to anyone in need of a stiff drink...

history comes alive, kids.

news flash: president eats!

ok, it's a puff-piece but it is kind of awesome. some foodies have critiqued the president and the vp for going "medium well" but you wouldn't want some kid getting e.coli in peoria, ill and have his mom blame the president for setting a bad example, would you?

i also like that biden got a crazy hamburger with swiss cheese, jalapenos, and ketchup, which he topped off with a root beer. this guy is nothing if not unpredictable.

isn't it funny how awkward they look with cash???

addendum

here's the finished product (after i remembered to take some pictures of it...)



a really shite picture but i wanted you to be able to see the bubbles in the dough.

'za chez nous

alas, i've got an insane backlog of kitchen projects to blog about...i'm so behind schedule that i thought i'd just go ahead and write about tonight's dinner and make up the rest a bit at a time.

so, we're on this ridiculous food budget ($82 bucks a week for two, organic and local) which means that when the mood strikes us, we're trying to channel our "let's go grab a pizza and a beer" energy into "let's make pizza and drink whatever is left in the two rando bottles of wine we have in the fridge." j found a recipe for something called "pizza bianca" in one of our old cook's illustrated magazines and we decided to make that for our sunday dinner.

personally, i find the recipes in "ci" (for those inclined to confuse that with "si," this is the one with no pictures, no advertisements, and no annual tits and ass issue...) a little cumbersome. usually, they are tried and tested and come out very well--but invariably there are more than four steps which just overwhelms me. (i'm more of an intuitive cook). anyhow, j loves direction and exactitude. he finds freedom in the kitchen to be entirely too much of a good thing and he often becomes agitated when he tries to make something from some loose recipe that suggests a lot of dashes and pinches.

okay, so tonight, j took on pizza bianca...in the pictures, it looked like kind of like an upscale sicilian pizza dough, cooked in a rimmed baking sheet instead of directly on a baking stone. we topped ours with some fresh mozzarella and a little leftover tomato sauce from friday night's spag & meatballs feed. i also plucked one lone basil leaf off of our new little seedlings so we'd have a little green on top. j minced some garlic (remember folks, take out the green middles that run through the cloves this time of year--they're bitter) and threw that on too.

so, pizza bianca, faithfully transcribed from ci, september/october 2008. after the recipe, i'll make a few comments...

pizza bianca
------------

3 cups unbleached ap flour (we are devoted to king arthur)
1 2/3 cups water, room temp
1 1/4 tsp table salt (this is the iodized morton's stuff--we don't have any of that around so j used sea salt)
1 1/2 tsp instant yeast (this is the kind that comes in a jar and says bread machine yeast--buy a jar and keep it in the fridge)
1 1/4 tbsp sugar
5 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 tsp kosher salt

1. Place towel or shelf liner beneath stand mixer to prevent wobbling (seriously, this is in the instructions...ci is anality personified...). Mix flour, water, and table salt in bowl of stand mixer fitted with dough hook on low speed until no patches of dry flour remain, 3-4 minutes, occasionally scraping sides and bottom of bowl. Turn off mixer and let dough rest, 20 minutes.

2. Sprinkle yeast and sugar over dough. Knead on low speed until fully combined, 1-2 minutes, occasionally scraping sides and bottom of bowl. Increase speed to high and knead until dough is glossy, smooth, and pulls away from sides of bowl, 6-10 minutes. (dough will only pull away from sides while mixer is on).

3. Using fingers, coat large bowl with 1 tbps olive oil, rubbing excess oil from fingers onto rubber spatula. Using oiled spatula, transfer dough to bowl and pour 1 tbsp oil over top. Flip dough over once so it is well coated with oil; cover tightly with plastic wrap. Let dough rise (you need a room temp around 75--i you're house isn't that warm yet, turn the oven on to the lowest heat for about five minutes; turn off, open door for about 5 minutes more, and place dough in oven, with door cracked. When it's time to heat up the oven for baking the 'za, take the bowl out and leave it on top of the stove) until nearly tripled in volume and large bubbles have formed, 2-2 1/2 hours.

4. One hour before baking, adjust oven rack to middle position, place pizza stone on rack (a completely worthwhile investment, btw), and heat oven to 450 degrees.

5. (I promise, we're almost through...) Coat rimmed baking sheet with 2 tbsps olive oil. Using rubber spatula (remember, the one you coated with olive oil?), turn the (very wet, very flubbery) dough out onto baking sheet along with any oil in the bowl. Using fingertips, press dough toward edges of pan, taking care not to tear it (this is the fun part). The dough doesn't really want to tear but it doesn't want to stretch either. If is makes it hard to spread out, leave it be for a few minutes and return to it after it's gotten used to being flat. This was EXTREMELY forgiving dough, though, so don't be nervous. Just try not to tamp down all those gorgeous bubbles. Okay, so you let the dough rest (after stretching it out) for another 5-10 minutes. Then, using a fork, you poke some holes in the surface (j forgot to do this, no harm, no foul). If you're going to use cheese and sauce (like we did), omit kosher salt. If you are going to bake it au natural, sprinkle a tsp of kosher salt on the dough. You could also choose to add rosemary or thyme or any other hearty herb at this stage.

6. So, now, the moment you've been waiting for. You put the baking sheet in the oven (on top of the baking stone...) and bake for 20-30 minutes. In our case, we took it out after about 15 minutes (it was already browning up really nicely with lots of lovely golden brown spots forming on the top), threw some thinly sliced fresh mozz and a few dollops of our leftover sauce (it was very thick, btw. I'd avoid using a watery sauce) on top and put it back in the oven for another 10 minutes or so. At that point, we pulled it out, threw the garlic on top, and baked for another five. The cheese was adhered to the crust and the sauce looked set. We pulled it out and J ran under the whole thing with a spatula to make sure it hadn't stuck (it had in a few places so he unstuck it...). You want it to come out easily (the dough will be very crisp so this is not hard to achieve). Put it on a wooden board (we use our biggest cutting board; plastic will make the bottom go soggy sooner), cut it up with a pizza wheel, and mangia.

All in all, this sounds difficult but it was spectacularly easy--especially considering how well it turned out. You could top it with any number of lovely things; I was thinking of caramelized onions and goat cheese myself. Maybe a few quartered figs at the last minute? You could also make a nice asiago and garlic pizza with some red chili flakes. You get the idea.

The dough itself turned out beautifully...light, airy, and crisp. Even made the craptastic wine we drank with it seem sophisticated...

photos to follow momentarily...they didn't come out too well but we are dining by candlelight.

dessert is buttermilk panna cotta with strawberry-kumquat compote. yeah, we wish you were here too.

a taste of things to come...

can anyone actually believe i'm going to do this???

good news from kansas too...just not from florida.

i could make a joke about the author's name or i could be mature. here, read.

Just saying hello

My first contribution... Hey... Everybody....particularly the ever-hounding over-powerful da-shey. Talk to you later.

mellow yellow

Pursuing knowledge for its own sake is something, don't get me wrong, but on the dark and lonely days, there is no denying that the best thing about being an academic is, of course, mobility. All the long, seemingly endless years of grad school, the tortuous hours of dissertation writing, the time lost in the dark, dusty stacks of libraries and archives, the pervasive and anxiety-inducing feeling of never, ever being finished with anything, ever, and the students who interrupt your lectures to ask where the bathroom is...and, of course, the paycheck that never covers the bills (okay, i realize this is my fault more than the Academy's fault...), all this seems like a trifling price to pay when you realize that on a Monday like a thousand other Mondays you and your family will leave your home on the bitter, wind-swept prairie (or just the snow-covered suburb) for a warm, sunny place where you are expected to do nothing but write, read, and cook. It makes it all worthwhile.

And, so, on a winter's day last week, while most of you were recovering from ice storms or snow storms or some other kind of bone-chillingly cold storms, while you were sitting in your cold houses cowering under your cold blankets, I was picking fifty organic lemons off a tree in central Florida in shirt-sleeves. And, somehow, while you are now throwing things at the screen, I'm hoping that this post helps you enjoy, vicariously of course, some of the warmth and rejuvenation I have experienced here this winter. (If not, well, make the booze anyway. It will keep you warm).

The lay of the land here, about an hour and a half south of Orlando, is all citrus, all the time. While we are smack-dab in the middle of vast, commercially owned orchards that rely on copious amounts of chemical fertilizer and migrant labor to produce the juice you may be drinking as you read this, the small plot of land we occupy here has been owned by the same family for over a hundred years and possesses a small grove of oranges, lemons, and grapefruits (plus a few guava plants and mango bushes) that get very little human attention save for picking. These trees are gnarly, mottled, ugly things. But my how they make beautiful fruit. When Jonathan and I decided to come down here for the winter this year, the promise of abundant, organic lemons was foremost on my mind. More than the rest, the remove from daily cares of life back in Lawrence, the time to read and write, the dream, for those of you who know about my obsession with this stuff, was to make enough limoncello to see me through the rest of the year. Finally, after watching the little lemons turn from their promising chartreuse to their full, sunny yellow, the day arrived.

Upon my description of limoncello, a friend who has never had it suggested that it sounded like the magical nectar that the elves gave to Frodo to bring him back to life after he was attacked by wraiths. I couldn't really have said it better myself. For if ever I were to find myself having been poked in the chest by a sharp stick that may represent a manifestation of pure, unadulterated evil, limoncello would be a fine remedy--perhaps the only remedy, indeed. I say this because even if it didn't save me, it would make dying a lot more enjoyable. You see, to the uninitiated (and you should initiate yourselves tout de suite), limoncello is a viscous liquid that tastes like life--sunny, sweet, tangy life. It is ice cold, and, upon being poured, it looks like the most gorgeous thing you've ever seen...in or out of a frosty little glass. Citrusy yet somehow milky, it wants to fall down your throat, it wants to give you vitality. Unlike wine or beer or scotch, which want to stay in your mouth to mellow before they go down the hatch, and unlike vodka which demands that you swallow or die, limoncello just happens to you, not unlike love really. And so, having a lot of it on hand, just sitting in your freezer in anticipation of you drinking it--even if you don't expect any terrible encounters with wraiths and even if you're not on some sort of epic quest to destroy a world-ending piece of bling--seems an excellent idea.

So, you get it, right? I can stop talking about why you should care and talk about how we made this and how, in, like 60 days, we are going to have a couple of nice big vats of beautiful lovely luscious heavenly miraculous...limoncello.

Well, first, the recipe. Recipes for limoncello--which is, of course, Italian in origin--are many and varied and there is at least one website devoted solely to experimenting with various preparations. The website is super useful and betrays its author's obsession (which would appear to well-eclipse my own) with this particular eau de vie. I've used the basic recipe listed there as a baseline. What the future holds is unknowable (for at least 69 or so more days) but I can't imagine it won't be amazing.

The critical thing to understand about making limoncello is that instant gratification is completely and unalterably elusive in anything but the most purely aesthetic sense. You will need to comfort yourself with the sight of a glorious jug of lemony-yellow liquid just sitting in your refrigerator among the half-eaten take out and the semi-full pickle jars lurking in there for two-three months before you can do any drinking at all. But, there it will sit and when you need to feel like life is full of promise and possibility, open the fridge door, move the pickles out of the way, and behold (then, drink something else). Considering how unrelentingly cold and gray this winter has been for many of you, I should think that the mere sight of this jar of sunshine should have a salutary effect, but I am sitting in a sundress right now, in early February, next to an open window, so maybe I shouldn't be presumptuous about such things...

Anyhow, back to the recipe. So,making limoncello demands a two phase process. First, you flavor the alcohol with lemon, then you sweeten the flavored alcohol.

For phase I, you will need:

17 lemons, organic and unwaxed if possible (wax scrubbed off if you can't find them unwaxed--use a veg brush or a plastic pot scrubbed to do this)

2 750ml bottles of pure grain alcohol (this was hard to find so I went with cheap, 80 proof vodka)



(Ain't that just a bowl of freakin' sunshine...)

Anyhow, you will want to wash and scrub, as noted above, your lemons. Then you'll want to start distilling your booze. So, in lieu of getting everclear, which I totally spaced on at the ABC, I got 80 proof vodka and then decided to purify it. You want the liquor to serve as a blank slate for the lemon flavor, with no cheap vodka-ish aroma or aftertaste. How do you do this, pray tell. You begin the incredibly tedious process of filtering your liquor FIVE times or more, if you can stand it (I couldn't). You can use your Brita or Pur water pitcher--just remember to change the filters before you return to filtering water--lest disaster (though potentially pretty funny disaster) ensues.



While that is going on (and it will go on for a veeeeeeerrrrryyyy looooonnnggg ttttiiimmmeee), you need to be zesting like you've never zested before. A microplane is the tool of choice here because a box grater, no matter how fine, just won't quite let you get all the oily goodness out of the zest. Here's what the whole scene is going to look like. It's very CSI...



You'll want to have some large jars ready (uh, should have told you that earlier). I used a 64 oz Mason jar for each batch. And, I had cleaned them the night before and allowed them to dry upside down on a clean towel (should've told you that too...). The 64 oz jar holds just about all of the 1.5 liters of booze plus the zest. You'll lose about a half cup of vodka and because its monetary (and gustatory) value will have increased exponentially because of the amazing amount of time it took to filter it, I suggest that you make yourself a cocktail for your troubles. I had fresh orange juice on hand so I just tossed together a Harvey Wallbanger. (Harvey makes very good company in the kitchen as it turns out; he's quiet but supportive).

Okay, so, that's pretty much it for the hard labor.

Now, the zest goes into the jar.



Once it has finished distilling, the vodka goes into the jar. The jar is sealed. You shake it around a bit. And, it just sits there looking gorgeous in the light of the setting sun...see...



and see...



Then, after all that, you put the lid on, put the jar in the recesses of your fridge, sip your second Harvey Wallbanger, and...wait. You wait for 45 long days.

Of course, the first hour or two of that 45 days is spent cleaning up the mess that you have inevitably produced in your quest for limoncello. To be certain, you are left with a lot of naked lemons--17 of them to be precise. Now is the time to pull out the juicer and use your by-products.



Save juice in ice trays--you can thaw later for guacamole, cocktails, pies, soups, etc. Will taste just like fresh.



Then, after dumping the rinds in the compost (you might want to chop them up a bit in the food processor or by hand if you want them to disintegrate any time in this century), you're done.

And the waiting begins. I've got 38 days to go. I think I'll blog Phase II in real(er) time.

In the meantime, envy me not dear friends as you shiver and shake. Make limoncello and rejoice.