Cast Iron

I love things that are well made, that seem as though they'll be around for decades to come. And although I'm a bit compulsive about culling my own belongings, there are certain items that have been passed down through my family over the years that I would never dream of parting with. So it will come as no surprise that I adore my grandmother's cast iron skillet, a family heirloom that is also possibly the most durable good you will ever come across.



If you look closely, you'll see the imprint indicating that the skillet was forged in Erie Pennsylvania. Good old time American craftsmanship if I've ever seen it.



Happily, given the limited storage and display options that my apartment offers, the skillet is also an extraordinarily useful item. Despite its considerable heft, I find myself wrangling it to the stove at least twice a week.


It conducts heat evenly and retains heat extremely well, which makes it the ideal implement for searing meats. But I also find myself using it for a variety of tasks including baking (cornbread and frittata particularly), roasting (perfect for a small shoulder roast or the like) and cooking fish on the stovetop. This last task is not traditionally recommended, but in my experience it works wonderfully well, and when I found out that Le Bernadin, the high temple of fish, uses only cast iron cookware, I felt fully vindicated.


So why is cast iron cookware not a more common item in American kitchens? My guess is that people have been scared off by all of the talk of seasoning, of scrubbing with salt rather than soap, and of the ongoing maintenance. And I'll admit that often the instructions that are given for cast iron care are off-putting and complex. But as is the case so often, life doesn't have to be so difficult.


For the uninitiated, when you buy a new cast iron item (they are surprisingly cheap by the way), its surface is just about as far opposite from nonstick as you can get. However, the seasoning process will make the surface more nonstick than Teflon, and will erradicate all of that concern about chemicals in your food and the associations with well liked but adulterous politicians.

Seasoning consists essentially of coating the pan with a thin sheet of oil, and then heating it for some time, either in a low oven or over a low flame, until the oil is absorbed. You do this five or ten times, and the surface is no longer porous...all of the small crevices will have filled with baked oil. The more you oil it, the better the surface (and the more resistant it is to rust), which is why old, well used cast iron pans are highly prized.


General wisdom goes that you should re-season the pan after each use, and that you should not use soap of any kind on cast iron as it will only serve to compromise the seasoning. Therefore you should use coarse salt to scrub away any cooked on food. Now if this were actually the case I probably wouldn't ever use cast iron either.

My mother, as she often does, has debunked this labor intensive myth and come up with a much easier method. Now you can't get around the initial need for seasoning, but once you've got a good thing going, all you need to do after each use is heat the pan on the stove, turn off the flame, rub a little coconut oil on the pan with a paper towel and leave it alone until the pan has cooled down. As cast iron retains heat like nothing else, this will be a good fifteen or twenty minutes. Once it's cool, simply wipe off any excess with a paper towel. Couldn't be simpler. And if I may put my two cents in on the cleaning question, if you can't get the pan clean with a scrub brush and very hot water, a tiny bit of mild soap like Dr. Bronner's isn't going to do any harm.

Et voila, you will eventually have a pan that gleams with nonstickiness.

If you come across an old cast iron pan with old cooked on food, do not despair, there is hope. I speak from experience here...my grandmother, who was a wonderful woman in countless ways, was not, as far as I can tell, a great cook. Thus this pan had a lot of non-iron material stuck to the surface. I can only assume it was the result of some botched cooking experiments.

I started off by sanding the offending particles off. But that was slow going so I began to research alternatives. I was advised to throw the pan into a hot fire for three hours and then re-season. But if I were to come across a fire of that size in Manhattan I am fairly confident that I would want to run away from it, not towards it with a skillet in hand. However, it turns out you can achieve the same effect with a self-cleaning oven. Simply leave the skillet in the oven during the cleaning cycle and you will have a nearly virgin surface to deal with. The seasoning will need to be re-done, but the surface will be perfectly smooth and food-free. No manual labor required.

Aren't you tempted to give it a go now?

Leisure Time

Memorial Day could not have come at a better time.  A busy period on both the professional and social front had left my apartment, and perhaps more importantly, my refrigerator and pantry, in a deteriorated state.  I needed some time to recharge myself, and one of the best ways that I know of to do so is, after a quick trip to the Greenmarket, to spend a few hours puttering about the kitchen while Paul spends some well deserved time on the couch, lifting his head only occasionally to ask after the origins of the aromas wafting towards him.

I was feeling a bit down after a week without flowers in my living space, so my first order of business yesterday was to pick up a couple of bunches from James Durr in Union Square.  

As summer approaches, Mr. Durr's stand is quickly becoming my favorite.  His selection of flowers is almost never the same week to week (although thankfully peonies have been a constant over the past month), and he is bringing an increasing variety of vegetables and fruits to market these days.  With choices ranging from rhododendron boughs to bearded iris to asparagus (the best in the market in my opinion) to rhubarb to strawberries, it's hard not to feel inspired by the bounty of the season.

After picking up my usual milk, eggs and cheese, my last stop at the market was Paffenroth Farms, my root vegetable stand-by, where I picked up a bunch of mellow french breakfast radishes.  Once home, I indulged in the wonderful french children's snack (I suppose adults indulge on occasion as well) of radishes with butter and salt, which I consider to be the perfect warm weather weekend snack (or meal, depending on your mood and how heavily you indulged the night before)

Now, I must insist on being a bit of a salt snob here.  Maldon salt, in my opinion, is utterly necessary in this dish.  As is extremely good butter.  I always use Ronnybrook's butter, which I consider to be among the best available here in New York, but brands like Plugra also make a good product with a high butterfat content.

Once my hunger had been sated, I got to work on my kitchen puttering.  My first order of business was the Zuni Cafe's pickled red onions.  

I hewed fairly closely to David Lebovitz's adaptation, although Molly over at Orangette has a nice one as well.  As they both mention, the methodology that is recommended by the Zuni Cake Cookbook is sort of a pain, but look at what a brilliant pink my onions gained as a result!  I'll reserve judgement on the taste until they've marinated for a day or two but I have to say, based on a couple of sneaky tastes, my hopes are high. 

And lastly, I got to work making my rhubarb compote.  After making a rhubarb custard a couple of weeks back, I've been somewhat obsessed with this very odd vegetable, and have picked up a bunch of the stuff at every chance I've had.  

I rather loosely followed Deborah Madison's recipe for rhubarb compote and the result was utterly delicious (she suggests adding strawberries and mango which I'm sure would be delicious but I took the purist route).  The end product provided the perfect accompaniment to my yogurt for breakfast this morning.

Now I'm feeling sufficiently recharged to venture out of my kitchen to spend time with some long neglected friends.  And tonight I'm thinking traditional Sunday roast.  Yum.

Rhubarb Compote

Adapted from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone

1 bunch of rhubarb (mine weighed about 1 lb 12 oz.)

scant 1 cup of sugar (this is a matter of personal taste, increase or decrease depending on your preference)

juice and zest of one orange

1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

dash of vanilla extract or a bean, scraped (optional:  the vanilla will mellow the rhubarb out, if you prefer a more bracing taste, omit it)

In a Dutch oven or other heavy pot, combine all ingredients and simmer over medium heat until rhubarb is tender.  At the ideal point, some pieces will have disintegrated, some will still be relatively whole.  This should take about twenty minutes.  Serve at room temperature or chill in the refrigerator to serve at a later date.  Keeps for approximately one week.

They're HUGE!

I'm not sure when I became such a fan of peonies.  They are considerably more frilly than I am after all, a totally incompatible match for me.  And yet, I find them strangely compelling.  They are bright, effusive, like that over the top, vaguely annoying yet totally entertaining and fiercely loyal friend that you love to be irritated by.

So when I saw that my dear Mr. James Durr had them last week I nearly fainted in rapture.  When I took them home they were tight little buds, and I had no idea how idiotically huge they would become upon opening.

But after a day or two, they were like exuberant pom poms sitting on my bathroom sink, and made me smile each time I walked by.

But I walked in the door this evening and saw the saddest sight.

Peony petals in my sink.  And my one pink one is wilting. 

Which means that my giant fluff balls are not long for this world.  Such is life I suppose.  Thank goodness that there are more where they came from.

You May Have To Have Me Committed Soon

If my freezer, closet and spice cabinet haven't already convinced you that I'm not quite right in the head, then my love affair with my new label maker will.

I'd been eyeing the label maker that the Container Store carries for quite some time, but at $50 it just seemed gratuitous.  So imagine my delight when I came across this little beauty at Staples the other day:

The Brother PT-80 P-touch cost only $19.99 with the in-store rebate, and if you want to go the online route, is only $16 on Amazon.  The device could not be simpler to use, and the results seem to be as good as with any label maker to my untrained eye.

And it allowed me to realize my dream of complete bathroom cabinet organization.

See the perfect labels?

Hide all of your unlabeled items, I'll be coming for them before you know it.

Spring Is Springing

Spring is nearly here...we haven't had that one glorious day yet when the sun is out in full force, people are out in full force and the city hums with the promise of warm, sweater free days...Mother Nature seems to be taking baby steps this year.  The bone chilling temperatures are seemingly a thing of the past, but the sun is not out on any regular basis and there still isn't anything green at the farmers market...I can't take the potatoes anymore!

But this past Saturday in Union Square there was a glimmer of hope.  Flowers flowers everywhere!

Loads of tulips:

And daffodils...

...I'm less excited about the pussywillows, which have been around for a bit and I'm hoping are on their way out.

I adore the magnolia boughs and came quite close to buying a bunch (only $10!) but thought they might compete a bit too aggressively with all of our giant plants (and the giant pile of detritus on the table on which they would have sat), plus I didn't feel like carrying them around during the rest of my errands.

Instead, I settled on some beautiful pink tulips...only $5!

Arranged...

And sitting happily on my bathroom sink.

I love flowers in my bathroom.  I made a habit of keeping a bouquet there this past summer (the last time the farmers market had flowers, I suppose) but fell off the wagon when the weather got cold.  Somehow New York seems to be lacking a mid-priced florist.  It is either bodega flowers or $100 bouquets, nothing in between.  My experience with flowers at various gourmet food shops was also highly disappointing, so I gave up on the whole thing, since my efforts brought more stress than pleasure after a certain point.

But now we're back to happier times!

I love the unexpected punch of color you get from a small grouping of blossoms on an otherwise dull, standard rental apartment countertop.  There is something about paying attention to oft-forgotten spaces (we are generally at our least dignified in the bathroom after all, which perhaps makes us want to ignore it) that makes life inordinately more beautiful.  And life really is so much better when it is beautiful, no? 

Clean Green House

It seems virtually impossible these days to avoid reading about the multitude of environmental catastrophes that are constantly levied against the planet.  It is just stunningly depressing, so in order to avoid great despondence, I tend to push this knowledge to the back corners of my mind, only to be retrieved during moments of intense reflection.  Besides, generally speaking, there is little that we as individuals can do to stop deforestation, improper mining practices, pollution from coal power plants and effluent pouring into water sources so it is not particularly productive to get too overwrought.

However, I find it totally impossible to ignore what I learn about household toxins...otherwise known as common items in the home that we all use on a regular basis that are, to varying degrees, toxic.  Cleaning products are the most common offenders.

So because I am utterly psychotic about very specific aspects of my health (I am not a regular exerciser nor do I shun heavy cream yet I refuse to use deodorant with aluminum because I heard once that aluminum causes Alzheimers) I have been on a quest to find some greener household product options.

My first discovery actually originated from Martha Stewart's Homekeeping Handbook, which is quite a good reference book if you are so inclined.  She recommended Dr. Bronner's castille soap as a gentle all-purpose cleaner.  

I had vague recollections of seeing these ubiquitous bottles in health food stores so I figured the product couldn't be too poisonous.  Turns out it is vegetable based, biodegradable and the ingredients are all fair trade and organic.  Can't get much better than that for environmental cred.

According to the bottle this soap has 32 uses.  That is, of course, if you count their suggestion of tooth cleaner.  I personally do not.  But I have found three excellent uses for this cleanser.  First, as a dishwashing soap (for hand washing, not the dishwasher).  I dilute it with equal  parts water (and decant into my old dish soap bottle...recyling!) and I've got an excellent sink side companion.  Second, as laundry soap for my hand washing...my sweaters and, as my mother would say, my "unmentionables".  And lastly, as an ingredient for my all-purpose spray cleaner.  Or rather, the recipe that Sophie Uliano suggests in her book Gorgeously Green:  8 Simple Steps to an Earth-Friendly Life:  

2 cups water

1/2 cup white vinegar

1 teaspoon castille soap (I up this to 2 teaspoons)

3/4 cup hydrogen peroxide

20 drops of tea tree oil

20 drops of lavender or lemongrass oil

Just a suggestion: I would not ignore the essential oils.  This stuff smells a bit...strong, shall we say, if you omit them.

This is great for kitchen counters, bathroom sinks, shower tiles and toilets (excluding the bowl, obviously), and it is considerably cheaper than Fantastic, 409 or other similar unnecessarily specific cleaning products.  Especially if you go for the 99 cent spray bottles at Home Depot.  

Related to this, instead of Windex, buy yourself a second spray bottle and fill it with half water and half white vinegar.  Just as good, about 80% cheaper and totally non-toxic.

Back to Dr. Bronner's.  My personal preference is for the almond soap, but if you are going for the tooth brushing thing, knock yourself out with the peppermint...it is very, very minty.

My second discovery is hardly a discovery.  Apparently my grandmother uses Bon Ami Polishing Cleanser, as did her mother.

It is biodegradable, phosphate free (I'm not sure why this is good, but it sounds like a big plus), fragrance and chlorine free, and best of all, it is actually quite an effective cleanser.  I use it mostly in my bathtub, but have been known to scour my kitchen sink with it on occasion as well.

On to the toilet.  Now I'll admit that I haven't found a great toilet bowl cleaner that is green.  Ecover makes a decent one, but I need to use quite a bit of product to get the desired effect, and I do have to scrub a bit.  Ms. Uliano suggests dumping a cup or so of vinegar in the bowl and letting it sit for a while, which works for below the water but requires scrubbing above the waterline.  So bottom line, if you are willing to work a little (and it really is a minimal effort) there is no need to use traditional toilet bowl cleaners.

And lastly, detergents.  I adore Ecover's laundry detergent.

Ecover is a progressive Belgian company that has been producing green products since 1980.  This detergent smells amazing...like lavender and some other unidentifiable herb.  Only a small amount of product is required to clean a huge load of clothes, it is easy on your garments, and you don't have to worry about toxins clinging to your clothes or washing down the drain into our water supply.

Same goes for their dishwashing tablets.

Now admittedly these last two items have less to do with not wanting to poison myself and more to do either with my yuppie tendency to buy nice smelling European products or my desire to minimize my own contribution to pollution.  I am going to go with the latter.  We all could stand to contribute to some sort of a solution to our looming environmental problems, don't you think?  

Tomorrow:  Green Facial Products

The Last Oasis...

I've always had a thing for closets.  After lusting over many a celebrity closet, I have a very clear idea of what my ideal one would be.  And after watching The Secret the other night with Laia and Marissa after one too many glasses of sake (Paul got the DVD in a gift bag, I promise I did not actually spend money on it), I am convinced that this very clear vision of mine will eventually attract the perfect closet to me.

So here it is.  I want my closet to be spacious enough so that I could walk in, turn around unencumbered, and generally just hang out if the mood struck me.

And in that same vein, I would like a cushy chair or chair equivalent on which to lounge:

And I want sufficient room, or sufficient organization systems, such that there is complete and utter order at all times.

Well obviously this closet utopia of which I speak is quite a few years off.  I live in New York for god's sake.  My apartment in total is about the size that I would require for the ideal closet.  So in the meantime, rather than mope about my lack of offensively large closet, I figured I should at least attempt to meet one of the three requirements I described above with the resources I currently have available.  Clearly, space is not an available resource, so I had no choice but to impose insane organization on the tiny space that I do have.

After my freezer and my spice cabinet, I would say that my closet is the last oasis of organization in my apartment.  All other cabinets and storage lockers simply contain things, they do not impose any sort of order on the contents.

But behold what a moderately together person (me) can do with a lot of time, a little willpower and millions of trips to the Container Store:

Just to clarify, every piece of clothing that I own (coats excepted) is contained in this closet.  So obviously, if you plan to try to replicate this system in any way, step one is get rid of 75% of your clothes.  Honestly, not as hard as it sounds.  You only wear 20% of what you own on any kind of regular basis anyway, and getting rid of the marginal stuff feels absolutely great.  You're no longer bogged down by excess and you've (hopefully) donated the items you don't need to someone who can really use them, which always feels good (and provides a nice tax write-off).  I personally found myself at Housing Works about three times per week when I was going through this cleansing process. 

Step two is get thee to the Container Store.  Get these boxes for your clothes (I have boxes labeled underwear, bras, workout, pants, tank tops, short sleeve shirt, long sleeve shirts, accessories, evening, but obviously adjust to fit your needs).  And if, unlike me, you have access to a dresser of some sort, this part is probably not necessary.

And get these boxes for your shoes.  Only $1.99 each!

This way shoes can be easily stacked at the bottom of the closet and you don't have to deal with shoe racks, which frankly I find impossible to use satisfactorily.

And finally, these boxes for your sweaters.  

And these lovely, effective, all natural herbal sachets to repel moths.

And there you go.  You'll never have to search around for that t-shirt you've been wondering about again.  Unless of course it gets lost in the wash.

Another Martha Moment

I'm fairly organized when it comes to my life in general. I'm usually on time for things, I pay bills promptly and I can locate things when I need them. But I don't think I'm one of those people that others look at and think "wow, she's the most organized person on the planet". My apartment is tidy enough, but not obsessively clean, and there's a charming (I hope) aura of slight chaos about it.


But that said, I do have tiny oases of high level organization. My freezer is an example that comes to mind immediately, but as I was refilling my spice containers this weekend, I realized that my spice organization system is also quite anal. I share it here with you because I think it works extremely well for those who, like me, lack a giant kitchen with spice-specific storage options.


It all started with the watchmaker's cases from Lee Valley Tools:



I read about them five or so years ago in Real Simple magazine, and it occurred to me that they would be a great aid in organizing my burgeoning collection of spices. When I bought them they came in cardboard boxes. For a time, storing them in this way worked, but eventually the boxes began to disintegrate. So when I moved back to New York after grad school and was on an organization kick, and was going to the Container Store several times per week, I figured it was time to find a more permanent solution.



Luckily, because The Container Store is the greatest place on the planet, they had a most excellent solution to my problem:


A tiny chest of drawers that accommodated my spice containers perfectly (which sadly, they do not seem to have on their website)! Using my dry erase markers that were so successful in the freezer, I labeled those containers that I hadn't already adorned with sticky tags (prior to the discovery of the great dry erase markers' many applications in the kitchen), alphabetized the spices, and labeled the drawers accordingly. Anal, I realize...but I did warn you.


I keep a giant tupperware container full of the overflow spices, full of the bags from SOS Chefs and from the San Francisco Herb Company (my mom buys from them in bulk, and when she can't figure out what to do with 3 pounds of cumin, she sends some my way). Once a month or so, I pull everything out and spread it on the living room floor and refill what needs refilling, and make a list of what needs to be replenished.



I once saw a kitchen renovation show that showcased a series of drawers that were divided into individual wooden boxes with covers that were meant to store spices. That is pretty much my ideal. But unless the real estate market in New York completely collapses (not a totally impossiblity) it is a reality that is quite a few years off for me. So in the meantime, this is a solution that I've found to be quite a decent stand-in.

I Know, I Know, I Need To Get A Life

I suppose this little find of mine should also be filed under the unnecessarily obsessive domestic perfection heading, along with my tupperware. So I apologize to those of you who are not into that whole thing. To those that are, you are going to love this.

I ducked into the Ricky's in Soho the other day to avoid a massive rainstorm and ended up wandering around for a good half hour marveling at all of the obscure beauty gadgets that they stock. At one point I found myself carrying around three different types of back scrubbers (why I don't know, I have never in my life scrubbed my back). But then I came across was seemed to be a wall full of various German implements.

I don't know why, but I trust things made in Germany. There's just something practical and sturdy feeling about them. On this teutonic wall I saw this little beauty:

A Titania Brush Cleaner. At $2.99 for one it felt like a bargain, so I dropped the back scrubbers and went for it.

Turns out the thing works wonders. Now I'm not going to pretend that I have trouble getting hair out of my brush. I just comb it out, or when my hair is long it all pulls out of the brush in a clump and Paul becomes convinced that I'm developing alopecia.

But what I can never remove is that random fuzz that seems to get caught at the base of the bristles. I have no idea what it is, perhaps down from my pillows that gets caught in my hair when I'm sleeping? Who knows. Whatever it is, the little wonder brush cleaner dispenses with it. After a going over with the Titania my brush now looks like it has just come out of the package from the store. Perfectly clean. Lovely.

Possessed By Martha

In advance, I'm really sorry about the obsessive domestic perfection aspect of this post.  I think that aliens may have swapped my brain with Martha Stewart's over the weekend.  But I have got to share my little discovery with you.  Whether you have got to listen (or in this case, read on) is of course entirely up to you.  

Although I'm a fairly organized person, my freezer has always been a little bit of a disaster.  I always had bags of various vegetables, nuts, potstickers and god knows what else falling out on me when I would open the door, and half of the bags were open or not sealing properly or in some other condition that was contributing to the chaos.

Then I was sitting at home one day a few months back watching a Barefoot Contessa marathon on TV and I noticed that she always seems to have everything stored in those translucent pint and quart size plastic takeout containers.  

I was inspired by the orderliness of it all, so after twenty minutes of searching for a website that sold these containers in quantities of less than 1,000, I ordered fifteen of each size from this website.  And they cost about $0.30 each.  Hard to beat.

So they arrived, and I proceeded to make quarts and quarts of stock and tomato sauce to fill them, and to fill my freezer. 

But how to keep track of what is what, and when it was made?  Ah, I'm glad you asked.  Because now I can tell you about my other nerdy domestic discovery.  You can write on the lids (or I suppose on the containers) with a Dry-Erase marker!  And it stays on until you wipe it off with a paper towel!  

Observe.

A new batch of nuts I just bought from Trader Joe's:

With personalized lids!

OK, I promise this is a phase.  I'm over it now.  I will return to normal post haste.