It may look like the control panel of some 1950s space-ship, but in NYC reality, it’s how I voted. It did provided a satisfying “kkerrrrr-chunk!” when I pulled the lever (not shown) to cast the votes I had just thrown all the switches for!
Hope you voted too. Yay democracy!
There is something irresitable about the lovely colors of fall squash. Bright greens and oranges, smooth tans, variegated or monochrome, I am always pulled to pick one up, even if I have other plans for dinner. Luckily, squash waits patiently, brightening my kitchen counter with no worries of spoiling.
This beautiful specimen only waited a couple days before a snap of cold weather and a long day out (seeing Chihuly) left me with little energy to cook something up. My glass-filled brain came up with this dinner as we rode the subway home…hmmm, I have salad greens, but I want something warm. I have that squash. Ooo, I have quinoa, and raisins, and that Gruyere I need to use! Voila! The birth of a dinner idea.
At home quinoa quickly morphed into a pilaf stuffing while the squash and some baby sweet potatoes roasted, shortly thereafter stuffed squash halves topped with cheese returned to the oven and a salad was whipped up to join them. Quick and easy! Here’s how I did it:
Quinoa Stuffed Carnival Squash – for two
Ingredients:
Instructions:
1. Pre-heat oven to 375F.
2. Cut the squash in half through the stem and de-seed. Coat inside lightly with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Put in a small pan/dish, cut side down, and fill with 1/4″ water. Put in oven for 25 minutes. (If also roasting baby sweet potatoes, put them in a separate dish and put in the oven at the same time.)
3. Heat broth, add quinoa and raisins and cook covered until broth is gone. Quinoa will be “al dente” not soft. While quinoa cooks, toast pine nuts and grate cheese.
4. When quinoa is done, mix in pine nuts and half of cheese. Mix to will integrated.
5. Squash should be nearly done at this point – a knife should enter the flesh easily and the water should be evaporated. Pull it out, fill with pilaf stuffing and top with remaining cheese. Return to oven for 5 minutes. (You’ll have extra stuffing to serve as a side or for leftovers.)
6. Put together a simple salad with vinaigrette* and plate it. Squash (and potatoes) will be ready to serve!
*Note: my standard vinaigrette is one part vinegar, one and a half parts oil, a squeeze of brown mustard, a couple shakes of salt, a couple grinds of pepper, and some oregano. If I’m feeling spirited, I add a small clove of garlic and a little honey.
All together, it makes for a bright and festive fall meal!
This past weekend Luis and I met up with friends Peter and Lizzie, and Lizzie’s wonderful mother, and caught the last day of Dale Chihuly‘s glass installations in the New York Botanical Gardens. We had previsouly seen his installation in Miami’s Fairchild Tropical Gardens – an experience so wonderful that we went twice in one weekend (and took about 500 pictures – which we culled before putting on the web). When we found out Peter and Lizzie were going, it goaded us to move this to the top of our list and actually get out to the NYBG before the exhibition left.
Thankfully!
Having seen a couple PBS shows about Chihuly and about the garden installation series (he’s done many other botanical gardens) we were expecting a fare amount of repetition, but figured the difference in composition would be worth it. What a wonderful suprise to see many coupletely new pieces as well as wonderful reconfigurations.
The height of the NYBG installation was definitely the area in and around the Conservatory. Each greenhouse was filled with multiple pieces of glass or installations – most set with amazing care among the surrounding plants. I think may favorite was a reflecting pool filled with blue and indigo pieces. Some were balls, some were more tear-drop like, a flock of heron-like pieces filled one end while a row-boat floated at the other overflowing with cobalt spears and flowing indigo shapes. Absolutely captivating.
Other high-lights of the Conservatory were silver spikes in the arid greenhouse and amazing oversized ornament-like decorated balls floating above some (very healthy) coleus. The garden’s flowers weren’t shabby either. Since this was our first stop, we were blown away. There were five other installations to visit.
Unfortunately, the other installations were pretty much single groupings and not nearly as inspired as those in the Conservatory. Nevertheless, they were worth seeing. I enjoyed the sunburst in place of a fountain and Luis took some amazing close-ups of oversized scollp-edged tulip-bowls.
Overall, I felt like the Miami exhibit had been better integrated with the grounds and had matched well with the plants, showing off their characteristics, while the NY show had some more stunning glass groupings. Both shows were worth the visit, and we’ll probably make an effort to get down to Miami when Chihuly returns for an encore presentation at Fairchild.
All the pictures are Luis’s, as my camera simply can’t do justice to the glass. Here are the full complement of pictures.
I have recently finished reading Michael Pollan’s The Ominvore’s Dilemma. It is a fascinating book. It did take me a while, but mostly becuase I needed to mentally digest things before moving on, not becuase it was too dense or at all dull. I enjoyed/was most disgusted by/influenced by the first section most. It’s about factory farms, and not for the faint of heart. I was already heading towards eating less meat, but that pretty much convinced me that I don’t want to eat any meat unless I know where it comes from and can live the farming practices where the animal was raised.
I am not morally opposed to eating meat, it is after all, a natural process that many other species take part in. But if I chose to eat meat, I want to consider two things: my health and my general respect for living creatures. An animal may die to feed me, but I don’t want it to suffer before that. Some may call this opinion hypocritcal (you’re raising it just to be killed), but it’s what I’m comfortable with.
So, with the goal of eating healthy and (relatively) happy meat in mind, I have decided I will only purchase meat whose provinance I can track. This is much easier for me here in New York than it was in Boston, as there are many meat vendors at the various Greenmarkets – pastured beef, pastured lamb, “natural” (hormone free) pork and chicken. (I do not think the chickens I’ve seen are free range, but when sold along side 100% grass-fed beef, I feel pretty certain that they’ve had better lives than your average factory farm chicken.) The odd thing is that even after deciding it’s ok for me to purchase meat if I know that it has been raised well, it took me a while to actually make that purchase.
After so long not purchasing meat in markets, not cooking meat myself (though occasionally indulging at restaurants), I had to think carefully about this. I decided it was worth it and picked up a “split” roasting chicken (frozen) on a Thursday. It sat in my freezer for quite a while as Luis and my life got busy, but this week I finally had a chance to cook it.
The chicken took two days in the refrigerator to thaw, and much more time to prepare than store purchased chicken legs, before the actual cooking. Nonetheless, it was worth it. I had not made this lovely recipe in quite a while, since I have rarely been cooking meat at home, and had forgotten quite how good it is. It is one of the better recipes I have.
I lay no claims to creating this wonderful recipe, however – it is almost verbatim from one of the first Eating Well magazines I read (almost three years ago), and it is fabulous. Also, it is VERY easy. Sure, it takes an hour when you consider all the prep and making something to eat with the chicken, but it is wonderfully worth it.
In this picture, you see a perhaps overly-ambitious meal, with roasted beat and goat cheese salad and glazed parsnips as the side dish. A much easier dinner might involve brown rice (perhaps with cinnamon and raisins) and a simple green salad with a light vinaigrette. I think I’d go that route next time. (I was so hungry and ready to move to the table that I can hardly believe this picutres came out in the rush I was in.)
So, with no more ado, allow me to present:
Chicken in Orange Sauce (Catalan style) – 4 servings
Ingredients:
Instructions:
1. Scrub 1 orange and use a vegetable peeler to remove zest from half of it. Cut the zest into thin strips. Squeeze the oranges to yield 2 cups juice. (You can zest the other oranges as well and keep it stored in the freezer for future use in muffins etc.)
2. Combine sugar and vinegar in a 12-inch skillet. Place over medium heat and cook, uncovered, swirling the pan but not stirring, until the sugar melts and turns a deep amber color, 6 to 8 minutes.
3. Stir in broth, the orange juice and zest. (The caramel may harden but don’t worry – it will liquefy as it heats.) Bring to a boil over medium-high heat and cook until the sauce is dark, glossy and lightly coats a spoon, 30 to 35 minutes. It should be reduced to a little more than 1 cup.
4. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 375F. Coat a large baking dish with cooking spray. Skin the chicken, trim the fat and split at the joint. Rub chicken with oil and season with salt and pepper. Place in the prepared baking dish and bake for 35 minutes.
5. Pour the hot sauce over the chicken and turn to coat well. Bake until the chicken is cooked through, 10 to 15 minutes more. Serve the chicken with sauce and orange zest spooned on top.
Note: If you’re dealing as I was with a whole chicken and not just legs, you might want to prep the chicken before starting the sauce and then stick the chicken in the oven as you set the sauce to boil down. If, however you are an expert chicken prepper, the 6-8 minutes while the caramel forms may be enough for you.
Lastly, serve and enjoy!
I spent the past week (Thursday-Thursday) in CA as the live-in help for my sister and her two 3 1/2 year old twins while her husband is away on business. This was an incredibly busy week and did not involve nearly as much cooking as I had hoped. (I admit to dreams of treating my sister to food she doesn’t have time to cook, but it turns out, when she’s away teaching class, the person at home watches the boys instead of cooking). I did manage an apple crisp, a lentil-rice-cranberry stew and a waldorf salad. But mostly, I was kept busy with these two:
Ethan and Arran, my lovely nephews, saying, “Namaste!” (Ethan’s Full Lotus makes his daddy proud….)
Last night we had guests, and in my excitement to serve a yummy dessert I forgot to take a picture! Alas! My brain has been addled by all my studying for the GRE…I can tell you about geometry and analogies but can’t remember to take a picture of tasty food. So instead, I submit a concept (and recipe) for you.
The most famous fall fruit may well be the apple. But at this point, we can get apples year-round thanks to storage and transportation from places like Chile and New Zealand. This has perhaps removed our sense of apples as a fall fruit. Pears on the other hand are nearly a year-round fruit, ripening over a broad range of months (August to June) depending on variety. Yet I’ve seen a plethora of them of late, linking them in my mind with fall.
Perhaps to express my confused seasonality, or maybe just because it sounded good, I decided to substitute pear for apple in one of my favorite deserts, apple crisp. This works best with a good firm kind of pear (Bartlett, Bosc, or what I used, the small Seckel pear). Being as I am lazy, I left the skin on, and liked the slight texture it added (and probably a deeper taste).
My experiment turned out quite well and I happily submit for your fall enjoyment (or winter or spring) – Spiced Pear Crisp.
Spiced Pear Crisp – 5 large servings, or 6 more reasonable ones
Ingredients:
Filling:
Crisp topping:
Instructions:
1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Chop pears, removing cores, into bite-sized pieces and place in a large mixing bowl.
3. Add other filling ingredients and stir until pears are evenly coated with flour, sugar and spices.
4. Chop walnuts into small bits and mix with other dry ingredients in the crisp topping. Once evenly combined, pour on melted butter and combine with fork until evenly moistened.
5. Spoon pears and any accumulated juices into 10″ pie dish (preferably glass) and sprinkle the crisp topping evenly on top.
6. Set aside until you sit down for dinner.
7. Put crisp in oven as everyone heads to the dinner table; bake for 45 minutes until fragrant and bubbling at the edges. Serve warm!
Could be served with ice cream for an extra decadent treat.
Yesterday there were beautiful pattypan squash at the greenmarket, mostly full-sized (3-4 inches across), but there were a couple cute babies hidden admidst the adults. I was inspired by their lovely yellow smallness to pick up a handful for some sort of dinner, despite the fact that I tend to find summer squash rather boring. I had made some pesto and that, along with some lovely peppers of different colors and gorgeous grape tomatoes, formed a burgeoning dinner idea: fusilli with summer squash, roasted pear tomatoes, tri-color peppers and pesto.
This evening I implemented my squash plan. Water went on to boil, squash was sliced and set to rest with salt to remove some liquid, peppers were chopped, garlic sliced thinly, and pre-made ingredients pulled out of the fridge (pesto and roasted tomatoes).
I put olive oil into a heating pan, dumped the pasta in the water and began an 8 minute countdown to dinner. Of course it turned out slightly longer than that, but not much more. Overall, a decent way to serve squash. And very yummy other bits.
Summer Squash Pesto Pasta – 4 servings
Ingredients:
Instructions:
1. Heat olive oil, add pasta to water and then add squash cut side down to the pan. Allow to cook without stirring until the first side is lightly browned.
2. Flip squash until all pieces have second side face down. Allow to cook briefly until beginning to brown.
3. Add garlic and stir.
4. Add peppers and stir, salting and peppering lightly.
5. Add white wine (will probably splatter) and then pesto. Stir to coat and allow to cook for a minute or two.
6. Remove pasta to strainer, remove veggies to pasta pot, rinse pasta and put in on top of veggies.
7. Add roasted tomatoes and cook down pasta sauce to desire consistency, then dump over pasta.
Serve with the bottle of wine* opened for the sauce, a slice of crusty bread and balsamic vinaigrette drassed salad with fresh grape tomatoes, cucumber and walnuts. Top with a dusting of parmesan.
*Note: my chosen bottle was a Tablas Creek 2005 Vermentino, which it turns out, is a lovely wine. We just received our Fall wine club shipment yesterday (our first!) and it’s fun to try wines that I haven’t necessarily chosen myself. This one is bright with plentiful acid, but not sour. The vintner describes the bouquest as “mineral, with notes of lavendar, pear and lime,” I actually caught a hint of coconut at the very end of the breath in. Taste included lime and green-apple most prominently. Very tasty.
One could hardly be blamed, based on my recent lack of posts, for thinking that I have not been cooking much of late. However, one would be misled! It is merely that I have been too hungry upon dinner completion to pause to photograph my creations. (Also, some of them have been less photogenic than one might desire.) However, my attempt at pita bread turned out quite well, and was willing to smile for the camera.
My pita-making urge was brought on by reading a post by Helen at Beyond Salmon about honey garlic eggplant. There are still lovely eggplants in the greenmarkets, so this was irrisistable. One of her suggestions for serving the grilled eggplant was in pita bread sandwhiches. So, Krissa decided to make her own pita pockts.
I have been baking my own bread (not often enough, I admit) for the past 5 years, and can make a passable spur of the moment flat bread, muffins and scones are no problem, I even make double batches of pizza crust and freeze it for later. But somehow pita has been intimidating. Perhaps I’m afraid it won’t pocket?
Since the acquisition of my pizza stone earlier this year, I’ve been a little braver with this sort of thing, so pita it was. My recipe was drawn from the Joy of Cooking, the place to start for anything you’ve never tried before. I chose a proportion of 2:1 whole wheat to white flour and followed their directions explicitly (I went out and bought a spray bottle so I could mist my pizza stone).
As you saw above, my pitas pocketed! They ballooned up like little bubbles and then slowly deflated. All but the last one that is. I think its ball sat a little too long before making it into a round and then into the oven.
Dinner that evening was honey garlic broiled eggplant with goat cheese, hummus heirloom tomatoes, carrots, red peppers and lettuce. They were rather stuffed pita, but mmmm, did they taste good.
Joy’s Pita recipe – makes 8 pita rounds
Note: In this recipe, you can substitute any amount of whole-wheat flour for white flour, according to your preference, although the dough may require additional water to be soft and pliable. You may also spray th etop of the rolled-out pita rounds with water and sprinkle with sesame seeds before baking.
Combine in a large mixing bowl:
Add:
1. Mix by hand or on low speed for aobut 1 minute to blend all the ingredients. Knead for about 10 minutes until the odugh is smooth, soft and elastic. Add flour or water as needed; though dough should be slightly tacky but not sticky.
2. Transfer the odugh to an oiled bowl and turn it over once to coat. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to rise at room temperature utnil doubled in volume, 1 to 1 1/2 hours.
3. Punch the dough down, divide equally into 8 pieces, and roll the pieces into balls. Cover and let rest for 20 minutes.
4. Preheat the oven to 450F. If you do not have a baking stone, place a baking sheet upside down on an oven rack to serve as a hearth.
5. On a very slightly floured surface, roll out each ball of dough into a thin round, about 8 inches in diameter and a 1/8 inch thick.
6. Spray the stone or baking sheet with a mist of water, wait 30 seconds, then place as many dough rounds as will fit without touching directly on the hearth (2 in my case).
7. Bake until the odugh puffs into a balloon, about 3 minutes, wait 30 seconds, then remove each bread to a rack to cool. If you leave the breads in the oven too long, they will not deflate to flat disks.
I purchased this spinach at the Union Square Greenmarket, I thought, “This is some really good looking spinach.” But I did not realize how truly stunning it was until I was plucking each perfect leaf from its stalk and tossing them into my salad spinner to wash. Such a color. What wonderful texture. So unblemished (and organic!). It was clear I had to share this spinach with the world.
After making my decision to spend entirely too much time in my kitchen with Luis’s camera, I turned this lovely spinach into one of my favorite salads (a variation of one first seen by me at Upper Crust Pizza in San Luis Obispo, CA about 14 years ago): spinach topped with walnuts (usually candied), apples, blue cheese and a raspberry/balsamic vinaigrette. Served of course with crusty bread and wine. Mmmmm, bliss.
Update – 9/21: After the E. coli scare of late, I’m even more happy to purchase my spinach at the local greenmarket.
As I mentioned last post, I have been doing a lot of cooking and canning. Here are the results of my homemakerly adventures. It all started with beautiful tomatoes at the greenmarket. It seemed silly to let summer’s largesse pass me by without putting some of it away for future use. So I picked up 5 lbs. of tomatoes and LOTS of garlic and made some tomato sauce. This went quite well.
I had also seen some tomatillos in the market, and for some reason passed them by. The next day it dawned on my that I should make my own tomatillo salsa. I used it after all for enchilladas. So I eagerly awaited the next greenmarket – except that the vendor wasn’t there on Thursday! So I waited with baited breath for Sunday’s market, and lo! he was there. So, 2 lbs. of tomatillos, some garlic, onions and lots of cilantro later, I had salsa. Slightly more gelatinous than I had intended, but still tasty.
After two successes, I decided to add Puttanesca sauce to my repertoire of canned goods. This was a little more challenging, as I had to decide whether or not to use the anchovies that most recipes called for, and how many olives. I cobbled a recipe together, (using Thai fish sauce instead of anchovies) and away we went. It too worked! So many kitchen successes in a week – what a thrill.
Below are the recipes I ended up using (in some cases altered for future use based on my results). You can also see the full bounty of my canning adventures (minus what we’ve already consumed).
Recipes:
Basic Tomato Sauce – makes 2 quarts
Ingredients:
Instructions:
1. Prep garlic to be pressed, chop onions, wash tomatoes, get wine and vinegar out. Rinse and dry basil.
2. Heat oil in a dutch oven or large soup pot over medium heat. Once hot enough to sizzle well, add garlic and cook, watching constantly and stirring frequently, until fragrant and just beginning to color, 2 to 3 minutes.
3. Add onions and salt, stir to coat, cover and cook, stirring often and adjusting heat as necessary to prevent burning, until soft and turning golden, 10 to 15 minutes. Chop tomatoes while onions cook.
4. Add red pepper flakes to desired heat, stir in tomato paste and oregano and cook, stirring often, until the tomato paste is beginning to brown on the bottom of the pan, 2 to 4 minutes.
5. Pour in wine and vinegar; bring to a simmer, scraping up any browned bits with a spoon. Cook until reduced slightly, about 2 minutes.
6. Add the tomatoes and any juice; return to a simmer, stirring often. Add sugar and stir. Reduce heat to maintain a gentle simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes are mostly broken down, about 25 minutes.
7. Remove from the heat; stir in basil and pepper. Blend with stick blender to desired consistency.
Note: This recipe is based on, and mostly true to, one found in the August/September 2006 issue of Eating Well magazine. I found this be a very satisfactory sauce, though you have to blend very well if you don’t like a chunky sauce (which I do).
Cooked Tomatillo Salsa – makes 5 to 6 cups
Ingredients:
Instructions:
1. Heat oil over medium-high heat until garlic will sizzle well. Add garlic and jalapeno, stir for 30 seconds until fragrant. Add onion and poblano, stir, then salt and cumin. Cook stirring until slightly soft, 3-5 minutes.
2. Add tomatillos and cook until they break down, 10 to 20 minutes.
3. Remove from heat, add cilantro and blend with stick blender.
4. Add lime juice and stir. If consistency is too thick, add broth to desired liquidity. (If canning, return to heat until just bubbling, the put into jars.)
Note: This recipe came from a mix of several online recipes and my own thoughts. Most tomatillo salsa recipes are not cooked this long – I only did so because I wanted to can it. If you’re not intending to store it, try roasting the tomatillos and onions, then blending all ingredients and serving fresh.
Puttanesca Sauce – makes 5 cups
Ingredients:
Instructions:
1. Prep garlic to be pressed, chop onions and wash and chop tomatoes.
2. Heat oil in a dutch oven or large soup pot over medium heat. Once hot enough to sizzle well, add garlic and cook, watching constantly and stirring frequently, until fragrant and just beginning to color, 2 to 3 minutes.
3. Add onions and salt, stir to coat, cover and cook, stirring often and adjusting heat as necessary to prevent burning, until soft and turning golden, 10 to 15 minutes.
4. Add red pepper flakes to desired heat, stir in tomato paste and oregano and cook, stirring often, until the tomato paste is beginning to brown on the bottom of the pan, 2 to 4 minutes.
5. Add olives, capers and fish sauce, cook stirring for 2 minutes.
6. Add the tomatoes and any juice; return to a simmer, stirring often. Reduce heat to maintain a gentle simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes are mostly broken down, about 25 minutes.
7. Remove from the heat; add pepper to desired flavor. Blend with stick blender to desired consistency.
Note: I cobbled this recipe together from several on-line sources, the basic tomato sauce and my own intuition and taste. It tasted good when I canned it, but I haven’t tried it on pasta yet. We’ll see how that goes.
