Friday, August 14, 2009

Reflections on the Virgin Voyage

1. I realize how much support I have in this thing already. You guys have no idea how much it means to me. My mom said the nicest most supportive stuff on the phone yesterday. And there's something about the way she says it that lets me know how sincerely excited and proud she is - and not just cuz I'm her (favorite) kid. She has always been my biggest fan, and while I know this, it's really, really nice to hear it. Libby and P.J. SPRUNG into action when we got ourselves settled last night and AFTER the Dallums stopped by on their way out of town with birthday treats and a wonderful card for P.J.'s b-day. Libby then tidied the kitchen (see comment from yesterday about housekeeping...but I do think that my kitchen deserves and will enjoy more attention as this project progresses - tidied to 90% cleanliness last night at 130 a.m. which is SO not like me) and gave me a clean workspace to start from and she put away my sundries and purchases. P.J. got cold beer going because Mike Flavin was joining us as a surprise guest and well, he likes beer. (who doesn't?) Libby de-shelled and deveined aka CLEANED THE POOP TRACK out of the shrimp. She only gagged maybe four times, and thoughtfully commentated on the length, color, texture, placement, oddity ("Was this one pregnant? Oh my GOD, is this shrimp roe?") or surprising absence of twosies altogether in a couple of the little buggers.

P.J. cleaned, fetched, grabbed, chopped and helped me time everything. This will very much be a "family" project and I love it already. McKenna was there for slush sampling and table setting. Mike Flavin did his part to say the word "outstanding" several times throughought the meal, and I realized that the two men in my life, P.J. and Bryan, both eat in complete silence when something really turns them on, and both can eat too quickly...to the point of choking and hacking. I take it all as a giant compliment. Libby also did her usual merciless name-butchery...."The Lynn Kitson Genome Project?", "The Leonard Nemoy-Rosario Project?", "The Lana Kasper Rossetta-Stone Project?" so then I finally snapped at my "sister-from-another-mother" and reminded her that I'm cooking my way through a culinary bible, not teaching people to speak German in six weeks!

2. I may have, dare I say it, detected a "mistake" in this first recipe. Disclaimer: I copy edit and proof read as part of my job and it's the catching of errors in particular (as you will soon realize if you haven't already) that I struggle with. So with that said, I fully understand that I may just have completely skipped over this or that section or direction, especially considering at one I point I know I was looking at two different recipes (stupid delicious vino verde). While no errant ingredients from the WRONG recipe made their way into the dish, there were times where I just had to stop, think it through, shake my head a bit, do a set of push-ups and get clear. SO with last night's dish, one step is to saute minced onion, sage, rosemary etc. You do this until the onion is a light gold. It never turned light gold but when it started to brown, I got it off the heat, covered it, and set it aside, as the recipe called for. As things were coming together toward the end I realized:

a. This is soupy! It's like soup! Oh my god, I just made fucking pasta soup! They're all gonna laugh at me!

b. I hadn't incorporated the onion/herb mixture yet. Once I did, it ALL came together SO beautifully and I realized why LRK suggests serving in warm pasta BOWLS (I will be registering for 1,000 of these btw) because it's so gorgeous this way. It turned into this delicious and medium textured broth that coated and covered everything. We used the system whereby I held the pasta vat, guests laid down their pasta "base" or "foundation" with a tongs and when they were ready for "fixins" as we called them, I ladled on a giant scoop of sauce, olives and succulent and spicy shrimp. It wasn't frickin ballet tables service at the Ritz, but it worked for our little partay. So then, due to the bowl, you can sop up all this wonderful, spicy richness with the bread I made/doctored (rosemary ciabatta, brushed with olive oil, garlic powder, salt, pepper - toasted in convection oven and sprinkled lovingly by Mike with parm-regg).

c. To my real point here (you made it this far, hang in there), LRK never tells you when to incorporate the onion/herb mixture. I have scanned the recipe ten times, not to mention the 1,000 times during cooking (when studying or reading normally, I can retain like a mo-fo...with cookbooks, I read each line over and over and over again....I could get whiplash from looking to and from the book and the saute pan), and I JUST do not see where she says to throw this mixture back in with the rest! So, I just threw it all in with the shrimp/shrimp broth mixture, crushed plum tomatoes and pasta. Perfecto.

d. The Quick Broth is quick but it's a LOT of vegetables for not much yield. LRK basically shows you how to quickly doctor up store-bought broth by boiling it with celery, parsley, carrot, broiled onions, another onion, a crushed garlic clove and a generous pinch of basil. I needed three cups of said broth for this pasta recipe and that's about all that was yielded from the Quick Broth recipe after starting with 4 14.5 oz cans of low sodium chicken broth. Perhaps the veggies absorb a lot (those were yum-yum-dim-sum after straining the broth...tried to come up with something for them in fact) but I always thought that veggies released liquid rather than absorbed it. SCIENCE! Resolved and noted to make infinity batches of either the quick broth or the chicken/beef broth and freezing them for future and frequent use.

e. The BEST parties are the impromptu ones. I figured it would be just P.J. and me last night, which would have been lovely too but then Libby signed on for the job, McKenna needed a place to store her frozen booze slush for camping so she was in for dinner, and Flavin sent a text seeing if any of us were doing something fun. All of the sudden, it was an intimate dinner party, full of horrendous jokes that I will never share here, and a list of blog post titles such as:
  • "I'm So Barf I'm Gonna Full"
  • "Sweet n' Beefy"
  • "Riding the MoonCruiser on Dane Cook's Face"
  • "Smell My Fingers"
  • "Sweatyback Jones"
I've got a sneaking suspicion that none of these are going to make it anywhere beyond this very blog post (when I rejected suggestions, my retort was to tell Libby "NO, do NOT write that down. You put that onYOUR blog, not MY blog. I hate you.), but it will give you some insight on the state of affairs after last night's meal, wine/beer consumption and slush sampling and the SICK amount of A Baker's Wife treats that were consumed (mostly by me) AGAIN. I need STAY AWAY. I'm getting married next year and I'll be just gutted if my dress has to be designed by Coleman or Boeing. OR perhaps I should just give up, get an apartment above the joint, take a few years off work and just write my blogs. I will put a Paypal account up so that readers can contribute to my inevitable removal from said apartment by crane in 2012, but it's something to consider. Sometimes, you just gotta let go and be yourself.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. And followers, do me a solid and put some profile pics in there! All these anonymous profile icons/silouhettes are freakin' me out!

We're off with our besties to celebrate my beloved's THIRTIETH birthday. Happy Happy JOYFUL DAY to "the bread to my butter, the breath to my life", Patrick John Besinger.

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