One Action Dinners, Part Three

One Action: OPEN YOUR LIQUOR CABINET. 

Cook with gin, vermouth, tonic, bitters & more. Those bottles can do more than fill cocktail glasses. Let the elixirs flavor your dinner food, too. Last week’s Academy project (finding fun anyway possible) was cooking with booze, using tablespoons and cups, not shot glasses. Still consuming alcohol but with emphasis on creativity and sophistication. The alcohol gets burned off so dinner is still child friendly. And the aromas are divine, as Mae West might say... 

Beefeaters & Beef

Beefeaters is more than a foundation for martinis and G&T’s! Smooth, silky and juniper scented, gin and beef is a marriage made in a pan. Sauté salted and peppered ribeyes over high heat. When steak is almost to your liking, pour in the gin and turn down the heat. Add a couple tablespoons of butter. While the gin and butter swirl together, turn the steak over a couple of times in the sauce. Remove steak to cutting board, slice, plate and pour gin sauce over steak slices while the juniper aromas are still strong.

Vermouth & Quail

The Vermouth bottle has been getting a workout. And when friends drop off quail, I quail with delight. After a quick flour dusting, sauté the birds in olive oil over medium high heat. When browned on one side, flip over. After both sides are brown, pour in vermouth. (our new favorite is Dolin.) Simmer until quails are cooked, throw in a tablespoon or two of butter, fresh thyme leaves, coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper. Done!

Vermouth & Savory Scones

When making ham and cheese scones (no yeast required) add equal parts vermouth to crème fraîche along with enough butter to satisfy fat requirements. To find out more, schedule a virtual scone class at the Academy.

Tonic’s Many Uses

Besides delivering a tiny hit of quinine, that lovely bitterness that mixes so well in cocktails, tonic can be whisked into flour (to the consistency of sour cream) making a batter for fried zucchini slices. Even children enjoy these green vegetables enclosed in crisp. After turning golden brown in very hot oil and draining on paper towels, use a generous hand when sprinkling coarse salt over the fried pile, because salt is a taste accelerator. 

Don’t forget the bitters lurking in your refrigerator…

Who doesn’t love nuts? Add a healthy dose of Angostura when you make spicy nuts. 

Roast 2 cups of unsalted nuts — a mixture of nuts is especially yummy — at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. Combine 1 tablespoon of Angostura bitters, 1 tablespoon brown sugar, 1 tablespoon honey, 1 tablespoon butter, 1 tablespoon chopped rosemary, 1/2 teaspoons of cayenne pepper and cinnamon and finally, 3 teaspoons of coarse salt. Mix with warm nuts. Serve with cocktails. Reheat extras for tomorrow and the next day and the next…or toss in a salad for crunch.

And desserts love liquor too.

You can flambé, scent, and build flavors with booze. Flame Bananas Foster with rum, make Grand Marnier or dry curaçao souffles, add tablespoons of sweet vermouth to macerate fresh strawberries for shortcake. 

Inquire about Academy classes to learn these techniques & other spiritual matters. During the past few weeks we have learned how to hold your hand, guide you step by step, answer all questions and even look into your cabinets, examining mixing bowls and knives. Real learning takes place when you do all steps on your own!  It’s not watching and wishing. It’s watching, doing, producing and tasting, together. Best of all, it’s hanging out with your friends and completing an activity!

One Action Dinners, Part Two

Less equals more, that’s what we are learning. We know what we do not need, what we can live without, and what we can do that we didn’t realize before. We might be discovering that the simplest dinner ever can be soul satisfying. The children might be happy with macaroni and butter but you need some fiber and greens.

One Action Dinners are simple. The one action might be brushing olive oil on a vegetable. Something delicious awaits you about an hour later. Sixty minutes to sit back, feel proud, drink a cocktail or finish a work project, know that you will be fed, and soon!

By the way, who said dinner had to be a meat and three? No it doesn’t! Sometimes one is enough. Kids might not like all of these, but you will. (Because…health.)

• Huge baked sweet potato - 425-degree oven for 1.5 hours, served with salted butter and sour cream and plenty of S&P.

• A pound of veggies - cut up & marinated in olive oil and any spices you’d like, grilled until charred. 

• Roasted red cabbage - slice, toss with olive oil and place in a 400-degree oven for an hour. Sprinkle in some caraway seeds and S&P. (Some cabbage slices get crispy, others are soft, all delicious and a little different.)

• Crispy potato pancake - thinly slice peeled white potatoes, toss with olive oil, arrange in an overlapping circle, sprinkle with S&P and bake for 1 hour at 425. What you want is golden brown crispness. This potato cake is addictive. If you want two actions, serve with a poached egg. 

• Fennel bulb - cut lengthwise into fourths, add oil and salt, roast for an hour at 425. Toss with fronds before serving. Served hot, warm or room temperature for a very pleasing dinner.

• Broccoli rabe - toss with olive oil, sprinkle with S&P, roast for 30 minutes at 400. 

For a change in pace — when you feel like doing two things and have some farm vegetables a neighbor left at your door — melt a little butter in a pan and sauté spring onion bulbs (white parts cut lengthwise in half) until lightly browned, and their delicate onion-y smell fills the kitchen. Then throw in a few snap peas and add tablespoon or so of heavy cream. While the mixture simmers, get a plate, fork, S&P and DONE! Dinner is simple and simply delicious.

What to do with leftovers? Add in pasta, rice or salads for yet another One Action delight.

One Action Dinners

We love Churchill’s Action This Day! campaign. He believed in getting the extreme priorities done daily. (Everything else was relegated to Report In Three Days...)

At the Academy, we take Churchill’s quote in a culinary direction because feeding people is an extreme priority. We like the idea of one step at a time towards delivering dinner tonight. Sometimes it’s too difficult to focus on more than a single action during times of distress.  

Know that some of the tastiest meals are the simplest. Here is a dinner menu made up of one action items, all delicious:

• Had Enough Cocktail - Pour soda water over ice. Sprinkle a few cocktail bitters on top. This is a perfect drink if you decide to reduce alcohol but still want the illusion of a cocktail.

• Roast Chicken - Liberally sprinkle the outside and inside with coarse salt, freshly ground pepper and Herbs de Provence. Stick chicken in 425-degree oven for 1.25 hours. Done!

• Fennel - Cut fennel bulb in quarters and save the fronds. Toss in oil. Place in 425-degree for 1.25 hours. No turning. To serve sprinkle the crispy roast fennel with S&P and lots of reserved fennel fronds. Delightful! 

• Sweet potato - Wash sweet potato. Put in 425-degree oven for 1.25 hours. Cut and let diners load potatoes with butter, creme fraiche, sour cream — any or all. Their choice! 

While looking through the fridge and figuring out what to make with what’s inside, remember that often the simplest things are the best.  Sometime all it takes is ten minutes and even less ingredients to deliver a meal you can proudly serve to anyone in need.

• Eggs + Butter = Omelette

• Jars of cherries + Angostura bitters = Old Fashioned

• Parmesan + Heavy cream + Fettuccine from the pantry = Alfredo

• Olives + Anchovies + Capers + Tomatoes + Spaghetti from the pantry = Spaghetti alla Puttanesca 

• Sour cream + Buttermilk + Herbs + Lemon = Dressing for a wedge of lettuce with crispy bacon

• Sour cream + Yogurt + Lemon zest and juice + Garlic = Creamy sauce for meats of all kinds…

@#$%&! #’s are difficult right now. Looking at a scale (going higher), looking at a bank account (tanking), all information that leads to even more numbers — faster heart rates. Let’s lower that beat by counting breaths, counting numbers in a recipe, counting projects to be done in the house and the times it takes to do them, counting how many times our children and other inhabitants living at home ask, ‘What is there to eat?’ (Actually don’t count that last one but the Academy has solutions for that too.) 

For all of us it comes down to one number, ONE. One step at a time, one day at a time, one problem solved at a time. But make that one into a smart choice. Make that into One Action Now.

Simple Syrup

Time for Math class at the Academy,  Put away your calculators -- this one is easy.  What do you get when you add one part water with one part sugar over heat?  The answer...delicious drinks!

The secret to so many great cocktails is Simple Syrup. No need to buy this in a bottle.  All you have to do is count to two: equal parts sugar and water, boiled for a minute, and then stored in your refrigerator for up to a month.  What could possibly be easier?  

Save Your Silver

Believe it or not, Thanksgiving -- even Christmas -- is right around the corner.  Whether you have two pieces of silver, or two thousand, the Holidays present the perfect opportunity to put it to use.  (If you aren't using your silver at all, the Dean says time to sell!)

Simplify your life.  Go ahead and check polishing off your list with this quick, easy trick utilizing aluminum foil.  It doesn't need to take all day, or even an hour.  Your silver will be shiny as new in minutes, less time even than takes to down a glass of wine.  Why not?

Full Disclosure: There is a rumor floating around on the Internet that silver will tarnish faster using this method.  We say, who cares?  We're just trying to make it through New Years without passing out from sheer exhaustion.  In the name of brilliant advanced planning, short cuts are A-OK with the Academy.

CHEESY RICE! & A Post-Joaquin Dispatch from Lake City

AK here, writing from a hotel room at the Inn at the Crossroads, which just happens to be the grandest hotel Lake City SC has to offer.  My boyfriend and I found ourselves stuck here last night in a foolhardy attempt to get home from a mini-vacation in the mountains over the weekend.  While driving through the thick of the storm, we were re-routed from the main stretch/I-95 to local highways, large parts of which are still underwater today.

The sight of houses and cars ruined by unprecedented rainfall along the way made us all the more grateful to arrive in Lake City and eventually (after calling a friend in Charleston who knew someone who knew someone else here) find a place to lay our heads.  We have since been counting our blessings -- our apartment on the third floor of a two-centuries-old Charleston house undamaged, our belongings accounted for, our friends and families safe.  But we are still desperate to be cozy at home.

Once we find ourselves back, we will no doubt be hankering for a homemade meal of the most comforting kind.  But, thanks to the houseguests who occupied the apt. in our absence, I expect our pantry is likely to be stripped down to the bare minimum.  If cabin fever is setting in & making do with whatever is left over sounds like a situation you can identify with, then here is what we'll both be having for dinner:

In aside...absolutely NO judgement if you are face-to-face with a bag of Uncle Ben's, but if you have any say in the matter, go Gold.

Finally, on behalf of the CADP, stay safe out there!  As we make our way back to Charleston -- which probably still looks more like Venice than it probably should -- we keep all those in SC who have lost people they love and places they call home in our hearts today.

X AK