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Sunday, April 29, 2007

Sacred Sunday

Some people have date night. Honey P. and I have sacred Sunday. It’s the one day of the week that remains relatively untouched--barring weekend houseguests (not typical) or travel plans (even less likely)--and devoted to living in the margin.

The day begins with our reading the Sunday New York Times in our fuzzy robes. I get the Week in Review, Arts & Leisure, Travel, Business, and Sunday Styles. P. gets the homepage, sports, magazine and book review. We almost never trade sections. At the hour mark, breakfast (always eggs, bacon, toast, and espresso) begins. Then, clean up and ramp-up for what’s left of the morning and the afternoon.

Sometimes we spend the entire day working at our desks to unbury ourselves from the undispatched detritis of the week. Sometimes, we meet friends for a late brunch. Sometimes we walk into Andersonville and wander through the shops and boutiques.

Today, home improvement. We and half of the neighborhood showed up at The Gethsemane Garden Center for the first flush of spring/summer foliage. A little over $300 later, we returned home to plant. Two rosebushes. Three columbines. Two flats of vinca. Some shrubby purple flowers that looked adorable until I realized it would translate into five more minutes of stooping, digging, sweating, and swearing. And three hanging plants with baby petunias (I have no idea what they really are, but they look like petunias) for the balcony. Two hours later, I’m tan, sweaty, dirty, and wondering how we managed to move into another season of short-sleeve shirts and single layers without my shedding the extra 25 pounds that continue to make tanktops a privelege and not a right.

We move indoors. There’s a small space in the living room that, until two hours ago, housed a campaign desk, palm, and aphid-infested hibiscus. The hibiscus was rescued (better living through chemicals) and moved outdoors with the palm,, and we decided make that space a reading nook. Which meant wrapping the desk for storage and hauling it up to a relatively unused closet one floor up. And scrubbing the windows and floors clean of dead aphids (they’re like sea monkeys, but unflushable). And hauling a chair down three flights of stairs. (Few things try a relationship as easily as heavy furniture, winding staircases, and the need for someone to walk backwards.)

Then there was vaccuuming. And three loads of laundry. An hour worth of emails left from last Friday. And a second, desperately needed shower.

In a little bit I’m going to fire up the grill and pour myself a glass of wine to ease the pain in my back and legs and shoulders. Tonight’s dinner is skirt steak, grilled zucchini and onions tossed in olive oil and balsamic vinegar, a mixed green salad with tarragon dressing, and roasted potatoes. And after that, my favorite part of Sacred Sunday begins. The fuzzy robes, martinis, hours of incidental television, and our holding hands together on the couch. For just a little bit, the week that’s just passed is a distant memory, and the week-to-come feels a long and dim ways away. 

Saturday, April 28, 2007

This Little Piggy…

I’ve grown accustomed to specifics. Not that I need blow-by-blow and ounce-by-ounce instructions, but enough at least to know I’m heading in the right direction. Which is why I was both intrigued and annoyed by the recipe for Mario Batali’s porchettain the April 2007 issue of Esquire. After spending paragraphs extolling the virtues of bone-in pork shoulder cooked over low heat for hour upon hour, the editors published a recipe for boneless pork shoulder cooked at standard heat for only 120 minutes. Teases.

The impetus for my need, an upcoming dinner party. Some dear friends of ours recently resurrected their movable feast dinner party, in which each couple brings somehing exquisite o contribute to a lovely meal. I wanted to make a roast. Mario’s roast. The one that cooks overnight and fills the house with the scents of rosemary, garlic, and pork. But google as I might, I couldn’t find any guidance past the brief narrative in the magazine. So I adapted a prep treatment from Barbara Kafka’s Roasting. Then there was the question of cooling and storing the pork, which is meant to be cooked overnight, cooled through the day, and then reheated for dinner--placing it into the fridge would be a one-way ticket to congealed toughness. I placed pork consultation call to friend and business partner Michael, and we hatched a plan.

Judith proclaimed the pork a success (very high praise in my book). Here’s the recipe:

- One 8 lb. bone-in pork shoulder roast
- Two tablespoons of fennel seeds
- Two tablespoons of salt
- Two tablespoons of freshly ground pepper
- Eight cloves of garlic
- Four sprigs of fresh rosemary
- One tablespoon of olive oil

1. Preheat oven to 250 degrees.
2. Place salt, pepper, fennel seeds, garlic, oil, and rosemary into food processor and blend into a paste.
3. Score the fat side of the pork, careful not to slice into the actual meat.
4. Rub pork with the paste.
5. Place in oven and cook for 8.5 hours.
6. Remove from oven and allow to cool. If you’ve made the pork overnight and are serving it for dinner, store the pork, tightly covered, in a cool place, until dinner (I used our garage).
7. Roughly 45 minutes before serving, reheat uncovered in a 250-degree oven to warm. The pork won’t be hot, but it will be succulently warm and delicious.

The rest of the meal was exquisite as well--a tian of vegetables that I’m going to try to replicate for Sunday dinner, a roasted beet and goat cheese salad with fried capers, fresh bread, homemade spumoni, and pistacchio cookies from a terrific new bakery in Andersonville, Pasticceria Natalina. Here’s to friends who are wonderful chefs and to friends with wine cellars.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Naha Chicago

Ethan Canin’s The Palace Thief continues to be one of my favorite books ever. It’s a collection of four short stories, one of which recounts the life of a man who vacillates between the safe practicality of his own skin and the desire to be, well, more reckless. At one point he faces a choice between two women: one is down to earth, kind, sweet, and nurturing. One is impossibly beautiful, aloof, expensive. He chooses Sheherazade.

Dinner at Naha last night reminded me of that story. The decor is exquisite, the meals certainly not cheap, and the experience is a strange toggle between heaven and hell. What, the hell? Perhaps the bartender, who when I motioned to for help as another member of our group was ready for a drink, muttered “I see him, give me a second.” Or the hostess, who when I said “we’re all here now” responded without looking up “now it will be 20 minutes more.” Or the server who came up to the short line of us waiting our turn for the private restroom and chided “there are more downstairs” as if we should have known. Or perhaps the chef, who passed our table with a brief nod, no more. Or the staff who, at the end of the night, were giving each other play-by-play reports of how many tables were left seated (I admit, we were the last to leave). They made clear that they were there in spite of you, regardless of you, and that you should be grateful.

Balancing the gloss and glower was the meal, and our server Sara. Naha’s menu is extraordinary, and my personal choices for the night were a risotto with morel mushrooms, a ribeye with a gratin of macaroni and cheese, and their cheese plate--all perfectly prepared and portioned, all delicious. And Sara chose a wonderful sequence of wines for us--a riesling for the appetizer, a French red for dinner, and another German wine for dessert. It was truly a brilliantly meal prepared by a master, and Sara’s knowledge about wine, fine food, and the Farm bill surpasses belief.

I’d come back again. Dressed more formally than I’d normally dine. Ready to be somewhat ignored. Prepared with a high-limit credit card. I will love my meal. And I might even respect myself in the morning. 

Saturday, April 14, 2007

Last-minute Wine Event

Anyone in Chicago and free tomorrow afternoon should check out The Language of French Wine at 3:00 p.m. at the Aliiance Francaise. Charles Foulkes of Crust and Damien Casten of Candid Wines are presenting a wine and bread tasting (yum!).

Friday, April 13, 2007

The Perfect Guacamole

I have to admit that when it comes to certain foods, I’m really a pretty much of a basics guy. As long as the basics are perfect.

So, for example, let’s take a look at one of my favorite appetizers. That would be guacamole. I know that there are versions of guacamole out there with lots of ingredients: even people whose taste I respect put things like tomatillos, powdered chile, cilantro, onion, garlic, lime juice, and other stuff in their guac. I don’t add any of these adulterants to my version. My guacamole has just four ingredients in it--five if counting the corn chips. But they all have to be perfect.

Let’s start with the corn chips. You’re not going to have perfect guacamole if you don’t have perfect corn chips. And they’re hard to find!

I dont buy any of the commercial brands like Tostitos, Doritos. They all taste too stale to me. Likewise, I don’t like chips with stuff in them (or, more precisely, on them. I’ve never had a chip with a sprayed-on flavor that was worth eating. I don’t like the way the coating on the chip feels in my mouth. Not to mention that most of them taste terrible. Yuck.

Likewise, most of the health food brands I’ve tried leave something to be desired. Back in the 1980s, we consumed a lot of Bearitos. But then the company was sold. The old chips used to have a great corn flavor, they were crisp, they had the right amount of salt on them, and they weren’t too thick. And they always tasted fresh. The new chips are too thick and the taste is to variable for me.

So finding a brand of corn chips that is relatively small, thin enough, and salty enough to hold up to the perfect guacamole is a challenge. I’ve tried various brands that seem like they’re made by small producers and I’ve liked several of them, but they’re often hard for me to buy. My current favorite brand is Madhouse Munchies white corn chips: nice size, good corn flavor, nice crunch, good amount of salt, well packed (not a lot of broken chips in a bag). They also make blue corn chips and it’s nice to mix them up for a party. I also buy Green Mountain Gringo white corn chips, but I don’t like them as well as the Madhouse chips. As a bonus (for me!), both these brands are made in Vermont and though my favorite market stopped carrying the Madhouse Munchies chips [!!!!], I’m now buying them at my local country store. These specific brands might be hard to get in other regions of the country, so you’ll have to taste around for a brand that works for you.

The next challenge is the avocados.

For the perfect guacamole, you need perfect avocadoes. The best avocado you’ll find in a decent market are Hass avocadoes. They’ll need to be ripe, but not too ripe. The flesh should be a rich, deep gold with a greenish tinge--shall we call it an “avocado” green?” No bruises! And if the avocadoes have any tinge of brown or grey in their flesh, they’re too ripe. The guacamole won’t be perfect.

The next important ingredient is a fresh poblano chile. A poblano is an ancho chile before it’s dried. It looks a lot like a Hungarian sweet pepper, but it’s the green of the (sweet) green pepper that you’re used to seeing in the supermarket [good photo here. Poblanos have a slight bite to them, but they’re not really hot-unless you have no tolerance for any type of heat at all. I see poblanos at many markets these days, so they’re fairly easy to find. Is firm-fleshed and not wilted, with no mold or bad spots.

Next, you’ll need canned chipotles in adobo sauce. There are several popular brands--you can usually find them with the Mexican foods in your supermarket.

Finally, salt. I use kosher salt.

This recipe yields a guacamole that has a nice bite to it, but isn’t too hot--and it really allows the avocado flavor to come through. You’ll want some salt to help to accent the flavors, but not too much. There should be a hint of sweetness from the peppers and the avocado that can get lost if you oversalt.

So enough already. Here’s the recipe.

Guacamole
(for 2 people)

1 medium poblano
2 ripe avocadoes
1 canned chipotle chile
kosher salt

Roast the poblano: turn on the gas to one of your burners full-blast and put the poblano on it until the skin is blackened; turn until you’ve blackened the skin on the entire pepper. Put into a bowl, cover tightly with foil, a plate, or a tight-fitting lid, and allow to steam for 30 minutes. If you can roast the poblano over a grill or on a wood fire, so much the better. If you have an electric stove, you can broil the pepper.

Peel and seed the avocadoes. To do this, I cut them in half lenthwise, use a teaspoon to scoop out the pit, then scoop the flesh out of each half into a bowl. Mash them roughly, add some salt, and let them sit while you chop the peppers.

When the poblano has steamed, scrape the blackened skin off it with a sharp kitchen knife. Cut the poblano in half, remove the core, any membranes inside the pepper, and the seeds and discard them. Chop the poblano into 1/4-inch dice.

Scrape the excess adobo sauce off the chipotle, cut it in half lengthwise, and remove the top, inner membrane, and seeds. Chop the chipotle finely.

Mix the peppers into the avocado, season with salt to taste, and let the guacamole sit for 5-10 minutes to allow the flavors to blend. Put it in a serving bowl, scrape it up with perfect corn chips, and enjoy.