Just in time for New Year's...

101 Simple Appetizers in 20 Minutes or Less from the New York Times.

Have a wonderful New Year's, everyone!

Anniversary Food: Herbed Pork Chops with Wine

There are three meals/restaurants that are important to my relationship with Neil:

1. On our first date we had sushi at Sakura Blue.
2. On our second date (which was New Year's Eve) we got carry-out from Vietnam Kitchen. It was my first time eating there and it rocked my world.
3. The first time we cooked together we made herbed pork chops with wine.

Our third anniversary was yesterday, and of course we had to commemorate it with food. We didn't really feel like sushi, but we couldn't decide between fixing the pork chops together and getting food from Vietnam Kitchen. So we decided to fix the pork chops on Friday and go to Vietnam Kitchen on Saturday; a two-day anniversary food extravaganza.

Herbed Pork Chops with Wine
1 tsp dried leaf sage, crumbled
1 tsp dried rosemary
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
1/4 tsp salt
freshly ground black pepper
2 1-inch pork chops
2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp olive oil
3/4 cup dry white wine

Combine sage, rosemary, garlic, salt, and pepper. Press the mixture into the sides of the chops. Over medium heat in a large skillet, melt butter and oil. Brown cops on both sides, turning gently with tongs. Remove chops and pour off most of the drippings. And 1/2 cup wine and boil. Return chops to pan. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer until chops are tender when pressed with tip of knife, 25-30 minutes. Remove chops, add remaining wine to skillet, and quickly boil down to syrupy glaze. Pour over chops.

Every time I make this I amazed at how simple and delicious it is. The simplicity amazes me because the first time we cooked it together it seemed like a huge, complicated production. I can't imagine what it was that we had so much trouble with. It's not even really a good meal to cook together because there's not much for more than one person to do. It's really quite quick and easy.

We traditionally serve this with baked sweet potatoes and some manner of crusty bread dipped in herby olive oil. Friday we picked up a garlic and tomato focaccia at Liquor Barn that was great with this. We cooked and served this dish with a bottle of Lindemans chardonnay that was leftover from a party.

The wonderful thing about this meal, and about food in general, really, is its ability to transport you another place and time. Every time I fix these pork chops I'm reminded of my little yellow kitchen on St. James Court where Neil and I were just starting to figure out cooking and each other. These pork chops remind me of falling in love.

As it turned out, yesterday, which was our actual anniversary, I was not really in the mood for Vietnam Kitchen (probably because we ate there with friends just last week). So instead we walked around the corner to Jockamo's for a delicious pignolata pizza and a couple of beers. Not the fanciest of anniversary dinners by any means, but it was really exactly what I wanted; great pizza and beer with my boyfriend in the heart of our beloved Germantown. It was a very nice anniversary dinner indeed.

Today we're picking up my mom and going on a food field trip. If you know me and Neil, or if you're a foodie living in the Louisville area, I bet you can guess where we're going. I'll be sure to blog about our adventure when we get home.

Grandpa's Christmas Stollen

This is me and my grandpa, Herb. I'm not sure what year this photo was taken, only that it was a Christmas Eve in the early 80's and that we are sharing a cup of eggnog. I love this photo.

It's hard to explain how and why my grandpa was so awesome. For starters, he loved me. I was never a daddy's girl, but I was surely a grandpa's girl. He brought me jelly donuts (my favorite), called me sweethaht in his New York accent, and took the curvy, hilly "shortcut" home from the store with me even though it actually took longer to get home that way. We took his Dalmatian, Molly, to the park, and downtown he'd go through the revolving doors of office buildings with me, garnering odd looks from people in suits. The house he shared with my grandma was a gloomy, nicotine-stained wonderland of seashells, old National Geographics, bells, tea sets, books, slides, and other odds and ends that kept me occupied for hours at a time. For many years they lived right around the corner from me and my parents; our backyards were catty corner to one another, and I frequently fled to their back gate as a response to some real or imagined injustice perpetrated by my parents. To say that I loved my grandparents, and especially Grandpa, does not even begin to describe the relationship I had with them.

Grandpa died in 1995, when I was 14. With him died the long tradition of the Christmas stollen. Stollen is a German bread, similar to fruitcake but better, and Grandpa made it every year for Christmas Eve. He left the recipe behind, but it seemed that no one was up for the challenge of baking it. From 1995 forward, there was no Christmas stollen. This year, emboldened by my first bread-making experience a few months earlier, I decided to pick up the mantle.

A week or so before Christmas I called my mom to ask for the recipe. "Let me call you back with it," she said. On December 23 I called her again. "Let me call you back," she said again.

"That's what you said the last time I asked!"
"Okay, hold on."

She finally returned with the recipe and started reading. I scribbled furiously. I wrote. And wrote. And wrote. And started to wonder what on earth I was getting myself into.


I felt a little overwhelmed. But then I went to the store and got what I needed. There was no candied angelica to be found, nor candied citrus peel. Mom assured me that it didn't matter. "Just use extra candied fruit. It doesn't have to be exact." I returned home with the best approximation of the required ingredients I could find, and as directed, set all the candied fruit to soaking in rum. Christmas Eve morning, with Neil gone to work, I started baking.

Grandpa's Christmas Stollen
1 cup mixed candied fruit
1/4 cup candied angelica
1/2 cup dried (candied) citrus peel
1/2 cup seedless raisins
1/2 cup candied cherries
1/2 cup rum
2 packages live active yeast
1/4 cup warm water
pinch of sugar
2 tbsp flour
2 eggs, room temperature
1 cup milk
3/4 cup sugar
1 tbsp salt
1/2 tsp almond extract
1/2 tsp grated lemon peel
6 cups flour
3/4 cups butter, room temperature, cut into bits
1 cup blanched & slivered almonds
4 tbsp melted butter
1/4 cup powdered sugar

Combine fruit with rum, stir, and let soak at least one hour, preferably overnight.


Pour water into small bowl, sprinkle in yeast, add pinch of sugar and stir. Wait for yeast to bubble.

Strain fruit and reserve rum. Dry fruit with paper towels.


Put fruit in paper bag with 2 tbsp flour and shake to coat.

In medium saucepan, heat milk, 1/2 cup sugar, and salt until lukewarm, stirring constantly until sugar dissolves.

Off heat, stir in rum, almond extract, lemon zest, and yeast mixture.

In large bowl, combine 3 cups of flour and yeast mixture with wooden spoon. In a separate bowl, beat eggs until frothy. Stir into mixture. Add butter bits to mixture, beat 100 times. Add 2 cups of flour and mix until the dough forms a soft ball.


Turn out onto floured surface, sprinkle generously with flour, and knead, adding flour as necessary. Return dough to bowl and gently knead in fruit and nuts, taking care that fruit does not discolor dough. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and place in warm location until dough is doubled in size.


Turn dough out onto floured surface, punch, and knead again.

Divide dough and put half back into bowl. With a rolling pin, shape dough into rectangle 12" long by 8" wide and 1/2" thick. Melt 2 tbsp butter and mix with 2 tbsp sugar; brush surface of dough with mixture.

Fold long side of dough over to center, then repeat with other side, overlapping by 1". Press the outside edges of the dough gently. Taper the ends of the loaf slightly and push sides together to mound center. Loaf should be 13" long and 3-4" wide.


Repeat with other half of dough.

Place loaves on 11x17 baking sheet and brush with butter.


Cover with wax paper, propping the wax paper on two tumblers so that they do not touch the dough. Place in a warm location until doubled.


Preheat oven to 375°. Bake 50 minutes or until brown, turning halfway through.


Cool on wire rack. Sprinkle with powdered sugar just before serving.

I am pleased to report that the stollen turned out exactly as it was supposed to. We had the ceremonial cutting and first tasting of the stollen by the baker. We have many years' worth of photos of this event; now, after an 11-year hiatus, there will be more.

I cannot tell you how pleased I am to have revived this tradition. My mom was very proud of me. I know Grandpa would be too.

The Worst Salmon I've Ever Made

Neil had his wisdom teeth out on Tuesday and has thus been on a soft food diet, which is getting kind of old for both of us. He's had his fill of pudding and mashed potatoes. So last night I decided to cook something soft but relatively normal. A quick check of the kitchen revealed that we had salmon and sweet potatoes. Sounds like dinner to me!

This recipe for Asian salmon is my go-to salmon recipe. It's easy, it's quick, we usually have the ingredients on hand, and it's really good. Last night, however, we were out of onion. I contemplated just leaving it out, but then decided to look around see if I could find a recipe that contained only things I already had in the house. I settled on this recipe for maple salmon.

I got the fish out of the freezer - Kroger brand wild-caught Alaskan sockeye - and put it in a bowl of water to thaw. I immediately noticed that it smelled super fishy. I know that fishy smell = unfreshness, but I'm also not sure how a salmon fillet that's been frozen all its life can be unfresh. Was it unfresh when it was frozen? Was it allowed to thaw at some point and was then refrozen? Who can say? But I was hungry and didn't feel like going to the store and it didn't smell that bad, so I forged ahead.

A couple of the comments on the recipe mentioned wrapping the salmon in foil with the marinade, which sounded like a good idea. I prepared the marinade (which smelled and tasted wonderful), spooned it over the fish, wrapped it all up, and popped it in the fridge for half an hour. What the comments didn't mention, however, was whether or not I should bake the salmon in the foil. I know that's a pretty common baking method, but I've never actually done anything that way. It seemed like a good idea at the time, though. Having the salmon all wrapped up would keep it moist and tender, right? Into the oven went the foil-wrapped salmon.

20 minutes later I retrieved the salmon packet, opened it, and found... fish. It looked like baked salmon. It smelled like delicious marinade, but underneath all the maple-soy yumminess, there was still a strong fishy odor. I was beginning to have my doubts. But I plated it and the sweet potatoes and we dug in.

Ew.

It tasted, as you would expect, fishy. But the texture was at least as bad as the taste. I never knew that salmon could be tough! I took two bites and declared that I didn't want it. But there wasn't really anything else in the house to eat, so I tried some more. It was edible, but barely. I ate most of it and gave the rest to Franklin and Otis. (They tell me it was the best dinner they've ever had.)

Where did I go wrong? Clearly the flavor came from the fish, but how did it get so tough? Was it the funky fish or the foil wrap? It's times like these that I wish I knew what the hell I was doing in the kitchen.

Restaurant.com

You know what's awesome? Restaurant.com. You can search for restaurants in your area and then buy discount gift certificates. How much of a discount? Typically you can get a $10 certificate for $3 or a $25 certificate for $10 (or other denominations, depending on the restaurant). A pretty good deal, no? In Louisville the selection of restaurants isn't fantastic, but there are a few really good ones.

I signed up for the Restaurant.com email list a few days ago, and this morning I was greeted by an email titled "70% Off Sale - Get $25 Gift Certificates For $3." So that's exactly what I did. I just bought $100 worth of gift certificates - to two really good restaurants - for $12. Amazing!

Nana's Sugar Cookies

Several years ago my mom gave me a great Christmas present: a recipe book with some of our most beloved family recipes. She included the recipe for my nana's sugar cookies. I have no idea where this recipe came from, if it was something passed down through the generations, if Nana made it up (doubtful - she's never struck me as much of a from-scratch baker), or if it came out of a 1950-something issue of Good Housekeeping. No matter. They are amazing sugar cookies. Somehow, though, I'd never gotten around to making them. There they were, the second card in my recipe book (after my mom's don't-call-it-Derby-Pie® recipe), but for some reason I never felt compelled to bake them.

Along came the holiday season, though, and sugar cookies sounded just right. So this evening I decided to get to baking. A mountain of delicious cookies was the result.

Nana's Sugar Cookies

1 cup softened butter
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 cup oil
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
5 cups unsifted flour
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cream of tartar

Preheat oven to 350°. Cream sugar and butter together. Add the eggs, vanilla, oil, and salt. Mix until well blended. Sift the flour with the baking soda and cream of tartar. Add to butter mixture with wooden spoon. Mix well. Roll dough into balls the size of walnuts. Place on cookie sheet and gently press with bottom of glass dipped in sugar. Bake 10-12 minutes. Cook on wire rack. Makes 4-5 dozen.

Garlic and Sapphires

Neil and I drove up to Philadelphia for Thanksgiving and, as usual, picked up some audiobooks to make the 12-hour drive a bit more bearable. Among the meager offerings at the public library was Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise by Ruth Reichl. Reichl, now the editor of Gourmet, recounts her experiences as the restaurant critic for The New York Times. In an effort to find out what dining was like for the average Jane, she donned an elaborate series of disguises for her restaurant visits. Unsurprisingly, the difference in the way that she is treated while in disguise is striking. But the book is more than just the story of her undercover dining adventures. We're also made privy to the politics of the mid-90s New York dining scene, and you can't help but smirk in satisfaction each time she awards two stars to over-hyped, unimpressive restaurants (much to the chagrin of many Times readers) or cheer each time she lavishes praise on outstanding, but overlooked, ethnic eateries. We also see Reichl grapple with the meaning of restaurant criticism and the implications of her various alter egos. The book is in turns poignant, mouthwatering, and uproariously funny. We had a fantastic time listening to it. It turns out that this is actually Reichl's third memoir; she also wrote Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table and Comfort Me With Apples: More Adventures at the Table. I can't wait to read them both!

Mai's Thai Cooking Classes

Neil and I had lunch at Mai's Thai in Jeffersonville today and we saw that Mai is holding cooking classes next month! Sounds like lots of fun! The classes are $35 and include a buffet lunch afterward.

January 19 & 20, 11:00 am

Mai's Thai
1411 E 10th St
Jeffersonville, IN
(812) 282-0198

We don't know much about food, but we know what we like.

On our first date, Neil and I went to my favorite sushi place. On our second date, we went to his favorite Vietnamese place. Neither of us remembers our third date, but I suspect it might have involved tea and cookies (and making eyes at each other over my kitchen table). None of this is remarkable; people usually do eat on dates. But I never suspected that food would become such an important part of our relationship. Before long we were cooking together and eating out all over the place.

That was three years ago. Now, as cohabitors and life partners, we approach the world as an adventure in food. It's become more than what we eat several times a day to sustain ourselves. We talk about it. We analyze it. We go special places to buy it, and it plays a prominent role in our travel plans. It seems that we are turning into foodies. And how better to record this adventure than a blog?

8 Things that Inform the Way We Eat

1. We are pescatarians, or, more accurately, flexitarians. We decided to stop eating red meat and poultry in August of this year, for both environmental and animal welfare reasons. We do sometimes eat meat, though, usually because of travel (we can't visit Philly without cheesesteaks!), special occasions (we ate a ton of ham over Thanksgiving), or limited choices in social situations. We also just sometimes give in to cravings. For the most part I find it very easy not to eat meat. Neil misses beef.

2. We believe there is something seriously wrong with the food industry, and we try to eat our way around that. High fructose corn syrup and partially hydrogenated oils are the banes of our existence. We try to buy organic often, though an entirely organic diet is cost prohibitive to us right now. We believe in buying locally-grown foods and in sustainable agriculture.

3. I am trying to lose weight. About 25 lbs. Neil has lost quite a bit of weight in the last year or so and is trying to keep it off.

4. We support local restaurants. With such a vibrant and exciting restaurant scene in our city (Louisville), we rarely find a reason to dine somewhere that is not locally-owned.

5. We love beer. Like whoa.

6. We're living on the cheap right now. I'm finishing grad school, Neil has gone back for his second bachelor's, and we own a house that needs lots and lots of work. This means that we have not yet been able to dine at many of the better restaurants in our city. We're hoping that this will change soon.

7. We were not necessarily raised to be foodies. Both of us come from families with pretty conservative tastes in food. The only "ethnic" food I was exposed to as a child was Chinese. I was in my 20s before I had Indian, Thai, Middle Eastern, Vietnamese, or Japanese food. My mom is a great cook, but in a very down-home, not-necessarily-good-for-you way. Neil's mom doesn't really cook at all.

8. We are still learning how to cook. I had no interest in learning to cook until I was 23. What I've learned since then has been self-taught, and I think that's how Neil knows what he does about cooking as well. We have a long ways to go. We're good at making things from recipes, but we lack a lot in technique and creativity.

Join us here as we continue on our food odyssey. We plan to review restaurants, books, and products, share recipes, rant about the politics of food, and share news about special food events. We hope you enjoy it.