Living On a Prayer

"Three tablespoons? How can there only be three tablespoons of flour in this whole recipe?" I demand.

"I dunno. I mean, isn't souffle supposed to be difficult to pull off?" Mr Gastro asks, "Isn't that the whole deal with souffle?"

"Difficult, sure, but nobody told me it would require the use of witchcraft. How is that even possible?"

It's true, the recipe for vanilla souffle in Mastering the Art of French Cooking features shockingly little actual solid matter to hold together all that liquid. Four egg yolks, five whites (beaten until they beg for mercy), butter, milk, vanilla extract, a little sugar, sure...and THREE TABLESPOONS OF FLOUR. I couldn't help but picture each individual speck of flour, magically suspended midair on a fluffy white cloud of egg white and desperate prayer, making no contact whatsoever with his fellow flour molecules. In fact even now, after this little experiment is over, that's still kinda how I think it works.

Anyway, the seemingly impossible nature of this recipe made it that much more necessary for me to try it, so tonight I recruited Mr. Gastro to photograph the proceedings for posterity.

Julia is pretty specific here that you should measure out your ingredients ahead of time. This is one of those things I am not always on top of, but in this instance I am putting my faith in J.C (so to speak)and doing as I am told. And boy am i glad I did. I'm not saying that everything would have fallen apart had I not measured out my vanilla and granulated sugar ahead of time. I'm just saying that throughout the process, I was glad I didn't have to worry about it. It's one of those recipes.

"It's only dessert,"I tell myself as I am whisking egg yolks into the cooked flour and milk bouillie on the stove. "What's the big deal? Follow the recipe, and everything will turn out fine."

Now anyone who has ever made a souffle, eaten a souffle, heard of souffle, or inadvertently blurted out "souffle!"as they sneezed can tell you that the key to a successful souffle is in the egg whites. Fail to beat them within an inch of their lives and that souffle isn't rising, period. Sure, it might get a little puffy, but in order to achieve what Julia Child refers to as "magnificence," they have to be thick, smooth, and hold their peaks. So

my confidence waned a bit as my trusty KitchenAid mixer got to work on the egg whites, but not to worry; within moments my egg whites were transformed from runny, slimy goo into snowy white peaks you could ski down. Oh, and a note for the over-ambitious: Many recipes refer to whipping up the egg whites by hand in order to create this magical effect, but that is because many of these recipes pre-date the ubiquitousness of the at-home stand mixer. You definitely don't need a fancy KitchenAid mixer to get the required consistency; a hand-held mixer will do just fine. But I can't see how any mere mortal could produce these silky stiff egg whites using only a wire whip and some elbow grease. Don't be a hero. Use the mixer.

The egg whites are folded into the bouillie (gently, gently, oh so gently...), and the bouillie into

the porcelain ramekins, and I am once again full of confidence seeing my pretty little ramekins full and ready to go into the oven. "THIS IS GONNA BE GREAT!"I insist, and Mr. Gastro smiles at me indulgently and says "gooooood..." before returning to his book. He is retreating into the pages of his vintage cocktail manual because he knows me, and he knows what is coming next. I put the ramekins into the oven...

And I pray.

I'm not kidding. I am praying over my souffle. Why? Because everything is now out of my hands. What happens in that oven has to do not with me and my efforts, but with chemistry, and I never had much of a grasp of chemistry.

"This isn't going to work," I say, peering into the oven.

"It will be fine," Mr. Gastro says.

"Okay. okay. It will be okay. Hey, I know, if my souffle falls and this is a horrible failure I can title the blog 'Deflated.' That will be cute, right?"

Mr. Gastro just shakes his head.

And then like magic, they start to rise. One minute I am discussing my comedic blogging options in the face of certain catastrophe, and the next I am putting my face as close to the oven door as I dare, whispering "THEY'RE RIIIIIIISING!!!" Everything from here on out happens in a whisper. I am standing two inches away from my oven, whispering like I have a colicky baby in there that I am afraid will wake up and start to scream. I literally tip-toe through my kitchen for the duration of this process. Why? I don't know. I guess i saw it on TV one time. And I am certain that my souffle would not have fallen had I spoken in a normal tone of voice, but I also guarantee that when it is your turn...you will whisper too.

About halfway through the process I am instructed to remove my souffle and dust it with powdered sugar. "Are they INSANE?" I demand in a croak. I do manage to pull them out, Mr. Gastro behind me to open and close the oven door with smooth, friction free movements. Just then, as if god is reinforcing to me that no, this cannot actually be this easy, I accidentally tap one of the five, just slightly, with my oven mitt, and watch as it slowly, incrementally falls.

"It's okay,"Mr. Gastro whispers, like I'm a small child who just received a baseball to the head, and this is that terrible half second of silence before the wailing begins. I keep it together. We slip the surviving souffles into the oven, along with their sad, flat sister, and we wait. And pray some more. And then...then...

SUCCESS.

Sweet, sweet success. They are oh so pretty, and perch several inches over the tops of their containers. We place our souffles on two little plates decorated with the powdered sugar ghost of a spoon, and dig in. It seems almost a shame to deflate and eat something that you've just spent so much time and effort creating, but then I remind myself that food is for eating, and so I do.

I realize now that this is the first time I have even eaten souffle, let alone made it, and so I am surprised by the lightness in the mouth, the simplicity of the flavor, the slightly crisp crack of sugar on the crust. It's lovely, but then I've never had another souffle, so I don't know if this is the correct brand of lovely.

"Is it okay?" I ask.

"Mm hmm!" Mr. Gastro replies.

"No, I mean, sure, it's okay, but like, is it okay enough that you would want me to make it again?"

"Well lets see," Mr. Gastro says, "If you're not sure it's perfect, you could..." he takes another bite, "always practice some more..." another bite, "or do it with chocolate..." he finishes his souffle. "I mean... I guess I wouldn't mind if you wanted to keep practicing."

Ten Tables

Ten Tables

Valentines Day came late to the Gastro household this year, as it tends to do. When Mr. Gastro and I first started dating we were both working on the same theatrical production, and tech week was the week of Valentines Day, meaning neither one of us was going to be spending much time anywhere but at the theater. This was the story every Valentines Day until we graduated from college, at which point I found myself working in the floral industry for several years--a very romantic place to spend Valentines Day, you might say. And if you believe that, then you have obviously never spent Valentines Day wading in foliage and rose thorns up to mid-calf, running on nothing but pizza, coffee and nicotine and about 3 hours of sleep, listening to strangers scream at you on your busiest day of the year about how their roses are the wrong shade of pink. (Yes, this has actually happened.)

This year it was a simple quirk of Mr. Gastro's work schedule that kept us from celebrating Valentines Day out on the town like two newlyweds ought, and so we had a quiet evening at home with a pair of bone-in pork chops, a peanut butter pie, and a box of chocolate dipped strawberries from Godiva. (Who needs flowers when your hubby brings you chocolate dipped strawberries?) We were determined, however, to have a lovely restaurant dinner to celebrate our first married Valentines Day in style, even if we had to do it a little late, and so tonight Mr. Gastro brought me to Ten Tables in Cambridge.

With a website that boasts of locally sourced ingredients and thoughtfully crafted dishes, I was looking forward to a smart, fresh, New American menu, and I was not disappointed. We left ourselves at the mercy of the kitchen and agreed without hesitating on the four course chef's tasting menu (a complete steal at $42 per person) and were rewarded for the first course with a sweet and mild bacon wrapped pork pâté. The pâté was served alongside a coarse brown mustard, sweet and tangy caramelized onions, and the tiniest, most delicate slices of pickle you've ever seen. The whole was deceptively elegant in spite of all its seemingly humble parts , and combined sweet, tart, and spicy elements to perfection in one amazingly savory starter.

Next came Mr. Gastro's personal favorite, a tender white slab of swordfish, topped with a Meyer lemon and Picholine olive salsa that absolutely made the entire dish. The zip of Meyer lemon meets you first head on, and then the olive and complicated bouquet of tarragon, chive and chervil grounds the bright citrus flavor, giving it roots. The fish came on a nutty bed of tender barley, beets and red pepper. The barley and beets were the perfect accompaniment, but I couldn't help but feel like the red pepper faded in comparison to the soprano song of the salsa and the barley's earthy alto, and probably could have been left out altogether.

Tri-tip steak came next, and the gorgeously arranged slices of bright pink meat filled me with hope, but sadly this round was a little off. The steak brought flavor to the table you just couldn't argue with, but Mr. Gastro and I both agreed it was tough. The steak was saved, however, with the brilliant addition of a grape compote that was an absolute inspiration--everyone knows that red wine and red meat are natural partners, so how is it that we never thought of the grapes themselves? I vowed to attempt a reproduction of this brilliant pairing at home, and for the sake of the compote, decided to forgive the steak for being a little chewy. By the time we'd received out Meyer lemon sorbet, I was over it.

Finally for dessert, Mr. Gastro and I parted ways, at least on our plates. Mr. Gastro claims that his Meyer lemon cheesecake with berry compote was the victor of the dessert round, and I must confess it was very good, but I just couldn't get enough of my chocolate terrine with sea salt and Thai basil ice cream. The basil sliced right through the overwhelming richness of the chocolate ("But I LIKE rich chocolate!" argues Mr. Gastro), and the sea salt jumps out from underneath the ice cream for just a split second and dances under your teeth before fading away. The dessert, like almost every other aspect of this meal was smart, complex, creative and unexpected, and Mr. Gastro and i left feeling very much in the Valentines Day spirit, even if we were, once again, a little late.

Hand-Me-Downs

My Mom has a habit of sending me books. Novels, biographies, memoirs. We are both passionate bibliophiles, so whenever she finds that her book collection has begun to encroach on her living space (about every six months by my calculations), she will pack many of them up, most of the time in several huge boxes, and ship them off to Boston, where I spend the next several months devouring them indiscriminately. Mr. Gastro gives me this weary, slightly amused look every time we get one of these shipments. Where exactly do I think I am going to put all of these books? Somehow I always seem to find room, but I suspect Mr. G. thinks I am becoming a bit of a hoarder.

This past shipment was over 100 pounds, and came in three boxes that were literally buckling under the strain by the time they made it to my doorstep. There were several dozen novels, but most of the books in this shipment were cookbooks, and as soon as I saw them, I began tearing through the box, stacking willy-nilly in teetering piles until I found what I was looking for at the very bottom of the very last box I opened. Volumes 1 & 2 of Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child.

I could have bought my own copy a dozen times over during the time that I have been waiting for this one book. But I didn't want a new copy. I wanted my mom's copy. Yesterday I decided to devote my entire day to cooking, and found that the recipe I was looking for, Boeuf Bourguignon, had already been dog-eared by my mother. Flip to the next down-turned corner and you'll find the recipe for brown braised onions that are to be strewn over the stewed beef before serving, and after that the butter sauteed mushrooms. It's like I have an invisible helper in the kitchen, guiding my fingers just a little more deftly to the next step. Each page is smeared and stained with olive oil, butter, and any number of other traces of meals gone by. It's like a spell book that's held on to the candle wax drippings and incense ash of the previous user, and therefore some of the magic as well.

I could go on and on about my morning spent serenely hand-drying and browning beef, just a few pieces at a time, or my afternoon rolling tiny onions in a pan of hot butter, and sitting back while they simmered in beef stock. I could wax nostalgic line after line about the nutty aroma that filled my kitchen while I diligently shook my skillet full of beautiful little brown mushrooms, or about the wonderful time Mr. Gastro and I had with food buddy John, drinking wine and cocktails and devouring plates of fall-apart-when-you-look-at-it beef. Instead I will control myself, and simply say that yesterday I spent the entire day cooking with my mom, and I had a wonderful time.

The Foul Weather Blogger

Dear fellow Gastro Junkies,

Last week I made a beautiful aioli from scratch the old fashioned way with a mortar and pestle. On Monday you would have found me slaving over a pot of beef stew, well past the hour of the night when normal people would have turned in their aprons for the evening. Last night I fixed up a stir fry with noodles that I had made from scratch and cut by hand. (Mr. gastro came home from work to discover me covered in flour, shoo-ing the cat away from the table where my beloved lo-mein were drying.) And tonight I am making Julia Child's Beuf Bourguignon with Pommes Dauphinoise. Later this week I have plans to tackle Ratatouille.

And this seriously isn't even the half of it. Pork chops with rosemary and mustard, my dad's linguini with clams, pan seared salmon steaks, peanut butter pie on Valentines day...I could go on. I sincerely wish, Oh Gastro-readers, that I could say I am able to tackle all these involved multi-course meals in my free time around work, but I would be a liar. Confession time. I was laid off from my job last Monday, the job that I only just recently landed at the dream company where I was happy, entertained, and financially stable for a whole month and a half before being downsized. (I was certainly not the only one. 35 of my new friends went along with me, many with years and years put into this company. My heart goes out to each and every one of them.) But here's the thing folks. This is not my first time being laid off. This isn't even the first time in the past 365 days. The first time I was laid off was last April, when my team was cut from the Theater we had been fundraising for. Which also happened to be right before I began this blog.

Oh yeah. I probably could have mentioned back in April time that all this free time I had to blog and cook was really due to my lack of employment, and looking back, I do make a handful of references to my job search, or vague, unnamed financial troubles. Still. I never really came right out and said, "I am doing this thing because I have to, because if I don't do something I am going to slip into a deep depression and die from a fatal overdose of hot dogs and macaroni and cheese." But now I'm back, in nearly the exact same position I was in back in April, so I'm saying it now. I need to cook, and I need to write, because I need to do something.

Does this make me a foul weather blogger? Certainly. I was definitely absent enough when I was planning my wedding, working for a video game company, enjoying my newlywed status. Fair. I can own that. But does it mean that I don't love cooking, or writing, or writing about cooking? Of course not. It's just that now I don't just love it--I need it too.

A little reprieve from my being a total bummer: I'm having a blast. There is a very real part of me that couldn't be happier than when I am dancing around my kitchen, listening to Nina Simone records and rolling out dough, browning beef, whipping cream. I'm in absolute heaven. The feminist side of my brain will sometimes look at me in this state, and sneer, "You look like you wish you had been born in the forties so you could be a housewife and do this all the time!" And when faced with this commentary I can only respond, "Maybe I do."

So I am at times a crap feminist. Guilty. And I also understand that I cannot be without a job, not do I really want to be. I want to find success and satisfaction in my career. But the fact of the matter is that right now, I just don't have a career. Not yet. So I seek success in the kitchen instead. Because it's fun, and I could use a little fun right now, and some comfort, and some activity.

So I hope all of you loyal Gastro-readers will forgive my on again, off again blogging, and perhaps even give me a pass now that I've given you the real scoop on the genesis of the Gastro-Junkie--this thing is all about passion, yes, but it is also about therapy--a fact I guess I forgot to mention before. You will almost certainly be seeing a lot more of me over the coming weeks, a fact that has its up side and its down, but please believe, dear readers, that having the space and the time to be a full time cook and writer, at least for a little while, is a big, huge silver lining. Much love,

Morgan