night at the fair...

Dutchess County, New York, is covered in farms. They're everywhere. The last fair I went to was the then-Del Mar Fair (apparently it's now called the San Diego County Fair, but that just sounds wrong to me), a pretty big one that seems to be dominated by vendor booths selling every product I've already glimpsed while flipping through shopping network channels. Although I half-thought the Dutchess County fair would be quaint, with a plethora of bunnies, I really didn't know what to expect from tonight's venture.

By way of comparison:
Del Mar Fair, from flickr.com's teamtauni (I forgot how to embed the credit, oh well).


Dutchess County Fair, from flickr.com's jeanphony.


It was a little quaint, but I'll take a plethora of bunnies over a plethora of ShopVacs any day.

More to the point, here's what I ate, with some help from B. There may have been some local fare among these. Note: I hadn't eaten anything between 9 p.m. Monday and getting to the fair at 4 p.m. Tuesday. I tried to prepare...

Started with kielbasa, potato and cheese pierogis (which, when eaten at a deli around the corner from my Bay Area elementary school, we pronounced as "piroshkis") from a stand whose awning blared "MILLIE'S." Three and sour cream for four bucks. Not bad, kinda gummy, but I was unfulfilled. Maybe I should have been more adventurous and tried the prune one.

But still hungry, so onto the chicken skewer. It was actually B's idea, but I ended up doing most of the eating. It was, again, okay. Yakitori-style chicken on a skewer. Not seasoned very much at all. Pretty basic.

Went on a couple of rides before having a corn dog. This was the culinary highlight of my trip to the Dutchess County Fair. Unfortunately, I couldn't handle the just-out-of-the-fryer, crispy-shelled, perfectly salted (and I don't even like salt) dog, dropping it about two-thirds of the way through. Also unfortunately for my taste buds, I'd given B's niece Riley a couple of bites. The girl had never tasted a corn dog before! So, glad she got to try a good one; sad I didn't devour the whole thing more quickly.

Then it was time for more serious fair fare. We found a spot at some picnic tables in the shade, and ventured out for more serious food. I came back with a pulled pork barbecue sandwich. It was basic, but awesome (but not as awesome as the corn dog). Meat, sauce, bun. Don't waste my time with accessories like pickles, you know? Other people had some weak-looking burgers, and fries that came in a cardboard bowl that looked like a dog food dish. Weird. (The fries actually weren't too bad.)

Had to drink something, too, you know? I'm a big fan of lime, so when I saw the "Lime Fizz" sign, it was, well, a sign. I guess the booth primarily purveyed lemonade, but we can get that anywhere, you know? Lime it was. The girl working grabbed a couple of limes, hacked them open, and juiced them. She poured the juice in a cup, squirted what I am pretty sure was simple syrup (sugar water), and added soda water. A few swirls of the straw, a sip - sublime. Get it? Sub-lime? Ahahaha, just kidding... (It would have been good with vodka, too. But that would likely have precluded going on any more rides.)

I think we headed out for more rides and a tour of the horticultural building. I saw a cow put its hoofs up on a teenage girl's shoulders and wasn't sure if it was some kind of stunt or something - I'm a city kid, remember? - but the look of terror on her face let me know... Fortunately, someone moved the cow and all was well. The girl was probably happy to sell it for any price at the 4-H auction.

Then we had to get a shake. These shakes are legendary (I guess). Chocolate, vanilla, strawberry. I was under the impression that they were something SPECTACULAR, like they workers shot the milk from a cow's udder into a cup, into which fell some kind of magical glittery ice cream and then with the first sip, we have world peace, and a unicorn is born right in front of you (maybe in the barn where the cow was mounting the girl), and there's no wait when leaving the parking lot post-fair. I got a strawberry one. It was - okay. The proceeds benefit the local 4-H, I think. (I just spent way too long looking at the fair's Web site and still couldn't find the info.) Good for them.

After walking around even more, we stopped for fried dough. It tastes better than it sounds. Kind of funnel cake-y, covered in confectioner's sugar - be careful not to inhale. I only had a few bites, as I was busy trying to cool my coffee down by alternately spilling it and blowing on it. Plus, I wanted to save what little room was left for a cream puff.

A cream puff? Yep. I'd been waiting alllll summer long for this cream puff, the favorite carny food of the fair's new director, which he'd raved about in the Hudson Valley Table magazine. I bought one; the chocolate syrup surprised me. It was kinda heavy. Maybe I'd been thinking about something more like a popover? Fluffier, you know?

But it was cool. B and I sat at a picnic table next to a radio booth that was blasting cheesy hair metal. We gave the popover our most valiant effort (I wondered why they gave us a knife - it was kinda tough). Then we called it a night and waddledheaded to the car. Naturally, I finished the cream puff on the way home. I had to - I waited all summer for that and I'll be damned if I wasn't going to finish it!

Now, if only we'd taken pictures...

in the meantime...

Since arriving here, I've done a little cooking. The photos are from when I made the dishes in SLC.
A repeat of the chicken vindaloo:



A repeat of the Thai potato curry; apparently, Caroline liked it:



I made the Nutella bread pudding again; that was good but my timing was off as two of the other four people I'm living with had just gone out of town and I was about to. It was a little too much, too rich, for the people left behind.

Got a puppy on July 1 and he's had some digestive problems, so recently my cooking has looked more like this:

C'mon, who doesn't love sweet potatoes, chicken, yogurt and rice? Speaking of the pup, it's time to walk him so I'm outta here... I hope to have more (and better) pictures up soon, and new dishes.

hey there, 'member me?

it's been a while. i actually was doing okay with the whole national-dish-a-week resolution - until i picked up the first week of may and moved to new york. no, not the city, but not toooo far from it, either.

don't exactly have my own kitchen, so it's been hard to stay up on cooking, but that should change soon. maybe another two months?

i made this buttermilk-chocolate cake when i was here in april for job interviews and dear friend (of the flame le creuset)'s birthday.

pictures and blurbs of the national dishes to follow.

Meals, Ready to Eat

for the MRE project (before)
Originally uploaded by Amelia PS

I received this e-mail Monday afternoon from my coworker and friend Matt.

"I'm working on an article about military MREs. As part of our extensive reporting on this very important topic, we've invited some of Utah's top chefs to come and review 20 of the military's infamous travel-ready meals.

"And I'm going to need some help.

"I need three people to help me cook & plate the MREs, beginning Monday at 9:30 a.m. and lasting for about two hours. Experience with these nasty things is nice, but not necessary. (I'll give a quick crash course on the preparation of these fine meals and then let you go at it.)

"If you're interested, please check with your editor to make sure it's OK to burn a couple hours this way and then let me know if you can lend a hand. The expressions on these gourmets' faces should be enough, but I'll also make it worth your while in other ways (read: booze.)"

Not noticing the email's timestamp, I assumed the request was for the same day (one of my days off) and I blew it off, looking forward to hearing about the results.

Apparently, response wasn't what he expected (or editors wouldn't OK the time), because he tapped me to help out next Monday. He thought it might be worth bloggin about. I hope so.




The Italian challenge went well – eventually. Pictures and a longer post TK.

Italian

Week one of the challenge was, well, certainly a challenge.

A bunch of old friends from my days at Starbucks were weaving in and out of town, and many of them started school on Monday, January 7. I wanted to host a shindig at my new place. Consensus was that Saturday night (which I usually work) would be best for most people.



(bradley, left, lexi, back of caroline's head, danielle, and ryan. it was late; we were tired. except brad.)

After looking through a cookbook one of my cousins put together with recipes from family friends, I decided to start with Italian food. Jamie's compilation, The World in My Kitchen, includes recipes from Raffaele "Lele" Malferrari, who grew up outside Bologna. Apparently Lele loved bean soup as a kid, so Jamie included its recipe. She also included one for lasagna verdi al forno (baked spinach lasagna) that included bechamel and a ragu.

The pasta di faggioli, Lele's Bolognese bean soup, looked easy enough on paper. I soaked the navy beans overnight, and then some. The aroma of olive oil and garlic filling the kitchen was heavenly. Things were going well until the oil started splattering all over! I hurried and turned it down, but that front right burner runs extra hot. After I added parsley and tomato puree, the saucepan calmed down. I cooked the beans in the FLAME! oven, which also runs hot, and I can't believe those didn't burn.

After running the beans through the mini-chopper (oops! I guess when I read the recipe the first time, I didn't see anything about a food mill - which I don't have), with cooking water, I set the mush - not exactly puree - aside in a big china serving dish. I was trying to cook for the lasagna at the same time (I'll get to that) and was running out of stovetop food receptacles! After rinsing the oval oven and pouring the lasagna sauce into it, I rinsed the big pot and reassembled the beans and tomato/parsley/garlic sauce in it. I followed directions and added the rice and potatoes, but after waiting a while it seemed like the potatoes weren't cooking. So I covered it and turned up the heat.

If you're a real cook, you may have just winced at that.

I burned the soup. Didn't realize that was possible. And I didn't realize what was happening for a while, either. My phone was ringing off the hook and I was trying to concoct lasagna, and I probably didn't like the song on the radio, all at the same time.

As soon as I figured out something might be wrong with the soup, I pulled it from the heat, after playing musical chairs with the other pots on burners, and stirred it. When you can tell that the entire contents of the pot are rotating together, things are very bad. I used a spatula to pull up from the bottom of the pot, and there was my charred pasta di faggioli. I'm sure it wasn't the worst thing that could have happened, because it was surprisingly easy to scrape the soup from the charred part and keep cooking - after adding more broth, and going back to low heat.

The lasagna didn't give me any trouble, really. It was just more complicated than I expected.

Ragu alla bolognese - was supposed to be made with freshly ground chuck, which sounds like it would be damn good. But one of my presumed guests was vegetarian, so I substituted finely chopped (minced? I should learn the difference) portobello mushrooms. It turned out great - Danielle, the veg, loved it, and no one else noticed what was missing.

One of the ingredients for the lasagna was bechamel, a sauce made from butter, flour, milk, salt and pepper. It sounds fancy, and there are only a few ingredients, and it involves whisking constantly, so I was pretty intimidated.

Bechamel is the most forgiving sauce ever. I was mid-whisk when I noticed the soup crisis. I turned down the heat on the bechamel and dealt with the soup, and when I went back to whisking, the bechamel recovered marvelously. And I couldn't stop "tasting" it - next time I'll double the recipe, so there's extra for the lasagna.

I wanted to have dessert ready for my friends, too, but there was no way I could make something else. The boxed tiramisu (in keeping with the Italian theme!) from the frozen foods aisle worked GREAT.

Went well: Lasagna prep and cooking, chopping all the veggies the night before, substitutions. And we had such a good time!!
Didn't go so well: Figuring cooking times - when Caroline started into the soup, the potatoes still weren't done. Pot and pan and burner management - musical chairs on a stove is no fun. I went through the saucepan, the frying pan, the big pot, and the oval oven (that's all I've got) multiple times each before the meal was done. I hope that was a one-time thing.

I was given china when I got married that I had never used in three years. Well, why not now? We went through all eight place settings. I've never been happier to do so many dishes. Friends I hadn't seen in ages came by and ate and drank (and disregarded the vaguely squatteresque feel of the apartment). Dyson took pictures of the food, but I still haven't seen them. I only have the party pic, which is fine. Even though it felt like my head was spinning for hours, once my friends were over and food was done, it was SO worth it.

new year, new kitchen

I recently moved out of a long-term apartment and left a lot of things behind. My new apartment looked and felt naked, and I felt like it wouldn't be home until I made a meal there. The kitchen, especially, depressed me – drab white walls with a high ceiling and poorly designed "country kitchen" cabinetry, which probably magnified the empty feeling, because I could see what was missing behind the glass doors. It looked like there might be potential, but it was difficult to identify what was missing. Needless to say, I kind of avoided it.

Then a dear friend called on Christmas Day, asking if I'd received a large box in the mail. I said I hadn't, and he was upset because "they said it would be there by Christmas." I didn't know who this "they" was. We hung up, figuring the package had just been delayed. Leaving later that day to go do some laundry, I happened to look around the staircase that goes up through the center of the building, and caught a glimpse of a box in front of my apartment's vestigial door (it's probably left over from when the building was a house, or each floor was its own flat). That door doesn't have a number on it - it could be a closet as far as anyone's concerned. But there it was, the missing box.

I hauled it inside, and called him back to let him know I'd been mistaken. As I opened the box, I ended up leaving a long, rambling message of flabbergastedness – as close to speechless as I've ever been. The return address was The Chef's Shop, in Great Barrington, Mass., and inside were many goodies:



COLOR was what my kitchen was missing! It's funny how much of a difference that made once the tea towel and oven mitts were arranged just so by the stove, and of course that Le Creuset oval oven in FLAME! (which looks too small in the picture; must have been the angle) will stay on the stovetop. The gifts were an unbelievably generous move, and I can't wait to cook for the giver.

Its been very chilly here lately, so the first thing I made in the FLAME! pot was chili:


The super-high quality of the pot, and maybe even just the brand's reputation, really intimidated me! I still handle it very gingerly, even though that thing has more tough in its plastic oven-safe-to-450-degrees-lid than I do in my whole body. But the chefs at work assure me that I won't ruin it, and it'll cook everything. Kathy, the food writer, said, "You can even braise in it!" I replied that I don't even know what that is, yet. The coworker behind me assured me that I've done it a million times, whether I knew it or not. I looked it up in Food Lover's Companion, and nope, I've never braised. But I'll see if I can do that in week two of the...

...Food/cooking-related New Year's resolution! It got figured out Sunday with lots of help from my coworker Erin. I'll be cooking food from a different country every week. If I go out of town, I don't have to do that week (but probably will). Instead, I'll do at least two dishes the preceding or following week. Erin, a world traveler herself, had lots of good ideas about procuring recipes, so I'll only head for Bittman's World's Best Recipes if I abolutely have to.

I have this vision of heading to the African grocery store (I know the Salt Lake Valley has at least one), ingredient list in hand, then talking with an employee about me trying to cook, and hopefully getting suggestions for side dishes (such as injera, a flatbread – I'm learning already!) or cooking techniques that might help.

For week one - Italian! No, I'm not boiling up some Bertoli and throwing in some Prego (not that anything's wrong with that). On the menu this week, for a long-overdue shindig for old Starbucks coworkers, are pasta e fagioli (that's how FLC spells it), lasagna al funghi (subbing chopped portobello mushrooms for chuck in the ragu alla bolognese recipe) with handmade sauce and béchamel, and probably some combination of salad, bread and wine. I hope to have pictures of this - ideally with a digicam, not just my phone.

This is all happening in fewer than 24 hours, so I should probably get on the ball about it. Or at least start soaking some beans.