From Gourmet Today: Cosmopolitans and Gin Rickeys!

You had to know it would only be a matter of days before I explored the Drinks chapter of the new cookbook! And before I embark upon this post I just want to make clear that it is NOT my ambition to add Gourmet Today to my cook-through blogging quest. Good lord. I MIGHT do the three subjects that aren't in the original book...grilling, vegetarian dishes, and drinks...but that's it. Well, I might do some of the cookies. And cakes. But that really is where I will be drawing the line.

Really. And don't say, Famous Last Words.

ANYWAY.

Being a cocktail enthusiast I had a hard time settling on which drink recipe I would try first. Something in the gin dept.? A champagne drink, perhaps? Punch for 50...don't need that right at the moment! Finally I just shut my eyes, flipped through the chapter, and pointed...and landed on Fizzy Sour Cherry Lemonade, a vodka drink that involves fresh or frozen sour cherries, which are not to be found right now. So I went to the recipe above, and the winner was...Cosmopolitans! Hooray!

Thursday also being CSF day (Community Supported Fishery) I invited our friends Elizabeth and Mark over for dinner to help us eat the fish and try out the Cosmos, and they were more than happy to say yes--impromptu dinner party! Hooray!

The notes for this recipe say that their version uses regular vodka rather than lemon-flavored (thank god, I think that stuff smells like cleaning fluid) and replaces lime juice w/ Rose's. Here's my mis en place...

Just so you know, I never use booze that's more than 80 proof, because anything more just knocks me on my keister. And I would like you to admire those lemon twists! Those of you who have witnessed even some of my many, many incarnations will not be surprised to hear that at one point I was a bartender, though that was a long time ago. Before Cosmos were invented in the mid-90's, so that should give you some idea.

Hello, cocktail shaker that I hardly ever use! Hello martini glasses which seem so appropriate now that we're finally watching Mad Men! Add ice, 1/4 cup vodka (THANK YOU whoever made the decision to translate ounces into cup/spoon measurements!!!!) 2 tbsp triple sec, 2 tbsp cran juice, 1 tbsp Rose's...shake shake shake shake shake shake shake, and.....

Isn't that pretty? Tasted great too! It's worth noting that as I was pouring I was saying, that's it? That's two drinks worth? If you are a habitué of bars where martini glasses are filled almost to the brim, now is the time to tell you are probably drinking two drinks worth of booze per glass. Super-sizing strikes again!

I'll confess to slurping two of those down before moving to wine halfway through dinner and I had a partner in Elizabeth--the guys declined Cosmo #2, finding it a touch too sweet for them. And the next time I try these, I might sub out the Rose's for regular lime juice, just for the sake of experimentation.

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Whenever Mark and Elizabeth go away and I take care of their cats, Elizabeth thanks me with a bottle of Bombay gin. So in return for having the privilege of cuddling two kittens last weekend, I got high-end gin...what a great deal! Mark and Elizabeth, go away any time!

So last night I asked Don if he wanted to try one of the gin recipes and although Classic Martinis were a strong pull, Gin Rickeys won out because neither of us had had them before.

This one was pretty simple--gin, lime juice and soda or seltzer. Again, the cocktail shaker! I love that thing! The only sad part of this drink-making experience is that I opened a small bottle of club soda and finished off the drink--only to realize belatedly that it was flat. Phooey! It must have been opened and closed, or it was really really really old. Probably the first one.

So I dumped a little out and poured in some Poland lime-flavored seltzer, which my husband consumes like crazy. I felt like I was cheating a little, but what are you going to do?

This is a really refreshing drink, and if you're one of those folks who would rather not taste the booze, just have the effects creep up on you, this is one of those. You feel the gin more in your stomach than taste it going down.

Is it weird to be so enthusiastic about drink recipes? I AM mindful that booze is a drug (legal, but still a drug), and with a 16 yr. old son we are certainly talking on a regular basis about the All Things in Moderation philosophy. But...I suppose the same thing could be said of food--not that it's a drug, but that it's best enjoyed with moderation. I guess what it all comes down to is how you approach it! Gosh, I could get all philosophical here but I think I'll save that for another day and instead I'll just say have a happy (and safe) Labor Day Weekend! Those of you who are actually laboring, we'll drink one for you. ;-)

Melissa Gets a Surprise!

Do not adjust your color settings, people--that pretty green cookbook is the younger sister of our dearly beloved Gourmet Cookbook!

Yup--hot off the presses and into my hot little hands and OH GOURMET WHY DIDN'T YOU WAIT TIL I HAD MASTERED SPACE AND TIME????? Not fair at ALL to come up with such a sexy book when I'm only half way through the first one--LORD I'll be cooking this stuff in the nursing home! I need to be able to bend three-dimensional reality to fit in all of my ardent desires so send me a manual next time, will ya?

Oh puleez, I hear you cry--stop complaining and get on with the descriptions already...ok, ok...here it goes:

Our new little sister cookbook has three new chapters, which is to say that basically the layout is the same (Adam/Teena/Kevin if you're still with us/Annie you too--you will recognize the chapters...grains and beans, fish and shellfish, fruit desserts, etc.)...but with a few additions. And they are:

The chapter I am possibly most excited about, Drinks! Yes, before I sat down to write this post I did a quick survey of our poorly-stocked liquor cabinet and a quick skim of the Drinks chapter and determined that I have NO INGREDIENTS (except for the basic vodka/rum/tequila/random liquor assortment) so you can be sure I will be remedying that in record time.

Grilled Dishes...and can I just say where were you Gourmet when we got our grill a few years ago and I embarrased myself charing hamburgers? Sheesh.

My friend Georgia! And Eve! And Leigh and Monique and Paula and May and all of you other dedicated vegetarians, look! A cookbook that has cocktails AND vegetarian food. The two are not always to be found in the same book, but here you have Fennel, Telaggio and Cardamom Tart...Buttered Barley and Onion Soup...Rolled Omelet with Arulula-Goat Cheese Filling...and cheek by jowl with Sangria and Gimlets and Bloody Marys. Really now...could life get any better? I think not!

What else about this alluring young thing...well, all of the recipes here are supposedly do-able in less than a half-hour of active time, and that will be a pleasant surprise for folks who are actually busy (and who among us is not?) Not tested one jot by me, and it behooves us to be skeptical so WE SHALL SEE...(bwah ha haaa)

But my real surprise? Was this:

and this!

How many of us can say that they got a note from Ruth Reichl saying, "From one cod to another" and "I hope you like this book as much as I like your rate!" ? Oh Ruth...it's ok...just don't try to do the Molly Katzen/handwritten cookbook thing or we'll all be wandering lost in the wilderness. And let us raise a glass to the gods of word processing...my glass which is filled sparsely with Mt. Gay and lime juice and ice, which really is not a bad way to toast those particular gods.

And a little birdy told me you were asking about my phone number which I assume is to discuss which director will direct our movie. Will it be Woody Allen (Woody is married to you, has an affair with me, we all sing about it)...Quentin Tarantino (you and I set up a secret espionage unit at Conde Nast and scalp certain executives who want to shut down Gourmet)...or perhaps Nora Ephron (a heartfelt movie about two women who make their separate ways through the world of food and food writing and find themselves and satisfaction with their lives and impact each other in ways neither could have imagined)?

Stay tuned, readers! Oh, and the book--get it!

Smoky Black Beans, or Melissa Takes Liberties (Again)

Well, it must be the season of j'en sais quois. Or perhaps it's the season of je m'en fous! Whatever it is, I have clearly thrown caution to the winds with my recipe following and have gone madly, madly astray.

Think I exagerate? Read on, ardent friend.

What better dish to bring to a summer picnic than Smoky Black Beans? It's not potato salad, it theoretically pairs nicely with steak and/or chicken, and this particular recipe seems pretty low key and easy to make.

Perfect!

Let me just note that the recipe on epicurious differs ever so slightly from the recipe in the cookbook, which is to say that our esteemed editors want you to use FRESH orange juice, and someday I will tell you all I know about supermarket orange juice and then you will never want to drink it again but for the time being let's just say TAKE THEIR ADVICE and cut open a few juice oranges for this dish.

So I know you, readers, you're looking at this recipe on epicurious and thinking, well, where could she really have gone that far astray? Vegetable instead of olive oil? White instead of black beans? It's a simple recipe, after all!

Here is where: see that point where it says take 1 canned chile in adobo, minced? And add it to the beans?

Well, I was doubling the recipe, and also understand that I really have an aversion to saving things in cans (or de-canning them and freezing them or whatever) and so instead of fishing out TWO of the chilis in adobo (it really is a small can, kind of a mini-can) I just decided to use the whole can.

And actually there were really about 8 chilies in the can. All told. More or less.

But at this point I had taken the bit between my teeth and was convinced that 8 chilies would be not so different from 2, but in retrospect actually that's not quite correct. 8 chilies are hot!! This is how hot they were, in the dish--they made me cough, which did not however make me not appreciate how good the flavor of the fresh orange juice complemented the whole thing.

So at this point, readers, I had to make a decision...I could scrap this as a potluck offering and bring it into work (many hungry peeplz w/ adventuresome taste buds), or I could give it a try at the BBQ (and the hour was growing late).

I opted for the lazy way out, and brought it along with MANY warning about the heat level...and was rewarded by seeing lots of plates left around with tiny little mound of beans on them.

Hey, what can I say...this is New England.

BUT--it was not a total loss, since my husband (Italian/Jew from Long Island) came home from work and devoured a plate of this stuff with sour cream. Granted, this is a man who brings hot sauce to the table so it's not that unexpected, but it still made me feel as if although I was immoderate with the chilies, perhaps the target diners were too moderate with their palates.

Coleslaw with Hot Caraway Vinaigrette

Yes--more salad! Anybody who thinks that salad means putting some tomatoes and pre-washed lettuce bits in a bowl (and who does that not include?) will find real salad recipes off-putting because they require more than 10 seconds of time to assemble. There is a certain casual charm to tomatoes and pre-washed lettuce bits, but they DO get old after a while so if you can just wrap your brain around the fact that you're going to spend half an hour or so on a salad you can lovingly approach it as a work of art.

So here we have Coleslaw with Hot Caraway Vinaigrette, and--full disclosure--right out of the gate I altered this recipe to substitute my ever-growing kohlrabi collection for the green and red cabbage this recipe calls for. DON'T JUDGE ME, PEOPLE--if you had a veggie drawer full of little green sputniks you'd be playing fast and loose with your own self-imposed cook-through recipe rules too.

Don't know what a kohlrabi is? Don't feel bad--hardly anybody does. Here's a picture:

See what I mean? Like a little green sputnik.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT SPUTNIK IS?!?

Hello? First satellite ever in orbit around the earth? Put up by the Russians? Kicked off the space race? Ask your parents and/or grandparents if this is not ringing any bells for you.

Anyway, back to kohlrabi--it actually IS a cultivar of the cabbage family, and it tastes kind of like broccoli stem (after you've peeled it). Wikipedia helpfully states that it's sweeter, and I guess it kind of is but it's also a little peppery too. Anyway, if you've ever had broccoli slaw you'll have no problems making slaw out of kohlrabi.

So this recipe is coleslaw without the mayo--if you don't like mayonaissey dressings (and I only like the ones I make myself because usually storebought coleslaw is waaay too sweet) you'll really love this one. And I see it's not on epicurious so I'll tell you what it is in case you too have lots of slaw material hanging around taking up real estate in your fridge.

So--make slaw. Easiest w/ a food processor with a grater attachement. Generally this means cabbage (or kohlrabi etc), carrots, maybe some onion, maybe some bell pepper. Toss it together in a bowl. This recipe serves ten so cut the dressing recipe below in half if you don't have that much.

This recipe then asks you to do the following--toss the slaw w/ five tablespoons white wine vinegar. Then heat five tablespoons olive oil in a pan until it's hot but not smoking, and put in 2 tablespoons caraway seeds and 1 tablespoon mustard seeds. Cover and wait until the mustard seeds have stopped popping--then take it off heat and drizzle over the slaw--toss with salt and pepper to taste.

I didn't quite understand why the pan needed to be covered until my mustard seeds actually started popping (and spitting oil out of the pan). 'Nuff said. What you get are basically fried seeds, which are wonderfully toasty and crunchy--and it's this taste experience that elevates the slaw into something different from what you've probably ever had in the slaw department.

You would think five tablespoons of oil would be oppressive, but it just vanished into the salad. And in spite of my grumbling about hand-peeling eight kohlrabi and also the agedness of my food processor (which sometimes goes off without me telling it to and startling me half out of my wits) I really liked this salad, though I was glad I didn't have any kind of dentures or bridgework with all of those seeds.

Salade Niçoise

I was flipping through the book a few days ago, trying to find some salads that would use up some of these ever-lovin' veggies I'm getting from the CSA (kohlrabi salad, anyone?)--and after about five minutes of browsing around I was thinking to myself, why am I not making these salads now, regardless of whether or not they use kohlrabi? It's hot and I want salads! It's just a matter of putting your attention in the right place.

So with that can-do spirit, I embarked on gathering the ingredients for Salade Niçoise.

Now, I've had this salad before and I knew it was (in general) cooked and chilled veggies + a hard boiled egg + tuna + a garlicky dressing. On lettuce.

This recipe is no different and the basics were in my pantry and fridge, with the exception of the star of the show, the fancy tuna canned in oil.

You might be wondering what the difference is between tuna that's canned in water and tuna that's canned in oil and if I were being flip I'd tell you ten bucks and 200 calories but actually I think it must be a dryness issue...only dieters can really choke down hunks of albacore tuna without a little mayo to ease the passage if it's been canned in water.

But here's the thing (and jeez, I'm really just skipping the whole recipe part aren't I and getting right down to my gripes) canned tuna in oil tastes and smells and feels like cat food.

Which actually is the problem I have with "light" tuna too, so I DON'T GET why people would pay $10/can for this stuff unless they are cats. If I were a cat I'd probably pay a million dollars for tuna canned in oil, if I had a million dollars which I probably would because I'd be such a cute cat.

And here's another question I have, which is how is it that canned tuna is SO DIFFERENT from tuna? I mean, real tuna? What do they do to it? It's like tuna from the seafood market is from one planet and tuna from the grocery store shelf is from another one. They shouldn't even be labeled the same thing. I think canned tuna is terrific for bomb shelters and during the apocolypse I will enjoy tunafish salad sandwiches but until then, for pete's sake, if you can get your hands on fresh tuna use that instead on your Salade Niçoise and you will love me (but your cat won't.)

Have I talked about the actual recipe yet? No? OK, here's how it goes--make a dressing out of shallots, lemon juice, Dijon mustard and XVO + a little chopped parsley. Boil and cool new potatoes and green beans, and make some hard-boiled eggs. Toss the peeled potatoes, green beans and some chopped green bell pepper in with some of the dressing, and mound it on some like-wise dressed lettuce. Surround artfully with tomatoes, egg wedges, Niçoise (or other) olives, capers, and top off with cat food I MEAN TUNA PACKED IN OIL. Dollop a little more dressing on top to disguise the smell and wash down with ice cold beer. Mmmmmm m!

Cold Poached Chicken with Ginger Scallion Oil

It only takes a few days of hot, sultry weather to make New Englanders go out of their minds with irritation. Don't believe me? Try driving around on a day like today--90 degrees with 70% humidity--and you'll find out quick enough. I almost got clipped four times and at least one driver called me something that fortunately I didn't understand because I don't know any of those bad words and it's like a foreign language to me. And I just have two words for you, irritated drivers. AIR CONDITIONING. Get some. Ice water wouldn't hurt either.

If you, too, are irritated because of the heat and the thought of cooking dinner makes you want to likewise swear at somebody, like your stupid family for wanting food, don't despair! Cold Poached Chicken with Ginger Scallion Oil will make you want to send love notes to me for suggesting it.

This is how you do it. Early in the morning, before it gets hot, poach a few chicken breasts in water with a little fresh ginger and sherry (or sake) (or Scotch, says Epicurious, which is kind of weird but what do I know). Throw those babies in the fridge, and at your leisure at some point during the day mix together vegetable oil, fresh grated ginger, sliced scallions, and dark sesame oil.

When it's time for supper, pull out the chicken, slice thinly, and spoon the ginger scallion oil over the top. Serve with a salad (from all that freakin lettuce you have from the CSA) and you've got a nice, light hot-weather meal. A little sea salt puts it over the top--I'm mad about sea salt these days, even over lettuce.

My only problem at all with this recipe was something visual, and it's only evidence that I've done bad things to egg-based sauces, like overheat them so they break. If you look at the photo above, the ginger can be sort of visually construed as a broken sauce. Anybody who's broken a sauce knows what a tragic and frustrating experience it is, and the photo might make that person sad or anxious. And you think I'm being melodramatic, but when you're plating food that has to go out RIGHT THIS SECOND, brother, a broken sauce makes you want to yell bad words at people even if you have air conditioning AND ice water.

Oh, now here I've injected a note of melancholy into a nice happy post about hot-weather dining. How did that happen? Do I have Post Traumatic Sauce Syndrome? I think I might.

Leg of Lamb with Tomatoes and Garlic

Last Sunday I wanted to make something we could enjoy during the week for leftovers, but what? I didn't have anything in particular in mind...I thought of Teena's random number generator (by which she selects recipes in moments like this) but not having a mathematician's tools I went with just opening the book and cooking whatever was on the page, if I hadn't made it already.

So, hello Leg of Lamb with Tomatoes and Garlic! Perfect!

OK, not completely perfect, because lamb is not the cheapest meat in the world and I just had to pretend I didn't see the $30-something price tag. And if you too are trying to eat as organically as possible, you should know that 8 heads of organic garlic are also kind of pricey.

This is one of those beautifully malleable recipes. The roasting part is pretty straightforward--you start off in a hot oven, then turn it down after 15 minutes to reasonable and cook the lamb til it's 135. Let me speak once again of my love for my remote digital oven thermometer--if you cook large cuts of meat in the oven and you don't have one yet, for the love of peter sagal why not?!?

And what gets cooked with the lamb? Tomatoes, rosemary and garlic--the tomatoes can be fresh or canned (I went with a large can that we had in the pantry); the garlic requires only that you remove the papery outsides; and the rosemary is just draped across the top of the lamb.

That's it!

The results--delicious, as you might suspect. Roasted garlic is a treat, and it's a winner paired with lamb and tomatoes. We ate this all week long, mostly cold.

If you want to try this at home (and the recipe is not on Epicurious but it ain't hard, people) my suggestions would be to cut the garlic back to 3-4 heads (and that only if you lurv garlic) and instead of draping whole rosemary sprigs, take a little bit of extra time to mince the rosemary and rub it into the lamb with some oil. I say this because the sprigs just kind of burned--not sure they contributed much more than blackened decoration.

Thanks, Lisa! or, Melissa Gets Press!

Many thanks to syndicated food columnist Lisa Messinger, who mentioned me and my blog (my blog and me?) in her recent article entitled "Updated Existing Recipes for an Easy Way to Innovate"! Not content to let her 2006 cookbook stand as the last word on superfoods, cook Jenny Jones is refining, refining, refining and she brings those recipe improvements to her website. Lisa lists many of those improvements, and mentions one of her own from her cookbook "The Tofu Book: the New American Cuisine"--a recipe for tofu chocolate chip cookies. (!) Who knows--maybe someday if Gourmet ever releases an updated edition of The Gourmet Cookbook they'll use some of the suggested improvements we Gourmet bloggers have mentioned in our exploratory fun-fest of cooking.

Twice-Baked Potatoes with Basil and Sour Cream

Like many of you, I am spending much of my cooking week looking at far more vegetables than normal, thanks to a CSA share. I must confess that sometimes I just take the simplest route possible and go for a little saute in olive oil, but last night I was determined to MAKE something, many things actually, and to have at least one of those things be a NEW Gourmet recipe that I could write about here.

With that in mind, I give you Twice-Baked Potatoes with Basil and Sour Cream.

Actually, it should be thrice-baked potatoes! And before I dive into this recipe I'm going to wonder out loud, once again, why most of the potato recipes in this book call for russets. If you don't know the difference between baking and boiling potatoes, it's all about the starch content--boiling potatoes have less, baking potatoes have more. This makes a difference in many things, from texture to whether or not they hold together in soup, to how they crisp up.

So you would think that a twice-baked potato recipe would call for a baking potato, right? Wrong. For whatever reason, this one calls for Yukon Gold--I think mostly because of their relatively smaller size.

Well, I had a bag full of dirt-covered Yukon Golds to cook up, so Twice-Baked Yukon Golds it was, starch (or lack thereof) be damned.

The first step is easy. Bake your potatoes! Prick them with a fork, and bake in a 400 oven for an hour. No problem.

The next one--scoop out the potato flesh (once they're cool enough to handle), mash with butter, add milk and salt and pepper and some chopped fresh basil. Roger!

The next one (and this is an unusual step and one that makes this recipe extra yummy), brush the potato shells with butter, and put them back in your 400 oven for 20 minutes to get crispy. Got it.

Then, put your filling in the crispy shells, and bake for an additional 10 minutes to get everybody all up to the same temperature.

Garnish with sour cream (you were wondering when the sour cream comes in, weren't you?) and additional chopped basil.

Hey people--if you're baking these with those little bitty Yukon Golds I'm just telling you in advance that it is almost impossible not to pop them, whole, into your mouth. Before they get to the table. So make a lot. Fair warning!

Sesame Black Rice

Oh, Readers--I have not forsaken thee! Well, I have kind of forsaken thee but I have good excuses and here they are:

1. My new job draws on my writing skills, not my cooking skills. This means that I no longer carry The Gourmet Cookbook with me to work (although my new co-workers would surely be intrigued).

2. My private cooking clients have dietary needs that just aren't represented in The Book.

What this means is that my creative time in front of the stove is drastically reduced, but it's not completely gone--I also have half shares in both a farm program and a fishery so each week I say to myself, "what the heck am I going to do with all this mizuna?" and "who knew fish guts were so yucky?"

But I'm also using this small window of opportunity to explore new recipes (and yes, I still have a backlog that I haven't written about but jeez it seems so long ago!) So here I give you, as something that goes really well with grilled cod, Sesame Black Rice.

Isn't that pretty? Don't you think it would be striking against something white like fish or scallops? You're right, it is, and the preparation, which is so simple, goes like this--boil until tender, then toss with 2 teaspoons dark sesame oil. Add salt and pepper to taste and you've got one good looking side dish.

Hey, you're thinking, where do I get me some of that black rice? Look around in specialty food shops, health food stores, or if you're lucky, the exotic section of your supermarket. It's not all that easy to find--I happened across it in Lula's--a fancy gourmet store in downtown Rockport and I snatched it up because I knew I'd want it for this recipe. If all else fails, look online.

And if you have any bright ideas for mizuna PLEASE pass them my way!