12/15 two winter soups

Have you ever looked into your refrigerator and been truly horrified by the amount of produce that is lurking therein? I guess I haven't been as vigilant as is needed on the cooking front, and this is the season of bulky, space-taking leafy greens (arugula, cabbage, spinach, beets and their greens, etc.)

This soup, of the roasted carrot variety, used up onions, carrots, and potatoes, roasted until very caramelized with garlic, bay leaves, and thyme. I pureed the soup, thinned it a little with milk, and topped it with goat cheese.

And here we have what I have decided is the new Christmas soup - borscht! Look at how lovely and seasonal the borscht appears with its ruby red broth, creamy white creme fraiche, and ivy green italian parsley. Into the borscht goes cabbage, potatoes, celery, onions, leeks, garlic, carrot, and of course, beets. Borscht is a real powerhouse at reducing an intimidating pile of produce into a ...well...giant pot of soup. Ohwell, at least I can freeze it.

The common element uniting both of these soups was a large batch of vegetable broth, started with a base of frozen bean cooking water and dressed up with the vegetable trimmings from both soups.

12/10 winter squash and seared radicchio risotto

Well this is a bit illogical, but I had about 4 butternut squashes which had arrived in my pantry over a series of weeks, so last weekend I cubed and roasted and froze all of it. The illogical part is that this recipe only called for one cup of roasted winter squash, and yet somehow I felt good about how I was making progress in "using up" an entire crop's worth of squash.

Here we have a simple risotto recipe with the addition of the cup of squash and one head of radiccho, cut into wedges and seared until caramelized a bit (about 10 minutes). For some reason I worried that I would mess up the radicchio and this would come out "gross" (in the parlance of our time), but it was actually awesome - just the right balance of sweet and bitter. I am no longer afraid of searing radicchio.

12/1 black bean enchiladas

I wanted to finish up the last of the year's crop of tomatillos (just for the record, these came in the CSA box at least a couple of weeks ago and have been "chillin'" in the fridge) and I also had about a cup of heirloom black beans that were lookin' for a place to do business. The inevitable result was black bean enchiladas. This was definitely a "weekend" meal. Its a lot of steps and a bit time-consuming. Just to fully reveal my process, I decided to document a more step-by-step narrative.

First, I had to make a black bean chili. Typical of recipes by Deborah Madison, this one involved making your own chile powder from ancho chiles and making your own chile spices from a toasted and ground medley of oregano, cumin, and cayenne. Here's a shot of the chili cooking (keep in mind I had already soaked the black beans all day). Also present are two cans of diced tomatoes, garlic, and three yellow onions:

I also made a tomatillo sauce with red onions, garlic, and cilantro, which was hand-pounded in my mortar and pestle. I did that because I hate technology. Here's a shot of the tomatillos cooking (they've already turned a nice cooked, "yellow" color):

You need to briefly heat the corn tortillas in hot oil so that they are nice and pliable. Here is the assembly line:
Last but not least, making the enchiladas. Yet another assembly line:

You can see the tomatillo sauce (middle) flanked by extra-sharp cheddar (left) and black bean chili (right).

At long last (15 minutes in a 400 degree oven), the enchiladas emerge in their full glory.
Here's a money shot, just to show how black beans + cheese=crazy delicious. This is what makes it all worth it:

11/26 leek, olive, and duck tart

The photo here is of a half-eaten tart. You should take that as a fair indication of the results from this relatively easy recipe. I made a yeasted tart dough in advance (Sunday) and stuck in in the freezer, so the only thing that needed to be prepared night of was sauteing leeks, chopping olives and herbs, grating parmesan, and whisking eggs and cream.

PLUS chopping leftover duck. I picked this recipe precisely because it seemed it would take to duck leftovers so well - and this time, instincts did not disappoint. I think I could have eaten the whole thing if I was properly motivated (although I'm sure I would have regretted it).

11/23 My first duck

The first time is always difficult. I was nervous, especially since I never make meats in general. Plus duck needs a little bit of extra special care to make sure you render the fat out from under the skin during the cooking process. It only took me two different days of two different roasting sessions to get it right - and I learned a lot in the process. I was supposed to be eating/serving duck on thanksgiving day, but instead I had a little post-thanksgiving feast.

The duck is served with one of my favorite recipes: marjoram pesto with beets and their greens, with thinly sliced onions marinated in red wine vinegar (it's supposed to be red onions - but I didn
t have any. A small sweet white onion worked fine). I thought this might need a little extra starch to round out, so I roasted some potatoes (boiled whole in advance to speed up the cooking) in a bit of the duck fat still left in the roasting pan.

10/20 pasta with butternut squash and tomatoes

Mark Bittman ("The Minimalist") wrote a great piece last week about the ratio of pasta-to-sauce. I have to say I've always been a bit of a fan of the 1/3 pasta - to - 2/3 sauce ratio (when cooking with dried pasta - not fresh), so this was merely a nice reinforcement of an informal practice I was already observing to some degree. I decided to try out one of the featured recipes with this article, because - guess what - I had more squash from the CSA.

I modified Bittman's recipe a bit, making it a little more complex. For one thing, I blanched, peeled, and seeded the tomatoes, reserving the juice and throwing it back in with the sauce. For another thing, I cooked the sauce longer than Bittman seems to recommend here (probably close to 45 minutes). This ensured that the tomatoes had broken down and bit more and that the sauce had time to thicken. The squash, while tender, didn't break down with the increased cooking time. I also added several good glugs of olive oil at the end to give the sauce a bit more flavor and a nice sheen.

Experiment = successful! I'll be adding this to the rotation.

10/18 Breakfast: black eyed peas and brown rice

I have this thing for savory/spicy breakfast foods. Waking up to a cold bowl of sugary flakes and milk does nothing for me - I like a nice hot bowl of ramen noodles with a poached egg, or pho, or grits and grilled veggies.

Before embarking on an epic drive up to Sacramento for "state business", I needed some fuel for the fire. Leftover spicey black eyed peas and brown rice with red kale did just the trick.

10/20 Battle Chestnut

As usual, I waited till the last minute to cook my chestnut dishes, but here they are. It was my mom's birthday, so it was a good opportunity to try out some dishes. The first is a chestnut ravioli from the french laundry cookbook. Now, i've cooked a few of Keller's dishes, and every single time, I realize why they charge as much as they do at the Laundry. This food is complicated, and doing it alone is a tall task. So, definitely want to thank my mom for the help pulling all of this together. So back to the ravioli... the filling was a puree of roasted chestnuts, mascarpone and butter. The recipe was actually for agnolotti, but after struggling to roll out the pasta dough, i decided ravioli was going to be far easier. The sauce was made with pureed celery root, potato, heavy cream and fontina cheese. The sauce to me was the highlight, it was amazingly light and refined.

The second dish was quite a bit easier. Just a chestnut and fennel soup recipe I found in Gourmet. The fennel provided a nice bright finish to the chestnuts. The soup could have been a bit smoother, but the flavors were there.

To be honest, i'm somewhat happy battle chestnuts is over. Peeling 4lbs of roasted chestnuts was not fun. Rolling out the pasta dough was frustrating and trying to do all this in one meal was maybe a bit much. But, everything worked out in the end and the food was quite tasty. What else can you ask for.

10/18 Meat and Potatoes

Once in a while everyone needs a pick-me-up kindda meal. A meal where calories just don't matter and you're just after delicious satisfaction. Thursday night was one of those meals. I coated a rib-eye, my favorite cut of meat, with three kinds of peppercorns (green, black and szechuan). At the same time i boiled some parsnips, potatoes and carrots to make a mash. I heated up my cast iron skillet and seared the meat nicely. Flipped it over and and threw it in the oven. While it finished, i mashed up the root vegetables with a fork and added heavy cream. yup. no skim milk here. 3 minutes later the rib-eye was done and it was time to max out the calories. Accordingly I made a nice heavy cream & mustard sauce in the skillet. Oh I did serve all this with a nice arugula salad - but fear not, i did cover it with some tasty olive oil.

10/15 The Quickfire Challenge

Hungry and with not very few things other than beer in the fridge, I watched the Top Chef season 3 reunion show last night. For those of you who don't watch it (shame on you!), chef's compete against one another each week in various, often ridiculous, challenges. This is not a gimmicky show however. The contestants are very skilled executive or at the very least sous-chefs and the food they make is top notch stuff. Unlike anything shown on the food network, they actually cook on this show (it's on Bravo). Anyway, each week, the show begins with a "quickfire" challenge, where contestants are given a very limited time frame (often 10-30 minutes) to come up with something based on some ingredients or theme. So... as I was watching the reunion show and some of the quickfire highlights, I decided I should do the same and make something quick and tasty with whatever I could scrounge up in the house... (my theme was "be less hungry"). So here it is: Gnocchi with Apples, Turnips and Gruyeres.

I guess it's pretty self explanatory, I pan seared the frozen gnocchi i'd made a few weeks back, while I cooked a finely diced apple and turnip in butter in another skillet. Tossed each a few times before adding them to one another with some parseley and grated gruyeres. All in all a very successful 10 minute meal if I do say so myself.

10/14 Apple Picking

Although I was at Lisa + Nate's wedding in Groton, MA most of the weekend I did manage to convince a few of the people there to go apple picking on Sunday morning. For the most part, produce on this side of the country can't hold a candle to what comes out of California, except, of course, apples. As it turns out mid-October is pretty much the peak of apple season and Groton is pretty much the center of apple picking land in Massachusetts. So going apple picking on Sunday seemed like the only logical thing that we could possibly do.

So off we went to visit Phil and his less famous twin brother to drink some cider and pick enterprise, cortlands, mcintosh, macouns (my favorite) and a couple other varietals. As you can see, many apples were picked and I'll be eating them for some time to come - so keep an eye out for them to show up in my dishes...

10/10 Bo Kho

Alright, I'm back! Well sort of... After a week long (or more?) hiatus, and an overwhelming number of posts by my blog partner I decided it was time I post a little somethin'-somethin' myself. Much to my chagrin, weddings and several other things have essentially kept me away from the kitchen for the last couple weeks. Anyways, last week - I forget exactly when - I did cook some delicious beef stew. Of course this wasn't your average beef stew served over egg noodles, this was Bo Kho, which is a very traditional Vietnamese dish. Apparently, it's one of those dishes that every Vietnamese family has a different version of. So in that spirit I decided to take the recipe out of the same vietnamese cookbook i'd mentioned in a previous post and switch it up just a bit. Of course the end result was a brown beef stew, which frankly makes for a bad picture, so you'll have to forgive the photography on this one, and just take my word on it, it was good!

So what goes into Bo Kho? Well its a tomato based stew with Chinese five spice, star anise, lemon grass and ginger. Of course, there are a few splashes of fish sauce in there too (ask my roommates about that one...). the whole thing is cooked with some carrots and onions for about 3 hours. Now what I decided to change up was the cut of meat. I used short ribs instead of "stew" meat (whatever that's supposed to be). I think the bones gave the stew more flavor, and frankly few cuts of meat are better than a braised short rib. The whole thing fed me for almost all of last week.

10/15 "classy" grilled cheese and tomato soup

Taking yet another queue from my good friend Mario, we have here a sort of "italian" french toast. A bufalo mozzarella sandwich is dipped in an egg/milk batter with thyme and nutmeg.



Serve with leftover yellow tomato/yellow pepper soup.

*slurp*

10/14 there's a method to my madness

I'm sure all you out there in readerland stay awake at night wondering: just how does she do this - week after week? Where does the inspiration come from? Does she really go through almost a liter of olive oil every three weeks?

Well, the answers to all the above questions, folks, are yes.

Here's my workspace on Sunday afternoon. One observes the piles of cookbooks, the shopping list, and the good-for-nothing cat.

10/14 enchiladas rojas

I feel like it would be unfair of me to all of the beautiful enchilada colors and ethnicities of the world to make enchiladas verdes without a follow-up of enchiladas rojas. This is an improvised recipe that started off with a memory of one of my favorite childhood dishes: broccoli and potato enchiladas. I don't know how "authentic" this combo is, but it sure hits the spot. I also had a pint of frozen red chile from the New Mexico extravaganza.

I started off by blanching the broccoli and boiling and cubing potatoes. I searched through my recipe books for something on red sauce, but didn't find an exact match for the red chiles, so I ended up sauteing an onion, adding some toasted/ground cumin and oregano, a big can of whole tomatoes (pureed until smooth), the chiles, and salt. I simmered this for about 15 minutes and decided that was all it needed. I assembled the enchiladas per the usual technique (filling was brocc and potatoes, sauted onions, plus a cheese blend of grated monterey jack and white cheddar).
As usual, I had lots of leftovers.

Blog Action Day: Food and Sustainability

It's blog action day - and I would be greatly amiss in not taking the opportunity to participate in the discussion, especially since my food ethics are so bound up in my environmental and community ethics. As a reminder, I'm not just an amateur home food experimenter. Food - where and how its grown, how it gets into salsas and bread and plastic wrappers, and how people find and purchase it is something I spend a lot of time thinking about professionally. In particular, since my graduate school days (while not quite salad days), I've been exploring how food impacts community sustainability, health, and economic vitality. The farm bill, which has been a new target of activist attention (especially those concerned with conservation and community food security) can be seen as a major piece of environmental legislation, since it sets the rules of the game (i.e., programs and subsidies) for what gets grown and what gets eaten in the U.S. If we want to see the preservation of family farms, programs that encourage farmers to go organic, and funding for farmers to practice landscape stewardship by creating biodiverse farms that support native species and habitats, we need a better farm bill. And if we want consumers to have better, cheaper access to fresh, local produce, we need a better farm bill. I'll just make passing mention to great sources on the farm bill: anything Michael Pollan has written this year, and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy's fact sheets on understanding the farm bill are both excellent places to start. Yes, this is a blog about a very small subject: what I (and my esteemed colleague) cook. But I try to remember that what I cook is also about the environment...and that without a substantial redirection of the farm and food policy in this country, buying from the farmers' market and the CSA (while something I'm thrilled to support) won't cut it in the long run.

10/10 ligurian pesto

Molto, molto italiano (yes, I know this is a terrible indulgence to write these words). I have been dying to try a classic ligurian pesto (with blanched green beans and boiled potatoes along with pasta), and I have no idea what I was waiting for.

Here you go folks:One thing of note here. I got the "fancy" pasta (because that's the only kind that you can find at the Berkeley Bowl in the appropriate trennette variety). This happened to cost FIVE DOLLARS, which is a lot to pay for dried pasta. However, perhaps unfortunately (for my budget and underlying belief in what's right and fair), this pasta was amazing. The flavor was outstanding. It really made the rest of the dish shine. Those expensive pasta bastards.

10/09 sweet and sour butternut squash

My first Mario Batali recipe! As usual, the inspiration came from a CSA box item I hadn't planned for. This time, it was butternut squash. Maro has a recipe for sweet and sour pumpkin (zucca agrodulce) that caught my eye while flipping through the book, so I appropriated the recipe for butternut squash.

First, I peeled and diced the squash (approx. 3 pounds) into 1-inch cubes. I sauted the squash with a good 1/2 cup olive oil and several cloves of thinly sliced garlic. After this began to get golden and lovely smelling, I added add 6 tbsp of honey and 6 tbsp of red wine vinegar plus 2 tsps of red pepper flakes, then simmered for 12 minutes or so until the sauce was syrupy and the squash tender.

Mario suggests serving this with pasta (which I did, along with mint and grated parm), and it came out great. Prepare-ahead note: minus the mint and cheese, this kept in the fridge so all I had to do was boil pasta and prep the toppings.

The dish was so good, in fact, that I've thought of a brilliant hack that I plan on trying out soon. The idea is: Prepare per the instructions above, subbing peanut or veg oil for the olive oil. At the end, stir in a can of coconut milk and some lovely shrimps, and simmer gently until tender. Serve over rice with chopped mint and/or cilantro. Yum!

10/08/07 smoked salmon with brown rice and a poached egg

This was a totally improvised recipe based on something similar (though not as good) I had at a tea house. I got the brown rice in my CSA box as a "substitute" because of their problems filling boxes with the normal mix of veg - all caused by a quarantine on tomatoes/peppers/similar fruits in the Dixon, CA area to contain a Mediterranean Fruit Fly infestation. Massa Organics grows rice in the Sacramento delta and is a friend/neighbor of Eatwell Farms.

What to do with brown rice? It takes forever to cook (a whole hour) and I personally believe it needs lots of soy sauce to make it worthwhile. Here I composed a dish of four parts:

1. smoked salmon from the farmers' market
   
2. brown rice seasoned with plenty of soy sauce
3. carrots stir fried in sesame oil with a little bit of ginger and chile powder, plus sesame seeds
4. a poached egg

This is a good meal for a person still recovering from a cold (aka, me).

10/07 sweet potato pizza

I had planned on making this days ago, but I've already told you of my grave illness and my lack of cooking. In any case, good thing sweet potatoes are stable at room temperature for a couple of weeks.

This pizza has:

• olive oil
• baby leeks and garlic (sauted until golden)
• roasted sweet potatoes (375 degree oven for about 35 minutes)
• gruyere and parmesan cheese
  
• minced thyme and sage
• red pepper flakes
  
• and trader joe's refrigerated pizza crust

The oven was a little hot so some of these sweet potatoes got a little crunchy, but all in all it was a decent show.

10/03 Birthday wishes

Since it was my birthday, I thought I would share a birthday acquisition: Molto Italiano. I haven't made anything out of it yet, but it looks awesome. Lots of veg recipes that build on classic, straight forward ingredients and technique.

In case you all are feeling sad that you didn't shower me with material objects in commemoration of this momentous moment, cast thine eyes upon other food-based objects of my lust:
Whole Grains Every Day, Every Way
and, my Williams Sonoma gift registry (event was 10/03/2007).

That's right. A food mill.

10/01 hearty late summer spaghetti, aka, return to form

I got sick this week. And it was my birthday. And that stellar combination appears to result in statistically fewer meals cooked at home. I did manage to sneak one in - and that was Monday night. A long time ago. And I still haven't posted about it. The shame.
This is a delicious hearty spaghetti recipe filled with the goodness of late summer. It all starts with some juicy anchovies sauted with garlic and onions, whilst eggplant and peppers are roasted. A pound or so of fresh tomatoes and a handful of green and niçoise olives later, all this is simmered for half an hour or so. Served over whole wheat spaghetti and shown here with a typical amount of pecorino and parsley. Too much parsley you say? That's nonsense! More parsley equals more better.

10/02 Home Cured Salmon

I was gonna wax poetic about how awesome curing foods is, but if you're reading this you probably already know this. If not, this post should convince you. I've been eyeing a gravlax recipe from Rick Stein's Complete Seafood cookbook ever since I bought it a couple years ago. I highly recommend this book for anyone who really loves seafood btw. Gravlax is a Scandinavian dish consisting of salmon cured in salt, sugar and dill. This is not quite as refined as smoked salmon, but it's pretty damn good nonetheless - maybe a bit saltier. So what exactly is involved in making this? Well actually it's remarkably simple. Take your salmon (in this case wild pacific coho) and cover it in coarse sea salt, sugar and dill. Wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate it for 48 hours, flipping it every 12 hours. That's it. Seriously. It's dead easy. When you're done rinse off all the salt, slice and enjoy. This will keep in the fridge for a week, maybe longer.

So thats all nice and well, but what are you gonna do with a pound of cured salmon now? Well here's a simple idea that brings me back to my childhood. Take some tagliatelle - in this case the spinach varietal - add in some of that salmon, some creme fraiche (ok, lots of creme fraiche) and chives. Again, this is dead easy and yet so damn good. Over the winter I hope to explore this wonderful world of cured foods further, so stay tuned and try it out for yourself!

9/28 Scallop and Shrimp Burgers

Scallops were on sale today at Whole Foods, so I picked up a few. Unsure of what I would do with them I started browsing the internet. Inspired by several things, but without an actual recipe, I settled on cajun scallop and shrimp burgers. I basically modified the technique I'd used for crab cakes in the past. I threw a few of the shrimp and a scallop in my mini food-processor and made a paste of sorts. Cut up the remaining seafood into small chunks and added them to the paste along with some cajun seasoning, mayo and panko breadcrumbs. This held together reasonably well, but as you can tell came apart a bit during the cooking process. I served them as a open-face sandwich of sorts on some buttered bread with cajun mayo. Added a few slices of tomatoes and some mizuna greens along side and had myself quite a little meal. Next time, i'll have to make the whole thing hold together a bit better, but the flavors were definitely there.

9/27 wild mushroom risotto

I think I've always been a person who likes food and flavors. One of the first foods I learned to make for myself (and still a favorite comfort food) was a grilled cheese sandwich. I can remember sprinkling dried oregano on top of my slices of cheese and tomatoes to see how it went - and being thrilled with the results.

But didn't really "start cooking" until about half way through my undergraduate years. Oh sure, I hacked Annies Mac N Cheese (added canned green chilies and beans to the yellow cheddar mac, or tuna, frozen peas, and extra parm to the alfredo). And I had helped my mom in the kitchen for many years before that. But really cooking my own things - trying out new recipes and starting from scratch - wasn't a common occurrence.

One of the first things that I made that really turned me on to the pleasure of cooking was a risotto from Jamie Oliver. Yeah, okay, he's kind of an overgrown man-child, but hey, I like his recipes. Anyway, the risotto had shrimp, peas, and mint. Risotto is special to begin with, since it's a very "transformative" dish (coaxing creaminess from crunchy little grains of rice one cup of stock at a time). Jamie also advises the risotto chef to throw in a couple of tablespoons of butter at the very end, after you've achieved saucy goodness, turning off the heat, and letting the risotto "rest" for a few minutes before serving. Oh, heaven.

I picked up some maitake mushrooms and tomatoes at the farmers market for a wild mushroom risotto - chanterelles came from the Berkeley Bowl. The risotto base" is standard: leaks, garlic, arborrio rice, veg stock. I also stirred in some cream at the very end as my "finishing fat" and topped it off with parsley and parm.

9/27 Moussaka

After picking up my veggies from Steve from Parker Farms, Haskell and I headed over to Market Basket to pick up some sort of protein to make a meal out of. With no real idea of what we were going to cook, we hoped that Market Basket would provide some sort of inspiration. After browsing through the various offal they have there (veal hearts, beef feet, marrow bones, veal tongue, beef tripe...) I decided I wanted some lamb. Since I still had Steve's eggplants from last week and got more today, I figured a moussaka was in store. Unfortunately I didn't have a recipe, and didn't quite remember how to make it. So this is my bastardized version of moussaka. Basically where I went wrong is that I substituted the white cream sauce that usually bakes on top with mashed potatoes. So the whole thing turned out to be the bastard child of a moussaka and a Sheppard's pie. Not the worst thing in the world by any means. So just to recap what did end up inside this concoction: evoo, onions, garlic, ground lamb, parseley, thyme, oregeno, tomato paste, homemade tomato sauce, mashed potatoes, grilled eggplant, feta cheese all topped with a thin layer of egg yolk, which i guess was my approximation of what should have been a baked cream of sorts... Anywho, it was still quite delicious and will be enjoyed tomorrow at lunch as well.

9/26 Soup

Alright, it's my turn to make some soup... I'm not sure what to call it - maybe an early autumn soup - but I'm pretty sure even Donovan McNabb's mom would have found it rather chunky and satisfying. It was composed of parsnips, carrots, heirloom tomatoes, fresh kidney beans, spring onions, celery, a couple cloves of garlic, fresh thyme and fresh oregano. The kidney beans were simmered 20 minutes ahead of time with some herbs and finished with the rest of the soup. This was all cooked in the chicken stock I made last week. Overall it was pretty tasty, though it was significantly under salted. Fortunately, this is a problem which has an easy remedy.

9/25 smoked salmon quiche

I couldn't resist picking up some smoked salmon at the Temescal Farmers Market this Sunday. Originally, I had planned to add it to a potato salad, but upon perusing the cookbooks, I spotted a recipe for a smoked fish quiche that I couldn't resist.

I made the shell in advance (on Sunday) and had it waiting in the freezer. This is a very simple quiche: just sauted scallions (in butter, of course), smoked salmon, and two eggs beat together with 1/2 cup creme fraiche, milk, and salt and pepper. I think I went a little heavy on the salmon, but that's because IT'S DELICIOUS. The side veg are quickly steamed baby green beans (known in pretentious circles as "hericots verts" - also from the farmers' market), halved cherry tomatoes, and slivered basil tossed with a couple tablespoons of butter, some lemon juice, a splash of balsamic vinegar, and salt and pepper.


p.s. The cats really got excited when I made this - uh, the quiche, not the veg.

9/24 two-potato griddle cakes

Yet another CSA food conundrum here: too many got-tamn sweet potatoes. Sure, they are yummy and chock full of "the nutrients." But they are not as versatile as your regular potato. In the fall/winter/spring, Eatwell sends me sweet potatoes almost every week - and my list of things that I like to put them in is frighteningly short.

Enter, stage left, a new recipe. This one comes from Everyday Greens. A two-potato griddle cake that combines sweet and yellow finn potatoes with shallots, gruyere, parmesan, eggs, and flour into deliciousness! Served with a bitter greens and apple salad, this is a nice fall meal.

I had a lot of sweet potatoes, so I made a double batch and froze the rest of the patties. Maybe I'll pull them out for Chanukkah. After all, it's not just the chosen people who like festivals of lights and potato pancakes.

9/24 Gnocchi

I never really understood the fuss over gnocchi until I had to make some at Gharibaldi's and then enjoyed some of the finest gnocchi I've had at Bouchon. There, they are made using pate a choux, a light french pastry dough usually reserved for profiteroles, eclairs and gougeres. However when used for gnocchi, the results make you wonder why you'd waste it on anything else. However, last night my goal was to recreate the traditional potato gnocchi recipe I'd learned at Gharibaldi's from Chef Sasaki. He in turn had learned it from Keller when he worked at the French Laundry. Sasaki was as fanatical about how gnocchi should be prepared as I'd imagine Keller to be at his own restaurant.

The potatoes have to be russets or another starchy variety and they have to be baked - not boiled. Baking them, keeps them drier, and that means you need less flour to make the dough. Once fully baked you spoon out the flesh of the potatoes -but not all the flesh! The outermost flesh has become too dry and hard while baking - using it would ruin the final product. Now pass the flesh through a ricer and add flour and egg yolks - no egg whites, like some other recipes called for. Does this make them less healthy? Of course it does, but I don't think an extra egg yolk or two will kill me. Now this is where the dish can all go wrong. Mixing the ingredients has to happen fast and gently. You want to cut the eggs and flour into the potatoes, not kneed it. This keeps the dough light and fluffy. Now you're almost in the clear, you just need to roll the dough out into 1/2" round snakes and cut them into small pieces with a dough cutter. Arrange all the gnocchi on the backside of a cookie sheet - this makes it easier to dump them into SALTED water. For the love of god don't forget the salt! ah the memories... Once they're in the water, they will quickly rise to the top when they are ready. Fish them out and dump them immediately into ice water to stop the cooking. There you have it, you can use them right away, preferably by searing them up in some butter, giving them some nice color along the way, or you can freeze them (individually - before throwing them together in a bag) to use later on.

Last night i served them with a quick lamb stew i made with shoulder steaks and tomato sauce. Sure everything took two hours to make, but it was well worth it, and now I have four more meals worth of gnocchi to look forward to :)

9/22 Gone Camping

This weekend, I headed up to New Hampshire for a little camping trip. It was my friend Matt's Bachelor party, and so it was up to me to take care of the food. Sure enough, hamburgers and hot dogs were not had. Instead I picked up some European Sea Bass (also known as Branzino) before heading up to the mountains. There's not much else to tell other than that the fish were stuffed with lemon and thyme after being well salted and peppered. Each weighed approximately one pound, and so there was plenty for the 6 of us to go around :) They were served with some grilled corn and potato salad. Seemed like everyone really enjoyed themselves and I especially enjoyed cooking over a natural fire. As you can tell from the picture it was getting pretty dark when we started cooking, but everything worked out deliciously.

9/23 winter squash soup with cannellini beans, turnips, and fried sage bread crumbs

My CSA supplies me with many a squash throughout the fall and winter months. I'm pretty comfortable with butternut squash and spaghetti squash, but I've been getting delicata squash for the last couple of weeks, which is a little more mysterious. It looks a lot like an acorn squash, and I've never been particularly found of acorn squash.

I decided to try out another Vegetable Soups recipe that calls for butternut squash. I figured it would be close enough - right? Without having had the opportunity to make a direct comparison with butternut, I think the delicata might be even better here. It held up well over the course of cooking and brought a sweet, subtle flavor. The other veggies are little white tokyo turnips (also quite sweet when cooked), cabbage, and onion. To this, I added canellini beans and their cooking broth plus some store-bought veggie stock.

Debora Madison warns that this is a very sweet soup and needs something savory to balance the flavors (here, bread crumbs fried with sage and garlic). It looked lovely and tasted great on a cloudy Sunday afternoon, with the smell of our first rain in something like 6 months drifting in through the window.

9/22 Enchiladas Verdes

I don't normally make enchiladas since they're pretty time-consuming; they live in same "not really a Tuesday night dinner option" as making lasagna from scratch . But I ended up with a bunch of tomatillos from the CSA, and I wanted to do something a little more substantial than salsa verde.

This is a pretty straight forward recipe, and if you made the sauce and filling in advance, you probably could assemble and bake it on a weeknight and eat before 8:30. The tomatillo sauce is dead-simple (just onions, green pepper, jalapenos, tomatillos, chile pepper and salt simmered and blended). For all you tomatillo newbies out there - please don't over-blend. Tomatillos are chock full of pectin, and you can end up with a really gross goopy jam-mess if you blend too much. Some people like to add sugar to too-tangy tomatillo sauce, but with the cheese in this dish, I say the tangier the better. The enchiladas are stuffed with smoked cheddar and sauted zucchini, corn, onions, more jalapenos, and a good bit of ground cumin.

I had enough left over to do another small pan - which went straight into the freezer for dinner at a later date.

9/21 butter fried potatoes with curry spices

Okay Tom: you're not the only one who can play the "butter card" around here. I, too, can make a recipe based entirely on butter! In this case, clarified butter. I cooked a little over half a cup for this recipe, browning it nicely. Essentially, everything you see is fried in butter: first, potatoes; then, carrots. Separately, red onions, ginger, freshly ground cloves, cinnamon, turmeric, black pepper, cumin, coriander, cardamom, and nutmeg plus tomatoes and yogurt. Then you simmer it all together with about a cup of WHOLE CREAM. Bo-ya.

It is tre yum. A bit on the heavy side, though. I'd recommend ripe melon for dessert.

9/20 lunch: arugula and basil pesto with olives and capers

Sometimes, even the best of us have too much arugula. This especially happens now that I am a CSA member, since arugula grows thick and fast in Nor Cal in the winter.

A solution to this problem: arugula pesto! It is delicious. All the same principles as basil pesto with a little extra kick. I threw in some arugula and some basil here, along with parmesan (if I have pecorino, I use it, but alas parm would have to do), pine nuts, garlic, and a splash of balsamic vinegar (yes, yes, I'm an utter heretic). This was tossed with whole wheat spaghetti, cracked green olives, and capers. Nummers.

9/17 chicken and garlic

For someone who claims to dislike chicken, i do find myself with a whole chicken in my fridge rather frequently. Really when it comes down to it, i dislike chicken that others cook. By others, i mean most commercial establishments. It's always skinless, boneless and invariably tasteless, dry as chalk breast meat (yes this is a bad thing). anyway, tonight i had a whole chicken and instead of roasting it, which always leads to happiness, i opted to braise it. Now, not too long ago, my mom made a garlic chicken dish from a classic elizabeth david book, which was quite delicious (the meal, not the book). i didn't have the recipe on hand, so i just did my best to recreate it. Basically, after browning the chicken, which i'd cut up into the standard 8 pieces (breast, thing, leg & wing), i braised it with some white wine, onions, a lot of garlic and some carrots till everything was nice and tender. (unsurprisingly, i used bacon fat as the lubricant). i also cooked up some green beans as a side. Speaking of the green beans, after steaming them, i like to pan fry them in butter till they are basically burnt. I realize this is very french of me and some might even say this is slightly weird, but it tastes sooooooooo good. they're not actually burnt, its closer to lightly caramelized. the waxiness is nearly gone and any crispiness that they've lost while cooking has been replaced by buttery crispiness. basically, they've become an unhealthy reincarnation of their previous selves. simply delicious.