Category Archives: Veggies

Hasty Bites

Posted on by
Reply

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 2: Christmas Eve dinner

Posted on by
Reply

Behold, for I bring you tidings of great joy:

dsc_3659

Christmas Eve dinner this year was a beautiful leg of lamb, crusted with herbs and nestled lovingly amidst a mound of chunked carrots and red potatoes.  Adorned with slivers of garlic and massaged with black pepper, fresh rosemary from the front garden, and olive oil, the lamb not only gained an assertively herby crust, but as it cooked its juices spilled over the potatoes and carrots, leaving them creamy and beatifully flavored.  Even N, who doesn’t care much for lamb, loved the flavor it left behind on the vegetables.

Inside, after we overenthusiastically cut in and sliced out four or five pieces and then thought better of it and enclosed the lamb in aluminum foil to rest for a few minutes, we ended up with meat done medium well but still juicy and tender.  That’s what lamb is supposed to be, I suppose.  Though we had the requisite mint jelly and horseradish, the meat had enough flavor of its own, and enough crunch and earthy kick from the herb crust, that it hardly needed accompaniment.  Each slice was shot through with a fine vein of fat, pearly and translucent, that I tried to get a taste of with each bite.  I’m beginning to understand what the Food Network snobbies call “mouth feel,” as the textures of this dinner were almost as pleasing as the taste.

*** This lovely photo was taken by my dad, just before carving into the haunch.

Winter warm-ups

Posted on by
Reply

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.

.

pc150206

.

pc160208

.pc160210

pc160211

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!

Brought to you by Safeway

Posted on by
Reply

A brief vignette of our surprisingly delicious and satisfying weeknight dinner yesterday, thanks to tiny, slender spears of emerald-green goodness on sale.

Truly brief: 1 lb. asparagus, simmered in hot salted water until just barely tender and drained.

Three or four green onion bulbs, left from some ambitious Asian execution, chopped fine and sautéed in a few tablespoons of butter, then spread out evenly across the bottom of the pan in preparation of receiving 4 eggs, beaten together with a splash of cream and a healthy dozen-or-so grinds of black pepper.

When almost cooked completely, leftover aged sharp cheddar cheese, grated and sprinkled over half the omelet before adding the asparagus, folding over and heating through till cheese is melted, then serving up hot with buttered multi-grain toast.

Last night, Heaven looked like this:

Derridean BBQ

Posted on by
Reply

Call me a post-structuralist, but since arriving in graduate school and submerging myself in contented and sometimes even enthusiastic nerdiness, I’ve become intrigued with the idea of slippage. How can words with clear definitions become other words? On a lesser but related note, I’ve always been fascinated with what must be the gradual process of how nouns become verbs and vice versa. The focus of this discussion, of course, is Barbecue. It being Labor Day weekend, the natural assumption to this Oregonian is that barbecues will take place. However, barbecue is, rightfully and literally, neither the name of an event, nor is the accurate word for the type of cooking that I assume will take place at the gathering I have just been to. Before we get to the food, let’s have a brief history lesson, shall we?

Thanks to the ever faithful Food Network, and of course the estimable wisdom of Wikipedia (yes, I’m a bad graduate student!), I know that there are primarily two methods of outdoor cooking in the US. Barbecue generally refers to a slow, often all day process of indirect heat and smoke, often achieved within a large, enclosed apparatus that looks nothing like the “BBQ” you can buy at Home Depot or Target. Grilling, on the other hand, is the process that involves placing meat on a rack over charcoal or propane heat and cooking it quickly, directly over the flames. Why, then, do we not say that we’re going to a grill? Perhaps because the tradition of barbecue as a slow process is uniquely American. Perhaps this is a square versus rectangle argument. Perhaps I should start telling people that I’m going to a grill, and add this new noun to the dubious regional dialect I find myself immersed in.

So, for the Grill that I attended last night, I decided to go simple and, knowing there would be ample meat for the tasting (and glorious glutting), I made a panzanella salad. Stepping this traditional bread and tomatoes salad up a few notches with the addition of local mesclun greens, basil, cannellini beans, and parmesan cheese makes it almost fit to be a meal in itself. But I still ate one of the hand made lamb and goat cheese burgers.

Panzanella salad

Toss together in a large salad bowl:

4-6 cups bagged mixed greens (I used a mesclun mix from the local Farmers’ Market)

1 pint cherry tomatoes or 3-4 tomatoes cut in bite-size pieces (I used Sungolds from the Farmers’ Market)

¼ cup julienned basil (from my backyard basil plant)

1 can white beans, drained and rinsed

½ cup freshly grated parmesan cheese

1/3 cup balsamic vinaigrette (my recipe follows)

2 cups freshly baked sourdough croutons (my recipe follows)

Vinaigrette:

Squeeze of spicy brown mustard

A few tablespoons balsamic vinegar (To make it extra special, I use a locally made Raspberry Balsamic)

Whisk in enough extra virgin olive oil to equal 1/3 cup of dressing

Croutons:

Cut about ½ of a sourdough baguette into bite size chunks, scatter onto a cookie sheet and spray liberally with an olive oil cooking spray. Bake in a 400° oven for 10-15 minutes or until all pieces are golden brown and crisp to the touch.

In addition to the lamb burgers, which were cooked only to medium and therefore excruciatingly delicious (N. likes his meat very well done, and pink interiors make him nervous, which means the pink and juicy center is reserved for special occasions for me), we ate a delicious spicy cream cheese dip on tortilla chips, a pesto and cherry tomato pasta salad, locally made (I think) vegan peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies, and a cocktail I invented with the help of my backyard bounty; essentially a blackberry mojito without the mint. I was encouraged to name my creation, and told in no uncertain terms to remember it so I could make it again, and so my rough estimates follow below.

Blackberry Crush

6-8 very ripe blackberries

1 TB sugar

1 TB lime juice

1-2 oz. white rum (or to taste)

Ice

Club soda or other sparkling mixer

Muddle together the blackberries, sugar, and lime juice at the bottom of a pint glass. Add rum, ice, and top up with club soda. Garnish with a lime slice and a few whole blackberries, skewered and balanced on the edge of the glass.

Happy Labor Day weekend!