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mushroom walnut dumplings

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mushroom walnut dumplings

Inside: Roasted mushrooms, walnuts, parsley and cheese. Outside: a biscuit-like crust made with whole wheat flour, toasted oats, rosemary, black pepper and buttermilk. I called these dumplings because of their shape, but it might be more accurate to call them stuffed biscuits. They’re not soft and flaky, like anything made with paté brisée. They’re a little heartier-tasting, so they’re nice with soup or something saucy. Or even a sauce! Like the herbed walnut sauce, perhaps. Each bite has subtle flavors of baked rosemary and black pepper, and you can pick them up and eat them with your hands! Always a bonus.

Here’s Big Joe Williams with King Biscuit Stomp
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Roasted cauliflower and potato soup

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Potatoes roasted with rosemary and garlic – such a perfect combination. So completely comforting. This soup combines these flavors, as well as the equally perfect combination of cauliflower roasted with brown butter and caraway seeds. It’s not an elegant soup, but it is a delicious and substantial soup. We ate it on the coldest day of the winter, so far, with warm goat cheese rolls fresh out of the oven. Exactly right! I had actually roasted the cauliflower the night before, and cooked the potatoes in a clay pot at the same time. But I’m going to give you this recipe as though you were starting from scratch. It will work equally well either way.

Here’s Papas by Mr Loco. That means potatoes, doesn’t it?
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The elegant leftover scheme

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In which we outline a cooking plan for the new depression.

french lentil egg-fried mujadara

Times are hard. We know this because we hear it every time we turn on the radio. It’s been a rough year. It’s been a rough couple of years. Well, I’ve always enjoyed trying to make the most of the food I have – trying to think of something inventive to make with the contents of my cupboard, and trying to use every bit of food I cook, in one form or another. This hearkens back to the way people cooked during the first depression. The food was often vegetarian, and people found ingenious ways to stretch it to feed as many as possible, or to use simple leftovers to make a meal so good even meat-eaters didn’t miss their meat. Left-over mashed potatoes would become croquettes, leftover beans would go in a stew. Some of the most memorable dishes from around the world were initially devised as money-saving ingredient-stretching feasts. Over the years, I’ve developed a scheme for using leftovers creatively. It’s not just the dishes that are elegant in this scheme – although you’ll feel like you were dining at William Powell’s night club – it’s the way everything fits together. If, say, you make a big batch of french lentils on Saturday, and you make a dish with rice on Sunday…on Monday you can make a delicious mujadara-like dish. Add one beaten egg, and you have a tasty mujadara egg-fried rice. The flavorings are sage, rosemary and thyme, and are enhanced with shallots and onions. Very satisfying! On the night I made this, I also cooked some potatoes in a clay pot, and made brown-butter-roasted cauliflower, and a simple salad of arugula and goat cheese. Everything tasted wonderful together. And the roasted cauliflower and potatoes will show up another day in a soup, (stay tuned!) which will take a fraction of the time to cook, because they’re already roasted!

Here’s Times is Tight Like That, by Bo Carter, and a recipe for french lentil mujadara fried rice is after the jump.
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Chipotle chickpeas

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Still life with chickpeas

Tortillas, injera, dosas, jamaican roti, moo shu pancakes, crepes. Why are they so fun to eat? Why is it so fun to wrap all your food into a tasty bundle and eat it with your hands? These were the thoughts going through my head last night during my 8th night in a row of infuriating insomnia. Then I thought, wouldn’t it be fun to invent a completely new form of flatish bread that you could use as a utensil? And I’m determined to do it! (I even thought of a name for them!) And then I thought about inventing completely new methods of cooking. Like the first time somebody realized that if you whip egg whites they get stiff. Is it possible to invent something absolutely new? Yes it is! In award-winning restaurants in Spain or Norway, maybe. Sigh.

Anyway, last night was a back-to-normal-after-the-holidays meal. Chickpeas and broccoli sauteed with chipotle, sage, oregano and smoked paprika. Smoky, spicy, good. We had them with warm tortillas, lettuce, tomatoes, grated cheese and basmati rice. Ready in minutes and fun to eat.

Here’s Move Move Move from Nacho Libre we listened to during dinner last night. I love this soundtrack!
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Roasted butternut pies with a beer crust

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Butternut beer pies


These pies are crisp and flaky on the outside, and soft and yummy on the inside. They combine roasted butternut squash, roman beans, and pistachios. The squash is sweet, the beans are earthy, and the nuts provide a nice flavor and a little crunch to the proceedings. There’s beer in the crust and beer in the pies. So use a beer you like! Roman beans are very similar to pinto beans, in appearance, taste and texture. They’re largish, and you partially mash them here, so you have a nice contrast of refried-bean texture and the occasional solid yet tender bean.

These pies have sharp cheddar, which holds everything together and adds an edgy yet melty flavor. And they’re seasoned with thyme, sage, rosemary, paprika, nutmeg and fennel. They’re nice to take to a party, because they transport well, and they’re substantial enough that they can make a meal. That’s it! I’m done talking about them! I’m going to tell you how to make them now. Except that I should mention that I took them to a party, and as I sat with them on my lap – they were warm and fragrant, and they smelled like butter and beer, and it made me think of butter beer. That’s from Harry Potter, right?

Here’s Roman Blue by Danger Mouse and Daniele Lupp. I’ve just heard it for the first time, but it’s lush and Ennio Morricone-y, and I think I’ll listen to it again!
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Sunshine

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A lot of people are talking about post-holiday healthy eating. A profusion of greens and water to clear away the holiday fog. For some reason it made me think about this song by the Jungle Brothers called Sunshine. It’s about eating healthy and thinking healthy. It’s about good food, good knowledge, sunshine and brightness. It always makes me think of that wonderful but elusive feeling of walking down the street feeling good in yourself, and good in the world. Plus it samples parliament! So that’s what I’m thinking in this moment of New Year’s resolutions. It’s always nice to have some sunshine on a cold winter’s day! Do you have any New Year’s resolutions this year?

Nighttime fades away, on to the next day
The weatherman predicts a clear sunny saturday
Relax laid back and feelin the cool breeze
Positive vibes in sauce and the melodies
Gather my leaves and all my minerals
Fix myself a bowl of vegetables
Ice cold water and chopped up fruits
Gonna be a long day so I throw on my boots
Stretch out my hut and beyond the sun rises
…
Yeah Id like to say Id like to say somethin serious
Real serious
The sun shinin, the guidin light
The fire that we all attempt to fight
The only thing is you cant put it out
You blow and blow but that makes it grow
Bright around and it was made for me
A gift from God that he gave to me
You eat it and chew it, and then you swallow it
And wisdom is what you get from it

Cheater’s flaky paratha

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I love paratha. I like any food that has layers of deliciousness that are fun to peel apart and eat. I’ve tried making it myself many times, but the results tend to be tough, oily, and stodgy. Not the delightful combination of light flakiness and pleasantly substantial whole-wheatiness that is paratha. The other day I decided to cheat a bit, by deploying a sneaky application of puff pastry techniques. That’s right! I added butter. Because everything is better with butter. I used a combination of whole wheat flour and white flour (with a bit of basil, because I love basil with curry flavors). I rubbed olive oil into the bulk of the flour, and I made a little square lozenge of frozen grated butter and a tiny bit of flour to wrap inside the dough. I cooked them on a skillet till they got nice brown spots, then put them in the toaster oven till they puffed a bit. They turned out quite nice. Not completely like paratha, but with their own charm. The outside was a little crispier, and the inside was nice and flaky and layered.

Here’s Booker T and the MG’s with Jelly Bread.
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Slow cooked urad dal and black-eyed peas

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urad dal and black-eyed peas

My son got a couple of science experiment kits for christmas. I got a slow-cooker. I’ve never had one before! I like the idea of trying to figure out how to use it without reading too much about it. I feel just like a 6-year-old with a box full of mad experiments to try!!

The first thing I thought to cook in the big beautiful black stoneware pot was Urad Dal. I bought some this summer at an Indian grocery store. They’re beautiful, tiny, black ovoid lentils. They need to cook for a loooooong time, on a looooooow heat. And then they turn out delcious! I matched them with black-eyed peas, because they both have an earthy flavor, and because I liked the little black beans with white spots, and the larger white beans with black spots. I seasoned them with allspice, ginger, cardamom, coriander and basil. Bright and sweet – to go with the earthy. And I cooked them in butter, because Dal Makhani, the traditional urad dal dish, is cooked with butter, yogurt and cream, and I wanted to give a nod to that. Turned out yummy! I cooked it for 6 hours on high, and I think it would have been done an hour earlier, but I wasn’t home. Very tasty with basmati rice and cauliflower in a spicy cashew-almond sauce. It’s not the prettiest dish you’ve ever made, but if you stir in some chopped tomatoes and cilantro at the end, it will have a bit of color and fresh flavor.

This was fun to make in a slow cooker, because I could leave the house with minimal fear of burning it down. But I’ve also cooked urad dal on a low burner for 5 hours, and that’s worked, too. So if you don’t have a slow cooker…don’t despair.

Of course it’s got to be Slow and Low by the Beastie Boys. That is the tempo!!
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Merry Christmas!

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Merry Christmas, friends, eaters, and mad scientists of the kitchen! These are some little amaretto butter cookies I made with my sons. And we made a portobello wellington for dinner, which I’ll tell you all about tomorrow.

I hope everybody has a glowing, merry, cheerful christmas! Here’s some music to help you with that.

Herbed semolina dumplings

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Semolina dumplings

It’s quite a dreary day, today, grey and damp-cold, but not raining. You know what’s perfect on a day like this? Soup and dumplings, that’s what! I like to bake dumplings, so they get a little crispy on the outside, before you surrender them to the depths of your soup or stew. I like that contrast in texture, and the sense of immediacy in eating them before they lose their crispness, and in enjoying their transformation. These dumplings, made with semolina flour and eggs, are crispy outside, but they’re dense and soft on the inside. They’re a lot like Roman gnocchi, as it happens, and you could certainly eat them with a sauce of some sort, rather than dunking them in a soup. They’re quick-as-can-be to make, and you can have them hot out of the oven by the time your soup is warmed up.

Bouillabaisse photographed in the company of a semolina dumpling

Here’s Sam Cooke with Sugar Dumpling.
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