Ding, Dong The Cleanse Is Dead

HUZZAH! 'Tis I, back from Juicecleanseland, finally revived and able to apply fingers to keyboard and report my findings.

If you've ever competed on the pageant circuit, or been trapped in a mineshaft, you might have some insight into what the past three days have been like for me. Here's a brief overview.

Day one was challenging, but the real low point was day two. I woke up feeling like I had anvils tied to my limbs. The Scribe and I stood across from each other in the half-dark kitchen, drinking our lukewarm-water-and-lemon "morning tonics" and glaring at each other with a mix of blame, fear, and resignation. By halfway through Core Fusion Cardio, I started having an out of body experience as my mind wandered to my happy place, which happens to be the bottom of a wine glass. I can't prove anything, but I know that I saw the clock tick backwards for a period of minutes, and I'll swear that the instructor started shouting orders in German.

Work was a comedy. All non-essential thought and movement were removed from my routine. Unable to focus on anything substantive, I took to obsessively reading the BluePrintCleanse website for guidance and reassurance about exactly what this would do for me and when I could expect things to get better. The site told me that the cleanse would actually improve my concentration and energy. LIES!! What other lies did the BluePrintCleanse have in store for me?? Was it really even romaine/parsley/kale/celery juice I was drinking, or was it perhaps the pureed souls of failed juice cleansers?

The worst part of each day, and especially day two, was 4 PM - 9 PM. Nightfall. This was when the rage came out, the bargaining, the panic. This was the point at which I was exhausted by cravings for foods I couldn't have, and embittered by the contrast between my usual dinner and the green juice that I'd be downing for the THIRD time since sunrise.

My energy did pick up on day three, along with my concentration and my will to live, which was probably due in equal parts to my body adjusting to the new regimen and my mind knowing it would all soon be over. By yesterday afternoon, I had resigned myself to the steady ticker of verboten foods marching through my head, and no longer had enough fight left in me to care.

Today I feel energetic. More so than pre-cleanse? Hard to tell. I think I'm firmer in the abs and I definitely have the smug, virtuous glow enjoyed only by people with self-imposed dietary restrictions.

But the biggest benefit to the cleanse was [cue Chariots of Fire theme] what I learned about myself. It's astonishing how much of my day-to-day joy is derived from food and drink: preparing it, consuming it, sharing it with friends. It is my entertainment, my creativity, and my comfort. Replacing food with vegan juice drinks made me a shadow of my former self.

The payoff: I was reminded of the delicate balance between hunger and satiety, and how much more often we tip too far in the direction of over-fullness. It's okay to be hungry sometimes. In fact, it's great. This morning, for the first time in months, I bounced out of bed and made a real breakfast (the BPC website told us we could "begin to introduce fruit" the first day after the cleanse but we at no point seriously considered that advice). The Scribe and I sat at our breakfast table with the sun streaming in on us, slowly and quietly devouring pastel omelets with tomato and carmelized onion, half a whole-wheat bagel, pineapple, and coffee. I was shocked at how little it took for me to become full, and how satisfied I felt. And what could be better than that?

Ok, it's time to close this sad chapter on cleansing. Let's move on to happier things. I'm off to pour myself a glass of wine and enjoy the bowl of Kuku Wa Nazi pictured above...because I can.

How To Lose Your Mind In Three Days Or Less

The fault is entirely mine.

It was my idea to do the juice fast. I even talked the Scribe into it, who was minding his own business until I decided that I couldn't leave well enough alone.

But in my defense, the BluePrint Mind + Body Cleanse isn't just any juice fast. It promises total mental and physical renewal, courtesy of a three-day regimen comprised of drinking six custom-engineered super juices per day, eating exactly nothing, and attending special workout classes. The grand finale is a full-body massage at a snooty spa on Central Park South on the third and final night.

It would be like going to Canyon Ranch only cheaper and more convenient, I told the Scribe, who was clearly skeptical but I knew harbored a weakness for anything that promised enhanced ab definition. Eventually he capitulated, and we signed on for a Monday start.

Why was I so set on doing this? Boredom? Maybe. The steady approach of beach season? Partly. But given how much of my mental and physical energy I devote to food, I was fascinated to see what it would feel like to give it up for three whole days. According to the BluePrintCleanse website, I eat far too much animal fat and gluten and not enough fiber. I don't drink enough water. I drink too much wine. I'm short on vitamins and long on toxins. My nutrition is in crisis -- to a juice faddist, at least.

Maybe that's going a bit too far, but there's still something appealing about the idea of giving the whole system a spring cleaning. When I close my eyes I picture streams of purified water, green tea, and vegetable juice coursing through my blood vessels and flushing out the "toxins," whatever those look like, probably like the cast of Celebrity Fit Club. After all is said and done I might emerge on the other side of this looking like one of the blue people from Avatar. Or least like an aerobics instructor.

The Scribe and I began our wellness journey yesterday morning, in a class called "Core Fusion" that left us unable to rise from a seated position unaided for the rest of the day. From there I went to the office and began to put the juices to work.

There are plenty of calories in the juices (by plenty I mean exactly 1,250 per day, so enough to avoid crippling headaches and blackouts), but they're loaded with things like lettuces and parsley and cucumber. Trust me, there's a reason why romaine juice doesn't have a spot on the supermarket shelf next to OJ. Never before have I gotten so little pleasure from taking calories into my body.

My body is in cleanse mode, but my mind wants no part of it. A partial list of foods I've been craving that are not allowed on the BluePrintCleanse: coffee, mango, a hot bagel with cream cheese, pad thai, cigarettes, lamb stew, coffee, vegetable dumplings, mojitos, eggs benedict, DID I MENTION COFFEE?, a dirty martini, cheese and crackers, pasta bolognese, and chocolate cake.

We're only about halfway through so I'm not going to pass any judgments just yet. So far, I have only questions: Will I gradually become less hungry? Less angry? More energetic? How can I be worse at Core Fusion than all the middle-aged women in the class? And most importantly, how is it physically possible that I am peeing so much?

The Redcoats Are Coming, And They Want Our Pudding Snacks

I spent last Friday night indulging in one of my all-time favorite activities: curling up on the couch alone in a warm, dark apartment, eating takeout, and watching bad TV. It's like being in the womb, except with better snacks. There I was with a steaming bowl of Pad Thai and a bottle of Rioja, contemplating my choice between Who Is Clark Rockefeller? and reruns of Designing Women. The night was off to a promising start.

While scrolling through the channels, I came across Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution and thought I would give it a look-see.

The show’s premise: Jamie Oliver, of Naked Chef fame, travels to the outrageously obese town of Huntington, West Virginia, hell-bent on getting processed foods out of school cafeterias and teaching local families about proper nutrition.

Let me be clear: the whole thing is mortifying.

In a country chockablock with celebrity chefs, it's a foreigner who has managed to launch a massive national health campaign complete with prime time network TV coverage. Like Angelina Jolie decamping in Darfur or Wyclef Jean pulling babies out of the rubble in Haiti, America’s fatness has gotten to the point where it's the subject of international celebrity philanthropy. And Jamie Oliver is our Sally Struthers.

That he's English only adds insult to injury. The last time the Brits took part in a revolution in the US it didn't go so well for them, but it's 2010 and now we're taking nutritional advice from the people who brought the world "mushy peas," baked beans on toast, Marmite, and Branston Pickle.

But we're the people who market peanut butter in squeeze tubes as a snack, so hey, I guess we're not in a position to argue.

I can get past the idea of having our food systems reformed by an English guy, but watching my country's appalling eating habits immortilized on film is just beyond embarassing. I hope that this show never gets aired in Europe, or all the progress that Obama has made in convincing the rest of the Western world that we're really not so bad after all will be undone with the image of a 200-pound fourth grader eating Twinkies for breakfast.

Midway through the episode I saw, Jamie cruises around an elementary school lunchroom and examines what the kiddies have brought to eat from home. Among his findings are radioactive green fruit chews, some sort of Windex-hued jello, and bright pink flavored milk. These are colors that belong on an Italian teenager, not on a lunch tray. And the effects of this diet are nothing if not clear; in Huntington, the children are Santa-shaped, and the adults look like walruses.

It may have been the Rioja talking, but as I kept watching, Jamie and his winsome cockney inflection began to grow on me. I think that the folks in Huntington like him too. He sounds like the GEICO gecko as he finger-wags at teen moms, imparting such non-nonsense advice for reading food labels as “If it sounds like a NASA science lesson, don’t buy it; if it sounds like stuff you’d find in your nan’s pantry, then do.”

I still wish that the Marios and Emerils among us had gotten their heads out of their asses to do what Jamie came cross the pond for. But, he actually seems to be making some serious headway on school lunch reform, an issue about which much is said and little is done, so I'm inclined to support his efforts. If you are too, signing this petition is a good start:

http://www.jamieoliver.com/campaigns/jamies-food-revolution/petition

Baby Steps To Better Time Management

I have this dream.

I'm standing in the kitchen in a black dress, a white apron, and heels. The doorbell rings; I answer it, kiss my guests hello, take their coats. I ask them if they'd like a cocktail and then calmly wander back to the kitchen.

I'm making a vinaigrette, whisk in one hand and champagne flute in the other, now peeking into the oven, now fluffing the salad greens, now sprinkling a little more salt into soup simmering on the stove, all the while discussing nuclear arms control and cracking terribly clever jokes about Dmiti Medvedev.

And then I wake up. Because in fact, this couldn't have less in common with the actual three ring circus that takes place whenever I have guests for dinner.

At 7:55 PM my hair is still in a ball on top of top of my head, I'm wearing boxer shorts and the Viking's "You Don't Have To Be A Plumber To Have Pipes Like These" t-shirt, and I'm covered in driblets of hardened egg, olive oil and flour. Once I wrestle a dress on and take a couple of swipes with a mascara brush, I spend the first hour after company arrives trying desperately to be witty and engaging without losing a finger.

It's a failure of self-discipline, really. The wise cook, when she knows that she will be single-handedly cooking three courses for a half dozen people, chooses only "do-ahead" dishes that won't cause an hour of pre-dinner frenzy. She then plans out a detailed schedule for the day and follows it faithfully.

But I'm not a wise cook, I'm an emotional one, prone to choosing dishes with a romantic disregard for cost, logistics, and my own limitations of skill.

I'm happy to report that this past Saturday, I took baby steps in the right direction. Although I wasn't exactly 100% ready for company to arrive, I succeeded in choosing dishes that could in theory be prepared and set aside an hour or two before dinner.

The main course was a spring lasagna. I'll be the first to admit that it's not a quick meal -- especially if you're making the ricotta and the pasta fresh -- but it can be 100% finished a couple of hours before guests arrive and need only be heated and sliced. It's seasonal and elegant, a fresh take on a frumpy (though beloved) classic.

I served the lasagna rustically (read: sliced frantically into uneven slabs) but if you want to be fancy, cut it into rounds and garnish it with chervil.


Spring Lasagna

Serves 8

1 recipe basic pasta dough, rolled into 3" x 13" sheets or 1 lb lasagna noodles
2 c ricotta (preferably fresh)
4 c stinging nettles
6 c spinach
1 lb ramps, trimmed and coarsely chopped
1 bunch asparagus
6 artichokes, trimmed
4 tbsp butter
4 tbsp flour
2.5 - 3 c milk
2 c grated Parmesan


1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2. Bring 2 quarts of water to a boil in a large stock pot; add spinach and nettles and boil for 1-2 minutes. Drain and cool in an ice bath.

3. Either by hand or in a food processor, coarsely chop nettles and spinach. Set aside.

4. Trim asparagus, peel the stems using a vegetable peeler, and remove the tips. Set aside the stems and tips.

5. Slice artichokes and asparagus into 1/8" slices, using a mandolin if available. Set aside.

6. Heat milk until not quite simmering, in the microwave or on the stove.

7. In a medium saucepan, heat 5 tbsp butter over medium heat. Once melted, add 5 tbsp flour, whisking constantly and cooking until golden brown.

8. Gradually add warm milk, whisking constantly and waiting for sauce to thicken before adding more.

9. Add in the ramps, simmering and stirring occasionally for 4-5 minutes.

10. Fold in spinach and nettles, season with salt and pepper, and remove from heat.

11. Butter a 9 x 13 baking dish and lay down a layer of noodles. Spread with a layer of spinach/nettle mixture, followed by sliced asparagus and artichokes, ricotta, and then Parmesan. Repeat layering three more times.

12. Bake in 400 degree oven for 20 - 30 minutes, then remove from the oven and let rest for 5 minutes.

Poached Eggs: A Love Story

I owe you a post about the lasagna that occupied the better part of Saturday, but I can think of nothing but poached eggs and feel it best to get this out of my system before proceeding with anything else.

Early Saturday morning, I yanked on my jogging clothes and headed into the drizzle armed with nothing but cash, keys, a metrocard, and the burning desire to beat fairweather cooks to the Union Square Greenmarket. My mission was to get a load of spring produce for the aforementioned lasagna, but when I saw eggs for sale I decided to splurge. $6 for six. This would be my first time buying eggs outside of the confines of a supermarket dairy department.

Now, I don't mean to disparage the poor old mass-production egg. For the past twenty-some-odd years of my life those little ovums have done quite a lot of heavy lifting. They've been there for the pancakes and custards and quiches, the pecan pies, the chocolate chip cookies, and the omelettes. Those little yellow floating globes are still better than 99% of what's on the shelves at the grocery store, but I will no longer kid myself by choosing the cage-free variety and thinking that I'm most of the way towards really high quality product.


Enter the fresh farm egg: the yoke isn't yellow, but the color of ripe apricots. It's custardy. Savory. Animal. You eat a farm egg and really understand what it is that vegans object to; you might as well be eating marrow. This is a carnivorous experience.

It's been said that high-quality eggs are the key to good fresh pasta, so I used four of my greenmarket eggs to make lasagna noodles. True to form, when I began rolling out the sheets of pasta they were buttery, silky, and elastic. Gorgeous.

I've never been much of an eggs for breakfast person. Growing up, I always opted for french toast or pancakes (this was at an age when I could eat a plate of pancakes and syrup in the morning and not feel like I had a dumbell tied to my waist for the rest of the day). My brother and dad would usually choose scrambled eggs, but they have always seemed to me to be less than the sum of their parts -- not creamy and indulgent like the yolk, not light and virtuous like the white. Just a bad compromise.

But I still had two eggs left over when I woke up on Monday, so I ditched my usual yogurt-and-meuslix routine. I decided that the best way to get the full effect of these phenominal yokes was to poach them, which took ten minutes total (including the six minutes I spent waiting for the water to heat up and packing my lunch).

I sat alone at the breakfast table with my two perfect, oozing, poached eggs, a mug of very hot, black coffee, a piece of mulitgrain toast, and the remnants of the Sunday Times (specifically: Sunday Styles, the guilty pleasure that I leave for after dutiful reading of Sunday Business and once out of the Viking's presence).

Poached eggs, I have not begun to fully appreciate you. You might be the closest thing I've found to a cure for a case of the Mondays.


Monday Eggs

Serves 1

2 Farm eggs
1 Tsp distilled white vinegar
Kosher Salt
Freshly ground black pepper

1. Fill a saute pan with three inches of water and vinegar (this helps the outside of the whites to congeal faster so that they hold their shape).

2. Bring water to a boil, then reduce the heat until the water is simmering (between 180 and 200 degrees F is ideal).

3. Drop the eggs in one at a time, cooking for 2-3 minutes.

4. Remove with a slotted spoon and transfer to plate, sprinkling with salt and pepper.

Serve with hot black coffee, a slice of multigrain toast, and The Sunday Style Section.

Say Cheese

To pass the time on this gloomy Friday afternoon, I will tell you the story of how fresh ricotta came into my life.

It wasn't long ago that I was reading through Barbara Lynch's (fantastic) new cookbook, Stir, looking for something not too risky to make for dinner with a couple of the Viking's colleagues and their wives. It was there that I came across a recipe for ricotta.

I guess I had never thought about cheese-making as a realistic possibility before. Some of my free-associations about people who make their own cheese: radical, hipster, unibomber, Brooklyn, patchouli, libertarian.

Well that turns out to be really unfair, because ricotta is actually incredibly easy to make and trust me when I say that the homemade kind is way better than that Polly-O sludge that you get at the grocery store.

Traditionally, ricotta is made from the by-products of making other cheeses, but we won't be going down that path. You can make it straight from milk too. In that case, you use heat and acid to curdle the milk, separating the curds from the whey.

As it turns out, I had some experience already as an accidental cheese-maker. When I was five I mixed orange juice and milk together in a misguided attempt to recreate the creamsicle...and it curdled. I tried to drink it and cried.

Then there's the Irish car bomb. After you drop the shot of Bailey's in a pint of Guinness, if you don't drink it quickly enough the stout curdles the cream-based liqueur.

For the record, neither of these are actually approved methods of ricotta making. You can do it using buttermilk, distilled white vinegar, or lemon juice. I prefer vinegar because I think it leaves the least taste residue in the cheese, and provides a consistently high yield from the milk.

I served my first-ever batch of ricotta alongside bread and honey as an hors d'oeuvre (pictured at top), and used it again that night to top fettucine with lamb ragu. Once my guests got wind that I had made the cheese myself, they were curious to know how it's done. I'll advise you not to explain the cheese-making process to dinner guests. It's inherently gross and there's no way to sugar-coat it. I didn't think that they would buy my story about "ricotta fairies" so I deflected the question and changed the subject. They probably thought there were dead bodies involved, but oh well.

Since then, I make ricotta whenever I have a little spare time and I've have never had a problem finding ways to use it up before it goes off. Fresh ricotta will keep in the fridge for 3-4 days.


Ricotta Cheese

Yields 2 cups

1/2 gallon high-quality whole milk
1/2 c distilled white vinegar
3 tsp kosher salt

1. In saucepan, combine ingredients over medium heat.

2. Heat until liquid reaches temperature of 175 - 180 degrees, stirring occasionally.

3. Remove from heat and ladle curds into colander lined with a double layer of cheesecloth. Either leave as-is to drain in colander or tie cheesecloth shut with kitchen twine.

4. Allow curds to drain for about an hour, or until ricotta reaches desired consistency.

Salt-Roasted Salmon Is My Everest

"Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat." //F. Scott Fitzgerald//

To me, one of the most exciting things about cooking is screwing up. Not "I added salt instead of sugar because I was preoccupied with watching Hoarders" type screwing up, but when something by all accounts should taste damned yummy and decidedly does not. I love a good puzzle, and figuring out how to make the alchemy that is cooking work in my favor is exactly that.

I mention this because of a particularly puzzling recent kitchen fail. The dish was out of Tom Colicchio's first cookbook, Think Like A Chef, and like most very short recipes it was deceptively difficult to pull off. The promise: sear fillets of salmon skin-side down in pan; bury in coarse sea salt and put in oven; remove from oven, brush away salt, and voila! Perfect medium-rare salmon.

Never mind the logistics of coating a wet thing in salt and then removing it again. Salt-roasted! Doesn't that sound like a Nantucket clam bake in your mouth? Wouldn't it be the slickest party trick when I unearthed the salmon from its mound of salt table-side, expertly, effortlessly, Kitchen Goddess That I Am?

Alas, my first try at salt-roasted salmon turned out to be truly inedible. It came out something like cat food rolled in iodine, the most catastrophic result I had had since The Pumpkin Soup Incident Of '06 (a story for another day). This would have been embarrassing were my only guest not the long-suffering Viking, who looked sidelong at the salt-studded little brick of fish and gamely took the first bite.

Right. Crackers and cheese for dinner.

Truth be told I don't even like salmon all that much. Or Nantucket. Or clam bakes. But pride makes us do stupid things, and so I persevered with the recipe. A day may come when I am defeated by a small fish, but it would not be this day.

I won't bore you with tales of subsequent flops -- suffice it to say that I have instilled in the Viking what might be a permanent phobia of big red canisters of La Baleine sea salt ("Maybe it wasn't meant to be," he philosophized after my third attempt, as we stared wanly at our sad, pink little salt licks).

Okay, so the first time around I didn't exactly follow the timing as indicated, so being more diligent there solved the overcooking issue. Removing the salt continued to be a stumbling block. I tried different types of salmon and various ways of removing the salt (paper towel, pastry brush, bare fingers, tweezers, prayer...), but found that even a few granules of the pernicious stuff was enough to ruin the fish. Finally I gave up and put parchment paper between the salt and the fish, which turned out to be the winning (if inelegant) solution for some seriously tasty salmon.

On my final attempt I served the salt-roasted salmon alongside brown rice and a simple watercress and fennel salad with lemon-rosemary vinaigrette (pictured above). The entire meal took only an hour.

Six nights and one hour.


Salt-Roasted Salmon
Adapted from Tom Colicchio's Think Like A Chef

Serves 2

2 six ounce center cut salmon fillets (high-quality farmed or never-frozen wild)
3 cups course sea salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper


1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

2. Heat olive oil in oven-proof skillet over medium-high heat for around 1 minute.

3. Add salmon fillets and cook for 2-3 minutes, until skin is crisp.

4. Remove skillet from heat and cover each salmon fillet in 1 layer of parchment paper.

4. Pour sea salt over fish, fully covering all fillets.

5. Move skillet to oven and roast for 6 minutes.

6. Remove salmon fillets from skillet with spatula one at a time, taking care to brush away any salt granules stuck to the bottom.

7. Drizzle with olive oil, season with pepper and salt, and serve immediately.

An (Almost) Springtime Lunch

I've been looking for the perfect subject for my Very First Blog Post and after three weeks, have resigned myself to the fact that no such opportunity will present itself. But a springtime Sunday lunch chez moi seems like as good an excuse as any for the momentous First Post. After all, spring is about birth, renewal, optimism, yada yada, the moral of the story is that I'm genuinely excited to have something to cook with besides root vegetables and winter squash and I want to show the fruits of my labor to all of you people.

Spring vegetables: I'm talking rhubarb, peas, artichokes, fava beans, asparagus, and ramps (aka wild baby leeks). I try to eat these things only when they are growing locally, which makes the first ones of the season taste just outrageously good. First day without a coat good. First iced coffee good. First day of outdoor drinking good (okay, maybe not quite that good, but close).

Unfortunately I got a little ahead of myself on the spring lunch idea. It's early April in New York and even though the weather has been in the 70s and 80s, the ground is still cold and the Union Square Greenmarket is still largely sans spring veg. On my Friday morning greenmarket outing, I did manage to snag stinging nettles, arugula, and asparagus.

That's right. Stinging nettles. How exciting. It feels awesome and a little bit survivalist to be cooking with these -- really anything that needs to be handled-with-care/devenomed in the kitchen is an immediate hit with me.

Turns out you can do a lot with the stinging nettle: soup, pesto, stuffed pasta filling, pizza or crostini topping...it tastes a lot like spinach, only sweeter. The key thing to keep in mind above all else is -- and forgive me for stating the obvious here -- if you touch them in their raw state with bare skin, they will leave a sting that lasts for a few hours. While not excruciating it's unpleasant and quite the buzz-kill, as I learned last summer when I accidentally romped through a nettle patch barefoot after a couple of cocktails. Oops.

For today's lunch I made a stinging nettle pesto, and tossed it with homemade linguine. I considered doing ravioli and then decided that I might want to post something that's not completely useless to anyone without a pasta machine and access to wild plants. (if you don't have the time/requisite insanity to make pasta from scratch, store bought pasta of any shape will do just fine). Unfortunately, you are not going to be able to find nettles at your local Safeway...but if you come across some, do consider trying out this pesto as a yummy alternative to the traditional basil version.


Stinging Nettle Pesto

Serves 8

6 cups stinging nettles (2 cups cooked)
1/3 cup pine nuts
1/2 cup olive oil
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup grated Parmesan-Reggiano or Pecorino-Romano
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper

1. Put on rubber gloves.

2. Plunge nettles into boiling water for 1 minute, drain, and squeeze dry.

3. Coarsely chop.

4. Add nettles, garlic, pine nuts, salt, pepper, and 2 tbsp olive oil to food
processor and pulse until they form a paste.

5. With food processor running, drizzle the oil into the mixture in a constant stream.

Voila! Pesto. Just like that.



Also on today's menu:

Roast leg of lamb with mint-parsley salsa verde

Roasted asparagus and arugula salad with farm egg, parmesan, and lemon-rosemary vinaigrette

Country bread

Lemon-blueberry bread pudding with vanilla creme anglaise