Semper Pasta

I made a couple of pasta dishes in the past week that I thought I should share. The first is carbonara, a fairly typical pasta dish, usually associated with Rome. In fact, I believe this may have been the first real Italian food I ever ate, in Rome, when I traveled to Italy with my high school Latin club (yes...Latin club. Semper ubi sub ubi. What?). Being a stupid sixteen year old, I think my reaction to it was, "Pasta with eggs and ham? Seriously, what are they trying to pull?" In my defense I was probably irritable because of severe jet lag and, authentic though, I realize now, the food may have been, it probably was not very good. Being part of a low rent tour group and all, we ate a lot of substandard, buffet-style meals. But anyway. I have since discovered that this dish can be delicious, if made well.

I haven't been able to track down the exact etymology of "carbonara," but a lot of sources render it "coal miner's style" pasta in English. I have also seen claims that it is called this not because it was the traditional lunch break fare of Italian coal miners, but because the black pepper gives it the appearance of being sprinkled with coal dust. Wikipedia claims these speculations are apocryphal, and that in fact there are no known recipes for the dish dating from before WWII. The Oxford Companion to Food claims that Romans invented the dish to incorporate the bacon and eggs they received from US troops as a supplement to their war-time rations. In any case, carbonara is a tasty and economical pasta dish that delivers satisfying creaminess without as much fat as a cream- or butter-based sauce like Alfredo. The primary ingredients are spaghetti, bacon (to be more fancy you could use specialty Italian-style bacon such as pancetta or guanciale, but regular bacon will suffice), eggs, cheese, salt and pepper. I also like to add peas, a common American twist.

This recipe is slightly modified from Leite's Culinaria. Now. This is fairly straightforward and easy once you get the hang of it, but this dish takes a little bit of practice. It is essential that you time things correctly and have all your ingredients ready to go when you need them. When the pasta is done cooking, you need to be ready to throw it back in the skillet right away. You want the pasta coated in sauce that is thick and rich, not pasta with scrambled egg in it. Don't worry that, because the sauce is viscous, the eggs are not fully cooked. They are, through some chemistry-related process that I cannot explain, but that Alton Brown probably could. By the way, I love Alton Brown. He's like the Bill Nye of cooking (I also love Bill Nye).

1/2 pound of spaghetti (about 1/2 a package)

4 strips of bacon

3 eggs, beaten

1 cup grated Parmiggiano-Reggiano cheese (or Parmesan if you can't find/afford the other stuff)

1 cup frozen peas, thawed and drained

salt and pepper to taste, plus extra cheese for garnish

Fry the bacon in a large skillet until crisp. Remove from skillet and drain off most of the excess grease. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. While the water heats up, chop the bacon into small pieces. When the water boils, at the pasta to the pot and remember to check the pasta frequently for doneness, instead of relying on package directions. When the pasta is almost done, turn the heat on under the bacon skillet to low. Remove the pasta from heat and drain, reserving a little of the pasta water. Return the pasta immediately to the skillet. Pour the eggs and over the pasta, adding the hot pasta water as needed to thicken the sauce. Toss the spaghetti well to coat with the egg and cheese; return the chopped bacon and peas to the skillet and cook until warmed through. This makes three to four servings.

The second pasta dinner I made combines the classic triumvirate of sausage, peppers and onions with rigatoni for a hearty meal. I think of sausage, peppers, and pasta as a totally Italian thing, but I could not learn much about the origins of this combo. The nifty blog Almost Italian sheds some light on it, suggesting that, while Italian restaurants might serve this dish under glamorous-sounding names like Pasta alla Napoletana or Pasta alla Calabrese, the fact is it was probably thrown together in some Italian-American immigrant's kitchen for no other reason than that's what they had to work with. It is no less Italian--or American--for all that.

This is one of those meaty dishes, by the way, that can translate to a faithful vegetarian or vegan approximation. While I'm not crazy about a lot of meat-substitute products, I have found that there are a lot of meatless sausages out there that are quite good, both in terms of flavor and texture. At Avanti we had wheat-based meatless Italian sausage that was nearly indistinguishable from the real thing. Unfortunately I don't know the name of the brand, but I know good options are out there.

Rigatoni with Italian Sausage, Peppers, and Onions

1/2 pound rigatoni (about 1/2 a package)

2 sweet Italian sausage links, sliced into 1/4 inch rounds (If you substitute spicy sausage, omit the red pepper flakes)

1 large onion, pie sliced

1 and 1/2 bell peppers, seeded and sliced into thin strips

3 cloves garlic, sliced

1/4 cup of beer or red wine (I used Fat Tire Amber Ale)

1/4 cup crushed tomato or tomato sauce

2 tsps red pepper flakes

1 tsp each salt, oregano, basil, black pepper

Grated Parmesan cheese for garnish

Heat a little olive oil in a large skillet. Cook the sausage over medium heat until well browned on both sides. Meanwhile, start heating a large pot of water for the pasta. When the sausage is fully cooked, remove it from the skillet and set aside, and drain off excessive drippings. Add the garlic to the skillet and cook until it starts to turn golden. Add the onion and cook until it starts to soften. Add the peppers, beer (or wine), tomato and spices. Cook until the peppers begin to soften and the liquid reduces. When the rigatoni is done, drain and rinse and add to the skillet. If you have a small stove and a less capacious skillet, as I do, I suggest that you remove everything to a large bowl and then throw only as much pasta and sausage mixture back into the skillet for one serving. Although I suppose it's not strictly necessary that it goes back in the skillet, I like to do this because it kind of cooks the sauce to the pasta and improves flavor and texture in my opinion. Toss everything together until well combined and serve. This makes four large servings.

Anyway, I should really get back to my reading and stuff now. I'll catch up with again in a few days, depending on how my schedule goes.

Delicious Dal

This is going to be a brief post, but I just had to share the recipe for the "Dal Nirvana" I made for dinner, because it was quite tasty and pretty easy too! This is a really simple, healthy, vegetarian Indian dish you can make if you are craving Indian food. I followed Beth M's recipe on Budget Bytes (a blog I'm in love with!) to the letter; the only thing I did differently was I halved the recipe. I also made Beth M's naan, a type of Indian flatbread, which was a little more complicated and time consuming, but worth it if you have never made homemade bread like this before. You will feel awesome, and the result might not be restaurant quality the first time around, but it will be better than anything you buy premade at the store. It is a bit tricky, but not as hard as you might think, so don't be intimidated. I also followed her recipe almost exactly (the only thing I did differently was I added lowfat plain yogurt instead of Greek yogurt. I think they are similar enough that it didn't make a huge difference.) That's it for tonight, blog-followers.

Grocery Day? Already??

I tell you what. The month of October is not shaping up to be super for the Sexy Divorcee. My reading load has gotten ridiculous, my students are taking up all of my energy, my house is a mess, and there are so many damn birthdays and parties and things going on! I haven't had a break since the month started, and I'm not likely to get one any time soon. It's getting to be a "clean all the things?" kind of situation over here.

So I was chagrined to realize that, oh my god, two weeks have gone by and I'm running out of food. I have to go to the grocery store today; I don't have time to do it tomorrow, and anyway I am out of coffee, and what is the point of living if there is no coffee? So I made up my plan for the next two weeks, and headed off to the store. I don't know how this happened, but the bill was a little pricey this week, almost $90. Luckily I just got paid, but yikes. I did buy some staples that I was running out of that are a little more expensive--olive oil and stuff--but jeez. An 8 oz bag of frozen peas was like, $3 or something. That seems like a lot. I found myself wandering through the store going, "wow, that seems like a lot," well, a lot, this morning. But anyway, my shopping is done, so I can get back to all the other things I need to do.

Before I get into my list and plan for the next two weeks, let's rank and review my last plan. Take a look at this post to learn more about my ranking and review criteria. I am adding a new one: good-for-you-ness. This criterion (like the rest of them, honestly) is kind of sketchy, since I'm not a nutrition expert or anything. It's mostly based on my sense of things.

1. Sweet and Sour Pork

Convenience: 3

Deliciousness: 5

Value: 3

Leftover-worthiness: 4

Good-for-you-ness: 4 (good balance of protein and vegetables, and the sauce isn't fatty or anything. It might be a bit on the salty side to be considered truly healthy)

2. Tony Rigatoni

Convenience: 4

Deliciousness: 4

Value: 4 (the sausage is really the only thing here that is a bit more expensive)

Leftover-worthiness: 3

Good-for-you-ness: 3 (the sweet potato and arugula are full of vitamins; the sausage, unfortunately, is full of fat)

3. Chicken mole enchiladas

Convenience: 2

Deliciousness: 4

Value: 3

Leftover-worthiness: 3-4 (I would say this is a solid 4 if you have a microwave; I don't, and reheating them well is a bit tricky for me)

Good-for-you-ness: 3 (I'm going to go ahead and call this moderately healthy, even though the chocolate, nuts, cheese, and cooking oil add fat. The sauce is vegetable and vitamin rich, chicken is lean, and the corn tortillas are whole-grain.)

4. Chana Masala

Convenience: 5

Deliciousness: 4

Value: 4

Leftover-worthiness: 5

Good-for-you-ness: 5

5. Chicken with Roasted Vegetable Pilaf

I realize have not posted a recipe for this one. I simply didn't have time. I'll get around to it eventually.

Convenience: 3

Deliciousness: 3

Value: 4

Leftover-worthiness: 3

Good-for-you-ness: 5

6. Yellow Split Pea and Sweet Potato Soup

I also haven't posted a recipe for this, but I pretty much used this recipe from Fat Free Vegan, substituting arugula for kale.

Convenience: 4

Deliciousness: 2-3 (My version of this didn't taste bad, it was just kind of boring and disappointing. It would have been better if I had used the whole spices instead of substituting ground, and if I had an immersion blender than I could have used to smooth it out a bit. On the upside, it is totally vegan, and fat free.)

Value: 5

Leftover-worthiness: 4

Good-for-you-ness: 4

I also made tuna melts and tomato soup, but because they were not part of my original plan, I won't rank them.

So here's my plan for the next two weeks. New recipes are in italics:

Dal nirvana x 3 (once again, this was on my last plan, but I haven't made it yet)

Butter chicken and rice x 4

Rigatoni with sausage, peppers and onions x 4

Fried rice x 2

White bean and chicken chili x 4

Shrimp tacos x 2

Pasta carbonara x 3

Cuban black beans and shrimp x 2

And here's my shopping list:

Frozen peas

Unsalted butter, 1 lb

Skim milk, 1 quart

Black beans, 2 cans

Great northern beans, 1 lb dry

Crushed tomatoes, 28-oz can

Diced green chiles, 1 can

Low sodium chicken stock, 1 quart

Extra virgin olive oil

Vegetable oil

Corn tortillas, 1 dozen

Coffee beans, 1 lb

Parmesan, bulk wedge

Bacon, 1/2 lb

Chicken breasts, package of 3

Frozen Baja shrimp, 1 lb bag

Red onions, 3 lb bag

Garlic

Napa cabbage

Roma tomatoes, 1 lb

Cilantro, 1 bunch

Bell peppers, 2 green, 1 red

1 avocado

2 mangos

2 grapefruit

4 bananas

I don't think any of the recipes I've chosen for the next two weeks are particularly complicated, and I've thrown a couple in there that are really fast and and easy; fried rice and shrimp tacos. I wanted to make things relatively easy, knowing that my work load isn't going to let up any time soon. I'll let you know how it goes.

Irma, You Done Done It Again

I had some leftover roasted yam from when I made "Tony Rigatoni" the other night, and this morning, as I looked into my somewhat bare fridge that was not offering up any appealing breakfast options, I thought, "Hm, I wonder if I can put that yam that into a quick bread or something." So I consulted my trusty Joy of Cooking, and what do you know, the exact thing I had in mind was right there in it's venerable pages: yam muffins! I'm enjoying a couple right now that I just took out of the oven. So spicy and sweet and warming; perfect for the fall weather that has FINALLY decided to come to Tucson. Thanks, Irma Rombauer.

One thing that I love about the Joy of Cooking (if you don't have a copy, you should really look around for one at a used bookstore or something. Get a classic edition; mine is a modern reprint of an edition from the '70s. Some of the recipes are dated, but it's just a charming all-purpose cookbook) is that it's not just a bunch of recipes. There is a lot of great practical information scattered throughout the chapters that help you understand what you're doing when you're cooking. Anyone can follow a recipe, but understanding why you are going through the steps in a very specific way is what makes you a cook or a baker. Rombauer includes one of these helpful tidbits for baking muffins, and it's so interesting (to me, anyway) and written in such a quaint, grandmotherly way that I have to include it with the recipe. It might make the difference in the quality of your muffins.

"Muffin batters are easily made. To mix, add in a few swift strokes the beaten liquid ingredients to the combined dry ones. The mixing is held to an absolute minimum, a light stirring from 10 to 20 seconds, which will leave some lumps. Ignore them. The dough should not be mixed to the point of pouring, ribbonlike, from the spoon, but should break in coarse globs. If the batter has been beaten too long, the gluten in the flour will develop and toughen the dough; and the grain of the muffin will be coarse and full of tunnels.... Good muffins should be straight-sided and rounded on top...the grain of the muffin is not fine but uniform and the crumb moist."

Isn't that lovely? There's actually a drawing included of what the cross section of a poorly-made muffin looks like, and what the top will look like if the oven temperature is wrong. Anyway, if you follow this advice, your muffins will be better for it, and you will be a better baker.

I made a couple of substitutions to the J of C recipe. I didn't have quite enough cooked yam, so I smashed it with a couple overripe bananas that I had been saving, and that worked out fine. I also did not add the extra 1/4 cup of sugar the book recommends. I figured the banana would provide enough sweetness, and in my opinion it did. If you were just using sweet potato, or canned pumpkin, I think the extra sugar would be necessary. I also used chopped walnuts instead of pecans--equally tasty either way, I think.

Joy of Cooking Yam Muffins

Dry ingredients:

1 1/4 cups flour, sifted

1/4 cup sugar (increase to 1/2 cup unless you are using banana)

2 tsps double-acting baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

3/4 tsp salt

Optional: 1 cup chopped pecans (or walnuts--and it doesn't have to be a full cup)

Wet ingredients:

2 eggs, beaten

3/4 cups milk

2 tbsps melted butter

1 cup cooked mashed yams, OR 1 cup canned cooked pumpkin, OR a combination of yam and banana

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Combine the dry ingredients well in a large mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, combine the eggs, milk, and melted butter. Pour the mashed yam mixture into the dry ingredients and pour the wet ingredients over. Combine quickly with a rubber spatula or wooden spoon, following the recommendations above. Drop the batter from the spoon into greased muffin tins; each cup should be no more than 2/3 full of batter. Bake for twenty minutes, or until a knife inserted into one comes out clean. Irma says they are best right out of the oven.

Holé Molé

So I made some molé sauce from scratch and turned it into chicken enchiladas. No big deal.

Actually, I'm really proud of myself because molé is a little complicated, and I haven't been able to find two recipes out there that are remotely the same. Most include onion, some kind of dried chiles, and unsweetened chocolate. Some have peanuts, some don't, some have tomato sauce, some don't, the spices and amounts vary wildly...you get the idea. So I looked at three or four recipes that had some basic elements in common, and tried to combine them to approximate what molé, in my mind, should taste like.

I guess I should say what molé is. Since I've lived in Arizona and California my whole life, I've maybe had more exposure to it than a lot of people. Don't quote me on it, but I don't think you can get anything molé-related at Taco Bell, for instance. This is understandable; it's less accessible than a lot of Mexican dishes because the spicing is pretty unique. It includes chocolate as a spice. It's unsweetened, but still. A lot of people think reflexively of chocolate and meat mixed together as some kind of abomination that is probably prohibited in the Bible. To my knowledge, it's not, but even if it were, I would trust my own taste buds over the word of God in this case. I ignored what God had to say about eating shrimp and shellfish, and I have yet to regret that. Anyway.

Wikipedia says that molé (which is really spelled with out the accent, but saying I made "mole" sauce is just confusing/gross) is really just a generic word for sauce that comes from the Nahuatl "molli." When we talk about molé in the US, what we're usually talking about...well, it's ambiguous. It could be mole poblano, named for the state of Puebla from whence it comes, or mole negro, which comes from Oaxaca, and is similar but, apparently, as the name would suggest, darker because it contains additional spices. In any case, turkey or chicken with molé is typically a celebration thing that you might have for weddings or holidays. I think what I ended up making was maybe closer to mole negro? But I'm not sure. It was pretty tasty, though. Better, I feel confident in boasting, than the molé chicken I ate at El Charro here in Tucson. So there.

Some of the items you might have better luck finding in a specialty market, but I think most supermarkets have an area, usually in the "Ethnic Foods" or whatever they call it aisle, that sells Mexican spices. If you can't find Ibarra-brand chocolate, just get a bar of unsweetened baking chocolate. I got some Ghirardelli's and it worked fine.

Molé

4 dried pasilla (aka ancho) peppers

15 almonds

2 Tbsps pumpkin seeds

1 Tbsp sesame seeds

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp black peppercorns

1 whole clove

1 whole allspice

1 corn tortilla

1 yellow onion, diced

4 cloves garlic, sliced

2 Tbsps orange juice

1/2 cup canned crushed tomato

1 cup+ water (I continued to add water little by little as I went along to get the right texture. I suggest you follow the same policy)

1 oz unsweetened chocolate (1/4 of a 4 oz bar), grated (Grating the chocolate is messy! Do thison a large plate with a rim to catch the excess

2 tsps sugar

salt to taste

Bring a pot of water to boil; pour the boiling water over the dried chiles and let sit covered until they soften, 15 minutes to 1/2 an hour. Meanwhile, toast the almonds, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, whole spices, cinnamon and cumin in a skillet over medium low heat, stirring occasionally. When the sesame seeds start to turn golden, remove from heat and grind into a fine powder--I cleaned out my coffee grinder really well and used that; if you want to be old school I suppose you could use a mortar and pestle. Cook the corn tortilla in a little oil until it softens, then tear into pieces and set aside. Cook the onion in the same skillet until it begins to soften, then add the garlic and cook a little longer.

Drop the nut-seed-spice powder, tortilla pieces, chiles, cooked onion and garlic, tomato, orange juice, and water into a blender or food processor and process until you have a smooth paste, somewhat thicker than ketchup. If it is too thick, add more water. Pour the sauce back into the skillet and cook over medium low heat until it starts to bubble. Add in the chocolate and sugar, stirring well to incorporate. By the way, you should taste the sauce as you go to decide if you think the seasonings need tweaking. You may want it to be sweeter or spicier than mine ended up being. There you go, there's your molé. This makes about 4 cups, I would say, but I don't know how much water I ultimately ended up using. You can use it right away, either as a sauce for chicken or turkey, or for enchiladas, or you can freeze it. If you use it for enchiladas, you may want to dilute it with more water.

Mole enchiladas

2 chicken breasts, cut in 1-inch cubes

8 corn tortillas

Mole sauce

Cooking oil

1 cup shredded jack cheese + more for garnish (optional)

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Drop in the chicken and cook until cooked through, 15 minutes or so. You don't have to worry about overcooking the chicken in this case. Drain the cooked chicken and, after it has cooled, shred it. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Mix half of the mole sauce with the shredded chicken and the shredded cheese. Reserve the other half for coating the tortillas. Now, before you get ready to cook the tortillas, make sure your workspace is organized. Have your bowl of mole sauce, your baking pan, and your bowl of enchilada filling lined up in that order for efficient assembly. Enchiladas are easy to make once you get the hang of it, but you need to plan well. Over medium heat, heat enough oil to cover the bottom of the skillet until an edge of corn tortilla dipped in bubbles on contact. Carefully place one tortilla in the skillet. After just a few seconds, flip it with your tongs, and then place it in the bowl of sauce. Be careful not to get sauce on your tongs, or you will cause the oil to sputter and possibly burn yourself when you go to flip the next tortilla. Coat the tortilla well in the sauce and place in the baking dish. Scoop about 1/3 cup of the enchilada filling into the middle of the tortilla and wrap it it up tightly, being careful not to rip the tortilla (not that it will matter much once it's baked, but still). Repeat these steps until you have eight happy little enchiladas tucked into the dish. Pour any remaining sauce over the top and sprinkle with additional cheese. Bake for about 15 minutes. This makes about 4 servings. ¡Olé!

This meal is labor intensive, and messy, I'm not going to lie. Stupidly, I was not wearing the apron my dear mother gave me, and at one point I zinged hot sauce all over myself slasher-movie style and nearly ruined my favorite white shirt. But if you have the time and the energy, I highly recommend that you try this, because you will feel accomplished for having done it...and you will have yummy food in your fridge.

Odds & Ends

I came home today after a five-hour grading marathon with no will to cook anything complicated for dinner. The solution: tuna melt and tomato soup.

Now, a tuna melt is like, cooking 101-type stuff, right? Well, I don't know; tuna melts, like pancakes and omelettes, are simple in theory but take some time and practice to master (or at least they did in my case). Also, anyone can open a can of tuna, mix it up with some mayo, slather it on some wonder bread and call it a tuna sandwich. But it doesn't have to be that way. The tuna/mayo base is easy to fancy up, and usually you can do it with whatever you have on hand. To cut fat and add a little extra kick of flavor, I usually substitute a little Dijon mustard for some of the mayo. Some things I commonly add to tuna salad include (not necessarily together, mind you): sliced green olives, red onion, green onion, celery, diced apple, capers, nuts, cilantro, pickle, etc, etc. In this case I had a bunch of celery left over from when I made red beans and rice, and some chopped green onion that I kept forgetting to garnish my leftover sweet and sour pork with. I dumped this into my tuna, along with about a 1/2 tablespoon of capers for tang and some chopped almonds for crunch. A good sprinkling of fresh ground black pepper is a must for my tuna salad; sometimes I add a little dill as well.

To make a tuna melt:

Melt a pat of butter in a wide skillet over medium-low heat. Add your bread to the skillet and rub it around a bit to get some butter on it, then flip it over and rub it around again. Let your bread toast on one side until it starts to get golden. Flip it over and carefully spread your tuna mixture over one of the slices. I usually add something on top of that, like sliced onion or tomato or some baby spinach. Because I have arugula right now, I threw a handful on top of the tuna. Place your slices of cheese (I used Monterey Jack this evening) on top, close your sandwich, and press it down gently with the flat of a spatula to smoosh the different layers together. Reduce the heat to low and cover. When the cheese has started to melt, carefully flip the sandwich. I use two spatulas or other utensils to do this, sliding one under the sandwich and pressing the top down with the other. Cook on the other side until the cheese is nice and gooey.

For me, a tuna melt isn't really complete unless there's a side of tomato soup to go with it. If you have canned soup, that's fine, but I almost never get canned tomato soup because it is so easy to make, and homemade is much better. It's also better for you, because you can control how much salt goes in. Even the low-sodium soup brands have a lot of salt in them. Tomato soup is one of those gloriously minimalist foods. All you really need to do to make tomato soup is take a little can of tomato paste, mix it up in about two cups of water, season with salt and pepper, and heat through. I like garlic so I usually add some garlic, which I saute in a bit of olive oil before pouring the liquid in the pan. Beyond that, you can add pretty much whatever you want to your soup. I had extra grilled onion from my dinner last night, so I chopped that up and threw it in, and spiced it up with some cumin and paprika. Instant comfort food.

Tony Rigatoni

...That's "tony" as in fancy, or posh. You wouldn't think that a chunky tubular pasta could be glam, but I think this recipe is. Not only that, but it's easy, and relatively cheap, too! I drew inspiration from two sources to come up with this dish. One is a simple, fairly standard Italian recipe that consists of a chunky shaped pasta, like rigatoni or orecchiette, tossed with chunks of Italian sausage and broccoli rabe. Broccoli rabe (or raab, or rapini), if you don't happen to know, is not related to broccoli, but is actually a type of mustard green. It gets its name from the broccoli-like green buds it sprouts. It has a strong bitter flavor that pairs really well with rich sausage. I don't know what this dish is called, but I have seen it in a lot of places. I got it once at Ciao Italian restaurant in Newport Beach, one of my favorite Italian restaurants ever, and it was so good I've been meaning to make it ever since.

The second source of inspiration came from a pizza topped with garnet yam, arugula, and artichoke pesto on the menu at Avanti Cafe in Costa Mesa. I worked at Avanti for a while, and a lot of what I know about preparing food and being creative and efficient in the kitchen comes from working with those lovely people. Fun times. Anyway, those may sound like weird pizza toppings, but the salty-sweet-bitter combination of flavors balance each other really well and the overall effect is light and delicious. I thought roasted yam would pair similarly well with spicy and salty Italian sausage, and arugula is a bitter salad green that has a very similar flavor to broccoli rabe. So I decided to mix all these things together, and I was quite pleased with the result. The yam really makes the dish seem special, even though it's one of the easier pasta dishes I think I've made. There are a few prep-intensive steps involved, but they are not complex. Also, if you've never roasted yams before except to make that Thanksgiving casserole with the marshmallows on top, you are missing out. Roasted yams are an easy vegetable to prepare, they are extremely good for you, they are delicious, and surprisingly versatile. I recommend you add them to your repertoire of easy vegetable sides if you haven't cooked with them before.

Tony Rigatoni

Olive oil

1 large yam, unpeeled

2 large garlic cloves, sliced

1/4 - 1/2 pound Italian sausage* (one or two largish links), casings removed

4 loosely-packed cups arugula (This seems like a lot, but it will cook down to about a quarter of its volume.)

1/2 pound rigatoni or similar pasta

kosher salt, black pepper, and crushed red pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Scrub the yam well, dry, poke with a fork on all sides, and rub all over with olive oil and a sprinkling of salt. Incidentally, the salt is not for seasoning, but aids cooking by drawing out moisture. This technique is ideal for flaky baked potatoes as well. Cook the yam on a foil-covered baking sheet until a fork can be inserted easily into the center; half an hour to an hour. When the yam is done baking and has cooled for a bit, the skin will come off easily. Chop the yam (or use a large spoon or melon baller to scoop it out of the skin) into bite-sized chunks, and set aside. Put pasta water on to boil. Heat a little olive oil in a large skillet. Add the garlic and crushed red pepper and cook for a few minutes. Add the sausage, using the side of a wooden spoon or spatula to break it up into small chunks. Allow the sausage to cook for several minutes, stirring occasionally, until it is thoroughly cooked and well browned on all sides. Add the arugula to the skillet and cook in the sausage drippings until it is just wilted. Remove from heat. Meanwhile, cook the rigatoni, testing frequently**. When the pasta is done and drained, toss everything together and serve immediately, seasoned to taste with salt and pepper and topped with a little fresh-grated Parmesan cheese. Four servings.

*I used sweet Italian sausage, but in the future I might try spicy. A little more spice would kick this up a notch, as Emeril Legasse might say.

**Mushy, over-cooked pasta is unacceptable to the Sexy Divorcee. Something I learned at Avanti: When cooking pasta, NEVER trust the cooking time given on the package. Cooking times for different kinds of pasta vary widely, so you should always test your pasta frequently as it cooks until you get a piece that is just slightly undercooked. By the time you turn the heat off and drain your pasta, it will be perfectly al dente. Rinse the pasta in cold water to stop the cooking. Even if you find that your pasta is a little too al dente at first, it will soften up when it sits in the fridge and your leftovers will be a nice texture instead of soggy, like leftover pasta can tend to be.

Catching Up

Last week was a heavy week in grad school. Tons of student conferences, a twenty-page reading journal I neglected to attend to until the week before it was due, hundreds of pages of reading, and so on. Not much time left over for blogging. Now conferences are over and the journal is off my desk...just in time for me to begin grading 50 papers! It's a good think I got some cooking in on Sunday so I have some things to eat.

For lunch I made chana masala, using a recipe modified from Smitten Kitchen. The internets tell me that "chana" is Hindi for chickpea, while masala just refers to a spice mixture. According to wikipedia, chana masala is popular in the Indian states of Punjab and Gujarat, and is typically a "dry"curry. I don't know how accurate that is, but this is definitely a saucy version, so if you are from India or know a lot about Indian food, this recipe might not produce what you think of when you think of chana masala. Deb of SK writes that her recipe is itself a modification of another she got somewhere else, which may explain why something about this recipe wasn't exactly what I expected. It still turned out fine...quite tasty, in fact. But it's lacking something that I expect from an Indian dish...maybe a certain spice, or maybe the proportions are off, or something, but I may tinker with it. Like Deb, I did not have amchur powder (dried mango), which imparts sourness, so in addition to the lemon juice I splashed in a little white vinegar.

2 onions, minced

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 tsps fresh ginger, peeled and grated

1 serrano pepper, minced

1 Tbsp ground coriander

1 Tbsp amchur powder (or, an equal amount of extra lemon juice or white vinegar)

2 tsps ground cumin

2 tsps paprika

1 tsp turmeric

1 tsp garam masala

1/4 tsp cayenne

2 15-oz cans chickpeas, or 4 cups cooked (if starting with dry)

2 cups finely diced tomatoes, or 2 cups canned crushed tomatoes + juice (I used canned; if you can only find 30-oz cans measure out what you need and freeze the rest)

Juice of 1 lemon

1/2 cup water

salt to taste

Heat about a tablespoon of vegetable oil in a large pot. Add the onions, garlic, ginger, and serrano and cook until the onion is soft and translucent. Add the dry spices except salt (I measure them out into a little dish beforehand so I can just throw them all in at once) and cook for a few minutes. Add the tomatoes and stir well, making sure to scrape up any bits cooked to the bottom of the pan. Add the chickpeas and water and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. If it seems dry, add a little more water, a tablespoon at a time. Stir in the salt, lemon juice, and vinegar if using. I poured this over cooked rice and ate it with a little plain yogurt on top. You could also have it with an Indian-style bread. Wikipedia also tells me that in Punjab and Pakistan, the dish is often served with a puffy bread called bhatoora (looks kind of like a sopapilla) and is eaten for breakfast. This will yield four to six servings. Vegan! Unless you add yogurt, like I did.

Fast-forward several hours...

For dinner I made what the One Pot Cookbook I bought at a yard sale calls "Asian pork." This seemed kind of...general to me, so I retitled it sweet and sour pork, which may or may not be what it is, but at least it's a little less geographically and racially ambiguous. I was a little skeptical about making this, because the recipes I have made out of this book have been sort of hit and miss (probably why it ended up in the yard sale pile). Some of the things I have made out of it turned out great/just like the picture; other recipes have turned out to have wildly inaccurate measurements and cooking times. In this case, however, it turned out kind of awesome. It did taste pretty much like the sweet and sour pork I have eaten in Chinese restaurants before. The sauce is really good, not overwhelmingly sweet or sour, and not greasy. Yummy.

1 lb boneless pork (I used the remainder of the pork butt I bought for puerco pibil; carefully trimming as much fat as possible off. It worked pretty well), cut into 1" cubes

1 Tbsp flour

1 onion, sliced into thin wedges (like an apple for a pie)

3 garlic cloves, chopped

1-inch chunk of ginger, peeled and grated

1 Tbsp tomato paste

1 1/4 cups chicken stock

1 cup pineapple chunks with juice (half a 15-oz can)

1 Tbsp soy sauce

3 celery ribs, diagonally sliced

1 bell pepper, chopped

1 Tbsp vinegar (I used white, but sherry or red-wine vinegar would do)

sliced green onions for garnish

Toss the pork chunks in the flour until well coated. Mix together the chicken stock, the tomato paste, and the pineapple juice (reserving the pineapple until later) until well-combined, and keep it at hand. Heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil in a heavy pot. Add the onion, garlic, and ginger and cook over medium heat, stirring often, until the onions soften. Add the pork and cook, stirring constantly, until it is browned on all sides. You may need to add the pork in batches; I found that the pieces wanted to stick together in a big clump when I put them in, which made separating and cooking them evenly a bit tricky. Remove from the heat (I don't know why, but that's what the book says). Pour the chicken-stock mixture gradually into the pan while stirring. Add the soy sauce and return to the heat. Continue stirring and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer, stirring occasionally, for about an hour. At about forty-five minutes in, add the bell pepper and celery for the last fifteen minutes of cooking. Stir in the pineapple and vinegar and serve garnished with sliced green onions and a side of white rice. Makes about four servings.

Grocery Day!

Happy two-week anniversary to me. The beginning of the Sexy Divorcee's third week of existence happens to coincide with shopping day, and a new two-week plan.

First, maybe I should review last week's cycle. For the detailed menu, see this post. I'll list what I made from my favorite to least favorite, and rank on a scale of 1-5 for convenience, deliciousness, value, and leftover-worthiness, with 1 being least and 5 being most:

1. Puerco pibil

• convenience: 3 (easy, but time-consuming)
• deliciousness: Off the charts
• value: 3 (expensive spices, but good investment; dirt-cheap meat)
• leftover-worthiness: 4 (reheats well, but is best straight out of the oven. Would probably freeze well? I didn't have enough left over to find out.)

2. Louisiana red beans and rice

• convenience: 3 (simple but time consuming)
• deliciousness: 4
• value: 4 (pretty darn inexpensive per serving)
• left-over worthiness: 4 (keeps fairly well; can be frozen)

3. Ratatouille with chicken and rice

• convenience: 3 (simple but time consuming)
• deliciousness: 4
• value: 4
• left-over worthiness: 5 (just as good if not better reheated; also freezes well)

4. Summer succotash with bacon

• convenience: 3 (simple to make, but multi-tasking and different cooking techniques involved)
• deliciousness: 4
• value: 3 (combo of inexpensive and more specialized ingredients)
• left-over worthiness: 4 (good cold, but loses some crispness)

5. Kofta sandwiches

• convenience: 4 (pretty quick and easy)
• deliciousness: 3 (not bad)
• value: 3
• left-over worthiness: 3

6. Angel hair pasta with pesto and chicken

• convenience: 4 (as easy as measuring and boiling water)
• deliciousness: 3
• value: 2 (basil and nuts are a bit pricey)
• leftover-worthiness: 2 (it was great the first night; leftovers, not so much. I think if I were to do it over, I would definitely store the pesto and the pasta separately--not only did it seem to make the pasta soggy, but also, it didn't taste like much after a few days in the fridge except oily garlic. The fresh basil flavor disappeared.)

So here's my new menu (new recipes are italicized, transitional recipes are in green):

Chana masala (chick pea curry) with rice x 4 --this was the last thing on last week's plan, but I never got around to making it.

Sweet and sour pork x 4

Rigatoni with sweet Italian sausage, arugula and sweet potato x 4

Chicken molé enchiladas x 4

Yellow split pea and sweet potato soup x 4

Chicken with roasted vegetable pilaf x 2

Dal nirvana (curried lentils) with rice and homemade naan (Indian flatbread) x 2

And here's my shopping list, with changes and substitutions in green:

Canned pineapple

Tomato paste

Rigatoni

Dried yeast

Dried pasillo peppers

Dry roasted pumpkin seeds

Sesame seeds

unsweetened Mexican chocolate (They do not carry this. Odd, and sad. :( Now I must go to WF for it)

Almonds (bulk)

couscous Bulgar wheat (bulk)

Green lentils (bulk)

Chicken breasts

Sweet Italian sausage (3 links, just over a pound)

queso fresco Monterey Jack--their fresco was muy exspensivo

Wheat bread

Corn tortillas

Plain yogurt

Eggs

Sweet potatoes (technically, jewel yams) x 3

Arugula (5 oz package)

Green onion x 2

Onions x 2

Italian parsley x 1

Zucchini x 1

Lemons x 2

Fresh fruit (bunch of 4 bananas, 2 6-oz cartons of raspberries)

All for just over $70, which was about what I was guessing it would be. I continue to be in love with Sunflower. The employees are so nice there, and not in the creepy forced way that they are at Safeway. I'm just sad they didn't have my chocolate. So, there's at least one unscheduled shopping detour in my future.

Short Cuts

Hello, blog readers. I apologize for my absence, but it has been a busy week in grad school land. But now that I'm more or less caught up with my work, I can more or less catch up with my blog, too.

This week I made two meals that are each very classic in their own way--Louisiana red beans and rice, and Kofta sandwiches (an ubiquitous Middle Eastern fast food). For convenience's sake, I did not prepare them in the classic way, however. I'm not going to pretend for a minute that taking a short cut with a venerable recipe is going to result in something that tastes as good as the traditional version. But sometimes a tasty approximation is good enough, and I think I achieved tasty approximations with my simplified recipes this week.

No-Soak Louisiana Red Beans and Rice with Andouille Sausage

A traditional recipe would use dried beans soaked overnight. Dried beans yield more flavor and better texture than canned, and they're not difficult to prepare. They just require advanced planning. Sometimes I end up changing my plans at the last minute, so I didn't want to take the chance of leaving beans to soak overnight only to not use them--they don't keep well uncooked (which takes additional time) after they have been soaked. One time I soaked a pot of beans and ended up not using them when I planned to, and they started to ferment and I had to throw them away. Ew. Traditional versions of this recipe often call for a ham hock or other stew meat to be added to the cooking beans to add more flavor and richness. I didn't have that, so I didn't do that, but I did add some chicken broth to the cooking liquid.

1/2 pound to 1 pound andouille or smoked sausage, 1/4-inch slice (I bought fresh andouille from Sunflower Market's meat counter, and the grind of the meat was not as fine as I think you will probably find with a commercially produced sausage. In my case it was necessary to remove the casings, which resulted in chunkier bits than the sausage "coins" you might expect in this dish...just FYI)

1 medium onion, diced

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 green bell pepper, diced

3 celery ribs, leaves removed, diced

2 cans red kidney beans, drained and rinsed

1 bay leaf

1 tsp oregano

1 tsp thyme

1/4 tsp cayenne (I'm serious about this! Any more and you will not be able to taste the different flavors, but only the hotness of the cayenne. I speak from personal experience. If you like your food spicy, add hot sauce to the finished dish. Over spicing in the pot will ruin the taste, in my opinion.)

salt and pepper to taste

Fully cook the sausage in a large pot over medium heat. Remove from the pot and keep refrigerated until ready to add back in. Add the onion and garlic to the pot and cook until they begin to soften in the sausage drippings. It may be necessary to add a splash of vegetable oil to the pot to prevent sticking. Add the bell pepper and celery to the pot and cook until crisp-tender; add the beans and spices and stir well to combine. Pour in 6 cups of water, or a mixture of water and chicken stock. Bring the liquid to a boil and then reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, for about an hour, stirring occasionally, until the mixture has cooked down to the consistency you want. It may be necessary to add more water. After about half an hour of cooking, use your spoon to mash the beans against the side of the pan. This will add a pleasing thickness. Throw the sausage back in the pot for the last fifteen minutes of cooking. Remove the bay leaf and serve in a bowl topped with a scoop of hot white rice. Season with hot sauce and garnish with chopped green onion if you desire. Yields 4-6 servings.

Kofta* sandwiches with tahini sauce

Middle Eastern kofta (as opposed to Indian and central Asian versions) is a highly spiced grilled meatball, made either of ground beef or lamb. The typical way to prepare it is as a kebab; the meat is formed in a long sausage shape around a skewer and grilled. In Egypt, along with taamayya (aka falafel), shish tawook (chicken kebab), shwarma (thinly sliced marinated beef or lamb, similar to gyro meat), and koshary (lentils, rice, and macaroni topped with fried onions and spicy tomato sauce), kofta is one of the more readily available and cheap fast food options. When I lived in Alexandria, I would buy kofta kebabs as a platter with a side of rice pilaf, or in pita-style sandwiches. Not having skewers or grilling capabilities, I improvised and made baked meatballs with kofta-style seasoning, which I put into pita sandwiches and topped with homemade tahini sauce.

Kofta balls

1/2 lb lean ground beef or lamb (I used very lean beef)

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 tbsps onion, grated

2 tbsps chopped fresh Italian parsley, or 1 tbsp dried parsley

2 tsps ground coriander

2 tsps kosher salt

1/2 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp cardamom

a pinch of black pepper and a dash of cayenne

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Mix the garlic, onion, and spices into a paste. Using your hands, work the paste into the ground meat until well combined. Shape the meat into balls, about an inch in diameter. You should have about eight of them. Place the meatballs on a foil lined baking sheet and bake for 20 minutes. While the meat balls are baking, you can prepare the tahini sauce. Serve with rice and a salad, or in a pita with lettuce, tomato, and cucumber. Makes 2 servings.

Tahini sauce

In addition to use as a condiment, this tahini sauce can be used as a salad dressing (with the addition of more lemon juice and water), or as a marinade for chicken or fish. It will keep in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks.

1/4 cup tahini paste (Tahini paste is made of ground sesame seeds. It is a key ingredient of dips hummus and babaganoush. Mixed with a little honey, it is yummy spread on bread. You can find this in the Middle Eastern or Kosher foods section of your grocery store. A common brand is Joyva, and it comes in a 15 oz. tub.)

1/4 cup lemon juice

1 garlic clove, minced

1/4 tsp salt, or to taste

Combine all ingredients together until smooth. Tahini paste should be a little thinner than mustard; if it is too thick, add a few teaspoons of water until the desired consistency is reached.

*Arabic word borrowed from Persian meaning ground meat. It is also transliterated "kufta," "kafta," "kefta," or "kofteh," depending on the dialect.

Sexy Sunday Science

I heard this bit on Weekend Edition Sunday this morning about new studies about the science behind willpower. According to a new book, called Willpower, by Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney, willpower is more than just a state of mind; it's an actual function of the brain. And interestingly enough, it's a function that depends on having enough glucose circulating in your blood stream.

In the interview, Tierney said a couple of interesting things about how willpower works that stood out to me. He described how it's much easier to exert willpower to resist the temptation to eat a cookie if the cookie is out of sight. You're more likely to eat some Oreos if they're sitting in front of you than if they are hidden away in a drawer across the room. When asked about willpower and dieting, Tierney explained that one reason dieting is so hard is because it usually involves taking in less food than one is used to eating, and less food means lower levels of glucose, which means willpower can't function the way it's supposed to. "In order to diet you need willpower," Tierney said, "but in order to have willpower, you need to eat."

These two points of Tierney's speak exactly to principles underlying my whole system of shopping and menu planning. To start with, don't buy things that you know you wouldn't be able to resist if they were in your house. Sometimes I crave ice cream, or something like that, but that craving is pretty easy to resist when I don't have it around. More importantly, though, you need to eat. Eating healthfully doesn't mean eating less. In my case, I've found it actually means eating more, but eating better. More protein, veggies, and fruit. Changing my diet turned out to be surprisingly easy, at least in terms of my enjoyment of food. When I have good food in the fridge that's ready to eat, I don't find myself wishing I had a quesadilla or a slice of pizza instead. The somewhat more challenging part was learning to plan ahead, and to get used to making time to cook things more complicated than burritos or tuna melts. I suspect that this is really the hardest part for most people. It's not the idea of changing what you eat, it's changing how you eat--that is, how you tend to shop during the week and what you usually do about making dinner after a long day--that's hard. Planning makes all the difference.

So how do you come up with a plan? Well, I think you have to let food be the motivating factor. You should think about the meals that you really enjoy, and that you know how to make. (Maybe you don't know how to make many things; that's a problem unto itself that I will need to address in a different post. I always say, however, that if you can read, you can cook. I think that a lot of cooking failures, my own included, are the result of not reading a recipe attentively. Just following the directions carefully is usually all good cooking takes.) Think about it this way, if it helps: if you were going to go out to eat all week, what kind of restaurants would you like to go to? Thai? Italian? Mexican? OK. So, is there anything you get at that kind of place you could make on your own? The answer is often "yes." A simple example is your basic taco, that you can get from any taqueria, which is just a corn tortilla, some spiced meat filling, topped with chopped onion, cilantro, salsa, and lime juice. This is one tasty meal that is about as easy to make at home as it is to go to a restaurant and order it. And you can dress it up or down as much as you want. Anyway. Can you come up with three or four things you wouldn't mind eating throughout the week? Alright, then, you've got a menu.

Once you've got a menu, it's fairly easy to come up with a shopping list to get the things you need. Even if you have a menu that's kind of complicated and disparate, and requires a weird mix of items, don't let this intimidate you. It's far better, I think, to spend more money in one go, knowing where that money is going, than to shop frequently and randomly--buying fruits or vegetables you have no clear plan for that end up going bad, buying bread that languishes until it's moldy or stale, buying staples haphazardly so you end up with dozens of cans of something you use infrequently while you never seem to have enough pasta or rice on hand, etc. Make a shopping list, get everything that is on it, and don't get anything that isn't on it.

Getting motivated to cook is the hardest part. You need to think of cooking as a necessary task that needs to be done regularly, just like laundry, or cleaning the bathroom. And just like laundry and cleaning the bathroom, cooking need not be something you do every day. If you want to make something complicated, make it on your day off, and on the nights when you have no energy for cooking you don't have to do anything but reheat it. In addition, having an arsenal of simple, quick, tasty recipes at your disposal, like the pesto pasta I made the other night, or the succotash, or those tacos I mentioned earlier, is great, because you can throw them together anytime without a lot of effort. The key is to make things in the proper quantity. Make enough of something that you can get some leftovers out of it, but not so much that it will go bad before you finish it. Most of the recipes you'll see on this blog will make about four servings, or enough for a person living alone to feed themselves four times throughout the week. If you live with someone, doubling the recipes for two may cost you a little more money, but the increase in time and effort will be negligible. I actually think shopping for two (assuming that you have two incomes) can be more economical, because buying things in bulk often means you pay less for something per ounce. That's why they call big packages of things "economy-sized."

So back to the willpower thing. A final thing John Tierney said about willpower is that you can build it up and train it, like muscle. With practice, you can develop stronger willpower over time. I have found this to be the case with me and cooking. It used to make me tired to even think about, but now I'm used to it and it doesn't seem like such a chore any more. In fact, I really enjoy it, to the extent that for me it can be a way of procrastinating from working on something else that needs to get done. Well, maybe it's not procrastinating. Maybe it's just my brain craving the food it needs in order to focus on my other work. Right?

Friday Nuttiness

I don't know about you, but I'm glad it's Friday.

I'm not going to get all fancy with this post, which is appropriate, because I didn't get all fancy with dinner, either. Sometimes, though, you can make a really simple meal that seems fancy. Pasta with pesto sauce is one of those things.

The basil pesto you're probably familiar with--garlicky, silky, rich, and bright green--is usually made with pine nuts. Unfortunately, thanks to climate change, there is currently a pine-nut shortage, which means they are craaaaazy expensive. I saw them selling for almost $30 a pound at the store. The good news is you can substitute other nuts. I've seen recipes that substitute cashews, which in my opinion are kind of bland. I decided to go with walnuts. That...walnutty...flavor (I'm at a loss to describe it...if you have a suggestion, I'd love to hear it), I think, meshes well with the other flavors, and you still get that same sense of nuttiness you get from pine nuts.

If you eat at my house, you'll always come away with a sense of nuttiness.

Walnut Basil Pesto

When I threw this together, my measurements were a little fast and loose. These are just my estimates. Play around with the amounts until you get the combination of flavors and consistency you like.

2 cups (neither packed too tightly nor too loosely) fresh basil, chopped

4 large cloves garlic

1/3 cup walnut pieces, lightly toasted

1/3 cup olive oil

1/4 cup grated parmesan or similar hard cheese

1 tsp kosher or sea salt

1 tsp black pepper

Throw it all in a food processor and pulse until it's a paste. Alternatively, if you don't have a food processor, but do have a broad, sharp knife, you can do it the way nonna did back in the old country and rock your blade back and forth over the pile of basil leaves, garlic, and walnuts until it's very finely minced, and then just mix it up with the other ingredients. By the way, simply omit the cheese for vegan goodness.

This should make enough for 4-5 cups pasta. I just tossed it with some angel hair and some cooked chicken. Fast, easy, delicious.

Leftover Love

Here it is, midweek, and I have three tasty things in my fridge to choose from to eat, and all I have to do is reheat them. I had some of the ratatouille for lunch today. Ratatouille, by the way, is one of those things that gets better with age (up to a point, of course...). While I was looking around in the fridge, I couldn't help breaking into the puerco pibil leftovers and stealing a couple chunks of pork magic. I want you to see something:

I know it's a little hard to see, but can you see the orange goo that seems to be suspended in place despite the fact that I'm holding the container almost vertical? Yeah, that's achiote paste...and rendered pig fat. Lots of it. Did I say I made healthy food? Ha!

Well, the truth is, folks, that animal fat is an essential part of making a lot of things taste so darn good. I try to use the leanest cuts of meat I can get away with in most cases, but you just can't produce a pork dish as melt-in-your-mouth as this without a starting with a fatty cut. You could try this, maybe, with something leaner, and it might even be good, but it wouldn't be puerco pibil. Authenticity--and flavor--sometimes trump doing what's best for your arteries.

I'm going to go out on a limb, here. I'm no nutritionist, but I'm going to argue that a decadent fatty meal like this has a place in healthy, nutritious eating. The portion I ate last night (or rather, yesterday afternoon, since I couldn't bear to wait until dinner time), was a reasonable size. It was probably half the size of a serving you would get in a restaurant. I had it with rice, some avocado, and a little salad. And a beer...an extra indulgence, I will admit. But I didn't have chips, I didn't have beans cooked in lard, I didn't have any cheese. I had sensible portion of meat for an adult, rounded out with sensible sides. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. If I had a Big Mac every day for lunch, and then came home and had pot roast and mashed potatoes every night, I would have a problem, and so would anyone else who does that. But I don't. Eating healthfully, I think, means being moderate. That's my thought o' the day.

Puerco Pibil (Robert Rodriguez, Te Amo)

"Not knowing how to cook is like not knowing how to fuck." --Robert Rodriguez

If you don't know who Robert Rodriguez is, he's the director behind the films El Mariachi, Desperado, and, most pertinent to this post, Once Upon A Time In Mexico. In Once Upon A Time In Mexico, Johnny Depp's character Special Agent Sands is obsessed with puerco pibil, a traditional Mexican dish of slow-roasted pork in achiote sauce. I don't know why I decided to give puerco pibil a try; it wasn't because of the movie. However, when looking for a recipe, I came across a video of Rodriguez demonstrating how to cook this dish like in the movie. Being a fancy-pants director and all, the video is very well done, and fun to watch, so I encourage you to check it out.

The main component of puerco pibil, aside from pork butt, is achiote paste, a Mexican spice blend utilizing achiote (aka annatto) seeds, which impart a distinct yellow-orange color to dishes. Not having the items on hand to make traditional achiote paste, I was honestly going to fudge it with some turmeric, but after watching Rodriguez's video I felt I would be doing the spirit of the dish a disservice if I half-assed it. So I made an unscheduled run by Whole Foods on my way home from school and picked up the requisite spices. Now, while I try to avoid unscheduled store runs as much as possible, I defend them where spices are concerned, because spices can make or break a meal and, more importantly, they are an investment. Shelling out for the spices needed to make, say, traditional Indian food, may set you back quite a bit initially, but it will be a long long time before you have to buy them again, and the range of culinary possibilities a well-stocked spice rack allows you pursue is well worth the initial cost. Anyway. About this pork.

Something that comes to mind after eating my puerco pibil is, gosh, it must suck to be a Jew, or a Muslim, or (god forbid) a vegan. They are so missing out on the glory of this pork. Oh my god. This might be the most amazing dish I have ever produced with my own hands. Seriously, it's so good that when I took a piece out of the package to test if it was done, I almost cut myself in my rush to get it on my plate. And...it...was...SO...EASY. You do need a food processor or a blender, though.

I must admit, I did not follow Rodriguez's recipe to the letter. I did not, for instance, throw in a tablespoon of "the finest tequila I could find." I'm not much of a tequila drinker, nor am I a fancy pants big shot movie director, so I opted to not drop the money on a bottle of tequila just to throw a splash into my meat. I did, however, pick up a six pack of hop shock IPA on my unscheduled store run, and a splash of that did just fine.

Here's Rodriguez's recipe with my slight tweakings. I made a much smaller amount than he did. However, I would suggest that you make the full amount of achiote paste and use only as much as you need and freeze the rest for another day.

Achiote paste:

5 Tbsp annatto seeds

1 Tbsp whole black pepper corns

8 whole allspice

2 tsps cumin

1/2 tsp whole cloves

8 cloves garlic

2 Tbsps salt

1/2 cup orange juice

1/2 cup white vinegar

Grind the spices together in a very clean coffee grinder (no coffee residue) until very fine. Add to a food processor with the garlic, salt, orange juice and vinegar, and pulse until smooth. Use 1/5 of this amount of achiote per one pound of meat; freeze any leftover paste.

The pork:

2 lbs pork butt, cut into 1-2 inch cubes

2/5 of the achiote paste made using above method

2 serrano peppers, minced (Rodriguez uses habanero, but that may be a hotness bridge too far. Start out with the milder serranos and work up to the habanero if that's what you're into.)

Juice of two lemons

1 Tbsp tequila, if you have it. I used beer.

tin foil (my substitution for the more-exotic and authentic banana leaves)

Preheat the oven to 325. Combine all the ingredients and mix well to coat. In a roasting pan or baking dish, lay out two or three pieces of foil, rather larger than the size of the dish, and overlap to keep the juices from running out. Pour the pork and all the sauce into the tinfoil and fold it up into a tight package. Roasting time is approximately 1 hour per pound of meat. Serve the hot pork over rice or hot corn tortillas topped with fresh avocado slices and a squeeze of lime. And have a beer on the side. Holy shit, is it good. Make this for all your friends.

Thufferin' Thuccotash

I never really thought about succotash as an actual food people in the 21st century might eat. Its sole association in my mind has been Sylvester, the cartoon cat with the speech impediment. I think somehow I inferred from the depression-era vintage of those cartoons that succotash must be a mushy, nutrient-rich slop only eaten by people in Steinbeck novels who had fallen on hard times. It seems to me I did have a vague idea that it involved lima beans, which did not boost its appeal in my mind. I can't remember the last time I had lima beans, but I can say for sure I do not have fond memories of them. Lima beans, like broccoli or brussels sprouts or spinach (all delicious if prepared well), have a reputation of being a punishment food--you know, the last thing left on your plate, an unappetizing obstacle standing between you and dessert. On their own they are not unpleasant, but I can imagine how they might take on a chalky bland consistency if overcooked. In any case, there's no reason why it should occur to me to make succotash for dinner.

I chanced, however, on a recent post from Smitten Kitchen, a cooking blog I intermittently follow, with a recipe for "summer succotash." It looked amazingly good, and totally easy to prepare. I had some corn in the freezer that I had been thinking about using, and I wanted to make a simple meal out of it that was a little more appropriate for the hot weather we've been having than a chowder of some kind. Succotash was the solution. I made it tonight for dinner and the result was light but filling, and truly yummy. I made some changes from the original recipe; I didn't have some of the specialty items called for, such as sherry vinegar, on hand, but the result was quite pleasing, nevertheless. Because I was concerned that the succotash itself wouldn't be enough for a meal, I cooked up a little pasta to pour it over, pasta-salad style, and that was pretty satisfying, all in all. Here's my somewhat less fancy version of Smitten Kitchen's recipe. I've rounded portions up a bit to make four solid servings; I had to skimp on some things, and ended up with about three.

10 oz bag frozen lima beans, thawed

10 oz bag frozen corn kernels, thawed

1 pint cherry tomatoes, quartered

1 sweet onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, mined

6 slices bacon

Juice of one lime

1 tsp sugar

salt and pepper to taste

1/4 cup packed fresh basil leaves, roughly chopped

Bring a pot of water to boil on the stove and cook the lima beans until just tender (think "al dente"), about five minutes. Drain and rinse in cold water and set aside. Meanwhile, combine the lime juice, sugar, salt and pepper and let sit. In a large skillet, cook the bacon until crisp and set aside to drain on a paper towel. Pour off most of the bacon grease, leaving only about a tablespoon left, and add a splash of olive oil. Cook the onion in the bacon grease until it starts to soften, about a minute. Add the garlic and cook another minute. Add the corn, tomatoes, and lime-juice mixture. Cook just until the tomatoes begin to lose their firmness. Crumble half the bacon and toss it with the lima beans, and add both to the skillet. Cook until just warmed through and remove from the heat. Toss with the fresh basil and garnish with the remaining bacon. If, like me, you are eating by your lonesome, set aside some of the crumbled bacon and basil in a plastic baggie until you get around to eating the leftovers. Can be eaten cold. It would be easy enough to eliminate the bacon, if you are not a bacon eater, and turn this into a vegan dish. I would suggest eating it with some quinoa (a grain high in protein) for a balanced dinner.

Enjoy!

A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood

What a beautiful September day in Tucson! After two days of heavy monsoon rain, the air was fresh and clear this morning, with a steady--dare I say it--crisp breeze. It felt almost fall-like. Let's hope it keeps up. Anyway, it was great weather for riding to Sunflower Market. Let me say a few words about Sunflower. I think I might be in love. If you've never been to one before (as I never had until two weeks ago, when I happened to go with a friend), it's kind of like a Trader Joe's on a bigger scale. Like Whole Foods, it has a lot of natural and organic options, and bulk grains and nuts and things, but like Trader Joe's, you can actually afford the prices and the people who work there are very nice. They had everything I needed (except 1% milk quarts, so I went with skim). The produce section is great, and so is the meat counter. I found fresh andouille sausage, which they never seem to have at Safeway. The cost was pretty close to the $70 range I was predicting; the total bill ended up being $74.23. I suspect that I would have spent at least $100 at Whole Foods for the same items. So here's that list again, with some notes:

1. Bacon (1/2 pound bulk)
2. Pork (3 lbs boneless pork shoulder)
3. Andouille sausage (1/2 pound)
4. Quart of 1% milk (not available in quart size so I got skim)
5. 1/2 quart of lowfat plain yogurt (Nancy's brand)
6. 1/2 gallon of orange juice
7. Frozen lima beans
8. Coffee beans
9. White rice
10. Walnuts
11. Peanut butter
12. 1 28-oz can crushed tomatoes
13. 2 15-oz cans chickpeas
14. 2 15-oz cans red beans
15. Fresh fruit (2 6-oz cartons of raspberries and a pound of pluots)
16. Lemons (3 for $1)
17. Limes (3 for $1)
18. Cherry tomatoes (1 pint)
19. Avocados (3)
20. Bell peppers (3 green)
21. Serrano peppers (2)
22. Celery
23. Fresh basil
24. Salad greens (red-leaf lettuce head)
25. Whole-wheat pita bread
26. Freezer bags

So here's what I'm going to do with this stuff. As I mentioned previously, I plan my menu out for two weeks. To be more specific, I plan for 28 meals: 14 dinners and 14 lunches. (Breakfast isn't included because it often doesn't involve cooking. On most school mornings when I'm pressed for time I just have a bowl of oatmeal of a smoothie or something.) I allow for about four meals eaten outside the house in the course of two weeks (one dinner + one lunch out/week), which means I need to shoot for 24 meals. Because I am not about to make 24 separate meals, I come up with seven or eight recipes yielding 3-4 servings each (or more if it's freezable) that complement each other in terms of the ingredients required, the amount of prep time required, and the variety of flavors, to stick to and stretch out over the two weeks. Usually I'll have a couple things that are a bit heavier on meat and other things that are mostly vegetarian, some things that are more labor intensive and some that are quick and easy. I also try to incorporate at least one new recipe into the mix. It's not unusual for me to end up with more of one thing or less of another than I anticipated, but it works surprisingly well. Finally, if I do things right, I'll end up with at least one "transitional" recipe that will get me through the end of the two weeks into the next shopping cycle.

So my menu items for the week are as follows. Recipes that are new to me are italicized; transitional recipes are in green:

Tuna salad pita sandwich x 1

Ratatouille with chicken and rice x 4 (possible extra for freezing)

Puerco pibil and rice x 4 (adapted from Robert Rodriguez; possible extra for freezing)

Summer succotash with bacon x 3 (adapted from Smitten Kitchen)

Red beans and rice with andouille sausage x 4

Angelhair pasta with walnut pesto and chicken x 4 (hopefully extra pesto for freezing)

Kofta (Middle Eastern spiced meatballs) and rice x 2

Channa Masala (chickpea-tomato curry) x 2

Et voila! 24 dishes from 8 recipes, all of which function as complete meals within themselves including vegetable, protein, and a starch.

Since ratatouille is going to be my dinner tonight, let's end with my ratatouille recipe. Ratatouille is a highly-spiced vegetable stew with a tomato base traditional to French and North African cuisine. It's a good choice for a weekend meal because, though it is not difficult, it takes a bit longer to prepare. The cooked vegetables freeze well, so this is also a good recipe to double, so that you can freeze half and turn it into an easy meal sometime in the future. Ratatouille pairs well with rice, but could also be served with some rustic bread or couscous, or even a chunky pasta like rigatoni. Because ratatouille is pretty hearty, I prefer to have chicken with it instead red meat, but I imagine it would be tasty with beef or lamb kebabs. To turn it into a balanced vegetarian meal, add a can of drained chickpeas to the pot just before serving.

Because I don't have a grill, I plan to saute my chicken. If this is something you're unfamiliar with, it's quite easy. It works best if you pound the chicken breast first so that it's of an even thickness. You don't want a thick part staying pink inside. Place the chicken breast in a freezer bag or wrap well with saran wrap (maybe a couple of layers--there's nothing grosser than having pulverized bits of raw chicken flying at you). Beat the shit out of it until it's about a quarter inch thick. You can use a mallet, or if, like me, you don't have one, a rolling pin or the bottom of a small sauce pan will do. Heat a little olive oil in your skillet. Rub your chicken breast with a little olive oil and a spice rub of equal parts cumin, paprika, cinnamon, salt and pepper (this is something you can mix a quantity of and have lying around so you don't have to measure the spices out every time). Place the breast in the skillet and cook about five minutes on each side. That's how you saute a chicken breast. Easy. On to the ratatouille:

You will need:

Olive oil

1 yellow onion, sliced in thin half-moon slices

4 garlic cloves, minced

1 medium eggplant*, peeled and cubed

1 zucchini, cubed

1 yellow (summer) squash, cubed

2 cups crushed tomatoes and juice (about half a 28-oz can)

(Optional: 1/4 cup pitted green or kalamata olives)

zest and juice of 1 lemon

1/2 tsp ground coriander

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

1/4 tsp ground cloves

salt and pepper to taste

In a deep skillet, heat about a tablespoon of olive oil over medium high heat. When the oil shimmers, add the onion and garlic and cook, stirring constantly, until the onion begins to soften. Add the eggplant and cook until the eggplant softens, stirring constantly. This is important, because eggplant is a squirrelly vegetable. It can suck up oil like a sponge, with the result that half your eggplant chunks are oily and the other half are bitter and dry. Stirring will ensure that it is evenly coated with oil. Once the eggplant is soft, add the remaining ingredients and, stirring, bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and simmer, covered, for 1/2 an hour to an hour, until the vegetables are all soft and the sauce has thickened. Adjust seasoning to taste and serve. Yields 4 servings.

*You may want to salt your eggplant cubes before using them. Salting draws moisture out of the flesh and makes it less bitter and easier to cook. Toss the eggplant with salt and let sit in a colander for an hour. Rinse the pieces well and squeeze them in your hand to expel moisture. Pat dry with paper towels or a clean dish towel. You can do this with squash, too.

And On Sunday She Shopped

I've worked out a system for grocery shopping and menu planning, taking my various restrictions into account (schedule, money, distance to store and mode of conveyance), that seems to be working pretty well for me. The system mostly arose out of the circumstance that getting to a reasonable grocery store* is a giant pain in my ass. I've been schlepping down to a Safeway about 3 miles from where I live. (I recently discovered a Sunflower Market, however, that is somewhat closer to me, and safely accessible by bike. I did my last grocery run there and was really pleased with the overall experience.) I realize that may not seem that far, but bear in mind that: 1) I live in a place where the temperature routinely rises above 90 degrees by midday for much of the year, 2) I must negotiate fitting all my groceries in bike baskets and a backpack, which makes for cumbersome riding, and 3) I must brave bike lanes on some pretty busy streets. The whole process of getting there, shopping, getting home and unpacking can take upwards of two hours, on top of which it requires a good deal more cleverness and physical exertion than hopping in one's car. So my menu planning has become an exercise in uber-efficiency; a not-unenjoyable puzzle, the endgame of which is a schedule of meals, requiring a number of items within the limits of what I can reasonably afford/carry that will sustain me healthfully while not boring my palate for two weeks. In short, I must come up with a way to only go to the store once every two weeks.

My list of ingredients and cooking-related groceries for tomorrow's excursion is as follows:

1. Bacon
2. Pork
3. Andouille sausage
4. Quart of 1% milk
5. 1/2 quart of lowfat plain yogurt
6. 1/2 gallon of orange juice
7. Frozen lima beans
8. Coffee beans
9. White rice
10. Walnuts
11. Peanut butter
12. 1 28-oz can crushed tomatoes
13. 2 15-oz cans chickpeas
14. 2 15-oz cans red beans
15. Fresh fruit (I am usually open-ended about fruit and will buy what's in season/what looks good)
16. Lemons
17. Limes
18. Cherry tomatoes
19. Avocados
20. Bell peppers
21. Serrano peppers
22. Celery
23. Fresh basil
24. Salad greens
25. Whole-wheat pita bread
26. Freezer bags

26 items for two weeks of eating; not too bad, I don't think. Notice how I've grouped things that are kind of alike--cans with cans, etc. This makes the process of shopping quicker and easier, so I'm not zig-zagging back and forth across the store. I will update you later about my plan for all these particular items, what if anything I had to cut from the list, how much it ended up setting me back (I'm guessing $70), and any other mishaps or items of note that may occur along the way. But for now I am off to bed. Goodnight, internet.

*On a side note, I live within walking distance of a Whole Foods. This is odd, because the surrounding neighborhood is mostly working class, and let's face it, Whole Foods is pretty mockably boojy. I have shopped there occasionally, and, I don't know, maybe it's this location, but it always seems to be poorly stocked and poorly staffed. The prices are outrageous, for reasons that are nebulous to me. I know they promote themselves as some kind of pro-sustainability, more-ethical-than-thou alternative to a regular grocery store, but I'm not sure I buy it (literally). This piece from Slate and this open letter from Michael Pollan to Whole Foods' CEO John Mackey partially inform my view. For the record, notionally, I am down with sustainable agriculture and the whole "locavore" movement and organic produce and fair trade and all of that. Practically, I think there's a long way to go with all that. I could (and at some point probably will) write about my thoughts on the topic at length, but I'm not going to do that here and now. I would love all my food to be squeaky clean, ethically and otherwise, but when we come right down to it, I'm a shopping pragmatist. When it's reasonable for me to buy, say, cruelty-free eggs, organic milk, local produce, etc, I generally do it, even if it costs more. There are several "natural" products I prefer to the generic brands, which I buy regularly. Laura Scudder's peanut butter, for instance, or Brown Cow yogurt. But my biggest motivator as a shopper is not being wasteful, and I do that by shopping for things that I can afford and that I know for sure I will eat and not end up throwing away. If that means buying the non-organic tomatoes from Mexico at $1.99 a pound instead of the local organic heirloom tomatoes at $5.99 a pound, I can live with that. By the way, although I wouldn't consider myself a Michael Pollan disciple or zealot or anything, an awful lot of what he says about food and food culture in America makes sense to me. Take a look at his work, if you're not familiar with it.