The Kitchen Table

What We Ate: brisket, couscous, chard, mushrooms

Update: This overly bright shot is mine. Thanks! backyard and iPhone.

 

Bama will eat most anything you give her, or at least try it. There are few absolutes: sausages, hot dogs are on her no list. I'm okay with that.

I must have memory block about her eating habits at one -year, or a steadfast refusal to be more accommodating to Rabbit. We all eat the same thing, but this means that he doesn't always get greens as he should because they aren't workable for someone who has five and a half teeth, none of which are molars.

I paired this couscous dish from The Kitchn (minus the chili pepper flakes) with a brisket we made the night before. I say we because Mister pulled out Suzanne Goin's Sunday Supper at Lucques for the brisket recipe. I did the browning and vegetables, leaving him to dump chicken stock (because I don't have beef stock on hand, shameful!) and stout over the meat and toss the whole thing in the oven. What should have been easy suddenly was not because he had to defrost the stock. Oops! Where was I? Playing D&D, people. Mama has a life! ;)

The grown-ups thought the dinner was delicious. The juice from the brisket worked well with the chard and couscous. I'd planned on adding mushrooms, but ran out of time before getting the smalls outside to eat in the garden. The brisket came from good ol' Tamarack out of Vermont. It was only a pound or so, which is really too small for a brisket. The meat was tender and delicious, but it's a silly size considering all the time you spend on it. Five or six pounds makes more sense because you have leftovers. Sandwiches, another dinner. This lot left me with a puddle of couscous and a sliver of meat and some dessicated carrots. Yum, but sad.

The smalls, on the other hand, were overjoyed with eating outside again and having spent the last 30 minutes mucking about in the dirt so they weren't as keen on the whole sitting and actually eating thing. Rabbit did his usual snack and spit (he rolls the food out of his mouth with his tongue. He thinks it's charming), while Bama ate the brisket and carrots, smearing dark brown tracks across her face. They played with the napkins for a while, I ate while enjoying them. It was nice even if it didn't turn out quite as I'd hoped. They both hated the chard. Who can blame them? It's tough and unfun. She loves kale, and once he has molars, I'm sure the whole leafy texture issue will evaporate.

Let's get back to the other matter at hand: What was I feeding Bama at 14 months? She had the same number of teeth, give or take, at this point. Didn't she? 

 

Note: Rabbit's not starving nor is he missing vitamins. His diet is fine, thanks. They both eat sardines, mac & cheese, peas, and mango, among other things. He likes bananas, she thinks she likes bananas. They love seaweed. We're good.

It's Official: favorite chocolate chip cookie

via instagr.am

I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies today. The recipe is Jim Lahey's (Sullivan Street Baking) via Bon Appetit. The gossip around town is that Lahey is a nutter, but he's a nutter who can bake some decent loaves of bread and offers up these cookies.

In truth, I'm not much of a cookie eater. Mister is known for his chocolate chip cookies. They contain secret spices (we gave out the recipe and a packet of spices as our wedding gift). When I told one of his best friends, at our first meeting, I wasn't crazy about hte cookies, she looked like he might have to cut things short with me. We've mended the cookie fence, she and I, though I still don't love the spice cookies, and I prefer dough to the finished product.

Until today. I thoght I had my cookie recipe, A Friend to Knit With's adaptation of the Tollhouse recipe. She uses bread flour and they are fantastic.

But I can't stop eating these Lahey cookies. Bama hasn't had one and Mister flew out to Califonria today. It's must me. And this pile o' cookies I can't leave alone. I've eaten four. Maybe that doesn't seem like a lot to those of you who are cookie monsters, but it's insane for me. 

They are crispy round the edges and soft in the middle. Clouds of butter with a few chips for good fortune. My belly can't fit in the kitchen with the rest of me anymore.

It's not like it hasn't been a busy day. Mister flew off, it's daylight savings (who the hell thought it was a good idea, really??). So after a weird morning nap, and absurdly long afternoon nap, the smalls were out back gardening while I finished up dinner. I cooked like crazy today, starting with buttermilk-buckwheat waffles. Cookies, egg muffins (mini- soufflés), soba noodle yum.

I've got a sink full of dishes to wash and a dozen cookies to avoid.     

Plenty of Good Stuff in Plenty

 

via www.bonappetit.com

 

I was invited to join the Ladies' Cookbook Club which is exactly what it sounds like. A cookbook club for women. It's quite a group. The founder, which sounds so formal and stuffy, which she isn't, is a food editor. Attendees included my friend @sarahm, one of the founders of a recently defunct freshly prepped meal delivery company, a woman who works once a week for one of the farmers at her local Green Market (genius, I was thinking it would be a smart gig and per her, it is!), a well-networked techie. The women are, for the most part, from an intersection of food and technology. (Oh, and there were plenty of fantastic necklaces to be had!)

The rules: pick a cookbook, pick a recipe. Each person selects one recipe to prepare, enough for 8-10 people. With 20 attendees, that's a lot of food! 

 

The inaugural book was Plenty from U.K. chef-owner Yotam Ottolenghi. He is also the author of the new vegetarian column in the Guardian, despite his not being vegetarian. 

Ottolenghi's recipes are ingredient-rich. Laundry lists of herbs, some possibly unfamiliar ingredients such as harissa or preserved lemons. I selected mushrooms with herbed polenta which called for four different fresh herbs and two tablespoons of truffle oil. Despite the lengthy chopping queue, it was easy to assemble and tasted fantastic. My two changes to the recipe would be minimal: more mushrooms (it calls for four cups, I used five and would advocate for six) and less oil (2T per batch of mushrooms was too much; 2T of truffle oil seemed overkill though it smelled delicious and made my cab ride delightful). He's not big on salt which is not a problem in this house, but several people wanted more salt.

If you can get over your worries about the ingredient roster, you'll be fine. I sipped tea and listened to craftlit's Dracula** while prepping. I did, in fact, prepare everything -- mise en place! -- and found it incredibly helpful. 

My second dish, the Ultimate Winter Couscous, was less successful with the smalls. It came out too spicy;  the rcipe calls for two tablespoons of harissa stirred in at the end. I might use only one or omit it altogether. The vegetables weren't soft enough; my own fault, in the rush to dinner I didn't check carefully enough.

On the other hand, it was the best couscous I've had and I don't like couscous. But, I used the vegetable broth I'd make on Sunday per Mark Bittman's directions in How to Cook Everythign Vegetarian. I browned my vegetables, included mushrooms, and tossed in soy sauce at the end. Vegetable stock is about as intersting as white bread to me, but this was rich and wonderful and showed well in both the polenta and the couscous. I'll do my stock this way always. 

via www.bonappetit.com

Despite the imperfections in execution, I'd make this again because it is easy, forgiving, and flexible as many of the recipes in the book seem to be.

Others on our list (Bama helped me choose):

• Green couscous
• mushroom ragout with poached duck egg
• green pancakes with lime butter
• saffron cauliflower
• lentils with broiled eggplant
• tomato party
• swiss chard, chickpea, and tamarind stew
• gado-gado
• green lentils, asparagus, and watercress
• black bean paste and quesadillas
• soba noodles with eggplant and mango
• caramelized fennel with goat cheese
• Tamara's ratatouille

I'll stop there, but you get the picture. The recipes are not perfect. There have been several criticisms of portions in the ingredient list (the spicy Moroccan carrot salad calls for 2.5 cups of cilantro leaves which seemed overkill to the woman who made it. I thought it would be okay if they were chopped a bit more, but I'm a cilantro nut as it seems Ottolenghi is, as well); not enough salt; odd combinations. But with the nearly 20 dishes on the table representing about a third of the book (okay, I didn't count so maybe 1/4?) there wasn't one that I didn't enjoy. Even the fried limas.

**craftlit is a fabulous podcast. a chapter a week of a book, with readers for the characters. part play, part audiobook, all swell. 

Happy with Hungry?

 

via www.innocentdrinks.co.uk

Mister found Hungry? for me a few months ago. I've cooked many recipes from it, including this chicken, bacon, and leek pie. I haven't had one failure.
Make adjustments for US measurements (we have a scale that weighs kg or oz), and Anglophile away.
It's chock full of vegetables, and in the ingredients, the authors note whether it counts towards or for your five a day.

Recipes we've tried:

• Green Mac n Cheese. The smalls are eating it tonight for dinner. Right now. They love it. It includes cubes of roasted butternut squash, whirled tomatoes and basil, and a green crust of broccoli/basil/bread crumbs on top.
• Toad in the Hole. I used sweet Italian sausages from Tamarack Hollow Farm, purchased at the Union Square Green Market. So good. They ate it all.
• Smoothies. Please, mama, make smoothies.
• Bright mash.
• Peas. Yes, a new way for cooking peas. I should have known. 
• Homemade beans on toast
• Spag (their term)
• Chop chop salad

The book includes a section of down and dirty recipes for one vegetable sides. Like carrots, beans, peas. It's been handy as a way to expand beyond the blanche, the sautè. 

via www.innocentdrinks.co.uk

It is not an easy book to get hold of, but I think it's worth the search if you're looking for another handy standard of recipes that are pleasers to tastebuds, time, and budgets.

A Little Love at Dinner

Happy Valentine's Day! Rabbit, Bama, and I had one of those exceptionally great days. He took a nap, we worked on her spring skirts. We all went to the library for story-time and play. We stopped at Amy's Bread for Valentine's Day cookies. 

 

 

 

Then Pino's for steaks. We haven't had steak in aeons. We had string beans (blanched, tossed in hot olive/sesame oils with almonds) and risotto. I tweaked the Farro and Millet Risotto from 101cookbooks ... 

On the recipe front, I'm tacking on a recipe for a Farro & Millet Risotto I've been making quite a bit lately as we try to close the door on winter this year - the weather hasn't entirely cooperated. You can use whatever fresh or roasted vegetables you like - asparagus, peas, and herbs are great this time of year. But I was making it with roasted delicata or other little squashes until recently.

            via www.101cookbooks.com

 ... adding dried porcini mushrooms and using barley instead of farro. Easy to forget that barley won't get creamy smooth like arborio rice. The grain's toothiness was just right with the steak (definitely corn-fed, so it's something we do maybe once a year).

No matter. Bama and Rabbit gobbled it down. Win number two this week. We are still working off left-overs from the kale pasta (also 101cookbooks). That recipe was also well-received, especially by Rabbit who can't get enough of it. But, it's a little bland, especially when low on salt as most of my meals for us/them are. I added sweet Italian sausage from Tamarack Hollow Farm (so good, sweet, fennel, fresh tasting), and that was also a hit with Rabbit. Bama isn't a (consistent) fan of sausage. There are worse things in life than a girl who loves to eat most anything except hot dogs, sausages, chicken fingers. And I really mean most anything.

We didn't need it, but I couldn't help but pick up a loaf of the heart-shaped black sesame semolina at Amy's. 

 

Happy Valentine's to all. 

B's, Baking, Blueberries

Mister's college (high school?) friend, Nora, came to visit last year, leaving behind a Mr. Potato Head who's since been joined by the Missus (thanks, Uncle Nellie!). She blogs over at Nonlinear Girl but is, of late, on an instagr.am kick. 

Nora started a #365 #alphabet project at the beginning of the year. A photo a day following hte alphabet. Which means 14 photos of A, B, C items until the year is over. I jumped on the train immediately. Some photos have been better received than others, which isn't surprising.

Some are better planned, like the blue whale at the American Museum of Natural History. 

And while I've been talking about baking scones for a week or so, because I'm baking more regularly overall, this was more of a happy accident. 

B/4: baking (she helped mix the flours and pat the dough out into shape, then cut the scones from the dough)

 

B/5: blueberry scones

[The recipe is from Breakfast, Lunch, Tea: The Many Little Meals of the Rose Bakery. The bakery is in Paris. I like the sipmlicity of many of the recipes, including the scones. I modified this one, which asks for 3 1/2 cups of all purpose flour plus a handful of another flour -- whole wheat or cornmeal. I used 1/2 cup of buckwheat, 1/2 cup of barley flours, 2 1/2 cup AP, and handfuls (really, about 1/2 cup) of oat flour. We don't have any fresh blueberries on hand, so I used frozen. We bathed them in flour to help with sticking. The scones are fabulous.]

Oh My, Apple Pie! (cookies)

I love pie. I love it. However, I do not love or even like apple pie a little bit. I'd like to, but I don't. 

But, when I saw this recipe for Apple Pie Cookies, how could I resist? I had a bowl full of apples and pears fresh from the green market. I could not resist.

One little pie fits tidily into the palm of even a smallish hand like mine (or Mister's, which is the same size). 

Smitten Kitchen says the recipe makes 24-30 pies, though she's unsure of the actual number because they ate them as soon as they popped out of the oven. My adjustment was to add pear. I put in a cinnamon-sugar-nutmeg dipped slice of apple with a slice or two of pear on top. Oh yeah. 

I made about 15 pies. I may roll the dough thinner next time and see how that works out.

Food photos taken with an iPhone in the ick light of a yellowy kitchen, not so good. Sigh.

Apples and Pears: New York Wins

Here's the truth of it: Mister and I complain about a few odds and ends regarding New York. He hates the coffee, I have yet to find a hamburger that makes my heart sing. 

But pears and apples? How can one not be excited to see sixteen varieties at a stand and know that most of them will be delicious. And when they aren't so great for eating straight, will bubble down in some mighty fine applesauce, which is our new house staple.

This week's selection includes Macouns, something crisps, something else, a few of the others, and two kinds of pears. The stand charges $2/lb for most, $3/lb for some. I stay away from those. ;) At the top, a bag of pears for $2. Why, I asked the first time I bought a $2 bag? Why not? they answered.

My plan for these beauties is a lot of snacking, some more apple-pear sauce, and a ginger cake, this time with some sliced pears mixed in.

I clicked through four pages of "kitchen" posts to get to this which includes a whisper mention of the ginger cake recipe I use. Way back in 2008, I developed a mighty ginger cake crush after having crushingly expensive slices of moist, sweet, spicy ginger cake from Crixa Cakes (oh, how I miss you, sweet little Hungarian-inspired bakery that was perfect for a cup of tea and slice of cake on a rainy day). While I liked the ambiance, I didn't like paying $3.95 for a slice and then another $1 for whipped cream, no matter how good.

In going back through the kitchen pages, I learned a few things. First, holy crap I was cooking a lot of really good looking stuff. What happened? Now, I'm happy if I crank out a salt free shepherd's pie, which was fantastic, but come on. Sloppy stuff on a puddle of gooey stuff and call it a day = shepherd's pie. Also, I miss lemons. Goodness. New York wins for apples, and maybe even carrots. But lemons? Go home, farmers, go home. Lemon curd from my own Meyer lemon tree, my heart aches for thee. 

But, while I miss lemons, I could cry I miss them that much, and canning, and the smell of the Pacific, fall apples and pears make me stupidly happy. Rabbit will eat a pear by himself, starting with the butt end of it. Bama eats at least one apple a day. That's worth a lot. 

 

Another Use for All Those Bananas

Don't get me wrong, I love banana bread. Maybe I like banana bread, a lot. And, now that I have a recipe (from Molly Wizenberg's A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table ) that I've tweaked on the flour end, it's my go-to.

But I like muffins and I like variety. Enter the banana cereal muffin from Good to the Grain: Baking with Whole-Grain Flours. It took only minutes to set up, made easier by having leftover breakfast cereal (the multigrain blend from Whole Foods bins) on hand. They were moist, needed a little more banana kick, and had a nice texture. 

 

I haven't baked much else from the book, a few things, and I like it. Do not be fooled. She uses AP flour in almost all of the recipes, she says for consistency, but lots of substitutions and a decent selection of recipes per flour type. I love that she includes rye, quinoa, and amaranth flour. I have become a barley fan after using her scone recipe. It's incredibly easy, and the barley flour gives the scones a nice creamy texture. 

Tofu, I Love You!

We eat a fair bit of tofu around here. Considering we're happy and vigorous meat eaters, I'd say more than a fair bit. I've been trying to have at least one meal a week be vegetarian. My go-to site is 101cookbooks. I can enter in a vegetable and Bam! up comes a recipe that's almost guaranteed to work. I use her book, Super Natural Cooking, regularly, too.

We had a lot of beautiful green things in the fridge, so, a farro (maybe it was barley) base with asparagus, peas, sugar snap peas, broccoli, and ... what was it? kale? in a ginger peanut sauce. Snap! We ate it up, yum! 

 

 

Also from Super Natural Cooking, this delicious and absurdly easy bowl of coconut curry udon with tofu and whatever you feel like adding. Mister is anti-coconut which means it's a fast and fantastic lunch for Bama and me.

Alright, there's no tofu in this chicken pot pie, but I had to include it. We have a copy of Thomas Keller's beautiful Ad Hoc at Home. It's labor intensive cooking but sakes alive, the results are incroyable! 

Flaky crust, savory inside. I subbed 1/2 cup of all-purpose flour with amaranth flour. Winner, winner chicken dinner! Seriously, though, Ad Hoc recipes are not for the faint of heart nor the short on time.

Many of the dishes could be, and should be, split over a couple of days. For example, next time:

Day one - Pie crust, make and chill (standard); parboil the vegetables separately (integrity of flavor, it worked, but man!). 
Day two - assemble, bake, and make love to the pie.