Cory Matthews, Cream of Celery Soup, and (Pain Au) Chocolat

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It happened this week fan(s). I saw some leaves changing color and that can only mean one thing.

It's SOUP SEASON!

I love soup season so much that I am just now finding frozen soup in my icebox from last soup season and the reunions have been sweet. And some meals have even been a gamble because I clearly didn't have a Sharpie to mark what the frozen soup flavor was. Who doesn't love a surprise outside of dropping the soap in the locker room? 

Back to making soup. This weekend was just chock full of activities. I had a work social engagement on Friday. Thankfully my new work friend insisted we slip away so I could venture even deeper into Southern Jewishness and try oysters and mussels for the first time. As with most things I need to give them three tries before saying, "yup, still gay". I mean, "I like oysters".

I followed that crazy Friday up with a date on Saturday. Yes I said date. I'm still in shock myself. Not to sound selfish but I like to make sure to plan my dates around places that I need to get something out of...say a fresh pain au chocolat. Thankfully there is a perfect petite patisserie, Atelier on Trade, within walking distance. So perfect I had to tell myself I couldn't just wander into the back and test my croissant skills. After my date I came home, noshed on my pain au chocolat and maybe watched 20 episodes of Girl Meets World. Don't judge. I learned 20 life lessons and oddly a lot of history lessons. Thank you Mr. Matthews.

Feeling somewhat guilty and worrisome regarding bed sores, I removed myself from the settee and decided to make some Cream of Celery Soup. Did anyone else call it Cream of Celery Poop Soup growing up? Or was that just some twisted Northern Minnesota thing my cousins and I did?

Anyway, thanks to my dear friend Ms. Stewart I was able to whip up my first soup of the 2015 Fall season! And this time (and just this time) I made just enough to eat for this week and not need to freeze for next years possible zombie apocalypse. 

Ms. Stewart's Creamy Celery Soup

INGREDIENTS

  • 2 tablespoons butter

  • 1 1/2 pounds (12 to 15 large stalks) celery, sliced 1/2 inch thick crosswise (about 6 cups), leaves reserved for garnish

  • 1 medium onion, coarsely chopped

  • 1 baking potato, (8 to 10 ounces),peeled and cut in 1/2 inch cubes

  • Coarse salt

  • 1 to 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

DIRECTIONS

  1. Heat butter in a large (4-quart) saucepan over medium heat. Add celery, onion, and potato; season with salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, until vegetables begin to soften, 8 to 10 minutes.

  2. Add 6 cups water to saucepan; bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium, and simmer until vegetables are very tender, about 20 minutes.

  3. Working in batches, puree soup until smooth. (To prevent splattering, fill blender only halfway, and allow the heat to escape: Remove cap from hole in lid; cover lid with a dish towel, holding down firmly while blending.) Return soup to pan; stir in lemon juice, and season with salt. Serve, garnished with celery leaves.

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Forced Family, Forced Fun, and Forced Fed

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RH Buffet 2015

It's Rosh Hashanah time again! 

For all you Jebliers (Jesus fans) out there that means today is the Jewish New Year and the start of our holiday season. It's one of two times a year you have to go all American Ninja Warrior at temple to get a seat. 

Unfortunately this year I am not physically close enough to my blood family to force them into eating my food and pushing my Jew-bulousness (Jew Fabulousness) upon them. I am also not physically near my Jew Bestie Forever and her family to get my Russian Jew fix. 

Fortunately for me I am in a living situation surrounded by new friends who are willing to eat whatever I put in front of them with the promise of alcohol. So this year I forced all my new Southern friends to come over to my pied a terre where I filled what little counter space with all the cheeses. All of them.

This week I spent my down time scouring cookbooks and stalking middle aged female celebrity chefs online. Then two days ago I had a Me Moment with my platters. I hadn't spent any one on one time with my platters for months. So like a good 80's romantic evening I lit some candles, put on a Carly Simon album, poured a La Croix, and reacquainted myself with all my favorite lovers. After a few hours I totally started to understand the point of view of the mother from Flowers in The Attic. Some of my lovers ended up back in the pantry with the promise to see the light of a buffet table at a later date.

Starting early on Saturday I got to work with what I feel covers everything a Southern Jew Rosh Hashanah Brunch needs. Needless to say finding smoked salmon options in a medium sized Southern non coastal city was not easy. There was one. It wasn't bad.

I filled all my baking dishes and sheet pans (and my mouth periodically). Ran the dishwasher twice and wrapped up a few episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. All in all a productive day. 

The menu ended up with the following: 

Smoked Salmon and Dill Quiche with Feta

Cinnamon Kugel

Traditional Challah Bread

Deviled Eggs

Mini Honey Bundt Cakes

Meat and Cheese Platter (Pimento Cheese included)

Spring Green Pomegranate Salad with Almond Halva Dressing

To recap I will say for being the only Jew in the room I was very pleased to be able to share this New Year with the kids at Melrose Place. However my new goal is to get @crazyjewishmom to find me a new Jewish doctor who still has a mother around to cook a Rosh Hashanah meal for me. 

The Dead Dad's Club

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Dumplings and Bean with Bacon Soup

Dumplings and Bean with Bacon Soup

A NOTE:
Below is a post from awhile back. I find myself reading it once a year on Father's Day. So I am going to share it once again. And you will probably see it next year around this time as well. It's a damn good recipe.

Today’s post is going to be short. It is a holiday for many and I assume there are meats being bought, hot dishes being prepared, and Jell-O salads firming in the ice box.

This is the time of year I steer clear of the card aisles, ignore the barrage of promotional emails that filter in daily and make a concentrated effort to not ask my co-workers what they have planned for the weekend.

Today is Father’s Day and I’m a card carrying member of The Dead Dad’s Club. Though the name of our club sounds harsh it is our way of memorializing our fathers. Most of us in the club agree our fathers had a sense of humor to support our sardonic group name.

We formed innocently enough one night over beers. The Fates had found it necessary to bring together different circles of friends that once seated and stories told realized they formed a human Venn Diagram whose common space was our departed fathers.

That night, though nothing was said, we had our own Hallmark-less, cookout-less, present-less, and fatherless Father’s Day. I will not speak for everyone at that table but I imagine for a split second we all held a mental memorial for the men who were half responsible for making us.

This Father’s Day I will spend time thinking of the men who taught us to make soup, who could play a mean accordion, who proudly served our country, who filled a station wagon full of kids and travelled cross country, who stopped to make history by being photographed on a toilet in the middle of a field, who built a log home, who could light up any room with his electrical skills, who took us to our first psychic reading, who made historical societies cool, and who knew that even after he was gone could make a difference to a medical school.

So this week’s recipe is dedicated to my father, Just J. In my mind this is a family recipe. It very well could have come from Good Housekeeping decades back. But only my father could make it a real family delicacy. It’s a simple soup. From a store bought can. But made to taste homemade because of who taught me to make it.

Just J’s Bean with Bacon Soup (aka Dumps)

Feeds me for about two days. Or a family of four for one meal

(Crawfish) Boils, Boston, and Boozy Cakes

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A few weeks back I took a vision quest to the small village of Cambridge, Massachusetts to visit some friends and partake in my very first crawfish boil. Now I am sure that many of you are picking your jaws up off the floor with the image of my fine Jew self sucking down some crawfish brains. It should be known to all that I was given official Jew approval by the official Southern Jew (SoJew) herself. In fact her exact words were, “You are a Southern Jew now. Get over it.” With those words of encouragement and $40 cash it wasn’t but a few minutes time that I found myself beard deep in serving platter of the little red bastards. One thousand pounds of crawfish had been ordered for the annual LSU Crawfish Boil held at The Baseball Tavern. I ate roughly 999 pounds. I kid. I ate enough that I was afraid to fart in public but not enough that I also chased it with a cheese burger from Tasty Burger about two hours later.

The event overall was wonderful. I was able to spend hours with friends talking about all the great times we had at LSU. The picnics we had in the quad between classes. The all night ragers over at Lamda Lamda Lamda. And then I realized I didn’t go to LSU. That I spent all my time in college working at the mall like all good gay virgins with dreams of big city Working Girl lives. Oh Tape World. I miss you.

The whole weekend was full of fun activities. There was the night I kiki’d with the girls over Indian take out. That night I learned that I am the same Myers Briggs personality type as Joe Hackett from the seminal television classic Wings. Television has not been the same since that show left us.

Then there was the afternoon that I lost my virginity while getting a pedicure. I have to admit it actually was my first time in the pedicure chair. And I have to admit that I really do think I lost my virginity (again and again and again) to that same pedicure chair. My fine Boston friend, Ms. Antipasto, apparently didn’t feel it necessary to tell me that the chair reenacts scenes from movies you normally have to verify your age to watch. The place was lovely. If I lived there I was would have a standing weekly appointment. Maybe on Saturday mornings.

Part of an afternoon was spent crying in a Christian Science library. Part of an afternoon was spent acting out our favorite scenes from Evening Shade on balconies overlooking bays. One morning was spent getting to know strangers over cheesy grits. Another morning was spent binge eating pie for breakfast with friends.

And through it all we still had time to squeeze in some greatly appreciated episodes of Good Times. Thankfully JJ got out of jail in part two of that nail biter.

All in all a great weekend.  

Now I am sure all of you are wondering what the “H”, “E”, Double Hockey Sticks I whipped up in the kitchen this week for the blog.

If you recall last week's riveting post you will know that at one point during my weekend shenanigans I found myself a bar listening to my wonderful friend Leasing Agent sing. While there the barkeep suggested I try this new to me root beer with a kick. He handed me a bottle of Not Your Father’s Root Beer by the fine folks over at Small Town Brewery. Let me just say that if you are a fan of root beer and a fan of alcohol pick some up. Warn your family that rehab is your plan for next Summer and call it day. If this liquid gold had been around when Nancy Reagan was in office she would have warned us against it on an episode of Diff’rent Strokes. As my plan is to not be plastered at the pool all weekend I decided to use what I bought for a good old fashioned Root Beer Cake.

Not Your Father’s Boozy Cake

(adapted from The Food Network’s Root Beer Bundt Cake)

Prepared Buttercream Frosting (recipe here)

Spatchcocked Chicken, Summer Shenanigans, and Sports Bar Pizza

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Herb De Provence Spatchcocked Chicken

With the arrival of summer I have found myself at the pool a few weekends in a row. Now as I am one to only get in a pool on the rarest of occasion, the time spent is pure observational. At the start of the summer I, along with a few select neighbors, could be seen lounging about, cattily chatting about the goings on around our building and tossing back a La Croix or two. With summer now in full swing the pool has become a petri dish of high school coming of age movies. Picture a lovely mash up of Heathers and Mean Girls. Everyone in their places with eyes spying over Hawaiian Tropic smudged knock off Ray-Bans.

So naturally my close knit group have situated ourselves on the deep end in a position to watch absolutely everything. From the pretty gay who surrounds himself with a dozen guests buzzing around to the thump thump of his overly clichéd Pandora playlist. To the wall of silent college linebackers not so stealthy checking out the opposite sex. To the family of four who dares to dip their toddlers in a salt water pool full of marinating humans. Occasionally there is a Step Up-like showdown of whose music can be played loudest. While other times you can’t help but hear the daytime drama emerging from a phone call “accidentally” left on speaker phone.

It is usually at this point I gather up my mumu, straw hat, and waddle my way back to my dorm room four floors up.

As yesterday was no different than the Saturday before I bullied my neighbor, Fitness Instructor, into leaving our Wild Kingdom watering hole early to go re-hydrate with beers alfresco. After we solved all of our problems over Small Batch beers we moved on to a new place in town. I’m not going to bother you with the name of this bar because, other than myself, Fitness Instructor, our dear friend Leasing Agent (who was singing at the bar) and the barkeep, we were the only people there. I could be wrong but there may have been a Nathan’s Hot Dog vendor outside but I think he moved down the block to the new strip club. Because hot dogs naturally go with vinyl lounge chairs and sad men. Needless to say I don’t think this bar will be around long.

However I will say I found my Netflix twin in the barkeep. In fact I was pretty sure we were destined to be best friends forever when after discussing the culinary expertise detailed in the show Hannibal, he offered up some of his cold pizza to share. And if anyone really knows me they know that I would bend over backwards naked behind a Nathan’s Hot Dog cart in front of a strip club to have day old cold pizza. Why it isn’t an option on pizzeria menus I will never understand.

Again all of life’s problems were solved over beers. And then I went to bed.

A few weeks into this summer living I have determined that only one day of pool research is good for the health. With that I have vowed to stay in today and catch up on some much needed housekeeping. And by housekeeping I mean roasting a chicken while binge watching Star Trek: The Next Generation.

As much as I want to just sit on the sofa and lick the carcass clean I plan on using this chicken to feed off of for a few days. You know the Jews love a good roast chicken.

Herb De Provence Lemon Roasted Chicken

  • 1 whole 5 lb chicken
  • 2 Tablespoons Olive Oil – divided
  • Coarse Salt and Ground Black Pepper
  • 1 Tablespoons Herb De Provence
  • 3 Small Lemons – sliced

1. Preheat oven to 425. Start by placing the chicken breast side down on your work surface. Beginning at the thighs remove the back bone using kitchen shears. Discard backbone or save for stock. Flip the chicken over and open like a book. Then press down on the breastbone, firmly to flatten the bird.

2. Rub the chicken with one tablespoon olive oil. Then season with 1 tablespoon of salt, ½ teaspoon of black pepper, and 1 tablespoon of Herb De Provence.

3. Oil the bottom of a rimmed baking sheet with remaining 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Layer half of the sliced lemons on the tray and then place the chicken, breast side up, on top of the lemons.

4. Using your fingers gently separate the skin from the meat of the chicken. Then gently place remaining lemon slices under the skin of the chicken.

5. Roast the chicken for 50-60 minutes. Chicken will be done when a thermometer placed in the thickest part of the breast reads 165 degrees.

6. Remove from oven and let rest 10 minutes before carving up.

Until next time.