In Vino

Tuesday was a multi-purpose cause for celebration. It was not only my first payday at my new job, but also the first day of autumn. For me, the first day of autumn is marked by my waning craving for most white wines (ever a child of Napa, I know), which conveniently coincided on the same day. Imagine my thrill when Ben brought home several bottles of vibrant red wine!Our first bottle, a Tiz Red from back home, was dead in an evening after I took Ben out for a picnic dinner date. The red nicely accompanied cold chicken caeser wraps, a crisp sunset, and selected readings from Augusten Burroughs. The second, a Château Briot bordeaux, met a valiant end with some organic mushroom ravioli, bell pepper stuffed meatballs, and some Newman's Own sauce (I had destroyed my kneecap that day and couldn't stand long enough to make proper sauce, but Newman didn't disappoint). Ben preferred the Tiz on the grounds that very dry wines don't suit him. I, for one, might sin for a fine bordeaux.

That leaves us with a Lucky Star petite sirah and a Baglio di Pianetto ramione. As excited as I am to try them, I am more excited about pairing them properly with food. My last two meal pairings were completely random and spontaneous, so these require more delicate consideration. Ben is also reveling in eating at home after our recent ventures, so I think he deserves a reminder of why he comes back home night after night to the same wee kitchen. After some research I found a lovely roast leg of lamb recipe that was recommended with the Lucky Star, while the Baglio di Pianetto only suggests pairing with Italian food. Thanks for that. More on the results will surely come later this week, and will likely be joined with an attempt to make mulled wine.

Before I sign off and muse about my soon-to-be obliterated wine cache, I believe that a word from Miss Julia Child is in order.

Prost!

This weekend marks the moment that Ben has been waiting for all year: Oktoberfest in Mount Angel. It is normally Ben's favorite excuse to drink, but I saw it as an opportunity to garner inspiration for further meals. Ben is, after all, so German that it hurts sometimes.
Perhaps a turkey leg (pictured above with my friend Joe) is too ambitious for my kitchen. However, there was plenty more to be had. There was the classic bratwurst and sauerkraut, savory Russian dishes that I could neither pronounce nor spell, and schnitzel that made my taste buds dance. For the sweet (and inebriated) tooth there were also strudels, danishes, and delicious apple fritters. There was food as far as the eye could see.
Yes, there was also a ton of beer.

I am excited to come back to my kitchen. With the smell of fall in the air and the taste of borscht and schnitzel lingering, I look forward to recreating as many Oktoberfest dishes as possible over the next few months... Except maybe this one.

Comfort in a Cup(cake)

Ben's grandmother died on the 3rd. He has been off of work for a week, so there is no need for making early breakfasts. We are spending a lot of time with Ben's mother in Salem, so dinner is usually eaten out. As a consequence I have not cooked anything since the 10th. All of the comfort and love I could express to Ben through food has sadly been ignored. That is, until this last weekend.

I knew that my desire to cook, both for Ben and for the joy of it, was intensifying. However, I had no idea that it would affect the volume of how much I wanted to cook. I figured that cupcakes would be the best way to go - sweets generally cheer a troubled soul, and I had a cupcake tin that fit conveniently enough into Lenny. With a renewed sense of courage after my last cupcake debacle, I approached Ben with half a dozen recipes and asked him to choose one. He chose a delicious chocolate cream cheese recipe that made a beautifully colored treat, but it seemed too savory for my purpose.

Before the first set of cupcakes had cooled, I was already working on more batter. This time, I tried a chocolate cupcake recipe and added 1 cup of toffee chips to make it interesting. Unfortunately, I accidentally added three times the amount of cocoa powder requested in the recipe. I don't know whether or not it adversely affected the cupcakes, but the finished product was a sticky mushroom cloud of a thing that more closely resembled a chocolate bran muffin. It, too, was not as sweet as a traditional cupcake. Ben suggested some frosting to complement the rich batters, but in my kitchen-atrophied state I was a little wild with ambition. Instead, I made a rich homemade caramel sauce for a topping. This did not work ideally with the chocolate cream cheese cupcakes, and only made the chocolate toffee cupcakes stickier.

At this point a crazier muse kicked me in the side of the head. With two cupcake recipes and caramel sauce already made, I began whipping up a third batch of batter. I took Amy Sedaris's vanilla cupcake recipe (with a heaping extra dose of vanilla), spooned caramel sauce on the top (much like the chocolate cream cheese cupcake recipe), slid it in the over, and prayed. The results were by far my favorite. I noticed that each cupcake was marked with a slice, where the heated caramel had sunk in. The top of the cupcakes were singed like creme brulee, the baked batter was delightful, and the center of the cupcakes held the majority of the caramel as a sweet, creamy surprise. These may be forever known as my creme brulee cupcakes.

The end result of a week away from my hobbit kitchen: 40 cupcakes in three varieties, almost a liter of caramel sauce, and a vanilla cake made with the remainder of the third batter because I ran out of cupcake papers. I would have taken pictures, but they all disappeared in record time.

Spartan Lab: SCONES

A coffee shop in Eugene called The Beanery is where my muses come out to play. It is settled in an older building with skylights, big windows into the neighboring shops, and no air conditioning to speak of. However, they have a cracking good coconut vanilla black tea that massages my ideas in all the right places.

I was there about a week ago in a perfectly British mood (don't tell my dad!) when the muses hinted that a scone would help them work. I complied, skipping my normal choice of peach for a nice-looking chocolate chip model. To say that the muses were right is a desperate understatement: the scone was absolutely delicious, with notes of lemon zest and rose water that made my coconut tea so much creamier. I was not finished before the muses insisted that we try scones at our hobbit kitchen.

I was already afraid of this venture. I had never made scones, and they seemed even more daunting than delicate French crepes. What's worse, scones required an oven. I know that the word "oven" occurs in Lenny's label, but I wouldn't call him an oven if he wasn't listening. And then there was recipe choices. Epicurious offered a fair share of fancy scone recipes, and for a few days I was stuck in an almost painful selection process. Ben made this process much easier one day by throwing a bag of miniature chocolate chips in our shopping bag. Very well, chocolate chip scones it shall be.

My noni (Norwegian grandmother) called me while I was pulling my ingredients together. Her one piece of advice about the scones was, "make sure your butter is as cold as possible." I shrugged at her strange-sounding advice, but took it to heart nonetheless. It may be the best advice ever given about scone making, as part of the recipe calls for hand-kneading diced butter into the flour/sugar mixture. This, by the way, is the most entertaining part of scone making next to eating them. Ben helped me move the bowl (with my buttery hands in it!) to the couch so I could knead and watch "The Tudors". I may have kneaded far longer than necessary because it was so fun.

Soon it was time to start baking, which involved quickly doling out dough and constantly switching trays into Lenny. Baking also involved cooking two to four scones at a time because of Lenny's size (the recipe made about ten). As a result of my cupcake debacle, I no longer trust Lenny with the timing called for in recipes. Instead, I shifted Ben's giant computer chair (straight out of a James Bond villain scene, I swear) and guarded the scones diligently. They ended up needed six to eight less minutes than the recipe called for, so I am glad I was so obsessive.

The scones were excellent, easily the best thing to come from Lenny to date. The dough was slightly buttery and held the lemon zest flavor well. I was actually quite surprised how well the lemon zest played against the chocolate. I have tried them as a breakfast side, a teatime snack, and a dessert, and they play every part well. My favorite, though, is with teatime after Ben gets home from work. They go well with many sorts of teas (I prefer a nice chai with them), and pair nice with fancy old literature on a clear afternoon. Not that I've tried this.
I shared the scones with everyone - neighbors, strangers, Ben's ex girlfriends - looking for some critique for next time. The only criticism was that I had not made enough. Taking this to heart, I doubled the recipe and set out with baked treats to Alise's house last Saturday to welcome her new horse, Picasso Moon, to the family. I had almost two dozen scones for the small crowd who came out. Everyone was thrilled to have some warm baked goods waiting for them in the barn, given that Labor Day weekend was marked with drizzly rain. In fact, the scones seemed more welcome at times than dry towels. Alise, our feisty hostess, snuck out of the downpour several times to grab a second, a third, another one.I started with two dozen scones, and traveled all over Oregon to share them. By Sunday they were all gone. I am so glad that the second round of my baking lab was so welcomed, because it came with a fairly painful cost... My left arm and hand are peppered with tiny burns from quick tray changes with Lenny. Every dab of lanacane and inventive curse word was worth it, though. This Spartan Lab was a wild success, and likely will be a constant project.

Remains of the Day

Too much food goes to waste in our house. Cucumbers rot in the crisper because I forget to pick up salad mix, baguettes go stale when Ben and I are sick of sandwiches. Frozen food never stays frozen in our ridiculous freezer, so ice cream and stores of vegetables rarely last a day before becoming suicidal. Only Ben’s Jagermeister stays cold, buried in hard drifts of frost.

I am mostly to blame for the wastefulness, though I would never think myself wasteful. I was raised on an organic farm near Napa, and my father built his own Ferris wheel sized compost turner when I was barely able to read. I am nothing if not self sustaining…. And stubborn. Of course I’ll use these vegetables if I just buy them; the price is too good to pass up. Sure, I only need one tenth of this Dutch process cocoa powder for a recipe, but who doesn’t need Dutch process cocoa powder around? My personal favorite: Ben has a big enough appetite that we won’t have leftovers (on chicken parmesan meant to serve four people). In the end, two people only need so much food, yet I retain the delusion that I am cooking for ten in a kitchen straight out of the Food Network.

History repeated itself last Friday when I made tortellini for two and homemade vodka sauce for a regiment. You must understand that Ben is ravenous for my vodka sauce. We had a pretty substantial debate at the store because he wanted to buy an industrial vat of Stoli for the occasion (in reality, the recipe requires less than a shot glass). I still made enough vodka sauce to fill a medium saucepan, confident that Ben would turn his dinner plate into tortellini soup. As I watched him delicately apply the sauce like a debutante on a diet, I briefly considered throttling him.

The remaining vodka sauce, about four cups’ worth, sat in our refrigerator for a few days. Seeing it was like waking one morning to find permanent marker on my face. I couldn’t ignore it away and neither Ben nor I were in the mood for pasta again, but I had to do something with the sauce and fast.

Tonight my frustration got the best of me. In a fit of ridiculously immature growling and stomping, I just dumped the sauce on top of some seasoned chicken breasts and shoved the mess in the toaster oven at 425 degrees. Thirty minutes later, both Ben and I were pleasantly surprised. The vodka sauce was perfect on top of the chicken. The sauce became firmer, but not hardened or burned, and it cocooned the chicken in juicy flavor reminiscent of chicken parmesan. I will definitely make this again, even if it is not a matter of making a use of leftovers.

The moral of this story: sometimes it’s good to let your temper get the best of you!