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in case anyone had ever wondered:

Robiola does not belong in salad.

Let us not speak further of it; let us draw a curtain over the entire dreadful episode.

Takeout

[Somehow, I forgot to post this, back in May when I wrote it. And yes, the conclusions I came to here have held true ever since.]

There are some ways in which I am not a very good New Yorker.

I spent a good portion of this week getting the broadband in my apartment to work, fiddling with cables and typing commands, and so forth; when I finally got it all right yesterday, including tidying the cables (which was almost the worst part of the job), I was so tired I refused to cook dinner, and instead ordered Chinese takeout, that essential nutrient of the savvy urban dweller.

Chinese food — especially takeout — is more than a convenience in this city; it’s a lifestyle. There are people pretty much living on it, and despite the mass-produced origins of most of it, people argue for the superiority of one place’s dumpling’s versus another’s lo mein versus a third’s beef with broccoli. (And I’m not talking about Chinatown, but takeout holes-in-the-wall, with one or two sticky Formica tables and a backlit plastic menu over the counter.) I’m pretty sure that most of Fordham, NYU, and Columbia’s collective population survive on Chinese takeout (not takeaway, please note, the guys on bikes with plastic bags on the handlebars are a part of the landscape) and pizza.

It saddens me to confess I am no longer one of that number.

There was the triumph of hooking up broadband, the well-deserved reward of Chinese takeout, and then — it tasted, to use a technical term, yucky.

Asian food is one of my chief joys in life, up there with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, strawberry smoothies, and correct grammar. I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few years trying to learn how to make it myself (I am working on stirfrying tofu now), reading cookbooks, spying on men in the kitchens of Chinatown through gusts of tiger-lily colored flame. The result: I can no longer enjoy Chinese takeout.

The sauce for my shrimp with mixed vegetables was completely out-of-proportion to the dish and too salty. The rice was so dry that it scattered at the mere sight of chopsticks, and I ended up with a tablecloth of rice. The dough for the dumplings was thick and uncooked at the seams.

It all just tasted off in some indefinable fashion. Muddied, perhaps; I can accept the slightly overcooked vegetables and even the rice as the hidden surcharge for the convenience of having food brought to my door (that said, a friend of mine got ground glass in her shrimp a few weeks ago — no, I am not making this up — and that is not reasonable). But the sauce was simply wrong; it managed to be both greasy and too thin, while salt and fish were all I could taste,

When I tried to use it to moisten and clump the rice, figuring that would tame the saltiness, at least, it just sort of puddled there. Sauce is a dealbreaker for me, as you may guess; I don’t like celery in my mixed vegetables (I don’t like celery much period, actually), but it’s not a dealbreaker. Sauce permeates every part of a dish, infuses even where it isn’t really present.

I don’t think I can order Chinese from this place again, and given that it’s the best Chinese place in the neighborhood (I spent a lot of time determining this; I took notes), I suspect I’m kind of screwed when it comes to takeout period. The end of an era. :(

Tea!

Like nervousness, and nausea, it dangles from my heart to hang in the empty space below my ribs. It is a fragile thing, or it looks fragile, glimmering organically like fish scales, a hollow thing; but it is heavy, so wet and slick with gritty oil that I cannot grip it to gauge its weight or what it’s made of.

The sensation is curiously doubled; I am both hollowed out and heavy, gravid, slow-moving, sluggish in my thinking, and yet the air seems to be made of razors. If I so much as speak to ask for comfort in my torpor, the response is like an underwire bra, meant to support, to bear me up, but I cannot breathe, and it digs into my skin.

Describing the sensation of menstrual cramps is easy — as if everything below my ribcage to the pubic bone has been scooped out and scraped away — compared to this. To describe it in terms of the body (here, here is where it hurts) ignores the fact that it is not me, it is something alien to me, and I feel it most strongly second-hand: not my body itself, but the space in my body. It is tucked between my ribs and curls and cuddles up against my organs, lying sleek alongside muscle fibers. It echoes in those space, reverberates inside my heart.

I live with depression; I live with anxiety attacks. I live with Churchill’s black dog at my heels. But I live with other things too, I live with a cuddly cashmere sweater the color of a lake in upstate New York, I live with a fountain pen that leaks black ink on my fingers, I live with an electric kettle at my bedside.

The thing, the parasite, that has claimed me as its current food source, rears up and demands attention, shoves on my lungs until I cannot breathe, stretches out and weighs down my muscles. But there is steam rising from the kettle, calling me back, and I have to concentrate to pour the water in a clean ellipse into my mug. Color, pale gold and tawny brown, begins to extend tendrils into the water, and I watch, mesmerized, until the tea is ready.

It’s too hot to drink, and the cup is too hot to hold; all I can do is wait, fingers curled around the handle, and let my thermodynamic clock run down. There’s steam coming off the surface of the water-turned-tea, pale wispy breaths of warmth and I swear I can feel them clean the inside of my throat, locked tight, ease back the bolts so gently I don’t hurt.

You’re supposed to breathe when you have a panic attack, but as anyone who’s had them can tell you: that’s hard to remember, much less do, when you’re panicking. My palms are warm where they’re wrapped around the mug, and when I press them against the tendons at the back of my neck, my spine loosens, my shoulders slump. I inhale and lean back in my chair, press the cup to my breastbone so the steam can rise and open up my windpipe, my lungs. By the time the cup is empty, I can remember what I’m supposed to do when this happens, how to assess the severity of it, have a tenuous grip on myself again.

I don’t mean to suggest that a good cup of Earl Grey or spearmint can or should replace actual anti-anxiety medication or therapeutic techniques that are far more developed and empirically supported than my homemade remedy. But tea has its own clock, its own timetable, one that’s slower than the racing mind of someone whose brain chemistry is sometimes out of whack, and that is, at least partially, what we need: an adjustment, of how rapidly we’re breathing, our heart rates, the world spinning around us.

Blueberry pie of win

In my file of ‘posts to make on A Very Uncommon Cook’ is a scribbled note that reads ‘wtf is the difference btwn fud processors & blenders?’

Well, I have discovered at least part of the answer: you can’t make pie dough in a blender.

This apartment only has a blender. I wanted to try the Cook’s Illustrated foolproof pie dough that Bitten Word published a while back. The very first line of that recipe reads ‘Process 1 ½ cups flour, salt, and sugar in food processor until combined.’

Yeah. No.

I tried, honest I did. But the blender just whirred away, and the pile of flour and sugar and salt collapsed in the middle and then refused to move. Dubious now, I nevertheless perservered, and added butter and shortening, just as I was told. It was a well-meaning attempt that produced absolutely nothing that resembled pie dough, even pie dough in utero.

At which point I dumped the whole mess into a bowl and started hand-cutting the butter and shortening into the flour mixture. Which worked well enough that as I type, I have pie dough chilling in the fridge. The counter got a little messy, but I blame that on the fact that the bowl was a little too small for the amount of dough in it.

Okay, the dough is sufficiently chilled now; I will report back when I’m done wrangling blueberries!

Later:

I would kill for decent counterspace; have I mentioned that? Rolling out the dough was mostly painless — it’s not a very sticky dough, so it stuck to the rolling pin and the counter very little — except that I ran out of room for it. The filling is quite easy to make, although as blueberries tend to, it stained everything it touched purple (and delicious).

Speaking of delicious, that would not be an overstatement; the pie smells fantastic, the crust is flaky and tender, and while I think I should have thickened the filling more (or, you know, let it cool all the way before I started eating it — don’t judge me, I bet you wouldn’t have been able to restrain yourself either), it’s a great balance of sweet and tart, and I am so making this again.

Pie dough

  • 2 ½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon table salt
  • 2 tablespoons sugar
  • 12 tablespoons (1 ½ sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut into ¼-inch slices
½
  • cup cold vegetable shortening, cut into 4 pieces
  • ¼ cup cold vodka
  • ¼ cup cold water

Blueberry filling

  • 6 cups fresh blueberries
1 Granny Smith apple, peeled and grated on large holes of box grater
  • 2 teaspoons grated zest and 2 teaspoons juice from 1 lemon
  • ¾ cup sugar
  • 2 tablespoons cornstarch or ground tapioca
  • Pinch table salt
  • 2 tablespoons unsalted better, cut into ¼-inch pieces
  • 1 large egg, lightly beaten with 1 teaspoon water

Pie dough

  1. Process 1 ½ cups flour, salt, and sugar in food processor until combined, about 2 one-second pulses. Add butter and shortening and process until homogeneous dough just starts to collect in uneven clumps, about 15 seconds (dough will resemble cottage cheese curds and there should be no uncoated flour). Scrape bowl with rubber spatula and redistribute dough evenly around processor blade. Add remaining cup flour and pulse until mixture is evenly distributed around bowl and mass of dough has been broken up, 4 to 6 quick pulses. Empty mixture into medium bowl. Blend 1 ½ cups flour, 1 teaspoon salt, and 2 tablespoons sugar on a mid-size bowl. Add 12 tablespoons of cold butter and ½ cold shortening and cut in, using knives or a pastry cutter (which I do not have, and honestly don’t see the point of; I mentioned the size of my kitchen, right? the size of New York City kitchens, by and large? Just use cutlery, it’s a little more tedious, but it works just fine), until fats are broken up and mixture resembles coarse sand.
  2. Sprinkle vodka and water over mixture. With rubber spatula, use folding motion to mix, pressing down on dough until dough is slightly tacky and sticks together. Divide dough into two even balls and flatten each into 4-inch disk. Wrap each in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 45 minutes or up to 2 days.
  3. Remove 1 disk of dough from the refrigerator and roll on generously floured (up to ¼ cup) work surface to 12-inch circle, about 1/8 inch think.  Roll dough loosely and rolling pin and unroll into pie plate, leaving at least 1-inch overhang on each side.  Working around circumference, ease dough into plate by gently lifting edge of dough with one hand while pressing into plate bottom with other hand.  Leave dough that overhangs plate in place; refrigerate while preparing filling until dough is firm, about 30 minutes.



Filling

  1. Adjust oven rack to lowest position, place rimmed baking sheet on oven rack and heat oven to 400 degrees.  Put 3 cups berries in medium saucepan and set over medium heat.  Mash berries several times to release juices; I used a fork, but a potato masher would work well if you have one.  Continue to cook, stirring frequently and mashing occasionally, until about half of berries have broken down and mixture is thickened and reduced to 1 ½ cups, about 8 minutes.  Let cool slightly.
  2. Place grated apple in clean kitchen towel and wring dry. (I forgot to do this, and I doubt it made much difference.)  Transfer apple to large bowl.  Add cooked berries, remaining 3 cups uncooked berries, lemon zest, juice, sugar, cornstarch, and salt; mix.  Transfer mixture to dough-lined pie plate and scatter butter pieces over filling.
  3. Roll out second disk of dough on generously floured (up to ¼ cup) work surface to 11-inch circle, about 1/8 inch thick.  Slash a starburst into the dough, radiating out from the center, leaving a generous frame around it.  Roll dough loosely around pin and unroll over pie, leaving at least ½ inch overhang on each side.
  4. Trim bottom layer of overhanging dough, leaving ½-inch overhang.  Fold dough under itself so that edge of fold is flush with outer rim of pie plate.  Flute edges using thumb and forefinger or press with times of fork to seal.  Brush top and edges of pie with egg mixture.  If dough is very soft, chill in freezer for 10 minutes.



Baking

  1. Place pie on heating baking sheet and bake 30 minutes.
  2. Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees and continue to bake until juice bubbles and crust is deep golden brown, 30 to 40 minutes longer.
  3. Transfer pie to wire rack; cool to room temperature, at least 4 hours.  Cut into wedges and serve.

carrots!

In the file of things I can no longer buy anywhere but the farmer’s market: carrots.

There was a bag of baby carrots in the fridge, and I decided to have them with hummus for tea. Utterly, completely tasteless. Like firm, orange colored water.

Carrots, as far as I’m concerned, are one of the greatest snacks ever invented. Colorful, they make noise when you bite into them (okay, so they’re less than ideal at the library, but you can’t have everything), and they’re fun to peel. I realize not everyone shares my opinion on the last, but a vegetable peeler makes everything more amusing. Plus, the scrapings can go into stock.

It’ll be interesting to see what I do in December this year.

receipt-filing

I’m apartment-sitting for a friend who’s out of town for a few days; he lives in Brooklyn. So today I headed over to the Borough Hall farmer’s market.

Total bounty:

a little over a pound of tiny red potatoes ($4.25)
half a pound of shelling peas ($1.30)
2 cucumbers ($1.50)

There will be smashed potatoes and peas for dinner tonight, my friends. And If may — may — come visit on Saturday and buy a ridiculous number of potted herbs. And rhubarb. And strawberries.

As an update to my last post: I tried roasting the beets and carrots together, wrapped in foil, in a 375 F oven for half an hour; it was the most gorgeous thing ever, all crimson and shimmery (especially the carrots), but next time I think I’ll try putting some protein in there with it; maybe a white fish filet of some kind. It didn’t feel like a completed dish.

Today’s haul

Today at the farmer’s market, I picked up:

1 bunch of baby beets ($2.00)
1 bunch of wee carrots ($1.50)
1 bunch of swiss chard ($2.00)
4 empire apples ($1.00)

Perhaps there will be a swiss chard tart and roasted vegetables in my future.

(Unholy) Cherry-strawberry pie

I have returned, in triumph, from various familial obligations and Boston and whatnot, and I have summer lying on my doorstep to greet me! There were cherries and strawberries in my fridge this morning, and the air conditioning is on; the farmer’s market is open this Saturday before I go to dance class, and I’m hoping tto get he chance, in between manuscript critique and the vagaries of life, to clean up the balcony and put in a few more pots of herbs.

You’ll note I said that there were cherries and strawberries in my fridge this morning; they’re now in a sort of unholy — but delicious! — pie-like substance.

I have the good fortune to possess a convection toaster oven, which meant that I didn’t have to heat up the whole kitchen — which would have dissuaded me from doing anything no matter how interesting the thought — and which worked perfectly, both for the crust and the filling. Among the socks, crumpled confirmation numbers, ticket stubs, and the like in my suitcase was a bag of cinnamon-sugar pita chips. How I acquired this, I swear I do not know. In my considered opinion, pita chips are for hummus and precious little else. I cannot imagine I would have willingly purchased sweetened pita chips, and lay the blame at the feet of any of the dozen people I have been in cahoots with for the last week.

Regardless, there they were, and there was the bag of cherries, deep crimson and shiny-skinned, and the container of strawberries, all green-leaved and sweet-smelling. So I did what any sensible woman would do — I pulled down a rolling pin (okay, okay, I pulled down a bottle of rosé) and started banging the hell out of the bag of pita chips. When I had them crushed about as well as I was going to, I preheated the toaster oven to three-fifty Fahrenheit, opened up the bag and dumped the pita crumbs into a prep bowl with some applesauce. I could’ve used butter, as the Joy of Cooking instructs (which I discovered only afterwards; I pretty much reinvented the graham cracker crust this morning), but applesauce seemed like a perfectly sensible option to me at the time.

It was. I stirred the applesauce in until the crumbs were moist, pressed them firmly into a pie pan with the back of a spoon until there was an even layer (I didn’t have enough to bring them up the sides of the pan, annoyingly), and stuck it into the toaster oven for ten minutes.

While that was baking, I started hulling and slicing strawberries. I’d guess I had about ten ounces of berries, and they went into a bowl once sliced. I mentioned how the cherries were fresh, right? And therefore not pitted? Yeah. I pitted the whole bag. I have no idea how many that was, but my fingers were stained scarlet the rest of the day. When the crust was done, I let it cool for a while while I finished with the cherries, and let them and the strawberries macerate in a little lemon juice, about two-three tablespoons of sugar, about an equal amount of cornstarch (which I probably could’ve omitted, but I was hoping for some thickening of the juices). I poured in a little vanilla extract, and added a dozen black peppercorns — usually I use black pepper as an accent for blueberries, but I didn’t think balsamic vinegar, which is my favorite contrasting taste for strawberries (the strawberries pick up the sweetness in the vinegar, and the acidity opens up the sort of floral taste the berries have) would work too well here. If I’d had ginger, I might have used that, but I didn’t.

Once that was all jumbled together, and the crust was cool, I poured the fruit mixture into the crust and slid it back into the three-fifty oven. About half an hour later, I pulled it out again, let it cool, and had it for lunch.

Good points:

  • I don’t think I’ve ever made a prettier pie; I was worried the lack of a topping would dry the filling out, but I would have been sorry to miss the brilliant crimsony pink of the fruit.
  • The vanilla was a great floating sweet note in the midst of the complex berry flavors.
  • The black peppercorns, as long as you didn’t chew on them, deepened the whole taste.

Things to improve next time:

  • The crust. Oh, lord, the crust. I’m not sure what went wrong — pita chips might not be suited for this role no matter what; perhaps I didn’t crush them finely enough; maybe the applesauce was a mistake and using butter would have avoided any problems; baking it in a toaster oven might not have been the best idea ever. Whatever the reason, the crust got soggy very quickly. On the bottom, which confused me; I wouldn’t have been surprised if the fruit mixture had made the top of it mushy and generally yucky, but the side of the crust against the pie plate, I was not expecting to have that texture. It still tasted okay, though.

And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen: Unholy Cherry-Strawberry Pie.

Just FYI — it’s graduation season, and I’m running around buying and wearing dress clothes; as soon as that fun is over, I’m spending a few days in Boston. Therefore, blogposts are thin on the ground at the moment; I’m pretty much clearing out the fridge and making very unexciting things — lots of pasta and leftovers, egg salad, that kind of thing — which will change as soon as I get back.

The farmer’s market is open. Oh yeah.

In the file of

things I have done in my life which may or may not turn out to be madness:

  1. putting three prunes in the turkey stock today
  2. trying to install broadband on my own this afternoon
  3. made myself a cup of chocolate tea