Friday, August 01, 2003

I’m just so fucking tired all the time.  I missed calls from both my mother and Hannah last night, cooking, and didn’t return them because when I’m tired like this my agoraphobia flares up – only it’s not agoraphobia, is it, I’m not afraid of leaving the house, at least not primarily, I’m just afraid of people.  All people.  It’s the saddest thing. Anyway, not to bore you with the details of my neurosis, last night was the Canapes aux Epinards I failed to make Wednesday night, and Crepes Fourrees et Flambees, made with Crepes a la Levure, that is crepe batter made with yeast.  You make it the same way as the Crepes Sucrees, except that you heat up a quarter cup of the milk—“to blood temperature,” Julia says, as in “warm the milk to blood temperature,” which is such an evocative and yet icky phrase, it really sticks with me -- and let the yeast sit in it.  Then proceed as usual, adding the rest of the milk, ¾ cup cold water, 3 egg yolks, a tablespoon of sugar, 3 tablespoons of Grand Marnier, 1 ½ cups flour, 5 tablespoons of melted butter, and the yeasty milk at the end, and blend.  Only, okay confession, I didn’t want to dirty yet another pan, and I have no microwave, so instead of heating up the milk, I let the yeast stand in some of the water, which I was able to get sufficiently hot out of the tap.  Was that wrong? Because of the yeast, there was no cheating with the timing, sticking the batter in the fridge for an hour instead of two or whatever.  No, it had to sit at “room temperature” – such an amusing concept, “room temperature” – for two hours.  Sigh.  This was all made worse by the fact that I didn’t manage to finish the batter before “The Daily Show” started, which means I didn’t manage to finish the batter until “The Daily Show” was over.  The upside being that I heard Jon Stewart say this (paraphrase, but a pretty close one:) "Of course there’s been a lot of debate in this country about gay marriage, and frankly it’s got me worried.  Are we all going to have to marry gay  Because I’m – Because I – Because my wife wouldn’t like that.  And I’m thinking it has to be mandatory.  We must all have to make man-love, because otherwise, why would anyone care?" Jon Stewart works hard to maintain my belief in humanity, and for that I thank him. So after all that happened, I set aside the batter and got to work on the spinach.  We’d pre-cooked it yesterday, so there was only all the rest of the fucking stuff we had to do to it.  I love spinach, but it can be a bit of a pain in the ass.  Helen expressed a bit of surprise at the vehemence with which Hannah described her very best way of cleaning spinach, at which I could only think, “Oh, Helen – you haven’t made much spinach lately, have you?”  Because if you did, you would know that anything you can do to make any part of the process – the cleaning particularly – less irritating is a godsend.  So anyway.  I threw the spinach in a pan with some hot butter and let all the excess water evaporate, then added beef stock and let it cook down.  Julia’s spinach rather turns out spinach sludge, but I like it like that.  Then I stirred in some swiss cheese, and scooped a bit of the stuff onto each of six canapés – pieces of bread fried up in butter – which I’d made Wednesday night before giving up on the idea of Canapes aux Epinards.  Sprinkled some more swiss cheese, and bread crumbs, and melted butter, on top of that.  All they had left to do was broil in the oven.  I haven’t gone into it, but I was also at this point baking potatoes and making sautéed pork chops in a white wine tomato sauce, a recipe from the 60-Minute Cookbook that used to be a staple back in the day before The Project.  So the pork chops were done, the spinach canapés were ready to go, but the potatoes had not sufficiently baked.  Damn their eyes! (Ba-dum Bump!)  So we decided to go ahead and broil the canapés, and eat them as a first course.  Which we did.  They were very good, but extremely buttery.  The butter-fried bread was a little intense.  I think maybe garlic rubbed toasted bread would have been a little more suited to contemporary tastes.  But spinach and cheese good.  Okay, so now the potatoes were done, and we ate them with the pork chops.  Then it was on to crepes.  A much better success this time – I don’t know if it was because the batter was less delicate, what with the yeast and all, or if it was the use of Pam instead of far too much butter, but it worked better.  They didn’t stick together, at least after the first one, and I could flip them without tearing them.  I can’t quite flip them over in the pan without a spatula, but I’m getting there.  Only thing is this – whereas with the savory crepes I would have the problem every so often where the crepe would adhere implacably to the pan, this time, the batter seems not to want to stick at all.  It almost beads up, like the pan is made of scotchgard.  Which makes for less mess, but also less shapely crepes.  Ah well.  No matter, I did manage to make the crepes.  I set them aside and made the orange almond butter, which is the same butter I made Wednesday – butter creamed with sugar cubes rubbed on an orange, minced orange peel, yet more sugar , orange juice and Grand Marnier – with pulverized almonds added.  I smeared each crepe with a good slab of this butter, folded them into wedges, arranged them in a pan, sprinkled them with sugar, and stuck them in an oven for ten minutes or so.  Meanwhile I heated up some cognac and Grand Marnier in a pan.  When the crepes were hot I took them out, poured the alcohol over, and lit them.  They burned very nicely for a little bit, but burned out quickly, and when I tried to relight them, they wouldn’t.  Had they already cooled down too much?  Because clearly, once again, not all of the alcohol had burned off.  I think I should have kept the pan over a low flame while I was doing it.  Also, I need some of those fancy long matches, lighting my food on fire with a Bic is a little scary. So the crepes weren’t that good, because they were entirely too alcoholic.  The next recipe gives me a break from flambéing, though, and a treat of chocolate.  Scharfenberger Chocolate.  Maybe that’ll get me through the day. Meanwhile, the house is a terrifying mess.  I’m planning on holding a blowout or two for any of you who wish to join in the next month, but I may suggest you wear rubber gloves and not sit on anything.  And poor Eric.  His life with me has become, shall we say, pretty thankless.  Nothing but dishes and late dinners and neurotic wives for him.  I’m sorry honey.  I’ll make it up to you.  In 26 days.   8:10:04 AM    comment []