Birthdays and dog days

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.

Mille fois merci

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.

The idea of order

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.

Further kneading

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.

Sir! I have a plan!

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.

You gotta know...

...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.

Cookie monster

I made three kinds of dessert today. Please, dear reader, stave off your disgust. All three recipes are of my own invention, so by making three types of baked good, I'm not being overindulgent. I'm taste-testing! These goods are destined to be fed to a ravenous husband and a coterie of hopefully ravenous quizbowlers, further allowing me to suppress the little voice in my head saying, "Wow, you manatee-sized glutton!" and listen to the one clapping its hands in glee at the prospect of low-grade* culinary innovation.

Here we go:

1. Lemon-basil cookies with Mast Brothers chocolate, inspired by this recipe
3/4 cup sugar
zest of 1 lemon
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 cup softened butter
1 large egg, room temperature
1 3/8 cups flour
1/8 tsp salt
1 tsp cream of tartar
1/2 tsp baking soda
8 large leaves basil, chopped
1/2 bar Mast Brothers Madagascar chocolate

Cream the butter and sugar. Beat in the egg, then add the lemon juice, lemon zest, and basil. Add the dry ingredients just until blended. Refrigerate the dough for at least an hour. Preheat the oven to 350 F. To make grin-inducingly huge cookies, use two tablespoons of dough per cookie; to make delicate and elegant cookies, use two teaspoons. Roll dough into balls and flatten them with the bottom of a glass. Bake the large cookies for 12 to 14 minutes and the small ones 8 to 10. Let the cookies cool on the cookie sheet for at least 5 minutes before moving them to a cooling rack. When they're cool, gently melt the chocolate and drizzle it on the cookies. Let the chocolate harden slowly at room temperature.

2. "Breakfast blondies" with cinnamon and maple syrup in the batter and a crunchy cornflake and soy bacon topping

1/2 cup browned butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup maple syrup (this is more than my original portion; it wasn't as maple-y as I wanted)
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 strip soy (or other) bacon, cooked and crumbled
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup flour
1/2 cup cornflakes, crushed somewhat

Preheat oven to 350 F. Butter and lightly flour an 8x8 pan. In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together the maple syrup, butter, and sugar. Add the egg and vanilla extract and whisk thoroughly. Add flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt and mix until just combined. Pour into prepared pan and spread evenly. Sprinkle the crushed cornflakes and crumbled bacon on top and press them in lightly. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. (I overbaked these just a bit because the forthcoming batch of blondies took longer than I thought they would, so I assumed these would, too. Foolish, foolish Hannah. I'm abashed.) Let cool before cutting.

3. Pistachio saffron blondies

1/2 cup olive oil
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp ground saffron (I added more than this, and I think the saffron flavor in the blondies is too intense. Ah, well. It's not embarrassingly bad, at least. I plead beta testing.)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp baking soda
1/3 cup chopped pistachios
1 cup flour


Preheat oven to 350 F. Butter and lightly flour an 8x8 pan. In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together the olive oil, saffron, and sugar. Add the egg and vanilla extract and whisk thoroughly. Add pistachios, flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt and mix until just combined. Pour into prepared pan and spread evenly. Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. Let cool before cutting.


*It has rare mitotic figures and non-pleomorphic nuclei.

It came from within the freezer!

One of my most heartbreaking quizbowl moments was buzzing relatively early on a question on the Grool from It Came from Beneath the Sink! only to be unable to remember the actual name of what came from beneath the sink.

Luckily, dinner did not come from beneath the sink, as appetizing as fresh sponge with Clorox sauce sounds. I did, however, resuscitate frozen and canned ingredients galore into something slightly more edible than bleach soup.

I present to you garbanzos con espinacas (recipe alterations: a tablespoon of red wine along with the balsamic vinegar, lime zest and juice instead of lemon). The only actual fresh foods contained therein are a tomato, a sweet potato, and half a lime. So sue me. Frozen spinach and canned chickpeas and tomato paste and dried spices are way too convenient.



More importantly, my roommate came home last night with leftover papayas from a club workshop (Did you know that a papaya is like a uterus?), saying that the consensus was that I would know what to do with papayas. Six perfectly ripe papayas. I had asked another club member for leftovers, but I'd imagined one, or at most two! This felt like an episode of Chopped, except instead of having four mandatory ingredients and a fully stocked pantry to work with, I had one mandatory ingredient and a very, very unstocked pantry. No butter. No limes. No milk. No coconut milk. No coconut. No lemongrass. No Thai basil. Basically, none of the ingredients that I immediately thought might be fun to use with papaya. I could have waited, yes, but these things were so perfect and so ripe and beckoned so temptingly...



My next thought, after cursing my paltry pantry, was "hmm, banana bread." It often uses melted butter or canola oil, so why not substitute olive oil for the butter and mashed papaya for the bananas? So I did, to surprisingly good reviews! I picked up a couple limes at a green cart today, which means the rest of the papayas will become papaya-lime-ginger sorbet. I've still got some simple syrup kicking around in the fridge from when I made those candied lemon slices; time to use it up in sorbet (spicy papaya lime).



Hannah's Ginger Papaya Muffins
Please note: I'm sure you could improve upon this recipe. Please do. Then tell me about.

Two large, ripe papayas, seeds removed and flesh mashed
Juice and zest of 1/2 lemon (I think a lime or two would work much better)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp dried ginger
1/4 tsp salt
1 egg
1/3 cup olive oil
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups flour, of some combination of whole wheat and all-purpose (I really wanted to use some cornmeal, but there was none to be had)
Option: some oatmeal for garnish, plus half a third ripe papaya, cut up for crust and mix-in purposes.

Mix the egg, olive oil, sugar, and vanilla until homogenous. Add the mashed papaya and lemon juice and zest, and mix well. Add the dry ingredients and mix until the batter is smooth. Add some chopped papaya if you want chunks of it in the batter. Pour into muffin cups (or a greased loaf pan, although I have no idea how long that would need to bake), top with a chopped papaya and oatmeal crust, and bake for 30 minutes or until deep brown on top.

"Useless" knowledge is the best knowledge

First of all, happy Pesach to those of you who are celebrating it. I chose to ring in the holiday with matzo brei last night. Matzo brei is perfect. It deserves never to be gussied up*. Its nutritional value is also questionable, which is why I'm not going to be making it again this Passover.

I've been craving something spicy, so I made a Jamaican-inspired meal that hit the spot: red beans with coconut milk and habanero peppers, paprika sweet potato hash, and spinach with a hint of cumin and some sriracha. There's really not much else to say about that.

I was in Pittsburgh this weekend in order to, among other things, moderate a quizbowl tournament. In order to add content to this post, and to bloviate about nerdy stuff**, I shall include a list of thoroughly randoma nd thoroughly awesome things I learned about:

1. This opera (and its composer)
2. This mechanism, and the fact that it is important
3. This artist
4. This book
5. This play
6. This syndrome

This is why quizbowl is neat.

*Oh, and those of you who truck with sweetened matzo brei are wrong. Sorry. Matzo and maple syrup aren't meant to mix.
**One of my more unfortunate habits.

Just can't quit you

I told myself when I got to medical school that I was going to ditch a few aspects of my undergraduate life, quizbowl being one of them. Oops. I should have known better than to think I was actually going to succeed at completely divesting myself of a community of people who can discuss, in quick succession and with acceptable competence, Brahms, Bohr, and Bulgakov. The spending money I can earn by writing questions doesn't hurt, either.

Which is why I'm throwing together a quick dinner of sautéed mushroom and roasted chickpeas with ginger-turmeric sauce and heading out to some café to write ICT questions tonight. Less rambunctious than my other post-exam options, maybe, but a girl needs a little quasi-polymath* time, you know? I'm no longer playing tournaments, so this is the best I can get.

*I say quasi because I'm pretty sure one needs to be better-versed at "everything" than a typical quizbowler is in order to be called a polymath. But a lot of us still know some fun things and will talk about what little we know ad infinitum, given the chance. It makes me smile.

Find-a-zeugma

I was so excited when I got my yeast, and plus Mom had just gotten me a kitchen scale so I could actually measure ingredients by weight! Sadly, I managed to make a serious error with the very first thing I made with both: challah. I rose it once while in class, let it rise again while I ran some errands, and came back, only to realize that I had forgotten to braid it before the second rise. So I let it rise a third time, hoping that it would be okay.



I took a bite. Chewed. Evaluated. Beery taste... present, to the mildest of degrees, but overridden by sweetness. Not the best challah I've made (okay, so this was my second attempt, but it came in second place), but it retained most of its moisture, and now that I've got a pound of yeast and a pound to sell, there's plenty of opportunity to try again.



Dinner was not just challah (although that would have been completely copacetic, in my opinion). The challah did, however, form the base component of a savory French toast topped with a mushroom, kale, and squash blend simmered in tomatoes and spiced with thyme.



Oh, and cookies! Browned butter chocolate chip, to be precise and enjoyed by those of you who come to HFT this Saturday (distribution controlled by last post's aforementioned friend).

Dictatorship of autumn

Lately, the Internet has just exploded with recipes featuring pumpkin. And apples. But mostly pumpkin.

I've never cooked with fresh pumpkin, nor do I particularly care to try, but I felt that I should grudgingly give in and do the pumpkin thing just once at least. Tonight seemed like a good time, because:

a. we have an exam the day after Halloween, and this is close enough to Halloween that I can celebrate the pumpkiny goodness of it all without endangering my studies.
b. whenever Andy is here, I eat copious amounts of food that is not very good for me, so I felt like I could round that off tonight by making whatever I wanted.
c. organic canned pumpkin was on sale at Trader Joe's.

I used half a can of the pumpkin (roughly 7.5 ounces) to make pasta with pumpkin cream sauce. Well, cream-ish. I used a smidgen of milk and about a tablespoon of goat cheese (yes, that stuff is sticking around!) rather than heavy cream and lots of cheese, and sure, the sauce was less runny and smooth, but it tasted fine and will do a lot less damage calorie-wise. I caramelized some onions with a bay leaf, then added some sage, nutmeg, red pepper, and salt with the pumpkin and dairy items, tossing in the pasta (too much, actually; the leftovers will feed me for two lunches, easy). Pine nuts and/or parsley for the top would have been nice, but I'm not complaining! Simple steamed green beans were a great foil (Look at those tasty-looking green beans. I love fresh green beans. Seriously. I could eat a pound at one go).



The rest of the pumpkin went into a half-recipe of these pumpkin pie bars. I diminished the amount of sugar and upped the spices, adding a smidgen of anise and a lot of cloves for good measure. I reheated Zeno's Mug of Green Tea that is always sitting on my desk and enjoyed one for a late-night dessert as I wrote some HFT other arts questions and listened to a little of the opera about which I was writing. Tomorrow, it's back to work... this time on host-defense! Viruses! Bacteria! Parasites! I am so very excited!

Synchronicity is awesome

I was on the subway today reading The Crying of Lot 49, and there is a point when Oedipa Maas reflects briefly on the fourth movement of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra. As I read that passage, my iPod shuffled to the fourth movement of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra. How cool is that?

Anyway, lunch was more bread (it has spinach in it, happy?), and I went out to a restaurant called, amusingly, Tiffin Wallah with a quizbowl friend for dinner (eating out stops as soon as classes start, believe you me). But I couldn't let my final day of relative freedom pass without making something.



Remember the latest batch of chocolate chip cookies? I didn't have enough bread flour to make a whole batch, and I didn't want to substitute all-purpose because the results of the bread flour were so amazing, so I made a half recipe. In order to avoid having six massive cookies all alone on a cookie sheet, I made mini-cookies out of them and baked them for about half the time.



Yum.

tl;p(lease)r(ead)a(nyway)

Last night, I didn't post because we ended up going out to dinner at Charlie's Kitchen with some quizbowl acquaintences, where I had a vegetarian reuben. The concept sounds off-putting, but it turns out that when you combine high-quality fake meat--none of this Boca Burger dross, if you please!--with the awesomeness that is grilled rye (with, I suspect, a lot of butter), cheese, sauerkraut, and mustard, you get a delicious sandwich. Plus, there were fries on the side. I haven't had a meal so unhealthful and greasy in a long time. It felt really good and really bad all at once to chow down on that sandwich.

Earlier in the day, I had made, for said acquaintances, two varieties of cookie: chocolate with peanut butter chips and matcha shortbreads. The chocolate with peanut butter chips were good--although the dough, annoyingly, was so runny that it had to be refrigerated before baking, so I think I'll choose a different dough to spruce up with peanut butter chips next time--and the matcha shortbreads were as well, but I was disappointed because the latter had the potential to be great. They were a little too strong in the matcha department. While making the cookies, I saw that they called for two tablespoons of matcha (to a two-sticks-of-butter recipe) and was dubious, but since it was the first time I'd made matcha cookies, I didn't try to change things right away. Shortbread relies on a dominant buttery flavor for its goodness, and it treads a fine line between crumbly and chalky. The matcha was both so strong and so powdery that it both eclipsed the buttery flavor to an unreasonable degree and put the cookies a little too close to chalky. I'd reduce the matcha by as much as half next time in order to restore this balance.



Now, all unknowing that we'd be eating out, I prepared a marinated (in red wine vinegar with a bit of sugar, salt and pepper, and a squirt of lemon juice) salad of chopped Swiss chard, kidney beans, and thinly sliced red onions and baked Andy's rosemary garlic bread. We had most of that for lunch today, and Andy is making good headway on polishing off the loaf (now it's gone. I did not photograph it or the salad, which I assure you was quite pretty.). For dinner, in the interests of cook-this-before-the-produce-spoils, I made Ethiopian green beans and potatoes with misr wat, or lentil stew. Berbere is one of my favorite spice blends, and one of the few that I'm committed to buying instead of making. This is eminently good, wholesome food. I swear, if the bread-salad-cheese option were removed, I could live on lentils, potatoes, and green beans.



The last of the tomatoes we bought spoiled Wednesday (after just four days, which seems odd to me), and all I had was a very large can of tomatoes, so I just used tomato paste, of which I had an appropriate amount, for both dishes, to no discernible ill effects.



I would now like to note that after either tomorrow or Sunday, I'm no longer going to be making planned meals, since I'll be busy packing for medical school and trying to get rid of ingredients rather than pursue new ones. The blog may suffer accordingly.

Brevity: the soul of nutriment

I made caprese pasta, giving it balsamic flavor by steeping caramelized onions in balsamic vinegar. I stirred up the pasta and onions, spinach, tomatoes, herbs, and spices, then topped it with mozzarella and baked it in a 475-degree oven for 15 minutes. It was a satisfying dinner for a rainy day. I didn't bother to photograph it.

Now, back to writing tossups for that pesky tournament tomorrow.

Melting pot food for the fourth

No, sadly I did not make a fondue. One day, though. One day.

We did, however, have a picnic that included German, Middle Eastern, and French food items. Pictured here is broiled kale, pumpernickel bread, goat cheese and Moroccan (or so the recipe claimed) marinated carrots to put on the bread, Brie, fruit salad with mint (which I ate most of, to Andy's amusement. I love fruit salad.), and some cookies from yesterday.



The bread came out quite well! I would have liked a little less sweetness and a little more caraway, but under the sandwich-making circumstances, light caraway flavor was a good thing. Amusingly, consulting the Wikipedia page on pumpernickel in an effort to find the origins of the bread's name (indeterminate) led me to discover that the reason pumpernickel is usually so dark is that the traditional slow baking process allows the Maillard reaction to occur and color the bread. I didn't want to take up the oven for six to eight hours, considering that we've got housemates, and so the bread got a fifty-minute bake instead; it's not too dark, but it sure is tasty. Bonus: It held up well to the strong flavors of goat cheese, marinated carrots, and caper-and-parsley-and-lemon zest garnish.





Projects for the rest of the day include going to watch the Pops and fireworks at the hatch shell and making a recipe of Mark Bittman's vegetable stock. Oh, and I should finish working on ANGST. Stupid quizbowl.

gah backlog

Okay, let's start with the four dozen or so cookies I baked for the NSC. Between the snickerdoodles and the chocolate chewy cookies, the chocolate was absolutely superior (despite the fact that a coach who sampled one of the snickerdoodles was all exclamatory about how "tender" they were, which I didn't know was a particularly positive quality for a cookie to have). It's not that cinnamon isn't delicious, but chocolate remains the most toothsome of dessert flavors. I lowered the sugar content on this recipe and increased the cocoa content; additionally, I prefer dough to chips, so I lowered the dough-to-chip ratio. If I make them again--well, let's face it, when I make them again--there will be no chips at all.

Oh, and as an aside... the tournament went splendidly. This was triply gratifying: I worked substantially on the set, it's delightful to see the immense knowledge those darn kids are accruing (insert link to photo of the Watkins pole here), and it was probably the last tournament in which I'll play a substantial part. In short: Quizbowl rocks.

Anyway, upon arriving home at about 2 a.m. Monday morning thanks to the vagaries of Dulles, I had no desire to post about that, which is why I've got a few more recipes to discuss. First, lemon meringue pie... with a photograph!**



See that cookbook? That cookbook contains my favorite pie crust recipe ever. Sure, I could go find one that uses lard and would probably be flakier, but I refuse to ingest lard (knowingly), and this one is easy, delicious, and perfectly serviceable. My one criticism is that a single recipe's worth of dough isn't quite enough for a single-crust pie, so it's a good idea to make 1.5 portions. The meringue and lemon filling were in sufficient quantity, though, even if the lemon filling was mysteriously runny (it wasn't like that the last time I made it from the same recipe). And the meringue was dry-eyed, thereby satisfying the most important criterion for a successful meringue pie.

The pie came after a meal of spinach and Swiss cheese crepes, with a bit of nutmeg and a splash of lemon juice thrown into the spinach filling. I also made hasselback potatoes (described in a question from this past weekend as "that most destabilizing of starches," a turn of phrase that I particularly enjoy), because carbohydrates are fun! The meal was tasty enough to eradicate the fact that the lock on our door mysteriously jammed and we had to pay an absurd amount of money to have it fixed and replaced, the latter of which it turns out the landlord would have preferred we not do. Sigh.

Also, despite the fact that I'm starting my tutoring "full-time" tomorrow, I'm committed to baking desserts at least twice a week and bread at least twice a week. Hold me to that. Perhaps tomorrow I'll try out some pita, or just get going with that sourdough starter I've been swearing to myself I'd prepare one of these days.

**These photographs are going to improve starting tomorrow, I swear it.

Summertime, and the livin's... er... yeah.

Hello again! Summer cuisine got off to a start weeks ago with a lentil stew for the Justice, a test of three types of chocolate cookie in preparation for the upcoming NSC quizbowl tournament, three loaves of bread topped with a cool avocado-apple chutney at Northwestern while visiting my best friend pre-HSNCT... but I've only just now gotten around to actually blogging about it.

Tonight has been all about the busy. There's that pesky NSC to finish editing, and Andy and I still haven't fully moved in. Thus, the obvious thing to do is to add one more task and bake cinnamon raisin bread. The kind folks at Brandeis' tech services fixed my camera about three days before my lovely mother gave me a camera for graduation, so now I'm all about the poorly taken food pictures (in my defense, it's 3 a.m. and I have other things to do and can't be bothered setting up something pretty)! This bread is going to help the two of us power through the rest of unpacking and tournament editing (high school quizbowl chemistry canon: VERY TINY). It is just rich enough and coated with a fantastically thick layer of cinnamon sugar. I also greased the pan with butter rather than the recommended cooking spray, which makes it artery-cloggingly rich on the outside.




Here's a bonus shot, thanks to the guy who fixed the camera.



Not pictured is the beet mac 'n' cheese (made with fontina, spiced with a bit of tarragon; beet greens included) that Andy and I had for dinner; there was a rather limited farmers market off Central where I picked up the beets and cheese, as well as some chard for tomorrow's dinner. The color pink isn't my favorite, but it was kind of fun to watch the cheese sauce turn all rosy as I mixed in the beet chunks.

Meet me in St. Louis, Louis

A Facebook quasi-poll led to my decision to make St. Louis gooey butter cake tonight and apple tarte tatin tomorrow, since we're having a gumbo party tomorrow and the tarte tatin fits better with the Creole theme. I'll make raisin bread at Brandeis and carrot walnut cookies to bring to Winter (or at least to the excellent person who is driving me to Winter).

Now, a few words on the cake:
1. I want a paddle attachment. Every single recipe I've made (well, not really, but almost) has called for one, and I've just had to go without.
2. The author of the New York Times article about the confection from which I drew the recipe included an anecdote about buying the last slice of butter cake from the man in front of her in line at the bakery for a brownie and two coconut bars. There is a reason that she went to such lengths. This is sweet and yeasty and indulgent. If faced with never eating this again or committing a minor crime, I'd probably go with the crime. Holding myself to one tiny square for health purposes was really, really difficult.
3. You should make this. But unless you like staying up late, don't start making it at 8 p.m.

And now for something completely different...

So, I might make some marshmallows at like 1 a.m., depending on the rate at which I finish my half of a quizbowl packet, but I did eat some wonderful tarte tatin today.

That occurred at a memorial service for a woman named Joanne Perrot. My dad took some ceramics classes at the local community college in whose studio Joanne worked, and he quickly realized and showed the rest of my family what a lovely person she was. She and her husband Paul, the most dapper of erudite older French gentlemen, were consummate world travelers, artists and art connoisseurs, and just generally good people. We stayed way too long at the service (from 2 to 7:30) because it was impossible to tire of talking to their wonderful children and other friends and relatives who are doctors, scientists, teachers, artists, and so on. Joanne was a spectacular woman who will be missed and who left her mark in her extraordinary family in friends.

Who, to draw it back to the purpose of this blog, have great taste in desserts.