The Dinner Files

Look at that beef. Pretty perfect looking, wouldn’t you say? How about if I told you I grilled it while wearing a knee immobilizer?

I have and will happily eat rare beef. Hell, I don’t mind a portion of steak tartare every now and again. But I really prefer a steak at a true à point, that state of medium-rareness where everything is a lovely rosy pink except for that blush of red at the center. For a larger cut, like this cross-rib roast, I’m an ideal eating companion or audience. If I think I can get away with it, I’ll nab the toasty burnt ends, but if all that’s left on the platter is a slice or two of bloody center cuts I’ll dig in with equal glee.

This roast was prepared as I was taught by my Minnesota predecessors. It was coated with a generous amount of salt, black pepper, and where they would use garlic powder I got all California on that roast and used fresh minced garlic. It was put on a hot grill and seared all over before the heat was brought down for it to cook a bit more gently. After it was off the grill and resting (the seriously most important step in cooking meat that way way way too many people pass over), we threw the asparagus on the grill until it was charred on the ends, at which point we took it out of its misery, drizzled it with olive oil and scattered a sort of crazy amount of lemon zest on it.

The extent to which, after surgery and a burial and long plane rides and leaving concourses full of pitying glances in my wake as I made my way through airports in a knee brace, my mouth watered while preparing and eating this dinner made me think of that old belief that beef “feeds the blood.” My blood, I’m afraid, needs a bit of feeding these days.

We had our first asparagus of the year last night. It arrived in the farm box, as promised in last week’s farm box newsletter (the farmer keeps us updated on all manner of things happening at the farm and in the world of California agriculture, which really is part of the fun of the farm box). As much of it as we eat every spring, we hadn’t had it in so long that Ernest had forgotten all about it. I took great pleasure in watching him discover its clean grassy taste all over again. As the season wears on I’ll start making soups and custards and salads and such. But for now I’m keeping it even more simple: I heated the oven to 400, trimmed the asparagus, laid it in a gratin dish (although any old baking dish or even a sheet pan or large piece of foil would do), drizzled a bit of olive oil on top as well as sprinkled on some kosher salt, and roasted them for about 15 minutes. The high heat intensifies the flavors and, like all cooking, tenderizes the vegetable. Once out of the oven I grated a bit of meyer lemon zest over the top (although any old lemon zest or even a squirt of juice would be tasty). We ate them with our fingers while the gnocchi with ricotta and greens (made with a bunch of red chard and a bunch of golden beet greens) baked.

Speaking of which… a friend told me she thought that recipe needed some “melty cheese.” I thought she was nuts. Cheesier? I thought, why that would make it too cheesey. Then I made it with the regular supermarket brand part skin ricotta, which was all they carried at the little market I stopped at, instead of whole milk ricotta…. Oh my. Yes. If you make it with part skim it definitely needs a little something something to keep the cheesey part from baking into crumbly dry bits. Um, some cream? Kind of defeats the “part skim” aspect of things, doesn’t it? I’m thinking that instead of parmesan you would need to use something softer, less aged, more melty. Fontina or a young pecorino. As for me and my future with this dish (and Ernest luvs it as much as I do, so it’s sticking around because while my dashing husband does not luv it he happily tolerates it even though it comes dangerously close to his much hated “casserole” – I know, I know, but please don’t tell him that it is, in fact, a casserole), I’ll be making the extra effort to buy the whole milk ricotta.

p.s. Remember that creamy spicy tomato sauce from the other night? It ends up that if you let it cool down to room temperature it makes a delicious dip. Dee-li-cious. My dashing husband and I stood around dipping cauliflower florets into it and trying to figure out if it was weird or if you could actually just serve it as a dip. We decided you woudl never guess it wasn’t a dip. Go forth! Dip!

May I highly recommend keeping some tamales in your freezer? My lord, but they make a quick, delicious dinner when you’re maybe not so much in the mood to cook or otherwise inspired.

While Ernie would like to live on tamales and other carb-heavy fare alone, my dashing husband and I had both had late, big lunches. So, instead of tamales my aunt threw in a plastic bag for us to take home after my cousin’s graduation party last weekend (thanks Nancy!), we tucked into this lovely spring salad. Mixed baby greens, thinly sliced raw asparagus, and a generous few handfuls of fava beans (see how to double-shell them). Each item tossed in a vinaigrette made from 3 parts left-over artichoke-curing olive oil and 1 part left-over vinegar from pickled garlic before the whole thing was sprinkled with some slightly over-toasted pine nuts. I used the last bit of that dressing, itself made from the last bits of the last jars of each from last year’s batches.

So Sunday’s complete insanity will pay off with much delicious vinaigrette as well as scads of impressive antipasti plates. That’s a real comfort.

Two bunches of asparagus in the fridge and a desire for something a bit light and clean led to this quick and simple dinner (I used this recipe but added chopped green onions with the garlic and a 1-lb. container of tofu cut into bite-size pieces added with the asparagus). I prepped all the ingredients and cooked the aromatics (garlic, ginger, green onions) and started up the rice maker, then Ernie and I drove to the airport and picked up my dashing husband. Back at the casa the rice was ready; I cooked the tofu and asparagus. We ate within five minutes. Then it was my turn to pack again.

A friend had a birthday party on the shores of Lake Berryessa yesterday. As luck would have it, Ernie’s school was closed for a long weekend paint-job. We grabbed his best friend from school, packed up a cooler and some beach towels, and headed north to play hooky. Not a cloud in the sky, water just warm enough for me and children to play in, and a rented boat for waterskiing made for a lazy, exhausting afternoon.

We got the fire going before dark and started throwing things on the grill. Sweet potatoes, baby potatoes, asparagus, and sausage. Lots and lots of sausage. Plus a rib-eye to share. Manhattans shaken, candles lit, mouths stuffed.

Other party-goers camped out. One of my dashing husband’s few faults is that he doesn’t like to camp. Correction: he doesn’t think he would like to camp. He can’t say for sure because he’s never done it. The boys fell asleep as soon as we hit the highway. We savored the still of a long drive home in the dark.

Someone got creative with the oil, that’s all I can say. Week after week of beets. I’ve roasted them, boiled them, souped them, saladed them. I’ve even grilled them (yes, it works quite nicely). So now I’ve fried them. As chips. Guess what? They were a big hit. Ernie snarfed down a ton and my dashing husband joined him.

And anyone who has deep-fat fried can tell you: once you have the oil going, you might as well keep frying. So the sweet potatoes–sitting so innocently, thinking they were going to be turned into a spicy gratin–were next. Cut into fries and fried. Delicious. Not as crispy as potato french fries, but really good. A bit of chile “lava salt” we got in Kauai was just the ticket to sprinkle on them.

You would think that after five days in New Orleans, I’d want a break from the fried.* And I thought I did. I do. So dinner began in earnest with this gloriously simple but labor-consuming fava bean and pecorino salad. Shell a shit-load of fava beans. Blanch them. Shell them again (seems like torture, I know). Toss with a bit of delicious olive oil and top with tiny cubes of fresh pecorino cheese and a sprinkle of salt. This is a dish best made if you have staff. Staff to do all the shelling and blanching and re-shelling. Today I had that staff in the shape of my lovely intern.

Isn’t it just lovely? Stay tuned next week when we develop a whole slew of fava bean recipes.

The main thrust of the meal was some simple grilled asparagus (brush with oil, grill until charred and tender–about 10 minutes total (covered) and some braised greens with a poached egg on top. Yes, you caught me, that’s a total fall-back meal for me. We all eat it, we all like it, my dashing husband can customize it with hot sauce. I highly recommend it.

* To be honest, I’ve been a bit obsessed with some sweet potato fries I saw at Parkway Bakery and Tavern while I was eating a giant po’ boy–a dining companion saw them too and made a bee line for the counter to order some for us. Alas, the line was long by then, and he gave up. It was for the best, but I’ve been thinking about them ever since.

Beet and yogurt salad. My dashing husband thought the color akin to acrylic paint. It seemed, in fact, that one could palate-knife up quite a creation if it weren’t so damned addictive taste-wise. So, instead of finger-painting or re-doing the dining room walls, we ate it. A lot of it.

Note to self: In the morning, remember you ate beets last night. No need to panic. No need to call the doctor. No need, even, to drink lots of cranberry juice. You’re not dying. You don’t have a bladder infection. You just ate a lot of beets. A lot.

We also filled up on some stir-fried asparagus and spinach rice pilaf.

A green salad was thrown in for good measure because, frankly, we are over-supplied with salad greens.

See what I mean? That’s a weird dinner, right? The kind that results from a lot of recipe-testing that day (we could have also had an asparagus salad, borscht, and a beet and blood orange salad). It’s the kind of dinner I try to explain to people who think we must eat like gods everyday. The food is good, yes, but it’s not always a dream meal, you know?

At least it was vegetable-heavy. If we ate like this everyday we’d never die. Except for the rice. It should have been brown.

As mentioned yesterday, we had some asparagus soup in the fridge at home. With some gremolata swirled in, it hit the spot tonight. We also pretty much finished off the cheeses I’ve been putting out at dinner almost daily for a week.

But the highlight last night was the salad. Red oak lettuce tossed with a vinaigrette made from oil in which baby artichokes had been preserved and vinegar in which garlic had been pickled. I’ll work on getting those recipes to you. It’s a ridiculous amount of work to go to to end up with this salad dressing–and I didn’t know the end point when I put up those artichokes or pickled that garlic–but I’d do it again. The vinaigrette is just that good.

Last night we enjoyed the rest of our faux bubble-squeak creation. As you might have guessed, it was even better the second day–everything got a bit browner and crunchier. Along with it we gorged on a cheese plate (Humbolt Fog, Point Reyes Blue, and some French muenster–it had been a long time since I’d had muenster and MAN did it taste good) and this lovely creation:

Recipe by me, cooked by my new lovely intern. I’d been thinking about setting up an internship for awhile (when I finished cooking school it was restaurant internships or nothing, I went with nothing but would have loved to see recipe work and food writing up close and personal) and my broken-hand syndrome forced the issue.

But the real story here happened before dinner, when Ernie baked cupcakes for his preschool to celebrate his birthday, TODAY! He is five. Five, it ends up, is old enough to pretty much bake cupcakes by yourself–as long as you have someone to deal with the oven and even out the batter in the cups. Oh, and read the “instructions” as Ernie calls them. In terms of batter-licking, though, he required absolutely no help whatsoever.

With some direction, he measured and mixed the dry ingredients, poured in the wet, and mixed it up. He also measured and mixed the chocolatey royal icing we used as a glaze to help the sprinkles adhere and, of course, applied the sprinkles: “two kinds, Mama, I want two kinds of sprinkles.” Ask, my son, and you shall receive.

They turned out pretty darn cute, if I do say so myself.

If you want to make some egg- and dairy-free chocolate cupcakes that are super-moist and yummy, use the batter for this Amazon cake (bake them 20-25 minutes). It just may be the easiest cake to make in the world and I get raves every time I serve it. I stopped telling people how easy it is years ago and started just saying “thanks, yeah, isn’t it great?” We mixed up a triple batch and ended up with 45 cupcakes. We could have gotten to 48 with a bit more planning and measuring, but we only needed 42 (38 for school plus 4 for tonight–more on that tomorrow).