staying awake

i think i may have figured out why i fall asleep in class : i fall asleep when i'm hungry. weird, huh? i guess my body decides to shut down or something.

i don't have too many food recountings to recount this week, sadly. sometimes i lose track of time because every day i just do work for 15-20 hours and the rest of the hours i sleep. makes for a very uniform type of existence. oddly enough, i never really get stressed out, because it all works out in the end (just repeat it over and over to yourself). anyway, the food : carrie and i made what was probably tex-mex on monday, i think it was. or maybe it was another day. it was sometime last week. i found the avocadoes we'd gotten from boston organics in the back of the fridge and we decided we needed to eat them, but not cold, because it was cold outside. we ended up with chicken braised in broth and tomatoes, with sauteed onions, corn, and the avocadoes diced and mixed in for good measure. oh, and there was some cumin in there too, which went well. to go with it, we made some rice, which is probably the first time i've successfully made rice in a pot. weird, huh? at lmf we had the rice cooker, and at home my mom always made it, so i've always been able to avoid the mess that is overdone/burned rice. at any rate, tex-mex or not, it was quite good, and there was enough of it (my tendency to overestimate amounts kicked in) to feed us for a couple more days.

probably the only other notable food experience of the week was grendel's, yesterday. grendel's is probably the closest thing to the bun shop at cambridge university, which is the ultimate college pub. or, pub in general, really. besides, you can't really get better than "the bun shop" for names. grendel's doesn't have food that's as good, but it is cheap. what makes it good, of course, is going with your next-door neighbors and other random people, and having some fun after spending the entire day alone in studio. i like to work in studio when it's quiet, but not really alone because it's such a big room. and i feel like i'm doing something wrong by coming in when nobody else is there.

but this is a food blog! food, food, food. i'd like to cook again sometime soon. i do love my knives. this is something that i think i say far too often, but they really are so wonderful... i could do anything (to food!) with them... hmm, if i could cook right now, i would make...chicken pot pie. well, it's not really cold enough outside for chicken pot pie. but what i'd really like to make is some sort of really involved dealio that's really horrible for you. something chocolate, that involves real mousse made with egg whites, and also fruit. god. do you ever just get the yen to make a ten-course meal? here's what i'd make:

ode to food, 31 october 2005

(i) some sort of fruit salad-y type thing. poached pears with cheese?
(1) potato-leek soup with bacon
(2) salad greens with pears and toasted pecans
(3) risotto with red bell peppers
(4) chicken pot pie with caramelized onions, peas, corn, and carrots
(5) tomato-smoked eggplant salad with balsamic vinegar and mozzarella
(6) spinach-onion-yogurt persian thing with toasted pita (borani es fanaaj? that's not right...)
(7) cheese course (things like taleggio, brie, and blue cheese, with honey and apples)
(8) oatmeal tuiles with strawberries and whipped cream
(9) caramel fondue
(10) complicated chocolate-mousse-fruit confection...

review: central kitchen

central kitchen / 567 massachusetts avenue / cambridge ma / 617-491-5599 / sun-wed 5:30-1am, thu-sat 5:30-2am / reservations accepted for parties of 6+ (recommended) / entrees moderately expensive ($18-25)

i have no wish to tackle my thesis at the moment, so instead i'll write about food. i had dinner with rob at central kitchen, which i had been to once before with celina back in june when i had just moved into 24. while it's not mind-blowing, it's good, solid, above-average stuff. it's a bit expensive for students, but has a great atmosphere - hip but not pretentiously so. it's a small place, balanced lighting, cool dented chrome tables.

neither of us was particularly hungry, so we split an appetizer and an entree - mini portuguese style stew (clams, mussels, and sausage in a tomato broth with bread) and mushroom ragout with ricotta dumplings and creamy polenta. the portuguese stew was good but pretty standard; the ragout was really quite good. the ricotta dumplings were an interesting idea, and really good with the mushrooms (shiitake, hen of the woods, lobster, i think...). and creamy polenta is always a good idea. it had peas in it too, which added some color and a bit of sweetness to the heft of the mushrooms.

for dessert we had an orange chiffon cake with mascarpone cream and a bit of diced tropical fruit. it was pretty good, but i wouldn't have described the cake as a chiffon cake - it was more like a lighter pound cake. the mascarpone was a great addition, and probably what made it for me. in general, it was very enjoyable, if the service was a bit neglectful at the beginning. the high point was definitely the mushroom ragout, and the portions are pretty big, so we were rather full even having split what one person would have ordered normally. i hadn't been out for a while because of studio, so it was really nice to have dinner out somewhere - it's as enjoyable as cooking dinner with friends, just different. makes me feel like i'm a normal person again, really. funny how that is.

autumn trifle

one could not possibly call this trifle a "fall trifle;" it requires the british-accent, hunting-dogs-and-trumpets air that "autumn" lends to the phrase. specifically, this is an autumn trifle with roasted apples and pears, and a pumpkin-caramel sauce. carrien sent me the recipe a while back when we had just gotten apples and pears in our organic foodbox, and as we still had them, and i finally wasn't closeted in studio, it got made. it was a relief to cook again, and wonderful to use my santoku. i'm afraid i've been neglecting my wusthof chef's knife in favor of the wonderful balance of my santoku. the wusthof is great for heavy-duty work, but i haven't had to do any lately. and the santoku just cuts through things as if they're butter. it's simply amazing. have i mentioned that i love my santoku? i really believe that i own the most beautiful knives in the world. or, at least, in the world of people i know. i bow down in awe of my knives. and hope that i won't cut myself with them, as i am wont to do from forgetting that i own sharp knives. no testing the edge on my finger for these babies.

we started off the evening coercing miriam and v to abandon their plans to go to grendel's, and come over to cook with us as we had food to cook - an unnaturally large "jewel yam" (more plump than anything else) and cauliflower. i had seen a disgustingly beautiful (if that makes any sense) photograph of a cauliflower gratin in my bouchon cookbook, and jumped at the opportunity to make something from it for the first time.

for dinner we ended up making the cauliflower gratin, the jewel yam with wilted greens, and pasta with fennel sausage in a tomato cream sauce that was essentially a vodka sauce. both the yam and the cauliflower had curry powder in them and i added some to the pasta sauce too, along with some cumin, billington's dark brown sugar, and balsamic vinegar to take away the awful canned blandness of the crushed tomatoes we had in the pantry. that's the last time i use that brand of tomatoes (the green can)... all of it turned out quite well, though, and got put together in a reasonable amount of time. the gratin was suspiciously easy to make, although probably more involved than the typical gratin - the cream segment of the recipe was onions sauteed with finely chopped cauliflower stems, cooked with the herbs (supposed to be bay leaves and thyme, but all star had was tarragon), curry powder and cream. not hard to do, though, just longer. you mix that with blanched cauliflower, top it with cheese and bread crumbs, and pop it in the oven until it looks done. it was quite good (thank you thomas keller), if very rich from all the cream. i think i liked the tarragon more than i would have liked thyme. and of course we ate the whole thing. we had some red wine with dinner (markko cabernet sauvignon, 1999, which is best with food) as well.

i made the trifle while we watched a few good men. the first part is a cinnamon pastry cream - typical preparation, with a bit more flour than i would have liked. it thickened up remarkably quickly, unlike the last time i made pastry cream, probably because of increased egg yolks. next was a pumpkin caramel sauce, which starts with butter and sugar, eventually lots of cream when the mixture caramelizes, and then canned pumpkin at the end of all that. i ended up doubling the recipe because one reviewer recommended it as an ice cream topping - the one constant in our fridge is invariably ice cream. you might wonder how my body handles the cholesterol bombardment, and i can't give you an answer. you would think that my arteries are about to be completely clogged, but my cholesterol was normal when it last got measured. strange. the trifle gets finished off with roasted apples and pears. i hadn't realized that they would release so much liquid, so i was a bit disappointed with that - i would prefer firmer fruit still with the roasted flavor (guess that's a bit of the oxymoron). but all together (all of the above plus ladyfinger soaked in the tokay i opened yesterday - royal tokaji, 1996, 5 puttonyos) it was quite good. and very autumnal. and now we have breakfast for tomorrow!

autumn trifle with roasted apples, pears, and pumpkin-caramel sauce
cinnamon pastry cream
6 large egg yolks
2 cups whole milk
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup cake flour
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons unsalted butter

pumpkin-caramel sauce
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1/2 cup canned pure pumpkin

roasted fruit
3 large Fuji apples, peeled, cored, cut into 1/2-inch cubes (about 4 cups)
3 Bosc pears, peeled, cored, cut into 1/2-inch cubes (about 3 cups)
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes

assembly
3 1/2 dozen (about) soft ladyfingers
1/3 cup dry Sherry
2 cups chilled whipping cream
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
8 1/8-inch-thick slices Bosc pear
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

1. for cinnamon pastry cream: whisk yolks and 1/2 cup milk in large bowl. add sugar, flour, vanilla, and cinnamon. whisk until sugar dissolves. bring 1 1/2 cups milk to simmer in heavy medium saucepan over medium heat. gradually whisk milk into yolk mixture. return mixture to same saucepan. cook until custard thickens and boils, stirring constantly, about 2 minutes. transfer to medium bowl. add butter and stir until melted. press plastic wrap directly onto surface. chill until cold, about 2 hours.

2. for pumpkin-caramel sauce: melt butter in heavy small saucepan over medium heat. add sugar and cook until mixture is deep amber, stirring constantly, about 8 minutes (mixture will be grainy). reduce heat to medium-low. add cream (mixture will bubble). stir until caramel bits dissolve, about 2 minutes. add pumpkin; stir until heated. refrigerate until cold, about 2 hours.

3. for roasted fruit: preheat oven to 400F. mix apples, pears, and lemon juice in large bowl. place butter on rimmed baking sheet. heat in oven until butter melts and begins to brown, about 5 minutes. add fruit to baking sheet and toss with butter. roast until fruit is soft and golden, turning with metal spatula every 15 minutes, about 1 hour. cool fruit on sheet.

4. for assembly: place ladyfingers, flat side up, on baking sheet. brush with sherry. line bottom of 2- or 3-quart glass trifle dish with single layer of ladyfingers, sherry side up. line bottom edge with 1 row of ladyfingers, sherry side in, pressing gently against dish. spoon half of pastry cream into lined dish; smooth top. cover with half of fruit. drizzle with 1/2 cup caramel sauce. line edge of dish with second row of ladyfingers, sherry side in. cover fruit with single layer of ladyfingers. spoon remaining pastry cream on top. cover with remaining fruit. drizzle fruit with 1/2 cup caramel sauce. line edge of dish with third row of ladyfingers, sherry side in. chill at least 6 hours.

5. whip cream, sugar, and vanilla in bowl until mixture holds peaks. fill pastry bag fitted with large rosette tip with whipped cream and pipe over trifle (or spoon whipped cream on top of trfile). drizzle whipped cream with 2 tablespoons caramel sauce. brush pear slices with lemon juice; arrange decoratively atop whipped cream.

[makes 12 servings]

review: great bay - confusion and disappointment

i guess that the hostess not being able to choose between taking our coats and checking the next group's reservation was already a bad sign. half of our party (my parents, my sister, her fiance and his parents, and me) left for the table as the rest of us stood around awkwardly holding the coats we'd taken off. though we were standing right in front of her she couldn't seem to decide if she should take our coats first, then ask the next group for their name, or to talk to them first, then take our coats. eventually - eventually - she decided to take our coats.

the restaurant itself is a little too self-consciously hip, though the layered window curtains are pretty cool and the lighting is at the perfect level. the menu was so-so, in terms of being adventurous, and the food was pretty good, but all of this was marred by the unexcusably bad service. when our waitress poured the wine, she dribbled some of it down the side of multiple glasses. when the busboy came with his crumb-scraper, he seemed to view the crumbs as some sort of large, looming monster because he scraped them off so forcibly, not into his hand, that most of the crumbs got flung into my lap. we waited an interminably long time for the check after we had asked for it, and had to flag down some random busboy to get them to take our check to someone who could take care of it.

i would like to say that otherwise, our experience was good, but how can one have a good experience at a restaurant without good service? if i had expected bad service, it would be a different situation entirely, but at a restaurant like this i had expected good service. getting bad service at a nice restaurant just ruins the entire experience. the food we had was good, but not sparkling, as it is wont to be at many other restaurants of the same level. it was merely average - no technical perfection, nor anything that was particularly exciting. the fromage blanc ice cream that came with the blackberry cobbler was good, but the gelato version i had of it in san francisco two months ago was far superior to it. my sister commented that the cider doughnuts she's had at apple orchards were better than the one we had at dessert.

now, the spaetzle i had with my roasted monkfish was excellent - slightly truffled with some faint lemon - and the monkfish was wonderfully crusty on the outside. i didn't really understand why it came with a prawn and would have preferred it without. my father's short ribs were fantastic - the best i've had in quite a while. the rolls were excellent, and the wine we had (a sauvignon blanc, andrew rich from willamette valley) was great, too, but the service just cast a shadow over the whole affair. i can now only fixate on what bad service i had - the last time i had such bad service was at stella, and theirs was a fault of having been open for only a few days when we went (great bay has been open for an entire year). it's true that the "poached" egg that was really a softboiled egg, that came with my entree at stella, was a travesty, but i'm sure they've fixed that problem by now. i sure hope that great bay is going through some sort of flux, but i guess i won't be finding out, because i won't bother to go back.

delicata squash

this is a photo of our delicata squash, a type of squash that has a hard rind that makes it feel like a gourd, but that's also edible. we cut it up (with my gorgeous, wonderful santoku that i keep nicking myself with by accident) and tossed with with carrien's ligurian-pesto-infused olive oil, then shot it in the oven until it was done. we had gotten the delicata squash in our organic food shipment (must remember to leave the boxes out for them this week); neither of us had ever had it before. it has the texture of a slightly firmer sweet potato, with a more subtle, less dramatic flavor to it. it's also much more attractive than your typical squash. we added some microplaned parmesan cheese, too, and had it for dinner along with some persian hybrid rice. the best thing about our box o' organic food is that it forces us to cook with what we have, instead of running over to star, which always looms in the oh-so-short distance. tonight we had spinach and half a bell pepper to use up, so we sauteed some diced onions, added the bell peppers and the spinach, and then yogurt. minus the bell pepper, this resembles a persian dish celina once made for a menu. we then added rice (if you were persian you would eat this not with rice, if i remember correctly) that we had cooked with chicken broth and cumin. it was quite good, and something i'd do again. amount-wise, we had about two cups of spinach, one medium-sized diced onion, and half a green bell pepper, and added maybe a third cup of lowfat plain yogurt (plus salt and pepper, of course). to this we added the rice, which was about a cup dry.

a tidbit for you to enjoy is this article about cornell's award-winning variety of delicata squash. this is the first link that comes up when one googles "delicata squash." it's kind of funny (as well as noteworthy for you plant breeders out there) in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way.