Tuesday, April 08, 2003

April may be the cruelest month, but mostly it just bites my ass.  Anyone who cannot fathom committing suicide solely in reaction to bad weather has not been resident in New York City in the past twenty-four hours.  Plus, I simply must crawl back into bed for ten more minutes of blessed horizontality with my dear husband before I go to work.  So this is going be short and sweet. For dinner with Em the Stalwart – who it turns out only skipped out on us because, um, our phone wasn’t working for most of Saturday – we had chicken sautéed in white wine, Jordan’s Special noodles, and Aubergines Farcies Duxelles, Eggplant stuffed with mushrooms. Yes, I am in the midst of a wild love affair with eggplant.  Julia warns that “preparation is somewhat long, as it is for many good things,” and she’s not wrong.  She does say you can make the dish as much as a day ahead, but when you come home from work at eight thirty (memorial, shmemorial – they’ll still be dead in the morning, let me go home!*), you don’t have that luxury.  Things can get a little haywire. Start by chopping the three big eggplants in half, making big slices in their flesh, salting them, and laying them flesh side down on a towel for half an house.  While that’s doing, mince up some onions to sauté in olive oil, and run a pound of mushrooms through the Cuisinart.  Squeeze the juice out of them in a kitchen towel before browning them in olive oil and butter as well. On second thought, don’t bother with the salting, because at the end of half an hour, the eggplants haven’t exuded much of any water and don’t even when you squeeze them.  Rub their flesh with olive oil (heh.  I said “rub their flesh”) and broil them for ten minutes, kind of far away from the flame. On second thought, don’t broil them that long, they’ll get totally burned.  Probably roasting them in the oven – yes, that oven with the nasty brown grease dripping down the front of its door, grease which just might be responsible for said oven’s delinquent smoking habit – would be better.  Scoop the flesh out of the eggplant halves, leaving about a quarter-inch-thick shell.  Then, if you wish to test Em the Stalwart’s good name, throw the shells away, so you can root through the trash for them ten minutes later. Combine the scooped-out eggplant flesh, the sautéed onions and mushrooms in a bowl with a package of cream cheese, some parsley, and some dried basil.  Mix all that mess together, then scoop it into the shells which you have carefully pulled out of the garbage, rinsed and dried.  Place the shells in a roasting pan and pour in about half a cup of water around them.  At least I think that’s what I was supposed to do.  The instructions said: “About 40 minutes before serving, arrange in roasting pan and surround with 1/8 inch of water.”  Is it me, or is that an odd way of putting things?  Or maybe it’s ten-thirty and I’m getting punchy.  Sprinkle with grated Swiss cheese and bread crumbs, baste with melted butter, stick in a 375° oven for half an hour.  Sit back and smoke the cigarettes provided by Em the Stalwart and Insidious, who knows full well that whether the subject is nicotine, vodka, Oreos or a nice round of Civilization, “Moderation” has never been Julie’s middle name.  Repeat the phrase “I’m so fucking exhausted” until someone throws you out the window or the eggplant is done. Somewhere in all this Eric is making chicken, from a recipe out of The Sixty Minute Cookbook, an old standby.  I have not much to say on this, except that it involved browning chicken pieces in olive oil, that instead of the two teaspoons of garlic called for, Eric added about four tablespoons (you think I exaggerate, but these are exact figures), and that is was very, very good.  Jordan’s noodles – egg noodles.  Cook ‘em, drain the water out of the pot, throw the noodles back in, toss in a shitload of butter and parmesan and salt and pepper.  Should probably have thrown in some chicken juices too, but we didn’t.  They weren’t as good as Jordan’s, they never are, but Noodles are Nice. The eggplant was VERY.  VERY.  RICH.  Maybe it’s just because we were eating it sometime after eleven at night, but this stuff was like plutonium.  Probably didn’t help that I served each of us a whole half an eggplant, which is simply too much food.  Anything with that much cream cheese is of course good, but I can’t help thinking I’d be more happy with Hannah’s method of frying up slices in a little olive oil and smacking on them right out of the pan, with some kind of dip.  But I’m gonna have to love the eggplant I’m with, for awhile, since I have about a metric ton of it in the fridge. Okay.  Must go lie down now.  Ta. *Disclaimer: the above views do not in any way represent the views of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.  Well, they know they'll still be dead in the morning, but they don't think that's any reason to go home.  Because, you know, they really do care. Aw hell.  I probably shouldn't have written that.  I plead innocent by reason of fucking tired and bitter.   7:31:52 AM    comment []