Butter and Whiskey

Roasted Parsnip and Asparagus soup

Made this up tonight, and it was pretty interesting:

20 stalks asparagus

2 parsnips, peeled and cut into chunks

3 leeks, cleaned well, white and green parts only, sliced

extra virgin olive oil

kosher salt and fresh ground pepper

1 tablespoon butter

2 shallots, chopped

1 brown onion, chopped

4 cloves garlic, chopped

2 teaspoons curry powder

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1 teaspoon cumin

2 tablespoons flour

3 cups chicken or vegetable stock

2 whole cloves of peeled garlic

1/2 cup heavy cream or milk

Heat oven to 400˚. Toss leeks, asparagus, and (on a separate pan) parsnips with 1-2 tablespoons olive oil and sprinkle with kosher salt. Roast asparagus and leeks for 5-10 minutes or until bright green. Remove from oven. Roast parsnips for 30 minutes or until they pierce easily with a fork.

Heat stock over low-medium heat until simmering, then keep warm.

In the meantime, heat a deep pot or dutch oven over medium heat. Add 2 tablespoons olive oil. Add onions, shallots, and garlic to pan and toss a tablespoonful of kosher salt in the pan. Cook until translucent. Add curry, coriander, and cumin, and cook for a couple minutes. Add butter and stir until well combined.

Add flour and cook for a minute or so. Slowly ladle in warm stock, stirring well after each addition, and bring to a simmer - don't boil or you'll break your roux. Turn heat down to low.

Cut asparagus into chunks and add to soup along with the leeks. The parsnips should be ready; remove them from the oven.

Ladle soup and parsnips into your food processor. Be sure to cover the top with a kitchen towel, unless you want an enormous mess. Pulse a few times and then blitz it on full blast (you could also do this in chunks with a blender or hand blender). Blitz for a few minutes and taste. Add salt and pepper to your liking, plus two whole cloves of raw garlic. Blitz again until smooth.

Return to stove and stir in cream. Serve immediately with a dollop or créme fraîche or sour cream.

The leeks and parsnips are very sweet, so a good amount of salt really works. Great as a starter, although we had it for dinner and it was more than enough.

Couple great recipes

Very exciting news: I made my first from-scratch curry. Lots of spice, lots of ingredients, but pretty hard to eff up. It's a Nigella recipe, and it came out beautifully. Lucky/poor Scottie has to eat it every day for lunch because it made a SHITLOAD.

Then last night, still trying to break out of my comfort zone, I decided to try and find the recipe for a favorite of mine and my pal Jill Benjamin's. We get it every time we eat at a particular Japanese restaurant in Santa Monica, even though it always gives us tummy gurgles that never materialize into anything nearly as dramatic as the gurgles would have you believe. So what is this gurlgy dish? Miso black cod. Wow. So rich, but just as good as the restaurant, if I do say so. Jill is coming for dinner on Wednesday and wants to try it, but honestly, the dish was so rich I don't know if I could have it two days in a week.

Here's the recipe from Epicurious: For Nobu-style Saikyo Miso saké 3/4 cup (150 ml) mirin 2 cups (450 g) white miso paste 1 1/4 cups (225 g) granulated sugar For cod 4 black cod fillets, about 1/2 pound (230 g) each 3 cups (800 g) Nobu-style Saikyo Miso 1 stalk hajikami per serving preparation Make Nobu-style Saikyo Miso: 1.Bring the saké and the mirin to a boil in a medium saucepan over high heat. Boil for 20 seconds to evaporate the alcohol. 2. Turn the heat down to low and add the miso paste, mixing with a wooden spoon. When the miso has dissolved completely, turn the heat up to high again and add the sugar, stirring constantly with the wooden spoon to ensure that the bottom of the pan doesn’t burn. Remove from heat once the sugar is fully dissolved. Cool to room temperature. Yield: 3 cups (800 g). Make cod: 1. Pat fillets thoroughly dry with paper towels. Slather the fish with Nobu-style Saikyo Miso and place in a non-reactive dish or bowl and cover tightly with plastic wrap. Leave to steep in refrigerator for 2 to 3 days. 2 Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C, gas 6). Preheat a grill or broiler. Lightly wipe off any excess miso clinging to the fillets but don't rinse it off. Place the fish on the grill, or in a broiler pan, and grill or broil until the surface of the fish turns brown. Then bake for 10 to 15 minutes. 3. Arrange the black cod fillets on individual plates and garnish with hajikami. Add a few extra drops of Nobu-style Saikyo Miso to each plate. Makes 4 servings.

I visited Nikki's beautiful baby boy, Dash. Mrrrrrrppphhhh. I'm in love. Nik had me run upstairs to check out his bassinet - and there was his beautiful baby blanket, hand crafted by moi! I was really touched. The whole time I was making it, I was thinking of his little tiny self snuggling up with it. Aww.

Man cannot live by starch alone

Scott and I have given up bread, potatoes, rice, and pasta for Lent. It's Scott's first time giving something up for Lent, being Presbyterian and all (??), so there's been a lot of confusion and explaining.

The best part of Lent is the Sunday gimme - on Sundays, you can have the thing you've given up! Now, I've never seen this in any official church literature, but enough of my Catholic friends adhere to this rule that I think it's okay. Right? It's okay? Okay. Right, God?

Were it not for this possibly made-up rule, Oscar night would have been a very different night indeed, but we did fine. I made Ina's roasted shrimp and orzo and - gasp! - a slightly altered version of Rachel Ray's green bean and asparagus salad. I just eliminated the asparagus because Scottie really hates smelly pee.

Shrimp and orzo thingy was really, really tasty. Feta makes everything tastes good. If I hadn't made the horrible decision to give up pasta, bread, potatoes, and rice, I would have eaten it for forty days and forty nights.

I am one-third of the way done with baby Finn's crocheted* St. Patrick's Day blanket. It's an Irish flag baby blanket, because I'm fucking proood like that. Since I don't do recipes**, here's a brief explanation:

It's three large squares, green, orange, and white, which have been made by doing a granny square that, well, goes and goes and goes. Til it's blanket length. Here is the clearest online explanation of a granny square that I've found. I just kept going round and round and round until it was huge.

Will post a picture once it's done!

*pronounced croh-shayd, not crotch-i-tid, as funny as that would be.
**That's what Jen Thompson Wistrom calls patterns and I love her for it.