The problems, however, were apparent from the beginning. For starters, this is how Gwyneth opens the instructions: “Wash and dry the chicken. Discard the back, and cut the chicken into 10 pieces.”

That’s it?! No loving, gentle guidance? Just an assumption that we’ve all done this before? Am I really in the minority of people who have never before butchered a chicken? Is this something the typical American attempts before the age of 25? Am I embarrassing myself on the internet by admitting that I, a VERY famous food blogger, have never butchered an animal, something Gwyneth Paltrow dismisses with one sentence?

Well, I refuse to be embarrassed. And thankfully this is the 21^st century, in which we are blessed with roughly 5 million how-to-cut-up-a-chicken YouTube videos. Picking the one with the least-obnoxious soundtrack, I grabbed my sharpest knife and got to work.

The worst part is the beginning, when you have to pop bones out of their sockets. This is a good way to discover you were absolutely correct to give up on trying to get into med school, and that you’d never make it as a serial killer. After maiming the chicken with your bare hands, the rest is simply a matter of trying to find the correct places to cut, and hacking away at the bones with knives that probably should have been sharpened a long time ago.

Bone popping: not for the faint of heart.

20 minutes later, I am very proud to report my chicken looked like this:

BUTCHERED YA, CHICKEN. (Note for the future: cell phone photos of raw meat are not the best things in the world.)

(I triumphantly texted that photo to about 15 people. No one responded.)

This was only one of two whole chickens I had purchased for this recipe. The other was simmering away on the stove in a pot of water full of various spices and vegetables, to make homemade Chicken Stock.  Once it had properly stewed, I set aside some of the stock for the current recipe and froze the rest for later. And rather than wasting a perfectly good chicken, I shredded the boiled carcass and made a chicken salad Gwyneth would be proud of: chicken, Vegenaise, stone-ground mustard, fresh parsley, celery, salt, pepper, and paprika. Chicken salad for DAYS, and not an inch of the chicken wasted. I felt like a proper Native American.

Back to the main recipe: I browned all my chicken pieces in a dutch oven on the stovetop, setting them aside once properly seared. Into the pot, which was filled with a mix of butter, chicken fat, and oil, I added sliced celery, carrots, leeks, the infamous duck bacon (easily procured at a local Brooklyn farmer’s market, proving the best way to take full advantage of Gwyneth’s cookbook is simply to move to the second most expensive city in the United States), a bay leaf, and some thyme. I let this aromatic mixture simmer for about 15 minutes, to soften the vegetables a bit, and then reintroduced the chicken to the pot. On top of it all, I poured some white wine, and brought the whole thing to a brief boil. I added my homemade chicken stock and some water and seasoned with salt and pepper. The final step was to cover the pot with parchment paper and seal with the lid, pop it in the oven, and then watch a movie and drink wine. These are my favorite kinds of recipes.

About two hours later I quickly mixed some flour, baking powder, half-and-half, and salt in a bowl and then scooped spoonfuls of this mix into the stew, giving me about 10 plump dumplings. I popped the pot back in the oven for a few minutes and then it was all finally done.

Although it took many steps, the recipe was pretty easy and foolproof. Of course, there are ways to save time: you don’t have to make your own chicken stock, and you can buy pre-cut chicken pieces instead of cutting apart your own whole chicken, but I found something rewarding about making all the components from scratch. Plus, it was much cheaper, especially once you consider I now have extra chicken stock in my freezer and a Tupperware container full of homemade chicken salad in the fridge.

A big ol’ bowl full of stuff.

As for the meal itself, it was pretty good! (This is why I will never become a successful food critic.) It’s not very revolutionary, considering it’s chicken and dumplings, but it’s homely and comforting and all those other words people always throw around with regard to dishes like this. Even though she didn’t really bring anything new to the table with this recipe, Gwyneth did get me to cut apart a whole chicken for the first time in my life, so I guess that counts for something? I’m sure I’ll be butchering all sorts of farm animals in no time.

So Sunday morning I strapped on my most waterproof boots, to better trudge through the horrifically blackened, disgusting piles of what was once Nemo’s snow, and headed out the door. The plan was to make Hot Niçoise Salad. “One cold wintery day in London, I was dreaming about salad niçoise,” Gwyneth introduces the recipe, because of course. “It didn’t seem right to be eating something so crispy and chilly in the dead of winter, so I devised this hot version.” The ingredients listed were pretty straightforward, it was a cold wintery day in New York City, and I have already attempted her cold niçoise salad, so I brimmed with confidence.

My neighborhood is terrible for fish (I’m shocked Bed-Stuy isn’t swarming with fishmongers!) but, in my year and a half(?!) in Brooklyn, if I’ve learned one thing it is this: Gwyneth Paltrow would go apeshit at Brooklyn Fare.

Brooklyn Fare, in downtown Brooklyn, is the most insane grocery store I’ve ever been to. I’ve been to the flagship Whole Foods in Austin (bragging), and, while that store is overwhelmingly stocked with every ingredient known to man, as well as about 30 different bars and restaurants, the Whole Foods has about 4 city blocks with which to work. Brooklyn Fare somehow packs all that variety into a space that seems smaller than my apartment.

What I’m trying to say is, Brooklyn Fare is the best discovery I have ever made, and will probably singlehandedly keep this blog chugging along to its miserable, long-delayed conclusion. (And, before you ask, no, there will not be a second season of the Danny/Gwyneth Project focused on her upcoming cookbook, which will apparently turn you from a fat, slovenly, anemic piece of shit into a superhuman BFF of Beyonce and Jay-Z. Although, I am slightly tempted. You see? Brain cancer.) This is how perfect Brooklyn Fare is: the second I walked in, I saw a sign proudly declaring, “WE NOW HAVE AVOCADO OIL!”

See what I mean? Brooklyn Fare is like shopping inside Gwyneth Paltrow’s brain.

So, I spent about 45 minutes plodding through the overstuffed, confusing, cramped, and completely fucking insane aisles until I had found all the ingredients I needed. They were all pretty standard items, but I knew from my last experience one item I’d have problems finding was niçoise olives. Of course, Brooklyn Fare had them, on a shelf with about 400 different types of olives. (They also had anchovies in a resealable jar, which is delightful, because I never use all the anchovies that come in a tin in just one recipe, and then I try to save the rest of the anchovies even though the tins don’t re-close, and then I end up coating my fridge with anchovy-scented olive oil. This is perhaps the most White People Problem-y complaint ever, but I’m very happy it is no longer my White People Problem.)

The last thing I had to purchase was the tuna. Two tuna steaks at Brooklyn Fare came to an absolutely astonishing $30. The tuna was more expensive than the lobster on hand! I didn’t major in Fish Economics in college so I don’t understand how this could happen, but spending nearly $100 on ingredients for one recipe is a classic Gwyneth move, so I just told myself it was her gentle way of saying, “Welcome back.”

The dish is actually very easy to prepare, and it’s one of those rare recipes that allots plenty of clean-up time while you’re cooking, leaving you with almost no dishes after you’ve eaten, which is always the best thing. I started by roasting two peppers, one of my favorite things I started doing thanks to Ms. Paltrow. My dog, clearly out of practice with this project, whimpered in the corner as the peppers popped and burnt in the flames. Rotating peppers over an open flame with a pair of tongs in my own kitchen is when I feel most like I’m on Top Chef. I just need about 30 more tattoos and a handlebar moustache to really complete the picture.

WOW, RIGHT?

While the blackened peppers cooled, I steamed a bunch of green beans and prepared the other vegetables (halved the cherry tomatoes, tore the basil, and briefly considered trying to pit the niçoise olives before realizing I wouldn’t even know how to begin and I really just didn’t feel like taking that extra step). I tore the roasted peppers and arranged all the vegetables on a roasting pan, rubbing the mix with oil. I then took one of my massive, overpriced tuna steaks, rubbed it with oil, salt, and pepper, and plopped it in the middle of the vegetables. I then layered a few anchovies amongst the vegetables, cracked an egg in a ramekin in the corner of the pan, and put the whole thing in the oven.

This makes me want to paint.

This wasn’t the Danny/Gwyneth Project I remembered. This was too easy. The ingredients were familiar, simple, easy to work with, and the dish was absolutely beautiful. Something clearly had to go wrong.

But nothing did. The hot niçoise salad was outrageously good – the entire dish was consumed in under 15 minutes – and, I can’t stress this enough, it was crazy beautiful to look at. It vastly outdid the cold niçoise salad I had made earlier – I remember thinking the anchovies in the cold salad mixed with the tuna to overpower the vegetables with a noxious fishy taste, but in the oven the anchovies were able to melt into the vegetables, blending it all together in a much more palatable way.

This was crazy good. Seriously. Probably in the top 5 Gwyneth recipes I’ve made so far. Besides the outrageous price of the tuna (which is definitely due to everything in New York being insanely expensive, so I can’t fault Gwyneth), it was fast, easy, super tasty, and – a rarity for a cookbook that considers “mix eggs and whatever else you want to make an omelet” a recipe deserving two pages – it was an original idea I wouldn’t have thought to try. Sometimes you just have to admit that Gwyneth knows best.

On an unrelated note, I’m driving a rickshaw across the entire country of India this April as part of a charity event. Seriously. It’s completely insane and I’m probably in way over my head and there’s a not-so-small chance we’re going to drive the rickshaw into a Bengal tiger’s mouth or something, but if you want to learn more about it and follow along (I’ll be blogging as much as possible from the road, and will probably end up writing about a million words about the experience when I get back) you can find our team page at Sitar-Wars.com. And if you are feeling extra supportive, we really, really need more donations to hit our fundraising goals, so please, while you’re there, read about our two charities and please consider donating!

WHAT CAN IT BE????

Anyway, let’s talk Indian-spiced tuna steaks. (And I just now realized how ironic this is, considering I recently decided to race a rickshaw across the length India for charity next April — BUT THAT’S A STORY FOR ANOTHER DAY.) I wanted to have some friends over for a nice dinner, and this is literally the only dish in Gwyneth’s cookbook where she tells you which of her other recipes to pair it with, so I threw a multi-course (read: two courses) Gwyneth meal! The menu:  Butternut Squash Soup and Indian-Spiced Tuna Steaks with Raita and Tamarind Chutney. Let’s do this.

The first step was to procure the ingredients, which is always exciting. My neighborhood is pretty terrible, as far as groceries go, and especially when seafood is concerned. But it was a nice day outside, so I took a walk to a fish market Yelp recommended, which was somewhere in Brooklyn that I have long since forgotten. Point is, during my walk, it started to snow. (And this is where I let you behind the blog-curtain and reveal that I made these dishes many months ago, long before the past three or four posts I wrote. Time bends to my will!)

I finally got to the fish market, which was absolutely insane. It was like Chinatown-lite, with stray cats scampering across my feet, old ladies screaming in various languages and pointing at fish heads, and poor, little me, baffled in the back, wondering if there was some sort of numbered system to placing orders? After observing the crowd for about 5 minutes, I realized it was a total free-for-all; you grab your fish parts from the ice-covered table, throw them in a plastic bag, toss the plastic bag at whomever looks most like an employee to weigh and price, and then you just throw some dollar bills in their general direction and get the hell out. It was utterly exhilarating, a completely different world in the middle of Brooklyn. I found some pleasing-looking tuna steaks, spent a few minutes admiring the live creatures scrabbling about in their glass cases, and headed back home.

The first step for the tuna steaks was to combine cumin and fennel seeds with salt and pepper and crush it using “a mortar and pestle, coffee grinder, or Jamie Oliver’s ingenious Flavour Shaker,” which OBVIOUSLY all of us have. In actuality, I have none of the above, so I just crush them in a plastic bowl using the handle of a knife. Oh, what I wouldn’t give for one of Jamie Oliver’s ingenious Flavour Shakers! I then added some freshly minced ginger and cilantro and crushed those with the spices until a rough paste formed, which I then mixed with a bit of olive oil. What resulted was kind of like a pesto, and it smelled like some sort of Indian paradise. I combined the spice mixture with the tuna steaks in a Ziploc bag and let them sit in the refrigerator for a few hours.

Spice mixture, with no help from Jamie Oliver.

Marinatin’.

Meanwhile, I heated some olive oil and butter in a soup pot, and sauteed a couple yellow onions and minced garlic, which I then spiced with salt, pepper, and garam masala. I then threw in a diced butternut squash, which I let soften for a few minutes. I then covered it in vegetable stock and simmered until the squash was soft. Ultimately, I blended the soup using my VERY wonderful hand-blender I got last Christmas, which was pretty damn fun. And honestly, the soup smelled awesome. I’ll give Gwyneth this: she can throw together a pretty decent soup. THERE, I SAID IT.

Goin’ butterNUTS.

This is really stupidly fun.

The next step for the tuna was to make the raita. This was very easy: just mix a diced English cucumber, minced red onion, fresh mint, black pepper, and plain yogurt, and you’ve got a fresh raita! Who knew it was so easy to be Indian?!

I want to eat this raita now! (Ugggghhhh sorry for that.)

The last recipe was the tamarind chutney, which was just a disaster. I mixed vegetable oil with cumin and fennel seeds, and heated for a few seconds. I then poured in the following spices: cayenne pepper, ground ginger, and garam masala. She also recommended asafetida, but said it’s optional, and since I don’t really know what the hell that is, I skipped it. I then poured in one cup of water and a tablespoon of tamarind paste (which, let me tell you, is practically IMPOSSIBLE to find, no matter how many south-Asian markets you traipse through during a snowstorm), and brown sugar. This simmered for about 25 minutes, and then I stirred in some rice wine vinegar, and simmered the mixture for another 15 minutes, until it thickened a bit. I tasted the chutney and it was TERRIBLE. I don’t know what happened, but it was very, very vinegary and just sour and awful. Holy god, so terrible. Not like chutney at all. I’m sure it was more my fault than Gwyneth’s, but instead of splitting hairs, I threw the mixture in the garbage and ran out to buy a jar of pre-made tamarind chutney. SO SUE ME. My guests never knew; it was a total Mrs. Doubtfire move.

When everyone showed up, I heated up a grill pan and seared the tuna steaks a couple minutes on either side, so they were almost cooked through. Simple! I then served the tuna steaks with the raita and the guilty, evil, not-homemade chutney, along with a bowl of the butternut squash soup and OH MY GOD I JUST REMEMBERED THERE WAS A FIFTH RECIPE: Roasted Cauliflower! What a wonderful surprise! The reason I forgot is because this is one of Gwyneth’s fake recipes that aren’t really anything even close to a real recipe. Because, you see, she used a whole page to tell me to roast some cauliflower in the oven with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and serve it as a side. WOW. Ingenious. So, yes, we had that, too.

Roasted cauliflower is about as exciting as it looks.

Anyway, the food was actually really, really good. Not only did Gwyneth surprise me by planning a whole menu, but it actually all went very well together! The spice mixture on the tuna was perfect, and the coolness of the raita and the spiciness of the chutney perfectly balanced each other. Plus, the butternut squash soup was really hearty and velvety and kind of a meal unto itself. The cauliflower was whatever.

A really terrible, rushed photo of some grilled tuna steaks. I WAS HUNGRY, OKAY?

The raita and the evil, secret chutney.

All in all, a wonderfully refreshing reminder that, as ridiculous as she can be with her occasional absent-minded dropping of the “N-word” on Twitter, sometimes Gwyneth can really knock it out of the park.

I invited somewhere between four and fifteen friends to my place for Easter morning for a totally Gwyneth brunch, so I knew there could be no fucking this up. THE EYES OF THE WORLD WERE UPON ME. The brunch was scheduled at 1 (we tend to be a lazy group), but I had to get started at 8 am. What else would you expect from Gwyneth? As a result, I excused myself relatively early on Saturday night and set my alarm. Yes, this brunch was serious business.

After hitting snooze for roughly an hour on Easter morning, I roused myself and headed to our lovely local C-Town to get everything I needed. I planned to accomplish a whopping four recipes: Slow-Roasted Tomato, Basil & Smoked Mozzarella Frittata (kind of a cumbersome name, no?), Leek & Gruyere Frittata, Blythe’s Blueberry Muffins, and Blythe’s Savory Bread Pudding. Thankfully, everything I needed was available right on the corner. A rare one-store grocery trip for the Danny/Gwyneth Project! When it was most needed, too. Truly an Easter miracle. He has risen!

The first step was to slow-roast the tomatoes, which I’ve done before. The process takes at least three hours, which is why I was up so disgustingly early to prepare for a 1 pm brunch. In the meantime, I got to work on the bread pudding. First, I gutted a loaf of French bread and drizzled some olive oil over the chunks of bread. I stuck it all in the oven for a few minutes to crisp up the bread, and then let it cool. I then whisked four eggs and heavy cream to make a custard, mixing in some fresh thyme leaves and black pepper, which is kind of disgusting? Thyme in custard? Blythe Danner, what kind of madness is this?

Once the bread had cooled, I folded it into the bizarre custard and let it all sit in the fridge until it was time to bake. Easy! Albeit slightly weird and off-putting.

I don’t know what to make of this.

Next up: muffins! These were incredibly straightforward (although, fear not, Gwyneth has her own twist on these muffins, which use roughly 15 special kinds of flour; look forward to that when I get around to it in probably two years). I melted a stick of butter and whisked it with some eggs and milk (almond milk, naturally). In a second bowl I mixed flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt, and then stirred the dry ingredients into the wet ones, ultimately folding in a whole shitload of blueberries. Then it was just a matter of separating the batter into muffin tins and baking for roughly 25 minutes. GREAT. WONDERFUL. WE DID IT, GUYS!

Muffinstagram.

As my friends neared (and several texted to drop out; such is the life of a person who lives in Brooklyn — if you invite eight people to an event at your apartment, roughly four will show up, even if it’s a FREE BRUNCH), I removed the bread pudding mix from the fridge, poured it into a pie pan, sprinkled cheddar cheese over the top, and stuck it in the oven for 20 minutes.

Savory bread pudding: proof Blythe Danner is a LUNATIC.

All that was left was to cook the frittatas. I put two frying pans on the stove. In one, I sauteed sliced shallots; in the other, sliced leeks. To each pan I poured a mixture of 6 eggs and almond milk. In the pan on the left (with the shallots), I dropped in my slow-roasted tomatoes, a lot of diced mozzarella, and torn fresh basil. It looked quite beautiful. In the pan on the right (with the leeks), I simply sprinkled gruyere cheese. It looked quite boring.

Ooooooooh.

Eh.

This was not my first attempt at a Gwyneth frittata, so I knew the routine: Wait roughly five minutes until the edges of the eggs have set, then put the skillet in the oven for EXACTLY 8 minutes, until set throughout. Aaaaaaaand that’s a frittata. Easy. Foolproof.

While I finished everything, my friends prepared a fruit salad and, obviously, a large amount of mimosas (I also made some hashbrowns, but those were store-bought and nothing special so let’s not even MENTION them again).

The verdict? The muffins were by far the favorites. They’re essentially butter, sugar, and blueberries, so obviously they would be awesome. Second-favorite then seemed to be the slow-roasted tomato frittata, which was surprisingly delicious, and definitely the best frittata in the book. The other frittata was pretty boring, and it probably wasn’t fair to compare it to the vastly superior tomato frittata. Sorry, other frittata. Better luck next time? (Hot sauce helped it taste better, as it tends to do.) And then there was the bread pudding, which was… odd. Bread pudding is one of my favorite desserts, so I was curious to see what a savory bread pudding would be like. I guess it was okay? It kind of just tasted like cheesy bread. Which is fine, but not really a very exciting breakfast item. A RARE MISS, BLYTHE DANNER.

Anyway, we all got disgustingly full, vaguely day-drunk, and found ourselves unable to move or think for a good half hour after splitting what was originally intended to be a meal for nine people between five of us. And that’s the mark of a successful Easter brunch. WELCOME BACK JESUS, WE MISSED YOU!!!

Really, this recipe is a perfect example of the idiocy of this cookbook. What is this nonsense? Why is it in a cookbook? Do people really not know how to make BLTs and they need Gwyneth Paltrow to tell them? The recipe for a BLT is almost literally the entire name of the sandwich. Tell any halfwit “please make me a turkey BLT” and you will get a rough approximation of this recipe. Here’s what I mean:

Fry some turkey bacon. Take some bread, slather both slices with Vegenaise. Cover one slice of bread with arugula. Drizzle a little olive oil on the arugula, as well as some salt and freshly ground black pepper. (The Vegenaise, arugula, and olive oil are the VERY slight changes Gwyneth has made to the classic BLT to try to trick you into thinking this is a real recipe she worked hard on. Don’t fall for it; this is all a joke.) On top of that, layer a couple slices of fresh tomato. Drain the bacon, put it on the tomatoes, close the sandwich with the other slice of bread.

This is what lettuce, mayo, and tomato look like on top of bread.

As you can see, our toaster is wonderful at ignoring 98% of the bread, but making sure one corner is perfectly charred black.

There. You made a BLT. Congratulations! You must feel so proud! I remember when I made BLTs for lunch back in elementary school, all by myself! Without Gwyneth Paltrow’s help! Yes, this is healthier than a classic BLT, what with the Vegenaise and the turkey bacon, but that doesn’t mean it deserves its own page in a highly publicized cookbook. What is this? Why did any of us waste our time with this?

Thankfully, the next recipes are just that: actual recipes. In this book?! I AM GENUINELY SURPRISED.

(I should also point out the elephant in the room: We’ve passed the 9-month deadline I set for myself. WHOOPS. Looks like I failed. If that bothers you, you’re free to find another blog where they’re cooking all of Gwyneth Paltrow’s recipes for no reason. BEST OF LUCK TO YOU. Missed deadline aside, I won’t stop cooking, because I will not be satisfied until I’ve completed all these recipes or we’re all dead. Whichever comes first, although I think the latter might actually be preferable. My move to New York has obviously derailed things, but I’ll keep trucking along, for the two of you who are still reading and aren’t my parents. Anyway, let’s DO THIS.)

This lemon spaghetti is so stupidly easy. Boil water. Cook pasta. (I didn’t have any spaghetti, but I have somehow acquired many, many boxes of other kinds of pasta, so I just used one of those boxes instead. I think I used fusilli? I don’t know. Something goofy-looking. To trick myself into thinking I was enjoying this.) Meanwhile, zest a lemon, slice it in half, and squeeze the lemon juice into the same bowl as the lemon zest. Then grate a shitload of Parmesan cheese. Add some salt, pepper, and olive oil, until you have a “wet paste,” which is a disgusting way to talk about something you’re going to eat.

This is what it looks like when you put lemon juice and basil in pasta.

Throw in a couple tablespoons of pasta water, and add the cooked noodles to your bowl. Mix the stuff until each noodle is coated with the cheesy, lemony mixture, and roughly tear in some fresh basil leaves. Eat with some sort of a salad and wine, and go to bed starving and half-drunk off of only one glass of wine. If this is what it takes to look like Gwyneth Paltrow, it sounds like an absolute fucking nightmare.

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!

At the Grammys, Gwyneth Paltrow was so starving she thought Adele was a leg of lamb in a dress.

It’s laughable how easy it was. I should have known. It shouldn’t have surprised me that duck bacon in Brooklyn is literally sold on the sidewalk. But, there it was, in the heart of the paltriest, most pitiable farmer’s market I’ve ever seen. Six tents, crammed on the length of one sidewalk, offering very little in produce (no duh, it’s January in New York, but STILL. Very depressing). I walked up and down the block twice, looking for the duck salesman the internet had said might be there, before I finally saw why I hadn’t seen him the first two times: he was just some dude, youngish with a hipster beard, sitting atop a cooler, behind a hand-painted sign that simply said, “DUCKS.”

“I need some duck bacon?” I ventured. “You’ve come to the right place,” he replied. It was a very mundane conversation, considering the months and effort that had gone into my first forays in duck-bacon-purchasing. How could it be this easy? “How much do you need?” he asked. “How much do you got?” I shot back, feeling like a rebel. And, just like that, three plastic-wrapped packs of duck bacon were dropped on a table in front of me. I handed him some cash, he handed me the bacon, and I strolled off. Easy as that. I giggled nervously to myself, clutching the plastic bag to my chest and anxiously eyeing a trendy hipster couple pushing their kid in a stroller, lest they think they could make a grab and run.

Flushed with confidence, I ventured down the block to a butcher shop, one of those old-timey ones with sawdust on the floor and meat hanging from the windows. I asked the girl behind the counter if they had any duck, and she strolled into the back of the building, where she spent the next ten minutes. I had never purchased a whole bird before — not even so much as a whole chicken — so I was extremely nervous. Why was it taking so long? Was she chasing it around the backyard and chopping its head off? Would I have to chop its head off?! (Most of my knowledge of how whole duck is served comes from the Chinese dinner scene in A Christmas Story.)

Finally, she returned with what looked just like a thinner, longer chicken (thankfully headless) in a bag. Pleased, I paid for it and moved on to the next store: an extremely crunchy, organic market down the street. By this point, I was lugging around over $40 in duck, so I felt both an extreme sense of self-satisfaction, and also sore arms. Sure, I could have returned home, dropped off the duck, and gotten the same ingredients at my shitty corner C-Town grocery store for half the price, but A) you’re always told to “respect the ingredient” and if I was going to be serving $40 worth of duck, I was going to get the best, most organic ingredients, sore arms and long lines be damned, and B) I really, really, really hate everyone and everything about C-Town. It’s unspeakably horrendous, and I hope they go out of business tomorrow, if not sooner.

Dead duck. Only slightly terrifying.

But I managed to lug home all my ingredients on the subway, which was no small feat considering the hefty duck in my arms. Before moving to New York, I was nervous about looking like a fool as I carted exotic meats and seafood on the subway for this project. Now, after a few months here, I know everyone is too busy pretending not to notice the homeless guy screaming at the advertisement to even care about the kid carrying some chicken or whatever. I’m still not quite used to the idea that the more crowded a city is, the more invisible you become.

I knew this recipe would take at least five hours, so I got to work immediately upon returning home. For dinner I would be serving Gwyneth’s famous Duck Ragu, as well as a Classic Chopped Salad, which I chose because A) it’s easy and B) it has duck bacon in it, and I wanted a whole feast of duck to celebrate my triumph, damnit!

Sorry to get all Gwyneth on you, but this really is the best stuff ever.

The ragu, you should know, begins with a story about the time Gwyneth was given a cooking lesson from Jamie Oliver for her birthday. Of course. Even Jamie Oliver is nothing but a paid servant to Gwyneth Paltrow. She regales us with a description of the wonderful duck ragu he prepared with her, and then tells us that this recipe is her version of it. NOOOOOO. We want Jamie’s version! No one ever gives ME a cooking lesson from Jamie Oliver.

Step one is to roast a whole duck. So I preheated the oven, and nervously removed the dead bird from its bag. I opened the “cavity” and removed the little bag of innards and immediately discarded them because, come on, guys, that’s disgusting. I then rubbed the outside of the bird with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and then rubbed down the INSIDE, which was horrifying, just stroking the inner ribs of a dead animal. Oh god, it was the worst and I don’t want to talk about it anymore.

I inserted the dead thing in the oven, where it would sit for two hours as I rotated it every half-hour. It pretty much immediately started to smell like the greatest thing ever. Also smelling like the greatest thing ever (gooooood segue): the diced duck bacon I was sauteeing in a pot on the stove. Once it had crisped up, I dumped in a whole pile of diced carrots, celery, garlic, and onions, and sprinkled some spices all over the mess but I don’t remember what spices those were so SORRY. It smelled ridiculous, though, and only kept getting better. Those simmered for about 20 minutes, before everything was nice and tender, and then I dumped in two big cans of whole peeled tomatoes, a little bit of water, and some Italian red wine. Gwyneth DEMANDS Italian wine, and my parents had given me a bottle of Italian red for Christmas, so I uncorked that baby and poured a little into the mix. And oh my god did it smell perfect after that point.

Pretty, pretty, pretty good.

Sadly, it wasn’t even 4 pm, and we had a long way to go before dinner. But I also had this freshly opened bottle of wine on the counter, so why not taste a little of it? Next thing I know, I’ve watched nearly two hours of the first season of the Real World while the sauce was simmering on the stove, I had finished practically an entire bottle of wine by myself, and found myself afternoon-drunk, with a whole roast duck that still needed carving. I’d imagine this is exactly how it goes for Gwyneth at home when she makes this recipe.

Uhhhhh, now what?

I stared at the dead, juicy bird, and turned it over three times, trying to figure out where to start. I grabbed what I thought was our sharpest knife, flipped the duck over once more, and ran the knife along the center. The knife scraped horribly against bone, and nothing happened. So I grabbed a fork in my left hand and rethought my strategy, choosing instead to just shred the thing to pieces wherever I could find soft meat (Gwyneth does tell me to shred it, anyway). This took nearly half an hour of painstaking labor, but by the end I felt reasonably confident that all the usable meat had been extracted from the bird and added to the simmering pot of sauce on the stove. Well, probably half the usable meat; the other half went directly into my mouth without ever touching the ragu. Feeling drunk and confident, I also strained the rendered fat from the bottom of the pan into a Tupperware container and stored it in the freezer to use in a later recipe, JUST LIKE THE NATIVE AMERICANS PROBABLY DID. I’m basically a James Beard award-winning chef at this point.

Blecccccch.

Once the duck has been added to the ragu, you simply turn the heat extra low and let it simmer for anywhere from one to four hours. But I still had to make the salad, so I chopped two heads of Boston lettuce and threw it in a bowl, followed by a diced avocado, a diced tomato, crumbled Gorgonzola cheese, and, of course, a heaping pile of fried duck bacon. The dressing (a separate recipe! Yes!) was pretty standard stuff: Dijon, maple syrup, red wine vinegar, canola oil, olive oil, salt and pepper.

This is what a picture of a salad looks like.

My wonderful guests arrived, bearing bottles of wine, having no idea that I was already secretly drunk (and I don’t think they did know until right now, so let’s all pat ourselves on the back for keeping that a secret). I boiled a pot of water and dumped in a huge bag of fancy, dried pappardelle, and then realized that I forgot to make the gremolata topping Gwyneth insists takes the duck ragu to “another level.” Thankfully, it’s pretty easy. Not thankfully, I was drunk, and fucked it up.

You’re supposed to just mix bread crumbs, salt, fresh parsley, and two lemons’ zest together. But I mixed it with two lemons’ JUICE. As I mixed the sludgy, mushy paste created from lemon juice and bread crumbs with my hands, I thought, “This is disgusting. She wants me to pour this crap on my beautiful ragu?” I’m just happy I double-checked the recipe, because that could have been a disaster. I tossed out the lemony paste, zested the lemons, and made the real gremolata topping.

And then it was dinner time! The ragu was pretty delicious, if I may say so, although I was slightly disappointed that it wasn’t more delicious. I did cook for several hours, I spent a lot of money on various forms of duck, and the recipe began with her name-dropping a real, successful chef. It should have been mind-blowing. Instead, it was good. Sorry, everyone.

Duck ragu, as Jamie Oliver Gwyneth Paltrow intends.

The salad, on the other hand, was goddamned delicious. I mean, the dressing is a classic, and one of my favorite combinations (Dijon, sugar, red wine vinegar, and olive oil), and then a salad with buttery Boston lettuce, avocado, Gorgonzola, and then DUCK BACON to top it off? That’s just gold right there.

I do want to say that even though the duck ragu was underwhelming (but still good!) it was definitely one of the more enjoyable cooking experiences I’ve had on this project. I mean, I butchered a duck for the first time (I’m using “butcher” here less in the sense of what actual, professional butchers do, and more in the sense of what Jack the Ripper did), and I spent an enjoyable lazy Sunday afternoon cooking and drinking and spending time with friends over a good meal.

We finished the night by watching Gus Van Sant’s new movie Restless, which, while horrible, comes with a funny story I’ll quickly relate because why not: When we first moved to Portland, the two friends I moved with, Ali and Nora, responded to a Craigslist ad requesting extras for a film shoot. They were asked to come in their Halloween costumes, and when they arrived they learned they would be extras in the new Gus Van Sant movie. They spent the day hilariously pretending they were drunk, with Nora in the background in a stupid cat mask and Ali wearing a witch’s hat standing directly behind the leads, Mia Wasikowska and Henry Hopper (Dennis Hopper’s son, who apparently wants to act now). The film languished in post-production forever, the title changed multiple times, and we more or less stopped following its ever-changing release date over the past couple years. And then Nora and I walked into a movie store in Chelsea and saw the DVD sitting upon the counter.

So we watched the movie, nervously anticipating the Halloween scene. Finally, Mia darted out of a hospital in one scene, shouting to her sister, “I’ll be home late; it’s Halloween!” and we jumped out of our seats with excitement. The two leads then approached a party, and lo and behold, for practically a minute of solid screentime directly behind the stars of the movie, there was our good friend Ali:

Hi, Ali!

It was perfect. We rewound multiple times, laughed hysterically, and then fast-forwarded to find out what happened at the end of the film, because it was just a horrible, terrible movie. Don’t rent it. Restless: Terrible. Duck bacon: Fantastic. The end.

One recent weekend, I woke up and decided that pancakes were NECESSARY. Thankfully, Gwyneth provides me with two pancake recipes! One of them, however, requires you to make the batter the night before (naturally), so instead I went with the very literally named Morning Pancakes. Unfortunately, my camera battery wasn’t charged, so I don’t have any pictures. You know what pancakes look like, though, right? That’s what these looked like. I don’t think any of us are missing out on anything here.

To make the batter, I mixed an egg (organic), almond milk, vegetable oil, and some flour. Gwyneth specifies “any kind of flour will work,” but you can just FEEL the Jewish (or semi-Jewish, or whatever she is) guilt washing over you if you dare to use anything but spelt flour. I risk the wrath of Gwyneth and use all-purpose flour. I’m a pancake rebel. Oh, you also throw some baking powder in there. She also includes an optional seed mix, which is a whole other recipe in itself, but I wasn’t about to go wandering about Brooklyn in my pajamas on a freezing cold Sunday in search of goddamned goji berries for some stupid pancakes. So I left them out. We’ll make the seed mix some other day, and I’m sure it’ll be just wonderful.

Oh, and there’s one other thing in the mix: yogurt. WTFFFFFF???? Is she INSANE? She clarifies in the introduction that the yogurt gives the pancakes a buttermilk flavor, since buttermilk can be hard to find (especially in London), which I just find hilarious. For someone who lives her life bathing in a never-ending supply of DUCK BACON, I doubt buttermilk is that hard to procure. But whatever, I stirred some yogurt into my pancakes, feeling like an escaped mental patient.

Then you fry them up like pancakes. Exciting! She tells you to fry them in a little bit of vegetable oil, which seems very unlike Gwyneth. Whither the safflower oil? I take a page out of Paula Deen’s book (diabetes be damned!) and fry them in butter instead, because DUH. It quickly becomes apparent that these pancakes are some soggy little bastards. I mean, they are just DRIPPING with liquid. With later batches, I removed most of the butter from the frying pan, which helped a bit. But, really, batter filled with yogurt does not seem to make for sturdy pancakes. Lesson learned!

That said, they were actually pretty good. The yogurt taste was slightly disconcerting, and lacking a lot of the richness of buttermilk, but they were definitely more interesting and better-tasting than pancakes you make from a box. SO. Not too shabby, I guess.

Moving right along, I also recently cooked Homemade Veggie Burgers. And I have pictures for this one! They were supposed to only take 25 minutes, but, in true Gwyneth fashion, one of the ingredients is “cooked brown rice,” just casually slipped in there, which adds another 30-45 minutes. So dinner was at practically 10:30. Fun! Working mothers would LOVE that!

Anyway, I cooked the stupid rice. Once it was almost done, I then sauteed some finely diced onions and garlic with a bit of cumin. After letting the onions sweat for a while, I added the rice, a can of drained and rinsed black beans (organic, of course, and also transported cross-country from Portland; I always insist my canned beans be driven 3,000 miles before I eat them), and some salt and pepper. I stirred it all together and then proceeded to mash it all with a potato masher. Excepppppt we don’t have a potato masher. But shitty improvisation is a hallmark of the Danny/Gwyneth Project, so I grabbed a slotted spoon and went to town on the mixture. And it actually worked quite well, if I may say so.

Pre-mush.

Mid-mush.

I let the mashed mixture cool for a while, and then shaped it into four patties. It quickly became apparent that these were not going to stay together very well, but Gwyneth suggests you put the patties in the fridge for a few hours, so I did that for as long as I could stand the hunger (about half an hour). I then removed the patties from the fridge and checked on their consistency: slightly drier than before, and not any more cohesive. Ah, well, whatever. I dusted the patties with flour and placed them in a skillet with olive oil, struggling painfully to prevent the patties from crumbling into some sort of a mashed rice and beans saute.

This is what a Gwyneth veggie patty looks like, before it falls to pieces.

And flipping these burgers? Ohhhh boy. Not fun. You need to guide the patty back onto the skillet with your free hand and gently lower it, even though the hot oils may be burning the skin from your fingers. Just ignore the pain! This pain is much less than the hell you’ll pay if Apple has to eat a store-bought veggie burger!

Three hours later, I managed to flip the patties with minimal crumbling. I then sliced some cheddar and placed it on top of the patties, mostly to ensure these were veggie burgers and not vegan burgers, out of spite. Once the patties had browned slightly, I scooped them onto whole wheat buns (of course), at which point they all basically collapsed and turned into the consistency of sloppy Joes. WHATEVER. I got it on the buns, that’s all that matters. (That’s what she said.)

When it’s 11 pm and you’ve been making veggie burgers for 3 hours, you just kind of pile stuff on top of it.

Gwyneth gracefully allows us to top with our favorite toppings, so I simply went with lettuce, tomato, and the non-brown parts of an avocado from our shitty, shitty corner store. (I can’t overemphasize how truly awful the store is; a friend recently asked, “Would you rather spend a month in your grocery store, or in a public restroom?” I chose the restroom.) Also some ketchup and mustard, OBVIOUSLY. And, you know what, these weren’t that bad! They were hard as hell to eat, but not any more difficult than a typical juicy, meaty burger. The patties probably need more flavoring than some cumin and garlic, however. And there definitely has to be a way to make the patties more patty-like. But, all things aside, not too shabby.

AND WE’RE BACK.

We start by sauteeing garlic in olive oil. A pretty standard beginning to making pasta sauce; nothing to complain about here. This also happens to be one of the best smells on the planet. After a few minutes of gentle sauteeing, I pour in a huge can of whole, peeled tomatoes, sprinkle in some salt and pepper, and bring the whole mixture to a boil. I then turn the temperature down to medium-low, and let simmer for an hour.

AND WE’RE BASICALLY DONE HERE, PEOPLE.

The final steps are to cook spaghetti noodles, adding arugula to the boiling water about a minute before the pasta has finished cooking. Then you mix it all together, grate some Parmesan cheese over, and this is what you have:

Are you kidding me with this? I paid 30 dollars for this cookbook, and this recipe takes up a whole page? Is the addition of arugula to the pasta supposed to be groundbreaking? Is that really supposed to make up for what is literally the most basic version of pasta sauce you could ever conceive? This is, honestly, insane. We’re however-many months into this project, and finally – finally! – I am reaching my breaking point with the cookbook in general. I suppose that’s what happens when you purposely try to make all the tasty-looking recipes first, as you’re then left with all of the shitty ones last (although we still have some duck ahead, which I’m actually looking forward to, because it’s finally winter, and who doesn’t love duck in the winter?). But, still. Come on. Did anyone even TRY with this cookbook? Is there some sort of law that says every cookbook must have 150 recipes in it? If so, fine, I get it, she’s padding her numbers, and that’s acceptable. But if there isn’t a mandatory-recipe law (and, I don’t know about you, but that seems like something I just made up two seconds ago), this recipe has no business being in a cookbook in 2011. An award-winning cookbook, no less! Shameful, shameful business, this.

Happy Hanukkah, Gwyneth, you terrible con artist.

Way back in November, faithful readers may remember I was still living on my friends’ couch, still hopelessly searching for an apartment, aided by nothing but my own determination, and a box full of cunt balls. Nora and Mandy, my two gracious hosts, were finally throwing a housewarming party a mere three months since moving in, and I wanted to contribute. A seasonal crumble seemed perfect, even though I was kicking myself for not making this during the summer, when I could have used peaches and blackberries. Instead I would be stuck with apple, which is fine, but not nearly as exciting. Alas, the plight of a lazy blogger.

But stuck with apple I was, so after a trip to Trader Joe’s (and oh my god am I happy not to live near a Trader Joe’s in Brooklyn because those places in the city are insane), we returned to the apartment to set up for the party. Nora made her famous dip and tried to mix an alcoholic cider while the rest of us criticized her hesitation at adding too much alcohol, Mandy made her famous red velvet cake balls, and I got to work on the crumble.

Much like the rest of this cookbook, the actual recipe was far too easy. Dice up your fruit, put it in a baking dish. I sliced up my apples and tossed them in, and then added my secret ingredient (blackberries, which I had purchased on a whim, even though they were out of season, because I wanted some more flavor in my crumble, SORRY FOR BREAKING THE RULES). On top of that I dumped some flour. I don’t remember how much; this happened a month ago.

To make the crumble topping, I mixed some softened butter, whole rolled oats, and brown sugar in a bowl with my hands, which is turning into one of my favorite things Gwyneth makes me do. I don’t know what it says about my fetishes, but I LOVE kneading softened butter with my fingers. I’m sure there’s a whole section on the NYC Craigslist where I could make money off of doing only that, but we’ll save that for when I get a little bit more desperate for money.

Anyway, I put the crumble on top of the fruit and baked it for however long Gwyneth told me to bake it for. And then I took it out and forced people to eat it with the ice cream, and everyone at the party commented on how wonderful the store-bought ice cream was. So that should tell you all you need to know about the crumble.