Tuesday, June 17, 2003

So I didn’t write about this yesterday because I was too busy being tortured by my computer, but I sure do hate living in New York.  Gotta tell ya.  After one pleasant Sunday evening at home with the husband, real life came down like a fucking anvil Monday morning.  The apartment, which I had been more or less able to ignore in the semi-darkness, was hideously filthy and messy in the cold – and very bright, through our curtainless rear window – light of day. Practically the first thing I did when I got out of bed was step on the forty dollar Sonya Dakar Bergamot Wash face cleanser my mother bought me in a fit of guilt over having raised a girl so crazy she went and tried to commit suicide by French food.  So I’d do what anybody would do who had gooshed forty dollar face cleanser all over her none-too-clean bathroom floor – I scooped it up with the flat edge of an economy sized tube of toothpaste and scraped it into the cap stolen off an economy sized can of shaving cream.  Then, after a shower, shave, and some unsuccessful hair styling, it was on to the aforementioned computer.  The keyboard, as I’ve mentioned, doesn’t work, so I’ve had to poach the keyboard off Eric’s three-thousand-year-old Compaq.  Only now, the mouse on the laptop doesn’t work either, and there’s only one port for keyboard and mouse both, which does seem a little dumb.  So I scream and moan a bit there.  And then, of course, inevitably, work, at which horrific place I do the filing I’ve been putting off for three months, which never fails to bring home what an inept person I am overall.  Now that I write all this, it occurs to me that to the outside observer, none of this bitching and complaining seems particularly New York-related.  But I know it to be true that life is easier elsewhere, I can feel it in my bones.  Perhaps I could blog about clearing cedar on my own forty acres out in the Texas hill country somewhere?  Mastering the Art of French Cooking on a Coleman Stove?  I really must conjure up a way to make money and influence people which isn’t directly dependent upon my being miserable.  I’ll give it a think. So anyway, dinner Monday night was Jambon Braise Morvandelle (Ham Braised in Wine with Cream and Mushroom Sauce.)  Actually, two versions of Cream and Mushroom sauce, one with egg yolks and one without.  And Julia’s recipes for making canned peas not taste ill. There was some confusion over what sort of ham to buy.  Julia calls for an 8-10 pound “cooked ham or picnic shoulder.”  But cooked how?  Eric bought something called a Smoked Pork Shoulder, which was the most ham-y looking thing at the Astoria grocery.  It was enormous.  I started by sawing the skin off it, which reminded Eric of an article he’d just read in the National Geographic about Untouchables in India working in tanneries, and reminded me of Silence of the Lambs.    I sautéed some sliced onions and carrots in butter and oil in the large roaster that was the only cooking vessel I own large enough to hold the ham.  I laid the ham on top, fatty side up, and added parsley, bay leaf, peppercorns, thyme, cloves, three cups of vermouth and five cups of Better Than Boullion beef broth.  I brought that to a simmer, covered it up with foil, and stuck it in the oven for a couple of hours, basting occasionally.  Piece of cake.  I was taking a bathroom break when Eric turned on the TV and started yelling at me to come watch the end of Julia’s show.  Nothing like going to the bathroom while your husband shouts at you about Julia Child to rekindle the spark of romance, let me tell you.  Actually, it’s sort of really true, because I came out just in time to see Julia shake hands with the chef she’d had on the show, and then there was the PBS logo and Julia crooning “Bon Appetit!” like some sort of giddy, deranged, giant schoolgirl, and that was good for entertainment for the rest of the evening.  Just say it, everybody all together now, in that inimitable warble – “Bon Appeteeeeeeeeee!!!!”  Just see if you don’t earn the envious stares of your cubicle mates. Also for entertainment, Eric railed against the hypocritical rich liberals on Cape Cod who are fighting the installation of a windmill farm off the coast, which would provide them with clean electricity and reduce dependence on foreign oil, because they’re afraid it’ll be an eyesore.  Which is obnoxious.  But have you ever noticed how Republicans never get called hypocritical when they indulge in pettiness and selfishness?  That’s because they’re totally upfront about not giving a shit about anyone else.  No one would call folks out on Hilton Head hypocrites in the same situation – they’d just being acting like the assholes we all know they are.  But once a rich democrat, who gives money to the right causes and wants to help the underprivileged and the environment and give peace a chance and all that, just once whines about his property values, and he’s a hypocrite.  The cross we right-thinking folk must bear, I guess. So while the ham was braising, I sliced up two pounds of mushrooms and sautéed them in butter and oil with some minced shallot, in two different skillets.  I also used the mushroom stems to whip up some mushroom broth, which I would use, per Julia’s suggestion, to jazz up the canned peas.  Only when I opened and drained the peas, it was immediately obvious that they would need more jazzing than mushroom broth could provide.  I have had very little exposure to canned peas in my life, and as I opened up the can and dumped the khaki-colored ball-bearings into the sieve, I realized just how luck I’ve been.  There’s not much in the world more boring than a canned pea.  I’d almost rather eat poached eggs in aspic, at least there there’s the Ick Factor for interest.  So once the ham was done, I took it out and set it in a pan, and strained the braising liquid, and degreased it, using my handy-dandy deglazing cup, which every time I use it I just marvel at the simple ingenuity of it, if the human race had been dependent upon people like me to evolve, we’d still be beating coconuts open on rocks.  Then I boiled down the juices to three cups, then added some Madeira and boiled it down some more.  Here I kind of fucked my two sauces up, sort of on purpose in an effort not to make any more dishes.  Instead of proceeding from there a few more steps in the roaster before adding in the sautéed mushrooms, instead I added half the braising liquid to each mushroom skillet, and proceeded from there with the mushrooms already added.  To one pan I added two tablespoons of butter mashed up with tablespoons of flour, and a cup of cream.  That then just simmered until thickened.  In the other pan, I simmered the braising liquids with the mushrooms for five minutes, then gradually beat in a mixture of egg yolks, cornstarch and cream, and let that come almost, but not quite, to the simmer.  Voila -- two versions of Cream and Mushroom Sauce.  Which look, and taste, almost exactly the same.  Hm. Somewhere in here I also made some egg noodles and did Julia’s method for saving canned khaki peas, which entails just cooking some green onions in butter, adding the peas and salt and pepper, and a few tablespoons of mushroom broth, then boiling that down until the liquid boils off.  Eh.  Like I said, more than mushroom broth is needed here.  Maybe heroin would do the trick. Well, mostly the dinner was very, very, very salty.  I didn’t add a damn sprinkle of the stuff, but the ham was like licking a salt dome.  The two cream sauces helped a bit with that.  One of the sauces, the one without the egg yolks, was slightly paler and lighter.  The other, the one with egg yolks, was glossier and heavier and a slightly more golden shade of pale.  But really, so identical.  The canned peas were canned, khaki peas with a bit of butter.  Also, we were eating it at 10:45 at night, and Eric was experiencing a meltdown.  So that didn’t help.  I wouldn’t feed this stuff to homeless people, there’s no need to give them heart attacks on top of everything else.  So instead I’ll take it to the office and see if I can bag me some Republicans.   8:07:41 AM    comment []