The Wedding of Mr. & Mrs. Gastro part 1

So maybe I needed the space of a couple months in order to properly write about my food-a-licious wedding day with Mr. Gastro. I'd really like to excuse my lack of writing with some line about needing time to process the beautiful event, and get settled into my new married life....and if you are inclined to use those lines to give me a pass for not writing for several months, knock yourselves out. I promise to make an effort to write more consistently of my food adventures to come. And to make it up to all of my very patient fellow gastro nerds, here is my completely epic, multi-entry, New-England-tastic play by play of all things food and romance from the Cape Cod wedding of Mr. & Mrs. Gastro.

First, I've got to set the scene: From the beginning, Mr. Gastro and I have said that what we really wanted for our wedding weekend was a gigantic farm house on Cape Cod. Something with enough bedrooms to house both sides of our now enormous family for several days, a kitchen that could stand up to the efforts of the famous Kitchen Sluts, and a yard where matt's Mom and Step-father could host a 30 person Lobster bake rehearsal dinner--oh, and you know, someplace for the ceremony and the reception. All within our fairly humble wedding budget.

We came to terms pretty early on with the fact that this house we had envisioned might in fact not exist, and so imagine our glee when not a month after getting engaged, we were shown around every inch of the Overbrook house on Bay End Farm in Bourne Massachusetts by a super chill organic farmer named Kofi. This was in January, so the house was closed and the farm covered in a blanket of snow, but we knew almost instantly that we had found our place. The house was a rustic 1920s gem, with eight bedrooms, a giant living area, a sun room, a little library, one sunny and super-functional farmhouse kitchen, and a dining table that seats twenty. As in people. Outside, a pretty little path lit with fairy lights cuts through the woods behind the house, runs over the bubbling brook, and leads to the dance hall nestled between the trees where we could set up a tent and tables and host our reception.

Now imagine this magical house on a mild, suede gray September afternoon, trees just starting to turn gold, and your new in laws setting up pots of seaweed and coolers full of crustaceans on the back lawn. My Long Island family had taken over the lodge next door to the house, my Mom and aunts were getting settled in the kitchen, Matt's adorable niece Dagny was boldly meeting what must have seemed to her to be about a hundred thousand new grown ups, and my Dad was gleefully running up to me with that Elvin smile he sometimes gets and exclaiming about how the house is "So cool! Completely awesome! I mean this is so cool!" I made a note to myself that if I happened to lose track of Dad at any point during the weekend, I would most likely find him happily tripping along one of the many footpaths that rambled around the property, exclaiming to himself about how awesome and cool everything is.

So this was the beautiful backdrop against which Mr. Gastro's and my culinary worlds collided for the first time. Now, my family is from New York, meaning that we have all at some point probably eaten a lobster. Most likely in a restaurant, or perhaps in stew form, but we've eaten them. Sometimes. Matt's family, on the other hand, is from Maine. When they eat Lobster, it's pronounced Lobstah, and it involves dropping the little buggers into a pot in your own backyard, covering them with seaweed, leaving them until they are red and dead and then slathering them with butter on a paper plate, alongside potato salad and corn on the cob. (Three guesses which preparation I prefer, and the first two guesses don't count.) The first time Matt ever took me to a cookout in Maine, I went in expecting hot dogs and hamburgers. When I was presented with my very own LOBSTER on a plate, I looked at Matt in wonder, and he coolly replied, "What? I told you we were going to a cookout in Maine." Right. Now imagine that New Yorker reaction multiplied about twenty times, and that is the sense of wonder and gratitude that was pouring forth from my family to Matt's for our very first meal together. It was our first night in the house, (or rather, in the back yard) and the gray afternoon had descended into a jet black Cape Cod evening, and a beachy, barely-there mist that wasn't ever quite rain served to soften everybody's edges and remind us with every whiff that we weren't exactly in Kansas anymore. Linda and Bill had worked non-stop since they had gotten to the house to present these two families with THIRTY FIVE LOBSTERS, along with chowder, salads, and blueberry cake, and the result was spectacular. To my New York family, my real live in laws from Maine preparing a lobster bake on Cape Cod was a regional novelty akin to if I had chosen to marry a man from New Orleans and asked his family to prepare gumbo. We were all simultaneously giddy, humbled, honored, and oh yeah...starving!

There have been fancier rehearsal dinners in the long history of such events. I'm sure there have even been glitzy rehearsal dinners in upscale restaurants with crisp white linens, where every guest gets their own lobster, and a waiter to crack it for them too. But I would make a strong argument that for uniting two families into one big one, few rehearsal dinners can touch ours. Paper plates, plastic forks and knives, jeans and flip flops, and every guest saturated up to the elbows with butter and lobster juice, pouring out praise onto your brand spankin' new relatives for the quality that we all seemed to rank among the highest valued in our own families--the ability to use food as a social adhesive, gluing together our ever expanding mix and match cast of characters with family recipes, regional specialties, and histories shared over home cooked meals.

Two Plates of Eggs

Among our group of friends in college, Stacey and I were always the ones who could cook. To be fair, we had many, many friends who liked to cook, and just as many who laid claim (to anyone who would listen) to the best chocolate chip cookies, or the best lasagna. But I don't think it's giving us too much credit to say that Stacey and I were widely considered to be two of the best cooks in our group of friends, the two who could throw together the best dinner parties on the shortest notice. The ones who would tell you which bottle of wine to buy in a pinch, if you didn't know a Cabernet from a Chianti.

Stacey has since moved to Chicago, where she went to pastry school and did the impossible--she improved upon what we all assumed was perfection. So when Stacey promised me brunch upon my very early morning arrival in Chicago for my bachelorette party weekend, I was excited. I was even more excited when I saw the photographs she posted online a few days before of the challah bread she had baked from scratch in preparation for the French toast she was planning on making. I mean, seriously, who does that? And when I showed up at her apartment on a Sunday morning on four hours of sleep and found myself in possession of a very large mason jar full of very spicy bloody mary, including, I'm not kidding, and entire pickle she had pickled herself... Well. Excited isn't even the word.

There were many hysterical, silly, happy, food fueled moments that weekend, but that brunch takes all. My sister and my cousin showed up, and Stacey showed us all what she had been learning in school. The french toast was buttery, the bacon crisp. There was even a concord grape sorbet which blew. My. Mind. But the winner hands down was the caprese egg dish that Stacey made. I couldn't help but think of the caprese salads we had made nearly every weekend the first Summer we lived together in Boston and the farmer's market was our second home, magically transformed into breakfast. Stacey used sun dried tomatoes, some fresh mozzarella balls allowed to melt just slightly in the pan of cooking eggs, and topped it all with gorgeous, fresh green basil. It was like we'd died and gone to heaven. The eggs were perfectly cooked, not runny or dry, and that happy hour spent over breakfast fueled us through the rest of our girly, fun filled weekend.

Now please understand how vivid the memory of that meal was not two weeks later when I received two travel weary bridesmaids after midnight two days before my wedding. Stacey was absent, flying in the next morning with boyfriend Elliot to meet us on the Cape, but sister Leigh and cousin Rebecca-two thirds of the magical bridesmaid trifecta of power-were dragging their suitcases out of a cab in front of my building in the wee hours of the morning, and looking...a little wilted.

When I asked the girls if they needed anything they put on their best brave bridesmaid smiles and lied, and told me, "Nope, water would be great!" But I wasn't fooled. "Are you sure?" I asked. "My kitchen's not exactly stocked right now, but if you two are hungry, I think I could whip up some eggs." The wide eyed looks on their faces told me everything I needed to know.

I wasn't kidding when I said there wasn't a lot going on in my refrigerator. Preparing for my long weekend on the Cape, I had somewhat neglected my larder, so a fancy re-creation of Stacey's triumphant dish was out of the question. Instead, I opted to go in a different direction, offering the girls a classic three egg omelet with no frills, just egg and butter. It was a deceptively simple kitchen basic I had been working on perfecting, and as the girls looked on I explained about the benefits of butter not only as a cooking fat, but as a flavoring agent. We talked about the importance of letting the pan heat up thoroughly, just the way Stacey had two weeks before, when she showed us everything a plate of eggs could be. I talked about how tricky the simple omelet can be, and all the ways it can go wrong, becoming dense or dry or gummy, or bland.

The kitchen gods were truly with me that night as I turned out two simple but altogether perfect half moon shaped omelets, my best two to date, and watched as two of my favorite girls sat at my kitchen table in the middle of the night and ate them. Mr. Gastro had gone to bed early to nurse an ill timed cold, and so it was just us girls, working ourselves up into a silly, pre-nuptial frenzy as we talked until two am about new names, new family members, and the mania the next two days were bound to hold. These girls were going to do me a lot of favors in the next couple of days. At the time I wished I could have prepared them a feast, but in retrospect it seemed pretty perfect under the florescent lights of my kitchen, at 12:30 in the morning, to be eating three egg omelets and talking about shoes until we finally forced ourselves to go to bed so we could wake up the next day, do some last minute packing, and make our way to Cape Cod for a wedding.

Introducing...Mrs. Gastro

So first of all, a great big apology for being so absent for the last month and a half or so. For anyone not in the know, I was a little preoccupied GETTING MARRIED!!! :) And therefore was too distracted with napkin colors, playlists, seating arrangements and travel itineraries for very much writing, let alone cooking.

And trust me, I have many an exciting gastro-journey to report surrounding the big day itself. I mean, sure, there was the food at the reception, which was good (at least I remember the one or two bites I was able to get down before I was whisked onto the dance floor being nice enough). But around that same general time there were lobster rolls, midnight omelettes, cape cod clam bakes, cheese and champagne al fresco, not to mention bachelorette brunches, bagels and lox with family, and one EPIC SIZED dining table. And I will relate each and every one of these adventures. Later.

But tonight, for my first blog as a married lady, I thought I would relate the particulars of a rather unremarkable meal I cooked a couple weeks back. I know. Boring. But bear with me. Because what makes this particular meal special is the fact that it was exactly how I would have liked to have been cooking throughout the escalating hysteria that is planning a wedding, had my life been anywhere near normal. But nothing had been normal. I'm pretty sure this was the first time I had gone into my kitchen in weeks. I think if you ask most newly married women how much time they had for the simple things like cooking meals during the weeks leading up to their wedding, the vast majority of them would laugh in your face and reach for the nearest takeout menu. Seriously. Things at Chez Gastro had been...a little hectic.

Lucky for me (and Mr. Gastro...and our tummies) one of the first gifts we received when the onslaught of wedding loot began about a month prior to the big day was a gift card to our local surf-hut themed food-o-rama. And this was an excellent gift. It was like someone gave us permission to cook again, just like that. It was like an invitation to get back to normal, if only for a day. So on the first cool crisp day of the season, I got a hankering for some old fashioned comfort food and picked up a couple of lovely french cut pork chops, some apples, and a bottle of wine and went to town. I locked myself in the kitchen and whipped up a marinade with dijon mustard, fresh rosemary, shallots, and a little bit of honey, and let the pork chops hang out in there while I fixed the salad. The beauty of this particular pork chop recipe was that with a little bit of olive oil and a drop or two of balsamic, a tablespoon of leftover marinade made a dandy salad dressing.

I had been thinking about the traditional combo of pork chops and applesauce, and decided to give it a bit of an update. A couple of sliced apples in a pan of hot butter, cinnamon, red wine and a dash of salt and sugar until they were just slightly soft turned out to be a great grown up twist on the old standard. I dropped the apples in a pretty little ramekin, propped the pork chops on a bed of baby arugula with blue cheese and walnuts, placed the whole shebang on our spiffy new china and had...::GASP:: a real meal with my fiancé.

I cannot stress enough what an average night this was. We ate dinner in front of the TV, racing each other to the correct responses on Jeopardy. We ate in our pajamas. But sometimes a meal can come together like magic, where everything is cooked to perfection, and the flavors are the exact right thing for that moment in time. When the kitchen gods are smiling on you. This was one of those nights. We needed that meal. Hanging out on the couch, alternating sweet spicy apples, funky blue cheese, and tangy tender pork chops, just to keep our tongues on high alert--it felt like we had earned that meal, with all of the previous month's planning and stressing, and micro-managing. With all of the pizza. We had earned it. With my feet in his lap and a big glass of red wine in his hand, Mr Gastro let out a big sigh, sank just a little deeper into the couch, and said, "This is perfect baby. This is wonderful."

So I promise, promise, promise, that in the next week or two I will share all of my food related wedding stories, in multiple installments if I have to. But for the time being, please content yourselves with this first meal, and a taste of what I can only hope will be the general flavor of our marriage from here on out. Something undoubtedly laid back, but crafted with a lot of care.

Brain Candy

The Green Street Grill

Green street Grill in Cambridge lays claim to the longest standing liquor license in the city, so what better place to stop for a much needed cocktail after a hard day's work? This was the mentality that food buddy John and I walked in with when our plans for an elaborate home cooked meal were derailed by a sudden emergency at John's office. What was supposed to be an early evening of steamed crab legs and angel hair primavera at my apartment had suddenly turned into a late evening of me looking over John's shoulder as he plugged information into his computer (none of which I understood) and he and his cube mate and I shared cheese and champagne while they worked. As far as late nights at the office go, this one definitely wins, but by the time we made our way out of the office and into the crisp air of Central Square around 10:30, we were ready for a real meal and some cocktails.

Green Street Grill did not disappoint. At John's recommendation I ordered the Sugar Daddy, a kind of deconstructed dark and stormy, with ginger beer and mint, and a snifter of rum served on the side. I was instructed by our wonderfully laid back and spunky waitress not to mix them. I'm normally not one to sip rum straight, but when she tells me it would be a waste of the lovely rum she's served me to mix the two together, I believe her and obey, and am rewarded with the beautiful velvety caramel of the rum, and the shocking bite of the ginger beer that chases it down my throat.

We decided we were feeling a little crazy and ordered offal to split as an appetizer, since neither of us had ever tried fried cow's brains before. Now I can say I've had them, and I would certainly order them again, but perhaps not here. The texture of the meat itself was delicate almost like a scallop, but the niceness of the texture was ruined when all I got for flavor was the slightly burnt oil it had been fried in. The whole dish was saved by the details however. The salad of baby arugula the offal was served on, with its bright, acidic dressing, and the swirl of funky aioli underneath kept my mouth happy and distracted.

My entree of fresh homemade pasta with Wellfleet littleneck clams was a great example of why fresh pasta is worth bothering with, (you can absolutely tell the difference, both in the texture and the flavor) and the light citrus-y sauce was so yummy that John continued to reach over and sop up what was left in the bottom of my bowl with his bread long after his own entree was gone. Even against the sunny sauce, the flavor of the clams shone in every bite, which is why it was such a shame that the clams themselves were slightly rubbery. That being said, John's lobster gnocchi was the clear winner for the entree round. The lobster's flavor could easily have been overwhelmed by the chorizo it was served with, and almost was, but then somehow it sneaks back into your mouth after the spiciness of the sausage has died down for a little fresh kick of seafood to balance out the richness of the rest of the dish. We both had to scrape our jaws off the table after the first bite.

Everything up until this point had been very nice, save for a few technical snafus. But dessert won the entire evening, hands down. We ordered the ricotta fritter, and received a tidy pile of chocolate pastries in the shape of pretty little eggs, sitting in a pool of liquid chocolate. When you cut into them they reveal themselves to be light and airy, not the dense heavy bricks of cheese and chocolate I had been expecting at all. And biting into them...pure heaven. The slightly crisp exterior melts into the sweet, slightly tangy cloud of ricotta and pastry inside, managing to be both shockingly light, and unbelievably rich. We were literally stunned into silence by our dessert. Finally I got my brain together long enough to say what we were both thinking: "It's like an evil doughnut!" John was still chewing, and so could only nod his approval and make yummy noises, in what I could only assume was his agreement with my (slightly unsophisticated) assessment.

All in all, a lovely dinner, a friendly and unpretentious server, and the discovery of a restaurant in my neck of the woods that's not afraid to put brain on the menu kept my Gastro-brain humming, and my mouth happy.

Confessions of a (formerly) Picky Eater

"Mom, I just don't like rice, okay! I don't think I should have to eat it if I don't like it!"

This is me, fifteen years ago, a ten year old making demands about what my mother should or should not serve for dinner. I remember my sister taking her cue from me from across the table, the very picture of seven year old self-righteousness, saying, "Yeah, I don't like it either!" and setting her fork down with a firmness that was just downright silly. I can't for the life of me figure out if my distaste was justified or not. I remember thinking rice was dry, grainy, tasteless and horrible. But this is not necessarily a reflection of reality, or of my mother's cooking, considering the list of foods I would rather have had my jaws sewn shut than eat at the time included pickles, quiche, guacamole, apple pie, tomatoes, cheese on hamburgers, gravy, olives, mussels, rare beef, cherries, yogurt, cream cheese... the list goes on. This is my dirty little secret. I was an atrocious eater. It took two and a half years of vegetarianism, a Summer as a vegan, and then a plummet back into the delicious world of meat to get me to realize that people can eat a lot of cool stuff, especially if they really have to. (My two favorite world cuisines, Ethiopian and Thai, would have never been on the menu for me if I hadn't been forced to broaden my horizons by my limited dietary options and my very veggie boyfriend.) Strange new foods are very often delicious, and the only way to find out is to bite the bullet and try it. Choking down rice doesn't seem like such a big deal once you've been feasting on Shiro Wot and Yeabesha Gomen at your local Ethiopian joint.

So I wonder what that ten year old version of me would have thought if she had been able to witness me this past Thursday night, sweating over a giant pot of arborio rice and mushrooms, willing it into becoming risotto. She probably would have begged me to order pizza.She would have been so wrong.

Risotto is really much more pasta than rice. Yes, it is rice, technically. But when it's been infused with onions and garlic and dry white wine, and stirred into oblivion until it's a creamy, starchy bowl of loveliness, the resemblance is much closer to a lovely pasta in cream sauce than a big bowl of rice. And let me address for a moment the mystique surrounding risotto, and it's reputation for being a difficult dish to pull off. I believe this is a conspiracy. Is it tedious? Sure, when you're adding stock a half a cup at a time and watching diligently as each grain soaks up every little ounce of liquid, it can feel a little tedious. This is not a quickie dish. But in terms of difficulty it's, well...not. I truly believe that risotto's reputation as a difficult dish is a farce put forth by professional chefs and restaurant folk in order to be able to continue serving what is essentially, I'm sorry, STILL RICE, in their fancy restaurants. And don't get me wrong. I adore risotto, and believe that it should be served in restaurants regardless of whether it takes years to master or not. But you should not feel discouraged from exploring the beauty of a well crafted risotto in the comfort of your own home because some professional cooks say it's difficult. Do not be intimidated, fellow Gastro-Junkies. It's just not that hard.

Here's the routine. There are a billion ways to prepare risotto, and a billion different preferences about type of stock, the toothiness of the grains...this is how I do it. Adjust as you see fit. Saute up a medium sized onion and 1 clove of garlic in about 4 tablespoons of butter over medium heat, until the onions are translucent and soft. Add the uncooked rice (use high quality arborio, not your regular long grained rice, the results just won't be the same) and toast until the edges of the grains go translucent. Reduce heat and add some good dry white wine, about a cup, and stir until the liquid is absorbed. You'll know when this happens because when you stir from the bottom of the pan the liquid won't run in to fill the space right away. Now add about a cup of high quality chicken broth (or if you're me, some good home made stock with a little water) that you've been keeping slightly warm on the back burner. Stir until the liquid is absorbed. Once it is, continue to add more broth, a half cup at a time, waiting for the liquid to absorb between each addition. Continue doing this for about 20 minutes, or until the rice is the consistency you prefer (I prefer mine fairly thick and creamy, as opposed to looser and soupy). Remove from heat, add a generous amount of Parmesan cheese and some cracked black pepper, and mangia.

You can adjust this recipe to be made with seafood (switch to vegetable stock), add mushrooms, or drop in a few drops of black truffle oil for some funky flavor. Whatever you choose to do with it, don't be afraid...it's only rice.

The Ugly Tomato

A fellow blogger pointed out recently on her page (which you can find here) that people tend to have wonderful, memorable anecdotes surrounding our dear friend, the tomato, and I felt inspired. My favorite tomato story isn't really a story at all, more like a memory of the first time I really tasted a tomato. But it also speaks to one of my major attractions to food--it gets all tied up in our memories and grounds us in them, and causing us to hold on more clearly to otherwise unremarkable moments about kitchen tables, conversations about nothing, and places we used to live.

Senior year of college, the three of us roommates sitting at the kitchen table in our apartment in Brookline in the Summertime. I still couldn't tell you how we got that apartment--it was too sprawling, too rambly and romantic for three girls still in college. Hardwood floors, working fireplace, built in glass cabinets, original 1920s molding, and no doubt, original 1920s dust. Steam radiators that hissed in the Winter and couldn't be adjusted for temperature. One of us took up residence in the old dining room, where she traded a little bit of her privacy for a chandelier and a walk in closet that used to be the butler's pantry. We adored it. No air conditioning, no dishwasher. Still, I've never lived anywhere nicer.

Too tired after work to make real food, the three of us sit down still in our work clothes and cut up the Brandywine tomato Stacey and I have brought home from the farmer's market. Misshapen, alien, heavier than you think it ought to be and sporting purple splotches, with streaks of yellow and green at the top. A crack of broken skin across the bottom, they'd never sell this thing in the supermarket. Nobody would want it. It's hideous. It's perfect. We cut it into slices, and the thing holds on to all of it's juices, doesn't waste them all onto the plate. We douse this monstrous tomato in olive oil, sprinkle it with salt and pepper and the three of us eat it just like that with forks and knives, all off of the same plate. Then we eat it with our fingers. It's sweet and slightly savory, not pale and watery and pink like the tomatoes we'd see at the store. It tastes like where it came from, we decide. Laugh all you want, but we decide it tastes just a little like the coast, like a little touch of coastal New England seawater somehow made its way into our ugly tomato through the soil. Finally, when it's gone, we grab chunks of Italian bread and drag it through the remaining oil and pink flecks of tomato juice, getting every last ounce of enjoyment out of this one tomato.

Smokin'

Walking into my Aunt and Uncle's house Saturday afternoon, the first thing that hit me was the smell of hickory smoke. My cousin Danny had been at it all week, smoking racks of ribs in an apparatus out back the approximate size and shape of a giant oil drum. The smell is filling the house, heck probably the whole neighborhood, with the promise of red meat. There is to be home-brewed beer this weekend, a light summery golden cream ale compliments of my uncle Jeff, along with guacamole, and grilled corn, and mojitos, among other things.

Is this a beach party? A family reunion BBQ? Perhaps the latest Food Network Challenge: Grillmasters-Long Island edition? Nope.

It's my wedding shower.

No cucumber sandwiches for this Gastro-junkie. No cheese fondu. No tea. I'm getting married in 7 weeks, and when my Aunt Pam called me and offered up their home on Long Island for a co-ed wedding shower (meaning Mr. gastro gets to come too, thank you very much) I knew there would be good food, good beer, and a refreshing lack of pink. The welcoming aroma of burning hickory that met me at the curb only confirmed what I already pretty much knew. This was going to be a spectacular food-fest.

First: Credit where credit is due. Cousin Danny is the hero of this story. The guy spent pretty much the entirety of the party slaving over large, hot pieces of cooking equipment--grilling corn, warming ribs, and taking breaks from the swelter only to do important stuff like fix everyone mojitos with his very nice rum that may or may not have had its origins in a certain nearby communist island that rhymes with SCUBA. The ribs were absolutely to die for, sporting the telltale ring of pink right under the dry-rubbed exterior that can only be the result of days of smoking, and packing a subtle sizzle of heat that politely waits until after you've swallowed to ignite sparks behind your teeth. The guacamole was perfect (Dad's always is) and Uncle Jeff's home-brew was crisp and light and only slightly fruity, a true testament to Jeff's powers as a home-brewer. But the real stars of the day were Danny and his ribs.

We did end up doing some traditional wedding shower stuff after all. Mr. Gastro and I received a cart full of completely inspiring kitchen gadgets that I'm certain will be making appearances in future blogs (traditional aioli using my very serious looking mortar and pestle is at the top of the list, not to mention the gamut of pan-Asian possibilities presented by the appearance of our new flat-bottom wok). Bridesmaids Leigh and Rebecca did manage to work in some silly hat action, a tradition I had remained blissfully unaware of until the disturbing appearance of paper plates, sticky bows and bubble wrap--on my head. There was cake, and wonderful company, and...have I mentioned the ribs yet?

On a serious note, it's no mystery if you've read any of my past anecdotes about family and food, that food makes me feel stuff. Belonging, comfort, relaxation, creativity, tribal-happy-I-feed-you, you-feed-me type of stuff. It just gets me. And so here I am again, my heart on my sticky, BBQ sauce stained sleeve, my emotions at the mercy of the people in the kitchen. And what I feel, is grateful. Grateful for a family that feeds me, and embraces the man I love because he loves me. Grateful for leftover ribs that fall off the bone, and sticky fingers, and new toys, and family recipes, and relatives old and new. Just grateful. And happy. And full.

The Turn

I found it sitting in the lobby of my building two weeks ago. The box was addressed to Mr. Gastro, but somehow I knew it was really for me.

Fire Engine Red. Ten speed with a tilt back head and a 5 quart bowl. Flat beater. Wire whip. Dough Hook. The thing weighs as much as a cement cinder block, and you can bet that if my grandmother had invested in one 50 years ago, she'd still be using it today, and it would look damn near identical to the one sitting on my kitchen counter. It's my first wedding present. The Holy Grail of kitchen appliances.

The KitchenAid stand mixer.

This must be what it feels like to dream about some sweet little classic car for decades, only to find it in your garage one morning and be too afraid to take it out for a drive. Seriously, I just want to sit here and polish the thing. It's been sitting on my amazon wish list for years, and now that I have it, it's taken me two weeks to turn it on, like I'm going to dent it, or something.

And then I got over it and made croissants.

I chose croissants specifically because I'd never made them before, and because I knew they'd take me all day. I could have made up a batch of chocolate chip cookies or a simple pie crust easily enough, but I wanted to make this first spin count. Croissants are a process, I found out. They're definitely an all day commitment. Making croissants essentially comes down to a long process of taking your lean dough, comprised of flour, sugar, salt, yeast, a tiny touch of butter and some whole milk, and layering it with the "butter square" which is exactly what it sounds like-- Three sticks of butter mixed up with about an iota of all purpose flour and formed into a SLAB. You roll out the lean dough, drop your butter brick in the middle of it, fold it up in the sheet of dough like a present. A buttery, fatty, heart stopping present. To yourself. Then you roll out that envelope of butter and flour, and you fold it on top of itself in thirds. And then you do it again. This little maneuver is called the turn, and when you're done you've got what looks like a neatly folded up blanket of deliciousness. You give that tidy little thing two hours in the refrigerator, and then you do it all again. Rolling. Folding. Turning. Waiting. It sounds a little tedious, but it's actually a really soothing, ordered process, and a big departure from my normal, off the wall modus operandi in the kitchen. You have to follow the rules. You have to take your time. When you're done with the turns and you roll it out one last time, what you are left with are layers upon layers of perfectly dispersed butter and lean dough. When the croissants bake the dough expands and lifts, while the butter melts and infuses everything around it with stop-your-heart sinful flavor. And when they come out of the oven you have a dozen perfectly flaky, golden, European style croissants, and an apartment that smells like a bakery.

I am happy to report that the croissants are gorgeous, and my new mixer did the job beautifully, as if there was ever any doubt. The dough hook is a life saver, and will certainly inspire me to take on may more baked goods in the future, now that the threat of kneading-induced carpel tunnel is off the table. I am also happy to report that fresh baked croissants freeze beautifully, and with a quick spell in the oven and a large cup of coffee, infuse a little bit of bliss into an otherwise routine weekday morning.

Challenge Response: Caribbean Shrimp

So it's still hot, but not as hot as it has been; That is to say, not so hot that I can't turn on my stove for fear that my apartment would sizzle and burst into flames. Not so hot that even entering my poorly ventilated little kitchen would be inviting a fainting spell. So I decided that tonight had to be the night. It was time to stop procrastinating.

I had to meet my challenge.

Oh yeah, remember the challenge? The one that I invited, then failed horribly with my mango chutney scallop disaster? And swore that I would re-attempt? Weeks ago? That challenge.

To recap, the challenge went as follows: Create a dish that uses shellfish as the key ingredient, is gluten free, and has some sort of unexpected ingredient combo that makes your mouth go, "huh...Wow!" In addition, the whole shebang should feed 2 for under $20, with leftovers. Which is A-LOT of challenge indeed, but I felt up to the task. But then again I felt up to it last time. When i ended up ordering pizza.

So first of all...SURPRISE! That lovely peach salsa that i posted a couple days ago? Rocks a featured role in this meal. And As far as I'm concerned fulfills the requirement for the "where did you come up with that?" ingredient dance, with the unexpected but completely fun combo of peach and cayenne. The rest of it is actually fairly simple: Grilled shrimp marinated in black pepper and lime. Heat Wave Salsa. And Coconut rice. The lime gives a little zip to the shellfish without overwhelming the shrimp's own natural flavor. The acid of the salsa snuggles right up against the creamy sweetness of the rice and does a little cha-cha. And the best part? Excluding basics I always keep in my kitchen, (like spices and olive oil) using my grocery Store's rewards card and a little bit of discriminating shopping, the ingredients for this recipe cam in at just over $18. And as for leftovers? We would have had some. If Mr. Gastro and I hadn't gone back for seconds.

Caribbean Shrimp with Coconut Rice

1 Lb Shelled, de-veined shrimp

juice of 1 lime

salt

Black pepper

Olive oil

1 cup long grained white rice

1 cup coconut milk

1 batch of Heat Wave Salsa (see previous entry)

First, whip up some of that yummy peachy salsa that you learned to make just the other day, and set aside in the refrigerator. Don't eat all of it. Save some for dinner.

In a large bowl whisk together the juice of 1 lime, and an equal amount of olive oil (approximately 1/4 cup), along with a pinch of salt and a generous amount of cracked black pepper. Toss with 1 pound of rinsed, dried jumbo shrimp. Set aside.

In a sauce pan combine 1 cup of water with 1 cup coconut milk and a pinch of salt, and bring to a boil on the stove top. Add i cup of rice and immediately cover and reduce heat. Simmer for 20 minutes.

Grill the marinated shrimp on high heat for approximately 3 minutes on each side or until the tails turn pink and the shrimp are opaque all the way through. Fluff the rice, and plate with grilled shrimp and a generous scoop of peach salsa. Serve immediately.

Heat Wave

Guys. It's hot. Too hot to sleep. Definitely too hot to even THINK about turning on the stove, or god forbid, the oven. And I have not spoken to a single person this week, in any region of the country, where this isn't the case.

It's just unpleasant.

That being said, I haven't updated in several weeks. But I have had a handful of mini Gastro-adventures. A lovely mozzarella tomato basil salad with John last week. Truffle pizza with Masha and Mike. (So good! Why didn't I think of that?) Burgers on the 4th of July. And I tried rose flavored ice cream at a lovely little shop in Cambridge. (The first bite was beautiful. ROSE FLAVORED ICE CREAM! But I will not be ordering an entire bowl of it again, not even a small one. There is a reason rose is used as a palette cleanser between the big stuff, or as a sprinkle of fun on an otherwise familiar dish. A whole bowl of rose flavored ice cream crawls into your throat and your nose and under your tongue and becomes far too much of a good thing very quickly. But I'm glad I tried it.) There has been good food these past several weeks, but there has also been sweat, and bad feelings and disrupted REM cycles. Therefore, bearing the weather in mind, please enjoy the following (fire-free) foray into the world of salsa. Sweet and spicy, salty and creamy, and most importantly, best served cool.

Heat Wave Salsa

1 Avocado

1 Large ripe tomato

1 Peach

1 Lime

3 cloves garlic

Salt

Black pepper

Cayenne pepper

Dice the tomato, peach, and avocado with a medium-fine dice--Small enough that the components can easily come together as a salsa, but not so fine that they begin to break down and become mushy. (Especially important concerning the avocado.) Drain excess liquid from the tomato if necessary. Mince the garlic, and combine with tomato, peach, and avocado in a large bowl. Add the juice of 1 lime, plus salt, black pepper, and cayenne to taste. Stir ingredients together gently, turning with the spoon so that the avocado doesn't fall apart. Enjoy with pita chips and central air.

Humble Pie

I believe it would be really disingenuous of me to share only my cooking triumphs with you, my loyal gastro-readers, and none of my spectacular, hilarious failures. Now I don't think it's presumptuous of me to say that I am an acceptable cook. Professionally trained? No. Master of the art of French (or any other nationality of) cooking? Absolutely not. Iron Chef? Far from it. But I'm no slouch here. 9 times out of 10 I produce something that the majority of people would be happy to eat. Really I do. But to present myself as a cook, and not to include any of my occasional kitchen disasters in the tapestry, like some kind of obnoxious Stepford-esque Martha Stewart clone? Totally not my style.

So in the spirit of that sentiment, I present to you, my epic failure on the VERY FIRST Gastro-Junkie challenge. Now to be fair...

I should have known the recipe was doomed from the start.

There were some clues. Now please note, it was no fault of the challenger. Lex provided me with an absolutely do-able challenge. Interesting, but far from impossible: Using shellfish as the featured ingredient, create a gluten free meal, utilizing some sort of "oh weird...but good!" sort of accent ingredient. Something that shouldn't work but does.

It took me about a day, but I ended up distilling my idea down to this--Pan seared scallops, served with a mango-lavender chutney (surprise!) and coconut-lime rice. It was summery, it had a totally unexpected floral element, and it was, in fact, gluten free, a fact I confirmed after doing a little research (ie. asking Lex) and finding out that rice, in it's un-messed with, non-instant form, is totally fine for those who are gluten intolerant. And I was only slightly put off when I discovered upon hitting the grocery store that the food grade lavender I had spied there last week was GONE. (Clue number 1.) But not just GONE. Spirited away, evaporated, and any memory of its very existence wiped from the memories of everyone who works there. No lavender for me.

No matter. I grabbed some mint instead, figuring that the cool mint would cut through the sweet mango and the buttery scallops to add some needed freshness, and went about my business. Now. Here's where everything went horribly wrong. At the advice of the friendly man at the seafood counter I turned the temperature on my refrigerator down in order to keep the scallops fresh overnight. So I shouldn't have been surprised when I took the poblano pepper I was planning on using in the chutney out of the refrigerator, and found that it was a poblano-sicle. Not the end of the world. I ran it under some water, cut it in half, and threw it on the grill to get a nice, smoky flavor out of it. No big thing. What WAS a big thing, was the fact that the mint flat-out-froze in my fridge, so it looked gorgeous and fresh when I pulled it out, and then wilted into disgusting seaweed green mush when I went to rinse it off. Oh, and my mangoes? I'd left them out on the counter to ripen, so they blessedly suffered no weird mango frostbite. But When I chopped them, instead of creating a nice, chunky salsa consistency, they disintegrated into uneven mushy goop. Yuck. Oh, and that poblano? Well it was fine, except for the fact that only after adding it to the mango did I realize that I hadn't bought nearly enough to balance the cloying sweetness of the dish, and now it was too late.

At this point I'm starting to get that feeling in the pit of my stomach that this simply isn't going to work out. But I don't give up. Not right away. Slimy,unusable, wilted mint, mushy mangoes. Fine. I am not excited about the flavors coming out of this bowl of stuff, not at all, and I'm thinking this might be an evening of Mr. Gastro nodding politely at me as he chews, trying not to give away his lack of enthusiasm, but I'm not giving up yet. I can still fix it. Maybe. But when I go to get the limes out of my fridge and find two hard, frozen, angry little green golf balls, It's the final straw. It's 9:15. This stuff doesn't taste very nice, and now it's not going to. I decide to take my own advice.

I ordered a pizza.

I dumped the soupy mess in the garbage, shut the kitchen door behind me without cleaning up, and I ordered a pizza. I'm actually waiting for it as we speak. Because it is entirely okay to mess up a meal every now and again. Especially if the reason is an over-abundance of ambition. It is not okay to eat something that you know is crap, and even less okay to serve it to someone else. Not when there are no-ones feelings to hurt but your own. I'm not discouraged, and I'm not giving up on this challenge (expect a re-match some time next week) but tonight, with a big laugh and an eye toward better meals in the future, I'm staying the hell out of the kitchen, because that was an absolute comedy of errors. Everything that could have gone wrong did, and so I ordered a pizza and shared the messy details with all of you, so that we could all laugh together.

The Challenge

Hello there fellow Gastro-Junkies. So some of you may have been noticing that the frequency of my entries has fallen off a little bit these past couple weeks. Never fear, I am not throwing in the towel, far from it. I am however settling into a new job, and therefore dealing with a still unsettled financial situation, and of course less sleep, and less free time to daydream about all the wonderful things I can cook up while I'm home!

That being said, I do truly believe in being able to have your cake and eat it too (So to speak). Or in this case, have your job and food blog too. But sometimes we all need a little motivation, and so I concocted this little game we can all play together:

I am opening up the comment section of this, and every blog entry to follow for you guys to issue me challenges. These challenges can be whatever you please, ranging from "Morgan, make something using eggplant and Brie! And potato chips!" to "Create a meal for two for less than ten dollars!" or, "Develop a four course meal featuring peanut butter in every course, a la Iron Chef!" It can be whatever you want. The more creative the better. Please refrain from suggestions involving outrageous monetary commitment (No caviar pizza), but strange ingredients, monetary restrictions, multiple courses, new and challenging cooking techniques...bring it on. Make my day.

I like this plan for three reasons: 1) It provides me with a constant influx of new and entertaining cooking challenges, even ones I might not come up with on my own, always a good thing. 2) It gets you guys involved, and I am always a fan of audience participation. And 3) It helps me get to know you guys! Now to be fair, I'm pretty certain I know a lot of you, but there have been a couple times that I've looked at my little blogger tracker thingy (technical jargon) and thought, "You know, I'm not certain I know anyone in Australia," or "Who could that be in Florida?" And I want to hear from you guys! I want a great big, tasty, juicy, meeting of the gastro-minded from all over the place.

So go ahead, throw some ideas out there, and see what sticks. And I shall report back with all of the silly, tasty, hilarious details.

Two Meals

A while back I wrote a rather impassioned blog about the state of American cooking culture, and about what we lose by discouraging our up-and coming adults from learning how to cook. I was on a roll about how many of my peers don't know how to cook, and maybe never will, and what we lose as a generation when we lose that ability to express ourselves socially through food.

What I didn't write about in that blog was all the people of my generation who do choose to cook. I was lucky enough to be a dinner guest several times over the past couple weeks, a novel idea for someone who is much more accustomed to being a host. These were two really different dinners; the first a beautiful, festive evening with interesting strangers and close friends alike. The second, a casual, one-on-one meal with one of my oldest friends. Both times I left full and happy, no question about that, but I also left with the comforting knowledge that maybe the art of cooking and creating social bonds through food isn't a dying art after all.

One:

Heading over to Tia's house with Masha and Mike, I have no idea what's cooking. It's Tia's birthday, and she's invited some friends over for dinner, and I don't know any of them except the two I've come with. I'm also not used to being a dinner guest. Dinner host, always, dinner guest, less so, and I've got a lot of restless host-y energy coursing through me right now. I've kind of got to force myself to relax. I've come with an open mind, a healthy appetite, and a bottle of wine. Masha opens the front door without knocking, and standing in the foyer I can smell food and heat wafting through the house from the kitchen, and hear running water and clanging pans in the next room.

In Tia's kitchen, I'm hit with that familiar happy feeling from when I was growing up. A large part of my love of the art of the dinner party comes straight from my childhood, when my parents would invite a handful of their friends over, mostly writers, or our well travelled and foul mouthed hippy-ish neighbors from down the block, and get cooking. The food would be well on it's way to completion by the time people started showing up, and my mother would answer the door with a glass of wine in her hand, ("Always have a glass of wine in your hand when you open the door," she told me when I started hosting my own parties, "if you're relaxed, your guests will be too.") and Tim, or Rigel, or Mike and Jen would start in on a glass of wine or a martini, and try the dip, leaning against the counter in our kitchen saying, "Anything I can do?"My parents were great at this, timing the food and the booze and the music, so that when their guests started showing up, there would be excitement and anticipation pouring out of the kitchen, but nobody would ever see them break a sweat. It was an art form, and Tia had nailed it.

"Anything I can do to help?" I asked. Tia had me set out some cheeses on a pretty little multi-tiered stand, (Brie and pepper-jack, and a completely addictive marinated mozzarella) and whip up some pretty, summer-y grapefruit and pomegranate cocktails. Tia busied herself with a mind-blowing spinach quiche with a homemade crust that totally re-defined for me what a quiche is supposed to taste like, a chunky salad with avocados and field greens, and a vat of fresh steamed mussels that smelled like the ocean and burst their shells wide open on the heat of the stove like little garlicky, beach-grown flowers. On Tia's porch, we sat in the dark surrounded by candles and fairy-lights and drank mussel broth straight from the bowl, and Masha told us all about how in Russia, you toast the host, and then each other, and when you're done, you take turns toasting every member of the hosts family, if only as as an excuse to continue drinking. That was all well and good, but as we opened another bottle of wine and Tia appeared from the kitchen with a fresh berry tart in her hands, we simply couldn't help but make yummy noises and raise our glasses to our host, over, and over, and over again.

Two:

"Can I do anything to help?" I ask.

"Absolutely not," John replies, "I'm making you dinner." Truthfully I'm just as happy for it, because I've just come off my second day at my new job, and I'm exhausted. Normally John and I share cooking responsibilities on our semi-regular dinner nights, but tonight John has taken the reigns, and I'm inclined to let him. Apparently reading my mind, John has contrived the most comforting of comfort food dinners, meat loaf and mashed potatoes with corn on the cob. I haven't had meat loaf in probably 15 years, but somehow tonight seems the perfect evening for it. It's a hot and sticky night, probably too hot to be running the oven, but it doesn't matter. Meatloaf is exactly the thing.

We spend so much more time talking than cooking, it's almost comical. "I really am going to start making dinner, I swear!" he assures me, but I'm not worried. John tells me about the girl he was seeing until very recently, and about why it didn't work out. I tell him about my work frustrations, and about the rough week I've just come off of and how I've been feeling just a little bit fragile. About an hour in, John starts the meatloaf, and pours in so much BBQ sauce that we both have questions about how the meatloaf is going to set up, but decide, the hell with it and toss it in the oven. The sauce, it is worth noting, is from the legendary Dinosaur BBQ, the best Barbecue joint in the town we both grew up in, and that gets us started on our hometown, our families, his sister who is getting married, my sister who is just starting out on her acting career, our friends from high school who we don't see anymore, all of it.

Our concerns about the meatloaf were unfounded. It is perfectly moist and surprisingly spicy, and full of Dinosaur BBQ magic. I've got work in the morning, but we're still talking and listening to music, and then it turns out that John has the ingredients for root-beer floats, a sign if I've ever heard one that the evening is not over. (Especially when said floats are fortified with rum, a choice I strongly endorse.) We watch videos online and eat huge chunks of Italian bread with way too much butter and get a little bit drunk. There is nothing formal about this dinner, but then, there doesn't need to be. We've known each other since I had braces and he had frosted blonde tips, and a polite, formal dinner would just feel silly. Instead we eat amazing meatloaf made with hometown barbecue sauce, drink grown-up versions of a classic childhood dessert, and insist that we are going to get together again sooner rather than later, to do it all again. Perhaps next time I'll even help cook.

Float

I've been having a rough week.

Okay, it's been several weeks, really, of exhaustive job searching, financial freak outs, not enough fresh air, not enough fruits and veggies, and a lot of couch-grown negativity. But this week, it kind of came to a head, and I have been acting just a little (read: a lot) like a person in need of some serious pharmaceutical help and a lot of talk therapy. There's been crying. Totally irrational, red in the face crying. I think everyone is allowed a little bit of this every now and then, but I am becoming increasingly aware that I am nearing my quota for the year.

Meanwhile in the midst of one of my semi-normal spells earlier this week, I passingly mentioned to Mr. Gastro that I had stumbled upon a food blog out there in the great big blogosphere on the topic of foods from our childhood, specifically root beer floats. And I thought this blogger had a pretty good point. I mean, when was the last time that you, as an adult, had a root beer float? If you had to take more than 7 seconds to think about it it's been too long. Anyway, it was one of those random sentences that sometimes flies out of my mouth, and having said it, I promptly forgot about it and returned to wailing uncontrollably or gnashing my teeth, or whatever it was I had been doing before my synapses randomly misfired and prompted me to want to talk about root beer floats.

And is anybody surprised that the very next day, on a disgustingly hot night, Mr. Gastro came home from work carrying a bottle of A&W root beer and a gallon of vanilla ice cream? Maybe not you, but he surprised the hell out of me. I swear to God, I jumped up and down like a little kid, scaring the crap out of the cat and probably out of Mr. Gastro. I was so stupid happy at the prospect of root beer. And ice cream. TOGETHER.

Later that night while watching District 9 and drinking ridiculously huge root beer floats, I thank Mr. Gastro for thinking of it, and he blushes, saying, "I mean...I know it was silly, but..." and without even thinking about it, I cut him off, and shouted, "It's not silly, THIS IS THE HAPPIEST I'VE BEEN ALL WEEK!"

There was all kinds of stuff wrong with that statement. Like the fact that it was true. And the fact that something that was so bad for me could make me feel so much better. Is that wrong? Probably. I was mortified as soon as I said it. And then I just stopped. Because my own personal dietary health aside, when you're feeling that low, it doesn't really matter what it is that brings you out of it, as long as you get out of it one way or another. For me it was a root beer float. But I maintain that if I had gone down to the store myself, bought the root beer and the ice cream and had a root beer float all by myself, I would have ended up feeling even crappier than I had started. It was Mr. Gastro who picked me up, pumped me full of high fructose corn syrup and made me feel all better, something I'm not certain I could have done for myself, regardless of how much sugar I had thrown at it.

So here is my assignment for all of my fellow Gastro-Junkies out there tonight: If you have somebody you love, and who loves you back, make them a root beer float. They probably haven't had one in a while. And while you're at it, make one for yourself.

Drink

Drink.

You see the sign as you're coming down the stairs into Barbara Lynch's cocktail heaven, and it seems more a command than a simple piece of entryway signage. The smell hits you, fruit, real sugar, booze, and something else you can't quite put your finger on, and you are more than happy to obey.

People see different things when they first enter Drink. I saw the pots of fresh herbs on the island and the old fashioned juicers, and I saw a particularly trendy and spacious home kitchen, with a laid back cocktail party going in full swing. Mr. Gastro noted the exposed bulbs, the bare brick walls, the eyedroppers and mysterious glass beakers and bottles with hand written labels, and he saw a laboratory. The one thing people generally don't see when they first walk into this place, or at least don't think they see, is a bar. It took me a couple minutes the first time I came here to figure out why, and then it hit me; No bottles. You won't see the ubiquitous lineup behind the bar, Skyy, Captain's, Absolute, Stoli, Jim, Jack and Jose. Everything is kept hidden away. They do this for a very good reason. Don't go to Drink expecting to order your old standby Captain and coke. Here's the way it works: You tell them what you're into, a certain ingredient you've got on the brain, a mood, and then they work their magic. My first time was very early in the springtime, when you could just start to smell the green getting ready to pop out. I told my very friendly bartender to make me something to celebrate the Spring, and he brought me a concoction that tasted just like sweet, cut grass. Amazing. A few other phrases I've used here to start off the evening included, "I'm feeling...ginger," (Gin Gin Mule, with homemade ginger beer) "Clean and crisp and not too sweet!" (Aviation, invented in honor of the Wright brothers first flight, with gin and lemon, and bitters), Mr. Gastro's challenge of "Can you do anything with Sake?" (Of course they could, and provided a Strawberry Sake Sour,) and my favorite, "That was incredible. Make me something totally different!" (Slumdog Millionaire, featuring Indian rum, fruit, cinnamon and spices.) On one occasion Mr. Gastro and I decided to challenge our bartender and said simply, "You know best! We are in your hands." She took two steps back from us, looked us both over for what felt like an eternity, fingers jumping like a sleight of hand artist, then finally nodded once like she'd come to a decision about us and set to work. Once she was out of earshot Mr. Gastro leaned over and whispered, "Christ! Did you see her face? She's got a Rolodex up there of every drink that's ever existed, and she's flipping through it to see what fits." I've seen them whip up their signature Fort Point cocktail (a local twist on the Manahttan, using Rye whiskey) the time I brought my dad with me, as if they were reading my mind and his. And when I brought along a couple of friends from out of town who were in the mood for a little rowdy fun, our bartender whipped up the now infamous Green blazer, a chartreuse cocktail set on fire and spilled in a flaming waterfall over and over again between two mixers, before being set into a vintage glass, still flaming, given a twist of citrus oil that sparked into the drink, and then finally snuffed and served to my totally tickled pal. Applause ensued. I relay all of this because I cannot stress how important this is; Go with an open mind. Tell them anything you want about yourself, except what cocktail you want them to make you. You let them handle that.

These were the exact instructions I laid on my friends who met me in Fort Point last week for my birthday celebration, and we were not disappointed. I requested a "happy birthday drink" (exact words) and was rewarded with a Bees Knees, a delicious cocktail of gin, honey, and lavender. When I my next words were, "God that's good, give me something like that, but different!" I was issued a lavender gimlet, which quickly replaced the Bees Knees as my favorite cocktail. Plus I got to watch the look on Masha's face as our bartender Joe picked a delicate piece of fresh lavender off of the potted plant sitting behind the bar and used it to garnish my drink. A lemon verbena gimlet was to follow, and I never thought you could get so much mileage out of one family of drinks. Masha for her part included in her instructions, "I'm from Russia if that helps!" and received a Moscow Mule in the appropriate vintage copper mug with mint garnish on top. (This is a point at Drink, correct glassware to match the vintage cocktails. No detail overlooked.) I finished off my evening with a crowd pleaser, the Ramos Gin fizz, which I had tasted before, and got everyone's attention when the bartender placed a whole fresh egg on the counter next to the workstation, ("No...they couldn't possibly.") and then dropped the raw white into my drink. ("Oh my God they did!") Everyone was horrified, but it's a visually gorgeous drink when it's done right, the walls of creamy white foam expanding and rising above the rim of the glass, defying gravity and physics. And once everyone had had a taste, we all agreed that it tasted a lot like an orange creamsicle, and smacked much more of fresh cream than of raw egg.

And lets talk about the food, for a moment. This being a Barbara Lynch establishment, you would think they'd serve up something better than your standard bar fare, and you would be right. We must have ordered a dozen plates of gougeres, (and at $2 a plate, who wouldn't?) the little pastries that kick you in the teeth with pure cheese before evaporating in your mouth, leaving nothing but a surprised look on your face and the need to eat another one right away. Bacon wrapped dates were a perfect balancing act, combining the dates' candy sweetness, the smoke and salt of the bacon, the funky gorgonzola fondu, and finally the hard little reality check of the almond in the middle, bringing you back down to earth. Even french fries are elevated to a whole new level here, cut thick and served alongside a tangy, totally addictive aioli--ketchup will never be good enough again.

Do yourself a favor when coming to Drink and show up at odd hours. Mid afternoon on a weekend or late on a weeknight (after the post-work crowd peters out) seems to work nicely. The key is to get belly up to the bar instead of relegated to some corner, and on a first name basis with your bartender. Get there at the wrong time and you'll find yourself standing in the far reaches of the bar, stuck behind the crowd, sucking on well crafted but familiar cocktails and wondering what all the fuss was about. Get there at the right time and it will completely change your notion of what it means to go get a drink.

Birthday Brownies

"Okay," Masha says, "so we will meet you at the bar at 7, right? What are your big exciting birthday plans before tonight? You going out?"

And with just a little too much enthusiasm I shout, "Mr. Gastro and I are making brownies! From scratch!!"

Masha chooses not to take the opportunity to point out how totally dorky this might actually sound when said out loud, perhaps a small act of kindness in honor of my birthday. But it seems pretty clear to me as soon as the words come spilling out of my mouth that not everyone considers spending a morning at the grocery store, and the afternoon stuck in a cramped windowless kitchen to be thrilling birthday plans. Then again, not everyone feels the need to blog about nearly every morsel of food that passes through their life, so the brownie thing should come as a surprise to no one.

But I digress.

Brownies were the project du jour on Tuesday, before Mr. Gastro and a rotating cast of characters met me at Barbara Lynch's Drink in Fort Point for fancy cocktails. (Review of the evening's festivities forthcoming in the next blog.) I briefly considered baking a cake in honor of my big 25, but the prospect of baking my own birthday cake just seemed too sad for words. Brownies, on the other hand, seemed simply delicious. And consider for a moment if you will, the birthday cake:

I am one of those people who pretty much only eats cake for the frosting. Yes. It's true. I am a child. But it could be worse. Here is one of my favorite quotes from my mother on the subject: "Seriously, bourbon is the only way I can stomach cake... Yeah, I said it." (A true Southern girl at heart). But really, even if you're not a disgusting, sticky fingered frosting eater like myself, nobody ever bakes a cake and leaves the frosting off. I mean really, you guys who turn up your noses at our blue icing stained lips and sugar palsied hands, the ones who say, "Yeah, I just don't like frosting that much," (Lies.) You would never dream of baking a birthday cake and not frosting it. Because cake needs frosting. It's nothing without it.

Brownies on the other hand...

Seriously, ask yourself, what would you rather have? A dry, unfrosted birthday cake, or a big fudgy tray of homemade brownies? (Which need no frosting at all, as brownies are clearly a superior birthday treat to cake. Obviously.) Yeah, that's what I thought.

Anyway, my lack of enthusiasm for cake aside, these were some excellent brownies, and I am beginning to see that there is no cookbook in the world that can beat my America's Test Kitchen Best Recipe Cookbook. This recipe was easy and totally tasty. Moist and fudgy in the center (Even when eaten the next day. For breakfast.) And with just a little bit of that perfect shiny, papery top. Mmm. Now any normal person would ask me why on earth I wouldn't just buy a boxed brownie mix for like, $3 instead of going to the trouble of making them from scratch, and to that person I say, A) "Um, I'm sorry, how do I know you again?" and B) We're not having fun until you have to break out the double boiler. Seriously. Melting satiny dark chocolate and creamy butter on the stove-top. whisking in that velvety dusting of pure cocoa. Flour in the air, chocolate on your sleeves, risking salmonella just to lick the spoon, even though your mother told you never to lick the spoon when the batter has raw eggs in it. You know you love it.

This project was exactly what I needed on this particular birthday as I'm realizing, no, I'm not a kid, I'm a quarter of a damn century old (As my mother so delicately reminded me. Thanks Mom), but dammit, I can still get flour all over the kitchen, I can still sneak bits of chocolate for myself before they go into the mix, and I can still lick the spoon. And the bowl. And the other spoon.

And if nothing else, this project provided the absolutely hysterical picture of Mr. Gastro caught in the act, seen above. I'd say he's a team brownie guy as well.

It's a texture thing

You can't win 'em all.

I would really love it if every single dish I made was pure gastro-magic. I really would. But everybody makes mistakes in the kitchen, sometimes really dreadful ones. I made one this afternoon resulting in a slimy brown bowl of soy protein,and one cranky, hungry, gastro-junkie.

Imagine a marinade based in agave nectar (left over from my previous adventure with Lucky Shrimp. An auspicious start I thought). I'm going for a sweet and sour Asian thing today, so I mix it with some soy sauce (Cheap soy sauce from the convenience store downstairs. Second ingredient corn syrup. Mistake number 1). Then I add fresh grated ginger, ground Szechuan peppercorns, a little cayenne. So far we're doing okay, aside from my questionable taste in soy sauce. I drain and dry a block of tofu and cut it up into cubes, and toss it with the marinade. Now some would argue that using tofu at all was my second mistake, and after the resulting mass of grossness, I might be inclined to agree with you. This whole thing might have gone a lot better had I opted for spareribs over soy, but I had the tofu on hand, and according to every vegetarian I've ever met TOFU IS DELICIOUS! (Liars. Sauce is delicious. Peanuts and chiles and garlic are delicious. Tofu is packing material.)

Anyway, I don't marinade the tofu long enough, because, hey, I'm hungry now. So hungry in fact that I drop some Canola oil in a pan, let it heat up for all of about 7 seconds (Mmm, lukewarm Canola oil...) and I drop in the tofu, cold marinade and all. Now instead of sizzling and caramelizing and crisping up on the outside, my tofu is swimming in a bath of warm Canola oil and cheap soy sauce. It's not sizzling. It's just sitting there, and I'm beginning to believe this was a bad idea, but I continue. I turn the tofu until it's picked up a bit of dark caramel color on all sides, and sprinkle the whole mess with black sesame seeds (Another mistake. Contributes nothing flavor wise and looks like bugs). I drop it in a bowl WITH THE OIL (Why???) and dig in.

Ugh.

The tofu's not crispy. It's slimy, unctuous, just warm enough to be extra special gross. This dish reminds me instantly of all the people I've ridiculed over the years for turning up their noses at some new dish, citing, "I have this thing about texture." (A lame excuse for not trying something new if ever I've heard one, but with this sluggish pile of brown tofu in front of me, I'm beginning to understand). The marinade, treated with any care at all would have been perfectly edible, but as it is, it's clumsy, sticky, salty. I've done a terrible thing. This is really, really bad.

I almost didn't write about this particular culinary adventure. I figured I could go on portraying myself as queen of the kitchen, a wooden spoon in one hand and a perfectly ripe heirloom tomato in the other. But the potential for self-deprecating humor proved too much, and this dish was just too bad to let it go without comment, and so I am sharing. We all make missteps in the kitchen, some worse than others. The key is to recover as best you can, and if you happen to be cooking for company, and the mistake is particularly foul, have your local pizzeria on speed dial and an extra bottle of wine on hand. This lunch was particularly bad, (although only for me, thank God) to the point that it has done a number on my culinary confidence, at least for the day, and my adventurous dinner plans might find themselves toned down in favor of some comforting old standard recipe, something I know I can't screw up. Something heavy.

After all. I did skip lunch.

Lucky Shrimp

I'm a pretty improvisational cook. No rules, no measurements, dozens of ingredients, kitchens destroyed, hours spent on a single dish because, hey, why not? But sometimes we all need some rules to keep us honest. Are we really cooking skillfully here, or are we just piling on enough stuff that we can't help but find something to like?

I was recently issued a cooking challenge for a job interview, one I have yet to find out the final verdict on. The challenge:

One recipe

To be served at room temperature

Must be transportable

No more than six ingredients

Must feature pineapple

Pineapple? SIX ingredients? Palpitations, folks. I haven't cooked with pineapple...well ever basically. And I might be able to pull something off if I could go for baked goods or maybe bake a whole ham. But neither of those options was going to fly, and so I bit the bullet, dealt with the parameters of the assignment, and re-learned very quickly something I should have remembered from high school art class--putting rules and limitations on yourself is sometimes a great way of finding out just how creative you can be. The result of this little experiment was something I've taken to calling Lucky Shrimp, in the hopes that if I say it enough times, it will actually bring me luck (and the job I want). So here it is, without further preamble, my recipe for Lucky Shrimp:

1/2 pound shelled, de-veined shrimp

2 limes

Blue agave nectar, amber (Can also substitute honey.)

Chipotle peppers

Cilantro

Fresh, whole pineapple

Salt and pepper (Do not count as ingredients! I'm not a cheater!)

Fire up the grill, or set your kitchen contact grill to 350.

Rinse and dry shrimp thoroughly and set aside in the refrigerator.

With a sharp knife, open two chipotle peppers to expose the seeds and ribs. Remove these and discard, leaving only the leathery skins. Grind the peppers in a coffee grinder until fine. Set aside.

Finely chop 1 cup fresh cilantro, and combine in a bowl with the juice of 2 limes, and 1/2 -1 cup of blue agave nectar. Add ground chipotle, salt and pepper. Set aside a small amount of the marinade, aproximately 1/4 cup. Take the rest and pour over the cleaned shrimp, and leave to marinade in the refrigerator for about an hour.

Cut the pineapple into chunks, discarding core and taking care to remove all traces of rind. Place chunks on bamboo skewers, alternating with the marinaded shrimp. With a basting brush, brush the pineapple slices with the reserved marinade, making sure that each piece of pineapple gets some smoky chipotle flecks before hitting the grill.

Grill skewers on both sides, about 4 minutes each side, or until the shrimp turn pink and your pineapple chunks are sporting attractive, caramel colored grill marks. Can be enjoyed at room temperature, but when eaten hot off the grill--magic.

My interview panel made many yummy noises while enjoying my Lucky Shrimp, as did Mr. Gastro when I came home later that night and made a fresh batch for dinner using what I had left over. The results are unexpectedly smoky, sweet, savory and spicy, and whatever the results of my interview, I know I will be coming back to this dish many times over the course of the summer. Why? Because it's only got six ingredients, it can be enjoyed hot or at room temperature, and it has pineapple, which is my new favorite ingredient.

Stone Soup

The chicken in my freezer was starting to guilt trip me.

"Pasta? You're having pasta tonight. Sure, pasta seems awfully heavy, but then what do I know, I'm only a chicken."

"Oh no, don't mind me, I'll be fine all by myself, here in the freezer. In the dark. With the half empty bag of frozen peas."

"You know, it's always so nice when you drop by, even if it's only to refill the ice trays. Oh, you're leaving? OH... ::sigh:: Well goodbye."

And then I realized I was anthropomorphizing a roaster, and that it was time to put both of us out of our misery. So I carted my chicken out to Cambridge, along with a couple of potatoes, some onions, and a bag of carrots, and made an old fashioned dinner for myself and a couple of friends. Roast chicken is a neat trick. You spend all of 15 minutes actually working. Toss the carrots and potatoes in the bottom of the pan. Clean up the bird and stuff it with onions and apples. Give it a little TLC with some butter and some salt and pepper. Then you stick it in the oven for an hour and forget about it. Drink some beer and spend the better part of the evening telling dirty jokes and hilariously racy anecdotes, which is exactly what I did until dinner was done cooking itself. (And I found that if you cook the chicken at a relatively low temperature and then crank the oven to about 450 for the last 15 or 20 minutes, the meat stays juicy and tender, while the skin browns and crisps up beautifully. Tasty and gorgeous.) The whole shebang looks very impressive when it comes out of the oven--starch, meat, and veggies all sitting pretty in one pretty little package. It gets great reaction, but the fact of the matter is, it takes significantly less effort than most of the simple pasta dishes I count as a part of my regular repertoire.

But the best part is the leftovers. No, not the cold chicken sandwiches you make up for lunch the next day (And lets be real, the boys and I picked that chicken to the bone with our bare fingers, and there are no sandwich fixings to be found here). No, I'm talking about the sad, meatless carcass that I carted home on the train at 11:00 at night in a lunch box. And yes I am aware that carrying what is essentially food garbage with me while riding public transportation might make me a crazy person. But I was on a mission. Stock.

This afternoon I dropped that scrawny, naked chicken carcass in a stock pot, along with some sautéed onions, celery and carrots, and a handful of herbs, and I waited. I really love this process. I love that it takes all afternoon. I love that it feels a little bit like stone soup--how out of some bones, and whatever else you've got lying around you somehow create magic. It's like alchemy. And I especially love that out of the supposedly inedible remnants of one very nice meal with friends, I have suddenly created the basis for dozens of others. I spend the whole afternoon fantasizing about the dishes I'll make. Next weekend, Parmesan risotto. Maybe I can try my hand at Ratatouille, and then watch the movie with Mr. Gastro while we eat it. And in the fall, when the first chill rolls in, I can pull the last of the stock out of the depths of my freezer and make chicken soup from scratch, a project I pass up more often than not exactly because I don't have any chicken stock already in the house. Now I'll have no excuse. Now, every time I open my freezer I'll see nothing but endless opportunities to create exciting new dishes, sitting there waiting, right next to the frozen peas.

Medium Rare

Mr. Gastro came home from work today with two white plastic Adirondack chairs and a flimsy little table, and I nearly fell over squealing with glee. We've been talking about getting some cheap patio furniture so we can eat out on our balcony ever since we moved into this apartment a year ago, but up until today the only thing taking up space on that patio was the dead remains of last years blight riddles tomatoes in a couple of rubbermaid tubs. (Must. Throw. Away.) Anyway, the arrival of the new patio furniture could not have been timed better.

I was making burgers.

We're on day three of Aquapocalypse here in Boston (Or as I've taken to calling it, Javapocalypse. Nobody is really dropping dead from dehydration around here, but everybody was pretty pissed off on this Monday morning that regardless of how many Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks exist in this city, there was nary a cup of coffee to be found. That's what I call priorities.) Saturday morning the weather felt like classic Springtime in Boston, that is, appropriately cool. But wouldn't you know that no sooner does that water main break than the temperature shoots up and the humidity along with it so it feels more like July or August than the early days of May in New England. Somehow these two events going hand in hand feels all too appropriate. After all, what good is a water crisis without some unseasonable heat to go along with it?

Anyway, the heat dropped this afternoon to just about Nirvana levels, like the most perfect Summer evening you've ever seen, and I decided we were going to celebrate our temporarily perfect weather and the arrival of our new patio furniture with some burgers and corn on the cob. I took a couple of tips from a repeat I recently saw of the No Reservations "Techniques" special, where Tony and Friends review all of the cooking basics any self respecting American home cook cannot go without, and made, I'm sorry, SOME REALLY AWESOME BURGERS.

Looking at tonight's Burgers in comparison to those I've made in the past on the grill, I will say now that a flat cooking surface is definitely preferable. On a grill all of the fat (read: flavor) is able to run off, giving you a leaner, but not nearly as tasty burger. On a flat top (Or in our case, the pancake griddle side of our reversible contact grill) all of that greasy, flavorful goodness has nowhere to go but right back up into the meat, and I can tell you without a doubt, that you can absolutely taste the difference. The other great tip that I stole from Tony was the real winner though, and I will never again make a burger without doing this one thing--brush both sides of the burger with melted butter before throwing it on the heat. I know, I know, it's like cooking with Caligula, the excess is almost too much to handle, but I am telling you--the butter crisps up and creates a beautifully browned exterior, while the inside gets sealed up with its own fat and juices, making, I swear to god, one of the most awesome burgers I've had in a really long time. Or to quote one of my mother's favorite phrases:

"I don't know whether to eat it or shove it down my pants."

A couple of other quick to tips I've found helpful when doing burgers at home:

*Let the meat come to room temperature before cooking it. It will cook much more quickly and much more evenly, and you will have better control all around.

*Fat is your friend. With burgers, you want to choose a ground beef with a higher fat content. It feels so wrong, but it tastes so right. 85% lean has always worked for me.

*Less is more. Don't do anything clever to your burgers. You don't need spices. You don't need bread crumbs. You don't need to stuff the burger with anything. Ground beef. Lots of salt, pepper, and butter on both sides. Done. Step away from the burger.

*Toast the buns. Drop them face down on the cooking surface around the same time you flip the burgers, preferably in a smear of burger juice. The bread will be warm, crispy, and just a little meaty. Mmmm. Meaty.

Now for the toppings: We forgot until about halfway through the cooking process that we hadn't picked up any cheese, but get this--we dropped some ripe avocado on top instead, and the result was cosmic. Creamy, fatty, all the things you love in a cheeseburger, but somehow, more awesome. A little red onion, some fresh tomato, and I ground up some chipotle peppers in my coffee grinder and mixed them with the ketchup to give it a smokey kick, to very nice effect. The final product is everything you want in a burger, but your civilized, PC brain tells you is wrong and evil. These burgers are big, and when you bite into them, you suddenly find that your hands (and face) are dripping with grease and butter and chipotle ketchup. You're a mess. A hot mess. And maybe on some other night you would feel self conscious about that, but tonight, the weather is perfect, the beer is cold, it's dark and maybe (just maybe) nobody can see that you're wearing your dinner, but you don't really care. You lick your fingers, sigh a fat, happy sigh, and lean back to nurse your beer and enjoy the rest of this balmy, greasy, gorgeous evening.

They say pizza is like sex...

...When it's good, it's great. And when it's bad...well it's still pretty good.

But more on pizza in a moment.

The plan for today was going to be making chicken stock. I recently read Ruth Reichl's latest blog post, talking about her mother, her birthday, and chicken stock. And it occurred to me that I have never made chicken stock, and that I really ought to. I figured I could freeze it, and then it would always be there, ready for a last minute risotto if company came over on the spur of the moment, or a chicken soup if Mr. Gastro happens to catch a cold. I was feeling ambitious.

But then I see on Twitter and Facebook that the whole city is in a tizzy over the fact that the tap water for all of Boston has been contaminated by a broken water main. And as much as I know that the whole question of contaminated water could probably be solved with a quick boil to kill off any icky microbes, the mood is somehow gone. Who wants to make chicken stock, meant to be saved and consumed at various points throughout the upcoming seasons, that may or may not have harmful bacteria hanging out in it? I know, I know. You boil the water. The stock was going to end up frozen anyway. Still.

On a happier note, last night's flat bread pizza seemed to be a hit at the potluck dinner Mr. Gastro and I attended. I was planning on making only one, but then I got to the store and got carried away, like I do, and I ended up making three, because I couldn't decide which type to make. And to keep all of my fellow Gastro-Junkies happy, here's a lovely vid of my pretty pizzas, pre-baking. I was going to make an after video as well, but...well we ate them instead. Sorry.

Anyway, the pizzas were very pretty indeed, but unfortunately they had to do a little travelling and a lot of waiting before they could be eaten, and therefore I couldn't get a really clear idea of their success or failure. (They're never the same if it's not fresh out of the oven. The whole "cheese can't re-melt" thing.) Guess I'll just have to take that leftover dough and make more pizzas later on this week... ::Sigh:: Oh the sacrifices I make in the name of culinary research. ;P

From Scratch

So late last night My Uncle Jeff, one of the many people in my life whom I hold responsible for my obsessive compulsive fixation with cooking and eating, sent along this article written by Michael Ruhlman:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-ruhlman/message-to-food-editors-w_b_555003.html

The basic jist of this being, that the food companies, and Rachel Ray, and Burger King are all telling us that we should commit less time to cooking, because it's hard and time consuming. Ruhlman's response, and I couldn't have said it better myself, is BULLSHIT.

for some reason I've got a major bee in my bonnet about this. Ruhlman gets into some things here that I think we all know are a major problem in this country--that the processed food companies, and the pervasiveness of their product, their packaging, and their message, has not only made it easier for us to avoid doing something for ourselves and our families as basic as cooking a meal, but they've hurt our health as well by peddling us crap and telling us it's "food." This is all true, and it's a really dangerous state of affairs. But there's another issue tied up in this one that speaks to me personally--I'm a home cook who learned early on that cooking and eating are inextricably tied up with relationships and family, and I'm deeply disturbed by the fact our country's "food culture" (BIG sarcasm quotes around that one) has actually managed to discourage many of us who might have otherwise been inclined to become active home cooks, by bombarding us with the message that cooking is somehow a major pain in the ass, (rather than a joy) and therefore not worth doing. I think this whole idea deprives us of a really basic form of social expression, one that has been with us since we were charring wooly mammoth on spits over an open fire and picking nits out of our neighbor's hair.

For those of you who are just joining the party, I'll just say up front that food and cooking has always been a huge part of my family life, and I learned from a very young age that adults cook. It's how we feed ourselves. It's how we feed our children. But it's also an incredibly longstanding, traditional way of solidifying relationships with friends, relatives and neighbors. What better way to say to someone "Hey, I like you," than to feed them? I just never thought of cooking as optional.

Apparently I'm in the minority here, because I'm shocked by how many adults my age or older just never learned how to cook. We're grown now, we're getting married and having babies and starting families, but we still don't know how to cook. And why would we? We can grab a Big Mac, we can pop something in the microwave, and if we're feeling really ambitious, we can put on some water to boil and make Mac 'n Cheese. And let me be really honest here for a second: I HAVE DONE ALL OF THESE THINGS. But when you have an entire generation that chooses these quickie "food products" to the exclusion of cooking real food at all, ever...well I worry about a couple of things. I worry about our health, for sure. And I worry about the health of our kids, the ones who are going to grow up on processed non-food because Kraft foods and Stouffers taught my generation that you don't have to know how your food (or your kids food) is made anymore, and you certainly don't have to make it yourself, you just have to buy it. But I also worry about the food culture of those kids. The ones who aren't going to be exposed to the subtle social and cultural benefits of sharing the act of cooking with those you care about.

Ever make cookies for a friend when you were too broke to buy them a birthday gift, only to find that they were more psyched about the fact that you went to the trouble to cook for them than they ever would have been about another blouse or a CD? Ever have someone cook you dinner one a second or third date, rather than just going to a movie? (And wasn't that person always just that much more likely to get lucky? Admit it.) Ever perch on a stool in your mom's kitchen while she fixed dinner and tell her all about your day while she nodded and stirred and listened? I did.

Cooking real food, from scratch, is time consuming. Sometimes it's even a pain in the ass. But regardless of what the food companies and the fast-food mega chains tell us, it's also fun, and sexy, and creative, and one of the surest, oldest, most visceral ways of reinforcing our relationships with one another. I'm fascinated by food not only because I'm a glutton, and like the way food tastes (and I do), but because for me, food is emotional. Cooking and eating with my family sets off all of the happy little buzzers in the most primitive parts of my brain that tell me that I am a part of a tribe, and that we will care for each other. And if that's not worth learning and passing along to your friends and your kids, then I don't know what is. Yes, it is a time consuming pain in the ass, but then, so are the people you love.

So.

What's for dinner tonight?