smitten kitchen

Don’t laugh, but I think this post might be the closest I have come to service journalism on this site. I say this because, honestly, I have no idea what I am going to do with three batches of cranberry sauce I’ve cooked over the last week, but if at least one them makes it home with you, I suppose this effort won’t be a waste after all. Is this as noble and un-self-serving of me as it sounds? Of course not — I love cranberry sauce — I just have a little bit more than a two-person household should ever need.

I’m not sure if it was because I was a vegetarian and without the turkey, the cranberry sauce made no sense, because I thought it always came from a can in a fun-to-play-with but terrifying-to-eat cylinder, or because I just didn’t like it, but I never ate cranberry sauce growing up. It wasn’t until my first year in New York when I lived in a worn and infested fourth-floor walkup on Avenue B with my friend Dan that I had the real deal, and completely fell in love. Dan’s from Massachusetts and from what I understand, they take cranberry sauce pretty seriously up there, or at least he did, simmering, zesting oranges and carefully sifting through the rinsed bag for deflated or still stem-attached berries. This classic cranberry sauce recipe (which I am sure he’ll tell me I’m getting wrong) will always be my favorite, stirred into plain or vanilla yogurt or simply taken spoon-to-mouth. I hedge on the sugar a little, preferring it on the tart side, but I never skimp on the orange peel, as there’s a reason it is so often paired with cranberries: they bring out the best in each other. A few julienned or thick-zested strips in the sauce is one of my favorite parts; simmered in the stunning rouge syrup, they candy like an orangette, and are a fantastic surprise when you run across them in your hungry tasting. Lest you need any more evidence of its greatness, look how little we have left from a week ago.

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I don’t know about you but when I arrived at work yesterday I had both the appearance and seething demeanor of a wet cat. I don’t know what exactly the point of carrying my green flowered umbrella was, if to get utterly soaked just the same, making my way through two phone calls irked by a lingering unpleasant zoo-like scent that turned out be emanating my sopping wool pants. Yech! After work drink thing? Cancelled. Pedicure? Cancelled. Tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches? Oh, it was so on.

It’s funny, you know, when I talk about these “classic homey foods,” these “best childhood memory meals,” as I must confess that they’re not mine. We ate grilled cheese, but never tomato soup; we loved mac-and-cheese, but all I ever wanted was (of course) Kraft. I believe I had Campbell’s tomato soup a few times at friends’ houses, but never thought it was anything to write home about, as well as more than my share of tomato bisques at restaurants, but too often they reminded me of pasta sauces, excessive at even a cup at a time. But, with times as appropriate as this long, wet winter ahead and sources as good as, yet again, The America’s Test Kitchen Cookbook, this seems as good as a time as any to start making our own, because these recipes are keepers.

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As what would a weblog be without the at least occasional, melodramatic confession, today — a morning after which not a single new thing was prepared in the Smitten Kitchen last night (Tuesday’s yoga and volleyball night, and I’ll let you work who does what. Always such mystery!) — seems the perfect time to dislodge one of mine: Sometimes I cook things, love them to pieces, but hate the photos I took of the dishes so I never tell you about them. Can you imagine anything more pathetic? The pictures make me cringe so much that it upstages the deliciousness within! Could I be a little more crackpot, a little less rock-and-roll?

But as we’re in the midst of NaBloPoMo meaning that I won’t have to see these poorly-lit, blurry and color-jinxed photos on top for more than a day, let’s dig in, shall we? Because really, you should make these stuffed peppers. If anything could convert a stuffed pepper hater, it would have to be this. The filling was so good, possibly a new favorite couscous dish, that we ate the extras (there was a bit) freely and eagerly. As it makes four peppers, it’s the perfect two-night meal and they keep wonderfully in the fridge. For the feta component, we’ve developed a strong liking for both French and Bulgarian fetas – they’re a little softer and less salty than their readily-available Greek counterparts, and enmeshed wonderfully with their surroundings. I also added a few tablespoons of tomato paste to the mix, because I love it, and because it helped all the flavors come together. Ugly picture be damned, I want more of this right now. (See how this exercise has forced me to grow?)

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Because it’s fun for me, I’ve decided that today is the day that I will embarrass my former boss. You see, she and I are two of a very small group of girl-types in a very boy-dominated sector of publishing, and while I would normally argue that gender stereotypes are old, tiresome and played out, in our professional realm at least, they’re fairly rightly-placed. While the guys go on in great lengths about (pick one, or all of the below) the Red Sox, Giants, hockey, PlayStation, Borat, You The Man Now Dawg website, beer and where it doesn’t cost much and the Joy of Street Meat, she and I would spend an at least equal amount of time and devotion chattering about all aspects of food and cooking as, just my luck, she is as obsessed as I am.

Having excellent taste, she loves chocolate and Guinness in a near-equal ratio, thus when I happened upon this recipe many, many months ago, I bookmarked it for the express purpose of making for her birthday. In the months since, she’s moved onto bigger better things – Full-time freelancing! Breaking even! Subverting the dominant paradigm! (fine, I added that) – this recipe has drilled such a hole in my bookmarks, I was unable to ignore it any longer, busting it out for the birthday of a friend who ended up stuck in the airport from LA and didn’t make back in time for Sunday night’s dinner party and a sampling of her cake, which as it turns out, we were more than capable of enjoying without her. [Is this sentence still on? Because, really, I feel no need to stop.]

Now, I’ve explained before that I’m not a huge fan of chocolate cakes as I think all that egg, flour and baking powder dilute the inherent charm of true chocolate, leaving you with things that taste “chocolatey” but are not that bite I crave, covet and occasionally dream about. But this cake is really fantastic. The beer gives it a richer, fuller, nuttier flavor while keeping it from leaning too heavily on the sweet side; the sour cream makes it an exceedingly moist cake that is neither mushy or unstructured, without requiring any additional basting, sealing or prayer to keep it on this side of the texture of stale cornbread; and the chocolate ganache on top with a hint of coffee is like the crowning third of the flavor trifecta. This cake kicks butt.

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When Alex woke me up this morning, I was certain, and not for the first time, that he was indeed smoking crack, as it couldn’t have been even 4:30 in the morning, nonetheless 8. Someone really ought to tell him he can go back to bed for a couple hours, I mused to myself, but determining this to be a too-depleting energy expense, I simple rolled over and pretended he wasn’t there. After all, if he simply fails to wake me up this morning – if it is simply not possible – he’ll eventually have to give up and I will be able to sleep uninterrupted, forever. I am nothing if not the height of rationality in the morning.

Anyway, it didn’t work, I am sleepy and now here we are, aren’t we? Let’s step back to a more pleasant time, say, yesterday evening when this fatigue was incurred. It was a good cause, and I have no regrets, most importantly, none of the kitchen bounty variety. All of my obsessive prepping for the dinner for ten eight six, a sly excuse for what was really a chair-warming party, paid off. Even better, I cooked nothing I wouldn’t make again, thus breaking the cardinal party-planning rule of never auditioning new recipes on dinner guests did not bite me in the tush afterall. Having such fine and well-tested resources as Leite’s Culinaria and Cook’s Illustrated, of course, helped too.

Recipe the first was for shrimp cocktail. Seeing as my husband loves cocktail sauce almost as much as he likes pickles – “I would eat anything dipped in it,” he says with not a hint of joking – when I saw that the America’s Test Kitchen Cookbook had a sinfully easy recipe for it, I couldn’t resist. Appetizers should always be as simple as opening a few bottles and mixing with a spoon. As for the accompanying herb-poached shrimp, I can’t say with any certainty that the flavors of the stock get imparted in the shrimp. I’d probably just splash the wine, lemon and maybe a garlic clove in the water next time, saving a step or two. And also? We got such a giggle out of the specification of four peppercorns, and even more out of the scandalous act of tossing in seven, and not five, coriander seeds. We’re all rebel yell, aren’t we?

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