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!

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.

---

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!

Winter Vegetable Feast

These ain't ya mama's brussel sprouts.

When it's cold outside, and Thanksgiving is over, and you're waiting for the first real snow to hit the ground, there's nothing that warms things up like roasting some winter veg in the oven.

I know I'm not the first one on the bandwagon here, but really: simple, roasted vegetables are the way to go!  Nothing tastes heartier or more delicious than slightly crisped, well-seasoned vegetables that the oven has turned into nutritious dinner-jewels.  (okay, I'm waxing a little poetic, but they're delicious!)

The best part, especially now around finals, is that they're way hands-off.  Throw them in the oven, sit down, go through a lecture, pop up to check on them, and there! dinner's all done.

Oven-baked Carnival squash with a pseudo-poached egg
and roasted brussel sprouts

I like to make my winter squash the way my mom used to, cut in half, gutted, and baked in a pan with a little water in the bottom and foil on top until it's melt-in-your-mouth tender.  This takes about an hour to an hour and a half, so it's good to start ahead of everything else.

Brussel sprouts are a new wonder, too.  When I was little, they were awful: Mom would steam them in the microwave or on the stove, and I remember them being a terrible olive color and smelling disgusting, with a texture that was basically mush.  These I halved and tossed with some olive oil, salt & pepper and popped into the oven 20 minutes before the squash was done.

To pull it all together, I wanted a fried egg with an oozy yolk, but decided I'd made enough dishes for myself.  With the squash done, I put it on a plate, cracked an egg in the middle, and covered with plastic wrap.  Microwave for about a minute or two (check every thirty seconds or so!) until it's done the way you like it, and it looks way prettier than the time it takes to make would suggest.

Bonus: you can actually roast squash seeds in about 5 minutes in the microwave! I did not know this was possible.  I washed them and originally was just going to dry them in the microwave, but after a "nuke for a minute, stir, repeat" for a couple of tries, I added a tiny splash of oil and salt and continued microwaving in 1-minute bursts until they were toasted.  It probably was 5-6 minutes total--I didn't really keep track and since I was trying this out I wasn't even sure it would work.  But it was way faster and just as delicious as the oven, without washing a pan afterwards.

Amateur Recipe Invention and Hurricane Noodles

We cook because we are hungry. It is for this reason that cooking, even at the most basic level, guarantees a sense of satisfaction. Whatever it is you cook, be it a soup or a fried egg, the end product will not only leave you fed but also with a sense that you have fed yourself. That is the fundamental. The act of creation. It is what makes cooking deeply personal. It is what makes it both endlessly rewarding and daunting.

This authorship in cooking inevitably means there is risk. Your self-esteem is on the line here. Right before I eat what I cook, my heart sinks in anxiety. I get stupid, my sympathetics go into first-world stress overdrive. The food is me, and if it is no good, neither am I, and the hours I had spent grocery shopping and dicing vegetables and adjusting heat and stirring and tweaking spices were a waste. It wrecks me. Don't get me started on how I feel when I cook for others.

It is for the moment of pure ecstasy---that food porn, imaginary camera shot in our own kitchens---that keeps us coming back with new recipes and ingredients and tools. On the flip side, there will always be those times when the stuff you cook is just bad. Blech. Bland stews. Gratuitously soy-sauced stir fries. Bone dry cakes. We've all been there. Most of the time,there's at least something to blame. Carrots just aren't for me. The recipe wasn't good. My oven thermometer is a fibbing piece of shit.

All those excuses become moot when you start from scratch. For the amateur cook, nothing feels more risky than inventing a recipe. It seems ridiculous that you would even attempt it. There are thousands of tried and true recipes that are already out there. Why even bother? What do I know? Well, I'm here to say there are lots of reasons to try and that you know more than you give yourself credit.

Reason #1 – You like food things
Jacque Pepin said that if you take a recipe someone else wrote and over time you make small adjustments to that recipe to fit your liking, that recipe is now yours. This definition of “your recipe” includes all the dishes that have been made by taking a recipe from Joy of Cooking and doubling the butter. While that may sound like L.H.O.O.Q.esque kitsch, it illustrates something important, which is to say, recipe invention happens when you take something you enjoy and combine it with more stuff you enjoy. I'd like to think that many of the gustatory combos we love today were made when some dude took a risk and made a strange combination of stuff they liked. Mint and chocolate. Tomato and cheese. Egg and paprika. If you like more than one food thing, you are on your way to inventing recipes.

Reason #2 – You already think about cooking with a critical and analytical mind
Cooking gives you freedom to eat what you want. It gives the freedom to not eat the same Subway sandwich for lunch everyday, to not pay the huge overhead cost, and to not get the teriyaki sauce that's sweeter than you'd like. You can definitely make something better.

That's pretty much the whole ball game of creating recipes: defining what you like and figuring out how to get there. But how DO you get there? Sounds tricky, like learning a new science, but you already do it all the time both purposely and accidentally. You like garlic, so you add triple garlic to your stir fries, and it's really good. You kind of burn your onions while caramelizing them, but it turns out really good in a different way. You're out of strawberry preserves so you substitute honey into your PB&J, and you have a new snack staple. You are watching out for your arteries so you use half the butter in your Alfredo sauce, and still, it's really good. You don't have bay leaves, so you leave them out of your soup, and you can't really tell the difference. You don't have baking soda so you use baking powder, and that was silly. You don't have onions so you use onion powder, and that was also really silly. Each time you have cooked, you have learned a little more about what each step does for the final product. You realize what you can leave out and what you absolutely can't. You begin to parse the flavors of a dish. You develop your palate.

Reason #3 – It's your kitchen, and you don't give a fuck
So you tried to make macaroni and cheese stuffed tomatoes, which on paper sounded awesome, but the end product was mushy red-tinted mac and cheese. Who gives a fuck! It's your kitchen. No one is judging. You are cooking for you and only you. You hold onto that fantasy of cutting into a oven roasted tomato bowl filled with creamy and crunchy macaroni and cheese that holds form for a mere moment before melting in your mouth. It's not going to be perfect the first time around. Of course it's not! There is so much to cooking and you don't know the half of it. Like me, you're a pretty big noob, but you're dish is going places, and even though it isn't THE divine macaroni and cheese stuffed tomato, it's still macaroni and cheese with tomatoes, and that's still pretty fucking great. Drizzle on some hot sauce, mix in a slice of butter, smile like a fatty, and try again tomorrow.

Aaand the recipe – Hurricane Noodles, aka miso chili noodles with basil

Here's a recipe I've made recently using the amateur principles I've outlined above. Cooped up waiting for Hurricane Irene to strike, I decided to cook what might have been … my last meal. I was craving both miso soup and bean and tomato chili, stuff I've cooked before. I thought, why not, let's combine them. And what the hell, chickpeas are awesome, and so is ginger, and so is teriyaki sauce, and so is Sriracha, and so is that Korean hot pepper paste (gochujang), and so is beer, and so is fresh basil, and hey, why not some noodles, because noodles make everything awesome. Sounding pretty good. (It's also vegan if you use miso without fish.) Let's do it.

INGREDIENTS
4 tbsp olive oil
1 pound extra firm tofu, pressed and diced into ½ inch cubes
½ medium Vidalia onion, diced
6 cloves ginger, minced
1 tbsp ginger, minced
5 dried shitake mushrooms, soaked for at least 4 hours and then diced

Powders – mix well beforehand
2 tbsp Chipotle chili powder
2 tbsp miso soup powder mix (powder called for 1 tbsp per 3 cups of water for miso soup)
2 tbsp ground cumin
1 tbsp all-purpose flower
1 tsp fresh ground pepper
1 tsp granulated sea salt

Teriyaki sauce – mix well beforehand
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp Sriracha sauce
1 tbsp Korean hot pepper paste (gochujang)
2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp mirin
1 tbsp rice wine vinegar
4 tbsp cold water

1 can (14.5oz) diced tomatoes
3 oz tomato paste
1 can (15.5oz) chickpeas, drained and rinsed

1 bottle Magic Hat #9 (or whatever beer you think would be good)

½ pound somen noodles (or whatever noodles you like), cooked according to package directions
a few handfuls of basil, chiffonade-ed
a bunch of scallions, chopped

METHOD
In a large pot, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat and fry the tofu until golden.

Add onions and cook for about 5 minutes.

Add garlic and ginger and mushrooms. Cook for another 30 seconds.

Add in all the powders and stir until even distributed.

Add in teriyaki sauce. Stir well.

Add in half bottle of Magic Hat #9. Drink the rest. Bring pot to boil.

Add tomatoes, tomato paste, and chickpeas. Stir. Bring back to a boil. Then immediately bring back down to a simmer and COVER. Leave it for at least 2 hours, stirring every half hour or so.

Remove chili from heat (or continue simmering, since the longer the better, but you're starving by now). Adjust seasoning.

In an appropriately sized bowl, toss together the chili and noodles. Divide into individual portions. Top with basil and scallions.



And that's it. The dish turned out a little spicier than I expected, and more ginger would've been good, and my basil was a little old, but you know what? A lot of it was fantastic. The miso really comes out and works well to balance the heat and makes the chili so, so hearty. The mix of different spiciness along with the teryaki makes for a chili that is sweet, tangy, smoky, and rich. The tofu absorbs all this and makes the texture of the dish a bit creamy, and the mushrooms give a meaty bite. The basil is absolutely critical with its crunch and lemony and peppery aromatics that combines perfectly with the sweet and sour chili. The noodles and tomatoes serve their tried and true role of bringing everything together. I came away from this first attempt proud and elated and begged my roommate to eat some even though he was already stuffed from free med school pizza. And next time it will only be better.

title image from http://hoosonline.virginia.edu/atf/cf/%7B7A479B31-0AD7-4154-814C-2C6C72C03E93%7D/Jessica%20Tabacca%20-%20My%20Cooking%20Disaster.JPG

Say it with me: Rat-ah-too-ee

Ratatouille.

Is there another more enigmatic food word?  For me, (thanks, Disney/Pixar) it conjures up visions of a happily contented foodie-rat who moves to Paris to pursue his dream job as a chef.  It also makes me think of summer vacation, hot and humid days, and the south of France.

Ratatouille is a Provençal dish that really says everything summer: fresh as can be produce, thrown together with a few glugs of olive oil and some s&p, and baked until everything's tender and simmering in their own juices.  Sometimes when I want a quick pasta sauce, I do a riff on ratatouille in a saucepan and throw in some spaghetti or linguine and toss it around.

This ratatouille was inspired by smitten kitchen's excellent recipe for it here. If you are moderately good at slicing things, you're good to go.  If you have a mandoline, even better and you won't have to meticulously cut every slice yourself.  If slicing things carefully and consistently isn't your thing, dice everything the same size and throw it on a baking sheet or in a casserole and cook it anyway!  The original dish from Provence is pretty rustic and forgiving.

Ingredients:

1 baby eggplant

2 small or 1 large summer squash

1 medium zucchini

2 roma tomatoes

1 yellow onion

1 large or a couple small garlic cloves

olive oil

thyme

salt & pepper

I was feeling stripey.

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375.

2. Slice the eggplant, squash, zucchini, and tomatoes thinly into rounds.  Cut the onion in half (or quarters) and slice the same thickness as the other veggies.
3. Pour 1-2 T of olive oil in the bottom of your casserole.  Grate a clove of garlic into the oil (thank you, microplane! or you could mince it.) and smush it around with your finger (or a spoon, I guess) so it gets into the olive oil and all over the bottom.

4. Layer the veggie slices in concentric circles in the baking dish.  

See how pretty?  I love the bright colors and the pattern the veggies make.

5. Drizzle a couple tablespoons of olive oil over the top, sprinkle with dried thyme or a few sprigs fresh if you have it, and salt & pepper generously.

6. Bake for 45-55 minutes until vegetables are tender and just starting to release some juices.  Bake covered the first 25 minutes and uncovered for the rest.

Voilà!

That's it!  Really, the hardest part is slicing the veggies thinly, and even that isn't that bad.  Plus, it looks so pretty as you arrange it in the dish that everyone will be impressed when you put it on the table.  I made this for a community potluck on Tuesday night and got so many compliments that I'm taking it tonight for a potluck with friends.

Update: There was just a little left over, so I saved it and had it for lunch over quinoa with another tiny drizzle of olive oil.  Yum!

Enjoy your summer veggies!

Love,
Lindsey