The Dinner Files

Paul Feig, in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine’s profile of him, explained it perfectly in the pull quote pictured above. 

For me it went like this:

The Man (while waving wads of dirty cash in your face): Can you do this thing for which we feel you are totally and uniquely qualified? We love everything you do like this. Please, will you do it? 

Me: You’re right, I AM uniquely qualified. Plus, I like cash.

The Man: How do you, who are so uniquely qualified, see this working best?

Me: I see it being X, Y, and Z because it seems like everything like this is A, B, and C. A is okay, but it’s obvious, and B and C are just plain untrue.

The Man: So true. That sounds great. You do X and Y and Z. X, Y and Z! That’s genius! (pause) One thing, it seems like we can’t include H.

Me: That’s okay. How about L?

The Man: No, L won’t work either.

Me: Okay, we could use M instead.

The Man: That’s fabulous! Other letters might be okay too, if M doesn’t work. But no P. Absolutely no P.

[time passes...]

The Man: We don’t like Z. It’s all zig-zagging. The lines go this way and that way and they make a…

Me: A Z?

The Man: Exactly! And Y is made out of two lines joined in a V with a line at the bottom.

Me: But that’s what a Y is… is X okay?

The Man: Well, it’s… it’s two lines that just sort of cross and make an…

Me: An X?

The Man: Right. But we think we can work with it. We’re going to pull them apart a bit and stick something in the middle, across, and then it wil be more like an…

Me: An A.

The Man: Yeah, that’s going to work just fine.

Me: So you don’t want X, Y, and Z?

The Man: We’re thinking maybe A, B, and C would be better.

(silence)

The Man: And M isn’t working. How about H?

Me: uh, huh

The Man: And where’s P? Why isn’t there any P?

I then made a vow to construct a new life in which when The Man calls I say no, or hang up, or don’t even answer. Maybe in this new fantasy life The Man doesn’t even have my number.  

So we ate that soup above for dinner last night. We actually ate several different versions of that soup–with me grilling my beleaguered dashing husband and jet-lagged broken-armed son about which version was creamier and thicker and more “indulgent” and better coated their poor hungry mouths and whether they could taste the tofu or pears or crack or whatever I put in there.

I can’t believe I buy something with that name, but I do. There is almost always at least one Ethnic Gourmet palak paneer frozen entree in my freezer. They are for emergencies. Like when I’m home alone and obsessed with needlepoint, obsessed to an extent that maybe I’ve even injured myself. You see, I can’t seem to bend my thumb quite all the way anymore. Maybe I should take a break….

Yes, when left to my own devices I will relish in a dinner of cereal or toast. So as the sun set last night and I realized I should put down the needlepoint* and have something to eat, I toasted up some 2-day-old walnut bread, slathered it with the remains of some sheep milk ricotta, and sprinkled the whole thing with salt and pepper. I used a “green garlic salt” my aunt brought up to the cabin this summer and which I boldly took home for my own use. Yes, I could have left it there for posterity, visiting it every summer until I have grandchildren of my own to show it to, but it’s so tasty, it seemed disrespectful not to put it to good use. 

* As some of you know, I love the crafts. Love them! I quilt, I knit, I embroider, I learned how to crochet this summer. But I’ve never needlepointed. My grandmother did, though. Awhile ago my mother asked her to needlepoint a cover for a window seat. Gram didn’t want to start such a big project because, quite frankly, she was hoping to die before too long. I promised I’d finish it if she died before the final stitch. I said it almost jokingly because at the time–and based on her insanely long-lived parents–it seemed pretty clear to me she would finish the cover and have time to do several more. Things didn’t quite work out that way. So this summer I got my mom to dig out the very unfinished project. She found the canvas okay, but what must have been the massive amount of yarn to complete it had gone missing. No aunt nor cousin would cop to taking it or giving it away or throwing it out. So this weekend I headed myself downtown to a needlepoint store, spent a small fortune on yarn, and began stitching. Have you ever done needlepoint? My god, it takes forever. FOREVER! I spent about 6 hours yesterday stitching and covered maybe 3 square inches. Were that I was exaggerating for effect. I am not.

But like all crafting, it’s the process more than the product I love. I do love the products when they’re done, of course. But it is the still, mediative work of making stitch and stitch, slowly and methodically, that takes me a bit out of time. Then, after all that meditation, I have things to give people. Ever hear David Rakoff talk about giving people his homemade crafts as gifts? He’s says it like a runner doing a few laps and saying “Happy Birthday!” So true.

Let’s just file this one under “embarrassing,” shall we?

I came home after a long day out working and errands and who knows what all to an empty house. I was famished. Famished, I say! But didn’t want to cook. I wanted to listen to the presidential debate because I am a responsible, engaged citizen. So even though I knew the whole thing would drive me crazy and was most extremely unlikely to change my vote (!), I listened. Yet I was needed something substantial and tasty and hot to eat. I turned to the freezer. And in that freezer I found some tamales. Red chile pork tamales. Red chile pork tamales from Leona’s in Santa Fe. Red chile pork tamales from Leone’s in Santa Fe leftover from when we had a tamale taste-off at Sunset. If one of my former co-workers is reading they might let you know when that was. Me? I’m not telling. It’s a deep-freeze. Things last forever. And they looked fine and tasted great and I’m alive today. My only question is how I had forgotten to eat them sooner.

The leftover leftover potatoes and spinach with yogurt made a tasty supper for one (especially with all the browned–not burnt!–bits from the double-reheated pan of potatoes; ask my mother, father, or brother–the parts closest to burnt are the best). The boys are out of town and I spent the day making and eating different kinds of popcorn (!?!?!) on a professional level, you know, as part of my job because my job is bizarre. So just a bit of leftovers was perfection.

I’ve been making the same dal for years. Seriously. Since college. That’s years. And then last night I was distracted and let the butter brown. Oh well. I was making it to round out leftovers, so I wasn’t going to waste good butter and just went ahead with the recipe.

I struck gold while mindlessly digging for dirt.

Brown Butter Dal

I serve this with lots of things, but it commonly shows up with rice and some quickly cooked greens as a pretty easy, quick, and highly nutritious meal when I’m not up for much cooking. 

1 cup chana dal or yellow split peas

4 cups water

5 thick slices ginger

1/2 tsp. turmeric

1/2 tsp. salt

4 Tbsp. butter

1 to 2 tsp. cumin seeds

4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced

1 hot chile, thinly sliced or 1/4 tsp. cayenne (optional–seriously, sometimes you want something spicy and sometimes you don’t–this dal is good both ways)

1. Put legumes, water, ginger, tumeric, and salt in a medium pot and bring to a boil. Lower heat to maintain a low but steady simmer. Put a lid on a bit askew and cook until legumes are tender, 20 to 30 minutes. Add up to another cup of water during cooking if the beans start to look dry. This dal is very flexible–you can add more water to make a soupy dal or cook off any extra liquid at the end to make a drier dal that can be eaten with a fork.  
2. Melt butter in a small frying pan over medium heat. Cook, swirling butter a bit to help it brown evenly, until butter turns light brown. Add cumin seeds and cook until they start to turn color, about 30 seconds. Add garlic and chile, if you’re using it, and cook about 1 minute.
3. Stir brown butter and its many flavors into the dal. Fish out the ginger slices and serve hot or warm.

Say it with me: green bean slicer. Now, I am not a gadget girl. No herb mincers for me. I even threw out my pastry cutter because 1) it takes up space, and 2) I hardly ever used it, because 3) my fingers work better than it ever could.

But when I saw this green bean slicer–yes that is it’s stated purpose on the package–at Community Thrift about 5 years ago (I was accompanying my Very Tall Cousin Sam who needed a jacket because he had lost his; he also needed a pair of socks for a job interview and talked a woman at a shoe store into opening a package of three to sell him a single pair), I couldn’t resist. If I remember correctly Very Tall Cousin Sam and I both thought the $1.75 price tag was a bit out of line, but I just had to see if it worked.

It does. If you want really thinly sliced green beans. Which, when I make green beans with onion paste from Madhur Jaffrey’s Invitation to Indian Cooking (p. 150, my copy just opens to the page since my dashing husband adores them so), I do. So it’s a match made in heaven. Except for the 357 days a year when I don’t make green beans with onion paste. Then I have to make space in my limited cupboards for a truly absurd gadget.

The green beans were part of a glorious meal. Again, I was cleaning out the fridge, but I felt like cooking. Ernie was home because he had broken his arm in two (2!) places the afternoon before (yes, if you’ve worked in pedatrics or at an emergency room you know quite well he fell off the monkey bars) so I was home with him all day and by 3 felt the urge to cook. Cook a lot. Ernie wondered if guests were coming. Luckily, when I start cooking dinner at 3 in the afternoon I can log it as “work” as long as I come up with a recipe or two in the process.

So with the green beans (to which I added some diced red pepper–both sweet and hot), we also had some spicy sauteed okra (I declare myself a genius for brainstorming this recipe), potatoes in cilantro “sauce,” some spinach in yogurt, and spicy lemon pickles. Everything but the pickles had ample amounts of cumin seeds. Yum.

This was a hit at my house, but that may have been because for a minute there is looked like no one was willing to make dinner and yet we were all famished. I served this Late Summer Vegetable Stew on some polenta (I made it with some vegetable broth I had used in some recipe development for someone else–yuck! what’s the deal? anyone out there have a brand of vegetable broth they like? a recipe so I can make my own?).

Ernie joined me on a little day trip up to Bodega Bay yesterday. He patiently climbed trees and played in a ditch while I attended to a photo shoot. He was rewarded with this ear of grilled corn and proceeded to entertain the crowd with crazy antics like this.

By the time we headed home we were starving, because an ear of corn only fills a person up so much and as any food writer knows, there is oddly no food to eat at food photo shoots. By the time everyone is done shooting the food it is old and sad and you’ve been looking at it for way too long to find it even remotely appetizing. Funny, huh?

So E and I stopped off at The Boat House in Bodega Bay for fish-and-chips (except we substituted onion rings for the chips) and some bbq oysters. We waited a long time for the oysters. We had fully finished the fish and were sitting and waiting for some time when the runner finally came out with our platter of oysters. He put them on the table and said, “they’re a bit crispy, but they’re still good.”

What? Are you kidding me? Are you seriously serving me overcooked oysters? On purpose? Even the lovely deck setting and brightly shining sun couldn’t make up for that. We each tried one and decided to head home. The idea of waiting for more of the same was just too much.

Has anyone ever had one? I hadn’t, so I made one. (Sorry for my absence–too much recipe development for others that I can’t reveal and that makes me feel sad on the inside and less inclined to blog because who wants to read about that?) 

But last night! The corn souffle! It was so light! So airy! So “like an omelet but so much lighter!” (thanks dashing husband). So “I ate the whole thing!” (thanks Ernie). See how to make your own.  

Before the souffle, however, my Very Tall Cousin Sam stopped by with his Viking Goddess Girlfriend and her Baby Sister (basically, she has the same look and style but with dark hair–which I mention only because the entire extended family is obsessed with VGG–I include myself–and if they could get a look at her younger sister, on the left below, they would LOSE THEIR MINDS because she is just like VGG–including her willingness to see Ernie’s room and watch him kick a ball and listen to him count to 100 in English and 29 in Spanish and anything else he would possibly think of to keep their beautiful, Nordic attention–but “dark and mysterious” which you would think being Norwegian would keep you from being, but no, which is weird to post about because I was taking pictures while they were here and they were asking about the blog, so they’ll probably read this…, but they really are just so beautiful and not in a creepy model-way but in a stunning real-person way and next to them my dashing husband and I really do look like odd, albeit fabulous-looking, trolls).  

We all had a fine time, the tall and the gorgeous and the trolls all together: cocktails, olives, and Ernie antics at hand (did I mention how my brother taught Ernie how to play “exploding apple baseball” from the fruits of our apple tree during his recent visit? no? really? seems I would have mentioned that….).

My favorite part of the visit, however, was definitely when Sam got up, went out to his car, returned to the living room, and pulled some plastic-wrapped prosciutto from his pocket for us all to share. Smooth move, exlax.  

We had to stop Ernie from Bogarting the “prosciut.” I mention this just in case anyone was questioning his Italian heritage, which I’m pretty sure they weren’t.