Paint-By-Number Zen

Running errands with a friend, we came across a wire display of Paint-By-Numbers in the kid section of the art supply store.  We couldn’t resist.  Half joke, half spending frenzy, we each bought one; planning to ply our painting skills with a bottle of wine later in the week.  I brought mine home and tossed it in a pile on the dining room table.  There it sat forgotten. 

Until one day, lacking in inspiration and bogged down with brain prattle, I let procrastination get the better of me.  Instead of going to my workshop and finishing the pieces I needed for the week, I checked the weather.  Then did the dishes, walked the dog, checked the weather again, went on Facebook, put on some socks, checked the weather one more time, and then distractedly sat down with a pile of papers form the table.  Under the health insurance summery and the 2 for 1 deal on pizza was my paint-by-number.  It seemed the time waster I was dreaming of.  But as I popped open the first little numbered paint pot, something changed.

There is something about doing a paint-by-number.   It has the same inexplicable draw as coloring with a three year old.  It doesn’t really matter what it looks like.  It’s not like you drew it.  It’s understood that you aren’t creating a masterpiece.   You gather your stock paintbrush and ubiquitous jar of water. You pick a primary color and tug on its plastic tab. You dip in the brush and search the printed cardboard for the right tiny blue number and begin.  Then it happens.  By the second tier of the smokestack, you stop being concerned with picking up dog food.  By the third or fourth leopard spot, your breathing slows. You stop bunching your shoulders and crinkling your forehead.  Filling a swath of cloud, you begin to think clearer, have better ideas. 

I painted four number 10 spaces, and I was ready.  I’d somehow found focus simply by covering up little blue lines with a tiny brush.  I went to the workshop and was more productive than I had been in two days.  I had stumbled onto an indispensable tool.  The paint dries quickly, so I can cover just a couple of spaces, filling in what will become a shadow or a suitcase.  Then, put it back in a drawer until I need it again. I don’t really know what I’ll do with the finished product.  Maybe hang it in a pantry or the closet.  The finished product really isn’t the point.

My friend and I did eventually get our wine and paint-by-number diversion.  We had mimosas and rolls and painted.  Thinking up marvelous plans (watch for a paint-by-number cocktail) and churning out color blocked amalgamations that only vaguely resemble the picture on the box.  The picture didn’t really matter.  Just that we had a great time.  Am I suggesting that paint-by-number will cure you of anxiety and put you on the path of brilliance?  Well, yes.  I am.

When was the last time you did a paint-by-number?

 

Cocktail Fail

Some of you may know, I contribute to a beer blog called Chicks that Dig Beer.  Last week I created a Caramel Ale Ice Cream that is absolutely amazing.  It has a delicate beer flavor brought out by a smooth caramel foundation.  I considered it a success.  It was so good, it kept coming to mind.  I couldn’t shake the thought that it had even more potential.  But, as what?  An accompaniment to a warm, winter root salad?  By pouring even more caramel over it?  I settled on what I always settle on. I got out the cocktail glasses. 

Beer Ice Cream Cocktail.  Sounds good.    The liquor cabinet was overflowing with possibility, following an over-indulgent trip to Surdyks.  Not to mention a miasma of half bottles.  Jewel toned schnapps in various faux flavors, most of which needed to be run under a hot faucet to be opened.  I began easy.  Vodka and ice cream.  Meah. It just wasn’t quite right.  Then, I tried whisky.  Still not it.  Each new concoction was pouring into two gleaming low balls that were whisked into the living room for my husband and I to try together.  Each one was followed by mutual looks of apathy and sometimes distain.  The glasses were politely discarded on the marble coffee table and I’d trot (or slink) back to the dining room.  Sounds of contemplation where followed by the clamor of ice in an aluminum cocktail shaker.

I tried to keep up hope.  This was just a tricky one.  I would need to think out of the box.  I tried all sorts of liquors and every mixer imaginable to compliment my wonderful ale ice cream.  Most of them overpowered the delicate beer flavor.  Some of them led to wiping our tongues on our sleeves to remove the taste…or texture… that had invaded out mouths.  There was a blueberry vodka contrivance that tasted like drinking beer out of a Caboodle that once stored erasers.  Soon, the living room began to fill with half drank, pungent glasses of separated booze and cream.  Some rimmed with sugar, all of them sticky.  Like a limousine after prom. 

Once we got over the house smelling like Lindsey Lohan hawking kettle corn for beer money, we did find one that we tolerated.  By tolerated, I mean we didn’t involuntarily re-open our mouths and let it fall out onto the rug… or the passing dog.  By this point, the subject was moot.  I had run out of ice cream.

The moral of this story:  Though happy people see potential in all their surroundings, not everything was meant to be a cocktail.

Lingonberry Sausage

The week after the New Year holds mixed feelings.  Taking down the Christmas tree, hauling the carefully wrapped ornaments back to the attic and tossing the last cookie from the tin.  All those crumbs, remnants of delicious memories tinged with caloric regret.  Opening the fridge, you try to figure out how to make a healthy, optimistic, looking-forward-to-the-future meal out of half a pint of cream, a quarter bottle of flat champagne and those stupid lingonberries you always buy but never seem to do anything with. 

You’ve surely heard that legendary quote attributed to Otto von Bismark, "There are two things you don’t want to see being made—sausage and legislation."   Working for a non-profit for 10 years gave me a fair helping of legislation, and I’ve made sausage.   Frankly, sausage tastes better.  When I opened my fridge and saw those beady little lingonberries glaring at me I could hear them taunting me.  Whispering, “We got you again.  We were expensive. You bought us anyway.  And you’ll buy us next year too, so SHOVE IT!”  I’ll shove it, all right, right into a meaty sausage casing.   {Sidebar: Lingonberries are a small tart berry used in Scandinavian cuisine. They show up in grocery stores in Minneapolis around the holidays.  Their jewel like beauty always tempts me into buying them.  Grand schemes of lovely cheese plates and cocktail with glowing red lingonberries resting at the crux of a martini glass flash through my head as I reach for them.  Unfortunately, they float.  And….I don’t like lingonberries.}

Making sausage is one of those wonderful processes that allow you to be creative with the recipe.  You just need to follow a couple of rules.

     -Communicate with your butcher.  Tell them you are making sausage before they bring you your cut of meat.  Meats like pork shoulders make great sausage when they’re untrimmed, but if your butcher assumes you’re going to roast it, they will trim much of the fat off.

-It’s very important to keep your ingredients cold.  If it’s too warm, all the wonderful fat will just stick to the equipment, leaving you with dry sausage. 

      -Have enough fat.  Your meat should contain at least 35% fat.  You can use any meat combination you like.  But, if you’re using a lean meat, like lamb, you’ll need to add more fat in the mix.      Adding pork fat is a great choice. You can ask for it at your butcher.

-Keep your proportions right.  For every 5lbs or meat and fat I use 2 ½ Tbsp of kosher salt and 1 cup cold liquid.  Put in as much spice as you want.

-You don’t need to stuff your sausage in casing, but if you do, take the time to taste it first.  Get out a frying pan and fry up a little patty.  Adjust the seasoning as needed.

Lingonberry Sausage

5lbs untrimmed pork shoulder

2 ½ Tbsp Kosher salt

4 cloves garlic minced (about 2 Tbsp)

1 Tbsp ground pepper

1 Cup cold shiraz or good red wine

¾ to 1 cup whole lingonberries (you could substitute dried cranberries or even frozen wild blueberries)

8-12 ft hog casing, soaked in warm water 40 min and rinsed. (Don’t forget to rinse the inside)

A meat grinder with a sausage stuffer attachment.  I use the Kitchenaid attachment.  Make sure you have both the grinder and stuffer if you plan to make sausage links. They are often sold separately.

Cut the pork into cubes that will fit into your grinder.  Usually one inch cubes.  If the pork has a bone, reserve it for another use. Toss the meat with the salt, garlic, and pepper.  Cover and chill thoroughly, 2-24 hours. This is also a good time to put the wine in the fridge.

Set your grinder to the finest setting.  Set a bowl on ice.  Grind the meat mixture into the bowl.   Mix the mixture by hand or using a stand mixer for about a min.  Add the wine and the lingonberries and mix for 1 min more.  Do a taste patty.  Adjust the seasoning as needed.  Now you can make the sausage into patties or stuff into casing.

Stuffing sausage:

It’s really nice to have a partner when you’re stuffing sausage.  Not only is it more efficient, you need someone’s support when you realize what your doing could easily be misconstrued and the phrase ‘meat extruder’ makes you laugh like a 15 year old.  But, like sex, you can do it alone as well. 

Feed the casing onto the nozzle.  It’s surprisingly durable.  If you are getting kinks or knots in the casing, run a small amount of cold water through it.  That usually does the trick. 

Leave 3 inches of casing hanging off the end of the nozzle (sometimes called the ‘extruder’).  Give it a little twist or tie a knot.  Begin feeding the meat through the machine at an even speed.  Keep one hand on the nozzle releasing the casing slowly.  If you get very large air bubbles, prick them with a knife.  Small air bubbles usually work themselves out when you form links.  If you are seeing lots of air, the casing isn’t filling enough.  Release less casing.  If the meat is backing up around the outside of the nozzle, release more.  Once all the meat is stuffed in the casing, you should have a long coil of meat.  Don’t cut off the excess yet.

Clear out the machine and excess equipment. Figure out how long you want your sausages.  Start with the beginning of your length of meat. (Same place you started before.)  Measure your link and twist.  Measure another link. Don’t twist.  Measure a link.  Twist.   Got it?  Twist every other link and the in between links are formed by the twisted links.  It sounds strange, but will save you a lot of meaty heart ache.  When you reach the last link, twist the end casing and cut off the excess.

Eat your sausage!  It’s best fresh, but it freezes well for a couple of months when well wrapped.  Sausage making really is very fun. 

There are some great references out there for making sausage and other meaty delights.  One is Charcuterie ,by Micheal Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn.

Another is http://www.sausagemaker.com

The Idea Sharpener

One of the side effects of being a person compelled to do everything is mind altering loss of sleep.   I spend much of the night obsessing over processes and possibilities.  I’ve tried everything.  I’ve gotten too good at counting backwards from 100.  I can say the states in alphabetical order.  I can even say the alphabet backwards.  None of it works.  The only thing that really works is to write down my ideas as they come to me.  I wake up and rummage in the dark for a scrap of paper and writing utensil of any kind to sooth my thoughts and help me sleep.  As a result, my night stand is a tumbling waterfall of receipts with scribbles on them, bookmarks carelessly torn out of pages, and post-its with half written words scrolled in eyeliner.   All these hasty documents are meant to be read again at a later date, inspiration for brilliant projects.  But really, they fall to the floor and end up sucked into the vacuum. 

One night I reached into the drawer and pulled out an unused role of receipt tape that I had brought home from work.  My co-workers were kind enough to save all the roles of paper that no longer fit the new register in the gift shop.  I believe the conversation went something like this: 

“What should we do with these?”

 “I don’t know.  Give them to Emily.”

The receipt tape prompted another concept: an idea roll.   All my nights ramblings contained in one place to be sorted through and deciphered later.  No more world changing inventions lost under the bed, only to be pawns in a game of cat and dust bunny.  I just needed a place to keep it.  Fortunately, I had a pencil sharpener, some bolts, and a part from an adding machine my neighbors gave me for my birthday.  Together, with my new welding and braising skills, The Idea Sharpener was built.

Come to the Nokomis Gallery in Minneapolis from 2pm-4pm today, Dec 10th, 2011 to interact with The Idea Sharpener in person along with other works by Emily Organ.  What dreamy sculpture would you like to see next?

Kringla, Versatile and Amazing Little Pastry

   

    It’s the day before Thanksgiving.  It’s time. 

    I climb on the kitchen stool and open the cabinets in my 30’s kitchen.  After a sigh over the disarray, I reach for the top shelf.  Out comes a half package of spaghetti, the Dutch cocoa in the pretty tin, the excess corn husks from a tamale experiment, a lost BBQ spice blend, and six open boxes of toothpicks.  There it is, next to a sandwich bag of half used birthday candles.  The chipped, dark brown recipe box still has floury finger prints from when I stowed it away last year.

     I really only bring out the box around the holidays.  Most of my recipes are digitized and searchable or clipped from magazines and stashed in three ringed binders.  But, around the holidays, that annual nostalgia for familial comforts must be satisfied and grandmas old recipes are resurrected.  I open the box.  There it is, printed on bright yellow paper and given to me by my aunt years ago.  The recipe for Kringla.  An upper Midwestern mainstay, this Norwegian pastry is an enigma, both dense and fluffy.   The slight sweetness is like no other and immediately evokes memories of stocking footed mornings watching Sunday Morning and cozy evenings playing Rummikub.   My grandmother served Kringla with butter and a dish of jam.   They are frequent additions to after dinner cookie trays on my aunt’s coffee table.  My dad likes them with coffee in the morning.  When I asked him how Grandpa liked to eat them, he smiled though the phone and said, “Quickly.”

      My grandma always made perfect little knots.  It took me years to get even reasonable at it.  Still, most of my kringla look like pastry tumors with ears.  Never the less, I still consider this one of my go to holiday recipes.  Every year, I make a huge batch of them and freeze them by the dozen.  They make a unique host’s gift.  They also match surprisingly well with a glass of champagne as an elegant cocktail accompaniment or a late night snack.  What?  You don’t have champagne as a late night snack?

Recipe for Kringla

½ cup butter

1 1/3 cups sugar

1 cup sour cream

1 tsp soda

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla

Beat all the above together thoroughly.

Add 1 cup buttermilk and 4 cups flour alternately a little at a time.  Make sure it is thoroughly mixed but don’t over beat. 

Chill overnight.  This is an important step.

Heat the oven to 375 degrees.  Roll out in logs about 13 inches long and the thickness of your ring finger.  Shape like a pretzel and move to a parchment covered cookie sheet.  Leave about an inch between each kringla.  Bake until lightly brown on the bottom edges, about 15 min.  Cool completely and store in an air tight container. 

Protective Goggles and Kinetics

I got a lot of strange looks today.  At the grocery, the teenager at the deli counter kept covertly pointing at her head.   I thought she liked my hair.  I made sure to say thank you.   It wasn’t until I got in the shower and was lathering oatmeal-lavender soap through my hands that I realized my protective goggles from welding class where still nestled into my taciturn locks.  This isn’t the first time this has happened this week.  My husband is beginning to believe I have added protective goggles to my wardrobe along with a regular dose of soot smear on my face.  The soot is never in a romantic-hardworking-damsel type of place, like accentuating a high cheekbone.  No.  It usually extends at an awkward angle from the corner of my mouth, or leads straight out of my nose towards the left side of my lip.  Despite my efforts to unknowingly match them to pairs of vintage heels, protective goggles have not caught on.  I’ve just gotten so used to wearing them.   

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the welding class I’m taking.   It’s at the Chicago Ave Fire Arts Center in Minneapolis.  And, I honestly think, welding might be the most enlightening process I have ever tried to learn.   I feel about welding like I did when I first started cooking.  It’s become an obsession that holds court in my psyche.  There’s something about taking a pile of cast away metal and using fire to transform it into that thing you’ve always wanted.  That great idea you had in 1997 that you thought was always out of reach.  That problem solving technique you used to use when you where seven that started with “You could make a …”

Not to say Oxy-acetylene welding doesn’t have its limits.  This week I learned what pot metal is.  It’s pretty much a bunch of zinc and other cheap, quick melting alloys used in inexpensive manufacturing.  I believe it has been used extensively since the 1940’s to make Slinkys.   If you can imagine what metal would look like if it turned into foam instead of melting into a puddle, that’s what it looks like when you hold a torch to pot metal.  No matter.  There are always bolts. 

So, my first project stemmed from a shovel off a cultivator I dug out of the ground in our old yard, a pile of nuts (the metal kind), and a solder pin.  Being a lover of contradictions, I added a folded bit of paper from an old book that had lost its cover long ago.  I love a challenge so I made it kinetic.  

The class is once a week, so I will lay awake now, mind trilling with rusted springs and steel cranks.   Saying, “You could make a …”

I should take a moment to thank my parents for teaching me not to be afraid of power tools.  All those days Dad asked me to steady a piece of wood while it was fed through the table saw and watching Mom wield farming implements has given me approachable access to any tool I might need to follow my whims.  

What should it be named?

Chocolate-Pear Jam

     I love jam.  I love it for cooking.  I love it for sauces.  I love it dripping down my hand as it slips off warm toast.  It makes that AM rush out the door, toast balanced on the coffee mug and trying to scrape frost of the car, routine bearable.
     Jam often evokes the image of moo-mooed grandmas in hot kitchens, elbow deep in pulp.  I, on the other hand, have been on a recent mission to upscale jam.  I'm convinced jam deserves a place in gourmet kitchens next to smoked paprika and pink salt.  But it retains a timeless quality that corn foam lacks.  
     I tried a few experiments.  I put salt in blueberry jam.  The first batch was like what you might imagine a blueberry would taste like if it washed up on the shores of New Jersey.  The next batch was fantastic and I served it with roasted marshmallows and Graham crackers.  I made jam from Shallots and port and served it with goat cheese. I considered these successes.   Then I was seduced by the Top Chef bandwagon and tried to create a bacon jam.  I put it in a BLT.  It was a weird pap of a surrogate. It was less jam and more fat spread.  I should have just used bacon.
      I tried not to be discouraged.  I kept trying to add a little this or that to a classic jam recipe until I found what I wanted.  Then I found some windfall pears at the farmer's market. I made Chocolate- Pear Jam.
 

Chocolate pear Jam:
5-7 very ripe pears
3 cups sugar
Half a vanilla bean
4 oz good quality chocolate, like Valhrona, chopped into small pieces
4 sterilized pt jars or a container for storing

     Peel and chop the pears into small pieces.  Depending on the variety of pear you use, the pieces may not cook down completely, so you will have small chunks in your jam.   Chop the pears so that you will still be able to spread the jam.  Put the pears into a heavy bottomed pot.
     Split the vanilla bean and scrape out the seeds.  Add seeds and pod to the pot. How to split a vanilla bean
     Add the sugar.  Boil until the mixture gels.  There are tons of techniques for telling if a jam is ready.  Dripping it off a spoon, dropping it on a cold plate, bringing it a Voodoo priestess, use what ever technique you prefer.  If you don't have a preferred method, use a thermometer.  Jams should start to gel at 120 degrees Fahrenheit. 
     Remove from heat and stir in the chocolate.  When the chocolate melts, remove the vanilla bean and poor into jars.  Continue with the canning process or store in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks. 
                                   Anyone had an amazing jam?