apropos of anything

I think I got a little too big for my britches today.

I tentatively put the cranberry, caramel, and almond tarts from Smitten Kitchen on my Thanksgiving menu, but because I’ve never done anything like that before, I figured it might be a good idea to do a test run before I actually attempted them for a full-scale audience.

I was supposed to do them yesterday, but I kind of ran out of time (and also was missing pie weights, but after discussing it with several people today, I decided just to go the dried beans route anyway), so I only made the dough. I figured I could roll out the tarts and do the filling quickly today.

And I could have, if only that tart dough hadn’t kicked my butt all over my kitchen.

Deb mentions having issues with the dough in her post. Since one of her readers says he used Martha Stewart’s tart dough with great success, and I use Martha’s pie crust recipe regularly, I figured I’d substitute the easy dough for the original tough dough and be done with it. After all, I once made a tart dough in my dorm room, so this should be no problem at all, right?

Ha. Hahahahahahahahaha.

I have added water and begged and pleaded and re-refrigerated and scolded and re-floured and threatened, to no avail. The dough stubbornly refuses to roll out. I managed to eke out three semi-reasonable shells in an hour, and then I gave up and stuck the remaining lump of buttered flour back in the fridge to see if a timeout will teach it to behave itself. As of this typing I have lost the will to battle it out again, so I’m moving forward with the three shells that I have and will try the remaining dough again tomorrow.

The caramel filling, though, is lovely. Rich, dark brown, and gorgeously buttery. I want to grab a spoon and dig right in, tart shells be damned. (I did sneak a caramel-drenched almond slice… yum.)

The three semi-presentable shells are baking now, so I should know in about 20 minutes how it’s all going to turn out. If my camera hadn’t imploded, I would take pictures… but as it is, you’ll just have to take my word for it.

I wonder if it should tell me something that I do this so much.

I’m up in Tarrytown for work (meetings don’t actually start until tomorrow, but they’re being nice and not making me take a 6 a.m. flight), and while the Internet connection is flawless, I’m not really very surprised to discover my cell service is spotty at best. I can get a decent signal outside, but it’s too cold (and dark) to sit out there now, so I’m taking advantage of the uber-comfortable accomodations to channel surf, catch up on email, and of course, plan future menus.

Last night we decided spontaneously to eat in after a long day at Piedmont Park and the Macy’s One Day Sale. Aamir wanted soup, so I immediately thought of Nigella Lawson’s Easy Pea Soup, as featured on Running With Tweezers. It was the only one that sprang to mind where I could remember the entire ingredient list, plus it seemed really simple, and I didn’t think it would take too long. It didn’t, but it mostly tasted like pureed peas. Possibly I didn’t use enough balsamic vinegar.

Anyway, the point is, I know advance menu planning is kind of pointless when you’re having to figure out your grocery list on the fly in the Lenox Square parking lot, but last night’s pea soup debacle has me motivated to do it anyway. Since it’s fall, I really want to incorporate the butternut squash and caramelized onion galette somehow, but every time I look at that recipe I’m compelled to start color-blocking (leafy green salad, something red, something blue), and that inevitably trips me up.

Really must get past that.

Maybe the galette with a leafy green salad, some spinach soup with shrimp and avocado, and possibly some chicken? Of course, if it’s Sara Foster’s greek chicken, I’d get some red, and rice pilaf is white, and then a nice blueberry or blackberry dessert makes blue…

It’s a disease. I can’t help it.

Really must stop reading blogs. Sarah at Whoorl has me wanting to straighten my hair, and Jenny at Use Real Butter has me convinced that even I can make petit fours — chocolate covered petit fours at that!

Updated: And Deb from Smitten Kitchen? Is trying to bamboozle me into experimenting with pumpkin bread pudding. Wouldn’t some chopped raisins or walnuts, or maybe some caramalized bananas, go so nicely with that?

Y’all. Ramadan Mubarak. This is going to be the BEST. RAMADAN. EVER.

How do I know?

Because of the cookies. The cookies, they are a sign.

Today after sunset I went to Walgreens — not my usual Walgreens as for some bizarre reason I picked the one that is closer to me but completely out of my way to send the photos to this time — to pick up my pictures from Musab and Abby’s wedding. I was chatting with Dave, who I’d called to wish Ramadan Mubarak and to laugh at his comment on the cookie post, when I saw the Fresh Market next door to the Walgreens.

Yesterday when hunting for Whole Foods phone numbers, Alicia had mentioned Fresh Market carries Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafers. I figured I’d give it a try.

It’s a cute little shop, smaller than Whole Foods but with the same type of groceries and more of a general store kind of feel. I scanned the cookie aisle and saw the Nabisco Nilla Wafers and the Ginger Wafers, but not the Chocolate Wafers… until I looked up two shelves.

There they were.

Obviously, the icebox cake was meant to be made for Ramadan this year. It is going to be a good Ramadan, insha’Allah.

Now if only I can find that new mosque around the corner….

Ramadan is coming up. (Like, day after tomorrow. Early Ramadan mubarak, y’all!) And so, of course, I am planning an iftaar party because that’s what you do in Ramadan when you are not fasting or praying or reading Quran: you go to iftaar parties. I got the first Evite almost six weeks ago, at which point I turned, wide-eyed, to Alicia who was sitting next to me, and said, I have to pick a date! Now! The flood has started!

Indeed it had, as somebody else got my coveted original date before I sent out invitations for it. (Narrowing down the guest list is hard. I dither for days as I try to balance my small house with all the people I’d like to invite, and particularly with all the people who I know will invite me. This time, I lost the date in my indecision.)

I was working on the menu when I ran across this post from Smitten Kitchen. The icebox cake. I’ve heard of it before and always skipped over it without reading the recipe too closely, casually dismissing it as too 50′s housewifey for my taste. And then I saw that photo. It’s beautiful. It’s simple. It’s beautiful in its simplicity. Best of all, it MUST be made the night before.

This, I decided, would be my chocolate dessert.

The universe has decided otherwise. No icebox cake for you, guests. You’ll just have to settle for a fudgy chocolate layer cake with chocolate ganache icing, or maybe dark chocolate cupcakes with cream-cheese frosting. The icebox cake has five ingredients, one of which does not exist on this planet, or at least not outside of Chicago.

I’ve scoured the Internet. I’ve called four grocery stores and one drugstore. I’ve harangued two store managers. I cannot find the Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafers anywhere except on Amazon, and despite the deep level of my current obsession, I don’t know if I can pay $40 to ship myself six boxes of cookies. (Although, as I write this, I’m beginning to wonder if $40 for six boxes of cookies is really ALL that much.)

Everybody has them in the computer. Nobody has them on the shelf. The Kroger customer service person cheerfully offered me the phone number of another Kroger in the area. The Publix store manager halfheartedly offered to order them for me, but even I don’t go to Publix enough for him to know my name, which he didn’t bother to write down so he could tell me when they’d arrived. And then there’s the Whole Foods manager.

Ah, the Whole Foods manager. Alicia convinced me to call the store rather than going by in person. She even wrote out a list of phone numbers for me as I searched the Internet fruitlessly for chocolate wafer cookies, any chocolate wafer cookies. I called the one in Sandy Springs.

“Hi, I’m looking for Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafer cookies. Do you carry them?”

“Hold on,” she said, “let me transfer you.”

Several minutes of hold music later, a man picked up the phone. “Who are you holding for?”

“Hi, I’m looking for Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafer cookies. Do you carry them?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll transfer you to grocery.”

Two more minutes of hold music. “Grocery.”

“Hi, I’m looking for Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafer cookies. Do you carry them?”

“Nabisco?” (said as though he didn’t understand me)

“Yes, please.”

“Nabisco?” (said as though I had just insulted his grandmother)

“Yes, the Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafers.”

“No.”

And then there was a click, and he was gone. Apparently, Nabisco is beneath Whole Foods. I wonder if it’s the high fructose corn syrup that puts them over the edge.

So, Universe 1, Huda 0. Chocolate wafer cookies still so securely hidden even Jack Bauer couldn’t torture their whereabouts out of some nefarious and wily stock boy. It might be time to stop doing my best Sir Pellinore impression and turn instead to Essence of Chocolate for a chocolate dessert recipe… or maybe to give in and order off Amazon after all.

On a completely unrelated note… spicy garlicky cashew chicken? SO YUMMY.

Because food is always, always beautiful:

1. Berries and berry season. I look forward to summer for so many reasons (baseball (duh), sunshine, Screen on the Green, the Shakespeare Festival, fireworks on the Fourth of July, etc., etc., etc.), not the least of which is the return of fresh fruit, especially berries.

The color and contrast in this photo is just gorgeous.
As always, click on the image to get the source photo.

Sometimes I think I love berry desserts more than chocolate desserts, shocking as that may sound. I certainly love making berry desserts. My mother would say the abundance and variety of berries is just another sign of the glory of God, and she would be right.

Click to go to the original Flickr photo.

2. Grapefruit. I know it’s not to everybody’s taste, but I love it. Dark red pulp, surrounded by bitter white pith, surrounded by yellow rind. How pretty is that? Martha uses them for sandwich cookies, and chockylit uses them in cupcakes (seriously, how yummy looking is that?), but they’re also great just by themselves, sliced and sprinkled with a little salt and pepper, or maybe just a pinch of sugar. I will eat them in the rain. And in the dark. And on a train. And in a car. And in a tree. They are so good, so good, you see!

3. Indians are passionate about mangoes. When I was twelve and went to Mumbai for my cousin’s wedding, we came towards the end of mango season, but my grandmother had stockpiled them for us. She’d set aside so many we couldn’t possibly eat them all, so I spent one afternoon with my cousins making mango jam out of the spoiling ones. When I was twenty-two and went to Mumbai just to visit, we came at the beginning of mango season, when the fruit was still mostly green, yet my mother came back from the villages with crates full of mangoes, all of them gifts from family who wanted us to get our fill of India’s prize fruit before we left for the desolate, mango-less American wasteland.

To a man, all non-resident Indians attest that the mangoes available in the States (from Mexico) are “nothing” compared to what you can get in the villages of India. When given the choice, the NRI will always choose the mango-infused version of a food. Mango ice cream, mango cheesecake, mango juice. It will never be as good as the Indian kind, but they will choose it anyway because mangoes, even the inferior ones, are a temporary passport home.

These mangoes are not Indian, I don’t think, but the shot was too
beautiful to pass up. Click on the image for the original Flickr photo.

In the end, I think maybe this TBTT was less about food and more about gorgeous photography… and of course, about the endless bounty of God, which is so large and amazing and beautiful we aren’t capable of fully comprehending it.

1. Pitchers and catchers reported today. You know what that means: Baseball is back! Pitchers and catchers reporting is only a short step away from everybody reporting, which is only a short step away from spring training, and then, before you know it, we’re in April, looking at Opening Day. I can’t wait.

2. Believing in something. The speech Izzie gave on tonight’s Grey’s Anatomy was kind of hokey and way inappropriate (how is Meredith’s impending death about you, Izzie, and why would it be a good time to tell George how much you think his marriage sucks?), but the point of having her make it was to show that she’d regained her faith in medicine. She believed again. If you’ve ever had even a moment of being unable to believe in anything, or anyone, you know how amazing it is to finally step out of that fog.

3. Stuffed grape leaves. Sometimes all I would eat for dinner in Saudi was two grape leaves and an orange. They were a staple at the dinner buffet, but even knowing I’d get them after isha didn’t stop me from craving their tangy goodness during the day. One of the girls in the group said you can find fresh ones at Middle Eastern markets, but I haven’t found any Middle Eastern markets in Atlanta that carry them. In the meantime, I guess I’ll have to make do with canned, or I could try making my own.

The other day while I was researching Starfish Sushi, I discovered that Raving Brands, the company behind Moe’s, Doc Green’s, and several other fast-casual restaurants, had purchased my favorite breakfast spot, The Flying Biscuit.

I’m a Moe’s fan; AM and I take their food to every Braves game we attend. I also like Doc Green’s, despite the whole you-could-make-this-yourself argument. I could, but all those ingredients wouldn’t be cheap, and as an inexpensive, moderately healthy family-friendly restaurant, Doc Green’s does quite well. Mama Fu’s I could give or take, but I know some people who swear by it, and Planet Smoothie is quite the institution nowadays. There’s one on almost every corner. In fact, there are very few corners that don’t have at least one of the Raving Brands franchises.

What’s RB going to do with the sign? And the shingles? And the power lines?!?

The last would be the first reason I’m disappointed that the Biscuit sold out. I love the Flying Biscuit because it’s an Atlanta trademark and because every table has quirky hand-painted crockery full of sugar cubes, and the chairs don’t match, and sometimes the tables wobble, and the french toast is delicious. I love it because it’s not a chain with a pre-packaged menu designed for mass appeal. Or at least, it wasn’t.

I wonder what Raving Brands will do to my restaurant to suck away its personality, or how they’ll tweak the menu. Will they keep the fried green tomatoes? The love cakes? Are they going to throw in verbiage on the menu so you know you can add meat to any menu item for a mere $1.99? The Flying Biscuit is NOT ABOUT MEAT. IT IS ABOUT VEGANS AND VEGETARIANS AND EVERYTHING IS FREE RANGE.

Right. Taking a breath.

I don’t even want to think about what it’s going to feel like to walk into the fifteenth Flying Biscuit franchise in the city, to sit at the new, uniform cafeteria-style tables, and grab my silverware from a bin beside the soda fountain. That’s not the Flying Biscuit. It doesn’t remotely resemble the Flying Biscuit. I know RB will keep the name because that’s what they bought more than anything else, but for myself, I wish they’d change it. Even then, I don’t know that I’d go, really.

If Little Szechuan ever succumbs to the Power of the Conglomerate, I swear I’m done with loving restaurants.

Saturday morning I pulled privet in Oakhurst with Trees Atlanta, which meant that I finally acquainted myself with the parasitic British plant after knowing for years that the Dursleys live on Privet Drive. It was the dirtiest I’ve ever gotten doing a volunteer project; even when I shoveled mulch for three hours during last year’s company volunteer day, I came away reasonably clean.

Saturday afternoon I went shopping for the first time in months. Lately I’ve bought more books than I have clothing as I just haven’t been interesed in browsing through multiple racks of slutty, expensive, or oh-so-cute-but-not-hijab-appropriate. Shockingly enough, I actually bought some things. Of course, this means for the first time in months, I’m going to have a high credit card bill (once you add in the plane ticket to Chicago I still have to buy), so now I’m debating whether I have to start over on my quest to cross number 37 off my 101 in 1001 list. I suppose I could cross off number thirty, though… probably could have done that with last year’s BoHo explosion that made long-sleeved, loose-fitting embroidered tops all the rage.

Saturday evening (or, technically, Sunday morning) I yelled at my neighbors because I’ve turned into a Crotchety Old Lady Who Has HAD IT With Those Kids Today. Throwing a massive party with a bass that causes my walls to shake is irritating, but okay, I’ll give you that. Charging out of your house shouting at the top of your lungs because you’re drunk and your cousin insulted you is NOT okay, not when it’s two-thirty in the morning and you just woke all your neighbors out of their sound sleep. I don’t really care if you’re still in college, but if you’re going to live in a neighborhood of fully-grown adults, we expect you to behave like a fully-grown adult.

And I didn’t really yell. It was more like a what the hell, and they deserved it.

Sunday I made a pineapple mango upside down cake for the Desperate Housewives dessert party we were having. I don’t really watch DH with any consistency anymore, and judging by the amount of talking we did through the episode, none of the other girls loves it like I do Veronica Mars, but as an excuse to hang out and eat cake, it sufficed. Because I was on the phone while I was mixing the batter, I forgot the 1 c. of sugar the recipe called for, but as long as you eat it with the fruit topping, you can’t tell. Much. And that’s why we have ice cream, right? The mango/pineapple combination was awesome, though.

That was my weekend. How have y’all been?

Giada de Laurentiis has a new book out, and I bought it, despite never having seen her show on the Food Network and despite flipping through her freshman offering and passing on it. I bought it because Borders sent me a coupon for forty percent off, because the reviews were good, and because Grant seems to approve. The latter is relevant because I figure if I like the recipes he posts on his site, I should trust his cookbook sense as well.

As is my wont, I sat in the bookstore and flipped through the pages first. It’s one of the rare Italian cookbooks that doesn’t use some kind of alcohol in every recipe or devote a large chunk of its pages to pork. Strangely, booze and bacon just doesn’t do it for me. De Laurentiis does use a lot of pancetta and prosciuotto, but I can work around that. Roasted pork loins, on the other hand, leave me grasping for options.

There’s one thing about Giada’s Family Dinners so far. The pictures. Lots of pictures. It’s just that… so many of them aren’t of the food so much as they are of Giada, who is a lovely woman who seems to own only scoop-neck t-shirts. Very scoopy scoop-neck t-shirts. Sometimes you can’t see the food for the scoopiness. If it’s a marketing ploy, I don’t get it, considering the cover of the book is relatively tame, and in any case, your target audience probably doesn’t care to see those particular features.

(Ivan pretended he didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. Ken took it like an honest man and admitted the pictures were… distracting.)

For the most part, I’m willing to forgive in exchange for the butternut squash lasagna and raspberry tiramisu. I mean, wouldn’t you?

I made her ravioli with creamy tomato sauce last night. I changed it up a bit because I’m attempting to clean out my refrigerator before the vegetables I bought two weeks ago and the multiple open bottles of pasta sauce spoil; I always feel so guilty when I let food go bad that it preys on my conscience when I know I have potential for rot in the fridge, and then my obsessive-compulsive self has to do something about it expediently. In any case, de Laurentiis did say the recipe was open for manipulation, so I’m comfortable appraising it even with my tweaks.

It’s fast, simple, and unpretentious, and the resulting dish is very acceptable for a weekday meal. I don’t know that I’d serve it at a fancy dinner party, except perhaps as a starter. The recipe that I really want to try is her penne with creamy spinach sauce, but I have to finish going through the refrigerator first.