Candyland

Posted on December 29, 2010 by Chelsea

My two favorite board games when I was a kidlet were Chutes & Ladders, and Candyland. I liked the first, but found it slightly stressful, since it seemed I inevitably ended up sliding down the longest possible slide and having to restart the game from the beginning. Looking back, I wonder whether the primary design of this game was to keep children occupied with it for as long as possible, to give exhausted parents a chance to rest. Having no siblings at that point in my life, if this was the goal of the game it backfired in my family.

But Candyland? Candyland I loved. And I loved it not so much for the gameplay itself, but for the fantastical characters and decorated board, and for the outrageously wonderful idea that a whole kingdom could be made out of and based around candy. It was like “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs,” but better. Because it was candy. My favorite figure in the game was Queen Frostine. She had blueish silver hair that came down to her waist, and a sparkling rock candy scepter. I still remember the first sentence or two provided about her in the game description: “Peacefully adrift on an ice cream float in an ice cream sea…” Pretty, powerful, royal, and living in ice cream. It was everything I thought I had ever wanted.

When Candyland was at last boxed up for good and covered in an inch or two of dust in our attic, I retained a love for both miniatures and candy. Thus, truffles were like little boulders, or tree stumps, and gingerbread houses were the most romantic, creative way of celebrating the desserts of the holiday season.

Now, as an adult but also a student, my holiday budget is somewhat limited. But I know, since I share my life and most of my friendships with other graduate students, that food – especially a special, out of the ordinary sort of food – makes a good gift. So, with the holiday season approaching and the term ending, early in December I celebrated my extraordinarily timely submission of my first dissertation chapter by hiding books, pencils, and papers from myself and instead filling my kitchen with bags and boxes of chocolate. I submerged myself back into Candyland. Not as Queen Frostine this time, but as a new character: the Empress of Truffletown, perhaps. I wrote some time ago about my first experience with truffle production, and this time I wanted to explore some new flavors – add my own sweet twists to the basic recipe.

The basic procedure is to coat squares of ganache in melted chocolate. It seems to me after some experimentation that the right ratio in a ganache is 6-8 tablespoons of liquid for each 8 oz. of melted chocolate. At least 6 of these liquid tablespoons should be heavy cream. But the really exciting part lies in the possibilities for the other 2 tablespoons…

I made three varieties: Amaretto White Chocolate Truffles, Gingerbread Truffles, and Peppermint Truffle, and popped them into some pretty, festive boxes I found. Then, just for fun, I also whipped up some Almond Butter cups. My willing taste testers declared the Amaretto and the Almond Butter cups the best selections.

Amaretto White Chocolate Truffles:

To make this flavor, I melted 6 TB of heavy cream with 8 oz. white chocolate over a double boiler. When the mixture was almost completely melted, I carefully stirred in 2 TB amaretto. When it was completely smooth, I added a few tablespoons each finely chopped dried apricots, and finely minced, toasted almonds. I stirred the whole thing together quickly, poured it into a plastic wrap lined loaf pan, and stowed it in the fridge to harden.

The following day, I pried the block of creamy white goodness, studded with precious gems of flavor, out onto a board, cut it in squares, and dunked each in melted semi-sweet chocolate. After letting these harden on parchment paper, I added a white chocolate drizzle to the top for a little flair. They were incredible. The white chocolate was delicately flavored by the amaretto, which is one of my favorite liqueur varieties. Nutty and rich and sweet, and here punctuated by the soft crunch of almonds and the slight chew of apricot chunks. This variety is definitely one for the recipe books. I will absolutely be making it again and again.

Gingerbread Truffles:

I followed the same basic procedure for these as for the Amaretto version, though I used dark chocolate as my base for the ganache. Lacking a ginger flavored liqueur, I melted the chocolate with only 6 TB heavy cream, and stirred in about a ¼ cup finely chopped candied ginger. Again, I refrigerated, again, I removed, sliced, and dipped. Then, while the outer layer of chocolate was still glossy and wet, I sprinkled a good teaspoon or two of powdered gingersnap cookie crumbs atop each truffle. Spicy and warm in the back of the throat, with a pleasing crispy crunch from the cookie powder. I did find, with these, that the ganache was a bit crumbly after it hardened, perhaps because it was made with less liquid. I would up the amount of heavy cream in the mixture to 7 or a full 8 tablespoons to try and combat this issue.

Peppermint Truffles:

For these, I combined 8 oz. of milk chocolate with 6 tablespoons of heavy cream and 2 tablespoons of peppermint schnapps we had kicking around in the back of our liquor cabinet. This time, instead of pouring into a loaf pan, I just left the ganache in the glass bowl I was using as the top portion of my homemade double boiler. While I waited for it to cool and solidify into that glorious fudgy paste ganache becomes, I broke up and crunched several candy canes into bits. The bottom of the peppermint schnapps bottle proved an excellent tool for this project. A rolling pin would probably also work well for this. As I scooped out each tablespoon of ganache, I rolled it into a ball with my hands and then rolled it through the candy cane flakes, creating a pinkish minty snowball to add to the collection. I wasn’t as thrilled with the flavor of these; the schnapps came through more as the harsh grate of alcohol rather than the spicy-cool flavor of peppermint, but my taste testers didn’t complain. They were Christmas-y in appearance, which no doubt leant to their appeal. If I do this flavor again, I might use only one tablespoon of schnapps, rather than 2.

Almond Butter Cups:

I was much less exact with these, working mostly for flavor rather than creating a recipe. Again, I melted 8 oz. of chocolate – semi-sweet this time. Then, I mixed a few tablespoons of powdered sugar into a cup or so of almond butter. Trader Joe’s makes a really good crunchy variety with roasted flax seeds, so that is what I was using. When the sugar and the butter were well combined, I scooped it into my chocolate and let them melt together into smooth, thick ribbons. Then I poured a tablespoonful or so directly into candy papers. I found that setting each paper into the depressions in a mini muffin tin made them stand up straight and not collapse when the hot chocolate mixture was added. I refrigerated my muffin-tin-full to let them set up. Imagine taking a bite of a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. Now imagine it tastes of almonds instead of peanuts. Now imagine that nutty flavor is mixed evenly through the chocolate, rather than sitting in the center, and that it is interspersed by the crispy, deep, roasty-ness of golden flax seeds.

Presenting boxes of these collected divinities to my officemates, a few close friends, our neighbors, and finally our families, I felt like a benevolent ruler. Sure, it’s only my little kitchen where I rule with a chocolate-daubed fist, but my offerings were wide and sweet. Move over, Candyland. This is Truffletown.

Thanksgiving veg 2010

Posted on October 31, 2010 by Chelsea

My family always argues over a Thanksgiving vegetable dish. My dad doesn’t like the classic green bean casserole made with Cream of Mushroom Soup and crispy fried onion ring crumbles. He can’t get past the condensed soup flavor. When I asked him last year what vegetable I should make instead, he suggested lima beans. We made green bean casserole anyway.

One year my Mom and I tried making this dish from scratch. We figured, fresh green beans lightly steamed, thick chunks of mushrooms, a silky white sauce, and what could be better? That was the year I determined that part of what I like so much about the classic green bean casserole is… the taste of processed condensed soup. I can’t help it. I love the savory, umami saltiness of it, and the homemade substitute was just not an acceptable replacement for me.

One year at Thanksgiving with some family friends, they brought a big salad to supplement our carbohydrate-rich, overloaded plates. The bowl was passed around the table. No one took any salad except L, who had made it in the first place. When she protested, her husband uttered the truest words anyone has ever spoken: “Thanksgiving is not about lettuce.” So salad, too, failed the test.

Now that October is over, the challenge again rears its head: which vegetables can I dress up to complement the comforting classics we always serve? While N. was gone at a conference recently, I fiddled around with some trial dishes and voila, Thanksgiving Veg 2010 was born: creamed spinach and artichoke bake. It’s the comfort and familiarity of creamed spinach, with the flavors and reminiscence of spinach artichoke dip. Perfection, no?

Here’s what you need:

4 TB butter

4 cloves garlic, crushed and minced

1 – 2 leeks, white and pale green parts only, chopped fine

4 TB flour

Generous grating of fresh nutmeg

2 cups milk or cream

4 oz. cream cheese

At least 10 oz. spinach (that’s the amount in one frozen box, but I used fresh because I prefer it)

16 oz. can of artichoke hearts in water, drained and quartered

Salt and pepper to taste

Topping:

2 TB butter

½ cup or more of Panko bread crumbs

2-3 TB parmesan cheese, grated

Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat. When it is nearly all melted, add the garlic and sauté for just a minute or two, until the aroma is enticing. Add the leeks and sauté until they are softened. Leeks are a new love of mine. They are the least aggressively flavored members of the onion family, and I think they taste like a cross between a sweet onion and garlic. They don’t have that astringency onions sometimes do, and I think they are like a stalk of springtime. I’ve started putting them in frittatas, and when I had one left over on the night I made this little concoction, it seemed like the perfect thing to add in.

When the leeks are tender but not browned, add the flour and nutmeg. Add some pepper too, if you like. Stir in until well incorporated with no huge floury lumps, and cook for a minute or two until the flour is pale golden in color. Then add the milk, slowly, whisking the entire time. I added it in installments of probably half a cup each, stirring until the milk was fully integrated into the flour mixture. I found this helped avoid lumps, making a smoother base overall. Add the cream cheese and mix in. Whisking fairly constantly, let the milk come to a boil. It will thicken as it heats.

When the milk is quite thick, add the spinach and artichoke hearts. The spinach will wilt quickly, and as soon as it is looking soft, kill the heat. Since this is going to bake for a while, you don’t want to overcook the spinach because it will lose its beautiful color and begin to look muddy.

Salt and pepper to taste. You could stop here and eat this whole delectable mess right out of the skillet, but I wasn’t ready to quit yet. After all, it takes my dad about half an hour to carve a turkey, so the oven is (mostly) free. Why not take advantage of that?

With your oven at a preheated 350F, carefully dump the spinach and artichoke mixture into a baking dish (I used a glass nine-inch pie pan). Set it aside for a moment while you make the topping.

Mix together the Panko bread crumbs and parmesan cheese with the softened butter. Drop the buttery crumbs in little clumps all over the top of the spinach and artichoke mixture. If you don’t get the vegetables completely covered, that’s okay. In fact, it’s good, because it means any exposed edges of leeks or artichokes will get a little toasty and golden. More texture = more exciting to eat!

Bake the whole thing for about half an hour at 350F, or until the crumbs on top are browned and the sauce is bubbling at the edges. Remove and consume.

What I liked about this dish was… well, innumerable. But the basics: I love creamed spinach, and this was a more extravagant, luxurious take on it. I also love spinach dip, and this reminded me of it, but without the excessive mayonnaise, the MSG-laced spice mixture, or the pounds of parmesan that go into a hot artichoke version. The bread crumbs on top were a welcome textural element, especially for a Thanksgiving table, where stuffing, mashed potato, and even the tender juicy turkey, all lack an essential crunchiness. Not that you would want your mashed potatoes to be crunchy, but it is a sensation for your mouth often missing from this meal.

I told my mom about this dish when I spoke to her on the phone this weekend, and before I could finish explaining what it was, she had already confirmed that this, indeed, would be our Thanksgiving vegetal offering. Challenge met, and challenge exceeded! Now I just have to wait for the end of November…

Frankenbrownies

Posted on October 20, 2010 by Chelsea

I love Halloween. We always have a party, and I always go overboard with the variety and quantity of treats I make. I get nervous about whether we will have enough food, and then I get anxious about whether I’ll be able to pull everything together in time. It can be a little scary…

I also loved the pumpkin enchiladas I posted about here. I never would have expected the flavors of rich, fruity pumpkin, mild creamy goat cheese, and the deep roasty chocolate of mole sauce to go together well. But they did, and it got me thinking of other ways of combining this trio. Spurred by a statement of dessert desire by a sick friend, the project became brownies. Pumpkin cream cheese brownies: could such a thing be?

There are a million recipes for brownies, but I went with Dave Lebovitz’s Cheesecake Brownies, which turned out to be a really good idea. Though I was at first thrown off by and nervous about the complete lack of leavening products, I fought back my temptation to add some baking powder and mixed the ingredients exactly as written. It was the right choice.

Rather than simply swirling the cream cheese dollops with the thick, shiny chocolate batter, I also added about a cup of pumpkin puree mixed with a teaspoon or two of pumpkin pie spice. I swirled. I swirled and swirled and swirled, and still no chocolate came to the surface. I scooped and plopped and swirled some more, and finally a few rich brown slivers came to the surface. It was kind of a monster. But keeping in mind that at its Latin roots, a “monster” bears in its etymology the idea of showing us something, I decided that was good enough, and I’d have to wait and see what it had to show me. I deposited my weighty, ugly baby into the oven for almost an hour.

Fifteen minutes or so into the cooking process, I started to smell that incredible, mouthwatering aroma of chocolate cooking. Half an hour in, a delicate curl of cheesecake inserted itself into the scented air. I couldn’t smell the pumpkin much, but suddenly there was chocolate-cheesecake-spiciness, and I wanted to pull the whole thing out and just eat the whole thing with a spoon.

I resisted, and when the collection of smells had solidified into a… well… a thing from which an inserted toothpick came out clean, I set it aside on the counter to cool. It was truly a frankensteinian creation. The brownie layer was dark and rich and barely disturbed, while the top was a delicate whipped pale orange that cut like a harvest-flavored mousse.

The taste was so good. The brownie was dark and rich; it was definitely of the fudgy brownie ilk rather than the cakey, flakey brownie. The pumpkin and the cream cheese read like a pumpkin cheesecake, with all the creamy smoothness of a cheesecake and all the spongy custard-y quality of pumpkin pie. They were delicious together, just as the same flavors – with considerably less sweetness – melded in my pumpkin enchiladas.

While the flavor was great, it did read more like a layered dessert than a brownie. I think this is because I used the full amount of cream cheese mix Dave Lebovitz calls for PLUS a cup of pumpkin puree. There was just too much goodness to swirl evenly. My proposed solution to this is to layer half the chocolate, then dollop on the cream cheese and pumpkin, then top it with the other half of the chocolate batter before mixing. It seems it will be easier to swirl together the much denser, thicker chocolate with the delicate creaminess of the additional flavors if the chocolate is divided up.

This was truly a Frankenstein creation, but it was certainly not a monster, except perhaps in the sense that it demonstrated deliciousness. It will make its debut at our Halloween party this year, swirled and sliced and dressed to impress, in orange and “black.” Its trio of components all vying to be the star means I won’t have to make as many kinds of treats, because here’s the trick: this is a three-in-one.

See, trick-or-treat’s not so scary…

Heralding Fall

Posted on October 7, 2010 by Chelsea

A few weeks ago, N. and I took some friends to Agate Alley bistro, and one of them ordered the Pumpkin Enchiladas. I was intrigued. I took a mental note: these would soon appear in my humble little kitchen.

Then summer came to a close. School started. And that means I went crazy. This is my first year dissertating, which means I need to stop playing on the internet and start playing with ideas. And so the pumpkin enchiladas, and my ability to post here, went on hold.

But Tuesday night, magic happened. In celebration, perhaps, of the second day of the second week of my second-to-last year as a graduate student (fingers majorly crossed, folks!), I decided to take a few hours with my nose out of books. And they were pretty incredible (the hours off AND the results). With my own twists and considerations about ingredients, I put together:

Pumpkin, Roasted Garlic, and Goat Cheese Enchiladas in quick mole sauce.

Enough people have asked me for my recipe (hah!) that I’m going to post in a more traditional ingredient-and-process list format, to make it easier to follow. This is approximate, however, so tweak and twiddle as you so desire. I ended up making 5 enchiladas.

Ingredients:

1 whole head garlic, split horizontally

1 – 2 shallots, sliced thin

corn tortillas

1/2- 1 cup pure pumpkin puree

crumbled goat cheese

crumbled queso fresco cheese

handful of pumpkin seeds

Quick Mole Sauce, or your favorite mole, ready to go at the time of assembly.

(I know, this is not a “homemade” mole sauce, and it doesn’t taste exactly the same. But it’s a good shortcut, I think, and let’s face it: if you want to make these enchiladas to enjoy on a weeknight, most of you aren’t going to take the time to make a mole from scratch. I’m not ashamed. I added extra unsweetened chocolate to this recipe, but otherwise kept it mostly the same).

Preheat your oven to 400F. Place the garlic halves in a small dish, drizzle with oil, salt and pepper, and cover tightly with aluminum foil (or just wrap loosely in foil). Roast in the oven for about an hour, or until cloves are very soft and very golden. Burnished but not burnt. Cool, then squeeze the cloves out of the papers and mash them into a paste. During this time, you can take advantage of the oven being on to roast your pumpkin seeds. They will only take 5-10 minutes, though, so don’t lose track of them or they will burn.
Caramelize shallot slices in a skillet. They should be dark, dark, like French Onion Soup onions. Set aside to cool.
Turn oven down to 350F. Spread the bottom of a baking dish (I used glass) with mole sauce.
Prepare and assemble enchiladas: working with one tortilla at a time, spread the tortilla with the garlic paste, then top with 2-3 TB each pumpkin puree, goat cheese, and shallots (or to taste). Carefully roll up the tortilla and fit it, loose edge down, into the baking dish, pressing each enchilada tightly against its compatriots.
Top enchiladas with a thick, even layer of mole sauce. Sprinkle with goat cheese and queso fresco crumbles to your liking. I say the more, the better when it comes to cheese, but that’s just me…
Bake for 30 minutes, or until the cheese is soft and the sauce is bubbly. Queso fresco and goat cheese, depending on which types you use, don’t melt and burble the way other cheeses do, but they will soften and collapse on themselves a bit.
To serve, sprinkle with toasted pumpkin seeds and enjoy with spicy refried black beans, Spanish rice, guacamole, or whatever you so desire!

I was a bit concerned, at first, that the mole would overpower any other flavor, but it didn’t. This dish executed an intriguing and intricate dance between dinner and dessert. Ingredients that often appear in sweet circumstances remained decidedly savory. The pumpkin and the goat cheese were so creamy and rich, like a harvest cheesecake enfolded in a tortilla. I could have used more roasted garlic paste, but there’s always next time. The chocolate in the mole, too, holds the expectation of sweetness but none of the sugary suggestion of a dessert. Instead it provided a perfect bite of creamy-spicy-chewy-oozing-warmth, with an almost unexpected nutty crunch from the pumpkin seeds.

Also good were last scrapings and bites of loose cheese crumbles, sticky caramelized mole sauce in the bottom of the baking dish, and a last, perfect, creamy green square of avocado.

Dark beer, perhaps even a chocolate stout, would be a lovely accompaniment.

Dancing in the Kitchen with Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef

Posted on September 20, 2010 by Chelsea

Shauna and Danny Ahern are my friends. I don’t know them, we’ve never met, and though I read Shauna’s blog Gluten-Free Girl with a dedication that trips along the border between religious devotion and obsessive-compulsive disorder, I doubt she has ever glanced at mine. I have drooled over the food (and made some of it!), I have laughed at her triumphs, I have felt my biological clock chime when she speaks of her daughter. In late July, I sat on my sofa with tears streaming down my face, choking for breath as I read the beautiful story of her wedding. As a writer myself, I admire her style, her skill with words, and her ability to talk lovingly, richly, thoughtfully about food, about family, about opportunity and love. I feel like I know these people. I wish I really did.

A few weeks ago, Shauna announced that along with the forthcoming publication of the cookbook/love story she and Danny “the Chef” wrote together (Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef: A Love Story with 100 Tempting Recipes, listed on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Gluten-Free-Girl-Shauna-James-Ahern/dp/0470419717), they were willing to share three preview recipes with interested parties. I was, of course, one of these, and in a flurried email exchange, I suddenly had three brilliant recipes, replete with stories, to dance to in my little kitchen.

I ended up only making two of the three, mostly because N. doesn’t like shrimp, so a plate of seared prawns in almond garlic sauce did not sound appealing to him. But if everything in the cookbook is as stellar in flavor and straightforward in instructions as the two recipes I did conquer over as many days, everyone should own a copy of this book, whether you eat gluten-free or not.

Friday night N. and I went to a last-hurrah-of-summer-bbq at the home of J., my birthday twin, and his partner HP. Troubled by the notion of bringing the chocolate cake again (I’ve made it several times this summer already), I cast about mentally for another idea, and there was the pdf recipe for GFG’s chocolate peanut butter brownies. My mouth started to moisten. Chocolate, butter, sugar, peanut butter, and my first experimentation with xantham gum? Yes, thank you, I think I will!

As brownies go, it was a fairly standard procedure of careful melting, mixing, swirling, baking, but oh the delight of tasting! In the short section about the recipe preceding the ingredient list, the words “Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup” appear. They aren’t kidding. With the peanut butter swirled gently into the deep chocolate batter (and there is no other word for the color than that: chocolate) and my fingers cautiously tasting stray blobs of batter, I wanted to stop and eat the batter. Half of it would bake up just as nicely as the whole pan, right?

I resisted, and slipped the dish into the oven, relinquishing it from sight for half an hour. Still tasting the batter, I could detect a slight grainy texture that I attributed to the alternative flours used (my previous experimentations with gluten-free flours have not always been great, but they have always been grainy), so I was a little worried about that. But after the pan cooked, cooled, and came to the party with me, my concern lifted. I wouldn’t have had to tell anyone these brownies were gluten-free. I wanted to, because I must admit I wanted to brag a bit about participating in this project (and get the word out there!), but there was no explaining to do.

Oh Shauna. Oh Danny. The taste! The crumb was rich and moist, the pockets of peanut butter were sticky bombs of candy-like delight. I couldn’t even get a photo in before the hordes descended on the pan. Seven people decimated ¾ of the pan in ten minutes. Almost everyone went back for seconds. Ever thoughtful of my not-so-narrow waistline (and hips, and thighs, and butt), I generally try to leave leftovers at other people’s houses when I choose dessert as my contribution to a meal. Not this time. The remaining brownies came with me, clasped tightly on my lap as we drove home in the rain.

Saturday, I ventured out into the weather again to pick up a few last ingredients for my second dance with Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef; it’s hard to make a pasta dish containing lemons, olives, anchovies and pine nuts when you don’t have lemons or pine nuts in your kitchen. I grumped to myself as I walked to the store and back. Why did I need this stuff? I knew I shouldn’t, but it would just be easier to substitute ingredients. The brownies had been good (liar, understatement of the century!), but this was just pasta. I could post about the brownies and leave it at that…

I was so wrong. With water for brown rice pasta considering coming to a boil, I prepped ingredients and tried to imagine what this was going to taste like. N. had already been frightened by the idea of anchovies, and I knew he was envisioning a cheap pizza draped with little fishy bodies. I told him that Shauna and Danny said not to be afraid. He said “hmph,” which meant he was unconvinced. He doesn’t know Shauna and Danny like I do.

With the toasty, nutty perfume of not-quite-burned pine nuts still lingering in the kitchen, I sautéed a collection of vegetables in my biggest skillet, hurriedly chopping and slicing in between stirring sessions. I’m always too anxious to cook to bother readying all my mise en place before scraping a boardful of ingredients into the pan. At the point that the roughly chopped mix of olives I’d kept stowed in the back of my fridge and the finely chopped little fillets of anchovy hit the pan, I felt my knees buckle. The smell was incredible. When I added capers and lemon juice, I had a Proustian epiphany of Corsica, of Greece, of Spain. Except I’ve never been to Spain. Or Corsica. Or anywhere in Greece. It was just a strong enough, rich enough, delicious enough smell that it lifted me from the stained hardwood floor of my kitchen and transported me onto some magical different plane of Mediterranean glory.

Carefully twirling the pasta through sauce, I had to be careful not to drool on it. These flavors: is this umami? It was almost more than I could manage to mix in pine nuts, lemon zest, a clumsy chiffonade of basil – I just wanted to eat it straight out of the skillet.

We sat down to eat. I tried to do one of those perfect forkfuls where you get a tiny sample of everything. I tried to think objectively about what I was about to experience, about what vocabulary I would use to describe it, about how I could speak like a food critic about it. I don’t know how. Here are my words, all I can manage: earthy. Warm. Salty-bright-tangy-acidic-perfect. Briny. Tart. Meltingly rich. Flavor bomb. Somewhat reminiscent of chicken piccata, but deeper, richer, earthier, nuttier.

And N.? He scraped his plate. I asked him what he thought so I could make a report. “It was excellent.” As I’ve written before, N. is generally restrained in his verbal praise of food. And this was “excellent.”

I’ve never bought anchovies before. I might never allow them out of my pantry again. This recipe, whether we use gluten-free pasta or not, will fast become one of my staples. For me, it’s too distinctive to have all the time. It’s too special. But for those nights when I need something powerful to wake my taste buds, when I need something that makes my mouth feel alive, this is it. This was like eating a tango.

Go to a bookstore. Order Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef: A Love Story with 100 Tempting Recipes. Rejoice in the story and in the recipes and in the wonderful opportunity to eat really, really good food. Dance in your kitchen. And then tell me about it. And tell Shauna. I know she’d want to know.

Homecoming

Posted on September 2, 2010 by Chelsea

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.