Happy Meal: Shelby’s Baby Shower

My sister and her partner are about to have the first child of a new generation in my immediate family (and in the extended family of first cousins.) So, this gave us reason to celebrate…and a good excuse to concoct a divine meal for 20 ladies and 5 gents.

In some cases, these recipes serve far fewer than 25 people, so adjust according to your guest list. This is a labor-intensive menu, with many fresh ingredients that need cleaning and chopping. But if you have three people working on this (i.e. Super Mom, Sister Extraordinaire, and myself) you can pull it off.

Here’s what we served up:
Signature Cocktail: Cucumber Mint Martini
Signature Appetizer: Cucumber Shrimp Canape (see below)
Signature Lunch Item: Asian Chicken salad in Lettuce Cups

Appetizers:
Stephanie’s Iced Tea
Crudite plate with Olive Parsley Dip – veggies included steamed broccoli (2 min), snap-peas, red peppers, celery and carrots (we made twice this recipe, from Chow.com)
Jacquie’s Pepperoni Bread
Cheese plate
Medjool Dates stuffed with Roquefort (with balsamic glaze) – no recipe needed, make 25 dates.
Shrimp Canape (recipe at end of this entry)

Lunch:
Asian Chicken Salad in Lettuce Cups (3 x’s recipe)
Sesame/Soy marinated london broil, grilled on BBQ and sliced thin
Fennel and Asparagus Salad with Citrus Dressing (2x’s recipe)
Assorted Bread

Desserts:
Whoopie Pies
Caramel Chocolate Bites
Fresh Fruit Salad
Cheese Cake Tarts
Walnut Tarts

I wish I had pictures and recipes for it all, but some of the items were made by other family members. Any questions, please ask!

xo,
g6

Shrimp cucumber and Dill Butter Canapes (from Martha’s hors d’eouvres cookbook, pg 329)
Makes 2 doz

Parsley shallot butter:
8 T (1 stick) plus 1/2 T unsalted butter at room temp
1 large shallot minced to yield 3 T
1 T dry wine wine
1 t kosher salt
1 T finely chopped fresh flat leaf parsley

Heat the 1/2 T butter over med low heat in small skillet. Add shallot and cook til soft, 1-2 min. Add wine and cook til liquid has evaporated, 30 sec. Remove from heat and stir in salt. Cool completely.

Place remaining 8 T butter in med bowl. Add shallot mixture and parsley. Smash with back of fork or wooden spoon til combined.

Transfer butter mixture to sheet of parchment or wax paper. Roll into a 1” wide log. Refrigerate until ready to use.

Canapes:
1/2 c dry white wine
1 T kosher salt
12 med shrimp, heads removed
6 very thin slices of white sandwich bread, crusts removed
3 ounces shallot parsley butter at room temp
1 seedless cucumber
1 small bunch fresh dill

Place wine, 2 c water and slat in saucepan. Simmer and add shrimp. Cook, covered for 1 min until shrimp are opaque. Drain. Cool and then peel and devein.

Heat oven to 300. Arrange bread slices on baking sheet. Dry out in oven and toast slightly 5-7 min. cool on wire rack.

Spread each bread slice with shallot butter. Use mandolin or veggie peeler, slice cucumber lengthwise. Place 2 cucumber slices side by side to cover the surface of bread slice. Trim the crusts. Arrange springs of dill over the cucumber. Cut 2 shrimp in half lengthwise and evenly space the 4 shrimp halves on the slice. Cute each piece o g bread into quarters. Repeat with the remaining ingredients and serve.

Cauli Herb

My ten-year-old self would be so pissed to hear his thirtysomething self admit this, but he loves himself some cauliflower now. Fare thee well, childhood taste buds. We’ve been picking up some unbelievably sweet and flavorful heads of cauliflower from the farm, with flowers that range from purple to green, golden to the classic white, and find each and every variety to be revelatory.

Perhaps I could’ve convinced the young me to choke it down if the stuff was drowned with butter and melted velveeta, but this cauliflower needs nothing more than a bit of steam and a dash of fleur de sel and fresh-cracked pepper. Seriously, this 30-y.o. self kinda wants to eat it for dessert now.

My First Recipe

This insufferable heat mixed with short, worthless thunderstorms keeps my mind numbed by the pressure of 90 degree temps. It has me wondering how on earth we can cook anything, let alone eat! Last night I fell asleep remembering my first recipe which may be the perfect meal for this evening.

I believe I was 6 years old. My mother was sacked with a migraine and my father was at work. While tending to my younger sisters on a hot August night, we soon realized that dinner would not magically appear at the table this evening. I slunk into my mother’s darkened bedroom and moaned, “Mom. We’re hungry.” As my pathetic little voice cut through the peaceful quiet of her cave, she moved her hand to her brow and held it there for a moment, considering the options. “Make your sisters dinner.” “But what do we have?” Now both hands were pressed against her forehead, desperately willing me and my whiny voice out of her room. She thought for awhile and whispered from the back of her throat, “Ice cream and waffles.”

Door slam. Feet run to the kitchen. I tell my sisters to wait on the porch outside because I’m making them dinner. I throw open the freezer and pull out the gallon container of rocky road and a box of 12 Eggo waffles. Plug in the toaster. Pop in ice cold waffles and out come toasted buttery delicious wafers. A dollop of rocky road ice cream on top. Maybe two. Melting chocolate goodness flowing over the finest pastry King Kullen could offer. I take the plates to my sisters, who eagerly await the best dinner of their lives. The feast begins and a raucous thunderstorm kicks up. As we watch the sky ignite, we don’t even use forks. Our sticky fingers pull apart the waffles soft and saturated with chocolate ice cream. We pick nuts off the plate and shriek as the rain pours over gutters creating a scrim of water around the porch. With slick feet we run back to the kitchen for a 2nd helping.

The next day, Mom was back to herself. Ready and able to prepare three hungry girls a hot dog or two. But secretly we all wanted to see her retreat to the bedroom so that we could concoct another outrageously scrumptious dinner ourselves.

In this heat, and in this storm, I wish I had my sisters with me on our porch, slurping up the last bit of melted ice cream with eggo fingers. – g6

Cold Brew Coffee

It doesn't look delicious yet, but just wait...

Two years ago, The Times ran a rather hilarious article about cold brew coffee, ultimately admitting that it was the only way to drink it on ice. I myself tried in vain to merely pour my hot steaming coffee over ice, never quite being able to get the melted ice ratio to equal out and no matter what, there was a bitterness that couldn’t be overcome.

So this summer, I decided to try the cold brew method. We tried it using 9th Street Espresso‘s Honduras bean, which promised notes of citrus and brown sugar. After years of sipping the hot stuff, all of those subtle nuances and flavors of the bean were delivered, each sip revealing another aspect as it all blossomed in my mouth.

What’s funny about it is despite arguments for using mason jars, cheese cloth, hourglass pitchers, and fine mesh sieves (or else ponying up $30 for Toddy cold brew system), at the end of the day, all you really need to make the stuff is your regular hot coffee press pot.

It’s simple: fine grind 5-6 tablespoons of beans and pour into a jar or press pot. Add 1 1/2 cups of water (arguments abound over spring versus tap versus filtered), stir so there’s no clumps. Let it sit out on the countertop overnight.

Come morning, strain (or press) and pour into another glass. Rinse out your jar or pot, add another 1 1/2 cups of water to the concentrated coffee, pour over ice into your glass and viola! A tasty, complex, nuanced, and cold cup of coffee is ready. We’re now excited to experiment with Stumptown’s Colombia El Jordan, which promises satsuma orange, ripe blackberry and brown sugar.

Summer Risotto

Despite the sweltering heat, risotto is truly a magnificent dish to make all year long. It allows you to play with the best the season has to offer and it allows for endless permutations with its basic ingredients. They are:

Rice. This doesn’t change. Arborio. Always Arborio.
An onion (shallot, leek, onion, scallion)
A veggie (peas, squash, zucchini, mushrooms, edamame)
A milk based fat (butter, parmesan, mascarpone)
Good wine. Please don’t forget the wine (red, white, sake)
Stock (anything from a heavy mushroom stock to something ethereal, like leek)

Here’s a combination I made yesterday evening. Surely more will come in the months ahead to demonstrate this recipe’s versatility. –g6

Summer Risotto with Green Peas and Zucchini
(Serves 2 for dinner, time to cook – 35 minutes.)

Ingredients:
1 cup Arborio rice
4 cups leek stock
¼ c sauvignon blanc or other light white wine
½ cup finely chopped onion
1 T butter (unsalted)
1 T extra virgin olive oil
1 zucchini, cubed
½ c peas (frozen is just fine)
1 c grated parmesan cheese
5 leaves of basil

Heat stock in one saucepan to a slight simmer.

In a 4 quart heavy bottomed pot over a medium flame, melt butter and add olive oil. When just bubbling, add onion and stir ‘til sweaty and clear.  Add rice. Stir and leave and stir ‘til the rice sounds like grains of glass in the pot. Add wine. Wine will bubble up and infuse rice with its flavor (which is why this recipe calls for very little.)

Bit by bit, add ¼ c stock, stir and wait and stir and wait ‘til there is no stock left. Then add a 1/4 cup more. S & w & s & w. Stock. S & w & s & w. Stock. This takes 15 minutes (a nice time to have a friend in the kitchen with you, drinking the rest of the wine you didn’t use.)

When the amount of rice seems to have doubled in your pot and the grains themselves appear to have a clear film around them with a solid white center, you are getting somewhere. Add the zucchini. Keep up with the “stock and stir” action. Taste the rice every once in awhile. When you think you have no more than two rounds of stock and stir, add the peas.

Stock and stir twice more. Pull from the heat. Add cheese and stir. Taste. If it needs salt, add it. (And have fleur de sel on hand at the table.) Finish with a little pepper. Plate and sprinkle ribbons of basil on top of the dish.

We’re Julia’s Children

Not that our readers haven’t already devoured the most recent Michael Pollan article in the New York Times Magazine, but thought I’d highlight his bit about Julia Child: “When I asked my mother recently what exactly endeared Julia Child to her, she explained that ‘for so many of us she took the fear out of cooking.’”

He then goes on to unpack how televised cooking shows have devolved to the point where they are mere spectator sport. There’s a curious feminist aspect to this change as well. He makes a parallel between the appearance of “The French Chef” on television and Betty Friedan’s tome “The Feminine Mystique,” touting Child as a true feminist icon.It grows treacherous as the corporations that sponsor most cooking shows these days have in fact inverted and subverted that feminist spirit:

Many of these convenience foods have been sold to women as tools of liberation; the rhetoric of kitchen oppression has been cleverly hijacked by food marketers and the cooking shows they sponsor to sell more stuff. So the shows encourage home cooks to take all manner of shortcuts, each of which involves buying another product, and all of which taken together have succeeded in redefining what is commonly meant by the verb “to cook.”

Rather than empower women (oh hell, I’m a man trying these things for the first time in the kitchen, so such bravery applies to me as well) to tackle intimidating cuisine or envision cooking as a kind of fulfillment, recent cooking shows instead proffer “shortcuts and superconvenience but never the sort of pleasure — physical and mental — that Julia Child took in the work of cooking…It was a gratifying, even ennobling sort of work, engaging both the mind and the muscles. You didn’t do it to please a husband or impress guests; you did it to please yourself.”

Amen to that, though I know I secretly do do it to impress my girlfriend…

Turkish Inspired Eggplant Yogurt Pitas

It is hot. Around 90 degrees in the kitchen, and cooking anything is not recommended. Beta picked up this gorgeous eggplant from the farmers market and it has been staring at me all week. Though I am willing to succumb to some time in front of the flame to make it palatable (raw eggplant, anyone?) I needed to cook quickly in this summer heat.

This recipe combines what’s on hand with a food memory from a trip to Turkey six years ago. Grilled eggplant atop fresh yogurt dusted with paprika. So simple and delicious. I took some liberties from there by pulling from several recipes, adding what we had around, and stuffing it into a pita. – g6

Turkish Inspired Eggplant Yogurt Pitas
(serves 3 for lunch, time to cook – around 30 minutes.)

Ingredients
1 Red Bell Pepper
1 eggplant
1 lemon
1 c hummus
6 pitas
½ cucumber
4 basil leaves (optional)
1 c yogurt (preferably greek style, low fat)
1 garlic clove
kosher salt
1/3 c + 1 T olive oil

Directions: Roast a red bell pepper by putting it directly on top of a burner on your stove (must have a gas stove for this part.) Grill on your stove until black. Toss into a plastic bag, spin and seal the bag. Let the pepper cool. Later on, you’ll peel off the black stuff and slice it up.

Slice eggplant ½ inch thick, dust with salt, and leave in a colander to sweat out some of its bitter juices for 20 minutes.

Towel off the juices and heat a grill pan to medium. (sauté pan works well too.) Oil the pan.

Mix and brush on both sides of eggplant slices: 1/3 c extra virgin olive oil and juice of ½ a fresh lemon

Grill eggplants about 4 minutes each side until they have nice brown marks and look soft and slightly custard-y. Slice the other half of your lemon, toss in the remaining oil/lemon juice mixture and add to the grill pan. Take off after 2 min each side when slightly charred.

Meanwhile…mix together the yogurt with minced garlic and 1 T olive oil.

Peel half a cucumber and slice into spears. Slice the basil into ribbons.

Smooth the yogurt sauce onto the bottom of the dish. Place the hot eggplant slices on top of this yogurt sauce. Top with sliced red peppers and arrange the cucumber spears around the plate. Sprinkle basil over top and add grilled lemon pieces. Let this sit for several minutes. (Ours sat in the hot kitchen for an hour before serving and was just fine.)

To serve, toast pita and smear some hummus inside. Add eggplant slices and red pepper, cucumber and yogurt sauce. Drip some juice from the grilled lemon on top.

Peaches

Peaches are in season, but it’s always a tantalizing/ taunting purchase. Most times, they remain rock-hard and inedible, right up until the moment they rot and release fruit flies into the kitchen.
So we took some online advice for our most recent white and yellow peach picks and put a few in a paper bag and a few between two linen napkins, not touching.

Peaches in a paper bag

Patience is a virtue here. You don’t want to be all touchy-feely with peaches, as they bruise easily. In both the bag and in the napkins, space them so that they aren’t touching. That telltale scent of fresh peaches should be evident within a few days. Once I caught a whiff, I knew they were ready. And sure enough, our peaches were juicy, divine jewels, their sweetness coating our lips, chins, fingers. Quite honestly, both methods worked well and are recommended. Aesthetically, I just like how the peaches look all tucked in-between the two linen napkins, as if they are asleep, dreaming of deliciousness. Sleep tight, little fellers, by morning you will be in my mouth.

Peaches tucked into linen napkins

Slow and Sweet begins.

A butternut squash and fontina galette. A plum and lamb tagine. A melange of spicy sausage, acorn squash and cheddar cheese. So began our love affair and recognition of the great pleasure that comes from cooking together and for each other.

We’re cooking up something good and shall be serving you soon; recipes, cooking adventures, and great eats. g6 & beta