Day 216, Part Two: My First Mayonnaise

My arms are sore. Seriously. My upper back is feeling the burn, too. I didn't lift any weights yesterday or go to the gym and use those upper body machines. I did something far more interesting. I made mayonnaise.

I'm sure you're thinking, Why didn't you use the food processor? In this day and age, who whisks egg yolks and oil for forty-five minutes? Who doesn't take advantage of technology? Me, apparently. Partly because I'm "old-school." Partly because both my food pro and my blender had pieces that needed washing. But mostly because, if I was going to make mayonnaise, I wanted to do it right. I was using the recipe from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I wanted to do it Julia's way.

Did you know that the average American large egg yolk can hold up to 3/4 cup of oil in the mayonnaise making process? I guess you do now. I learned that from Julia as I thoroughly read the recipe and instructions before cracking my egg yolks into the bowl (well--almost thoroughly--it turned out there were a few more instructions on the next page, but they were sort of "just in case"). For three egg yolks, you want a minimum of 1 1/4 cups oil. I don't think I got that much in. My measuring cup was dirty, too, and I was using a bottle with a small pour spout so I could get that drip-by-drip pour that you need in the first phases of mayonnaise. That side of my body, the one holding the oil bottle, is actually more sore than my whisking arm. I did about half the bottle. My mayo was fairly thick but not even close to grocery store thick. But you know what? I was okay with that. And it was still delicious.

Have you ever spread mayo on bread with pepper and had that as a snack unto itself? I don't think it would occur to me with grocery store mayo, and I'm not sure how much I'd like it, but with my homemade mayo, it was divine. Dangerously so. I could have eaten mayo all night and had a stomachache all day.

Day 192: Soupe au Pistou

Tonight, I made a beautiful dish, the recipe for which I got out of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which I'll be doing my best to cook my way through over the next who-knows-how-long. The translation Julia provides beneath the title Soupe au Pistou is "Provencal Vegetable Soup with Garlic, Basil and Herbs" (no Oxford comma for Mrs. Child). She then explains that, "The pistou itself, like the Italian pesta, is a sauce made of garlic, basil, tomato and cheese, and is just as good on spaghetti as it is in this rich vegetable soup." That made sense, and I plan to make a big batch of the pistou tomorrow to use some more of my fresh basil and to either spread on my homemade bread or use as pasta sauce or even mix into some ground turkey for pistou burgers.

It was quite leisurely preparing the soup. I put the Billie Holiday station on Pandora and started chopping the carrots, potatoes and onions (only half of what Julia asks for, since I didn't need to serve 6 to 8 people; half the recipe made a full meal for tonight's dinner and tomorrow's lunch). Then those needed a full forty minutes to boil, which seemed a bit excessive to me, but if forty minutes the recipe said, forty minutes the recipe got. This also helped me get my navy beans boiled, as I had thought I had canned white beans but apparently did not. While all that was bubbling away, I had quite a bit of time to cut my green beans (diced, according to the recipe, so I cut them in about inch pieces like they are in the can, which is so not stylish now that it made me smile) and break the spaghetti and crumble the bread (a lot of starches go into this soup, which makes it a satisfying meal unto itself) and also to make the pistou (though Julia outlines how to do it by hand, I dumped everything in the food processor, because I could). I also had time to write a letter to a friend and straighten up the house before my husband got home.

The soup, once all boiled together and mixed with the pistou, was beautiful and salty and oily and luxurious. I served some crisped bread with it, and a few slices of local cheese I'd gotten at the farmer's market (Brush Creek Creamery's Farmstead Cheese, Brush Creek Select). It was lovely to eat, definitely something I'll be making again, and completely vegetarian, which I like, especially when we've had meat at lunch (Ian came home on his lunch break and I heated up leftover pork loin). This was not a challenging meal for me, but a good way to ease into Mastering the Art of French Cooking as I try to cook my way through it and teach myself to be the best cook I can be. I was diligent and read the entire recipe twice before starting. Thankfully, this wasn't a variation on anything so I only had to read one recipe.

Day 190: Rhubarb, Rhubarb, Rhubarb

Do you know what background actors say to each other when they're supposed to look like they're talking without being heard? "Rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb. Watermelon. Rhubarb." Which is why, when a director wants more silent chatter in the background, she'll say, "More rhubarb!" She's giving direction, not asking for pie.

Rhubarb is an interesting plant. It's a vegetable, but it's generally treated as/combined with a fruit because of how tart it is. Strawberry rhubarb pie is probably its most famous incarnation. The strawberries are sweet, the rhubarb is tart, and everything balances nicely. Or so I've been told. I don't think I've ever had strawberry rhubarb pie. Until tonight, I'm pretty sure I'd never had rhubarb.

This Wednesday, at my local "fresh food market," I bought a bunch of rhubarb, weighing in at about two pounds. Tonight, I prepared rhubarb two ways: a rhubarb peach cobbler (recipe courtesy of Alton Brown and my husband's Good Eats 2 cookbook) and a rhubarb glazed pork loin (recipe courtesy of my red-and-white checkered Better Homes and Gardens cookbook).

I've never made a cobbler before, but I figured it couldn't be too hard. I've made fruit filling (this one was peach, rhubarb, lime juice, sugar, corn starch, and salt), and I've made pie dough (this one contained lemon zest, making it nicely fragrant). Unfortunately, flour is a finicky thing. I wasn't paying good attention. By the time I'd added five of the nine suggested tablespoons of water, my dough was already goopy. I added more flour, but it still didn't firm up the way I would have liked. So I improvised. I threw the whole mess into the freezer, which helped a little. Thankfully, the bottom layer of dough doesn't need to be pristine. The top layer is supposed to cover all the fruit, it seems, so I tried spreading my dough (with wet hands) on my Silpat, and then inverting it onto the pile of fruit in the pan. It still didn't want to come off nicely. So, as the name would suggest, my dessert is a little cobbled together. But still, it's delicious. So tangy and sweet and creamy, with a nice bit of pastry and a nice bit of fruit, which I served with vanilla ice cream. So incredibly good.

The main course was also delicious and smelled so good while it was cooking. The rhubarb glaze involved cooking chopped rhubarb in fruit juice concentrate until the rhubarb turned to mush, then mixing that with a corn starch slurry, dijon mustard, honey, and wine vinegar (I chose red, though the recipe didn't specify). The recipe didn't give a lot of instruction on how to roast the pork loin for maximum deliciousness, but thankfully I've watched enough cooking shows to know that I should season it well and sear it on the stove before throwing it in the oven. I then used the juices to cook some super colorful rainbow chard that we bought at the farmer's market this morning, plus I did my super creamy, super low-cal mashed potatoes (boil potatoes and garlic, drain, mash in low fat sour cream and buttermilk, plus salt and pepper). All together it was a lovely meal.

This meal required some food knowledge, some of which I had (like making a corn starch slurry instead of adding the corn starch and water separately) and some of which I maybe didn't (like how far to cook the chard--I may have gone too far). Since I am currently unemployed and any jobs that wouldn't make me tear out my fingernails look like they won't be available to me, I'm trying to figure out my life until we finally finally finally move out of this college town. I'm going freelance with the writing and editing, for one, though I know that won't earn a ton of money. But what to do with the rest of the time? One thing: I can teach myself how to cook. I have several good cookbooks to cook my way through, ones that explain the history and science of food, and carefully guide the cook through techniques. This might get in the way of my persistent plans for weight loss, though I can practice some self control. I also want to brush up on my French, my guitar playing, and keep up a fairly rigorous exercise routine (partially to combat the food I'll be cooking). So you'll start seeing posts marked "Cooking School" soon, in which I describe my efforts at mastering certain cooking techniques. It should be fun. I'm looking forward to it.