Cheese, please!

Posted on June 7, 2009 by Chelsea

Once upon a time ago, N.’s parents bought him a quesadilla maker. I’m not sure what this was in response to, but my first reaction might have been a giggle. I can make a quesadilla, you just fold a tortilla in a frying pan! I resisted the quesadilla maker. I begrudged it the space it took up in our moving boxes when we moved in together. I glowered at its awkward shape in our cabinets.

Since those early days, the quesadilla maker and I have become good friends. I still use a skillet for plain cheese quesadillas, but when I want to go all out and add other vegetables, the dual surface cooking mechanism is helpful in preventing flip-related spills and leaks. In fact, we’re down to a fairly standard recipe that one of us employs once every month or two.

Tonight, inspired by the need to use up some vegetables, I dug out the trusty quesadilla maker and layered in the standards plus a few additions. I usually fry some sliced mushrooms and defrosted corn in olive oil until the mushrooms are soft and the corn has just started to caramelize against the bottom of the pan. Then I layer Monterey jack cheese, baby spinach, the mushroom and corn mixture, and a little bit more cheese onto the bottom tortilla before slapping on the top. Today, since I’ve been reading everywhere to eat a rainbow of colors in your fruit and veggie diet, I added some chopped radicchio that I had hanging around in my crisper drawer.

While I was waiting for the mushrooms and corn to do their thing, I addressed several aging avocadoes in our fruit baskets. I’ve recently made a few alterations to my old standard guacamole thanks to a shortage, and am pleased enough with my new strategy to share it. I’m not calling this a recipe, because I still adjust things every time I make a batch. Tonight’s avocado-and-a-half was joined by four or five strips of julienne cut sundried tomatoes, chopped cilantro and garlic scapes from the back garden, lime juice, sea salt, one finely chopped miniature pickled jalapeño, sea salt and black pepper. Sometimes I use garlic powder and some green onions instead of the garlic shoots, but the key ingredient, the fundamental change, is the move from fresh tomatoes to sundried. There’s a pleasant textural difference, and I like the intensity of the flavor profile that the dried tomatoes lend. Tonight’s spice from the pickled jalapeño was a bright change as well, that cut nicely through the thick cheesiness of the quesadilla itself. I cleansed my cheesy palate with a Hornsby’s hard cider, but I suspect any pilsner or lager would have done the trick just as nicely. A crisp pinot grigio or some other fruity white wine would have paired well too.

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.

Soy love story

Posted on March 4, 2009 by Chelsea

During my first year off from college, I lived in a house full of girls. There were five of us. Even if I wasn’t now happily married, I would never do that again. Too many showers, too many door slams, too much food in the fridge. Have you ever tried to contain all of your perishable food in one fifth of the refrigerator? There’s no division by product, there’s no organization, just a crowded heap of undifferentiated ingredients.

While living in this harem, however, my closest friend in the house was vegetarian, and made great use of that one product so often labeled as simply a vegetarian food item and shoved by the rest of us omnivores into a back, ignored corner of the fridge of life: tofu. I had never dealt with the stuff before, and was slightly mystified by its enigmatic properties. My friend, over the course of several “housemate date nights” that inevitably incorporated deliciously good food and deliciously bad TV, showed me the way.

Step one: cut extra-firm tofu into squares (I use a 14 oz. block and usually cut 4x6x2, or whatever looks like a nice bite-size piece). Marinate tofu squares in soy sauce for ten or fifteen minutes (again, rough estimate, but I’d say these guys are sharing about ½ cup of tamari).

Step two: strain tofu squares and toss them in a light coating of brewers’ or nutritional yeast. Small flake is preferable, but large flake works fine too in a pinch. Nutritional yeast is usually available in grocery stores that have a bulk bin section.

Step three: sauté tofu in several tablespoons of very hot oil in a wok or frying pan. Don’t scramble it around too much because the coating of yeast will fall off and a major part of the flavor will be lost to the bottom of the pan. This sautéing (or stir-frying, if you prefer) process always takes longer than I expect it to. Be patient. Allow the squares to develop a dark golden color and a firm crust around the outside. When they are done, they will look like little croutons, but the taste is infinitely more complex and interesting and, of course, different given the soft tofu center of these squares of delight.

I’ve enjoyed these in Pad Thai, stir fries, on baked potatoes, and inevitably plain and scorchingly hot right out of the frying pan. They add a deep, earthy, salty flavor. There is something very pleasurable about eating them, because the outside takes on a texture somewhere between crunchy and chewy for your teeth to play with, and the inside just melts away. N. claims they are delicious with beer, which makes sense, considering that they are crusted in yeast. Tonight’s application? I’m thinking fried rice.

The interesting thing about this recipe was that my housemate never had to find room to store any leftovers in our fridge. We always ate them all.

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.