Whole Grain

This is the whole thing, finished, with the mail rack on top (it's still in Arizona; it's being crated and sent on Monday).
And here's a close-up that shows the grain of the wood.


As always, click to embiggen.

Scrappy

Well, I ended up doing a version of Iron Chef at my house tonight. The great thing about it was that I was able to make something for tomorrow's potluck at work and I was able to use up a whole bunch of scraps from around the kitchen. The two major things I had hanging around were three-quarters of a loaf of whole-grain bread that had gotten pretty stale and a fuckton of zucchini. I had originally thought to make a sweet bread pudding, maybe with some fruit thrown in, but then I thought doing it as a savory would be a better idea, one that would enable me to use up some of the zucchini. I sliced the zukes in the food processor. I chopped an onion and what I thought was another onion but that was a huge fucking shallot from my CSA share, and put those to saute in the big pan with some olive oil and a chunk of pesto from the freezer. I threw in four cloves of crushed garlic, too--also from my farm share--and then the zukes. I tried not to cook it too much. The bread--more than a pound of it--I cut into very small cubes. I used three cups of milk, six eggs, about three quarters of a cup of cream (basically, I used up some old milk and some old cream; I would have left out the cream if it were just for me, and I would not go out and buy it, but I happened to have a bunch of that around, too).

I mixed the cooked veggies into the bread cubes, then poured the milk and egg mix over it. I stirred it, a lot, and threw in some grated parmesan that was sitting in the fridge, and some grated carrots that I had intended to use for salads this week. I let it sit, stirred it again, and it's in the fridge now. Tomorrow I"m going to bake it in muffin tins, so there will be individual nibbles. I'm going to add some cheese curds (again, in the fridge, otherwise I'd grate some gruyere), and I took some slow-roasted herbed tomatos out of the freezer, which I'll chop and put on top tomorrow before I bake it. (I was a bit concerned about mixing the tomatos in, because of the milk, but I might do that anyway.) I was tempted to make it in a big pan, but I realized that it wouldn't bake all that evenly, or quickly, and would be harder to transport as well, so I think the little things will work better. We'll see how it comes out.

Finally, on tonight's Top Chef, more annoyance. This season has yet to really interest me, in many ways, and a lot of the people commenting at Television Without Pity seem to feel the same way. It may be that the lesser chefs have just taken up too much time and space and it'll improve, but . . .

The people who continue to annoy the fuck out of me: Amanda, oh lordy, she's insane. Not to mention, for someone who said, a few weeks ago, that she was an addict when she was younger, she cooks with an awful lot of alcohol. Having spent a fair amount of time around recovering people--and having been married to one--that just strikes me as odd. I know that alcohol is useful for flavors and sauces and such, but EVERY dish? And Angelo continues to provide adjectives with his dish, which is completely annoying; you provide the food, I'll pick my own fucking adjectives, 'kay? I find it disturbing how much he's treating the whole thing like Survivor: Kitchen. I know there is always a certain amount of strategery, but he really seems to take it to a whole 'nother level, and that turns me off. If you can cook, then your need for that kind of strategizing is really limited.

Finally, I ordered a table from a place I found online, a guy in Arizona who does custom furniture in the Arts & Crafts and Mission styles. It's nearly done--just needs a mail box on top (I asked him to create some kind of box to put on it for me to throw my mail into, but let him decide whatever he wanted to do) and finishing. Here's what it looks like in his workshop:

I'll post another picture when I get it and it's in its proper place.

Lazy Hazy

Tonight: No hockey, no Tour, no friends in the house. Ergo, it feels kinda strange. I had a fabulous time on my vacation; I must do that again sometime! Perhaps, soon! Given that I have more than three weeks' worth of time, I will in fact go ahead and do that.

M and I did a whole big bunch of nothing. We talked endlessly (and wonderfully); given that we have known each other for more than three decades and know each other's families and life stories, it wasn't as if we were going to run out of things to say. And we got to spend a bunch of time on the back porch and the sun porch, helping confirm just how wonderful those spaces are.

Saturday Friend and I took a friend to Madison so she (and we) could get a brewery tour, talk to a brewmaster, and drink beer. That was pretty good, too. We got back yesterday afternoon, and I couldn't help but think that a vacation from my vacation would have been a good thing. As it was, I had things in flames on my desk already, so that would have been a bad idea.

So, really, I don't have any profound thoughts tonight; I barely have any thoughts at all. Which is also fine. I'll put out a few more fires tomorrow, perhaps, and take it from there. This week is also full of social events, so I'm not sure where sleeping is going to fit in. Dinner tomorrow, possibly drinks with an old friend on Wednesday, and then concerts on Thursday through Saturday. Sunday will involve a great deal of nothing, I suspect.

Get Your Ass in the Kitchen and Make Me a Pie

I've been sleeping for shit lately--waking up early more than having trouble getting to sleep--but I've decided to ignore it. I don't actually feel tired during the day, so I"m going to assume that my brain just is a little wired at the moment. It's true that there's a lot going on, mostly at work, some of it very stressful, but I don't think that's it. I tend to regard these things as random and transient, so whatevs.

Meanwhile, on Top Chef this week: Pie Fail! Partly as a way to introduce the upcoming latest in the Top Chef line of programming, they had a rock star pastry chef to judge the quickfire, which was: make a pie. Seriously--that was it. And the Pie Fail? Was all over the kitchen. The absolute best comment, however, was the person who complained, "I'm not a pastry chef," to which RockStar Pastry Chef said, "My grandmother's not a pastry chef, either, and she can make a pie." Total pwnage.

That's the thing that kind of blows me away. This is Season SEVEN, people! Once you know you're going to be on the show (or hey, live dangerously, when you're still fucking trying out to get on), there are a half a dozen formulas you need to commit to memory:
1. A basic pie crust--this can be used in both sweet and savory concoctions, so it will increase your options for your all kinds of dishes (e.g., a breakfast quiche, anyone?)
2. A basic cake formula (ratio of flour, fat, liquid, leavening), which can be adapted in a number of ways; old Domestic Science cookbooks are full of this shit, because it dates to when women were trying to get into places like MIT by demonstrating the scientific aspects of their household work; if you make it look more like a chemistry task, then it looks all sciency and it "elevates" it, which of course is a whole nother patriarchy-induced cringe moment, but we'll ignore that for the moment. The point is? Cake.
3. Pastry cream. Really not difficult, and it can be used in so many ways it's not even funny.
4. A basic cookie recipe. Sugar cookies cab be flavored with all kinds of herbs and spices, and you've suddenly expanded those possibilities as well.
5. A basic yeasted dough. You can turn this into a whole-grain bread, or a baguette, or sweet rolls. This may be the least important one, but it may give you an opportunity to put an extra something on a plate at some point (restaurant wars, anyone?), and a lot of yeasted doughs don't require much work on your part--the yeast does all the work!
6. A basic ganache. You can go crazy and add a buttercream and/or an italian meringue to this (the latter would be very useful, as the meringue principle could probably be used in savory concoctions somehow as well).

This will get you enough information for just about any dessert challenge, I'd say. BT, whaddya say? What am I missing? What would your list have?

Point being, however, even if you're going to be hiring a pastry chef at Your Famous Restaurant, you should know some basic things to make (not least because you want to have a potential pastry cook know how to do these things, I'd say), and you really want to be able to evaluate the work that your pastry kitchen is putting out the door.