No, I’m not going to give you a recipe for a vegetarian version of pink slime! Pink slime has been in the news so much lately, and I find reading about it, and reading the conversations that follow, very frustrating. So I’m going to take a moment to try to organize my thoughts, which are after the jump. Please feel free to ignore them! I realize that I sound preachy, but I sincerely don’t mean it that way. Sometimes things seem so clear to me, when looked at a certain way. I’m just trying to explain the way the world makes sense to me. Continue reading →
Chikoo (also called sapota) are not the prettiest fruit.They’re brown and mottled and slightly furry. I’m not sure what possessed me to buy two of them on our super-bodega traveling trip to Patel’s Cash and Carry. Yet buy two I did. I’d never heard of chikoo fruit, I had no idea what they tasted like or how to use them! Therein lies the very heart of the edgy and exciting fun that is super-bodega traveling! When I researched the little fruits, you cannot imagine my excitement to learnt that they are exceptionally sweet and malty, and that they taste like caramelized pears! Can you even imagine?!? Why don’t we eat them all the time!
So I brought my two little chikoo fruits home and waited for them to grow nice and soft, and I schemed to make ice cream with them, because it seemed like a nice way to let the flavor shine through against a simple yet tasty and creamy canvas. I cut into the first chikoo fruit. Very pretty, soft amber flesh. Crazy looking spiky shiny black beetly seeds. First taste – swoon! They’re delicious! I cut it into a bowl. I cut into the second fruit. A little firmer and paler. Took one very small bight. Tasted fine, but seconds later, my entire mouth was dry as can be. Turns out when they’re not ripe, they’re astringent. D’oh! So I had one little chikoo fruit to flavor the near-quart of custard and cream I had incautiously concocted. I tried to think of other things I could add. I let it sit in the fridge. I fussed and stressed.
And then David wisely said that if the whole idea of the ice cream was to showcase the chikoo fruit, obviously, what was needed was more chikoo fruit. We had the nicest impromptu afternoon adventure! We stopped to look for ebony wood. We went to an antique store. We went to Patel’s Cash and Carry, and I bought even more inexplicable produce! I bought frozen chikoo fruit. I bought a can of chikoo fruit, and I bought 4 very very ripe actual chikoo fruits. We can’t afford to go out to lunch at the moment, but we bought two fresh fat 79 cent samosas, which tasted as nearly perfect as you can imagine.
So I added the pulp of 4 more chikoos to my chikoo ice cream. (Minus the pieces that Malcolm, now a fan of the chikoo, snuck from the bowl). It turned out very very delicous! It did taste malty and caramel-y, with a lovely sweetness and a pleasing texture. And I still have frozen and canned chikoo fruits to fuel my future scheming!
This song Deewangi Deewangi was playing in the store when we selected our chikoo fruits. Yesterday my sons made a fort/pirate ship out of blankets on the couch. When I played this song, they both stood up at the helm of their ship, and did an instantly perfectly choreographed dance. Joy! Continue reading →
I’m not a fan of big movies. I was an independent filmmaker in a pre-child life. That’s part of it. I’m naturally contrary. That’s a contributing factor. I don’t like the big films that I feel like I’m supposed to like. Most of the time those big films also tell you how you’re supposed to feel – now you laugh, now you cry. They don’t bother with subtlety at all. It’s like they think we’re really thick. (They DO think we’re really thick!) I could go on and on, but I won’t (yet).
Sometimes a biggish film breaks through all of that, though, and defies expectations and makes me love it, despite my ornery ideas. I love Kung Fuuuuuuuuuuuuu Panda. I love both films, 1 & 2. Yes, it’s another tale of an unexpected underdog using unexpected physical force to defeat a bully who seems stonger and is really mean! Yes, that story has been told a bazillion times. But there’s something about Kung Fu Panda that rises above all of that. I asked Malcolm why he admired Po (the panda). He said, “because he’s happy all the time.” That’s exactly what I was thinking, although I’d used the word “cheerful” in my head. I love the fact that he doesn’t get discouraged, he doesn’t have a dark and brooding side, he doesn’t have an angry side. When he fights his stronger bullyish foe, he laughs. Even when he’s getting beaten, even when he surprises himself by doing well. He laughs! It’s so unexpected, so anti-drama, and yet it makes you care about him more, which makes it more dramatic. The other quality that I admire in Po, that you don’t see very often in your cooler-stock-hero characters, is that he’s a fan. He admires his cohorts so much that he’s bursting, he’s desperate, he’s glowing with the pleasure of being in the same space as them. Even when he should revel in being the best of the best, instead he’s a warm furry bundle of disbelieving gratitude at being in their presence.
We had a lot of leftovers from our black rice, black lentil, golden beet meal, and Malcolm asked if we could use them to make dumplings like in Kung Fu Panda. Of course we can! It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while. So I made the dough while Malcolm was at school, and we put them together when he got home.
The dough is quite simple. Traditionally, they’re steamed. I don’t have a bamboo steamer, so I used my vegetable steamer, which is not huge. I could fit 3 dumplings in there. I decided to bake the rest, because I’ve always wondered if that was an option. It is! They turn out lovely! Crispy, just the right amount bread-y. The steamed ones were nice, too. David said the steamed ones felt inexplicably lighter. You could put anything in these! Leftover beans or vegetables. Cheese. Just beans, just veg. Anything! Pretty much any filling for any savory pastry I’ve ever posted on this blog would work in here. I’ll give you a few suggested fillings, but…go crazy!!
Sometimes, in life, you search for something. You look in all of the ordinary places your path takes you. You don’t find it. It becomes a quest. You go farther afield, you make special trips, just to find this thing. You ask the wise people you meet if they know where it can be found. You don’t find it. You find something similar, you tell yourself it’s the same, but in your heart you know it’s not. Then, one day, you’re looking for something else, perhaps in one of the places you’d already searched. And you stumble upon the very thing you were looking for all along. Thus it was with me and beluga lentils.
My friend Neil told me about them years ago. I’m a huge fan of all lentils, but these sounded exceptional, and I became determined to find them. To no avail. Neil lives in Germany, and it turns out that the Germans are several years ahead of us in lentil availability. I bought some urad dal, I thought it might be similar. Not so. Jump ahead a couple of years, and I found myself in Whole Foods. For me, Whole Foods is a forbidden land. Everything is too tempting and too beautiful and too expensive. I rarely go, and then only on precise pinpointed missions. I went this week to find golden beets (my new questing food!). Straight into produce, secure the beets, get out. But no – you have to walk all over the crazy store to get to the checkout. Of course I passed the castelvetrano olives. So pretty, so delicious. And then my greatest challenge. The bulk food aisle. Black rice! I haven’t had that since the Tibetan store closed down. The one with the nice man who used to give Malcolm little bags of black rice. Sigh. And then, a few bins down…BLACK BELUGA LENTILS!
As I walked to the checkout, grappling with all of my little bags of food and tubs of olives (I hadn’t gotten a basket. I wouldn’t need a basket, I was only buying one thing…) This recipe formed in my head. The colors! The flavors! The textures! We would have a sort of pilaf or warm salad, of black rice, black lentils, roasted golden beets, sauteed beet greens, castelvetrano olives and capers. (Malcolm’s first time knowingly eating a caper – he called them “flavor dynamite.”) All layered on a big plate of fresh baby spinach and topped with toasted hazelnuts. Part warm, part cool, a little smoky with Spanish paprika, a little sweet with oregano and basil, a little earthy with beets and sage. Finished with a tangy sweet balsamic and lots of black pepper. And rosemary roasted red bliss potatoes on the side. Delicious!
In the interest of keeping it ordinary, I should tell you that this would be very nice made with basmati rice and not-so-ugly-themselves french lentils and red beets.
I asked Neil to play guest DJ for this post. Here’s what he said…
“Recipe sounds big and brassy…so how about Bold and Black, an Eddie Harris composition played by Ramsey Lewis…from the album Another Voyage. Some smoky rhythm guitar, that sweet melody on Rhodes, and the wonderfully earthy drum riff which kicks off the groove section.” Perfect!! Continue reading →
“This is my first sous chef job!” Said Isaac, brightly, as he stood on a chair before the stove, watching a pot of milk. It turns out watched pots do boil! What else have they lied to us about?
Isaac and I were making paneer. Here’s how it all went down…I felt a little bad that I hadn’t spent much time cooking with Isaac. It’s nice to have something special with Malcolm, but I was worried that Isaac might feel a bit left out. So I’ve been trying to think of something fun to make that Isaac likes. I noticed that whenever we get Indian food, Isaac goes crazy for paneer, the soft, white cheese. He’ll even eat spinach, if it has paneer in it. Paneer also happens to be quite fun and easy to make. So that’s how Isaac got his first job as sous chef. He made the sauce to cook the paneer in, as well. He chose all the spices, and the main ingredients, and described the taste and texture that it should have.
On the way home from school, Isaac said he couldn’t wait to get home and be sous chef. Malcolm said Isaac was the sous sous chef. Isaac said, “Mommy is the over chef.” Malcolm said, “She’s the ogre chef!” I can live with that title!
Homemade paneer
As you will no doubt remember, we just went to Patel’s Cash and Carry on our Super Bodega Traveling adventure, and I had some ingredients I wanted to try out! So we made a meal with lots of little dishes. Isaac’s sauce had peas and tomatoes and cashews. It was a warm, earthy sweet dish. To go with that, I made a light saucy dish with punjabi tinda (baby Indian pumpkin) and cauliflower; and a very green dal, with whole moong dal, bay leaves, curry leaves, jalapeno, cilantro, lime, and ginger. I added a little black salt to this one as well – it’s a volcanic, sulfur-y salt, that adds a very distinctive flavor! Everything went very nicely together. I tried to make dosa, too, with my new urad flour. Complete and utter failure. Curses and frustration! I’ll try again, sometime, once I’ve recovered.
My friend Chris is playing DJ for this post, and he suggested the perfect song (and video). As he said, it’s a saucy little number! It’s Asha Bhonsle singing a song from Jewel Thief, Baithe Hain Kya Uske Paas. Continue reading →
Here at The Ordinary, we are done baking with cadbury mini eggs (until the next time!). We’ve used the milk and royal dark mini-eggs in cookies. But we hadn’t used the mini creme eggs. That was a bridge we’d have to cross. Some might say a bridge too far. As you are no doubt aware, I am a scholar of savory pastries, and It has come to my attention that throughout the world you find some variation or a pastry with a crust, a soft yet firm inner layer, and a hard-boiled egg hidden inside. This would be the starting point for our mini creme egg experiments. The jumping-off point from that bridge too far. So I made little tarts, with a paté sucrée crust (kind of shortbread-y) a blackcurrant-almond filling, and one mini-egg hidden in each one. I was very curious to see how the creme eggs would fare in a hot oven. They sort of melted, but they’re still recognizable as creme eggs, I think. I like them! My boys love them! David thinks they’d be better without the cadbury creme egg, because what the heck is that cremey stuff made out of, anyway?!? My one regret is that I mixed the blackcurrant jam with the almond paste, rather than including it as a layer. But only because it turned the inside a bit grey, not because it doesn’t taste good. I think if you used raspberry jam, the whole thing would be pink and pretty. I don’t know for sure – I might have to try it!
Very nearly every day for the last half of my life (21 years, if you’re counting) I’ve eaten the same thing for breakfast. An apple, cut into small pieces, with a few spoonfuls of cereal and some milk. And almost every day for the last 14 years, I’ve given the last three pieces of apple to my dog, Steenbeck. This might not seem like something most dogs would look forward to, but she always came eagerly racing into the kitchen when she heard my spoon hitting the bottom of the bowl. Even when she was very old, and her back legs were rusty, and it was so difficult for her to stand that she wouldn’t bother coming in for her dog food, she’d make her way into the kitchen for her three pieces of apple. She died last Monday, lying in the unseasonably warm sunshine, under a flowering quince bush, in her own back yard. I don’t think she was in pain. She’d had a rough weekend, and could barely stand. She’d been infirm for a year – shockingly thin, (though she ate as much as ever!) wobbly on her legs, prone to seizures. But she’d still been bright and sweet and hungry.
I miss her so much! I miss her warmth and humor and sweetness. I miss the 9-week-old puppy that entered our house for the first time and immediately took over. Fearlessly exploring every inch. Throwing herself at the couch in frustration that she couldn’t jump up by herself. I miss the old dog, who barely ever left her dog bed on the floor, who sometimes stood miserably by the couch, remembering that she could no longer jump up by herself.
When she was barely a year old, we moved to Boston. David was in school full time, and it took me a little while to find a job and to make friends. Steenbeck was as good a friend as you would ever want. David got out of bed at 6 am, and Steenbeck would move up and put her head on his pillow, and lie alongside me. We’d sit on the bench in the park. She sat next to me, and she was so tall, and had such lovely shoulders, that I could just sling my arm around her neck, and she’d lean up against me. A woman once scolded me for letting Steenbeck put her paws on the bench, so she sat on my lap, and leaned up against me, and together we watched everyone in the park.
She was with us for one third of our life. And our life changed so much in that time. The life of a dog is so fast and full of grace, and it makes you think, more than you might want to, about time passing. I mourn her, and I selfishly mourn the person I was when we got her. So many memories are hopelessly tangled with memories of Steenbeck. It’s painful but strangely precious to sort through them now.
I miss her speed and strength and beauty. She was so full of life it was almost frightening sometimes! I miss her stillness, too. I can’t describe the comfort of lying next to her when I couldn’t sleep, or didn’t feel well, and all of her strength and energy were contained in this beautiful quiet warmth.
So here I am, with an aching emptiness where Steenbeck used to be, crying over the last three pieces of apple in my cereal bowl.
I can’t believe it’s been two months since our last super bodega travelling excursion! You know how it is, booking flights, finding hotels, packing… Of course I’m joking, but it’s amazing how hard it can be to fit even a short trip into a routine. The days fly by, and feel so full and busy, but when I look back I can’t remember what I’ve done! I’m not complaining, though! I like my days – I like thinking about cooking dinner, spending an hour at the playground after school, walking around this town in the advancing springtime. Tomorrow does creep at a petty pace, but I don’t think it signifies nothing. I couldn’t say what it signifies, but it feels wonderful to me. Sorry – sidetracked!
Stop number two in our super bodega travels brought us, on a warm and sunny day, to Patel’s Cash & Carry. Speaking of wonderful! The store felt HUGE! And so full of amazing and surprising food! I love Indian food. It’s one of those cuisines I feel like I know something about. I eat Indian take-out every chance I get. I’ve got two cookbooks! (Madhur Jaffrey and Julie Sahni, in case you were wondering). I’ve loved it since I was small, and my boys (still small!) love it, too. Walking into this store made me realize how incredibly little I know. Which is (part of) the joy of bodega traveling. You get to see, beyond the takeout menus, a glimpse into a rich and diverse history that the cookbooks only hint at. As David said, you could write a cookbook on the flour aisle alone.
whole moong dal
Here’s what we bought…Kulfi for the boys – rose and pistachio flavored. They couldn’t wait to eat it, and it melted in their hands as we walked around the store. Curry leaves. I’ve seen these before, but never cooked with them. What a remarkable smell! A little earthy and smoky, but still very green, if you know what I mean. Two chikoo fruits. (Very excited about these!) Urad flour, black salt (volcanic and sulfuric! rotten eggy), whole moong dal (beautiful!!), Tinda (in a can), which is called baby indian pumpkin, lotus root, and different kinds of snack mixes, which my little ones eat like hungry mice with their whiskers on fire from the spiciness! Then we couldn’t let the boys back in the car because their kulfi was so melted, so they ate on a grassy bank, and Isaac got rose-flavored kulfi on the tip of his nose and in his eyelashes.
For the next few days we’ll be cooking with these, and we’ll let you know how it goes. We’ve got big plans!!
Remember the scene in Bedknobs and Broomsticks when Charlie rebels against eating nettles and declares that he wants some “toad in the ‘ole”? My boys were intrigued. What is this toad-in-the-hole, of which he speaks? So I broke out my handy dandy Rupert the Bear cookbook (circa 1974), and Malcolm and I schemed together to make our own, vegetarian version. It’s fun flipping through the pages of my Rupert cookbook. These must have been some of the first things I learned how to make. I’ve been wracking my brains lately, trying to think of the absolute first thing. I just don’t know! David said his was cinnamon toast, which seems like such a nice thing to know how to make. Do you remember the first thing you knew how to make, all by yourself?
So we decided to follow the recipe for toad in the hole (which is a strange practice for me!) accept that, obviously, we wouldn’t be putting sausages in! We could easily have used fake sausages from the store, the boys love them! But I wanted to try something a little more inventive, so we used mushrooms, marinated in sausage-y herbs and spices, and then roasted till they were quite crispy. It turned out delicious!! I added a little bit of smoked gouda to the pudding batter (Just can’t leave well enough alone!) because I think it adds a nice meaty flavor to mushrooms. Other than that, we stuck to the recipe pretty carefully. Which I might not do next time – the book only calls for one egg, but I think with two it would have puffed up much more nicely. That’s how I’ll write the recipe – with two eggs!
The other day my friend Laura asked me if I’d ever made anything with parsley as the main ingredient. Guess what! I had just bought a large bunch of Italian parsley! Strange, right? I don’t usually buy parsley, for some reason. I enjoy it when it comes in our CSA box, but I usually pass it over at the store, in favor of it’s showier cousin, cilantro. But I’d been craving parsley. Something about the fresh green flavor seemed perfect for the time of year. So Laura’s question was very well-timed. I thought of a lot of different types of things I could make, which I will eventually. But for some reason my mind kept wandering back to tabouli. I thought of a sort of soup, with a clear, clean broth. One of those garlicky, lemony broths that people eat when they’re not feeling well. With flecks of parsley floating in it, and with herbily seasoned bulgur on the side, that you could add to your taste. So that’s what I made. I tried to keep it simple, and I was worried that it wouldn’t have enough flavor, but my son said it had too strong a flavor, so … who knows! I seasoned the broth with thyme and basil and the bulgur with zatar herbs and sesame seeds.
Out of the Ordinary 