Upside-Down Pear

One thing I always meant to do, but never quite got around to before I got laid off, was writing up weekly dinner menus. They’ll help keep me organized! They’ll prevent me from forgetting what vegetables I have in the drawers! They’ll let me know what I need to buy!

Except it was One More Thing on top of doing my job and keeping the house clean and maintaining a marriage. Sometimes I’d write up three days or so, and then one of us would have a bad day at work and screw it — we were going out for Ethiopian, or ordering in Indian, and then I never seemed to get back on track. This was particularly a problem during the farm box months (which is more than half the year), because the farm boxes have so many veggies in them that if you don’t keep on top of it, you’re hip-deep in slightly spoiled food before you know it.

It’s easier now to work menu planning into my life — now that there’s less need for it, of course! Still, I enjoy it more than I thought I would.

Sample Weekday Menu

Dinner menu, Feb 23-27
Mon: chicken cottage pie
Tues: roast beef, swiss chard
Weds: pork chops, asparagus
Thurs: leftover roast, sauteed carrots
Fri: red sauce (sausage & pepper), pasta

Things are still subject to change, to unexpected bobbles in life, to unexpected leftovers — this past Monday, I halved a recipe for a 5-serving Persian dish called ghalieh-ye kadoo, and still ended up with enough leftovers that I had to figure out what else to serve with it last night…and I’ve still got 2 servings left. (Maybe the recipe meant 5 servings as a main course?)

But with this kind of planning, it’s a lot easier to know what I have left, what I need to accommodate, and where everything is going!

Last night, I had a wild hair for a grilled cheese sandwich. Not just any grilled cheese sandwich, indeed, but one on cheap puffy white bread, with processed American cheese. A terrible grilled cheese sandwich, that’s what I wanted.

Off I went to the grocery store, to purchase pre-sliced processed cheese and soft white bread. (Some chocolate thumbprints fell into my basket. Don’t know how.)

Today, when I went to cook up the sandwiches for lunch, Nat expressed a desire for tomato soup to dip them in. I don’t keep canned tomato soup around, and I wasn’t changing out of my comfy weekend lounging-about pajamas to go get some. So, instead, I made a very simple tomato soup from chopped onions, good canned tomatoes (since fresh tomatoes are out of season), parsley, extra virgin olive oil, salt & pepper. Once it had simmered a bit, I whirred it all around in a blender and thinned it with water; we added cream tableside to taste.

The homemade, semi-rustic soup went surprisingly well with the oozy, buttery, overly-processed sandwiches. I’m not sure this is the equivalent of wearing an H&M dress with Prada shoes, but it amused me nonetheless.

Weekend (and holiday) brunches are important in this household. Today’s was simple: a potato-leek frittata dressed up with the long-simmered red sauce I made yesterday.

I lined the small cast-iron skillet with thin slices of potato, gallette-style, cooked everything slowly, and ended up with a firm, creamy dish that lifted out of the pan perfectly.

• 1 medium potato
• white of one leek
• 4 eggs
• 1/4 cup cream
• Salt & pepper to taste
• extra-virgin olive oil

Set a pot of salted water to boil. Slice the potato thin — not quite as thin as you would for potato chips, but thin. When the water boils, put the slices in and let cook for about 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, slice the leek into discs, and sautee in olive oil. (I used the same small skillet for this step as for cooking the frittata.) I like to let them carmelize slightly before removing them from the heat (and from the pan, if you are using the same pan as I am).

Beat eggs with cream and season with salt & pepper.

Preheat oven to 350F.

Brush small oven-safe skillet with olive oil and place over medium heat. Remove potato slices from water with a slotted spoon and arrange in the bottom and sides of the skillet. When the potatoes are sizzling, add the leeks and then the egg mixture. Turn heat to low and let cook for about 5 min.

Put skillet into oven. After 4 minutes, check to see if center is set. If not, check back in another few minutes. When center is just barely set, switch oven to broil mode and broil the top until puffy and lightly browned (about 1 min).

Serve with a side salad or red sauce.

Nat and I decided, rather spur-of-the-moment, to throw a Halloween Feast. Since we had this idea on October 31st, we actually scheduled it for November 4th, to give us time to execute our cunning plan.

What we ended up serving:

• hummus, baba ganouj, eggplant dip, & pita
• olives, marinated mushrooms, and artichokes
• cookies
• leftover Halloween candy
• sweet potato pie
• cheese board & crackers
• dry sausages
• vegetarian lasagna
• dijon chicken
• cornbread
• roast chicken
• roast salmon
• portobella caps
• roasted potatoes
• asparagus
• roasted butternut squash
• apples
• apple crumble
• beer-boiled shrimp with cocktail sauce
• penne in red sauce

I intended to make my famous spicy spinach, but completely forgot. It’s just as well; there was more than enough food. We’re still making our way through the leftovers. I also made roasted garlic, but forgot to put it out…well, I’m sure I can find a way to use that up, as well.

The cold weather and our new large freezer are what really made this possible — we had enough cold places to store things, so we could do a lot of the preparation beforehand.

Our generous guests brought along desserts and plenty of drinks; I think we ended up with more wine at the end of the party than at the beginning — oh well, it’s an excuse to throw another, isn’t it? Some of the desserts brought were cranberry-walnut bread, caramel apple pie, dark chocolate raspberry truffles, chocolate cake, and probably other items I am forgetting. All in all, it was a lovely spread….

I have a bad habit of making up a dish as I go along, and then forgetting what I did before I write things down. I’m sure I’d have more luck remembering what I did if I got around to the writing before a week or so has elasped.

Tonight, I am eating a soup I made last week to clear up room in my refrigerator. I am not really certain anymore what I put into it. Er.

What I remember: 1 pie pumpkin, roasted and chopped; 1 small squash of some kind, roasted and chopped; a stray tomato that was sitting on my counter, chopped and mostly de-seeded; some chicken broth; some smoked paprika; some cumin; I think some rosemary; a ton of pepper; leeks, chopped; extra-virgin olive oil ; not sure about garlic.

When I served it tonight, I mixed a little cream into each bowl (less than a teaspoon per bowl) and put in some fried cubes of pancetta for a little kick.

It was delicious, warm and comforting on a cold wet day. I just hope I’ll ever be able to replicate it.

I was looking around through my draft posts, the ones that I never published here, and found this:

Recently, I made a delicious dinner: bay scallops in red pepper butter, cooked in ramekins and served up with dry-seared asparagus. I had half of the recipe left over: 4 ramekins full of scallops and shallots, butter and hot pepper and bread crumbs.

In my fridge, I had fresh egg lasagne noodles, twice as wide as the dried versions.

I carefully picked out the large chunks of butter, leaving behind the peppers and shallots, and wrapped the leftovers gently in cooked noodles (2 ramekins to a noodle), topped it all with vodka sauce, and slid it into the oven for about 10 minutes.

The leftovers, thus transformed, passed through delicious into sublime: melting on the tongue, the shallots tender, the scallops sweet and delicate against the noodle in a way they had not been standing alone.

Dry-seared asparagus, almost impossible to improve on, again provided the accompaniment. What better?

I had another experience like this just this past week. We’d grilled a white-wine-and-herb marinated half-chicken, and had the tender, smoky leftovers in the fridge, along with leftover grilled cherry tomatoes (three varieties – grape tomatoes from our farm box, and Red Currants and Yellow Pears from our garden). We shredded the chicken from the bone, and reheated it and the tomatoes in our trusty microwave. On the stove, I made penne and heated cream with some salt and pepper.

When the penne was ready, I drained it and put it back in the pot, tossed in the chicken, tomatoes, and cream, and stirred it all about before plating it and topping with some freshly grated Parm. Marvelous! (And enough left over for two lunches, making three meals out of that half-chicken.)

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!

Some years ago, one of my favorite restaurants, Road to Karakesh, closed down. Karakesh specialized in “cuisine from the spice road”, and among many other things, gave me my first taste of doro wat.

The one thing I missed terribly was brik à l’oeuf – thin pastry wrapped around tuna and an egg, fried and served with chili sauce. None of my cookbooks had a recipe, and I searched bookstores in vain for one that did.

Eventually, I searched online and found precisely one recipe, credited to Hayet Lehssairi. It now exists only in the Google cache, and I feel I must preserve it. So here it is, as originally written:

INGREDIENTS

For one brik per person
1 circle of filo pastry
1 egg
½ soup spoon of stuffing per person
Oil for frying

For the stuffing
150g lamb or veal (can also use tuna)
Salt and black pepper
2 soup spoons of finely chopped onion
1 glass water
4 soup spoons parsley, finely chopped
1 knob butter
Salt and black pepper

To make the stuffing, chop the meat, then season. Put into a pan with the onion and water and cook until the water has evaporated. Mince the meat, add the parsley and butter and warm together for two or three minutes.

To make the brik, take filo pastry circle and fold in the edges to form a square. Place half a soup spoon of stuffing into its centre, together with a raw egg. Fold one corner of the square to the opposite corner and seal edges. Slide into hot oil and spoon oil over the brik until it swells and turns golden. Serve hot with the egg still runny.

Hayet Lehssairi

This morning, I stared unhappily at my crepe recipe, not wanting crepes, but unsure what I did want. “Brik,” said my back brain. “You want brik.”

And so I did. Here is my version of Hayet Lehssairi’s brik recipe, adapted for what I had in my house, and for more standard measurements.

Makes 2 large briks.

For each brik:
1 spring roll wrapper
1 egg
½ stuffing
Safflower oil for frying
Chili garlic sauce (I keep the Huy Fong “rooster” chili garlic sauce around).

For the stuffing:
1 can chunk light tuna, preferably unsalted
Salt and black pepper
1/2 medium yellow onion, finely chopped
2 tbsp water
1 tsp dried parsley
1 tbsp unsalted butter

Melt the butter in a sautee pan. Add the drained can of tuna, the onion, and the water, and cook until the water has evaporated. Add black pepper, salt, and the parsley, and stir to combine. Turn off the heat.

Heat the safflower oil in a Dutch oven on the stovetop. You will want about 3/4 of an inch of oil in the bottom of the pan, maybe less.

Crack 1 egg over a bowl, and let the runny part of the white run out (you can crack it into your hand and let it run through your fingers, or crack it in half and let it drip out of the shell). The original recipe needs very fresh eggs, which have a solid white; the runny white of not-so-fresh eggs is No Good and will ruin your brik.

Lay your spring roll wrapper out on a flat surface, and brush the edges with water. Place half the stuffing in the center, and your de-runnified egg on top. Fold diagonally, then brush the tops of the fold and fold them over themselves to form a nice tight seal.

Slide into hot oil and spoon oil over the brik until it puffs up nicely and the edges are golden brown. Carefully turn it over (I used a spider) to brown the top. Drain on paper towels or brown paper bags for a few minutes, then serve with chili garlic sauce.

Unholy good, and a delicious breakfast, lunch, or make 2 per person for dinner.

Next time I make it, I’m going to add a teaspoon of capers to the filling; Karakesh’s version had them, and I think they’d play nicely in this one.

I bought some rapini (aka broccoli rabe, broccoli rabe, Italian broccoli, and about 30 other names) recently, never having made it before, and went on a quest to find some recipes. One of the recipes I found was Soft Polenta with Pancetta and Broccoli Rabe. It looked good, but I didn’t have heavy cream around, so I saved it for later. Instead I made a feta-and-rapini-and-pasta dish that was nice, but not superb.

I still wanted to try the polenta dish — polenta being something else I’d never made — so I bought more rapini and all the other necessaries, and tonight I finally got around to making it.

Someone shoot me for being so dumb as to not have run out and IMMEDIATELY bought everything for this the instant I saw the recipe. Really.

It was so delicious that I nearly died of joy on the first bite. I wanted to eat it all and never, ever, stop eating it. Possibly it was the tastiest thing I have made in my life, and it might be up there in the top 10 tastiest things I’ve ever eaten.

If you are still reading this and not in the kitchen cooking up a batch of polenta, you are missing out, and I weep for you.

When I was a kid, pizza was a rare treat. My parents didn’t like to feed us junk food, and most nights we sat down to a feast of Balanced Meal, Heavy on Veggies. (Mom always had a salad on the table, and usually two or three cooked veggies in addition. Even now I feel a meal is somehow incomplete if only one vegetable is present.) I used to deliberately eat less than I wanted, knowing I was running the risk of my siblings consuming everything. It was a risk I was willing to take, because then, a few hours later, I could creep into the kitchen and filch cold pizza from the box.

Usually it was pepperoni left-over; if I was lucky, there would be a slice of black olive, or one of everything-but-anchovies. Sometimes I would take a slice and wrap it up and stick it in the back of the fridge, under the pickles, to put in my lunch the next day; more often I would eat my bounty out of hand, savoring the cool salt of it, the solid feel of the cheese and sauce, the way the crust had transformed from tender to chewy.

As an adult, I still tend to order an extra pizza – no longer running the risk of absent leftovers, but rather creating for myself the opportunity for joy.

The food you find at a fairground or amusement park is not good for your body, but it does wonders for your inner child. Fried, crisp and soft and hot; spun-sugar, ice-cream sticky; bathed in cheese or shrouded in sugar. Corn dogs, brown and slathered with ketchup – fried Oreos, the cookies gone soft in the middle – piles of huge steak-cut fries drowning in a lake of hot cheese.

Children wander around sticky-mouthed, Icees or soft-serve clutched in their hands. The adults are neater, their hands cleaned, their mouths wiped, but their eyes give them away, drifting back to childhood. In their hearts, their mouths are sticky, too.

My commute to work loops me through the northeastern part of the city of Pittburgh, and down through the Strip District. The Strip is a long, narrow section of the city, bounded by the Allegheny River on one side and the long ridge of Polish Hill on the other.

A few mornings a week, Nat and I stop to get coffee at La Prima and breakfast from Il Piccolo Forno. Il Piccolo Forno is an Italian bakery that also serves pasta lunches and pizza; in the mornings, they have huge, beautiful muffins set out in trays – flaky, sugary meles filled with apples or almond paste – mini strudels in tempting, jewel-like rows. I am not there for any of that. I am there for the cold pizza, thin and crisp and perfect, that sometimes sits on the counter. It looks rather forlorn next to the lovely pastries, but each small slice hides deep and delicate flavor beneath its humble skin.

When I am lucky, the pizza is topped with spicy green olives: briny and peppery and faintly bitter, their flavor setting off the cheese and sauce to such perfection that I wonder how I will survive the loss when the slice is gone.