mid-week bonus!

I know! It's not even Sunday! Sometimes, I also get to cook in the middle of the week. Like when there's a federal holiday and I don't have to go to work.

Sauteed Tarragon Chicken Breasts with Orange Sauce
From The Best of Jayni's Kitchen Cookbook, a gift from Diana (whose recipe for pork roast with fennel appears on page 79!)

The chicken wasn't anything special. I went on a hurried search for fresh tarragon yesterday, believing that the dish would suffer if I used dried. Should have guessed that if the first Dillons I tried had every fresh herb but the one I needed, then it would be the same story all over at the second Dillons. This logic is only apparent to me when I'm standing in the fresh herb aisle in the second grocery stop in 30 minutes, and I don't see what I came for. In any event, I found fresh tarragon today and made the chicken tonight, only to decide that the flavor would have been better with the bottle of dried tarragon already in my pantry. Lesson learned.

The sauce will definitely be repeated. I want to drink it from the pan. It's shallots in the buttery chicken drippings, plus orange juice and zest. Citrus and chicken are a winning combination.

Ladies' Potluck recap

Some years ago in Lawrence, a group of friends gathered for a semi-monthly ladies' potluck dinner. The hostess decided on the guest list, but all attendees were invited to bring a friend. They were always great evenings for both food and friendship. Last night I revived the practice, and invited a wide swath of female friends from every corner of my Kansas life. Those who were able to make it each contributed a dish or drink to the communal table.

What we didn't anticipate was the unspoken theme for the evening:
At least half of the diners brought squash! Not just plain old roasted acorn squash, but "meltingly smooth" baked squash, squash salad, soup with squash...and mine, my recipe for the week.

Gratin de Potiron d'Arpajon
(it sounds much fancier than it is).

From San Francisco a la Carte
(yes, again. I really like this one)

I would post a picture of the gratin, but it isn't the prettiest dish. The color is lovely, but since it is essentially a puree of acorn squash and white beans, it most resembles baby food. It received good reviews from my friends. My favorite part of the evening was when we went around the table and everyone talked about the dish they brought. Even with half a dozen squash-based dishes, dinner was delicious and a welcome break from the day-to-day meals we usually eat.

Tonight for dinner, I reheated some of the gratin--still good! Maybe better! I ate it with some asparagus that I made for last night and forgot to put out. This was even the first time I'd ever bothered to peel asparagus. That's how much I like my friends. Personally, I don't care if asparagus is peeled or not, but I guess I did wind up with less stringiness of the mouth.

Pizza!

Yesterday, I tackled pizza dough.

It's not difficult. The mental block is more the problem than the steps involved, or the ingredients. Last night a collection of friends was coming over to celebrate Halloween and my new fire pit. The plan was to cook the pizzas over the fire in the fire pit, but I decided early on that rigging up my grill rack over a 3 foot wide fire pit was going to be more trouble than it was worth. They went into the oven instead.

The book: Pizzas, part of a series produced by Salamander books in 1995.
The origin: From my mom's collection. This was likely the first time anything was ever made using a recipe from this book, which is a tall slim volume written for a British audience. I learned that Gas 7=425 F.

I really just made the basic recipe. It's not complicated. It doesn't even take that long, especially since my Kitchenaid did all the kneading. It's just that you have to PLAN and let the dough rise, and the planning and waiting alone is what keeps me from making yeast bread during the week.

Speaking of yeast, I accidentally doubled the amount of yeast I needed. My plan was to make two recipes of dough. I wound up with four. I kept half plain and added spinach and sundried tomatoes to the other half. It looked pretty, but didn't taste all that different. Next time, I'll load up on the tomatoes to get a really intense flavor.

For sauce, I made a simple tomato sauce using Muir Glen's fireroasted canned crushed tomatoes and the remainder of my dried tomato powder from the Spice House in Milwaukee. I stick blended the crap out of the hot pulpy remains, which threw splotches all over my cabinet doors. It won't come off, so I now enjoy a smattering of pink dots on the otherwise white cabinets.

Toppings were the responsibility of the party guests. Several are vegetarians, and they brought many veggies, goat cheese (yum) and an assortment of faux meats. Especially disconcerting was the fake bacon. I avoided it. Everything else was delicious, and the crust was perfectly crispy. More salt in the dough next time.

As for last week's Bastila? I ate it all week. Though the crispiness was gone, the spices (especially the cinnamon) held up well. I'd do it again, anytime.

new goal: cooking on sundays

New Goal: Cook something new on Sundays. Even if it turns out crummy, if it doesn't taste good, if it is expensive and probably unsuited for a single person to eat all week.

I have several dozen cookbooks that were either inherited or given to me by epicurean-minded family friends. It does include some basics: Joy of Cooking, Better Homes, America's Test Kitchen's Best Recipes. It also includes a growing variety of Junior Service League cookbooks, local interest (Jayni's Kitchen), thorough and detailed master cooks (Julia's The Way to Cook and two from Chez Panisse), and books focused on a single theme (Bread, Pizza, Olives, Tea).

So, with my life all but static and my Sundays unencumbered, I get to do something challenging and delicious. I love to eat, I love to cook, and I will experiment my way through these collections.

TONIGHT:

From San Francisco a la Carte, by the Junior League of San Francisco
Gift from the Dexters

Bastila!

This was the recipe I fixated on when I first leafed through the book two years ago. Bastila (or Pastilla, as Wikipedia tells me) is a Moroccan pigeon pie. Lacking pigeon, chicken is usually substituted. It involves a long list of spices (cumin, ginger, saffron, cinnamon, etc.), phyllo dough, almonds, eggs...yum. Had to fork over for the saffron, but it's otherwise an inexpensive meal. Seriously rich: 6 eggs + 2 yolks and cup and a half of toasted almonds. And pretty, when all finished!

You assemble it in a 10-inch pan lined with phyllo, dump in all the fillings (almond, egg, chicken, then more egg), fold over the phyllo, bake, invert onto a plate, then sift cinnamon sugar on top and decorate with whole almonds.

I'll let you know how the leftovers taste. It'll lose the crispy-ness of freshly baked phyllo, but I think it will still taste great.

Crocodile Gena

Sam introduced me to Crocodile Gena last week. The songs are lodged in my head now, and I might have to learn Russian just so I know what they really mean. I'm submitting this in Erin's YouTube party tonight. I hope the other guests can appreciate the joy found in this Soviet-era animation, where a Crocodile, his fuzzy alien friend, and an old lady ride atop a blue train car, and sing about enjoying life. In a minor key.

I can't figure out how to post a YouTube video to blogger. I really have to switch hosts, or something. The link is below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KouvdnY01bQ&feature=PlayList&p=89F1DE6CCFA7AB61&playnext=1&index=8

sublime (-inal?) message.

Last night, I dreamed of ice cream. I think it was Gold Rush from Sylas and Maddy's. Yummmmm.

harassment

Monday morning, all permanent employees were required to attend training on what constitutes sexual harassment in the workplace. I pretended to be a full-time employee (which I do every day, full time, but that's another story) and went along for the ride. I will tell you this-if this guy from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment ever comes to your town, go. It's not that he's a notable comic, but this guy has done this program enough to make it worth your while. It's delivered with ease and humor. And he uses the word "tushie" a lot.

Most importantly, after this hour of sensitivity training, all who attended have the camaraderie of a shared experience. This is expressed in rehashing the events of the morning, laughter, and making slightly off-color remarks to your colleagues for the next three days. Just as long as we stop before the kids start flooding the gates for Kansas Day.