Tuesday, May 06, 2003

So come Monday I’ve got what looks like burgeoning pink-eye, a slight infection of SARS inherited from my husband, and a burn going septic on my forearm.  Typical Monday, I suppose.  I got up a bit early to prepare the veal and put together the marinade for the veal for the Veau Sylvie, Veal Roasted with Ham and Cheese.  The veal I prepare by cutting slits all the way through the roast to within an inch or so from one end, one slit every inch and a half or so.  Which leaves me with these strips of meat like the “leaves of a book.”  This sounds like something that could backfire horribly, but amazingly, it more or less works.  Then I just stick it in a bowl with a half cup of cognac, half cup of Madeira, sliced carrots, sliced onions, salt, parsley, a bay leaf, thyme and six peppercorns.  Remembering bad experiences with marinations past, I stick it in the fridge rather than leaving it out on the counter.  I go to work.  I’ve got pink-eye, I’m exhausted, I’m whining, I just want to quit or fall asleep on my desk, it’s a bad scene all around, best left more or less undiscussed. I come home.  I’m very, very tired, for some reason, and feeling will-less.  I can’t tell if my vague depression is because of illness, or if my illness is a result of my vague depression.  Anyway, I get to work on dinner.  I peel some carrots for Carottes Glacees, Glazed Carrots, which I’ve made before, but we’re getting low on vegetable recipes, so the recycling is beginning.  I slice the fancy swiss cheese and get out the crappy ham – Zeytuna had run out of the “French Ham,” all they had was Boar’s Head, it was one of those foodie moments where you realize how nice it is to use really yummy imported products, the Boar’s Head seemed really salty and just not as interesting.  I dry the veal roast, on a dish towel because I’ve run out of paper towels.  I whine a bit, just to keep things interesting.  One thing I whine about is that every time I open the refrigerator I get this whiff of something nasty. When the veal is dry, I layer between each strip of meat a slice of ham between two slices of cheese.  Doesn’t this just sound like something that wouldn’t work at all?  It sure did to me.  But I am shocked to find that it goes fairly easily.   I tie it up with twine, and it’s just neat as can be, though Eric says it looks like a Dark Ages Dagwood sandwich.  I heat some butter and oil in a casserole and cook the brained marinade vegetables in it for a few minute before turning up the heat and sticking the roast in, uncut side down.  If we were to continue the book analogy, we would say that we were putting the spine of the book down.  Anyway, let that brown for a minute, then baste the meat and stick it in a 450° oven for fifteen minutes to brown all the cuts sides that would spill ham and cheese all over the place if I turned the roast.  While the roast was browning I, in honor of Cinco de Mayo, decided to make the recipe for stuffed jalapenos that Hannah sent me like three thousand years ago.  I started by cleaning out the jalapenos, which she instructed me to do by cutting out the stems with the smallest hole possible, and with a thin knife scraping out the seeds and pith.  This takes rather a long fucking time, as it turns out, but I do it to ten jalapenos.  By this time – actually a little before – the roast is browned.  I take it out of the oven, pour the marinade liquid into the casserole, and let that boil down until reduced to a third.  Then I salt and pepper the roast, and lay two strips of boiled bacon over it.  I am amazed that only a very little amount of cheese has melted out of the roast.  I’ve run out of foil – we’re not doing too good on staples here – so I just put the top on it and stick it back in the oven, which I’ve turned down to 325°.  I put half a cup of meat glaze – of which I have literally about a quart and a half – and half a cup of water in with the chunked carrots, along with some sugar, salt and pepper.  These I simmer, covered, for half an hour.  I put on water for noodles.  I mince up some mint, basil, and a very small onion.  I crumble up some queso fresco.  I mix that all together, and, with the aid of the non-business end of a chopstick, I stuff the stuff into the jalapenos.  Again, something that sounds like it would end in disaster, but doesn’t.  Takes some time, though.  Hannah described this as a fun and easy little cooking thing, but it’s rather labor-intensive.  It’s her inner Julia coming out, I guess.  It occurs to me that messing with jalapenos while infected with pink-eye is not a brilliant idea.  But I haven’t had any searing pain yet.  Which makes me a little worried about the hot factor of the peppers.  By the time I get the oil heated up in the skillet to brown the jalapenos, the veal is almost done.  I think.  It’s a little tough to tell when you don’t believe in meat thermometers, which I doubly don’t in this case, since there are these big slices in the meat, and I may have inadvertently gotten the tip of it stuck in some molten Swiss cheese.  I throw the jalapenos in the hot oil, where they pop merrily away.  Every time I reach over the skillet to deal with the noodle pot behind it, I fear for my bare underarms, but nothing too horrible happens.  I take the roast out of the casserole and stick it on a plate, which I stick back in the oven, which I’ve turned off.  I get some of the oil out of the stuff left in the pan, which I don’t usually bother too much with, but there is a hell of a lot of the stuff in there.  I boil down the sauce, mashing up the vegetables.  The carrots I’ve gotten glazed, with this nice syrupy sauce.  I don’t remember that happening last time, but this time it has.  I drain noodles, put them back in the pot, toss them with oh half a stick of butter or so.  The jalapenos are browning up nicely, though they’re a little behind everything else. I serve plates – slices of veal larded with ham and melted cheese with sauce on top, carrots, noodles, jalapenos.  “Everything’s so glisten-y,” says Eric. It’s true.  We’ve gotten use to a lot of fat and grease, but for some reason, this looks just particularly oil-slick-ish.  Huh. Obviously, the jalapenos don’t go with the rest of the meal.  I also think I didn’t get them cooked enough – the cheese stuff inside didn’t seem sufficiently amalgamated.  And the peppers weren’t hot enough.  But it’s worth trying again – the mint-basil-jalapeno combination is an intriguing one.  Happy Cinco de Mayo!  It’s no margarita with salt, but it’ll do. The noodles were noodles.  The carrots were carrots.  Pretty good carrots, actually. I thought the veal was pretty good, if a bit noxiously filling.  But as I write this this morning, my eye sealed shut with gunk, generally pathetic, my husband comes up to me and tells me that, to him, the veal tasted rotten.  “Or, not rotten, but musty.”  Rotten!  Musty!  This is the thanks I get.  The little shit.   9:03:07 AM    comment []