lazy fall soup

This soup is for slackers.

+ Butcher your Halloween pumpkin that is embarrassing you in front of your neighbors. Well, except those sketchy neighbors with the pit bulls and pile of shoes on their stoop. While your unholy, uneven pumpkin chunks get toasty, google all your insecurities about food safety ("pumpkin ok to eat" "san diego night temperature" "food safety danger zone"). Forge ahead. When your pumpkin is soft, puree it. Maybe with some stock so you don't break your blender. Not that I have ever caused a blender to make that "sad robot wheezing" sound.

+Or maybe you actually had time to carve a jack-o-lantern this year, or you are more responsible in your gourd-disposal than I am, in which case used canned pumpkin, in which case this soup is reallllly for slackers. Two or maybe even three cans should approximate my black-bean to pumpkin ratio, which I thought was pretty on-point.

+OK: Chop and saute a medium onion in some olive oil and toss in some cumin and oregano and maybe coriander. Or garam masala. Spices that are warm but not too warm, you know what I mean? Probably a tablespoon of spices total. This is weeknight soup. Don't dirty your teaspoons.

+Now toss in the pumpkin and a can of black beans (rinsed!) and stock until it is a happy consistency. Heat. Boom boom pow, enjoy yer mad seasonal slacker dinner. If you crumble cotija cheese on top and maybe some green onions, you will totally not even feel like your dinner came from the pantry. Fortasse haec olim meminisse juvabit, y'all.

cream of broccoli soup

I have this in my head as a Silver Palate recipe, but now that I actually own the cookbooks (!) I don't think it is. It fits that bill though-- there is something I find really charming about the early days of American gourmandise, those crazy 80s where it was both about good fresh produce and butter.



One of my qualifying papers is about Southern food, and I am having so much fun with it. Paula Deen! The Lee Bros.! I think what's so interesting about a lot of contemporary Southern cookbooks is exactly that mix: of things that just taste good (cream, bacon fat) with things that are fresh and maybe a little complicated to procure (vegetable pickles, wild rice). Which, ironically, brings me back to how I imagine the Upper West Side in the mid-80s, when people went out and bought "Bistro Cooking" but also had eaten more than one veggie loaf in their college days. I actually spend a lot of time imagining about decadent 1980s NYC, because I wonder how baby Lily fared. I probably snuck a bowl or two of this broccoli soup at dinner parties. It's delicious.

+ 2 or 3 bunches of broccoli, or a 16 oz bag of frozen (what was I saying abut local produce? attention attention blah blah blah. Veggies in any form are better than Lunabars, so quit that ego-trippin and lay in a bag for the next time your feet are cold and you want a real meal, Lily!)
+ A medium yellow onion
+ Stock to cover
+ Mustard seeds! A lot of them! Try with a quarter cup.
+ However much cream you have-- a quarter cup? Like that? I guess you could use sour cream or yogurt.

Sautee the onion and mustard seeds in a soup pot, then add the broccoli and stock and simmer until the broccoli is tender.

Let cool, add cream, puree. It's even better once it's been in the fridge for a few days. YES!

Also, without further ado... this.

egg salad

Just when I think I might not be turning into my dad-- boom! Another bizarro food craving from the 1940s. As if my newfound love of mashed turnips, vanilla malts, or blue cheese was not frightening enough, my return to San Diego was marked by a fierce craving for egg salad. Let's be real about this. I mostly hate eggs. I wouldn't eat them at all until a few years ago and only then scrambled with cheese. Last year Huevos Rancheros eased me into the fried-egg-fan-club (unlike the Lisa Frank Fan Club, it does not come with stickers, only higher cholesterol.) But I still haven't ever eaten a hardboiled egg without gagging. When I see them in salad bars I feel sorry for the poor nerds who eat them while I help myself to more samosas across the way (this scenario takes place in Whole Foods, I guess).

So WHAT?! I return back a few weeks ago, I move out, I feel all turmoilish, and boom! I find myself in a coffeeshop eating a curried egg salad sandwich. It was delicious, and I ate it and read Giving An Account of Oneself and basically swooned. Fast forward to the Fourth of July. I am contemplating bringing deviled eggs, since that seems like a Martha Stewarty thing to do when you go to the hills to celebrate America. Instead our contribution was grilled peaces with honey and goat cheese FROM A GOAT THAT I MILKED-- but more on that later. Geez I love farms.

The take home message of today: what do our lovely hosts bring out but a bowl of egg salad. And then another. And another! Three types of egg salad with homemade mayo with eggs from their chickens!

My creepily religious but ultimately effective art therapy book (thanks Julie!) says that as soon as you tell the universe what you want it provides it. The examples in the book are like: Molly decided she wanted to be a painter then realized her next door neighbor gives painting lessons. Mine is "I never knew I liked egg salad and as soon as I realized that I loved it, someone made three different kinds of transcendent egg salad." I am either easy to please or have really low expectations.

Anyway, here is how to make some delicious egg salad.

3 hardboiled eggs (the key, according to Alton, is to start with the eggs in cold water, boil, then turn off the stove AT THE BOIL. Then wait ten minutes. Then run cool water over your eggs. I can attest: pretty perfect.)
2 tbs mayo
a little mustard
lots of salt and pepper
a T or so of chives or dill, fresh or dried. Don't skimp.

Mash it all together. Oh yeah. On a sandwich with refrigerator pickles? I want to take a bowl of this out behind the middle school and get it PREGNANT. I am not usually one for citational humor, but I can think of no better way to describe how I feel about this egg fucking salad. Tracy Jordan knows what it means to love a foodstuff, let me tell you that.

grilled cheese sandwich heaven

y'alls, i love grilled cheese sandwiches. i would say they are probably my all time number one favorite food. number two i guess. i know when you were a kid is the cool thing to say was that your favorite food is pizza but i would always be like, well, my favorite food is french bread with gravy but my second favorite food is grilled cheese. recipe for poulet farci al' ail may be forthcoming at some point, the dish that creates the gravy that creates the french bread with gravy that owns my heart. but for now: the best grilled cheese.

usually i make toasted cheese, which is kind of cheating, but it makes me feel like it might be "healthy" or at least healthy enough to count as one of those quick lunches or late night dinners that you stand over the stove eating. my toaster oven, though, is back at the ranch so i have been forced to conquer my fears of pan-fried grilled cheese: these sandwiches usually end up burnt or flabby with butter or half cold.

no more. the answer is mayonnaise. do you know this trick? i don't know how it entered my brain but i am glad it did.

spread a thin layer of mayo on the outside of the bread so you don't need to put butter in the pan which can separate or burn or whatever. medium heat until the bread browns and the cheese melts. when the cheese melts, flip it. boom. perfect crispy crust, no burning, doesn't really taste like mayo (especially if you spread mustard or chutney on the inside of your sandwich. yummm.)

the past two sandwiches, mozzarella on potato bread, have been simply perfect. in a succulent garden in the shade with a cat making happy sounds: you better believe it.

carrot soup

i am very impressed with this stupidly easy soup, which is basically just a love poem to carrots. i think i get confused about soups and rarely make them because they are going to take forever or i am going to have to go out and buy cream, neither of which is the case. anyway, (this) soup is just perfect for fall, or for san diego days when you get too excited about the sunshine and wear shorts but then it gets cold and you have to walk home and you are FREEZING even though the walk is only 20 minutes and-- let's face it-- its 65 degrees.



carrot soup

+a bag of carrots
+a half-inch or so of ginger, grated. what i like particularly about this soup is that it is not like BAM carrot ginger soup, just slightly interesting and really carrot-y.
+stock or its equivalent
+some rice or grains. i used spelt grains. probably buckwheat or wheat berries would also be good. nutty! texture!

-- peel and chop your carrots, throw them in a pot with some olive oil. dump in a few handfuls (a cup?) of rice or grains. i was kind of weirded out by this idea at first but i think it makes the soup way more interesting without a laborious "onion-chopping-and-browning" phase.

--cover with stock and about extra two inches. if you are using can/box stock you might want to dilute it so your soup doesn't get too salty.

--cook for about half an hour until the carrots are soft and the grains are done. cool.

--then blend/puree. if it is too thick, add more stock. if it is too bland, add some salt and pepper. if it is too delicious to be such a bootleg crisper-drawer-reject dinner, then yeah: i hear you.

tomato tart

This time last year, I had a real job. Hard to believe, I know, but I actually held down steady employment, learned how to make the most beautiful spreadsheets, and kept my shoes on for basically a whole day. It was a great job, and driving by the office on my way to get ice cream by the sound makes me crazy nostalgic for those days. The best, of course, were when I would set up the catering from the Sono Baking Company and hide the tomato tartlets in the back, hoping that there would be one left over for my lunch. These little buttery monsters inspired larceny in my soul, so you know they're good. And now the cookbook is mine all mine... thanks, Mom!... so my east-coast send-off has been filled with the treats I have grown to love (to steal).

Tomato tart

+Pate brisee (otherwise known as pie crust)

*So the recipe in the cookbook is basically the same as Martha's, probably because the author was the mastermind behind her baking cookbooks/shows/etc before moving to scenic south norwalk. You could also cruise smittenkitchen for more highly favored, bendy brisees, although frankly as far as pie crust is concerned I am more concerned with the easy flakey buttery quotient than the picture-perfection-despite-a-thousand-instructions quotient. BASICALLY. End up with ONE PIE CRUST.

+a tomato

+1/2 cup of fontina cheese

+a head of garlic

-Preheat the oven to 425, and toss in the whole head of garlic to roast. If you are pressed for time (because it will take like 45 minutes) you can always boil the garlic, a little trick I learned from my dad that makes me feel like a domestic goddess of roasty garlicy goodness every time I use it.

-Make a pie crust, if you zoned out during that informational stage and neglected to do so. Press it into a pie tin, and let it chill out while the garlic cooks. People think that pie crusts are mega-fussy, but I can personally attest that this wabisabi chef whipped this tart up in an hour so don't worry about the "chill for an hour blah blah" thing.

-Go harvest the sexiest tomato from your container garden and core and slice it pretty thinly. Also grate that fontina.

-Denude the garlic and smash it up with some olive oil, then rub that stinky goodness all over the bottom of the tart crust. Now half the cheese, the tomatoes in an attractive pattern, more cheese, salt, and pepper.

-Bake for half an hour to 45 minutes

Lily's first cookbook book jacket photo, right? I love it.

(green bean and "roasted" garlic) quiche!

I like to be out of the house, but if I am in the house, I would really like to be cooking and eating then cooking some more. So the last couple days, in the face of literally thousands of pages of reading for this summer, I have been cooking up a storm. First the curry, then the tortillas (too dry), then those snack cookies again, then THIS QUICHE. My goodness! I was worried about the green beans since I bought them the last week of class up at a farmstand in Irvine and those long days are now a distant memory. But they are still delicious! Then on Monday some buddies and I drove to the mountains-- it was beautiful and California is strange and at its best when not paved. Anyway, I bought some eggs from a sweet old lady just like in Wendell Berry's fantasy and got home and realized I already had a dozen eggs in the fridge. Oops.



I am not Gaston, I mean this time two years ago I wouldn't even EAT eggs. But I made a quiche and even though it used up less eggs than I thought it would, it was a much better way to pass the time of day than reading Diderot... More importantly, though, it was really, really, very good.

GREEN BEAN AND GARLIC QUICHE

+ A good couple handfuls of green beans, enough to make like 2 cups chopped
+ A whole head of garlic
+ 5 eggs (3 whole, 2 egg whites)
+ 1/3 cup milk/half&half/cream
+ Some cheese, 1/2 cup? I used some frozen cream cheese from a smoked salmon binge that I had been hoping would thaw okay and it worked fine. If I were you, though... gruyere!
+ A pie crust that you will make while the veggies are cooking (see below), or one from the store

- Oven to 425

- Steam those green beans until they are bright green and done to your liking. My liking is overcooked, so I'll just assume you know how to cook vegetables to your liking, right? I mean what is this. Sometimes these vegan blogs assume you don't know how to do ANYTHING RIGHT, and just because I don't doesn't mean you need to tell me how to cook a goddamn green bean I can google it ON MY OWN thanks.

- Now is a good time to make that pie crust (see below)

- OK now put those aside and refill your little pot and boil some more water while you separate the garlic cloves, you don't need to chop them or take the skins off. Just free them.

- Now boil the garlic cloves for like 10 until they are squishy. Squish them out of their skins by holding the bottom part.

- Meanwhile beat the eggs with the milk and cheese. Add the mashed roasted garlic and bite-sized chopped green beans. Salt and pepper that baby up right.

- Roll out that nice & cold pie crust and just kind of press it as best you can into a cake pan or a pie pan or a quiche pan or what have you. It can be a kind of Frankencrust, I am not going to call the crust police and no one will see it. Or if you went out and bought a pie crust, you know, that's cool too. Or if you are still doing Atkins and are SO EXCITED about crustless quiches like the rest of the internet... that's not so cool but also fine.

- Bake for 25 minutes until the crust is browned and it smells good and everything. Cool for a bit before eating it.

PIE CRUST
1/2 cups whole wheat flour
3 T ice water
1/3 cup butter/shortening

Cut in the fat, mix in the water, roll into a ball (add more water if you need to), chill (in the fridge).

braised fennel pizza

If you know me you know how I feel about pizza. Right? Right. Especially bougie pizzas with no tomato sauce. Brussels sprouts bechamel pizza. Sweet potato pizza. Mushroom goat cheese pizza. There is just nothing like fucking pizza.

Okay, so with that in mind. This is easily the best pizza I have ever made, and potentially the best pizza I have ever eaten. I KNOW! I know. I wasn't expecting it to be so good at all. I bought the fennel on a whim because I was thinking of my grandmother, who used to carry around sliced fennel and eat it daintily for lunch. After a couple weeks of zigzagging around my house and wishing I was somewhere else and sucking up energy from the universe, sitting quietly in one place and just being there and eating something so delicious was really awesome. Wow, holy California, did I just talk about energy? I think I did. But seriously, if this pizza can snap me out of break-up anomie, it's gotta be pretty delicious.

Fennel, shallot & gouda pizza

(makes one small pizza, like lunch for two with a salad or lunch for one with a lot of happy chewing sounds and a tummyache)

-pizza dough
-a bulb of fennel
-2 shallots
-a bunch of mild semi-soft cheese. Trader Joe's fans should be apprised of Panquehue, it is cheap as hell and pretty delicious, especially melted. Gouda, Havarti, or any other laid-back snack cheese would do the trick.

+Preheat your oven to as hot as it can go.
+Slice the fennel vertically and place the slices in a hot grill pan or skillet, get a good sear on them.
+Meanwhile mince those shallots
+OK now throw some stock into the pan and the shallots and let the fennel soften for a bit, like 10 minutes? They should be tender and barely sauce-y.
+Now toss your pizza dough out and put it on a baking sheet or in that same oven-proof skillet, spreading the fennel-shallots on top. Grate the cheese on top, too.
+Bake for 15 minutes or so, until the cheese is melted and the crust is brown.

vegan jambalaya

Veganomicon is amazing because they lump food into groups that make sense to me, like "eat something else with this or you will be cranky and malnourished" or "food that you can put in a bowl and eat for dinner". Lately I have been crushing on the latter category, trying to make mostly casseroles and one pot suppers and all that, saving precious time for watching TV or zoning out, apparently my top two pastimes. Otherwise "forgetting to eat then gorging on buffalo-chicken flavored pretzels" gets added to the list, which is fun sometimes but mostly not. I guess moms figured out this principle a long time ago with that whole casserole thing but I am just catching on, so bear with me. It also makes not eating meat take way less planning, which is a bonus if you are trying, you know, to go that route.

This recipe makes a lot of food, enough to eat until you get bored of it and some to freeze, too, which is awesome because instead of getting in the car and picking up a b-r-c burrito you can be like, wait, there are some rice & beans in the freezer. Cajun style.

OH P.S. 30 rock fans who got that reference who also love NPR... how weird was Alec Baldwin's Studio 360 guest hosting? I thought it would be so right, but it was so wrong.

Vegan Jambalaya
adapted from Veganomicon, I had to return the cookbook from Inter-library Loan (HA!) so I winged it and it turned out just fine.

+an onion, minced
+some seitan, cut into little pieces and browned in a pan
+a can each of red & white kidney beans
+a 28 oz can of peeled seeded blah blah tomatoes
+a couple cloves of garlic, minced
+2 cups rice, white or brown doesn't matter
+veggie broth
+a red pepper, if you like peppers. also celery, if you are willing to buy a whole mess of celery just to use one stalk in this recipe.
+"cajun seasoning" for tourists of the spice aisle, otherwise we are talkin thyme, marjoram, paprika, celery seed and cayenne, heavy on the thyme and paprika. About 3 T total.

-Fry up your onion, garlic, and optional pepper and celery. Keep stirring until everything is fragrant and translucent and soft.

-Throw a little veggie stock or wine in there to unstick whatever might be sticking, then add the rice, let it get oily/toasty. Rinse the beans in the meantime.

-Yeah, now add the tomatoes, the browned seitan, the beans, about 3 tablespoons of that cajun spice mix, and about 2 cups of broth.

-Stir it up, set the dial to simmer, and let the good times roll for about half an hour. Think about how gross crayfish are for a little bit, then about the glory that was muffuletta/mac and cheese for lunch day in high school, then about beignets, then about christmas beignets, then about vacation. See what I mean about the zoning out? Where were we?

-Check back in about 15 minutes, give it a stir to make sure the bottom isn't scorching. Then in another 15. Brown rice might take another 15 more, so don't let it burn.

-One-pot dinner success! Feel like the chair of the PTA but without all those kids involved.

hibernation pasta with lemon and root vegetables

This is probably the least "back-in-California" dinner in the world, but there you have it. I suspect this meal would make a lot more sense in snowy NY. Especially in a charming pre-war apartment owned by the home editor of real simple magazine. AH! I miss walking everywhere, and molding, and fireplaces... but hiking around in Torrey Pines and gawking at koalas is pretty great too. Anyway, here is a mid-winter feast:

A whole mess of root vegetables
olive oil
a lemon
pasta
nutmeg
parmesan cheese

Preheat the oven to 425, peel and chop a whole mess of root vegetables into sticks. I used two parsnips, five carrots and a sweet potato.

Roast your veggie sticks with a drizzle of olive oil, salt, and pepper for about 20 minutes. You can rattle the pan halfway through to make sure they don't get burned.

Boil some pasta, al dente, you know the drill.

Drain the pasta and throw it back in the pot, adding veggies until it is about 50-50. Toss with about a half-teaspoon of nutmeg, the zest and juice of one lemon, and some olive oil. Grate some parmesan cheese on top and you are ready to brave the cold. Or your nap.

bbq chicken pizza

Because I can't eat anything that's been cooked near lobster, family vacations to Maine can be a little trying, especially if you are on a tiny island 10 miles off the coast with no cars and 2 restaurants. Maybe in light of that, but probably in its own right, The Novelty is one of my favorite places to eat, ever. A small shingled building with trivial pursuit on every table dishing up pizza that is way better than it needs to be. And microbrews. And ice cream. Amen!

So the other day, when I got hit with a fierce craving for pizza that is 48 hours of driving and an hour on a boat away


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I decided to try it myself. And it was amazing, I have some more dough rising RIGHT NOW for an encore. If this seems like too much work, try to make the dough or bbq sauce individually-- they're knock-out and well worth the effort.

PIZZA DOUGH
(via Mark Bittman)
1 tsp instant/rapid rise yeast (although I think I used active dry and was fine, actually)
3 cups flour (2 cups white, 1 cup whole wheat is perfect)
2 tsp salt
1- 1 1/4 cup water
2 tbs olive oil

Combine half the flour with the salt and yeast. Now add olive oil and water, mix. Add the rest of the flour a little at a time. start kneading when it is too stiff to stir and keep kneading for about 10 minutes-- the dough should be moist and elastic. Let it rise for an hour or so-- if you keep the bowl covered in shrink wrap in the fridge, it can keep itself happy overnight. Cut the dough in half and use or freeze.

BBQ SAUCE
adapted from the molasses jar

1 cup ketchup
1/2 cup molasses
1/4 cup vinegar (I used white but apple cider would probably be better)
1/4 cup mustard
1 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp cayenne or red pepper flakes
1 tsp hot sauce

Mix in a bowl. Makes enough to store some in the fridge in a clean jar or bottle.


BBQ CHICKEN PIZZA
bacon
bbq sauce
onion
pizza dough
grated gouda cheese (optional, but delicious)
mozzarella or 3 cheese blend (like from a plastic pack)
shredded chicken (from a rotisserie chicken, or some chicken breasts that you poached, or pre-cut-into-strips Perdue style)

---Preheat the oven to 475.
---Fry half an onion and several strips of bacon in a pan.
---Throw some cornmeal down on a baking sheet, if you have it, then toss your pizza until it has a pretty thin crust.
---Spread some bbq on, then the bacon and onion, then the shredded chicken, then a bit more bbq sauce. Then the cheeses.
---Bake at 475 for about 15 minutes: until the crust is golden brown and the cheese is bubbly.

Quinoa with sweet potatoes, kale and mushrooms

It's tough to the be the queen of the nerds. Sometimes I get so carried away thinking about pedagogy or writing one page response papers that they take all night and all I want to eat are Trader Joes's tamales and I am convinced I don't have 10 minutes to throw some veggies in a pan. Sad, right? But whenever I actually make myself a balanced meal I feel like a million bucks. And my In N Out burger self hates to say it, but especially a balanced vegan meal. Especially since the best laid plans of yoga, surf, and cycle classes all went down the tubes this week and I think my body is letting me know if that if I am really going to be a sedentary nerd queen, I best not be eating three tamales in a sitting.

You may be thinking...quinoa?! But actually I was informed that the secret to non-horrible quinoa is cooking it in veggie broth. So I guess my trademark secret for cooking polenta is out. Yes folks, I may be dead before I'm 40, but I'll be damned if salt isn't the most amazing thing in this whole world. Anyway, here's the first real meal I've had in about a week: it was delicious and really, not that hard. And it makes enough for crazy leftovers, so get ready.

Here we go:

1 cup quinoa
two sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
a tub of white mushrooms, cut into slices
a bunch of kale, with the gnarly stems removed and cut into smallish pieces
red pepper flakes to taste
some minced garlic, salt, and pepper

Put the quinoa in a small pot with two cups of broth or a mix of broth and water. Turn the heat on medium and let it cook.

Meanwhile toss some oil in a pan and start cooking the mushrooms and sweet potatoes. After about 10 minutes (potatoes are getting tender and mushrooms are darker), add the minced garlic, salt, pepper, red pepper, and kale. At this point, my pan was at pretty much total capacity. I threw about a cup of water in (you could use wine) and put the lid on and hoped for the best. Check on it from time to time: my quinoa and veggies were done at about the same time.

Also a piece of kale got caught outside the lid and it made me want to make kale chips; maybe more on that later.

In other moderately culinary news, we started composting! And it's totally not working! Does anyone have under-the-sink-in-an-ikea-bin vermicomposting tips? The hot hipster on youtube made it look so easy.

palak paneer

Having just read bell hooks for the last few hours, I worry that cooking all these fake-o versions of international food is just "privileged acting out for anti-racist while folks." Am I over-worrying this? Oh dear. So take this recipe with this hyper-self-conscious grad student's apologies and a grain of salt. I didn't use the right spices, and I got the basic idea from my new internet friend, Manjula. Anyway, it was delicious and you should try it; imagine the sheer joy of using homemade cheese.

A bag of frozen spinach, thawed
Frozen peas, if you have them (thawed)
Half an onion, minced
A cup or two of paneer cheese, cut into cubes and fried in oil
A small container of Greek yogurt
About 3 tsp garam masala + more cumin, if you want
Pinch of salt
Chile powder or red pepper flakes to taste
2 cloves garlic, minced
About an inch of ginger, minced

--Fry your cheese and set aside.
--Now cook the onion until it is translucent, and add the spinach and spices and garlic and ginger. Cook until dark green and wilted. Taste to make sure the spices seem ok.
--Add the paneer and at the last minute, stir in the yogurt.

Chow down.

faux-roccan couscous

Well, RealSimple called this a one-pot lamb tagine, and it does have speed and balanced-meal-ness and one-pot-ness going for it. But apparently out here in la holla meat is crazy expensive and fish is cheap cheap cheap. It makes sense, but I was scandalized and cowtowed to the little voice within that says, "NO MORE MEAT." So I made this with seitan, and while I think that made it way less juicy, it also made it easier to freeze and transport to work, both good things. It probably does require a special trip to the grocery store to get some stuff, but again, knowing what you are going to eat in advance instead of eating SEVERAL CUPS OF HALF FROZEN COOKIE DOUGH is worth its weight in... uh, body fat. What have I done?!?!?

FAUX-ROCCAN COUSCOUS
adapted from RealSimple Magazine

* 3 cups of so of bite-size-chopped seitan bits (pre-sauteed until browned) OR 2 1/2 pounds of browned lamb cut into chunks, your choice
* 1 teaspoon paprika
* 1/2 teaspoon curry powder
* 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
* 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
* 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
(I didn't have paprika and used "red curry powder" instead of cayenne, don't sweat the spices if you don't have them but the cinnamon and ginger are key)
* a glug of olive oil
* an onion, sliced
* 4 carrots, peel and cut into little pieces
* 2 cloves garlic, minced
* about an inch of finely chopped fresh ginger
* zest of 1/2 lemon, grated and the juice of that lemon
* 1 32-ounce container low-sodium veg broth (or chicken, I guess)
* 1 10-ounce box couscous (Trader Joe's whole wheat couscous, will you marry me?)
* 3/4 cup black olives, cut into pieces
* 1/4 cup chopped dried fruit: I used cranberries and apricots


1. Fry up your onions with some salt and pepper and olive oil in a big ole' pan (seriously, BIG) or a pot until they are translucent and oniony, then add the carrots and cook until mostly tender, 15 minutes, let's say.
3. Throw the seitan bits in there, then add the spices, garlic, ginger, zest and lemon juice (just squeeze it right in there) and stir. Smells good, right?
4. Add the whole thing of broth and bring to a boil. Stir in the couscous. Take your pot off the stove and let the couscous cook for about 10 minutes. Stir in the olives and fruit bits and serve!

better seitan

Oh, snap! Doesn't our library look like a rocket ship about to take off? I think so, which is why I never spent any time there in case I get launched into space and it's like Rocket Man.



It's been too long, dear blog. My camera died again, but I managed to resuscitate it for a few shots from previous posts... I feel like text-only posts are kind of lame, but maybe they are less lame than watching videos of baby pandas having a physical exam at the zoo. Notice how I said videos plural. Yes.



Anyway, yeah, I made some food in the last month. No kidding, eh? My roommate baked 100 potatoes (literally!) for a BBQ and brought most of them home along with a good half-gallon of sour cream, so there were many hash browns and baked potatoes and borscht! Borscht that I ate for so many meals that I started to feel kind of like a Ukranian peasant... it was grim. Then I went to the bulk food store and bought all kinds of marvelous, dirt cheap grains with the intention of making all my food from the bulk aisles... before I realized that I was already all malrourished from 3 days of borscht consumption and eating nothing but bread was probably not a good call.

Anyway, I did buy vital wheat gluten and let me tell you, that stuff is so cheap. Most importantly, it taught me a way better way to make seitan than the previous seitan recipe on this site, for reals. But still with all the healthy-good-vibration feelings and ease-of-having-something-meaty-on-hand feelings.

Better seitan
Based on the recipe from the Post-Punk Kitchen

2 cups vital wheat gluten
a little less than 1/2 cup soy sauce
1 cup veggie broth (or cold water)
2 cloves minced garlic
1 tbs tomato paste or ketchup

+ the rest of the box/can of veggie broth.

Mix all those that stuff into a dough, then knead it for a few minutes. When you are bored, let it hang out for a sec while you fill a pot with COLD veggie broth + COLD water. If it is mostly water, throw in a little soy sauce. If it's mostly broth, you're all good.

Now plump your blob of fake meat dough (!) into a log shape and cut it into slices... put those in the broth and turn up the heat. After the broth boils, turn the heat down to a simmer and let it get all delicious for about an hour. Take it off the heat and let it cool.

To store: keep it in some of that brothy water in a tupperware in the fridge. I just had some that was fully two weeks old and it was delicious and I'm still here.
To use: take it out of the brothy water and wring it a little bit, then fry in olive oil until browned. Like, you know, meat. Seitan is delicious in sandwiches, tacos, stir-frys, etc. The stroganoff I made was nasty but I blame using a vegan recipe but not having any of the weird vegan stuff (yeast, arrowroot, wtf?) and just basically making some winey mushrooms with sour cream. Where was I? Oh yeah, seitan is mad versatile.

Strata

Delicious! Remember when I got all excited about frittatas and the possibilty of party sized eggs for dinner? This is like that in heaven. I'm trying to make all my own bread here to avoid sesame scares, save money and structure my seemingly endless "down time" -- I'm two for two weeks, more on that later, but the last loaf got stale before I could eat infinity smoked salmon sandwiches from impossibly cheap trader joes salmon. Damn, and now I want more. Anyway, strata! They use up stale bread and are also so filling and delicious, I am now convinced they will become a fixture of my new Californian cookery. Also that you can throw some "what do i do with these veggies?" veggies in the mix, or a not so healthy version with cream and sausage, if you want to go the heart attack be damned church social type route. The NYTimes first gave me the idea here- and this is basically the recipe I used. Lemme break it down for ya.

1 lb fresh (by the way, the la jolla farmers market was described to me as small and it's basically the size of union sq, I guess there's some farmland in between
those strip malls after all) tomatoes
Half a loaf of stale bread or a stale baguette
4 eggs
2 cups milk (skim worked fine)
Molto thyme and basil and garlic
Whatever cheese you have kicking around- I had mozzarella, times guru recommends gruyere

Slice the bread- if it's too hard to get a knife through, soak it in water and wring it out. Holy great recession, batman! Wringing bread??? It works, near with me.

Now toast the bread and rub both sides with a raw clove of garlic. Slice the tomatoes into, uh, slices.
Preheat the oven to 350.
Layer bread and tomatoes in a bakin sheet of pan or what have you, throwing some cheese and the leftover garlic in there, also salt and pepper, naturally.

Beat up the milk and eggs and herbs in a bowl, then pour that on top. Make sure it's all covered and kind of dense, especially if you are weird about eggs. Get all artistic with the top layer of tomatoes, while youre at it.

Pop that baby in the oven for 40-50 minutes, when it's done, it should be custardy and much more than the sum of its parts. My computer is in the shop so photo evidence forthcoming, but I've been chowing down in this for the past 4 meals and I'm ready to go back for a midnight snack... Now.

Pasta for a crowd

Back from Canada! During our layover at Miles' house in New Hampshire, there was a dinner party. And I ended up cooking! One of the guests had dropped the recipe off earlier in the day... I guess it's from the Presidio Grill in Tuscon. I thought it was pretty tasty. Especially if you have a hoard of bona-fide meat eaters showing up and you are like wahhhh, why did I throw a dinner party. Technically this serves 4 but we tripled the recipe for 13 people and only ate half. So. Yeah. Lots of food. Pretty tasty.

Pasta with Chicken, Basil & Peppers

1/4 cup olive oil
4 tbs (a few cloves) of garlic, minced
3/4 lb fettuccine
1 package of chicken breasts, cut into bite sized pieces
2 poblano peppers, seeded and julienned
3 tomatoes, seeded and diced
1/2 cup fresh basil, chopped
4 ounces of prosciutto, chopped
2 tbs butter
1/2 cup parmesan cheese + more

--Do all your chopping and dicing (times 3, can you imagine? it took hours). Pretend that you are an underpaid food stylist for the Food Network and grumble to yourself about how Emeril gets all the glory and you get all the burnt fingers from pepper oils.
--Heat up the oil; fry the garlic in the oil until everything starts to smell like garlic for days.
--Fish out the garlic so that it doesn't burn, keep the oil in the pan.
--Put on the water for the fettuccine. When it boils, start cooking the pasta.
--Fry up the chicken in the garlicky oil for about 5 minutes. YOu could throw on a little salt and pepper, but remember that there will be cheese + brined meats in the equation soon.
--Now fry up the peppers for about 3 minutes
--Now add the tomatoes. I like them cooked down, but you don't really need to cook them that long. Now basil! Now prosciutto! Now the garlic!
-- Check the pasta. Is it done? In either case turn off (or down) the heat on yer sauce and add the butter and the parmesan cheese. When the pasta is done, so are you! Serve it up to your posse and eat the leftovers all week.

mushroom and boursin tart

On a "success" note, this is one of the most delicious things I have ever made. A vast improvement over the already sophisticated, crowd favorite, mentioned in the first ever post on this here blog mushroom-goatcheese-pizza.


1 sheet puff pastry (or pizza dough, I suppose, although I have totally started going steady with puff pastry. It has my class ring and everything)
1 container white mushrooms
container of Boursin cheese (or goat cheese, or gruyere)
rosemary
thyme

--Let the puff pastry thaw while you heat a pan with some olive oil. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees, while you're at it.
--Slice the mushrooms. Button mushrooms are so amazing; they always look so forlorn and 1950s next to the fancy mushrooms at the grocery store, but once they're cooked I swear no one will complain. Don't be fooled: white button mushrooms are the little, cheap mushroom that could.
--Throw the mushrooms in a saucepan over medium heat and add salt, pepper, and thyme. Three pinches, let's say. Be patient. The mushrooms will brown and then start to cook down. If they start to dry out before shrinking, add some more oil. or wine.
--When the mushrooms have started to make their own gravy, add a few teaspoons of chopped rosemary. DOES THIS OR DOES THIS NOT SMELL LIKE HEAVEN?
--Cook a few more minutes until the mushrooms are juicy and soft. Patience + white button mushrooms = restaurant quality (honest!) sauce. Not only for this tart, but polenta or chicken too.
--Roll out the puff pastry so it's a little thinner and place in a baking pan/ sheet. Put the mushrooms and little crumbles of Boursin on top.
--Bake for 15-20 minutes until the pastry is puffed and golden brown. Slice and serve. It's delicious cold, too, but... it won't last that long.

"i'm kind of a big deal" stupidly easy zucchini tart

Classy lunch alert! Bringing a slice of this guy to the office just screams "I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany." Or for those doldrum days when you need to remind yourself that "you're kind of a big deal." Don't we all have those?

Set 2/3 a sheet of puff pastry on the countertop to defrost.... remember that time you made the cheesy poofs? Or a whole sheet. Whatevs.

Place whatever farm-fresh bound to be delicious thing suits your fancy on there-- for me, zucchini and summer squash that I knew would carry the day, thinly sliced, decoratively placed. Nice kosher salt and fresh ground pepper. 15 minutes at 400 and a simple, delicious, very, very, classy tart is all yours.

curried sweet potato pressed wraps

Moosewood calls these roti, but I am such a gringo that I can't really call them that with a straight face, especially since I forgot to steam the tortillas and I would never want to disgrace the real roti love of my life... roti roll. I did hand grind the spices in our mortar and pestle though-- if only to laugh at the fact that we have a mortar and pestle kicking around-- so that was kind of "authentic." But mostly, yeah, these are just delicious wraps.

Also, I think the fact that the authenticity or not of my sandwiches makes me think of Baudrillard means it's time for grad school. You hear that, grad schools?

Anyways, this is kind of a lot of prep for a goddamn sandwich, but the filling is extremely delicious and they were still good cold at work the next day. So try it out, y'all.

Curried Sweet Potato Roti

from the moosewood low-fat cookbook... kind of.

tortillas
handful of seitan strips, chopped pretty small (would be fine without it though)
3 sweet potatoes
half an onion
some garlic
half a lime (ok, you got me! a whole lime, put the other half in your corona)
pinch of each:
cardamom
mustard seeds
cinnamon
cayenne pepper
ginger (fresh, if you have it)
turmeric
cumin
salt
(if you are missing some of these, don't sweat. "caribbean tasting spices" could also include nutmeg or allspice. if all else fails, got any garam masala?)



Wash the skins, now microwave those sweet potatoes in a bowl for like 5-6 minutes until they're cooked... while you're doing that, chop and fry the onion and garlic.
Let the potatoes cool, then wrestle them out of their skins, stick in a bowl and mash with a fork, squeezing the lime juice in there. Now add the spices and the onion and seitan. Smells gooood.

Microwave the tortillas for a few seconds with a wet paper towel so that they are pliable, then fill up and stick 'em in a sandwich press, forman grill, or in a skillet with a smaller pan on top until they are kind of brown and quite warm. Get a load of Moosewood's suggestion: wrap in tin foil and heat in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes. Wacca wacca wacca.