Home Is Wherever Your Family Is

This is my first Thanksgiving away from home.

I know many of my friends have spent their Thanksgivings elsewhere--on campus during undergrad, or with their partner's family, or just on their own--whether because travel was too expensive or because their family was in the middle of shaking up the established order of Thanksgiving rituals, or because for them, Thanksgiving was never a huge holiday.  I always felt saddened by this because for me, Thanksgiving is my absolute favorite holiday.

Thanksgiving in general tends to be a warm and fuzzy holiday: good food, family ties, woolly sweaters and maybe a fire in the fireplace, with the weather getting just cold enough outside for the deck to be a secondary fridge for leftovers (well-protected from raccoons and squirrels, of course).  Even better, my family has a tradition of eating the Thanksgiving meal in the early afternoon--usually around 1 pm--so that the rest of the day can be spent in a cycle of napping, playing Scrabble or Trivial Pursuit, and snacking on leftovers.

When I realized I would have to work on Thanksgiving (people get sick on Thanksgiving, too), I knew I wouldn't be able to go home to my family.  Even if I had the day of Thanksgiving itself off, I have to work on Wednesday and Friday, so going home was out of the question.  Luckily, my brother also decided this year that going home was too far for him to travel.  Instead, he is driving down from the UP and will stay with me, and then on the weekend we will visit our cousin who lives in Chicago now (much cheaper & more manageable than going all the way home to KC).

As the days get closer to the holiday, I started to get the itch to make all the traditional Thanksgiving foods--if we can't go home, maybe I can conjure up all our traditions here.  A few quick searches later and I needed  to make a (rapidly-growing) list of items from the store to make the foods that must be on my Thanksgiving table:
-Turkey breast (for my carnivore brother)
-Trader Joe's vegan "turkey" roast (they were sampling it in the store...it was delicious!) for me
-Mashed potatoes (my spin: with roasted garlic)
-Green bean casserole
-Corn casserole
-Dinner rolls
-Pumpkin pie
+/- some optional dishes that seemed like they should appear, though by now my grocery list was a mile long:
-stuffing (inside of acorn squash from my garden?)
-cranberry sauce (maybe I'll go with the can?)

I have a deep, wide ceramic pasta dish that looks like a flying saucer--I'll be able to bake the stuffing, green bean casserole, and corn casserole together.  Make the pie, rolls, and peel the potatoes the night before and I actually think this is pretty doable.

I'm actually excited to give this a try...preparing a meal like this one takes coordination and a considerable amount of hubris, I suppose, to try and recreate my mother's cooking.  I'm also pretty excited to have my own veggie "turkey" option.  But mostly, I'm just happy and thankful that I'll still get to see some of my family for the holiday.  Even if I can't go home, having my brother here and my cousin a short drive away make it feel like home is actually all around me.

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Recipes

Green bean casserole
1 bag frozen green beans, French cut
~4 oz portabella mushrooms, sliced
1 small onion, diced
2-3 T. butter
2-3 T. flour
~1 c. milk, warmed
S&P
French's fried onions (you have to.  It's required.)

1. Saute the mushrooms and onions in the butter.  S&P to taste.
2. Stir in the flour until the butter is soaked up (should be about equal amounts).  Cook for about a minute.
3. Whisk in the milk and bring to a boil, stirring constantly, for a minute until the bechamel thickens.
4. Mix in the green beans and spread in a baking dish.
5. Bake at 350 for ~20 minutes, then top with the fried onions and bake another 10-15 minutes, until sauce is bubbly and onions are toasted (but not brown!)

Corn casserole (also known as scalloped corn, corn pudding, and other names)
1 can creamed corn
1 can corn, drained
1/4 c. butter, melted
2 eggs
1 c. sour cream
1 box Jiffy corn bread mix
S (just a bit) &P
optional add-ins (dice or finely chop):
bell pepper
onions
pickled jalapenos, or a can of green chilis, drained
anything your heart desires

1. Mix together all ingredients
2. Bake at 350 30-40 minutes until a knife comes out cleanly.

Mashed potatoes with roasted garlic
potatoes
butter, cubed
cream
roasted garlic
generous S, some P

1. Peel potatoes if desired and cut into medium chunks (the night before if necessary--just keep completely covered in water)
2. Boil potatoes until fork-tender, then drain.
3. Return to the pot in which they were boiled (this will help them dry off a little) and add in butter, roasted garlic, and a splash or two of cream. S&P to taste.
4. Mash by hand, or if you prefer really smooth potatoes, with an electric hand-mixer.
5. You can also add softened cream cheese, herbs, & other seasonings.

Soft dinner rolls (adapted from several recipes around the web, but it's basically a lightly-enriched yeast dough that you roll into balls and bake in a 9x13 pan)
1 T. yeast
1/2 c. warm water
1 c. warm milk
2 T. sugar
2 T. melted butter or oil
1 t. salt
~4 c. flour

1. Combine water, milk, and sugar in a large bowl.  Sprinkle yeast on top and let sit for a couple minutes until it looks bubbly.
2. Stir in melted butter and salt.
3. Add in 3 cups of flour, then add flour in 1/4 to 1/2 cup increments until a soft but workable dough forms.
4. Cover and let rise until doubled, 20-30 minutes.
5. Flour a work surface and pat into a rectangle.  Cut rectangle into six strips (halve, then each half into thirds). Cut each strip into 4 pieces = 24 rolls.
6. Take each piece of dough and palm it, then roll against a surface til the edges are tucked under and it's nice and round.  Place in a greased 9x13 pan.  Repeat with remaining dough.
7. Cover with greased plastic wrap and let rise until doubled.
8. Bake at 400F for 20minutes until brown on top.  You can also brush them with melted butter before you bake them so they brown even better.

Pumpkin pie
I use the recipe on the can of Libby's pumpkin!  I think it calls for evaporated milk, eggs, pumpkin, spices, and sugar.  Very traditional.
No-roll pie crust from Allrecipes:
1.5 c. flour
1/2 c. oil
1/4 c. cold water
pinch salt
1-2 t. sugar

1. Mix pie crust ingredients together.  Press into the bottom and sides of the pie pan to an even thickness.
2. Pour in pumpkin pie filling and bake according to directions.

Fall Means Apple Butter

When I was little, my mom and I made apple butter every year.  There was a specific ritual to it: we'd go to the apple farm to get a good deal on a huge bag of apples (a peck? half a bushel?), make sure we had new lids for the canning jars, and got to work.

My job was to cut up the apple quarters into tiny pieces.  One of the first times I remember being allowed to help, I must have been maybe seven years old.  My mom and Gammy were much faster--one of them would quarter, core, and peel the apples while the other would chop.  My "job" was really just to keep me busy, I'm pretty sure.

After the invention of the slap-chop thingamajigger, my job became much more important.  Mom would keep the apple quarters coming, and I would slam the handle down in rapid-fire mode until the apple pieces were pulverized.  

The rest of the day only got better from chopping apples.  We would make our apple butter in huge batches in a Nesco turkey roaster oven so that we had enough to give as gifts and to eat all year long, and once all the ingredients were cooking I got to lift the lid periodically and take the longest-handled spatula we owned to stir the bubbly, spicy, molten apple lava.

The end of the day was the best part, though.  If you make apple butter, there is absolutely no way to know that it has been properly made unless you taste it on homemade bread.  Once the apples had been cooking for a long time--usually early afternoon--Mom would make a couple loaves of country white bread. She had a knack for timing it so that the loaves were cooling while we sterilized and canned the apple butter.  There always seemed to be the right amount left for a bowlful of scrapings that we dipped into with spoons, smearing the mahogany-colored preserve over the fresh bread.

The jars of apple butter we processed in a hot water bath for ten minutes, taking them out and letting them cool upside down on a towel on the counter top.  After an hour or so we turned them right side up and I always tried to listen for the pop as the cooling air inside the jar set the seal.

This ritual of making apple butter was so ingrained in my experience of fall that when I went to college freshman year, I woke up one September morning craving apple butter.  When I called my mom a few days later, she actually told me that she had made her yearly batch of apple butter that weekend!  Somehow I must have known it was an apple butter day, even four hours away from home.

If you have a crockpot, apple butter is a cinch to make--prep it in the afternoon and let it cook on low all night, and you can make bread in the morning and have it for breakfast.  If you make it on the stove, it only takes a couple hours for it to come together (and less if you have friends to help you chop apples).

Apple Butter

makes 7 or so jars

1/2 peck + a few apples, any kind*

1/4 c. white vinegar

3-4c. sugar

4 T. cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground cloves

1/4 tsp salt

Quarter the apples.  These are Golden Delicious
from the farmer's market.

 

1. Peel, core, and chop the apples to small-to-medium pieces.  The bigger the pieces, the chunkier the final product.  If you like yours thick and spreadable, chop the apples smaller.

Seems like I've cut up so many!  Not nearly enough.
Keep going!

This is half a peck of apples, quartered.

This step takes a while.  Cut out the core from each
quarter and peel them.  I ended up using this many plus another 1/3 of this bowl of apples--enough to fill my dutch oven.

Chop the apple quarters into small pieces.  I cut them
lengthwise into thirds or fourths, then chopped them crosswise.

 2. Put all the apples in either a large crockpot or a dutch oven.  Add the vinegar, sugar, and spices to the apples and stir until the spices are well-distributed.

Add the other ingredients to the apples and turn on the heat to medium.

3. If using a crockpot, turn on high until it starts to bubble, then switch to low heat.  If using the stove top method, turn heat to medium.

It only took a couple minutes for them to start getting juicy!

 4. Cook in the crockpot on low overnight or on high 8-ish hours, until the apple butter has reached a pleasing consistency (up to you) and color.  You might have to switch to high heat and take the lid off to evaporate some of the liquid and make it thicken up.

Stove top method: once the apple juices are bubbling, turn the heat to medium-low and stir frequently to prevent bubbling over.

Bubble, bubble, bubble.  Be sure to stir every 5 minutes or so
or you might get scorched apple butter on the bottom.

This is maybe an hour in.  It's cooking down a lot and
the apples are getting softer.

 5. Once some of the liquid starts to evaporate, check out how the consistency is coming along.  If the apple butter is getting thick without changing to a deep cinnamon-brown, you can add a little water, put a lid on the dutch oven, and turn the heat down lower to give it enough moisture to cook for longer.  If it's coming along nicely, skip that part and let the juices cook out until you get a consistency you like.  Be aware that as the liquid evaporates, you'll need to stir more frequently to prevent scorching.

(Almost) finished!  It reduced in volume by about 50%.
I let it cook a little longer with the lid on, on very low heat,
so that the bigger pieces softened up and the butter looked darker.

6. Once the apple butter is done, you're ready to go!  You can can it at this point--and if this is your plan, while the preserves are cooking you might want to wash and sterilize your jars in a big stock pot of water so that hot apple butter goes into hot jars.  Otherwise, you can keep the apple butter in the fridge for a reasonably long time (several months--like a jam.  The sugar/vinegar/cooking helps preserve it).  I have trouble getting jars of apple butter to last that long, though.  This recipe made enough for 7 peanut butter or regular jelly jars (I recycle the glass ones--they make great pantry containers).

7. Enjoy the scrapings from the pot (or whatever won't fit into your jars) on a slice of fresh bread.  Or, you could get a nice rustic loaf from the bakery/store and toss it in the oven on low for a few minutes to warm it up.  If you're feeling super-nice, share with friends.  Otherwise, hoard it til next fall.

Lasagna, soup style

Grocery shopping while hungry the other day, I had a craving for lasagna.  It's starting to get chilly outside at night and in the mornings, and instead of craving cold sandwiches and ice cream I want to bake bread and cook soup in a crock pot and make warm casseroles.

I'd found a recipe a long time ago for lasagna soup, and the idea has always been in the back of my head as something I wanted to try.  I made mine completely from scratch and while it took a while, most of the time is pretty passive.  Here's three ways to make it, depending on how much time you have or how skilled you are.

Lasagna soup.  Like tomato soup, but waaaaay better.

Lasagna soup, level three

3-4 big tomatoes

1 medium onion

2-3 cloves of garlic

1 cup loosely packed fresh basil leaves, divided

1 cup cottage cheese

0.5-1 cup grated parmesan

4 wide lasagna noodles

S&P

1. Heat some olive oil in a medium pot.  Finely dice the onion and throw it in the oil, cooking until it's translucent.  

2. Medium-dice the tomatoes, reserving any juices that ooze out while you chop them.  

3. Either grate the garlic cloves or finely mince them, then saute them with the onions for about a minute.  

4. Once the onions and garlic are fragrant, add the tomatoes and juices into the pot.  Turn the heat on medium-high, salt the pot liberally, and bring to a boil.  (The salt will help the tomatoes release their juices.)

5. In the meantime, finely mince half the basil.  Add to the pot, which should be very juicy.  Add about a quart of water and bring back up to a boil, then turn the heat down to a simmer.

6. Combine the cottage cheese, parmesan, and the other half of the basil (minced fine), along with some freshly-ground pepper, in a separate bowl.

7. Once the soup has simmered for about 10-15 minutes, break the lasagna noodles into pieces and add directly to the soup.  Cook until the noodles are al dente.

8. To serve: dish up the soup into a bowl and take a heavy dollop of the cheese-basil mixture in the middle of the bowl.  

Holds up surprisingly well as leftovers, too.

Not that much time?  Try it this way.

Lasagna soup, level two

1 medium onion

2-3 cloves of garlic

1 jar pasta sauce

basil, fresh or dried

cottage cheese

grated parmesan

lasagna noodles or other pasta

S&P

1. Dice the onion and saute.  Mince the garlic and saute with the onions for a minute until fragrant.

2. Add the jar of pasta sauce and 1 jar's worth of water.  Bring to a simmer.

3. Add some basil to up the flavor.

4. Make the cheese garnish as above.

5. Add the noodles to the soup and cook until al dente.

6. Serve garnished with the cheese mixture.

This version leaves out the work of fresh tomatoes, but throws in a little prep so it's half-homemade.

Used up your food budget for the month? Haven't been shopping in weeks?  Here's a pantry items-only version.

Lasagna soup, level one

1 can tomato soup

dried basil

garlic powder

noodles of choice: macaroni or shells or lasagna noodles

Optional garnish: cottage cheese, or just parmesan

1. Prepare tomato soup as directed on the package.  Add dried basil (or Italian seasoning) and garlic powder.

2. Add noodles to the soup and cook until al dente.

3. Garnish if desired/available.  Enjoy!

Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes

If you have a garden, and if you planted tomatoes, then when August hits you know that you are in for a LOT of bounty all at once.  There will be more tomatoes than you will know what to do with; there might even be more tomatoes than you can give away to grateful or unsuspecting neighbors.

All this came out of my garden in...about 3 days.  See the monster
squash in the top left corner?  And see how big the tomatoes are?
Seriously.  Bigger than baseballs, only barely smaller than softballs.

I only planted three tomato plants: two "Early Bird" and one "Cherokee Purple" (heirloom) variety.  The Early Birds have lived up to their name: they started flowering almost as soon as I put them in the ground, and now for the past month or so they've gradually sped up production.  At first, it was one or two tomatoes a week.  But this weekend, I pulled 5-6 tomatoes off of one plant and left at least that many in varying states of orange behind (they should be ready soon!).

I ate tomato sandwiches, and I sliced tomatoes into wedges and ate caprese salads, and I made a small batch of homemade salsa.  And then I still had tomatoes left over.  Since I'm on my pediatrics outpatient month (and basically have a month of vacation), I thought I'd make tomato sauce.  Turns out, that's pretty damn easy and I would've been able to make it even if I weren't on an easy rotation.  Once it was done, I portioned the sauce into single-serve containers and froze it for an afternoon, then popped them out and kept all the blocks in a freezer bag (to free up the valuable tupperware containers).

Tomatoes: into the skillet they go!  Plus some salt.

Easy Tomato Sauce: makes 3 single-serving portions

Ingredients (all fresh is best):

-tomatoes

-garlic

-basil

-salt

Method:

1. Chop the tomatoes.  I used 3-4 large tomatoes from my garden.  They each probably weighed almost a pound...they were about the size of grapefruit!  If you have smaller tomatoes, I'd use 5-6.  The amount of tomatoes I used filled a 10 inch skillet basically to the brim

2. Throw all these tomatoes in the skillet over medium heat.  Using a wide skillet is actually helpful because it gives you a large surface area for evaporation; this makes the sauce reduce more quickly.  Add a few sprinkles of salt (I used about a good pinch per tomato) to help them release their juices.

Adding salt was the right idea.  See how juicy they got?

3. Cook on medium heat, stirring occasionally, while the tomatoes start to break down.  Finely mince or grate some garlic into the cooking tomatoes.  I used two fat cloves of garlic for my panful of tomatoes, but you could use more or less to taste.

4. Next, chop the basil.  I usually chiffonade basil, then cut it cross-wise, to mince it easily.  Add this to the pot of tomatoes.  (They should be pretty juicy and watery now.  The liquid in my skillet went almost all the way to the top.)  You can also turn down the heat to medium-low at this point.

Garlic and basil have joined the party.

5. Keep watching the tomato sauce and stir it occasionally.  It needs to bubble gently (not boil rapidly or anything) and should be giving off plenty of steam, which means it's reducing.  The tomatoes will also gradually become less chunky and more like a thicker tomato sauce.  It's important to stir, too, because the thick tomato-paste-stuff will sink to the bottom while the tomato juice reduces on top, and you don't want the sauce to scorch.  Taste the sauce every now and then to make sure there's enough salt, or the basil flavor isn't too strong, or that there's enough garlic for your liking.

Now it's all reduced.  It's a little hard to tell, but it's much
thicker and more sauce-like than tomato juice-like.

6. In about 30 minutes, the sauce should be reduced enough to be finished.  The key here is to check for the consistency that you like, not to just time it.  Turn off the heat.  You can either puree the sauce and run it through a sieve to make it extra-smooth, or you can be like me and just pour it into containers.

Ready to freeze!  Now I'll have fresh tomato sauce stowed away
for the cold, bleak days of surgery rotation.  Or just winter in general.
Be sure to leave a little room for the sauce to expand when it freezes.

Tomato Sandwich

Ingredients:

-fresh tomato

-cheese (mozzarella or farmer's cheese or provolone would all work)

-basil

-mayonaise

-bread

Method:

1. Toast the bread.

2. In the meantime, slice the tomato.  I like my tomato slices about 3/8 inch thick (I know that's pretty exact, but it's more than a quarter inch but less than half an inch).

3. Slice up your cheese of choice.

4. Make sure your basil is ready to go (leaves picked off stems, chiffonaded if you prefer)

5. Spread mayo on your toast, thinly.  This protects the bread from tomato juice.

6. Assemble the sandwich: toast-mayo-cheese-basil-tomato-mayo-toast.  Oh, and you can throw some S&P on the tomato before you close it up.

7. EAT very messily and think "YUM THIS IS WHAT SUMMER TASTES LIKE!"

Enjoy the tomatoes while you can!  THIS is when they absolutely taste the best--forget fresh tomatoes in December, you don't even want to know how far they've traveled (you can taste it in their mealy texture).

Go!  Make sauce!  Or Bloody Marys! Or just eat them sliced and plain!

Things to Eat when It's Hot Out

Even in an air-conditioned apartment, summer heat leaks in through windows and the cracks under the door and the closets under the eaves.  So, having moved in the middle of summer, I have hardly given my new kitchen a proper christening.  Yes, I've cooked a few times, but really I've been eating lots of cold meals.

Here's what I eat when it's too hot to stand by the (turned off) oven or stove:

-Peanut butter sandwiches and milk

-Crackers and {peanut butter, cheese, hummus, tuna salad}

-Salads

-Cherries (yes, sometimes just cherries for dinner)

-Cottage cheese and nectarines

-Cottage cheese and walnuts and a drizzle of honey

-Cheese roll-ups (large tortilla with some shredded cheese, microwave for a minute until gooey)

-Yogurt

-Cereal (even for dinner)

-Pasta with a no-cook sauce (minus points for boiling water, bonus points for no-cook sauce). I like a creamy yogurt + pesto combo, or carbonara (shredded parm, garlic, and a beaten egg, plus a tiny bit of pepper and pasta water), or chopped tomatoes, garlic, and olive oil.  Throw in a big bunch of arugula and it's like pasta and salad all together.

-Peanut butter (yes, it's on here again.  I eat lots of peanut butter.)

-Ice cream

I love to bake my own bread, but when you don't want to turn on the stove, setting the oven to 450 degrees for any kind of bread is madness.  I did find this recipe for Crock Pot Bread that actually worked like a charm--the end result was really tasty and I didn't heat up my apartment hardly at all.

Here's to staying cool, even in July!

Other people's comfort food

Comfort food is a very culture-specific thing.  Not always the healthiest food, not always the most decadent food, not always the most complicated food, it's usually simple and hearty and makes you feel like your mom just called you in to dinner after a long day playing outside.

For me, comfort food can be many things: macaroni and cheese, chicken noodle soup, tomato soup and grilled cheese, oatmeal, peanut butter and jam sandwiches with a glass of milk, apple crisp.  The idea of "soul food" comes pretty close, too--fried chicken, green beans simmered all day with bacon and onions, mashed potatoes and gravy. 

Over spring break, my best friends from undergrad and I met up in Chicago for a weekend.  We went to Chinatown and ate dim sum, and as we were leaving one of my friends realized that every Chinese family in the restaurant had a big steaming pot of rice porridge on the table.  

"This place must be known for their jook!  We should have had some," she lamented. By this point, though, we were stuffed and resolved to use the jook as an excellent excuse to come back to Chicago.  I asked Gena, whose heritage is half Chinese, half Japanese,and Inez, who is from Singapore, what exactly went into making jook.

Finished jook: all it takes is a handful of rice, lots of water,
bouillon paste, some mushrooms, and plenty of time.

Jook, also known as congee, is just rice porridge: much the way Americans eat oatmeal, or oat grains cooked in plenty of water until they soften into mush, most Asian cultures have a name for rice cooked the same way.  It sounded easy and nourishing and hearty, and I resolved to try to make some once I was home.

All the rest of the week, I made jook just about every morning.  Not just because it was easy, not just because it was new, but also because it's absolutely delicious.  And here's how you do it:

• First, decide how much you want to make.  It's easy to scale up, and a little bit of rice makes a LOT of jook.
• Measure out the rice in a pan.  Add water, about 8:1 water to rice (yes, 8:1.  So if you use a quarter cup of rice, add 2 c. water).  Add any seasonings you might want, or maybe some leftovers (chicken would be yummy, or I just chop up some raw mushrooms and toss them in to stew a bit).  Bring to a boil, then cover and cook on low until the rice has swollen up and completely softened, maybe half an hour or more.  

  

  Raw egg in the bottom.

• To serve, I eat mine the way Inez says she used to get hers at her school cafeteria: a raw egg in the bottom of the bowl, jook on top, some soy sauce and sesame oil sprinkled in, and a generous helping of chopped scallions.  Take your spoon and stir the egg into the jook, it makes it rich and sort of creamy, a bit like custard.  (The heat from the porridge cooks the egg, no worries.)

Chopped scallions, a few drops of sesame oil, soy sauce go in next.

• A few caveats: white rice is best for this, it gets nice and soft (I used jasmine, which is excellent).  If you can't stand it and have to have brown rice (or if brown rice is all you have), it works fine, but be aware that the resulting jook will be chewier and nuttier-tasting and won't get that creamy, soft consistency.  Also, sticking to traditional Asian flavors really go well with the rice, but I'm sure you could use other flavor combinations, too (get creative!).

Stir it all together, then the best part: eat it!

Sometimes, all you really want is your favorite comfort food: when it's rainy, when it's been a bad day, when you're sick, when you miss home...any and all of the above.  But it's nice to branch out once in a while and try on other cultures' comfort foods: jook is definitely a new member on my list of favorites!

bisous,

Lindsey

Honey Mustard Salad Dressing

In undergrad, the "all you care to eat" cafeteria option had lots of daily choices of entrees as well as a handy selection of desserts and baked goods.  They also had the best salad bar, with all the trimmings and tons of different salad dressings.  Most of them were gloopy and pretty gross--your generic red French dressing, thick Ranch, oily Italian straight out of the bottle...and then one gem: honey mustard dressing.

For some reason, this dressing was amazing: tangy, sweet, zippy, a little bit of a bite, strong mustard flavor.  It went well with everything, and my roommate loved it so much we would eat at the cafeteria just so she could get the honey mustard dressing.

I was making a salad for lunch today and that honey mustard dressing popped into my head.  I figured it was worth a shot to try and make it, so I pulled out a few things and whisked them together.  I couldn't have been more shocked that it was pretty spot-on!

Even if you've never had the original, this is a pretty awesome salad dressing and a great sauce for dipping veggies into.  It took about a minute to put together and I doused it all over my salad, which I am now enjoying with relish.

Honey Mustard Salad Dressing

1 T. dijon mustard (I used Grey Poupon)

1 T. honey

~1-2 t. rice wine vinegar

~1-2 T. olive oil

Whisk the mustard, honey, and vinegar together, then drizzle in the olive oil while you whisk briskly.  (Then say "whisk briskly, whisk briskly" five times fast!)  Serve on your favorite salad or dip crudites into it.

Tabbouleh, revamped

Normally, when I think of tabbouleh, I think of something that I always sort of wished I enjoyed but which in reality always kind of overwhelmed me.  Usually, the intense green flavor of the parsley and mint knocked my socks off.  It wasn't until I read a bunch of tabbouleh recipes that I realized that, actually, that was sort of the point: a punch of fresh flavor and brightness with the chewy goodness of bulgur.  Either way, tabbouleh has never been my thing (even though it always seemed just out of reach--I wanted to be cool enough to like tabbouleh!).

Tabbouleh!  Only, not as punchy.

Rewind to last Saturday: I was going to a potluck for Alice's Garden, and my plan wasn't to make tabbouleh at all. I wanted to make a broccoli slaw, something with a yogurt dressing and maybe some curry powder and dried cranberries and almonds.  Well, turns out I completely imagined buying broccoli at the store.  There was absolutely no evidence in my fridge that the purported veggie had even come near it.  So, with only a few hours to go til the potluck, I needed to reassess.  I have taken the liberty of recreating my inner monologue for your enjoyment:

What do I have on hand?  Crap, where's the broccoli?  Wasn't it right here next to the celery...wait, did I put it back?  Maybe I changed my mind...shoot, I definitely changed my mind and put it back.  Well, now what am I going to do?  No time to go to the store.  Need a new idea.  (Open cupboard.)  Umm...what do I have a lot of?  Let's see...ooh, how about this barley stuff, I haven't used that yet and I have a whole quart jar of it.  Perfect.  Uhhh...what goes well with barley?  No idea.  (Back to the fridge.)  Hmm.  Okay.  Available green stuff: celery (meh), carrots (err..), kale....hmm.  What about kale? That could work...hmmm and here's a lime...I could do a citrusy vinaigrette to go with it...okay, got it.

So that's how this tabbouleh came to be.  I've recently become really enamored with raw kale salads, so I figured that idea could work combined with cooked whole-grain barley to make a hybrid grain/green salad.

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Recipe:  Kale and Barley Tabbouleh

Time: 1.5 hours, mostly passive

Yield: 5-6 c. salad, probably at least 8 hefty servings

1 c. whole-grain, hull-less barley (I used Bob's Red Mill from the grocery store)

3.5-4 c. vegetable broth

Combine barley and broth (or 4 c. water and some bouillon) and bring to a boil.  Cover and boil for about an hour, or until the barley is cooked.  It will be chewy and sort of pop in your mouth the way corn does when you bite it off the cob.

Cooked & drained barley.  I didn't rinse it or anything, just let
it drain in a strainer in the sink.

While the barley cooks, cut up the kale.  I used about half a bunch from the store.  It was probably 4-5 cups of greens when it was all fluffy.  Here's the secret, though: cut the kale really, really fine.  I cut it into strips about half an inch wide cross-wise, then turned my cutting board 90 degrees and did the same thing going the perpendicular way.  Then I just mowed through the kale in all directions some more until it was like kale confetti.

Barley + Kale.  This is only about a third of the kale that I used.

Once the barley is cooked, drain it and let it cool before you stir in the kale, or it will get all wilted.

Caution! Contains lime!

Now, make some dressing.  I juiced half a lime over the barley & kale, then poured on a few good glugs of olive oil (maybe 1/4 c. or so--eyeball it so it's not too greasy or anything).  Salt and plenty of pepper, and then a good stir so everything's combined.

This was really mild-tasting.  The kale wasn't too bitter or strong, and the lime wasn't too biting, either.  The barley sort of soaked up the dressing, too, so it wasn't too wet.  Overall, this was bright-tasting enough to be fresh but not too strong, such that a tabbouleh-novice like myself could handle it.

Enjoy!

SOPA

If you haven't heard anything about how the US government is trying to censor the internet, you should find out more by visiting this website.

If you prefer a more humorous approach to learning, Cracked did a great piece on SOPA, too.

You would think with all the other crap that the government could spend its time doing (oh, you know, fixing the economy, continuing to reform health care, polishing up the Bill of Rights by actually standing on the side of people's rights, finishing up wars that we've started, finding solutions or implementing measures to slow global warming, revising the food system, getting new and equally inefficient legislators elected, working to actually improve education in our country...surely they have enough on their plate?  Seems like a hell of a to-do list to me) they would be too busy to mess up something that already works just fine, like the internet.

Guess I was wrong.

Random Babbling Without a Camera

Not too sure what to write, so I thought I’d write about one of the meals I cooked a while ago. It showed a few things which I think are important to making a dish: how to think up a dish that fits the event; how a chefy trick can save a recipe; and give you an idea about how one can go about making a simple change to a dish.

All of this began months ago when I got invited to a birthday party a couple days before the event. I wasn’t able to find out much about the likes and dislikes of the birthday girl except that she enjoys drinking shots and eating sweets. So in thinking up which dish I should pick, I focused on the three things I knew: it’s a party, she likes drinks, and she likes sweet things. One dish I thought might work was this avocado and mango salad with a roasted garlic & jalapeno dressing. It worked somewhat with the party and sweet themes, and I thought I could add some tequila as well to get the third.

When I went to the market, I ran into a couple common problems. I checked the avocados and they were hard as rocks. I looked at the mangos, none of them looked good. Unperturbed, I knew I could quickly ripen the main component of the dish, the avocados, by placing them in a brown paper bag with a couple bananas the couple days before the party (sometimes a little chefy knowledge can come in handy). I was fine there, but I needed a replacement for the mangos because I knew nothing I could do would get them to ripen in time.

Many of you have probably run into a similar problem at one point or another and during these situations it’s best to think about what an ingredient brings to a dish. For instance, say you’re missing a lemon to a braised chicken thigh dish. Well, what’s the lemon there for? It’s probably to cut the fattiness of the chicken thigh to lighten the dish by bringing in an acidic, high note. So why not try another acidic fruit such as an orange or a lime? Or you could go a little out and try making citrus marinated red onions to add that high note with Mexican flare. What about fennel? There are lots of ways to bring a high note to a dish.

Heck, you could swing the other way entirely and try to bring out the savory aspects of the chicken dish with cinnamon or tomatoes. There are lots of ways to save or change a dish when you know a little bit about different ingredients. Yes, you will make some horrible dishes at times, but that’s part of the learning process. In my case, I chose to heighten the sweetness of the dish and added peaches. With my avocados, peaches, tequila, and a few other ingredients in hand, I went home.

Jump forward a couple days, my avocados are ripe and it’s time to cook. However, while preparing my ingredients, I thought, let’s make this fit the party atmosphere more and change this from a salad to a guacamole dip. Well, how do I do that? Simple. Cut up the ingredients into small chunks instead of wedges and make more dressing to give the dish a creamier texture. These quick and easy changes can completely change a dish.

On the other hand, sometimes what seems like a good idea ends up pretty bad. Before putting the tequila into the dish, I taste tested a small bit with tequila. Yeah, didn’t taste good at all. I really wanted to use it, but not at the cost of the dish. This is an important lesion. Make sure you taste test when you’re cooking. You can’t always do this, but when you can, give it a taste. You can easily avoid some awful combinations that way.

In the end the dish came out alright. I can still see some room for improvements, but people enjoyed it.