Monthly Archives: February 2010

The Week of Magical Eating: The End

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After a week of hard work for N. and plenty of cookery for me, I came home from grocery shopping last Saturday and routine disintegrated.   N. and I looked at each other, and we looked at our books, and we looked at the tentative sunshine falling onto our porch, and we decided to take our dog-daughter to the beach.  Sure, there was cooking to be done and reading to be done, and editing and grading and cogitation.

But there was also this:

And that made it all worthwhile.

And then when we got home, sandy and tired and smiling, the house smelled like strawberries from the buy-one-get-one-free sale I couldn’t help but take advantage of during my grocery adventure.  So there was nothing else to do but eat them.  A whir of cream with a sprinkle of sugar in my trusty stand mixer, some quick coring knife-work, and two beautiful glasses, and voila, dessert is served. 

The Week of Magical Eating, Day Five: Phoebe-Phriendly

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I realized recently that if I lived alone, I would not cook the way I do now.  I would eat scrambled eggs, I would eat yogurt and granola and pasta.  I would cook occasionally, but what I do now built out of a desire to care for my then-boyfriend, now-husband.  Some of it was, admittedly, to impress him, because he was eating microwave dinners and frozen bagged teriyaki concoctions.  But some of it was born from a desire to nurture him, because he was eating microwave dinners and frozen bagged teriyaki concoctions!
Somewhere along the line, I discovered that I really liked this whole cooking thing.  It became challenging but fulfilling, stress-relieving and relaxing, but also a self-induced obligation.  Deep within these seemingly-contradictory-but-somehow-harmonious-co-existing attributes, the urge to feed and nurture remained.  I cook because I love.  It is the best, most sincere, heartiest way I know how to show my deep affection and fierce warmth.  If I cook for you, it means I care about you.
As I have mentioned on this blog before, I have a friend Ph. who presents some challenges to my ordinary routine.  She is a good friend.  I care about her.  Therefore, I want to feed her.  But her particular dietary needs present me with unusual requirements.  Not only does she eat gluten-free, but dairy-free, corn-free, and nut-free.  This has, much like the Caesar dressing in my previous post, become a minor obsession for me.  I never realized how much of my love involved cheese, milk, and butter, to say nothing of wheat products.  But I care, and I feel driven, and I want to cook for her.  It has become a kind of mission for me.  So I have been educating myself; experimenting with alternative flours, rejoicing in olive oil, learning about how soy milk reacts differently than cows’ milk.  I have done some reading, found some new “friends” online, and discovered with delight how many flour and starch options exist in the bulk foods section of Market of Choice.
Despite all this, I haven’t done much baking yet.  I find myself a little intimidated because I don’t like failure.  I don’t know how these new ingredients react to each other yet, and I dislike the idea of presenting substandard or imperfect food.  But I bucked up my courage recently and made my way through my first bag of rice flour.  One semi-triumph was a version of Elana’s “Magically Moist Cherry and Apricot Cake” from Elana’s Pantry.  Since Elana uses almond flour as her primary gluten-free alternative, I cannot use her recipes verbatim.  Ph. cannot eat tree nuts.  Additionally, Elana uses alternative sweeteners, and I have not yet delved into the mysterious world of agave nectar.  So some amendments needed to be made.
For a girls’ TV night, to which Ph., ironically enough, was not able to attend, I attempted Elana’s cake.  I used white rice flour instead of almond flour, and sugar instead of agave.  Since the resulting clumpy, bumpy batter would not have poured, per the directions, if I’d pointed a gun to my bowl, I added a few splashes of soy milk until things loosened up a bit.  I smoothed the dough out in my pie plate and stuck it in the oven.  Thanks, I suspect, to the soy milk addition, I had to up the cooking time by ten minutes or so, and when I took it out of the oven, it certainly didn’t look like Elana’s.  Hers looked moist with a lovely crumb and a golden crust.  Mine hadn’t lost the spatula-smoothing strokes I’d used to even out the batter.  I broke off a clumpy edge and took a taste.
It was tasty, if different.  Rice flour seems to contribute a grainy texture that I’m not thrilled with, so I know that more experimentation awaits.  But the cake was not as dry as I had feared it would be.  Finally, a baked good that Ph. could eat safely and enjoy (she loves dried fruit).  Since, as it turned out, she was not able to partake on that evening, I broke all my rules to make the dish completely Ph-Phriendly, and made a yogurt glaze to drizzle over the top.  Vanilla yogurt, defrosted frozen blackberries, and a tiny splash of creme de cassis.  This added just the moisture the cake seemed to need.  A few days later I had a slice spread with cream cheese.  That was good too.  Oh what would I give for nondairy cream cheese?
So experiment #1 is complete.  Next up, new flours, mixes of flours, and maybe a fruit crisp.  Doors are opening, and I’m on a mission.

The Week of Magical Eating days 3 and 4: Soup and Salad

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Since sharing lunch with my friend S. a few weeks ago, I have developed a minor obsession with Caesar Salad.  The crispest romaine, whether to add the Parmesan by shreds, crumbles, grates or curls, the perfectly textured crouton: crisp and golden on the outside, with the barest hint of residual chewiness deep within.  But mostly, the object of mystery and allure is the dressing.  It’s tangy but creamy and rich but still light, and pulls the flavors of the salad together to make it a phenomenon.  I decided to make it.  In the gloom of winter, I don’t have the opportunities I’d like to find farm-fresh eggs, and locally grown egg yolk is all I would feel comfortable using without cooking it.  Besides, N. gets worried about raw foods sometimes, and he doesn’t care for the idea of fish in dressing, so egg and anchovy were out.  I poked around online and found some vegan Caesar salad dressings with interesting suggestions, including the addition of brewer’s yeast and tamari to add the salty richness of anchovy.  I collected ideas and then, as usually happens, ended up making my own.

Mayonnaise, lemon juice, brown mustard, tamari, pepper, and garlic went into the mixing vessel that came with my immersion blender.  I pulsed these ingredients together a few times until the garlic was chopped and things were looking paste-like, and then streamed in some olive oil with the blender running until it reached a more dressing-y consistency.  It’s a work in progress, and I didn’t take note of amounts, but it began to capture that lofty Caesar flavor as I added additional spoonfuls of mayo here and lemon there… a bit too much mustard in the first squeeze.  Over-enthusiasm, you know. Tossed with fresh greens, lemon wedges, and sourdough croutons from half a baguette, it was almost right.  Almost there, but close enough for a weeknight.

The next night, inspired by a recipe request I couldn’t fulfill from D., I scoured the ‘nets for a suitable looking black bean soup.  Our salad accompanied a slow cooked chicken with 40 cloves of garlic, and I saved the garlic-infused broth our chicken expelled in the crock pot, so I had a wonderful flavorful stock to use for soup.

After sliding a pan of batter in and a loaf of cornbread out of the oven half an hour later, I commenced to create Dave Lieberman’s black bean soup, found here:  http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/dave-lieberman/black-bean-soup-recipe/index.html

I made a few changes to his recipe, for one reason or another, which I’ll share because I thought the result turned out well.

I cooked my bacon until crispy before draining out some of the fat (which ended up mixed with dogfood; Lucy was ecstatic!) and adding only 1 ½ onions.  Instead of Dave’s can of chicken broth, I used the leftovers from our chicken, which were about 1 ½ cups, and about a third of a bottle of New Belgium 1554 for a little extra flavor and fizz (then I handed the remainder of the bottle to N.  Beer and bacon = happy little family!).  I eliminated the ketchup and forgot the lime juice, and added my cilantro right at the end rather than letting it cook.  I decided I wanted a fresher green flavor, so it would serve as a garnish.

Then we went a little crazy with toppings.  I crumbled up some queso fresco, which I am having a deep affair of intrigue with, and used up my single-serving ramekins providing serving dishes for cheese, sour cream, green onion tops, more cilantro, and lime wedges.  The photo below isn’t the most aesthetically pleasing composition, but it was belly-warming and hearty, and tasted marvelous.  We usually have trouble finishing up leftovers from soup, but it has been only four or five days since I made this, and the remains are already gone.  That should tell you something.

The Week of Magical Eating Day Two: Belated Valentine

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Belated Valentine, from my kitchen to you:

I am a big believer in comfort food.  For me, mashed potatoes are a comfort food that are impossible to get tired of.  They can be made in so many ways: with butter, with olive oil, with sour cream, whipped, blended, smashed, gravy-ed.  Two things seem to remain true about them.  1.) there are never enough, and 2.) they get cold too fast.  How to combat this?  It helps that I am only cooking for two, but had my first lessons, triumphs, and failures in a kitchen that fed four nightly.  I haven’t yet mastered the downsizing process, but in cases like mashed potatoes, N. and I actually benefit from my over exuberance.

The key element to mashed potatoes, I think, is including enough fat.  Otherwise all you end up with is crumbly boiled potato.  I take my fat options extremely seriously, and in considering all the creamy options, I decided to play with ricotta cheese during this round.  Not only would this add a cheesy dimension, which is almost never a bad thing, but would contribute a velvety texture and give the potatoes a way of clinging together as they crumbled under the force of my masher.

I dropped a bag of baby Yukon golds into a pot of half salted water, half leftover chicken broth that didn’t get stirred into the risotto from the previous night’s adventure.  Then, in a moment of sudden, startling inspiration, I cracked three whole, unpeeled garlic cloves off the bulb and tossed them in too.  Considering the plans for the following night, these paper-wrapped, pungent little cloves could tie the whole week together.

While the potatoes boiled, I considered their final destination.  Ricotta cheese is nice, but it certainly could be improved upon.  I chopped up a good handful of dill and Italian parsley, and on sudden urge, grated a handful of parmesan cheese too.

I like my mashed potatoes chunky, and I know that most of a potato’s nutrients are found in its skin, so I like to make mashed potatoes with new or fingerling potatoes, or with red-skinned potatoes, which all have thin skins with unobjectionable flavors.  This adds to the nutritious value of the final result, and it saves me time because I don’t have to peel a bunch of potatoes in preparation.  Additionally, the skins add a nice textural element as they yield their hold on the starchy interior and shred through the pot upon mashing.

After draining and peeling the garlic cloves, I added and gently mashed together the following with the softened soldiers:

  • 4 TB butter
  • ½ cup milk
  • 8 oz. part-skim ricotta cheese
  • ¼ – ½ cup grated parmesan cheese
  • ¼ cup roughly chopped fresh parsley
  • 2-3 TB chopped fresh dill
  • Sea salt and black pepper

Using a plastic masher is invaluable because you can do your mixing and mashing right in the pot, which ensures that the potatoes stay hot longer.  We mounded ours up on warm plates and ate them alongside roasted asparagus.  The ricotta was a great addition; it was not super cheesy, but recognizably creamy and smooth.  It definitely added richness and tamed the starchiness of the potatoes.  The combination of herbs was a success.  With the additional richness of the cheese, having bright pops of green both visually and orally made the dish feel, not exactly healthy, but not overbearing.  Besides, with a side of asparagus and burst cherry tomatoes, we weren’t being all that bad…

The Week of Magical Eating: Day One

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With my exam over, and firm commands from my adviser to give myself a break for a week or two (she said a month, but she and I are both too dedicated and both such workhorses that I doubt that will happen), I can concentrate on the important things: food, and husband.  Fortunately, since he needs to be fed, these important things can work in tandem.  So I send my apologies to Joan Didion, and promise to report to you a Week of Magical Eating.  Some dishes will be fancy, fresh, and well prepared.  Some will probably be valiant attempts to use up leftovers.  Either way, I will try to check in with my results.

Day one, yesterday, also happened to be Valentine’s Day.  Neither N. nor I particularly support this Hallmark holiday, likely as a result of residual bitterness before meeting one another and deciding that no one but each other should ever be subjected to either of us again.  However, thanks to my rapidly ebbing stress and rising ability to enjoy normal activities like shopping and cooking without feeling guilt about not studying, I was able to secure ingredients for dinner on the special side.  Not for VDay, but for each other.

As a congratulatory gesture for passing my exam, one of my officemates gave me the ingredients for Kir Royale: champagne and crème de cassis.  This blackcurrant liquor smells sweet with the promise of a bite.  Mixed with champagne, it was much less sweet than I had imagined; my taste buds were prepared for something dessert-like, but the mix was delicious and fresh, and the color was appetizing too.

With our aperitifs poured, and an acorn squash halved, liberally basted with butter, honey, mustard, and shoved unceremoniously into the oven, I embarked on Jaime Oliver’s spinach and goat cheese risotto.  I’ve made this dish before, and was craving its fresh green notes and rich tanginess.  To make things extra special, and since between the two of us on a Sunday night we deemed it unwise to drink an entire bottle-o’-bubbly, I used champagne instead of white wine to deglaze my risotto pan after lightly toasting the rice and onions.  In the end result I couldn’t taste a difference, but I like to think the champagne contributed to the light tang of the final dish.

Piled high on a plate, it was creamy, it was luscious, with pockets of goat cheese slowly melting in amidst the kernels of rice that never lose their bite completely.  The acorn squash as a vegetable side, though it has a completely different flavor profile, works nicely with this risotto, I think, in part because the color contrast is so striking.  After an hour in the oven, the rind gets thin, flexible and yet crackling at the same time, and if you don’t mind burning the tips of your fingers, you can hold the caramelized edges with one hand while you scrape the flesh out with a spoon held in the other.

Nothing bitter here.  Honey, crème de cassis, goat cheese, sweetness layered on sweetness, but not enough to be cloying.  Exactly, perhaps, how Valentine’s Day ought to be.

Post-exam bliss. And chocolate.

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As I mentioned a post or two ago, this Friday I had to take an exam.  A very-big-deal exam, the outcome of which determined my ability to move on in the program.  And I passed it.  This means I am now free to move toward my dissertation, and that I am a doctoral candidate (well, almost, first I have to create and get approved a dissertation prospectus)!

Excitingly, in a project that does have food as a focus (although more the ways of eating it than the preparation and aestheticism thereof), I received some unexpected but delightful well-wishes in the form of food, when I went out to brunch with some friends/colleagues last Sunday morning.  As we crowded around our table at Midtown Marketplace, some with omelets, some with pancakes, me with a glorious hazelnut waffle topped with mixed berry compote, they began emptying pockets, purses, jackets, and loaded this impressive loot onto the table before me:

This was far more than I expected, and far more than I needed, but it was so brimming with love and support that I was quite overwhelmed.  The breakdown: Dove chocolates (bottom right), always a delicious and reliable standard.  I took the bag to my office to share with my office-mates, since they have had to listen to and encourage me throughout the process of preparing for this exam.

The Belgian chocolates (back right) were a selection of five fruit flavors blended with different types of chocolate (milk, dark, and white) and had some delightful combinations.  I shared these around the office as well.

The candied ginger spiked chocolate bar, which N. dubbed “crack,” was outrageous.  Spicy little chunks of candied ginger in smooth luscious dark chocolate; we finished the bar in two days… now all I want is to make my own candied ginger and wrap it lovingly in a truffle to recreate the experience.

The tea (middle left) is chamomile citrus, and is incredibly beautiful.  The ingredients are left whole, and enclosed in transparent little cloth packages sewn together with soft twine.  You can actually see the chamomile flowers, little strips of dehydrated orange zest, and the other leaves and blossoms used to create the tea.  With a drizzle of honey, it is the perfect not-too-indulgent bedtime beverage.  With the addition of a few shortbread cookies (back left), it becomes rather more indulgent.  These cookies were so rich and buttery that I thought they would leave my fingertips buttery, like the aftermath of a big handful of popcorn.  Just softened in the tea, they were lent an appealing subtle citrus flavor.

For true indulgence, the Ghiradelli cocoa mix is your best bet from this table of luxuries.  It is chocolate and hazelnut, so in essence it is like drinking a hot cup full of Nutella.  Incredibly rich and delicious.  I have only mixed it with water thus far, but the package recommends mixing with heated milk, which would only add to the indulgence!

Finally, the tall bottle in the middle is a Spanish sparkling white wine by Albero, which the bottle claims is made with organically grown grapes.  I have not yet popped the cork of this delightful looking treat, but when I do I expect to feel the same sort of rush of relief and unbelieving but effervescent bliss that I did yesterday afternoon, when my adviser and the chair of my examination committee shook my hand and told me “Congratulations!”