green gazpacho

Whenever someone near me on a plane orders tomato juice, I always wonder. When did they start drinking tomato juice? Was there some kind of pro-tomato-juice propaganda circulated during the war that makes grandparents love it? Are some people just more virtuous? Is it a Southern California savory-juice thing?

But last weekend we ended up with triple the normal amount of produce. Which meant triple the sprouts. A visit to a local sprout farm (my day job?) instilled a sudden craving. All of a sudden, growing sprouts didn't seem like a weird thing for other people's moms, the ones who served carob milk and listened to NPR... it seemed kind of fun. Like a science experiment. I crunched on them as they grew-- from lifeless white beans to green-tasting still-white beans. I sat writing all day, and all day the sprouts grew. All watched over by machines of loving grace! It was great-- I felt like the Dr. Frankenstein of healthy snacks. But then, what are you gonna do with all those sprouts? I don't even like sprouts. I made a salad. It did not look appetizing. Kedar's suggestion was to blend it-- probably the only thing that sounded worse than eating a salad with such a sprout to cheese ratio (a lot to zero). But then, it's hot out. Why not?

Most of the recipes were for throwing spinach into sweet smoothies with bananas, which turn out a kind of brown-green-grey and probably deserve their reputation. Green smoothie lovers, email me! Spring to the defense!

We figured that going full-savory was the only way to save dinner. Years of watching people drink virgin bloody mary mix and not gag supported the hypothesis. Into the blender with the salad: an onion, a head of romaine lettuce, bzz bzz. Half a cucumber. Handful upon handful of sprouts. Bzz Bzz. Pickled garlic. Oregano, I think.

I was skeptical. It tasted ok.: then salt salt salt, three tomatoes, another tomato, two hot peppers from the farm-- anchos? On top: some roasted squash seeds from a hopeful transition to fall-flavored root vegetables.  I started thinking of it as green gazpacho. I imagined myself saying the mere phrase "green gazpacho" while wearing a maxi dress and drinking white wine. Nigella Lawson was there. We discussed her weight loss. And I felt virtuous. Vegetables in a blender! I get it.

plum pie

"If there is one thing Lily is good at, it's making desserts."-- said yesterday, to me, and I guess its true. I spent my formative, learning-to-cook years with above average cooks, and so I think nothing of cowing to a late-night desire for cookies with making cookies or coming home to cupcakes. Frankly, I always thought of myself on the lazy side of dessert development. A cookie here, a birthday cake there. And yet, in grad school, I am the one bringing the pie.


Last time, I overstepped my bounds: lemon-meringue, which was intended as a birthday gift and-- with its watery rim around the edges-- seemed to capture the melancholy of a grey beach birthday in February. This time, the fruits themselves let the sunshine in. 


I think one time, a couple years ago, Mark Bittman suggested the same move in a column: only make a top crust for a pie. Now, Mark Bittman and I share one capital failing: we are no great lovers of pie crust. It must be truly exceptional to inspire me to love it more than sugary baked fruit... and usually my penchant for subbing whole wheat flour or living where it is always hot but then not freezing the butter means that my pie crust, well, isn't. THIS crust, though, is so unfussy, so shortbready, so citrus-zesty! Kedar, no great maker of pies, started hopping around: can we put this on an apple pie? What if we put this crust on top of a pumpkin pie? I went all Marion the Librarian-- "no, because apple pies need a bottom crust because... uh... and this and a bottom crust wouldn't work, because, uh... pumpkin pie has a bottom crust and no top crust, well, because, well..." And as I started to hear what I was saying, I realized, well, there is no good reason to say no to this pie crust.

MY NEW FAVORITE WAY TO MAKE PIE
(in this case, plum-strawberry.)
(originally from Smitten Kitchen, originally originally from Nigel Slater)


Crust:
+ 7 T butter, at room temperature (YOU HEAR ME! ROOM TEMPERATURE! take that, food processor! take that, making room in the freezer for my butter! Take that, crackery piecrusts! Your days are numbered!)
+ 1/2 cup sugar
+ zest from an orange, or half an orange, or a lemon, I suppose, depending on your filling fruit.
+ an egg
+ 1 cup plus 6 1/2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
+ 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
+ 1/4 teaspoon (kosher) salt

-- Oven to 350. 
-- Cream the butter, sugar, and zest with a stand-mixer or hand-mixer or your awesomely-honed-thanks-to-biking-to-school forearms. 
--Now add that egg.
-- Now add the dry stuff and beat until combined. Conglomerate it into a ball, cover with plastic wrap, and freeze while you prep the...


FILLING


+ 2 lbs of fruit: we used a pound of plums and a pound of strawberries.
+ 2 T sugar
+ a shake or two of cinnamon
+ a squeeze or two of whatever citrus fruit you just zested

-- Butter a pie dish-- or, because this has some crumble-like qualities, a crumble dish. Otherwise known as a lasagne dish. Otherwise known as a casserole. I once got into a long supersophistic conversation about what makes a casserole-- isn't it anything baked in a casserole dish? Would that make this pie a casserole? Sure. I just like saying casserole. UH, just go out and buy a pie dish, it's freaking summer and this pie crust makes me want to eat a pie a day.


-- Toss all the ingredients together in the dish.


-- Roll out that now-chilled dough. If you asked for Silpats for Christmas and now have three because everyone you know got you one (uhhh they are oddly expensive you guys)... roll out the dough between two Silpats! No sticking! Otherwise, roll it out on your marble pastry counter. Or your other counter, with plenty of flour. 


-- Place the crust on top of the pie and crimp the edges into the double-thick parts you will fight over, fork in hand. Good luck.


-- Bake for about 40 minutes. If you want to brush the top with cream or milk and sprinkle with sanding sugar, good for you-- the crust might ripple and tear and bubble with fruit juice anyway, so I figure it has enough rustic charm as it is. Or late-Saturday-night-in-a-now-broiling-apartment-because-of-the-oven urban charm. Either way, I demolished this pie.

persimmon chips

Dudes, I have had this blog for four thanksgivings. That's crazy right? That's like 100 in internet years.

Montreal was lovely-- I love that feeling when your legs get cold under your pants, I love the creative energy that crackles in the air of brickbuildinged cities, I love being alone in a crowd of people that isn't speaking a language that I know. It's exhilarating to walk for miles and stop at museums and bookstores and coffeeshops but by the end of the week, I was ready to get back to San Diego.

Driving my commute this morning, I was wearing a T shirt and the wind whipped through the car and the stereo loud and the palm trees against the sky and all of the cinematic cliches about living in Southern California are true true true. WE'RE THE KIDS IN AMERICA.



I am so thankful to be here. I'm still able to see the vision of the future I had when I started this blog, the vision where I would stay cold-nosed and in-love and on the Upper West Side forever. But, you know, I am starting to believe that you end up where you are supposed to end up. I love that my life is quiet and stable enough to buy a farm share. There have been lots of persimmons lately. I usually turn them into bread, but instead I've been amassing a hoard for the past few weeks in the fridge. Today I made persimmon chips-- they could just as easily be apple-- and man are they good. Happy thanksgiving, everyone!



Oven to 200 degrees.

Slice a cross-section of yer crisp fuyu persimmon or apple. If you have a mandoline, use it! If not, knife skills! I found that the ones that only went halfway across and slipped got stuck to the sheet and were wasted, so I would err thicker-but-all-the-way-through with a long cooking time. Place on a baking sheet or silpat, if you are fancy.

Cook until the slices are dehydrated... the edges will curl and each chip will taste carmelly and mysterious and, unsurprisingly, like fruit leather. If the thicker slices just tastes like chewy hot fruit, leave them for a bit longer. Took me about two hours.

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.

cabbage gratin

I feel like side dishes are for a different demographic. Like for people with a spouse. Or for people with regular potlucks. Or for professional chefs. People who use menu planning apps. Mothers. I don't know: somebody that is not me. These last few months I have amassed a hat collection so that I can stop showering, for chrissakes.



Is this just a function of grad school? A function of grad school-cum-secret-life-as-an-artist? Am I going into slob remission? Being on top of things is hard.


(hat tip to Hyperbole and a Half for nailing this phenomenon so hilariously)

So it's not really fair that I fault this technique for braised cabbage/bokchoy/fennel for being a side dish: I've started eating it over pasta for lunch and it's delicious, even if it doesn't have that gold star casserole-y "take this to school every night to eat at rehearsal" goodness. Every time I don't know what to do with a green thing and I braise it I surprise myself with my culinary savvy. Especially given that cabbage is mega-cheap, this tastes surprisingly sophisticated.

+Chop a head of cabbage (or bok choy or fennel or a combo) thin and saute it in some butter with some chopped scallions or leeks, something oniony without the hassle and time of onions. For maybe 10 minutes, until the cabbage is wilty and maybe a little brown.

+Add a cup or two of good stock-- you know, that you made from the peels in your freezer.

OPTION 1: Simmer until the cabbage is soft and the liquid is mostly gone. 15-20 minutes?

OPTION 2 (via Orangette): Simmer for just a minute, then cover the pan with tin foil and bake in the oven at 350 for about half an hour. When it seems like the cabbage is soft and the liquid is mostly gone, take off the tinfoil and sprinkle the top with breadcrumbs and a soft cheese. Increase the temp to 375 and bake until the crust is toasty.

avocado fries

I love the superbowl because it is a whole holiday devoted to snacks. I actually watched the game yesterday, but that was kind of incidental to my love of beer and dips. Ha! And after several aforementioned beers found myself EXPLAINING THE RULES to someone who didn't understand field goals. Not sure if that proves that I am a hilarious con artist or was secretly listening all those times I was on the receiving end of the same conversation.

I have to say, the classy-trashy-snack-quotient was a little low at this party. So these avocado fries, while no taquitos and totally coals to Newcastle in the "fats" department, fit the bill. Also because I joined a CSA and-- while I feel downright beatific, if sick of doing dishes-- don't have a say over what veggies cross my path. Like avocados, which are slightly chancey in the mouth-hives department as guacamole.

A little googling later, fried avocados from just down the road at La Jolla Shores. I would say "small world", but really it's like "small world in which avocados are foisted on you and you need to come up with recipes for them" which is basically a statement bougie enough for only La Jolla.

AVOCADO FRIES
from Sunset Magazine from George's at the Cove

+2 avocados, pitted and peeled and sliced into fry shapes
+ a handful of flour
+ salt
+ pepper
+ oil for frying
(classy edition: 1 beaten egg, panko flakes)

-- Dredge your avocados in flour, salt, pepper. Maybe some garlic powder or chili powder? I never really eat avocado so the plain taste is exciting enough in my world. If you are going to be all "ew, fried avocados are sooo bland" like all the commenters on myrecipes.com maybe you should spice them up a little.
-- If you want to really do it up right, then dip them in egg and coat in breadcrumbs. I don't usually have panko/breadcrumbs/such things in my house, plus my "getting fry coatings to stick" skills are pretty limited, so I just skipped it.
-- Heat up about an inch of oil in a frying pan. If you have a fry thermometer, you want about 375. If you don't, you want it "really hot."
--Fry slices for about a minute until golden brown and crispy-on-the-outside-looking.
--Serve while hot

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.

no duh zucchini

I don't know why, but the zucchini I just made was a freakin revelation. I swear if this was on the side of my plate at a bougie farm-to-table restaurant I wouldn't raise an eyebrow. You know how their side vegetables are always just unreal? These were like that. Here is what I did differently than normal, maybe you can recreate the magic that just happened. Or maybe you know how to make zucchini taste like this normally, in which case, hat tip!

CUBES, not slices. Pretty big chunks.
SALT IT. for like half an hour, then drain out the water and rinse and dry
BARELY ANY OIL. i just used what was left in the pan after cooking some other veggies
FIRST LOW HEAT, then HOT. i didn't start out with a super-hot pan, but after it hadn't browned after a few minutes i pumped it up and let them get kind of brown/charred/grilled tasting.

Over & out,
America's Test Kitchen

persimmon tea cake

Well, before making this cake the only thing I knew abut persimmons was from this video:



Suffice it to say that I was skeptical. As soon as I bought some at the market and did a little online research, I became even more skeptical. How to tell if my persimmon is Fuyu or Hachiya? Was I going to poop my pants if I did chose wrong? Is this like some kind of whack-ass farmer's market Indiana Jones and the Quest for the Holy Grail? Well, anyway, I think I screwed it up and used the squat kind you're supposed to use in salads (Fuyu), the good news is that it was delicious. I ate half the loaf in one day. Seriously.

The recipe comes from Beard on Bread, kind of, except I halved the recipe but forgot to halve the sugar. I then added more flour, but make no bones about it: this is a cake. A cake that you eat for breakfast. Because you are a grown-up.

Persimmon tea cake

2 1/2 cups flour (I started with 1 3/4 but the batter was too thin because I screwed up and added some whole wheat until it looked like zucchini bread batter. 2 1/2 cups seems right. Use some whole wheat flour at your discretion)
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp nutmeg
shake of ginger and cloves, too.
3 persimmons, chopped up (I'm pretty sure that if you're cooking them, it doesn't matter if they are the crunchy Fuyu or mushy Hachiya kind)
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup (one stick) melted butter
1/3 cup water (or bourbon or cognac-- I didn't have these)
Optional: some dried cranberries or raisins

Preheat the oven to 350 and butter a loaf pan

Dump all the dry ingredients in the bowl and mix in the wet ingredients.

Cook for an hour, mine took an extra 15 minutes or so.

Curl up some tea and a good book. Or a not so good book that's due tomorrow. Any book will do.

"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.

Bootleg rhubarb-cherry cobbler... ish

Actually what this baby turned out to be is more like a tangy, upside-down corn bread. After ix-naying the idea of a pie (post-work and then post-tutoring, it's 9 and I still haven't eaten dinner yet but the rhubarb was going bad and once you let inertia set in....) I decided to make something a little simpler. Also something I could eat with good conscience for breakfast. My boyfriend's house is notoriously lacking in baking staples (witness the bread made with pastry flour that ended up like a giant, sad biscuit), so I ran into the quickee mart while getting gas to grab some Jiffy corn muffin mix and sugar on the way. Bootleg, but what the hell. I am a busy lady. That's the alibi, anyway.

Chopped up the rhubarb (5 stems or so) and threw in some frozen sour cherries for good measure. I love sour fruits, but if you want to go sweeter, a pear or strawberries would go nicely. Toss it in a baking dish with some sugar (I used not a lot-- 1/4 cup or so. Up to 1/2 cup would not be ridiculous) and some flour to soak up the goopy mess. As a consistency whack job, I do not tolerate goopy mess, so I added probably 3 tablespoons of flour. Not really necessary.

Then mix up the muffin mix with an egg and some milk. I added more milk than the box called for (probably half a cup) so that the batter could be in the oven long enough for the fruit to cook. Oh. And I added some sugar (a couple tablespoons) to the corn mix too which was a good call because your cobbler ends up being like 3/4 bread to 1/4 fruit. So a little sweet is good. Pour this on top of the fruit. Bake at 400 for like half an hour. While totally not a cobbler, it is a good breakfast concoction and the sour fruit moistens up the cornbread and the cornbread soaks up the goopy fruity mess. Symbiosis! With Greek yogurt and honey, I actually am a big fan of sour-fruity-cornbread for breakfast. Try it out, teamola.

no duh beets

The Minimalist this week has roasted beets! I ate these at least every other day last year-- it is the only way to make beets. I thought that it was so "the only way to make beets" that this was a no-duh recipe, but the Times published it so. There. Maybe these aren't part of your life yet, and you will thank me forever.

At the (farmer's) market, look for a bunch of beets that are about the same size.

Take yer beets and cut off the greens. Don't throw them away! Wash and boil/steam them for 10 minutes or so, then fry them up with some garlic. Delicious!

Preheat the oven to 400. Hot!

Rinse the beets, then wrap them up in tinfoil.

Stick them on a baking sheet and put them in the oven.

Do your homework, putter, whatever for about an hour. The beets should be soft. Are they soft?

Yum. Stick tomorrow's beets in the fridge as is. Quel convenience! For dinner: rub off the skin, then serve with goat cheese or (if like Mark Bittman you are sick of the beet&goat cheese monopoly) a squeeze of lemon and some rosemary.

fondue stuffed squash

Well team, it's almost time for that most food-related of holidays. I also fare pretty well on the allergy front: except for some nutty stuffings and the occasional a-hole who brings pecan pie, thanksgiving dinner is pretty lily-proof.

And while I actually pretty much just gorge myself on dad's stuffing and cranberry sauce and squash and call it a night, Thanksgiving has kind of a bad rep of being "food sensitivity" unfriendly.

And so this entry begins the list of delicious nut-free soy-free vegetarian fall-like dishes... add your own ideas or "lily's test kitchen" possibilities in the comments.



This recipe comes with a book review! I just finished Tender at the Bone, Ruth Reichl (NYT food editor and editor-in-chief of Gourmet) 's memoir. It's one of those brilliant "not-mentally-taxing-but-not-trashy" books that are kind of hard to find. Because while none of the stories involve her doing anything too noteworthy, her writing is big fun and the stories are all about food. Which makes me happy because everything in my life is kind of about food, too.

After cooking my fondue-stuffed squash featured in this month's Gourmet, I got to the part of the book where she invents the dish in college. Something about the double whammy of reading about the delicious lunch I had just made warmed my heart.

Fondue-stuffed squash

QUICK AND DIRTY (serves one or two. really just one if it's your meal):
a squash (acorn! or your favorite, but round is good)
a crusty roll
fondue in a box



Preheat the oven to 450.
Slice the roll and toast it well.
Cut the squash 3/4 and 1/4, so that it is like a bowl with a small cap on top, scoop out the seeds and create a good sized hollow.
Layer the toast and fondue generously inside the hollowed out squash, put the cap back on, cook for an hour or so until the squash is tender. Now eat it!


FANCY PANTS TABLE PRESENTATIONAL (for a crowd)
a pumpkin
a sliced baguette (probably will be leftovers, just... eat them!)
1 cup cream
1 cup veggie broth
pinch nutmeg
glug white wine
2 1/2 cups each, Gruyere and Emmenthal

You get the drill: 450, toast the bread and prepare the pumpkin.
Mix the nutmeg into the cream.
Layer the toast with the cheese, broth, cream and wine. It will all get copacetic inside the oven, so don't fret too much about mixing.
Cook for about an hour and a half until the pumpkin is soft and your kitchen smells like heaven.