Voted Off the Island

FLOTUS in the ATL

Phil Skinner, pskinner@ajc.com

First Lady Michelle Obama was in Atlanta yesterday to talk about Let's Move! her initiative to restore healthy food choices for school meals and to inspire American families to fight childhood obesity.

Her speech at North Point Community Church (Andy Stanley's congregation) was terrific.  Read it and remember the days when you could really BE a free range kid who stayed outdoors until called home for dinner. 

And she quoted my friend Aaron Mark, proud dad of Murray!

Aaron Marks, a father from Decatur, Georgia, wasn't happy when he found out that his four year-old son was eating pizza for breakfast at school...and donuts and cookies for snacks. So he talked to the school administrators. He joined the school's nutrition committee. And he helped raise money to plant a garden. As he put it: "You just can't take no for an answer. You have to be tenacious." So it's never easy.

I'm Not Dreaming -- A White Jewish Christmas!

The setting:  Oriental Pearl Restaurant (famous for dim sum), 6:45 pm on Christmas. 

The expectation:  Jammed with Jews like us, lining up to chow down after a movie.

The reality:  The place is empty.  Seriously empty.
A couple of Asian families with kids, and a handful of gringoes like us.

The reason:  Not merely snow, but fluffly snow that was actually sticking.

The reaction:  Pure Panic!

The waiter:  "Chinese people scared to drive in snow."

Strange Seasonal Craving

  I want hot chestnuts.  Now! 

This is definitely  not Atlanta street food.  It's a New York City thing, especially at Christmas.  I want to hold a little bag of chestnuts in my cold hands and taste their toasty, mealy nutty goodness.

 

 

Dessert's Answer to the Terducken: Cherpumple

Best Brisket

There are some who make their brisket entirely on the stovetop.  My mom is one of those.  The vast majority of brisketeers start on the stovetop to achieve a magnificent "sear" and then move their meat into the oven, wrapped tightly in foil, for a slow, even braise. 

I started out as a stove-topper, but I've become an oven brisketeer, and the reason is Nach Waxman's simple and sublime recipe for Jewish brisket.  Nach is the owner of New York bookstore, Kitchen Arts & Letters, specializing in cookbooks. His brisket recipe has never failed me. There's nothing heartier for your Yom Kippur dinner. It's really all about the onions, caramelized to perfection. Don't shortcut that step!

Here you go.  G'mar tov, chatimah tova (May you be well sealed in the book of life)

Nach Waxman's Brisket of Beef

1	each	beef brisket	5-6 pounds
1-2	teaspoons	flour, unbleached all-purpose
		black pepper	to taste
1/4	corn	corn oil
8	each	onions	thickly sliced and separated into rings
2	tablespoons	tomato paste
1  1/2	teaspoons	coarse salt
2	cloves	garlic	quartered
1	each	carrot	peeled

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 F Trim the brisket of most of its fat, and dust it very lightly with the flour.

Sprinkle with pepper. Heat the oil in a large heavy flameproof casserole.

Add the brisket, and brown on both sides over medium-high heat until some crisp spots appear on the surface. Transfer the brisket to a dish.

Keeping the heat medium high, add the onions to the casserole and stir, scraping up the brown particles left from the meat.

Cook until the onions have softened and developed a handsome brown color, at least 10 to 15 minutes.

Remove the casserole from the heat, and place the brisket, along with any juices that have accumulated, on top of the onions.

Spread the tomato paste over the brisket as if you were icing a cake. Sprinkle with pepper and the coarse salt. Add the garlic and carrot, and cover tightly.

Place the casserole on the middle rack in the oven, and bake for 1-1/2 hours. Remove the casserole from the oven, and transfer the meat to a carving board. Cut it into 1/8 - 1/4 inch-thick slices. Return the slices to the pot, overlapping them at an angle so that you can see a bit of the top edge of each slice (in effect ressembling the brisket, slightly slanted).

Correct the seasoning if necessary, and if absolutely necessary add 2 or 3 teaspoons of water to the casserole. Cover, and return the casserole to the oven. Cook until the meat is brown and fork-tender, 1-3/4 to 2 hours longer.

Slice the carrot, and transfer the roast, onions and carrot slices to a heated platter. Serve at once.

Turn Your Weber Into a Pizza Oven

Saw this today on Serious Eats.  Brilliant.  "Need" this.  After dreaming of a wood-fired pizza oven, this may have to do. Pricey at $79.95 + shipping, but it comes with a thermometer, which would be handy even when grilling other things. 

The Pizza Kettle ($79.95) is an aftermarket insert that turns your Weber Kettle grill into a sort of coal-fired pizza oven. It basically "extends" the height of your grill enough to give it an oven mouth that you can slide pizzas in and out of. The lid stays on, with the idea being that the temperature stays high enough inside to cook the pizzas under the same intense heat that the best wood- and coal-fired ovens reach.

Massachusetts inventor Al Contarino makes the Kettle Pizza Oven and sells it from Main Street Hardware in North Andover, Massachusetts. It's $79.95. You can also buy it online via eBay.

Dipel Dust

I know, I know...never count your tomatoes, or your eggplants, before they ripen, but I finally scored me some Dipel Dust over at Farmer D Organics on Briarcliff Road. Dipel Dust is a formulation containing bacteria (Bacillus Thuringiensis). It's the choice of organic gardeners and presumably the least toxic pesticide you can buy to defeat the dastardly tomato hornworm (manduca quinquemaculata). For protection, I sprinkled Dipel Dust all over my eggplants which now look like they've been dusted with Colombian Marching Powder.

Hornworms go for nightshade plants -- potatoes, tomatoes and eggplant. These brilliant camouflage artists wait until the fruit is set and ripening, just when things are looking rosy, and then go to work chomping on your plants.  It's tragic. I have blogged about them before and continue to inspect my plants daily for signs of hornworm damage.  So far so good. 

The problem with hornworms is that they lay eggs in the soil.  Because I do so much container gardening, many of my large pots are infested.  The remedy would be to empty them (too heavy) and replace with new soil.  I can't manage that so I'm hoping, praying, that Dipel Dust does the trick.

The BP Cake

Love this!  It's a cake baked up at a Louisiana grocery store called Breaux Mart, giving BP the finger in a sweet and sassy way.  Love the dark oozy frosting breaching the yellow barriers. Got Milk?

King of Pops

Happy happy joy joy.  Steve Carse, The King Of Pops, a hip-flavors popsicle guy who sells from a cart, has now parked himself more or less permanently at the corner of North Highland and North Avenue.  Sadly and gladly for me, this is right smack on my route home.  Steve's luscious popsicles are a perfect little snack when I've skipped lunch and don't really have any plans for dinner, but they're a tough street food temptation on a day when I've already maxed out on carbs -- which is most days actually.

So far I've sampled grapefruit & mint (4 stars), and blood orange (4 stars), and pineapple ginger. (31/2 stars).  All were fresh and bright and clean tasting. Just delish. By the time I roll in at the end of the day, some flavors are already sold out.  

See the website for a list of other stores that carry these yummies.

Mother's Day = Lemon Ice Cream Trifle

It just wouldn't be Mother's Day for me without this dessert, culled from a charity cookbook and now a family favorite.  It really does look fabulous in a trifle bowl, but if you don't have one, any deep dish will do.

Lemon Ice Cream Trifle

1 store bought pound cake, cut into 1/2" cubes
1/2 gallon good quality vanilla ice cream, softened

For the curd
3 eggs
1 stick unsalted butter
1/2 cup FRESH lemon juice
1/3 tsp. salt
1 cup sugar

Whisk lemon curd ingredients together and bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly.  Cool

Starting with pound cake . . . layer 1/2 the pound cake at the bottom of the bowl, then scoop in 1/2 the vanilla ice cream, and top with 1/2 the lemon curd.  Repeat.  Swirl the top of the trifle with the back of a spoon.  Garnish with lemon slices.

Freeze the trifle, but remove from the freezer at least 1/2 hour before serving.  Extra nice with strawberry or raspberry sauce on the side.