Kale and sweet potato empanadas with pecans, goat cheese and smoked gouda

Posted on October 22, 2013 by Magpies

Kale and sweet potato empanadas

“For years, Cohen’s approach was to shoot three rolls of film over a two-hour walk, develop the rolls directly, have dinner, then go back to the darkroom, develop eight to nine prints directly from the negatives, and cast aside the rest. Cohen did this several times a week for decades. He estimates he has 600,000-800,000 images that he’s never seen or developed, not even on contact sheets.”

Mark Cohen is a street photographer who shoots images from his hip, without looking through the viewfinder. In an article in today’s Guardian, he describes his methods. He doesn’t carry a camera with him all the time, he goes on specific walks just to take photographs. This used to be in his home town of Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania, but he’s recently moved to Philadelphia, and now he takes trolley rides, “I get on a trolley and go to a specific intersection. I like to go to the same one 10 times, so I understand the texture of the neighbourhood.”

His photographs, not surprisingly, are unusually framed, they’re askew and disorienting–not focussed on face and shoulders, but on whatever part of the body he happened to catch. There’s something beautiful in this discombobulation. The photos of people feel more intimate and specific to one person, because they capture some part of that person nobody would notice, but they also feel like a document of people everywhere at this particular moment in time. They look familiar, like family snap-shots, like people you knew, and in their abstraction they become surprising and new…you see the human form in a different light, as a collection of angles and light and shadows, vulnerable and beautiful.

Bare thin arms against aluminum siding

I love the eccentric ordinariness of this whole process. I love the way it’s described as part of his routine, as natural as making a meal. In describing his career trajectory, from gallery shows in New York in the seventies to relative obscurity (although he has a show in Paris at the moment) he seems more than resigned. As his career waned, he remained as productive as ever, perhaps even more so. ‘Removing himself from the New York scene gave him a “purity”, he says, by virtue of “not having a personality so involved in the dissemination of work”. But by his own admission, he “dropped out” in the late 80s. “Gallerists couldn’t sell my stuff,” he says matter-of-factly. “My work’s not the most optimistic. It’s not like Yosemite.”‘

In all of these things: his subject matter, his seeming need to take photographs, the fact that he hasn’t developed many of his negatives, or even looked at them, he reminds me of Vivian Maier, another brilliant photographer who had a unique view of the world all around us. They capture time as it passes, they save moments in the lives of strangers and make them into something remarkable–something worth noticing, something worth saving. There’s a feeling almost of melancholy in the works of both photographers, something almost lonely in a glimpse into the life of somebody else. But there’s tenderness and compassion, too: we feel a connection.

kale and sweet potato empanadas

Autumn empanadas!! These were warm and smoky, earthy, sweet and tangy. Very very nice on a chilly autumn evening. The kale and sweet potatoes are from the farm, as are the sage and rosemary. I used a combination of goat cheese and smoked gouda, for the nice contrast in flavor and texture. These were mostly soft and pleasing, but they did have a bit of crunch from the crust and the pecans.

Here’s Jimmy Smith with Just a Closer Walk With Thee.

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Roasted beets and sweet potatoes with fresh tomatoes, mozzarella and walnut tarator sauce

Posted on October 17, 2013 by Magpies

Roasted beets and sweet potatoes with fresh tomatoes and mozzarella

Here at The Ordinary’s home for over-used and worn-out metaphors, we’ve been visiting an old friend. We’ve been thinking of a metaphor, and we’re driving that tired horse the extra mile down well-traveled roads. It all started the other day when I described Malcolm’s mind as a vivid, teeming, beautiful place. I began thinking of it as a garden, I started to imagine what Malcolm’s garden would be like. I pictured it as a wild mix of different styles. In some parts it would be carefully planned and cultivated, and would yield delicious herbs and vegetables. In others it would be wild and unruly, full of raspberry bushes, say, delicious but prickly and hard to control. There would be gaps in the walls, hidden behind bushes or clever doors that Malcolm had fashioned from objects he’d found. These doors would open to secret passages, beautiful and rambling, which run for miles to unexpected places, alongside clear creeks. And Isaac’s garden would be bright and sunny, full of vibrant flowers and sweet smells. But there would be shadowy patches of skeleton flowers, or ghostly weeds or crazy jaggedy monstrous plants that look scary but would never really hurt you. His garden wouldn’t be hard to walk in, it would have plenty of paths, but they’d be meandering and twisting, and you’d never end up where you expect to. And my garden would be a miss-matched jumble. I would have started out carefully enough, drawing detailed plans in a little notebook, I would have chosen strange aromatic herbs and obscure fruits. I would have started with energy and good intentions, but somewhere along the way I would have gotten distracted or discouraged, and the flowers would never be as beautiful or the fruit as fruitful as I’d hoped. And I’d constantly be surprised by what I found in my own garden, forgetting that I’d planted something, or bewildered by some plant that had found its own way in and grown with wild gusto almost without me noticing. And sometimes this unexpected unremembered thing will be more beautiful than anything I’d planned. Like all gardens, ours will be dormant sometimes, seemingly bare under a layer of frost or snow, but beneath the soil all of the roots will be growing and alive. And like all gardens, we’ll have to be careful what we plant and what we allow to grow, and we’ll try to pull away the vines that choke everything healthy and vital. But we’ll never reject a plant because it’s not bright or showy enough or because somebody else calls it a weed. And we’ll understand that it’s good when our gardens are wild and alive and teeming, but it’s important for us to take care of them, and make plans for them, and forge paths through the brambles, so that we can share them with other people. We’ll revel in all the different moods and seasons, the sun and warmth and rain and frost, because we’ll know we need them all. Yeah. It’s an old metaphor, but the soil’s still good, it’s still got years of crops to harvest.

Beets and sweets from the local farm! The season’s almost over, so we’ll make the most of it while we can. I sliced the beets and sweets and a few regular potatoes quite thinly. Then I roasted them till they were crispy. I lay these on a bed of baby arugula, and then piled them high with fresh tomatoes and basil (from the farm) and mozzarella, and then I drizzled the whole thing with a creamy vegan walnut tarator sauce. A sort of warm salad, perfect for this season of unexpectedly warm days and unexpectedly chilly nights.

Here’s REM with Gardening at Night.

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Mashed potato and white bean croquettes with sage and rosemary

Posted on October 15, 2013 by Magpies

Potato and white bean croquettes with sage and rosemary

People at work have been giving me grief about my handwriting. Sometimes they’re joking, sometimes they’re exasperated and angry, but it’s always the same cry, “You have to write more neatly.” The odd thing is that in my 44 years, most of which I’ve spent a lot of time writing, nobody has ever said a negative word about my handwriting. It’s not pretty, I’m no calligrapher, but it’s always been legible. I get my point across. I’m tempted to say, “Don’t worry, my seven-year-old has a hard time reading cursive, too. You’ll get it eventually.” But I don’t. The other odd thing is that it’s surprisingly hurtful to be teased about your handwriting. It feels bad to be scolded. It feels bad for about a minute, because this is just my extremely part-time job, and I don’t really care enough to care, and when you work in a restaurant if you can’t weather some criticism barked at you by stressed-out cooks you won’t last very long. The other day we were trying to sort through the mess of papers in Malcolm’s backpack, and most of them said, “Write more neatly!!” Well! I had such a surge of sympathy for my Malcolm! He hears it all the time. The teachers are only doing their job, and I’m sure they’re kinder than my co-workers (they’d better be!!). But I’m sure it’s not just the handwriting, it’s everything. I’m sure he’s constantly told to sit still, focus, be organized, pay attention. And that’s just the school part, just the educational side. He’s got a million other things to figure out, too. The other day he needed his tiger hat. With classic Malcolmish single-mindedness and urgency, he wouldn’t even eat breakfast until he found it. He was sure all the other kids would be wearing their animal hats (last year his class was like a strange sort of zoo.) Well, they weren’t. It’s just Malcolm and his tiger hat. But he didn’t care, he’s still happy to wear it, as cool as ever a kid could be. Yesterday Malcolm was worried about a grade he got on a math test. So worried that he wouldn’t look at me or talk to me. He wouldn’t lift his head, and I found myself talking to the blankly staring, slightly surprised button eyes on the tiger’s hat, pushed back to the top of Malcolm’s head. It’s overwhelming! There’s so much for Malcolm to be responsible for, to keep track of, to figure out! He’s so bright and sweet and smart and practical, but it seems like so much. We can’t do it for him, we can’t even be there with him most of the time while he’s holding all the pieces together. It’s just so strange to be a parent, sometimes. It’s my job to show Malcolm that all of this is important: that grades are important, and neatness, and showing your work,and points, there are always points to keep track of, to be lost and never regained. It’s my job to make this matter to Malcolm, when part of me wants to shout, “Who cares what your handwriting looks like if the words you write with it are as imaginative and clever and funny as you are? Who cares if your spelling is erratic as long as your stories are so brilliant and creative? And who cares about math at all?!” But of course I would never say that, because I do care, and I know that he should, too. I know he can manage all of this, I know he can. He’s a strong swimmer, I know he can carry himself over this sea of worries and responsibilities. His mind is a vivid, teeming, beautiful place, and I know his head hurts sometimes with trying to see his way through clearly, trying to rein it all in, and trying to get it all out–trying to organize all this brilliance and show his work, and write more neatly so other people can share it, too. I understand that sometimes a person might need to lie on the floor and hide behind his tiger hat before he wades in again, I might try it myself sometime.

I think there’s nothing more comforting than mashed potatoes! They smell like a holiday while they’re cooking, and they’re so pleasing and soft and gently flavorful. I had some left over, and I wanted to make something that accentuated their comfortingness, so I made these little croquettes. I kept them very simple, but they’re not bland. It’s just mashed potatoes mixed with smushed white beans, eggs, white sharp cheddar, and rosemary and sage. Quick and easy. I made a red sauce to go with them, with some balsamic and garlic and shallots, so it’s got stronger sharper flavors which were nice against the simplicity of the croquettes.

Here’s James Brown with Mashed Potato
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Sweet potato gnocchi and spicy spinach sauce

Posted on October 1, 2013 by Magpies

Sweet potato gnocchi

“And because the breath of flowers is far sweeter in the air (where it comes and goes like the warbling of music) than in the hand, therefore nothing is more fit for that delight, than to know what be the flowers and plants that do best perfume the air. Roses, damask and red, are fast flowers of their smells; so that you may walk by a whole row of them, and find nothing of their sweetness; yea though it be in a morning’s dew. Bays likewise yield no smell as they grow. Rosemary little; nor sweet marjoram. That which above all others yields the sweetest smell in the air is the violet, specially the white double violet, which comes twice a year; about the middle of April, and about Bartholomew-tide. Next to that is the musk rose. Then the strawberry-leaves, dying, which yield a most excellent cordial smell. Then the flower of vines; it is a little dust, like the dust of a bent, which grows upon the cluster in the first coming forth. Then sweet-briar. Then wall-flowers, which are very delightful to be set under a parlor or lower chamber window. Then pinks and gilliflowers, especially the matted pink and clove gilliflower. Then the flowers of the lime-tree. Then the honey-suckles, so they be somewhat afar off. Of bean-flowers I speak not, because they are field flowers. But those which perfume the air most delightfully, not passed by as the rest, but being trodden upon and crushed, are three; that is, burnet, wild-thyme, and watermints. Therefore you are to set whole alleys of them, to have the pleasure when you walk or tread.”

Francis Bacon on gardens. It’s an essay in the middle of The Essays or Counsels, civil and moral, of Francis Ld. Verulam Viscount St Albans. In between essays on religion, judicature, faction and ambition, lies a beautiful little essay about gardens. It’s civil and moral discourse, because he believes it’s important to have a garden, and to attend carefully to the arrangement of it. He names every flower that will bloom every season of the year in London where he lives, and he suggests that you discover what will grow year round where you live. And then he has this lovely little section on the scent of flowers, which has such odd and particular language it reads like a poem. Secret roses that hold their smells fast? Strawberry leaves when they’re dying? Honeysuckle though it be somewhat far off? What is a little dust? What is the dust of a bent? But let us not speak of bean-flowers, because they are field flowers.

Spinach and jalapeno sauce

We got some sweet potatoes from the farm, and I decided to make these little baked gnocchi with them, and then some spinach sauce to dip them in. The gnocchi are based on a choux pastry batter. They’re somewhat denser than regular choux pastry, because of the sweet potatoes, but pleasantly so. I flavored them with sharp cheddar and sage, and the sauce is flavored with jalapenos, almonds and lemon.

Here’s Tom Waits with Trampled Rose.

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Crispy spicy semolina-crusted sweet potato fries

Posted on September 29, 2013 by Magpies

Semolina crusted sweet potato fries

Here at The Ordinary, they call me “oblivia.” I’m not the most observant person on the planet. I’ve been known to watch the same movie twice and not even notice until I was halfway through. I feel as though I’m reasonably observant about people and books, but when it comes to music or art, I tend to let it wash over me, so I get the full effect, but I often miss the details. Some songs, though, I pay closer attention to. This is because they have one part, one moment, that I find very exciting. It could be a strange instrument, a strange rhythm, a sample, a noise. Usually it’s not throughout the whole song, which is why it gets my attention. So this week’s Sunday interactive playlist is a little complicated. We’re looking for songs with a particular unexpected moment that you look forward to, that you pay attention to. For instance, the bagpipe in Belle and Sebastian’s Sleep the Clock Around. The clanging noises in 16 shells from a 30.6 (honestly, listen for it, it makes no sense but it makes perfect sense.) The xylophone at the end of Gone Daddy Gone, when it gets all synchopated (that is a xylophone, right?). All of Nina Simone’s little asides in Nina’s Blues. The Jaws and Psycho samples in Beastie Boys’ Egg Man. This list will take a little thought and a bit of explanation. Especially for me, because as well as being oblivious my memory is useless. So I know there are more songs, but they’re not coming to me just at the moment. Add songs if you like (the list is collaborative) or leave a comment, and I’ll try to remember to add them for you.

Semolina crusted sweet potato fries.

I like sweet potato fries, but often they’re mushy and disappointing. Not when they’re crusted with spices and semolina flour!! This way they’re crispy outside and soft inside. Perfection. I used a blend of “sweet” and “savory” spices, but you can use any blend you like. And you could use herbs instead of spices, if you want. I also used a mix of white and orange sweet potatoes, but either would do.

Here’s a link to that playlist, as it stands so far. I’ll be thinking about it all day at work, so I’ll have more to add later.

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Harvest pie with potatoes, tomatoes and basil

Posted on September 28, 2013 by Magpies

End of summer pie

Autumn is a good season for time travel. Not extensive trips involving complicated machines, but small, simple glimpses into the past. Maybe it’s the way scents travel in the clear air, or the way the light seems more slanting and golden, but for the last few days I keep finding myself in some other time of my life. Not that I’m just reminded of another time, but for a moment I’m there. I’m a child walking to school in England, or a twenty-three year old walking through the world with my new friend David. For some reason I’ve been thinking a lot the past few days about time passing. Not in the usual way that I think about it passing in my life or in the lives of people I love or in the seasons changing, but on a larger scale, a bigger cycle, about how the world has changed so much and is constantly changing, but under all the clutter and confusion people haven’t changed that much. We still all want the same things: someplace safe to rest our head when we’re tired, enough food to eat, sunshine when it’s chilly and shade when it’s warm. People have probably always struggled, as we do now, to free ourselves from the burden of being hopelessly, irredeemably, the center of our own universe so that we could be kind to others, and see everything around us with more clarity.

End of summer pie

Here’s a good pie for the change in seasons! It’s like a pizza, so you can call it that if you want. I made the crust much thicker than I usually make my pizza crust, so it would be comfortingly soft and strong enough to hold up to all the toppings. All the herbs and vegetables are from our farm. I like potatoes on a pizza, it’s one of those things that shouldn’t work, but somehow does. I parboiled these and then tossed them in a little olive oil, so they’re soft but just starting to crisp up. I love the combination of tomatoes, potatoes and basil, but you can add any kind of vegetables or cheese or herbs you like on here.

Here’s Good Feeling by the Violent Femmes. I’ve been listening to them a lot lately…talk about a portal to the past!!

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Thinly sliced potatoes with tarragon and leeks

Posted on September 20, 2013 by Magpies

Thinly sliced potatoes with tarragon and leeks

This morning on the way to school, Isaac asked, “Mom, what’s a hobo?” I told him my understanding of the word. He thought about it a bit, and asked a few questions about riding the rails. And then he said that when he grows up, he’s going to have one train with boxcars, and his kids can ride around and make a fort in it, and anybody else that wants to ride it is welcome. It will go around his giant yard with the tall grass, and then on to points unknown. I love the generosity of this plan, and the fact that my Isaac, who is a man who would stay warm and cozy in his pajamas all day long if possible, has devised a way to combine the life of a hobo with safety and certainty. And of course I’ve been thinking about hobos the rest of the day. I’ve always been fascinated by hobos, probably because I would would make such a bad one. I don’t like being cold and dirty, I don’t like uncertainty, I’m easily overwhelmed by darkness and loneliness and vast unknown spaces. But I love songs about hobos and ramblers, and films about them. Like Preston Sturges’ beautiful Sullivan’s Travels, or John Davis moving documentary Hobo. I saw this one in a theater in Edinburgh, alone and far from home, and it made me weepy. Very honest, very powerful, with a wonderful soundtrack. I’ve been reading up on hobos, to be sure I gave Isaac the right information. Here are some things I’ve learned today. A hobo wanders and works, a tramp wanders and dreams, and a bum neither wanders or works (that’s me.) Hobos have a shared language, and it reminds me of Slim Gaillard’s Vout. I imagine that it changes constantly and varies from place to place. Hobos also have a shared sign language or code. They leave marks for each other in coal or charcoal, to share information about mean cops, barking dogs, kind ladies. I love language and I love drawings, so I think this is a beautiful idea. It’s a network of connection between people I think of as fundamentally lonely. It’s a way to look out for one another and to say “I was here,” to mark your route and write your history. It seems fitting that it lacks the permanence of most graffiti, just as the life of a hobo lacks constancy. The fact that the language is shared gives it a history and a future, but the mark itself is transient and vulnerable to all the shocks of time and weather.

And “An ethical code was created by Tourist Union #63 during its 1889 National Hobo Convention in St. Louis Missouri. This code was voted upon as a concrete set of laws to govern the Nation-wide Hobo Body; it reads this way:

Decide your own life, don’t let another person run or rule you.
When in town, always respect the local law and officials, and try to be a gentleman at all times.
Don’t take advantage of someone who is in a vulnerable situation, locals or other hobos.
Always try to find work, even if temporary, and always seek out jobs nobody wants. By doing so you not only help a business along, but ensure employment should you return to that town again.
When no employment is available, make your own work by using your added talents at crafts.
Do not allow yourself to become a stupid drunk and set a bad example for locals’ treatment of other hobos.
When jungling in town, respect handouts, do not wear them out, another hobo will be coming along who will need them as bad, if not worse than you.
Always respect nature, do not leave garbage where you are jungling.
If in a community jungle, always pitch in and help.
Try to stay clean, and boil up wherever possible.
When traveling, ride your train respectfully, take no personal chances, cause no problems with the operating crew or host railroad, act like an extra crew member.
Do not cause problems in a train yard, another hobo will be coming along who will need passage through that yard.
Do not allow other hobos to molest children, expose all molesters to authorities, they are the worst garbage to infest any society.
Help all runaway children, and try to induce them to return home.
Help your fellow hobos whenever and wherever needed, you may need their help someday.
If present at a hobo court and you have testimony, give it. Whether for or against the accused, your voice counts!”

Good advice for all of us! For any man or saint among us. Now if you need me, I’ll be on a freight train headed west. Until Isaac decides it’s time to turn the train around and come home, that is.

Here’s Hobo Blues by Peg Leg Howell.

And here’s a recipe for late summer or early autumn, or this cusp we’re currently riding, exactly between the two. Almost everything was from the farm…potatoes, tomatoes, leeks, and they’re all layered with olives and smoked gouda to make a rich, tart, smoky, comforting, bright dish.
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Farro with smoked sweet potatoes, french lentils and pinenut lemon aioli

Posted on September 18, 2013 by Magpies

smoked sweet potatoes with farro and lemon aioli

Further Tales from the Towpath. Every morning since the boys have been back in school, David and I have been going for a bike ride on the towpath. Flying down this green tunnel with the man I love, on the bike he bought for me the year we got married, seventeen years ago, is an every day thing, but I don’t have to remind myself of how important it is, how valuable. You think about all the things that have changed and are changing every day, and all of the things that have not and will never change. Riding a bike still feels like flying, it’s still exhilarating, just as it was when I first learned. The air is colder every morning, the sun lazier each day to climb up and burn off the chill. This morning was the kind of cold that makes your ear-bones hurt and renders your fingers useless. As David said, it was miserable and beautiful at the same time. The mist rose off the water in small smoky tornadoes, and it revealed hundreds of spider webs all around us. It was as though we’d put on spider-sensing glasses. In the grass some webs are vague and formless, like tiny tactile clouds you could scoop up with your hands, and some look like small tents or funnels, as if a little circus had pulled into town. In the bushes and trees, the mist clung to Halloween spider webs in little clusters of light. Hundreds!! I like to think about this arachnid community, which is always there, though we don’t see it and think about it. I like to think about them busy with their lives, going about their business just as we are, all the humans on the canal, walking with purpose or ambling along, alone with our thoughts or deep in conversations. When we went camping one night, we discovered that if you shine your flashlight in the grass, a wolf spider’s eyes reflect back bright and green. It was as if the grass was full of sparkling emeralds! Full of them! Who knew there were so many spiders about! Earlier in the summer, we let a baby tree frog, raised from a tadpole, free in our back yard, and the other day, David found a big healthy tree frog, who clung to his hand like it was a warm and solid comfort. The same frog? We’ll never know. And that same night we saw screech owls wheeling around in the trees, and heard their tremulous song all night long. They live in our neighborhood! They hang out in our yard, whether we hear them or not. Well, I feel lucky that they’re there, grateful to get a glimpse of them from time to time, and glad to be reminded again that we’re not the center of everything, we’re not the most important, we’re part of a big teeming world at work all around us.

Lemon pine nut aioli

One day last week David made a fire in the back yard and the boys helped him burn up all the little twigs and sticks. Because I’m always thinking about food, I decided to try to smoke some sweet potatoes I’d gotten from the farm. I peeled them, wrapped them in foil, and buried them in the bottom of the fire, where I let them smolder for an hour or two. They turned out very nice! Soft inside, crispy outside, smoky and good. I made some french lentils and then cooked the farro in their broth. We had arugula under and tomatoes on top, like a big warm salad. My favorite part might have been the lemon pine nut aioli we drizzled over. Vegan, creamy, tart-sweet and delicious!!

Here’s Slim Gaillard with Sighing Boogie, just because I like it!
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Chickpea & artichoke stew; chickpea semolina dumplings; olive pine nut sauce

Posted on September 14, 2013 by Magpies

olive and pine nut sauce

A few years ago I threw my back out. I was just helping our old dog to stand, and she weighed nothing, she was all bones and sunken skin. And yet, somehow, in trying to help her up I pulled something or other and I couldn’t move without pain for a few days. I couldn’t walk, sit, sneeze, laugh, sleep. I felt as old and infirm as our poor dog. A couple of years later I asked a doctor about my back, because it never seemed to get completely better. She said, “You have to strengthen your core! Strengthen your core.” I’ve been thinking about this phrase a lot lately, as I struggle to do one normal sit-up. I’ve been feeling a little lost and off-kilter. Partly because the boys are back in school, I suppose. And partly because I’ve been doing something for a long time, believing it was important–at least to me. And now I’m thinking about doing something else, which also seems very important but probably isn’t and now I’m all confused, and maybe nothing seems important, so why try to do anything at all? What does important mean, anyway? What does it mean to be important? Ack. In this scattered and bewildered state, I seem to need to strengthen my core. Not my core values or affections, because those are very unvaried, they’re constant. But the core beliefs that are hard to hold onto. Viz…it’s important to understand that you’re valuable to your children and your dog, even if you don’t feel all that good about yourself. It’s important not to let discouragement paralyze you, because time is flying. Don’t let yourself judge your work by what the world rewards with awards and praise and money (have you seen what the world awards with praise and money?) It’s probably good to take a pause and look at everything from the outside, but don’t let your doubts keep you from getting back into it, when the time is ripe, don’t feel foolish about working hard on something you know you’re good at. Don’t feel foolish about giving yourself meandering pep talks while you struggle to do sit-ups!! Strengthen your core! Strengthen your core!!

Chickpea and semolina flour dumplings

What we have here is a typical, Ordinary tripartite meal. A stewy sort of mix of vegetables, which becomes croquettes the next day, and a flavorful sauce to go with the croquettes. In this case, the stew has chickpeas, leeks, tomatoes, and artichokes. We ate it with plain couscous. The next day I combined the leftover stew and couscous with semolina flour (which is what couscous is made out of!), and some eggs to make the croquettes. And the sauce has olives, goat cheese, pine nuts, and a little maple syrup. The reason it’s this pretty color is that I made it with olive oil which I had steeped with annato seeds. You don’t need to do this…you can use regular olive oil.

Chickpea, potato, artichoke stew

And that’s that!

Here’s Hold On Be Strong by Outkast. Short and to the point!

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Cornmeal-crusted roasted potatoes

Posted on September 8, 2013 by Magpies

Cornmeal crusted roasted potatoes

I like to think about a time when people walked everywhere. Not just all around town, but from town to town, because there weren’t cars or bikes or busses or trains, and they couldn’t afford carriage fare. Like Nicholas Nickleby or David Copperfield walking from York to London, and having adventures along the way, of course: and thus a novel is born. A novel seems to move along at a walking pace, which is maybe why I like novels, because I love walking. I like to go for a walk before breakfast and a walk after dinner. I like to walk when I don’t feel well, because I honestly believe it will make me feel better. I like to walk when I have something I need to think about, or to work out in my mind. I like to walk when I’m trying to write a story. I like to walk when I’m trying to clear my mind. I’m glad to have a dog so I don’t look like the crazy person walking around town for no reason. I’m glad to have a son who always wants to go for a walk with me, no matter the time of day or season of the year. I’m glad to live in a town that is so extremely pleasant for walking through. I’ve been semi-obsessed lately with Bob Dylan’s Time out of Mind. It’s so sweet and sad and haunting and strangely hopeful. To me, the whole album has a walking pace. Not a speed-walking or power-walking pace, but a slow, thoughtful, steady pace, the pace of a person walking from town to town and then further on. The very first song on the album Love Sick, opens with the lines

And the whole album carries on at this pace, moving from song to song with a quiet, steady beauty. So today’s Sunday Interactive Playlist, is on the subject of walking. Songs about walking, songs that sound like walking, songs you like to walk along to. As ever, the playlist is collaborative, so feel free to add what you like, or leave a comment and I’ll try to remember to add it for you. I’ve been bad about this lately, but the boys go back to school tomorrow and I’ll have hours and hours to drag songs into playlists. And now, we’re going for a walk!

We got these tiny potatoes from the farm. I scrubbed them, coated them with a little beaten egg, coated them in herbaceous cornmeal, and then roasted them in olive oil. They turned out nice and crispy on the outside and soft and tender in the middle. Perfect! And very very easy. I used sage and black pepper, but you could use any kind of herbs you like.

Here’s a link to the walking playlist.
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Out of the Ordinary

extraordinary food from an ordinary kitchen

Category Archives: potatoes

Kale and sweet potato empanadas with pecans, goat cheese and smoked gouda

Roasted beets and sweet potatoes with fresh tomatoes, mozzarella and walnut tarator sauce

Mashed potato and white bean croquettes with sage and rosemary

Sweet potato gnocchi and spicy spinach sauce

Crispy spicy semolina-crusted sweet potato fries

Harvest pie with potatoes, tomatoes and basil

Thinly sliced potatoes with tarragon and leeks

Farro with smoked sweet potatoes, french lentils and pinenut lemon aioli

Chickpea & artichoke stew; chickpea semolina dumplings; olive pine nut sauce

Cornmeal-crusted roasted potatoes

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