smitten kitchen

Despite the fact that it takes some kind of crazy to cook a separate meal while embedded in preparing a multi-course meal for a dinner party, yet another night of take-out — even from my beloved Kitchen Market — seemed unbearable last night, and seeing as it was the first night of Hanukah, it was only appropriate to make a batch of latkes. But tradition is so boring, isn’t it? Thank goodness for Food & Wine’s deliriously enticing latke-vodka party (this is the second year in a row I am kicking myself for not having one — 2007 Deb, get on that!), pairing them with the wasabi cream topping, the suggested accompaniment for the sweet potato variety. Awesome, awesome. We skipped the caviar and what-not on top as only one of us would have loved that and it was not the person standing over the stove, tra-la-la. It all went perfectly with a lightly-dressed napa cabbage salad and, you betcha, a hefty glass of wine.

And now, the kitchen yet again beckons. Soup! Tarts! Salad! Cheater’s creme anglaise! Those croutons aren’t going to toast themselves, lady.

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I’m so torn today, people. I’m trying to maintain that whole stiff upper lip thing because complaining that waah, my shoulder hurts more, and boo, the bruises are getting uglier and also, my left foot is mysteriously swollen, isn’t going to solve anything. I mean, bitching and moaning? I hear there’s a real shortage of that on the internet. On the other hand, sometimes just the smallest amount of venting — petty as it may be — is all it takes so simply get over oneself. I mean, I fell down the stairs, did I think the next couple weeks were going to be a cinch? Like, duh.

But since I’ve already slipped into my less-savory side for the moment, can I mention the big purchase Alex and I made last week? The thing I’ve been wanting forever and finally managed to justify the expense? That thing would be ice skates. I think they’ll arrive today. Raise your hand if you think I should go ice-skating with a bruised shin and my dominant-side shoulder in a sling. Hello? Anybody? So there’s that, too. (But its sweet the way everybody is trying to protect me from myself.)

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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.

The second cranberry sauce is Alex’s mother’s recipe and his family’s absolute favorite, despite my efforts to convert them to the back-of-the-bag classic. It’s terrifyingly simple (I’ll let you find out for yourself at the end, but promise that you’ll laugh), but I’m warning you, addictive. With mixed berries and walnuts, it seems more dessert than dinner, in my opinion, and the spoonful we had over vanilla gelato two nights ago was almost unbearably delicious. Alex’s mother told him she had a new recipe to try this year - something with jalapenos and ingredients that scare me - and he said, “sure, sounds good, but only if you make the other one, too.”

The final recipe is a new one and for the record, my husband was absolutely horrified at the thought of it, but I persevered. I mean, port? Love it. Balsamic? Ditto. Dried figs? Yum. Black pepper? Intriguing. Rosemary? Could be. Brown sugar? Hells yeah. All together with cranberries? Er, ah, uh… it took me an hour to even try it and even now, I’m just not sure I fell in love. (Right now, Alex is biting his tongue, but I’m sure it won’t be long until he says “told you so!”). It’s… (hang on, let me try it again)… wine-y. I think it would go well with turkey, or even some roasted potatoes. I’m just not sure it’s good for spooning, and if there’s anything the above two recipes should hint to you, it’s that I like the stand-alone cranberry sauce. At your Thanksgiving table, however, I’m sure it will get no complaints, a sauce for the sauced grownups, if you will.

In site-related news, I’ve added a Tools tab at the top-right there, which links to the beginnings of a conversions and ingredient exchanges page. There will be more to come — most urgently, weight conversions for Europeans — but it’s a start, and I hope it helps.

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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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As you may have noticed, I’m not the kind of person who just throws together things in the kitchen without a map, compass, 637 glowing reviews on Epicurious or a friend’s sworn assurance, sometimes written, that a specific recipe is a guaranteed to blow the ennui right out of your taste buds. Sure, I’ll make small adjustments while I work on something to accommodate our personal preferences, but aside from pasta sauces, eggs and salad dressings, I rarely go it on my own intuition.

You see, my intuition has led me to all sort of unsavory places, in and out of the kitchen, though I’ll save the latter for another time, or say, encyclopedia volume. As for cooking, one time, my homemade oatmeal made me so violently ill, I had to cancel a date. (Though perhaps, that was some conniving intuition, after all, as it was not with Alex. Cue: swoon or nausea.) The milk, as it turned out, was not past is expiration date but most-definitely rancid. (The sniff test on all dairy products, from those from a friend’s fridge to restaurants with $40-entrees, has since been instituted, offended sensibilities be damned.) Another time, I tried to bread and pan-fry tofu - because how hard could that be - and created a dish that was so foul, just the memory of it has killed my hunger pains for lunch. So, as you see, these days I use recipes to anchor my cooking urges to a safe harbor.

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