Zugenia's Procrastination Salon

As per antof9's request, here is a rough recipe for the spicy vodka cream sauce I made up to go with our gnocchi tonight. It is very simple and very tasty.

Heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil in saucepan. Add five cloves of minced garlic and a teaspoon of red pepper flakes; a minute later, a 28-oz. can of crushed tomatoes. Season with salt, pepper, oregano, and basil and simmer for 10-15 minutes. Stir in a generous splash of vodka and half a cup of heavy cream. That's it.

As with everything, I'm sure this would be improved by fresh herbs. But as a (mostly) pantry-based concoction, it's still pretty damn good.

Every time I listen to The Breeders' "Cannonball," I hear the line about the reggae song, "...the bong in this really gay song"—and I can't remember if, back in the nineties, this was my joke or Beavis and Butthead's. (No, I'm not proud.)

Also, from the Adventures in Testing One's Prejudgments file:

At the gym this afternoon, I was working out with my headphones on (Britney to Ting Tings to Stars to The Dollyrots: iTunes Genius really is a genius!), eyes glued to some atrocious VH1 reality show ("Daddy's Girls"?), when a leggy, wide-eyed, blond girl in a pink sorority t-shirt comes up to me and asks kindly whether I'd mind if she changed the tv to CNN. "They're showing Obama's speech on the economy," she explained, a little bit apologetically, but more as if I were, you know, slightly retarded.

Also, from the Because I'm Awesome file:

Last night, D had a craving for both soup (inspired, I think, by the lackluster Tale of Despereaux, which we saw last weekend) and turnips (inspired by...I got nothin'), so I TOTALLY MADE UP this turnip-leek soup, and am amazed at my own genius.

( Turnip Leek Soup )

D and I had big plans for ringing in the New Year at Art Amiss's Blue Masquerade (a.k.a. The Party Where Lady Z Broke Her Dress And Her Wrist Last Year). D put a good 40 hours into the party's video installation (view promo here), and I was looking forward to an excuse to wear sexy shoes. But right now we both seem to be coming down with something throat-itchy and head-stuffy, and we're kind of into the idea of curling up on the couch with hot toddies and a movie for the night.

I think we are officially old.

I have some pretty big news for the new year, but the Internet Announcement will have to wait until after the Formal Announcement. (And NO, it does not involve babies or me having them. You're not going to be an aunt just yet, Emma.) In the meantime, I'll share a couple of recipes, which is a new thing for this blog, but our loved ones totally hooked us up in the kitchen for our wedding so I've been cooking more. D is thrilled.

For Christmas, D and I baked cookies for everyone. I don't eat a lot of sweets myself, but D gave these the household stamp of approval, and my niece and brother-in-law seemed to concur. I used these two recipes:

Carolyn Guinzio's Mom's Toffee Bars

2 sticks butter
1 cup brown sugar (packed)
1 egg yolk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teas. salt
2 cups flour

Cream butter, sugar, yolk & vanilla well (2 minutes). Add salt & flour. Mix well. Spread in greased pan & bake about 20 minutes at 350.

While still hot, put 4-6 Hershey Milk Chocolate bars on top & spread.

sprinkle w/chopped nuts

after they're cool, cut into bars.

[Lady Z's notes: I used Hershey's Special Dark Chocolate Bars and chopped pecans.]


Chocolate Peppermint Bark Cookies from 101 Cookbooks (my favorite recipe blog)

[Lady Z's notes: peppermint bark was extremely difficult to come by in northwest Arkansas. It is a thin slab of chocolate—white on top, milk on bottom—in which is suspended peppermint candy chips. The 101 Cooksbooks lady says you cannot simply substitute chocolate chips and peppermint pieces and I believe everything she writes about food. We finally found gift bags of the stuff and spent over $20 on enough for the recipe. I'm sure you can find it more cheaply on the internet, or if you live closer to civilization in a more densely populated area.]

3 cups whole wheat pastry flour (or unbleached all-purpose flour)
1 cup non-alkalized cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon aluminum-free baking powder
3/4 teaspoon fine-grain sea salt
1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 cups sugar
3 large eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 cups peppermint bark, roughly chopped
1/2 cup miniature chocolate chips (optional)

Preheat the oven to 375F degrees. Position the racks in the middle of the oven, and line baking sheets with parchment paper or Silpats.

Whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Set aside.

In a large bowl or stand mixer, beat the butter until light and fluffy, then beat in the sugar until it is the consistency of a thick frosting. beat in the eggs one at a time, incorporating each fully before adding the next and scraping down the sides of the bowl a few times. Stir in the vanilla until evenly incorporated. Add the dry ingredients in 3 increments, stirring between each addition. At this point you should have a moist uniform dough. Stir in the peppermint bark, and optional chocolate chips by hand, mixing only until evenly distributed. Reserve a bit of the bark to sprinkle on top of the cookies after you have dropped them onto the baking sheets.

Drop a heaping tablespoon of dough for each cookie onto the prepared baking sheets 2 inches apart and bake for about 10 - 14 minutes, until very fragrant. Cool on wire racks.

Makes 2 to 3 dozen medium-large cookies.

In making both of these recipes, I took advantage of our absolutely kick-ass new KitchenAid stand mixer and Cuisinart food processor, both from Auntie Irma Nell.

Yesterday we received a magnificent gift from D's Uncle Doug: the Mario Batali Risotto Pan with rice and a cookbook, which I used to make this for dinner:

Spinach Risotto with Arugula and Roasted Tomatoes

6 cups vegetable broth
1 stick unsalted butter
1 onion, finely chopped
2 anchovies in oil
2 cups risotto rice
2/3 cup dry white wine
1 lb. baby plum tomatoes
1/4 cup olive oil
8 oz. young fresh spinach leaves
2 cups fresh arugula leaves
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
freshly grated parmesan cheese, to serve

Heat broth in saucepan. Melt half the butter in another saucepan; add onion and anchovy. Cook gently for 10 minutes until soft, golden, and translucent but not browned. Add the rice and stir until well coated with butter and heated through. Add wine and boil hard to reduce until it has almost disappeared. Remove from heat.

Put tomatoes in roasting pan and sprinkle with olive oil. Mix well to coat and season with salt and pepper. Roast in 400 degree oven for 20 minutes or until slightly collapsed with skins beginning to brown. Remove and put aside.

Return risotto to heat, warm through, and begin adding broth one ladle at a time, stirring gently until all the liquid has been absorbed before adding more. (I'm leaving out the detailed explanation of how to cook risotto rice here, because it is a technique one cannot learn from a book. My dad showed me how to make it when I moved into my first apartment. It is seriously easy and requires only patience. Stand over the stove and stir the broth into the rice one ladle-ful at a time, stirring gently the whole time. It will take about 20 minutes or so and will use all 6 cups of broth.) Just before the risotto is cooked, stir in the spinach and arugula. Taste and season well with salt and pepper. Beat in remaining butter and parmesan cheese.

Cover and let rest for a few minutes. Fold in tomatoes and their juices and serve immediately.

[Lady Z's note: I used an extra anchovy and added a little soy sauce to the broth for flavor. D had never had risotto before and he loved it.]

So there you have it. Lady Z is seeing in 2009 from the kitchen, with Secret News, and a much lesser chance of dancing herself into the emergency room (knock on wood). Happy new year however you're doing it. See y'all on the other side.

Is the week after Thanksgiving maybe the saddest week of the entire year? Points of evidence:

1. If you've left Fayetteville for the holiday and now returned, you find the temperature has fallen a solid 30 degrees in your absence and the leaves, too, have dropped for good.

2. If you've taken a full week off to go to New York for the holiday, you've given yourself a little taste of vacation time only to discover that the semester has not, in fact, ended.

3. Most importantly, it's now a full year until the next Thanksgiving dinner.

Richard Prince's scary nurses!

Anyway, I'm back in the AR after a fantastic week with Derek and the family in the NYC. D and I caught Lamorisse's The Red Balloon (1956) and White Mane (1953) at Film Forum and Eagle Pennell's The Whole Shootin' Match (1979) at Walter Reade; we saw a spiral of Richard Prince pieces at the Guggenheim and roomfuls of portraits at the Frick Collection; we strolled through the rainforest at the Central Park Zoo and cruised The Strand; we ate Cantonese noodles and Koronets pizza and drank Turkish wine and caipirinhas and tasted the best trendy vegetarian cuisine since Zen Palate...

Yummy heritage turkeys!

... and that was all when we weren't partaking of my dad's special Thanksgiving heritage turkey and, leading up to it, a series of Kitchen Support Vodka Shots.



I think I'm returning to New York next month to catch sillygirl84 on her brief visit home from London, but before then I need to finish the semester, get an article manuscript out, and get D completely moved in. I'm also going to start writing book reviews again, but not until the next post; for now I'll just say that I'm reading Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and I love it. You can read the Wall Street Journal's interview with this M.I.A. sensation here—recommended to any other readers out there who've been waiting for his reappearance since 1996's Drown.