Local beef brisket receives the house cure at Bluegrass Kitchen. A cartoon smoke curlicue wraps itself around the awnings, wafting, wending, wisping it’s way from the local bacon smokehouse. It wouldn’t surprise me if the eggs were walked over by the neighborhood chickens, hand-crafted baskets tucked under their wings.
Take me back to Keeley Steele’s oil cloth, bumpy brick, pressed tin, paint luscious, velvet sauced paradise of textures.
Posted in Sandwiches, West Virginia
Tagged Bluegrass Kitchen, Keeley Steele, West Virginia
A taste of summer, summer, summer, summer, tasting much sweeter than wine.
Country bread
I lie in bed
Basil Pesto
With the solstice manifesto.
Olive oil
Longer days uncoil
Fresh mozzarella
Promising shorter stellar,
Tomato slices
Spiked light enticers,
Lettuce leaves
And warm day sheaves.
Photo by Renee Comet, Styling by Yours Truly
Posted in Recipes, Sandwiches, Thanksgiving
Tagged Pesto, Renee Comet, Turkey Sandwich
Watershed moment at The Lunch Encounter. A recipe.
Do we need any more recipes? No we do not. That said, I’m feeling strong about posting this one.
Last Thanksgiving I was thinking about the ubiquitous turkey-cranberry sauce-stuffing sandwich and had an aha moment.
Do you like that stuffing in the sandwich? I do not, although the taste is good. What we need here is my brilliant idea – Stuffing Bread! I’m so excited about this that I can’t shut up. Toss a turkey leg into a crowd and you will hit one of my victims. Poor thing had to listen to me gaggle on and on and on about my brilliant idea.
Last year Thanksgiving and the leftover turkey got away from me. Stuffing bread was back-burnered. This year however – woo hoo – we did it. I’m all puffed up like the Tom himself.
Tell you what, stuffing bread is brilliant. I think so anyhow. Here’s how to make it yourself.
Stuffing Bread
Makes 2 9×5-inch loaves
2 cups finely diced celery, about 4 ribs
2 cups finely diced yellow onion, about 1 large
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
(This picture is only enough for one loaf. You will need double of everything for the full recipe.)
Put the butter, onion and celery into a medium sauté pan and set over low heat. Stir to coat the vegetables evenly with butter, then let cook slowly until very soft, about 10 minutes. A little browning is okay, but watch that they don’t get dark.
1 quart unsalted turkey or chicken stock, 1/4 cup set aside
Add the stock to the vegetables, turn the heat to high and bring the stock to a boil. Let boil until the liquid has reduced to what looks like 2 cups. It need not be exact, but it must be 2 cups or less, not more. Remove from heat and pour into a liquid (glass pitcher style) measuring cup. Add cold water to make 2 cups, if needed. Let the mixture cool until it is tepid.
2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley
1 tablespoon minced fresh sage
1 tablespoon minced fresh thyme
Add the herbs to the stock mixture.
1 package active dry yeast (I like Hodgson Mill Fast Rise)
1 teaspoon sugar
Put the reserved 1/4 cup stock into a small bowl, add the yeast and sugar and stir until the yeast is completely wet. Set aside for 5 minutes.
5 cups all-purpose white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
Put 4 cups white flour, 1 cup whole wheat flour, the stock mixture and the yeast mixture into the bowl of the standing mixer. Using the hook attachment, blend until a dough begins to form. Add the remaining cup of flour and let it spin for a minute or so. The dough should be soft and not sticky.
This can all be done by hand, too, of course.
Water, as needed
If it is dry, add more water a couple tablespoons at a time.
1 tablespoon salt
Freshly ground pepper, black or white
As the dough is mixing, add salt and a generous grinding of pepper.
Knead the dough, by machine or by hand on a lightly floured surface, until it is smooth and elastic, adjusting with flour or water if necessary.
Butter a bowl, put the dough in it, cover with a tea towel and set in a warm place to rise for about an hour. It should double in size.
When it is twice its original size, punch the dough down. If you have time, cover it again and let it rise a second time. If not, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and shape it into two loaves, pinching any seams together tightly.
Grease two 9×5-inch loaf pans and set the dough in them, seam side down. Cover with the tea towel and let the dough rise again until it is almost double.
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.
Bake the loaves in the center of the oven for 10 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees F and bake for about 30 more minutes. The bread should be nicely browned and sound hollow when you tap on the top.
Let cool on a rack. Turn out and let cool completely before slicing.
There. Hap hap happy. We dignified that bird.
Posted in Recipes, Sandwiches, Thanksgiving
Tagged Baking Bread, Baking with Herbs, Cranberry Sauce, Stuffing Bread, Thanksgiving, Turkey Sandwich
Thanksgiving 2012 has come and gone. I just pitched the last squirrel-ravaged hubbard squash off the porch. Reflecting back now, as a mental model train hums “Christmas Time Is Here” on a continuous track.
Before you can build a better turkey sandwich, you have to build a better turkey. And cook it better. Chris Kimball, of America’s Test Kitchen, is in the business, and as-close-to-pleasure-as-he-gets, of cooking a better anything.
Perfect turkey is on a lot of minds this time of year. Maybe you eat a Thanksgiving feast reprised on December 25. If not, squirrel this away for next November.
Strap on your aprons and ride the NPR train with me for a few minutes. Listen to, and look at the making of,
Comfort And Joy: Making The ‘Morning Edition’ Julia Child Thanksgiving.
Carolyn and I shopped, cooked, labeled, packed and hauled for a couple days ahead. You wouldn’t know it from the pristine looks of Joyce Goldstein’s gorgeous sunny kitchen. That’s the idea. Smoke and mirrors, people, even for the limelight eschewing radio.
Styling for radio? Dat’s right. Blast and a half. Damn fine turkey, too. Would it ever make a good sandwich.
AIGA DC kindly invited me to present at their PechaKucha, When Lightning Strikes, and I did. What a joy to stand up and talk about something other than food or food styling.
A PechaKucha is a twenty slide presentation done in five minutes. 20 slides = 20 seconds/slide. Practicing I tried, with little success. Generally, by the time I reached my point, the slide was long gone. Those who know me, know HOW MUCH I talk. So, as geeky as I knew it would look, I held notes and made a stab at reading as the slides whizzed by. What a laugh. Look at the slide, look at my notes, look at the audience, spout nonsense and repeat. Twenty times. What a joy. It was FUN.
All the presentations were wild and inspiring and varied. Can we do it again??
Here are my geeky notes, with most of the images. My social networking guru suggested I run about five slides, that that would be plenty. Did I listen? Nope. Scroll down fast and read fast. If you have the interest, it will only take five minutes. Or less if you rush. Recommended.
1 ARTHUR ASHE
When I need a shot in the arm I think of what Arthur Ashe said about the beauty and bounty of our limitations. “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” Remembering that reminds me that tending my own garden is more than enough, that what I have is incredibly abundant, and that my contribution is ample and then some.
2 MADISON, WI
That’s where I’m from and where I go to daydream when I need a good escape fantasy. That’s where I am my best self and my instincts are most pure and free. Midwestern, between two lakes, an anything goes kinda town.
3 MODERN TEXTILES
I admit it, I’m domestic. Love the touch of fabric and yarn. The thrill of beginning. The beauty and precision of construction. The repetition of stitches. Making stuff. I just love making stuff. Dumb small stuff. Out of anything. But especially out of beautifully designed fabrics.
4 STREET FASHION
By way of saying, scissors are my favorite tool. Let’s take something we have and make it into something new. It makes me happy to see someone dress expressively. To share happiness is the noblest thing to which we aspire.
5 COOKS
Knowing them, cooking with them, being around them. They’re hard workers and inspire ME to get to work. To dig deep and to work even harder. Knowing the cook puts the meal in context and makes the food taste good to me. Working with cooks – who know what they’re doing – gets me into a transformative groove.
6 GOOD HAIR DAYS/ILLUSION
It’s not what you’ve got when it comes to looks, it’s what you do with it. I’m into the Diana Vreeland version of beauty – imperfect beauty being the most interesting and beautiful of all. I applaud and admire anyone who can get up and get it together over and over and over. Imaginatively.
7 SNOW DAYS
I almost always feel short on time and I know I’m not alone in this. Time is THE most precious commodity. When we get a snow day, playing beat the clock stops, my mind opens up as time becomes liquid and a sense of vastness in the world is renewed. I feel small with lots of space around me to fill with ideas and that is good.
8 DOUG MICHELS, CADILLAC RANCH
Doug Michels, one of the 3 original members of the Ant Farm Collective, died in 2003. He was my friend and the most brilliant and bold human being I have known or expect to know. Media Burn and Cadillac Ranch are two of Doug’s more notorious collaborations. Ideas drove him and he was a lightning rod for visionary people.
9 INDUSTRIAL DESIGN
NATURE/NURTURE
Things that do a job perfectly and look gorgeous while doing it. Whew. Good design inspires me to work better and harder. To strip away anything unnecessary. You gotta be brave to be plain. And to be simply utilitarian.
10 POTENTIAL/POSSIBILITY
I feel blue when a sense of possibility escapes me. Canned Hams in need of TLC excite me. The Highlander Motel is a building and business that I would love to get my hands on. It has the potential to be a fabulous destination and I’d like to be the one to transform it. Transforming anything from what it IS to what it COULD BE gets me going.
11 TWOFER
My son TEDDY and one of my favorite Brancusi
sculptures
A gorgeous head. Asleep! That slows my breathing, speeds my heart and make me think deep thoughts.
Robertson Davies talked about reading deep rather than wide and that made an impression on me. Raising a child keeps me in one place, and reading deep rather than going top speed in a million directions.
12 MARFA, TEXAS
Talk about vastness. And minimalism. Marfa’s got both. I own some land there, a little more fuel for my escape fantasy. Marfa gives me an intense “sense of place”. Donald Judd’s Chinati Foundation and desolate high desert create awe-inspiring contrasts.
13 ANDY GOLDSWORTHY
Is my all-time favorite artist. He uses what is on hand in nature and ordinary stuff is transformed by his sense of order. And then a lot of what he does is gone. Like cooking. Like everything ultimately, actually, if you wait long enough.
14 THE BOTTLE ROCKETS
My favorite band. Need I say more? Midwestern, hard-working, hard-rocking, kinda twangy. They wrote my favorite song, Sometimes Found, which expresses the way I think we all fit in the world, or don’t. When I hear music in the distance, I have an irresistible urge to run towards it.
15 SANDWICHES
I blog. About sandwiches. Sandwiches are simply the conduit for everything in the world. All you need is scraps and imagination. The blog is a vessel for my brain ephemera. A place to put together connections and ideas, words, pictures, people. Sandwiches are a repurposing, upcycling, refashioning food. When I write I’m building a big bad stacked sandwich collage.
16 PATTERNS
They’re everywhere and so pleasing. And funny. Someone spends time designing paper towels. That cracks me up and also warms my heart. Patterns are simultaneously comforting and invigorating for me.
17 SYNCHRONICITY AND CONNECTIONS
Connections, collaborations, repetition and patterns are my emotional skeleton. Here is a sculpture by Ai Wei Wei and a cinnamon construction built to illustrate a story about the healing properties of foods Ordinary objects seen in new ways make me realize that anything can be – and maybe should be – seen in new ways.
18 STORIES
Radio. Where would I be without my radio? Isolated and very lonely. Radio surrounds me and brings me into a vast community.
Stories, context, connections – those are my things in all things. People, food, art, architecture, music… How did you/it/we get here??
19 SMALL SPACES
Small, modern prefabs fill me with lust, which is in itself inspiring. These two are so efficient and so beautiful. Also, anything reduced to the essential blows me away. In Einstein’s words, “As simple as possible but no simpler.”
20 FOUND ART/BEING BETWEEN
Here’s my dad and my son – I live between them, my history and my future. And I think we almost always live in between. In between what life was/is and what life could be. While we’re here we have to keep our eyes open. A vision here from my history –oddly hung, anachronistic telephones, and a peek into my future – my son’s fantasy doodles.
I have been set straight. Thank Saint Earl-of-Wich I lived long enough to see improvements on these essential quotidian tasks.
Other things I am doing wrong:
1. Putting on nylon stockings. My mother always put on a pair of white cotton gloves before slipping her foot into a stocking and shimmying it up her leg. I don’t have any white cotton gloves.
2. Um…gee….
That’s it. We must be perfect around here. Please don’t poke any holes in our delusion. That would just be wrong.
Posted in BLTs, Peanut Butter and Jelly
Item #02-2719136 Chef’n Panini Spatula
Williams-Sonoma says: “Wide platform with a slot simplifies slicing then lifting even the largest sandwiches.”
Price: $19.95
Notes from Drew: ZOMG THIS SANDWICH IS SO LARGE! I can’t possibly lift it using only my hands or a common spatula. If only someone out there would invent a unique tool that would allow me to lift my panini and then transfer it to a plate. I’m not just gonna pick it up myself, like a DOG. There’s hot gruyere in that sandwich! It could burn.
By the way, you should know that any kitchen utensil designed specifically for one kind of food or meal is essentially useless: a panini spatula, a fondue pot, a steak tartare fork. Unless you plan on eating raclette four days a week, you don’t need any of that s**t.
Holy Macaroni, Mac + Cheesewich Strikes Again!
Between-bread critical mass.
Tried to tell you it was a thing. Thing, as in, thing being an epically benign word for a cataclysmically crackin’ happenin’. The mac and cheese sandwich.
Occurring across borders. Inter and intra-incidents.
THE PINNACLE (see above)!: Big A** Sandwiches
You saw it HERE!: Heister’s
THERE!: Watchung Delicatessen
And EVERYWHERE!: It’s a Thing Hotdogs
So, yeah, you don’t have to take it from just me. Not from little old lonely macaroni me. Nope.
Between
Enough behind and enough ahead
To know where you’re going and where you have been
Don’t think too fast or sleep too deep
Keep track of your dogs and mind your sheep
Look straight ahead and watch your back
Read the signs and lay good track
With sky above, concrete below
Cash on hand, more yes than no
He is between, as he was born. Not to get too existential, but aren’t we all?
I feel that I’m always behind, always late, a chronic case of “it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place.” A curse that could be lifted with a simple flip of the brain switch. My emotional clock could be, or might have been, perpetually punctual. That clock, however is more like a sundial, made of stone, immovable, locked and loaded through years of training.
“Mom,” he said at about age 7, after he learned to tell time. “It’s never the time that the clock says, it is always becoming the next time.” For him there is hope. His clock is liquid.
Posted in Poetry, Toast Poast
eanutbutter and 
ickles
From KG-in-a-
inch
Thought about you the other day: the NY Times had a write up in the food section about 
eanut butter & bread & butter 
ickle sandwiches. That is the one 
ickle I do like. Karin and my dog Mitchell were out of town all weekend seeing her mom in Roanoke. Kept telling myself – since I had all the ingredients – I was going to try this out. Kept chickening out.
My (used to be) aversion to 
ickles was 1.) thought 
erfectly fine cucumbers were messed with & 2.) (back when I would do McDonald’s – thought it was nervy of them to assume everyone wanted 
ickles on the cheeseburgers. Having quit smoking a couple of years ago find my 
alette has expanded. Such adventure ahead!
The verdict is in: Skippy Extra Crunchy w/ bread & butter 
ickles on lightly toasted French bread = 100% winner!
Your encouragement was very helpful making this dive into the gastronomic unknown…..
Sandwich Monday: The PB&Pby Ian Chillag
NPR – October 29, 2012
The Peanut Butter & Pickle Sandwich dates back to the Great Depression. It’s great if you’re transported back in time to 1930 and you forget to bring Powerbars, or, say, if you’re stuck in your house with limited pantry options as a big hurricane heads your way. The New York Times says the PB&P is “a thrifty and unacknowledged American classic.”
Ian: As New York Times endorsed sandwiches go, this is way better than the Paul Krugwich.
Robert: It’s a weird combination. It’s a bad sign when even pregnant women won’t eat it.
Ian: The reason the Peanut Butter & Pickle sandwich was popular in the Great Depression was because people didn’t have money for the more traditional sandwich, the Anything & Anything Else.
Leah: Yeah. This pairs great with a nice shoelace and mule hoof stew.
Eva: This was part of FDR’s New Deal program to get unemployed pickles back to work.
Ian: Wow. It’s not bad. I haven’t been this surprised by a sandwich since that White Castle slider came to life and begged us to stop eating it.
Robert: Reese’s, are you listening? America wants a Pickle Butter Cup.
Eva: I always thought mixing peanut butter and pickles was lethal…or maybe that’s bleach and ammonia. Can’t remember.
Ian: Subbing in pickles is like having Tebow come off the bench. By that I mean pickles are bad at football.
[The verdict: surprisingly not bad. The pickles provide a nice texture and sweetness. That said, no one wanted more.]
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The Lunch Encounter 
