Ever run into a recipe that is so easy and so tasty that you are dazed under its spell, obeying its command to make it again, and again, and again, until two weeks later you blink and say to yourself, “Damn, that was good.”

This recipe is why I bought the big honkin’ bottle of sesame oil.

Perfect for chlily nights when you have some time to cook, but not a lot of time, this sesame-peanut stir fry puts together pantry and freezer ingredients in about half an hour to create a comforting sweet-and-spicy assortment of veggies and rice. I love it for its…well, its heft. Vegetables and rice are so very light that they threaten to float away without something to anchor them down, and in winter that something is chunky peanut butter and luscious, dark sesame oil, anchored by onion, ginger, garlic, and lots of black pepper.

For a truly comforting experience, mix the rice right into the finished stir fry. We’re all at home here. If it’s late, we’re going to scoop some of this into a bowl and curl up on the couch with it, furtively, because we know we’re not supposed to.

And if we’re lucky, we have Babylon 5 in the DVD player, and it’s a Londo episode, with lots of Vir, because who knew Flounder could act?

Sesame Peanut Stir Fry

Recipe inspired by “Szechuan-style lo mein stir fry with broccoli slaw and peanuts” from The PDQ (Pretty Darn Quick) Vegetarian Cookbook: 240 Healthy and Easy No-Prep Recipes for Busy Cooks. I’ll often make this with a bag of mixed frozen vegetables — broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots. It’s great with basmati rice and the great part is, you can start the rice when you start cooking the stir fry, and they’ll both be done around the same time. P.S. Sesame peanut stir fry doubles easily to feed a crowd or have extra leftovers.

1 tablespoon canola oil
½ cup chopped onion
1-2 minced garlic cloves
¼ tsp black pepper
16-ounce frozen broccoli, thawed
⅓ cup water
⅓ cup reduced-sodium soy sauce
½ teaspoon ground ginger or 1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger
½ tablespoon sugar
1 package (approximately 14 ounces) firm or extra-firm tofu, drained and cubed
2 tablespoon chunky peanut butter
1 tablespoon toasted (dark) sesame seed oil
¼ cup unsalted chopped peanuts
cooked rice (I like basmati)

In large skillet, heat oil over medium heat. Add chopped onion and cook until softened, 3 minutes. Add garlic and black pepper and cook 1 minute.

Increase heat to medium-high and add broccoli. Cook, stirring occasionally, until warmed, 1 to 3 minutes.

Stir in water, soy sauce, ginger and sugar. Add cubed tofu, if using. Bring to a simmer.

Reduce heat to low and add peanut butter and sesame seed oil, stirring to incorporate; cook until heated through.

Serve on basmati rice. Sprinkle chopped peanuts on top.

Breakfast in Spain is unsubstantial, to my taste: a toasted and buttered bolillo (a large roll) and café con leche, Spain’s rich and tasty version of the latte. (I don’t like coffee or even lattes particularly, but I’ll take a café con leche any day.) Supper, as well, is fairly insubstantial: fried finger foods or a light platter of leftovers, served at 11 p.m., midnight, or even later, depending on the night-owlishness of your household.

Those are the foods my host mom, when I spent 6 months studying in Seville in college, served for breakfast and supper. She was garrulous and quick with a smile, matronly and recently-grandmotherly as well. Also in the household was my roommate and confidante, Laura; and host mom’s two daughters, one also with a husband and 3-year old daughter of her own. However, due to the 8 a.m. light breakfast and midnight greasy/not-filling supper, I was hungry quite often!

Lunch helped alleviate that. The biggest meal of the day in Mediterranean countries, usually eaten just before taking a siesta. My day went like so: get up and get breakfast around 8 a.m. Walk 45 minutes to classes, attend classes. Walk 45 minutes home around 2 p.m., famished, and have it alleviated by a home-cooked meal often followed by the biggest, juiciest, navel oranges you have ever eaten.

And after siesta, often it was another 45-minute walk back to the city center to hang out until the wee hours of the morning. Oh. That’s me in my feria dress. For Seville’s yearly post-Lent carnival and fair. Yeah. Dancing flamenco in that til 5 a.m. was kinda fun, actually.

Often host mom served fatty pork-based dishes that Laura and I picked at desultorially but tried to eat for sustenance. Occasionally she’d surprise us and make a Spanish or Andalusian classic, stunningly: a transcendent tortilla de patatas — transcendent precisely because the dish is basically eggs and potatoes — or gazpacho. Rich, smooth gazpacho as I like to imagine only the brash, proud Sevillanos would dare make it — with lots of fruity olive oil and soaked bread.

it’s tomato soup, served ice cold!

On the Simpsons, Lisa got laughed out of a party when she proudly presented her contribution, gazpacho. “It’s tomato soup, served ice-cold!”

Gazpacho is tomato soup, true, but in the sense that a Chevette is a car. It sounds really similar to a Corvette, yet they are very different machines.

People, well-intentioned people, absolutely mangle gazpacho. They make it without bread. They make it without olive oil. They put in a bunch of herbs and spices. They make it chunky. And when they serve a bowl filled with watery chunks of tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers, and ice cubes, people understandably balk.

They make it wrong. Wrong, I say!

gazpacho: the corvette of tomato soups

I’m biased due to my original gazpacho experiences. Inflexible, I am certain that gazpacho must contain, besides tomatoes, bread; it must contain olive oil, and a bit of garlic, cucumber, bell pepper, and onion; and it must be velvety smooth and thick.

I prepared this gazpacho for many reasons. One is to celebrate summer’s end. Though nearly October, the tomatoes still cling to the vines; they are the last ones. The green tomatoes will not ripen before a frost comes. Same goes for peppers; the onions are already pulled a month ago and cured; and cucumbers are long gone. Another reason to make gazpacho was to make use of the Nature’s Pride bread that I got from a coupon they sent me via Foodbuzz. This gazpacho recipe will be entered in a competition to be featured at the Foodbuzz blogging festival in November.

If it’s still warm where you are, or if there are still homegrown tomatoes available, try to make some gazpacho before the cold sets in for good. Having gazpacho today was a warm splash of summer.

gazpacho sevillano

This recipe was inspired by a Spanish-language post deep in some forums on Microsoft’s Spanish version of Bing. It looked close to what I remembered. I accidentally doubled the bread, but found it perfectly matched the gazpacho I knew and loved. For a less thick soup, use only 2 slices of stale bread. I also use less bell pepper and cucumber than most gazpacho recipes call for. Use your own taste buds and add ingredients to suit yourself. It’s easy to toss in a few more pieces of cucumber or green pepper to the food processor if the mixture seems to need them. Be careful with the garlic — a little raw garlic goes a looooong way. Also, I took the advice from Anya von Bremzen’s The New Spanish Table and used a food processor first to mix, then transferred it to a blender to make the gazpacho silky smooth.

time: 60 minutes, if you are slow like me
yield: 5 cups, or 1¼ liters
special equipment: food processor and/or blender

4 slices (7 ounces or 200 grams) of stale Nature’s Pride Country White or any other white bread, crusts removed
2–3 pounds tomatoes — I used bumpy, blemishy heirloom tomatoes that I have to cut away lots of, so I used 3 pounds
2 small cloves garlic or 1 large clove, peeled
½ small red or yellow onion
½ of a medium cucumber, peeled
1 small green bell pepper
½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons champagne vinegar — sherry vinegar is often the type called for, but this works fine
salt to taste

Note: You’ll be making half of the recipe at a time. The food processor won’t hold everything at once, if yours is a normal-sized food processor.

First, put on a pot of water to boil. You’ll be slipping the tomatoes in there to loosen their skins.

While waiting for the water to boil, tear the stale bread into small pieces and put them into a bowl. Fill with water and let soak.

Prepare the vegetables. Peel the garlic. Peel the onion and cut it into quarters. Peel the cucumber half and cut into chunks. Core and peel — yep, peel — the green pepper. It’s pretty easy to just hold it in your hand and peel; seems easier than an apple. If you’re sure your food processor and blender can pulverize the skin, skip peeling. Toss 1 clove of garlic, half the cucumber, and half the green pepper into the food processor’s bowl.

Once the water is boiling, drop the tomatoes in for 30 seconds to 1 minute. Remove the tomatoes and plunge into cold water. The peels will slip right off. Remove tomato peels, then core and seed the tomatoes. Add half the tomatoes to the food processor. Add half of the soaked bread, squeezing lightly before putting it in.

Whirl it all together until it appears smooth. Add ¼ cup of the olive oil and 1 tablespoon of the vinegar. Process until all mixed. Transfer to a blender. Make the second half of the gazpacho by putting the rest of the seeded tomatoes, cucumber, onion, garlic (if using), green pepper and bread into the food processor. Mix, then add the remaining ¼ cup olive oil and 1 tablespoon vinegar. Taste and adjust vegetables/seasoning if desired.

Transfer the second half of the gazpacho to the blender. Whirl together until velvety smooth. Add salt to taste. Serve chilled. Garnish with finely diced cucumber; green, red, and yellow bell pepper; and quartered or halved cherry or grape tomatoes. Serve with crusty bread and a quality olive oil.

Helen: Hmm, Pita. Well, I don’t know about food from the Middle East. Isn’t that whole area a little iffy?
Hostess: [laughs] Hey, I’m no geographer. You and I — why don’t we call it pocket bread, huh?
Maude: [reading the ingredients list] Umm, what’s tahini?
Hostess: Flavor sauce.
Edna: And falafel?
Hostess: Crunch patties.

Courtesy The Simpsons Archive.

For this (mostly) vegetarian, the second Project Food Blog challenge actually posed several small challenges. It’s called, “The Classics,” and it asks, “Any food blogger worth their salt can make a classic dish sing, but can they go outside their comfort zone and tackle a foreign cusine?”

One problem was that most cultures’ emblematic dishes are meat-based, and I wanted to remain as faithful to whatever recipe I chose as possible. Also, I live in…the boonies. Flyover country. BFE. While it’s possible to source many unusual ingredients, it can become very time-consuming driving across several counties to charming hole-in-the-wall mom-and-pop shops and whoa, is that a Vietnamese market?

*shakes head* Okay, I’m back now. So anyway, one thing we don’t have in Project Food Blog is time.

how to decide?

I agonized. I researched world cuisines to see what unfamiliar cultures made. It was mainly meat, or used ingredients I wouldn’t be able to source out here on the Prairie Farm.

I toyed with the idea of baking a country’s signature dessert. As much as it appealed to me, it seemed too easy, too comfortable — I really enjoy baking.

I should have just lied and baked something.

Friends and family were helpful. Do empanadas. Remember how we ate empanadas at that little restaurant at Ground Zero on our vacation. Do pasties, a Yooper classic by way of Cornwall. Do gyoza. There was a definite meal-in-a-pocket theme.

And then there was the try-something-crazy theme. Do lutefisk, natto, garum.

Well, they tried.

I made a spreadsheet. I listed the candidates. I scored them on originality, authenticity, photogenic-ness. Shush. I know I’m a geek.

I wanted a good story. All my food stories seemed so pedestrian, boring, common.

ding ding ding

Throughout it all, I kept telling my friends and family about Middle Eastern food. How, in Chicago, I had literally six Middle Eastern restaurants and three Middle Eastern bakeries within a two-block radius of my apartment. A light supper on the way home from work was stopping at one of the bakeries after getting off the el and picking up a few spinach-and-feta pies or a falafel sandwich.

Whenever people came to visit, I took them to the Middle Eastern restaurants, especially Andie’s after it expanded and remodeled, because they could eat meat to their heart’s content and I could get falafel, eggplant mousaka, couscous, and more.

In some restaurants, the owners greeted us by name. One had a traditional seating area with pillows on the floor and hookahs you could try. Friends and I would stumble to one or another restaurant after an evening out for an appetizer and a nightcap, or make it the start of an evening.

Falafel was so ubiquitous, so cheap, and so readily available that I had no need or reason to learn how to make it. I lived in falafel heaven.

Then, of course, I moved to BFE. The nearest falafel was 30 miles away. Sadface.

In the end, after all this agonizing, falafel was the clear choice. My pedestrian, boring, common meal wasn’t so common for me any longer, so might not others find it unique as well? What’s normal to me would surely be new to…someone at least.

Besides, it was incredibly daunting. Grinding chickpeas? Deep-frying? I don’t deep fry! How the hell was I going to make those little balls stick together? Definitely out of my comfort zone.

the falafel recipes

Things I quickly learned in my search for falafel recipes:

1. Falafel is made from uncooked, soaked chickpeas. Canned beans will not do. It’s possible to make a facsimile of falafel with canned beans, but they are so wet that one has to add a lot of binder (flour or potato) to get them to stick together, rendering falafel-style hush puppies.

2. Egyptians make falafel with a combination of chickpeas and fava beans, or sometimes with all fava beans. I made mine with chickpeas only.

3. There are as many recipes for falafel as there are falafel shops in Chicago.

In the name of science, I tried two falafel recipes. One by Mark Bittman, who admittedly I often have trouble with, and one by a charming crazy Iraqi named Moti.

The nice thing about falafel is, it can all be mixed up in a food processor. The traditional, and preferred method is to use a meat grinder, but who has one of those lying around?

Oh, me. I do. No, I used a food processor instead. That thing up there? It weighs a ton!

They were both good recipes. The recipe here is my mishmash between the two.

can you quick soak beans for falafel?

One forum post said you could get away with quick soaking the beans (Bring to a boil, then remove from heat, cover and sit for an hour).

Two other sites said the slow soak was the only way and quick soaking would ruin the beans/falafel.

What’s the verdict? I made the Mark Bittman falafel using quick-soaked beans. Moti falafel was made using overnight-soaked beans. Both came out great.

So, yes, Virginia, you can quick soak garbanzo beans for falafel. Yay!

In the end, falafel is quite easy, as long as you have a deep fryer and plan to make it a day ahead of time (or are prepared to spend the time doing a quick soak). The worst part is making the balls themselves. They’re very messy and crumbly and you worry they will fall apart. Every other part of the recipe, though, is a breeze. I hope you try them sometime!

I’ve also included a recipe for flavor tahini sauce for the sandwich. Tahini itself is just a nut butter — it’s like peanut butter, but with sesame seeds. If you add some lemon juice, garlic, salt and pepper, and yogurt if you like to tahini, and thin it with some water, you have a great dip or nutty mayonnaise substitute.

falafel (crunch patties)

prep: 12–24 hours (5 minutes active time)
active time: 1 hour
special equipment: food processor

1 cup dry chickpeas
1 small onion or ½ large onion, quartered
5 cloves garlic
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
⅛ teaspoon ground cayenne (hot) pepper, or to taste (both recipes had more than this)
¼ cup chopped fresh parsley
¼ cup chopped fresh cilantro
1½ teaspoons lemon juice
¼ teaspoon baking soda
¼ cup flour, either garbanzo flour or all-purpose flour (optional; use garbanzo for gluten-free)
oil for frying

A day ahead:

Put chickpeas in a bowl and cover with 2–3 inches of water. Let soak overnight, the longer the better, up to 24 hours. Check periodically to see if you need to add more water.

Now to mix up the falafel!

Heat oil in a deep pot or deep fryer to 375°. While the oil is heating, mix up the falafel.

Drain the soaked chickpeas. You’ll have about 2 cups.

Put them in the bowl of the food processor, along with the onion, garlic, cumin, coriander, salt, pepper, cayenne, parsley, cilantro, lemon juice and soda. I tried one version without lemon juice and the boy thought something was missing. Grind and mix by pulsing, stopping once in a while to scrape down the sides. You don’t have to stop very often; I found that everything was mixing pretty uniformly on its own. Just make sure not to mush everything up completely. The beans should be in small niblety chunks, like sprinkles. Mmm, sprinkles.

Now, you could stop right here if you wanted to for the most pure falafel. If you’d like a little bit of help binding things together, add the flour and stir or pulse it all together. To be honest, I didn’t find the flour to help all that much to make the raw falafel feel like it held together better, but it did allow me to make bigger balls that held together, so I do suppose it helps.

If you don’t want to make the falafel right away, you could refrigerate the mixture for up to a day. Moti says that refrigerating at least 2 hours helps the falafel stick together better. I tried this and found it to behave the same whether fresh-mixed or whether chilled.

Now for the messy part!

Take a tablespoonfull of the falafel mix and make a ball of falafel in your hand. It will not want to stick together. I’m warning you right now. Just keep squeezing and pressing and molding for a few seconds and quickly you’ll have a ball that’s just holding together. Set this in the pan or in the deep fry basket. I used a Fry Baby and it made things so much easier. You will get lots of falafel bits sticking to your hands. Make several ping pong- to golf-sized balls, and fry for 2–3 minutes. Remove from oil and set on cutting board or paper towels.

tahini sauce (flavor sauce)

½ cup tahini
½ cup plain yogurt (omit for vegan sauce; it’s still wonderful)
juice of 1 lemon
1 clove garlic, mashed
salt and pepper to taste
water

Whisk together tahini, yogurt, lemon juice, and garlic. This mixture will be quite thick. Thin with water to desired consistency, or don’t thin at all if you don’t want to! Add salt and pepper to taste. Use as a dipping sauce, or in place of mayonnaise, or as a spread in falafel sandwiches.

To make a falafel sandwich from a thick pita, spread the inside of a pita with tahini sauce. Place 3 or however many balls you want of falafel in the pocket. Add sliced or diced tomato, cucumber, pickled turnip or pickled vegetables, lettuce, sliced sweet red pepper, and/or whatever sandwich fixins you enjoy. With thin pitas, roll like a burrito.

a vote for shiny cooking is a vote for kitten power

If you enjoyed this post, please vote for Shiny Cooking to continue onward in the Project Food Blog competition! Out of 400 competitors, 200 move on to round 3, and everyone gets 200 votes to cast! If you can spare a vote for me, I will truly appreciate it.

I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve never had to learn how to make strawberry freezer jam. I’ve been even more fortunate in that I never even tasted store-bought jam until I was practically an adult.

As a result, I’m spoiled. Spoiled rotten. I turn up my nose at Smucker’s, and even those fancy top-shelf brand jams can’t satisfy.

I never had to learn how to make strawberry freezer jam because every year I saw my mom make it right in front of me. Sis and I got drafted to help pick strawberries in our grandparents’ strawberry patch. I recall crouching low, pushing through the leaves, and searching for the elusive strawberries Grandma insisted were still there even though we were sure we’d gotten them all.

Nowadays we buy our strawberries already picked from local growers. Rhode’s Strawberries, run by “Captain Bob” Rhode of Chesaning Showboat fame, is always our first choice. Most area growers this year, though, complained of small harvests and we wound up going about 35 miles away to find reasonably-priced berries.

let’s make strawberry freezer jam!

Making strawberry freezer jam is a snap because there’s no special recipe. In fact, deviation from the standard recipe is frowned upon because it will likely result in failure of the jam to set up properly. Just clean one quart of strawberries per batch of freezer jam. Have one package of Sure-Jell or other pectin on hand for each batch. Then chop up those berries. You could briefly, carefully whirl them in a food processor, or use a potato masher, but I find the chopper to be my favorite.

Oops, you can’t really see the chopper in that pic. Here’s a better one! See, it’s like a biscuit cutter, but darksided.

Add the sugar to the chopped strawberries. I’ve got a double batch going in this picture; that’s why there’s so honkin’ much. You can totally double batch it, but don’t even think of triple or more batches at a time. That’s crazy talk.

At this point in the process, if you’re gonna be snapping pictures, you’d better have someone else around, because the stirring and the pouring and the stirring again and the zomg fill the jars before jam sets madness is going on and things are, if not exactly hectic, then not quite “Let’s stop and compose an artsy photo” conducive.

See, for the above, after the lime went in the coconut sugar went in the strawberries, the water went into the pectin, the pectin-water went into the strawberry-sugar, and the pectin-water-strawberry-sugar went into the adorable little jars. And all pretty quickly too, because if you lollygag, the jam will set up before you get it into the jars, which isn’t a tragedy but is a bit messy.

The strawberry freezer jam recipe is in every package of Sure-Jell, and I’m including it below as well, with tips and commentary Kraft simply does not offer. Oo la la.

strawberry freezer jam recipe

Every time I’ve made strawberry freezer jam, and every time anyone I know has made it, I’ve gotten more jam than the recipe predicts (5). I always wind up with 6 cups or 6½ cups. So be prepared with extra clean jars/containers. In fact, that’s always a good idea when canning or preserving. You don’t want to stop in the middle of something time-sensitive to wash jars.

yield: 5–6 cups
special equipment: chopper or food processor; funnel
time: 60 to 90 minutes, plus 24 hours

1 quart strawberries
4 cups granulated sugar
¾ cup water
1 box Sure-Jell fruit pectin

Wash 6 cups’ worth of containers and lids in warm soapy water and dry thoroughly.

Hull and wash strawberries. Chop strawberries until they’re soupy and contain chunks in the size you desire.

Stir in the sugar. It won’t all dissolve right away. Let stand for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. While waiting, set out jars/containers where you plan to fill them, and get a ladle and a funnel ready if you have one.

In a small saucepan, mix water and pectin and bring to a boil over high heat. Stir constantly. Boil for 1 minute, stirring constantly and watching to be sure it does not boil over.

Remove pectin from heat and add to the strawberry-sugar mixture. Stir for 3 minutes or until sugar is dissolved. The sugar may not be entirely dissolved, but 3 minutes is all you need to stir, or less if the sugar dissolves quickly.

Immediately fill containers, ladling the hot jam through the funnel if you have one, leaving ½ inch head space to allow room for expansion in the freezer.

Cover containers with their lids and let stand at room temperature for 24 hours. Then the strawberry freezer jam is all ready to go into the freezer.

Sis and Mom were thrilled with the dinner party. “You can do this anytime,” they cooed conspiratorially, and they began plotting holiday schedules. “Thanksgiving, Christmas…no, Mom will still do Christmas…Easter….”

I hadn’t hosted an event of this magnitude before. A bit over a month ago my sponsor, Foodbuzz, contacted me with the offer to host a pasta and wine-pairing dinner party using free coupons supplied by Buitoni Riserva. That shit’s expensive, so I jumped at the chance.

the asparagus mistake

I picked up 5 packages each of fresh pasta agnolotti, which is is a jumbo half-moon shaped ravioli. One was wild mushroom, and I planned to toss it with roasted asparagus and chives, drizzle it with olive oil, and top it with freshly ground black pepper and goat cheese. Unfortunately, I didn’t consult my sister the asparagus roasting expert, and left it in the oven about 20 minutes instead of the 5 she said was correct, and the asparagus came out limp and mushy.

My aunt, Linda, brought over a bunch of chives she snipped from her patch, some blooming with crunchy-oniony flowers atop them. They were too pretty to ignore, so they got put out on the table.

The guest list: Mom and Dad, Jennifer and Dale Javier (he said he wanted to be called Javier), Mom’s best friend Leeann and her daughter (and my friend) Angie, and Linda. I asked Leeann which wine she wanted to drink. “Oh, I love all white wine,” she said, so I poured her the La Noble chardonnay I’d picked up and a teeny glass of fino. Fino is very dry sherry that I drank a lot in Spain and it always makes me think of briny olives, tapas, dancing sevillanas, and walking home through the Parque de María Luisa at seven in the morning.

Not everyone was into the wine thing, though. Dad and Javier mixed themselves up some massive bloody marys.

Check out this spread! Angie made that vibrant salad, Mom brought the relish tray, and there’s the wild mushroom agnolotti along with the four cheese (Quattro Formaggi) agnolotti, and the red sauce I mixed up for the latter.

where’s my two dollars?

There’s Linda and the view from the other side of the tablecloth. That’s right, tablecloth. Cloth napkins. Frawnch fries. Frawnch bread. Kwissssmassss. Pardon me, I’m channeling Better Off Dead.

The top is the wild mushroom agnolotti with the asparagus/chives/black pepper/olive oil/goat cheese topping I mentioned. The left/bottom is the four cheese agnolotti with a roasted red pepper and kalamata olive sauce, topped with fresh basil. And supposed to have grated parmesan on top, but I forgot to get it on there for the pic. That sauce was the bomb.

Jennifer posed for an action shot! You can see a glass of red wine, which would be the shiraz Angie brought. I’d originally planned on cabernet to pair with the wild mushroom agnolotti, but we ended up breaking that out later. The red paired really well with the four cheese as well. Personally, I drank a little of the chardonnay and the shiraz and liked them both with both pastas. Maybe I’m just easy. Don’t answer that.

Dad warned Javier early on, “You’re not going to be getting any meat here tonight.” Of course they were going through that theater to tease me, but their little plan backfired. They chowed down and made happy noises just as much as everyone else did.

Notice how I ran out of serving dishes and dug into the storage containers. I’m so not prepared for this big party thing.

bring out your desserts

Linda made the coolest. Dessert. Evar. Think peanut butter pound cake. Slice it. Spread with peanut buttercream and blackberry jam. Top with another slice of pound cake.

That’s right. Linda made pound cake pb&j. Awesome.

Jennifer dipped strawberries in chocolate and served them on an appropriately-themed playing cards plate. Did I mention this was dinner and games night?

Mom and Leeann have been best friends for like 40 years, since Leeann moved in next door to Mom and Dad. <suckup>Did I say 40? I meant 20, because they couldn’t be a day over 40 themselves.</suckup>

euchre tournament!

Time to get our game on. With 8 of us present, and everyone liking euchre, we drew numbers, paired up, and had a little euchre tournament. To my chagrin, I was paired with Dale Javier, but he only fucked up once so I didn’t get to yell at him.

Jennifer and Mom were the winning team (never put people with shared DNA on the same team) and suddenly when it was over people began joking, “Where are the prizes?”

“Prizes?” I said, and a light bulb went on. An opportunity to divest myself of some excess goods! I got out some packaged rice/pasta sides I’d been planning to hand off to Linda, some product samples I’d received randomly in the mail, and some decks of playing cards from an estate sale I went to last week. Jennifer chose this lovely rice side dish to take home with her.

For her parting gift, Angie selected “stars of country music” playing cards and some instant coffee samples.

Then we played Perudo, or Liar’s Dice, and after that midnight was approaching, so the parent types and Jennifer and Javier left before they all turned into pumpkins. This left Linda, Angie, Bill, and me, and we broke out the Pictionary.

how to draw siamese twins in pictionary

how not to win at ingenious

Even with the adults gone, the wine kept flowing. We finished the La Noble and the Oak Leaf shiraz. Then we finished the Red Truck varietal red, and broke into the Clos du Bois chardonnay and Ravenswood cabernet, and Linda finished her Funky Llama chardonnay.

Wits and Wagers made an appearance, and then we closed out the night with Ingenious. Angie couldn’t remember if she’d played before and Bill was new to Ingenious, so I played with a handicap — I picked my tiles to play randomly. I got trounced as the newbies quickly picked up on the strategy and scored one Ingenious after another. I’m never believing Cranky Angie again! (Cranky Angie: I don’t think I like this. I don’t know if I want to play this. I know and understand Cranky Angie, because Cranky Amy always makes an appearance with new games too.)

what did i learn from all this?

I can put on a grownup party.

I can sip wine without getting too drunk.

Having smokers around leads to more smoking.

The Buitoni Riserva pastas are really good. The Quattro Formaggi Agnolotti was the hands-down favorite.

Good wine goes with anything.

Euchre needs to be more than a regional game.

roasted red pepper and kalamata olive pasta sauce

This sauce was the hit of the party. Salty, piquant, and complex, it goes well with simple pastas like cheese ravioli or agnolotti. I hesitate to post it as a recipe because it’s so simple, but it’s so good that it must be shared.

1 (28 ounce) jar red pasta sauce, like marinara
1 small (7 ounce) jar roasted red peppers
¼ cup kalamata olives

Purée the roasted red peppers and kalamata olives in a blender. Pour sauce and pepper/olive purée into a 2-quart pan and warm over medium heat. Serve over pasta.

Rhubarb with caramelized onions? Rhubarb salsa? Rhubarb and lentil potage? I can hear you now, the ornery ones of you that is: What the hell, woman…rhubarb’s for pie. Crisps. Crunches.

For April’s Foodbuzz 24, 24, 24 event, I decided to explore the savory side of rhubarb, since there’s a ton of it growing about 50 feet from my front door. As rhubarb is technically a vegetable/herb, why not try some recipes that utilize rhubarb as a vegetable?

Hey, salsa has a tangy bite. I bet rhubarb could work in salsa. So I tracked down a viable candidate in The Joy of Rhubarb: The Versatile Summer Delight. It’s a classic Mexican salsa, with fresh cilantro, green onion (which made me happy; I can’t stand regular onions raw), lime juice, jalapeño for a bit of bite, barely-blanched rhubarb, and lots of sweet peppers and more sugar than salsa normally would have, to counteract the rhubarb’s bite.

Dad’s verdict? “It would be great on hamburgers. By the way, we’re having hamburgers tonight….” Subtle hint there, Dad. Yeah, he went home with some rhubarb salsa. Linda thought it had a bit of a bitter rhubarb taste to it and suggested more sweetener. I loved it. Fresh, crisp, clean salsa taste with the rhubarb adding uniqueness without overpowering it.

Overall verdict for rhubarb salsa: Two snaps up.

Jump to the rhubarb salsa recipe now or continue reading.

balsamic-rhubarb reduction

I swear, this was some fancy-pants shit I made. Asparagus with balsamic-rhubarb reduction (recipe here). It was dead easy, too. You cook down some balsamic vinegar and chopped rhubarb — along with a good little heap of sugar — until most of the liquid has evaporated and you get a thickish sauce. In this preparation, it’s served with roasted asparagus. You could really impress some guests with this stuff.

Dad’s verdict: Tasty, but the roasted asparagus was too soft. He grabbed a stalk of raw asparagus from the 10-pound bag I’d just picked and dipped that in the reduction instead. Linda’s verdict: “Too strong for asparagus. Would be really good with pork or something.” I liked the contrast between the tangy, balsamic-flavored reduction and the mild roasted asparagus, but I see her point. Comme-ci, comme ça.

Overall verdict for rhubarb-balsamic reduction: Two snaps sideways.

lentil and rhubarb potage

The original title of this Mark Bittman recipe is “Lentil and rhubarb stew with Indian spices,” but it’s too thick for a stew. So I did some Google-fu and discovered it was more of a potage, which also sounds fancier.

And man, it may be one ugly mofo of a dish, but damn, lentil and rhubarb potage is tasty. I was shocked. It had no added sugar. I was certain it would be inedible. But I had to try it, because it has cardamom in it, which is my new favorite spice ever.

Linda’s verdict: Really good and interesting. Nice balance of complex flavors. I’m transling from “Mmm” here, by the way.

Overall verdict for rhubarb and lentil potage: Two snaps up.

caramelized onion and rhubarb compote on herbed yogurt cheese

Hey Aunt Geri, I finally broke in the yogurt cheese maker! And all was good. This recipe, heavily adapted from one for caramelized onion, beet, and rhubarb compote, made me nervous. For one, it was another fancy-pants recipe. For another, I was adapting the living hell out of it. I’m not good at that sort of thing. Usually my adaptations tend to turn out more like the rhubarb mistake below. And for yet another thing, I was winging the whole herbed yogurt cheese thing. Entirely.

If you want to adapt the recipe like I did, simply make it without the beet purée, and add more maple syrup when you add the rhubarb, about 2 tablespoons worth. Trust me, you’ll need it. For the herbed cheese the easy way, go with a slightly sweet prepared cheese spread like Aloutte…because that was what I was shooting for. I put them in baked wonton cups, but they’d be better on small squares of puff pastry.

Dad’s verdict: “I really like the cheese and compote filling, but those wontons are like chewing on glass.” Linda’s verdict: “I love that filling!” Me? Shocked. And happy it worked. :p Cue the Smiths.

Overall verdict for caramelized onion and rhubarb compote: Two snaps way up.

rhubarb mistake

Since I had Mexican, Indian, and vaguely Italian (in the form of the caramelized onion and rhubarb compote), I decided to try incorporating rhubarb into a Thai curry. I’m not even going to link to the recipe I worked from, because the experiment was an utter disaster, and I didn’t follow the recipe exactly, so I don’t want to impugn the blogger who posted it.

Suffice it to say: disaster. Coconut milk wasn’t enough sweetness to balance rhubarb’s astringency, the rhubarb became gloopy, and it tasted awful. Oh well.

The experience did cement my dedication to you, the reader: You will never be subjected to a recipe I don’t absolutely love. I want everything you try to be something well-tested and well-liked before it ever hits this page.

Overall verdict for rhubarb mistake: Two snaps way down. Let’s forget all about it and move on to the rhubarb salsa recipe.

rhubarb salsa

Adapted from The Joy of Rhubarb: The Versatile Summer Delight by Theresa Millang.

2 cups finely diced fresh rhubarb
½ cup sweet red pepper, chopped
½ cup sweet yellow pepper, chopped
½ cup fresh cilantro, chopped
3 green onions, tops only, chopped
1 jalapeño pepper, finely chopped
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
2 tablespoons brown sugar, or to taste
salt and ground black pepper to taste

Blanch rhubarb in a saucepan of boiling water for 10 seconds. Seriously. Ten seconds. No more. Remove rhubarb promptly from heat, dump into a strainer, and rinse under cold water until rhubarb is lukewarm or cool. This is to stop the blanching process.

Place rhubarb in a glass bowl.  Add remaining ingredients, and mix well. Refrigerate at least an hour before serving to allow flavors to develop.

Hello, my pretties. We’ll be quick today in honor of tax season. I have a zillion e-mail records to go through (the bane of online work) and missing 1099s to calculate by hand. My tax preparer, who also happens to be my best friend from grade school, is in 90 degree-plus Virginia this week, so I really can’t say which of us has it worse.

This red wine tomato sauce recipe can be subbed for a jar of any red store-bought pasta sauce. I like to double or triple the recipe and freeze it because hey, if I’m going to the work of making my own sauce, I may as well have some for next time.

But is it really work? Chop an onion, press a few cloves of garlic, open a can of tomatoes, and do some measuring. Twenty minutes on the stove, and it’s done.

There’s a secret to this tomato sauce. Your omnivore friends will think it has meat in it. The trick is fennel. An earthy, tangy spice used to flavor sausage, fennel is the spice that makes us think “meat.”

What do I like to do with this versatile tomato sauce?

• use it in lasagna
• top pasta with it and sprinkle with Parmesan (obvious)
• use it in baked penne (recipe coming, ooh)
• add mushrooms to it
• add soy burger crumbles to it
• add chopped red or green pepper to it
• add soy sausage crumbles to it

I-can’t-believe-it’s-meatless tomato sauce will happily take anything you wish to add to it. Go make it if you have a chance. I have Paypal receipts to sort through.

i-can’t-believe-it’s-meatless tomato sauce

The recipe calls for a large can of whole tomatoes, briefly whirred in a blender. You could instead use a 28-ounce can of tomato puree (make sure it’s made from only tomatoes) or even diced or crushed tomatoes, according to your preference. The latter will be a chunkier sauce. Adapted from Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites: Flavorful Recipes for Healthful Meals.

Time: 45 minutes
Special equipment: blender (optional)

1 tablespoon olive oil (not EVOO)
1 cup finely chopped onion (1 medium onion)
¼ teaspoon salt
2 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
2 teaspoons ground fennel
2 teaspoons Milford’s Buon Appetito Italian seasoning* or 1 teaspoon each dried oregano and dried basil
⅓ cup red wine
3 cups undrained canned tomatoes (28-ounce can)
½ to 1 tablespoon sugar
salt and pepper to taste

In a large saucepan, heat the olive oil on medium heat. Add the onions, sprinkle with salt, and sauté until soft, about 4 to 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

While the onions are cooking, whirl the tomatoes in a blender until just puréed and set aside.

When onions are soft, add the garlic and cook for 30 seconds.

Add the fennel, oregano and basil* and cook for another minute to coat the onions and garlic in the spices.

Pour in the red wine and bring to a boil. This will happen quickly, so have the puréed tomatoes handy, or have your canned purée, diced, or crushed tomatoes open and ready. Add tomatoes and sugar to the pan and mix well.

Cover and simmer gently for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Taste and season with salt and pepper to your preference.

* Just want to let you know that Milford Spice, a Michigan company, sent me a free sample of this seasoning. I also happen to dig it a lot.
** If using fresh herbs, use 1 tablespoon each of fresh oregano and basil and add them in the last couple minutes of cooking time.

This March was in like a lion, out like a lamb, just as it’s supposed to be, right and good. It’s a slow-brewing Easter revelation: for the past several days, we’ve had our eye on the forecast and those double digits creeping up from 40s to 50s to 70s. We’ve been talking about the weather forecast in awed, hushed tones: it’s going to be 75°F by Thursday! Maybe 80°F on Friday!

We so want to be true believers in meteorology, just this once. We’re ready, after months of snow and ice and wind and mud, to prostrate ourselves at the altar of the Mighty Blue Screen of Meteorological Prophecy.

And today, we are believers. It’s 56°F right now. We see whispers on Facebook: our Chicago friends wax poetic in their status updates about their glorious weather, and we close our eyes and smile, knowing that what’s in Chicago today will be here tomorrow.

in the hippie spirit

And since I’m in this warm hippie spirit, I’ll offer up a foodstuff so linked to hippes that it became an adjective all its own. I’m not too granola myself, but having gone to school in Ann Arbor, I’ve mingled with the granola crowd.

And let me tell you, they’re on to something. This maple granola, from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking: Delicious Recipes Using Nutritious Whole Grains, is precisely what I’ve missed in every granola I’ve had until this point: fresh, balanced, and just crunchy enough. It doesn’t make large clusters of granola; rather, maple granola is more suited for the cereal bowl. I can’t tell you quite how it is as cereal though, because it became my habit to put a bit into a custard cup and spoon it, dry.

I was really happy with this maple granola and hey, it’s low-maintenance: stir it all together, a couple hours in the oven with 2 stirs, then store in an airtight container forever. Yay!

maple granola

I made half this recipe for 8 cups. Remember, granola is infinitely customizable. Substitute your own favorite nuts and dried fruit. Go crazy. You have my permission. Speaking of permission, this recipe is reprinted from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking: Delicious Recipes Using Nutritious Whole Grains…with permission!

Yield: 16 cups
Oven: 250°F
Total time: 2½ hours

7 cups (24½ ounces) old-fashioned rolled oats

1 cup (3 ounces) flaked coconut

1 cup (4 ounces) wheat germ

1 cup (5 ounces) almonds, sliced or broken up

1 cup (3¾ ounces) pecans or walnuts, chopped or broken up
1 cup (5 ounces) sunflower seeds, raw or toasted

½ teaspoon salt

1 cup (11 ounces) maple syrup

¾ cup (5¼ ounces) vegetable oil

1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 cup (5¼ ounces) golden raisins
1 cup (4 ounces) dried cranberries

1 cup (4½ ounces) chopped dried apricots




Preheat the oven to 250°F. Combine the oats, coconut, wheat germ, nuts, seeds and salt in a very large bowl. Mix well. In a separate bowl, whisk together the maple syrup, oil and vanilla. Pour the syrup mixture over the dry mixture, stirring and tossing till everything is very well combined; its probably easiest to do this with your hands.



Spread the granola over 2 large baking sheets with rims. Your cleanup will be much easier if you line them with parchment paper.



Bake for 2 hours, stirring the mixture after 1 hour or so. Remove the pans from the oven and let cool completely. Transfer the granola to a large bowl and mix in the dried fruit.



Store in an airtight container at room temperature.



Some of you have been expressing…concern…as to what happened with the whole big levain/sourdough plot. I’ll tell you what happened. A winter storm happened. Unripe levain happened. Flat bread happened. And a possibly unconnected but mysteriously coincidental horrible sinus flareup happened.

By day 4, I had a feeling the levain was ripe and active. Compare the above pic to day 3 and see how much the yeast activity made the levain rise in 12 hours. So I put it back into its normal container and fed it again that evening and planned to bake whole wheat sourdough the next day.

When I checked it in the morning, I frowned. It had been near the north window in the kitchen, and a winter storm had blown in overnight, winds howling from the north. The area where the levain had been sitting was extremely chilly. Worse, the leavain didn’t look active. It wasn’t bubbly or beginning to exude the brownish liquid that it does when active. It had been too cold, there by the window.

f*** it, we’ll do it live!

But like a dumbass I pushed those worries aside. Making sourdough would take a six-hour block of time, and I had scheduled my day specifically to allow for that. I’d make whole wheat sourdough bread come hell or high water, dammit!

Of course, my inflexibility was my downfall. The bread rose sluggishly, my clumsy attempts at brotform substitutes seemed inferior, and the two loaves baked into delicious-smelling, heavy discs of whole wheat sourdough.

With trepidation, I gingerly sliced a sliver of bread from one end once it had cooled. The taste? Wonderful. It was mellow and not outrageously sour; just a hint, the barest hint, of tang. So what if it was fairly leaden? I could still eat this stuff.

And eat it I did, and took it to Mom and Dad’s that night to have with tomato soup. Dad liked it and ate a ton (it probably felt like a ton, too) and so did I.

has your face ever tried to explode away from your head?

The next day I woke up, and wanted to sever the left side of my head from my body. Everything hurt: my jaw, my cheek, my ear, around my eyeball, even my left temple. Everything on the left side of my head was in excruciating pain. Ibuprofen didn’t touch it. The pain knocked me entirely out of commission. It was bizarre and horrible and I’d highly recommend it as a torture technique.

I self-diagnosed a flareup of a sinus infection I thought I’d kicked last fall. Only this time, for some reason, every sinus on the left side of my head was affected and pissed. Off. The next day the pain had subsided a bit, and the day after that it was pretty much gone. It hasn’t come back.

I don’t want it to come back. I’m worried that something about the wild yeast in the sourdough affected my sinuses and made them try to kill me. I don’t want my sinuses to kill me. I want to try this sourdough still. But now I’m afraid to.

So for now, the big sourdough plan is on hold. I am keeping the whole wheat levain alive in the fridge, feeding it weekly. Maybe once I forget how my sinuses felt, and how they took up arms and tried to kill me, I might try baking with it again.

whole wheat levain, refrigerator maintenance

Once you’ve developed an active whole wheat levain, you don’t need to feed it twice daily unless you’re baking with it regularly. This starter can be stored in the refrigerator and fed once weekly to keep it alive. Adapted with permission from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking: Delicious Recipes Using Nutritious Whole Grains.

Once a week, remove levain from the refrigerator and discard all but 2 ounces. Add:

4 ounces whole wheat flour
4 ounces cool water

Mix well. Let it sit at room temperature at least a few hours before putting the levain back into the refrigerator.

Two to three days before you plan to bake with the levain, remove it from the refrigerator, keep it at room temperature, and resume twice-daily feedings.

This is the time of year when we write posts about how tired we are of winter. But I’m not. I’m totally over being tired of winter. I already gave in a few weeks ago to the allure of fresh produce, abandoning the frozen corn, green beans, and zucchini in favor of bean sprouts, cucumbers, and oh my lord grape tomatoes as big as your thumb.

There’s still part of a cabbage in the fridge — my cabbages grow to gigantic proportions, I don’t know why — but the last of fall’s carrots was gone over a month ago and yes, I tired of the old. I wanted the crunch of nutrients I hadn’t had fresh in months.

I abandoned locavore eating. Just until spring, and just once in a while. There’s something about fresh sprouts. They’re a promise. They’re potentiality. They could have become beans, but instead they’re going into my tummy. They’re earthy and new and taste of beginnings.

And this salad. Oh, this salad is all about the decadence, the utter wrongness, so wrong it’s right, of eating things that have been trucked two thousand miles. This is what perked me up, got me looking forward to the herb seeds I planted today, made me impervious to the clutch of the muddy clay that is my yard as I glop through it in winter boots, leaving wet dinosaur footprints that would fossilize when the ground dries, if I weren’t going to seed it with grass this spring.

We’ll be eating local again soon, very soon. And even now, I still take down a jar of pasta sauce made from my tomatoes and onions for supper, and pull 2008 applesauce from the freezer, still tree-fresh. But along with preserved homegrown every few days or so something like this salad pops into my mind, and demands attention.

I think it’s the cucumber seeds up on the shelf, whispering to me that they’re ready, almost ready. Ready to grow.

yes, peanut dressing is the bomb

Indonesian tofu, bean sprout, and cucumber salad with spicy peanut dressing, from Jeanne Lemlin’s Vegetarian Classics, takes simple ingredients and elevates them with this peanut dressing.

It’s to die for. Take tofu roasted in sesame oil and soy sauce, bean sprouts, cucumber, and green onion. Nice ingredients, but who cares?

Peanut dressing cares, that’s who. It’s just got all good stuff in it: peanut butter, soy sauce, brown sugar, lime juice, you know the drill. I’m sure you could find other uses for it beyond just this salad. A regular green salad, for example, or in a quinoa salad. Some kind of cold fried rice?

In any case, if you still suffer the winter blahs, consider breaking the locavore commitment for just a few meals, gather up some sprouts and cucumber, and try this salad.

indonesian tofu, bean sprout, and cucumber salad with spicy peanut dressing

Adapted from Vegetarian Classics by Jeanne Lemlin

servings: 4 as a side salad or very light meal; 2 as a meal

peanut dressing:

¼ cup natural-style peanut butter

2 tablespoons tamari soy sauce
 (choose a brand without wheat for going gluten-free)
1 tablespoon lime or lemon juice

2 tablespoons firmly packed brown sugar
1 garlic clove, minced
¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

3 tablespoons water

salad:

1 recipe roasted tofu (recipe here)
2 cups mung bean sprouts

1 small English cucumber, sliced 1/4 inch thick

1 green onion, very thinly sliced, tops only

To make the spicy peanut dressing, combine all the dressing ingredients in a small bowl and beat vigorously with a fork or small whisk until very smooth.

To assemble the salad, spread 1/4 of the bean sprouts on each of 4 salald plates. Layer on 1/4 of the cucumber, followed by 1/4 of the tofu. Drizzle the dressing over each portion and garnish with sliced green onion.