Authentic Mexican Thanksgiving

After 28 years of stuffing and sweet potatoes, The Gourmand & I opted for something completely different.

Instead of celebrating the authentic American Thanksgiving meal, we made a 4 course meal, including 4 condiments, oysters, seviche and dessert, and spent the day, just the two of us, cooking and eating and being thankful.

Our reference was Rick Bayless’ classic cookbook Authentic Mexican: Regional Cooking from the Heart of Mexico. A new edition was just published, but I was gifted with a first edition from Bonnie Slotkick’s Cookbooks in the West Village of New York City.

 

 

The Oyster Course

On Wednesday afternoon, round 2pm, the Gourmand & I braved Grand Central Station to get to Grand Central Market, to buy oysters from Wild Edibles. It wasn’t lost on us that despite the fact that we were not traveling anywhere, we still ended up in Grand Central during the holiday crush.

At noon on Thursday, we listened to Arlo Guthrie’s classic Thanksgiving tune Alice’s Restaurant and had the first course, 1 each of 4 types of oysters. 

I have revised my rule regarding shellfish. I will only eat what I’ve caught myself, or what I buy at Wild Edibles. The freshest oysters this side of the Peconic Bay. If you can find Kumamoto oysters, and you know they are fresh, buy them. Chef recommended them to me by describing the experience like “swimming in an ocean of salty cream.” He was right. And for just $2.50 a piece, how can you pass that up?

The Mole
 Pronounced MO-lay and created in the city of Puebla by a nun to showcase the flavors of the region for a bishop back round 1680. Like most things of over 300 years ago, the truth is forever interwoven with the myth of mole’s creation. The recipe remains, however, to celebrate special occasions with days of cooking and tons of ingredients, each handled in turn lovingly to bring out the myriad flavors on the plate.

The first step including chopping some bitter chocolate. I used Columbian chocolate as Mexican chocolate was no where to be found. 

 

The chocolate, some tomatoes, whole toasted and ground spices are added to a bowl. This becomes sort of the mother-bowl to which I added each subsequent ingredient, including 4 types of fried, re-hydrated chile peppers. (*Sidebar: If you make this recipe, and I hope you do, DON’T breath in the smoke that comes off the chiles when frying unless you want to feel like you’re front row at a WTO protest. Don’t ask me how I know that…)

Then you fry raw almonds, raisins, garlic, onions, bread, and a tortilla and add all these into the big bowl. Then, using turkey stock made earlier, purée all these ingredients and press through a medium mesh sieve, resulting in a smooth, earthy sauce that only needs 4 more steps to be done.

Purée the chiles, and strain into a separate bowl, then sautée the first purée, add the chile purée, and simmer until you get a deep, rich brown sauce ready to be poured over your turkey, about 45 minutes. Olé.

Quarter the turkey, brown over high heat in grapeseed oil (because it has a very high smoke point) and pour the mole sauce over to cover it. Notice that I used two pans, as no one pan was large enough to cover my 12-lb turkey. Did I mention I was cooking for 2?

Ok, then bake that and while its cooking, make your guacamole, salsa, salsa verde(using tomatillos), spicy jicama (HEE-ca-ma) salad, pickled red onions, and grill your pineapple and cactus pads. Oh! And on Tuesday, I started by marinating mackeral in lime juice for Thanksgiving seviche on Thursday. Phew! 

Ok, the truth is, I can’t give you all these recipes. For a few reasons. Primarily, I really respect Rick Bayless and even though I’m not getting anything in return for saying this, I think you should buy a cookbook or two of his. They read almost like travel narratives, with history and hints for being successful at Mexican cooking. And I think he doesn’t need me to be giving away the milk for free.

Additionally, it might take days to type and I’d rather be cooking!

I’ll leave you with some hints of my own that I learned while making this meal:

#1: When a recipe calls for tomatoes, unless its August and the tomatoes are heirloom and fresh off the vine, use canned. Buy San Marzano tomatoes from Italy if you can find them. If not, Muir Glen is a good brand. The tomatoes are canned at the height of ripeness and you’ll get yummy, juicy tomato-ness, not mealy, crunchy, methane-gassed, hot house specials that taste like wet rice cakes.

#2 Don’t underestimate how long your meal is going to take. Sure, the book says 6 hours. It took us days. And we loved every second.

#3 Finally, don’t get roped into tradition just because its, well, traditional. Try new stuff and experience other people’s authentic celebration food. Because that is how your palate stays fresh and new memories are in the making.

What Chefs Call “Fabrication”

My culinary school program is broken up into modules, each building on the last and a practical, hands-on exam is required to progress to the next. Module one contains virtually no actual cooking. Instead, we are focusing on the basics: knife skills, mise en place (how you set everything up,) sanitation, basic sauces (making mayonnaise is part of the Mod 1 practical) and fabrication.

Fabrication means to take your animals from carcass to ready-to-cook. We started with fish. Exciting! Relatively easy, familiar smells (comforting, even.) We moved on to chicken and duck, then beef. All identifiable and approachable. Today however, we fabricated veal.

Let me address the ethics of veal-eating, really any meat-eating, or if you stretch the definitions and want to starve, eating in general. Veal is a calf, no more than 4 months old. Not to point out the obvious, but take a look at your shoes, jacket, wallet, purse, belt and car seats. The product that is fabricated into leather is a slightly more mature version of that which is fabricated in to food, so take a long, deep breath before shrieking “Baby Cow!” I’ve already addressed the ethics of eating meat as I see them, so I’ll direct you here if you want to catch up. If you really want to never eat veal again, fabricate one.

The process starts like any other fabrication: you take the big, hulking chunk (primal cut) of your animal out of its packaging, find the USDA stamp, and begin removing inedible parts to one pile, edible parts to another, and you continue refining the edible pieces to a nice, neat, clean pile of sub-primal cuts like tenders or chops.

In the United States, a chicken, any poultry for that matter, must be purchased fully eviscerated and so when you open up your turkey this week and pull out the packet of neck and liver, hearts, etc., know that unless you bought your turkey from a farmer and specified that you wanted your turkey to come to you with its own guts, what’s inside could have belonged to anyone else whom Sarah Palin failed to pardon.

Veal comes eviscerated, but the kidneys are still attached to the inside of the back. I want to say that modern science and engineering would have figured out a way to remove the kidneys without damaging any of the sub-primal cuts, but apparently not. So, step one in fabricating veal is to remove the excess fat (we’re talking pounds of brittle, white fat that comes apart in pieces like baseballs) and remove the kidneys.

People eat the kidneys and so, if you throw them away, you are missing an opportunity to recoup some of the money spent on having veal on the menu, so you remove the mass that weighs about 5 pounds and looks like a dark brown brain and chop it into bite-sized pieces.

The smell is ungodly. Its awful. Its permeating. It smells like a urine-soaked subway car in the heat and humidity of midsummer. I actually gagged and went from fearless chef to “I’m not eating that” in a pulse.

My chef agreed. Anything that smells so wretched is not meant for consumption. If I was starving and my choice was death or a diet of kidneys, I’d find my way to the bright light.

Chef did say that for those who wish to eat them, a soak in several changes of milk over 24 hours is necessary to remove the smell, blood, impurities, etc. Here’s where the machismo kicked in and my 19-year-old classmate decided that HE was going to eat those kidneys. Today. Not in 24 hours when they might have given up their Bog of Eternal Stench profile. No, no. Today. He, of course, is a real man.

He proceeds to get the chef’s instruction on how to prepare them, and the room fills with the smell of shallots, sauteeing in butter, a reduction of brandy, and then… the kidneys hit the heat. No, instead of the smell being contained to each of our fingertips and knife points, it permeates my clothes, my hair, my nostrils.

So even when the beautifully cleaned veal tenderloins and medallions came ready, all I could taste was kidney. I think that I’m off veal for a while. Not because of the poor-baby-cow problem but the now-I-know problem and both myself and the calves of the future are happy about it.

Sauteed Veal Kidneys
1 veal kidney, cleaned of sinew and fat and cut into 1″ pieces
1 quart milk for soaking
Salt and Pepper for seasoning
2 T salted butter, separated into 2 1-T lumps
1 medium shallot, minced, about 1 T
1/3 cup brandy

Put all the kidney pieces in a large bowl. Pour enough milk over, just to cover them. You won’t use the whole quart right away. Cover with saran wrap and refrigerate 24 hours, changing the milk two or three times. Drain the kidneys just before you are ready to cook. Season with salt & pepper.

In a sautee pan large enough to hold all the kidney pieces, melt 1 T butter. Add the shallots and sautee over medium heat. When the shallots are softened, add the kidneys and cook, stirring occasionally until they are cooked through, about 8 minutes all together. Remove cooked kidneys to a warm plate.

Add the brandy to the sautee pan (off the fire to prevent fire from flaming up) and deglaze (scrape all the browny bits off the bottom) saute pan. Continue to cook, stirring regularly until the brandy has reduced by half. Add the second tablespoon of butter and melt. Add the kidneys back to the saute pan, toss to coat with the brandy reduction. Serve immediately.

Hands-on Learning to Cook

When I started out, I was prepared to provide a hands-on account of what its like to go to culinary school. Partially to educate you, but also to do some reflection on the experience. What I am discovering is that it is incredibly difficult to put into words because so much of the learning is hands-on and visual. I sat down to write every night last week and just couldn’t articulate what it was like. Frustrating, as a writer, but more educational to a would-be chef than I could ever qualify in a quippy paragraph or two. Here are some highlights:

• Making Mirepoix
Mirepoix is a French combination of onion, celery and carrot that is the basis for myriad stocks, soups, braises and the like. The Cajun equivalent, the “Holy Trinity” of onion, celery and green bell peppers, serves the same purpose: learn this, and you can cook nearly everything.

So, why French? I had a long conversation last Saturday with my friend Brad about why it is that French technique is so pervasive. I think of it much like art. Jackson Pollack, Andy Warhol, Mark Rothko, all did something that after the fact everyone could look and say, well, I could have done that. And well, yeah you probably could have. The thing is they recorded it first. They didn’t do it first, or maybe they did, but I imagine that every culinary culture in  a temperate climate was experimenting with something that resembled mirepoix (MEER-pwah.) The French named it and popularized it before anyone got around to scratching out what they were doing, and it was a really good idea. I could create a mushroom, butter and chocolate syrup base for lots of meals, but it probably wouldn’t catch on. Read up on Brillat-Savarin and Escoffier if you are truly excited by the history of Le Cuisine Francais, or shoot me an email and we can chat about it because the stories light the pilot light in my soul.

• Knowing how to handle your meat
My father was a commercial fisherman, and I’ve watched him fillet (fill-EH) millions of fish, open clams, scallops and oysters, many of which I helped to catch, butcher chickens and rabbits, and turn a deer into a year’s worth of venison in the freezer. The thing is, my dad is a kind of perfectionist. Having been a middle school teacher, I’ve learned to accept that the first couple of times you ask someone to do something, they will fail. Miserably. My dad, looking for Martha-quality cuts the first time around took the knife to “show me how to do it.” So I got to watch thousands of striped bass and little necks find their way to the serving platter, but before this week, I had never actually done it for myself.

However, I opened my big mouth and so everyone in class knew I was a fisherman’s daughter who grew up raising chickens, so there was a lot of pressure to know what I was doing. I was elected “team captain” to make sure my group was doing it right, which was perfect, because I’m real good at observing. But like any new student, I butchered my fish. Not in a good way. In a “…well, we can put that piece in the soup” kind of way. And it felt great.

Go to the fish market, buy some whole fish, youtube some videos and get slimy. It feels great! Do it with a chicken, a rabbit, and fear not! It will still taste good, even if you mangle your first attempts. Like anything else, it takes practice.

• The Perfect “Dice”
In my toolkit came, oh how to describe this. OK, picture a 3″ square platform of stiff plastic on which is mounted plastic models of the fine french cuts, which require precise knife skills. We in class call it our “fake food.”

A “medium dice” is exactly a 1/2″ cube. Like Chef says in class, God didn’t make vegetables into cubes, so it is your knife skills that turn a potato into perfect cubes. Or celery. Most celery is not 1/2″ in any dimension, so your knife skills have to make it happen. Leeks, shallots, garlic… make it happen.

Its not mean, there is no yelling, but there is an expectation that you will strive for the perfect dice. Its not the final product, but exhibiting the patience and diligence to be willing every morning to try for the perfect dice. Its a Zen-Sisyphean undertaking and I love it.

Ok, so what about the cooking?

Here’s what I did with some fillets of fish and zen cut leeks:

Panko Fried Flounder with Caramelized Leeks
For the fish:
1 cup grapeseed oil (or vegetable, or corn, but not olive. It burns before it gets hot enough to fry)
4 flounder fillets
1 egg
2 T whole milk
1 T sea salt
1 T freshly ground white pepper
1 cup panko (Japanese breadcrumbs)

For the leeks:
2 large leeks, sliced thin and washed well (wash after slicing in a few changes of cold water, allowing any grit to settle to the bottom of the washing basin. Lift the leeks out, drain, repeat. Don’t dump the grit back over the leeks when draining.)
2 T butter
2 T olive oil
1 medium shallot, minced
1/2 cup white vermouth

To cook the fish:
Heat the oil in a pan that the oil fills about a 1/4″ deep. In a wide, shallow bowl, mix together the egg, milk, salt and pepper, like you were making an omelet. Tear a piece of wax paper into a large square and dump on the panko. One fillet at a time, dunk the fish into the egg, and then coat with the breadcrumbs, using the wax paper to help you coat. Set aside on a plate until you are ready to fry.

To cook the leeks:
Wash the leeks very well. In a large skillet, over medium-high heat, melt the butter, with the olive oil. When hot, add the shallot and sautée until they are very soft. Add the leeks and toss to coat with the butter. Add the vermouth and turn the heat down to medium-low. Let cook slowly, stirring only occasionally until the leeks are very soft and some start getting very dark brown.

Bring it all together:
Fry your fish in hot oil, in two batches (more if necessary) about 3 minutes per side. The panko should be just starting to turn golden. Move onto a piece of brown paper bag from the supermarket (no printihttp://ng ink) that you have placed on a rack in a 200 degree oven. This absorbs any excess oil. Repeat until all the fish is cooked. Serve the fillets with a heaping pile of the caramelized leeks and a squeeze of citrus juice, if you have it.

Week 2 Thrills & Blues

Week one of culinary school down and week two has begun! I have passed through all the stuff I already know how to do and am into the actually learning part – that didn’t take long!

Here’s a story: When I was a kid, like any brainy kid, I not only was excited to be learning my 2nd grade material, but was excited to see what was coming in grade three. In my elementary school, I knew that in third grade, I would learn conversions! How many teaspoons in a cup? How many cups in a gallon? My little mind bristled with excitement. The problem that has haunted me all of my adult life (especially as a math teacher!) is that when I made it to third grade, the conversion unit had been dropped down to second grade, and I never was formally taught teaspoons to cups and so on. So the basics that I do know are pure memorization of conversions I come across most frequently. I know that there are 16 ounces in a pound. I know that there are… that’s where my confidence ends. I am never sure that I am not about to sound like a fool.

Culinary math has been a big part of recent days and while my classmates want to stand by me to make sure they are doing the chiffonade correctly, they are quickly learning that I, the former math teacher, am not the one to stand near during math, except to offer help.

On the plus side, last week, we did a tasting of thirty cheeses. Awesome. We’ve tasted tons of different greens and learned about oils and vinegars in an in depth and practical way.

Today, I got in the mail my student loan, hooray, and the paper work on the compounding interest payback. I felt light-headed. I scrubbed my stovetop for a distraction.

Also, this weekend was my birthday, for which I had friends over for a make-your-own pizza party and made a German Chocolate Cake from the Tate’s Bakeshop Cookbook. Tate’s is in Southampton, NY. Mark & I bought our wedding cakes from them. (Sidebar: If you are getting married and aren’t obsessed with the idea of the inedible, rolled fondant tower of chalk, opt for several 10″ cakes, so you not only get to choose a variety of filling/cake/icing combinations, but won’t pay $10 a slice either. Our total cake bill was under $250 for 100 guests. Just don’t mention “wedding.”)

Kathleen King’s (née Tate) cookbook is adorable and my mom gave it to me last Christmas. The problem with it is that the recipe development is, well, lacking. It pains me to critique such a successful and prolific cookbook author, but I will because if you want your cakes (specifically the presentation) to be a success, adjustments need to be made, primarily in the icing. Unless her theory is that you don’t feel successful and keep buying her fabricated cakes… conspiracy?

Tate’s Bake Shop German Chocolate Cake with Notes from Yours Truly

Cake
4 oz Baker’s German Sweet Chocolate
1/2 cup canned Coco Lopez (look in the cocktail mixes isle)
2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup (2 sticks) salted butter, softened to being easily malleable, room temperature
1 1/4 cups white sugar
4 large eggs, separated
2 tsp real vanilla extract (NOT imitation)
1 cup buttermilk

1. Heat oven to 350.

2. Grease and flour three 9-inch cake pans. (If you grease then flour, you run the risk of white streaks turning out on your chocolate cake. I used Pam Baker’s Spray, which has flour in the spray, and no white streaks. Alternately, you could grease with butter, but dust with cocoa powder, so the streaks don’t appear on the cake because they are both brown!)

3. In a small sacepan, melt the chocolate and the cream of coconut together, stirring constantly. (Use a bigger saucepan and stir with a whisk, to break up the gooey coconut.) Set aside to cool. (The recipe doesn’t say how cool. I let it sit until I was ready for it, and it was fine. Just put the pan on a different burner than the one you cooked on, as the metal/coil will hold heat and thus keep the bottom of your pot warm.)

4. Mix the flour, salt and baking soda in a medium-sized bowl and set aside.

5. In a separate bowl, beat together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. (I used my KitchenAid on medium speed for about 2 minutes, scraping the sides and bottom halfway through.)

6. Add egg yolks, one at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping sides and bottom of the bowl.

7. Beat in the vanilla extract.

8. Stir in the chocolate coconut mixture and mix until completely combined. (Take big, deep inhalations to enjoy the rich, sweet smell.)

9. In a separate bowl, whip the egg whites to a soft peak. (The bowl must be absolutely clean, no rogue grease from last night’s french fries. The act of whipping egg whites incorporates air. This is most efficiently accomplished with a hand mixer, but a whisk and a strong arm work just as well. If you are whisking by hand, don’t lift the whisk out of the bowl, except to test the density of the egg white, otherwise you are releasing air and undoing your hard work. Instead, rapidly trace a figure eight in the bottom of the bowl. To test for the soft peak stage, stop stirring and lift the whisk or mixer straight up, slowly. As soon as the whisk separates from the eggs, the top of the peak in the bowl should stand up and immediately flop over, retaining its shape. Test frequently because if you go too far, you get stiff peaks (they don’t flop over) and you can’t recover from that except to start over. Oh, and soft peaks take about a minute and a half by machine, 2 and a half by elbow grease.)

10. Fold 1/4 of the egg whites into the chocolate batter to start the fluffing, then fold in the rest. (Be gentle, you don’t want to break up all the air pockets you just created. Only stir until all but a few thin streaks of white remain.)

11. Divide the batter into the three prepared pans.

12. Bake for 25 minutes. The edges will pull away from the edges of the pan, the center will spring back when lightly pressed on and a toothpick inserted in the center will come out clean. (Rotate pans once halfway through to ensure evenly cooked cakes.)

13. Remove from oven. Cool 10 minutes in the pans, then turn out onto wire racks to cool completely.

Icing
1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks)
2 cups evaporated milk
6 large egg yolks, lightly beaten
1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
2 tsp real vanilla
2 cups pecans, lightly toasted (I chopped mine lightly before toasting)
2 cups shredded coconut (the recipe says either sweetened or unsweetened. Use unsweetened if you can find it. I used sweetened and the whole cake was too sweet. I know there’s not really a such thing. But it was too sweet. We were all twitching.)

1. In a small saucepan, stir together butter, milk, eggs, and brown sugar.

2. Cook ingredients over low heat, stirring constantly until the mixture thickens and is golden brown. (Here is where a poorly written recipe stands out. How thick? How “golden?” Because of the dark brown sugar, its golden brown as soon as everything is evenly mixed. How thick is the bigger issue. I feared over-cooking and thought that the mixture would set up (get thicker) as it cooled and that the coconut and pecans would add to the the thickening. WRONG. It doesn’t set up at all, so you have to cook it until its the consistency you want at the finish. I’d give you a temperature, but I didn’t temp it. I cooked my mixture for about 20 minutes over low. It was thickened and golden brown, but soaked the cake and created a nice pool on the cake plate. I’d go for medium-low heat next time, and cook until I can scoop a bit of icing up without it flattening out too much on the spoon.)

3. Remove from heat and cool completely.

4. Stir in cooled (from toasting) pecans and coconut.

*To toast pecans, line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and spread out the pecans in a single layer. Put in a 425 degree oven for 3 minutes, take out par, stir around the nuts, place back in over and toast for a minute or two more. the best gague is your nos. When you smell toastiness, they’re done.

Build the cake
On a large cake platter, center the first layer. Scoop 1/3 of the icing into the center and spread it flat all the way to the edges of the cake, without spilling over. Place second cake ring, repeat icing treatment. Place final cake, top with remaining 1/3 of icing. Don’t ice the sides, the icing is too heavy.

Ok, so yes this cake has 4 sticks of butter (as my dad says “if a recipe calls for butter in sticks, you know its going to be good”) but you aren’t going to eat this cake everyday, or all of it in one sitting.

I recommend it served with a sweet sparkling wine (Clairette de Die, if you can find it,) a calculator for practicing culinary math, a Sallie Mae student loan statement, or a 29th birthday party with great friends.

Its Not Bland… Its Delicate

Describing food is hard. I imagine that most of you, dear readers, are either foodies or looking for a particular recipe and up I popped on your google search. Either way, communicating the experience of eating something to someone who has never had what you are describing is incredibly challenging. I think its part of why I love food writing so much. I am a sucker for a good challenge.

This vegetable was in a pile on the stainless steel table over which Chef was presiding. Our instructions were to come up to the pile, and pick out a vegetable that we had never seen before, or didn’t know what was. I selected this guy (I say “guy” because it reminds me of a toothless old man’s puckered face) as classmates picked up fennel, leeks, a sweet potato.

I had seen this before in the supermaket, but assumed it was some kind of bitter melon and left it alone. Turns out, its called chayote (pronounced cha-YO-tee) and is in the squash family. So, Chef is trying to find the right words to describe it. He (a flamboyant Texan with an effortless sense of dry humor and endless depths of energy) says “it doesn’t have too much flavor on its own…its…” and I finish his sentence by chiming “bland?” He flashes a one-cornered smile and says “delicate.”

Such is the nature of cooking school. When one signs up to learn not only how to chop celery into a fine brunoise (the teeniest little perfect squares you can imagine) but why (to add subtle crunch to something like a cream soup without your guest identifying the source of the crunch) you have crossed into another world and left the “common” world behind. While I struggle a little with the inherent elitism, after all I was a food lover before I was a culinary student, it is true that I joined up because I wanted the elite credential. Moreover, most people glaze over when I wax poetic about, oh, say, salt. But not you, dear reader, you salivate. Or click the back button an find an easier/more appropriate recipe, or realize that by google searching for “clam” you didn’t find here what you were looking for.

Ok, so let’s go back to the pile of vegetables. We haven’t been allowed to turn any stoves on yet. First we have to address the basics. For the love of all that is good, please wash your hands after using the bathroom. Then there’s the identity of cooking stuff. No stove will help you if you don’t know how to clean, and ID a leek. On Day 1 of ID, we each got a little cup of something that looked like milk. Taste. Buttermilk. Day 2, vegetables. When we went around the room and introduced ourselves, each person said ‘I love to cook’ in their own way. Watching some of those same people eye a bulb of fennel like it was potentially explosive was not a reaction I expected.

With many of our vegetables yesterday, we began learning classic cuts and practicing the knife skills necessary to produce them. I’m not much for fussy food, but there is something extremely rewarding in fluffing a finely diced carrot. What was just moments before an ugly, tuberous, over-sized phallus now converted into brilliant little jewels as pleasant to admire as a spoonful of caviar.

Today was fruit, so we made fruit salad. Mangoes, apples, strawberries, grapes red and green, cantaloupes, oranges and pineapples were pulled one by one from the fridge (too common) the reach-in and passed around so we each could practice the right way to clean them up for a fine fruit salad. I seized the opportunity to collect my table’s pineapple rinds and took them home to make Daisy Martinez’s vinagre. I’m going to share my version of the recipe below, I hope she doesn’t mind. Tomorrow, I’m bringing in some to eat on our blanched vegetables (we get to turn the stove on!) and convert another group into being horrified to throw away pineapple rind.

Today also including a whirlwind of cheese tasting and fruit salad eating and ended with a conversation about sustainable cuisine. Chef was on his soapbox, as were I and several other classmates, passionately informed about the honeybee population decline and corn, possibly the smartest species on the planet, and there sat others, horrified because the had never imagined that a tomato-is-a-tomato-is-a-tomato is wrong. Or questioned why it was that our apples in the fruit salad had been shipped from Washington when New York is currently flush with some of the best apples in the world.

And the thing is, they can’t go back. Now the seed has been planted (sorry pun-haters) and just like washing your hands after the bathroom, and the riveting video on food saftey and sanitation, you can’t go back. As culinary professionals, we can’t unthink our role in shaping the way people think about food. We can only go forward from here.

Ok, enough soapboxing.

Vinagre!

Rinds from 2 or 3 pineapples

1 sweet onion, sliced into half moons
20 garlic cloves, crushed
hot peppers of your choice, chopped fine (the type and quantity will vary based on your taste for heat. I used 6 serranos)
2 T fresh oregano leaves, bruised (just rub them between your palms a few times until you start to smell them)
1 T Bragg’s apple cider vinegar
1 tsp black peppercorns
salt to taste, about 1 T

Collect the rinds from the pineapples you are cleaning. Put them in a pot just big enough to hold them and cover with cold water. On high heat, bring to a boil. When the boil starts, set the timer for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, do al your cutting and slicing. Assemble all the savories in a container big enough to hold them and the liquid from the pineapples, and with a tight fitting lid. Add the vinegar and the salt.

When the timer goes off and the pineapple rinds are soft (if they need more time, give it) turn off the heat. Using a fine mesh seive (or a bigger seive lined with cheesecloth) ladle the liquid out of the pot and into the savories, using tongs to remove the pineapple pieces as necessary. Let stand, uncovered until it comes to room temperature. Taste and add more salt and/or cider vinegar if necessary. Cover and refridgerate. Use as a condiment on everything. Lasts about a week in the fridge reach-in.

My First Day of School

Whenever I see pictures of so-and-so’s first day of school, I think Great. Another high school acquaintance found me, friended me and has added me to their list of people who care about so-and-so getting on the school bus. Yes, yes. I love kids. I was a teacher. Someday Mark & I will have a brood of our own. But for today, it is my first day of school. Again.

I’ve had several “first days of school” before. The usual ones, a first day of art school, which was on purpose, and a first day of teaching school, which was for all intents and purposes, an accident. Thank you 9/11.

Ok, so there I was, a few months back, knowing I was a creative person, knowing that New York City schools are too fucked up for me to teach in. Knowing that I didn’t want to sit behind a desk for the rest of my professional career, and feeling like I could look around and see so many people who had figured out what they want to do with their lives. I was wrong, and I think most people are figuring it out as they go along, but I was just stuck. I couldn’t take the chance to exhale to admit that I’d made some pretty poor choices, and begin to figure it out. I felt like a failure because I hadn’t gotten “it” like everyone else.

In a past professional iteration, I commuted 3 hours in each direction, to have basically nothing to do. In another, I loved what I did but it was like the movie Groundhog’s Day. (Remember? With Bill Murray?) In another, I devoted my whole being to what I was doing to be told I was “completely replaceable.” Ouch. These were all in my grown-up years, post schooling and so I was trying to fit into the mold. 401k, dental, taxes, etc. The thing is, I never fit into any mold. Ever. I dyed my hair pink with Kool Aid because Manic Panic hadn’t been invented yet. But grown ups are supposed to fit into molds and build safe, stable lives for themselves. Right? Maybe you, but not me.

Now what? I started with books with titles like “The Anti 9-5 Girls Guide: Practical Career Advice For Women Who Think Outside the Cube,” Money & the Meaning of Life, and A New Earth, and websites like www.mylifeinacube.com and lots of therapy. I’m not kidding. It really took (and takes) an hour with Evelyn every week to remind myself that its okay that I don’t fit into the mold I thought I was supposed to fit into. There are other molds out there.

A quick story. When I first started seeing Evelyn, I was crying and begging for her to tell me how people knew that they were doing the right thing with their lives. I was having an existential crisis. My beloved Grandfather had died two weeks before I got married and changed my name. Enough to send anyone to the couch. I was fixated on finding a career path like some friends of mine fixate on finding a husband. I found me one of them, but the idea of spending the rest of my life explaining what a PDF file meant sent me into whirls of anxiety and frightening depression. So on this particular day, I’m begging Evelyn to tell me the secret that everyone else knows but I must have gone to the ladies when it was announced. And you know, she said the most frustrating thing. She said that I already knew. And that when I cleared away all the anxiety and depression and accumulated garbage and failed expectations, it would be sitting in my mind like it was in the middle of an empty room.

And, in a nutshell, that’s exactly what happened. I came home for the nth night crying about “the sands of my life falling through the hourglass” and decided to make chicken stock. And as I was chopping this onion, all of a sudden, it was there. That’s it. That’s what I want to do. In all the dark, sad days with all the change and loss and gain and upheaval I return to my knives. And my onions. I love to cook. And unlike other professions, if I try and fail, at least I won’t go hungry.

Ok, so there it was sitting in the middle of the room just like Evelyn said. Now what? Culinary school?! Are you NUTS?! That’s like $35 grand! I know I’ll save it up. I’ll work, pay off my credit cards, then save up the money and then I’ll go. One more day of cubicle dwelling was all I needed to see for sure that that would never work. So I spent a few days, two, three tops, researching New York culinary schools, found two that looked promising, and chose one for a variety of very practical reasons. Money was not one of them. I came to the conclusion that what money I had would never be enough. That there will always be another debt, and that if Sallie Mae would lend me the money, it was an amount that, compared with what I had without the debt, was priceless. Then I was getting fitted for a chef’s jacket.

Anticipating that it would feel like camp was exactly right. There are big stoves and pots and a proofer and a salamander and other things I’ve never even seen before. Here’s a pic of my new tools:

And I’m so excited to keep you posted on techniques, recipes, learning experiences and et cetera. And here’s my new life, in the making.

Blue Cheese Stuffed Burgers & Culinary School

Culinary school starts in a week. Have I mentioned that I am going in to culinary school? Its pretty awesome. Prohibitively expensive, had it not been for dear old Aunt Sallie Mae, before she froze all assets. Remember? Back before the meltdown, when she was still all like “I can charge 13% interest!” These are things I don’t think about. Instead, I imagine that instead of buying an entry-level BMW, I bought a whole new life.

I’ve learned a few things about myself in recent times, and sitting behind a desk is not something I can do to make a living. Even if I really good at it, it just isn’t in my blood. So I redefined what I mean when I say “I’m a creative person.” I used to believe that this meant that I had unique solutions to problems. As it turns out, that’s only half the story. The other part is I actually have to create things, where there was nothing before. Not in like a God way, but in an apple+butter+sugar+flour=Apple Pie Bars. Or ball of yarn=homemade holidays. Or what might I do with that left over blue cheese? Unique solution! Put it inside the burger. Ok, so maybe I read that somewhere in a magazine, but I thought of it at the right time.

So, I plan to keep you posted on the culinary school adventure. Primarily, was it worth all that money when the only thing I’m even a little sure of is that I don’t want to be a chef. Not in the Anthony Bourdain way, anyway. Maybe in the private chef in an island villa kind of way though.

In the meantime, fire up the grill and make these:

Blue Cheese Stuffed Burgers
2 lbs ground sirloin
1 egg
1 T cajun spices (you can mix up your own concoction. I used something called “Slap Yo’ Mama Cajun Seasoning”)
1/4 lb really good blue cheese, cut into 4 slices (I used what we got from Lively Run Dairy in the Finger Lakes. If you can find goat’s milk blue cheese, use it, otherwise, Roquefort or some other stinky, furry thing will work.)

4 bakery-style rolls

In a large bowl, mix the beef, egg and spices until just combined. Divide into for portions and make 4 big meatballs. Use your index finger to hollow out the middle of a meatball, slip a hunk of cheese inside, and reseal the hole. Press the meatball into a patty, making sure you don’t expose any of the cheese, and repeat three more times for the remaining meatballs.

Cook over a medium-hot charcoal grill until done to your liking. Keep in mind though, the cheese has to melt, so if you like your burgers medium-rare, and that usually means 4 minutes per side, add a minute or two to the cooking time to ensure gooey cheese centers.

When cooked, move the burgers to a plate and let the rest for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, toast your buns over the charcoal. Put the burgers on their buns, and slice in half to reveal the centers. Serve with whole grain mustard, ketchup and hot sauce.