Open Window

The Man Who Came To Dinner

In our household, Peter is known as "the man who came to dinner ... and never left". Twenty-two years ago, I invited Peter to come over for dinner and to watch the Oscars, and that was the beginning of what has been the most wonderful 22 years of my life. We have fit together like glove and hand since the very beginning, enjoying the same past times - like cooking and photography , sharing nearly boundless curiosity on subjects ranging from The Barnes Collection to gun collections, loving the thrill of travel in the U.S. and abroad, and basking in each other's companionship whether we're chatting up a storm or simply silent. We work and play well together, sharing similar values and perspectives on the world. We truly like each other ... still.

Tonight we get to celebrate once more the first of our two anniversaries. Our second anniversary celebrates our marriage, on a hot day in July, nearly five years after this fateful dinner. This evening, we'll share a favorite meal of lamb and asparagus, preceded by oysters and caviar, and our interest in movies. We'll light a fire and enjoy its warmth while we watch the awards being handed out. As I look across the room, even today, I smile - adoring the sight of this man that I love and feeling so very fortunate that I was smart enough to have invited him to dinner twenty-two years ago "today". 

 

 

Split Pea and Ham Soup

A hearty soup like split pea and ham is just what is warranted on these chilly days in January. We rarely have ham anymore, preferring chicken, fish and our beloved lamb, but you just can't make a satisfactory pea soup, in our estimation, without a meaty ham bone. So Peter and I cooked up a smoked ham for just that - the bone!

Years ago I created this recipe for Split Pea and Ham Soup which is the amalgamation of numerous recipes I read in books and magazines. We've never been disappointed and hope you'll enjoy it too.

Split Pea and Ham Soup
(6-8 servings) 

1 pound split peas, sorted and rinsed
1 bay leaf
Large ham bone (from a smoked ham)
1 cup minced onion
3 cloves crushed garlic
1 cup minced celery
1 small thinly sliced potato
2 cups sliced carrots
2 tablespoons olive oil
A little water
1/4 cup dry red wine, optional
1/4 teaspoon dry mustard, optional
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme leaves, optional
===================================

Soup

• Place peas in pot with 7-8 cups of cold water.
• Add bay leaf and ham bone. Cover and simmer for 1½ hours.
• Remove ham bone and cut off ham morsels for later use in soup.

Vegetables

• Sauté in oil, the onion, garlic, celery, potato and sliced carrots in a large skillet. Add a little water and cover to steam a little to soften vegetables.
• Add vegetables to the soup.

Put mixture in food processor to purée. Do this in small batches and return the puréed soup to a soup pot.
Add ham bits.
Add red wine, dry mustard and thyme, if doing.
Add salt and pepper to taste. 
Serve soup hot. 

 

Photo Exhibition - February 25th & 26th

Peter and I have been invited to participate in a photo exhibition this coming weekend at Ashawagh Hall. The exhibition has been curated by Laurie Barone-Schaefer and is hosted by Hampton Photo, Arts and Framing. If you recognize the name Schaefer from a previous post, you may recall that Laurie is not only an accomplished photographer unto herself, but she is also the mother of the three boys, ages ranging from 3½ to 9, who exhibited their paintings at the Thank You Art Show in January. This show however, is photography-centric and will showcase the images of over 50 local photographers. This is exciting for us all and we hope, if you are near East Hampton and/or Ashawagh Hall, that you will come to see the show:

           Saturday February 25th 5:30 p.m. - 11:00 p.m.
           Sunday February 26th 10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.

You can check out more details about music and food, etc. by going to the Hamptons Photo Arts website by clicking here. 

In January, we were all really pleased with the turn out at the Thank You Art Show but we all thought it might have been even better if the weather had not been so cold, and the roads so snowy and icy. Well the weather forecast for this weekend is balmy by comparison - no precipitation and highs in the 40s. So take a break from your chores this weekend and come see some amazing images.

 

The Dirty Old Meat Grinder

When we broke up the family home many years ago, one of the kitchen devices that I got was the cast iron Universal meat grinder. This piece of equipment always fascinated me from assembly to operation. The parts could be selected for the task at hand and each had it's place and a screw or bolt to hold it in place. As the handle turned, the meat would be fed by the threaded worm through the chamber to the cutting wheel and forced out into the bowl below by the persistence of the turning handle. It's truly a classic and in my eyes, a real work of functional art.

I mentioned recently that we were given a grinding attachment for our KitchenAid mixer for Christmas - a replacement for my classic, or so one would think, but if you know anything about me, I let go of the old with great difficulty. So when we recently set out to grind pork for homemade pork sausage, I decided the two should meet - the old and the new - the self-confident workhorse and the sleek aggrandized prima donna. Well, several hours later, the rest is history ...

If I've told you once, I've told you several times ... we are never bored. I started to photograph both devices with an eye toward the photography composition class I've been taking - wondering what I could do with the lines and light, and if I could tell a story. Peter quickly joined in and what fun we had. This slide show is the result.

You tell us, is there a story here ... one you find engaging and just a little entertaining? Does the narcissistic old meat grinder succumb to the charms of this buff, new beauty?

 

Photos & Slide Show ©2012 Claudia Ward & Peter Tooker
Music: The Euphonium from the soundtrack of "Mr. Majorium's Wonder Emporium" by Aaron Zigman & Alexandre Desplat 

 

You're probably thinking that we have way-too-much-time-on-our-hands, but trust me we don't .... we'd like to do more.

Stuffed Green Peppers

What to do with leftover ham? Stuff peppers!

For Christmas our nephew gave us a grinder attachment to our KitchenAid Mixer, which has made grinding meats of all sorts a breeze! It attaches easily, grinds beautifully (coarse or fine), and everything except the knife and grinding plates is dishwasher safe. It also comes with a specialized plastic tool that is a pusher at one end (to help coax the meat into the grinding chute) and a wrench at the other (to help unscrew the ring that holds the grinding plates in place). You've just got to appreciate the mind that created that piece of useful art! 

Grinding the cooked ham was easy; we then mixed it with some cooked rice, stuffed parboiled peppers, placed them snuggly together in a casserole, sprinkled bread crumbs on top, and drizzled beef broth over each pepper to ensure that they remain moist. Heat and serve. If you prefer you could always mix the ham and rice with some tomato sauce, and if green peppers are not to your liking, mix it up ... use sweet red peppers, the variations are endless.

Stuffed Green Peppers
(4 servings)

4 green bell peppers
2 cups of ground cooked ham
2 cups of cooked white rice
Bread crumbs
1 cup beef broth
=================================

Bell Peppers

• Core the green peppers - remove the stem by cutting a circle around it, remove the seeds and cut out the white ribs without cutting through the pepper wall
• Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, drop the peppers in and parboil just until a fork can easily pierce the pepper wall
• Drain the peppers and drop them into a large bowl of ice water to stop the cooking

Ham and Rice

• Grind ham and place in a bowl
• Cook the rice according to the package
• Add cooked rice to ham and mix well

Assembly

• Preheat oven to 325℉
• Place the green peppers in a casserole dish that will hold them snuggly
• Fill each pepper with the ham and rice mixture
• Sprinkle the top of each with bread crumbs
• Pour 1/4 cup of beef broth over each pepper
• Place the casserole in the center of the preheated oven, cook until heated through, approximately 20-25 minutes.

 What do you do with leftover ham?

 

Ham - It's What's for Dinner

This time of year, we love to cook meals "that keep on giving" - like a ham. We like the shank half because it's slightly sweeter than the butt half, has less fat and only one bone, making it easier to carve. A dear friend of mine shared her recipe for glazed ham years ago and I've been making it the same way ever since. The flavor of her glaze is what makes me come back to this recipe time after time. Brown sugar, orange juice, dry mustard, ground cloves and ginger, are spiked with a touch of cognac or brandy - tell me that doesn't sound delicious. The recipe is easy. The first and second meals are great: sliced ham served with a tablespoon or two of that wonderful glaze, accompanied by sweet potato fries and green beans, or some variation thereof. Then the leftovers are diverse and wonderful ... Stuffed Green Peppers perhaps, and/or Split Pea and Ham Soup. We don't have ham very often, but when we do we never let anything go to waste.

Carol's Glazed Ham

10 pound smoked ham (Cook's), Shank-end - (NOT an un-smoked Picnic Ham)
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 small can frozen orange juice concentrate
1/4 cup cognac/brandy
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon ground ginger
Shake of cinnamon
==================================
 

Glaze Sauce

• Combine the brown sugar, defrosted oj concentrate, cognac/brandy, mustard, ground cloves, ground ginger, and cinnamon in a medium-size bowl or a 16-ounce measuring cup.

Ham

• Place ham in a large dutch oven or stock pot, broad side down. Fill with water, covering the ham as much as possible (¾) without risking boiling over. Cover pot, canted, if possible. Boil ham about 2½ hours. If you cannot cover the pot, add water during the 2½ hours as it evaporates.
• Preheat oven to 350℉
• Place ham in roasting pan with a little water, and put in preheated oven.
• Baste ham with glaze/sauce every 15 minutes. Cook 30-60 minutes.
• Allow ham to rest, carve and serve pouring some of the extra glaze over each portion.

 

Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day, one and all.

Montauk Seagulls

Seagulls are a generally an under-appreciated bird. Growing up along the coastline of New England, seagulls were an integral part of the environment in which I lived. They floated above the beaches on warm summer days, darted past one another during the spring mating season, and dropped clams and other shellfish on the concrete parking lots to extract the food within.

Seagulls are part of the Larus family and are most closely related to terns. The word larus is reportedly derived from a Greek word meaning gluttonous bird, a reputation these fowls do nothing to dispel. Most of us know seagulls to be opportunistic scavengers, birds that will be equally satisfied eating fish and crabs as they are eating your french fries or turkey sandwich. 

Peter and I recently spent the weekend at Gurney's Inn out in Montauk. Off-season rates allowed us to get a room, with a balcony, overlooking the ocean. Facing south, the views were spectacular, as were the sunrises and sunsets. We spent most of our time either on the beach or on the balcony - always with camera in hand. The first morning we were there, Peter took part of his breakfast bagel outside to enjoy it with his coffee sitting in the sun. Well that apparently was an open invitation to all seagulls, near and far, to "come and get it". These birds that appear so docile and curious perched on a banister can become quite aggressive when free food is around. They will swoop in and take food right out of your hand and will fight off any others who might want to partake of a free picnic.  

So here are the many "faces" of the Montauk Seagulls.

   

Photos © 2012 Claudia Ward
Music: Fuga a cavallo by Ennio Morricone from the original soundtrack of
"The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" 

 Note: If you've never seen this 1966 spaghetti western starring Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, and Lee Van Cleef, and featuring this stylized music as a fourth leading character, seek it out ... it's a classic. 

Lemon Thins

I have a weakness for all things lemon, and lemon and sugar is simply an irresistible combination, so when I saw this recipe for Lemon Thins in The Gourmet Cookie Book, I knew they would be in our not-too-distant future. They are delicate, thin lemon crisps, and it's very hard to eat just one. As a gift for friends, they'll be remembered a very long time. So from the April 1976 archives of Gourmet magazine ... (drum roll please) ...

Lemon Thins
(April 1976)
Makes about 4 dozen cookies

In a bowl, beat 2 eggs with ⅔ cup sugar and ½ teaspoon of vanilla for 3 to 4 minutes, or until the mixture forms a ribbon when the beater is lifted, and add 2 teaspoons of grated lemon rind. In a bowl, beat ¾ stick (6 tablespoons) butter, softened, until it is light and fluffy and add it to the egg mixture alternatively with ⅔ cup flour. Drop the batter by teaspoons 2½ inches apart on buttered baking sheets, flatten the mounds into 2-inch rounds with a spoon dipped in water, and bake the cookies in a preheated hot oven (400℉) for 5 minutes, or until the edges are browned. Let the cookies cool on the sheets for 1 minute, transfer them with a spatula to a rack, and let them cool completely.

 

RECIPE NOTES

1. Use an electric mixer to beat the eggs with the sugar, and don't be surprised if it takes more than 4 minutes to ribbon the mixture, it usually takes 8 minutes for me.
2. Use grated lemon zest (without any of the bitter white pith). Meyer lemon zest is great too!
3. Truly use a teaspoon to drop the cookies (I use an ice teaspoon and it's perfect), they look small but remember these will be flattened, will spread a little during cooking, and are meant to be quite thin.
4. If possible use, medium-weight, light-colored cookie sheets, not nonstick. In dark metal pans the cookies may brown more and cooking time may be shorter.
5. Allow the cookies to ret when taken from the oven only 10-15 seconds before removing them to a cooling rack. They are soft then. If you wait for the perscribed 1 minute, the edges get too hard and they crumble when you remove them from the pan.
6. When baking batches of cookies, be sure the pans have cooled before you place more dough on them; a warm pan will cause the cookies to spread too much.

"The Artist"

In October I did a post on the film "The Artist" that Peter and I saw at the Hamptons Film Festival. I was enthralled by the style, the acting, the story, and the music. "The Artist" won the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at the festival which is mildly entertaining as one thinks of "narrative" as relating to the "spoken word" and yet this is a silent movie. Yes, a black and white, silent movie about a romance in the era of silent movies. That, right there, should be enough to peak your curiosity and get you out the door. 

"The Artist" was directed by French auteur Michel Hazanavicius and stars Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo. Dujardin won The Best Actor Award at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival for his role in the artist, and deservedly so in my opinion - his performance was captivating. The Oscars are coming up soon (February 26th) and this magical film has been nominated in multiple categories including: Best Supporting Actress, Best Actor, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Art Direction, Best Music, and Best Picture. In addition to those nominations, "The Artist" has won:

Golden Globes for Best Picture and Best Actor
Critics Choice Awards for Best Picture and Best Director
A Director's Guild Award for Best Picture
A Producer's Guild Award for Best Picture
A Screen Actor's Guild Award for Best Ensemble of the Year 

We implore you, go see this movie, we expect you'll find it as colorful and sonorous as we did, and we hope it resonates with you the way it has with the rest of the world.

 

Cinnamon Sugar Breakfast Puffs

Food52 is the best food website I have yet to stumble upon. It's really a food community, where people share recipes and tips, cooks can follow one another, and cooking contests result in the creation of "crowd-sourced" cookbooks. Check it out, it's wonderful. 

Recipes on Food52 are organized in the usual way, by food categories like "Appetizers, Entrees, Cookies, Soups, etc." but they also are sorted by "Top Recipes", "Community Picks", "Contest Winners", and "Genius Recipes". These Cinnamon Sugar Breakfast Puffs were the winner in the "Best Holiday Breakfast" contest. The picture was so alluring, I could practically taste the cinnamon sugar and I decided then and there that I had to make these puffs.

Well I made the puffs Sunday morning and they are pure ambrosia - the aroma of cinnamon wafting through the air was intoxicating but the flavor of these mildly spiced light little puffs covered in cinnamon sugar was sublime. Neither Peter nor I could resist having two and had to exert real self-discipline not to have even more. According to fiveandspice, the source for this recipe, these freeze well, can be defrosted overnight and then warmed up in a 200℉ oven, and that's exactly what we're going to do - with the next batch!

Cinnamon Sugar Breakfast Puffs
(Makes 12 regular muffin-size puffs)

The Breakfast Puffs
1/3 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 large egg, at room temperature
1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1 pinch ground cloves
1 pinch ground ginger
1 teaspoon orange zest
1/2 cup whole milk, at room temperature

Cinnamon-sugar Coating
6 tablespoons butter, melted
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
=====================================

• In a heavy bottomed pan, heat the 1/3 cup butter, and cook over medium-high heat, stirring frequently, until browned and nutty smelling. Pour into a mixing bowl and allow to cool completely to room temperature.
• Preheat your oven to 350F. Grease and lightly flour a 12 cup muffin tin.
• Add the sugar and egg to the cooled butter. Beat with an electric mixer until all creamed together.
• In a separate little bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt, spices, and zest. Add the dry ingredients in increments to the butter-sugar mixture, alternating with the milk and beating well after each addition.
• Divide the batter evenly into the cups of the muffin tin. Pop into the oven and bake until golden brown and fragrant, about 20-25 minutes.
• While the puffs are puffing, put the melted butter in one shallow bowl and combine the sugar and cinnamon in another one. When the puffs come out of the oven, use a knife to gently pop them all out of the muffin tin.
• One by one, dip each puff in the melted butter - get it all over it - then roll it in the cinnamon sugar. Transfer it to some lovely, festive serving platter, and continue until you have rolled all of the puffs. Serve warm - they are by faaaaar the best when they are still warm - with coffee, and mimosas, and other goodies.

 Note: These can also be made into bite-size puffs too - that's next.