the beet ravioli again

the day before i had my last paper due, i decided i needed a break, and sent myself off to miriam's and josh's pre-hannukah party with the bottle of champagne that lauren dropped off. said bottle of champagne, incidentally, went to toast the impending end of finals, and miriam's new job at nelson/nygaard (much thanks to lauren).

if these smallish informal dinner parties are what real life consists of, i'm more than ready for it. in honor of hannukah, we had latkes and doughnuts (sufgiyanot, i believe the proper spelling is...) at the kitchen table, which, on occasions like this, is pulled away from the wall, the leaf put in, and chairs of all kinds pulled around it - it's kind of like eating in the galley of the ship. close quarters - fridge, stove, and sink all within an arm's reach - and thoroughly enjoyable. we also had roasted broccoli and pot roast, the latter having been bought at star on a whim (supermarkets are so good for those).

as part of the guest party, carrien made beet ravioli with the golden beets from our boston organics shipment, and i, having nothing to show for the past week but copious drawings, a model, and a poorly written paper, brought along the bottle of champage, which i had stuck in the fridge the day before in anticipation of thursday. i had had my first favorable encounter with beets the year before, when somebody at lmf (i think it was mika since carrien has no recollection of it) made beet risotto. beets are actually good. not that i'd ever thought they were bad, per se, but i had had quite enough pickled beets in lisbon. fresh beets are another matter entirely. i encourage you to try beets the next time you are at the supermarket. the beet ravioli were particularly good, and i of course ate too many of them.

however, this is all a buildup to the point of this post, which is to say that i am making the beet ravioli for new year's eve tomorrow at nora's. this is partly a desire to make the beet ravioli myself, and partly a desire to make tiny, labor-intensive things for a manageable number of people (5). i'm going to do them in wonton wrappers like carrien did, and make them a bit smaller, because then they will go in soup. i really think they would go best in a plain chicken broth with some peas or scallions or something, but in that case, the only kind of acceptable chicken broth would be the from-scratch variety, which isn't going to happen. as an alternative, i'm planning to make a plain tomato soup with the vegetables sauteed in rendered bacon fat, in hopes that the acidity of the tomatoes will go with the beets, and the smokiness of the bacon will with both tomatoes and beets. the garnish will probably be sour cream, and of course, the poppy seeds still figure into the equation (the original ravioli were sauteed in butter and poppy seeds). perhaps also some peas for color and flavor? i don't know. anyway, more to come on this later - i have no idea how this will all turn out because i can't really imagine the flavors well enough to put them all together in a foolproof manner.

beet ravioli with poppy seed butter
2 large red or golden beets (about 14 ounces)
1/2 cup fresh whole-milk ricotta cheese
2 tablespoons dried breadcrumbs

1 pkg wonton wrappers

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1 tablespoon poppy seeds
Freshly grated Parmesan cheese

1. preheat oven to 400F. wrap beets individually in foil; place on baking sheet. roast until tender when pierced with knife, about 1 hour. open foil carefully (steam will escape). cool. peel beets; finely grate into medium bowl. add ricotta cheese and season to taste with salt and pepper. stir in breadcrumbs.

2. place small bowl of water next to work surface. spoon 1 tablespoon beet filling onto a wonton wrapper, dampen the edge of the wonton around the filling with water, and seal, pushing out as much air as possible. press the edges firmly to seal; the ravioili can be sealed in any shape you like. transfer to a nonstick surface, dusted with flour.

3. melt butter in large skillet over medium heat and stir in poppy seeds; keep warm. working in batches, cook ravioli in large pot of boiling salted water until cooked through, stirring often, about 2 minutes (alternatively, you could nuke these in a microwave, probably, if you put them on a plate with a bit of water). using slotted spoon, transfer to skillet with melted butter; toss to coat. divide ravioli among 8 plates; sprinkle with Parmesan.

[makes 8 first-course servings]

cold, creamy + luscious

few things are as satisfying as a bowl of vanilla ice cream with cherries in it.

triscuits and the end of a hiatus

man, who invented triscuits? why are they so addictively good? they're like healthy potato chips - fiber replaces the potatoes but the salt is still there, so eating one means eating about twenty. ok, maybe not twenty - there's a limit on how much fiber one can eat in one sitting - but still...i wouldn't be surprised if there are huge triscuit boxes in my dreams, urging me to eat more triscuits.

as i sit here thinking of all of the wonderful food-related things i am going to do - like go hunt down a good butcher in the north end, finally find that russian food store from my childhood, make another pilgrimage to formaggio kitchen - i can't help but realize that i only have four weeks in which to cram about a semester's worth of food exploits. hmph. i have grand plans for weekend brunches at 24 - but there's only 4 weekends! perhaps some of those weekend brunches will have to come on weekdays. and the most amazing thing about this statement is that some of those weekend brunches actually could come on weekdays, since i will technically be on vacation.

regardless of how much of my list of food things to do that i get through - and based on how much of it i got through during the summer when i lived at 44, it won't be much - i am determined to make up for last semester's dearth of things food. well, ok, not really a dearth, but every morning that i wake up, i'm amazed that i'm still alive. the semester was really just a very lovely, intense blur that passed in the blink of an eye, and the contrast between that and the wonderful nothing that i'm doing right now is as stark as it gets. i enjoy being at home, but (brace yourself for another outpouring of love for knives) i can't wait to get back to my knives, poor neglected things. i feel like i've only been flirting with them, and january is for actually getting to know them. i will finally stop being slightly afraid of the mac, with its ability to cut off my digits without a second thought, and learn both knives so that i know exactly when to use each one. mmm....

i've also come to the conclusion that i will never be a professional chef. i might have a bakery at some point, but when it comes to professional ambition, i know i'm really just not good enough to be more than a better-than-average home cook. ah, reality. i also don't really care to be good enough to be one of those famous, cutting-edge cooks - i'd rather generate large amounts of comfort food with a little experimentation on the side. i would like to have that neighborhood bakery where everyone lines up for bread in the morning...

on the list of food exploits:
- restaurants to go to : family restaurant in brookline, taberna de haro near nora's,
- food places to go to : russian food stores in brookline/allston/brighton, formaggio kitchen, butcher's shops in the north end, trader joe's, whole foods
- food things to make : bread....lots of bread, brunchy things on sunny-but-cold sunday mornings, banana cream pie with a graham cracker crust that has been brushed with chocolate, cheesecake, carrot cake, i freely admit that i have a sweet tooth the size of california, a wedding cake (yes, i just said "a wedding cake"), butternut squash anything, salt-roasted chicken, clay-pot-chicken...

the calm before the storm

alright, i've been staring at my computer since 6:30am, trying to make my portfolio reach that mythical land of completeness; i need a break. oddly enough, not one from the computer, but at least one from the portfolio because i'm falling asleep.

i shouldn't have done it, but yesterday careen and i made dinner for 44 and assorted friends. hm. i really did know it was going to be bad for me, and it will mean that i will sleep much less this week, but i did it anyway. i guess i don't really know about moderation. it was quite wonderful...quite an orgy of cooking. i'm still learning which one to use when; for example, the wusthof for chopping chocolate; the mac is really just for vegetables. i've started to be able to feel the differences in the knives when i use them - i can actually feel the brittleness in the mac, whereas the i feel that i could use the wusthof forever and it would always be the same.

i also got to make pie crusts; i could make pie crusts all day. i used a slightly different recipe (less butter, essentially) because i was blind-baking them for pumpkin pie. brushing them after they came out of the oven with a beaten egg white did the trick again for keeping the crust from getting soggy. i do like soggy crust in a way, but not leaden crust. it's not a surprise that the egg white works, but it's something that i never would have thought of. good ol' saveur...

anyway, this is what we made, for about twelve people (recipes included for the stuff we didn't make up) :

roast turkey with prosciutto, rosemary, and thyme
apple, sage, sausage, and parsnip stuffing
broccoli with a fontina cheese sauce
butternut squash risotto with peas

chocolate pudding (with my trusty callebaut chocolate and valrhona cocoa)
pumpkin pie x 2
spiced poached pears

i had no idea really what kind of spices to put in the pears, which got poached in a dessert wine, water, and sugar, so i went to harvest. i ended up getting white peppercorns, star anise, cinnamon sticks, and cloves. pretty standard except for the white peppercorns, which i quite liked - it added a bit of a kick. i got lazy (this whole production took maybe 7 hours straight of cooking) so i didn't make a chocolate sauce. of course, there was chocolate pudding so that went with the pears fine. the chocolate pudding tasted better today, after a day. i'm not surprised, since that's what chocolate things are wont to do; but it definitely tasted like it was of the campfire variety yesterday when i made it. faintly so, and not enough so that i wouldn't serve it (and eat lots of it), but i was annoyed all the same. "campfire," by the way, if lmf lingo for "slightly scorched." anyway, today the taste was completely gone. go figure. it was also almost black - it was, hands down, the darkest chocolate pudding i have ever seen, due to the dark color of the cocoa. valrhona cocoa - go get it from whole foods. it'll change your life.

the pumpkin pie was excellent, probably because it's really hard to mess it up. have you ever had a bad pumpkin pie? ok, let me rephrase: have you ever had a bad pumpkin pie, made from scratch? yeah, that's what i thought. they don't exist.

the turkey was pretty damn good. it was my first time roasting a turkey, though at this point i'm convinced it's not as hard as the food magazines make it out to be every year. we stuffed prosciutto-herb butter underneath the skin, put an onion and some garlic inside, and roasted it for maybe three hours. i think it must have been just the turkey that was good, because it tasted more turkey-like (gamier, i guess) than the turkey i had at home for thanksgiving. the gravy was excellent, too, with the addition of a lot of pan juices. mmm, pan juices...it's amazing, the amount of gravy one can eat, and the range of things one can eat it with.

i hadn't cooked for a bunch of people for a while, so it was probably the best thing i could have done saturday night. the cooking time was well-paced and not rushed for a rather impromptu affair (i planned and went shopping on saturday morning). if i measure my level of stress by the strength of my tendency to abandon work to cook as therapy, i would say that my stress level is off the charts this semester. formerly, i was able to go a few weeks without cooking anything; now i seem to be able to go about a week and then i give in. but i already knew that.

well, i am sure this will be my last post until xmas break. if i am still alive after that, and i haven't totally ruined my health with forced poor sleeping habits, i'll live to cook another day. but right now i am going to go eat a poached pear. poached pears are undoubtedly one of the most gorgeous foods known to man. all translucent, golden brown on the outside and cream-colored on the inside, and so wonderfully spicy...how could you not love them? they instantly redeem any mediocre pear.