The Cooking Critic

My father had a request for Father’s Day: a story about his father. Surprised, I asked, “A non-fiction story?” “Of course a non-fiction story,” he replied. In retrospect, I’m not sure why I was so confused—people order up stories from me all the time. If I can create an article on bathroom fixtures, a boring subject I know nothing about, surely I could write a memoir about my grandfather, a man infinitely more interesting than bathroom fixtures. Still, it was a daunting task to pull off a decent gift of a story about someone so close to me in just over a week. But here’s Dad’s promised story. And here he is with me on the first day of being a father (or maybe the second)—he’d like you to think that he did all the work and my mother was just there to take pictures:

To give this piece some focus, I determined I’d cook a food in honor of my grandfather (who my brother and I called Daddy Drew when were young and just Drew as we got older). The foods that came to mind were: gumbo, mincemeat pie and dog food, in that order. Gumbo because of his Cajun heritage, but then, the month of June doesn’t exactly shout out for a hearty stew served over rice, even with the dank overcastness we’ve had lately and especially with the pounding heat that followed. Then I contemplated a mincemeat pie, a dish often made with dried fruit preserves and no actual meat. I was surprised when I discovered Drew’s affinity for this dish a few years ago, especially since I recently had encountered this dessert in Wales and was so put off by the word “mincemeat,” I didn’t even try it. I can’t say the thought of making one is anymore appealing to me now, although I’ve since tasted it and discovered that there were, in fact, no traces of meat in it. But if I’m going to spend time in the kitchen creating a pie, it certainly isn’t going to be filled with mincemeat. After rejecting making a mincemeat pie, dog food came to mind because Drew once claimed to have eaten it and that “it didn’t taste too bad.” But then again, Drew was known for tall tales. That and big sneezes. And an extremely competitive nature that kept my brother and I from ever beating him at ping pong. But since I wasn’t about to do any experiment cooking with dog food, I decided to write about carrots. Because he hated them, and I did too for a long time, and it was strangely bonding.

Carrots typically showed up at Sunday suppers at my grandparents, and Drew would simply ignore us when we’d jokingly suggest he eat some. I too turned my nose up at carrots for a long time. I think I refused the puréed version as a baby, which carried into an aversion towards cooked carrots and their mushy texture as an adult. I’ll eat cooked carrots now if they’re served, but I can’t say I ever go back for seconds. Raw or barely cooked carrots are a completely different story for me, but I don’t know if Drew’s dislike of carrots had nuances.

So I began my quest for a carrot recipe both Drew and I might have liked. I flipped through my recipe books and found a carrot terrine— “a ter-what?” he would have said. A response that it was a cold, molded pâté probably would have gotten an “I don’t know about that.” Then I came across a carrots Vichy recipe, which is traditionally made with water from Vichy, France. This would have been met with strong opposition—my grandfather was a man who fundamentally opposed bottled water since perfectly good water came out of the tap. Requesting a specific bottled water would have prompted stories about growing up during The Great Depression. Next I considered a carrot soup, a light delicate thing that I was surprised to find I enjoyed when served it at a wedding, but Drew simply would have skipped that course of the meal. In the end I determined the best dish to make with carrots was a carrot cake, a cop-out if ever there was one.

Still, my decision to make a Super-Moist Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting wasn’t completely void of logic. Drew was a man, after all, with a fierce sweet tooth; cookies tended to disappear when they were in his house, and he didn’t seem to mind the nickname Cookie Monster at all. I reasoned, too, he might have liked carrot cake since it has some vaguely similar qualities to mincemeat pie, both being spice-heavy and not overly sweet (if you just forget about that cream cheese frosting for a while.) Also, carrot cake isn’t strange and foreign. It would have been far easier to get him to eat a cake than a terrine.

True to its name, this carrot cake was moist, and my friends raved—thankfully since some mishaps were involved in making it (the frosting oozed out of the center and the top layer of cake started sliding to the right all because of the heat in my un-air-conditioned apartment). But would Drew have liked it? It’s hard to say. He was stubborn in both his likes and dislikes. He was opposed to anything unnecessarily fancy—the carrot cake is borderline on this front, made from the humble carrot but whipped into a two-layer cake appropriate for special occasions. Had he seen my kitchen after making the cake, he would have grumbled about how he didn’t understand why it was necessary to use every bowl in the house, but then he would have started doing the dishes without another word.

But I think, like the cookies, the cake might have disappeared when we weren’t looking.

Drew (1920-2006) with my brother

Apparently, the world is even less interested in salads than I am. Nobody seems to care about the Broiled Shrimp and Spinach Salad I raved about recently. Or at least, few people cared enough to actually access the recipe. The much-less healthy Sausage Balls, however, are wildly popular. So since y’all like cheese and meat, I figure sugar and butter can’t be far behind. Hence, an entire entry devoted to icing.

With multiple Taurus birthdays, which timed themselves well with my practice for a cupcake competition, I’ve been trying out many different icings. Mostly buttercream in nature with an occasional ganache thrown in. Kurt says I’m “a bit dorky” for entering a cupcake competition, but I think most people would have no problems with the fact that I’m bringing more iced cupcakes into the world. You have to make the world a better place somehow. Angelina Jolie helps the children of Namibia; I bake cupcakes then sloppily ice them.

I started with this basic buttercream recipe that we regularly use in my family, and for my first effort turned it into a Peanut Butter Icing by substituting the peanut butter for the butter. I also added lots of salt because I can’t stand super-sweet peanut butter. I made a Chocolate Glaze to complement it (2 cups melted semi-sweet chocolate chips with 1 cup cream whisked in until smooth), and then swirled the glaze and the icing on top the cupcake to make a cupcake version of the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. Mmm, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cupcakes.

I decided to turn another batch of buttercream icing into Chai Icing by adding cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, ginger, even some crushed black tea leaves—though sadly, didn’t bother with measurements. It was an unusually spicy and mysterious icing. I’m trying to think of its female celebrity equivalent. Grace Kelly? Sophia Loren? Hmm, not sure. But it would go well with a pear or apple cake.

Next up was a White Chocolate Ganache. This was my first foray into ganache-making, which typically consists of heated cream, some form of chocolate and a liqueur mixed in. I’ll be visiting ganache again. As much as I love buttercream, ganache was a nice way to mix things up, especially when it topped a thin layer of raspberry preserves or lemon curd.

Maple Syrup Icing is next on the icing queue (possibly with some stewed apples mixed in or used for garnish), and then I think I will be cupcaked out. I may even be forced to eat another salad….

I showed up to the last poker match without a single baked good on me. No brownies, no pies, no cookies. I only had a bottle of red wine. And I was late.

I was under the impression that the boys only wanted my money, which I inevitably lose as of late, but, as it turns out, they want my brownies too–I was called a tease for bringing brownies to a previous poker game but not this one. So, not wanting to disappoint, I promised brownies this time around . . . then made a Strawberry and Lemon Curd Cream Pie instead.

I had intended on going through with my brownie promise, I even bought the ingredients, but I had all these sweet leftovers sitting in my fridge after holding a massive brunch (strawberries, a cream cheese fruit dip), and since I hate wastefulness, I felt obliged to use these ingredients. Also, Strawberry and Lemon Curd Cream Pie is easier to make than made-from-scratch brownies. It’s true whether you believe me or not.

Here are some of the fruity friends from World Market that helped me make this pie:

After using Sticky Fingers Bakeries’ jarred lemon curd, I see no reason to make my own lemon curd ever again. It’s a relief, really, to know that part of my life is taken care of. I will never have to constantly stir thickening lemon curd in my makeshift double boiler again. Although, when I put it that way, it makes me kind of sad.

Recipe: I followed the Honey Maid Graham Crackers Crumb’s pie recipe on the back of the box. You don’t have to bake it, but I did because I thought that would lessen the chances of it turning into a crumbly mess. Then I put a very thin layer of the jarred lemon curd, then a layer of this Fruit Dip with a little vanilla extract mixed in, then sliced strawberries, then I heated the Raspberry Tart preserves and used that as a glaze. I don’t know if I would bother with the glaze next time. I thought a red jam might heighten the red of the strawberries, but I found myself preoccupied with trying not to stain the cream layer underneath when brushing it on the berries. Placing the strawberries on top the cream can get messy, so you can always do the cream as a top layer or serve it on the side. One thing I like about this dish is that it can be reconfigured in so many different ways: rearrange the layers any way you like or omit one all together. Lemon curd and strawberries taste great by themselves without the cream filling, and the cream filling and strawberries don’t need the lemon curd either.

It’s not my most professional presentation, but it looks summery, and it tastes summery, and it was gone by the end of the evening.

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’m going to give you a hot tip. When making Chocolate Fondue, use cream, when making Chocolate-Covered Strawberries, use shortening to create that smooth-but-set exterior. There you have it. I know many of you have spent sleepless nights wondering about this, so now you can rest easy knowing you can create the perfect creamy or hardened chocolate companion for your strawberries. Let’s hear that collective sigh of relief.

Von’s had strawberries on sale (buy one pack, get one free), and since I absolutely cannot resist strawberries, I purchased them. It’s a lot of strawberries for one girl, but I started off at a decent pace—having a bit of a sweet tooth that evening, I made a fondue out of Nestlé’s chocolate chips, and enjoyed my snack immensely while watching The Constant Gardner.

Fast-forward to a couple of days later—there’s still quite a few strawberries in my fridge and Shayna Maskell’s Oscar Party on the horizon. Why not make something where others can enjoy these strawberries before they become inedible in a few days? At first, I considered making Berry-Capped Cupcakes, something I made once before with some buy-one-get-one-free strawberries. My memory recalled that these cupcakes were good, but not spectacular. Still, an excellent food to put strawberries into if you don’t want them to go bad. But why are there so few good strawberry recipes in the world that I constantly have to turn to Berry-Capped Cupcakes anyways? I’d love to meet other nice strawberry recipes, but they just aren’t showing their face. But more than my feeling of frustration for being trapped in this relationship with Berry-Capped Cupcakes was the feeling that I really really didn’t want to go to the grocery store to get the cupcake tins and buttermilk. Yet, I needed to show up with something at the Oscar party, and I didn’t want to bring alcohol since I had no plans to partake of the alcohol (taking a break from liquor and beer—as it turns out, they don’t seem to help my half-marathon training. Wine, on the other hand, helps immensely.) The only answer to the must-bring-something -but-don’t-want-it-to-take-a-lot-of-time-and-am-worried-the-strawberries-may-go-bad-soon dilemma was to make chocolate-covered strawberries. So they were made.

Making chocolate-covered strawberries is kind of fun because it’s easy and makes you feel fancy. I used my makeshift double boiler (see pic), which creates softer heat and a smoother mixture than a pot directly on the fire—I think that’s what it does anyways. Threw some leftover Trader Joe’s Pound Plus Bittersweet Chocolate in the pot (not bad, but if you don’t mind spending a little more money on your chocolate, buy some Valrhona—it’s worth every penny) along with some shortening and some Kahlúa, and I was in business. Then I created my little army of Chocolate-Covered Strawberries.

Assessment: Both strawberry recipes were totally toothsome. (Sorry—word of the day—had to use it.)