The Cooking Critic

I love my new air conditioner. Love it love it love it. It is my favorite thing right now (I love it even more than my new white dress that I got from H & M), and it was a long time coming. I ordered my air conditioner online in July of 2005 from evil Wal-Mart, paid far more than I intended once shipping and tax were added, and it didn’t show up until September when summer was over, and I had no use for it. I called Wal-Mart, full of self-righteousness and the knowledge that shipping a seasonal product to a person when the season is over is clearly wrong, and they should make amends.

They felt differently.

They only offered me a measly $20 discount, which they never made good on. And while I’ve heard all sorts of horror tales about Wal-Mart from the book Nickel & Dimed and the movie Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, I felt a little more outraged when it affected me personally. (That’s normal, right?) Therefore, all people should boycott Wal-Mart, if not for their general evilness, then for me and my tale of un-air-conditioned woe and sorrow!

So, anyhoo, the air conditioner was stored in my garage that September and was finally brought out of hiding when its services were needed last month. It should have been released from hibernation earlier, but previously when I opened up the box the air conditioner came in, I found its size and booklet of instructions very intimidating, so I kept putting off its installation. It took an outrageous heat wave and the help of my friend Rob to bring to fruition what should have taken place a year ago when I first ordered the damn thing.

I made Banana Bread after the air conditioner was installed simply because I can (also because I owed Rob an edible thank you, and I needed to make a July breakfast item for my blog.) The oven was on, the air conditioner was pumping, and I felt cool as can be … whenever I was in my bedroom anyways. My air conditioner doesn’t quite pump enough to cool as many square inches as it claims to on its box. But if I strategically place three fans throughout the house to push the cool air into various areas, you can almost feel a difference. And sleeping is way easier in a cool, air-conditioned bedroom than in a hot, muggy one.

Assessment: I’ve made and enjoyed many banana breads in my day, and I’ve determined that this one from the Junior League cookbook is the best. I don’t say that lightly. And since topping always makes bread taste better, I added a Streusel Topping from Family Circle. I blame the heat for the fact may streusel melded and never reached crumbly status when I mixed it together with a fork. My technique could also be at fault, but I prefer to blame the heat (and Wal-Mart too while I’m at it–why not? I’m sure I could think of a way to blame Wal-Mart for my banana bread inadequacies if I thought about it long enough.)

Also, did you know boys love banana bread? I ended up making muffins since my bread pan ran off (the floozy!), but at least this way I got to snag a few muffins for myself and share them with some male friends. Jim said he doesn’t normally care for banana bread, but he devoured mine and especially liked “the stuff on the top.” And Matt, who doesn’t like any food at all, more or less, said the muffin he ate was “like a golden biscuit.” So boys apparently love banana bread. Who knew? And here they are pictured on some hand-me-down plates from your mother.

Sooner or later, people begin to expect baked goods of me. My monthly poker game started about a year ago with no such expectations, but some brownies there, a strawberry lemon curd pie here, and suddenly my reputation is sealed, one that has followed me around nearly my entire life. If I show up without food, people are disappointed. And I hate to disappoint.

Since there have been no brownies present at the last few poker games, a fact the guys like to remind me of often, I decided to make the fudgiest brownies known to man in order to make it up to them. Mission accomplished.

Adjustments: I don’t have the 11×13-inch baking pan called for, so I used my 11×9 one and a muffin tin for the extra brownie mixture. Still, it was hard to guess how much of the mixture should go in the pan and how much in the muffin tin. I guessed as best as I could, but when the 30 minutes cooking time was up, I added on 10 more since the brownies were still slightly wobbly in the center. Eventually, the brownies set, but I could never get the toothpick to come out clean–my mother had the same experience with these. That’s just the way things go sometimes when baking super fudgey foods. Still, what I call “fudgey,” others may call “undercooked.”

Assessment: When I made Raspberry Brownies before, Dave Crocco dubbed them the best brownies he’s ever tasted. As far as I know, he doesn’t go around saying that about every brownie he encounters. But they aren’t for the lily-livered—they’re more of a cross between a brownie and a piece of fudge, so be prepared for the dense chocolate intake you’re about to experience when tasting these. A layer of tart raspberry jam helps cut the chocolateness.

There are some recipes that you will glance at and consider every time you thumb through a cookbook, yet they will never make it to your kitchen table. Honestly, I thought that would be the fate of Hearts of Palm Salad. It was interesting, but didn’t seem interesting enough to purchase ingredients I normally don’t. While I like to try new foods, I’m also keenly aware that I don’t know what I’m doing when I work with them, nor do I really know what to expect.

Then came a five-day stint with my family in Mississippi where a kind neighbor with a poultry farm (yes, I know someone who owns a poultry farm) treated us to chicken ‘n dumpling, chicken Tetrazzini and chicken salad sandwiches. I loved indulging in the heavy Southern foods, but by the time I came back to California, I was ready for something light and leafy. Once more, Hearts of Palm Salad caught my eye. Since I bore easily when it comes to salads, the idea of adding of an unusual ingredient like hearts of palm was actually appealing, and really only more so because I wasn’t entirely sure what it was. Strangely, it is what it says it is, which is the heart of cabbage palm tree—its edible core that looks not unlike a bamboo shoot. They come canned since fresh is nearly impossible to find, and since they’re soft and perfectly straight, it’s hard not to feel like a pro when chopping them up.

The flavor of hearts of palm is much like an artichoke. In fact, if you can’t find or don’t want to pay for the sometimes pricey hearts of palm, a marinated artichoke makes a good substitute. Still, I prefer the palm’s heart because it’s not as pungent. It’s got the tang without the overkill, and the texture is nice and soft with no worries about chewiness that the marinated artichoke sometimes troubles me with. Not to say the artichoke is generally troublesome. Normally I find him quite sophisticated and charming. But you don’t have to work as hard with hearts of palm who’s always laid back and never fussy. You get all the class but none of the stress of feeling like you’re socializing outside of your bracket.

Adjustments: The recipe calls for “salad herbs,” and I’m not sure if this was a vague suggestion to use whatever herbs you feel go with a salad or if there were a specific set of herbs designated for salads or maybe even a product, like jarred fines herbes. A quick Internet search provided no conclusive evidence, so I used fresh dill, which tasted good.

Assessment: This is a flavorful, spunky salad that’s not substantial enough to be a main dish but is a great accompaniment to just about anything because of both its taste and the ease in assembling it.

My idea for an Easter brunch started out harmless enough. I saw the Weekend Cookbook Challenge was having a bloggers’ brunch round-up, and I thought something along the lines of “Brunch! What a lovely idea. Perhaps I will have a few friends over, and I will serve them brunch.” Between this original small-scale notion and sending out an Evite less than a week before Easter, the idea had ballooned into inviting nearly everyone I know in the Los Angeles area. And while I generally think I’m capable of fitting more tasks into a day than is humanly possible, I had no delusions about being the sole supplier of a meal for thirty people, which was a pleasantly surprising showing for a last-minute shindig. So I described the brunch as “potluck-ish” and at the risk of sounding bossy, told people exactly what we needed for a diverse spread (egg dishes, fruit dishes, salads, etc.) since I was afraid otherwise, most would just stop by a bakery beforehand, and all we’d have was a diverse array of muffins.

I think it turned out well:

The day before the brunch, I whipped together this ridiculously simple Fruit Dip (cream cheese, marshmallow fluff, orange juice and orange zest) that I’ve made countless times. It was sweeter than I remembered, and I might use lemon juice instead of orange juice to cut the sweetness next time or try out one of the other many fruit dip recipes I have lying around. (Yes, I am in possession of multiple fruit dip recipes. No, I do not think this is strange.) But the crowd said nice things. Then again, it was a nice crowd. Alie thought the dip was a great summery addition, and Audrey described it as dipping fruit into a creamsicle.

Next I mixed and rolled Sausage Balls, another easy one. It’s possible that the term “Sausage Balls” doesn’t sound particularly pleasant or edible to you, but they are “a surprising animal” according to David Friedman, the biggest Sausage Ball cheerleader I know. Here’s another way to think of it: a little round biscuit with sausage and cheese baked in. Doesn’t that sound infinitely better? And despite the fact that the crowd kept giggling at Sausage Balls’ ridiculous name, they ate them and proclaimed their love for them. And here’s a tip: my mother was talking to a woman about her Sausage Balls (this is a perfectly normal conversation in the South since everyone makes Sausage Balls there) and how they can cook up dry. The woman said she rolls her balls more loosely to keep them moist, and I found this works. And on that note, we now move on to Orange Chocolate Salad but not without a giant picture of a Sausage Ball first:

I first noticed Clementine Chocolate Salad when Running with Tweezers posted it for the last Weekend Cookbook Challenge. Though I was drawn to it and had half-heartedly considered making it, I couldn’t commit. But when Adam showed up on my doorstep with a sack full of oranges as a thank you for my feeding Pants the cat while he was away, I determined the oranges were a sign from God telling me to make Clementine Chocolate Salad but with navel oranges.

This dish looks simple, but I encountered one problem after another with it—sometimes that happens when you feel pushed for time. I doubled the dish and spent 20 minutes grating chocolate, which is very very boring, and still had only half as much chocolate as I needed. As it turns out, I hate grating chocolate. I will never grate 3.5 ounces of chocolate again. I will either buy it pre-grated (if this product exists) or hire someone to do the grating for me (anyone want that job?—it doesn’t pay, but there’s free Orange Chocolate Salad in it for you.) Then I made the vanilla bean syrup, which was only three ingredients but more trouble than I imagined. On my first try, I cooked it too long trying to get it golden as instructed and ended up with basically Vanilla Bean Jolly Ranchers. So I tossed my creation and made the syrup again, taking it off the burner soon after the sugar dissolved instead of attempting anything golden for fear of wasting more vanilla beans.

Despite the hassle, it was a wonderfully elegant dish that would be especially good at a bridal shower, and people loved the fact that the words “chocolate” and “salad” were used together. But next time, I think I’ll try the version with the fresh mint instead of the chocolate (though the crowd loved the taste of chocolate and oranges together) since I prefer whacking at mint with scissors to grating chocolate.

Next I made a Caramel Coffee Cake, something that sounds far more complicated than it is. All you do is throw yeast rolls in a greased pan, mix together some dry butterscotch pudding and spices, throw them on top of the rolls, then top with melted butter. If you ever make this, you will look at what I just described and think that I must be crazy for insisting that it will turn into a gooey Caramel Coffee Cake. You have to let it rise overnight, and in case you have any reservations about letting the butter that it’s topped with sit out unrefrigerated for hours, Real Simple, one of the premier butter authorities in the world, says it’s okay in their discussion of food myths here (click the link and scroll down.) Evidently, there’s enough salt in salted butter that you can always leave it out, and it will still be fine. As for the coffee cake, when the yeast rolls have risen the next day (appropriate for an Easter meal, no?) into a doughy mass, you will still think I’m crazy for claiming you will have coffee cake after it is cooked. But trust me and put the pan in the oven, let it cook, take it out, flip it out on a plate, ooh and aah, then thank me. I will not hold it against you that you thought I was crazy. Here it is half-eaten, slightly blurry, poorly lit and not nearly as pretty as it is in person (sadly, pictures were an after-thought). But by the end of the party it was gone except for one slice. An excellent sign. Sarah Kate described Caramel Coffee Cake and Orange Chocolate Salad as “can’t-go-wrongs.” I’m thinking about adding that as a category to my blog….

All the day-before prep work complete (sorry for all the jumping around in time), I rested on the seventh day, meaning I tried to sleep around midnight but could not, thinking of all the cleaning and additional food prep work I had to do before 11 a.m. At least I got the coffee and tea station (a transformed IKEA bookshelf) set up in the living room, which I am very proud of because it prevented overflow in the kitchen area and kept the guests happy and caffeinated:

The morning of brunch, the show got under way with minimal sleep and the much-appreciated help of Melissa and Trixie, who assisted me with everything from moving furniture to peeling oranges–somehow the latter turned out to be more difficult than the former. Proof:

As it turns out, Melissa, though a gifted writer and quite adorable, cannot peel an orange to save her life. The above is an example of an orange peeled by Melissa. I had to fire Melissa from her orange-peeling duties and give that job to Trixie who went about scoring them first and making them look more uniform than I thought possible.

However, Melissa was able to redeem herself by expertly opening a bottle of champagne, and she was an immense help with our last-minute assembly of Gorgonzola Grits (another quick dish, but it requires nearly constant attention during its ten-minute prep lifespan), a recipe I got from a Junior League cookbook. I made one with chicken broth, as the recipe told me to, and another version with No-Chicken Broth (the name of the brand) for the vegetarians. I had used the actual chicken broth to poach a chicken earlier in the week, and so, it was an extra-chickeny chicken broth. The grits made with this broth had a very powerful, salty flavor. It made for robust grits—perhaps too robust. But flavorful and unusual in the best sort of way—I’ll just go with a tamer chicken broth next time. The vegetarians loved their less-salty version, one claiming they had converted her to gritsdom and another describing them as “half city/half country—the Donny and Marie of breakfast.” (The No-Chicken Broth made much yellower grits than the real-chicken broth, in case you were wondering about the color difference.)

Soon Mike and Meghann arrived, then Tim, Danielle and Kysa with coffee pot in tow, and it became a rockin’ party from there with people enjoying their mimosas:

and bringing more delicious brunch foods than I knew existed. To give you a sense of what was present, I’ll describe my leftovers. For dinner that night, I had Marissa’s French toast casserole, Sarah Kate’s deviled eggs (with caviar!), Melissa’s spinach salad and a puff pastry stuffed with mushrooms and cheese that magically appeared near the end of brunch. (I have no idea who brought it). For breakfast I had Meghann’s egg casserole and Maggie’s cheddar dill scones. Lunch was Christiane’s quiche, my grits and Shayna’s stuffed cream cheese French toast. For a dessert break I’ll have chocolate cake (Sarah’s?) and/or Leslie’s peach cobbler. And already I’m eyeing the leftovers and imagining what I can create with them—some sort of tart with the fruit dip and strawberries? A cake with a layer of those vanilla meringues? Lucky for the people playing poker at my house later this week….

>>Buy Open House: A Culinary Tour by The Junior League of Murfreesboro.

In The Lord of the Rings fashion, I’m going to begin the second part of “Who Will Be the Grilled Cheese Champion?” without a recap on the previous part. Instead please read part one of “Who Will Be the Grilled Cheese Champion?” by clicking here.

Back to “Who Will Be the Grilled Cheese Champion?” part two…

Next up was the third heat for sweet sandwiches. Shayna, Shahan and I took care of this leg, creating the most efficient grilled cheese assembly line ever known to man. It went like this: Shayna grilled the quesadillas, flipped them off the grill onto a plate, then put a new quesadilla in the pan, while I cut the quesadilla into wedges with scissors, then drizzled raspberry sauce on them. Next Shahan shook the powdered sugar, I added a dollop of whipped cream on each, Shahan raised the flag to alert a runner and Shayna was already taking the next quesadilla out of the pan. If there’s a grilled cheese zone, we were in it. Sadly, our flag and half of Shahan’s face got cut out of the picture, but here’s what we basically looked like in all our grilled-cheese making glory:

Not that we didn’t have some minor glitches. The hosts of this event informed us butter would be available for all. I had a sneaking suspicion that when they said “butter,” they meant “margarine” and had intended to bring my own butter since margarine will never ever do. Happily, my sneaking suspicion was correct. Sadly, I forgot to bring the butter. Still, when an enormous slab of real butter magically appeared in front of me, I determined this must be the secret communal butter stash and picked it up. As it turns out, this was not secret communal butter because it was whisked immediately out of my hands by another contestant and placed out of my reach. Luckily, a man to our right, making grilled cheese sandwiches in cube form, gave us his whole container of creamed butter when he was done making his sandwiches. Butter at last!

Another minor glitch–we nearly ran out of raspberry sauce and got stingy with it, as you can see here:

As for sweet sandwiches, one was made with slices of bread pudding and had a vanilla sauce and was nice and mild, but the sandwich had little to do with cheese. There was also an unusually sharp sandwich with dark bread, feta, cooked pears and a very tangy caramel sauce.

Finally the votes were tabulated. Team We Aim To Cheese waited anxiously for our name to be called . . . but we weren’t named winners of the standard grilled cheese competition, which made sense since we didn’t enter that field. Then came the alternative sandwich champions . . . and sadly, no glory for We Aim to Cheese. The sweet category finally arrived. The emcees called the third place winner . . . not us! Then right before they announced the second place winner, the emcee said, “This is my favorite sandwich name,” and we knew it was Requiem for a Cream…Cheese Quesadilla. Indeed, it was. I went on stage to receive the second-place trophy, and Brandon doused me in champagne to celebrate the victory. I was very cold but pleased the rest of the night.

Then the emcees called out the first place winners, and two girls in bikinis ran up to the stage, squealing with excitement. They looked something like this:

Picture that times two.

For some reason, we thought we could win looking like this:

The lesson we learned: team aprons are certainly not bikinis. Also, bring digital cameras, so we don’t have to worry about crooked, scanned images later.

I’m not even sure what sandwich the girls in bikinis made since ingredients were not announced during the award presentation, but I suspect no one knew what sort of sandwich they made. What happened to the good old days, when grilled cheese competitions were about the grilled cheese and not about the girls in bikinis?

At least we know what we have to do next year.

Recipes: Here’s a variation of Rob’s Breaded Pirate Roberts/Mozzarella in Carrozza , and here’s the family recipe for Cream Cheese Bars that inspired my quesadillas. For the quesadilla variation, I cooked the cream cheese mixture described in the Cream Cheese Bars link like a soufflé in a greased 8 x 8 pan for 25-30 minutes, then stuffed the cream cheese mixture into folded tortillas (roughly 1/3 cup per tortilla), cooked the tortilla on both sides on the stovetop (in butter), removed from heat, drizzled this super-simple Raspberry Sauce on it, sifted some powdered sugar over top, then finished with a squeeze of whipped cream. Here’s what Shahan has to say about Requiem for a Cream…Cheese Quesadillas: “It is good.” Now if that doesn’t convince you to try these, I don’t know what will.

Photos by Jim Sutherland, Leslie Limerick and Ezra Freedman.

>>Buy Real Fast Food by Nigel Slater or Open House: A Culinary Tour by The Junior League of Murfreesboro.

I feel like this post is like one of those freestanding episodes of The Wonder Years thrown in the week after something exciting with Kevin and Winnie happened. You didn’t care about that episode–you just wanted to see if Kevin and Winnie were going to get back together after kissing in the previous episode. And then you were forced to watch an episode all about the father without even a mention of Winnie. Anyhow, you will have to wait a little longer (and I know the world is waiting with bated breath) for my official Grilled Cheese Invitational post and how Team We Aim to Cheese fared. Crafting highly entertaining posts on important events take time, you know. What also takes time: getting the necessary digital images from my friends in charge of photography.

Poor Stuffed Tomatoes with Spinach and Ricotta. No one cares. But I will post a picture of them to pique your interest, and then I will discuss them without a decent transition.

I used to request the ricotta cheese be left out of the calzones I ordered since I felt it overwhelmed the other cheeses. Ricotta was strange and oozy. The others were stringy and familiar. And stringy, melted cheese is one of the most tempting things ever.

But I never gave up on ricotta completely—for some reason I felt compelled to give him additional chances because while he never made a huge impression, we got along and I liked his company well enough. I just didn’t know if anything long-term was in the cards for us, but sometimes I would wonder. . . . I’ve been flirting half-heartedly with ricotta cheese ever since. I’ll avoid him, then determine I like him, grab his upper arm when I see him, and then avoid him again. I’m pretty sure this is why he’s into me.

The turning point for ricotta and I was a dish at AOC where the ricotta was so mild and smooth and wonderful that I didn’t even recognize it. It’s lame that I can’t remember the actual dish or who I ate it with (my mom, maybe?), but the fact I remember the ricotta and nothing else says a lot about ricotta.

Stuffed Tomatoes with Spinach and Ricotta is intended to be an appetizer, but since I happened to have all its ingredients lurking in my kitchen one evening, it became my dinner.

Adjustments: I used Roma tomatoes, which are more dinner-like, rather than cherry tomatoes, which are more adorable and appetizer-like. I also let it bake in the oven longer since I was using the bigger tomatoes, though I can’t say how long because I wasn’t paying attention.

Assessment: Very pretty and mellow-tasting with a nice crunch from the pine nuts. I should have included more salt. I wasn’t as wowed as I would like to have been by this, but the taste did grow on me as I continued to eat it—ricotta is like that. I think I’ll sit on this recipe, and if I return to it again, then I’ll take the time to type and post it.

Polenta inspires nothing in me. Basically, I think they’re glorified grits. But for whatever reason, the Polenta Fries in CHOW (a hip, new food magazine that you should check out) spoke to me. Actually, I think the cheese wine dipping sauce spoke to me, but I had to have something to dip into it, so I figured might as well make the fries too. And an excuse for a dinner party was born!

Maggie Flynn and Shahan Sanossian joined me for a little vegetarian antipasto feast. I let them be taste testers for the guacamole I’m entering in Guac Bowl ’06 (tremble in fear those competing against me). Then we ate our Polenta Fries with Fontina Fondue, and I provided two healthy dishes to prevent us from having massive coronaries: Roasted Eggplant & Peppers accompanied by Tomato Salad with Basil-Honey Vinaigrette (both from the Williams-Sonoma Complete Entertaining Cookbook.)

Also, I made an Apricot Brandy Pound Cake from the Junior League Open House cookbook. I don’t know why I keep trying to convince myself I like pound cake. It’s a homely little dessert. Nothing to it. If I’m going to add some fat to my body, I’d rather do it with something that’s creamy or rich or chocolately or something. Pound cake is too vanilla for me, which I feel is actually an insult to vanilla because it’s far more interesting than pound cake.

Adjustments: I bought pre-cooked polenta (instead of cooking up instant per the instructions,) and despite my last minute freak-out that it would be horrendous and inedible, and I wouldn’t have enough decent food to serve my guests, it turned out quite good. I cut the roll of polenta into discs, dipped them in flour, and fried away (actually, Shahan did the frying.) Really, what wouldn’t taste good like that? Also I served the pound cake with a couple strawberries and an easy Apricot Sauce (hit the link and scroll down to “Topping Ingredients.”) It helped gussy up the presentation and the taste.

Assessment: Polenta fries and fondue are really yummy, but not the easiest dinner party undertaking because you have to do two things last minute (fry polenta, make fondue). It helps to have laid-back dinner guests who don’t mind helping. (I recommend Shahan and Maggie.) Tomato Salad is really easy and flavorful, and you can’t screw it up. Roasted Eggplant isn’t a show-stopper but a respectable side all the same. It’s good too because you can make it in advance and it’s not hard–but peeling off the skins of the eggplant and peppers is kind of a pain. And I think I prefer it on toasted bread, which is how I’ve been eating the leftovers. The pound cake tastes like pound cake. And despite the fact that I’ve determined I’ll never make another pound cake as long as I live, I still find myself intrigued by this version of a Apricot Brandy Pound Cake, which I ran across after making my own. It incorporates dry whipped topping mix into the batter.

Say what you want about the Junior League, but don’t knock their recipe books. The Junior League of Murfreesboro, Tennessee fame has put together a fine book that I cook from regularly, Open House: A Culinary Tour. My latest cooking endeavor at their recommendation: Roasted Vegetables and Pasta, which suited me since I’m always looking for something new to do with eggplant. And all the vegetables (zucchini, mushrooms, carrots) made me feel healthy. I thought their marinade was ingenious, just onion soup mix, fresh thyme leaves and olive oil. It created some pretty flavorful veggies.

Adjustments: My only adjustment I wouldn’t recommend; I write it up as a warning of what not to do. To save time, I bought pre-sliced mushrooms instead of whole ones as suggested, which you’re instructed to cut in half. The sliced ones shriveled up to almost nothing during the roasting process, so don’t be lured by the ease of pre-sliced mushrooms. In the case, follow the directions.

Assessment: Pretty easy to execute, but chopping the veggies takes a while, and you have to time the various components well (toasting pine nuts, roasting vegetables, boiling pasta.) I like their suggestion to try it with chicken, though I didn’t. All in all, it wasn’t the most amazing dish I’ve ever had–I won’t dream about it or anything–but I could end up making it again. A friend who got a tupperware full of it and ate it the next day called it “delicious.”