Madison&Mayberry

Tempted by... Liver??

Here's for my mom who said, "Please write something so I'm not always pulling up the tomatoes." Sorry! But I'm cranky. Everyone's on vacation -- except me -- or at least it feels like that. I don't feel like battling the heat to cook most nights. Plus, with Ryan in Peru -- it's not as much fun without someone to cook for. I've been existing on Ruth Reichl's Spaghetti Carbonara. And no recipes have really pulled me in to break this mood.

That was until I was reading Anne's copy of "Julie & Julia," chronicling the adventures of New Yorker Julie Powell's attempts to cook all Julia Child's recipes in "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." Of everything she cooked, I found myself seduced by her description of beef liver. Yes, liver. Just listen to this description: "It is one of the great oddnesses of life that I have come so to love liver.  I love, love, love it.  It's like the silky soul of steak.  You have to close your eyes, let the meat melt on your tongue, into your corpuscles."

How can you not be tempted by that? My mom would always force liver and onions on me as a child. But this recipe was liver topped with a shallot-mustard spread and breadcrumbs. And it was endorsed by both Julie and Julia.

I tried the recipe and -- unfortunately -- I still don't like liver. I barely ate any of it. And, let me tell you, rarely do I not clear my plate. I just kept thinking, "I'm eating the liver of a cow." Now, mind you, I have no problem polishing down a steak or sweetbreads or even chicken livers, for that matter. Why is it that I find beef liver so troubling?

Maybe because it looks like what it is. And even under a mustard and breadcrumb crust, it still..looks..like..a..cow.. liver.. I remember reading that a majority of times when people don't like certain foods, it's because they don't like the texture, as opposed to the taste. And I think I may also have issues with that slightly mushy, chewy texture.

Alright. Enough ranting about the liver. Let's move onto the spinach. Another recipe from the book that sounded 1) simple and 2) good was a description of washed and blanched spinach that is then mixed with swiss cheese, dolloped with cream, topped with breadcrumbs and cooked in the oven until bubbly and browned. It was good, yes, but lacked a little something..maybe cayenne? Just in need of a little pep. At least it looks more appetizing that the liver, right?

So the spinach wasn't bad at all; the liver wasn't for me. And the combination of them both was on the heavy-side. I can't imagine eating Julia Child recipes for almost a year as in the Julie/ Julia Project. Anyone else had any recipes you thought you'd adore, only to be dismally disappointed at the results?

Taming my Troubles with Tomato Sandwiches

Have you ever felt a gasp away from true hysterics?

Granted, this doesn't mean much as I am prone to over-thinking, which leads right into hysterics. In short, a worrier I am and a worrier I will always be. So what does a worrier do when her boyfriend decides his life can not be complete without a jaunt to Peru and a Manchu Picchu hike? Well, she worries, of course.

I lacked both the vacation time and, quite frankly, the interest to come along and the timing wasn't right for his friends. So Ryan was going by himself. This was cause for concern to me. But in front of Ryan, I kept the worrying to a limit in a please-don't-realize-how-neurotic-I-really-am-and-break-up-with-me way with tame questions like "Did you get the shots you need? and "Have you booked your hotels?"

I had one break in normality when I demanded he not visit Pisco, as his Peru guidebook warned of gunpoint muggings for people by themselves at night. "Fine, fine," Ryan said, grabbing the book back so  I couldn't make more demands. I worried about muggings and diseases and elevation sickness. The thought of an earthquake never entered my mind.

Leave it to Ryan to be in a country less than 24 hours and it be hit by an earthquake. Ryan soon texted that his area hadn't been hit -- although the proximity he was to the earthquake was still too close for comfort for me. The whole experience made me feel a stone's throw from a breakdown. Maybe not that I was about to have one but rather its aftermath of exhaustion. 

It's funny that during times like these you crave the food comforts of childhood. And in the summer, we would pick tomatoes in the garden and make them into tomato sandwiches. So today was filled with numerous tomato sandwiches to soak up the remnants of last night's stress.

It's nothing more than thick, juicy slices of tomato on white bread with gobs of mayo. But there are rules to follow:

-- The tomatoes have to be garden-fresh. No grocery store tomatoes. Farmer's market tomatoes are acceptable, although I have to say they still miss that familiar tomatoness of the garden variety, or that could just be in my head. You can also do as I do and beg tomatoes from coworkers with gardens.

-- Spread kosher salt and freshly ground pepper liberally over the tomato slices.

-- This sandwich is for the mayo lover. As with a BLT, the more mayo, the better. I have to give a shout-out to Hellman's here.

-- Use the cheapest white bread possible (Wonder bread is recommended) so it almost fuses with the mayo and tomato. (Disclaimer: I realize this step is not for everyone. Feel free to substitute with the bread of your choice.)

   

I feel the need to add that you can spruce up your tomato sandwich with parsley, scallions and the like. But the beauty in it is the flavor of the tomato. I'm a tomato sandwich purist so no herbs on mine -- just tomatoes, mayo and bread eaten over the sink to catch the escaping drops of juice. It's enough to make someone forget about the scare of the earthquake.

Good Southerners Eat Homemade Pimento Cheese

Today, I was branded a bad Southerner by the New York Times' Florence Fabricant via an article about homemade pimento cheese hitting the aisles of Murray's Cheese: "In some parts of the country, pride is taken in homemade pimento cheese; self-respecting Southerners would never buy the commercial kind to fill a sandwich or to top a canapé. "

Oh, dear. We wouldn't? In my house, we boiled our peanuts, baconed our collard greens and fried our green tomatoes. But never did we make homemade pimento cheese. And thus I've been branded a bad Southerner?

For those of you not in the know (you'd apparently make very bad Southerners), pimento cheese is a concoction of cheddar cheese (and other types of cheese if necessary), mayo, cream cheese and pimentos. And in the South, it's available in your grocer's aisle right by the deli meats. As a child, my mom liked to pack up my lunches full of creative sandwiches on whole wheat bread no less. But children never appreciate best intentions. What did I want? Bologna on white bread with mayo or pimento cheese on white bread. These were reserved for special occasions -- code: when my mom ran out of nutritious lunches and was in a hurry.

I was 24 when I discovered pimento cheese came in other forms than a plastic container. (Please don't tell the Times.) I worked in the lifestyle department of a suburban Atlantan newspaper and was writing an article on tailgating foods. I was interviewing a die-hard UGA football fan, who told me about her famous pimento cheese recipe. "You can make pimento cheese?" slipped out of my mouth before I knew it. There was a pause. I had offended her delicate Southern roots. "Why, yes," she said, cautiously, "You've never had it homemade?"

You think I would have learned my lesson. But it actually took this picture of a pimento burger the other week to bring back my pimento cheese memories. So who do I turn to in my time of need but Ms. Paula Deen, whipping up some homemade  pimento cheese this weekend. (Take that, Times.) Ryan's friend, Bryan, hosted a cookout (or "bbq," as I've found Northerners refer to them, despite there not being any bbq present). Ryan and I -- and a few other brave souls -- slathered our burger with the pimento cheese while they were still on the grill, to melt the cheese just a bit. Then we placed them on their buns and dug in. It was really, really good. Like better-than-a-cheeseburger good. So good we had wolfed them down before I remembered to snap a picture. (Oh, I'm a bad blogger and a bad Southerner!)

Since this weekend I've put my pimento cheese on anything I could think of -- smeared on celery sticks, tossed into scrambled eggs, placed atop a hot dog and wedged between two pieces of cornbread. I'm a (homemade!) pimento cheese lovin' fool. Whether you've experienced homemade pimento cheese or not, it's worth a shot to try during a cookout for a pimento cheese burger.

Bobby's Pimento Cheese by Paula Deen

1 (3-ounce) package cream cheese, room temperature
1 cup grated sharp cheddar
1 cup grated Monterey Jack
1/2 cup mayonnaise
2 to 3 tablespoons pimentos, smashed
1 teaspoon grated onion
Cracked black pepper, salt and garlic powder to taste

Using an electric mixer, beat cream cheese until smooth and fluffy. Add all of the remaining ingredients and beat until well blended. It can be used as a dip for crudite or as a sandwich filling.

Truffle Honey Butter

This may look like an ordinary blob of butter but no.. This is my own hand-churned buttery creation. Okay, well not completely -- unless, hand-churned now means "throwing in the Kitchen Aid mixer and mixing past the point of whipped cream."  It was so easy to do that it made me wonder why I hadn't done it before.

This also gave me an excuse to indulge in my longing for honey butter. I grew up near a chain restaurant named Ryan's Family Steakhouse, complete with a Southern style buffet table full of all the fixins. But this wasn't the best part -- Ryan's had these yeast rolls served with the best honey butter. Oh, I could eat the honey butter alone. It made me wonder why more restaurants didn't succumb to the sweet goodness of honey butter. Since then, I've always been on the lookout for it but rarely found it.

Which is why I decided to make my own, loosely following Luisa's directions. My cream was drawing close to the "use by" date, so I poured that into the mixing bowl (about 3/4 cup), along with a tablespoon of truffle honey that I had saved for a special yet-to-be-determined occasion. I let the mixer do its job until the butter was clumpy but still mixed with pools of the newly formed buttermilk (the milk solids removed from the cream). I removed the butter from the buttermilk and then slathered my creation on some homemade bread.

Yes, yes.. I could have bought butter from the store. And bread too (certainly better bread for sure because I got impatient with the rising and it didn't turn out so great). But there's something so satisfying about the self-sufficiency and simplicity of creating your own bread and butter. Maybe it's not an everyday project but it's certainly a must-give-it-a-try-once project.