Ostensibly, we have a book group. Sometimes, though, it feels more like a food group.
At some meetings — such as our discussion for Post Captain — there is a serendipitous potluck fusion that yields a meal as fine as any you could hope to pay for in a fancy restaurant. (The Post Captain meal featured lemon pepper chicken , lemon potatoes, asparagus, an almond lemon tart, and much wine. Nobody co-ordinated the lemon theme; it just happened. It was delicious.)
Last week, we met to discuss Ron Rosenbaum's Explaining Hitler. The topic was grim — though not nearly as grim as last month's discussion of Maus — but this mood was subverted, in part, by the wonderful food. And the piña coladas.
Craig brought a roasted raspberry chipotle sauce, more delicious than you can possibly imagine. He combined it with cream cheese to make a dip, but I liked the stuff straight. I've already told Kris that she needs to teach me how to can this summer just so I can make a large batch of this stuff. We made coconut-lime chicken which, while not outstanding, was tasty enough in its own right.
The real stand-out, though, was Joel's Caldo Verde, a Portuguese soup. Here's the recipe, which he produced from memory (it is originally a Cook's Illustrated recipe, I think):
Caldo Verde (as remembered by Joel Miron)
Sautee one large onion (chopped medium)in two tablespoons olive oil for about five minutes, stirring. Add six cloves of garlic for about thirty seconds, then add six cups chicken stock. Bring to a boil and add one pound red potatoes (peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks). Simmer for about twenty minutes (until the potatoes are "tender but not complete mush"). "Take the pot off the heat and mash the potatoes with some blunt instrument until the big chunks are reduced to smaller ones and the soup is a bit thicker." Put the pot back on the heat and add 12 oz. chorizo sausage (Joel used a spicy chicken sausage from Trader Joe's) and a couple of sprigs of savory or oregano. If the sausage is pre-cooked, just simmer the soup for a few minutes. If the sausage is uncooked, bring the soup to a boil and then simmer for about fifteen minutes. Remove the herb sprigs and add one pound of kale, cut into 1/2-inch shreds. Simmer for about five minutes, just until the kale is tender. Eat the soup.
I sometimes say that "Joel is the most underrated chef I know", by which I mean that when people talk about the good cooks in our group, they talk about Jeremy, et. al., and Joel's name isn’t mentioned. It should be. His cooking skills never fail to impress.
Some of our most memorable meals have been themed, where the members try to match the food to the book at hand. For example, when we read Nine Parts of Desire, about women in the Middle East, we attempted to produce a Middle Eastern meal. My book choice for this summer is Red Mars (or, perhaps, Green Mars) by Kim Stanley Robinson. I was thinking that we could all make Martian food...
Bullet points
- Dan Benjamin (of The Hivelogic Narrative), has kindly granted me permission to base this site on his CSS/HTML framework. I'm very grateful to him for being so accommodating.
- The comment preview page is finished. Mostly. There's some sort of Movable Type error that I cannot trace, though. If any of you MT-users can diagnose the problem, please let me know.
- More site work to come, but most of this weekend is going to be spent on outside chores: mowing and fertilizing the lawn, trimming the arborvitae, adding compost to the raised beds, weeding the strawberries, weeding the gravel (the "RV parking"), and doing whatever else it is that Kris asks me to do.
- Birthday gift highlights (thus far): The Annotated Pride and Prejudice, a set of Edward Gorey books, a super-fancy wine opener, a George Foreman grill, three dozen chocolate chip cookies, another Flash Gordon serial (The Purple Death From Outer Space!), an iTunes Music Store gift certificate (the geekiest gift), and, from five-year-old Harrison, a Spider-Man comic book that he chose himself. My friends and family seem to know me pretty well, even the kids.
- I've developed some sort of freak rash on my forehead. It's bizarre. Late yesterday I noticed my forehead was greasy and bumpy. I washed vigorously with soap and water, but that only seems to have made it worse. We're heading to OMSI with Jenn and the kids today, and I'm a little afraid to be seen in public. I might frighten small children.
On this day at foldedspace.org
2003 — Film Criticism The key is to find a critic from whose reviews you can accurately determine your own likelihood of enjoying a film.
2002 — At the Shop This morning when I arrived at the shop, I called for the cats as normal. Instead of three cats, only two appeared. Then I noticed that Silver was there, hobbling her way from the hedge, favoring her right rear haunch.
2001 — Home Sick The past several days have been eventful, in a good way. On Friday night, Kris and I saw Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for the fourth time, and then we met Dave and Karen for dinner at Thai Orchid.
Keep an eye out for ABC - it should be on it's way!