“Naw, I don’t need anything,” I said.

Linda and I were in Panini’s Deli, a sandwich shop right in the middle of the Discount Health Foods store. I’d link you but, you know, they’re too cool to have a website. We were eating the best sandwiches you can find in this godforsaken restaurant desert of a town, but that doesn’t do them justice. These sandwiches are the bomb, made with fresh, semi-trendy ingredients like red pepper alioli or basil pesto mayo, with several vegetarian sandwiches that — surprise! — aren’t all variations of “avocado, tomato and bean sprouts.”

Surrounding it is one of the two best health food stores in the region, complete with an awesome bulk foods and bulk spice section. Linda was asking if I wanted to do any shopping.

There had to be something. There is always something I want/need from the health food store. I get all my spices there now. They’re cheaper —less than half the cost usually — and even fresher than you find in the supermarket. But for the life of me, nothing sprung to mind. We finished noshing our awesomewiches and took off, emptyhanded.

That was yesterday.

Today, I go to make some Old Bay seasoning (don’t ask; it’ll bore you to death and I have to get to my point here sometime). It has cardamom in it.

Cardamom.

Oh, yeah, that spice I love. That spice I ran out of a few weeks ago. That spice I made a mental note to buy when I next went to the health food store.

KHAAAAANNNNNN!

muskrat love

They sure look ugly coming out of the oven!

I didn’t even tell you that story in order to tell you this one. I just told it to remind everyone to keep your shopping lists handy. :p

And this story is just about a yummy veggie burger that I love. I like that, even though it has bread crumbs, which I consider filler, it doesn’t go nuts with them and it still is full of wholesome stuff like green pepper, hot sauce, onions, and of course, black beans. I also love that it stays the heck together. Lots of homemade burgers don’t. It’s like, the nearly-unattainable goal of all veggie burgers: stay together. Like muskrats. Muskrats in love.

Yummy Black Bean Burgers

In my search for good veggie burger recipes, the hardest part is finding burgers that actually stick together! This recipe for black bean veggie burgers stays together very well and has a great Mexican kick to it too. Just be sure to make the ingredients as dry as you can before mixing: pat dry the beans, and strain or pat the green pepper and onion. If you don’t have a food processor, mash the beans with a fork or potato masher, and cut up the green pepper, onion and garlic very finely. I actually haven’t tried this without a food processor so if you do, report back, soldier! Adapted from allrecipes.com

Yield: 4 large patties or 6 to 8 smaller patties
Oven: 375°F
Special equipment: A food processor makes it much easier!

1 (15 ounce) can (1½ cups) black beans, drained, rinsed and patted dry.
½ green bell pepper, cut into 2 inch pieces
½ onion, cut into wedges
3 cloves of garlic, peeled
1 egg
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 tablespoon cumin
1 teaspoon Thai chili sauce (can also use any hot sauce)
½ cup bread crumbs

Preheat oven to 375°F and oil a baking sheet or line with parchment or a silicone baking mat (like a Silpat).

Add beans, green pepper, onion, and garlic to your food processor. Pulse until veggies are finely chopped and beans are pasty, but not quite puréed. In a large bowl, whisk together egg, chili powder, cumin, and Thai chili sauce. Add bean and veggie mixture and mix well. Finally, stir in bread crumbs. If mixture is not thick enough to form patties (it should be), add more bread crumbs.

Take a look at your buns and make your patties about the same size. Big, round, luscious buns require bigger patties, of course. Small, firm buns need small patties. There are zero sexual innuendos in this paragraph.

Put the patties on your prepared baking sheet, and bake at 375°F for 20 minutes total: 10 minutes on one side, flip, 10 minutes on the other side.

Greetings and hello from the lovely planet Venus, where it’s cloudy and rains all the time. For our purposes, Venus is also known as Michigan.

For this month’s Foodbuzz 24×24 event, I hosted a Game Night — that’s with a capital G and N — and made oodles of easy-on-the-expensive-games snacks. I’m here to show you just how easy it is to have people over and serve amazing finger foods like tropical trail mix (above), asparagus frittata bites, blueberry-vanilla goat cheese on polenta dolce, cantonese roasted vegetables, and much, much more!

Err…just try not to make these foods all at once. These dishes dirtied themselves for your benefit in testing all the recipes out. I wouldn’t recommending doing this all at once!

At the end of this post you’re also getting the easiest recipe of them all: tropical trail mix.

planning board game night snacks

1. First of all, people aren’t picky. If you put out grub, they’re going to be happy. Chips and thick dips work for game night, as long as your guests aren’t clumsy Neanderthals. So do trail mixes of all kinds. Right here with step number one you’ve got savory and sweet already covered. But that’s just too easy. Keep reading if you want to get all fancy like.

2. Serve real food in bite size portions that can be skewered with a toothpick. You don’t want grubby hands mucking up your copy of Settlers of Catan hexes, do you? Well, I would, but then, I hate Settlers.

See that asparagus frittata there? It’s nice and dry and in little pieces.

3. Someone, let’s just call him He Who Shall Not Be Named, thought chocolate covered strawberries would be a good idea. After making them, Zach — er, He Who Shall Not Be Named — pointed out they were a bad idea, due to juiciness and instant garbage made by not eating the leaves. We ate the strawberries anyway, of course (duh!), but they weren’t allowed near the Dominion table.

4. All parties need an ice bucket and drink station. We can’t have the host sneaking drinks, now, can we?

“let” your guests bring food

5. Make sure your guests know you’re doing them a big favor by letting them slave away for you. They’ll be happy to bring things like really yummy seven layer dip with avocados on top instead of guacamole. Resist the urge to cackle evilly at your brilliance until you’ve ushered them out the door later.

6. Soft cookies > crunchy cookies when it comes to game night. Crunchy cookies will splatter crumbs all over your precious pieces and cards! Soft cookies hold their shape.

I was this close to making bite size cookies. But I didn’t. Instead I “let” Debi bring these cookies (as well as the dip above).

7. You can still be seasonal! This asparagus tart Linda brought, as well as the frittata bites above, have asparagus from my patch in them. Awesome!

8. Cut vegetables a bit bigger than bite size, and roast in flavory stuff. They’ll shrink to bite size and people can eat with toothpicks. See, these began bite size, so they got a bit small to be eating like that, but you know what? We soldiered on and still did!

9. Use timesavers, aka pre-made foods like hummus or polenta. Look at this. Blueberry-vanilla goat cheese. Sam’s had it in one-pound packages marked down to $4.81. I bought some prepared polenta — well, it was called something like “Billy Bob’s Corn Mush” — and cut it about one-quarter inch thick and fried it, then sprinkled some sugar on it.

OH. MY. GODS. These polenta slices were like fair food. Fair food, I tell you. And the goat cheese was just creamy, slightly sweet and slightly tangy and loads of blueberry-infused flavor smeared on top.

10. “Let” guests style your food for you. Debi arranged these strawberries, cheeses and wine. And did a great job! I might even “let” her do it as much as she wants in the future!

this is why we can’t have nice things

Bad Fang! Bad!

break out the skeezy cheeses and spicy mixes

I lied. Only one of these cheeses was skeezy. But I’m not the most adventurous cheeseophile. Linda picked them up at Whole Foods in Ann Arbor. That speckled one? That has mustard seeds in it. If you can imagine a mustard cheese, that is it. *Homer Simpson drooling noises*

There are also two goudas, a manchego, and one or two others I can’t recall.

Debi and Andy also brought this wasabi trail mix. More spiciness!

get down to business and play games

Armed with plates of relatively clean finger food and drinks of our choice, we settled in for some Serious Gaming. The cards in this game, Dominion, go through constant use and lots of shuffling, so we’ve already sleeved them in protective clear plastic.

No, I am not crazy. Every Dominion owner does this. Really. Trust me.

We got two games in, with a break in between for even more snacks, and I didn’t win either time! Take that, all you people who gang up on me saying I win all the time. I didn’t win.

list of the finger foods

Here are the finger foods I served at game night. I went overboard for purposes of this post, and recommend making one, maybe two max of the cooked items so you can spend more time relaxing instead of working and cleaning up!

• tropical trail mix
• roasted vegetables – cooked
• asparagus frittata bites – cooked
• roasted tofu cubes – cooked
• hummus and pita chips
• polenta crostini with blueberry-vanilla goat cheese — polenta was store bought but still cooked (fried)
• chocolate-covered strawberries – not a clean finger food after all!
• bread and cheese

Mini anything works too. I debated making mini pizzas, mini cookies, even quesadilla bites.

tropical trail mix recipe

Make this with unsalted nuts to keep guests’ hands clean. I’m a salt fiend and didn’t miss it. You can find unsweetened coconut flakes at natural/health food stores.

2 cups unsalted dry roasted peanuts
1 cup M&Ms
½ cup unsweetened coconut
½ cup banana chips
¼ cup Craisins^®

Crumble banana chips in hand to approximately bite-sized pieces. Mix all ingredients together in a bowl with a tight-fitting lid. Cover and store until serving.

Sugar beets are a communal crop. It’s rare for one farmer to have both the specialized harvesting equipment and the manpower required to harvest all of his sugar beets by himself. It’s also a busy crop: as the beets are pulled from the ground by the mechanical harvester they are dumped into a truck driven alongside it in the field, and they need to be driven to the sugar plant ASAP. As a result, several farmers work together in the fall to get everyone’s sugar beet crop in on time.

Every fall, Grandma made doughnuts for the guys working sugar beets. I helped her more than once, probably getting in the way more than I actually helped. She made cake doughnuts in traditional ring shapes. Then she set an iron rod across the kitchen sink and strung the doughnuts on there like Christmas lights. She must have glazed them like that, because I remember the doughnuts hanging on the rod, dripping fresh glaze into the sink.

Doughnut Oppression

Making sweets for menfolk is so quaint. So old-fashoined. So not me.

Last spring I made these yeast-raised beignets for men who were working on the house’s foundation. I enjoyed baking for them.

But I wondered if I should feel oppressed.

I was having too much fun to feel oppressed, though. I wondered if I should stop having fun.

That was impossible once I began dropping simple rectangles of simple dough into hot oil. The dough bubbled up with bellies puffed full of air.

Birthday Beignets

A few weeks ago was Linda’s birthday. She helped me make the beignets last spring. She hasn’t forgotten them. She mentions them from time to time.

They were yummy.

As a surprise, I made beignets for her birthday.

People said I should fill them. I disagree. But I suppose you could.

Make them for your favorite doughnut lover. Extra points if that doughnut lover is you.

Check out Yeastspotting for more yeasty goodies.

Yeast-raised Beignets

I include a light glaze for these beignets, but you may dust them with powdered sugar instead. I like the sweet glaze. The recipe includes instructions for using a mixer with a dough hook or a bread machine. I like using my mixer, but then again, I haven’t tried it with the bread machine. The bread machine method is probably even easier! Adapted with permission from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking.

beignets

¾ cup (6 ounces) water
2 cups (8 ounces) whole wheat flour
½ cup (4 ounces) half-and-half
1 large egg
2 tablespoons (1 ounce) butter, melted
¼ cup (1¾ ounces) sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons instant yeast
2 cups (8½ ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour

5 to 6 cups (about 2 pounds) vegetable oil for frying

beignet glaze

2 cups (8 ounces) confectioners’ sugar
¼ cup (2 ounces) water, coffee or milk
1 teaspoon vanilla (I do this, boring huh?) or other extract of your choice

To make the dough:
Pour the water into a mixing bowl or the bucket of your bread machine. Add the whole wheat flour and let the mixture soak for 30 minutes, to soften the bran in the flour.

Beat the half-and-half, egg, butter, sugar and salt in a small bowl. Stir this into the flour mixture. Add the yeast and all-purpose flour, program your bread machine for the dough cycle, and press Start. Whether you’re mixing by hand or machine, once a soft dough forms, knead for 6 to 8 minutes. Cover the dough with greased plastic wrap, and let rise until it has doubled in bulk, 1½ to 2 hours.

After the dough has risen, deflate it and turn it out onto a floured work surface. Knead out any stray bubbles and let rest for about 5 minutes to relax the gluten. While you roll out and shape the beignets, start heating the oil to 365°F. You should have at least 2 inches of oil in the pan.

To cut the beignets:

Roll the dough out to a rectangle roughly 12 x 20 inches and ¼-inch thick. Use a flour-sprinkled bench knife or bowl scraper to keep the dough from sticking. Note: this is a very wet dough!You may need to throw a bit of flour underneath from time to time to keep the dough from sticking. With a pizza cutter or a sharp knife, cut the dough into 4 long strips, 3 inches wide. Cut each of the strips into 8 pieces. Cover with greased plastic wrap and let them relax while the oil heats.

To fry:
Once the oil is hot, slip in 4 or 5 beignets at a time and cook for about 1 minute before you flip them over. Let them cook another 1½ to 2 minutes, flipping them back and forth so they brown evenly. Every once in a while you’ll have one that doesn’t want to turn over because its “tummy” is so fat. Use your spoon to turn it and gently hold it in place until the underside is brown enough. When the beignets are done, remove them with a slotted spoon and drain on a paper towel. Continue with the remaining dough.

After the beignets have cooled, toss them in a paper or plastic bag with ⅓ to ½ cup of confectioner’s sugar, or brush with glaze (below).

To make the glaze:
Mix the confectioners’ sugar and your choice of liquid and flavoring in a small bowl. You can dip one or both sides of your beignets or brush some glaze over the tops. I use the dip method. It’s less mess and more fun!

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.

Do you ever read something, get entirely the wrong impression, and walk around carrying that impression, like a treasured memento or a nursed wound, for ages before realizing you were mistaken?

For some reason I got Fritos in my head when I first read the recipe for Jeanne Lemlin’s 10 Minute Chilaquiles, from her surprisingly excellent Vegetarian Classics : 300 Essential and Easy Recipes for Every Meal.

Cooking with Junk Food

Neat! I thought. I get to cook with junk food! And I joyfully bought a big bag of Fritos on my next shopping trip. I proudly plopped it onto the conveyor belt at checkout, smug in the knowledge that, HA! I wasn’t going to chomp on them sitting on some hundred-dollar secondhand couch, oh no, not I.

I was going to cook with them. I was going to cook with Fritos.

And I did, and lo, the people ate of it and it was good.

But something always nagged at the back of my mind. I had a dim memory of chilaquiles being a use for stale or broken tortilla chips, not delicious monstrosities like Fritos. The omnipresent and omniscient Elise Bauer confirmed my suspicions.

And I found that my beloved 10 Minute Chilaquiles were actually…

Drum roll please…

Frito pie.

Step 1: Open a Bag of Fritos

I embraced it, the Frito pie. I mean, shit, it tastes good. It’s fairly nutritious, with protein, calcium, and a good deal of veggies from the salsa and tomato sauce. Each of six gigantic servings runs 500 calories. Serve this with salad and you can easily get by with half or two-thirds of a serving.

You really can’t go wrong with a recipe that begins with “open a bag of Fritos,” can you?

Vegetarian Frito Pie

This will be pretty salty if you use regular Fritos, so cut back on the salt where you can in this — a lower-sodium corn chip, perhaps, or no-salt-added tomato sauce. Feel free to mix up the beans or cheese or salsa, or use low-fat sour cream. I’ve made this with black beans as well as pinto and kidney, and with pepper jack and mozzarella instead of plain jack cheese. (I liked the larger beans more than the small black beans in this.)

Sauce:

1 (14– or 15–ounce) can pinto or kidney beans, rinsed, or 1½ cups homemade pinto or kidney beans
1 cup salsa, your choice of hotness
1 (14– or 15– ounce) can tomato sauce, no salt added preferable (the corn chips add quite enough salt, thank you very much)
½ cup water
1 (4-ounce) can chopped green chiles, undrained
½ teaspoon dried oregano
½ teaspoon ground cumin

The rest:

11 ounces of Fritos or other corn chips (a 9-ounce bag is fine, too)
1 cup sour cream
2 cups grated Monterey Jack cheese

Preheat oven to 350°F.

You’re going to be layering the sauce, chips, sour cream, and cheese in a 7 x 12 or 9 x 13 pan. First spread half the bean sauce in the bottom of the pan/dish. Then add half of the corn chips. Dollop half the sour cream on the chips in small spoonfuls. Sprinkle half the cheese over that.

There! Half done. Now spread the rest of the chips atop all of that, pour the rest of the sauce over everything, dollop the rest of the sour cream on top, and sprinkle the remaining cheese on top of everything.

Bake for 35 minutes in a 350-degree oven, until hot. Make happy noises while nomming.

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.

Rice is born in water and must die in wine. – Italian proverb

Mm, risotto. The creamy arborio rice dish accepts all sorts of additions, especially vegetables of all kinds. One of my favorite risottos, right up there with mushroom, is asparagus risotto. When the asparagus season wanes and we’ve had our fill of steamed or pan-roasted, or oven-roasted, or with-an-egg-on-top asparagus, I like to make this risotto before the weather turns too hot to want to attend a stove for half an hour or more.

So many risotto ingredients are white: the wine, the rice, the cream, the cheese. Choose a light broth base, and you get a stunning white dish.

I fail at this. My base is brown, and tints the rice a pale amber. However, I LIVED.

The old proverb above refers, in part, to the wine customarily used in making risotto. Wine is added just before you begin pouring in the water/broth that the rice is going to absorb, to relax the starches with its acidity and add a subtle, fruity note to the dish.

I think it’s to get a bottle of wine opened up so you have to finish it. Yes, you have to finish the wine, by hook or by crook.

If in the mood, I love the attentiveness risotto requires. Adding 1 cup of liquid at a time, and stirring until it’s absorbed is a bit meditative, if you’re weird that way. I am.

One cup down, 4 to go. One glass down, several to go.

The liquid is absorbed, and a small flurry of activity gets cooked chopped asparagus, cream, Parmesan, and salt and pepper stirred in until you could cry at the pinnacle of starchiness and smoothness.

One last look. Now eat.

asparagus risotto

This is an excellent risotto base recipe. Substitute ½ to 1 pound of any other vegetable or vegetable combination. Just make sure the vegetables are cooked to your liking before adding to the risotto at the end. Adapted from a recipe by RiceSelect.

1 pound fresh asparagus spears, diagonally sliced into 1-inch pieces
3 cups water
2 cups vegetable broth (I like Better Than Bouillon Vegetable Base the best)
1 tablespoon butter
½ cup chopped yellow onion (1 small onion)
1 cup uncooked arborio rice
⅓ cup dry white wine
½ cup heavy cream
¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese
½ teaspoon salt
¼ 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

Have all ingredients measured and ready before preparing the asparagus risotto. You’ll be glad you did.

Steam or pan-fry asparagus until crisp-tender. Set aside.

In a 2-quart saucepan, bring water and broth to a simmer. Turn down the burner to its lowest setting and cover to keep warm. This water-broth mixture is what we will add to the arborio rice, cup by cup, until it’s all absorbed.

In a large, heavy-bottomed skillet, melt the butter over medium heat. Cook onion in the butter about 5 minutes, or until soft. Add rice and stir for a couple minutes, coating each grain in the butter-onion mixture. You may notice some browning in the pan as the rice’s starch hits it. That’s okay; just don’t let the rice itself brown.

Add wine and stir until it’s absorbed. The wine will sizzle but it won’t jump out at you dangerously. Just thought I’d let you know so you aren’t too surprised. What the wine will do is deglaze the bottom and quickly soak into the rice.

Now it’s time to begin cooking the rice. You’ll be stirring almost constantly for perhaps 20 minutes. Turn the heat up to medium-high, and pour in 1 cup of the water-broth mixture. Stir frequently until the liquid is absorbed.

Continue this process: Once the cup of water-broth mixture is absorbed, add another cup of it and keep stirring. Repeat until all liquid is absorbed, or until the rice is tender. I’ve always used the entire 5 cups of water-broth mixture.

You’ve made risotto! Now’s the part where we make it awesome risotto. Stir in the cooked asparagus, cream, Parmesan cheese, salt, and pepper. Mix well.

Leftovers keep well in the fridge and freeze well too. It’s even good cold. Enjoy.

It’s asparagus season, it’s baseball season, it’s school music program season, it’s kitten season.

All of these pale, though, compared to the One Season to Rule Them All.

Pie season.

Fruit pies are the pinnacle of the home baker’s art — sweet and tart, ensconced in a flaky crust. I’d go so far as to say they’ve always been an indicator of a farm cook’s prowess.

When I was just a wee browncoat I read the entire series of “Little House” books. Tacked onto the end of the boxed set is a slim volume called The First Four Years. The First Four Years covers the time just after Laura and Almonzo were married, and they set out to build their own household. It’s an unusual volume in the series in that it doesn’t bear the editorial stamp of Laura’s daughter, Rose, who edited and polished up the rest of the series to give it a smooth narrative and familiar themes.

The First Four Years is rougher and darker than the rest of the series as a result. Almonzo develops what sounds like a viral joint condition similar to rheumatoid arthritis which makes it difficult for him to work with his hands, weather disasters constantly eradicate their crops and efforts to get ahead, and Mr. and Mrs. Boast come off as pathetically creepy when they make Laura a modest proposal to adopt her new baby, their reasoning being that the Boasts themselves cannot have any but Laura and Almonzo could always have more.

we’re getting to the point

There were happy and amusing spots in the narrative, though. One which stood out to me as a child was near the beginning of the book, when Laura and Almonzo moved into the house he’d built for them. She marveled at the kitchen’s modern conveniences, like the pull-out bins for flour and other dry staples. I flashed back in recognition to my house’s kitchen, which had been remodeled when I was six or so. Before then, however, the cupboards had a couple of those same bins along the bottom, which, for the uninitiated among you, open in somewhat similar fashion to an expanding file folder.

laura’s rhubarb pie

The other humorous moment I remember from the book was the first time Laura made a pie in her new home. Almonzo brought home the threshing crew for lunch, and Laura had been wracked with nerves, sixteen years old, hoping everything she’d cooked would turn out satisfactory.

The crew was impressed by the food, relieving Laura. She put the rhubarb pie out. One man took a bite, paused, and reached for the sugar bowl. Lifting the top crust and generously spooning sugar on the rhubarb filling, he joked that the best kind of pie was one where you could control how much sugar was in it. Yeah, she’d forgotten to add the sugar.

with rhubarb pie, try not to forget the sugar

There’s a reason rhubarb is known as pie plant. Familiar to people in the past, rhubarb was rarely used in cooking before sugar became commonly available, because it’s so incredibly astringent. I kind of proved this in my savory rhubarb experiment, in which I found out it was very difficult to make rhubarb tasty without sugar.

The beauty of fruit pie is that balance between sweet and tart. Try not to freak at the 1-⅓ cups of sugar in this rhubarb pie recipe. The rhubarb needs it, and you’ll still have that distinctive rhubarb tang.

Rhubarb’s the first pie fruit of the season. Try to get a pie made with it before the rhubarb’s gone. You won’t be sorry.

rhubarb pie

I haven’t done a pie crust tutorial yet, and for that I apologize. If making your own crust, please, please just use the recipe on the Crisco can. Note that the shortening was reformulated several years ago to make it virtually trans-fat free (the label says 0 grams). You’ll be disappointed with butter. Use shortening, use ice cold water, add just enough water til the dough comes together cohesively, and don’t play with the dough too much, and you’ll have a flaky crust. Trust me.

oven: 450°F (then 350°F)
prep: 15 minutes (assuming pie crust is already made)
total time: 1 hour 15 minutes

pastry for a 9-inch double crust pie
4 cups chopped rhubarb
1-⅓ cups granulated sugar
6 tablespoons unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon butter

Preheat oven to 450°F. Roll out bottom crust and place in 9-inch pie plate. Trim edge of pastry.

In a medium bowl, combine sugar and flour. Sprinkle ½ cup of the sugar-flour mixture on the bottom pastry crust in the pie plate.

Dump the chopped rhubarb on top of it.

Sprinkle the remaining sugar-flour mixture evenly on top of the rhubarb.

Cut the butter into 6-10 smaller bits and dot the rhubarb with them.

Roll out top crust and cover the pie. Trim, seal edges, and crimp. With a sharp knife, make a few slashes in the top crust to allow steam to escape.

Place pie in 450°F oven on bottom rack. Bake for 15 minutes, then lower the oven temperature to 350°F and bake another 45 minutes, or until top crust is very slightly golden and fruit is bubbling.

Remove pie from oven and let cool on a rack for an hour or more. If you cut into a warm pie, it goes all over the place! If you can resist long enough to let it cool completely, you won’t have watery juices pouring out from the slice you just cut.