Food, glorious food!

I’ve been obsessed with food my entire life, sometimes in less than healthy ways. But in the last year or two, really since moving to the very foodie Pacific Northwest, I’ve really gotten into it in the best possible way. Good food, fresh food, eating and making it, and I’m always looking for an occasion where I can do both. Which brings me to this weekend. It was the first anniversary of my first date with my boyfriend Dave, and both of us wanted to do something at least a little special to recognize our first year together. So I got to cook!

The idea was to do a picnic. There’s a small college campus across the street from Dave’s apartment, and we were going to spread a blanket out on the grass and lay back in the sun and feed each other and be schmaltzy and romantic. So I decided to make stuffed mushrooms, bruschetta, beef carpaccio and asparagus wrapped in prosciutto. Oh, and chocolate dipped strawberries for desert.

I did say I was obsessed, right?

One of my current food obsessions, besides mushrooms, is blue cheese. Like mushrooms, it’s something I refused to touch as a child but have recently discovered I love, so I decided to combine them. Last week I was eating out and had a salad with blue cheese and candied walnuts with maple dressing, and the combination of the sweet and pungent was so good, I decided I wanted to do something similar with the mushrooms. So here’s what I did:

Took half an onion, lovingly chopped by my fella (who tells me his hands still smell like onions two days later), and tossed them in a pan with a generous pat of butter to cook. I wanted the onions to caramelize, to give me the sweetness to balance out the strength of the blue cheese. But I was impatient – we were REALLY hungry by the time we got around to cooking – so I poured in some maple syrup to help things along. Then I put in the chopped mushroom stems (also lovingly chopped by Dave), and let everything get all yummy together. Then I threw in the blue cheese so everything got all soft and gooey.

When the cheese was all melted I took the pan off the heat and let it sit for a bit while I worked on assembling the asparagus and the carpaccio, then Dave spooned it into the waiting mushroom caps (which had been sautéed in butter earlier). Then we dragged everything into the living room (we were so hungry by then, and it was so late, that the outdoor picnic was moved by unanimous vote to the living room floor), and ate.

Oh. My God, y’all. It was SO good. The blue cheese completely overpowered the onion and maple syrup, but it was hard to care. The bruschetta, which I’d made with some amazing little cherry tomatoes and some heirlooms I’d found in a local market (along with garlic, olive oil, balsamic vinegar and fresh chopped basil) was equally awe inspiring. I said to hell with cholesterol and grilled the bread rounds in the pan with olive oil, and the flavor was amazing. I don’t care at all that my arteries were hardening audibly.

The asparagus and prosciutto was good, but then I'm a sucker for prosciutto and anything. The carpaccio didn't turn out like I wanted - way too bland - so we decided to set that aside and pan sear the meat for breakfast the next morning (was better that way). I was worried the mushrooms and bruschetta and asparagus wouldn't be enough...but trust me, it was. We were both in a serious food coma after we got done, and there were plenty of leftovers to join the beef at breakfast.

Next time I make the mushrooms I’ll probably let the onion cook a lot longer to get the caramelizing I wanted, and I’d probably mix some seasoned breadcrumbs in with the blue cheese to give it a little more texture. And I think instead of putting the blue cheese in the hot pan, I’ll crumble it in a dish and then throw the hot onion mix into it there, so the cheese retains some of its structure. I won’t change anything about the bruschetta, except make more of it.

It was the perfect anniversary. Except next time, I’ll start cooking earlier. And wear looser pants.