Martha, Martha, Martha!

I cannot believe I forgot to tell you that I saw Martha Stewart.


I mean, I saw Martha Stewart and I saw Martha Stewart. Fortunately it was a food-based episode so it makes perfect sense to tell you about it here, I'm not just namedropping because I was in the same room as Martha Stewart and breathed the same air as Martha Stewart or laughed at Martha Stewart's jokes or anything,

There were other people there. Such as Curtis Granderson. He's one of the New York Yankees! And this guy, Adam Richman, who wrote a book about food and eats lots of it on TV. He's on the Travel Channel like, all the time. His mom was in the audience which was soo cute.

It was a particularly delicious episode: macaroni and cheese was made, discussions of food anthropology took place (see also, Adam Richman's book, which we received copies of but I haven't yet finished reading), and we watched as Martha went on a pretaped "date" with some hilarious MTV News guys I didn't know (they went to the restaurant Daniel.) Also! Excellent swag bags with loads of free stuff!

So yeah, went to see Martha Stewart. It was definitely my favorite TV-taping experience ever. I've previously seen Emeril Live (also about food! The only swag item was a little bag of super spicy potato chips. It was in October or November 2001, their first taping after 9/11, and so there was an awful lot of "Yeah! New York! We love ya! Bam!" that's probably puzzling if that episode still airs), the Daily Show (no swag, forget who the guest was but it was someone funny), and The Late Show with David Letterman (also no swag but pretty sure I heard myself "woo!" on TV and Hootie and the Blowfish played "Let Her Cry.").

Anyway, at Martha, I had the best seats ever. Got to sit on the floor, right next to the fake greenhouse area of the set! (Those are real plants in there.) And oh yes, because you want to know but are too classy to ask: Martha was really pretty and really skinny -- um, not "skinny," exactly, more like "svelte" -- in real life. And was only like, 15 feet away from me when she rolled beeswax candles with the MTV guys, who made jokes with Martha about their mad skillz at rolling things. (It was a pot-smoking joke! OMG! In front of Martha!!)

Savor Providence 2010

After skipping last year’s edition because of torrential rain, I was super excited to return to this year’s Savor Providence, a fundraiser for the fabulous Trinity Rep theatre company. (You may recall my attending 2008’s inaugural event.)

The day started off right with Rhode Island wine and cheese – Sakonnet Vineyards and Narragansett Creamery – in the theater’s lobby. Great stuff! I’ve been aware of Sakonnet wine for years, if not decades. I knew of it when I was a kid (my dad being a bit of a consumer of localish wines) and moreso during my R.I. college days when a few times we enjoyed their Eye of the Storm wine (when we were feeling upscale we’d browse the wines at Haxton’s instead of heading straight to the Natty Ice!) whilst reminiscing about Hurricane Gloria, as New England kids our age tend to do. (It was, aside from the Blizzard of ’78 which for most of us was just an opportunity for our toddler selves to be posed next to snow piles, the main weather memory of everyone’s youth. I doubt you want to hear the story of how school was cancelled that day and I was pissed because it was supposed to be my first day of clarinet lessons and I really needed that first day of lessons in order to figure out how to put the darned thing together. Also, one of our apple trees fell down.)

Anyhoo, they had much tastier wines than that one at Savor Providence. I tried two: the “Petite White NV,” a vidal blanc/gewürztraminer blend which actually had detectable levels of the “white grapefruit flavors” the tasting sheet touted; and the 2007 No Oak Chardonnay, which was delicious. I haven’t had a lot of unoaked chardonnays but really enjoy them every time I do.

And I cannot say ENOUGH about the Narragansett Creamery cheese. Their Atwell’s Gold was fantastic, as was the Salty Sea Feta. (UPDATE: Bought a nice slab of Atwell’s Gold at Sandy’s in Westerly in September! Love it!)

This year’s restaurant list was different than the first year’s, which turned out to be a good thing because otherwise we probably would have just returned to some of the same places that we knew were fabulous – we’re still talking about the mac and cheese at Al Forno – instead of trying new ones. And the addition of cooking demo tents was really nice, even though we only made it to one session.

Here’s a rundown of the highlights:
Aspire, 311 Westminster St.: “Unagi shrimp with wakame salad & toasted sesame; spiced nori encrusted scallop with grilled watermelon.” OMG. LOVE. Why am I not encrusting and grilling more things at home?

Café Noir, 125 N. Main St. They offered steak frites and a “goat cheese tart with sexy greens.” Sexy greens! Say no more. (They actually looked like ordinary greens to me but if you’re gonna stick tiny flowers in ’em and call them “sexy greens” I’m game.) And I’ve certainly never met a goat cheese tart I didn’t like.

Trinity Brewhouse, 186 Fountain St.: We started off here for lunch with the lobster mac and cheese, which I enjoyed with the suggested pint of Rhode Island IPA. Then at the end of the day we finished things off with dessert of “stout brownie sundaes.” Tasty! And a trip to Trinity is not complete without me reminding people that this is where we went for my 21st birthday. It was always my favorite bar in Providence. Still is now that I know they make brownies out of beer.

OK, this isn't a food highlight, but was super excited to learn that as Savor attendees we were entitled to 10 percent off at Craftland. I love love love Craftland. Go! Visit their website! Become a fan of them on Facebook!

Finally, new this year, I tweeted the event. (I know! I just used “tweeted” as a verb!) At one restaurant we were sitting next to someone checking people’s tweets to see what others were saying about the day. (I later figured out it was the ProJo’s food editor; I’ve still got my reporting chops!) So I logged on to Twitter using my mobile phone (for like, the first time ever, I might add) and unleashed one weak tweet about where we went and where we were going next. (I also spelled a word wrong and forgot to add the appropriate hashtag.) My bad. Next year I promise to tweet the event properly.

No Two Wheys About It

Curds!

Whey!

Queso fresco!!

“My Name Is Erin, and I Am a Home Cheesemaker.”

Best daughter ever? I just might be.

I decided recently that, instead of giving people presents of items they don’t need, I’d prefer to give people gifts of “experiences.” So for my father’s birthday, I presented him with plans for the two of us to spend a day at the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company’s Cheesemaking 101 workshop.

Located in Ashfield, Mass., the company is housed in the adorable old home of its proprietress, Ricki Carroll, the Cheese Queen. (If you’ve read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, you may remember the family visited here when they went north. If you haven’t read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I urge you to. it was great, dare I say, life-changing. In fact, that’s how I heard about it myself: from the book.)

I’m not going to bore you too much with the details right now (because one thing I’ve learned since attending the workshop is that, like sausagemaking and lawmaking, most people also don’t want to know the details of cheesemaking) but suffice it to say it was awesome. Plus, as I mentioned above, better writers than I have described the workshop already.

Long story short: We made cheese. A LOT of cheese. And ate a lot of cheese. And bought things with which to make cheese (and yogurt!). And met other people who enjoy cheese. A fantastic day was had by all.

Stay tuned, however, as I will surely bore you with more stories about cheese (and yogurt!) in the future.

[This is me and my dad with the cheese our table (above left) made together. Pretty much everyone at our table posed for a photo with the cheese. My kind of people! My face is a little swollen still because I had my wisdom teeth out earlier that week.]

Ode to One Pie

There are a lot of things I love about New England: fresh seafood, colorful leaves, ornery folks. But something I especially love is the variety of old-fashioned regional foods. Chief among these is One Pie, and chiefest among the One Pie varieties is the squash. Squash is at once deliciously bizarre sounding and ordinary. At some times of the late summer the squash is so common, and then so abundant in Ziploc freezer bags, that the thought of buying commercially canned squash would be ridiculous. But yet for many New England cooks the One Pie squash is both secret weapon and, I think, uniquely odd thing that we embrace simply because we are known for embracing uniquely odd things.

It’s darn near impossible to find much about One Pie (of West Paris, Maine) on the Internet, but what I do find definitely falls into the “ornery New Englanders” category. Pretty much all I found was a bunch of complaints from Thanksgiving 2007 that the recipe for squash pie on the labels everyone bought was wrong. Seems the recipe is supposed to call for 20 minutes of baking at one temperature and then another spell of baking at a lower temperature. But somehow the labels most cooks ended up with last fall had just the 20-minute bake mentioned. Awful lot of angry cooks. What I don’t understand is, you say you’ve been using One Pie Squash to make yer Thanksgiving pie for yer whole life, and yer mother before ya too. So how come when you read the label and it says to bake it for just 20 minutes you thought that all of a sudden this year it would be different? This observation also flies in the face of the Hardy and Thrifty New Englander stereotype: I would have thought these people would be cooking their squash pie from an old label they tore off a can years ago and saved. I know I have a One Pie label kicking around somewhere around here.

Ah, the labels. Probably the best thing about One Pie is the old-fashioned typography and design of the label. The only other thing I found online about One Pie was a blog entry from some sort of city folk about the label. It even features nearly the same photo I took of my One Pie can: http://brooklynometry.blogspot.com/2007/12/one-pie.html

Only the photo of my can of One Pie is probably the best kind: a freshly emptied can.

Here are some of my favorite recipes featuring One Pie:

SQUASH

Ann’s Pumpkin Cookies

(OK, so these are supposed to be made with the pumpkin. But one time in college we wanted to make them but all we had was squash in the pantry. I actually liked them better with the squash and make them with squash whenever I can.)

Ingredients:

• 1 can of canned squash or pumpkin
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup oil (or applesauce for low-fat version)
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp baking soda, dissolved in 1 tsp. of water
• Optional: nuts, chocolate chips, etc.

Directions: Mix all the ingredients together. Put cookie-sized blobs of mix on a greased cookie sheet and bake in a 375 degree oven for 12-15 minutes. The cookies come out the way they look when they go in. You can also make these cookies with fresh pumpkin or squash but it makes the mix runnier, so adjust accordingly.

PUMPKIN

Ina Garten’s recipe for Soupe au Potiron. It’s a French recipe that she says is usually made with potirons, a kind of French pumpkin. But she recommends using canned pumpkin.

BONUS!

And here is a recipe for something I just tried. It was super easy and turned out fine, although I think it needs a little more flavor: Penne With Pumpkin Cream Sauce from the magazine Everyday With Rachael Ray.

As always, I made it with Romano cheese instead because I didn’t have any fresh Parmesan, with a tiny bit of garlic because I didn’t have any onions, and with a mix of half-and-half and 1 percent milk because I didn’t have any heavy cream. Still, not bad. Probably just needed a little more cheese.

Mac and Cheese and Garlic

Ever have one of those days when no matter what fascinating thing is on NPR, you spend the whole drive home thinking about dinner? That was me, tonight.

The culprit? Another entry from the "Recipes for Health" department at the New York Times, this time something that sooo doesn't sound healthy: Creamy Pasta. This is from "Recipes for Health: Kids Edition" and is described as "an alternative to prepackaged macaroni and cheese." It was a winner, and so easy ... but the best part is probably that it's infinitely customizable. For instance, you can always toss in some veggies, but I didn't have any broccoli or peas (my faves). Another option is to add garlic. I chose this route; the suggestion was for a whole clove, but my clove must have been larger than average because my breath is definitely pungent right now. It is kickin'.

Did I mention one of the ingredients is cottage cheese?! Yes, cottage cheese that's been pulverized in the food processor is one of the main ingredients. This is probably the component of the recipe which fascinated me the most on my drive home. ("It must just get all creamy, like any other dairy product," I thought. "But it's cottage cheese! That's so CRAZY!") I have been eating a half-cup of fat-free cottage cheese as part of my breakfast for just about a year now -- I got these cute little Rubbermaid cups that hold exactly the right amount. So I get my calcium, and a little protein to keep me full, hence preventing me from biting the heads off my coworkers at 10:45 a.m. (I get cranky when I'm hungry.)

Although I resisted the urge to add some leftover chicken to the mix -- I wanted to follow the recipe to the letter for my first go-round -- I think a little cut-up breast meat would be a nice addition. Unfortunately, in my excitement that all was going well, I actually forgot two -- two! -- of the recipe's ingredients: the milk and the olive oil. So mine turned out a little chunkier than it should have been (it actually ended up resembling the texture of cottage cheese again, even though the curds had been all mashed up). And, as always, I substituted the Parmesan cheese -- which, again, I didn't have -- for some Gruyere. And I probably added more freshly ground pepper, and more coarsely ground at that, than the average kid could stand. Still tasty!

And oh yes -- the Times' photo is much better than mine, but I did want to include this photo to show off my spatula with the cute little lobsters and crabs. It's from Sur La Table. I think it's so fun.

Strategery

So, on Wednesday morning I realized I had a loaf of potentially stale bread. I figured I would give it to my companion's father to feed to the birds, as he is wont to do with stale bread (and various other kitchen scraps). The half-loaf was going to sit in my car all day then become birdfood when we went for our weekly Wednesday night pasta dinner.

But then, lo and behold, what should appear in the New York Times? The article and recipe "What to Do With Stale Bread? Pudding, for Starters." It describes a strata -- an Italian "bread pudding" of sorts, the name coming from the layers of bread and tomatoes -- more than a bread pudding per se. Its billing as a "Savory Bread Pudding With Tomatoes and Herbs" tells the whole story.

Since I was using a slightly smaller baking dish than it called for, and I neglected to measure out my bread (just used it all , since I definitely didn't want any left over after it had sat in my car all day), I didn't really stratify it as much as I did a layer of bread, a layer of tomatoes (diced, and with most of the seeds taken out), and a layer of bread. And I probably used twice as much cheese as it called for. OK, maybe three times as much cheese. I used Gruyere and Romano (the recipe called for Parmiagiano, but I usually just have Romano around; it's my go-to dry cheese). Also I used basil instead of the herbs it called for.

I think it came out pretty good. Tasty, easy, definitely a comfort food. Although it's supposed to be a way to use up bountiful late-summer tomatoes (in addition to the stale bread), I think it would be a nice addition to a cold winter day. (Once winter arrives in earnest, I'll introduce you to my zucchini gratin, which is one of my winter comfort-food faves.)

The Cape

Went to Cape Cod with two of my best girlfriends from college. We had a great time: lots of laughs, great weather, fun times, etc. Also ate some good food. Highlights:

- We had a nice spread of tapas for dinner on a Saturday night. A ton of food, actually. This place, Embargo, was fun and the food good. Drawbacks: they had a bunch of TVs (for me, ordinarily a plus), but after a while they changed the one TV that was showing Olympics coverage to the Red Sox. Also they forgot to take one of the stickers off one of the apples in our pitcher of sangria.

- One of my friends recently went to Wisconsin. I had asked her, if she wouldn't mind, to consider bringing me back a Cheese Head. She obliged, but with a much more awesome Cheese Head that I had imagined. I think the packaging says it all.

Mac and cheese for grownups

Mmm ... risotto.

I know what you're thinking, "risotto," oh puh-leeze. But I'm not just being snooty, I'm getting in touch with my heritage. When my grandmother was a little girl in Italy she went to work with her mother in the rice fields. I've seen photos.

So anyway, it's now one of my favorite foods and one which I'm proud to be able to make. I think I must have inherited my forebears' hardy spoon-mixing wrists, so if you're prone to carpal tunnel disease, kids, don't try this at home. But if you'd like the comfort-foodiness of some Kraft Cheese and Macaroni but want the agony and ecstasy of standing at a hot stove for 40 minutes to prepare a meal that people think is "hard," have at it:

"More Risotto and Cheese, Please!"
6 tsp olive oil
2 cups Arborio rice
1 cup white wine
One box and a can or two of chicken broth
1/2 to 1 cup parmesan cheese (adjust to your taste and lactose tolerance)
4 tbsp butter
a little bit of parsley, for color
salt & pepper to taste *

Heat the olive oil in a heavy-bottomed saucepan (I like using my new cast iron dutch oven, but if I halve it I use a regular old Farberware saucepan). Heat the chicken broth in a separate saucepan. Add rice to the oil saucepan and cook, stirring (I use a wooden spoon), for 5 minutes or so; until the rice starts to--for real--sound like glass beads clicking together. Carefully add the wine and stir. When the wine looks like it's all absorbed, start adding hot broth to the rice a ladleful or two at a time. When the spoon leaves a trail in the rice, add more broth. Keep doing this and keep stirring until the rice is all done, about 25 minutes or so. Keep stirring. Add butter, parsley and cheese, salt & pepper to taste. Stir it up a little more. Serve hot all lumped up in a bowl.
Calories: a lot
Servings: a lot


* you may note there are no onions. Often these dishes will start off with onions. I dislike onions.