suzy feels reasonably successful

the best part is, i forgot to mention one other recipe that i was planning on making as well -- a "vegetable paella" recipe from bettycrocker.com. but let's begin at the beginning, shall we?

purple mashed potatoes

my friend wasn't kidding when she said these were purple. neither was the guy at whole foods (i couldn't find them at my grocery store or at wild oats, otherwise i wouldn't have gone to what my friends and i affectionately refer to as "whole paycheck") when he told me they were deep purple. the photo really doesn't do them justice.

these are potatoes that are purple. naturally purple! sadly, wikipedia has nothing useful to say on the topic. but take my word for it. if you thought purple ketchup was fun, you will love these things. they are purple peruvian potatoes (i found them fingerling style, but i imagine normal looking ones are out there as well).

the mashed potatoes are excellent! i'm not sure if it's the potato or the fact that i started using half and half, but they have the smokiest taste, and the skins are a great crunch factor.

the crunch factor is very important, by the way. i'm thinking of going back to school just so i can write a thesis on the two texture factors i have just identified this week: the crunch, and the pop. you will all be the first to read it, i promise you.

next up? ah yes, marinated chicken with vegetables. this was not exactly a recipe; more of a throwback to how i first started cooking. my very first recipes in married life were of the chicken-in-the-crockpot variety. you can't really mess that up, can you? this time, it was actually the tastiest i think i've ever done. i call it crock o' havana:

1 pkg boneless skinless chicken breast filets
1 bottle Lawry's Havana Garlic marinade
1/2 pkg mushrooms, sliced
1/2 jar silver/pearl onions

-Layer marinade, filets, and onions in the crockpot, reserving some marinade for the mushrooms
-Plug in crockpot, let sit for 5ish hours
-Immediately before serving, saute mushrooms in marinade and spoon over filets on the plate
-Serve with purple peruvian mashed potatoes

the only thing i wish were different is how salty Lawry's marinades are. if only i could figure out how to make them minus the intense sodium... something for a rainy day?

crab cakes italiano have already been documented extensively. my only addition to that topic is, use actual breadcrumbs (i used Progresso) instead of smushed-up croutons. the patties stay together much better.

same goes for ruth's mushroom soup. make this recipe NOW! it is the perfect fall recipe. warm, soothing, comforting, infinitely tasty... but hey, you already know i'm obsessed with it.

green bean casserole? what, that thing that comes out of the microwave thanksgiving day because you're pressed for time? yeah, that.

it turns out that, the way that i am obsessed with mushroom soup, my husband is obsessed with green bean casserole -- only he's been that way apparently since childhood. i should have remembered the casserole incident last thanksgiving: this is one of my aunt's pride-and-joy dishes. she's wonderful in so many ways, just not gourmet. she is also consistently mocked for her pride in this recipe. last thanksgiving, there was quite a lot left over, and my husband begged to take it home with us. ah, the tears of joy....

in any case, i thought this one would be a snap. little did i know that the fresh green beans at the supermarket would be, ahem, less than fresh (read: covered with white slime). also, i don't feel like the small can of soup plus milk cut it--they seem a little low in sauce to me. in any case, he's eaten it all already, so i guess his obsession is not exactly picky. i think i found the recipe on allrecipes.com, but i wouldn't swear to it. in any case, my only advice is don't EVER used canned green beans. that is just wrong.

stay tuned for: suzy wonders about paella!

suzy gets ambitious

the proposed menu (proposed by myself, i should specify) for making over the weekend (since i don't have much time to cook during the week):

-purple mashed potatoes - no food coloring involved
-marinated chicken breasts with accompanying vegetable
-crab cakes italiano - my husband demands them on a regular basis now
-ruth's mushroom soup - i demand this on a regular basis now
-green bean casserole - a favorite from my husband's childhood
-rosemary potatoes - a mutual favorite

and, due to time restraints, these will all have to be cooked saturday afternoon or sometime on sunday.

am i insane? probably! but the thing that makes me feel like this is at all doable in the first place is

a) i am already familiar with four out of the six recipes
b) two require almost no prep and another almost no cook time
c) almost (note: almost) all of the recipes i've made recently have turned out well

so! stay tuned for updates. will suzy sink under the weight of her own ambition? will her tiny convection/microwave oven refuse to work past recipe number three? will her two pans stand up to the task of being used in almost every recipe?

suzy needs a role model but has a good recipe

a friend of mine is getting married next summer -- actually two friends of mine are, but i was only talking to one of them -- and it came up in conversation that she felt the same way i do. we are both twenty-something, both driven career-wise to make good choices and hopefully find something both fulfilling and worthwhile, both desparately in love with the idea of making a home, and both completely unsure as to how to go about that.

"i want to be the kind of woman who has a great career and makes a difference, but also be home all day making cookies," she said (or something close; she'll forgive me the paraphrase).

why, i wondered to myself and to her, is it so hard to believe the things we want are compatible? and why do we want things we consider incompatible in the first place?

it's pretty much entirely the reason i started writing this blog. i have never been so confused in my life as about a month after i got married and started a new job. i was happy with my marriage, and happy with my job, but unsure how to make them fit together. i wanted nothing more than to make our new apartment a home. it's the first apartment we've ever had to ourselves, the first time for both of us that we don't have roommates, and therefore the first opportunity to really claim a space and make it our own.

i have my very own kitchen, my very own pots and pans that no one else will spoil by using metal spatulas on non-stick surfaces, our very own very small living room to decorate... but then, it turns out that even on weekends, the last thing i wanted to do with my free time was think about decor. i wanted to read, i wanted to spend time with my husband, i wanted to learn exciting new recipes that would actually turn out edible.

and there's another part of the rub. i feel defensive about how good my relationship is. when did that become something to be ashamed of? i mean sure, we've had very rocky moments, but we've had very good ones, and the good ones outweigh by far the rough ones. and i'm not talking about yelling matches, or declarations of hate and frustration. i'm talking about quiet conversations where we both attempt to put into words things that are difficult to say, without unduly hurting each other.

i am inclined to blame it on society -- sex in the city, friends, and then all those terrible family life sitcoms like everybody loves raymond and married with children, where everyone is miserable all the time and the good moments are just icing on the misery cake.

but then again, i've never actually sat down and watched an episode of sex in the city. i have watched a decent amount of friends, but the show stopped when everybody got married/serious so who knows what their relationships would have been like. i have a deep and abiding hatred for ray romano, so that may be more to the point than my attempt at social criticism.

i guess what i'm trying to say is, i'd love a role model. my marriage is nothing like my parents, and my mother truly was a homemaker and housewife, so not much help there. and while i can come up with tons of examples of relationships or women that are not helpful, i can't come up with a single one that is.

so while i'm elbow-deep in mushrooms, preparing to make and share a new and exciting recipe from above-mentioned friend, and meanwhile juggling six different projects at work, i guess i'll try to make some time to go role model hunting in there somewhere.

here's to my favorite in-the-kitchen role model!

Ruth's Mushroom Soup
adapted from Comfort Me with Apples

1/2 lb whole mushrooms (i've been using white ones, but i think any will do)
1/2 stick butter, unsalted
1 small onion, diced
4 tbs flour
1 1/3 c beef broth
3/4 c half and half (i believe the original recipe called for 2 c half and half and 1/3 c broth)
salt and pepper
1/4 tsp nutmeg

-thinly slice mushrooms
-dice onion
-melt butter in deep pan over low heat
-after foam subsides, add butter and saute until golden
-add mushrooms and saute until brown
-stir in flour, SLOWLY, distributing evenly and stirring immediately
-add broth VERY SLOWLY, stirring constantly
-heat half and half, then add
-add spices
-cook over low heat for 10 minutes; do NOT let boil

enjoy!

suzy falls in love

i dreamed about mushrooms last night.

soft, white, pillowy button mushrooms replaced my pillow and then dared me to eat them. big meaty portabellas wafted through the air, borne on their own aroma. shiitake mushrooms danced in the corner, bowed and then scurried off. varietals that i must have made up, because those are the only types of mushrooms i can identify, whirled round me in the finest display of fungal acrobatics ever seen in dreamland.

i blame ruth reichl.

ever since reading Comfort Me with Apples, i have become obsessed with her recipe for mushroom soup (which i promise to post later, right now i don't have access to the book). i have made it twice. the first time i discovered that i was hesitant to follow it to the letter--that much half and half is more likely to prevent me from enoying something than enriching the experience for me. so i put a little more broth in, much less half and half, and stirred with a worried frown. i did not let it boil, and followed all of her instructions to the letter.

except for the one about not putting the mushrooms in until the foam from the butter has dispersed. how long does that take? what heat does that take? i almost burned the butter before i gave up on that step.

it didn't matter. it was amazing.

the second time i made it, i followed my little alterations. but then, to my shame, i let it boil. just a little, and just very briefly, and my defense is that i was finishing the book at the same time, but still.

it didn't matter. it is amazing.

i have never dreamed of food before, much less gone to bed smelling it (hours after i had last touched the stuff), woken up craving it, and thinking about it in between.

this food is, for me, what i imagine crack is for other people.

i am in love...

suzy gets a self-esteem boost

so i've been completely taken over by the need to read food writing -- calvin trillin, ruth reichl, ed levine... that is, i would read some ed levine if only the library had it. i am severely handicapped, in fact, by the library system. so far i've managed to unearth Garlic and Sapphires, Comfort Me with Apples, Feeding a Yen, and The Tummy Trilogy, but that seems to have exhausted the possibilities.

of course, part of the problem is that i have no idea who to look up in the catalog. i love my library, it has been very good to me. i just don't know where to look (or at least, that is what i will assume until further notice).

hopefully some diligent online research will tell me who else i should read. it will be hard to find someone to match the insights of reichl and the down-to-earth humor of trillin, but it can't hurt to try.

but i digress. last night, as we sipped our (cheap but tasty) wine and watched Leaving Las Vegas (cinematography: excellent; direction: pretty good; acting: great except for elizabeth shue), my husband turned to me and said:

you know, if someone had told me that getting married would mean eating at a four star restaurant every night, i would have done it a lot sooner. i hope you know how much i love your cooking--i feel like maybe i don't express that.

i am, quite possibly, the happiest woman alive. despite the stomach virus and interminable mediocre dishes of cous cous, i am appreciated and making some progress with my cookery.

the recipes that provoked this outpouring of support? tune in next time...

suzy wastes food

i have a confession to make. i was brought up just like everyone else, told to eat my peas because there were starving children in china, taking leftovers to school for lunch in empty "i can't believe it's not butter" containers, and never knowing what an in-sink garbage disposal was for.

but sometimes, all that training just doesn't cut it. the stomach virus has come and gone, and left me with extra food-money (when you eat nothing but bread and cashews for two weeks, you can really see it in the budget) and three containers of cous cous.

the first container is half-full of pesto, squash, and zucchini cous cous adapted from bettycrocker.com. i made it right before the stomach virus struck, and it is wonderful. it's rich, it's fragrant, it's tasty, it's insanely easy to make... and it's totally incompatible with stomach viruses. so now, two and a half weeks later, i can't bring myself to believe that it's still good.

the second container holds the remains of my invention, stomach-virus friendly cous cous. i ate it for breakfast and lunch for a week, and managed not to fall fully prey to the virus. but now... i look at it and then i look away.

the third container is the most dismal, because it contains a classic example of what kept me from cooking for so long--one of my inventions that is, well, not very good. we were tired of the ginger mint dish, but still not ready for heavy foods again. so, flushed with the success of the ginger mint recipe, i threw together tomatoes (and not very good ones either), apple cider vinegar, red wine vinegar, and cous cous. the result is, well, vinegar-ee. surprised? me neither. like most of my failed inventions, it's not inedible; it just doesn't taste very good.

it reminds me very strongly of the summer during college that i spent working and living alone in los angeles. in my sublet studio apartment i did nothing but read everything i could get my hands on and cook from the Vegetarian 5 Ingredient Gourmet. i don't blame the cookbook at all. i don't know what happened. but every recipe i made turned out wrong. they were all edible, and i ate them, but i didn't enjoy it much. that summer is the reason that it took three years for me to open a cookbook.

so here i am, surrounded by unwanted food. my husband and i are tired of cous cous, no matter how gentle it is on our stomachs. what do i do?

i say, to hell with it and the ghost of summers past!, and throw it all away. it's a grand gesture, one that carries a bit of guilt but a lot of freedom. and despite the guilt, i feel like i'm throwing away more than just mediocre food--i'm also letting go of childhood frustration, college culinary failure, and the last remnants of the evil virus.

so long, cous cous. i'm sure we'll meet again.

suzy says, take that!

hah! and i quote:

The new young reporter, on the other hand, was jus the opposite; Amanda Hesser was terrifyingly sweet. She was pale, pretty, petite, but she seemed so frighteningly ambitious that we all kept our distance. -- Garlic and Sapphires, pg 208

needles to say, i've finished the book. it's wonderful and amazing and i can't wait to buy it and make every single recipe in it. go, i tell you, go to the library and check it out. you will wish you had sooner.

suzy meets ruth

i am only sixty pages into Ruth Reichl's Garlic and Sapphires, and i had to stop to post this. it's wonderful. it's what i wanted out of Amanda Hesser's Cooking for Mr. Latte and didn't get. her prose is clear, her anecdotes are entertaining and fit within the wider context of the essay, her characters and relationships are fleshed out... blah blah technical jargon blah.

i guess the bottom line is, when i read this book, i get that much closer to what it felt like to be Ruth in Le Cirque, or to eat the soba noodles at Honmura An, both things i will never do in real life. thank you, ruth. i am ashamed that it took me this long to read, and i can't wait to finish this one and read the others!

suzy and the stomach virus

i guess that's the problem with advanced cooking: life gets in the way. you spend lots of time shredding imitation crab, slaving over a hot sauce pan, praying for things to form cakes instead of lots of little separate lumps of crab and breadcrumbs, and what happens?

your husband ends up not being able to eat them, because he's got the mother of all stomach viruses. all he could eat this week was bread and cashews (don't ask, i don't know). as if by sympathy (unwonted, i guarantee it), all i feel hungry for is cous cous, bread, and the occassional bean burger.

so what happened to the crab cakes? i guess i'll discover how well they freeze.

so, in tribute to the past week, here's a recipe straight from my brain:

Suzy's Stomach Virus Friendly Cous Cous
1 c uncooked cous cous
fresh mint leaves, chopped or shredded
1 medium-sized ginger root, chopped
1/2 c almond slivers
1/3 c cashew pieces

-Cook cous cous according to package.
-Sautee mint, ginger, and nuts in olive oil for 5 minutes, or until the mint leaves shrivel up.
-Pour entire mixture, including any extra olive oil, into cous cous.
-Mix well.
-Eat in good health!

suzy meets amanda

i really, really, really wanted to like Amanda Hesser's Cooking for Mr. Latte. i got it on the recommendation of adam (the amazing amateur gourmet), i liked the cover, i really liked the fact that there were illustrations before every chapter (i'm going to start the More Books Should Be Illustrated movement one of these days), and i loved the fact that there was an index at the end that encompassed recipes and ingredients.

as far as the recipes go, i must admit that i only tried one--the macaroni and cheese recipe. the white sauce was more white chunks of butter-clotted flour than sauce, and even though i followed the recipe verbatim it just didn't seem like there was enough cheese in it. but that's not amanda's fault, and for the most part i liked what i saw of the recipes. her insistence on ground pepper and grains of paradise (whatever the hell those are) is a little annoying, but that i can forgive.

what i can't forgive, however, is how flat the chapters are. i was expecting some lively dialogue, some interesting insights, and hopefully some entertaining stories about food and relationships. what i got instead were essays that are hardly cohesive, with random anecdotes barely woven together with random descriptions of whatever food she happened to be eating. even the anecdotes specifically about eating in restaurants with famous foodies are interspersed with amanda's distracting and lackluster internal monologue. the last chapter was the most frustrating--she attempts to sum up the trials, tribulations, and successes of dating mr. latte, but because it wasn't backed up in the previous chapters, it felt artificial.

overwhelmingly flat, is all i can really think of to describe her writing. of course, i haven't read her columns, and maybe this isn't the best introduction to her style. i live in that hope. in any case, i'll certainly be trying some of the recipes, and will stick to the illustrations from now on.

suzy and the crab

did you ever wonder what, exactly, imitation crab is made of? i like to think that this little guy, weird-looking as he is (or she? i have yet to learn the fine art of crustacean gender identification), is happy that i use it, instead of real crab. but then again, it's mostly because i can't afford to buy a pound of actual crab. so look out, buddy--just wait till i get my raise.

wikipedia has this to say about imitation crab: " a type of processed sea food made of surimi, or finely pulverized white fish flesh, that has been shaped and cured to vaguely resemble snow crab legs... The primary ingredient in most crab stick is Alaska pollock from the North Pacific."

so pollock it was. why, you may be asking? do we care?

because, in what i consider one of my finest successes to date this week, i decided to try to make crab cakes. imitation crab cakes. vaguely cake-like congolmerations of imitation crab. you know what i mean.

what possessed me to do this? oh, the dangers of having betty crocker's recipe of the day! there it was, on my google home page, just one click away: Crab Cakes Italiano. mind you, most bettycrocker.com recipes are called things like "Impossibly Easy Spinach Pie", and involve Bisquick. so you can perhaps understand my impulse, given that a five year old with a measuring cup could make most of their recipes. which is why i have an account on the site in the first place.

but crab cakes? impossibly easy crab cakes? and what makes them italiano, anyway? is there such a thing as an italian crab? did the recipe involve bisquick? so many questions... how could i pass that up?

i did not! but, friends, it was not that simple. the ingredients themselves were easy enough to get, and the recipe is very short and simple. that is, until you get to the part about the crab.

1lb fresh lump crabmeat, cleaned and rinsed, or imitation crabmeat, shredded, it demands. shredded? i looked at my imitation crab. it was arranged in cute little rolls, pink on the outside and white on the inside. shredded? i actually (believe it or not) picked one up, unrolled it by hand, and picked it apart. that, i decided, would take hours.

is there such a thing as an imitation crabmeat shredder? if so, please send one post haste. i have never been so stumped in my life. i ended up mashing it about with a fork until it looked less roll-like and more... piece-like is really the only way to describe it.

which, i think, is what led to difficulties later on. i have never in my life had such a weird experience attempting to turn something into a cohesive patty. did i not use enough breadcrumbs (for breadcrumbs, read smushed up croutons)? too little mayonnaise? too much pesto? god only knows, but it was a miracle that they even looked as crappy as this:


and so, aspiring crab-cake makers, take it from me. no matter what it takes, shred that crab. the agonies of getting these into the pan to fry were ... well, agonizing!

the fact that they stayed (mostly) together at all was, i believe, divine intervention. thank you, oh patron saint of bad cooks who try advanced recipes without the proper equipment. thank you thank you thank you.

but, believe it or not, these were an intense success! they were tasty--much chewier than real crab, but i guess that's the imitation part--my husband ate two and had to be forcibly restrained from eating more, and considers it my finest creation to date. which may not be saying a lot, but feels good nonetheless.

so the moral of the story? crab cakes are yummy, imitation crab cakes are yummy too, but god help you if the crab, imitation or otherwise, is not shredded.