Rest in Peace, Dear Friend.

On September 5, a great Sinner-Saint who has taught Ben and I much about love, theology, and cooking, and rendered us unable to separate the three, died. An Episcopalian priest and prolific writer, he wrote on parables, theology, church, and - most importantly to me - cooking. The Supper of the Lamb has saved Ben and my marriage countless times; it was Capon who reminded us that everything we receive in this world comes as gift:

"In a general way we concede that God made the world out of joy: He didn't need it; He just thought it was a good thing. But if you confine His activity in creation to the beginning only, you lose most of the joy in the subsequent shuffle of history. Sure, it was good back then, you say, but since then we've been eating leftovers. How much better a world it becomes when you see Him creating at all times and at every time; when you see the preserving of the old in being is just as much creation as the bringing of the new out of nothing. Each thing, at every moment, becomes the delight of HIs hand, the apple of His eye. The bloom of the yeast lies upon the grape skins year after year because he likes it; [it] is a dependable process because, every September, He says, That was nice, do it again," (The Supper of the Lamb, 85).

This one of my favorite quotes. I use it in many situations, but I especially need to remind myself of it when the shadows grow tall and faith grows thin. It has shaped me in ways of which I am still unsure. Capon has taught me the extravagance of the Feast and the extravagance of the Host, showering upon us things for which we would never have thought to ask in the midst of difficulties we doubt we'll survive.

I will confess it here: I don't think I've made a single recipe from the book. The recipe I have taken from it is far more powerful: it has been a recipe for living graciously and falling in love over and over again not because it is anything I am capable of doing on my own but because of the echoes of the Creator in creation: in its terrifying otherness and in participating in it, I learn who I am.

Capon has become a dear friend, whom I have never met, and is part of the cloud of witnesses that refuses to allow humanity's "no" to the beauty and extravagance of creation speak louder than the Creator's "yes."

I can't say that the world has lost someone great because great sinners are never, finally, lost; we share with them in Feast of the Prodigals, which beckons us all to its raucous celebration, as we raise a toast to the Prodigal God who is never quite what we expect.

A Perfect Omelette

This morning, I made a perfect omelette. It was fluffy and beautifully browned (some people don't think they should be browned at all, a la French omelettes, but I think they are fools) and had the perfect amount of cheese in it. To make a perfect omelette is a small thing. To marry the person who can appreciate it as much as you do is one of the greatest gifts.

It totally stinks that Ben is working this morning and won't be done working until 11pm because he's taking one for Team B-R and working more than anyone should.

It has never been the big things that teach us how to feast, and it is never the big things that teach us how to fall in love. Feasting, like falling in love, takes practice. Ben and I had no idea what we were doing when we started dating 15 years ago and weren't much farther along when we were married 9 years ago; we had no idea how to cook, no idea what spending half of our lives together would look like and no idea that it was actually all of the detours along the path that make the journey worth it.

We're still not really sure what we are doing, but we can make a mean omelette. Satis est.

Perfect Omelette for One:

2 eggs

2T milk

1/4c of whatever cheese you happen to have laying around

a pinch of salt

a pinch of pepper

freshly grated nutmeg if you dare

fresh herbs if they're around (skip the dried ones; they don't have enough time to meld in dishes that cook fast...)

Heat 1T butter in a cast-iron skillet over medium heat (assuming you have a gas stove... you can make a passable omelette without a gast stove and without a cast iron skillet, but it is difficult to achieve perfection). Whisk together the egg and milk using a circular motion (imagine the circle is vertical instead of horizontal; it will add more air to the mixture and improve the texture). Add the salt, pepper, and herbs. Pour the mixture into the hot skillet. Wait a few minutes until the outsides start to solidify. With a rubber spatula, push back the eggs closest to you and tip the pan toward you so that the un-done egg flows in. Do this once or twice. If your omelette starts to get too done on the bottom, turn down the heat. When there is no more liquid, put the cheese on top of the egg. Swoop the rubber spatula under half of the pan, gently folding the omelette over. Voila!

More importantly: To make a perfect omelette for two, double all of the ingredients and get a bigger pan. And make hollandaise sauce. And open a bottle of rose. 

Perfect Omelette for Two with Hollandaise:

For the Omelette:

4 eggs

1/4c milk

Skip the cheese for this one; the hollandaise will do.

1/2c. asparagus, quickly blanched (see below)

a pinch of salt

a pinch of pepper

Julia Child's Hollandaise from The French Chef Cookbook (As I was doing the link to Amazon, I noticed there are used ones for under $10. Buy it now; you won't regret it.)

3 egg yolks

1T lemon juice

1T water

1/4t salt

pinch of white pepper (we use whatever color we happen to have on-hand)

1T cold butter

1 1/2-2 sticks melted butter (if you are squeamish about using this much butter or if you have margarine in your fridge, skip the hollandaise altogether. Feasting is not for the faint of heart.)

Beat the egg yolks in the pan (before you turn on the heat) to stabilize them and prepare them for what is to come. When the color of the yolks starts to lighten, you know they are ready to be transcended into  perfection. Beat in the lemon juice, water, salt, and pepper; beat for a minute again. Add the tablespoon of cold butter to prevent the mixture from heating too quickly (which will scramble your eggs, which is a sign you need to start over. Having two dozen eggs on hand before you begin this process will help alleviate frustration and increase your bravery; it is worth a few more eggs in the compost to make perfect hollandaise). 

Place the saucepan over low (I mean it - LOW!) heat and stir the egg yolks with a wire whip at a moderate speed. Pick the pan up off the heat every now and again to slow the cooking process. If you see lumps forming, you can put the bottom of the pan in a bath of ice water, as Julia suggests, but I am too easily frustrated and get an immense amount of pleasure out of the theatrics of dumping a failed sauce in the compost and starting again. 

Know thyself and respond accordingly if the sauce starts to flop. For me, there is nothing quite like taking a pan of steaming flop and ceremoniously walking outside, opening the lid to the compost and, with a flick of the wrist, dumping the whole thing in. You have not failed it; it has failed you.

Back to the eggs. This is the version of the story where the eggs do not begin to scramble and you have a perfect sauce. Beat the eggs over LOW heat until you can see the bottom of the pan between strokes. When they coat a spoon dipped in the sauce, you are ready to start adding hte melted butter. Start adding the melted butter VERY SLOWLY, dribble by dribble, as you are emulsifying the eggs with the butter at this point in time. This takes patience and a steady hand. Do not give up. This sauce is completely worth it. The sauce will thicken to a heavy cream; when it does, it is stable enough for you to add the butter a little more quickly. Taste it to see if it needs anything. If not, pour it on top of your omelette, which your partner - by now - will have just completed.

DO NOT, however, dump the sauce into the compost if it does not emulsify properly. 

Should it happen that the egg yolks resist the butter (you will be able to tell because the fat will stay separate from the eggs and it will not thicken), you CAN fix this. Two sticks of butter is too much for even me to waste. Three egg yolks are negligible. To fix it, leave a little bit of the egg mixture in the bottom of your pan and pour the rest into whatever you are using to pour the butter in. Start whisking, adding the mixture back in slowly, dribble by dribble, once again. Breathe. Put it down and take a break if you must. Don't throw away two sticks of butter, for the love of all things holy.

For the Omelette:

Blanch the asparagus:

Set a pan of very salty water (it should taste akin to the ocean) on the stove to boil. When it is boiling, dump the asparagus you have cut into 1-inch segements in. They will turn bright green. Remove them after 30 seconds to one minute, depending on how crunchy you would like them to be. Set aside.

Follow the directions for the perfect omelette above, adding the asparagus when you would add the cheese and following the same process.

Cut the omelette in half and slide onto two plates. Pour a liberal amount of hollandaise over the omelettes and garnish with fresh herbs (chives or parsley are particularly delightful) if you have them. 

I love hollandaise so much that Ben has already started scheming of ways to pasteurize the egg yolks so that I do not have to give up hollandaise when I am pregnant (and no, I am not, should you be raising an eyebrow at this). 

Grilled Trout with Horseradish Cream... Lemon Curd for Dessert!

It has been a long time. I have eaten since we last spoke, but I haven't feasted much. I was starting to become scared Ben and I had forgotten. For all the candles and all the wine, neither loosened enough of the oh-my-God-how-are-we-ever-going-to-survive fears of failure, fears of unknown, fears that we have been drawn into a future that is going to be more work and more amazing than we imagined. It's terrifying. There have been times it was all we could do to hold each other's hands, knowing we each needed to journey along the road alone. There have been times we wanted so desperately to connect that we fought because it was the closest thing to a good conversation we could muster.

But we are feeling brave. There comes a point that fear ceases to have any power precisely because it has so much. For us, its domination led to our determination to subvert it. Armed with trout, wine, beeswax taper candles, and a couple of new friends, we have decided to practice the feast until we remember it. We will keep lighting candles, and we will keep drinking wine. Soon we'll break though. On that day, we'll be ready, and we will laugh our heads off, tears streaming, stomach aching. Then we'll know we're home.

Grilled Trout:
- 1 trout per person
- Parsley
- Lemons
- Olive Oil
- Salt and Pepper

Leave the trout whole: heads, tails, eyeballs, etc. If your guests are squeamish about heads, they come off rather easily after they have been grilled (grab a paper towel, take the head, and pull it off. It sounds completely grotesque... I once worked in a restaurant where a waitress, in her frustration that Americans do not want to acknowledge that the thing they are eating was once living and that somehow the head is representative of all this, grabbed a napkin and, at the table, pulled the fish's head off. I had to go back into the kitchen to giggle to myself and regain my composure). Fish have heads. We eat fish. Plus, the cheeks (right under the eyeballs) are the best part of the fish!

Okay... enough about fish heads. Fire up your grill 40-60 minutes before you want to cook them; the charcoal should all be white. While the fish are still raw, salt and pepper the outsides and the insides. Put inside of each fish several sprigs of parsley and slices of lemon. If you want, you can get some butcher twine and sew up the seams of the fish to keep all of the stuff on the inside. I know a woman (not naming any names) who uses her tapestry needles for knitting to do such a task... I remember (I mean, she remembers) to wash off the needles before returning them to the knitting bin - most of the time. Grill the fish for 5-10 minutes per side (this varies greatly, given the heat of your grill). The fish should be done but not dry. The "touch" test also works well: if, when you push your finger down on the fish and it feels firm to the touch, it is finished. This is also how we test lamb. Why not use a thermometer? As great as thermometers are for such tasks, I do not always have one on me and do not always have time to remember to go get fifteen million things when I am drinking a gin and tonic and grilling. I'd rather just enjoy the gin and tonic and impress my guests by touching the fish and proclaiming it done.

After the fish are done, or, if you split up the tasks, when the fish have been flipped, you can make:

Seared Green Beans with Parmesan, Chilis, and Garlic
- Olive oil
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 dried chili, crushed
- 1/8c parmesan cheese, grated with a microplane
- 1 lb green beans

Heat the olive oil until it is thin in the bottom of the pan; this occurs just before it starts to smoke. It will be hot. Don't get scared. You might burn yourself. You will get over it and, with time, will learn how to not burn yourself. For the time being, muster your bravest self and deal with the consequences later. It's tough to burn yourself really badly doing this, though oil burns do suck. If you get one, rinse immediately in cold water or, if you're really into cooking, just grab an ice cube out of the freezer and hold it in your hand while you finish cooking. Plate the food and put aloe on the burn. This way, dinner still gets made and you take care of the burn. Anyway, the olive oil is now hot and almost smoking. Throw the garlic and the chili in the pan, swoosh it in a circle, and add the green beans. Leave the green beans for 2-3 minutes or until one side of them has started to blister and turn brown. This is carmelizing the sugars in the beans, which makes them delicious.

After you plate the beans, sprinkle parmesan on top.

Lemon Curd Tartlets for Dessert!!!

I love lemon curd. It is lemony, puddingy, and remarkably satisfying. I make it a lot and there are probably at least three other entries of it on this blog.

Lemon Curd Tartlet
Pie Crust
- 1stick butter
- 1 1/2c flour
- Water
- 1t salt

Cut the butter into small pieces and mix with the flour and salt, squishing it between your fingers until the mixture is uniform and there are no big butter chunks. Add water, stirring with your hands (this is messy!) until the dough feels like play-doh. Roll out fairly thinly and cut to the size of your tart pan. I'm making mini-tarts, but you can make any size you like. Bake at 350 until just before it starts to brown (check it after 10 minutes or when you can smell it).

Lemon Curd (from The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters)
- 4 Lemons
- 2 eggs
- 3 egg yolks
- 2T milk
- 1/3c sugar
- 1/4t salt
- 6T butter (3/4 stick)

Grate the zest of one of hte lemons on a microplane; juice the lemons (there should be around 1/2c). Beat the eggs, yolks, milk, sugar, and salt until just mized. Stirr in the lemon juice and zest and add the butter. Cook in a heavy-bottomed pan (non-aluminum) over medium heat until it coats a spoon (it will be pretty thick and will seem to happen all at once; you'll notice a difference!). If you accidentally curdle it (i.e. it starts to look like scrambled eggs), immediately strain it through a mesh strainer and it is good as new.

Pour the custard into the tart pan(s) and bake at 350 until set... this should take 10-20 minutes, depending on its size.

Voila! Feast! Pictures are coming!

Homemade Flavored Soda

Have you ever seen those fancy $7 for four sodas in the coop with amazing flavors like lavender and lemongrass?  They were never in my budget.  Now they never will be.  Buy a case of soda water, and knock yourself out, experimenting with flavors:

Basic Recipe:
Simple Syrup
       1c sugar
     1/2c water
Bring these to a boil for a few minutes until sugar is completely dissolved.

Depending on whatever flavor you're hankering, put it in at the beginning.  Store it in a small mason jar or whatever heat-friendly container you have lying around.

Suggested flavors:
Vanilla (add 1 vanilla bean) => tastes like cream soda
Lavender (add 1T dried lavender flowers)
Rosemary Lime (add 1T lime juice and 1t dried rosemary)
Lemongrass (put 1 small stalk lemongrass)

YUM!