Lab Work

From time to time, I remember that I'm a certified chemist. On the occasional cold winter night, I even miss the lab. When that happens, I cook. (When it doesn't, I cook anyway. Eating is good)

Right now, we're about to rebuild our kitchen -- a good thing, since our current kitchen is the worst I've had since grad school. As of last Saturday (Delmonico steak on a bed of gorgonzola onions, with rosti potatoes and broccoli) our kitchen has been without a dishwasher. I learned to hate washing glassware roughly three years before I learned what a garlic clove was.

Today, Tekka food writer Meg Hourihan's favorite cookbook, The Vegetarian Bistro, arrived. I tried the broccoli au sauce roquefort, I need to learn to judge when broccoli is done; I was way behind the pitch on Saturday and way out in front today. The home-roasted cashews in the recipe were a win; verdict is out on the overall effect.

Talk about the flavor of the crackling of the pork,
Nothing could have been so strong
As the glorious effluvium that filled our house
When the gorgonzola cheese went wrong.

Megnut's favorite cookbook is out of print, but Amazon quickly and inexpensively found me a pristine copy from a bookseller in Traverse City, Michigan. Traverse City is not on my beaten path, and I'm no vegetarian; that's why Amazon's venture into used-book matchmaking may be one of the watersheds in the history of literature.