On Cooking: #3 in 50

I see we should be around day 15 of 50, but alas – it is only day 3. So I’ll just list the new things made in the meantime – delicious things, but things that I got too busy to blog about: rabbit stew with homemade dumplings, sautéed chicken with porcini sauce, broccoli with buerre blanc, braised lentils, the ever-present frittata combos in our house, a sweet potato/Israeli couscous dish I will never repeat, oriecchette with mushrooms, and oven-roasted beef tenderloin (new method for Thanksgiving). That brings us to …

White Chicken Chili. I love this dish, but have never been satisfied with my attempts at it. So I reached for the Jan/07 recipe in Cooks Illustrated (my cooking education and companion). Highly recommended.

As in war and armies, you go to cook with the ingredients you’ve got. I had only boneless/skinless thighs instead of 3# whole breasts (which meant so skin for browning or bones for stock). I also dropped the anaheim/poblano/jalapeno chili combo quantity by 1/3 (after all, I have children to think of) and subbed in 4 tomatillos. Since I was short on chicken I dropped in one length of andouille sausage for that optional kick. After making it a day ahead to blend flavors, I served it with the following toppings: scallions, limes, cilantro, minced jalapeno, and sour cream.

We ate almost the entire pot (plus some cornmeal biscuits). Michael’s response – “woo-hoo-chakalaka-boom-boom!”

love to you all - andy

(cross-posted at Facebook)

On Cooking: #2 in 50

So I am a week late, but here we are. As a reminder, my goal is 50 new recipes over 50 weeks to expand the ol’ home repertoire. Sound easy? try it sometime. Week #2 was Baked Lamb Shanks (also via Cook with Jamie, p. 162). Lamb shanks, sage, thyme, butter, garlic, salt, pepper – all piled on top of finely sliced carrots, onions, and leeks, then wrap in foil, tip in a glass of wine, and cook for 2.5 hours. Witness the raw ingredients:


(props to Ela for taking the picture for her dad: my hands were filthy, and we can work on her focus).

So what was so fun about this recipe:

1) It’s lamb! I love it, but this is the only the second time I cooked it. I couldn’t resist the noise: “what’s this bleating of sheep in my ears?”

2) It’s meat. Ok, I love meat: all the Cornetts do. But we, like most Americans, eat too much of it, so I’ve been cutting down our portions. The two times I’ve cooked meatless, I’ve endured long, mournful glances from the children before one of them gets up the courage to ask, lips trembling, “Dad, what happened to the meat?” Lamb shanks don’t give you a ton of meat, but just enough.

3) It’s the first time I frenched a bone: something I’ve wanted to do, but never really had the excuse. This was fun, and not as hard as I expected.

The end result was delicious: I tucked in with a good will, and I think the others all tried some. But let’s just say it’s not a meal fit for a sweltering August night in south Florida. Think early December, up north, with cold winds outside and steaming potatoes alongside the toasty packages on a platter.

In other cooking news, let me share two recent developments. After a hearty dinner of a homemade Tuscan Bean Stew, Michael pushed back has half-eaten bowl and said: “Dad, can’t we just have canned soup next time? I mean – can’t we just trust Publix?” Oh, Michael – you don’t want to trust canned soups. Second, I have decided that my current guilty pleasure in cooking is pancetta. Expensive? Salty? Fatty? Yes. Delectable? Oh yes. In small amounts – omelettes, pastas, arugula salads, and more – it’s both worthwhile and economical.

Love to you all - andy

(cross-posted at Facebook)

On Cooking: 50 in 50

Some of you know that I love to cook. I’ve tried to analyze why: it’s the creative outlet, it’s the routine, it’s the necessity, it’s the joy of fresh whole ingredients, it’s the satisfaction of doing well at something others enjoy – and yes, it’s because I love to eat.

But lately I feel like I’ve been in a rut. So two things are happening: (1) I’m making a list of new recipes, and (2) Robin signed up so for this 2x/month organic co-op fruit-and-veggie box which will force me to use things outside my normal repertoire (like the fresh globe eggplants I turned into “Operation Grilled Baba Ganoush” last night – don’t think that campaign went over very well).

That means I have a goal of using 50 new workable recipes this year (I cook for my wife and kids, after all!), trying out one new dish in each of the 50 weeks. I’ll keep a running log for you of what I’m cooking, where it’s from, and how it went. It has the added bonus of stretching me to write about something outside my normal zone. And if it helps inspire you in any way about what you put on your table, then so much the better!

Just a teaser from this last week: summertime tagliarini(via Cook with Jamie – a 447-page effort by Jamie Oliver). Think smashed pine nuts, copious olive oil, lemon juice and zest, flat-leaf parseley, parmesan, pecorino, sea salt and pepper, and hot fresh pasta. Killer good.

Love to you all - andy

(cross-posted at facebook.com/AndyCornett)

hey, what's for dinner?

It's no secret that since Andy has taken over the kitchen, this girl has basically forgotten how to cook. Well, it's not completely true, but the meals for which I am responsible are involved and extravagant: meatballs, lasagna, pizza, calzones (apparently I am Italian?), all from scratch. So on the evenings that Andy's not home to feed us (4ish each week), I'm usually at a loss for what to do. I don't like to touch or look at raw chicken. You can really only eat spaghetti so many times each month before they start complaining. I don't like TV dinners. Or Hamburger Helper. Or canned, sodium rich soups. Andy can make a gourmet stir fry out of just about nothing. Not I.

Last year, I met this couple, Brad and Darlene, who owns a little store over in the Cape called Dinner by Design (site). The deal with this is that you place your order, go into the kitchen, and make a bunch of meals at once. Then you take them home and throw them in the freezer to have at any point in the month. At first, it sounded a little strange to me, but I tried it, and it's actually fantastic. First off: yes, you are making frozen dinners. However, instead of getting a frozen dinner at the grocery store that has unpronounceable and incomprehensible ingredients in it, your dinner has real chicken, veggies you recognize, and seasonings that you put in yourself. So you still actually know what you are feeding your family. When you go into the kitchen, there is a separate station for each meal option and everything is ready for you to put together. The best part is that Brad and Darlene follow right behind you and clean up. I want them to come to my house too!

I don't normally do shameless plugs on here, but if you are in the Fort Myers/Cape area and are meal challenged at all, Brad and Darlene are just awesome. My children love the dinners (I went last night and Elanor said "Mommy, I love the design dinners. I am so glad you are getting more design dinners!"). A full meal will do for us for two meals, especially if Andy's not home for one of them, but generally even if he is. They also do half meals if you're just cooking for two (or, like a lot of my friends, two actual eaters). If you don't have time to go in and make the meals, you can pay a little extra and they'll make them for you and you just pick them up. The last two times I've done it, I've gone in with friends and it's a lot of fun to do together.

If you're in my neighborhood, give it a try! If you're not, look anyway and see if there is a kitchen near you. You can't get any nicer than Brad and Darlene, but I imagine the food at the other ones is just as good.

on cooking

Most of you know that I love to cook. I've recently been reading Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto (oddly enough as research for a theology paper), and I wanted to share with you a long quote from this simply marvelous little book. Enjoy!

"As cook in your kitchen you enjoy an omniscience about your food that no amount of supermarket study or label reading could hope to match. Having retaken control of the meal from the food scientists and processors, you know exactly what is and is not in it: there are no questions about high-fructose corn syrup, or ethoxylated digliycerides, or partially hydrogenated soy oil, for the simple reason that you didn't ethoxylate or partially hydrogenate anything, nor did you add any additives. (Unless, that is, you're the kind of cook who starts with can of Campbell's cream of mushroom soup, in which case all bets are off.) To reclaim this much control over one's food, to take it back from industry and science, is no small thing; indeed, in our time cooking from scratch and growing any of your own food qualify as subversive acts."

I'll cheat and give you his rules of thumb: "Eat Food. Mostly Plants. Not too much." Breathtakingly simple, and profoundly wonderful. All the best things usually are. Into the subversion!

UPDATE on 9.6.08 - I planted some plants. I think they are growing. Of course - the goal would be to eat them, or rather, eat what they produce. I give myself a 53% chance of it working ...

yesterday

So, yesterday found me writing my resignation letter for Covenant. It was weird, really - ending something but at the same time continuing it. Effective March 21, I and most of our staff will no longer work at Covenant - but at New Hope Presbyterian. Of course, working out of the house will be a change ...

In other news, I tried to start a kitchen fire last night. You know I love to cook and I was in a rush (due to an hour long grocery trip with the kids) so i didn't put all the groceries away which meant that there was no counter space (we have little enough as it is) and so I put the Joy of Cooking on the back of the stove (yes, you can tell what's coming) and 45 minutes later while stirring risotto I said ...
"That doesn't smell like roasted pork or sauteed greens!"
... and what did my eyes behold but a half-moon bright orange glow partially obscured by a smoking white book. Yes, the Joy of Cooking was en fuego, my friends! I yelped, grabbed it, flipped it over (such a nice bubbly-brown ring pattern!) splashed it with water ... and went back to cooking. It now sits happily back on the shelf.

And in still other news, I finally started reading, for the first time (gasp!), The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Sallinger. Maybe that's why I am feeling random ...

UPDATE (3/16 evening): if one accident wasn't enough this week - I tried to slice off my left index finger tip on Friday night. I was slicing homemade bread (yes, that is another kitchen misadventure worth its own post) when my super-cool super-sharp knife (thanks David and Rabia) went into my finger, not the bread. After the instaneous moment of thought "why'd the knife meet resistance OH MY GOSH that's my FINGER not the crust!" I had to quit the crouton-making business and go for the bandaids. All I could find was this "Cars" movie-themed one - thanks, kids. It beat the Little Mermaid, though. Oh - and I finished Catcher in the Rye, and it wasn't what I was expecting. That book grew on me - I didn't like it until about 1/2 way through. I can see why your average teen finds something to cherish in its pages. More on that later. Oh - and it was our last Sunday at Covenant. Hello New Hope!

80-proof pie crust

So I love to cook for Thanksgiving. After these ten years together, Robin and I have cobbled together a menu of Cornett favorites that we just cannot wait to make. This year I added in a new one: Dutch Apple Pie (the recipe is from Cooks - a magazine that basically taught me everything I know). But there was a twist. A few days before Thanksgiving I ran across a Cook's recipe for fool-proof pie crust - and having several bad experiences with pie crust behind me, I gave it a shot. It called for using 1/4 cup cold water mixed with 1/4 cup cold vodka as a replacement for the miserly 4-6 Tbs of water used in most crust recipes. Why? Because the 40% alcohol content of vodka lets you increase the liquid but not increase the water (which bonds with the flour to make the sticky tough gluten that can curse a dough ). So you get plenty of liquid to make a really soft, stretchy, pliable dough - but one that cooks up very tender, flaky, and un-boozy (because all the alcohol cooks off in the baking). I had to try it. So after calling a friend to locate our nearest liquor store on Wednesday, I made the dough. It looked weird, felt weird, and I was sure I was wrong ... but the result was amazing. And the pie - it was so good I ate it for breakfast the next day and the next day. Now I just have a really nice bottle of vodka in the frig waiting for its next use ... can you say penne alla vodka?