White Bean Garlic-Rosemary Mash! (aka “Stuff on Toast”)

Just my luck.   Today this blog thing is set to be featured on the CNN's "Eatocracy" Blogger Spotlight and what did I have scheduled to dazzle the world with?  Toast.  Had the gods smiled on me I'm sure I  would be featuring a mouthwatering cocktail or an impressive desert  all lined up and ready receive the throngs of adoring  Sis. Boom. Virgins but nope...today it looks like I'm featuring...sigh....toast.  Well, not just toast but "stuff on toast" but it is still toast nonetheless.

So there goes my 'big break'.  By not serving up something spectacular and garnering tens of thousands of new readers I won't be able to quit my day job, move to Paris, and blog out the rest of my years (like some people I know).  Oh well.   At least I can afford toast.  

* * * 

Every Friday an email circulates around our firm with the subject: "Fridge Clean-Out at 3PM!".  The email  contains a warning that any food left in the common lunch room refrigerator will be thrown away at the announced cutoff time.   At 3PM there is a merciless trash toss tasked to eliminate the neglected pieces of dehydrated pizza, moldy sandwiches and containers of yogurt incubating new life forms.   Unspoiled things must go too under this policy but that is the way it must be if order is to be preserved and room for our  future is to be considered.

Come Monday morning people will arrive with new food and offer a compelling glimpse into their home via the sack lunches and Tupperware containers they put on display in the public refrigerator 

For the weekly "Fridge Clean-Out"  at home I do not circulate a warning email.  I just do it when I feel it is time.  Unlike at work however, everything gets one last chance to make it to the dinner table.  After  I deem the night "clean-out"  I get to work going through and pulling out items setting them out to audition for that night's dinner.

Some bloggers out there are masters of  invention with their unused herbs, dressings, slices of bacon, pasta sauces, withering garlic cloves, unused diced pepper, a single new potatoes, etc.  They have the ability to create new entrees, soups or exotic salads, give them extraordinary 'foodie' sounding names,  and then take stunning photos to share with us.    These, my friends, are the real deal.  That's just not me.    

I usually just make "Stuff on Toast".    You might think it is lowbrow but even The Ina will put stuff on toast, call it something fancy, write it up for her book and then shoot it for her show.  She'll call it a 'tartine' or 'smørrebrød'  but she knows that I know that this is  just stuff on toast.   So whenever you see it on her show or in her books  it just remember  it was probably a Friday and she had to clean out her refrigerator.

The key is good toast.  If you take the time to make some really good toast you can put anything on it, call it something fancy, and dig in.  I you can't remember a fancy foodie sounding name just make one up.  Now you are just like Ina.   Maybe you can even get your own show or book deal.  

Topping our toast tonight is a simple garlic rosemary white been mash.  I wanted  to use up some cans of white beans which had been sitting in the pantry forever and I had some rosemary leftover from some of the week's oven roasted potatoes.   A wedge of Parmesan cheese came in handy but any cheese bits and pieces will do;  as will any herb, spice or whatever else you have on hand about to go to waste that can be chopped real small and added.   I know you have something good.  

* * *

And Doristas, I finally got around to making the Eggplant Caviar for French Friday's with Dorie.   I had made it for some guests earlier in the week and...well..I thought it was so awful I pulled it off the menu at the last minute and refused to serve it to them.   For toast night I messed around with it a bit but could never take it out of that 'eggplant salsa' vibe I was getting from it.   I know this dish can be so much better so stay tuned.

* * * 

When my husband asked what was for dinner I told him it was garlic rosemary white bread tartines and eggplant smørrebrød.   He replied, "oh, is it clean out night?"

See why I love him?

Grilled Bread aka "Toast" with Garlic Rosemary White Bean Mash   
(remarkably, this toast recipe is adapted from Epicurious.  No lie.) 

• 1 loaf French bread, cut into 1-inch slices
• 1/4 cup extra -virgin olive oil

Prepare grill to medium-high-heat.  Brush both sides of bread generously with oil; season with salt and pepper. Grill until golden, about 1 minute per side.

(recipe for Garlic-Rosemary White Bean Mash after the jump)

Black Pepper Cherry Crisp

A bag of late season Bing cherries made it into my cart tonight.  It was purely an impulse buy as I had nothing in mind for them when I reached out and rescued them from the supermarket display.  Eh, they where were on special.  That alone is usually not enough to persuade me to buy anything without plan but tonight it was just instinct.

I went through the checkout line of the impossibly perky checkout girl I happen like.  She is the one with a  tattoo on her neck and face who is always trying to decipher my basket as she checks through its contents.   A bag of cherries, two apples, tomato paste and AA batteries.   I imagine it is a game she plays to stay sane in a job where insanity must be a job requirement.  A person's grocery items are nothing more than a puzzle to be solved. 

She never shuts up but she also doesn't let anyone really engage her in conversation either.  As a result  her  line never slows down for idle chit chat. This has earned her my affection.  While she tries to figure out what I am going to cook on any given night when I get home I try to figure out how someone so pretty and smart ended up checking groceries at the supermarket with a tattoo on her neck and face.  My puzzle is harder to solve.

Tonight neither of us were going to solve the riddles in front of us.  She didn't have a clue and  I  didn't have one either.

"Aren't you cooking tonight?"

"I'm going to make a pie."

Why did I say that?  I was caught off guard.  Cherry pie?

"Well, aren't you motivated!"

As soon as she said it I knew I wasn't going to make a cherry pie tonight.   I know they say things like 'easy as pie' to imply making pie is easy but to me its not so.  It involves crust making and crust making just seemed like a lot to ask tonight.  

Eating them outright was not a consideration.  I needed to come up with a blog post and if I ate all the cherries I would just have to think up something else to use and, well, I wasn't motivated enough for that either.   Besides, thinking up something else would mean I would have had to go back to the market and I certainly wasn't motivated enough for that.   In hell you have to go the supermarket twice in the same day, every day. 

Perhaps 'unmotivated' just another word for 'lazy'?   I would have wallowed in my laziness or even rose up to its challenges and made the damn pie but then I read over at Tasty Trix that some people refer to 'cobbler' as 'pie for the unmotivated'.  It got me to thinking that there are still a lot of options available for the unmotivated!   

If you find some fruit in your basket and pie seems out of the question you can still make a cobbler, a clafoutis, a crumble, a crisp, a grunt, a slump, a flummery, a buckle and even something called a pandowdy.    Oh I almost forgot, you can make a betty too!     

I don't even have to motivation to pretend I know what all the differences are.

As it turned out I did have the motivation to make this crisp.  At least I think its a crisp and not a crumble.  I also had the motivation to throw in some black pepper at the last minute which was a really good idea as it turned out.   It gave the dish some interest without taking over.   I'll be motivated to do this one again. 

Black Pepper Cherry Crisp

Honey Spiced Madeleines

I wanted to write a poetic masterpiece describing all manner of involuntary memories my recent encounter these Honey Spiced Madeleines provoked of me.   That sort of thing is my stock in trade  at Sis. Boom [blog!] after all and I do hate to disappoint!   This perfect, tiny, fall predicting jewel of a cake slash cookie was to mark my triumphant return to the French Friday's with Dorie parade after an unfortunate, weeks long absence due to a combination of factors such as work travel and complete disinterest (cookies and chicken? Nah.).

This time around I really wanted to turn in a good performance for my beloved Doristas.    I really did.

There can be no doubt about it that the madeleine is one inspiring baked confection.  One taste and any mere mortal will surely be locked under its spell for good.   Subsequent encounters will flood your brain with the romantic memories and inspiring times created at your first meeting.   Even if you have never met before it is likely a well orchestrated madeleine can fill you memories you didn't know you had.  Yes, when madeleines are good, they are that good.  

So what could be more fun than to take a bite of this tiny, elegant puff of perfection and make love to it with words?

Then I bit into one and remembered MY college lit class and recalled the esteemed French noveliast Marcel Proust's already famous ode to the madeleine.  C'est la vie.  Proust's narrator in his "In Search of Lost Time" has a near orgasmic spiritual epiphany after consuming just one taste of the beloved madeleine:

"She sent for one of those squat, plump little cakes called "petites madeleines," which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted valve of a scallop shell. And soon, mechanically, dispirited after a dreary day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. "

The narrator's memories are so fantastic and so well written that they will just have to be mine for the remainder of this post:

"... Suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before mass), when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom , my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it; perhaps because I had so often seen such things in the meantime, without tasting them, on the trays in pastry-cooks' windows, that their image had dissociated itself from those Combray days to take its place among others more recent; perhaps because of those memories, so long abandoned and put out of mind, nothing now survived, everything was scattered; the shapes of things, including that of the little scallop-shell of pastry, so richly sensual under its severe, religious folds, were either obliterated or had been so long dormant as to have lost the power of expansion which would have allowed them to resume their place in my consciousness.

"And as soon as I had recognized the taste of the piece of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-blossom which my aunt used to give me (although I did not yet know and must long postpone the discovery of why this memory made me so happy) immediately the old grey house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like a stage set to attach itself to the little pavilion opening on to the garden which had been built out behind it for my parents (the isolated segment which until that moment had been all that I could see); and with the house the town, from morning to night and in all weathers, the Square where I used to be sent before lunch, the streets along which I used to run errands, the country roads we took when it was fine. "

Just as it is not recommended to settle for one madeleine, I hope you won't just settle for my excerpts here.   Please click over here to read the full piece when you get a chance.   Its delicious.  

Dorie Greenspan's gutsy tampering with this French classic could inspire us all to take more chances in our lives.  I never would have thought to take the madeleine's delicate springy balance of of eggs, butter and kiss of lemon and risk overpowering it with those overused barometers of fall: cinnamon, clove and ginger.  (What's next? Cranberry apple madeleines?)   Don't we get enough of this marauding spice trio in just about every other fall/holiday treat these days?   

I would have really liked to nix the whole idea and cry foul at this whole fall indoctrination of this classed except for one tiny thing:  it really works here.    The spiced flavoring (with the citrus recast as orange) is restrained and takes full advantage of the format's overlooked most positive attribute: its small size.  There just isn't enough of it to get sick of.    Beyond the flavor, the texture is what a madeleine should be: soft with the tiniest bit of crunch on the outside and a springy texture brought on by the thorough whip of eggs and butter.  And unlike the grossly expensive madeleines brought to you by chains such as Starbucks there are no preservatives here, just tasty, perishable perfection.

And they make a good peace offering to sisters too. 

Honey Spiced Madeleines
By Dorie Greenspan

Tilapia with Mustard and Capers

"Hello?"

It always struck me as odd that I still answer the phone as if I don't know who is on the other end of the call.   Modern technology has given me the luxury of not having to answer the phone unless I know for sure who it is yet I have not updated my basic salutation since I learned it at age 4.   I used to enjoy talking on the phone but these days I tend to avoid it.  The act of answering the phone used to give me an attractive sense of danger or thrill I suppose.    Would it be an annoying solicitor?  My best buddy?   My boss or a client?  Or worse!  What if it's my sister?    

"How come you never write about me in your blog?  And where have you been?  I've been trying to reach you for days."

It was my sister.  Evidently she was  calling to let me know she had discovered yet another thing I don't do for her.   Either the caller ID or my brain must have been malfunctioning for I tend to let her calls go to voice mail. Some telephone thrills I can live without.    

"I've been busy.  And besides, I'm not really sure how to tell you this but I write primarily about food, and, well,  you don't really know how to cook".

Should you think I was being unnecessarily cruel to my sister  let me assure you that this wasn't the first time I have had to tell her she should avoid the kitchen.   This is something she is used to me telling her.  Its not my fault she is  a slow learner and needs the constant reminding of her younger brother.

 I always tell people that my sister doesn't even know how to make tea and they laugh it off as if I'm joking but it is true -- she actually called me once to ask me whether or not you had to leave the teabag in the hot water longer for herbal tea than you do for 'regular tea'!   To my way of thinking that qualifies one as not knowing how to make tea, right?

After she asked me that, and after I stopped laughing I had to  use the occasion to lecture her on Tea 101  -- the best teas are loose teas and that she should eschew teabags altogether -- blah, blah, blah.   Then I suggested that she just go to her herb garden and grab a handful of fresh mint to steep in the cup.

If you have ever seen her "garden" you are laughing right now.

I suppose people expect the sister of someone who enjoys the kitchen as much as I do to be equally at home in one.   Genetics doesn't work that way.  For example, I don't know how to replace a water heater or how to keep score of a football game but she does.    She  managed to avoid the 'cooking gene' that just about everyone else in my family benefits from.  

"That isn't true.  You don't just write about food and I cook just fine!  Everyone had a fantastic time at my house that one time last month."

"That was a potluck.  Mom and I brought most of the food."

"Not the fish.  Everyone loved that fish I made."       

She was right.   Everyone did love 'that fish' and yet everyone was also quite sick to death of it.  "That fish I made" is the same fish I'm featuring here today: Tilapia with Mustard and Capers.   I wanted to tell her that if she was going to be completely accurate she should have said "everyone loved that fish I make every single time anyone comes to my house for dinner."

Last year I showed her how to make it when she needed some emergency kitchen coaching.  She had inexplicably invited her boss who travels a lot over to her house for dinner for a home-cooked meal.   An act I can't help but think reveals an astonishing lack of self-awareness on her part.

I suggested this fish with mustard and capers for her as it is just about the easiest thing to make I can think of.   Instead of copying out the recipe for her I rewrote it so it would look more like something she would understand: assembly instructions.  She was always very good at making Ikea furniture and I imagined that if I ever should have to assemble a new bedroom set from Ikea (as if!) I would want her to help me out by rewriting the diagrams into recipe format.

These flavors are wonderful on any white fish and the elegant sauce makes itself.   Food that makes itself is right up my sister's alley.

It never dawned on me that once she had mastered it she would never again feel the need to learn anything else!     Despite its deliciousness my family has grown quite tired of it as it is the only thing ever served when it is her turn to host a family evening.   If she has any friends I'm sure they are sick of it too.

"Teach her something new! Please!" my dad begs me.  

It wasn't that long ago they used to tell me I was doing "God's work" when I would lie and try to convince her there was no shame in hosting potlucks just so we would be allowed to bring our own food to her house.   Now I am being asked to teach a woman who last used the All Clad I gave her to wash engine parts from her Wave Runner to turn around and make something edible with it.

When I succeed, like I did with this fish, I feel just like Annie Sullivan.

This recipe is adapted from Ina Garten.   Whenever you see the word 'adapted' and 'Ina Garten' in a recipe featured here it usually just means I've either reduced the sugar or I've reduced the salt or in some cases I've reduced both.   Here it was the salt.  Rarely is there anything else I would ever quibble with The Ina over as she tends to get just about everything else just right.    


The method is great and is quite welcoming to variations unless you are my sister in which case you should stick to the instructions.   

You see dear sister?   I will too write about you if you ask nicely.


Tilapia with Mustard and Capers
Adapted from Ina Garten

Granita di Espresso con Panna (Espresso Granita with Whipped Cream)

If there is anything I can’t stand it is when family, friends or food bloggers go to Paris or Rome (or Prague) and then come back home with tons of  "Paris this" and "Rome that" (or "Prague this and that!".  They  go on and on relating their experiences with the certainty that we who have not been there cannot possibly relate --but they will tell us, won't they?

Of course I find this especially annoying when it is also true.

To me it is the culinary equivalent of that time my college room mate sported a slight British accent after having just returned from only a 6 week government class taught at Cambridge .  (Please note that I said "taught at Cambridge" as the class was not an actual Cambridge University offering -- it was a distinction he never failed to quite acknowledge.)   Nevertheless, after his return he reminded me of what I did not get to experience with every vowel he uttered.  Literally.  

But this post is about food, isn't it?    

“Oh Trevor you have never tasted anything as good as the veal we had that particular night at La Tige D'or!”    

Having never dined at La Tige D'or I suppose  I will just have to take your word for it, won't I?  (Were you eating the scraps of veal I have been leaving on my plate all these years?  How else would you know?)

“It was the most amaaazing bottle of wine we have ever had and it cost only 2 Euros. Can you believe that?  You just can't find wine as good as that here in *this country*. I would put that bottle up against anything in Wine Spectator.”

Of course the fact that you were physically picnicking in the hills of Tuscany had nothing to do with your impression of the wine that day, right?    I suspect that I too would have loved a bottle of 2 Euro Chuck should I have been there with you.

And then there is the worst offender:

"We had street-food from the friendliest vendor and that dinner was as good as anything you can get from the finest restaurants here in 'The States'".

Blech.

Sometimes people won’t shut up about their trip for weeks or even months. Years even.

I once went out with someone who six years prior to our relationship had spent 4 months in Australia doing nothing particularly productive other than noticing things that were seemingly different or better than they are in the US.  You know, the beach, the clubs, the attitude.    And here it was six years later and he still felt the need to make it known at least 3 times a day he had lived "outside this country"  by referring to something that isn't the same here as it is there.

OK. Enough already.  

Which reminds me that only a few short weeks ago we were in Rome and we had the most fantastic Espresso Granita I had ever had.  I'm sure the surroundings had nothing to do with my opinion of it either.  Just in case you were wondering.

I know you are thinking we must have gone to the famous Cremeria Monteforte on the Via della Rotonda, (preferred by David Lebovitz), but you would be wrong.   No sirree.  I wasn't even at the Tazza d'Oro on the other side of the Pantheon.   Not far from there, however,  tucked just behind the Piazza Navona (with its gorgeous Bernini fountains) at the Campo de' Fiori Square we were introduced by our ex-pat friend and our tour guide that day Rick to the Sant'Eustachio Il Caffè, an ancient coffee shop and roaster established there in the thirties.

The first thing you notice about the shop it is that unlike the 1930's coffee roasting houses in The States, this one actually was established in the '30's and not  just decorated to look like it.   Take that Coffee Bean!  I knew we were in for a special treat when I saw that the granita at the Sant'Eustachio Il Caffè was so well thought of that  real Romans were lining up at its counters along with the tourists in the middle of one hot-as-blazes Roman summer.

"Trust me when I say that you have never tasted anything as good as this particular granita! You just can't find espresso granita as good in The States."  

Perhaps not.  Granita isn't something you find a lot here in this country anyway unless you make it yourself and you really can't find it offered next to a Bernini fountain or just a short walk from The Pantheon and that really does seem to make a difference.

It hardly matters anyway as it is so incredibly easy to make at home and the "I made it myself" enthusiasm will certainly counter the "I'm eating this in Italy" factor.   Of all the culinary inspirations I came home with espresso granita is by far the easiest to recreate.

Its perfect for a 105 degree end of summer day and a DVD of  The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone don't you think?   I did.

(Yes, I plan on being insufferable for quite awhile. Its my turn. Have I told you yet about the pizza?)

Granita di Caffè con Panna 
(Espresso Granita with Whipped Cream)