Vindication

This is not really a blog post.  It's an unabashed dissemination of my salt agenda propaganda:

For Supertasters, A Desire For Salt Is Genetic

I loved this article.  It's sciency and nerdy and foodie all at once.

I Scream.

Considering my last post was so negative, I thought I should try to maintain decent food karma with a more positive entry this time...

A few weeks (months?) ago I bought my ice cream maker and it has given me endless frozen creamy joyousness.  The initial experiment with tahini ice cream came out wonderfully, as previously noted, and the continuing results have been just as pleasant.

My sophomore ice cream creation was a batch of Earl Grey with a touch of vanilla bean.  It was, in my not-so-humble opinion, quite fabulous.  It had a nutty flavor reminiscent of coffee ice cream, but lighter, and with that refreshing hint of bergamot.  I simply simmered the tea bags in the sugar-milk mixture for the base custard.  It was very straightforward and very, very yummy.

After that experiment, I made a batch of strawberry jalapeño ice cream at the request of one of my friends.  I sliced up some fresh strawberries and a couple jalapeños and cooked them down with a bit of my vanilla bean simple syrup until they were reduced to a fairly thick consistency.  I made the sweet cream base and added the syrupy mixture approximately halfway through the freezing process.  The results were wonderful.  There was no spicy heat left from the jalapeño, but the distinctive flavor was definitely there and it played off the sticky sweet strawberry quite nicely.  I've had a few people wrinkle their nose at the thought of the combination, but I'm not sure why.  It was somewhat akin to one of my favorite pre-party snacks:  crackers with cream cheese and red pepper jelly.  Both combinations pair the "capsicum" flavor in a sweet syrupy mixture with a heavy, creamy base.  I will, without a doubt, be making that flavor again, although next time, I'll probably up the jalapeño a bit and maybe get a bit more bite from it.

My latest ice cream adventure was a nice traditional pistachio.  This was the most labor-intensive of the flavors, but certainly worthwhile.  First, a word of warning to anyone attempting such an endeavor:  ignore the fact that all recipes call for roasted, UNsalted pistachios.  Apparently, these do not exist.  At least in Alaska.  And if they do, apparently you need to relinquish a kidney as currency.  After much searching and hair-pulling and angsting, I decided to just use the roasted and salted pistachios that you can get in bulk from almost every natural food store in Anchorage.  They worked just fine.  In fact, the touch of additional salt probably helped.  (Anyone that knows me knows that I am addicted to salt and I'm past my stage of denial).  My friend Tony, (the strawberry-jalapeño requester) helped me with the shelling of the pistachios and then I went about trying to remove that papery outer layer so I didn't end up with gritty little flakes in the custard.  The interesting part about this ice cream is that you grind up most of the pistachios into a paste and cook that paste into the custard, simmering then straining it out before freezing it.  The paste manages to impart the pistachio flavor, and then, once the ice cream is mostly frozen, freshly chopped pistachios are added for that cruncy texture.  The resulting color was a bit dreary looking; greenish, but barely, so I cheated and added one drop of green food coloring.  The resulting hue was a perfect cheerful but subtle green and I had a beautifully traditional pistachio ice cream at the end.

Side Note: I was able to use the leftover pistachio/custard paste as a filling for puff pastry.  I added a little dollop of mascarpone cheese for some savoriness and created little turnovers.  If I do it again, I'll probably go the extra step and make a real pastry cheese for it, similar to what you'd find in a cheese danish.

So far I've been really pleased with all of the fruits of my ice cream labors.  There are still a few more combinations I'd like to try out:

Peanut, apricot and sweet red chili (Thai influence, perhaps?)
Black cherry with black pepper
Blueberry and pine nut
Vanilla and basil

Oh!  Speaking of basil... I have a little planter full of fresh herbs hanging on my front porch.  So far, they've survived a full two weeks.  They actually seem to be flourishing (except for the purple basil which I maintain was doomed from the start).  I also have a hanging basket full of nasturtiums which are also surviving, despite a rocky start.  I can't wait to throw together a nice summer salad with herbs and flowers.  Yum.  The Nikon D60 will have fun with that colorful little endeavor.

This week I'll be having a few folks over for a pre-race pasta party.  I'm aiming for quantity with a secondary goal of quality, but it should be relatively easy.  I have quite a bit of meat sauce and pesto that I had previously frozen, and I'm planning to make a marinara with wild mushrooms for an additional meat-free option, as well as a white sauce with parsley, clams and garlic.  There should be about 12 people in all, so I'm hoping to have enough variety for everyone to be happy.  I'll be pairing the dishes with a nice vintage of SmartWater so that we're all properly hydrated for Saturday's race.  Should be fun times!

Infuriating Instances of Incompetency and Severely Saddening Service

Aaaaaaannnnnnnd: I'm back!  It's been a while.  I appreciate all the prodding from people asking why I haven't been posting.  It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy to know people actually check for updates...

Unfortunately, this post will not be dedicated to any kitchen fiascos, nor creative culinary adventures.  Instead, it's a "venting post" into which I plan to pour some of my frustration with living in Alaska.

Before delving into the particulars, I should preface this vent with the fact that I have had the opportunity to dine in a multitude of countries and experience a fairly wide variety of cultures and cuisines.  I've had good service, impeccably pristine and artful service.  And I've had bad service.  Really really bad service.  Best service I've had was probably at Al Mahara, at the Burj Al Arab in Dubai, the only 7 star hotel in the world.  That was good service.  Mark's in Houston, also spectacular service.  I've also had bad service.  Really, really bad service.  Surprisingly, I had consistently bad service in Israel, possibly because I was one of those obnoxious American tourists.  France is known for their snarky service and the Parisian wait staff do an excellent job of maintaining that reputation.  Just about everywhere in the Former Soviet has pretty terrible service.  There's that general attitude of "you're going to get what we give you, and you're not going to dare complain."  Anything goes.  I thought I'd leave that behind upon repatriating to the US.  Alas, such was not the case.  I could write a book about the cultural and economic similarities between Alaska and the Former Soviet, but tonight I'll focus on the restaurant service.  The really really bad restaurant service.  I attribute it to the lack of competition here.  There seems to be this secretive conspiratorial collusion amongst the restaurants in this town to maintain an astonishingly, painfully low level of service.  They also seem to be very good at maintaining the ridiculously high prices that only "good" restaurants elsewhere would be able to charge.  I feel like many Alaskans don't even realize just how criminal this combination is, and if they do, they're powerless to escape it without boarding a flight for Seattle.

For you "outsiders" reading this, I know what you're thinking.  "You could get good service if you're just willing to pay for it.  There must be at least a few outrageously expensive, elite restaurants that you could get some good service at."  Well, there are a few outrageously expensive, elite restaurants here, but even those with generally decent service are fairly inconsistent.  The bar here is just so low...

This rant was brought on by my dinner experience last night.  A group of 7 of us decided to get a little dolled up and go out for a nice Saturday evening dinner.  We ate at an Anchorage restaurant called Romano's.  I'd heard mixed reviews.  It's supposed to be one of the nicer Italian restaurants in town, so I had been planning on trying it out for some time now.

There were so many issues with the service that it would be too emotionally draining for me to relive/recount them all right here.  I will say that we'd have to continuously ask for refills of water, we waited ages to have our orders taken, both for appetizers and for the main course, and we had the good fortune of being able to all sit around and listen to the waitress chit chat for a good 15 minutes with the table next to us while we were trying to get her attention.  When we finally managed to pry her away from her engaging conversation, much to her annoyance, we asked to order the stuffed mushrooms, inquiring, of course, how many mushrooms came in an order.  Six.  Six mushrooms per order.  Well, we clearly had 7 of us eating dinner, one of which had gotten up to wash his hands prior to eating.  We asked if we could get 7 mushrooms.  Much confusion and consternation ensued.  We offered to pay for the 7th mushroom.  Continuation of consternation.  "Well, you only have six people sitting here right now." "Yes, but there are seven of us, the other guy is coming back."  "Well he's not here right now."  "Ok... Can we get 7 mushrooms?" "He's late, he doesn't deserve a mushroom."  "Ummm... We like to encourage hand-washing.  Can we get 7 mushrooms?  We are willing to pay for it..."  "I'll ask."

Whew!  We did, in fact, get 7 mushrooms.  One of which was the size of a nickel.  They were moderately tasty.  About a half hour later, we were able to order our main courses.

When the main dishes finally came out, I had the added good fortune of finding a nice curly black hair nestled in the cream sauce of my fusilli.  Yum!  I tried to discretely let the waitress know, but she seemed extremely confused by the whole situation.  By the time she finally clued in to the reason for my outreached-cream-sauce-covered-hair-displaying finger, the entire table had figured it out.  So she took the plate, and grumbled, "I'll go get you another one."  We all sat there for a bit, no one eating, everyone trying to be polite.  I finally convinced folks that I'd be more comfortable if they just started eating.  They gracefully put together a collection plate of food for me which held me over until my plate re-arrived, sans-hair this time.  When my plate finally arrived, everyone had pretty much finished their food.

Thankfully, throughout all of this, I was able to self-medicate with a really nice Beringer cab.  I'm guessing it was a 2007.  The rest of the gang managed to keep things light-hearted and the humor rarely managed to crawl out of the gutter.

The bills come out, again, after much confusion and consternation on the part of the waitress, and this is what my date and I received:

This check was for two of us.  Please note the $1.50 "MUSH" and the $22.95 filet, (which was my dish).  I'm shocked that they didn't charge us for the hair.  I asked the waitress about it all and she said, "well, they made me."  Ok.  So I talked to the manager about it, explained that this really was pretty lacking in class to charge full price for a meal that had hair in it, and, on top of that, charge us for the single additional nickel-sized mushroom when there was a table of 7 people all drinking wine and eating food.  She said, "Oh, you sent it back?  That should have been removed from the bill, let me check on that."  I smugly returned to the table, feeling satisfied in the resolution.  The manager returned and said, "I didn't realize they brought you a new plate.  The charge remains..."

Seriously?  Wait, so let me get this straight:  you brought me food with hair in it, which means someone back there wasn't wearing a hair net (or worse...) and thus violating food code, and then, you make me wait 20 minutes while the rest of my party eats their food or worse, allows it to get cold, and then you charge us for an additional mushroom on top of it all?!?  Usually a restaurant that wants you to come back, or at least not bad-mouth them will comp your dish if not the whole meal.  They'll usually offer you free dessert or a gift certificate or SOMETHING.  Nope.  We got charged.  It was such an incredibly uncomfortable situation that I'm pretty much determined to shout my disgust from every digital roof-top available.  Like this one.

I will admit, I should know better than to expect anything different.

And on that note:  I'm going to go plan out my cooking for the next month, since I doubt I'll be eating out very much...

Wining and Dining, (with a touch of "whining" perhaps?)

Well my life lately has been full of wine.  Wine tastings.  Wine dinners.  Wine sauces.

The Chemistry of Wine event was a bit disappointing.  There was a component tasting table which we probably should have visited, but didn't.  It was tucked away back in a corner.  The catered food consisted of stuffed raw veggies (little tomatoes and celery) which ran out before we made it over to the food table.  That was also disappointing.  I had been under the impression that the food would be paired for the wines.  One of the vendors had a table of food to "cleanse your palate."  Ironically, it had garlicky hummus and artichoke dip with pieces of bread.  There was also an assortment of dark chocolate.  Not exactly what I'd choose to create a blank slate for tasting the next wine, (especially with the artichoke which is notoriously impossible to pair with wine).  After the tasting, we headed to Crush where we did a bit of supplementing in both the food and wine departments.

I had much better luck on Wednesday when I attended a Kenwood Winemaker's dinner at Kinley's.

We started out with a nice 2009 Pinot Gris to begin the evening.  It was fairly straightforward, but enjoyable, which says a lot since I'm generally not a huge fan of white wines.  It was followed by the first course, a white asparags salad with chevre, chopped egg, sauteed bread crumbs and lemon vinaigrette.  This was paired with a 2008 Sauvignon Blanc.  I wasn't a fan.  The wine was pretty lemony and the whole thing was a bit too intense for me.  The sulfur from the egg added to the abrasiveness of the dish and the texture combination of cold white asparagus and chopped egg was less than appealing.  Needless to say, I don't like Sauv Blanc and I don't like lemon, so I'm probably fairly biased here.  I will say that the goat cheese was very tasty.  I would have paired that wine with something to balance the acidity, maybe something buttery, like seared scallops.  The second course was fantastic.  It was a spicy black bean and shredded pork Napolean topped with a sugar snap pea and cabbage slaw, drizzled with chili syrup, paired with a 2007 Zinfandel.  The Zin was loaded with raspberries and it played well off the savory spiciness of the dish.  I'll have to remember that combination next time I make a pork and black bean chili.  The third course was a petite filet mignon on a caramelized apple demi glace, parsnip and potato puree and a slice of warmed Cambozola.  This was paired with a 2006 Merlot.  The combination was wonderful.  I loved the parsnip and potato puree.  The demi glace was pretty sweet, it reminded me of a caramel apple.  The cheese was pretty overpowering.  All of the flavors ended up balancing each other out.  I really enjoyed this dish and the pairing.  The fourth course was a grilled rack of lamb on a roasted shallot and mushroom risotto with bordelaise sauce and friend artichoke hearts.  It was paired with a 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon.  Unfortunately, this course was pretty disappointing.  The lamb was overpowered with pepper.  The artichoke heart (singular) was cold and no longer crispy.  The risotto also had a lot of black pepper in it, and the rice was undercooked.  The tanins in the Cab ended up amplifying the pepper and I found it all to be overwhelming.  Thankfully the last course was very pleasant.  They served mango white Stilton with freshly sliced papaya, topped with a ginger reduction.  I loved it!  The course was paired with a 2008 Gewurztraminer.  Normally I'm not very enthusiastic when it comes to Gewertz or Reisling, but I think they can be nice when paired properly.  This was paired properly.  The wine was sweet enough to hold it's own against the fruit, but not so sweet as to be candy-like.  The creaminess of the Stilton tied it all together nicely.  The table next to us apparently hated it though, exclaiming in horror that the gelato tasted "weird."  Shocked, I leaned over and told them it was a Stilton, (just like the menu said), and they just looked at me in silence.  It was an uncomfortable situation all around.  I'm still coping with the fact that people that were willing to pay $85 for a wine maker's dinner couldn't tell the difference between STILTON and GELATO.  *Sigh*

The Pastabilities Are Endless!

Most Alaskans have a talent for spending lots of money on the activities they love.  Walking into an REI brings on the overwhelming aroma of burning money.  It just incinerates right there in the pocket it's hiding in.  A girl can never have too many pairs of moisture-wicking-you-name-it or too many water-resistant-layers-of-this-or-that.  Or yoga mats.  The same holds true for kitchen appliances.  If you name it, there's a good chance I have it.  If, however, you'd named "pasta machine" or "ice cream maker" you'd have proved me wrong... a week ago.  I recently welcomed these two appliances into the D'Eramo collection and they have not let me down.

This past weekend, I decided to break out the new additions.  The plan was to make some fresh pasta with my white whole wheat flour, and some tahini ice cream.  That's pretty much as far as I had gotten in the planning process before jumping right in.  My friend Tony helped me kneed the dough and roll it out.  We attempted two methods.  For half the dough, I used a food processor with a dough blade to combine the flour, eggs, oil and salt.  The other half I combined the old-fashioned way, creating a little egg volcano in the pile of flour.  This latter method proved to be significantly more difficult.  I broke the barrier of flour and ended up with a nice little lava flow of raw egg, headed straight for the edge of the cutting board.  I found myself asking Tony questions like, "This does not look right, does it?" "How much flour do you think they mean when they say 'not all of it'?" "Hmmmm, is it supposed to do that?"  Poor Tony just shrugged, and then Googled a YouTube video for me to watch, which ended up being somewhat helpful.  I will say that the traditional method could be more appropriate for moderating how much flour is added to the dough.  With the processor, it's pretty much an all-or-nothing.  At least the egg-volcano method provides more freedom to gradually increase the flour.  In the end, I don't think the two sets of dough really behaved differently.  Letting the dough rest after it's been kneaded seems to be pretty important.  It definitely relaxed quite a bit.  We struggled with the first batch and it started to tighten up on us from overworking it.  Giving it 30 minutes to re-relax made all the difference in the world.

Rolling the dough out was tons of fun.  It was just like playing with Playdough.  I think that I could eventually do it by myself, but it was certainly helpful to have two people to help guide the dough through and catch it on the other end.  We went down to the thinnest layer for the first sheet and decided it was too thin for fettuccine, so we kept the subsequent layers at a level 2.  After rolling and cutting both batches of dough, we hung the pasta on racks and let it dry while we moved on to the ice cream festivities.  

The ice cream turned out to be a bit tricky.  It basically requires a cooked egg custard as the base.  I let myself get distracted while making the first batch and it boiled, creating a tapioca-looking goo.  I tossed it and tried again.  The second time around the custard came out well, and immediately after taking it off the burner I added the tahini to it and beat it in.  The mixture had to cool completely before being added to the ice cream maker.  An ice cream maker, by the way, is an incredibly simply thing, (unless you get the super-uber-fancy kind).  Basically, you pour this custard into a pre-frozen container and that container does the "freezing" of the ice cream.  The machine itself just insulates the process and turns a mixing apparatus to break up the ice crystals as they form.  It's surprisingly noisy.  All this being said, the ice cream that came out of that little machine was pretty fantastic.

While all this ice cream business was churning in the background, I started thinking about what to put on this potentially fantastic pasta.  I hadn't thought as far as sauce.  After rummaging around a bit, I decided that some hand-crushed canned tomatoes would work.  I rinsed them off to get the seeds and goo off, crushed them by hand, strained them, and tossed them in a deep pan with a little olive oil.  I found some of the leftover cooked Italian sausage I had from earlier in the week and I added that in.  I made a little well in the center of the mixture and sauteed some crushed garlic.  I bloomed some saffron in warm water and added that in, as well as a splash of white wine.  I let that all simmer for a while, reducing the liquid, and then I added the remaining 1/4 cup of the mascarpone cheese I had from Easter brunch.  I served that over the pasta and topped it all with some Romano cheese, served with a bottle of Alta Vista 2007 Atemporal Blend.  The result was pretty much heavenly and the wine paired perfectly.  I'm going to hold on to that little "recipe" in my head, but I doubt I'd ever be able to replicate the magic.  The pasta was extremely easy to cook and very tasty.  I think that if I make it again with the white whole wheat flour, I'll set the machine to the thinnest setting.  I thought the pasta was a bit dense. Everyone else seemed to prefer the thicker pasta, but as the chef, my preference rules.  

Everyone loved the main course and the dessert was a hit as well.  The ice cream was a bit nutty and very creamy and rich.  It was a bit reminiscent of halva, which is a favorite sesame-based treat of mine.  I'm looking forward to all the fun of combinations.  Chile pepper, gorgonzola and blueberry?  Black pepper and cherry?  Rooibus tea and vanilla?  Avocado?  Mmmmmm.  The possibilities are endless!  

Oh, and the shameless title of this post?  I'm going to blame that one on a co-worker of mine who had a bit of elevator-induced inspiration on our way out today.  Thanks Sam!

This weekend I'm attending The Chemistry of Wine which is a wine tasting benefit for the museum.  It's supposed to be about the science behind wine tasting, complete with wine and food.  Right up my geeky wine alley.  More to come on that...

Easter Expanded

Easter.  Even though this holiday is generally supposed to be about a really important dude emerging from 3 days of death in his tomb, we generally associate it with adorable fluffy things like little chicks or bunnies or lambs.  Mmmmmm.  Lamb.  The former vegetarian in me cringes to think of eating cute 4-legged things, but the current carnivore in me usually succeeds in shushing that former self and getting on with picking out a nice wine pairing.

(Jen: if you're reading this, I apologize.  For the purposes of this post, let's pretend it was a fluffy little texturized-soy-protein lamb that we ate…)

Apparently I wasn't the only person in this town to make such a logic leap from "fluffy Easter animals" to "yummy rack of lamb."  I called New Sagaya approximately 30 minutes after they sold their last fresh rack of lamb on Saturday.  Mr. Prime Beef had frozen packages of 4.  My heart was set on rack of lamb, so I went for it.  I planned to thaw one and vacuum pack the rest, keeping them frozen for another time.  Unfortunately, my zealousness had me leaving my engineering logic in the dust.  It is impossible to pry frozen racks of lamb apart while leaving them even moderately intact.  Trying to thaw them a bit to "loosen" them up is a silly idea because they tend to follow the laws of physics and heat transfer, thawing from the outside in, thus never reaching the fully fused internal sections.  So I thawed it all out and had enough servings of lamb for 8 people when I was only feeding 2.  Needless to say, it turned out to be a very lamb-centric week.

I rubbed the meat with salt, pepper, olive oil and herbs de provence, then seared the lamb rack on both sides in a cast iron pan and put it in the oven.  It was incredibly, quick, easy and straightforward.  For the vegetable, I chopped some lovely rainbow chard, blanched and shocked it, then briefly warmed it in a pan with some olive oil and garlic.  I topped it with some shaved Romano cheese.  I roasted some mini Peruvian potatoes as the starch.  Just olive oil, salt, pepper, and coriander, with a pinch of rosmary and thyme.  As a dipping sauce for the lamb, I used a recipe I found with combined crème fraiche, mascarpone cheese, honey, mint and cumin.  For my purposes I switched out the cumin for coriander.  I think that cumin is generally a lime-light starring-role type of spice.  It doesn't play a supporting role very well.  There's nothing subtle about that spice.  Coriander, however, complimented nicely.  It's a more delicate, fruity spice and it tied the sauce in nicely to the potatoes and the somewhat floral character of the Romano cheese.

The meal was very rich and satisfying.  It was all very easy to throw together.  There was minimal preparation and, aside from the cast iron pan, clean-up was a snap.  That was a good thing, because I ended up recreating the meal for five friends and myself after work the next day, at which time I paired it with a Tempranillo blend from Washington called Hellcat.  When that ran out, I opened a BoomBoom Syrah, which is generally a safe bet.  There were a few other bottles mixed in there, but I didn't keep my wine tags or write down the names.

I had sworn off of lamb for a period of time after returning from Baku.  In Azerbaijan, we ate a lot of adult "lamb" (i.e. mutton) which has a very strong flavor and is generally pretty tough and dry.  I needed a bit of time to recover from that.  The lamb that we had on Easter was very mild, tender and juicy.  I'll certainly be making it again.  I'd like to get a few racks of lamb (separately packaged) to keep in the freezer for last minute dinner parties.  It's always easy to find a leafy green and a starch to add alongside.

In general, it was a fun food-filled and relaxing weekend and a great way to start out the week.

Easter-esque Brunchiness

I've been a bit remiss in posting lately. Strange how my real life tends to get in the way of the important things in my life, like food.

I'm going to rewind a bit. Easter feels like it happened ages ago, but I suppose it's really only been about a week. I decided to do a small brunch with a couple of very close friends. I wanted to do something vaguely breakfasty but non-traditional, something sweet and something savory, and most importantly, something that could be prepared quickly because no one wants to get up early on a Sunday morning. I decided to make dishes that could be prepared the night before and assembled the morning of, thus allowing maximum sleeping-inage.

For the first course, I made some fun little fig muffins filled with a gooey honey goat cheese mixture. The recipe called for "white whole wheat flour," a substance which I'd never heard. I was of course very intrigued and went out in search of it. I found it, shockingly, in my little local supermarket, the one affectionately known by Anchorage folks as "The Ghetto Carrs". (It has character. And sometimes no cilantro. Or chicken. But always plenty of white powder and sticky black stuff. At any rate, I digress…)

The white whole wheat flour is made from "albino" wheat and has less "bite" than the normal red varieties. So far the results have been pretty good.

I'm going to experiment with using it as a substitute for plain white flour in various recipes. I used King Arthur brand, which is generally my favorite brand for every type of flour. Some girls have favorite brands of handbags or shoes. I live a slightly-less-glamorous, flour-dusted lifestyle.

The recipe called for either cream cheese or goat cheese for the filling. I decided a mixture would probably be best. I love goat cheese, but it can be quite intense at times. Cutting it with fat free cream cheese also cut the calories quite a bit. I'm pretty sure I'll be using this filling for other purposes: equal parts goat cheese and fat free cream cheese, honey and vanilla to taste plus a pinch of salt. I worked it together with a fork until it was creamy. This would probably be fantastic in a parfait with blueberries, or as a spread for toasted bread.

The muffins were yummy. If I make them again, I'll leave out any added sugar since the sweetness from the figs was nearly overwhelming in itself.

For the "main course" I served little polenta cakes topped with sautéed spinach, Italian sausage and Romano cheese.

I've found, through unfortunate experience, that polenta goes from creamy and smooth to firm and fairly stable when refrigerated overnight.

Thankfully, that knowledge came in handy for the creation of these little polenta cakes. I made the creamy polenta and added a handful of grated Romano cheese and a smidge of white truffle oil. I then poured it into muffin trays, covered them with plastic wrap and let them "stabilize" overnight.

I browned the fresh Italian sausage (from Mr. Prime Beef, pretty much the only real butcher in town), sautéed the spinach and grated the cheese the night before. On Sunday morning, all I had to do was bring everything back up to temperature in the oven, plate the servings and throw them under the broiler for a minute.

The result was very tasty. The polenta cakes were a bit crunchy on the outside without drying out.  There was a nice mixture of textures and flavors.  The cheese provided a touch of saltiness, the sausage gave it a little spicy heat and the polenta mellowed it out with a mild sweetness.

I did, however, notice that strange coating that spinach sometimes leaves on your tongue. By the end of the meal, it was fairly intense, (for myself, at least). I suspect that the others were being polite in not mentioning it, but I think it detracted from the enjoyment of the meal.  It even gave the dryness of the champagne a slightly abrasive quality.  The next day, I decided to do some sleuthing and determine the culprit.

Apparently, the source of that funky texture is oxalic acid. It turns out that oxalic acid is a pretty nasty substance. Thankfully, most of us won't suffer too many problems from it or the resulting oxalates, however certain groups could be susceptible to issues. Anyone that suffers from kidney disorders, gout or rheumatoid arthritis should generally avoid high levels of oxalic acid because it bonds to metals, (calcium, iron, etc…) to form very small but very sharp oxalate crystals which exacerbate those conditions. It also renders those metals useless to our bodies in the same way that many tetracycline and quinolone antibiotics do. It's a process called chelation. The two things bond together and become an entirely different entity. (Never take your antibiotics with dairy or a multi-vitamin! You'll get the benefit of neither the medicine nor the supplement.) Apparently, serving items high in oxalic acid (such as spinach) with dairy products will cause chelation and intensify this pasty film effect. One way to reduce the amount of oxalic acid in spinach is to boil it and change the water 2-3 times while cooking, essentially dumping the oxalic acid (and any fun vitamins or minerals) out with the water. Personally, this sounds like a pretty disrespectful way to treat spinach.

I thought that this website provided a pretty level-headed overview of oxalic acid.

I probably won't change my spinach-eating habits much, however I'll probably avoid cooking it with calcium-rich ingredients, and I might even try to change things up a bit by cooking with other leafy greens that are low in oxalic acid, like the ever-intriguing kale family.

Overall, the brunch was a success, and it led to a few epicurean educational experiences for me, which is always exciting!  Shortly after the dishes were cleaned up from brunch, I started preparing for dinner:  roast rack of lamb with rainbow chard and roasted Peruvian potatoes.  More details (and photos) to follow...