Summer Salad Sonata

Posted on May 31, 2009 by Chelsea

As we launch unforgivingly into what will be my fourth complete Oregon summer (we moved up halfway into one, so that doesn’t count), I’m reminded of Monty Python. Specifically, I’m reminded of the animated plot-moving section in QHG when the narrator tells us that “A year passed: winter changed into spring, spring changed into summer, summer changed back into winter, and winter gave spring and summer the miss and went straight on into autumn… until one day…” Oregon, I call foul. After a wretched winter, we’d barely touched into spring temperatures when we’re suddenly awash with summer. Except for the allergies, which linger in heavy layers of nose clogging pollen to remind us not only that Linn County just to the north is the grass seed capital of the world, but that it’s not quite summer yet, even though my feet are bare and my window fan is running at full blast.

So it’s hot, that’s basically what I’m trying to get across here. I’ve lost my California hardiness, but then again, it’s been four years. Apparently my computer has lost its tolerance for heat as well. Despite being mid-term-paper, I took long breaks throughout the day during which I shut the poor machine down so it wouldn’t die of heat exhaustion. The fan was running overtime, to the point that I actually pointed another fan at the box in hopes that this would help cool things off. With all this impending heatstroke, the last thing I wanted was a hot meal for dinner. Thankfully, my latest issue of Cuisine at Home charged me with the challenge to “build a better salad.” In congruence with their directions, I produced the following opus:

At its bass line, that’s a spinach salad you see there, but the accompaniment is really what makes it sing. It featured steamed sweet potato slices, raspberries, defrosted frozen edamame, and homemade granola. Like a complex perfume or a fine wine, a good salad needs a top note. Ours was a vigorously whisked dressing of yogurt, mayonnaise, garlic powder, salt and pepper.

The best part is imagining what to do with the leftover granola. I’m thinking yogurt… honey… fresh raspberries…

Rice Parade

Posted on March 16, 2009 by Chelsea

In my mind, few foods are as simply clean and perfect as a pot of perfectly cooked rice. If foods were chosen to embody colors, rice would be the perfect candidate for whiteness. Think about it. Freshly made, just off the heat, the first time you fluff it to break up some of the clumps, it’s like little pillows. It smells comforting and grainy and nutty and warm, it’s stuffed in heating pads and pillows, it’s thrown at weddings, it’s an amazing little miracle all on its own – tiny individual grains, hard and pointed, but after 20 minutes in bubbling water they magically become this beautiful, warm, sticky heap of comfort. You can do anything with them, but why would you? How can you possibly improve upon the perfection of a fresh, hot, sticky/chewy/creamy/nutty pot of white rice?

By turning it into pudding.

I’ve never liked the look of those stovetop rice puddings that are soupy and goopy – almost like the consistency of hot cereal. No, when I think pudding, I want something that sets up firm and has to be broken through with a spoon, not just scooped up. I want a custard. Given our crazy weather today, my mom’s amended rice pudding recipe is perfect.

Cook two cups of raw rice in a pot on the stovetop until done, then take the pot off the heat, remove the lid, and let the rice cool.

In a large casserole dish combine:

3 eggs, beaten

3 cups milk

¾ cups sugar

1 ½ tsp. vanilla

¾ cups raisins

1 generous tsp. cinnamon

Cooled, cooked rice

Place casserole dish in another larger, shallow dish (I use a glass pie plate) and fill the shallow dish about halfway with hot water. Cook, uncovered, in a preheated 350 degree oven for 45-60 minutes, or until custard is just set. Remove from oven. Cool. Consume.

Hasty Bites

Posted on February 16, 2009 by Chelsea

A friend S. told me today that I hadn’t updated in a while and really should see to my absence. Unacceptable. I sputtered, considering all the usual excuses. I’ve been sick all week. I’m so busy. I have needy students, a dog desperate for exercise, books piling up that need reading, but she was right. I just needed the text, and lord knows I’m not short on text. I talk text in my sleep. Which I’ve been getting a lot of lately, what with being sick.

The point is, she guilted me like a Greek Grandmother. Appropriately enough, my response is Spanikopita!

It was one of those brilliant flashes of leftover magic. Phyllo dough languishing from some fanciful application. Feta just weeping in its own milk to be used. Dill wilting down with every passing day. I usually think of spanikopita either as a kind of delicious Greek lasagna, or as individually wrapped servings. This evening, in what I can see is playing into a theme, I didn’t have the time for either.

Hastily, I buttered and stacked my sheets of phyllo and draped them over a pie dish. Then I mixed a beaten egg, a few slivered green onions, a defrosted, wrung dry box of chopped spinach, at least a tablespoon of chopped dill, crumbled feta, and black pepper, then poured it down onto the dry surface of the top layer of dough and wrapped the whole thing up like a money bag. I pinched the top together, fanned out the edges, and lovingly brushed the outside with butter before baking for half an hour or so.

I’ve never cooked feta long enough to melt it, and something very interesting happens to the flavor. Pavlov wasn’t Greek, but I think you’ll know what I mean when I cite him in relation to my usual reaction to feta cheese. Something about the sharp tang. But this application made the cheese more mellow, almost creamy, and certainly no less delicious.

Happy, S.? There’s another bite/byte where this came from in your almost immediate future…

Christmas food part 3 – the Christmas dinner anti-tradition

Posted on January 24, 2009 by Chelsea

Though the food in this post, and the topic at large are from Christmas, the need for posting is largely a result of a newly established Ladies’ Spaghetti Night that I recently attended.In true occupatio style, I will say nothing of A.’s marvelous sauce, chunky with sweet, acidic tomatoes and impossibly large slices of button mushrooms.I will not mention how good the bread, delicately seeded and torn in large chunks from the loaf, was when we smashed cloves of roasted garlic over it.No, the reason for this post is one of the people involved in the genesis of this weekly pastafest.Though she was not present at the particular gathering of which I speak, she was in my thoughts because she cannot eat gluten.She also can’t do dairy.This means that when Ph. is in attendance, we have to have gluten-free pasta.It also means that since almost everything I cook involves bread, butter, or cheese in some form, rarely do I make anything that Ph. can eat.

All that changed on Christmas Day (I think, since I haven’t cleared the recipe with her yet).Let me explain.For probably a decade, my family has done Thanksgiving and Christmas with another family who my parents have known since at least the time that I was born.I’m the oldest of the four kids between the two families, so that’s a long time.Three or four years ago at about 5:30pm on December 25^th, over a steaming baked brie and a ¾ eaten bread bowl of spinach dip, five of the eight of us decided that we weren’t hungry.We had eaten appetizers with such enjoyment and such gusto that the standing rib roast my dad was asking whether he should carve seemed utterly extraneous.We decided a new plan was in order.Appetizer Christmas.

Since that fateful day, we’ve had a Christmas meal of 100% appetizers – mainly finger food or toothpick-able items that come in cute, single-size servings.Same goes for dessert.We’ve done coconut shrimp, we’ve done tempura, we’ve done Swedish meatballs and stuffed mushrooms and pate.For dessert, truffles, individual espresso chocolate cakes, and tiny cheesecakes made in muffin tins.

This year, I made spring rolls.Here’s where Ph. comes in, because they were made with rice noodles and rice wraps.No flour.No wheat.No cheese.I found the recipe here: http://www.ivu.org/recipes/chinese/spring-rolls.html and highly recommend it with minimal alterations.

I found that making these in a two person assembly line was really effective.While I jammed small piles of carrot, lettuce, mint, and noodles into each wrapper, my mom dipped and flipped the next wrapper to bat in a wide, shallow Tupperware of warm water until it lost its rigid structure and became elastic.Warm water works the best for this, and we discovered that each rice paper round needs between 30-50 seconds in the water.After a few botched first tries (I’ve never rolled a spring roll before), we settled into the perfect harmony of dipping, rolling, and transferring.It took me exactly the amount of time to stuff and wrap a spring roll as it took for the next wrapper to melt into perfect texture.When we made the sauce, which my sister took charge of, we substituted lime juice for some of the broth and water for the rest, since one of our fellow consumers is vegetarian.It turned out thick and sweet and a perfect accompaniment.

I definitely side with the recipe’s author in calling for mint with no substitutions in this recipe.Since I have an ample crop just poking their little heads up in the backyard amidst the decimation of stalks left over from last fall, this herbal portion is easily reproducible.Pressing and baking the tofu, which I had never done before, gave it a whole new texture that my dad (who is marginally obsessed with the power of soy) and I both really enjoyed.I think others did too, but he and I professed it the most loudly.The compressed slices sucked in the tamari I glugged over them, and smelled so good that I didn’t even mind the burn I got when, too excited to be remotely intelligent, I reached in and grabbed the cookie sheet I was baking the slices on out of the oven without a potholder.The tofu and the skin on my hand both survived.Ah, the magic of Christmas.

Christmas Food part 1: Mom’s tradition

Posted on January 1, 2009 by Chelsea

Though it is a bit late for a Christmas entry (or three), between driving up and down the western coast of the country through dubious weather, packing and unpacking car, dog, and husband, and figuring out up- and downloading procedures for the new camera, whose glories are displayed below, this is the first chance I’ve had to share my festive food frolickings.Since this is (or was) a time of year for celebrating togetherness, family, and traditions, I’ll start with a contribution from Mom.

In the late days of the 20^th century (hah!), my mom cut a recipe for Cranberry-Nut Bread out of her local newspaper.Since that time, she has probably made at least 50 loaves of this moist, crumbly, fresh tasting holiday quickbread.Okay, some of them were made in the mini aluminum tins that you give out to neighbors you don’t feel that close to, but still… We’ve distributed these loaves of tart tastiness to not only neighbors, but family friends, teachers, coworkers, and this year I took up the tradition, handing out a few to our neighbors before arriving in California just in time to make more!

One of the nicest things about this bread is that it is not overly sweet.Not only do the cranberries contribute their customary tartness, but the walnuts add an edge of strangely creamy bitterness that cuts through what might otherwise be a dessert-like batter.The walnuts, and the small amount of fat in the recipe, also keep this from being an overly oily bread, though it is still quite moist.Using fresh orange juice rather than juice from a carton results, I have found, in a bread that tastes bright and sparkling, almost as if it were carbonated.The flavor is fine with premade juice, but the extra oomph from the fresh squeezed is worth the minimal extra work, in my opinion.

Mom says I can share the recipe, since after all, she received it through an act of free and willing disclosure in the first place:

Mom’s Cranberry Nut Bread

2 cups flour

1 cup sugar

1 ½ tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt

½ tsp. baking soda

¾ cup orange juice (I prefer freshly squeezed)

1 TB finely grated orange peel (rind only, no white pith)

2 TB shortening

1 egg, well beaten

1 ½ cups fresh cranberries, coarsely chopped (the food processor works well for this.Otherwise the cranberries roll and burst all over your cutting board, kitchen counter, and floor)

½ cup chopped walnuts

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Preheat oven to 350 degrees.Grease a 9×5 inch loaf pan.Mix together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda in a large bowl.Stir in the orange juice, orange peel, shortening, and egg.Mix until well blended.Stir cranberries and nuts into the thick batter.Spread evenly in the loaf pan and bake for 55 minutes or until a tester inserted in the center comes out clean.Sometimes this takes as long as an hour and ten minutes, depending on the batter and the oven.Cool on a rack for 15 minutes before removing from the loaf pan to cool completely.If distributing these as gifts, it is nice to cook them in disposable aluminum tins, so that you can leave the loaf in the tin, wrap it in colored saran wrap, and bedeck with ribbons of festive colors.Makes a lovely presentation, and a welcome snack, in the late morning on Christmas Day.

Winter warm-ups

Posted on December 17, 2008 by Chelsea

Weather forecasters are often wrong.On the days when they are not, we often wish they were.So it is today, where the expected high in Eugene is to be around 30°F.At the moment, the thermometer perched precariously outside our home office window reads about 28°F.The snow that fell Sunday night and Monday morning is still coating our backyard, though the front street is now glistening wet with melted ice thanks to the brilliant sunlight today.

To combat this expected but still unusual chill, I’m using our dinner party tonight as an excuse to have the oven on for as long today as possible.With three space heaters running at full strength, the house is still cold thanks to protective, sun-blocking eaves, and house-wide hardwood floors.Last night I mixed the batter and patted out the logs for Almond and Orange Biscotti.I’ve amended the recipe for Lemon Walnut Biscotti from Bon Appetit magazine, seen here: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Lemon-Walnut-Biscotti-231901.I’m substituting almonds for the walnuts, orange peel for the lemon peel, and a mixture of freshly squeezed orange juice and orange liqueur for the lemon juice in the original recipe.Then I drizzled some of them with melted semi-sweet chocolate to really make them a dessert item.These cookies require not one, but two sessions in the oven; an excellent plot for subversive house heating.

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Later, I’ll make baked acorn squash, coating the flesh with a mixture of honey, brown mustard and melted butter before shutting them up for their hour and a half required cooking time.The spinach risotto with lemon and goat cheese (courtesy of Jaime Oliver) does not call for the use of my oven, but I should be able to accomplish a healthy amount of steam from the stovetop.

Here’s to my kitchen and keeping warm!

"blackberry-eating in late September"

food, in so many words.

Category Archives: Recipes