Category Archives: recipe

French lentil & barley stew with sage, rosemary and port wine

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French lentil barley stew

French lentil barley stew

Beware of any post that starts, “Last night, I was trying to fall asleep and I started thinking about…” You’ve been warned! So, last night, I was trying to fall asleep and I started thinking about the Easterish theme of resurrection. And I’ve had Elizabeth Cotten in my head (delightfully) for a few days, so I started to think about blues musicians who recorded some tracks in the 20s and early 30s, and then weren’t heard from again until the sixties. Their careers were resurrected.

Of course their lives continued in those decades, and they worked and struggled to get by, and they wrote about working and struggling, they wrote about their lives. In particular, I was thinking about Mississippi John Hurt and Skip James. (And then I thought about how hard it is to write about something that you really love as much as I love the music of Mississippi John Hurt and Skip James. But here goes!) Mississippi John Hurt and Skip James were Delta blues musicians. They were both born around the turn of the last century in Mississippi. They both started playing very young, sneaking a chance to play guitar any time they could. They were both largely self-taught, and they both developed unique styles of playing, just as Elizabeth Cotten did. She, being left-handed, turned the guitar upside-down, plucking out the melody with her thumb. Skip James has his own special tuning, in melancholy D-minor. Mississippi John Hurt played the guitar the way he “thought it should sound.” And when you hear him play, you’ll agree, this is the way guitar should sound.

Their music and their lyrics are disarming–sophisticated and wild, perfectly, strangely, human and familiar, poetical, violent, at times, but always sung in the sweetest possible way. Mississippi John Hurt’s voice is gentle and comforting, Skip James’ high and haunting.

Hurt was born in Avalon Mississippi, and he was endearingly fond of his home town. He travelled to Washington and New York to record music in the late 20s, but he wasn’t happy there – he was homesick. They tracked him down, later in life, based on lyrics to his song Avalon Blues. “New York’s a good town but it’s not for mine. New York’s a good town but it’s not for mine.” He was given a chance to perform with a traveling show, but he declined, because he wanted to stay near to his home. Skip James travelled for jobs and work camps, but his lyrics are about the people back home.

I wonder what it must have been like for them to be in their 60s and suddenly discovered by New York City folksy hipsters. What it must have been like to travel, at that age, and perform at the Newport Folk Festival, and be revered by these kids whose lives must have been so different from their own. Supposedly, Hurt, whom everybody liked his whole life due to his pleasant nature, enjoyed the experience, and James, who “could be sunshine, or thunder and lightning depending on his whim of the moment,” hated the folkie scene, and wasn’t fond of some of the covers of his songs that became wildly popular. What a strange turn for their lives to have taken. Blues music is full of fables and mythical characters, tales of death and life and reinvention, tales of people with legendary powers. I like to think about the long and hard-earned lives of James and Hurt in this way.

Here’s a short playlist of some of my favorite Mississippi John Hurt and Skip James songs.

So, this meal is something like winter’s last hurrah. It’s warm and comforting and nourishing. It has barley and french lentils, spinach, potatoes and carrots. So it’s pretty much everything you need in one big pot. The sauce is rich and savory, with port wine, tamari, sage and rosemary. And we topped the whole thing off with some grated smoked gouda and sharp cheddar. This is one of those “serve-with-a-good-loaf-of-crusty-bread” meals.

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Asparagus and macadamia tart with a lemon-pepper crust

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Asparagus and macadamia tart

Asparagus and macadamia tart

I’ve been in a little bit of a blue funk lately, and I couldn’t start to tell you why. It’s inexplicable! The other morning I was lying in bed, trying to think of a good reason to get out of it, and I heard birds singing outside my window. I heard birds whirring and calling and warbling. It wasn’t a particularly nice morning, it was grey and unseasonably cool, but the sun came up a little earlier than it had the day before, as it does this time of year. The birds seemed to recognize that fact and want to sing about it. The birds and bugs and flowers just get on with their work, they go about their business. They wake up and live because that’s what they do in the spring. Maybe they think about time passing. Maybe they’re bewildered by memories and worries, but it doesn’t seem to slow them down any. As the days grow longer and lighter, they work harder and louder, and they seem satisfied with that. They seem happy. It felt like a comfort to me, listening to the birds busy outside my window. It felt like a good reason to get out of bed and get on with my life, and join the cool bright world waking up all around me, at its own irrepressible pace. You can never hold back spring.

This is what we made for easter dinner. It’s modeled on a bakewell tart, so you’ve got your crust, your jammy layer (pureed asparagus and tarragon!), and your baked nut custard layer (with macadamia nuts!). I added lemon zest and pepper to the crust, because both those things go well with asparagus and seemed fresh and springlike. Other than that, we kept it really simple and clean. I thought it was very tasty – bright but comforting.

Here’s Tom Waits with You Can Never Hold Back Spring. Remember everything that spring can bring.
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Blackberry bittersweet chocolate chip brownies

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blackberry-blondiesHappy Easter from The Ordinary!! We’re having a slow, cold spring here, but it’s coming, you can feel it. The flowers and flies and bees are out, clinging for dear life to any patch of sun and heat. We have such a hopeful light in the morning and the evening. In the afternoon, if you position yourself directly in a sunbeam, sheltered from any cold breezes, you can feel actually warmth. It’s hard not to feel cheerful, when you see spring trying so hard to spread itself over the world, despite the odds. So this week’s interactive playlist is hopeful songs, songs about a new beginning, songs about having the strength to make a new start, songs about rebirth, redemption and new growth. It could be songs that you listen to that inspire you, or songs you listened to at a time that you started something new in your life. So happy easter, happy spring, and we wish you all the cheerfulness and felicity that this pale spring light seems to promise.

These blondies have blackberry jam in them. I like the combination of juicy bittersweet dark fruits (blackberry, black currant) and bittersweet chocolate. These were dense and jammy. Good!

Here’s your hopeful playlist so far. It’s interactive, so please add as many songs as you’d like.

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Collard purée with roasted sweet potatoes, ginger, smoked paprika, and lime

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Collard puree with sweet potatoes, ginger and lime

Collard puree with sweet potatoes, ginger and lime

Hello, Ordinary friends! Don’t look now but we’re doing it again! Last week I introduced the idea of a sort of writer’s salon, hosted by The Ordinary, in which we’d all (whoever wanted to that is) write a story inspired by a certain photograph. I hope to make it a weekly feature, because I’m enjoying the story-writing, and I’d be curious to see what my story-writing friends come up with. So here’s week two’s picture, courtesy, once again, of Square America.
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My story is after the jump, and I’d love to include yours, too!

This recipe is inspired by the Indian dish sag aloo, which is an addictive puree of spinach with soft comforting pieces of potato in it. This is collards, instead, because I love collards. And sweet potatoes, because they go nicely with ginger and lime, which were the seasonings I chose. It’s a nice dish to have with basmati rice and flatbread, or as a side for any other meal.

Here’s Children’s Story from Slick Rick. Classic!

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Soba noodles with arugula pecan pesto and sauteed brussels sprouts and castelvetrano olives

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Soba noodles with arugula-pecan pesto and sauteed brussels sprouts

Soba noodles with arugula-pecan pesto and sauteed brussels sprouts

Malcolm’s teachers talk about making “smart choices.” It’s something he needs to work on. Because I’m a terrible parent, the phrase seems to have lodged itself in my head as something almost funny, and I find myself using it in less-than-serious situations. I had to have a talk with Clio because she doesn’t make smart choices in the throes of separation anxiety, and she’s become a danger to herself and our furniture. (I’d like to state for the record, before I continue, that I agree with his teachers that “making smart choices” is something Malcolm needs to work on (as do we all!), and I respect their efforts to remind him of that!) I worry a little bit for him, because he’s my son, and I have a lifelong history of crippling indecision and poor choices. Why would a person drop out of Oxford a third of the way through? Why would a person apply to film school, get in, and then not go? Why would a person waste time and money on a second independent feature when the first was a big failure? Why would they do it? Although on paper it may seem that I have made dumb choices, I have no regrets. I think it’s impossible to harbor regrets once you’ve had children, because every single decision that you ever made your entire life–massive or minute, important or seemingly inconsequential–resulted in their creation. It boggles my easily boggled mind! It makes a person think about fate! I believe in fate in the sense that it’s the same thing as history looked at from the other end. Once something has happened, it was obviously meant to happen and it becomes part of the pattern that connects one life to every other life on the planet, as we all move inexorably in the same direction. But I also believe that we control our fate, at least in part, by the smart and dumb choices that we make. And we determine the quality of our lives, as we’re swept along on our fateful journey, by these choices as well. I’m fascinated by the word “fate,” which is closely related to the word “faith,” and to the words “fay” and “fey.” I’m comfortable with the idea that whatever we think about fate, generally, and our own fate, specifically, we have to understand that we’ll never fully understand it, and we have to accept that we’re frequently powerless to control it, as it rolls ceaselessly over us. I also believe that what may seem like a dumb choice if you’re looking at your life from a certain angle at a certain time, might seem like the smartest possible choice looked at any other way. (Hence the lifetime of indecision!) Although small choices have always rendered me a useless mass of anxiety, as I look back on my life I realize that the big choices, like being with David, were simple. There was only one option, only one wise choice. That feels like fate! That gives me faith! And I have faith that Malcolm will make good choices. They might not always be smart and practical choices, but they’ll be brave choices, and (hopefully) kind choices.

Soba with pesto, brussels sprouts and castelvetrano olives

Soba with pesto, brussels sprouts and castelvetrano olives

Malcolm loves soba noodles. He gets very excited about them. He likes them plain, with tamari, so that’s how we most frequently eat them. This week, I decided to augment their sweetly savory nuttiness with a pesto made from pecans and nutty arugula. I added some smoked gouda, because I thought that would be nice, too. And it was! The pesto also has a bit of sage and honey, to balance the sharp strong flavors. Brussels sprouts and castelvetrano olives are pretty together. They’re so GREEN! And this pesto was very GREEN! This whole meal had a solid-earthy-wintery-melting-into-summmery flavor. If you know what I mean.

Here’s Once in a Lifetime by The Talking Heads, because it seems to fit!

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Roasted chickpea and cauliflower pies with masa harina crust

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Roasted chickpea and cauliflower pies

Roasted chickpea and cauliflower pies

It’s spring break and it’s snowing. The snow is light and fine and in a tizzy, spiraling madly with any small breath of wind. Inside The Ordinary it’s warm and dry, and the boys have been in a tizzy, too, looping around the house making rude noises with spent balloons, the frantic dog nipping at their heels. Malcolm is playing with matches and begging for candy, and I let him buy some, because I feel so bad that it’s snowing and they have to go to the dentist tomorrow. He was looking forward to today so much, and it’s not turning out good at all. He’s nearly in tears, and I know how he feels, his disappointment is so palpable. And now he’s back with wind-rosy cheeks and snowflakes on his eyelashes, bearing juicy fruit gum with its indefinably nostalgic flavor. He wants to cuddle on the couch. “You’re not watching TV!” I say. “I don’t want to.” he replies. “I suppose we could all sit and read,” I say. “No,” he says, “I just want to sit on the couch and cuddle.” I love this boy! It has always been part of my parenting strategy to provide my boys with lots of long, unplanned days. They don’t get bored on empty days because their minds are so full of schemes, some brilliant, some ill-advised. (What can two little boys do with a dozen deflated balloons, scissors and a lit candle? Why isn’t their mother stopping them?) David and I were talking about the importance of making plans, recently, because it feels hopeful and important, and we do have some small trips planned for the week ahead. But not for this particular snowy monday. My calculated method of never scheduling anything fun for them to do has paid off, because they make their own fun. And they recognize the value of sitting together on a day in late March, watching the snow swirling down. There will never be another morning quite like this one.

I love the combination of cashews, raisins, chickpeas and cauliflower. If you roast the chickpeas and cauliflower, and combine everything in a crunchy, flavorful masa harina crust, that’s even better! I kept the seasonings simple – coriander & cumin, rosemary and sage. I added some stinky black salt to the crust, because it’s a flavor I like a lot, and I used a little smoked salt, too, because, quite frankly, I ran out of regular salt! Feel free to use regular salt if that’s all you have.

Here’s Belle and Sebastian’s Another Sunny Day, because David was whistling it this morning and it’s stuck in my head, and because it describes a rainy day trapped inside with hot chocolate, which sounds good right about now!
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Tender folded whole wheat flatbreads

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Whole wheat flatbread

Whole wheat flatbread

I have to be at work very early this morning for the dreaded brunch shift. So I woke up at the crack of dawn, and then I Made Wise Use of My Time. I Made Smart Choices. That’s right, I sat on the couch and played lego star wars with Malcolm. I was Boba Fett, which is cool, because I had a jet pack (!) but it was very discombobulating because all of a sudden I was fighting Boba Fett, and I didn’t know which one was me, and then Malcolm was Boba Fett. What a tizzy! And now, since my scheduled start time draws on apace and I’m way too old for a tardiness scolding, I’ll keep it mercifully brief. Much as Boba Fett has many incarnations, as we go through life we progress through stages of being. From mewling and puking infant through reluctant schoolboy and to, well, I can’t remember all the rest. And all of these stages can be brought back in an instant with a few notes of a song. Our history folds in on itself at the sound of a melody we listened to incessantly in our younger days. People and parties and jobs and long days of school all come crowding back to us in the form of a familiar refrain. So for this week’s interactive playlist, we’re asking you to pick one song from each decade of your life. Don’t over think it! It doesn’t have to be your favorite song, or the one you listened to the most. Just the song that first comes to mind when you think of a certain time in your life. Leave it in the comments, or add it to our playlist, here.

These flatbreads are partially made with whole wheat flour. They have a nice consistency – tender inside, crispy outside. Buttery and yummy. They’re folded over, so you can tuck things inside of them. Which is the most fun way to eat!!

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Spicy, tangy, smoky, sweet: catsup with pomegranate molasses

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Pomegranate molasses catsup

Pomegranate molasses catsup

We’re going to try something new, here at The Ordinary, and I’m quite excited about it! Allow me to explain… Once there was a website called Square America. I loved this website! It presented found photographs from various eras, arranged into albums. Some of the photographs were remarkably beautiful – snapshots from a time when you couldn’t take a million pictures at once, when you had to wait for the film to develop, and you’d never know what you’d find. I always found it profoundly moving to think that we were allowed a tiny glimpse into the lives of the people in these pictures, and that we’d never know what they were really like, what they were thinking, how their lives would turn out. I’d always thought that if I had some kind of writer’s group, it would be a fun exercise to choose one picture, and see what kind of stories various people would write about it (or haikus or epic poems or essays…) Well, I never actually had a writer’s group, so I never organized anything like this. As it happens, Square America is back on facebook, and the photos are as beautiful and inspiring as ever, so I thought…why not do it here? Why not host a virtual writer’s group at The Ordinary, for anybody that has the time or interest? So that’s what we’re going to try. Snacks will be provided! I’ve chosen a photo for the first story, and I’ve written my (very short) story, and I welcome others to contribute as well. Of course, you can make your own rules. For myself I had a few…keep it short, don’t think about it too much, and try to be respectful, because these were real people, after all. I haven’t completely worked out all of the technical details. If anybody does actually write anything, e-mail it to me and I’ll post it (with mine) after the jump. If you have someplace of your own to post it, give me a link, and I’ll post that here. We’ll see how it goes!

This is the photo I’ve chosen for the first story. Beautiful, right? My story is after the jump!
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Pomegranate molasses catsup

Pomegranate molasses catsup

Hopefully, it will go as well as this catsup! What a nice combination of flavors. Pomegranate molasses is sweet & sour and delicious! As the title says, this catsup was a nicely balanced mix of spicy, tangy, sweet and smoky. It had a nice texture, too, a little jammy. And a lovely deep brick red color. And it was very very quick to make! We ate it with oven-roasted french fries, but you could eat it with anything you eat with catsup. It would be good with croquettes or kofta or pakoras… David even liked it, and he doesn’t like catsup much!!

Here’s A Tribe Called Quest with 8 Millions Stories.
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Roasted butternut farro balls and rosemary walnut tarator sauce

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Roasted butternut farro balls

Roasted butternut farro balls

It’s a very slow, cold spring. Everybody is upset by it, everybody is complaining bitterly, everybody is angry with that stupid lying groundhog. Everybody except me. It’s very strange, but I don’t mind. I’m not quite through hibernating yet. I feel like maybe something’s wrong with me! And you might agree, when I tell you that I’m a little anxious about summer. Not about the long, endless days with the boys, which are days that I crave. It’s hard to describe. I feel as though I’ve slowly pulled layer upon layer of something strong and warm over myself and my family, to keep us cozy and secure. And in summer the boys will burrow out and run like mad little things in all directions, laughing and glowing, with barely a glance back, and it will all go so fast and be over before we know it. It’s a very strange feeling, and I’m not sure I’ve ever felt like this before, although in retrospect it might have been creeping up on me with slow sneaky progress for a few years now. TS Eliot famously said that April is the cruelest month, I think that people frequently misinterpret this line. They think April is cruel because it just won’t be warm and sunny, dammit. Just when you’re ready for spring it’s all chilly and drizzly with those April showers. But what he really meant was that April is cruel because it wakes you up.

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.

I suppose I’ve gotten too comfortable this winter, with dull days that please me so much and go by so fast–just keeping my family warm and feeding them roasted tubers, and then writing about that and starting all over again. It’s hard to do anything very important when you’re too comfortable, but I’m also convinced that the day to day of every day is as important as life gets, so I’m not easily motivated. I’m sure it’s just the chill and the damp that folds me in on myself. Already the slanting hopeful rosy light of morning and evening is rousing me from my wintery dormancy, but gently and kindly. When the weather is warmer on top of that I’ll feel all the old unspecified longings and yearnings, which must visit you no matter what your age. I’ll be ready to go on adventures again. And if the warmth won’t do it, Malcolm will! He’s so full of life and plans, he’s so curious and fearless. I want to be like him when I grow up, so I may as well start now! And maybe summer will surprise us, and we’ll stop in the colonnade, and go on in the sunlight.

In the meantime, we’re still eating winter squash, here at The Ordinary. And I’m still experimenting with the joys of grating and roasting it. It’s so nice and soft and crispy and sweet and savory all at the same time! In this instance, I mixed it with some leftover farro and some walnuts and made it into little balls. I fried them up in olive oil, so they’re crispy outside and soft in. The flavors are sage, smoked paprika and nutmeg – I suppose they’re flavors I associate with a sausage-y taste, so these could pass for vegetarian meatballs, or if you made them long and thin, they could be vegetarian sausage. We ate them with tender whole wheat flatbreads, which I’ll tell you about soon, arugula, which went so nicely with the nuttiness of the walnuts, and a creamy (cream-free) walnut rosemary tarator sauce. The sauce turned out very good, and would be nice with any kind of roasted vegetable – beets, potatoes, parsnips, any of those old dried tubers. In the summer, it would be nice with grilled zucchini and asparagus as well!! If you don’t have leftover farro, I’ve told you how to make it, and you can use the extra to toss on salads, or as a base for sauces and stews.

Here’s Nina Simone with Another Spring.

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Nutella ice cream with crispy chocolate hazelnut bark

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Nutella ice cream

Nutella ice cream

I think Isaac might have the best teacher in the world. She glows! She’s as shiny as a first grader (which is one of the highest compliments I could bestow!) She’s one of those rare individuals who has a lot of energy, and is capable not only of harnessing her own, but of focussing the energy of others as well. Which is no mean task in a room full of six- and seven-year-olds! And she gets Isaac. At our parent-teacher conference she said he’s bright and funny and fascinating. Of course he is! All seven-year-olds are! She pulled out some of his bright, funny, and fascinating drawings and writings, and she said that she likes his voice. She said that she hopes he can continue to develop his voice, and to express himself in the unique way that he does now. Because our Isaac says the sweetest, oddest things in the sweetest, oddest language–he has a unique turn of phrase. I love to think about Isaac’s voice. He talked early and often, and to this day he has a lot to say, and feels confident that everybody needs to hear it. I like to think about him refining and developing this ability under the tutelage of somebody who allows him freedom and respects his creativity. It feels so hard to maintain that individuality, sometimes, it really seems as though the world is set up to knock it out of you. Malcolm’s conference followed Isaac’s, and he’s doing well, too, but by the time you’re ten doing well means doing what you’re told. His writing teacher said he’s writing all the correct things in the correct order – it’s not exactly poetry, she said, but it’s what she needs to hear. Because at his age they have to teach towards a test and meet certain standards, and those standards never seem to encompass imagination or uniqueness. Tidiness is more important than originality. And you start to learn that people don’t always want to hear what you have to say, because they’re so busy talking themselves. Malcolm went a whole day without eating the other week. He left without breakfast, threw out his snack and his lunch, and ate no dinner. Why? Was he ill? Was he anxious? We don’t know – he couldn’t or wouldn’t tell us, and if felt like the foreshadowing of adolescent years to come, when it’s hard to share what you’re feeling, because you don’t know yourself. You don’t trust your voice or have faith in the importance of the things you want to say. I’m not ready for that time, when the boys feel that they can’t talk to us, and I hope it never comes. I hope that they’ll always have faith in their voices, they’ll always trumpet out their odd sweet thoughts, confidently, in their own strong words. I hope they’ll sing out happily for all the world to hear!

And I hope they’ll always help me cook! Malcolm doesn’t like chocolate ice cream, but he loved this! I melted a quantity of chocolate chips, and I combined half of them with chopped hazelnuts and a bit of salt, and I combined the rest with some nutella, and made a nice creamy ice cream. When the ice cream was freezing, I broke the chocolate-hazelnut bark into small pieces to mix in. Deeeelicious!

Here’s Sing Your Life from Morrissey. You have a lovely singing voice!

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