d'oh!mestic

And now we have a dog.

It was a regular Thursday. I stepped out of the office for a quick moment, and when I came back to my desk, there was a note scribbled on my memo pad: “Call husband, re: dog.”

Well, as of that morning, we didn’t have a dog. So I called the Capt’n just to see what was up, and he let me know under no uncertain terms that he had Found A Dog. There was the formal request as to whether the dog could come home, but seeing as how money had already been exchanged for the pooch, my hands were tied.

Now we have a dog. His name’s Grimlock. We call him Grimmy. He’s a fairly even tempered Chihuahua mix (we think 50% yipper and 25% terrier and 25% hound), though he’s got some issues. He was returned to the pound after his owner claimed he nipped at a toddler (which I can totally see). When we got him home, he wanted to be the big dog of the house and rejected his dog food. During his free well-dog checkup, the vet said that judging from the plaque buildup on his teeth, he was either a year old and had never eaten dog food, or was eight or nine. Seeing as how the City of Albuquerque claims he’s 13 months, I’m betting it was the former.

We’ve made up a backstory for the pup. We think that he was a rebound dog — that a brokenhearted single girl decided that what she really needed was a dog instead of a man, adopted Grimlock, and then, about a year later, got a new boyfriend who gave her the standard “the dog or me” ultimatum. We assume that within a month, the dog’s former owner will go back to the pound, asking for her precious little angel back.

Mwahahaha. Too late, sister. He’s one of ours, now.

Mwahahahaha.

(Ahem.)

Still, as I’ve said, the dog has issues. To combat them, we’ve put him on the Cesar Milan regimen of long walks (while weighted down with 1.5 pounds of deep well sockets and two bucks in quarters in a doggie backpack), discipline and affection. He’s starting to mellow out into a well-behaved pooch and has won my heart by carrying around his blanket (a knitted afghan I made long ago) in his teeth.

Any dog who appreciates a hand knit is going to be my dog.

The cat still hasn’t forgiven us.

In other news, my mother-in-law took second in her category at the Fiber Arts Fiesta this weekend. I am in mega awe. Pam is a fantastically talented artist who has inspired me in so many ways, and I can’t express how proud I am of her accomplishments.

Her quilt, New Mexican Kitchen, will be for sale in local quilt shops soon. You know you want to get down with the applique action.

Finally, a little vacation knitting. I’m working on the Clapotis scarf using Brooks Farms Solo Silk that I acquired at the Fiber Arts Fiesta. I cannot begin to express how much I love this yarn. It’s the first hand-dyed/hand-painted yarn that hasn’t triggered an allergic reaction in my hands. It’s smooth and supple and gorgeous.

I settled on the scarf as my vacation knitting project after sitting under an A/C vent at work one day too many. It’s so obnoxious having to pile on a parka in the middle of summer and I’m hoping the scarf will be a lightweight and lovely alternative. Damn HVAC systems.

I think I will do more sewing with the last week of vacation, but for right now, it’s nice to do some mindless knitting while reading a book.

And that’s about all that’s happening here.

When I was in college, I worked for the university paper as a designer and sometimes features writer. I remember one week in October of ’96, my features editor handed me a stack of CDs and told me to review them even though the slightly-deaf girl is probably not the best music critic on staff.

In that stack was Warrant’s comeback attempt, although they’d had the foresight to dub themselves Warrant 97, as if it were going to totally distract from that 80s hairband. The sound was like this: “Warrant? Us? Not us. We are not the ‘Cherry Pie’ guys, even though we totally sound like them. We are totally different and way more grungy. I mean, it’s 1996! Grunge is still totally in, right? Where’s my Aqua Net?”

I talk about this because I made a cherry pie and, because I am a predictable creature, I had “Cherry Pie” running through my head for the better part of twenty-four hours. I made a cherry pie. A sweet cherry pie. A sweet cherry pie with a lattice top — another first. Sing it, Warrant.

It was decent as my pies go. The filling was grade-A perfect and more or less the same recipe as my apple pie. I’m guessing that most fruit pies are a variation of sugar, lemon juice and corn starch enveloped in two flaky crusts. Nom. Pie. The lattice crust was my first and the strips were less rectangles and more rhombuses, but the Capt’n has since bestowed me with an engineer’s ruler for lattices lines straight and true, and I’ve promised myself to pick up a fluted dough cutter the next time I’m near Williams Sonoma.

Oh, and mental note — tent the pie with foil at the 25 minute mark, not the 40.

The Capt’n was totally down with the pie and then asked what I’d put in it. I rattled of the ingredients and then we discussed the ingredients list of canned cherry pie filling — two types of corn syrup, red dye #40 and a random acid to keep that red dye red — and how it took me about the same amount of time to make this pie from scratch that it would take the anonymous middle American to pop open a can of this cherry filling/topping concoction and slather it between two slices of pre-made dough. And while I know and you know that it’s not the case, not really, I still don’t understand why someone wouldn’t take the extra ten minutes and make the filling from scratch. It’s so much more satisfying, gratifying, and healthy. Cherries. Sugar. Lemon juice. Corn starch.

I mean, it’s pie. Pie, by the very nature of its being, equal a special occasion, because there is pie! Why not take that extra ten minutes? Why not? Why not?

The Capt’n reminded me that I’m an odd one in the world — that I care about taking the time out to do things from the base up, but that I tend to do things in a lovely, half-assed manner, that I’m not Martha Stewart and have no aspirations in that direction, but that he understands why my delicate kitty sensibilities can be thrown out of whack by the casual, slipshodness of everyday life, and that’s why he loves me.

Or at least, that’s what I think he was saying. His mouth was filled with pie.

It’s been overcast this weekend, and it finally started to rain this morning, and while I wouldn’t go so far as to say I find the dark and slightly dank inspiring, I will tell you that I’ve always liked the way rain-splotched light looks in my kitchen. It’s soft and cool — rare commodities for New Mexican light. Rainy days soften the edges and lend a bit of gentrified glamor. Well, maybe “gentrified” isn’t the right word, but you get my meaning. Nothin’ like a bit of an overcast to give my kitchen and my cupcakes a touch of that Muffin-in-the-Aspirational-Lifestyle-Magazine feel.

These are Devil’s Food jobbies with a banana cream cheese icing. The cake itself is standard — any recipe you dig up for Devil’s Food will do — it’s the icing I’m bragging on. It came out runny, lumpy and tasting like heaven. I’m not quite sure why I haven’t run across this flavor before; it seems like the sort of thing the local cupcake shops would be down with.

And another thing to brag on — this is the first time in the new year that I’ve felt well enough to bake. The Capt’n and I were both felled with a Milwaukeeian Death Cold over the holidays. I went to bed on Christmas feeling kind of stuffy and woke up the day after New Year’s with a chapped nose and no memory of the preceding week, with the exception of one blurred recollection of me standing in the kitchen in mismatched pajamas trying to replicate a hot toddy for the Capt’n, who couldn’t do much past coughing.

Evil, evil virus.

Banana Cream Cheese Icing
8 oz. package of cream cheese
1 stick of butter, softened and cubed
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 ripe banana
3 cups sifted powdered sugar

In a mixer, beat banana until mushy. Add butter, vanilla and cream cheese, and beat until fluffly. Slowly add powdered sugar and beat until smooth. For frosting (rather than dribblely icing) add two to three extra cups of sugar.

The Capt’n's Hot Toddy
In a mug, combine two packets of instant hot apple cider, two tablespoons of honey, several drops of lemon juice, a jigger of rum (optional) and hot water. Stir until everything dissolved and add cinnamon stick. Serve to grateful invalid

I think I might be having an issue with the ginger. Specifically, I’m a touch obsessed. I say this, because when I woke up this morning and saw that it was snowing, I decided — after breaking out the extensive profanities — that I’d make gingerbread cookies.

Actually, I think I said, “Oh, boy! It’s snowing! Now I can make gingerbread cookies!” Which I then envisioned eating with a cup of ginger tea — and then I had trouble deciding which ginger tea, because I’ve amassed several lately.

Problem.

(Oddly enough, my beautiful tin of powdered ginger didn’t make it into the shot)

I used Martha’s gingerbread recipe, because it was at hand, and I have to say it turned out well. As per my MO, I swapped out the black pepper for fire engine red cayenne to bring out the latent heat in the ginger, and really, I could have stood an extra yolk’s worth of moisture (the eggs I used weren’t as large as they could have been), but the cookies rolled out and baked up nicely, so I’m counting this one as a win.

However — and there’s usually that “however,” isn’t there?

When I got to the cutting phase of the recipe, I decided to forgo the usual shapes and just slice rectangles. I was inspired — the color of the gingerbread was an exact match for a paper bag, and while it might sound rather odd to some of my friends, paper bags are very much a part of Christmas in these parts. No New Mexican Christmas is complete without a string of luminarias marching across a snow-covered adobe wall.

( A quick primer on luminarias, or, if you’re from northern New Mexico, farolitos. Same/same.)

So I cut rectangles, and dreamed up an icing scheme.

The icing scheme didn’t quite work out the way I planned. It’s less paperbag-y and more rhombus-y. Sigh. I did figure out — after I had managed to toss the extra icing, mind you — that if I pressed the cookies into raw sugar, I got a lovely, lighted brown effect similar to a luminaria. I smacked my forehead good after that. A quick-thinking genius I am not.

But next time, next time, I will remember to smear the cookies and dip them in sugar, and maybe, if I’m really ambitious, I’ll do a stained glass version with melted butterscotch centers, to give them that lit-from-within feeling of the real thing.

Or not. I’d like to think my obsession has its limits.

(Tomorrow! I’ll do it tomorrow!)

When I was eleven years old, my mom got tired of listening to me beg for treats and chucked (okay, handed) the Joy of Cooking in my general direction and told me to figure it out on my own.

Except, she said it nicely, because my mother is a very nice woman.

Still, at the age of eleven — or maybe I was nine — I was expected to suck it up and do it myself. And on the day I was ushered into the kitchen, I was taught the basic rule of baking: use what you have, and for god’s sake, pay attention to the measurements called for.

I have a vague memory of my mother telling me to pick a recipe by what we had at hand, because she was not going to make a special trip to the store just so I could burn a batch of cookies. I remember that she suggested brownies, because we had everything for them, and I remember how she got down the tin of Hershey’s cocoa powder special and then left me to my own devices, just me and the cookbook and an overwhelming desire to make something good.

And I remember how, spurred on by my initial success and establishing a pattern that still holds later in life, I made brownies every day for weeks afterwards, and even after I had branched out into other treats — oatmeal chocolate chip cookies or pumpkin pies, say — brownies were the old standby, a quick way to pass an hour on an endless Sunday afternoon.

I’m sure that in a parallel universe, this would be the point in the narrative where I would talk about spending my teenaged years in the little kitchen of my childhood, making the transition from pedestrian bake sale fare to elaborate Asian-inspired pastries, thus setting a course for my future glamorous side project of baking and writing about it on the intarwebs. However, in this reality, I didn’t hoard back issues of Bon Appetite, and I’m sorry to say that by the time I finished high school, I had stopped baking completely, and with the end of my baking came the end of my brownies.

I lost the magic. I have lost the magic. In the intervening years since graduation, I haven’t been able to make a single decent batch of brownies.

A couple of times during my college years, I took a crack at making pan, but they’d always come out weird — the cocoa would be off, giving the end product a color more similar to creamed coffee than, y’know, brown, or, if they were brown, it would taste like I’d dangled a single packet of sugar over the mixing bowl. Sometimes the squares would have the consistency of wet cement, or sometimes they’d resemble baked adobe bricks. It didn’t matter how faithfully I followed the recipe, I could not reproduce the earlier successes of my childhood.

I blamed many factors — decrepit rental ovens, faulty memory, altitude — but when I got into this house, my house, and I started baking in earnest, I still could not produce a single batch of edible brownies to save my life. I hate to bring up the Kate Hepburn incident again, but the proof (as it were) is in the pudding. I suck at brownies, which means I fail as an American.

Seriously. In a piece which appeared in the April 11, 2007 edition of The New York Times, Julia Moskin speculates on the decidedly American origins of the simple brownie and its evolution from deflated chocolate cake to a chocolate-heavy soul food and status symbol among hip French pastry chefs and talks about how simple, how easy they are. Why, even a child can make brownies. And hell, any food that a moderately stoned hippie can make (with added, grassy ingredients) can’t be anything but simple, right?

Failed. American.

But there I was this afternoon, hanging about the kitchen, bummed out for other reasons, needing a distraction. I didn’t even know what I was going to make when I started pulling things out of the pantry, it was just whatever came to hand.

What came to hand was fine, unsweetened chocolate, sugar, eggs — the idea started building — pecans, heavy cream, flour, vanilla. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. I started mixing without giving name to what I was making. I just melted the butter and the chocolate, added a little more, beat a few eggs, it needs more sugar. This was baking by feel, something I thought was impossible. It was part muscle memory and part invention. And by god, when the experiment came out of the oven after thirty-five agonizing minutes, I was pleased to say I succeeded.

Sort of. I added a half bag of pecans to the batter, thinking it might liven things up. The Capt’n, who claims not to be partial to brownies, shunned this batch when he discovered the nuts. I’m not sure he’s wrong, either.

Still, it’s a success, and damn it, I’m going to post the recipe.

Almost There Brownies
12 oz. 100% cacao unsweetened baking chocolate (1 1/2 baking bars)
3/4 pound butter
3 eggs
2 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 Tbs baking powder (yeah, I know, but damn it, it’s over a mile up in altitude here)
1 Tbs baking soda
2 Tbs vanilla
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 c flour
Pecans (really, really optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a heavy duty saucepan, melt chopped up chocolate and butter over medium-low heat. When all the lumps are out, remove from heat and set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, beat the three eggs and add in two cups of sugar. Continue beating. Add brown sugar and final 1/2 cup of white sugar. Continue beating. Add the bicarb, baking powder, vanilla and cream, and mix until everything’s combined. Pour in the buttery-chocolate mixture and mix until just incorporated. Add flour and mix throughly. Pour into whatever pan you have at hand and bake for 35ish minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out mostly clean.

This could be revised later, but it kind of made my day.

It snowed Thursday night, which prompted me to stomp around the house, muttering compound, multi-hyphenated profanities. I’m not the biggest fan of the snow, and besides, the previous Sunday, it had been 78 degrees and sunny. But there it was. Big fat wet flakes, falling from the sky.

Don’t think that the snow “inspired” me in any way for the next project. Not in the drippy sense of “a toasty project inspired by winter’s first snowfall,” because I like to think of myself as not being that damn slavish to the Seriously Sincere brand of craft porn. Inspiration more came from “It’s cold. We’re going to the ‘rents’ for lunch. They’ve got a fireplace. Marsh-fuckin’-mallows.”

Marshmallows are like my culinary parlor trick. “Watch me pull a marshmallow outta my hat!” The Capt’n — though he claims to be astounded — is more practical. “Why not just buy a pack of Jet Puffs for $2.49? Seems easier.”

But hell, I am a woman of few-ish talents, and homemade marshmallows can be used as a trump card. “Oh, this is a homemade pie.” “This is a homemade cookie.” “Homemade marshmallows, anyone?”

Yes, if pettiness was a sanctioned even, I would be dreaming of Beijing and practicing my homemade graham cracker recipe. Go for that Gold! Metal!

Um, flour.

Anyway. Marshmallows. I follow the Martha Stewart recipe, though this time, circumstances forced a single substitution: when I ran short of corn syrup by a quarter cup (hello, pecan pie), I substituted an 1/8 of a cup of honey and made up the difference with water. It combined with the vanilla to give the mallows a divine taste — better than anything store-bought, believe me.

I also finally found a use for some disposable foil cake tins I’d had for awhile. It only required brushing the sides with vegetable oil, and when it came time to unmold the Cakes o’ Mallow, there wasn’t any problem.

I squeezed about fifty out of the batch and boxed them up in four Glad sandwich meat containers. They stood stacked on my counter like a Leaning Tower of White Fondant, though we took one box to my parents’ for roasting — we didn’t actually roast them. And the Capt’n utilized a few in a cup of hot chocolate, but really, it wasn’t until I was looking at the stacked boxes of finished product that nobody really likes marshmallows around here. I can’t eat them, and, well, the Capt’n prefers store-bought.

I just can’t win sometimes. Damn it. So close.

Growing up, chicken pie was a regular Sunday night dinner. It was one of my very favorites, but rather labor-intensive, which is probably why Mum saved it for the weekends and special occasions like my birthday or the fall of communism.

Later, when I was living on my own, I asked her for the recipe, but because it involved canned mushrooms (and for some reason, I had it in my head that canned mushrooms was where Botox was formed) and began with the string of words, “first, make a roux,” I never attempted it.

But the Capt’n, even with his gouty toe, is a big fan of chicken pie and had been asking for it, and his pleas had doubled after an episode of Nigella Express which featured a chicken pot pie, so I figured, what the fuck.

Chicken Pie

Simple puff pastry recipe from the yellow book
1 lb chicken breasts
1 thing of mushrooms
1/2 pound pearl onions
Chicken stock
Thyme
Rosemary
Flour
Butter

First, make a roux. Seriously. I took two pats of butter and two tablespoons of flour and did the thing in the pan. Once it was all roux-like, I added in cut up pieces of chicken and set it to brown, giving it a tablespoon of olive oil, just to mix it up.

In a separate pan, I cooked the onions and mushrooms (and some garlic) in olive oil, adding fresh rosemary and thyme and letting everything cook down some. When the onions were giving up their juices and the mushrooms had whithered, I added in about two cups of chicken stock and let it simmer away.

Once the chicken was cooked through, I added it to the onions and mushrooms, gave it a couple of stirs, and then tossed the whole thing into a casserole pan and draped with the puff pastry dough. The pie was then shoved into a 350 degree oven for 25 minutes. It came out nice and golden, though I think it could have stayed inside for another 3 to 5 minutes, and really, it could have stood for some green chile, but over all, mmm.

No, kitty. That is my pot pie.

The idea that Thanksgiving is on Thursday still hasn’t taken hold, not even after spending a weekend fighting for the last bag of Las Cruces pecans, not after watching a chorus line of Butterballs go down grocery conveyor belts, not even after having the “what should I bring” with conversation with my mother. It was 75 degrees today. Really, it’s just not decent to be thinking about roasting a turkey when it’s still that gorgeous outside.

Thanksgiving is on Thursday.

Thanksgiving is on Thursday, and I have been charged with making pies.

I can make a mean pumpkin pie, we all know that. But pecan pie can be a different story. I’ve made a few in my day; some have turned out, some have turned into boiled monstrosities. I decided to get a practice pie in before I have to make one for real. The Capt’n has no problem with this; it means he gets more pie. [More pie! -- Teh C. ]

So I made a pecan pie.

And now we know why I always put a cookie pan under the pecan pies.

So, note for Wednesday night, don’t fill it quite so much.

But hey, that wasn’t the only project in the kitchen. There’s a potluck scheduled for Tuesday, and even though I was late to the sign-up sheet, nobody had jotted down a pie-type dessert. So, I’m bringing pecan pie bars.

The recipe’s out of the yellow book, but instead of using honey, I substituted light corn syrup to make it conform to my notion of what pecan pie should taste like.

And I also have my very first attempt at puff pastry setting up in the fridge for tonight’s dinner (chicken pie!), but whether or not it will actually puff remains to be seen.

The Capt’n was kind enough to change my oil this afternoon. Normally, that’s a chore I can do by myself, but the Capt’n wanted to crawl around under my car, and hell, I was going to let him, but I did want to repay his kindness, because rolling around on the cold November concrete is a serious act of love, one which deserves recognition.

So I made him cookies.

Years ago, the Capt’n introduced me to Flying Star’s triple ginger cookie — large and soft and drizzled with a ginger-spiced icing — a grown-up version of the ginger snap. I was hooked. And for years, getting a triple ginger cookie was part of the charm of Flying Star or Satellite Coffee, but as this d’oh!mestic phase settled in last winter, I was convinced that anything they could bake, I could bake better.

After months of experimenting, this is the current version of my triple ginger cookie, and one which the Capt’n swears is the best.

D’oh!Mestic’s Triple Ginger Cookies
[Better than Flying Star's -- Teh C.]

3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup light brown sugar
1/4 cup molasses
1 large egg
1 Tbs Mexican vanilla
2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
4 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp red pepper (optional — it kicks up the ginger to a slow burn)
1 Tbs cinnamon
Fresh ginger
Crystallized ginger
12 oz. good milk chocolate chips

Hack up a fist-sized ginger root, throw it into the food processor and blitz. Meanwhile, dice up about six ounces of crystallized ginger and set aside.

In a mixer, cream together the butter and the sugar. Add molasses, vanilla and egg. Toss in the fresh ginger and mix until evenly distributed. In a separate bowl, sift together remaining ingredients (except the crystallized ginger and chocolate) and gently add to the sugar mixture. Mix well. Fold in crystallized ginger and chocolate by hand. Place in the freezer for 15 minutes, and then bake at 350 degrees for about 12 minutes, or until cookies are slightly brown in color.

Eat.

The Capt’n and I have a sushi joint. A place where we go at the end of a long week, a place where they know us, and within a minute of sitting down, we’re given soup, and tea and questions about the week. Seriously, it’s enough to make me wish they’d named the Capt’n “Norm,” because we’re about to that point in the diner-dinee relationship.

Anyway, the owner has a son, a sophomore in high school. Heck, I think the place might be his very own “My First Restaurant” — he kind of hangs out and makes suggestions to the chefs and says things like, “Hey, I’m bored. If I rolled you something, would you eat it?”

(I keep not telling him that if he slightly modifies that sentence, he’ll be very popular in college.)

We first befriended him when he noticed the Capt’n's D40 and started talking about his photography class. He’s a good kid. Sometimes I can even help him with his AP biology homework. I mean, it’s only been 15 years since I took that class.

Anyway, last week — when we honored the Capt’n's birthday wish to drown in sushi — he was there and kept wandering back to our table to chat, and at some point, it came out that I bake for fun.

“Really?” he asked, and his eyes were friggin’ saucers. “Hey, my mom’s opening a new café, breakfast and stuff. Like [the super trendster local chain all the hipsters love to hate], but like, ours. Do you want to bake for us? Like pies? Because I love pies. If I brought you an application, would you fill it out?”

Somewhere along the line, a simple agreement to bring the staff a pie (because again, y’know, “NORM!”) turned into a sort of trial. And while I tried to explain that I haven’t worked in the back of a kitchen since I was a bus-girl-cum-muffin-tin-filler, he wasn’t listening. Really, he’s a high school sophomore, and I’m an editor. [::cough:: Assistant Editor -- Ed.] There is no job, no career change on the line here.

But at some point during the week, I started thinking about this pie as a new gateway, an option I hadn’t considered, a new way to beat my arthritic knee into submission, an expansion of my mediocrity from the dohmestic sphere into a larger world.

I started asking myself “what would Martha do?”

That is never a good sign.

Apparently Martha would add a leaf motif to the crust of a pumpkin pie seasoned, in part, with cayenne pepper.

Yeah. I was really reaching with this pie.

I was baking like I really wanted the job.

Funny thing was, the kid wasn’t there when we made the delivery (and availed ourselves to some fine tuna, yesireebob), but the rest of the staff made the “OHEMGEE PIE!” faces and exclamations, and really that’s enough. The pastry chef dreams went out the window about the time I realized I don’t particularly like getting up at 5 a.m.

Maybe I can work something out with them in the future — I do make a killer truffle, in the name of full disclosure, and a little consignment work might be cool — but yeah, not so much for another career switch. Not today.

Spiced Out Pumpkin Pie
Basic Pastry Shell from the yellow book

2 cups cooked pumpkin
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
2 slightly beaten eggs
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
1 Tbs vanilla
2 Tbs cinnamon
1 Tbs ginger
1 Tbs cloves
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper — and in future editions of this, I might try pureeing a single habañero instead, because I am so my dad’s daughter.

Mix everything together until well blended. I did this by hand with a whisk. Taste and keep adding spices until it tastes right. Bake at 425° for fifteen minutes before lowering the temperature to 350° and baking for another 45 minutes.

Makes one 9″ pie.