Hot Dates

 

 

First off, let me apologize for this picture.  These are truly delicious, but there's just no way to make them look appetizing on film. This was picture #62 and I HAD to move on to other things! Like eating them...lol

That being said...

This is so simple it really isn't a recipe at all.  It's a dried, pitted date wrapped in bacon.  Like pigs in a blanket...only this time, the pig IS the blanket!
Their hot salty sweetness is perfect with cocktails before dinner.  Bacon, booze, and tiny snacks...does it get any better than that??

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1 canister dried, pitted dates
1 pound bacon
Cajun seasoning (I use Tony Chacheri's)
broiler pan

raw, assembled, and ready to broil

Take the pound of bacon out of the package and cut it in half.  If you have regular bacon, one half will be lean and the other will be fatty.  (Depending on how fatty the 2nd half is, I don't use it.  Freeze it to make bacon grease for other recipes in the future and only use the "lean" part). 

So now you have halved pieces of bacon.  Wrap a date in each one by rolling it up and laying it seam side down on your broiler pan.  When you've finished, sprinkle the top with Cajun seasoning.

Turn on the broiler.  Broil until bacon is no longer raw and as crisp as you want it.  (Broiling is quick and sometimes dangerous, and I always do it with the oven cracked open so I can keep an eye on it!)

When crisp enough for you, take out and place on a plate.  Serve hot.

(should make approx. 20 hors doeuvres)

so cute on a cocktail plate

Salad Nicoise

Down here in the tropical south, temperatures are 102 in the shade right now, and even though it rains every afternoon, it leaves the air hot, sticky, and steamy. Once the torrential summer downpours stop (usually around 5:30 in the evening), the sun comes back out for one of our amazing sunsets as if on cue, and you can literally see the steam rising slowly from the blacktop of the streets, while the mugginess of August fills your lungs, and the feeling of dread comes over you:  I'll never be cool again!!  And you're right...you won't...until November.  So in the meantime, try this...

 
Though it's a salad, my version has no lettuce at all and is full-bodied enough to be served for dinner.  Turn the air conditioning down, uncork a pinot noir, and dig in with someone special enough not to care that you're in such close proximity while eating anchovies, tuna, and capers! lol.  If you can't eat fish, no worries:  omit the anchovy from the dressing and substitute grilled chicken breast instead of tuna (you'll have to increase the salt and pepper to your liking, though).  If you do this, leave me a comment so we know how you liked it!

Summers almost over and we'll be wearing courderoy and eating acorn squash before you know it.  Hang in there...relief is coming...

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This salad should be cool (not cold) while assembling and warming to room temperature slightly while plating, so the robust flavors unfold as you're eating.

This is often served as a composed dish (layed out on a platter, each ingredient grouped by itself), but I like to mix mine together before serving so all the Mediterranean flavors meld together in one big bowl of deliciousness!  Feel free to add more of one ingredient and less of another, or substitute something else entirely.  This is your salad, I've just given you my ideas :)

raw vegetables

6 small white new potatoes, washed and halved
16 ounces hericots verts or fresh green beans, trimmed
2 tomatoes, cut in 8ths
1 can tuna packed in oil, drained
2 hard boiled eggs, cut lengthwise, in 4ths
2 teaspoons capers
12 pitted nicoise olives, left whole
1 loaf crusty French bread

FOR DRESSING 

boiling vegetables

red wine vinegar, 
Fresh lemon juice, Extra Virgin olive oil,  Dijon mustard, garlic clove chopped fine,
salt/pepper, 
1 anchovy filet from a can, 
dried Italian Seasoning, 
chopped fresh parsley.  As much as you want until it tastes good.

First make the dressing:  mix all,  and whisk until the anchovy is broken up completely and incorporated into the dressing.  Set aside.

Place potatoes in enough water to make a rolling boil.  Boil just until fork tender.  Add green beans and cook together approx. 1 1/2 - 2 minutes until the beans are crisp tender.  Drain and rinse under cold water.  While in colander and still hot, mix vegetables with a little bit of the dressing, add pepper and  (just a) pinch of salt.

At this point, place dressing and vegetables in the refrigerator for approx. one hour, until ready to eat, so they are chilled slightly. 


dressed vegetables

WHEN READY TO EAT:
Place vegetables in large bowl.   Add tomatoes, eggs, capers, olives, and tuna. Drizzle with more vinaigrette, as much as you'd like (you will not use all of it), and mix carefully.  Place on plates and serve with crusty bread to soak up some of the juices (the salad should be moist, though not drenched in dressing or it will get soggy as you're eating).

Serves 2

 

Only halfway done. We cleaned our plates, ate all the bread...and not a drop of wine left either!

The 4 Mrs. Hemingways

Those of you who know me (and those of you who don’t, do now) know that I have a degree in English, and anything to do with rhetoric and the language is like written aphrodisiac to me!  To be able to manipulate words in such a way that you can elicit feelings of your choice by making the reader believe it’s theirs, is crafty and downright SEXY!  In speech, as well as delivery, the masters:  Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Dick Cavett, Dennis Miller, and Ronald Reagan’s speechwriter, who took 2 phrases from the 1941 poem “High Flight” by JG Magee, Jr. , and wrote his way into history when he said about the astronauts in the Challenger disaster:  that they had "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God."  Brilliant.

Wheeeeere are you going with this, Christine??

Right here...

I’m reading the best book, and I can’t put it down!  It’s called Mrs. Hemingway, by Naomi Wood, and I offer you this, from both the back of the book and Amazon:

In the dazzling summer of 1926, Ernest Hemingway and his wife Hadley take refuge from the blazing heat of Paris to a villa in the south of France. They swim, and play bridge and drink gin with abandon.  But wherever they go they are accompanied by the glamorous and irrepressible Fife. Fife is Hadley’s best friend. She is also Ernest’s lover. Hadley is the first Mrs. Hemingway, but neither she nor Fife will be the last. 

Narrated by Hemingways four wives—Hadley, Fife (Pauline), Martha and Mary—and peopled with members of the fabled “Lost Generation”, Mrs. Hemingway paints a complex portrait of the man behind the legend and the women behind the man, a riveting tale of passion, love, and heartbreak.  Told in four parts and based on real love letters and telegrams, Mrs. Hemingway reveals the explosive love triangles that wrecked each of Hemingway's marriages.

So, we all know about Hemingway.  Tough, rough around the edges, a man’s man who smoked cigars and drank too much.  Hunted game and fished for tuna.  Wrote novels that were way too long with ridiculously short sentences.  But what we find out in this book is that he was also surprisingly childlike.  And when these two facets of his personality come together, they’re chock full of betrayal, deceit, and disaster.  Because while he’s genuinely cherishing the wife of choice, he’s cheating on her with the woman who would become his next wife, each time.  Lara Feigel writes “He once told F. Scott Fitzgerald that his vision of heaven comprised two lovely houses in town, one containing his wife and children, where he would "be monogamous and love them truly and well", the other "where I would have my nine beautiful mistresses on nine different floors"*.

Hemingway was a complex and curious sort.  To each of these four women, he was their dream and their heartbreaking nightmare…and I can’t WAIT to see how it turns out!

In honor of Paris and that wonderful time in history when the expatriots Fitzgerald and Hemingway took up in France and Spain, let's make one of my favorite French dishes together this weekend:  Salad Nicoise.   As its name suggests, it is a salad (usually composed, but I like mine all mixed together) in the style of Nice, which is on the South East coast of France, on the Mediterranean Sea.  It's perfect for this time of year because it's served cold, and even though it's "just a salad", the flavors are hearty and bold.  I can't wait to share it with you! 

 PS:  Funny how natural segues present themselves, isn't it?:  Hemingway wrote the novel To Have and Have Not, which is a big part of my previous post on Lauren Bacall.  And incidentally, “segue” itself is French-- a big part of THIS post. See how that works??...lol…


*The Guardian 2.20.14
 

 


 

Lauren Bacall

 

Lauren Bacall  1925 - 2014

She was, to my father who first introduced her to me, one of the greatest lookers of all time.  About her and Suzanne Pleschette he’d wink and say “she could hurt ya”.  To me, she was the original sexy chick.

The world first laid eyes on her in 1944’s “To Have and Have Not” opposite Humphrey Bogart.  They married a year later, and were together only 12 years before he died of cancer.  It was a great and true love that by her own admission was far too short, and indeed, the things Hollywood legends are made of.  "She often referred to it as the happiest period of her life".* 

She was sultry, sassy, sexy, and playful.  "With an insinuating pose and a seductive, throaty voice — her simplest remark sounded like a jungle mating call, one critic said"*.  Indeed. 

Check out these pictures:  Now you know why people thought smoking was glamorous...

 

The 2 minute video below is a favorite of mine and a little treat on its own.  If you've never seen it before, watch it to the end (so grab your ipad or laptop because sadly it doesn't appear on an iphone).   It’s the scene she’s the most famous for, and a piece of movie history--the precise moment she went from relative unknown to cinematic superstar.  All of 19 years old,  purring like a kitten to the biggest star in Hollywood.  No chemistry between these two.  Nope.

Members of the sexy chicks club, we lost our President yesterday.  Let’s raise our  martini glasses to Lauren Bacall.  There’s never been another like her before, during, or since, and there never will be again in our lifetime.  I’ll drink to that.

 

 

 

 * The New York Times, 8.13.14

Spicy Cocktail Nuts with Fresh Rosemary

When I was growing up, my great-aunt Florence used to send us a package every Christmas.  It contained 2 things and 2 things only:  roasted pecans, and a fruit cake so soaked with rum that the cheesecloth it was wrapped in was dripping wet.  The fruit cake would always find it’s way to the garbage (though no one would admit to putting it there), but the nuts were delicious and we would eagerly await them.   They came wrapped in wax paper, inside an old Danish Butter Cookie tin.  My dad was allergic to  nuts so they were all for my mother and me, which was just fine with us.

Now, I can’t tell you this story without telling you a little about Flo.  She was kooky crazy.  And fabulous.  She was independent and eccentric, never married (though she did have a  “lady-friend” named Henrietta), worked overseas in Japan for the government right after the war, then took a job in Downtown Chicago, communting daily on the train from our suburb on the North Shore (so bohemian for a single lady in the early 1950’s), where she worked as a legal secretary in the Loop until she finally retired.  She had rhinestone sunglasses, painted red toenails,  wore wigs (bad ones!) for “fashion”, smoked in secret and when she did, used one of those long handled cigarette holders like Cruella DeVille, and had a beautifully embroidered  kimono hanging in her closet that she brought back from Japan.  When she would get drunk (which was often), she would put it on,  do a little bow  and say “ohio gozaimasu“, which means good morning in Japanese…lol   She was way ahead of her time…until she got older and then sadly, time passed her right by.

She also had a gigantic fat white-haired cat named Beauty.

One December, my aunt Annie went over to see Flo, who was in the middle of making the nuts to deliver to our entire family.  She was roasting batch after batch, and had them spread out on cookie sheets all over her kitchen and living room.  Annie knocked and let herself in, and then stopped cold:  there was Beauty, walking on top of the nuts, shedding everywhere and licking the salt off them.  ALL OF THEM!!  Needless to say, as the story got back to my mom, every year thereafter the nuts would arrive and my mom would yell “DON’T EAT THOSE! They’re full of Beauty!!” and she’d throw them right away.  No worries, she said…we’ll make our own.

The recipe below is ours.  They’re spicy, but it’s a salty sweet kind of heat that sneaks up on you.  I like to pair them with an ice cold Bud Light (or 3!) because its perfectly crisp and carbonated.  During the Stanley Cup playoffs I couldn’t make enough of these and with football starting, it’s a great time for you to try them, too.  Enjoy!

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COCKTAIL NUTS
1 - 10 ounce bag shelled, halved pecans
6 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons light brown sugar
1 tablespoon cayenne pepper
4 springs fresh rosemary, stripped off the stalk
1 tablespoon kosher salt, plus a little extra


Preheat over to 300 degrees

ready to roast

Melt butter in saucepan over med heat.  Add pecans.  Stir to coat until the nuts get warm. Spoon onto ungreased cookie sheet.  There will be some melted butter left in the pan, but that's ok, you don't need it.  Very lightly, sprinkle with some of the salt.  Place in the oven and roast for 15-20 min.  (Check the oven at 15 min and move the nuts around.  They should be smelling like toasted deliciousness.  If they start to become too brown, take them out. Otherwise leave in the full 20 min). 

While the nuts are cooking, make the spice mixture:
In large bowl, mix brown sugar, cayenne pepper, rosemary, and 1 tablespoon kosher salt.  Set aside on counter until nuts are ready.

When nuts are done, remove from oven and let cool for 10 min.  Then, place them in the bowl with the sugar mixture and toss well, making sure the spices coat all the nuts.  Pour into colander over sink and shake so the excess sugar mixture falls away.

Place in bowl.  Let cool completely and cover until ready to serve.

NOTE:  These nuts are great while still hot, but will still be a little soft from the butter.  I prefer the flavor and texture of them the next day.

Lime Shrimp with Black Bean Salsa

I’ve been thinking about my little friend, Ben, all week.  Not only because he's a shrimp lover like me, but also because it's his 15th birthday.

You know how when you spin a top it does one of two things:  you can spin it normally and it goes and goes and goes until it runs out of steam then it collapses until you spin it again?  Or you can spin it crazy-like and it’ll start turning wildly and fly off the table and hit something??  That’s Ben.  He’s either at full capacity…or on overload…all the time.
 
I met Ben when he was 12 years old.  His dad had been his best friend all his life and they spent much of their time together so naturally, Ben loved and emulated him, so much so that what you ended up getting was a 45 year old man in a 12 year olds body…without the cigar!  And just like his dad he was, all at once—puffed up and blustery, loud, playful and sensitive, inquisitive, tenacious and flirtatious…and curious.  So curious.  He would view your every movement and the general goings-on like a scientist would a bug under a microscope.  If I’d be drying my hair in the bathroom, he’d be standing so close my elbow would touch him.  If I’d start taking my clothes out of the dryer, he’d rush in front of me, scoop them up, and put them in the basket.  Then he’d sit and talk to me while I folded them, asking question after question in his relentless pursuit for information about the curious bug under the microscope.  Like Sheldon knocking on Penny's door..."dad, dad, Christine, dad..."...lol.  I couldn’t shake this kid, he was exhausting.  And charming.

I’m not sure Ben ever knew how much I liked him, or if he really even cared.  But when I think of him, I smile…because for better or worse, and again like his father: once you've met him, you never forget him.

I've been promising him a fried shrimp basket for 3 birthdays now and one day I'll have to make good on it, but until then, this will have to do.  Even though the shrimp is hot on the plate, the abundance of piquant citrus flavor makes it seem cool and refreshing. And it's so quick and easy; perfect for these blistering hot days of summer we've been having down here in Southwest Florida.  My daughter loves it served with garlic bread...and I of course love it more served with a crisp white wine...lol.  I hope it becomes one of your favorites, too.

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LIME SHRIMP WITH BLACK BEAN SALSA

2 limes
2 cans black beans, drained
2 green onions, chopped
2 plum tomatoes, seeded and diced
1 yellow bell pepper, diced
1 jalapeno pepper, diced
1 bunch cilantro OR Italian flat-leaf parsley
1 tsp. garlic salt
salt,and pepper
olive oil
1 lb. shrimp, peeled and deveined


black bean salsa

1 loaf frozen garlic bread

First, preheat the oven for the garlic bread and make salsa:
In a large bowl, mix the juice of 1/2 lime (and some of the zest if you're so inclined), with the black beans, onions, tomatoes, and both peppers.  Season with garlic salt and some pepper.  Cover and let sit in refrigerator until ready to serve.

Put garlic bread in the oven.

Toss shrimp with the juice of 1 lime and some salt.   Drizzle 3 tbs. olive oil in hot pan and quickly sautee until they turn pink and firm up on both sides.  This takes approx. 3-4 minutes (you'll want to cook them longer but DON'T, they'll be rubbery).

Take black bean salsa out of the refrigerator.  Taste, and add more lime and salt if necessary. Sprinkle some fresh cilantro or parsley on the top and mix together.

Spoon salsa on plate and serve with shrimp and garlic bread. 


(serves 3)

The Missing Porkchops and Applesauce Recipe

So, by now you've noticed that there aren't any pictures of porkchops and applesauce.  Here's how it went and keep in mind, this is the norm in my life...

While I was chopping the apples, my friend called to ask if she could come over to see how things were going and could she bring her bassett hound, Bobo?  Absolutely. I used to  have a bassett hound of my own (named Chester) and I love love LOVE them.  They're the perfect dog for me...all they do is eat and sleep...and so it occurs to me I might be part bassett hound myself.

But anyway:  I'm sautéeing the apples, which are smelling pretty delicious by themselves in their butter and brown sugar bath, the pork chops are just about ready to come off the grill, and she arrives.  Perfect timing.  I cover the porkchops and let them rest on the counter and we have a glass of wine. And then some.  Now, even though the "applesauce" portion of my recipe is written "serve immediately", there's wine and we're talking...and I'm not gonna lie, sometimes I just plain like to hear myself talk...so I decide to chance it and let the apples sit for awhile. A decision I was perfectly fine with...but in retrospect, not so much.

in butter and brown sugar

Here's where it all goes bad.  All of a sudden, in the middle of the wine and the talking and the wine, the goddamn dog puts his front paws on the counter and EATS every single one of the porkchops.  Gone...in like 6 seconds. BOBO!!  You dirty nasty ANIMAL!! GRRRRRRRR...and before we can even get out of our chairs, I hear the plate hit the floor and there's nothing left.  My friend gets in the kitchen first and chases Bobo to the corner, where he's pushed the last little bit of meat up against the baseboard.  What can I do??  I remained calm and finished the bottle of wine, that's what I did.  It was the big bottle, too!  I got drunk...my kids had to order a pizza...and the dog ate my homework! 

And THAT, my friends, is the story of the missing porkchops and applesauce recipe.