In which Shana takes liberties with chili

I wasn’t planning to write about my recent chicken + white bean chili recipe makeover. It seemed too modest an innovation to warrant a post. But now that Ann Arbor is in the midst of a cold snap, it seems the right moment to do this. Plus, Carolina suggested that I actually communicate how to make something once in awhile, so I oblige her here (even though it’s probably 40 degrees warmer in Barcelona. No fair!)

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Winter Beginnings

Since late December, I’ve been thinking that maybe winter isn’t the time to begin a writing project, to begin a writing project about food. Spring and summer are so bursting with promise and inspiration that I wouldn’t really need to think about what I wrote. I could just walk through the farmer’s market and make lists that read like poetry. But now it’s winter in Ann Arbor and the herbs in the garden have finally succumbed to frost (we were lucky this year; I cooked with fresh herbs at Christmas). The big wide view of the Huron Valley from my office window is muted by snow that gets washed away by cold rain, and it’s always, always gray. The market holds a few meager potatoes, apples that already are showing their age and a thin sprinkling of soap, maple syrup and jam.

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A Simple Pleasure

Risotto, in January, made with turkey broth frozen after Thanksgiving. I made it once, years ago, and remember it was a hit, but though that might have been by chance. Made it again tonight with some very meaty broth made from Thanksgiving’s brined turkey and it was very good indeed. There’s something about the the thick, binding quality of the turkey broth that works just right. Highly recommended. Risotto as usual, whatever that is for you, but use turkey broth instead of whatever that usual is.

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Melange: A Mixed Response

On Saturday night, John and I went to Melange for dinner with Mark and Claire. This was a pretty big night out for us (no kids!), so the restaurant was going to have to bear some extra burden to justify our investment. I think my response, for good and for ill, is pretty fair (and shared by Mark and Claire who’s children are grown up, so they’re foot loose and fancy free and not nearly as worried about choosing the Right Restaurant). Claire and John both did their research before we went and told us that the reviews said to try the River Rock and avoid the duck. Mark advanced the theory that the duck was the thing to order because restaurants read the reviews too, and so the kitchen would be trying really extra hard on the duck. John said all he cared about what was the rumor that they used Reidel O wine glasses and he’s been wanting to try those.

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Anne’s December dinner party I

Haven’t had much time to post lately as I’ve thrown small dinner parties the last two Saturdays. I LOVE menu planning but spend way too much time on it. I have to pull out all my food magazines from the past 3 months for inspiration, jot down references to interesting recipes in my notebook, then there is usually some kind of color coding process to make sense of it all. Then I usually end up picking one or two that I’ve found (usually appetizers) and coming up with the rest on my own. After that I will go on Epicurious to find the best recipe for each dish, to use as the basis for my own take on it. Then of course there is the shopping list (categorized because must get produce at one place, groceries at another, meat and specialty items at another, wine at another) and all the requisite running around to get everything. And right now, running around Ann Arbor takes more time than usual as everyone else in town is out doing the same thing! So my dinner parties (along with shopping and other holiday-related activities) have been taking up a lot of time lately.

In any event, let me tell you about the one I did a week ago. It was a farewell dinner for 6 in honor of our friend Leif, a top-notch science writer who landed a sweet (and well-deserved) job at Duke, and so will be moving to North Carolina at the end of this month. We started out with champagne (as we do for all our dinners with the Bates), accompanied by bruschetta with white beans and prosciutto, and a crabmeat crostini, which is topped with a grated dry jack cheese. I know it sounds a little tuna-melty, but it is nothing like that! I made the crostini for Thanksgiving and they were a huge hit, so Lenny insisted I do a repeat performance. The key is to purchase good quality crabmeat. I got mine at Whole Foods, and though it cost $10.99 a pound, it was the most delicious crabmeat I’ve ever tasted (I’ll have to look up the brand and post a comment – also Lenny told me he saw the same kind at Busch’s for only $8.99).

I then served a broccoli and leek soup with a sour cream lemon garnish, but I was a little flustered with getting the next course out so we didn’t sit for this one – everyone just stood around with their ramekins of soup and watched me cook. Well, really they were all into the wine at this point, and unfortunately I was too busy to write down the different bottles that came out – mostly interesting reds that Leif and Anuj brought.

For the main course I served beef tenderloin. You can get your USDA Choice tenderloin at Whole Foods for $24.99 a pound (eeks!), or, you can go to Hillers and get your non-USDA Choice (but tasted amazing to me) tenderloin for $6.99 (yeah!) a pound (and currently they are on sale for $5.99 a pound, through the holidays). Now, my mother makes beef tenderloins for Christmas almost every year, but as I thought about it I realized I have never actually made one myself, nor have I paid close attention to how she does it. So I get the monster home and realize it is not trimmed or anything, and it is all misshapen and has this weird tail on it. Luckily I found this great article that was written by the former director of instruction at the Institute of Culinary Education in NYC (where I have taken several classes). After a thorough read I knew how to attack the beast. I started by cutting the sucker in half for easier handling and trimming away the fat and all the silverskin. Then I had to do some more cutting and tucking so I had two pieces of similar size and shape, which I tied at about one inch intervals. I don’t have a phot0 (bad Lenny!) but I must say in the end these babies were beautiful. I basically followed the advice in the article for cooking them – salt well and brown them in the roasting pan on the stovetop, then remove and coat them generously with a mixture of grainy mustard and herbs and roast until they reach 120 degrees, then let them rest before slicing and serving. They turned out beautifully and (sadly) there were no leftovers!

Along with the tenderloins I served a potato gratin (“The ‘Upper Crust’ Potato Gratin” a/k/a “Le Gratin des Gratins”) from Joel Robuchon’s cookbook “Simply French,” and oven roasted green beans with garlic.

For dessert I made a bittersweet chocolate mousse, which I thought would be simple but I must have been flustered Saturday morning, because first I didn’t measure the heavy cream correctly so I cooked it and then realized I had to start over; then I burnt the really expensive Scharfenberger chocolate so had to do that all over. Luckily I had just enough in my pantry to re-do it without going to the store (next time I will buy my chocolate at By The Pound – I saw the other day they had Callebaut for $5.99 a pound). In the end it all turned out fine, but I had to skip spinning class that morning because I basically made this recipe twice. In the end it was worth it – the mousse was dark and rich and went perfectly with the dessert wine , a 10-year old from the Southeast of France. I had read an article about dessert wines that said either a Banyuls, or a certain type Madeira, goes great with dark chocolate. So I sent Lenny to Big Ten, along with the article as reference. They didn’t have Banyuls, but advised that Maury is very close to where Banyuls comes from in Languedoc-Roussillon (good enough!). It was not too sweet and a little like a tawny port, and a lovely finish to a pretty damn good meal (if I do say so myself!).

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Best of the Break

I fully realize this is the time of year for Top 10 lists of all sorts–I spent this morning poring over Pitchfork’s Top 50 Albums of 2006, Must Reads from Salon, and Bob Mondello’s film picks. And believe me when I say I intended to share with you, dear readers, my favorites of 2006–the best meal I cooked, restaurant I visited, hard-to-find-ingredient I snatched up, guy to cook for, co-workers to blog with, etc. Since my ambitions outstrip my time and I’m afraid my memory isn’t always great, I offer instead the best of my recent holiday vacation in Greensburg and Pittsburgh, where I spent a blissful if overfull (in every sense) week of catching up with friends and spending time w/ family. Inevitably these activities centered around food and drink. Remarkably, I cooked only once during the week–a spicy Thai grilled beef sald and spring rolls w/ peanut sauce (thanks, Josh!) for my family on Christmas Eve which ended up delicious, in spite of a mean hangover and worse sleep deprivation.

Even though we had fabulous, contemporary meals at Eleven and the Red Room, my favorite eating experience was an early evening dinner with Michael at Primanti Brothers in the Strip District, an old shipping district now dotted with nightclubs, biker bars, and restaurants–yet remains an active wholesale grocery and restaurant supply neighborhood. (Legend has it that my great grandfather, Meyer Kimball, was a grocer there in the 30s.)

Primanti’s is a ‘burgh establishment, where people yell at but are never impolite to each other. It’s always busy and always open. We grabbed two seats at the bar, ordered two Yuenglings, 2 sandwiches (cheesesteak for her, pastrami for him), 1 chili, and pickles. (I was impressed with Michael’s appetite, as I often am, when we went to karaoke later in the night and he had to have an order buffalo chicken wings.) The Primanti Brothers schtick is that they place french fries and coleslaw directly on the sandwich. The fries are goddamned perfect, and the slaw doesn’t know anything about mayonnaise: it’s mild and crunchy and vinegary, and I wish every sandwich were accompanied by this condiment. (MUCH better than boring lettuce and tomato.) The sandwiches are just sort of tossed at you on deli paper–even red plastic baskets would be too pretentious for this place. I have no idea if this is true, but it’s the kind of food I imagine steel and dock workers would have appreciated–hearty, greasy, generous, and utilitarian.

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