Poor Jean. She comes over just to hang out with Melissa, and has to suffer through my reaction to a month and a half of no entertaining. Somehow she struggles through it, though.

Since she was coming over so she and Melissa could work on projects, I just made an antipasto platter that they could pick at as necessary. I tried making my "platas" again (my flat focacce), but this time they puffed up tremendously. Still good, though; I drizzled them with olive oil and a good amount of fleur de sel before putting them in the oven. I also put out some salami, a delicious prosciutto salami from a local store. I wouldn't have thought you could improve on prosciutto, but I'm having my doubts now.

Other items on the plate. Roasted cipoline onions, which were a huge hit. Hard-boiled eggs, sliced. Fontina Val d'Aosta cheese, and fresh radishes. Next to the platter I put a bagna cauda, anchovies and garlic in a mixture of warm oil and butter, so people could dip stuff into it. I sent a fair amount of bread into the bowl, but the radishes and onions were good in there as well.

To go with this casual Piedmontese platter, I chose a casual Piedmontese wine: a Barbera d'Alba (Clerico, 2001). This is, according to Karen Macneil's The Wine Bible, the everyday table wine of the Piedmontese. It delivered exactly what I wanted: a good casual wine, without a lot of depth and complexity.

Oh, and dessert. Well, I had made that lemon curd the other day, and that ginger caramel sauce, so Melissa asked for a lemon tart. I did individual tarts. I made my pie crust, baked it for a while, and then put in the warm curd to finish it. I thought the crust was underbaked, but it was still good. And I finally did the right thing with my ginger caramel sauce. I warmed it in a water bath until it was very liquidy, then I strained it into a squeeze bottle (I didn't want the candied ginger to clog up the bottle). Then I was able to make pretty patterns on the plate. Mine was the only one that came out exactly the way I wanted, a perfect tight spiral of caramel sauce starting from the center of the tart and working its way out to the edge. I guess I got better at it. I garnished the whole thing with cookies I made out of the leftover pie dough; I rolled it out, brushed it with melted butter and a mostly-cinnamon cinnamon sugar, and then rolled it into a log. When cut, the cookies were little spirals of dough and cinnamon, a nice complement to the theoretical spiral of the caramel sauce. It worked on my plate, anyway.

For this dessert, I opted for another Piedmontese wine, a Moscato d'Asti (Saracco, 2001). Moscato d'Asti is a charming little dessert wine, though not as sweet as many. In fact, I am more inclined to use it as an apèritif than a dessert wine. Or even serve it with brunch. However, I thought it might work here since the dessert was not too sweet (you have to pair dessert wines with desserts that are not as sweet, or else you end up making your dessert wine taste dry and sour). It went reasonably well. I would have liked the wine to be sweeter to pair up with the dessert, but it wasn't bad.

Costs (minus the wine, which was $30 in total):
Anchovies: $1.50
Onions: $4.49
Cheese: $3.50
Salami: $5.69 (but I have lots left over; I didn't quite realize how much half a pound would be)
Radishes: $2
Eggs: $.60
Dessert was all from leftovers or pantry ingredients
Total cost: $17.78

posted by Derrick at 11:15 AM

It is ironic that while I have yet to make anything out of Nancy Silverton's Sandwich Book, I nonetheless have been inspired by the concept to make sandwiches on two separate occasions.

One could argue that it has something to do with all the bread I've got around recently. I had made a loaf for the Anniversary Dinner (which I neglected to mention), and with half of it left, well, some sort of toasted bread thing made sense.

Anyway, I had it roughly in mind to do open-face sandwiches last night, but everything didn't click until I saw dates at the farmer's market. I don't know why I haven't paid more attention to dates; I've fallen in love with them recently. So I bought a pound of dates, and decided to top it with Parmiggiano, a classic pairing. But what else to put on it? Inspiration struck. The beet greens I had lopped off of the beets the previous night!

I made a couple renditions in the form of two servings, and tried different things for each one. Here's my preferred version:

• Pit and chop dates
• Grate parmiggiano-reggiano (1/4 lb. produced enough for two servings for each person).
• Cut bread into slices 3/4 - 1 inch thick
• Wash and chop beet greens. I cut them into fairly large pieces, because I knew what was coming
• Heat some oil in a skillet. Drop in the beet greens, and sauté until they've shrunk a bit but are still fairly vibrantly green. (One could imagine adding shallots or garlic to the oil beforehand). Salt lightly.
• Fire up the broiler
• Put the bread slices under the broiler for 1 minute, just to get them pre-toasted a little
• Once they come out, top with beet greens, then dates, and then grated cheese. Broil for 2-3 minutes, rotating the pan with the slices halfway through (check at 2 minutes, put in for an extra minute if necessary).

Costs:
Beet greens and bread leftover
Dates: $2 (though I have a bunch left)
Cheese: $2.50
Total costs: $4.50
posted by Derrick at 10:07 AM

As Melissa left for the day, she put some money on the desk. "I want crab." She's been pushing for crab for a while, but I haven't felt like it. But it was our anniversay dinner (5 years!) so I decided to go for it.

I've never cooked a live crab or dressed a cooked one, so I was a bit nervous. After some research through my various books, however, I felt I could do it, but I decided to first buy it cooked so I could worry about dressing it, and then next time I'd buy it live and cook it.

Melissa points out that most people would have been thrilled to get home and discover the crab had been fully dressed already, but I was annoyed. Next time, I'm doing it all myself.

Anyway, I made two dipping sauces. Lime juice with brunoised ginger, my new favorite flavor combination, and melted butter. Both were delicious. I also made a salad with roasted beets and one Redwood Hill Farms Crottin each.

To drink with it all? I was going to get a Loire Valley white, something like a Sancerre, but I was worried about the sweetness in the roasted beets, so I went over to a 2001 Kabinett Riesling from von Schleinitz. I used my usual rule of thumb for German wines I don't explicitly know: if it says "Terry Theise" somewhere on the bottle, it's probably pretty good. I liked it quite a bit, though I prefer spätlesen in general. But it was definitely worth $14, which is what I paid for it.

So it wasn't exactly a cheap meal, but it was our anniversary.

Costs (without wine):
Crab (2 crabs, already prepped): $20.97
Cheese: $11.98
Greens and beets: $4
Total: $36.95
posted by Derrick at 9:03 AM

Melissa and I have been eating very well cheaply the last few days. Each night this week-end, we were guests at a dinner. I guess one could argue that the wine we brought as presents was more expensive than our normal meal, but then I don't include wine in the price of our own meals, either (how's that for deluding yourself!). For more about one of them, see my other blog.

But, alas, it is time for us to fend for ourselves again. We are not doing too badly, however. Trout in a cornmeal crust, loosely based on a Bon Appétit recipe, topped with a beurre noisette sauce (butter heated so long it turns a deep nutty brown). A side of caramelized leeks, and a salad of shiitake mushrooms carpaccio, based on a recipe from Jeremiah Tower's newest cookbook Jeremiah Tower Cooks.

And we even had a fancy dessert. Melissa called while I was at the store to tell me her boss had brought in a flock of lemons from his tree. She made some suggestions for a lemon tart, or perhaps a lemon crêpe (you may remember that I had a few still in the freezer from last week). I opted for the latter, sort of, making a napoleon with crêpes and lemon curd as the layers and topping it all with a ginger caramel sauce. I don't know where I saw the idea for using crêpes thusly, but somehow it stuck and the rest fell into place.

It was good enough that I would make it again. A few things I'd do differently, though. I wanted to use whole crêpes, but I only had five, a number which does not lend itself to even division by 2. Instead, I used a cookie cutter to cut out rounds of crêpe, 2-3 per crêpe. It made for a dainty dessert. I also didn't reheat the caramel sauce enough, so it didn't end up as liquidy as I would have liked for drizzling it on the plate; it kind of plopped and oozed rather than flowed.

And how expensive was all this? Not very. The shiitakes were grown right here in our own home, courtesy of a shiitake kit my aunt and uncle got us for Christmas. This may seem an odd present, but unbeknownst to them we had been eyeing one the week before, so perhaps it just demonstrates how well they know us. The lemons were a present, the crêpes were leftover, and so forth.

Costs:
Trout: $8.32 (2 whole trout, boned and scaled)
Leeks: $3.75 (but it was a lot of leeks)
Whipping cream for the mushroom salad: $1.69
Eggs: $.80 (only included because I used so many)
Everything else was in the pantry
Total cost: $14.56
posted by Derrick at 10:29 PM