This and that

This is the olive and ricotta pizza from Stir that I made the other night using leftover brioche pizza dough. You bake a hot, zesty, salty pie and then top with cool ricotta and chopped scallions. Quite delicious, though it reinforced my preference for a lean, chewy pizza crust. 

That's it. That's all I've cooked from Stir in the last week. I don't know why. Busy. Distracted. Unmotivated. We've been dining on leftovers and cereal and, last night, take-out from the glamorous new Whole Foods of which half the floor space is devoted to prepared foods: salad bar, pizza counter, deli, sushi bar, burrito bar. Crafty! Because while there were long lines in the food court, absolutely no one was buying rump roasts or flaxseed or sugar or flour.  It's like the whole town is a giant campus and this is our fancy canteen. It depressed me.

 

Sunday supper:

Alice Waters would not approve. I don't approve. 

Meanwhile, I've done some baking from Good to the Grain:

Currant scones. Made with spelt flour, these tasted healthy, and I don't mean that in no nice way.

Banana walnut cake. 

Rich and moist, but a bit to sweet. Not a replacement for banana bread. It is not flying out the door.

Graham crackers. 

These did fly out the door. Made with a combination of graham and teff flours, they're less like graham crackers than assertive, swarthy, super-snappy gingersnaps.  Last night I ate the last of them spread with leftover whipped mascarpone.

 

I posted about this before, but have you all experienced whipped, sweetened mascarpone? It's like a miraculous cross between whipped cream and buttercream frosting, but tangier, fluffier, more maddeningly delicious than either. I do not hate myself enough to ever make it again. 

Gourmet Today: some low-hanging fruit

Toasted coconut cookies. Brown sugary, chewy-crispy, like chocolate chip cookies without the chocolate chips. You finish one and your mouth instantly wants another, which is the best kind of cookie. 

 

Capellini with fresh tomato sauce.  It tasted exactly as you would expect, was juicy and much loved by children. Benefited from heavy dosing with Parmesan.

Two early thoughts about Gourmet Today: 

1. There's a recipe for cinnamon toast ice cream, but none for vanilla or strawberry. On the other hand, pasta with fresh tomatoes? Buttermilk pancakes? I'm not sure I understand the mix of novelty and pedestrian basics. 

2. So much booze. Dish after dish calls for a dram or two of some expensive/exotic liquor -- armagnac, framboise, pomegranate liqueur, sauternes, creme de menthe -- that I don't have and really don't want to buy.

 We are about to be pounded with our first storm of the season and I can not wait.  Whole Foods was aswarm, everyone talking excitedly about "stocking up for the storm," which was funny because it's not like you can't go to the supermarket in the rain. 

My life flashed before my eyes and it looked like Whole Foods

Yesterday, it was just Owen and me doing the grocery shopping. It's been a lousy week. I have no idea why. I was slumping in front of the crowded meat counter wondering whether to defer to pushy people or risk being perceived as pushy myself, and decided this was a "defer" kind of day. You need different strategies for different moods.

Owen: "Can we have clams for dinner?"

 

Tipsy: "Clams? You don't like clams."

 

Owen: "Yes I do. I love them. Steamed clams."

Tipsy: "We're having chicken."

Owen: "Then I won't eat any dinner."

Tipsy: "So, don't eat dinner."

Owen: "Okay I won't. Pleeeaaase?"

Tipsy: "No."

Owen: "Pleeeasse."

Not cute. Not appealing. I decided to teach him a lesson. I bought a handful of clams just for him. Came home, dinner rolled around, I steamed the clams. At first I was going to serve them plain -- gray and chewy --  but I softened and made some garlic butter. I do actually like the boy. I intended to sit and watch him eat them so he'd have to look me in the eye when he admitted he doesn't like clams. 

And I was right, of course. He doesn't like clams. He said these particular clams tasted "weird," and stopped after two. Which was great! All the more for me. I was too busy eating the clams myself to impart any lessons. They were fantastic, dipped in that garlic butter, so much better than the chicken. 

Terrible week.

Splendid Table: I am never cooking tuna again

Listen, I know tuna is expensive. I know it should be expensive. But who are the people I live and walk among who are buying ahi at $24.99/lb?

Ordinarily, Whole Foods has a cheaper tuna option. I tried this once and the fishmonger warned me it was not to be "seared" but cooked all the way through. I hate to think why, but that was the plan, so no problem. That was the plan again yesterday, except when I got to the fish counter there was only the fancy "searing-grade" ahi. Rather than change the menu (uh, rigid?) I bought it. From the moment I was handed that tiny piece of fish wrapped in brown paper, I felt like a sucker.

Lynne Rossetto Kasper's recipe for tuna Adriatic style is fine, a basic formula for a quick saute of fish with tomatoes, onions, and olives. The tuna, however, was awful, fishy in the bad way. A friend told me I could have soaked it in rice vinegar to take care of this problem, but should you really have to doctor such expensive seafood? It would be interesting to return to Whole Foods today and see if I could get my money back. But what if there's a scene, or even just an embarrassing exchange, and I can never shop there again?  

Here's the happy news. I also made Kasper's oven-roasted radicchio, for which I had the lowest of expectations. (I'm scraping the barrel, as we're coming to the end of the vegetable recipes in The Splendid Table.) You toss radicchio with olive oil, salt, and pepper, then roast for an hour, which magically turns a tough, bitter, and crimson vegetable into a crispy golden delicacy. The outer leaves acquire the papery texture of a wasp's nest while the cores become meltingly soft and the flavor is that of a fried artichoke. It was quite incredible and almost made up for the tuna fiasco.