You know you're an academic when...

everything becomes a research project.

For example: I recently became entranced with the caffè macchiato, which is (contra Starbucks' souped up caramel version) a shot of espresso which is "stained" with a daub of milk foam and sometimes a little steamed milk too. In the darker days of my first semester of professor-ing, I pretty much needed one of these (and, depending on my mood, some biscotti dipped therein) to keep me my energetic self.As crutches go, it's a tasty one, and not too expensive. The coffee cart outside my office will do it for me for $1.10 (as it's not on the menu, some negotiating usually takes place); at Starbucks it's about $1.70. I first got into the habit of ordering this because it was the cheapest drink on the menu at Nero's, a cafe in Cambridge on my way in to work (and conveniently right next to where my friend Ali lived). I could plop down my 1 pound 20p. saved up from the change from groceries and work on my dissertation for a couple of hours without guilt and without having to just drink straight espresso. If I was feeling rich, I would plop down a second pound for biscotti, but I'd often just buy a dark hazelnut chocolate for 25p and have a bitter and sweet go of it. Lovely contrast, but probably reinforced those two cavities I've been working on.

But a latte, for which I also have an increasing affection, is about $2+ around here, so I decided it was time to look around for an inexpensive way to make it on my own with my favorite brand of Italian espresso, Illy. Now, I'm no connoisseur of Italian espressos, but Illy was the bean of choice at our favorite cafe in Cambridge, Savino's. (You know it's authentic when well-dressed and well-shod Italians are always lined up in droves outside! They had the most amazing cappuccino I've ever seen - foam that was light and silky and oh so lovely. Plus, they had this amazing hazelnut and dark chocolate croissant, which has certainly done its part in shortening our life expectancy.) So Illy it is.

I didn't want to a massive espresso machine crowding my glorious counterspace, so I was in the market for a petite stovetop espresso maker, and after some research (say, about an hour), I discovered that the classic Bialetti Moka fit the bill.

Ok, so that's the back story. I've got my beans, I've now (thanks to my brother-in-law) got my Bialetti and a milk foamer, so you'd think I'd be content, but I've been researching for hours and hours and hours the following:

• fineness of grind to use (and how to achieve it with the kind of grinder we have)
  
• water level
• how to load the filter basket
• what level of flame beneath and for how long
  
• placement on the stovetop
• timing
• when to pour
• optimum water temperature to start
• how to get the Bialetti not to sputter when it brews
  

And so was born the great espresso taste-testing of this morning, along with this over-caffeinated blog post. The winner: cold water start, with a 15-second grind of Illy's medium roast whole bean espresso, about 3 heaped teaspoonfuls, with 5 holes poked in the grinds with a chopstick in a pentagonal shape (the bottom ramekin). Runner-up: hot water start, with Illy's pre-ground medium roast espresso (fine), again about 3 1/2 heaped teaspoonfuls, no holes poked in (on the left in the pyrex measure).

Of course, I enjoy tracking all this information down a lot, but I'm trying to figure out if this is a virtuous habit of learning or a sign of an inability to not be perfect, even in my espresso m aking. The jury's still out on that one.

The other question: if you've been infected by the research bug, does that mean you should think seriously about being an academic? I.E., is the inverse also true? In that case, I'm worried that Pancho is on his route to a Ph.D in projectors and screens...and I'm not sure what the job market is like in that particular discipline...

Sunday Conundrum

A typical Sunday morning

• wake up (late) and get ready for church
• worship
• start to feel peckish while talking afterwards
• start to feel a bit hungry (at least 1/2 hr. later) while finally thinking about making a move
• chased out of the sanctuary by deacons (themselves now positively hungry), you realize, hey I'm hungry

At this point, you have a choice:

1. Invite the people you've been talking to for the last hour to go out to lunch with you
   
2. Go home hungry and wonder why there isn't much in the store cupboards (namely, because it's Sunday and the budget week starts on Monday)
   

Choice 1 gets pricey sooner or later (usually sooner). Choice 2. comes with kicking yourself for not thinking ahead and having something at the ready. But then you think to yourself, "Wouldn't it be great if waiting for me at home was a sizeable cooked lunch (so that you could invite over on the spur of the moment) that I could sit down and eat in a chilled-out 30 min. or less?"

The probem is, of course, that you've been out of the house for the last 3 hours or so. The typical <30 min. options are things that often require last-minute hustle and bustle, so that's out. All you really want to do is slide things in and out of ovens or microwaves or rice cookers. A small amount of measuring and garnishing is acceptable.

So I'm looking for recipes for Sunday post-church lunches with the following qualities:

• stretches easily to accommodate 2-4 unanticipated guests
• not just those listless variations of pot roasts with onion soup mix
• filling and warm - this should be the main meal of the day, paired with a light meal / snack at supper. Pancho can't just eat salads, I'm afraid.
  
• small amount of AM prep (e.g., browning) and moderate amount of Sat PM prep ok
• modest cleanup - not loads and loads of sticky pans!
• affordable on a modest budget
• ready in less than a leisurely 30 minutes from arriving home from church
  
• well-balanced, nutrition-wise
  
• and (do I have to say it?) delicious - this should be something we look forward to, not sigh about!

What could work:

• Slow-roast lamb shoulder, served with couscous and yummy garnishes and salad
• Carnitas?
• Artisan bread in five minutes a day (including pizza dough) - but then the oven is taken up...which may or may not be a problem
  

What doesn't work:

• Standard 1 1/2 hr roast chicken with trimmings - too much last minute faff and too many pots and pans, and it roasts too quickly to put in before church and too slowly to put in after. Otherwise, it's perfect.
  

I would like to make a collection of suitable recipes, starting with my slow-roast lamb and then possibly adding Jamie Oliver's 3-hr pork goulash. Slow-cooked cheap-cuts of meat seems like the best strategy, but I don't want lackluster pot roasts (which is what you're directed to if you google "sunday lunch church") and slow-cooker specials that all taste alike. I'm also interested in collecting quick and easy side dishes (especially if they can be prepared and served in the same dish). Here's the rub - I just know there's stuff out there that families do, or at least used to do, in order to avoid being consumed by meal preparation and clean-up on days of worship and rest. I just don't know where to look for the recipes! Any ideas or tips would be very welcome.

Zee Menu, Mesdames et Messieurs

Entracte

Appetizers: olives, cornichons, melon, asparagus and prociutto wraps

Prime

Green salad with orange, fennel, and asparagus,

served with a crisp white wine or juice

Mains

Harissa-spiced slow-roasted lamb shoulder with haroset, couscous, pita, and hummous

served with a robust but soft red wine

Dessert

Vanilla panna cotta with summer berry couli, or an elderflower and blackberry jelly

served with Sauternes

Fromage

Brie, Blue, and Comte, with biscuits

no more wine for you!

Cafe et The

Coffee, tea, and chocolates

Sortie

Fresh and dried fruit and nuts

Zee chefs extraordinaire

A. (zee hostess) et Ladybug

....et zee sous chef langue-suffering

Pancho

Planning the Easter Feast

Inspired by Nigella AND with the idea that it would be best to feast in a way that doesn't require lots of kitchen time at the last minute, I'm leaning towards slow roast lamb.

Did you know that you can roast a lamb shoulder overnight? How cool is that! I'm thinking of adopting Nigella's all-night technique and giving it a spice rub of something like ginger, cumin, coriander, turmeric, harissa, lemon, etc. I'm still pondering side dishes, but I think definitely quickly-cooked seasonal veg and possibly a funky salad (e.g., watercress, pecorino, and pear). Updates will follow, and hopefully we'll take pictures this time around!

Eating all by my lonesome

My beloved husband is still in California for the next few days after we flew out all of a sudden for a family funeral. Work constraints have me back in the UK, and I'm faced with the prospect of eating alone for the next few evenings. Now I could in theory invite myself over for dinner with friends (which I may yet do tomorrow), but much as I seriously and actively dislike being without my dear Drumstick, I am rather looking forward to cooking just for myself. Hector, Drumstick's digestive alter ego, seems to require meat in large quantities in order to feel satisfied, whereas I can be happy noshing on bits of this and that. Case in point: when we were apart a couple weeks ago for the same reason, I moved away from spaghetti with meat sauce and starting eating spinach salads with pancetta cubes, chicken liver pate spread on french baguettes, yoghurt, and apples for my meals. Prospective menus (ones which leave Hector still a little rumbly) for this evening include:

• sauted filet of some white fish with pancetta and white wine sauce, served over a bed of spinach with wild rice on the side
• seared tuna, dressed with soy, ginger and honey and served with noodles and bok choy

Leon Kass in The Hungry Soul talks about taking time to dine, to relish a meal, even when eating alone. This means, at a minimum, eating for over more than 15 minutes, not watching tv while eating, and just generally observing the same proprieties one would in company. Part of the point is that one tends towards a particularly human sort of virtue when one takes the time to eat in a way that goes beyond necessity, beyond mere re-fueling and feeding and towards dining. This, I confess, is difficult for me when alone; dining for me typically reaches beyond necessity because it is also time with my husband to discuss things, chat over the day, and generally just talk and talk away until it gets so late that the dishes get left 'for tomorrow'. When by myself, I often turn the radio on or put on a dvd to keep myself company instead of missing Drumstick, paltry as the substitution is. I find reading while dining to be generally awkward, even with a bookstand, and I can't remember if that's even allowable by Kass' high standards. I suppose, though, at the end of the day as with all virtues it's not about a certain list of rules to apply, but about being a certain sort of person. Perhaps the care I take in shopping and preparing for the meal evinces the same sort of human virtue as leaving the dvd on the shelf for the moment, so I shouldn't worry too much about the temptation of watching the first episode of Firefly during dinner tonight.

Update: Menu turned out to be sesame-encrusted tuna, seared to medium-rare and served with a stir-fry of egg noodles, chestnut mushrooms, carrot, green onion, and chinese leaf cabbage (no bok choy at Sainsburys last night) dressed simply with soy and ginger. Drumstick called me right when I was tucking in, so I had a leisurely meal by default :)

Easter feasting

For Resurrection Sunday, we invited friends over for a proper Easter feast, with all generousity and abundance in light of prudential wisdom. We wanted to celebrate together as a family with them, and so planned for a leisurely, relatively painless meal preparation that wouldn't take away from my enjoyment and their comfort by enslaving me to the kitchen. This pretty much went according to plan, minus the roast being a bit more speedy than anticipated and causing a last-minute sprint for me! But the original plan was something like this:

Come whenever after church
Nibble on cheese and crackers, nuts, delicious french pickles, while sipping Kir for a good while, listening to joyful music
Kick-start the appetite proper with pan-roasted asparagus with a warm orange-sherry viniagrette (easy to make!), quaffing the rest of the white wine therewith
Have a breather and talk
Bring out the roast lamb, peas, artichoke hearts, and green onions with lemon zest and garlic, and 'smashed potatoes' and switch to the red wines
Adjourn to the sitting room and eat carrot cake (made the day before)
Read resurrection poetry (largely dominated by Hopkins) over coffee and chocolates
Go on a walk together by the river

And that's generally what we did, resulting in a great time of leisurely fellowship and celebration of Christ's resurrection and our new life in Him.

Later that day, after the walk, friends spontaneously dropped by and we spent the next hour and a half laughing ourselves silly together. Calls to home ended the day, and we woke up on Monday for another round of enjoying resurrected life with our friends: banana pancakes with John and Di in the morning sunshine and later tacos with more friends in the evening, picked up from Cambridge's one and only tacqueria. All in all, a satisfying set of celebrations and delight, all pointing towards and participating in the great feast in New Jerusalem that awaits us and to which we look forward eagerly in hope!

How to do Thanksgiving, from two greenhorns flushed after a modest success

So we had our first ever "on our own" Thanksgiving last Thursday, which was a blast. A few people brought drinks and starters--including a lovely tart by Anne and a salad by John--but we handled all the classic dishes, which is no mean feat when you don't have a car and live in a country that: (1) doesn't understand the use of pumpkin in desserts and the wonder of cranberries, and (2) thinks stuffing ought to be little balls of gluey breadcrumbs.

Well, it all came off ok, although I still find turkeys stressful. And we learned a few things for the record. First of all, I realized how much can be done ahead of the day to make the day easier! Second, I realized the IDEAL Thanksgiving is a potluck, where everyone brings a part of the show, and the host just handles the bird. So here's what we did:

Wednesday PM
- make cranberry sauce
- bake sweet potatoes and puree
- prepare pie crusts

Thursday AM

- finish pies
- make up and bake: stuffing, sweet potato casserole, honey-roasted parnsips

Thursday afternoon
- pop in turkey and prepare gravy
- peel potaoes

Just before dinner
- take out turkey and pop in rolls to warm/bake
- boil potatoes
- take out rolls and put in stuffing, sweet potato casserole, parnsips in oven to re-heat
- finish gravy
- warm peas and any other veg
- carve turkey

then...FEAST!

So here's the deal - if other people bring the stuffing, sweet potatoes, veg, potatoes, rolls, cranberry sauce, and pies, then all you have to do is pop other peoples' work into the oven for the 30 minutes while the turkey is resting. Then all you've done is turkey and gravy! OR if you're 'people' all you've done is one casserole or some such. Ahhhhh....sweet bliss...

For us, it all turned out amazingly well, although not the hottest food ever, and one of the 3 (!) small birds for 22 people+ was a leeeetle underdone, but no matter. We expected bumps in the road, so that when they came it was quite all right. The pumpkin chiffon pie plooped on us, but still tasted nummy. It was a great feast too, lovely atmosphere, good friends, lots of wine but never too much quaffed, just good fun, and much generosity of spirit.