Pesto, Part Two

Earlier this summer, when my sister Claire and her boyfriend Geoff were visiting me in Portland, cilantro almost made an enemy of me.  It would have been a tragedy, because cilantro is my all-time favorite herb, and I would have been sad to see my frizzy green friend go.  As we all piled into the car one evening to drive Claire and Geoff back to their hotel, I made a quick stop in the veggie patch to test out a theory.  I had heard that, to address the problem of quick-bolting herbs like basil and cilantro, don't give yourself a hernia trying to prevent it in the plants you've got; just give the plant a shake after its gone to seed in the hopes that new, little plants will sprout up around it.  This I thoroughly did with my blossoming cilantro plant, and then got in the car with my family.  Soon enough the car filled with a blooming, overpowering aroma.  It was so strong it was on a par with skunk, freshly sprayed on your dog's nose.  I made the mistake of sniffing my fingers and almost vomited.

Luckily, several weeks and some distance from the herb renewed my love for the stuff, so when I received my latest email newsletter from 101cookbooks.com containing a recipe for a Cilantro Noodle Bowl, I found I was ready to renew my relationship with the green.  It was apropos, too, of my recent foray into another kind of unconventional pesto (using kale), so I thought I'd give it a whirl.  In the Cuisinart, that is.  The 101cbs recipe looked a little stark, so I also consulted my Curry Book, by Nancie McDermott and found a recipe for a cilantro-ginger pesto.  Ever the brassy and independent cook, however, I glanced at each of these recipes once, and did not use them again.  Here is my own rendition, and you will find it very flexible since no recipe was used.

Cilantro Pesto

-1/2 to 1 bunch cilantro, washed, dried or spun in a pillowcase, with leaves plucked from stems

-A hunk of ginger to taste (I used about a thumb's worth), peeled and quartered

-1 clove garlic, peeled and quartered

-1 large dollop of sesame oil (I'm sure olive would do)

-1 quarter jalapeno (more to taste: the heat resides in the seeds)

-1-3 tablespoons brown sugar

-Juice of half a lime

-Soy Sauce to taste

-Water, as needed

Toss the lot sans water into your food processor and pulse till blended to resemble pesto (though when you lift the lid, you'll smell something entirely different).  If it's dry and not blending, add a couple Tbs. of water and blend again.  Set aside.

Chop half a package of tofu into cubes and saute in a film of olive oil, with generous pinches of chile, curry powder, and salt stirred in.  Leave on medium-high heat, turning the cubes occasionally.

Meanwhile, set a pot of water boiling and add a package of chow mein noodles.  I was hoping for soba noodles, but my country bumpkin Safeway had never heard of such a thing.  When the noodles have about a minute to go, toss in chopped broccoli florets.  Yes, toss the broccoli IN to the boiling pasta!  Isn't that such a cool idea?  I gratefully acknowledge 101cbs for such a timesaving tip.  Let sit for 30 seconds to a minute, depending on how crunchy you like your broc, then drain both noodles and veggies in a colander.

Combine noodles/broccoli, tofu, and cilantro pesto in a large bowl, and toss well to coat.  Season with soy sauce, and maybe even garnish with some lime zest if you're feeling zesty.  Yum!

Quick Tip

If you've ever made homemade macaroni and cheese, then you know one of the great pleasures of life.  I always make a whole lot so I'll have plenty the next day for lunch.  I'm always bummed, though, when a night in the fridge turns the mac tough, pasty, and bland.  Even a good stint in the microwave and a pinch of salt doesn't do much.  But today I discovered a way to make your mac n' cheese very good the next day-- after you reheat it, mix in a couple tablespoons of fresh salsa!  If there be no salsa, then a few dashes of your finest hot sauce will do nicely too.  Stir it all up!  The moisture and flavor will be re-introduced and then some.

The Ugly Duckling Vegetable Garden

Well, here she is: possibly the least attractive garden you've ever laid eyes on.  A couple weekends ago Adam and I rented a roto-tiller and turned our wasteland into workable soil.  Unfortunately, while the soil was being tilled just about every single weed seed in town got wind of the fresh, aerated soil and flew over and dove right in.  I can't get grass to grow on my lawn for example, but it sure loves the veggie patch!  The hideous cardboard is covering the pathway as well as some spots that are as yet unplanted.  I'm hoping this will keep weeds at bay, and will create a nice dark, moist, welcoming spot for worms (they'll eat the soil and weeds and from their back ends will emerge nutrient-rich "black gold" that the veggies next spring will love.)
We've had some success so far-- my roommate Christie, a refugee from another house in Hood River that burned down recently, brought over as many plants as she could salvage.  This basil is looking good.
Also, she brought about ten broccoli plants, and they seem to be flourishing.  Her tomato and pepper plants are small, but alive.  We'll see about those.  The watermelons, sniff, are no longer with us. 
These broad-leafed sproutlings are squash-- I planted Waltham winter squash and Butternut.  Of the seeds, these came up the quickest, largest, and most robust.
As for my carrots, chard, and kale, I'm worried about this weed.  What IS this stuff???  It's too tiny to pluck and I'm afraid that I'm going to wake up one morning and these things will be chest high and my little veggies will be dead in infancy.  Any tips from you green thumbers out there?  Note, the chard does seem to be emerging-- I did clear the areas around them as best I could.

Note to Readership

Hello, faithful readers,

Now that I've got quite a collection of labels for each post, I've decided to reveal them in the blog.  To save space, I've placed them at the very bottom of the page, which requires a bit of scrolling down to find it.  I've also recently begun to label each recipe with the time of day the meal would be most appropriately consumed.  For example, Kale Pesto would be under Recipe: Dinner.

I hope you will find the new system most convenient.

The Armchair Foodie

Food Blogs and Kale

During a long and lovely chat with my sister Claire last night, she told me that on a list of the best foods, the number one healthiest ingredient you can put into your mouth is Kale.  The formidable, tough, weedy, crunchy but very lovely and sometimes purple-hued KALE.  To give you an idea of how hardcore of a veggie it is, it's Hilary's favorite food.  To give you an idea of Hilary, well, lets just say that Hil would rather eat raw cremini mushrooms than dessert.  So.  I believe I have made my point.

Therefore I would like to devote today's post to kale, and the multitude of-- Ok, two, that I know of-- ways that you can transform it so that it is edible and even yummy.  But first I will make a brief detour to another topic.  Why?  Because I can.  

Usually, when I sit down to write a post I try and get some research in first.  My research is of your standard, Google-variety.  I don't have a whole lot of cookbooks, and plus I'm lazy.  So but whenever I type in a foodstuff into the little google searchbox, I'm always rewarded with the discovery of at least one new food blog.  Today I found two terrific ones.  One of them, 101cookbooks.com, has a list of recipes by ingredient along the left side, so I checked out the Kale link (here it is).  It looks pretty good-- there are about six or seven recipes using the intimidating green-- and two of them that looked especially lovely are the Chickpea HotPot, and Kale & Olive Oil Mashed Potatoes.  Now this woman, I'm led to believe, has got a LOT of cookbooks, unlike me, so maybe her recipes are really good.

As I continued to skim the site, I came across the inevitable Food Blogs link, and browsed it for catchiest title.  cook eat FRET.  Perfect.  I clicked on it.  This blog is great-- the author is wry and funny and fully admits that all cooks are cooking to impress that one mythic cook in her mind.  In cook eat FRET, the imaginary cook-judge was a toss-up between Gabrielle Hamilton and Mario Batale.  I don't know who mine would be.  The mushroom-munching Hilary, perhaps.  So thanks to my two new food blog finds, forever immortalized in the column on the right, I will now be re-titling that column.  It is no longer called Food Blogs I Like, but will now given the heading that is far more appropriate... (see right).

Ok.  Kale.  The simplest way to cook it is in a saute pan.  This is perhaps the best way to introduce yourself to the vegetable if you are unacquainted.  You will get to know the flavors and textures that kale is capable of-- to know it in its pure form, you can put it to good, creative use in the future.  So, chop a couple or three cloves of garlic per head of kale and toss the garlic into your pan with a good smattering of olive oil.  While the garlic sits in heat just high enough to sizzle SLIGHTLY (garlic burns all too easily, so watch it), chop your kale into ribbons.  Some people like to chop the stems up and toss them in too, but don't pressure yourself the first time around.  After the garlic has sizzled for a minute or two, toss the kale in and stir till its coated with the garlicky oil.  Cover.  Come back in five minutes or so, and stir it till its tender.  Now, a word.  Kale will not become as tender as spinach.  It'll still be crunchy and will take several more chews than you might be used to (think steak, here).  This will grow on you, I promise.  Soon you'll feel like Popeye, after he has just guzzled a can of spinach.

Next recipe.  This is for a Kale Pesto, and its lovely.  It reuses the water the kale is steamed in for the pasta too, so you don't waste any of the plant's nutrients.

-1 bunch, kale, washed, drained, de-stemmed

-8 oz. penne pasta

-1/2 c. whole almonds, toasted (dry in a small skillet till aromatic and slightly darker in color)

-as many cloves of garlic as you can stand (it will be essentially raw)

-1/4 c. Parmesan, plus more for garnish

-1/2 tsp. salt, 1/8 tsp. salt

-2 Tbsp. evoo, 1 tsp. evoo

-juice of 2 lemons

-1-19oz. can cannellini or Great Northern beans, rinsed and drained

-1/4-1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes (optional)

-s&p

1.  Steam kale over 2 quarts of boiling water for 5-7 minutes, till tender.  Transfer with a spoon or tongs to a colander to drain.  Don't toss the water, but boil your pasta in it until al dente.  Now you can drain.  (Hell, see if you can use the water one more time-- let it cool and water your garden with it.) 

2.  Chop your almonds in a blender or food processor until well-chopped (but not a butter).  Add garlic, cheese, 1/2 t. salt, and juice of one lemon.  If you haven't already done so, cut the thicker parts of the stems from the actual leaves of kale, leaving leaves with slits halfway up the middle.  Chop roughly.  Process till all ingredients are finely minced.  If the ingredients are too dry for the blender to process, and even if they aren't, add 2 T. oil till paste forms.  If still too dry, add another T. oil, and after that a little water or milk (spoken by the person with a very crappy blender).

3.  In a medium bowl toss your beans with juice of the other lemon and 1/8 tsp. salt.  (Don't forget to rinse beans first Claire, or else they taste like can.)

4.  In a large skillet or pot, fry your red pepper flakes in 1 tsp. evoo for a minute.  Add the pesto.  If still too thick, add a little water. Stir till hot, then add pasta and beans and toss gently till heated through.  Garnish with parmesan, salt and pepper.

Unless you've got a couple football playing teenage sons, you'll definitely have leftovers for lunch the next day.

Just Call Me Prawn Jeremy

"Many of [M.F.K. Fisher's] successors see food as an end in itself-- and end up producing something like food porn-- but the most successful memoirists write about food and the self in order to write about the human condition."

--Molly O'Neill, Introduction to American Food Writing

"Thanks for the lovely food porn, dear."

--my friend Berkeley, in reference to the blog Armchair Foodie

After reading Molly O'Neill's luscious introduction to the best collection of writings since... well, maybe ever, I vowed to be the food writer who falls into the latter of the two types she above describes. What lofty ends these writers attain, all while scribbling about eating! Food as metaphor for freedom, as Frederick Douglass writes: "The odors [of cooking] I shared with the winds, but the meats were under a more stringent monopoly... ." Or food as a re-introduction to nature, as Thoreau points out: "Our diet, like that of the birds, must answer to the season." Or even food as an illustration of a culture, like George C. Foster's Old New York: "The chief merit of these establishments is that they are kept open all night, and that hungry Editors or belated idlers can get a plate of biscuits with a lump of butter in the belly for three cents, and a cup of coffee for as much more... ."

And what do I do? I manipulate, then flaunt and exploit my groceries so that they become like maidens, made up and thrown across a bed, stripped all too young of their innocence. My food-- I can't help it-- is an end in itself. When I returned from the sweltering August Farmer's Market today there was nothing I wanted to do more than to lay my bounty across the table in as decorative a way as I could muster, and drool over it, fondle it, photograph it. I eyed it and thought long, lascivious thoughts about just what exactly I was going to do to it as soon as I could get it inside. Sigh. What else can I say, but: Hello. My name is Megan, and I am a food pornographer.

Old Standby

Every family's got their old standby, the when-all-else-fails meal that, over the years becomes a sort of edible member of the family.  Ours is the Breakfast Burrito.  In fact, I think it was the first meal that Adam ever cooked for me, on a camping trip near the Bosque del Apache in New Mexico early in our courtship.  So intimate with the Breakfast Burrito have Adam and I become that we now affectionately refer to it simply as "BB."

It was living in Santa Fe that taught us to integrate the BB into our lifestyle; after all, the cheesy, spicy treat is offered at every cafe and coffee shop worth its salt.  The New Mexican tradition puts green chile and bacon into its BB, but as herbivores who no longer live in chile country, we omit both those ingredients.  This by no means limits us.  Which, I guess, is why the BB is so fantastic-- there is no limit to what you can include.

There is a base, however, which includes tortillas, scrambled eggs, potatoes, shredded cheese, and preferably salsa, though hot sauce will do in a pinch.  Beyond that, let your imagination fly.  Avocado, cilantro, sour cream or yogurt, beans (black, pinto, refried...), fried onions, hash browns, corn, tomatoes, squash, chives, oregano, quinoa, as many different kinds of hot sauce as you want.  Tonight, on a whim, I even supplemented our paltry potato supply with a quarter of a purple cabbage, sauteed in cumin, chile powder, and smoked paprika (which, by the way, was the best six bucks I've spent recently).  It turned out great!  Nice crunch to counterbalance the starch of the spuds and the soft tortillas.  Another tip: if you've got it, stir cream cheese or sour cream into your eggs when you scramble them-- they'll come out soft and fluffy. 

The cabbage looked so pretty in the pan, I'm enclosing a before- and after-cooking shot, along with the final product: the beloved BB.  

Eating...TOO Well?

Before my next house guests get into town, I better hurry up and put up this posting, showing off some of the good food we made when Hil was in town.  I was actually able to stave off my ravenous gobbling long enough to take photos of these dishes, so I figured I might as well display them here, they're so beautiful.  I'll refrain from posting recipes, but everything, sauces included, was made from scratch.  Need a recipe?  Email me!

1.  Shrimp tacos.  Oh boy, every time Taylor, of berry-gallette fame, comes to town he graces us with his Chipotle-Cilantro taco sauce.  While he's busy putting that together, Hil gets some shrimp marinating.  This time was extra special because we had a campfire to cook the shrimp on (we got creative with little foil trays).  Flour tortilla, shrimp, chopped tomatoes and cabbage, as much sauce as the thing will hold.

2.  Summer Salmon dinner.  First night after camping we went a little over the top with our return to society.  Salmon baked with soy sauce and brown sugar in foil packets, roasted summer corn, roasted summer squash, and this fabulous Columbian rice recipe where you cook the rice in butter, onions, garlic and veg broth instead of water (hello?!  Why did I not think of this before?)

3.  Mole Enchiladas.  Mole sauce has always struck me as an exotic mystery when I get it at restaurants.  Well, I found a terrific recipe in Vegetarian Magazine, and I'll never be afraid of this sauce again.  It's creamy, chocolatey, spicy, earthy.  Cheese enchiladas with our homemade cows milk cheese, boiled and salted to resemble crumbly Mexican cheese, and mole sauce; Calabacitas with squash foisted on us (it's that time of year) and corn; yogurt and cilantro for garnish.  

4.  Stuffed eggplant.  We found some huge, gorgeous eggplants at a country farm on our way home from camping, so we stuffed them with (you guessed it) more zucchini, bread crumbs, onion, garlic, pine nuts, parmesan, herbs, and laid them on a bed of Hil's tomato sauce.  Garnished with crostini, a dollop of homemade goat cheese, and chopped basil.

If you can believe it, none of these dinners took longer than an hour to prepare, and much of the stuff you can do in advance.  If you're looking for dinner ideas, think of this posting...

Hot for Pancakes

Whoa.  I just had quite possibly the best pancakes in the world.  Harkening nostalgically back to the occasional breakfast-for-dinner evenings created by my father (a bachelor during much of my youth), and desiring to get rid of the buttermilk used in cheesemaking last week, I looked up a buttermilk pancake recipe for dinner tonight on the old tried and true epicurious.com.  I like that site because you can type in whatever ingredient you're overloaded with, and a long list of recipes calling for that ingredient will come up.  They are rated with a fork system, and this recipe got four out of four forks, so I thought I'd give it a whirl.  I give it an enthusiastic four forks too.

The recipe actually includes this whole other part that sounds really good-- sauteed apples in maple syrup and cinnamon-- but I had yesterday-picked blueberries and blackberry jam, so I decided to try the apples another time.  But the pancakes themselves are really outstanding,  whatever you top them with-- a little crispy on the outside, and moist, fluffy and slightly sour on the inside.  Find the recipe here.

Also, I love it when you look up a recipe for something kind of random, something you wouldn't think of alone by just staring at the cupboards and fridge and hoping for inspiration, and then you realize that you actually have all the ingredients.  It makes me wonder how many meals-- good meals-- I could make with the contents already in the kitchen.  Hundreds, probably.  Thousands. 

Blackberry Blitz

While riding bikes around my new town, Hood River, Hilary and I discovered miles and miles of blackberry bushes-- first we found them on May St, but once we started looking around we realized they're ALL OVER town, including at the dead end a block and a half from my house.  It's newly August, so the berries are pushing each other out of house and home to find space to ripen on their vines, and of course Hil and I were there to relieve them of their housing crunch with as many bowls and tupperwares as we could find in my kitchen.

If you are as lucky as I am, and live in a place profuse with blackberries, here are a couple recipes to put the berries to good use.  The first is a simple jam-- we brewed up over five quarts of the stuff (using, also, some of the many pounds of rhubarb Adam's co-worker forced upon him the other day).  See my strawberry jam recipe for details on how to make it.

The other recipe, for Blackberry-Basil Crumble, I'm taking right out of Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.  So, I give all credit to Ms. Kingsolver for making this recipe so shamefully easy.  But I will take a small slice of credit for the specific one executed by me, and photographed here.  We must gloat over our desserts when we can.

Blackberry-Basil Crumble

2-3 apples, chopped (I peeled them first)

2 pints blackberries

2 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar

1 large handful of basil leaves, chopped

1/4 c. honey (or more if your fruit is not so sweet)

Preheat the oven to 400F.  Combine the above ingredients in a casserole dish or pie plate; mix, and set aside.

5 Tbsp. flour

3 heaping Tbsp. brown sugar

1 stick cold butter

Cut butter into flour and sugar, then rub between your fingers to make a chunky, flaky substance-- uniformity not necessary here.  Sprinkle over the top of the fruit and bake for 30 minutes or so, till golden and bubbly.  And, of course, be sure there is vanilla ice cream in the freezer.

 

My friend Hilary-- She's so Cheesy!

I have two pieces of advice for all you blogosphereans out there: 1.  Make Goat Cheese!!!  2.  Don't attempt to make mozzarella, unless you're looking for a really infuriating project.

Our day of cheese did actually turn out pretty well all around, because the soft, cream cheese-type cheese that resulted from our botched mozzarella attempt was converted expertly by Hilary into a fabulous dip.  She roasted some garlic, chopped up some basil, toasted some almonds, and poured a little tomato sauce and evoo onto the somewhat funky stuff, and whipped it all up in the Cuisinart for a scrumptious appetizer, causing me to hold my friend in deep reverence for not the first time in our long friendship.

The goat cheese was a dream from beginning to end, however, and I wasn't too busy struggling with it to take pictures of the very simple process.

1.  Pour a gallon, or half a gallon if that's all you've got (or are willing to pay for-- I really need to make some goat-owning friends), into a large pot.  Heat the milk to between 190 and 200 degrees F.  You will need a thermometer for this, because as the recipe we used told us, "In cheese making, the temperature is up there next to God, so it has to be right!"  We also used a bain-marie for this (see my post on corn pudding), so as not to scald it, and to maintain the temp once we reached it.

2.  When you get to your desired temp, slowly mix in 1/2 c. (per gallon of milk, so we used 1/4 c.) white vinegar OR lime juice OR lemon juice.  Mix very minimally-- just enough to distribute evenly.  Watch it curdle!

3.  Let the temp get down to 100 degrees F, and you'll probably want to take it out of the bain-marie for this, if you want to accomplish it while you're still young.  Add salt to taste, it says, but are we really going to be tasting curdled goats milk?  No.  Add a little salt, and you can add more later if you need to.

4.  When you've gotten her down to 100 degrees, S-L-O-W-L-Y stir the curds until they break up into small, coin-size nugs.  We used ultra-pasteurized milk, which really impeded the curdling process.  It's not impossible, but it sort of sucked, as you'll read later, so buy un-pasteurized if you can, or pasteurized if you have to.  Ultra-pasteurized would be a last resort. 

5.  Pour the stuff as gently as if it were your first-born over a cheesecloth-lined colander.  Our curds were so fine, we had to use a pillow case.  Pull the corners of the fabric up so your curds form a little satchel like those on the end of a hobo's stick.  Let it hang somewhere inventive (a clothesline? a cabinet directly over the dog bowl, so she can lick up the whey?) for as long as you want.  The longer it hangs, the harder the cheese will become.  Due, we believe, to our ultra-pasteurized milk, we had to let it strain overnight before we could even hang it.  Then we let it hang for a good three hours.

And oh, boy.  When we tasted this stuff.... expressions of rapture were plastered on our faces.  Gosh, food-writing is hard.  How do you describe a perfect-tasting substance?  It was so creamy, it resembled creme-fraiche, and the goatiness was very subtle, not stinky at all.  Just the slightest hint of barnyard.  Dip a handpicked blackberry into the stuff, and you may attain spiritual enlightenment.  It was easy and great fun, and I'd recommend it to anyone who likes her some chevre.