House Girlfriend

Last but not least, the King Cake! (Baby not pictured.)

Please don’t judge my sad “serving platter”/really old cutting board. One of the true tragedies of my life is that I’m a house girlfriend and not a housewife; in other words, I’ve never had the joy of registering for things like a serving platter. One day…

And, finally, made-to-perfection pralines, made by my gorgeous friend Johanna, just like you can get right on Decatur Street by Cafe du Monde. (Notice the coffee?)

After I’d already decided to host a dinner-party and enticed people to attend under the promise of gumbo, I realized I hadn’t the faintest how to make gumbo. Much less a roux, the most important aspect of any gumbo (as every cookbook I own kept incessantly reminding me). Nor had I ever made jambalaya. Or remoulade. Luck for everyone, my mother sent me a king cake from Gambino’s in NOLA, so there’s really only three dishes I can ruin tonight! Although I do have to ice it myself, so we’ll see…

SHRIMP SKEWERS WITH “REMOULADE” SAUCE

I immediately messed up this recipe, using cayenne when I ought to have used paprika and vise versa. The sauce, not at all like remoulade, was still good… just insanely spicey. Insanely. No bother including the recipe here, but the shrimp turned out lovely. 

After de-shelling them, I marinated the shrimp in lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper for about an hour. Then threw some Tony Chachere’s over them once skewered, broiled them 3 minutes on each side… and they were the hit of the evening! (Tony Chachere’s can make anything a hit.)

And here, the “fried” okra I threw together at the behest of a Pinterest pin. It was good, easy, but it lacked a little oomph.

CHICKEN-CHORIZO GUMBO

I made this almost precisely as directed by Joy of Cooking’s Chicken Gumbo recipe, which might seem an odd one to follow, given that Joy is neither cajun nor Southern. But it is my Bible. And the gumbo turned out with as much cajun spice as anything I’ve had outside New Orleans, so you’ll hear no complaints from me. As recommended, I made it a day ahead of time and reheated this evening. But I was confused as to when to use File (pronounced fee-lay). Make a gumbo and all you’ll hear about for ages is file. File and roux. Roux and file. Thank goodness for A Guide to Great Gumbo! Though I made the gumbo the day before, I added the file only seconds before serving. And it was… unspeakably divine. If only I’d made the roux while having a glass of wine or two, following Emeril’s two-beer rule in my very own way. 

JAMBALAYA WITH SMOKED SAUSAGE

This was the hardest venture of the night, as I couldn’t find a satisfying recipe for the version of jambalaya I was craving. I’m not much of a sausage person, but I’ve always loved smoked sausage: it reminds me of bacon, and my father. And I wanted to have a smoked sausage jambalaya because, when my father made it, the sweetness of the sausage so perfectly complimented the spicy rice, it broke your heart. But the recipe was not to be found; so, despite the fact I started the jambalaya an hour before people were expected, I made my own.

INGREDIENTS:

1 pound smoked sausage, cut into 1/4 inch slices

1/4 pound chorizo sausage

1 white onion, finely chopped 

1/2 red onion, finely chopped

1 red pepper, finely chopped

2 scallions, finely chopped (so much fine chopping!)

1 cloved of garlic, minced

1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 can diced tomatoes and their juices

1 1/2 cups white long grain rice

3 cups of water (I’m sure chicken broth would be better- but I used all mine on the gumbo!)

salt, pepper and garlic powder to taste

DIRECTIONS:

Brown the smoked sausage and chorizo in a heavy cast iron skillet, and set aside to drain. Using the remaining fat in the skillet, sautee the onions and peppers (adding olive oil, if needed) until the onion is translucent. Stir in the scallions, cayenne, tomatoes, garlic, rice and water. 

Cover and let the mixture simmer over low heat for 45 minutes or so, adding water when needed and stirring frequently. About 30 minutes in, add the chorizo and test for seasoning. Add salt, pepper and garlic powder, if needed (it will be!). About 15 minutes before serving, add the smoked sausage to warm and flavor.

About 5 minutes before serving, remove the cover and allow the rice to dry out and absorb the remaining liquid. It was beautiful. Exactly what I wanted- I just wish I had the photos to do it justice. 

Everything was amazingly tasty- and amazingly spicy! I sweat my body-weight eating this feast… and I ate so much, I achieved part of the goal of Mardi Gras: I don’t think I’ll want to eat until Easter, so I haven’t any need to give it anything up for Lent. 

The richness of New Orleans is not just in the food, but also in the spirit, the culture, the air of magic down every street you turn. I went to school in New Orleans, where my mother’s side of the family lives; it informs my cooking, and my life. Once you have lived there- or, I suspect, even visited- it haunts you, changes you. And this time each year, as crawfish and parade season begins, I start feeling it calling me back… back to the baccanal and the lazy afternoons, back to the endless sense of joy you have when you’re there. But I can’t often go back. Instead, I go to the kitchen.

Not many of my friends in Los Angeles, The Boyfriend included, have been to New Orleans. And I’d venture to say that many of them have the same Girls Gone Wild/COPS: Mardi Gras vision of it that much of America has. It’s not my duty to prove that there is more to New Orleans than topless Spring Breakers, but it is my joy: the European cobblestones in shambles, the cocktails served by cigarette-aged 16 year olds (the best cocktails in the country, mind you), the best sandwich you’ll have in your life, down a scary, un-promising back alley… these are New Orleans to me. And I wanted to bring something of that into my home this Fat Tuesday.

I pulled down my long-abandoned collection of Mardi Gras beads, dusted off some old recipes (new to me), called up a few friends, and let the festivities begin.

Laissez Les Bon Temps Roullez!

It hasn’t been much of a cooking week for me; we’ve been in a celebratory mood, eating out day after day, going out to ice cream every other night. Other than my no-bake baking for Valentine’s Day, I’ve barely stepped foot into the kitchen- and yesterday, when I was going to try, The Boyfriend whipped up some multi-grain blueberry pancakes for me while I was out at pilates. He set the bar high… so I had to come up with something new for Saturday morning brunch.

I slept in late, and we both woke up hungry, so there was no time to spare for one of my long, meandering trips to the grocery store or farmer’s market. I had to make do with the little I had on hand. Luckily, I had the makings of a frittata… something I’d never made before, of course, but how hard could it be? 

Turns out, a little. But only because my arms were so tired from pilates and my cast iron skillet weighs a TON.

ORANGE PEPPER & RED ONION FRITTATA

INGREDIENTS: 

1 yellow bell pepper, diced

1/2 red onion, diced

4 tablespoons olive oil

5 eggs

1/2 cup shaved Parmesan cheese

basil, parsley and oregano, to taste

salt and pepper, to taste

DIRECTIONS:

Heat half of the olive oil in a large cast iron skillet, add the onions and sautee until golden, stirring regularly. Add the peppers, cooking until tender. Toss with salt and pepper, then drain off the excess oil in a colander. Set aside to cool. Wipe our the skillet, getting it ready for use again.

Meanwhile, whisk 5 eggs together with salt and pepper to taste. (I am a well-documented pepper fiend, so I just add pepper until I can see it distinctly… so I don’t really have an accurate measurement system going- maybe, three shakes of the pepper container?). Stir in the cheese, spices (a few shakes a piece), and the vegetables. 

Turn on your broiler and heat the remaining olive oil in your cast iron skillet, adding the egg mixture when hot. Cooking over medium heat, let the bottom set. When the bottom of the eggs are set, remove the entire skillet to your broiler and let the flames cook the top.

 In our oven, the broiling took about 2 minutes, but our oven is not strong.

Use a spatula to loosen the sides, cut and serve. 

A great start to the weekend, in deed. (And look how pretty that bacon turned out… I’m getting better at this, I really am!)

As someone who loves stiff eggs, without a bit of runny, but with all of their flavor, it was the ideal egg dish: savory and rich, while still being light and fluffy. The Boyfriend was impressed. 

My thanks, as always, to Joy of Cooking for helping me through this new challenge. 

I think I am beginning to understand why I am terrified of baking. As a control freak of sorts, I am more at home cooking elaborate meals than barely-complicated sweets. The thing I like about cooking (besides the inevitable eating, that is) is the constant tinkering: I can stir and fiddle to my heart’s contentment. And I do. I will slave away over a hot stove for literally hours, tasting a concoction hundreds of times before I put it out for public consumption. I can adjust flavors as I go, fix road-bumps (or butter clumps) along the way, improvise solutions to things turning out poorly and, most often, I end up with something completely delicious.

And that’s not to say that my baking thus far hasn’t been delicious. It has. But I do miss the hours of care that cooking demands. And I do hate the unknowing of putting something into the oven and not being able to check on it again for hours. Like sending your child off into the world, not knowing what will happen to them out there- not knowing if they’ll still be edible when they come back from college… 

I’m good at the specificity. Bad at the unknowing. 

But I’m trying. For Valentine’s Day, I wanted to challenge myself and I knew I couldn’t do that with a meal: The Boyfriend and I had our eyes on a new restaurant downtown (The Spice Table, if you’re interested, which was beyond…). So dessert, my dreaded baking, loomed ahead. And all I knew was it needed to involve raspberries.

Now, why I had to choose a recipe that involved cheesecloths, a sieve, and just-melted chocolate (all things I’ve never tackled) is beyond me. But what we came out with was just as far beyond my expectations as dinner: a real culinary masterpiece, in fact. And all due goes to Orangette. 

I was never one to read food blogs before I unofficially started one- they made me too hungry. But as soon as I started writing, I began hearing about Molly Wizenberg. 

And here I am, poring over her lovely book, A Homemade Life, nightly and dreaming of leading a life like hers. At least I can eat a life like hers… and I started with the Coeur a la Creme with Raspberry Puree. 

Or, I can if I can figure out what to do with this cheesecloth:

Or how to get these raspberries through a sieve to make a puree:

Or how to stop worrying about this dessert while it sets in the refrigerator overnight:

I needn’t have worried. Molly blessed our late night Valentine’s Day dessert with her brilliance. 

Dome a la Creme with Raspberry Puree!

Beautifully light and marvelously airy, sweet and tart and all around heartwarming… who knew I could create such a beautiful thing?

Valentine’s Day provides the perfect opportunity for me to finally hone my baking prowess… but what if I just haven’t the inclination to turn on the oven? Or go to the store? Or spend hours of my Monday obsessing over the texture of a mixture whose texture I haven’t a clue about?

How do I bake without bothering with the baking? 

Maybe it’s the passing of Whitney Houston, a woman and voice so intertwined with my childhood, it is hard to separate one from the other, but my mind tripped back to a forgotten, favorite childhood treat, not terribly advanced in flavor and easy enough for a child to make, but a satisfying and easy cookie, one that hits all the notes I required as a child for things deemed “favorites”: chocolate and peanut butter. No-Bake Chocolate Oatmeal cookies. Easier than pie. If only I have the ingredients. 

I searched my already mostly-barren cupboards and found a secret stock of sugar I’d forgotten about. And, yes, I had cocoa and peanut butter and some fancier oats that just don’t work as well for my beloved oatmeal as Quaker. Could it be? Could I finally figure recreate one of my favorite childhood treats in my very own adult home?

A little creative Google-ing and I found what I was looking for all over the place. This charming little cookie has quite the following. Who knew? After sifting through everyone’s ideas, here’s how I made mine:

NO-BAKE CHOCOLATE OATMEAL COOKIES

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 cup butter, melted

2 cups sugar

1/2 cup milk

4 tablespoons cocoa

3/4 cup creamy, unsalted peanut butter (I used the oil-separated kind, and found it makes for much moister recipes)

3 1/2 cups quick-cooking oats

DIRECTIONS: 

Combine butter, sugar, milk and cocoa in a 4-quart pot over medium heat. Stirring constantly, bring the mixture to a boil. Let the mixture boil for 1 minute and remove from heat. Stir in the peanut butter until it’s melted completely. Stir in the oats. 

Drop by tablespoons onto parchment or wax paper- I dropped mine into lovely little hearts.

Let the cookies cool until set. 

The perfect 6-minute way to start the Valentine’s sugar-frenzy. Enjoy!

It’s midnight on Saturday night and The Boyfriend is tired, understandably wanting to sleep after a long day. Unfortunately, he can’t. I’m busy ironing our bedsheets and thinking about The Mommies: at thirteen, I was in love with them. While my friends were out on dates, kissing boys, I was home on weekend nights watching these mommies, so unlike my own, wax hilarious about homemade baby foods, negligent husbands and, of course, the best way to iron a towel. I didn’t envy my friends and their budding love lives, I just wondered why no one in my house had ever taken the time to iron our bathroom linens…

It was a comment that didn’t go over too well with my working-mother. And my attempts at making towel-ironing a ritual in our household didn’t last long. 

Yet, here I am. Back where I started long ago. Ironing, on a Saturday night.

But there’s no longer anyone around to tell me to stop. The Boyfriend naps happily out on the couch- and I can go to sleep knowing that I finally found someone to kiss and the sheets we sleep on are wonderfully wrinkle free. As are our towels!

A lot of my so-called meal planning is inspired by what I see on sale at the grocery store. Barely bruised artichokes marked down to half price? Yes, please! Three pounds of a bean I’ve never heard of for only $1.29? Certainly, sir! Bargain bin peaches? Don’t mind if I do. So naturally, when I found a mountain of neglected fiber-fortified penne on the clearance rack last week, I jumped at the chance. 

But I hadn’t a clue what to make with it, and I feared that the sheer fiber-fortifiedness of it would make it a wee bit inedible. I had to turn to the internets for inspiration, for a recipe that would mask the cheapness of the main ingredient. And I found just such a recipe on All Recipes, Baked Penne with Italian Sausage.

I loooove cooking with Italian Sausage, it has such robust and exciting flavor, and yet it never overpowers, only compliments; I knew this was the recipe for me.

I made a few changes, of course: I don’t like to cook with alcohol, if I can help it, and I like to avoid processed foods when I can. (Ridiculous, I know, when cooking with pasta that can keep on a shelf for years, but welcome to my brain.) 

I substituted simple tap water for wine, and chose instead of jarred tomato sauce to simply use a larger can of peeled whole tomatoes. And fresh garlic instead of canned. And lots of additional basil and oregano. And… you get the picture.

It was delicious- and full of fiber, too!

We’ve been snacking on it for days now, and the flavors only get better. Who knew Baked Penne was even a thing? Goodbye, Baked Ziti. I may never eat you again… unless I find ziti for sale in the pasta aisle, that is. 

(Source: allrecipes.com)

When I first started House Girlfriending full time, I was certain it would be no time at all until I was the Mary Poppins of my own domain, aka Practically Perfect in Every Way. 

And, to be honest, I’m not doing a terrible job: though the decor comes slowly, the apartment looks lovely, it stays clean, the meals get cooked- and mostly very well. But I had visions of a garden, a growing swath of herbs I would nightly throw casually into our meals. I had visions of a patio full-to-overflowing with ferns and succulents, a veritable greenhouse in our apartment. I had visions of home-grown flowers I would cut and bring to friends’ houses for dinner parties as hostess gifts. But the dinner parties never quite materialized- and neither did my flowers.

I was doing quite well at first: when The Boyfriend and I moved in together, we planted seeds, we bought a few plants and the summer treated them nicely; we had blooms and leaves where before there was nothing… but winter came. (Yes, even in Los Angeles.) And I decided to try my hand at houseplants. My mistake.

Here is where my lack of Mary Poppins-ing really comes into play: what I have in culinary flare, I obviously lack in green thumbing. I have killed, or very nearly murdered, every plant that enters our home. Even the succulents! And those everyone says take no effort at all. But I have seen them: day after day, committing suicide just to escape life in my I’m Trying So Hard To Make It Beautiful Home.  

I don’t know what to do. It is hard for a person like me, trying so hard to be perfect at everything, to admit that I am failing- and miserably so. But I am. Like an overbearing mother, I am giving too much light when all that is needed is darkness. Giving too much water, when all that is needed is dry soil.

A kind Tumblr reader, a horticulturalist, has lately given me some advice: not all plants want sunlight, test your water for chlorine, please stop drowning your succulents. And I have no choice but to listen, to admit that I do not have all the answers, that, for some things, Mary Poppins-ing does not come naturally. Not yet.