Mmmmm.....cabbage!

So, Gropius found this purple cabbage at the natural food co-oop and Whole Paycheck had a sale on corned beef the day after St. Patrick's day was over (who would've guessed?). Being the creative types we are, we had cabbage and corned beef last night for dinner. We also had some leftover potatoes (blue and gold) and some fresh asparagus. Man, was it good!

Irish Eyes are smilin'...

So, in deference to my Southern Scotch-Irish roots and St. Patrick's Day tomorrow, I had an Irish by way of the American South by way of Italy breakfast. I enjoyed a nice cafe latte (Italian) along with a couple of cinnamon pecan scones (Southern-Irish).

Here's the recipe:

Cinnamon Pecan Scones

1 1/3 cups all purpose flour
3 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 ½ tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
2 Tb ground flaxseed
1/3 c rolled oats
handful of pecans (~1/2 c?)
5 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1/3-1/2 cup buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract



DIRECTIONS
Preheat the oven to 425°. In a food processor, mix the flour with the sugar, baking powder, salt, spices, flaxseed, oats, and pecans. Pulse the food processor to cut in the butter until the mixture resembles fine crumbs.

In a small bowl (or large liquid measuring cup), mix the buttermilk with the vanilla. Add to the dry ingredients and pulse just until the dough comes together.

Turn the dough out onto some saran-wrap on the counter. Pull the saran-wrap over the dough and use it to pat the dough into a round and cut into 8 wedges.

Set the wedges on the baking sheet and spoon a little cream (or half and half) over the scones and sprinkle with demerara sugar.

Bake for 12 to 14 minutes, or until the scones are puffed and pale golden. Transfer to a rack and cool before serving.



The crushed oats are the best part of the this recipe, I think. The butter (which could be reduced to only 3Tb or so) makes them nice and flaky. And Gropius spent the better part of 5 minutes trying to figure out what the spices were (the cloves threw him for a loop).

Dijon Dinner

With the warmer weather recently, we decided that we should break out the grill pan and fashion an erstatz grill on the back patio.



This is the burner that Gropius bought to fire up his as-yet unbuilt still. In the meantime, it's a powerful flame for cooking!



That picture is with the flash and this one is without it:



Whole Paycheck had some beautiful rhubarb and asparagus. The Delta is *just* starting to come into season.



So, we assembled a riff on the Napolean and served it with some baby blue potatoes and the grilled chicken with a dijon mustard-cream sauce.



Close-up of the potatoes (check out that rhubarb in the background!)

I wonder what the poor folks are eatin' tonight!?

That's what my great-grandfather always used to ask as he sat down to a much anticipated meal. The implied statement being, this is a meal for a rich man.



Now, if only Paw-Paw could've seen this meal. We had an assortment of roasted vegetables: purple potatoes, candy-striped beets, golden beets, carrots, celery, red onion....



All drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with salt and pepper and roasted in the oven. To round out the meal, we had a nice NY strip that Gropius cooked outside on the propane cooker that he bought for his future still and some English peas.



Poor folks indeed.

Tonight's meal was brought to you by the letters R & V.

So, Gropius and I had over our first dinner party guests--our friends Hellen and Derek. They thoughtfully overlooked the stacks of boxes in the living room and appropriately ooh'ed and ahhh'ed at the projects that we *have* finished. Walter made jagerschnitzel and I made spatzle. Derek and I played a quick Bach duet between courses on the piano keyboard and we listened to my clarinet try-out music. Fun, fun!



We were scurrying around on Saturday afternoon, making a mad dash to the grocery store for last minute ingredients (read: everything we needed to cook dinner in four hours). So, I started baking the Red Velvet cake recipe from the NYTimes food section around 2pm.



I realized as I was half-way through that I didn't have enough red food coloring and the all-natural stuff I bought at Whole Paycheck wasn't as strong as the industrial, commercial-grade stuff you can buy at the regular grocery store. So, it wasn't going to be as red as I had hoped. (But since I was pressed for time, I had to make-do with what I had).



The cake recipe is from one cookbook and the frosting is from another, but either way, it looked delicious in the paper and I hoped it would look as impressive when I attempted it.



Hellen and Derek are lactose intolerant, so in hindsight perhaps this wasn't the best dessert to make, but they each had HUGE slices and tried gamely to finish their servings. So, I figure any dessert with cream cheese frosting that someone who's lactose intolerant will devour has got to be good, right?? Right??

Dinner out

So, Gropius and I joined one of my colleagues and her husband for dinner out on Friday night at a new steakhouse that opened up in town. It was very busy when we arrived about 15 minutes before our reservation at 8pm.



It's supposed to be a French-Cowboy themed steakhouse although we noted that it seemed to be more of a gay cowboy themed steakhouse. The cowhide banquettes were a nice touch with the chandeliers. Anyway, we had ample time to observe the decor as we waited.....and waited.....and waited for our table. (NOT good!)

But we were finally seated after some comp'd drinks and the food was definitely good. Gropius had the NY strip special with cilantro mashed potatoes, my vegetarian colleague had the beet salad and two sides (roasted vegetables and mac-n-cheese), her husband had the pork chop, and I had the pork stroganoff with marscapone mashed potatoes. YUM!

Dessert was the real highlight of the meal though because lo and behold, they had Dr. Pepper cupcakes on the menu! Just like my Grandma used to make! (Well, hers was a 9x13 sheet cake, but still the flavors are the same). For those of you who have not had the pleasure of eating Dr. Pepper cake, let me know and I'll send you the recipe (it's MUCH better than Coca-Cola ham btw).

Shrove Tuesday Feast

In honor of Shrove Tuesday (or Fat Tuesday, depending on your origins), Gropius and I had pancakes last night for dinner. Actually, we had chestnut pancakes with bacon from a recipe I found on epicurious.com. We were initially a little nervous since the reviews for the recipe weren't that promising--people complained about the pancakes' texture and lack of flour.



I think you can see that we had no such problems. They are definitely meant to be blini-sized or else they fall apart when you try to flip them in the pan. We didn't have the creme fraiche in the recipe, so we (okay, Gropius) improvised with some unsweetened whipped cream. Very tasty!

I would be remiss though if I didn't also mention that we had the chestnut pancakes with wirsing that Gropius cooked all by himself with some purple Savoy cabbage that we bought at the local food co-op. Nice accompaniment to the pancakes!



Wishing everyone a contemplative Lenten season!