Good Real Food

Yet another salad to make and keep cold in the fridge, to pull out and serve with weekend grilled things, or to take to a spur of the moment potluck or picnic. Take two cups peas, two cups lima beans, and two cups of edamame beans and steam them for just about 5 minutes or untill just tender. Toss with olive oil, red onion, white wine vinegar, fresh garlic, salt, pepper and whatever fresh herbs you happen to have around. It is a fun take on the traditional bean salad as no one ever thinks that lima beans are much to squawk about.

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I had never seen this cut of lamb before at the market. It was so great on the grill. I just let it sit with some olive oil, rosemary, garlic, salt and pepper and lemon juice for about three hours before putting it on a hot grill for 5-7 minutes on each side. The salad was made by cooking the couscous and tossing it with olive oile, kalamata olives, garlic, onion, spinach, grilled egg plant, and red onion.

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This was definitely a night for boiling some water while considering my options.

Kale in a hot skillet with some olive oil and a few sun dried tomatoes. Onions and garlic would have been nice, carmelized onions even better, but I was feeling about that lazy tonight. Toasted walnuts (on the skillet that was still out from an ill advised beans and tortillas lunch prep; note to self: don’t make lunches that want a toaster oven if you work in a microwave-only office.) A good size glob of red pepper paste from a tube (it is french, so it must be good for me, right?). I forgot this is why I keep capers around–they would have been good. Some mascarpone because I got it on special so we have to eat it until we have a collective butterfat heart attack. Some cheddar and parm because they were there. Toss with some type of pasta.

What do you throw on pasta when you want to feel like you made dinner but don’t feel like making dinner?

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I had no idea that this was such an easy meal to make, or that pork tenderloin is one of the leanest meats you can get. My Dad and step mom are big fans of pork tenderloin on the grill, but I was lazy, and, being as it is not quite summer yet, and no risk of overheating the kitchen….I went with an easy inside version. Take a fresh pork loin, salt and pepper it, then brown in a heavy skillet on both sides with a little oil. Transfer to a baking pan and roast in the oven at 350 for about 15 minutes. At this point, pour on a sauce or glaze of some kind. I used about a 1/2 cup of maple syrup mixed with cinnamon and cloves. Other recipes I have seen call for orange juice and ginger. Roast for another 5-10 minutes–but check, as it as it is really easy to overcook these babies, leaving them dry. D liked the finished product with a bit of the extra glaze drizzled on top. I served the sliced tenderloin with summer squash and kale made by sautéing both in sesame oil with onion and garlic and sesame seeds added just before serving. The combination of sesame infused veggies with the maple syrup taste of the pork was divine.

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years ago, when my father was starting to teach me about cooking, he shared with me the single best piece of cooking advice I’ve received:

He said “you have to be patient. The food will get done in the time that it needs to get done. If you’re patient, it will come out well”

And he was totally right. Nothing likes being rushed, but least of all food and I remember that lesson often as I sit there waiting for my onions to get just dark enough or my risotto to be properly tender, or any of the million other things I do in the kitchen that get done in their own time.

Another great piece of advice I’ve had was to start boiling a pot of water when you start cooking - you’ll either need it for your food (thin a sauce, moisten your gravy, etc), or you can make a cup of tea. This has been mostly replaced by my electric kettle, but it still a very very good thing to keep in mind.

What’s the best cooking advice you’ve given or received?

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I won’t be this prolific for long, I’m sure, but I’ve had a few posts stewing in me, which is why I finally decided I should just dive in.  Continuing on the theme of my sister (and quietly laying the groundwork for my master plan which is to get her writing about her own recipes) and her coworkers, she told me another story, on the same trip to Costco to buy reading glasses and an EZ pass for dad. I don’t remember what the story was supposed to be about, but it wound up being about her mac and cheese and her coworkers who don’t cook. About how they ooh and awww when she brings mac and cheese to a potluck “when I just put some Wensleydale and a swiss and it isn’t any big deal.” So she starts into how she was trying to explain to her coworkers that home made mac and cheese is easy and you just have to start with a white sauce, but no one knew what a white sauce is. So she says “first you make a roux” and they all stare at her like she’s speaking french. Which she is.

This story was on my mind, this story about “first you make a roux” and all the blank stares, when I called Noah to tell him that we had broccoli and some fresh pita and not a whole lot else. He asked after our cheese stocks and whether we couldn’t have some cheese on our broccoli. And so I made a roux. I haven’t done that in 10 years, but I cracked open Joy and found a cheese sauce recipe (Sauce Mornay, to be precise) and ignored it entirely. Not entirely. Actually, I followed the first half pretty closely, and then tripled the amount of cheese. If you don’t have the Joy, find a standard cookbook, the kind that might have a recipe for at least Bechamel. When it is done, stir in 3/4 cup of cheese and spoon it on some food that needs cheese sauce.

The Joy recipe has you simmer the milk with  half an onion, a few cloves and a bay leaf  before you add it in to the sauce. You don’t have to, but that was a nice touch.

So we had a lot of steamed broccoli and some cheese sauce along with some  manaeesh, which is just bread and zaatar, which was good.

As a rule, I file cheese sauce under “well sure, anything tastes good with enough butter on it” but, well, it is true. So it was good.

Zaatar is just oregano, thyme, sumac, sesame seeds … and some kind of secret ingredients, which is why when I buy Sahadi’s zaatar mix it tastes better than when I try to mix my own spices. You take the spice mix and mix it with enough olive oil to make a paste and you spread it on, if you are lazy, pita bread. If you are classy, you make fresh flatbread, which probably tastes fantastic. You put it in a hot oven (500) for as long as it takes for the bread to get nice and hot.

Since we almost always have pita in the freezer, this was a serious scraps of the fridge meal.

PS. I was thinking about Winnie and her Wensleydale and almost bought some Wensleydale today but it had ginger and figs in it and even though right now that sounds amazing, when I was standing in line at the cheese store it sounded like the kind of thing that could go either way, even at $3/lb.

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My sister told me, in another context that had to with lame gifts she was saddled with and not great gift ideas, but she told me, my sister, about how when they do gift exchanges at work she’ll do something like buy a set of muffin tins, make black bottom cupcakes and deliver to her secret santa the tins, the cupcakes and a recipe. Or a cookie sheet, same story. And people don’t appreciate this.

Which is just weird.  I’ll just put it out there that if you want to make me cookies, you don’t even have to give me the cookie sheet.

A long, long time ago, Noah or I clipped a recipe for “Molten Chocolate Babycakes.” We had to get married before anyone would give us enough ramekins to actually make them, but it was worth the wait. We inaugurated them with a helluva party trick of our own, which involved bringing the ramekins of batter to a dinner party and sticking them in the oven halfway through dinner.

• 4 T  soft unsalted butter, plus more for greasing the dishes
• 12 oz bittersweet or semisweet chocolate (preferably high in cocoa solids)
• 4 large eggs, beaten with a pinch of salt
• 3/4 cup superfine sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/3 cup flour

Heat oven to 400 degrees; butter 6 ramekins (they say to line the bottoms with parchment but we didn’t.)

Melt chocolate over low heat and let it cool.

Cream together 4 tablespoons butter and the sugar.

Gradually add egg mixture, then vanilla, then flour. Mix well. Add chocolate and blend until smooth.

Fill the ramekins and arrange them on a baking sheet; bake 10-12 minutes. Or 15. We left them in longer than 10-12 minutes.

You can file these under kosher for passover, too, if you can handle the density of matzo flour. It won’t ruin them, and as passover desserts go it is pretty good.

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Sunday we came home from a camping trip to a fridge with not much in it, save for half cube of tofu and a magical bag of beet greens. That and one lone boca burger. I don’t know how the greens survived the nuclear winter that seems to have decimated the rest of the contents of our fridge. The tofu I understand but fresh greens? Where’d they come from?

This is a pretty conventional recipe. For whatever reason it is almost always a chicken salad. If you don’t eat chicken or don’t have chicken or don’t feel like having chicken tonight, no big thing. Use something else. I have a tofu technique that I’m fond of, that goes something like:

• Iron skillet
• Some oil, (not olive oil: canola or safflower or something higher heat than olive oil)
• a little bit of dark sesame oil
• tofu, in cubes
• soy sauce

Get the tofu going in a little oil on pretty high heat, but not the very highest. Just a little oil, enough to coat the pan. We’re not deep frying here. Leave it. Do other things. Stir it from time to time. When it starts to brown a little, put a cap-full of soy sauce in the pan and prepare to stir madly while the soy sauce caramelizes on the tofu and makes it really crispy. There is probably a better word for the effect than caramelize, but you get the idea.

So Sunday night, the other things I was doing were washing the beet greens and cooking cellophane noodles. I drained the noodles and dumped them, hot, onto the greens.

Then I called my sister who, so far as I can tell, is not on the internet to be found and linked to, and who always knows what to put in dressings. She suggested a dressing of …

• Chili oil (actually, I used some Thai chili paste)
• Sesame oil (dark)
• Soy sauce (I always use Tamari. I don’t know if that matters or not. If you tear open a few old takeout packets the sky will not fall.)
• Rice vinegar
• lime juice
• and a dash of fish sauce

I’m going to file this under vegan because the fish sauce is optional, not because I think fish grown on trees. My sister is a vegetarian: fish sauce was not on her ingredients list, but I like a little fish sauce.

If you’re anything like me, you’re annoyed that there aren’t any portions above. If you call Winnie for recipe advice she’ll only give you “oh a little and then a bit,” and the truth is that learning to cook is about learning to make some sesame dressing, stick your finger in it, taste it and think “hmm. too salty.” and add some more rice vinegar and limes.

So there you are. There we were anyway. Mix it together. Eat. If you have other vegetables: scallions, cucumbers, asparagus … it is a salad. This is the sort of summer salad that should be a staple in my life. I don’t know why it isn’t.

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I just finished off some brown rice and canned food and with a side of cauliflower drowned in a dressing I fondly call crack because I couldn’t think of anything else to do with cauliflower (just eating it, I suppose, was one option.) I’m thinking now that a little garlic and olive oil would have been a nice touch. We’re overrun with mint in the garden, which could have made the nice touch nicer.

There’s more cauliflower, though, and I’m on my own for the rest of the week, so maybe garlic and mint will happen after all. Until then, I’m open to better ideas.

Mostly, though, I wanted to say hello and thanks for having me. I thought I’d get to gloat about how spring comes sooner to NYC but it seems that St Paul CSAs are already underway? I’ve got two weeks yet until my food desert turns oasis.

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It is officially grilling season! Our dinners have taken a turn from kitchen cooking to outside-as -much-as-possible meals. D built this amazing little sitting nook in the back of our yard under a tree where the birds like to hustle and flow, and I have been sitting back here in contemplative bliss many evenings this past week. Making a bunch of interesting salads over the weekend to go with our simple grilled meats has been my new strategy for how I can sit under the tree in the evenings as much as possible. The two salads in the photo I made tonight with little hassle. A few potatoes boiled with two eggs and asparagus tossed in the last few moments (all in the same pot), mayo, Dijon mustard, splash of red wine vinegar, spring onions and garlic, parsley, salt and pepper. The other is a ripe mango tossed with fresh mint form the garden.

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