As you can see, I’ve been cooking. Oh, how I’ve been cooking. But there hasn’t been a lot to say about the food. I mean, we can all get behind a great roast chicken, but really, what more could I possibly tell you about it? Well, OK, just a word about this one, then we’ll move on…

I was craving another Zuni roast chicken for dinner during the week, but my way-back machine was in the shop and I couldn’t have one seasoned in time for that evening’s meal. So I did the next best thing; I used Thomas Keller’s method of seasoning and dry roasting a chicken in a 450-degree oven for an hour. (Thanks for the heads-up, Dietsch.) It’s very similar to the Zuni method, only it requires no advance planning. It’s also very similar to my grandma’s roast chicken: 500-degree oven for an hour, but she bastes it in butter whereas this one stayed completely dry, the better to crisp the skin, my darlings. It was a delicious bird, only not seasoned through the way it would have been if I’d started the project three days earlier. Live and learn.

One thing among many I’m grateful for is that my husband remains unmoved by chicken butt. Rufus and I go crazy for it, so there must be some primal instinct that Gil’s missing. Whatever — more for me. (What? You don’t really think I’d actually share this little morsel with a dog, do you? He got a few bites of chicken skin after we’d finished eating, which was all the reward he was getting. Did he help me lift the heavy cast iron pan into the oven? No. Did he help me make gravy from the salty pan drippings? No. He just napped cutely while I did all the hard work.)

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Confession time: I wasn’t raised on anything even resembling homemade biscuits, an especially shameful admission for a Southerner. The closest to “from scratch” my family ever got was Bisquick, but more often Dad would crack open a can of flaky biscuits and call it breakfast. So I don’t know where I developed a taste for the real stuff, but I’m glad I did, because there’s just no comparison.

This was a big biscuit weekend around here. I woke Saturday with a craving and set the wheels in motion, but the results were unsatisfactory, so I followed up with a second round Sunday because I just knew there was a better recipe out there. And of course there was; Gourmet ran an article on Ms. Edna Lewis and her protegé Scott Peacock not so long ago, and the magazine was practically staring me in the face as I blithely searched recipes online. Why would I look for second-rate when the ultimate was right there? It’s like reading Adrian Tomine when all you want is Dan Clowes or popping in a DVD of When Harry Met Sally when you know you’d be much more satisfied by Annie Hall. My ways are mysterious, sometimes even to myself.

So Ms. Lewis (via Mr. Peacock) was very particular about her biscuits, you’ll probably be unsurprised to hear. From the brand of flour to the method of cutting the biscuits, it’s all very precisely laid out in the recipe. White Lily flour — a Southern staple made from a soft wheat — is preferred. Naturally, it’s nearly impossible to find around here, so I made a close approximation with 2 parts cake flour to 3 parts all-purpose flour. And because I just don’t keep lard at hand, I used Plugra instead, figuring it has a higher percentage of butterfat than most supermarket brands, so it’d be closer to lard. And really, who can complain about Plugra?

I worked the butter into the flour with my icy hands (which, though naturally chilly, were perfect for the task after a mile-long walk with Rufus on a 15-degree morning), then stirred buttermilk into the mixture juuuust until the dough came together. After kneading the dough briefly on a well-floured board, I rolled it out and began cutting the biscuits. Did you know that you shouldn’t twist the biscuit cutter as you do this? Well, it’s true, and it was more difficult to break myself of that habit than you might think, but all turned out well.

Just a short time later, we were enjoying pillowy, crusty biscuits brushed with melted butter. Gil went the standard route, smearing his biscuit halves with butter and jam, but I ate my biscuits dipped in pure cane syrup, just the way I have since I was a tiny tot. Oh, man, it just curls my toes. Excellent stuff.

Do give this recipe a try if you’re ever craving buttermilk biscuits. Just remember to take the recipe as gospel (except for the lard, I suppose); if you do, you’re guaranteed one heavenly breakfast.

recipe after the jump

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I’m a terrible neighbor. Oh, I don’t let Rufus pockmark neighbors’ yards with calling cards or have crazy drink-till-dawn parties or have a car on blocks in the front yard, but I’ve found other less obvious ways to be a bad person.

Those of you who are lucky enough to be in warmer climates at the moment might not have heard, but it’s cold here. Negative wind chill cold. Unacceptably cold. AND it snowed like a sonofabitch last weekend. So we’re all miserable, is what I’m getting at. When it snows over the weekend, Gil and I sometimes shovel the driveway, but more often he just drives over the snow in his Honda Element and we don’t think too much about it. Last weekend, however, in the midst of all the wintery misery, our neighbor came over with his snow blower to take care of the dirty work for us.

As he was doing his thing, I looked over at our fruit bowl and noticed a few blackened bananas there just begging to be made into banana bread. So I dug out my version of a Cooking Light recipe and got to work on some bread for this wonderful, generous man.

And when it came out of the oven, I took a few pictures.

And then we sampled a slice just to make sure it was gift-worthy, which of course, rendered the entire loaf un-gift-worthy.

And those being the last of our bananas, there was no thank-you banana bread. Therefore, I am a bad neighbor.

But a happy one.

recipe after the jump

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This slushy winter weather has pressed my cast iron skillet into heavy rotation lately. As our mothers and grandmothers knew, cast iron cookware is perfect for homey meals or stove-to-oven cooking with a minimum of mess.

Awash in laziness last weekend, I decided to try my hand at a Spanish torta, as it required the relatively simple journey from living room to kitchen instead of a more arduous trek to the grocery store. The recipes that turned up in a Google search varied only slightly from each other, so I got the gist of them, used Martha’s (yes, we’re on a first-name basis) as a guide to ingredient amounts and oven temperature and set out to create my own vegetarian version.

To the basic recipe, I added diced red bell pepper, sautéed broccoli rabe (leafy greens only), garlic and a hefty dose of hot pimentón. (Several of the recipes I found called for chorizo, which I agree would be a superb addition, but there was that whole going-out thing to avoid. The pimentón seemed an acceptable substitute under the circumstances.) Since I don’t have much experience with cast iron pans, I was concerned that the potatoes would stick, but with the pan preheated and coated with a thin film of oil, that wasn’t a problem in any way.

The torta alone was our lunch, but I had a few tricks up my sleeve for dinner. OK, only one trick, but what a beauty — Zuni Café roast chicken. I made the turkey version for Thanksgiving and was so shockingly pleased with the outcome, I had to try the chicken sooner rather than later. And it didn’t disappoint. All of the raves you’ve probably read across the internet are absolutely true — the chicken is moist and perfectly seasoned with delicious crispy, browned skin. Mmmmm. We managed to keep some of it for leftovers the following day, but only just. I think it’s likely to go into the weekly rotation.

recipes after the jump

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To celebrate Gil’s 38th birthday tomorrow, I thought I’d treat him to dinner this evening at a nearby restaurant with the excellent and unusual reputation of fine French dining in a casual strip mall atmosphere. Sadly, today’s snow closed the restaurant prematurely and we had to reschedule for next weekend, so I broke out the latest issue of Food & Wine to make him a birthday dessert that would take some of the sting out of his missed dinner.

“That must be some dessert!” you say. “Whatever could it be?” Oh, just a little something called Warm Chocolate Croissant-Bread Pudding.

As you know, I’m no stranger to the charms of bread pudding and I’ve often substituted croissants for bread when I’ve thrown caution (and calories) to the wind, but this is easily 10 steps beyond anything I’ve made. And it was so simple! Just a few ordinary ingredients, about an hour of my time, and Gil and I were stumbling around in a lovely chocolate- and carbohydrate-driven serotonin haze.

I probably should’ve made the full recipe instead of half, but with the snow, it was unlikely that an ambulance could reach us before we fell into diabetic comas. I’m already dreaming up variations and think that sautéed bananas and bittersweet chocolate would be excellent together here, but I’ll keep you updated.

recipe after the jump

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Five years ago this evening, I ended my post-work crosstown death march at St. Mark’s Bookshop chilled to the bone, and hoping my nose would unredden before meeting my latest online date. This was going to be the last for a while, I’d decided; the frustration of dating required a cleansing break a couple of times a year. And anyway, given the general length and creativity of the typical online dating gambit, this guy was lucky I deigned to respond at all to his mere two-sentence note that said, basically, hi and write back. But his ad mentioned a chaise longue, the strangeness of which piqued my interest, so I responded, and found myself here a couple of weeks later (after holiday travels and an all-night poker session on New Year’s Eve that I was still recovering from).

I looked over the selections at the design table up front and enjoyed the warmth of the store, hoping he might be a few minutes late so I could thaw a bit more. But he showed up on time (Considerate: check) and introduced himself. I put down my book and looked up, and up, and up. (Tall: check) He was cute, miracle of miracles, and had a genuine smile on his face, but that corduroy coat had to go. He asked if I was ready and mentioned he needed to drop off a book at his car. (A car: check, check! Herodotus: erm, seriously?)

And so we ambled around the EV looking for a warm place for drinks and conversation — or, rather, where he could talk and I could listen. (Chatterbox tendency: Keep an eye on it. Could just be nerves.) We found a small table at Virage, got a couple of drinks and discussed our strange timing: We’d been in New Orleans at the same time (he at Tulane, me visiting Tulane and generally enjoying New Orleans nightlife), but our paths never crossed. Stranger still was the coincidence of his mother living directly across the street from my old office in St. Louis, and his email correspondence with one of my co-workers there. (About basketball, I believe, but the details are hazy.)

After a couple of hours, we decided to move on to sample a different atmosphere and ended up at a nearly-empty Marion’s Continental for a nightcap. The evening was winding down and he seemed a bit logy, still recovering from jetlag (a New Zealand trip a few weeks before), but it had been a very enjoyable date — a pleasant surprise.

He offered to drop me off at my apartment (Clean car: check) and just happened to have They Say It’s Wonderful queued up on his iPod. That seemed awfully smooth and couldn’t have been mere coincidence, but I laughed it off. Hey, it was the background to the first dance at our wedding just two years later, so what did I know?

Happy meet-iversary, my love.

We sprang out of bed at the crack of mid-morning today, and after a strong cup of coffee, I got started on the traditional new year’s day meal of black-eyed peas and greens (turnip, this year).

Carefully sorting through the beans, I searched for rocks and discarded the misshapen beans, then chopped the other ingredients according to my all-time favorite recipe from The Prudhomme Family Cookbook.

The greens are more intuitive. I never make them the same way twice, but they always start with stemming, chopping and a vigorous washing before I even think of cooking them.

This time around, I chopped the 1/4 pound of tasso leftover from the beans and halved a small piece of salt pork, then covered the meat with water in a large pot. I brought it to a boil, then lowered the heat to simmer for about 30 minutes to create a flavorful cooking liquid for the greens. At that point, I added some chopped onions, cayenne pepper, a little bit of salt and the greens. They simmered for about 20 minutes, though you can certainly cook them longer; I just prefer greens when they have a little bit of bite to them.

I cooked the beans at a lower temperature than usual, so they were more of a soup than side dish, but still just as delicious as I remember from last year. The greens held their own when topped with cider vinegar, so I thought an extra helping couldn’t hurt, especially in these tough economic times. Call it an edible insurance policy.

Thank you for visiting last year, keeping up with my infrequent food and Rufus postings. I’ve loved hearing from everyone and wish y’all a happy and safe 2009, filled with friends and food and many, many naps.

recipe after the jump

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