Christmas Comfort Food

This Christmas, Ben and I spent a week at my parents house helping out.  My mom had her hip replaced and couldn't be left alone for her first week post-op.  With limited mobility that also meant no cooking, no laundry, no household chores of any kind.  That's where we came in.  And since we had to stay close to home for the duration of our week, I passed the time cooking.  While I made a few tasty meals to speak of, one stands out.  That meal, Spaghetti with homemade Bolognese sauce, is allowed to claim fame because my father, the pickiest eater on the planet, couldn't stop eating it.  The recipe is below, courtesy of Tyler Florence. I would STRONGLY recommend halving it.  Even at 50-percent this recipe yields enough for two meals for normal people or one meal in which my brother and dad eat.

(The sauce simmering on the stove. I'm going to concede here that it looks a little like dog food.  However, make it and you won't ever worry about that again, it's so tasty!)

Ingredients for Spaghetti Bolognese

Extra-virgin olive oil (one generous turn around the pan)
2 medium onions, finely chopped
4 celery stalks, finely chopped
4 carrots, peeled and finely chopped
8 large garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp salt (this is my addition since you're intended to sweat rather than caramelize the mirepoix)
2 pounds ground veal (if you object to eating veal or can't find it ground readily, just double up on lean ground beef)
2 pounds ground beef
2 cups dry white wine, such as Pinot Grigio
3 (28-ounce) cans whole peeled tomatoes, drained and crushed by hand
2 quarts chicken stock
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 cups milk
1 pound dried spaghetti
Large spoonful ricotta cheese
Handful freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, plus more for serving
Handful fresh basil leaves, torn into small pieces
Extra-virgin olive oil


In a large heavy-bottomed pot, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the onions, celery, carrots, garlic and salt and cook for about 10 minutes, stirring, until the vegetables are very tender but not browned.

Raise the heat a bit. Take the ground veal and beef, break it up into chunks and add it to the pan. Cook, breaking up the clumps with a wooden spoon, until the meat is no longer pink. Add the wine and simmer until the wine has evaporated. Then add the tomatoes and stock and season with salt and pepper. Lower the heat and simmer very slowly for 2 to 2 1/2 hours, stirring now and then, until the sauce is very thick.

Now add the milk - the milk will make the meat tender and will give a creaminess to the sauce- and simmer again until thickened, another 20 to 30 minutes. Taste again for salt and pepper. Mash the sauce against the side of the pan to really blend it. Transfer half of the sauce to containers and refrigerate for up to a week, or freeze for up to several months.

Bring a big pot of lightly salted water to a boil for the spaghetti. When you're ready to serve, drop the spaghetti into the boiling water and cook until tender yet firm (al dente) 7 to 8 minutes. Drain and put the spaghetti into a big pasta bowl. Return the sauce remaining in the pot to a simmer and stir in the ricotta cheese. Pour the sauce over the drained spaghetti and give it a good toss. Garnish with a handful of grated Parmigiano, the basil, and a drizzle of olive oil. Pass more grated cheese at the table.

Ciao to 2010 with Cioppino

With all the traveling and working and traveling all year long, Ben and I decided that if what you're doing at midnight on New Years you're doing all year, we wanted to be at home, whatever we did.  So we stayed in and enjoyed the quiet and warmth of our own house, with for once, both of us in it.  To add a little of the midnight magic to the mix, we decided to make a special meal to ring in 2011 - Cioppino.  While it finds its roots in San Francisco, Cioppino is also an Italian tradition, and provides a hearty, warm meal perfect for a chilly December night.

I started with a Giada recipe (that's the original in the link), tweaking it as needed to accomodate what I had in the pantry. I also halved it to make it manageable for two people since shellfish doesn't usually reheat well. I served it with roasted garlic crostinis, the recipe (very very basic) is at the end.

Ingredients for Cioppino

1.5 tablespoons olive oil (one generous turn around the pan with the olive oil)
1 small fennel bulb, thinly sliced
1 small onion, chopped
2 medium shallots, chopped
1 teaspoon salt
2 large garlic cloves, finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper flakes (this is a best approximation, I just eyeball this stuff)
A generous 1/8 cup tomato paste
1 (14-ounce) can diced tomatoes in juice
3/4 cups dry white wine
2.5 cups chicken stock (the original recipe calls for fish stock, but unless you make it homemade I'm not wild about the fish stock you can buy in the store so without the time or requisite fish parts to make my own, I opted for a tried and true, although different alternative)
1 bay leaf
1/3 pound little neck clams, scrubbed (the original recipe calls for manila and if you can get them I'd go that route, but they can be hard to find depending on the time of year and little necks are a reasonable substitute)
1/3 pound mussels, scrubbed, debearded
1/2 pound uncooked large shrimp, peeled and deveined
3/4 pounds halibut, cut into 2-inch chunks

Heat the oil in a very large pot (e.g. dutch oven) over medium heat. Add the fennel, onion, shallots, and salt and saute until the onion is translucent, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and red pepper flakes, and saute 2 minutes. Stir in the tomato paste. Add tomatoes with their juices, wine, chicken stock and bay leaf. Cover and bring to a simmer. Reduce the heat to medium-low. Cover and simmer until the flavors blend, about 30 minutes.

Add the clams and mussels to the cooking liquid. Cover and cook until the clams and mussels begin to open, about 5 minutes. Add the shrimp and fish. Simmer gently until the fish and shrimp are just cooked through, and the clams are completely open, stirring gently, about 5 minutes longer (discard any clams and mussels that do not open). Remove bay leaf. Season the soup, to taste, with more salt and red pepper flakes.
Ladle the soup into bowls and serve.

Crostinis
1 head of garlic
Olive oil
1 half-loaf french baguette

Before starting the Cioppino, preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Slice the top 1/3 off the top of a head of garlic, just revealing the individual cloves.  Place the garlic on a piece of aluminum foil, sprinkle the garlic head with olive oil.  Wrap the foil around the garlic, covering it completely.  Roast in the oven for 45 minutes. Remove, allow to cool and open.  Squeeze the garlic head over a bowl to extract the roasted garlic.

While the Cioppino broth is simmering, slice the baguette on a diagonal.  Place the slices on a cookie sheet and sprinkle with olive oil. During the last five minutes of the Cioppino's cooking, place the baguette slices under the broiler until lightly browned.  Remove from broiler and spread the roasted garlic extracted from the head with a knife over the baguette slices.  Serve two slices with each bowl of Cioppino.

The blog is back in town...

So an eight month hiatus? That seems reasonable. There's been a lot happening in the last eight months, including our big move to the new house, lots and lots of travel (Las Vegas together, Israel for Ben twice and Halifax, San Diego, Orange County x 1000, Dallas, Detroit, Boston, Indianapolis, and El Paso for me), a couple of promotions at work, a few fun adventures in the DC area and I'm sure plenty more.  Since I got so behind I can't possibly recap it all other than to say 2010, like the years before it, was a great year filled with the love and laughter of friends and family.  And with a little luck 2011 will be even better. In the coming months I'll do my best to stay on the blog-wagon, but I'm not promising as many posts as those months when I was really on my game.  But you can still count on lots of food posts with ample side orders of the life that happens between  meals.

A Legacy of Literacy Begins Now

In honor of her 30th birthday, my nearest and dearest friend Nicole is making it her mission to raise $13,000 dollars to build a school in Cambodia.  Literacy has always been a cause close to her heart and, when combined with education, is a great way to help prevent young girls and women from being victimized by human traffickers.  This is a cause I believe is completely worthy of being plugged on the blog.  Below you'll find her fund raising letter, which provides some additional detail on exactly what she's undertaken.  If you know anyone who might be interested in making a donation to this great cause, please forward the information along.  And of course, feel free to leave any fund raising ideas in comments and I'll be sure to pass them along!!

Happy 30th Cole!

Fund raising letter from Nicole - 

Hello friends and family,

As most of you know, I turn 30 this May, and I’ve been thinking about doing something meaningful to mark the occasion. Everyone who knows me knows that the cause dearest to me is literacy because of my lifelong love affair with books (and newspapers and journals and magazines). So… I have decided that I would like to build a school!

I just finished Nick Kristof’s book Half the Sky, which is full of fantastic ideas to help women around the world, and one project in particular really caught my attention: a non-profit that builds schools in Cambodia, where the low literacy and high poverty rates make it a hub for the trafficking of girls and women. Think of an 8 or 9 year old girl close to you, whether it is your daughter, niece, or a friend’s daughter. Now imagine that girl being sold, at that age, to a brothel. Education is the best weapon we have against such a disgusting trade because it gives wome n options, knowledge, confidence and community.

I’ve checked out this program pretty thoroughly and am satisfied that it is a good one… and the 13k that donors raise to build a school is matched with 13k from the World Bank and then by another 13k from the Asian Development fund – a great value! Here’s the website: http://www.cambodiaschools.com/

I hope that you will participate in helping me reach this goal. I realize that 13k sounds like a lot, esp. in this economy, but I’m not looking for big amounts from anyone, I’m looking for small amounts from lots of people! So the more this is shared, the easier it will be to reach the goal. If you have any connections to businesses or firms with philanthropy programs, or faith communities that you feel comfortable reaching out to, that would be most welcome!

I’ve set up a new email address called letsbuildaschool@gmail.com with a linked PayPal account to help me keep track of fund raising. I’d like to be able to thank the people who contribute, so please email me and let me know who you are (if you aren’t comfortable announcing your identity or donation amount I totally understand, but I won’t be able to tell people’s identities from their PayPal info. to be able to thank them).

I will also send out an update on our total once a month to interested parties.

Thank you so much for helping. I want more women to have as much love & luck as I have.

My cup (cake) runneth over

Last night Ben and I had a date night in Tyson's Corner.  We went to see the new Iron Man movie and then grab a bite to eat. Except instead of dining in on a healthy meal we opted to take home a cupcake (or three).  That's the beauty of being adults.  We can eat dessert for dinner and there's no one around to yell at us.  Since Nicole was without power for the third day in a row, she came over after our date to indulge in some of our hot water, so we decided to share our date night cupcakes with her too!

The cupcakes themselves are from a place called Cake Love, which has had its 15 minutes of fame more than once on the Food Network and who's proprietor, Warren Brown, is also a frequent host/guest on the network.  So we had high hopes for these cupcakes.

(The top of our cupcake carrier)

Since this was our first try, we each selected one and decided to share them both and then selected a third to bring back for Nicole.  Knowing that it's easiest to judge a place when you have a good basis of comparison, Ben selected an old stand by, Vanilla cake with Vanilla frosting or "Vanilla on Vanilla." I chose something a bit less tested, a chocolate coffee cake with whipped frosting (mild vanilla flavor).  And for Nicole, we chose a toffee cupcake, knowing her love of the candy.

(Here's the toffee cupcake, sorry no shots of the other two, Ben and I got a little ahead of ourselves with the eating and forgot to take pics)

All in all, we really enjoyed our sweet treats.  But there is a note of relativity about that statement.  I say this because while they were good, moist and light with tasty frosting, they were not the best I've ever had.  Up to this point in life the best cupcake I've ever had comes from Georgetown Cupcake, where the bakers put all other cupcakes to shame.  However, the average cupcake from this upscale locale rings up at around $5.00.  Cake Love, however, delivers a tasty alternative (even if not as perfect) for just $3.25 and is less than 10 minutes from our new house, where as Georgetown requires me to negotiate the Key Bridge, parking and more Trixies (substitute Georgetown for Lincoln Park) than I care to encounter.  That said, they'll be seeing us back at Cake Love sometime soon.

And while we're talking cupcakes, I should note that although I've enjoyed what the metro DC area cupcakeries have had to offer, I am DYING to try a cupcake from my great friend Julie's mom's new cupcake store, Cup.Cake.  From everything I've heard and read, I am confident that they'll give even Georgetown Cupcake a run for it's money!

House + Birthday = May Madness

And so it begins.  In addition to the many, many tasks we will have to complete between now and the May 28th closing date on the house, May also marks a month of birthday madness.  Celebrating their entries into the world this month are Ben, Nicole, Melissa and Marika.  This is a month that normally finds us out a lot, celebrating the people we love and we usually start with Ben.  However, with all the goings on around the house and the fact that saving money is a big priority for us right now, Ben decided this year we'd celebrate his birthday in a low key sort of way - with the home inspection.

We met up with the Inspector at the house at 3PM.  I was warned ahead of time that a good home inspection takes about three hours.  This was NOT a lie.  We wrapped up at just about 6 PM.  In the hours in between, I was amazed to realize all the things a home inspector considers when giving a place a clean bill of housing health that would never even have crossed my mind.   The roof, the HVAC and the electrical were no-brainers (and the things that we were most concerned about considering the costs often associated with them), but he noticed things that I had never imagined.  He taught how to stabilize our railing with silicone capping, how to raise an air conditioning unit at no cost, and he shook our deck to make sure it was stable in a way that scared me so badly I ran back into the house while the deck was still moving (not to worry potential visitors, the deck is stable, he just freaked me out!).  But the best part of the whole experience was when he came out of our attic and proclaimed to Ben, "Buy it!" with a thumbs up.  All in all, the inspection went very well and while there are a few things on the list to focus on right away, there were no deal breakers.

But with all the house hubbub, I couldn't let Ben's birthday go by unmarked.  So on our way home, we stopped off at The Pie Gourmet, a happy local bakery that doesn't look like much at all with their 70s-style bakery cases and no frills locale, but man do they know their way around a pie.  Apple, Cherry, French Silk, Boston Cream, you name it, they do it and do it well.  Since it was Ben's 29th we were celebrating, I had ordered his favorite - Key Lime.

It took him less than three minutes from the time we walked in the door to be sitting at the kitchen table with a piece of pie.  A sweet ending to what turned out to be sweet day!

Welcome Home!

After some crazy weekends spent looking at houses (the craziest point of which was 15 houses in a single day!), we finally found one that met both our needs and nearly all our wants.  Just over a mile from the Dunn Loring metro stop with a metro bus stop right at the mouth of our development, it's in a great location for both Ben and me, closer to work for us both.  Closing is May 28th and we couldn't be more excited, except for all the stuff that has to be done between now and then!  Below are lots of pics of the new place.  Consider these the "before" that include some of the prior owner's clutter.

 (The front facade.  This pic was taken in the winter, 

but right now we have lovely green trees lining the whole street)

(The main floor entry way (down a step from the rest of the floor), living room and dining room)

(A closer shot of the living room.  It's bigger than it looks, 

the former residents had some seriously over-sized furniture)

(A closer look at the dining room.  I love that the space is open 

but the column makes it seem like it's own room)

(Kitchen!  It will need a little work down the road, but it's great for the time being)

(An alternate view of the whole first floor including the half bath door on the left, the stairs 

to the lower level and the view into the eat in part of the kitchen)

(Deck off the kitchen, again all the giant stuff on it makes it look smaller than it is.)

 (Master Bedroom with vaulted ceiling!)

(Master bath with dual vanities, needs some work but it's a good start)

(First guest bedroom, yes, the wallpaper border is coming down ASAP!)

(The second guest bedroom, again, down comes the border)

(Upstairs guest bathroom)

(Lower level with walkout)

(Backyard)

Now you've seen all the move-in, "before" pictures.  As we start working inside I'll post more pictures.  Wish us luck on the move, Saturday, May 29th!