COOK BOOK?!

I'm finally considering embarking on my cookbook project, "South Dakota Phyllis!" More info to come!!!

It's Fig Season Y'all!

Hi! Yes, it's been almost 8 months since I've written. Bad me! But if you read my last post you'll understand why. Sometimes I just need a break from blogging. (I really wish we could come up with a cooler name.)

Anyway!

This will be short but sweet (and savory)! I made up a new quesadilla the other day and it was awesome so I'm gonna share it with you. Because I love quesadillas and I'm always looking for ways to make it more interesting than just tortillas and cheese in the micro for 45 seconds, I always pull out the basic ingredients (see previous) from my fridge and then keep looking for what else I could add. This time I pulled out Parmesan, fresh figs, and arugula. Three of your faves too? I thought so.

How to do it:
Just get a big plate and two small corn tortillas. Put the tortillas on the plate next to each other. Slice medium white cheddar on one side and Parmesan on the other. Microwave for 45 seconds (or do it on the stove, you snob). Then smush sliced fresh figs into the cheddar side and smush the arugula into the parmesan side, connect the two sides, cheese-sides together, slice pie-like and enjoy!

Sorry no picture with this one. I ate it before I could think straight, it looked and tasted so good. If I make it again, I'll add a pic, which will probably be very very soon.

Love you!
XO
K

I Sing My Blog Electric

I was just inspired by an essay by Jonathan Lethem on Harpers.org called The Dreaming Jaw, The Salivating Ear, and I know exactly what he means. I think. He's explaining, with marvelous eloquence, how he feels about his long-neglected blog. Again, I think.

When one commits to writing a blog, there's a kind of manic-depression that comes along with it...for me, anyway. There's the manic joy of starting it and the burning excitement of setting off on a new adventure. But then there's the depression that can sometimes come along with the commitment...the depression that rears its ugly head when things start to go off course and the commitment starts to feel more like a burden than a blessing. I feel like a failure when I haven't been kindly, methodically tending my blog. I made a commitment to keep it going, dammit, and any thought of stopping again feels lousy (yet somehow also full of abandon). It's not a job, it's a hobby. It's extra-curricular, it's unnecessary and it's vain, to be truthful. Why should I think people are interested in what I have to say about food let alone any of the blather I'm spouting now?

What I meant to do when I got on my computer 30 minutes ago was to write about how amazing I've felt since going back to 90% raw vegan last Monday. I meant to gush about how much better I sleep and how my jeans are already looser and how I feel like dancing every time I hear music. That's probably more interesting to most people; most of us would rather hear about how we can become better people, right? But instead, I read that essay and felt like anything I would have to say would be useless to anyone who decided to read this and they wouldn't get very far (have you even come this far?) before giving up and opening Facebook in the same tab to see what's new with their other friends.

But that all seems pretty negative, right? And I'm supposed to be saying no to negative these days. My friend Bree says no to negative and by default, she walks around in a bubble of positive all the time. That is seriously great for her, although I don't think she sleeps much. I think there's something healthy about looking at the things one does with one's time and admitting that they aren't necessarily as fruitful as they promised to be when they were newly embarked upon. I'm not saying my blog is like that, ok, maybe I am. I do recall telling myself I would come here every day and say at least something. That didn't happen. I also started out with the intention that it would be mostly about food, and it seems to be going in a completely different direction.

What am I trying to say?

I think that blogs are weird. I think they're selfish and indulgent and over-used and I'm totally guilty of all three of those charges. I have no more reason to be blogging than you or my neighbor or the homeless woman sleeping in my "secure" Bank of America ATM location. In fact, if she were to blog, I'm sure it would be a hell of a lot more interesting than what I have to say.

By the way: Don't those people on the subway know I can hear their music coming through the outside of their earbuds? Don't they know how annoying they are and how silly they look? It takes all the mystery out of closing yourself off from the world with headphones when people can hear you jamming out to Barry Manilow. Doesn't Apple know about this problem?

But I digress. I bet this all still sounds negative, but the funny thing is, I've been much more positive and open to everything around me this week and this current spouting of ideas is just a symptom of that gift. Eating foods straight from the earth; organic raw fruit and vegetables and grains has completely (en)lightened me. Again. There's nothing in the world more effective and lasting than massively clearing all the clutter from the inside. Processed foods cause physical inner clutter and I've rid myself of that burden in so short a time. I've done this before and, again, committed myself to it for life, but then life gets in the way and can sometimes turn all our commitments upside down and dump them out into the rubbish bin. This time, like the last time, I felt amazing the second day and even though I had some major detox symptoms (my legs killed!)I felt more on top of the world than I have since the last time I was this clean. I still feel the lightness and the energy; it never really goes away unless I revert back to my old habits, which I've certainly done more than once before, but always hope to not do again. That space and energy makes room for the free-flow of thoughts and inspiration and here tonight's thoughts land, on this post, on my blog, for all to see.

If you have the time and want to read some amazing blogiture, check out the essay that spawned this schizophrenic post:
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/10/0082674
And look for my next post which will be about, well, I really don't know.
Enjoy!

I'm Back and I'm Proud

You probably (haven't) noticed that I've been absent for the past (almost) Month. That's because every spare moment I had to be on the computer I was writing a friggin' novel, people. Yes I was! Woot! And here's a little shout out to my girl Dana Reiland who introduced me to it, kept me motivated up to the very end and who also won the contest. Vanilla Shake, baby.

I've never been a part of something like National Novel Writing Month before. I don't even know why it appealed to me. Well, that's not true. I've always thought writing a novel would be neat, but with all the other things I'm doing that I think are neat, it just wasn't on the top of the list.

Enter NaNoWriMo; the perfect excuse to open the laptop and spend lots and lots of time typing for no other reason than getting words out; 50,000 of them to win. That's the concept of NaNoWriMo, just to write write write without preconceptions or judgements or perfectionist tendencies. Just take the risk, go for it, feel it out, if it sucks deal with it later, get it out with abandon. (Sounds kind of like acting... hmm...)

And I did it, my people! It has nothing to do with food. It's a fantasy about parallel universes and it has faeries and witches and talking mirrors and cute boys and lots of forests and fog and horses. And it's the first in a series. Who knows what happens from here, but I'm definitely going to take the next month to fix and revise it. Then maybe I'll start an alternate blog and post a chapter a week or something. Or maybe try to get it published, even though I haven't the slightest idea of how to go about that.

But what matters most is that I accomplished this thing that seemed so abstract and wild when I first sat down to an empty Word document. The higher my word count got, the more invested I became and it essentially came down to a race with myself. I was writing upwards of 6k words a day and one day I wrote almost 10k. That, my people, is insane. Especially when I'm a busy-ish working person!

So here's a "hello again" from being on vacation in novel land. I'm back and I promise I'm going to post about food next time. Also, I've been full-on vegetarian since my last post. Yes, even over Thanksgiving.

Here's to me and Dana and all the other Wrimos who accomplished something amazing. We did it y'all and I'm so proud!!!

http://www.NaNoWriMo.org

Raw Till Dinner and Vegetarian

There comes a time (lots of times) in every chef's life when she must look inward and re-evaluate once again why she does what she does and what it means to her. I've had these moments strike me a few times now and it's happened again. Mostly prompted by the tighter fit of my favorite jeans, but also by seeing Jonathan Safran Foer read from his new book Eating Animals at Barnes and Noble the other night. I had read an excerpt from his book in the New York Times magazine a few weeks back and it affected me. I've always struggled with the paradox of being a gourmet chef and wanting to be a vegetarian. The two can go together of course, there are gourmet vegetarian chefs out there, and I might be one someday, maybe someday soon, but I'm not yet. I still have clients and students who want to eat meat and lots of it. How do I work out being a vegetarian myself for moral and health reasons and still justify cooking up slabs of meat for other people? I need these clients, they're my livelihood. But I want to make this work, I want to be able to be meat-free and still have my job.

I sometimes do this thing called "raw till dinner." It's a way to eat raw without going completely for broke. Dinners usually involves a lot of organic, cage-free, humanely raised eggs with different vegetables or sprouted grain toast with avocados and agave nectar, or some kind of pasta or quinoa. These are delicious dinners and I can make a kickin vegetarian dish. But the one thing I will not become is vegan. If only for the cheese (raw, grass-fed, organic, humane) it's worth not having that title to allow for some gastronomical decadence. I can't honestly live without cheese. Well, I haven't tried, so I don't really know if that's true, but I bet it is.

Anyway, eating this way, vegetarian and raw till dinner, always makes me feel really great. And that's the goal here. I don't fool myself anymore that I can be a size 2 if I really really work at it. I just know that when I'm eating clean foods, most of them vegetables, and filling my body with energy from the earth and sun instead of from sugar and wheat and coffee, I feel light and good and weightless. So size doesn't matter. It comes with the territory that my fave jeans will loosen up a bit, and that's great. But I do it because of how it makes me feel most of all.

I'll still be making food for my clients at least until the new year. I also know I'm gonna have to serve some meat to people to keep the bills paid until something comes along that makes it possible for me to be vegetarian in all aspects of my life. But there are certain things that are important to me, like opposing animal cruelty and keeping my insides free from harmful food, and I will do my best to abide by those personal standards.

I'm sure this will go deeper after I read Eating Animals in it's entirety, and I'll keep you posted on that but for now, I'll continue to post what's going on in my food world. I'll even give you a rundown of what I eat on an average day of raw-vegetarianism. Won't that be fun?

Eggs and Cream = Fritatta!

Well if I do say so myself, I made the most delicious fritatta for my client this week. Fritattas are so easy to make and are fabulously Olde-World French and Tuscan. They look amazing and taste amazing and can be eaten breakfast, lunch and/or dinner. Any fresh ingredients you have on hand can go into them and all you REALLY need are eggs and cream. And for you dieters out there, egg whites and skim milk will work too. (Just not as yummy!) Seriously, I love thin people.

So, in this one, I threw:

Feta cheese, fresh sauteed red bell peppers, fresh sauteed mushrooms and fresh basil. The one I make tonight for my man and myself will have some chicken sausage in it too. Here's the basic way to go about it:

1-Crack about 5-6 eggs into a big bowl and whisk.
2-Pour in about 2-3 cups cream, 1/2 and 1/2 or whatever and whisk.
3-Saute whatever veggies you want in an oven-friendly skillet.
4-Turn the oven on broil.
5-Add the egg mixture to the veggies in the skillet and sprinkle in (lots of) the cheese of your choice.
6-Turn the stove to low and cover the skillet.
7-After a while and when the outside seems done but the top needs some heat, stick it in the oven and broil until golden brown.
8-Remove from oven WITH AN OVEN MITT!
9-Let cool, slice, and indulge!

Bon Appetit.

Lasagna From the Scratchiest Scratch (Almost)

Every time I make lasagna from scratch, I wonder why I don't do it every week without fail. It is the most delicious, mouthwatering, lovely, indescribable culinary experience I've ever had, and it just seems weird to say that. It might make more sense to me if that sentence described something with truffles, something exotic or something with loads of dark chocolate. Or something. But no, for me, it's Emilia-Romagna-style many-many-super-thin-layer-lasagna, all three components made from scratch.



The paper thin pasta made from a simple mixture of bread flour, semolina flour and eggs is so wonderfully delicate that you only need to boil it for mere seconds before prepping it to go into the pan.



The Bolognese sauce starts with finely, finely minced Mire Poix (a flavor booster of 1 part onion to 1 1/2 parts each carrot and celery), lots of butter, fresh pureed Italian tomatoes, white wine and well-marbled, well-crumbled ground chuck. It simmers for at least three hours, but all day is best. It's especially great when you make it in the morning and set it to the lowest of possible simmers and your house smells like Italian heaven all day.

The third component is Bechamel, also from scratch; a simple roux of flour and butter, added to scalded milk that's been steeped with 1/2 an onion and a few peppercorns. Add a grating of fresh nutmeg and you have lasagna-binding perfection.




When it comes time to get the gorgeous creation into the oven, the layering is the most wonderful part. I love to see how many super-thin layers I can get out of my components. Sometimes I only manage six, but once I managed eleven! Oh, heaven, you are eleven! Of course one of the layers is freshly grated Parmesan cheese, and that's what you end with on top, but that's the only cheese involved in this amazing invention. And it only spends 15 minutes in the oven!

This is so different from the thick, hefty, chewy, chunky lasagna you get at the Olive Garden or frozen from a box. every simple step in making this beauty is delicate, even down to the eating of it. I just cannot plow through a serving of my lasagna. It's because every bite demands full attention of every part of the tasting experience. It looks delicate in the pan, delicate on the plate, on the fork, and feels delicate in the mouth. Nothing convinces me more of the importance of cooking foods from scratch than my lasagna from Emilia-Romagna.