Around and Around

Photo by Christopher Silsby.

Groundhog Day. Hmph. The implications leave me uneasy at best, at worst distraught in a seriously dishevelled, crazy-eyed, whimpering spin. Groundhog Day actually makes me feel a little affronted, especially when it comes upon me unawares, as it does, because who remembers Groundhog Day is coming?

Vagaries of fate and fat little varmints aside (and it occurs to me that I'm definitely conflating the movie Groundhog Day, which I've never seen, with Scrooged, which I've seen in fragments), I had some people over for dumplings last week.

No more high-flown talk of fresh starts. Down here in the mud, it is what it is. I don't care what the groundhog thinks of his shadow (though if he wants to bite Bloomberg again, I'm down--UPDATE: Bloomberg's off the hook today for the Planned Parenthood thing. But the biting was still funny). Anyway, what winter? I caught my cousin and sister lounging outside the juice shop yesterday and I won't mention which one of them was rocking Birkenstocks. Welcome to the year of the Dragon.

But the dumplings. That was fun. My upstairs neighbors and I accidentally found ourselves hosting parallel dumpling parties, kept each other up the night before with rampant cabbage chopping, and got so busy that we never tasted each other's dumplings. His method was to prepare all fillings in advance and use his guests as a labor pool for assembly. Mine was a bit messier--I laid out bowls of filling components (including ground pork, shrimp, ginger, tofu, garlic, cabbage, carrot, daikon, mushrooms, scallions, garlic chives, tapioca starch) and bottles of condiments (amazingly, those bottles numbered well above 20, including sesame oil, soy sauce, fish sauce, chili, ponzu, ume plum vinegar, pepper vinegar, etc...), and made it a free-for-all.

As guests arrived, they were encouraged to grab a bowl and concoct their personal blend of dumpling filling. After a slow start, the cabbage started spilling, there was black vinegar everywhere, and a potsticker pan and new 8" steamer were in full rotation. There were vegetable dumplings, there were pork and shrimp dumplings. There was shrimp and cilantro. There were a few little salads of straight filling ingredients (I provided no appetizers). Due to the time-consuming nature of handmade wrappers, I had provided a pile of store-bought ones as well, but my homemade ones were better in every way, easier to fill, tastier, and prettier. I wound up making another batch of dough halfway through because I wasn't enjoying filling and cooking the store-bought wrappers. I think they're better for ravioli, actually.

As I mentioned, there were no appetizers, but there was dessert. As guests drifted in and out, and the steamer sputtered, I did offer two varieties of ice cream, both made with recipes from my new toy, Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home. The lime frozen yogurt was good, but the Salty Caramel with Smoked Almonds (Jeni calls it Gravel Road), was the heart-stealer, converting even me, dubious about smoky flavors at the best of times. Since then, I've gone a bit nuts with that book, adding Passion Fruit Frozen Yogurt, Chamomile Champagne Ice Cream, and Hazelnut Ice cream to the repertoire.

Life is, as I mentioned above, seriously messy. But at least some of the mess is delicious. The rest...I'll tell you about it when that groundhog heads back under into his hole like the rest of us.

French Fridays with Dorie: Mushroom Soup

Photo by Matt Korahais.

So far, my foray into Around My French Table has been almost uniformly successful (we'll see how I feel when we get to the smoked fish), but this book really shines in the soup chapter. This week's soup, a rich mushroom, was perfect both for eating and for adding to other sauces. I made it even richer by adding Marsala instead of the white wine called for. While I ran out of mushrooms before making the little raw mushroom salad garnish Dorie recommends, it didn't much signify because I hadn't pureed most of the soup (house preference is chewy things in broth, rather than uniform mush). We're still eating it, and it's perfect for a snowy Friday, especially one when Matt's flying away to Paris and I'll be left alone at the end of the night. Still, we're so lucky, and this year is starting out very, very well. Lisbon in two weeks, and for now, there's mushroom soup.

Lay Ladies Lay

Sorry, couldn't resist.
Remember those tiny pullet eggs my aunt and uncle brought from Keene, NH? Well, apparently they're not kidding around up there (all counties blue! Yeah!), because when Joe and Nicki came back to stay last Thursday, they brought us these:Impressive, right? Those girls know what they're doing. The Keene harvest was bountiful in all respects, and we were also lucky enough to receive a tub of Joe's pesto (frozen earlier in the season, and so delicious), and a big ol' spaghetti squash, currently awaiting its demise by decorating our dining room table. Ah, but the eggs. Only one thing to do with those.

I don't know if I've mentioned this, but Matt makes superlative scrambled eggs. Here they are with some turkey sausage, mushrooms, and soup chicken bits.

Mark Bittman's Kasha Varnishkes

Or, I do whatever the NYtimes tells me to, part two. There have actually been several unsuccessful efforts between this post and the Chocolate Chip Cookies, but the Times has a surprisingly high hook rate, I tend to make at least one recipe of theirs a week, if not more. This week's breakaway winner was Mark Bittman's simple Kasha Varnishkes. I even had chicken fat leftover from last week's roast. I made it last night--this version is fast enough even for the likes of Rachel Ray, and I was making another recipe at the same time. I particularly liked learning Bittman's way of drying out the onions--he cooks them covered in a dry pan to sweat out some juice, and only adds fat after ten minutes when they've shrunk and started to brown. And it's so so delicious.

I inhaled half of it five seconds after it was done, added a bunch of sauteed mushrooms and repeated the process for breakfast today. It's that good. Sometimes color and fresh vegetables are just not everything. Sometimes you have to inhale greyish-brown, oniony food, cooked in chicken fat, and praise your ancestors for coming up with anything so good. (If anyone's counting, the mushrooms, and the kasha were farmer's market local, but I'm not kidding myself that that detail truly affected the dish.) Thanks, ancestors. You really did this one proud..