Brimfield Flea Market

Today, I'm too tired to write about the Brimfield flea market.  I went there with the Goob this week.  She scored a table ($175) and a jewelry case (also $175), both for her shop in Northampton, MA, and I scored two pickling crocks with lids ($30), which means that you should look out for kimchi and half sours by the gallon this summer.  Actually, by the two-gallon and the three-gallon, since that's how big my crocks are.  Anyway, one can't shop for crocks all day long without a lunch break.  Can one?  

I liked this alligator.  Though not old, it was humorous.  Too bad it's not a crocodile, though, cause then I'd be rocking a crock pun.  Whatever.  I also loved this giant, inedible hoagie.  

If I'd gone to Brimfield to take pictures, well, things would be different.  Mainly, this post would be different.  There'd be more and better pics.  Maybe even a review of all the grub tents.  There'd definitely be one of the kielbasa sandwich the dude next to me was eating.  It had kraut (made in a two gallon crock?) and mustard gloriously dripping everywhere.  Anyway, I did manage to get this hot pic of our french fries.

The place that sold these sold only french fries.  Five bucks for this little paper boat of them, but worth every penny.

Nice and scenic.  The woman seated in the foreground is apparently reading or sending a text message.  She probably scored something good--and for cheap--and wanted to tell someone about it ASAP.  Anyway, I'm out of steam for the day.  Here's the french fry hut.  Apparently they sell cold drinks, too.

 

Vegetarian Carbonara

I've made some very loud proclamations about the absurdity of vegetarian carbonara recently, but I made them in a time of relative plenty: I had bacon.

   
Today I had no bacon.  By all other accounts, it was a normal day.  I woke up in the morning and had a quick run-in with the law before breakfast.  I phoned my lawyer in Quatar and mowed the lawn to blow off steam.  When I finished, I was quite hungry, so I went inside and rummaged around for food.  I found one egg, a nub of Parmesan cheese, half a bag of frozen peas, three asparagus spears, and some left-over pasta.  Not exactly a bounty, but I could work with it.   

I stole some of my roommate's Italian parsley to garnish my feast.  I also lopped off a portion of her red onion.  I've become quite the degenerate in the kitchen these days, and I was just about to flambe the table cloth when it occurred to me that I would do better to take a picture of my lunch.  (see above) 

This is what my vegetarian carbonara looked like from the perspective of my kitchen ceiling.  Basically, the same, but smaller.  Now, I don't say this to be funny.  Your vegetarian carbonara could also look this delicious from an aerial view-point.  To learn the secret vegetarian carbonara recipe, read below:


1) beat an egg in a mixing bowl; salt and pepper the egg(s)
2) thaw some peas
3) sautee peas and whatever other vegetable in some olive oil or butter
4) cook some pasta (or briefly reheat old pasta in boiling water)
5) when the pasta is cooked, incorporate it into the egg with a spoon
6) stir in the peas and other veg
7) grate some Parmesan cheese into your carbonara and mix it all up

*optional: you can add a touch of cream or milk to your eggs

White Pizza

You know, I hate white pizza.  Absolutely hate it.  I've never had a good one in my entire life.  And I don't know when white pies became fashionable, probably around the same time that indoor soccer shoes became fashionable footwear for the ultra hip of Brooklyn, or maybe it was around the time when it became ever so popular for gutter punks to make holes in their earlobes big enough to shoot a basketball through, well, whenever white pies became the "in thing," that's just about when I started hating them.  

The reason I hate white pies is simple: they're not as good as red pies.  They're not succulent enough.  And furthermore, I resent the way they have corrupted pizza nomenclature.  The world was more simple before white pies showed up.  A pizza was a pizza; you never had to distinguish the color.  Anyway, I'm changing.  The gray hairs on my head testify to that.  Maybe when I'm a silver fox, I will trumpet to any young person within earshot, "when I was your age," blah blah blah.  

I guess what I'm getting at is that I have a huge heart, a huge heart that's willing to love even the stinkiest of prodigal sons.  Prodigal son?  Does that even make sense here?  Anyway, I thought I'd make my own white pie, and I started in the garden.

 baby arugula

 oregano, thyme and immature shallots

I also started with the olive oil.  Call to the stage the first actors: it is time for some herbs and garlic to take a little swim in some warm olive oil.  Let them infuse it with their flavor.  Basically, I thought that one of the primary reasons why white pizzas are usually so bland is that the olive oil is bland, and so, over a very low flame, I infused a healthy quantity of olive oil with one (halved) clove of garlic, a bunch of chives, and a sprig of fresh oregano.  Then, later, I sauteed my asparagus and shallots in this oil.

toppings: asparagus, jalapenos, oregano and thyme

Finally, I was ready to slice the fresh mozzarella (really nice mozz from a Vermont farm), grate the Parmesan cheese, toss out the dough and build the pizza.  I brushed an ample amount of the olive oil all over the crust, laid down the slices of mozzarella, spread out the baby arugula, scattered the asparagus, along with its cooking oil, scattered the jalapenos, sprinkled the herbs, scattered the Parmesan, and, last but not least, cracked a raw egg onto the middle and slid the white pizza into a 500 degree oven. 


I can now say that I have loved a white pizza.  I'm even man enough to admit that this was not only the best white pizza I've ever eaten, but the best pizza, red or white, that I've ever made.  Drizzled with a little extra herb oil and sprinkled with salt, OMG, so good!

p.s. here's my dough recipe

spaghetti frittata

Some people want to become star lawyers, some people want to become famous doctors.  I want neither one.  My ambition is simple: I want this spaghetti frittata pic to be the top hit on Google images.

Well, that's not the prettiest shot ever, but things viewed from the top are not always at their prettiest.  Think about it.  Think about Christie Brinkley.  Does she look her best from the top?  Or think about the best looking iron fence in the world.  How good does it look from the top?  Can't really tell, can you?  Moving on.

      
A long view across the mildly rugged and oh-so gorgeous surface of the spaghetti frittata shows the chef's curious mind at play.  Huh?  What?  What did the chef just say about the chef's curious and playful mind?  I don't think I follow.  Is this some kind of beauty pageant?


The chef decided to poo-poo the standard spaghetti frittata by choosing a different pasta shape!  Behold, a more airy, even springy spaghetti frittata.  Spaghetti frittata Spaghetti frittata Spaghetti frittata, if you say it three times fast, you will enter a kind of billowy trance, a billowy trance from within which you will begin understand the deep pockets of air inside the spaghetti frittata, the tubular pockets of air trapped in the food, courtesy of the pipette pasta shape.  What?  Huh?

    
There she is, inverted, bottom up.  Bottom up, baby.  Now, the deft observer will notice that some of the green peas have found their way into the noodle!  Yes kids, it's just another perk.  The switch from spaghetti or angel hair to the hollow noodle allows for many pleasures.  It allows for a lighter, "airier" frittata *and* for this bit of where's-the-pea fun.  If I knew a lot about child psychology, that is, if my ambition was to become the world's greatest child psychologist, I'd say that your kids will love biting into hunks of this oh-so-light spaghetti frittata to find the delicious little peas tucked inside the tubes.  

Finally, the in-the-skillet shot.  Or rather, a close up of the in-the-skillet shot.  Whatever.  Accuracy is not my bag.  Being the number one spaghetti frittata image is.  

Being a good friend and food blogger is, too, and thus I will actually tell you how to make this dish.

1) cook noodles

2) crack eggs into bowl; combine with peas; salt and pepper (don't be stingy with the salt)

3) mix cold noodle with egg

4) heat oil in cast iron skillet, plop in egg and noodle mixture; cook until bottom forms

5) top with cheese and herbs and whatever and pop into 300 degree oven 


6) finish under broiler if desired


This is an great thing to do with left-over noodles.  You don't even need to use peas, but they do make it so much better.  Finally, caveat: if you don't add enough egg, some of the noodle near the top might not adhere to one another.  It's no biggie; I'm just sayin'

Midnight Special #2

Last night I needed a sandwich before bed...

 partially "savaged" sandwich pile

The bottom tier is a grilled cheese sandwich.  The grilled cheese sandwich was then topped with shredded Genoa salami and shredded cabbage, both of which I sauteed.  Then, on top of that, plop went an egg, and on top of that, like a little poof on a winter hat, some baby arugula.  I scarfed it down and went to bed.  

This is my second Midnight Special.  Click here for the first.  

Bon appetite 

Baby Arugula

I keep trying to watch "The Third Man," but every couple minutes I pause the movie and dream about a cheese sandwich with baby arugula.  I am hungry and tired, and the greatest achievements in film mean nothing to me when I am hungry and tired.  Harry Lime got run over by a car, and I am wondering what kind of sandwich he had in his belly at the time of death.  Did he have an ordinary meatball sub in there?  Or was it tuna?  Perhaps he had nothing but a buttered slice of bread in his tummy when he got mowed down.  In any case, I sat down to write this blog post about baby arugula, and this is where I ended up.  Life is indeed a strange little beast.  Nonetheless, I do have some very developed ideas about harvesting baby arugula.

 
The first thing you'll notice is that there's actually a tiny stick in my sandwich!  This should be an important clue for all of you food detectives.  The baby arugula pictured here is from my garden.  I harvested a large area of it when the seedlings were only half an inch tall.  To some, harvesting lettuces at .5 inches tall may seem like a monumental waste of time, but every year I do it.  Every year I toss out handfuls of arugula seeds and let them germinate; and when they've gone just beyond sprouting, I pull them out wholesale, roots and all, and I clean them in two big pots of water, swishing them around, back and forth, pot to pot, jostling them vigorously and changing the water each time it gets dirty.  Like I said, it's a huge amount of work for such a small quantity of salad green, but it's become a ritual delicacy for me, and in that way it has become a beacon of summer.  

Anyway, I don't mean to bore you.  If you are so inclined, I really recommend doing this.  Baby greens, arugula among them, are best when eaten roots and all.  Pull out the entire plant and thoroughly wash it.  Baby greens are nice an springy; they are unlike mature lettuces because they don't compact.  Basically, the whole point of this post is to encourage gardeners to eat the roots of their micro lettuces.  The root hairs are so long and they get all tangled up like hairs in a shower drain, but they're much more delicious.  

Bon appetite