A Picture of You

How do we capture our images and impressions of the people that we love? How do we properly recognize the pauses, the glances that endear us to one another, the securing relationships so deep in our hearts as the years turn themselves into a beloved shelf of collected stories? To celebrate my friend's birthday, I did what I could: I poured, cooked, and served. A side of sentiment was tossed in as I prepared a menu of what I know she loves to eat. To whit, I pored over cookbooks in preparation, and so arrived a Sunday brunch of devilishly good stuffed eggs, beets, and duck.

I created place cards with a picture of us from 30 years ago and put the menu inside. She loves these Pottery Barn plates with yesteryear letters embossed on them. Fiddle head napkins accompanied.

Otherwise, the festive table was mostly orange and green with a few other friends scattered about.

Pugs in the form of salt and pepper shakers!

Behold the centerpiece! A set of serving trays with a fine giraffe stretched across found companions such as some Meyer lemons and an artichoke!


February 19, 2012
In Which We Celebrate
A 45th Birthday Brunch for Jennifer Buermann

To Drink
Bloody Good Prosecco

To Snack
Caviar Eggs

To Sup
Beet and Endive Salad

...I hadn't added the beets in yet.

Tangerine Duck with Dried Cherries, Vegetable Purees & Pear Chutney, Stuffing Cups

To Sweet
Pepperidge Farm Lemon Cake with Berries

Happy Birthday!

Luncheon Ladies Soundtrack: Billie Holiday, Billie's Best; Ella Fitzgerald, The Best of the Songbooks--The Ballads; The Dinah Washington Story; Nancy Wilson, Anthology.

Shouldn't You Just...?

Valentine's Day!

Modern advice on etiquette for the not-so-new millennium.

Pizza & Beer Party

Despite the presence of PBR, this wasn't exactly a throwback to college days. Our friend was visiting from Turks and Caicos sort of last minute and so we wanted to have a party! We filled up a few growlers of beer, picked up our Pabst, made our own pizzas and off we went. It wasn't a huge affair, or at least didn't start that way, but the evening did seem to grow as unexpected guests stopped by.

Prepping ingredients should always be first and foremost!

Baby made the crispy, exquisite (easy!) dough for our pizzas from Jim Lahey's book. Shown here are the Cubano and Veggie.


Cubano Pizza
Ingredients: pernil al horno, sliced ham and pickles
Sauce: mustard bechamel
Cheese: shredded provolone
Note: for the pernil, Baby does not use a mortar and pestle to make the time consuming paste; he just throws the ingredients into a food processor.

Veggie Pizza
Ingredients: thinly sliced zucchini and yellow squash
Sauce: leek-onion balsamic jam
Cheese: sprinkling from a bag of Emmi gruyere and Swiss cheese


Sausage Mushroom Pizza
Ingredients: sweet fennel sausage with sliced oyster and shiitake mushrooms
Sauce: San Marzano sauce with basil from Fresh Direct
Cheese: grated mozzarella

French Onion Soup
Ingredients: click here
Sauce: strained onions from the soup!
Cheese: more of the Emmi cheeses

Lazy Beans

This is such a festive soup and great to make with leftovers found after rummaging through the refrigerator and freezer. Why not throw a little kale or Swiss chard in to finish? We did!


This is how our lazy soup started, simmering bones and broth and whatever else we had on hand to make a fine stock.


Lazy Pasta and Bean Soup
Serves 10
Ingredients
2 quarts of stock, any combination of chicken, pork, and beef
1 lb. sweet sausage, casings removed
1 carrot, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
2 medium onions, diced
1 28 oz. can of diced tomatoes
1 lb. bag of Hurst 15-bean mix, soaked overnight and drained
1/2 lb. tubetti pasta, or any small tubular pasta such as elbow macaroni

Simmer the stock for one hour with one handful of dried soup greens (such carrots, garlic, celery, onions) and any bones you might have from the freezer. Liberally season with sea salt and ground black pepper.

Brown sausage in 4 quart pot with 1 TB olive oil, breaking it down as you go. Set aside and refrigerate.

In same pot, cook carrot, celery and onions until translucent, not browned. Add can of tomatoes with juice. Let simmer 3-5 minutes. Add beans and stock and let simmer further for 2 1/2 hours. Add sausage and continue simmering for 15 minutes. Stir in pasta, cover, turn off flame and let sit for 20 minutes.

Season with grated Parmesan and serve.

Do enjoy!

Super Bowl Snacks

Although I really have no affiliation with football at all, I loved Madonna during half-time and was sorry to see my home-based Patriots lose. But the Giants defeat over the Patriots had nothing to do with our mercurial girrlll!

We supported our compatriots with this:


In anticipation of the kick-off, Baby and I made a Layered Chicken Three-Cheese Enchilada from a recent Williams-Sonoma catalog as well as a batch of Classic Margaritas to er, get the ball rolling. Both are simply executed and well suited up any time of year.

Do enjoy!

One Pot Meals

A simple chili dinner for a friend turned into somewhat of a bacchanal when our neighbors dropped by last Friday. As always, a judicious scattering of elegant serving ware is prudent with some fine napkins to accompany, whatever the event and however unexpected it may be. My relatives used to speak of boiling an extra potato in case a friend or a hobo dropped by. Throw everything onto the table! Of course! With our one pot meals prepared beforehand, this was all such an easy delight.

A little unleashed ambiance created by candles will pull together any meal.

It was a total blast, as we also reheated some recently braised pork to add to the proverbial pot, poured a few more accompanying Fritos on our plates...

and cracked open at least a few more bottles of wine.


Do enjoy fully prepping beforehand--as well as embracing the unexpected!

Shouldn't You Just...?

Find a few old Simplicity patterns and use them as centerpieces and runners for your table, if only for a while? Adding a favorite cookbook to your table top works as well with perhaps a fanciful Nancy Drew mystery novel.

Further set your table by adding dishes, utensils and accoutrements...



And make Kalua pork with sriracha aioli! I don't have a slow cooker as the recipe suggests, so I just used an ample enamel Dutch oven. The oven temperature didn't go over 200 degrees and it cooked slowly overnight, about 12 hours.

Observe the gorgeous hue of preternatural blue from the black lava salt, and the fat cascading off the bone!


The pork turned into Frito pie!

Do enjoy!

Kalua Pork Sliders with Sriracha Aioli
Adapted from foodista.com
Ingredients
Kalua Pork Ingredients:
5-6 lbs pork butt
2 tbsp black Hawaiian lava salt
1 1/2 tbsp liquid smoke
Slider buns
Dill pickle slices
Lots of time (16 - 20 hrs)
Sriracha Aioli Ingredients:
2 egg yolks
1 cup canola oil
2 tbsp Sriracha
Juice from one lemon
Pinch of salt

Preparation:

Take your pork butt, poke a bunch of holes in it with a knife and rub with the Hawaiian salt and liquid smoke.

After you thoroughly rub your pork butt with the the salt and liquid smoke, put it in a crock pot on low for 16-20 hrs. It's a fantastic meal to start the night before you want to eat it. Let it cook all through the night and all day at work and you'll have a great surprise when you get home from work the next day.

After 16-20 hrs in the slow cooker, the kalua pork should be finely pulled apart. It's easy to pull apart by grabbing two forks and just getting to work. Mix the meat up with all of the delicious simmering sauce and keep it on warm.

Now it's time for the aioli. Simply add your egg yolks, Sriracha, lemon juice and a pinch of salt to bowl of your food processor and blend until the eggs are slightly frothy, about 1 minute.

Once the eggs are beaten, slowly add your canola oil while the mixer is running.

Garnish your slider buns with pickle and the aoili and serve!

Modern advice on etiquette for the not-so-new millennium.