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!