snow day, part 2 of 3

For at least the last year (and probably longer), I have been obsessed with the idea of making delicious, perfect macaroni and cheese. I want it to be the greatest, most satisfying thing I have ever made. Whenever I find a recipe for it, though, I am seriously turned off by the massive quantities of milk, cheese and butter usually called for. And I abandon the mission for a time.

Finally, I found a recipe I could commit to, one with relatively moderate amounts of the aforementioned ingredients. Of course, it was Mark Bittman's. Disappointingly, it was far from what I'd dreamed of. And I know that, if mind-blowingly amazing mac 'n' cheese is my goal, I probably must embrace scarily large amounts of dairy. But this time I didn't, which is why it was something of a bust.

Objectively, it was pretty good. But it fell far too short of my lofty expectations for me to appreciate it. And I'm predisposed to dislike any recipe that makes me dirty this many dishes.

Macaroni and cheese
Adapted from How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman
Serves 4 or more
Time: about 45 minutes

1 3/4 c. low-fat milk
1 bay leaf
1/2 lb. whole-wheat penne rigate
1/2 c. or more frozen peas
2 Tbsp. (1/4 stick) butter
1 1/2 Tbsp. flour
3/4 c. grated sharp cheddar cheese
1/4 c. grated parmesan cheese
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1/4 c. or more fresh whole-wheat bread crumbs

1. Preheat oven to 400* F. Bring a medium/large pot of water to a boil. Grease an 8x8 baking pan with a little bit of butter, reserving the rest for later.

2. Cook milk and bay leaf in a small saucepan over medium-low heat. When small bubbles appear along the sides, about 5 minutes later, turn off heat and let stand.

3. Salt boiling water and cook pasta to the point where it still needs another three or four minutes to become tender. Throw in the frozen peas and cook another minute, then drain peas and pasta. Rinse under cold water to stop cooking, and set aside.

4. In a medium saucepan over medium-low heat, melt remaining butter. When it is foamy, add flour and cooking, stirring, until mixture browns, about 5 minutes. Remove bay leaf from milk and add about 1/4 c. of milk to hot flour mixture, whisking as you add. As soon as mixture becomes smooth, add a little more milk, and continue to whisk and add until all milk is added and mixture is thick and smooth. Add grated cheddar and stir.

5. Dump pasta and peas into this mixture, add parmesan, season with salt and pepper, and stir to combine. Pour into prepared baking pan, and top liberally with bread crumbs. Bake until bread crumbs are browned, about 15 minutes, and serve hot.

a second glimpse of veggie heaven

As promised in yesterday's post, we made good use of the offerings of my dad's co-worker's garden for last night's dinner. Though it wasn't a meatless meal, there were a lot of vegetables invited to the party. The main event was sausage and pepper sandwiches, which we made with sweet Italian turkey sausage (grilled) and a bevy of onions and Italian frying peppers (sliced and sauteed, and pictured). I was especially excited about the peppers, because I've had a years-long half-assed interest in trying them since I worked at a farm stand during high school and college. I love their fierce green color, and their scent gives me the impression that they'd be spicy to eat, but I've never cared enough to actually purchase and cook some. They weren't spicy at all, which was a bit of a disappointment. But they were good!


As a side to our sandwiches, I threw together this salad with the gorgeous red and yellow cherry tomatoes as the centerpiece. We didn't have enough tomatoes to make a salad large enough for everyone, so to stretch it out I added: quartered cucumber slices, torn fresh basil, some itty bitty balls of fresh mozzarella, a drizzle of olive oil, kosher salt and black pepper. Mmm! A big bowl of freshness.

And finally, here is a recipe I made over a week ago with my partner in culinary crime, Julia, that I failed to post (and photograph, as it happens). It is super simple, especially because we used canned beans, and lightly filling. In other words, exactly what you feel like making and eating on a hot and humid summer evening.

Four bean salad with vegetables
Adapted from Simply Recipes
Yield and time: A lot and a little. (Whoops, I didn't keep track of either!)

1 15-oz. can kidney beans, rinsed and drained
1 15-oz. can cannellini beans, rinsed and drained
1 15-oz. can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
1 15-oz. can butter beans, rinsed and drained
2 celery stalks, chopped fine
1/2 red onion, chopped fine
1 c. cooked corn kernels
1 c. chopped flat leaf parsley
1/3 c. apple cider vinegar
1/3 c. granulated sugar, or to taste (I really liked that the dressing was sweet, but next time I'd prefer it a little less so)
1/4 c. extra-virgin olive oil
1 1/2 tsp. salt
Freshly ground black pepper to taste

1. Combine beans, celery, onion, corn and parsley in a large bowl.

2. In a small bowl, whisk together vinegar, sugar, olive oil, salt and pepper. Add to salad, and toss to coat.

3. Serve immediately or, if you have time, let salad chill in the refrigerator for several hours so beans and veggies can absorb the flavors of the dressing. Serve cold or at room-temperature.

Julia and I cooked up a batch of wheat berries and ate them alongside the salad. But when I ate some of the leftovers later in the week, I threw the wheatberries right into the salad and much preferred it that way. I like the presence of their chewiness with the beans and crunchy veggies, and the grain gave the salad more visual interest by adding another color to the mix.

We also brainstormed some further variations on this: the addition and/or substitution of black beans; making a dressing of orange or lime juice, honey, olive oil and a little cumin, and possibly also replacing the parsley with cilantro; more and/or different vegetables, such as green or wax beans, grape tomatoes, chopped cucumber . . .

complete in every detail; perfect

That's how Merriam-Webster Online defines the adjective form of the word consummate, and that's how I would describe the dinner I had on Sunday. (And no, I could not have written about it sooner than Thursday morning. I am a busy lady, and a terrible blogger, and this should come as no surprise to you.) Sunday was roastingly hot, and the temperature took such a toll on me that by about 5 pm I was already shaky and needing food and so, so ready to start cooking. That I was extra-hungry by the time dinner was ready no doubt made it that much more enjoyable.

Which isn't to say it wasn't still an incredible meal. Because it was. As is often the case with me, simple meals can be outrageously, unexpectedly good--perhaps because the straightforward ingredients and preparation don't seem like anything extraordinary, but then something happens when they're combined, and I am blown away by the result. This is how I felt about the grilled tuna with mustard sauce we made on Sunday. The recipe was a variation of the same one I used to make swordfish last month, but I have to say this was far more interesting and delicious than the original. It was the first meal of the year that we cooked on the outdoor grill, an annual event that always excites me because it means summer (my favorite season!) is coming.

Grilled tuna with mustard sauce
Adapted from How to Cook Everything (Wiley, 1998) by Mark Bittman
Makes 4 servings
Time: 45 minutes, plus time to preheat the grill

2 (1-inch thick) tuna steaks totaling 1 1/2 to 2 lbs.
1 Tbsp. plus 1/4 c. olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
3 Tbsp. Dijon mustard
1/4 c. minced shallots
2 Tbsp. minced fresh parsley leaves
2 Tbsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice

1. Preheat your grill or broiler.

2. Brush fish with the tablespoon olive oil and season on both sides with salt and pepper.

3. Grill fish 3-4 minutes on each side, then check for doneness. Check sooner if you like your tuna still red in the middle (as I do); cook longer if desired.

4. While fish cooks, combine remaining 1/4 c. oil, mustard, shallots, parsley, lemon juice and salt and pepper to taste. Drizzle fish with a bit of the sauce, then pass the rest at the table.

While I worked, I sipped a homemade shandy--half lemonade, half beer--which I had been craving since the temperatures had begun to rise. The beer I used was Sam Adams Cherry Wheat, which is great on its own but also mixes well with lemonade. (It may sound weird, but just try it once and you'll understand why I love this combo.)

We also had simply blanched snow peas and emergency boxed tabbouleh (emergency, because I wanted to make brown rice but didn't have enough in the house; also, because I was tomato-less and therefore so was my tabbouleh) with lots of cucumber and lemon juice. For my perfect dessert, I scooped myself some of this awesome cinnamon ice cream I recently spotted at Wegmans and sprinkled some chocolate chips and a little maple pecan granola on top.

jamaica roundup

Hello, dear reader(s)! I trust that all 1.5 of you have noticed my lack of posting recently. I haven't cooked much in the last week because I was in Jamaica for five days. The trip was relaxing, the Port Antonio area completely gorgeous, the sunshine omnipresent. Perhaps best of all, there were plenty of new foods to try!

A trip to Portland (the parish where Port Antonio is located) wouldn't be complete without sampling jerk, the spicy and flavorful preparation of chicken, pork and other meats that hails from this parish. Although I've eaten jerk-seasoned foods in the states, they don't come close to the real deal. In Jamaica, the meats are seasoned with allspice (aka pimento) and Scotch bonnet peppers, then placed on pimento wood covering a fire and essentially grilled. We sampled jerk at this roadside stand in Boston Bay.


Our first breakfast on the island was a traditional Jamaican dish called ackee and saltfish. The "meat" of the ackee fruit grows inside a pink exterior that opens like a flower and yields three pieces of the fruit, each attached to a large, shiny brown seed that looks like a chocolate-covered cherry. Salt cod is the fish in this dish, which comes served with fried dumplings sometimes called Johnny cakes (second from left) and a fried cassava cake (right). Ours also came with fried plantains (left).


While rafting one afternoon, we stopped at a riverside spot where lunch is served daily. On my plate, you'll see (clockwise from top) rice and peas, another traditional Jamaican dish of red beans, rice and coconut milk; another Johnny cake; breadfruit, which I found delightfully soft, comfortingly bland, but still quite satisfying; cooked bok choy; curry goat (at center); and a salad of lettuce, cabbage, carrots and peppers.

For our dessert at the same spot, we were served sweet-potato pudding (left), which had the consistency of a very dense pumpkin pie filling, and chewy, uber-gingery cookies called coconut drops. In the cup? The best lemonade e-ver! Belinda, the cook, told us she had added lime juice to the mixture.

On the second night, we dined at a casual restaurant where the first food we were served was an otaheiti or Jamaican apple. It was quite petite (you see I photographed it next to my Red Stripe for a sense of scale), pear shaped, with flesh that reminded me of a cross between pears, plums and apples. The flavor was remarkably floral, almost like the scent of roses. Our escort from the tourist board told us this was eaten before the meal to aid in digestion.

One of my favorite food experiences on the trip happened not at a restaurant, but at a small roadside produce stand. After seeing countless signs advertising "ice cold jelly" during our two-hour drive from the airport in Kingston to our hotel in Port Antonio, we asked our escort what the signs were all about. Rather than tell us, he had the driver stop at the next sign for the stuff and told us to all get out so we could try it. The jelly turns out to be the inside of the cavity of a young, green coconut. (The hairy brown things we think of as coconuts are the mature version, smaller than their young counterparts.) In the picture below, the innermost, whitest layer is the jelly.
The owner of the roadside stand, who identified himself to us as Watches, hacked off the tops of a few green coconuts with his machete, then passed a handful of straws to us. After we sipped the delicious coconut water out of the center, Watches cut open the coconuts and demonstrated how to use one half to scoop out the jelly from the other half in ribbony sheets. Its flavor was mild, and the consistency reminded me of scallop sashimi.

Our tour guide then borrowed Watches's machete and cut open a mature coconut to let us sample the flesh. It was quite firm and required extensive chewing, but I was surprised by how much I liked it. The flavor was much less concentrated or coconut-y than what we find here in the states, perhaps because by the time coconuts reach our shelves (or in the dried, shredded or flaked form) the water content is so much less and, therefore, the coconut flavor more intense.

Not pictured, but also consumed: okra, dolphin, wahoo, Ting (a lightly sweet grapefruit soda), and insanely fresh ginger beer. All in all, lots of new flavors and foods!

pea risotto

Easter dinner was an awesome, delicious success. I was determined to make it springy all around and so chose foods that evoke this season in my mind. Lamb seemed an obvious choice, but since I don't cook or eat it often, I let my dad decide how to handle that. He decided that rack of lamb would be fancy and festive enough for such a holiday, and after letting it hang out with some herbes de provence overnight in the fridge, he roasted it in the oven. (It was tasty, but after talking to my favorite cooking friend about her Easter lamb preparation--boned leg of lamb first marinated in yogurt, then roasted with garlic, rosemary and lemon--I was a little disappointed with what we decided. Plus the whole bones-on-my-plate thing wasn't awesome, but I dealt.)

I wanted a gorgeous spring vegetable to be part of the equation, and immediately thought: asparagus! But after hearing my cousin (who would be eating at our house and who has a good foot, and many pounds, on me) proclaim that asparagus is the one food in the world that he absolutely despises, I abandoned that thought. Instead, we made a simple, satisfactory (and super easy to throw together) salad of mixed baby greens, English cucumber and grape tomatoes, all dressed in a basic vinaigrette (balsalmic vinegar, olive oil, Dijon mustard, salt, pepper and minced shallots).

My main contribution to the meal was pea risotto, which I tackled with some trepidation because I had never made it before. The thought of cooking a dish for the first time when I'm feeding other people freaks me out a bit--What if they hate it? What if it all goes horribly wrong?!--and the labor intensity I associate with risotto-making has always given me the impression that the dish is the result of a mysterious, complicated, counterintuitive process. This is the same reason I am daunted by homemade pasta, ice cream, bread and anything that requires a candy thermometer.

I found a Nigella Lawson recipe that looked good, and I asked several trusted cooking friends for input and tips to steer me away from disaster. But other than making WAY too much for a group of eight, it was an utter success. I kept my stock hot, I didn't skimp on butter, I stirred until my arm felt like I would fall off. Everyone was pleased, except for my sister who doesn't like peas (but who was a trooper and sampled it anyways). I asked her ahead of time if she thought she'd like it, and she said it sounded good, but she still couldn't get past the pea-y-ness of it.

Sadly I don't have photo documentation of the meal. Chatting with family + keeping everyone's glass full + synchronizing every part of the meal to be ready at once = I didn't have time to screw around with my camera.

Pea risotto
Adapted from How to Eat by Nigella Lawson (Wiley, 2002)
Time: 40-50 minutes, depending on how slow you are
Serves 2 (I quadrupled it to feed 8 as a side and probably still have half of it left over)

4 Tbsp. (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
1 c. frozen young peas, thawed or not
4 c. stock, hot (Nigella says anything light is good, such as chicken, veal or veggie stock)
4 Tbsp. freshly grated Parmesan, plus extra at the table
Freshly ground black pepper
Whole nutmeg
A drop of oil (evidently this is nothing to sniff at; omit, and the butter will burn)
2 shallots or 1 small onion, minced
1 c. arborio or Canaroli rice
1/3 c. white wine or vermouth
Kosher salt and more black pepper to taste
Chopped fresh parsley for garnish

1. Melt 1 Tbsp. butter in a medium saucepan. Add peas and cook, stirring occasionally, about 2 minutes. Remove half the peas and reserve for later.

2. To the peas remaining in the pan, add a ladleful of stock. Cover and cook gently about 5 minutes, until peas are soft. Add 1 Tbsp. Parmesan, another 1 Tbsp. butter, some grinds of black pepper and a grating of nutmeg. Puree all these things together and reserve for later. (Note: I did these first two steps the night before and stored the whole and the pureed peas in the fridge overnight.)

3. Melt 1 Tbsp. butter and the oil in a large saucepan or small-to-medium stockpot. Cook shallots about 4 minutes, then add rice and "stir till every grain glistens with the oniony fat" (direct quote from Nigella; pretty much sums up why I love her; not to be omitted or paraphrased).

4. Add wine and let it bubble away and absorb. If it's not bubbling, raise the heat and cook until it does bubble away and absorb.

5. Add a ladle of hot stock and stir, constantly or nearly constantly, until absorbed. Continue doing this for 10 minutes.

6. Add the whole peas to the rice, and continue with the stock/stir method for another 8 minutes. At this point, check for doneness: the rice should be cooked, just a smidge al dente, and the risotto should be creamy. You may have leftover stock, or you may run out and need to continue with hot water.

7. When risotto is done, add pea puree and beat it well into risotto. Taste, add salt and pepper to taste, then beat in remaining butter and Parmesan. Garnish with parsley, and serve hot with more Parmesan at the table.


Off to make dinner! I'm having . . . leftover risotto.

chickpea stew

Thanks to my newest friend, Julia (no, not Child), I had company in the kitchen on Wednesday! At her genius suggestion, we decided to make dinner together. I was thrilled to have a buddy with whom to cook, and I realized that although it's rare that I make myself a real dinner in the middle of the week, it never takes as much time as I expect and the payoff is more inspired and satisfying than many of the usual low- maintenance suspects. It was easy to choose a recipe that we both liked, since she's a vegetarian and I often eat like one; many of the ingredients were already in one of our kitchens, so the meal was easy on our wallets, too. Bonus: she let me keep the leftovers of everything, because her mom wanted to clear out their kitchen in anticipation of Passover!

Although the recipe is extremely simple, the results were ultra tasty and quite filling. We left the stew to simmer while we nibbled on our salads (beets, zucchini, romaine, gorgonzola--all thanks to Julia!), and there wasn't much liquid left when we checked on it. Not a problem, but it made it a little less stew-y. Also, the original recipe includes russet potatoes, but we nixed them and cooked up some barley instead.

Middle Eastern chickpea stew
Adapted from The Big Book of Vegetarian (Chronicle Books, 2004)
Serves 6
Time: Who knows? We talked and talked and talked, so it took us forever!

1 1/2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 medium red bell pepper, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp. ground cumin (the addition of which made Julia murmur, "Mmm! Smells like fajitas!")
1/2 tsp. dried oregano
1 15-ounce can diced tomatoes and their juice
3 Tbsp. chopped fresh cilantro
3 Tbsp. chopped fresh parsley
3 Tbsp. tomato paste
2 c. vegetable broth
2 15-ounce cans chickpeas, rinsed and drained
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.

1. In a large, nonstick skilled over medium-high heat, warm olive oil. Add onion, bell pepper, garlic, cumin and oregano. Cook, stirring often, until vegetables soften, 5 to 6 minutes.

2. Add tomatoes, cilantro and parsley. Cook, stirring occasionally, until most of liquid has evaporated and mixture has thickened, about 5 minutes.

3. Stir in tomato paste and cook for 1 minute. Add broth and bring to a boil. Add chickpeas, lower heat and simmer until sauce thickens, about 10 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and serve hot, preferably with cooked barley or other grain and with pleasant company. ;)

dinner for one, on the fly

Last night, I cooked dinner just for myself. Because I live with my parents, my weekend meals are generally a larger affair because we cook for three. And while I feed myself every day of the week, I don't typically put much effort into my weeknight meals: cereal, leftovers, salad, the ubiquitous peanut butter sandwich. But I like to make weekend meals special, and since my parents were not eating with me last night, I thought it would be a good opportunity to try out something more daring than they're used to. (I was also going to say "something vegetarian" when I realized that we do cook a lot of vegetarian meals together . . . although sometimes, about an hour later, I find my dad rummaging in the kitchen for something to nibble.)

Looking in the refrigerator, I saw the leftover barley pilaf still hanging out, and I wanted to try to use it all before it got funky. There was most of a can of white beans I'd opened for my lunchtime salad also in the fridge, and knowing my tendency to open a can of beans, use about half a cup and forget the rest until a strange odor emanates from the tupperware, I pounced. Burgers, I thought. I'm going to make a bean burger. Remembering that beans and grains, two sources of incomplete proteins, make a complete protein when combined, I thought I'd build a bean-based burger that also contained barley. (If the previous sentence didn't make sense, you can read more about complete proteins here.) I was disappointed that white beans and barley are both pretty sad looking, and I wanted a little more color in the burger, so I threw in some shelled soybeans (which, I found out later, contain a complete protein themselves, so never mind all that nutritional mumbo jumbo from before) and some minced parsley. I didn't season the burgers much more than that, since the pilaf had onions and thyme and would, I hoped, flavor the patty enough. But I did throw in a few pinches of whole wheat flour, because I had a feeling that might prevent the burger from falling apart when I cooked it.

I didn't take notes or measure anything, but these are my guesses:

• 1/3 c. white beans, mashed
• 2 Tbsp. barley pilaf
• 1-2 Tbsp. thawed frozen shelled soybeans
• 2-3 tsp. minced fresh flat-leaf parsley
• a few grinds black pepper
• 2 tsp. whole wheat flour

I rolled all these things together into a ball, flattened into a patty and refrigerated for 20-30 minutes. I had a feeling that refrigeration might help the patty set, to further prevent it from falling apart, but I don't know if it actually did anything. The burger didn't fall apart, though, so that's encouraging.

An almost-too-old sweet potato lurking in a cabinet also called to me, and I knew exactly how I wanted to prepare it. I cut it into rounds, halved the rounds to make little moons and seasoned on both sides: extra-virgin olive oil, smoked paprika and kosher salt. If you're not familiar with smoked paprika, it is a bangin' spice unlike any other--smoky, sorta spicy, definitely awesome--that I bought a couple of years ago for an eggplant and garbanzo stew recipe. I really like it paired with the sweetness of the sweet potatoes. I baked the slices at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for ~45 minutes (I wasn't really timing), flipping and rearranging the slices every 15 minutes.

When the sweet potatoes were close to done-ness, I heated a little extra virgin olive oil in a sautee pan over high heat and seared the burger on both sides, to brown but not burn it. Then I lowered the heat and cooked it a little longer on both sides to heat it through.

The only thing I had to buy for the meal was a green veggie. I went with sugar snap peas, and kept some water simmering in a small saucepan until the burger and sweet potatoes were nearly done. Then I cranked up the heat, dropped in the snap peas and let them play for a minute, then drained.

Overall, everything was awesome. I'm most excited that I experimented with the burger and didn't follow any specific recipe. It was so much more flavorful and interesting (and less fake-tasting) than a manufactured veggie burger, and the success of the experience encourages me to branch out and try different combinations of ingredients.

woo wee, what a weekend

It wasn't particularly fabulous or interesting (or, at least, according to people whose lives aren't so mundane as mine), but it was full of good things: a dinner date and mall trip with Mom, my return to running after three days of nursing a very painfully strained/pulled glute, a hailstorm (!) last night, and watching "Vicky Christina Barcelona" with a friend last night. Best of all, I had enough time, energy and inspiration to cook at home on both Saturday and Sunday. Both were new recipes, so both get a shout-out here.

[saturday]
Fish is what I was craving, and so fish is what we had. Lately, I've had swordfish on the brain; when I was younger, it was a summertime supper staple, but it fell off our family's map for reasons not totally clear. (I think, and my dad agrees, that we made it too much and just got sick of it.) I hadn't had it in forever, but given that I enjoy so many kinds of seafood, I suspected that I would still enjoy it. With Mark as our guide, we marinated a 1 lb. swordfish steak (hello, huge hunka fish!) in 2 Tbsp. soy sauce and the juice of 1 lime for 30 minutes, then grilled it and served it with lemon slices. Our veg was asparagus--drizzled in olive oil, sprinkled with salt and pepper, grilled until charred and delicious looking--and we had some of that huge batch of couscous salad I made earlier in the week.

The verdict on swordfish: My, it is meaty! I was really surprised by the meatiness. I don't know how else to explain it, except that it was good.

[sunday]
After Saturday's dinner, my dad announced that he would like to eat something spicier for dinner on Sunday. At first I thought he meant literally something more spicy, and so did he, but after a bit of brainstorming together, he explained that he meant anything more interesting (metaphorically spicy, then) than Saturday night's relatively easy, tasty but unadventurous meal. Much cookbook browsing yielded the following pork recipe, paired with barley pilaf (barley, sauteed red onion, salt, pepper and dried thyme) and grilled radicchio (extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper). We'd planned on baby bok choy, but when we couldn't find any at Whole Foods, Dad suggested we pick up some of the beautiful little heads of radicchio displayed before us. Grilling it added a lot of smokiness to the expected bitterness, which was awesome.

above: beautiful and tasty grilled radicchio
(pork not pictured because meat is ugly)

Note: This breaks the pork rule! I do like pork tenderloin, because it's so lean and, well, tastes like chicken if you ask me.

Grilled pork tenderloin with mustard curry
Adapted from Mark Bittman
Time: about 30 minutes, plus time to preheat grill
Serves 3-4

2 Tbsp. Dijon mustard
2 Tbsp. curry powder
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 1/4 lb. pork tenderloin, in 1 piece
Fruit chutney (Mark suggests recipes for a stone fruit chutney and a corn and tomato relish contained elsewhere in the book, but because stone fruits, corn and tomatoes aren't yet in season, I used storebought Major Grey's chutney, which has mango and ginger and a nice kick of heat)

1. Preheat grill.

2. Combine mustard, curry powder, salt and pepper in a small bowl, and rub all over meat to coat. Grill, turning to brown all sides, abput 10-15 minutes, until meat is nearly cooked through but still pink in the very center. (The internal temperature of the center should not exceed 145 degrees Fahrenheit.)

3. Remove from heat and let rest 10 minutes before slicing into 1/2-inch thick pieces. Serve with chutney.

Warning: If you choose to grill the meat indoors, as we did, it might get smoky! We had to open the kitchen windows, then the back door . . .

. . . and then the front door, too.

The leftover radicchio and pork made their way into my lunchtime salad yesterday along with the rest of the asparagus from Saturday (blanched this time) and the dregs of the couscous salad, plus romaine, thawed frozen corn kernels and alfalfa sprouts. One of the best parts of cooking on the weekend is having lots of wonderful leftovers during the week!

an old friend

I'm in a lunch rut. A rut defined by the same old things, day in and day out, which are things I can and do frequently make for breakfast and/or dinner as well: peanut butter sandwiches (with or without banana, honey or raisins), cottage cheese on toasted English muffins, yogurt and granola, oatmeal. I need something exciting, healthful and lightly filling to mix up my lunch routine, because recycling my breakfast menu just hasn't been satisfying me. Enter my old friend, the curried couscous salad.

While working in the retail world a few years ago, I came across the recipe while flipping through one of the Barefoot Contessa cookbooks during some down time, and immediately scribbled it down on a scrap of paper to try at home. It's been probably a year or more since I last made it, and while it doesn't exactly count as a new recipe (which are the only ones I originally intended to post here), I'd forgotten how good it is. It's so much more satisfying than I expect it to be and, in terms of preparation, really quite idiot-proof. And because this is my blog, I get to make up and break the rules whenever I want!

Some notes:

• I use fat-free strained Greek-style yogurt, because that's the kind I buy. I find the dish prepared this way quite richly flavored, and I cannot imagine that it suffers from not using some-fatted yogurt. Go with your gut on this one ... or with whatever's in your fridge. If using strained yogurt, take extra care to mix the dressing thoroughly into the couscous, as it will be thicker than if using regular yogurt.
  
• On my hand-written recipe I noted that you can use currants or dried cranberries rather than raisins; I'm not sure if this is an Ina note or a Me note. I happen to hate currants, and the cranberries seem too sweet to me with the other ingredients, but I thought I should mention it.
  
• The original recipe calls for red onion, which I find too severe in this dish, not to mention also a bit unkind to the breath and perhaps not desirable if you will be eating this at the office. But if you are a die-hard lover of red onion, or if you want to stick it to your boss, go right ahead and use it.
  

Curried couscous salad
Adapted from Ina Garten
Makes ~7 cups, so serves at least 7 as a side
Time: 10 minutes if you're really organized or 20-25 if you're scattered like I am

1 1/2 c. water
1 Tbsp. plus 1/4 c. extra-virgin olive oil
1 1/2 c. couscous
1/4 c. plain yogurt
1 tsp. white wine vinegar
1 tsp. curry powder
1/4 tsp. turmeric
1 1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1 tsp. black pepper
1/2 c. small-diced carrots
1/2 c. minced flat-leaf parsley
1/2 c. raisins
1/4 c. sliced almonds
2 scallions, thinly sliced (both green and white parts)
1/4 c. small-diced red onion, optional

1. Bring water and 1 Tbsp. oil to a boil. Meanwhile, place couscous in a large bowl or pot that has a lid (or which you can fully cover with a plate). When water and oil are boiling, pour over couscous. Cover tightly and allow to soak 5 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, whisk together remaining oil, yogurt, vinegar, curry powder, turmeric, salt and pepper. When couscous is finished soaking, fluff with a fork, then pour dressing over couscous and stir to mix.

3. Add carrots, parsley, raisins, almonds, scallions and onion (if using). Stir to combine, and adjust seasonings if necessary. Serve at room temperature.

bad blogger!

I have been delinquent in my blogging duties! Doing my taxes, trying to find a new pair of running shoes, and searching for a job were my priorities this week, so writing here took a backseat. Still, I've been in the kitchen a bit. Last weekend I made a foray into baking yeast bread, and while it feels like a step up from the quickbreads I've done in the past (banana, pumpkin, honey whole wheat) in terms of Kitchen Seriousness--and this is only because it required yeast, which I've never used before--it still doesn't feel like bona fide bread-baking because there was no kneading, punching, folding or proofing.

However, it did yield some amazing, carby deliciousness. Which is really all I needed. The original recipe called for all whole wheat flour; as this was my first time using whole wheat flour (rather than whole-wheat pastry flour, which I use in almost all my baked goods), I didn't know if it would be too intense, or bitter, or something. And because I love the textural variety that cornmeal adds, I thought I'd throw in some of that as well.

Whole wheat bread
Adapted from ZestyCook
Yield: one gargantuan loaf
Time: About 1 hour

1 tsp. honey
2 2/3 c. lukewarm water, divided
4 tsp. dry active yeast
3 Tbsp. molasses
3 c. whole wheat flour
1 1/2 c. whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 c. medium-grind cornmeal
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 c. wheat germ
1 T. rolled oats

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Lightly oil a not-too-small loaf pan. (I have two sizes, and I opted for the larger one, whose dimensions I don't know. This is probably the world's least helpful note.)
2. Stir honey into 2/3 c. water. Sprinkle yeast over mixture, and set aside for 10 minutes. All yeast should be dissolved into the liquid. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, sift together flours and cornmeal.
3. Stir molasses into 2/3 c. water, and combine with yeast mixture.
4. Stir yeast mixture into dry ingredients. Add salt, wheat germ and remaining 1 1/3 c. water, and stir until incorporated. Dough will be sticky.
5. Pour dough into prepared pan, smooth top with a spoon or spatula, and sprinkle rolled oats over dough. Allow dough to rise to top of pan.

(dough before rising)



(after about 15 minutes)

6. Bake 30-40 minutes.
7. Cool loaf while still in the pan on a rack for 10 minutes. Then turn loaf out of pan and allow to cool completely on the rack.

The large size of the loaf combined with my utter lack of knife skills meant that I could only hack off thick pieces from the loaf. So I used this to dunk into soups and to make open-faced peanut butter and banana sandwiches. And I loved it!

This was how I spent last Friday morning, and there was minimal cooking for the rest of the day. Saturday, I had dinner out with my parents and favorite aunt and uncle, and Sunday we cooked simple grilled chicken and broiled eggplant with a Middle Eastern recipe from How to Cook Everything for lentils with rice and caramelized onions. I'm not sure whether I made it properly--I was expecting discrete, defined lentils but instead got a mass of mush--so until I know I won't be posting it here.

polenta pizza

Last night I decided to try out Mark Bittman's polenta pizza recipe from How to Cook Everything. I was reminded of my desire to try this recipe earlier in the week, when I spotted a variation to the HtCE recipe in the Wednesday dining section of the Times. Given that the variation included pancetta, which clearly breaks The Pork Rule, I chose to follow the original, although somewhat loosely, as I wanted to top it with spicy sauteed broccoli rabe and aged provolone—a match made in heaven, if you ask me.

So I was ambitious: I made red sauce from scratch, I prepared the broccoli rabe (sauteed with garlic and red pepper flakes, then braised with water until the stems were tender), and I made a batch of polenta. All of these were first-timers for me, and I'm proud of myself for doing each one. But the end product, the pizza itself, wasn't what I'd hoped. The crust wasn't firm enough to hold up to a spatula sliding underneath it as I tried to plate each piece. I suspect that one of these facts may have contributed to this disappointing result:

• I might have flattened the polenta too thin in certain spots
• I should have let the polenta rest and firm up a while longer before topping and baking it (this step was included in the published version of the recipe, but not in the HtCE version, though it should be noted that MB used different ingredients, such as milk, in the polenta in the published version, too)
• I may have topped the polenta with too many wet ingredients

I'm not sure what is to blame, but I do know that I have more experimenting to do before posting my adaptation of the recipe here. Because while everything was exceptionally delicious, it looked a lot less like pizza and a lot more like a mess on a plate.

Tonight my dad and I are making: salmon baked with lemon and dill, potatoes Poupon (recipe to come tomorrow) and wilted arugula. I am also enjoying, as I type this in fact (!), a homemade margarita: lime juice, tequila, Cointreau, a splash of lemon juice. I'm still figuring out how the proportions, and until I do, you don't get the recipe. I think the best version was one I made over the summer and included some lemonade.

Happy weekend!

I thought I was going to cook today

Reading the NYT's Dining section this morning got my all excited to do some cooking. Mark Bittman's column about savory, whole-grainy breakfast dishes motivated me to crack open the can of butternut squash I've had for a few days. I mixed some into my oatmeal, along with maple syrup, ground cinnamon and a sprinkling of that crunchy, Biblically inspired cereal I've mentioned before. The results, I can assure you, were scrumptious.

One of the recipes he mentioned is polenta pizza, which also appears in How to Cook Everything. I read the recipe there a few weeks ago around the same time that I toyed with the idea of making meatballs, which won out. Seeing it again in this morning's paper reminded me of my urge to give it a go, and with not much else planned for the day, I thought I might make it for tonight's dinner. I also spotted a few other recipes that, in their published form, seem like I'd like them with a few tweaks, like Melissa Clark's cauliflower with cheese AND chutney (yum to either one, but together? yikes) and Pichet Ong's chocolate-oatmeal cupcakes with maple-bacon buttercream, which clearly breaks The Pork Rule (I hate all pork products) and also the cake rule (I think cake is gross) but which appeals to my dual loves of oats and chocolate. I wonder if this could be adapted to a brownie form. I now recall that I have a brownie recipe, I think by Liz Applegate, that includes oats, but they're mixed into the batter a la The Sneaky Chef, whereas I'd like something that showcases the oats more boldly, something perhaps along the lines of a crumble. There was also a mention of chocolate mocha cookies in the Food Stuff section. Mmm.

All of this led me to the conclusion that I would be cooking tonight, and possibly baking tomorrow. Were it not for my gelato date with a friend tonight, I'd be all over some baking, but I wouldn't want any batter/dough sampling in the afternoon to kill my appetite for a cold confection post-dinner. But before I made it to the grocery store, Gelato Friend invited me over for dinner, too. So polenta pizza will have to wait another day ... but probably not more, because I'm really excited to take a crack at it.

playing catchup

I've been in the kitchen quite a bit in the past few weeks, but I haven't posted any recipes because I haven't really modified or put my own twist on any I've tried. But to stay true to my original goal of documenting all the recipes I prepare for the entire year, I'm going to mention them briefly:

1. Spaghetti with homemade meatballs (Jan 24): Lately, I have felt an inexplicable yen for meatballs. I can't understand why, exactly, because I didn't enjoy them much in my pre-vegetarian days, and with a few exceptions, I am typically not interested in meaty dishes like this. But the most important food rule I follow is "If you want it, you should eat it," and while I'm not always good at following it, in the case of the meatballs I did just that. I followed Mark Bittman's recipe in How to Cook Everything and used equal parts (1/4 lbs.) beef, veal and pork. Very simple and requiring no fancy kitchen skills. What blew me away was how profoundly filling they were; halfway through a small portion of pasta and a single, medium-sized meatball, I questioned whether I'd even be able to finish. It wasn't an unpleasant feeling, but one which I'm not used to feeling--probably because of my usual preference for leaner meats and, more often, meatless meals.

2. Tilapia with capers and tomatoes (Jan 25): The judge gave me the assignment of finding a preparation of tilapia with capers and tomatoes, and the recipe we chose together was this one from Cooking Light. I hate that a magazine by this name exists, and I have many times sworn to myself that I'd never cook anything from it. But this looked too delicious, and it didn't contain any weird/fake/chemical-y "lite" sort of ingredients, so I though it was worth breaking the rule. Because I couldn't find anchovy paste in the supermarket that met my food-purity standards (the one kind I found contained, among other things, sugar, butter and added salt--who needs it, when you're dealing with anchovies?!), we bought a tin of flat anchovies and mashed a couple with a fork, using a little of the oil they came in to achieve a paste-like consistency. It was exceptionally delicious, very fresh tasting, but also filling and satisfying.

3. Pumpkin oatmeal (several times in Jan): After a little trial and error, I've arrived at what I consider the ideal way to make pumpkin oatmeal. So I guess I do have a recipe here, although the procedure is based mostly on the instructions on the canister of oats.

In a small saucepan, bring 1 c. water and 1/8 tsp. (or less) salt to a rolling boil. Add 1/2 c. rolled oats, lower heat to medium, and simmer 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.* Cover saucepan, remove from heat, and let stand 2-3 minutes. Meanwhile, place 1/4 c. pumpkin puree in the bowl you're going to eat from. When oats are ready, pour over pumpkin, add 1-2 tsp. maple syrup and a few shakes cinnamon (optional), and stir to combine. I like to drizzle an additional teaspoon maple syrup on top at the end.

*Optional: When I have some in the house, I like to add 1/4 c. of this crazy sprouted whole grain cereal (crazy, because it's named for a Bible verse...) when there are 1-2 minutes left in the cooking time. This adds texture variety to the final product, as the sprouted cereal is crunchier to start and cooks for less time. Mmm!

4. Finally, I discovered a veggie burger that meets my current criteria: does not contain funny ingredients; does not contain an excessive number of ingredients; is delicious. I like to top it with 1/4 of an avocado that I've smashed with a fork and mixed with a sprinkling of salt and a few drops of lemon juice. This doesn't count as a recipe, but maybe a little bit of pleasing kitchen ingenuity.


For the sake of making this blog less ugly and stupid, here's a photo.



It doesn't count as cooking, but I was proud of how I gussied up my Indian leftovers from Monsoon. By adding frozen corn to the saag paneer and fresh string beans to the dal makhani, I got more mileage out of small portions and also amped up the nutritional content of my meal. For my grain, I made my own brown rice. Booyah!