House Cleansing

A week ago last Saturday, my friend Mari had a house cleansing. She had a rather tempestuous break up and divorce. She brought family members and friends together to help cleanse her house emotionally. I think it was a great success. The peals of laughter virtually shook the roof and those bad feelings were forced out through the cracks...this is despite the fact that Mari does not know what direction counterclockwise is. For those of you who don't understand the reference. When cleansing a space, you use a smudge stick (a bundle of burning herbs, mostly sage)and walk around the space counterclockwise and go around any openings counterclockwise. The great thing about this kind and gentle type of witchery, the spirits are very understanding and aren't demanding task masters.

So wine flowed and food was consumed...that's where I come in. Mari asked me to make something for the occasion. We chose the menu because of it's light spring-like nature. We chose Chicken Oscar. I've had Chicken Oscar several times, and I love it. I attempted to find a good recipe, but none of them seemed on the mark to me. A Chicken Oscar is primarily made up of chicken breast, English muffins, crab meat, asparagus, and Hollandaise sauce. Not too hard. I think most restaurants grill their chicken, I'm not the slickest griller. But I do a bang up poached chicken. Real crab is very expensive out here in the plains. Besides, we don't get enough the real stuff to know the difference, so we settled on faux crab. The English muffins and the asparagus were no big deal. So, I made everything except toasting the muffins and the Hollandaise sauce before I got there. It was a little busier than I expected when I was cooking for anywhere between 9 and 12 people.

So, for a Hollandaise sauce I just went to The Better Homes and Garden Cookbook, on page 450 of the 1996 edition.

Ingredients
1/2 cup butter
3 beaten egg yolks
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Dash of salt
Dash of white pepper

Preparation
1. Cut the butter into thirds and bring it to room temperature.
2. In the top of a double boiler combine egg yolks, water, lemon juice, salt, and pepper. Add a piece of butter. Place over boiling water (upper pan should not touch water). Cook, stirring rapidly with a whisk, till butter melts and sauce begins to thicken. Add remaining butter, a piece at t time, stirring constantly till melted. Continue to cook and stir till sauce thickens (about 2 minutes more). Immediately remove from heat. If sauce is too thick or curdles immediately whisk in 1 to 2 tablespoons hot water.

We're not even going to discuss nutrients of this stuff. In this case, who cares? I felt really good about the sauce. I had been told by someone in the La Chiesa cooking class that I had to worry about it separating. I've made it a couple times now, and it's never separated. That includes the night of the cleansing when I prepared a triple batch.

I think one of the things that helped with that success is that I have a really nice whisk with which I whipped the hell out of it, and rather than a small little double boiler that doesn't really allow me to whisk well, I used a big aluminum pan set on top of a pan of boiling water. It worked beautifully. It tasted good too.

As a matter of fact, I've found that it's an easy meal to make on the spur of the moment, but then I always have these ingredients around. When I make it for myself, I cut way back on the Hollandaise, although it is soooo good.

I should add that Mari's friend Barb brought this delicious salad with spinach, pecans, and strawberries. It was lovely. And Mari made these beautiful cheesecakes for dessert. We had the leftovers at the party we had last Saturday night. Mari calls these parties "Wine-d Down parties." The name is very applicable, and they are a lot of fun. :)

Dessert at La Chiesa

This afternoon was the last class of the series at La Chiesa. Today, Jeremy tackled desserts. He made creme brulee, biscotti, a chocolate tart, and chocolate panna cotta with a coffee foam. They were all fabulous, and this was the lesson with which I was probably most comfortable. None of it was too terribly new for me except the foam thing. I've learned from this lesson, that I can tackle a creme brulee and plan on doing so sometime in the near future.

I was so happy when Jeremy said he's looking at doing another series this coming fall. I really hope he does, and if you are any kind of foodie, you must consider this great pleasure. And if you are just looking for some really good food that's not zapped or just thawed and warmed, check out La Chiesa, and tell Jeremy that I sent you. :) Oh, and the house wine is great!

Bitchy

I now know the true meaning of the word bitchy. Joey and I have started back in our routine of taking a walk early in the morning and when I come home from work. When I come home from work, she just gives me hell if I do anything other than taking her out for her walk immediately. Yesterday, after walking to and from school in the relative cold, she didn't even want to let me warm up for a few brief minutes.

However, I guess I shouldn't bitch about my little bitch. I probably wouldn't do much walking if I didn't have to consider her needs.

As I said, I have begun to walk to and from work, which is a little over a mile one direction. I was able to do it Tuesday and Wednesday. I wanted to walk today, but it was too cold out to wear a skirt out walking, and I didn't have any clean pants to wear. I suppose I could have worn my snow pants with the dress, but that seems a little overdressed for the weather we have, and I would have felt really stupid with snow pants on the walk home this afternoon.

It seems as if I'm ready for one extreme or the other, but not this mild stuff in between. Now that winter clothes are on sale, I bought myself some good, low, subzero boots, a face mask, a full-head stocking cap (can we call it that if it's not clearly knit?) and some thermal gloves. I'm set for next winter. If we have school, I should be able to walk regardless of the weather. Now, if it'll warm up a little more, I'd be walking to school EVERY day.

Damn Mandolin

It was two weeks ago Saturday that a lot of things began to play out. First of all, Mari and I were going to try a new dish. Her birthday was just two days prior so, we had a little birthday party. I was going to be making Lobster Risotto. The risotto itself turned out well, but the lobster was disappointingly tough. Later, I e-mailed my chef friend Jeremy Nepple and he said it was probably because I either cooked it too long, or the temperature was too high while it cooked. I give you the recipe down below, but there was so much more to this story.

That same day, I had bought Mari's gift, I found a mandolin slicer. Jeremy had recommended that we get one. He did, however, warn us to be careful. Well, Sunday, the next day, I decided to try out my new Mandolin. I decided I'd fry up some potato chips. At the beginning it was difficult to slice the potatoes using the protective guard. And, of course, I thought that my hand would be far enough away from the slicer itself, that I would be ok putting the potato through without the guard. WRONG! I sliced off a good hunk of my thumb. Oh my God, blood spurted and although I wrapped a towel around it tightly, I couldn't get it to stop bleeding enough to bandage it. So, I got in the car and drove to the emergency room. Since I was driving with one hand, I put pressure on my thumb with the same hand and by pushing it up against my chin. It was as I was driving along that I realized that the towel I was using was the same towel I had used while preparing the lobster. It had a distinctly fishy smell. When I was finally settled down and getting it bandaged, I told the nurse working on me about the towel and the smell. She listened politely...but then a few minutes later, she came around to my side and she said it was a good thing I had told her about the towel, otherwise, she wouldn't know what to think when she smelled that smell. We both enjoyed the joke. So obviously it wasn't so bad that I couldn't share some dirty insinuations.

My thumb is healing quite well now. You can still see that it took no only skin, but also a small piece of muscle as well. And I've faced my demon. I've since used the mandolin successfully. However, I will always give it the respect it deserves. My friend Dennis has called me Julia Child, which of course was a reference Dan Aykroyd's comedic portrayal of Julia Child. (You can watch Dan Aykroyd by clicking on the highlighted name.)

Things seem to have come full circle. I began this blog after watching the movie Julie and Julia, which was in part, about Julia Child.

Well, and here is the Lobster Risotto recipe. I got it from page 184of the Jan/Feb 2011 edition of Cooking Light.

Directions
Bring 4 cups broth and 1.5 cups water to a boil in a saucepan. Add 3 (5-ounce) lobster tails; cover and cook for 4 minutes. Remove lobster from pan; cool for 5 minutes. Remove meat from cooked lobster tails, reserving shells. Chop meat. Place shells in a large zip-top plastic bag. Coarsely crush shells using a meat mallet or heavy skillet. Return crushed shells to the broth mixture. Reduce heat to medium-low. Cover and cook for 20 minutes. Strain shell mixture through a sieve over a bowl, reserving broth; discard solids. Return broth mixture to saucepan; keep warm over low heat. Heat 1 tablespoon butter in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Add 1 cup uncooked Arborio rice to pan; cook 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Stir in 1 cup broth mixture, and cook for 5 minutes or until liquid is nearly absorbed, stirring constantly until each portion is absorbed before adding the next (about 22 minutes total). Remove from heat, and stir in lobster, the reserved 2 tablespoons broth mixture, 2 tablespoons butter, and 3/4 cup frozen green peas. Yield: 4 servings (serving size: 1 cup)

Nutrition:
374 calories; 10.7 grams fat; 24.7 grams protein; 44.4 grams carbs; 4.1 grams fiber
Weight Watchers points plus value: 10

La Chiesa II

Tonight, I went on the second of three culinary adventures put on by Arts on Grand and La Chiesa restaurant, both of Spencer.

It was,again, MARVELOUS. Not only is it good food, but I feel as though I'm learning so much. Tonight Chef Jeremy Neppl made a pork loin with an Italian bacon, but the name escapes me. It wasn't prosciutto, but something similar to that. He also made potato gnocchi (a pasta-like dumpling) and Bolognese sauce, a layered potato dish, green beans, and Brussels sprouts. They were all so good, and it was a lot of fun watching him cook. By the way, I know that at some point, I am going to make the gnocchi.

I should have been writing over the last few weeks all that I learned last time. But it's not very interesting reading about how to bread something without breading your fingers in the process. I learned a lot of neat tricks like that. I've also made chicken stock from scratch, blended olive oil and canola oil for some things in the kitchen, etc. They're small things, but significant if you spend any time in the kitchen.

Tonight Jeremy really surprised me. He told me that he read my blog... to be honest I was a bit embarrassed. I felt sort of like a food critic wannabe. I don't feel I know nearly enough about food for that role, but then I got thinking. I'm entirely comfortable with the role as literary critic. Actually, I thrive in that role. And like I tell my students, "critic" does not mean negative. It means to be analytical, interpretive. But then, even with that definition, I don't feel as though I know enough about food to really analyze it or interpret it, but I do feel as though I'm getting there. My palate is strengthening. Now, when I eat something I would have found acceptable in the past, I realize how bad it really is. Hell, take out pizza no longer cuts it for me. So now I find myself in a quandary. I have to cook more even if I'm tired or I don't want to cook in order to be satisfied.

I don't want to be a chef like Jeremy (the hours would kill me). I want to be a good cook and I want to know about all the different foods out there. Here in Northwest Iowa, we have so few opportunities to experience foods from different cultures. Sometimes our only option is to make them ourselves. So Jeremy, if you're reading this. I need to learn more about cooking. Can you point me in the right direction? By the way, the pictures I took of you with my cell phone tonight didn't turn out well, so I borrowed one from your website. And I told my boyfriend that we have to eat at your restaurant SOON. Thank you for everything, and I can't wait until next month.

"Whore's spaghetti"

I haven't been dieting well or even exercising well lately. Frequently, I've been coming home exhausted. I've been trying to at least avoid junk food and eating home made food even if that food isn't necessarily the most dietary of foods. It's been a rough couple of weeks because I've been teaching 4 sections of Composition II how to correctly use NoodleTools, a program that generates works cited pages. I've been doing this in a computer lab, which means I run around hour after hour during the day, but it isn't healthy running around. It's not aerobic. I rush from one side of a room to the other to stop a couple of minutes each place. It's taking its toll on me.

On Friday I spent the day with Mari and Brian, at a state conference between community colleges and the regents (the public state universities). The day was interesting, but long. The upside is that we went down to Newton for the meeting on Thursday. Thursday night we unwound with some drinks and soaking in the hot tub. I haven't been that warm and relaxed in MONTHS!!! I'm definitely going to have to get a whirlpool tub. Those drinks and that soaking was more rejuvenating than sleeping a week straight.

I was so refreshed and the day was so nice today that I took Joey for a walk on our fair-weather route. It was great! I'm hoping to take her again this afternoon.

So, anyway, right now, I'm more interested in exploring cooking more so than dieting. When I came home I found 3 new cooking magazines in the mail box. I had to try one of the recipes today: Spaghetti alla Puttanesca. Not knowing what puttanesca meant, I just did a quick search and learned from Wikipedia that it literally means "whore's style spaghetti." I've been called worse things.

I was intrigued by this recipe because it's made mostly of ingredients that can be kept in the pantry and not in the fridge. In other words, I can keep the ingredients on hand for a long time and when I'm tired or I don't want to go to the store, I can still whip up something that's good rather than going through a fast food drive-through. Also, it has a lot of ingredients with which I've had little to no experience, so I was challenged by it.

I don't know if this recipe is for everyone, but I really enjoyed it. This is a very oily spaghetti. It especially has a lot of olive oil. But there's also anchovies in it, so it also has omega-3 fish oil. The Kalamata olives and capers made it nice and tangy as well. So, if your idea of spaghetti is Chef Boyardee, or Kraft, this may not be for you.

The one ingredient I didn't use was grape tomatoes. I looked at them in the store and they just looked hard and woody. So, instead I used a big can of diced tomatoes. I drained them slightly, but when it called to add the additional spaghetti water, I didn't need to because there was plenty of sauce. Besides, I've read where canned tomatoes are even richer in the healthy antioxident, lycopene, than fresh tomatoes.

I found this recipe on page 91 of the March 2011 edition of Everyday Food.

Ingredients
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/5 cups grape tomatoes, quartered lengthwise
2 tablespoons capers, rinsed, dranied, and coarsely chopped.
3 anchovy fillets, minced
1/3 cup pitted Kalamata or other brined black olives, coarsely chopped
2 garlic cloves minced
1.5 cups tomato purée (from a 15-ounce can)
coarse salt and ground pepper
1 pound spaghetti

Preparation
1. In a large skillet, heat oil over medium-high. Add grape tomatoes, capers, anchovies, olives, and garlic and cook until fragrant and tomatoes soften, about 5 minutes. Add tomato purée and season with salt and pepper; cook 2 minutes (sauce will be separated)
2. Meanwhile, in a large pot of boiling salted water, cook pasta until al dente. Reserve 1 cup pasta water; drain pasta and add to sauce tossing to combine and adding enough pasta water to create a thin sauce that coats pasta. Season to taste with salt and pepper and serve immediately. Serves 6.

Nutrition:
420 calories; 13 grams fat; 12 grams protein; 63 grams carbs; 4 grams fiber. Totals 11 points plus weight watcher's points.

Risotto

Although it's far from being dietary, I wanted to try to make risotto as I learned to make it Sunday night at La Chiesa, and at the same time, I wanted to make the broiled tilapia that I made a couple of weeks ago for Mari again. So, I went ahead and made the two together. The flavors went together very well. And although there aren't a lot of flavorings added to the risotto, it was very tasty.

I thought I knew how to make risotto until Sunday night. There I discovered that I was using the wrong kind of rice. You need to use Arborio, or similar rice in which the starches are on the outside of the grain rather than on the inside where most rice stores the starch. You also need to roast the rice before you add it to liquid. Although I don't have an official recipe, I can give you the general run down without specific amounts.

First, you need to heat a little olive oil and butter together in a skillet. Add finely chopped shallots and Arborio rice. Roast, stirring until the shallots begin to brown. I'd say about 5 minutes will do it. Then add stock about a cup at a time. I made chicken stock last night. That's something else I learned Sunday night. You need to make chicken or veal stock around. You just need to simmer the bones along with some carrots and onions. I also threw in some celery. You can freeze it and have it around as you need it. So, anyway, you keep adding the stock as it cooks away and is absorbed. Test the rice by tasting a grain once in awhile. Once it's done, add Parmesan and salt and pepper.

I really was impressed with how tasty the risotto was. But the tilapia was again really good. :)