U.S. Army Creamed Beef on Toast

There is something a little perverse about Memorial Day.  Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against parades or cook-outs or furniture sales, but it all seems misplaced on a day when we are supposed to honor our fallen dead.  I think with all the flag waving and burger flipping we sometimes forget that this is day about the incalculable loss of war.  That is, of course, except for mothers. 

My son is almost 12, and the thought that in less time than when he was in kindergarten he could be dressed in camouflage, armed, and headed for combat makes my heart stop.  He has almost climbed out of childhood, and is poised on the dangerous precipice of manhood. 
His over-sized feet are still waiting for the rest of his body to catch up, but it won't be long.  I can't imagine my terror if those same sweet feet that used to kick the inside of my belly should one day walk right into a recruiter's office. 

I wonder about my grandmother who watched her own skinny boy leave home at 17 for the promise of a uniform.  And were she still alive I know that she would be thankful to salute her son on Veteran's Day and not on Memorial Day.  But this weekend, I am mindful of the mothers who are not so fortunate.  So this Memorial Day, when you honor those who did not make it home, save some space in your hearts for the unspeakable suffering of their mothers. 

I won't begrudge you your hamburgers and hot dogs, but the right food for Memorial Day is the U.S. Army's Creamed Beef on Toast.  It's a dish my father discovered as a young recruit, and it is dull and gray and drab, like this holiday should be.  But it is also comfort food at its best--warm and thick and hearty.  It's the kind of meal that staves off the hunger and homesickness of a young soldier, recognizing, of course, that it won't do a damn thing for his mother.

U.S. Army Creamed Beef on Toast
Adapted from the Mess Hall Cook, Fort Jackson, South Carolina, 1950
1.  Brown one pound of lean ground beef in a large skillet. 

2.  Add 2 cups of skim milk.

3.  Stir 4 heaping Tbsp of flour into 2 cups of cold water.  Stir vigorously until all the lumps are removed.

4.  Slowly pour into the beef/milk mixture, stirring constantly.

5.  Add two beef bouillon cubes.

6.  Add garlic salt, pepper, and a dash or two of Worcester sauce to taste.

7.  Simmer for 30 minutes until thick and creamy.  Serve over toast.

Ode to the Olive

I have friends who don't like olives, and as much as I try to be open-minded, it makes me question our friendship.  I mean, how could you possibly not LOVE olives?  They are little flavor grenades that are not only good for you, but they aren't fattening.  It doesn't get any better than that.  Even my friends who don't like chocolate (and I can assure you there aren't many) can at least legitimately argue that the stuff goes straight from your mouth to your hips.  But not olives.

When I was kid, there were pretty much two kinds of olives:  the fat black canned ones or the green ones stuffed with pimentos.  Both have done their damage to the olive's reputation.  The black ones were essentially flavorless, but figure fondly in my memory only because you could stick one on each finger and pretend you had long black fingernails; conversely, the green ones freaked me out--my parents would stab them with a toothpick and plunge them into gin, which when you're 10 looks and smells exactly like formaldehyde.  The skewered olives would then sort of bob around staring at me from inside the glass like bloodshot green eyeballs. 
Scary.  I had a hard time processing that grown-ups would actually eat them.  Still do for that matter.  Fortunately, both types have been essentially relegated to permanent wall-flower status what with the incredible variety of olives that now abounds: kalamata, greek, garlic-stuffed, cheese-stuffed (sort of ruins the low-fat quality, but oh-so-worth it), the various olives spreads and bruchettas, and recipes like the one featured here that uses all of the above.  

This tart pairs kalamata olive spread and chopped black and green olives with carmelized onions and goat cheese.  It's the brain child of a chef named Todd English and it completely rehabilitates the reputation of the olive.  Indeed, Mr. English loves olives so much he named his flagship restaurant "Olives" (not to be confused with, ugh, "The Olive Garden"--a restaurant doing it's best to sully the name.) The butter content of this dish pretty much negates the low-fat value of the olives, but I like to rationalize that at least it's healthier than chocolate.



Olive Tart
By Todd English

1.  Prepare the tart shell by blending in a food processor 2 1/4 cups flour, 3 tsps sugar, and 1/2 tsp salt.  Next add 1/2 cup cold water, and pulse again.  While the processor is running, add 16 Tbs of cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces until the dough comes together.   Try not to freak out at the amount of butter; the dough will usually begin to bind after about 8 Tbs--the rest is pretty much gratuitous, and I usually stop at about 12 Tbs.

2.  Remove the dough, form it into a ball and refrigerate for 20 minutes.  This step is actually pretty critical.  With all of that butter, the dough rapidly turns into a gooey mess if it isn't cold.

3.  Remove your mascara, and then peel and thinly slice 4 large Vidalia or Sweet Mayan onions.  

4.  If you neglected to remove your eye make-up, go to the bathroom and wash your face because I guarantee after slicing the onions your face is now streaked with mascara from your tearing eyes.

5.  Heat a large skillet over medium heat with about 1 Tbs olive oil--enough to coat the pan.  The actual recipe calls for butter, but I am trying to save calories where I can here.  Add the thinly sliced onions. 

6.  Lower the heat, and cook the onions until they are golden brown, stirring frequently.  Mr. English's recipe states that this will take about 10-12 minutes.  He lies.  This part has never taken me less than 40 minutes.  The goal here is to carmelize the onions.  You want to bring out their natural sugars and if the heat is too high you will simply char them.  Better to slow it down and get it right.  When the onions are done they taste like candy.  Really.

7. Remove the dough from the refrigerator.  Lightly dust a work surface and roll the dough out to fit half of a baking sheet.  Or--just lightly dust your hands and press the dough out with the heel of your hands.  The dough has so much butter that as soon as it gets the slightest bit warm, the dough just sticks to the rolling pin.

8. Spread one 4.5 oz. jar of prepared kalamata olive paste onto the dough.  It's sort of like spreading sauce on a pizza, except that the olive paste is a bit thicker. 

9.  Add an even layer of the now cooked and cooled onions.  Sprinkle with 1 cup chopped black and green olives, 8 oz. of crumbled goat cheese, and 2 Tbs chopped fresh rosemary.

10.  Bake for 20-25 minutes in an oven preheated to 450 degrees until the dough is golden brown.  Serve either warm or at room temperature.

One parting thought:  I have, on occasion, made a facsimile of this dish by spreading the carmelized onions into a small serving dish, and then topping with the olive paste, chopped olives, goat cheese, and rosemary, and serving it as a dip with crackers, i.e. no tart.   Ultimately, I decided that 10 crackers basically equals a 4-inch square of the tart, so I bagged it, because the tart is so much more elegant.  If, however, the butter content of the dough truly offends you, crackers is an option.

White Balsamic Fruit Salad

Perhaps I am a freak of nature, but I love to go grocery shopping.   Of course, I get to shop in a grocery store like no other, a place called Wegman's.  Calling Wegman's a grocery store is like calling Mt. Rushmore a sculpture in South Dakota.  Wegman's is a shrine to food--a veritable Disney World for grown-ups who like to cook.  The first time I walked in I just stood there and took in the place--not knowing whether I should cry or giggle.   The produce section features about 10 different kinds of apples, an entire wall devoted to mushrooms, and pretty much everything comes organic, mass produced, or locally grown.   There's an entire section of the store that sells nothing but cheese, and another that just sells tea.   I felt like a lost alien that finally got back home to the Mother Ship.

I'm not so stupid to realize that Wegman's is clearly the result of years of marketing studies and focus groups.  The mad demographers at their corporate headquarters have clued in completely to what the average middle-aged suburban mom wants from her "shopping experience."  They pipe in the lost artists of the 90's like Basia and the Cranberries.  You find yourself meandering through the aisles listening to the tunes of your youth oblivious to the fact that your funky ergodynamic shopping cart is being filled with items you had no intention of buying.  What's up with that?
 
It's also no accident that this month's Vanity Fair, the cover of which is a shirtless Rob Lowe, is oh-so-strategically placed throughout the store, so that when his bedroom eyes stop you dead in your tracks you'll be right next to the display of expensive prepared sauces and dressings.  It's kind of frightening and Orwellian, but it works.  These guys are good.  So.  Thanks to my friends at Wegman's and Rob Lowe's biceps (or is it his pecs?), I now have on hand a bottle of a white balsamic vinegrette.  I wasn't exactly sure what to do with it, but because Wegman's knows what I'm thinking before I do, they've come up with the following:

White Balsamic Fruit Salad

1.  Peel and cut into bite-sized chunks one honey dew melon.

2.  Toss in a couple of handfuls of blueberries, 1/2 cup fresh cut mint leaves, and 1 cup crumbled feta.

3.  Generously dress with Wegman's white balsamic vinegrette, which as best as I can approximate if you are among the unfortunate masses without ready access to Wegman's:  1 part white balsamic vinegar, 2 parts canola oil, 1 clove minced garlic, 1 tsp dried parsley, salt and pepper to taste.

Not as tasty as Rob Lowe, but better for your marriage

4.   Serve yourself a bowl.  It's simultaneously sweet and savory, and you might even be able to pass it off as dessert.  Then hunker down with fantasies of Rob Lowe or at least the May 2011 issue of Vanity Fair.

Gwyneth Paltrow's Slow Cooked Chicken

Gwenyth Paltrow has written a cook book.  Damn her.  It isn't enough that she's an academy-award winning actress who can sing and is married to a hot rock star; she also apparently knows her way around a kitchen too.  So much so that she's published a cook book.  On the cover jacket, she is standing all perfect and gorgeous in a kitchen that is all perfect and gorgeous, and the photo doesn't bear even the slightest suggestion of being air-brushed. She is living my fantasy life and getting to do it in a tall slender blond body.  Life is so unfair.

Fortunately, I had the good sense not to draw little Hitler-esque mustaches on her face.  Instead, I picked up a copy and started flipping through it.  Turns out that aside from her almost religious-like belief in all things organic, and an aversion to red meat, we share much of the same philosophy about food and cooking.  She believes that what you eat is as much about the food as it is about your stories.  Of course, she being a Hollywood actress born to Hollywood actors, her stories are a lot more glamorous than mine.  She can offer "Playwright's Patty Melt," which is a cheese covered sandwich served to her mother by some renowned playwright while her mother was, you know, acting on Broadway, and getting a Tony.  In my family, we have "U.S. Army Creamed Beef on Toast" that was served to my father while he sat in a foxhole in Korea getting a Purple Heart.  But you get the picture.  Like me, she believes that her stove is the "epicenter" of her home and that most good food is very simple to make.  Gwyneth believes that you should stir a pot with one hand so that you can hold a glass of wine in the other.  In short, she believes that cooking should be fun.  She's my kind of gal--even if part of me still wants to scratch her eyes out for being so nauseatingly perfect.

And because she is perfect, this simple slow cooked chicken was amazing:

Nine and a Half Hour Chicken
By Gwenyth Paltrow

1.  Take one organic chicken, place it in a roasting pan to which you have added:  one lemon, halved; a few sprigs of thyme; a couple cloves of whole peeled garlic; salt and pepper.

2.  Cover with foil and roast it in a 200 degree oven for 9 1/2 hours.

3.  Serve it to your beautiful rock star husband and adorable children.

Candidly, I didn't have 9 1/2 hours; I'm not that organized.  Perhaps if I had a nanny, a housekeeper, a gardener, and a stylist, I might be able to get my act together--but there I go getting all snarky about Gwenyth again.  Here's a short-cut for us moms on the run:  do the exact same thing as Gwenyth, but skip the organic chicken and use a factory-farmed, but decidedly cheaper roaster, and  instead of putting the chicken in the oven, put it in your crock pot at the low setting for about 5 hours.  Try not to look too jealously pained when your husband asks you where you got the recipe because this is the best damn chicken he's had in years.