Category Archives: recipe

Lemon pine nut chocolate-covered cookies

Posted on by
5

Pine nut cookies


My ex-sister-in-law used to talk about totem animals. I’m not sure precisely what she meant, (I’m simple!) but to me it’s always meant the animal that you’d be, if you could be an animal. If your spirit could leave your body (at night, say, in your dreams) and slip into a body that felt more comfortable, what body would that be? For me, it’s always been an otter. They used to live around here, but they were hunted out of existence in this area. It makes me sad that you can only see them in zoos, but when we do visit zoos, I find the otters mesmerizing. I saw this video yesterday, and I can’t stop watching it! I think I’m losing it! I’m not a person who LOLs and posts cute things. But this video kills me. I love Nellie’s ridiculously beautiful otter belly, and the sound the cups make when she hits them against it. I love her speaking face and paws – every expression and gesture is so perfect. I love how slick and cool she is. I love her otter friend, who’s just kicking back, happy to be with her. I feel bad for her that she’s in a zoo, and that she’s performing for fish. But I love how she looks at the zookeeper, when she’s given the cups in the wrong order, with a sweet look that seems to say, “There’s no fish in here, and you got the order all wrong. Sheesh.” I love that when she holds her friend’s paws, which she’s told to do, she half-closes her eyes.

What’s your totem animal?

Holy Smoke, I’m waaaaaaaay behind on telling you about recipes. I’ll never catch up! I won’t make it to everything. Some recipes will get left behind. These were nice, though, so I’ll tell you about them. I wanted do make a sort of shortbread cookie with pine nuts. I realized that I always think of pine nuts in a savory setting, but they have such a smoky sweetness that I thought they’d be nice in a cookie. And they were! I could have probably left it at that, but I felt that they’d be good with a touch of lemon zest. And everything’s better with a coating of bittersweet chocolate, right?

Here’s Jean Redpath with Song of the Seals

Continue reading →

Zucchini-corn-basil soup and herbed semolina biscuits

Posted on by
5

Zucchini corn soup

When last we’d left our intrepid explorers, Claire was yelling at Malcolm and feeling bad about it. CUT TO…several days later. Claire’s walking home from work. She’s tired, and if we’re being honest, she’s a little cranky and discouraged. Suddenly, through the shifting crowd of tourists, she sees two beaming faces bobbing towards her. It’s her boys! Isaac stops at the corner, and leans cooly against a lamppost; Malcolm charges across the street and nearly knocks her over with the force of his hug. Back in their paint-peeling, disordered, yet charming home, Claire makes a quick and delicious dinner. Then she and Malcolm set out to get a cup of coffee and a quart of milk for their breakfast. The air is cool and sweet, it’s a peach of an evening – a perfectly ripe, sweet, peach of an evening. So they take the long way, they walk down to the tow path. Malcolm says he wants to swim, but the air is like water, and it feels good when he flaps his arms like wings. Claire loves him so much she could cry, at that moment, but they walk along the towpath, both flapping their arms slowly like big strange birds. They meet friends who had a beagle that died the same week Steenbeck did. They have a new beagle puppy, who’s boundingly happy. They all seem happy, and they remark that Malcolm is almost as tall as Claire. “I know!” she replies, “and he’s only ten!” When Malcolm and Claire reach the main street, the shop is closed, so they keep walking. Somehow, Malcolm catches Claire’s hand…and holds it! Claire feels as though she’s caught a rare, sweet toad, that might jump through her fingers. This won’t happen much longer, she knows that. On the way home, they pass a boy they knew when he was Malcolm’s age. Now he’s a teenager, a big, lanky, laughing teenager, walking with his friends. Malcolm eyes them appraisingly. In the house, David and Isaac are playing a game with bug-inscribed tiles. Claire passes through the house to the backyard, because the air is so delicious. She listens to the katydids and the whirring evening insects. David joins her, and they hear a screech owl. He calls to it, and it calls back. They watch the day change into night, they feel the summer change into autumn. The boys come out, and Isaac curls up in Claire’s lap, his smooth cool/warm skin glowing milkily in the dusky light. They don’t want to go inside, they want to listen for the owl. It’s hard to make them go to bed, at this moment. CUT TO…

Herbed semolina biscuits

But wait a moment, you’re asking yourself! What was the quick and delicious dinner that Claire made? Well, I’ll tell you. It was a soup with zucchini, corn, scallions and lots of basil. Malcolm said it tasted like winter, and David said it tasted like something we’d eat in winter to remind ourselves of what summer tasted like. And we had biscuits made partly with semolina flour, with fresh sage, thyme, and oregano, and freshly ground black pepper in them. Isaac loved the biscuits. Everyone else liked everything together.

Here’s A Tribe Called Quest with Excursions. “I said, ‘Daddy, don’t you know that things go in cycles.'”
Continue reading →

Lemon-caper roasted potatoes and the best bread I’ve ever made

Posted on by
14

Lemon caper potatoes

Here at the naive political philosophy department of The Ordinary, we are sick and tired of worrying about money. And bills. And not having money to pay bills. We suspect that we are not the only ones who feel this way. We have been applying ourselves to solve the problem.

Here’s how it will go… Everybody will work very hard doing what they love, and they will have as much as they need to live comfortably. We trust that everybody will love to do different things, so the jobs should be nicely distributed. If somebody feels that they don’t love any kind of work, they will go to school for a time until they figure it out. Education should prepare you for a career by helping you discover your passion, and that’s how it will work.

The crappy jobs that nobody wants to do will be divided evenly by everybody, and performed a few hours a day or a few days a week – whatever is necessary and pleasant. Everybody! These jobs generally involve serving people, caring for people, or cleaning up after people, and when everybody has to take a turn at them, we will all develop a love and respect for humanity that will humble and elevate us. You cannot buy your way out of this.

In this way, we will reconsider our societal notions of what is valuable, and of what is successful. If you isolate yourself with more riches than you can use, and accumulate more things than you need, you will not be admired, you will seem foolish. Children are taught not to be greedy, not to want more than everybody else, and we will remember these teachings as adults. Everybody will look into their own heart or soul or stomach – wherever they make important decisions – to decide what they need, including, of course, things that don’t seem strictly necessary, but give pleasure or inspiration. So you might say to yourself, “I would like a half pint of castelvetrano olives, but I don’t think I need an elevator for my car.” This is our plan, and I’m sure you can see that it is the essence of pragmatism, and that it will be extremely practical to implement, and will go off hitch-free, and that nobody can quibble with it in any way.

In keeping with the practicality of this post, we will give you two recipes at once, and both will be for practical things – bread and potatoes. This bread is the best bread that I have ever made! All the other loaves have been preparation for this bread. It is crispy, it has a big open grain – it has holes! It’s chewy, and tasty. I nearly killed my food processor making it!! I’ve been experimenting with wetter and wetter dough, these last few months – to the point that it became very messy to knead with my hands. I was thrilled to get my food processor, because I thought I could use it to knead the dough. It worked, but at some point it seized up! There was a bad smell of burning. The dough was stuck in the food processor, the blade wouldn’t move, the container would not be budged! I scraped all the dough out into a bowl, and everything worked out in the end. I must have left it too long. The other recipe is for a medley of different types of potatoes (from our CSA!) We have red-skinned, white fleshed, golden fleshed. We scrubbed them, cut them in half, boiled them briefly, combined them with olive oil, oregano, capers, olives and lemon juice, and broiled them. Perhaps the most delightful and unexpected part of this recipe is that the capers (or flavor dynamites, as my sons call them) got crispy. Crispy! They’re delicious.

Best bread I’ve ever made!

Here’s The Velvet Underground with Beginning to see the Light. Some people work very hard, but still they never get it right. Ain’t it the truth?
Continue reading →

Cuban beans & rice burgers, and cuban sofrito

Posted on by
Reply

Sofrito – cuban style

Aww, man, I’m having trouble writing this post! I was going to keep it simple and brief, and that is still my intention! But I can’t even get started. I keep wandering around, watching Malcolm dismantle the kitchen shelves. (In theory, I’m reorganizing the shelves under the counter to make a home for my new food processor. In practice, Malcolm is spreading pots, pans and dishes all over the kitchen floor). This post feels significant, somehow. It feels like an ur-Ordinary post. It covers Ordinary themes and motifs. I feel like I’ve been assigned an essay on how this meal exemplifies various qualities we go on and on about here at The Ordinary. What are those themes? I hear you asking. And will they be on the test? Yes! It’s all on the test, all of it! First of all, we have sofrito. Sofrito was one of the first things I wrote about, nearly a year ago, in its Spanish form, which is tomatoes cooked very slowly till they’re an intensely delicious paste. I first discovered sofrito, in any form, because of Mongo Santamaria’s brilliant song of the same name, which is one of the first songs I posted. Sofrito fascinated me, at the time, because it’s one of those foods (here comes a theme, take this down in your notes!) that appears all over the world in different forms. It travelled with imperialism and colonialism – people brought the recipe with them from home, and then it changed over time, to become new and distinct and definitive of their new home. Second of all, we ate cuban beans and rice two nights in a row, once as, well, beans and rice, and once as beans-and-rice burgers. Repurposing leftovers is a thing we do. We do it all the time! We even invented a scheme to define it! What were the other themes? I can’t remember! because Malcolm is banging pots and pans around my head and singing “let’s go to the creek creek creek.”

Okay, back to simple and brief. We got some green and purple peppers from the CSA. I don’t love green peppers. I’m sorry, but there it is. I like red peppers! Especially roasted. I was searching my mind for a way to “use up” the green peppers, and I thought of the radio dj describing sofrito, after playing the mongo santamaria song, a year ago. It sounded good. I read some descriptions of it, and I decided to have a go at making it. Obviously it’s not officially cuban, it’s my odd version of cuban sofrito. But it’s very tasty! A relish, almost. And then I just went crazy with a cuban-themed meal. I decided to make black beans and rice, with a cuban sort of flavoring, and I made crispy smoky tofu to take the place of ham. So that’s what we did. The boys loved the tofu, as I’ve described. And David and I loved the burgers we made the next day with the leftover beans and rice. Amazingly flavorful, and a with nice texture. I didn’t try grilling them because of a big dinner-time thunderstorm, but they worked well pan-fried in olive oil.

Cuban beans & rice burger

Here’s Mongo Santamaria’s Sofrito. I know I’ve posted it before, but, remarkably, it’s been nearly a year!

Continue reading →

Two summer salads with feta

Posted on by
3

Arugula salad with apples, pecans and feta

We find ourselves in the delightful position of having too much to tell you about! I can’t keep up! I’ve also been talking too much lately. So, first of all, I apologize for posting several times in one day. Second of all, these are salads. Salads should be quick to make and pleasing to eat, and you shouldn’t waffle on about them for hours and hours. So I won’t! I’ll give you some recipes, and some good music, and set you on your way.

Chickpea, tomato, olive, feta salad

My boys loved both of these salads and fought over the bowl. The first is green and light, with arugula, romaine, pink lady apples, feta, and pecans. The second is a little heartier and quite savory. It’s got chickpeas, feta, kalamata olives, capers, pine nuts and fresh juicy tomatoes. We ate it with crispy eggplant rounds, as a nice meal.

And here’s a playlist featuring songs with horns. Horn-y songs. I love songs with horns! If anybody would like to suggest other songs with horns to add the list, I’m all ears!
Continue reading →

Beet carpaccio with warm goat cheese, pecans and sage

Posted on by
1

Remember the Chekhov play The Three Sisters, in which one of the sisters longs to go to Moscow? It’s a theme! Well, here at The Ordinary, for the past few days, our Moscow has been the secret path that leads to the secret path on the other other side of the towpath. If you think I’ve mentioned it before, it’s because I have, and that’s because IT’S ALL I’VE HEARD ABOUT FOR DAYS NOW!! When will we go? Why can’t we go? Why shouldn’t we go just because a storm is raging around our house? On the very first day of summer vacation, way back in the glowing, hopeful, anticipatory month of June, Malcolm and I happened upon a small winding path that branched away from the towpath. He was ecstatic! We ran through it, leaping fallen logs, stooping under trees, racing through light and shadow. He’s wanted to return ever since, but with one thing and another, we’ve never made it back. Lately his yearning has reached a fever pitch, so today we braved spiders, ticks, stinging nettles, poison ivy, mosquitos and impending thunderstorms, and set out on our journey. (Who is an anxious mom? Who is?) It’s quite a long journey, as the Isaac walks, but it was worth it to see how happy the boys were. After a night of rain the ground was muddy, the leaves sodden and fragrant, the creeks fast-flowing. In June all the green things were small and pale and bright, but today they’re lush and dark and overtaking all the paths.

Secret path

Tree climbing

The way home

Malcolm looked for the spider sitting on a milk jug, that he’d seen in June, and was surprised to find the jug buried in weeds, and the spider gone. Isaac had heard of this milk jug! He was excited to see it. Isaac jumped off of a huge log, and said, “Mom, did I hop like a toad?” Yes, you did. “I toad-hopped it!” They climbed a tree in the strange wet palely glowing light, they hid in a hollow of vines and branches. Isaac asked about each thing Malcolm had described to him – the vine to swing on, the stump to jump off of, the dead tree to crawl under, and Isaac could never be disappointed by any thing that Malcolm showed him. The late-summer smell of wet steaming earth was all around us, and I can’t smell that lately without craving beets. I know that’s odd, but there it is!

Glowing beet

Funnily enough, we’d eaten this beet carpaccio the night before, and I’d remarked that prepared this way, beets didn’t taste like dirt. Huh? Asked Isaac (he’s a small boy, dirt is his medium). I’d replied that beets grow in dirt, so they taste like dirt, but in a pleasant way. In this carpaccio, however, they were juicy and sweet. This couldn’t be easier to make, and it’s very delicious. The boys loved it!! I love goat cheese with beets – sweet and juicy meets a bit of creamy tartness. The pecans added crunch, and the sage added depth.

beet carpaccio

And here’s Modest Mouse with So Much Beauty in Dirt.
Continue reading →

Eggplant & olive tart with a rosemary-cornmeal crust

Posted on by
Reply

Eggplant & olive tart

I had a muddled quote in my head last week. I couldn’t remember the whole thing, and google wasn’t helping. Turns out it was Roland Barthes, from his essay “Upon leaving a movie theater.” The quote goes thusly…“The film spectator might adopt the silk worm’s motto: inclusum labor illustrat: because I am shut in I work, and shine with all the intensity of my desire.”

I’ve been thinking about it a lot, before and after I finally discovered the precise words. At first I thought it was a glow worm, glowing with the intensity of his desire. (I’d asked for help with the quote, and a friend said it reminded him of Churchill’s quote, “We are all worms, but I do believe that I am a glow worm,” which, obviously, I love on every level. I like things that glow. I believe I coined the term “glowy.” Glowy is a Clairey word.) I love film because it glows. Because it’s light through a lens that makes the film and exhibits the film – flickering glowing lights on screen. Of course, this isn’t really true anymore. Obviously video involves light, but it doesn’t glow the way film does. And Barthes’ quote is from a place and time inhabited by people who thought of film as an art, that they could shape by endless discussions, which sometimes resulted in beautiful films being made, and sometimes resulted in more discussions. I’m sure the conversations glowed, too, with the intensity of their words.

Nowadays the film spectator isn’t always cocooned in a darkened theater. They are, as likely as not, watching on a television in their home, with familial chaos all around them. I thought about myself, when I was younger, talking about films, making films. Not shut in: filmmaking is collaborative, it requires confidence and lots of coordination, but you do spark off of the people you work with – you do create light that way. I thought about my life in the last ten years, as a mother. I believe I have slowly shut myself in. I have slowly pulled soft silken threads around myself and my family. I believe this would have happened even had I worked full time outside the house. It’s not that I don’t have friends and interests outside of my family, it’s that I have this space, this home, from which I look out on the world.

And within my space nothing glows as much as my children, with their creative lightening, their immediate needs, their unshaded love. I’ve been thinking that the “work” I do, shut in pleasantly here, especially in the last year, has been cooking. All of the creativity, the fiendish plotting, the anticipation – it’s all become so important to me…it’s such a pleasure to do this work. And writing has become important to me again, too, whilst shut in with my beautiful sassy brats. The beauty of it is that you can do it anywhere, at any time, you can put words together in your head no matter what else you’re doing, and if you’re lucky they’ll glow for you. In the end, this work doesn’t confine us, it gives us the sustenance and the shine we need to venture out into the world.

I love a meal that takes a little bit of attention at various points throughout the day. You’ll start something in the morning. You’ll forget about it for a few hours and go ineffectively do some housework, or go on adventures in the secret passage that leads to the other secret passage on the other other side of the canal. You’ll go home and slice this and mix that, and then leave it while you take the boys to a creek or the river. And then just before dinner you’ll have a big glass of wine and start putting everything together. This is just such a meal! You can start the dough, and leave it for hours. You can slice and salt the eggplant, and leave that for a while. Come back, punch down some dough, make a marinade for the eggplant, go about your business. Plus it tasted really good! Crispy eggplant, fresh tomatoes, a soft but crispy cornmeal crust, a subtly flavored roasted garlic custard, smoky mozzarella, some briny olives, and some fresh basil. What could be better than all that? I actually roasted a whole head of garlic, in a little pottery garlic roaster, and used a few of those cloves. You can also toast a couple cloves in a toaster oven, or roast them in the oven at 425 for about 15 minutes, to take the edge off. It won’t be quite as soft and delicious, but good nonetheless.

Eggplant olive tart

Here’s Nina Simone’s Work Song.
Continue reading →

Cherry chocolate coconut almond crisp

Posted on by
2

Cherry clafouti crisp

Here at The Ordinary, in our illustration division (located in a spacious and sunny atrium between the rooftop greenhouse and the outdoor swimming pool in the parpapets) we like to draw mixed up animals. You can find us hard at work, day and night, combining winged creatures, finned creatures and those with claws and tails. The best part of this fantastical exercise, is that the resulting mixed up creature is usually quite delightful. Let us present a few choice examples from our archives…
Malcolm’s fox-owl.

Isaac’s Ring-tailed Ouzel

Ring tailed ouzel

And my squirrel-giraffe

Squirrel giraffe

This dessert is a mixed up animal, too! Part cobbler, part crisp, part frangipane, part clafoutis. It’s fruity, soft, chocolatey, and crispy all at the same time! Here’s how it all went down: I had bought a bag of cherries. In general, cherries don’t last long in this house. However, we went away twice for a few days within a week or two, and before we knew it, the cherries were past their first blush of youth. Well! A chance to bake!! I wanted to make a cobbler/crisp type dessert. I also had clafoutis on my mind (the french cherry & baked custard dish) – specifically I was thinking about clafoutis with a frangipane type of custard. This combines all of those things. We have a layer of warm cherries splashed with rum, a layer of soft baked almond custard with bittersweet chocolate chips, and a crispy coconut topping. If I do say so, and I do, this is one of the most delicious things I’ve ever made! It has a lot of different flavors, it’s true, but they all go very nicely together. We ate it warm with lightly whipped cream flavored with maple syrup and vanilla.

Here’s The Kangaroo Rat from the Beastie Boys. I know that’s an actual animal, but they look so unlikely (perfect, but unlikely!) And the album is called the mix-up, so it’s double extra good.

Continue reading →

Zucchini, hazelnut, and millet croquettes

Posted on by
5

Millet croquettes

So my dog, Steenbeck, was a german shorthaired pointer. Not a dog you see very often! But these days, when I do see one, I can’t not pet it! Today, I saw an unmistakable brown-spotty-tailed-pointer-butt saunter by. I flew out the door! I’d met the dog before – he’s a handsome boy. He looked at me with fear! He positively cowered away from me! Well, my goodness, most irregular! I laughed to David that I must have seemed too needy, and David said there’s probably a warning out about me, on german shorthaired twitter networks. It’s funny, if you know pointers, because they’re twittery. They’re naturally nervous nellies, which is why I didn’t take it personally that this handsome boy didn’t feel like socializing. I’ve been dreaming a lot about Steenbeck, lately, and it’s nice to spend time with her in my dreams, even if the dreams are sometimes anxious, and I miss her all over again upon waking. I live in a town full of dogs, and it’s good to have them around. And, as I said the other day, I see dogs everywhere – in knots in wood, in branches of trees, in rocks and stones. (Where is she going with this? You’re asking yourself. Well, I’m glad you asked!) The other day, in the mountains, the boys were fishing. I’m not a big fan of fishing. Not a big fan of the inevitable cruelty to worm-and-fish. But it’s a summery thing for a boy to do, once in a while, I get that. I had to sit with them, because Isaac can’t swim as well as he thinks he can. I had my blank notebook and a ball point pen with me. I carry them everywhere, because I like to pretend that I might write something important at any moment! When you least expect it! I sat at a weather-greyed splintery picnic table, which was only lightly coated with worm poop and fish guts. And this is how I happened to embark upon my new, slightly vandalistic, bench-and-picnic-table improving project of the summer! I was very happy, drawing dogs in knots in wood. I have an odd idea of fun, and this is it! Of course it’s not permanent, but surely the transitory nature of the drawings makes them more poignant! I’d like to travel the world spreading wood dog spirits!!

Maybe someday. In the meantime, let’s cook some good meals! I had some leftover millet from this dinner, and I decided to combine it with zucchini to make croquettes. I made them quite simple, so the flavor of the millet could shine through. I added some hazelnuts for flavor and crunch, and fresh basil (of course!). Millet makes lovely croquettes – crispy, lacy, and flavorful. We ate them almost like falafel, but with tortillas instead of pita. Pita would work well, too! We ate baby arugula and chopped tomatoes to wrap up as well. Some sort of sauce would have been nice, but I was tired after work, so I never got around to it. Almond aioli would have been perfect, and quick and easy! Next time. We ate them the next day as kofta balls in a red lentil curry, which I’ll tell you about soon.

Here’s one dog, and the rest are after the jump.

Wood dog spirit

And here’s Maga Dog, by Bob Marley and the Wailers. Love this!
Continue reading →

Red beans in red wine & tamari sauce, with roasted mushrooms and potatoes

Posted on by
6

Nobody stands on the beach getting teary-eyed over the sea birds. That would just be silly. Certainly I would never do that! This week when we were at the beach, I saw something I’ve not seen in many decades of beach-going. The seabirds followed a school of fish so close to the shore that the lifeguards pulled everyone out of the water. The birds frantically ate, circling and calling – two kinds of terns, two kinds of seagulls, farther out large brown pelicans. Small silver fish leapt through the waves, where we had just been swimming. The dolphins had been following the fish, too, but they didn’t swim in as close to shore. It was a dizzying spectacle – the sun white bright on the sand, the horizon heaving and changing with each wave, the birds wheeling in fast flowing arcs, blurring your vision. I found it incredibly moving. The ocean moves me, anyway…literally, with each wave that sweeps me off my feet, high above the sand, and then sets me down again, where and when it chooses; and emotionally, with its vasty vastness and beauty and mystery. Somehow seeing the sea birds made me more aware of just how unaware we are of the life in the ocean. Their frenzied activity hinted at the world in the waves, but we’ll never know what’s in each smoky green swell of water, and what’s living where there are no waves, where the ocean is deep and dark. The birds know…they seemed to sense, as a group, when it was time to move on. (And it just killed me, that in the midst of all of this activity, a handful of gulls stayed apart, floating cooly on the water, not bothered at all.) By contrast, the humans on the beach suddenly seemed endearingly foolish – with our garish colors, our strange skin, our beach chairs and umbrellas and toys and snacks, our lumbering movements into and out of the waves. (I say this as somebody who gets knocked over by 2 feet of water!) We think we know, we think we’re in control, but we have no idea. I love that moment of recognition – I HAVE NO IDEA! – but it’s frightening as well.

And, of course, you love the birds and the dolphins, but you feel a little bad for the small silver fish, leaping through the waves. It’s the unavoidable cycle of life for the birds and the dolphins, but not for me, so when we got home, I cooked up some beans. But these are very very special beans!! They’re in a sauce made with red wine, sage, rosemary, and tamari. It’s a very savory, meaty, delicious sauce (umame-y?) I made it quite brothy. I served it over millet (we love millet!) which I’d made with the same broth that’s in the sauce, and I roasted some mushrooms and potatoes to mix in. I’d thought about cooking the mushrooms and potatoes with the sauce, as a sort of stew, but I really like them best when they’re crispy and flavorful, so this is how we did it. We topped the whole thing with fresh smoked mozzarella and fresh basil from the garden. A simple salad of baby arugula and walnuts was the perfect crunchy bright accompaniment, and a good loaf of crusty bread was on hand to sop up the juices. The broth was the star of the show, and I will make it again! But Isaac loved the beans, and ate them very sweetly one at a time, between spoonfuls of millet.

Red beans in red wine, tamari, sage sauce

Here’s J Dilla’s hypnotic Waves

Continue reading →