Wednesday, July 30, 2003

Last night was broiled fish basted with Beurre pour Escargots, which is not butter with escargot in it – I have not eaten escargot since Eric took me to The Belgian Restaurant for his senior prom in, dear God, 1992, and to tell you the truth I don’t know for sure that I tried them then, though I retain a very unpleasant image of Eric in a tuxedo sucking his down – but butter which can be served with escargot.  I served mine, instead, with the most enormous piece of cod you ever saw, Eric bought it at the local fish store and it was like a side of beef.  The butter is made by creaming a stick of butter and mixing in minced shallots, garlic, parsley, and salt and pepper.  I then smeared it – an entire stick’s worth of butter, mind you – on both sides of the cod and, as I mentioned, broiled it.  Turning it over was rather a trick, but I did.  The butter was very nice, but I don’t much like cod.  Actually, I really love salt cod, but fresh cod, broiled cod, is, I don’t know, a bit bitter or bland or something.  Though it was pretty, separating out into these soft white slabs.  Whatever.  I need to be eating more fish and less, oh say, custard filled tarts.  The cod was accompanied by some very nice green beans I got at the brand spanking new green market outside my building in lower Manhattan, and by, and I don’t know where I got this idea, orzo.  Orzo.  What a stupid food.  The contempt I once held in my heart for eggplant I now reserve for orzo.  Why does pasta have to pretend to be rice?  Doesn’t rice do very well on its own, thank you very much? But I was trying to think what ought to go with fish, and potatoes seemed wrong, rice seemed wrong, noodles seemed wrong.  Ergo orzo.  I did mine per a suggestion of Martha -- very much an orzo sort of person, that Martha – boiling the orzo and then tossing it with some onions I’d chopped and sautéed in butter.  And even though it had an odd, slightly soapy taste, it was addictive.  Or maybe I’m just such a pathetic carb addict that I’ll scoop any form of the stuff into my mouth.  I suspect that’s the case. For dessert, at last, the last of the tarts.  Pineapple.   I nearly fucked it up again – Julia asked me to boil ¾ cup of the juice from the canned pineapple for 5 minutes.  Which I did, but losing track as I did it of actually keeping an eye on it.  It boiled away to nothing and burned.  I was able to get nearly another ¾ cup of juice out of the can, to which I added a bit of water, and tried again, watching this time.  When it had boiled a bit, I dropped in the pineapple slices and let them boil a bit more.  Then I took them out and stuck them in the fridge while I boiled the juice some more with red currant jelly and kirsch until it was syrupy.  I brushed this into the tart crust I’d made yesterday and let it cool.  After dinner all I had to do was smooth a layer of Crème Patissiere left over from the weekend into the crust, and lay the pineapple on top.  I could have smeared some more red currant – pineapple juice syrup on top if I hadn’t already thrown it into the sink with the dishwater.  Oh well. So those of you who hate hot pineapple things can be comforted because this was not hot.  But I still don’t like pineapple.  Actually, the idea of it with meats is much preferable – I’ve had some pretty amazing tacos made with pork spit roasted with pineapple – but mixing it’s slightly rotten oversweet taste with custard is to me slightly repulsive.  It makes me think, if I may be so gross, of putrefaction.  Thank God for my office Republicans (and no, I won’t be stopping tarring Republicans anytime soon, sorry, it’s the way I was raised.) Eric bravely ate his piece, distracting himself by watching “Orphans in the Storm” – silent movie, Gish sisters, French revolution.  Like watching “Birth of a Nation” without the moral discomfort.  Okay, so here’s the situation.  I’ve got 27 days to go here, and 52 recipes.  One of which is, as I’ve obsessed before, boned duck stuffed with pate and baked in a pastry crust.  Another of which - -and this is the real problem I don’t know how to solve – a chicken recipe I skipped way back because it calls for a spit attachment for your oven, and surprise surprise I got no stinkin’ spit attachment.  I don’t even know what one is.  So that’s a problem.   7:45:21 AM    comment []