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Announcements, Announcements, Annouuuuucements!

November 3, 2009 by vmacandcheese

You’re probably saying, “Who are you? What, no posts for like, ten days, then all of a sudden, BLAM-O!  VMAC + Cheese (2) in my Google Reader!”

It’s true. Time gets away from me just like it gets away from everyone else. We’ve already said goodbye to October and it’s time to plan for Thanksgiving. Ooh boy, I can’t WAIT to post on that! Thanksgiving is a time honored tradition ’round these parts. The secret: no turkey involved. Stay tuned.

That’s not the announcement though. This is:

If you take a peek over on the right hand side of your screen, under my tweets and my blogrolls, you’ll notice I’ve started to re-categorize most of the recipe posts on the site. Actually, I think the appropriate word is “sub-categorize,” but you get what I mean, don’t you?

Now, instead of having the very vague term of “recipe” attached to posts with — well, recipes — you’ll also get a bit more information on the contents therein. Was there pasta involved? Is this recipe going to make me gain 5 pounds overnight (category: indulgent)? Does the recipe do anything for my liver (category: greens)? The answers to these types of difficult questions can now be answered by my sub-categories. Eventually, I’m going to add a second Food subcategory on Cooking Techniques. That way, when it’s 40 degrees outside, pouring rain, and you haven’t showered or changed out of the sweats you slept in, you can click on a little category named “braise” and locate a meal perfect for a weekend hermit like you (Which I totally approve of by the way. Welcome to my winter weekends). Awesome, right?

Please let me know if you have any ideas on how to make content on this site more accessible. As VMAC + Cheese rolls into another year, I’m excited to see the backlog of posts building up, but also concerned about losing things — out of sight, out of mind, after all. I realized I had made up some pretty yummy recipes on the fly, and that this could be a catalog not only for you guys, but for my own reference as well.

Come next year, you might also notice a few other visual changes to the site. But we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.

You know, the funny thing is, in categorizing all the recipes, I realized how many things I’ve cooked and wanted to share but never got around to posting on the site. I hope I can remedy that! It’s beyond me how I still haven’t posted anything on guacamole (along with mac n’cheese, it’s supposedly a signature dish of mine), or a little number called Pasta Dream, or even a quick tutorial on basic knife skills. Wouldn’t you like to know about the difference between a brunoise and a medium dice?

The one year anniversary of the blog was back in July, and even though I realized when it was happening, I think I had too much going on to mention it. But now seems as good a time as any to say thanks to my faithful readers out there, as well as the people who discover this site by the most random of Google searchers. I have no idea why your search for “the history of the fork” or “dry ice on Halloween” led you to this blog specifically, but I’m glad you’re here.

And a big hello and thanks to all those readers who end up here because they want to learn about winemaking. By far, my most popular post ever.

Posted in Conversation | Leave a Comment »

Friend and Foe

November 3, 2009 by vmacandcheese

I really love grapefruit. I really don’t love fennel. Who knew that when you put the two together, you’d get something revelatory?

They’re an odd pair, to be sure, but I think my respective love and loathing of each ingredient is even odder. I mean, grapefruit is a really polarizing fruit. Bitter, tart and powerful, grapefruit is probably the least liked of all citrus — or as Joe likes to say, it “tastes like a cross between an orange and a monkey’s butt.”

But since I was a little girl, I’ve loved that monkey’s butt (wait, what?). My mother was never a fan of orange juice, but she loved starting her morning with either a glass of cranberry juice or grapefruit juice (and especially grapefruit juice when I was sick. She used to insist that grapefruit juice was the only citrus I consumed when I had a cold.). Back then, it was hard to find grapefruit juice in anything except a big can. I’m surprised my tooth enamel didn’t erode more given how much grapefruit juice I drank.Texsun RRGF 46oz

Mom didn’t stop at grapefruit juice either. She showed me how to halve a grapefruit and slice between the pith (those perfect, pre-determined guidelines) to form little wedges you could pop out with a spoon. In the mornings before school, I was allowed to sprinkle the top of the fruit with granulated sugar; a sweet-sour treat to start my day.

And my love for grapefruit doesn’t stop at eating it. Much to Joe’s dismay, I tend to love grapefruit scented things — in soaps, lotions, cleaners. It just smells so fresh and luscious!

Fennel? Well, let’s just say that anything flavored like licorice has never held a special place in my heart. I didn’t even taste fennel until I was in college, but similarly flavored ingredients — black licorice, anise — have always tasted awful to me. Red Twizzlers? Fine. Black Twizzlers? Bad. Like my other nemesis, raw celery, raw fennel still makes me go “blaaarrgh,” but recently, roasted or caramelized fennel has been palatable. Only just.

[Aside: I know pastis is the thing in Provence, but I think I'm just going to have to stick to rosé while there. I don't want to be THAT American who turns their nose up at the Pernod.]

But they say that the older you get, the more you should re-visit foods you thought you hated, since your palate is always evolving (and usually for the better). So when I saw this tee tiny little fennel bulb last weekend at the market and the first pink grapefruits of the season, I was inspired to see if the two could make merry. A thick, meaty filet of halibut later, and I had a plan.

First, I preheated the oven to 375°. I wanted to try out this nifty technique from the Pioneer Woman, where you pan roast the fish and don’t flip it, so the oven had to be called into service.

Next, I cut one lovely pink grapefruit into suprêmes, and put the cut fruit and the juice from the remnants into a small bowl. I cored my itty bitty fennel bulb, then julienned it. Into the saute pan it went, with a bit of brown butter, olive oil, thyme leaves, and sliced shallot. I turned the heat up to medium high and caramelized the goods. A splash of white wine to deglaze, a sprinkle of kosher salt and black pepper, then the whole mixture was tossed with the grapefruit. It looked like this: Continue Reading »

Posted in Feel Good Food, Fish/Seafood, Food, Mama, Recipes | 2 Comments »

Love the salt. Hate the steam.

October 24, 2009 by vmacandcheese

A quick lesson of the day for you, and a little backstory to give it some context.

I like to roast whole chickens at home. Why?

a) It’s really easy.

b) I can throw it in the oven right when I get home from work, putz around on the Internet and watch back episodes of The Girls Next Door before Joe gets home from the gym, and by the time he is back, showered, and ready to eat, the meat is done-zo.

c) It’s versatile! You can eat the plain roasted chicken, or put it in a soup, or re-purpose it for a sandwich, or even mix it with other fixings to make a chicken salad (a delicious pesto chicken salad comes to mind).

d) You get the bonus of the carcass to make stock. It’s really a win-win situation.

Now for the past year or so, whenever I’ve done anything with a roasted bird, I tried to just salt and pepper it really well, throw it in the oven, and let it be. No herbs or lemons stuffed in the cavity (or “the butt” as Joe likes to say). Nothing lining the bottom of the pan the bird cooks in. I read in both the Bouchon cookbook and in an old issue of Cook’s Illustrated that this only creates steam, and steam is the enemy to crisp skin.

To get super crisp chicken skin — and I mean papery, crackly, seems to shatter when you stick the thermometer through it skin — you need to salt the heck out of the skin, and remove any element in the oven that creates steam. End of story.

I like to wash and dry the entire bird, then pat it really dry with a paper towel. Again, what does residual rinse water, plus a scorching hot oven equal? STEAM.

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Then, salt the heck out of that sucker. Don’t be shy. Get it all over the breast and the top part of the legs, then do this number on it: Continue Reading »

Posted in Food, Kitchen Basics, Poultry | 3 Comments »

The Annual Pilgrimage North

October 22, 2009 by vmacandcheese

It seems that about this time every year, I find myself up in Napa. It’s rare that we go up in the summer (too hot, too crowded), and I’ve never gone during the winter (too rainy). Spring is lovely during bud break, but if I had to pick a time of year to visit, it’s definitely autumn. The vines’ foliage is still abundant, yet you can’t help but notice the tinge of golden yellows, fiery oranges and even deep aubergine that have begun to creep amongst some of the rows. The air is crisp, and clean, and a few vines still play host to the late season varietals — often merlots and cabernet sauvignons. By mid to late November, the fields are awash with autumnal color; who needs trees that change color when you have vines that do the same thing?

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Last weekend, I spent Saturday visiting a number of wineries with Joe and some of his co-workers. Phelps, Paraduxx, Grgich and Sequoia Grove all made the list. Verdicts?

Listen, you can’t beat the views at Phelps. The last time I was there was in the spring, and the valley below the tasting room was a lush, verdant green. Now, it was apparent that summer had come and gone, but the expanse of land wasn’t any less beautiful to look at.

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See that first blush of orange and red I was mentioning? Perfection.

The wines? We’ll get to that in a bit. Continue Reading »

Posted in Why yes I AM a local!, Wine | Leave a Comment »

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