Baby Got Crabs

No, not every post from here on out is going to be a ridiculous picture of my infant participating in a questionable epicurean activity.

But most of them will be.

Just kidding...I suppose Fancy Toast will eventually get back to being a food blog.

Unless you don’t want it to.

In any case, I made some crab cakes the other day, and who really cares about that, not me and probably not you, but what I DO care about and what you SHOULD care about is the aioli dipping sauce, which I would eat by spoonfuls IF I had some left and IF it wasn’t mostly mayonnaise.

Saffron-Orange Aioli Dipping Sauce

I found the recipe on Epicurious earlier this spring when I was looking for a way to fancy up some grilled asparagus. Afterwards, we had so much aioli left over that we started putting it on salads, potatoes, and everything that could be enhanced by a drizzle of flavorful liquid fat. For the crab cakes, I added orange juice and grated orange zest to give the aioli a little more zang-a-lang.

You may or may not be delighted to know that this is really a fake aioli because you are using store-bought mayonnaise instead of whisking eggs and olive oil together yourself. But honestly, how many of you have actually made a successful aioli from scratch? If you have, please to send me the recipe so that I may try again?

Deliciously Fake Saffron-Orange Aioli
From Epicurious.com, adapted by Fancy Toast
1/8 cup red wine vinegar
1/8 cup orange juice
1 tablespoon honey
Large pinch of saffron threads
1 cup mayonnaise
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon grated orange zest

Whisk vinegar, orange juice, honey, and saffron threads in heavy small saucepan over medium-high heat. Bring to boil. Remove from heat. Cool completely.
Alternatively and more easily, heat in a microwave.

Mix mayonnaise, garlic, and orange zest in medium bowl to blend. Mix in cooled vinegar mixture. Season aioli to taste with salt and pepper.

Drizzle over crab cakes, grilled vegetables, salads, napping babies, etc.

Suck it, Anne Geddes.

OK so here’s Alice! I’m so sorry it took me so long to get a post up. I had planned to announce her birth right away by posting a photo of her giggling in the Dutch oven, all Anne Geddes style.

Well you may or may not know that two-week old babies don’t giggle, and they don’t like being put in pots, even when you promise them a big slab of ribs afterwards.

So that first photo shoot failed miserably, and had I posted photos of a wretched newborn punching herself in the face with fists clenched in sheer terror and betrayal, I would have gotten more hate mail from that one post than the Tyler Florence post and the parrot-eating post combined. And no one is emotionally stable enough to get hate mail for their baby’s birth announcement, so I put that project on hold until she seemed old enough to enjoy sitting in a soup pot, and also old enough to understand me when I told her if she was good, she would get a beer with her ribs.

Pregnant Lady’s Still Gotta Get Her Booze On

Well if I can’t drink anymore, I’m going to have to supplement my daily alcoholic beverage(s) with something just as delicious…

Hmmmmm….after much thought, I still have not discovered an adequate replacement for the libations that once brought so much joy into my life. I guess my only option is to add alcohol to my cooking instead of consuming it in liquid form.

This grilled pork with apricot-brandy glaze (recipe below) does just the trick. The small amount of hooch in the glaze is still enough to keep hair on my chest, but not enough to cause the little Nugget to be born with the IQ of a toad.

For those like me who are also suffering from an insufficient alcoholic intake, may I suggest some additional substitutions:
Beer can chicken (beer turns into steam; steam keeps chicken moist while grilling)
Tiramisu (just a wee bit of rum in the syrup!)
Beer sponge baths (no explanation needed)

By the way, I apologize for the long break in Fancy Toast posts. I soon hope to be posting more regularly! The constant nausea of the first trimester has passed, and I can finally look at photographs of food and be hungry instead of queasy. Now when I want to feel queasy I just look at photographs of myself in seventh grade when my perm was halfway growed-out and the top half of my hair was straight and the bottom half of my hair was a holy mess of floppy squiggles.


Pork Chops with Apricot-Brandy Glaze
~ adapted from Grilling by Chuck Williams and Denis Kelly

This is my standby grilled pork recipe. Delicious. Never fails to yield juicy, slightly spicy pork chops with the perfect amount of sweetness from the caramelized glaze.

Ingredients:
8 pork chops, at least 1-inch thick (I prefer bone-in for the juiciness)

Spice Rub:
1 tablespoon sweet paprika (I used a combination of sweet and smoked)
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon dried thyme
1.5 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

For the apricot-brandy glaze:
½ cup apricot jam
2 tablespoons brandy or apricot brandy
1 tablespoon dry mustard
juice of 1 lemon

Directions:
Mix all ingredients of spice rub together in a bowl.
Rub generously on both sides of each pork chop.

To make the glaze, heat the jam in a small saucepan over low heat. Stir in the brandy, mustard, and lemon juice. Remove from heat and set aside. When ready to use, reheat while whisking contantly.

Grill the pork chops over medium-high heat, turning once, about 3-4 minutes per side. Move the chops to an unheated part of the grill and brush the glaze onto both sides. Cover the grill and cook for 2-4 minutes. Pork chops should be just faintly pink inside. Try your hardest not to overcook them, as they become dry in just a few too many seconds over the coals. (My husband never grills without his trusty digital thermometer. He lets the pork chops come to 150 degrees Fahrenheit and then he lets them rest for a few minutes under tin foil.)

Death by Granola Bar (Potentially)

While driving to work, hunger strikes.
What should I eat?
Oh yes….there is a homemade granola bar in my lunchbag.
I can totally reach my lunchbag, which is in the backseat.
I lied.
I can’t reach it.
Stretch…..stretch a little further….was that a red light I just ran?
Ah, now I have the lunchbag.
Oh no, the zipper is stuck.
Need both hands.
Look, a curve in the road ahead. This will work out rather well, considering my car’s alignment is off and we will naturally follow the road if I remove my hands from the wheel.
Take hands off wheel, fix zipper, oh no, curve is curvier than I expected.
Wheeeeeeeeee, hey, now I’m in the other lane, surprise! Good thing there weren’t any cars next to me, and now I have my granola bar and I am happy and not dead and not hungry.


Homemade Granola Bars
My new favorite snack (besides eating store-bought icing from the tub). Every bite tastes delightfully different, depending on the particular combination of the various little goodies in each piece.
This is a huge double batch, so it makes enough for two people to have at least one granola bar every day for two weeks. (I suppose I could have done the math for you but then if I was wrong you would get mad at me because your recipe didn’t make enough granola bars but this way I can just say oh you must have eaten them too fast you are such a pig)

Ingredients:
3 cups rolled oats (old-fashioned or instant)
1 ½ cups pecans, chopped
¼ cup flax seeds
½ cup sesame seeds

2 generous cups puffed brown rice cereal
2 cups dried fruit, chopped (I used apricots, cranberries, cherries and raisins)

1 cup honey or brown rice syrup
1 teaspoon salt
¼ cup pomegranate molasses or 2 tablespoons butter (optional)
¼ cup brown sugar (optional)
2 teaspoons vanilla


Directions:
Heat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Spread first 4 ingredients on 2 baking pans and toast for about 15 minutes, or until you can smell the aromas from the toasted nuts.
When oat mixture is toasted, mix in the fruits and the rice cereal.

Meanwhile, heat the honey (or brown rice syrup), salt, sugar (if using), molasses (if using), and butter (if using) in a small saucepan over medium-low heat until ingredients are well combined. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla.

Add the mixture to the oats and mix well.

Spread the mixture evenly into 2 greased/buttered pans. How thick? Your choice.
Press firmly so that everything sticks together.
Bake for about 20 minutes, until the granola turns golden.

When you take the granola out of the oven, only let it cool a little bit before you slice into bars. Wait until the bars are completely cool before you remove them from the pan.

Wrap each bar individually in plastic wrap and store in an airtight container. Mine have lasted 2 weeks, so yours might last longer if you don’t eat them all first.

My Plans for Sainthoood

Coconut-Braised Short Ribs and Sweet Potatoes

I think I chose the wrong career. I should have gone into sainthood.
The reason being is that I have developed a marketing strategy that is going to help my friends who are smokers live longer: Package every pack of cigarettes with a sweet potato. Everyone who buys a pack of smokes gets a free sweet potato!

Why? Smoking (or inhaling second-hand smoke) depletes the body of vitamin A. Low levels of vitamin A are linked to emphysema of the lungs and several types of cancer, including that of the lung and heart. Sweet potatoes are high in beta carotene, which the liver converts to vitamin A. So if you breathe in a lot of smoke, your lungs will be in better shape if you can replenish your body with copious vitamin A. Read more if you don’t believe me.

As if this superhuman super-vegetable quality wasn’t enough, the sweet potato also is also a good source of copper, dietary fiber, vitamin B6, potassium, and iron, and an even better source of vitamin C and manganese.

Are you ready for more?
The beta carotenes in sweet potatoes make these root vegetables a high souce of antioxidants, which boost the immune system.

Should I keep going?
A food containing anti-inflammatory nutrients, sweet potatoes are also very healthy for those with asthma and rheumatoid arthritis.

Wait! There’s more!
It hasn’t been proven yet, but there are studies being done that are exploring the effects of sweet potato on people with diabetes. It is hypothesized that sweet potatoes help stabilize blood sugar levels and lower insulin resistance.

Enabling my smoker friends (as well as smokers around the world) to live longer is Plan A for reaching sainthood status. If it doesn’t work, fear not, I have a back-up plan:

I will write a catchy, rhyming song to promote the new packaged deal. The melody will ring through the ears of the nation, and everyone will want to sing along, and then the whole country will be singing the same song all at once and it will be so inspiring that all my smoker friends will want to live longer so that they can keep singing the song forever and ever, so then they will all quit smoking and proclaim me a saint. I also hope that they will all give me a percentage of what they would have spent on cigarettes for the rest of their lives, and then I will be a rich saint, because those are the best kind.



Coconut-Braised Short Ribs and Sweet Potatoes
(because beef is better for you than smoking)
~a Fancy Toast original recipe

Ingredients:
3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
2 lb. short ribs, bone-in
1 large onion, chopped coarsely
4 cloves garlic, chopped
2 tablespoons ginger, chopped or grated
1 stick lemongrass, cut lengthwise and smashed with the end of a knife
1 tablespoon crushed red pepper flakes

2 15 oz. cans coconut milk (you can use low-fat if you like)
1/2 cup orange juice
2 cups chicken broth
1 handful cilantro stems, bundled together in cheesecloth or in a teaball

3 sweet potatoes, cut into 1” cubes
1 handful of cilantro leaves

salt and pepper

Directions:
Preheat oven to 300 degrees Farenheit.

Pat the short ribs dry with a paper towel. Rub salt and pepper into all sides of the meat.
In a Dutch oven, heat 2 tablespoons of the oil over medium-high heat. Brown the short ribs, taking care not to crowd the ribs or else they will not brown properly. Do in 2 batches if necessary.
Remove the ribs from the heat and set aside (the lid of the Dutch oven works perfectly for this…it’s going to get dirty anyway, right?)

Heat the remaining tablespoon of oil. Add the onions and let soften for a few minutes. Add the garlic, ginger, lemongrass, and pepper, and cook until the garlic is fragrant.
Place the short ribs and any accumulated juices back in the Dutch oven, nestling them in one layer, if possible. Add the coconut milk and the orange juice. Add the chicken broth, until the broth is just barely covering the meat. If you don’t use all of the chicken broth, that’s fine. If you need more liquid, add more chicken broth or water.
Place the cilantro stems into the broth.

Cover the Dutch oven and place in the oven. After ten minutes, check the liquid and make sure that it is not bubbling too aggressively. If it is at more than a gentle simmer, turn the heat down.

Cook for thirty minutes. Add the sweet potatoes and cook for about another hour, until the meat and the potatoes are tender.

Remove the cilantro stems from the broth, ladle into individual bowls, and garnish with cilantro leaves.

Polenta Flipbook

Flipbook Instructions:

Print out the following photographs.
Use scissors to cut along the edge of each picture.
Stack the photographs into a booklet, making sure to maintain the same order as shown below.
Holding the lower left corner of the booklet with your left hand, use your right thumb to flip the pages quickly from front to back.
Watch the polenta in action, prepared like they used to in the countryside of Northern Italy!



Place a marble slab on the countertop.







Pour hot polenta over the marble slab and spread out evenly.





Spread it good, polenta man.


















Spoon the topping over the polenta.
























Sprinkle with parmesan shavings.

Painstakingly wait for polenta to harden from the coolnes of the marble slab. Sip wine and pretend to flirt with polenta man, but really, all you can think about is polenta.







The polenta has now cooled enough to be sliced into individual pieces.











Mmmmmmmmmm.
Thanks, polenta man.

Behold the polenta at Enoteca Roma, a restaurant and wine bar that prides itself on its rustic preparation of polentaria. The dish is assembled in front of you, and you can literally see the polenta hardening on the marble slab while you wait for it to cool. The main course served atop my polenta was salsiccia e funghi, a savory mixture of crimini mushrooms and sausage...soon I will need to go back soon to taste the corvara (venison Bolognese and parmigiano) and quattro formaggi (Letizia's four-cheese sauce).

Although I do not consider myself a very good tinkerer in the kitchen (generally I need a recipe), I am considering a serious attempt to tinker away and try this technique out at home.

In the meantime, while you wait for me to figure out a decent recipe and post it, visit Enoteca Roma and taste their polenta. You might even see me there. I would be the one sneaking out the door with my new marble slab. Sssssshhh, don't tell polenta man.

Enoteca Roma
2144-2166 W. Division St.
Chicago, IL 60622
773.342.1011