Wednesday, July 23, 2003

When you get started, it’s so hard to stop.  The night seems like it will go on forever, and you say to yourself, “Just one more.  I can handle it.”  And so it goes, down the sad road of addiction.  Of course you all know what happened last night in the Powell household.  It wasn’t pretty.  That’s right.  Two episodes of Buffy, season 4.  They weren’t even particularly great episodes, but you know how it is.  After awhile you need two just to keep alive. On the dinner front, Julie/Julia front there was Fonds Blanc, or White Veal Stock – or rather half of it, I’ll have to finish it tomorrow, and don’t you real cooks out there bitch about making stock in spurts, I know it’s not ideal, but it’s the cards I’ve been dealt, so get over it – and beef patties with Beurre Marchand de Vins, Shallot Butter with Red Wine.  Also oven fries and baked tomatoes, these too done Julia-style, but I’ve already done that, so it doesn’t count.  Everything went pretty smoothly, for the most part.  For the stock I covered the veal bones I’d gotten at Ottomanelli’s – which butchers didn’t lift an eye when I asked them if they could get me calves’ brains, it’s no problem, but which also charged me nine bucks for bones – with water and let them boil slowly for five minutes before draining them, rinsing them, rinsing the pot, putting the bones back in and covering them with cold water again.  Threw in some onion, carrot, celery, bay leaf, thyme, parsley, garlic and cloves and let come to the simmer and stay there all night.  Then I made the Beurre Marchand de Vins.  Very easy, this.  Just mince some shallots, show them in a little pot with a fourth cup of red wine and half a cup of beef boullion and pepper, and boil down to a tablespoon and a half.  The only problem came when we couldn’t find the beaters for my mixer.  I of course assumed Eric had put them someplace stupid, and so was irritable with him. But in the end, he was the one who found them, in a bowl of whipped cream I’d forgotten in the fridge, which had turned a nasty shade of pink.  So then I washed those and beat a stick of butter until creamy, then beat in the wine-shallot reduction, and then some parsley.  The butter was mauve, but it was done.  I stuck it in the fridge while the potatoes and tomatoes baked and the hamburger patties fried up in some butter and oil on the stove. Eric had put on The White Album and come to join me in the kitchen.  He read the New Yorker with his I-Book on his lap while I sliced the potatoes and dried them and made the beef patties with a pat of butter in the middle.  At one point, we were quiet for a long time working and reading away, when all of a sudden, apropos of nothing I could detect, he muttered in a surly voice, “fucking Beatles.” Yeah.  Fuck ‘em. Oh, and I also made some Crème Anglaise to go with the Flan des Isles.  Sort of.  I fucked it up by letting the sauce – which is made of sugar and raw egg yolks and cornstarch and hot milk all beat together – come to a simmer, which it’s not supposed to do.  This is what happens when you use a candy thermometer instead of being clueless and paranoid.  I can see Julia in full Yoda-mode, intoning, “The only instruments you can trust are your eyes, and your heart.”  Only it was Julia that told me to use the friggin’ thermometer.  So, yeah, it was lumpy, and then I got so discombobulated  (and an aside here, my friend Matt asked the other day, “Why do we never use the word ‘combobulated’?  As in ‘Everything went perfectly, I was completely combobulated.’”  Why indeed.) that I forgot to stir in the vanilla before I set it in the fridge to chill. So dinner was fine – the red wine and shallot butter tasted about like you’d expect, like butter with red wine and shallots.  It was good.  The Flan des Isles was not so successful.  First of all, I think I didn’t cook it quite enough, it didn’t set quite as good as it should have.  Secondly, and more importantly, it tasted like pineapple.  Like really a lot.  And I really, a lot, don’t like pineapple.  Oh well. A couple of last points.  Re: the expletive debate, I obviously speak for most of the company when I say that while of course everyone’s entitled to their opinion, I’m clearly not going to be cleaning up my act anytime soon.  It may be a crutch, but it’s my crutch, and well-earned.  One of the few non-drones at my office summed it up best: “I’ve heard that ‘cop-out’ argument before, and I think it’s a bunch of fucking bullshit.”  Well said, my friend, well said. On the non-dinner eating issue:  I was hoping not to get into this.  My eating habits whilst not Julia-ing leave, shall we say, something to be desired.  I of course will do leftovers when available and when I remember, but I tend more toward the nothing-and-pepsi-one school, sadly.  Occasional visits to salad bars and pizzerias.  It is very unenlightened.  Someday I’ll be Amanda Hesser and pack my homemade gourmet lunches when I take my flights to Italy, but for now I make do with beverages that can dissolve pennies in 72 hours.      8:03:15 AM    comment []