Fancy Toast Personality Quiz (Sort Of)

Cassoulet on A Slice of Bread

There are two types of people in this world, and you can tell who is who by what they do with the fat that rises to the surface of a cooled stew on its second day.

The first type of person peers inside the pot and says, “Ew.” She then takes a slotted spoon, scoops off the fat, and discards it.
The second type of person shrugs and says, “Yum.” He heats up the stew and stirs the fat right back in.

Oh, and there is actually is a third type of person. The type who opens the lid of the pot, jumps for joy and exclaims, “MEAT BUTTER!”
She proceeds to grab a hunk of bread, slather it with meat butter, and happily devour it, smearing enough of the fatty goodness on her mouth and lips that she doesn’t need to use chapstick for the rest of the month.

Well, I suppose there is a fourth type of person, who makes a lean, healthy stew that doesn’t really have any fat.
And maybe there’s a fifth type of person who doesn’t ever make stew.

So that narrows it down. There are five types of people in the world, and all of the people on our beautiful planet can be categorized according to their feelings about fat upon the surface of a cold stew. Which one are you?

I am the third one. The gross one. Yes, I ate fat and I liked it. No, not fat...meat butter. And it was delicious. And if you came to my house, and I handed you a slice of home-baked bread with a lovely sienna-colored spread on it, and said, “Welcome. I made you a delicious meat butter,” I bet you would eat it and like it too, because you wouldn’t want me to cry. Even if you thought it was gross. But you wouldn’t think it was gross, because you wouldn't know what it was until after you had eaten it and proclaimed your love for meat butter and also, your friend, me.

Meat Butter (with beans). Doesn't it look good?

Recipe for Meat Butter on Bread
Here is the part where I usually post the recipe. But I’m not going to, because the recipe for the pictured cassoulet is pages and pages long, and honestly, if you’re going to make a cassoulet, you’re probably not going to take the recipe from a food blog that has had about 3 posts in as many years.
So.
Make a stew with at least one type of fatty meat. In this case, I used bacon, pork shoulder and chicken thighs.
Put stew in refrigerator overnight until fat rises to the surface and hardens.
Bake or buy a loaf of bread.
Smear meat butter (along with some stew) on a slice of bread.
Offer to a friend.

Getting Greens Into Her Diet.

Greens?

That looks like ice cream to me.

But it’s GREEN ice cream.

Basil ice cream!

That counts as a vegetable serving, right?

Yes it does, shut up. And make it. And then feed it to your toddler who won’t eat her vegetables.

(Even if you don’t count basil ice cream as a vegetable serving, you should still make it, because David Lebovitz made it and he is an ice cream genius and this ice cream is delicious. Come on, if a toddler will eat it, you know it has to be good. OK, so maybe this toddler eats ants off the floor, perhaps disqualifying her from becoming the next Gael Greene protégée, but who knows, some people think ants are delicacies, and maybe David Lebovitz should figure out a way to make ice cream out of them so I can feed it to my toddler and she can get a little more protein along with her greens.)

Basil Ice Cream

From The Perfect Scoop, by David Lebovitz

• 1 cup packed basil leaves
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 heavy cream
• 1 cup whole milk
• Pinch of salt
• 5 large egg yolks
• 1 lemon, preferably organic

Using a food processor or blender, grind the basil leaves, sugar, and one cup of the cream until the leaves are ground as finely as possible. Pour half of the mixture into a large bowl and add the remaining cup of cream. Place a fine-mesh sieve on top of the bowl.

Warm the milk, salt and the rest of the basil mixture in a medium saucepan. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks. Slowly pour the warmed basil mixture into the eggs, whisking continuously. Then scrape the combined egg and basil mixture back into the saucepan.

Stir the mixture constantly over medium heat with a heatproof spatula, scraping the bottom as you stir, until the mixture thickens into a custard and coats the back of the spatula. Pour the custard through the sieve and stir it into the cream. Zest the lemon directly into the custard, and stir the custard over an ice bath until cool.

Chill the mixture in the refrigerator (this usually takes a few hours), then freeze according to your ice maker’s instructions.

Alice Sucks at Jenga

Just a little glimpse into what Alice and I are doing these days when we're stuck inside the house waiting for springtime...

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.)