Thursday, January 30, 2003

Thanks, guys, for mentioning the Miami Herald piece yesterday.  Kinda neat.  I can’t help thinking those Floridians just get off reading about crazy New Yorkers doing things that make them miserable, preferably while freezing to death.  It is amazing, though, what two days not spent at a dead-end job can do for the soul.  GW oughta have a Soul-Suck Tax Break – lots more people earn their livings off those than off dividends. Wednesday night was Moules au Beurre d’Escargot and Epinards en Surpise, or: Tiggers Prefers Mussels when Crepes are involved. Yesterday afternoon, after a terrifically productive day of doing nothing much, I made up some crepe batter, for I had decided to make for dinner Epinards en Surprise, “an amusing presentation” of creamed spinach under a crepe.  The crepe batter recipe calls for eggs, milk, water, salt, flour, melted butter and a blender.  It takes approximately four minutes to make.  And here I’d been all nervous about crepes….  Then I traveled by subway to the store where I knew I’d find those nifty new-fangled bagged-up, sandless mussels which had tasted so not-bad last time.  I was so refreshed after not being at work two days in a row that I didn’t even want to shoot anyone on the way there.  Well, that’s not true, I did.  But much less so than usual. I met Eric at his work because I’m such a good and faithful stay-at-home wife, and also because we’d finally gotten a shipment from Texas of Christmas presents received down there, including among other things the All-Clad braiser that’s going to make my life complete AND the two kitchen stools I gave Eric, which are going to be a total boon to the Powell marriage.  Now when my husband is immersing himself in Lyndon Johnson biographies or some computer game, he can do it in the kitchen, among his loving family.  We brought them home and while Eric parked our wheezing wreck of a car, I started on the mussels Julia wanted me to open them raw.  What she actually says is “For this recipe you may steam the mussels open… or you may open the raw mussels with a knife.  We prefer the latter method.”  Well, God forbid, Julia, I don’t do the preferable method.  But I should have known – JC was employing her characteristic terseness of tone, which implies that something unpleasant is on the way.  Opening the raw mussels was not at all easy.  Well, actually, for some it was very easy.  Many had swung open like the jawbones of skulls in the desert, exposing their dried-up innards.  But I had some issues with those.  So I started opening the closed mussels, gingerly pressing the tip of the knife between the shells and trying to pry the things open.  Lawyer, doctor or Indian chief, maybe, but an oyster shucker I will never be. Thing was, instead of swinging open like skulls’ jawbones, they just cracked up.  Which made me squeamish, thinking how awful having it must be for the slimy invertebrates, having their shells broken to pieces.  Plus, it wasn’t that attractive – I needed to keep one half of the shell more or less intact.  Plus, it took for fucking ever.  About an hour, and half the mussels, into it, I figured out the trick.  If instead of being all squeamish and shy and just sticking the knife in timidly along the edges, you slide the whole blade in deep enough, eventually they’ll give up the ghost and open.  Took me an hour to figure that out.  Good thing I wasn’t an early human – we’d still be eating earthworms and beating on rocks to amuse ourselves. As I opened each mussel, I scraped the meat of each one into one half of the shell, discarded the other half, and put them in a baking pan.  When I was finally done, I beat together the ¾ a stick of butter I’d set out to soften with minced shallots, bread crumbs, mashed garlic, minced parsley, and salt and pepper.  Put a teaspoon or so on top of each mussel.  Put the baking dish in the fridge.  Eric meanwhile had cleaned and trimmed the spinach (Good husband!  What a good, good husband!!)  I set on some water to boil it.  Eric had turned on the TV and was watching “War Stories,” (Bad Husband!  Yer bad!!), this show with Jeff Goldblum about journalists covering a civil war in Uzbekistan, which proved to be totally compelling, at least in part because I find Jeff Goldblum to be totally and inexplicably sexy.  Which almost made me over-boil the spinach, and did make me burn the butter I was meant to sauté it in.  I finally got the spinach sautéed, then simmered in cream.  All that was left was to make crepes.  Crepes plus watching of embarrassingly interesting TV show equals surefire disaster.  So I gave up and decided to finish dinner after the thing was over.  Got to see the inexplicably well-built Jeff walking around shirtless, and the very surprising murder of half a dozen annoying American journalists.  Eric bitched about how (duh!) they were just using Uzbekistan as a fill-in for Afghanistan, and how Uzbeks don’t look or sound anything like that.  (Down, Husband.  Down, boy!) “War Stories” done, I went back into the kitchen to finish up dinner.  Heated up the broiler for the mussels.  Put a skillet on the stove, wiped it down with a piece of bacon, and heated it up. Now you may infer from my casual tone that crepes are deeply imbedded in my experience, that I’ve been flipping crepes since I was a wee bairn.  Untrue.  I have never before, in fact, made crepes.  But I am filled with confidence.  My husband not so much.  My husband, in fact, upon hearing that crepes would make up part of our dinner, promptly made himself a cheese and mayonnaise sandwich to hold him over.  But now it is time.  When the skillet is good and hot, I pour in some crepe batter, and rotate the skillet around until the batter is stuck to the entire bottom.  I take a spatula and slip it around the edges to loosen.  And it comes up!  I attempt flipping it with my fingers, and it tears.  But I’m encouraged – you’re supposed to tear the first crepe.  JC says as much.  So I wipe the skillet down with the bacon again, pour in some more batter – a bit more than last time – and do the same routine.  Swirl the pan around briefly to get the batter to stick to the whole bottom of the pan.  Loosen with the spatula.  Flip over with my fingers. Crepe!!! That was too easy to even talk about. I stick the mussels in the broiler, turn the heat back on under the spinach.  Make another crepe.  Voila!  Crepe!!  I’m the king of the world!!! The spinach, reheated, I smear onto two small plates.  I lay a golden crepe atop each.  The mussels come out, the bread crumbs golden brown.  Dump them into two bowls. I just don’t know about this whole mussel thing.  Maybe it was the intimate contact with their raw innards beforehand, but they just tasted too mussel-y for me, again this time.  Eric said good, I dunno.  Maybe just going to have to accept I’m not a mussel person.  The spinach with crepes, however, was fantastic.  I mean, as you’d expect.  Creamed spinach + crepes = what could go wrong?!  I suppose I could have let the crepes get a little browner.  In fact, I think I will practice that, and smear the result with Nutella. And eat it. Right now. 7:47:00 AM    comment []