Braised Be

An otherwise fabulous Alice Waters recipe instructed me to scatter this delectable braised cabbage and roasted potatoes in a circle around the halibut-- for some reason the highest organism on the food chain always gets featured front and center on a plate, with the afterthought veggies serving as a mere picture frame.  If I ever make this dish again, and I can assure you that I will, the cabbage will be shaped into a big heart in the middle of the plate, and the fish and potatoes will be served on a little saucer on the side.  What I mean to tell you is, this method of making cabbage is...  ...the only way to make cabbage.

Now I know what you're thinking!  Ew, cabbage.  Ew, stinky, sulfuric rabbit food.  But no!  Try this recipe.  You will be converted.  Take a head of green cabbage (the recipe called for Savoy Cabbage, which looks like green cabbage with a perm, but we're not that fancy in Hood River).  Cut the head into 2 inch wedges and pack them into a baking dish.  Oh yeah: turn the oven on to 400 while you're prepping.  Sprinkle the wedges with thyme, and tuck a bay leaf in there somewhere.  Pour over it all 1/2 cup of vegetable stock, and 1/2 cup of dry white wine.  Slice up to 3 Tbsp. of butter and dot the tops of the cabbage wedges.  Cover and bake for 30-45 minutes, until the cabbage is tender.  When cooled enough to work with, cut the core off of each wedge and discard, roughly chop the leaves, and return them to their juices in the baking dish.  Here is a shot just before going into the oven.  As is usually the case when something comes out amazing, I forgot to take an "after" shot.  Eh voila.  Cabbage for people who hate cabbage.
Oh, and if you want to make something good to go with your ambrosia-cabbage, you can douse a couple filets of halibut in some wine and veggie broth and roast 'em at 500 for a few minutes; and you can toss some quartered red potatoes in a bit of olive oil, salt, pepper, and maybe some rosemary or something before baking them covered or no for about a half hour at 400.  Or you can just save room for more cabbage.

The Existential Mess. Dirty Dishes.

Well, it has been a day.  When I imagine my best self-- you know, that productive, talented person that each of us wishes to be and somehow imagines we will become-- I picture a Saturday spent reading copiously, writing semi-copiously, and then procuring in a mere twenty minutes the dinner of a lifetime.  I'm sure you all have your own best imagined selves too.  Maybe you spend three hours in the garden on the ideal weekend day, or perfect your latest screen print, or paint the deck of your boat.  And these projections get so near to our hearts don't they, so important to our senses of self, that when we realize that we are not spending our spare time quite realizing our ambitions, it can be a bit of a crushing blow.

I received that blow a little bit today.  I don't read a book a weekend, and I haven't brought myself to write the sparkling, social commentary-saturated book reviews that I visualize myself being so good at.  But life was wearing big cushy boxing glove because when it hit me that there are probably not enough hours or days to accomplish every item on the Great To-Do List, it then occurred that I might spend my energy enjoying what I do do.  I mean, in other words, life is too short to fret over unattained goals.    

And so what did I do today?  I cooked!

First, Adam and I whipped up a batch of pumpkin chocolate chip muffins.  They are seriously easy, sinfully good, and outrageously fattening.  2 cups of sugar and 1 1/4 c. vegetable oil!  But worth every drop.  Anyway I've heard that applesauce is a good substitute for oil.  But as you can see, I've never bother with such healthy shortcuts.  Case in point: you see that round maroon mound on the bottom of the above photo?  My belly.  Find the recipe here.
Later, after finding three cookbooks on my front doorstep, thanks to a gift certificate to Amazon courtesy of my lovely Grandma, I got inspired to go whole hog and just spend the rest of the evening in the kitchen.  Without the hog, of course.
I wish this red chard translated better on screen.  It was a glistening ruby bouquet.  Inspired by Alice Waters and her Chez Panisse Vegetables, I sauteed some shallots, and then tossed in the chopped chard and braised it, covered, over medium heat for twenty minutes.  When it was done it got a little squeeze of lemon, salt, and pepper, but that's all.
Meanwhile, at the direction of Mollie Katzen in her famous Moosewood Cookbook, which it has taken me five years as a vegetarian to finally buy, I made mushroom strudel and was inordinately pleased by how easy it is to make something with filo pastry dough.  Or is it phyllo?  Katzen spells it filo, the box said phyllo.  Tomato, tomahto.

Saute chopped mushrooms, and mix them with goodies like cottage cheese, yogurt, dill, scallions, bread crumbs, lemon juice, etc. and roll it all up in a log.  Bake, and then slice, as below:
Notice how the chard looks almost black.  Quite a meal.  I'll probably make a few adjustments to the filo next time I cook with it-- you need more oil between "leaves" than you'll probably want to use in order to avoid a thick, cardboard-like material; and next time I won't spend so much time draining the precious juices from the mushrooms, like Katzen directed me.  But, as you can see, the campers were happy.  And there were muffins for dessert.

So, life is short.  If I can't review novels for the New York Times, then I'll review cookbooks and my imagination for my blog.  I'm already happy anyway, so it's all the same.