Thoughts, Opinions, and Irrational Ranting

For Christmas, Stark bought me a copy of Lidia’s Family Table, and much like our friend C. and a certain Halloween magazine, upon presentation of this book Stark announced “I expect results.” So, for Stark’s birthday, I attempted to deliver some of those results.

For anyone interested in cooking, I highly recommend Lidia’s books and TV shows. Unlike many of those schmucks on Food Network, Lidia actually teaches you how to do things. She’s to Italian food what Julia Child was to French food. Her recipes aren’t intended to just show you how to make one very specific dish, but instead on how to combine a series of different skills and base ingredients to create an endless variation of dishes. Unlike that bobblehead, Giada, she looks like she actually eats the food she makes, and unlike that slob, Guy Fieri, she didn’t just steal all her recipes from her grandmother and never give her credit. In conclusion, you know Lidia is the best of all the Italian TV chefs because you can find her cookbooks in places of pride in the kitchens of real Italian mamas. So that is my opinion of Lidia Bastianich. I share it often and widely.

First up for Stark’s birthday dinner was sweet onion gratinate. You can actually get the recipe for this on Lidia’s website. I highly recommend you make this shit, like, NOW. It’s that good.

It does involve slicing up a lot of onions, though. Like, a lot of onions. Three and a half pounds of onions to be exact.

Then, like in so many of Lidia’s recipes, you cover them in cheese and butter and olive oil and more cheese. Lidia’s recipes are not exactly ummm… low calorie, let’s say. Her favorite ingredients are grana padano cheese, butter, olive oil, more cheese, breadcrumbs, hot pepper flakes, and more cheese.

But oh, it is all so worth it.

Then I set about to make pasticiatta, an apparently thoroughly unpopular dish, because I cannot find one solitary photo of it on the internet. I only mention this because there is a printing error in the book. It says “Turn to page 216 for a photo of pasticiatta,” but the photo is nowhere to be found. So I have no idea what Lidia (or anyone else, for that matter) thinks pasticiatta should look like. Now that I have tagged my photo on Flickr, I think I have officially set the internet standard for what pasticiatta looks like. Pasticiatta, for those of you who are wondering, is like lasagna, but instead of pasta there are layers of polenta.

This recipe was very involved. First I had to make marinara sauce. Then besciamella sauce. I was not a huge fan of Lidia’s fresh marinara sauce. I think I like my sauces thicker, richer and more blended. But then, I also didn’t want to be cooking sauce for ten hours like my grandmother used to do, so I guess that’s what I get for picking the twenty minute recipe. Next time I will try the longer cooking sauce from the book. The besciamella sauce was another bit of confusion, as I have never made a roux and had no idea what one should look like. I spent twenty minutes whisking flour and butter and mumbling to myself, in the manner of the little bird in that Are You My Mother? book, “Is this a roux? Is this a roux now?” When you find yourself pondering the question “What is a roux?” in the kitchen as if it’s a major philosophical quandary, you know you’ve been cooking for too long and the heat from the stove has melted your brain.

Then I turned to polenta. We have a very weak electric stove, as compared to Lidia’s gas burners, which probably have the power to melt rock into lava. It took forever to bring this stuff to a boil (Lida said ten minutes – HAH!) and then forever to thicken. It sure was delicious though. Not that I was licking the cooking spoon every five seconds… I swear!

Once the polenta was done, I spooned some besciamella sauce into a butter casserole dish, then a layer of polenta, then a layer of ricotta, then some grated parmigiana, then a layer of sauce, then more polenta, more besiciamella, more cheese, etc., until I reached the top of the dish. It was in the oven for a bit more than an hour until it got nice and crusty.

I served it up with some broccoli rabe cooked in garlic and olive oil, et voila. Dinner is served.

I have to say, usually I fret over whether or not my cooking has come out well and whether or not it tastes good or whether or not everyone is lying to me about the quality of my cooking, but this meal left no question in my mind. It was TASTY. Mmmmmm. And, since Lidia’s recipes are aimed at feeding a small militia or a incredibly reproductive Catholic family, we have many, many, many yummy leftovers.

For dessert I made struffoli. Struffoli are a Neopolitan dessert. They are fried balls of dough covered in honey. You can find a variation of this dessert from pretty much every culture on the planet. Fried dough and honey just go so well. Anyway, struffoli is the Southern Italian variety and my mother makes them every Christmas. I wasn’t back in New York for the holidays this year and missed out, so I decided to try my hand at making them. They didn’t come out as perfectly as my mom’s, but they were pretty damn good (and are almost gone already).

For any interested parties, this is the family recipe, which my mother ferreted out of an Italian mama in Bay Ridge many, many decades ago.

Anna Conticello’s Struffoli

3 tbs. butter
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 cups Bisquick
Vegetable oil for frying
Honey
Confetti

1. Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs, vanilla, the flour and the Bisquick. Knead dough with hands on a floured board.
2. Divide dough into pieces. Roll into long ropes about 1/2 half inch in diameter. Cut into little pieces, about 1/2 inch squares on a lightly floured surface.
3. Heat 3 quart sauce pan of oil (about half full). Put eight to ten pieces of dough in a frying basket and submerge in hot oil. Dough will form balls which will rise to the surface. Keep stirring them around until they are golden.
4. Drain the balls on paper towels. Repeat until all dough is used up.
5. Slightly mound the balls on two aluminum foil pie plates. Drizzle honey (slightly warmed) over balls. Sprinkle with confetti.

Guaranteed yummy! This recipe makes a lot of balls, so plan to give at least one of those trays away, unless you want to go into a sugar coma.

For Hannukah, I managed to put together some pretty decent latkes. I used a recipe I found on The New York Times website. They were the simplest and closest to what I remember as a kid. Frankly, if you’re talking about a latke that doesn’t involve grated potatoes, I’m not interested. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. That’s what I say! ::shakes old lady fist::

Some notes from this humble chef:

I don’t know what planet these people live on, but there is no way this recipe makes 24 small pancakes, unless the pancakes we are talking about are about the size of a Hershey kiss. I made the latkes to the size I have always enjoyed them in Jewish homes and restaurants across North America, which is to say bigger than a silver dollar pancake and smaller than a burger patty, and it made around 12 or 14 latkes. Also, it was way more watery than indicated, so I had to use a lot more than a couple of tablespoons of matzo meal. However, they were REALLY YUMMY and I would say the best latkes I’ve ever had, so this recipe was generally a SUCCESS. And quite easy, too!

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View Toronto Running in a larger map
RACES:
Toronto Waterfront Half-Marathon, September 28, 2008 – 2:40:56 (10:57 m/m)
Toronto Goodlife Half-Marathon, October 18, 2009 – PB 2:02:00 (9:19 m/m)

MILEAGE TOTALS:
477.45 miles (up from 283 miles in 2008)

Best month: September (81.47 miles)
Worst month: December (5.03 miles, not counting warm up runs on the gym treadmill)
Average miles/month: 39.8

GOALS FOR 2010
Run a half-marathon in under 2 hours.
Break 500 miles per year.
Keep average pace under 10 minutes per mile.
Explore new parks and trails.

2008 Running Map

I have been on a bit of a cooking kick lately. Stark’s enthusiasm for the kitchen is contagious and as I’ve successfully completed smaller tasks, my confidence to try bigger and better things has been growing. Stark and I have been trying to cooking big dinners on Sundays, enough to feed us for at least part of the week. Also, with the holidays coming, there has been more of a need to dig some of those more ambitious recipes out of the cookbook. First up was ribollita.

It has been my great goal to make ribollita for about… well, three years. I kept saying I was going to do it and then never put in the effort, despite looking up recipes numerous times. Well, I finally gave in and got ‘er done. I used a modified version of Lidia Bastianich’s recipe, from her book Lidia’s Italian American Kitchen. I’m sure if you’ve known me for more than five minutes, you’ll know how much I fangirl Lidia, so I thought it best to go with her version of the Tuscan stew. Also, the woman isn’t totally irrational and toned down a lot of the “And then, since you are an Italian housewife who lives in the kitchen, make sure and stand over the stove and stir the pot for twelve hours and then don’t eat it for three days” aspects of this dish. When I spend a few hours cooking, I better get to eat the end product immediately!

Have a lot of veggies and cans of beans to get rid of? Ribollita will take care of it. It uses a lot of leafy greens, as well as potato and onion and such. A lot:

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Book roundup:
1. The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz: B-
2. Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson: B+
3. Spook Country by William Gibson: B
4. Empathy by Sarah Schulman: B+
5. Jokes and the Unconscious by Daphne Gottlieb and Diane DiMassa: A
6. Gommorah by Robert Saviano: C

Stuff I’ve acquire recently that I hope turns out to be better reading material than this last crop:
1. Kingdom Come
2. Gravity’s Rainbow
3. The Hikiteia
4. Blood Meridian
5. The Mere Future
6. The Library at Night

Spoilers in the reviews ahead.

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After I left the States and started working from home, I couldn’t justify owning a cell phone. I love cell phones, but it’s sorta stupid to pay for one if you never leave the house and you don’t actually know anyone to call. I promised myself that when I got a new job, my reward to myself would be a brand spankin’ new cell phone. Well, I recently got a job that will take me out of the house, and that, along with the addition of new Canadian friends with whom I would like to converse, has led me to purchase a new cell. I had been in withdrawal and have since become obsessed with my new phone, now known in our household as “the mistress.”

In an attempt to prevent myself from boring my friends to tears with constant prattling about my exciting new phone, I have decided to write a review here. I usually find myself frustrated with tech reviews – they’re either too technical or not technical enough and they never give me the information that I really want about how I’m going to use the product. So here is the review that I would have loved to read before purchasing this phone:

So, the phone is the HTC Dream Smartphone, which quite possibly is known by other names outside of Canada, but I’m not sure exactly what. It runs on the Google Android platform and it has been added to my Rogers plan. Now, a word about Rogers. I know it’s the evil empire, I do. However, if the evil empire is going to provide such good service, well, I am all for it! When we had Bell, we were constantly losing either the TV or the Internet and got nothing but nastiness from the customer “service” staff. With Rogers there have been no problems. They pick up their phone, they send out technicians, they are friendly and nice and efficient. At the odd time that they make an error, it is corrected quickly and apologized for with free channels. They keep adding new services, like this new and wonderful ability of the TV to show caller display. You can use the remote to send the call directly to voice mail! I love it. They now own my cable, internet, land line and cell phone life. All Hail Rogers.

So anyway, back to the phone. The main reason I wanted this phone was basically because I wanted an iPhone, but with a full QWERTY keyboard. I have made attempts at texting on the iPhone touchscreen and they haven’t ended well, but the HTC Dream, although it is a bit bigger and clunkier than the iPhone, has a full keyboard, allowing me to type with ease AND without losing a chunk of the screen to a digital keyboard. Also, iPhones and Blackberries are EXPENSIVE and the HTC Dream was on special with Rogers (ALL HAIL) for thirty bucks.

I also wanted the phone because it runs on the Google Android platform, and I am Google’s bitch. I already have a love affair with Google Search, Google Maps, Google Translate, Google Reader, and the email, calendar and contacts built into Gmail. The Android platform taps into all of these web based services, automatically syncing my email, my contacts and my calendar with the phone. No annoying entering of contact info or fretting over incompatible programs! And, if the phone dies, my info won’t be lost! Many of the applications available on the Android Market also take advantage of the connection with Google. More on that later.

I don’t have any photos of hardware, those are all much better represented by the HTC website, but here’s my personal home screen after a few weeks of messing around with the customization:

The phone is really easy to use and allows the user to navigate with the touch screen, the trackball, or the keyboard. Handy! This is the main screen that you see when you turn on the phone. The menu bar displays notifications, whether text messages, emails, or announcements from programs that are running. It also shows signal strength, GPS signals, and the wi-fi connection. Just below that, the phone has a built in Google search window! You don’t even have to bother opening the browser, it’s just right there, waiting to settle bets in bars!
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“Project Finish My Halloween Costume Before Halloween” is moving along smoothly. Party prep is in full swing on this fine Halloweek. The decorations have been up for weeks, all we have to do is switch out some light bulbs for spoooky ones and set up the epic number of Jack-o-lantern candle holders I bought at Dollarama. Grocery shopping for various secret ingredients was done on Sunday and baking will commence on Thursday.

As for the Worm Bum, the costume has been fully assembled and now only needs several dozen layers of paint. I just realized that with my poor understanding of color theory, I neglected to buy yellow, but I’m going to see if I can make do without it.

After finishing the bottom armature, we started on the top piece. This came together quickly and efficiently, if I do say so myself:

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Dear Mayor Bloomberg,

I don’t think you’re a bad guy. Yeah, you’re big business and a Republican, a combination that would normally inspire a knee jerk reaction of the highest power from a pinko such as myself. You were the first, and probably last, Republican I ever voted for, and generally you’ve been okay. Maybe I’ve been fooled. Maybe you just seemed alright in comparison to the fascist rule of Rudy. Maybe I’ve misjudged you from the very beginning. But maybe I haven’t, maybe you’re not all bad. So Mayor Bloomberg, I’m begging you – if you really love New York and you want it to live forever as a place of importance and magic and inspiration, preserve and enforce the zoning laws that are keeping the city from becoming nothing more than a generic Midwestern mall.

When I was a kid, my mother would ask me if I knew why New York special. Her answer to this all important question was “Because no matter what you’re looking for, you can find it here.” It didn’t matter that other cities were growing in size or investing in fancy new waterfronts or shopping districts, they would never be New York, because none of them would ever have the diversity. My mother’s examples proving her theory were manifold. You want a rare orchid? The Flower District. Homemade ravioli? Little Italy. Rare books, Jewish deli, discount ballet tickets, imported Japanese mushrooms, the perfect cocktail dress or the best cheesecake you’ll ever eat? My mother knew where to get all these things. A graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology, my mother was particularly fond of the Garment District. Did you break the button on your favorite coat? You could find an exact match to replace it in the Garment District, and while you were there you could marvel at the stores selling nothing but lace, nothing but buttons, nothing but zippers, nothing but bolts of satin in every color imaginable. New York, my mother intoned with gravity, was ten years ahead of everyone else in fashion. New York had things you couldn’t even imagine.

Last week, work began on Project Worm Bum, otherwise known as “Michelle’s Most Epic Halloween Costume Yet.” Each year I promise to have a fantastic Halloween costume and each year I let costume supply shopping wait until the last moment, when I typically lose enthusiasm for the effort and just do a crap ass job. See: the sailor outfit that consisted of a sailor shirt and jeans and the Cyndi Lauper outfit that looked nothing at all like Cyndi Lauper. But not this year! No! This year I resolve to finish my costume with time to spare.

Stark and I had an amazing idea for a costume while watching a movie that shall remain nameless. This led to elaborate plans for a costume that quite possibly will be too awesome to even fit in the apartment. It involves acrylic paint, a wire armature, and yards and yards of the same stretchy fabric they use to make figure skating costumes. WHAT COULD IT POSSIBLY BE? You’ll have to wait and find out.

But here, in the interests of posting something to this blog so it looks like I actually work on projects instead of just procrastinate, are the first photos of Worm Bum construction. No one involved has any experience with making armatures, so it was an adventure, to say the least.

Here are the beginning stages of assembling part one of the armature:

And the final product, with cat:

The end of this summer hasn’t been the most productive for this project. Between two road trips, work, a overly ambitious Halloween costume, and assorted other smaller projects I’ve been working on, I haven’t really gotten anything done. In fact, I haven’t even had time to post some updates from months ago, so here we go. Hopefully this will help me get motivated again! As of my last post, I had completed the Wonder Wheel and its cars. Next, I set about working on the boardwalk. After much agonized sketching and re-sketching:

I finally managed to get it all painted.

I think it looks rather nice when the beach, the sky, and the wheel complete the picture:

After finishing the boardwalk, I got the brilliant idea to sink hours of my life into a under boardwalk tableau. This was inspired by a section of the interviews in which my mother discusses how all sorts of unsavory activities used to take place under the boardwalk until it was finally filled in with sand. I attempted to illustrate the unsavory activities, although I have to admit – my mother never mentioned aliens, escaped convicts, or battling dinosaurs. The idea is for there to be a very short animation made by having the camera tilt down as my mother talks about the boardwalk.

Here is the initial sketch:

And the almost finished product:

I have since filled in some more of the color, but then I decided to go on a cleaning binge and the unfinished painting ended up under the bed. Next up: The animated puppets that will march along the sand.