Step 1: February, 2009, win old maple handled S. Richard (Southbridge, MASS) cleaver at silent auction to benefit Lucky Dog Farm, at Applewood. Put cleaver in drawer, lose track of it.
Step 2: June, 2009, Purchase a beautiful knife made by Roselli, from the fine folks at einmaleins in Oly, WA. This knife puts all other knives out of my mind. It becomes my knife. The S. Richard cleaver recedes further into the drawer.
Step 3: November, 2009, another trip to einmaleins, and this time I come away with Michael Ruhlman's Ratio, which gets me to baking bread every week.
Step 4: January, 2010, I buy a very nice pair of poultry shears, all stainless steel, no plastic, so I can more easily cut the backs from chickens and pursue my current favorite dish of a spice rubbed, flattened chicken. I adopt the habit of cooking the livers from these split birds as a cook's treat. Lori need not know.
Step 5: May 2010, I have been experiencing bread ennui, and am reinvigorated by Thorne's Outlaw Cook. But that doesn't last...
Step 6: July, 2010, damn it's too hot to bake every week and there's just too much good bread in the neighborhood. I become a bread slacker. I even stop making pizza.
Step 7: October, 2010, I decide to use the wine yeast and the must from this year's Primavera production to make, yes, purple pizza. Flour is back in my life.
Step 8: December, 2010, sculptor Frank Saliani describes to me how he makes a no-knead bread. Hmmm. I do the same. And again. And again...
Step 9: December 2010, I watch a video of Melissa Clark making a prime rib. Her knife, her knife... the lady uses a cleaver! I rummage through our kitchen drawers. There it is! Feels good in my hand...
Step 10: December, 2010, Lori buys so much nutmeat for baking Christmas cookies that it affects the futures market. There are bound to be leftovers. There are.
Step 11: December, 2010, whenever we're at home on Christmas day we have a Polish meal of pirogi and kielbasa. Usually we buy rye bread to go with it. This year we forget to buy the rye bread, so I decide to make it. I can only find 5 pound bags of rye flour on Christmas eve. There is rye bread in our future.
Step 12: January, 2011, I make New Years Day rye bread.
Step 13: It all comes together. I buy a chicken for dinner and prep it just before making lunch. There's the liver, in the little glass cup, waiting for me. While Lori reheats eggplant leftovers for herself, I fry up the liver. I butter two slices of our rye bread. With my mighty cleaver I chop up walnuts. Then mighty might cleaver minces the liver, smooshes it together with the nuts, and spreads it on the buttered rye. Then back into the frying pan and pressed down a bit on each side to warm and toast everything just a touch.
And let me tell you, Sweet Baby New Year, it was totally worth the wait. Delicious.
Happy happy, everybody.
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