Mushroom, Lentil, and Chestnut Ragù

A ragu is meant to be a little bit sauce-like, but mine was more solid. This is my version of the Myra Kornfeld recipe in my favorite cookbook, the Voluptuous Vegan. I bought my copy about 10 years ago and have slowly worked my way through ever since, triumph by delectable triumph. Allow yourself a generous 3 to 4 hours. It tastes like Thanksgiving! All the picky eaters in my family loved it. Serves 8 hearty eaters alongside the broccoli rabe polenta--which you could make a few days before because it keeps well--of the previous post.


1 Cup whole roasted chestnuts from a jar
1 1/2 Cups French lentils (they keep their shape, unlike some lentils I could mention!)
cheesecloth
7-8 sprigs fresh rosemary
7-8 sprigs fresh thyme
2 bay leaves
12 ounces fresh shiitake mushrooms
2 large portabello mushrooms
6 Tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
4 Tablespoons shoyu or gluten-free soy sauce
2 onions, diced (2 Cups)
4 garlic cloves, minced
4 celery stalks, cut into large pieces on the diagonal
salt and freshly ground black pepper
juice of 1 large lemon

1. Cover lentils with 8 Cups water in a pot. Add a bouquet garni (tied in cheesecloth) of 6 sprigs rosemary, 6 sprigs thyme, and 2 bay leaves. Bring to a boil, then simmer, partially covered, about 30 minutes or until lentils are soft. Drain liquid, remove bouquet garni, and set aside.
2. Preheat oven to  375 degrees. Clean mushrooms. Remove stems. Cut the mushrooms into large chunks. Toss in a bowl with 4 Tablespoons olive oil and all of the soy sauce. Spread in a shallow baking pan and roast 30 minutes. Set aside.
3. In a very large saucepan, heat 2 Tablespoons olive oil. Add onions, garlic, and celery and saute about 10 minutes until softened. Salt it to taste.
4. Add the lentils to the onion mixture. Salt to taste. Add the mushrooms. Add the chestnuts, breaking them up by hand. Add about 1 Cup water. Simmer to marry the flavors and add any salt or pepper to taste. Turn off the heat.
5. Mince a teaspoon of rosemary, one teaspoon of thyme, and add it to the mixture along with the lemon juice. Serve immediately while wearing well-polished boots. 

Three Minute Polenta

For Snowed-In Blizzard Day, I made an extremely fancy dish from my favorite cookbook, The Voluptuous Vegan by Myra Kornfeld.  The meal included a carbohydrate base of baked polenta triangles with broccoli rabe. Kornfeld suggested reducing the usually burdensome cooking time by mixing the stone-ground polenta with quick-cooking corn grits. She wrote that it should take 15 to 20 minutes of gentle bubbling for the dish to thicken into genuine polenta. For some reason, when I stirred 1 Cup each of the polenta and grits into the 6 cups of salted and oiled boiling water, they instantly became polenta. It took me a minute or two of panicked water-adding before I realized it had happened.

But Sarah, you ask skeptically, was this "instant" polenta anything like the real deal? Yes, dear reader. Exactly like. I stirred in the blanched and chopped broccoli rabe, let the polenta cool and harden, had my handy assistant carve it into triangles, brushed it with oil, and baked it for 40 minutes at 375 degrees into perfectly delicious food. Since I don't know what I did, I'd be curious to hear if anyone replicates this "method."

Tortilla Adventure and Huevos Americanos

You have my deepest apologies for the ridiculously long absence. Unfortunately for my goofy cooking adventures, my career seems to be taking off, which means too much work, writing work. That wouldn't be such a problem if Goofy Toddler weren't also taking off, all the time, in every direction at rocket ship speed, and then keeping me awake half the night screaming, "nurse the OTHER boob! nurse the OTHER boob!"  How many times do I need to explain there are only two? You might perceive why my output has suffered.

Anyway, on to my most recent tortilla adventures! I have discovered that I live quite close to a tortilleria y panaderia (a tortilla and bread bakery).  The first time I waltzed in, I made a brief tour of the bakery, shelves overflowing with breads and pastries topped with candy-colored frosting. I didn't see any tortillas, though. I sashayed up to the counter and asked the woman behind it, Donde esta los tortillas? (I used my favorite sixth-grade Spanish sentence, Donde esta el banyo? then hacked in "tortillas," and guessed the article los was plural because of Los Angeles.)  The woman replied to me, in what I assumed was Spanish, one of those pesky phrases not covered in sixth grade. I looked at her blankly and gestured around the store, repeating, "Where are the tortillas?" The woman looked at me, resignation in her weary gaze, then went over to an unmarked cooler next to the tortilla-making-machine and took out some tortillas. She weighed them and told me how much they cost. I said, Muchas gracias, and then she moved on to a literate customer. 

The tortillas were still warm!  Joy coursed through my veins. I gave some to Goofy Toddler, who chewed one up and asked for another. After a week or so, the tortillas had vanished into numerous digestive systems. I returned to the tortilleria, armed with the knowledge of where the tortillas are.

I walked up to the counter and said to a (different) woman behind it, "Tortillas, por favor." With my hand I indicated how large the stack of tortillas should be. I felt quite clever at my language work-around. The woman, bored, replied in English, "Two pounds?"  I flushed. "Yes," I muttered. "Two pounds." I had no idea how high a stack of tortillas two pounds makes. Two pounds of tortillas turn out to be only so high, and they last most of a week at our house. 

I invented this recipe last week using our fresh tortilleria tortillas. George really loves this recipe, but I have to admit it's kind of a trailer park/Tex-Mex mash-up.  Don't serve it to your rich relations, is all I'm saying.

Huevos Americanos

Serves 2 to 4 people

You will need:

 a medium small fry pan with a lid

a slotted spoon

4 eggs

1 15 ounce can Old El Paso enchilada verde sauce, mild or medium

OR enchilada/ salsa of your choice

4 medium-size corn tortillas

4 slices American cheese

1. Pour can of enchilada sauce into fry pan. Heat gently until bubbling.
2. Carefully crack 4 eggs into the bubbling sauce, keeping them separate from each other. Cover.
3. Meanwhile, heat up tortillas in a toaster oven or on a dry fry pan, melting one slice of cheese on each tortilla,
4. When the egg yolks have filmed over and no longer jiggle, use a slotted spoon to scoop out each egg and place it on a single cheesed-up tortilla. Serve immediately with a friendly jiggle of your own.

Spring Sabzi, Persian Greens with Black-eyed Peas

In Farsi, the word "sabzi" means green and can refer to herbs or vegetables.  This version of Sabzi is hardly the last word on the matter and—although easy and quite delicious—is a far cry from the top-of-the-line meals I enjoyed at the home of my Persian friend Roshanak. Roshanak loves to cook together several kinds of greens and herbs into a dense stew, or ash (AWSH). Then her family spoons it over rice and mixes this delicious concoction with homemade yogurt. Although I haven't visited Roshanak in years, this Sabzi's combination of cooked greens, good creamy yogurt, and rice reminds me strongly of all the amazing meals she so graciously served me. The black-eyed peas are the real surprise here: their light freshness adds to the feeling of Spring provided by the mixture of leeks, parsley, spinach, and lemon juice.  And the unexpected sprinkling of cinnamon works magic, although I have no idea why it belongs in this dish!

I think I got a version of this recipe from Vegetarian Times, but I'm not sure.

Serve this dish with a side of refreshing tropical fruit like pineapple or mango, spritzed with lime juice.

Spring Sabzi

about 1 Tablespoon olive oil
2 leeks, white and light green parts only, chopped and washed in several changes of water
12 to 16 ounces fresh spinach
1/4 Cup fresh parsley, chopped
4 scallions (white and light green parts), sliced
2 16-ounce cans black-eyed peas, rinsed
3 Tablespoons fresh lemon juices
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
several gratings of fresh nutmeg

1. In an extra-large skillet or soup pot, heat oil. Add leeks and cook until soft, roughly eight minutes.
2. Add spinach, parsley, scallions, and 1/4 Cup water. Cook until spinach wilts.
3. Stir in the black-eyed peas, lemon juice, cinnamon and nutmeg. Heat 5 minutes until through. 

Serve over rice and offer people good quality yogurt or wedges of lemon.

Mexican Vegetarian: Breakfast of Tortillas, Beans, Rice, and Eggs or Avocado

My neighbor Alicia from Mexico kindly invited me over for breakfast twice this week. It turns out that whenever she has time to make breakfast, it's naturally vegetarian (but not vegan). Alicia assured me that if I went to a Mexican restaurant for breakfast, they would always serve the same thing that she makes herself: eggs, beans, and rice with salsa spooned generously over everything and a pile of crispy tortillas for scooping. This sort of breakfast can keep you going all day, she told me, unlike cereal or pancakes. In my experience, that's true. If you don't like to eat eggs, slices of fresh avocado make a perfect—and, Alicia would agree—authentically Mexican substitute.

Alicia's Tortillas:
Alicia uses either corn (gluten-free) or flour tortillas and leaves them on the fry pan until they get crispy and bumpily shaped. Then she uses them to scoop the beans, eggs, or rice into her mouth. No forks necessary! she told me happily.

Alicia's Beans:
Alicia cooks dry pinto beans in water with salt. First she covers them with water in the morning. Then when she returns in the afternoon she boils them until soft. She drains all but a little water, cooks them in a little oil in a fry pan and smashes them with a hand-held potato masher. Sometimes she adds a little bit of dried Mexican oregano. At serving time she sometimes tops the reheated beans with grated queso fresco, a soft white Mexican cheese.

Alicia's Rice:
First toast the dry rice toasted with a little oil,  then boil it until soft in water and a bit of bouillon or stock. Add corn kernels at the end.

Alicia's Salsa:
Cook 10 or more peeled and rinsed tomatillos in boiling water until they change color and soften. Drain. Puree them with a small handful of dried chilies de arbol (tiny red chilies) and a touch of salt. You can soak the chilies in water for an hour to soften them, first, if it makes them easier to puree. Alicia's mother taught her to make salsa this way. It can be extraordinarily spicy and flavorful.

Alicia's Eggs:
She sautées together diced mushrooms, tomatoes, and white onion, and possibly a little jalapeño pepper. Then she adds some beaten eggs and makes either scrambled eggs or an omelette.


It seems like a lot of work for breakfast, but the truth is that the beans, rice, and salsa are usually left over from dinner the night before, and the tortillas are store-bought. Alicia can serve a steaming hot breakfast in about 15 minutes.

Mexican Vegetarian (also Gluten-Free): Enchiladas, Tamales, Empanadas, Chile Rellenos

I hope the title didn't mislead you; I don't have recipes for the above foods. What I do have is a neighbor, Laura, from Mexico who barely speaks any English and who cooks to order from her home. Her food is quite inexpensive so I've been experimenting almost weekly with vegetarian requests from her (and learning Spanish food words). This post will report on some vegetarian possibilities for Mexican-style home cooking in the States, and you can use the post to create your own recipes.

The Goofy Family has the double limitation that we are eating gluten-free this month for medical reasons. We aren't concerned about the minute level of gluten contamination that causes problems for people with celiac disease, which is why we can eat gluten-free from my neighbor. Otherwise, with my language abilities that would be out of the question.

Spinach Enchiladas

Spinach is espinacas in Spanish and the Mexican people in my neighborhood exhibit a lot of familiarity with it, even though my Mexican-American neighbor pretty much never cooks with it or with any dark leafy green. I brought Laura an enormous bag of fresh adult spinach still attached to the crown and asked her for a batch (hornadas) of enchiladas, which turned out to be a dozen medium-sized enchiladas. I think she sautéed the spinach with generous amounts of garlic and onion, then rolled the spinach mixture tightly into warmed-until-soft corn tortillas. She piled the enchiladas up in two layers on a platter, poured a mild sauce over them, sprinkled on grated queso fresco (a mild white fresh Mexican cheese), and topped everything with a beautiful chopped salad of lettuce, tomato, radishes and avocados. They looked spectacular. She gave me a side of a very spicy salsa verde (tomatillo-based).  Everyone loved the combination of sauce-soaked corn tortillas, crunchy vegetables, chewy succulent spinach, and spicy fruity salsa. The key is to stuff a lot of spinach into each tortilla so that it makes a satisfying bite. Also, you need to add the sauce last-minute so that the enchiladas don't fall apart.

Bean-and-Cheese or Poblano-Cheese Tamales

Katharina asked me if tamales are a very fancy food. I laughed and told her that tamales are the equivalent of peasant food. But it's true that tamales look quite appealing in their fragrant banana leaf packages. I asked Laura for a dozen cheese tamales, half with beans (frijoles) and half with strips of roasted poblano peppers (rajas). The tamales innards (the part that you eat), is soft masa, or corn meal, mixed with your specified ingredients. Laura packed the innards into fresh banana leaves and then steamed the tamales until the masa cooked. For the frijoles tamales, she made runny refried beans that mixed in an appealingly gooey way with the queso fresco.  The rajas tamales lacked the kid-friendly texture of the frijoles tamales but George and I appreciated the deep complexity of the roasted poblano. Because the tamales had such a mild flavor, Sally though they needed some salsa or hot sauce. George and I enjoyed them without.

Kale or Spinach Empanadas

l had on my hands an enormous bag of baby kale, which I washed and brought over to Laura. She didn't know the Spanish name for kale but she easily recognized it and knew how to cook it. I asked for a batch (a dozen) of kale-and-garlic (ajo) empanadas, and Laura nodded and mentioned tomatoes, onions, and a bunch of other Spanish-language flavorings (which I didn't understand) that she would add as a matter of course. In my cookbooks I had read a few recipes for empanadas and was concerned that she would put wheat flour (harina) in but she shook her head and said she only makes empanadas with masa.  Laura called empanadas "The Mexican quesadilla," which I found hilarious. Empanadas are stuffed crescents of dough; they have the shape of a paper plate or a pie crust folded in half. Laura deep-fried the empanadas in a large fry-pan and gave them to me very hot and fresh. The kale empanadas—pairing succulent chewy savory greens with bright corn flavor—were delicious,  but they didn't contain very much filling. I wondered if the empanadas were more difficult to maneuver around cooked greens without the flexibility of wheat flour in the dough. At any rate, they tasted wonderful both hot and cold but we all found the oiliness a little overwhelming. I know that there are baked version of empanadas which I would experiment with next time.

Chile Rellenos

We ordered this classic dish a few days before the gluten-free diet began, and the chile rellenos came in a fried batter, which contained wheat flour. Laura stuffed full poblano chiles with big blocks of queso fresco which somehow did not even get warm, let alone melt. Then she dipped the peppers in a batter and deep-fried them in a large fry pan. She poured a delicious thin sauce over the peppers that made what might have been a somewhat unsatisfying recipe into a pretty captivating meal. The good thing about making your own chile rellenos is that it is always, in my experience, extremely easy to peel off the fried batter. So if you're gluten-free (not celiac, obviously) or dieting, you can deep-fry your peppers, pull off the oily exterior, pour a warm delicious sauce over the whole thing, and dig right in.

I hope this post inspires you to try a little Mexican vegetarian cooking at home!

Improvement on Green Enchiladas

You know what's wayyy better than those Green Enchiladas? This: Omit the sauce. Spoon a hefty dollop of Mexican crema onto the middle of a cooked tortilla, add the filling (or even some steamed broccoli, I'm serious!), sprinkle with your favorite cheese, fold into taco-shape, and gently maneuver food into orifice. Repeat.

And repeat.


And repeat.


Mmmmmm.... So luxurious.

Mexican Vegetarian: Green Enchiladas

The Goofy Family is going gluten-free for two months to test for intolerance, so pretty much everything I'm posting for a while will be gluten-free. This coincides nicely with Passover, although the (Ashkenazi) Passover diet is much stricter. Let's compare gluten-free with Passover.

Gluten-free:

Nothing that contains wheat, rye, or barley.  Most oats are quite contaminated.

(Ashkenazi) Passover:

Nothing that contains wheat (except matzah). Nothing that contains rye, barley, spelt, or oats. No corn, millet, and sometimes rice. No legumes including beans, soybeans, lentils, and peanuts. Or anything made from any of those things.


So these enchiladas I just made definitely fit the gluten-free category, but they fail in the Passover category. To make these Kosher for Passover, you need to ditch the corn tortillas and serve the filling over rice (if you're cool with that) or quinoa, pouring the sauce on as a final touch. Plus, the sauce can only contain kosher for Passover ingredients.

I really "riffed" on this recipe, which is my first by Rick Bayless, famous famous cook of Mexican cuisine. I chose all the riffs because I am lazy to my core. The recipe that resulted certainly had its delicious components: a fruity and tangy sauce, the smell of fresh corn, and the satisfying chew of gently cooked spinach and mushrooms. Its Achilles heel was the texture of the tortillas, which I did not spray and bake in the oven until pliable like Bayless suggested. Instead I over-toasted them or under-microwaved them. Next time I'll probably cook them in oil in a huge fry pan so I can keep a close eye on their pliability. But the oven is definitely overkill in my opinion.

Green Enchiladas

The filling:

8 ounces button mushrooms, washed, stemmed and sliced
10 ounces fresh adult spinach, washed, stemmed and chopped
1 red onion, thinly sliced

The sauce:

1 16 ounce jar (2 Cups) of tomatillo salsa
1 Cup No-chicken or other vegetarian broth
3 Tablespoons crema or sour cream or half n' half

12 fresh corn tortillas

Optional: grated queso fresco


Directions:

1. Heat the salsa in a pot for 7 minutes. Add broth and simmer 10 minutes. Stir in crema. Cover and set aside.
2. Meanwhile, saute mushrooms in a large frypan on medium high heat until browned. Add onions and saute a few more minutes until softened and translucent. Add 1/4 Cup water and then as much spinach as you can fit into the frypan at a time until all 10 ounces are wilted.
3. Cook the tortillas until pliable. You might need to use oil or a frying pan or the oven or whatever you need.
4. Dip each tortilla in the sauce. Lay it on a plate. Add 2 Tablespoons of filling. Add the cheese. Roll up seam side down. Ladle more sauce over the top of each tortilla. 
5. Serve 3 enchiladas on each plate. Do not shout "Olé!"

Kimchi Fried Rice

I thought this kimchi fried rice would be exciting and invigorating. Instead I felt comforted and warmed. The spiciness increases gradually from the back of your mouth, but the rice keeps the heat from overwhelming your palate.

Kimchi Fried Rice

adapted from one of my favorite recipe authors on Serious Eats, Nick Kindelsperger

Serves 4

vegetable oil
4 Cups kimchi, chopped into bite-sized bits (DON'T TOUCH IT for crissakes)
4 Cups white rice, preferably a day old
1 Tablespoon unsalted butter
1 Tablespoon go chu jang, Korean red pepper paste
1 Tablespoon sesame oil
4 eggs

1. Heat up a little oil in a fry pan over medium heat. When the oil shimmers, add the kimchi. 
2. Once the kimchi is warm, in about 2 minutes, add butter and go chu jang. Stir until completely coating the kimchi. 
3. Add the rice, breaking up clumps, and stir until evenly distributed through the kimchi.
4. Pour sesame oil over the rice and stir again. 
5. Allow the bottom of the rice-kimchi mixture to develop a little crust.
6. Take out the mixture and divide among 4 bowls. Cover with plates to keep it hot.
7. Turn down the heat in the frypan, add some more oil, and scrape out bits of leftover rice.
8. Break 4 eggs into the pan. Cook slowly. When the egg is still a little oozy, turn off the heat. Put one egg on top of each bowl of kimchi rice. Serve at once.

Bread Pudding Casserole

This casserole took me a whopping 4 hours to make!


…Are you still here?

Even without careful rationing the casserole fed me through three-and-half days of lunches and dinners, so it ended up saving me about 2 hours.  The picky Goofy Baby loved it, I loved it, and its gorgeousness warmed my hungry heart.  The bon appétit site from which I adapted the recipe tried to market this recipe as a vegetarian Thanksgiving centerpiece, but I don't think so. I would never serve a cheesy dish at Thanksgiving, let alone as the centerpiece. I know some families have a broccoli and cheese casserole tradition on that day, but not as a turkey substitute!

The vegetable ingredients stay in season for months, so you can enjoy this from November through March or even April.

* This dish adapts really well to the gluten-free diet because the baguette I used had to be toasted until it was completely crisp. GF bread has no trouble getting crisp. I think you could use toasted gluten-free bread or even large, unseasoned GF croutons as a substitute (The brand Ener-G makes some). Just be careful to use gluten-free alcohol.

Butternut Squash and Kale Bread Pudding

2 pounds butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cut into 1 inch cubes
olive oil
1 baguette, * sliced into 1 inch pieces and toasted until crisp.
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
7 large eggs
1 pint cream
6 tablespoons dry white wine, sake, or Chinese Shao xing wine
4 large shallots, chopped
1 pound kale, ribs removed, coarsely chopped or torn into small pieces
8 ounces extra-sharp cheddar cheese, grated

1. Preheat oven to 400ºF. Toss cubed squash with 1 Tablespoon of oil. Spread on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and bake 20 to 25 minutes, until tender.
2. In a large bowl, beat eggs. Whisk in cream, wine, and kosher salt. Add baguette pieces. Mix gently together and allow to sit for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.
3. In a large pot, heat 2 Tablespoons oil over medium-high heat. Add shallots. Sauté until soft, about 5 minutes. Add kale. Cover and cook 2 to 7 minutes until kale has wilted a little but is still bright green.
4. Reduce oven temperature to 350ºF. Butter a 9x13 baking dish.
5. Using a slotted spoon, transfer half of the bread from the egg mixture to the baking dish. Arrange it to cover most of the dish.
6. Spoon half of the kale-shallot mix over the bread.
7. Spoon half of the squash cubes over the kale.
8. Sprinkle half of the cheese over the squash cubes.
9. Repeat steps 5 through 8.
10. Pour remaining egg mixture over the bread pudding.
11. Cover the bread pudding with foil and bake 20 minutes. Remove foil and bake uncovered 20 minutes.
12. Cool and serve.

Prospectus

Hi My Voracious Groupies,

I'm sorry to have let my blog lapse so much recently. Goofy baby plus the due date of my prospectus last Friday meant that food took last place in my priorities (after sleep). But don't worry, I'm trying out a bunch of casseroles and I'll get back to you soon on how awesome or shame-laden they make me feel.


Take care all,
Sarah

Pumpkin Treats: Pancakes and Milkshakes

I have been called "pumpkin" by the maternal parent for much of my life, but pumpkins didn't become my favorite food until I moved to Japan. In Japanese markets they sell "kabocha," which are medium dark green round ridged squashes with bright orange insides. I could buy halves of them, just the right amount for a two-person dinner. The flesh is sweet and firm, not stringy like the flesh of many American squashes. My first sampling of its tender succulence was kabocha tempura in a restaurant—heaven. For Thanksgiving George made kabocha soup. I've also learned to simmer kabocha chunks in sweetened water (this is no peasant food; they serve it boiled to accompany sushi bombs at Bozu in NYC). When I returned to the United States I regarded squashkind with new respect and interest. Pumpkin cans found a permanent home in my pantry.

If—Heaven help you—you've been following this blog for long, you may have noticed quite a lot of pumpkin- or squash-themed foods. That trend is sure to continue. Generally I get a craving for a sort of food, then I think to myself, "how much better this food would be if orange and pumpkin-flavored!" I research in my cookbooks, find nothing, and then with ruthless focus hunt the perfect recipe down on the Internet. I proceed to alter this perfect recipe to suit my prejudices, and voìla, you get to read about another pumpkin food.

I hope you didn't make any of those boring New Year's dieting resolutions because these recipes ain't gonna help you none.  To be fair to my creations, though, these pumpkin pancakes really kept me energized yesterday through nursing and hiking and writing and…um…napping. I've realized that the pancakes contain a lot of ingredients that provide sustained nutriton: pumpkin, whole wheat, soymilk, and egg. So you could actually do worse than start your morning with a beta-carotein and protein splurge.

Pumpkin Spice Pancakes

adapted from comfortofcooking.blogspot.com

Ingredients

1 Cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/4 Cup whole wheat flour
1 1/2 Tbsp. brown sugar (sift it if it's lumpy)
1/4 tsp. salt
3/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
three gratings of fresh whole nutmeg (or 1/4 tsp. ground)
Dash of ground ginger
Dash of ground cloves
1/2 Cup pumpkin purée
1 large egg, beaten
2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
1 1/8 to 1 1/4 Cup plain soy milk or cow milk
optional: chopped nuts

Directions:

1. In a medium bowl whisk together flours, sugar, salt, and spices. 
2. In a smaller bowl, whisk together pumpkin, egg, oil, and milk. 
3. Combine all ingredients, and add more milk to achieve a nice consistency in your batter. Not too thick, not too runny. Come on, you've made pancakes before! Add nuts now if you want.
4. Heat a greased fry pan and cook those pancakes, using standard pancake technique.

Makes three Enormous Pancakes or about 6 standard-sized pancakes. Serves 2 to 3 people, depending on the size of the pancake-sized holes in your stomachs.

The neighborhood children give this two thumbs up. You may notice that you use the exact same spices as in the pancakes. Coincidence?

Pumpkin Milkshake

adapted from seriouseats.com

1 1/2 Cups vanilla ice cream
1/4 cup soy milk or cow milk
1/2 Cup pumpkin purée
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
three gratings fresh nutmeg or 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

Put everything in a blender. Let the blender do its thang.
Then use a spoon.
Serves 2.

Greens and Quinoa Pie

I made this pie first thing after the major December holidays had finished up. For my recipe I adapted an old Myra Kornfeld recipe in the March 2010 Vegetarian Times feature on Passover.* Passover recipes in magazines usually fail to follow the rigorous dietary requirements of Ashkenazi Jews in one way or another, but I suspect that with a name like "Kornfeld," Myra figured out the rules the natural way. Anyway, this pie is ingenious because quinoa is technically NOT a grain—and technicality is everything in Jewish law. Quinoa, related to spinach and chard, has the added advantage of a complete set of amino acids and as a bonus, also lacks gluten!

Don't place this pie side by side with your grandmother's brisket because you will break the laws of kashrut. This pie features two kinds of cheese, so use the pie for a dairy Passover or any dairy meal during Passover, like on the fourth night.  But like I said, it's December right now and the recipe works really well for those of you who want something light and refreshing and festive.


*The other Kornfeld Passover recipes included a Chocolate Mousse Cake made with almond flour, Garlicky Leek and Artichoke Soup with basil pesto, and Tunisian Carrot Salad with radishes and olives. You might be able to look them up at the Vegetarian Times website.

Greens and Quinoa Pie

1/2 Cup white (not red) quinoa
1 large bunch escarole, curly endive, or chicory (about 1 1/4 lb.)
1 head Romaine lettuce
2 medium onions
4 to 5 scallions, washed
1/4 Cup fresh dill, washed
1/4 Cup (1 ounce) feta cheese, preferably marinated
1/4 Cup (1 ounce) Swiss-type cheese, grated
3 eggs
olive oil
salt

Special equipment: a 9-inch pie pan

1. Thoroughly rinse off the saponin (bitter coating) on the quinoa in several changes of water. Drain. Combine with 1 Cup of water and 1/4 teaspoon salt in a small saucepan. Cover, bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium low, and simmer, covered, 15 minutes. Remove from heat. Alternately, combine the water, quinoa, and salt in a rice cooker and set for the regular cycle. Fluff with the rice paddle.
2. Meanwhile, remove damaged outer leaves and core from escarole, chop roughly, and wash and dry. Set aside.
3. Repeat Step 2 with Romaine lettuce.
4. Heat a large pot over medium heat. Add escarole and cook up to 5 minutes, or until mostly wilted, stirring frequently. Add Romaine and wilt that too. Transfer the greens to a strainer and push out excess moisture with a wooden spoon. Allow greens to continue draining while you complete additional steps.
5. Preheat oven to 350ºF. Peel and thinly slice onions. Heat some olive oil in a frypan over medium-high heat. Sauté onions about 10 minutes or until softened and browning. Allow to cool 
6. Chop your drained, wilted greens until they are in quite small pieces. Return them to the large pot (without heat). Add quinoa. Thinly slice scallions and add. Chop up dill and add. Crumble the feta cheese and add. Add grated Swiss cheese. Add cooled onions. Mix thoroughly all together.
7. Lightly beat the eggs and add to the pot. Mix again. 
8. Pour 1 Tablespoon oil into the pie pan. Place pan in oven for 5 minutes. Remove and swirl oil to coat the bottom. 
9. Put the quinoa-greens mixture into the pie pan and smooth the top. Bake 20 minutes.
10. Remove pie, drizzle with 1 Tablespoon olive oil, and bake another 20 to 30 minutes, until the pie is golden brown.
11. Eat hot or eat cold or eat from the pot nine days old.

Two Kinds of Pasta with Beans

My friends, I apologize for how long I have gone between posts. I am doubling down on my dissertation prospectus, and meanwhile the Goofy baby has been battling an ear infection and my life is a whirlwind of insanity. Thank goodness I am not a snob about food, and I have been managing to get enough nutrition by eating these two cheap, quick dishes. And actually, they're good enough to serve to company that stops by unexpectedly.

Fragrant Rigatoni with Saucy Pinto Beans

1 lb. rigatoni or other textured pasta
1 Tablespoon olive oil
2 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
1 15 ounce can tomato sauce
1 4 ounce jar artichoke hearts, drained, rinsed, and chopped
dried basil
dried oregano
1 15 ounce can pinto beans, drained and rinsed
4-6 ounces cheddar cheese (or to taste), grated or cubed
2 scallions, sliced


1. Cook pasta until al dente.
2. In a sauce pot, sauté garlic in olive oil until golden and fragrant.
3. Add tomato sauce, and add basil and oregano to taste.
4. Heat slowly until bubbly.
5. Stir in pinto beans, and reheat until bubbly again.
6. Mix sauce with pasta and cheese. Add scallions right before serving.


Elegant Penne with Cannellini Beans

1 lb. penne
1 15 ounce can cannellini or Great Northern or any white bean, drained and rinsed
2 Tablespoons mayonnaise
1 1/2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 clove garlic, peeled and chopped
1 large bunch spinach
salt
6 ounces Swiss cheese, grated or cubed


1. Cook penne until toothy.
2. Mix with mayonnaise, beans, and Swiss cheese.
3. Meanwhile, saute garlic plus some salt in olive oil until golden and fragrant. Add spinach and keep stirring until all is wilted and covered in garlic oil. Toss spinach with pasta mixture and serve.

Perfect Scrambled Eggs

The Goofy Family felt quite unwell one morning last week, so I offered to make eggs. For eggs to work effective magic, they have to taste, look, and feel like sunshine with a side of toast. So I looked up  Science Food Man Harold McGee's recommendation for how to make "perfect" scrambled eggs, by which he means tender and moist eggs, safely cooked-through, and with even, fluffy curds. This culmination of eggdom was a lofty goal I had yet to attain. So I followed McGee's instructions. The result? Perfect scrambled eggs, just as McGee had described. George was delighted. I, on the other hand, had to keep reminding myself that eggs could be moist without being underdone. Soon, I am sure, I will become accustomed to the taste of greatness.

Perfect Scrambled Eggs

Mix the raw egg innards with cream or milk or somesuch. Add some salt and pepper.
Heat up a fry pan on medium low heat. Add butter. When the butter has just started bubbling, pour in the eggs. Cook the eggs on medium low heat, constantly stirring the eggs and scraping the bottom. When the eggs are about ten seconds away from being completely set, scoop them onto the plate (they will continue to set on their own). Serve immediately with nice toast.

Tangy Herbed Beans

I've been seeking a quick way to freshen up cans o' beans. My pantry overflows each week with cans o' beans, and I find myself occasionally—okay, often—bored at the thought of MORE BEANS. And worse, I don't really like beans cooked in pressure cookers or slow cookers because they don't allow me enough control over the tenderness. So I'm stuck with home-boiled beans or salty canned beans (or those Eden-brand canned beans preserved with seaweed, which taste odd in loads of recipes!).

I am still sad that Western cooks haven't jumped onto the idea of sweet bean treats, which in Japan was my absolute favorite way to eat both beans and desserts.

Luckily, I read a Vegetarian Times recipe for Southern California tacos invented by the winner of some show called The Cupcake Wars of all things (!), and then I read the amazon.com reviews of her recent cookbook, which commented that the chef asked for unnecessary amounts of oil. Keeping this plus the chef's obvious love for sweet desserts in mind, I pared down the recipe to about a fourth of its size and removed the oil, halved the sweetness, laughed at the request for cactus juice, and ignored the call for mushrooms once I realized that my box of mushrooms was hosting a fuzzy white fungus too. The result? A super quick, easy, fat-free, gluten-free (deep breath) delicious, tangy take on canned beans that I can't wait to make again.

If you are one of those people with the gene that makes cilantro taste like soap, this recipe is not for you. Although…would you enjoy cilantro bubble bath? Just curious!

Tangy Herbed Beans

1 15 ounce can of either black beans or pinto beans, drained and rinsed

1 Cup of cilantro, washed

1/2 Cup Italian (flat-leaf) parsley, washed

1/4 Cup lime juice

1 Tablespoon honey

4 cloves garlic, peeled

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

a few good grinds of black pepper

1. Add all ingredients except for the beans to a blender or food processor until the herbs are in tiny tiny bits. 
2. Heat a fry pan. Add the beans and half of the blender sauce. Sauté 3 to 5 minutes until heated through, less wet, and the flavors have slightly muted.
3. Serve beans warm with extra sauce (all of it, if you dare!) spooned on top. Yum diddle dee dum!

How to Reduce Food Waste, and an Easy Autumn Supper

After reading some good advice on how to reduce food waste, I now wash and/or prepare almost all my vegetables as soon as I get back from the market. Because of this one change,  I waste almost zero fresh food and eat more vegetables. Plus, I find that simple meals like this one come together much more quickly and with less expenditure of my waning end-of-day energy. 

Some people think vegetables will spoil more quickly if you wash them days in advance. Well, I keep all my washed vegetables in airtight plastic or glass snap-ware in the refrigerator, and they don't seem to spoil any more quickly than dirty vegetables. The only vegetables I don't wash in advance are mushrooms because I fear their turning slimy. 

This autumn meal for 2 is very simple, attractive, easy, and quick. Plus it's comfort food!

Meal Components:

1 stone fruit like peach or plum, washed and sliced

1 can vegetarian baked beans, warmed on stove or in microwave

1 recipe of Joy of Cooking's buttermilk cornbread

1 bunch collards, stemmed, torn into bite-sized pieces, and washed

The cornbread mix comes together in about 3 minutes and bakes for 25 minutes. The collards should simmer in salted water for 12 to 25 minutes, depending on your preference. Drain the collards and press out the excess water with the back of a wooden spoon.

On each plate arrange one slice of cornbread, a heap of collards, and a fan of fruit slices. Add a small pretty bowl to the side of each plate with some warm beans.

Enjoy with iced tea or a mug of cider.  Offer seconds of everything.

Skillet Pizza

"Kid tested, mother approved!" 

How many times have I heard that slogan? So annoying. (Thanks a lot, 1978 Kix cereal ads.) And I don't believe that slogan for a second. I don't believe there exists a single cooked or processed food that the children in my neighborhood like AND I consider healthy.

So when 11-year-old Hannia told me she liked my skillet pizza—as long as she picked off the zucchini first—I knew she liked it because skillet pizza is unhealthy. Is it as unhealthy as most of the pizza you can buy around here (Costco, Papa John's, freezer aisle pizza)? No. But it's pizza. So will your kids or the Kid-In-You enjoy this recipe? Definitely. But try not to make it a weekly staple.

This recipe makes two small pizzas. You can just make one pizza, refrigerate half the dough in a ziplock bag, and make the second pizza the next day. I did it, and I quite liked the results.

Some people don't like ricotta. Fine, just add a bit more mozzarella. Other people don't like zucchini on pizza. Feel free to cook some mushrooms or open a jar of olives or whatever and add that instead. Some people don't like vegetarian pizza. Well, Buddy, the lemur's out back, he's all yours, but I'm warning you: he's quite a fighter.

Thanks to Vegetarian Times, Mark Bittman, George, and Hannia for their input.

Skillet Pizza

Special Equipment: 
food processor
An 8 or 10" cast iron frypan, or equivalent oven-safe fry pan
A rolling pin
An oven
A large wooden or bamboo cutting board


Dough:
1 1/2 Cups bread flour
1 Cup whole wheat flour
1/2 Cup stone-ground cornmeal
2 teaspoons instant, bread machine, or rapid rise yeast (same things)
2 teaspoons good quality coarse salt (kosher or sea salt)
3 Tablespoons olive oil, divided
1 to 1 1/2 Cups water

Toppings:
2 tsp. vegetable or canola oil per pizza
a small jar of prepared refrigerated pesto or low-sodium, high-quality tomato pasta sauce
less than 1 Cup grated low-moisture, part-skim mozzarella
a few Tablespoons low-fat ricotta cheese
half of 1 peeled zucchini, sliced into 1/4 inch rounds

Directions:

1. Combine flour, yeast, and salt in a food processor. Turn the machine on. Add most of the water and 2 Tablespoons of oil through the tube while the machine whirrrs.
2. Process about 30 seconds until the dough wads into a ball around the blade. It should be slightly sticky. If it seems too wet, add a little more flour. If it seems too dry, add a little more water. Then process until it's all copacetic.
3. Dump dough into a large plastic or metal bowl. With well-floured hands, knead a few times until the dough comes together into a smooth ball. Pour 1 Tablespoon olive oil over it and turn the dough until it's evenly covered with oil. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth and let sit in a warm, moist location to rise for 1 to 2 hours, until doubled in size.
4. Preheat the oven to 500ºF and set the oven rack in the lower third of the oven.
5. Divide the dough in half. On a lightly floured board, roll out 1 ball of dough evenly until it is roughly the size of your fry pan. 
6. Heat the vegetable oil on high heat in the fry pan. When it's sizzling hot put the dough in. Cook 3 minutes until brown and crisp on the bottom. Turn off the heat and, using two spatulas, flip the dough over in the fry pan. 
7. Spread the nicely browned dough with pesto or tomato sauce. Sprinkle mozzarella evenly over the surface. Top with dollops of ricotta spaced apart and place zucchini slices around the ricotta. 
8. Bake in the oven for 8 to 10 minutes until the cheese is melted and bubbly. Drizzle pesto/sauce over the zucchini slices. Cut the pizza into 4 wedges and serve hot hot hot!
9. Repeat with the other half of the dough.

Serves 4 to 8 people, depending on a bunch of factors.

Moong Bean Tomato Soup

Doug and I eat a lot of bean soups. After all, why not? Bean soups answer every need: cheap, healthy, filling, and comforting in the winter. Also, practically no one is allergic to them. The only problem is that bean soups bore the palate after a while, especially if you eat them for dinner every single night. Doug varies his bean soups by adding canned pumpkin or Italian sausage.  I like to revolve through a variety of beans. I make a tamarind-sour red lentil soup, a lemony split pea soup, a curried brown lentil soup, an eye-watering kimchi tofu and rice soup, and most recently a cozy moong bean soup.

The Indian people display a special genius for the legume family. I've never eaten a dal I didn't like. So when you grown bored with American-style beans, head over to an Indian grocer. Check out the rainbow of dals, both split and whole, that line the shelves. You may feel inspired to start making Indian bean soups. (Indian beans are still quite cheap.) If you don't live near an Indian grocer, order some Indian beans online. Dried beans travel well.
Some places online to buy Indian beans:
Indian Foods Co.
I Shop Indian
Indian Blend
Desi 911
Patel Brothers
Desi Mart

This particular soup was inspired by three fancier recipes created by Mark Bittman, who is not Indian and therefore tends to use more accessible ingredients in his recipes. I was able to make the entire soup in an hour. It won't take as long if you use split moong beans. I used whole. Whole moong beans are olive green in color with a tiny white stripe (see above).

Serves 4 to 8, depending on who's counting

Moong Bean Tomato Soup

1 Cup whole moong beans (dried)
1 large or 2 medium tomatoes, washed
6 Cups or 48 fluid ounces of vegetable broth (I use Imagine No-Chicken)
salt and pepper

Equipment: 1 medium pot, 1 small pot

1. Wash the moong beans, being careful to pick through and make sure there aren't any small stones. 
2. Put moong beans and the vegetable broth in the medium pot. Heat on medium-high heat until boiling. Lower to a bare simmer, cover tightly, and cook 1 hour.
3. Meanwhile, fill the small pot with water. Bring to a boil. 
4. Cut a small X in the bottom of the tomato. Blanch it in the boiling water by immersing it for 30 to 60 seconds. Take it out, let it cool a few minutes, and then peel off the skin with your fingers. Chop the tomato into small pieces.
5. Add the tomato to the moong bean soup—it doesn't matter where in the cooking process it is.
6. When the beans finish cooking, have a sip. Don't double-dip the spoon! Add salt and pepper to taste. Enjoy hot.

Optional additions: fresh-squeezed lemon juice, cayenne

Alternatives to Soda and Juice

Apparently, drinking sweet beverages ruins your teeth, makes you obese, and gifts you with diabetes. With any scientific discovery that a certain foodstuff or drinkstuff hastens death, you have to decide, "Am I content to live 10 years less, as long as I fill those 60 to 70 years with delicious glasses of iced guava and pineapple juices?" The jury is still out on that one, for me.

People are wracking their brains trying to find healthy alternatives to sweet beverages, especially to serve at school lunches. Well, I have compiled a list of delicious un-sweet drinks for you, a list that does NOT include milk, since a lot of people suffer from milk allergies or lactose intolerance. Also, I have heard rumblings that milk may not be as good for you as the dairy industry promises it is. Who woulda thunk it? I used to drink that stuff by the gallon.

The recipe for almost every beverage on this list requires you to steep some of the ingredient in a pitcher of filtered—i.e., tasty—water, possibly overnight in the refrigerator or over-day by a sunny window.

Lime Water
Every beer ad I see these days is for "XYZ with lime." Lime is in. But those tiny limey wedges may not do the trick. I've discovered that one of those jumbo limes will produced enough juice for four tall refreshing glasses of cold lime water. Squeeze some of half a lime into the bottom of a glass. Fill the glass with cold filtered water. Serve immediately, or chill and serve in a hipster glass so as to feel with it. Pucker-licious.

Cucumber Water
You can pay more than $100 to go to a fancy pants spa that will serve you this drink in the waiting room…or you can make it at home by picking a cuke from your dinky backyard garden. Peel the cucumber, slice it lengthwise, use the tip of a spoon to scoop out and discard the seeds, and then slice thickly. Add cold water, refrigerate for 1 hour and you have cucumber water.

Barley Tea
Translate from the Japanese, "mugi cha." Every casual restaurant in Japan (and Korea too, I hear) serves iced barley tea as a complimentary service in the summer. Because barley is a type of grain, barley tea has a soothing effect on the stomach, and the mild flavor doesn't interfere with any kind of food you might eat. You can buy bags of Barley Tea at an East Asian grocer, or you can buy a bunch of whole barley. With tea bags, you steep a few in cold water in the refrigerator overnight and voìla, barley tea. With the whole barley, it's better to boil and simmer the barley in water, then strain. I love both hot and cold barley tea. Plus, barley tea is probably the cheapest kind of tea in the world.

Sun Tea
Somehow iced sun tea always tastes a little better than the boiled version. Buy some loose leaf tea (green, brown rice green tea, black tea, hojicha, kukicha, rooibos, pu-erh, white tea, or oolong). Pack it into a tea ball or fold it into 2 ocha packs, sold as pretty much any tea shop I've ever patronized. Put the packed tea into a tall glass pitcher with a lid. Fill with purified water and close the lid. Leave the glass pitcher outside or in a sunny window for several hours until the tea has taken on a deep hue. Then refrigerate the tea and serve it cold over ice with optional lemon or orange slices.

Seltzer or Club Soda
Let's say you just can't resist that delicious 100% juice despite health concerns. You can simultaneously dilute it and fancy it up by filling a glass 1/3 with juice and 2/3 with seltzer or club soda. You can squeeze fresh lemon or lime juice in. Or you can just enjoy seltzer plain, or over ice. It feels nice in the mouth and might settle your stomach or aid in a belching contest.

Ginger Tea or Green Ginger Tea
This tea will invigorate you. I learned how to make this from a Korean friend. You wash a fresh piece of ginger, slice it into a few thin segments, then pour boiling water over it and steep a few minutes. Ginger goes really well with banana bread or muffins. If plain ginger tea tastes a bit harsh for you, you can steep only one or two pieces of ginger with two bags of green tea. Just make sure not to steep the green tea until it's bitter.

Got any favorite unsweet beverages of your own? I'd love to hear about it.