Food always makes me feel better. Cooking food always makes me feel Super Better. The washing of the dishes part is problematic, but the gathering of the implements, the mixing and tasting, the making of the mess, and the tweaking are all just fab.
Besides sulking over the decision of our elected leaders to ignore the spirit and letter of America with their appalling vote last Thursday, I had another reason to get down in the kitchen. I realized that if I want to alter Mr. Magic's alarming habit of camping out at In 'n Out as soon as he gets off the plane from an assignment, it is incumbent on me to provide an alternative. That this hit during my traditional Post-con Refusal To Leave The House For Any Reason Except More Cigs means it all worked out perfectly.
I made:
1. Julia's roast chicken. That would be the great Julia Child, whom I was greatly honored and humbled to meet and (sort of) cook for a few years ago. The (sort of) part of that story is long, and yes, it involves my previous profession. Perhaps I'll tell it here one day. I use her basic roast chicken recipe, tweaking it with the addition of 10-15 garlic buds stuck under the skin, and eliminating the carrots. I use green apples instead to get the sweet tone. Also I add a lot more pepper, onions and turnips. I like savory chicken. Usually when I cook anything with a skin I peel off the cooked skin, salt it and deep fry it as a special treat for myself. Deep fried halibut skin is my favorite. But as this chicken is an attempt to wean someone off of double-doubles, the skin remains safely on the chicken, mocking me. All of the veggies - onions, celery, yukon golds, mushrooms, turnips and green apples - I did the usual with. Mash it up, boil it down with wine and strain it several times until it turns into a tasty killer gravy. (That's something I came up with years ago. It takes FOREVER but it's worth it.) The toughest part about Julia's roast chicken is the Baste Every 10 Minutes thing. It sounds excessive, but if you don't do it the difference is vast. For one, the bird is GORGEOUS. It also turns out very moist. So I just sprawl on the kitchen floor for two hours and read. This time I went back and forth between "Eyewitness Auschwitz" by Filip Muller and "The Magnificent Activist: The Writings of Thomas Wentworth Higginson."
2. Two gallons of Jamaica. Pronounced ha-MY-kah. God bless my Mexican brethren for introducing me to this drink. However, I use an ancient Egyptian recipe as base. When I first learned of Jamaica, I of course hit the Internet(s) and discovered this drink has been around since the pyramids. I have tried and tweaked several different versions of this drink and find the Egyptian one the simplest to make and the Most Tasty. Perhaps I'll make a batch to bring down to the San Diego faire.
3. A tomato tart. Using the tomatoes my neighbors gave me from their Garden of Eden. All my tomatoes died after one season. So did the herbs, the daises and the corn. The collard greens are doing fine, but collards are like roaches. I made an extra tart for them.
4. A fig fold-over. I don't really have a name for this. It's something I made up because there's two fig trees in the yard so I had to come up with something or be buried in wasted figs. Think of it as fig ravioli. This time I put a little bit of cinnamon and nutmeg in the pastry. It came out okay. Something's still off, but I'm not sure what. I think next time I'll wrap the puff in banana leaves, put it in the coals and see what happens.
5. Mom's mac & cheese. Duh. With my special addition of jalapeno paste.
6. Russian tea cookies. Which I am not sharing.
7. Ho-Ho Cake. You know what a Hostess Ho-Ho is? Well, I use one of Martha's chocolate cake recipes, then cut it in half, scoop out some of the insides and fill the trench with homemade whipped cream and thickened homemade chocolate frosting. Then I put the top back on and seal it with grenache, which I also make from scratch. I started this Friday night because, like The Greatest Sugar Cookies In The Known Universe(tm) it takes a couple of days to make. This cake was picked up on Sunday afternoon by the person who requested it. He's trying to lure a woman who has a chocolate jones. The Ho-Ho Cake will definitely get her that much closer to his bed, provided the boy has enough sense to keep his mouth shut about where it came from. Later he can tell her. But now? That would be a Bad Idea.
8. Mango salad. This is a recipe I got from the Long Tail Kitty cookbook Lark Pien put out a couple of years ago. It's mangoes, onions and jalapeno. My tweak is to eliminate the corn, up the jalapeno and use rice vinegar in addition to lime juice. Dee-lish! Also all gobbled up by Sunday night, so I'll have to make some more.
9. Dangerously Smashed Potatoes. Yukon golds and russets with butter, heavy whipping cream, more butter and sharp cheddar cheese. Lord have mercy on my soul.
And that's what I did with my weekend. I was going to make a blueberry fruit salad since one of the stalls at the Farmer's Market had big tubs of blueberries on sale for $1.25 each, and the fruit guy who sets up on a corner along Buckingham had four pound bags of cherries for $5 each, but I just ate the blueberries instead. I put the cherries in the freezer for a treat when winter hits.
Maybe I'll just take a little bit of the skin off the bottom. He'll never notice...