Impulse Shopping

Awhile back I bought this book. At the time, it just seemed like the right thing to do. I was at The Strand, which in my opinion, does not have 18 miles of books. It seems to me they might have 1 mile of books, and what makes up the other 17 miles are repeats and remainders. But 1 mile of books is still a hefty sum. So Brian and I went to the bookstore and split up accordingly-- he goes to philosophy and music, and I go to cooking and fiction. So I'm browsing, and I pick up The Big Book of Casseroles.

I thought to myself, as I thumbed through the recipes, I'm American, I should know a thing or two about casseroles. I have a Pyrex pan, an oven. I like rice; I've been known to eat elbow macaroni. I don't really come from casserole people, my family is Jewish, but there is no reason not to give this casserole thing a try. And the book is quite large, 310 pages of rib-sticking recipes. I am bound to find something that I like.

So I brought this book home, and it just sat there, occupying precious shelf space. I would look at is occasionally and wonder: what was I thinking? Beef Strips with Mushroom and Artichokes just doesn't sound that appetizing. And no, I am not tempted by Salmon Loaf. I had made an impulse purchase. But determined to give this book a shot, I finally decided on this recipe.

New Potato and Blue Cheese Pie. Sounds simple and wholesome, and it was, but the recipe definitely needed tweaking. Made in a pie plate (hence the name) this dish was like a potato gratin sprinkled with blue cheese. If the recipe was followed exactly, I would have had my warm and bubbly potato pie in 45 minutes using just 1/2 cup of chicken stock and baking at 350 degrees. What I got was neither warm not bubbly; it was pale and crunchy. The potatoes didn't brown, they remained crisp, and the cheese had hardly melted.

To save my dinner side dish I had to raise the heat to 400 degrees, add about 1/3 cup more chicken broth, and wait another 20 minutes. And then the dish was okay, not terrific, but fine. The cheese that had been nestled under the top layer of potatoes had melted to a pleasant blue mess, and the potatoes baked into a dense, crisp mass. Weren't casseroles supposed to be easy, not stress inducing? Maybe the Beef Strips with Mushroom and Artichokes is the way to go after all.

Gobble Gobble...It Up

Dear readers, I'm sure you are getting ready, as am I, for a holiday full of turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes. But let's not forget about Thanksgiving's most maligned side dish, the jello salad. Probably not eaten at Plymouth Rock, but neither were those bubbling casseroles of yams topped with marshmallows, the jello salad is worthy of inclusion in this festive meal. Here's a post from 2005, detailing one unique variety of the dish. Happy Thanksgiving!

I am a Thanksgiving traditionalist. I don't like anything fantastical at my feasts, and I come from a long line of traditionalists. Parsnip-Potato Puree may be scrumptious any other day of the year, but on Turkey Day it has to be pure-- Russet Potatoes mashed with milk and butter and slathered in homemade turkey gravy. For me a ginger-lime rub on the turkey would be sacrilege, I'll take butter anyday, and I'm getting racy if I add some bourbon to the sweet potatoes. For one day a year I forget about haute cuisine, and it's true Americana at my house.

But this year I borrowed from another family's tradition and made the weird and wonderful Layered Raspberry Jello Salad. Salty, sweet, and pungent, this is a bizarre trio of flavors-- raspberry jello with whole raspberries, Cool Whip, mixed with cream cheese, all plunked on top of a crust of salted, crushed pretzel sticks and butter. Mmmm.

First let me say, I am not one of those people who is ga-ga for jello. It all seems a little strange to me; a clear concoction of sweetened fruit is an alien invention-- just eat a piece of fruit. Mixing the cream cheese with the confectioner's sugar, and blending it with the whipped topping, made my stomach turn, but the layering process was a thing of beauty. Neatly wedged into a clear Pyrex baking dish, then plunked in the refrigerator to set, this quivering mass of white trash goodness came out only hours later and made me giggle with glee. The holiday season had arrived!

What makes this "salad" even more of an anomaly, is that the recipe doesn't even come from a typical American family. My sister had a roommate in college who was first generation American, much of her family is still in Italy, and scattered around the world. They had a huge Thanksgiving feast, replete with an American-style turkey, and many Italian side dishes. They always ate early in the day, and my sister and I would stop by to wish them a happy Thanksgiving before our own feast began. We would bring some fudge that my mother had made the night before, and in return we would get a plate of Italian cookies, and a little dish of Raspberry Layer Salad for my sister and I to share. We loved the stuff!

Those Thanksgivings have passed. It had been years since I had tasted the jello salad, but I thought of it each November, as I was buying up my yams, and sorting through mounds of brussel sprouts. So this year I decided to make it, and it was almost as good as I remembered. It was a little too strange for some people at our Thanksgiving dinner, and that's fine. They don't know what they are missing.

Still Life With...

At the market last week, I just about stopped dead in my tracks. There each one was, assembled in such close proximity that I almost couldn't bear it. Check out the loveliness of the following: Fuyu persimmons, Satsuma mandarins, and Belgian endive.

If I were Martha Stewart, hostess extraordinaire, queen of all good things, CEO of a multi-billion dollar empire, and owner of several palatial estates along the East Coast, I know what I would have done. I would have bought a basket full of these stunning edibles, arranged them beautifully on one of my 12 foot long, maple dining tables, careful to hide all of their bruises and imperfections, and had a stunning centerpiece to enjoy for the few days that the produce remained rosy.

But let's get real. Martha may be great, but she can also be a tad, well... unrealistic. I live in New York City, in a tiny one bedroom apartment, with a three foot square Ikea dining table, and as lofty as my aspirations may be for autumnal, perishable centerpieces, my stomach always gets the best of me. I guess I am just too human to be a marvelous homemaker.

I bought a handful of Satsumas, a few crisp, ripe persimmons, and an endive that went solemnly into the fridge. Sure I enjoyed the fruit for a day, sitting in my fruit bowl, I glanced at their day-glo beauty as I carried on with my days activities. But soon the fruit beckoned to me, and it told me it wanted to play with that lonely endive in the fridge.

And play they did, quite beautifully, together on the chartreuse salad plate. I love a salad with fruit, not a fruit salad mind you (though they are stupendous as well), but a salad that has the mystical interplay between sweet and savory, and that is what this salad had. Crisp leaves of endive were plucked, but left intact; puckery, first-of-the-season mandarins; and smooth, slippery, peeled persimmons; were assembled on a plate. Sprinkled with crumbles of salty blue cheese, then drizzled with a simple vinaigrette to heighten the salty-sweet advantage, and my salad was ready.

For the moments that the salad sat resting while I tore off a hunk of bread to go with my meal, it was truly lovely. I could even imagine Martha saying it was, "Bee-yoo-tiful!" But then I ate it, my stomach gurgled pleasantly, and I have to say, my lunch was pretty beautiful too.

What Comes Around, Goes Around

Well, we've definitely come full circle, at least culinarily. Frozen yogurt (or fro-yo as it was affectionately called in California, where I spent my childhood) is back, with a vengeance. Oh sure, this time around it is vaguely different, flavored with green tea, or just plain-- a simple, tangy version of the refrigerator variety. But it still is a cup of fro-yo.

A Pinkberry's moved in near my apartment, and hearing all of the hype, I knew this was something I had to try. The bubbly decor, infectious-beated pop music, and unfazed, high school-aged staff, were all some how strangely familiar. I ask you, dear reader: do things every really change at the fro-yo parlor?

Picture it: summer 1989. I was nine years old, and I was obsessed with my cool, older sister. She was 16, had her outfits of Units clothing (It's a dress, no a shirt, no a belt, no a head wrap! No, it's whatever you want it to be!), listened to edgy New Wave music, and wore her hair just so, half up, scrunchy firmly tying her rambunctious curls away from her face. And she, for some reason, felt an obligation to me. That summer, I gleefully rode around town with her small group of friends.

Tiffany (I know, I couldn't make up a better name for this 80's memory if I tried) was my sister's friend who lived up the road from us. She would come barreling down the driveway in her Ford Mustang, which always just looked like the much-lesser ride, the Ford Escort to my unskilled eyes. I would squish myself into the backseat, and off we'd go, down the hill to Yummi Yogurt.

Yummi's was the best. With eight flavors of yogurt, seemingly chunky styles, like rocky road, made unctuous and smooth, awaited to be adorned with countless toppings. And can you believe it, it was fat-free? "One small cookies-and-cream (?) yogurt, with crushed Butterfinger topping please!" And then I would sit in silence as my sister and Tiffany prattled on about the new Units top/skirt/belt they coveted. Ah, the summer of '89.

And it all came flooding back to me at Pinkberry's. Because even with all of the hype, the new, "healthy" fruit toppings, or the gauche Fruity Pebbles that I opted for, it's still just frozen yogurt. Excuse me, fro-yo. Pinkberry's is becoming huge, and in no time one will be causing a "fro"-motion near you too.