Er...hello.

Please, please, please, don't be mad at me.  From the looks of it, it’s been 3 months since my last post, and all I can say is…woopsie daisy.  Don’t fret, I thought about you ever day we were apart.  Plus, I have a really good excuse, I promise!  I do!  Ok, I’ll just come right out and say it.

I’ve enrolled in Culinary School! (yay)

That means that each day at 4 pm, I shut down my work computer, grab my knife kit, school books, and uniform, and leave my downtown cubicle in the dust.  Then from 5:30 to 10:30pm I’m brunoise-ing, and sauté-ing, and tourne-ing, and degrassier-ing.  I’m playing with santokus, chard, halibut bones, and china caps.  I’m taking copious notes on the proper way to cream garlic, and when you must and must not salt the boiling water.

In other words, I’m having the time of my life.

It took me some weeks (ok, some months) of trial and error to figure out how to fit my regular life into my new work/culinary school packed schedule.  But now I’m back and more excited than ever before to share with you some new favorite dishes and fancy restaurant techniques (straight from Le Cordon Bleu instructors!) If you want an even more detailed account of the life of a culinary student, check out Hillary’s blog.  She’s one of my new culinary school buddies, and she’s super awesome.  As for me, I’m going to continue on much like before, but hopefully with slightly more successful recipes!

And with that, I'd like to tell you about the best meal I've eaten in months.  I wish I could credit it's success to the fact that I'm paying someone to tell me how to cook better.  But I can't.  Nope.  This time, every last ounce of credit must go to the incredible farmers who sell their stunning produce at the Green City Farmer's Market here in Chicago.  Last Saturday, I found myself snatching up purple haze carrots, multi-colored sweet peppers, dinosaur-egg plums, long ears of golden corn, and the most exciting finds, the sweetest green, yellow, red, and purple cherry tomatoes I've ever tasted and an armful of fresh-as-can-be basil. 

As any cook knows, there's only two things to do when you have oodles of basil: 1) make a bucket of pesto, and 2) invite your friends over to help you eat it.  So, that's how my impromptu Sunday night dinner party was born.  It was clear that such beautiful basil could not be wasted on the dry, flavorless noodles from the pasta aisle of the grocery store, so the first step would have to be rolling out my own fettucine.  If you've never rolled your own pasta before, my goodness, I suggest that you try it.  Not only will it result in a vastly more tasty noodle, but I can guarantee you will also have a most excellent time making it.  That being said, if you don't have access to a pasta roller, I might suggest splurging for fresh pasta instead of the boxed stuff, because really, fresh basil deserves no less.

A Late Summer Sunday Night Pasta Party Menu:

whole-wheat, handmade pasta with market-fresh basil pesto
 

heirloom cherry tomato and fresh mozzarella salad

Pasta Ingredients: (makes 1 lb.)
2 cups flour
2 extra large eggs
2 teaspoons olive oil
1/4 teaspoon salt

Pesto Ingredients: (makes 1 cup)
2 cloves of garlic
3 Tablespoons pine nuts
3 cups basil leaves, no stems, washed and dried
a heaping 1/2 cup freshly grated parmemsean
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
salt to taste

Cherry Tomato Salad Ingredients:
1 pint fresh heirloom cherry tomatos (the more different colors, the better)
1/2 pound small fresh mozerrella balls
Basil, chiffonade

Step 1:  Make your pasta.  Like I said, making pasta is not nearly as hard as it looks.  Everyone has their favorite ratio of ingredients and method of pulling it together, and unsurprisingly mine can be found in Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.  I prefer using the "well" method, and since an image is worth 1000 words, I've attached a youtube link showing you how to do it.  After finishing your pasta, lightly flour it and set it aside while you prepare the rest of the meal.

Step 2: Make your pesto.  Using a food processor, combine the garlic, salt and pine nuts until finely chopped.  Add basil and olive oil and blend until smooth.  Add cheese and process long enough to combine, but no more.

Step 3.  Make your salad.  Depending on the size of the tomatoes, you may want to cut them in half.  I did, but this is by no means necessary.  Toss the tomatoes with mozerella in bite site pieces.  Sprinkle with the chiffonade of basil, and serve fresh. 

greens and all

Lately, I've been all about reusing instead of throwing things in the trash. I still haven't figured out a good system for composting in our new apartment, so I'll admit I'm doing nowhere near as well at reducing waste as I'd like. However, I've been doing alright in other areas. Instead of buying new wrapping paper, I've been saving old papers and scraps to decorate and create new works of art and handmade wrapping paper. And I've been thoroughly inspired by websites like Design*Sponge (particularly their before & after section) to look at refuse in a new way instead of rushing to the store to buy each item I need. 

Today, after a nice morning workout, I planned to find a hardware store somewhere near the gym. We've had some potential home accessories sitting around the apartment for a while that I felt could be freshened up by a new coat of paint, and today seemed like as good a day as any to muster up the courage to figure out how to: a) buy paint, b) sand off old, peeling paint, and c) correctly refinish some furniture. Somehow the below-freezing weather didn't deter me, even though I was still wearing my capri gym pants. I'm really silly sometimes. 

I found out that there was a Lowe's just a few blocks from the gym, and I jauntily departed. I left brownstone-covered Park Slope and started to feel small among the industrial buildings. Below the train tracks at the Smith and 9th Street F stop, on a sidewalk frozen over and slippery enough to skate on, I spotted a few chairs and a broken mirror. Sitting in the middle of the sidewalk. Ready to be thrown out. I walked past, partly because my calves were getting numb and partly because I was afraid somebody would see me eyeing that old furniture and shoo me away. 

I finally made it past lines of sanitation trucks and into the compound of the hardware store. I decided on paint colors, successfully purchased them, and left armed with some extra courage (could it be that the hardware store infused me with some sort of butch bravado while I waited for my paint to mix? Doubtful). Regardless, I made my way, again, below the train tracks, skidded across the icy concrete, and poked with a numb finger at the bottom of a battered old chair. It looked like it had been broken in an Italian restaurant, perhaps cracking atop a mobster's head. I swooped it up beneath my arm and dashed for the train. 

It was exhilarating. While I really knew nobody cared if I wanted to go home with a broken, ugly bottom-half-of-a-chair, I felt positively brazen. I finally made it home with my haul, and Mary's eyes widened a bit, like, "Oh, god, what is she bringing home now?" My mischievous grin must have won her over, though, as that half a chair is now sitting against the living room wall, waiting to become something fantastic once again. 

. . .

One of the things I like most about this recipe from Bon Appetit's February issue is the fact that it uses the whole beet, greens and all. It's meant to be made with golden beets, but I used the red ones because that was what the Coop had, and I honestly like the sweetness of red beets better anyway. If you use red beets, your whole dish will turn red, including the pasta. Personally, I like that. I think we can all use some more color in our lives, or a fresh coat of paint.

-Kylie