A day without a recipe

If you're one of those people constantly glued to the Weather Channel, you probably know that it's been really freaking hot in Florida. Hot and humid. The kind of heat that makes you sweat as soon as you step out of your apartment. The kind of humidity that just weighs down your body and soul, making you feel worn out and tired.

The kind of weather that you can put up with for a few months, but that you're ready to see break around the time everyone else in the country is out looking for pumpkins.

Well, thank God for FINALLY sending some relief to Florida.

This weekend we're experiencing what we Floridians call a "cold front." I don't think the temperature dropped below 70 all day, but that's cold after months enduring temperatures upward of 90. (Although not cold enough that I couldn't go for a little swim ... quite lovely because I was the only one there. Apparently the children who usually inhabit the pool on the weekend aren't so hardy).

Either way, I was having such a lovely time drinking my morning coffee on the patio, looking out over my little retention pond without breaking a sweat I thought "Wouldn't it be great to just spend the whole day like this?"

So I did. Well minus some time for the workout and the swim.

Maybe it was also the universe's way of getting me to slow down a little. As I sat on the patio, I thought back on the past few months and realized not a weekend day has passed that I didn't spend much of my time in the kitchen, quite often much of the day pursuing ambitious recipes under a tight deadline of expecting company.

So today I relished in the art of just laying low, catching up on some magazines and chilling on the patio. Besides, it was also a good opportunity to finish off one of the backlog of dishes in my freezer - the Comoros chicken from a few weeks ago.

Ode to an onion

So Fridays can be tough at work. In our world, we essentially have three times the amount of work to make up for the weekend. An occasional late night is a given.

My frustration must have been oozing out of me this particular Friday evening because my foodie cubicle buddy tried to bring some logic to my problem of the moment.

"You don't understand," I told him. "This is just one layer of it. It's just been layer after layer, like an onion. If it keeps going like this I might start crying!"

Then I felt all clever and got that zen feeling I get when I feel like I've drawn some deep, metaphorical parallel between my life and my kitchen. But recently it's come to my attention that these little stories may seem melodramatic. And this one was way too cheesy to be taken too seriously.

Still, wanting to share my new found incite about the onion on the blog, I thought I'd have a little fun with it. I wrote a Haiku, or rather a series of them, to pay homage to this staple of the kitchen.

Without further ado ...

An ode to the onion

Like every onion

Life's challenges come layered

One then another

Some we cut right through

No problem, we keep going

On to the next one

But the point will come

We've finally had too much

The tears start flowing

Too many layers

A few were fine, but no mas

Too many of them

But ultimately

The great chef will keep chopping

The onion to bits

The little pieces

Toss them in a saute pan

Sweet, yummy, delish

Speaking of Emeril ...

... I thought I'd post this video for the easily entertained among us. I found it over the summer for my cousin, who as it turns out is becoming a bit of a foodie herself. She wanted to watch Emeril Live, more specifically watch him deliver his signature "Bam!"

What's one to do in this day and age to find such a specific video segment? That's right. YouTube came through on this one.

The 10-year-old and I found it amusing. The best is the part with the chocolate torte and powdered sugar.

What isn't on the Internet?

Molto Mario

We all have those nights - sometimes five of them a week - when there's barely energy to feed ourselves. That's the beauty of leftovers.

But what's one to do when the leftovers are long gone? Or we're just kind of sick of them. Or, dare I say in this great age of Atkins, we just feel like a little carb loading.

I've never been big on jarred pasta sauce. I don't remember ever eating it growing up. My mom always made sauce from scratch when we had spaghetti.

Making a quick marinara may be easy enough, but everyone deserves to cheat at something every so often. For me, that usually involves heading to Publix and picking up one of Mario Batali's jarred sauces for a quick dinner of angel hair spaghetti.

(Yes, when I cheat and buy jarred sauce I buy it from a gourmet former Food Network super star.)

I'll admit I've only tried the one, the Arrabiata. I was sold on it immediately. It has a fresh, spicy flavor packed with dried red peppers. It has no preservatives and doesn't have that fake taste you get with other jarred sauces.

Back at it

After my brief weekend of laziness (if one would call preparing four dishes for a dinner party lazy) I've dipped back into the wine bag of fun and pulled out the next two countries.

The two I pulled were the Dominican Republic and Tunisia, so hopefully this weekend I will get to both of those. Stay tuned ...

Battle brownie

Some things just aren't supposed to be such a problem.

I mean, come on. Brownies? All the recipe said I needed to do was melt some butter and chocolate and mix in the dry ingredients.

The problem with brownies is the baking. You might have all the right ingredients and just the right mix. But sometimes it's hard to gauge when they're ready to come out the oven. The top might be deceptively crisped and cracked and looking like they're ready, but deep down inside they haven't quite matured yet.

I've never made brownies from scratch before, but I decided to have a go at it last weekend for my Iron Chef party. I wanted to wow my guests with some sort of goody that had that hot pepper, chocolate combination fairly common in Mexican cooking.

The problem was not so much with the brownies or the recipe as it was the fact I was distracted. I tried to throw my attention into my party spread, staying up late into the wee hours of the morning stirring polenta, simmering red peppers and cooking Italian sausage to take my mind off of it. I should have stopped there, but I couldn't. I figured the brownies were easy enough. I would get those ready before going to bed.

As I've written before, there comes a point in cooking where the distractions of chopping, stirring or mixing are gone. It's like the calm after (yes after) a storm. All you can do is wait, left alone with your thoughts and your brownies.

I sat there on my kitchen counter exhausted and tears welling in my eyes as I dwelled on my problem. The recipe said to cook the brownies for 40 minutes, but by the time they hit 30 I was tired of waiting. They looked done to me. I know the fork test doesn't work, but for some reason did it anyway. The fork came out clean. I put the brownies on a cooling rack. Whatever. I was ready for bed anyway.

The next morning I woke up and cut into them to discover they were soft and gooey in the middle. At first I tried to rationalize that there was nothing wrong. I told myself they were supposed to be like that because they were real brownies made with real melted chocolate, not a mix of dried powder. I took a bite of one of them and realized that despite my rationalization they just weren't working.

I thought I could try to salvage the batch and stuck them back in the oven. When I took them out 20 minutes or so later they were rock hard. I thought maybe they weren't so bad to serve to my guests. I would have plenty of other stuff to feed them, and it's the thought that counts anyway. Maybe I could make some whipped cream to serve with them and no one would detect their dryness.

I went back about my Sunday morning routine, but for some reason in some quick, spontaneous, split decision I just picked up the plate and chucked them in the garbage. Yes, maybe one could settle for brownies that were too gooey or too dry. But not me. I realized I just couldn't live with that. Some things that aren't working just aren't salvageable, and sometimes you just need to start over with something different.

I went back to Publix and bought some more chocolate and butter. I returned to my kitchen and this time with much more focus whipped up another batter. I stuck them in the oven, and waited the appropriate cooking time before taking out of the oven.

This time, they were perfect.

So...

... I'm being totally lazy this weekend. At least as far as the global culinary adventure is concerned. I'm taking the weekend off from exploring obscure foreign cuisines. My focus: My Next Iron Chef premier party.

I designated a chairman and asked him to pick a secret ingredient - peppers, any kind except the ground black kind - and invited some fellow foodies over to watch the premier on Food Network. The goal is for everyone to bring a dish with the secret ingredient.

I've spent much of the past week figuring out my menu for the event. The place to start looking for pepper recipes was obvious, especially to someone who has an autographed Bobby Flay cookbook in her possession.

From the Mesa Grill cookbook, tomorrow I'm going to try making some chickpea stuffed chile rellenos in a mushroom sauce and a tapioca pudding that involves serrano peppers and a mango blackberry sauce. A few weeks ago I saw Brian Boitano make this italian sausage polenta appetizer with red pepper salsa, so we'll be giving that a whirl.

The temptation to whip up some brownies with chipotle chile powder was just too strong. The recipe from Emeril was so easy I figured I should do some of those as well.

So anyway, that's what I'll be doing Sunday. Pepper mania. Stay tuned ...

Tonight, I'm taking it easy. Got some takeout from Bonefish Grill (got to use my free bang bang shrimp birthday coupon) and am watching the first season of Next Iron Chef marathon, getting geared up for tomorrow.

In the interest of feeding myself brunch in the morning I do plan to whip up this quiche from Emeril. The highlight of this quiche is the potato crust, which makes it awesome for breakfast. It's like a complete traditional breakfast in one neat little square. Instead of the salmon, I'm going to use prosciutto to get that full breakfast vibe going. That means I'll also be nixing the dill.