father's day

These are the cinnamon rolls beside which all other cinnamon rolls are not cinnamon rolls but rather insipid slices of supermarket white bread. We have been making them for special occasions for ten years. The only quibble I have with this recipe is the icing. The icing is kinda pointless, isn't it? We expect to see icing. It has no particular flavor; doesn't add much texturally, either. Eh. I make the icing, and the ones we're eating on the spot, I drizzle a modest amount of icing on them. But the real gift-that-keeps-on-giving aspect of making something like this for someone for breakfast is, the honored one is entitled to the leftovers for the next few days. We freeze them. I don't think the icing does well for re-heating the buns, so the leftovers are naked.

Why does it seem as though I work the word 'naked' into virtually every post?

This particular Father's Day I am doing a lot of cooking. Howie is smoking a big rack of ribs, and he has also taken responsibility for the greens. The menu:

Smoked pork ribs
Coleslaw
Mustardy potato salad
Collard greens

Strawberry-rhubarb shortcake

So a few words about the rest of the menu:
Coleslaw: traditionalist. I like the shred fairly fine, and always like the slaw best when it's a mixture of green and red cabbage with a good amount of carrot, for that confetti color effect. Nothing else but a bit of onion or scallion and a a thin dressing of vinegar, sugar, mayonnaise, salt and pepper.

Potato salad: what I've come to is a variation on a mustard-dressed potato salad some friends made for us once. the dressing is mostly oil, vinegar, lots of stone-ground brown mustard and a very modest amount of mayonnaise—just enough to mellow the sharpness of the mustard a bit—and nothing else in the potato salad but the boiled potatoes and a little scallion, though parsley can be good in it too (the little girl loathes parsley, so we try not to harrass her with it if we can do without it). I know some people like to cook whole potatoes and then chop them, but I prefer to cut them into 1" to 1.5" pieces, skin on, and boil them in well-salted water with a quartered onion in it.

Um, and I love sweet pickles, but their presence in potato salad drives me to a murderous rage.

Strawberry rhubarb shortcake: I've already posted my shortcake recipe elsewhere on this blog. The rhubarb part is from a recipe in one of Deborah Madison's cookbooks for 'rhubarb fool' (rhubarb puree mixed with creme anglaise, folded with whipped cream. very nice). Sliced rhubarb cooked down to a puree with sugar, a few strips of orange rind, the juice of the orange, and vanilla bean. Sliced strawberries stirred into the chilled puree, spooned in a split shortcake, topped with whipped cream. Rhubarb is one of those foods that people seem to love or hate. Greenish, big rhubarb is not worth anyone's time, I think, but gorgeously red, small rhubarb really does justify its existence, and it can be a lot better than strawberries when the strawberries themselves are not superior ones.

Okay, back to the kitchen with me. Neither barefoot nor pregnant but today: highly domestic.

Comments

[Julie]

This icing is the answer to a cinnamon roll lover's prayers.

It's great on carrot cake, too, though a bit runny — better for drizzling than spreading.

Try it. Mmmm.

[anne]

i'm telling you: cookbook.

however, if you insist on cooking disgusting things like potato salad and cold slop, i might not buy it. even though you make them sound like they might not be that bad.

[scott]

Rhubarb: Not just what extras say in crowd scenes, but a (poisonous) vegetable my mother frequently used to feed us...

[zeno]

Rhubarb is a wonderful vegetably thing, we used to have it in our garden when I was young and eating it straight from the ground with a little bag of sugar to dip it in is magical. It is also good for moving your bowels.

[Penny Pressed]

Though always up for a murderous rage, I'm with you on the sweet pickles. Actually anything in potato salad except the basics does it for me. Someone sent me a potato salad recipe with ... ALMONDS. What? Huh? Just ... don't.

[jenB]

im against nuts in salads. hee. i am pro-rhubarb though.