the other people involved (namely those who weren't chosen to make latkes and a few of your unsuspecting shiksa* girlfriends) and whine until they agree to come over to help you. (Your shiksa girlfriends will only fall for this once, so choose wisely.)

3) Cover your stove and other work surfaces to protect them from hot oil (foil works well). In fact, draping your entire kitchen in Reynolds Wrap and having a Hazmat team at the ready would not be overkill. (Those guys that cleaned up after that BP spill in the Gulf would be perfect.)

4) Put on your oldest "schmatta" (an old rag of an outfit) because the smell will never leave your clothing. Never. Ever. Trust me. Please.

5) Prepare, Prepare, Prepare: Open all the windows in the kitchen and turn on the exhaust fan. Close all bedroom doors and put rolled towels underneath. Turn off the furnace so the smell isn't circulated through the house. Buy an extra furnace filter to install after the holiday. Find the fire extinguisher and place it within easy reach, even though it's 20 years old, in need of recharging and you have no idea how to use it.

6) Fill several skillets with about 1/2 inch of oil, tisk-tisking as to "oy, so much fat!" the entire time and loudly debating the merits of sunflower/corn/canola oil with your latke-making partners and insisting that your choice of oil (whichever it is) is best, even if you used something different last year and you're only using canola this year because it was 2/$5 at Kroger last week.

7) Call your mother or grandmother six times while you are mixing the batter to make sure you have the proportions right and then cry until she comes over to help you. (Special note for shiksas: under NO circumstances call your Jewish mother-in-law for advice; this would be admitting weakness and it’s all down hill from there.)

8) Loudly yell "oy!" each time a tiny splatter of grease touches your skin and complain that your back hurts after the 3rd batch. (If you'd stand up straight like I told you, you wouldn't have this problem.) Take a motrin. At this point, those of us with shiksa blood begin drinking heavily. I find sparkling wine goes nicely with latke making, although grain alcohol straight from the bottle will do in a pinch. Surely it's no coincidence that "vodka" is the only word in the English language that rhymes with "latke".

9) Repeat until all potatoes are fried and your kitchen, clothing, hair and the dog smell like a White Castle restaurant at 2 am. (Only a shiksa would know from that smell.)

And now for step ten.

I'm pretty sure every single latke cook learned to make these crispy delights as a result of having been suckered into helping someone else make them and that no real recipe for them exists.  Now, pay attention because I'm only telling you this once.

10) This is really just one step...be sure to read it all the way through; I wouldn't want you to be the subject of gossip in the locker room at the JCC next week. It's bad enough they're already talking about you at mahj.

RECIPE:

Large russet potatoes (many pounds)
medium yellow onions (about a 1 to 5 ratio to potatoes)
eggs (a dozen or more)
matzo meal or flour (many handfuls)
salt (several teaspoons per batch)
pepper (smidgens per batch...oy, so spicy!)
oil (more than you can imagine)

a) shred or grate potatoes and place the shreds in a bowl of cold water until all potatoes are shredded and you're bleeding from every knuckle

b) grate onions and put in a separate bowl (a gas mask is helpful here)

c) beat about half the eggs and season them with salt and pepper

Then, using a separate large bowl:

d) pull about four or five big handfuls of shredded potatoes from the water and squeeze the moisture back into the bowl of potatoes and water until they are pretty dry (alternately you can squeeze in cheesecloth) and dump into another large bowl

e) add a handful of or so of onion to the bowl with the potatoes

f) add a small handful of flour or matzo meal until the potatoes are very lightly coated, mixing with your hands

g) add enough egg to well moisten the potatoes; the mixture should be wet but not soupy

h) at this point experienced latke makers will spoon up some of the potato starch that has settled to the bottom of the original bowl of potatoes and stir this into the mixture, as well.  This was a trick I learned from my mother-in-law.  Genius.

i) fill your palm with some of the potato mixture and pat it to compress it onto a large spoon or spatula; slide it gently into a skillet containing about 1/2 inch of hot (375) oil...cook until browned on one side; turn over and brown on the other side.  (If you're cooking for a crowd, you'll need multiple skillets going at once. In this case, I recommend holding off on the vodka until after the latkes are made. Four skillets of hot oil can strike fear in the heart of even the most experienced drunken cook.)

j) Drain on a rack and transfer to baking sheets lined with brown paper (cut up grocery bags work great and they're free, unless you're in Illinois in which case they're 7 cents, but that's for another blog) and set aside. Reheat in a hot oven when ready to serve. Once they are cooled you can freeze them and use a paper bag lined cookie sheets to reheat. They reheat really well and are yummy topped with a fried egg at breakfast.

Serving Method: (What, you're shocked that there are twelve steps in the ten-step process? Silly girl.)

11) Fill two platters with hot latkes; repeat as needed. (It is best for the latke chef to plan to remain standing for the duration of the meal. Have a vodka.)

12) Serve with sugar free apple sauce and low fat sour cream and act surprised when your gentile guests find the incongruity of this puzzling.

Happy Hanukkah...Chanukah...whatever.

PS:  They have really nice frozen latkes at Trader Joe's.  Just be sure to fry up a pan full of onions before your party and nick your knuckles a few times for effect. I promise I won't tell.


This material is the sole property of the writer and may not be copied or republished without permission.

Salad Days

Nicoise Salad on a summer evening.

A crisp white rhone was the perfect pairing.

Craig did a GREAT job grilling the tuna!

-------------------------------------------------------

If you grew up in the sixties or seventies the term “salad,” more often than not, meant a bowl of soggy iceberg lettuce garnished with some pink tomatoes, swimming in some creamy pink or acidic “Italian” bottled dressing.

Even today, many restaurants still serve a version of this as a “side salad” with a few stale croutons on top. Luckily our salad horizons have been broadened.

There are two basic types of salad: simple and composed.

Simple salads include anything where the ingredients are tossed together. Greek salads with beets, olives and tangy feta; fattoush salad, the middle-eastern mixture of cucumbers, onions, parsley, tomatoes and toasted pita in a tart, minty dressing; spicy Thai salads of chicken, cashews and apples, and the new classic “Michigan salad” of baby greens, apples, walnuts and blue cheese. And of course, the ubiquitous (but usually poorly prepared) Caesar. The possibilities are endless.

The composed salad—a salade composée—is a salad in which an assortment of ingredients are arranged artfully on a plate and drizzled with dressing, usually a vinaigrette. Quite often these salads are intended to be the main course, rather than a side dish or first course. A well-composed salad should have a balance of colors, flavors and textures, and even temperatures (cool veggies and warm meats). Your imagination is the only limit.

The Cobb Salad, a ridiculously fattening combination of blue cheese, chicken, bacon, avocado and egg (oh, sure, there’s lettuce underneath, but what’s the point, really?), became popular in the eighties and is a modern version of a composed salad.

But by far the most famous and classic composed salad is “salade niçoise”, a specialty of Nice, France that made all over the world today. Traditional ingredients should include crisp haricot verts, hard-boiled eggs, anchovies, potatoes and tuna, but to say that chefs have taken some license with the ingredients would be an understatement.

Call me “old school”, but I love a classic nicoise a la Julia Child, the doyenne of French cooking. Her recipe is complicated but simple, and a timeless classic, like the lady herself. I do deviate from Julia’s classic in one way, though; by using seared ahi tuna instead of canned. But it’s tasty either way.

Presentation is everything with this salad. Think of the plate as an artist's palette when you arrange the various colors and textures.

Hubby (“The Grillmaster”) seared the tuna to perfectoin. We ate “al fresco” on a beautiful summer evening with a crisp white Cotes du Rhone.

Don’t let the lengthy instructions deter you from making this salad. It’s a perfect summer dinner or patio lunch and worth the time and effort when summer’s bounty of tomatoes, green beans and lettuce make this salad really sing.

Ingredients
• 6 eggs, hard boiled and peeled
• 6 to 8 red-skinned or yukon gold potatoes, of a uniform, medium size (2-inch diameter)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 pound very fresh, crisp, young, string-less green beans, blanched and chilled
• 2 tablespoons salt
• 1 tablespoon finely minced shallots or scallions
• 1/3 cup dry white wine
• 1/3 cup cold water
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 3 to 4 tablespoons excellent olive oil
• 1 large head Boston lettuce
• Oil and Lemon Dressing , recipe follows
• 3 to 4 ripe red tomatoes quartered through the stem or 12 to 16 ripe full-flavored cherry tomatoes halved through the stem
• 1 (2-ounce) can or bottle anchovy fillets packed in olive oil
• 1 (8-ounce) can oil-packed chunk white tuna, drained (or seared fresh tuna, as you prefer)
• Fresh lemon juice
• 1 cup good mayonnaise
• 2 tablespoons capers (fine fat ones if possible)
• 1/2 cup small Italian or French black olives, pits in, and packed in brine
• Fresh parsley sprigs

Directions

Scrub the potatoes under running water with a vegetable brush, and place in a steamer basket over a saucepan containing 2 inches of water. Bring to the boil, lower heat to moderate, cover closely, and steam about 20 minutes or until cooked through?be sure they are really cooked through, cut one in half and taste carefully. Peel while still hot, halve them, cut into slices 1/4-inch thick.

In a 2-quart bowl, combine salt, shallots, wine, and water. Lift the potatoes gently into a the 2-quart bowl. Using a bulb baster, so as not to break the slices, baste the potatoes with the liquid. Taste for seasoning adding more salt, if needed, grinds of pepper, and several spoonfuls of the olive oil. Baste several times as the potatoes cool.

Shortly before serving so that all elements will remain at their freshest, toss the lettuce leaves in a large bowl with just enough dressing to coat them. Taste the potatoes, adding a little more seasoning if necessary. Halve the eggs. Toss the green beans with a spoonful of the dressing. Lightly salt the cut surfaces of the tomatoes and dribble over a little dressing. Open and drain the anchovies, separating them with a form. Drain the canned tuna, flake gently, and season with lemon juice and pepper.

 Arrange the largest lettuce leaves nicely around the sides of the serving bowl or platter, and make a bed of the remaining leaves in the center, where you will pile the potatoes. Place the egg yolks against the lower part of the potatoes, spoon a dollop of mayonnaise over each yolk, and decorate with crossed strips of anchovies and a sprinkling of capers. Divide the beans, tomatoes, and tuna into 6 portions, and place at strategic intervals around the potatoes.

Survey the platter, scattering black olives and tucking parsley springs wherever needed. Serve as soon as possible.

Oil and Lemon Dressing:
• 1/2 lemon, zested and juiced (at least 1 tablespoon)
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• 1/2 tablespoon finely minced shallots or scallions
• 1/2 cup excellent olive oil
Grate the lemon peel into a screw-top jar, add the salt, several grinds of pepper, mustard, minced shallots, and 1 tablespoon lemon juice. Shake well to blend, then pour in the oil and shake vigorously again. Taste for seasoning, adding more lemon, salt and pepper if needed.
Yield: about 2/3 cup

Memories in Liquid Form

Memories in Liquid Form
Category: Food and Restaurants


Over the past few weeks, on a local "wine and spirits" discussion board, the group's resident, self-appointed mixology expert posted an eloquent missive in praise of one of America's first cocktails, the Sazerac.



A sazerac is one of the oldest known cocktails and a classic New Orleans creation, with a base of rye whiskey, flavored with a drop of Pernod (in place of the original absynthe) and Peychaud bitters, a type of cocktail bitters that originated in New Orleans. The sharpness of these flavors is cut with a dash of simple syrup and the entire thing is shaken and served straight up, icy cold.

I drank my first Sazerac with my first husband , in New Orleans, and hadn't had one in at least 15 years. So this past weekend, I amassed the ingredients needed for a sazerac and had one the other evening. My favorite liquor store(s) were out of Pernod so I used anisette and it was just fine like that. The bitters are what really flavors the drink anyway; the Pernod is just for scent.

One sip of that lovely elixer and I was back at a white-clothed table enjoying my first taste of New Orleans, at Galatoire's in the French Quarter.

It was the 1980, before the world discovered "blackened" everything and no one had heard of a chef who used the term "BAM!" while cooking.

New Orleans then was less "sanitized for your tourism pleasure". And this was a good thing.

Bourbon street had more strip clubs and fewer storefronts dispensing artificially-colored "daquiri" slushes. You were warned not to step one foot off the Rue Royale or Bourbon. The genteel antique shops on Royal Street were a stark contrast to the debauchery and drunken excess of Bourbon. What New Orleans was in the recent years before Katrina, it was ten-fold 20 years ago.

The cuisine in most places in New Orleans is Creole, not "Cajun". In order to find Cajun food, one had to venture along the River Road and eat at little mom & pop places with grease-stained table cloths. Boiled crawfish and jamabalaya were washed down with Dixie beer and were offered mostly out in peasant country; Creole reigned in New Orleans at Commander's and Brennan's and Galatoire's. And Galatoire's, to this day, is the spot where old, wealthy New Orleans families gather on Friday nights to relax after a long week and catch up on the local gossip.

I vividly remember my first creole meal, at a table for two in the middle of Galatoire's brightly-lit bustle. A first course of shrimp remoulade, a dish I quickly learned to cook at home, and ethereal Oysters Rockefeller, a delicacy I knew of but had never experienced. Although it was invented up the street at Antoine's, Galatoire's version was as authentic as the original; plump gulf oysters baked with their famous spinach and herbsaint (another absynthe substitute, this made in New Orelans) topping.

I also experienced my first raw oyster on this trip. I grew up eating clams on the half shell, but until this trip oysters were a bit outside my gastronimical reach. Until I polished off two dozen in one sitting at Felix's oyster house down the street from Galatoires. But I digress.

As we ordered our main course and I sipped my first sazerac (of many on that trip) my ex pointed out the "Yankees" at the next table.

"How do you know they're Yankees?" I asked.

"Only a Yankee," he said, "would order coffee before dinner."

Poisson Meuniére Amandine followed, a crisp piece of impossibly fresh trout floating in a tidepool of browned butter and almonds. Served with crunchy young green beans and Brabant Potatoes (what we yankees would probably call home fries) seasoned, cubed and fried, sprinkled with parsley.

We had a liquid dessert; Café Brulot; coffee spiced with orange and lemon peel, cloves, brandy and Orange Curacao.

The Yankees, he pointed out, were still drinking plain old coffee.




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