Culinary conquests, part iii: Buns in the oven

One of the best things about doing this dinner-and-movie supper club is that it motivates me to take on projects that normally scare the shit out of me.

Baking buns to house all that pulled pork I made, for instance. I learned many things from this.

Batch 1: I finally found yeast that seemed somewhat alive still, knocked the dough together quickly in the stand mixer, and then was left to puzzle over why, contrary to the recipe, my dough was not sticky. And then I realized that I had forgotten the sugar. (It remains unclear to me how these two things are related.)

Lesson 1. Do not bake under the influence/fog of too little sleep.
Lesson 2. Do not leave yeast untended in the cupboard for six months and expect great results.
Lesson 3. Do not attempt to fix dough that is missing sugar and has already been thoroughly kneaded by dumping 1/4 cup of sugar into the middle of it.
[Corollary 3a. Especially if the dough is now sitting in a well oiled bowl.]

Batch 1 went into the trash.

Attempt 2: I remembered the sugar and everything else. But two hours of proofing later, the dough was still the same size.

Lesson 4. It is worth hunting down the thermometer so one is not left wondering if one killed the yeast with dairy that should have been cooled down to the specified 115 degrees F.

Batch 2 joined Batch 1 in the trash.

Lesson 5. Do not be daunted by repeated failure.
Lesson 6. If one is uncertain about the outcome, make a backup.

Batch 3 turned out okay. And went into our bellies.

I went through 15 cups of flour and more than a quart and a half of milk and cream to make 17 buns.

Lesson 7. Homemade buns are worth the trouble.

PS. This is the best potato salad ever.

Fire escape garden, week 9

Ladies and gentlemen, we have peas.

The cutest thing on eight wheels

My sister called me from the road in Greensboro, North Carolina: “We just passed the most ridiculous thing ever. I’m going to send you the pictures.”

Culinary conquests, part ii: chicken that tastes like bacon

For the second installment of the supper club, besides lemon meringue pie, I thought it’d also be a good opportunity to try my hand at fried chicken. Who wants to make the house smell like fried for just four people? Who cares that I’ve never fried anything before? Well, that’s not exactly true, but it is mostly.

It was suggested that I do a trial run first, but Carla, who has made the recipe for me before (not to mention, in her little kitchen in Italy) assured me that it was straightforward and didn’t even require a thermometer.

The recipe, of course, is the Edna Lewis/Scott Peacock fried chicken from The Gift of Southern Cooking — perhaps the most stained book in my cookbook library. It’s not a very demanding recipe laborwise, but you do need lots of time: 12 hours for brining, 12 hours to soak the chicken pieces in buttermilk (Carla, where did you manage to get buttermilk in Bra?). And then they just get a roll in seasoned flour, with a little cornstarch for crunch. All the steps thusfar ensure that the chicken is impregnated with flavor and retains succulence through cooking, but it’s the frying fat that probably makes this

THE BEST FRIED CHICKEN EVER.

A pound of lard and a stick of butter make the chicken crispy, but it’s the piece of country ham that sits in the pan all through frying that gooses the chicken with a little porky goodness (yeah, that’s right: I used three animals in one clause). Someone even asked if there were bacon in the chicken.

Also, fried chicken is easy. The frying part takes only about 10 minutes per piece (which meant that, with the 10″ Lodge skillet and 32 pieces of chicken, I fried for about an hour and a half), and you can tell by looking when the fat is at the right temperature or needs more or less flame. Even cleanup wasn’t so bad. I waited for all the fat to solidify and then just scraped it into the trash.

Also, fried chicken is good. It is, in fact, one of the world’s perfect foods. Good thing it’s so easy to make.

Culinary conquests, part i

For the second installment of our dinner + movie series, I thought it would be a brilliant idea to tackle three things I’ve never made before and have always been intimidated by while cooking dinner for 15.

The first dish I undertook — and one of the last we ate — was the lemon meringue pie.

I’ll admit it: egg whites make me anxious. I’ve now made custard ice cream bases so many times that I’d probably only scramble the yolks if somehow Ed McMahon showed up at my apartment door with a bigger-than-me-sized check. But whites are another story. It seems like they’ll get all spooked if you just look at them the wrong way — there can’t be a speck of yolk, a trace of fat of any kind, in fact, on your beating apparatus or vessel; the whites whip easier if they’re room temp (or is it cold?), overbeat them and the protein strands will shrink or just collapse on you. I love me some Pavlova, but all that meringue makes me want to run screaming for the hills. Also, did I mention that I didn’t have any kind of electric mixer at all? Until recently, that is. Somehow I ended up with two stand mixers, and it seems a shame not to put them to work.

(Before all the hardcore egg beaters out there with their guns of steel start protesting and insisting that this should all be done by hand, I’d just like to point out that it took more than seven minutes of stand-mixer beating before my whites got to the stiff-peak stage. And god knows what that translates to in hand-beating years. I’ll make mayonnaise with a wooden spoon before I do whites by hand.)

Turns out that, armed with the right small kitchen appliances and proper respect for the egg white’s particular ways, meringue is not so hard after all.

A few things I learned from making lemon meringue pie:

1) Best not to get all cocky about how well you separate eggs. Don’t assume you won’t a) screw one up and end up trying to scoop a yolk (unsuccessfully) out of the container of whites; or b) that there won’t be a bad egg in the bunch, even if you just got the bunch at the Greenmarket that morning.
1a) Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. That is, do four or five whites in one vessel and then move on to another to avoid ruining all your whites in one go.
1b) Bad eggs smell terrible. Not like sulfur at all — like badness. Plain ol’ badness.
2) It takes a long time to get those whites to stiff peaks.
2a) But boy, are they ever pretty.

It also happens that I’m intimidated by pastry dough. I’ve had some fall apart on me, others become tough shoe-leather, and still others that tasted like crayons. This time I read up on the latest in crust technology and got three tubs of leaf lard and threw some duck fat in the dough for good measure. That took care of the flavor. Also, it’s true what everyone tells you — keep everything really, really cold. That’ll take care of the structure. And lastly, practice makes perfect:

If you’re gonna make one, you might as well make three. (Here, lemon meringue, egg custard, and rhubarb.)

Patterson House

I have been unapologetically hermitic and haven’t left the house here in Nashville after 6pm in weeks. But last night I got to try a new speakeasy called The Patterson House.

The vibe: roaring 20s in the south. Walnut bar, bartenders in vests and ties, pressed copper ceiling, and dark built-in bookshelves everywhere giving a parlor feel. Beautiful cylindrical glass chandeliers cast a warm glow. And the music is just as I like it in bars: felt but not heard.

The cocktails are the best I’ve had in recent memory: perfectly balanced and cleverly crafted without being over-the-top. Classic with a thoughtful contemporary twist. I had The Maisie Day, made with Luzianne infused gin, lemon, egg white, and lemon bitters and it had a lovely lemon creamcicle flavor up front and the Luzianne tea added a nice, subtly tannic finish. The ice is formed into a single perfect sphere (to fit Old Fashioned glasses) or elongated rectangle (for Collins glasses). Patterson makes their own syrups and bitters from fresh fruit and herbs, and they’ve designed 50 cocktails including a Bacon Old Fashioned with Benton bacon macerated 4 Roses bourbon, maple syrup, and coffee pecan bitters—which I didn’t get to try. Another reason to return. Not that I need it.

The small plates: Delicious. The chef is a veteran of The Fat Duck, Craft, and Alinea. The only other thing I have to say about the food is “BBQ pork sliders.” Hell yes!

(Photo by Chris Wage)

Alice’s Boureg

This is a video of my great aunt Alice Doney making Armenian boureg (a puffed pastry dumpling made with a ground lamb or cheese filling—nom nom nom) and talking about Armenian history and my family’s migration to the US. Some abrupt editing here as she goes between cooking and talking about the trauma of the genocide. There’s a photo in here of her as a child, with my grandmother Gladys and great-grandmother Esther. I didn’t know until seeing this video that Alice has published recipes—her simplifications of traditional Armenian dishes. This was really touching for me to see, and I’m inspired to make more Armenian goodies… stay tuned!

Let the planting begin

Peas and beans, day 3.

Peas and beans, day 25.

Lahmajoon

1. Weigh it

2. Chop it

3. Toss it

4. Roll it

5. Press it

6. Bake it

7. Serve it

Lahmajoon (لحم بعجي, “meat with dough”) is an Armenian “personal pizza” made with very thin crust and a ground lamb topping. Here’s the recipe, transcribed by my mom and dictated by my Armenian grandmother, Gladys.

Serve with lemon juice on top, or a pickle, or put the whole salad on top and wrap it up in a blanket of lamb.

boston arts blog

winnie reminded me that i never post to this blog anymore, so i thought i’d finally get around to posting the link to the blog i’ve been maintaining on the side for a while now that’s focused on boston arts: Nine Dots Boston. i happened to post some restaurant reviews recently, including comments on Sorellina, Great Bay, and Cuchi Cuchi and an updated run-down of Korean restaurants in Boston. oh, and if matt’s reading this and is interested (or anyone else for that matter) here’s my post about The Pains of Being Pure at Heart show from a couple months back. so i didn’t abandon you for no reason, honest, and yes i’m still as overly critical about everything as ever.