Ravenous Fig

The holidays came and went in a flash this year, despite the fact that Vance and I managed to amass over 7,000 miles in our travels. We spent a week in Florida with my parents (that sounds so exotic now!) to celebrate Christmas and my (early) birthday, followed by a week with Vance's parents out in Colorado. From a warm, windy ride on a boat in the Keys to a traipse through freshly fallen snow in Pueblo, we experienced the full gamut of winter weather possibilities in the span of a fortnight.

I think this may be the first year when I can say I preferred the former. As insane as it seems to wear shorts on Christmas, surrounded by palm trees and orange groves, it felt good to thaw out for a week. Back in Durham now, my shivering muscles are perpetually sore (does that count as a workout?), and I find myself whining to Vance at least once a day about how I'm cold to my bones!

Alas, the grass is always greener.

To be fair, it is beautiful here now, quiet and picturesque, and (best of all I think) it's perfectly acceptable to curl up in front of the fire with a good book any night of the week. (Currently finishing up Julia Child's My Life in France, in case you were wondering).

[caption id="attachment_735" align="aligncenter" width="235" caption="Photo from Donna Hay"][/caption]

The market has narrowed its offerings down to a short list of meats, hearty greens, and root vegetables, but with that comes the excuse to cook simple, easy one-pot meals like this Tomato and Garlic Stew with Prawns.

What makes this stew even easier is when someone else makes it, which Vance heroically did after a full day of me feeling as if I'd been backed over by a Mack truck full of canned tuna. Nothing better than a heating pad, a dog, and a husband who can cook to cheer me up on a day like today.

Vance and I stole away to the mountains for a few days, to relax and recharge for the upcoming end-of-year sprint and have a little Thanksgiving vacation. (Maybe it's a staycation now that we're NC residents?) Having never visited the Biltmore during the holidays, we made a nighttime pilgrimage there on Wednesday, followed by the most unbelievable meal at Table in downtown Asheville. A bowl of piping hot local mushrooms over brie started off a meal of Hickory Nut Gap pork chop and sunchoke three ways. A sip of Vance's apple sidecar cocktail might have stolen the show, though; and for someone who is not a lover of strong liquors that's saying a lot.

Hard as it was to follow that meal, we decided to cook a semi-traditional dinner at home for Thanksgiving night. Having already cooked two turkeys for a fall dinner party with the team at Relevance, we opted for the smaller, humbler chicken. We caramelized shallots for mashed potatoes that didn't beg for gravy but stood up on their own; we caramelized brussels sprouts with parmesan to have something green on the plate; and we washed it all down with a bottle of wine we found in the secret stash under the kitchen island.

Continuing with this year's theme of Anything-Other-Than-Stuffing-To-Stand-In-For-The-Stuffing (it was savory bread pudding at Eat Relevance), we also crisped some bread and olives up in the pan juices to make a crispy, salty, crouton-y panzanella.

During our Black Friday wandering through downtown Asheville, I finally picked up a copy of Andrea Reusing's Cooking in The Moment. I only wish I had picked it up sooner, as it didn't take more than five minutes with the book to have me informing Vance that we'd be cooking our way through it for the next 12 months. I tend to read things backwards anyway (the best recipes are almost always in the back of the magazine), so starting most of the way through this seasonal book shouldn't throw me off too much.

I've always struggled with breakfast; so many common breakfast foods are too sweet, too rich, too complicated, or too served-before-dawn for my taste. In middle school I went through a phase where the only thing I would eat for breakfast was sausage. Sausage. Nasty, greasy frozen sausage patties that nearly always contained a bite or two of gristle. (Gross, I know). I also went through a toaster strudel phase, a cheese phase (that's American cheese to you — none of this brie or "goat" stuff), a frozen waffle phase, and a brief I-refuse-to-eat-anything-you've-suggested phase.

A few years ago I saw a photo that blew the lid off of any "perfect breakfast" I had ever encountered or imagined. It was too simple to impress anyone other than me, I'm afraid; just a couple of eggs cracked into a pan of some leftover tomato sauce, sprinkled with cheese and baked to perfection. It was a peanut-butter-in-my-chocolate kind of moment; the mere presence of an egg in tomatoes gets me every time.

Which is what made this simple dish jump off the page at me. The beauty of it is that it works equally well with standard vine-ripened tomatoes as it does with cherry tomatoes, so as the beefsteaks turn to cardboard (which they have around here) we can still enjoy this dish with sweet, caramelized cherry tomatoes until those, too, have left the market.

Cocotte, by the way, is French for prostitute… or a tiny, personal serving-sized Dutch oven. I'll leave the choice of definition up to you.

I spent the better part of last week in New Orleans for RubyConf. I have to confess, before I left for the Crescent City I had little hope of a great time. My memory of the place was darkened by the broken windows and street smells I'd experienced a few years back when Vance and I went for a wedding, not to mention the restaurant we ended up at, where mice flitted openly across the floor, scavenging for scraps.

[caption id="attachment_709" align="aligncenter" width="540" caption="The Patio at Cafe Amelie"][/caption]

I boarded the flight to NOLA this time with a single culinary goal: eat a pile of beignets from Cafe Du Monde. I came home having "accomplished" much more than a check-in at the legendary coffee stand — we ate like kings at some brilliant restaurants in the French Quarter (no mice in sight).

Emeril's Delmonico served up a memorable Banana's Foster; the "Trotter Jennings" at Cochon (Smooth Ambler Vodka, Adrian Adami Prosecco, St. Germain, lemon juice) was a happy punch in the face; Cafe Amelie had a patio that could have come straight out of a Renoir painting; Mr. B's had a Crawfish "ravioli" that was too good to stop me from over-eating; and naturally there are a few restaurants whose names I've already forgotten but whose fried goat cheese salad is the stuff of dreams.

By the time I stepped off the plane at RDU Sunday night, I was ready for a week of straight up salad. This recipe is one I swore I'd try to repeat after the first time I tried it at Fifi's (a now-defunct Orlando restaurant that was a real neighborhood gem while it lasted). Two things that normally don't go together — lettuce and a hot grill — marry up in this unconventional blue cheese salad. Try it alongside a bowl of soup or with some crusty bread.

Eight days ago Vance and I were in the middle of throwing one of the most unreal dinner parties we've ever hosted. Nineteen friends and coworkers came to enjoy about thirteen different dishes at a tapas party we won't soon forget. The table was set with rows upon rows of neatly folded napkins; Marcona almonds and a bevy of Spanish cheeses dotted the table at regular intervals, only to be replaced by platter after bowl of homemade tapas-inspired fare.

All but one of our dishes made it out, and to be honest, I don't think we could have stuffed any more food into our guests without having to physically roll them out the door. All that said, we did a lot of eating leftovers (and admittedly, eating out) during our week of recuperation, so sorry for missing a week's worth of posts. (And no, we have no photos from the party — too busy in the kitchen! — but I promise it happened, and it was a worthy excuse for a blog vacation).

Leftovers and I are the opposite of friendly. I generally push them to the back of the fridge until they too closely resemble a sort of science experiment to be eaten anyway. And as hard as I tried to make it through the week eating only what remained of the tapas after the party was over, I too sorely missed fresh vegetables by the end of it.

So as I wandered amongst the produce in the market this afternoon, I felt like a kid in a candy store. Tomatoes of every shape, fresh corn, local okra, onions, peppers (oh, and some slow-churned local butter — how'd that get in there?) begged to be turned into a dinner that would start off the week just right.

This is my "see you next year!" to summer — the end of August couldn't get here fast enough!