Awkwardly Social

I’ve had this book for many years.  And I have never made a single one of the recipes, because while I love mac n’ cheese, I’m usually scared of making something fattening.  There are two reasons for that. Number 1, I’ll eat the whole thing and become obese overnight, and number 2, I live in Los Angeles so if I make it and bring it somewhere no one will eat it because everyone else in LA is afraid of eating something and becoming obese overnight.Since my New Year’s Resolutions involve not really worrying about that so much anymore, I made a damn mac n’ cheese recipe.  And let me tell you, it was a hit.  People were in LOVE with the mac n’ cheese.  It was a Los Angeles miracle!  So without further ado, I present to you City Hall Macaroni and Cheese.

City Hall Mac and Cheese

• 1 lb penne rigate
• 2 cups heavy cream (I am always flummoxed in the cream section, there’s whipping cream and heavy whipping cream, but no cream that is heavy cream, so I used the heavy whipping cream. I’m also bad with measurements, so I used the medium sized container, not the tall one, not the little one, the one right in the middle.  Exactly two cups!)
• 2 cups whole milk
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 2 cups (1/2 lb) American cheese shredded (I couldn’t find shredded American cheese at Ralph’s, and the only non-deli American cheese was in individually wrapped slices and that seemed like a bad idea, so I went to the deli counter ordered 1/2 pound of white American cheese in thin slices and sort of tore it up into pieces when I got to that step)
• 1 and 1/3 cups (1/3 lb) grated Monterey Jack cheese (I just used one 8 oz. package of pre-shredded cheese, and seriously, I don’t know how to convert pounds and ounces and get worried that I never learned that in school.  Maybe because I didn’t take home ec?  So, basically after I put it in the pan, I realized I used 2 cups of Monterey Jack.)
• Kosher salt
• Fresh ground pepper
• 1/2 cup Panko bread crumbs
• 2 teaspoons chopped fresh parsley (didn’t use)
• 2 teaspoons grated Parmesan cheese

First you preheat the oven to 350 degrees and butter a 9 by 13 in. baking pan.  (Like brownie pan size for measuring challenged like myself.)

Then do the pasta according to packaged directions for al dente.

Then the hardest step - combine the cream, milk, nutmeg and cayenne in a heavy sauce pan over medium heat and bring it to a simmer, making sure to stir it so it doesn’t get a gross skin and so that it does reduce to about half its volume.  (The book says about 15 minutes, I gave it more like 20 because I’m a slow learner.  The book also says to season with the salt and pepper, but I forgot.)

Add the cheese slowly, whisking along to way so it melts without getting clumpy or gross.

Then put the cooked pasta in the creamy cheese and mix together, the starch from the pasta supposedly helps thicken the sauce, SCIENCE!

Then put it in your buttered baking dish, sprinkle with the combined panko and parmesan and bake until golden brown and bubbly.  (The book says it will take about 15 minutes, but it took mine more like 20.)

Enjoy!!

Astute readers will have noticed the “Life List” tab that I snuck into the tab bar above.  I didn’t write about writing it, because it’s still very much a work in progress.  Also, I feel slightly like I did in junior high when the cool girls in the grade above me started some lame trend, the details of which seemed so important at the time but are now completely escaping me, and me and my friends (I use that plural loosely, I think at the time my only friend was Callie) attempted to imitate said trend and we were publicly shamed in the cafeteria during lunch by the mean girls.  I was mortified at the time.  Now, I’m clearly emotionally scarred because I am embarrassed to make a “Life List” -  something that is not trademarked, but that some girls in the grade ahead of my in blogging life have kind of “branded” as their “thing.”  But whatever, I’ve been writing “Life Lists” since I was an awkward teenager in Camp Verde, Arizona trying to convince my parents to buy me a horse.  Which reminds me, I need to add “own a horse” to my list.Without further ado, at #31 on my Life List is to try 100 recipes I’ve never made.  This weekend I did two!  Both from the cookbook my mom put together for my sister and I.  Below is the recipe for the Peach Cobbler.  The other will follow later this week.

Peach Cobbler

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon corn starch
•  4 cups sliced fresh peaches (this is about 3 large peaches, I think you should use 4 large peaches.)
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1 cup flour
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 tablespoons shortening
• 1/2 cup milk

Heat oven to 400 degrees.  Blend 1/2 cup sugar and cornstarch in medium saucepan.  Stir in the peaches, cinnamon and lemon juice.  (Note:  when I did this I was totally nervous that there wouldn’t be enough liquid.  Somehow, there is.  It’s really amazing.  Fear not!) Cook, stirring constantly until mixture thickens and boils.  Boil and stir 1 minute.  Pour into ungreased 2 quart casserole.  Keep fruit mixture hot in oven while preparing biscuit topping.Biscuit toppingMeasure flour, 1 tablespoon sugar, baking powder and salt into bowl.  Add shortening and milk.  (I think I messed up my shortening measurements because something was off with the biscuits, they didn’t taste like my mom’s.)  Cut through shortening 6 times, mix until dough forms a ball. Drop dough by 6 spoonfuls onto hot fruit.  Bake 25-30 minutes or until biscuit topping is golden brown.  Serve warm, and if desired, with ice cream.  Six servings.

I think the next time I make this, I’ll use more peaches, my peach to biscuit ratio was off.  Also, I think I’ll leave it in the oven a little longer, it just tasted slightly different than my mom’s.  I know it wasn’t perfect because 3 days later, we still have leftovers.  Cobbler never lasted that long in my mom’s fridge.

In between posting trainwrecky photos to flickr while drunk and sipping ill advised Jalisco cocktails on the back patio with minor reality tv stars, I’ve been busy. There’s a lot of work in forming new relationships. There’s something so completely bizarre about talking on the phone, I’m used to pulling up a person’s blog, figuring out if I like them through their written words. This time I don’t have that luxury. It’s a little fucked up to wish everyone would let me read their diary, but there it is. I want to read your dirty little secrets, so I can close my browser window and move on if I see something that doesn’t fit with my increasingly more lax standards on what it is I need in a person.

The phone rings after nine every night, unless it doesn’t. I sit on the stoop and try to get my neighbors to realize that yes, I’m on the phone. They’re worse than children, they are more insistent and drunker.

I exhale and he hears me. He admires my commitment to smoking. I admire his commitment to Scotch. It’s refreshing to talk to someone who likes drinking as much as I do.

It’s new like a baby deer, wobbly but fresh faced. It still has its fawn spots. It occasionally disappears into the weeds to hide. But it’s incredibly interested in the possibilities. The places we’ll go. The things we’ll do. The hunter hasn’t shot its mama yet.

I’m being too vague, but I want to protect the baby deer. It deserves that.

Al’s Famous Jalisco Cocktail - aka The Kenmorian Margarita

Fill a large glass with ice. Pour a two count of light tequila (we use Sauza in the silver bottle) Fill it 2/3 of the way up with Italian Grapefruit soda from Trader Joe’s. Top with club soda. Squeeze in some lime.

Watch as girls take their shirts off.

Tomorrow is the two month mark. I haven’t cooked since Louie left me. I guess partly because I wasn’t really eating anything other than a take-out meal here and a handful of crackers there. Occasionally I would open a can of black beans and heat it up with some cheese and salsa, or shove some spinach in my mouth while trying to get that last bit of work done for the job I don’t talk about here. It’s been a busy two months, a sad two months and a messy two months.

I told myself I wouldn’t cook in my new kitchen until I had everything put away. But now at the one month mark of living here with two boxes left to unpack and 2 boxes’ contents to wash, and a free Saturday afternoon, I decided to let myself off the hook.

That is one half of my counter space. I’m not exaggerating.

This is the other half.

I decided that if I could roast a chicken in this mayhem, I’d be OK. And roast a chicken I did.

I used Mark Bittman’s recipe for standard Roasted Chicken. I set off the fire alarm several times. I hope I didn’t give myself salmonella.

Mark Bittman’s Roast Chicken Recipe

• 1 whole (3-4 lb.) chicken, trimmed of excess fat, then rinsed and patted dry with paper towels [I rinsed it, but didn’t do much fat trimming or paper towel patting, probably the reason my fire alarm went off.]
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme, rosemary, marjoram, oregano, or sage leaves, or 1 teaspoon dried



• Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
• Chopped fresh herbs for garnish [didn’t do]

1. Preheat oven to 500 degrees F.
2. Place the chicken, breast side down, on a rack in a roasting pan. Begin roasting. Mix together the olive oil, herbs, salt and pepper.





3. After the chicken has roasted for about 20 minutes, spoon some of the olive oil mixture over it, then turn the bird breast side up. [This is when I opened the oven and my fire alarm got angry.] Baste again, then again after 7 or 8 minutes; at this point the breast should be beginning to brown (if it hasn’t, roast a few more minutes). Turn the heat down to 325 degrees F, baste again, and roast unitl an instant-read thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the thigh [??? WTF! this was my same problem during our turkey roasting/wine drinking disaster of ‘07, I wish I knew what this ‘thickest part’ business meant. Gargh!] reads 160 to 165 degrees F. Total roasting time will be under an hour.
4. Before removing the chicken from the pan, tip the pan to let the juices from the birds cavity flow into the pan (if they are red [they were… very bloody….ick] cook another 5 minutes). Remove the bird to a platter and let it rest for about 5 minutes. While it is resting, pour the pan juices into a clear measuring cup, [why a clear measuring cup? Also, who has an opaque measuring cup?] and pour or spoon off as much of the fast as you can. Reheat the juice, carve the bird [FAIL!], garnish, and serve with the pan juice.

I don’t know. After buying a free range organic chicken, factoring in my spices used, my time and frustration with the fire alarm, it’s totally cheaper to get a rotisserie chicken from Gelson’s. I’m also probably less likely to give myself salmonella and more likely to end up with a clean kitchen.

It felt good to get in the kitchen. It’s been too long. Tomorrow night Allie is cooking Sunday dinner, I’m helping. Hopefully we’ll do better than I did tonight.

If something happens two years in a row, does that equal a tradition?

I made sangria again for Louie’s birthday BBQ in the park and it is a hit every year. This year I added a new recipe to my arsenal and people thought it was tasty. I found it a bit on the sweet side, so if you like that kind of thing, by all means, sweeten it up. Next time I’ll probably take back the white grape juice a touch and add more club soda.

White Sangria Recipe - Inspired by Malo restaurant

• 2 bottles dry white wine (I used a Chenin Blanc from Trader Joe’s $3.99 a bottle)
• 1 1/4 cups Limoncello
• 1 Granny Smith Apple - cored and sliced thinly
• 2 nectarines - sliced thinly
• 1 peach - sliced thinly
• A couple of handfuls of red grapes - halved
• White Grape Juice
• 1 bottle Club Soda

Directions: Cut up fruit and put in the pitcher, add the white wine and Limoncello, chill for at least 2 hours.

Right before serving fill the pitcher with one part grape juice to one part club soda. Serve and watch your friends get nice and toasty.

It’s so easy, and such a nice summer drink. Too bad it’s not summer anymore.

Tara’s Red Sangria Recipe can be found here.

Because iocane comes from Australia, as everyone knows, and Australia is entirely peopled with criminals, and criminals are used to having people not trust them, as you are not trusted by me, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you.

I made a batch of this shredded chicken with a few minor changes (I used chicken breasts on the bone, instead of serrano peppers I used a can of diced jalepeno peppers and instead of Taco Seasoning I used a teaspoon each of salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, cumin, and coriander) and it is delicious if a bit spicy.

Yesterday, Louie saw me eating it and wondered why I hadn’t offered any to him. And I told him because it was so spicy that it gave me what might be considered an uncomfortable stomach condition akin to food poisoning, or that the chicken went bad and it was food poisoned. Since he has an aversion to spicy food and had been burned by food poisoning of the chicken variety previously (not by my doing, thankfully) he has steered himself far, far away from my delicious chicken.

My evil plan worked.

He should have a show called that. Then after he teaches lame people like me how to make something as easy as potato salad, we have to have sex with him. Food. Porn. I think it’s exactly what Food Network is looking for.

Bittman’s “American” Potato Salad

• 1 1/2 pounds waxy potatoes (like Red New Potatoes)
• 1/2 cup minced onion
• 1/4 cup minced parsley (I omitted because I’m bringing it to Tara’s house and she hates parsley)
• 1/2 cup mayonnaise (to taste)

Bring a pot of water to boil and salt it. Add chopped, bite sized, peeled potatoes (I left the skins on because it seems more like my Mom’s “German” potato salad that way). Boil for about 15 minutes until potatoes are tender but not mushy. Drain the water and rinse potatoes under cold water (to stop them from cooking).

Tamara’s Extra Step - Saute some chopped shallots in olive oil with fresh rosemary. I should have made more of this.

Add chopped onion, shallots and rosemary to warm potatoes. Then add mayonnaise starting with about a half cup and finish when your fat meter goes off. I also added about a 1/4 cup of Dijon mustard. Then salt and pepper to taste.

Cover and chill in the fridge. Bring to room temp when ready to serve.

It tastes very awesome already.

I was going to make my mom’s Rhubarb Crumble to bring as well, but there was no rhubarb at the Von’s on Sunset. Rather than search all over town for the elusive rhubarb I opted to buy ‘patriotic cupcakes.’ I guess these cupcakes would fight for America if asked. That’s exactly the kind of cupcake I want to eat.

Happy Boom Boom day!

I recently made fun of my mom for not having any (real) favorite vegetable recipes for our family cookbook, so here’s one for her next edition.

Roasted Winter Vegetables (serves 8 ) - From Barefoot Contessa Family Style Cookbook by Ina Garten (a gift from my sister that I adore)

I am pretty lazy when it comes to chopping and peeling and this recipe requires a lot of it, so it’s a good measure of how tasty it is once it’s done that I put up with it. Just be prepared to be very familiar with your cutting board, vegetable peeler and knife by the end of it.

Ingredients
1 pound carrots, peeled
1 pound parsnips, peeled (Parsnips, for those of you who don’t know, are delicious, if you have never seen them they can be a little off putting as they kind of look like albino carrots, don’t let that stop you from trying them)
1 large sweet potato, peeled
1 small butternut squash (about 2 pounds), peeled and seeded (Oh man, peeling this fucker can be a total pain, get a good sharp vegetable peeler and be prepared to do some trimming with your knife when you’re done.)
3 tablespoons good olive oil (She doesn’t really say what constitutes good olive oil, so I just use what I have, the slutty, non-virgin kind.)
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freashly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley (This is for garnish, after cooking, so if you aren’t a big parsley fan, feel free to omit it. I usually do because parsley irritates me.)

Instructions
1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

2. Cut the carrots, parsnips, sweet potato and butternut squash in 1 to 1 1/4-inch cubes. (Try to make them as close in size as possible, without getting too anal. They’ll cook more evenly and then you won’t taste one, think everything’s done and take them out too early.) All the vegetables will shrink while baking, so don’t cut them too small.

3. Place all the cut vegetables in a single layer on two sheet pans. Drizzle them with olive oil, salt and pepper. Toss well. (I actually put them in a big mixing bowl and toss them with the oil, salt and pepper that way, because I found tossing them on the sheet pans was kind of a messy pain in the ass. Do what you will with this information.) Bake for 25 to 35 minutes, until all the vegetables are tender, turning once with a metal spatula.

4. Sprinkle with parsley (eh, or don’t), season to taste (I find they need a bit more salt) and serve hot.

Garten recommends using the leftovers for her Roasted Vegetable Soup, but I find they taste delicious on a salad with a little stinky blue cheese and balsamic vinegar.

Enjoy!

The recipe I posted here is doctored a little from the one I ended up using for dinner last night. I was a little concerned about having people over for dinner and serving them casserole. It feels kind of like a cheat, or maybe a little too white trash, but they asked for the recipe, so I’m guessing it was OK.

1 whole roasted chicken (fryer size, bake at 400 for one hour or buy it roasted from the store)
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 cup of milk
1 can diced green chiles (it’s the little can)
1/4 of finely chopped onion
one dozen quartered corn tortillas
8 oz. grated cheddar cheese

Bone the chicken (heh, gets me every time)
Mix all the ingredients except cheese and tortillas together
Grease a casserole pan (I used butter flavored Pam) and line with one layer of corn tortillas.
Pour one third of mixture in, put another layer of corn tortillas, more chicken mix, another layer of corn tortillas, top with remaining chicken mix and refrigerate (covered) for 4-6 hours.
Bake on 350-400 for 40 minutes, then add the cheese on top, bake for 15 more minutes.

Be prepared to be sad that you won’t have many leftovers. This casserole is delicious.

I’ve been threatening my mom and sister about putting together a Blaich family cookbook, one that encompasses Dad’s side and Mom’s side of the culinary spectrum.  It all started because my mom told me about an old recipe book she found in her mom’s stuff, and one of the entries was for Dandelion Wine, another for soap.  I am so far removed from a culture in which you have to make your own wine (with weeds no less) and your own soap (with lye…which, coincidentally, is an ingredient in Lutefisk, a meal so disgusting, you’ll wish you were dead.) that I thought it would be fun to try out the recipes.  I don’t know if you guys remember, but I am super lazy.  I have done exactly zero of the things it would take to make either of those items and really the only thing that I have done is continue to think about where in the hell one finds a plethora of dandelions, because, come on, my lawn is alternately brown and full of clover, and really, I don’t want to make wine out of weeds that my neighbors dogs pissed and shat on.

Today I was going through my finances and realized that after dinner tomorrow night for a close friend’s birthday (heavy drinking!) I will have exactly $12.00 in the bank (I’m only exagerating a little, I’ll have $12.92) until payday.  Payday was Friday.  So $12.92 for two weeks.  (Ok, I have more than $12.92… but seriously it feels like $12.92.)  The point of this exaggeration is that I decided to see what the cookbooks suggest for times like this.  I have three cookbooks that aren’t vegetarian, and fuck if I’m going to eat vegetarian by choice for two weeks.  So I pulled out the Hendrickson Cookbook, and my Betty Crocker “New Choices” Cookbook (which means it’s lame butter free recipes) and the “New Dieter’s Cookbook.”  It became very, very clear that I have a some serious food issues.  Someone please buy me the Mark Bittman book.  God.

I cracked open the Hendrickson Cookbook (this is Dad’s side) and flipped to Chicken Manyana (which made me giggle, because I’m fairly certain they put the ‘y’ in there to make it clear that this is a “Mexican” recipe.  Ole!  Or as the Norweigan’s say, “Uff da!”  Actually ‘ole’ and ‘uff da’ are very different representations of exclamatory remarks.  I feel like ‘ole’ is like ‘ta da’ or ‘yippee’, whereas ‘uff da’ is like ‘oh boy, here we go,’ or ‘fuck.’ ) Anyway, I was hit with a wave of nostalgia for this recipe my mom used to make called “Chicken Tortilla” which is a casserole that includes not only cream of chicken soup, but also green chiles.  Mexican and Norweigan unite!

I think I’ll save making it until the weather cools just a touch, but here it is for your dining pleasure.

Chicken Tortilla

Ingredients:
1 whole chicken (fryer)
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 onion (it says grated, but how do you grate an onion, do you use a cheese grater? I’m confused)
1/2 pound grated cheddar cheese (I do, however, know how to grate cheese.  You buy the bag that says, “grated”)
1 dozen corn tortillas
1 cup milk
1 can green chiles, diced (heh.  Here it says, ‘not hot’, but I say, if you want to, go for the hot!)

Wrap chicken in foil and bake 1 hour at 400 degrees.  (or just buy a pre-cooked fryer from the deli section.  Jesus, no wonder I’m so poor.) Bone chicken, leaving in large pieces (I’m assuming they mean take the meat off the bones, not, ‘put your penis in the chicken’).  Cut tortillas into quarters.  Mix soup, milk, onion, and chiles.  Butter a large casserole dish (yeah, take that “New Choices cookbook!”) fill with repeating layers of tortillas, chicken, and soup mix.  Finish with soup layer on top.  Store in refrigerator over night.  Bake at 300 degrees for 40 minutes.  Cover with grated cheese and bake until cheese is melted.

My mouth is watering right now.  Enjoy!