double grilled pizza

Being on campus over the summer is weird. I expect it to have a kind of empty, hushed, library-late-at-night quality... but it doesn't. Sure, not everyone is here. But a lot of people are, and it's kind of bizarre to run into people in the hallways, or listen to tours breeze by, or stand and wait for the library elevator.

Grad school is funny that way-- like college (few responsibilities, learning) but also... not (revising a paper as soon as a draft is in, having an office, showing up at that office in July). So I'm reminding myself that it's summer by grilling pizza.

I just inherited my grill, so I need to make an active attempt to use it. So after making pizza last week, a lightbulb went off. Grill + pizza = grilled pizza. I have been prosthelytizing for everyone who has a BBQ to make this for years, so I decided to just do it. The days have been, somehow, packed-- reading and writing, biking here and there, errands, so by the time I was actually standing in front of the grill assembling the pizza, it was nighttime. Even without that sunshine-feel-good-beer-in-hand grilling thing, this pizza was a delight.

(thanks, http://billsharp.wordpress.com/2011/04/13/weber-grill/)

GRILLED PIZZA WITH GRILLED EGGPLANT

+an eggplant
+pizza dough (make or buy)
+tomato sauce (optional)
+cheese (also kind of optional, but delicious) (I used mozzarella and cheddar) (but seriously, a minty goaty cheesey version of this pizza would probably also rule).

1. Cut a big ole globe eggplant into wide flat slices, like for eggplant parmesan. Meaty! I may have "way crazy oversalted" my eggplant. Salt your eggplant if you have the skills to do with without making the inside of your mouth taste like the bottom of the ocean when you are done. By that I mean cover the eggplant with salt and set it in a strainer to firm up, if you dare. After about half an hour, rinse the eggplant and press firmly between paper towels.

2. Or just go ahead and marinate your eggplant slabs in olive oil and some hot red pepper flakes and maybe Italian-y herbs (oregano, thyme). Or maybe mint, garlic, and lemon for aforementioned babaganoush goat cheesey pizza? Somebody do this and tell me if it's awesome.

3. Hopefully your timing is better than mine and it is daytime. Fire up the grill. Bonus points if you are wearing some kind of apron. Double bonus points for beer in hand. Quadruple bonus points for pizza BBQ party (the two best kinds in one!) and echoes of laughter and the Beach Boys.

4. Grill the eggplant, about 5 minutes on each side. While you have a second, get that mise en place all ready to go. For example, uh, wipe yr hands and unscrew your sauce lid and make sure the cheese is already grated and all that.

5. Stretch the dough and lay it across the grates. Grill about 2 minutes on the first side, until it's bubbly.

6. Flip and assemble! Go go quick! Sauce, cheese, eggplant, cook until the crust looks golden brown and awesome. Carefully remove from the grill, pat yourself on the back for making such a festive weeknight dinner, rejoice: it's summer!

to pasta, with love

I have always defined living well as a kind of European sensibility-- fresh bread daily, runny cheese, scarves. Whenever I see women wearing blousy shirts and chunky silver rings, I dream about growing into one of those effortlessly chic women who decides to eat dinner and then there is delicious pasta on the table made up of strange pantry delights (uh, basically just my friend Alex). 

Breadcrumbs in pasta. There's the answer. I have long read recipes that call for breadcrumbs and I have always been like, why do that when you can add cheese? Because it's delicious and cheap, that's why. I made this pasta, then I googled the ingredients to see if I could have done one better (is that nuts? do other people do that?) and learned that Zuni Cafe in SF has basically the same pasta but with fennel seeds, too. Validation! Also, I want to go to the Zuni Cafe, or at least cook beautiful honest Berkeley-food without knowing it. I'm getting there. 

WEEKNIGHT PASTA

+ a few anchovies (the other secret to effortless elegance, according to Nigel Slater, anyway, is anchovies. Anchovies for all!)

+ a few cloves of garlic

+ capers (a tablespoon? two?)

+chile pepper flakes (a few shakes? to taste?)

+ olive oil. A lot of it.

+ a head of broccoli or cauliflower

+ half a pound of pasta

+ 1/2 - 2/3 cup breadcrumbs

-- Boil your pasta water and then add the pasta. Let it cook al dente and drain. Duh.

-- Meanwhile, lay your breadcrumbs on a baking sheet and toast at 425 for about 10 minutes, checking FREQUENTLY. 

-- Meanwhile, heat the olive oil. Smoosh in the anchovies until they make a paste and add the hot pepper flakes. If you need more oil, add more. 

-- Now add the broccoli and saute. Don't be afraid to walk away and let it get a little scorchy-- that's the good stuff. Add the capers towards the end, in enough oil so that they get crispy crunchy.

-- OK! Pasta into the sauce. Did you forget about the breadcrumbs in the oven? Don't! When you're ready to serve, sprinkle them on top. And there you have it. With a cold beer in your stickyhot-but-seriously-I-love-my-eat-in-kitchen? Maybe more Brooklyn than Paris, but not bad, at all.

Iceberg wedge salad

Have I mentioned lately how much I love blue cheese? A lot.

It's a newish thing, born out of my brother's love of buffalo chicken more than anything else. Increased buffalo chicken calzone consumption leads to increased blue cheese dressing consumption leads to picking over the cheese aisle for a D.O.P. gorgonzola at Whole Foods. Buffalo chicken is a gateway drug, you guys.

Anyway, a head of iceberg lettuce arrived in the CSA this week, which made this salad basically non-negotiable.

1) Fry up some bacon. And then crumble it up.
2) Make your dressing (serves one, so multiply if you are feeding the masses at your "Mad Men steakhouse dinner" themed dinner party. No? It is just you in your house but damn if these papers aren't going to get written without salads with bacon? Yep, that sounds about right.)

+A heaping spoonful or two of mayo or sour cream, or mayo AND sour cream
+A spoonful or two of buttermilk to thin (or milk with acid)
+A couple ounces of crumbled blue cheese (this is dinner, after all)
+Another teaspoon or so of wine vinegar, to taste
+Lots of salt and freshly ground pepper

Mix it up!

Now drizzle that over your wedge of lettuce with the bacon and some diced tomatoes, if you must have something with some kind of nutritious value. Oh man, it's good.

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.

Marcella Hazan's pasta sauce

Just learned that Mark Bittman's NYT column, the Minimalist, has been cancelled. He'll be moving on to write about food policy... he was already moving in that direction. Frankly, I should probably move in that direction, too. Food is Serious Business and Agrobusiness is a Big Problem and we should all Inform Ourselves. But I just want to maintain that there is something PLAYFUL about food, something that is fun and easy and sincere. I think about authenticity a lot-- both in terms of our sarcastic generation & queer performance-- and as much as I sneer when idiots start talking about how much they love HONEST food, I get it. Mark Bittman cooked "real" food and taught me how to cook it and love it. From crackers to cake, something about the Minimalist just said: "you can do it. just cook it from scratch." And "from scratch", my friends, has been the most meaningful activity in my life for the past five or so years. So goodbye, the Minimalist, and thanks for everything.

If I haven't made you watch this yet, please do.
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2008/02/21/dining/1194817099345/roasted-tomato-soup.html

Anyway. Speaking of "from scratch", there is no reason to buy jarred pasta sauce when you can make one that is this amazing! AMAZING. And easy. And honest. Don't feel bad about using canned tomatoes, even NPR says its ok.



+ An onion, peeled and cut in half BUT NOT DICED.
+ 1 28 oz can of nice tomatoes (Trader Joe's, San Marzanos, whatever). I cut mine up a little first but you could crush them with a spoon while they're cooking so whatever. Just don't lose the seeds because they are MAD UMAMI.
+ Half a stick of butter (Yeah, I mean, duh. I said AMAZING right? Well. There you go.)

--Put the ingredients in a pan and let it simmer for as long as you can stand it. 45 minutes?

Discard the onion. Toss it in a blender, if you are like, only interested in foods that bear no resemblance to things that grow in the ground. Proud, Bittman? See? I am "politically engaged." True confession though, one time I pureed this sauce because I missed the corporate consistancy of fake pasta sauce. So. Anyway, that's it! You're done! Turns out all it takes to make "honest food" is butter and patience.

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.

white lasagna for fall

If you know me in real life, you have probably heard me speak in hushed, wondrous tones about my undergraduate advisor. For brilliant-school-reasons, of course,



but mostly because she has this kind of magical aura of peaceful wisdom. The cardinal example in my mind: one time she made this a lasagna based on carrot puree and it was so good and strange and new and she was like "oh, yes, I learned how to make this on a fellowship in Rome" and I knew right then that I wanted to be an academic. Not for the international travel, but in order to have the free time and gentle disposition to cook mysterious dishes like lasagnas based on bechamel. After years of fantasizing about this carrot lasagna, I decided to copy it with the sweet potatoes that were kicking around my house. If you make your own ricotta, this is incredibly cheap and delicious.

SWEET POTATO LASAGNA


+ 3/4 lasagne noodles (not no-boil)
+ ricotta cheese (a tub, or however much a half-gallon of milk makes)
+ 2 sweet potatoes
+ 4 cups of milk
+ cracked black pepper
+ parmesan cheese, grated (1/2 a cup? As much as you have or want)
+ a clove of garlic, minced
+ 5 T butter
+ 4 T flour

-- Boil the lasagna noodles until al dente then fish them out and try to lay them on paper towels so they don't stick to each other. YEAH RIGHT.

-- Microwave or bake your sweet potatoes until they are done, then take the skins off and mash them.

-- Preheat the oven to 375.

-- Now start making a bechamel sauce. Yes! Maybe this is old-hat to "real cooks" but to me they are just kind of magical, kind of like the carrot lasagna itself. One time my friend Adam's mom made us Hollandaise sauce in a hotel suite and my heart just melted. Strong, brilliant women cooking elegant food with love makes me so happy to be alive.

-- Anyway it's totally not hard, even though it does seem kind of mysterious. Heat up the milk with garlic in the microwave or another saucepan. Melt the butter in a pot on the stove and add the flour a little bit at a time, whisking until it's smooth. Let it get kind of toasty and brown, about 6 minutes. Then add the hot milk a little at a time, again making sure everything is smooth and not doughy or gross. Once you have added about half the milk you can just dump in the rest, but keep whisking (or stirring. I don't have a whisk actually. Bootleg) Let it simmer/cook for 10 minutes, stirring & making sure that the milk doesn't get cruddy on the bottom. It should look really thick and creamy, which is also kind of awesome given that you can make this with skim milk. Then remove from heat and season with salt & pepper & nutmeg. I think a lot of black pepper really makes it. Foux de fa fa, you made a classic white sauce!



-- Now layer the lasanga noodles, the mashed sweet potatoes, the cheeses, and the bechamel sauce in a pyrex or whatever. Bake for about 45 minutes until the top is bubbly and your house smells like melted cheese in the best possible way.

dutch baby (baked pancake)

Oh my sweet goodness, where has the dutch baby been all my life?

Actually, here's a story. The first time I almost went to school in Chicago, I dragged my family out to visit on the train for spring break. There were a lot of brisk walks and Greek classes and pretentious conversations... The upshot of the whole thing was hanging out with my friend from the suburbs and bumming around and eating at the original pancake house. So, so, so very good. Google now tells me that there are a bagillion franchises-- even one in the S.D.-- but at the time it seemed like a magical, midwestern unicorn of a restaurant.

Oh, right, but the story. So I ate a dutch baby at the original pancake house and it was the first time I had had such a thing and it so filling and delicious that I took my bacon with me in a napkin. And stuck it in my parka pocket. Obviously! Later, we are in the fake coal mine in the museum of science and industry and a bunch of other tourists are like, why does it smell like bacon? And the tour goes on and all of a sudden the whole tour is laughing and wondering about the bacon smell. And that's when I realized that carrying around meat in your pocket is not "what normal people do."

Anyway, I just loved everything about this: the fact that it was easy to make after hours in the car, watching it puff in the oven, nibbling at the sides while standing over the stove waiting for it to cool off. The custardy texture in the middle. Eating something covered in powdered sugar for dinner. Yes indeed, the dutch baby is perhaps the new king of breakfast-for-dinner for one or two people (or breakfast for breakfast! or breakfast for dessert!) which we all know is the best meal in the world. Come to think of it, why don't people have breakfast-for-dinner parties more often? It is basically the easiest and cutest thing. Invite me!

DUTCH BABY

* 3 tablespoons butter, melted
* 1/2 cup flour (whole wheat is delicious here)
* 2 T (heaping? yes I think so) sugar
* 1 T vanilla
* 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
* 1/2 cup milk, room temperature
* 2 large eggs, room temperature
* Lemon and powdered sugar, or some berry compote, or nutella. Or. Mmmmmmm.

Preheat oven to 425. Let the eggs and milk hang out and room temperature-ize for as long as you can stand it. Melt the butter.

Oh yeah, you better be rockin some kind of ovenproof skillet. Scoop out 2/3 of the butter (that's 2 tablespoons for those of you low-scorers. Oof, SAT joke! That hurts. I'm embarrassed for myself) and put it in yer pan and let that heat up in the oven.

Mix up the rest of the ingredients, butter last so it has time to cool. I am talkin about some real deal mixing. Like in a blender or food processor or with a mixer. Or with a whisk I guess. Take a full two minutes even with a machine to really get the batter all congenial.

Now pour that into your pan (hot hot hot!) and bake for 25 minutes, until it is puffy and golden-brown around the edges. Serve with something delicious, like powdered sugar and a squeeze of lemon. So yuuuuummy: tastes like living the dream.

(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.

Huevos Rancheros

It only occurred to me last week that you can buy enchilada sauce at the store. That epiphany came pretty much at the same time as the one where I realized that enchilada sauce is "that red stuff that makes Mexican food taste like Mexican food." Which is to say outrageously delicious. My life just hasn't been the same since.

So previous huevos rancheros attempts weren't so good, and I would have to go get them at the only Mexican place in town, where they happened to be the cheapest menu item at 12 bucks. TWELVE! Gah. If you have the foresight to keep some refried beans and enchilada sauce in the house, this is the easiest, fastest, most delicious breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Huevos Rancheros

Heat a (small corn) tortilla in a pan, spread on a layer of refried beans and some shredded cheese. In the other side of the pan, fry an egg to your liking. Plop the fried egg onto the tortilla and pour some enchilada sauce on top.

Repeat as many times as you like. Serve with salsa.

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.