smitten kitchen

Am I glad I spilled out my frying pan angst to you all yesterday or what? This morning (and by “morning” I think we all understand that it was 1 p.m., right?), when faced with the task of an apple pancake recipe I’ve been wanting to make for eons, the thought using that stainless steel pan was enough to make me skip it.

But since two hundred and thirty two of you (approximating, you see) suggested I get back in with cast iron, I decided to give it another shot. I’ve had a big (and omg, so heavy!) 12-inch cast iron pan for years. It was a whopping $18 and I hear, supposed to be the best investment I’ve ever made. But despite my repeated no-soap, re-reseasoning and tomato-avoiding efforts, the seasoning had never gotten to that “nonstick-like” place. Or so I thought! This morning, I heaved that thing up onto the stove for the pancakes, warned Alex that this might be “bagel run” kind of morning in the end, after all, and got to frying those babies up.

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All right, people, time for a confession. This summer, for our third anniversary, our parents bought us a new set of pots and pans from the lovely All-Clad Master Chef 2 series. My last set, also a gift, dated back to 2000 and as much as I loved, loved, loved those Calphalon non-sticks with the clear glass lids, the nonstick was not only wearing off, I was ready to wean myself from it, and the annoying silicon-coated cooking utensils required to keep them intact. I wanted wooden spoons and metal spatulas and better caramelization in my cooking.

I love my new pots and pans, and they do everything good, heavy steel pots promise. Caramel? A cinch. Stovetop to oven? No problem! Gorgeously browned food? You got it. Eggs, potatoes and pancakes? Whoops!

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Is pumpkin pie as we know it broken? This is what I was asking myself at 10 p.m. last night as I had words I will only express in asterisks going through my head as I was in my twentieth minute of trying to push a pumpkin pie filling through a very fine mesh strainer.

The source of the recipe, as some of you may have guessed by now, was the November 2008 issue of Cook’s Illustrated, wherein seeking to make a more complex and less grainy pie, those clever people up in Vermont came to a few conclusions. Swapping out some pumpkin puree with canned yams resulted in a better pumpkin flavor, as did concentrating the flavor by cooking the filling on the stove top before filling the crust. They also found that a mix of a higher and lower baking temperature kept the pie’s custard from curdling (making the filling a bit coarse). And then they found that passing the filling through a fine mesh strainer resulted in a less grainy filling.

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More than six months ago, I had a dinner party and auditioned a then-new recipe for one of my favorite middle-of-the-freezing-winter dinner party dishes (short ribs) that was so good, I still weep a little when I recall it. I made a tarte tatin that was… well, it needed a little more cooking, and perhaps a Molly intervention And I made this onion tart, and we ate it with the cheese “course” and it was perfect in every way.

So why are you only hearing about it today? Well, as is all too common when I have people over, I forget to take pictures. Any pictures. I have not a single picture of either dish from that night. I am still not over it. I have brought shame to the food blogger community.

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We had an election returns nail-biting and wine-drinking gathering last night (I refused to call it a party until given good reason to) and so, well, to say I’m a bit slow today might be a bit of an understatement. That said, even as I scrubbed grimy, chocolaty fingersmears off the sides of champagne flutes this morning with a raging morning-after headache, I never regret a good party.

Nothing worse than coming to a party around dinnertime that doesn’t actually provide dinner. But, since I didn’t want to have a dinner party, but the kind where you could come and go as your schedule allowed, hot food was out. Instead, we settled on cheese and breads, olives and salads, like this one.

Now, I love cauliflower. I always have. I like it in pasta, I like it in gratins (coming soon!), I like this dead-easy silky cauliflower soup and I like it curries and salads.

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