Little Susie Homebreaker

My Teeny Tiny Tasty Super Bowl Party

Let me introduce you to one of  the NFL's most  surprising fans: me. I barely know the rules of the game, but I am a total sucker for anything political, poignant, or scandalous about big league sports.

This year I'll be cheering  Eli Manning and the Giants— and the special note to my teeny tiny Super Bowl party, as usual, will be the food.

I know how to make a chili for people who hate chili. —A chili for vegetarians that the meat-lovers will demand for seconds. —A chili you can make in minutes but will make everything believe you toiled for hours. You can cook it as picanté as you like, but I know how to take all the heat out of it, and still make people feel rambunctious. And... my guacamole is the best.

These are not idle boasts. Here is my recipe, rudely adapted from Molly Katzen's Still Life with Menu. It's good for any winter day you wanna feel like a winner!

Black Chili with Pineapple Salsa

Sweet Plantains, Crazy Cuke Sauce, & The Best Guacamole

Ingredients on Hand:

 
Canned back beans
Olive oil/butter
Cumin
Salt and Pepper
Fresh Basil
Dried oregano
Limes
Small jar of diced jalapeños, or one fresh pepper
Any other peppers you like
Minced garlic
Canned chunk pineapple
Bananas or plantains
Avocados
2 big cucumbers, at least
Red onion
Cilantro
2 bunches of mint leaves
Plain yogurt

Black Chili

Put three cans of black beans, with their water, in a saucepan, Slowly heat them up.
In a skillet, on medium heat, sauté three or four minced garlic cloves in olive oil with a
little butter. For faster results, just spoon it out of those brilliant jars of crushed garlic.
(I told you this was going to be fast!)

Add in one of those small jars of diced jalapeño peppers. They’re perfect.

(You can also cut up a fresh one if you like. If you go with the fresh, and you want to
subtract the heat, be sure to remove all the seeds, and wash your hands with hot water
and soap afterwards).

If you want a hot chili, get out the Poblanos and Anaheims and go for it. 

To your sauté, add 3 T. of chopped up fresh basil,  2 tsp. cumin, 1 tsp. oregano, salt,
pepper You’ll get a nice hot paste with the peppers, until they’re wilted and soft. Add
the juice of one lime towards the end.

Add this mixture to the beans, along with a cup of any tomato, or marinara sauce, or— 
the Trader Joe’s roasted pepper and tomato soup in a box. 

Let that warm on low heat, while you make the salsa.

Pineapple Salsa

Get your Cuisinart out. If you don’t have one yet, sell some plasma and get one. It’s a
critical as  a wooden spoon.

Pour in a can of pineapple chunks, a couple tablespoons of diced fresh mint, a couple
more spoonfuls of diced garlic, a pinch of the cumin, and salt. You can add chilis of
course, if you want this to be hot, too.

The mint is the one part of this operation that has to be fresh. It comes in little
bunches and is easy to chop that way.  Don’t use the whole bunch in the salsa… you
need at least half of it for the Crazy Cuke Sauce.

Pulse the food processor a few times until the salsa is shredded and mixed well. It’s
nice to have a few chunks of pineapple bobbing around. Put it in a serving bowl in the
fridge to chill.

Crazy Cuke Sauce

Peel and coarsely chop up two cucumbers for your Cuisinart. Add 4 T. of chopped
fresh mint, a couple T. of chopped red onion and a cup or two of plain yogurt. Salt and
pepper!  Buzz it up good, and then pour it into a serving pitcher or cup to chill in the
fridge.

Plantains/Fried Bananas

Put these on before you make the guacamole so they have enough time to caramelize.
Get any kind of banana you like. Slice them in half length wise, and then maybe in half.
Melt butter with a little olive oil ( so it doesn’t burn) in your skillet, so you have a fine
⅛-1/4” coating.

Place the banana slices in the pan, and slowly cook them on medium low heat, turning
over when one side gets streaked with dark brown. In other words, you’re slowly burn-
ing them, and the sugar’s coming out.

When they’re done, turn the heat off and let them sit in the skillet until you serve them.
They taste great with sour cream or the Cuke Sauce.

Guacamole!

Get the best avocados you can find. Perfect ripeness. That’s the magic part.
Peel the green fruit out of their skins and drop into your serving bowl. Now add the
juice of one lemon per three or four medium avocados. This is what gives it the kick,
like it was just born.

Chop up a little cilantro, and smash it all up with healthy shakes of salt and pepper. 
Use a fork for this part, not the food processor.

That’s IT.

Yes, you can gum it up with hot sauce, onions, tomatillos, tomatos, sour cream— but
please taste it in its virginal stage and tell me if you aren’t quivering.

Extras

Grate or crumble up some of your favorite cheese. Yum goat cheese. Yum cheddar.
Scallions, peppers, sour cream, chopped up tomatoes, that sort of thing.

Serve It

Pour the hot chili ( which will have been gently simmering for a half hour or so)  into
bowls.

Drizzle Crazy Cuke Sauce over it, scatter some cheese, put a spoonful of Guacamole in
the center, festoon it with Pineapple Salsa. Get the chips out. Anything goes at this
point.

Photos: Cutiepie QB Eli Manning in the  Off Season On Smash blog, and all vegies from Mariquita Farms' Recipe Book!

Keep Your Shears in My Heart

Jonny made a Fimo heart for me to stash my beloved shears. You're in My Heart is carved on the left ventricle. I just wrote about the importance of a good blade in my sewing column for a recent edition of Craft magazine. 

But back to love. For today's theme, I thought of the song that was playing the first time I made love to someone who knew what they were doing. Did I know what I was doing? No. But this really helped:

Photo: Honey Lee Cottrell.

The League of Amazing Latkes

I dream about potato pancakes. There aren't enough Hanukkah parties to sate my appetite; I always want more.

I used to cry like a spoiled brat because even though I have the perfect recipe— and I do mean "the best latke you've ever tasted"— my routine took a couple hours of numbing handwork to prepare, and ruined any possibility of a quick fix.

I don't like squeezing water out of potato gratings in cheesecloth scraps until my arms fall off. I don't care to spend all day grating a mountain of potatoes plus part of my knuckles. Yet nothing but my own recipe satisfies me.

It turns out that immediate gratification IS possible with the right equipment. It took me twenty years to realize this, but no one should suffer as long as I did. The tools are everything in this recipe. There are no substitutions!

Susie's Perfect Latkes On Demand

2 1/2 - 3 cups grated potatoes, grated in a Cuisinart

1 onion— the size of a tennis ball, grated in a Cuisinart

2 large eggs

3 tablespoons fine matzo meal crumbs from the box— no other crumb will do!

2 T. sea salt

Lots of black pepper

2 T. butter

2 T. canola or safflower oil

Sour Cream

Applesauce

Preheat your oven to 250 degrees— you won't be baking, but you need a warm place to store your piles of fresh-cooked latkes. You'd like to think you could cram them all in your mouth at once, but be realistic— you need a spot to keep them hot.

Eggnog to Die For

Homemade Eggnog. The very words incite delirium.

I only make eggnog once a year, for a big party at Yuletide. The word orgy comes to mind. I've never seen so many people's eyes roll back in their heads, simultaneously.

You want the recipe? You shall have it. It's not hard, just a bit time-consuming. You have to break a lot of eggs. And you will be spoiled. That supermarket eggnog is going to taste like Elmer's Glue after this.

My recipe is adapted from the first cookbook I ever bought with my own money when I was 16: The Vegetarian Epicure, by Anna Thomas. I have  learned more from this book about food and cooking than any other; it was my kitchen teacher... still is, actually. Before I die, I want to make every recipe in it.  More about Anna Thomas after the recipe!

Eggnog

Ingredients:

12 eggs, separated
1 1/2 c. powdered sugar
1 qt. milk     (regular, not lowfat or nonfat! preferably organic!)
1 c. cognac (optional)
1 c. dark rum (optional)
1 large orange
1 lemon
1 quart whipping cream
grated nutmeg

Special Things Needed:

a very sharp butcher knife
electric mixer
grater
potato peeler
extra eggs in case you screw up the separations (easy to do)
two big bowls to make it with
one nice bowl to serve it in, and a ladle

Method:

Beat the egg yolks and sugar until thick, then stir in the milk, cognac, and rum.

Beat the egg whites in another bowl, until they just hold a peak, and then fold them into the first ingredients.

Put this mixture away to chill for at least 3 hours. (Overnight is fine, just put plastic wrap over bowl).

Use a potato peeler to peel the very outside of the orange skin, so you have barely any white pulp on the back of the skin. You just want the pure orange rind. Cut this skin into matchsticks, as thin as possible and about 1 1/2 inches long. Yes, you need a sharp knife for this.

Grate the fresh lemon rind.

Whip the cream until it only just begins to thicken, not so much that it actually holds peaks. Stir his half-whipped cream into your chilled milk and egg mixture, and beat a few more strokes with the whisk. Stir in the lemon rind and half the orange matchsticks.

Pour the eggnog into a serving bowl. Over the top of it, sprinkle the remaining orange rind and plenty of grated nutmeg.

Serves 25 reasonable people, but only a dozen or so fanatics.

If you make it "virgin," it's easy to offer your guests liquor to add separately; just let them pour and stir.

Anna Thomas, who wrote the original of this recipe, was the author who brought "health food" into the gourmet realm. Her book came out before "Chez Panisse," before nouvelle cuisine was part of our vocabulary. And yet her recipes and philosophy were at the beginning of the whole movement.

The book was published in 1970, and in her author's bio— that touches me so— it says: "Anna Thomas... is strongly committed to the women's liberation movement..."

The book combines the techniques of French cooking with the organics of American heritage. This book taught me, as a teenager, how to make a "roux," how to bake bread, make  a crépe, a curry, and the best soups I've ever tasted. If it had been difficult to understand, I never would have attempted it at the time! She makes very nuanced techniques seem graceful to accomplish.

It only occurred to me rather late that it was all indeed "vegetarian." You don't notice it, if you're not thinking about it. This is an excellent book to move into a carnivore's home— they'll never know what hit them.

Thomas also published two sequels, The Vegetarian Epicure Book Two, and The New Vegetarian Epicure— which are excellent as well. I have them all. But I am stubbornly hung up on her first one. I bought a second one after I scorched the first!

Photo of "Kiss Eggs" by Raka, whole blog and Flickr photo collection are not to missed!

 

Mom's Baked Apples with the Marshmallow Buttplug

There's something about a cold snap that begs for baked apples. Baked apples with ice cream, pecans, brown sugar... and gooey, toasted marshmallow melting on your tongue.

Go ahead, tell me how bad you want it!

When my friend Steve Harsin visited me this fall to help catalog my dad's library, he shared his mother's baked apple recipe with me, which involved plugging the cored fruit with a marshmallow, before you pop it in the oven. It's a brilliant improvisation on the old Betty Crocker standby. 

I stuffed the apples with a flourish. "It's like a marshmallow buttplug!"

Steve said: "If my mother heard that, she would die."

Baked apples are easy-peasy to prepare, and will blow your Thanksgiving guests' minds. People have forgotten the  tasty genius of a basic baked apple, and they'll worship you for reminding them of what's right and good in the world.

Just remember, Don't Tell Steve's Mom.

Choose some apples that are a little tart. You really can't go wrong as long as they're crisp and flavorful.

Wash and core apples with a cheap but effective APPLE CORER. It works a lot faster than a paring knife.

Don't quite pierce the bottom of the apple; just drill down to about the last quarter inch. Your opening needs to be almost an inch wide.

Place in baking dish. Fill the centers of each apple with 1-2 tablespoons of brown sugar, a teaspoon of walnuts or pecans, 1 tsp. of butter, and a sprinkle of cinnamon. I actually don't measure anything in this recipe myself, I just use my fingers and approximate!

I've given you the basic ingredients... but you could substitute or add anything you think tastes good with apples.

For the final touch, take a marshmallow and rudely stuff it in the top of each apple, pushing down the other ingredients into the cored hole. It doesn't matter that the marshmallow pooches out at the top— baked apples are suppose to be messy.

Fill your baking pan with about 1/4" of water, so the apples are sitting in a shallow bath.

Bake uncovered in a 375 degree oven until tender when pierced with a fork. Time varies with apple size, but it's about 30-40 min. Yum yum yum! Serve with ice cream or whipped cream, like an apple sundae.

Photo from Simple Recipes.

If You Want to End War and Stuff You Got to Sing Loud

Alice's Restaurant

by Arlo Guthrie

This song is called Alice's Restaurant, and it's about Alice, and the restaurant, but Alice's Restaurant is not the name of the restaurant, that's just the name of the song, and that's why I called the song "Alice's Restaurant."

You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in, it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant

Now it all started two Thanksgivings ago, was on- two years ago on Thanksgiving, when my friend and I went up to visit Alice at the restaurant, but Alice doesn't live in the restaurant, she lives in the church nearby the restaurant, in the bell-tower, with her husband Ray and Fasha the dog.

If I Could Have Stuffing Every Day

Why do we only eat stuffing once a year? Everyone says it's their favorite part of Thanksgiving, and yet we starve ourselves.

It's bread pudding, and that gives you a clue right there. I love bread. I love pudding. Pour on the butter and let's have a party.

I make two stuffings, one traditional and one for the vegetarians, although that's a bit of a joke because the carnivores eat all the veggie dressing too.

I used to buy loaves of bread and dry them out before cutting them into cubes by hand, but I decided that is not where the labor-intensive hours count. Instead, I support buying unseasoned bread crumbs ahead of time. The key is UNseasoned. Seasoning is an area where you can make your homemade stuffing shine.

Buy fresh herbs. Actually, if you live near me, come over and get some for free, because I have enough parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme to sink a dingy off of Plymouth Rock.

Just cooking up  fresh herbs in butter and garlic is enough to set the whole day right. Saute them with your onion, your celery, and if you want my other secret, diced fennel bulb. YUM. You can even skip the celery entirely if you want.

My famous star of the stuffing comes next:  I chop up oysters and saute them... more butter, please!  I love the taste of shellfish in poultry dressing. Of course you have the sizzling ground sausage mixed in there as  as well... pork, shellfish, and turkey flavors cannot be beat!  Sometimes I add baby shrimp, too.

I'm big on nutmeats. Pecans. I have a Cajun feel for stuffing. If I could come up with 'gator meat to throw in, I bet it would be heaven. Brazil nuts, or pine nuts work alright too, but remember this is NOT a candy bar. Peanuts and almonds are not your friend in the stuffing department.

I like raisins. I like capers. I like to throw everything in but the kitchen sink as long as I think it will harmonize.

I always buy a separate package of giblets and livers to cook, just for the stuffing. You can't get enough of that stoned turkey flavor.

I learned a great lesson from a Cauldron cooking class I took at Mariquita Farm: the most flavorful part of any bird comes from the gelatinous body parts. That's why chicken feet are the quintessential flavor orgasm of any hen. More than anything you can do to enhance your chicken stock, it's the feet that make it POP.

During class, we cooked in an enormous witch-size iron cauldron, so I cleaned about 100 chicken feet. Nasty things they are, especially for a sheltered city girl like me!  They made me think, "so this is what dinosaur toes must have looked like."

But the flavor of the broth was off the hook. I don't blame you if you use canned broth, but if you're determined to make homemade stock, get some of those feet from the butcher. Just a handful will make you a shaman in the kitchen.

What do you like in your stuffing? Are you a purist, or surrealist when it comes to additions?

I hope you are taking a slow weekend with family and friends, whether you're munching on bird or Sushi or Cadbury bars! I'm very thankful for all your support and good words this year, and I look forward to more of the same!

Some mad satire for you:

"Pardoned Turkey" to be He Held at Guantanamo

Scenes from a Bush Thanksgiving

White House Turkey Stuffed with Leaks and Donuts

This is rich.

Remember Walter Scheib, the brilliant chef who was fired by Laura Bush’s East Wing for using traitorous French cooking techniques? — You know, like sauteing. W. hates “green food” and “wet fish,” and Scheib must have suffered under such constraints. Now he's serving his revenge— blazing hot.

Walter has just written a tell-all recipe book, White House Chef, which he's dedicated to Hillary Clinton— Quelle Surprise d'Octobre!

The Times has the whole story. For extra crumbly-Oreo satire on the same, read The Swift Report. It's more damning than not finding WMD in Iraq... it's finding out the Leaders of the Free World have No Fucking Taste Whatsoever. And critics like these fourth-estate slow-food bitches are never going to let them forget it!

Let me whet your appetite:

Scheib was a cooking diva, the fair-haired boy at the top of his class at the Culinary Institute of America. He worked his way up through the finest hotels and resorts in the country, a wunderkind, before Hillary Clinton summoned him to the White House.

Scheib was thrilled to discover his new mission. Unlike the dull reputation of many First Family kitchens, Hillary encouraged him to go wild with “what’s best about American food, wine, and entertaining.”

Of course he cooked comfort food for the Clintons, and I’m sure Bill got his share of grilled peanut butter & banana sandwiches. But for public affairs, Scheib indulged his every nouvelle inspiration. He remained in the kitchen when the Bush family moved in, and made his quiet, pained adjustments.

But at last came the Cheney merengue.

Lynne Cheney, it seems, had a social secretary named Lea Berman who had no qualification for anything other than that her husband was a sugar lobbyist who gave beau-coup dough to the Bushies.

Berman was promoted in Bush's second term to run the First Lady's social affairs, and she was a real piece of trans-fat. She insisted Scheib create an inaugural dinner menu that paid honor to the corporate brand names of a dozen top GOP donors— like Dunkin' Donuts and Coca Cola. She'd tear out pages from Martha Stewart Living for Walter and tell him to make lunch look "just like the picture.” Whenever she saw anything on Scheib’s menus that offended her, like hummus spread, she would write “yuk!” in the margins.

Wouldn't you just love to see her trussed up in one of the pots in Muki’s Kitchen?

I can't wait to read Walter's entire recipe file. Damning with faint praise is nothing compared to being cursed with Kraft Singles!

After Scheib left the White House, an East Wing leak told The Wall Street Journal that the chef had been fired because he showed “a level of arrogance” in preparing scallops for the First Family even though the president detested them. Scheib protested: “If we had been told not to serve scallops, we wouldn’t serve them.”

But what did Walter do next? He offered one of his top secret recipes to listeners on NPR radio: "Seared Scallops in the Manner of An Old Friend." Gee, I wonder who that is?

The shellfish sound delicious, but I pine for the Inaugural Stuffed Turkey With Donuts recipe— a wonderful satire— that Deanna Swift provides on her blog! I'm sure you can make this recipe, but can you TAKE it?

Coca-Cola Brined Pilgrim's Pride Turkey with Dunkin’ Donuts Old-Fashioned Cake Doughnut Sweet and Savory Stuffing

Coca-Cola Brine

1 1/4 cups salt
1 quart Coca-Cola
2 bay leaves
1 medium onion, peeled and halved
2 cloves
1 10- to 12-pound Pilgrim's Pride Whole Butter Basted Turkey

1. Place salt and Coca-Cola in a large deep pot and whisk until salt crystals dissolve. Whisk in 4 quarts cold water. Pin bay leaves to onion halves with cloves and add them to brine. Let mixture cool to room temperature.

2. Add Pilgrim's Pride turkey, placing a large heavy pot or sealed zip-top bag filled with cold water on top to keep bird submerged in Coca-Cola. Place pot in refrigerator and marinate overnight.

Dunkin Donuts Old-fashioned Cake Doughnut Sweet and Savory Stuffing

6 cups Dunkin Donuts old-fashioned cake doughnuts, chopped
2 cups diced onion
1/2 cup butter
2 cups cranberries
2 teaspoons dried rosemary
1/2 tablespoon dried sage
1 cup chicken broth

Cook onion in butter or margarine over low heat until soft. Add
doughnuts, cranberries, rosemary and sage, chicken broth,
salt and pepper to taste. Mix gently but thoroughly.

Roast Turkey

Remove Pilgrim's Pride turkey from Coca-Cola brine.

Thoroughly rinse turkey under a slow stream of cool water, rubbing gently to release salt and soda residue, both inside and out. Pat skin and both interior cavities dry. Remove neck and giblets. Begin lightly spooning doughnut stuffing into the neck cavity, then into the body cavity. After the bird has been stuffed, secure the legs to the tail. If the band of skin is not present, tie the legs securely to the tail with string. Twist the wing tips under the back of the turkey so they won't overcook.

Roast turkey, breast side down, in a preheated 325 degree oven for 2 hours. During this time, baste legs and back twice with Coca-Cola.

Dig in, everyone!

Taffy Pull!

I'm going to pull taffy this Halloween. I've invited some crazy cooks over to help me... apparently you have to pull, pull, and pull— until you collapse— that's when you know it's ready.

The taffy link I've posted is from the wonderful Exploratorium in San Francisco, a "kids" science museum that adults go crazy over. It's actually called "a museum of art, science, and human perception." Yes!

We're throwing a candy-making cabal. It all started last year when I had the grand idea that we should make chocolate razor blades, as a spoof on trick-or-treat hysteria. But I could not figure out how to make the "blades" thin enough!

This year, I'm just going to get down to the basics. I want to use some old-school candy recipes that I used to make with my mom when I was a kid— see below. My fondest memories of my mom are from when we made candy together, and then ate it all in one sitting watching "Get Smart" on our black-and-white Zenith.

The first is the Fudge recipe that we found on the back page of Ian Fleming's book, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Yes, it's James Bond fudge!  I've translated all the British measurements for you:

Prom Night, Gun Fight

It's prom time. It's beautiful girl time. It's also military service time for  young women in Israel.

I've been soaking in all of it. On the high side, I made a prom dress for my friend Gabby, who's  turning 18 and graduating from high school this month.

This is my third "Cinderella" dress. I made one in Schiaparelli pink for my daughter's Quinceneara, and I made one for myself— just because— in Cowboy Sleeping Bag flannel with minkish trim.

For you fashionistas, Gabby's dress is a riff off a McCalls pattern. Gabby had the idea of lime green satin overlaid with black lace, and my teacher Jill Sanders led the way, showing me how to make a corset lace-up in the back. It's  simpler than a zipper for this sort of thing, and you can really make it FIT. 

Ah, but in the meantime, one of my readers sent me the most amazing link: a photographer's portfolio of teenage girls in the Israeli army. It's called:  Serial No. 3817131, which is the number the artist, Rachel Papo, was known by during her miliary career. It's also the number of her gun.

From Papo's artist statement:

The life of an eighteen-year-old girl in Israel is interrupted when she is plucked out of her environment at an age when sexual, educational, and family values are at their highest exploration point.

She is then placed in a rigorous institution, where individuality becomes a secondary matter, making room for nationalism. “I solemnly swear…to devote all of my strength and to sacrifice my life to protect the land and the liberty of Israel,” repeats the newly recruited soldier during her swearing-in ceremony.

She enters the two-year period in which she will change from a girl to a woman, a teenager to an adult, all under a militaristic, masculine environment, and in the confines of an army that is engaged in daily war and conflict.

I decided to portray female soldiers in Israel during their mandatory military service as a way for me to revisit my own experience.

I served as a photographer in the Israeli Air Force between 1988-1990. It was a period marked by continuous depression and extreme loneliness, and at the time I was too young to understand these emotions. Through a series of images showing female soldiers in army bases and outside, individually or in groups, I attempt to reveal a facet of this experience that is generally overlooked by the global community...

And speaking of prom dresses and the War At Home, did you see the story about the delivery of prom dresses, by the hundreds, collected for glamourous young misses in New Orleans? I would have liked to be part of that drive! Sometimes glamour is the only answer to utter devastation.