Category Archives: recipe

Crepes with chard & pecans

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chard crepes Oh, chard, is there any nut you don’t taste good with? Chard and pecans are lovely together, both have their own special blend of earthy brightness. The fresh ricotta and mozzarella add a creamy texture, the peas add a sweet little bite, and the pecans add crunch. I made this using cheater’s chickpea crepes, but you could use ordinary old crepes as well. Or even lasagna noodles, layered on top of each other, with the sauce all through rather than added at the end. If you do use the chickpea flour crepes, don’t worry if they tear or fall apart a bit. The filling will hold them together, and they’ll look fine in the end, with delicious sauce to cover any holes.

chard!

Here’s Elmore James’s Rollin and Tumblin, which was in my head while I rolled the crepes, and which blows me away every time I hear it. It really is phenomenal. One of my favorites.
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Cheater’s chickpea-flour crepes

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chick pea crepe

Nice has their socca, India has their own version of chickpea-flour pancakes. Decidedly delicious, but something of a challenge to make. I have made them, and they turned out tasty, but I had to chase the boys out of the kitchen so they wouldn’t hear me curse at the mother-flippin pancakes that would not flip! That stuck to the pan! Or fell to pieces!! It’s the equipment, I tell you! I don’t have the right equipment!!

So now, when I make my own version of chickpea-flour pancakes, I cheat slightly, by adding some regular wheat flour and one egg. That’s it! Not so terrible! They’re still chewy, crispy, and they still have that distinctive chickpea-flour-taste. If they fall apart a bit, never fear! They’re still delicious, even in pieces. They’re lovely used to scoop up tapinade or humus, or sauteed greens. Or you can go more elaborate, and fill them and make them a sauce, as I will soon show you.

Here’s the Clash with The Cheat. Don’t listen if you’re offended by sweary language!!

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Simple tomato sauce

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Simple tomato sauce

This recipe is so easy, so tasty, and so versatile, that you will never buy a bottle of pasta sauce again! In the summer I use fresh tomatoes, but the rest of the year I use canned, and, honestly, it’s just as good. I use fire-roasted diced, in a can, for extra smokey flavor.

You can season this any way you like – you can make it spicy with cayenne or red pepper flakes or chipotle puree. You can add oregano, basil, rosemary, thyme or cilantro. You can add olives and capers to make a sort of puttanesca. You can add roasted red peppers and paprika to make it nice and smokey. You can add ground almonds or hazelnuts. You could add curry spices. You could add grated toasted beets. And of course, you could add any vegetable you’re fond of. Anything you like! My youngest son likes to eat it as though it was soup, which it would be, if you thinned it down a bit with water or milk.

Here’s Sly and the Family Stone with Sing a Simple Song, to show you how it’s done.
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Sweet potato/pumpkin ale soup with chermoula spice

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sweet potato pinto bean soup

We got the world’s largest sweet potato this week, from Honey Brook Organic Farm, our local CSA. So I made a soup! The mild sweetness of the sweet potato is offset by sharp, bold flavors modeled on a Moroccan chermoula sauce. I used pumpkin ale, because the slightly sweet/slightly spicy quality went well with everything else. But you could use any type of beer you have on hand. Or a bit of wine. Or even apple cider. And I added pinto beans, which I love because of their wonderful creamy texture when smooshed, and their savory appealing flavor.

As it happens, sweet potatoes have inspired many wonderful songs! Here are a few to listen to while you stir your soup.
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The music that cooked you.

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Everybody knows that you are what you eat. But I believe that you are what you listen to as well, and what you read, and what you watch. There’s a line from the Dungeon Family song On & On & On about remembering “…the music that took you, put you in a pot and cooked you.” I’ve always loved this notion. I think he’s talking about the music that made you “lie in awe on your bedroom floor,” and I think he’s also talking about the music that you heard as a child, that shaped who you are.

I was trying to think of a food from my childhood that feels significant, that had special value, and made me who I am in some way. I thought of crepes, or as we called them, flat pancakes. They were a special-occasion breakfast for us, so simple, and so pleasing. And now I feed them to my sons. They both ate them on their first birthdays, and for many many breakfasts (and dinners) since. And it makes me happy when they eat them.

And the music I listened to was mostly baroque or early classical. I remember holding the tune of Mozart’s Haffner Serenade in my head as a kind of talisman to ward off anything that made me anxious. My sons listen to very different music, but I love that they love what they love!

So… what are you made of? What food or music is part of your childhood, and became part of who you are?

As a bonus question for people who like thinking of songs on a certain topic (who could that be?) can you think of songs about your musical heroes recalling songs they listened to as a child? Like Talib Kweli’s Holy Moly, for instance.

Crepe recipe (written by my mother on an index card and memorized by me!) after the jump.
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Daikon braised with ginger & honey

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Or… What to do with that strange vegetable you got from your CSA

A daikon is a long white radish. It’s milder than a regular radish, I think, but it still has a bite. I braised it with some little red radishes, and it made a beautiful dish of translucent amber and amber tinged with pink. I added honey and ginger, to temper the slightly bitter after taste. Very easy. And don’t you love the radish spirit from Spirited Away? Surely he’s a daikon!

Here’s Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass with Taste of Honey. I love this video!
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Toasted beets

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My nine-year-old son invented this method of preparing beets, and it’s really tasty! Only slightly eclipsed by my five-year-old son’s suggestion that we have roasted cheese puffs for dinner.

I didn’t think I liked beets at all, but we got some from our CSA over the summer – I tried roasting them, and quickly became a convert. One day my son said, “Why don’t we grate them and toast them?” Well, we did. We grated them, tossed them with a little olive oil, and put them in the toaster oven, on “toast.” The result was wonderful! It really smells like burnt sugar as they cook, so sweet are beets. We stirred them around a little bit, and cooked them until they started to turn very dark and caramelize. They’re lovely, because you get little patches of bright, juicy beets, and little pockets of crispy, caramelized beets. We salted them and loaded them with freshly ground pepper, and tossed them in a salad. Last night I made a salad with lots of different greens, Malcolm’s beets, goat cheese, hazelnuts, tomatoes, olive oil & balsamic. Malcolm also had the bright idea of putting grated, toasted beets into a tomato sauce, which adds a nicely sweet and earthy element to the acidic sauce. If you don’t have a toaster oven, you can roast them in a hot regular oven, and it should work just as well.

Here’s one of my sons’ favorite songs at the moment, M.I.A.’s Hussel. Hello my friend, hello my friend, hello my friend, yes it’s me!

Pear, hazelnut, dark chocolate CAKE!

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Pear chocolate hazelnut cake

The juiciness of the pear, the nutty crunch of the hazelnut, and the supreme deliciousness of very very dark chocolate combine to make this fairly ordinary cake seem like something special. This is a nice combination of autumnal flavors, and it goes well with your coffee in the morning, but with a dollop of cream whipped with a little sugar and vanilla, it can seem like a fancy dessert as well.

Here’s Miles Davis’ Chocolate Chip
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Potatoes, sofrito, fennel, mmmmmm

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Potatoes, so mild-mannered and comforting, meet some spicy, vibrant friends in this very pleasing, intensely flavored dish. The potatoes are sliced thinly, and layered with sofrito, olives, capers and fennel, and they all combine to create wonderful tastes and textures.

I just discovered this song, but I really like it! Tony Touch, the Beanuts and D’Mingo with Sofrito Mama.
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Soup Meagre

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Soup Meagre is from the 18th century, and I don’t think there’s a definitive recipe, but to my knowledge (or in my imagination!) it’s a sort of hodgepodge of any green thing you can find. A spring tonic! Or, for my family this week, a fall tonic. There’s a lovely sort of cycle to the CSA that we belong to. It starts and ends with greens. Lots and lots of greens. Lettuces; spinach; arugula; wild, bitter little leaves. The autumn greens tend to be coarser and more bitter than the spring greens, but once you cook them they mellow out in no time. I think this is a pretty soup, and it’s surprisingly substantial, and wonderfully delicious. I always add yellow split peas, because they’re tasty, have a nice texture, and make a flavorful broth. But you can leave them out, or add any kind of legume you like.

Here’s Yo La Tengo’s beautiful Green Arrow, which sounds like a spring or fall evening, just at dusk.
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