Going for a Dip

This election day has got me all- I don’t know what- amped up and wishful, I guess, and a little nervous too. I just can’t wait until this long season, with its animosity and tension, its media fixation and wasted energy, is over.  A week ago I was feeling really panicked about the nation’s future, but today I am feeling hopeful. When I saw the queue around the block and when I walked into my neighborhood polling place- a public school gymnasium- and saw that instead of the usual half-empty room, there was an additional one with a quadruple, snaking line leading into the voting room, I felt elated. People really wanted to exercise their right to vote today. And as much as I have mixed feelings about continuing to abide in this part of Brooklyn, where I have experienced so much violence and sadness, I am still full of love for the community. I was overcome with emotion when I watched my ballot sliding into the scanner, and I almost cried as I said Thank You to the kind church-lady volunteer who helped me through the process. I love the mix of people around us here. I saw families I have known since Lucian and Theo were babies, and people who’ve lived around the corner from us for years, with whom we’ve never spoken. Many strangers, some friends, one collective push forward.

We’re going to be with neighborhood friends this evening watching the results. When we were invited, we decided comfort food was in order. I got all fired up to make good old-fashioned “French” Onion Dip, and I bought many bags of Tyrell’s salt and cracked black pepper potato chips for dipping. Last week, when I was feeling more pessimistic, though, I was thinking maybe I’d make Devils on Horseback, and present them with an ironic flourish… but now I’m glad to say a crowd-pleaser is in order: something with depth- something sensible, kind, comforting and reliable.

img_6172Cooking the onions earlier today was fun- I made a large batch ( 3 pounds of onions) so I had two pans going to caramelize them efficiently. After they were browned and very soft, I cooled them down and went about my day.  Later on I pulsed them in the food processor with sour cream, and a few dashes of the excellent Red Boat Fish Sauce (or use another Asian fish sauce, or Worcestershire sauce) and a drop of sherry vinegar. Done.

Now I’ve got some delicate bubbly rosé chilling and I’m ready to start dipping in.

Caramelized Onion Dip

Serves 8-10

olive oil

1 1/2 pounds yellow onions, thinly sliced

coarse salt

1 cup sour cream, preferably organic (better texture and a real, cultured cream flavor)

pinch of sugar, any type

pinch of cayenne pepper, optional

Asian fish sauce, about 3/4 tsp or to taste

sherry or balsamic vinegar, about 1/2 tsp, or to taste

Coat the bottom of a large, heavy skillet with olive oil and place over high heat. When oil is shimmering, add onions and a large pinch of salt; cook, stirring occasionally, until browned and beginning to soften. Reduce heat to medium-low and continue to cook, stirring from time to time, until meltingly tender- 25-30 minutes. Add a pinch of sugar. Set aside until cooled to room temperature.

Transfer onions to food processor with sour cream and pulse until coarsely pureed. Season to taste with remaining ingredients. Best if allowed to stand for at least an hour so flavors can mingle.

Serve with the best potato chips you can find, and a bottle of sparkling wine.

 

POST SCRIPT

In hindsight, maybe Devils on Horseback were in order…

devils on horseback

Remove pits from large dates, such as Medjool. Tuck a small knob of blue cheese inside each date and wrap with thinly sliced bacon or pancetta. Roast in a hot oven until sizzling and the bacon is beginning to brown. Serve warm.

These are good served without bacon too. But I think the bacon is the devil part, and that’s the salient point. Don’t forget the napkins! Things may get messy.

 

 

Tiptoeing Away, and Taking Tomatoes With Me

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That’s it for summer as we knew it, 2016… School is open and I’m getting back in the swing of some things I had almost, just almost forgotten about.  Like fitting in everything I need to do before two fifteen on most days so I can get to school, and having to plan dinner when I’m not anywhere near ready to think about eating. I’m not sure I’m ready to button up and stop living from moment to moment. Among other ways I’ve let it all go: I’ve ignored my pantry and my freezer. Now it’s time to wipe those shelves, throw out last winter’s uneaten candy, and restock. Can I have my cake and eat it too?

During the first days of September I tiptoed slowly towards fall, but I kept a strong hold on summer. I lingered upstate in our quiet, Hudson-area village, and spent long days with my son Theo before he had to go back to school, to the third grade.  My little boy will soon grow into a big one, leaving only a trace. There are only some things you can hang on to; the days were getting shorter. I made a last grasp, just to see how much of the summer I could keep.

At the farmstand up the road, tomatoes were selling for ten dollars per case… that’s heavy: a  25 pound box, about 11 kilos, or about half a Theo. The tender ears of corn were five dollars for 13 – a baker’s dozen- and so very, very sweet.

The linoleum-covered floor in my summer kitchen tilts comically, and there isn’t much counter space. When we moved into the house I purchased a small kitchen island for chopping on.  Now I stationed myself there. Before long, the narrow wooden surface was fully covered in tomatoes. I don’t have a lot of equipment, nor was I prepared with jars and supplies for canning- but I do have a new foodmill and I was very excited to use it. Truthfully, in my heat-induced torpor I was looking for the simplest possible way to preserve the summer.  So, in between our yard sale adventures and an afternoon visit from friends, I made a batch of tomato sauce in my largest pot. And when that visit turned into dinner, I decided I would save my energy and work in stages (in fact, two days is preferable so that your sauce can chill down nicely before you need to put it away for its hibernation). That night I stood in the little kitchen after everyone had gone to bed, turning the handle of my food mill and watching slips of tomato skin pile up in its metal teeth. When the tomatoes were effectively a purée, I cooked it down until it was a light sauce, and then returned the giant pot to the refrigerator for the night. The following day I divided it into smaller containers and froze them. Any extra tomatoes were peeled and frozen whole. And before we tidied the house and loaded up the car for the city I quickly cooked the corn cobs, then shaved off yellow kernels into a pile… I watched the steam rise, and when it dissipated I knew it was time to bag those little bits of sunshine up and pop them in the freezer; not saying goodbye, but more like arrividerci. Until we meet again…

img_4984September Tomato Sauce

Recipes for tomato sauce sometimes call for a pinch of sugar.  Towards the end of cooking time, taste your sauce to see if it is lacking a certain mellowness that a bit of sugar can help along. But I can’t imagine that any September tomatoes you cook with aren’t sweet, holding inside, as they do, all the sunshine and warmth of your summer days.

15 pounds plum (Roma) tomatoes

extra virgin olive oil to coat the bottom of your pot by 1/4  inch, about 1/2 cup

8 garlic cloves, thinly sliced

coarse salt (kosher or sea salt)

a handful of fresh herbs stems: basil, thyme and marjoram or oregano, or a mixture

crushed red chile, optional

1. Quarter tomatoes through the stem. Place a large, heavy pot or a stockpot on the stovetop and add oil and garlic over medium heat. Cook just until you can smell the fragrance and garlic is becoming soft, do not let it brown AT ALL. Add the tomatoes all at once, and a large pinch of salt. Raise heat to medium high and cook until the tomatoes on bottom begin to collapse, about 10 minutes. Add herbs and continue cooking, stirring often to distribute tomatoes, until the pot is full of bubbling, juice and tender tomatoes, about 30 minutes. Mash the tomatoes up a bit with the spoon.

2. Let tomatoes cool, at least 20 minutes, and up to two hours. Strain through a foodmill fitted with the coarsest blade. The skins and some of the seeds will be left behind, and you’ll need to scrape them out of the food mill from time to time. The tomatoes will be a coarse purée. For a smoother sauce, use the smaller blade.  Return all of this loose purée to the pot.  Place it over medium heat and cook again, stirring occasionally until deep red, saucy and as thick as you like it. I didn’t cook mine for very long; a sauce with a light body and fresh tomato flavor can be a lovely thing to have on hand in winter. When you defrost it, you may need to add a bit of simmering time until it’s thick enough to coat your pasta, but it will be a versatile thing, and can be used in place of canned ground tomatoes- and so much more flavorful. Taste and add more salt, and a pinch of hot pepper if you like. Cool to room temperature before transferring to smaller containers and refrigerating or freezing.

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Lentil, Tomato and Turmeric Soup for a Blustery Spring Day

IMG_1689There’s nothing like the prospect of a desk day, with its long hours yawning ahead, to get me into the kitchen and cooking. Today I have a lot to do: odious things like preparing invoices and health insurance paperwork; and some recipe writing too. My lunch plan was an easily thrown-together lentil salad with roasted beets and goat’s cheese… inspired by the happy coincidence of all three things coexisting in my fridge on the same day. But I’m feeling the chill on the strangely blustery May day, and the containers of cold, cooked ingredients sitting on my kitchen counter hold little charm. Just around 12 I make a snap decision to turn those lentils into soup.
A rummage in the refrigerator often turns up many ideas. It’s how I work the best, to be honest; I cannot plan ahead nearly as well as I can think on my feet. I’ve often felt really dull, sitting with a piece of paper in front of me, not finding any ideas to jot down; but throw me into a situation of limited options, put some leftovers in front of me, and I may be easily inspired. Today, with hunger, restlessness, and the cool breeze motivating me I was a mad genius.  I got a little pot of that soup on the stove and about 45 minutes later I was happily spooning a second helping it into my mouth before preparing to return to my dreaded paperwork. Genius or just hungry? I’ve inadvertently planned ahead: I made enough soup for tomorrow’s lunch, no more excuses.

“Fridge Rummage” Lentil Soup

Crush some fennel and cumin seeds and sizzle in olive oil in the bottom of a heavy pot over medium heat until fragrant; add garlic and ginger, stir and lower heat so the garlic doesn’t brown and become bitter. Stir in turmeric. To quickly slow down the cooking, add half a can of tomatoes, chopped first, and their juice. Stir in the lentils and enough water to cover so they have enough room to be stirred easily; add coarse salt. (If using raw vegetables or starting with uncooked lentils, add them earlier with the spices and aromatics, and simmer with water to cover until tender. But in a fridge rummage soup such as this, you might have ingredients which are already cooked, so they can be dropped into an aromatic soup base and cooked for a short time).  Now add roasted, finely chopped vegetables: parsnips and red onions in this case.  (Mad genius moment: two dates, which had been in with the parsnips went into the pot, finely chopped; adding sweetness and depth).  This is a good time to add greens, such as kale, so they can cook down until very soft. Partially cover the pot, lower the heat to simmer gently and cook until flavors and textures have mellowed- about 30 minutes.

Serve with generous spoonfuls of plain, whole milk yogurt, and crushed, dried chili, or a spoonful of harissa on top.

The amounts:

1/2 teaspoon each of cumin seed and fennel seed coarsely ground or crushed

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 small red onion, finely chopped

1-2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh ginger

3/4 teaspoon turmeric powder

1 cup diced, canned tomatoes, and their juice

2-3 cups cooked lentils

water or stock

coarse salt, about 1 teaspoon

2 handfuls kale, chopped

 

 

 

 

Monday Sunday Blues

Summer of Solace

Just as Sunday is the end of the weekend, so Labor Day is the Sunday of the summer- the day before it all begins again.  In the morning I remembered what a Sunday used to feel like: it felt like a luxury, borrowed and treasured. It felt like there was all the time in the world for whatever we wanted: bacon, french toast, waffles or pancakes.  Sunday mornings were elastic and we let things unfold until the children needed to be released to the outdoors- shepherded, as city life necessitated, to the parks and playgrounds.  But that was before.

Beautiful Vermont!  We have, of course, fallen in love with you. I knew this could happen. But what I didn’t know was that a whole summer of seeing your cool green, hearing your frogs and crickets and just being, could not heal me.  A salve is all I can hope for. “Healing?! Whatever that means” another mother of a boy killed by a car last year, said to me.  She’s right I’m sure: there is no such thing as healing now.  For me what’s helped has been space to breathe, with the knowledge that I’m always held close by friends and family. Retreating from too much noise and activity has made me calm. I’ve worked to treat myself well.  This was to have been our summer of solace. But loveliness was crowded out by sadness, and this has been the summer of watching my surviving son learn to be an only child.  He has also been learning to swim, daring himself to go a little bit deeper and a little bit longer every day.  And he’s reading pretty well now, dipping into favorite books again and again- some of these books were inscribed a long time ago with his brother’s name. He’s working hard all the time, and he’s doing all this without his big brother to cheer him on with his sweet smile and words.

After my little boy awoke on this Sunday, he ran down the lane to play with his friends. His dad had gone fishing early, so I had the house to myself, space to stretch out- and time to bring my tea to bed. I finished the Laurie Colwin novel I’ve been reading, in which the sudden death of a young woman’s husband teaches her to see her own depths. Looking out the window over green rolling fields to Mt. Ascutney I felt the ripples of the moment wash over me.

I needed this quiet morning to myself. After I finished the novel I thought about breakfast. I could skip cooking completely if I wanted to. What would make me feel most free?  I tried to imagine eating a simple boiled egg, outside on the grass by the pond. Or toast with a slice of gorgeous, ripe tomato, and salt. Hmm, cereal? No cooking involved there. Give yourself time to do something else, I told myself- get out of the kitchen!

But I knew what I wanted to eat: a Sunday breakfast. Earthy buckwheat pancakes, big as a plate; deep blue, local berries and maple syrup. The sun shone through the glass bottle of syrup, refracting amber onto the kitchen table as I stirred batter in a bowl. I fed myself today, and made enough for us all to eat tomorrow.

Buckwheat Pancakes and Syrup

Delicate Buckwheat Pancakes

This is an adaptation.  There is a copy of The Joy of Cooking in this kitchen which has been used so often it’s lost its cover and its spine; therefore I can’t say which edition it is – but my research leads me to guess 1964.  The recipe for Buckwheat Cakes on page 215 calls for buttermilk. In the absence of buttermilk, I used a combination of yogurt, milk and water. The recipe produces a batter which can be spread almost as thin as crepes in the pan; it makes light, slightly crisp pancakes. But what really drew me to the recipe is that, according to The Joy of Cooking, the batter stands up very well to “several” days in the refrigerator.   I like to make these individually in a small skillet so I can really swirl the loose batter into a crepe-like griddle cake.

Sift before measuring:  1/2 cup all purpose flour

Resift flour with:

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons sugar

Whisk in: 1 1/2 cups buckwheat flour

Pour into a large bowl: 3 1/4 cups buttermilk (or substitute 1 cup whole milk, 2 3/4 cup plain, whole milk yogurt and 1/2 cup water)

2 tablespoons melted butter, plus more for skillet

Add dry ingredients into liquid ingredients, and stir just enough to combine. If not using immediately, cover and refrigerate.

To cook, pour a large spoonful of batter (about 2 tablespoons) into a medium-hot skillet of sizzling, melted butter. Reduce heat to medium and swirl pan to spread batter into a thin pancake.  When pancake is filled with bubbles, flip; if it won’t flip easily, wait a few more seconds until the bottom has crisped slightly, and try again. Cook just until set on second side, and transfer to a plate or a a warming tray; raise heat to medium-high and repeat. Serve with blueberries and Vermont maple syrup, of course.

 

 

 

 

 

Pasta e Fagioli for My Heart’s Ache

A Rich Base for Pasta e Fagioli

A Rich Base for Pasta e Fagioli

What is a simmer? A rapid one is agile and productive; a gentle one is steady, rhythmic. And there is also the bare simmer. Although on the surface a bare simmer hardly seems to be moving, there is work going on under the surface, a huge effort constantly deployed so it can quietly maintain itself.

It’s all been at a simmer for me. A bare one, that is- a hard-working, silent one- since November 2nd. Unspeakable tragedy has struck, and nothing will ever be the same. So what is the new normal? I don’t know yet. The kitchen stopped calling me. Comfort was brought to our door instead. The visitors poured in and helped out. Friends and family are getting us through, day to day. Meals arrive from them and they feed us, those dear ones- some of whom I’ve never met.

But something needed to bring me back- if only for a day. Was it the cold snap? I had an instinct to get out and be free for a moment- which for me meant a short walk alone; the first time in weeks that I didn’t need someone by my side. And then a short walk home, my canvas bag filled with vegetables, coffee beans, slab bacon. Snapped out of my gloom for a moment, I gathered up a few pieces of myself and found them in the kitchen.
I heated olive oil in a heavy pot and toasted fennel seed (should have bought that fresh fennel bulb!) until aromatic. I added diced carrots, celery, onion and garlic, and a bit of green cabbage and let them go until they were golden and sticky-soft, stirring often. Thinly sliced stems of lacinato kale- cavolo nero- went in too. I added a generous amount of tomato paste and two bay leaves and topped it all up with water.  Quick-soaked dried beans (navy and calypso) simmered all afternoon in a separate pot. I found a tiny rind of parmesan -the only one lucky enough to have escaped the uncharacteristic fridge-purging I had done in December (it had been a moment of stark recognition: cooking was not going to be part of my foreseeable future, not until an ounce of my old desire returned).  I guess this was the day; I scrubbed the rind and added it to the pot.  I stirred in the beans and their liquid and seasoned it all with salt and thyme.  Though I told myself I was heading to my desk several times, I found I could not leave the stove. After tending my soup nearly constantly, I chose a pasta- a short shape, chiocciole, so good for nestling those beans and vegetables in its curves.

What became of this whole pot, its humble contents simmered gently and mothered by me- one lonely child, needing attention? It became a comforting soup- no, thicker than a soup- as it was rich with savory oils from the parmesan rind, creamy from the marriage of bean and pasta starches- aromatic from vegetables and herbs. Can pasta e fagioli help me find a way to be here, with myself and for us all?  And yes, it’s true- there is one less at the table to share in this meal. Can I not still cook and keep his place, just as we keep him all around us?  I think I will try; in the quiet moments of gathering, peeling, chopping and stirring lie the remembering.

 

A bowl of comfort topped with grated parmesan and a drizzle of olive oil

A bowl of comfort topped with grated parmesan and a drizzle of olive oil