Things I Ate That I Love

that I like Christian, I just also like eight year olds.  Sigh, blogs, everything gets so bitchy so fast.  I wish I could assign everyone to see the movie, read Christian’s whole essay, and then think about it for a full 60 seconds before weighing in, but this medium is inimical to all that stuff.

Signed, Part of The Problem

If I still had a scanner I would scan in the piece of yellowed, stained notepaper that this recipe is written on.

“Dear [Emily’s Dad],

This is the recipe that Nanny [paternal great-grandmother] gave me -

For 3

3 eggs, separated

1 teaspoon of sugar for each yolk —-> beat til smooth

1 cup of milk

dash of cinnamon

add matzoh meal

fold in egg whites

fry in butter

Now, when I made it for “us three,” I doubled it.

Remember, the batter shouldn’t be too thin or too thick —

Good luck!

Love,

Mom”

Just a few 2010 clarifications:

1. Definitely add a pinch of salt.  2.  Did you get the part about how you separate the eggs then beat the rest of the ingredients into the yolks, then fold in the egg whites, which you had first whipped til they held soft peaks?  Cool.  3. “Add matzoh meal” is a bit vague, huh?  You are going for something with the milkshakey consistency of pancake batter.  If you add too much matzoh meal you can thin the batter down with more milk.  4. Fry slowly and gently in butter over medium heat; it’s easy to end up with burnt outsides and raw insides.

If you avoid these pitfalls, though, your matzoh pancakes will be airy little fried souffles. The traditional topping is granulated white sugar. Fresh fruit on the side will make you feel less like you’re eating straight-up dessert for breakfast.

Two “Whatever You Like”s and One “Dur Dur D’etre Bebe” later this diabolical song is still stuck in my !@#@_!@#% head

I was in the laundromat just now and their TV was tuned to the Celine Dion episode of Oprah, which featured as its finale a group called the Canadian Tenors (I think?) performing the most treacly, faux-inspirational, tremulous, molesty possible version of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, a song which I think we have all agreed is just dead and needs to be banned from being covered ever, ever again (see: Maura’s definitive assessment of this problem).  When I heard the opening bars of the song I freaked my fellow launderers out by groaning audibly.  “If this fucking song gets stuck in my head because of this I am going to sue Oprah for mental anguish,” I thought, and then for several minutes afterwards I amused myself by trying to come up with imaginary verses of the song whose third lines could end with the words “sue ya.” 

My mom made Maida Heatter’s flourless chocolate cake for post-Seder dessert.  It’s not the world’s most attractive cake; the almonds make it a weird not-quite-chocolate color, like a dark beige.  It is however one of the world’s most delicious cakes and you should make it whether you’re abstaining from leavened bread or not.  The icing is a thick, rich, intensely coffee-chocolatey glaze, like a more sophisticated version of what’s on donuts.

is just not a good idea, fyi.

I’m cool like that

I’m cool like that

(digression: In 1993, when this video was made, I owned shoes like that)

I’m cool like that

I’m cool like that

I’m cool like that

I’m cool like that

I’m cool like that

I’m cool like that

I’m cool like that

I’m cool like that

I’m cool like that, we out.

Last night some friends and I went to Katherine Randazzo’s Winter Vegetables class at Brooklyn Kitchen and I learned three important things, two of which are incredibly useful: how to make fresh ricotta, how to make confit garlic, and that my classroom personality is just intractably clownish/dickish.  This lattermost fact is something I have had ample opportunity to suspect for a while now; considering that I am not actually in college I am someone who finds herself in classes fairly often.  But last night the knowledge really crystallized for some reason.   Also, homemade ricotta is so much easier than you’d think and I’ll get to that after like one more paragraph about my personality problems.

I am not, thank god, the person who asks a ton of pointless questions and makes the class be all about them, but I am the person who has to crack a little joke every 15 minutes or so or else completely lose interest.  I try, of course, to curb this tendency, especially since the karmic wheel has lately turned in such a way that I now regularly teach a class that has such a person in it — so now I know how un-fun it can be, as a teacher, to have your spotlight stolen.   But it’s just so much fun to be a class clown — what it actually might be is a moment of all the fun parts of being a teacher, with none of the onerous slogging responsibilities. 

Anyway, ricotta:  you heat two quarts of whole milk and 2 cups of cultured buttermilk slowly over medium heat in a heavy-bottomed pan, and when the milk is about 180 degrees (we screwed this up and heated it too high, in class, and it still came out great, so probably don’t sweat it if you don’t own a thermometer — just curdle the milk without boiling it, basically) you remove it from the heat and let it sit for 45 minutes.  Then you strain it through butter muslin (I don’t know either; cheesecloth might be ok) and let it drain in a colander over a bowl for another 45 minutes — not longer, because you don’t want it to get too dry — “creamy and just firm” is the goal.  Season the portion you’re going to use with salt and, if desired, grated orange zest (yum) and put the rest in the fridge (this recipe makes a ton of cheese; you just saved $$). 

(My class clown joke, btw, was about guessing almost correctly how much a big salad bowl full of pea shoots cost at the farmer’s market — I guessed $35, it was actually $38 — and proposing a gameshow like The Farmer’s Market Price is Right, which I still think is a good idea. I would win.)

Confit garlic is just, you submerge some peeled garlic cloves in hot fat (we used olive oil), add salt and pepper, and simmer them til they’re translucent and soft.  Then you can put them with anything: in vinaigrettes, mashed into potatoes, incorporated with some delicious roasted cauliflower — amazing.  I have tried roasting garlic in the past and it’s never as sweet and un-bitter as recipes claim it is; confit garlic is so mild and sweet you can eat it like candy. 

I never used to sympathize with the wedding-planning ladies who were like “Well, I’m just really concerned that the hydrangeas won’t be the perfect shade of blue to match the napkins?” because … well, lots of reasons but also, how concerned can you be about something that no one besides you will ever in a million years notice?

Now, though, there are inexplicable ?s around a quote that is not in Spanish on my book’s Amazon page and I know just how those crazy bitches feel.