cooking-spree

May 17

Humble Pie

Most mornings I’ll wake at first light and sit in my corner chair with coffee and journal. The words that find their way to paper flow like ribbons from a spool. I don’t make these words, I barely write them. They unwind and flow of their own volition it seems, perhaps falling from the last pages of my dreams. Sometimes they inform, other times amuse, and sometimes I have no earthly explanation for what they mean or how they came to be upon my page. Yesterday was such a morning. I’d been writing for maybe fifteen minutes, when out of the blue, Humble pie appeared. I asked (amused, as you can imagine), Really?! Humble pie? And Yes, was all it said. And so I laughed out loud. What would you have done? It seemed like such a reasonable response! I know, I know, but after years of companionable times with my journal, I’ve learned to listen. Writing in the mornings has uncovered much for me. When my thoughts and feelings are a jumbled mess, writing helps me sort them. It can help set me straight, show me where I’ve erred. It shines a light when I’m standing in the dark. SO even when something as silly as humble pie shows up, I say OK. Tell me more.

In this case, I took it both figuratively and literally. I suspect you’re more interested in the literal interpretation, which brings me to today’s offering: Strawberry and Rhubarb Galette.

Have you ever had a completely irrational, seemingly baseless fear? We all have, right? Well, mine has been pie. OK, absurd, I know, but I prefaced this by saying irrational. My Mom always made beautiful pies. Her crusts were never tough or soggy, but always buttery and flaky and just plain pretty. At some point, probably very early on, I told myself I could never make a pie like my Mom. And you know how it oftentimes is when you tell yourself a “lie,” you believe it instantly and go on repeating it for (oh, I hope it’s not so!) the rest of your life. SO, a couple years ago, being buoyed by little successes in unrelated areas, I vowed I would tackle the pie! I came upon a recipe for Galette, this free-form, rather rustic and charming little fruit-filled pastry. It seemed goof-proof. And I believed instantly, I can do that! And I did! And it was good! Have I conquered my fear? Not entirely, but I’m working with it. And maybe that’s all we’re called to do. Was it Maya Angelou who said, “Feel the fear, but do it anyway.” If it wasn’t she, it was someone else quite brilliant.

So this is me, being humble before you: I still have a little fear of pie. But I’m not willing to give up. Two reasons: 1) because who ever heard of being afraid of pie? and 2) berry pie is possibly my very favorite dessert and I’m a grown woman and I can’t expect my Mom to make them all for me! This humble little pie-like thing was my first attempt. Is it just possible that eating a little humble pie may be good for the soul? I think maybe so.

May 17

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Strawberry & Rhubarb Galette

I had a bunch of fresh strawberries sitting on an old plate in a north window this morning as the sun came up. Dawnberries, I thought. And of course I had to bring my camera to where they sat. I can rarely leave anything this beautiful alone. The joy for me in cooking starts here, with beautiful fruit and vegetable shapes and colors. How shadows accentuate their plumpness. How water makes their washed surfaces glisten. How creases and dimples and stems and seeds tell the story of how they grew. What beauty crosses our paths in the ordinary, everyday act of putting a meal on the table!

(In the preceding post you’ll see how I came to choose this particular dish to share.)

Strawberry & Rhubarb Galette

For the dough, enough to make two 8-inch galettes:

(using a food processor)

3 T. sour cream (or yogurt or buttermilk)
1/3 cup (approximately) ice water
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup yellow cornmeal
1 tsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
7 T. cold unsalted butter, cut into 6 to 8 pieces

Stir the sour cream and 1/3 cup ice water together in a small bowl. Put the flour, cornmeal, sugar and salt into the bowl of a food processor fitted with the metal blade. Pulse to blend. Drop the butter pieces into the processor bowl and pulse 8 to 10 times, or until you have a consistency ranging from bread crumbs to pea-size pieces. With the machine running, pour the sour cream and water mixture through the feed tube and combine until the dough forms soft curds. (This will take just a short moment. You don’t want to over-mix, but you probably already knew that.)

Remove the dough from the processor and, separating it into two pieces, quickly shape each into a ball and then flatten to a disc. Wrap each separately in plastic and chill for at least 2 hours. (Alternately, put in the freezer for about 15 minutes.)

Remove from the refrigerator and with a light dusting of flour on your work surface, roll the disc into an 11-inch circle. (You may need to lift and add several light dustings of flour since the dough is very soft, and will roll out very thin.)

Storage of galette dough: If you decide to only make one galette at a time, the remaining dough can stay in the refrigerator for a couple days; or, with parchment paper between them and wrapped air-tight, they can stay in the freezer for up to a month.

May 15

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Moroccan Orange Salad with Red Onions & Black Olives

This salad from Morocco is colorful and refreshing, and perhaps unbelievably delicious. If you can be swayed by it’s somewhat unique beauty to try it (as I was), I believe you’ll return to it again and again. I quickly rinse the sliced onions to remove any of their biting sharpness. They mellow almost instantly and the flavors seem to all come together in perfect balance. This salad accompanied our skewered chicken, grilled asparagus and couscous for last night’s dinner. It’s also an excellent accompaniment to hot stews or highly spiced dishes, which is, I suppose, why Moroccans imagined it in the first place. (Recipes for the rest of dinner to follow.)

Orange Salad with Red Onions and Black Olives

(serves 4)

3 fresh navel oranges
1/2 – 1 red onion
1 handful of black olives (12 or so)
2-3 Tbl. olive oil
freshly squeezed juice of 1 lime
sea salt
1 t. cumin seeds, roasted
1/2 t. Spanish smoked paprika
1 small bunch of cilantro leaves, coarsely chopped
Optional: fennel bulb – see below for variation

Roast the cumin seeds on medium-low heat in a small pan. Remove from pan and set aside to cool. Read more

May 14

Plans and Punts

It was a beautiful day here yesterday, the first in a string of one, and it was Friday (the 13th), the end of a good but long week. Everything seemed right for a special dinner – prepared partly outside, partly in, and eaten around the table with the doors flung wide open. And then, around 4:00, more than two-thousand local residents lost their power and had to punt their dinner plans. So last night’s dinner menu is making its way to tonight’s table. I thought I’d give you a little forecast of what’s to come. It looks like I may be grilling in my rain boots tonight, but that’s nothing we and countless others haven’t done before. It’s part of the adventure – now that’s the spirit!

Tonight’s dinner will go something like this:

Grilled Lemon-Fennel Chicken Skewers
Morrocan Orange, Red Onion, Fennel & Olive Salad (sounds so weird and I promise, it’s SO delicious!)
Couscous – with maybe herbs & spices or toasted pinenuts – we’ll see what comes

I’ll be sure and let you know, with photos and posts tomorrow, or possibly tonight, depending on how contented and lazy I am after tonight’s offerings. Yes, probably tomorrow.

May 13

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Hummus – revisited

My daughter Ashley and I laughed the other day about one of her childhood memories. She remembers gazing into the refrigerator, many more times than once, standing there long enough to get goosebumps, and concluding: there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, to eat here! She said that the only things we always had in the fridge were lemons and eggs. And though we had a genuine laugh over this the other day, I’m seeing the refrigerator through my little daughter’s eyes now and it’s something I so wish I could do over! It’s not that the refrigerator was near-empty. Aside from the fruit in the crisper though, it was never a storehouse of delights and ready-to-eats. I didn’t see it at the time, but I do now: our refrigerator was not a kid-friendly place. It wasn’t that there was nothing to eat in there, but that just about everything required a Mama to put it together. Grocery shopping was for me one of those things I’d procrastinate over. I think that reluctance to shop made me more resourceful in the kitchen; but it didn’t make it easy on my girls. Neither did the fact that I didn’t buy junk food. About the time Ashley would sink her head though, sigh and walk away from the refrigerator, I’d jump to. I’d become a dervish, and pulling things from the pantry and the refrigerator (things she hadn’t recognized as real food – and probably no kid would have) I’d manage to concoct something colorful and nummy…most of the time. I always tried to put love on the table…but I’m wishing now I’d put a little more of it in the fridge, within reach of my kids’ little hands.

I’ve learned and grown some since then (though I still always have those eggs and lemons.) Like everyone, I have some stand-bys that, when the refrigerator begins to yawn, I employ. One of our favorites is hummus. Why? you ask. The first and best reason is simply that we really like it, a lot! But there’s another good reason (and you’ve already guessed it haven’t you!) I always have on hand what it takes to make it. What can we do with hummus? A generous scoop on the plate, a crater in the middle, a good drizzle of olive oil. Whole-grain crackers or pita. A hard-cooked egg (clever, huh?), or maybe paired with some leftovers from the night before. A beautiful green salad, a little wedge of good cheese, a few olives, a glass of wine. No one complains. It’s what we do at our house when the cupboard is bare.

As good as hummus can be as part of a vegetarian meal, it’s also good as part of a vegetable appetizer; or with fish, or kebobs, or as a spread in a vegetarian sandwich. I’m saving what I like best about hummus for last though. It ‘s a dip-able, scoop-able, ready-to-eat-able bowlful that kids know JUST what to do with. (What’s more, it’s the perfect consistency for drawing smily-faces.)

May 11

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A diet of adrenaline

Rising this morning in a dense fog not typical for me, I made a slow but straight bee line to my chair in the living room. There I sat. Though my eyes wandered out the window, there was no intention behind them, and I’m not sure I actually saw anything. I sat some, and then I decided to sit some more, waiting perhaps for a thought to form, or an inclination to do. Nothing really came to me and so I wrote:

All the adrenaline I’ve produced and consumed over these last couple weeks has me pretty exhausted. Right now I’m wondering: do I really want to rise from my chair? Who will bring me my breakfast? What if I have to go to the bathroom? Then what? : )

I need a friend to take me by the hand and put me on a forest path and then I would know what to do. I would take a step. And then another. And then finally, maybe I would breathe.

Does it ever happen for you this way? Life presents you with something that calls for your full attention, all the resources at hand, or maybe even your full heart and mind, focused and present for what is being asked of you. Or, let’s say it’s a much milder mishap and you’re simply thrown a curve ball after a long string of pitches straight across the middle of the plate. What do you do? Usually we’re faced with a menu of options, and frequently we’ll grab at the thing closest or most familiar. We’re all doing the best we can, right? And sometimes the best we can do is simply cope with what we have. Sometimes gracefully. Other times, not so much. Us, being human. Sometimes, it’s just one foot in front of the other, until we have a rhythm going again. I know some of you out there have done what I’ve done, and fed on too much adrenaline for a time, and then after days of that, come to a crashing halt. What do you do then? Who, or what, do you reach for?

Knowing we were having our dear Zack for dinner tonight, I wanted comfort food for us all. Each of us has need of a slow and easy meal around the table tonight. What would it be? The avgolemono soup of the previous post would have fit that bill perfectly (especially since my husband is all sniffle-y with a cold.) But, first of all, we didn’t have any, and secondly, if we did it would have been growing cultures by now, so whatever dinner would be, it would mean starting from scratch. Getting to think on a blank canvas (or from an empty refrigerator) can be liberating (or intimidating.) So, thinking: first, warm in the belly, then, cool on the tongue…tonight’s dinner will comfort, from start to finish:

Indian Fish Stew on Basmati Rice

Toasted Pita Triangles

A Minty Cucumber & Yogurt Salad

Strawberry Sorbet

I’ll share photos and recipes tomorrow. Now, I return to my comfortable kitchen to wash and slice, measure, pour and stir. To breathe, smell and listen. That’s one sweet way to put one foot in front of the other and find our way back home.

[You can find the recipes referenced above at the top of the blog in the “slider” menu.]

May 9

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Chicken Soup with Egg-Lemon Sauce

It’s pitiful to beg, I know, but I’m coming dangerously close to it. Just look over the recipe below, imagining the pairing of these ingredients, and you’ll want to try this soup. (OK, I want you to, but let’s not quibble.) This is one of those comfort foods, and – I’m fully convinced – a cure for what ails. It’s somehow “creamy” with no cream (thanks to the arborio rice.) It’s full of flavor, while still being gentle and so easy to eat. It’s aromatic (thanks to the generous amount of dill and the perfume of the lemon.) It’s a soup equally good in summer as in winter, so Spring would be the perfect time to prove it to yourself! Take the challenge – try this soup – you will not be disappointed! It’s positively kissable.

At the start of “Citrus Month,” I promised you a soup from Yaya and Papou’s homeland. This is the one. In Greece, until fairly recently, chickens were considered a great delicacy. Except on important feast days, chicken dishes would have been reserved for children and the sick. This chicken and rice soup, with an egg and lemon “sauce” stirred in at the last moment, was served as a much-loved, one-pot meal at Christmas. Nowadays, I’d venture to say you can find this on any Greek restaurant menu – but please let me know if you’ve ever tried one better.

The secret to any good soup is in the stock, and this one is no different. If you’re pressed for time, you could use a pre-roasted chicken and a high-quality, store-bought (or previously prepared homemade) chicken stock – but the gentle, two-hour-long cooking of a whole chicken imparts the most delicate, silken of flavors to this broth. If you need to take the short-cut, about 2-1/2 quarts or so of good stock should prove about right, and the meat from about one-half of the chicken. (In either case, please use a free-range, organically fed bird.)

Chicken Soup with Egg-Lemon Sauce (Kotopoulo Soupa, Avgolemono)

(makes 4 to 6 main-course servings – or 6 to 8 for first-course)

one 3-to-4-pound free-range chicken, quartered, plus 2 pounds chicken backs, necks and/or wings
1 large onion, halved
2 medium carrots, peeled and quartered
2 bay leaves (if your bay leaves are more than a year old, toss them and start new)
10 – 12 peppercorns
2 Tbl. olive oil
5 scallions (white and most of the green parts), thinly sliced
1 cup chopped fresh dill
2/3 cup of medium-grain rice, such as Arborio
2 large eggs
4-6 Tbl. freshly-sueezed lemon juice
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

To greatly reduce the fat content of the resulting broth, and how much skimming is required, I like to start by first removing the skin and all visible fat from the quartered chicken. Remove the fat from the backs of the chicken as well. Place the chicken parts in a large pot and add enough water to cover. Bring to a boil and skim off any foam. Reduce the heat to low and add the onion, carrots, bay leaves, salt and peppercorns. Cover and simmer for two hours, adding a little more water if needed, until the chicken begins to fall from the bones.

May 9

Lenten Orange Cinnamon Cookies – Kourabiethes

Countless recipes for rich little cookies like these exist, and most cultures have their versions. Most of them are little round balls rolled in powdered sugar, but these take the shape of a crescent. Because it’s that time leading up to Easter, I thought I’d share with you the version that Greeks might be eating during this Lenten season. (Another version that I’ll maybe share with you later includes eggs, butter and Ouzo!) This one calls for margarine, though I always use butter in cookies. The addition of olive oil and orange juice, as well as almond extract, make these distinctly different and delicious.

Kourabiethes

(makes about 40 cookies)

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 cup butter (or margarine, but not lower fat versions!)
2/3 cup powdered sugar
1/2 cup orange juice
1 tsp baking powder
1 cup almonds, blanched, lightly toasted and chopped
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 tsp almond extract
3 to 4 cups flour
ground cinnamon
powdered sugar for tops

Whip the olive oil, butter, and sugar with a stand mixer fitted with a wire attachment set on high speed for 3 minutes.

May 9

Yaya and Grapefruit

I’ll be honest with you. I’ve never really considered grapefruit rinds as anything but garbage…or, more recently, compost material. I’ve lumped them right in there with coffee grounds and egg shells. But recently I learned something that set my whole grapefruit world-view on its head. Oh, they’ll still end up in the compost…but perhaps not always anymore.

A little something about my Greek Yaya. I think it will help you understand the great surprise I had a few days ago when my mom told me something of her I hadn’t known before.

Yaya was the matriarch of the family, and the only female in the house in which my dad and his three brothers grew up. By the time I met her, she was already in her late-60′s, early 70′s? I’m guessing here, because, being only ten-years-old myself, she looked pretty darned old! Besides her husband, our Papou, who was at least fifteen years her senior, she was by far the oldest person in my world. I wondered even then though, how does a person so old manage to be so full of life? So young? She was exuberant and outspoken. She knew what she wanted and generally just how to get it. She laughed big. She had a big heart, full of praise. That was Yaya. She always wore dresses, always! and they were always dark. She wore support hose with elastic tops that sometimes rolled down around her legs. And big black shoes. Her hair, which must have been very long, was always twirled into braided buns. (Her hair held an endless fascination for me! The thin ends of those long braids reminded me of an artist’s paint brush, dipped in yellow. They weren’t blond. They were a true and very beautiful lemon yellow! But the rest of her hair, the most angelic white! I always secretly wished to see her hair down around her shoulders, but I never did.) Yaya was, I guess you’d have to say, squat. Matronly. Big-bosomed. And she gave the most amazing hugs! Like a great feather bed with arms. And she never hugged without at the same time cooing (or sometimes even shrieking) her delight in us! My brother Don and I would run up and down her staircase and slide down the bannister, and this made her so happy! She loved the loud noises of children! “No make it them be quiet – is nice!” she would tell our parents. Her Greek was vastly better than her English, but even so, she knew how to be funny in her second language, and she often was. Incense perpetually burned at a small altar in her bedroom, beneath the icons of patron saints and Jesus. It was partly for that reason that her house always smelled so very different from our own. But it was also the bread baking, the homey “soupas” and “cassa-row-les” and other foods, quite exotic to me at the time. Much of what I first saw of Yaya was in the context of her kitchen, and as mother to my dad who adored her. I never considered who her friends were, or what she might do when she wasn’t with us (besides cook all day and pray – both of which were intriguing mysterious to me back then.)

So, do you now have a little picture of Yaya? Then can you imagine her sitting at the round wooden table in her parlor? With her lady friends from the Greek Orthodox Church? And on the table, plates of candied grapefruit rinds? And kourabiethes (a crescent-shaped butter cookie)? And stiff, dark, thick coffee in short cups? And OUZO, that licorice-flavored liqueur, in thimble-sized glasses? And the ladies yakking loudly and laughing! Ha! I loved this new expanded picture of my Yaya!

The more I contemplated it, the surer I became that I simply had to find out what candied grapefruit rinds and ouzo taste like in the same mouthful. And that’s what brings me here, to this place where I’m ready to share with you some food.
(See following post – Kourabiethes cookie May 9.)

May 9

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Orangettes – Candied Orange Peel Dipped in Chocolate

Orange and dark chocolate! A show of hands – who loves this combination? For me, it ranks up there with the best of sweet culinary marriages! I do want to warn you before we get started though that this is not something you’ll want to do if you’re in any way pressed for time; or if you’re one who shuns repetitive activities, (some prefer the word boring.) Every once in a while, some of us (with a higher tolerance for things slow) like to put on some happy music and wile away some hours playing in the kitchen with food. I had a day like that recently, and this is what came of it:

If I’d had some company, we could have danced a bit and the play would have been far more enjoyable – but then there would have been a witness to the “mistakes” that would mysteriously disappear. So, you take the good with the bad. And these are good!

Orangettes – Chocolate-dipped Candied Orange Peel

This recipe can easily be halved, and for your first batch, you may be happier doing that. But once you’ve tasted them…a whole batch will do just fine. I’ve discovered that if you can draw the process out over two days, the final result will be improved. I candy the orange peel and roll in sugar the first day and let them dry overnight. The next day, it’s all about the dipping, and the cleaning up your mistakes.

Ingredients

candying the oranges:

6 large navel oranges (always when you’re using the peel of any fruit or vegetable, it’s far better to use organic or unsprayed produce!)
3 cups of sugar
2 cups of water
1 cup orange juice (either store-bought or from the flesh of the oranges put through a strainer)
for rolling:
1/2 up of regular granulated sugar or turbinado sugar (you decide – or choose both)
for dipping:
10 ounces of bittersweet chocolate