Digression: Loving Tilda Swinton

Holy crow. As those of you who've known me for a while (the entire reading audience of this blog, I think) might be aware, I have a longstanding, silly obsession with fashion that has very little to do with what I wear on a day-to-day basis. I like to think that if I became a celebrity (when, dammit. WHEN) I'd dress like Tilda Swinton. Envelope-pushing, sort of scary and demented with a real sense of humor. With an intimate familiarity of my own flaws and the bravery to accentuate them until they're art. She's not trying to look pretty, or cute. She eschews makeup - it's all about the architectural and sometimes nihilistic clothing. Sometimes a photo can just make your freaking day. As I write this, I'm wearing a St. Mary's College sweatshirt that was left behind by a law school friend ten years ago (Hi, Ky!) but wishing I was wearing the frock pictured above, with the library-model Kik-Step from my kitchen concealed under my skirt to create the illusion of even more height and willowy-ness. This makes me want to ransack my closet and search for the combination of garments that will make me most closely resemble a confused visitor from outer space. Swintonicity!

Gwyneth Paltrow Has A Lot of Balls

Confession: I am an ironic subscriber to Gwyneth Paltrow's "lifestyle" e-newsletter, unappetizingly entitled "Goop." Its tagline, "Nourish the inner aspect," invariably causes me to silently add, "While malnourishing the outer aspect in order to fit into that size-zero Stella McCartney." Her personal and guru-solicited musings on philosophy are both hippy-dippy and airy-fairy, and her fashion advice can only be described as economically tone-deaf. But once in a while a recipe of hers looks. . . potentially halfway decent. To her credit, she always gives attribution to the many friends and chefquaintances who are the real authors. Recently, I received a Gwynethgram featuring a family Sunday-night dinner with these meatballs as the centerpiece. They seemed.. .maybe. . .kind of tasty. And given my husband's neverending quest for healthy food, in eternal conflict with my kids' desire for kid stuff, turkey meatballs appeared to strike a nice compromise.

Gwynnie's recipe (I feel like we're besties now!) uses only a pound of ground turkey. I had three. So I optimistically made three batches of Paltrow Balls, hoping they'd be a hit and I could freeze some for later. Plus, In These Straitened Economic Times, I was happy to use up all of the pricey fresh herbs I had purchased for the recipe. They rocked. While I'd be happy to rescind the Oscar for the assy "Shakespeare In Love," I'd give her a "Kiss the Cook" apron for the meatball recipe, which filled the house with herby fragrance. The killer ingredient: lemon zest. I browned my two superfluous batches, froze them individually on a cookie sheet, and bagged them up for future tastiness. To be served: during a filmfest-style screening of "Shallow Hall" and that one karaoke movie she did with Huey Lewis.

Cupcakes, Schmupcakes

The pop-cultural fetishization of the cupcake irritates me to no end. Working at the library, I see what seems like scores of lame chick-lit books mercenarily illustrated with food-porn pictures of cupcakes in order to capture that 90s-retro-Sex-and-The-City market. The cupcake has become shorthand for mini-decadence. Cutesy self-indulgence for women whose two battling, powerful desires are to be skinny and to eat chocolate. Of course, the show "Sex and the City" is somewhat to blame. I'm convinced that show was basically a live-action "Cathy" cartoon brought up to date with sex and cocktails. I still likes me a good cupcake, if only for the efficiency and portability the form brings to cake-eating. And I also desire a set of the annoyingly-named "Cup-A-Cakes", pictured above and available at Williams-Sonoma, where I can no longer afford to shop. (Analogy: the recession=the linoleum in my childhood home. Stores like Williams-Sonoma= the orange lozenge-shapes, which=HOT LAVA!)

ANYHOW, the lower picture depicts the dark chocolate cupcakes with vanilla bean buttercream that I threw together for the Madison Public Library Staff Association bake sale. They are the rockingest cupcakes ever. The frosting contains real vanilla beans. However, these cupcakes seem to bring humiliation and effrontery with them whenever they are baked. During my MFA, the not-yet-Pulitzered author Junot Diaz came to visit. I made the cupcakes in honor of my visit. Bear in mind that I offer a baked good the way an arms-trading Afghanistani warlord offers you a cup of tea. You. Take. The. Cupcake. Mr. Diaz SPURNED my cupcakes. DEAD TO ME.

After receiving a personal request from a co-worker to bake something for the sale, ("Who, ME? BAKE something? Don't mind if I do!!!") I proudly brought my cuppycakes into work, only to discover that they were going to be sold for ONE DOLLAR APIECE. The deal of the century, cupcake-wise, but the Staff Association might have done better financially by just having me donate the cost of the ingredients. I felt this way about my son's school carnival Cake Walk attraction. One can only conclude, alas, that baked goods are among the least efficient ways to generate money for a charitable organization. Pennies on the dollar, if that. Which is probably why I feel the way I do about things I bake. They're like handmade sweaters, on a smaller scale. Nobody would pay their real value to have them, in materials and man-hours. So when I bake somebody a batch of cookies with real butter and King Arthur Flour, I am giving real effort. So eat my dang cupcakes, people.

Pech Pie

Peaches might seem like an odd post subject for March, but I wanted to round up the Great Out-Of-Season Turkey Project by highlighting our dessert: peach pie. I have an odd relationship with peaches. Ripe, in-season peaches are one of my top five fruits of all time, and when they are widely available, I'm confronted with utter gastro-confusion. The desire to eat as many juicy ripe peaches out of hand as possible usually overwhelms the motivation to actually cook with them. Peach desserts have never been a big part of my repertoire. The fact that my family inhales every peach that hits the door doesn't enable the kind of contemplative recipe-selection process that usually precedes a hotsy-totsy cooking project for me. Last summer, I tried something new. I bought a few cases of peaches from a local fruit-seller that carries perfect, softball-sized peaches every summer. They are pricey but fail-safe. No hard, green fruit that never ripens, no mealy flavorless blobs. Every peach is perfection, nestled in its little cardboard nest. The sign which advertises these peaches, however, is irritating as all hell: "Chin Drippin' Peaches." Without even getting to that cutesy "n'", the notion of letting the juice dribble freely down one's face is not one I can really get behind.

BUT I bought a couple of ginormous boxes last summer and spent well over a week cranking pies out of my kitchen as if they were Model-Ts. Most of them, I froze, using disposable pie tins and the largest freezer bags I could find. Ike, who was five at the time, labeled them. When cooked, they taste as fresh as if they were made that day. I appreciate the flavor of the peaches so much more in the middle of winter when their lush sweetness is not just delicious but totally out of step with the rest of cold-weather cuisine. Yumminess. More dessert-like posts to come.

New Food-Related Posts Soon!

I just got a shiny new laptop, but the photos of my most recent culinary endeavors are still on Old Bessie, so until my IT guy (to whom I also, coincidentally, happen to be married) helps me switch the photos over, I am a bit hamstrung, post-wise. Will catch up within a day or two, for all of you who are breathlessly awaiting the post-turkey project (hi, Mom!). (Photo by Brett Rogers, www.beatcanvas.com)

Turkey Triumphant!

Thar she blows! The most delicious, crispy-skinned golden-brown turkey, roasted in about 1 hour 45 minutes. Does it not look as if it is crossing its legs to avoid wetting its imaginary turkey-pants? And also gesticulating for you to admire its plump and juicy breast(s)? As you can see, the bird portion of Project Turkey was a smashing success. There are, however, some bugs to work out. Here's the rub: the stuffing, which I made the previous day out of challah and sausage and minced fresh herbs, was in the roasting pan underneath the turkey throughout the roasting process, soaking up tasty drippings. HOWEVER: my guests did not like the stuffing very well, I suspect for the same reason my in-laws would not like it. It just wasn't Stove Top. That is to say, its flavor and consistency were entirely foreign to the palate of a family that has come to think Stove Top = stuffing. It did not get eaten. I am OK with making some Stove Top to go along with this bird, but the stuffing also serves a function here: it keeps the turkey drippings from burning in the pan. Remember, this turkey is being roasted at a high temperature. 450, to be exact. When I roast chicken, I put some stock in the pan underneath to prevent the smoke alarm from going off and to keep my drippings from getting black and crispy, but I'm worried that if I do that here, the resulting steam will compromise the skin-crispiness that is the turkey's best feature. What's a girl to do? I've thought of just putting a bunch of crappy damp bread underneath the bird as an ersatz-stuffing, but there must be a better way. Thoughts?

The Secret of the Turkey Hearts Revealed!

I don't have a photo of Phase 2 of the great turkey project, but that's probably for the best. The day before the meal, I made stuffing out of challah, sausage and fresh sage. My first attempt at purchasing challah resulted in the acquisition of two decent-looking loaves that revealed themselves to be disturbingly flecked with fake-looking orange zest and tinted apricot-colored throughout. Dessert challah! Who knew? A trip to Whole Foods yielded a challah that could swing both ways (sweet or savory). Disaster struck again while mincing three cups of onions for the stuffing. I also managed to mince off a big chunk of my index fingernail. I have very sharp knives. I was fortunate to locate the disembodied nail chunk before it could become lost forever in the stuffing. I now have a gnarly-looking pointer that I enjoy using to direct library patrons around my workplace.

The gravy was made, not with drippings from the turkey itself, but from the narsty bits: the back, the gizzard, the chest plates I trimmed from the bird during the spatchcocking process, the tail (which dear mama refers to as the Pope's Nose) and, of course, the heart. There was at least one other unidenifiable giblet in there as well, but the heart was gratifyingly heart-shaped and even had the little vessels attached as in the diagram above. I roasted all of this detritus along with a mess of coarsely-chopped veg, creating a nice little fond which was later deglazed, combined with some chicken stock and white wine and reduced for hours upon hours. During this period of time, with my hearts and giblets boiling merrily on my stove, I felt as much like a wicked witch as ever I have. This entire turkey project has been tinged with a delightfully macabre quality. Stay tuned: in tomorrow's post, the finished bird will be revealed!!!