Granny knows best

You know why Yorkshire pudding always goes with Granny's roast and potato dinners? Because Yorkshire pudding is awesomely delicious and dead easy to make. I'd never made them before, as I was rather intimidated due to all the special popover tins you see in kitchenware places, and popover mix, and restaurants acting like it's a big giant deal when they bring them out.

Here is how you make them. Spoon a little of the drippings from the roasting pan into the cups of a muffin tin. Keep it hot in the oven. Make a batter out of a cup of flour with a little salt, into which you mix a cup of milk you've beaten with 2 eggs. Pour this about halfway up the muffin tins, and bake for 15 minutes. Done. Beef drippings in the making, and can be used to sop up whatever falls on the plate, my kind of breadstuff.

Soup is good food

I have always been rather terrified by recipes calling for a can of Cream-of-Something soup, and for good reason. However, I will reveal that the one dish that probably makes me happiest in the world -- my mother's beef stew over broad egg noodles -- does in fact take both an envelope of Lipton's Onion Soup Mix and two cans of Campbell's Tomato Soup. This is added to browned cubed beef (and it's great to make this with a good cut, not generic stew meat), a little Worcestershire sauce, a touch of wine vinegar, carrots, peas, and sliced mushrooms, and seasoned with salt, pepper, and a little garlic powder. Simmer that away and take it from me, the onion soup and the tomato soup blend with the seasonings and the meat juices to form a very rich brown gravy that has just a hint of sweetness, enrobing meat that falls apart with a fork.

Thanks for bringing that over tonight, mom!

Cultural Learnings of My Mother For Make Benefit Glorious Comfort Food

I should start by saying that it helps that my mother is not that normal.

For Passover this year, she bought $150 worth of standing rib roast, but had no idea how long to cook it. I hauled out my copy of Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything" and got excellent, clear instructions, that mandated the use of a meat thermometer. Foolproof! Of course, she didn't trust me, and the meat, though succulent, did get a teeny bit overcooked. Anyway, it was good and we all enjoyed it, but she had way overbought, which is appropriate for a Jewish mother cooking a holiday meal.

So today she made the world's most expensive pot roast out of the leftovers, with kasha for the mushroom gravy, and invited me over with the little Cupcakes. I am telling you, this was comfort food to the nth degree. In fact, I highly recommend going a little nutso with your prime rib purchasing, just to enable something like this.

Right round, baby, right round

Yes, the theme of this post is "round." Round, as in the shape of the little tiny meatballs I made for dinner. Round, as in the circumference of each strand of spaghetti. Round, as in the shape the tomatoes were before they were pounded into submission. Round, as in the shape of my distended belly after I ate a gigantic bowl of the stuff.

Here is how it went down: my friend, Mr. X, organized the purchase of a side of grass-fed beef, and invited me to participate. The dividing up took place over the weekend, but as I was otherwise occupied drinking too much and eating foie gras bread pudding with Meg and Pam, I had to pick mine up from Mrs. X last night. And what a haul -- all the meat that's fit to eat, all delicious and nicely wrapped for the freezer, about 40 pounds of it. One pack of hamburger started to thaw on the way home, so I set that aside to eat today. At first I thought I'd make just a Nice Juicy Hamburger (as my mother would say, when she was trying to sell us the concept of going out for a nice simple dinner on the nights she'd worked and didn't feel like cooking when she got home). But as we were out of buns, ketchup, tomatoes, onions, and probably a million other things, I decided to do meatballs and spaghetti.

These are good -- they're based on Nigella Lawson's recipe. Of course, she makes her pasta by hand, which will happen around here approximately when hell freezes over. They're a little fussier than my usual midweek cooking, but somehow I managed to get it done, even with Mr. Gateau at work late and the mini-Gateaus (Gateaux? cupcakes?) engaging in their usual chaos. I happened to have in the freezer a couple of Ziploc bags of roasted tomato puree I made last summer after I bought a ridiculous amount of tomatoes at the farmer's market, so I was able to use up one of those. There is something incredibly appealing about a bite-sized meatball, even if they are kind of a pain to make.

Delicious as these are, I've been craving sweet-and-sour meatballs of the sort this friend of my parents used to make when we'd go visit them in Philadelphia. I suspect that they won't taste quite right until I break down and use grape jelly as the sweetening agent. Stay tuned -- there is a lot of meat in my house and I intend to use it.