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Or at least, what slatterns are interested in…..
Happy Memorial Day, folks. And GO B’s!
Happy Thanksgiving: Embrace the can
Cranberry sauce as God intended
In these, the final precious moments of calm before the storm, I am taking on the ultimate Thanksgiving taboo. And I’m not talking about what happened in the powder room last year after Uncle Fred found the cooking sherry and Vaseline even after I hid them behind the sofa, grotesquely fascinating though that story most certainly is. In this case, the love that dare not speak its name involves your guests and cranberry sauce.
Let’s all just come clean, shall we? Of course we should prefer homemade cranberry sauce, and every year I make some interesting version of it – with apricots and toasted almonds, orange marmalade and Grand Marnier, or some such – which arrives at the table looking festive and appetizing, then sits right there for the entire meal. Eventually some sympathetic soul, usually me, makes a token gesture and takes a spoonful, but let’s be honest, ninety-five percent of the stuff just loiters in the bowl until the meal is over and it’s scraped down the dispose-all.
courtesy freshcutcook.blogspot.com
When it comes to fruity sides, what really moves is the peeling-free, heavily-sugared Ocean Spray from the can. Everybody loves it, and the only real question is whether you prefer a middle slice or the one that comes imprinted with the bottom of the can. I like the end.
So listen, save yourself some trouble this year and just go with the flow. Shove the bag of cranberries in the freezer (they keep forever) and dust off the can opener. The sanity you save may be your own.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Sunday Morning Pancakes: Of buttermilk and hangovers
Has this ever happened to you? It’s Sunday morning and you wake up with a yen for pancakes. Perhaps you overindulged the night before and need a little bulk to face the day. Or maybe you overindulged then picked a fight with your husband and are feeling just a tad guilty. It may even be that your in-laws are visiting and you’d rather cook than discuss the Sunday papers, your “drinking problem” or how you can be such a bitch to their golden boy who is also the perfect husband. Maybe it’s all three, not that I’d know much about that. Anyhoo, whatever the reason, it is safe to say that when we crave pancakes (or white cake, or biscuits, or whatever) it’s best that the monkey be fed. For everyone.
So as I was saying, there you are on Sunday morning, all ready to whip up a batch of the best when you realize the recipe calls for half a cup of buttermilk, which of course you do not have. I for one don’t even know what buttermilk is, nor do I care enough to bother to find out, and I certainly wouldn’t waste valuable cold storage space – space that is required to keep champagne at the ready and at least one bottle of white in reserve – on buttermilk, which only comes in quarts and will have to be located and thrown out in three months after I’ve forgotten all about it and it’s gone rancid and is stinking up the kitchen.
Now I know what you’re thinking – there’s no buttermilk in the instructions on the Aunt Jemima box. I thought we understood each other on the issue of baking mixes by now. Well all I can say is once you’ve had scratch pancakes, which are about the easiest thing in the world to make, you will never go back to the nasty, grainy, plastic ones from the box, no matter how kindly and reassuring the face under the headscarf may be. And I’m not even going to get into buckwheat pancakes. Why in the name of all that’s holy would anyone eat those?
Here’s the good news: there is no need to have buttermilk on hand, or go out searching for it at odd hours while trying to conceal your pajamas under your trench coat, as long as you keep powdered buttermilk on hand. Oh yes, it comes in powdered form, just like the dry milk you use in bread machine recipes. Saco makes it, and there’s even an organic version available from the good folks at Organic Valley. You can order it online, it never goes bad and you keep it in the pantry.
Alternatively, you can substitute either of the following for a cup of buttermilk:
- For each cup of buttermilk, pour a tablespoon of white vinegar or lemon juice into a one-cup measure and fill with milk, then let it sit for ten minutes or so.
- Drop a heaping tablespoon or so of plain yogurt into a one-cup measure and fill with milk. Mix and use immediately.
For those of you who can’t be bothered with any of the above, here’s my no-buttermilk recipe. Although buttermilk pancakes are best, the regular milk version is still head and shoulders above anything from a mix. This recipe is utterly foolproof and goes a long way toward getting those pesky in-laws off your back happily fed on a Sunday morning.
No Panic Pancakes (makes about 10 smallish pancakes)
In a bowl, mix:
- 1 cup all purpose flour (don’t even think about whole wheat)
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon salt
Add:
- 1 beaten egg
- 1 cup milk (whole is best, low fat will do, skim only in an emergency)
- 2 tablespoons vegetable or canola oil (or use melted butter, which I prefer). Almond oil is also nice for a slightly nutty flavor.
Stir until just blended and still a little lumpy, then cook on a hot, oiled griddle as usual.
A note on additives: If you’re adding fruit, and this is important, don’t add it to the batter in the bowl. Instead, sprinkle each pancake with the fruit (or chocolate chips, which are delicious with bananas or strawberries, btw) right after you pour the batter on the griddle, then flip.
And now, for those of you who have hung on to the bitter end, a little John Malkovich to go with your flapjacks.
You can make pie, and you should
As mentioned, I feel strongly about pie for cultural reasons. If you can’t make it, find a decent bakery where you can buy one. To my way of thinking there aren’t many. Usually a manufactured crust (the kind you see in the freezer at the grocery store) is a dead giveaway that the product will suck. So is a big blocky rim on the pie or anything that looks like this.
So dry it makes me choke just looking at it.
As I’ve said, making pie crust from a mix is not hard. You just follow the directions on the box and fill the damn thing with fruit, sugar, flour and butter and shove it in the oven. But a few tricks are worth pointing out:
You can mix the dough with a fork. If I’m feeling particularly lazy, and I usually am, I use the electric mixer (for me, the Kitchenaid stand mixer is a gift from God) for about 15 seconds, just until the dough comes together.
Recipes always tell you to chill the dough before rolling it out, but if you leave it in the fridge for more than about 10 minutes it gets too hard to roll. Just saying.
For pumpkin pie, do not, I repeat DO NOT, bake the shell before filling it. That’s just crazy and the rim will burn before the filling is set. Speaking of which, never use anything but canned pumpkin. Fresh pumpkin pie is stringy and dealing with a whole pumpkin is a giant pain in the ass from start (lugging it home, cutting it up, seeding it, removing all that stringy stuff) to finish (Do I have enough puree? Too much? What is all this stringy crap in my pie? Eww). It is always disappointing, especially if you spent a whole freaking day making it when you could have just opened the damned can (always use plain puree and add your own spices, eggs, etc.) and caught up on Project Runway while it baked.
Making a prebaked shell for one crust pie gives me fits. The crusts always collapse or they shrink and become unusable, or the recipe calls for pie weights (what?) or tells you to fill the thing with dried beans while you bake it. Screw that. Just avoid them. Make a graham cracker crust (or use ginger snaps) or chuck the whole project and make brownies instead.
You can crimp the top and bottom crusts with a fork if you must, but I think this looks gross and it always burns because the crust is too thin. Plus the crust bonds with the pie plate and makes it really hard to cut and serve. See?
Ugly, overdone crimped edge. Yuck.
Better to use your thumb to pinch the edge between your index and middle fingers. It’s a tad Martha, but it looks so much nicer and the pieces hold together better. Look.
Nicely crimped and properly vented.
Apple pie: For the love of God, use only Macintosh or Rome apples. Any guest who requests a slice of cheddar for his pie should be asked to leave. Enough said.
Fill ‘er up: Go on, mound the fruit up high. There is nothing worse than a skimpy layer of filling. See top photo.
Lattice top pies: What are you on, crack?
Kitchen Slattern 
Lobster Mac and Cheese: The end of civilization as we know it? I think so.
May 30
Posted by WSW
I’m not necessarily opposed to gilding the lily. In truth I enjoy a gold covered stamen as much as the next slattern. Neither am I in any way against indulging in a little wretched excess from time to time. A third round of Singapore Slings before dinner? Serve ’em up! Deep fat fried cheesecake? I’m game if y’all are, Paula. Pepperoni AND sausage on that double cheese pie? Why the hell not? As long as I’ve got a full six pack in the fridge it’s all good.
Courtesy the Food Network. Ewww.
No, I’m no stranger to overindulgence, even gluttony, but even so one has to draw the line somewhere, and for me it’s the addition of lobster to macaroni and cheese or mac and cheese to lobster, depending on your point of view. It’s just too much of a good thing, and though I tend to regard moderation as the province of Gwyneth Paltrow, sissies, milquetoasts and Proust scholars, in this I’m with the mung beaners. Lobster simply has no place in the all-American favorite.
Here’s why: With macaroni and cheese you always run the risk of leaving the table with a stodge ball lodged uncomfortably amidships. Because the dish is delicious in the extreme, more often than not the temptation is to overindulge. It doesn’t matter how much steamed asparagus, undressed green salad or ratatouille comes with it, you will almost certainly waddle away from the table, then collapse on the nearest horizontal surface only to awake two hours later, sweaty, parched and numb from the waist down because the waistband of your pants has cut off all circulation to the lower extremities. The same holds true for meals involving the noble crustacean. So mind bogglingly delicious is the flesh of the bottom feeder, especially when dipped in melted butter, it is only the labor involved in extracting it and the enormous expense of ordering up a second one that keep the delirious diner from taxing the digestive system beyond its limits. When the two are combined, no good can come of it.
“Here’s mine. Your LobMacChee is out back in the trough.”
Via housebeautiful.com.
That LobMacChee is much of a muchness is not sufficient for condemnation, of course. Many things are excessive and still manage to stay on my menu — hot fudge brownie sundaes, double bacon bleu cheeseburgers, champagne cocktails and PopTarts for breakfast, to name but a few. No, the reason I object to this new taste sensation is that the combination diminishes the components. The whole is actually less than the sum of its parts. The cheese overpowers the lobster, the lobster distracts from the mac and cheese, and neither shines. And that, quite simply, is why I view the dish as a crime against the palate.
Lobster mac and cheese occasionally turns up among restaurant offerings in the metropolis; however, in the eateries of Downeast Maine it is now apparently de rigeur, as common as muffin tops, missing teeth and limp cole slaw. In fact, it appeared on every menu I perused on my recent trip north to open up the Slattern family summer palace on scenic Chum Bucket Lane. I can only assume the plague is spreading, so consider yourselves warned.
Still not convinced? Well, different streaks, as the saying goes. If you must, here’s a recipe for lobster macaroni and cheese from none other than Her Bang-cellency, the one and only Ina Garten. What else makes sense?
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Posted in Commentary, Dinner
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Tags: bottom feeder, Cook, Food, gilding the lilly, Ina Garten, Kitchen Slattern, Lobster, lower extremities, mac and cheese, macaroni & cheese, restaurants, singapore slings, Slattern, slatternly