Category Archives: summer

Vacation fried

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Nothing says vacation like fried food.  Of course, for me, nothing says vacation like fried-food-I-didn’t-have-to-fry-myself-that-comes-in-achingly-bad-for-the-environment-but-when-I’m-on-vacation-I-might-not-care-styrofoam-containers. So at the Farmers’ Market near my parents’ home in California’s East Bay Area, I fought with my compunction about collecting a lunch made at an event celebrating freshness and organics and the products of the earth in a container that will last longer than my own body will. Compunction lost.

Because inside that container were two items: a chicken tamale and a spinach and cheese empanada.  I bought them from a stand advertising Panamanian food – the boy and the man in charge webbed within unexplained netting. The tamale was largely unremarkable; steamed in a banana leaf instead of a corn husk, filled generously with a mixture of moist, shredded chicken and kick-less tomato based sauce, I ate it with enjoyment but not gusto. The empanada was a different story.

When my mom and I approached this stand, it was barely 11am. While the tamales had been pre-steamed and just needed to be heated up to be ready to eat, the empanadas did not yet exist in finished form. As I ordered, the older man doing the cooking ambled toward a small outdoor fryer consisting of a coal-black bowl full of questionable oil and turned on the gas.

He ambled back to the netted tent and pulled a ball of smooth, elastic dough from under plasticwrap and, easily and lovingly, rolled it into a six or seven inch circle with almost no extra flour (if you’ve read about my troubles with dough, you understand why this amazed and alarmed me). He layered on some spinach and a big chunk of cheese, dribbled egg wash, then casually folded the dough, pressing the edges first with floured fingers and then with the tines of a fork, leaving even indentations all around the outside to seal in the goodness.

As he carried my lunch over to the warming oil, he told us there were two ways to make an empanada: baked or fried. Then he added, “but really, there’s only one way,” and we agreed that fried is always better. Tipping the little pastry into its bath and carefully manipulating its floating orientation with his fingers, he said he likes to fry his empanadas in oil rather than lard, because lard makes the exterior too dark too fast.

My mom was surprised by the time and low temperature this fry required. The oil did not sizzle and leap furiously, but simmered warmly around the edges of the pastry. This was necessary, we were told, because time was needed to thoroughly heat the filling and cook the dough all the way through. The empanada, with help from our new friend’s careful, gloved prods, swam its way around the oil bath into a state of deep golden crispness before extraction and enclosure within baneful Styrofoam.

Too many minutes later, we were home and I was investigating my purchase more personally. The dough, fried so carefully and attentively, parted with a raspy flaky tear between my teeth, quickly revealing moist, almost dense chewiness. The cheese had cooled only slightly and now maintained all the delightful elasticity of a taffy-pull. But it was the pastry I couldn’t get enough of. Because it was stuffed, the central, puffed area containing the spinach and cheese was a slightly different texture than the crisp pressed edges – softer, chewier. The edges, almost completely crisp, still had a slight interior tenderness to squash pleasingly between eager teeth. The closest comparison I can imagine, though I’ve never eaten it, would be fried pie dough.

 

 

I dispatched the whole thing in a time embarrassingly less than five minutes. I tried to savor, I really did. But isn’t that just like vacation? No matter what you do, it’s gone too quickly…

Emptying the Fridge

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Big news, oh friends: come July, N. and I are moving.  We’re leaving Eugene, OR and heading south for Los Angeles, where N. landed a great job.

I’m sad about this, of course.  I love Eugene.  I love its beauty, and I’ve made some of the best friends and eaten some of the best food of my life here.  I don’t love the way the weather lately has been playing winter/spring/winter/spring/summer/winter on us, and I’m terrified it will pour on graduation day in a week or so.  But mostly I love it.

Yet this move presents the potential for plenty of new delights.  LA is a foodie paradise.  A quick search on Yelp for our new area revealed restaurants serving every kind of food I could possibly crave, and some I’ve never tried before.  Ethiopian will be new to me, as will Caribbean (outside of the ubiquitous and usually inauthentic jerk [insert your protein of choice here]).  The idea of being back in a place with excellent Chinese and Mexican food is overwhelming.  But it’s not just restaurant food that I’m looking forward to.  The Willamette Valley in Oregon boasts great growing conditions for lots of foods, including berries of all kinds, hazelnuts, and plenty of local produce.  But Southern California has so much, given its balmy temperatures year round, that buying and eating local food will suddenly become much easier – not even from farmers’ markets and farm stands, but even from the grocery store.  Avocados, citrus, grapes, all no longer destroy the locavore dream.  Even the backyard of the house we will be moving into has a lemon tree.  A lemon tree!  This excites me almost more than anything else about the whole situation!

Our upcoming relocation also presents a challenge.  N. and I have lived in our current home for four years.  We have lived in Eugene for six.  Over that much time, things accumulate.  Not just house things, like forgotten books and extra sweaters and skillets I shoved in the back of that cabinet N. hates when I replaced them with Circulon non-stick wonders.  Food things.  We have so many half-empty jars of condiments.  So many bags of frozen vegetables bought on a buy-one-get-one sale.  Blackberries from last summer and cranberries from Thanksgiving, carefully preserved on the shelves of my freezer.  Canisters of rice, and brown rice, and millet, and dried beans, and barley, and noodles in the pantry.  It’s a lot of stuff.

So here comes the challenge: interspersed with regular food posts and wedding cupcake practice and the occasional, still-kicking-because-I-can’t-bear-to-abandon-it Bittman dish, I will be instituting a new project.  I’m calling it “Emptying the Fridge.”  Each week when I make our menu plan, I’m going to try to incorporate at least one dish that requires the remnants – or a good quantity – of at least one refrigerator, freezer, or pantry item.  I’m not talking about things we use all the time, like yogurt or bread or eggs.  I’m talking about the minimal use items, like anchovy paste, or capers, or champagne honey mustard, or chili garlic paste.

This week, I have plans for several items, and though I may not eliminate them, I will at least make a dent in several jars.  After a barbeque a few weeks ago featuring a peanut noodle side dish, I decided I want to make Ina Garten’s Szechuan Noodles.  This requires a whole cadre of ingredients including peanut butter, soy sauce, rice vinegar, and various vegetables.  It also, of importance to this project, requires hot chili sauce and tahini.  Both of these items currently languish on my refrigerator door, awaiting stir-fries and hummus.  But this week, they will shine and diminish simultaneously. 

Other plans include a white bean puree I will invent (and post the recipe for, if it turns out well) to work on using up the four cans (four?  How can I possibly have four?) of white beans in my pantry, and peanut butter energy bars, which will help eliminate the giant canister of oats I’ve gotten too stubborn to turn into oatmeal.  At a certain point, you have to eat like it’s summer, even if the sky says it isn’t, don’t you?  But snack bars are a worthy and not-un-spring-like application.

This project is, I think, a combination of homestyle Iron Chef and Chopped.  Not only are there feature or star ingredients, but after a while the pairings of available options will become unusual and require a certain amount of ingenuity to use up.  I like this, because it prepares me for the Food Network show I will never have, which I would call “Empty Fridge.” EF would consist of me trying to use limited pantry and refrigerator items to create something delicious without having to make an extra trip to the store, so in essence it’s Chopped-at-Home.  The difference with my current project, though, is that I am not prohibited from shopping, and am in fact planning ahead based on the contents of my condiment collection to determine our dinners.

Come August, you can expect an abundance (after a short hiatus, most likely – moving and blogging don’t necessarily mesh well) of drooling and groveling over our new location and its diverse and numerous highlights.  But until then, you can look forward to quarter jars of mustard, forgotten marinated artichoke hearts, and hidden canned peaches in various applications.  Hopefully, in this case, not in the same meal…

Homecoming

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Bodily home from vacation, but my mind is refusing to admit that it’s time to work again. With two writing related project deadlines in September, the beginning of the new school year, and that looming dissertation thing in the background, the time for reluctance and inactivity is over.

Yeah, tell that to my sunbathing motivation and my zinc-nosed inspiration. Since returning home, my productivity has been almost nil.

Far opposite holds true in my backyard. Despite a very, very slow start and still largely unresponsive tomatoes, the garden has rebounded and seems determined to make up for its early uncertainty. Every one of our eight peppers has a small green bell swelling on it. Tiny might-be tomatillos are forming inside wasted flower buds on each of the two plants. Cucumbers and zucchinis, oddly shaped but still tasty, are pushing their way out into the sun. Even the eggplants are growing and fruiting! But the real stars, the real miraculously successful, grocery-store quality items are my pole beans. The first sowing was a failure (too cold), but in the second sowing ten or twelve leaves pushed up out of the ground, and on Monday, as we crawled out of the car after a punishing nine hour drive, at least two pounds of ripe, juicy, six-inch long green beans hung ready from the vines.

What could be better, I thought as I looked at them with grinning awe, than a garden-fresh stir-fry to welcome us home? After two weeks of rich food and restaurant dates, we needed some vegetation in our systems, and here was our own garden graciously willing to oblige!

I started some sticky rice in the rice cooker and ran outside to divest our leafy residents of their harvest.

Eggplant and green bean stir-fry seemed to be the obvious menu choice. I simmered water in a skillet and tossed in the halved green beans, cooking them until they were just tender. Then I drained off the water, added vegetable oil and sesame oil, and tossed in chunks of eggplant and some white sesame seeds. Six minutes later, when the eggplant was juicy and soft and the beans had taken some dark marks from the heat of the pan, I scooped big spoonfuls onto a bed of fresh hot rice, and we ate without talking until every bite was gone.

It’s nice to be home.

Gourmet

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On a warm, July day, when a person (and her husband) is unjustly required to spend the shining hours of the afternoon working, teaching, holding office hours, what better treat could there be than to come home and indulge in a little gourmet dinner?

As I’ve divulged previously, I like cannibalizing from restaurant menus.  Usually it’s not the dish I order, but another that was second or third on the list… or just barely missed the final, nervous, rushed decision as the server hovers above me… and I jot down the description on a slip of paper somewhere and try not to lose it in the subsequent weeks.

This time it was that Americanized, fancified Italian food-of-the-common-man: pizza.

Several weeks ago N. and I celebrated Friday by meeting some friends to drinks and dinner.  We’d already eaten, so we swore to each other we would only drink one pint (for him), and one glass of wine (for me).  Then we went to Agate Alley with our friends and ordered a huge, gluttonously greasy, spicy, salty, decadent basket of onion rings.  I ate so many…

While we patted our fingertips on napkins to try and assuage our greasy shame, our friend S. ordered a personal size pizza topped with prosciutto, gorgonzola cheese, brandied figs, and a bright salad of fresh raw arugula, piled high right in the middle.  I had never thought of putting figs on a pizza before, but it seemed so inspired.  Though S. ate hers without the porky delights of prosciutto (one of those vegetarian types, you know), the idea of wafer-thin slices of cured pork-belly lingered in my mind when I recalled the recipe.

So I, so often operating as Dr. Frankenstein in the kitchen, decided a recreation was required.  This pizza would be a hybrid – a loving, daring combination of Agate Alley’s delectable pie and the prosciutto and caramelized onion darling Ree of The Pioneer Woman has developed.  With a hunk of gorgonzola languishing in my cheese drawer, it was just the right thing to do.

Ingredients (mostly approximated):

1 lump pizza dough (I shamelessly bought mine, pre-made, from Trader Joe’s fridge section)

1 medium to large sweet onion

2 TB brown sugar

4-6 oz. prosciutto

5-8 dried figs, sliced

1-2 oz. gorgonzola cheese, crumbled

1 cup (at least!) shredded mozzarella cheese

Big handful of arugula or basil

While my pizza stone heated in the oven, I caramelized my onions per the Pioneer Woman’s directions.  Then, while I prepped all my other ingredients (grating cheese, slicing figs, playing with the dough), I forgot about the onions for a little bit too long and the brown sugar started to burn.  But I decided to just call that “extra-caramelized” and be happy with it.

With the dough stretched, plunked onto the hot, cornmeal sprinkled stone and already starting to shrink back in on itself (it never wants to stay in a 12-inch circle; why not?), I quickly piled on the toppings: a drizzle of olive oil, evenly spread mounds of mozzarella, trailing slices of salty hammy goodness, cheese crumbles, figs, and dark, dark mahogany clumps of onion.

Into the oven at 450F it went, and about 12 minutes later, gasping, I edged it out and clunked it down on my stovetop.  Lacking arugula, I sprinkled baby leaves of basil atop the whole thing.

It looked glorious.  The crust was crunchy on the bottom, the cheese was golden and bubbling, the prosciutto had crinkled and crisped, and the figs were these dark, seeded pockets of mystery.

We ate.  We ate more.  The combination of salty and sweet has been hyped for years now, but that’s because it works.  The sweet onions and tangy, sugary figs balanced the rich creamy funk of the gorgonzola and the perfect saltiness of the prosciutto.  I would have preferred arugula to basil, because the licorice overtones of basil weren’t the perfect match, but the fresh greenness was definitely welcome.

I would never have thought of figs on pizza, but I would urge you to try them in this combination (or just figs and prosciutto, I won’t tell).  Sliced thin, they warmed in the oven and just started to create their own glassy brulée atop their honeyed interiors.  With chewy dough, creamy bubbling cheese, crisp-chewy ham, soft sweet onions, the crunch of the little seeds inside each slice of fig, popping between the teeth and tickling the taste buds, was the perfect final flavor of each bite.

This would be perfect enjoyed with a crisp, semi-dry white wine, though the beer we drank with it was just fine.  It is supposed to be simple fare, after all.

Re-envision Whirled Peas!

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Last week I wrote about an appetizer I made with pureed peas.  I wasn’t thrilled with it, but thought it was a good base for… something else.  This week I present you with the modified version, and one of my mottos for green produce of all kinds: when all else fails, make pesto.

I smashed, peeled, and blitzed three cloves of garlic in my food processor along with a handful each of basil and parsley.  Straight from the fridge, I scraped the leftover pea puree, now a humble new beginning, back into the food processor.  In went a few tablespoons of lime juice, a few heaping tablespoons of Parmesan cheese, and a judicious helping of freshly ground black pepper.

Whirl.

Taste.

It was tangy and herby, but still had the sweetness of peas and the cutting, intriguing coolness of spearmint from the original concoction.  I liked it.  If I hadn’t been feeling lazy, I might have added some toasted walnuts or even almonds.  But I was, and so alas, laziness ruled the day.

Fortunately, laziness did not keep me from slipping a log of goat cheese into the freezer, a box of curlicue pasta into a pot of violently boiling water, and a few slices of sourdough, nicely oiled, salted, and peppered, under the broiler.

It’s summer here, but the smells of this Franken-pesto as it hit the steaming hot curls of chewy-soft pasta were the kind of April and May I wish we’d had.  Warm, fresh, sharp but sweet.

We grated the chilly goat cheese over the top – when it’s almost frozen, it becomes like any other hard cheese – and as a coup de grace, added chopped snap peas to the top.  Pinched from the plant, rinsed, sliced on a bias.  Almost carelessly thrown onto the mound of snowy cheese and grassy sauce.  Another garden.

Yum.  Welcome, summer.  I embrace your call for simplicity, for freshness, for inventive dishes.  I will try to do you justice.

Envision whirled peas. And weddings.

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There are two stories to be told here.  One is the story of a wedding.  Well, a wedding reception.  Well, a backyard barbeque eight months after the wedding that was my way of providing the couple with a reception.  The other is the story of a van.  Both occur in mid-July.  Let’s start with the latter.

I had completed my first year as a bona fide college student and was, like any bona fide college student, enjoying the summer in between shifts at my first job.  I was changing into a tank top in the back of my friend’s car at the Santa Clara beach boardwalk before heading out to the beach when I saw a van parked a few spots down.  Okay, so it wasn’t a van, it was a vintage old style VW bus, complete with tie-dye paint job, beads in the window, and Grateful Dead stickers everywhere.  But there was, as I discovered after straightening myself out and exiting my friend’s car, only one bumper sticker.  It read “Envision Whirled Peas.”  Read out loud, of course, it emerged as the hippie/peacenik/ flower child ultimate mantra.  Peace + food + word play = my day was made.  Maybe my week.

But back to the wedding story.  Ah, weddings.
The love, the beauty, the glowing smiles…

On the eve of my own wedding anniversary, a hot, beautiful day three years ago, I bring you a tableau of another.  A reception, at least, where my role was slightly different:
The heat of the kitchen, the stress of catering, the need for perfection…
I’m being overdramatic.  I’ve never catered a wedding before, and I still haven’t.  I simply cooked for our dear friends K. and T. this weekend.  I made a whole collection of things (full list is here), but I want to tell you about the crostini.
Thanks to A. and her delectable food sense, I made a pea, lemon, and mint puree to spread on crostini.  She called it “whirled peas.”

I defrosted one 16 oz. bag of petite peas and jangled them into the food processor.
Joining them: the zest of about ¾ of a lemon (one spot didn’t look so nice),
the juice of half that lemon,
probably ¼ cup of mint leaves,
coarse salt,
freshly ground black pepper.
This fragrant mixture received an ample dose of olive oil (½ cup or so?  I didn’t measure) as I whirled it in the food processor for a good minute or two.  I wanted it as smooth as possible, but I still wanted it to be impossibly bright green.

As the time for the party approached (our first guest’s feet were practically climbing the front steps!), I sliced a slim sourdough baguette on an angle and, shielding each slice with a glug of olive oil, broiled them until they turned golden and crisp.  While the little toasts cooled, the lovely and accommodating K. helped me pick some nasturtiums from our front garden to top our creation.  Even a simple backyard barbeque needs a fancy-pants appetizer option!
I spread a generous helping of minty, citrus-y bright “whirled peas” onto each crostini before gently pressing the calyx of each flower gently into the emerald spread.  They looked like flower arrangements – miniature edible gardens that looked and smelled of springtime and fresh birth.

K. and T. loved them (and seemed to love everything about the evening – a hostess-and-wanna-be-caterer’s dream!), but I was a bit nonplussed.  The flavor was minty and fresh, but seemed to be missing something.  Perhaps tang.  Peas are naturally sweet, and mint paired with some sweetness reads as more sweetness.  I wanted something to tell my tastebuds this was a savory bite.  The pepperiness of the nasturtium was too mild to do the job.
Because I have plenty of leftovers, I am considering adding some lime juice, perhaps some basil and a zinging shaving of Parmesan, and turning this into something more like a pesto.  Whirled peas pesto.  Say it out loud with me… “world peace” pesto?

Envision it: One little crostini, two happy people, global cooperation and betterment.

Aren’t weddings fun?!

Stay tuned for results and additions!