From California, With Love

This is not New Year’s resolution food, at least not unless your goals for 2013 involve incorporating more carbohydrates and fat into your diet. But it’s February, so even setting aside my antagonism toward the whole concept of resolutions, you’ve all had over a month to compensate with whole grains, dark leafy greens, etc., in which case one rich pasta dish isn’t going to utterly corrupt you, or you’ve already fallen off the wagon and this bit of indulgence isn’t going to do any additional damage.

Beautifully silky, creamy and elegant, with the warmth of lightly toasted walnuts and the brightness of good extra-virgin olive oil, this walnut sauce is neither complicated nor time-consuming to prepare. However, there is one catch, and it’s critically important to heed it: you really do need to make this with the freshest, highest-quality walnuts, because it will make the difference between a sauce that’s luscious nutty perfection and one that’s flat and dull or, even worse, bitter or rancid.

My walnuts were backyard-grown, very recently harvested, and lovingly shipped to me from northern California by His Lordship’s cousin. The first time I made this, I did it on-site during a holiday visit with walnuts from the same source. If you’re not lucky enough to have a West Coast connection, either wait until locally-grown walnuts in season are available in your farmers market, or seek out the best vendor you can find, preferably get them still in the shell, and make sure to taste the nuts before trying this recipe. If they don’t taste fresh and mild and sweet, use them for a more forgiving sauce, like pesto.

Slight post-facto edit: A rousing discussion with my Facebook friends made me think of a possible alternative if you can’t get really good walnuts.  Pistachios still in the shell are readily available year-round just about everywhere, and would definitely work as an alternative.  It will taste and look quite different, of course, but it should still give you the nutty, creamy unctuousness that’s the heart of this sauce.  As a bonus, if you have children, it will be entertainingly green and you can tell them it will make them strong like The Hulk.

Pasta with Fresh Walnut Sauce
(Mash-up of two recipes, one from Nigella Lawson’s Christmas Special, and one from Mark Bittman, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian)
Serves 4 as a main course, 6-8 as a side dish

1 slice bread, crusts removed
½ cup cream or whole milk
1 cup walnuts, as fresh as possible and preferably hand-shelled
2 cloves garlic, peeled
½ cup grated Parmesan cheese
Salt and freshly grated black pepper
½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
¼ cup Italian parsley, chopped
1 pound dried spaghetti rigate, fettucini, or other substantial ribbon pasta

Roughly tear up the bread and place it in a shallow bowl, pouring over the cream or milk. While it soaks, very carefully toast the walnuts in a dry pan over medium-low heat, tossing frequently to avoid burning, just until the nuts have barely started to turn golden and release a faint toasty aroma. Allow to cool briefly.

Place the nuts, garlic and cheese in a food processor and pulse a few times, until the nuts are broken up. Add the soaked bread and the liquid, with a hefty few pinches of salt and several grinds of pepper, and run the processor again until a paste forms. With the processor running, pour the olive oil down the feed tube and process just until you have a homogenous sauce that looks like a slightly grainy mayonnaise. Taste and correct the salt and pepper as necessary.

Boil the pasta in very well-salted water until al dente according to the package instructions. When you drain the pasta, reserve a good cup of the pasta water and set it aside. Toss the pasta with the sauce and the parsley, adding as much pasta water as needed to thin the sauce to a creamy consistency that evenly coats the pasta and allows the strands to caress each other instead of clumping. Serve immediately in warmed bowls.

Notes:

All resolution-bashing aside, there are some things you can do to lighten this up just a teeny bit, although it’s never going to be exactly what your doctor ordered. You can use low-fat milk instead of cream, whole wheat pasta and multigrain bread (provided it’s not too dense and chewy), and cut back a bit on the cheese, or you could serve smaller portions as a side dish beside a suitably healthy protein and a very large salad.

This would also work just fine as a vegan dish with non-dairy milk and omitting the cheese entirely, although in that case you’ll need to salt a little more aggressively, and you might want to toast the walnuts a tiny bit darker for added flavor. I’d also be tempted to add a very light grating of nutmeg for complexity.

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Champagne and Caviar

2013’s New Year’s lentil recipe has the dual advantages of being vegan and also using up any leftover champagne you might have lying around after the New Year’s Eve festivities. It’s also a wee bit clever, given that they’re beluga lentils. (Incidentally, this is the only kind of caviar I could tolerate even before becoming vegetarian, since I was never able to share my mother’s wild passion for genuine beluga.)

This is a perfect mid-week pasta dish for the rest of the year, since it comes together in about half an hour if you time it right, and you can substitute any white wine or even a dry hard cider, French or even plain old brown lentils, and essentially any sort of green vegetable. I was originally going to add broccolini, but it was missing from the crisper when I went to cook, probably because I added it to soup mid-holiday week and forgot. No matter, since the leeks worked fine, as would any leafy green or brassica.

The only thing I’d recommend not messing with if at all possible is the fresh shiitakes, because they go so satisfyingly crackly at the edges when seared, and add so much meaty savoriness to the dish. Regular button mushrooms would not be quite the same.

Pappardelle with Beluga Lentils, Seared Shiitake Mushrooms and Leftover Champagne
Serves 4

½ cup black (beluga) lentils
5-6 tablespoons olive oil
8 ounces fresh shiitake mushrooms, stems removed, roughly sliced
2 medium leeks, white and pale green parts only, thoroughly cleaned and thinly sliced
1 cup leftover champagne or white wine
Salt and freshly cracked black pepper
8 ounces dried egg pappardelle

Cook the lentils in a small saucepan with sufficient water to generously cover until just tender, around 20 minutes.

While preparing the sauce, set a large pot of water to boil for the pasta, salting it well once it has reached the boil. Add the pasta and cook to al dente according to the package instructions.

In a large, non-nonstick sauté pan, heat 3 tablespoons of the olive oil over medium-high heat until shimmering, then add the shiitakes. Sear the mushrooms until deep golden and crisping around the thin edges, adding a bit more oil if the pan gets too dry. Remove the mushrooms but don’t worry about any brown bits that cling to the pan.

Add the remaining oil to the pan, lower the heat to medium, and add the leeks. Sautee until they begin to brown a bit, then deglaze the pan with the champagne, add a generous amount of salt and pepper, and simmer until the champagne has mostly reduced away. Add the lentils and taste, correcting seasonings as necessary.

Drain the pasta, reserving about a cup of the pasta water. Add the pappardelle to the pan and toss with the lentils, loosening it with the reserved pasta water as necessary. Serve in warmed bowls with a quarter of the seared mushrooms mounded on top.

Notes:

If using fresh pasta instead of dried, you’ll want to double the quantity by weight. Also, if you don’t use leeks, I’d throw in a couple of cloves of minced garlic along with your green vegetable of choice.

It’s important not to use a nonstick pan because you want to be able to use high enough heat to sear the mushrooms properly, and you also want to be able to scrape up all the yummy browned bits when you deglaze with the champagne.

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New Year, New Insanity

On the off chance that my prior Wednesday night baklava, candy making adventures, or Sunday layer cake baking haven’t convinced you that I’m a wee bit off my rocker, this really ought to do the trick. How many people go on impromptu solo tamales-making binges, I ask you? Tamales are the sort of thing that generally involve tons of planning and the rallying of an army of assistants, but I decided at lunchtime on New Year’s Eve eve not just to make tamales, but to start by making mole as the sauce first, which is normally considered a whole-day, once-a-year, multi-abuela job all on its own.

But the thing is, even rationally accepting how insane the idea was, I still had to do it, because while on a shopping excursion on Friday, I finally stumbled on a place in this generally foodie-positive but sadly Mexican-ingredient unfriendly city that sold fresh masa. I hadn’t had really good tamales since my last California trip, this time last year, so finally having the proper ingredients on hand, I was going to do it up right, damn it. Since it was also nearly New Year’s, I was also going to incorporate lentils somehow, as has been my habit for the past decade or so.

Tamales really are a ton of work and time, so I don’t expect anyone to try this particular recipe any time soon, but if you don’t have a ready source of really fantastic tamales, I seriously think these are worth the trouble once a year. They’re sweet and spicy and scrumptious, not to mention colorful, comforting, and festive, and unless you’re actually having them in the context of a tamales-making party, you should have at least a dozen tamales and at least a cup of mole to stash in your freezer for a few lovely effortless meals later on.

Roasted Sweet Potato, Beluga Lentil and Mole Tamales
(Adapted from Nancy Zaslavsky, Meatless Mexican Home Cooking, 1997)
Makes approximately two dozen tamales

For mole:
4 ancho chiles
4 guajillo chiles
1 chipotle chile
¼ cup golden raisins
4 garlic cloves, peeled
1 small yellow onion, peeled and quartered
¼ cup toasted sliced almonds
1 ½ cup vegetable stock
½ can fire-roasted diced tomatoes
½ teaspoon kosher salt
3-4 grinds black pepper
1 ½ tablespoons peanut or olive oil
1 ounce bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground allspice
1 2-ounce disk palm sugar, grated or shaved, or 2-3 tablespoons light brown sugar

For filling:
2 large orange-fleshed sweet potatoes
Peanut or olive oil for roasting
½ cup beluga, black, or French green lentils

For masa:
1 kilo (2.2 lbs) fresh masa
1 ½ cups softened unsalted butter, vegetarian non-hydrogenated shortening, or a mixture of the two
1 cup frozen corn
2-3 tablespoons cream or vegetable stock
1 tablespoon kosher salt
Freshly ground pepper

For assembly:
2 1-lb packages frozen banana leaves, defrosted

Stem and seed the chiles, then toast them in a dry pan over medium heat until pliable, flipping often to prevent any browning. Put the toasted chiles in a large bowl or measuring cup with the raisins, cover with boiling water, and soak for 20 minutes.

Toast the onion and garlic in the same dry pan until beginning to darken slightly on each side. Place the onion and garlic in the carafe of a blender with the drained chiles and raisins and a few tablespoons of the vegetable broth. Blend until smooth, adding more broth as needed to keep the blender running. Add the tomatoes, salt and pepper and blend again.

Heat the oil in a medium pot with a heavy bottom and high sides, and fry the sauce for five minutes, stirring regularly. Add the chocolate, spices, sugar, and remaining broth, lower the heat, and simmer uncovered for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally to avoid scorching along the bottom and sides. Set aside to cool while preparing the rest of the tamale components..

While the chiles for the mole are soaking, preheat the oven to 425 F and line a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Peel the sweet potatoes, then halve them and cut into 1-inch slices. Toss them on the baking sheet with just enough oil to lightly coat them, and bake until cooked through and starting to caramelize on the bottom, around 30-45 minutes. Let cool slightly, then cut into chunks of about half an inch. At the same time, boil the lentils with ample water to cover until they are tender but not falling apart. Drain the lentils and set aside while making the masa.

In the bowl of a standing mixer, cream the butter and/or shortening until light. Scrape down the sides and, with the mixer running, slowly add the masa by the spoonful and continue beating until fluffy, about another 10 minutes. With a food processor or immersion blender, puree the corn and cream or stock, then whip into the masa with the salt and pepper. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap to prevent the masa from drying out.

Unfold the banana leaves and rinse the powdery residue off. If they’re not already cut in half, remove the center vein from the leaves and cut into two long strips with a pair of kitchen shears, then cut each leaf strip into 10-inch rectangles. Steam the leaves in a large steamer until they’re pliable. Tear a few of the less nice leaves, or any that have torn while processing, into ribbons for tying up the tamales.

Lay down a steamed banana leaf square on a work surface. Using an ice cream scoop, portion out a ball-sized scoop of masa, and press it into a 6-inch circle in the middle of the leaf. Over the center of the masa, pile 2-3 pieces of roasted sweet potato, a small spoonful of lentils, and a spoonful of mole. Using the bottom edge of the leaf, flip over about a third of the masa over the filling, then lay the leaf flat again. Starting at the top edge, flip over the other edge of the masa to seal in the filling, then keep rolling to enclose the tamal completely. Fold under the two open sides until they meet underneath the tamal, and use a strip to tie it securely shut. Lay the finished tamal on a cookie sheet and continue forming tamales until the masa runs out.

Lay a few of the leftover banana leaves on the bottom of a large steamer over simmering water, and fill with the finished tamales. Cover with a few more leaves, and steam for about 1 hour, adding water to the bottom as necessary. Tamales are done when the leaf pulls cleanly away from the masa. Let rest for a few minutes before serving with the remaining mole on the side.

Leftover cooked tamales will keep in the fridge for a few days and reheat well in the microwave, or they can be frozen immediately after folding and steamed later.

Notes:

If you can’t find a source of fresh masa, you can substitute the equivalent amount of reconstituted masa harina, which should be available in most supermarkets. It won’t taste quite as sweet and lovely as fresh masa, but it should still be good, especially when livened up with the pureed sweet corn.

I used banana leaves rather than corn husks as the wrapper because I could easily get the leaves at the Asian market a block away from the tortilleria that sells the masa. Tamales are traditionally made with either of those wrappers in the various parts of Mexico and Central America, so use whichever you prefer. They will each impart a slightly different flavor to the tamales but will work equally well.

Palm sugar, like the banana leaves, is commonly found in Asian markets. It’s less sweet than cane or beet sugar and has a wonderful rich caramel flavor, similar to maple sugar, which you could also use. If you don’t have either one, light brown sugar is more than fine, but start with the smaller amount and taste before adding more, because it’s significantly sweeter.

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Of Houses and Hurricanes

I was going to offer up more pictures of the new kitchen and also the garden, but weather, work, and a whole lot of chaos relating to our upstairs remodeling project got in the way, so that will have to wait.  In the meantime, in order not to fall back on my blog-procrastinating ways, I’ll dish a little bit about the house and share the recipe for the black bean soup I also made in anticipation of the hurricane.

When we went looking for a house, there were many criteria on our very long list of needs, but of paramount importance were a big yard for the Monster, who clearly missed the grassy kingdom she ruled in Seattle, and of course a well-appointed kitchen, or at least a kitchen space large enough to be made well-appointed with a reasonable amount of renovating.  After much searching and a fair amount of nail biting, we landed Chez Disdain, which, while it has its downsides like any old house, has both yard and kitchen in spades.

The plot is mind-bogglingly large for being still within city limits, and since it has both expanses of lawn and trees and shrubs around the fence line, it’s like her very own dog park (with the corresponding downside for His Lordship of that much more ground to cover with his push mower).  There is also plenty of room for gardening in containers on the patio and even in numerous sunny spots on the ground, so my dad, who came with my mother to help with the move and settling in, planted a stunning variety of things that are now, despite the ridiculous weather, yielding up some great dividends.  We have three varieties of tomatoes currently producing enough for a little bit of salad or salsa every week or so, both bell and long twisty peppers turning a nice deep red, a ton of different herbs I’ve been using pretty much daily, and in about a month we’re going to have as much winter squash as anyone can handle, by the looks of the rapidly-swelling vines. Our two failures so far were the watermelons, which just got into the ground too late and won’t have time to turn those flowers into fruit before summer truly ends, and a summer squash that didn’t survive the tipping over of its pot while we were moving it.

The kitchen, as I hinted in the previous post, is the best I’ve ever had by a mile.  Since it’s the one place the prior owner actually seems to have put a large investment into (don’t get me started about where she should have and didn’t), it reads like the househunter’s impossible wishlist.  It’s gigantic, has acres of counters even before you factor in the big island/breakfast bar, contains so much cabinetry that even I haven’t been able to fill it all yet, and let’s not forget the aforementioned six-burner Viking range.  For the first time ever, I’m able to have pretty much every appliance out and ready for use at all times, from the Kitchenaid to the rice cooker, and I could cook about six different things at once if I thought I could keep it all under control.

The only things that I don’t so much love are the lack of plugs in the island, the slightly smaller than ideal sink, the lack of window in the oven, and most irritatingly, the fridge. It’s one of the French door side-by side models with built-in ice and water dispenser, so I’m sure it was pricey, but the configuration makes no sense at all for anyone who actually wants to cook.  The refrigerator side is much too narrow, unable to hold a cookie sheet or an average sized turkey for the holidays, and a frosted cake would require major reorganizing of the bazillion jars of jam, pickles, condiments, etc. that we can’t live without.  The capacity is so low that we have to think carefully about what we buy on the weekend shopping trips, and it would probably be better if I adopted the European style of buying produce a couple of times a week, because the vegetable bins aren’t very big either.  We’ll eventually replace it with something better but right now there are just too many things ahead in the queue of our thrilling adventure in home ownership, starting with every single bathroom.

But since this is a food and snark blog rather than a This-Old-House-cum-Money-Pit blog, and I promised a certain person the recipe for black bean soup, let’s get back to what you can do when facing a preposterous weather event.  This soup is adapted from a recipe from Millennium, the schmancy San Francisco vegan restaurant, which His Lordship took me to one birthday when we lived on the other coast.  I find the cookbook overly fussy in some ways, but if you cut out the garnish components and pare the recipes down to the essential parts, many of them can be made deliciously reasonable for everyday use.  Apart from the extra time of cooking the beans from scratch, this soup is easy and yummy and comforting, whether you’re staring down a hurricane or just a drippy early-fall day.

What makes it “Brazilian” is the combination of orange and coffee added to the basic aromatic vegetables and generally Latin spicing of cumin and chile.  You might think that adding orange juice would make it weirdly sweet, and putting ground coffee straight into soup would leave it gritty, but both just dissolve completely into the broth and create a lovely complex, smooth base in which the beans can shine.  While I adore black beans in pretty much any form, this is one of my absolute favorite applications for them.  It’s a meal in itself, especially rounded out with some fried plaintains, but it would also be a great first course for a pan-American feast.

Brazilian Black Bean Soup
(Adapted from Erick Tucker & John Westerdahl, The Millennium Cookbook)
Serves 6-8

3 tablespoons olive oil
2 large yellow onions, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
1 large carrot, peeled and diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 small serrano chiles, minced
1 ½ tablespoons ground cumin
1 ½ teaspoons dried marjoram
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
½ teaspoon ground chipotle
1 large bay leaf
1 tablespoon finely ground coffee
1 pound black beans, cooked, with their cooking liquid (about 6 cups beans and liquid)
1 cup orange juice
3 cups vegetable broth
Salt or soy sauce to taste
Sour cream or creme fraiche and lime wedges for serving

In a large, heavy pot, saute the vegetables in the olive oil over medium heat until beginning to turn soft and translucent. Add the spices and coffee and cook a minute longer, stirring constantly.

Add the beans with their liquid, juice and enough broth to cover and season with several pinches of salt or a few shots of soy sauce.  Bring to a boil, lower heat enough to maintain a strong simmer, and cook uncovered 24-30 minutes, until the broth has thickened a bit and all the flavors have blended well.  Taste and add more salt or soy as needed.

Serve with a spoonful of sour cream on top and lime wedges on the side.

Notes:

The original recipe cooked the beans in the soup straight from a pre-soaked condition, which made the total cooking time 1 ½-2 hours.  I prefer to cook the beans separately the night before in the slow cooker, so I can have the option of making half the recipe and freezing the rest of the beans for later.  If you want to cook the beans in the soup, omit the salt until the last minute and keep the soup covered while it cooks.

If you get sick of the leftovers, the soup freezes very well, but it can also be transmogrified into really easy and tasty burgers.  Pulse the soup with an equal amount of cooked rice, some additional cumin, salt and pepper in a food processor just until it starts to form a chunky paste.  Turn out into a bowl and stir in enough fresh breadcrumbs or panko to create a moldable mixture. Shape golfball sized amounts into patties and pan fry in a bit of olive or canola oil until crisp on both sides.  I served it with a quick ranch-type sauce of mayonnaise, creme fraiche, a little buttermilk to thin it, and a lot of freshly cracked pepper, plus some cherry tomato salad.  It’d do just as well on a toasted bun with the usual fixings.

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More Fun with Beets

I don’t just view beets as a non-toxic source of food coloring. They’re actually one of my favorite vegetables, and have been ever since I was a kid. Nonconformist that I was even then, I have always loved beets, and their accompanying greens, in every form I could get them.

One of the beauties of beets is that you get two vegetables for the price of one if you buy them with the tops on, as you should definitely strive to do since that keeps the beets fresh longer too. Beet greens are on the mild end of the greens spectrum, very close to spinach in texture and right next to chard, their near-relative, in flavor, but with thinner and more tender stems. This makes beet greens an ideal replacement or companion to either, as in the filling for this luxurious, thrice-green lasagna.

The combination of spinach and ricotta in lasagna, ravioli, or other filled pasta may be classic, but to be perfectly honest, it can also be kind of boring. You’re never going to offend anyone with it, but you won’t wow anyone either. Mixing in greens with a little more personality — in this case, the mellow mineral note of the beet greens and the bright peppery note of arugula — brings in genuine wow potential. Since I strongly prefer a white lasagna over a red one when the filling is this green, the more complex combination of greens creates a nice balance against the richness of the bechamel. This not-too-cheesy, creamy yet assertive lasagna is a great fit for the cooler temperatures we’re finally getting.

In case you’re wondering, the beets that came with these greens were roasted — my favorite way to cook them, because it concentrates all that sweetness instead of bleeding it into the boiling water — and turned into a vaguely Eastern European salad that I will probably write up next week.

Spinach, Arugula and Beet Green Lasagna
Serves 6-8

For the filling:
3 tablespoons olive oil
15 ounces baby spinach
15 ounces baby arugula
Greens from two bunches beets
1 small onion, finely diced
2 shallots, finely diced
15 ounces ricotta
1/4 cup grated parmesan
Salt, freshly ground pepper, and freshly grated nutmeg to taste

For the sauce:
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 shallot, minced
4 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 cups milk
1/4 cup pureed canned tomatoes
Salt, freshly ground pepper, and freshly grated nutmeg to taste

For assembly:
6-8 sheets no-boil lasagna noodles
1 cup shredded mozzarella
1/4 cup grated parmesan

Thoroughly wash all the greens, and slice the beet greens into thin ribbons.

Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy-bottomed pot and saute the onion and shallots until transparent. Add the greens in big handfuls, turning with tongs to cook evenly, and adding more greens as soon as the batch before wilts down enough to make room.

Once all the greens have wilted, set them in a strainer over a bowl until most of the liquid has drained off. Squeeze thoroughly to remove any remaining liquid, then turn the greens out on a cutting board and chop into bite-sized pieces. Put the greens in a bowl, stir in the ricotta and 1/4 cup parmesan, and season assertively with salt, pepper and nutmeg.

Combine the butter and the minced shallot in a saucepan and cook over medium heat until the butter has completely melted and the shallots have softened. Whisk in the flour and cook for an additional minute or two, then whisk in the milk. Simmer for at least five more minutes, stirring regularly, until the sauce is well thickened.

Preheat the oven to 375 F.

Spread an 8×8 Pyrex pan with enough sauce to generously cover the bottom, and nestle in enough noodles to form a single layer without overlaps. Spread several tablespoons of sauce over the noodles, add half the filling in an even layer, and sprinkle with a handful of mozzarella. Repeat the layering process with the remaining half of the filling, topping with a third layer of noodles. Add the tomato puree to the remaining sauce, pour the sauce over the top layer of noodles, and sprinkle the rest of the mozzarella and parmesan evenly over the top.

Cover the pan with foil and set on a baking sheet in case of drips. Bake for 30 minutes, then remove the foil and bake another 15 minutes, until the sauce is bubbling, the noodles yield to a sharp knife, and the cheese is golden-brown. Switch on the broiler and cook for an additional 3-5 minutes for a really brown and burnished top.

Cool for 10-15 minutes to firm up the lasagna and prevent serious roof-of-mouth burning.

Notes:

Be sure to season the filling really aggressively, since the noodles, cheese and sauce will mute the flavor a bit.

The addition of the small amount of tomato puree to the sauce is not enough to impart noticeable tomato flavor; it just adds some color and used up a small amount of canned diced tomatoes I had lying around anyway. You could easily leave that out.

If you don’t have beet greens, you could use a large bunch of Swiss chard instead, but trim away the stems and just use the leaves here. The stems can be chopped and added to soup or pasta with olive oil and garlic later in the week, but they’re a little too firm for this filling.

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I’ve Been Slimed!

Only, you know, not, because if you’re okra-averse due to the slime factor, fried is definitely the way to go. Frying gives you a completely un-slimy result, which more than justifies the inconvenience and mess.

I first fell in love with okra not in this form, or in any typically southern application like gumbo, but in Thai food. One of our regular hang-outs adds okra to their vegetarian red and green curries. The okra’s mucilage melts into the surrounding coconut milk to create a velvety sauce, and the de-slimed rounds have a fabulously crunchy-firm texture and fresh green flavor, the exact opposite of all of offensive things I’d always heard about okra.

Since I had no time for Thai curry on the Monday I made these, I went looking for the easiest fried okra recipe I could find. Mark Bittman’s sounded almost perfect, except that I wasn’t going to batter each individual piece of okra. I opted instead for whisking together the dry ingredients, stirring in the buttermilk, then dumping in the okra to coat. It worked perfectly, the slime from the okra leaching into the cornmeal batter and thickening it so efficiently that you would have thought I’d used eggs.

We had these fritters for dinner with leftover cauliflower and potato soup from Sunday, dipping the crunchy little bites into a cocktail sauce thrown together by His Lordship from ketchup, mayo, horseradish, and some homemade hot sauce. The hot sauce was originally intended to serve as a basic red enchilada sauce, but the peppers, probably mislabeled at the farmers market, were so infernally spicy that we ended up having to dilute it down with vinegar and put it in tiny bottles to use as a pants-kicking alternative to the two commercial hot sauces we already have on hand. If I can reconstruct what went into it, I’ll write it up, because it might have been serious overkill for enchiladas, but is really quite good as a condiment.

Okra Fritters
(Adapted from Fried Okra in Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian)
Serves 2

1/4 cup cornmeal
1/4 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
4-5 grinds black pepper
1/4 teaspoon each chipotle and ancho powder
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/4 pound okra, trimmed and sliced into 1/2-inch rounds

Canola or vegetable oil for deep frying

Whisk together the dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Stir in the buttermilk to form a thinnish batter, then fold in the okra. Let the batter sit for several minutes, long enough for the slime to release into the batter and thicken it up.

In the meantime, heat several inches of oil in a medium, high-sided pot until it burbles around a wooden chopstick or spoon handle (technically around 350 F).

With two soup spoons, scoop up around two tablespoons of batter and drop it into the hot oil. The fritters should consist of no more than three slices of okra and its surrounding batter, to keep them small enough to cook through all the way without burning the outside. Once the fritters are a deep golden brown, remove from the oil with a slotted spoon or mesh strainer and set on a rack over brown paper to drain the excess oil and cool to edible temperature.

Notes:

Should you have peanut oil around instead, I imagine that would give the fritters that much more genuine Southern appeal.

Since it’s the okra that thickens the batter, I would think that you could probably make this successfully vegan by swapping the buttermilk for soy milk.

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Cue Up the Gypsy Kings

There were some optimistic souls who assumed we were due for a mild summer to make up for the horrific winter we had, followed by a spring with a terminal identity crisis, which it tried to resolve by experimenting with 40s and rainy and 80s and humid in 72-hour rotations for the past two months. Said well-meaning souls do not have my hard-earned and deep-seated cynicism, which is why they might have been disappointed when the weather gods decided Memorial Day weekend was as good as any time to go from zero to July, and to hell with June.

Some might say that my reality-based view of the universe makes me less shiny-happy-whatever, but I say there is a certain grim satisfaction to be derived from being right, to say nothing of being better prepared when the inevitable happens. When the 90s-and-humid hit, I already had a pitcher of cold-brewed coffee ready in the fridge, and I was also raring to make my favorite heat-busting celebration of summer, even if it had to be made with supermarket tomatoes because it isn’t actually July and the Jersey tomatoes are still weeks away.

Gazpacho, like flamenco music, is one of those things I fell so hard in love with at first exposure that I have to attribute it to genetic memory. After all, some part of my cross-Mediterranean mix does come from Andalusia, the ancestral home of both. I’m still trying to find the time and discipline to learn guitar, but regularly making gazpacho during the sauna season honors my forebearers with almost no time or effort, and consistently helps me keep my cool.

Gazpacho is infinitely forgiving and you can vary the amounts and ingredients according to what you have and like. For example, this version comes from Jose Andres, my favorite Spanish chef and the source of the best flan ever. His (actually his Andalusian wife’s) recipe uses half a green pepper rather than one whole red one, but I almost never buy green anymore since red is so much sweeter and more versatile, so I used that. Of course, the better tomatoes you use the more deeply flavorful this will be. When the heirlooms hit the farmers markets, go nuts with any variety you can find.

Gazpacho
(Adapted from Jose Andres’ Tapas: A Taste of Spain in America)
Serves 4, if I feel especially self-sacrificing

2 pounds ripe tomatoes (around 5-6 medium ones)
1 large cucumber, peeled
1 small red pepper
1 garlic clove, peeled
3 tablespoons sherry vinegar
1/2 cup cold water
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil, preferably Spanish
2 teaspoons sea salt

Core the tomatoes, chop roughly into eighths, and place in a blender. Roughly chop the cucumber and pepper and add to the carafe on top of the tomatoes. Add the garlic, vinegar and water, and blend until the mixture is uniform and no visible chunks of vegetable remain. Taste and add more vinegar to balance the tomatoes and pepper if they’re especially sweet.

Add the oil and salt and blend again briefly. Don’t blend too long or the gazpacho will start to heat up and you’ll lose the fruitiness of the olive oil. Chill in the carafe until very cold, at least 30 minutes.

Serve in glasses, drizzled with a tiny bit more olive oil and vinegar. If you like, you can also garnish with cherry tomatoes and additional diced cucumber.

Notes:

The recipe calls for straining the gazpacho after the initial blending and before the refrigeration step, but I never bother because unless I’m paying big bucks for it at Jaleo, when perfection is to be expected, I prefer gazpacho to be a little rustic. You can strain if you like, but the extra fiber is good for you, and shouldn’t life have a little texture?

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A Tale of Two Polentas

Two polentas, both alike in dignity. They use the same coarsely-ground organic corn, the same simple seasoning of butter and grated Parmigiano Reggiano, and the same no-stirring concept. They should taste as identical as they look, right?

WRONG.

What we have here is not Shakespeare but Dickens: it was the best of no-stir polentas; it was the worst of no-stir polentas. One of them is smooth and creamy, with deep corny flavor and a wonderful, just slightly resilient body, and the other is thin, watery, and utterly flavorless. It’s with regret that I have to say that the scurvy knave responsible for the latter atrocity is Chris Kimball, for not keeping a tighter leash on his Cook’s Illustrated minions.

Polenta is not particularly challenging to prepare, but all that stirring is labor-intensive. No one wants to be standing over the stove for half an hour on a Wednesday, which is why the pre-made varieties in plastic tubes are such brisk sellers. Since I have those Wednesdays too, I’ve been using a no-stir, oven-baked polenta recipe from Madhur Jaffrey for years, but when I saw a new recipe in last month’s CI that promised to produce extra-creamy polenta in 30 minutes instead of Madhur’s 50, I was intrigued and hopeful.

On top of cooking the polenta, covered, over such low heat that burning wouldn’t be a factor, the recipe seized on the idea of using baking soda to soften the cell walls and speed up the cornmeal’s absorption of liquid. Both seemed perfectly sound in principle. What could go wrong?

Everything, it turns out.

This baking soda idea speeds up liquid absorption, all right. It lyses the hell out of the poor little starch granules and lets the water rush in like a tsunami, bloating them grotesquely up. Instead of “creamy”, what you get is gluey, and any flavor potential the corn ever might have had is diluted out into the gelatinized substrate, giving you a bowl of water-logged, gummy nothingness. It was so vile that my first impulse was to blame myself, for using cornmeal that was too fine and not up to the treatment. The recipe did insist on coarse-ground, an admonition I had not heeded because I hadn’t wanted to make another trip to the store.

So, giving the CI people every previously-earned benefit of the doubt, I marched out and bought proper, organic, coarse polenta. In the spirit of scientific inquiry, I also decided to run a control by making Madhur’s recipe alongside, timing things so they would be ready at the exact same time. I would season them identically with a tablespoon of butter, two ounces of grated cheese, and several grinds of pepper, and use His Lordship as a blind taste tester. I gave CI a perfectly level playing field and a scrupulously fair chance.

It was, to quote His Lordship, “not even a contest”. It took him exactly one bite to identify which was which, and to refuse a second bite of the CI version. Even with exactly the right kind of polenta, it was still weak, watery, and wretched. Madhur’s version was not only bursting with sweet, rich golden flavor and perfect texture, but also had some lovely caramelized bits along the edges that were just a little bit chewy, like good corn bread. Giving it just twenty extra minutes and refraining from any Frankenstein’s experimentation meant the difference between a pleasure and a punishment.

The only way I could salvage the CI batch was to pour it onto a foil-lined sheet pan, cut it into squares once (further) congealed, pan-fry them until golden-brown, cover with a cloud of additional grated cheese, and broil them. If I have to give something the Full Nacho Treatment to make it palatable, Kimball, it is not anywhere in the same galaxy as “a better way”.

So it pains me to have to do this, Chris, but I’m going to have to give you the same cold shoulder I gave Alton when he let me down. There are some corners you can’t and shouldn’t cut. My departed ancestors, whose ranks now include my beloved grandmother, are very disappointed in you and your lackey, who apparently doesn’t know the difference between polenta and library paste. I want you both to go to the corner and meditate on your shameful conduct, and don’t come back out until you’ve adequately atoned.

I am not even going to share the CI recipe, because I refuse to perpetuate that atrocity. Instead, I’m going to give Madhur’s, with my full, empirically-backed stamp of approval. There’s nothing remotely shameful about this one.

In terms of what to do with polenta, while a bowl of really good soft polenta is fabulously comforting all by itself, my current favorite topping is garlicky sauteed broccoli rabe and a fried egg. The crunchy, punchy greens against the unctuousness of the yolk and on top of the creaminess of the polenta is just about perfection, which is why what CI did to the poor unoffending cornmeal is such a travesty.

Oven-Baked Almost-No-Stir Polenta
(Adapted from Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian)
Serves 2

3 3/4 cups water
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 cup coarse-ground yellow cornmeal (polenta)
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, plus more for greasing
2 ounces Parmegiano Reggiano, grated
Freshly-cracked pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 400 F, and thoroughly butter a lidded casserole approximately 8 inches across and 4 inches deep.

In a bowl, mix the cornmeal with 1 1/2 cups of the water.

Bring the rest of the water to a boil in a large saucepan. Salt the water, then stir the cornmeal mixture and pour it slowly into the boiling water, stirring as you go. Return to a boil, still stirring, until it thickens, which will happen almost instantly.

Immediately pour the polenta into the buttered dish, cover, and bake for 50 minutes.

Stir in the butter, cheese and pepper. Serve immediately with sauce or toppings of choice, or pour into a foil-lined baking sheet for cutting into shapes and grilling or pan-frying later.

Notes:

The recipe can be doubled or tripled, or scaled even further up, as much as your needs and your casserole capacity can take.

If you want super-rich polenta, you can swap milk for half of the water.

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Getting My Ducks in a Row

Well, my spices, actually.

It only took four months, but I finally managed to turn the binful of spicy chaos that followed my last binge at Penzey’s into something orderly, useful, and even a little bit elegant.

After much research, deliberation, and boggling at what people have the nerve to charge for spice storage solutions, what I ended up doing was shifting the whole lot out of the myriad zip bags and little jars into wide-mouthed magnetic tins with laser-printed labels. The tins were then put in orderly, alphabetized rows on a dry erase board, mounted vertically on my kitchen wall. After just one rainy afternoon’s worth of work, everything is now right at my fingertips and ready to be used at will. Every time I flip the light switch, which is right beside my fantastic new spice rack, I am filled anew with a smug sense of accomplishment.

It would have gone faster if I’d bought tins with magnets already on them, like the handful I already had, but I seriously balked at paying three bucks a pop. Instead, I bought three dozen non-magnetic ones for seventy cents apiece, plus two rolls of magnetic tape. A little more work and delay, yes, but when you consider that magnetic spice rack kits with 20 tins are currently going for $120 and up, it was totally worth it.

To celebrate the fact that all my spices are now out where they can be easily used, I improvised a dish of cauliflower, potatoes and peas that called for eight of my freshly-filled, readily-accessible tins to come off the rack. I’m not claiming it’s authentically Indian, but it does combine whole and ground spices common to Indian cuisine and stew and went smashingly with the batch of naan my pride-flushed ego also prompted me to bake. I especially love the crunch of the tiny brown mustard seeds and the lemony zing of the whole coriander.

As impressive as I think my new rack is, I will tease you just a bit by saying this is an intermediate step. I have even bigger plans for spice storage, but it’s going to take considerably more work than this did. You’ll just have to wait and see what I mean.

Cauliflower, Potatoes and Peas with Whole Spices
Serves 4-6

1 head of cauliflower, cut into small florets
3 Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and diced
3 tablespoons canola oil
1 1/2 teaspoons brown mustard seeds
3/4 teaspoons coriander seeds
1/8 teaspoon fenugreek seeds
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon Rogan Josh seasoning
1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 15-ounce can diced tomatoes in juice
2 cups vegetable stock
1 cup frozen peas
Salt to taste

Parboil the potatoes in lightly salted water until just starting to soften. Drain.

In a large pot, heat the mustard seeds, coriander seeds and fenugreek in the oil over medium-high heat just until the mustard seeds start popping. Standing back to avoid the sputtering, stir in the tomatoes and the remaining spices, and cook until the liquid has mostly evaporated. Add the stock, cauliflower and potatoes, cover the pot, and simmer until the vegetables are tender. Stir in the peas and continue cooking just until they have warmed through.

Serve over basmati rice, or in shallow bowls with naan.

Notes:

You can vary the whole spices and the vegetables depending on what you have. For example, if I’d had whole cumin seeds, I would have used a teaspoon of them and lowered the ground cumin by the same amount. Similarly, if I’d been out of potatoes, I would have used a can of chickpeas instead.

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A Pampas-Worthy Vegetarian Empanada

Unlike flan, empanadas were most definitely a major part of my upbringing. Of course they were beef, and at least when my grandmother visited, they were sometimes fried instead of baked.

As is always the case with a food so elemental, empanadas were something of a flash point, because everyone had strong opinions about what should be in them. Grandma and Dad both liked a bit of sweetness in theirs, either in the form of raisins or, in Grandma’s case, a sprinkling of sugar over the filling as she took each bite. This was anathema to Mom, me, and my brother. The grown-ups all liked green olives, but my brother and I hated them, and although I liked hard-boiled eggs, baby brother has loathed them since he was pre-verbal and still does. To navigate this minefield of preferences, we ended up defaulting to the simplest possible filling of lightly seasoned ground beef with no additions whatsoever.

Later, of course, I completely voided this carefully-achieved detente by becoming a vegetarian.

While there are certainly vegetarian-friendly empanada varieties that boast their own long-established authenticity — my favorites being creamy corn or spinach and cheese — I still periodically have attacks of nostalgia serious enough to have conducted a couple of experiments with meat substitutes. The trouble is that soy- or wheat-based faux beefs never really do the job, and at this point I’m steering away from the super-processed stuff anyway.

Empanadas remained a head-scratcher until recently, while I was making my shepherd’s pie, when it occurred to me that I’d already cracked the ground-beef substitution problem. The pie’s lentil filling was pretty much everything I was looking for: substantial, protein-rich, just saucy enough to be moist but not so liquid that it would run right out of a pastry pocket. Encouraged, I made a smaller pie and reserved half the filling for use later in the week, when I had time to make pastry. I was quite happy with the little pockets, both freshly-baked and warm, and cold the next day for lunch.

While I’m sure several generations of my ancestors are still spinning in disapproval at my giving up the almighty cow, lentils would have been a familiar food, especially during the meatless days of the Catholic calendar. Unorthodox it may be, but I still think they would have understood and even liked this empanada as much as I do.

I will add that, as usual, I’m not unequivocally satisfied with the pastry recipe. While it does produce a moderately crispy-flaky, firm but not muscular crust that securely contains the filling and holds up well to refrigeration, it’s also rather bratty to work with, both as you’re mixing it and as you’re stretching and filling. It must be really cold in order to stick together and hold a nice edge, and requires a good long chilling or freezing step before going in the oven. That is more aggravation than I need for a simple snack.

Now that I have the filling down, I may go back to this dough from Saveur, which I make with butter instead of lard. It’s not as flaky and it does leave your fingers a bit greasier, but it’s also way less troublesome and much friendlier to shape. It also responds excellently to my flattening method of choice:

I like to use a tortilla press for filled pastry not just because I lazily avoid the rolling pin as much as the piping bag, but also because it completely eliminates the issue of scraps. Re-rolled dough made from scraps will never come out as tender as first-rolled, and I hate throwing the scraps out. With a press, you get perfect, uniform circles without bothering with cookie cutters and with absolutely no waste.

Since it’s difficult to adequately explain in writing how empanada dough is crimped to form the traditional rope-like edge, check out this video for an easy-to-understand how-to. If the technique still eludes you, just seal them well with the tines of a fork.

Empanadas de Lentejas (Lentil Empanadas)
(Pastry adapted from Cook’s Illustrated’s The Best International Recipe)
Makes 32 snack-sized empanadas

For the pastry:

3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) very cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
10 tablespoons ice water

For the filling:

1/2 cup brown lentils
1 small bay leaf
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 small onion, finely diced
1/2 cup finely diced celery
1/2 cup finely diced carrot
1 cup diced cremini mushrooms
1/4 cup tomato sauce
1 large handful fresh parsley
Salt, pepper, and splashes of soy sauce to taste

For assembly:

2 hard-boiled eggs, chopped (optional)
1 large egg, beaten with a tablespoon of water

Combine the flour, sugar and salt in a food processor and pulse until well combined. Add the butter cubes and pulse again until the mixture resembles cornmeal. Dump out into a large bowl and add 1/4 cup of water at a time, working it into the flour mixture with a spatula just until no dry flour remains. Divide the dough into two equal pieces, flatten each into a disk, and wrap each tightly in plastic wrap. Refrigerate at least 2 hours to relax and hydrate the dough.

In a small pot, boil the lentils with the bay leaf in just enough liquid to keep them covered until just tender, adding more boiling water if necessary. Do not drain the lentils.

Saute the onion, celery, carrots and mushrooms in the olive oil in a skillet over medium heat until the vegetables just begin to brown . Add the tomato sauce, the lentils with their liquid, and the parsley, torn roughly by hand. Simmer until the liquid has mostly evaporated, then season with salt, pepper, and soy. Cover and refrigerate until cold.

When everything is well chilled, take one pastry disk out of the fridge and divide into 16 equal pieces. Shape each piece into a ball, then cover again. Line a tortilla press with a strip of parchment, folded in half, or a quart-sized zip-top bag slit open along both sides. Set a ball of dough between the halves of the parchment or plastic, and press gently to a thin, uniform circle.

Hold the circle of dough in your palm and fill with around two tablespoons of lentils, leaving an inch clear around the edge. If desired, top with a teaspoon of hard boiled egg. Fold the dough over the filling to form a half-moon, pinch the edges firmly together to completely seal in the filling, and crimp as indicated above. Repeat for remaining balls of dough.

Set the empanadas on a parchment-lined baking sheet and return to the refrigerator to firm up again, at least 15 minutes. Repeat the process with the second disk of pastry on a second baking sheet.

Preheat the oven to 425.

Brush the cold filled pockets with the egg wash and bake, one sheet at a time, until nicely browned, 20-22 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature. Refrigerated leftovers will keep well for two or three days.

Notes:

If you prefer, the filled empanadas can also be frozen for baking later.

There are peas in the filling in the pictures above by virtue of it being half a batch I made for a shepherd’s pie, but as they’re not usually found in beef empanadas, I left them out of the recipe. If you like them, you can put them back in. If you’d like something green that actually is traditional in empanadas, try mixing some chopped green olives into the filling once it has cooled down.

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