So long 2018 (you kinda sucked)

Looking back at 2018:

So my dog is still cute, and still hanging in there. She's pretty geriatric at this point...But she is doing ok. Had to install a ramp for her to get down the porch stairs to the yard, and it is incredibly amusing to watch the technique that she developed to crawl/slide down it. 

I'm not EVEN getting into the fiasco that is all things DT.  There just isn't any point. So don't ask.

Here's what I am going to do...I'm going to cover the highlights of this year, because that's what I feel like reflecting on today, this 1st day of January 2019.

So, I saw a lot of great art this year...the Hannah af Klimt exhibit at the Guggenheim, the Hockney exhibit and the Delacroix show at the Met, the Marc & Macke exhibit at the Neue Gallery. And there was the Anselm Kiefer show at the Met Breuer.

At the MFA I saw the Klimt & Schiele exhibit, and the super-fun Takashi Murakami show.  Went to a few small galleries, too, and saw some great and not-so-great works...which all adds to the balance.

         

Books...I read a lot of good ones this year (click on the book to go to the link)
The desert and the sea : 977 days captive on the Somali pirate coast / Michael Scott Moore

Educated : a memoir / Tara Westover

The book of Polly : a novel / Kathy Hepinstall

A fall of marigolds : a novel / Susan Meissner

The Patrick Melrose novels : Never mind, Bad news, Some hope, and Mother's milk / Edward St. Aubyn

Rants and raves : selected and new prose poems / Peter Johnson

French exit : a tragedy of manners / Patrick deWitt

One day we'll all be dead and none of this will matter / Scaachi Koul

There were many others...those are just the highlights.   I'm starting 2019 with the newest Tana French: The Witch Elm

RIP Anthony Sad day when we lost him. I checked out this book and made both the tomato soup and the macaroni and cheese (which is phenomenal).  Clio and I had been in the habit of watching Parts Unknown together a few evenings a week,  and now it is such a bittersweet thing to do. March for Our Lives in March at the State House...with my dear friend Arthur.  Robert helped me make the posters.  So many kids getting killed. Too many guns.  Not enough gun control.  It's a terrible tragedy for our times.   April in NYC...the David Bowie exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum.  What a memorable show. I saw a few remarkable movies...these 3 were among the best. I saw Nick Cave twice this year!!! Boston, at the Schubert Theater, doing a Q&A and acoustic set, which was spectacular. And then In October, at the Barclay Center in Brooklyn, for a riveting performance.  He never disappoints.       I am lucky I have such wonderful friends, and so glad I was able to see the lovely folks who don't live so close to me. I will end with this...since it was a pretty pivotal moment this year.  Clara graduated, and headed to Northeastern University in Boston.  A stellar student and an amazing person...on to great things.

"Fuck!" isn't strong enough

So just to be clear, I'm extremely disquieted by the turn of events this past year. Bowie!?! David Bowie?!? That was heavy. Bouleversant. (The French often have a better word for describing things.) And the whole election fiasco does not need to be re-hashed, so I won't bother. But I think the Liz Plank post is a pretty apt summation of how I feel.  For now.  It changes every day.  I could go on a good long rant, but I won't (you're welcome).
So back to my cooking...the whole point of this blog.
I completely slacked off this summer...cut corners, took shortcuts, kept it simple.  Still kept it healthy and interesting...just didn't get too carried away.  So here's one of the quickies I pulled off:












This meal was inspired by one a friend made for me this summer.  It was peak tomato season and this sauce took advantage of that.  Roasted tomatoes and garlic, a
jalapeño and a shallot, and fresh pasta. Simplicity and deliciousness, topped with grated parmesan.  For starters, all you need are a few gorgeously ripe tomatoes, some garlic, a jalapeño and good olive oil.  I cored the tomatoes and put garlic cloves in them.  Sliced the pepper and shallot, drizzled it all with olive oil, and roasted it at 475º for about 30 mins.

Once they were done, it was simply a matter of tossing the whole lot in the food processor.  I bought fresh fettucine, which cooks super fast. I set aside a small amount of the pasta water, which I added to the purée, to thin it out a bit. Then you're pretty much done: toss the sauce with the pasta, grate some Parmigiana-Reggiano (no, really, don't skimp here...it really does make a difference) and presto, dinner is done.  
And done deliciously.

All that you need now is a good bottle of wine.  

March Myths and Madness

In keeping with my sporadic postings, I'm choosing today to dispel myths about madness.  No, I really can't do that.  I just like the juxtaposition of those two words, and I was having a discussion about madness this morning that has stuck with me.  I do think that this daylight savings concept is a form of madness that we are all subscribing to, but that argument has already been posited to no avail.  So here I am, with an hour less of today, and I have not accomplished anything worth mentioning thus far.  The food is in mid-preparation, however, so there's that.
This recipe comes from a website called The Muffin Myth (hence the "myth" reference), and it struck me because of the lemon aspect.  I just made the most spectacular Lemon Blueberry Scones last week, and also a lemon/mascarpone/parmesan sauce for a pasta dish, so this one had to be done.  Tempeh is a hard sell in this house (and by that, I mean that I am the only human who will eat it...it goes without saying that Mabel would love a few pieces, thank you very much), so I am hoping that the addition of lemon might soften the blow a bit (my girls are mad about the lemon scones and pasta).  As you can see from the recipe, it is delightfully easy to prepare.  Points to you, Muffin Myth-buster!

Waiting for "the drop"

Zest a lemon, juice it, chop the broccoli and tempeh...toss it all together with some olive oil, and done (just about).

Now it simply needs to roast in the oven, while you make the quinoa (which I make with vegetable broth).

Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy...(sorry, had to).  And so delicious!  (Even one of the younger humans in this house agreed to try it and gave it a tentative approval.  So, yay me!).

Today's soundtrack consisted of a Spotify mix, but I'm just going to include one song here...because it was my favorite of the mix, and I listened to it twice:

Heatmiser: Half Right

https://youtu.be/LSVITUMdZf0

Heatmiser - Half Right

Cast Your Fate to the Wind

Sometimes I think I know better...

I'm not saying that I'm directionally challenged, because I have always felt that I had a rather keen sense of direction.  But it just doesn't work all the time.  And my phone doesn't help.  What has this got to do with cooking, you may ask?  Well let me tell you about my recent trip to CT.  I'm making decent progress, and Cyril is dutifully reminding me of the various exits and turns I need to make (Siri has been replaced by a gentlemen from Bangkok with a lovely accent).  About 2 hours in, I reached a point where I suddenly felt as though I had a better idea as to where I should be headed.  So, despite Cyril's frantic attempts to redirect me to the planned route, I suddenly found myself driving through a town that has deemed a stop-light every 500 feet to be an absolute necessity.  Cyril had given up on me at this point, and I was supremely aware of my error in ignoring him.  I eventually got back on track, and let Cyril get me to where I needed to be (I did end up running one of those red lights...I just couldn't take it any longer).
And this brings us to tonight's dish...Broccoli Cheese Stuffed Sweet Potatoes.  The recipe is pretty straight forward, and I had most of the ingredients (not the same cheese, but no biggie), so I figure this one will be quick and painless.  Bake the sweet potatoes, chop the broccoli, pulverize the cannellini beans, shred the cheese...done.  Right?  But I decide that the recipe isn't quite right (nothing wrong there...tweaking recipes is a given), but I also didn't follow a few of the basic directions, and suddenly I'm creating something different, and I'm not quite sure where to go with it.  So, I just went with it.  By all means, go to the linked recipe, and try that out...I'm sure it's just as good as this mess I made here...

So far, so good...baked them just right
 (and ALWAYS put foil under them...you do NOT want that stuff leaking onto the bottom of your oven!)

Here's where I start to diverge...I hollow them out...

...and I add the mush to the pureed beans and broccoli.  Why?  Well, 2 reasons:
1- when I pureed the beans and shredded cheese, I believe I must have added too much water, because I suddenly had soup.  NOT what I was going for.
2- What the hell else was I going to do with that sweet potato goop?
(The recipe actually tells you to set it aside and use it later, for something else.  Right.)

So, now I'm basically making "twice baked potatoes"...nothing wrong with that.
Except for the fact that I have a lot of cheesy potato, broccoli, cannellini, sweet potato glop to fit into 4 hollowed out skins.
I heated the mess up a bit to try to thicken it, then just spooned it in and piled it high.
A little grated cheese (why not, at this point...right?), and into the oven for a 10 minute heat-up.

Lovely...yes?  

So there you have it...no need to follow directions, right?  You always end up somewhere.

You just may be a tad late.  Or you may show up at the wrong place.

Side note...
it's all Christmas music, all the time, here at this house, per order of a certain 15 year old, so my soundtrack this evening was this:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTJIAncqNDknWgEMH3WF0IchVRnX_qZZx

You can take the punk out of Paris, but you can't take Paris out of the punk

A request for Potato Leek soup always brings me back to the first time I tried this superlative soup. Paris, 1986, in a lovely apartment on Blvd St Germain.  Marie-Josèph whipped this dish up without seeming to give it any thought.   Although I have never been able to replicate that exact elixir, I have made it often enough that I can create a delicious approximation with ease.  Perhaps if I was in Paris, and was using Parisian leeks...
But for now, Four Town Farm leeks will suffice (and are gorgeous right now), and my crumbling Colonial is where my kitchen is located, so I make do.
There are a lot of variations on this soup, but mine is pretty basic:  leeks, potatoes, half an onion, light cream, and vegetable stock.  The basic Julia Child recipe, more or less.

I love the way the farm trims the leeks...

Sliced thin, and sautéed with diced onion in a mixture of butter and olive oil

Peel and dice the potatoes, toss in with the leeks, then pour on the vegetable stock.  Then it's time to let it simmer.  Oh, add some good sea salt (or Pink Himalayan, perhaps) and ground black pepper.

Two of my favorite Vegetable Stocks.  I really like Trader Joe's, too.

And here it is...smooth, velvety...une soupe impeccable.

So getting back to the title of this post...

I've included a video by one of my favorite French punk bands.  They were popular when I was in Paris during college, and I brought home a lot of their albums (yes, as in vinyl).  Give it a listen.  It will give you a pretty good idea of the soundtrack running through my head during that part of my youth.  And it is still running in the background today.  Once a punk, always a punk.