40 in forty: the import of good knives

If you cook anything ever, my greatest advice is to invest in high-quality, sharp knives and keep them that way. 

Not only are sharp knives infinitely more effective than dull ones, they're also much more fun to work with and a great deal safer. A clean cut made by a finely whetted blade will heal more quickly and neatly than will a jagged wound made by a toothless steel. I've been to the ER two or three times with deeply slivered fingers; once I got stitches, once the skin glue, and I have no discernible scars to show. Fantastic!

A honed blade slicing briskly through a silky green zucchini or the thick rind of a vivid orange never fails to delight me. It is efficient, quiet until the cutting board stops the forward motion with a pleasing thud. Cut, thud, begin anew.

You might recall this lengthy post Tom and I co-wrote a few years back. He is the knife sharpener in our home, keeping stones at the ready for both German and Japanese knives whose blades are honed at different angles. We have several Wusthofs, 3 or 4 Globals, and now, thanks to my friend, Mary, a fabulous Kamata (a generations-old Tokyo store that sells fabulous knives that are sharp as get-out).

Because I still feel low today, I decided to take an hour and do just what I wanted. What I wanted to do was make a gorgeous vin pamplemousse that my friend Ginger recently made and posted on Instagram. I think she based her recipe on Heidi Swanson's, and Heidi rarely misses (really never!), so I knew it'd be fab.

Vin pamplemousse is basically a fortified grapefruit wine made with rosé, vodka, sugar and grapefruit. Ginger (and Heidi) use a variety of citrus which, as you might know, is having a wonderful season right now. Mandarins, blood oranges, ruby reds, gold nuggets, Meyers...it is citrus heaven at Whole Foods, and I love citrus. I omitted the vanilla bean G and H use but otherwise followed Ginger's instructions to a T.

I thought, during all my chopping, about what a pleasure it was to be able to ignore my malaise by being able to easily slice gloriously even rounds of beautiful, pungent fruit. I considered how much I love a crisp, cool glass of Lillet pamplemousse on warm spring and summer evenings, and how much better a homemade version might taste.

all the citrus

a Cara Cara orange

The methodical, productive, simple act of cleaning and slicing and layering many beautiful pieces into a more beautiful whole was a welcome reprieve from an otherwise busy, demanding day. So often, those feelings of creation and focus, contemplation and peace are why I cook and miss the kitchen when I'm away for too long.

Sharp knives make every bit of those experiences better.

ready for sugar, vodka and rosé

Great Green salad

Without the slightest bit of lady façade tinting this statement with falsity, I want to aver that I love a good salad. I really, truly do. I like messy "kitchen sink" salads, what I like to call compost salads. Those are the sorts crafted by tossing in a deep bowl (spills are annoying), all manner of vegetal flotsam found in your crisper drawers with any grains, nuts, fruits, meats, cheeses and dressing you fancy and then flipping the result onto a plate or into a generously-sized bowl (see above parenthetical note for the why). Serve with warm bread if you like, perhaps some hummus or dipping oil too. Enjoy.

I also appreciate a composed salad though I don't often make them just for me because really, who has the time? As well, I want to enjoy my food and, especially at lunchtime for the love, if making it requires too much in the way of preciousness or crafting, the pleasure-factor is diminished. Not always, but you get my drift.

I like pasta salads and grain-based salads, fruit salads and warm salads. I like leftover salad too, unless you start with the wrong sort of lettuce in which case the leftovers aren't nicely marinated but instead remind me too much of the stems of flowers that have been in a vase for a week: slimy, smelly, yuk.

And I enjoy experimenting with the ways various ingredients can come together in salad form.

Today, I craved a fresh, unique salad. I'm -gasp- the slightest bit tired of tomatoes and regular old lettuce. So I poked around and found half a head of the always-beauitful Savoy cabbage; two heads of sweet Belgian endive which I adore for its crunchy, vaguely bitter, delicate flavor; some Persian cucumbers; and some scuppernong grapes*. I immediately chose all of that plus some Parmesan, a Meyer lemon, walnut oil and fresh walnuts which I immediately toasted so that they could cool while I made the salad.

I adore cabbage but I wanted it to be part of the team here. As such, I sliced it into paper-thin slivers to match rather than overwhelm the texture and taste of the endive. I didn't peel the cucs because A) peel = fiber and other good stuff, and B) I like texture and color and cuc peel adds both. I quartered the grapes both because they are large and I wanted to do the seeding work in advance of indulging in this lovely salad-to-be.

The dressing was made by the simple whisking together of two tablespoons of walnut oil, the juice of half that Meyer lemon, salt and freshly ground pepper. Using a vegetable peeler, I shaved Parmesan feathers over the top, dressed the salad and let it sit for a few minutes so the flavors could diffuse and marry. This hit the spot completely!

*Scuppernongs are a large variety of the muscadine, a grape that has a thicker-than-usual skin, three to four seeds, hails from the southern US and is worth every bit of the effort required to -oh my!- eat a grape with seeds. Scuppernongs (and muscadines) aren't available all year but are in season now. Try some! You won't be sorry!

To read more about scuppernongs (because really, isn't it fun to say their name?), read this Garden & Gun article, if only for the stunning photo.

Have decided to ignore cold, on tap for dinner

I am, at this point, so flipping annoyed with my snorting and other cold manifestations that I have decided to pretend it doesn't exist. To the best of my abilities. I fully intend to have a glass of cold white tonight as we will be enjoying fresh Pacific cod and a fennel/Meyer lemon/green olive/garlic dish I'm currently concocting in my head. Don't these ingredients look lovely?!

As I believe I mentioned, Jack's school called midday; he felt sick and wanted me to come. I hurried over, and within five minutes of picking him felt sure he was half-faking. He is totally pooped, this is true, and doesn't have school until next Monday, so I didn't much mind, but I must say that at this point I'm feeling a little talked out as he and Ol have NOT been meek ones this afternoon. PLEASE GO TO BED. I swear to you that if I hear any from a handful of words (all scatological in nature, really), I'm going to start spinning like the Tasmanian devil. Oh, and no they're trying to pick each other's noses. Jesus. What happened to the overabundance of knock-knock jokes? At this point, I might accept those back.