Grandma's Platter

This morning I was still doing the last of the New Year's dinner dishes. The ones that had had to soak overnight (that's what I told myself, anyway).

The first thing I washed was the serving paltter that had belonged to my Grandmother. It's a lovely, old plate decorated with tiny little roses and a bit of gold vining around the edge. It's not valuable in the least, except to me. I'm always very anxious to make sure it gets carefully washed and put away before it comes to harm.

My Grandmother, Helen, died on April 21, 1999. She was just a few short months away from her 100th birthday. Unlike most of my other relatives, she played a huge role in my life from my start, to her finish. But one of the most enduring legacies my Grandmother left to me was my love of cooking.

I remember all the foods she made when, as a child, I spent summers with her in Pennsylvania. My Grandfather taught me to fish with a tree branch and a worm on a hook. But oh, the delicacy that resulted as we fried those perch in butter for our breakfast!

I made my very first pie under my Grandmother's watchful eye as I used the fresh blackberries I'd picked from alongside the road at the cottage. I helped her make the potato salad that was always our contribution at the Coxton Lake annual celebration each August. I even learned to love prunes - which she served every morning.

As an adult, however, my life was filled with other things and it wasn't until I returned to the home in which I grew up - in part because my Mother needed help caring for my Grandmother, who'd lost her ability to live alone and had been brought down to live with us - that a desire to cook again took hold.

Before the cooking came the gardening. Gram and my Grandfather had always had a vegetable garden at their home and a smaller version at the cottage. So canning, fresh vegetables and herbs were always being used. When Gram was spending her first summer here, I planted a vegetable garden for her and, I hoped, my Mother to share. Tomatoes, cucumbers, salad greens, eggplant, herbs, radishes and green beans.

That was the summer I made my very first attempt at tomato sauce from scratch, using the fresh tomatoes. It was a revelation and the "inciting incident" on my way to becoming a serious cook.

Gram died 9 years after that summer. As distressing as it was, she'd lived a long life and had taken care of herself until nearly the end. A strong, proud woman, she left me with a love for knitting, country summers, gardening - and cooking.

I do almost all the cooking for my family now - which at this point consists usually of just my Mother and myself. But on holidays my baby brother returns home. He is in a group home for the mentally retarded in a nearby town. And the three of us are the small group that celebrates, whether it is a summer barbecue on Memorial Day, the traditional odd collection of food choices that he demands for his birthday in October (including steak, spaghetti and brussel sprouts) Most memorable, however, is the holiday season when he comes home for the big feasts.

We just finished the last of the turkey soup that had been the last gasp of our Thanskgiving dinner. Christmas, of roast beef and vegetables, will also leave beef with barley soup in our freezer as a reminder of the gentle celebration, our gorgeous tree, and our family gathering. For New Year's we chose a roasted chicken with carrots as our main course. There was, of course, stuffing and gravy and broccoli because we all love green vegetables. But my gorgeous chicken - stuffed with fresh parsley and dill and a halved lemon - and the deliciously carmelized carrots - was perfection. Browned, moist and very flavorful, it was placed on my Grandmother's platter for carving.

The plate had been with my Grandmother all of her adult life. The many other dishes and utensils of hers that I salvaged when her house was sold and she moved in are gone. Broken, or misplaced. This is the last piece that I have left. the last link to the memory of the woman who so lovingly cooked for her family and for me, as long as she could.

The joy of preparing food and serving it to my family is something that I greatly relish. And serving my roast chicken from my Grandmother's plate connects me to the spirit of the woman who loved her family and is now gone from us, but not from our memories.

Comfort Food

It's a grey day after two days of rain. The sun was predicted to make an appearance but, apparently, has stage fright. So it is still grim, damp and generally ugly today.

Which makes it all the more enjoyable to anticipate the meal I have planned for tonight - a roast of beef. Coupled with pearl onions, carrots and potatoes and a nice portion of burgundy for the gravy. I love roasts because they don't take long to cook (2 hours tops for the size that I generally buy for just the two of us - me and Mom). The vegetables are always exquisite and caramelized and I always get a nice rich gravy which usually doesn't even need anything extra.

It makes a warm, rich, satisfying meal - not to mention excellent luncheon leftovers - which is perfect for a day like today. I'll be making one of my favorite vegetable side dishes, too, equally warm, savory and satisfying - brussel sprouts with garlic and lemon. I blanch them first, slice them in half, and then sautee them with butter, minced garlic and lemon, seasoned with only salt and freshly ground pepper. They are perfection when the sliced bottoms are caramelized and nice and brown and cruncy. MMMMMM!

Dessert? Well we're still working on the leftover Halloween candy!

Next weekend: Mission Impossible - Pie Crust.

Ymmmmm!

Despite the fact that it is the first day of National Novel Writing Month (and I'm participating for the 4th year), the fact that it is my last day of vacation and I haven't done even 1/4 of the stuff I'd planned, and that I wanted to simply kick back and write and relax today, I ended up succumbing to the lure of the cookbook and all my new cooking and baking implements (more on that later).

My Mother had been mentioning scones lately. Her grandmother and mother made them in the skillet (Scottish style, I guess). All the recipes and all the demos on cooking shows, however, have them made in the oven. I pulled out a few cookbooks to see if we had any skillet recipes (nope) but I started poring over the various scone recipes in the King Arthur Flour Company cookbook. It's really filled with all manner of amazing sounding recipes (daunting, many of them because I'm not a very experienced baker...). While Mom likes the sweet scones - berries, raisins, etc., I'm a fan of the more savory goodies.

So when I encountered a cheddar and scallion scone recipe - and had just watched Ina Garten make cheddar and dill scones - I couldn't resist.

I had purchased a plethora of new items from this great store in my town. It is a restaurant supply store, but it sells retail. Everything - and it takes up thousands of square feet - is amazingly cheap (well, not those mondo costly pans, but most everything else!). Over the course of two days I purchased: 3 seasoned cast iron skillets (medium, small and oh-so-cute teeny-weeny). I got a chef's knife (and yes, upon using it the first time sliced off a hunk of my left pointer finger including a third of my nail. Barely felt it. Nice to know my knife is sharp!) I also bought 1 silicone spatula, 6 assorted whisks ("piano wire" and the stiffer kind in 3 descending sizes including some adorable little ones for making elf pastries, I guess) 9 silver bowls - 4 small, 4 medium and 1 gargantuan; 2 tiny white dishes, 2 tiny sauce dishes, 1 salt shaker, 4 hot pads (assorted) 2 silicone spatulas, 1 covered glass salt dish, 2 small red square dishes, a round cookie cutter, and then, from the Corningware Outlet store, a Revere pan, 2 Pyrex small dishes, and a fabulous roll-up silpat like baking sheet. It has all the measurements for all sorts of pies and such. And it has conversions, too.(It's a Magic Dough brand pastry mat - see the illustration below).


The smallest of the dishes (white ceramic, silver, red square, sauce dishes) - I bought all of them because I've always got all the ingredients in their containers all over my very small kitchen. On TV all the "real" cooks have all the ingredients pre-measured in these various little containers so the stuff can all get tossed in with a minimum of time and no juggling of measuring spoons. So I've now got this fabulous assortment to use for that.

But back to my first ever attempt at savory scones. So I filled one of my new glass tumblers (forgot those - 2 small, 2 large) with a nice merlot, I pulled out all my new dishes and proceeded to sort out the ingredients. I was really happy with all my little dishes filled with great things, and used a new whisk for whipping up the eggs. "Rubbing in" the butter into the dry ingredients stumped me for a bit, but ultimately I just caressed the crap out of it and squeezed the 6 tablespoons into tiny shards (as Ina says, there should be some visible little bits of butter in your finished scone product). I'd shredded the cup of cheddar and later realized that I need to be a bit more generous. Since I hadn't patted the cheese down, what filled the 1 cup measure was probably less than. The King Arthur recipe called for scallions and cheese but I added the dill with a devil-may-care disregard for the recipe.

It was a new experience laying out this sticky but aromatic dough on the new measuring board (heavily floured mat and hands!) But I got it laid out, cut into triangles (though because I could not find a square cookie cutter no matter where I looked, I ended up cutting free-hand, which, admittedly, led to disparate sizes in my triangular scones).

In the process I discovered and tossed 2 old containers of baking powder and got my hands (including the bloody pointer finger)covered in dough, flour and ultimately Crisco.

But in went the scones and a mere 25 minutes later, the knife came out clean from the tummy of the largest scone and while they were not particularly brown (I forgot the egg/milk wash that would have helped, as per Ina G.) and while they needed more cheese and I would have prefered a bit of salted butter versus the unsalted variety that I had on my steaming hot scone, they were, in a word ...


Ymmmmmmmmmmm!

So Many Things to Cook - So Little Time!

As someone who has a roundtrip daily commute (3 – 3 ½ hours door-door) and a stressful day job, I don’t have a lot of time for indulging in cooking either before or after. Mornings I’m up at 6 and take care of some household chores before I leave, and when I get home, I need the hour or 2 left after eating for quiet “down time”.

As a result, all of my cooking “aspirations” are left for weekends and, better yet, vacations. (Even weekends seem to fly by, my time occupied with chores, resting up and driving around on suburban roads filled with horrid drivers – whatever happened to using your turn signal, by the way?).

The best vacations for cooking – for me (I don’t like the hot weather and can rarely be bestirred to boil water, much less cook) – are autumn vacations. I usually take 2 weeks in the fall and I’m in the middle of my last fall vacation week right now.

I had a lot of ideas in my head for things I wanted to try. I’d seen “Julie and Julia” twice and had made a wonderful braised beef roast from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. I. It got my mouth watering – figuratively as well as literally – for some more excellent repasts. In the past few weeks I'd made some homemade baked beans, as well as some sweet quick breads.

Here’s my report card for this week’s cooking and eating, so far this week:

Mom and I are still working on the superb chicken noodle soup I made the weekend before last. I like my soups thick and hearty and this one was filled with chopped vegetables, a wealth of chicken meat from the leftover roast chicken I used, and when I added the medium width egg noodles? Oh, Mama! I’d had it with a rich brown bread with a nutty, slightly sweet taste (Ecco Panis bread purchased from the S&S – but excellent and fresh!) and butter. Simple and smashing. Today I had the soup again for lunch (the remainder has now been packed away in the freezer – always a boon for the busy commuting working girl, having that secret container tucked in there that can provide a fast and wonderful meal at work – and keeps me from having to shell out the god-awful $10 for a sandwich and a soda!) along with some roasted garlic chiabatta and dill hummus. Perfect taste combo, if I do say so myself!

I’d made tomato sauce with hot Italian sausage on Monday night. I fill it with zucchini and green peppers and I am still fortunate to have parsley and oregano going strong in my herb patch. Did I mention I like strongly seasoned and flavored, very hearty dishes? That night we had it with fettucine fini, but for another night I bought some of the ready-made pasta - chicken stuffed this time. (I've got pasta sauce in containers in the fridge and freezer because I seem to think I'm cooking for an armored tank division or something! There are only 2 of us here, for crying out loud!)

Yesterday I got the urge to make something with apples – I bought 6 Granny Smith apples without having the foggiest notion what to make. wasn’t looking for the time investment required for a pie (or the frustration of the crust!) so I glanced through a few cookbooks and found a terrific apple crisp which included oatmeal, which I like for the texture. I went out on a limb and added some dried cranberries, a dollop of honey, some lemon zest and some crushed walnuts (none of which the recipe called for – it was from Julie’s “How To Cook’ cookbook and it was great although a tad on the dry side). Unlike the other crisp recipes, it called for the crumb pastry to be lined on the bottom, as well as put on the top, so the apples and juices cooked down as well as up. It was terrific – flavorful and just spicy enough without that cloying sweetness that ruins the bite of the apples. Mom suggested it would have been better with vanilla ice cream, but she’s on pre-diabetes watch, so no ice cream for her! She had some warmed up for lunch and I'm planning to sneak a snack soon, too!

For dinner I made a sesame chicken with broccoli and red sweet pepper strips. Alas, too much sauce and now I know better than to add the veggies from the beginning. They were like limp little sponges and while tasty, not as appealing as I’d hoped. The chicken, however, fell off the bone and was wonderfully flavored.

Tonight it’s an old favorite. It’s been raining, windy, damp and chilly – a real autumn day – so I’m going with meatloaf, mashed potatoes and green peas. (Mom’s choices for veggies…you can’t mess with tradition!). For my meatloaf I add chopped celery, onion, an egg, a packet of onion soup mix, fresh parsley, bread crumbs, a dollop of barbecue sauce (hickory smoked) and a dash of hot sauce as well as the all-important Sazon seasoning. I bought powdered mashed (I’m on vacation, for heaven’s sake!) and frozen green peas (I haven’t seen a fresh pea in longer than I can remember). I like to drain the peas, then add a pat of butter and a dash of some dill into the hot peas and then they have a lovely little herby flavor.

For later in the week, I pulled out a recipe that looks good for savory corn bread, and with it I’m planning a black bean soup, and, somewhere in the vacation madness, a pie. I haven’t made a full pie from scratch since I was in my 20’s, so I’ll buy the Pepperidge Farm ready made dough and will go for making the guts of the pie from scratch, instead. Given my lack of expertise with pie dough, I’m thinking that is the safest bet, anyway! And I’ll buy whatever berries they’ve got for sale.

And for an easy night, maybe Sunday as I contemplate my return to the salt mines, probably a pumpkin soup (topped with thinly sliced scallions and a dollop of sour cream, and a greens salad with bacon bits on top – dressed with balsamic vinaigrette – this is a taste sensation I discovered during the summer and I’m smacking my lips just thinking about it now! Besides it is literally about 20 minutes from start to finish and it is a nice light meal.

It’s been great fun working with food this week: the, spices,the smells, the tastes and the sensations – and it’s cheaper than therapy no matter how you slice it!

Once vacation is over it is time for the holidays and all those old favorites. But this year I'll make sure to try some new things in the mix, too!

Cook happy!

Inspiration Strikes: Chicken!

So I went out last evening with a couple of friends to a restaurant. California Chicken (? - maybe). I usually order steak but last night they had changed the menu (Yikes!) and I had to choose from among 3 chicken dishes - wasn't up for their gazillion pizza choices and I am wary of fish unless I'm at a seafood restaurant. SO. I chose "Chicken Milanese". Breaded chicken cutlets topped with arugula and sauteed tomatoes with garlic.

Oh. My. God.

FABULOUS!

So naturally I decided I'd make it tonight for dinner for me and Mom. Results? Mahvelous.

A little heavy on the olive oil (I overdo routinely - too much oil, butter, spices, etc.). But it was all done to perfection (Mother's better than mine since I put the remnants of the oil and garlic on my cutlets) and the side dish - steamed asparagus with balsamic vinaigrette was delish.

I can't stand it! I'm feeling like a chef for heaven's sake!

When I Turned Into A Cook

When I was a child, I never concerned myself with food or cooking except when I was at my Grandmother's in the summertime. She and my Grandfather had gardens at both their home in Scranton, as well as their cottage at a place called Lake Coxton, also in PA. Fresh vegetables and fruits were a staple throughout the summer and we often picked fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, even sweet onions and would have a bite of the warm veggie right their in the bed.

The food memory strongest from those years before my Grandfather died in 1971 when I was 15, was the fresh fish. He'd taught me to fish as a small child and I used a branch with a line of string, a bobbin and a worm. But I could catch perch, small mouth bass, pickerel, sunnies and the odd bullhead. Let me tell you, the simplicity of a freshly caught perch fried up with butter in the morning was in directly inverse proportion to the amazing flavor. Salt, pepper, butter, fish. Yum to the 10th power!

A few summers later, when I was a teen, I learned how to make pies from the berries we picked. Huckleberries, blackberries and the red rasberries that took hours to pick a sufficient quantity for a pie, or, on the days when the pickins were slim, then a kuchen. The satisfaction of eating something I had not only created, but made from fresh fruit I gathered was huge.

Unfortunately, college rolled around, after that adulthood, and my culinary experiences were few and far between. Not counting the time in the Hamptons where a bunch of us actors gathered to cook Thanksgiving dinner. Another gal and I were assigned the turkey and were mortified when, after checking, checking, and checking we STILL didn't see the little button pop up, we discovered we had, gulp, cooked the turkey upside down. Imagine our surprise - and relief - when it was the juiciest turkey we'd ever eaten because the juices all settled in the breast!

I lived alone in an apartment in Manhattan only at the end of my time there. That was where I made my first, solo, Thanksgiving dinner. For one. ME. I was beside myself with glee that the family tradition: turkey with stuffing (onion, herbs and celery only), mashed turnips (rutabegas, my Gram called them), mashed potatoes with butter and peas, with the ubiquitous pumpkin pie - all came out perfect. I sat in my apartment on West 57th Street that night and gorged on my meal. Accompanied by the Georges DeBouef Beajulais Nouveau for that year. It was marvelous. It was also a turning point.

I was still working full time and acting and singing at that point, but soon gave it up. When I realized that I was going to have to move back home to Long Island as a result of my elderly Gram's recent arrival at our house and my Mother's increasingly poor health, I packed up the few new kitchen items I had and headed home.

And that is when the most amazing transformation occured. I turned forty that year, but instead of a wild mid-life crisis involving partying and orgies, I morphed, instead, into a hausfrau.

14 years later I have become a happy cook. Still with much, much, much to learn, but I've experienced the excitement of a complicated meal - getting it all done to perfection and served together to compliments - and to discovering the perfect combination of flavors that make a dish soar rather than simply fly along at low altitude.

Then along came the new movie, Julie & Julia. I saw it the weekend it opened and immediately ran to the bookstore for the bible of French cooking. They were sold out. I grabbed "How To Cook" by Madame Julia instead but went on-line and purchased both volumes of "Mastering The Art of French Cooking", as well as "My Life In France" and the biography of her editor.

And I went and saw the movie again today with my Mother (who, unfortunately, tries hard but with a few exceptions, which oddly enough included a masterful b'oeuf Bourginon, is a fairly sad cook.

But I came home and had been inspired. A dish appeared in my mind as if by magic and I created it to both my Mother's acclaim and my own.

A ring of saffron rice circling the outer perimeter of the plate. In the middle, a bed of steamed fresh spinach with lemon. On top of the spinach perched thin-sliced chicken breasts sauteed with lemon and (yes, Julie and Julia, BUTTER!). On top, a finely diced melange of broccoli and carrots that had been blanched, and then sauteed in garlic and butter and a dollop of the mixture on top of each breast.

Delicious!

While I have no intention of earning the badge of "lobster killer", or attempting aspics which do not appeal to me, there are oodles of fabulous recipes that I am already planning to try. And I'm going to study the books of other cooks and compare the recipes. What do they do differently about a basic dish like, for example, coq au vin? What do they do the same when preparing a quiche?

My brother went to the French Culinary Institute, but I've never heard about what he learned, what he cooked, or why he simply abandoned that particular dream.

But I now understand the joy of learning new things, acquiring the implements to make them with, and discovering the satisfaction of a well-devised, creative and tasty meal.

Dare I say it? Why not! As Julia would be bold, so can I be.

Bon Appetit!

Ahhh, Comfort Food!

It's a cold, windy, grey Saturday night. There's now on the way and I'm tired, out of sorts, achy and after surviving a week in the trenches - otherwise known as a week at my desk at a NYC law firm - I'm ready for succor.

I'm hungry for food that is relaxing, warm, comforting and filling. Hence, I've planned the perfect "comfort food" meal for tonight.

As a child I watched Soupy Sales in the afternoons and demanded that my Mother provide me the same meal Soupy had, for lunch. I don't recall being disappointed, more power to Mom for her well-stocked cupboard.

But what I recall is my favorite lunch meal. And it has become my "comfort food" meal. And it is what I'm having tonight: Tuna fish sandwich and tomato soup.

Of course, there's a twist.

The tuna will be jazzed up with a little bit of dill and a dash of freshly ground pepper and a few shakes of garlic salt. Instead of the mushy, white Wonder Bread of those days of yore (also known as the '50s), I'm having a thick slab of semolina bread that will soak up the juices and provide a crunchy crust for my Tuna Melt!

As cheese is the food group of which I am fondest (what do you mean it isn't a food group? It is in my house - blue, cheddar, swiss, brie, feta, mozzarella) I'm adding it to the top of my tuna-laden semolina with a few delicate slices of tomato between the two.

And my Campbell's Tomato Soup gets its own little spiffed up touches. The same pepper and garlic salt and a blend of milk and water - not too thick and creamy, which makes the tomatoey tang a little bit more potent - and not too watery, either.

It will be perfect. Just the thing for my tired soul, my aching knees, and my weary mind.

Had a bad day? The turkeys getting you down? Close your eyes and remember what made you feel good as a kid. Don't be shy. Doesn't matter if it's a tuna melt or a Fluffernutter sandwich. Dig in!

You'll feel better.