Here's where I cry just a little

I had the best intentions of posting a lovely almond cookie recipe today which has been ready to go for a while and mentioning the bitterness surrounding the dearth of toasted coconut almond fudge gelato everywhere. There is a world-wide cost crisis with almonds, one foodie told me. No way. Is it just the almonds, Mrs. Clueless, or are lots of people struggling to put food on the table and gas in their SUV's at the same time? Surely not! Pish-aw, we'll muddle through! It's just an almond crisis.

I will tell you about the cookie as planned. You're not just here for me to wax nostalgic about some guy who might have cancer, right? Even if he is the best kind of guy?



Now, the cookie. A guy sitting to my right at Esca in New York one evening turned out to be a foodie devoted to Chef Batali. He whipped out an impossibly slim and glamourous writing utensil and, in perfect architectural block print, wrote down a recipe on his cocktail napkin. He handed it to me, placed his pen back in the breast pocket of his Hugo Boss and left (to return to the Bat Cave). That guy was nuts or else Mario Batali is. It was a recipe worthy of the Blue Willow Inn Cookbook: Not meant to make food. Meant to drive you into an asylum. It went something like this: Grind the almonds, add very little butter and sugar. Mix, bake, and proceed to the medication line. Won't work, I don't care what Bat Man says. At least he was accurate. I found the cookie recipe on the internet credited to the Chef. It's not looking good for the chef's sanity: Ever eat dry sand? Here's your chance.

The recipe below will work like a charm however, and you'll be out of the kitchen in a shake. You'll need some almonds to grind down to flour or some almond flour. Go to Trader Joes or an organic store or the nut isle of the supermarket and grind it down, takes a second. Or don't. I am preoccupied and cannot possibly find a way to creatively mention the health benefits of almonds at the moment. Or to discuss how very wise hostesses make sure the baked goods go into the oven as late in the day as possible before hosting a dinner party, to allow the scent of fresh pastry to waft through the air when the front doors are opened to guests. Look, I can't. Another time.



I am itching to shift gears here.

Paul Newman is a good man. Maybe the best. Yesterday it slipped out that he has an undisclosed cancer. Here is a real Bat Man. A guy who saved the world for you and I and we hardly knew it. He was an organic-food-for-children philanthropist before it became popular. This man built farms, huge, green, happy affairs for stricken kids. He gave more money than most will ever dream of to charity. He made more, he gave that away too. The arts, the kids, the athletes, I tell you, he touched millions of lives far apart from his movies. He and Joanne Woodward make more difference in one day than most do in three lifetimes.

It'll be great if we can make one for him. Hope for him in whatever language or faith you know that he'll live on to do what only he can. I know he can't be spared forever, none of us can. But if there can be a hold out, Paul Newman should be it.

I was seven years old when I met him for the first time. At our stables' first horse show under his ownership. He and his family are good horse people, but they are even better humans. I am certain the prayers of the horse community and the food community (he owns Dressing Room, in Westport, "Our Mission: We believe that the food we grow and cook -- in the place that we call home-- defines who we are.") are with him tonight. Send yours too, will you?

Not Mario Batali's Almond Cookie
Bastardized from this Mario Batali recipe, sadly
For Paul Newman
Makes 2 dozen cookies

1/4 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, very softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup almond flour, or the same amount made by processing almonds into flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg, beaten soundly
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Garnish: a few slivered almonds on top just before baking

If you are using whole almonds, put them in the food processor and pulse them down until it becomes like a powdery sand.

Then you get a bowl, medium is fine, or use your stand mixer, but really, if your butter is very soft, you needn't. Into the bowl place the stick of butter, sugar, almond flour, salt, and the beaten egg. Use a wooden spoon or the like (or your stand mixer, if you really must), to mix all of these ingredients to smooth, it will take about 2 minutes, be patient, it is a thick dough. Add the extracts and stir again just to combine. Put the bowl in the fridge overnight to allow the butter to firm up again.

The next day, preheat your oven to 350 degrees and lightly spray two cookie sheets, non-stick is best (spray them anyway). Bake for about twelve minutes, until the sides of the cookies are just golden and the tops set. Cool ten minutes on the baking sheet, remove with a spatula to a cooling rack or large platter, eat as soon as you can handle. Or, wait, if you must.

Greenery

This morning, when coffee and the New York Times hit my place at the table I was relieved for more than just the jolting dose of caffeine: The Dining Out section of the Times includes a subject which will become more important to every home soon, if it has not already. As you know, we prefer to "discuss" and "suggest" here at Blushing Hostess, it is preferable to lecturing. Vegetables growing in every yard is our double-dog secret goal on this blog, second only to the recipes to support your crop.

That probably does not surprise you as there are more subliminal messages about growing your own food here than product punches in Talladega Nights. We have been committed to this sort of growing (and African Violets) for generations as a family. There are small and large food yielding operations at all of our family homes: Some of us are variety growers, some herb and greens, some still thinking their preferences through.

I would like to tell you this is a wholly organic pursuit: This growing for our families and those of others who need the produce. But recently, two of the patches in question were crippled by dire pestilence and the experts hereabouts nixed my organic growing initiative: Higher yields mean more food. That will make a difference to another person down the line possibly. Consequently, we fought blight here with the chemical equivalent of nukes last week. Most of the plants are beginning to crawl back now. Unfortunately, the kales and lettuces are history but we've time there to begin again. The point is, grow food. Use chemicals if you truly must but be sure they are the sort that can be removed, not the sort that alter the plant from the outside all the way in.

In school when I was a child, Mrs. Finnegan had us place seeds in Dixie cups with a bit of soil from the school yard and a hole in the bottom for drainage. We placed our cups on the sunny window sill in the classroom and watered those seeds dutifully each day. It was amazing how quickly and surely they grew. Considering the amount of stuff Home Depot would have you believe you need to buy in order to get a seed to grow and flourish, it is even more impressive! Home Depot was not even a glimmer to the credit card companies then.

It will take a bit of effort, true. It will take next to no money to get a small patch started for yourself though. You can buy seedling plants (and for tomatoes, you should, they are really difficult to start) or go a less expensive route and buy seeds. Or, go an even less trod path and develop your own seed collection: Having squash for dinner (cheap and easy, try it)? Save the seeds you scoop from the centers, clean them off a bit, place them on a baking sheet, and leave them in the sun for a few days. Now you can start your own seed company. Don't say I never gave you business advice.

Don't believe me? I am still conducting this experiment because it is easy (I'm busy) and straightforward (little cups can be found everywhere) and because I need to prove it to you in order to be encouraging. You can do this, okay? Please try for me, it's about getting good green food into little bellies, and that should be Job 1.

Start small, a border garden, possibly. These are squash borders, rather than flowers. Vibrant, yes?


This is dinner.
Now, take a break. Go to Starbucks and get yourself a latte (I like skinny hazelnut) and look in the basket at the front of the store. They give out their used coffee grinds as fertilizer for free. Now your garden is fertilized, for free. Turn your free grounds into the soil. Water daily. Watch your dinner grow.

If you are really on the ball, you can compost all organically occurring kitchen waste (egg shells, coffee grinds, vegetable peels, etc.) into a pile in a corner of the garden. Allow it to decompose for a season and them pull it down and turn it into the ground as well.

I am finished discussing for today. Keep the Host and I apprised of your food growing progress.

Hostess first, citizen second

I wish I could tell you there has been little excitement afoot and therefore, I have had no reason to bounce about my part-time neighborhood like a cleaning, landscaping, entertaining butterfly. But one thing, in the world of a feverent and slightly neurotic hostess, always leads to another and there is forever another moment when I am in grave jeopardy of going from The Hostess to That Hostess.

It has happened again. Look, I am no pretender to Martha's throne. I set out to tell you the way it really is in gracious homes. And I think you understand now, between my lectures and the kind interludes of The Dashing Host from over by the blender, that it is a lot more ironic, preposterous, boozy, and amusing than Martha has allowed you to believe. I hope you can actually see the enormity of the potential silliness in the domestic operation of a well-appointed home. I hope all that helps you, in some small way, to appreciate what happened Friday afternoon and not to hold it against me. This blog occurs with a purity of soul, and it is that same purity which helps to me be a good, if somewhat focused and inadvertent, neighbor.

For sometime I have been grousing about the condition of lawns. Not to you, but in general, you see. Weedy, over-grown, senselessly marginalized pieces of greenspace are on my list of most aggravating visual circumstances. Indeed, right here in our fine neighborhood, we have one of those crazy houses which looks not unlike a modern adaptation on the haunted houses of old black and white movies: Only sparse patches of grass here and there and always untamed dot a small yard which once held careful plantings inside borders, all of which the earth is reclaiming at an alarming rate. This ratty space is punctuated with the occasional shrub allowed to roam out of control into bushy masses the landscaping equivalent of Rorschach figures. If I were the one to whom this landscape test is being administered, I would guess the full effect of the yard was meant to be an abstract comment on one person's best guess at what the garden in front of Satan's house looks like: Welcome to hell, ya'll.

My landscaper and I have been focused on this den of yard-keeping iniquity for a while now. We stand on my lawn, talk about the health of the grass and eventually our glances stray towards that yard across the way. We speculate on how things go down hill, "Something must be going on, keeping them from it." He says. "I hope she's alright," I say, assuming the young lady of the house must be in significant distress to allow the yard to creep into devilishness that way. I make a mental note to offer to help if I see her about and hop back to the window washing. That pattern continued for a couple of weeks. Until Friday.

It was then that I was getting the baby into the car to buzz over to the beach when, with no warning what-so-ever a woman (tall, comely, not unpleasant to behold) walked with great determination up the drive. Down on the road, a white truck followed her from drive to drive. I assumed, with great annoyance, that she was soliciting for my money or soul, neither of which is welcome here, on Friday or any other day.

She was not; she was a reporter from the evening news she said and showed me her identification. I asked what I could do for her. "Just wondering," she said with some tentative ring to her voice, "if you wanted to comment for the news on your neighbor being arrested?"

"Good Lord!" I exclaimed. Mostly, because I am from Bedford and people go up for white collar tax crimes there left and right but it would be tasteless to get hauled in on a real criminal matter. Unacceptable! I thought to myself. "Who was arrested?"

She gave the name and then pointed at the home. The House of Satan's Fern Garden.

"Oh!" I exclaimed once again and before I was able to stop myself, "I just wish she would mow her lawn!" tumbled past my teeth and out into the air.

My first concern should have been for whomever the devil-gardening thief had victimized now! I should certainly have been a bit less focused on her lack of home-keeping and hostessing abilities and exercised a bit more empathetic and civil mindfulness. Not the case, I am afraid.

Indeed, I leapt into the car and began calling everyone. Relived, on the one hand, that the aesthetic offender was identified and quickly rounded up into lock up where she hopefully will not be the one charged with tending the prison's kitchen garden. And disturbed on the second hand, after all, now what was to become of that unyielding patch of horticultural agony?

Oh, dear. It was not until much later in the day that I discovered what the indictments are for. They have nothing to do with gardening (the Homeowner's Association seemingly having a good deal less pull with the local law-making bodies than I assumed).

It is so much like Bedford here in so many comforting ways. Dealings with the law can still be just as civilized. Why, I can hear Dori's voice ringing now, "Federal agents executing a warrant next door. I'll get the cocktails!"

Here is a heart healthy salad (for the bloggers at Heart of the Matter) to go with crow, if you happen to be dining on the same meal I am:



Fresh Field Pea and Brown Rice Salad with Chile Pasilla Vinaigrette
Serves 6

For the salad:
3 cups fresh field peas
4 cups water 2 cups brown rice, cooked
1 cup cojita cheese, crumbled
Kosher salt and freshly cracked pepper

In a wide deep skillet over medium heat,, place field peas and water. Season with salt and pepper, and cover. Cook about half an hour or until peas are softened when tasted. Drain the mixture off in a colander with small holes or a large strainer. Place in your serving bowl, toss with cooked brown rice and crumbled cojita cheese.

For the Chile Pasilla Vinaigrette:
1 dried chile pasilla, soaked in a cup of boiling water for 5 minutes
2 garlic cloves
1 tablespoon oregano
6 juniper berries, crushed
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon honey
Kosher salt and freshly cracked pepper

Remove the stem and seeds of the chile. Chop the chile roughly and place in the small bowl of a food processor. Add the garlic, oregano, juniper berries and pulse until combined and only a few small pieces remain. Add the vinegar and mustard and process again until the mixture is smooth. Add the honey and quickly pulse to combine. Taste, add more honey to your taste and season with salt and pepper.

To assemble: Pour the vinaigrette over the tossed salad and combine. Serve warm or, even better, chilled. Garnish with a bit more crumbled cojita and fresh oregano.

Ghosts in the pesto

A short and bouncy tale from the Land of Before (aka, New York City, 2006):

Two years ago in Manhattan, on a 100 degree summer evening when the buildings seemed to become oases and then melt before us, Dori, Rebecca, and I were on a food trek. These things start and end with no plans. But you see, they have never failed to yield some of the Greats in our food pursuits in our fine city. Among the best, and the one my mind returns to often, was a dinner at Bouley Test Kitchen where we were served blanched asparagus with a parsley pesto.

This dish is the phantom I will chase for all my days. Never again has asparagus been so pleasing on a plate, like ten willowy bright green columns. Every tiny leaf intact at the tips. Peeled ever so gently at the same height of circumference around the stalk. The sauce is a haunting apparition each time asparagus appears before me: I can still feel it on my tounge, completely processed and refined in a processor, light, bouncy, full of citrus and something sweet along side something earthy.

I have my suspicions about this "pesto". No question it was parsley that took the center stage but having attempted several versions of this now, parsley (from my own patch, from the organic market) does not alone provide the punch that dish possessed. Fifty seconds of research and twelve minutes of sitting back in my chair with my assumptions for company leads me to two possibilities after last night's little pesto adventure: First, some of the parsley pesto recipes you will find on the internet include basil. I did not taste basil in that Bouley dish (Dori and Becca will have to confirm this). Therefore, in these trials I continue to avoid adding basil because the best part about the pesto was that it was an unexpected hit and basil would have been noticeable, expected, and played. Secondly, after buzzing walnuts into last nights remarkably pleasant (but still miles off the mark) pesto, I don't believe there were pignoli or walnuts in the thing. It may have been something more difficult to pinpoint because we might not recognize it, having little experience with this particular class of Potential Suspects.

In future trip-and-falls through the Bouley recreation forest of fervor, I will try my hand with alternative oils: Avocado and pistachio. I will also have to think about the brightness again, here I used a Reims Chardonnay Vinegar to bring the pesto up but it occurs to me now, some interesting thing might occur with a sweet citrus: meyer lemon?

In the meantime, this pesto, straight out of the garden behind the house, is fabulous. Without the vinegar, I used it to grill corn going into the corn, poblano, and cohita grilled salad. With the sweet vinegar, it went (of course) over the roasted asparagus (I was too caught up with Life to deal with blanching). This makes about a cup and a half and will keep in the fridge for a few days. You will use it all over the place and it is a more cost-effective alternative than a basil pesto in these lean times.

Parsley Pesto
Makes about 1 1/2 cups

Use this mixture to marinate veggies on the grill, dress your pasta, pasta, potato, and bean salads, or to use as a bread dip. Add a good, sweetly pleasant vinegar and use it as a dressing for salad or grilled or roasted veggies. I am certain you can find a thousand other uses beyond these...

1 cup parsley, leaves only, stems discarded
1/4 cup walnuts, toasted
2 tablespoons lemon zest
2 garlic cloves, peeled
2 tablespoons grated fresh parmiganno regianno
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper
1 tablespoon good quality honey
1/4 cup good quality extra virgin olive oil

Into the bowl of the food processor, place the parsley, walnuts, lemon zest, garlic, and parmiganno. Process until all ingredients are in tiny pieces. Add the honey, salt, and pepper. With the machine running, begin to slowly drizzle in the olive oil in a steady stream until it is completely combined and the mixture is smooth.

Photogenic? No. Good? Yes.

Right off the bat let's understand that I am not the biggest hummus consumer. If there is a fan club, I won't be Googling it (Now is a good time to ask if you have set up your Google reader page so you can keep track of me? It is super easy and it makes reading fifty blogs a day a whiz.). The caveat is that I like food that works for its keep, which this dip/ spread generally does. It is a form of hummus I suppose, but it doesn't bother me.

You know, its like anything in life, the better the ingredients you put into it, the better the product they turn out. The same goes for the kitchen staff at the club yesterday who elected to use bad, stale croissants and pastries for the social tea: What you put in is what you will get out in terms of attendance. I don't need to pay for bad pastry, I am learning pastry in this forum and so I have plenty on hand, albeit never stale. Mr. Bourdain, take note...

I dreamed this up while someone was screaming at me, admittedly not my most creative environment, but I can work under pressure if I need to. I hope you use it in good health for good health. If you love Indian food, this is right up your alley. While it is not the biggest looker in photography, it is very tasty, just warm and deep on your palate. A nice place to begin a light supper.

Spinach, roasted garlic, warm masala spice dip
Makes 2.5 cups

As long as you drain the spinach completely, you can add a great deal more which would be even better for your bod. Whose bod doesn't want better, huh?

1 15.5 ounce can chickpeas
1 small head garlic, roasted
1 cup chopped frozen spinach, thawed and drained
1 teaspoon cumin seed, toasted
1 teaspoon Garam Masala
1 teaspoon hot smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 cup plus two tablespoons best quality olive oil

Into the food processor, place the chickpeas, roasted garlic cloves, spinach, cumin seed, garam masala, hot paprika, sea salt, and pepper. Pulse for 20 seconds (large pieces may remain). Turn the processor on and through the feed tube, drizzle in the 1/4 cup of olive oil until ingredients are combined to the consistency you prefer (I like mine a bit chunky.) Transfer the mixture to your serving bowl. Pour the remaining two tablespoons directly over the top. Serve with pita chips.