Martha, Martha, Martha (or: Time For This Month's Snitty-Rant)

Arancini with Sage

Bee's birthday was a few weeks ago.  What better way to celebrate the occasion than by getting into arguments with him over cooking!



As promised in my last post, I have begun my self-imposed quest to make 2 new recipes a month.  I had some catch-up to do, since January was nearly over by the time I made my resolution (note to self: resolve to procrastinate less.  Next year.); luckily, we were having the ex-in-laws over on the 31st to celebrate Bee's birthday, so I pounded out two recipes in one night.

First, the Arancini with Sage, pictured above.  I used arborio rice and panko bread crumbs for the first time in my life, thanks to my fond childhood memories of deep-fried, cheesy goodness.

formed and ready to fry

I must go back and thank those cafeteria workers, because -- as I learned -- arancini are not easy to make.  They're not hard, mind you, but they're not a walk in the park; and I have no clue how the old nuns working in the lunch room managed to churn out hundreds of these delicious balls a day.

Apparently, you can fill them with tomato sauce and even (gasp!) peas, but Martha wanted me to use Taleggio cheese.  Shockingly, my local low-price superstore didn't carry Taleggio, so I substituted with fresh mozzarella (because that's how I remembered them, anyway).

Bee, ever-supportive, looked over my shoulder the entire time.  "What are those?"  "I have never had them before."  "I don't know what they are."  "You deep fry them?"  "You're frying them too long!"  (Which, really, he has no right to say, since he's never had them before and doesn't know what they are.)  "No one's going to want to eat those!"

Guess what?  All our guests ate them; all our guests loved them; and all 3 dozen Arancini with Sage were gone by the end of the night.

I also made a Cranberry Sparkler Cocktail ("No one's going to want a mixed drink!").

Also tried by all, and also gone by the end of the evening.

thank you, Martha

THE SCORE BOARD - January
Martha + Toxic Housewife: 2
Bee + stubborn, ill-founded know-it-allness: 0

The next day was February 1.  A new month; two new recipes.  I knew I wanted to try my hand at potstickers some time this month, so I'd bought the ingredients the last week of January when I was at the store.  The chives were probably going to last until about February 7th, so Bee took that as his cue on January 29th to start pressuring me to make potstickers NOW.  ("When are you making those potstickers?"  "All the ingredients are going bad!"  "I don't know why you're making them anyway."  "I don't want to eat a bunch of potstickers."  "Do you know what you're doing?")

OK, so maybe I don't know what I'm doing, but it's not like YOU DO EITHER.

The recipe calls for ground pork.  To make it easier on myself, I wanted to just buy ground pork at the store.  But, unlike SOME people, I learn from the past, and recognized that I'd never hear the end of it from SOME people if I didn't use meat from the whole pig we'd bought and had processed last fall.

I asked SOME people to get me 2# of pork chops or pork roast or SOMETHING from the freezer.  ("Pork chops?  Really?  Are you sure that's what you should use?  Well, no: I don't have a better idea.  But, are you sure?  I'll just get out a pound.  Fine!  I'll get out 2 pounds!")

It was 1 p.m. on February 1st when he started hounding me to make the potstickers NOW for dinner at 6.  Since I could tell he wasn't going to let me read my latest copy of Living in peace, I called on my Toxic Housewifely inner-calm and suaveness and ambled into the kitchen to discover he was soaking both my pork chops in a sugar/soy sauce brine.

"What the f--- is this!" I screeched, as only a suave and inwardly-calm housewife can.

"You don't need both of those," he stated.

"How do you know?" I screeched.  I grabbed my kitchen scale and slapped it on the counter, throwing the pork chops on it.  "1.62 pounds, with the bone in!  See, even both pork chops aren't going to be enough!!"

Now he acted like I was being unreasonable.  "Just take them out, then; they've only been in the brine for like, 10 seconds."

The hardest thing about trying to cook for him is that he has such little faith in me: he's blatantly preparing his back-up plan before I've even started.

I did accept his suggestion that I not break out the meat grinder we've never used and instead grind the raw pork chops in our Cuisinart.  And I did ask for his opinion on whether to cook the pork first: Martha and several online recipes make no mention of this important detail, but Bee and I decided the cook-time on the filled dumplings was too short to properly de-worm raw pork.

With all my ingredients ready, I prepared to assemble the potstickers for searing.

"You're searing them?  All of them?  That's really how you're supposed to do it?  We'll never eat all of those."

He ended up leaving in a huff to take Mr. C for a bike ride.  I'm sure my screaming had nothing to do with it.

And guess what?

THE SCORE BOARD - February (so far)
Martha + Toxic Housewife: 1
Bee + stubborn, ill-founded know-it-allness: 0

The potstickers were delicious, and the three of us ate them all that evening.

I like to pretend that he was sheepish when Bee later said, "All your recipes were good.  Maybe I should just stay out of the kitchen when you're cooking."

Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks?