Can we talk about chickpeas for a moment? They’re one of my
all-time favorite foods, largely due to their versatility: they can be hummus or
chana masala; their canning liquid can be used to make mousses and puddings. Chickpeas
are like tofu, when done well (yes, tofu
can be done well)—they take on the flavors of what they’re cooked with and
in that process become something more than the sum of their parts.
Apparently everyone discovered the wonder that is chickpeas, given how few of them I’ve seen in the grocery store over the past few weeks. I hope people are doing more than draining and sprinkling them over salads, which is quick and tasty but also quite a lot of wasted potential. With a modicum of effort and not much beyond pantry staples, chickpeas can become something nigh on transcendent. Braised with tomatoes and enlivened by oranges and rosemary, these chickpeas are a bit citrusy, a bit herby, and a lot delicious.
Braised Chickpeas
with Tomatoes, Orange, and Rosemary
Source: Adapted from Milk
Street Magazine
Serves ~6 people
Total Time: ~45 minutes
Ingredients:
Olive oil
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon honey, plus more for serving
2 29-ounce cans chickpeas, drained
1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes or whole peeled
tomatoes, liquid reserved and solids chopped
1 medium orange (save the peel for the next two
recipes!)
1/2 medium red onion, thinly sliced
3 or 4 medium garlic cloves, minced
1 4-inch long sprig fresh rosemary
Salt and pepper, to taste
Fresh oregano and parsley for sprinkling, if
desired
Directions:
Heat a large Dutch oven over medium heat. Add
enough olive oil to lightly cover the bottom, then add the tomato paste and
honey. Cook, stirring often, until the tomato paste begins to deepen in color,
about 4 minutes.
Add the chickpeas and tomatoes (along with their
liquid, if you used whole tomatoes).
Increase the heat to medium-high to bring
everything to a simmer, then cook until most of the liquid has evaporated,
about 10 minutes.
While the chickpeas are cooking, zest about one
quarter of your orange and set it aside. Slice the orange into quarters and set
them aside.
Reduce the heat to medium-low before adding the
onion, garlic, rosemary, and salt and pepper to the chickpea mixture. Juice
one-quarter of your orange into the Dutch oven, and stir well to combine.
Cover the pot and cook for an additional 10
minutes, until the onions are soft, adding a few tablespoons of additional
water if needed to prevent sticking or scorching.
Turn off the heat under the pot. Stir in the
orange zest before dishing the chickpeas into individual bowls. Drizzle with additional
olive oil and honey and sprinkle with fresh oregano and parsley, if desired,
before serving.
I’ve never had much use for traditions. I was something of
an iconoclast in my youth and thought that traditions were empty rituals, things
done over-and-over for the sake of being done over-and-over. I frequently (and annoyingly,
truth be told) bemoaned all traditions from the benign to the malignant.
Despite my best intentions, traditions have crept into my
life over the years. Part of that is due to moving away from home; part of it
to getting married and experiencing the fun of creating new rituals with my
partner. But most of it was Iraq. I was volun-told for a four-month deployment,
scheduled to depart in the spring. I was frantic that I would have to leave
before Easter, not simply because I didn’t know what the holiday would be like on
the base, but because I needed that last milestone, that last touch point with
familiarity before I left for a place that was deeply unfamiliar. I found
myself clinging to traditions in the days before I left, wanting to run my
favorite routes, visit my favorite coffee shops, and make my favorite dishes
one more time. When it came to Easter dinner, I took no chances at all, making
my now-traditional chicken, leek, and mushroom pie and a carrot cake for
dessert.
Several years older and a dubious amount wiser, I now see that
it was only because my upbringing was secure that I could question tradition
and see it as so unnecessary. Certainly, some of them are, but they’re also powerful.
When they are thoughtful, traditions provide us with fixed points from which we
can chart our course and our progress. They provide vantage points through
which we can study other times, either happier or more difficult than the one
we are abiding in. Traditions form anchors, the kind that steady us or the kind
that keep us from moving forward. It’s up to us to decide.
Nowadays, no Easter feels complete without a towering carrot
cake. For years, I used the same recipe, but this year I decided to push my own
bounds by making not one but three different versions to taste test. Much to my
surprise, the clear winner was not my traditional recipe, but it was the best
carrot cake I’ve ever had. It’s a three-layer stunner redolent of spices, chock
full of carrots and nuts, and crowned with the most glorious cream cheese
frosting. Really, it encapsulates my new and old feelings on tradition awfully
well—traditions do have their place, but there’s always room for improvement.
The Best Carrot Cake
I’ve Ever Had
Sources: Adapted, barely, from Stella Parks’ Brave Tart
Makes one 6-by-5-inch cake, serving at least 6 people
Active time: ~2 hours; total time: ~3 hours
Note: This might
be the best carrot cake I’ve ever had, but fair warning: it’s also the most
labor intensive. I highly recommend making this over the course of several
days. For example, prepare the custard for the frosting, chop and toast the
nuts, grate the carrots, and brown the butter on day 1. Bake the cakes on day
2, and make the frosting and frost the cake on day 3. Make sure to leave time
for the finished cake to set up before slicing it, or it will be difficult to
cut.
One More Note: I
call to make this in three 6-inch cake tins. If you don’t have this size pan,
you could make a two-layer cake using 8-inch cake tins or a one-layer cake in a
9×13-inch baking dish.
Cream Cheese Frosting
Ingredients:
3/4 cup milk, any percentage
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar
2 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 1/2 eggs (to get a half egg, crack one into a
small bowl, whisk, and measure out roughly half)
1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract
8 ounces cream cheese (I used Neufchatel)
1 1/2 sticks butter, softened but still cool (I
used salted butter)
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Salt, to taste
Carrot Cake
Ingredients:
1 3/4 cups walnuts or pecans (optional)
1 pound carrots
2 sticks butter (I used salted butter)
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole-wheat flour
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup gently packed brown sugar
1/2 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground coves
1/2 tablespoon vanilla
3 eggs (no need for them to be at room
temperature)
Directions:
Make the
custard for the frosting: Put the milk in a small glass bowl or measuring cup
and heat it in the microwave at 50% power until it’s warm, but not boiling. In
a separate, medium-sized bowl, whisk together the sugar, cornstarch, and eggs.
Pour about one-third of the warm milk into the
egg mixture, whisking well, and repeating twice more. Scrap the custard into a
medium pot and cook over medium heat, whisking constantly. The custard will
change texture quite suddenly, going from fairly loose to thick and a bit
lumpy. Keep whisking, and keep
cooking the custard for another two minutes or so. At this point, it should be
very thick and quite smooth.
Remove the custard from the heat. After it’s had
a chance to cool a bit, stir in the vanilla extract.
At this point, you can cover the
custard—pressing plastic wrap onto its surface so that it doesn’t form a
skin—and refrigerate it for a few days.
Prepare
the nuts: Finely
chop the nuts and then add them to a skillet set over medium heat. Toast the
nuts until they’re golden brown and fragrant. This will likely take 5–10
minutes. Remove the nuts from the skillet and set them aside.
Prepare
the carrots: Wash, trim, and peel the carrots. Grate them with a box grater
or in a food processor, then set them aside.
Brown the
butter: Place the butter in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat. Let the
butter melt before increasing the heat to medium. Swirl the pan regularly or
stir it with a spatula to ensure the butter browns evenly. Continue swirling or
stirring until the butter is clear, golden yellow, studded with little brown
bits, and smells toasty and delicious.
Note:
If the heat under your pan is too high, the butter might start to foam up,
making it difficult to see what color it is. Reduce the heat or even take the
pan off the stove for a few minutes to let the foam subside before proceeding.
Make the
cakes: Position a
rack in the middle of your oven before preheating it to 350°F.
Do your future self a favor by preparing your
cake tins now. Grease them well, with either cooking spray or butter, and line
the bottoms with parchment paper. Yes, you really should do this—after all,
you’re spending quite a bit of time making the best carrot cake ever, is this
really the time to skimp on preparation?
Stir
together the flours in a medium bowl, then set it aside.
Stir
together the sugars, leavening agents, salt, and spices in a large bowl; this
can either be the bowl of your standing mixer or any large bowl you happen to
have. Add the vanilla and eggs and beat the heck out of the mixture with
whatever you’ve got—standing mixer, hand mixer, bulging biceps—on medium speed
for five minutes (yes, really). The mixture should be light in color and fluffy
yet thick. Use a spatula to scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl.
If
you have a standing mixer that allows you to be hands free, add the butter in a
slow stream, beating into the egg-and-sugar mixture on medium-low speed. If you
aren’t using a stand mixer, add the butter in three additions, stirring to
combine after each addition. Once you’re done, give the sides and bottom of the
bowl another good scrape down.
Go
ahead and add the flours, mixing well to incorporate. Fold in the carrots and
nuts. It’ll look like there’s too much of them, but trust me—they’ll all fit,
and it will be delicious. You guessed it: give the bowl a final good scrape
down.
Pat yourself on the bake for having remembered
to prep your pans and preheat your oven ahead of time. You’re awesome!
Divide the batter evenly between your pans. If
you have a kitchen scale, you can be precise about this, but otherwise just
eyeball it. The cake will still taste just as good. Smooth the batter in each
pan, then pop them all into the oven.
Bake until the cakes are golden brown and a cake
tester inserted into the middle of each cake comes out with just a few crumbs
clinging to it. This was about 45 minutes for me, but I suggest checking your
cakes around minute 40, to make sure they don’t overbake.
When the cakes are done, remove them from the
oven. Let them cool in the tins for a bit before turning them out onto a wire
cooling rack, removing the parchment rounds from their bottoms, and turning
them right-side up again. After they cool, you can frost them or wrap them well
in plastic wrap and frost them the next day.
Make the
frosting: Several hours before you plan to make the frosting, take the
custard, cream cheese, and butter out of your refrigerator and set them on the
counter to soften.
Once they’re softened but still cool, congratulate
your past self for remembering to have taken out your ingredients ahead of
time. If you forgot or are short on time, give the butter and cream cheese a
few short blasts in the microwave on 40% power (do this separately, as they
have different melting points) to soften them up. Still give yourself a pat on
the back because hey, you’re baking the best carrot cake ever.
Stir the vanilla custard well. If it’s very
thick, mash it up with the back of a spoon and give it a good stir.
Put the butter and cream cheese in a large
bowl—again, either of your stand mixer or any large bowl. Cream them together
using a stand mixer, hand mixer, or your own power until they’re light and
fluffy—this should take about five minutes.
Add about one-third of the custard to the
butter-and-cream cheese mixture and beat well to combine. Scrape down the sides
of the bowl and repeat with the remaining custard in two additions.
Add the lemon juice and mix well. Give your
frosting a taste. If it could use a little more pizzazz, add a bit of extra
lemon juice and/or a touch of salt. Repeat tasting and flavor adjusting as
needed.
All
together now: Your cakes likely domed a bit while baking, so set one on a
level surface and use a serrated knife to carefully cut off the dome and create
a flat top. Repeat with the remaining two cakes. Pick up one cake at a time and
brush any stray crumbs from the sides or top; this will help ensure that your
frosting is smooth and bump-free.
Set one of the cakes on a plate or cake
decorating turntable, then dollop on a good amount of frosting. Use an offset
spatula or even a butter knife to work the frosting from the middle of the cake
to the edges. Add the second cake layer. If you have time, you could let this
sit in the refrigerator, to ensure your cake is straight and strong.
Add a dollop of frosting to the second layer,
and again work it from the middle of the cake to the edges. Add the third layer
and repeat.
At this point you have three options: leave the
cake as-is for a “naked” look, add a small amount of frosting around
the sides for “semi-naked,” as I have shown, or fully frost that
sucker, because it’s spring and a pandemic and YOLO.
If you’re going with either the semi-naked or
fully dressed version, scoop up a tablespoon or so of frosting onto your
spatula or knife. I prefer to start at the bottom of my cake and move up, so I
spread the frosting on the seam between layers and turn the plate around
slowly, working the frosting around the cake, adding more to my knife as I go.
If you need detailed frosting instructions, I recommend this guide.
Once the cake is frosted, set it to chill in the
refrigerator for at least an hour. If it’s going to be several hours before you
cut and eat the cake, consider draping it loosely with plastic wrap. When it’s
chilled, cut with a serrated knife and enjoy.
Does anyone else feel like this month has been a year long?
It’s hard to believe how much has changed in such a short amount of time.
I don’t know about you, but all of those changes have had an
effect. I haven’t felt much like cooking the last few weeks, and even less like
writing (perfectly evidenced by the fact that it took me about four days to
summon even that sentence). I’m privileged to still be working, but between
work and stress, it feels like my creativity has run dry. I just don’t know
where to start or what to say.
On the days when life leaves me with little inspiration or
time to reflect, there are a few dishes that I fall back on, meals that I’ve
made so many times that they take almost no thought. This salad is one of
those. For years, it’s been my go-to “I’m out of meal planning ideas”
and the thing I crave when I return from deployments. Lately, it’s been lunch
or dinner on several occasions. It’s comfort food with little prep time, little
cook time, and a short ingredient list. It’s a suggestion of a meal for
difficult days.
A Salad Suggestion
for Difficult Days
Source: I Thought There Would Be Free Food
Serves: As many people as you want
Active time: 30 minutes
Note: For a one-person salad, I like three or four kale leaves and a good handful of arugula. It’s easily scaled to feed as many as needed.
Ingredients:
Kale (I prefer lacinto)
Arugula
Nuts (my favorite are pecans, but walnuts and
hazelnuts are also delicious)
Avocado
A wedge of lemon or lemon juice
Olive oil
Salt and pepper, to taste
Directions:
Rinse, de-rib (save those
stems!) and chop the kale. I like to chop it into fairly small bits, around
1/2-inch squared, because I am an inelegant salad eater and this relieves quite
a bit of my “is a leaf hanging out of my mouth” anxiety. Chop the
arugula, too, and toss both greens together in a bowl.
Heat
a skillet over medium heat. While it’s heating, coarsely chop the nuts, then
add them to the pan when it’s warm. Toast the nuts until they’re golden brown
and fragrant. This will likely take 5–10 minutes.
Meanwhile,
dress however much kale and arugula you feel like eating with some lemon juice.
Give it a good toss. Cut as much avocado as you’d like and set it aside.
Once
the nuts have finished toasting, add as many as you’d like onto your salad.
Drizzle with olive oil and toss everything together. Garnish with avocado and
salt and pepper, to taste.
Few foods are as synonymous with a place as pot roast is
with the Midwest. It was ubiquitous in the middle-class Christian milieu I grew
up in, so much that I would almost guarantee that on any given night, someone
within a five-mile radius of my family’s home was making it. Pot roast is
Midwest through and through, and for years I ate it without every giving it
much thought.
I was hardly alone in my lack of attention to Midwestern
food. It seems to be that most food writers don’t think about the Midwest either,
unless they’re making fun of it. The Midwest is to American cooking what
Britain is to European cuisine—a joke or something that sustains you, but
nothing to praise. Think about it: almost every other regional cuisine has had
its moment (see: the
South, the
Southwest, California,
and the
Pacific Northwest), but Midwest cooking seems to be as much of a culinary
flyover as the physical states themselves.
I think I know why this is. Midwest food is seen as
unexciting and unsexy; it’s the type of food that your grandmother made and few
people want to think about their grandmother as being sexy. It lacks the
Southwest’s spices or anything to do with avocados; the American culinary
narrative is definitive about what Midwestern food is not. What I want to do is
talk about what Midwest food is: ingenious,
low-intensity ways to turn economy into abundance. Take pot roast, for example.
The dish uses relatively inexpensive ingredients—a chuck-eye roast, root
vegetables—and requires a minimal amount of prep time but yields just-firm
vegetables and fork-tender meat. Call me crazy, call me unsophisticated, but I
think that’s something worth boasting about, and maybe even an example of a
cuisine whose moment is overdue.
1 or 2 boneless chuck-eye roasts, totaling 3
1/2–4 pounds
Kitchen twine (optional)
Vegetable oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 small carrot, chopped
1 stick of celery, chopped
2 medium garlic cloves, minced
2 teaspoons sugar
1 cup low-sodium chicken broth
1 cup low-sodium beef broth
Salt and black pepper, to taste
1/2–1 cup water
1 1/2 pounds red potatoes, scrubbed and cut in
half if larger than 1 1/2-inchs in diameter
1 1/2 pounds carrots and/or parsnips, scrubbed
and cut into sticks
1/4 cup dry red wine
1 sprig fresh rosemary
Directions:
Put an oven rack in the middle of your oven,
then preheat it to 300°F.
While the oven is warming up, take a look at
your meat. If there are clear chunks of fat running through it—not marbling,
which is good, but big veins of it—I like to cut out the majority of the fat.
If you can do this while keeping the roast in one piece, do that;
alternatively, you can cut the roast into smaller pieces as you trim it. The
final product won’t present as nicely, if you’re planning to carve it at the
table, but it will still be delicious.
If desired, use the twine to tie your roast into
a neat package. This isn’t necessary, but it will keep the roast from falling
apart while it cooks.
Set a Dutch oven over medium-high heat. When
it’s hot, add enough oil to lightly coat the bottom. Add the roast and sear on
each side until its nicely browned. You may need to do this in batches, if you
cut your roast into pieces or have more than one.
Pro tip:
Adjust the heat as necessary so that the oil doesn’t get too hot and set off
your smoke alarm. I speak from personal experience here people.
Once the roast is browned, remove it to a plate
and set aside. Reduce the heat under the Dutch oven and add a splash more veg
oil, if needed, before tossing in the onion, carrot, and celery. Cook, stirring
and scraping up any bits of fond from the bottom of the pot, until the onion is
turning translucent and the vegetables have softened a bit.
Add the garlic and sugar and sauté for 30
seconds or so. Pour in the broths and stir, scraping up any additional bits of
beef that might be stuck to the pot. Season the liquid with salt and pepper to
taste.
Put the roast back in and add as much water as
needed for the liquid to come halfway up the roast (I only needed about 1/2
cup). Bring everything to a simmer, then cover the pot with the lid and put the
whole thing in the oven.
Cook the roast, turning it every 30–60 minutes,
until a knife inserted into the meat meets little resistance, about 3 1/2–4
hours. Remove the roast from the oven and take off the lid. If you’re picky
about this type of thing, this is an excellent time to strain out the
vegetables that were flavoring the cooking liquid. I quite like leaving them
in, so I just go ahead and…
Add the vegetables. Depending on how full your
pot is, you may need to take the meat out or just move it from side-to-side
while you do so.
Once you’ve added the veg, put the meat back in,
if you took it out, pour in the wine, add the sprig of rosemary, and carefully
taste the broth to see whether it has enough salt and pepper. Adjust if
necessary.
Recover the pot and return it to the oven. Cook
for another 30 minutes or so, until the vegetables are tender but not mushy.
Remove the roast from the oven. You can dish up
straight from the pot, or if you’re feeling fancy, you can put the roast on a
cutting board and tent it with foil for a few minutes. Scoop out the vegetables
and put them in a serving bowl, ladling a little extra cooking liquid over
them. Carve the meat—which really should be more along the lines of pulling it
apart with two forks—and put it in another serving dish, again ladling a little
of the stock over them, before serving.
Note:
Pot roast makes excellent leftovers. If you have extra meat, I highly suggest
using it as a base in tacos or enchiladas.
I’ve been thinking about failing a lot lately, probably
because it feels like I’ve had a higher-than-average spat of kitchen flops.
There was the mushroom-leek soup with parsley dumplings the approximate weight
of a collapsing star, the sourdough bread that didn’t rise, and the
chocolate-cinnamon-pecan tart that led to an impromptu oven cleaning. Suffice
it to say, the past few weeks of cooking have not been kind to me.
I don’t mind a kitchen failure or two; it’s just part of recipe
development and growing as a cook. What I do mind is a failure that begets no
lesson, so after mishap number three I spent some time considering what had gone
wrong. Sure, there were issues specific to each dish, but there was one that
was common to them all: I wasn’t really there.
Obviously I was in my kitchen physically, but mentally I was a million miles away during each of those fiascos, chewing over what had happened at work or rushing through cooking so I could get on with something else. My experience reminded me of everything that Ann Patchett said in this lovely little essay, which with hubris I will boil down to one sentence: if you want to do a task well, just do that task. While cooking or baking, do not start a serious conversation with your partner about how their day was; do not also open your mail; do not throw in a load of laundry, or even think about doing so. For however long it takes to cook the thing you’re cooking, just do that.
I am a person who believes that every minute of the day should be productive so calmly waiting for the onions to turn translucent over medium heat is a bit torturous because shouldn’t I just check my work email one more time? But to avoid future food failures, I made myself take a step back. I committed to spend 20 minutes doing only one thing, cooking, and started over with a simple recipe. I measured out all of my ingredients before I started, just as you’re supposed to do and I often skip over, and paid attention. I was rewarded with a not-flop—in fact a resounding success—to sustain me on the busy days when it seems that it will be impossible to do just one thing.
Peanut Butter-Date
Energy Bites
Source: I Thought There Would Be Free Food
Makes ~20 bites
Total time: ~20 minutes
Ingredients:
3/4 cup old-fashioned oats
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2–1 teaspoon salt, to taste
10 ounces dried, pitted dates
1/2 cup peanut butter (I used natural, but other
varieties should work as well)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Directions:
Halve the dates, then set them aside.
Put the oats, cinnamon, and salt in the bowl of a food processor and process until the oats are finely ground into uniform nubs.
Add the dates, peanut butter, and vanilla extract and process until a cohesive mixture forms. You might need to stop and scrap down the sides of the food processor once or twice.
Grab a small handful of the mixture and tightly compress then roll into a ball. You may need to compress the mixture once or twice before rolling, or it will crumble a bit; you should end up a Ping Pong-sized ball. Repeat as needed.
Place the finished bites into a seal-able container and let them firm up in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes before enjoying.
I spent a lot of time in Nairobi for my previous job—nearly
a year, all told. It was an easy place to be, vibrant and beautiful, with
burgeoning food and design scenes, and I enjoyed my time there. But spend that
much time away from home and you’re bound to suffer some homesickness, no
matter how much you come to enjoy ugali
or kachumbari.
Homesickness is a strange thing. Sometimes it’s as simple as
missing a person or a place, and there were many days when I missed my partner
and our cozy routines. Other days, however, my homesickness took different
turns; I would find myself yearning to wear a particular
sweatshirt, or wishing I could go for a run along my favorite route. And sometimes
my homesickness got downright peculiar, and I found myself craving Mexican
food. At home, I might have had Mexican a few times a month, but in Nairobi, it
was all I wanted to eat. Somehow it was a symbol of home, something unattainable
in a place where I could get most any other type of cuisine or creature comfort.
Common sense and rationality didn’t diminish the craving, so when a taco stand opened in my Nairobi
neighborhood, I found myself there constantly, chomping down on black bean or
chicken tacos to assuage my homesickness for the people and things I missed
most.
Of the many tacos I ate in Nairobi, the one I loved the most
was filled with squash and kale, topped with a lemony cashew crema. It’s the
one that I plotted to make again when I returned home. Now that I’m back, it’s
gone from being a cure for homesickness to a connection to a place I grew to
love.
Butternut Squash &
Kale Tacos With Cashew Crema
Source: I Thought There Would Be Free Food
Makes: At least 12 tacos
Total Time: ~45 minutes
Ingredients:
1 cup raw cashews
~2 pounds butternut squash, weighed before
peeling and seeding
Olive oil
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 teaspoons chili powder
Salt, to taste
1 bunch kale
Juice of 1 lemon
Tortillas, for serving
Directions:
Put the cashews in a small bowl, glass or metal,
and pour in just enough boiling water to cover the cashews. Set the bowl aside.
Prepare the kale: de-rib and chop it into thin
ribbons 1–2 inches long (save those ribs for Kale Stem
Pesto!). Put the kale into a bowl and toss with a drizzle of olive oil and
sprinkle with salt, to taste.
Peel and seed the squash, then slice into
1/2-inch cubes. Place in a large bowl and toss with a few glugs of olive oil,
cumin powder, chili powder, and salt. Spread onto a large, greased cookie
sheet, then pop into the oven and broil on low for about 10 minutes.
While the squash is broiling, make the cashew
crema. Drain out half of the soaking water and put the cashews and remaining
water into a blender or food processor with 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and
salt to taste. Blend until smooth, adding additional water or lemon juice as needed
to create a creamy sauce. Set aside.
Increase the broiler heat to high and broil the
squash for an additional 3–5 minutes, or until it begins to caramelize.
Remove the cookie sheet from the oven, spread the
kale on top of the squash and return the sheet to the oven to broil on high for
2–3 minutes. Watch it carefully to ensure the kale browns and doesn’t char.
Once it has browned, remove the sheet from the oven and stir the veggies to
combine. Enjoy the squash–kale mixture in tortillas with the cashew crema.
I started a new job last Monday, and it’s changed
everything. All the comfortable rhythms I’d established during my fall sabbatical
were obliterated the second my alarm clock went off that first morning. I’m
negotiating a lot of change, and even when changes are positive, they still
require some adjustments. The biggest change, of course, is time—where I used
to have hours free for kitchen experiments, I suddenly need to squeeze my
cooking into little windows of time throughout the week. I’m making it work because
I have to, because baking and cooking are how I process the world (Exhibit A, baking
bread for bravery. Exhibit B, making
cookies while waiting). I might look like I’m separating eggs for a
custard, but chances are good that some little corner of my mind is also
puzzling over a challenge and how I want to respond to it. For me, busy hands
lend themselves to a calm mind and give me a chance to think things through.
Rather than rushing to make this ice cream in a single day,
I figured out how to adjust it to my new schedule. I put the ice cream bowl in
the freezer and make the custard one evening; churn and layer the ice cream the
following day. It’s a different pace than the one I’d developed, but no less a
good one. And somewhere along the way, as I whisk the custard or crumble the
cookies, I find that I’m thinking less about change, and more appreciating the
time in the kitchen that I do have. From a distance, it might almost look like
I were unflappable.
Lemon Bar Ice Cream
Source: I Thought There Would Be Free Food
Makes ~2 quarts
Active time: ~1 hour; total time: at least 6 hours, the
majority of which is chilling
Note: If making
ice cream from scratch is too difficult or time-consuming, you can use
store-bought ice cream instead, and significantly cut down on the total time. Let
1–1 1/2 quarts of store-bought vanilla ice cream (my favorite is Breyer’s
Natural Vanilla) soften on your counter while you crush the cookies and prepare
the lemon curd, then mix in the lemon zest and proceed with layering as
directed below.
7 1/4 ounces shortbread cookies; I used 1 bag of
Pepperidge Farm Chessmen
10 ounces lemon curd
Juice of 2 lemons
Directions:
The day before you plan to make the ice cream, put
the bowl in the freezer.
The next day, pour the cream and milk into a
heavy-bottomed pot and bring the mixture to a boil over medium heat. Meanwhile,
whisk together the egg yolks, sugar, and a pinch of salt in a medium bowl.
When the cream and milk are at a boil, turn off
the heat and whisk one-third of the mixture into the egg yolks, whisking
vigorously as you do so. Slowly add the rest of the cream and milk to the
yolks, whisking all the way.
Pour the mixture back into your saucepan and
heat over medium. Keep stirring, or you could end up with little curds in your
custard, and no one wants that.
There are two ways to test whether your custard
is done. Dip a spoon or spatula into it and then run your finger through the
custard; your finger should leave a clear trail with no custard running into
the track. Alternatively, take your custard’s temperature: it should be between
170–180°F.
Remove
the custard from the heat and pour it into a clean bowl. Let it cool for
several minutes before stirring in the vanilla. Cover the custard by pressing a
piece of plastic wrap directly onto its surface and refrigerate until cold. The
custard will be fine in the refrigerator for a day or two, if you want to
spread out the work load.
Once
the ice cream bowl and custard are cold, churn the custard per your machine’s
directions. My custard took ~20 minutes to reach peak height and frostiness.
Stir in the lemon zest.
While
the custard is churning, crush your shortbread into bite-sized chunks. You’ll
want a mix of smaller and larger pieces.
Spoon the lemon curd into a small bowl. Give it
a taste—how sweet is it? You’ll want it to be quite tart so that the flavor
will carry through the richness of the ice cream, as well as thin enough to
spread. Heat the lemon curd gently in the microwave, at short bursts on low
speed, or in a double boiler.
Once it’s warm, stir in lemon juice to taste. I
used the juice of two lemons, but you may want more or less depending on how
much tartness you enjoy.
Spread one-quarter of your ice cream into a
large, freezer-proof container (I used a two-quart Tupperware). Top with
one-third of the cookie pieces, then one-third of the lemon curd. Repeat as required,
ending with a layer of ice cream. Cover the container and return to the freezer
to firm up before enjoying.
In my personal vegetable hierarchy, cabbage falls squarely
in the “meh” category. I don’t dislike it, but I don’t crave it,
either. Mostly I forget about cabbage until the late fall, when they’re some of
the only local produce left in the markets and I’m again seduced by their
glossy leaves—particularly the siren song of the anthocyanin-rich red cabbage.
Last fall was no exception to my seduction by cabbages. I
bought a cabbage for the express purpose of making the cabbage and mushroom handpies
from Joshua McFadden’s Six Seasons, which is
an excellent book that you should look at immediately. We demolished the pies in
short order, astounded by how well the cabbage’s earthy notes played against a
buttery pie crust. (Truly, what won’t pie crust improve?)
Despite proper prior planning, I ended up with extra filling.
Coupled with an errant CSA order that left me with a surfeit of bacon, I
figured the best thing to do would be sauté the bacon, add it to the leftover
veg filling, and bake the whole mess into a quiche. My experiment turned out to
be a use-up-the-random-ingredients-in-the-refrigerator match made in heaven,
good enough to make on purpose for my family’s Christmas Eve brunch, where it
was promptly devoured.
Bacon, Cabbage, and
Mushroom Quiche
Source: I Thought There Would Be Free Food
Makes 1 9-inch quiche, serving 6–8 people
Active time: ~1 hour; total time: ~a little less than 2
hours
Note: You can
split up the time it takes to make this dish by preparing the pie crust and filling
up to two days ahead of time. Wrap the pie crust well and keep in the refrigerator
until you’re ready to use it. Sauté the bacon and vegetables and store separately
until ready to use, then simply combine with the eggs and cream.
Pie Crust Ingredients:
(Optional; feel free to substitute one pre-made, refrigerated pie crust)
1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 stick butter (leave it in the fridge until
you’re ready to use it)
3–4 tablespoons ice water
Bacon, Cabbage, and Mushroom Filling Ingredients:
1/2 pound mushrooms, any variety
1 medium onion
1/2 pound cabbage, any variety
1/2 pound bacon (easily omitted to make this
quiche vegetarian)
Salt and pepper, to taste
6 eggs
1/4 cup cream
Directions:
Make the crust: Do your future self a favor by laying a sheet of plastic wrap on your counter and making sure you have a large bowl handy.
Add the flour and salt to the bowl of a food processor and pulse to combine.
Take the butter from the fridge and chop it into 1/2-inch cubes. Scatter the butter into the flour mixture and pulse until the butter is coarsely ground. Add 3 tablespoons of ice water and pulse 2–3 times, then dump the contents into a large bowl. Gently press a bit of the dough together; if it holds, proceed to the next step. If it does not, add additional water as necessary.
Gather the dough into a loose clump and then transfer it to the plastic wrap. Use the corners of the plastic wrap to form the dough into a disc about 2 inches tall. Make sure the dough is completely covered in plastic, then transfer to your refrigerator to chill for at least 1 hour, or up to 2 days.
Make the filling: Wash the mushrooms and then set them in a colander to drain. Meanwhile, dice the onion, then set it aside. Core the cabbage any remove any rubbery outer leaves, then finely slice and finally chop into pieces approximately 1-inch long; set the cabbage aside, too. Trim the tough ends off of the mushrooms—no need to discard the stems entirely—then thinly slice the mushrooms and, you guessed it, set them aside.
I like to trim some of the excess fat from my bacon before cooking it; feel free to join me in doing so, or just plan to drain more fat from the skillet after the bacon cooks. Choose your own adventure, and then chop the bacon into 1/2-inch pieces.
It’s time to cook! Warm a bit of oil in a large skillet set over medium-high heat. Once the oil and skillet are hot, add the bacon and sauté it until browned and crisp. Use a slotted spoon to transfer it to a paper towel-lined plate.
Pour off any excess bacon grease, leaving just enough to coat the bottom of the pan. Return the skillet to medium-high heat; once it’s up to temperature, add the mushrooms and sauté. Most varieties of mushrooms release quite a lot of water, and you want to cook most of this off.
Once much of the water has evaporated and the mushrooms are browning, reduce the heat to medium, then add the onions and sauté them until they begin to turn translucent. Add the cabbage and cook until it has softened and the vegetable mixture is quite dry—this will help prevent your quiche from being weepy. Season your veggie medley with salt and pepper to taste, then remove the skillet from the heat.
Position a rack in the bottom third of your oven, then preheat it to 400°F. Take your pie crust out of the refrigerator.
In a large bowl, beat together the eggs and cream. Add the vegetable mixture and bacon, and stir to distribute the ingredients evenly. Set the bowl aside.
Prepare a place to roll out your pie crust, dusting the surface with a bit of flour and setting out a rolling pin, sharp knife, and 9-inch pie plate. I like to bake my pies and quiches on a parchment-lined baking sheet, just in case there are any eruptions or overflows, and this would be a good time to get that ready, too.
When the crust is roll-able, do so, working from the middle of the dough out. It’s okay to use a fair amount of flour to make sure the crust doesn’t stick, just be sure to dust it off before you fit it to the pie plate. Once the crust is about half rolled out, try to gently pick it up, dust your work surface with flour again, flip the crust over, dust it again with flour, and continue rolling.
Transfer the crust to a 9-inch pie plate and trim away any extra dough before crimping or fluting or otherwise finishing the crust.
Pour the egg-vegetable mixture into the prepared crust and then carefully transfer the pie plate to the oven. I recommend baking the quiche on a rack set in the bottom third of your oven, which helps cook the bottom of the pie crust, but make sure that your oven doesn’t run hot or you might end up with a more-browned-than-desired crust. If your oven does run warm, just reduce the heat by 10 degrees or so.
Bake the quiche for ~40–45 minutes, or until the quiche is lightly browned, slightly puffed, and doesn’t Jell-O jiggle when you give it a shake. Remove from the oven and let it cool slightly before digging in.
Note: It’s totally unorthodox, but this quiche is even more delicious with a smear of Dijon or stone ground mustard on top.
If you celebrate any of the many holidays observed this month, or observe people who do, you’ve probably noticed how busy many of them appear. The holiday season seems to be a whirl of endless party going, food making and eating, and shopping.
It is a time for doing, and in some respects I’ve been no exception to that rule, dashing about buying presents and writing cards and preparing our flat to be shut up while we travel. And yet, amidst all this activity, I also find myself in a season of waiting. There is a possibility out there, and I am waiting for it to come to fruition, or not. I am waiting for a yes or a no, and I expect it every minute.
I’m not particularly good at waiting. If ever there was an action-oriented person, it is me; I will push tirelessly and unceasingly, from every conceivable angle, to try to bring about a desired event before I will sit down and wait for the outcome. Given that, it’s almost torturous for me to find myself in a situation that I cannot influence, where there is no action for me to take. There is nothing I can do to bring about the end of my waiting, so I’ve been trying to distract myself, arranging coffee dates with friends and running errands. Still, I’m left with more time than I know what to do with. I need something to occupy my hands, something just technical enough to also occupy my brain, and so I bake. I set the butter out to soften while I go for a run, trying to burn off nervous energy. I put on Christmas carols as I measure and mix the ingredients, humming along as I roll and cut and bake and decorate. For me, the minutes slide by more easily in the kitchen. Baking is a form of meditation, the end product a manifestation of my active waiting.
These cookies are just demanding enough to take your attention off whatever you might be waiting for and demand you stay firmly rooted in the present. The tahini makes them rich, almost shortbready, and leaves just a touch of bitterness that the sweet white chocolate-rose ganache tempers. Bitter and sweet: a perfect representation of waiting during the holiday season.
Tahini Sugar Cookies With White Chocolate-Rose Ganache
Sources: Tahini sugar cookies inspired by Eat Cho Food; white chocolate-rose ganache from Honey & Co
Makes ~5 dozen cookies of various sizes
Total time: ~2 hours
Tahini Sugar Cookie Ingredients:
1 cup butter (2 sticks), softened
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup tahini
White Chocolate-Rose Ganache Ingredients:
9 ounces white chocolate
3 1/2 ounces heavy cream
2–3 teaspoons rose water extract
Dried rose petals for decoration (optional)
Directions:
Make the cookies: Preheat your oven to 350°F. If you’re a think-in-advance type, set the butter out several hours before you plan to bake. If you’re more of an impulse baker, zap the butter in the microwave in 10–15 second bursts at 50% power until just softened. While the butter is softening, mix the dry ingredients together in a medium bowl and then set it aside.
Put the butter in a large bowl or standmixer and add the sugar. Using an electric hand mixer or standmixer, cream the mixture until it is light and fluffy, about 3–5 minutes. Add the egg and vanilla, beating to incorporate, and then add the tahini. Beat again to combine.
Add the dry ingredients in three additions, beating well to incorporate and ensuring no streaks or dry pockets remain at the bottom of the bowl.
Once your dough is ready, use your hands to compress it into three or four large balls. Working with one ball of dough at a time, roll the dough out on a well-floured surface to ~1/4 inch thickness. Use your cookie cutters of choice to cut out a variety of shapes and sizes.
Note: The amount of tahini in this recipe gives the cookies excellent flavor and texture, but also makes the dough a bit crumbly, so be patient and go slowly as you roll it out. You can reserve scraps to re-roll, but don’t do this too many times, or the additional flour will change the texture of the dough. It’ll still be delicious, but not quite as crumbly delicious.
Place the cookies on a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet and bake the cookies for ~10 minutes, rotating the sheets from side-to-side and top-to-bottom at the halfway point.
Take your cookies out of the oven when they’re set and just beginning to bronze. Let them sit for 2 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool.
Make the ganache: While the cookies bake and cool, combine the white chocolate and cream in the top of a double boiler, then set on top and bring the water to a simmer. Warm the chocolate/cream mixture until the white chocolate melts, stirring to evenly distribute the heat and ensure the chocolate melts.
Once your mixture is melted and homogeneous, remove from heat and stir in the rose water extract. Start with two teaspoons, and taste; feel free to add more as desired (I preferred the higher amount).
Decorate the cookies: Use a small spoon to dish up some of the ganache and spread it on top of the cookies, then scatter dried rose petals across them to decorate. Let the ganache dry completely, which may take several hours, before stacking, packing, or eating the cookies.
I am an inveterate recipe tinkerer, unable to leave well
enough alone. No matter how many times or how fervently I insist that I’ll make
a recipe exactly the way that it was written—at least the first time through—I
am incapable of doing so. I’m forever adding a little more salt or spice,
reducing the oil just a smidge, or attempting to streamline a few steps.
There’s hubris in being a recipe tinkerer, which came home
to me a few weeks ago, when I first made this persimmon quick bread. The
original recipe is by James Beard, who
is kind of a BFD—after all, they named one of the most prestigious food awards
in America after him, and he’s widely regarded as a pivotal figure in American culinary
history. He wrote a few books, appeared on a TV show or two, and sometimes
vacationed with Julia Child, if that tells you anything. In short, Beard was a
guy who knew his stuff, food-wise, and his recipes are well thought-out. Still,
I found myself from changing this recipe to my liking.
At first blush, fiddling with a Beard recipe seems crazy:
who am I to do such a thing? I have no formal culinary training and am barely
two months into this blogging business; why do I suppose that I can make
something better than James Beard? But at second look, this is precisely what I
should be doing, and what I expect you to do as well—to make something
different, hopefully better, perhaps worse, but nevertheless according to your
own likes and dislikes. This is, after all, how innovation happens, and it’s
how we grow as cooks and make food that we like to eat. We are curious. We try,
we taste, we try again. And if it makes you feel any better, Beard himself is
no stranger to tinkering; David Lebovitz points
out that Beard gives an “inexact” amount of sugar in this recipe, an unusual
act that allows the baker to bake according to their preference. Whether he
states it explicitly or not, Beard is intrinsically aware that we all cook to
our own liking, and that’s a good thing.
Beard’s recipe was far too sweet for me, so I reduced the
sugar by half and replaced some of the all-purpose flour with whole wheat to
make this less of a dessert and more of an anytime treat. I substituted ground
allspice, which I always have on hand, for ground mace, which I generally don’t
(you could also try nutmeg or ginger), and swapped the bourbon for rum, since I
didn’t want to use the good stuff for bread. If you disagree with any of these
changes, I think it goes without saying that you’re welcome to adjust them.
Persimmon Quick Bread
Adapted from James Beard’s Beard on Bread
Makes one 9″ x 5″ or 8 1/2″ x 4 1/2″ loaf
Active time: ~25 minutes; total time ~85 minutes
Note: There are
many different varieties of persimmons, but the two I see most commonly are
Fuyu and Hachiya. Fuyu are non-astringent and can be used when relatively firm,
although I recommend letting them get very ripe for this recipe. Hachiya taste
unpleasantly astringent unless they are very ripe.
Ingredients:
1 cup walnuts (optional)
2 very ripe persimmons
1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whole-wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1–2 teaspoons ground allspice (I prefer the
higher amount)
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup lightly packed brown sugar (light or
dark)
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/3 cup bourbon, rum, or milk, if you prefer an
alcohol-free version
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter and flour or otherwise grease a 9 x
5″ or 8 1/2 x 4 1/2″ loaf pan; set aside.
If using the walnuts: Heat a medium skillet over
medium heat. While it’s heating, coarsely chop the walnuts, then add them to
the pan when it’s warm and toast until they’re golden brown and fragrant. This
will likely take 5–10 minutes. Transfer the nuts from the skillet to a plate
and let them cool slightly.
While
the nuts are toasting, melt butter on the stove or in a microwave; I do it in
the microwave for about 2 minutes on 30% power. Set the melted butter aside.
Bisect the persimmons along their equators and
scoop their pulp into a small bowl. Discard the peels, then mash the puree with
a fork until you have a mix of smooth and a few lumps; it needn’t be uniform.
Combine dry ingredients in a mixing bowl and stir
with a fork to combine, mashing any brown sugar lumps as necessary. Add the
persimmons, butter, eggs, and liquor or milk, and stir to combine.
Pour batter into prepared loaf pan and bake for
~60 minutes, perhaps a little less for a smaller loaf pan, or until the loaf is
beautifully burnished and a cake tester inserted into the middle of the loaf
emerges with just a few crumbs hanging. Remove your loaf from the tin and allow
it to cool on a rack.
This bread is excellent warm, with butter;
toasted, with a drizzle of honey; and pretty much any other way you care to
have it—I certainly won’t tell you what to do.
