dreaming@echonyc.com

things i have cooked in the last few days:

• a million meatballs. four pounds of meat and a one-inch scoop — you do the math. i told emily on the phone that i was making a million meatballs. "you can't do that," she said incredulously. "how many do you think i could make?" i asked. she thought. "maybe...ten?" i said, "more like 100." "you can't do that!" indeed i can; i counted 102 of the larger size and 36 tiny ones, marble-sized, for soup.

  if i had made a million one-inch meatballs and lined them up single file, they would stretch almost 17 miles. the 102 i actually did make would only go about 8.5 feet.

• onion soup. the onion soup recipe in mark bittman's how to cook everything is sublime — props to terry for telling me about it. here's the basic idea:
  1. slice a bunch of onions thinly.
  2. cook them in butter until they're very soft and beginning to brown.
  3. add chicken stock, thyme, and a hit of cognac.
  4. drink by the gallon.
  it's the cognac that makes it special; it adds depth and roundness and elevates the already-buttery flavor.

• pasta sauce. i don't usually bother, since we like barilla spicy pepper flavor just fine, but something came over me in the tomato aisle of the grocery store. i make no apologies, because the outcome is delicious.

• chicken stew. there is a chicken perched atop mirepoix in the crock pot even as we speak. i have plans to strip its carcass bare, then convert it to individual pies by way of frozen puff pastry sheets.

i'm not quite sure what i'll cook today, but it had better be something small — the freezer door is beginning to bulge in a very alarming way.