Month: May 2006

smørrebrød


I read the smørrebrød article in Saveur and got a little bit of religion. I want to have a big smørrebrød party, and have people over and make a shitload of these things, but i worry that not everyone thinks that eel and herring is as delicious as I do. So to scratch the itch just a little bit, I got out a tin of sardines in mustard sauce that’s been kicking around the cabinets for a while, and chopped up a hardboiled egg, and put it together into a salad and spread it on brown multigrain bread, with a sprig of dill and some baby pickles. Delicious! And to make myself feel like I was eating more healthfully, I made a salad of red peppers and fennel, which bizarrely went really well with the sandwiches.

i love it when a plan comes together

You have to picture me smirking and chomping on a cigar like George Peppard in the A-Team when I say that, by the way. Heh.
I woke up today hungry, so i ate a multigrain pita and a hardboiled egg, which should be plenty to get me through a couple of hours before lunch begins to occupy my consciousness. But i didn’t even make it out of the house and onto the bus before I was hungry again, and I was seriously considering stopping into the KFC that emits such wonderful smells where I wait for my second bus, even though I know it never tastes as good as it smells.
But I held out, figuring I’d just endure the shame and order lunch at 9:30am once I got to the office. And lo and behold, the professional-networking meeting that was held here last night had only two attendees, and so the fridge was FULL of fabulous leftover homemade cocktail nibblies, and I’ve been able to completely address the crisis with deviled eggs, roast-beef and red-pepper-mayo crostini, stuffed mushrooms, crab-goat cheese empanadas, and avocado-egg-creamcheese-caviar spread. I felt like I was at a London hotel, drinking my milky tea and munching on WASPy savories. How awesome is that?
Sometimes the universe really does provide.

pavlova


When your friend asks you to bring a dessert to a gathering, and you have a half-bag of shredded coconut, a handful of almost-overripe strawberries, and a few bananas, what do you do? You dig around in the cookbooks, decide that macaroons are not going to use up the berries, and that coconut custard pie is just too much work, and settle on a pavlova instead. Then you bike to the supermarket and buy kiwis and heavy cream, and get busy.
I used the Cook’s Illustrated Best Baking Book recipe, and the meringue came out beautiful, just perfect, but I couldn’t get it off the parchment paper when it came time to serve, so I guess it wasn’t so perfect after all. It broke all up into ugly sticky bits, but i shoved them back together and hid them under fruit and cream, and no one was the wiser save H who witnessed the whole thing. I put kiwis and strawberries and bananas onto it, drizzled it all with passionfruit puree, which is much runnier than I expected it to be, but is also so staggeringly delicious that I am putting it on every pav I ever make henceforward, and topped the works with toasted coconut. The whipped cream went on separately, because one of the guests was lactose intolerant, and the whole thing was rather well-received, happily. I was very happy with it myself, since the meringue base is very sweet but the rest of it is all just fruit and unsweetened cream, so the whole thing works once it’s together — and it’s easy to make, AND as a bonus it makes me think fondly back on my trip to New Zealand. What’s not to love?