Grasping at Straws

This has not been the best summer. I admit it, I've been struggling to put a good face on things but when you find yourself listening to Queen's Innuendo for motivation you aren't in the best place.

You need a Shirley Temple.

Ok, maybe you don't, but I do. I don't know what it is about this drink that wraps me up in footie pajamas and says, "It's ok, you can have fun now.", but it never fails to make me feel better about the world. Of course, as a grown up I can play with it in ways that wouldn't have been suitable when I was eight. Also, as a grown up, I can decide how many cherries it gets. This may be the best part, especially when you use cherries you have done up yourself. Or, if you have had a really bad set of weeks, you can do something like what I did. You can get really crazy and take someone else's inspiration and really customize your drink. Like, for example, making a cherry cheesecake shirley temple float.

Put rum cherries in the bottom of your glass(about a dozen, depending on how your day was.) Top with rum from the cherries, and some cherry syrup. Add cheesecake ice cream. If you think cheesecake tastes like ick, you can use vanilla or almond ice cream. Pour ginger ale over the top. You may need another cherry. Or more rum.

And footie pajamas.

Cherry Syrup

750 g of cherries, pitted (I used Ayers Creek's amazing montmorency cherries)

150 g sugar

50 g water

a dash of bitters

a squeeze of lime juice

a pinch of salt

Put everything together in a pot and bring to a gentle boil. Boil for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Strain through a fine strainer into a bowl pressing all of the syrup out of the fruit. The syrup will thicken slightly when cool, but you can reduce the strained syrup to intensify its flavor and thicken it if you want (you risk scorching it, so use caution!). Cool and store in a covered container in the fridge. I have no idea how long it will keep because I use it too quickly.

I just came for the appelflappen

If you spend some time looking up the finer details of Dutch cuisine (and I know you want to) you will find some discussion about the celebratory food of New Year's Eve. Alongside the oliebollen (oily balls! yummers!) you find a note about "apple folds"aka appelflappen, a short pastry filled with bits of apple not unlike a turnover.

That is not my appelflappen.

My appelflappen (I love the word so much, even if spell check doesn't.) is entirely a product of my experiences at the Big E, the Eastern States Exposition, the greatest fair anywhere ever. You can have your county fair. Your state fair, with its butter cows and demolition derbies or whatever? Not even close to the Big E. You see, the Big E wasn't just for my piddly little New England state. It was for all of them. Oh yeah! You could get maple sugar candy at the Vermont building, wait in line forever for the tiniest, most wonderful sample of wild blueberry ice cream at the Maine building. And standing proud among the fried doughs and turkey legs was the Appelflappen.

Appelflappen! A deep fried, beer battered apple ring served hot with powdered sugar. And if you were bold enough to suggest aloud that it was not simply a reason to go to the Big E but *the* reason to go to the Big E, a bell would ring, angels would chorus and you would get an extra piece.

You know I always got an extra piece.

Sadly, I hear there is no longer appelflappen at the Big E, and what I make at home, with its microbrewed beer and heirloom apples, could be construed as an elitist Portlandia version. Instead, I recognize it for what it is, a tribute to a very sweet taste memory.

Appelflappen, Big E style

The key here is getting a good baking apple, not one that cooks into sauce, but can stand up to the rigors of battering and frying. A tart apple is a nice contrast to the batter and powdered sugar.

2 c all purpose flour

1 egg

12 oz beer (I used a Pyramid Apricot Ale which was lovely, but any beer you'll drink will do)

a pinch of sugar

a pinch of salt

4 apples, peeled, cored and cut into rings

oil for frying

powdered sugar for dusting

1. Mix together flour, sugar, salt and the egg. Slowly add the beer while whisking to form a smooth batter

2. Heat the oil over medium heat until hot

3. Dip the apple rings in the batter and gently place in the hot oil

4. Fry the apple rings, turning over as necessary, until the rings are a lovely golden brown (how dark your batter will get will depend on the beer you use, use your best judgement).

5. Drain on paper towels, dust with powdered sugar, eat while still warm. Don't forget to give yourself the extra one.

Frittered

I can tell you when I stopped worrying and learned to love brussels sprouts. It was the day they came to the table as fritters.

I come from hearty New England stock. We do not, as a general rule, fritter. Frittering is Bad News. In fact, these fritters may have been the first fritters I ever had. It opened new worlds of frittering to me. With the help of friends, I experimented with frittering on my own. Eventually, there was even Appleflappen, but that's a story best told at a bar with a few drinks in me.

Still, these remain one of my favorite fritters.

Here's the trick about working with brussels sprouts: cook them as little as you can manage. I'm not saying raw, although you could eat them that way, I'm saying don't put them in a pot of boiling water and then walk away until the air smells of sulphur. If this is how you cook your brassicas Captain Cabbage will hunt you down for the villain you are. Also your sprouts won't taste good, and this kind of overcooking is often responsible for people making the yuck face.

Instead, try these fritters.

4 c brussels sprouts*

1.5 c all purpose flour

1 c grated cheese (I used half parmesan, half gruyere following the "It's what is in the house right now" rule of thumb)

2 eggs

.5 c heavy cream plus a little just in case

3 t baking powder

1 t salt

1 t black pepper

.25 t nutmeg

oil for frying

1. Get a big pot of salted water boiling. Drop those happy sprouts in for 4-5 minutes. Drain and shock them with ice water to stop the cooking. Drain again.

2. Chop the sprouts into small bits. If the sprouts are big, something like an eighth is dandy, very small sprouts can be just quartered.

3. In a large bowl beat the eggs lightly. Add the flour, baking powder, salt, pepper, nutmeg and cheese to mix. It will be super thick. Add the cream to thin it. Stir in the chopped sprouts. You want to end up with a batter that is thicker than pancake batter, but not stiff, so feel free to add a bit more cream if you need it.

4. If you have a deep fry rig you could deep fry these, but I don't, so instead I heated a quarter inch of oil in my cast iron skillet to slightly above medium heat. A generous spoonful of batter makes a good sized fritter. Fry a few fritters at a time (I could only do 4 at a time in my pan), leaving plenty of room between each, and flip with tongs when golden brown. Fry until golden brown on both sides, and then place on paper towels to drain. (See, really, it's kind of like cooking bacon, not scary.)

5. Serve these hot, with lemon wedges to squeeze over them. If you have to fry them in advance, you can reheat them in the oven. If you are me, you won't care if they are hot, cold, or from yesterday.

*The recipe that I adapted this from called for 4 cups of brussels sprouts, but I have no idea how much that is actually supposed to be. I don't have time to put brussels sprouts in cups! Instead, I took one of those stalks of brussels sprouts and cut the sprouts off, and used however much that was. I didn't measure it. It turned out fine.

Fat

It comes up, inevitably.

Something along the lines of, "For the love of all that is good and glorious in the world how can you work with all of this stuff and not weigh a gazillion tons!"

Here's two secrets: 1. When you work with something every day it becomes just stuff, a "product", less of a consummation devoutly to be wished. Even if that something is well and truly beloved. 2. I ain't skinny.

I'm not bad off. In fact, if you look around my place of employment, you would see a bunch of people up to their elbows in butter, sugar and dough all appearing to be relatively healthy. But truth is, last time I saw the doctor I was told to lose a few pounds. Like at least 10. Seriously. And that was the first time a doctor has ever flat out told me that.

And of course, that was the day before making some 400 rhubarb mini pies with a ginger crumb topping. I really love rhubarb. And ginger. And pies. Especially small ones.

Since then I have given up nothing (except eating my fill of rhubarb mini pies). But I am walking to work more. I am watching portions as much as I can without making myself crazy, adding a bit more exercise. I bought a scale that was big enough for me. So far it is ok. I am losing weight, at a reasonably healthy rate. It isn't fun, it isn't my favorite thing, and I certainly hope it will be worth it in the long run.

But I'm not going to let it stop me from finding inspiration for a chocolate tart in a twix bar.

Dans le merde

The rhythm in a bakery is very different. My busiest day is my first day back; Saturday, I'm taking it easy, doing some extra dishes, getting out early.

Not like the line.

Which doesn't mean you don't get weeded. You do. But this is Production in a different sense of the word. And our weeds are different. It's like a different part of the swamp.

What I hate, though, are the weeds you can see from a distance, the weeds you see coming, but you just haven't reached them yet. Knowing they are mostly unavoidable. It comes from being part of a good solid team. You would think that would make it better, right? A good team can pull together, pull through. A good team can weather the occasional outbreak of the plague or maternity leave. Yes, maternity leaves come in outbreaks. Seriously.

What a good team can't do easily, is hum smoothly along when parts of it leave permanently. Sometimes it happens, through no fault of management, economy, or Acts of God, that you lose a few people all at once. Rolling over a quarter of your production staff in a two month period? That's pretty harsh. We're dealing with that now.

And if you're a team of two, and your other half is leaving? The half that could be relied upon to pick up all those thousand little jobs which, although each was a five minute job, those five minutes added up to hours of every day? The half that knew exactly what you meant when you forgot English was your native language and gibbered about the thingy. The half that made you crazy with cleaning even as you were inspired to do better yourself. The half that let you bitch about a job you love just because you needed to bitch about something. The half that actually deserved full credit because you knew that, even if that person could not do your job, you would have problems doing your job without them? When that half leaves, even if you understand, are genuinely happy for their opportunity, and wish them all the best, how do you roll with that?

You see the weeds coming. But you know the old saying about lemons.

I'll miss you, other half. Big shoes.

I figured out the disconnect

We work a lot in this business. I hear it with my friends when we do manage to find a moment to catch up each other - ten, twelve, fourteen, sixteen hour days - but it's not a oneupsmanship game. More a statement of, "Yes, I'm still here, doing this."

It's a statement that means more than you think.

There are statistics everywhere about the terrible parts of this business. There are the numbers about how many restaurants flat out fail in their first year of business. Numbers about alcohol and drug abuse among those in the industry. Appalling pay scales. Injury reports (and you know those numbers are higher than the statistics.) My company has an HR person, and there are things like sick and vacation days for those of a level to have been offered such things. Our chef asks us to not get sick when it is busy. He doesn't even say please, and we're surprised at his need to even vocalize such a thing. Who would allow themselves to get sick when we're serving 2000 people this weekend in three places at all the same time? I know, on a certain level that all of my coworkers are scarred, slightly damaged, or else they would not do this. Then I smile and wonder what they might imagine my damage to be, if they thought about such things.

My damage? I love this work. It's my curse, my albatross and anyone who recognizes it in me, however subconsciously, has totally got my number and I'm screwed. It is so easy to take advantage of me because I will think about each detail that I didn't get right, and it bothers me when I have to work at a level below what I think is good. I have a crappy day and I want to come home and cook. When I'm too exhausted to cook, I'm thinking about food anyway, reading about it. I want to travel to eat. I want to call up people and bore them with food talks at odd hours, as my sister will attest. Sure, I have other hobby things I do but I mean, I have been known to crochet cakes. I am a seriously damaged individual.

And I can possibly think of one person, of all the prep cooks, event cooks (there are over a hundred) and other culinary staff besides me in my workplace who may get that. That one person is not one of the management team. My own supervisor doesn't bake at home because it is too messy. In a word, I have no idea what their motivation is. They make similar money, work in the same environment, for the same hours and they don't flat out love this stuff? They don't want to taste everything and find out what a dragonfruit is, and contemplate new pairings for watermelon? The mind boggles.

I was showing some pictures posted by a friend of mine of her Easter buffet and my boss, in astonishment, verified that yes, she was a classmate of mine, same level of experience and all he could say was, "Well, what happened to you?"

I didn't reply with, "I'm working in the wrong kitchen."

As for the watermelon, there are so many taste memories with this sorbetto from David Lebovitz's book and Friendly's watermelon sherbet coolers that I want to leave it alone. But watermelon and black pepper is pretty kicking. And cubes of watermelon with really good balsamic. Or some of those strawberries that are starting to come in. Or with tapioca pearls as a shot drink... I can keep going...