A Post-Partisan Dinner

No photos, but trust me… delish and beautiful.  It was only as I was half-way through menu planning that I realized I was color-coordinating for a post-red and blue-state celebration.  Here was last night’s dinner:

Red Salmon Pinwheels with a dill mustard sauce served over mesclun

Smashed red and blue potatoes with garlic and sauteed onions

Roasted cauliflower

Blueberry ice cream for dessert

Coordinated and delicious… offering enough energy to keep us going until 3am waiting for the (disappointing) Prop 8 news from California.

Healthy Hedonism

If you know me, you’re asking yourself, “Really, is there anything more Russell can say about Myra and the Healthy Hedonist we haven’t heard a thousand times already?”  And the answer is, “Shut up.  No one is talking you.  And your shoes look funny.”

Myra is an inspiration.  Giving and passionate and smart.  Talented beyond belief and an excellent teacher.  My love of teaching comes from watching and working with Myra.  I can proudly place this blog entry about these two cookbooks because I can honestly say I’ve made every recipe at least once, if not multiple times.  Getting to assist Myra as she develops recipes is to get into the head of a genius (it’s like being a culinary Sylar on HEROES).  How else do you learn about “salting to taste”?  Who else would allow you to do a recipe three different ways with subtle variations in order to achieve perfection?  She’s an artist who can talk to the scientist in me when it comes to experiments.  She understands her craft in the way Alton Brown does, and never sacrifices flavor.  Her recipes are impressive without being intimidating (except to your guests, who may never feel comfortable cooking for you in return once they’ve sampled these feasts), and her writing style is concise and intimate at the same time.

Check out her website (www.myrakornfeld.com).  Buy her books.  Reap the benefits and revel in your own creations.  You’ll start to spread your wings and gain confidence from the first recipe.  Take her classes at the numerous cooking schools she graces.

Imogen and Chris’s Wedding Cake

I can’t take credit for the cake (the three-tiered sacher torte of your dreams) or the absolutely stunning wedding (a weekend of perfection, all coordinated by the bride herself), or the genteel hospitality proferred to a couple of Yanks overseas in Great Britain, but the night before the wedding, Imogen allowed me to do a little chocolate ganache work on the icing of the cake, and the great-delegator she is, Imogen asked me and David to be the cake point-people on the big day.  Which meant I got to re-glaze the entire cake, assemble the tiers, and then decorate according to her specificaltions with giant, beautiful peony blooms.  How classy is this cake?  Only half as classy as the bride and chef herself.  The only thing David and I can take credit for is the use of the leaves around the cake and the actual labor.  Oh, and eating far more than our fair share.  I can own that.

Meads and Cysers and Ciders! Oh, my!

So, it’s been a year now since I started making my own fermented meads (fermented honey), cysers (fruit juices plus honey) and ciders (just the fruit juice).  They start off exposed to the air, and whatever yeasts happen to be in the air and find their way to the liquid start the fermenting process.  When they start out, everything has lots of color.  These four are a sweet raspberry cyser, a cherry stomp cyser, a pomegranate cyser, and an Ethiopian T’ej (a mead variation).  Look at the colors!  These are all about a month into the process, and you can see how much sediment they’ve already produced.

A year

Eventually, they get “racked”, which basically means separating out the sediment.  And then bottled.  And look at the results… clear!  That surprised me.   But since there are no fruit skins (like in red wine), no color.  The bottle on the left is a cranberry cider.  It started out redder than the raspberry.  So far, we’ve opened two vintages, one mead, and one apple cyser.  The mead was surprisingly sweet and bubbly. a dessert wine.  The cyser, on the other hand, was a dry white.  Fantastic… and unpredictable.  Which is exactly what I like about this process.  To learn more, read WILD FERMENTATION by Sandor Ellix Katz (www.wildfermentation.com).  And then start bottling for yourself!