Bad Home Cooking

Procrastination sandwich

Curse Elfini. Curse her, I say!

I sit here Friday, hyperventilating. Shaking with panic. Four big-ass articles in various stages of due, day job editing backing up, daughter's birthday party tomorrow, house in a ruinous state, and only ten short days before I'm off to visit the cousin in sunny New England. How am I going to do it all?

And she sends me this.

Truly. A pox on the house of Elfini.

She knows how I feel about chickpeas. She knows I probably have a can in the house. I don't know how she knew about the lemons, but that's Elfini for you.

I had no choice but to make this sandwich. My editors might understand. Maybe.

The recipe, from Deb at Smitten Kitchen:

1 15-ounce can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
2 tablespoons pitted, halved and very thinly sliced black olives
1 tablespoon finely chopped red onion
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
Juice and zest from half a lemon (unless you've got a dry one, in which case, go ahead and use the whole lemon.)
A couple good pinches of salt
A few grinds of black pepper
A few glugs of olive oil (your discretion. Or, if you're at all like me, your ultimate undoing)

Mix everything but the olive oil in a small to midsize bowl. Lightly smash the chickpeas with the back of a fork or a potato masher. You're not going for smooth here. You want a blend of smooth and chunky. Note to self: buy another potato smasher.

Add the glugs of olive oil, mix it lightly and enjoy.

I added a tablespoon of chopped roasted red pepper. Because what's better than chickpeas? Chickpeas with roasted red peppers. The color blast helped, too.

Spread this on any kind of good bread, preferably toasted. I went with lightly toasted dark slices of "European-style" whole grain bread.

The result? Well, when I stopped shoveling this into my mouth as I seasoned it, I got it onto the bread and continued eating. When the sandwich was gone, I put the rest of the mixture into a bowl and devoured most of that. No matter that I put too much parsely in, or that my lemon had shed seeds into the mix. I ate through it.

Perhaps my shaking was due less from deadlines and more from forgetting to eat today? It wouldn't be the first time. Elfini knows this.

OK. I remove the pox on the Elfini clan.

As for photos, well, go back to Smitten Kitchen and study Deb's. She's the pro. I am becoming increasingly shamed over the quality of my photos on this blog, and something will have to be done. And anyway, my camera ran out of juice just as I was trying to capture this delight and I don't have the time right now to search for the charger. I offer you up cell phone pictures instead.

Now back to work. *urp.

Obama cupcakes: Just because we can

Everybody watched Tuesday's historic inauguration of Barack Obama as 44th president of the United States, even the kids. That afternoon I picked my 8-year-old up from school, and he described watching it with his teacher and classmates. We were in Trader Joe's picking up milk and other groceries.

"Look at those chocolate cupcakes," he said. "Could we get some? Because of the special day?"

"Nice try," I told him.

He tried the puppy dog eyes next. He opened his huge brown eyes as wide as he could and put on his most alluring pout. "Please?"

"Those cupcakes are $5," I said. "No."

"But it was the inauguration today," he said. "It's history, you said. And look, they're brown, like Obama."

God. "It's not about color anymore," I said. "It's about ability and leadership. Besides, I could make those cheaper myself."

"Bet you couldn't." My boy knows me too well already. He threw down the dare gauntlet like a pro. "And we can't make cupcakes on a weeknight."

"Yes, we can," I said, in my most presidential voice. "Just you watch."

I'm hardly the first to make an Obama Cupcake. The women at Cupcakes Take the Cake blog did gangbusters with the idea, but then they're pros. My Obama cupcakes are not chocolate. They're golden cake, (like Michelle's dress!) topped with vanilla butter creme frosting, and garnished with orange zest. No particular reason, other than I didn't have chocolate to melt down and make chocolately-goodness from. And why the orange zest? Dunno. It just sounded good at the time.

The result: Millions of Americans would congregate on the Mall to sing Hail to the Chief to these cupcakes.

Here's the recipe. From Mark Bittman's immortal "How to Cook Everything."

Golden Layer Cake

one and 1/4 sticks butter, softened, plus extra for greasing the cupcake tin
2 cups cake or all-purpose flour
1 1/4 cups sugar
4 eggs or 8 yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla extract OR 1 tablespoon grated or minced orange zest
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup milk

For cupcakes, preheat oven to 350. Butter up the muffin tin and then put your cupcakes papers in (the cake will spill over the top when baked).

Using an electric mixer, cream the butter until smooth, then gradually add the sugar. Beat until light, 3 or 4 minutes. Beat in the eggs or the yolks (I used eggs) one at a time, then the vanilla or orange zest, and the almond extract.

Combine the flour, baking powder and salt and add to the egg mixture a bit at a time, stirring in milk as needed. Stir until just smooth.

Fill the cupcake papers almost to the brim. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on a rack. Frost and serve without the paper.

And I made this frosting, also from "How to Cook Everything."

Vanilla Butter Cream Frosting - orange variation

1 stick unsalted butter
4 cups powdered sugar (I only used 3 and it was perfectly sweet and still held together)
6 tablespoons milk or cream, plus a little more if needed
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon or so orange zest

Beat the butter until creamy and gradually work in the sugar, adding milk as you go as needed. Add the vanilla extract and the orange zest. Frost those cupcakes. For a final splash of color, I tossed on some grated orange peel.

No photo. Just the iconic painting by Wayne Thiebaud, one of my favorite artists.

Maybe these aren't as fancy as the gal who used to do the Cupcake blog could turn out, but then nobody at my house needs fancy. They just need edible. And sometimes they need cupcakes to mark an occasion. I've got two waiting for Malia and Sasha, but they'd better hurry if they're going to claim them. They're going fast.

It was a sweet end to a historic day.

The pantry clean-out project: What's in, what's out

Gotta hand it to Mark Bittman (and to those who religiously forward me his articles): His recent column about what should and shouldn't be in one's pantry was a godsend for me. And not only because it gave me a solution to my tomato paste quandary. (as the second person to cite tomato paste in a tube, I can only assume the universe is telling me to get off my butt and go find a store that sells it.)

His list of pantry staples in just the kind of service journalism I need to read. It's because I wouldn't otherwise know these things. Because I didn't grow up in a household where fresh cooking was ever considered, much less valued, and I have only slowly come to realize how much better a dish can taste with a little creative embellishment.

Take his example of lemons. Just say no to the ubiquitous yellow plastic lemon in your refrigerator side shelf, he says, and buy fresh lemons, six at a time, and use them over everything. "I never put lemon on something and regret it." (well, I have, but I take his point.) He suggests scrambling up some eggs in a little chicken stock, then finishing up with a lot of lemon, fresh pepper and dill. Yowza. I guarantee you slop the first time I try this...but maybe with a few practice runs I might stumble upon something marvelous.

He gives me good reason to go out and buy another wedge of fresh Parmesan, something I'd had since last year's soup swap and have since run out of...to my regret. I reach into my fridge for the stuff almost daily, and yet I never remember to buy it anew. But "...grated over anything, there is no more magical ingredient." I like the sound of that. And with that one fell swoop, perhaps even I can make something special out of something otherwise mundane. 

These are the kind of magiks my friends who know how to cook employ as a matter of course. For Julia, Audrey, Christina and Kelli, having capers and anchovies and good olives on hand is a big duh. They'd probably never have a can of corn sitting around in the summer, when they could get the fresh stuff. Truly, I must learn from them.

True, some of his suggestions lie too deeply in my fantasy-land. A quarter pound of prosciutto? In my refrigerator? In my wildest dreams (along with a mention on Oprah and a vacation villa in Tangiers). And cooking fresh beans every week? I don't have the time management skills for that rotation. Plus it sounds like a waste of perfectly good dried beans.

The advice to throw spices out after a year gives me pause as well. I love my spices, but I buy them in Little India, where I can get 8-ounces of cumin or coriander for $3 or $4, compared to $5 or more for 3-ounces at the supermarket. I use them a lot, but not so much that my 8-ounces of Garam Masala is going to be used in 12 short months. Thriftiness vs. freshness is a conundrum here. And as we know, my forays into fresh herbs are often wasted. 

Still, I'm not so behind in the pantry game. I cleaned out my own pantry just the other day, and I must say that for someone with no skill in the kitchen, I do keep a pretty-well stocked place. It's not everyone who keeps walnuts (for my yogurt) and miso paste at the ready. I've got dried mushrooms and bonito flakes and real maple syrup. I've got fish sauce, and yes, even a tin of anchovies.

Although those actually went over, in the can, when I last went to whip up a salad nicoise. OK. So there's lots of work to do. Maybe I could start by figuring out how I could get a quarter pound of prosciutto into my freezer.

Bad Home Cooking seal of approval: Dunkin' Donuts coffee

This is the first of a series of posts about products the Bad Home Cook loves....or not. And I'm no pushover, mind you.

This month's BHC Seal of Approval: Dunkin' Donuts original blend coffee.

Americans have a thing for gilding the lily. To hear people talk, we're suppose to view the 4,500-square foot house and a TV the size of a plate glass window as desirable. This is the culture that has brought us the Hummer, and the $5, 40-ounce coffee drinks covered in whipped cream, caramel and gold leaf.

What happened to the simple things?

A regular cup of joe. Not shade-picked, triple-roasted, imported on the backs of virgin Sherpas. Not a bitter-tasting vente anything. I've always wanted my coffee plain and old-fashioned; light, no sugar, and served in one of three ways: in a chipped porcelain coffee cup, in evil Styrofoam, or in a blue paper cup edged with Greek motifs.

In other words, diner coffee. Drugstore coffee. The kind of coffee you buy at a donut shop where they don't sell croissants.

This is my world. My desires are basic. So you can imagine the happy jig I danced when a recent trip to Target hipped me to the original cup of coffee -- Oh Dunkin' Donuts, I never knew how much you meant to me.

Whip up a pot at home. Smell that? Now you can trudge upstairs to the computer with a smile on your  face. Mocha-brown, medium-roast coffee of the sort that allows for all day drinkin'. God only knows how much money I save by quaffing this stuff instead of paying $3 for a cup of bitters at the chain coffee stores that litter every corner.

I know. If I were really hard-core I'd be drinking Folger's freeze-dried from a can. Allow me my simple luxuries.

Bad Home Cooking: Eight resolutions for 2009 (and six things that make me happy)

I love a new year. Like a newly-cleaned house or a freshly-scrubbed kid, a new year is a clean slate, full of potential and hope. I like to keep my expectations low in the kitchen, but I thought it was worth coming up with a list of possibly actionable items that will make my life (and that of those forced to live near me) that much better in the new year. To wit:

Here are EIGHT resolutions for 2009:

1.) I will learn to dice an onion (Kelli, if you're still knitting me those gloves, you might want to subtract a finger or two...)

2.) I will learn how to roast a chicken in one go.

3.) I will figure out something to do with the tin of tomato paste I've used one tablespoon of other than cover it with tinfoil and let it go fuzzy in the back of the fridge.

4.) I will update this blog once a week, damnit. And OK, I'll try to fix the photos, too.

5.) I will not waste so much food. If my kids won't eat it, I will find someone who will. Any volunteers...?

****************************** crickets *********************************************************************

6.) I will learn the ancient art of timing. That is, I will learn how to get three things on a plate and serve them before any of them get cold.

7.) I will bake Linda's white bread this year. I will not be afraid.

8) I will identify three more meals my kids will both eat. (It's the both part that will prove tricky)

What'dya think? Are any of these doable? I think they all are, but you, plucky readers, may think otherwise. Which one(s) is/are the most likely to fall through the cracks?

Oh, and in other news, I found out that I've been sent my first Blog meme of 2009, along with a little award of unknown provenance. I saw my blog mentioned on a food blog called Joie de Manger, written by a woman trained as a chef and now trying to juggle cooking and family (and dog).

If I understand these things correctly, I'm supposed to do something (in this case, list six things that make me happy), then pass this award onto six other deserving blogs. This does seem like the blog version of a chain letter, but hell. I'm flattered enough to do as I'm told,

As such, here are six things that make me happy:

1.) Hearing, "Mom! Can I have some more of your (insert home-made foodstuff here).

2.) Dinner parties with friends

3.) Farmer's markets

4.) Noodles of all sorts

5.) Flamenco, especially live, when it's caught fire

6.) Cute scarves.

I pass this forward to:

Elfini
Matt Bites
Bananaberryfarmgirls
xxstream -- Housewifery in real time
Talk of Tomatoes
The Perfect Pantry

Visit these excellent blogs and see what they've got for you.