d'oh!mestic

My mother is from the Piedmont region of North Carolina, where they take perfectly good hot dogs, smother them in delicious chili and then top that with coleslaw. It is some of the best eating to be had, period.

I know, I know, you’re stumbling over the “topped with coleslaw.” To the uninitiated, it’s like slathering chocolate cake with ketchup — stomach-churningly gross. But life is an adventure, nobody likes a picky eater and my mother always taught me to respect the regional cuisine, so put some damn coleslaw on your chili dogs already.

Or not, because this post really isn’t about having a come-to-Jesus moment with you over the slaw.

This post is about the most fantastic hot dog chili, which is especially timely, given tomorrow’s high holy holiday of Super Bowl Sunday.

All week I had planned on a Friday night where I would come home, open a cold Guinness and make up a mess of chili dogs before settling down on the couch to watch the new X-Files movie.

There were some problems, of course, like where I managed to leave the grocery store without hot dogs or buns, and, um, barbecue sauce for the chili.

And yeah, I remembered that last item just a few minutes before Adam returned from the emergency store run for the hot dogs and buns.

It was a stressful week.

But I am resourceful, sort of, and I have the Gourmet Big Yellow Book of Answers, so I consulted the Big Yellow Book of Answers and came up with their recipe for barbecue sauce and then realized that hell, a little modification would make a fine, straight up chili, which I present to you now.

3 dried red chiles
1 red onion diced
4 cloves garlic, diced
1 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes (drained)
1 2″ length of ginger, minced
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup orange juice
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 Tbs dried mustard
2 tps cumin
Olive oil
1 pound ground beef
Salt and pepper to taste

In a cast iron skillet, toast the red chiles, turning them when the get hot and the skin color has darkened somewhat. (I did it more off the smell — when it starts smelling like autumn in Albuquerque, turn those suckers). Once toasted, place the chiles in a bowl and cover with hot water just off the boil and allow to soak for five minutes.

In a large pot, throw in the diced tomatoes and about two tablespoons of olive oil and a couple of pinches of salt and let simmer on medium heat.

Meanwhile, slice up the onions and throw into the cast iron skillet with another couple of tablespoons of olive oil and cook until the onion is soft and nearly translucent. Add in the garlic and the ginger and cook on medium low for another couple of minutes, and then add to the pot with the tomatoes.

Dice up the chiles and add them to the tomato mixture.

Throw in the rest of the ingredients, give a good stir and allow to simmer.

Going back to the cast iron skillet, throw in the ground beef and brown, seasoning with garlic powder, onion powder and red chile powder. Once the beef is browned through, add to the tomato mixture and allow to simmer on low heat. At this point, taste the chili. If it doesn’t have quite enough heat, throw in a little red pepper, just to kick up the capsaicin content to reasonable levels.

Add in the hot dogs, pushing them to the bottom of the pot and covering with chili. Allow to cook for five to seven minutes longer. Serve with mustard and coleslaw.

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

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.

The secret shame is that I have an affinity for Blueprint, the hipster nesting mag from Martha Stewart Omnimedia. The more secret shame? I tried a recipe from this quarter’s issue, more specifically, the Cauliflower and Roasted Garlic Soup.

Of course, being me, I didn’t bother reading past the ingredients list (and even then, I was sort of just reading the whatfors, and not so much the quantities), so when I got down to making dinner this evening, I discovered I was going to have to improvise my way through.

This is what I did:

Improved Soup-Chowder

Lay three heads’ worth of naked garlic on aluminum foil, and cover in salt, pepper and olive oil. Squinch up the foil to a tight ball and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes

Meanwhile, slice up an onion and a half a head of cauliflower. Warm up a scant 1/4 cup of olive oil in a deep pot, turn in onions and cook until they’re soft. Add 2/3 cup of dry white wine (I did not pay heed to the “dry” part and used a Muscat) and the cauliflower. Add about six stems of finely minced thyme and cook until the wine’s reduced by about half, or about six minutes. Add 2 1/2 cups chicken stock and a scant 1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce. Bring to a simmer and then cover for 20 minutes. When the 20 minutes are up, uncover and let simmer for an additional 15.

When the simmering’s up, add the roasted garlic, and then add 1 cup finely shreded Parmesan cheese and 1 1/2 cup heavy cream. Bring to a simmer, stirring occasionally for another three or four minutes. Serve immediately. Feeds two hungry people

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 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.

Last winter, the Capt’n's parents converted their guest room into a home office and gave us some of their furniture. Specifically, we became the owners of a twin bed with trundle and a small bedside table. The beds were shoved into what has been affectionately dubbed “the junk room,” but I didn’t have a clue what to do with the table, so it also went into the junk room.

It wasn’t a bad table: small, round, real wood, and it had three support feet carved into claws — and boy howdy, I am a sucker for clawed furniture. However, it had been finished in a dull walnut, which I can only describe as “Middle America Republican,” and since the house doesn’t sport a single brass eagle or framed picture of Cheney anywhere, it really didn’t fit.

Within minutes of possession, I knew I would slap some white paint on it and love it for ever, it was just a matter of when I’d get around to that little project.

Flash-forward to Labor Day Weekend, 2007. The Capt’n had plans to continue the engine swap and I decided I would avoid finishing revisions by refinishing the table.

We got up early this morning and made the requisite early morning run to Lowes for sandpaper and primer (and Locktight for the Capt’n) and then came home to start work. And this is where I should mention that two families within two doors of us had decided to hold garage sales this morning. I hadn’t so much as raised the garage door and carried the table out into the driveway when a woman in a van shouted “How much?”

“It’s not for sale.”

“But ain’t you havin’ a yard sale?”

Lesson learned: raised garage and random furniture hauled onto the driveway on a Saturday morning? Insta-sale.

Three more people asked if we were having a sale through the course of the morning, which was mildly surprising when I was sanding, annoying when I was painting and downright obnoxious when I was carrying the table inside. And every so often, the little boys next door (who are moving next weekend, praise Zeus!) would come over and ask what I was doing (painting) what the Capt’n was doing (fixing an engine) and what was I doing again?

And then they’d skip down to the end of our property line and use their fake samurai swords to beat on Qwest’s switchbox for the neighborhood, or throw rocks at the dog across the way.

(I swear, those boys are the number one reason we keep putting off parenthood, but that’s a post for another time.)

It took two coats of primer to get that shabby, secondhand antique junk find look I was going for, and it took all of my patience to properly sand it and not just slop paint here and there and call it good. And for once, it turned out right.

Please note, that is not the table’s actual placement, nor are those the table’s actual accessories. HA! The table is currently sitting next to the bed in the junk room, completely bare, and really not much has changed, except for a flutter of satisfaction I get when I see it there.

It was a first step into a larger world.

The Company has crappy coffee. I don’t think stating that The Company has crappy coffee impugns The Company’s honor in any way, given how generous it is with its employees (Hello, raise!), it’s just a fact. The coffee? Isn’t something to swan over. Hell, I’d speculate that unless you work for a small, independent coffee company or live in the vicinity of Kailua-Kona, your office has crappy coffee, too.

For a while, the crappy coffee situation didn’t bother me. The Company is situated within walking distance of Starbucks, and while I’m not in the OHEMGEEZORStarbucks! crowd, I like the baristas, and they’ll give me a grande in a venti without hassle. Except, I hadn’t counted on the busy season, a time — once every quarter — where all of our clients go a little bit nuts, and I don’t get up from my desk for 12 hours.

So after missing my afternoon jolt one too many times, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I dusted off the French press someone had given us for Christmas, and — after doing some research on the intarwebs — bought a pound of course-ground coffee from Satellite Coffee and became my own barista.

I don’t have to tell you that I fell in love with the French press experience.

The Capt’n praised me for being proactive in the name of caffeine, and started making wistful comments about hanging around the office at coffee time, just so he could experience this French press bliss-in-a-cup. So, after much consideration, I brought home the press and the coffee, just so he could try it.

I didn’t realize it would turn into a battle royale, a fight between the ever loyal Ol’ Brewski — an unassuming Black-n-Decker 12 cup jobbie that has held on since the last Clinton administration — and the upstart from Gay Pareeeee, French Prezzors!

(I have a thing about throwdowns, if you couldn’t tell.)

The first cup was from the press. I presented it to the Capt’n, who took a mighty wiff and said, “This smells like the kind of coffee they give you in Europe.” He took a sip, and then his eye exploded.

Okay, his eye didn’t explode so much as it popped open with alarming speed and kept twitching for the next twenty minutes. Every so often, he’d come out with some nugget of half-praise, “Boy! That’ll put hair on your chest” or “This coffee takes cowboy coffee and makes it its bitch” or “My coffee is formulating plans to invade Russia in winter.”

I think what he was saying was that it was strong.

And then the Capt’n begged, pleaded for me to make normal coffee in Ol’ Brewski. “Because it’s Ol’ Brewski,” he said. “And also, I think I’m going to die from caffeine overload. I need to flush my system.”

The Capt’n claims the second cup of coffee was better, but that was before I caught him sneaking in some of the dregs from the press.

I don’t think we have call for a second, home-based press, but I do think I’ll bring home the office press every so often — like when I have a deadline to meet, or when my dad will be at the house, or on the odd occasion I want to remind the Capt’n what strong coffee with a lust for conqust is like.
Until then, I will continue to rely on Ol’ Brewski for all my home-based caffeine needs.

When I rang the Capt’n, it was a catalog of doom which began and ended with “The Civic blew up.”

While that’s not exactly true — only the battery went kablammo — it’s knocked us down a car, and the Capt’n is already in the middle of an engine transplant. My car is it  for the time being.

From three cars to one and a whimpering Capt’n — that calls for dinner.

We had a bag of beautiful brown Italian mushrooms the Capt’n found at Albertsons, some cream cheese, a half an onion, cheese, some herbs from the windowsill and one teeny-tiny jalapeño.

I destemmed the mushrooms, sliced up the onion and threw the whole mess into a sauté pan with some olive oil.

And then, while thinking about it, I threw in some rosemary from the window garden, some salt, the baby jalapeño, some garlic, some salt, some New Mexico red.

When everything was nice and delicious-fied, it was mixed in with an 8 oz. package of cream cheese, more rosemary, more garlic, more salt, and more New Mexico red. The mushrooms were stuffed with the mixture, and for an added kick of the ridiculous, I covered everything with cheese.

It went into a 350º oven for 10 minutes. The result?

Damn tasty.

Crappy Monday Mushrooms:

• 18 – 20 big brown “Italian” mushrooms — stems removed from caps and diced
• 8 oz cream cheese — softened
• 1/2 yellow onion — diced
• garlic powder (add in some some freshly minced, if you have it lying around)
• kosher salt
• enough rosemary to last until Judgement Day
• olive oil
• New Mexico red chile powder and a small jalapeño
• Shredded cheese — whatever is lying around

Sauté the mushroom stems, onion and jalapeño in olive oil, and season with salt, garlic, rosemary and chile to taste.

Mix the softened cream cheese with the same spices as added to the mushrooms and onion.

Mix the contents of the sauté pan with the softened cream cheese. Fill the mushroom caps with the cream cheese mixture. Sprinkle with shredded cheese.

Bake at 350º F  (175º C) for 10 minutes.