Foodrighter

It’s Saturday night. The kids are asleep. Joe’s asleep. The dogs are asleep. I can’t sleep.

I’m turning on the TV.

First stop: Roseanne… the domestic goddess. Funny, but no.

Second stop: Iron Chef. What’s the secret ingredient? The smoke is flowing on the stage. The majestic music crescendos. What could it be? Shark Fin? Sea Urchin? Oh. They went to commercial.

Wow. JC PENNEY is having a sale. Excedrin now has a medicine specifically for tension headaches. Great.  Oh. Richard Marx is coming out with a new CD. Available now. Swiffer Wet Jet now has a “scrubbing head”. I’ve got to write that down. Oh. I just did.

But, when you’re done you can just throw the pad away. Go to www.swiffer.com for more info.

Back to Iron Chef. What’s the ingredient????  Kaga says, “LLLLLAAAAAAAMMMMMBBBBB!!!!!!!!”

Boring.

Ooh. Tavis Smiley. We love him.

Naw.

Weather Channel.  It’s going to be hot here. Yup.

The Simpsons. Wow. Must be an old one. It’s grainy.

Good background for writing.

So, getting back to my midterm, my mushroom cups needed to be kicked up a notch (as Emeril would say). I was obsessing on it.

My first thought is always Bleu Cheese. So that’s the first thing I tasted. Bad pairing. The Bleu was Pt. Reyes Original Blue, my favorite. It’s from Farmstead Cheese Co. in Marin.

So good!

Try to find it and simply spread it on a piece of bread. You’ll cry. However, it was so powerful, it  just wiped away all trace of flavor from the mushrooms and Madeira. Not going to work.

I stared at the mushrooms almost begging them to tell me what they want.

Suddenly the spoke to me…

Well, actually, since mushrooms can’t talk, I decided on the only failsafe thing in the world of food.

Parmesan!

Yum

Parmigiana Reggiano. If it helped the dates, maybe it would be kind to the mushrooms, too.

I pulled a wedge from the fridge and grabbed the OXO veggie peeler.

Marge and Homer are kissing and Mo is crying.

A crisp clean shave of Parm on top of a spoonful of the mushrooms. Was it going to be enough?

I took a taste.

Oh yeah! That is good.

0% Financing on a new Jetta. Wow. That’s a great deal.

Oh crap. Now it’s Drew Carey. I need to scan. Celebrity Justice. No. Will and Grace. Jesus! Can’t that show just go into cable syndication and leave us alone? How many fag hag jokes are there?

Oh. I found it. The Rockford Files.

A show that makes us all want to live in a trailer in Malibu.

The parm/mushroom pairing was perfect, but it needed garnish. I was thinking some thyme from the garden might work.

Phyllo cups with wild mushrooms in a Madeira reduction garnished with Parmagiana  and a sprig of fresh thyme.

Perfect! I finally knew what I was going to present to the wine tasting class. I felt relieved and fell asleep.

On Sunday morning, Mom came to babysit, and I headed to school. It was the big day!

Class, then meeting, then winetasting class with midterm presentations. Whew!

Class was fun.  The topic: pizza and designer pasta.

Pizzas… (one trick: don’t cook your sauce. It will cook on the crust raw, cook it ahead and  it will burn). My creation: shrimp, tomato sauce, goat cheese and basil. It was really good. Although the basil looked horrible after being in the hot oven.  Always add it after cooking.

Even the 17 year-old kid next to me, warned me. But I spent ten minutes arranging it decoratively anyway. Just as he said, it turned brown and shriveled up.  But I garnished it with so much chiffonade of fresh basil after the fact, that my mistake was almost hidden. It tasted so good to me. I was happy.

Chef didn’t like it.

What else is new?

Cameron was also taking this class today. I met him at the Wednesday class. He’s definitely gay, and so cute. He totally looks familiar. After we went through every possible connection and almost connection that we have, we figured out that we’re just one degree of separation from each other. I have a sneaking suspicion we’ll figur out where we know each other from eventually. In the meantime, he’s really fun. He and Lu, another gal in the class were cracking me up! It was a fun class. California pizza or not.

After six other dishes and a bunch of clean up, I headed home to prep my hors d’oeuvres.

I only had twenty minutes to make it back before the meeting.

I drove home like a bat out of hell, ran in the house and darted for the kitchen. I ripped the phyllo from the fridge. I attempted to, with my pizza cutter, make perfect squares dredged in melted butter to tuck into my mini muffin pan, but the girls were climbing all over me. They thought I was home for the day. They couldn’t figure out why I was rushed, annoyed, freaking out and trying to get back out the door. The squares quickly turned into decahedrons.

They are “rustic”, I told myself.

I prepped them all, and draped a damp towel over them. I loaded the sheet pan of dates into the car.  I grabbed my full mini-muffin tin of rustic mushroom cups, a wedge of parm and my peeler. I ran to the garden and ripped the thyme from the ground, roots intact. I was ready to go.

I kissed the girls goodbye. They couldn’t figure out what was happening, and I felt really bad about leaving them again. And in a tremendous moment of great self-doubt, I ran back to the kitchen and grabbed the tiny 1/2 oz. bottle of white truffle oil.

More later…