Upside-Down Pear

Tonight, Nat is off playing bocce, so it was time for dinner for one. He doesn’t like broccoli, and we had a head of it in our farm box. I can’t eat a whole head all at once, so this was meal #2 from it, just for me:

• about 2 handfuls broccoli florets
• 1 thumb-size piece of ginger
• 1 nice fresh scallion
• sun-dried tomatoes (not oil-packed)
• soy sauce
• chili sauce (I use “rooster” sauce - the Hoy Fong brand Sriracha sauce)
• 1 lime wedge
• honey
• black pepper
• peanut oil

Cut the ginger in half and keep half for some other recipe. Peel the remaining half and cut into matchsticks. Slice the white and green parts of the scallion into thin slices on the bias.

Heat the peanut oil over medium-high heat. Stir-fry broccoli, ginger, and scallion until the broccoli is bright green and the ginger soft.

Meanwhile, chop the sun-dried tomatoes and put in a bowl. When the stir fry is done, add to the bowl. Dress with soy sauce, honey, rooster sauce, the juice from the lime wedge, and a little black pepper. Toss. Eat.

Makes about 1/2 of a large cereal bowlful.

This would be delicious with tofu, chicken, or shrimp in it as well; it would also multiply well for more people. It took me about 5 minutes, start to finish. Yum!

What to do with two smallish lamb shanks and two slightly-aged carrots? Why, make the smallest stew ever — just two servings.

• 2 small lamb shanks, meat cut from the bone & cubed (about 2 handfuls meat)
• 2 carrots, chopped
• 3 shallots, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 cup red wine
• 1 cup water
• extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 bay leaves
• salt, black pepper, and parsley to taste

Sautee the shallots and garlic in the olive oil until translucent. Add the carrots. Add the lamb and brown well all over. Pour in the wine and water, add the bay leaves. Simmer over low heat until most of the liquid is gone and the lamb is tender (about 2-3 hours). Add salt, pepper, & parsley to taste.

Serve over rice or noodles, or with good crusty bread.

In retrospect, I should’ve put the shank bones in to cook, for the gelatin. Next time!

My fascination with fried eggs should come as no surprise. While looking for something entirely different in my copy of Cradle of Flavor, I found a recipe for Telur Mata Sapi Bumbu — Indonesian Fried Eggs. These eggs are fried in hot oil, then topped with potent aromatics: garlic, shallots, chiles, and ginger.

I aim to try them soon. Until then, here’s the recipe, to tide you over:

• 3 tbsp peanut oil
• 3 eggs
• kosher salt
• 3 cloves garlic, sliced thin
• 2 shallots, sliced thin
• 2-3 fresh chiles (the original recipe calls for Hollands, Fresnos, or cayennes; I don’t see why jalapenos won’t suit just as well
• 1 thumb-sized piece fresh ginger, peeled and cut into matchsticks
• 1 tsp palm, cider, or rice vinegar

Heat the oil in a skillet over medium heat. When hot, crack an egg into it (when I make eggs in hot oil, I crack the eggs into small bowls and then tip them in from the bowls — less chance of splatter or of shell ending up in the oil). Season the top of the egg with salt. When the white turns brown & crispy at the edges, flip gently and cook until the yolk is just set (about 1 min).

Remove fried egg with slotted spatula, set aside, and fry remaining eggs in same manner. (I would probably use a little more oil and a larger skillet and cook all the eggs at once.)

Let the oil cool slightly, then place over medium-low heat. Add the aromatics and stir until garlic and onions are just translucent. Remove aromatics with slotted spatula and place over eggs.

The book suggests serving these with rice or with a number of other recipes found in the book. It also says they work well with a nice salad & crusty bread, or, if you like a spicy breakfast, as breakfast.

Me? I like a spicy breakfast — but I’m currently out of hot peppers. I shall have to remedy that as soon as possible.

Last night, I made broiled head-on chili shrimp, Chinese noodles, and vegetable stir-fry for dinner. The stir-fry was simple — just onions, bok choy, oyster mushrooms, and some seasonings — but delicious. We had noodles and some stir-fry left over, and it occurred to me that it might make a good breakfast, paired with an egg somehow.

Scramble the egg and go frittata-style? Scramble it and fry up like pad thai? Egg on the side? Egg over top?

I settled on a variant of the Greek fried egg: 1/4 c. olive oil in my big skillet, and an egg for each of us in that. It seemed to me that the crisp brown edges and silky-smooth middles of these eggs would compliment the leftovers well.

As for the leftovers themselves, I warmed them in the microwave, then added them to a pan where I’d sauteed some extra onion in chili oil, and tossed to coat. Once they were thoroughly warmed, I divided them into two shallow bowls, popped the fried eggs on top, and dressed them with a sprinkle of soy sauce and a dash of chili oil.

They were hot and crisp and fresh-tasting, with just enough spice to be interesting.

Nat rated it “A+! Would eat again!” — and that’s good enough for me.

There are a million variants of warm spinach dip floating around, but when I was looking for one earlier today, none of them suited what I had in the house. So I made one up.

• about 1/2 cup of grated parmesan cheese
• a big spoonful of sour cream, maybe 1/4 - 1/3 cup or so
• a few tbsp mayonnaise
• some onion, minced
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• maybe a tsp of the Penzey’s Chip & Dip seasoning a friend got me
• maybe a tsp of the Penzey’s Fox Point seasoning the same friend got me
• about 1/2 cup of frozen, thawed, drained, squeezed dry spinach

Mix everything together and put in small oven-proof casserole. This ends up making a bit less than 2 cups of dip, so I put it into my 14 oz Le Creuset Petite Pear (a gift from the same friend who gave me the Chip & Dip and Fox Point…hm).

Bake at 350F for ~45 min, until nice & hot. Serve with crudite.

I have long had a fondness for the small dishes of many cuisines. I cut my teeth — almost literally –on the American bar & grill appetizers, which to this day I enjoy as meals on their own. Show me a tapas restaurant and I’m there, with bells on. And then there are mezethes, more commonly known in the US by the name of the singular, meze. Just out of college, already a fan of the “meze platter” or “mezza platter” from various Greek and Middle Eastern restaurants around me, I found a few brands of jarred mezethes — “eggplant dip”, “roasted red pepper meze”, “grilled vegetable appetizer”, and so on.

Desperate to use up the bounty of my garden and farm box, I turned to mezethes (or their close relations). A friend had recently made Ina Garten’s Roasted Eggplant Spread, and I had fond memories of roasted red pepper meze, so I decided that’s what I’d make (only I didn’t have red peppers. A small detail). It’s hard to roast in the summertime when you have no air conditioning, but this morning was cool and I was working from home, so could make this in-between projects.

I gathered up all the peppers I had — many! of several varieties, ranging from hot to sweet — and roasted them in a 450F oven for about 20 minutes, turning them after 10 minutes. I put the veggies for the Garten recipe into the oven at that 10 minute mark, then turned it down to 400 for another 20 minutes after the peppers came out.

Meanwhile, I cooked chopped fresh tomatoes and diced onions on the stove until the tomatoes broke down, then added minced garlic. This would be the base of the pepper meze.

When the peppers came out, I set three aside for the Garten recipe — it calls for two red bell peppers, and red bells are pretty large. I figured three of my peppers would be about right; I used one small bell pepper and two of a slightly spicy mystery variety (similar to Hungarian Wax peppers) that came out of my garden.

The rest I peeled, seeded, and chopped. I added them to the pan with the meze base, spooned in a little canned crushed tomato for extra tomato goodness, splashed in maybe a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar, and shoved it all over a low burner for about half an hour.

I then peeled, seeded, and chopped the peppers for the Garten recipe and put them, the roasted eggplant, and some more canned crushed tomatoes (I don’t keep tomato paste around) into my food processor.

Roasted Pepper Meze

• mixed hot & sweet peppers, about 2lbs
• 2-3 medium/large tomatoes (flavorful meaty tomatoes preferred!)
• 1/2 large white onion
• 4 cloves garlic
• extra-virgin olive oil
• a few big spoons of canned crushed tomatoes (or else maybe a small spoon of tomato paste, or some spaghetti sauce if that’s what you have around, but not ketchup because that would taste funny)
• balsamic vinegar
• salt (I use kosher salt) and pepper

Wash peppers and roast, whole, in 450F oven for 20 minutes, turning once. (Peppers should be browned or blackened on the outside.)

While the peppers are roasting, chop tomatoes and squeeze out the gooey bits. Put them in a hot pan with a few tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil and some kosher salt. Chop the onions and add them to the pan, as well. Let cook over low heat until the tomatoes are soft and have broken down a bit (like they are trying to be sauce). Mince the garlic and toss it in the pan at this stage, and turn off the heat.

By now the peppers should be out of the oven. Let them cool down until you can easily handle them. Peel them & remove the seeds (you should be able to just pull off the skins and rip open the pepper and slide the seeds out. Very messy and a bit slimy, but easy). Chop them up and toss them into the pan, along with the canned crushed tomatoes and a splash of balsamic vinegar.

Cook over low heat for about 30 minutes. Taste & adjust salt & pepper until it’s how you like it!

Serve on toast, crackers, pita, eggs….

We ate both of these with toast and pieces of cheese for dinner. They’re like concentrated late summer, hot and smoky-sweet.

Lately, I’ve had two baking failures. One: I made this zucchini bread recipe. It came out VERY strangely indeed, and tasted strongly of baking soda. Two: I made rhubarb crumble and forgot to turn the timer on, so it burned up dreadfully. I am guessing that is the last rhubarb of the season, too — and one of my favorite easy recipes.

Rhubarb Crumble Pie

• 1 bunch rhubarb
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup lightly packed brown sugar
• 4 oz. (1/2 stick) butter
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• pinch salt

Preheat the oven to 400°F.

Remove any leaves from rhubarb. Wash & cut into 1-inch chunks, and place in a 9″ or 10″ pie pan.

Mix together the flour, sugars, and salt. Melt the butter and stir into the flour/sugar mixture until you get a big crumbly mess.

Cover the rhubarb with the crumble mixture. Bake for 35 minutes, or until the top is brown & crisp and the juices all bubbly.

Serve warm or cold! Keeps a bit over a week, covered, in the fridge.

Now, onto the Greek fried eggs. This morning, I minced a clove of garlic and divided it into our two bowls; I kept it pushed to the side so that I could put the egg next to it & the hot oil would pour directly onto it and sizzle it up.

This resulted in a lovely, garlic-infused breakfast. Highly recommended!

A while ago, someone — either my husband or my mother-in-law — gave me a copy of The Olive and the Caper: Adventures in Greek Cooking, by Susanna Hoffman. I haven’t made a lot from it, but everything I’ve made has been delicious. (The moussaka recipe is meltingly good, and freezes very well.)

The dish I make the most often is the Greek fried egg. Hoffman says that fried eggs are not so much a breakfast food in Greece, though they are occasionally served to tourists. The fried egg method she outlines is different and surprising, but produces an egg like nothing I’ve ever tasted: crispy-brown on the bottom, tender on top, olive-scented and amazing.

Greek Fried Egg

• 1/4 cup good extra-virgin olive oil (yes, really)
• 1 large or extra-large egg
• 1 piece good bread (optional)
• a few kalamata or spicy green olives (optional)

Heat the olive oil in a small, heavy skillet until drops of water sizzle off immediately. Break the egg into a small bowl (so you don’t have to worry about picking shell out of hot oil!) and then tip it gently into the oil. After about 20 seconds, use a spatula to dislodge the egg from the bottom of the pan and push it to the side; spoon hot oil over the top of the egg repeatedly, staying well back so as not to get splashed!

Timing: about 1 min. 15 sec. total cooking time for your yolk to be just at the edge of gelatinous; about 2 min. for it to be jelly-solid; about 3 min. for it to be burned! (Note: 3 min. not really recommended.)

Lift the egg out of the hot oil and put it in a shallow bowl, like a soup plate. Pour the rest of the oil over top of it, let sit a few minutes to cool, and eat with bread and/or olives. Soak up the oil! It’s delicious, and good for you.

Hoffman says these can be eaten at room temperature as well as warm, but I can’t imagine having the self-control to just let them sit there that long!

You could probably also put garlic into this recipe — I’d put it in the bowl before pouring the hot oil over, so it doesn’t burn — but I haven’t tried it. If you do, let me know how it works out!

I’ve been accused in the past of having too much weird food lying about my kitchen. I don’t, really; mostly it’s normal foods that I happen to keep around regularly, while most folks buy them especially for particular recipes. While this has advantages, such as my “there’s nothing in the house” meals being rather less “nothing in the house”-like, it has disadvantages, such as realizing that you have a collection of oddments around that need to be combined into a meal, and soon, or they’ll go off.

Last night, for example, I had some defrosted chorizo sausages, five bananas just past perfect, and two jalapenos that were threatening to get fuzzy around the tops. I thought about this for a bit, and figured - well, I’ve had Peruvian cooking, and other South American cooking, and they use a lot of chorizo and a lot of bananas, so there has to be something out there with both….

Google found me an Ecuadorian recipe for bean & banana dip, and I used that as my starting point.

Chorizo Banana Dip

• 2 chorizo sausages, skinned and chopped, or 1/2 lb ground beef or pork, seasoned with 1 1/2 tsp chili powder [1]
• 1/2 medium white onion, finely chopped
• 2 green onions, chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1-2 jalapenos, seeded and minced
• 1/2 cup crushed tomatoes
• 2 cups cooked kidney beans or 1 can kidney beans, slightly mashed [2]
• 4 bananas, ripe but firm
• 1 tbsp water, if needed
• tortilla chips [3]
• sour cream

  1. Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Brown the chorizo, stirring occasionally.

  2. Add onion & the pale/white parts of the green onions and cook until onion is soft and translucent, stirring occasionally.

  3. Reduce heat to medium and add the garlic, jalapenos, and crushed tomatoes. Mix well and cook for a few minutes, stirring occasionally.

  4. Mash beans and bananas together in a large bowl. Add water if needed to make a thick, dip-like consistency.

  5. Add bean and banana mixture to skillet and mix well.

  6. When everything is mixed up and heated through, scoop into a bowl and top with the darker green parts of the green onion.

  7. Serve warm with tortilla chips and sour cream.

  [1] Mild Italian sausage? Was the original recipe kidding me?
  [2] The liquid in canned beans makes me ill, so I always rinse it all off. I wasn’t about to reserve some of it like the original recipe asked for.
  [3] Some brands are way too salty for me. Herr’s chips have 30mg sodium less per serving than Tostito’s, for the same serving size.

This recipe makes quite a lot of dip - about 4 cups. We ate some of the leftovers this morning, in tortillas with scrambled eggs and sour cream.

On Sundays, Nat and I often sleep in, then fix ourselves a nice brunch. Our brunches cover a wide range - from crepes to brik to muffins - and are sometimes large, and sometimes small.

Today’s was a true brunch meal - large enough to cover both breakfast and lunch. To gear ourselves up for the task of cooking, Nat made Cafe de Olla, and then we settled down to the serious business of tuna cakes.

Tuna Cakes with Eggs

This recipe is for two people, for a large brunch. It would also easily serve 4 as a small brunch.

• 2 cans chunk light tuna in water, drained (or about 340 g. tuna, cooked & flaked)
• 1/2 medium red onion, chopped fine
• a couple handfuls breadcrumbs
• a handful of fresh parsley, chopped fine (or about 1 tsp dried parsley)
• 5 eggs
• 1 heaping tablespoon Dijon mustard
• 1 tablespoon mayonnaise
• about 10 grinds black pepper (er, about a tsp?)
• 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
• salt (if your canned tuna has salt, you can omit this; ours is unsalted)

Mix together all of the ingredients except the eggs, then add one egg to the mix, stir in, and form mix into flat cakes. Pan-fry cakes in butter or olive oil until nicely browned on both sides. At the same time, make the remaining 4 eggs how you like ‘em (Nat had his poached; I had mine fried hard).

Serve tuna cakes topped with the eggs and whatever condiments you desire (we put sour cream on ours).

Now, if I can only work up the will to move the rest of the day….

One of the best things about marrying into the family I married into is the vast store of new family recipes to investigate. My mother-in-law is happy to share recipes with me — one of my Christmas gifts one year was her mother’s old bescribbled and note-bookmarked cookbook, including the handwritten family recipe for ravioli — and I enjoy cooking with her when we visit. (The time she got busy during dinner prep and said “Laura, can you make bechamel?” and I said “Sure, about how much?” and she blinked, not quite believing that of course I could make bechamel, that it wasn’t something she had to explain, is a memorable one.)

Among the recipes I’ve nicked from her are a modification to the Near East brand of pilaf that she calls “boat rice”, fried whitefish with an almond-lemon sauce (which I cannot quite get right, but it’s getting there), Portuguese kale soup, and now panzanella: bread salad.

I have all these tomatoes, see, and the two main ingredients for panzanella are cubes of stale bread and coarsely chopped tomatoes.

She gave me both her mother’s old-school recipe, very simple and sour, and then her own variation, a neo-classical Italian concoction of tomatoes and bread and pesto, balsamic vinegar and olive oil, various optional add-ins. I opted for the version she makes when we visit, with fresh sweet onion, pesto with basil from my garden, and about 12 small ripe tomatoes that spilled from the vine into my hands.

My husband tells me that making panzanella is Secret Convert You To An Italian Test #18. I think I love kielbasa too well to ever be Italian, but surely “by marriage” is close enough.

The theme of today’s Is My Blog Burning is the color orange.

What is more orange than the eponymous fruit?

I had some small Valencia oranges in my fruit bowl, left over from the lunches we pack for work. They’d been around for a few weeks and looked hard and dry, but inside they were brimming with intense, sweet juice. The zest and juice were shockingly orange, so orange that the honey I mixed them with seemed pale, so orange that the soy sauce I added next turned amber.

The orange scent drifted out of the kitchen into the living room and lingered.

I brushed the mixture on a duck and popped it into the oven.

Waited. Took it out and brushed it again. Waited. Took it out and brushed it one final time. Waited.

Took it out and let it rest, then used my kitchen shears to quarter it.

I reduced the remaining mixture to a lovely syrupy consistency, and served it all up with snow peas and fried rice. And the living room still smells of orange…darkened now, roasted and deep.

As near as I can tell, I was 20 or 21 before I had pancetta, in a salad at Casbah. If I had it before, it made no impression on me - but I suspect I hadn’t, since it didn’t feature in my native cuisine, and it tends to stick to more upscale restaurants than my poor student self usually frequented.

For all that I loved its salty tang, I never cooked with it until recently. It is entirely possible that I shall go to hell for neglecting it so long. It was the pancetta that smoothed away the bitterness of the rapini; it was the pancetta that gave texture to the polenta. And it was the pancetta that was left over because we’d bought a pound but barely needed a third of that.

Tonight I used another third of it in risotto - diced fine and browned, then removed before making my usual mushroom risotto with thyme, and stirred in & sprinkled over at the end.

O lift me from the grass! I die! I faint! I fail!

Crispy and chewy, the perfect salt counterpoint to the creamy rice and soft mushrooms - perfection, bleeding flavor onto my tongue.

In other news, Nat writes about Cafe de Olla.

If I ever write a letter to Miss Manners, it will go something like this:

Dear Miss Manners,

What should I do with the tails on shrimp? I can understand it with shrimp cocktail, where the tail provides you with a handle for the shrimp, which is properly conveyed to the mouth with the hand, and the tail neatly pulled off and discarded on a little plate. I am at a loss when it comes to shrimp curries, soups, or other liquidy dishes. Should I reach into my bowl and pull the tails off and leave them in the dish, or place them on my bread plate? Should I reach into my mouth and tug the tails off there, and if so, what do I do with them then? Should I simply eat the tails (ugh!) or not eat the shrimp? Please help!

Distressed

I live inland, so when I buy shrimp at home it is usually in frozen form. When I can, I get pre-cooked fully peeled shrimp or raw, tail-on but otherwise peeled & deveined shrimp. The former are best in tacos and curries; the latter for more flavorful applications.

I take the tails off once I’ve defrosted the shrimp. It’s an extra step, but I’d much rather take it at prep time than have to dig around in my spicy habenero shrimp sauce to extract the tails later. I don’t like it, and I don’t know anyone (who is not a cat or insane or an insane cat) who does.

Do the world a favor, y’all. Take the damn tails off. And then, make this.

Shrimp in Tomato Habenero Sauce

1/2 medium yellow sweet onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 orange or yellow bell pepper, diced
1/2 poblano pepper, diced
1 habenero pepper, diced or minced (remember to wear gloves!)
~14 oz. crushed canned tomatoes (I used half of a 28 oz. can of San Marzano tomatoes)
salt
black pepper
extra virgin olive oil
~1 tsp roasted pounded cumin
1 lb. peeled deveined tail-off raw shrimp

Toast whole cumin seed briefly in a small skillet. Remove and crush (or whir in a spice grinder).

Sweat onion & garlic in olive oil over low heat with a little salt and black pepper. Add bell and poblano peppers; stir. Add habenero. After a few minutes, add crushed tomatoes, a drizzle more olive oil, and the cumin.

When it bubbles, add a little water to thin it out, and let it simmer for a little bit.

About 5 minutes before you want to eat, add the shrimp and cook until the shrimp are pink and opaque. If you only have precooked shrimp, cut this time down to about 2 minutes.

If you value your tongue, do not add any other spices to this dish. It is fiery and fruity and the shrimp are tender and juicy. The cumin and garlic keep it from being too sweet and bright-tasting, without killing the essential light freshness of its flavor.

Excellent with steamed green beans in lemon butter.

One of my favorite main dishes is roast lamb - I love a six-bone rack of lamb, rubbed with salt and pepper and brushed with mustard, roasted so that the fat crisps up, browns, splits and crackles. Done just so, the meat is soft and juicy, the flavor delicate and warm.

The simplicity of this is what makes it work, makes it go with anything - and like so many things, simplicity is in the details. Get good lamb. Get good mustard. Get a probe thermometer. Get an oven thermometer.

Pay attention to the little things, and the big thing will come out perfectly roasted, browned, gorgeous and tender and just the right thing for a cool summer night.

Today, it is time again for Is My Blog Burning?. This edition’s theme is dumplings. So I’ve had a month of experimentation with dumplings, variety: not my native cuisine and fried. First, I had a go at brik à l’oeuf, mixing up tuna and parsley into a soft filling, wrapping it in filo, tipping in scrambled raw egg, and frying it up in my cast-iron skillet. The timing on brik is sensitive: you need the egg to still be runny. I didn’t achieve it.

I also roasted half an eggplant and mixed it with parsley and garlic, salt and pepper, and fried that in filo as well. It came out perfectly crisp on the outside, warm and savory in the center.

Once I’d finished my fried feast, I still had more filo than I knew what to do with.

So I sliced some parboiled potatoes and the rest of the eggplant, sprinkled it all with salt, pepper, and paprika, folded it into filo, and baked it in the oven for one hour. I followed it with asparagus, onions, and Nevat, likewise wrapped, likewise baked.

I still had quite a bit of filo, and some thinking to do.

Last year, I’d made samosas out of pumpkin. Then, I’d faithfully followed the dough recipe:

Samosa dough

1 1/2 cup flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup oil
5 tbsp cold water (or as needed)

Combine flour and salt, either in a food processor or by hand. Add oil slowly, until mixture resembles fine crumbs. Add just enough cold water to form a medium-soft dough (if you are using a food processor, the dough will leave the sides of the bowl). Cover the dough and refrigerate.

When ready to use, make 1 inch balls of dough and roll them out thin.

The dough was excellent, but difficult to roll out; I spent hours trying to make it thin enough and large enough to wrap around the filling.

Why not try the filo? For that matter, why not give those Vietnamese spring roll wrappers a shot?

Pumpkin Samosa Filling

1 tbsp oil
1 small onion, diced
3 garlic cloves, diced
1/2 pie pumpkin or 16 oz can pumpkin puree
1 cup frozen peas, thawed
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp salt, or to taste
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper, or to taste
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp garam masala
pinch turmeric

If using pie pumpkin, peel and cut into chunks. Steam until soft, then mash by hand or in a mixer or food processor.

Sweat onion & garlic in oil until translucent, then add all other ingredients and stir well. Cook until thickened, about 7 minutes. Let cool, then wrap in dough and fry.

Since pumpkins haven’t yet shown up in my local markets, I used a butternut squash. This was a mistake - too sweet, too soft; the filling ended up tasting like pumpkin pie with peas. It wasn’t bad, just strange.

First, I worked with the filo. I cut the sheets in half and then folded them again, so that I was working with a double layer the size of a quarter sheet. A big spoonful of filling in the middle, and brush the sides with water, fold them up & stick them together.

They didn’t look like samosas, but into the hot oil they went, one after the other.

When I was down to only a few pieces of filo left, I decided to experiment with the spring roll wrappers. These were not the soft, refrigerated kind, but were stiff and dried, labeled in Vietnamese, French (galettes de riz), and English. To use, they have to be dipped in water to soften them. Too long a dip, and the rice paper melts; too brief a dip, and it is too stiff to work with. I experimented and found that a quick in-and-out motion in a shallow pan worked best; I filled up a wrapper and dropped it in the oil - and jumped back as the water made the oil spatter. The next one tore as it went in, and the third puffed up strangely.

I went back to the filo: predictable, controllable, well-behaved.

The finished dumplings were almost nothing like samosa; they were tasty, but might have worked better as a dessert (minus the peas, onions, and garlic, plus powdered sugar over top). The ones in spring roll wrappers were more samosa-like in texture, but the wrappers were so annoying to work with that I think I shall avoid them in the future.

My quest for good substitutes for homemade samosa dough continues. Next time: refrigerated egg roll wrappers.

She was tall and wry-voiced and always seemed tipsy, and the food was delicious.

But what I loved was the fearlessness, the joy and ease in her approach. She was the food-lover’s embodiment of the hymn I learned in childhood: Be not afraid - I go before you always. Come, follow me, and I will give you…dinner.

If there’s a heaven, I’m sure she’s there now, with plenty of food and tipple to keep her company.

I learned to cook very young. I remember my parents helping me choose a meal to make, taking me shopping for the ingredients, and helping me prepare it; I remember the sweet-and-sour chicken I chose for my first try and hated. In retrospect, it was not all that bad - a bit watery and too sweet, but I’ve had worse in Chinese restaurants over the years. I remember going to the supermarket, the Italian grocery, the Asian market, the East End Food Co-op, the Strip.

We were taught to make salads, to make our own school lunches, to figure out our own snacks, to function as sous-chefs for my mother. My sisters and I talk of our “home training” - this steady exposure to choosing food, to preparing food, to serving food. By the time I moved out at seventeen, I had been cooking for twelve years. I spent the next few years learning to deal with no prep room, a tiny, terrible stove, a microwave, a budget. I moved into an apartment with Nat and learned to cook with gas. I tried new things as I got bolder and more confident, and I called my mother up for recipes, and went over to her house to eat dinner and get more ideas to try.

I started visiting Nat’s mother, and learned about fish and boat rice and cookies I’d never dreamed of, and I took those ideas home with me as well.

Now, when I go over to visit my mother, she has to chase congregations of her children out of the kitchen, a legacy of all the years she spent having us help her and teaching us to be useful. We love kitchens, love spending time in them, hanging out, talking, doing prep work or stealing bits out of the pot. When we were younger, this was one of the best ways to get uninterrupted time with Mom. Nowadays, it’s one of the ways we reconnect.

Chicken dijon
My mother makes this a lot; I’ve had a photocopy of the recipe for years. I don’t know where it came from, originally, but the copy hanging up in my pantry has her handwriting and mine all over it. I’ve included the notes here.

• 8 chicken breasts, skinned and boned (I cut these up into smaller cutlets or fingers to make them easier to wrangle.)
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 cup oil (I use extra virgin olive oil. I also use less butter & oil than the recipe calls for.)
• 6 tbsp Dijon mustard
• 6 tbsp freshly chopped chives (I’ve only used chives with this once. Sometimes I just increase the basil. Sometimes I use scallions. Sometimes I add some other herb. Whatever.)
• 1/2 tsp dried basil (I like more.)
• Dash black pepper (more!)
• Dash cayenne pepper (more!)
• salt (kosher if you have it)
• 2 cups fine bread crumbs

Melt the butter and combine with oil. (Melt the butter w. oil in microwave - 20-35 sec.). Set aside 1/2 of the mixture. To the other half, add mustard, peppers, and herbs. Whisk until smooth. Salt chicken lightly (I always skip this), brush with mustard mixture (I always just dunk it to coat it), roll in bread crumbs. Line 9×13 baking pan with foil (Mom says: I also don’t line pan w. foil - but it is easier to clean up if you do.) Add part of the reserved butter & oil, coating the bottom of the pan well. Place chicken breasts in baking pan and bake at 375°F for approximately 1 hour. (I find that the chicken is slightly dry if you cook it this long.) Baste as necessary w. the remaining butter & oil. If crumbs begin browing too quickly, cover pan lightly with tent of foil.

I find this a bit too greasy as originally written, but just perfect if you cut the amount of butter & oil a bit. It expands easily - I like it for parties, since it’s almost as easy to make 40 pieces as 8, and it’s great cold, and (if cut in half like I suggest above), can be easily eaten with the fingers.

It’s good with rice, spinach, pasta…well, actually, it’s good with almost anything.

Thank you, Mom.

I invented this one on a Sunday afternoon. I had a BBQ to go to, and nothing to bring except beer. Fortunately, my pantry and fridge stood ready to assist me, along with the pot of basil on the windowsill.

It’s a very on-the-fly recipe - not for people who are uncomfortable with spicing to taste, or with adjusting textures. (If you’ve successfully made hummus before, this should be a snap.) It is also one of those things that I constructed almost entirely in my head before making it - a pleasant pastime, highly recommended for lazy afternoons on the porch with a beer and a friend to bounce the ideas off of.

Curry bean dip

• 3 cloves garlic, smashed with the side of a knife
• 2 cans cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
• salt, black pepper, red curry paste, Thai garlic chili sauce, lemon juice, tahini, honey, and cayenne pepper, all to taste.
• extra-virgin olive oil
• a bit of fresh basil, chopped

Unless you are a big fan of raw garlic, sweat the garlic in a little oil until translucent, or cook it over higher heat until the edges are a tad browned. This really requires that you know your garlic, so if you don’t…don’t.

In a food processor, combine beans, garlic, and all the seasonings. Go easy on the seasonings at first, because too much is hard to correct. I’d say start with a pinch of salt, a few good grinds of black pepper, 2 tsp. curry paste, 2 tsp garlic chili sauce, 1 tsp each of lemon juice, honey, and tahini, and 1/4 tsp of cayenne. Whir it all together, and slowly pour in extra-virgin olive oil until the texture is a little bit rougher than you want it to be at the end. Taste-test, and adjust the seasonings if you need to, and whir again, adding more olive oil if necessary to smooth out the texture.

I recommend making this dip less spicy than you think you want it; after three hours in the fridge, it was substantially more intense.

This time around, Is My Blog Burning? called for grilling or barbequing - which was perfect for me, as we’ve recently acquired both a grill and the strength of will to use it.

See, last year, we bought a house. With the move from an apartment to a house came the ability to grill, and with the ability to grill came the ability to smoke up our entire neighborhood by using too many mesquite chips. Still, the beautiful puffs of white smoke drifting past the windows were lovely, as were the skewers of asparagus, the mushrooms and steaks brushed with jerk sauce, the delicately scorched onions. There’s something satisfying about cooking with the wind in your hair and the smoke in your eyes, the food sizzling below the grill lid.

My next grilling project (and recipe) is brined shrimp. I haven’t made this, but I had something very like it at a tapas bar in Baltimore. If anyone makes it before I do, please let me know how it works out!

Grilled Shrimp with Chilis

• 1 lb. shrimp, preferably U-12s, head on & unpeeled
• 3-4 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 serrano peppers, seeded and minced
• A good handful of parsley, chopped
• Olive oil

For the brine, I plan to use the brine recommended at What’s Cooking America.

Once the shrimp are brined, combine the garlic, peppers, parsley, and olive oil in a bowl and toss in the shrimp. Get the shrimp nice and coated, then either refrigerate them in the mixture for a bit or pop them on a nice hot grill. U-12s are large enough to put on the grill by themselves, but if you are using smaller shrimp you may want to skewer them.

The shrimp will probably take about 3 minutes per side to cook, and are done when they are a nice bright pink.