Filling an MD stomach

Matthew Barney meets AvP

2011-12-04T22:02:00.001-05:00

On Friday, Andy and I went to see a dance performance by Shen Wei's dance company. It was mind-blowing. Since the Park Avenue Armory's arts performances are pretty much obligated to include something amusingly high-concept, the third piece allowed audience members to walk among the dancers (who were mostly naked, so don't bring the kids unless you deem them mature enough to appreciate topless male and female dancers rolling around in paint*) and appreciate the union of technology and humanity** that is going to be driving Shen Wei's next artistic phase, or so the program says. In any case, the second piece, Folding, was by far my favorite. Like I said, mind-blowing. You can watch several YouTube performances, like this one. However, the most amazing piece also included what I found to be the performance's only perceptible-to-a-non-dancer-or-dance-aficionado flaw: very silly headgear. Andy likened the head coverings to squash; I imagined them as what would happen if Matthew Barney remade Alien versus Predator. They were downright distracting from the ridiculous choreography.

Other note (and skip this one if you have a weak stomach): I accompanied three of my classmates this morning in shadowing an autopsy at the medical examiner's office. Aside from experiencing fresh organs, substantial amounts of blood, and a man whose long bones had been harvested for grafts***, I noted that of the cadavers we encountered, nobody was older than 46, and nobody's BMI was anywhere near normal. This stands in stark contrast to the quite elderly, usually practically cachectic cadavers in the anatomy lab. Hmm.

Now, food! Two days' worth to blog about today:

Brown sushi rice with seared tempeh and a marinated Asian vegetable salad****.

Farmhouse vegetable soup from Cook's Illustrated, with whole-wheat bread.

In deference to Cook's Illustrated, I'm not going to post the recipe. They do ridiculous things like use forty-five pounds of ground meat to find the absolute perfect meatloaf recipe. For this recipe, the tester made at least ten varieties of vegetable soup to find the perfect balance of umami and nuttiness and fatty deliciousness (lemon-thyme butter to finish is the secret!). For that, I'll pay for a subscription.

One note, though: the recipe calls for cabbage and parsley. I forgot to buy both, so I used kale. It's a cabbage relative, and it's got that fresh tang of parsley. Other than that: totally faithful to the brilliance that is this soup.

*It's artistic, not voyeuristic, I swear to you.
**Including projected T1-weighted cranial MRIs!
***Have you ever bent someone's boneless arm? No? Never thought I would, either.
****I found a massive daikon for a dollar. And layed the smackdown on a woman about my age who tried to insist that the watermelon radish I was teaching Andy about was not, in fact, a radish. Score.

Fungi gone wild

2011-12-01T19:01:00.001-05:00

It's cold. Again. I'm still wearing flip-flops*, but this counts as soup weather.

Cream of wild mushroom! Well, mostly wild. Thirty-three percent tame, actually. The porcini are dried and from a Whole Foods bin; the shiitake and cremini were from farmers market bins and are purportedly woods-gathered or whatever. Either way, they were great in soup form, especially with shallot croutons (read: shallots fried in brown butter) and whole wheat artisan-style bread. And then about a pound of spinach, a persimmon, and a mango for dessert. I felt fancy, so I abandoned the behind-on-studying mentality and actually passed the soup through a wire strainer a couple times to make it smooth.

Cream of mushroom soup
3 cloves garlic
1/2 oz dried porcini
12 oz fresh cremini
8 oz fresh shiitake
3 large shallots
2 to 3 tbsp butter
about 1/3 cup white wine
3 cups water
1 1/2 cups milk
a dash of soy sauce
sage, thyme, nutmeg, salt, and pepper

Bring the water to a boil and put in the dried porcini; let sit while you prepare the rest of the ingredients. Mince 2 of the shallots and the garlic. While the butter is melting in the bottom of a pot, slice the third shallot thinly. Just as the butter begins to sizzle, fry the shallot slices in the butter. Remove when they're toasted to a dark golden brown. Add the minced shallots when the butter is fully browned and cook until translucent. Add the garlic, salt and pepper to taste, and the chopped fresh mushrooms; cook until the mushrooms have stopped exuding liquid. Add the wine and reduce to about 1/3 of the original total volume of wine and mushroom liquid. Add the porcini broth (but not the porcini themselves), soy sauce, sage, thyme, nutmeg (you only need a little of each, especially the nutmeg), and bring to a boil, then reduce and simmer until all the mushrooms are very soft. Puree, strain, puree again, and strain again. Stir in the milk and heat gently until the soup is warm. Adjust salt, pepper, and spices to taste.

*and will continue to do so until it actually endangers my toes.

Pittsburgh Nights

2011-11-29T21:13:00.001-05:00

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving weekend. Mine was basically spent flopping around on my delightful in-laws' delightful couch* and eating lots of desserts, and also delightful Italian food at this place called Stagioni, and watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and not doing the Introduction to Bedside Diagnosis studying that I'd promised I would do. Now, I think my mother-in-law tried to rectify our diet somewhat by making a delicious carrot soup and arugula salad and grilled cheese on Saturday night, but we had to go ahead and ruin it by two straight days of NYU-provided junk food. Other relevant point: December heralds this thing that my grandmother is calling a gala that is basically a delayed wedding reception for us. I rather dislike the spotlight, a lot, but if this spotlighting party thing** is going to happen, it's going to happen to a lady who fits into the, erm, curve-hugging dress she bought at the beginning of the summer, dammit.

Thus, chickpeas in a caramelized onion and za'atar broth with arugula, persimmon, walnut, and feta salad in a lemon-mint dressing, and homemade crackers. I call it Delicious Zip-that-dress Dinner.

*Man, that is one fine couch.
**Mom: "You never got nervous when you were the center of attention for academic achievement! But now you're being the center of attention as a whole person!"
Me: "The part of me that can get married qualifies as a whole person?"
Mom: "..."

Comme un patron

2011-11-22T12:10:00.001-05:00

Ever given a massage? I love giving them. And working a rich, bolar pastry dough feels almost exactly like massaging the skin and subcutaneous fat of someone's back*.

Before we continue, please excuse me. I have to take a few aspirin, because it hurts to pat myself on the back for making perfect croissants on a first attempt.

Food stylist credit to Avanti, who can rompre her pain like
nobody's business.

Jen also helped with the eating.

Unbaked, puffed up, full of potential.

Okay, done being arrogant now, because making these** is actually not very difficult. It's a long process, and I nearly had to skip a class in order to finish baking the second batch***, but there's very little that is technically difficult. A few tips cobbled together from the Internet, this experience, and a couple cookbooks:

1. The dough should be smooth, cold, and pliable. Imagine giving someone a massage just after they've been in a naked snowball fight****. Like that. Be sure to keep the room and your work surface cool so that the butter stays cold and malleable.
2. You won't need much flour to keep the dough from sticking. Overflouring will leave you with tough croissants, not the flaky, delicate deliciousness that you're aiming for.
3. If you're working with a small oven in a studio apartment under 400 square feet--no shame, my indebted, belectured compatriots!--the croissants will begin to brown well before the inside is baked. Either drape them lightly with aluminum foil when they're crusty and golden on top or cut smaller croissants.
4. Use good butter. I didn't, and I regret it. Also, these are a little tiny bit too sweet for my tastes, but still, the 1/4 cup is plenty subtle. And maybe try a sourdough croissant and let me know if it's worth the extra effort.

It's Thanksgiving break now. I'm going to read (one chapter left in 1Q84!) and sleep and convince myself that med school isn't as stressful as I make it out to be.

*I tried to think of a more appetizing way to put this. "Flesh" was the best I could come up with. While it's not poetic, it's true.
**Joanne Chang is the scion of Flour, and thus I trust any food-related statement she cares to make.
***I may have skipped that class in order to make a doctor's appointment anyway, but at least it wasn't for the croissants!
****Again, I tried. I'm sacrificing imagery for accuracy.

Adherence

2011-11-21T19:10:00.001-05:00

Such a better word than compliance, don't you think? Anyway, I faithfully followed this recipe to make what I am going to humbly say are some of the best damn bao ever.

Next time I'm going to put some tofu in the filling, and maybe roll the dough a little bit thinner. Maybe.

We're trying to use up the rest of the veggies in our fridge before we go to Pittsburgh for Thanksgiving (alert: if any of you want hilarious amounts of kale, cabbage, onions, or mushrooms, let me know), so I also made a cabbage and tofu stir-fry, just for a little protein, you know?

Duckling/swan

2011-11-19T19:11:00.001-05:00

Once upon a time there was a head of cabbage that weighed over five pounds.

That poor, humble, ugly, morbidly obese head of cabbage got hacked in half. Part of it got made into cabbage with caraway, apples, and white beans, and it was very happy.

Just next door were some sunchokes. Not only were they tragically homely, they contain a whole lot of inulin. This makes them much-beloved by diabetics and dieters, but much-maligned by people who can't digest fructans and get horrible flatulence when they eat sunchokes.

Nothing could be done about the inulin content of the poor sunchokes, but they got sliced up and made into crispy oven-baked sunchoke chips, and they were delicious, and they were very happy.

This cinnamon bun "loaf" is just an all-star, from start to finish. It's as though the Gerber baby went on to become Heidi Klum and endured nary an awkward stage in between.

The Holy Tetrad

2011-11-18T18:59:00.001-05:00

The Italians got it right quite a long time ago. Nothing can go wrong with a combination of noodles, cheese, tomato sauce, and garlic. If you're extra lucky, there will be vegetables.

Lasagna roll-ups! Like real lasagna, but rolled up! No need to post a recipe; it's pretty self-explanatory. Just try not to let the lasagna noodles stick together as you boil them, and boil them just until they can be rolled without breaking so that they become fully tender in the oven.

And now back to studying limb anatomy and bone pathology. It's hard to believe that this is the penultimate unit of my pre-clerkship curriculum...

Compulsive

2011-11-17T20:59:00.001-05:00

So many muscles. So little time. Such an irrepressible urge to make twice-baked Tex-Mex sweet potatoes.

Recipe
2 lbs sweet potatoes
1 can black beans, drained, rinsed, and dried
1 onion, finely chopped
cheddar cheese
cumin
oregano
cocoa
paprika
cilantro
ancho chili powder
salt
pepper
scallions
yogurt/sour cream
other toppings/mix-ins, like jalapenos, chopped tomatoes, salsa, or corn

Bake or microwave the sweet potatoes until they are just tender. Halve the sweet potatoes lengthwise. Scoop out the insides once they're cool; attempt to leave a thin layer of sweet potato in the skin to give the skin some structure. Puree the sweet potatoes with spices to taste, keeping in mind that the heat will intensify things a bit. Mix together the beans and chopped onion, as well as any other mix-ins that you wish. Spoon some sweet potato puree back into the sweet potato skins, top with bean mixture, and top all that with a ludicrous amount of cheddar... or, if you're not me, a reasonable, heart-healthy amount of cheddar. Broil until the cheese is melted and just beginning to brown. Serve hot, topped with whatever you like.

Pomo carrot tart

2011-11-14T19:12:00.001-05:00

Try as I might, I can never manage to finish laying a spiral of slices of... something... right in the center.

Following my complaint that my tarts are always decentralized, Andy encouraged the above moniker. Entertaining though it may be, I'd like to develop enough skill to make sure all my carrot slices (or apple slices or whatever) follow a fixed hierarchy.

That being said, this is really tasty. You can omit the raisins in the filling, and if you don't have or like rye flour, use whole wheat or just all white flour. Note that the vinegar in the crust isn't for taste. A little bit of acid--vinegar, lemon juice, even vodka--helps make the crust flaky, as does keeping all the ingredients as cold as possible.

Pomo carrot tart
For the crust:
1.25 sticks frozen butter, cubed
3.5 oz rye flour
3 oz all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp white vinegar
1/4 cup ice cold water

Use a food processor to mix the butter, flours, and salt until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs. Add the vinegar and ice water and mix just until it comes together in a ball. Refrigerate for 2 hours or up to overnight. Roll out on a well-floured, cool to cold surface and place into your pie dish, decorating as desired. Blind-bake at 425 F for 5 minutes and at 350 for an additional 7.

For the filling:
1.5 lbs carrots
2 shallots
1 tbsp butter
1 egg
(here's where things start to break down, because I stopped measuring)
1/4 to 1/3 cup whole milk
salt, pepper, tarragon
honey (about 1 tsp)
lemon juice (1/4 tsp, ish)
about 1/4 cup raisins, optional
1 tbsp honey mixed with 2 tsp water, for glazing

Peel and trim the carrots. Use a mandoline or very sharp knife to cut thin slices from the large ends of the carrots until you have about a cup of them for decoration. Boil the rest until very soft. Meanwhile, chop the shallots and saute in 1 tbsp butter (or olive oil) until transparent. Add the carrots and puree the whole shebang. Stir in milk, honey, and lemon juice, and, when the mixture has cooled somewhat, the egg. Add salt, pepper, and tarragon to taste, keeping in mind that the flavor of tarragon intensifies somewhat with heat. I'm thinking that cooking the tarragon with the shallots will allow you to better gauge what the flavor will be like after baking. If you like, stir in raisins. Spread in the tart shell and layer the carrot slices on top. Brush with the honey-water glaze. Bake at 350 F for 25 to 30 minutes, or until the slices on top are tender and browning. Cool slightly before serving.

No words.

2011-11-13T11:33:00.001-05:00

I'm very happy that I have functional brachium and antebrachium muscles that allow me to make this.

Caramel apple coffee cake
Adapted from Pioneer Woman, with original input on the caramel sauce

For the cake:
3/4 stick softened butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2/3 cup milk
1/4 tsp cardamom
1/2 tsp vanilla
2 egg whites, whipped until stiff
1 apple, cored, peeled, and thinly sliced

For the streusel:
3/4 stick softened butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup flour, plus a little more if necessary
1/2 cup oats
1 tbsp cinnamon
Optional: 1/4 cup walnuts or pecans

For the caramel swirl:
1/2 cup sugar
2 tbsp water
3 tbsp butter
1/4 heavy cream or half-and-half
pinch salt
Optional: 1 tbsp liqueur, such as Calvados

First, make the caramel: Combine the sugar and water in a heavy saucepan. Heat to boiling, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon. Drop the heat to low and boil until the mixture is a rich amber color. Take the saucepan off the heat and stir in the butter. Add the half-and-half/heavy cream (and liqueur, if you're using it); the mixture will bubble vigorously. Continue to stir until the caramel is smooth. Set aside to cool while you make the cake.

Mix the dry ingredients for the cake together, and mix the milk and vanilla. Cream the butter and sugar. Alternately add flour and milk mixtures, beginning and ending with the flour mixture, and fold just until mixed. Gently fold in the egg whites. Pour the batter into a greased 9x9 cake pan. Pour the cooled caramel over the top and use a knife to swirl it in the batter. Layer the thin slices of apple on top of the cake.

To make the streusel, just combine all the ingredients until the mixture is made of large, pebble-like crumbs. Top the cake with the streusel. Bake at 350 for 40 to 45 minutes, and serve warm with coffee or tea!

The many purposes of OkCupid

2011-11-12T19:44:00.001-05:00

In order of importance:

Setting up hookups
Enabling me to procrastinate via blog.okcupid.com
Enabling friends around the world to compete for Creepiest Message Received
Enabling friends around the world to mock prime examples of duckface
Setting up meaningful relationships

This MD stomach is family-friendly, so I apologize for the more, hrm, tart content of the blog, but this thing is hilarious, not to mention pretty to look at. Faux science is such fun! Emphasis on observations about what makes a dating site profile picture attractive and why Lithuanians appear more willing to participate in bedroom enactments of a certain kind of fantasy.

Are we still family-friendly? No? Sigh. Kids these days.

So I asked Andy to pick up some soba on his way home from class* in order to make cold noodles with dipping sauce and a broccoli, tofu, and cashew stir-fry. Instead of the long, thin buckwheat noodles I envisioned, he brought home chuka soba from the Washington Square m2m. I was forced to make crispy chuka soba nests topped with broccoli, tofu, and cashew stir-fry instead.

The horror, Andy, the horror. Forty lashes with a wet noodle, variety to be determined. That'll teach you.

Chuka soba nests with vegetables

N.b.: I recommend trying to fry the noodle nests and make the sauce simultaneously.

1 package chuka soba

1 small head broccoli

5 carrots

1 package extra-firm tofu

1 cup miso broth

1 tbsp soy sauce

1/2 tbsp sugar, or 1/4 tbsp Splenda

2 tbsp mirin

1 tbsp cornstarch, dissolved in 1 tbsp water to make a slurry

salt, pepper, Sriracha to taste

toasted cashews and chopped scallions for garnish

Blanch the vegetables, dice the tofu, and set aside. Boil the chuka soba 4 to 5 minutes or until al dente. Toss with sesame oil and allow to cool until it can be handled. Heat 3 tablespoons canola oil in a skillet. Form small portions of the noodles into nest shapes and fry until golden brown on each side. To make the sauce, brinch the miso, soy, sugar, and mirin to a gentle simmer, then gradually stir in the cornstarch slurry. Bring to a gentle boil and whisk constantly, cooking until it is reduced and thickened. Add salt, pepper, and Sriracha to taste. Mix in the vegetables and tofu. To serve, spoon vegetables, tofu, and sauce over a noodle nest, then sprinkle with cashews and scallions.

*Yes, he has a Saturday class. If you want to send a sympathy card, let me know, the cheesier the better.

Short bus

2011-11-11T18:57:00.001-05:00

I'm special, in the euphemistic way. You see, when I see a recipe for sweet potato gnocchi calling for two pounds of sweet potatoes, I don't think, "Hannah, that's a lot of gnocchi, and only two of you to eat them. Maybe you should halve that recipe and use the remaining sweet potatoes to remake those sweet potato cinnamon rolls from this summer*." I think, "Hannah, go to the fridge and weigh out two pounds of sweet potatoes!"

Sigh.

They were really good after a brown in browned butter, topped with Argentinian Parmesan. And after a wine and cheese tasting at the medical school. And after a private apple tasting of $5 worth of farmers market apples.

These are, in order starting from the bottom middle, proceeding clockwise, and ending with the center apple, Cameo (the only one I'd eaten before), Caville Blanc, Melrose, Suncrisp, Arlet, Newtown Pippin, Jonathan, Winter Banana, and Northern Spy. I loved the Caville Blanc and the Suncrisp, the Jonathan and Melrose, not so much.

This is the Pippin, which was a close third to the Caville
and the Suncrisp. Very close indeed.

This is the Jonathan. Ew.

In short, this was a really good day. Except for that work thing. Don't remind me.

*Huh, I think I actually forgot to blog about those. They were amazing. AMAZING. I'll make them again soon** and post about the results.

**But I also want this exam's post-exam cooking spree to involve either croissants, homemade pasta, or a cookie exchange. Dilemmas.

Flip-flopping

2011-11-09T21:53:00.001-05:00

This morning: "Man, I had better adapt this recipe and bake rather than fry the squash. It will be healthier, and plus I really, really need to study."

This evening: "Man, I have exactly enough olive oil left! And fried things are delicious. And I can always catch up on learning the arteries of the arm after lifting tonight. Let's do it."

And I'm so glad I did. The only bad thing about this recipe is the instruction to fry garlic until golden, then remove all the garlic and discard it. Who does that? I thinly sliced the garlic so that it would be easier to pick out of the oil and then mixed it into a yogurt sauce with scallions, lemon juice, dried mint, pomegranate seeds, salt, and pepper. Amazing... and yet, really, I should have made some other protein with this, perhaps chickpeas. I hate it when people use a hearty vegetable as a substitute for protein in vegetarian dishes, and yet I commit this sin constantly. Vegetables are too delicious.

On that note, Andy and I ate an entire bunch of kale in salad form with dinner tonight. And by Andy and I, I mean mostly me. Erm.

Superfreekeh

2011-11-08T18:03:00.003-05:00

It's a very special grain. But I'd totally take it home to my mother.

Especially considering that I probably don't get enough protein in my diet, and this is a relatively high-protein grain. I put it in a salad with persimmon, pistachios, mixed greens, shallots and scallions (overkill? who cares). Dressing: olive oil, rice wine vinegar with a shot of white vinegar, a little lemon juice, salt, pepper, cumin, paprika, and dried mint. Andy ate it all before I had a chance to pack some away for lunch. I suppose that's a compliment?

Whatever it is, this stuff is delicious. It's my first time cooking it, and I might go with more traditional preparations next time just for fun, but it's definitely going to reappear in our diet.

Also, a final shout-out to my mom and aunt, who ran the NY Marathon this past weekend (and fed us delicious food at locations like this one) for Shoe 4 Africa. Well done!

Study skills

2011-11-02T19:23:00.002-04:00

New strategy: now that I have finished reviewing all lectures at least once, I am going to type up outlines to every single lecture and then review those all weekend long. This will require epic amounts of Diet Coke. Also, bread stuffed with cheese, pesto, and tomato paste.

Mmm, cheese. Did you know that cheese contains casomorphin, an opioid? That is one of the reasons cheese can cause constipation (a notorious side effect of morphine) and is reputedly one of the reasons cheese is so hard to stop eating.

Now please excuse me while I have another slice and try to hit upon more pleasant dinner-oriented topics.

Pisum thank you

2011-11-01T19:45:00.003-04:00

After making a series of neurology termination-related puns with a friend, I feel a little bit better about the fact that we are in our ninth week of this neverending unit and it is severely interfering with my food and exercise routines.

I suppose I should have expected this; it's what med school is supposed to be about. Up until this point, though, I could manage blogging a lot/working out a lot at the same time. Perhaps limb anatomy next week will be a bit of a respite? Or perhaps I should take this as a sign that my blogging/working out career is over and my medical career has begun to actually rear its head. Or perhaps I should take this as a sign that in order to manage exercise, cooking, and school, I shouldn't be spending time reading 1Q84. I was a little skeptical of it at first, considering that there's an episode of sporadic barely legal teen Asian lesbianism within the first 20 pages and I generally prefer my literature to be a little less like an idealistic porn scenario. But it's increasingly worth reading.

Here is pasta with peas, lemon juice, olive oil, and just a little taleggio. I thought of making taleggio crisps or taleggio ziti, but my resident garbage disposal got into the cheese and reduced it in quantity somewhat. No matter! It's so powerful that a little bit on top is all that is necessary.

Imam bayildi: You'd cry, too, if you were an oil-marinated eggplant.

2011-10-24T19:49:00.004-04:00

Imam bayildi means "the priest wept" in Arabic, and while I found a variety of stories as to the origin of the name, I'm going to stick to the "eating eggplant cooked with over a cup of olive oil will make anyone cry copious tears of joy."

Sitting in a pool of broth that's mostly olive oil, ready
to be devoured. Yes, it is sticking a few inches off the
plate! Thank you for noticing.

Chillin' in the skillet, pre-baking. The other eggplant halves
had to go in a 9x13 baking pan, because they didn't fit.

Seriously. It's that good. I'm a little afraid of how good for you it is(n't), but I can't care all that much because it is that good. We ate it with lavash, a flatbread flaky with yet more lipids, dusted with za'atar.

Mmm, lavash.

This is the recipe I used. When the blogger says "two large eggplant," I don't think she had foot-long eggplant in mind, but that's what I got, and it worked just fine.

In the dessert world: I've been wanting to attempt a vegetarian (read: gelatin-free) marshmallow for some time now, and with a small amount of maple syrup taking up space in the cabinet, yesterday seemed as good a time as any to attempt a maple sesame marshmallow. After doing extensive research on the hazards of agar agar marshmallows, I used 3/5 the recommended weight of gelatin of agar agar, and I simply replaced the corn syrup in the recipe with maple syrup. Instead of greasing and powdered sugar-ing a dish, I greased it and dusted it with sesame seeds and just a touch of cardamom. The sugar mixture fluffed up just as I hoped it would and didn't have a weird, grainy mouthfeel. Agar agar success! But then it didn't set. Rather, it set to a certain extent, but it just didn't become that cuttable, chewy, fluffy wonder that is the marshmallow. I was crushed. Agar agar fail. Fortunately, upon looking over the procedure once again, I realized that I'd misread the temperature to which the sugar solution should have been boiled. I'd cooked it to 220 F, not 250. Drat. It's these kinds of mistakes that waste valuable enzymes in undergraduate-bedeviled labs the world over. Luckily, it tasted great, and I'm living with someone who I have observed eat a pat of butter rolled in cinnamon sugar. It shouldn't have been a surprise that he was all too willing to eat a soft, gooey, maple-flavored quasi-marshmallow and declare it "so *$&#%)! good. No, seriously, this $*#& is amazing."

Silence, cur!

2011-10-22T18:14:00.003-04:00

A little education for the uninitiated: Hush puppies are the finest of Southern delicacies.

Fried cornmeal scallion batter with a chili honey dipping sauce?

Yes.

Pumpkin head

2011-10-12T19:08:00.001-04:00

I've been remiss. To be fair, potato leek soup looks sort of gross when I attempt to photograph it, and showing you Emmenthal* grilled cheese on homemade rye with pumpkin fries and kale chips would have been simply unfair, and I have made udon noodles four times in the last two years, so who wants to blog about that again? But here you go, pesto pizza on whole wheat pumpkin crust:

That's right, pumpkin crust. I substituted a small amount of the liquid in my usual pizza crust recipe for mashed pumpkin; it only imparts a slight pumpkin flavor (then again, I only added about half a cup), but the color is nice, and the crust is oh so tender. I'll titrate the pumpkin for my anticipated pumpkin flavor-friendly pizza (Manchego? Goat cheese? Parmesan? who knows!) some other time. Meanwhile, using the rest of the (large) pumpkin we got this weekend on pumpkin fries does not sound half bad.

Also meanwhile, Andy's chemistry department guru sent an e-mail alerting the department to a molecular gastronomy talk on, appropriately enough for those dastardly chemists, foams and emulsions. I'm trying to convince him to take time off from his, you know, real work to absorb transmissible wisdom, but he's not being receptive. Yet.

*Insanely cheap at East Village Cheese, the home of all insanely cheap and awesome cheeses.

Two pie? Aye!

2011-10-09T21:43:00.002-04:00

A potluck at a friend's apartment and a gift sent from Florida provided an excellent opportunity for not one, but two desserts.

The goat cheese cheesecake is something I've been wanting to make for a long time. In its original incarnation, it involved a peach and thyme filling, but peach season has given way to apple season while I was trying to find an opportunity to make it. I also wanted to sweeten this with honey, but I wanted to go by the original recipe first until I had a better idea of what the viscosity would be. This was rather runny as-is, so if it had been sweetened with honey instead of sugar, I'm sure the baking time would have had to be significantly increased. But oh, boy, would that have been delicious.

Turning from autumn to summer, we have a key lime meringue pie, thanks to the parents of a dear friend from high school. They sent us a wedding gift of miniature ceramic pie plates, key limes, condensed milk, and a recipe for key lime meringue pie. How could I resist?

Apple nutmeg goat cheesecake for those without a springform pan, adapted from Food and Wine
Double the recipe (except for the goat cheese; the original called for 11 oz) if you have a springform pan.

1 prebaked crust of your choice in a pie pan (I used graham cracker, but I bet a flaky, buttery pastry crust would be amazing)
6 oz goat cheese, the good stuff
3 eggs, separated
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp lemon juice plus 1/4 tsp lemon juice
1/4 to 1/2 tsp lemon zest
1/4 to 1/3 cup sugar (or honey, if you're brave)
1 1/2 tablespoons flour
1 large, tart baking apple, of the sort that mostly breaks down when cooked
nutmeg
2 tsp butter

Peel the apple and slice it thinly. Melt the butter in a pan and add the apple, a pinch of salt, nutmeg, and 1/4 tsp lemon juice. Cook over medium-low heat until a chunky paste is formed. Set aside to cool, and set the oven to preheat at 350 F. Beat the goat cheese with the egg yolks, vanilla, lemon juice and zest, and sugar until it's very smooth. Stir in the flour until just incorporated. With clean beaters, beat the egg whites until they are stiff but not dry. Stir a third of the egg whites into the goat cheese mixture, then gently fold in the rest. Pour about half the filling into the pie crust. Layer the apple paste on top as evenly as you can, and pour the rest of the filling on top. Bake for 15 to 25 minutes (I know, it's a big span of time, but my oven is weird and should not be trusted), until the filling is set and a knife inserted into the middle of the cheesecake comes out clean but moist. Cool to at least room temperature before serving sprinkled with nutmeg.

Man, Janeway really does pose like Robin Hood...

2011-10-07T20:13:00.003-04:00

My BLS/IV venipuncture course ended well over an hour early tonight, without incident save a little pain inflicted on a classmate (sorry, Brent) who volunteered his arm, so I had plenty of time to bake these carnival squash:

But first I filled them with a mixture of rice cooked with mirepoix, spinach, saffron, cinnamon, and a little pepper, then stirred with some yogurt. For dessert: toasted squash seeds with cinnamon sugar. When you toast them in your cast-iron skillet, they spin around so quickly they blur, or do the Mexican jumping bean thing.

And now to a very thrilling, Manhattanite Friday night of weight-lifting, multiple episodes of Star Trek: Voyager* (or maybe an episode of Torn Apart, the web series accompaniment to The Walking Dead that is providing yet another piece of evidence that no character in any form of media who is named Hannah is a person you want to empathize with***), and lots of sleep.

*Nobody is ever going to convince me that this is not an awesome Star Trek incarnation. I've already seen every episode at least twice**, but Andy had never seen a single one, so of course we're planning to gradually rewatch it together.
**Wipe that pitying look off your face, young whippersnapper!
***A Widow for One Year? Hannah's a backstabbing slattern. House? Hannah's a whiny adolescent. Hannah Montana? Don't even. Veronica Mars? Hannah's a doormat, just as she is in Harry Potter. There's a Hannah in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, but that movie is deeply creepy and basically justifies abducting women and coercing them into marrying you by saying, "Look, they'll fall in love with you eventually!"

Licking my wounds

2011-10-03T21:24:00.000-04:00

That exam was predictably not good (for everyone, not just me, which I guess is a good thing?). I needed salve. I needed comfort. I needed the food equivalent of this:

This is eggplant ziti with a goat cheese mint bechamel sauce.

Recipe: Very thinly slice and abundantly salt 1 large or 2 medium eggplant, and let it sit for an hour or so to draw out some of the moisture. Meanwhile, make 2 1/2 to 3 cups bechamel sauce. Just as it's finishing, stir in about 8 ounces of goat cheese and whisk over low heat until it's smooth. Toss in 1/4 cup chopped fresh mint (and some parsley, if you want), 1 pound al dente ziti, and salt and pepper as needed. Preheat the oven to 350. Pat the eggplant slices dry, then alternate monolayers of salted and peppered eggplant with layers of sauced ziti in a greased baking pan. Top with breadcrumbs and bake for about 30 minutes, or until the eggplant is tender. Unlike me, you should let it sit for a few minutes after it comes out of the oven so the slices of ziti hold together.

If you fry it, they will come

2011-10-01T20:00:00.003-04:00

There's this Steelers bar/restaurant on 41st called Public House that is becoming Andy's de facto Place to Watch Football Games until he finds one either closer to Washington Square or closer to the medical center. But even if a Steelers-friendly locale opened up across the street from his lab, I'm thinking he might stick with this one, because he has recently discovered the all-holy fried mozzarella stack: two slices of fried mozzarella between which is a slice of tomato, accompanied by pesto and marinara sauces. Fortunately, I refuse to be outdone by a sports bar.

These are fried rounds of goat cheese accompanied by homemade Concord grape jam and pesto. Please ignore the fact that the pesto sort of looks like baby poo on a plate and focus on the fact that alongside it is fried cheese, which is actually food of the gods.

I also made focaccia with Concord grapes and sunflower seeds, and the omnipresent kale chips, of course!

Andy: "If I buy you ten pints of grapes and some meth,
how many of these can you make per week?"

And then ate the rest of the grapes. They're $3 per overflowing pint at the farmers market. Next week, I will be purchasing one of several varieties of white grape, because they looked amazing and because I bet they'd go well with a wide selection of awesome semi-soft cheeses.

This leads into why I made a rather elaborate--though surprisingly un-time-consuming--dinner instead of studying for an exam for which I'm extraordinarily, terrifyingly, unprecedentedly unprepared: I did not trust myself around those grapes. By Monday afternoon, when my exam was over, I would have picked and nibbled until there were none left. Other omnipresent theme: self-control? Not my thing.

Spittin' kitchen

2011-09-29T23:23:00.001-04:00

Dammit, Deb. You had to go and post on your food site--Smitten Kitchen, only one of the most trafficked of them all--a recipe for the exact idea I had on my own: apple and honey challah.

Andy can attest that I've been plotting this for a week now. Sure, she's apparently been incubating this idea for nearly a year, but somehow I still feel vaguely usurped. By the professional. Totally. Yeah..

I just filled the braid with apple slices and speckled the top with more, then brushed the whole shebang with an egg white and honey glaze. Also, check out this impending storm!

To appropriate by destruction

2011-09-26T20:06:00.002-04:00

Sometimes I get an idea and inexplicably glom onto it like a hedgehog with a raspberry.

Like yesterday's lentil soup with caramelized onions, dates, porcini broth, and turmeric, over wild rice and arugula pilaf. I've had a note on my desktop for three weeks about this idea, not that it's particularly revolutionary. It just stuck.

Or tonight's pasta salad based on this recipe, minus the pomegranate seeds (I thought those were in season by now, but couldn't find them anywhere), plus a little cinnamon and cayenne.

Or opening a French restaurant for existentialists-in-denial called Mauvais Foie. It's going to happen one day, just you wait.

Lentil soup with dates and caramelized onions
2 onions
2 cups lentils
1/3 cup chopped dates
2 cloves garlic, chopped
turmeric, cayenne pepper, and salt to taste
1 bay leaf
1 oz dried porcini mushrooms

Caramelize the onions at the bottom of a soup pot. Add the garlic and saute until it's toasted, but not burnt. Add the lentils, dates, porcini, and bay leaf, and add water or broth to cover by about two inches. Bring to a boil, then simmer until the lentils are cooked. Pick out the porcini insofar as is possible (I suppose you could wrap them up bouquet garni-style, but that's too fancy for me). Using an immersion blender, puree the soup until most, but not all, of the lentils have been liquefied. Add more water/broth or boil off liquid according to how thick you like the soup. Add turmeric, cayenne pepper, and salt to taste after adjusting the viscosity (sorry, bad term) of the soup.

Tea and Thorazine

2011-09-24T19:40:00.000-04:00

Before I start the usual culinary blather, here, in honor of the fact that I'm currently digging myself out of a massive academic hole*, here's my Fun Diagnosis to Make o' the Week: syringomelia! And here's the current Number One Thing I Never Want to Experience: mixed mania! Well, either that or this.

Moving on to a topic I'll probably address annually: Anyone who has spent more than five minutes around me between the months of September and May knows that I hate the cold. I go all Raynaud's**, and it's impossible to wear sandals, and my hair freezes in the morning as I walk home from bikram. First-world problems are hard.

But one thing that is delightful about the months between, at least, September and November is squash. And apples. And hot spiced drinks. And more apples. Since last week's surprisingly diminutive Lower East Side Apple Festival taught me more about mastiha*** than on everyone's favorite all-American fruit, I'm sticking with squash for today:

Butternut squash fries with paprika and ketchup!

I should really learn how to light pictures at this point.

These go with a toasted fontina, mixed wild mushroom, and arugula sandwich on flaxseed whole wheat bread. I'd like to try the bread with some rye flour in addition to the whole wheat, and with some ground flaxseed or flax oil. The seeds themselves need to be ground up (by teeth or by mortar and pestle) before any real nutritional benefit can be had from them, and there's no way enough chewing of this bread is going to happen for that to be possible. Recipe to follow.

Roasting mushrooms "en papillote" (okay, or "en foil")
with rosemary.

One of the batards...

...sliced open to reveal the seeds inside.

I broiled the fontina on top...

...and added arugula while the cheese and mushrooms were
hot so that it would wilt somewhat.

And, of course, an apple for dessert, finished off with coffee containing my newly homemade pumpkin spice syrup for Andy and black tea with the same stuff for me. Again, recipe to follow.

This may look like a normal coffee,
but it has a secret superpower of
Absolute Deliciousness.

I apparently cannot succeed at filtering things, both because my attempts to use a coffeemaker and then a paper towel failed utterly and because I refuse to pay for cheesecloth, but the syrup was fine despite the fact that the spice granules had to remain in it.

Before resuming my panicked studying (ohgodneurologyohgodpsychiatryohgodohgod), a food-related (and unusually political, for me) addendum about someone who actually scares me: I met a patient once whose child had recently received a new kidney because of E. coli food poisoning. Just saying.

Flaxseed bread
N.b.: I'd replace about a third of the bread flour with rye and retain the whole wheat flour, I think. You could also use sunflower seeds, linseed, or even wheat berries in this as well.

400 g bread flour
100 g whole wheat flour
2 tsp salt
150 g flax seeds
1 tbsp honey
2 1/4 tsp yeast (a.k.a. one packet)
300 g warm water

Mix the flours, honey, and water, and let the mixture sit for 10 to 15 minutes. Add the rest of the ingredients and knead until the dough is very smooth and homogenous; it should be tacky, but not too wet, and consequently it won't appear too elastic. Let rise for an hour to an hour and a half in an oil-coated bowl. Punch down the dough and divide it in half. Let rest for 20 minutes under oiled plastic wrap. Shape the dough according to this video (or however you want, really, the bread doesn't care). Let rise for an hour or until the loaves are doubled in size. Meanwhile, preheat an oven with a baking stone and another heatproof pan in it to 425 F. Brush the loaves with water, score them, and put them on the baking stone; also throw some water into the other preheated pan to fill the oven with steam and help develop a nice, crunchy crust. Bake 40 to 45 minutes, rotating the bread halfway through to brown it evenly, or until the loaves sound hollow when tapped on their undersides.

Pumpkin spice syrup
1 1/2 cups water
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 tablespoons pumpkin (I use canned; it makes life easier)
teeny tiny pinch of salt
teeny tiny pinch of black pepper
1 tablespoon cinnamon (or three to four cinnamon sticks)
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon cloves

Heat the water and sugar together over medium heat until the sugar is dissolved and the solution is nearly clear. Add all the other ingredients and cook at medium-low to medium heat for 6 to 8 minutes. If you're not me, you'll be able to successfully strain this so that you get a clear, amber-colored syrup. Allow to cool and store, refrigerated, until use.

*I've always hated this expression. You don't dig yourself out of a hole. You dig yourself into a hole. What's especially confusing is that both expressions are apparently widely used.
**These pictures exemplify the dramaticest of the dramatic Raynaud's. It's not nearly that bad in most people, no worries.
***This substance is fascinating. It's only grown on Chios, and it's like a cross between the smell of a pine tree and the taste of buckwheat honey. Idea: mastiha semifreddo, or possibly mastiha taffy, or orange-scented mastiha caramels. I'll keep you posted.

Gouda on you

2011-09-21T21:18:00.000-04:00

Smoked gouda macaroni and cheese with a dill and Parmesan crust.

This is actually the most perfect food.

In other news, I had my first psychiatric patient session today. It turns out people with schizophrenia are deeply, intriguingly, fascinatingly different. I know how stupid that sounds, but I'd never conversed with a psychiatric patient before, and going in, I wondered about my ability to evaluate the patient's pathology with my extraordinarily minimal training. It's easy to detect, believe you me. Most striking of all, though, was the emphasis the physician who led our group placed on the importance of long-term therapeutic relationships and on a shift in societal attitude toward the mentally ill, particularly the criminally mentally ill. I wish all doctors retained the depth of compassion he has even after a clearly long and intense career.

Gouda mac 'n' cheese
2 tbsp cornstarch
3 tbsp butter
2 cups smoked Gouda, grated
2 1/4 cups milk
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
red pepper flakes to taste
1/4 cup grated Parmesan
1/4 cup panko
1 tbsp dried dill
1 pound cooked orecchiete (traditionally used in a situation in which you want as much sauce to cling to your pasta as possible; I learned this from The Geometry of Pasta)

Preheat the oven to 375 F. Stir together the cornstarch, salt, peppers, butter, and milk in an ovenproof saucepan or cast-iron pan or pot. Heat over medium-low, stirring constantly, until it boils gently, then remove from the heat and add the Gouda. When the cheese is melted, add the noodles and mix well. Smooth out the top. Mix the Parmesan, panko, and dill in a small bowl and sprinkle evenly over the top of the noodles. Bake, uncovered, for 20 to 25 minutes or until golden brown.

Fall back

2011-09-20T19:37:00.002-04:00

Man, a week since my last post? You totally missed out on me waxing trite about communing with Mark Bittman via cheddar, ale, and cauliflower soup, going South with corn pudding, black-eyed peas, and collards, playing with my mandoline to make shaved kohlrabi and apple slaw... Hasn't your week been empty? No? I am slain.

No pictures for today, since all I made was a black and gummy-looking jajangmyeon that contrasts not at all with the black cast-iron skillet in which it was cooked, but in honor of the newly crisp weather, here's a recipe for a pumpkin spice latte rice pudding that I concocted yesterday. It may or may not cut down on Andy's actual Starbucks pumpkin spice latte consumption*, but it has its own puddingy charm.

Pumpkin spice latte pudding
1 cup brown rice
1 cup very dark coffee
1 cup water
4 cups milk (whole is creamiest, but whatever)
1/3 cup honey
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/2 tsp salt
2/3 to 1 cup pumpkin puree (I thought 2/3 was plenty, but you might like more pumpkin flavor)
2 tbsp butter
cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and ginger to taste

Cook the brown rice until it's just barely al dente in the coffee and water. Add the milk, honey, maple syrup, salt, pumpkin puree, and spices. Heat over medium heat until gently boiling, then lower the heat to medium-low and cook until the pudding is thickened and the rice is creamy. Keep in mind that the pudding will thicken somewhat as it cools! Turn off the heat and stir in the butter. Leave the pan on the stove to cool to lukewarm, then taste to adjust the spices. Serve warm or chill in the fridge first.

*Not that I particularly want to. I get to steal sips.

Sticks and stones

2011-09-13T19:23:00.000-04:00

Sticks of bread are the best thing since slices of bread.

They're awesome and crunchy and can be bitten in half in one fell swoop!

This is my attempt at Mario Batali's juniper grissini, which are these super-slim, crispy Italian breadsticks, but I was in a rush and only cut some of them to grissini thinness. I happened to have juniper berries on hand thanks to a friend of mine who bought them in Puerto Rico. No, they're neither native to South America nor used in South American cooking. The way said friend chose them was this: he picked up a bag of them at a spice shop and asked the saleswoman what they were used in. She said she'd have to look that up. He said, "Never mind, this is just what I was looking for." I think that's a compliment of sorts? He may have overestimated my juniper knowledge, because this is one of exactly two recipes I know of that uses juniper, and no, I'm not making my own gin. Any ideas, Internet?

Since lentil salads are apparently my new curried lentils with rice, that's what I served the breadsticks with*. The lentils are flavored with celery salt, pepper and sage; the roasted brussels sprouts and shallot slices have lemon juice on them; and the cheese is smoked gouda. The grapes are grapes.

*No, not the other way around, thank you.

Double or nothin'

2011-09-11T21:29:00.000-04:00

I did two bikram yoga classes in a row today for the first time. A "double" is something I told myself I'd never be silly enough to undertake, but somewhere along the way I just felt like I had to. Honestly, it wasn't bad! Lifting my arms is currently not as simple as it should be, though.

Speaking of changed minds... I'd originally planned to make something quotidian and doubtless repetitive for dinner today, but then I saw this recipe for sweet corn polenta. And I had to.

The vinaigrette has sesame oil and balsamic vinegar in it instead of olive oil and red wine vinegar, and I used a more liberal hand with the garlic and shallots than recommended here. Whatever you do to it, the basic concept remains: making polenta with fresh corn rather than cornmeal is pretty much the best idea.

On top of spaghetti

2011-09-07T19:38:00.000-04:00

Vegetarian meatballs aren't bad, if I do say so myself.

A little floury--I'd omit a tablespoon of the flour next time--but reasonably meatball-imitative. And chewy. Really wonderfully chewy.

Add them to linguini tossed with a simple tomato sauce in which eggplant and kale have been cooked, and you're golden. I presented at lab meeting today, which was harrowing if fun (and educational!) in the end, and a big plate of pasta plus the leftover cookies from the meeting hit the spot. It's like reverse carbo-loading! For your brain!

In order to make up for the fact that I really haven't got much to say*, I'll default to posting this video.

Vegetarian meatballs, adapted from here

2/3 cup lentils (cooked)

1 cup rice (cooked)

1/4 cup finely minced onion

1/4 cup oats

2 tbsp to 1/4 cup finely minced parsley

2 tbsp whole-wheat flour

1 tsp wheat gluten

1/4 cup wheat bran

1 tbsp soy sauce

2 tbsp olive oil

2 tsp lemon juice

1.5 tsp balsamic vinegar

1 tsp Dijon mustard

1 tsp maple syrup

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

1/8 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp chili powder

1 tsp paprika

1 tsp garlic powder

Puree or food process or immersion blend all ingredients together until the mixture is vaguely meatlike; I like it when some lentils are still whole. Chill for 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 400 F in the meantime. Form into balls 1 inch in diameter and place on a cookie sheet; spray lightly with olive oil spray. Bake 10 minutes, rotating halfway through to promote even browning. These taste best lukewarm, actually, so wait some time before eating them.

*As if I ever do...

Hippy dippy

2011-09-04T19:23:00.000-04:00

A quick perusal of the past two weeks of blog confirms that, yes, I forgot to mention that my rather fabulous PI from this past summer took me and my research compatriot to dinner at Tom Colicchio's Riverpark as a summer wrap-up. It's fun to walk past a grubby stretch of First Avenue into a charming, elegant dining room, and needless to say, the food was delightful. I had mushroom consommé (while coveting the oxtail), creamy and perfectly balanced mascarpone ravioli (while coveting the duck), and a black forest sundae that included these amazing brandy-soaked cherries (while coveting absolutely nothing else, because I was too busy devouring chocolately lushness). Aside from the unlikely location, there's another lagniappe to the restaurant: its oh-so-virtuous "backyard" garden right behind the Alexandria Center. Today, after doing a little work in the mouse room*, my PI and I had coffee at the newly de-walled garden, and I took some pictures:

There were three varieties of eggplant.

Teeny baby kale!

The adorable little kale reminded me that I have been meaning to try this recipe for "hippie hot pockets," a.k.a. empanadas stuffed with leafy greens.

The crust looks better than this in person.

Kale and arugula caprese-esque filling

And as long as I was baking with olive oil, some coffee olive oil brownies were in order.

Caffeeeeeeeine....

Hey, NYUSoM second-years: Which cranial nerves allowed me to enjoy the taste of my brownies and empanadas?

Hippie Hot Pockets, adapted from Feasting Freds
Olive oil crust
1 cup all-purpose flour
2/3 cup whole-wheat flour
1/3 cup cornmeal
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup very warm water
3/4 cup olive oil

Stir together the flours, cornmeal, and salt. Add the olive oil and warm water all at once and mix with a fork or your hands until it comes together in a ball. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes and bake as needed.

Arugula and kale filling
10 cups raw arugula/kale
1/2 onion
2 cloves garlic
2 plum tomatoes
1/2 cup mozzarella
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1/4 cup loosely packed fresh basil
1 tsp red pepper flakes
2 tbsp capers
1 egg, beaten

Cook according to the directions in the linked recipe!

Olive oil cocoa brownies with a crunchy caffeine surprise
2 eggs
1 tbsp water
1/2 cup light brown sugar
3/4 cup white sugar
1/2 cup dark cocoa powder
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup coffee beans
1/2 cup olive oil

Beat together eggs and water. Slowly add sugar, beating until the mixture is thick. Very, very slowly add olive oil, beating all the while. Gently fold in dry ingredients and coffee beans. Bake at 325 for 25 to 30 minutes or until just moist in the center.

*Once again, I've concluded that mice are evil. While it was interesting to be able to examine a mouse spine and ribcage, the way I imagined doing so did not involve a juvenile female whose brothers had ripped out her throat and upper chest and eaten out her lungs.

A little warm in here

2011-09-03T19:13:00.000-04:00

There are three things I like extremely hot*: weather, showers, and food.

That's probably why Andy and I disagreed about this Thai yellow curry with eggplant, carrots, snow peas, and egg (I wanted tofu in it, but I forgot to buy it). It included not only the outards of a habanero, but the delightful seedy innards. I shoveled it in happily, relishing the burn and the slight runniness of the nose** that come from a particularly piquant meal. Andy was practically in tears.

We may have to go buy him some milk. What a wimp, right?

*Yukyukyuk, very funny, let's move on.
**Thanks to anatomy, I now know way too much about why this happened.

How a cannonball to the head turns you from a mercenary into a hyper-religious academic

2011-09-01T23:02:00.000-04:00

I wish I could say that the lack of blogging was due solely to the fact that I've been making things like vegetarian meatloaf, which are good to eat but not good to look at, but really my priorities lie somewhere in the pterygopalatine fossa rather than in being online. The ugly-and-easy food is probably a result of that, come to think of it. Ah, well.

First, a medical tale to relate. There is a certain anatomy professor and former surgeon of whom I (and the two other women in my anatomy group*) have grown quite fond. He's practically antediluvian--I recall him telling a story about cracking open someone's chest in the ER sans anesthesia because there were no pagers or whatnot to alert the operating room staff that they needed a room freed up stat--and as a result has a somewhat quirky set of professorial offerings. There are the mnemonic rhymes that ring with that delightful sort of archaic smut**. There are the stories about being a patient and knowing exactly what was going on, back in the days when that was probably an even more disquieting thing to be than it is now. And then there are the stories about medical school. Today, amidst some review of the cranial nerves' paths and functions, we learned that when he was a medical student at McGill, this doctor had an anatomy professor named C.P. Martin. Said professor began his adult life as a mercenary for the British during the Irish War of Independence. In some skirmish or other, he received a cannonball to the back of the head and lay on the battlefield for days before some poor schmucks coming to collect the bodies found him inexplicably alive. Even more inexplicably, he recovered without a hint of infection, but with a huge scoop taken out of his skull and a chunk of his brain covered only by soft tissue. As a result of his injuries, he went on to become a. very religious, b. a renowned anthropologist, and c. a renowned anatomist. As a more tangible result, not only did he have to wear a sort of sweatband with a big pad in the back to keep his brain warm during the winter (says our professor), but he lost left nasal and right temporal vision. The students, said our professor, exploited this by signaling to their cohorts who were sneaking into class late which way Martin was looking. The tardy students could then enter class via whichever door to the lecture hall lay in Dr. Martin's rather substantial blind spot.

Second, on a Diet Coke expedition to Rite Aid today, I discovered, for a mere $2.50, the renowned confection of Delta airlines: Biscoff!

These taste like burnt caramel with a slightly salty finish. They're godly. When I finally make that goat cheese cheesecake, I think I'll make the crust out of these. Godly, I tell you.

And here is a blurry and yellow (nothing new, I know) picture of dinner: eggs, fruit salad with a mint/sesame oil dressing, roasted chard, and lemon ginger pancakes that I came up with on the fly. They were really good, so here's the recipe:

1.5 cups flour
1/2 cup cornmeal
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp dried ginger
1.5 cups milk
juice and zest of 1(very) large lemon
3 tablespoons fresh ginger, grated
2 eggs
2 tablespoons oil or melted butter

Let the ginger and lemon zest soak in the lemon juice while you mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Separate the two eggs, putting the yolks in the bowl with the dry ingredients and putting the whites in a separate, small bowl. Add the vanilla and the ginger/lemon juice mixture to the milk and let it curdle slightly while you whip the egg whites to medium-stiff peaks. Stir the milk mixture and then the melted oil/butter into the dry ingredients. Gently fold in the egg whites. Cook in an oiled or buttered frying pan by the quarter-cup.

*We were (accidentally) segregated by gender in all our anatomy activities, which is slightly surreal but not an impediment to education, it turns out.
**An example, which is apparently by Oliver St. John Gogarty: The lingual nerve/ took a mighty swerve/ around the hyoglossus./ "Well, I'll be fucked!"/said Wharton's duct,/"The bastard's double-crossed us!"

Hurrican't

2011-08-29T19:22:00.000-04:00

So yeah, that endtimes flood thing didn't really happen to Manhattan. But that doesn't mean I didn't a. buy peanut butter, b. make whole-wheat bread, and c. gorge myself on a combination of the above for two days, using "well, we could have lost power" as an excuse.

And the night before I had made crescent rolls, which Andy wreaked his own form of natural disaster on.

If you make these, roll them out 1/8 inch or thinner. Otherwise,
you get these sort of indistinct little buggers.

Mmm, warm, fluffy insides.

And tonight was African burritos. What is an African burrito, you may ask? Why, I'll tell you!

Gently microwave a collard until it's cooked enough to be palatable but still hold up to filling, plop in some turmeric rice and berbere lentil spread, toss julienned vegetables on top, and fold using this retro guide* to burrito folding.

Mmm, tasty. Almost tasty to make me forget that what I really have to do tonight is review pretty much every single bump, crevice, and nubbin on this guy**:

Alas, poor Yorick. I wish I knew well how your pterygopalatine fossa works.

*Guys. That guide was posted in 2002. That was almost 10 years ago. Meditate on that and despair.
**Me, upon arriving home: Andy, I have a skull in a box. You can play with it, but only after I've Clorox Wipe'd it to remove the cadaver juice.
Andy: ...

Their Eyes Were Watching Blog

2011-08-26T19:53:00.000-04:00

I'm having trouble taking this hurricane thing seriously. Perhaps it comes with the territory of growing up on (or sort of in... I grew up on a barrier island) the Gulf of Mexico. First of all, it looks like it's supposed to be a category 1 at most by the time it hits us. Secondly, I live on the eighth floor. Thirdly, I'm a little immersed in the last of summer produce right now:

These are zucchini, corn, and chickpea fritters flavored with mint and lemon zest. Also, kale chips and slices of tomato.

I fried them in the safflower oil that Andy brought home as a surprise one day, and I am still looking forward to picking the BCBs* out of the pan when the oil has cooled a bit. And then baking the assuredly chewy and buttery crescent rolls that are rising right now. Irene, Schmirene.

*Burnt crunchy bits, a term coined, I believe, by the sadly Alzheimer's-afflicted Terry Pratchett of Discworld fame.

Zombie jamboree

2011-08-23T18:23:00.000-04:00

I held a brain today! Said organ was our cadaver's none-too-well-preserved brain, so it wasn't the most, shall we say, cohesive experience, but still. How awesome is that? A whole formerly thinking and feeling and visceral afferent-sending brain!

You can tell school has started again because here's yet another quick-and-easy soup recipe. I actually followed this one almost verbatim, with one exception: toasting garlic on high heat and then searing bok choy on high heat with the garlic still in the pan would, I intuited, lead to burnt garlic, and there are few disappointments more bitter (literally and figuratively) than burnt garlic. So I toasted the garlic in the oil, scooped out the garlic and tossed it in the soup, and seared the bok choy in the garlic-flavored oil.

There's also, as you can see, some sriracha in here for good measure. Don't be shy with the lime juice; a healthy dose is absolutely necessary to cut the saltiness of the broth (okay, so maybe I wish I hadn't added exactly 2 teaspoons of salt) as well as to add the tropical zing that all earthquake-beset* New York denizens crave.

*Hardly.

Real butter, medical blue cotton/poly blend, and you.

2011-08-22T19:09:00.000-04:00

Hello, anatomy. I suppose I kind of missed you. For one thing, scrubs are so forgiving to the figure.

Thus, lemony parsley and egg soup from Mark Bittman, complete with butter and cream and served over a scoop of orzo. I didn't manage to purée it as he suggested, because the parsley was more fibrous than the tarsi of the eyelids*. The recipe instructs to cook the parsley only until wilted, and there was no way it would be purée-able at that point. It's perfectly palatable this way, though. Addictive, even, if you are as enamored of parsley as I am. I've been known to down most of the bowls of karpas on the Passover seder table, with or without salt water dipping accompaniment.

Also, while the recipe suggests that 3 bunches of parsley will yield 4 cups, I used about 1.5 bunches (one curly and one Italian flat-leaf), chopped and packed reasonably tightly into the measuring cup. Because I used orzo (heartier and more complete meal: check), I feel like I could have halved the recipe, which means that the benefits of this soup go well beyond my usual "quick and tasty", since for a half-recipe:

Cost of 1 (large) bunch parsley at Greenmarket: $1
Cost of lemons: $0.25
Cost of eggs: $0.30
Cost of butter: $0.13
Cost of onion: $0.25
Cost of orzo: $0.18
Total (omitting the optional heavy cream): $2.11

Not bad.

*The jokes, they have already begun. Run. Save yourselves.

So fresh and so clean

2011-08-21T21:11:00.001-04:00

Andy and I found something delightful at the Greenmarket this past Saturday: teeny tiny adorable tomatoes.

The nice lady running the tomato stand said that this was a "Mexican [word we didn't catch] tomato," and assiduous Internet research has only turned up an heirloom cultivar called Matt's Wild Cherry that does in fact grow wild in Mexico. In any case, they were fun little bursts of tomatoey goodness in a kale, tomato, and tofu scramble sandwich, served on bread made in...

wheeeeeeee

That's right. A stand mixer. Some of my friends from undergrad went in together on a stand mixer for us as a pre-emptive wedding present. I'm very, very happy. I mean, look at this dough.

That dough took me little time and less attention. Oh, stand mixer. You're everything I hoped you'd be.

So are you, bread.

Speaking of friends, we had friends over tonight to share the sandwiches, caramelized onion and parmesan rice, and salad, deviled eggs, and (incredibly good) key lime pie that they brought. They pointed out--okay, justifiably mocked me for--the frequency at which food bloggers use phrases like "fresh _____" or "perfectly ripe _______" in describing food, with emphasis on the overuse of the word "fresh." Of course, now I'm determined never to use that word again.

Despite the fact that I didn't photograph it, I should say something about tofu scramble: I hate that I like it so much, because it's one of those hippy-dippy stereotypical vegetarian dishes, but oh, it's so quick and tasty and proteinaceous. Which is, of course, exactly the set of criteria one looks for in an evening-before-classes-start-again meal, or, in fact, a harried-evening-while-classes-are-going-on meal. Summer, you will be missed.

Simple sandwich loaves
4.5 to 5 cups bread flour
1 2/3 cups warm water
1 tsp yeast
1.5 tsp salt

Mix the yeast and water until the yeast is dissolved and let it sit for 5 to 10 minutes or until foamy. Mix in the flour and salt, and knead until the dough is smooth and springy. Grease a bowl, put the dough in, and cover with plastic wrap; allow to rise an hour to an hour and a half, or until doubled. Divide the dough into four to six sections, depending on how long you want your loaves to be. Roll the portions into balls and let rest for about 30 minutes so that the dough can relax (read: until you can actually stretch it into position and expect it to stay there). Pat each ball into 9-inch-long rectangles and roll up tightly into cylinders; fold the ends under to create a tight seam and press out as many air bubbles, gently, as you can. Allow to rise until doubled, about an hour. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 425 with a metal pan in the lowest rack. Just before baking, put ice cubes in the hot pan to create a steamy oven, which will help develop a crust. Bake the loaves on a cookie sheet or baking stone for 20 to 30 minutes.

Itallian rapscallion

2011-08-20T20:23:00.001-04:00

Yesterday was my (ostensible; I'm actually going in tomorrow) last day of work, and as a thank-you to our rather fabulous PI, my med student co-worker and I assembled a package that included florentines. These delicate caramel-and-almond wafers are, as the name suggest, of Florentine origin, which is why, after many weeks, I bring to you:

Komm, süßer Tod, Part VI: Giuliano de Medici

(florentines, sans the oft-used chocolate and candied citrus peel accoutrements*)

You'd think having a brother nifty enough to get the nickname "the Magnificent" would send Giuliano de Medici into a tailspin of mediocrity. But no, he had to go and co-rule Florence in the late fifteenth century with said brother. Unfortunately, members of the Pazzi and Salviati families butted heads with the Medici rulers of Florence over that most Italian Renaissance of issues: capitalism.

The Pazzi, a banking family had helped the very anti-Medici Pope Sixtus IV purchase some land that Lorenzo and Giuliano had their eye on, thus gaining the financial favors of the pope. Francesco Salviati, having helped with this whole pull-the-wool-dyeing-business-over-Medici-eyes scheme, also got himself named archbishop of Pisa for his efforts. To make a long and complicated story short and oversimplified, after suffering Lorenzo's disapproval one too many times, the Pazzi and Salviati decided to engineer what may be one of the ballsiest assassinations in all of history: have the Medici brothers stabbed to death in front of thousands of people during High Mass at the Duomo, the great cathedral of Florence.

Poor Giuliano bled out on the floor of the church while everyone watched (or fled in fear, more likely), but Lorenzo escaped and actually went on to attempt to defuse the situation, trying to save the lives of Pazzi and Salviati family members and allies. Unfortunately, Salviati was hanged to death at the Palazzo Vecchio, Pazzi family members were murdered by an angry mob, and Pazzi and Salviati family members were in general assaulted and defaced whether or not they had anything to do with the conspiracy... and, as you may have been able to guess, "or not" was the norm. As a last resort, Lorenzo turned himself over to the Neopolitan king Don Ferrante, prostrating himself in captivity for a few months until the king was convinced to help him calm Sixtus down. Lorenzo went on to die quietly in 1492, conveniently avoiding the climax of the whole Savonarola blowup that started during his reign. And even though Giuliano lost his life, his bastard son went on to become a pope. Ah, Italy!

Now, to move to the Iberian peninsula:

This is what happens when you make a sauce of nutmeg, black pepper, and the most delicious cheese ever to be wrapped in sycamore leaves, queso azul de Valdeon...

...add liberal amounts of fresh red grapes, sliced roasted garlic, and flat-leaf parsley...

...and toss a pound of pasta with the whole shebang, then top it with crunchy walnuts and a few more sprigs of parsley for good measure.

This is delicious and delightfully simple. If you can get ahold of the aforementioned cheese, or any other particularly earthy and pungent blue, make this.

*Recipe adapted from Good Housekeeping: Baking and One Perfect Bite. I actually made two batches of this because the first refused to peel off the parchment paper, no matter what I tried. The next batch I baked on lightly greased cookie sheets, which worked like a charm. And those first cookies? Andy ate them, paper and all. The results were surprisingly indigestion-free.

Vive le roi (de sandwichs!)

2011-08-18T20:30:00.000-04:00

I am only a little ashamed to admit that Andy and I are voracious fans of Food Network Star (formerly Next Food Network Star). We faithfully watch it on Hulu on a four-day delay. Tonight, we were gratified to find that our favored contestant, self-proclaimed Sandwich King Jeff, won over a contestant who inexplicably made the judges quiver with satisfaction but to us was laughably artificial. I mean, seriously, not only did she look and talk like a Muppet, there was actually a clip in the finale of her reciting in Spanish with all the dramatic flair of an amateur telenovela her father's declaration that he came to America to give her a better life. Please.

So, Jeff the Sandwich King, we dedicate to you the Most Difficult to Eat Sandwich Ever, with a side of steamed cabbage with (very) spicy peanut-lime dressing.

Take a slice of avocado brioche, the best healthification of a really indulgent bread I could possibly imagine.

Add a Mark Bittman-inspired panko-crusted lentil-and-vegetable cutlet*, flavored with cayenne and Korean fermented black bean paste.

Top with homemade pickled ginger, a slice of the most perfect peach of my summer thus far, and a slice of cooling avocado.

Attempt (and fail) to eat with dignity. Declare a successful, if amateur, homage to the Sandwich King.

*How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, p. 661

Bready or not...

2011-08-16T19:27:00.000-04:00

Unfortunately, yesterday got me re-started on soups, and now I'm back to my old habits.

This is a carrot soup, strained for a change! I used a porcini mushroom broth, an apple, and a good amount of ginger. More importantly, though:

Fresh baguette. This is possibly the best I've ever made. It's all in the thwack, I've discovered. You see, there are several joys to a fresh baguette, including a thin, crunchy crust and densely crumbed inside. Slapping the dough firmly on a floured tabletop two or three (or four) times gets rid of any large air bubbles and helps create that special texture.

I should have made more than one; I used leftover rhubarb from last week to make a rhubarb-onion jam, and it would have been phenomenal on baguette. Unfortunately, Andy wreaked his own personal havoc on most of the bread. Jam another day!

Simple gifts

2011-08-15T20:21:00.000-04:00

I know, I know, how saccharine and disgusting! But I can't help it. There has been such a glut of them recently. Take these matryoshka measuring cups and spoons, given to me by my mother-in-law.

My revived basil plant.

This thing has at least nine lives.

Cheap end-of-summer heirloom tomatoes, resting on a bamboo cutting board courtesy of my best friend's mother (i.e. my second mother).

Pretty and delicious

The re-realization, at the wedding of two of my high school friends who have been dating since we were in ninth grade, that the friends I made in high school are so staggeringly full of personality, strength, and accomplishment that I couldn't have assembled a better group of them if I'd tried.

PAR-TAY

Roasted heirloom tomato and red pepper soup on an unseasonably cool and rainy day, with butter lettuce salad and 45-cent happy hour bagels.

Tastes better than it looks. As usual.

Schadenfreude. No, I don't have a specific recent example of that, but I figured I had to cut the cloying examples featured in this post with the acknowledgement that revenge is just as sweet as any of the above.

Neither here nor there soup
I'm calling it this because it needs to be summer for tomatoes to be good enough to make this, but it's too warm to be eaten if conditions are not autumnal.

1.5 lbs heirloom tomatoes, slow-roasted
2 large red peppers, roasted and blistered in the oven
4 cloves garlic, roasted
1 carrot
1 onion
1 rib celery, with the annoying veiny bits stripped out
1 pod star anise
1/4 to 1/2 tsp sugar
paprika
cinnamon
salt
dash of soy sauce
pepper
red pepper flakes
1/2 to 3/4 cups milk
1/2 tsp cornstarch

Dice the onion, carrot, and celery to make a mirepoix. Sweat the mirepoix in a heavy-bottomed pot, then add the roasted vegetables and garlic, add soy sauce and water to cover, and bring to a boil. (I don't really care about a perfectly smooth soup, so I included the tomato and red pepper skins, but if you do care, take the skins off by scalding the vegetables prior to roasting.) Reduce to a simmer and add the spices to taste; make sure you taste every 5 minutes or so and remove the anise pod as soon as you find the anise flavor to be sufficient. Simmer until all the vegetables are soft enough to immersion blend or puree, at which point you should cool the soup enough to do so. Warm the milk in the microwave and add the cornstarch gradually, stirring to combine. Stir the cornstarchy milk into the soup and heat through. Pass through a mesh sieve or a chinois if you like. Eat with crusty bread (or really cheap bagels) and salad.

Birthdays and dog days

2011-08-12T00:36:00.000-04:00

It was my birthday today! Well, technically yesterday, but you know what I mean.

I brought to the (sadly, so sadly) final quizbowl practice of the summer this rhubarb lemon brioche cake that I've had planned for some time, adapted from a combination of some sketchy Hungarian fruit cake recipe and a plum brioche cake recipe that was a little oddly worded for my tastes. I thought the cake was "too": too little lemon, too little rhubarb, too much sugar, too much baking. But the rest of the group seemed to like it! So here is my (heavily) altered recipe. There's no paprika, I promise.

Rhubarb lemon brioche cake, adapted mostly from here
150 g butter, softened, plus more for the pan
4 egg yolks
3 egg whites
120 g brown sugar, plus more for tossing with the rhubarb
1/4 tsp salt
pinch nutmeg
juice and zest of 1 lemon
1 tbsp sour cream

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Beat the butter until fluffy, then add the sour cream and brown sugar and beat to combine. Add the egg yolks one at a time. Beat 10 minutes, or until light and fluffy. Stir in the flour. Add the salt to the egg whites and begin to beat them; about halfway to the soft peak stage, add a few drops of lemon juice. Continue to beat until the whites hold soft peaks. Stir a generous spoonful of whites into the batter to lighten it, then gently fold into the batter along with the rest of the lemon juice (reserving a small amount to toss with the rhubarb) and the lemon zest. Spread in a generously buttered pie pan. Toss the rhubarb with sugar and lemon juice and arrange it on top of the batter. Bake for 30 minutes or until just set and still very moist.

The only known example of the happy meeting of the immovable object and the irresistible force

2011-08-10T21:07:00.000-04:00

Andy and I are both, to put it mildly, stubborn. And, to put it mildly, somewhat competitive, mostly with the standards we set for ourselves. But when you give us an opportunity to compete with each other... well, that's how we got started on our current workout regimen, which I like to call the Recipe for Pain. For the past six days, I've either gone to yoga, lifted weights, or both, motivated both by determination to build up my physical fitness level and provide a buffer against the onslaught that will be medical school and by determination to show Andy that I can, in fact, power-lift at 9 p.m. on Monday and get up at 5:48 a.m.* to do hot yoga on Tuesday. And then whimper as the backs of my thighs tell me how much they disapprove of what I'm doing.

Something, of course, had to fall by the wayside, and it was blogging. I could have written about how chopped dried cherries macerated in lime juice provided an excellent substitute for pomegranate molasses in this lovely Lebanese dish. I could have written about how sriracha, lime juice, mirin, and miso paste make a great dressing for a soybean and rice salad with steamed carrots and cucumbers (and cilantro and garlic). But that didn't happen. Instead, I'll just have to tell you about this zucchini and spinach tart with a cornmeal crust, served alongside whole wheat bread thumbprints and a pesto of cilantro, kale, and roasted garlic.

It was... uh, really good. I guess that's about it. Not as good as Freddy and Fredericka, though, which I've moved on to after completely exhausting myself with Celestial Harmonies. Mark Helprin continues to impress me with his wit. I tend to read past some of the most carefully and subtly crafted side-splitting similes** I've ever experienced, do a mental double-take, and start giggling uncontrollably. It's long, but oh, how the pages fly by.

Zucchini and spinach tart
Crust
*Note that this crust only goes on the bottom of the tart! If you want sides, too, you'll have to multiply it by 1.5 (I estimate)
1/2 cup cornmeal
1/2 cup white flour
1 tsp dried rosemary
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup ice water
2 to 3 tbsp olive oil

Mix together the dry ingredients and stir in the olive oil with a fork. Gradually add ice water, stirring with the fork the whole while, until the mixture comes together in a ball. It shouldn't be sticky; if it is, add more cornmeal. Chill for 10 minutes. Roll into a 9-inch circle and line the bottom of a tart pan. Chill for 15 to 30 minutes while you preheat your oven to 425 F. Prick the pastry with a fork, then bake for 10 to 15 minutes or until just turning golden brown. Remove and set aside to cool.

Filling
5 oz goat cheese
1.5 cups spinach, steamed and chopped, with much of the water squeezed out
1 onion, cut into a large dice
1 zucchini
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp lemon juice
salt and pepper to taste

Caramelize the onion in olive oil, deglazing when appropriate with the vinegar. Stir in the spinach at the end, cooking just until the mixture is no longer damp. In a bowl, use an immersion blender to whip the goat cheese and lemon juice, then add the spinach and onion mixture and blend until it's of the desired consistency (leave chunks if you want, or don't!). Salt and pepper to taste, then spread in the cooled tart shell. Meanwhile, use a mandoline or sharp knife to thinly slice the zucchini. Arrange the slices attractively on top of the filling, brush with olive oil, and sprinkle on a little more salt and pepper. Bake at 425 until the zucchini slices are done, broiling it at the end if you want a little extra browning.

*I have carefully calibrated this time such that I have enough minutes to haul myself out of bed, put on my contacts, make sure my yoga bag is assembled, and get out the door at 5:57, to arrive at yoga between 6:15 and 6:20, depending on whether or not the stoplights run in my favor. Life is in the details.
**As well as metaphors, but that would destroy the alliteration.

F for effort

2011-08-07T18:58:00.000-04:00

I had all these dreams.

Dreams of red onion gram flour roti... dreams of black bean fritters... dreams of homemade tortilla chips... dreams of peach salsa and roasted vegetable gazpacho into which the tortilla chips can be dipped...

And what do I do in the end? Totally forget to make the gazpacho until it's too late, take the black beans intended for the fritters and mix them in with the peach salsa, buy some tortilla chips, make a quick kale salad, and call it a day.

Pitiful, I say. Summer is clearly eroding my work ethic. To make up for it, I threw together a yeasted gram flour and wheat bran zucchini bread that tasted great but was seriously squishy in the center, despite its lovely crust. Next time, I'll treat it more like a batter bread than a yeasted bread: bake it low and slow!

Autopunition

2011-08-06T18:24:00.001-04:00

I'm very disappointed in myself. I was too busy patting myself on the back for the best cinnamon rolls I've ever made--filled with walnuts, raisins, cinnamon, cloves, and brown sugar, and with mashed sweet potatoes in the dough, plus whole-wheat flour and olive oil for an extra infusion of "pretending to be abstemious"--to photograph them. It's a pity because I managed to get the icing to what I consider the perfect thickness as well, thanks to the inclusion of sour cream, so it was very attractively patterned on the top! Like I said, too much back-patting. Ah, well; you'll just have to trust me when I say that these are as attractive as they are delicious. Brush the dough with olive oil instead of spreading softened butter over it and you've really completed the delusion that they're good for you, allowing you to eat even more of them!

Which isn't to say, of course, that real butter isn't fantastic. Why, there's a whole three tablespoons of it in this crust!

Along with Parmesan, cashews, whole-wheat flour, and sesame seeds. The filling is whipped Fuerte avocado*, lemon juice, and basil, covered in a layer of chopped olives and raw corn kernels, and then layered with thinly sliced persimmon tomatoes. I chose this heirloom variety because a. they're pretty, b. they're huge, c. they're appropriately acidic but also somewhat sweeter than average, and d. they're $2.50/lb at the Union Square Greenmarket where other heirlooms run at $4.50/lb, if not more. Also, they show you what a tomato is supposed to taste like. The inside is more meat than juice, and that meat can only be described as silky, hearty like a supermarket beefsteak but without a hint of mealiness.

Andy had his with a fried egg on top.

I had mine with copious quantities of string beans in roasted
garlic-white wine sauce.

I'm going back to reading Celestial Harmonies now. I really should have been done with it weeks ago, but since Andy helped me hop on the Game of Thrones bandwagon, I had to continue revisiting my childhood via trashy fantasy novels until I'd finished the series (those books of it that are out in paperback, that is). Alas, a return to Real Lit'retchah is past due.

Tomato avocado tart, recipe adapted from here
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup Parmesan, grated
1/4 cup cashews
1/3 cup cold butter cut into cubes (or 1/3 cup olive oil)
1-3 tablespoons ice water
1 enormous avocado, or two small ones
about 1 pound tomatoes, any variety that isn't crappy supermarket beefsteak or too-sweet cherry or grape
kernels from 1 ear corn, raw
juice of 1/2 lemon
3 to 4 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
salt and pepper to taste
red wine vinegar and olive oil for garnish, optional
1/4 cup chopped olives, optional (I could have done without them, honestly. Not that they were bad, but they just didn't add anything that a sprinkle of salt on top wouldn't have.)

To make the crust, pulse the flour, cheese, and nuts in a food processor until the mixture is blended. Add the cold butter or the olive oil and pulse until combined. Add ice water, a tablespoon at a time, until the crust just comes together in a ball. Chill for 10 to 15 minutes, then either roll out the dough and line a 9-inch tart pan with it, or just press it into the tart pan. Chill again for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Prick the bottom of the crust with a fork, line with aluminum foil or parchment paper, and fill with pie weights. Bake 10 minutes. Remove the weights and bake another 10 minutes, or until golden brown. Let the crust cool completely.

Meanwhile, whip the avocado with the lemon juice and enough olive oil to make the mixture smooth; I used an immersion blender and kept going until the mixture was fluffy and mousse-like. Fold in the chopped basil and corn kernels and spread the avocado mixture in the cooled pie crust. Sprinkle on the chopped olives, if you're using them. Thinly slice the tomatoes and layer them on top. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, red wine vinegar, and olive oil to taste (or not at all, if you don't find you need it). Chill at least minutes before serving. To make it really pretty, garnish with more basil and a curl of lemon zest.

*This is easily the biggest Fuerte I've ever seen:

DIY Artichoke Basille's

2011-08-04T20:37:00.000-04:00

Artichoke pizza is the best thing. Unfortunately, it's also the fattiest thing. Since I don't have Andy's epic metabolism, I clearly had to make a reduced-calorie version! Now, I'm not saying it's good for you. It's not even particularly low-calorie, not by a long shot. But it is lower calorie, and it's got all fat-free stuff in it (except for the pecorino romano... I don't know about that.), and the portion size is certainly smaller.

I like mine sprinkled with a little chopped parsley
and a lot of red pepper flakes...

Oh, and it's so damn good it's not even funny.

For the base, I made a couple tablespoons of roux (olive oil and flour), melted in some pecorino romano and fat-free cream cheese, added garlic, lemon juice, and white wine*, thinned it with some milk, and Bob's your uncle, white sauce! This was spread on a whole-wheat thin crust, topped with ample amounts of chopped frozen spinach out of which water had been thoroughly squeezed, chunks of artichoke, and fat-free shredded mozzarella.

So. Damn. Good.

*which I sprayed all over myself in my attempts to open the bottle. Sigh.

The house with a Bloch on its walls

2011-08-02T20:49:00.000-04:00

Do you know who Judith Lorber is?

Neither did I, until Andy and I were tragically waylaid on our walk to the West Village by The Strand and its bothersome displays of cheap books. Among these was a Robert Coover book I didn't yet possess (for a dollar!) and a book called Women Physicians: Careers, Status, and Power, written by the aforementioned Dr. Lorber. A little Googling told me that she's a New York professor of women's studies and gender studies, as well as a (possibly erstwhile?) staunchly left-wing political activist. I'm excited to read this.

What really caught our eyes, though, was a large pile of art auction catalogues for a dollar each. We got the idea to cut out pictures from them and decorate our (now formerly) barren walls painted in an unthrilling shade of Institutional Beige. Of course, this means that what is habitually sold at Sotheby's dictated my choices of wall hanging. While there are now some Henri Matisse and Jean Arp pictures up, there's also a healthy dose of relatively bland obscurata, including the hilariously named Kees van Dongen and such minor Impressionists as Armand Guillaumin and Albert Marquet. Yes, yes, art isn't supposed to match the sofa or whatever, but as much as I love, for instance, James Ensor, medical school is grotesque enough without photos of twisted, screaming masked people to come home to.

Food tonight: paprika-dusted sweet potato chips and broiled zucchini stuffed with a chickpea/mushroom/onion/garlic/basil/lemon filling, creamy with goat cheese.

Much like our walls, this food aspires to elegance one day, when it's gotten rid of its student loans and can afford to hang real paintings.

Tennyson and Everyday Life

2011-08-01T19:44:00.000-04:00

In Memoriam A.H.H. came to mind today when I opened the very first cage of the day in the mouse room and discovered that one mouse, notable for his ability to impregnate more mice than any other male breeder, had literally ripped a hole in the body wall of another mouse.

It was horrifying. I needed comfort.

Mmm, cozy brown rice and vegetable pilaf.

Mmm, white bean dip with eggplant chips.

I needed to slice the eggplant chips more thinly--I foolishly heeded a recipe that instructed me to slice them 1/2 inch thick. They were nowhere near crispy enough; I'd describe them as "eggplant wraps." But man, that dip was a delight. I'll forgive the floppy vegetable chips, but I might make some crispy sweet potato chips to go with the leftovers tomorrow...

White bean cilantro dip
15 oz precooked white beans
1 generous cup chopped cilantro
juice and zest of one lemon
1 tbsp sour cream (optional)
3 to 5 cloves garlic
olive oil
salt and pepper

Put everything but the olive oil, salt, and pepper in the food processor. With it running, pour in the olive oil in a slow stream until the dip is thick but smooth and spreadable. Chill, then salt and pepper to taste after it is cold (or you could serve it at room temp).

Street food

2011-07-31T19:28:00.000-04:00

In my regular perambulations through Curry Hill on the way to yoga*, I pass this run-down Indian convenience store that has a sign in the window advertising pav bhaji. I looked it up... and immediately started salivating. Mashed-up vegetables served in an aromatic tomato gravy with buttery rolls? Um, yes.

Pretty brown outside...

...soft, fluffy inside!

I used whole wheat flour for the rolls and pulled back on the butter somewhat (although I did finish the sauce with an indulgent tablespoon of butter on top of the olive oil I'd already sauteed everything in). While I had no paneer and didn't feel like making it, I looked at the mushrooms, eggplant, and cauliflower in the fridge and selected cauliflower as the "main" ingredient.

I also didn't have pav bhaji spice and didn't particularly feel like buying it... so I made some! And then added other spices on top of that, of course. The final list: lime zest and lime juice (to substitute for the more traditional green mango powder), turmeric, chili powder, asafoetida, kasoori methi, cloves, cardamom, cinnamon, fennel seed, cumin, black pepper, coriander, mustard seed, and salt. Minced garlic, ginger, and Thai chilies ended up in there as well.

Despite the fact that I forgot to use the chopped fresh cilantro and didn't have a protein to add, this was pretty much the best thing ever. Again: mashed vegetables in an aromatic tomato gravy! With rolls**! Why wouldn't it be? And it's not difficult to create besides. Go make it.

*That makes me sound like a pretentious white chick obsessed with Indian culture. I'm not. Really. Promise.
**Yeah, I wasn't sure how slightly sweet, buttery rolls would work with this, either. They did. So well. Oh, so well.

Imitosis

2011-07-30T21:14:00.000-04:00

Last night, I realized that the dregs of the buttermilk in my fridge were on their last legs. What better time to use up the bizarre Baggie of flour I'd dredged up from my spice cabinet while moving and make dessert: a cornmeal Dutch baby with cinnamon and sugar sprinkled on top?

It might have been the cornmeal, or it might have been the fact that I had about half the amount of batter I should have been pouring into my lovely cast-iron skillet, but this Dutch baby was rather denser than usual. Doesn't mean it wasn't delicious, though.

Dinner tonight was an imitation tabbouleh. Oh, yes, it had parsley and mint and lemon juice, but it also had beets and goat cheese and raw sweet corn and barley (not bulghur). Forgive me?

It's easy not being green.

2011-07-28T23:27:00.001-04:00

The perennial glut of late-summer zucchini has led to a perennial glut of "THIS IS HOW TO SNEAK ZUCCHINI INTO TASTY CHOCOLATE THINGS" recipes.

Let it be known that these brownies do not contain vegetables. They contain browned butter, cocoa, chocolate, caramel, pecans, and other delicious and distinctly unvitaminiferous components.

Zucchini, you have your place, but not in this dessert, thank you very much. I'll take my brownie decadence unadulterated by pretensions of healthfulness*.

Speaking of green... Andrew Bird finds it easy to be green!

*Appending "and healthy, too!" to a brownie or cake recipe just because it happens to contain a vegetable or whole-wheat flour or oil instead of butter annoys me to no end. Guess what? If your dessert contains one or more of the following, which all the recipes invariably do, it's not exactly part of a balanced meal: sugar, refined flour, and most lipids, including but not limited to butter, canola oil, and full-fat yogurt.

Poindextrous

2011-07-27T19:50:00.001-04:00

An unexciting evening was in order after I, while tricked out in the dorkiest of dork gear in order to handle estradiol powder, nevertheless very nearly gave myself a healthy dose of Exposure To Potentially Carcinogenic And Certainly Endocrinologically Disruptive Substance* because I, ladies and gentlemen, am a butterfingers who shouldn't be allowed near a vortexer.

Solution? Inspired by this guy, I made Asian tacos: sriracha sour cream sauce, gingery lentils with a touch of sesame oil, and a long-marinated Asian red cabbage slaw with red onion, carrot, raw beet greens, Thai chilis, and a healthy dose of cilantro, all on a soft corn tortilla.

Now that, plus some quizbowl question writing, calms the nerves.

Asian cabbage slaw
1/2 red cabbage, thinly sliced and then roughly chopped
1/2 large red onion, chopped
1/2 to 1 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
2 carrots, grated (or chopped, what the heck!)
juice of two limes
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 tbsp ketchup (stop judging)
Minced Thai green chilies to taste
2 tbsp soy sauce
1/4 cup rice vinegar
1/4 cup oil (if you're not putting this on top of lentils that have been flavored with sesame oil, you could include a little sesame oil in here; all sesame would be too strong, I think. You could also include minced fresh ginger if you're not putting it on top of lentils that have also been flavored with ginger!)

Mix everything together. Let it sit in the fridge for at least an hour. Eat. Relish.

*I'm pretty sure the medical student I'm working with thinks I'm being unreasonably paranoid about possible estradiol exposure. But when a substance peaks in your blood at 180 to 200 pg/mL, you can't be too paranoid about handling several milligrams of it at a time. Right? Because I'm also pretty sure that while one exposure wouldn't really increase someone's risk of cancer, it could screw with someone's menstrual cycle or cause her to retain water like a camel or cause gynecomastia in a hypothetical male scientist. I'll take paranoia for $500, Alex.

Everything but the pileta

2011-07-26T19:13:00.001-04:00

This is a Mexican orzo risotto with roasted vegetables and black-eyed peas.

It contains basically everything in the fridge: tomato, onion, jalapeno, tomatillo, fresh cilantro, roasted red pepper and roasted poblano, and roasted zucchini and summer squash, with sour cream to finish. The one tragedy is that somehow I'm running out of cumin yet again, and this dish taxed my supply. Since I tend to use cumin in perhaps 70 percent of my food*, I'm heading to the food coop ASAP and stocking up on delightfully cheap cumin from their bulk bins.

On the less-tasty front**, my (three-person) research team's mice are imminently giving birth! And it's almost 50:50 control:experimental mice! Science works! Sometimes! Maybe! If they don't eat their babies!

*Okay, not lately. But often!
**I actually don't know how untasty mice are. When I try some, I'll let you know.

And the daddy tomato said, "Ketchup!"

2011-07-23T20:20:00.000-04:00

Before I try to recount all that I've been neglecting to post about, I must share some (marginally, or not at all unless you're non-verdipollicalic me) exciting news: my orchid is in full bloom once again! I'm pretty sure it's been inspired by the not-so-sub-tropical weather we've been suffering through here in New York. Seriously, Florida left me with a deep appreciation for hot weather, but when the inside of the bikram studio I visit is not appreciably different in temperature or humidity from 27th Street, even I can't help but complain. At least, thanks to said chthonic conditions, there are three blossoms out and three more on the way.

So, yeah, inattention to blog: achieved. I neglected to post about the semolina buttermilk cupcakes with chocolate buttermilk frosting that I made for quizbowl yesterday*, or about the variation on Mark Bittman's frozen honey mousse that I made to use up some of that leftover caramel sauce**. There's been a lot of excitement 'round these parts, but at the end of it... we finally have a real apartment! With furniture! And a well-stocked kitchen! And even some free floor space!

And bread, of course. This is basil garlic bread made with buttermilk***. Oddly, the recipe I based it on called for a significant amount of sugar. I thought twice about adding it, but concluded that it must have been included to cut the sour flavor in the buttermilk. And sure enough, the bread was a little too sweet. Otherwise, though, A+.

Dinner was a black-eyed pea salad complete with kale, watermelon, feta, tomatoes, red onion, cilantro, and a tangy buttermilk balsamic dressing. One day I'll actually compose an attractive plate of salad instead of shoveling it all on a plate and chowing down.

*where I learned about the petroleum spas of Naftalan, Azerbaijan, which have a history chock-full of Soviet hilarity. This is why I play quizbowl.
**Replace the 1/3 cup honey with 1/2 to 2/3 cups caramel sauce, depending on how dark and how runny your sauce is. What results is a (slightly denser than the original) frozen dulce de leche mousse, and it's phenomenal.
***I have quite a lot left over. My current recipe ideas to use it up pronto include pancakes and... pancakes. Any suggestions, Internet?

Whey to go!

2011-07-19T19:27:00.000-04:00

I am making a second foray into the world of homemade cheese! Deb of Smitten Kitchen posted this recipe for creamy ricotta, and of course I had to give it a shot. Heavy cream? Yes, please, as much as possible.

I used some of the whey (which apparently sometimes goes by the much more X-Men-worthy name of MILK PLASMA) to make a portion of no-knead bread; replacing the liquid in any bread recipe with whey gives you a tangy, sourdough-esque dough with a hit of protein even without bread flour. Andy* took a bite of ricotta-slathered bread and started making a sound something like this. I guess it's good.

Other components of my welcome-home spread included:

Caramelized onion (to go on top of bread and cheese)

Roasted red peppers with a garlic caper marinade (to go on top
of bread and cheese, and oh, by the way, guess who likes capers
after all? Hint: It starts with "A" and ends with "tkins."

Green bean and almond salad (not to top bread and cheese)

And brownies with a squishy caramel layer inside. For a concoction that is basically the platonic ideal of dessert, these are surprisingly easy. Make a recipe of your favorite caramel sauce** (not difficult, but I always have sour cream left over after I do it, because my favorite caramel sauce uses sour cream to tangy effect) and a recipe of your favorite brownie batter***. Spread about half the batter in the pan, then top liberally with caramel sauce. Pour the rest of the batter on top and either spread it to cover the caramel or swirl the layers together. Protip: avoid letting the caramel sauce touch the edges of the pan, because it will scorch.

*Andy lives here now! For real! As of, like, five hours ago!
**Or buy some.
***It hurts me to say this, but fine, I'll begrudgingly admit that you could buy a box of brownie mix. Ghirardelli's is rather fantastic.

self-assessment

2011-07-18T18:57:00.000-04:00

In the past four days, I have not:

1. blogged
2. gone to yoga (though I did have a great run with Andy and my mom in Pittsburgh)
3. eaten a reasonable amount of calories

In the past four days, I have:

1. tasted a fantastic amount of cake for possible wedding celebration cakes for December (Oakmont Bakery's chocolate torte may be the most delicious thing)
2. purchased 400-mL beakers for the above celebration
3. read three books (Walter Benjamin for Children, Game of Thrones, Waiting for the Barbarians)
4. prepared for Andy's arrival tomorrow by cooking and cleaning like a madwoman (I swear to god, our relationship is more than me cooking things he likes. There are puns, too.)

Major food post coming tomorrow. For now, I'll just say that I think Jeffrey Mehlman is trying to imitate the prolixity of his favorite thinker in his book, Game of Thrones lives up to the hype, and Waiting for the Barbarians is as good as any Coetzee novel I've ever read. And that I rode the Megabus home last night with a church youth group, a priest, and two nuns. It was funny until one of the boys started, like, preaching as the rest of us tried to nap. Woman in front of me, bless you for turning around and saying, "Really?" in the most sarcastic voice you could muster, thereby shutting him up.

Mille fois merci

2011-07-14T18:24:00.000-04:00

Quizbowl practice was today instead of tomorrow on account of me being out of town for the next few days, so I came up with a dessert a day earlier than usual. I'm trying to use up this semolina flour I have. For one thing, I don't want it sitting in the cupboard growing stale and taking up space. For another, I'm sort of in love with its texture and want every excuse to play with it. Semolina buttermilk cake with a light chocolate frosting is in the future, but I didn't have time to embark upon anything that adventurous, so I'm saving it for next week.

The recipe that follows is my take on these little shortbread-style cookies from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. My all-time favorite shortbread recipe (thank you, Good Housekeeping) uses a different butter-to-egg yolk ratio, so I went with that one, and slicing cookies makes me nervous and impatient and frustrated, so I rolled these out instead and cut them. I don't own cookie cutters*, but my Brandeis chemistry department shot glass was the perfect size for tiny, delicate, sophisticated biscuits. Note that these were actually a poor decision for practice; they don't transport well at all, so eat them in the house. Note as well that the degree to which the butter is softened is very important in shortbread. It needs to be slightly cool still, but there can't be any resistance to it when it's beaten in an electric mixer.

I should also note that these practices are a major highlight of my week. It's quizbowl just how I like it: no drama, just questions, intriguing people, and general nerdy rumpus (and, of course, chow). I'm not sure how many of the Unofficial New York Quizbowl Conglomerate read these posts, but if you're one of them, hi! I'm grateful for your participation. Have a cookie.

Semolina shortbreads with thyme and apricot, adapted from Mark Bittman's brown sugar cookies with sea salt from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian

1 stick softened unsalted butter
1/4 cup light brown sugar, only somewhat packed
2 egg yolks
1 cup semolina flour
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme, crumbled
dried apricots, sliced thinly
1/4 teaspoon salt

Using an electric or stand mixer on very low speed, beat the butter and sugar for 30 seconds or until just combined. Beat in the yolks on low speed, then add the flour, salt, and thyme. Mix just until everything comes together. I added about half a tablespoon more softened butter to make the dough hold together since it was just too crumbly otherwise; I suspect my smallish egg yolks necessitated this. Form the dough into a ball, wrap it in plastic wrap, and refrigerate it for at least an hour. When you're ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350. Roll out the dough between two sheets of plastic wrap or parchment paper to 1/4-inch thickness. Cut out the cookies and place them on a parchment paper-lined sheet. Gently, gently, gently press a slice of dried apricot in the center of each cookie. Bake for 6 to 8 minutes until they're very lightly browned at the edges. Let them cool on the pan just until they can be handled, then gently transfer them to a cooling rack to finish.

*With the exception of these amputee gingerbread man cookie cutters that will doubtless make their appearance in December.

Dukkah and cover

2011-07-12T19:57:00.000-04:00

My mom keeps insisting that, and this is a direct quote, "[I] live like a monk." This is something I don't understand. My apartment is hardly a cell (minus its quasimonochambered nature), I'm married, I regularly take in sinful amounts of Diet Coke and exercise, and I eat rich, indulgent food, like this.

Dukkah is a blend of crushed nuts and spices usually eaten with olive oil-soaked bread. I figured there'd been enough wholesale abuse of large amounts of flour lately, so to use it in more of a main course, I mixed some it with julienned carrots, chopped red onion, shredded kale, chickpeas, lemon juice, apple cider vinegar, olive oil, and a little bit of unsweetened coconut. I wish I'd had some raisins or dried apricots to throw in there (well, I have dried apricots, but I'm saving them for baking), because the sweetness would have helped.

Hand-grinding a cup of nuts: oddly satisfying.

There are a bunch of varieties of the spice blend; I used toasted hazelnuts and almonds, sesame seeds, coriander seeds, cumin seeds, dried mint, black pepper, and red pepper.

Road not taken

2011-07-11T20:27:00.000-04:00

I had intended to make Mark Bittman's beer- and honey-glazed black beans, thanks to a desire to be rid of one of two bottles of Stella Artois that have been stagnating in my fridge forever. Beer is not a tasty drink, but it is a tasty ingredient!

Turns out, though, that a long day running back and forth among three different hospitals plus a notable lack of honey plus a notable glut of vegetables equals a quick and lazy spicy black bean and vegetable soup with a beer- and tomato-based broth. And kale chips. And "oven-grilled" (read: broiled) peaches with a light thyme and brown sugar glaze.

Bunny ears made of kale!

It is probably a good thing that I ditched the original recipe. This soup was really, really spicy (that's what half a large habanero in a total of about two cups of soup will do to you), which appealed to my culinary masochism. In any case, the sweet peaches (and the ketchup in the broth) cut it satisfactorily. Oh, and those peaches are probably my new favorite thing in this world. I'm looking forward to making a goat cheese cheesecake with a thyme-glazed broiled peach layer. I'm just not sure what kind of crust I'll put it with, and I don't have a recipe for goat cheese cheesecake, so I'll have to figure one out on my own. Once I come up with something satisfactory, I'll let you know.

Oh, speaking of goat cheese, one more thing.

I didn't expect this to be as attractive as it is.

What do you do when you have a cup of beer leftover from your beer soup? Make yeasted beer bread, of course!

Spicy black bean and beer soup

Half a can of black beans

stems of three very large leaves of kale, chopped

1/2 small onion, chopped

1/2 habanero, minced

1 clove garlic, minced

1/2 tomato, chopped

4 mushrooms, sliced

ketchup

beer

worcestershire sauce

broth or water

oh god, there was another ingredient, but I totally forget what it was... sorry, readership!

1 peach

thyme

brown sugar

In a little olive oil (or butter or other oil), saute the onion until soft. Add the garlic and habanero and cook about a minute or until fragrant. Add the vegetables and beans and stir until they're heated through and beginning to soften. Add the ketchup, beer, worcestershire, and broth in a ratio that looks good to you, because I didn't actually measure. Bring to a boil, then turn to a simmer. Meanwhile, put a rack at the uppermost level in your oven and heat up the broiler. Slice the peach, not too thinly, and brush both sides of the slices with olive oil. Sprinkle one side with brown sugar and thyme; you don't need a lot of either! Broil them, sugar side up, until they're blistered and soft. Serve with the soup, which should have simmered for 20 minutes to half an hour.

Goat cheese and sage yeasted beer bread

2 1/4 tsp yeast

1/4 cup water

1 1/4 cup beer

3 1/2 cups flour

1 tbsp sugar

1 1/2 tsp salt

1 tbsp goat cheese, plus more for the top

1/4 tsp black pepper, plus more for the top

1/8 tsp sage, plus more for the top

Let the yeast and sugar sit in the water until foamy. Add the beer, salt, and goat cheese, then add the dry ingredients slowly until it all comes together in a dough. Pour into a greased loaf pan and allow to rise until doubled. Preheat the oven to 375. Just before baking, brush the top with melted butter (I had to resist the urge to seriously slather it with butter, because damn, that would be good) and sprinkle with more pepper, sage, and crumbled goat cheese. Bake 45 minutes or until golden brown.

Victorian nouveau

2011-07-10T19:58:00.003-04:00

I hate myself for loving the quasi-steampunk aesthetic that Trader Joe's has going on its packaging*.

This juice went into Hawaiian rolls. The recipe from which I adapted these inexplicably didn't say how much salt to use, so I took a wild guess. I also made the decision to knead the dough in order to smooth it out--shaggy dough equals lumpy rolls--and reduced the yeast and sugar.

As you can see, these were for spicy black bean plantain sliders with kale chips. I really loved the flavor and zing of this slider. It could have benefited, however, from the addition of some Cheddar or Monterey Jack, or maybe a spicy lime mayo; the sweetness of the burger and bun needed salt and fat.

Spicy black bean plantain burgers
10 oz black beans, cooked until soft
1 ripe plantain
juice and zest of 1 lime
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup red onion, chopped
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1 tbsp finely minced habanero pepper
1 clove garlic, minced
3 tbsp cornmeal, plus more as necessary

Slice the plantain and broil it until it's soft and slightly browned. Chop half of it roughly. Mash the rest with 8 of the 10 oz black beans. Mix in the reserved beans, chopped plantain, and the rest of the ingredients. Put in the fridge for at least 15 minutes to firm up somewhat. Form into patties and cook as you wish, either by pan-frying or baking until the outside is crispy.

Hawaiian rolls, adapted from here
1/2 cup warm water
1/2 cup pineapple juice
1/4 cup melted butter, plus more for brushing
2.25 teaspoons dry yeast
1 large egg, beaten
1 tsp salt
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
4 tablespoons turbinado sugar
3 cups all-purpose flour plus 2 teaspoons vital wheat gluten

Mix the melted butter, water, juice, sugar, and yeast; wait until the yeast is foamy. Add the egg and vanilla, then stir in the flour until it's evenly incorporated. Allow the dough to rest for 15 minutes, then stir in the salt. Knead until smooth; the dough will be very sticky, so if you can't knead it by hand, stir instead. Allow the dough to rise for 2 hours or until doubled. Grease two 9-inch cake pans with butter, canola oil, or nonstick spray. Divide the dough into 16 balls of about 1.5 ounces each. Shape them into smooth balls and put 8 in each pan; allow to rise for about 2 hours. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Just before baking, brush the rolls with melted butter. Bake until they're golden brown, 20 to 25 minutes. They're best eaten the day of baking.

*Actually, I hate myself for loving steampunk in general.

The idea of order

2011-07-09T20:24:00.001-04:00

First things first:

Yes, that is an Orthodox Jewish man with a showercap over his hat to protect it from the rain. Secondly:

I'm no great fan of Martha Stewart, but she's got some darn good cookie recipes. These maple iced oatmeal applesauce cookies went over well with the quizbowl crowd, but I found them too sweet; when I was making them, I balked at the sugar:other stuff ratio, but I foolishly didn't change it (I did, however, substitute whole wheat flour for white). It's a pity, because the soft texture and light applesauce flavor and very low amount of butter are extremely appealing. I plan to tinker with the recipe. Among other things, I'm going to replace some of the sugar with maple syrup and some with more applesauce, adding more whole wheat flour to keep the dough firm enough to bake.

And finally, after a Trader Joe's trip today, there was something much more healthful on the menu:

This zucchini soup and summery relish were made with local zucchini and local heirloom tomatoes from Trader Joe's. Two pounds of zucchini for $1.25 and two heirloom tomatoes for $1.00? Yes, please!

Creamy zucchini-chive soup with corn relish
1.5 lbs zucchini
2 cloves garlic
1/4 cup chives, minced
1/2 tsp lemon juice
plain yogurt
1 tomato, heirloom if possible
1 ear corn
1 tbsp basil, minced
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
2 tbsp feta
salt and pepper to taste

Cut up the zucchini. Put it and the garlic in a pot and cover with water or broth. Bring to a boil and cook just until soft. Drain off all but 2/3 cup liquid and, once it has cooled somewhat, add 3 tablespoons of the chives and puree. Add plain yogurt to taste, and season with salt, pepper, and lemon juice. Meanwhile, shave the kernels off the ear of corn and core and dice the tomato. Mix together with minced basil, the remaining chives, the apple cider vinegar, the feta, and salt and pepper to taste (easy on the salt, trust me). Serve the cooled soup topped with the relish.

Customer service

2011-07-07T21:40:00.000-04:00

I tossed my backpack onto my bed upon returning from lab a couple hours ago, settled down to bake some bread and read some book... and instantly got an automated phone call from a hair salon in Sarasota to confirm "my" appointment for Saturday. Clearly, this is not an appointment I made. When I called the salon to speak to a human rather than a machine and set things straight, the conversation went something like this:

Me: "I received an automated phone call confirming an appointment, but the phone number must be wrong. I don't even live in Florida anymore."
Employee: "Okay, we can cancel it. What's your name?"
Me: "It's not under my name, because I didn't make the appointment. Someone else did, and the phone number was taken down incorrectly."
Employee: "Okay, we don't need your name. Do you remember with which stylist you made the appointment?"
Me: "No, because I didn't make the appointment, but the person who does may need the confirmation. Would it be possible for you to look it up by phone number?"
Employee: [does so] "Okay, Ms. Smith, your appointment is for Sa--"
Me: [loses patience] "No, it's not, because this is not my appointment."

I'm pretty sure this conversation was part of the reason why I ate most of a "lobe" of the world's most chelonian scallion sourdough bread.

Horrible picture, I know.

Events conspired to give this bread way, way too much time in its last, room-temperature proof, so the mini-loaves flattened and melded. Kind of cute, though, don't you think?

Crusty on the outside, fluffy on the inside!

No matter how I try, my sourdough is never as sour as I like it. Don't get me wrong: this was delicious and tangy and crusty. But I want sour, dammit! I used a properly aged starter and gave it a 24-hour fridge period in addition to the other rises and everything. The only thing I didn't do according to what looks like an exemplary recipe was use distilled water for everything. That can't possibly be it, though... can it? The Internet is giving me some excellent tips with which I can troubleshoot my sourdough protocol. I'll just have to try them and feed my friends the results.

Okay, fine, I'll just comfort myself with the best deviled eggs ever. Chives, yogurt, Dijon, and just a sliver of butter make fluffy heaven out of egg yolk, I'm telling you. Plus, of course, the requisite paprika.

Creamy, healthfulish deviled eggs for one
two hardboiled eggs
literally just a sliver of butter, softened
1 tbsp chives
1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
1/4 tsp minced garlic
2.5 tbsp plain yogurt, Greek or otherwise (in this case, I favor not-Greek, to thin things out a bit)
salt and pepper to taste
paprika for sprinkling

Slice the eggs neatly in half. Cream together the yogurt, mustard, butter, and egg yolks with a spoon, adding salt and pepper to taste. Stir in the chives and minced garlic. Pile or pipe into the egg white hollows. Presentation note: To get them to stand up straight, cleave a small bit of white off the underside of the half to give a flat surface.

With love and squalor

2011-07-06T20:21:00.001-04:00

Today is the day I finally ~~got up the gumption~~ got my lazy butt in gear and moved the stacks of folded clothes from my floor to their temporary home, as long as my home is dresserless. The floor feels so... clean. Except for the fact that I don't own a vacuum (yet) and there were cardboard bits strewn on the carpet during the moving process. It's not too dirty, but it's not preferable.

That scallion ginger sauce nearly did away with my scallions (upcoming recipe will show you what I'm doing with the last of them), but the poor chives are still hanging about, dangling perilously over a precipice below which are the depths of Yellowed, Limp, and Unusable Canyon. What to do, what to do...

Crackers! These use very little butter--only 3 tablespoons for four dozen crackers--and I substituted half the white flour for whole wheat. And then there are the tasty, tasty chives, of course. And I got to those golden beets just in time as well. I based my full meal on this recipe, making crackers topped with golden beets (and one regular that got in my bunch somehow) marinated in dressing, with goat cheese and pistachios, on a kale salad (but just for show, before the cracker got soggy).

Of course, I started out carefully assembling a couple crackers, but then got impatient and ditched the goat cheese and stirred the shredded kale in with the beets; it was the same dressing, so I figured it didn't matter. This was so delicious I ate tomorrow's intended lunch salad portion. Oops.

While my research is proceeding more slowly than a Pleistocene glacier chewing its way down the Eastern seaboard, literarily everything is bouncing right along. I received the Goodreads equivalent of a friend request today, reminding me that while I'd created an account months ago, I'd never actually added books, since I've been using LibraryThing for much longer. Now seemed as good a time as any to get on that. Unfortunately, importing from the .csv I downloaded from LibraryThing didn't go so well*, so my Goodreads account is in no way the accurate reflection that my LibraryThing account is of what I've read, what I want to read, and what I actually own. First-world problems, I know.

The latest book I've added on LibraryThing is the collected short stories of Amy Hempel, which I'd mentioned yesterday. These stories are mind-blowing. She writes in the way I wish I had the talent to write, exposing the reader to the rawest and most painful experiences a person can have, but insidiously such that her stories are all the more powerful. For her characters, happiness and above all stability are not the norm, nor are they expected to be. Sadness and discontent are lived matter-of-factly, and sometimes even affably. It's captivating.

And last but not least, science: Blaser Lab's meeting today was a guest talk on molecular beacons. In and of itself, the concept is great, and it's going (and has gone) some really exciting places for science and medicine. But what got me the most was the joy in the speaker's voice. This wasn't a particularly advanced talk, and he must have given it dozens of times, but his heart was practically pounding out of his chest as he spoke with the rapidity not of boredom-inducing practice, but of joy at communicating his life's work. It's a work he clearly loves. I hope to be lucky enough to speak about my own future career with such ebullience.

*Among the more minor but most frustrating aspects of this is the fact that there is one book, one, that did not import itself. Am I tempted to go through my LibraryThing account book by book to find it? At the risk of admitting moderate mental illness, yes, yes, I am. But maybe when I've actually got Internet in my apartment and don't waste the time I convince myself to spend in the med center library in the evenings on indulging my obsessive-compulsive tendencies.

Aspirations

2011-07-05T20:43:00.001-04:00

Momofuku has been a legendary establishment for me. It's a media darling, I'm sure deservedly so, and when I lived in Florida and Boston, I used to wish I could go there. Of course, now that I live in New York, I'm confronting the sad facts that it's not exactly vegetarian-friendly, and it's way too expensive for my budget, but that doesn't mean I can't employ a little DIY.

This sauce, you see, is actually as delicious as it sounds (and as it is described). As you can see, I served it with an assortment of soba, grapefruit, steamed beet greens with a squeeze of lime, steamed carrots, and soybeans (edamame's more mature version). The combination of grapefruit and beet greens was a little too bitter; next time, I'll use oranges or a sweeter green, like bok choy. Otherwise... A+. Now, for an excuse to make crack pie...

Oh, and this was the view of last night's sunset from the window of my new apartment. Totally gratuitous.

Déjeuner sur l'herbe

2011-07-04T14:56:00.000-04:00

I can do without most Independence Day traditions, but eating en plein air is not one of them. Last Fourth of July, I made a picnic that included Moroccan carrot salad. This Fourth of July, I had a solo picnic lunch in the courtyard of my new building that included a layered purple carrot salad.

This is what purple carrots look like! They don't taste any
different (at least not to my untrained palate), but they are
aesthetically pleasing and no more expensive than regulars.

This is a peeled purple carrot.

Mandolined purple carrots, ready to be dressed.

I let the carrots sit in a shallot and tarragon vinaigrette while I made a pesto of lemon juice, sunflower seeds, chives, and carrot greens (after verifying in a cookbook (no Internet, remember?) that carrot greens aren't poisonous or disgusting or some such). I made a sort of layered dip using the carrots, pesto, and some goat cheese.

Of course, if there's a dip, there must be a chip, so I made some with the last farmers market potato, baking them in the oven rather than frying them.

These are easy to make, but only if you have a slicer. Only the
most seasoned of professionals could make slices this uniformly
thin without the aid of a slicing apparatus.

And then I took everything outside to eat. While I was chowing down, Gustav Holst’s Brook Green Suite came up on my iPod, and I was nearly bowled over by one of those vaunted “sudden rushes of nostalgia” that you read about in bad novels and worse food blogs (no delusions of grandeur here!). We played that piece in orchestra in middle and high school over and over. Life wasn’t actually simpler back then, but I was young enough to think it was, so I suppose my nostalgia was for that delusion; ignorance was, in quite a few ways, bliss.

Oh, and I was wrong yesterday when I posted a picture of cats and said it was adorable. Compared to this, those cats look like Newt Gingrich.

Oven-baked potato chips

Thinly slice a potato using a mandoline or other slicing apparatus. Soak the slices in cold water for 10 to 15 minutes, drain, lightly salt the slices, and let them sit for another 5 minutes. Pat them dry and toss them in olive oil or spray them with olive oil spray. Sprinkle with pepper, other herbs or spices, and additional salt if necessary. Bake at 425 F for 15 minutes, rotating halfway through and removing any smaller or thinner slices that are done before the larger ones.

Carrot green pesto
Food process one very large bunch of carrot greens with 1/4 cup chives, 1/2 cup sunflower seeds, the juice and zest of a lemon, 1/4 cup olive oil, and 2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar. Salt and pepper to taste.

Favaritism and e-scape-ism

2011-07-03T20:37:00.000-04:00

This is how I feel about The Man Died: There's a reason A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch isn't five times its actual length. Sure, Wole Soyinka hands out pertinent pearls of wisdom right and left, and it's heartrending to read about the sufferings of Nigeria's political prisoners, and it's crucial that a record of the human rights violations by the government be set down. Even the greatest of insights, however, becomes old hat after two hundred pages or so, and being glad that Soyinka survived to publicize the atrocities committed against him and thousands upon thousands of others only sustains a certain amount of interest in the actual prose. Yeah, I hate to say it, but after 200 pages, I was blasé in the face of Soyinka's incredible fortitude and incredible suffering. Perhaps I made a mistake reading it all in one go, because those segments I enjoyed the most were those immediately subsequent to a lengthy reading break. Overall, I'm glad I read it, but installments would definitely have been the way to go. I also recently finished An Unfortunate Woman, Richard Brautigan's last novel. It's amazing that something so witty and quirky also, in retrospect, is a clear presage to Brautigan's suicide. I'd recommend picking this up. After reading this story at the recommendation of a friend, I'm a little enamored of Amy Hempel, so her collected stories are next, followed by Walter Benjamin for Children. I am absolutely gleeful that both Bobst and the NYUPL have both those books. Choices, choices!

In other news, these are scapes:

They taste like the Valium-plied love child of garlic and onions. What they really are is the shoot at the top of the garlic, that thing that turns into a woody stem as the garlic matures. I made them into a sauce with yogurt, rice wine vinegar, and lemon juice, and I used that to make a new potato and fava bean salad, topped with feta, chopped almonds, and a sprinkling of chives.

Christ, this picture is awful.

Fresh fava beans are palate-charmingly delicious, but I'm glad I was making them for one. I forgot to take pictures before I shelled them, but the gist is that they come in long pods about the thickness of a man's thumb. In those pods are the beans encased in leathery capsules that are nestled in spongy white stuff. They have to be extracted from all that packaging, after which you're left with a pile of bright green beans and a much larger pile of detritus. This gives you a pictorial idea of the process. This has some information as to why you shouldn't eat fava beans if you have glucose-6-phosphatase deficiency. This is just adorable.

The King said, very gravely

2011-07-02T20:07:00.003-04:00

What he said, of course, is "begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end, then stop." So here goes*.

Apartment: moved into, such as it were. I'm lacking such things as Internet (thus a daily foray to the medical center to check my e-mail and such), chairs, and a dresser; those will all arrive with Andy in just over two weeks. But what I have is an excellent amount of space, and a comfortable and non-twin double-long bed, and an intriguing amount of solitude. I'm liking it, except for the fact that there's nobody to help me put sunscreen on my back. Why is that pertinent, you ask? I'll tell you!

This is the view of Manhattan from the Governors Island ferry; I went there to see a performance of In C. Predictably, it was fantastic. I lay in the grass (protecting my back from an even worse sunburn) and closed my eyes and ~~thought of England~~ just sort of let an hour's worth of music happen to me. The island itself was lovely, pastoral with an antebellum tinge to it. It's hard to believe it's just an eight-minute ferry ride from the insanity that is Manhattan.

The guy directing the performance (and playing the toy
piano) was described as "Liberace's final protégé."

Manhattan has its perks, though. Example: the Union Square Greenmarket, which has burst into full flower. I set out to go grocery shopping today with a list of recipes and necessary ingredients, but the variety of produce was bewitching, and I ditched my plans for more fresh (and more expensive) options. Purchased: fresh fava beans, a massive amount of scallions and chives ($1 per forearm-sized bundle), radishes, carrots, golden beets, a few baby new potatoes, and kale. Problematically, I'm going to have to figure out how to use all these things while they're still fresh; please, please help yourself to scallions and chives if you like! I started in on things with cinnamon-sugar radish chips:

OVERLY DRAMATIC RADISH SHOT

These have an intriguing nutty and slightly spicy flavor. Unfortunately, since they have to be baked in a single layer, they were kind of a pain in the neck to make. Imagine laying out individual very thin slices of radish. For dinner, I had a radish green and caramelized onion gratin that I did not photograph. It was, and here is where I apologize for tooting my own horn, delicious (and very quichelike).

Radish green and caramelized onion gratin
1 large bunch radish greens, chopped
1 large onion
1 clove garlic, minced
chives
salt and pepper to taste
fresh basil leaves, chiffonade(d? Is that a verb)
1 egg
1/3 cup plain yogurt
1 ounce goat cheese

Slice the onion thinly and caramelize it. Just before it's done, add the garlic and radish greens and cook until the greens are thoroughly wilted. After it's cool enough to handle, squeeze as much water as possible out of the mixture. Stir the egg, yogurt, and goat cheese together until smooth and creamy; thin with a little milk or water if it appears too thick. Stir in the radish green mixture, the chives, and the basil, then season to taste with salt and pepper. You can also omit the basil and add a pinch of nutmeg. Bake in a greased glass dish at 325 until just set; this should not take very long. Let cool slightly before cutting in and serving.

*I'll be omitting from the narrative details about my ridiculously blistered feet (there is, it turns out, such a thing as too much walking) and shower curtain-buying excursion.

A few sandwiches short of a picnic

2011-06-30T20:51:00.001-04:00

My move is tomorrow. I'm not quite done packing (read: that load of laundry I did today won't pack itself). So what do I do?

Make cookies, that's right. You see, someone in the NYU maintenance staff who shall not be named did me a favor that shall also not be named. I promised him homemade cookies. I delivered by borrowing some cooking equipment and half-assing together a recipe that turned out pretty well. Surprised? Me neither, not because I'm just that good (I'm not), but because it's butter, sugar, flour, and cocoa, and nothing can go wrong.

Hannah's Half-ass Cookies

Take a stick of butter that was hanging around forlornly in your fridge, waiting for you to abandon it when you move four blocks away. Melt it because you packed your beaters and there's no way in hell you're creaming together butter and sugar by hand. Add about 3/4 cup white sugar. Stir frenetically with the one wooden spoon you haven't yet packed. Add an egg and a slosh of vanilla. Stir slightly less frenetically. Add about 1 cup flour, 1/3 cup cocoa, about 1/4 tsp salt, and 1/2 tsp baking soda because you don't know where the baking powder is, and you figure it's in the box of kitchen supplies that's already been taped up. Stir gently until it comes together in a sticky dough. Taste. Approve. Bake in heaping tablespoons that you threw on a borrowed cookie sheet while trying to calm your jangling nerves at 350 F for 13 minutes. Cool on cookie sheet. Place in sandwich bags to give to people who are helping you out more than you deserve.

Kismet

2011-06-29T18:35:00.000-04:00

I love perfect timing.

I'm desperately trying to empty my fridge--thus the eating about a quarter cup of crumbled Parmesan with a spoon that occurred earlier--and what do I run across but an egg salad recipe that uses every single thing I'm trying to get rid of and is pretty much the Platonic ideal of egg salad to boot. Three eggs (four, but who's counting). Three tablespoons mayo (yogurt, but who's counting). An onion (large, caramelized). Toasted minced garlic. Thyme, salt, pepper, hot sauce. I ate all of it in the form of lettuce wraps, and I wished I had more.

Novelties

2011-06-28T20:30:00.000-04:00

In the interests of using up all my refrigerated products before The Big Move on Friday, I found myself staring a large number of radishes in the face, wondering if there was an alternative to just slicing them and gobbling them down raw as the world's most monotonous salad.

Still having trouble making these horizontal. Have to go through
a laborious Picasa Web Album process to make it so.

Yes, yes there is. I've never had cooked radish before (except for the boiled Asian radish served in udon soups and so on), and these slow-roasted radishes were a good introduction. After a very long time in the oven, tossed with olive oil and rosemary and an onion and some cloves of garlic, they get soft and almost buttery. Here's a cooking tip for you: as soon as you get home for your lunch break, throw the radishes into the unheated oven and turn it to 450. When you leave 30 minutes later to go back to lab, turn off the oven, leaving the radishes inside. Instaradishes. Of course, as soon as I had made dinner, I sat down at the computer to eat and almost immediately found this recipe. I am intrigued. More radishes are in order.

Oh, and here, white beans with spinach tossed in a yogurt, mint, and lemon sauce. Think this, but with no tagliatelle, and with spinach instead of peas. I considered making tagliatelle, but somehow, even though work is a 9-to-5 sort of thing (mostly) and I don't have studying to do (mostly), I find myself running around like a crazy person. Perhaps next week. I've still got all that semolina, after all...

Bandwagons

2011-06-27T20:39:00.000-04:00

Nothing too interesting today, but I figured I should make a post since I hadn't done that in a few days. Really, I haven't done anything productive in a few days. It's been fun in a questionably harmful, definitely unsustainable kind of way. New York's potential for endless entertainment is both a blessing and a curse.

Seriously, why the hell aren't these photos
uploading in the proper orientation? They're
horizontal everywhere but on the actual blog!

Hey, look, chickpeas and rice with turmeric, ginger, garlic, tomatoes, and those radish greens I'd mentioned. They're delicious, with a peppery bite similar to that of arugula but a texture more like cooked chard or spinach. I'd love to try them in a frittata or chop them up for a grilled cheese sandwich. Here's the thing: I sincerely doubt that any major grocery store (and probably few to none of the minor ones) sell radish greens on their own. I'm just going to have to get inventive about radish usage if I'm going to eat these again. Which would be nice, really.

Further kneading

2011-06-24T17:20:00.000-04:00

This post title brought to you not only by yet another bread-making session, but also by Ferdydurke, which continues to be awesome. What to read next, The Man Died or An Unfortunate Woman?

The Amalgamated Quizbowl Practice Dessert of the Week is cinnamon sugar pretzel bites that do not have the greasy buttery mouthfeel of your mall-stand pretzel (or, to be fair, the same almost disturbing degree of buttery flavor) but do have that characteristic chew and crunchy, tooth-melting sugar coating.

Peter Reinhart's pretzel method is appealing for a few reasons: no poaching, no room-temperature rise that would require me to be home from work early in order to implement, no egg wash. But in every photo I saw of pretzels made according to the simple baking soda bath rather than one-minute poach, the pretzels had a bilious pallor rather than a rich brown color, and even though I wanted to coat them in cinnamon sugar, I also wanted there to be a polar bear-dark skin underneath. Furthermore, how to coat them with cinnamon sugar? I could toss them in butter and then in sugar post-baking, but I wasn't confident in the sticking ability of the butter, and plus, holy god how could you toss anything in butter and feed it to people and still be able to respect yourself in the morning as a future physician? Solution: poach the Reinhart-method dough, use a cornstarch-and-butter glaze so as not to waste an egg* or impart the greasiness of mass production to the pretzels, and liberally douse the pretzel bites in cinnamon sugar immediately after their hot baking soda water and buttery cornstarch spa treatments.

34 ounces of pretzel dough

One teeeeny pretzel!

What do you think of the results?

Yeah, me, neither. Still not dark enough... maybe I just didn't leave them in the oven for sufficient time?

*Seriously, this cornstarch thing is my new favorite baking glaze.

Impeassioned

2011-06-23T19:10:00.000-04:00

Fresh English peas: way too delicious for their own good.

You see, they're not in season very long, they only stay fresh for 24 to 48 hours, they're expensive (probably because of that freshness issue), and they require shelling.

Step 1: obtain peapod.

Step 2: unzip with thumb, ignoring disgusting blister
incurred while baking bread.

To test whether these are truly fresh, shake the pods; if you hear rattling, the peas have dried out and are past their prime. The day of purchase, shell them and boil them for three minutes, then immediately rinse them with cold water to stop the cooking. A third of a pound (purchased from a farmer's market stand whose proprietor thought my pea maraca moment was very amusing) yielded less than a cup of peas. I could probably eat at least five cups, so you see the danger.

A mere dollar bought me a massive bunch of radishes, and for another dollar I got some lovely carrots. Clearly yet another salad was in order! Bored with this blog yet?

I really wanted to make this horizontal, but for some reason the rotating function sucks.

Farmer Dude also told me that radish greens are edible, but that they're too "prickly" to eat raw, so these greens are probably going to be steamed and cooked up with leftover chickpeas and rice and an overripe tomato for dinner either tomorrow or Saturday.

Pretend this is horizontal, too!

Because I'm a fan of completely destroying the good work I try to do via healthful dinners, I also made a half-recipe of ginger chocolate chunk cookies that are tasty, but ugly, ate way too many of them, and gave the rest away before I did even more damage.

On the "probably not what you want to hear right after I talk about food" side of things: I spent an hour or so in the endoscopy suite of the VA and saw two colonoscopies, two upper GI endoscopies, a stricture dilation, and a lot of great GI-related banter. One guy had candida all up in his esophagus, which was simultaneously awesome and sort of awful to see, and one of the colonoscopies was performed on a guy with what the doctor I was trailing called a "seriously cavernous colon." The thing's diameter was large enough for it to qualify as prime Manhattan real estate, especially the cecum, which seemed to have two lumina as the result of an appendectomy the patient had years ago. I'm not thinking of actually going into GI, but our GI faculty seem to have fun doing what they do, despite the squishy sounds and general yuck factor. And there are squishy sounds, oh, yes indeed.

Yogurt mint salad dressing
1/4 cup plain yogurt, Greek or otherwise
1/4 cup rice vinegar or apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon lemon juice, plus the zest of one lemon
honey to taste
salt and pepper to taste
mint to taste (I used about a teaspoon dried)

Mix the ingredients. Dress your salad. Ain't life grand.

If you can't stand the heat...

2011-06-22T20:04:00.000-04:00

Oh, summer. Season of late sunsets. Season of flaunting good lab practice and wearing shorts and sandals to work because your lab's AC is broken and it feels like a bikram yoga studio in there. Season of eating salads because the combination of walking around all day and said toasty, toasty lab makes you crave cold things.

This (sloppily plated) salad is actually more wintry in its flavor profile: lentils flavored with tarragon, blue cheese, apples, and thinly sliced raw onion, all with a dusting of black pepper mixed with a teeny bit of celery salt. I sort of wanted to make lettuce wraps out of the components, since I got this huge and gorgeous head of lettuce from the farmer's market today, but I got lazy at the last minute and just dumped everything on the greens.

Now, to chow down on the rest of the apple and attempt to complete the series of tasks that reared their ugly heads today. All at once. Why does this happen?

Sometimes I realize what Tom Waits is actually singing about, and then I let out this forlorn "Oh."

2011-06-21T18:56:00.000-04:00

The title of this post really has nothing to do with anything other than the fact that I just paid attention to the lyrics of "Pasties and a G String" for the first time since maybe fifth grade when I really had no idea what any of those phrases meant, and I let out a forlorn "Oh." In my head. Because I was walking down 3rd Avenue at the time. Okay, back to reality:

Patricia Wells and Jacques Collet have versions of this recipe for a Mediterranean semolina bread with fennel and saffron in it. I'm loving having semolina flour on hand; breads made from it have an incredible texture. Next time, I'm trying semolina pancakes! But perhaps without the fennel... I used half the amount dictated by the recipe, and it was still very, very assertive.

This loaf (even with the fennel dialed down somewhat) went very well with a kale salad with orange balsamic vinaigrette and olives, orange segments, a smattering of raw almonds, and kidney beans on top.

Oh, and Ferdydurke is pretty fantastic. It reminds me of Petersburg in some ways and The Trial in others and everything Beckett ever wrote in others, mixed with a lot of its own thoroughly unique character. I highly recommend picking it up... after I've returned it to the library, of course.

Short stack

2011-06-20T18:01:00.001-04:00

I like how this "getting rid of ingredients before the big move" schtick is going so far.

What this lacks in diameter it makes up for in height: carrot chickpea burger (original recipe, for a change! Get pumped!) on a leftover pretzel roll (as seen yesterday, unoriginal recipe). It's pretty straightforward in terms of taste; I'm thinking some chopped olives or pickles might add a little zing, if that's what you're into.

I finished Point Counter Point today, as well as Beauty Salon (the latter is quite short). Point Counter Point was not what I expected, but it was pretty fantastic. The back cover informed me that DH Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, John Middleton Murry, and Huxley are "lightly disguised and readily distinguishable" as characters, but I don't know enough about... anything, really to readily distinguish them except according to their professions. They, along with other perhaps lightly disguised and readily distinguishable real-world figures, participate in sort of a textual give-and-take, ebbing and flowing that doubtless gives the book its title. Any more would spoil the plot (or plot-like apparatus), so I'll just say that you should absolutely pick this up. It's not exactly beach reading, however. And nor is Beauty Salon, despite its brevity. It's Julio Cortazar for the AIDS generation. It's weird and deeply disturbing and touching and... yeah, read this one, too.

Carrot chickpea burgers
1 1/4 cups cooked chickpeas
1/2 cup cooked brown rice
1/3 cup chopped onion
two small carrots, peeled and steamed
juice and zest of one lime
1/2 tsp cumin
Sriracha and Tony Chachare's (read: salt, pepper, cayenne, and paprika) to taste

Preheat the oven to 375 F. Chop 1/4 cup chickpeas and reserve, along with about 2 tablespoons brown rice and the onions. Food process the carrots and the remaining chickpeas and rice until almost textureless, then mix in the reserved rice and chickpeas, onions, lime juice and zest, and spices. Form into patties (it will make about six good-sized ones) about 1/4 inch thick and bake on parchment paper or a greased cookie sheet 20 to 25 minutes, or until the outside is dry and crispy.

Slapdashery

2011-06-19T19:49:00.000-04:00

I had all these ambitions to make delicious things today, but then I got home from the Bang on a Can marathon concert having eaten nothing all day but half a watermelon (seriously guys no judging please) and desperately wanted food as soon as possible. I was only there about three hours--I say only because it's a thirteen-hour concert, so attending less than a quarter of it ain't no thang--but I saw Michael Gordon, heard two pieces involving the very, very impressive Young People's Chorus of New York City, and had a tuba blown in my face by one of these guys. Oh, and stared forlornly through glass windows at this thing.

Read the article! It's quite good.

Okay, so while I didn't make the deliciousness that I'd planned, I did create these homemade pretzel rolls and topped them with defrosted walnut-mushroom pâté, veggies, and Dijon mustard.

It's probably a good thing that I halved the roll recipe; if I hadn't had to save the two remaining rolls for tomorrow's deliciousness deferred, more sandwich action would have occurred. This combination is a serious winner. I suggest pretzel rolls in general; the little bit of extra effort it takes to poach the rolls in baking soda solution is worth the chewiness and that slightly bitter crust that makes a pretzel such a joy.

Boy, I could get used to this summer thing.

Sir! I have a plan!

2011-06-18T19:44:00.000-04:00

I have quite a few small containers of raw ingredients, including five types of bean, two types of pasta, one type of rice, two types of flour, and a large amount of frozen walnut-mushroom spread that really needs to go. In addition, I'm moving on July 3rd (granted, I'm moving four blocks up the road, but still). Consequently, the plan is to purchase only produce that can be used up within a few days and completely eschew the purchase of beans, flour, eggs, cheese, or other staples. This may result in a blog hiatus when I'm forced to do things like eat lima beans with brown rice and frozen spinach three days in a row. In the meantime, though:

Seared watermelon, fried pignoli and white beans (was going to make a fritter but got lazy, and this is yet another step to proving the hypothesis that Anything Can Be Fried and Taste Better For It), Parmesan kale chips, and basil-white wine gelée. All that I purchased was kale and watermelon, I got to use up the rest of the white wine that had been stagnating in my fridge, and the Parmesan and pignoli and white beans need to be used up as well, so I'm well on my way! Bonus: I got to feel fancy. And eat the watermelon I didn't sear. That was pretty great.

Mmm, basil leaves floating in basil gel.

I'm of two minds about seared watermelon. On the one hand,
it's ridiculously good. On the other, I love plain watermelon
more than almost anything else I can put in my mouth, so the
idea of improving on it is utterly incomprehensible to me, and
it can arrive at my mouth more quickly than this as well!

Kale chips really can't be improved upon. No way, no how.

My various projects o' the day included fetching books at NYU's largest undergrad library (I'm already well into Point Counter Point). Obtained: Beauty Salon (Bellatin), Celestial Harmonies (Esterhazy), and The Man Died (Soyinka). I was going to pick up Ferdydurke, since it came up at quizbowl yesterday and I'm trying to decrease my frequency of Modern Jackass moments, but the only translation to be had was a second-hand job that passed through French before coming to English, so I declined. Funnily enough, when I got home and idly got on Facebook, one of the first items on my newsfeed involved this, which I think is a little hard on Unbearable Lightness of Being but which seems to back up my instincts about that translation. In any case, the Mid-Manhattan branch of the New York Public Library has not one, but two copies of the modern translation with foreword by Susan Sontag. I'll be heading up there as soon as I've finished the three aforementioned library books.

Ed Ruscha, eat your heart out.

2011-06-17T15:04:00.000-04:00

This is how I feel right now:

When I finally got home after finishing first year, I back-flopped onto my back on my bed in a fashion that embodied OOF. And then promptly finished Geek Love, which I have to say was not really worth the time it took to read it. It's not that it was bad per se, but its premise only held my interest for a few chapters, after which point the ample grotesqueries contained therein were not substantive enough to be captivating. Characters developed predictably. Wackiness ensued predictably. Basically, from now on, If I'm going to read fluff, it's going to be one of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books or some Star Wars novelization* rather than fluff that tries to mean something. I'm officially moving on to Point Counter Point.

I feel like I should have profound words for this last day of my first year of medical school. So much has happened since January. So much. "I learned a lot and made great friends" are both true statements, to be sure, but they're hackneyed enough to rival ipecac as an emetic. I will indulge in a mote of sentimentalism and say this: Never mind all the complaints I've made about NYU** or medical school in general, and all the stress I've vented about on this blog, and all the debt I'm accruing. I'm lucky to be where I am today***, on my way to a career I want more than anything, partnered with a person who understands that during my residency he probably won't see me while I'm conscious, with brownie-stuffed chocolate chip cookies in hand for tonight's mini quizbowl get-together...wait, what was that last one?

That's right. Brownies inside cookies. And quizbowl. And no more histology until August. And Andy is moving in with me in less than a month. Cue the Bob Marley, because in this moment, it seems like every little thing's gonna be all right.

I used this brownie recipe and this cookie recipe, which didn't fare as well as it does when it doesn't have brownies stuffed inside it (seems to have gotten sort of dry), but there you go. The brownies on their own were amazing and worth the little bit of extra time it takes to fluff up the eggs.

Start with a ball of dough.

Make a pit in it.

Fill 'er up with some pre-baked brownie.

And cover it up again! Then bake at 350 for 10 minutes.

I can't decide whether to compare these to Eshu...

...or Lokai. They're cookies from one side and something
thoroughly different from the other side, you see.

I now feel more like this:

*Stop judging. Kevin J. Anderson is my homeboy.
**Except for the complaints about the baffling miasm of awful that is the complete absence of organizational capabilities on the part of Housing Services. Mind that. Mind it all the way.
***Thank you, family, friends, and uncategorizables, for facilitating all this and for putting up with me while I'm being saccharine, snarly, or some combination of the above.

Better living through chemistry

2011-06-16T18:36:00.000-04:00

I wasn't going to post today, The Exam to End All Exams (until August) being tomorrow and all, but the god-given gift that is 5-hour Energy* has convinced me otherwise.

This is cold soba with egg noodles (that is, noodles made of egg) sprinkled with sesame seeds and ginger powder, with a side dish of cucumber and mango marinated in lime, cilantro, rice wine vinegar, and soy sauce. The soba I acquired comes in these neat little bundles, each of which is about twice as much soba as I should be eating (even for two meals). It sort of made me sad to have to cook half a bundle, because man, if I were actually cooking for two, that would be so damn convenient!

To make egg noodles, one simply
makes a thin egg crepe...

...and cuts it into strips (that break under
their own weight when dangled off
your hand, as I discovered here).

The dipping broth is the marinating liquid for the cucumber and mango plus a little miso broth.

N.b. While rinsing pasta will bring the collective ghost of Italian grandmothers down on your head Fruma-Sarah style, it is proper to rinse soba with cold water after it's boiled. If you don't rinse until that floury odor and texture are gone, the noodles will gum up and get this unpleasant mouthfeel, although the taste won't change.

*I refuse to believe it's just vitamin B and caffeine in those sinister little bottles. It's probably some Lewis Carroll-generated concoction that shows us how buzzed the rabbit can get.

Not-so-Southern comfort

2011-06-14T18:57:00.000-04:00

Among the many events of this week is a much-anticipated visit from my BFfroC, who will be arriving late tonight for a brief stay before she moves on to a family event. I plan to have something warm and homey waiting for her when she arrives this rainy evening: fresh tomato soup with pesto and semolina bread.

I wasn't sure that it would be late enough in the summer for good tomatoes. But when I visited the Greenmarket and a stand proprietor saw me skeptically eyeing the tomatoes, he offered me a taste, gratis. It paid off for him, because the tomatoes were delicious. I bolstered their flavor with a little tomato paste anyway and used some milk left over from the Dutch baby to make the soup light and creamy.

Speaking of milk, the rest of it needed to be used up, and quickly. Solution? Boil up some brown rice pudding while studying (I can't believe there was once a day when I actually enjoyed histology. Yes, fellow med students, I confess: I used to like histo. Don't worry, this final has beaten that out of me.). It tastes like home.

Pity this busy monster

2011-06-13T19:07:00.000-04:00

It's the week before an exam, so why do I have so much non-studying activity going on? Mouse training courses, a last PLACE session... and because I'm an idiot, I sort of voluntarily added to my lengthy to-do list "bake for the last Practice of Medicine session." Any high-minded plans I had to make something impressive (macarons!) flew out the window in the face of everything else going on, so I turned to black bean brownies, an ostensibly healthful dessert that is in every way the quickest and easiest baked good I know how to make.

And one of the fudgiest to boot.

This kale salad with blue cheese, blueberries, and Dijon-balsamic vinaigrette is similarly quick (but not all that impressive...). I got the blue cheese/blueberry combination idea from The Flavor Thesaurus; it's helped along by the sweet and tangy dressing.

Brownies for the temporally challenged
1 can black beans (15.5 oz)
3 eggs
3 tbsp canola oil
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 to 2/3 cup turbinado sugar (white is fine, too)
1 tsp instant espresso, if you've got it

Preheat oven to 350. Put all ingredients in a blender and let 'er rip until everything is... blended; alternatively, use your food processor or immersion blender. Pour the batter in a greased 9x9 pan and bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until the edges just start to separate from the edges of the pan.

Ever fickle and changeable

2011-06-12T19:51:00.000-04:00

I was all set to make hobak jeon, but an unexpected windfall in the form of friend-going-abroad-who-needs-to-get-rid-of-her-perishables brought me some black bean paste.

As Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka might say, "Strike that; reverse it." It's jajangmyun time!

Forgive the poor photography. I was too excited to cram this
into my gullet to take a good picture. Ardenter, you say?*

Jajangmyun is, as you may have guessed from the name, a Korean dish of noodles, vegetables, and (usually) pork in a black bean paste sauce. I had to use soba instead of sweet potato cellophane noodles, and I omitted the pork, and I didn't have tofu or cabbage or a potato, but other than that, I'd say this was pretty traditional. As a consequence of the fact that I dropped half the ingredients, there was way too much sauce, so here I present an updated version.

Jajangmyun, taken with a grain of salt because this recipe is coming from a white chick
1 onion
1 zucchini
2 carrots
(You should probably use cabbage and potato and cooked pork or tofu)
3 tbsp black bean paste
2 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp sugar (or less)
1 tbsp rice wine
1 cup water
a slurry of 1 tbsp cornstarch and 1 tbsp water

Stir-fry the vegetables with the exception of the zucchini and cabbage in the sesame oil. Add the black bean paste, sugar, rice wine, and water, and stir to combine. Mix in the zucchini and cabbage and bring to a boil. When it's boiling, add the cornstarch slurry, return to a boil, and simmer until the sauce is thickened and slightly reduced. Stir in the cooked meat/tofu and heat through. Serve over sweet potato cellophane noodles.

*This is a reference to Thomas Aquinas, who listed six or seven ways to commit gluttony. Ardenter is, simply put, eating too quickly.

Challenges

2011-06-11T19:43:00.000-04:00

I generally wake up very early on weekdays to exercise, either with running and calisthenics (I love that word) or bikram yoga. Naturally, the 6:30 a.m. yoga class tends to be populated by a certain cohort of people, plus or minus a few sporadic attendees, who are insane enough to drag themselves into a heated room that early. So lately, when I noticed that one of the instructors had begun coming to the early class and had been a few days consecutively, I asked if he was doing a 30-day challenge, which is exactly what it sounds like: 30 consecutive days of bikram. If a day is skipped, you do a double session the next day (I love the practice, but that sounds hellish). It's sort of an insane time commitment, and I'm sure it gets physically draining, and I'll probably never do one because med school. In any case, the instructor replied that he was doing a 10-day challenge, which he called "intense yoga for people who have trips to go on and birthday parties to attend." And exams to take, I thought to myself. And then I thought, Hey, Hannah. Come on. Ten days. You can hack ten days, right? Ten days is basically a week... a morbidly obese week. So for those of you who call me nuts, please feel free to redouble your admonishments and look so askance at me your eyeballs nearly pop out of their sockets*, because this is happening. I did not practice on Monday, but I did on Tuesday and every day since, which means that I've committed myself to going every day until Thursday. I'm not planning to deliberately avoid class on Friday (last day of class!), so it might be an 11- or 12-day challenge. We'll see.

Speaking of challenges, tonight's dinner was a julienned carrot and zucchini salad (again with the mandoline!) with raisins, walnuts, and a lemon-caraway aioli.

I know that aioli is traditionally considered difficult to make, but (newsflash) all that's required is adherence to two simple tips: use room-temperature egg yolks and add the oil so slowly you can feel your beard growing as the aioli whips up into perfectly emulsified deliciousness.

*Sorry. Graphic happens.

Warning: not above making the obvious Bieber pun

2011-06-10T19:20:00.000-04:00

I've got a cast iron skillet now, and I'm not afraid to use it! Dutch babies are these puffy oven-baked pancakes usually served with just some sugar and a spritz of lemon juice for dessert, but in order to make it a full meal, I added blue cheese, walnuts, chopped dried apricots, and caramelized red onion to a buttery cast iron pan, then poured on the batter and baked it.

And I was like, "(Dutch) baby, baby, baby, ohhhh...."

Way too interested in eating this to bother taking pretty pictures.

It tasted much better than it looked.

In addition, I decided to make crepes (a very similar batter) and flambé them. But I didn't have orange juice or any of the other things that one might use to make an actual sauce and, you know, do it right. Instead, I just heated some coffee-orange vodka in a pan, lit it on fire, and poured it over. My friend Jen filmed the sort of lackluster results. But who can say no to coffee-orange vodka-flavored crepes?

Dutch baby, plus!

1 cup flour

4 eggs

1 cup milk, plus a little more if the batter looks too thick

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 red onion, caramelized

1/2 cup dried apricots, chopped

1/3 cup walnuts, chopped

Blue cheese to taste

Black pepper to taste

3 tbsp butter

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Beat the flour, eggs, milk, and salt together at high speed for about one minute, or whisk vigorously for three minutes. Meanwhile, melt the butter over medium heat in a cast iron skillet (or other heavy, oven-safe pan). Sprinkle the walnuts, onion, and apricots evenly along the bottom of the pan, then pour on the batter. Top with cheese and black pepper. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until puffed and golden brown. Eat immediately.

You gotta know...

2011-06-09T18:58:00.000-04:00

...all about the avocado, at least according to quizbowl organization NAQT.I have to say, culinarily speaking, I agree.

This is an avocado dip made with a worth-fifteen-points-if-you-buzz-here Fuerte avocado (as opposed to the more common, ten-point Hass variety) and chickpeas. I hesitate to call it hummus--no tahini--or guacamole--no cilantro or onion or tomato--so perhaps guacammus? That sounds like some obscure holiday, though. Merry Guacammus! Good tidings to you on Guacammus! Chag Guacammus sameach!

Whatever it is, it tastes really good spread on crusty whole-wheat bread (Jim Lahey, I love you) and topped with chopped tomato and cucumber tossed in a light, vinegary za'atar dressing. This is made eminently evident by the fact that I was too gluttonous in the face of a plateful of it to take a photo before chowing down. Neg five.

Guacammus
1 medium-sized avocado
10 to 12 ounces chickpeas
juice and zest of 1 lime
1/4 cup chopped scallions
1 Thai chili pepper, diced
1 tsp rice wine vinegar
2 tsp sesame oil
cumin, salt, and pepper to taste

Puree all the ingredients except for the scallions. Mix those in at the end.

Those darn Europeans

2011-06-08T19:09:00.000-04:00

Strange cravings strike more than the gravid among us. Lately, all I've wanted is garlic, lots of it, and fast. My first thought was to make ajo blanco, which I figured was a more summer-appropriate variant of the 44-clove garlic soup I've written lovingly about before. But then I actually checked out some recipes for ajo blanco, and holy bejeesus is it shockingly caloric. When I think ajo blanco, I think about long, lean, perfectly tanned Spanish women sipping it on a Mediterranean beach while drinking albarino and eating grapes and melon slices. Now I see that the reason they remain long and lean is that ajo blanco is often served in small, small portions as an accompaniment to a roasted potato or fish dish. So while I try to figure out a way to a. make recipes like this one somewhat easier on the waistline or b. create the perfect accompaniment to a tiny little shooter of ajo blanco, I will accept substitutes... like this one!

This is a green grape, roasted garlic, and zucchini gazpacho with chopped raw almonds and scallions on top. I'm getting my garlic fix (and my raw almond fix, because boy, are those puppies delicious) and retaining the ability to drink more than a few tablespoons of soup without pondering pasty, plump Americans hunkered down like grubs on that aforementioned beach in Spain. Plus, it pairs nicely with the rest of those gram flour crackers from yesterday, although I think a slice of sourdough or some rosemary and olive oil crackers would be preferable.

Green and garlicky gazpacho

(N.b.: "Green garlic" is an actual thing, so calling this "green garlic gazpacho" would have been misleading.)

1 1/2 cups green grapes

1 cucumber, peeled

1/2 cup jicama (or substitute a couple stalks of celery with those annoying stringy bits removed)

1 zucchini

1/4 to 1/3 cup chopped red onion (more to taste)

1/3 cup breadcrumbs, fresh or packaged

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

5 large cloves roasted garlic (my cloves were very large, so you might use more if yours aren't so substantial)

sherry vinegar to taste (I used about 3 tablespoons)

1 cup liquid (I used water; I suppose you could use vegetable broth, but the saltiness concerns me)

salt and pepper to taste (make sure to season after the soup is cold!)

chopped scallions and chopped raw almonds for garnish (lots of almonds!)

Soak the breadcrumbs in the liquid while you prepare the vegetables. Food process everything but the garnish items into oblivion. Chill for at least an hour. Sprinkle with garnish items. Eat.

Happy as a clam

2011-06-07T20:17:00.000-04:00

A clam:

Me:

Who has two thumbs and a bivalvular calcium carbonate
shell? This girl!

See the resemblance? The reasons for my sanguinity are threefold: the transfinite is a really, really cool thing* and is only at the Park Avenue Armory until June 11, so you should go see it, we have eight days of book-larnin' before the summer, and I finally, finally obtained a mandoline.

No more hacking away at vegetables with low-quality knives wielded by an inexpert hand! Filling an MD Stomach will now be graced with the finest of thinly sliced vegetables, and you, dear readers, will have to put up with mandoline-inspired dishes until I calm down about it. For instance:

This is a jicama salad "quatre-feuille" with gram flour and sesame seed crackers, a homemade pear chip, and raw cashew and dill dressing. I'm experimenting with raw, nut-based foods, not because I have any intention at all of adapting a raw foods diet--can you think of anything more horrific?--but because nut butters, pastes, and dressings are great sources of all the right sorts of lipids. They're also delicious.

Look at those thinly sliced pears!

I'm experimenting with the food theory that if the food
is piled high on the plate, it must be über-chic

This is just gratuitous.

*It's mesmerizing and unsettling all at once, like Four Organs, but less brain-melting.

And... action!

2011-06-06T11:49:00.000-04:00

Recently, a friend introduced me to the "My Drunk Kichen" videos of Hannah Harto, the most adorable person ever to attempt to cook while schnockered. I am honored to share her first name. While I could never match her adorableness, her wit, or her state of profound inebriation, in honor of the unveiling of my homemade orange-coffee liqueur, also known as 44 cordial, I have made a video of myself tasting the results for the first time. Sláinte!

I should note that I rarely drink any alcohol, and when I do, it's the equivalent of a glass of wine. This whole midday cocktail thing is new to me, thus the silly faces.