on the subject of another dinner

juice made of apples, carrots, cucumber, ginger.
blue brie
baguette.

not shown: cherries. lime flavored olive oil.

I'm Still Here (Sunday Dinner)

Taking a break from paper world, I finally took a minute to cook up the stuff I got at the AMAZING Inwood farmer's market (more on that later). I like to do a Sunday night dinner that is a little awesome since the rest of the week is so insane. Here we go:
-roasted fingerling potatoes
-sauteed collards
-roasted spaghetti squash with vars spices
-baked soy-mustard crusted tofu

P.S. HAZ! (thx Ben!)

Pesto is the answer

I am revealing to you my trump card for every potluck or backyard bbq. Roasted russet potatoes and haricots verts with pesto. Usually I would put this over watercress. Sometimes I add capers but the pesto was a little salty this time. Why I am making it in the middle of the week on a school night when I have 42309324 pages of reading to do for tomorrow I am not sure except that it is difficult to concentrate with basil aging in the vegetable bin.

¡Chili con huevos!

Vegetarian chili topped with spinach, cheddar cheese, and a poached egg. Kind of like The Soup but it's chili instead of soup. I'm tempted to say that my chili recipe is TOP SECRET but I already gave it to Laura and it's here for anyone to see. I make it with NO TOMATOES BECAUSE I HATE THEM. Also, I can not stress enough how much of a difference bulgur wheat makes to a vegetarian chili. Much meatier. Or you could just put in meat.

Polenta with parmesan, crimini mushrooms, white beans, olives, and broccoli rabe

Here I have some repurposed leftovers. I had the polenta and BR in the fridge from the previous night, so I thought I'd dress them up for lunch. The polenta was made by boiling and constantly stirring coarse cornmeal. I let it set up in a shallow round dish, then cut into triangles. I fried the leftover triangles on both sides in a hot pan, then garnished with some fresh parmesan cheese.

In the same pan, I threw in some mushrooms, chopped oil cured black olives, the leftover rabe (which had been sauteed with lemon juice), and some white beans, which I drizzled with olive oil and lots of black pepper.

Tent Cooking

I recently visited one of my all time fave cooking partners and good buddy, Emily Z, in her unbelievable tent in Vermont. Let me tell you, the VT tent life is pretty amazing. Fresh food and herbs from the garden, mountain views, swimming holes, outdoor peeing.

We made a simple dinner of lacinato kale and tofu with sage-parsley butter on toast over her camp stove.


We picked the herbs straight from the garden, minced and incorporated into the butter. Check out the toasting mechanism.

Component meal: bbq tofu, fiddle head ferns, kale, mashed yams

What I like to call a component meal is basically a bunch of things in little homogeneous piles on a plate. What I did here was some sauteed kale, steamed fiddleheads, bbq tofu, and mashed yams (not pictured) -- oh sorry. Sweet potoatoes!

I don't know why bbq tofu is so awesome. I used the primo sauce in my mom's fridge (living at home fridge access benefit) called Hoboken Eddies. Some of you should know what I'm talking about. Lately I have been really into doing triangles instead of cubes for tofu. Don't ask me why. I think it might just be really satisfying to do them this way. First, cut a grid in all directions so that you have little rectangular prisms, still composed in the original tofu block form. Then cut diagonally through the stacks in one direction, going through the corners of each square-face.

Tofu gets seared in a very hot pan, then sauced. I sauteed the kale in a little olive oil, salt, and pepper. Doesn't need much more than that. Fiddleheads are also delicious almost naked. Just steamed up with some lemon juice squeezed on top and then tossed. Mashed sweet potatoes are a great alternative to regular mashed potatoes because they are healthier and taste great without too much stuff mashed in, which is where the butter/margarine/salt intake can get out of hand. All that went in was maybe a dot of olive oil and a little fresh pepper.

Noodle soup with delicious toppings

Still living at home. My mom and I collaborated on a noodle-soup-with-toppings dish, similar in spirit to a ramen or udon composition, which is Ben's and my favorite food format. Beware of having something like this out at a restaurant, where you may encounter a wussy broth and a dearth of toppings. What you are looking for is a very hearty broth with something other than cabbage or broccoli floating around with the noodles.

Here, we have a gingery clear broth made with ginger, carrots, and scallions. We steamed some baby bok choy, quartered or eighthed, and I used the shiitake poaching technique featured in the nabeyaki udon installment in cooking with dog.

Shrimp dumplings were made by food-processing some raw shrimps with herbs and a little corn starch. Dumpling balls were formed and dropped into boiling broth. As the dumplings finished cooking, I dropped some already softened rice noodles in there. Soup then ladeled out and and topped.

cukes

This post is about cucumbers, but also about sandwiches. I am temporarily living back at home for a few months. Drag, right? Wrong. I opened the fridge this morning to make myself a lunch sandwich. WHOA. There was so much great stuff in there, I didn't know where to start. (Of course, food is not the only reason that living at home is not a drag!)

Beginning with spelt bread, I layered on avocado, basil, olive tapenade, cheeses, carrots...the possibilities could go on. BUT. The crowning sandwich element was the cucumbers. My mom prepares a healthy flavored water that involves soaking various ingredients overnight in the fridge. The bonus byproduct of this process is the leftover cucumbers which were hanging out and mingling for hours with lemon, mint, and ginger.

The most refreshing thing you will ever eat EVER. I was advised as well that they are not only dynamite in a sandwich, but also make a really sweet salad.

Family Dinner

When you can't eat steak, tofu steak. Yup, that's right. Tofu steak. I was shitting around with John and told him that I would take care of the sides and he could make the steak. Being that we're communally vegetarian in this house, tofu steak. He let the tofu marinate in steak sauce and then coated them in flower and seasonings and fried them up with onions and mushrooms. At the end I pulled them out and threw some wine in with the veggies and reduced for a sauce. I also made some mashed potatoes with cheddar cheese and garlic. While the potatoes were boiling I threw my new bamboo steamer on the top as a lid and put broccoli in the bottom and spinach in the top. Just a little al dente for those real veggie lovers.

Here's everything all ready to go. We called Kyler in and sat down for a home cooked family dinner. It was excellent. Here's a picture of the boys sitting down to chow.

The pictures were all rushed because I totally forgot to charge my camera! Anyway it was an excellent departure from the foreign one panners that we all usually try to throw together. And there were leftovers!

vegetarians know how to make crap taste delicious

i've lately been reading this book to enhance my culinary knowledge. lettin' it slap me around a little for my ignorance, you know. like the other day, i was reading about grains. this book has chapters on grains i've never even heard of! frickin quinoa (pronounced keen-wah or something), rye-berries... oh man. it was like walking into Whole Foods for the first time.

So, obviously, i decided to break some of it out. i've been looking for some foods that i can make and freeze, and also eat cold - the kinds of foods i could theoretically take out of the freezer and put in my car and that would be delicious around lunch time. i spend a lot of my time at construction sites and such, and there's not really a whole lot of kitchen areas at places like that, and frankly i'm sick of all fast foods. even wawa (sacraligious, i know). So. Also, i found a large amount of barly in my cupboard! wooo barley! i love some beef and barley soup - so good. but i digress.

I decided to make a modified version of a summer salad i found in the Book. (yes, i'm capitalizing it - this Book is just THAT GOOD. A TOME OF KNOWLEDGE)

1 cup barley - cooked
1 cup peas - shocked (now, for those of you who are as un-savvy as i am and dont/didnt know what that means, it means dump those peas in some boiling water for like 30 seconds, and then strain em out and dump them in ice water! delicious! no over cooking! and they dont get mushy!)
some lemon juice
some pepper
some olive oil
some herbs from the garden

now the recipe originally called for cucumbers instead of peas, and also threw some yogurt all over the everything once you were ready to serve. i'm not that kind of gal.

you take your barley and toss it with 2 tbsp of EVOO (just like rachel ray says it), some pepper. i used one of those garlic-pepper grinders and i dont regret it one bit. take the peas out of the ice water and shake some salt on em and let them sit for about 5. then throw them in the barley (taste first, if they're too salty, rinse them off prior to tossing). squeeze some lemons all over that mother, and then go out in the garden and get some mint or basil or lemon thyme or golden oregono, or all of the above and dice it all and throw it in the salad. (ed. note - the original recipe calls for basil only. i took some liberties)

take it all, toss it, and then fork it into your hungry, gaping mouth. mmmm. so good. so damned good.



oh, and just a quick post script: to get the most out of your lemons, some people will say to roll them on the counter. this is for suckers. take those little lemons (or limes, or any other citrus fruit that you might want to suck the juice from) and stick em in the microwave for about 15 seconds each. be careful, you want them warm to the touch but not hot - if they get hot, run them under cold water for a minute or so. then cut in half and shield your eyes! these guys will be the juciest fruits you've ever tried to squeeze! the theory is that the microwave makes the juice in each little juice sack boil just enough so that the sacks all burst. this bursting of sacks is essentially what you'd be doing if you rolled the fruit, but our good friend the microwave does a much more thorough and quicker job than my silly hands.

Family Bowl

(reblogged from Ben)
I do believe its time for some Monkey-Fighting Family Bowl. God knows I love making the Family Bowl. What? You inquire as to the name? I’ll tell you why I call its the Family Bowl. I cook the chicken in egg. What’s this bull about not cooking the calf in its mothers milk? I flipped that shit on its head. Wonderful fresh veggies cooked in dashi broth. Yeah, I got that. Top it with toasted sesame seeds and teriyaki sauce? Sure thing, broseph. Serve it all on top of some grade-A udon noodles sitting in rice vinegar and you got yourself a meal that would make Jesus come back for a bite. Yeah, I know what I’m doing in the kitchen. Maybe I’ll let you come by some time and check it out.

A fast soup

Swiss chard, shiitake mushrooms, tofu, and bean threads in a red curry coconut broth, garnished with lime and dark tamari. Brown the tofu in some sesame oil first and use dried mushrooms so that you can add a little of the rehydrating broth to the coconut milk mixture. Then crack an egg in the whole mess and let it poach for a little while in the soup. Sub brown rice for bean threads and sprinkle on some chopped cilantro. Not a bad weeknight dinner.