Full Gastronomic Tilt

One night, it came up that I had never attempted homemade sushi.
“Really?” asked my friend. “It’s so easy. I’ll teach you. The trickiest part is making the rolls, but that comes with practice.”

I was skeptical about the easy part. Many Japanese dishes have a short ingredient list but a long list of steps, as the food is lovingly arranged or incorporated just so for a pleasing aesthetic and surprisingly complex taste. Not hard to make, but involved. Truth be told, I hadn’t given much thought to the creation of sushi prior to that night. My sushi thoughts are reserved for the eating of it, which I do frequently and with gusto.

So one night soon after that conversation, my friend and I set out for the store and gathered all the ingredients we’d need. Back home, I was unsure where to start and waited for some direction.

“How can I help?”
“Hmm…julienne these vegetables, please.”

Red pepper, green pepper, carrot, cucumber. I cut, scooped and sliced until I was surrounded by piles of veggies. Cooked baby shrimp and snow crab legs rounded out our ingredients. I was reminded that I dislike handling raw seafood, but pressed onward with only the lightest shudder. This was going to make a lot of sushi! Meanwhile, my friend busied himself with making nishiki rice, a specific variety of on-the-short-side-of-medium grain rice that lends itself perfectly to sushi, becoming plump and sticky when cooked. After the rice finished cooking, he dumped it into a large bowl and let it cool slightly before making slashes in the rice and dribbling in a goodly amount of seasoned rice vinegar, then folding it in with a wooden rice paddle.

“Okay. Do you have the mat?”
I did. I made room on a countertop, setting out the mat and the sheets of nori.
He turned around, reaching for the veggies…and stopped.
“What? What is it?”
“…Nothing.” He picked up my knife and started re-julienning all of the vegetables I had so neatly cut minutes ago.
I sighed, frustrated. I reminded him I had never done this before. If it was imperative the vegetables be sliced that finely, why didn’t he say something?
He turned around and smiled, not taking my bait for the sort of argument that only happens when two foodies (each with their own well-developed approach and rituals) cook together.
Instead…”When you’re making sushi with this many fillings, each has to be sliced pretty finely so it doesn’t make the roll too large. If it’s too large, it will fall apart.” Oh. Right.
Specificity.

At last, it was time to roll. I watched as my friend laid a sheet of nori on top of the bamboo mat, rough side up. Did you know nori sheets have a shiny side and a rough side? I didn’t. Rice always goes on the rough side, as I soon learned. Shiny side out makes for a more attractive presentation. He scooped some rice out of the bowl with the rice paddle and, turning the paddle over, began to spread the rice. Shiny side, rough side. Front of the paddle for scooping, back of the paddle for spreading. Specificity.

He placed the vegetables in a line along the edge - alternating and layering up as he went. The shrimp (sliced) and the crab (shredded) went on top. Then, lifting up the bamboo mat and pressing firmly, he confidently rolled the sushi tight.

(How crazy neat is this picture?)

Moving the roll to a plate, he wet the edge of the seaweed and pressed down to make a firm seal. Taking a knife with the tip dipped in the water, he sliced up the roll, and circles of perfect sushi appeared.

I was impressed. My turn didn’t go nearly as well. As effortless as he made it look, it was challenging to roll the sushi. At one point, I confess I wanted to fling the sushi mat across the room. My sushi was more oblong than spherical. But I did it! Now I have a better understanding why there are chefs out there completely devoted to the art of sushi and have even more appreciation for those beautifully presented rolls I get at Wasabi and Zen Sushi.

Have you made sushi? How many tries did it take before you got the rolling part down? If you do make it at home, does it diminish your desire to go out for sushi? My inquiring mind wants to know!

Speaking of inquiring, do you have a burning question for me? Ask away, anonymously, at my Formspring page.

A little over three years ago, Mark Bittman, via Jim Lahey, turned the bread baking world on its ear and gave it an impolite finger (I’ll let you imagine which one). Bittman’s New York Times column, The Minimalist, published “The Secret of Great Bread: Let Time Do the Work” and included a recipe for No-Knead Bread. This was about the time the food-blogging world started to grow exponentially, so everyone and their mother tried this technique. And whaddaya know, it actually worked.

Now, before you wince and turn away to comfort your bread machine or indignantly defend your kneading abilities…hear me out. No-Knead Bread may not be for everyone, but it certainly works for me.

Why I Like No-Knead Bread:

1. Prior to trying no-knead, I was afraid of yeast. Baking chemistry freaks me out. So precise, with many things that can go wrong. I hate the thought of abject failure, even though it’s an integral part of the learning process.

2. I still fear kneading, perhaps irrationally. This gives me something to work up to.

3. It’s easy, but not without thought. Three ingredients and time, that’s all you need! Mix, stir, rise. Flop, fold, sit. Add cornmeal. Let rise again. Slide into pot, bake. Remove lid. Bake some more ’til brown.

4. You can make it in or on practically anything. I used an 8-quart Lodge cast iron dutch oven and it worked beautifully. I’ve heard you can also flop it on a pizza stone. Just be sure to warm up your surface in the oven as you are pre-heating!

5. It makes neat crackling sounds as it cools. Perhaps all bread does this. I have no idea.

6. It’s my favorite kind of bread. Crunchy, chewy crust, speckled inside with lots of air pockets, made for lots of butter. I find it sooo satisfying.

Check this out:

The Original No-Knead Bread
makes one 1½-pound loaf
shamelessly reprinted in full from the NYT website
(Hey, who knows how long they will continue to have older posts available for free? Death of print, pay-per-view, advent of the iPad, all that?)

Ingredients

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
¼ teaspoon instant yeast
1¼ teaspoons salt
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed.

Directions

1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.

2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.

3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.

4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack. Cool completely to room temperature before cutting!

So, a few notes:

This dough is sticky! You can kind of tell from looking at the above picture, taken after I dumped the dough onto the counter. It can be a little challenging to work with, but as long as you lightly (I said lightly!) flour your hands, you should be okay. The below picture is immediately before the second rise. As directed, I shaped the dough into a ball, which is a (fruitless but not pointless) battle. Don’t expect a perfect sphere, more like a flattish oblong. This is totally okay. Just move quickly and use a LOT of cornmeal on the towel and all over the top. I’ve made this exact recipe twice. Once a year ago and once yesterday. Both times resulted in a tasty loaf. Crackly outside, nubbly from the cornmeal, springy inside texture. Whether you’re a bread-baking novice like me, or just pressed for time, No-Knead Bread is worth it.

Of course, an easy, inexpensive recipe resulting in homemade bread in no time at all was just the beginning. As the recipe made its way around the blogosphere, no-knead bread started getting fiddled with and adapted. Below is a small sampling of the many, many experiments bravely attempted:

* Steamy Kitchen makes Rose Levy Beranbaum’s adaptation, with success (and zero effort - she had her 4-year old make it!)

* Mark Bittman made No-Knead Bread even faster, two years later. And this is where my foolproof caveat comes in. I tried this recipe after my first no-knead success and it was a total disaster. The dough stayed goopy, impossible to shape and it baked up terribly. Should try it again.

* The Pink Peppercorn makes a cinnamon-raisin version! Yum!

* In 2007, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day was published, to rave reviews, further increasing the popularity of no-knead bread. No-knead challah? Yes, please.

* More recently, The Kitchn hacks No-Knead Bread to make a sandwich loaf!

One additional note: Due to the extended rise (12-18 hours), you do have to think ahead a little. I started this loaf on Friday evening around 7:00 PM. Fresh bread was cooling on the counter by 12:30 Saturday afternoon. Remember that the second rise takes about 2 hours. I’d advise starting it on a weekend evening, Friday or Saturday, but feel free to make it suit your schedule.

Flip. flip. Flipflip. flip. Cookbook after cookbook. I had agreed to whip something up for a 10 person gathering - mostly vegetarians, one vegan, one gluten allergy. I thought something hearty, warming and fulfilling would be appropriate before extended discussion involving, among other things, community building.

What’s more communal than soup? What’s more friendly, vegan and gluten-free than lentils? Just as Laurie Colwin says - there are hundreds of ways to make lentil soup, and they’re all good.

Dish decided, I pondered strategy. My beloved Red Lentil Soup with Carrot and Coconut Milk seemed fussy, so I nixed it. Hmm…my recipe binder had a rather good, straightforward lentil soup recipe. But Casual Kitchen’s Easiest Lentil Soup caught my eye - whole cloves? In the end, I went with my recipe (included at the end), but tossed the cloves in as a lark. The effect was subtle but noticeable, an undertone of sweet warmth. Happily, the soup was met with raves, served with gluten-free cornbread, sesame kale and a spinach salad. I always forget about cornbread - so delicious spread with butter or Earth Balance, a fabulous complement to hearty soups.

Remember: Soup makes people happy. Unless they aren’t soup people. (”I just made a huge pot of fragrant, rich, zuppa toscana! It has BACON in it. Why aren’t you grinning from ear to ear and gripped with ecstasy? Sigh. Here, have some chicken.” True story.) Heathens.

Less than a week later, I discovered a glass jar of (I think) duPuy lentils. Small, dark, almost blue-green in color. Beautiful. Time to try a recipe that’s been kicking around in the back of my brain and making noise, mujadara.

Pronounced Moo-jzah-dra and not moo-jah-dara, it has just three ingredients: lentils, onions and half a cup of basmati rice. Dead simple. The only unique aspect of this dish is that the onions are finely diced and caramelized. Mujadara is RIDICULOUSLY delicious. I used Orangette’s recipe, because Molly’s blog introduced me to this dish, years ago. There are tons of variations on this dish out there, as it is a Middle Eastern staple. Some cautioned against using duPuy lentils, but I found they retained their shape and texture much better than green lentils. Phooey to them.

Why, why, why did I hold off making mujadara for so long (almost three years)? Because I was a doubting Thomas. There was no way a three ingredient dish could be that tasty. I was wrong. Please don’t make the same mistake. Serve it with a generous squeeze of lemon and a bit of salt. I lightly sauteed some baby spinach and stirred it in at the end. Yum. This dish will get you through to spring, I promise.

Lentil soup, a pantry dish if there ever was one
(original inspiration due Giada De Laurentiis)
serves 8-10

Ingredients

5 cups vegetable broth
5 cups water
1 3/4 cups green lentils
1-2 T olive oil
2 sweet or yellow onions, large dice
1 28-ounce can diced or crushed tomatoes
4 stalks celery, coarsely chopped
4 carrots, diced
4 garlic cloves, pressed
6 whole cloves
3 sprigs fresh thyme (~2 tsps dried)
2 bay leaves
at least 1 tsp salt
lots of black pepper
up to 1/4 cup cider vinegar and/or lemon juice
Parmesan cheese, optional

(More options, you say? Add white wine, balsamic vinegar, red pepper flakes, sausage, spinach….)

Directions

Heat the oil in a very large pot over medium heat. Add the onions, carrots and celery and saute until softened, about 8 minutes.
Add the garlic and saute 1-2 minutes.
Add the tomatoes with their juices and simmer about 5 minutes.
Add the lentils, water/broth mixture, bay, thyme, whole cloves, stir it up and bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 45 minutes -1 hour.
Add salt, pepper, 2 Tablespoons of cider vinegar and the juice from one wedge of lemon. Stir, taste and adjust as your palate desires. I needed more salt and more lemon, but your mileage may vary.
Sprinkle with Parmesan if you like.

Serve to a hungry crowd!

News broke last week that a fixture of the Asheville fine dining scene, Savoy’s, is closing on January 31st, another casualty of the recession. But this time there’s a twist. Instead of simply shutting the doors and moving to greener pastures (a la Sugo and Damien Cavicchi), restauranteur Eric Scheffer is holding on to the space and reopening Savoy’s as Vinnie’s Neighborhood Italian. Vinnie’s will have lower prices and be styled in the manner of a corner Italian restaurant like the ones you find all over the tri-state area.

That’s New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey for you non-Yankees.
I am cautiously optimistic, but with high expectations.

Though I’ve not had the opportunity to eat at Savoy, I’m familiar with Scheffer’s focus on flavor and creative approach to upscale dining. Among other ventures, he developed the uniquely marketed New York Jew wine. But how challenging will it be to transition a restaurant with nearly a decade-long track record of being both phenomenal and phenomenally expensive to one that’s affordable and drop-in casual? The Citizen-Times article mentions that entrées at Vinnie’s will be $22 and less. On Savoy’s current dinner menu, entrées range between $16-26, small plates (no doubt a recent addition) between $4-9. A $4 decrease in the upper tier of the entrée selection isn’t very much. Will the median entrée price at Vinnie’s be below $16? Granted, it was mentioned that pasta will be between $10-14, but will it be designed as a primi course or suitable for an entrée? We will see…

Anyone who knows me knows how I’ve longed for a true Italian joint. Asheville overflows with upscale Italian (Fiore’s, Vincenzo’s, Pomodoro’s, Cucina 24) and pizza (Digable, APB, Marco’s, Nona Mia’s, Circle in the Square). While Marco’s satisfies the red gravy urge to an extent, their focus is pizza and it is what they do best. While the food is good, Nona Mia’s is frequently busy, loud and due to its location, more destination than neighborhood. There’s Eddie Spaghetti…they have the right idea, but the quality is just not there. Iannucchi’s is pretty good, but a bit too far away for me to be a regular.

When I think corner Italian, I think of my favorite restaurants from up north: Elegante’s, Two Guys, Arcaro and Genell’s, Cafe Rinaldi, Revello’s…I could go on and on. What these places have in common are GREAT sauces with fresh ingredients, large portions, fresh (and free) crusty, chewy bread with butter and what can only be described as the feel - cozy, unpretentious, maybe not always the greatest service, a subtle encouragement to linger and a check that makes you think ‘Hey, I could be a regular here.’ You don’t need to have a special occasion to eat there, but they’ll certainly accommodate one. Oh, and they always have cannolis. Made with ricotta, studded with chocolate chips and dusted with confectioner’s sugar, the way God intended.

I can only hope that this is the direction Scheffer is thinking of taking.

If you’re curious about Savoy, Asheville Foodie has a post which reprints Savoy’s history in full from its website.

Speaking of foodie, the word itself came under heated debate earlier this week over at Serious Eats and The Kitchn. People argue that the f word has a cutesy connotation, is pretentious, imprecise, implies too much responsibility and is overused and misapplied.

All of these things are true.

Humans make a habit of classifying, overgeneralizing and pigeonholing things. But it’s also just a word. I don’t mind it so much, as I find it convenient for distinguishing between persons with different perspectives about food, which could in itself be considered snobbish or classist.

I’m reminded of a discussion about the labels which define us. Everyone identifies as something to someone - mother, sister, friend, book lover, student, foodie.

What do you think? Is foodie past its prime? What word would you use to describe yourself?

As entertaining as it is to read all of the Best of 2009 lists, I didn’t really feel up to the task of creating one. Then Sara Mead’s post over at the IFA inspired me. Brief, reflective, perfect.

I started this blog in 2009, which I still feel was a crazy thing to do. But it has been a lot of fun (thanks, guys!), and I’m keeping it going in 2010. I’m taking the spring off from grad school and want to use the free time to do more in-depth posts, perhaps with a bit of research and footwork thrown in for good measure. We’ll see.

For me, 2009 was the year of two simple ingredients I had never cooked with before, and are now staples in my pantry: quinoa and risotto. Relatively quick-cooking and with endless variations, I’m glad to have them both in my repertoire.

2009 was the year I cozied up to the humble egg, after discovering some of the best-tasting eggs in the world. I made buttery fried eggs, deviled eggs, omelets and perfectly fluffy scrambled eggs at every opportunity.

2009 was the year I went from 4 cookbooks to 17, heaven help me.

2009 was the year this dairy lover started doing some vegan cooking and surprised even herself.

2009 was the year I realized that ponzu, dijon mustard and coconut milk qualify as staples in my book.

2009 was the year I picked up a DSLR and started learning about photography, with a little help from my friends.

The best meal of 2009? The stellar, seemingly endless, sustainable sushi dinner at Bamboo in Portland, Oregon with nine friends.

Some of the best things I cooked never made it into the blog - pad thai and gai tom kha among them. And chilaquiles from Almost Meatless, which are easy and oh my gosh delicious.

Baking is still a secondary craft for me. I baked bread a total of twice and need to do it more. Made at least three failed batches of muffins, but my quick breads were tasty and reliable. I made scones and discovered I have a talent for it. My favorite cookies are still Heidi’s triple-ginger, followed closely by my white chocolate cherry oatmeal.

As far as drinks go, I’m lucky to have several amateur mixologist friends, because I am no bartender. If I had to choose a favorite drink from this year, I’d stick to that 2006 Folie a Deux Cabernet Sauvignon. Yum.

For New Year’s Eve, I made my first multi-course dinner for friends. Simple, delicious dishes: my spinach-artichoke dip (will share soon!), a salad with sliced pear, gorganzola, dried cranberries and toasted pecans, smitten kitchen’s mushroom bourguignon, and sorbet for dessert. It was terrific, hitchless and a milestone for me.

2010 will be a year in which I stretch. Short ribs are on my list, as are crepes. Puff pastry and phyllo dough. More yeast-raised doughs. More buttermilk. I will go back to Cucina 24. I will try Nepalese food and continue to lobby the gods for a pho place in Asheville.

And one more thing - I’m going to figure out how to change that banner up at the top.

How exciting.

This adventure in baking began with an innocent idea. Two friends wanting to send some homemade deliciousness to those they love scattered far and wide. Two decent bakers + everybody loves cookies = failproof. I mean, it’s just a few batches of cookies, right?

Ha! Little did we know…

One weekend, we gathered our baking arsenal and set to work. One thing led to another, and I had to duck out early. We managed to whip up the dough for Martha’s Chocolate Gingerbread cookies, as well as some jelly thumbprints and almond crescents.

We’ll just let this dough rest overnight and come back to it in the morning. No problem.
Flattened into discs, wrapped in saran wrap, the dough sat.
For a week.

Oh, life.

And so we came back to our dough the next weekend, having complete faith that everything would turn out as promised. What we got was a now-obvious lesson in food chemistry and common sense.

Lesson #1: Baking even one batch of cookies is a serious undertaking with a wide berth for error. Baking 4-6 batches with the intent to parcel and deliver is madness.

It also cannot be achieved in one or even two days if you have anything remotely resembling a chaotic life.
Unless you are Martha Stewart. Or my mom.

Lesson #2: If you are attempting, for the first time, your mom’s tried & true, 40-year-old, 2 sticks of butter, tricky as hell almond crescent cookie recipe that she makes look effortless year after year, acknowledge that you must, must, must follow the recipe exactly, NO substitutions.

Except for that part about dipping the cookie in the chocolate. Whatever.

The crescents turned out okay, but were nowhere near the apex of flaky, buttery, melt in your mouth with a bit of crunch awesomeness that I was aiming for.

These jelly thumbprints? Beautiful picture, awful taste. The dough had a few Tablespoons of milk in it. Left for a week, well…by the time I baked them there was a sour note to them. I couldn’t justify feeding those cookies to my cat. And the jelly was a lingonberry jam. Great idea in principle, but a sweeter jam is needed to balance out the not too sweet cookie.

Lesson #3: Dough rests overnight so fats can emulsfy, gettin’ right with God down to some tasty business when they go in the oven. Dough resting for a week creates new lifeforms.

It over-emulsifies, leading to a sticky chocolatey gingerbread mess of goo. Still sorta tasty, really ugly.

After the first batch came out of the oven looking so frightening, Nikki cut her losses and busied herself flinging the rest of the gingerbread dough balls into the trash. Exactly as fun as it looks.

Lesson #4: By the time you bake, cool, taste and/or wreck five batches of cookies in an afternoon, you will never want to look at a cookie ever again.

Except for Heidi’s Triple-Ginger Cookies. Cookie Hall of Fame right there. Last batch of the day. Healthiest recipe of the bunch. Of course they came out perfectly.

These green-tea shortbreads were tasty. Except we ran out of green tea powder. So we ground up some green tea in a spice grinder. NOT THE SAME THING. I mean, it is the same thing, except…

I don’t know. Didn’t work. NEED MATCHA!

All in all, a great lesson learned, blah blah blah.
Kinda bummed about the epic disaster this became.
Then again…

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new. ~Albert Einstein

Sorry folks. No cookies in the mail this year. Maybe in January.

I stumbled on this recipe while flipping though a friend’s copy of Bon Appetit. It caught my eye because of the ras-el-hanout, which I am still trying to use. This dish has a…simple elegance to it. The sauce is a little sweet, a little tangy, a little rich, a little ‘what’s that?’ - not too much anything. The figs, bland straight out of the fridge, plumped a bit in the sauce and were a nice compliment. Could be a weeknight meal, or something a bit more special. I made it as a ‘last meal’ for a friend who is moving away from Asheville and it was just right.

A few notes:

~ I swear by the brining and marinade method for chicken breasts/thighs. It makes them juicy and tender, ready to soak up whatever sauce you create.

~ Couscous was the suggested pairing for the chicken. Alas, my Israeli couscous was nowhere to be found when I opened (uh, tore apart) my pantry cabinet. Basmati rice with butter and a squirt of lemon juice worked just fine.

~ Sauces are my kryptonite. The concept of reduction gives me fits and I hover neurotically over the saucepan. Then, the moment I turn around, the sauce threatens to scorch on me. Shockingly, this one turned out okay, but any sauce-related advice would be greatly appreciated.

Chicken with Figs in Ras-El-Hanout
adapted from Bon Appetit, September 2009

serves 6

Ingredients

3 boneless skinless chicken breasts
4 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1 pound carrots, peeled, chopped into fourths
4 large shallots, peeled, halved
3 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
1 teaspoon fresh or dried thyme
juice from half a lemon
2 tablespoons ras-el-hanout
3 cups low-sodium chicken broth
3/4 cup dry white wine
14 Brown Turkey figs, halved
2 teaspoons white wine vinegar
salt and pepper to taste
grain of your choice, cooked simply

Directions

The night before:
Brine chicken in a solution of 1/4 cup kosher salt dissolved in 1 quart warm water for 30 minutes. Remove chicken from brine and rinse well. Marinate chicken in olive oil and 1/4 cup lemon juice overnight.

The night of:
Preheat oven to 350°F.

Heat 1 tablespoon oil in large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Transfer chicken to skillet and sear until nicely browned, 5 to 6 minutes per side.

Remove chicken from skillet and place in high-sided roasting dish. Set aside.

To the skillet, add carrots, shallots, garlic, thyme, lemon juice, ras-el-hanout, chicken broth, white wine, and remaining 3 tablespoons olive oil to skillet. Bring to boil and whisk. Pour mixture over chicken in roasting pan.

Cover with lid or foil; place in oven. Braise 1 hour, until tender.

Transfer chicken, carrots, and shallots to baking sheet; discard garlic. Pour pan juices back into nonstick skillet. Spoon off fat from surface. Boil juices until reduced to 1 3/4 cups, whisking occasionally, about 18 minutes.

Add figs and vinegar; cook until figs are just heated through, 3 to 4 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

Place cooked grain of choice on large plate. Top with chicken, vegetables, and figs. Spoon sauce over chicken and figs. Enjoy immediately.

First, I blackened a pan of sweet potato fries last night, causing a detour to Rosetta’s for their awesome tempeh reuben. Rye foccacia is amazing.

Then, this morning, I strained some homemade chicken stock into a glass jar and some into an ice cube tray. I had just enough left over that I thought I’d heat it up and have a warm cuppa chicken tea for breakfast. Nutritious, savory…you know.

I walked into my bedroom to iron a shirt. 10 minutes later…my kitchen was a little smoky and smelled oddly of pad thai. I had turned the burner to HIGH without thinking and it boiled the stock away and scorched the pan.

Sigh.

Stay tuned for this weekend’s holiday cookie adventure.

Sometimes you need to reflect and look back. Living in the moment, it can be too easy to forget or downplay your achievements. Our successes spur us onward, offering up the necessary encouragement to keep going.

Let’s face it - task completion is awesome. Who hasn’t, at some point in time, written something on their to-do list that’s already been done, just so they can cross it off and feel a small rush of accomplished satisfaction?

In that spirit, and with the knowledge that I’ve picked up a few readers here and there who have not been following along since the beginning, I give you 10 posts - half recipes, half essays (some are photo essays, some are words) - from this blog. A top 10 list of sorts. The recipes are all dishes I made for the first time this year. Some I’ve made many times since, some are overdue for making again. The essays are a reflection of how I see and interact with the world…

Everything in the universe is a pitcher brimming with wisdom and beauty. ~ Rumi

Recipes

Pierogi - The recipe that started it all.
Much obliged, Twitter: Shepherd’s Pie - Oh, the things you can do with mashed potatoes. I had no idea.
Asparagus and Caramelized Onion Risotto - Risotto and caramelized onions by themselves are more than worth the time it takes to make them. Together? Heaven.
Blackberry Buttermilk Ice Cream - a) You do not need an ice cream maker to make ice cream. b) Photo composition is fun.
Superlative Chocolate Mint Pudding - What else do you need to know?

Essays

A Borrowed Kitchen
Arugula-Eating Liberals
Tomatoes and Cupcakes
Food Allergies 101
Contemplating Summer

Thanks for reading.

Listening: Toubab Krewe, Live at the Orange Peel
(A favorite)

Vegan crab cakes. Ponder that for a second. Consider also the fact that Vegenaise tastes enough like mayo to fool even the most hardened sandwich spread devotee. Which I am not. But if I were, I’d be converted.

Vegans are a creative bunch. I mean, they have to be - given the no meat, no dairy, no animal byproduct tenets of their culinary religion. Years ago, in college, like so many meat eaters humans - I scorned what I didn’t understand. No cheese?! Nutritional yeast? Sounds like something I don’t want to put in my body, nutritional claims aside. I saw veganism as a disruption of the natural order of things.

I now realize I had that backwards.

The older I get, the less meat I eat. These days it’s once or twice a week max, often less. I’m choosy about the types of meat I put into my body and how much of it I eat at a time. (as local as possible with vetted humane practices and no more than 4-6 ounces)

But I do eat meat. And I enjoy it.

I’ve read The Food Revolution (strongly recommend), Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (ditto) and two of the Pollan books (first half of Omnivore’s Dilemma is a good read, In Defense of Food gets a resounding meh. Do not recommend. The tagline is the gist of it - Eat. Not too much. Mostly plants. Common sense stuff). I’ve thought long and hard about why I eat meat - and I accept it. I could give up eating meat tomorrow and miss very little. While that may eventually happen, today…I like having the choice.

Anyway. I have more vegan/vegetarian cookbooks in my kitchen than any other type. The ingredient choice and recipe creativity can be counted on to stimulate me into trying something new, a little different, perhaps even a bit out of my comfort zone. I’m reminded that there are uses for nutritional yeast and Bragg’s beyond sprinkling on popcorn, that most anything calling for red wine vinegar AND tamari is quite tasty, and that tempeh is not just a brick of texturally odd, tasteless protein.

This brings me to Isa Chandra Moskowitz, whose cookbooks I don’t actually own. This will soon change, because I do lust for them…particularly Vegan With A Vengeance, Veganomicon and Vegan Brunch. Her punk rock DIY aesthetic and honesty speak to me on a level I can’t easily get to with cookbooks, which I deeply appreciate.

Long way around the kitchen table, I found myself in a position to make brunch one weekend morning. I’m known to fall back on staples at breakfast time when I’m cooking - omelets, french toast, tofu scramble, fresh fruit, juice, coffee, mimosas if I’m feeling perky. Sick of the staples, I wanted to make something NEW.

Enter the Post Punk Kitchen, the blog of Isa Chandra Moskowitz herself. I had Googled Vegan Brunch, because the name of the cookbook was all I could recall and I thought perhaps some lucky blogger had scored a recipe to share. Look no further than the source. This ‘teaser’ recipe did its job supremely well. Vegan Brunch will be mine!

The recipe is not difficult or all that time intensive, but it is intentional. You first have to boil/steam the tempeh to alter the textural composition (did I just use a variant of texture twice in four paragraphs? yeah, I did…), then let it cool before you form the cakes so they stay together. No Old Bay here, but you don’t even miss it thanks to a neat blend of ginger, oregano, mustard, hot sauce and nori.

And the Vegenaise. Yumwow. Give these cakes a try. Loads easier than cracking some over-fished, unsustainable crab or dealing with the fishiness on your hands or picking pesky bones out of your lunch.

Recipe here.