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SUPER. BOWL. WEEKEND.

February 5, 2010 by passionfruitbutter

I fail at blogging… In other news, here’s an article I wrote that ran today in Post-, a student-run magazine here at Brown. It’s 1:01 here which means it’s 12:01 at home… officially Super Bowl weekend! My pump-up playlist is at 32 songs and I am getting uncontainably excited. Miss you, New Orleans; wish I could be there at this special time, but I’m repping you here in Providence.

This Sunday, amid gloriously misogynistic beer commercials and eerily verbose E-Trade babies, uniformed hulks of men will hurl themselves at one another in Miami’s Sun Life Stadium as they clamor for the pigskin (and for their own oh-so-tasteful Super Bowl ring). The big, bad, vapid Colts will saunter in, finally away from the hell-frozen-over that is Indianapolis in February. Then, the zesty New Orleans Saints will cartwheel into their first Super Bowl in franchise history, magically bringing the crowd to decibel levels even higher than those accompanying the Patriots’ slaughtering a couple months back, and all will be as it should be.

As native New Orleanians and born-and-raised Saints fans, Colts quarterback Peyton Manning and I join in anticipation of this important game (and in hopes of a Saints win… can’t cheer against your home team, Peyton). As with meat and king cake during Mardi Gras, all that is delectable and cholesterol-filled during Jazz Fest, 72-ounce beers for any night on Bourbon Street, and unreasonably lavish food in the interim, celebrations like this have a tradition of good food. In the spirit of the decadence that typifies New Orleans, I’ve compiled a Super Bowl menu that fulfills the cardinal requirements of all respectable football snacks. Take note and follow suit: you, too, deserve excessive amounts of carbs and grease (and no, pizza from the Gate doesn’t count).

Giant batches of love: Most evolved, college-aged humans have a finely tuned radar for home cooking. Masses of them flock to you if you so much as turn on a stove. But, lucky for you, New Orleanians are old pros at cooking by the truckload. Grab the biggest pot you can find, toss in a bunch of meat, veggies, and rice (and, if you’re feeling feisty, more hot sauce than Jesus would approve of), and you’ve got jambalaya. Chili is an acceptable substitute for this if and only if you harbor an obsession for clichés and/or the other team.

Wings: Obvi. Go traditional (barbecue, buffalo) or more exotic (sesame, parmesan). Since these are ubiquitous right now, you can buy most things pre-made at the store if you’re feeling lazy, but why would you do that now that you know buffalo sauce is little more than Tabasco and butter? Bonus: guys, you get man points for gnawing meat straight off the bone.

More spiciness than your body has room for: Scrape the innards from halved jalapeños, stuff them with cream cheese, wrap in bacon (always, always bacon), and bake for about 20 minutes. Hoard before everyone else snitches them. And oh, they will snitch.

Dips. Lots and lots of dips: Chili con queso (go Rotel; I won’t judge). Barrels of guacamole and salsa. Seven-layer dip. Pimento cheese. Options abound; all you have to do is pick. Hummus will keep things from feeling too grimy. To make your own, drain a can of chickpeas and mash (or food-process, if you are so lucky) until smooth with tahini, olive oil, and lemon juice. I’ll toss some red beans in with the chickpeas and finish with Creole spices, but you can also play around with caramelized shallots, jalapeño and cilantro, or roasted red pepper to taste.

Maturity: Pigs-in-blankets are a relatively painless tribute to the otherwise gastronomically unremarkable Indianapolis, whose natives are known to prefer grilled brats. (They serve the added purpose of being mildly phallic, in case you tire of courtesy.) Extra points if you cook the sausages in beer before you wrap them in dough (cut down on time and use canned crescent rolls); serve with Zatarain’s whole-grain mustard, a New Orleans original that I’ve heard is highly favored up in Colts territory.

Popcorn: This is a huge cop-out as snacks go, but as long as your movie-watching experience is multiplied in the company of salty, buttery popcorn, so will your viewing of this game, which will likely be high-scoring thanks to kickass offense on both teams. Sprinkle liberally with Creole seasoning (cayenne pepper, garlic powder, paprika, white pepper, etc.) and look like you actually put in some effort.

Whether or not you know the meaning of a third-down conversion — no matter if you think a flea flicker is a groovy gadget you’d find at a pet store — the Super Bowl is as much an athletic showdown as it is a media spectacle and a once-a-year social event. Even if you’re not tuning in to behold Drew Brees’ otherworldly passer rating, you might as well pick a team, drink one too many beers, and meet your calorie quota for the week. And hey, if you’re lucky, you might just catch one of Peyton’s requisite sideline temper tantrums. Look for me if you get hungry; I’ll be the one in a gold leotard with buckets and buckets of food. Who dat!

With love from yours truly.

Posted in New Orleans, chicken, dinner, snack | 2 Comments »

checking in

January 15, 2010 by passionfruitbutter

Hi, all. The two-or-so-week gap that’s filled the interim between my last few posts is inadvertent; each time I check the site, I’m amazed at how much time’s gone by. I can’t say my absence has been for a lack of good food and inspiration, since I’m home for winter break and eating better than I do all semester. For a while, I could blame my broken camera – food blogging with no pictures loses its charm fast – but now that it’s been repaired, I can’t use that, either.

So I guess the best I can say is that I’ve jam-packed my time away from my computer with lots of downtime, cook-time, restaurant-time, sleeptime, read-time, etc. I’ll be back in full force soon, so don’t tucker out on me just yet. I’ve got a couple recipes (and a great big appetite!) to share with y’all once my routine gets back to normal.

In the meantime, I’ve delved into Jeffrey Steingarten’s The Man Who Ate Everything, which I’m ashamed to say became something of a bible to me before I’d even read it cover to cover. Now I’m gleefully doing that task and loving it all the more. Steingarten has an impressive but meandering life in food: he was plucked from a legal career to become Vogue’s food correspondent, and has since been a judge on Iron Chef America, received myriad awards (including a bundle of James Beards… not bad), and experimented tirelessly in the kitchen. The Man Who Ate Everything is a collection of his essays over the years, but that barely even covers it; his witty reports are fueled by exhaustive research, endless curiosity, and a joie de vivre as insatiable as his appetite. He is humble but plucky, informative but genial, and just the man you’d want at a dinner party. (Or not. He admits himself that he can be kind of ballsy.)

Anyhow, I can’t feel completely bad that such men as Steingarten and Anthony Bourdain, who spoke at New Orleans’ Mahalia Jackson Theatre last week, are keeping me away from my writing. But I’ll be back soon, for better or worse, with real offerings to boot.

Posted in musings | 1 Comment »

hot, rich, dark, and seductive

December 30, 2009 by passionfruitbutter

Good adjectives to describe men and brownies.

Falling apart. If you want to avoid this outcome, wait longer than two minutes to cut your brownies after taking them out of the oven.

My first go with this recipe was a miniature disaster. My friend Chris Struck, who calls himself Food Dude and may choose two of the aforementioned positively connoting adjectives for himself as a token of my gratitude for this recipe, is a culinary student at Johnson & Wales. He’s not half bad (um, hello, internship at Craft; cooking with the contestants from Top Chef New York at a James Beard dinner), so when he passed his recipe for brownies along to me, I sat up straight and knew I had to make them.

The big red figurative warning sign came at the part that explicitly instructed me to add eggs, along with sugar and vanilla, into butter that has been melting in a saucepan over low heat. But then, since baking often leaves so little room to improvise, I figured this was a deliberate decision based on the kind of knowledge you don’t acquire until culinary school. I added the eggs and brandished my whisk, beating them vigorously so as not to scramble the eggs.

I soon found myself with a rich, fragrant yellow custard-like concoction, studded with delicate fragments of scrambled egg. And that’s how I landed myself a gig as the scribe for whatever cookbooks lie in Chris’ future; with his culinary ingenue and my meticulous attention to precision and detail, every recipe will be a winner. We’ll start with this one, whose technical errors I have rectified. But the pint of butter and the 8 eggs? That’s all Chris. Don’t blame me for a second. And yes, this WILL make enough brownies for you to distribute throughout the Superdome at the Saints’ first playoff game on the 16th. Or you can make them next time you have a bunch of people over, since the yield is basically endless. OR you can do what I did and just hoard them and experiment with different sauces and toppings, such as…

Dark chocolate toffee. I got super-lazy and just melted a square of Ghirardelli’s Toffee Interlude [EDIT: dumbest name for a candy bar ever?] over a brownie, but you can go wild. Toffee anything is sure to please.

Raspberry coulis. In a saucepan, bring two cups of raspberries (frozen is great and cheap for this) to a mellow boil with two tablespoons of lemon juice and sugar to taste. Stir until it’s smooth and thick – my first batch was a bit thin, probably a result of my haste in getting it off the stovetop and into my mouth. Just stay the course and brave those extra minutes (not that a thin coulis is a huge problem; you still get a nice wallop of raspberry flavor, it’s just not quite as pretty or tame when you get around to plating). Strain in a fine-mesh sieve. You’ll wind up with a glorious, tart concoction that perfectly balances the density of the brownies. This is such an easy thing to make (I’ve heard you can even make a heatless rendition by tossing everything into a food processor, but I’m a bit old-fashioned for that), and next time, I might try it with blackberries or blueberries instead.

Nutella whipped cream. I can’t figure out why, but this doesn’t look as frothy as it was – maybe harsh lighting? In any case, this is HEAVEN not just for brownies, but for anything: what isn’t made better by Nutella? what isn’t made better by whipped cream? The offspring of the two is STELLAR. In a cold metal bowl, whip a pint of heavy whipping cream on high. When it’s just started to thicken, add a heaping spoonful of Nutella. Mix and taste. I really have no method to this, so it’s best to wing it – which in this case means just mixing and tasting, mixing and tasting, until you’ve found that perfect balance. What I love about this is that the airiness of the whipped cream keeps the Nutella from being as sticky-sweet as it is on its own. I found that the nuttiness stood out more than the chocolatiness, which made the taste of the whipped cream unbelievable, especially spooned over the piping-hot mess-of-a-brownie pictured at the top of this post.

In the spirit of the holidays, you could also spoon on a bit of homemade peppermint ice cream (a post on that coming soon) or just dust them with finely crushed peppermints. If you crave saltiness alongside sweetness, go with salted caramel or crushed pretzels. The possibilities go as far as your tastes (and your appetite).

Please make these brownies! They have none of the tacky consistency that comes from boxed brownies, and thanks to an ungodly amount of chocolate (and of basically every other ingredient) are in fact almost like a flourless chocolate cake on the richness scale – though the flour gives them a delicacy and texture that keeps them from sliding into fudge territory.

CHRIS’ RIDICULOUS BROWNIES
2 cups butter
3.5 cups sugar
3 teaspoons vanilla
8 eggs, slightly beaten
2 cups all-purpose or unbleached flour
1 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 teaspoon salt
8 ounces semi-sweet baking chocolate squares, coarsely chopped
8 ounces unsweetened baking chocolate squares, coarsely chopped

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
2. Go easy on yourself and melt the butter in the microwave.
3. In a large bowl, mix the melted butter with sugar, vanilla, and eggs; blend well.
4. Sift and stir in flour, cocoa, and salt; mix until just combined.
5. In 25-second intervals, melt chocolate in a microwave, stirring each time until completely smooth.
6. Mix this in with the rest of the batter until fully incorporated.
7. Liberally grease a 15×10-inch pan (yes, you heard me) with nonstick cooking spray.
8. Pour batter into pan and bake until set (about 35 minutes).

Posted in baking, chocolate, dessert | 6 Comments »

late night is a funny thing

December 16, 2009 by passionfruitbutter

This time of night is so lonely; it’s strange to check Twitter and see not a single update. Come on, people – am I the only nocturnal one here? In any case, when I take an Internet break after making some headway in this big essay I have due tomorrow, it’s rather jarring to have such stillness. I guess that’s what all these means of communication do to us – they prime us for nonstop barrages of talktalktalk. Good or bad, it’s what I’m used to.

Pork rillette with, from left: crunchy whole-grain mustard, housemade cornichon, sour cherry preserves, eggplant taponade

What I came here to tell you, though, was that this little item was a lot of fun to eat. It came from a summertime trip to Coquette. A rich pork rillette, preposterous in its smoothness, came in a little mound alongside a smattering of different condiments. Kind of a make-your-own gourmet snack. A bit kitschy, but delicious nonetheless. I ended up being happiest with those delightful cornichons when I could enjoy them on their own (and same, oddly enough, with the mustard; I am a very strange, vinegar-inclined girl), but the cherry/pork combo was beyond-words divine, with the cherry’s sweet tartness perfectly suiting the unapologetically velveteen pork.

Posted in New Orleans, cherry, lunch, mustard, pickles, pork | Tagged | 1 Comment »

oh hey everyone

December 12, 2009 by passionfruitbutter

Remember me? I’m the girl who hasn’t blogged in almost a month.

But then, for all our naked dance parties and naked donut runs, Brown isn’t a walk in the park. And it’s finals time. And somehow, at finals time, it seems professors always think it’s a great idea to dump papers and tests on you. I guess we could choose to be empowered: surely they think we’re superhuman if they believe we can handle all this?

So to that, I say, thank you, trusty profs, for having such faith in me when I had none. I have soldiered through three essays and two tests this week, and I’m facing another two tests and a big ten-pager in the next five days. I will be a better person at the end of this, and I owe it all to you.

In the midst of all this chaotic studying, I find myself taking solace in cooking, which is awfully convenient for my dormmates. Now, friends of my beer pong aficionado neighbors even burst into my room on Friday nights and say, “So you’re the one who cooks? Will you cook me something?”

June Cleaver, at your service!

SORRYSOSORRY for the utter lack of artfulness. Aesthetics get thrown to the wind when you're surrounded by hungry college kids. Also, this was after the chèvre enthusiasts dumped in a whole bunch of, well, chèvre. Your rendition needn't be this decadent.

Pasta is, of course, among the easiest things to cook and serve the masses: you can doctor it up with anything, you can satisfy the vegetarian and the carnivore in one shot, and you can get your daily (or weekly) carb dose. Magnificent.

I made this orechiette a while back for the folks of Champlin, and I know a few people wanted the recipe. I feel a bit traitorous even writing one, since it was so absurdly easy – I actually just improvised the whole darn thing. But here are some guidelines. It’s all straightforward if you’ve got any experience in the kitchen, but it’s a little involved what with the roasting you’ll be doing. Translation: what a fabulous thing to occupy your time while you’re cooped up inside away from the cold.

Now, please accept this obscenely long-winded blog entry as my humble apology for my recent academia-induced absence.

PHASE ONE, IN WHICH RÉMY ROASTS HER TOMATOES:
Gather a smorgasbord of cherry tomatoes. Or grape. Whichever you prefer, my dears. Just get enough to cover your favorite cookie sheet.
Slice them in half. Toss in olive oil and dust in kosher salt. Spread this heaven evenly over a cookie sheet and plunk a healthy amount of garlic cloves throughout. Don’t bother peeling them; when they’re finished roasting, they’ll be like little savory Hershey’s Kisses just begging to be unwrapped and devoured. Are you too good for eating roasted garlic straight-up? Get off your high horse and try it, buffoon. You’ll never go back.
Using a mortar and pestle (or, if you’re a poor college kid, a sturdy bowl and any pestle-like object you can find [I used a salt shaker]), grind up a couple teaspoons of Italian herbs (oregano, rosemary, basil, the like) and sprinkle evenly over the tomatoes to taste.
Shimmy this into an oven at 275 and slow-roast for a few hours. Three and four are both good numbers, so feel free to pop in a movie after you get this started and check back a little later. What we’re looking for are chewy, succulent, shriveled tomatoes. Be careful not to let them dry up! But at the same time, we want all that watery raw-tomatoey-ness to be gone, so you really just need to play it by ear. All things considered, this is a pretty easy (if slow) process, so don’t get too hung up on it.
When this is finished, dump everything into a pretty jar (or ugly Tupperware) and refrigerate until you’re ready to throw it into the pasta. Take extra precautions to guard the stuff; they’re like candy, and there is a good chance they will be snatched up by your resident kitchen miscreant.

PHASE TWO, IN WHICH RÉMY BASICALLY REPEATS THE PROCESS FOR EGGPLANT:
Now we’re going to slow-roast some eggplant. Get however many of these odd purple veggies that you want; I got two.
Slice them in half lengthwise and score them. Massage some olive oil into each half so they’ll have just enough to wallow in as they cook. Sprinkle with salt and more of your ground-up Italian spices. You know, the usual.
Pop in the oven. Cook until they’re soft and unctuous and everything good. Cut into little pieces that are roughly the same size as your pasta.

PHASE THREE, IN WHICH THE REST OF THE MEAL IS ASSEMBLED:
Start boiling some water for your pasta.
Meanwhile, you’ll want some chicken for the carnivores in your life. (Note: pancetta would also be wildly good here.) Salt and pepper the raw bits – you know what you’re doing so I’m not gonna give you quantities, because heaven knows I didn’t measure mine. Just follow your intuition and err on the side of NOT curing your lovely meat. We’ll be doing better things with it in a moment…
…i.e., cooking it in olive oil on the stovetop. Yeah. Pretty straightforward. Cook your chicken. Cut it into pasta-appropriate pieces, taking cues from your eggplant experience.
If you haven’t put your pasta into the boiling water, now is a good time to do so.
Unless you’re surrounded by very strict vegetarians, it’s fine to cook your spinach in the pan that was previously used for the chicken. Regardless, you’re gonna want to cook down the spinach in some olive oil. Toss in some minced garlic if you know what’s good for you. Spinach, as you know, SHRINKS when you cook it. You’ll need more than you think. Just know this. Something else to know: I can’t possibly tell you how much you need. Everything in my life goes back to the theme of WINGING IT. So if you want to follow my “recipes,” you will have to follow suit. Sorry. There is a reason Giada DeLaurentiis has a food show and I do not.

Congratulations! Everything important is completed. Now you just need to put it all together. So, without further ado…

PHASE FOUR, IN WHICH THE ACTUAL MEAL IS FINALLY ASSEMBLED BECAUSE, GODDAMMIT, WE’RE HUNGRY:
Drain your pasta and toss it with the spinach and tomatoes. For good measure, you’ll want a 4-ounce log of chèvre. (Or, who am I kidding? You’ll want however much chèvre as is necessary to make you happy. God, I’m inconclusive.)
Be like me: put the sliced chicken on one plate and the eggplant on another. Let everyone choose if they want one, both, or neither in their individualized pasta bowls (see? I care about the vegs. It’s all about tolerance).
Be unlike me, and toss your cares to the wind: toss the chicken and eggplant in with the pasta. SO INDULGENT.
Relax in the moment as everyone kisses your feet. Gracefully accept the praise; graciously play off any subsequent marriage proposals. You rule the world. Enjoy!

ALTERNATIVELY, THE SHORT(ER) VERSION OF THE RECIPE:
A pound of pasta
A couple pints of cherry or grape tomatoes
One or two bulbs of garlic
A few teaspoons of Italian spices (for all that roasting you’re gonna do!)
A healthy amount of olive oil. Any self-respecting cook should have enough not to worry about measurements, but I’ll humor you and tell you you want about a half a cup. Or a few gallons, just for future reference.
An eggplant or two, depending on demand
The patience to deal with my utter refusal to decisively quantify anything
Chicken of any fashion. I used thighs since they were CHEAP! And since dark meat is flavorful. But you could be tasteful and use chicken breasts; I won’t judge. (Or will I?)
A bunch of salt and pepper (but you already knew that)
One of those little tubs of spinach
At least four ounces of soft goat cheese

1. Slow-roast the halved tomatoes with olive oil, salt, and ground Italian spices.
2. Repeat the process with the eggplant.
3. Sauté your chicken with olive oil and spices in a little pan.
4. Boil water; cook pasta.
5. Sauté the spinach with olive oil and garlic.
6. Drain the pasta and toss it with the tomatoes, spinach, and goat cheese to taste.
7. Serve with chicken/eggplant/both.
8. Be worshipped by the desperately hungry college kids in your life.

Posted in chicken, dinner, easy, pasta, tomato | Tagged , , | 2 Comments »

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