READIN

Saturday, June 18th, 2011

🦋 My Favorite Cookbook

I cooked dinner tonight from my very favorite cookbook, one that I've been going back to for more than 20 years now. It was an excellent dinner; and finding that I've never written about this cookbook on this blog, I feel I should remedy that oversight -- if you're interested in learning to cook this style of food, I can't recommend this book highly enough.

The book is The Spice Box: Vegetarian Indian Cookbook, by Manju Singh. It is a thin book, about 200 pages, filled with terse recipes generally a half-page long or so. The first few pages describe cooking techniques and spice mixtures and repay endless re-reading; with this information in mind the brief recipes are easy to follow and delicious.

Singh's genius lies in not over-specifying ingredients and cooking directions. All instructions are simple and to the point; and it is easy to vary the recipes to your own tastes and to use what ingredients you have on hand. Dinner tonight (which was inspired by the need for something to complement the delicious mango pickles Huzefa gave us) was a vegetable curry with cauliflower and potatoes, pink lentil curry, coriander chutney, and an improvised raita; the four dishes took a total of about 40 minutes preparation time.

posted evening of June 18th, 2011: Respond
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Saturday, July second, 2011

🦋 A Softer Cocktail

Thanks to young urban bicycle enthusiast Dorothy Gambrell, today I found out about Saveur's Recipe Comix -- right now I am drinking (courtesy of A Softer World's Emily Horne) a Black Mischief -- this is Horne's take on a Kingsley Amis cocktail recipe, and boy oh boy is it smooth.

In general I am all in favor of mixing comix with other forms. Gambrell's recipe for Chocolate Ice-Cream is a good one, and the peripheral cartoony stuff adds to it, gives it resonance. I will remember this cocktail recipe because of how good it tastes, and also because of the A Softer World tie-in.

posted afternoon of July second, 2011: 5 responses
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Sunday, September 4th, 2011

🦋 Coffee Margarita

So ever since I tried A Softer World's delicious Black Mischief, I have been playing around with putting coffee in my cocktails; I like the taste and caffeine content alters the intoxication in a pleasant way. Today I think I found a winner, though I'm sorry not to be able to come up with a clever name for it à la Emily Horne. (If you've got any ideas, please suggest them in comments!)

The idea is simple enough; it is essentially a margarita with coffee in place of lime juice, and with a smaller proportion of Triple Sec than you would put in a lime juice margarita (because coffee is not sour). So you fill your glass halfway with iced coffee, add some ice, then a (generous) shot of tequila and a few drops of Triple Sec. A slice of lime is optional; I tried it with and without and it tasted good either way, but somehow the lime seems appropriate. This is a good drink to linger over; the first time I tried it I drank it too fast, because the flavor was so nice, and got inappropriately soused.

posted evening of September 4th, 2011: 1 response

Sunday, September 11th, 2011

🦋 A menu

Ellen is going out for dinner tonight with Lisa; Sylvia and I are going to cook a nice dinner for ourselves.

Rigatoni with sausage and spinach

Simplest dinner around. Saute some onions and garlic with fennel seeds, cook the sausage in the same pan, add some spinach leaves and wilt them. Toss with pasta, serve with some grated cheese. (We have some asiago on hand that will be very nice with this.) Sylvia and I are going over to the grocery store in a little while to pick up some spinach and some artichokes to serve on the side. (I asked if she wanted artichoke hearts and she said, "I want the outside part of the artichoke, the kind you scrape off with your teeth.")

Apple-blackberry gratin

(recipe based on one found in this week's NY Times Magazine)

• 3 sliced apples (unpeeled)
• Blackberries
• Sugar
• Cornstarch
• Butter
• ½ cup sour cream
• ¼ cup milk
• Honey
• Cinnamon
• Walnuts

Toss sliced apples and blackberries with 1 teaspoon each of sugar and cornstarch. Sauté in 1 Tablespoon of butter for 10 minutes. Spread in a 9-by-13-inch pan with some walnuts.

Whisk together sour cream, milk, vanilla extract and honey to taste, and 1 tsp cornstarch. Sprinkle over apples.

Broil 4 to 6 inches from the flame until lightly browned, 3 to 5 minutes. Let sit for 5 minutes before serving.

posted afternoon of September 11th, 2011: 2 responses
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Saturday, November 5th, 2011

🦋 Quick tasty dinner

(Made up on the spur of the moment this evening and worth remembering. It takes about 15 minutes including prep time.) A vegetarian pasta dish (vegan even, if you omit the grated cheese at serving time); for those who prefer it with meat, lamb or veal would probably go nicely in place of the beans.

Rigatoni and yellow and red

1. Heat salted water for the pasta.
2. Prep: chop a small yellow onion, a yellow bell pepper, some carrots and a yellow summer squash into bite-size pieces. (The carrot pieces should be smaller.)
3. When the water is nearly at a boil, heat a skillet over a medium flame. Add about a Tbsp of olive oil. When hot enough that the onions will sizzle a bit, add the onions and some salt and stir around.
4. Add the pasta, preferably penne or rigatoni (or wagon wheels or shells would be good, too), and a little bit of olive oil to the boiling water. Return to a boil and lower heat.
5. As the onions start to cook, add the carrots and some turmeric and some oregano. Keep stirring occasionally. Add the bell pepper and the squash and a little more salt.
6. Heat a little bit of water in a saucepan over a low flame. Drain and rinse a can of canellini or kidney beans and add to the saucepan with a splash of soy sauce. (I used kidney beans, which were the "red" -- the dish would perhaps not be as visually interesting with cannellini but I expect it would taste very nice. Broccoli would also add some nice visual/textural diversity.)
7. Everything should basically be ready at about the same time, 10 minutes or so after you returned the noodles to a boil. I served the noodles and vegetables in one bowl and the beans on the side because of certain family members who are not partial to beans; or they could all be mixed together. Tasty with grated asiago cheese and red wine.

posted evening of November 5th, 2011: Respond
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Sunday, November 20th, 2011

🦋 Food Pie

Herewith a recipe.

Food Pie

Ingredients: lots of vegetables, two pie crusts.

1. Roast some whole button mushroom caps and some sliced red bell peppers.
2. While the vegetables are roasting, fry one zucchini (sliced thin) with some salt. When the slices get brown, take them out of the pan and
3. Start sautéing two red onions, chopped roughly, and as much thinly sliced red cabbage as will fit in your pan. I used about a quarter of a cabbage.
4. The roasted vegetables will be ready about now, so take them out of the oven. Leave the oven on to 450° so it will be hot for cooking the pie.
5. When the cabbage starts to soften, fill the pie crusts. Cabbage and onions, then zucchini slices and mushrooms, then red peppers. Cook at 450° until crust is nice and brown, approximately 20 min.

posted morning of November 20th, 2011: Respond

Sunday, December 16th, 2012

🦋 porotos: making it up as I go

And on every one of these occasions, plus many others as well, the Christ of Elqui's response was simply to recite this verse, as boring already as the menu of a pulpería: "I'm very sorry, dear brother, my dear sister, very sorry; but the sublime art of resurrection belongs exclusively to Our Divine Master."

And that is what he said to the miners who arrived caked with dirt, carrying the cadaver of their workmate, just at the moment when he was most full of grace, preaching before the people on what diabolical influence the modern world could wreak on the spirit of even a devout Catholic, a believer in God and the Blessed Virgin Mother. The gang of calicheros broke through the midst of the crowd of worshippers carrying on their shoulders the body of the deceased; clearly dead of a heart attack, they were telling him as they laid the body with care at his feet, stretched out on the burning sand.

Upset, embarrassed, everyone talking at the same time, the rednecks were explaining to him how after they had eaten their lunch, the Thursday plate of porotos burros, the group of them had been on their way down for a drop to drink, to "wet the whistle," and that's when tragedy struck -- their fellow worker, all of a sudden he grabbed at his chest with both hands, he fell to the ground as if hit by lightning -- not even a chance to say so much as help!

The art of resurrection: Chapter 1

Porotos granados

1. Cook beans until tender. I used ¾ pound dry of cranberry beans. Cook with dried oregano and bay leaves. Add some salt when they get soft-but-not-tender.
2. Peel and chop squash and veggies. I used 1 medium butternut squash and a couple of carrots as well. Fresh corn is a recommended component but is not available to me this time of year; canned or frozen corn probably would have added a lot to the dish as well.
3. In a stock pot, saute 9 cloves of garlic, minced, and two chopped onions in a good amount of oil. Season with a tbsp. ground cumin and more oregano. Add squash, veggies, and beans. Add a little water, not enough to cover the vegetables, and cover the pot.
4. Let simmer for about 45 minutes, adding water if it gets too dry. When everthing is falling apart, mash it together with a wooden spoon -- it should be about the consistency of lumpy mashed potatoes.
5. Serve with a salad of bell peppers and minced cilantro; sour cream and hot sauce make good condiments.

posted evening of December 16th, 2012: Respond
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