Bellinis, and Shellfish Watermelon Ceviche, Take One

Oh, you were perhaps looking forward to Bluefish with Green Tomato and Watermelon Salsa? Well, so was I until I looked at the recipe again and saw that it called for sea bass, not bluefish. They don't taste anything like the same, so I cooked the bluefish with the Lemon Caper Brown-Butter Sauce from the Gourmet Cookbook. Mighty fine! But these green tomatoes aren't really going away very quickly so stay tuned--seriously.

So--I effed up the Shellfish Watermelon Ceviche. How, you may be wondering? Argh--really through my own arrogance, which is just so aggravating sometimes.

Here's what happened. Actually first let me tell you how it is that I first found out about ceviche--many many many moons ago at a friend's wedding I had ceviche for the first time. I was amazed when the technique was explained to me--the shellfish wasn't cooked with heat, it was "cooked" with the acidity from limes and lemons. I could go into a long explanation about denatured protiens but it's really kind of boring--the end result is something that has the same basic mouthfeel of fish that's been cooked with heat.

So, that's what I always thought--that ceviche was in essence, raw seafood cured with citrus juice, with some other stuff thrown in. And when I took a look at this recipe, I saw that it called for some poaching of shellfish--the scallops and the shrimp--and the lobster you've bought already cooked. The reason? It "eliminates any food safety concerns", according to the head notes.

Feh! I live in one of the most amazing seafood locations in the world, and I should have food safety concerns? I think not!

So I merrily chopped up my raw scallops and shrimp and mixed them in with the lobster and other ceviche ingredients, and waited for the magic to begin.

And waited.

And waited.

And stirred the ceviche.

And waited.

And 24 hours later came to the conclusion that perhaps there might have been a reason why poaching is called for.

And did a little research.

And discovered (thank you o font of information, Wikipedia) that in every country where ceviche is served (think places with hot weather), the fish is put in raw, but the shellfish is poached.

Also, for those daring enough to drink the ceviche "juice", it's considered an excellent cure for a hangover.

Good to know! But that didn't really help me with my quandry, which is that I had a bowl of mostly raw shellfish, cooked lobster, and ceviche stuff.

Hmm. So I picked out the lobster, and put the bowl in the microwave...and zapped it for one minute, four times in a row, stirring each time and finally coming to the sad conclusion that perhaps it was time to admit defeat and start afresh at a later date.

So I did.

Here's a picture of what it will maybe look like, at this aforementioned later date--and thanks to Anna Williams, who took this picture that's on Epicurious:

Doesn't that look good? We'll get there, promise.

OK, on to happier subjects! Bellinis!!

So this is yet another tasty entry in the Drinks chapter of Gourmet Today, and it only has two ingredients--peach puree and Prosecco. Of course, you have to make the peach puree, and the recipe calls for white peaches but I had some super ripe local peaches that needed doing something with so non-white peaches it was.

Here's what you do--put three quartered peaches in a food processor with a crushed vitamin C tablet (seems weird but prevents browning, and if you think that's odd believe it or not I have a bread recipe that calls for vitamin C too) and some sugar and lemon juice.

You might not be surprised to hear that I didn't read the directions super-carefully and put everything in my blender instead...

...which, I know, does essentially the same thing but with chunky stuff the food processor doesn't mess around and with the blender there is much stopping and stirring and pushing down and trying again before you get enough liquid to really get the party going in there.

But finally I had a puree going...

If you're serving six you're supposed to put this (strained) puree in a pitcher and then the Prosecco (oh and by the way if you're wondering what Prosecco is, it's sparkling white wine from Italy), pouring gently to avoid volcanic foam action.

But if you're making individual portions, it's 1/4 cup per glass, and then the Prosecco. It sure does foam up!

When she was getting a refill, my friend Moira combined them backwards--Prosecco first and then a splash of peach puree--and...no foam. So if you try this at home, try it both ways, just for the sake of experimentation. Why not?

The taste! Well, what do you expect? If you like Mimosas, you'll surely like this--it would be a brilliant drink for a Sunday brunch.

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Hey, don't forget about my Win a Double Signed Copy of Gourmet Today contest! Right now Fran has it locked up because she's the only one who's entered. You're not going to let her get away with that now, are you? Give her a run for her money! Contest ends in two weeks so get your entries in!

Molasses Sponge Candy and Brown Sugar Fudge

One of the things I've inherited from my father is his devil-may-care attitude in the face of inclement weather.

Snowstorm predicted, but you need to drive into Boston? No problem. He's fearless on the road.

Raining? He loves to run in the rain.

When I started my walking tour business, I used to tell my prospective customers, "There's no such thing as bad weather, just inappropriate clothing."

I'll run in both the rain AND snow and only a few bad skids have tempered my carelessness about driving in snowstorms.

So is it any wonder that I looked at the the recipe for Molasses Sponge Candy while the rain was drumming on the roof, and said, "I'll just try it anyway"?

For those of you who don't know, humidity + candy-making = bad idea.

Why? For the same reason that your book covers curl and your cookies get soft and soggy. Water in the air gets absorbed. By everything that can possibly absorb it.

This is a pretty straightforward candy recipe up until the "add baking soda" part, after which the molasses syrup bubbles dramatically and then you pour it tout suite into a buttered foil-lined cake pan. Where it hardens up. Theoretically.

Actually, mine seemed like it might harden up--it seemed pretty firm and as if it was on the right track. At one point I put it in the oven, hoping to protect it from the humidity. But when I tried to break it up, it was still kind of warm and bendy. Please note I did not turn the oven on, though I considered it for a very brief second--wondering if dry, slightly warm oven air might have a beneficial effect. Doesn't this look somewhat promising?



At the end of my shift I just put it on the counter in the cold room, expecting it to have recovered from any ill-effects from the humidity by the next day, which was supposed to be drier.

When I came in the next day, this is what I found--a surface goopy enough to write on:



I couldn't think of any way to salvage it. This did not prevent me from tasting it, and I have two things to say--1) great flavor, especially if you love molasses and 2) be careful, it's a filling-yanker.

The baking soda makes little bubbles in the candy. They look kind of cool. I probably would have had thicker candy if I had been faster pouring it out of the pot.



I pitched it in the trash. I had to. If I had been surrounded by hordes of teenagers they probably would have eaten it, but I wasn't. Too bad!

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Making Brown Sugar Fudge was a happier experience.

And, guess what? This was the first time that I've ever made fudge!

Now if when you hear fudge you're thinking, mmmmmmm.....chocolate....., think again. There is not one speck of chocolate in this recipe--it's technically penuche, which I always thought had something to do with peanuts, but is instead a mispronunciation of the Mexican sugar panocha.

If you too have never made fudge, it's like making candy but with milk instead of water and then you whip confectioner's sugar in at the end. You can also stir in nuts.

As always with making candy (or anything that requires a precise temperature reading), I love love love my remote thermometer with the alarm setting. It means that I can actually turn away from the stove.



Actually, see that gray unit on the very end? I can cart that all over the house if I want and it will show me exactly what temperature the candy is by mysterious remote...air waves (or something). Of course, I have to run like a maniac when the alarm goes off. So I don't wander far.

It cools in a mere 30 minutes in the fridge, then you cut it up into cute little squares, which seem too small but are just right because it's so sweet and rich:



How does it taste? Well, it's not chocolate, but it's awesome because it's the first fudge I ever made and also it tastes great.

By the way, fudge seems to be one of those infinitely flexible recipes. At one of our local stores, The Fudgery, here are the year-round flavors they offer. Just the year-round ones! Seasonal ones available too!

Chocolate
Chocolate Nut
Triple Chocolate
Triple Chocolate Almond
Peanut Butter
Chocolate Peanut Butter
Rocky Road
Maple Walnut
Chocolate Chip
Penuche
Penuche Nut
Vanilla
Vanilla Nut

Jeez, makes me hungry. I wonder what Rocky Road Fudge tastes like?

Quick Aioli

While I was hanging out in the Sauces and Salsas section of the book making Tartar Sauce, I got to looking around, and wondered why I hadn't made more of the recipes back there. I love sauces, and in fact when I was working in the restaurants fancied myself something of a saucier, since I could whip up a beautiful batch of Hollandaise or an orange beurre blanc with my eyes closed.

A lot of the sauces in this section are perfect for beef, chicken or fish, but some of them are just brilliant with vegetables. Aioli is one of those sauces. It's all about the garlic, and I've made a blender version of it many times before--back in my early vegetarian days (and before I figured out what garlic does to your body odor). I made those aiolis following a recipe from one of the many Moosewood Cookbooks I had in my arsenal--Sundays at Moosewood, as I recall.

So I figured this recipe for Quick Aioli would be a piece of cake, and that it would be just the thing for the veggies I was determined to use before I got my next box of organic produce today:



Please note that the recipe on line calls for twice what the book does (actually it asks you to make two batches). So the idea is 1/4 cup of chopped garlic in a blender with 1 tsp. salt and 2 tbsp. of olive oil. You grind that up for two minutes, add your egg or two yolks, then start pouring the rest of your oil in slowly from the top. This is where the emulsification is supposed to happen, and the recipe says that this will produce something akin to mayonnaise.

Easy, right?



No.

It didn't emulsify in the slightest, in fact it was broken, as you can see on the blender walls.

At this point I was thinking maybe I could fix it. Sauces will often break if there is too much fat in the mix, and you can sometimes save them if you whisk in a little warm water. So I did that, to no avail. Then I thought--well, I put in a whole egg instead of two yolks, and whenever I've made blender mayo I've always used just yolks--so maybe I should put in another yolk.

No help.

So here I decided that I must have screwed something up. Sometimes I eyeball measurements--I didn't actually fill a 1/4 cup measure with chopped garlic--I threw in what looked right. Were my eggs at exactly room temp? Maybe not quite. And maybe I didn't pour in the oil slowly enough.

So I poured Aoili #1 down the drain (goodbye, 1 cup of beautiful green extra virgin olive oil!) and determined to do it again, and do it right this time.

With Aioli #2, I followed the letter of the law, precisely. I measured out exactly 1/4 cup of chopped garlic (and was chagrined to see that it was about three times more than what I had estimated to be 1/4 cup earlier on). To blend the garlic, salt, and oil, I set the timer for exactly two minutes. My eggs were perfectly room temperature, and I only used the yolks. I measured out exactly 3/4 cup olive oil plus two tablespoons. And I poured that oil through the hole in the blender lid with excruciating slowness.

Readers, it was worse.





Look at that garbage in the blender. Look at it! Grrrr.

At this point (late in the evening, with two other diners waiting for me to finish my saucy experimentation) we decided that it would still taste garlicky, and who cares about appearances. I poured the aioli over both my grilled veggies and my hunk of toasted boule, and was satisfied that I would be able to terrorize my fellow karate students the next day with my fierce kicks AND my pungent aroma.

I still don't know what went wrong with this recipe, and I don't know whether to classify it under "cooking disasters" or "stupid recipes" (the former being disasters of MY making, the latter just being stupid recipes) so I think I'll put it under both.

Walnut Spice Cake and Melissa Gets Clever

One of the great pleasures of this summer, for me, has been the company of granddaughter E. (new readers, this is not MY granddaughter, but the granddaughter of Dr. and Mrs. S.). She is on summer break from her MDiv schooling, and at least once or twice a week she's been coming over to Seameadow in the afternoons to help me bake.

At first, not knowing exactly how much she wanted to do or really what her skill set was, I would split up the duties for baking projects. She would do the dry ingredients and I would take care of the wet ones in the Kitchen Aide.

But one especially hectic week I dumped two big projects right in her lap while I worked on the main meals. E. baked the cake layers and made the buttercream for Devil's Food Cake with Brown Sugar Buttercream, and the very same week she made the Chocolate Caramel Cheesecake for a Seameadow employee who was leaving for Italy. (Well, I made the caramel, because I'm an expert at that, remember?) Both creations were showstoppers, and E. was thrilled with herself.

So in the days following her Pa's death, E. was feeling especially bereft and useless. All the adults have been making big decisions, and even the smallest thing she could do for her Grammy--make tea just the way she likes it--was getting co-opted by the rapidly expanding set of family members in the house.

I know how to fix that. I took her shopping with me and set her to baking Walnut Spice Cake with Lemon Glaze.

I picked this recipe because we've been on chocolate overload at Seameadow. There may be some of you who say that one can never have too much chocolate, but I think you have to have something to contrast it with, or it loses its divine nature. Walnut Spice Cake seemed the perfect foil.

E. learned a lot of things baking this cake. She learned that I'm inflexible on spice measurements, and that, lacking a half teaspoon of ground allspice, an extra half teaspoon of nutmeg or cinnamon wouldn't do. I had her grind whole allspice to make up for the lack.

She learned my trick for answering the question: "are these egg whites stiff enough?" The answer can be found by resting an egg on the surface. If it doesn't sink more than 1/4", they're perfect.

And how was the cake? Well, there's none of it left, so that's one answer. The family loved it, especially with the contrasting lemon glaze. Another is that it seems a little out-of-season for summer--the spices sing out for fall and apple cider. E. was a little put out with me at first when I shrugged and said it was good, it was OK--but that's only because if I had to list the top ten ingredients I'd use for a cake, neither walnuts nor spice would be on it. What would be ingredient number one? Chocolate, of course.

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Melissa Gets Clever

Readers, by now you've discerned that Seameadow is filled with people. A lot of them. My normal audience of two has expanded to fourteen, and it will be sixteen when I get there next. And when you're putting out meals for that many people, you just put your head down and cook, cook, cook.

And you think large. Big salads. Big pans of cornbread. Huge piles of French fries and fried chicken.

So yesterday in the morning I decided to make lasagne--a big sheet for the meat eaters and a smaller one for the vegetarians. Frozen garlic bread and a big salad would make a good dinner.

But one of the frustrating things about making lasagne in the past (in a home kitchen, that is, not a restaurant) is that those little 9X13 pans aren't deep enough to really layer. So I purchased two 4" deep foil pans while I was at the supermarket, and when I got to work, after putting out lunch, I went to town making these lasagnas.

It's surprisingly time consuming to make large amounts of lasagne, because each component has to be perfectly seasoned. And there's a lot of stuff--four pounds of ricotta, three pounds of meat, all kinds of veggies to be roasted and chopped.

But finally I had them assembled, large and slightly smaller. And I get to looking at that large pan filled with meat lasagne, and I think, geez, that looks like a big pan. I'd better just check and make sure it fits in the oven. Because the ovens at Seameadow (we have four of them) are not the standard size--they're a little more compact.

Readers, it didn't fit.

Now, with four ovens you'd think that there would be options, but the ovens in the kitchen are the biggest ones.

After swearing loudly and alarming nearby family members, I called the housekeeper who lives next door. Her oven was smaller than the ones at Seameadow. I thought about E.'s house, a few miles away, but they have at least ten people staying there and I was sure the ovens would be in use.

Did I mention dinnertime was about two hours away? And that there would be 14 for dinner?

I thought about a family friend at the top of the road but we couldn't remember her last name to call her.

Could I bend the pan up, and stuff it in? K. wondered. Or could I take it to a nearby restaurant, where I have connections from my previous restaurant work life in Beverly Farms?

I was mulling all this over when I had an epiphany.

In The Gourmet Cookbook, there's a recipe for Grilled Turkey. Not grilled like drumsticks-and-turkey-breasts-on-the-barbie, but grilled. Whole. Like this:



The trick is putting a protective layer under the turkey, and using indirect heat--turning off the middle burner and maintaining a grill temp of about 350. I'm not sure how Lonnie up there in the photo did it, since he's clearly using a charcoal grill, but that turkey looks pretty good to me.

The big question--would the pan fit on the grill? YES!!!!

So I commenced to cooking what is probably the world's first grilled lasagne.

I put a cookie sheet under the pan, and checked the temp every ten minutes or so to goose it to 350. The setting I ultimately used was (should you ever find yourself in a similar situation): middle burner on low, front and back burners on medium-high.

Readers, it was perfect. And I never would have thought of it if I hadn't read the grilled turkey recipe in The Gourmet Cookbook. Who needs the Boy Scouts Manual for survival? I've got Gourmet on my side.

Writer, Heed Thyself

Here's the other thing not to do when you've got sugar on the stove: wander around on the computer using my latest favorite time waster, StumbleUpon. Yes I, your faithful correspondent, only an hour after giving you a little mini-lecture on how not to make caramel, found myself gazing enraptured at this:



...which was part of an article entitled The Most Curious Canned Good Found Online from Wired Magazine. By the way, those are canned silkworm pupae.

Seconds later, every smoke alarm in the house was going off (and we have three floors of them), Don was rushing down the stairs to make sure I hadn't set myself on fire, and I was gazing into a pot of smoking molten black sugar.

What was I making? The sugar syrup for Babas au Rhum, Don's requested birthday dessert.

And can you believe I'm typing this while the next batch of syrup is boiling away on the stove? Yes, well THIS TIME I put a timer on it.

But stay tuned, because I've decided to make Hunan-Style Tea-Smoked Chicken for dinner. Maybe I can get the smoke alarms to go off again, just to make life exciting.

Wild Boar Bolognese, or Melissa Gets Experimental

It's been a long time since I've been hunting, and a REALLY long time since I hunted boar. But last weekend in Newport I just couldn't resist.

I'm just kidding. There are bores in Newport, but you can't kill them (unfortunately).

Actually I was at the Fruitful Basket and saw a little packaged roast that said "Wild Boar". How could any chef resist? Bobby said the cut is basically like pork shoulder, responds well to "low and slow", and tastes fab with Bolognese sauce.

So I trotted back to work with my little boar roast, and readers, not only did I think to experiment with a new meat, I thought I'd top it off by trying a new cooking technique too.

Fans of Top Chef will have noticed that Hung, one of the final three contestants this season, makes frequent use of a cooking technique called sous vide. From what I could tell (from watching it on tv), it involved vacuum-sealing ingredients in a bag and cooking them in a pot of water. We happen to have a Food Saver at work--it's one of my favorite new kitchen gadgets. And so, friends, I decided to put the boar and the ingredients for Bolognese Sauce in a vacuum sealed bag, and then I boiled that sucker for about three hours.

Today I see from my research that sous vide is actually this:

Sous-vide (IPA pronunciation: [suː viːd]), French for "under vacuum", is a method of cooking that is intended to maintain the integrity of ingredients by heating them for an extended period of time at relatively low temperatures. Food is cooked for a long time, sometimes well over 24 hours. But unlike a slow cooker, sous-vide cooking uses airtight plastic bags placed in hot water well below boiling point (Usually around 60°C = 140°F).

The method was developed by Georges Pralus in the mid-1970s for the Restaurant Troisgros (of Pierre and Michel Troigros) in Roanne, France. He discovered that when cooking foie gras in this manner, it kept its original appearance, did not lose excess amounts of fat and even improved the texture. The method is used in a number of top-end restaurants under Thomas Keller, Paul Bocuse, Joel Robuchon and Charlie Trotter and other chefs. Non-professional cooks are also beginning to use vacuum cooking.

Deadly botulinum bacteria can grow in food in the absence of oxygen: sous vide cooking must be performed under carefully controlled conditions to avoid botulism poisoning. To help with food safety and taste, relatively expensive water-bath machines are used to circulate precisely heated water; differences of even one degree can affect the finished product.

Thanks, Wikipedia. Especially about that last part.

My husband asked me, when I called him in the afternoon, if I had a Plan B if this meal didn't work out. I was very nonchalant--oh I suppose, I said, but I'm sure it will be just fine.

I did have the foresight to open the bag around 6pm, an hour before dinner. I wanted to reduce the Bolognese, and I figured I would keep the meat warm and add it at the end. I cut open the netting that surrounded the meat, expecting it to fall apart like pork shoulder, but all it did was sit there like a sullen grey lump. So I started slicing. And tasting.

Uh oh.

Dry, dry, dry, and not all that tasty. Certainly not falling apart. In fact, there was hardly any fat on that meat at all, or in it--just a few veins of gristle. (Der, I'm thinking to myself, it's GAME, not a grain-fed stockyard prisoner.)

I did the only thing I could do (besides ordering pizza), I minced the heck out of it and threw it in with the sauce. And I added about three tablespoons of butter to the sauce to make up for the lack of fat in the meat.

Then I presented it with a flourish to Dr. and Mrs. S, who hardly ever eat Italian. In fact, I think I've served them pasta twice, this being the second. Dr. S. devoured it (once he got over his initial reservations)--Mrs. S. picked at hers.

My backroom audience (the nursing assistants) went cuckoo over it--Peggy said she could eat it every night all fall and winter.

So I would recommend the Bolognese sauce if you like that sort of thing. And since The Gourmet Cookbook makes no mention of either boar or sous vide, you can safely follow that recipe to a happy end, and leave the experimental cooking to me.

Parsley-Leaf Potatoes and Green Beans with Almonds

Parsley-Leaf Potatoes are so darn cute I can't believe that
a) I can't find a picture of them and
b) I burned the ones I cooked last night and so couldn't show them off in all their cute glory because I had to trim off the parsley part
and c) that every caterer on the planet hasn't appropriated this dish.

Talk about great effect for very little work! The idea is you cut a potato in half, press on a parsley leaf (or whatever flat herb you can find) and bake it cut side down on a buttered pan. Voila, decoupaged potatoes.

Me burning the potatoes is another story and has more to do with not setting a timer and then getting into a rare argument with a co-worker. But as my friend Zoritsa says, "In my country ve haf saying, that man who eat burn bread all his life vill never get hit by thunder."

I don't exactly understand what that means but it did make me feel better, especially since she ate all the burned potato disks hanging around the kitchen and rhapsodized about my cooking at the same time, which makes me think that either she really adores me or has very low standards.

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I don't know what it is about Green Beans with Almonds--the combination, not the recipe per se. They just taste great together, and if you like this combination too, try it this way and see what you think. You grind the almonds ahead of time and saute them with garlic in butter, then toss them with lightly steamed green beans. I used the roasted garlic butter from the potato skins the night before. As "a cook from Denver" says on epicurious...

"it freaking rocks and rolls man"

What more do you need than that?

Tuna Fillets with Pecan Butter Sauce and Red Wine-Poached Pear and Custard Tart

OK, technically this recipe is called Catfish Fillets with Pecan Butter Sauce, but tuna is one of the fish the list as a substitute and that's what I had in the freezer. I have made it with catfish, and my major complaint about it was that the catfish tasted terrible. I don't know why it suffers from its trip north, but the catfish I've purchased here in New England always tastes like mud to me, which is how I just thought it tasted until a real Georgia woman (my friend Elizabeth's mother)complained bitterly that the catfish up here tasted terrible.

So ok, eat catfish only when you're down south. Otherwise, substitute, substitute, substitute.

I wasn't sure at all that tuna would take to this flouring and egg-dipping process (being a fan of sashimi and all that) but it did just fine, cut into slender fillets. The best, though, was the browned butter and pecan sauce, which was brightened by lemon juice. Dr. S. gobbled his up, Zoritsa (the CNA) followed suite and licked her fingers and the plate with great dramatic flair. I'm sorry to say Mrs. S. has had a diminished appetite lately and so ate very little, but that makes me worry more about her than whether or not the food is spot-on.

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After years and years of making pie crust there are a few things I've picked up. One is that when you're using a food processor, go slow with adding the ice water--pulse the machine, and give the water a chance to ball the dough up. You can even leave it a little on the dry side and turn it out on the counter to finish up with the heel of your hand.

Did I take advantage of all this wisdom yesterday? No I didn't. I threw caution to the wind and dumped three tablespoons of water right into the makings for a single crust shell. The result? A very wet, well blended ball of dough that kind of resembled blond clay or some kind of putty you might use for glazing your windows.

Will it be too tough? was my main concern, but since it was a thin tart shell I figured I'd give it a try.

The best thing about this tart was the red wine syrup (ha--I finally found a use for that Concord Grape Wine kicking around the house) and the toasted almonds. The crust was indeed a bit leathery and since it shrank a bit, the custard was almost a non-issue--I did have lots left over. The pears shone through, and if you love pears (especially poached pears) you'll love this tart.

Here is a picture of a poached pear tart that I didn't make, but it sure looks pretty--somebody at Bon Appetit put it together. Next time I make this I'll cut the pears like this--aren't they gorgeous?

recipe flurry and 40 naked women vs. 1 naked man

I do beg your forgiveness, dear readers, for keeping you in suspense for almost a week. I have not been making Campbell's soup, I assure you.

Here's what's doin', as my father-in-law would say:
Chilled Pea Soup with Lemon Cream
Panzanella (Bread and Tomato Salad)
Chicken Piccata
Salt-Fried Rib-Eye Steak
Squash, Tomatoes and Corn with Jack Cheese
Coconut and Macadamia Banana Bread
Mustard and Cheese Crackers
Naan
Sour Cherry Crostata
Strawberry Cheesecake Ice Cream

Phew! Well, I cooked more than that, but those are just the new ones.

I obviously don't have the time or space to talk about each one individually but the veggies with jack cheese were surprisingly good, and so was the naan. I mean, they were ALL fantastic, but some were more fantastic than others, know what I mean?

Some of you may remember that my husband imagined he would not relinquish a certain ear of corn I made, not even for a room full of forty naked women.

My mother decided to make this dish, which she now calls "40 Naked Women Corn", when Don's parent's came to visit. She was disappointed. She said to me, later, that she would have left it for even just one naked man. What went wrong? she asked.

1. The corn was starchy, not sweet. This could have been because it was old, or had been left out in the heat. Corn starts converting sugar to starch the second it's picked--cold stops the process, heat speeds it up.
2. The corn soaked too long. The recipe calls for 10 minutes in the water--this corn soaked for at least two hours. It was waterlogged on the grill and never roasted.
3. The mayonnaise was too spicy! My mom had some high-test stuff, and used the full amount on my advice (mine was not so spicy)--this was ok for some, distracting for others.
4. My mom used a combination of non-fat feta and store-bought shredded parmesan. Neither of these have any flavor and the parm is distressingly plastic-like.

Should YOU, dear reader, attempt the same, remember these things--look for corn with a clean-looking, white break at the base--that's been picked the same day. Don't leave it out on the counter or in your car. Ten minutes soaking--that's it. Start modestly with the spice levels and adjust the mayo to your taste. And drop the diet for a moment, would you? Go for the full-fat feta. It won't kill you for one ear of corn.

Why You Should Guard Your Grill, or Grilled Lobster with Orange Chipotle Vinaigrette, Part II

Because a marauding seagull might steal half a lobster tail while you're not looking, that's why.

Darn things! Usually they just crap on my car early in the morning--they've never hassled us in the food arena. But last night, while I was inside getting something at the stove, I looked out the window and there was a white gull, big as day, standing next to my plate of split tails ready to go on the grill. I dashed out, yelling, but he had already absconded with one and flew off to a neighboring rooftop. And there was my lovely split lobster tail, incredibly visible and impossible to reach.

Good thing I bought three for the two of us, or I would have been apoplectic. Still, I stood over the grill jealously, keeping my eye on the gull that landed on the peak of our house and stood there regarding the proceedings with a cocked head and a beady eye. I took time out from turning the lobsters and sipping my gin and tonic to occasionally give him the finger, and he eventually lost interest and left.

If you haven't already tried Grilled Lobster with Orange Chipotle Vinaigrette, what are you waiting for? Now is the perfect time--you can't get a better summer dish. One technical note--don't cheat and use boxed orange juice for the vinaigrette. The first time I made this dish I used fresh squeezed, the second time (last night) I used Minute Maid or something like that--boy, it makes a difference. Still good, but not over-the-top. Regular readers may recall that I was so swoony over the vinaigrette last time that I wanted to drink it straight. I want you to have the same experience. Get out the citrus juicer!

Basic Pizza Dough, or Why Ordering Pizza Is Sometimes Easier and Cheaper

It all started innocently enough. I said no to my son's request to get pizza for dinner. "We can make pizza," I said. And we could. We had yeast, flour, a pizza stone...all we needed was a little trip to the store to get some pizza sauce and pepperoni.

Easy, right?

It even started easy. The yeast was good. The dough was fine to work with (very loose, but that's ok). I dredged the two dough balls in flour and set them on their own dinner plates to rise. I went upstairs to work out while O'Malley taped himself playing Guitar Hero.

While I was in the shower my husband stuck his head in the door. Pizza, he asked? Didn't I remember what happened last time we tried to make pizza?

I did remember. My philosophy of not cleaning the oven because nobody ever looks at the inside of an oven finally caught up with us in the form of thick acrid smoke that billowed forth when preheating the oven to 550 degrees (which is what the book asks you to do--rather hot, it seems to me). We ended up grilling pizza that night.

It's ok, I said soothingly. I'll just scrape whatever-it-is off the bottom of the oven and we should be fine. So he went out for a run and I went downstairs to clean the oven as best I could and preheat it with the pizza stone. Then I went upstairs to lay down with a book--a little rest before cooking dinner.

That was the end of the easy part.

"Mom! Don!" my son screamed with evident alarm, eighteen minutes later. I leaped up and yelled, "What?" "Mom! Don!" he screamed again.

I ran down two flights of stairs to find O'Malley bracing himself on the kitchen floor, breathing in the only clear air in the room. Thick grey billows of acrid smoke issued forth from the oven. I looked at the smoke alarm--it would go off any second.

"Get up," I snapped. "The house is not on fire." I turned the oven off and opened the door. A huge cloud of black smoke belched out. I shut the door, and every smoke alarm in the house--all seven of them--went off in unison.

"Pick up that rug," I yelled over the alarm, and O'Malley and I flapped area rugs around and opened windows until the alarms went off.

O'Malley, excited now, thought we should put the cat in a cat carrier, turn the oven on as high as it could go, and leave the house while it incinerated three years worth of grease. I explained that the neighbors would surely be upset by listening to our smoke alarms sound for god knows how long.

No, I said. We'll grill the pizza instead.

This would have been an easy solution except that there was no gas in the tank.

Reader, if you're wondering why I didn't just pick up the phone and order pizza at this point, which was 7pm, it's because a) we generally eat late anyway and b) I have a stubborn streak. Or you could say I'm task-oriented, which sounds kinder.

So I got an empty tank--we had two!--and headed to the hardware store, which was closest. Closed. Across the town line to Foster's Grill Store, attached to a gas station. Closed, but the clerk said there was a store open across town by the movie theater. (very far away) Well, I thought, I'll try Stop n Shop, which had a tank exchange bin out front last summer, then I'll drive to the place across town, and if THAT'S closed I'll stop at La Rosa's and drink a big glass of red wine while I wait for them to make some pizzas for us.

Stop n Shop did not have the tank exchange bin, but the place across town was open, and I got a pep talk from a very cute young man on the price of gas and what a rip-off all those other places were (they only charged me $11, compared to $20 or even $22). I left there very perked up.

At home Don hooked up the tank and we turned it on. I had the brilliant idea of putting the pizza stone in the grill instead of grilling the pizza right on the rack, which is an operation fraught with peril. The grill gets easily as hot as they want you to preheat the oven, I reasoned, and with a pizza stone I can make two large pizzas instead of four small ones.

O'Malley made his dream pizza (lots of mozzarella and pepperoni) and I got it on the stone without too much trouble. I set the timer for 10 minutes, thinking to err on the cautious side, and started making ours (asparagus, feta and proscuitto). At nine minutes I asked Don to check the pizza and he came back with the pizza on a cutting board, looking distraught. "It's a little burnt," he said, lifting it up so I could see the bottom, which was as black as...well...as the inside of my oven. "I don't think the fire helped," he said. What fire, I asked? The fire in the grease trap. Oh.

We turned down the heat and flipped the stone over, which at this point was pretty sooty. The grease trap with its little pan of incinerated grease rested on the patio table, and I gamely slid our pizza onto the waiting stone. We hovered over it, anxiously checking the bottom ever minute or so. At one point we took it off, only to realize it was underdone. More grilling, more hovering, and finally, two minutes later, we had an edible pizza that was only slightly charred on the bottom.

I sliced the top off O'Malley's pizza, which meant that I got the top part of the crust and all of the goopy stuff in the middle. "Think of it as a cross between spaghetti and pizza," I said, as I handed him his plate.

We finally sat down to eat at shortly after 9pm, with O'Malley complaining bitterly and Don trying to discreetly scrape burnt patches off the bottom of his slice. I ate my two pieces(burned the roof of my mouth) and was suddenly consumed with weariness.

"This day has defeated me," I said to Don. "I'm going to bed."

Next time, La Rosa's.

Lobster Bisque, Minestrone, and Hearty Goulash Soup

I can hear you. You're thinking, "One bout of the stomach flu and she's lost her mind with soups."

Although my mental status could be questioned at any time, my activity with soups is because Dr. and Mrs. S. went to D.C. and I had some time to do some stocking up. The entire family comes to the house in July, and so I used this opportunity to get ready and get some stuff in the freezer.

The Minestrone was great. Unlike many insipid versions I've had in my life, this one did not contain pasta (hurray) and did contain both pancetta and kale, which add to the flavor and body in a wonderful way. The Hearty Goulash Soup was likewise very pleasant although I'm not used to the idea of a beef stew with potatoes, and there are a lot of them in this dish (four large russets to be exact)

But the Lobster Bisque. Gourmet and Ms. Reichl, I have a bone to pick with you.

First of all, I want to know whose brilliant idea it was to alter the perfectly good recipe you published the first time around. Readers, if you go to Epicurious using the above link you'll see that you are asked to boil a lobster, let it cool, and pick the meat--then use the shells with sauteed vegetables, brandy and tomato paste to make a lovely stock.

In the Gourmet Cookbook, somebody thought it would be a good idea to take that sauteed mixture and put it in the food processor. Yes, shells and all.

Readers, do you remember Spin Art?

This is what happens when you take the shells from a hard shell lobster and put it in a food processor with soft vegetables. The force of the shells tumbling around (and ultimately getting the blades stuck) ejects the now liquified vegetables up under the lid of the food processor and out into space in a centrifugal spiraling (and decorative) arc.

There is nothing that makes me crankier than cleaning up lobster-y vegetable puree from: the backsplash. The counters. The floor. The calendar. The cookbook. The cabinets. The salt/pepper/butter. The cups with the whisks/wooden spoons/ladles. The toaster oven. And the cookie jars. (and let's not forget: Me.)

Well but wait, I thought, in the middle of my dark thoughts...it's the shells from the claw that are causing the trouble. The much thinner tail shells should be fine (and they were).

So what did I do with the very end of the cooked vegetables and shells, some of which were claw shells? Yes, I did it again.

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice and I am a f***ing idiot.

To add insult to injury, once I pressed what I could of this puree through a fine mesh sieve, I didn't like the flavor. It was too much, too intense. The bisque is supposed to be finished with lemon juice, cream and the diced lobster meat, but at that point I just had to put it all away and get down to the business of cleaning.

I did finish it the next day, and was feeling rather more kindly towards it. Cream and lemon juice help the flavor and the finished product is a very nice bisque. What is especially nice about this recipe is that it doesn't rely overly much on butter and cream to get the thickness, and perhaps that was the point of all that pureeing.

But would I make it again, as set forth in the cookbook? Hell no!!!!!!

P.S. If you're going to masochistically try this for yourself at home, take my advice and leave the thick shells out of the processor, or even all of them. Also, hold onto the top.

Meyer Lemon Marmalade and Artichoke Bottoms Braised in Olive Oil and Mint

Wow, these were two spectacular successes.

The Meyer Lemon Marmalade was a big adventure for me on a couple of fronts. The first was using Meyer lemons--a new fruit to me. The second was the process of canning, which I think I have done maybe twice in my life, possibly in high school. I remember it being a tremendous pain in the ass, fraught with peril.

I remembered correctly.

There is the boiling of the jars and the lids (actually don't boil the lids, just heat them. Oh, and the lids have to be NEW--no re-using.) And then after you fill the jars you have to boil them again. I was quite surprised and dismayed to have the bottom fall off my biggest jar of marmalade--the glass cracked and the marmalade seeped into the boiling water. That's when I went back and read the directions CAREFULLY and saw that the jars were not supposed to have direct contact with heat, thus a rack or some dish towels in the bottom of your pot. Yeesh.

I still came out with two and a half jars of beautiful, yellow marmalade (which tastes mighty fine with butter on toast made out of Portuguese Cornmeal Bread.) And the process yielded a fun, amazing and previously-unknown-to-me fact about lemon seeds, which is that they naturally contain pectin. Instead of buying a pouch of the stuff, you gather all the seeds from the sliced lemons and put them in a cheesecloth pouch (I put them in a tea ball) and cook them with the lemons. Isn't that cool?

And if you've never seen or heard of Meyer lemons--they are a cross between an orange and a lemon--so they're tart, but they smell amazing. The Fruitful Basket sells them in Beverly Farms, but other than that good luck finding them in normal stores. I'm sure you could find them online.

The artichoke bottoms had spectacular flavor, and Dr. and Mrs. S. were tremendously impressed with them. I had a hard time parting with all those leaves (the prep involves snapping them off) since I was raised to pay loving gustatory attention to all parts of the artichoke. I would never have thought to put these three ingredients together (artichokes, mint, garlic) but it works. Do yourself a favor and try this sometime.