Goodbye Is the Hardest Part

We have all kinds of relationships in our lives...but a theatre director's relationship with a longtime stage manager?

Priceless.

For those who don't know what a stage manager does, it is the person who takes all the blocking notes, keeps the director on schedule, is the primary contact for the the designers (sound, costumes, lights, props) and, when the show opens, has the primary responsibility for making sure that it runs right and on time--and those are just the common duties.  The director hands the show over on the day it opens. 

It's a terrifying thing, or would be if I haven't been fortunate enough to have a small handful of stage managers who I also consider good friends and confidantes.

My friend Erika first stage managed for me when I directed my first professional show, Deathtrap, in 2007.  I would trust her with just about anything, and never had a second's hesitation about handing a show over to her on opening.  I've lost track of how many shows we've done together, but Sandy, the head of our local semiprofessional theatre company, calls us "the Dynamic Duo."

Eeks, it sounds like I'm eulogizing her, doesn't it?  It's not that.  Erika is heading off to a four-year program at a Russian Orthodox seminary to become a counselor.  She moves to Kodiak Island later this week.

It's a perfect fit of a profession for her, and I wish her all the best. 

David and I had Erika and Sandy over to dinner this past Sunday to say our goodbyes, or at least our "farewell for nows."  It was a lovely dinner, but of course bittersweet since we will really miss Erika.

For a first course, we served the Barefoot Contessa's salad with phyllo-wrapped goat cheese.  It's a stunning salad, even if my phyllo purses were not quite as pretty as the ones in the cookbook.  Make sure you serve the salad when the purses are fresh out of the oven.

Summer Salad with Phyllo Purses

Adapted from Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics by Ina Garten

8 sheets frozen phyllo dough, defrosted

8 tbsp. unsalted butter, melted

6 oz. log goat cheese

Baby salad greens (I used a spring mix, about 2 oz. greens per person)

2 1/2 tsp. champagne vinegar

1 tsp. coarse Dijon mustard

1 clove garlic, finely minced

1 tsp. kosher salt, plus more for serving

1/2 tsp. fresh-ground black pepper

1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.  To prepare the phyllo purses, unroll the dough and set aside only what you need to use.  Cover the dough with a very lightly damp dishtowel--I ruined a couple of sheets of dough by using a towel that was too damp.



Trust me, they look so much better when browned.

Spread out one sheet of phyllo on a cutting board and brush all over with the melted butter.  Repeat with the remaining sheets of phyllo--you will want four sheets stacked on top of each other.  Cut the dough stack in half crosswise.

Cut the goat cheese log into discs about 1/4 inch thick.  Place two in the center of each phyllo section, then bring the sides of the phyllo square up to wrap around it.  The Barefoot Contessa compares it to wrapping a circular gift--you'll want to crimp together the top as much as you can, and get the dough as tight as possible around the bottom of each phyllo purse.

Repeat with the remaining phyllo--you will likely have some leftover goat cheese.

Spritz a small baking sheet or cake pan with nonstick spray and place the phyllo purses on it.  Bake for about twenty minutes, or until the purses are lightly browned.

In the interim, prepare the salad dressing by whisking the vinegar, mustard, garlic, salt and pepper in a small bowl.  Then whisk in the olive oil in a steady stream until the dressing emulsifies.

Place the greens in a salad bowl and toss by hand with a pinch of kosher salt, preferably flaked salt.  Then toss with the dressing until the greens are evenly coated.

Plate the salad with a small amount of dressed greens on one salad and one phyllo purse on the other.

Serves four, but could be easily doubled.

Dazed and Confused

Some weeks I feel like I'm sprinting for Friday, full of energy and purpose.  This week I feel like I'm crawling.

It hasn't been a bad week, just an exhausting one.  Work has been super-busy (not that I'm complaining--better that way than the reverse), and we just blitzed through blocking twenty-four pages of On Golden Pond over the last two nights.

Somehow, David and I have no plans for the next couple of nights.  I'm kind of grateful.  I foresee a long walk in my future tonight, followed by a glass of wine and some of the good cheese here my parents schlepped from one of the Italian markets in St. Louis.

A totally random photo demonstrating what happens if one flops on the

bed in our household.  Ingrid considers you her personal chaise.

David is doing somewhat better after his rib-fracturing bike accident a couple of weeks ago, but he's not up to hiking or other outdoor activity yet, so I also foresee a solo hike in my future this weekend.

We also received the latest CSA box, which includes a bunch of one of my favorite veggies, Swiss chard.  I love the stuff but am forever trying to find new ways to prepare it.

This recipe might win over people who don't particularly like dark leafy greens--it is savory and just slightly cheesy, and it has a terrific combination of tender and crispy bits.  While the original recipe did not call for oiling the pan prior before placing the chard cakes in it, they wanted to stick without it.  I thought it sounded weird not to oil the pan, but who am I to overrule Lidia?  Learn from my mistake.

Crispy Swiss Chard Cakes

Adapted from Lidia's Italy by Lidia Bastianich

1 lb. rainbow chard

2 tbsp. good olive oil

1/2 medium yellow onion, thinly sliced

3/4 tsp. sea salt

1 1/2 tbsp. unsalted butter

1/4 tsp. fresh-ground black pepper

1 cup Parmesan cheese, finely shredded

1 egg yolk, beaten

Wash the chard and trim off the stems, then trim away the central ribs.  You won't be using these for the dish, but they are great slow-cooked with a little broth, oil and garlic.

Bring a large pot of water to boil over high heat, then add the chard leaves.  Continue to let the pot boil for about twenty minutes, or until the chard is tender.  Drain and rinse the chard under cool water, and then finely chop the chard.

Here's the step I can't emphasize enough--squeeze every drop of water you can out of the chard, or the cakes will fall apart. 

Heat a large skillet over medium heat and add the butter.  When it is melted, add the onion and half a teaspoon of salt.  Cook the onion until it turns lightly brown, then add the chard and remaining salt.  Cook another 7-8 minutes, until the butter has all been absorbed.  You will want the chard to be dry but not crispy.

Remove the chard from the skillet and let the skillet cool.  When it is cool enough to handle, wipe it absolutely clean. 

When the chard is lukewarm to the touch, combine it with the cheese and egg yolk.  Divide the mixture into small patties and press them together firmly.  If there seems to be too much liquid in the mixture, squeeze some out and start again.



Reheat the skillet over medium heat and add the olive oil.  When the oil is shimmering, carefully place the chard cakes in the skillet.  Cook for about three minutes per side, then drain on a paper towel.

Serve warm--should make about four large cakes or six small ones.  We served them with a grilled Florentine steak, though they would make a fantastic addition to a vegetarian meal.

Here Comes the Sun

The sun is out!

This wouldn't be such an occasion for celebration were it not for the fact that it has been gray and rainy since last Friday night.  My hiking shoes and I will be heading out after work.

Despite the gloomy weather, I haven't been cooking much over the past couple of weeks.  Part of it is the casting process for On Golden Pond, which sadly remains ongoing as I seek out the last person, plus long hours at work, but part of it is that I've been wanting to eat basically two things:  Mexican food and salad.

There have been lots of blogs lately extolling the virtues of quinoa, a chewy little grain that takes on the flavors with which it's surrounded.  I have nothing but love for it, especially since it's kosher for Passover (a huge discovery this year) and a complete protein.  It's good hot or cold, and pairs particularly well with summery fish dishes.

This salad would make a light main course or a perfect side--I served it with Nigella's mustard-coated salmon.  I've doctored it up to add some additional color and crunch from radishes.  The ones we get in Alaska are vividly colored and very peppery, and I can't resist them.  We ate this salad outside on a sunny night with a bottle of Italian white wine.

Quinoa Salad with Greens and Spring Onions

Adapted from Salad as a Meal by Patricia Wells

For the salad:

1 1/2 cups quinoa

3 cups vegetable or chicken stock

2 dried bay leaves

1 tsp. coarse sea salt

1 tbsp. lemon juice

2 cups parsley leaves, coarsely chopped

1 tbsp. good olive oil

3 small spring onions (or scallions, if spring onions aren't available)

5 oz. baby spinach

4 radishes, sliced thinly

For the dressing:

2 tbsp. lemon juice

1/2 tsp. coarse sea salt

1 cup 2% milk

1/3 cup chives, minced

Lemon zest

Toast the quinoa in a large saucepan over medium heat, shaking or stirring it regularly until it crackles, about five minutes.  Remove the quinoa from heat and rinse it in a sieve with cold water.

Return the saucepan to the stove and heat the stock to a boil.  Add the quinoa, bay leaves and salt, then reduce the heat.  Cover the saucepan and simmer for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Taste the quinoa to see how chewy it is and cook for an additional five minutes if it isn't soft enough.

Remove the quinoa from the stove and allow to sit for an additional ten minutes.  While it is cooling, whir the lemon juice, parsley and olive oil in a mini-prep food processor until the parsley is very fine.  Pour this mixture into a small bowl and add the spring onions and radishes to marinate them.

Then make the dressing:  in a jelly jar with a lid, combine the lemon juice and salt and shake to combine.  Let sit for a minute to dissolve the salt, then drizzle in the milk.  Shake to combine, then add the chives and lemon zest.  This will make more than enough dressing for this dish--you could halve the recipe if you don't want leftovers.



Doesn't this look like the best brown-bag lunch?



When ready to serve, toss the baby spinach with enough dressing to coat the leaves but not leave a lot of extra.  Then combine the quinoa with the marinated vegetables.  The original recipe calls for these two mixtures to be combined, but I left them separate--all the better to keep the spinach fresh for leftovers. 

Makes four main course servings, and would easily serve six as a side.

Wherefore Art Thou, Dinner?

At the rate I'm going, it will be fall before I work through all of the posts related to my vacation.  Plus I promised the kick-ass salad recipe last week.  I seriously don't know where all the time goes.

David and I went to several regions in Italy, but the one we spent the least amount of time in was the Veneto.  This region, in northeastern Italy, is famous mostly for containing Venice, which we skipped this time around because we didn't have enough time to do it justice.  (As an aside, if you ever want to see a truly, atmospherically spooky movie, Netflix Don't Look Now, which stars Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie as a couple vacationing in Venice after losing their young daughter in an accident.  I seriously shrieked out loud at the end.)



Artwork made from recent letters written to Juliet.



The sole place we visited in the Veneto was Verona--the English major in me couldn't resist the opportunity to visit the place where two of Shakespeare's plays were set.  But sorry, Two Gentlemen of Verona, this city is all about Romeo and Juliet.  You can visit Juliet's balcony, Juliet's house and Juliet's tomb--and while the Capulet/Montague feud may have been based on history, you can bet that there was not really a Juliet.  Nevertheless, that doesn't stop throngs of tourists from visiting these attractions, particularly the balcony.

In the courtyard under the balcony, there is a statue of Juliet.  Legend has it that it is good luck to rub her right breast, and we saw lots of people doing it.  We skipped that little attraction and went into the house, which gives you an opportunity to go out on the tiny balcony.  Here's David standing on it, but sadly I couldn't get him to recite the balcony speech to the throngs below.

Verona is also home to some spectacular churches, and I had a terrific lunch there featuring a hefty pile of greens mixed with black olives, cannellini beans and chunks of terrific oil-cured tuna.  The kick-ass salad is definitely a relative of that Veronese salad, with the added advantage of being vegan.

This salad is all in the prep work, and could be varied according to the season.  We found one passable-looking tomato (Alaska gets notoriously terrible tomatoes), but the next time I would leave that out in favor of a vegetable in better shape.


Insalata Cruda e Cotta (Raw and Cooked Salad)

Adapted from Lidia's Italy

2 large, sweet yellow onions, peeled, trimmed and sliced 1/2" thick
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp. sea salt
1/2 lb. small red or gold potatoes
1/2 lb. fresh green beans, trimmed
1 fresh tomato, chopped
3/4 lb. fresh leafy salad greens
1/2 cup black olives, pitted
3 tbsp. red wine vinegar
Salt and fresh-ground black pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.  Brush the onion slices with olive oil in both sides, and sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Lay them on the baking sheet and bake the onion slices approximately 25 minutes, flipping halfway through.  The onions should be a light golden brown when done.

While the onions are cooking, start a large pot of water to boil.  Clean the potatoes and drop them in the boiling water.  Cook just until the potatoes are cooked through--you want them to hold together and not get mushy.  Remove the potatoes--don't get rid of the boiling water!--and cut them in good-sized wedges when cool enough to slice.

Add the trimmed green beans to the water and boil just long enough to bring out the color, about four minutes.  You'll want the beans to stay crisp.  When you remove them from the water, put them in a bowl with cold water and ice cubes to shock them so you'll keep the gorgeous color. 

If you have a salad spinner, this is the time to put it to work.  Wash and thoroughly dry the greens--use your favorite in-season lettuces.  I had green leaf lettuce in my CSA box, so that's what I used, but it would be fun to use lettuces of different textures and colors.

In a ramekin or small bowl, combine the vinegar and remaining olive oil and whisk together.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Then throw all of the ingredients except the lettuce and dressing in a large salad bowl and gently toss them together.  Add the lettuce and dressing and toss gently again;  serve immediately.

Makes four large salad servings.  If you do not plan to use all of the vegetable mixture, hold some back and don't toss it with the lettuce.  I had a couple lunches' worth of these salads later in the week.

Lettuce Entertain You

It's never good to start a Monday exhausted, am I right?

Eleemosynary opened on Friday night, and the actors were wonderful.  I was one kvelling director, and hooray for the great review that appeared online on Saturday.  There were four shows that opened on Friday--in Anchorage, of all places--so we're all fighting for audiences and hopefully the review will help.

On Saturday, I cooked a massive dinner for my mother-in-law Hope.  I seriously lucked out in the mother-in-law situation, although I'm not sure how hyperactive David emerged from fairly zen Hope.  I'm going to be wondering about that one for years.

So Saturday was serious cooking therapy--I'll be posting the results of the session this week.

It's really starting to look like spring in Alaska, which means melting gray snow, roads that are alternately slick and dry and moose ambling out of the woods in search of food further afield.  If you're ever thinking of coming to Alaska, this is probably not the time to do it.

This gorgeous salad is colorful, crunchy and substantial.  With the butter lettuce, it just looks like spring.  Although the original recipe called for baby heads of butter lettuce, no such luck finding those here, so I used a hydroponic full-sized head of butter lettuce.  Although my salads looked nowhere near as gorgeous as the ones in the cookbook, they were still suitable for impressing my mother-in-law.

Butter Lettuce Salad with Lemon-Shallot Vinaigrette

Adapted from the Mozza Cookbook by Nancy Silverton

1 batch lemon-shallot vinaigrette (recipe posted here)

1 head butter lettuce, leaves separated but left whole and thoroughly washed

1 cup hazelnuts, toasted

1 tbsp. hazelnut oil (good-quality olive oil would also work)

1 tsp. kosher flake salt

1/2 red onion, thinly sliced and separated into rings

1/2 small zucchini, shaved with a vegetable peeler

1/2 small yellow longneck squash, shaved with a vegetable peeler

1/2 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese

First, make the vinaigrette.  Then chop the toasted hazelnuts and toss with the oil and salt.

When you have sliced the red onion and divided it into rings, place the rings in a small bowl of ice water until you're ready to use them.

Combine the zucchini and squash shavings in a small bowl and toss with one tablespoon of the vinaigrette. 

Place one large leaf of the butter lettuce on each salad plate.  When you are ready to plate, tear the remaining lettuce into large pieces by hand and toss with the vinaigrette and half a cup of the hazelnuts in a large bowl, being careful not to overdress the salad.  Any remaining vinaigrette will keep in the fridge for at least a week.  Add a small amount of salt and pepper to the dressed salad if necessary.

Mound a small amount of the zucchini-squash mixture on the lettuce leaves on each plate, then carefully pile a small amount of the dressed lettuce on top.  Then carefully slide two rings of the red onion around the lettuce leaves, which should then hold their shape on the plate.

Repeat with the remaining plates, then sprinkle a few additional hazelnuts on each salad and dust with the Parmesan.  Makes six appetizer-size salads.

Mistakes Were Made

Let's face it, everyone makes a cooking mistake or three once in a while.  What is more important is whether whatever you're making actually survives those mistakes.

My parents arrived in Anchorage late Thursday night, and between wanting to cook something nice for them and continue using the CSA produce before it implodes in my refrigerator, I picked a summery, not-too-ambitious recipe from A16 to make Saturday night:  roasted young chicken with radishes and salsa verde.

Let's start with the first problem:  the book calls for young chickens of about six ounces, whereas the local grocery's "young chicken" is a behemoth five-pounder.  Um, no.  I (smartly, I think) decide to change to Cornish game hens, which the meat department tells me I might find in the frozen food section.  Oh boy.  Sure enough, I uncover four Cornish hens from behind a mountain of frozen chicken wings, take them home, and really read the recipe.  Wherein I find that the poultry should have been seasoned with salt the night before and then rubbed with an aniseseed-oregano combination first thing in the morning.  Oops.  It's 1:30 p.m. and I have frozen, unsalted, unrubbed hens.

I threw the hens in a warm water bath and realize that two of them must have been raised on steroids.  These guys must have been terrors on the farm, and I picture them as the Cornish game hen equivalent of Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver:  "You talkin' to me?  Huh?  You talkin' to me?" By 3, these babies are out of the warm water, patted down with salt--which really does have a purpose, to draw out the moisture for a crisper skin--which sits for a scant hour before they get patted off and rubbed with the spices.  After that, it's into the fridge for an uber-quick sit with the rub. 

So far, so good.  Then I realize that to make the salsa verde, I should have homemade breadcrumbs.  Oops again, but nothing I can't remedy.  After that, I throw some parsley (should have already been chopped--oh well), capers, lemon juice, garlic, tiny dried red Italian peppers and olive oil into a prep food processor along with the bread crumbs and pulverize it all.  Delicious gloppy green goodness.  A couple of tablespoons of this gets tossed with thinly sliced red radishes for the side salad.

After some fine jerry-rigging, David got the steroidal hens onto the rotisserie that attaches to our grill.  I'm not optimistic at this point that any of this is actually going to work, so I start on the side dish that I know I can make work:  the A16 braised kale with anchovy and onion soffritto.

No one is more shocked than I am when the hens came off the rotisserie and looked, well, not totally unlike the photo in the cookbook. 

 

Ignore the fact that the radish salad appears to be emerging from the hen's behind.

 By the time I put the kale in the soffritto (the key to good kale:  undercook it--it continues to cook after leaving the pot), I realize that I have made way more sauce than necessary, but at this point that sort of mistake seems like an afterthought.  I garnished the kale with a little fromage blanc and called it dinner.

We had a ton of salsa verde left, but it tastes good on grilled bread as well as the chicken and radishes.  Frankly, I totally lucked out with this dinner.  Take that, A16!  I didn't even start to think about cooking this until a mere four hours beforehand and it was fabulous if I may say so myself.

Salsa Verde
Adapted from A16 Food + Wine Cookbook

1 cup parsley (I used curly because it was what I had)
1/2 tsp. capers, rinsed
1/2 tsp. dried red chiles
1/2 cup bread crumbs, plus more if the salsa is too thin
2 small cloves garlic
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 tbsp. fresh lemon juice
Salt to taste

Blend the first five ingredients in a food processor until it is the consistency of a rough chop.  Drizzle in the olive oil until it reaches the desired consistency, and add more crumbs if you prefer a thicker sauce.  Give it a few more seconds in the food processor and then add the lemon juice and salt to taste.  Serve with sliced radishes, grilled bread, poultry or anything that needs a little extra pizazz.