Ever since we moved into our new house I’ve wanted to have a dinner party, but I had no dining room chairs and every room was filled with cardboard boxes spilling out into the hallways. The list of people I was promising to invite to this imagined dinner party kept growing, while my prospects of actually having it were not. At long last, I acquired dining room chairs, and slowly but surely the cardboard boxes morphed into novel things like couches and coffee tables. Virtually all of our furniture is from Ikea, and while I am still enamored with the mountains of accessible design they have to offer, suffice to say, they confuse their orders often, and some things are blood vessel popping annoying to put together. That said, a lot of it is really easy and satisfying to assemble, and if you are particularly crafty with things like hammers and screws, the furnitures is easily modifiable. I, however, am not particularly handy with those things. But if you are, check out Ikea Hacker. Honestly, you don’t even have to be that handy, just motivated.

I digress from Ikea back to the topic of partying, dinner partying. Last Sunday, after spending days creating an overly ambitious menu, I had my first dinner party in our new abode with eight of our most favoritest friends (though one of my uber-favorites couldn’t make as she was diligently working on a paper). My friends brought beer, helped me with the dishes, and praised me like I so desperately need. After dinner, when there were eight chairs pushed back from our little table that is really only made for six and everyone was congregating on our front porch, my home finally felt gezellig, which is a Dutch word that is difficult to translate into English. It can be best captured in an amalgamation of the words cozy, delightful, and friendly. It is a word for an atmosphere or vibe of satisfying social interaction. Think warm yellow light, an early spring night, a porch full of your favorite friends, bellies full of fennel stuffed pork, truffled polenta with shiitake mushrooms, and roasted asparagus, and glasses full of beer and wine respectively. That’s the best definition of gezellig I can think of.

Pictured above are two out of the three hors d’oeurvres that I made, Bon Appetit’s asparagus tart with soppressata, ricotta, and comte cheese on puff pastry, Stilton and dalmatian fig spread on sea salt and olive oil crackers, and (not pictured, sadly, as they were eaten before they could be immortalized) roasted roma tomato spread with Humboldt fog cheese on rosemary crackers. This is the second time I have made the asparagus tart and it has been most excellent each time. This time I split my sheet of puff pastry in two and made one tart with the salami and one without, as we had a vegetarian in our midst. I also vegetarianized the roasted yellow pepper and roasted tomato soup by using “no chicken broth”, and the soup turned out wonderful. I think it was everyone’s favorite. Besides, it looks fancy, and that always makes things taste better, right? I served the two soups in the same bowl, carefully poured to result in the effect you see below, with a dollop of spicy serrano creme fraiche. As mentioned above I served a pork loin stuffed with fennel as the main course, it was good but next time I would try this recipe.

Prince, Joy Division, and The Jesus and Mary Chain were played, all the beer and wine was drank, and I think the last of our friends left around 3:00 AM. The evening ended in drunken conversations about kombucha and how we should hang our poster of Prince in the shower over our guest bathroom sink instead of a mirror.

Oysters are important–they taste like the ocean, like the dumb mouths of fish going open, close, open, close, and sand in my sheets at night. They taste like a briny vastness, like sex and fresh air. The first time I had oysters on the half shell was when I was seventeen years old and in New Orleans for the first time. It was at Felix’s Oyster Bar on the corner of Bourbon and Iberville, and the sun was sharp and golden in that early September kind of way. A broad black man with one gold tooth mixed a special cocktail sauce in a white paper dixie cup. It consisted of ketchup, horseradish, bourbon, Tabasco, Crystal hot sauce, salt, and pepper–and all of it piled on slick oyster flesh atop a saltine cracker. It made my nose water and my eyes burn, like any good cocktail sauce should, and I washed it all down with Mexican beer and lime. New Orleans, which I called home for four years, and oysters are inextricably intertwined for me, and I am as enamored with oysters as I remain enamored with New Orleans, which still feels like home in a way. Oysters, like New Orleans, are visceral and raw (at least they should be unless we are talking po-boys or Rockefeller). Something about the bed of crushed ice that the misshapen shells sit on, the tiny oyster forks, mixing my own hot sauce, the crinkle of cellophane wrapped crackers, and the sea grit in my mouth makes me feel like I am participating in the universe.

When we aren’t feeling lazy E and I ride our bikes down the river walk to a place called “The Boat House” for oysters on the half shell, if we are lucky this is on a Monday, when the oysters are half price. It’s a pretty bourgie place, full of bud light drinkers and buttons ups, but they have a deck that looks out onto the sunset over the river and delicious, albeit diminutive, Bloody Marys. In addition to oysters and Bloody Mary’s they have the best grilled okra I have ever had the pleasure of eating. It’s no Felix’s, but the river almost almost makes up for the fact that it isn’t New Orleans.

The breakfasts continue! I have come to the realization that neglecting that espresso machine was a horrible thing to do. I did not realize that I virtually have a coffee bar sitting on my kitchen counter. I plan on drinking espresso until my heart explodes from all the caffeine. It is so delicious, and it’s easy now that the machine has forgiven me for my neglect. I think it understands that marriage brings so many wonderful and bulky appliances into one’s life that I could hardly have been expected to begin using them all at once. I have slowly been phasing my appliances into my life, but my crock pots (yes, plural, a baby one and big one) have yet to see the light day, though I often plan on using them. The thing about a crock pot is it takes all the fun out of cooking, and you have to plan ahead which is not a strong suit of mine. Not a strong suit at all.

I woke up this morning feeling more than a little hung over. Luciano was feeling magnanimous last night during closing, and I greedily drank at least half a bottle of wine whilst setting up my tables. Once home, E and I bonded over a hastily imbibed magnum of cheap Pinot Grigio. Needless to say, a headache was in order this morning. I’m still not feeling perky, but I don’t think perky is anything I’ve ever felt. Poor E had to get up for work this morning, so I really don’t have much room to complain. Not only that, but having no time for breakfast at home, he (much to my chagrin) ate Krystal for breakfast. I always drive past the Krystal billboard advertising their “Scramblers” or whatever they are called, and I always say to myself “Who the hell eats that shit?”. Well, my husband apparently. /sigh I suppose that barring me getting up at 6:45 (ha!) to make him breakfast, there isn’t much I can do about it. On top of the icky Krystal breakfast, which I’m sure did nothing but compound his hang over, he then was taken to a greasy buffet for lunch. Sad. I’ve promised him a healthy dinner of tilapia, polenta, and swiss chard to counter balance his day of eww. That said, while he was texting me from the dismal buffet, I was making myself an espresso and Herb Baked Eggs from Ina Garten’s Barefoot in Paris. Life isn’t fair.

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I just got ramekins at the aforementioned trip to World Market, and this was the perfect opportunity to use them. I think lack of ramekins was the only reason this recipe has never graced my table before. Aside from a mild butter spatter mishap when broiling the butter these were easy, and my hang over found them very agreeable. I didn’t have any cream (not true, I had cream with an expiration date of March 11…) and wasn’t really looking to add more fat to them anyway, so I did without. I also only made the recipe for one (the loneliest number, sniff), and I only used two eggs, not three, because three eggs is a lot of food. I also sprinkled them with fleur de sel (which I’m addicted to lately) as opposed to the regular kosher salt I normally use. I think that fleur de sel is a clincher for eggs. This meal was made complete with a side of Sunday Morning…

ps. I am a big fan of the Barefoot Contessa cookbooks and recommend getting every single one. The same goes for The Velvet Underground’s records. ^^

I am not a natural breakfast eater, despite the fact that I’m thoroughly aware of the benefits of regular breakfast consumption. Breakfast usually seems like an unnecessary prelude to the real food, lunch. Lunch is Reuben’s and enchiladas and bowls of soup, breakfast is cold cereal and yogurt, neither of which repulse me but neither of which thrill me in the way that sandwiches do. I will inevitably do an entire post singing the praises of sandwiches.

Recently however, I have embraced breakfast, though my breakfast is usually sometime around noon, due to my terrible terrible sleeping habits. But it is morning to me and breakfast none the less. The first breakfast I had this week was a particularly ambitious one of Live! Raw! Foods! I am a very big fan of kombucha and despite the lack of recorded scientific evidence to back up its claimed health benefits, I feel good about drinking it. I have considered making my own kombucha, but given that kombucha has a great potential to be most unpalatable due to the strong taste of vinegar, I stick with the store bought variety. So, with the happy knowledge that I was ingesting a myriad of probiotics, this was my first breakfast in what I hoped to be a new found love of breakfast at large.

Feeling far too healthy, the next day I made Soft Scrambled Eggs with Fresh Ricotta and Chives.

I used two eggs from local producers Sequatchie Cove, fresh chives, and Natural by Nature Ricotta. I served them over two French baguette rounds with a little bit of fleur de sel. This was an exceedingly easy recipe, and all in all the entire preparation of them took maybe ten minutes. As delicious as this breakfast was, the previous probiotic rich breakfast left me with much higher self-esteem.

The third breakfast this week, today’s breakfast of espresso and a stroop waffle, was more of an exercise in nostalgia than cooking or nutrition. I utilized our much neglected espesso machine, at least neglected by me, though not by E., who often makes coffee with the more pleb side of the machine. I guess it’s a lot like the treadmill in the basement, which is also paid lots of attention by E. and is sadly neglected by me. Oh the poor machines.

I digress. After cursing the stupid machine for not making espresso on my first try, I recalled that I had neglected to put any water in. After putting water in, the machine spitefully still refused to make espresso for reasons unknown to me. Finally, after much waiting, thick black coffee dribbled out of the two spouts (inexplicably, as I expressly stated to the machine that I was only making one cup). Luckily, my one cup was able to catch both streams, resulting in a delicious double shot. In addition to not being much of a breakfast person, I am also not much of a coffee drinker. This is not due to a lack of love for coffee, which I have, but to the fact that any amount of caffeine makes me twitchy in a most unpleasant, anxious way. Generally decaf is all I will imbibe, but I braved caffeine this morning, namely due to a lack of decaf espresso beans (which just seems wrong anyway).

While on espresso I want to ask: why in god’s name to do so many people insist on calling it “expresso”? Why the hell do they do it? Because it makes you go fast? Nothing irks me more. Well, lots of things irk me more, but when I hear a server offering someone a cup of “expresso” all I can do is /facepalm. However, I seem to be alone in this, as most people I work with seem to think this is completely acceptable. Am I wrong? Is this an alternative and canonized word for espresso? Is it a southernism? Please, let me know if I am in the wrong here, but in the mean time I’m going to assume I am totally correct.

I chose a prized stroop waffle to accompany my espresso, which I had recently purchased (along with many other hard to find foreign food treasures) at a trip to World Market with my mom. I have spent long stints in the Netherlands off and on since I was 17 and the stroop waffles at tea time were my absolute favorite, and I miss them sorely. One can imagine my excitement upon discovering them right here in Tennessee. I put on The Books: The Lemon of Pink, and prepared to eat my breakfast in sublime peace, but that was not to be as our puppy, Moses, took to ramming his head into the side of the table for the duration of my meal. Puppy induced table quakes aside, it was a soothing breakfast.

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= breakfast of champions

Breakfast in general makes me feel like I’m about to do something important, which is generally not the case, but I like the feeling and plan to continue creating and consuming breakfast for the time being.

My favorite pasta, currently and by far, is orecchiette, i.e. “little ears” of Puglian origin. The relatively dense, roughly hewn domes hold sauce well and have an excellent toothiness to them. The first time I had it was at Boccaccia, a local restaurant here in Chattanooga, TN which also happens to be my current place of employment. The owner, Luciano, despite having a penchant for all at once being elated and minutes later infuriated, has mind blowing recipes. He serves his Orechiette in a sauce of Italian sausage, roasted red peppers, and goat cheese. That meager description does not do it justice. It is amazing; I want to eat it every day, and I virtually can because I pay half price for it. That said, as pleased as I was with my creation, it still did not touch Luciano’s recipe (as prepared by Oscar, our wonderful chef). The worst part is Luciano would give me that recipe over his dead body, if I had to guess, which I don’t.

That said, Green Life (Chattanooga’s very own pay check devouring organic grocery) carries these rustic brown boxes of it that conjure images of a bucolic Tuscan kitchen covered in a fine patina of flour. On numerous occasions I have put a box in my basket only to put it back on the shelf citing expense and the hip expanding evils of pasta. However, this past Thursday, after sitting in the parking lot for half an hour looking through the cookbooks I’d brought along, I still couldn’t find anything that excited me enough to cook it for dinner. I finally decided, after much deliberation, to do my own version of Bon Appetit’s “Penne with Greens, Olives, and Feta” (The recipe on Epicurious.com says “Penne with Green Olives and Feta” but this makes no sense as it calls for kalamata… I call typo!) The basis of greens, pasta, olives, and cheese served as the inspiration for the following dish.

Obviously, the first of these creative liberties was taken with the pasta, and I finally treated myself to an over-priced box of artisan orecchiette. It was very exciting. Not wanting to deprive E. of meat, I purchased two modestly sized boneless, skinless chicken breasts to add to the mix. Instead of feta, I bought crumbled Montrachet goat cheese which I thought would be a better foil for the salty olives. I chose swiss chard as my green, as it was looking particularly sexy that day.

Once home I roughly chopped a mix of Picholine and Kalamata olives and roasted some pine nuts (about 7 minutes at 375). I have a giant bag of pine nuts in my freezer which my Aunt Brenda graciously brought me from one of her pilgrimages to the nearest Cosco in Huntsville, Alabama, thus I use them at every opportunity, or at least I should. I made the garlic, lemon zest, and Italian parsley mixture as per the recipe. First I cooked my greens, intending to cook the pasta in the same water, but being rainbow chard, it turned the water a lively shade of magenta. Fearing that my prized orecchiette would come out pink, I dumped the water and boiled a fresh pot for the pasta. The chicken was given the olive oil, kosher salt, and fresh cracked pepper treatment before meeting it’s fate in my Le Crueset grill pan. The cooking of the chicken produced great billows of smoke which necessitated the opening of all the windows and E.’s futile flapping of the back door. Smoke not withstanding, the chicken turned out perfect. After the pasta was cooked, after about 16 minutes, I drained it, added the cooked greens, 2 tbs. of olive oil (three sounded like a lot to me), about half a cup of goat cheese (loves me some goat cheese), the sliced grilled chicken, olives, and roasted pine nuts. I tossed it all together until the goat cheese formed a creamy sauce. I then sprinkled the pasta with the parsley, lemon zest, and garlic mixture, a bit of fleur de sel, and yet more goat cheese. The above and below pictures are the result. It was rad.