See where I am now

My new blog is up, tottering on its feeble little legs, at http://laurendmckinney.com/blog/. I am still going to write here, about food. Can't bear to give up Dream Kitchen. So don't go away, Foodbuzz!! Visit me, will you?

Night at the Improv: Vegetarian Chili

I could have called this post "Night at the Improv: Chili," because almost all our meals are vegetarian any more, but I love the sanctimonious ring of "Vegetarian." However, the word "flexitarian," like the word "webinar," does not attract me. Even though "flexitarian" describes me, I eschew it.

Here is what you do. In the morning at breakfast, think, "Tonight will be a good chili night!" Retrieve about a pound of dried beans, red or black would be best, from your cupboard. Possibly they are in a bag slumped behind the oatmeal container. Soak them all day in a whole bunch of water; it should cover the beans at all times and the beans will swell.

About an hour and a half before dinner, drain the beans and cover them again with water, and cook them until they seem done. This will be at least 40 minutes. Meanwhile, heat up your cast-iron Dutch oven. You don't have one? Ask for one for Christmas. I use mine three times a week, at least. In the mean time, a big pot will do just fine. Put a little olive oil in. Dice an onion and add it to the hot oil. Celery or carrot is nice if you have it. If only I had had one fresh jalapeno (take out the seeds if you're going for moderate heat) and a fresh green pepper last time I made it, alas. Add a couple tablespoons chili powder, a teaspoon of cumin if you like that. I do. Coriander? Another possibility. A little cocoa powder adds depth, and a blob of jarred mole will add depth as well as a more complex heat. That would probably already have a touch of chocolate. And if you don't demand depth or complexity from your chili, I can only say--how sad for you. Saute the vegetables and spices until soft, 5-7 minutes.

Drain the beans when they're done and add them along with a can or two of diced tomatoes, tomato paste if you love that tomato flavor, which my husband doesn't, and some corn, perhaps, especially if you're cooking black beans. Corn is controversial in my family. A chipotle in adobo sauce would be daring, wouldn't it? Now might be a good chance to get rid of one of those cans of dull beer that lurk unwanted in your fridge, something like that Shiner Bock from your friends who developed a taste for it at Rice University (Hi, Bob and Nikkola!). So just open the can and pour some in. Let the chili simmer gently for 30 minutes or more. Cornbread and a salad top off this simple meal. It is frighteningly easy to make cornbread, please don't even tell me that you buy it.

Chili is even better the next day and just marvelous for the rest of the week.

Birthing a New Blog?

Hello dear readers,

I'm considering archiving this blog and starting a new one that is more geared toward my life as a writer and reader. That includes food writing,but I'd like also to review books, blogs, and films, especially documentaries. There will be less material about my sons. They're getting old enough to read every word over my shoulder, and take revenge by writing about ME on THEIR blog (which is private!). My blogroll will be quite different, not just a random collection of bloggers I know, but other writers and readers I have met through my MFA program at Goucher and my internship at First Person Arts, and other places.

I'm writing a book whose working title is The Last Curtsy: Memoir of an Uncommon Girlhood, and I'll also be writing about that process and showing you some of my grandmother's photography, which she developed herself, using her kitchen as a darkroom. I'll let you in on what the project is about. I bought a domain name and am thinking of using Wordpress. I am hoping to keep the Foodbuzz sponsorship, by the way.

What do you think?

Third Grade International Food Meltdown

Help me. Please.

On Oct. 25 the third grade will have an International Lunch. That's all very well and good. But then they put us hapless parents into culinary straitjackets that we just cannot wiggle out of. Here are the restrictions primly listed on the memo, in which the lunch sounds less and less fun the farther down the list you get.

Our contribution must be . . . Asian. You know, like the wontons my Irish ancestors always fried up in a pot with the kelp, or hmmm, how about that pretty mean Pad Thai that John's Swiss German Mennonites made . . . a little melted Emmenthaler on the top. Yum.)

No refrigeration is available. Forget the vegetarian sushi from Trader Joe's.

No oven or microwave is available. Forget any main dish that isn't sushi.

Bring enough for two to four children. OK, nothing large, not a big problem.

Nothing can be packed up and brought home with the children. Nothing large. Again.

We're supposed to list the ingredients. That may not be possible if I get it from Shere-e-Punjab.

Nothing can be cooked or prepared with peanuts. Fair enough. We're pretty used to that one. But I don't want to inspect Shere-e-Punjab's kitchen.

At least we get to pick which course. Hmmm. Asian desserts don't do a lot for me. So not that. Jack likes gulab jamun, there's a thought. But that sticky syrup might spill . . . I think I'm going to pick up four samosas at Shere-e-Punjab. Usually I like to cook something for special meals like this, but all these stipulations have whittled down the universe of delectable dishes down to almost nothing but fortune cookies. And no one makes those.

Any suggestions?

A Visit to Brasserie Perrier, Special Bourgeois Version

This is what passes for a restaurant review on my blog, my first ever, really.

Last Friday, John, otherwise known as the resident husband in the Dream Kitchen, met me at the 17th and JFK entrance to Suburban Station. We walked on over to Brasserie Perrier, where we had reservations. It was Restaurant Week, which meant that many Phila. restaurants offered economical fixed-price meals. Regional rail was free after 6:30, too. We decided to go to Brasserie Perrier because we can't afford its pricy sibling restaurant, Le Bec Fin, and wanted to go French. Plus I love the word "brasserie," which I imagine describes a small restaurant, a little noisier than one would like, intimate and friendly. Low warm lighting with a lot of brass. I don't know, it's just a cool word, and the word "brass" is already in it.

So we go in, and it's hopping by the bar area and beyond to the small tables in just the atmosphere described above, pretty much. We had early reservations, for six o'clock, just because we are creatures of habit from Stepford, and we always eat then. But the place is, as I said, really hopping. The hostess suddenly whisks us--where?--upstairs. Hmm. To a banquet room. A banquet room! What kind of brasserie is that? It had no windows and wall to wall carpet and bizarrely high ceilings and the kind of chairs you sit on at conventions. My heart sank. Perhaps we had been relegated to sit with all the other second-class Restaurant Week people, the chubby tourists and oldsters. Ew, I said "oldsters." I was feeling that what we were going to get was going to be a not very convincing simulacrum of a "normal" BP meal, away from the thin well-dressed, sparkling crowd below. Oh, and the dull department-store wattage lighting didn't make anyone look any more glamorous than we actually were.

All right, well, let's soldier on, we thought. I ordered a Caesar salad, a dish appropriately boring to the atmosphere, but in my defense, I wanted to get a vegetable appetizer if I was going to have fish for the main dish, and they didn't have any vegetarian entrees, how overly French of them. They don't have to be that French. But it wasn't French enough to have organ meat. Anyway, the Caesar salad. It was good, not enough anchovy flavor, just good in an ordinary way. But it did come with a delectable round crisp made of Parmesan, similar to something we had at Tinto in May. John ordered escargots because he had them once in his youth and fancies himself an escargots man. They were quite tasty in their buttery sauce.

John had scallops for his main course and I had salmon with brussel sprouts and bacon. The waiter asked me how I wanted my salmon cooked, and maybe I don't get out much, but I've never been asked that about fish. It was perfect, just barely done. Really a great dish; the brussel sprouts were "baby" and balanced out perfectly with the bacon and a littl mustard in the sauce. John's scallops were fabulous.

A word about the waiter. I found him a tad robotic. They bring out the robots for Restaurant Week? I had a question for him, "What is that lemony herb on my husband's scallops?" He said, "I don't know, but maybe it's chizzo." Now I've looked up "chizzo" and can't find it, so maybe he said something else. John suspects that the server got confused with an earlier version of the Restaurant Week menu, in which the scallops were served with "chorizo orzo." That would be a heinous error. So the hapless server goes on to say, "Or, it could just be something the chef threw in." Now this is the moment when Mr. Robot should have said, "Let me find out what it is," returning in a minute with an answer. But no. Not for the Restaurant Week people. We are left to wonder in perpetuity.

Dessert? We both got apple galette with caramel ice cream. It was a flat perfectly circular disk of pastry with razor-thin apple slices overlapping perfectly, topped with amazingly caramel-y ice cream. Real caramel has that addictive burnt taste. When I was child I used to make caramel by melting sugar in a spoon over a gas flame, and pouring it into a glass of cold water. This ice cream tasted like that. I may not be making it sound good, but it was. The galette itself was quite tasty, but you should know that I like desserts to be voluptuous, not thin disks. A galette, especially, should be free form.Leave it to the pies and tarts to be circular.

Finally, and I see that I'm sounding cranky, we were rushed along by the server, each course being brought promptly after we had finished the previous. We even had to order the dessert when we ordered everything else. We finished dessert at 6:55, which is pathetic on a Friday night. I think the moral of this is: Restaurant Week is Restaurant Week.

The Beauty of the Bean

With with all this talk of financial troubles, contaminated meat, an obesity epidemic, and the need to eat sustainably, it's time to consider the lowly bean.


It's beans and more beans here in the Dream Kitchen these days. They're cheap, very good for us, have no packaging if bought dry, and are generally liked by the whole family. I recently made Black Bean Chili with Butternut Squash and Swiss Chard. I used delicata squash and kale, and it worked very well. It was better the second day, as the spices "married" the other ingredients, as my mother used to say. Even Mr. Picky had seconds.

This weekend I'm making a double batch of Chipotle Pinto Beans from Simply in Season; we'll take it to a brunch for Swarthmore College students that my church has every month, hosted by members of the church. I'm hoping there will some left over for our family. Next on my bean agenda? I want to feed the organizers and volunteers at the Obama campaign office in Chester one of these days. Vegetarian chili sounds like a good idea for them. I can just send the crockpot along with my boarder, one of the Chester organizers. He works extremely hard but I fear he exists on a diet of pizza and Coke.

So, beans. What else? Every so often I use chickpeas to make hummus, zesty with fresh garlic and lemon juice. I will say that when I go through the trouble of soaking and boiling up a bunch of beans, I always make extra to have on hand. They're fine on a salad, or you can whip up a bean dip or make soup with them.

It's actually quite difficult to overpraise the humble bean. Have I succeeded?

Manayunk, at Last

I finally went to Manayunk.

How many years have I known about Manayunk's renaissance? Twenty years? Sad. Anyhow, John and I needed an excuse, and so we found one. We need a doorknocker. And a new mailbox. So we thought we'd check out Restoration Hardware, which happens to be located in Manayunk. Our babysitter was available on Saturday so we tooled on over.

Manayunk is fairly funky if you ignore the Pottery Barn. And the Restoration Hardware, which did have predictably acceptable door hardware. I fell in love with Artesano Iron Works, just under the big bridge on the west side of Main St. In fact, I have a terrible crush on a copper-topped table and chairs there. Their furniture is made of reclaimed lumber from Colombia. It's very heavy and square but has ornate ironwork on some of it, so some of the pieces look like treasure chests. The big old bridge, resplendent with arches, looms over the shop.

The best thing about Manayunk isn't the shops or the restaurants but the edginess of it, real edginess, not manufactured by a "loft" condo developer. The Manayunk Canal drifts dankly by, as you sip your California Dreamin' IPA at Manayunk Brewery and Restaurant. You can see people walking up on the railroad trestle high above the Schuylkill River next to the canal. A couple of kids jump into the river from that height, which surprises you.

After supper you walk along the Schuylkill River Trail, narrowly avoiding getting slammed by bicyclists. Across the canal, young men play a pickup game in a weedy city basketball court. Beyond the river, cars rush by on the Schuylkill Expressway. The sky turns pink and gray as you walk along. It's a Saturday night in late August. You walk in towards Main St. , where two tired women sit on a bench. There are more "For Rent" signs at this end of town than there should be. You see a sign for the SEPTA station and so you look for it. The tracks are elevated, and rise above the length of Cresson St., dwarfing and dominating the shops. Under the tracks you find The Cresson Inn, "Where the Real Yunkers Drink." All two of them. Edward Hopper, where are you now?

You could be "down the shore," but no, you're in Manayunk. It's hard to think of a more bittersweet place to be at summer's end.