Herbed Garlic Toasts

These are quick to make and fabulous to have on the side of soup or as an appetizer. In a small bowl mix 2 tablespoons olive oil, 1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley, and 2 minced cloves garlic.

Place 12-16 1/4" slices Italian bread on baking sheet. Run under the broiler for 60 seconds to lightly toast.

Remove from oven and spread garlic mixture on each slice.

Run under broiler again for another 60 seconds.

If desired, top bread with shredded mozzarella cheese and broil an additional 15 seconds until cheese is melted.

Madame von Meatball: How it All Began

Holy schmidt, I found my old recipe book.

Does everyone have something like this at one point or another? A notebook or composition book with recipes torn from magazines and newspapers, some pasted or taped in, some loose? This was mine. I'm looking through the pages as if looking through an old yearbook.

Oh my God, the eggplant rollatini. I made this dish for the first time when Jeeps and I were dating, at his parents house in Ridgefield. I laugh to think about this now. I just went over with a grocery bag of ingredients and the recipe torn out of Redbook magazine, took over their kitchen and made dinner one night. Thank God my future in-laws were such groovy people. I really need to make this again...

*Gasp* The nectarine-kiwi tart! I never made this but I had aspirations to. I mean look at it, is that not divine?

And then, from myriad of clippings tucked between the pages, I found this:

This, my friends, is what I wrote down one day in the spring of 2001, when my mother came over to my house in Croton Falls to teach me how to make meatballs.

We were a wreck.

Not because of anything bad between us. We were just on shaky ground. Two years prior, we had closed the dance school my mother had run for over 30 years, the school where I had grown up, and where I had taught with her for 9 years. We lived, ate, drank and breathed the school. I'm sure it wasn't all we talked about, but it seemed like it was all we talked about. 

Now, suddenly, our common thread was tied off and clipped. Suddenly there were awkward silences between us. I felt like I had to get to know my mother all over again, and she me.

I was also in the grip of serious post-partum depression. I was twelve pounds underweight, fighting terrible anxiety attacks, trying to deal with going back to work, trying to figure out motherhood as well as daughterhood.

My mother came over to cook. I know she was upset and scared for me, but she was so gentle. She didn't offer advice, she didn't try to fix it. She just came over to cook.  

We made meatballs in gravy. I think we may have even made spanikopita that day, too, but I mostly remember making meatballs. 

I remember asking her, for the first time, "Did you want to have a lot of children?" (There is just my brother and me, but I wondered what her vision of a family had been when she was young). I remember her drinking a cup of coffee and furrowing her brow before she responded, as if this was the first time anybody had asked her. We talked about children. We talked about mothers. We talked about food. Together, stumbling, we began the steps of a new dance.

It was the day my mother began to become my friend.

I make meatballs by rote and instinct now. I don't need these pieces of paper anymore. But I'm going to keep them forever because they are more, so much more than a recipe.

Madame von Meatball Fails

I swear I don't know how these things happen. Pandagirl had a friend sleeping over tonight and both girls asked to help me make dinner, which was going to be Swedish meatballs over egg noodles with broccoli on the side. Simple. No-brainer. And I already had the ground turkey defrosted because I have my head in the game!

Sort of.

Anyway, much like meatloaf, it feels ridiculous to give a meatball recipe because everyone has their own method and madness. So the charm here lies in the girls making them.

Very quickly this was 2 eggs with some fresh breadcrumbs, dried minced onion, parmesan, a squeeze of mustard, a squeeze of ketchup, and fresh parsley. Ground turkey mixed in, form into balls, brown in the skillet.

Roll the montage!

When nice and browned, I added 1/2 cup white wine and 1/2 cup chicken broth, lowered the heat, covered and let simmer while I finished up the noodles and broccoli.

Then I took the meatballs out, turned up the heat, mixed 1/4 cup chicken broth with 2 tablespoons of Wondra, and whisked that into the pan (I'm actually figuring this gravy thing out).

Then the meatballs went back into the gravy for a few minutes, last touches here and there, plate up the money shot, a sprinkle of parsley, zoom in:

And then we were in business for a lovely dinner downstairs while watching E. T. (which the kids have never seen)

90 seconds into the movie, Panda says, "Mom, these meatballs are really spicy."

"Yeah, they really are," says her friend.

"I don't like them," Redman said, the picture of despondency.  

He loves meatballs and I'd already gotten the pre-emptive, "Mom you make the best dinner" while they were still cooking. He looked at me now like I owed him money.

"But that's impossible," I said, sitting down and picking up my fork. "We didn't put anything in them that was spicy."  

I took a bite. Spicy. Like hot spicy. Hot Italian sausage spicy, what the hell? I put down my plate, went back upstairs, dug through the garbage to find the ground turkey container. I brought the edges of the cut plastic shrink wrap together to reassemble the label and read: Pre-spiced Ground Turkey, Italian sausage flavoring.

Son of a bitch.

"They're not that bad," Jeeps said comfortingly.

The kids ignored him and the meatballs, and ate all the noodles and broccoli.

I sulked.

Let's talk tofu...(and Joe)

"A brick of tofu. Gently warmed in brown butter."

So sayeth my friend Mieke, recounting tales of her mother's horrible, yet memorable cooking. This meal sounded particularly dire.

I've tried to make tofu memorable a bunch of different ways over the years, and when Panda was 2 or 3, I hit upon this sentence in The Enchanted Broccoli Forest (one of the Moosewood cookbooks): "Cut into cubes, dust with cornstarch and fry in sesame oil."

I cut, dusted and fried, and that's the way I've made it ever since. The kids eat it, we eat it. You can debate the healthiness either way but if you're trying to go meatless a few nights a week, it's a sure thing.

And we have Joe on our side.

I drive my friend Stacie crazy when I go on about Trader Joe's—apparently he does not reside south of the Mason-Dixon line—but I can't help it. I don't know what I'd do without him. He is a harried mother's true friend. Especially when it comes to the frozen food section, which is filled with staples of last-minute-whip-up-ability. Vegetable birds nests (little latke-type fritters of potato, carrot, onion and scallion); spanikopita triangles; different kinds of gyoza (so essential to Thai coconut soup).

Best of all, vegetable fried rice. Can't be without three or four bags of this stuff in the freezer at all times. Redman will eat fried rice down to the last grain and it's one of my best fallbacks after scrambled eggs. In fact, I put a scrambled egg in it.

Tofu with Fried Rice à la Trader Joe-San

• 1 brick of extra-firm tofu, drained on paper towels
• 1/4 cup cornstarch
• Canola and sesame oil
• Kosher salt
• 1 or 2 bags prepared vegetable fried rice
• 1 or 2 eggs

Cut tofu into 1" cubes, as such (and yes, I DO have to show all the steps because I'm very proud of how I cut the cubes with one hand while holding a camera in the other, do you mind?):

Heat a skillet over medium heat. Add 2 tablespoons canola oil and one tablespoon sesame oil.

Yes, that is a reused ziplock bag which at one time did hold Panda's collection of Silly Bandz.  Good eye!

Put cornstarch in a ziplock bag, add tofu. Zip the bag. Make sure it's zipped. Check again (can you tell I've made this mistake too many times?). If the bag is confirmed as zipped, shake to coat the cubes thoroughly.

Fry in the oil, shaking the pan often so that all sides are browned. Transfer to a paper-towel lined serving dish and sprinkle with salt. Add another tablespoon oil to same skillet and cook rice until thawed, stirring often. If desired, scramble eggs, making small pieces, and stir into rice.

Shown above is just one bag of rice, and all this here will feed the 4 of us with nothing left. If you have more people, or hungrier people, it's easily augmented by using another bag, or steaming some broccoli or asparagus and serving with soy sauce or any asian dipping sauce.

“To the ruler, the people are heaven; to the people, food is heaven.”

— Ancient Chinese Proverb

French Onion Soup

And suddenly it's Tuesday, the craziest day of my week. Pandagirl has back-to-back dance classes in two different places so I am on the run pretty much from 4:15 onward. Today I dropped her at her first class, then took Redman to the library, because he asked and I never refuse a request to go to the library. I swung Redman back home, dashed inside to grab something I'd forgotten, and Jeeps posed the $1,000,000 question:  "What do you wanna do about dinner?"

"Can you manage French Onion Soup?" I asked.

"Um...sure."

French Onion soup à la Wife Running out the Door

(Ingredients will be listed as dialogue because really, you had to be there.)

S: OK, so that plastic bag over there? It has two bags of onions, you're going to use one of them

J:  All of the onions in this bag?

S: (Calling from other room, grabbing things) All of them. Sliced. Then you're going to caramelize them down, use the orange pot. Low flame, take about 20 minutes, you want them really...

J: I got it. In olive oil?

S: And a little butter. (Opening fridge) 2 or 3 sprigs of this thyme go in with the onions, you'll pick them out later. (Opening cabinet) Here's a thing of beef broth.

J: Use all of it?

S: All of it, you add it after the onions are done. (Opening different cabinet) This is cooking sherry. Two tablespoons.

J: What about the bread and cheese...

S: (Opening freezer) Here's bread and—

J: Where'd you get this, it's already sliced?

S: I bought it Sunday when I went food shopping but I knew we wouldn't use it right away, so I sliced it and froze it.

J: You're so smart. Cheese? Do we have any of that Gruyère?

S: (Opening fridge) It's right here, you just have to grate it. About 2 cups. OK. You good?

J: I'm good. I got it. Go.

S: (Dashing for the door) Um... Can you take some pictures?

J: Yes, dear.

I married a prince.

So during ballet class I got only 2 pings from home. First time sending a picture of onions cooking: Brown enough?

Little more, I texted back. Don't forget thyme.

Then another picture about 15 minutes later. Better?

Perfect, I typed. Add broth.  Cover.

Panda and I got home at 7:20 to the most amazing smelling kitchen. And this:

I Heart Pizza

When did Valentine's Day become Halloween in February? I'm looking at the sugar loot the kids brought home from school today and feeling sort of depressed. The candy is all very carefully cataloged and bagged.  Any actual Valentines are crumpled up at the bottom of the backpack. This makes me sad. Why is it more about candy and less about the message?

Few years ago I decided to hell with Hallmark, I was taking February 14th in another direction. I made a Valentine for Jeeps (because I like to) and then I made Valentines for my circle of close girlfriends. And I've been doing it since.  I love it. I love making them, I love sending them, and I love that they get kept.

Blah blah blah. Rant over.

Being that Valentine's Day is a Monday this year, which is an easy day around here, I wanted to make something special for the kids. I thought individual pizzas would be fun, even more so if I could cut them into heart-shapes.

I think they came out well. They were made with love. And they got eaten.

Sunday Dinner

You know they say Sunday night is the new Monday morning? I don't feel compelled to make a big, nice dinner every Sunday. But sometimes the stars align and the right things are on sale at the grocery store and I have my general shit together, and so am able to pull off something big and nice for Sunday. If I am really on top of my game, I can get dinner on the table between 5 and 5:30 and be done by 6:15, giving the kids roughly two hours to deal with it being Sunday.

I was on top of my game tonight.

I found a rather pretty pork roast at DeCicco's and decided to do a down-home fare of roast pork, baked potatoes, stewed apples and asparagus.

Sunday Roast Pork

Put roast in a ziplock bag. Add 1/4 cup olive oil, 2 tablespoons minced garlic, 2-3 fresh sprigs of rosemary, chopped, 1 teaspoon of kosher salt and a few generous grinds of the pepper mill. If you have whole-grain mustard, a tablespoon of that is nice, too, but I was out.

Close the bag, pressing as much air out as possible, then start mooshing the roast around, getting it coated well with all the oil and herbs.  You're really massaging it but mooshing sounds less weird.

Let sit for at least half an hour, up to whatever amount of time you have available. I left it an hour while I ran and picked up Panda from a playdate.

Preheat oven to 350. Slide roast out of bag into baking dish. You may want to pick off some of the larger pieces of rosemary.

Roasting pork is tricky. It's very lean meat and can be easily overcooked. I consulted a few cookbooks and a few online sources and set my oven probe to go off when the roast registered 160. I tented it with foil and let it sit 10 minutes while I finished everything else. It looked plenty juicy when I was slicing and eating it off the carving board, but shortly after, at table, I noticed it was just slightly dry. That real annoying slight, like you just missed it. Taking it out of the oven at 150-155 and letting the carryover heat take it up to 160 would've been perfect. Live and learn.

Wishing you and yours a peaceful Sunday. By whatever name you call him, God bless you tonight.

Stewed Apples

Stewed apples serve a few purposes:

• They are a great side to any kind of roast but roast pork in particular. They're like besties
• They can be served hot, room temperature, or cold.
• Kids seem to like them.
• The leftovers are very nice warmed up and spooned over vanilla ice cream. Or oatmeal, if you're one of those people.
• They use up the stash of questionable apples in the colander. You know, the ones that nobody wants to eat because of a few bruises, but tossing them seems such a waste. Now the dilemma is solved. Bruises matter not. Even punky apples may contribute. Just peel them and gouge away any truly nasty bits, we do have standards here.
• Raisins make a perfect counterpart to apples. You could experiment with any kind of dried fruit—cherries, cranberries, etc—but if you start stewing prunes, expect an intervention.

Stewed Apples

Start some water boiling in a saucepan with a couple broken cinnamon sticks and a squeeze of lemon juice. If you, like me, are a cardamom lover and have pods on hand, add two or three, but remember how many because you have to pick them out later.

Peel 4-5 apples.  ore and slice into wedges. How thick depends on your preference. Thinner slices will fall apart more easily, thicker gives you more "chunk".

Add apples to boiling water along with 1/2 cup of raisins. Add a few shakes from your ground cinnamon jar. Stir well, then cover, lower heat and let simmer 10-15 minutes.

Drain the fruit in a colander. Discard the cinnamon sticks and cardamom pods if you used them. Slide into serving dish until you are ready for it. It will wait quietly and not disappoint you.

Once I made this using a lemon herbal teabag in the water. It totally worked. You could also peel and slice up some fresh ginger to give it that kind of kick. This is really nice to have at Thanksgiving, as a companion to cranberry sauce.

You can also make a lot and freeze it. What more could you ask for?

Chicken Not Pie

Behold last night's dinner:

There's a Boston Market not far from Panda's dance studio, and what's great is you can go to the Boston Market Website and order ahead of time, and it will be there waiting for you when you arrive for pick-up. It's a beautiful thing.

I always get a second chicken because I like to have it around for lunch the next day (or breakfast, but I'm weird that way). But with one thing and another and a four-hour training class, I didn't nibble at it much so I had a lot to use for dinner. But what exactly to do with it?

Of course. Chicken Pot Pie. There's a recipe for it in one of my cookbooks and AND! How awesome is this, there is a package of frozen puff pastry in my refrigerator! Madame von Prepared! HAH! Stuff like this never works out for me, I rarely have something like that on hand... Um... How long has this box been in here anyway? I don't remember. Does puff pastry go bad? (Opening box, tearing open packet)

Um, yeah it does.

Shit.

OK. OK. There's another box in the freezer. How long does it take to defrost?  40 minutes.  40 minutes...OK, I can wait 40 minutes. I really want to make this. It's gonna be great.

Wait.

I stop and think about chicken pot pie. Think about putting individual, pastry-topped bowls in front of each kid. What are they going to do. Really. I know my spawn. They're going to peel off the pastry, sniff and pick at it, and not eat it. Who am I kidding? I put the box back in the freezer. I will make chicken pot pie without the pie.

Chicken Not Pie

• Leftover roast chicken, white and/or dark meat, taken off the bone and shredded or cubed, to make about 2-3 cups
• 3-4 carrots, peeled and diced
• 3-4 ribs of celery, peeled and diced
• 1 onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 1/4 cups chicken broth
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch or Wondra
• 1/2 cup plain yogurt
• 1/2 cup frozen peas
• 1/2 cup frozen corn
• 1/4 cup chopped parsley
• salt, pepper, 1/4 tsp each dried thyme and dried rosemary, or one small sprig of each, fresh.

Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Saute onion, garlic, carrots and celery about 5 minutes until tender. Add 1 cup of the chicken stock. In a small bowl, whisk the cornstarch with the remaining 1/4 cup of broth until smooth, then whisk in the yogurt. Add mixture to skillet and combine with veggies. Bring to a simmer. Add chicken, salt and pepper, rosemary and thyme. Cover, lower heat, and simmer for 20 minutes. Add corn, peas and parsley and stir.

At this point, if you were making pot pie, you'd put the chicken and vegetables into small bowls or a pie plate, and cover with the puff pastry and bake. I made fusili and served it over that.

"Oh look," said Jeeps. "Chicken fricassee."

"Exactly," I said.

And everyone ate it.

Nursery Supper

Nursery Supper is the meal one partakes with the nanny, in the nursery, while the adults of the household dine in state downstairs. I cannot seem to arrange this in my own household. Probably because I'm one of the adults and I can't be in pajamas in the nursery while my children dine in state. I simply haven't the servants required.

The closest I came to this concept was Playroom Supper, back before house renovations and we had this nifty room off the living room that the kids played and watched TV in. To all intents and purposes it was a nursery, less the sleeping quarters, and though I would not change a thing about the new configuration of the house, I find I do miss that little room. It was cozy, cheerful. Christmas lights were tacked around the windows all year long. The kids' artwork hung on the walls. It had a wicker couch and a little table and chairs, and on nights when Jeeps was working late in the city, I would serve Playroom Supper, and we'd eat at the little table and watch Rachel Ray or House Hunters (this was back when I had control of the TV).

More often than not, what we ate at Playroom Supper was scrambled eggs. Because Rosamunde Pilcher said so in Coming Home:

[Diana] came to settle herself in the corner of the nursery sofa, close to the fire. 'Do you girls want to come down for dinner, or do you want to have nursery supper with Mary?'

"'Do we have to change if we come down for dinner?' Loveday asked.

"'Oh, darling, what a silly question, of course you have to.'

"'In that case, I think we'll just stay up here and eat scrambled eggs or something.'

"Diana raised her lovely eyebrows. 'What about Judith?'

"Judith said, 'I love scrambled eggs, and I haven't got a dress to change into.'

"'Well, if that's what you both want, I'll tell Nettlebed. Hetty can carry up a tray for you.' She reached into the pocket of her pale-grey cardigan and produced her cigarettes and her gold lighter. She lit one and reached for an ashtray.  'Judith, what about that beautiful box you brought with you? You promised you'd show it to me after tea. Bring it over here and we'll look at it now.'"

I, too, love scrambled eggs, not only for myself to enjoy but as my favorite fall-back for dinner on those nights when I can't think of a thing, or the kids just seem too tired to contemplate anything more complicated than eggs and toast. When I hear friends tell of children who don't or won't eat scrambled eggs, I try not to look horrified. No judgement on them, it's just that I don't know what I'd do. Cold cereal, I guess. Bread and milk? My very dear friend Francie served waffles and fruit salad for dinner the other night. She's one of my food heroines.

In Home Cooking, Mrs. Colwin devotes an entire chapter to nursery food, which I could happily transpose here and force you to read. But I won't do that, I will just put it in a china plate with the letters of the alphabet around the rim, and spoonfeed you the brilliant essence:

"A long time ago it occurred to me that when people are tired and hungry, which in adult life is most of the time, they do not want to be confronted by an intellectually challenging meal: they want to be consoled...

Of course I do not mean that you should feed your friends pastina and beef tea (although I would be glad to be served either). But dishes such as shepherd's pie and chicken soup are a kind of edible therapy. After a good nursery dinner you want your guests to smile happily and say with childlike contentment: 'I haven't had that in years.'"

Children cannot resist this kind of food because, I feel, it is trustworthy. It is solid, dependable and, most of all, recognizable. There are no tricks with a scrambled egg. Nothing fishy about a meatball on top of pasta. And if it is a perfect bite-sized meatball for their little mouth, so much the better. In fact, with kids, the smaller the food, the better. They are born noshers. If life could be served on a cracker or picked up with a toothpick, what a wonderful world it would be.

Last night's lid potatoes illustrate this perfectly. When I serve my kids nursery food, their manners materialize, unprompted and impeccable. They turn downright lovey. "Oh, Mom, this is delicious, I love this dinner. Thank you."

Who can resist?