Savory Lemon Jam

Does it not look like magic? Because it is. Completely.

This recipe is magic. It just is. You basically toss raw lemons into a food processor with sugar, oil, and salt, and you end up with this bright and creamy sauce--the very essence of lemons--that's as good an accompaniment to asparagus or fish or cheese that I can think of. I actually want to make one of those fancy little savory goat-cheese cheesecakes (don't worry, I never will) and spread this over the top of it for serving with crackers. Gosh. Now I'm making myself crazy.

Wait until you try it, really. You're going to think: The whole lemon? Really? Where's the part where I remove the pitch and those membraney things? But you never do. I don't really understand why it's not bitter, but it's not: just perfectly sweet-and-sour, and so good just the way it is--as a sauce or dip--or else you can stir a little into a dish that needs brightening. I used leftovers in a chickpea salad this week, and it was totally fantastic. I have also mixed it fifty-fifty with mayo or sour cream to make a more dairyish dip, and that's good too.

I'm so happy to be posting this, because it's been on my list of things to tell you for over a year, but other recipes kept barging ahead, demanding to be written about. But here it is, now, which is all that really matters.

On an unrelated note: Did you want to know how old Ben is? I'll tell you. Ben's so old that we had to go out and buy him a protractor. Seriously. My baby! A protractor! I got a little weepy about that, which is not the most ridiculous thing I've ever wept about, but nor is it the least. I think I once cried because Birdy could just take a bite of an apple instead of needing me to sliver it into tiny unchokeable shards. My baby! Ah, life.

Savory Lemon Jam

Makes about 1 cup

Total time: 10 minutes

This is a recipe that I adapted from a book I checked out of the library, The Improvisational Cook, by Sally Schneider, and that she adapted from somebody else, I don't remember who…m. She makes it with oregano, which is not an herb I'm all that crazy about, so I make it with marjoram, which is an herb I would marry. (Why I won't marry Catherine Newman: the marjoram story.) I think it would be good with other herbs instead: lemon thyme is a kind of redundantly obvious choice, and I bet it would be great, or else basil or tarragon… or no herbs at all, which makes for a jam that tastes so fresh and lemony you'd put it on toast. Not that you wouldn't put this jam on toast too, but you might put this slightly savory, herb-flecked jam on toast that already had goat cheese on it, and then you'd die and go to heaven.

2 large lemons, preferably organic, scrubbed and dried

¼ cup sugar

½ teaspoon kosher salt (or half as much table salt)

¼ cup extra virgin olive oil

Freshly ground black pepper

1 tablespoon marjoram leaves, chopped--or another herb, or skip the herb

Cut the ends off the lemons--just about til you hit the flesh--and discard. Now cut each lemon lengthwise into 8 wedges, then remove the seeds and cut each wedge in half again crosswise. And then into 100 pieces widthwise, before dicing them sideways into millionths. (Do everything up until the last sentence.)

In a food processor, whir together the lemons, sugar, and salt, until chunkily pureed, then, with the motor running, drizzle in the olive oil to create a kind of thick, creamy, lumpy sauce. Add the herbs and pulse on and off until the sauce is flecked with green. Serve or chill.

Two lemons and some stuff you had anyway. Right? You don't even need the marjoram.

Isn't that so pretty?

Abracadabra kadoozy-kadam, wickety-wackety. . .

Presto!

My boyfriend. Chopped marjoram.

It makes a fantastic dip, and it's especially great on asparagus. But the reason I was making it was to serve with salmon, and I'd fully intended to photograph that exquisite pairing--and it was exquisite--only then a bunch of people came over, and I drank, like, 45 beers, and it was all I could do to remember to serve everyone a meal, let alone photograph it. 

Luckily, I'd already photographed Mr. Ben dipping some lightly steamed asparagus.

Is it just me, or can you see why this was an outtake?

We Are All Winners. . .

But LibrarianMama (aka Amy in Portland) is the winner of Dixit.

And because I can't resist picking one more, Deborah is the winner of Gobblet.

Send me your address, please, and I'll get those games on their way to you.

Thank you all so much for playing, and I wish I could hand-deliver a game to everyone. (Pilgrimage idea? Get Rio Grande games to team up with an RV company and sponsor my around-the-country game-angel service? Hmmmm. . . would I have to learn to drive on the highway?)

Have a wonderful weekend.

xo

Cheese Crackers

mmmmm. . .

Did you know that Blogger has a function that allows you to see the Google search terms that have landed people on your blog? Oh, it is so delightful. Most of mine appear to be regular--"Ben and Birdy," "world's best pancakes" {shrugs modestly}, stuff like that. But then there are some that crack me up: "why I won't marry Catherine Newman," for example, which I know refers to my piece in Bitch in the House, but which always looks like something Michael might have typed to tease me. Or "Catherine Newman dwarves" (?), "Do tiger barbs have babies?" (I don't know), "Catherine Newman diaper cake" (yum!),"Catherine Newman love affliction" (I get that one), and my new all-time favorite: "menstrual dumplings." I really hope you found what you were looking for, seeker of the menstrual dumpling, but I'm not sure you found it here. Unless it was my recipe for blood-clot spaetzle?

Anyways, one search term I saw today was "Catherine Newman salt," and that makes perfect and excellent sense. Salt! I have a lot to say about salt, many strong feelings about salt, tons of advice about salt. It is in almost all of my recipes, at the heart of all of the deepest cravings of my stomach's soul, the one seasoning I would choose if I could only choose one seasoning. And when I finally launch myself into full-blown fatness, it will be from the plank of salty snacks. I love them--all those salty, styrofoamy veggie "stix" you put out for the kids, the Pirate's Booty and Pringles and Cheetos and Goldfish Crackers. Oh, yum, yum, yum. And so, as always, my goal is to make a typically lame snack a little more nutrient dense so as to have a better excuse for the gorging and the gobbling. Enter the Nutritionally Enriched Cheese Cracker: like Cheez-Its on a spa vacation. Make no mistake: they are rich and salty, cheesy and addictively, insanely, wonderful. But, thanks to the walnuts, the whole-wheat flour, and the loads of cheddar, they are also full of protein, calcium, phyto-nutrients, omegas, minerals, and fiber. Which is good, because I make them, I send the kids to school with some, and then I eat the rest.

Cheese Crackers

Makes tons

Active time: 1 scant hour; total time: 2 hours

This recipe is a cross between Smitten's version of the Lee Bros. Cheese Straws, the Cheddar Cheese Crackers in the Tartine book (which I've renewed from the library, like, 100 times), and these blue-cheese crackers that I make every Christmas. I'm ambivalent about the onion powder, which makes them taste more like packaged junk food, which is both a good and bad thing in my book. Skip it if that sounds unappealing. Likewise, skip the cayenne, if you like, although that little spicy kick will keep the competition down if your kids balk at it. (Oh, and I can't myself imagine cutting out a million little fish shapes, but if you can imagine it, then you should.)

¼ cup white flour

½ cup whole-wheat flour

¼ teaspoon each cayenne and onion powder

1 teaspoon kosher salt

8 ounces sharp cheddar, grated

½ stick (4 tablespoons) butter

2/3 cup walnuts, chopped fine

In a small bowl, whisk together the flours, spices, and salt, and set it aside.

Now here's the order of things, for me: I chop the nuts in the food processor, then dump them out and put in the grating attachment and grate the cheese. Then I put the blade back in with the grated cheese (I just wedge it in, though it would doubtless be easier to dump the cheese out first) and add the dry ingredients and the butter (not the nuts yet). Okay, back to the imperative: process the cheese, butter, and flour mixture until it starts to look clumpy, and not just like a dry whirlwind spinning around. Now add the nuts and process until a ball of dough forms. You'll know this has happened by the sound of something that's been sleeping suddenly waking up and trying to bang its way out of its cage.

Remover the dough and do one of two things: flatten it into a disk, wrap it in plastic wrap, and chill it for an hour (shown here) or shape it into a log (around 1 inch in diameter), wrap it in plastic wrap, and freeze it until hard, around 2 hours.

Heat the oven to 400, and line a pair of baking sheets with parchment paper.

For the disk: On a well-floured surface, keeping the dough floured as you go, roll the dough out thin (1/8-1/4 of an inch), then use a knife, pizza wheel, or pastry roller to cut the dough into small squares or rectangles. Transfer them to the baking sheet, leaving a bit of space between them.

For the log (log!): Use a sharp knife to slice the dough thin, and transfer the rounds, as you cut them, to the baking sheet, leaving a bit of personal space between them.

Bake for 7 or 8 or 9 or 10 minutes, until they are deeply golden on the edges and pale golden in the center--but check them at 5 to get a sense of how quickly they're progressing. You want them done, but not overly browned, unless you like that brown-cheese taste, which some people do. Transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely, then store them airtight.

This is not so complicated, right?

dry ingredients

walnuts

cheeeeez

Let me out! Dough ball WILL escape!

The dough, she is chilled. . .

she is rolled into a crazy shape of a strange color

she is cut

She is poked with a stick. This is called "docking," which means either "poking so it doesn't rise too much" or "trying to make it look more like a Cheez-It," depending on whom you ask. I forgot to mention it in the recipe I think.

ready to bake

baked

cooling

eated up

Have I mentioned how Michael hates cheese crackers? No wonder he won't marry me!

 Yowza. Sorry for the photographic micromanaging.

Thank you for entering the game give-away, which is still open! I'll pick and post a winner at 9 am EST on Friday.

xo

Game Give-Away Redux

Okay! You have patiently waited out the firing and the self-sorrying and the regrouping and the Frankensteiny mooning around, and now it's time for the long-promised game give-away. I will mention here that a new favorite of ours is Dixit, which we got Birdy for her birthday for the sole reason that some of you mentioned it here back in December (thank you)! It's a fantastic game: like a cross between the dictionary game (or Balderdash, if you're high-tech like that) and Apples to Apples and something totally different--with super-weird, pleasantly creepy art and buckets of creativity. It's also insanely easy to learn. We played it with my parents and Ben and Birdy--and the fact that everybody loved it, and scored similarly (except for one person who won because this is kind of what she, ahem, does professionally) proved to me its tremendous value.

Anyways. I mention this particular game only because I'm thinking of it. What you should do is simply leave a comment here with the game you'd hope to win--any game, as long as it's on Amazon--and I will pick a winner and have the game sent on its way. Easy peasy.

Happy weekend!

xo

Tortilla Soup with Chipotle Cream

You know those weeks where you feel like Frankenstein? Like everyone else is human and whole, and you're all pieced together from used parts and strangeness, your seams showing, while you clomp around and knock stuff over and grunt out your apologies? Only, somehow, you're more like a teenaged Frankenstein doing bad stand-up comedy, staggering through the world with your padded bra and acne, feeling like everyone is backing slowly away from you, even as you're trying to make them laugh, only they can't understand your jokes on account of your guttural personality and the fact that your neck bolts are kind of distracting?

No?

Me either.

Well, maybe just a little. I don't know. "Off my game" is one phrase that leaps to mind. "PMS" is another. I laugh too loud and blurt out weird stuff, and am simultaneously awkward and needy. If you were here, you'd be inclined to wrap your arms around me and say, "Oh, sweetheart," but then you'd end up getting something on your shirt--yogurt or snot or a hairball--and I'd laugh more snot out of my nose and apologize and… and you'd stay by me. I hadn't intended that as a metaphor for what's happening on this blog, but even as I'm writing, it occurs to me how vital it is, this circling of the wagons that you guys have pulled off around me. To keep the wolves out. Thank you. I'm sorry about your shirt.

The kids, too, are doing it--without even knowing consciously that it needs to be done. Ben's sense of humor is like a hot air balloon, and I'm in its basket, uplifted and admiring the view and a little deafened. We were at a show last night… Here we go again. Even as I'm starting to tell you this story, I'm realizing how awkward and impossible it will be to communicate. Grrrrr vvvvv nnnnhhhhhhhhhhh… ha ha ha. But I will try anyway. We were at this show and Ben and I were waiting for the bathroom, and the pretty woman who burst out of the stall, with her nice sweater and silver jewelry and sleek hair, had in her hand a bowl of stew. "Just enjoying a little dinner in the bathroom?" I said, because I'm so funny, and she laughed and coughed, her eyes streaming, and said, "No, I was kind of choking, but now I'm fine." Later, after the lights dimmed, who should come up stage to introduce the musician? "Oh my god!" Ben whispered. "It's the stew choker!" And at 10-minute intervals for the rest of the night he whispered stew choker and I died every time. I understand that this might not seem conventionally like a way to take care of another person, and yet, also, it is.

Is stew choking a good segue to tortilla soup? I hope so. Because here it is: warming and rustic, ruddy and full of bright flavors and dark flavors and crunch and creaminess. As with many other simple soups, this one is all about the garnishes: lime wedges and the chipotle sour cream, avocado and, of course, the tortilla strips. Feel free to substitute a big handful of tortilla chips in each bowl--it will be a little less exciting to look at, but equally delicious. And honestly? If I, personally, were going to omit one ingredient, it would be the chicken. Crazy, maybe, but true. Enjoy and stay warm.

Tortilla Soup with Chipotle Cream

Serves 4-6

Take an hour, more or less, to make

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 large onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

2 teaspoon chile powder* (I used half ancho, half new Mexican)

1 cup canned tomatoes

1 tablespoon tomato paste

6 cups chicken broth (or 4 cups broth plus 2 cups water)

½ teaspoon kosher salt (or half as much tables salt) plus more to taste

1 tablespoon cornmeal stirred into ½ cup cold water

Olive oil spray

6 corn tortillas

Lime juice and sugar to taste

2 large skinless, boneless chicken breasts (or 3 small)

1 14-ounce can black beans, drained

Garnishes:

Chipotle sour cream (1/2 cup full-fat sour cream whisked with 1 teaspoon chipotle puree**)

Diced Avocado

Lime wedges

Heat the oven to 400.

In a large soup hot, heat the olive oil over medium-low heat, and sauté the onion and garlic until they are getting nice and soft and translucent, around 5 to 10 minutes. Add the chile powder and sauté just until fragrant--a few seconds--that add the tomatoes, tomato paste, broth, and salt, and bring the soup to a boil over medium-high heat. Stir in the cornmeal slurry (this will add lovely body to the soup), turn the heat down, and simmer, covered, for half an hour, stirring occasionally.

ruddy onions

 Meanwhile, spritz the corn tortillas with olive-oil spray (I spray one side and figure that when I stack them they get pretty evenly coated), then stack them, cut them into strips, and spread them on an oiled baking sheet. Bake them until they're golden and crisp, moving them around as you need to so that they brown evenly. This will take around 10 minutes, more or less.

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

Exhibit C. Is this annoying--the photos in the middle? (asked Frankenstein)

 Now back to the soup: taste the broth and add salt, lime juice, and sugar to taste until you've got a good, fully, vibrant flavor that you like. Pop in the chicken breasts and keep the soup at a super-low simmer, covered, until the meat is cooked through. Remove the chicken to a cutting board and shred it with your fingers or a couple of forks.

BARFING Yum!

 In a blender, carefully and in batches, or with a stick blender, whir the soup to unify it, then add the chicken back in with the beans and simmer it for another 5 minutes. Taste it, adjust the seasonings, and serve with the garnishes.

This is yummy on other stuff too. Whisk a little mayo, salt, and garlic into it for the world's best sandwich spread.

Little white bowls of garnishes make me excessively happy.

Plus they give everyone an excuse to get all nice and involved.

You know I like a moody photo of a partially eaten meal. Sigh.

* A note about chile powder: I know you know this probably, but if you buy "chili powder," like, McCormick's, say, it will likely be a blend with other seasonings in it, such as cumin, oregano, and garlic--which is fine for this soup, honestly. But I recommend also having on hand some true chile powder--which is just the ground chiles--for times when you want to better control the seasoning of your dish. But, confusingly, this might sometimes be spelled "chili" also. If you read the label, you'll find out. Or if you buy it in bulk from a store like Whole Foods, you'll be able to get the pure chiles.

** A note about the chipotle: I buy a small tin of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce (if there's a Mexican section of your supermarket, you'll be able to find it there), puree it in the blender, and store it in a clean glass jar in the fridge, where it keeps almost forever as long as you don't stick a dirty spoon (or finger) in it. I find this incredibly handy to have around for those times you want to stir a bit of smoky heat into something.

Nobody's Fool

Okay, maybe somebody's fool. Really, I'm just here today to remind you of some of the fantastic April Fool's tricks that I posted last year. If you can't find what you need there, FamilyFun has, like, a million. Nobody does prankster like those guys, is all I'm saying. (And no, the Evil Empire did not hold a loaded mouse up to my head to write that.) I still laugh when I think about sweethearted Ben leafing through the Chore Camp brochure. "It's just not what I pictured, but I'm sure it will be fun."

I also wanted to let you know how we're going to proceed here, and this is in part a result of your fantastic feedback, which I continue to cherish and also find incredibly useful. (I'm thinking that, collectively, we should become a life-coaching team: Got a problem? Let thousands of loving, smart, and compassionate people weigh in with their support of you! How much should we charge, though?)

Okay. What was I saying? Oh right. Mondays here will be recipes, like usual. And then Friday will be grab-bag day: a piece of randomness, a review, a craft, or a new feature called "Mama Lunch," which is a polite way of saying: something delicious that your kids, insanely, might not like. I am also getting and welcoming inquiries from folks (readers all) about advertising here. Family-owned businesses and the like. It is intoxicating to imagine supporting each other in our worthy enterprises, and please do email if this is of interest to you, even though I am currently replying with baffled enthusiasm. ("Great! What should we do next?")

Today's Friday grab-bag: a video of Ben and Birdy's Rube Goldberg Drum-Banging Machine. Ben's been studying simple machines at school--pulleys, levers, and the like--and then he was inspired by an afternoon at his friend Nico's house spent with dominoes, cars, and cans. The cat was my idea. Yes, there is wet food in the dump truck. Ew. And please forgive the quality of the film. But I cannot recommend enough that you try this at home.

Shabbat shalom, darlings.

xo

Shoop (aka Salt n Pepa Shrimp)

Holy pajoli, that was a beautiful outpouring of love and support, and I'm so grateful. Honestly. What would I do without you? I appreciate that so many of you wrote to family.com, and I laughed a little bit about some of the emails you cc'ed me on--many of which said, in essence: You stink, but you should hire Catherine back, even though she's too good for you and I hate you. Smiling isn't going to get my rent paid, but it sure lifts the gloom. To be clear: I am still writing for FamilyFun, which is a magazine that I love. I know it's not like you're going to spot James Franco reading it on the subway, or whatever, but the kids and I get tons of ideas from it. I'm just saying. And to be fair: family.com gave me enormous creative license when I was writing my recipe column for them, and I was very lucky in that way.

That said, I have a little bit of the writing version of that feeling when you take your bra off at the end of the day: ahhh. And you'd think, with my boobs hanging out, figuratively speaking, I'd post something totally crazy here today. Rice-pudding Pot Pie for 100! Pork Parfait! But no. I'm giving you this, which is, like, the world's simplest dinner, and makes for phenomenal gorging provided that one person in your family hates shrimp and so is eating only bread and cheese leaving a glut of shrimp for the rest of you.

The shrimp are addictively spicy and salty, and you'll want plenty of crusty bread for mopping up all the delicious spicy and salty (and oily) juices. I know I always say this, but: do use the full amount of salt. The point here is that you're salting the shells, and you want to get enough salt on there so that your fingers and the shrimp get nice and salty while you're peeling and eating. Does that make sense? If you were using peeled shrimp, you'd want to cut the salt way back, but I'm not sure by how much.

If shrimp don't speak to you, you could always have this meal instead:

Granola and mango smoothies for dinner. It's a classy operation we're running around here.

Salt-n-Pepa Shrimp

Serves 4

Total time: 10 minutes

1/4 cup vegetable oil

2 bay leaves or kaffir lime leaves (optional)

1 pound large, shell-on shrimp, thawed if frozen

2 teaspoons kosher salt

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Heat the oil in a wide skillet over medium-high heat until it shimmers. Add the leaves, if you're using them, and the shrimp, spread them into a single layer, and sprinkle on half of the salt and pepper. Cook for 3 minutes, then flip the shrimp with a spatula, sprinkle on the rest of the seasoning, cook for two more minutes, and serve.

 

These are the shrimp I like, from Whole Foods.
 
 

Salt-n-pepa.

 

That's the shrimp before you flip them.
 
 
And after.



On a plate. With this bread and the world's yummiest salad: spinach tossed with leftover coleslaw and diced pickled beets.

Ben is a lover of shrimps.

Birdy is a lover of cheese.

Shrimp shells. Sigh.

Thank you so much for stopping by.

xo

Dear Ones,

Over at family.com, you'll find brown-butter whole-wheat shortbread (perfect) and Mexican Brown Rice (imperfect but good), and also, gulp, my last column.

If ever you were going to comment over there, now would be a great time (i.e. feel free to express your feelings). I'm also trying to gauge your interest in ongoing recipes, since I'm thinking of continuing to post them here. (And if you're new to here from there, then welcome!)

More soon, including the promised give-away, which I am getting to, I swear!

xo Catherine

March.

Birdy turned 8 today. "My baby!" I keep crying, and wrapping my arms around her. But seriously. My baby! She is so dear to me, that girl.

Spunky and kind, fierce and fair, loyal and loving and silly. Ben's been home sick, and when it was time to take Birdy to karate--our plan was just to leave him alone for a few hours--his fever was creeping up and up. "How bummed would you be to miss Power Girls?" I finally asked, and Birdy said, "Oh, Mama, I know. I was about to say the same thing--I really don't feel comfortable leaving him." That little brow furrowed with concern. I could bite her. I did bite her. Sigh.

Meanwhile, a lovely ginger-vinaigrette chicken recipe is here, and a less intuitively appealing but nonetheless delicious smoky chickpea recipe here.

Can we talk a little more about books and games?

Malena Watrous, a new friend I've never met, very kindly sent me her novel and I loved it.

If You Follow Me. It's about a young woman's year teaching English in Japan--but really it's mostly about trash, and I laughed out loud every few pages. When I offered her my incisive analysis--that it's about trash--she said that, in fact, she was going to call it the Japanese word for trash, but her editor dissuaded her, so there you go.

I have also recently read and loved Twin by Allen Shaw, and  The Saskiad by Brian Hall. You guys? Any books you think we should all know about?

Furthermore, I am recommending two new games, not because Rio Grande sent them to me to review, but because Rio Grande sent them to me to review and they are awesome.

Dominion boasts "massive replay value" and this is more true than I know how to describe. We opened it two days before Christmas, and I'm not sure that a day has passed since during which we haven't played at least once. It takes around a half an hour, and there are many variations, and we all seem to win sometimes. When you read the description, it's all weird second-person dungeons-and-dragons "You are a monarch, a ruler of the peasants, an eater of the mutton, blah blah," and that's not at all what it's like to play. You're trying to amass resources, and it's more like an algorithm of logic and strategy than a narrative. I'm just saying. Gosh, I am really turning into a gamer. Do I smell like a gamer yet? Maybe.

Now, if you already have Carcassonne, any Carcassonne, you really don't need this one too. But if you don't, then I completely recommend it as it is our new favorite Carcassonne game. Wheel of Fortune is a tile-laying game that is quick, lovely, and wickedly competive, with an element of luck that adds to both the fun and frustration. Again, that distraught woman on the box? I have no idea what she's all about, and whether the featureless gingerbread-man-shaped wooden play pieces ("meeples" they're called, I don't know why) are intended in some way to represent her plight. We are not so much about the story as we are about fitting the tiles together and sneaking into each other's high-scoring situations. It is so much fun.


I am going to do another games give-away next week, but I haven't figured out the method yet. Stay tuned.

And thank you for your responses to the paint chip. I really enjoyed reading them, and, as you know, am always up for a little lively debate. Just for the record, we do, of course, force Ben to wear pink. And we make Birdy wear blue lederhosen and a strap-on.

xo