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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A Balm for Writer’s Block

Blogging is going to be light this month, because I have more pressing matters to attend to. I’m still baking for the coworkers every Sunday because they’ve made it clear it’s no longer optional to bring in treats on Monday morning, so there will be things to blog, but it’s bound to be more hit-and-run in nature than I’d normally like.

So, since I have a daily word quota hanging over my head, here’s a very quick write-up of the perfect cookie for the November insanity. Not only are they the kind of yummy calories your brain needs for heavy thinking, but they are practically instantaneous to make because there’s no creaming of butter and they go straight from bowl to oven.

Interestingly, making these cookies last night for a lunch with students today also kicked me out of what had been a pretty weak start to this year’s NaNoWriMo. I was really organized about preparing for it last week, but I was also still pretty tired from a very busy October so the words weren’t coming as fast as they should have. Having fixed fifteen-minute windows between batches actually made me more productive than I had been with unstructured evenings on Monday and Tuesday, and since then I’ve been much more enthusiastic about the whole thing.

These cookies are adapted from the recipe for chewy sugar cookies in this month’s Cook’s Illustrated. Normally, I am no fan of sugar cookies, because almost every one I’ve ever had has been the equivalent of a white canvas — not in a stripped-down-to-essentials, purity of ingredients way like a good shortbread, but in a bland, bland, boring, nothing but flavorless-fat-and-sugar way. I gave this recipe a try, though, because His Lordship loves a chewy cookie, and the recipe relied on the same liquid-fat-ratio math that recently produced the first batch of brownies to really meet his chewiness requirement. I made changes to inject some interest, though, because I still wasn’t buying the whole plain sugar cookie idea.

The texture of these cookies was everything that was promised: crackly on the outside and beautifully chewy on the inside. With my additions of toasted coconut and macadamia nuts, they also have rich coconutty flavor and tender crunch, enough to inspire at least a couple of hundred words.

Since I now have cookies and an awesome new caffeine delivery vehicle, I have no excuses. Back to work!

Coconut-Macadamia Sugar Cookies
(Adapted from Chewy Sugar Cookies, Cook’s Illustrated, November/December 2010)
Makes 4 dozen cookies

1/2 cup finely shredded unsweetened coconut
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
2 ounces cream cheese, in 8 pieces
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 large egg
1 tablespoon coconut milk (or regular milk)
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup unsalted roasted macadamia nuts, coarsely chopped
Additional sugar for rolling

In a small nonstick skillet, toast the coconut on medium-low heat, stirring frequently, until golden brown. Set aside.

Preheat oven to 350 F and line multiple baking sheets with parchment paper.

Place the sugar in a large bowl and scatter the cream cheese cubes over the surface. Melt the butter and pour it over the sugar and cream cheese while still warm, stirring and folding with a spatula until most of the cream cheese has melted (streaks and a few small lumps are OK). Switch to a whisk and mix in the oil, then the egg, coconut milk and vanilla until smooth.

Whisk together the flour, baking soda and powder, and salt, and add to the wet ingredients. Whisk until almost incorporated, then stir in the toasted coconut and macadamia nuts.

Fill a shallow bowl with about half a cup of sugar. Scoop up heaping tablespoon-sized bits of dough and roll into balls, dropping them into the sugar and rolling to coat. Set the balls on the baking sheets, two inches apart.

Bake on the middle rack for 12-13 minutes, until turning golden at the edges. Allow to cool to room temperature on the sheets. Store in an airtight container for up to a week.

Notes:

This makes a very soft, oily, weird-looking dough, but it will come out fine, I promise!

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Yes. Yes She Did.

She most certainly did make the trek on a wretchedly rainy Saturday to the dangerously-nearer-than-before Penzey’s boutique, wherein she proceeded to plunk down more than $80 on spices.

What? I just moved! I needed to restock! Not to mention, the holiday season is coming up! Don’t judge.

By the way, was I exaggerating when I said I clean out their chile section whenever I go there?

No I was not.

Yes, I do like it hot.  QED.

So anyway, you might be wondering what I did with this embarrassment of spices when I got home.  Well, the first thing I did was make a curried egg salad sandwich for lunch.  The second thing I did was to make these fantastic cupcakes for afternoon tea, because spotting the poppy seeds on the Penzey’s shelves reminded me that I’d been craving them for weeks.  The cupcakes also gave me an opportunity to crack open the little jar of dried orange peel and intoxicating Mexican vanilla extract, both of which are absolute necessities for my holiday baking.

While these were cooling, we took the Monster out for her walk, and of course the heavens chose that precise moment to crank up the rainfall to 11. Normally that would put me in a vile temper, but I came home to ferociously strong and milky tea, snappy little cakes, a pantry full of future deliciousness, and an excuse to trot out the totally awesome poppy pin I got at the Museum of Opium in Thailand. I have absolutely nothing to complain about.

Except perhaps the project this shopping spree spun off, namely finding a storage solution for my spicy bounty. On our way out of the store, His Lordship declared the current arrangement — a big covered bin into which all the zip bags and little jars are unceremoniously tossed — unacceptable. If anyone has any suggestions that do not involve me wasting hours transferring spices into little jars I don’t even have the shelf space for, I’m all ears.

Poppy Seed Cupcakes
(Adapted from Brown Sugar Lightning Cake in Sally Schneider’s The Improvisational Cook)
Makes 10 jumbo cupcakes, or 12-16 normal ones

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
Scant 1/2 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons poppy seeds
2 large eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons dried orange peel, rehydrated in 2 teaspoons boiling water
Zest of one lemon
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350, and line the appropriate number of jumbo or regular muffin tins with foil or paper liners.

In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, and poppy seeds.

In a large bowl, beat the eggs with the sugar and zests until pale and light. Whisk in the liquid mixture, then fold in the dry ingredients until just incorporated.

Scoop the batter into the muffin cups, filling no more than halfway. Bake 20-25 minutes for regular cupcakes or 25-30 for jumbo cupcakes, until golden and springy and the proverbial skewer comes out clean when inserted in the middle of a cupcake. Cool the cupcakes in their tins on a wire rack.

Notes:

If the cake recipe has a vaguely familiar ring, it’s because the endoskeleton is the same basic one that supports the olive oil cake I wrote up last month. Like Alton, I adore a multitasker, and this recipe is as adaptable, quick and foolproof as any you’ll ever find.

I favor cupcakes not because I have a weakness for cute food, but because they cook faster than full-sized cakes, and leftover individual cakes are easier to share with coworkers or friends than a partially-eaten cake. If you have neither concern, bake the batter in a buttered and floured 9-inch round pan for 35-40 minutes.

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Soup for a Blustery Day

Despite my love of fall produce, especially cranberries, for some reason I’m not quite ready for autumn just yet.  Ready or not, the temperatures are dropping, the rain and wind have definitely arrived, and so have the seasonal offerings at the market.

Since I can’t hold it back, this rich, just barely gingery bisque of kabocha squash is a great start toward embracing the inevitable.  I roasted the diced squash first for extra depth, and separately toasted the seeds with butter and five-spice powder for a crunchy garnish.  Apple cider mixed with the vegetable stock and diced apples in the garnish added a hint of sweetness and brought out even more of the squash flavor.

Although it was the backbone of a very casual rainy-day dinner tonight, the smooth simplicity and seasonally-appropriate colors of this soup would make it a great first course for your Thanksgiving dinner.

Roasted Kabocha Squash Soup with Apple and Five-Spice Seeds
Serves 4

1 small (2-lb) kabocha squash
2 tablespoons canola oil
1 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon Chinese five-spice powder
1 tablespoon each unsalted butter and olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
3 stalks celery, diced
2 cups vegetable stock
1 cup apple cider
2 tsp grated fresh ginger
Salt and pepper
1 eating apple (preferably Honeycrisp or Fuji)
Juice of 1/2 lemon

Preheat oven to 400 F.  Line two baking sheets with foil.

Peel and empty out the squash, reserving the seeds.  Chop the peeled squash into 1-inch dice and toss with canola oil, then spread onto sheet in single layer.  Bake until tender and beginning to brown at the edges, 30-35 minutes, stirring once or twice.  Remove from oven and reduce oven temperature to 375 F.

Remove the seeds from the squash pulp, clean well in a bowl of water, and pat dry between paper towels.  Stir the salt and five-spice powder into the melted butter, add to the cleaned seeds, and toss to combine.  Spread onto the second sheet and roast until golden and crisp.  Set aside to cool.

Heat the butter and olive oil in a heavy stock pot over medium heat.  Saute the onion and celery until translucent, then add roasted squash and ginger cook a few minutes more.  Add stock, cider, salt and pepper.  Bring to a boil, then cover and lower heat, simmering for 30 minutes.

Using an immersion or regular blender, puree the soup until smooth. Taste and correct with additional salt and pepper as needed.

Peel and dice the apple, tossing with the lemon juice, then mix with the roasted seeds. Ladle the soup into bowls and top with the seed and apple garnish.

Notes:

Any orange squash, from butternut to pumpkin, could be substituted here, although pumpkin seeds are tougher and more fibrous than kabocha.  In that case, I would use toasted pecans in the garnish instead, as I did when I first made this soup with sweet potatoes, which was also great.

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Westward!

Today’s the day.  I still have a half-million things to do before we head out this evening on the deliberately very short first leg of the trip, but that’s better than yesterday’s million.

Since we’re playing the drive by ear, I’m not sure how soon it’ll be before I’ll be hooked up again to the interwebs and in a position to cook and blog about it, but I plan to take many pictures during the trip and will hopefully have one or two interesting things to write about before the kitchen is up and running again.  I might also have a surprise to work on during my time offline.

Stay out of trouble until I get back, OK?  Ciao!

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Kitchen-sinkakopita

More fun with phyllo

While I’m normally a language fascist and many flee the sight of my red pen, I can’t resist smartass neologizing no matter how linguistically improper I know it to be.  I’m sure someone in Greece has put a contract on my head for the insult I just perpetrated, but I’m a hopeless reprobate and I will quite certainly sin again.

Besides, albeit with apologies to the entire Grecophonic community, I can’t think of a better shorthand for this vegetable-bin-emptying yet tasty riff on spanakopita.

As I only used one of the two 8-oz sleeves of phyllo when I made the vegetable pie and mid-week baklava at the beginning of July, the other was still sitting in my refrigerator, staring reprovingly back at me from the second shelf every time I opened the door.  Since the plan this weekend was for a quiet Saturday night at home to start the always-delightful process of packing up for a move, I had time to make individual pockets instead of a big pie, and decided to cram as much as possible into each little pocket.

Since my fridge contained a rapidly-wilting bunch of chard, a container of cremini mushrooms, and a tub of feta, that was the starting point.  On a previous run of “stuff everything in a phyllo wrapper”, I had potatoes to use up and chose to grate them for better integration with the other ingredients instead of precooking and dicing them.  The grated potatoes added body to the filling and balanced the saltiness of the feta while melting nicely into the background, and as I had a few little potatoes in the cupboard, I used those too.

A few of these pockets make a nice first course, and the cooled leftovers are a great midnight snack.  You could make a large pie from the same filling and cut it into big squares as a main course, but as long as I have time, I always prefer the self-contained triangles because of the better dough-to-filling ratio and enhanced crispness.

The observant eye might notice that there are sesame seeds in the recipe but none in the picture.  That would be because this batch was all gone by the time my schedule opened up for a photo shoot, but these pictures were still in my archive from that prior run in which I discovered the virtues of grated potatoes.  While this small an amount of seeds adds a negligible bit of additional flavor, it really helps with the visual impact and is worth doing if you have a big tub of sesame seeds lying around, as I do.

Chard, Potato, Mushroom and Feta Phyllo Triangles
Makes approximately 24 (your phyllo and filling volume may vary)

3 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
8 oz cremini mushrooms, diced
1 large bunch chard, tops finely sliced and stems diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon each dried oregano and dill
3 small potatoes, grated
Salt and pepper
10 oz feta

8 oz phyllo pastry sheets, defrosted
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, melted
1/4 cup sesame seeds

Heat the oil in a skillet over medium heat, and add the onions with a good pinch of salt.  Once the onions have softened, add the mushrooms and cook until they release their liquid.  Add the greens, garlic, herbs, and salt and pepper to taste to the pan and saute until the stems are tender.  Finally, stir in the potatoes, cover the pan, and cook until the potatoes have lost their raw texture.

Remove from the heat, crumble in the feta, and correct the salt and pepper as needed.  Set aside to cool briefly.

Preheat oven to 375, and line two baking sheets with parchment or silicone baking mats.

Remove one sheet from the roll of phyllo, covering the remaining dough well to prevent it from drying out.  Brush one half of the sheet lengthwise with butter, folding in half lengthwise to create one long, narrow strip.  Brush the top of the sheet with butter again.  At the bottom edge, place two heaping spoonfuls of the filling, then take the bottom right corner of the pastry and fold over the filling to touch the left edge and form a triangle.  Flip the triangle over repeatedly to create a sealed pocket.  (If you’ve never done this before, see this diagram for the folding technique).  Lay the sealed triangle on a baking sheet, and repeat with the remaining phyllo and filling.  Since they won’t really rise, the pockets can be placed quite close together, although not touching.

When all the dough has been used up, brush the tops of the triangles with the remaining butter and sprinkle with the sesame seeds.  Bake for 20 minutes, or until the phyllo is deep gold and crisp.

These are best after you’ve allowed them to cool just a bit.  The cold leftovers will lose their crispness, but will still be delicious and will travel well.

Notes:

The first time I made this greens-mushrooms-potatoes configuration, I used arugula and was pleased with the peppery bite.

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You Like Me! You Really Like Me!

So I log in to WordPress this evening to continue my compulsive way-after-the-fact proofreading and re-re-editing of the last couple of posts, as I do, and imagine my complete and utter shock at having been nominated for an Arte y Pico award!  Here I am, blathering into the ether under the assumption that no one who doesn’t already know me and/or hasn’t been personally bribed with my cookies even knows this thing exists, and food blogs are a dime a dozen anyway, but Camille, an actual trained pastry chef, thinks me worthy of an award!

I’m just… I’m all verklempt.

I’d like to thank Camille for nominating me, and WordPress for enabling those random links so that Camille could find me.  And I’d like to thank His Lordship, who puts up with the giant mess I leave in the sink every Sunday night, saves me from buying every kitchen gadget and cookbook in sight, and provides an endless supply of creative ideas. I can’t leave out the Monster (the puppy’s nickname, from her electronics-destroying infancy), who conveniently disposes of cookies I’ve left the brown sugar out of and my extra pizza crusts so I can save room for the cheesy parts.  My parents and my baby brother, for accepting and encouraging my weirdo food choices, and my grandmother, for teaching me that pretty much everything can be fixed and improved with half a pint of cream.  My brother-in-law, for giving me Williams-Sonoma gifts on my birthdays. My coworkers, who graciously consume my baked goods so I don’t have to polish them all off myself.  And, and PBS, for producing the food shows that got me started when I was just a kid, and the Food Network, for sucking so hard and giving me enough Celebrity Chefs I Hate to provide material for a lifetime, and Trader Joe’s, who helps me make the magic happen every week, and, um…. WOOOOO!  I just… WOOOOO! I can’t believe…. WOOOOO!  WOOOOOOO!

Yeah, I’m not fooling anyone with the Cuba Gooding Jr. act, am I?  I’ve never WOOOOO!ed in my life.  But seriously, I am deeply touched and grateful that Camille bestowed this on me.  In this age of everyone and their grandmother blogging, you do your thing and you hope someone’s listening, and it’s an incredible thrill to know that someone is.  Y muchisimas gracias a Eseya, por haber establecido este premio.

Now, the rules are:

1. Pick five blogs that you consider deserve the award for their creativity, design, interesting material, and also for contributing to the blogging community, no matter what language.
2. Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone.
3. Each award winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award itself.
4. The award winner and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of the Arte y Pico blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award.

There are a ton of unbelievably professional food blogs I turn to for inspiration and guidance that I could nominate, from 101Cookbooks to Serious Eats to the tragically retired Cupcake Bakeshop, but they’re all so big-league that it’d be a drop in the ocean to them.  Likewise Television Without Pity, which takes snark to a whole new and institutionalized level I can’t hope to reach.

I’ll do my best to come up with some more pragmatic choices, with one initial exception:

1. TBogg, who is totally big time now and could swat it away like a July mosquito, but I’m proud to say I knew him before he was quite that big time, and one of the proudest moments of my life was when one of my snippy little comments on the Salon boards was praised by the Master of Snark.
2. Pip in the City, who is a fabulous baker, a great writer, and an amazing photographer.  Her blog feels like visiting a second home, since she cooks what I grew up eating and speaks with love of the places I would have grown up in if my family hadn’t emigrated. She also has the second-cutest puppy in the whole world.
3. Brass Goggles, because I have all kinds of random obsessions, and steampunk is my latest one.  They (it’s now a collective effort) find the neatest examples and sources of this incredibly fun aesthetic, and present them in the most user-friendly way imaginable.  You may roll your eyes and think this is the nerdiest thing ever, but I guarantee you will find something on this site so beautiful it’ll make you go “Wow!”
4. Curious Goods, creator of the coolest stuff ever. The level of imagination and craftsmanship is unbelievable, and makes me wish I had unlimited funds to spend on commissioning everything I ever wanted to have as a geeky bookworm kid.
5. The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks, which I recently re-discovered.  Bethany is out there, fighting the good fight, every day.  This is not just a pet peeve of mine, people; this is a scourge of our times.  The only threat more clear and present than this is the misuse of “comprise”.

I’m also going to suggest a possible future contender. Rosella, whom I’ve known for years and have been begging nearly as long to write for a wider audience, just started her own gardening blog.  Knowing of her passion for this subject, her expertise, and her elegant and gracious writing style, I am delighted to see her finally establish a presence and am sure it’ll be a hit.  I can only hope that one or two tales of the Vegecidal Mr. Rosella also make their way into the blog.  Go, Rosella!

To get back to business, there’s really nothing of interest to report on the pantry-clearing front, since we just had pasta with the leftover sauce from making pizza this weekend.  The excitement should resume later this week, even if I do have to — razzafrazzit — work on Saturday.

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Further Adventures in Pantry-Clearing

Last night’s dinner put an additional dent in my reserve of olive oil (currently five different kinds), tahini, and herbs, and completely used up the basmati rice. It also made excellent use of Sunday morning’s farmers market haul.

Pattypan squash, white eggplant and long peppers were tossed with olive oil, garlic paste, salt and herbs and roasted at high heat until caramelized outside and tender inside. The roasted vegetables were served on a bed of buttered rice and topped with a cool and lemony sauce of yogurt and tahini, which I’d previously modified from one of my legitimately Greek cookbooks. If you preferred to use this as a side dish, you could forego the rice or other starch and toss the vegetables lightly with the sauce instead.

I must give His Lordship credit for the roasted vegetables, since he did all the prep work and came up with the marinade. His mad knife skills are greatly to be envied, and his creativity is boundless and seldom disappoints.

Roasted Vegetables with Tahini-Yogurt Sauce
Serves 4-6 as main course over rice, more as a side dish

Vegetables:
4 small eggplant, in 1/2-inch dice
1 lb summer squash, in 1/2-inch dice
1/2 lb of mild long peppers, in 1/2-inch slices
5 cloves garlic
1/4-1/3 cup regular olive oil (not extra-virgin)
1 teaspoon mixed dried herbs (Penzeys Parisien Blend)
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
Salt and pepper

Sauce:
1/2 cup yogurt, preferably Greek
1 1/2 tablespoons tahini
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, preferably infused with lemon
Juice of 1 lemon
1 clove garlic
Half a dozen stiff shakes of Tabasco or other hot sauce
Salt and pepper
Sufficient hot water to dilute as necessary

Buttered basmati rice or egg noodles, if desired
Thinly sliced green onions for garnish

Position the oven racks in the middle and lowest position, and preheat oven to 450 F. Line two baking sheets with foil or parchment.

Place the cubed eggplant in one large bowl, and the summer squash and peppers in a separate bowl.

Mince the 5 cloves of garlic until fine, then sprinkle with salt and smash under the flat side of the knife until a smooth paste forms. In a small bowl, combine the garlic paste, olive oil, herbs, paprika, salt and pepper. Pour half the marinade into each bowl of vegetables, and toss until everything is evenly coated.

Spread the eggplant in a single layer on one sheet and the squash and peppers on the second, and place each sheet on a separate rack in the oven. Roast until vegetables are caramelized and tender, approximately 20-30 minutes, stirring the vegetables and rotating their pans once during baking.

While the vegetables are roasting, repeat the smashing process with the final clove of garlic for the sauce. Add the paste to a large glass measuring cup, and whisk together with all the sauce ingredients except the water until well combined. Taste and correct seasonings as necessary, then stir in enough hot water to dilute to the consistency of heavy cream. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Serve the roasted vegetables over buttered rice or noodles, drizzled with several spoonfuls of the yogurt sauce and sprinkled with the green onions.

Notes:

It’s preferable to use ordinary olive oil rather than extra virgin for the roasted vegetables, since extra-virgin will lose its flavor under the high heat anyway. For the sauce, which is uncooked, a good extra-virgin is best, and if you have lemon-infused, by all means use it.

Since we have Penzeys Parisien herb blend, that’s what we used. You could make your own blend of chives, dill, basil, tarragon and chervil, or any combination of dried herbs you prefer. If I’d had some, minced fresh parsley would have been an excellent addition to the finished dish, for both flavor and color.

The sauce will get increasingly garlicky the longer it sits, so if you want it really strong, prepare it well ahead. Conversely, if you’re garlic-averse (hey, it takes all kinds), cut the garlic to half a clove and make it just before serving.

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Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept It

All Items Must Go!

As I noted in the updated “About Me” section, I am leaving the job that interferes so inexcusably with my blogging time — and, let’s be fair, also provides the captive audience for my weekly baking experiments — in favor of an accelerated masters program to set up my next career move.  Since said program is on the other coast, His Lordship, the puppy and I are hauling ourselves all the way across the country, again, for the next year.

(I should probably mention that my shifting career was also the cause of the last cross-country move.  Yes, His Lordship is a saint who amply deserves perfect birthday pies preceded by meatapalooza birthday dinners. But I digress.)

The point is that we need to clear out the pantry in the next six weeks.  I’m going to have to forcibly restrain myself from buying anything except weekly staples and start thinking of creative ways to use up what’s already in stock.  Given my tendency to accumulate and hoard esoteric items, this is probably going to result in some interesting meals and might be fun to watch in a freakshow kind of way.

Shall we get started?  Fabulous.

This first entry might not seem like a pantry-clearing dish, but I’m definitely counting the liquor cabinet as part of the brief, especially since it contains both our purchases and legacies we took on when other friends moved away.  Since neither of us is much for drinking at home, we consequently have enough booze stockpiled to run a fairly creditable speakeasy.

I’ve said before that I’m a mad fan of sour cherries and am giddy as long as they’re in the market, which is about two weeks in an average summer here.  This summer’s harvest having been so delayed, I’m snatching them up with even more frenzied desperation than usual.  The last quart was made into a cobbler, but it occurred to me as I was digging the luscious fruit from under the disappointingly under-cooked puff pastry top that the filling would have shone much brighter on its own.

Which brings us to this sauce.  The original cobbler recipe included red wine, but as I didn’t feel like starting a new bottle when we were already going to a wine party, I substituted a recently-opened port.  The port gave the cherries a lush, grown-up character, while the sourness of the cherries ensured that the thickened port didn’t veer into insipidity.  The bottle still being mostly full, I made the filling by itself with a second quart of cherries Saturday evening, to serve over the cheesecake His Lordship picked up.

Essentially it’s Cherries Jubilee, but headier and easier.  All the decadent flavor, none of the scary open flames, and it can be made ahead and reheated before serving over ice cream, cheesecake, or pound cake to your appreciative guests.  If there are leftovers the next morning, it makes a self-indulgent breakfast over yogurt.

This is hardly an inexpensive dessert, since sour cherries and good port are going to cost you, but in the sense that it used up a bottle I’d otherwise have had to dispose of when we move, I think it qualifies as frugal!

Sour Cherries in Port

Sour Cherries in Port
Serves at least 8 generously

1-2 quarts sour cherries, pitted
1 1/4 cup sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
Pinch of salt
1 cup port, plus sufficient extra to make 3 cups of liquid with the cherry juices
1 3-inch cinnamon stick
1/4 teaspoon almond extract

In a large bowl, combine the sugar, cornstarch and salt.  Stir in the cherries and 1 cup of port, cover with plastic wrap, and leave to macerate for 30 minutes.

Drain the cherries into a colander set over a large glass measuring cup, then set cherries aside.  Add additional port to make 3 cups of liquid and pour into a saucepan with the cinnamon stick.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer for 5 minutes, stirring frequently.  Add cherries to the pan and return to a simmer, cooking 10 more minutes, until sauce has thickened and cherries are softened.

Remove from the heat, take out the cinnamon, and stir in the almond extract.  Cool to slightly warm or room temperature before serving, or refrigerate until needed.

Notes:

I had just one quart of sour cherries, which produces about a two-to-one port sauce to cherries ratio, but if you’re feeling extravagant, two quarts of cherries would be ideal.

The port I used up was an unusual Malbec-based one from Sonoma, but a regular good ruby port should be fine as long as it’s not syrupy-sweet.  You could also revert to the dry red wine of the original recipe.

Outside the evanescent season for fresh sour cherries, you could make this with frozen or jarred sour cherries in juice (not syrup).  I’m afraid that using regular cherries would probably result in a sickly sauce, but you’re certainly welcome to try and let me know.

Serving Suggestion

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Mid-Week Baklava

I’m still writing up this week’s Sunday baking recipe, but as an appetizer, I’m putting up the baklava I made in the middle of last week.

And why did the crazy woman make baklava in the middle of the week? Because she can, darlings!

OK, truthfully, because she defrosted phyllo over the Fourth of July weekend, dreaming all kinds of big phyllo-wrapped dreams, but never actually got around to realizing any of them. Instead, I made a simple spinach, potato and feta pie for dinner on Tuesday, using one of the two individually-wrapped 8-oz sleeves in the pack. Then, looking down at the third of a roll of dough left in the sleeve, I thought, what the hell, I’ll make baklava while I’m at it.

Although I have a few legitimate Greek cookbooks, I chose the Cook’s Illustrated Best International Recipe version as a starting point because I had yet to cook out of that book despite having obtained it it nearly two years ago as a result of the temporary insanity that led me to sign up for the CI cookbook club.

In addition to roughly quartering the quantities to fit the amount of dough I had, I made a couple of modifications in terms of ingredients and technique. First, regardless of its supposed superiority over plain melting, there was no way I was clarifying butter at 9:00 pm on a work day. I also chose the more adventurous combination of almonds and pistachios over their walnut-almond mix.

The combination of almonds and pistachios worked well, because pistachios alone can be a little overwhelming in baklava, and almonds by themselves don’t have enough character to stand up to the honey syrup. The CI approach of creating three thin layers of nut filling produces a nicely flaky and cohesive pastry without the usual tendency to slide and split in half when picked up. It was nicely saturated all the way through with this quantity of syrup, but next time I might double it just to ensure a completely hedonistic experience.

Baklava is never going to be an effortless endeavor, but this was ready to bake by the time the spinach pie came out of the oven, and it makes a perfectly reasonable quantity for a small household instead of enough to feed an army. It does need to sit several hours to absorb the syrup, so you won’t be eating it until morning unless you’re an even more incorrigible night owl than I am. The reward for your evening industriousness is sticky, buttery, crisp, perfect baklava with your breakfast coffee.

Almond-Pistachio Baklava
Serves 2-6

Syrup:
5 tablespoons granulated sugar
3 tablespoons honey
2 strips lemon zest
1-inch piece of cinnamon stick
2 cloves
1 pinch salt
2 teaspoons lemon juice

Pastry:
2 ounces sliced, unsalted almonds
1 ounce roasted, salted pistachios
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Generous pinch of ground cloves
1/2 tablespoon granulated sugar

1 stick unsalted butter, melted
1/4 lb phyllo sheets

Combine sugar, honey, zest, and spices for the syrup in a small saucepan and bring to a boil over medium-high heat until sugar has dissolved, stirring or swirling the pot as necessary. Transfer to a heat-safe cup, remove the lemon peel and cinnamon stick, stir in the lemon juice, and set aside to cool.

Adjust oven rack to the lower-middle position and preheat the oven to 300 F. Liberally butter the bottom and sides of a glass baking dish approximately 8 x 6 x 2.

Process nuts in a food processor until finely chopped, and transfer to a small bowl. Remove 1 tablespoon of nut mixture for the final garnish, then add cinnamon, cloves, and 1/2 tablespoon of sugar to remaining nuts.

Unroll the phyllo and cut to fit the size of the pan. Place one sheet in the bottom of the pan, and brush the entire surface with melted butter. Repeat with 9 more sheets, then sprinkle the top with one third of the nut filling. Cover the filling with 6 more individually-buttered sheets, and the next third of the filling. Repeat with another 6 sheets and the final third of nut mixture. Top with 8-10 more sheets of phyllo.

Using your flat palms, press out any air bubbles in the pastry, then brush on the remaining butter. Using a serrated knife, cut the baklava into diamonds, making sure to pierce all the way through the bottom layers.

Bake 1 1/2 hours or until completely golden, rotating the pan halfway through. Remove from oven and immediately pour all but 2 tablespoons of the syrup along each crevice, then drizzle the remaining syrup over the top. Sprinkle a generous pinch of the reserved ground nuts on the center of each piece.

Cool on a wire rack for 2-3 hours, then cover with foil and let stand 8 hours or overnight.

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