Monthly Archives: May 2009

for on the way

11

yogurt parfait

While Mom and I were walking out of the restaurant Sunday afternoon, arm in arm, our bellies full with sauer braten, bread dumplings and chicken schnitzel, she spotted a lilac bush in someone’s yard, and we talked about the corsages Grandma used to make with them on Mother’s Day each year.

Grandma used to say she had seasonal depression, meaning every winter she’d want to tuck away in the house, lethargic, doing little but cooking and baking, especially at Christmas—I think I get this from her—but come spring, she’d be the happy lady mowing her front lawn, planting geraniums along the front and big tomato bushes in back, hanging laundry to dry on the clothesline that ran from the back brick to the detached garage.

oikos greek yogurt

These mornings, when I wake up and hear pounding rain on the windows and see the grass deep, deep green, I think of how happy this would’ve made her, how happy it makes me. When I come home, the world bathed in sunlight, with fresh flowers popping up in yards and along open fields, there’s so much I want to do: take Bailey out, go for a quick run, stroll to the grocery store that’s a mile away instead of getting in the car to drive. Some nights, I don’t even care if I eat dinner, except for something quick I grab on my way somewhere. Like the other night, after I’d thrown in laundry, the windows open around me, and gone outside for a while, letting Bailey pull me wherever he wanted, I came back in, and instead of making dinner, I put together this quick parfait, made of Greek yogurt, chopped fruit, walnuts and honey.

yogurt parfait above

I had the yogurt thanks to Stoneyfield Farm, which gave me the opportunity to taste their Greek yogurt for free, sending a package of coupons in the mail, along with a bright yellow reusable grocery bag.

Do you know Oikos Greek yogurt? Created by straining whey from the liquid, it is organic and fat free, with double the protein of regular yogurt, fewer carbohydrates and just 90 calories per 5.3-ounce serving. It’s also a creamier, thicker, richer version that holds up well to heat, making it ideal for cooking and baking. You’ll find it in the same grocery sections as regular yogurt, though it’s not carried at all stores—here in Chicago, I know it’s available at my Whole Foods and at Treasure Island, but not at Dominick’s [update: yes it is!] or Jewel.

And really, its slight tartness worked wonderfully in my yogurt parfait, eaten with a pretty silver spoon before I headed to the treadmill—because, for all its blessings, spring still makes my eyes itch and my nose get stuffed up—and just as well in the dessert I made later that night, before going to bed, content.





Yogurt Parfait

Ingredients:
6 ounces Greek yogurt (I used vanilla)
Sliced fruit (I used strawberries)
Chopped walnuts
Honey

Directions:
Put the yogurt in a bowl and top with fruit and nuts. Drizzle honey on top. Enjoy!

the cake that was gray

20

frosting coconut cake

Over lunch on Mother’s Day, my brother happened to mention a coconut cake recipe he’d seen online, and I responded exactly as you’d expect: by whipping out my cell phone—newly with Internet, which, by the way, in itself is a huge change for me, and you know how I do with change, so congratulate me on that—and trying to find it.

The cake was beautiful: a pristine, white, regal-looking thing, step atop a cake stand and topped with toasted, shredded coconut. It was the reason that, a few hours later, I beelined straight for the baking aisle’s coconut extract and grabbed this.

What I purchased—coconut flavor—wasn’t exactly extract, but it was the next closest thing, and the bottle said something about its being good for baking. So maybe that substitution explains the problem I wound up with later, when, making the frosting, I found butter + sugar + milk + coconut flavor = icing the color of gray. As in, the same shade as gravestones or, decaying flesh.

icing

The cake tasted all right, albeit dry. It was the frosting that was the real problem—slightly grainy and never thick enough, changing textures while I covered the cake, from fluffy to very thin and not that far from soupy. It did taste like coconut, though, which I considered a small victory, but the color! The color! I didn’t have the heart to throw it away immediately, but I’ll let you guess where I’m headed as soon as I finish this post, barring, of course, any refrigerator miracle overnight. (Fingers crossed.)

the cake that was gray

Anyway, it got me thinking. In the kitchen, I know what failure feels like. I have done it—done it to death, you could say, embracing it with cupcakes and artichokes and an awful soup I still haven’t had the heart to tell you about—and I’ve always lived to see the next mornings.

So I go into cooking understanding that and knowing other people make mistakes, too—novice cooks and experienced chefs—because of any number of reasons, like, small details affect results or improvisations don’t turn out as planned or you reach for the flour when you meant to grab sugar. It’s no big deal. It happens.

the kind of cake you don't eat

In the rest of life, though, failure is scary. The thing to avoid. I have done it, of course—French papers in college; painful first dates; awful job interviews where, when asked what animal I’d be, I respond with swan, mumbling something about how they’re, you know, pretty? And I know other people fail, too, despite talent or skill or charisma.

But for some reason, in the kitchen, the failures don’t stick to me like they do everywhere else. If I burn cookies, and I have, I don’t see myself as The Girl Who Burns Cookies. Yet if I blurt out something awkward in front of someone new, I let that define me for a while. Why?

Why is it that failing with food is so much easier than failing with life? I wasted approximately two hours, a sink’s worth of dishes and a list of ingredients making this coconut cake, where disaster seems the most apt descriptor. And I’m not worried about it.

I think it’s because I know this: sometimes, I am a kitchen failure. But other times, I am not.

And maybe by accepting this, I learn the courage to step out, try something new, make a mistake and, embrace it.

testament enough

12

fork-tender BBQ chicken

I recently received a review copy of America’s Best BBQ, which was published by the same people behind Falling Cloudberries, one of the most gorgeous cookbooks I’ve ever seen. (Seriously, I don’t know who the graphic designers are at Andrew McMeel, but their work is so good, it’s honestly enough by itself to warrant buying these books, if just for flipping value.)

america's best BBQ cookbook

In the case of this barbecue book, cookbook might not be the best term to describe it. While filled with recipes, it’s also part guide, part travelogue, part window into the barbecue belt of America (i.e., from North Carolina to Texas, with a few other states thrown in). There are a lot (a lot!) of gorgeous, glossy photos, along with stories and commentary by Ardie A. Davis and Chef Paul Kirk, the authors and researchers behind this compilation. These men love barbecue. They make it, the taste it, they travel around the country deciding what’s good enough to tell the rest of us about.

If I had one complaint, it’d be that a lot of the recipes, at least for main dishes, require special ingredients particular to the restaurants they came from: Ed’s Pepper Vinegar Sauce from The Pit in Raleigh, North Carolina, to make a barbecued hog; Curtis’ Southern Style Bar-B-Q Sauce from Curtis’s BBQ in Vermont to make its loaded pork-stuffed potato. I had to dig a little to find a barbecue recipe I could make in my own kitchen: the Apple City BBQ Sauce that, ironically, comes from my own home state, one not especially known for that sort of thing.

BBQ sauce

To make this recipe from the 17th Street Bar & Grill in Murphysboro, Illinois, I had to tweak a few things, most notably the grated onion, which I replaced with onion powder. You’d think such a substitution would ruin everything, but in fact, it gave it a wonderful kick that almost made my eyes water.

Le Creuset of BBQ sauce

It worked very well in a an old stand-by chicken recipe I’ve posted here before (back when my camera situation was a little different), the one that, with a store-bought barbecue sauce, brought me back to my grandma’s kitchen and her clear glass plates.

With this new sauce, the slow-cooker recipe was just as easy and made the chicken just as delicious, but different.

And on sandwiches a few days later, this fork-tender meat left me with nothing but happy sighs—that and a desire for more. I’d say that’s testament enough to its value and, of course, the power of good barbecue.




Apple City Barbecue Sauce
Adapted from America’s Best BBQ

(Pictured above in Coke Chicken; recipe here)

Ingredients:
1 cup ketchup (Hunt’s is recommended)
1/2 cup rice vinegar
1/2 cup apple juice or cider (I used low-sugar juice)
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup soy sauce or Worcestershire sauce (I used Worcestershire)
2 teaspoons yellow mustard
3/4 teaspoon minced garlic
1/4 teaspoon ground white pepper
1/4 teaspoon cayenne
1/3 cup bacon bits
1/2 cup onion powder (or grated onion)

Directions:
In a large saucepan, combine ketchup, rice vinegar, apple juice, cider vinegar, brown sugar, soy sauce, mustard, garlic powder, white pepper, cayenne and bacon bits. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat and then stir in the onion powder.

Reduce the heat and simmer the mixture, uncovered, for 10 to 15 minutes or until it thickens slightly. (Note: my mixture started to bubble and spurt out of the pan, so I covered it, with the lid slightly ajar to let air in.) Stir frequently.

Allow sauce to cool and pour into sterilized glass bottles. Makes 3 cups. May be stored for up to two weeks.