Laurustina

… an unexpected bag of flour and a package of yeast, in case you didn’t know.

I am eating leftover potato & pea samosas for lunch today and feeling rather smug about them.  After six weeks of fretting over the perfect samosa wrapper, (not philo dough, not pastry puffs, not egg roll wraps … so many NOTS, i’ve even forgot a few) I finally broke down two days ago and asked the woman behind the counter at Spice of India, what might work.

Now asking the woman behind the counter about  ANYTHING at all issomething I would have normally been too intimidated to do. In fact, even going into the little Indian market is something I spent most of my life being too intimidated to do until my friend Susanne The Scot scoffed at me.

“What do you think they’re going to do? Yell at you for daring to spend your money in their store?”

Well maybe.

The truth is, I grew up in a way that left me half expecting that if I dared to go explore the little ethnic markets tucked here and there around town, that someone was going to think or say or even shout, “YOU DON’T BELONG HERE!”. And yes, there’s a whole other tangent I could go off on here, but let’s save my personal cultural ignorance essay for another day, because I really want to get back to these samosas.

So I ask the woman behind the counter for her suggestions, and I tell her what I’ve tried and she nods and cuts me off with a wave of her hand, and I’m thinking that she’s going to direct me down one of the crowded little aisles to some secret stash of samosa wrappers, but instead she says this:

“Mexican tortillas, the thin flour ones. You cut them in half, and use the flour with water glue, you know about the glue, right?” I nod. ”And then you make the cone and close the top.”

She’s gesturing, folding an imaginary samosa made from an imaginary tortilla, sealed with her imaginary flour paste. And I’m getting all excited because I know how to make the cone and how you close the top with your thumbs and then pinch out to make the perfect triangles, and oh oh oh, I actually have flour tortillas at home and seriously, who woulda thunk it?

“And they fry up right?”

“Yes, just right.”

I try to keep myself from clapping with glee as she’s ringing up my butter chicken sauce and minty chutney and I can hardly wait to get home, to cut up some tortillas and make the cone and shove in the filling and glue ‘em up and drop ‘em in the fryer and see if it works.

It works. And it makes me laugh, because all that time that I was running all over town and the internets and compiling my list of things that didn’t work, for that whole six weeks, I had the perfect samosa wrappers sitting right there in my fridge and it never once occurred to me to use them because what serious maker of Indian food would use a Mexican flour tortilla to wrap their appetizers in?

Now maybe, its time for that cultural ignorance essay.

Tonight is all about the chutneys. Actually that’s not exactly true, but it IS the first line that came to me when I decided to sit down and write while simultaneously sweating an onion on the stove. Ok, so it started out about chutneys, which I had to Wikipedia for the most basic understanding, before I went off in search of a decent chutney to accompany the potato and pea samosas that I conquered  the last time i went on one of these nervous energy late night cooking sprees.

Mostly, it is a way to stop thinking of all the things I spend most of the day thinking about … the overwhelming, the sad and scary, the things I can’t do anything about late at night … if I am worrying about measurements and sauté pans and spice mixes (i have used more garam masala in the last month than i did in all the years which proceeded it.) somehow everything else manages to fall away for a little while.

I was looking for a spicy chutney recipe tonight, something that would compliment the mildness of the samosas that I wanted to make for my nephew’s wife tomorrow. But with what was stocked in our cupboards, I could only make a tomato/onion one (turned out way too italian-ish for these purposes) and the same basic minty raita i always make. At that point, i decided to up the heat in the potato/pea mash, hopefully making the samosas worthy of a nice cooling minty/cucumber dip.

Two hours of this kitchen putter and the sink is full of dirty utensils, the counter cluttered with spice jars, and the last of the nights creations ready to be snapped up with Tupperware lids and relegated to the refrigerator for the night. My hands are sore and protesting the evening’s labor. My feet remind me that they would someday like some fancy slippers with arch support. My whole self feels old and tired and achy.  But once again, I have outwitted, sidetracked and subverted worry, sadness, fear and grief until such time that I can fall exhausted into bed and a half-decent sleep.

Some days, that (and a tasty Indian appetizer with a halfway-decent dipping sauce) is the most one can hope for.

Update: As it turns out, the perfect accompaniment for the samosa cups (which is how i served up the taster version of the spiced potato/pea filling on the night in question) was a dollop (yeah, i said dollop, what’cha gonna do about it?) of plain Greek Yogurt. Who knew?

On Saturday morning, I woke up with a vision of chorizo biscuits dancing in my head. Not that I’ve ever eaten a chorizo biscuit, not that i’d even heard of a chorizo biscuit, not that i was even sure a chorizo biscuit could be baked or enjoyed. I simply sat up in bed, half-awake and thought, “what I’d really like, is to go into the kitchen and whip up some chorizo biscuits for breakfast”.

I envisioned these biscuits big and fluffy, with just a trickle of paprika-stained grease escaping through a single pinprick, some kind of chorizo insertion point, though the manner and insertion implement were yet to be determined, as was the possibility that a simple biscuit had the integrity to withstand the rigors of baking after being stuffed with spicy meat.

Had it been done before?

Was there a trick to doing it well?

Whether it should be done, was not one of those questions that immediately crossed my mind. But there was plenty of time to consider such things before embarking on the experiment, as we had neither  chorizo nor biscuits on-hand. Instead, I ate two hastily fried eggs with a slice of wheat toast, and went about my day.

It was Sunday before I got around to googling “Chorizo Biscuit”.  What I found was underwhelming. There was a recipe for chorizo biscuits and gravy, accompanied by this rather unappetizing photo. And another recipe for a Rachel Ray chicken sandwich on a chorizo and cheese biscuit, which was also, nothing like what I had envisioned, but at least gave me a little hope in the possibility of some kind of communion between biscuit dough and chorizo.

I explain all of this to my sister on Sunday afternoon, as we are driving over to a friend’s house, and when I realize that I’ve been rambling on and on about it for maybe seven minutes, I say, “You understand that this isn’t so much about eating something as it is obsessing over creating something, right?” She laughs. Later that night, it is Mr. J. who reminds me that we have one of those Ronco Flavor Injector thingies, normally reserved for shoving cloves of garlic and such into a roast, but

By Monday afternoon, I figure that I should stop talking and theorizing about the damn thing and just do it, so we went up to the store, tossed two rolls of Pillsbury Grands Buttermilk Biscuits into the shopping basket, as well as two packages of chorizo, one the traditional pork and the other, soy-based. (My preference is honestly for the pork, but I’ve used soy chorizo once or twice, as it reduced the fat content and therefore the guilt factor. (And yes, at some point we could could have a discussion about Food Guilt, but let’s save that for another day, alright?).

Ok, so last night, after dinner, I enlist Mouse to help with my experiment.  We cook up half the soy chorizo, adding a bit of olive oil, because it fries up awfully dry and crumbly, and then we get the idea to mix in some crumbles of pepper jack cheese to help hold it together well enough to use one of those Flavor Injector thingies (normally reserved for shoving cloves of garlic and such into a roast) to shove the filling into the dough. We fill most of the biscuits this way, poking a hole in the side, shoving the injector in and then pinching the dough closed around the insertion point.  They’re not particularly pretty, but at least they’re holding up to the poking and prodding.

On the last two biscuits, we experiment. Me, with slicing right through the dough, adding a layer of chorizo and cheese at the center and then flopping the top back on and patting the sides until they close up. Mouse shoves his thumb down into the top of the biscuit and makes a little well, which he fills and leaves uncovered. We give them one last look and then pop them into the oven. Fifteen minutes later, we have this:

On the top right, is one of the ones we shoved the injector into. It’s ok, but not particularly pretty. On the bottom right, is the one I sliced open. Happily it held both its shape and its filling. It is the Stealth Biscuit, with just a little trickle of paprika-stained grease on the edge. And on the left, well there’s Mouse’s lovely thumbprint biscuit, which kinda looks like a bagel, but is definitely the visual crown jewel of the collection.

I insisted that Mr. J come over and take a look. I called my sister out from her bedroom to see them too. I buttered the tops of the ones that had tops. I removed them from the tray and arranged them on a plate. I took photos of them and smiled at them and felt quite proud of myself and my boy.

And then it occurred to me that yes, we had solved the question of whether or not it could be done, but hadn’t considered whether or not it should be done. Was this going to be like the beef and vegetable pies I made with the wrong kind of pie crust, the ones that looked all kinds of lovely as they sprung from the oven, only to devolve into a soggy, weirdly sweet and inedible mess?

I broke open one of the ugly biscuits and shoved half of it at Mouse. He ate it and pronounced it good. But Mouse will eat anything, so then I called Ruby back out from her bedroom and shoved the other half at her. She ate it and nodded. I broke open a second biscuit, noting how the cheese kind of broke off little melty strings as it came apart, looking tasty and warm and gooey. And then I took a bite. And a second bite. And I knew, not only that it could be done and should be done, but that it had been done. That I did it and it was good.

The smell of pot roast is oh so pleasant. The smell of Pinesol is also pleasant. However, the smell of pot roast mixed with the smell Pinesol is unpleasant in a clothespin-on-the-nose kind of way. I can only hope that the floors will dry soon.

i can’t seem to make myself do the simplest things these days; call my father, reschedule a dr.’s appointment, remind mr. j. that i need jumper cables for my car, send off a resume for that swanky college job I’d like, change the sheets on the bed, set foot on the elyptical trainer, mop the bathroom floor…the list goes on and on and on, and everything seems overwhelming.

The only task i seem to manage with any gusto these days is cooking; my first from-scratch pasta sauce, a chorizo quiche, fresh bagels, oven-roasted tomatoes drizzled with balsamic vinegar and sprinkled with goat cheese, basil mashed potatoes…this list too goes on and on and on, and it never seems to be quite enough. There is always something more left waiting to be made, mastered, plated up and forked over. This cooking habit is new, or at least newish in that until six months ago, a “nice salad” for dinner came pre-mixed out of a bag, no roasted pine nuts, sprinkle of herbed feta and fork-whipped vinegarette. Omelettes did not slide onto the plate with fresh chives and crumbles of bacon sprinkled on top or sauteed mushrooms and peppers tucked in between chunks of cheddar and black forrest ham. Eight months ago, Brandy, Chardonnay and Pomegranate juice were meant to be sipped from a glass, not measured into a pot to be reduced.  Sea, Kosher and Table salt were all just SALT.

And I know, just so you know, that I’ve got to get out of the kitchen if I’m ever going to get back out into the world, but the truth is, with all the things I don’t want to do or deal with or take care of these days, it’s nice to have one thing, even just the one, that I’m getting better, if not quite great yet, at.

* I am happy to inform you that the neighbors who live behind us have the noisiest dogs in the neighborhood. There are two of them, dogs that is; a lab named Mylie and a Rottweiler called Sasha. These names we know only because we have heard them shouted above the din of barking on a number of occasions. This evening, while sitting out on the porch, Mylie and Sasha started up thje vocal sparring and one of Ashlie’s friends called out loudly for them to shush up. “No, no,” I jumped in, “let them go at it.” I insisted. You see, I like that they are noisy and I like that their people rarely shush them. Oh the sound itself is irritating and droning and endless, but honestly, I totally dig NOT having the noisiest dogs on the block. I absolutely adore not being the inconsiderate shit who lets their dog bark and bitch and whine and irritate everyone living within a two-block radius all the damn time. I am NOT that asshole, and I fucking love that.

* It is no secret that I have lusted over the Magic Bullet for some time now. I have lingered over the freakishly excitable infomercial while flipping channels. I have paused and sighed in front of the display in the window of the strangely transient As Seen On TV Store in the mall. I have a bookmark for the product website under the FOOD label in my Favorites. But deep down I am my mother’s daughter and anyone who knows my mother even casually, would tell you that my mother’s daughter would never indulge in the frivolity of a kitchen gadget that requires “easy monthly payments” of any kind. Even when I saw Magic Bullet at a local drugstore, marked down to $60.00, I didn’t bite. Oh I stood there in the aisle and stared at it, practically salivating at the thought of the salsas and fresh pesto and daiquiris and mousses I could make with the flick of a finger. Still I did not give in.  And then (of course there is an “and then”), on a completely unrelated search for the perfect stovetop griddle/grill, I stumbled across a $22.00 knock-off of The Magic Bullet, titled simply The Elite. Instead of 21 pieces, it had a mere 17. No shaker and steamer tops (I understand the shaker, but the steamer is still a mystery). No gloriously full-color recipe book. No handles on the freezer/microwave ready mugs. But $22.00? THAT was a kitchen gadget bargain my mother could be proud of. And so I bought it. I came home and promptly whipped up scrambled eggs in it and proclaimed it the BESTEST THING EVER. And that’s all I really have to say about that.

* Normally I love winter, but this year it snuck up quick and unexpected, not particularly rainy, but with a pervasive chill and gloom. I’m curled up and reading all the time, only peeling out of my jammies and into real clothes when absolutely necessary (a trip to the store or the library). I’d burrow deeper into myself, my couch, my comfort zones if i could only figure out how.

This is Mr. J.’s favorite dish. One of mine too. However, I like to prepare it over the course of a couple of days, and it makes the family a little crazy, the smells wafting from the oven and then the stovetop…the beef fat, onion bite, sweet brandy boiling off…and goddamn, it smells like some alcoholic carnivore’s heaven, all sweet and thick and substantial in scent. But seriously, no matter how much your mouth is watering, you’re not eating what you smell cooking tonight and somehow, you’re just going to have to get over that. Ok?