Lunch with the Barefoot Contessa

I took a number of cooking classes at Sur la Table when a friend of mine, trained as a pastry chef, was in charge of the program at the Farmer's Market in Los Angeles. Vanessa and I were talking about cookbooks at one of them, possibly because I was complaining about incomplete recipes in some books. She told me that Ina Garten's recipes always work, and that has certainly been my experience in the years since I started cooking from her books.

We voted to use Cooking for Jeffrey as our book for this month's Cook Book Book Club. As someone cleverly pointed out on Facebook, "let's face it, all of her books are about cooking for Jeffrey." It was the first experience some of our members have had using Ina's books, but it was wildly successful. Even people who borrowed the book from the library, expressed their intentions to purchase it after having a chance to taste all the food.

The Menu:

Smoked Salmon Pizzas, p. 28
Butternut Squash & Ricotta Bruschetta, p. 57
Butternut Squash Hummus, p. 36
Asparagus & Fennel Soup, p.66
Roasted Italian Meatballs, p. 110
Kielbasa and Lentils, p. 64
Cider-Roasted Pork Tenderloins , p. 106
Brisket with Onions & Leeks, p. 96-97
Tuscan Roasted Potatoes & Lemon, p.143
Roasted Parmesan Zucchini, p. 134
Spaghetti Squash with Garlic & Parmesan, p. 158
Vanilla Cream Cheese Pound Cake, p. 208

Bourbon Honey Cake, p. 210

Frozen Hot Chocolate, p.240

The table was set with Aynsley's Cottage Garden china and Gorham's Etruscan flatware. Table cloth and napkins were from Lenox. The cobalt glassware is from Libbey. It does not pay to have expensive glassware in earthquake country.

Smoked Salmon Pizza

We had three lovely appetizers, starting with Smoked Salmon Pizzas made by Nan Cohen, who came in second at the Jeopardy! Teachers' Tournament last week. She arrived at the house with the raised dough ready to be shaped and cooked in my oven and timed to come out when most people arrived at 1 o'clock. Wonderful.

Butternut Squash and Ricotta Bruschetta

Another dish assembled in my kitchen was the Butternut Squash and Ricotta Bruschetta made by Michelle Resnick.

Then Sharon Baker showed up with the Butternut Squash Hummus and pita chips. Like my friend Gillian Horvath, Sharon likes making hummus with different ingredients. Someone pointed out the recurring ingredients in the book by mentioning the butternut squash. Truly, who could object to a new selection of recipes for butternut squash. 

Asparagus & Fennel Soup

The next course was our soup course. I made the Asparagus and Fennel soup, which started by making Ina's Chicken Stock the day before. I also used the chicken stock recipe as the basis for a vegetable stock, so I could make another batch of the asparagus and fennel without meat. Instead of chicken, I threw the stalks from the fennel bulbs I would be using in the final soup, to give some more flavor to the vegetable stock. Both versions were well received. 

Soup Course

I confess, I love making soup just to be able to use my double-handled cream soup bowls, soup tureen, and soup ladle. Everything looks so pretty.

Roasted Italian Meatballs with Spaghetti

The pasta course featured Ina's Roasted Italian Meatballs made by Karen Bailey. Inspired by the photograph of Rao's marinara sauce in the book, Karen went to the Los Angeles location of Rao's Restaurant to buy sauce to use. I do not eat beef, but everyone who does pronounced these meatballs which combine beef, pork, and veal as light and excellent. (My mother's recipe uses a combination of meats including venison, when available.) Everyone was also impressed by the flavor layer added by the Chianti in the wet ingredients for the meat balls. Karen had originally planned to make the Creamy Parmesan Polenta, but her experimentation made her decide spaghetti was the better choice in terms of flavor and textures. I was thrilled that Karen was finally in town and able to join us for a meeting and I look forward to seeing her at our next one.

My mother fries her meatballs, as many people do. I turned to oven-roasting mine years ago, mostly because it is tidier and less time-consuming than frying is. There's no better way for making meatballs for a crowd (or freezing) than the oven-roasted method.

Liz Mortensen working on potatoes.

We had neither fish nor poultry courses this time, but we had two additional meat entrees, along with some tasty side dishes.
 

Lentil & Kielbasa Salad

Julia Roberts made the Lentil and Kielbasa Salad, which had a nice, fresh taste and went well with the meat dishes. I don't usually think of lentils as a salad ingredient.

Parmesan Roasted Zucchini

We were treated to yellow squash and cherry tomatoes from Laurie Perry's garden, in addition to  zucchini from the morning's farmer's market, in Laurie's rendition of Parmesan Roasted Zucchini garnished with cherry tomatoes.

Spaghetti Squash with Garlic & Paremean

My sister, T Valada-Viars, made Spaghetti Squash with Garlic and Parmesan as another side dish. She roasted the squash earlier in the day at the home for which she is house sitting, and then brought the shredded spaghetti squash to be finished on top of the stove in my kitchen just before lunch started.  

Tuscan Roasted Potatoes & Lemon

The Tuscan Roasted Potatoes and Lemon that Liz Mortensen made were a good accompaniment to the meat dishes. We definitely tasted the lemon, and rosemary, garlic, and olive oil are a great way to season potatoes. I do wonder how these would taste if preserved lemons were used instead of fresh.

Cider-Roasted Pork Tenderloin

Ina's recipe for Cider-Roasted Pork Tenderloins is served with a roasted plum chutney. Unfortunately, it isn't plum season and Catherine Fleming had to replace the chutney with a plum butter. It worked quite well. This recipe is amazing, and fast--it cooks in less than half an hour in a hot oven--so long as you remember to put the pork in the marinade 8-24 hours ahead of time. I made the recipe several weeks ago and t is what I consider to be one of the real keepers from this cook book. Eventually, plums will be available, and one of us will make the plum chutney recipe.

Kim Gottlieb-Walker and Brisket with Onions & Leeks

Kim Gottlieb-Walker arrived with enough Brisket with Onions & Leeks to feed all fourteen of us and her family later that night. It smelled wonderful, but I have to rely on other people to tell me how good it tasted, since I don't eat beef, but everyone was happy. Kim said she would probably serve it with mashed potatoes at home. I suspect it with show up at several Jewish holiday dinners in the coming year. 

Vanilla Cream Cheese Pound Cake

 We had three desserts to sample. Susan Avallone, our happy baker, made the Vanilla Cream Cheese Pound Cake. She claimed it almost as soon as we chose the book, beating Sharon Baker to the recipe.

Bourbon Honey Cake

Sharon, however, decided to make the Bourbon Honey Cake as a last-minute submission in addition to her hummus. Sharon makes an excellent Eggnog with bourbon, so she couldn't resist this recipe, in spite of the almonds which decorate it (and which she can't eat.) It has a number of spices in it, and is a good recipe to keep in mind for the Jewish High Holidays in the fall.

Frozen Hot Chocolate

The final dessert offering was the Frozen Hot Chocolate inspired by the restaurant Serendipity 3 in New York, because like Ina and Jeffrey, Laura Brennan and her then beau (now husband) had the dessert at that restaurant when she was in college (at Yale, where Ina's husband Jeffrey taught for many years.) Over lunch, Laura talked about how she had accepted the invitation to the cook book book club because she felt she really didn't know much about cooking. She's not only improved her skills, but her son is learning his way around the kitchen and now is responsible for one meal a week for the family. That's a very good result, I think.

Three Desserts

Dessert was so popular that it was proposed we do a Dessert First meeting sometime down the line. My sister insists we wait until after she gets back from her summer job in New York.

Back: Liz, Laurie, Nan, Christine (hosting), Laura, Michelle, Susan, T; Front: Karen, Julia, Catherine, Sharon; Photograph by Kim Gottlieb-Walker

We are now considering books and dates for our next meeting. Besides the dessert themed meeting, Appetizers Only was suggested as another theme (because how can there be too many appetiers), and books on the list include Alton Brown's latest book, The Joy of Cooking, and a Korean comic book with recipes. We expect to have another fine time.

Dishes

My name is Christine and I'm a dishoholic.

I'd like to think that my obsession began when I would pick up items for food photography, back in the day when I was a full-time photographer, but that's not at all true. I didn't even have a decent set of dishes back then, just some Corelle that was easily replaceable and some ugly stoneware I got as a wedding gift.

Around the time my son was two, I decided I was tired of living like a college student and took advantage of a china sale at a department store by purchasing 8 place settings of a Noritake china pattern called Adagio (picture of the pattern below.) I managed to get the soup bowls and my brother gave me the sugar and creamer and that's what I owned I went off to law school a few years later. I discovered the pattern had been discontinued when I went to do a gift registry when I married Len.

That was frustrating, and for a while I considered choosing a different fine china pattern, but we managed to pick up some stoneware with a sun and crescent moon pattern (salad plate below) called Galaxy that we both liked and which served the purpose of matching dinnerware when we hosted Thanksgiving for several years. Len likes to say before I came along, he was happy to have enough jelly glasses for dinner guests. A beautifully laid out table is what makes me happy, and if I'm putting in the work for that many people at Thanksgiving, I deserve to be happy.

The 1994 earthquake caused us to lose pieces of both sets of dishes. The Galaxy pieces were still available in some places (I think I managed to pick up some at Ross, actually) and Target came out with a very similar pattern that provided some additional serving pieces. The only piece of Galaxy I have not been able to find again is the creamer, but friends gave us a cobalt etched glass piece that goes well with it instead.

It was soon after the earthquake that I discovered china replacement services like Replacements, Ltd.*  in North Carolina, and I managed to replace the few pieces of Adagio that broke. I also haunted flea markets--a somewhat less satisfying, in terms of deals, alternative to the house auctions I used to attend with my mother when I was growing up and while I still lived back east.

One fine day, I stumbled upon a trove of Adagio place-settings and service pieces. Heaven. $225 for what would have cost me $1100 through Replacements. It gave me place-settings for almost as many people as were coming to dinner for Thanksgiving (the record has been 23.)

The thing that is really most responsible for indulging in my dish obsession came into being around that time: eBay. I was suddenly able to find Adagio in abundance, and, at least in the early days of eBay, it was possible to find real bargains. Over the past 12 or so years, I've acquired the rest of the pieces I need for service for 24 in Adagio and I've got every serving piece except for the coffee server (my two "almost" stories involve dishonest sellers,  and although I did not lose any money, I didn't get the piece.) I used to have one of the demitasse cup and saucer sets, but the cup was broken during the house fire and I've never found another one. I've even got napkin rings for 24. My Thanksgiving table looks lovely. Except for a bargain on the coffee server or finding the demitasse sets, there's really nothing more I need or look for in Adagio. I don't really like the etched crystal (incredibly rare) made in the pattern and the only thing I'd love to have are snack plates (also known as tea and toast plates), which might once have been special ordered but were never actually made for general sale.

Ultimately, the pursuit of dishes is All About The Hunt. I've got a number of different dish patterns I collect and I keep an eye out for those collected by my friends. The Hunt is more fun when it is done on foot with friends, but eBay has had a negative effect on the existence of antique shops and second-hand shops where china and silverware are sold. Many of them just went on-line. In L.A., there is at least one good flea market every weekend and there are still places like Pasadena and Old Town Orange where there are collections of antique malls (though not nearly as many as 15 years ago.) We used to go to the Rose Bowl Swap Meet almost every month, but it has been years since Len's felt up to the walk or I've felt like facing the parking issue. I do, however, try to go to the Pasadena City College Swap Meet every few months, and I like to hit what is left of the antique shops in the San Diego area when we go down for Comic-con. It is rare that I don't find at least one item to add to my dish collection.

When I was growing up, my mother's everyday dishes were from Stangl. She had the Fruit and Thistle (below) patterns.

My siblings and I each had a place-setting of Stangl Kiddie-ware. Mine was Indian Campfire. Only the cup remains and the price for replacing the plate and bowl is steep, if they can be found.

 When I found out my sister had gotten mom's Thistle pieces,  I started looking for pieces for her as gifts, and found many through eBay, flea markets, and second hand shops. Because Stangl was a New Jersey company, it was not nearly as wide-spread in the west as it was back east, but eBay was the great equalizer.

Back in the day when antiquing was a regular part of my San Diego Comic-con weekend,  I ran across several snack sets in a Stangl pattern called Country Garden, where each dish had a different flower or combination of flowers carved and painted onto the surface.

 It turned out to be one of the most extensive Stangl patterns in terms of servingware variety, which made it a great choice for The Hunt. Once I started, it was hard to stop. Besides the typical five-piece place setting (dinner plate, salad plate, bread and butter plate, cup and saucer) there were soup bowls, sauce or berry bowls, lug soups, sandwich trays, bread trays, divided vegetable bowls, serving bowls from about 12" in diameter down to 8", kidney-shaped platters, chop plates, egg cups, sugars, creamers, tea pot, coffee pot, salt and pepper shakers, and those snack plates with an indentation for a cup. I got many of them.

When my sister came to visit two years ago as we were moving back into our house after the rebuild, she helped me wash things which had not been cleaned by the packing company. She told me I could not buy any more dishes. I didn't need them. They took up too much space.

She seemed particularly concerned with my snack plate obsession. In addition to the Stangl sets (probably 16 of them), I had two different snack set patterns in glass. One was clear glass in a button and bow pressed glass pattern and the other was a milk glass pattern called Orange Blossom.  Both were mid-century glass sets made by Indiana Glass.

There were a lot of them and they were hard to store.

Good thing I didn't still have the Fan plates I had been accumulating. Those I gave to a friend who already  had a large collection when the triangles caught my eye.

In addition to the snack plates with cups, I had begun finding cocktail plates which allow a guest to slip a wine glass into a hole so the two items can be held in one hand at a party. These are actually easier to store (I was only able to acquire two dozen of them because Presido Designs either discontinued them or went out of business and the ones I found were at Ross--and I went to every Ross in a 50 mile radius from where I live to hunt them down.)  I've managed to find other plates with the opening for wine glasses, but none are quite so nice and well thought out as this line called Amuse Bouche. Since we entertain so much, these are really useful.

 

 As a concession to my sister and my space limitations,  I decided I could get rid of the triangular button and bow plates. They were a little hard to wash and a friend had asked to borrow some for a party. I think just gave them to her. They actually look very nice with her colored depression-glass punch cups replacing the plain clear glass cups of the set. I packed up some green and yellow snack sets I had and sent them back east with my sister as a gift to her daughter. Culling  gave me a little more room for my next quarry: Aynsley Cottage Garden.

I picked up an Aynsley Cottage Garden tea pot, creamer, open sugar bowl and cookie plate at a flea market one day many years ago. It is a floral pattern with butterflies (and I'm pretty sure a the snack set I found in a second hand shop was a cheap Asian knock-off of this pattern.) On eBay, I had found a cake plate and a serving plate for crackers, but I didn't think about looking for more.

While we were in the rental house, I  scored some Cottage Garden vases, candy dishes, and a strawberry basket on eBay for bargain prices. Lots of other pieces started showing up and there was something so cheerful about the pattern, I kept up with The Hunt, expanding into place settings. I'm still looking for the snack plate set in the U.S. (I can find them from U.K. sellers, so maybe if I go to London with Len in February, I'll be able to buy them.)

Initially, I thought the pattern would finally be The One for my breakfast-in-bed set (a goal I've had ever since I saw a display at an antique shop of a  Johnston Brothers breakfast set on a  tray.) In fact, I've acquired so much of it that it that I can do a spring brunch on the patio for a dozen people if I can acquire some more tea cups. I do have enough egg baking cups for half a dozen people.

The Aynsley makes a beautiful display in my kitchen for ten months of the year. It makes me smile and I've carried the butterfly motif through to the curtains in the kitchen and some other things. (I own at least one of most of the vases below, and a number of other shapes.)

As I acquired more of the Aynsley, I realized that I wasn't really using the Stangl Country Garden any more. Since my sister had said that my niece loved the color yellow, and since there were so many big yellow flowers in the Stangl pattern, I offered the dishes to my niece, who happily accepted. If I had realized how much the shipping would cost, I might just have sold the pieces on eBay, but all except the very last of more than a dozen boxes went out last week and she is now reveling in a more complete set of china than I owned until I was almost 20 years older than she is. It is a good home, and, because she's on the east coast, she's got a better chance to find the missing pieces (soup bowls and salad plates, particularly) to round out the place-settings. She's got all the serving pieces she could possibly want.

The two months of the year that the Aynsley goes into storage is for the Christmas holidays when my Lenox "Holiday" pattern china comes out.

I started collecting it before the house fire and I kept it stored in the garage, so it managed to avoid damage and being unavailable to us during the Christmas holidays of 2009. What makes this pattern really fun is that it is active, easy to find, and Lenox introduces new serving and decorative pieces every year. Plus, it has matching flatware, linens, and Christmas ornaments. I love the way the table looks on Christmas morning, when my friends Karen and Michael show up for a day of food and fun.

It is a very specialized pattern, though, so I really can't use it the other ten months of the year.

There is a part of me that might consider swapping out the Aynsley for Lenox's equally cheerful "Butterfly Meadow" pattern.

Like Holiday, it is active, readily available, extensive and always expanding. Like the Stangl Country Garden, it features a variety of flowers on the different pieces. Although I have bought some of the linens, I can't really take on a second butterfly and floral set of dishes without people questioning my sanity.

That doesn't mean I won't dive into something completely different, because I just did.

I went on line a few weeks ago to look for some serving pieces decorated with horses for the Belmont Tea I will host on Saturday. I started hosting a tea for the last of the Triple Crown races during the last decade when it looked like a possibility that some Thoroughbred would finally make it a dozen winners. We're still   waiting for that, and it has been four years since I last had an excuse to hold the tea. This will be the first in the new house and with the 73" TV. Almost like being there in person in New York, right?

So, back to the Internet. I think I typed in horse teapot or horse china on eBay, which I've done a few times before, but not with the results I got this time: a beautiful pattern with Arabian horses.

The pattern is called "Chevaux du Vent." It is a fairly new pattern (it debuted sometime in the past two or three years, I think) and it comes from France. I found it from an eBay dealer in Canada, although there does appear to be a local authorized seller in L.A. I've only picked up a couple of serving pieces and part of a place setting, but this will be The One for my breakfast set and I am looking forward to using the pieces I've purchased at the Belmont Tea.

I've purchased a salad plate:

A bread and butter plate:

A candy dish with a mare and foal:

And a beautiful 12" cake platter:

I love the bread tray and I can't wait to get the larger tea pot. The dinner plate is rather plain, with the decorative pattern on the edge, so I haven't purchased it yet. I'm trying to decide whether I'll get the breakfast-sized tea cup or the mug for my morning drink. I did get a cereal bowl and I'm looking forward to sitting out on my patio eating breakfast out of it. I expect The Hunt to go on for quite a while, but that's fine. Bargains will no doubt be hard to come by.

I do want to share something else I saw, but which I cannot in any way even consider buying: Hermes Cheval d'Orient.    

The horses are a more abstract interpretation of my beloved Arabs, and it is gorgeous, but the place setting is around $1700.00 with a soup bowl and the teapot alone is $1225.00.

No wonder I first saw this on a website called "Wealthy Tables." Comfortable I am, but wealthy I am not. However, if anyone wants to bequeath me a set, I would not turn it down.

* Replacements, Ltd., was founded in 1981 and its owner, Bob Page, came under fire for opposing the passage of Amendment One last month. Please consider supporting this business (I don't recommend going so far as Christine Lavin has by breaking china just to replace it), which was the first of its kind and is the largest replacement service in the U.S. When putting together this post, I discovered they even carry the Galaxy pattern. Maybe Replacements will get my missing creamer in some time, but I just discovered there are matching demitasse cup and saucer sets.