I discovered a new trick when making a meatloaf today.

The trick was inspired by the much-lauded recipe for roast chicken that appears in the Zuni Cafe Cookbook by Judy Rodgers, which the cook crush and I made last week in double proportions with great success. (It was a dinner party with some newish friends and I was shy about busting out the camera so no full post on it, but the recipe is really easy to follow and it as awfully tasty, so that’s all you need to know.)

The trick is twofold:

First, choose make the meatloaf in a cast iron pan rather than on a cookie sheet or bread pan.

Second, get the pan super hot by placing it in the oven for 10 minutes before putting your loaf in it.

The loaf won’t stick to the bottom, will cook faster, will cook more evenly, and will give you double the crusty bits (top and bottom), which I think is the best part of a good meated loaf.

I’m going to Mexico TOMORROW and plan on eating as many street meat antojitos as I can cram in my face.

When the maintenance dude at the restaurant heard I was visiting his homeland, he informed me that in the carts around the Zocalo “you have the best al pastor tacos in the world”.  When I responded that this was why I chose to stay near the Zocalo, he smiled and called me a “good little gordita”.

Before a previous trip to Mexico I read up on the CDC’s advice on preventing GI distress while traveling. While part of their advice is to avoid street food, I followed the “2 Pepto Bismol tabs, twice a day starting a few days before your trip” advice, ate plenty, and it worked out just fine.

I will also be eating a great many goat milk caramels. And posting about my culinary exploits in between shots of tequilla.

My new favorite snack at work is a banana sliced on a homemade cracker, topped with a sprinkle of Maldon sea salt. We’ve been playing around with cracker making at work and the basic recipe we use results in a crisp, flaky-layered square much like a flattened biscuit when it is baked perfectly, and like tasty, chewy lavash bread when baked imperfectly or rolled out too thick.

Salting a banana makes perfect sense in terms of both flavor combination (think caramel and cashews) and mouthfeel (salt helps you produce more saliva, eliminating some of the chalky or mealy texture you can get from a too-ripe banana). 

The only way this snack could be improved is if it were made on a Vermont Common Cracker, like those sold at the Vermont Country Store in Weston, Vt. While I am a huge fan of making things yourself and am tickled by the idea of baking and keeping some of our crackers at home - maybe with whole wheat flour instead? - there is nothing like a common cracker for plain, baking soda satisfaction.

In an East Village apartment building trick-or-treaters are scarce so in general I celebrate Halloween by pumpkin alone. One of the great things about being a liberated adult is that you can admit that carving is important even if you are too busy to get your act together in the days before as originally planned, and proceed on your own schedule.  

I’m going to carve a pumpkin tomorrow, a day late for Halloween.  The secret to hosting a good pumpkin carving party is threefold:
1. Insist with dictatorial severity that everyone present carve, no too-cool-for-school shuffling about
2. Roast a turkey breast, cook up some butternut squash soup, and have a soup and sandwich buffet because people like food at a party and the smell of roast turkey puts even vegetarians at ease
3. Serve boozy cider punch

To make my boozy cider punch for four, combine 1 cup Laird’s Applejack, 1 cup dark rum and 1 quart mulled apple cider. This will give you around two drinks per person, enough to get spirited without risking cuts while you carve. 

I mull the cider with the juice of two lemons, some smashed cinnamon sticks, some fresh peeled ginger cut into coins, and any other mulling spices on hand (cloves, allspice, cardamom) in small quantities. Combine all this in a pot and simmer for at least 15 minutes. 

I have been known to serve boozy cider hot, but usually after mulling I chill the cider. I find everyone gets less muzzy-mouthed and more festive when they enjoy a cold boozy cider.

Carve Vel Intereo!

For all intents and purposes I’ll be celebrating Halloween this weekend - who knows what Wednesday itself will bring, but I have a couple of excuses to dress as Angus Young on Saturday night, and plan on carving a pumpkin on Sunday. Ghoulishly festive!

What snack is tastier than pumpkin seeds? I like them plain salt roasted best, but sometimes mix it up by either adding a pinch of cayenne pepper and some brown sugar or a bit of curry powder.

They have tons of zinc and are high in protein and delicious.

As a mark of my full employee line cook status, I was left in charge of family meal tonight, and given a bag of chicken wings and whatever vegetation I could find in the walk in to execute.

I was worried that in order to make a tasty meal I’d have to fry, but I grilled them after marinating them in lemon zest, tons of chili flakes, garlic, S&P and olive oil for an hour. The key was letting them sit on the grill forever, much longer than I would have had they been breasts or thighs of comparable size. Skin side down for at least 10 minutes, then flipped for a couple.  They came out toothsome and crispy.

I served them up with roasted sweet potatoes, sauteed brussels sprouts, and a salad with a buttermilk bleu cheese dressing and pancetta crisps. In all a healthified (relatively) wing experience. And cheap!

A while ago I posted a recipe for Heartbreak Sandwich, and although my heart isn’t aching, it ain’t soaring. Great dates are sometimes followed by crossed wires when you are a girl on the go in NYC, but rather than fully giving in and ingesting all that buttery creamy stuff only to feel as though my gall bladder might pop, for dinner tonight I’ll be making a twist on the Heartbreak Sandwich that Big Boss Lady presented at the Gourmet Institute demo she led this morning.

Bánh mì with pork, chicken or fish has become popular in NYC over the past couple of years, but I’ve never seen an ovo Bánh mì prior to executing her recipe at today’s event. It was delicious and easy once I had the ingredients together, and it will have just enough punch from the peppers to keep me from giving up on nice boys forever.

I don’t want to breech confidence by giving out someone else’s recipe, so I’ll be general:

• Make a dressing with lime juice, fish sauce, rice vinegar, water, chili flakes, a little sugar, a garlic clove, and some minced ginger. Let your taste buds be your guide but start with 3 limes and roughly equal parts of the liquids.
• Toss a grated carrot and a grated cuke with some of the dressing. Add a tablespoon or two of the dressing to some beaten eggs. Scramble the eggs in butter.
• Smear a butterflied, oven-toasted baguette with hot sauce and mayo. Top with scramblies, grated veg, sliced hot peppers (jalapenos or whatev) and lots of cilantro and mint leaves.
•  Eat, watch Simpsons, sigh a few times, go to bed early and get over it.

Really, I consider myself to have well-honed time management skills but I should have been in the shower an hour ago. I have to get to the freelance gig so that I can jet off to AC this eve to see the Sands Casino implode, and if I had just finished the Serious Eats Meatloaf Roundup last night instead of going on a (dreamy, I dare say chart-topping) date I would have time to post properly about the meatloaf I made this weekend.

Instead, I’ll offer the following observations and then get my ass in gear:

Although fancifying meatloaf with sage, carmellized squash and pancetta is delicious, it is no more delicious than the simple onion-and-garlic loaf mom makes.

If you live around the corner from a very nice butcher and you smile at him, he will grind specific pieces of chuck and pork for you. My butcher is an old school Polish guy and I feel super savvy supporting a food craftsman and getting a superior product for much less money than I would at Whole Foods.

One pound of meat with one egg and whatever mix-ins you see fit to add results in a loaf that fits perfectly in your average toaster oven.

Checkout Serious Eats for more meatloafery and tell ‘em Old Stove sent you.

Right now my favorite project at Prune is preparing the lobsters for the deliciousness that is the soupy rice with lobster and squid, sort of an extra liquidy interpretation of paella.  This project consists of the following steps:

• Dispatch the 10 or so lobsters with a cut between the eyes
• Break off claws and tail
• Sear claws and tail

and finally, my favorite part,

• Pre-crack the claws so the customer need not struggle

To do this, I hold a claw on the cutting board as though it were going to shake a hand, create a chink with my knife across the top, flip the claw and do the same on the underside, then put the claw on its side and whack it with my knife to create a clean break between the two chinks.  The claw splits neatly in two like magic but stays on and continues to enclose the meat so that once the dish is finished a la minute and served up, the customer is able to slip out lobster meat like an old hand.

I don’t feel tense very often lately but when I do I find myself pre-cracking claws in my head. The way the last whack of the knife joins the two chinks in one clean fissure is the source of great satisfaction and reliable order.

Finding the place where you are smart and engaged but clearly eager to learn new things can be challenging in a new work environment.

In my case it means stifling the desire to explain my thought processes - why I think what I think - a desire which is rooted in curiousity about how other people think and act, and is intended to serve as a spark for dialogue but can come off as a little defensive and smarty pants. I’m allowed to ask questions, but not to provide unsolicited answers.  

As outlined in my post on breakfast day in cooking school, I know how to hard boil an egg. I’ve always HB’d as I outlined in that post; cooking school reinforced my idea that the short simmer/long sit method is the best for obtaining firm but yielding whites and cheery yolks with no grey ring.

Yesterday while at work I was asked to HB 30 eggs (for deviled, natch). I got my flat of eggs and was placing them gently in a pot, intending to fill that pot with cold water and bring it to a simmer.

“What are you doing?” the chef asked.

“Hard boiling eggs”, I replied.

“No, you’re not.  Boil a pot of water first, and then drop them in.  Boil exactly nine minutes, turn off and let sit for one minute, then plunge into cold water.”

Seriously alarmed that the chef would think I don’t know how to hard cook an egg, I started to explain the the way I had been taught…but caught myself within the first few words. Don’t be the explaining person. It comes off as defensive.  Smile and say ‘yep!’ This chef doesn’t care. 

Seeing that I was holding my tongue, the chef patiently said, “Good.  This is the way we hardcook eggs. So this is now the way you hardcook eggs. Just boil the eggs our way.”

And you know? They were pretty easy to peel.