Category Archives: Cooking

For the Love of Ramen in South Dakota

Posted on by
buckeyes

An Ohioan would never search for how to make buckeyes, because it’s an inborn skill.

Okay, so things have been slow here on the blog lately, and I sat down today with a pure intention to write something serious, namely a rant about this article on school lunches that annoyed me greatly, blah, blah, blah. But when I went onto Huffington Post to find the article again, I stumbled upon this one, which is approximately eighty times funnier, and so I’m going to write about that instead and save the rant for some future day, possible a day when I have a school-aged child who eats lunch.

The second article was about what recipe, according to Google Trends, each state searches for the most frequently. It’s not very scientific, to be sure, but it does provide plenty of food for thought. What is Connecticut’s obsession with Moroccan chicken thighs, for instance? Are there really that many lobsters in Wyoming, or are Wyomans just so confused by them when they do show up that they have to Google what to do with them? Would Thomas Jefferson be proud that his fellow Virginians are searching for ways to make paneer above all else? I like to think so.

I was also a little surprised that cooks in my home state of Ohio are supposedly looking for recipes for spaghetti. You’ve got this, Ohio! Continue reading →

How to Pretend to be Tamar Adler (Part II)

Posted on by

cauliflower pastaAnd so the saga continued. And this time, I was determined to step it up a notch.

Attempt 3: A Cabbage with a College Education
What’s not to love about a vegetable that looks like a brain? So I decided to cook up some cauliflower, Tamar-style. She’s an advocate for boiling vegetables rather than steaming them (crisper is not always better), so I sawed up about half a head and dropped it in a pot of salty boiling water. And since I hadn’t done so well at thinking ahead up to this point, I also put the rest of the cauliflower (with some whole cloves of garlic) and some sweet potatoes in a 425 degree oven to roast.

When the boiling cauliflower was nice and tender, I ladled it out with a slotted spoon, and then used the same pot of water to cook some penne pasta. Then I mashed up the cauliflower with a generous handful of Parmesan cheese, some freshly ground pepper and the roasted garlic from the oven.  I added some of the starchy pasta water to turn to all into a sauce right before I drained the pasta. I don’t like to brag, but I think I got some extra points for tapping into Tamar’s fresh herb enthusiasm and topping it all with a bunch of fresh dill before serving.

The results were pretty good, simple but tasty. The components of the sauce did not combine quite as smoothly as I wanted them to, but no one can really complain about a big clump of melted cheese.
Tamar Score: 7

Attempt 4: It’s Not Over ‘Til the Skinny Yam Sings Continue reading →

How to Pretend to be Tamar Adler (Part I)

Posted on by

tamar sandwichFrequent readers of the blog already know about my obsession with Tamar Adler and her book. An Everlasting Meal is not a cookbook exactly; it’s more a string of philosophies about how to treat food. Now take whatever you’re imagining and make it not pretentious or insufferable, and you’ll pretty much have it. Anyway, I was so in the thrall of this book that I decided to try to be Tamar for a few days (we’re on a first name basis, obviously), focusing mostly on her chapter on vegetables, “How to Stride Ahead.” Here are the results:

Attempt 1: The Agony and the Ecstasy of Vegetable Retrieval
Tamar is a big proponent of buying a ton of vegetables on one day of the week and cooking them all at once. That way, you’re already a step ahead for the rest of the week’s cooking. This sounded lovely and elegant, and since we had a big ol’ shipment of CSA vegetables coming one Saturday, I thought I had this locked down.

Our winter CSA is a little different than the regular season. Instead of picking it up every week, you get a gigantic box of stored vegetables and fruit once a month. It’s great, except that Jason and I have somehow messed it up every single time: we’re out of town or we’re busy, and we have to impose upon friends and neighbors and bribe them with vegetables to make it happen. This time, though, we were ready. We went to visit some friends and their new baby, not too far from our place, with plans to pick up the box on the way home. But then the baby was supernaturally cute, and we were running late. And then, even though we’ve both lived in NYC for too long, we managed to get lost on the walk to the subway. And then the next train was delayed. And then Jason ran up the stairs to get in a cab and rescue the vegetables, but since I wasn’t sure if he would be successful, I stayed on the train and sprinted a dozen blocks in snow boots to try to get them, too. But there he was, vegetables saved in the nick of time.

I was so exhausted after this debacle that I decided not to cook the vegetables that day, and instead got drunk and ate nachos at 11 p.m. Jason says we should get a high score for effort, but I know the truth.
Tamar Score: 2 out of a possible 10

Attempt 2: No Sandwich is a Bad Sandwich Continue reading →

Smoky Potato Chowder

Posted on by

smoky potato chowderGuess who got a new Crockpot for Christmas? Ba-zam! Yes, I know that this makes me approximately a thousand years old, but I’m pretty excited. It’s like magic. You put a bunch of ingredients in it, and approximately eighty-four hours later, you have a delicious soup.

Seriously, though, I made some pretty awesome Crockpot delicacies this weekend, including this soup that I sort of made up as I went along. I used a variety of potatoes, to make it a bit more interesting. It also features smoked paprika, which is Jason’s favorite SOTM (Spice of the Moment). Truly, he will go through a jar of it in the blink of an eye, but I managed to spirit some away from him to give the soup a little heat and a delicious bacon-y flavor. Eat it on a cold night with a salad and some bread, and you’ll have enough energy to go head-to-head with the Abominable Snowman. Or to teach him how to use a Crockpot.

Smoky Potato Chowder Continue reading →

Winter Solstice Casserole

Posted on by

solstice casseroleIt’s hard not to think of Christmas as the granddaddy of December holidays, at least in this part of the world, but allow me to remind you that there’s another, more (literally) astronomical occasion to celebrate this Sunday: the winter solstice. Have you all gotten your Saturnalia costumes dry-cleaned?

People have been celebrating the shortest day of the year ever since…well, since they were able to calculate that it was the shortest day of the year. Some pre-Christian celebrations included Scandinavians burning a Juul log to honor Thor (yep, that’s where the Yule log comes from), Mayans doing a terrifying if-we-don’t-break-our-ankles-this-will-probably-be-good-luck trick called the flying pole dance, and Romans crowning some poor schmuck as Saturnalian king and giving him unrestrained license until they killed him seven days later.

solstice, servedGiven the, erm, vibrancy of some of these festivals, it’s a shame that most solstice celebrations have dwindled to nothing. It’s still an important holiday in the pagan religion, but despite the impact of a phrase like “pagan ritual,” I read through a couple of them, and they seem mostly to involve pretty staid activities, like watching the sun rise or sitting in the dark while mindfully chewing bread.

So how should you commemorate the solstice? Invent your own celebration. I made up this solstice casserole—filled with winter vegetables, spiced with black pepper and nutmeg, and blanketed with a thin layer of snowy white cheese.

Winter Solstice Casserole Continue reading →

Venerating the Bean: Winter Minestrone

Posted on by

minestroneAnd now allow me to praise a cookbook that I haven’t actually read. When An Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler came out a couple years ago with its tagline of cooking “with economy and grace,” I thought it sounded kiiiiind of boring, despite the good reviews it was getting, and chose to ignore it. And then this weekend I was flipping through a food writing anthology and happened upon a chapter from the book called, “How to Live Well,” which, in my opinion, is such an eye-roll-worthy title that I almost flipped right past it. And then I realized what the entire chapter was about: beans.

It turns out that there’s a lot to be said about the humble bean, that darling of the Tuscans. Adler outlines how to cook ‘em, how to dress ‘em up, how to enjoy them, all in a tone that is straightforward but definitely not humorless. I was charmed. Knowing that Adler was an avid bean eater put me solidly in her court.

Another thing I liked about the chapter was that the recipe she gave for minestrone was incredibly elastic, because it’s supposed to reflect the season (and possibly your mental state, like a mood ring). Got some spring peas? Awesome. Winter root vegetables? Also cool. I tried my hand at the recipe this weekend, and the result was a thick, hearty vegetarian minestrone, perfect for winter. (And holy moly! That “whistling the skin off a bean” method she mentions actually works!) I’ll share the recipe I used below, but really, I suggest checking out the book and making that minestrone your own. And if you don’t have time for the whole book, don’t worry; I’ve already dropped enough Christmas hints that it will probably show up here again soon.

Vegetarian Winter Minestrone Continue reading →

The De-fennel-stration of our Vegetable Drawer

Posted on by

onion and fennel risottoOur CSA with Windflower Farm is totally awesome. For almost half the year, they load us up with delicious veggies, and they never skimp on the good stuff. Every once in a while, though, they throw us a curveball, like in one of our last shipments of the season, when they gave us a big ol’ bulb of fennel. Fennel looks kind of like a multi-snorkeled Snork and has a name that sounds like a scheming butler on Masterpiece Theater. Needless to say, the CSA fennel offering kicked around in our vegetable drawer for quite a while.

And then—eureka!—the NY Times cooking section laid a solution right in my lap with this recipe for Carmelized Onion and Fennel Risotto. When I started to make it, I realized that I didn’t even know what part of the fennel to slice, and I had to watch some YouTube videos to school myself. Basically, you just want the layered part of the bulb; you can make stock out of the rest of it, but it’s too tough to chew. That means that there was shockingly little fennel on my cutting board by the time I was finished hacking away at it. Would I even be able taste it in the finished dish?

Because it is in my nature to meddle with even the simplest recipes, I made a few changes to the NYT version. Continue reading →

Kung Pao Squash and Greens

Posted on by

kung pao!At my first job after college, there was a woman named Cynthia (a.k.a. Cyn-Bad), who, upon being asked what Chinese food she wanted to order, would always say, “Kung PAO!” and do a series of high-energy karate kicks. I believe she went on to teach first graders.

But I was always a little jealous of Cyn-Bad’s order, because takeout Chinese places almost never have anything fixed in a kung pao style besides chicken or maaaybe shrimp, so it’s a no-go for vegetarians. That’s why I was so excited when our friend Jeff (who, now that I think about it, would probably admire Cyn-Bad’s wicked karate stylings) forwarded us a recipe for Kung Pao Sweet Potatoes. What?! A whole new world of Szechuan deliciousness opened up to me.

I changed the recipe up a bit to match what we had on hand, which included a whole load of squash. As frequent readers of this blog might already know, winter squashes are really not my favorite vegetables, so this was a serious test, but the spicy sauce and the crunch of the peanuts helped that squash pass with flying colors. No doubt about it: it’s a meal glorious enough for a palace guardian, not to mention Cyn-Bad.

Kung Pao Squash and Greens Continue reading →

Peter Piper and Me

Posted on by
pickled peppers

Let’s just call this a peck, shall we?

Never had I stopped and considered exactly how much of something constituted a peck until I was out in the garden in the dark, wiping cold rain out of my eyes and trying to locate hot peppers with a flashlight.

This project had started, of course, with grander visions. I had gotten nostalgic about the giant jars of whole chili peppers swimming in vinegar that used to grace every table in Cambodia, and I had convinced Jason to stick a single hot pepper plant in the corner of our community garden plot. Then, Peter Piper-style visions dancing in my head, I waited. And waited. And waited. Our pepper plant grew to mammoth proportions but was an exceedingly late bloomer. Finally, just this month, it sprouted loads of peppers, though most of them remained green, probably because of the chilly weather.

pepper picking

Trick or Treeeeat!

But then again, the peppers in Cambodia had always been a wide variety of colors, and ours were, indeed, hot, as evidenced by the weird panting noises that Jason made after I fed him a little piece of a raw one, so I decided that maybe the greenness wasn’t that big of a deal, and I should proceed with the pickling as planned. But the clock was ticking; it had gotten awfully late in the season, so late that it’s dark by the time I get home from work, which is why, last night, I was arming myself with a flashlight and trying to convince myself that it would be kind of like trick or treating, before heading out to lurk around the muddy garden and probably creep out all of the neighbors.

Man, it sure seemed like I picked a lot of peppers, yea, perhaps even a peck of pickled peppers. A peck is a quarter of a bushel (or eight quarts, for those of you who don’t regularly buy things by the bushel). My crop ended up filling two tiny jam jars, so I may have come in a little shy of my target. But boy, do they look delicious.

Here’s how you can pickle some of your very own: Continue reading →

A Double Dose of Allium Soup

Posted on by

IMG_1555Is there anything better than walking in your front door and being greeted by the scent of garlic and onion sautéing in a pan? For one, it smells delicious, and it also means that someone else is on top of dinner. Jason and I both took a turn at cooking up the ol’ alliums this week (the family that includes both garlic and onions), he with a healthful, cold-fighting garlic soup, and I with a not-so-healthful-but-seriously-super-delicious French onion soup.

Jason got the skinny on the garlic soup from his yoga teacher, who made it for her sick child. Garlic has long been a home remedy for warding off the sniffles, to say nothing of its reputation as a worthy adversary of arthritis, heart disease and some kinds of tumors. You could argue that garlic is not a miracle drug…or you could just eat some of this garlic soup and be happy. And you can trust me on this count: the garlic in it is well-cooked enough that you won’t leak garlic from your pores. I was sort of looking forward to getting a seat to myself on the subway afterward, but I smelled no more like a salami than usual. You can find the recipe at this very earnest website.

french onion soupHealthfulness is a noble ambition, but I had other things on my mind when I made my allium soup. Namely, the fact that the day I figured out that most French onion soup is made with beef broth was a very dismal day in my vegetarian life. Once, I was listening to an Australian woman rant about her travels in America. I was with her until she said, “My God, you put cheese on everything! I ordered soup and it came covered in cheese!” That’s the moment I discovered I had nothing more to say to this woman. If you can’t see the beauty in a heap of melted Gruyere, well, then…perhaps you better scoot on back to your former prison colony of a nation.

So when we got a couple big ol’ white onions in our farm share, I looked up a recipe and changed it a little for vegetarians. It involves making big Gruyere-coated croutons that you float on top. This might not be quite as impressive as blanketing the bowl like restaurants do, but it’s easier and it ensures that not a shred of cheese is wasted. Good for a cold? Maybe not, but it’s good for the soul.

Vegetarian French Onion Soup Continue reading →