smitten kitchen

I know that this is quite boring and stereotypical but I have PMS this week and my cravings come with, as my husband likes to say, “very specific instructions.” I wanted brownies. But, like every woman with a spastic relationship to her hips and, in turn their relationship the butter, sugar and 70 percent chocolate that makes our taste buds go round, I paused. And paused. How could I adjust my Very Strong Need for a bite of chewy, dense, bitter-laced homage to cocoa mass with my need for my favorite skirt to fit it my favorite way?

A-ha! I would make them tiny, and I would stash them in the freezer and eat but one each day. Just. One. I am brilliant, a master of compromise, I assured myself and got to work.

A while back, I confessed that my favorite brownie recipe in the entire world was the one I’d been making since high school — the “One Bowl Brownie” recipe from the back of the Baker’s Unsweetened Chocolate box. They are dense and chewy and moist with a thin crisp of a crust atop, they’re bitter-sweet and my god, you make them in one bowl! In a kitchen without a dishwasher, they’re a dream come true. Best yet, the actual use of Baker’s unsweetened chocolate is optional; they respond well to all levels of fancy.

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I got a real hoot (yup, said it) out of Molly’s entry a few weeks ago as her significant other and mine are clearly plucked from similar brine, that is, packed with a penchance for the pickled. (I’ll be here all week.)

One of the first big family events Alex took me to shortly after we began dating was a 55th birthday party for his father, no small affair, at a Russian restaurant. Course after course, platters arrived with pickled celery, lettuce and - I kid you not - watermelon to accompany the smoked fish, dumplings, caviar and all sorts of gamey meats. Do I need to mention the vodka? No, didn’t think so.

Nobody warns you that the food will not.stop.coming, thusly, don’t bother eating more than two bites of any course if you wish to make it to the end. I think its part of the fun for them, luring these newcomers in and watching them nod off at the table after too many sour cream-laden crepes and a misbegotten belief that they can handle their vodka like those from the old country. In fact, one of his family’s favorite stories to retell is when Alex brought home a friend from grad school and his mother laid out her typical 20-dish, 6-course feast (”I am worried I will not have enough food.”) including their favorite, pickled tomatoes. The friend had bragged that he couldn’t wait to try them, as they sounded delicious, but nearly spat his first bite across the table: “I didn’t know it was going to taste like a pickle!” he frantically tried to cover his tracks with while they laughed and laughed.

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I find it funny now — what with my obvious fascination with stirring up soups aplenty — that a couple years ago I didn’t care for them at all. Everything about the taste of vegetables boiled in flavored water until their structures compromised made my stomach turn and to this day, even the liveliest minestrone invokes a bad memory of flavor-sapped herbs and formless noodles. Even those that came close to passing muster were so laden with salt, I’d find myself aching for a glass of water after a bowl of something that was supposed to be soothing.

I think the turning point came with the Cuisinart Immersion Blender gift from our wedding registry. Nobody better describes my affection for it than Julie Powell: “Have I mentioned to you that I love love love my handy-dandy cuisinart wand? I love it the way other women love their vibrators.”

In one minute flat, it converts everything in the pot into a velvety consommé, bridging the disparity between ingredients (”No! I don’t want to hang out with the icky squash!” whines the orange-fleshed potato) like a mother insisting her children play nicely together. No more alarming boiled vegetable flavor, no more awkward, thin spaces between ingredients, with each spoonful the same as the last, I find these soups contemplative; a calm brought on by the knowledge that every spoonful will taste the same as the one before.

The pistou, which I was as skeptical of as I had been of the lettuce pesto, really brightened up the fall flavor and color with some spring, kind of like eating an orange soup on an 80-degree September day.

To also note, with two carrots, a sweet potato and onions cooked in butter, this soup lends itself towards the sweet side of the palate and I seasoned it a lot more than the recipe suggests to balance it. I also threw an extra scallion in the pistou to brighten it up. Finally, but not intentionally, I (ahem) browned the butter before sautéing the onions but you know what? That nutty taste was awesome, and stayed with the soup ’til the end. Dreamy, indeed.

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“Romaine? Like the lettuce?”
“Like the lettuce. And parsley, you make it into a pesto.”
“But not with basil?”
“No. And then you scoop out a tomato and you put it in the bottom and bake an egg in it.”
“I don’t know, Deb, it sounds kind of weird.”
“It does, right? I mean, pureed lettuce? Blech.”
“So why make it?”
“It’s calling to me.”

Sometimes, I don’t know what I’m getting myself into, and my husband — who was just going to grab some Murray’s Bagels for us — has pretty much given up trying to understand. But, I’ve had a whole week of errands, working late and after-work engagements and I haven’t had a single home-cooked anything since those wee tartlets and I was fiending for the kitchen by Saturday morning. Fiending.

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From the self-indicting delight of tiny infant fists gripping grownup forefingers to the calculated pinhole photography that lines my cubicle, I’m one of those girls, it seems, that can’t get enough of diminutive proportions. This absorption extends to the culinary world; from miniature artichokes and petite eggplants to pearl onions and microscopic zucchini, I find Lilliputian produce irresistible, and am incapable of not bringing them home by the bagful and readying them for their close-ups.

Baked goods are in no way spared these indignities. Puny cupcakes are always chosen over their brawny siblings, as are cheese puffs, scones and black-and-white cookies. “The more, the merrier!” I cheer until every flat surface (all three of them, that is) in our also-tiny apartment are filled with rows of one-bite delicacies and I exhaustedly wonder why I created three times the amount of work for myself.

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