Magpie Eats....gluten free

The Great Meal

2011-11-19T09:15:00.001-08:00

The other morning I woke up laughing at myself after having my first ever Thanksgiving dinner anxiety dream. I have those dreams all the time: the ones where I am at the beach when I am supposed to be at work or the ones where I realize it's finals week and I've forgotten to go to class all term. In this particular dream it was three in the afternoon and my kitchen was in its everyday state of chaos when the doorbell rang and it suddenly occurred to me that there should be a nearly-done turkey in the oven and a fridge stuffed with food and where were the pies?

There are plenty of things going on in my life right now to stress me out but you know what? Thanksgiving dinner simply isn't one of them. And that's why I was able to wake up laughing.

It feels pretty calm this year. We will be spending the holiday with good friends. I am much more relaxed about cooking without gluten. There will be no family drama, no need to measure up to the checkout line magazines' hyperbolic BEST THANKSGIVING EVER. With wine and good food and a crackling fire I predict a very fine holiday indeed.

Of course my menu isn't 100% set in stone just yet but I can pretty much plan on the following:

spiced nuts, good cheese, and maybe a light Campari-based cocktail, something like Nigella's Seasonal Breeze but cut with fizzy water
A simple roast turkey (I fussed around with brining last year and was not impressed)
Some variation on this stuffing. I'll pick up my GF bread from Happy Campers tomorrow.
Cranberry sauce
Cranberry Orange Relish
Mashed potatoes. With lots of butter and cream.
Tzimmes
Some kind of green salad with dark red lettuces, pears, hazelnuts, and a nice vinaigrette
Crustless pecan pie (but I'll sub maple syrup for some of the sugar)
chocolate meringues
maybe one more dessert (hey, it's a holiday!) with fruit

I hope all of you reading this will enjoy a lovely, relaxing holiday with good food and lots of loved ones.

Meal Plan Monday

2011-11-13T22:01:00.001-08:00

A busy week but we have lots of autumnal goodness in this week's meal plan: squash and sweet potatoes and cranberry gingerbread. Lots of slow cooking and more meat than I'd like but it will do.

Uppma Update

2011-10-28T15:12:00.000-07:00

One of the many things I've given up since going gluten free was uppma, a delicious savory combination of wheat semolina, veggies, spices, and just all around goodness. It's a hard one too describe....savory breakfast cereal with veggies? I didn't get it until I tried it at which point I was hooked and made many versions of it, preferably topped with thick yogurt and a dollop of crazy-hot cranberry chutney which I realize sounds weird but it is as close to heaven as things get for me.

I've missed uppma so much. I make a lot of poha which is kind of similar but doesn't quite hit the same note for me. The last time we visited a local Indian restaurant for a buffet lunch I excitedly loaded my plate with their tasty uppma. My husband looked at me like I was crazy. I think I was, just for a minute there. I slowly scraped my gluten-laden uppma onto his plate but nothing on the buffet was all that exciting to me (until I hit the chili pakoras anyway).

I've been sick all week and have spent way too much time sitting on my butt and not being able to taste anything. Today it occurred to me that I had everything I needed for an uppma fest including....rice farina. Well, why not?

There were cranberries in the freezer so I started up some of that chutney while I toasted the farina. Then I proceeded as usual: frying cashews in coconut oil, sizzling curry leaves*, dal, and mustard seed, sauteing a chunky red bell pepper and a pile of onions (and only one little hot chili so my husband could partake-the heat is in the chutney!). I tossed the toasted farina back in and gradually added boiling water risotto-style until the cereal could take no more without getting gummy, added a handful of peas from the freezer, and topped the whole thing with cilantro and the fried cashews. I served it, as I love it, with Greek yogurt and a hefty dollop of cranberry chutney and I am one happy girl today.

My slightly revised uppma recipe can be found here in all its gluten-free glory. It's another step, but don't forget the chutney!

Image by adaduitokla via Flickr* Curry leaves, the only truly unusual ingredient here, can be found fresh at any Indian market. I have also found them in the occasional Vietnamese/SE Asian market. They don't taste like "curry" at all. They have a mysterious, slightly medicinal flavor that is impossible to reproduce otherwise so do try to find them as they add something quite special to South Indian dishes. When I locate them I buy a big bunch, rinse and shake them well, strip off the leaves, and tuck them into a freezer-bound ziplock bag. Press the air out of the bag and they will keep for quite some time. They are generally tossed into hot oil with mustard seeds so they can go straight from freezer to skillet.

Meal Plan Monday

2011-09-20T08:00:00.000-07:00

I do not for the life of me understand why it is that the simple practice of meal planning is such a difficult habit for me to adopt. When I plan my week's meals I save time and money and avoid a fair amount of stress and even so I can't always make myself sit down and do it.

But this week I did so instead of beating myself up about all the times I didn't get to it I will try to focus on what I did manage: a well balanced, healthy, economical set of meals that might actually go ever well with every member of this extremely picky family.

You can take a peek right here.

One way I am saving money these days is by not buying organic. I know, I know, but right now it makes sense. Highly sprayed crops like conventionally grown strawberries, celery, and potatoes don't make it in to my shopping bags ever but I feel pretty safe buying non-organic melon, citrus, and onions. I make my decisions using the Environmental Working Group's Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce. Someday (soon, I hope!) things will turn around and I can buy all organic all the time but for now, this is good information that's helping me stretch our food dollars just a bit further.

Has this stinking economy hit your home? How are you eating well for less?

A fine pickle (or two)

2011-09-18T20:03:00.000-07:00

I'm kind of new to pickles.

Of course I've had my share of kosher dills but I don't generally love them so I haven't explored the pickle world in great detail.Until this year.

It started with too many zucchini.

Of course.

Who knew zucchini made such fantastic pickles?

Now you do. Every recipe I found online appeared to be some version of the zucchini pickles from San Franciso's Zuni Cafe. I figured it must be pretty good so I tried this recipe and was absolutely hooked. A warning, though. Let them sit a week or so. If you try them right away you will be disappointed but a little rest takes away the harshness of the turmeric and brings everything together beautifully. I am pretty sure that anyone who tries these will find them absolutely delightful.

I've also been making pickled jalapenos which I know not everyone finds delightful. But that's ok. I am the only chile-head in my house so I keep things like this tucked away in the 'fridge just to make things interesting. I made two quarts last month and could not stop eating them and then my dad came over and between the two of us we went through all of them in no time. Then I made a big batch for friends in California. And then I finally made more for myself today, tweaking the recipe just a bit. I think I've done enough tweaking to call this recipe my own. Just please, please, please, wear gloves when you slice up the jalapenos or you will have a mighty chile burn that might just turn you against these fiery, fantastic pickles. And I don't want that. Also, if your jalapenos are the super-hot, rip-your-head-off version I recently discovered in San Jose you might just want to scrape out those seeds with your gloved hands and discard them.

I had never made refrigerator pickles before this summer. I think I thought they were a short-cut, cheater version of pickles but keeping them out of the canning kettle means they stay bright and crisp and are a snap to make. You can buy jalapenos pretty much year round though they aren't likely to be as cheap or fresh as they are now. You might want to hop to it with the zucchini pickles, though. I don't know about where you live but here in Portland autumn is most definitely on its way.

Google+

2011-07-27T15:01:00.000-07:00

I'm all set up there now and I have a circle for food loving people. Let me know if you want me to add you!

Paella

2011-07-19T22:10:00.001-07:00

This was both my first time making and eating paella, the classic Spanish rice dish. What's kept me away? Shellfish. Apart from the convenient fact that shellfish is forbidden to me both by Jewish law and doctor's order, the real truth is that I can't eat anything the looks like giant bugs. Absolutely. No. Way.

It's always looked to me like that beautiful saffron-colored rice might be pretty delicious were it not festooned with those giant bugs in every photo I've ever seen. I've been wondering for years what paella might taste like and I actually thought I could maybe imagine its flavor but I was not even close.

I made paella today because I found an utterly fabulous sounding recipe in Plenty, the new vegetable-focused cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi. I imagine you'll be reading more about this book here as I am quite taken with it. While vegetables are the focus of the book, they are presented in a wide variety of styles and in recipes that are a little more complex and interesting than I normally see. I quite like the way the recipes are grouped and the photography is gorgeous. This recipe in particular caught my eye as there we no bugs. In fact, though I made my version with long simmered home made chicken stock, the original calls for vegetable broth making it suitable for vegetarians and vegans.

Of course I did not follow the original recipe exactly. With this many ingredients, one's bound to make a substitution or two, right? As mentioned earlier, I used chicken broth rather than vegetable because that's what I had on hand. I didn't feel like hunting (or paying) for Calasparra rice. This more authentic rice very likely makes an even better dish but I was perfectly happy with plain old US grown short grain rice. My cooking time was about 15 minutes longer than in the original recipe and I'm guessing that's because I used cheapo supermarket rice but remember--I had nothing to compare my paella to. If you have more experience, you might want to spring for a fancy Spanish rice.

If I can't be bothered to hunt down proper Spanish rice do you think I went searching for a jar of oil-packed grilled artichoke hearts?? Nope. Do we even have such a thing here? I used plain old canned artichoke hearts and I admit they did not bring much to the dish at all so maybe I'll try and figure out just what Ottolenghi was talking about the next time I make this paella.

You can see from my photos that my result was absolutely gorgeous. I'd say it was one of the prettiest dishes I've ever made. But it tasted even better. The combination of spices (saffron, turmeric, and smoky Spanish paprika) was fantastic. The artichoke hearts, fava beans, olives, and tomatoes provided something special in each bite, and the warmth of the cayenne pepper lingered gently. It's the kind of dish I love: complex but not excessively so, hearty but not heavy, and full of bold flavors.

I did use fresh saffron, smoked paprika, and fava beans. I've started buying my saffron from this guy on ebay and have been very happy with the quality of his very affordable product. I can't imagine cooking without smoked paprika but since my favorite local spice shop closed down I don't know who has the best product and price. Fava beans were new to me but I really liked the meaty, slightly chewy texture they brought to the paella.

The original recipe was published in Ottolenghi's column in The Guardian. It was then changed slightly for the book. I doubled the quantity for my version (believe me, you'll want more than 2 servings). I hope you enjoy this as much as we did!

Back again: meal plans!

2011-07-18T10:46:00.000-07:00

Such a strange thing: my menu planning was going so well and them my husband lost his job and I stopped planning any coherent way. Why? Maybe because there was always an adult home to handle food prep and he would rather handle that his way than have to deal with my plans. Or something. Anyway, it's been months but he's finally got a new job--not ideal in any way but it should tide us over until something better comes along. I hope.

My sweetie will be gone all day and I will be once again in charge of pretty much all the food, not unreasonable given that I only work 12 hours a week. So, back to menu planning!

This week I've been influenced by a couple of things: I borrowed a new cookbook from the library and am anxious to try a number of the recipes. This week there will be paella and a rustic tart--now that I can make gf pie dough--hooray! Also, weather permitting, we'll be going to two different concerts in the park so a couple of our meals will be tucked into a picnic basket. Lots of blueberries and a big, important 18th birthday to celebrate as well.

Quite an introduction, no? Here's the plan.

Pie!

2011-07-04T21:22:00.000-07:00

Of all the things I despaired of never eating or cooking again I wasn't exactly worried about pie. Even with regular old wheat flour available to me I've never been much of a pie baker or eater, truth be told. I've just never gotten all that excited about pie.

But. But it's summer and there's tasty fruit everywhere and it's the Fourth of July and everyone seems to be talking pie so what to do? Once I read this post I got all fired up and decided I, too, could make a delicious gluten free pie.

I was in the mood for cherry but couldn't quite fork out $10 on an experiment so I used the remainder of last year's blueberries from the freezer, tossed with a bit of corn starch, cinnamon, and lemon zest.

Even with icy cold butter and less water than called for, my dough ended up really wet. I dusted it with white rice flour and used parchment to roll it out which worked pretty well. The dough is fragile and doesn't really want to hang together so the lattice top of my dream pie was replaced with pastry stars as they were a lot easier to move from counter to pie dish. I wasn't trying to be cute, just practical.

The result? Delicious! The crust baked up nicely and was very tasty though completely without the flakiness I associate with good pie. My husband was so happy to have pie and coffee that I think I may just have to do a little more pie baking. I might skip the food processor next time and use my old grated frozen butter trick to see if I can get some flakiness into the crust. But even if that doesn't work, I think there are more pies in my future as this really wasn't difficult, just fiddly, and my family was delighted with the results.

2011-06-16T08:21:00.000-07:00

I've been making Claudia Roden's Orange and Almond Cake for years. I think I was initially attracted to it because it's a perfect ending to a Passover meal. I appreciate it now because it's a snap to make and always delicious, it's full of nutrients (for a cake anyway) and...I can eat it. "I can eat it" is an important food category for me these days, as you might imagine.

If you don't like the full on flavor of oranges, this cake isn't for you as it's made with two whole oranges, from juice to peel. Obviously you'd only want to make this with organic oranges as you probably don't want to feed your loved ones the food wax found on the non-organic variety.

I've made this cake for years and always used to grind the almonds myself in my trusty old food processor which made for a rustic, slightly gritty cake. Now that I keep big bags of almond meal in the freezer, I love how much lighter and more delicate this cake can be. (I use the same weight of almond flour as ground almonds in the recipe.) It's an elegant finish to any meal but it's still sturdy enough that you could keep it on the springform base, wrap it in foil, and take it along for a picnic. That's what I plan on doing, if summer ever comes.......

My First Gluten Free Seder

2011-04-16T13:43:00.000-07:00

Passover is almost here, the most food obsessed in a long list list of food obsessed Jewish holidays. And what is the most important Passover food? Why the matzoh of course, the unleavened (but fully glutened) "bread of affliction" as we so fondly call it.

The matzoh is the centerpiece of the ritual part of the meal, symbolizing the haste with which our people left bondage for a life of freedom. I am not so sensitive to gluten that the tiny bit of matzoh mandated for consumption during the seder would do me much harm, but so many of my Passover recipes are for good things to spread on matzoh during the week following the seder and I don't want to give those up. I am too cheap to fork over $30 for a pound of certified gluten free oat matzoh so I decided to make my own following this recipe, using flour I ground from gluten free oats.

My other big worry was matzoh balls. Somehow I didn't see homemade oat matzoh holding up to simmering dumpling style but luckily my friend Ruth found me a recipe for a potato-almond dumpling that should do the trick thought I'll still be making the real thing for my family and guests.

This year Passover won't be much different from the way I now eat all the time. The focus, as ever, will be on nuts, dairy, eggs, meat, fruit, and veggies. I have tons of new recipes which meet the guidelines for Passover food and I think we'll eat quite well.

Our seder menu:

"regular" apple-walnut charoset
"Indian" Charoset (made with dates, coconut, almonds, dried apricots, and cardamom)

Mock Chopped Liver (I hate this name so I call it walnut pate)

Salmon Pate

vegetarian broth/chicken broth + matzoh balls/gf potato knaidlach

Matzo kugel/crustless quiche for our vegetarians (haven't decided yet)

Chicken Marbella

tzimmes (baked sweet potatoes, carrots, apricots, with orange and cinnamon)

Asparagus Salad

Fruit Salad

Strawberry Cake Roll

Racines Cake

Iraqi Macaroons

Post Seder Followup: Most of the meal was fantastic. I loved doing the asparagus ahead as a salad so I didn't have to worry about overcooking it.

The chicken marbella was delightful--moist, flavorful, and complex. Loved it!

The potato dumplings were fantastic. They went well in chicken soup but they also met the morning after test. I was able to pan fry them in butter with great success.

The oat matzo, on the other hand, was truly "the bread of affliction" and was just about inedible. Next year, a better gluten free matzo!

Meal Plan Monday

2011-02-28T20:36:00.001-08:00

Not all that exciting, really. I'm looking forward to lasagna which I haven't had since I gave up gluten. Definitely going to have that uttapam again--yum!

February 28-March 5

It's funny how things work out.....

2011-02-27T14:56:00.000-08:00

The other day I developed a serious craving for idli which I blame on Shoba Narayan, the author of Monsoon Diary, a book I just finished which is full of mouth watering descriptions of the meals she ate growing up in Chennai (then Madras), India.

I don't really mind idli from a mix but I've had homemade and they are truly delicious: stark white, spongy, slightly sour and the perfect thing to dip in a delicious chutney. Every time I think of making my own, however, I remember the soaking and grinding and fermenting and abandon the whole plan in the realization that I should have planned ahead.

Well, for once, I did (and I'm out of mix!). I put the rice and urad dal to soak Friday evening, ground it into batter Saturday morning and left it to ferment for 24 hours. This morning I carefully spooned it it into my oiled idli stand, and made some coconut chutney while the idli steamed.
Looking forward to fluffy white idlis, you can imagine my disappointment when I unlocked the pressure cooker and found the blobs looking not much different than when I placed them in the cooker. Worse than their appearance was their gummy, unappealing texture. Thinking my batter was too wet I thickened it with rice flour and added a bit of baking powder to help the batter rise. Round 2: still gummy and nasty. Clearly it wasn't my day for idli but I still needed something to eat and got to thinking......

I knew that idli batter could also be thinned and used to make dosa, those delightfully chewy-crispy crepe-like pancakes. But I didn't want to muck around making a filling so instead, I just tossed in some finely chopped onion, cilantro, and chile, ground in a bunch of black pepper, and recycled my failed idli batter into highly successful uttapam batter.

I love idli and dosa so much that when I get a chance to eat either at a South Indian restaurant I skip the uttapam so I was not really 100% sure what I was aiming for but what I got was delicious, a thick, savory pancake which I tore into bits and dipped happily into my coconut chutney (you also see coriander chutney in this photo but it did not taste right so I ended up tossing it).

This batter makes a dense pancake that sticks easily so I used a fair amount of coconut oil in my cast iron skillet and re-applied it before flipping. I also covered each pancake with a pot lid as I cooked the first side to trap some heat and help it cook more evenly.

Though these don't have the wonderful spongy texture of idli, they do still have the tangy fermented taste. And they get on the table a lot faster than idi and require no special equipment. Despite being gluten free they are filling and satisfying and quite nutritious. Clearly I need some help in the idli department but I think I could eat uttapam pretty regularly and be quite happy.

If you'd like to give this a try, the recipe for batter and chutney is here.

Pumpkin Chili

2011-02-10T09:53:00.000-08:00

Chili?

Really?

Really!

This is the tastiest chili I've made, possibly ever. So good, in fact, that there's no need to top a big, steaming bowl with cheese or sour cream because the flavor is rich and complex all on its own. Plus it's loaded with nutrients like protein and vitamins and minerals and fiber (but don't tell your kids).

I stumbled across this recipe and then had to fiddle with it to make it work for my crazy weekday schedule so in to the slow cooker it went. When I came home from work everyone else had eaten and declared the chili delicious. Should I tell them that it was pumpkin puree which added sweetness and complexity?

Maybe not.

You can make this delicious chili and then its up to you to decide how to present it.

One note: if you are a lover of spicy things, you may find this a little tiny bit bland. That's what sriracha sauce is for, people. I found about a half teaspoonful swirled in a bowl of pumpkin chili to be just about right.

The recipe is here. Go make it and tell me what you think.

Meal Plan...Tuesday?

2011-02-08T18:41:00.000-08:00

Yikes! This time I wrote the menu plan but never posted it--silly me. Most interesting this week should be the parsnip-shallot soup made my by 17 year old son. I am looking forward to trying that, for sure. Also--last night's pumpkin chili? Major hit!

The meals are all here.

Pretty Darned Close

2011-02-01T08:27:00.000-08:00

When I got my gluten free sentence I handled it pretty well and the only gluten I really panicked about giving up was Jewish gluten. How in the world would I manage without my weekly challah and matzoh at Passover and hamantaschen at Purim and....bagels? No bagels? Seriously?

My first scouting trip to New Cascadia was all about the bagels--would they suffice? Sadly, no. Maybe when I've been on this crazy diet for longer they will work for me but for now I am sorry to say I don't love them. I like a good, chewy bagel but theirs are too tough for me and they have this mysterious weird flavor I've tasted in everything I've tried there. I've tried Udi's "bagels" but apart from having a hole in the center there's nothing in common with bagels. Insulation maybe, but not my beloved bagels.

Part of me knows that, because I will always be disappointed by poor imitations, I should just give up on the bready quest. But the call of the bagel is powerful and yesterday I tried some Glutino sesame bagels and was very pleasantly surprised. They still have that weird flavor present in so many gf baked goods (what is that, anyway?) but they have the right texture and they toast up nicely. At over $6/bag I don't expect to eat them often but it's nice to know there's something out there that will satisfy my need for bagels when nothing else will do.

Meal Plan Monday

2011-01-31T10:45:00.000-08:00

You know what? I didn't get it together last week and get our meals in place and it was chaos all week. So....I'm going to try really heard to stay in the meal plan groove because even when it's Sunday morning after a late night dancing it's absolutely worth it to make myself do this. And so, with that, I give you this week's meals.

A Little Something Sweet

2011-01-17T10:19:00.000-08:00

In general, I'm not really much for cupcakes. They seem kind of fussy and messy and just not my thing.

But caramel cupcakes? Maybe they're worth the trouble, right?

There is no end to my love of all flavors on the caramel-butterscotch-toffee spectrum. So when I saw caramel cupcakes in my new Blackbird Bakery Gluten Free cookbook, I was intrigued enough to go buy frilly paper cupcake liners.

The cupcakes were delicious--buttery and full of vanilla flavor. Nothing screamed "gluten free!" in taste or texture. Like nearly all gf baked good I've attempted, they needed an additional 10 minutes in the oven beyond what the recipe recommends.

The caramel flavor comes entirely from the frosting which was was sweet enough to make my head ring--a little goes a long, long way and I had plenty leftover. I even added some sea salt to try and pull it back from the edge but it was still too sweet for my taste. So, a bit of a puzzle--the frosting was way too sweet but, because it has all the caramel flavor, it's kind of the focus.

Next time I will try subbing out some brown sugar for the granulated in the cakes themselves so the caramel flavor is better distributed. Maybe I could get away with less frosting...

My kids, it should be said, had no trouble with the overly-sweet frosting and declared them delicious. I found them a little less intense and pretty much perfect by the second day. Especially with a nice, steaming hot latte.

I was going to type all of this up for you but realized that it's all available on the Blackbird Bakery blog. I used half the recipe to get 1 dozen cupcakes and a copious supply of frosting. And while the cactus decorations are charming, you can see I skipped that part. One thing these cupcakes did not need is more sugar!

Meal Plan Monday

2011-01-17T09:30:00.000-08:00

Nothing too exciting this week, apart from the fact that my boys are cooking two of the meals--hooray!

Here you go....

Meal Plan Monday

2011-01-10T08:00:00.000-08:00

This week will be influenced quite a bit my latest library find: The Indian Slow Cooker by Anupy Singla. You know I'm gonna have some fun with that!

We had the nihari (slow cooked beef curry) last night and it was fantastic rolled into sorghum roti. There will be a repeat performance for sure!

The rest of our planned meals can be found here.

2011-01-06T15:35:00.000-08:00

On a friend's recommendation (Thanks, Erin!) I just got Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes a Day out of the library. I loved the authors' first book and wrote here about the ease of their no-knead method and the tastiness of the results and we went through a great deal of that fantastic bread.

Of course I have to ignore 85% of the book due to my new diet but the great news is that there are a few gluten free breads using their no-knead, slow rise technique and I can't wait to try them out. There's a Crusty Boule, Not-Rye, and a brioche which might bring cinnamon rolls back into my life.

The doughs are made in large quantities and kept refrigerated with the idea that you always have dough on hand and you just bake up a chunk when you need it. Because of this, the recipes make a lot of dough. I was anxious to try that crusty boule but realized I didn't have nearly enough tapioca starch on hand. Rather than buy another expensive packet from the grocery store I decided to go down to Bob's Red Mill and see hwo the prices compared. It seems that for the gluten free ingredients, their packaged prices were pretty comparable to the grocery store but I was astounded to realize the savings to be had in buying from their bulk bins. Quinoa flour, for example, was $10 for a 22-ounce bag but only cost $2.49/pound in bulk. I'm no math whiz but I believe that makes the packaged version about three items as expensive as the bulk per ounce. I found similar savings on other flours as well as corn and tapioca starch. I don't remember the savings being as dramatic for the regular gluteny items I used to buy but perhaps they are.

I haven't gotten to the bread baking yet--hopefully this weekend--but I wanted to take a minute to share my discovery. Those of you who live in or near Portland and follow a gluten free diet have probably already realized the dramatic savings to be had by schlepping out to Milwaukee and loading up from the bulk bins but it was news to me so I thought I'd share.

Meal Plan Monday

2011-01-03T10:28:00.000-08:00

Here it is--oh, yeah!

We go from quiet days and visits with friends back to the old routine. Simpler meals, more reliance on our friend the slow cooker. I sure do treasure the time I get to be home in the evening to cook and eat dinner with my family but it's back to work for me, 4 nights a week.

Happy New Year Hoppin' John

2011-01-01T21:25:00.000-08:00

January 1 isn't really my new year (which we Jews celebrate in early fall) but I like to make this southern standard for the other new year's day. I do have a touch of Southern blood and I love a good tradition. While I don't really expect "Peas for pennies, greens for dollars and cornbread for gold" I figure it can't hurt, especially being a dish that packs in a whole heck of a lot of nutrients in one tasty bowl.

I have a little confession to make: I actually found a genuine secret ingredient which made this year's version extra fantastic. Our local natural foods market had a tray of truly ugly,blackened smoked turkey legs tucked in the corner of the meat cooler and, after a discussion with the butcher lady, I realized these hideous things might work magic in my hoppin' john -- plus it was fun to tell the kids I'd bought a smoked orc leg.

While my kashrut leaves much to be desired, we don't eat pork and I think that smoky, salty taste was missing from my ham hock-less beans all these years. I tossed that leg in my slow cooker yesterday with soaked black-eyed peas, some long simmered chicken broth, and a skillet full of sauteed bell peppers, celery, onion, and garlic and let it simmer all day. When I reheated it today, I shredded the turkey meat off the bone and into the stew, added a thinly sliced bunch of collard greens, and served it over brown rice with a side of gluten free corn bread. It was mild enough for the kids but I had a big bottle of my beloved Crystal hot sauce at hand and everyone was happy.

Give it a try and let me know what you think. The recipe is here.

Our hoppin' john may not bring us wealth, but I don't think I spent more than $5 (smoked turkey leg included) on the whole big pot so I figure we are most definitely starting the new year off right. Here's to 2011--may we all be healthy and happy!

GF Makeover: Nigella's Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake

2010-12-31T09:58:00.000-08:00

It wasn't all that long ago that I fell in love with the perfect chocolate cake which I made more times than I can count last summer. It goes with ice cream and whipped cream and fresh berries and makes a delightful bit of breakfast if the truth be told. This was one I was really sad to think of going without once I got my gf sentence. I know there are all kind of flourless death-by-chocolate cakes but those tend to be way too intense for me. I loved this cake for being simultaneously light and dense and for its slightly chewy texture.

This is the first time I've been really happy with a gf makeover of an "old" recipe. Sometimes the recipes written specifically to be gf have been fine but I wanted to take something I loved before and see how it would fare without gluten and it turns out this was a great test subject.

I've already learned that to replicate the qualities of gluten you need to blend grain flours and starches or baked goods will be heavy, dense, and weird. GF baking books are full of complicated formulas and recipes for various flour blends and right now I am trying out as many possibilities as I can. I have already decided that even thought we love, love, love Bob's Red Mill, their all purpose gf flour is too beany and leaves a weird taste in almost everything. I have heard good things about Pamela's baking flours but they are really spendy. My friend Anhata made me some delicious holiday cookies using the all purpose flour mix from Gluten Free Cooking School and I loved the whisper of corn from the masa harina in the blend. But it wasn't what I wanted in a chocolate cake so I reached for the flour blend than is increasingly becoming my favorite: Gluten Free Mama's Almond Flour Blend. This stuff looks and feels like "real" flour and has no weird aroma or aftertaste. I have had good luck using it in muffins and quick breads and we were able to switch it out 1:1 in my son's chocolate chip cookie recipe (along with 1/2 t xanthan gum) and there was much rejoicing in our home. Just make sure to whisk all your dry ingredients together really well before adding to the wet as it does tend to get a little lumpy.

For this cake, I used the same amount of gf flour as regular flour in the original recipe plus 1 t xanthan gum which helps hold it all together. The only noticeable difference was the gf version took longer to cook (maybe 10 minutes past the original recipe) but has that same rich chocolate flavor and slightly chewy texture.

Definitely a gluten-free success! I've rewritten the recipe and I hope you'll give it a try. If you use a different flour blend, let me know what worked for you.

I've been buying my Gluten Free Mama's Almond Flour Blend through Azure Standard but they have it at Amazon.com as well.

Meal Plan Monday

2010-12-27T10:34:00.000-08:00

Here's another week of meals. My kids will be gone for two nights which means we might take advantage of some of Portland's dining options and take a break from the kitchen.

We have dear guests coming one night and New Years Eve and Day this week so there will be sparking drinks, delicious ice cream, and a couple of new year traditions: Hoppin' John has a long history in the South and Golden Fruitcake is our family's new year tradition. Here's to a happy, healthy 2011!

December 26-January 1

Meal Plans

2010-12-22T22:16:00.000-08:00

I'm guessing you all have heard about The Economy, right? So you know what I'm talking about when I say hard times have come to our home. It's not the end of the world and I know things will turn around soon but meanwhile we've been needing to cut way back on spending and with food being a big budget item, it's definitely an area where we can trim some fat.

Also, since I've started this whole gluten free thing the days of easy, on-the-go snacks are over. I really need to think about what I'm going to eat and when and what I need to pack to get through a busy day out.

These two factors have combined to nudge me in the direction of a habit I really should have developed years ago. I am finally starting to make weekly meal plans with corresponding shopping lists. It is hard for me to sit and focus on a week's worth of meals but it sure makes a difference in how much time and money I spend at the grocery store.

It took me a while to come up with a system that works for me. I don't do well with paper and I am forever losing lists. I need to be able to see my meal plan on my computer, allowing me to link to recipes. I use an online shopping list which syncs with my phone and I have my meal plans bookmarked on my phone's browser. You'd think someone would have figured out how to put this all together but I haven't found anything but my cobbled together system works for me.

I am guessing that those who are naturally better organized are able to keep meals and ingredients in their heads but I need all the help I can get so I'm not running to the store over and over again.

I've been at it pretty consistently for quite a few weeks now and it seems to be working. I am going to try and have my meal plan ready to share here every week. Ideally I would love to see what others are cooking because that's the fun part, isn't it?

This week's meals

On the Go

2010-12-14T20:56:00.000-08:00

One thing I am learning about gluten, the very substance I am supposed to avoid, is that it's in everything easy. Seriously. When you're out and about and you need a quick bite, what do you reach for? A sandwich? A bagel? A slice of pizza? A roll and a slice of turkey? Right now it seems like everything quick and tasty involves gluten.

And so....more planning--a thing which I already fail to do well but perhaps with more practice? I can dream, no? Anyway, I have always been quite lackadaisical about our frequent running around days, figuring I can always munch on a scone, right? Wrong. And so I need to be prepared. Prepared with healthy, tasty, satisfying food I can pack with me and eat on the run. Some things that work: Lara bars, nuts, hard boiled eggs, Nut Thins with cheese, and recently discovered quinoa-fruit bars.

They aren't very pretty, I know. But they are satisfying, nutritious, and just sweet enough. They are sturdy but not nearly as tough as they look and I have found a ziplock bag of them to be just the thing to ward of hunger-induced panic attacks.

I found the recipe in Quinoa 365: The Everyday Superfood which is a fantastic book full of great ideas for making the most of this amazing little seed. I find quinoa really tasty but I haven't really done much with it past my favorite quinoa dish. This book has page after page of fantastic-looking recipes, most of which are gluten free. Oddly enough, this recipe wasn't written gluten free but I've made them so using first Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free All Purpose Baking Flour and Gluten Free Mama's Almond Flour Blend. I found the latter flour a bit lighter and tastier but the first wasn't bad at all.

If you'd like to give these a try, my recipe is here. Let me know what you think.

I'm back...and I'm Gluten Free!

2010-12-14T09:07:00.000-08:00

Way, way back when I started this little food blog I had hoped that, along with sharing tasty recipes with my readers, the blog-making would help me get re-inspired in the kitchen. Well, isn't it funny how things come around again? Here I am, four years later, re-examining my diet and looking at my food with new eyes as I just received test results indicating strong gluten sensitivity.

While I swore I'd never go this route, there's been some crazy health stuff going on in my body. I won't bore you with the details but the short version is that my Grave's disease just hasn't been getting better. While I've always been horrified at the thought of a gluten free diet, that horror pales in comparison to things like thyroid surgery and/or radiation so I'm going to give this a try. And I'm hoping you'll come along for the ride with me!

Seattle Eats, part 1

2010-06-25T11:21:00.000-07:00

Image by conjunction3 via Flickr

We just got back from an anniversary trip to Seattle. Because the kids were elsewhere we had the unusually delightful pleasure of being able to eat whatever we wanted. If you've been cooking for picky kids for over a decade then you understand just how remarkable this is.

We decided that, given our relatively limited funds for this adventure, we'd rather spend less on fancy lodgings and more on good food and that was a brilliant decision! We stayed in a little studio apartment in an old building right downtown. I was a little hesitant to rent it sight unseen but when Google maps showed its location to be directly across the street from the Dahlia Bakery, out came my debit card and a reservation was made!

What I didn't realize until we arrived was that our budget studio was located right in the middle of chef Tom Douglas' Seattle dining empire. We stayed two doors down from Lola, across the street from The Dahlia Lounge, around the corner from Serious Pie and a block away from Palace Kitchen. We'd planned to have a fancy dinner at one of these well-reviewed restaurants but when we arrived in Seattle, ravenous after a 3+ hour train ride and with time to kill before we could check in to our rental apartment, we decided it was a perfect time to try Lola.

This was probably the best of many good meals on this trip. It may have been due to our hunger after the long train ride or the playing hooky feeling of ditching the kids and skipping town or maybe just plain fantastic food--whatever, this was a meal to remember. Lola's menu is Greek inspired but features fine local ingredients. We started with freshly baked pita served with skordalia, a delicious potato garlic spread. I had amazing grilled salmon kebabs served with more pita, a lovely, tangy tzatziki and amazing "smashed" potatoes which were like no potato I'd ever eaten: golden and crunchy outside with creamy insides. Unbelievable. We were unnecessarily tempted by dessert and probably and ended up overstuffed and not nearly as delighted as we'd been by the meal itself but overall it was fantastic.

We spent the afternoon and evening wandering and, remarkably, ended up hungry again after hiking up to Capitol Hill hours later. There are plenty of restaurants along Broadway but none really caught our eye until we came to Galerias Gourmet Mexican Restaurant. A quick scan of their menu showed that this is definitely not your average burrito bomb Mexican place but a place that had a variety of interesting looking, unusual dishes. We stepped inside to some truly fabulous, over the top decor: bright colors everywhere, huge paintings of intense Biblically inspired scenes, and the tallest fake flower arrangement I've ever seen. We were seated in the shadow of the awe-inspiring monster bouquet but quickly forgot it once our food came. The trio of salsas which came as a starter was delicious. Each was distinctive, well balanced, and clearly made with care. The giant, tasty margarita was quite good and a definite bargain. My entree was poblano chiles stuffed with cheese and grilled veggies and wrapped in a light, buttery pastry which was an vast improvement over the usual soggy, eggy batter found clinging to chiles rellenos.

I thought I'd be able to write a quick post on our Seattle food adventures but I'm realizing this is way too much for one post...I'll break it up into manageable portions--stay tuned!

The Best Chocolate Cake I've Ever Made

2010-06-06T16:49:00.000-07:00

Cover via Amazon

How's that for a title?

But it's true.

Last week I made the Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake from Nigella Lawson's How to be a Domestic Goddess. This recipe is found in an entire chapter of chocolate cakes but somehow I'd never gotten around to trying this one out. Too plain, maybe. But plain and simple was what I was looking for when I was trying to put together a festive meal to welcome my kids home from two soggy days in the woods last week. Our menu included buttermilk chicken and baby potatoes cooked on the grill, herbed focaccia, and a couple of salads which should have been enough for anyone but a dessert was definitely called for.

This cake fit the bill: simple, easy, and no running to the store for ingredients. I mixed up the cake and wondered how the liquidy batter could possibly transform itself into cake. Plus, only 4 measly ounces of chocolate? I did not have high hopes.

I was totally surprised by just how good this cake was. It doesn't look like much with it's sagging, cracked top--it's all about taste. I think it's the dark brown sugar that gives it the deep flavor. It tastes rich and complex but without the intensity or fuss of the "death by chocolate" genre of cakes. Which, for better or worse, means it's far too easy to have a second (or third) piece. I made the cake again later in the week just to make sure it really was a winner and I am happy to report that the first time was not a fluke.

The only change I made was the addition of a bit of salt because as far as I'm concerned all sweets taste better with a touch of salt.

The recipe is here. Go make it NOW!

In which Melisa finally talks food again

2010-05-30T18:50:00.000-07:00

It's been so long since I've had anything great to share here. The days are flying by. We are, of course, still eating but what we're eating hasn't been all that memorable and time to write and photograph has been exceedingly scarce.

This holiday weekend, however, my lovely have been taken (by their lovely grandparents) to a hiking lodge in the gorge. I don't want to think about what they're eating but we are eating quite well. As soon as they left yesterday morning we headed out to the Flavour Spot waffle cart where I thoroughly enjoyed a tasty waffle wrapped, burrito style, around a creamy maple filling and topped generously with crunch toasted pecans. That kept me going nearly all day until a dinner at Por Que No made even tastier by the rum-laced mango agua fresca. We then headed out for hours of dancing and returned home ravenous. I don't know why I don't pack the car with snacks on the nights we go dancing as we are always starving when we leave but luckily I had a few of my father's heavenly sourdough biscuits tucked away and they hit the spot toasted and topped with Tillamook cheddar.

We had a very late Cuban style breakfast at Pambiche* complete with a basket of delicious pastries and cafe cubano. Their breakfast plates are full of nice little sides like friend plantain, tropical fruit salad, and other goodies so they are a bargain as you won't need lunch. What you will need is a walk and during ours we pretty much talked about....food.

I just borrowed Tessa Kiros' lovely Falling Cloudberries from the library for the second time. Nothing will pull you out of a cooking rut faster than one of her books. They are filled with gorgeous photos, family stories, and delicious recipes that are neither the usual humdrum fare nor terribly unfamiliar. The photos are spectacular enough that I would almost consider violating my admittedly lax standards of kashrut to try a bit of calamari. But not to worry, there are plenty of other dishes that I can happily eat either as written or with only slight modification.

After this morning's picadillo, a simple vegetarian meal sounded perfect. I've always wanted to try to make a pan-fried halloumi at home so that was a given and the chickpea salad with feta and cilantro sounded like a good match. What surprised me was just how nicely the cilantro went with the chickpeas. Onion and garlic-scented olive oil makes a simple, tasty dressing. I added the zast of the lemon I'd juiced but it occured to me later that some of the preserved lemons I have, finely chopped, might be a nice way to incorporate the lemon flavor. I took more than my fair share of "tastes" before getting this dish to the table and I think this will be a frequent dish this summer.

Of course I couldn't quite follow the recipe exactly given what we had on hand so my take on the recipe can be found here.

*click the link for a treat!

A Recent Breakfast

2010-04-27T12:54:00.000-07:00

Crepes filled with fruit and cream--so simple and so good. The crepes were made with eggs from my friend's chickens, we picked and froze the berries last summer, and the piima cream was cultured on my son's dresser above my kitchen.

I recently did a kitchen purge and got rid of my two nonstick skillets. The coating on the 12" Farberware one had started to peel, no doubt putting plastic bits into our bodies, so I wasn't sad to see it go. My lovely little blue Chantal skillet, on the other hand, still looked fine and was the best crepe pan ever. Once it left my kitchen I was a bit reluctant to make crepes but I found that Mark Bittman's recipe cooked up perfectly in an 8" stainless steel skillet.

It's true that crepes don't exactly make a quick and easy breakfast but they're absolutely worth the work, especially if you can share the cooking duties. And leftover better can be refrigerated for a quick snack later on.

How to Feed a Spring Cold

2010-04-04T15:41:00.000-07:00

Actually, I think I picked up a nice case of the flu on my spring break. My head was fuzzy my sense of taste blunted for days. Nothing sounded good until I remembered the bag of Meyer lemons I'd brought back from California. I know it's not exactly sickbed food but I couldn't think of anything a appealing as Meyer lemon sorbet. I think I greedily gobbled down an entire quart in one otherwise miserable evening.

Fast forward a week. I've made Meyer lemon sorbet, Moroccan preserved lemons, and I marinated our Passover chicken in lemon juice before drizzling with honey and roasting to perfection. Even after sharing a few of my precious stash I have a few more lovelies in the bowl.

I don't know why but in the middle of our return to winter (dark, rainy skies and chilly air) I needed another batch of that sorbet. But this time I topped it with some rhubarb that had been stewed with a bit of sugar and a vanilla bean and then chilled overnight. This was nothing sort of heaven! Meyer lemon and rhubarb are made for each other, a perfectly puckery pair!

I used the sorbet recipe from Simply Recipes (doubled!) and then made stewed rhubarb in the usual way. What? You haven't made stewed rhubarb? OK--fine, then. Take a couple of pounds of rhubarb stalks, wash them, and cut into 1" chunks. Throw your chunks in a pot with some water and and sugar, maybe half a cup of each. A slit vanilla bean is a nice addition, too. Simmer gently until the rhubarb breaks down and then taste. Adjust for sweetness. Cool before serving over Meyer lemon sorbet (but serve warm over waffles and pancakes).

Savory Cheese Custard

2010-01-27T16:16:00.000-08:00

This is one of my favorite standbys when I realize a meal is low on protein and we have nothing but cheese and eggs on hand. These savory custards from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone are quick, tasty, nutritious and well received, even by pesky children. You could make the custard in one large baking dish (cook it longer

You could certainly play around with different cheeses and seasonings but we are always pretty happy with a simple blend of Tillamook cheddar and Parmesan. I like these served with roasted potatoes and a simple vegetable on the side.

You'll find the printable recipe here.

Not Food

2010-01-14T23:08:00.000-08:00

Taking a break from my regular yammering about food because, well, this hardly seems the time, does it?

Looking forward to making this....

2009-12-28T10:37:00.000-08:00

One of the downsides of keeping this blog for a while (and, let's face it, getting older) is that I worry about repeating myself. I know I've written more than once about macaroni and cheese and bread pudding. On the other hand, we don't tire of our favorites, right?

I did a search of my archives and it appears that I've really never written about the fruitcake that is so fabulous it should be called something else. We've all heard those tired old fruitcake jokes and have maybe even had to politely eat some of those dark, heavy bricks bursting with chunky nuts and oddly colored "fruit". The fact is these are neither cake nor fruit and really should be called something else so that the name fruitcake might be bestowed upon a lovely confection I like to make for the (secular) new year. The recipe came from an early issue of Saveur magazine.

This one takes a little time. I like to candy the fruit peel myself which will add a day to the process. Also the pans are a strange size. I've used small (4 cup) bundt pans before and this year I am going to try an actual pudding mold with a snap on lid that I found recently at our local thrift emporium.

The cake isn't just baked, but steamed, which makes it moist and tender. While slightly boozy from the orange liqueur, it mostly tastes like fruit, butter, and almonds. Nothing green and oddly chewy here, just pure fruity loveliness.

Sadly, I don't have any photos, but that's ok because what I do have is a link to the recipe. It's a bit of a production, but if you've got a little time, there's no sweeter way to ring in the new year.

Insanely Good

2009-12-13T19:01:00.000-08:00

When I saw this recipe in my friend's Fine Cooking magazine, I was very, very interested. So many flavors that I love: brown butter, pecans, blue cheese, and Brussels sprouts. Sounds a little busy, doesn't it? But it is a heavenly combination.

The first time I made it I followed the recipe exactly and loved the rich, buttery flavors. When I made the dish tonight, I used onions in place of shallots, half and half instead of heavy cream, and Gorgonzola in place of the blue cheese because these were what I had on hand. The resulting dish was a little lighter, but no less delicious.

I particularly love the Brussels sprouts which are sliced and then roasted before being tossed into the pasta. I'd never had them prepared this way and will definitely consider the roasted sprouts as a side dish.

Chanukah Around the World

2009-12-12T21:24:00.000-08:00

Chanukah is here and the deep fryer has been released from its basement exile for its one week of service. A holiday that gives a green light to fried food--what's not to like?

On the first night, of course, we had the classics: potato latkes and doughnuts, both delicious. Tonight we opted to begin our international tour of fried foods with Swedish rosettes. My dear friend loaned me her rosette iron and I googled until I found a promising recipe.

The rosette iron is just a little metal snowflake on the end of a long handle. I did my research and learned that after heating the iron in hot oil, it's dipped into a thin batter and then back in the hot oil where the rosette shaped cookie thing magically disengages and bobs about until fished out, crunchy and golden brown. I had my doubts about how simply the rosette would leave the iron but it was a snap. I just held the iron in the oil and watched. After just a few seconds, the batter had cooked just enough to float off on its own and continue cooking until done, about a minute later.

The cookies were delightfully light and airy. We ate them dusted with powdered sugar and they really were just a little bit magical.

Oh, and if you think that Scandinavian Chanukah cookies are a stretch, I am one eighth Swedish so I figure it kind makes sense. More sense than the Sonoran enchiladas (minus the lard, of course) and Indian jalebis I'm planning to make later in the week, anyway.

Winter Salad

2009-12-04T15:11:00.000-08:00

It's almost the end of the term and, in our program, the end of the term means it's time for a party. ESL program parties are great because we get to try tasty foods from all over the world. I've had fabulous Cuban chicken and rice, Vietnamese spring rolls, Mexican tacos, and Turkish baklava made with homemade filo dough. All amazing stuff.

One of the Russian or Ukrainian students will inevitably bring a Russian salat, a layered salad of boiled potatoes, peas, carrots, cucumber, and hard cooked egg, carefully arranged and glued together with copious amounts of mayonnaise. It's not bad, but I find a little goes a long way.

I found a Central Asian take on the potato based layered salad in Darra Goldstein's The Vegetarian Hearth which is a wonderful resource for hearty, meatless meals for the colder months. The mayonnaise is replaced by a garlicky nut and herb based dressing which makes the vegetables positively sing.

I wish I could say this salad is a snap to make, but it isn't. It's fussy and there are beets involved. But it's the prettiest vegetable dish you'll ever find on a winter table and it tastes fresh and full of life. I hope you'll give it a try.

Printable recipe here.

Planning

2009-12-02T10:00:00.000-08:00

Chanukah comes earlier this year than last. It's not really "early" as it falls on the same Hebrew calendar dates every year. But in relation to the secular calendar and my work schedule it feels early as the holiday begins the day after my last day of teaching which is why I find myself uncharacteristically doing a bit of thinking ahead.

There are two really great things about Chanukah as far as I'm concerned. The imagery of lighting up dark, midwinter nights is lovely and also, we get to eat fried foods for a week to commemorate the miracle of a day's worth of holy oil lasting for eight days.

We used to go at this half heartedly: a few nights of latkes until we grew sick of them, one round of apple latkes for variety, and some sad attempts at making doughnuts in a frying pan. Then a few years back I went down to my local Kmart and bought me a deep fryer which was the best $25 I ever spent.

Now delicious homemade doughnuts are a regular part of the Chanukah repertoire. Usually I just make little 1-inch balls of dough, fry them up in high quality oil, and then roll them in cinnamon sugar. No one complains and there are never leftovers.

However, I'm thinking of trying something new this year. My friend Chris pointed out this recipe for pumpkin doughnuts and I can't stop thinking about them, especially in conjunction with hot spiced cider and roaring fire in the fireplace. Doesn't that sound like heaven?

We've also started exploring deep fried foods of the world during Chanukah. First there were loukamades, the lovely honey-drenched puffs of yumminess from Greece. These are fun to make. As they expand in the hot oil, they flip themselves which is amusing until the good part: eating them!

We've made pakoras along with an Indian meal but I am thinking about maybe making samosas....from scratch. Maybe. Manjula makes it look easy. Or maybe jalebi?

Last year, in the middle of the epic snowstorm that shut Portland down, we had a wonderful meal. I found a recipe for a Sonoran style enchilada which is basically a thick, deep fried masa patty topped with chile-tomato sauce, and whatever other toppings (cheese, scallions, shredded chicken, sour cream, etc) you can think of. My kids always like these kinds of assemble-it-yourself meals so this was a big hit, especially as we followed the enchiladas with churros and hot chocolate.

My goodness...I am getting hungry just thinking about all this good food. I've probably put on a few pounds just writing this, too.

Any Chanukah (or other holiday) food traditions and inspirations to share? I always love to hear from you!

Rough Count

2009-11-16T10:24:00.001-08:00

I was just reading this post over at the Bitten Blog and it got me thinking that I never did tally up all the canning, freezing, and drying I did this year.

I've given quite a few jars away and we've run through a few as well, but I must have filled close to 100 jars with apricot jam, sour cherry jam, strawberry jam, blueberry marmalade, peach butter, apricot marmalade, stewed tomatoes, chili sauce, sweet tomato chutney, apricot-red pepper chutney, cranberry marmalade, satsuma plum jam, cranberry-orange preserves with cardamom, Asian plum sauce, and cranberry vinegar. I dried blueberries, peaches, cherries, and apricots. And I filled the freezer, too, with bags of blueberries, strawberries, apricots, peaches, cherries, elderberries, cranberries, and roasted tomatoes. And many quarts of slow cooked tomato sauce.

I've used my old copy of the Rodale book Stocking Up for years but this summer I got a couple of new additions to my bookshelf. The Complete Book of Small Batch Preserving by Ellie Topp has a wonderful variety of recipes and the small batch aspect takes some of the stress and frenzy out of preserving. Not the book for a tomato avalanche, but nice for variety. Some of my favorites from this book were red pepper and apricot chutney, blueberry marmalade, Asian plum sauce, and a super fresh tasting, barely cooked strawberry jam.

I also got my hands on Fancy Pantry by Helen Witty. I can't tell you how many times I've come across references to this book over the years, but it went out of print long ago and the library doesn't even have it. Every time I looked it up I found copies for $50 and more so I figured I'd never see it. When I shared my despair over this with my friend Chris, she found me a battered but completely serviceable (and affordable) copy on Half.com that very day. I love this book. I think there's something about that classic 1980's page layout from Workman Publishing which really works for me, possibly because that's when I started looking at cookbooks seriously. It's a fun book, loaded with tasty things like candied cranberries, peach preserves with brown sugar and rum, and other delicacies. Like the best cookbooks, it's as much fun to read as to cook from. If you come across a copy of this while out and about, snap it up as it's a keeper!

Serendipity

2009-11-12T13:46:00.000-08:00

I've been down with a cold the last few days which does strange things to my appetite. I know most people like bland, simple food when sick but for me, the spicier the better. All I wanted this time was spicy Asian noodle soups and blistering curries. I ended up with simple, bland chicken noodle soup because I didn't have the energy to make it more interesting and an egg curry which wasn't nearly hot enough despite what I thought was a generous use of Dundicut peppers.

I started feeling better this morning and a new craving arose, this time for the jam filled scones they sell at my favorite cafe. I was still feeling too lazy to actually go out so imagine my surprise when I found the very thing I was craving while scrolling through my Google Reader.

Lelo in NoPo is a wonderful blog full of color and life an so many good things: food and photos and gardens and more. After my busy summer of preserving, of course I had to follow a post entitled What the heck are you doing with all that jam? I was delighted to find that Lelo had a recipe for the very jam-filled scone I'd been craving. All I had to do was make a trip down to my basement shelves to choose a filling.

Have I written yet about how many jars are down there? There are quite a few. Maybe more than that. But they're all neatly labeled so that's something.

After looking over the possibilities I decided on an apricot filling and pulled out a particularly special jar. This jar came from a box of old canning jars found in the back of our garage when we moved in. It doesn't look like any of my other jars and is emblazoned with the words Drey's Perfect Mason. I suppose it's silly to be especially fond of a particular canning jar, but there you have it: one more oddity on my ever growing list!

I'm not much of a scone or biscuit maker--I don't think I have that light touch which everyone swears is necessary. So when I saw that this recipe was made using a countertop mixer I was a bit skeptical. But this came out light and crispy and extremely delicious. My only complaint? I only got six good sized scones from a batch of dough so next time I am definitely doubling the recipe.

Since I had an ideal jam-topped scone in mind, of course I had to fiddle with the recipe just slightly. I know my dream scones have some coconut and I think some oats, too. And nothing is ever harmed by the addition of a deep, strong, long-steeped vanilla extract so I added that as well. Lelo generously gave me permission to share her recipe with my changes. You'll find a printable recipe here. Enjoy!

Is Nothing Safe?

2009-11-03T18:50:00.000-08:00

I recently (and with no small amount of reluctance) traded in my beloved old Sigg water bottle for a stainless steel version made by Earthlust. Why? Well it turns out that after denying their aluminum bottle liners contained BPA for years, Sigg finally revealed that, in fact, BPA was used in their older bottles. But it's OK, because it didn't leach into the contents. Really! They promised. Well, that wasn't good enough for me so I opted for food grade stainless, a non-toxic material that doesn't require a suspicious lining the way aluminum does.

Then I began worrying about the potential dangers in drinking hot coffee through a plastic lid. The waste generated by so called disposable cups is already appalling enough but who knows what leaches from those cheap plastic lids into my latte? So I made a deal with myself: no more to go coffee unless I have my snazzy BPA-free, leak proof, insulated stainless steel cup along with me. So far so good.

But no. I just read a disturbing report on the blog Civil Eats about BPA in the linings of virtually all food cans, organic or not.

Consumer Reports’ latest tests of canned foods, including soups, juice, tuna, and green beans, have found that almost all of the 19 name-brand foods tested contain measurable levels of Bisphenol A (BPA).

I'm not a huge user of canned food but there are few canned things which are staples in our home: organic tomatoes, coconut milk, beans, and tuna. I can't imagine cooking without some of these things in my pantry. I haven't been able to find much consistent information about which companies use cans containing BPA but someone at the Organic Grace blog has sone lots of research on the subject. Thanks, Organic Grace blog!

You'd think this would motivate me to do more canning next summer but even that's not safe as most commonly available home canning lids also contain BPA. What to do?

For years I really thought that my daily exposure to toxics wasn't really a big deal. But after recently reading a truly frightening book entitled The Autoimmune Epidemic , my Pollyanna tendencies are starting to wane. This stuff really does matter because we have no way of knowing which toxic chemical may be the one to tip us into any of over 100 autoimmune diseases. I already live with one which ups my likelihood of developing another. I've learned to live with Graves Disease in the last few years, but that's enough, thanks. I imagine it's only a matter of time until BPA goes the way of DDT and PCBs but how many people have to get sick before that happens?

Comfort Food

2009-10-31T20:37:00.000-07:00

With the recent acquisition of my 3-in-1 slow cooker, I've been looking at a lot of new cookbooks in an attempt to move beyond the chili and bean soups I can make with my eyes closed. There seem to be two camps in the slow cooker world: those who slow cook for convenience, and those who slow cook for the added depth of flavor imparted by long hours over low heat.

There are a lot of slow cooker books out there, enough that I've had to develop my own simple litmus test to use while scanning for promising recipes. If onion soup mix or anything from Campbell's show up in the ingredient list, that's when I put the book down and move on.

I've had some hits (arroz con pollo) and some misses (Moroccan chicken) and learned a few things, namely that most things taste better if I take the time to brown meat, saute onions, and warm spices in oil. Oh, and that you really can overcook slow cooked dishes.

Tonight's dinner was delicious. I made a slow cooked kitchari from the wonderful Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Book in which I've found interesting recipes with real ingredients--nary a can of cream of mushroom soup in sight! The recipe called for heating spices in melted butter to release their fragrance for the base flavors and the last hour spice paste addition gives a bright, fresh taste to this protein-rich Indian comfort food.

My modification: the recipe calls for moong dal but I used the split chana dal I had in the cupboard and was happy with the results, but they didn't completely disintegrate into the rice. If that sounds more appealing to you (or picky little ones) by all means use the moong dal or even red lentils. Also, though the recipe directed cooking on low heat, I cut the cooking time nearly in half by cooking on high. If you choose to do this, watch it at the end so it doesn't dry out too much.You'll find the printable recipe here. Enjoy!

Oh--and if, like me, you can't keep your dals straight, this is the guide I refer to.

Why, hello!

2009-10-26T19:34:00.000-07:00

I just looked up my visitor stats for this blog and noticed that a lot of people have been visiting lately. Like, people that don't even know me in real life. So....welcome! I'd love to hear what brought you here. Feel free to drop me a line in the comments--I'd love to know more about my readers.

Delighted

2009-10-26T09:45:00.000-07:00

The recipe I'm sharing with you today came from David Lebovitz' delightful new book The Sweet Life in Paris which I recently devoured. It's my favorite kind of travel writing, the sort that mixes bafflement and delight, good information and random observations, with the added bonus of a generous serving of recipes.

The recipe for Breton Buckwheat Cake caught my eye for reasons not entirely clear to me. There are much flashier recipes in this book for sure. But when I was a kid my dad occasionally made us buckwheat pancakes and there is something about that distinctive flavor that was very attractive--mysterious and familiar at the same time. I had no idea how that would translate to a sweet cake and was anxious to find out.

The sad truth is that I couldn't take a sexy photo of this cake. But please, don't be fooled by its homely appearance because it is a thing of beauty indeed. Its flavor is very nuanced and surprising--I kept getting hints of almond and honey despite neither being included in the ingredient list. Heidi at 101 Cookbooks suggests serving the cake with fresh fruit or Greek yogurt lightly sweetened with maple syrup. But I was enchanted by this cake all on its own. Really, it's the best kind of magic. Do give this one a try and let me know what you think.

You'll find the recipe here. And don't despair about all those leftover egg whites--that's what meringues are for!

Mas o Menos

2009-10-11T16:30:00.000-07:00

I recently retired my trusty old 6 quart crockpot. The earth toned workhorse, embellished with 1970's era herb illustrations, was a hand-me-down when I got it well over a decade ago. It made countless batches, of chili, white bean soup, and tomato sauce. Admittedly, it looked a little homely sitting on my counter but I saw no reason to replace it until a recent discussion with a friend who started talking about lead in old crockpot glazes. I wrote to the manufacturer a number of times and was never able to get a definitive answer regarding the safety of my trusty old crockpot so, with only a little regret, it has been replaced by a guaranteed lead free slow cooker which is very spiffy as it comes with interchangable, nesting stoneware cooking vessels in three different sizes which makes this thing suitable for anything from a small pot of slow cooked morning oatmeal to a vat of chili for a crowd. How cool is that? Of course it's a little spare looking without the groovy 70's color scheme but I can trade that for lead free glazes any day.

Those of you reading this who manage just fine without yet another kitchen device might wonder what all the fuss is about. What's wrong with a soup pot and a stove? Nothing. Nothing at all, assuming one is home to watch over the soup pot. But there is something truly wonderful in being able to throw dinner together in the morning and walk away, knowing that a tasty meal will be waiting at the end of the day. Or to set up a pot of oatmeal at bedtime and know that there will be a warm, slow cooked breakfast, even on busy mornings.

I used to only use it during the week when I work from 6-9 pm but in recent years I've found the slow cooker to be quite versatile as well as providing a depth of flavor that I really enjoy. I've written about using it for tomato sauce. Chutney works just as well. And recently I've found that slow cooking chicken necks for 15 or more hours makes a fantastic chicken broth. A slow cooker uses less energy than stovetop cooking, it's nearly impossible to burn properly prepared food, and it doesn't heat up the kitchen. What's not to like?

I wanted to share with you the maiden voyage meal as it was delicious. I'd had an itch to try making a Cuban style arroz con pollo but was set on using only what I had on hand which meant chicken breasts, leftover rice, and lots of CSA bell peppers. None of the recipes I looked at quite fit the bill so I just went freestyle and what I came up with was a keeper. If 4/5 of this family like a dish, I am doing well and that was how this was received. The trick was pureeing all those Vitamin C filled peppers along with tomatoes in the blender. My kids won't touch peppers if they know they're there but don't have refined enough palates to recognize them by taste alone. I'm calling it Mas o Menos Arroz con Pollo as I doubt it would be recognized as such by an actual Cuban person but I'm OK with that because it's good stuff!

Printable recipe

Power Bars

2009-10-01T11:15:00.000-07:00

Two of my kids and I are not big breaskfast eaters so the mornings when we have to zip out the door for a day of classes can be a little hairy. Thus, I am always on the lookout for healthy, nourishing take along snacks to provide a boost.

I made these last night after searching through internet recipes. I found lots of interesting ones but most were either scary (corn syrup? powdered milk?) or contained expensive, esoteric ingredients like agave syrup and stevia powder. I'm sure you could use those and these would be tasty but plain old honey suited my tastes just fine. There's lots of good stuff here, and room to play around with ingredients. The key for my family is to use the food processor to reduce the offensive elements (cashews, pumkin seeds, and walnuts) along with dried fruit to a barely noticeable paste. Mixed in with oats, peanut butter, and honey, you can hardly tell how nutrient dense these bars are. You can even add some protein powder of your choice (I used a yucky excessively vanilla flavored whey powder my doctor wants me to use in smoothies but it's much less noticeable here).

Let me know what you think of these and if you have a favorite to go type recipe for busy mornings.

Printable recipe

Brownie With A Twist

2009-09-15T10:15:00.000-07:00

This one wouldn't let me be. We recently discovered a little coffee house on NE Alberta which has lovely baked goods including a cardamom-pistachio-sea salt brownie that I sampled with no small amount of suspicion given all the extra ingredients. Of course after my first bite I was hooked. These things are crazy good and I couldn't stop thinking about them.

I finally decided to make my own version last night and am happy with the results. I started with the Baked brownie as a base, removed the espresso powder, added cardamom, sea salt, and pistachios and used a larger pan in the hopes of getting a slightly less moist brownie. My results were quite good. I am still looking for the chewy but not dry element, but that just gives me reason to keep experimenting! I think the ingredient that should prove challenging is the pistachios. I wanted roasted and unsalted and, ideally, shelled. I got the first two but ended up shelling my own which wasn't a big deal.

Give these a try and let me know what you think.

Link to Printable Recipe

Elderberry Syrup

2009-09-04T09:56:00.000-07:00

Now that I have a 17 day break with holidays coming up, I expect to share some tasty new food finds with you but first, I wanted to let you know about my recent experience making my own anti-flu medicine because I am just so thrilled to be able to make a proven antiviral flu remedy for a mere fraction of the cost of the commercially prepared variety.

Elderberries grow on tall, spindly bushes and the tiny dark blue-black berries develop in clusters after the feathery flower fade. Elderberry bushes are apparently quite easy to grow so I will be looking to add one to my garden soon as elderberries are extremely nutritious, rich in antioxidants, an known to stimulate the immune system in response to flu viruses. As the H1N1 hysteria grows (along with the pressure to subject our children to a virtually untested vaccine) you can bet I want something safe and free of side effects to give my family when we head into crowded synagogues and classrooms later this month.

Elderberry syrup, as it turns out, is super easy to make. The only hard part is finding your berries. Here in the Portland metro area Morning Shade Farm has a row of u-pick elderberry bushes. It took about 10 minutes to fill our buckets with snipped berry clusters. The only fiddly bit is coaxing the berries off the stems. After that, a quick rinse, a bit of a simer, some straining, adding honey, and bottling. That's it! Seriously. Instead of paying $9-12 for a 4 ounce bottle of Sambucol, I have nearly a quart of the stuff which cost about $2, plus another 4 batches worth of berries in the freezer. How cool is that?

The recipe I used came from Rosemary Gladstar's Family Herbal which is the source of The Dreaded Tonic, our standard homemade cold remedy. I made a double batch of the elderberry syrup by gently simmering 2 cups of washed elderberries in 4 C water for 45 minutes. I let things cool a bit and then strained the juice through a fine mesh strainer, mashing all the solids to extract as much liquid as possible. I then mixed in about a cup and a half of honey and poured into a 1 liter ez cap bottle (I buy mine here). I will keep this refrigerated. The great part is that, unlike the tonic, this stuff is good. Really good. Like pour it on your pancakes or drink straight from the bottle good. I only used about half the suggested quantity of honey and it's still sweet and fruity and ever so delicious. I won't have any trouble getting my kids to take their daily dose. That would 2T/day for big kids and adults and 1 T/day for younger ones as a preventative measure and twice that amount to reduce severity if someone falls ill with the flu. Because of the honey I wouldn't give this to babies.

One thing I learned as I did a little research: under no circumstances should you substitute red elderberries which are quite toxic. And don't eat your black elderberries raw--they can cause stomach upset.

I understand that the hard part here is finding the elderberries. But they are out there--ask around. And if you can't find fresh, you could make this with dried elderberries purchased online though I don't know how the cost would compare to commercially made. I figure that using my u-pick berries I can make close to 5 quarts of this stuff for under $10 which might be an incentive to plant a bush in your garden. I hope you are able to try this and that we all stay healthy this fall.

Edited 9/9/09: I just learned that you can buy dried elderberries from The Herbalist and it's still very cost effective at $2.33/ounce. You only need 1/2 cup of berries to make 4 C of syrup so making your own is still a huge savings.

Slow

2009-08-22T09:24:00.000-07:00

I have been reading about slow roasted tomatoes for years and I don't know why it took me so long to jump on the train with all the cool kids, but I am here now! Let me tell you, these things are a revelation. Everything good about tomatoes is magnified in the slow roasting approach, turning a perfectly serviceable Roma into a thing of brilliance. Think of the depth of flavor in a good quality tomato paste, but sweeter, and with the added fragrance of your favorite olive oil and a little magic thrown in. I'm told you can use these with pasta, salads, eggs, and as appetizers but so far I find that eating them as is works pretty well, too.

If you start googling recipes, you'll find that the directions are all over the map. Use cherry tomatoes. No--paste tomatoes. Place skin side up. No--skin side down. Roast for anywhere from 3 to 12 hours at temperatures ranging from 175 to 300 degrees. Herbs and garlic cloves are essential for seasoning. Or you can skip those. My guess is that all of these approaches work just fine.

What I did was drizzle two sheet pans with a lovely, fragrant olive oil and then slice a whole bunch of Roma tomatoes lengthwise, cutting out the little stem thingy as I went along. I rubbed the cut side of each tomato half in the olive oil, flipped it over, and lined it up with all the others until the pan was full. I gave each pan a light sprinkle of kosher salt and popped them in the oven at 175 degrees and came back 12 hours later. Once cool, I peeled the skins off each tomato half and then popped them into freezer bags to save for winter although I confess I ate more than a few during that process.

I hope I've convinced you that you need to go make these immediately. As in, RIGHT NOW. Seriously. GO. And then come back and tell me all about it.

Community Supported Agriculture...and carrots!

2009-08-18T12:49:00.000-07:00

We've come to the decision that, while we've loved the CSA this year and the produce has been excellent, we don't plan to continue next year, mostly because we'd rather have more say in what we buy and when we cook. The CSA food has been delicious, but there's a lot of guilt if we don't do something with it immediately. And goign to the farmers market has come to seem like a crazy extravagance. But we really, really like visiting different farmers markets and being able to see what's in season and make out own decisions about what we'll cook and eat. The CSA has made us try a few new things, but it makes more sense to spend our money on things our family loves rather than bravely tolerating turnips. And it's not like won't still support local farmers next year--we'll just be supporting more of them.

I will miss the weekly surprise. What did we get? Ooooh! Purple peppers? Strawberries? Funny carrots?

I've seen lots of carrots with legs:

but this was the first time I'd seen a carrot that needed to pee!

DIY Coffee

2009-08-10T11:36:00.000-07:00

I love the crazy diversity of my neighborhood. Some of my neighbors like to drink enormous quantities of soda and then toss the cups in the street. Others drink beer while sitting in their parked cars, listening to 70's R&B. And then there are the east African families whose serious love of coffee necessitates home roasting. When I arrive home from work around 9:15, the air in my neighborhood is often heavy with the scent of coffee roasting in the tiny apartments scattered throughout Parkrose.

I imagine these women, swathed in colorful cottons, carefully tending their beans in a cast iron skillet or perhaps some sort of fascinating bit of specialized equipment, passed down through families and carefully wrapped for the journey from Ethiopia to the US. What I never pictured was a hot air popcorn popper but, as it turns out, these silly things make decent one-batch coffee roasters.

Intrigued by this idea, I asked my friend Doreen for some green beans (which, because they are decaffeinated, are actually a light tan color before roasting). Doreen and her husband run ZBeanz, a local coffee roasting company whose coffee I love. While I was curious to try roasting my own coffee, I had no illusions that I'd produce anything brilliant and wisely bought a bag of their Sumatra decaf for backup.

You can read about popcorn popper coffee roasting all over the web, but I found this page at Coffee Geek to be particularly informative. After reading thoroughly I took the popper outside to avoid setting off smoke alarms. I put in about half a cup of beans, turned the thing on, and puttered around in the garden for 5 minutes or so while things warmed up. I was soon rewarded with a lovely aroma as the beans began to darken. I peered carefully into the popper to keep an eye on the darkening beans and soon noticed that along with the rich coffee smell I was also breathing in the less lovely aroma of melting plastic! When I realized the hood for the popper was starting to melt I unplugged things and decided the beans were dark enough.

I immediately heated water and ground the beans for my French press. The resulting coffee was good but not as full bodied as I would have liked. My 16 year old coffee loving son declared it "bland". And he was right. We both prefer a darker roast which was prevented by my early shutdown of the popper.

I may pursue this more, just because I love the idea of doing my own roasting. On the other hand, I don't love the idea of inhaling plastic fumes at all. Thank goodness I always no where to go for more excellent coffee!

More Food Preservation Fun

2009-08-05T10:00:00.000-07:00

Back in June when I decided this was going to be The Year I Preserve Everything I bought a copy of The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving, mostly because I was taken by the "small batch" part. Small batches mean I don't need to haul out the gigantic, baby bath sized canning kettle and attempt to move it, full of water, from the sink to the stove. Small batch means not waiting an hour for the water to heat. Small batch means I can toss a few half pint jars in my stockpot and can without drama. Awesome.

Also, this book had lots of intriguing recipes beyond the usual Ball Blue Book staples , things like Thai Chile Sauce and Madras Pickled Eggplant. So far I've made the barely cooked strawberry jam and the lovely blueberry marmalade and been quite pleased. Recently after halving and pitting 22 pounds of Tilton apricots and running them through my dehydrator, I was looking through the book again and came across red pepper and apricot chutney. Home dried apricots are nothing short of amazing and I needed to figure out a way to prevent myself from endlessly snacking until they all disappeared in less time than it took to dry them. I'm happy to report that I still have most of my apricots after the clever idea of sealing them up using my friend's Food Saver. Somehow busting into one of those lumpy, vacuum packed bags is a lot more daunting than sneaking a few out of a plain old jar.
But luckily I held a couple of cups of dried apricots aside to make this chutney which has raisins, apples, sweet bell peppers, candied ginger, and onion to round out the flavors. I found it disappointingly cloying at first, so added in about half a head of chopped garlic, some mustard seeds, and a dash of turmeric which provided the perfect foil for all that sweetness and the resulting chutney is something I am flat out crazy for. I used some in the dressing for curried chicken salad and it was delicious. The author suggests pairing it with cheddar cheese, and what I am loving right now is a thin layer of this chutney along with some smoked turkey on a crusty roll. I just started a fresh batch of chevre and I'm thinking a thin smear of chutney and a thick splodge of chevre on a cracker might be about the finest thing ever.

Unlike my tomato chutney which takes forever to cook down, this took no more than 30 minutes so it's really not a huge production, making it the kind of project I like best. If you decide to give this a go, do let me know how it turns out. And while we're at it, what are your favorite summer preserving projects? Let me know in the comments--thanks!

Printable recipe here.

A Long Overdue Mango Post

2009-08-02T10:05:00.000-07:00

According to Mr Bittman, the recession has yet to boost home cooking but I can tell you that we are tightening our belts around here and visiting restaurants much less often. Which means it's up to me to keep us supplied with good food. I've been hitting lots of U-pick fields, farmers markets and farm stands looking for both inspiration and bargains and storing up lots of summer bounty for the dark days of winter. When I recently came across a great deal on some fine looking mangoes, I snapped them up without much of a plan. Only later did it occur to me to try and make a simple version of mango kulfi, the delicious Indian ice cream that's so lovely and refreshing on a hot day.
I knew that, like so many tasty Indian desserts, reduced milk was key. Also I knew there was no way I was going to stand over the stove to carefully cook down milk on (yet another) very hot day. I had on hand a can of evaporated milk purchased for possibly making fudge frosting for a cake but the birthday boy opted for mocha buttercream instead, which was fortuitous.

No printable recipe today, folks, as this is super easy. I won't pretend that it's authentic, but it worked for us. Empty a 12 ounce can of evaporated milk into the blender along with 3 large peeled mangoes cut into chunks, 1/3 cup of sugar, maybe half a teaspoon of rose water, and the crushed seeds from 5 or 6 cardamom pods. Whiz until smooth, and chill. When good and cold, transfer to an ice cream maker, and proceed as usual.

Now let's talk mangoes for just a moment. I had never eaten a mango in my life until I lived in Mexico in my early 20's. At one point during our stay in Cuernavaca, we suddenly noticed that the roadsides were littered in flat, hairy things. I thought they were some sort of weird Mexican lemming following an ancient signal to march to their death. Then I learned mango season had begun and everyone was gorging on this loveliest of fruit, often cut to look like a flower, impaled on a stick, and sprinkled with lime juice and chile. My first mango was a tentative, sticky, messy experience, but in no time I was in love. Mangoes are one of my very favorite fruits to this day, though I find it's not always easy to get good ones. I have much better luck in smaller ethnic markets than I do in our local natural food emporiums. Pop into any Vietnamese market and you are likely to find a box of mangoes at a very good price.

But what kind of mango? I've always been partial to the smaller yellow mangoes known as ataulfo, champagne, or Manila for eating fresh. I like their buttery texture and almost complete lack of hairy fiber. I tend to have good luck with finding nice ripe ones. I have more trouble catching the larger mangoes when they are best so I normally don't bother, but these Kent mangoes were selling for an unbeateable price so I am glad I took my chances. They were bursting with flavor and perfect for the kulfi I made. If you want to use the smaller yellow mangoes, use 5 or 6 for a batch of kulfi.
I am so tickled with this recipe. I am not sure how it differs from the real thing, but it works for me. I hope you'll give it a try. Of course it's a lovely way to end an Indian meal but I could eat it pretty much anytime.

Even when it's stupidly hot..

2009-07-28T12:41:00.000-07:00

...you still need to eat. And not only sorbet. Sad, but true.

I had a mad craving for curried chicken salad yesterday and what I came up with was brilliant if I do say so myself: a lovely combo of creamy and cool, zippy, fruity, and crunchy with lots and lots of color.

I could have been deterred by the fact that despite my copious collection of Indian spices (seriously, you should see my freezer which is stuffed with things like curry leaves and mango powder and enough mustard seed to fill a small pillow) I had absolutely no curry powder in the house. But nothing was going to stop me from having my salad and nothing was going to force me out into the heat. I ended up making my own curry powder, and that may be why this salad was so lovely but then again, it would probably be just dandy with a good commercial brand of curry powder.

My other imrov move was using dried mangoes instead of fresh. Fresh woudl be delicious, I'm sure, but again, the heat. I stayed put and rehydrated some dried mangoes from Trader Joe's and they added the perfect bit of sweetness to the salad.

This was a huge hit at my house, enough so that I think I will be making it again very soon. There's really no end to this heat wave in sight, so I'm pretty happy to live on salads, smoothies, and sorbets.

Printable recipe here

Heat Wave

2009-07-25T10:39:00.000-07:00

You've just got to love the weather forecasters here in Portland. We get a week's hysterical notice for any potentially dramatic weather. They've been carrying on about the coming heat wave for days but as far as I'm concerned, it's already here. I'm having a harder time with the heat this year than usual. All I want to eat is ice cream.

Unfortunately ice cream and I don't really get along. It's pretty hard on my stomach though I have been known to suffer for a good coffee ice cream. Gelato I can handle pretty well and I adore Coconut Bliss, but it's awfully spendy. Sorbet, however, goes down with no trouble at all. When I stand in front of the freezer case, there are so many tasty looking ice cream flavors and then, maybe, there's lemon sorbet. Yawn.

Luckily it's a snap to make my own sorbet. In the last few weeks we've had cherry, blueberry-banana, and nectarine, all based on the recipes in David Lebovitz' most excellent book The Perfect Scoop. Although his recipe for nectarine sorbet was simple enough, I made things even easier by cutting out one step. I opted not to cook the nectarines --I just threw everything in the blender, transferred the mixture to my trusty Donvier, and we had a lovely fresh nectarine sorbet in no time at all.

I might try this again and cook the nectarines just to see what happens, but I really love the way my raw version burts with super fresh nectarine flavor. I'm sure you'll want to have some of this tucked away in your freezer when the heat wave hits.

Printable recipe here.

Colleen's Poison Jam

2009-07-21T15:14:00.000-07:00

Ok, folks, you are in for a real treat today. I'm going to share a recipe for, quite simply, the best jam in the whole world. This summer I've already made strawberry jam, sour cherry jam, and lots of blueberry marmalade. They are all very, very good. But nothing touches Colleen's Poison Jam which I am sharing here with her permission.

The first thing you should know it that it isn't actually poison, but it's so good that you'd willingly eat it even if it were. Back in March we took a trip down south to visit Colleen and her lovely family in California. We had a wonderful week and when our departure day arrived, I was quite sad about leaving. Colleen had thoughtfully gotten up early, thrown together some fabulous scones, and served them with an array of tasty homemade jams. The apricot was absolutely divine and I was delighted when she pulled a couple of jars out of the freezer and gave them to me to take home.

It was a long drive and I thought about the jam tucked away under the seat quite a few times. After many hours, we got home and unpacked and went about the business of switching from vacation mode to real life mode and it was quite a few days before I thought about the jam again. When I went looking for it, it wasn't in the refrigerator where it belonged. Both jars were right where I left them under the seat in the van.

In my defense, I will say that the weather was very cool and rainy all week. It never could have heated up in the van. And jam is full of sugar, a natural preservative. When I brought the jars in, I told the kids in no uncertain terms not to touch the jam as it was surely spoiled. And then I proceeded to eat an entire jar myself in the pre-Passover rush to get all the bread out of the house. My kids eventually realized that I wasn't dying from the jam and they took care of the rest of it. And thus the (terribly unfair) name was born.

I'm sure many of you are shrieking in horror by now. But here's the thing. I would risk my life for this jam. It's that good. And there wasn't a thing in the world wrong with it despite all my husband's grim doomsday warnings.

I thought it must be terribly complicated to make such a lovely treat but in fact it's a snap. Really. Couldn't be easier. Apricots, sugar, lemon juice, a pat of butter, and a vanilla bean which is crucial to the heavenly flavor. The only thing I changed was the method of preservation. Instead of freezing, my jars have been water bath canned so they're safe for long car rides and forgetful gift recipients. It takes about half an hour to make a couple of pints of the loveliest apricot jam ever. Apricots are in all the farmers markets these days (at least in our area) so don't miss your chance!

Printable recipe here.

Blueberry Breakfast Cake

2009-07-13T16:04:00.000-07:00

I woke up the other morning with blueberry breakfast cake on my mind. It probably had something to do with the more than 20 pounds of blueberries the kids and I picked at a lovely farm out in Canby. However, much as I liked the sound of it, I've never actually had blueberry breakfast cake so I had to come up with something that would live up to the name.

This cake has all kinds of things to get your day off to a good start. Yes, it's filled with those super healthy fruits, but there are also lots of whole grains and nuts to fuel your day. Lemon zest and cinnamon accent the berries beautifully.

I hope you'll give this one a try. I think it's the new summer breakfast of choice around here.

Printable recipe

Biscuit Breakthrough

2009-06-28T08:00:00.001-07:00

I've always loved cheese scones/biscuits even when they are, sadly, a little tough. I'm not a whiz with the dough and I often end up over working things but the results are OK nonetheless.

Today I wanted to make up something to accompany a pot of broccoli soup and my girl was itching to try her hand at making butter, so a little something bready was in order. I remembered a lovely cheese biscuit recipe I'd copied from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking which is also the source of the best brownies ever. Just saying.

Anyhow, these cheese scones are delicious due to the liberal use of chipotle powder, one of the finest flavors ever--so rich and smoky and deep and, sadly, poison to my daughter who worked so hard shaking that jar for butter. So I opted for a the similarly flavored Spanish paprika which has the same smoke, minus the heat.

The soup was nearly done and all I had was frozen butter for my scones. In a flash of brilliance, I decided to grate the frozen butter into the dough, which gave me lovely results. These were the lightest, most delicate biscuits I can remember making.

Whether you make these zippy with chipotle or mildly smoky with Spanish paprika, they're bound to be a hit. Especially if you decide to gild the lily with a little fresh butter, handmade by cheerfully enthusiastic child labor.

Printable recipe here.

What to do with.....

2009-06-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

...collard greens? We got a big bunch in our CSA box and, while I can turn most leafy things into smoothies when out of other ideas, I was afraid that tough collards might just do in my blender.

I did a quick blog search for ideas and came across fresh365, a food blog that's new to me but has already joined the crowd in my RSS reader. I enjoyed browsing through the varied vegetarian recipes and ogling the lovely photos. Yesterday's entry was a collard green and green olive pesto which sounded, frankly, a little odd so I had to look closer. Upon reading the recipe it was clear how it could work and I jumped into action.

Of course I was missing various key ingredients like pine nuts and sun dried tomatoes and didn't want to dash to the store. I improvised with roasted cashews for the nuts, but couldn't think of anything to replace the tomatoes. The cashews worked well, and the final dish was quite good, but I can see where the tomatoes would balance out the tang of the vinegar and the salty olives.

I served this spread on crispy toast as part of our patio lunch today. Surprisingly, my kids liked it quite a bit. It was definitely a bigger hit than the regular old basil variety, which I thought was very interesting. I have leftovers and I'm thinking about how it might work over a good whole wheat pasta with tiny tomatoes. The idea has potential, for sure!

The printable recipe is here, with permission from fresh365. Thanks, Erin!

Persian Love Cake

2009-06-24T08:56:00.000-07:00

I mentioned this cake last month when Epicurious did a feature on their 30 top-rated cake recipes. So many of them sounded good, but only Persian Love Cake (which, yes, I just love to say) stayed with me, almost nagging at me to give it a try. I only held off because the perfect cake-worthy event was on the horizon. Yesterday was our 19th anniversary and I finally had a chance to make this heavenly cake.

I imagine that many people, when confronted with elements like saffron whipped cream and candied rose petals might roll their eyes and move on to something simpler, say a nice pound cake. But, remember, I'm a girl who loves her three+ hour Bollywood movies. A complicated, exotically flavored cake seems only natural, at least for a special occasion.

This magical confection pulls together many flavors which I simply adore. First of all, there's cardamom. Lots of it. Based on reader comments, I added quite a bit more because that's one of my very favorite flavors. The whipping cream used for the frosting is infused with the lovely, complex flavor of saffron. There's a bit of rose water (which must be used ever so judiciously before falling in to the realm of air freshener), pistachios, and candied rose petals which I did myself using our own roses. If this is sounding just a bit too intense, keep in mind that there's a fair amount of lemon zest to keep all these flavors in check--brilliant!

In addition to adding more cardamom, I followed a number of the suggestions made in the reviews for the recipe at the Epicurious site. I didn't butter the pan, I crushed the cardamom rather than using it whole, and I added the extra egg white. What I didn't do and should have done was use superfine sugar for the rose petals. I had none on hand and mine ended up more clunky than delicate. Not that it that it kept anyone from eating it.

This combination of flavors is nothing short of heavenly. When I first read the recipe, I suspected that the flavors would combine like our favorite kulfi at Cool Moon Ice Cream--a lovely blend of cream, spicy sparkle, and nutty crunch. All those elements translate beautifully into a stunning cake, just perfect for a romantic celebration. If you need something extra special, you might want to give Persian Love Cake a try.

Recipe link here.

Goodness from the Garden

2009-06-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

One of the ongoing horrors of raising picky children is getting stuck in their ruts. At various times some or all of my children have been perfectly happy eating nothing but pasta and bottled marinara sauce topped with a blend of Parmesan and Romano cheeses. Apart from the burrito, mediocre pasta with red sauce has probably been served more often than any other dish in our house. It drives me crazy because I can make a fine tomato sauce. I even stocked my freezer with pints and pints of the good stuff at the end of last summer. But my kids turned up their nose at my summery goodness, making it clear that they much preferred the stuff in the jar.

I think may have reached a point where I can't look at another one of those jars again. But I still love pasta as much as ever. I came up with this recipe after being inspired by one published in this month's Bon Appetit magazine, but I made enough changes that I think it's safe to call it my own.

I was instantly drawn when I saw ricotta used. I had my first attempt at homemade ricotta in the 'fridge and this looked like a worthy showcase for my meager but tasty cheese. You don't have to make your own ricotta though if you are interested it could hardly be easier. Mine was a not-terribly-successful attempt at making ricotta using the whey leftover from cheesemaking. A lot of hoo ha for not much cheese, though it was tasty. There's a good, simple recipe at 101 Cookbooks that has nice clear directions and should have a much higher yield than the whey ricotta. It's on my list of things to try soon.

Back to the pasta--it's creamy and light, with lemon brightening the flavor of the sauteed veggies. I used what I had on hand in my back garden which meant only a few sugar snap peas, but my first zucchini of the year and a handful of tender young chard leaves. The combination was delicious and I'm sure you'll find your own combos which work just as well. My purple beans are coming along and will likely star when I make this dish next.

The added benefit of making this dish from what was in my garden (apart from not having to make a trip to the store) was that while I was poking around to see what was available, I got to nibble on delicious, perfectly ripe strawberries--and dessert before dinner isn't a bad thing at all!

Link to downloadable recipe

Triumph!

2009-06-21T19:10:00.000-07:00

My first batch of goat cheese was just the tiniest bit disappointing. I was expecting the sort of creamy, tangy spreadable cheese that I associate with the term chevre. I now know it was a learning cheese. It was a quick cheese which used cider vinegar to coagulate the milk and then hung to dry for a few hours. The resulting cheese was mild tasting and much drier and firmer than I'd expected.

I'm learning a little bit with each batch of cheese I make. I now know that vinegar makes a somewhat rubbery cheese and long draining times make a drier cheese. Nearly every recipe I've tried so far has come from either The Home Creamery or Home Cheese Making, both of which are excellent books full of promise. But I also tried a little freestyle cheese making last week, adding to my goat's milk some heavy cream and homemade yogurt which I wanted to use up before a trip out of town. The resulting cheese was unlike anything I've ever tasted and I was so tickled! Ed, my source for ultra-fresh goat's milk, tells me if I created it, I should name it but so far it's just The Awesome Cheese. I don't know why, but adding the cow's milk cream and yogurt to the goat's milk seemed to enhance the goaty flavor in a really good way. The cheese was a little dry but sliced nicely and disappeared all too rapidly. I'll try again and if I can duplicate my results, I hope to share the recipe here.

I still hadn't managed a creamy, tangy chevre and after a bit more research realized that I needed a starter culture and time to let things age properly. I ordered the Fresh French Goat Cheese kit from The New England Cheesemaking Company and soon found myself in possession of two types of starters, four cheese molds, more rennet, butter muslin and a recipe booklet which talked me through all the steps for a classic chevre. It's not quick--it takes a few days what with sterilizing the milk, incubating the culture, and draining the curds, but it worked! Two full days after I started the process I was rewarded with four tiny rounds of delicious cheese. I'm so jazzed about this! I really can make cheese in my kitchen from milk purchased nearby fom the happiest goats I've ever seen. Today I tucked some thin wedges of the cheese into pitted dates and wished I could pat myself on the back for my cleverness.

You won't be surprised to learn that I've added a few new blogs to my RSS reader. Curd Nerds, I Make Cheese, and Cheese Underground really hit the spot for me these days. But after reading/gawking at this fabulous photo essay on artisan cheesemaking in the Alps, I am starting to think that maybe the world needs another cheesemaker more than it needs another ESL teacher.

Unexpectedly Good

2009-06-19T19:17:00.000-07:00

There's been lots and lots of dairy action around here, now that I've met Ed, my local goat guy. I've turned 4 gallons of milk into yogurt, chevre, feta, and a my own invention which I'm just calling The Awesome Cheese . If I can duplicate my results, I'll be sharing that here since it's pretty straightforward and doesn't require exotic specialty ingredients--except for goat's milk.

Honestly, I've been just a wee bit obsessed with the cheese, but wasn't sure how many people shared my obsession and thought my next post here at Magpie Eats should be of a non-dairy nature. And so I bring you.....Turnip Soup!

Did I scare you away? I hope not. This turned out so much better than I'd imagined possible. It's rich and creamy and only lightly turnip flavored. It was such a pleasant surprise I thought I'd share this simple and unusual soup.

This is our first season with the Winter Green Farm CSA. I've always worried that my picky family wouldn't be able to handle an ever changing weekly supply of fresh veggies but one of the things that sold me on the CSA was when a friend mentioned the recipes that accompany the weekly box. Which is how I ended up with a plan for my bunch of young turnips.

The recipe is credited to Fresh from the Market which may or may not be this book. My apologies for failing to give credit appropriately--I'm just working with the information I have.

Summer seems to have left us here in Portland so it's soup weather again. Give this one a try and let me know what you think.

Printable recipe here.

A little housekeeping: I'm trying out a different way of of storing recipes and making them easily printable. Please let me know if this is better or worse than my previous setup. Also, I have a question for you. Would you like to see the entire recipe in the blog post as well as having a link to a printable recipe? I've always stayed away from that because I wanted to keep the posts trim and easy to read, but maybe having the recipe is more appealing. Please let me know what you prefer. Thanks!

Dairy Adventures

2009-06-04T10:48:00.000-07:00

After I wrote about my Dairy Magic class a few weeks ago, you surely knew that homemade cheese was sure to follow. I bought myself a copy of The Home Creamery and have started to experiment.

The first thing that caught my eye was chevre, a fresh cheese made from goat's milk which is actually something my entire family enjoys. I went off to New Seasons and grabbed a couple of quarts of goats milk not long ago, started heating everything up, reached the proper temperature, added the cider vinegar and....nothing happened. Nothing. I knew from making paneer and mozzarella that the curds and whey tend to separate pretty quickly so I figured something was wrong. When I dug the milk cartons out of the recycling bin I realized I'd missed one of the first details Chris mentioned to us: ultra pasteurized milk is no good for cheese. And sadly the Meyerberg goats milk so commonly available is, in fact, ultra pasteurized. I ended up tossing half gallon of warm, sour milk down the drain as I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to use it.

Earlier this week our homeschool co-op was scheduled to visit a small family farm outside of Camas, Washington. I figured we'd go and pet horses and chicks and whatnot but as it turned out, Conway Family Farm is a licensed dairy selling....you guessed it--fresh raw goats milk. Hooray! Despite their long list of customers, they had a couple of half gallon bottles to spare and I was in business!

I made the cheese yesterday morning and it really was super simple. You heat the milk (half a gallon in this case) to 175 degrees, hold it at that temperature for 10 minutes, add 1 cup of cider vinegar, watch for the curds to form, and then strain using a colander lined with a clean tea towel. You then wrap the curds in the towel and hang to drain for and additional few hours though I found mine was well drained after an hour and beginning to get quite firm.

This isn't the creamy, tangy chevre that we buy at the farmer's market. It's a firm cheese with a clean, pure dairy flavor. I was able to slice it and eat on hearty bread with a light sprinkle of coarse salt-heaven!

The goat cheese went so well I decided to give yogurt another go. My first experience a few weeks ago was using the crockpot which sounded too good to be true. My result was runny and stringy and not very tasty at all. This time I used the stovetop method outlined in The Home Creamery and it was a snap. Really--heat the milk, cool it down a bit, add some starter and stir. The big issue is keeping the milk somewhere warm for 9-12 hours while it sets up. I used a large picnic cooler and nestled my jar of yogurt among some large jars and bottles which I'd filled with hot water. Once I closed everything up in the cooler, the temperature stayed nice and warm, perfect for turning milk into yogurt. Ten hours later, I opened up the cooler to find a perfect quart of yogurt awaiting me--so exciting!

I'd wanted to make granola to eat with my homemade yogurt but didn't get to it right away so today's breakfast was a tumbler full of banana lassi. I put a cup of yogurt in the blender with a banana, some crushed cardamom seeds, and a dab of honey. So simple but so, so good. Of course ripe mangoes make a lovely lassi, too.

Now that I have the book, the thermometer, fresh rennet and starter cultures, I guarantee there will be more dairy adventures in the near future.

Picnic Perfect

2009-05-28T11:22:00.000-07:00

Picnic season is here in the Pacific Northwest and I couldn't be happier! We've been making the most of sunny days with lots of outdoor meals. I love to pick up little containers of delicious things at the New Seasons deli but that adds up pretty quickly so I'm trying to keep that to a minimum (though their smoky/peppery fromage fort is a new addiction).

When we packed up to celebrate my husband's birthday last weekend, we had so much good food: bread, lentil salad, cheeses, carrot salad, crackers, chips, fresh fruit and a few different spreads and dips (also a fabulous cake--more on that soon). This wildly diverse feast had no particular theme--it ranged from Tex-Mex to Mediterranean and it was all good.

The recipe I want to share with you today is always a huge hit. I was given this recipe years ago by a lovely homeschooling mom who has since, sadly, returned to Texas where this dish is apparently quite common. The recipe she shared for Cowboy Caviar is made with black eyed peas, avocado, tomato, and other tasty additions, along with a liberal splash of Louisiana style hot sauce and the resulting mixture is about the best thing you could ever put on a corn chip. This stuff is crazy good and a snap to make. I hope you'll try a batch soon, ideally on a picnic blanket beneath the shade of old trees on a sunny day. The recipe is here--enjoy!

Cake, Anyone?

2009-05-13T12:46:00.000-07:00

Epicurious just posted thirty top-rated cake recipes. Coconut layer cake? Rum Scented Marble Cake? They all look good, but could anything beat Persian Love Cake? Oh, my!

Chocolate Financiers

2009-05-13T11:29:00.000-07:00

Usually when I make meals to take to friends in need, I stick with the tried and true and rarely branch out. But this particular friend, in addition to needing a meal high in iron, also sticks to a gluten free diet. The beef stew was an obvious choice, as was the spinach salad but what about dessert?

I found this recipe on Smitten Kitchen ages ago. In the weird circularity that it The Interwebz, she pulled the recipe from Gluten Free Girl who pulled it from David Lebovitz. With all those links, I'm not even going to type up the recipe as you should have no trouble looking it up.

And you should. These tasty little bites are worth all of the 5 or 6 minutes you'll spend in prep time. Seriously--these are a snap to make, involving little more than almond meal, cocoa, sugar, butter, and eggs. Almond meal is usually on the shelves at Trader Joe's, but you can also throw blanched almonds in the food processor and make your own.

Your result will be like a mini-brownie, but with a chewy texture and rich, nutty flavor. They're fairly sturdy and should travel well, but none of mine have made it too far as everyone here has hoovered them down immediately. I had to sneak out the batch for my friend under high security.

As for the name--financiers--does anyone out there have any idea where this comes from? I picture serious men in pinstripe suits heading off to the bank, but that just seems so wrong for these tasty treats.

Dairy Magic

2009-05-12T16:19:00.000-07:00

I recently had the opportunity to take a class called Dairy Magic from Chris at Lost Arts Kitchen in which a small group of students met in her home kitchen to learn the secrets of making yogurt, mozzarella, and cream cheese. Classes at Lost Arts Kitchen focus on teaching basic cooking skills to those looking to incorporate slow food traditions into modern life.

I've made mozzarella before but my results aren't always consistent. I haven't made yogurt but I know homemade is delicious. And home made cream cheese sounded absolutely heavenly. I got a few friends together and we all signed up to spend an evening in the kitchen.

Chris gave us a general introduction to the properties of different types of milks and talked about different specialty supplies. Then we began heating milk, straining, scooping, pouring, and tasting. I enjoyed the class immensely but my favorite part was, unsurprisingly, the part at the end where we got to sample our fresh mozzarella on Chris' still-warm-from-the-oven bread with a selection of tasty chutneys. I brought home a stack of recipes, and samples of each thing we made. The cream cheese was absolutely heavenly on Tastebud bagels the next morning.

I've already ordered one of the recommended books and will begin tracking down the culture for the cream cheese soon as that is something I particularly want to make again, perhaps for this year's Shavuot blintzes.

I can't wait to see what's up next on the class schedule for Lost Arts kitchen. I really enjoyed my first ever cooking class and hope to return soon.

In Which Melisa Comes Out as an Omnivore

2009-04-28T13:57:00.000-07:00

There have been a few changes in my kitchen of late. I've written recently about my changing body and my increasing need for protein. I have been madly craving meat in recent months much as I did through two of my pregnancies. I'm pretty sure it's all about the protein and meat is doing the trick.

Vegetarians, I love you, and I'm glad to have you here. But this might be a good time for you to go elsewhere because this post is going to be flesh-heavy. But come back soon, OK? I promise the meat posts will be few and far between.

Anyone still here?

Good.

There are only two beef dishes I know how to make and I'm rather burned out on one of them (brisket) which leaves me with my second specialty: beef stew. I recently scored a lovely enameled cast iron Dutch oven which goes from stovetop to oven to table and this purchase was responsible for a sudden glut of beef stew.
I first started making beef stew many years ago during my second pregnancy. Julia Child's recipe in The Way to Cook was so very good that I've never really bothered looking for another. The key? Most of a bottle of red wine. That and tomato puree make for tender meat in a very flavorful sauce.

I make this on the stove top and then transfer to the oven for long, slow cooking, though a crock pot would also be an option. Either way, served with a green salad and some crusty bread, it's hard to come up with a simpler, more satisfying meal.

The recipe is here.

Bollywood Dal

2009-04-15T08:00:00.001-07:00

Finally! My love of Bollywood films comes, with complete legitimacy, to Magpie Eats!

I can't even remember where I came across this link, but when I saw that Anil Kapoor was recently a guest on Martha Stewart's show, my curiosity got the best of me. Most of you will know Anil Kapoor as the slightly sleazy game show host in Slumdog Millionaire, but he's made over 100 Indian movies. He has an impressive mustache, very puffy hair, and a rather charming goofiness in the roles I've seen. I think my favorite Anil Kapoor movie must be Nayak which is a wild and occasionally surreal romp through the pitfalls of political power.

But Anil alongside Martha? Not to be missed! He shared his wife's recipe for a very rich dal and appeared to give Martha a run for her money.

Honestly, this isn't the best dal I've made. It's very rich, due to the addition of heavy cream, and the spicing was not as intriguing as I'd hoped. But it's my first recipe from a Bollywood mega-star so I how could I not write about it?

News to Me

2009-04-13T08:00:00.000-07:00

I realize that Romesco Sauce is hardly new on the food scene, and it's one of those things I've been meaning to try for years--maybe even decades. I have no idea why it took me so long to get around to it. Now that I've made my first batch I feel terrible for all the time I've not had this punchy sauce in my life.

I was given the potato assignment for a Passover dinner with friends the other night. Normally I love my potatoes in pretty much any form but I wasn't feeling all that enthusiastic this time around. This may have had something to do with the potato disaster earlier in the week. I'd planned a big pot of simple steamed baby potatoes to serve at our seder. Seder meal planning can be a bit tricky as the pre-meal part can be quite long though we never know exactly how long. This means you want dishes which aren't fussy in terms of timing and heat. I'd thought the steamed potatoes would be a snap but things ran a bit long and next thing I knew people were asking if something was burning. The steaming water had boiled away, leaving my tiny new potatoes well cooked but with a distinctively smoky flavor.

Perhaps it was thoughts of that smokiness that got me thinking about how to mix up my potato assignment just a bit. They had to be simple, of course, for the kids. But a sauce alongside would allow the more adventurous of us to have some fun. Leafing through Martha Stewart's New Classics I came across a recipe for roasted potatoes with Romesco sauce that sounded perfect: smoky and nutty with just a little bite. Also it didn't include the bread which is part of many recipes--something to keep in mind at Passover (and when feeding the gluten-free).

I made only a couple of changes. I used a kosher-for-Passover balsamic vinegar rather than sherry vinegar and even though I had the fresh mint called for in the recipe, I forgot to add it. Once I tasted the delicious sauce I didn't think mint would do anything positive for the overall flavor so I left it out.

The sauce was a huge hit. It perked up the simply roasted baby potatoes nicely. I can't wait to try it on grilled fish or chicken, alongside my basil aioli and a platter of grilled vegetables, and of course once Passover ends, spread on nice, crusty bread.

My version of the recipe is here. Let me know how you use it.

Pesach Brownies

2009-04-11T20:50:00.000-07:00

The seders are over, but there's still plenty of time for Passover treats. Much as I adore it, even I can only eat so much matzoh crack (though I must say that this year's addition of coarse sea salt was brilliant).

I needed a quick dessert to share with friends last night and decided to look through a new cookbook I found the other day at the library: Jewish Holiday Cooking by Jayne Cohen. Its subtitle A Food Lover's Treasury of Classics and Improvisation pretty much says it all and I'm enjoying coming across the twists on classic dishes.

The Rich Fudge Brownies are lovely. Rather than a dense slab of heavy chocolate, these puff slightly in the oven and feel lighter than any Passover baked dish should. The cocoa flavor is deep and rich and the brown sugar provides a lovely moistness and depth of flavor but they aren't overpowering. I'll admit I'm not a huge brownie fan and I'm not sure these particular ones will make brownie lovers all that happy. But they worked for me. I guess we'll need to put these head to head with the Baked brownies to determine the new house champion.

You'll find the recipe here.

Food filled vacation and some tasty listening

2009-03-28T21:57:00.000-07:00

I just got back into town after a lovely week away. The food was great, from asparagus fries to Oaxacan mole to a fabulous South Indian feast followed by heavenly cardamom rose ice cream. And those were just the meals eaten out! I had the good fortune to spend the week with two excellent cooks and together we ate all manner of delicious things from Hawaiian chicken to black bean soup. I visited a bustling Bay Area farmers market bursting with citrus fruits, strawberries, and all manner of produce that we can only dream of here in Oregon in March. And I made a return trip to a large Indian grocery where I stocked up on all manner of exotic provisions from lime pickle to Kashmiri chile powder. And my most exciting purchase? An idli steamer which will allow me to make these tasty dumplings in my own kitchen! More on that soon, I promise.

I haven't managed to make much more than green smoothies and toast since we returned late last night but I did want to alert my readers to something which I hope at least some of you will find interesting. My friend Liz is one of the hosts of The Yiddish Hour on our local community radio station. Most Sundays she plays a nice variety of music but tomorrow's show will be something different. Instead of music, she'll be looking at the intersection of food, sustainability, and Judaism. It should be a fascinating program for anyone interested in ethical food consumption. You can tune in to 90.7 fm (or stream live online) at 10 am on Sunday, March 29th or download the show at any point afterward here. This should be a fascinating program--I hope you'll tune in. More info on Liz's blog.

Fish again?

2009-03-13T22:29:00.000-07:00

As I've mentioned here before, I'm mostly vegetarian. Cooking meat or fish always makes me a little nervous and I think I drive the guys behind the counter crazy on those rare occasions when I peer into the glass cases hesitantly, fumbling around for a coherent request. "Uh....yeah....I need some salmon? For a few people?" Most women of my age are quite competent with such requests and I still dither around like a 20 year old living away from home for the first time.

And for years it didn't matter. I had no need for flesh of any kind. But as my body has changed I have found that it rather likes the quick blast of protein a little meat or fish provides. I have been steadily working to increase my repertoire beyond fish on the grill and beef brisket, not that there's anything in the world wrong with either of these. When I was recently given a stack of old food magazines I came across a recipe for coconut crusted salmon with tamarind sauce that I've now made twice, and it's been a hit both times.

The recipe includes many of the flavors I love: earthy turmeric, tangy tamarind, and sweet coconut. It's got a lovely crunch from the panko and coconut crust, and the accompanying sauce provides lots of lively flavors. I served it along with saffron rice and a multicolored cole slaw (made by my youngest using a recipe from Mollie Katzen's Salad People) for a perfectly balanced meal. The fish is quite simple to make and comes together quickly, providing me with at least one fish recipe I can cook with confidence.

I typed up the recipe and posted it here before realizing that the whole thing is available at the Cooking Light website.

added later: I managed to get the turmeric stains out of a favorite shirt after the usual stain removers failed. The key seems to be to dab the stains with lemon juice and then leave the soiled garment in the sun for a few hours. Good as new! You can avoid this whole process by wearing an apron.

Tuna Corks

2009-03-11T16:51:00.001-07:00

There are lots of delicious looking recipes in A Homemade Life. I'm not sure what it was about these that intrigued me other than being made of things I generally have on hand (and let's not underestimate that appeal). The fact that anyone could write rhapsodically about humble tuna caught my attention and this was among the first recipes I tried. They're kind of funny looking: short, squat, and oddly pink. Despite this my kids gamely tried them (I think they were really hungry). The result--"not too bad" which would be high praise from anyone else. I rather liked them, too. They're easy enough to make, not as fishy as they sound, and provide a solid blast of protein should your meal be lacking. Also--as highbrow as the name bouchons de thon may sound, we got a kick out of the English translation: tuna corks. How great is that?

You'll find the recipe here. Let me know if you're brave enough to try them and what you thought.

How to Avoid The Dirty Dozen

2009-03-11T11:40:00.000-07:00

I don't know about you, but much as I try, I can't always buy organic produce. Sometimes it's about availability and sometimes, quite honestly, it's about price. I suspect the latter is increasingly becoming a consideration for food shoppers as jobs disappear, savings dwindle, and the economy tanks.

We're trying something new this year. Despite famously picky children, we took the plunge and signed up for a share in the Winter Green Farm CSA which will provide us with a box of seasonal produce each week of the growing season. Our weekly shares won't begin arriving until May, but we are looking forward to lots of fresh, locally grown organic goodies. Until those boxes arrive, however, we'll be shopping at the grocery store and early season farmers markets which provide varying amounts of organic produce.

When I can't buy all organic, it helps to know where to put my money. Thanks to the good folks at The Environmental Working Group, those decisions aren't too tough. They just put out the fifth edition of The Shopper's Guide to Pesticides, which I find fascinating reading. There's even a handy dandy wallet sized pdf version you can download and take along to the market.

I was surprised to see that the item with the highest pesticide load was peaches. Peach season feels a thousand years away, but you can bet that I'll only be buying organic when the time comes.

Holiday Baking

2009-03-07T21:10:00.000-08:00

I just went and looked up the post I wrote two years ago about making hamantashen for Purim and--horrors!--the dough recipe had disappeared! This is the best hamantashen dough ever as far as I'm concerned: moist, easy to work, and full of orange which enhances every filling I've ever used from classsics like poppyseed and apricot to the more modern chocolate and hazelnut. Most hamantashen dough is dry and crumbly and, in my opinion, just not all that appetizing.

I hunted around for a while and found the recipe living elsewhere and have updated the link so go get started with your baking. Even if you aren't Jewish, it's hard to beat the taste of a lovely, homemade hamantashen.

A Treat

2009-03-07T12:42:00.000-08:00

Hello? Anyone out there? Probably not. Probably you're all reading regularly updated food blogs by fabulous writers. Blogs like Orangette, one of my very favorites. Molly Wizenberg's blog was the first food blog I read regularly and one of the strongest inspirations for starting a food blog of my own. I love the way she weaves food and loved ones together so seamlessly.

Her new book A Homemade Life was just published and I got an opportunity to hear her read last night at Powell's. What a treat! The chapter she read was all about her father but her details could have described my own father with a few tiny tweaks: basil for dill, ugly cat lamp for hideous wild boar statue. I loved listening to her explain how food pulled her away from academia and into a life where she could focus on her passion.

It occurred to me as I was listening that one thing I never hear about from the food bloggers I so enjoy reading is kids. Do any of you know who is writing about how they manage to satisfy a houseful of diverse appetites? If I only had myself (and other adults) to cook for and my own tastes to pursue, I can assure this blog would be a happening place full of fresh veggies, stinky cheeses, and wild experiments from all over the globe. When I started this blog I was trying to answer very simple questions about how to nourish myself and my family and how to keep appetites alive. Those questions are still with me and I hope to keep trying to find the answersand writing about it here.

Fruity Oat Bars

2009-01-18T18:25:00.000-08:00

Lest my readers think that it's all chocolate and caramel and butter around here, I offer you an old favorite, highly modified from the original which, I think, came from Quaker Oats. This is a dense, sturdy bar studded with goodies like dried cherries and almonds. Kind of a homemade granola bar only softer and full of flavor.

My version has less sugar and more nutrition than the original recipe and had proven to be a welcome addition to any expedition as they travel well and pretty much can't go stale. The recipe is flexible so you can make changes depending on your tastes, your whims, or your pantry.

Especially after the recent super-indulgent cake, these bars were just the wholesome sort of thing to tuck into my tote bag for a day trip with a friend yesterday. They were very welcome when we left out destination absolutely ravenous. I think you'll like them. The recipe is here.

Sweet and Salty

2009-01-16T16:42:00.000-08:00

I mentioned in my last post that the book Baked: New Frontiers in Baking had a few things I was eager to try. Today I found myself with enough time to try the Sweet and Salty Cake, a three layer production which took most of the afternoon to complete, in addition to this morning's trip to The Meadow for fancy-schmancy fleur de sel. Given that the saltiness is a big part of the flavor I figured my standby salt (Diamond Kosher) was maybe not the best choice. I can make my way through any number of exotic supermarkets with confidence but this place with its Wall of Salt was just a wee bit intimidating, especially with a couple of slightly rambunctious kids in tow. The salesperson was quite helpful and talked me into buying a tiny, precious jar of very expensive salt which smells faintly of old basement. That and some wildly expensive chocolate set me back more cash than I'd care to admit, but the salt proved to be perfect in this case. I had my doubts but it turned out well, holding its crystalline shape atop the cake and providing tiny salt explosions within the creamy ganache.
What intrigued me about this cake was the use of salted caramel between the layers and as a component of the ganache frosting. While I love chocolate as much as anyone, caramel is my real weakness. Luckily with this cake there's plenty of both. Much as I love it, I haven't made caramel in ages because prior attempts were both stressful and unsatisfying. I think my so called candy thermometer may have had something to do with it. The Baked boys said to cook the caramel until the thermometer read 350 degrees but my first batch was a blackened, smoky mess at about 310 degrees. Once I got that cleaned up, I decided to skip the thermometer altogether, watch carefully, and remove the caramel from the heat the second the first bit of smoke appeared and this was a good call. The resulting caramel was absolutely perfect and I had a hard time keeping my fingers out of it. I can't wait to dive in to it after Shabbat dinner.
Later: Wow. That's a crazy-good, super-rich, over-the top cake. It's the kind of cake you'd make for a something huge: a graduation or a wedding. Even though I spent all afternoon making the thing I didn't quite feel I'd earned the right to eat it. I only used about 2/3 of the caramel ganache frosting and even so it was wildly decadent. And really, really good. When you need a showstopper cake, I'd highly recommend this one.

You'll find the recipe here. I'd love to hear what you think. I notice I haven't had a comment since November. Sometimes it feels like I'm talking to myself here. I know you're out there, people. Why don't you pop in to the comments and say "hi"? I'd love to know who's reading.

Baked Brownies

2009-01-11T12:01:00.000-08:00

Hello Readers! I'm still here, but with winter term just getting under way there hasn't been a whole lot of adventure in my kitchen.

I'd hoped to write about almond cardamom stars. I found the recipe in a back issue of Cooking Light which is not a publication I generally read. But I was offered a stack of used cooking magazines recently and took the lot. Almond paste and cardamom together in a cookie sounded lovely and the dough smelled heavenly. It even rolled out easily and cut with no problem--maybe that should have made me suspicious. Because the texture of these were awful, like dense cardboard, chewy and tough when I wanted them to be buttery and light. Oh, they were eaten, because the flavor was delightful, but I am going to have to import that heavenly combination to a more edible cookie. I'll keep you posted.

It's nice to be able to balance out our culinary failures with a huge, flamboyant triumph and thus I am offering you the Baked brownie. I generally find brownies underwhelming. Usually they are dry, crumbly, with only a hint of dusty chocolate. The opposite, of course, is the goopy frosted monster, sweet enough to make my teeth ache and leaving me feeling slightly nauseous and full of regret after the smallest piece. Brownies are either something my kids whip up because they aren't too difficult and my expectations are low, or they're an extra dessert during Passover because I've suddenly realized the seder menu is deficient. Passover brownies are generally better than regular brownies though I have no idea why. The lack of leavening maybe?

Anyhow, on a recent evening I was neither preparing for work or preparing dinner as we'd planned to eat here. This left me with a quiet bit of time to drink a cup of coffee and leaf through a new library find. Baked: New Frontiers in Baking is full of all kinds of enticing sweets although they almost lost me with their use of white chocolate (which is, in my mind, not chocolate at all and just, I don't know, icky) and the the thought of root beer bundt cake actually made me a bit ill. But paging through the crazy stuff, I found a few gems. I can't wait to make the Sweet and Salty cake which combines deep chocolate flavors with salted caramel. Oh my! But a layer cake requires planning and lots of time and I wanted to dip into this book with something a bit more manageable. I thought I'd give their brownies a try and I am so glad I did! These are crazy good--moist and chewy with a deep, dark chocolate flavor. The authors insist that only Valrhona or Callebaut will do but I was quite happy with my results using Guittard dark chocolate chips which I can buy for under $3 a bag on sale. So was everyone else who tasted these. And you will be, too, I promise. The recipe is here.

Snowstorm Soup

2008-12-23T17:00:00.000-08:00

I know, I know--not very pretty, is it? But it's tasty so read on......

We've been pretty much housebound for four days now. We were able to send the boys through the snow to the local beer and cigarette emporium we fondly call The Crappy Mart for milk and eggs of questionable quality but otherwise it's all about the pantry.

In honor of our epic arctic blast (the most snow in 40 years!) I'm calling last night's dinner Snowstorm Soup. It's a tomato-based lentil and pasta soup with a sample of all the vegetables in the house. When cooked together long enough my picky kids hardly realize they've consumed bok choi and sweet potatoes. They key was having some of last summer's basil pesto tucked away in the freezer. Hearty and warming, this is just the thing for a chilly, snowbound evening meal. Try serving it with a crusty no knead baguette and I don't think you could ask for more.

The recipe can be found here. I hope it warms you on a frozen night some day soon.

Another Bread Pudding

2008-12-22T14:51:00.000-08:00

At the risk of overdoing it, I'm going to share yet another delicious bread pudding with you all. I wish I could talk about my Chanukah donuts but they were so weird that for the first time in recorded history, we had some left over this morning and that was with three teenage boys in the house last night. I don't know what happened but I'm blaming it on the yeast and moving on.

This morning, as I watched the sky dump white stuff for the third day in a row and looked through our remaining provisions I came across last Friday's challah, some heavy cream nearing its due date, and a few bananas. Just like that, a new bread pudding was born and, my friends, this was a winner.

I started with bananas briefly sauteed in butter, sweetened with dark brown sugar and finished with dark rum. I tipped these into a dish of cubed challah and topped with a custard of eggs, heavy cream, and vanilla. Another sprinkle of brown sugar produced a sweet, crunchy topping and my goodness, this was delicious! It was just the thing to have come out of the oven when my intrepid husband returned home after his two hour long attempt at getting to work. He never made it, but got to have bread pudding and a cozy nap instead so I think it all worked out for the best, don't you?
You'll find my recipe here and I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

Rice Pudding for a Chilly Day

2008-12-15T15:00:00.000-08:00

I'm not a very enthusiastic meat eater mostly because I don't much like the smell of cooking flesh or the way most meat feels in my mouth and this meat has never really been part of my cooking repertoire. As we transitioned to a kosher kitchen, meat meals came to mean more fuss and trickier meal planning. The laws of kashrut forbid mixing meat and dairy and thus we have two sets of dishes, utensils, and cookware. And meat meals tend to be followed by not so spectacular desserts given that there can be no butter, cream, or other dairy products.

I could never eat meat again and be just fine but when my growing children request it, I try to respect their wishes, which is how I ended up with a 5 lb organic free range (but not kosher) chicken in my cart on Friday. The same chicken spent a couple of hours roasting to perfection after being rubbed with fresh rosemary, olive oil, and tangerine juice and was declared delicious by everyone except me. This time around, oh irony of ironies, I was the picky one! We followed the meal with my non-dairy dessert standby: apple charlotte.

The leftover chicken became part of a stir-fry the next night but when the dessert request came I was stumped. But only briefly. I thought a coconut milk rice pudding with Indian spices might be just the thing and set about coming up with a recipe by combining elements from Claudia Roden and this recipe from the web. Coconut milk makes a fine alternative to milk without all the weird additives in most milk substitutes. This dish takes a bit of patience since it calls for cooking the rice in the milk rather than working with leftover rice as in many rice pudding recipes. But the result is lovely: thick and creamy and slightly exotic and perfect with a steaming mug of masala chai on a chilly night. You'll find the recipe here.

Bagels

2008-11-28T13:59:00.000-08:00

While working on my contributions to Thanksgiving dinner yesterday I got a mad hankering for bagels. Nice, chewy, highly imperfect but always satisfying homemade bagels.

I first made bagels eons ago while in college. Our chilly little apartment grew warm and steamy as we boiled then baked our first attempts. They were ugly: dimpled and deflated and a little bit clammy to the touch. But the taste was great and they had a wonderful chewiness to them.

Once I was given my bread machine I decided that it was perfect for bagels. The dough is much stiffer than for regular loaf bread and very heard to work by hand so I was happy to let the machine do the work for me. The resulting bagels were a bit nicer to look at. There was still the dimpling problem but they did rise better. And they tasted great.

I'd been wanting to try the no-knead bagels in Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. I got the book back in June and quickly became hooked on the dough for baguettes and pizza. I confess I haven't done much else but the standard baguette recipe alone was worth the price of the book.

The bagel recipe, as it turns out, is almost exactly the same dough as for the pizzas and baguettes I've made. It is much softer than other bagel doughs I've worked with but it has the same relaxed timetable as other doughs in the book. I mixed it up last night, let it sit at room temperature for a couple of hours, and then put in the refrigerator overnight. This morning I got up, put a big pot of water on to boil, preheated the oven and began shaping bagels. Because the dough is so soft, it's a bit tricky to handle, especially given the need to boil before baking. The bagels were quite floppy after boiling and getting them onto the baking stone in the oven was no picnic, but in the end they were fine.

Having the dough ready to go shaved a good 90 minutes off the process which was a big help in terms of eating before noon. They still came out dimpled and funny looking but with a good dusting of poppy or sesame seeds, who's to know? They were devoured before they even reached room temperature so I think the flavor made a stronger impression than looks.

I'm posting the recipe here, but I really do encourage you to get your hands on the book as it is a wealth of information on this easy, low stress form of bread baking.

Amazing Potatoes

2008-11-26T16:45:00.000-08:00

I think I've mentioned here my undying love for potatoes. I can eat them baked, boiled, fried, roasted, and mashed and never ever get tired of them so it's a wonder I ever come up with anything new in the potato department. Why bother when there are already so many fine ways to cook a spud?

The other night I came home from work to a small pile of baked potatoes awaiting me. Normally I would have been happy to eat them just like that. I love to make hash browns with leftover baked potatoes, too. But I was craving something complex and spicy and thus a new dish was born. Actually, it's probably not a new dish at all. I imagine there are variations of this all over India and they're probably even tastier. Nonetheless I'll call this my own creation since I was improvising away with nary an Indian cookbook in sight.

And I have to say--I struck gold! This is one of those dishes that has everything I need: heat, color, and a savory blend of spices that's hard to resist. But it's not a long simmered curry with multiple steps and stages. If you have baked potatoes on hand you can have this on your plate in under half an hour. And oh how happy you'll be.Two slightly odd ingredients which I hope won't put you off. First: tamarind concentrate. I have something called Tamicon which isn't hard to find in Asian groceries. It's thick like molasses but with a serious tang to it. If you can't find any near you, I imagine a good squeeze of lemon would give you the sour you need for this dish. Or you could just quickly order a jar from Amazon!

The other thing you'll need is fresh curry leaves. Or fresh curry leaves that have been frozen. Any Indian market should have them and here in Portland I am delighted to report that they can be found on the east side at Fubonn on SE 82nd. I am so happy to have these available a few blocks from where I work as before I had to make a 30 mile round trip journey in search of curry leaves. Which actually seemed quite reasonable. Once you start cooking with then you'll find them irreplaceable as they add a distinctive savory flavor to any dish. Buy a bunch and when you get home, rinse the leaves, shake them dry, then strip the leaves from the stems. Packed in a heavy ziplock bag they'll keep in the freezer for months.

You'll find the recipe here. I have eaten these heavenly potatoes twice this week with a big dollop of good yogurt. And I've been very happy. I hope you love them, too.

Let me know. Please? There has been rather a dearth of comments here at Magpie Eats and I am wondering if anyone is out there and trying my food.

Warming Soup for a Cold, Wet Day

2008-11-25T16:13:00.000-08:00

It occurred to me that this blog has gotten really dessert heavy. It's not so much that all we eat are desserts but more that my kids are likelier to try new desserts than anything else. I can safely experiment in the world of sweets but deviating from the few savory foods they like seems to get me in no end of trouble.

But sometimes I just don't care. Which is why today I made up a simple, spicy soup which they will likely deem unfit for consumption. Too bad for them--more for me!

It's gray and soggy here in Portland, entirely typical for late November. Just the kind of day that makes a person want something hearty and warming and this soup is just the thing, thick with potatoes and a bit spicy from chorizo.

For those who think I've given up kashrut--fear not. It's a meatless chorizo I found at Trader Joe's and while I generally avoid soy based meat analogs, this seems like just the way to use such things. Of course I'm sure it would be delicious with pork based chorizo as well. I think I've seen chicken chorizo though if it's stuffed in a pork casing I won't be trying it.

As far as I can tell, this is a vegetarian version of the classic Portuguese dish caldo verde, but I only realized that after putting everything together. In any event, it is rich and spicy enough to take the chill off a cold November evening.

Do give it a try and let me know what you think. The recipe is here.

Carrot Halvah

2008-11-13T14:38:00.000-08:00

Yikes! It's been a little while since I've shared anything with you, hasn't it?

I had a number of things I wanted to write about but (and this is going to sound so lame) all my photos were stinky. The dishes I'm thinking of were not exactly photogenic and on top of that, the lighting was horrible. Really. We've had lots of dark skies and rainy days lately and none of my photos were remotely appetizing. I so want one of these in my kitchen for the cloudy days but I can't exactly call it a necessity.

Anyway--the sun came out again today just in time for me to show you one of the most brilliantly exotic dishes I know: carrot halvah. It's not halvah in the Israeli sesame seed sense, but a dense, sweet, highly flavored delight which makes a perfect ending to an Indian meal with a cup of spicy chai. Also, it's not bad for breakfast.

Long, gentle cooking is the key here so while it's not a complex recipe, do make sure you can pay attention as it's cooking. You will be rewarded with a sweet, buttery delight absolutely bursting with the flavor of freshly crushed cardamom.

If you ignore all the sugar and ghee, and focus on the many benefits of carrots, you can really feel good about this one. The recipe is here. Enjoy!

Fast Food

2008-10-08T15:22:00.000-07:00

At sundown tonight we, like other observant Jews around the world, begin a 25 hour fast in observance of Yom Kippur. Not surprisingly, all I can think about is food.When I am healthy I find fasting to be a very intense but satisfying experience which is magnified by being in community with others who are in the same place.

Yom Kippur is an intense day and removing distractions (like eating) does help me focus on the spiritual work of the day. I don't have too much trouble fasting apart from the demon caffeine but I've been 100% decaf for months now so I don't expect any raging headaches. However, this will be the first year both of my boys will join me in the fast. As one pointed out, this milestone is the down side of the bar mitzvah. I am concerned about how they will handle and have tried to make sure they go into this well fed and happy--or as happy as teens can be when stuck in services all day long.

When I asked what they wanted for their last meal, brisket was promptly suggested. I ordered a 4 pound hunk of beef from our local natural foods store and sent The Spouse to pick it up the other night. They couldn't find the reserved brisket under his name or under mine, but finally handed him the wrapped meat that had been set aside for "Nice Lady" which I found most amusing. I'm so glad someone thinks so.

I fast best when I've eaten heartily the day before, not just just that final dinner, but the entire day. I craved something substantial but not bland when I woke up on this cool and foggy morning. Remembering the fresh chiles I picked up at the farmers market last weekend, I dug through the sheaf of recipes adorning my refrigerator to find a small slip of paper I picked up from the chile roaster at a different farmers market a few weeks ago. (Yes, we are blessed with an abundance of wonderful farmers markets here in Portland).

The recipe for green chile and potato gratin couldn't be simpler but the results are spectacular. I like potatoes in almost any form (though frozen and reheated is spud abuse) but this preparation yielded an especially fabulous result. The potatoes were lovely and soft with a slightly chewy top surface and the flavor of the chiles was vibrant and delicious. I had a hard time not eating the entire pan today. You'll find the recipe here.

Help! My Camera is Possessed!

2008-10-03T12:57:00.000-07:00

It was a perfect kind of morning with nothing to do but cook for tonight's dinner in a a leisurely fashion and catch up on some housework. Since I never got to have a proper Rosh Hashana meal, I decided to make this week's Shabbat dinner more festive than usual. It's suddenly rainy and cool here, perfect weather for Elizabeth's Vegetarian Pastitsio which most of my family adores. I started a batch of apple challah and then moved on to dessert. I've never had a particularly good honey cake but they are the classic Rosh Hashana dessert so when Deb posted a recipe on Smitten Kitchen promising that this was unlike all other honey cakes, I took her at her word.

I tweaked the recipe slightly, most noticeably replacing the called for whiskey with rum and Cointreau as that's what I had on hand. Also, after reading all the comments about caved-in tops, I reduced the baking powder by one teaspoon and ended up with perfetly domed, golden, fragrant honey cakes. I was bummed that I failed to oil the corner of one pan properly and a little bit of the cake remained behind. But the unsightly wound in the cake allowed me a taste and yes, this is not like other honey cakes. I was excited to photograh my lovely, golden creations but my camera has apparently been taken over by demons. Not only did it refuse to focus properly, but it kept snapping pictures without my pushing the button, giving me weird images like these:Luckily there are the usual gorgeous shots over at Smitten Kitchen which are much more likely to inspire you to go into the kitchen than my own photos.

A Nice Surprise

2008-09-25T13:55:00.000-07:00

Maybe all the dire economic news is getting to me. For the last few weeks I've been cooking and canning, stocking my shelves and stuffing my freezer. It helps that a friend said I could come pick as many apples and Italian plums as I wanted. We now have applesauce, plum jam, and numerous containers of slow-cooked tomato sauce to brighten our winter meals.

After I filled the slow cooker one last time this morning I sat down and caught up on some of my favorite food blogs. 101 Cookbooks had something called Nikki's Healthy Cookies which caught my eye in that they're both wheat-free and vegan. I personally love my wheat and never turn down dairy or eggs, but I often find myself in the position of needing to feed people on more restrictive diets. I recently read Shauna James Ahern's Gluten-Free Girl and found it a real eye opener, making me both grateful for my relatively easy diet and full of compassion for those who have to turn down so many of the things I regularly enjoy. However, I am as yet unwilling to invest in a pantry full of the expensive and esoteric alternative baking supplies her baked goods call for.

I used to regularly be part of a knitting group that met weekly. I loved getting up early on Wednesday mornings to make the treat of the day be it cheese scones or babka. As time went by numbers dwindled and the steady members adopted increasingly restrictive diets. My ability to bring food to share was limited either to frankly unsatisfying packaged gluten-free "treats" or fruit. I realize that this shouldn't matter but it really affected my feelings about these gatherings.

All of this is getting back to the point that even though I don't require gluten-free vegan treats, people that I love do and I'm happy to have something to feed them which is why I went back in to the kitchen today out of sheer curiosity and I am glad I did. These cookies are a delicious combination of appealing flavors and textures with ground almonds, coconut, and mashed banana. They're even sugar-free (apart from whatever chocolate you use). Sugar free? Vegan? Wheat free? I know, I know...they sound far too earnest to be tasty but you'd be silly not to try them the next time you have some bananas going brown in the fruit bowl.

And--here's a real news flash--Mr Pickiest of All Picky Children turned up his nose at these on his first pass through the kitchen but then came back, no doubt for the chocolate, and pronounced them "better than they look"! Given that this boy has some kind of built in sensor that calculates nutritional value and then rejects anything high on that scale, the fact that he happily downed a handful of these tasty nuggets is really saying something.
Nikki's Healthy Cookies on 101 Cookbooks. Yum!

Not Exactly Tasty

2008-09-23T10:02:00.000-07:00

Normally I only write about the tastiest things from my kitchen but cold season is rapidly approaching and I decided today was a good day to share a great (but not exactly tasty) recipe with you. I wrote about it nearly two years ago on my other blog but I know I have some new readers who might appreciate this.

The Tonic is a fearsome brew of garlic, onion, horseradish, cayenne, and turmeric steeped in apple cider vinegar and eventually sweetened with honey. It's like salad dressing for Satan, really. It's hard to choke down but this stuff works. With its powerful combination of natural germ-fighters, it will kill the bugs that try to make you sick.

This needs to sit for3 or 4 weeks before it reaches full potency so run out and find yourself some fresh horseradish root today. Then when those sniffles start up in late October you will be prepared.

The recipe is here. Good luck.

Egg Curry

2008-09-21T15:50:00.000-07:00

Thank goodness for Colleen who is not only responsible for my first taste of egg curry (made by her Indian mother-in-law)--she also reminded me to give it a try and gave me a copy of her favorite Indian cookbook where I found the recipe. What a friend!

I've made egg curry twice now and it's been absolutely heavenly: rich, complex, and hearty. I served it over basmati rice steamed with a cinnamon stick and a few crushed cardamom pods and it made a perfect meal.

This low budget cookbook is packed with a huge variety of recipes but leaves something to be desired in terms of instructions so I tried to re-work the recipe and make it somewhat more user friendly. Nonetheless, it may look a bit daunting. Full disclosure: the first page is just ingredients. But it's really not that hard and most definitely worth every ingredient.

You'll find my adapted recipe here. After typing all that out I think it might be time for another batch.

Saving Summer

2008-09-11T23:34:00.000-07:00

I've been on break for two weeks and cooking up a storm. I have lots of tasty things to share with you but my photos have been stinky and I haven't found the time to tend to my blogs. I know--excuses, excuses.

One of these days, I'll sit down and write out the recipes for egg curry and piroshki, I promise. But until then, I have a late summer/early fall offering to tide you over (and make you very happy) in the meantime.

Is your garden overflowing with tomatoes? Mine is. Plus I was lucky enough to get a vacationing friend's CSA delivery for two weeks--more tomatoes! Though tomato sauce is a staple food around here, the thought of gently simmering a cauldron of tomato sauce for hours on end just didn't appeal to me during these warm late summer days. I inevitably get sidetracked while simmering sauces, resulting in a not-very-lovely scorched flavor. Mmmmm....

Wouldn't you know, the newspaper's food section came to my aid with a story on preserving summer's bounty with that most dowdy of devices: the crock-pot. Maybe you have one of the snazzy new ones? Mine is an earth-toned relic of the 70's complete with line drawings of herbs on the outside. It was old when it was given to me years ago but still works perfectly well.

The crock-pot method of making tomato sauce has numerous advantages. Your sauce can cook down to perfection without stirring because it won't scorch. It won't send bubbles of thick sauce all over your stovetop and your forearms. And it won't heat up the entire house on a late summer day. Having used the crock pot for apple and pear butter in the past, I knew it had potential in helping me handle the tomato avalanche.The recipe included in the newspaper wasn't quite what I wanted so, in classic form, I fiddled a bit as I went along, adding lots of garlic and upping the onions. I would imagine that bell peppers would make a fine addition.

I filled the crock pot with large chunks of tomato and cranked it up to high. Meanwhile I browned onions, garlic, celery, and carrot in a large skillet and then tipped it all in to the crock pot along with a bunch basil and another of parsley. The original recipe suggests throwing everything in the crock pot but I wanted a deeper flavor so I opted to brown the onions, celery, garlic, and carrots in a skillet. It was no big thing to use the stove for 20 minutes.

I covered the pot, and let it simmer for a couple of hours. Then I propped the lid slightly open with a wooden spoon so moisture could escape and proceeded to cook for 10 hours or so. Once cooled, I ran everything through a food mill to remove skins and seeds. I added a bit of salt to taste and then packaged everything up for the freezer. Filling my 6 qt stockpot gave me about 8 cups of delicious sauce.

The fist batch was made of all different types of tomatoes including many juicy slicers. The sauce was very tasty but took longer to cook than my second batch which used only paste tomatoes. It hardly matters. This is about the easiest thing in the world.

If you don't have a crock pot, ask around. Someone you know is bound to have one lurking on their pantry shelves. Offer them a pint of sauce in exchange for the loan. And then hang onto it and make another batch or two. I hate to say it but winter is coming. I know I want to go into it with a bit of summer saved.

Chocolate Cake To Go

2008-08-28T10:57:00.000-07:00

The three month long family birthday season has come to an end. I didn't make Monkey Boy's 13th birthday cake--I left that to the good folks at New Seasons given that it had to serve 50 people at his bar mitzvah party. The Dark Lord got a classic chocolate layer cake which was notable in that it was devoured in under 10 minutes by a herd of teenage boys, some of whom had never, or so they told me, had a home baked cake before. I this possible? How sad. I've already promised one of them that I'd bake his birthday cake next year.

The Princess turned six last week and we celebrated with a beach trip. Relatives from both sides of the family joined us at Neskowin where the weather simply refused to cooperate. In short stretch of time the weather went from cool and misty to downright wet and rainy. Our potato chips grew soggy, sand stuck to everything, and we were all shivering by the time we packed it in and headed to my parents' hotel room.

But here's what went right: the birthday cake. I knew I couldn't schlep an iced, layered cake to the beach with any success but the birthday girl had asked from something of a chocolate-orange variety. What to do? Happily, Nigella saved the day with the Pantry Shelf Chocolate-Orange cake.

This cake is admittedly sturdy, but it's also delicious. There's an entire jar of marmalade stirred into the batter making for a cake that's slightly tart and chewy. I added a bit of extra sugar knowing that a 6 year old has slightly different tastes than us old folks, but it still wasn't too sweet.

I suppose one could frost this cake but it's not necessary. A simple dusting of powdered sugar did the trick this time around.

You'll find the recipe here. I hope you give it a try because it's very tasty.

What's for Breakfast

2008-08-21T14:52:00.000-07:00

I have this weird relationship with eggs. I think I can't stand them and if you put a plate of scrambled eggs or an omelette in front of me, chances are good I'll have to walk away. On the other hand, there have been a few well loved but rather bizarre egg dishes in my life proving that I don't hate eggs, I just can't deal with them in their simplest forms.

My dad used to poach eggs in milk and serve them over shredded wheat with lots of butter, salt, and pepper. This used to horrify my husband, but now he's a convert as there's nothing better on a cold morning.

In college I frequently made and ate a dish I called SPEGS (slimy potato egg stuff) which involved cracking an egg or two over home fries with cheese and onions and was absolutely delicious as long as the egg wasn't too cooked, hence the slimy part. I know...weird.

When I was pregnant with my second child, a neighbor kept us well supplied with fresh eggs. I mostly avoided them until it occurred to me to hard boil them and make them into into tacos topped with liberal dollops of Mrs. Renfro's green salsa. This I never converted my husband to--he remains horrified to this day. However I once ate a classic dish of hard boiled eggs wrapped in tortillas in Yucatan so I wasn't not completely off base though I imagine no self-respecting Yucateco would have touched my crazy pregnant version.

Lately, in my ongoing attempt to eat more protein, I'm hitting the eggs again. Eggs can give me the same problem that nearly all meats do. I'm not really opposed to eating either, but the smell of them cooking tends to leave me too nauseated to think about eating. Aren't I just about the craziest person ever?

Anyway, the trick for me is to hide the eggs as much as possible. Lately I've been making a big mess in a skillet that has so much happening it's hard to even notice the eggs. I think the original inspiration for this dish came from Joe Esparza who, in the early days of his very successful restaurant, would make migas for me and it was an astounding breakfast. There's a great post here that goes into the nuances of various torn tortilla dishes should you care to dig deeper. We just tend to call the dish tortilla eggs.

My quickie version is rarely the same from one time to the next though corn tortillas, eggs, chiles, and cheese are all required components. Sometimes I like it on the mild side but lately smoky ground chipotle is making me very happy. Late summer additions have included diced zucchini and corn kernels. Though no real recipe is required for a seat-of-your-pants dish like this, my best approximation is here.

This dish has so much going on that the eggs pretty well get lost for me but the explosion of flavors and textures is spectacular. I'm sure you'll find a way to make tortilla eggs your own.

Chocolate Sorbet

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

Does chocolate sorbet sound good to you?

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

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

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

Summer Fruit Happy

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

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

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

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