New Year's Greetings!

That's all she wrote in 2008
But before it ends I just had to state
My apologies for not getting my act together
To write you each a warm new year's letter.
This rhyming attempt may be weak and retarded --
Next year I'll try to get you all carded!

How quickly the months passed! What a year has transpired!
Sarah Palin entertained us; Barack Obama inspired;
We picked up Senate seats, lost our shirts in the market;
I've been on the road with no chance to park it
To New York; Detroit; Philly and Boston!
To Chi-town, Louisville, San Fran and Austin!

We went up to New York in earliest spring
To hear Rich and Mindy's wedding bells ring
Then Tom and Mary Blaske hosted our wedding vows
Which we took 'neath the gazebo at Foxcroft House.

In June besides finally marrying Brad Katz,
I raised lots of money,saw the Louisville Bats,
Bet on the ponies, sipped lots of bourbon,
Knocked on Kentucky doors so suburban.
In November, Lunsford lost by a couple of digits
But a Brad at home makes a happier Bridget.

Such a strange wondrous year from finish to start!
I partied in NY with Nora C. and Madonna;
Bernie Madoff's hijinks broke my heart.
Shout out to my hometown and its poor Big 3 scions,
Its copious snow, and its winless Lions.

But a fresh start is at hand and times they do change
So I'm going to go drink une coupe du champagne,
Tip my hat to Roger Angell, and extend all my warmest wishes
To you, with a slight gloat, as I write from Paris, bitches!

Gifts for the Culinary Badass on Your List

Foodies should be easy to buy for, but they're not. You know they already cook a lot, so what if they already have that nifty new gadget you're eyeing in Crate & Barrel? You know they love cheese, but what if that fabulous wedge of Vermont cheddar turns out to be something entirely pedestrian and they never invite you to their holiday party again?

Never fear, the Culinary Badass Gift Guide is here. We'll go in descending in order in case there are any big spenders left in this economy.
Overdoing it
Caviar -- Truly, all I want for Christmas is this creme de la creme sampler. And some little buckwheat blini and creme fraiche. Oh, and some Cristal.

Really, I'm not high maintenance. Just expensive.

Cooking Lessons -- Not just any community ed cooking class, of course. I know I have a lot to learn and I think I could learn a ton from the pair of chefs behind Ideas in Food. They not only revel in the curiosity endemic to cooks and cooking ("what would happen if I braised this turkey in duck fat?," hypothetically, which I attempted to answer last week), they drop some serious science on you in the course of exploring and answering such questions. A night in a "Hands on with Liquid Nitrogen" class would doubtless yield some good ideas for revving up the occasional dinner party.

Custom-made pastry: Bryant Stuckey made a lovely croquembouche for my wedding, and I think a tasty tower of beautiful cream-filled pastry accented with spun sugar would make an equally festive New Year's Eve option.

The good stuff
Respect your Elders: St. Germain elederflower liquer adds a festively flowery kick to a gin and tonic, or mixes beautifully with champagne (not the Cristal!). Light a clove cigarette and get all Rive Gauche.

Scrape-free baking: The beater blade features little rubber fins that scrape the batter from the sides of your mixing bowl without your having to do the tiresome dance of stopping the KitchenAid, ratcheting down the mixer bowl, and scraping down the sides yourself. If you're a badass baker with places to go and people to see, you need this.

Luscious lushes, on the go: Since you can't take your bottles on the plane with you, bring a couple souvenirs from Napa bag safely in your checked luggage the Bottlewise way.








Nice for the Price
For potheads: How cute are these little clips that hold your spoon while you're cooking? How much time would I save cleaning off my countertip if I had one of these?!
Shrooms: This little jar of truffle salt adds a nice little hit of black truffly goodness to eggs or starches without the cloying, exaggerated flavor of truffle oil. Chardonnay oak-smoked salt is a beautiful accent to oysters, knocked back with a glass of Cakebread Cellars chardonnay.

Cheeseball: I'm waging a subtle campaign for liptauer and rye bread to replace hummus and pita as the hipster cocktail party snack fo 2010.
The kicker
This t-shirt by Married to the MOB, with its simple, acronymic question, would be the envy of any straight-up badass, not just a culinary one.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good meal!

NaNoWriMo

I'm failing doing National Novel Writing Month, for the third year. Even if you fail, I highly encourage you to check it out and flex your creative muscles.

At least it gives me an excuse for being a terrible blogger, as opposed to other months, when I am just an inexcusably terrible blogger.

Lady Apples

How do you like them apples? If you answered "small" then today is your lucky day, my friend. The lady apples have arrived.

These tiny, rosy-cheeked, tart and tasty little guys are in stores now, and they are impeccable sliced up and tossed up in a salad of mache or baby greens, a splash of sherry vinaigrette, and slivers of shaved manchego. Or take them for a sweet turn with Martha's easy recipe for fun caramel lady apples.

Still mad for Mad Men, but especially the Mad Women

The second season of Mad Men seems over almost before it began. I don't know how I'm going to get through the long, cold, post-election winter stretching out ahead of us without it. But they went out with a bang -- or at least, the contemplation of one during Cuban Missile Crisis. All sesason long, Mad Men has successfully juxtaposed the simple but profound changes wrought by new technology -- television, the photocopier -- with its equal capacity for devastating destruction -- the American Airlines crash, the threat of nuclear weapons.

I know the NY Times is whining about the general melancholia of this season, but I actually found its depiction of its characters' confrontation of a new, horrific and unknowable reality -- and decision to seize it as a chance to fundamentally change themselves and their lives -- not only elegant, but inspiring. Peggy's move into Fred Rumsen's old office; Betty's random end-of-the-world sex and contemplation of an abortion; Peggy's confession to Pete about having his baby -- all of these prompted fist-pumping feelings of solidarity. While mindful of the desperation and pain that have moved the characters to these actions, knowing that we as a species came through that episode in 1962 more or less intact, I was happy for a prime-time example of the rare clarity provided to humankind by events like this. In the midst of a fierce crisis of our own on many fronts -- and confronted with an unprecedented opportunity for change -- I hope some of us will exhibit the same clarity and courage.

PoMs, and the End of Old

So, Saturday I went to the Sticky & Sweet concert in NYC.

Nothing bad about that: a best girlfriend came up to the city; we had some decadent times; saw the sights and enjoyed gorgeous autumns weather. All in all excellent. Madonna's concert was spectacular in the most literal sense of the word: Lights, costumes, dancers. Pharell Williams. A Rolls Royce. It was a great show: like you and 50,000 of your best friends dancing to a remixed version of Madonna's newest album and greatest hits, singing along and waving your arms and throwing up horns. It rocked.

That also was kind of its problem. Madonna is the best and worst of this show. She entertains you with two hours of the most imaginative, athletic dancing and soulful singing you can imagine, putting a whole new spin and a whole new soul into tunes you've loved for years. The trouble is, she does so after making you wait for more than 90 minutes. And then she berates you. "Stand up, New York!" she shouted. "You guys are pussies! Show some respect." The show opens with five minutes of her growling "My sugar is rawwwww" into the microphone. That's where the bar is set, and about where it stays. Show some respect?! How about the 90 steamy, dinnerless minutes we just spent waiting for that? We are prisoners. Prisoners of Madonna (PoMs).

But my fellow Prisoners did not care. The excellent thing is, she gets away with that because she is Madonna. And she is 50. And she makes being 50 look like the most awesome thing ever.

At the beginning of the show, she slowly emerges onstage, sitting at the top of a flight of steps, one leather boot-clad leg drapped nonchalantly over the arm of a giant black-lacquered throne, the back of which is arched in an elaborate "M". Her dancers bow before her and one of them hands her a tall pimp cane. Then she gets Pharrell and the Rolls. Then she does double-dutch jump-roping. THEN she undulates against a stripper pole on a mobile platform attached to a DJ scratching the shit out of a couple of turntables. THEN she thrashes on her guitar.

At which point I said to myself, "I want all that! The pimp cane. The rolls. The adulation of dancers and audiences. The guitar-thrashing. And most of all, those most awesome black leather Louboutins.

If this is fifty, sign me the fuck UP! I am so there!!!"

Considering that I don't play guitar, know Pharrell, have access to a Rolls or thigh-high Christian Louboutin boots, or have many screaming fans at this point, it's a good thing I have twenty years to work on this. Thanks, Madge, for the lesson.

Eat this right now

You have maybe a week left in which to catch fresh figs at the market. Go get some and rinse them off. Quarter a few (three or four) and toss them with arugula, olive oil, lemon juice, pepper and salt, and toss with a few shavings of pecorino. Comme ca.

Post haste!

Get it while it's hot

I'm allowing myself one more post about summer produce, because the sweet corn has all but disappeared, the heirloom tomatoes will soon all but disappear and it will be all squash and kale until next May.

Here we have simple grilled ribeye made just a touch better with grape tomatoes and garlic quickly sauteed in a hot pan, just until the baby tomatoes start to wilt and blister, finished with a few shredded basil leaves. It's late summer on a plate in ten minutes flat.




Guacamole and ceviche are already well-worn territory in these pages, but to round out a beer-and-margaritas scene one night I made these Sriracha chicken wings from Food & Wine. I have a hard time finding or making adequately spicy Buffalo sauce at home, and even a lot of bars' wings are subpar (paling in comparison to the fiery excellence of Ouch wings at Blondies); these give off a fruity heat that makes a great appetizer and/or complement to conventionally spicy or salty foods.

And finally, an early-September trifecta -- an improvised succotash of corn, tomatoes, favas, and a little onion, charred in a dry skillet, accompanied by scallops stuffed with summer basil and accompanied on the grill by some gorgeous peaches.

It's all vanishing before your eyes. Get yourself to the farmer's market quick!

Condiment Class

To add some easy variety to grill night (you don't always have time to make chard and fava salad, after all!), turn to some easy condiments from around the globe. We all know that old standby pesto, great for brushing over grilled chicken breasts or thighs, stuffing trout or scallops before you grill them, or mixing with orzo or rice for a speedy side dish, but food processors and sharp knives make some other flavorings equally easy and accessible. My recent favorites include:

Chimichurri: A condiment for beef in Uruguay and Argentina, this simple combination of lemon juice, crushed red pepper, parsley, garlic, onion and lots of good olive oil is heavenly on a seared skirt steak.

I like The Minimalist's basic recipe (though you will see from the photo I used tiny pequin chiles, about half of the pile you see pictured, ground with a mortar and pestle), but it's extremely versatile -- use as a marinade and/or serve alongside; heavenly with red meat it also works beautifully with seared very rare tuna, grilled shrimp or chorizo (or some skewers of both for a nice mixed grill?), and even these grilled green heirloom tomatoes.



Harissa: North African in origin, you can actually buy this condiment in a jar or tube online if you're a slacker. But trust me, better and more fun to make your own. It's a fairly simple mixture of dried chiles (I have a lot of guajillo and one ancho here; pretty much anything will work depending on your own tolerance/preference for hot versus fruity), garlic, caraway and coriander seed, topped off with a bit of good olive oil. A good starter recipe is here via the LA Times; they even have a nifty slide show if you're nervous about technique. To this basic recipe I add a couple of drained canned plum tomatoes (fresh would probably also be fab but then there's the tiresome peeling/coring/seeding); some people also like to add red bell pepper. The beauty of this is that basically, once you have compiled all your ingredients you throw them into the bowl of your food processor and pulse the hell out of them until you get a fragrant red paste.



Thereafter, do what you want with it -- you can serve it as a condiment brushed on or alongside lamb chops or a fatty fish like salmon; thin it with more oil and use it as a marinade for other meat or fish; even use it as the base for a pasta dish like this gorgeous weeknight meal from Heidi Swanson.

No shortage of good variations and uses for these versatile condiments so these should keep you plenty busy as you squeeze the last over this rapidly-evaporating summer. . .

Grill, interupted

It's August. Summer is just weeks away from ending and the produce is bountiful and awesome. Get thee to a grill! I did:
I got this totally awesome indoor grill about a month ago. Now even the apartment-dwellers among us can enjoy grill lines and smoky charred taste. OK, maybe not as good as charcoal grill (you can't plank; no charcoal or hickory-smoked flavor) but fast, convenient and much, much better than braving the douchebag convention that is my apartment complex's communal barbecue out in the courtyard.

On it you see sweet corn and chard. This grilled chard salad with fava beans, fragrant with lemon and oregano, would make a convert of the most avowed veggie-hater. The heat on the All-Clad grill is fully adjustable, allowing for just the right level of caramelization on the sweet corn.







Of course, what is a grill without some meat? Throw a burger on there:

And then plate everything up and since your teeth into some tasty Amyrrhica.


Plums and berries are also in season so dessert is a no-brainer: plum and berry crisp. Cut plums into wedges and toss with a little bit of brown sugar with a couple of cups of whatever berries you like (blackberies, raspberries, blueberries all good options). Spread into a pan and bake for ten minutes or so at 400 degrees. Toss a cup of oats with a half stick of slightly softened butter, a quarter cup flour and a third cup brown sugar, crumble it over the plum-berry mixture and pop back in the oven until brown and bubbling. Let cool a bit and serve with a dollop of vanilla.

The next day, grill up some more of that corn (trust me, in three weeks it will be nowhere to be found and you'll wish you had); use the rest of the chard salad and as long as you've got the grill on throw some fat, succulent sea scallops.

Be nice; make your guests some sugar cookies. Not just for Christmas anymore!




Like a little bite of sunshine! Enjoy it while you can!

Coincidence!

Check this out! The dress worn by Joan Holloway (the redhead in the Center, Madmen neophytes)
is ALMOST the same, in terms of cut, as my very own late-50's Peggy Hunt dress that I wore at my wedding:
(I'm on the right, and it's the best pic of the bustle at my hip that I have. Clearly, I wore it less low and tight across my shoulders than Ms. Holloway).
(Via What Would Joan Holloway Do, awesome in its own right.)

Bal'more, hon

I'm not sure of the provenance of Baltimore's "Charm City" moniker. Even though I've lived not more than an hour away from it for the last four years, I haven't spent much time in it at all. Mostly, I just drive through it on 95 on my way to other places and marvel at how you know you're in Baltimore from the billboards, which almost exclusively promote (1) abstinence, (2) paternity testing, and (3) concerts at the Borgata. Not the usual radio stations, restaurants and Bud Light billboards for Baltimore, no sir.

Whatever its provenance, after a long weekend there I'm more apt to at least go along with the whole "Charm City" concept. It was one of those impossibly hot and humid mid-Atlantic weekends where it was nearly too hot to move, and your skin prickles with goose flesh when you stop outside not because you are chilly but just because of the sheer shock of the heat. Consequently, we decided to lay low and take it easy.

First stop: the Sports Legend Museum on Emory Street, just down the block from Oriole Park and featuring more than you ever wanted to know about Baltimore sports teams and heroes. It's a veritable cathedral of Cal Ripken, Jr.

Next up: crabs. Baltimore's famous, Old Bay-seasoned crustaceans are well worth the mess--better to have them in a restaurant than have to negotiate that mess yourself. This was the first opportunity of many to enjoy a cold beer on a hot day.

Staying closer to the cool water on a hot hot day seemed like a good idea so we decided to Ride the Ducks of Baltimore for a tour of the city by sea and land. Besides the obvious thrill of being in a vehicle that both drives and floats, you got some magnificent views of the Balto skyline
and noteworthy sights like the Domino Sugar sign,
Edgar Allen Poe's grave, and
these nifty old cars (props in a movie
being filmed in Baltimore).


Of course, the highlight of the weekend was the Tigers-Orioles game. While the Tigs managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory despite a seven-run first inning--it was almost like watching 1999's team and their regular implosions at old Tiger Stadium--the heat of the day melted into a nice night at the ballpark with beer, brother and others.

All in all, it was nice to get acquainted with Baltimore as a place other than just America's STD capital. I highly recommend it; check it out next time you're driving up or down I-95!

Guaca-viche night!

The painful irony of the first exquisitely nice official summer Friday in DC is that one's first thought, as the workday starts to draw to a close is, "Today would be a perfect day to go to Rosa Mexicano, sit outside, drink margaritas and eat spicy guacamole." But it's impossible to do that at Rosa Mexicano because they won't let you sit outside for drinks and appetizers (and the entrees are just too boring to be worth getting), and by the time you get out of work Rosa Mexicano will be packed elbow to elbow; will in fact be a sweaty, teeming mass of d-bags jostling for drinks and spilling Negra Modelo on you.

So I decided to Mexicano-at-home, with the new tools of my nicely-equipped kitchen (if you are the first person to correctly identify all the registry items in this post, I will make this meal in your home). The resulting light meal came out so nicely I couldn't resist posting the results, and I thought I might at least try to impart something useful to any wayward web traveler landing on this page. So here it is: a lesson in guacamole.

You will need:
3 ripe avocados
1/2 medium white onion
1 garlic clove
1 jalapeno or half a serrano pepper
handful of fresh cilantro
small tomato, cored and seeded
salt

Your first instinct is probably to start with the avocados, as they are the main ingredient, but that would be wrong. But don't worry, sugar, that's why I'm here: drop that avocado. Instead, give the onion, the pepper, and the garlic clove each a fairly fine dice (do NOT rub your eyes or your nose after doing so, not that you want to do that while you're cooking in any event, but especially not in the presence of a serrano!) and mill the cilantro.

Now here is the key, the thing you won't know instinctively about guacamole: you are going to start by making paste of these first ingredients, a guacamole "base" if you will. Take about a third of each of these chopped ingredients and mound them together in the middle of your cutting board, give them a generous drizzle of salt and chop and mince these ingredients together until they are a juicy, pale greenish paste. Get your knife on its side and use the flat of the blade from time to time to press and dig in:
Drop the paste into your molcajete. Now you are ready for the avocados. Halve those ripe green bad boys lengthwise--don't
get ahead of yourself and start scooping hem out of their skins--halve them, then grab your paring knife and gently score the avocado flesh into a dice:







Then, and only then, are you ready to gently scoop the scored avocado into your molcajete, and use a spoon and the pestle to gently fold together the paste and the avocado.

NB: In a truly ripe avocado, the pit that remains in one half should just slide out when you grab it with your fingers. A patient, forgiving person would tell you that you can wedge your knife blade into it and twist the avocado and the impaled pit in opposite directions, much as you would open a bottle of champagne, to dislodge the bit, but I am not that patient or forgiving a person. If you cannot easily dislodge the pit, your guacamole will be inferior, and you will have failed. Throw out everything, go to the market and buy RIPE avocados this time, or put your non-ripe avocados away to mellow for a day or so, come back and try it again.

At this point, you can throw in the remaining onion, garlic, pepper and cilantro, as well as your diced, seeded, cored bright red terrific tomato, and gently pound it all together with the pestle. You don't want to completely pulverize the avocado, just to meld the ingredients together and give the chunks a creamy base to hold them altogether.

Taste for seasoning; at this point you can add a bit more salt, a squeeze of lime juice, a dash of smoky chipotle sauce -- whatever floats your boat; go nuts.

I rounded out the menu by breaking out my brand new -- and completely bad-ass -- deep fryer to make some fresh, warm tortilla chips to go along with. I continue to be in awe of Presto's penchant for churning out single-use appliances that, while unnecessary, are so cool and functional in producing basic American comfort food (and they are truly all about Amyrrhican comfort food. Click on that link--their banner features pictures of waffle fries and onion rings). The CoolDaddy works like a charm. Heats up to the specified temperature within twelve minutes, cooks tortilla chips to golden brown perfection in about seven minutes, no grease-spattered stove top or floor. You lower the basket into your roiling oily pit, seal it up to do its thing
and minutes later, you yank out some warm, salty goodness that perfectly compliments the creamy guacamole:
I aslo threw together an easy and relatively quick ceviche de camaron for a hit of sour and spice.


Add in a frosty social bev with a salty rim







Fling the windows open wide; toss some Brazilian Girls on the stereo (I recommend ratcheting down to Astrud Gilberto, the original Brazilian girl, as the night wears on) and enjoy your margaritas and ceviche while sitting down, without anyone spilling drinks on you or having to make your way drunkenly home from Penn Quarter.

¡Feliz viernes!

Muppet Madness

The brilliance of this makes me cry.

Founding Father

I'm obsessed with the HBO miniseries "John Adams." I'm kind of over "In Treatment"--haven't seen an episode in its entirety since the one where Blair Underwood was dead (though I will watch it if I flip to it and Gabriel Byrne is staring out intently and sensitively from the television screen), but "John Adams"--now that is a show. I'm not one to throw around praise for "production values" or mise en scene but good lord--have you seen John Adams teeth, and the way they age and moulder from episode to episode? Our second president looked like Beetlejuice in Part 6. The buzzing fly and mosquito noises, the sweat, the pox episode (my god!), the fantastic mishmash of accents that attempt to mimic what our foundling country must have sounded like, the musty, creaky, construction-site White House. I never would have expected Thomas Jefferson and John Adams butting heads over France to be as exhilarating as the McDreamy-Meredith Grey chase, but dear me. Stephen Dillane must be a real athlete, doing this and The Coast of Utopia so close together--talk about marathons.

How fascinating, at a time when our country's global stature is so diminished, to witness it in all its grit and fortitude before it had any stature in the first place, and to be right in the sweaty, pocked faces of the founding fathers--and their wives (Laura Linney is my hero)--try to wage a war, build a government, and be people. I'm not expert enough on revolutionary history to gauge its historical accuracy but I'll tell you this: it's compelling as hell.

Whither art thou?

I guess mostly I've been hibernating. It was freakin' cold out there, even for DC. Herewith, a cook's tour of the last several months:

January -- Festive Fare

In 2008, I'm turning thirty and getting married, and it's the biggest election year in a lifetime--and those are just the things we know for sure. NYE08 needed to be rung in with appropriate fanfare and I pulled out all the stops. It required days of preparation, hundreds of dollars, and many courses--caviar, shrimp, pate, lobster, cheese, washed down with copious quantities of martinis and some fantastic estate-grown rosé.

Yes, caviar two ways, or eggs two ways, depending on how you want to look at it: on tiny buckwheat blinis, with creme fraiche, and on top of stuffed quail eggs.
Next up: shrimp cocktail with a fabulous, horseradish-spiked cocktail sauce:


It felt too gruesome to take pictures of the lobsters in their steamy final moments, so you'll have to take my word for it. And the word, my friends, is good.




February: Cold Comfort

I had the excellent good fortune of getting a Presto Salad Shooter for Christmas. Do not judge it by its exceedingly silly name: it is a totally versatile kitchen appliance, much easier to use than a food processor when your recipe calls for a quick sprinkling of shredded cheese, sliced cucumber or grated nuts. I love it, and while as often as not I use it to make quick-and-dirty "nachos" (extra sharp cheddar grated and melted over a plate full of Spicy Nacho Doritos -- you can take the girl out of Downriver, but you can't take the Downriver out of the girl), it is capable of churning out serious cuisine -- like this silkily seductive mac-and-cheese made of double-creme brie, l'Etivaz, and Grafton Village cheddar. Comment on dit "Awww. Yeah."?


In keeping with this bistro classics theme and inspired by a really superb dinner --long, leisurely and in good company--at L'Absinthe in NYC, I've become obsessed with a perfectly roasted chicken. This little poulet roti made me really happy. I'm still working on my pan sauce, though.

And of course, there were desserts. Aided substantially by the versatile Salad Shooter (not just for salads!): Apple Brown Betty.

And, to show some V-Day love to co-workers and friends, Red Velvet Cupcakes:
This is a fantastic
recipe, from Magnolia Bakery by way of Epicurious. Be warned, though: making it will make your kitchen look like a nefarious back-alley abortionist's.




March: Rite of Spring

OK, it still goes down into the thirties at night, but the days are longer and warmer, right? What better way to welcome spring than by eating a baby animal? Slowly braised in good olive oil and finely chopped aromatic vegetables, of course, and accompanied by a steaming heap of fragrant risotto.





Hellooooo, osso bucco.




There you have it: how I spent my time while I was off being the worst blogger in the world. Don't worry; the writer's strike ended; it's only 13 days until Opening Day and 90 days until Wedding Day; that should give me something else to talk about:-)