Cooking Marathon Mondays

So this semester I have Mondays off (yay!), so I try to plan my menu in such a way that I can do my more labor intensive cooking on Monday, before my school week starts. I'm at the beginning of a new menu cycle, and I spent a lot of time in the kitchen today, absorbed in preparing broccoli-potato soup and sausage cassoulet. I had to hang around the apartment anyway, because the annual termite inspection guy was going to show up. He surveyed my (luckily clean and tidy) apartment for all of two minutes with a flashlight. No termites. That's heartening news of course, but as I am going to be moving soon, I wasn't overly concerned with the termite population. As to the moving soon, more about that in a future post.

First I need to rate the recipes from my last menu.

Miso Shrimp and Rice:

This was something I threw together with things I had on hand, and it was OK, but doesn't merit a recipe.

Convenience: 5

Deliciousness: 3

Value: 4

Left-over worthiness: 4

Good for you-ness: 4

Roasted Potatoes in Romesco Sauce:

I adapted this recipe from Smitten Kitchen, and I must admit I was a bit in over my head here. The Romesco sauce was complicated but ultimately amazing; the potatoes a hot mess. Prepared properly, the deliciousness quotient would certainly be more on this one.

Convenience: 2

Deliciousness: 3.5

Value: 3

Left-over worthiness: 3

Good for you-ness: 2

Pork Carnitas Tacos:

Convenience: 2

Deliciousness: 5

Value: 3

Left-over worthiness: 4

Good for you-ness: 2

Spinach and Mushroom Frittata:

Convenience: 5

Deliciousness: 4

Value: 4

Left-over worthiness: 4

Good for you-ness: 3

Baked Polenta with Mushrooms:

Convenience: 4

Deliciousness: 4

Value: 5

Left-over worthiness: 5

Good for you-ness: 3

Skillet Black Beans and Potatoes:

Now, I will probably post the recipe for this eventually, because the first time I made it I was so pleased with the results. It was one of those meals that I was sad about when there wasn't any left. This time around I made it with presoaked as opposed to canned black beans, and I really didn't prepare the beans that well. The result was disappointing. However, I know the potential is there.

Convenience: 3.5

Deliciousness: 4

Value: 5

Left-over worthiness: 4

Good for you-ness: 5

Patchwork Pasta (Penne with Chicken and Spinach):

This reheats pretty well; the only negative is the spinach--pleasantly wilted on the first go--is listless and sad on subsequent re-heatings. I added a little bit of fresh spinach to my leftovers to brighten it a bit.

Convenience: 4

Deliciousness: 5

Value: 4

Left-over worthiness: 4

Good for you-ness: 4

Here's my menu for the next two weeks. I am incorporating made-from-scratch recipes with frozen leftovers, in an effort to clean out my freezer as much as possible pre-moving day:

Broccoli-Potato Soup x 4

Sausage Cassoulet x 4

Achiote Chicken and Rice (made with frozen achiote paste from Puerco Pibil) x 4

Ethiopian-style Yellow Split Peas (repurposing frozen Yellow Split Pea and Sweet Potato Soup) x 2

Broccoli and Sausage Strata x 4

Onion Galette x 4

Cheesy Polenta with Roasted Root Vegetables x 4

Black Bean and Sweet Potato Enchiladas (premade, frozen) x 2

As I mentioned above, my day was mostly taken up in the preparation of two rather labor intensive but satisfying culinary endeavors: Broccoli-Potato Soup and Sausage Cassoulet. Here are recipes for both.

This soup is at once light and healthy as well as pleasingly rich and creamy, thanks to pureeing, without the addition of any milk or cream. It's also quite easy to prepare, provided you have a food processor or immersion blender. It can be made vegetarian or vegan by subbing vegetable broth for the chicken broth, olive oil for the butter, and omitting the Parmesan cheese. A tasty vegan alternative to the cheese might be a topping of crushed toasted almonds or some kind of nut cheese.

Broccoli-Potato Soup

2 cups broccoli stems, peeled and diced into ½ inch chunks

2 cups red potato, peeled and diced into ½ inch chunks

2 Tbsps butter

1 onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 cups chicken broth

3 cups water

¼ cup almonds, toasted and ground in a food processor or spice grinder

2 cups broccoli florets, finely chopped

½ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese, divided in half

Salt and pepper to taste

Melt the butter in a large pot and sauté the garlic and onion about five minutes. Add the potatoes, broccoli stems, chicken broth, water, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat; simmer about ten minutes, or until the broccoli and potatoes are “crisp tender”; that is, tender but not mushy. Using an immersion blender, or in batches in a food processor, puree the soup to your preferred thickness. Stir in the broccoli florets, almonds, and half of the Parmesan cheese and simmer for five more minutes. Serve garnished with remaining Parmesan. Four servings.

If you're unfamiliar with cassoulet, it's kind of a cross between a stew and a casserole. It's a hearty French peasant dish made with white beans and some kind of fatty meat (often a combination of duck and sausage). I adapted this recipe from Real Simple. This humble version, which takes advantage of inexpensive winter root vegetables, carrot and parsnips, is an easier take on the more complicated all-day-long version. Still, it's quite satisfying. It's very flavorful, perfect for a cold winter's day, and preparing it will make you feel like Julia Child.

Sausage Cassoulet

2 large sausage links, casings removed (I used Polish, but Italian would be fine, too)

3 cups prepared white beans, drained (about 1 and 1/2 cans)

2 medium carrots, peeled and diced

2 medium parsnips, peeled and diced

1 red onion, diced

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 cup chicken broth

1/2 cup crushed tomato

1 tsp dried thyme

Dash of Cayenne pepper

Salt and black pepper to taste

1 cup buttered breadcrumbs (I used sourdough, which I recommend)

In a Dutch oven or lidded, range-top safe casserole dish, brown the sausage over medium heat, breaking it up with a spoon. When the sausage is browned, drain off excess fat. Add all remaining ingredients except breadcrumbs to the pot. Stir well to combine. If needed, add more chicken stock and/or tomato to the pot to keep the vegetables moist. Simmer covered until the carrots and parsnips are tender, at least 30 minutes. While the pot is simmering, preheat the oven to 400 degrees. When the vegetables are tender, top with the butter breadcrumbs and bake uncovered for 10-15 minutes, until the breadcrumbs are toasted. 4 servings.

As Julia Child would say, bon appetit!

A Pasta For All Seasons

Tuesday is my long day on campus this semester, and this time of year it's already dark by the time I get out of class, and I'm more than ready for dinner. Riding my bike home in the dark and the cold makes me crave comfort food. Thus, the perfect meal for my Tuesday is something that will come together quickly and easily and appeal to my comfort-food criteria. A simple pasta dish is often the answer.

The great thing about pasta is that it is incredibly versatile. You don't always have to go traditional; it's an ideal canvas for experimenting with unlikely combinations of flavors, or bringing together that random assortment of things left in the fridge toward the end of grocery cycle. The meal I made tonight is just one of those things I threw together with some pantry staples and odds and ends I happened to have on hand. Because I suppose it ought to have a name, I call it patchwork pasta. Though it's not traditional at all, the flavors echo traditional Italian, and it's hearty and familiar enough to fit the comfort food bill. Yet, it's fairly light and relatively healthy. It tastes fresh and light in a way that suggests summer, but because it's made from items that are available year round, it's suitable for any time of the year.

The tangy, salty, and spicy and subtly sweet flavors of this sauce would pair equally well with shrimp or a firm-fleshed fish like tuna. The sauce is substantial enough and the flavor bold enough to hold its own without meat; to make this vegan, omit the butter and parmesan and replace the meat with a can of garbanzo or white beans, or just let the flavors do their thing.

Patchwork Pasta

1/2 pound penne pasta (1/2 a package)

1 large boneless skinless chicken breast, cut into ½ inch cubes

3 oz baby spinach, sliced (baby spinach often comes in 6 oz bags; use half a bag)

½ cup tomato paste

2 Tbsps almonds, chopped

4 garlic cloves, minced

10 green olives, sliced

1/2 cup white wine

Juice of 1/2 a lemon

1 Tbsp butter

1 Tbsp olive oil

2 tsps – 1 Tbsp Crushed red pepper

Coarse salt to taste

Fresh grated Parmesan to garnish

Bring a large pot of salted water to a rolling boil. Add pasta and cook until just al dente. Drain and rinse with cold water and set aside. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a large skillet over medium high heat, and add the olive oil. Add the chicken and allow to brown on all sides. Add the almonds while chicken is browning. Remove chicken and almonds from the skillet and set aside. Add the garlic and crushed red pepper to the skillet and cook until garlic starts to turn golden. Pour in the wine and lemon juice, followed by the tomato paste and salt. Stir well to combine. When it starts to bubble, add the olives and spinach to the pan. Once the spinach cooks down a bit, return the chicken to the pan and toss. Add the pasta to the skillet and toss until it is well coated with the sauce and heated through. Serve topped with a generous sprinkling of Parmesan cheese. Four servings

The Sublime and the Beautiful in the Kitchen

I've been reading Burke for my Romanticism class, and in case you were unaware, the Sublime is something that is obscure and inspires terror. Rather like a daunting recipe you have never tried before. The Beautiful, meanwhile, is small, round, pleasantly varied in texture, and non-threatening. Like a frittata.

My current menu is a schizo mix of ambitious grand project meals and comfortable "I'd rather not cook tonight but I should" fallbacks. It's always good to have a little bit of both. The benefits of the ambitious meals are that, if you pull them off you have the satisfaction of being really impressed with your intrepidness and skill in the kitchen, and you also have a new thing that you now know how to make. The benefits of the fallbacks are that they are familiar and thus easy, and you know that although they may not blow your mind, they will always be good.

This is my menu:

Miso shrimp with rice x 3

Roasted potatoes in Romesco sauce x 4

Pork carnitas tacos x 3

Spinach and mushroom frittata x 4

Baked polenta and mushrooms x 4

Skillet black beans and potatoes x 4

Penne with chicken and spinach x 4

I present you now with recipes for one grand project (that I pulled off handily) and one fallback that never fails to please. The first is pork carnitas, a time-consuming but deceptively simple and maximally delicious way to prepare an inexpensive cut of pork. I reserve the right to apply my name to this recipe, because I made some changes to recipes I found online that I feel make these carnitas distinctive yet authentically Mexican in flavor.

Emily's Pork Carnitas Tacos

1 lb pork butt (aka pork shoulder), cut into 2” cubes

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 serrano pepper, minced

1 cup orange juice

1 splash of beer (preferably not a dark beer)

½ tsp cinnamon

½ tsp cumin

½ tsp black pepper

1 tsp coarse salt

For the tacos:

Corn tortillas (I use Alejandro's corn gorditas--made here in Tucson)

Diced white onion, radish, avocado, cilantro and lime wedges for garnish

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Combine the spices in a bowl. Heat some olive oil in the bottom of a cast iron baking dish, or skillet with a lid, over medium-high heat. Toss the pork in the spices until well coated and braise in batches. Remove the braised pork to a plate. Add the orange juice, beer, garlic and serrano to the dish and return the meat to the dish. Add enough water to just cover the meat. When the liquid reaches the simmering point, remove from the heat and place in the oven. Cook covered for three hours, giving the meat a stir every ½ hour to hour. When the pork is done, move the meat to a dish to cool, reserving the cooking juices. While the pork cools, prep the taco garnish and set aside. When the pork is cool, shred it with your fingers. It should shred quite easily. Heat some of the reserved cooking liquid in a skillet over medium high heat until it simmers. Add enough shredded pork to cover the bottom of the pan and let it cook until it begins to crisp. Let it crisp on both sides. Scoop a little of the pork onto warm corn tortillas and serve topped with the garnish, a fresh squeeze of lime, and a pinch of salt. Yields 8 small tacos.

The second recipe is a simple frittata, variations upon which I make a lot because they are quick, tasty, light, and easily adaptable to whatever ingredients you may have on hand. If you're not familiar with frittata, it's kind of like a quiche without the crust--and while it might seem tricky, with a little practice it's quite easy. This is one of those great dishes that works equally well as dinner or breakfast. Although I've thrown every vegetable imaginable into frittatas before, this minimalist interpretation is one of my favorites.

Spinach and Mushroom Frittata

6 eggs

1/2 cup milk

1 cup sliced mushrooms (I used a combination of white and baby bellas)

2 cups sliced baby spinach

1/4 cup grated cheese + 2 Tbsps Parmesan (I used white cheddar this time, but almost any cheese will do. I've used Swiss, jack, smoked gouda, feta, even bleu in the past)

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp black pepper

1/4 tsp paprika

1/4 tsp nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In an oven-safe non-stick skillet (about 12" in diameter), heat about 1 Tbsp olive oil over medium heat. Add the mushrooms and allow them to saute until they just start giving of their liquid. While they cook, beat the eggs with the milk and stir in the grated cheese, salt, pepper, and paprika. Add the spinach to the skillet, and cook until it just starts to wilt. Pour the egg mixture into the skillet, give it a gentle stir, and sprinkle the top with parmesan and nutmeg. Taking care that the flame is not too high (you don't want to make the bottom of the frittata rubbery), cook the frittata just until the edges start to set. When you can gently lift the edge away from the pan with a rubber spatula, but the center is still liquid, transfer the skillet to the oven and bake uncovered for 10-15 minutes, or just until it puffs up and the center is set. You can check by jiggling the pan. If the center jiggles, it needs more time. Once it is done, take it out of the oven and let it cool for at least a minute before removing from the pan. If you are adventurous and dextrous, you can remove it from the pan by placing a plate on top and quickly flipping it. If you are like me and prone to clumsiness, use a rubber spatula to gently loosen the frittata from the bottom of the pan and carefully slide it onto a cutting board. Cut into four wedges. Delicious served with a side of pears and walnuts with a little balsamic vinegar.

Culinary Adventures: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

This is a long post, since I haven't done this for a while, but just so you know there is a recipe at the end of it.

Well, I am now into another two-week recipe rotation. I have to say that since I've been getting back into the swing of the two-week menu planning, I've had some hiccups. I've had some quantity problems, and tried some recipes that really just didn't turn out that well, and perhaps most frustratingly I've been struggling with coming up with new things to try.

I've been reading Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, the very basic thesis of which is "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." Mostly this book is about the disturbing rise of "nutritionism" in America. In a nutshell, nutritionism is what Pollan calls the gradual cultural shift from an emphasis on whole foods to foods as collections of nutrients (some healthful, some harmful) that has led to the mass marketing and production of "imitation foods," or foods that have been heavily processed or in other ways altered or modified to fit the nutritional science claims of the moment. These "foods" are promoted as being healthier than the thing in its stripped down, natural state, but often turn out to be worse for you. Margarine vs. butter is a classic example. All this has created a generation of Americans that is unhealthier than the previous one and confused about food, as well as a food industry that is environmentally harmful and economically nonviable.

I didn't really need to be told any of this (although it is interesting), since I have been in the habit of ignoring the dubious claims on food packaging and avoiding processed foods altogether for, well, ever. But what Pollan's book has made me think more about is not processed foods, but produce. I'm out of touch with what produce is in season when. I guess I know that there is summer squash and winter squash and the seasonal correlations there are obvious. I know that asparagus is an early spring thing. The best tomatoes are available in summer. Yet, we can get these things year round...or at least we can get a version of these things year round that has been tweaked and manipulated to meet our unrealistic demands. I don't mean to sound paranoid or project that I am skeptical of science. Science is neutral. It's our unnatural demand that drives bad science. I mean, it bothers me that because we crave and expect access to fresh tomatoes year round, this is how industry meets that need. I mean, that ain't right.

So I've been trying to think seasonally about the vegetables I consume, and planning menus accordingly, but I'm food ignorant in this area and I don't know what's in season. I mean, sometimes you know because there's a shitload of something or other at the store, and it's on sale. But I want to use seasonal food creatively, while still managing to inject variety into my diet. Anyway, all of this is just a really long way of saying that I'm having a hard time meeting that criteria in satisfying ways. I'm sweet-potatoed out for a good long while. I'm approaching my limit with regular potatoes, and winter squash just isn't sounding appealing to me. I can only take so much cabbage/carrots/cauliflower. Look's like I'll be eating a lot of canned and frozen veggies for the next few months.

My last rotation came to an end Friday-ish, and I have yet to rate those recipes, so I'll just go ahead and do that now. As the title of this post suggests, there were some successes, and some relative failures as well.

1. Cauliflower-chickpea ragout (win!)

This recipe will become a standard of mine. Success in all categories.

Convenience: 4

Deliciousness: 4.5

Value: 4

Left-over worthiness: 5

Good for you-ness: 5

2. Pork with braised cabbage and onions (eh...)

After my success with slow-cooked pork back in September, I was really hoping for more here. This meal was good, like something mom used to make, but it didn't blow my mind.

Convenience: 3

Deliciousness: 3

Value: 4

Left-over worthiness: 3

Good for you-ness: 3

3. Miso soup with tofu and soba noodles (mistake)

I bought some yellow miso a while back, thinking we used to do such great things with it at Avanti. I figured I ought, at the very least, to make some miso soup with it, but I wanted it to be substantial enough to work as a full meal. The result was both bland and ridiculously high in sodium. Also, I managed to make way more of it than I wanted or needed. I really try to not throw things out, but I threw a lot of this out.

Convenience: 3

Deliciousness: 2

Value: 3

Left-over worthiness: 2 (the soba noodles get bloated, the veggies ever blander and soggier)

Good for you-ness: 3 (on account of the high salt content)

4. Tuscan white beans and shrimp (win!)

As I noted in my post about this meal, I was skeptical about this combination of elements. This recipe exceeded all my expectations and is going to be in regular rotation for me.

Convenience: 4

Deliciousness: 5

Value: 4 (shrimp are pricey, but only if you eat more than you should. Dry beans are dirt cheap)

Left-over worthiness: 4 (surprisingly durable for a shrimp dish)

Good for you-ness: 4

5. Potato gnocchi with spinach walnut pesto (not a full-scale disaster)

I was a bit in over my head with this one. I love gnocchi, but they are a bitch to make, as it turns out. I had never tried it before, and I couldn't find any recipes that seemed consistent. I did find a lot of warnings about all the things that could go wrong. For a first effort, I think these weren't horrible. It just didn't turn out at all like I had hoped.

Convenience: 2

Deliciousness: 2.5 (OK, so these didn't taste bad. It's just that it was not as expected.)

Value: 3

Left-over worthiness: 3 (these actually held up better than I thought, and were better leftover)

Good for you-ness: 2.5

6. Spiced carrot and lentil soup (the ugly)

This seemed like a winning winter combo to me: lovely vitamin-packed carrots, earthy protein-rich lentils. I found this vaguely Indian inspired recipe that seemed to fit the bill. If you look at the picture, you can see how pretty and appetizing it looks. Not so with mine. Mine was not such a pleasing, smooth yellow-orange...the color and texture of my soup could only be described as "baby vomit." It did taste OK, but in this instance having an immersion blender, instead of pureeing in messy batches in the food processor would have made all the difference.

Convenience: 3 (would have been a 4 with immersion blender)

Deliciousness: 3.5

Value: 5

Left-over worthiness: 4 (would probably freeze well)

Good for you-ness: 5

7. Cornmeal breaded oven fried chicken with mayo-less slaw (win!)

Given my above failures, I wasn't sure how this would go. It turned out great, and has the added benefit of being both tastier and healthier than the fast food version.

Convenience: 4

Deliciousness: 5

Value: 3.5

Left-over worthiness: 4 (I was afraid the breading would get soggy on the leftovers, but another benefit of the cornmeal breading is that this didn't seem to happen. I packed it carefully, however.)

Good for you-ness: 3

I will leave you with the recipes for my most recent success. I am very proud of the slaw, by the way, because I came up with it all on my own. I really want to try this with some Japanese noodles as a light meal on its own sometime. I think the sweet and sour flavors would combine really well with cold noodles.

Cornmeal Breaded Oven Fried Chicken

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, trimmed of excess fat and cut into 2-inch chunks

1/2 cup plain low fat yogurt

1/2 cup milk

(or, you could sub 1 cup low fat buttermilk. I often use this half-and-half mix of plain yogurt and regular milk as a sub for buttermilk in recipes that call for it)

1/2 cup cornmeal

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp black pepper

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

1 1/2 Tbsps vegetable oil

In a sturdy ziplock, marinate the chicken in the yogurt and milk for at least 2 hours and up to 24 hours.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. In a pie pan (or whatever works for you) combine the cornmeal and spices. Remove the chicken from the bag, shaking off excess liquid, and toss one piece at a time in the cornmeal mixture until evenly coated. Place the chicken pieces on a baking sheet brushed with half the oil. Brush the remaining oil over the chicken pieces so they brown well. Bake for about twenty minutes, or until they are golden brown (if you feel like they aren't browning the way you'd like, you might want to flip the pieces over midway through the baking time). Serve with a little dijon mustard mixed with honey for dipping. 4 servings

Mayo-less cabbage and jicama slaw

1/2 head of green cabbage, sliced into very thin strips

1 small red onion, thinly sliced

1 apple ( I used Gala), cut into matchsticks

1 small jicama root (about the size of the onion), peeled and cut into matchsticks

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp black pepper

1/2-1 tsp powdered ginger

2 Tbsps white vinegar

1 Tbsp white sugar

Place all the ingredients in a large tupperware and shake well to combine. Let stand for at least 1/2 hour to let the sugar dissolve and the onion marinate a bit. Serve sprinkled with toasted sesame seeds and green onions.

Still Divorced, Still Sexy

Happy New Year! As you may have noticed, I have not updated this blog in quite some time. The past few months have been especially hectic for the Sexy Divorcee, and life intervened, as it sometimes does. In a future post, I may go into that, but we'll see. The important thing for me vis-a-vis this blog is just to get posting again. I will probably be blogging less often, but as I get readjusted to life back in my own little apartment I do want to get back into the habit of posting not only recipes but also my meal plans and shopping lists. I went grocery shopping today--when I got home yesterday there were only condiments, a partial tub of light cream cheese, and (THANK GOD!!) enough coffee beans for my morning French press--so I will update you with shopping list and meal plan probably this weekend. So here's a quick post for the new year.

One of my dearest friends ever, who blogs at Still Life and who is way more motivated than me and a more ambitious cook than I am, sent me a little chapbook-style cookbook as a "Valentine's" present (I think it came in March or maybe April) that she had compiled of some of her favorite recipes, some of which were totally original. There are some wonderful things in this book, and I love it a lot. It's one of the nicest presents I think I've ever gotten. But...I really haven't made very many of the recipes in it. But I was looking at her recipe for Aubergine-Chickpea ragout, and thought, hm. That's the perfect thing to get me back on track with healthy cooking and eating after the holidays. Of course, being me, I tweaked it. In fact, it bears very little resemblance to the original, except for the presence of chickpeas and tomato. It doesn't even have the eggplant...er, aubergine. Still, I was pretty happy with the result, which kind of has a North African vibe (in my imagination, anyway), and I still must credit my friend for being the inspiration.

This recipe is totally vegan, but I think it would probably be awesome with some chunks of lamb in it, or as an accompaniment to grilled chicken or lamb.

Cauliflower-Chickpea Ragout

½ head of cauliflower, cut into bite-sized chunks

1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed

1 large carrot, diced

1 small red onion, diced

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 cup crushed tomato (from can…freeze the leftovers)

2 whole cloves

¼ tsp each ground (adjust blend to taste):

cinnamon

paprika

cumin

coriander

cardamom

zest of 1 lemon + 1 tbsp lemon juice

salt to taste

In a good-sized pan, heat a swirl of olive oil over medium heat. When it shimmers, add garlic. Saute, stirring constantly, for about 30 seconds and then add onion. When the onion begins to soften, add the spice mixture and stir into the onion. Add half the tomato and the carrot and cauliflower. Stir until the vegetables are well coated with the tomato. Add the remaining tomato (and a little water if necessary), lemon juice, and salt and cook over low heat, covered, for 20 minutes or until vegetables are desired tenderness. When the vegetables are cooked, add the lemon zest and chickpeas and cook until warmed through. Serve over rice. 4 servings.

Anyway, I hope everyone had a nice holiday. Let's hope we're all still here a year from now, and that the world does not end, Mayan calendar or no Mayan calendar.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!