the SIMMER blog

left over and over

In the days after a dinner party, I eat well... and badly. Well, because I always overbuy: too much of too many ingredients for the dinner party itself, all good things, and things that I don't want to go to waste. So lunch on those days looks less like this: 

 
And more like this:

 
Which leads to the "badly" part. Dinner party food tends to be rich food, and to keep it from going to waste, I eat more of it than I should. I've been known to make hot chocolate from half-and-half because I can't think of a better way to use it. It's delicious, but not smart.

But after our most recent dinner party, I did okay: not too much pasta left over, all the appetizers gone, and most of what was left was good for me. Which led to several straight days of these:

 
Beet, endive, and goat cheese salad, with a little olive tapenade turned into vinaigrette with lemon juice and olive oil. Light on the cheese and heavy on the beets. And some jicama for crunch.

 

Which was not only delicious, but kind of photogenic, and the kind of thing that people might even eat on purpose. My side dish, not so much:

 

(I cut the centers out of Bouchon walnut bread to make truffled walnut toasts with homemade ricotta, but of course I hated to see the non-centers go to waste! They made perfectly decent toasts to eat alongside my salad, though they were obviously not the easiest bread in the world to butter.)

an oldie but a coney

I've had this blog for several years now (wow!) and while a lot of things have changed (font! layout! photography style!) some things haven't.

 
National Coney Island still mails Coney Kits, and we still chow down on the contents, cheerfully.

 
For more about coney dogs and why they mean so much to my Michigan-connected family, check out this post from 2008.

original analogy contest at writer unboxed

Just a quick note: like analogies? Like books? Like laughing? You should enter the Original Analogy Contest over at Writer Unboxed. The deadline's tomorrow, so hurry!

(Quicker than a greased cheetah with its tail on fire! Or somesuch.)

Read entries and rules and enter your own analogy in the comments of this post. Good luck to you!

wordless wednesday lvi

 

sometimes, it's just lunch

Lest you think it's all multicourse meals and Guinness themes and extravagant tapas around here, I thought it might be fun to look at a few everyday things that happen in the Simmer household.

For one thing, this is a really bang-up lunch for me:

 
Reheated lentil soup + cheese + sriracha. Perfection.

And I often make lunches for my husband to take to work. A demonstration of the ways in which these meals pretty much define non-extravagance:

Meat and veg:

 

Meat and veg:

 

Meat and veg:

 

You get the picture. Literally.

more praise for the kitchen daughter

Oh, yay! Things are coming along nicely with the prep for the April launch of The Kitchen Daughter. Some of what's going on, it's too early to tell you about, but here's something I can share with you: new quotes from fellow authors who love the book!

“A delectable family drama, The Kitchen Daughter whips up a sumptuous blend of suspense, magic and cooking. A nourishing debut.” -Allison Winn Scotch,  New York Times bestselling author of THE ONE THAT I WANT and TIME OF MY LIFE

"The Kitchen Daughter is tender, charming and not at all what you expect—which is what makes it a true gem.  A beautifully written, boldly thought out tale of a young woman with Asperger’s syndrome suddenly alone in her childhood home after the death of her parents.  An unlikely heroine—long overdue—Ginny Selvaggio teaches us what it means to accept the magic in our lives, to never give up what we know to be true, and to honor who we are.  The end is exquisitely rendered, unexpected and hugely moving.” – Monica Holloway, author of COWBOY & WILLS and DRIVING WITH DEAD PEOPLE

Only three months now til the book hits shelves, and we've got a lot of things in the works -- looking forward to sharing more and more of them with you as the big day gets closer!

guest post! partridge in a pear tree

Jael here -- I cannot tell you how SUPER excited I am to have a guest post on the Simmer blog, and most importantly, THIS guest: my mother Lynnea. She's an inspiring woman, an impressive project manager (see below), and a really phenomenal cook. I'm thrilled to be able to have her speak to you directly with her own words and pictures about a recent charity dinner, and a recipe you'll want to file away for next Christmas -- if you can wait that long...

---------------------------

In our home the Christmas tree always stayed up until at least January 6, which we referred to as Ukrainian Christmas in honor of my immigrant grandparents who would have followed the Julian calendar. Even by today’s calendar, it makes sense when you realize that December 25th is really just the first day of Christmas. You can extend the season by celebrating the 12 days of Christmas and then Epiphany, when the Magi are said to have brought gifts to the Christ Child. (Besides, it gives us a reason to postpone putting the decorations away.)

This year I used the season as an occasion to organize a fund-raising dinner to help support the programs and ministries of our church. Using The 12 Days of Christmas song as a theme, our team of eight prepared a 12-course meal served at a beautiful neighborhood bed & breakfast. We began with 12 Drummers Drumming -- coconut-crusted wild-caught Alaskan salmon “drumsticks” served with a pineapple yogurt dipping sauce -- and ended with A Partridge in a Pear Tree, a deconstructed roasted pear tarte tatin with ricotta almond gelato. 

 
(forgive the blur)

The fun part was planning the menu around the theme; the challenge was coordination and timing. One thing that could be made a couple of weeks ahead was the pastry for the deconstructed tart, which I froze and reheated briefly before serving.

My favorite recipe for pastry crust is the one my mother makes, from an old Betty Crocker recipe. It uses milk and oil and can always be pressed together if you have trouble rolling it out. For eight small tart shells, add about ½ teaspoon of salt to a cup of all purpose flour. Pour 2 T. vegetable oil and 1 T. milk into a cup (don’t stir). Pour all at once into the flour and stir with a fork. I find I have better luck if I’m a little generous with the liquids. It should look like this:

 

 
Press into a ball and roll out between waxed paper. To suggest a partridge wing, I placed sliced almonds on the bottom of the individual buttered tart pan:

 
I cut the pastry to fit, brushed the crust with a bit of sugar syrup, and turned the crust over into the pan, pricked it with a fork, and baked at 450 for about 7 minutes.

pretty as a picture

There are certain things every author I know hates. "Hate" is too strong a word, I suppose, but there are things we worry about and whisper over and commiserate about. One, we always worry that our review from Kirkus is going to be a knock-down, drag-out, rip-the-book-up pan. Two, we fear that if we set up a reading and signing at a bookstore, there will be no one in the audience but the janitor. (Literally true. Happened to a friend of mine.) We worry about anonymous reviewers ripping us apart on Amazon, about pirates downloading our books for free from illegal sites with impunity, about the positive, promising book buzz quieting and eventually resolving into absolute silence. Brrr.

And then there's the author photo.

Initially I told myself I was looking forward to it, because I do kind of like to have my picture taken under the right circumstances, but as the months rolled on and on and on and I still hadn't gotten around to calling anybody, I had to admit that I was putting it off. My words were going out into the world to be evaluated by strangers, wasn't that enough? Did my face need to be out there too?

But in November I finally bit the bullet, found a photographer via recommendation, set up an appointment, spent days obsessing about what to wear, and got the thing done.

And it's beautiful.

semi-Mexican gougeres

Mmmm, gougeres. Silky, fluffy, rich, and crispy, all at once. You melt butter in water on the stove, mix in some flour and beat in eggs one at a time, dump spoonfuls onto a sheet pan, and twentyish minutes later, you've got an hors d'oeuvre that doesn't need to be babysat. Perfect for any occasion.

Except when you're making them to serve with an ostensibly Mexican meal, including pumpkinseed molé, rice, and chiles en nogada. Oops.

But, if neither you nor your friends really want to make a big issue out of authenticity, you add two things to a regular gougere batter -- fresh raw corn and diced jalapenos -- and then you call it a day. A cheesy, silky, fluffy, rich, chow-em-down day.

Batter up:

 
Magically delicious:

 
And on the inside:

 
Ah, just rip it wide open for a better view:

 

Want a recipe? I left the bacon out (shocking, I know!) and added one seeded, very finely diced jalapeno to this recipe from Gourmet. I also reduced the amount of corn to one ear and didn't cook the kernels before adding to the batter.

(And of course I left out the chives. Chives are pretty much always optional, right?)

shrimp in pumpkinseed molé

The molé class I took at the Astor Center taught us several molés. Dark brown with chocolate and peppers, a sunnier tomato-based molé with chicken and almonds, a tangy, fishy one with dried shrimp. But the one that piqued my interest most, that I decided to make for my Mexican-themed dinner party, was a little thing called pipian.

It started with tomatillos:

  
If you haven't dealt with these (like my cashier at Whole Foods, who asked what they were), don't worry, it's not hard. You just need to take off the outer husk (not edible) and rinse what's left (it'll be sticky). Which leaves this:

 
It looks like a tomato on the outside, but not on the inside. No need to seed or anything. You just chunk 'em up and throw them in the food processor with onion, cilantro, peppers, and... oh wait, I just realized the recipe I have for pipian isn't online. Well, it's more or less like this one from Epicurious. A lot of pipian recipes seem to have peanuts, but the one we learned at Astor doesn't, so of course I'm sticking with the one I know best.

Before:

 
After: