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Merry Christmas Eve 2008!

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berry the akita in front of a christmas tree in 2008

The most wonderful day of the year, Christmas Eve, and the weather outside was rainy, which is the best you can do in these parts.  Matthew, Mutti and I went to Nation’s to have a quick bite before going off to buy bread at Acme.  Acme was not an option, however, given the line of 50 people and rain nipping down smartly by that point.  We decided to buy slightly lame bread at Safeway, but even that was a drag given the traffic and lack of visibility.  Well, good sourdough bread is not something one can buy in advance, so what can you do but brave the obstacles?  Matt and Mutti came out of Safeway with an armful of Semifreddi’s baguettes, thank goodness, though we were hemmed into our parking spot for a good 15 minutes after being buckled in.  Once back home, we nested and tuned in to the yule log while waiting for Steven to come home from work so we could all watch Scrooge, the 1951 version of A Christmas Carol, starring Alastair Sim, the finest movie version of the book, as far as I’m concerned, with most of the dialogue having been exported to the screenplay verbatim. 

Delice de Borgogne

Delice de Bourgogne

After the movie it was time to tuck into all the German goodies from Karl Ehmer and the various cheeses, like Delice de Bourgogne and Cambozola.  Finally – presents!  Steve scored The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion, by Martin Grams Jr. & Patrik Wikstrom, which really got a rise out of him.  He also got The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic, also by Grams (he obviously needs to get a life – like the rest of us obsessed with these shows).  Matt was happy with The Celluloid Closet DVD and the other gay-themed items he received.  My take included two books by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich, the Istrian who started out working in Christopher Walken’s parents’ bakery in Astoria, Queens, before founding her cooking empire, and a mini-box set of Stax recordings.  Berry had a good night until I dressed him up as the Christmas dog.  For some reason this really pissed him off this year and he was so nasty I was forced to take off his bells.  I like the demonic look in his eyes in the photo above, so I didn’t do any correction.

Cuisinart Griddler at Costco

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Cuisinart Griddler in the act of making grilled cheese

The best $89 + tax I ever spent at Costco was for a Cuisinart Griddler last month.  I have been waiting for Costco to get this guy in for a few years now, holding off buying it on sale at Macy’s.  I always knew this would not be like some of the other gadgets we had to have, like that Buttoneer or Kitchen Magician, which were used once and then tossed in the back of some cabinet.  For grilled cheese alone the Griddler is worth the price of admission.  I have to admit that the controls are cheap and feel spongy, and I wondered if this was true only of the Costco version, but I saw the same problem on Griddlers elsewhere.  Since I will use this exclusively for panini, I will be turning only one knob on a regular basis, so I figure this should be OK.  This thing easy to use, and the grill and griddle plates snap on and off in a flash, and are dishwasher-safe.  The only problem I have is that all my counter space is below cabinets, and you need quite a bit of head room to open and close a Griddler, and to adjust the jaws to the thickness of your food while in mid-grill.  This is a small price to pay, however, for the excellent grilled sammies you can make.  This has been a huge help in turning bad bread into something edible.  My mother, being a senior, manages to bring home all kinds of bread and rolls that are donated by local bakeries to the senior centers she goes to.  Needless to say, these are items that were not purchased, so they’re usually odd, day-old or both.  The rolls that entered the house yesterday were some sort of round honey-wheat belly bombs with terrible texture, being that they had been suffocated by a plastic bag.  I split them, loaded them up with some Safeway-brand aged sharp New York cheddar, rubbed a little oil on the grill plates, and let ’em rip until they were oozing.  So good!  I mention the cheese here because I never saw this at Safeway before.  It was on sale, looked like a black-wax knock-off, so I gave it a go.  Very good!

Little honey wheat grilled cheese sammies

Food from QVC and HSN

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Mrs. Prindable's candy apples

Mrs. Prindable's candy apples

Like other cooking-obsessed people, I’m easily lured by certain kinds of marketing.  When I’m home by myself and have a bite of lunch I sometimes sit in the living room and watch a little TV.  If the shopping channels happen to be hawking food-related stuff I’ll tune in.  Over the past couple of years I have been tempted to order a few things that looked good to me, namely David’s crumb cakes, Kim & Scott’s pretzels and Mrs. Prindable’s apples.  The crumb cakes have to do with my love of New York-style crumb cake, with its 3 to 1 topping-to-cake ratio, and my 1980’s obsession with David’s ice cream, which Steven and I would have at the David’s shop on Broadway near Astor Place.  The early to mid-80’s were the glory days of high-end retail cookies as well as my relationship with Steven.  He lived in the East Village and I in Astoria, and we spent our evenings after dinner walking around lower Manhattan, often stopping for a snack we could carry with us.  I don’t know why the stuffed pretzels appealed to me – maybe it’s another New York City thing.  Mrs. Prindable’s apples, however, always inspired lust in my heart when they were sliced by the host.  I told myself I would order some of them for the hell of it one day.  Fully aware that many things on TV look better than they are, that I would have to order in volume, and that the shipping and handling costs would be an outrage, I took the plunge.  First off, I purchased a 3 pound David’s crumb cake assortment from HSN for just under $30, including shipping, which included three squares each of regular, apple and triple chocolate in a festive box with tissue paper.  The shipment was prompt and everything arrived in one piece.  To make a long story short, the regular version was by far the best, the apple and chocolate being too sweet for me.  That’s not to say they were not also good, but it’s been three weeks now and we still have a couple cuts of apple and chocolate hanging around.  Next, I visited the QVC site and placed an order for 16 individual-size Mrs. Prindable’s “candy bar assortment” apples for $47, inclusive of shipping.  Granny Smith apples are dipped in an excellent soft caramel and then rolled in candy bar material.  They come individually wrapped and are shipped in a big box lined with foam.  All apples arrived in pristine condition, and I received 4 each of candy-coated milk chocolate (think M&Ms), dark chocolate coconut, white chocolate peanut butter cup and milk chocolate crunch (think Nestlé’s Crunch).  Unfortunately, all but the dark chocolate coconut are barely edible unless you are a 5 year-old, in my opinion, the candy coatings being sickeningly sweet.  Too bad, because the apples are great — nice and tart — and the soft caramel is good.  Maybe the knock-off candy bar coating is made from poor quality chocolate, who knows, but whatever it is, you have been warned.  The dark chocolate coconut is very good, though, and does not suffer from the above-mentioned issues.  Next time I may order the nut variety.  I mean, what can you do to a plain nut?  Also from QVC came a 16-piece set of mozzarella-stuffed pretzels from Kim & Scott’s for $47 , including shipping.  Oh, man, these are good.  You are dealing with a high-quality hand-rolled pretzel with nothing but good, solid, ingredients involved.  Then they add stuffing, which, in this case, is like a cross between mozzarella and cream cheese.  This would be my only gripe – that the mozzarella is processed.  However, this is minor, as these pretzels are fab.  They are packed individually in an attractive wrapper that shows the product to full potential.  The other bonus here is that they are heated directly in the wrapper, which makes them super-convenient.  Take my advice and avoid the microwave, though, for the best result.  These were so popular at my house that I was not able to find one in the freezer to photograph for the website a week after they came in.

A piece of David's apple coffee cake

A piece of David's apple coffee cake

Fromager des Clarines

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a hunk of fromage des clarines

Wedges of Fromage des Clarines

We all took it easy today, laying around in one form or another.  Matthew went into San Francisco for his Dignity service and we ate leftover pulled pork on rolls with roasted red pepper strips and sweet pickles for dinner. 

This might be a good time to report on a new, quite decent cheese that Costco is now carrying:  Fromager des Clarines.  Like brie on mild steroids – and a steal at about $15 for 10 ounces – this is a soft cow’s milk cheese from the French region of Franche-Comté.  It’s made by Jean Perrin of Vacherin Mont D’or fame, the raw milk taste explosion that is illegal here because of the dumb-asses who make these kinds of decision.  Think about it.  There is so much absolute crap sold in the US that passes for food — products that are science experiments, like Cool Whip, and cake frostings with no butter, for example — yet they are worried about raw milk cheeses from European companies whose practices most US outfits can only dream of.  Give me a break.  Anyway, Fromager des Clarines, which is milder than Vacherin Mont D’or, needs to be eaten very ripe, with the center like custard. 

I saw a whole array of ripeness represented in the Costco stock, from white and firm to yellow and collapsed – with and without mold on the rind, I might add.  I chose one that was off-white but starting to sink down; normally I get one that’s more far-gone, but I was dealing with guests who might not appreciate it that way.  You should choose one that is more questionable looking – more yellow and concave – and smells strong.  Don’t be afraid to open up 20 wooden boxes to get the perfect specimen!  Eat at room temperature.  Let me say this again:  Eat at room temperature.  If you serve this cold you might as well go buy cheap brie.  When warm and ripe, the texture is very smooth and creamy, and the buttery flavor a little acidic with musty tones and other funkiness that is the hallmark of a good cheese.  While the impact of this cheese on the palate is more limited than real Vacherin Mont D’or (meaning the original made with raw milk and not the versions produced for the American market, which are made with pasteurized milk), it is full-flavored with a great mouthfeel.  Serve with crusty bread – and spoons, if really ripe.  I kid you not.  You can even heat this in the oven; just follow the instructions on the box.

A box of fromage des clarines french cheese

Halloween 2008

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ross, anthony and chris in elaborate halloween costumes

It’s me birthday today.  Oh, yes, it’s also Halloween.  We had a little evening party planned, for which I procured a bunch of snacks from Trader Joe’s and decorated the house with candles, flameless and otherwise.  Things went south at about 4:00 p.m., when I heard from Paul.  His condo had flooded courtesy of some faulty plumbing in the vicinity of the kitchen sink, which sent Matthew and our wet vac with Paul to Antioch for a night of cleaning with Paul’s partner and fiancé, Gino.  Paul and Gino are scheduled to be married tomorrow, you see, which made this particular day a really, really bad one for a flood.  This also meant that guests associated with Matthew would not be coming this evening, so we were left with only the three of us and a lot of ripe Cambozola (rich hybrid, more or less, of Camembert and Gorgonzola) and Blue Castello (triple cream blue).  As luck would have it, three of Matt’s friends, Anthony, Chris and Ross — dressed to the teeth for the holiday — came by and saved us from complete lameness.  Matthew rolled in all wet after midnight and slunk upstairs to bed.