A different kind of cheesecake

It's no secret that I'm a cheese gal--even for dessert.  Although a deep rich dark chocolate anything is up there, in the end, I'll choose a triple cream brie every time.  There's something sexy about licking it off my finger--even as I engage in total disbelief and pretend that it won't end up on my thighs.  So recently when I offered to bring something to a fundraising champagne and dessert gala, I immediately opted for a brie cake.   You've seen it before.  It's behind the glass case in the cheese shop at Wegman's or Whole Foods.  It's outrageously expensive--more outrageous when you realize how utterly easy and cheap it is to make yourself.  Indeed, the fact that these grocers persist in such abject thievery wholly exonerates that I've copied it whole cloth and am posting the results here.

Brie "Cake"

1.  Go buy a small wheel of a good rich and creamy brie.

2.  In a small bowl mix together the following:  1/2 cup apricot preserves, 2 Tbsp. golden raisins, 2 Tbsp. dark raisins, 2 Tbsp. craisins, 2 Tbsp. chopped dried apricots, and 2 Tbsp. of chopped walnuts or pecans.  You will have a gloopy concoction.  If it's too gloopy, add more dried fruits and/or nuts.  If it's too dry, add more preserves.  You can be creative with this step.  I have substituted caramel sauce, maple syrup and  raspberry preserves for the apricot preserves, but in the end, I think that the apricot preserves are best.  Your choice.  It's a free country.

3.  Slice the rind off the top of the brie.

4.  Slice the brie wheel in half, horizontally, to obtain two layers of your "cake".

5.  Spread about half the mixture on top of one of the layers, and top it off with the other layer.

6.  Pile the remaining mixture on the top layer.  The mixture should be thick enough that you can pile it into an attractive rounded pyramid.

7.  Garnish with walnut or pecan halves or dried apricot halves.  Serve it with crackers, french bread, or my favorite:  just slice it into wedges and serve it like the cheesecake that it is.

P.S.  The beauty of this dish is that any leftovers can be cut up, rolled up into raw puff pastry and baked for another entirely different and decadent dessert or appetizer.  

The Great American Melting Pot

My children spent their formative years in the home of a lovely Afghani woman.   No, scratch that--she's an American.   They grew up on rice laced with carrots and raisins, and she could stew an eggplant until it tasted like candy.  If I could only repeat that feat, my children might actually eat vegetables.  But besides feeding my children, she did the only thing that really mattered to me as a working mother:  she loved my children.

My hairdresser, who depending on the day, I might actually love more than my children, is Iranian- or was, I should say.  He's an American now too.  He is living in suburbia with his wife and two kids, and he's an absolute artist when it comes to hair color.  No one knows when my roots show because he has managed to match his dyes to my natural hair color.  At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, if there was a Nobel prize for hair color (and why isn't there?) this man would be standing on the Stockholm stage every year.

Queso-blanco; diced small

Another "new" American is a friend of mine, who like my grandfather, came to this country when he was 17 and taught himself English.  Unlike my grandfather,  this guy makes a mean macaroni and cheese.   It  uses-of all things-queso blanco, a cheese from Latin American that I didn't even know existed until he told me about it.  It must be good because they sell it at Costco in a two pack.   It's a subtle and mild cheese, and for those who grew up on the macho of cheddar for their mac-n-cheese, you may find it too mild.   Nonetheless, this version of mac-n-cheese is remarkably simple--you take this Mexican cheese, cut in up into small pieces, melt it over pasta with a little milk and butter, salt and pepper, add some parsley,  and voila!.  It's the perfect metaphor for what should be our immigration policy:  something simple that let's good people come to this country to share their best gifts and talents.

Macaroni-n-Queso-blanco

1.   Cook one pound of your favorite macaroni, al dente.


2.  Add 1 cup finely dice queso-blanco and heat over low heat, with a tablespoon of butter until the cheese begins to melt.  Stir constantly.  A word of warning here, queso-blanco doesn't melt into a nice creamy roux; even with the coaxing of some butter, it's a cheese that stubbornly keeps its shape.  By the end a lot of the cheese had glommed onto my stirring spoon, and I had to keep scraping it off.  Eventually, I managed to get the cheese fairly evenly distributed, but if look elsewhere if you want an alfredo-like sauce.

3.  Add fresh chopped parsley--about 1/3 of a cup, a generous dose of pepper, and salt.

The Final Product

4.  Voila: a macaroni-n-cheese that doubles as pasta salad.

Bee in my bonnet about buns in the oven

Let's face it. All of the baking in the world is done by women.  It's not our fault; sometimes biology is destiny.  Now men have an integral role in getting the bun in the oven, but while it's baking, they're pretty much AWOL--doing things that men do, like trying to win the Republican nomination for president.  Now don't get me wrong, I have an imminent respect for the miracle of baking.  It's a beautiful thing--a mystery really, how the union of flour and yeast can culminate in a perfectly brown bun.  And I fully respect that for some people this union of flour and yeast is a sacred thing.  Having done my fair share of baking, I actually count myself among them.

There are times, however, when things go wrong in the kitchen. The recipe was wrong or the dough didn't rise. Sometimes it's not the right time for baking.  Sometimes the oven is broken and it's too dangerous to wait for the buns to be finished before you fix it.  Sometimes there are enough buns in the pantry already.  Who knows?  Just don't forget whose oven it is and who is doing the baking.  The baker is the best person to figure out what to do.  Scratch that.  She's the only person who can figure out what to do because its her buns and its her oven.  So to the politicians and clergymen and whoever else is trying to control, regulate or otherwise take the baking away from the baker, your ideas and your laws are half-baked.  Please.  Do us all a favor and stay out of the kitchen.    

Happy Anniversary

The one year anniversary of my blog was this month.  It sort of got away from me, and I find myself surprised that's it's been a whole year.  Just like each of my kids' birthdays, my wedding anniversary, and well--ok, my age, I find myself perplexed by the passage of time.  Really--how in the hell does it happen?

But it's been fun, and when I started, I questioned whether I'd be able to keep it going.  I worried whether I could find enough material to scratch out an essay every week about life through the lens of food, or perhaps it's food through the lens of life?  Whatever.  I'm still here.  Along the way I've reconnected with old friends and made some new ones--much how I've reconnected with old recipes and tried some that I never would have otherwise.  A year ago when I googled "minivan cook", I came up with stories of minivan murders in Cook County and how to cook crystal meth in a minivan.  Now the same search pulls up this blog.  Say what you will, but I'll take that as an accomplishment.  Many thanks to those of you who follow me, encourage me, or feed me ideas.  We're a small little cadre, but look at this way, we're keeping crystal meth off the internet.   Happy Anniversary, Minivan Cook!

Anniversary Cake

Yeah right.  If you've been following this blog, you know that I don't bake.
Best I'll do is open a box of mix and add water, eggs, and oil.  Better yet--maybe I'll go buy one.  They're big and cheap at Costco.

Garlic: Stat

So if you read last week's post, there's no surprise about this week's: chicken thighs in garlic and lemon.  To the extent that not having garlic in the house was a crisis, obtaining some became an emergency.  A house without garlic is simply not a home--or at least any kind of home I'd want to live in.   It's like culinary feng shui--without garlic, there is an emptiness in the kitchen that generates negative energy.  Suffice it to say we were without garlic for less than two hours--long enough so that I could not make the recipe that I wanted to, but short enough that our house was still invulnerable to  neighborhood vampires. Now that the garlic stores have been replenished, equilibrium has been restored, evil spirits are at bay, and all is right in my world.

Garlic Chicken  

1.  8-12 chicken thighs on bone or 6 leg quarters cut up, skinned.  You are going for the dark meat here.  Set aside.


2.  3-4 potatoes peeled and sliced into 1/4" thick pieces.  Layer a large Pyrex roasting pan with the potatoes.

3.  Crush a whole bulb of garlic in a large bowl.  Put a note on the kitchen bulletin board to buy more garlic, because it really is a problem when you run out.  

4.  Add about 1/4 cup olive oil to the garlic and the juice of two lemons.  Add salt and pepper.  Mix well.

5.  Add the chicken thighs and coat them well with the garlic mixture.  Place over the potatoes.

6.  Bake on 350 degrees for about one and a half hours.  Check to make sure the internal temperature of the chicken registers at about 180 degrees.  Remove the chicken from the pan.  Stir the potatoes with the pan juices, and broil for about 3-5 minutes to get the potatoes a little crispy and brown. 

Before

After

7.  Take the garlic pact:  if you eat this dish, anyone you intend to kiss has to have eaten it too. 

My Garlic Shame

I recently asked a fellow foodie for ideas on how to spruce up chicken thighs.  I typically just smother them with barbecue sauce and throw them on the grill.  But when it's dark, raining, and 40 degrees outside, there's no way I'm firing up the old Smokey Joe.  I also don't want to wait until Spring to cook the Costco-sized package of thighs that is lurking in my freezer.  Chicken thighs, however, just stump me.  I never know how to make them, which begs the question of why I buy them, but this is a cooking blog not psychoanalysis.  In any event, this guy shoots me about 3 recipes in 30 seconds flat like he's a contestant on Iron Chef or something.   Lightly breaded with rosemary and garlic, sauteed with mushrooms, garlic, and tomatoes, and the one that really got my attention:  lemon juice, garlic, and  olive oil.  And then the words that made my mouth water:  make sure you use lots of garlic.  That was it.  Nothing but lemon juice, olive oil, and lots of garlic; lots and lots of garlic.  Perfect and frightfully simple for a working mom desperate to save some chicken thighs from freezer burn, and with all that garlic, destined to pack a flavor punch.

Except for one thing.  I didn't have any garlic.  For God's sake, I'm ITALIAN.  I NEVER run out of garlic.  My people weren't known as "garlic eaters" for nothing.  How was this possible?  I have 8 different kinds of pasta in my pantry, olives, anchovies, capers, and cans of tomatoes that would rival a food pantry for the homeless, but no garlic.  I felt my poor dead Italian grandmother spin in her grave.  This was bad.  No garlic in the house, except (shudder) for some garlic powder.  I felt like a fallen foodie.   I wound up making the thighs with bread crumbs, Parmesan, and rosemary.  They were actually really good, and I'm sharing the recipe here, but I'm haunted by chicken thighs with lemon juice and garlic.  As soon as I get some garlic, I'll let you know how they turn out.

Parmesan Breaded Chicken Thighs

1.   Remove the skin from 8 chicken thighs.  Chicken thighs are fatty enough.  Dredge in thigh in a little olive oil and set aside.

2.   Finely chop about 4 pieces of old bread in a food processor.  OK, you got me--pull out the store bought canister of prepared bread crumbs.  They work just as well.

3.  Add 1/2 cup of grated Parmesan cheese--the stuff in the green jar is  fine.   Save the good stuff for salads, risotto, or pasta.

4.  Add 2 Tbsp dried parsley.  Mix the dried ingredients together thoroughly.

5.  Coat each thigh with the bread crumb mixture and put in a roasting pan.   Bake for 1 hours at 350 degrees.

Brussels X Sprouts

I hate to exercise.  As far as I'm concerned it's two 4-letter words joined at the hip:   EXER*CISE;  F*** THIS. Same thing.

So you'll probably be surprised to discover that I joined a new gym this weekend: X SPORTS.  It has  free weights, stair climbers, tread mills, ellipticals, circuit training, spin classes, zumba, body sculpting, 3 lap lanes, and a juice bar.  It's open 24/7, 365 days a year.  It's close to home, and it's relatively cheap.  I can get a massage, a pedicure, and exercise outfits right on site.  In short, they've taken away just about every excuse I can come up with not to exercise.  And there's probably less than 50% chance that I'll last a month.  I'm amazed at those people who thrive on exercise.  They bop around "feeling the burn."  They like to sweat.  They seek their endorphin rush like I seek a cosmo at Happy Hour.  I don't get it.  

 I've always thought of exercise as a really nice idea.  I suppose that's the problem.  I love thinking about being active.  In the last four years, I've thought about, and actually tried: ice skating, running, tennis, kayaking, bikram yoga,  PX90 (think Jack Lalane with a serious ADHD issue) and rock climbing.  (Rock climbing was inspired by a woman rock-climber I once met with arms to rival Michelle Obama's. I lasted about as long as it took me to get up 15 feet on a rock-climbing wall, at which point I panicked from the height--not proud here--and had to get back to tierra firma via the rappel of shame while 50 teen-aged Girl Scouts snickered and laughed.)  Did I mention that I'm not a jock?  Truth told, I'm a complete abject woosie.

But in 6 short months I'm headed to a sunny Caribbean resort on an equally sunny Caribbean island.  I may be middle-aged and have 3 kids, but I'm damn well wearing a bikini.  It's important to have goals, you know.  Given my lack of athletic prowess, there's really only one way to make this happen, and it isn't in a gym.  You don't lose weight at the gym.  You lose weight at the grocery store, the restaurant, and in the kitchen.  It's what you put in your mouth, stupid.  And if I'm going to get into that bikini, what goes in my mouth better well be a whole helluva a lot of vegetables. I'll start with Brussels sprouts. This is hard core.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts (serves 4)


1.  Buy about 16 Brussels sprouts.   That's the hardest step.

2.  Cut them in half.

3.  Place them in a roasting pan and generously season them with salt, and olive oil.  Don't be stingy on the olive oil.  For God's sake, you're preparing BRUSSELS SPROUTS.  Make sure they taste good.  Put on some more olive oil.

4.   Roast at 375 degrees for about 30 minutes.  They should be all nice and toasty brown--naturally caramelized, but to just make sure that they taste appropriately sweet, toss them with about 1 Tbs of sugar and 1 Tbs of maple syrup right before you pull them out of the oven.

5.  Unfortunately, these actually turn out so well that when you pair them with roasted potatoes, tarragon carrots, roasted pork tenderloin, and a lovely pinot noir, well, you need to get yourself to a gym.  Damn.