Lynne Rossetto Awesome

I listen to a lot of public radio - begrudgingly. To me, it's ten times more tolerable than any other news radio, but this declaration comes with a lot of caveats. For example, I detest that faux-everyman windbag Garrison Keillor, yet his sinister droll still wakes me up every morning (WAMU airs The Writer's Almanac at an ungodly hour). I think This American Life tries too hard to look for the deeper meaning, but I subscribe to their podcast anyway (if you haven't heard "The Breakup" episode, you must). I think the hosts of Morning Edition are shrill snotfaces, but they nonetheless keep me company on every morning commute. I get annoyed when NPR reporters over-enunciate foreign words and names, but I still like how they cover corners of the world that most mainstream news sources avoid.

The one blameless thing public radio has to offer is Lynne Rossetto Kasper. If you ever saw "The Delicious Dish" skits on SNL (see Alec Baldwin's "Schweddy balls" if you can't immediately recall), they were designed to mock Lynne's show, The Splendid Table. These skits were funny but unfair, because The Splendid Table is NOT for boring cat ladies. Oh, wait...

Not surprisingly, I love Lynne and I love her show. Every episode begins with a visit from Jane and Michael Stern of Roadfood, who travel the country in search of the best local dives (I've tried a number of Roadfood recommendations, and the Sterns have never steered me wrong). Then Lynne usually does a few interviews with food experts, and gets into the hows and whys of such titillating topics as waxed versus unwaxed cheese. Okay, I admit it's not for everyone, but you have to appreciate Lynne's great big guffaw and her genuine interest in her guests' and callers' seemingly trivial gastronomical concerns. Listen with Lynne, and you too can become impassioned about the history of ramen, the politics of bananas, and the art of knife-sharpening. Plus, she often has cool guests like Amy Sedaris (though Lynne did seem a little unsure how to react when Amy kept mentioning her drug dealer). And lest you think this show is for food snobs, even The Splendid Table's resident wine critic, Josh Wesson, is credited for helping cheap wine earn some respect in the oenological domain.

Every week Lynne sends me (along with thousands of other public radio nerds with cats and M.A. degrees) an email with a recipe that she usually comes up with herself. I always read them through to the end, where she signs off "Have a great week" (you have a great week too, Lynne!), but seldom follow them. There was one that caught my eye a few weeks ago, a recipe Lynne adapted called "Salad of Pineapple and Winter Greens with Warm Roasted Chile-Coconut Dressing." The title was a bit lengthy for my taste, but what sparked my attention was the pineapple. A certain Special Someone I know is such a big fan of pineapple that he even puts it in lasagna. I hadn't cooked him anything other than a fried egg sandwich, if that even counts as cooking, so I set out to follow Lynne's recipe and make him a Splendid Table-quality first dinner.

The pineapple fan liked it (he even ate the soggy, dressing-logged leftovers for the next two days), which I guess was the whole point, but I was underwhelmed. But, as I stated before, Lynne is blameless, so I'm sure I did something wrong. Using the leftover ingredients I had bought for the salad -- peanuts, Thai basil, fish sauce, daikon radish -- I created a different salad a few nights later, one that I'm thrilled to include on this blog. It's just a remnant of Lynne's, and doesn't even have the titular pineapple, but it's definitely worth sharing. Have a great week.

Recipe: Lynne Rossetto Kasper-Inspired Crunchy Salad with Peanut Dressing

I'm having deja vu: I think I write about salads like this about 25 percent of the time, as they are my staple for weight loss attempts. But each one always seems better than the last one, so I can't resist posting them. This one contains two of my new favorite ingredients - daikon radish and fish sauce. I'm really late in jumping on the daikon radish and fish sauce bandwagons, but I'm glad I finally did. Fish sauce adds that mysterious umami taste (Lynne, as you may have guessed, loves talking about umami) and daikon is that delicious not-too-sharp radish you find in banh mi sandwiches and some Thai salads. Both are really inexpensive at Asian markets. I also used red cabbage in this salad; normally I buy green cabbage since it tends to be cheaper, but red and green are both 99 cents a pound at H Mart, so I went with the more visually appealing red. As with any salad I create, proportions are up to individual tastes, so this recipe is just a guideline.

Makes 4 generous servings. Lasts up to five days in the refrigerator. Add chicken, shrimp, or tofu to make it a more filling meal.

For the salad:
1/2 head of red cabbage (use green if you prefer)
1 carrot, shredded or cut into matchsticks
2 green onions, sliced (use green and white parts)
1/2 daikon radish, cut into matchsticks
1 handful Thai basil, cut into julienne, or cilantro
1 handful roasted, salted peanuts, chopped (food processor makes this much easier; cashews or macadamia nuts would also be good)
juice of 1 lime

For the dressing:
3 T peanut butter
2 T rice vinegar
1 T honey
1 t fish sauce
1 clove garlic, minced
a good sprinking of crushed red pepper flakes
1/4 t salt
water to thin the dressing, if desired

Mix together the salad ingredients; add the lime juice. Whisk together the dressing ingredients; add a few drops of water if you like a thinner consistency. Check seasonings and adjust as needed. Toss dressing with salad.

Spanx Salad

If you don't know what Spanx are, you are probably not a woman between the ages of 18 and 55 (beyond 55, we get into girdles). Spanx are high-tech undergarments that help to smooth out our squishy bits. Since I have been eating catered cocktail party food almost every night for the past month, and wearing form-fitting dresses on most of these occasions (I'm a salesgirl, not a callgirl, but sometimes there's not much distinction), Spanx tights have been indispensable.

I was outraged when a now-former gentleman caller of mine boneheadedly suggested it would be better to "just get rid of" the jiggly parts than hide them under Spanx. To paraphrase the great Destiny's Child, he wasn't ready for this jelly. Still, it would be nice to not feel bloated and gelatinous all the time*, so last night I created this powerhouse salad to help me recover from a month's worth of Christmas cookies, vodka tonics, bacon-wrapped canapes, and things served with Tartar sauce. It's delicious and filling, and it will make me svelte - not that I expect to get rid of my Spanx any time soon.

*Yes, I'm singing the same old song - see here, here, and probably elsewhere for more posts of this kind.

Recipe: Spanx Salad
Makes 2 hearty main course servings. Can be served warm, cold, or at room temperature. The main ingredient is quinoa, the seed with superpowers. Apparently you can subsist on a quinoa-only diet and live to be 120, it's got so many life-sustaining nutrients. With the addition of broccoli, spinach, and nuts, now you can live to forever - and look good doing it!

1 C quinoa
2 C water
1 T olive oil
1 head of broccoli, florets and stalks cut into bite-sized pieces
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 C nuts (any kind - I had a leftover mix of almonds, walnuts, and pecans), chopped
a hearty sprinkling of red pepper flakes
2 C fresh spinach, tough stems removed
juice of half a lemon
a sprinkling of ground nutmeg (I'm thinking ginger would also be great, and turn this into a whole 'nother salad)
salt and pepper to taste
1 handful chopped fresh parsley (optional)

In a saucepan, add the quinoa and water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer, cover pot, and cook for an additional 10 or 15 minutes, or until water is mostly absorbed. Fluff quinoa with a fork and remove from heat.

While quinoa is cooking, heat olive oil in a frying pan on medium heat. Add broccoli, increase heat to medium-high, and stir-fry for five minutes (add more olive oil if the pan dries out). Add the garlic and red pepper flakes and stir-fry another few minutes. Reduce heat to low-medium and add spinach, cooking until it's wilted. Remove from heat and stir in lemon juice. Mix in the quinoa, nutmeg, salt and pepper, and parsley.

International Potato Week 2009: Friday

I probably should be writing about potato soup instead of potato salad, given how cold it is today, but I don't think Potato Week is complete without this recipe (also, all the potato soups I've made are pretty run-of-the-mill variations on baked potato soup). However, my potato salad is the best there is, and here's why: it's not actually my potato salad but that of Ina Garten, also known as the Barefoot Contessa.

Say what you will about Ina's unabashed love of all things East Hampton, but the lady can cook. If you've ever watched her Food Network show, you may have noticed she's also really good at befriending gay Broadway producers, finding new uses for Pernod, and making eyes at her elfin husband, Jeffrey. But an economical cook she is not. She makes scrambled eggs with cream. She tops spaghetti with caviar. She fills pot pies with lobster tail. She makes cheese steaks with New York strip. And her house! Good grief, it's one of those cedar-shingled, Dutch-style, 8,000 square foot "cottages" that's practically dangling in the ocean. Oh, Ina, won't you let me spend the night? I can picture it now: the aroma of fresh-baked coffee cake and "good quality bacon" will find its way to one of the guest rooms, where I'll be slowly waking up from the best sleep of my life, on crisp, white, $400 sheets. I'll come downstairs, help myself to a Campari Orange Spritzer, and make cheerful chitchat with the two or three gay friends who've stopped by en route to Manhattan. In the afternoon, we'll set out in your gleaming silver Benz and hit the farm stand, the bakery, the butcher shop, and the fishmonger. Then we will come home, "assemble" our lunch -- I know how you favor assembling over cooking -- and carry it out to the beach in a wicker picnic basket. When the day is done, cute little Jeffrey will give me a lift to the LIRR, we'll talk about his Henry Kissinger days, and I'll be depressed the whole train ride home and probably for the next month. Oh, Ina, I want your life!

But I can't have Ina Garten's life, so I will have to live vicariously through her recipes - at least the few I can afford, such as this one for potato salad. This is not the hardboiled-egg-and-mayo-drenched version that ends up at every potluck and barbecue. That stuff is for the proles. This kind is high-class, with a punchy vinaigrette and a smattering of fresh herbs. There's a lot of ingredients, but you can definitely cut some of them out and still make a damn good potato salad. Here's Ina's recipe, with my tried-and-true suggestions for cheapening things up in parentheses.

Recipe: Aspirational Potato Salad
Adapted from The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook. Makes 4 to 6 side dish servings.

1 lb small white boiling potatoes
1 lb new potatoes (you can make this with just one kind of potato; Ina happens to like the color)
2 T good dry white wine (I say you can use bad wine, or none at all)
2 T chicken stock (I've left this out before because I didn't have any. NP. You can also leave it out if you want to make this a vegan dish.)
3 T Champagne vinegar (who has Champagne vinegar? Use whatever vinegar want, but definitely use it.)
1/2 t dijon mustard (crucial -- I might even bump it up to a whole t)
2 t Kosher salt (or table salt if that's all you've got)
3/4 t freshly ground black pepper (non-negotiable)
10 T good olive oil (if, by "good," you mean the huge $5.49 bottle at TJ's? Then, yes, good.)
1/4 C minced scallions, white and green parts (hey, at least she's using the whole plant. I prefer to leave these in, but I've made the salad without. If you have some of the other herbs, they won't be missed too much.)
2 T minced fresh dill (Ina LOVES her dill. It definitely goes well with potatoes, but again, if you have some of the other herbs you can leave it out.)
2 T minced fresh flat-leaf parsley (ditto scallions and dill. You can also use the declasse curly parsley, if that's what you got.)
2 T julienned basil leaves (ditto scallions, dill, and parsley)

Put the potatoes in a large pot and fill with enough water to cover them by a few inches. Bring to a boil and continue boiling for 20 to 30 minutes, until they are just cooked through. Drain in a colander with a towel over it and allow them to steam for another 10 minutes. Once they are cool enough to handle, cut the potatoes into quarters (alternatively, you can cut them before boiling and then boil for a shorter time, as I prefer to do). Toss them with the wine and chicken stock (if using; if not, just set aside, or mix in the dressing if you have already made it).

To make the dressing (which you can do while the potatoes cook), whisk together the vinegar, half a teaspoon of salt, and the pepper, and slowly whisk in the olive oil to make an emulsion. Add the vinaigrette, the rest of the salt, and the herbs to the potatoes, and toss. Serve warm or at room temperature (cold is also just fine).

Above photo from Ina's column for House Beautiful

International Potato Week 2009: Wednesday

Yesterday our potatoes took us to the Canary Islands; today we are off to Calcutta. Amazing how a tuber can transport you from your dingy office in doleful NoPe to a vibrant exotic locale. The following South Indian recipe is adapted from Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking, and it produces the most pleasantly piquant potatoes you will ever eat. Seriously. If you don't take my word for it, take Madhur's: "Can you imagine cubes of potato encrusted with spicy, crisply browned ginger-garlic paste? Add to that a hint of fennel, if you want it. That is what these potatoes taste like." As she suggests, they are the potatoes of your dreams.

Recipe: Sookhe aloo (dry potatoes with ginger and garlic)
Adapted from Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking (1983). Makes 2 servings.

If you already have the spices, this dish costs about 50 cents to make. Madhur Jaffrey's recipe has you boiling the potatoes "in their jackets," then letting them cool, peeling them, and finally frying them. If you are a purist about ethnic recipes, go ahead (all Madhur's potato recipes involve this long process), but I find it's a whole lot quicker to just peel the potatoes raw and fry them -- and the results are still delicious. I add a few glops of plain yogurt at the end, for tartness and texture. The spice paste would also be great as a marinade.

5 T vegetable oil
1 t fennel seeds (optional, but highly recommended)
2 large baking potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes
3 cloves garlic, peeled
1 2-inch piece of fresh ginger (or 1 t ground ginger)
1/2 t ground turmeric
1 t salt
1/2 t cayenne pepper
2 T water
A few spoonfuls of yogurt (optional)

Special equipment: mortar and pestle or food processor

Heat the oil in a nonstick or cast iron skillet over medium-high heat. Add the potatoes and cook, stirring occasionally, till they are starting to brown, about 20 minutes. While the potatoes are cooking, make the spice paste: in a food processor or with a mortar and pestle, grind together the garlic, ginger, turmeric, salt, and cayenne, and add the water a little bit at a time. Set aside. Add the fennel seeds to the pan and cook for an additional two minutes. Stir in the spice paste and cook for yet another two minutes. Remove from heat and stir in yogurt, if using. Serve warm.

International Potato Week 2009: Tuesday

This next potato recipe comes from Jose Andres, owner of Jaleo and a few other DC-area restaurants and boisterous personality behind the PBS cooking show, Made in Spain. I always order the papas arrugas -- baby fingerling potatoes with a to-die-for cilantro and cumin mojo verde -- so I was delighted to catch the Made in Spain episode where he shows you how to make them at home. They're easy, cheap, and positively divine, or "astonishing!" as Jose would say. I do not have exact directions for the original recipe so the following is my own interpretation, and it has served me well. Also, you should definitely watch Made In Spain, even if you don't like to cook. You will find yourself talking like Jose and dreaming of Iberia.

Recipe: Papas Arrugas
Adapted from Jose Andres. Makes 4 side dish servings.

The sauce alone is a keeper. You can serve it with anything -- chicken, fish, other veg, bread. I eat it with a spoon. My stomach growls at the very thought. Baby fingerling potatoes are hard to find, but you can use any fingerling or even boiling potatoes. Right now Trader Joe's has bags of these cute little mini boiling potatoes, which I have been using.

Don't be afraid of the amount of salt you are using; it's more a part of the cooking process than the actual flavor. The salt is used to make the skin cute and crinkly -- apparently how they do it in the Canary Islands, where this dish originates.

2 lbs. fingerling or boiling potatoes
kosher or sea salt, lots of it
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 bunch of cilantro, well-washed, including stems
1 t ground cumin
1 t pimenton (smoked paprika)
1/2 C olive oil
1 T sherry vinegar (optional -- but Jose adds this to everything)
salt and pepper to taste

Special equipment: mortar and pestle or food processor

Add the potatoes to a large pot, and add enough water to the pot to just barely cover them. Add about a quarter cup of salt, and cook on medium-high heat for 25 minutes, or until most of the water is evaporated and the potatoes are soft. Drain in a colander and set aside. If the potatoes have too salty a coating for your taste, you can wipe them off with a paper towel.

While the potatoes are cooking, make the sauce: with a mortar and pestle or the food processor, grind together the garlic, cilantro, cumin, and pimenton. Slowly add the olive oil, grinding all the while, till everything is fully incorporated. Add the vinegar if you're using it and salt and pepper to your taste, and serve with the potatoes.

International Potato Week 2009: Monday

There is probably already a national potato month or something like that, but I can't wait any longer. I am on a ravenous potato rampage, and I also haven't written anything in awhile (I'm sure you have been completely adrift without me). I formally declare the first week of November International Potato Week, which seems fitting since it's also right after Halloween -- potatoes are great diet food -- and coincides with the dark days of the Time Change -- potatoes are great comfort food, if you'll forgive my use of that stupid term.

I will be posting a favorite potato recipe every day, Monday through Friday. Some are invented, some are adapted, and all are unanimously believed to be delicious by those who have tried them. I wouldn't want anyone thinking I am blinded by love for the tuber (such an accusation has been brought against me before). Because it seems appropriate for the season, I may also include a recipe or two for sweet potatoes. But I have only five days, and there are about a billion things one could do to a potato, so I may end up sticking to the lighter-fleshed variety. We shall see how this exciting week unfolds!

Recipe: Olive Oil Mashed Potatoes with Feta and Roasted Broccoli
Makes about 3 main course or 5 side dish servings. Lasts up to five days and reheats well in the microwave.

This recipe's title bears the style of a food snob, but I couldn't think of anything better to call it without getting all Rachael Ray: "Cheesy Green Tater Smash'ems" or "EVOO Greeked Out Broccatoes" were options. Its main ingredients, all fairly common in most households, include potatoes, olive oil, some kind of green vegetable, and some kind of cheese -- making it essentially a deconstructed stuffed baked potato, but without the butter and sour cream. And, like the potato itself, the recipe is very versatile.

I came up with it when I found that the last few potatoes left in my 20-lb. bag from Costco had started sprouting coral reef-like growths. Most people in developed countries would throw the potatoes away at this point, but I was unfazed and just peeled them to make mashed potatoes. I also had a couple stalks of broccoli that were starting to turn, and wanted to add those to the mix. What came from these two humble old vegetables was one of the best and easiest potato dishes I have ever eaten. Of course, you do not need to wait till your potatoes and broccoli become potential health hazards to make this dish, but it is a good way to use up aging refrigerables.

While the potatoes boil, you cook the broccoli or whatever green vegetable you want to use. Spinach, chard, and other leafy greens are nice alternatives because you don't have to cook them; they just wilt in the warm potatoes. Also, the cheese does not have to be feta -- just about any cheese will be good.

3 large baking potatoes
2 stalks of broccoli
2 T olive oil, plus an additional half cup of olive oil
1 to 2 t hot or smoked paprika
2 t fresh rosemary leaves, chopped (optional)
1/4 C crumbled feta cheese
salt and pepper to taste

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Peel the potatoes, cut them into chunks, and add them to a large pot filled with about 8 cups of water. Bring to a boil and continue to boil for about 25 minutes. While the potatoes are cooking, chop the broccoli stems and florets into bite sized pieces. Toss them with the 2 tablespoons of olive oil and the paprika, then spread them evenly on a baking sheet. Bake for 15 minutes, then set aside.

When the potatoes are soft when pierced with a fork, drain them in a colander and return to the pot, but place on a different burner that is set to low heat. Add the quarter-cup of olive oil along with the broccoli, feta, and rosemary and mash with a potato masher till you get a consistency you like. Add salt and pepper to your taste (with the feta and paprika, it might be seasoned enough for some tastes, but I add an extra teaspoon or so of salt and a vigorous grinding of pepper). Serve warm.

Eat more beets

From whence this back flab and these love handles? I thought we were supposed to lose weight in the summertime.

But the summer is over, I'm about to turn 27, and I'm fatter than ever. Well, probably not fat by American standards, but heavier than appropriate for my frame. I think I'm even starting to grow jowls.

Time to stop making this and that, and stick to just vegetables, legumes, and whole grains. In particular, I must stop baking so much. Even when I bake for the sole purpose of gift-giving, I end up eating the raw dough equivalent of about 12 cookies. I also need to stop buying lunch, so that's adios to tacos con chivo and empanadas from NoPe's many fine dining establishments. And I really need to cut back on the alcohol, or at least modify my habits. By the way, did you know a frozen margarita contains roughly 700 calories? Vodka martinis from here on out, hold the vermouth and olive. Better yet, I'll just have ice water and get bored after 30 minutes at the bar. What fun my 27th year is going to be.

I can seek both consolation and a smaller waist in the crunchy deliciousness of good salads, like this one I made recently. Partially inspired by a recipe in Gourmet's September issue, it contains beets, which took me all of 27 years to learn to like. The beet was just about the only vegetable I disliked, and wrongfully so. I mean, it's a cheap root vegetable with some edible greens attached! It's like we were made for each other! In this salad the beets are chopped into cute little matchsticks, making the transition to beetlove a lot easier than it might be if you tried to boil up a bunch and eat them in one sitting. It's similar to dating: you think the guy's ill-mannered and unattractive at first -- and let's not even talk about his sweating problem and tendency to overuse "whatnot" -- but slowly, surely, you will cave, and come to appreciate that he's actually good for you and has a nice dark pinkish-purple interior. I get a little crazier with every passing year. Happy birthday to me!

Recipe: Beginner's Beet and Apple Salad

Makes 6 side dish servings. Inspired by Gourmet, whose recipe is just beets, parsley, and goat cheese. No goat cheese in my version, and it's fine without. But I still wanted it to be a fairly substantial salad, so I added some greens and an apple, which is also chopped into matchsticks like the beets. This salad is really good, really good for you, and really crunchy! To make it more filling, consider adding walnuts, sunflower seeds, or almonds. Also, unlike most dressed salads, this one actually tastes better the next day. Oh, and if you have just gotten a manicure or you are having tea with the Queen tomorrow, don't make it -- or wear gloves if you do. Beet juice stains like whoa.

2 small beets, peeled and chopped into matchstick-size pieces, plus their greens
juice of half an orange
1 apple, chopped into match-stick size pieces (squeeze a bit of lemon juice onto these -- it will keep them from browning right away)
1 quarter of a medium onion, thinly sliced
1 C loosely packed, chopped fresh parsley (I think some mint in here would also be good)
juice of one lemon (or a bit less if you want to lemonize the apple)
1/2 lb salad greens (arugula, spinach, frisee, or whatever you want)
a big drizzle of olive oil
fresh ground pepper

In a large bowl, stir the orange juice into the beets, then add the apple, onion, parsley, and lemon juice. Add the salad greens and a big drizzle of olive oil and toss everything together. Finish with some pepper.

Bridal Shower Feast

My cousin Ashley's wedding shower, which I hosted last weekend, went off without a hitch, excepting a couple episodes of belligerent Pomeranians trying to murder the cats (not really the dogs' fault, but mine for neglecting my feline brood). A few people have asked me about the menu, which I'm delighted to present here:

Appetizers:

-Bruschetta: mine's very basic -- just a few tomatoes, chopped up, with a handful of chopped basil, a few minced garlic cloves, and a tablespoon or so of olive oil, plus salt and pepper. I serve it in a bowl rather than on each individual piece of bread. Much easier for the host!

-Cheese plate with some Stilton, Raclette, and Manchego, all found at Trader Joe's -- in my experience, the only place to buy good cheese without going into foreclosure

-Almost-No-Knead Bread, sliced up for bruschetta and cheese

-Bowl of mixed olives from Shopper's Food Warehouse, which has a surprisingly good olive bar

Main course:

-Special Occasion Chicken Salad -- meat from two roasted chickens, a cup of aioli, a big chopped bell pepper, a bunch of chopped scallions, about a quarter cup of chopped tarragon, a squeeze of lemon, salt, pepper

-Poached Salmon -- thanks, Mom! (The EE ain't in no shape to buy a whole damn fish)

-White bean and tomato salad -- you soak a whole bag of cannelini beans overnight, then boil them the next day till they're soft; then you roast a bunch of cipollini onions in olive oil and a few sprigs of fresh rosemary for about 25 minutes at 300 degrees; add a couple handfuls of grape or cherry tomatoes to the onions and continue roasting for another 15 minutes; mix in with the beans; add ample salt and pepper and parsley and a squeeze of lemon, and serve.

-Delicious late summer salad -- about two pounds of mixed arugula and spinach; a half cup or so of crumbled Stilton (cut off a hunk from the cheese plate); another half cup or so of raw almonds; and two peaches, cut into half-inch chunks. Serve with the best easy dressing: 1 cup of olive oil whisked together with a heaping tablespoon of balsamic vinegar and a heaping tablespoon of raspberry preserves. If dressing's too thick for your taste, thin it with a few teaspoons of water.

-Greek-style Scalloped Potatoes: my Aunt Mary had brought these to my Easter party and they were a huge hit, so I attempted to reproduce them -- with minor success. The cookbook I followed was too optimistic about cooking times, so this dish didn't come out till everyone was just about done with the main course (but, good girls they were, they piled it on their plates all the same!). Peel about 12 baking potatoes, and slice them to 1/8" thin, preferably using a mandoline to save time. Layer them in a baking sheet with about two cups of feta cheese and olives. Be sure to add lots of salt and olive oil to keep everything both tasty and moist. If you want, add fresh oregano or rosemary here and there. Bake for about an hour, or till potatoes are soft.

Desserts:

-Flourless Chocolate Cake

-Upside-down Nectarine Chiffon Cake

-Cupcakes (provided by the lovely Erika, one of the bride's friends)

-Vanilla ice cream

Drinks:

-White wine sangria: this time of year, it's one big bottle of vino cheapo (get a sweet white like Riesling), a chopped nectarine, a handful of chopped strawberries, a third-cup of sugar, and about two cups of club soda. Stir everything well, and refrigerate at least an hour before serving. Be sure to double when hosting a lingerie shower for 20 ladies.

-Lemonade: a bag of 6 lemons has been going for just $1.59 at TJ's lately, and when life hands you lemons...anyway, my ratio for making a big pitcher consists of the juice of about 9 small lemons, a cup of sugar, and 5 cups of water.

-Iced tea (provided by Mom -- she won't tolerate anyone else's iced tea)

-Iced coffee: for some reason, people get all precious about the making of iced coffee, and some even buy special iced coffee makers like the Toddy. No need for that -- just brew hot coffee, remove it from the coffee maker and put it on a trivet to cool off, and put it in the fridge to get colder. Duh.

-Cava and Prosecco (much cheaper than good Champagne, and much better than cheap Champagne)

Of course, the bride-to-be and her guests were really the focal point. Everyone seemed to have a great time, and we all wish Ashley the best!

Oh, and a HUGE THANKS to my friend Sarah, the most competent person I know, whose help I could not have done without!

Nothing beats free

When it comes to cookbooks, we economical epicureans often find ourselves in quite a predicament. They beckon to us, the same way red wine does, and we cannot resist. They are expensive, sometimes upward of $40, especially the pretty, famous, or encyclopedic ones, but we rationalize them as a necessary expense, or at least a sensible, self-improving one. Yet -- and this may not apply to all economical epicureans, just the capitalized Economical Epicurean -- we rarely maximize their utility. We may refer to the same four recipes again and again, neglecting the remaining four hundred. Did we really pay $40 for four recipes, we sometimes ask ourselves in horror?

Then, we realize, we are using the first person plural rather peculiarly, and so we scratch our head, think maybe it's time to seek therapy, decide it's too expensive, and revert back to "I."

Almost a year ago, I wrote about the cookbook-buying success I've had at used bookstores and book sales. Among my better finds are Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking, Pam Anderson's The Perfect Recipe and How to Cook Without a Book (ironic title, I know), and Molly Katzen's Moosewood Cookbook and Enchanted Broccoli Forest. But such successes were the result of a combination of simple luck, hawkish bargain-hunting strategy, and occasional violence. Most of the time, if a cookbook is good, its owner wants to keep it, and so the good ones seldom end up on the $5-and-under shelf.

For this same reason, the library is a great place to find cookbooks. It doesn't seem to occur to people that you even can borrow cookbooks from the library, and why would you want to anyway, many cooks might wonder. Cookbooks are reference items, and what use is a reference item if you have to return it in three weeks? Note, for example, how the reference books in the library are not in circulation. But for those of us who are promiscuous with our cookbooks -- using them a few times, then moving on to the next pretty hardcover -- checking them out at the library is the most economical way to bake our cake and eat it, too. You could also treat library cookbooks as test drives: if the thought of returning a particular cookbook sends you into depression, you might as well buy it. At least you know you are paying for something you will actually use. I, for one, have paid full price for way too many cookbooks that turned out to be lemons. If only I'd had the good sense to test-drive them first.

On recent trips to the Rockville and Kensington branches (both part of the Montgomery County system), I encountered the entire collections of just about every celebrity cookbook author whose newest release you might see propped up on a display table at Barnes and Noble. From Nigella Lawson to Mark Bittman to Rachael Ray, they were all sitting there, glitzy covers in need of a good dusting, rarely if ever reshelved. More exciting for me, one of those annoying cookbook snobs, was what I'll call the NPR collection -- cookbooks with a scholarly approach, one that is more concerned with a recipe's authenticity than its ease. (I can't believe I just wrote that.) These books can be hard to find in bookstores, but at the library they're as ubiquitous as loud cell phone conversations. By the way, since when did librarians stop enforcing the quiet rule?

Anyway, at the 'brary you'll find Claudia Roden's Arabesque and New Book of Middle Eastern Cooking, Diana Kennedy's many books on Mexican food, Peter Berley's outstanding vegetarian cookbooks, and Cecilia Chiang's recent The Seventh Daughter, with recipes from her famous Chinese restaurant in San Francisco. If you're really high-falutin', you could borrow the roughly 200-lb Larousse Gastronomique, which retails for $75. Also, just about all of the America's Test Kitchen and Best Recipe books are in circulation, so I can finally outfox that smug, bowtie-bedecked Chris Kimball, who's always hitting me up for more money.

I was most pleased to find the entire collection of Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid's beautiful cookbooks, based on recipes they've encountered on their years of wandering through Asia. I started with Seductions of Rice because of the sexy title. It's full of great anecdotes, gorgeous photographs, and, oh yeah, a lot of rice, which indeed is a lot more seductive than I had previously thought. I made one of the first recipes, a scorching hot chili paste based on a version that Alford and Duguid encountered in the hometown of Mao Zedong (certainly a spicy character in world history). I had every intention of using Mao Chili Paste in another Seductions recipe, the Spicy Cucumber Surprise, and tossing it with some rice and beans to make a full meal. Unfortunately, the cucumber in my fridge had turned into Fuzzy Blue Surprise. Ergo, my recipe is a full departure from Alford and Duguid's, but still uses Mao Chili Paste, and is -- if I may say so myself -- a delicious, healthy, and inexpensive dinner. I just may buy Seductions of Rice, or maybe I will just keep renewing it till the Montgomery County Libraries hunt me down.



Recipe: Mao Chili Paste
Adapted from Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid's Hot Chile Paste from Seductions of Rice. Dried red chilis are very cheap, especially at Asian grocery stores. Alford and Duguid, who seem pretty trustworthy when it comes to the cuisines of Asia, say this is better than any store-bought chili paste they've ever tried. It's extremely hot, so if you don't like spicy food, don't even go near it. Just being in the kitchen while it's on the stove will make anyone's eyes water. I halved Alford and Duguid's recipe, and my proportions are below. Makes about a half cup.

1/2 C loosely packed dried red chilis, rinsed
1/2 C boiling water
1/2 t salt
1/2 t sugar
1/2 T peanut oil or vegetable oil
2 T minced shallots (optional)
1 t rice vinegar or cider vinegar

Place the chilis in a medium bowl, pour the boiling water over them, and use a wooden spoon to press the chilis into the water. Let soak for at least 20 minutes or up to 2 hours. Transfer the chili/water mixture to a food processor or blender and puree; add the salt and sugar and puree again. Set aside. Heat a wok or heavy skillet to medium-high heat and add the oil once the pan is very hot, then add the shallots, if you are using them, and stir fry for about until soft, 2 minutes. Add the chili mixture and stir fry for another 20 seconds, then remove from heat and stir in the vinegar. Allow it to cool, then transfer to a well-sealed container, where it will keep well in the refrigerator.

Recipe: Spicy Rice and Beans Surprise (pictured at top of post)
Inspired by Spicy Cucumber Surprise, also from Seductions of Rice. The Cucumber Surprise sounds great, so if you have a cucumber handy, just chop it up and stir fry it with all the ingredients for a couple minutes. I used red rice and chickpeas because I had some already, but you could use any rice or beans for this dish. Makes two servings.

3/4 C rice
2 C water
1 C chickpeas, soaked overnight and boiled for an hour and a half or till soft
1 T peanut oil
2 t ground ginger
1 t sugar
1 T soy sauce
1 t Mao Chili Paste (less for a milder version)
1/2 t salt
2 T chopped basil or cilantro (optional)

In a heavy medium saucepan, boil the water. Rinse the rice in a strainer and add to the boiling water; wait for it to return to a boil, then reduce the heat to low-medium, and cook, stirring occasionally, till the water is absorbed and the rice is slightly soft. Remove from heat, fluff with a fork, and let sit a few minutes. In a frying pan, heat the oil over medium-high heat; once it's very hot, add the garlic and stir fry for a minute. Add the beans, ginger, sugar, soy sauce, and chili paste and stir fry another minute. Remove from heat, and stir the bean mixture into the rice. Add the salt and basil or cilantro, if using.

Getting My Groove Back

I've been so busy lately, mostly with work, which inevitably means eating badly, overspending on restaurant food, and feeling generally uninspired on the rare occasion I do cook.

But one day recently, I decided to stop at the farm stand on my way home from work. Rows and rows of blackberries, sweetpeas, and corn, all so colorful and tempting, all called my name and recited this little speech, "Diana! I cost three times as much as the stuff you find at Safeway, but I am so worth it, and even though I come from questionably local sources and may have been picked a week ago, you should -- in fact you must -- BUY ME! By the way, you NEED to buy WAY more of me than you or even you and your three brothers and two parents can possibly eat before I go bad, which I may or may not have already started to do!"

And so that is what I did; I bought a bunch of vegetables that were not at peak season and cost me a pretty penny. But they were in fact worth it, because with them I made this gorgeous salad (and, fortuitously, the corn tasted like mid August corn and even the tomatoes were good) and sort of Got My Groove Back. For a spell, anyway. I suggest you replicate this, especially in a few weeks when summer vegetables are reliably both good and cheap.


Recipe: Fresh Corn and Other Summer Veg Salad
The corn makes this. Serves 6 as main course. The leftovers can be used in an excellent frittata (below).

1/2 lb. green beans, ends removed
6 ears corn, shucked
1 pint grape tomatoes, halved
1 cucumber, chopped into 1/2 inch cubes
1 (16 oz.) can blackeye peas, drained and rinsed
1/4 C olive oil
juice of half a lemon
pinch salt
pinch pepper
pinch sugar
some combination of herbs: basil is great, perhaps essential; I also used parsley and a bit of rosemary from my struggling herb garden

Fill a soup pot halfway with water; set it on the stove to high heat. Bring to a boil and add the green beans. Boil for about 8 minutes or until crisp-tender. Have a bowl of ice water ready, and remove the beans with tongs or a slotted spoon to the bowl to prevent further cooking. Add the corn to the boiling water and boil for two minutes. Remove and let cool. Meanwhile, chop the green beans into one or one-and-a-half inch pieces. When the corn is fully cooled, remove kernels from the ears. Stir together the beans, corn kernels, tomatoes, cucumber, and blackeye peas. Stir together the olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and sugar and drizzle over the salad you plan to eat. Toss in the herbs.

And if you still want more...


Recipe: No Longer Very Fresh Morning After Frittata
Makes two servings.

1 T vegetable or olive oil
Leftover salad veg
Salt
5 eggs
Some kind of cheese -- about 1/4 C, shredded (optional)
Herbs (optional)
More salt
Pepper

Heat the oven to 450 degrees. Heat the oil in a cast iron pan over medium heat. Add whatever leftover salad veg you have, and stir around. Add some salt. Reduce heat to low-medium and cook for about 5 minutes. Break the eggs into a bowl and whisk together. Pour eggs into pan and let cook another two minutes. Sprinkle in any cheese and/or herbs you are using. Add some more salt and some pepper, and then transfer to the oven. Cook until eggs are puffed up and slightly browned, about 8 minutes.

Losing Streak

This ain't my week. The week before was pretty bad, too. And the week before that I had the consumption, or maybe just some terrible cold, and spent most of my time watching either The Real Housewives of New Jersey (the beastliness of those women is captivating!) or various PBS cooking shows on the WETA Create channel (TRHONJ's equally captivating polar opposite). Three weeks later, the hacking cough and general yuckiness still linger on, but at least my 10-hour-a-day TV habit has been cured.

All this time as an invalid, I still never lost my appetite. But despite watching so much Lidia, Julia, Jacques, and that smug but still likeable Chris Kimball and his mad scientist brigade, I've been in a cooking slump (with one exception, which I'll get to in a few paragraphs). Not that I haven't been inspired -- a few nights ago, for example, I decided on a whim to make corn tortillas. Rather, it's the talent and foresight that seem to be missing. Now, I don't own a tortilla press, and had never before considered buying one. That evening, though, plucky resourcefulness was all I thought I needed to get by.

To make corn tortillas, you just make a dough out of 1 part masa harina (similar to corn meal, and available at most grocery stores), three-quarter parts water, and a teaspoon or so of salt. Then you form the dough into smaller balls which you then flatten with a tortilla press. If you don't have a tortilla press, you resort to dangerous and bizarre techniques, such as setting the dough ball on a plastic-wrapped wooden cutting board and thwacking it as hard as you can with a cast-iron pan. The dough never gets flat enough, a hand bone possibly shatters, and the wooden cutting board most certainly shatters. Then your roommate suggests you use a rolling pin, and you marvel at your own stupidity. But, you discover, corn tortilla dough is too brittle for a rolling pin to be very helpful, and you wish you had thought to buy a $15 tortilla press on your last trip to Target or, better yet, made something more sensible to eat, like a sandwich.

But you forge ahead with a crazy look in your eyes. You are also very hungry at this point. So you heat the same cast iron pan you were earlier using as a weapon. The pan gets extremely hot, and the smoke alarm goes off, but you casually wave at it with a piece of your broken cutting board until it stops. You return to your first pancake-thick corn tortilla, which is frying away over a dry, excessive heat for about 30 seconds on each side. You remove it, take a small bite, and think to yourself, "Not bad, if you like your tortillas the consistency of matzoh."

You then fill your tortilla -- which, you are amazed to discover, actually bends -- with the pinto beans that have been sitting on the stove all this time. You think to yourself, "When it comes to legumes, I got mad skillz yo, these pinto beans gonna be the icing on this particle board, I mean tortilla." But, horrors! you take a bite and almost spit it out! You can't understand what went wrong. You had simmered the beans over low-medium heat for a couple hours. You had doused them in delicious spices and herbs like cumin, cayenne, bay leaf, and oregano. You added plenty of salt at the end. And still they taste terrible. You have no reasonable explanation, so you think to yourself again, for maybe the 15th time in three weeks, "Today just ain't my day."

In fact, the past three weeks have been so bad that you desperately search your recent memory for a silver lining, and stop on some delicious sauteed collard greens inspired by your favorite new cookbook, Vegan Soul Kitchen. The thought of this cookbook and its charming author, Bryant Terry, makes you so happy that you open it and turn to its first recipe (the only one you have yet to try), "Citrus Collards with Raisins Redux." You may be in a slump, but at least your arsenal now contains this dish, which has completely changed how you cook collards, and which you will keep going back to again and again.


Recipe: Bryant Terry's Winning Collard Greens

Adapted and renamed from Vegan Soul Kitchen. Makes two gigantic side dish servings. Consider serving it over rice and beans for a very fast, filling, and healthy meal. Also, save the stems from the collards -- Bryant (we're on a first-name basis) also taught me this -- and cut them into one- or two-inch pieces and saute them separately in olive oil and lemon juice till they're just tender. He refers to these cooked stems as "collard confetti." I like to add them to garlicky white beans and tomatoes. People mistake them for asparagus and have no idea they are usually meant for compost!

1 bunch (about 1 lb) collard greens, stems removed
2 T olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
handful raisins
juice and zest of half an orange
salt and pepper to taste

Stack a few collard leaves at a time, roll them up, and slice them into strips about an inch wide (this is also known as julienne). Do this with all the collards. Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add the garlic and saute for two minutes. Then add the raisins and collards and saute for another three minutes, stirring to make sure all the collards get cooked. Add the orange juice and zest and cook for just 15 seconds and remove from the heat. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Ruth Reichl, Mothers, French Canadian Baked Beans: A Love Story

Tomorrow night (Thursday, May 7, at 7pm), Gourmet editor-in-chief Ruth Reichl will be at Politics & Prose to discuss her latest book, Not Becoming My Mother. I'm planning to go, but I don't think I will ever read the book. For now at least, it's available only in hardcover, and the Economical Epicurean would never waste her money that way. And, besides, Not Becoming My Mother is -- surprise -- about Ruth Reichl's mother and, frankly, I'm sick and tired of Ruth Reichl's mother. Within the past few months, I've read two other Reichl memoirs, Tender at the Bone (loved it) and Garlic and Sapphires (liked it). Both of these memoirs center around Reichl's life's work -- cooking and eating. The former is about her years as a burgeoning home cook and then chef, and the latter is about her experience as the New York Times restaurant critic. Both books are engaging page-turners, filled with mouth-watering recipes and a heaping side of angst. (I think I liked Garlic and Sapphires less because I just couldn't sympathize with all the angst that apparently went with getting paid to write about four-star meals for America's most prestigious newspaper. I felt only jealousy, sometimes to the point of rage.)

Another thing these books have in common is a fixation on Reichl's literally and figuratively toxic mother. As "The Queen of Mold," she provides some great material for Reichl's more humorous pages, but for the most part she is a huge source of conflict in her daughter's otherwise enviable life. I really don't need to read any more about this difficult woman, especially since probably most of the books I read involve the tenuousness of mother-daughter relationships as a major theme. Enough, already! But I still can't get enough of Ruth Reichl, so I will go see her anyway. And I hope -- and fully expect -- that her stories of reconciliation and forgiveness are peppered throughout with stories about food, as those stories are what Reichl does best.

That reminds me of baked beans, which I used to think were disgusting. I promise, there is a proper segue on its way. As I discussed in my last post, we celebrated my friend and roommate Mike Sanders' birthday this past weekend with a barbecue. He smoked a brisket, and I made the side dishes, all traditional barbecue fare like cole slaw, macaroni and cheese, potato salad, biscuits, and baked beans. Best supporting role went to the baked beans, hands down. I had loosely followed the recipe for Maple Baked Beans from the Gourmet Cookbook, whose editor is...Ruth Reichl. (There! Segue as promised, though maybe not so proper as I had hoped it would be.)

These beans are incredibly delicious and incredibly easy, despite some lengthy hands-off cooking time. I did a bit of research on the French Canadian origins of this dish, known in Quebec as feves au lard. According to Ken Albala's Beans: A History (yes, I am a dork with a capital D), the Quebecois started making this dish, or at least writing down the recipe, in the 19th century, and would follow almost exactly the directions that now appear in the Gourmet cookbook:

Soak navy beans or Great Northern beans in water overnight. Drain and rinse. Boil covered with 2 inches of water and simmer until the beans are somewhat tender. Place in a bean pot with the cooking liquid, maple syrup, mustard, thyme, a hunk of salt pork and a chopped onion. Bake for about six hours at a low temperature. Add a little more syrup and serve.

For my version, I omitted the salt pork so the dish could be enjoyed by vegetarians and omnivories alike. Because I feared this omission might be detrimental to the depth of flavor, I added a couple teaspoons of chili powder to smoken things up. Due to time constraints, I cooked the beans for a shorter period of time -- and at higher heat, to compensate -- than the Gourmet version calls for. To keep costs down, I also used less maple syrup, and I'm glad I did -- I think following the original recipe exactly would have produced some excessively sweet legumes.

Even though baked beans are a side dish, they have great main course potential. They can be served over rice or barley or a baked potato. In the last hour or so of cooking, you could add some chopped bitter greens, like kale, collards, or mustard greens, for a boost of nutrients and an interesting twist of flavor. You could even eat them in a tortilla or pita, maybe with a sprinkling of cheese. Any way you eat them, you will be thankful for the Quebecois for coming up with the recipe, Ruth Reichl for including it in her cookbook, and Ruth Reichl's mom -- however horrifying she may have been -- for bringing this great epicurean into the world.

Recipe: Feves au Lard, or Maple Baked Beans

Adapted from the Gourmet Cookbook. Serves 12-15 as a side dish. If you're cooking this for just yourself, halve the recipe. You will have no trouble finishing it over the course of a couple days. Maple syrup aside, it costs pittance to make.

1 (16 oz.) bag of dried navy beans
1 medium onion, finely chopped
3 t salt
1 t pepper
2 T chili powder
2/3 C real maple syrup
1 t dijon mustard (the original recipe calls for dry mustard -- use whichever you have or prefer)
6 C water

Soak the beans overnight. Drain, and put them in a Dutch oven. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Stir into beans the onion, salt, pepper, chili powder, maple syrup, and mustard. Add the water to the beans. Bring to a boil on the stove, then cover and bake for an hour and a half, stirring occasionally. Remove cover and bake for another hour or until liquid is mostly absorbed.

Family Jewels

Last night I enjoyed a picture-perfect barbecue at the home of my cousin Kate and her husband, Seth, joined by Kate's sister Liza and Liza's boyfriend, Avi. I brought along as my date a six-pack of Dogfish Head Raison D'Etre, whose brute strength left me still weak in the knees this morning. Heh. A good date, indeed.

The weather was perfect, the conversation lively, the fire pit roaring, and the food excellent. As an added bonus, I learned two important lessons from Kate and Seth's wonderful, casual, al fresco dinner:

1) Boiled potatoes with nothing but salt and pepper on them are underrated and delicious -- and a frugal eater's dream.

2) Grilled chicken need not be dry, if you follow this important step: boil it first! Kate learned this brilliant bit from her mom, my Aunt Mary. No need to boil it very long, maybe 5 or 10 minutes. This way, the chicken is already parcooked and doesn't desiccate away on the open flame.

That reminds me, I have another gem to offer, courtesy of Aunt Mary: her amazing broccoli salad, which I mentioned in my last post and served at Easter. It's been a popular fixture at the past three or four holiday functions, I think. I dare you to find a better way to eat broccoli.


Recipe: Aunt Mary's Broccoli Salad

Adapted from Richmond's Ukrop's Deli via a 1980s Washington Post recipe, which does not seem to be available on their archives. Makes 6-8 servings.

For the salad:

1.5 - 2 C finely chopped broccoli florets and/or stalks
2-3 finely chopped celery ribs
1/2 C finely chopped onion
1/2 C golden raisins [Mary's note: dark is fine]
7 strips bacon, cooked and crumbled [DEO note: omit the bacon if you want to make a vegetarian version]
6-8 large, well-shaped lettuce leaves for serving [DEO note: Mary doesn't serve the salad in lettuce leaves, and it is just fine that way.]

For the dressing:

1/2 - 2/3 C reduced calorie mayonnaise [DEO note: use full-fat mayo if that's what you already have]
1/4 C sugar
1.5 T cider vinegar
1/2 - 1 t seasoning salt
1/8 - 1/4 t freshly ground pepper

Combine all the salad ingredients, except for the bacon, in a medium-sized bowl. Combine all the dressing ingredients and spoon over the salad; stir and cover. Chill 4-8 hours before serving. Top with the bacon. Serve on lettuce leaves (optional).

Tentative Easter Menu

My parents are out of town yet again this year, so it's up to us at the Kentbury Kompound to host an Easter egg hunt and accompanying brunch/dinner. It's at 3pm. What do you call that mealtime? I don't like the portmanteau "linner" -- it doesn't sound like what it's supposed to mean; it sounds to me like a vulgar combination of "inner" and "linger," or maybe I'm the vulgar one.

Anyway, Easter was always my favorite holiday as a kid, and now that I'm older (but not wiser) I still get really excited about being surrounded by pastel colors and wearing a church-appropriate dress and, of course, all the springtime-y food involved (not to mention, egg hunts are still just as fun as they were when I was a wee one, now that I'm allowed to drink). I took a kitchen inventory, and here's what I'm thinking for the menu this year, but we'll see if I can get everything done:

-Roast leg of lamb (only because I found one sitting in my parents' freezer; I can't afford no stinkin' sheep. Not that I'm stealing, per se, only helping: this animal would continue to freeze for all eternity if I didn't use it.)

-Various quiches or frittatas that use up whatever veggies and cheese I already have or can find on the cheap. Most likely, I'll make some frittatas -- that way I don't have to bother with the crust. To make one, you simply preheat the oven to 450, heat whatever veggies or meat you are using in a cast-iron pan over the stove, add 6 or 7 beaten eggs, let them continue cooking for two minutes or so over low-medium heat, until the mixture begins to set in the pan, sprinkle some cheese on it if you want, and then transfer the pan to the oven and bake for 9 minutes or until the frittata is puffed up and brown.

-Some kind of white bean salad, since I have a whole bag of dried. I also could cook that lamb with the beans in the crockpot...the wheels are turning...

-Some kind of salad with quinoa (not a grain, as I mistakenly called it awhile back, but a seed), since I also have a whole bag of that. I'm thinking about riffing on my Sprightly Spring Couscous using quinoa; 'twould be good and good for you!

-An asparagus or green bean dish -- maybe with the veg mixed in with some roasted potatoes. Though I'm also interested to try the peas with poached eggs from today's Times article on Newark, New Jersey's Portuguese section -- where I can say I've happily eaten a few times!

-My Aunt Mary's awesome broccoli salad. I definitely need to post this recipe soon, but it deserves a whole post of its own.

-For hors d'oeuvres: I'm planning to make Almost-No-Knead bread again and toasting it for crostini. Or, if I run out of time, just serving it with some garlicky olive oil. I have a big hunk of goat cheese left over from Nana's birthday party; homemade bread with goat cheese and honey sounds very tempting right about now. If time lets me, I would like to make Dorie Greenspan's gougeres (cheese puffs), always a hit at my parties, and, conveniently, I happened to find a big bag of pre-shredded (horrors!) cheese that also needed to be rescued from my parents' black hole of a 'frigerator.

-For dessert: definitely flourless chocolate cake, an Easter tradition in the Owen family, for which I'll follow Alice Medrich's recipe again. I'd like to try a rhubarb crisp, too, since rhubarb is in season and I haven't cooked with it before. If I remember, I will also make Key Lime pie. I don't have an interesting recipe for this; we always follow the one on the back of the Key Lime juice container that you buy in the grocery store. I don't even remember the brand, but it's usually the only one of its kind. It's really good and really easy, and requires only three ingredients if I remember correctly: a frozen pie shell, a can of sweetened condensed milk, and the Key Lime juice.

-For libations: white wine sangria -- I mix together two big bottles of the cheapest white wine, a cup or so of club soda, another cup of triple sec, a bag of Trader Joe's frozen Fancy Berry Medley, some lemon or orange juice, and a quarter cup or so of sugar. It pleases a pretty big crowd. Once we run out, I guess we'll get creative with our bizarre assortment of liquors and liqueurs, or finally take care of those PBRs in the fridge.

-For the egg hunt: I'll be putting the family collection of plastic eggs to use by filling them with homemade truffles (all you do is mix together 2 cups of chocolate chips, a stick of butter cut into pieces, and a teaspoon of vanilla in a heat-proof bowl or double boiler, melt it over a pan of boiling water, stir it together, refrigerate it for an hour, form into balls, and roll in a mixture of 1/2 C cocoa powder and 1/2 C powdered sugar), which I'll wrap individually in tin foil. The eggs will probably also contain things I find around the house, such as pennies, cat toys, q-tips, used Post-It notes, barrettes, staples, and safety pins. What, you want me to go buy pastel M&M's? Times are tough, people!

So, all this seems like a lot, but nothing I'm making is very difficult and most of it just requires ingredients that I already have. The only things I will have to buy are broccoli, asparagus or green beans, some fresh rosemary, some potatoes (maybe), rhubarb, and the three Key Lime pie ingredients. Probably some more eggs for dying, too. I happen to have a pretty well-stocked kitchen, but I'm also not using any particularly expensive ingredients (with the exception of that free lamb -- score!). I'm really looking forward to it, and I hope to see you there!

And, lastly, if you'll pardon my horn-tooting, this blog was mentioned by the Chicago Sun-Times Food Section, in a feature on two of my favorite blogs, Cheap Healthy Good and Casual Kitchen, and is also listed on the Culinary School Guide's Top 100 Blogs for the Frugal Gourmet. I'm getting fatter -- and this time it's not just my waistline!

The Cilantroversy

It seems no herb but cilantro can provoke such strong opinions. I first witnessed this years ago, working at the Rio Grande Cafe in Bethesda. The special of the day was "Shrimp Acapulco" -- grilled shrimp served over a bed of "cilantro rice" and topped with mango salsa, if I remember correctly. I'm sure it was very thoughtfully named. Anyway, I was describing it (in more detail than what you just read -- this tactic is known as "upselling" in the restaurant world) to a middle-aged couple and their son, during a lunch shift. As soon as I said the word "cilantro," the woman shuddered, "Oh, ugh. I can't stand cilantro." What?? I had just sampled the new special earlier that morning, and I'll be damned if it weren't "out of this world" -- my favorite way to describe food to customers. Plus, I thought, cilantro makes everything better.

It turns out a lot of people hate, hate, this herb. It may just be genetics: a behavioral scientist recently took his cilantro study to the Ohio Twins Festival and found that if one identical twin hated cilantro, chances are the other twin felt the same way. Also, most cilantro-haters detect in it a soapy taste and smell, which strikes me as a genetic kind of thing -- a very scientific opinion, I know. It reminds me a little bit of the asparagus pee phenomenon; studies have shown that eating asparagus always results in an odiferous urine, but not everyone is able to smell it. I'm glad I can't, because it might ruin asparagus for me.

Anyway, cilantro. There have been a number of groups formed on Facebook dedicated to a collective detestation of this most ubiquitous of herbs. The below is a small sampling of the wall posts for the group I HATE CILANTRO, now boasting almost 2,000 members:

"We are born with something people who can tolerate cilantro don't have. It's called a soul."

"Cilantro is just plain vulgar. Its flavor lingers and repeats for at least three days. Reasturants should warn customers about every item that contains it. I HATE IT! It chould be illegal."

"Fresh coriander is an abomination.
It is surely the scent of evil, the stench of hell, the proof that the Enemy is working around us.
On his occasional meetings with the Devil around the turn of the first Millenium, it is reported that St. Julian Hospitaller could always detect the odour of fresh coriander - cilantro. It should never be consumed by human beings and restaurants should ALWAYS have a warning sign for any dishes dishes carrying this noxious weed. I certainly send my food back if they come up with pearls of culinary stupidity as a 'coriander pesto' but they only anounce it as 'pesto'."

Gentle readers, these are highlights from only Page One of the wall posts.

I'm not sure which came first, but there is also a website, ihatecilantro.com, where you can read all about the evils of the herb and the people who cook with it, and order your "I HATE CILANTRO" sweatshirts, messenger bags, throw pillows, mouse pads, and beer steins. There's even a canine-sized "I HATE CILANTRO" t-shirt, for that dog of yours who becomes nauseated at the very thought.

I jest. If cilantro-hating really is a matter of genes, then I can't fault the haters. But, all this hulabaloo against an innocent herb? It's kind of hilarious. I guess I, too, have joined "hater" Facebook groups -- my favorite among them being "If you can't differentiate between your and you're, you deserve to die." But what did cilantro ever do to you? Okay, touche, what did the your/you're offenders ever do to me (besides make grading their English 101 papers extra tedious)?

Well, doggone it, I love cilantro, if you couldn't tell already. I love it so much that I take a long whiff every time I encounter it. Mmmmm! Makes everything seem so fresh! The following two recipes are cilantro-heavy, but if you happen to be a hater, you could just as well make them without the cilantro. I had my parents and two of my brothers over for dinner tonight, and served the cabbage salad as the first course and the soup as the main course, fearing the flavors of each dish were too strong to be served at the same time. Home run! Everyone loved everything (my people don't have the cilantro-hating gene, clearly). Plus, it's all pretty low-fat, and yours truly is looking to get rid of about 10 pounds.

Recipe: Peanut-Ginger Cabbage Salad
The dressing is adapted from 101Cookbooks. Serves 6 as a heavy first course.


For dressing (makes about 1.25 C):
2/3 C creamy peanut butter
1/3 C rice vinegar
1/4 C maple syrup (I was out of maple syrup, so I just used 2 T sugar)
3 T water
2 T tamari (I do not have this, so I substituted soy sauce)
1 T minced fresh ginger (or 1.5 t ground ginger)
2 cloves garlic
1.5 t toasted sesame oil (use regular sesame oil if you don't have the toasted kind)
1/4 t crushed red pepper flakes (omit these if you don't like spicy food)
1 C cilantro

For salad:
1 half of a large head of green cabbage, cut into julienne strips
2 large carrots, coarsely grated
1 red pepper, julienned
2 C broccoli florets (ends of about two broccoli)
juice of half a lime
1/4 C loosely packed mint leaves
1/4 C loosely packed cilantro

To make the dressing, grind together the first nine ingredients in the food processor or blender. Add the cilantro and pulse a few times. Add water as necessary to get a consistency you like for salad dressing. May be refrigerated for up to two days.

To make the salad, toss together all the salad ingredients. Toss with the dressing.

Addendum: Feel free to use any combination of vegetables here. Red cabbage can be substituted. Green beans would be good. A different-colored pepper. Sliced radishes, especially daikon radish. Cucumber might be a nice addition. Red onion, perhaps. Use your imagination!


Recipe: Spicy Chickpea and Tomato Stew
Inspired by Rachael Ray's Indian-Spiced Chickpea and Fire-Roasted Tomato Soup (don't hate). Serves 6.


1 T olive oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 medium onion, diced
3 15-oz. cans chickpeas, or one and a half bags of dried chickpeas, soaked overnight
3 t ground cumin
1 t garam masala
1 t ground turmeric
1/2 t cayenne pepper or two chopped, seeded dried red chiles (omit if you don't like spicy food)
2 C chickenor vegetable stock
1 C water
1 28-oz. can diced tomatoes
1 C cilantro
1.25 C plain yogurt
Pita chips (optional, recipe follows)

Heat a large pot over medium heat and add the olive oil. Add the garlic and onions and cook, stirring occasionally, about 5 minutes. Add chickpeas and spices. Reduce heat to low-medium and cook another 5 minutes. Add chicken stock and water, increase to medium, bring to a low boil, reduce heat to low-medium, and simmer about 30 minutes. Add tomatoes and cook for another 15 minutes. Reduce heat to low. Ladle soup into bowls and give each a tablespoon or so of cilantro and a dollop of yogurt. Serve with pita chips.

Pita chips: Heat oven to 300 degrees. Take four pieces of pita bread that are about to go stale. Cut each in half crosswise (so each pita becomes two full circles). Slice into fourths. Brush each piece with olive oil on both sides. Sprinkle each side with salt. Bake for about 10 minutes, or until crispy.

Take Back the Tuber

So, I was in fact too busy with the cabana boys to write anything about my road trip to Florida. Besides, a vacation is not really a vacation if it involves a computer screen. And besides that, I figure no one besides me would find my food finds that interesting. But, if you ever find yourself traveling along both coasts or cruising down Route 1 in the Keys, and you are wondering what to eat, get in touch! I did not have a single unimpressive meal -- and this was almost two whole weeks of road food. Also, and this may come as a surprise, I do sometimes do things that don't involve eating (e.g., sleeping, drinking, lying on the beach, petting stray cats), and I'd be happy to pass that related information along, too.

Me in my bathing suit, Siesta Key, February 2009

But the vacation's over, another new job has begun, and news about the economy (is there any other kind of news?) gets more depressing every day. Well, bless her little heart, Jane E. Brody has come to America's rescue by encouraging us to Take Back the Tuber. I suppose I am amplifying her potato praise a bit -- it covered only two paragraphs or so of her Science Times column on March 2. But it did have its own section heading: "Potatoes: One of the Good Guys." Can I get an Amen?!?!

J. Bro goes on to point out that potatoes, defamed in recent years as nothing but carb-heavy repositories of butter and bacon, provide 35 percent of your daily vitamin C, 20 percent of your B6, 10 percent of your niacin, iron, and copper, and 6 percent of your protein. I'll add to that list that if you eat the skin, you also get a shitload (pun intended) of fiber.

Anyone who knows me well knows how much I love the homely old tuber, any way I can get it. But there's really nothing more comforting -- or more affordable -- than a baked potato. Tonight I topped mine with a tiny bit of butter, some salt and pepper, a whole lot of steamed broccoli, and a couple sprinkles of blue cheese (so tempting, all melty and soft in the potato's heat. Methinks my next career will be the first author of tubercentric romance novels, an untapped genre). Baked potatoes are also great for using up leftovers of almost any kind -- think of them as edible landfills (yes, that makes no sense at all) for chicken salad, ground beef, roasted veg, beans, whatever. I'd like to douse a tater with my dal saag or cilantro-garlic yogurt sauce. Talk about a stimulus package!

If you are one of the poor souls who doesn't know how to bake a potato, 1) you are no friend of mine, and 2) here's how to become my friend: turn your oven on to 400 degrees; take a potato, preferably a "Baking Potato," and scrub it under running water for a few seconds; get fancy if you want and slather that wet potato skin with salt; use a knife or fork to poke a few holes in the skin; put it in the oven for about 45 minutes (longer if you are baking multiple potatoes -- maybe about an hour); take it out of the oven; cut a big slit in it lengthwise and get creative with your toppings. Or use just a little bit of butter, salt, and pepper (just salt and pepper if you're watching your figure; just pepper if you're watching your sodium; just plain if you're a self-flagellating monk).

In conclusion, if we want to "get back to our values," as everyone keeps saying, the solution is really quite simple. Buy potatoes and bake them! Really, the slogan of the United Potato Growers of America can legitimately be "Country First." Let me break it down for you:

1) When you buy potatoes, you are "buying American." You really think we are dumb enough to import potatoes from China? Okay, maybe we are. But thankfully, we don't usually do that. In fact, we are the world's fifth largest exporter of potatoes.

2) Even so, supply is outweighing demand, which has caused potato prices to drop. Right now, that's good for you (on the other hand, price drops are usually compensated by federal subsidies, so consumers don't pay much less than they did before). And if we all start buying more potatoes, it'll be good for the farmers and good for the taxpayers!

3) Because they are so cheap, potatoes keep money in your pocket, which you can then stuff under your mattress. When your mattress becomes uncomfortable, you know it's time to hit the fire sales.

4) As Jane E. Brody so wisely enumerates, potatoes, as long as they're not scalloped or turned into fries, are good for your health. Lowered health care costs, my friends! Let's think long-term.

He's Just Not That Into Food

Above photograph stolen from the New York Times

There are many things about Barack Obama that I really like, a couple things I don't like, and one thing that truly makes me nervous about the fate of this country: he is a notoriously finnicky eater. A Newsweek article a few months back noted that most presidential candidates gain weight on the campaign trail, understandably, since it is really just a tour of America's folksiest barbecue joints and roadside diners. But President Obama, who, according to this same article, once requested his pancakes "to go" (we can easily assume he skipped the drippy syrup and butter, if he touched them at all), actually lost weight during his campaign. Yeah, yeah, the man has a lot of nervous energy, even melancholia, which probably has a lot to do with his success. But think about it: if he gets his pancakes to go and eats pretty much the same thing (salmon, rice, vegetable) every night, what will he do at foreign policy dinners? "Thanks, Vlad, but I'll pass on the potatoes. Gotta watch the carbs. Yeeahh, doesn't vodka come from potatoes, too? Do you have any unsweetened iced tea?" I sense a looming international fiasco! Then again, maybe Putin and Obama could make peace over a smoke.

Much talk has been made lately about Obama's 2001 appearance on Check, Please!, a Chicago public television show dedicated to local restaurant reviews. The blogs are now pinning Obama as a bona fide restaurant critic after a merely skin-deep discussion of Dixie Kitchen and Bait Shop, located in his old legislative district. When asked what he ordered at his last visit, Obama replies, "the Southern Sampler, just because I couldn't make up my mind." Though he claims to "eat there quite a bit," he seems unattached to the cuisine. For him, the camaraderie this unassuming neighborhood diner creates is far more remarkable than any particular entree.

Fine, but thinking about Obama in relationship to food became most troubling when Sanders and I began planning a menu for the inauguration party we hosted yesterday. To represent Obama's adopted hometown, Sanders was in charge of Chicago-style hot dogs and Polish sausages. (We should've also represented Obama's newest adopted hometown with half-smokes, but that's an embarrassing subject for our new president.) I had a harder time deciding what to make. Internet research on Obama's favorite foods revealed...only that he's not that into food. So I decided to delve into recipes from Hawaii and Indonesia, two places where he spent portions of his childhood and teenage years. I admit I was getting a bit precious about this menu-planning, but that's just what I do. The food had to be cheap, seasonable, and able to feed a crowd, so most Hawaiian recipes I found were out: too much fish, too many exotic fruits, and too much Spam, oddly enough. But I did come across a great Indonesian (not sure how authentic it is, but it is at least Indonesian-inspired) recipe on my new favorite food blog, 101cookbooks.com. It was unusual enough to be a conversation-piece, and tasty enough that a few people asked me for the recipe. I plan to make it again this week, not only because I now have many of the ingredients left over, but also because I can't stop thinking about it. I do not know if President Obama would ever eat it, but that wasn't really important to me in the end. I'm contented that, despite his picky habits, Barack Obama inadvertently expanded my culinary horizons!

Recipe: Vaguely Indonesian Red Rice Salad

Adapted from 101cookbooks.com. Serves 8, with reservations. I tripled it for the party, and with only about 15 people at my house, there were no leftovers. If you are planning to serve this as a main course -- it's certainly filling enough for that -- the amounts below provide for about 4 servings. Red rice is not available in most grocery stores, so now's your chance to explore the Asian market. H Mart in Wheaton sells 4-lb. bags for $5.99. You could also use basmati rice, but the red is just so purty. Heidi at 101cookbooks uses macadamia nuts and basil. I am too cheap to buy macadamia nuts, so I used peanuts, and basil this time of year is so wilted and pitiful that I used cilantro instead. Also, if you are doubling or tripling this recipe, I would not double or triple the amount of soy sauce. I learned this the hard way. A quarter-cup, which Heidi uses, is plenty, even when the recipe is doubled.

As always, the recipe below is modified a lot according to my own tastes and budget, and my modifications are in parentheses. Despite the long ingredient list, this dish is actually very easy.

2 C water
1 C red rice
2 T oil (I used 3 or 4 tablespoons, as vegetables got dry too quickly)
4 shallots, chopped (I had only two shallots, so I added one small onion)
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 large red chili, seeded and chopped (I used a dried chili, and did not seed it)
1-in. piece of grated ginger root (I used 2 T ground ginger, but I LOVE ginger)
1 t ground coriander
1 large carrot, thinly sliced
1/2 lb. green beans, trimmed and chopped
1/2 C coconut milk
1/4 C soy sauce (this was too much soy sauce for my taste, so I used about 2T instead)
1/2 t molasses (mine was about 3 years past its prime, so I omitted)
4 large eggs, boiled and peeled (forgot about these, didn't hurt)
1/2 C julienned basil (I used cilantro)
1/4 C macadamia nuts, toasted and chopped (I used peanuts)
1 lime, quartered

Bring water to a boil in a medium stockpot. Rinse and drain the rice, and add to the boiling water. Keep heat high until it returns to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium and cook for 45 minutes or until water is absorbed. Reduce heat to low and let stand for 10 minutes, then remove from heat and let cool to room temperature.

In large wok, saute pan, or Dutch oven, heat oil over medium-high. Add shallots, garlic, chile, ginger, coriander, carrot, and green beans. Stir-fry till vegetables are crisp-tender. Add coconut milk, soy sauce, and molasses and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and add rice. Stir in basil and macadamias, then toss everything together. Before serving, arrange hardcooked eggs on top. Serve with squeeze of lime and arrange lime wedges on top, if desired.