Irished up, or my divine kitchen comedy

Some of my favorite times from childhood were spent listening to my grandpa sing Irish and American folksongs. Grandpa had the true Irish tenor, and a seemingly endless repertoire. Naturally we had our family favorites, one of which was a song we knew as "Clancy Lowered the Boom". It starts like this:

Oh, Clancy was a peaceful man, and you know what I mean -
the cops picked up the pieces, when Clancy left the scene...

Or in modern parlance, he opened a big ol' can o' whup-ass. The refrain began, "Whenever they got his Irish up, Clancy lowered the boom!" My family has always related well to this song. We're a pretty peaceable sort, but if you get our Irish up, you'd best be getting out of the way shortly thereafter or else prepare to feel the wrath.

In addition to our temper - and probably closely linked - we tend to have a generous (by which I mean excessive) streak of good old Irish stubbornness. I have often found, when taking on grand new baking or cooking experiments, that said stubbornness is possibly as valuable a kitchen amenity as, say, the fridge. Similarly taken for granted, and yet indispensable, it's always there when I need it. This was never more true than on a recent Sunday, when it seemed like a good idea to spend the day making apple butter and cinnamon swirl bread. I had no idea that I was embarking on a journey that would make Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy look like a day in the park.

I got up at 8 a.m., knowing that the slow-cooker apple butter recipe called for 10 hours of cooking time, followed by straining the concoction. "No problem!" I naively optimistically thought. "I can probably still be done by 7:30." On Saturday afternoon, I'd picked a bunch of apples from the two trees in our yard, feeling rather domestic-pioneer-y as I did so. I noticed there weren't many apples without souvenirs from bugs or birds, but figured it wouldn't be that hard to cut around them.

The Pie-tastrophe Story

In honor of Thanksgiving, and all you cooks who are stressing out right about now, I thought I'd resurrect this email to a friend from late November 2005...

So here’s a story for your entertainment: after doing a bunch of cleaning last night, I finally got around to making a ‘test pie’ for the Thanksgiving pumpkin pie. Understand that my stepmother and her mom are incredible bakers, and that my grandma has taught me to make a pie crust from scratch. The problem is that I only do this once a year or every couple of years, so every time, it’s like starting from square 1, except I don’t have my grandma or Janet there as I did the first time.

So at 10 o’clock last night I call up Janet – fortunately, only 9 p.m. there. I’m covered in flour, the entire kitchen is covered in flour, and I can’t decipher my notes from when I learned the recipe with Grandma. So I call Janet, who has Grandma visiting, but of course is a darn good baker herself. Janet proceeds to talk me through the entire process, but only when I’m rolling the dough on the counter and it’s cracking all over the place – in fact, it looked like a map of Ireland rather than the circle it was meant to be – do we figure out that because the climate here is so freakishly dry, I need a lot more water.

So I put it back in the bowl, add more water mixed with flour, and try working it again. At this point, what is supposed to be adhering to itself in a ball is flaking like freaking Paris Hilton. It’s all over the place. So I add still more water. Now, it strongly resembles play-dough. I roll it out again, and this time manage to achieve something that basically looks like a pig, which is at least rounder than a map of Ireland. I put it in the pie pan, cut off the ragged edges, and pinch the rim into shape. I preheat the oven and make my pumpkin pie filling.

So you’re supposed to bake a pumpkin pie for 10 minutes at 450 degrees and then reduce heat to 325 and bake for 35 minutes. And this works great if you are in Owensboro, Kentucky. But in Colorado, at 6700 feet, this does not work so well. An hour and twenty minutes later, it was close enough to being fully cooked that I just turned the oven off, left the pie in there and went to bed at 1 in the morning.

This morning, Ben and I tried the pie for breakfast. We each had about two bites and threw the rest of the pie out. The crust was hard as a rock, and the filling was still too mushy. At least the flavor was good. Thank god I made a test pie, because I think now I know what to do (and not do) on the next go-round.

And yes, I am buying a ‘back-up pie’ on the pretext of having two flavors!!

Adventures in Spinach Dip

This weekend I was reminded of the cook's most invaluable tool: flexibility. It's very hard to be OCD and enjoy cooking; there are just too many variables beyond your control. If you're a novice cook and intimidated by forays into the kitchen, figuring that you're going to mess something up or do it wrong somehow, let me just say now that 1. it happens to the best of us sometimes, and 2. really, no cooking mistake is so serious that you can't just throw it in the trash and order some pizza. Oh, and also, cooking misadventures can make for highly entertaining experiences - as long as you can keep your sense of humor about you.

For example, this weekend I flew to DC to throw my dear friend a baby shower. We decided to make several easy recipes, including the spinach-artichoke dip mentioned in the previous post. I chose to include the dip because it requires so little thought and effort; you can make it in about 30 minutes or less.

Assuming you have a working food processor, that is.

Can you see the writing on the wall? First I made a couple other dishes, saving the spinach dip for last because - say it with me - it was so easy. And quick, did I mention quick? Yah. So I prep all the ingredients, throw them into my friend's combo blender/food processor, and hit the button. ...Not much happens. A lot of noise, but not a lot of results. I decide there must be too many ingredients in there, and dump half of it into a bowl. I hit puree again. ...Not much happens. Then I experiment with every button the processor possesses. Still not much. So I dump the rest of the ingredients out, including - at the very, very bottom - a puree that looks a lot like baby food, and look at the machine.

'Those look a lot like blender blades,' I think to myself. I ask my friend if there are other blades that come with this thing, and she replies that she did indeed notice other parts in the box. At this point, she also says they received this thing as a wedding gift and have used it all of twice, but it worked fine those times. We retrieve the other parts, which turns out to be the food processor bowl and blades, all of which still have the original packaging on them. Now I'm figuring we have resolved the problem. I remove the packaging, wash off the stuff and attach it to the base. I dump half the ingredients into the processor. I hit the button. ...Not much happens. Still making a lot of noise, but to no avail.

I'll spare you the rest of the painful details, but eventually, we figure out that the food processor blades aren't even turning, reattach the blender, puree it in small batches as best we can, and finally take a hand-held electric beater to it in a final attempt to achieve dip. Finally, a scant TWO HOURS after beginning this recipe, I say while laughing not-quite-hysterically, "It's just going to be a chunky dip," and carry it to the table. I was gratified to see that despite the chunkiness, it was very well received.

So remember, when you're beset on all sides by uncooperative kitchen equipment, just keep your chin up and keep laughing!