Magpie Eats

Chocolate Sorbet

2008-07-21T17:19:00.000-07:00

Does chocolate sorbet sound good to you?

I thought "eh". It sounded thin, watery, just not worth trying. But then Deb at Smitten Kitchen wrote a rapturous post about it and I've never known her to lead a reader astray in the desert department so I gave it a try. Yum.

It's another David Lebovitz recipe from The Perfect Scoop. It's simple as can be: sugar,water, cocoa, and chocolate. No dairy. Which means that all my vegan, allergic, and kosher keeping friends should be very happy to have this recipe. It does pack a serious chocolate punch that's as good as the chocolate you choose. I'm not very fancy--Trader Joe's bittersweet Pound Plus bars do the trick for me at a fraction of what you'd pay for the fancy stuff. But I'm sure the fancy stuff would work, too.

The reprinted is recipe is here and I strongly suggest you get started making this today. It's that good.

Summer Fruit Happy

2008-07-09T00:04:00.000-07:00

Summer is here and I am in sticky, juicy, fruity heaven. Last weekend I bought some of the first peaches and apricots, 3 pounds of cherries and a whole flat of late strawberries. It's hard to declare a winner. The peaches and apricots weren't up to their full flavor yet but having to choose between the berries and the cherries would be tough.

I've seen lots of tasty looking recipes using fresh cherries but honestly all that pitting doesn't hold any appeal when I could just gobble them down as is and gleefully spit the pits out. And that's just what I've been doing, for days on end. I don't know how many more times I can hit the farmers market and stock up so I will gobble while I can.

In my cherry stupor I almost missed the strawberries altogether. I'd gotten a box here and there but when I went looking for full flats to freeze at my local farmers market there were none to be had. I headed north to another market and I was in luck. I found someone selling flats of deep crimson colored Tillamook strawberries which are highly fragrant and extremely tasty. Half of them immediately went into the freezer for midwinter smoothies. We ate many of the remaining berries as is, some went into a cobbler along with rhubarb from our garden, and I made the last two boxes into a truly special frozen treat.I've written before about David Lebovitz' fantastic book The Perfect Scoop. This man knows his frozen desserts like nobody's business. I had all the ingredients for his strawberry frozen yogurt on hand and I made up a double batch yesterday. It is so tasty. I think these were just about the most flavorful berries ever, and mixed with creamy whole milk yogurt and a dash of Cointreau--there's nothing better on a warm night. This does require the use of an ice cream maker but surely you have one by now, right? If not, the Donvier machine is simple and effective. I've been using mine for 13 years without a hitch.
You'll find the recipe here. Let me know how it goes. Also--is anyone having trouble accessing the recipes? Is the hosting site bombarding you with annoying ads? Things seem to be changing there and I'm not so sure that's where I want to keep my recipes. Any suggestions?

Barley Salad

2008-06-29T23:48:00.000-07:00

My goodness it's been hot here the last few days. Really hot, the kind of heat that I take personally. There is absolutely no excuse whatsoever for this as far as I'm concerned and it makes me lethargic and grumpy. And strangely hungry. Because the fact is, there are only so many cool drinks and smoothies I can consume before I realize that I really haven't eaten much of anything at all.

I'm always on the lookout for a good, substantial salad that can be made ahead and kept cool in the refrigerator. No one in my family will touch potato salads and pasta salads seem to get old fast. But leafing through my new copy of How to Cook Everything Vegetarian I came across a salad that looked substantial and and cooling with its dressing of lemon juice and fresh dill tossed with cooked barley, scallions, and chunks of cucumber.

We ate this the other night on the patio along with freshly baked challah, homemade mozzarella, marinated carrots, lemony-garlic chickpeas, and fresh fruit. The barley salad was crunchy and toothsome and the yogurt and cucumbers somehow seemed to cool down the sweltering air.

This would make a lovely traveling dish, whether for a brown bag lunch, a potluck, or a picnic. The recipe is here. Let me know what you think.

Smitten

2008-06-26T11:49:00.000-07:00

I just got my own copy of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day and I am in love! I had it out from the library last month just long enough to experiment with the challah recipe which was delicious but kind of funny looking. Only this week did I start with the basic bread recipe and ....wow!

Here's the deal: you make a wet dough, let it rise once, and set aside until needed in the refrigerator. For days, if that's what works for you. No kneading, no proofing, no careful timing. The downsides are these: the wet dough can be tricky to work and you need to have space in the refrigerator to store the dough. If you can handle those, then give this book a look because the upsides are many: delicious, wholesome bread on your timetable with virtually no effort whatsoever.

While I love fresh bread as much as anyone, I am not one of those cooks to rhapsodize over the meditative glories of kneading dough. I freely admit to using a bread machine for making my family's challah week after week for most of the last 10 years though of course I braid it and bake it in the oven for the characteristic shape. And the machine has been a workhorse for turning out loaf after loaf of hearty, whole grain bread which is perfectly serviceable for sandwiches and toast. But the machine simply can't do anything in the realm of crusty peasant breads. And all the recipes I've looked at over the years involving numerous carefully timed rises and knock-downs, sponges and starters, and complex baking equipment left me cold.

The other afternoon, after I bought the book, I put some water, yeast, flour, and salt in a big bowl, stirred it together, and went to work. While I was gone, the rest of my family pulled off chunks of dough and and made numerous pizzas, some with standard mozzarella and tomato sauce, others with roasted red peppers, basil, and goat cheese. My kids have never gone for homemade pizza but everyone declared this to be the best pizza ever. So there.

I took the last of the dough and made a quick baguette this morning which was almost immediately devoured. I considered posting a video of the knife slicing through the crackling crust but without the aroma it wouldn't have been complete.

I immediately mixed a new batch of dough in the same bowl without washing so as to collect all the old dough bits and incorporate their sour flavor into the new dough. I am looking forward to experimenting with many of the recipes in the book and I encourage you to give it a look, too. Normally I would post a recipe at this point, but I think it's worth reading the book to get the technique down.

A Meal for Midsummer's Eve

2008-06-21T12:33:00.000-07:00

So we had a bar mitzvah last weekend. And fed somewhere around 100 people. There were bagels with whitefish salad, huge pans of spanakopita, quinoa salad, fruit, green salad, and hundreds cookies, nearly everything cooked by friends just for us. The night before the bar mitzvah, a very dear friend brought us a delicious Shabbat dinner of moussaka, asparagus, and tiny jewel-like pastries among other delights, with a spare pan of moussaka just in case. We've been eating well on all these leftovers and only last night did I really get around to cooking a proper meal after finally cleaning out the refrigerator.

There were lots of reasons to make something truly memorable. Our very dear friends are still staying with us, and not only was it Friday night which always calls for a special dinner, but it was also the first day of summer and the longest day of the year. The weather was lovely enough that I decided it was time to haul the trusty old Weber kettle out of the garage even though we're not big grill people. Maybe it's that we eat so little meat. And, honestly, it's kind of pain. We never seem to have charcoal on hand which wouldn't be such a big deal except that I won't eat food that tastes like gasoline so only Lazzari will do. Luckily it's easier to find than it used to be. And it seems to take forever to get enough heat to cook, after which the fire seems to fade all too quickly. Really, a big production and yet only the grill would do.

The meal I had in mind is a summer favorite of mine: grilled vegetables with a basil aïoli. I confess that my usual approach to this tasty sauce has been to mix crushed basil and garlic in to store bought mayonnaise but, perhaps feeling a bit too full of myself, I decided yesterday was the day to make my own from scratch. I started using Mark Bittman's basic mayonnaise recipe from this book, met with utter failure, and saved it using Deborah Madison's instructions from this book. Despite a few pitfalls and blender-induced temporary hearing loss, in the end I had a beautiful, velvety and perfectly emulsified sauce that made the grilled eggplant, zucchini, and peppers sing. To complete our feast, we had fresh challah, Orangette's simple but insanely tasty chickpea salad, a variety of cheeses, and the first summer fruits of the season. Of course we ate outside next to my bubbling washtub fountain surrounded by the sound of birds tucking in for the evening. You simply can't do better than this: tasty food and dear friends on an early summer evening. I'll give you a recipe for what I made but of course you can use this approach to grill and serve anything your heart desires. Just make sure to enjoy it outside, on a perfect evening with people you really love.

I Love This

2008-06-11T18:37:00.000-07:00

I received the following in the comments:

This blog could be more exciting if you can create another topic that everyone can relate on.

Who can't "relate on" food?

This blog would be more exciting if I cooked more often and had more to write about. And if the spambots went away.......

Salsa Verde

2008-06-10T18:39:00.000-07:00

If you keep up with my other blog at all, you know that my son's bar mitzvah is coming up in a matter of, well, days. So there hasn't been a great deal of excitement on the cooking front. A lot of pasta, salads, smoothies, and veggie juices as we try to get one kid through final exams and another ready for his big day on Saturday.

But when your kid says, "Mom, your green salsa is the best. You'll make it for my bar mitzvah party, right?", what's a mother to do? In addition to buying 3 pounds of coffee, 2 bottles of Manischevitz, numerous 6-packs of Hansen's soda at the supermarket today, I added a few pounds of tomatillos, some fat jalapeños, limes, and a few bunches of scallions to the party supplies in my cart. Because if my kid wants my salsa verde for his bar mitzvah party, you can bet he's going to get it.

This particular salsa is thick and tangy. The tomatillos are very gelatinous so you want this to come to room temperature before serving or it's just a bit weird. Obviously the heat can be managed by your use of chiles, but then again, you never know when you're going to get surprise firecracker. The tomatillos and chiles are roasted but that's the only time consuming part. Then everything is tossed in the blender and whizzed until smooth. So simple, and so very tasty. My recipe is here. Do give it a try.

Bengali Inspired Greens

2008-05-20T19:15:00.000-07:00

Have you seen this book? While I have no shortage of Indian cookbooks in my collection, this is the one I dream about owning. I haven't bought it because it's huge and expensive and unwieldy and frankly so gorgeous that I'd be hesitant to bring it into my kitchen and slop it up with turmeric and coconut oil. Instead, I check it out from the library in fairly regular rotation, then lie around and the couch, lazily leafing through the pages, gazing at the stunning photographs, and idly wondering what it would be like to tramp around The Great Subcontinent for months on end.

Until today, my ritual with this book hasn't actually included cooking anything. How's that for irony? Despite the clarity of the recipes and the informative descriptions I think I felt somehow intimidated. But after working in the garden yesterday and noticing that we quite suddenly have mountains of rainbow chard about to bolt, the recipe for Bengali Spiced Greens caught my eye today.

I made up a small batch of panch phoron, a Bengali five-spice powder made up of cumin, nigella, mustard, fenugreek, and fennel seeds. Keeping a wide array of spices on hand makes it easy enough for me to make up fresh blends but I keep almost everything tightly sealed in zip-top bags in the freezer where the spices remain fragrant for a good long time, or at least until I can schlep across town to an Indian market and restock. The recipe said to use whole spices, but I gave everything a good bash with the mortar and pestle for good measure.

I cooked the panch phoron in some oil, added onion and garlic and cooked everything gently until good and soft. At the same time, I'd thrown some potatoes in the microwave to bake for a quickie version of the masala potatoes I use to fill dosas. When the potatoes were just about done, I added the greens to the onion and garlic spice paste and and cooked until everything was wilted but not cooked to death. With a bit of basmati rice and mango pickle, this was a delicious 20-minute lunch. The bright green chard and the brilliant turmeric-yellow potatoes looked gorgeous on the plate, making me almost feel OK about the rain starting up. Again.
The farmers markets around here have lots of locally grown greens right now. I think you'll find this a tasty way to prepare them. The recipe is here.

Cheesecake

2008-05-06T08:17:00.000-07:00

Is there anything in this world that's been more abused and mistreated than the cheesecake? I have come across so many cheesecakes that are overly sugary and flavored with far too heavy a hand. Mocha, grasshopper, raspberry, oreo....I'm sorry, but yuck.

I was raised on my grandmother's cheesecake, a simple thing of understated beauty which no one could top. She would happily make it for us whenever requested and it added something special to many of our family celebrations. But I'm not giving you her recipe. She wrote it out for me once but my results never resembled hers. I always kind of thought she left something major out of either the ingredient list or the directions, but she insists she gave me the very recipe she used. I long ago gave up on that one and have realized that there are some of her dishes whose flavor I'll never be able to duplicate.

But a number of years ago, craving the heavenly flavor of a simple cheesecake, I came across a recipe somewhere on the internet and have been using it ever since. The problem is I have no idea where the recipe came from and who should be praised. I feel terrible about this because this cheesecake is a marvel: simple to make and absolutely heavenly.

For those looking for a heavy crusted chocolate turtle mudslide experience, you'll need to look elsewhere. No crust here--just the simple flavor of sweet dairy with a hint of lemon and vanilla. Fresh strawberries served alongside are all the adornment needed but even they aren't truy necessary.If you've never tried making a cheesecake, this is where you want to start. There's no crust to muddle around with and as long as you can separate eggs you are good to go. Do plan ahead in that you want this cake chilled before unmolding and serving. The recipe is here. I'd love to hear how it goes for you.

Granola

2008-04-28T10:11:00.000-07:00

About halfway through Passover I started craving granola which, being made of oats, is definitely on the forbidden list for the week. I tortured myself looking at recipes I couldn't make until Passover ended and finally purchased the needed ingredients yesterday. I still haven't switched my dishes, but by 9 o'clock last night I had a big batch of granola cooling on top of the stove.

I've made granola plenty of times and yet I 'm always delighted at how a good mix of ingredients and only the slightest effort produces something so much tastier than can be bought. I tried the recipe from Nigella Lawson's Feast which has gotten rave reviews all over the place and I wasn't disappointed. Yes, I know, there's an awful lot of Nigella around here what can I say? She 's never let me down.

Her granola recipe includes applesauce which seemed a little weird to me but I think it helps everything stick together without a frightful amount of oil and also softens the texture just enough that you don't fear cracking your teeth.
This batch was made with sliced almonds, cashews, pepitas, dried cherries and dried apricots. Yum. Surely you want to make some yourself. The recipe is here. Enjoy!

Matzoh Crack

2008-04-26T21:37:00.000-07:00

We used to call it toffee matzoh around here, but the description from Smitten Kitchen seems to have taken hold this year and for good reason. This stuff is delicious and, yes, downright addictive. In fact, it's what gets us through the long, tedious, post seder days of Passover.

It takes all of 10 minutes to make and the only hard part is waiting for it to cool. Heat a stick of butter and a half cup of brown sugar in a saucepan and cook until the sugar is dissolved. Add a pinch of kosher salt and 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract. Set aside to cool. Line 2 cookie sheets with foil and cover completely with matzoh, breaking the sheets as necessary to fill in gaps. Spread the melted sauce evenly over the matzoh and pop into a 350 degree oven until caramel starts to bubble. Remove from the oven and sprinkle with chocolate chips. Wait 5 minutes or so, until the chocolate is soft, and spread evenly over matzohs. You can top the melted chocolate with chopped nuts if you like. Put trays in the refrigerator to cool. Then eat. Not all at once if you can help it.

I probably should have brought this up before the end of Passover, but the good news is you should be able to find marked down matzoh in stores now.

Iraqi Macaroons

2008-04-22T10:35:00.000-07:00

The seder meal is rarely terribly innovative at my house, especially when I am serving to my older relatives. We start with gefilte fish and matzo ball soup and then move on to some kind of vegetarian main dish alongside brisket or chicken, allowing me and the kids who are concerned about such things to keep vegetarian while the meat eaters are satisfied, too. There's asparagus, tzimmes, and fruit salad as well along with charoset and horseradish.

Even dessert is pretty standard. Unless the holiday falls super early in the year and edible berries have yet to arrive on our supermarket shelves, I make a flourless sponge cake rolled around whipped cream and strawberries which, I'm sorry to say, does not photograph well. This year's berries were not so good, especially after the exuberantly fragrant ones we ate last month in San Jose, but liberal additions of sugar and vanilla brought them to life. Plus, when surrounded by clouds of whipped cream, what's not to like?

It was feeling a bit too formulaic for me this year and I started looking around for something to spice things up. While re-reading the Passover chapter in Nigella Lawson's Feast, I came across her recipe for Iraqi Macaroons which looked more or less like the standard homemade variety with the addition of freshly ground cardamom and rosewater. Freshly ground cardamom? I'm there!

Aren't they cute? So plump and nutty, and vaguely exotic. And they were the surprise hit of our seder. I thought they'd be politely declined (more for me!) but everyone requested a few in their take-home packages.

Do give these a try as they are quite delightful. Being quite sturdy I imagine they would likely travel well. Also, as I'm finding more and more folks eschewing wheat, I like having a few wheat free options for sharing. The recipe is here.

Walnut Pate

2008-04-17T14:15:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again and the massive cooking extravaganza has begun. Today I started the stock for the matzoh ball soup. I also made tzimmes and lemon curd, as well as a large batch of walnut pate. A week without bread, pasta, and tortillas leaves us wanting lots of different spreads to perk up all that matzoh. That first taste at the seder is wonderful but as the week rolls on, a change of pace is appreciated. That's how lemon curd and walnut pate became staples for us this time of year.

In all my frenzied list-making I almost forgot about walnut pate. The Dark Lord reminded me yesterday and it's a good keeper so I made up a big batch today. This recipe is often called (rather sadly in my opinion) mock chopped liver. That makes sit sound like it's not quite something else when what it is is delicious. So we are making a concerted effort to rename this tasty, high protein Passover standby (though it could easily be made any time of year). It's simple enough: onions, eggs, and walnuts--but these few things work magic together once the onions have browned deeply and the walnuts are lightly toasted. It doesn't make a spectacular food photo, but as a spread on matzoh (or bread) it can't be beat. Think of this when you need something a little different for your next picnic or sack lunch. You'll find the recipe here.

Soan Papdi (Version One)

2008-03-25T13:25:00.000-07:00

I am currently staying with friends in San Jose where I was recently introduced to a heavenly Indian confection called soan papdi. There's no way I can accurately describe it. It's sweet, buttery, and very strongly flavored with ground cardamom. The texture is spectacular: light, flaky, and quick to dissolve on the tongue. What we tried was a packaged sweet but of course I wanted to know if mere mortals might be capable of making this delight in a home kitchen.

There appears to be one recipe on the internet, endlessly copied and pasted into numerous blogs and Indian cooking websites with little information beyond ingredients and basic cooking instructions. After a trip to the Indian market for exotic ingredients like besan and charmagaz, we were ready to give it a go.

Wheat and chickpea flours are mixed together and cooked in copious amounts of ghee. Meanwhile a sugar syrup comes to a boil and is eventually mixed into the ghee dough until "thread like flakes" appear, obviously key to that heavenly texture. Unsurprisingly this was the part that completely eluded us. We beat and beat but there was nary a flake to be found. Defeated, we spread the dough into a pan to cool, and topped it with freshly ground cardamom and melon seeds. The resulting sweet was tasty but nothing like what we'd hoped. I was surprised at how little information I was able to find. I would love to know more about the process by which threadlike flakes come to be. I definitely want to take another stab at this.

Central Asian Carrot Salad

2008-03-02T19:12:00.000-08:00

It's funny how a carrot dish could start with turnips, but sometimes things work out strangely.

Late winter is hardly the high season for farmers markets but when The Spouse and I found ourselves unexpectedly free on a recent sunny afternoon we decided to include the lone east side winter market in our walk. As expected, greens featured heavily along with some lovely baked goods and some downright weird sauerkraut crackers.

Off to the side of the main action was the Hayat Farm stand whose offerings consisted of one lone table heavily laden with nothing but turnips. Normally I'm not a turnip fan but I really wanted to support this particular farmer whose family is one of the Meskhetian Turk refugee families who have recently moved to Portland and whose teens have studied in my classroom.

If you've read my not-food blog you'll have come across stories of these kids, some of whom have been among my most memorable students. They've not had had easy lives and I'm happy to support their communiy by buying their produce, even if that happens to be turnips.

Hayat Farm hands out recipes for much of their produce, but we couldn't get any suggestions about how to use the turnips as Farmer Idrisov's English is pretty minimal and my Russian isn't much better. But I did end up using their recipe for a carrot salad that was just delicious.

I don't think a person can have too many carrot salad recipes. Carrots are super nutritious, always tasty, and they keep well so they're always on hand at my house. This dish is flavored with deeply browned onions and their oil along with a liberal amount of ground coriander which give the dish an exotic twist. The recipe can be found here, at the end of a great article about Mr Idrisov and his family.

As for those turnips? They became a lovely curry courtesy of Mahanandi and they were pretty darned good. For turnips.

Best Food Book Ever

2008-02-20T17:28:00.000-08:00

I know, that's a pretty subjective statement so let's just say that Eating India: An Odyssey into the Food and Culture of the Land of Spices is easily the best food writing I've read in a very, very long time. I thought I was going to read this one cover to cover in no time, but I forced myself to savor it like good chocolate. I rationed it out, a chapter at a time, going back for seconds and thirds as often as I pleased.

My knowledge of Indian cooking is so much greater after reading Eating India. Sure, we all know about the Mughal influenced North Indian specialties, but this book takes the reader on a comprehensive tour of numerous Indian communities starting in the author's own Calcutta and wandering all over the subcontinent. No recipes, but lots of interesting tidbits to chew on.

Chocolate Truffles

2008-02-14T08:30:00.000-08:00

It's an annual thing around here: chocolate truffles for Valentine's Day. It wasn't quite as fun to make them on our own (we usually have the company of good friends) but The Princess and I had quite a lovely time making them on our own and tucking them into shiny paper wrappers.

Truffles don't take long to make. You still have time to make a lovely Valentine's Day gift if you hurry. The recipe is here. Make sure to use a chocolate that you really love. The coatings are up to you. I used ground toasted hazlenuts, finely ground coffee mixed with cocoa and sugar, and toasted coconut shreds. Give them a try and bring a smile to your valentine's face.

Chocolate Orange Cake

2008-02-09T09:11:00.000-08:00

Don't you just have to love a cookbook with an entire chapter dedicated to chocolate cakes? Nigella Lawson's Feast has just such a chapter and it's filed with all kinds of delightful looking possibilities. Since my Fridays have just gotten considerably less complicated, I was able to sit a and plan and then cook a proper Shabbat dinner for the first time in a very long time. We even invited guests, which hasn't happened in I can't tell you how long. Clearly a cake was in order.

I'd long wanted to try the chocolate orange cake in Feast. I can't think of a better combination of flavors and I loved that this recipe included and entire orange, skin and all. The orange is boiled first to soften it then mixed with ground almonds, eggs, cocoa powder, and sugar. I topped it with some strips of candied orange peel and it was quite lovely. Not being super sweet or dripping with icing, the cake wasn't a huge hit with the kids but that's why I was able to enjoy the final piece as my breakfast.

It has a wonderful, slightly nubbly texture and a bright orange flavor above the chocolate. I hope you'll give it a try. Folks from my tribe might even want to keep it in mind for Passover as the recipe can be made kosher-for-Pesach. In that case I would omit the baking powder and soda, separate the eggs, and beat the egg whites until stiff before adding to the batter. That should work in terms of leavening. The recipe is here--Enjoy!

Dosas at Home

2008-01-27T20:32:00.001-08:00

I think about dosas a lot. I love nearly every Indian dish I've ever tasted but I've actually dreamed about dosas which says something either about dosas or about me. I've been reading about them for weeks, gearing myself up to try making them at home. Most recipes have you soak rice and lentils, grind them together, and ferment them over a few days. Not necessarily difficult but planning is required. Planning isn't one of my strengths, sorry to say. I'd pretty well convinced myself that my homemade dosas wouldn't be worth eating anyway.

I was looking up a recipe on Bureka Boy's blog today, a yeasted roll with exotic flavors to serve with coffee (and I'll write about those soon, I promise) when I came across an old recipe of his for No Wait Dosas--just the kick I needed to finally try making my own.

No long-soaked lentils here--these are replaced by wheat flour. And rice flour takes the place of the soaked rice, making these a snap to whip up in the blender. I omitted BB's mustard seeds as I wanted those to flavor the filling. Grated coconut added a lovely nuttiness to the batter.

These don't have the lovely sourdough tang of a classic dosa, and mine didn't have quite the crunchy/chewy texture of the professional varieties I've tasted. But nonetheless, they were very tasty. I made an approximation of potato fillings I've eaten before, bright yellow with turmeric and speckled with green cilantro and black mustard seeds. The crepes take a bit of skill on the griddle, but you'll get the hang of them quickly enough. These came together in under an hour and that's with a pot of chana dal to serve alongside. Bureka Boy's recipe for quick dosa batter is here and my potato filling is here. I hope when you give these a try you'll get hooked, too.

A Little Something for the January Blahs

2008-01-26T22:17:00.000-08:00

I am not at my best these days. My luxurious 3 week winter break is just a fond memory, all the kids' activities are back in full swing, and there's been a great deal of extra stuff needing my attention of late. As one might imagine, nutritious home cooked meals have been few and far between. I should be posting here more often but I can't imagine anyone needing to get the details on the burritos, pasta, and tuna melts that have kept everyone fed around here. Sadly, that's so often what it comes down to. My efforts to uplift my family's meals haven't come to much lately as we've just gone for the old standbys, food without fuss, just enough, really to keep going. Not what I envisioned for my family years ago when the introduction to Laurel's Kitchen regularly got me all fired up. Well, what is parenting all about if not dispelling illusions right and left?

Another oft-used cookbook back in the days when my kids were too young to complain was The Savory Way by Deborah Madison. Among the many treasured recipes this book contains is Smoked Chile Salsa, something I need to make a few times every winter. In her introduction to the recipe Madison writes:

This sauce is based on a Mexican sauce I like very much but that is almost impossible to find. Búfalo is illustrated with a picture of the charging body if a red buffalo, which is just about how it feels in your mouth.

The book was written way back in 1990 before Búfalo became easy enough to find in any town with a Latino population but I find this homemade sauce to be infinitely better even without the stylish little glass bottle. This isn't a tomato-y chip and dip kind of salsa but rather a rich, flavorful, slightly smoky, slightly tangy hot sauce to be served in small dollops. It's plenty picante but also delightfully full of flavor, and just the thing to add some zing to the boring, inoffensive kid food we've been living on. Burritos with tasteless canned refritos? This sauce will help. Stodgy home fries? You'll want this sauce. Another pan of macaroni and cheese? It won't make the boxed stuff edible, but this sauce will definitely do something worthwhile to cheesy pasta. My very favorite way to use it involves sautéing chunks of sweet potato in a bit of broth until tender and tucking them into a warmed tortilla with cheese, and home-cooked pinto beans. A nice drizzle of this smoky, tangy sauce sets off the sweet potatoes beautifully. Too bad my kids won't touch my sweet potato burritos with a ten foot pole.

The recipe is here. I hope it helps to liven up these cold, dull mid-winter days.

Say It Ain't So!

2008-01-09T17:31:00.000-08:00

Many years ago, my sweetie and I spent a number of months living in Mexico. This was my first trip outside the US and it was full of exciting discoveries. One of the biggest thrills for me was all the delicious fresh produce. I enjoyed trying exotic new fruits like mangoes (which I still adore), papayas (not so much), and deliciously sweet fresh pineapple. But what I never expected to delight me as it did was the taste of Mexican bananas which were fresher, sweeter, and more flavorful than anything I'd eaten at home. I was a banana fiend in Mexico. I ate piles of them fresh and made a top nearly every morning to have some blended with fresh pineapple at the licuado stand in the central plaza of Cuernavaca. I still remember the first banana I ate after returning home, in a Safeway in California. It was woody, dry, and tasteless and I was, quite frankly, bereft.

I am still a voracious eater of bananas. I buy quite a few pounds each week, organic whenever possible. I know, I know -- the localvores would string me up for my love of this high-traveling exotic. So sue me. I love my bananas. They even have numerous health benefits.

All of this preface is to set the scene for the deep funk in which I find myself this afternoon after listening to the latest episode of Good Food. After the regular market report, host Evan Kleinman spoke with Dan Koeppel, the author of the recently published Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World. According to banana experts around the world, my beloved fruit is on its way to extinction due to the combination of a devastating fungus and a lack of genetic diversity. Needless to say, I'm finding news of the pending banana apocalypse very upsetting, but for those people whose diets are heavily banana-dependent this could be a real tragedy.

I'm waiting to get my library's copy of the book, but found Koeppel's Popular Science article to be fascinating reading in the mean time. And I think I might just run out and stock up on my favorite fruit while I try to wrap my head around the idea of a world without bananas.

A Perfect Little Cookie

2007-12-24T19:01:00.000-08:00

Many years ago, while setting up my first post-college apartment with the man who later became my husband, I began to get serious about learning to cook. I took a job with a catering company and began to absorb mountains of information about preparing food. I bought some of my first cookbooks and started to very slowly build my cookware collection. And I began asking anyone and everyone for recipes.

My grandmother was a source of recipes (some from her mother) for many delicious baked goods including sublime lemon cookies, a spectacular fruit tart, and a cheesecake that I simply cannot duplicate. But one of the first recipes she gave me is the simplest of all: brown sugar shortbread. The name says it all, and doesn't it sound lovely? It is: intensely buttery with a deep, rich flavor from the brown sugar. And it's easier to handle than traditional shortbread.
My grandmother made these simple cookies and embellished them with a terra cotta cookie stamp made by this company, leaving a raised design on the buttery cookies. I flattened mine with a fork until my grandmother gave me a cookie stamp of my own as a Chanukah gift many years ago. You can still purchase them in numerous designs on their website if you're interested.
A couple of weeks ago I went to make a batch of these to give as gifts and couldn't find the cookie stamp anywhere. The dough was made up so I decided to try rollling and cutting them in star shapes which worked quite well. But I was delighted to locate the stamp the other day while engaged in an extensive search for something else (MonkeyBoy like to make my life interesting when he unloads the dishwasher).

Clearly another batch of brown sugar shortbread was in order. I highly recommend these cookies which you can make with or without a terra cotta cookie stamp though I do think it adds a certain something. The recipe is here. Enjoy!

Perfection?

2007-12-17T19:20:00.000-08:00

Here's what I just realized--I already wrote about this dish, back in March. I wrote out this whole post and went to type out the recipe when I saw that I'd already done so. Oy. So if you want to read the first post, it's here. Feel free to read on for my more current thoughts on the topic of macaroni and cheese. I'm sure this type of thing never happens with the fancy, professional food blogger types.

I don't know if perfection is a goal I should be aiming for giving that sometimes it's a major accomplishment just getting everyone around here to eat. But some things you shouldn't have to settle for. Sometimes you just want to find that one, perfect recipe--the one that will allow you to end your search.

That's how this recipe for macaroni and cheese came into my home. I love a good macaroni and cheese but for years wasn't able to get to what I wanted: cheesy, of course, and nicely chewy without the sludge of a heavy, milky sauce. I tried any number of recipes, most of which were OK though one stands out as being inedible (John Thorne, what were you thinking with the evaporated milk?) but nothing really came close to what I wanted until I found Jack Bishop's recipe in A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen.

This is the simplest and tastiest version of macaroni cheese I know and can be varied endlessly with different cheeses from plain old Tillamook medium cheddar to a liberal amount of crumbled Cougar Gold. The bread crumbs make a slightly crunchy topping and you can control the texture depending on how you cook it. A large shallow baking dish will give you chewy macaroni with lots of topping and a deeper vessel makes for a creamier dish. Either way is great as far as I'm concerned. The recipe is here. I hope it goes over well in your home.

Apple Latkes

2007-12-05T11:20:00.001-08:00

It's that time of year again....

Chanukah always falls during the darkest part of the year when daylight is scarce and everyone is chilled. The lights, of course, are a welcome part of the 8 day festival but so too are the traditional foods. You've just got to love a holiday that requires us to eat fried foods. Potato latkes are perhaps the best known Chanukah food in the Ashkenazic world. Sufganiot (doughnuts) are another classic and I will try to share my recipes for both this week.

But when the first night of Chanukah falls on a work night that's been preceded by a day of juvenile illness, a big holiday dinner just isn't an option. Instead I came home from work and made apple latkes to enoy by the light of the first candle. Most Jews light the candles at sundown but given the requirement that no work is to be done while the candles burn, I make everyone wait until I get home from teaching my night class.And so it was that I arrived home, donned an apron, and got busy. The Spouse had brought home some beautiful Braeburn apples which turned out to be perfect in this recipe--just tart enough. An apple latke is really just a pancake, but a very special apple pancake indeed. Sweet-tart and dusted with powdered sugar, they make a delicious Chanukah treat. I suppose you could just as well have them for breakfast though we never do. I like having some recipes set aside just for holidays. If you'd like to give these a try, the recipe is here. Enjoy!

Last Meal?

2007-11-28T17:30:00.000-08:00

I was recently listening to KCRW's Good Food podcast whose focus mostly on Thanksgiving cooking, but there was a brief and touching segment in which callers described, in their own voices, their chosen last meal. I found it very poignant as well as quite thought provoking.

My last meal? Hard to say. I might let the good folks at Nuestra Cocina cook anything they wanted for me. I might ask for dosas from Chennai Masala. Or maybe my grandmother's beef brisket with baked potatoes and her tooth achingly sweet fruit salad.

If it were the last meal I ever cooked, well that's easy. I'd have my friend Laura join me once again to make buttery fresh corn tamales.

And what about you?