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Sunday, September 30, 2007

The Turnaround Report: Week Five

Honey P. is down 10 pounds, and while I’m not weighing myself regularly I can happily report that I’m getting into trousers that had recently been, ahem, snug and that our office manager tells me that I’ve gotten beefcakier. The wonderful thing is that this doesn’t feel much like dieting at all. We have five meals a day, wine with dinner, and our nightly medicinal martinis without fail. Granted, we haven’t had red meat all month and I’ve largely given up fried foods (with the exception of the fish and chips I HAD to have in Seattle, and for which I feel so little guilt I’m sharing a picture of the meal with you), but I feel great. We’re eating a lot more fish, veggies, and fruit--what’s the downside, I ask?

The biggest changes in our cooking routine are simply that I prepare only two servings for dinner--limiting the protein to a six-ounce portion--and that I’ve started to lean more heavily on spices and finishing dishes with healthy fats rather than cooking with a lot of oil or butter.

This shift really hit home last week when I was planning a small dinner party for some of P.’s colleagues. Was a time that the meal would consist of a petit bacon-wrapped filet mignon, a small lobster tail with clarified butter, creme fraiche mashed potatoes, and asparagus. No longer! I decided instead to make chili and hazelnut encrusted halibut, brown rice, and haricot verts. Turned out fabulous, and no one missed the extra calories. Recipes for the fish and the beans below. For brown rice, you can’t do better than Cooks Illustrated’s foolproof brown rice recipe, posted with permission on A Veggie Adventure. I should note that I embellished the flavor of the brown rice slightly by using chicken stock rather than water and by drizzling a little white truffle oil over each portion just before serving.

Chili and Hazelnut Encrusted Halibut
- four six-ounce halibut fillets
- 1/2 cup panko breadcrumbs
- 1/4 cup hazelnuts
- two teaspoons hot chili powder
- salt and pepper
Place breadcrumbs, hazelnuts, and chili in food processor and grind for 45 seconds. Rinse and pat dry fillets, and season with salt and pepper. On a plate or baking sheet, roll fillets in breadcrumb mixture, pressing the mixture into the halibut to cover as much of the fillet as possible. Place in fridge for 20 minutes to two hours. Preheat oven to 500 degrees, and place a nonstick skillet into the hot oven for five minutes. Remove the skillet, swirl with a teaspoon of oil or clarified butter, and gently transfer fillets to pan. Cook for five minutes, and gently turn fillets over. Cook five minutes longer or until done.

Haricot Verts
- one pound of French green beans
- two tablespoons of very good olive oil
- two cloves of garlic, lightly mashed
- cayenne chili flakes, to taste
Bring a large pot of salted water to boil. Add beans and cook for roughly four minutes, until crisp-tender. Drain and rinse beans in cold water. Toss with oil, garlic, and chili flakes. Remove garlic prior to serving. 

Saturday, September 29, 2007

Night Table: Vacation Reading

The thing about a cruise ship is that--depending on your tolerance for shuffleboard and theme-based dance parties--there’s not all that much to do. A fact that delighted Honey P. and me to no end. Our vacation consisted of enjoying numerous spa treatments, torturing the concierge with questions about amenities, walking one of the promenade deck an hour a day, ordering room service, and reading. Hour upon hour of glorious reading with the sound of waves in the background. I got through six books in seven days:

The Headmaster Ritual: I think that Taylor Antrim is wonderful, wonderful writer. The prologue was almost heartbreaking. The rest of the book, no real highs ... or lows.

Intuition: it’s really Grey’s Anatomy in trade paper. Unlike Honey P., I still miss Denny and I cry every time Meridith breaks up with McDreamy. Every single time.

Specialty Topics in Calamity Physics: easily the best book I’ve read all year.

A Dirty Job: easily the funniest book I’ve read all year. Are you a beta-male, too?

Cod: thankfully short with wide margins and few pictures. Cod are darned ugly fish, but they’re tasty.

The Big Over Easy: I enjoyed Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series on my iPod, but reading Fforde is even more fun.

See more pictures of the dam (Amsterdam, that is) ship ...
See a clip of Alaska from our stateroom deck ...

Friday, September 28, 2007

Seattle by Fork

It’s a dirty, rotten lie! Turns out that Seattle doesn’t get nine months of rain a year. I’m sure it does rain a great deal, but several people tells me that the myth is in place to keep Californians--and probably everyone else--out of the state. And with good reason, Seattle is wonderful! Bookending our seven-day cruise of Alaska were two nights of Seattle sightseeing and dining. Our favorite picks:

Crush
2319 E. Madison Street
Seattle WA 98112
206.302.7874

We went here twice, it was so good. The restaurant was a mere two miles away from Pike Place (a 30-minute drive at 5:00 p.m., unlike the rain, traffic problem rumors are NOT exaggerated) in a two-floor used-to-be-a-home space that makes dining comfortable and intimate. The bar overlooks the kitchen, where you can chat with head chef Jason Wilson or flirt with the really, really cute bartenders. The food, absolutely delicious, and the signature braised short ribs literally the best I’ve ever had.

The Steelhead Diner
95 Pine St
Seattle WA 98101
206.625.0129

You wouldn’t necessarily expect much from the outside facade, but this place really rocks. Perfect for casual lunching or dining, they do a fantastic fish and chips. And shrimp salad. And fried chicken. And these mussels in spicy broth that are plump, juicy, and the most flavorful mussels I’ve ever had.

Campagne
86 Pine Street
Seattle WA 98101
206.728.2800

Our first dinner in Seattle. Great restaurant in the heart of the Pike Place area. The fish was terrific, but I remember the wine the most.

Etta’s Seafood
2020 Western Ave
Seattle WA 98121
206.443.6000

I would move to Seattle simply to have bloody marys every Sunday morning here. Their calamari, their signature crab cakes, I’m getting all choked up ...

Monday, September 17, 2007

The Inn at Weathersfield Celebrates Vermont’s Bounty

This is a bittersweet time of year in Vermont. It’s just before the leaf season, when our dirt road, highways, and towns fill up with tourists--we call them "leaf peepers" (there’s sometimes an expletive placed in front of the term)--who drive v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y and take a lot of pictures. Or are in a rush to get to the next town to see what it’s like. In short: we experience some measure of the congestion that’s common to our friends in the city.

It’s also a bittersweet time for cooks. There were weather reports this weekend of a possible frost, so my gardner friends were out covering their tender plants--basil is particularly sensitive. The farmer’s market on the Green in Woodstock (not to be confused with my favorite Woodstock Farmers’ Market, which thankfully is open year-round) is closing after this week. We’re seeing carrots, squash, and apples now: the last of the corn is here, and the end of tomatoes are in sight.

But it’s also a time to celebrate. Harvest time is a traditional time for every culture to take account of its blessings and to celebrate abundance and the passage from summer to winter.

It’s particularly true in a place like Vermont. Vermont is a cook’s paradise--possibly unsurpassed by any state in the country. No one is far from a farm and it entirely possible to eat 100% from local farms from May to October or November. There are many people here who truly appreciate how unusual it is to be able to eat this way and make it a point to purchase local produce, fruit, cheese, meats, and dairy products.

Many Vermont chefs who are truly committed to buying and serving local foods. There are plenty of reasons why this makes sense. But it’s fundamentally about taste. Local products are fresher and usually taste better than foods trucked a long distance.

There’s no chef in the Woodstock area who appreciates this more than Jason Tostrup, the executive chef at The Inn at Weathersfield. Every night, the dinner menu is a showcase of local products, from salad greens to cheeses, to desserts.

But Jason outdid himself on Saturday night, 15 September. That was when the Inn held its 4th Annual Celebration of Local Farms--a fundraiser for  Food & Wine’s Grow For Good Campaign, which benefits Farm to Table (more info--and donation form--here). The menu went even farther than usual, showcasing some of the incredible--and excellent--food being produced in Vermont right now.

Here’s the menu:

Field: Cavindish Quail Salad; Grilled Mushrooms, Ricotta & Pickled Vegetables; Wild Garlic Dressing
Ranch: Black Watch Beef with Local Corn & Garden Herb Pudding; Smokey Tomato Preserve
Pasture: Shepherds Hill Lamb; ‘Three Sisters’ Autumn Squash with Anjali Farms Roast Garlic
Creamery: Woodcock Farms & Consider Bardwell Farms; Organic Beet Local Honey Terrine with Arugula
Cider House ‘Wood’s Cider’ Heirloom Apple Tart with Cider Sorbet; Angelica Root Custard & Maple-Pecan Crust

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

My Baggage

It’s a sad thing, indeed, to lose a traveling companion. Witness my Delsey Meridian, a 30” trolley that’s been traveling with me for the last eight years. I’ve hauled it through the West Coast, the East Coast, London, Paris, the French countryside, East and West Germany, Austria, Prague, Montreal, and Mexico. It’s been with me longer than Honey P., and is much lighter to carry. I’d forgotten, until I started packing, that it didn’t quite make it through baggage claim at O’Hare.

The thing is, it’s almost impossible to find hardside luggage anymore. I tried to find a replacement Delsey in several stores in Chicago and the suburbs, but not even my luggage pusher Liz at Bloomingdale’s (she hooked me up with the original) could get a replacement for me on short order. “I could make a few calls,” she said, “maybe have it shipped to you from the manufacturer.” A nice offer, but untenable, given our next-morning departure.

Hours and stores later, I ended up with the Eagle Creek ORV Trunk, a behemoth rolling duffel with enough compartments and straps to get me suitably excited. Their Pack-It system of color-coded folders, cubes and pouches made packing easy (and also managed to get me strangely giddy). Michael teased me about not having much of a packing list, but eight LaCoste polos, my entire collection of summer-fall dress shirts, two jackets and matching odd trousers, three cargo shorts, 14 pairs of socks, two pairs of adventure-appropriate footwear, four sweaters, and my grooming chemistry set (THIS doesn’t just happen, you know) later, I managed to fill both the duffel and its companion rollaboard. Honey P., in turn, filled up both big and small Delsey cases (long-ago Christmas gifts from me). As a wise friend once said, it’s not about finding the perfect person, but about finding someone with matching baggage.