It's Easter Sunday. What are you doing here? Did you find all those eggs? Aren't you making brunch for everyone? Are you at least sipping some champagne right now?
I am doing all of those things. Easter is one of my favorite holidays. Okay, it's Number Three, behind Halloween and Christmas, but still....What I really love about Easter is that it has never truly left its pagan self behind. It's a grown up with stuffed animals on her bed. She just can't leave all that whimsy behind.
My daughter asked me the other day why Easter hops around on the calendar so much. "Will it ever fall on my birthday?" she raised her brows hopefully. I had to dash them. No. Easter is always after the First Day of Spring, the Vernal Equinox. Easter is always after the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox. Easter is always the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox. How pagan can you get? I find it delightful!
I realize the value of this Christian holiday. It's what makes Christ, The Christ. Without this validation, this resurrection, Jesus is an excellent historical figure, a king without a country. Easter makes him holy. But you've got eggs, rabbits, baby chicks, and Estre, that goddess...Easter feels like a 18-year old girl who keeps trying on "costumes" to see who she really is. What's with all the fertility? (The eggs, the bunnies...) Easter feels like a celebration of rebirth: spring; we eat lamb, there's those eggs again!, asparagus, new potatoes, spring peas...yum! And then we've turned it into feasting after Lent. My kids get pure delight from the surprise of finding eggs, the wonder of what's inside. We wake up and search with glee until we find...what are we really supposed to find? Childish wonderment? Beauty in a plastic egg? True belief? I say yes to it all, with gusto! Easter is a busy holiday; she's got a lot goin' on. She's a modern girl.
I'm having Easter outside. It's going to be a beautiful day. I'm grilling lamb chops, roasting green and white asparagus and baby potatoes. I've made onion tarts and the lucky ones around my table will end with pink champagne and lemon souffles. I'm celebrating it all, but most of all, I thank my lucky stars for the people coming to my (finally!) clean house today no matter what reason they choose.
And now, I need some more champagne. How about you?
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Sunflowers
It's officially spring--the vernal equinox has passed, daylight saving time has begun, and my mind makes its annual turn to the outdoors. I see inspiration all around me: daffodils start to compete with the crocus, tulips hold my gaze and then, suddenly, sunflowers! The landscape feels freshly-painted; I am in love with it all!
I return to the Farmer's Market and drool over yellow carrots, heirloom tomatoes, zucchini blossoms. I think of asparagus tartes, lamb's lettuce glistening with new potatoes and fava beans, artichokes snuggled in a row waiting to blossom at my table.
I feel resuscitated; I want to fall in love again; I browse the bikinis...and pinch my waist. Spring gives the impression that you can start fresh. This is when those New Year's resolutions really should be happening. Spring holds such promise, so much hope for the possible. How can you re-birth yourself when everything around you is dead? The Persians have it right, celebrating their New Year on the cusp of Spring.
The rut of squash and root vegetables that my repetoire has been grinding out gets rinsed away with spring showers and every week, there's an old friend I haven't seen in a while in the produce section: snap peas, morel mushrooms, white asparagus. I stir fry, chopping and dicing. I blanche thin asparagus, pouring a custard carefully into a rosemary crust. I collect and cut a cornucopia of vegetables for my luscious--yes! LUSCIOUS!--minestrone.
Spring returns the light to our lives. The sun stays up, dinner becomes al-fresco, maybe even a picnic at the park. Your shoulders relax. You get your flip-flops out (and then you get a pedicure). It's time to clean out your closet and think about putting those sweaters away. Time to plant those herbs, re-hang the hammock, mow the lawn, re-arrange those kitchen cupboards.
Spring is a transition, a turning from inward reflection to outward joy. Be that sunflower, face up to the sun.
I return to the Farmer's Market and drool over yellow carrots, heirloom tomatoes, zucchini blossoms. I think of asparagus tartes, lamb's lettuce glistening with new potatoes and fava beans, artichokes snuggled in a row waiting to blossom at my table.
I feel resuscitated; I want to fall in love again; I browse the bikinis...and pinch my waist. Spring gives the impression that you can start fresh. This is when those New Year's resolutions really should be happening. Spring holds such promise, so much hope for the possible. How can you re-birth yourself when everything around you is dead? The Persians have it right, celebrating their New Year on the cusp of Spring.
The rut of squash and root vegetables that my repetoire has been grinding out gets rinsed away with spring showers and every week, there's an old friend I haven't seen in a while in the produce section: snap peas, morel mushrooms, white asparagus. I stir fry, chopping and dicing. I blanche thin asparagus, pouring a custard carefully into a rosemary crust. I collect and cut a cornucopia of vegetables for my luscious--yes! LUSCIOUS!--minestrone.
Spring returns the light to our lives. The sun stays up, dinner becomes al-fresco, maybe even a picnic at the park. Your shoulders relax. You get your flip-flops out (and then you get a pedicure). It's time to clean out your closet and think about putting those sweaters away. Time to plant those herbs, re-hang the hammock, mow the lawn, re-arrange those kitchen cupboards.
Spring is a transition, a turning from inward reflection to outward joy. Be that sunflower, face up to the sun.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
The Toque
I love the egg, so compact, so fragile, so versatile: an egg can be breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack, even dessert! What other food can boast such versatility? Take that hard-boiled egg, the ultimate snack: protein, fat, portable and just the right size. Mush that egg with your whisk and some mustard and mayo and you've got lunch. Add some lettuce and tomato slices and you've got a salad.
A chef's toque, or hat, has 101 pleats, symbolic folds that represent the egg and the 101 ways a French chef can transform it. I know, your mind is racing through your repetoire: scrambled, hard-boiled, sunny-side up, omelette...got 10?... maybe 15? The toque evokes images (Chef Boyardee?) and inspires a certain kind of awe. In this recent era of cooking shows and celebrity chefs, may I take a moment to celebrate the struggle behind the hard-earned toque?
When I was trying to earn my toque, the devotion to the egg and its nuances was never clearer than when I was in pastry spending an entire day on the egg's most mysterious, most awe-some disguise: the souffle. Eggs, milk, sugar: the simplest ingredients transformed into a dessert that waits for no one. We gathered around our Genius Chef as he mumbled ingredients and measurements. He weighed (important!), he cooked slowly (important!) he beat those egg whites and folded gently (SO important!). We waited for those rising clouds, perfectly formed, to come up and out. Ooh! We applauded with our eyes, applauded with clicking spoons scraping the ramekins, and then our Chef looked at us over his glasses and mumbled, "Your turn!"
We measured. We stirred. We added our own signatures: star anise, orange peel, cardamom. We beamed at our egg whites, poufy and glossy. We folded with our rubber spatulas (please don't use anything else!), and gently slid our ramekins into the ovens.
Cassandra's fell over the edge, lumpy and drooping. She cried. Dahlia's didn't rise at all. "Why me?" she wailed. Mine rose! I beamed. Chef pulled mine out of the oven and lifted the top of the souffle off like a muffin top. "Cake," he grimaced and threw it in the trash.
We did it again. Chocolate. Mmmm. And again. Nougat. Oh my god! And again. Lemon. Oh! I call this day "The Day I Ate Ten Souffles."
If you can conquer the souffle, your dinner, no matter what you served, becomes Dinner. They'll talk about The Evening. They'll eye your potluck contributions with new respect. A small salad and a cheese souffle isn't lunch, it's Luncheon. It suddenly warrants opening that bottle of rose.( Really, do it! It works!) Where's your flowery dress? Put it on!
A souffle is empowerment. It suggests mastery. Like all things egg, a souffle is not just a recipe. It is technique, respect, patience, and knowing the proper tools. A souffle starts so simply. You may have only 4 or 5 ingredients in front of you, but your sink will be full of dirty before it's over. You may survive this ordeal only to have your guests sit down too late. It's possible you are missing a pastry brush, a scale, or that rubber spatula we talked about. Well,... then,...
I earned my toque in so many ways: I learned another language, lived halfway across the world, let grown men yell at me and throw things, spent more hours than I can count standing with a hot oven behind me and a hot stove in front of me, but the souffle is one of my proudest accomplishments coming out of school. The recipe for a great souffle is nothing without the how and why behind each step, and that savoir-faire says it all when a perfect souffle slides in front of you.
A chef's toque, or hat, has 101 pleats, symbolic folds that represent the egg and the 101 ways a French chef can transform it. I know, your mind is racing through your repetoire: scrambled, hard-boiled, sunny-side up, omelette...got 10?... maybe 15? The toque evokes images (Chef Boyardee?) and inspires a certain kind of awe. In this recent era of cooking shows and celebrity chefs, may I take a moment to celebrate the struggle behind the hard-earned toque?
When I was trying to earn my toque, the devotion to the egg and its nuances was never clearer than when I was in pastry spending an entire day on the egg's most mysterious, most awe-some disguise: the souffle. Eggs, milk, sugar: the simplest ingredients transformed into a dessert that waits for no one. We gathered around our Genius Chef as he mumbled ingredients and measurements. He weighed (important!), he cooked slowly (important!) he beat those egg whites and folded gently (SO important!). We waited for those rising clouds, perfectly formed, to come up and out. Ooh! We applauded with our eyes, applauded with clicking spoons scraping the ramekins, and then our Chef looked at us over his glasses and mumbled, "Your turn!"
We measured. We stirred. We added our own signatures: star anise, orange peel, cardamom. We beamed at our egg whites, poufy and glossy. We folded with our rubber spatulas (please don't use anything else!), and gently slid our ramekins into the ovens.
Cassandra's fell over the edge, lumpy and drooping. She cried. Dahlia's didn't rise at all. "Why me?" she wailed. Mine rose! I beamed. Chef pulled mine out of the oven and lifted the top of the souffle off like a muffin top. "Cake," he grimaced and threw it in the trash.
We did it again. Chocolate. Mmmm. And again. Nougat. Oh my god! And again. Lemon. Oh! I call this day "The Day I Ate Ten Souffles."
If you can conquer the souffle, your dinner, no matter what you served, becomes Dinner. They'll talk about The Evening. They'll eye your potluck contributions with new respect. A small salad and a cheese souffle isn't lunch, it's Luncheon. It suddenly warrants opening that bottle of rose.( Really, do it! It works!) Where's your flowery dress? Put it on!
A souffle is empowerment. It suggests mastery. Like all things egg, a souffle is not just a recipe. It is technique, respect, patience, and knowing the proper tools. A souffle starts so simply. You may have only 4 or 5 ingredients in front of you, but your sink will be full of dirty before it's over. You may survive this ordeal only to have your guests sit down too late. It's possible you are missing a pastry brush, a scale, or that rubber spatula we talked about. Well,... then,...
I earned my toque in so many ways: I learned another language, lived halfway across the world, let grown men yell at me and throw things, spent more hours than I can count standing with a hot oven behind me and a hot stove in front of me, but the souffle is one of my proudest accomplishments coming out of school. The recipe for a great souffle is nothing without the how and why behind each step, and that savoir-faire says it all when a perfect souffle slides in front of you.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Meat Candy
I should be a vegetarian. Logically, it makes sense on so many levels. I feel morally conflicted supporting a system that pollutes, abuses, and poisons. The mass production necessary for a carnivorous population requires factories that reduce living beings to a number, sickened and medicated simulataneously without offering any quality of life. At the same time, this corporate feeding system pollutes without consequences, poisoning land, water, air-- ourselves!--what?!--and the food we ingest. What?!
I shake my head. I need to be a vegetarian. I shake my head again. And sigh. I'd also really like to be a vegetarian. It feels better to eat "better." Try your next hamburger as a veggie burger, or just condiments, seriously!, and you'll notice that it tastes about the same. It's the condiments you crave, not the tasteless beef patty. Go veggie and getting your 5-a-day will happen before lunchtime. If you do it right, you'll actually get to eat more!! (now there's an incentive!)
I'd really like to be a vegetarian. Vegetariansim gives you automatic access to adventure. Have an artichoke for dinner! Make that quinoa salad! Try those sunchokes...A diligent vegetarian, a cooking vegetarian, can be the more creative cook: (s)he can't just throw a piece of meat in the oven, there's more thinking involved. Maybe that's why Einstein was a vegetarian! Hmmm...
I want to be a vegetarian, but I have this Achilles' heel. I can make an awesome salad with my own dressing, but I catch myself crumbling bacon on top. I can hover, stirring, over a risotto brimming with fresh sage, butternut squash, toasted hazelnuts, but there I am suddenly frying some pancetta for garnish. (It belongs there, I swear!) I'll throw together a quirky three-pea pasta, lemon zest, chives falling in from my scissors, a little cream, and then I feel compelled --yes! compelled!--to add proscuitto. Yum....!
Everything tastes better with bacon.
And so I waver on that fence because of a pig. Take away the steak, the chicken for sure (it's kind of tasteless anyway, right?), I don't even need the ribs, just that belly, striped with fat. Start cooking some bacon and people pour into the kitchen like zombies. (It even gets my teenager out of bed!)
Even the World Health Organization recommends vegetarianism for the sake of the population and the planet. I hang my head and pop another slice of bacon in my mouth. Crunchy, salty-sweet. I think back to my hippie days in Seattle (let's see, what can I actually remember?). I had the opportunity to see the Dalai Lama speak. I sat in reverence and watched this cute little man clean his glasses periodically on his robes and discuss everything, anything, with humor and wisdom. I sat rapt when he got a question about his diet: "You're vegetarian, right?" ....well, yes and no, he said. He meandered, discussing his health, his doctor, and finally reasoned, "I'm a vegetarian every other day." Ah! A lifestyle of moderation that even I could follow.
I follow the Dalai Lama in this way: I eat vegetarian. Twice a week, I even try to do vegan. I've even pushed myself to do Raw. I know, that seems so Out There, doesn't it? Eat a salad. (Raw) Have a smoothie with almond or coconut milk. (Raw) Bag of trail mix mid-morning? (Raw) I sprinkle my bacon, have a turkey, bacon, avocado sandwich, make mouthwatering braised lamb or boeuf bourguignon, but mostly, I'm vegetarian. It works out to about 75% vegetarian. I can live with that. We all can...
I shake my head. I need to be a vegetarian. I shake my head again. And sigh. I'd also really like to be a vegetarian. It feels better to eat "better." Try your next hamburger as a veggie burger, or just condiments, seriously!, and you'll notice that it tastes about the same. It's the condiments you crave, not the tasteless beef patty. Go veggie and getting your 5-a-day will happen before lunchtime. If you do it right, you'll actually get to eat more!! (now there's an incentive!)
I'd really like to be a vegetarian. Vegetariansim gives you automatic access to adventure. Have an artichoke for dinner! Make that quinoa salad! Try those sunchokes...A diligent vegetarian, a cooking vegetarian, can be the more creative cook: (s)he can't just throw a piece of meat in the oven, there's more thinking involved. Maybe that's why Einstein was a vegetarian! Hmmm...
I want to be a vegetarian, but I have this Achilles' heel. I can make an awesome salad with my own dressing, but I catch myself crumbling bacon on top. I can hover, stirring, over a risotto brimming with fresh sage, butternut squash, toasted hazelnuts, but there I am suddenly frying some pancetta for garnish. (It belongs there, I swear!) I'll throw together a quirky three-pea pasta, lemon zest, chives falling in from my scissors, a little cream, and then I feel compelled --yes! compelled!--to add proscuitto. Yum....!
Everything tastes better with bacon.
And so I waver on that fence because of a pig. Take away the steak, the chicken for sure (it's kind of tasteless anyway, right?), I don't even need the ribs, just that belly, striped with fat. Start cooking some bacon and people pour into the kitchen like zombies. (It even gets my teenager out of bed!)
Even the World Health Organization recommends vegetarianism for the sake of the population and the planet. I hang my head and pop another slice of bacon in my mouth. Crunchy, salty-sweet. I think back to my hippie days in Seattle (let's see, what can I actually remember?). I had the opportunity to see the Dalai Lama speak. I sat in reverence and watched this cute little man clean his glasses periodically on his robes and discuss everything, anything, with humor and wisdom. I sat rapt when he got a question about his diet: "You're vegetarian, right?" ....well, yes and no, he said. He meandered, discussing his health, his doctor, and finally reasoned, "I'm a vegetarian every other day." Ah! A lifestyle of moderation that even I could follow.
I follow the Dalai Lama in this way: I eat vegetarian. Twice a week, I even try to do vegan. I've even pushed myself to do Raw. I know, that seems so Out There, doesn't it? Eat a salad. (Raw) Have a smoothie with almond or coconut milk. (Raw) Bag of trail mix mid-morning? (Raw) I sprinkle my bacon, have a turkey, bacon, avocado sandwich, make mouthwatering braised lamb or boeuf bourguignon, but mostly, I'm vegetarian. It works out to about 75% vegetarian. I can live with that. We all can...
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