Tuesday, February 16th, 2010
I’m alive and posting! And I had a pretty fantastic weekend. It may be mostly due to the fact that I actually had Monday off (holla!) but it may have also been due to the fact that I got this:
Fondue pot!
Let me tell you, I am an outright cheese FIEND. I am also a fan of melted things, dipping, tiny forks, and “nonstick convenience” so this baby is basically the whole package right here. Basically, neither the boyfriend nor I could wait for actual Valentine’s Day to try this puppy out, so we decided to cheat and give it a test run on Saturday.
I also got “The Everything Fondue Cookbook”, so I started there for ideas. Now, I am definitely no whiz in the kitchen (I am slowly branching out from my previous specialties of toast, more toast, chocolate chip cookies and grilled cheese sandwiches to, you know, real food) but I at least figured I could follow some simple recipes for melting cheese.
Well. For a book that has cutesy cartoon people on it that makes it look like one of those Klutz kids’ books, “The Everything Fondue Cookbook” has some pretty ridiculous recipes. I figured it would be easiest to start out with your basic cheesey fondue, but lord help me if I could find a recipe in that chapter that didn’t include either some crazy ingredient like truffles or some sort of fresh something or other nonsense, or some fancy cheese that I couldn’t even dream of pronouncing. Call me unrefined, but I think I was really just looking for something I could eat with nachos. And beer.
Alas, there were no dice to be had on that front, as they say. So I settled for an Italian fondue that at least contained a few cheeses I recognized, like Parmesan. Excuse me: Parmigiano-Reggiano. And Asiago. (Remember that part where I am a fancy cooking noob?) Yeah. So, I went on an epic journey to our local Safeway (there I go again with the classiness) to get all of the necessary ingredients.
First off: the cheese. The only real hard part here was reconciling the sizes of the individual cheese packagings with the actual ounces of each cheese needed for the fondue. Employing my impressive math skills, I guessed and cut off hunks that seemed to be about right. Then I chopped them all up and tossed them with a little flour and oregano. By oregano I mean that is what the recipe called for but since I didn’t feel like buying a whole separate thing of dried oregano I decided that my “Italian Herb” spice medley- which did indeed include oregano – would be sufficient.
SO MUCH CHEESE - Parmigiano-Reggiano, Gorgonzola and Asiago
After getting the SO MUCH CHEESE ready, it was time to actually get to the good part. The melting! Except I was sadly mistaken and this was not the good part at all. It started out just peachy: I got a little bit of delicious Frog’s Leap white wine heating up in my saucepan and added some lemon juice. Then I read the directions, wherein I had to very slowly, one handful at a time, melt about 20 ounces of strong not-so-soft Italian cheese. Oh and I had to stir constantly in a “sideways figure eight” and make sure not to add more cheese until the cheese I had added previously was completely melted. Well. Have I mentioned that I am basically the most impatient person ever? I am. If this had been anything other than delicious cheese I might have given up right there. But I persevered! And I even sacrificed precious moments of my very technical figure-eight stirring to grab a crappy pic!
Melting, melting - Excuse the bad picture, I had to be stirring the whole time
While I was a cheese stirring captive for who knows how long, I enlisted the boyfriend to make the bruschetta topping that would go with our awesome crusty baguette and, of course, the fondue. He got the easy part as all he really had to do was saute some tomato, yellow onion and garlic in olive oil.
Bruschetta topping
After approximately five and a half years of stirring cheese, and lightly toasting our olive oil drizzled chunks of baguette, it was time to feast! And also time to watch Ghostbusters! (I tell you the man really knows the way to my heart. Bread, cheese AND Ghostbusting? It was a pre-Valentine’s Day miracle!)
Chow time! Please note our fancy hot pink garage sale coffee table.
In case you didn’t read that caption: Please note our super fancy “coffee table” – that is seriously magenta- that we got at a random garage sale when we first moved to California. Just to remind you of how classy I am.
The total finished product:
1. Spear toasty, olive oil-y bread chunk with tiny long fork
2. Dip into delicious but super strong Italian cheese fondue
3. Dip bread and cheese into tomato bruschetta topping
4. Devour in a timely manner before aforementioned tiny long fork loses its grip on your now laden chunk of bread
5. Repeat as necessary, making sure to take breaks to shout along to the movie: “Get her, Ray?” “When someone asks you if you are a god, you say YES!” “Nobody steps on a church in my town!”
Dip dip delicious!
So, after all of that awesomeness actual Valentine’s Day was pretty low key. The boyfriend had lots of homework to do so I went on a jaunt in the sunshine. Oh yeah, that’s right, sunshine. NOT snowpocalypse/snowmageddon/snOMG/whathaveyou. Sorry, Eastcoasters, but seeing as I still have not really made friends in California and I am thousands of miles from my mommy, whose birthday it was on Valentine’s Day, I need something to make me feel good about being here.)
And that thing was watching all of the people out and about in the middle of FEBRUARY playing on the beach, letting their dogs run in the waves, and surfing.
People and puppies playing on the beach. Have I mentioned that it's February?
The waves were huge and the surfers were loving it
So, that was pretty much it. The three-day weekend was a really nice break, but now it’s back to work, getting up early and missing out on the pretty weather. Ah well, I can still make more fondue!
Tags: bread, cheese, fondue, Food, valentine's day