Bad Home Cooking

L'Shanna Tova (My ongoing trouble with roast chicken)

Out of the blue I decided to have a Rosh Hashanna dinner party. It was sort of my turn to host a dinner for my circle of friends anyway. And I get points for touching on the major Jewish holidays. "If it wasn't for you I wouldn't celebrate any of them," one told me. This tells me that having to endure my mediocre food is a small price to pay in exchange for observing tradition. Whew. That relieves some of the pressure.

Some, not all. But this year I was determined to make it easy for myself. This would be a simple meal: Roast chicken, salad, soup. Everyone else would bring the side dishes, deserts and libation. I made my shopping list, checked it twice, and steeled myself to keep on top of it all on a weeknight.

I found a recipe for roast chicken with pomegranate glaze and rosemary that sounded simple enough. Adapted from a Barbara Kafka favorite, this recipe promised a rich, dark brown bird with a savory gravy brightened by pomegranate seeds. Here it is:

5 to 6 stems of fresh rosemary, and 1 tablespoon chopped rosemary.
5-to-6 lb. chicken, excess fat removed, giblets reserved for stock.
2 to 3 teaspoons kosher salt
freshly ground black pepper, to taste
4 whole cloves garlic, unpeeled
seeds from 1 pomegranate (about 1 cup)
juice from 1 large or two small pomegranates (about 1/2 cup)
1/2 cup chicken stock

Wash and dry bird. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Place 1/2 cup pomegranate seeds, garlic and a sprinkle of salt in the cavity. Lay chicken on top of whole rosemary stems in a heavy roasting pan. Pour 1/4 cup pomegranate juice over the chicken and scatter 1 tablespoon chopped rosemary over it. Sprinkle bird with 1 teaspoon salt. Roast for 50 minutes. If the chicken is browning too fast, reduce heat to 400 degrees and open over door for a minute to lower the temperature quickly.

Continue roasting at lower temperature. The chicken should be a gorgeous mahogany brown. Tilt chicken over pan to drain juices, then remove chicken and rosemary sprigs to platter. Spoon out fat. Place pan over medium high heat and pour in chicken stock and remaining 1/4 cup pomegranate juice. Bring this to a boil, scraping up any browned bits from bottom of pan with a wooden spoon. Lower heat and simmer for one minute. Season with salt and freshly ground pepper. Add any juices that have collected on the platter. Pour some juice over the chicken and top with the remaining pomegranate seeds. Serve rest of juices in a sauce-boat. Serves four.

Sounds pretty straightforward. Until one of many variables inherent in the weeknight dinner party occur.

Such as: guests who arrive at different times. People are busy. People get there when they can, after finishing up work, sitting in traffic, picking up kids. How do you keep a chicken warm when you planned on eating at, say, 6:30, but eating doesn't get underway until an hour later?

How do you manage eight (eight!) starving kids who need their pasta NOW! and you realize that paper plates and cups were not on your shopping list?

How do you cope when the chicken you roasted for 50 minutes per the recipe, which has been sitting in a 200-degree oven for an hour keeping warm, is not, in fact, actually cooked through?

Are you supposed to scrape up the black bits in the bottom of the roasting pan for the sauce? And if so, why does the sauce come out tasting like burnt chicken stock with pomegranate undertones? If you pick black burnt bits from the sauce off the top of a roast chicken when nobody's looking, does that make you a better home cook than you actually are?

My friends are very forgiving. The carrot and ginger soup from Trader Joe's was a hit, and even I can make a pretty decent salad out of fancy greens, heirloom tomatoes, feta and toasted walnuts. The chick peas Joey made from a Nigella Lawson recipe were delicious over the cous-cous with cranberries. And the menfolk insisted the chicken, finally on the table after another 20 minutes in the oven, was tender and lip-smacking. I chose to believe them. And I had plenty of alcohol on hand to assist me.

The kids all got ice cream. The adults feasted on apple pie. All store bought. All delicious. And we all gathered around to dip apples into honey while I pontificated in the shallow end about the Jewish New Year.

My New Year's resolutions: Take some cooking classes. Forget about roasting chickens for a while. And let other people throw the dinner parties.

Martha help us! Persimmon cookies to die for

Audge can be one stubborn dame. With her persimmon tree heavy with fruit, stooped like an octogenarian, I asked her this morning for the recipe for her show-stopping, locally-legendary persimmon cookies.

She shook her head, a gleam in her eye. No.

I blink. "I can't have it?"

"No."

"But I'm gonna blog about it. And a whole 100 or so people will read your recipe and rejoice."

"Nope. I'm not giving it out to anyone anymore. Not until Martha Stewart puts me on her show. Then I'll tell the world."

Well that put the kaibosh on my blog post. But what could I say? The cookies are indeed THAT worthy. They are. I've had them. Chewy and cakey at the same time, not too sweet, but with a pleasant fruity under-taste, they're almost the best thing about the crazy back-to-school season.

I wouldn't divulge a commodity like that for free either.

There is some blending of ingredients, some secret alchemy, that Audge infuses these delights with. She's always been a force in the kitchen, but with these persimmon cookies, she approaches art. No wonder she's not talking.

Many bakers, far more talented than I, have tried to recreate them. All have failed.

We're just gonna have to wait for Martha to come calling. Martha?! Are you out there?

Japanese lunch...on the sly

I bought the drama 'tween her own bento lunch box at Marukai the other day. The next morning I filled it with two onigiri and some small pieces of grilled salmon. The look on her face when she came home that afternoon told me she'd been the belle of the ball. "All my friends wanted a taste," she said proudly. "They thought it was so cool."

I can wring significant jollies out of my daughter's experiences these days. Especially when they stem from some successful food stuff I've made for her. It makes me feel like my plan is working. My kids are gonna grow up thinking their mom was a boffo cook. They're falling for it!

That could explain why, in the middle of a terrifically crazy day, I made her another Japanese lunch, this one for after-school, complete with grilled salmon, rice, nori and miso soup. Home made miso soup.

It's like I'm manic or something.

Making a Japanese lunch is fairly straightforward, although I did manage to use just about every pot I own in the straining and restraining of first and second dashi. I'll have to sit down and think through my needs in this regard next time. But it is time-consuming. Or it is if you're used to opening a can of soup for lunch.

Buy sushi rice and follow the directions on the back of the bag. Except for the part about not having to rinse the rice first. Always rinse the rice.

I grilled up a salmon fillet on the grill, rubbing it first with some olive oil, sea salt and ground pepper. I splashed some soy sauce on there after a bit. I wanted them a bit overcooked so I left them on for ten minutes. I think subconsciously I'm after the dry, rather tough, but savory salmon bits I ate for breakfast in Japan.

For miso soup, I used four cups dashi and two and a half tablespoons of miso. Which turned out to be way too salty. Next time I'll try one and a half tablespoons. The kids didn't seem to notice. They both drank their bowls.

They fell on the nori. Now I'll have to go get more from Marukai, which is just as well, because I realize I've lost almost all my chopsticks and I need actual rice bowls if I'm going to try this sort of thing at home again.

And I will, since I am a new believer in the bento lifestyle. And here's a gal after my own heart. Check it out! Itadu-kimasu!

Mexican wedding cake cookies with rose water and cardamom

My neighbors down the street got married the other day. It was a simple yet elegant affair, held on the front lawn of their tidy Spanish-revival bungalow. Now that California has legalized gay marriage, they were able to confirm their long-term relationship in a ceremony in the eyes of the state, and in front of their friends and family. Even their "girls," three little dogs they walk every morning before work, which is when we run into them on the way to school, were groomed and in attendance.

What better occasion to try out my Mexican wedding cake cookie recipe?

Here's a recipe adapted from Epicurious. It's more or less the same recipe my mom sent me, back when I asked her about the bourbon balls. God only knows where she got it from. The back of Reader's Digest?

These are also known as Russian tea cakes. I live closer to Mexico.

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, room temperature
2 cups powdered sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup pecans, hazelnuts or other, toasted and finely ground. (I used ground almonds, because that's what I had on hand)
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon (optional)

Using an electric mixer, beat the butter in a large bowl until light and fluffy. Add 1/2 cup powdered sugar and the vanilla. Beat until well-blended. Beat in the flour (amazingly, I was so distracted at this point I almost forgot this part, and wondered what I'd done wrong to make the mixture so sticky. Duh.) Then your ground nuts.

Divide the dough in half, roll into a ball, wrap in plastic and let chill in the fridge for half an hour.

Preheat the oven to 350. Whisk remaining 1 1/2 cup powdered sugar and cinnamon into a small bowl. Set aside.

Take half the chilled dough, pinch off roughly two teaspoons and roll into balls, placing 1/2 inch apart on parchment paper. Bake until golden brown on bottom and just pale golden on top (about 18 minutes). Cool cookies for five minutes on the baking sheet, then drop them into the sugar mixture, covering them completely. Transfer these coated cookies onto a cookie rack, and let cool completely. Makes about 4 dozen.

Because I was feeling daring, I added a few drops of rose water to the batter. And 1/8th teaspoon of cardamom powder to the sugar/cinnamon mixture.

The results: Delicious. My kids were incredulous that I made such delights. So was I, truth be told.

Naturally I went for the overkill, and tried to line a little basket with multi-colored tissue paper, for that rainbow effect, and fill it with the cookies. It was a little twee, but I'm sure the guys appreciated the sentiment.