Caradosso

I don’t actually remember making this but lucky my friend remembered for me and there’s some horrendous picture of me during the cooking process.  It was a deadly combination of Inauguration Night and our friend’s birthday in Milan.  We stumbled home to Via Caradosso 7 and needed some food.  Spaghetti, olive oil, sauteed brussels sprouts, cayenne and black pepper all tossed together.  It’s spicy, simple, has some veggie in it and enough carbs to make you sober up.  And it’s pretty!

I revisited the Caradosso concoction last night for dinner and discovered how pretty brussels sprout stems are and their insides look kind of like brains.

Cigars and Beer

Almost finished with this Art History paper and I happily stumbled upon a great little poem in a book of poetry compiled by Joseph Knight in 1897 that is devoted to Pipe and Pouch: The Smoker’s Own Book of Poetry.  The tiny book gave me some great examples of how smoking, smoke, pipes, cigars and cigarettes were commonly referred to as women, brides, wives and lovers, but it also gave me these sweet stanzas:

CIGARS AND BEER

by George Arnold

“Here

with my beer

I sit,

While golden moments flit.

Alas!

They pass

Unheeded by;

And, as they fly,

I,

Being dry,

sit idly sipping here

My beer.

Oh finer far

Than fame or riches are

The graceful smoke — wreaths of this cigar!

Why

Should I

Weep, wail, or sigh?

What if luck has passed me by?

What if my hopes are dead,

My pleasures fled?

Have I not still

My fill

Of right good cheer, —

Cigars and beer?

Go, whining youth,

Forsooth!

Go, weep and wail,

Sigh and grow pale,

Weave melancholy rhymes

On the old times,

Whose joys like shadowy ghosts appear, —

But leave me to my beer!

Gold is dross

Love is loss;

So, if I gulp my sorrows down,

Or see them drown

In foamy draughts of old nut-brown,

Then do I wear the crown

Without a cross!”

Knight, Joseph, compiler. Pipe and Pouch: The Smoker’s Own Book of Poetry. Boston: L.C. Page and Company, Inc., 1897.

All I Want is Your LIFE!!!

After my roommate and I gorged ourselves on cheap, greasy delivery Chinese food we decided to kick back, digest and have a few laughs.  Thanks to Mel Brooks’ genius we fell into Dracula: Dead and Loving It, the rest is history.  In true Mel Brooks fashion, the movie had us flirting with the possibility of peeing our pants laughing throughout the entire feature.  Peter MacNicol delivered his best performance as Renfield, the enslaved Brit of Dracula (Leslie Nielsen) with a zest for insects and an insatiable palate.

I particularly love that Renfield’s luncheon companion, the director of the sanitorium, thinks he’s crazy not just for eating bugs but for the way in which he eats them.

Om nomnomnom

In my perpetual state of crackedoutdom, preparing for my senior Art History exam, I sometimes stumble upon gems like this…

Hans Baldung Grien, Death and the Maiden, 1518-20

Death looks more than a little peckish here as he takes a chomp out of this already dead looking lady’s cheek.  I’ve seen plenty of memento mori in my 4 years of studying art history but this is the first uncluttered image of Death literally owning some poor girl.  Usually, the subject is portrayed through a single skull, still lifes, dances of the dead or the wildly chaotic scenes from the Last Judgement.  The composition here is focused, central and sparse.  Of particular interest is Grien’s use of a black background which is traditional for portraiture or still life painting.  Reminds me of the lines from Snoop’s latest musical contribution to the world, Gangsta Luv, “it’s like True Blood/I sink my teeth in”.

Grill Mistress

So ok, my girls and I just put together our grill with no man help and then grilled some mad delicious burgers, dogs (Hebrew National all beef franks are great) and zucchini.  Real talk.  We used lamb for the burgers — and may I just say that these beat bison burgers any day.  Delicious.  And knockin’ em back with a Fort Collins Big Shot brown ale wasn’t so bad either.  Grilled up some zucchini and made the RAG salad and s’mores to finish.  Life isn’t so bad as a senior in college right now…until I realized that I actually have work.  Wee womp.

Dear Pork Belly,

How I love thee. You are smokey, tender, fatty, delicious.  You are lovely in a risotto which is the first way I had you.  You are also nice with a glassful of St. Bernardus 12.  You were cared for and prepared by the genius trio at Downtown 140.  Let’s be friends for always.  K thanks bye.

Sincerely,

A Hoppy Pipper

A Sad

Today I had a sad.  I tried my hand at making homemade pasta.  DISASTER!  First I tried all by hand – got my big wooden cutting board, made the volcano shape out of the flour, poured the eggs inside.  Then things went terribly wrong.  One wall of my flour volcano sustained a collapse and egg lava started oozing out.  Then my hands turned into sticky doughy monsters.  So, I started over and this time used the food processor.  Things went much better but in the end the dough sucked – as in, not tasty after cooked.

The fun, and successful, part of this venture was the filling.  I decided to screw around a bit in the kitchen and ended up pureeing fresh figs, marcona almonds, sharp white cheddar, cardamon (another mistake), ground ginger and black pepper.  It was unique, a touch spicy and a little sweet. I think it would be lovely if the pasta dough itself were actually tasty and bathed in a cream sauce (one of my friends suggested a saffron cream sauce) and some prosciutto crudo.  All of this was a great way to kill some time, stall packing for school and watch a documentary on Woodstock.  But I still has a sad.

White Lady

Happily fruit isn’t racist – so you don’t have to be a white lady to enjoy a white lady peach, it merely refers to the white flesh inside the peach.  The color through the skin is beautiful and is quickly distinguishable from the red haven (yellow flesh) peach.  With a free-stone pit peach you don’t have to worry about losing any of the goods to a tenacious pit.  It’s also easy to halve a peach without a knife – find the sutcher (butt crack) line, plunge both thumbs in and pull in opposite directions.  I picked these up from my family orchard, pulled them open, removed the pit and a dessert idea popped in my head:  halved peaches, a spoon scoop of Fage 0% yogurt and sprinkling of ground ginger over top.

The peaches are insanely good, juicy and sweet and the cool tartness of the yogurt blends well with the textures while the ginger adds a subtle spicy happiness.  With a bottle of Prosecco and two plates full of peaches between 4 people, these were gone in a flash.

Late-night Samiches

I love a really good sandwich with an equally matched beer — they’re easy to make, infinitely variable and portable.  So here are my four favorite sandwiches as of late, mostly late-night-scrounging-around creations.

First:  This first one came into being one late night in Milan when my roommate and I were desperate for food and our tiny fridge seemed huge with its insides voided by previous raids.  We luckily had four things available to us — a banana, one slice of wheat bread, peanut butter (sales of which are probably more lucrative than crack to American customers in Italy) and a tablespoon of jam.  I took out a skillet, put a small slice of salted butter (Kerry Gold — yes I was a poor student that splurged on butter) in the hot pan and the last piece of wheat bread we had on top to toast.  On the bread was spread a layer of extra crunchy peanut butter, Bon Maman strawberry jam and slices of banana.  I thought Elvis might be proud of my first forays into sweet, fattening, salty fried sandwich concoctions.  Need I explain how delicious this was?  How the saltiness of the toasted bread connected with the salty sweet peanut butter, the juiciness of the jam, the crunch of the bread with the mellow softness of the banana?  I guess not.  While I didn’t have it at the time I’ve often thought a dry stout such as Three Floyds Black Sun Stout would be a nice complement.

Second:  While in Italy I consumed so many prosciutto crudo and fontina panini that I grew to hate the sight of them.  So I decided to create an old favorite for the first time — chicken salad.  This is my favorite “salad” sandwich of all time but the mayonnaise has always scared me and I wanted to make it without.  I got some chicken breast, grilled and diced it up then threw it in a bowl with a small container of Fage Total 0% greek yogurt, chopped celery, halved red grapes, salt and pepper to taste.  Toasted up some wheat bread, lettuce, tomato and a big slop of the chicken salad.  The yogurt is the key component — it’s incredibly good for you, thick and delicious so you feel like this is a serious treat and it is.  Throw back with an IPA of your choosing.

Third:  The scorcher.  Wheat bread toasted with guacamole slathered on one piece and Defcon sauce (or whatever hot sauce you prefer) on the other, tomatoes, cajun rubbed chicken slices.  It’s simple but the spice of the garlic/onion/cilantro in the guac with the hot sauce and spicy chicken is awesome.  And the array of textures is so good.  An American strong ale, Lagunitas Undercover Investigation Shut-Down Ale, is probably the only thing to knock out the heat.  DO NOT try to kiss anyone after eating this.

Fourth:  Grilled cheese, that childhood standby and delectable snack.  My first grilled cheese experiences as a kid did not involve tomato soup, that came later when I first encountered school cafeteria food.  Grilled cheese was done at home in a skillet with butter and usually a loaf of rustic french bread with provolone or muenster cheese and always pepperoni (thanks to my bro for that one).  Up until maybe high school or my first year in college this was how we ate grilled cheese, until I started messing around with the status quo.  Thank god our status quo was already miles beyond delicious but the addition of horseradish cheddar cheese and pepido peppers made all the difference.

Happy Dogs and Burgs

Growing up as the baby of the family, 5 years younger than my sibling, I looked to my brother for almost everything.  When I was 6, I went through a phase of wearing umbros and giant t-shirts.  So somehow his pattern of food research became engrained in me at an early age.  He went on a caesar salad kick for a few years trying to hunt down the perfect combination of salad, cheese, dressing and croutons.

This summer has been my excursion into burgers and dogs — a staple of summer food and a personal favorite.  From my childhood, burgers were a home-cooked thing and McDonald’s/Swensons was a rare treat reserved for “Junkfood Fridays”.  The standard: thick, medium rare, small burger, bun with ketchup, grey poupon and pickles.  As I got older, I drifted to the cheeseburger, eventually the bacon cheeseburger, the triple cheeseburger.  But I didn’t realize the vast array of condiments I was missing until this summer when I had a burger at the Beer Engine and ordered the Southwestern Burger.

Oh my god. Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod.  Pepper jack cheese, jalapenos, roasted red peppers and chili sauce?!  I am completely hooked on this burger but more to the point, I’m in love with the idea of jalapenos on a burger.  My favorite little trick is tucking them in under the cheese when I make them at home so they don’t slip out.  Number one rule:  ALWAYS TOAST THE BUNS.

New Burger Adventures:

Srichacha in place of ketchup

Beets instead of tomatoes (if you love beets this will be your new favorite –  sweet, slightly firmer consistency than a tomato)

Worcestershire sauce and chopped onions worked into the burger meat (so much juicier and flavorful)

And as for hot dogs, my taste is undeveloped and seeking new ideas.  For some reason, in my household, hot dogs are always cooked in a skillet with water…this I detest — mostly because the water turns an icky color and the dogs look pallid and unhappy.  The happiest dog I have found is on a grill or in a skillet without water.  The skin crackles a bit, gets some nice color and then when it’s all done I take a knife to the top and score the meat on top, releasing the flavor and the color contrast is actually sort of beautiful in its own way.

Another trick I learned early on was putting the sparse condiments I use (ketchup and grey poupon) inside the bun first and the dog on top making it easier to eat.  As for most foods cooking away on a grill I really love a good old-fashioned IPA.  Recently I tried Green Flash West Coast IPA and found it to be a nice little hop bomb with a good amount of bitterness in the finish.  IPA’s that are not too floral I find are a good combination when eating grilled meats.