Cold front

Deep breath.

Here’s something you probably didn’t know about me: I have a damp spleen. I didn’t know that about me either, although I suppose if I’d thought about it, I’d have come to the same conclusion. It’s inside my body, after all, and I hear it’s damp in there.

The recent diagnosis comes from my new acupuncturist. To be fair, he’s my first acupuncturist. I’m seeing him because I have lupus, and a back injury that still hasn’t quite healed, but mostly—and most importantly, perhaps—because I’ve lost my appetite.

No Western doctor I’ve come across seems to think this is a giant problem—apparently many women have appetite failures after having children. Physically, it’s a convenient natural counterpoint to a recent pregnancy, and to too many years of steroid treatments, sure. But with all due respect to people who are actually missing limbs, I have to say losing my hunger feels a little like an amputation.

I’ve never had an appetite problem before. Or, if you look at it another way, I’ve always had an appetite problem. I’ve always been the one who gets hungry two hours after a meal, no matter how big. I can test recipes all day and gorge on every single one. My workday often consists of eating breakfast, snacking at a coffee shop, having two lunches, testing a recipe, grocery shopping, then launching into dinner. I grew up with a mother who examines what everyone eats extremely carefully—“would you like to eat that, or glue it to your thighs?”—so my idea of teenaged rebellion was baking a batch of cookies and eating the whole thing. If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you can relate.

But in the last few months—and if I’m honest with myself, I’d have to say it’s been a bit longer, even—I’ve learned that approaching the world stomach-first has its drawbacks. For one, I’ve built my career around said organ. Walking into a restaurant when I think I’m ravenous, finding only one or two things that sound even mildly appealing on the menu, then picking at my food does not feel normal (or productive, for that matter). I have phantom hunger; it disappears the moment something good hits the table. I’m eating out of habit, but it feels like I’m no longer tasting. It’s become so disappointing (and at times, embarrassing) to sit down over and over, expecting to love what someone has put in front of me, only to discover that I feel like eating about four bites—especially when the person cooking is me.

Once in a while, things taste good. Pasta’s been okay. I do seem to have an appetite for soups—hence the recent streak of hot and sour, and the fact that I went out for pho three times last week—but overall, it feels like something inside me has simply died. And it does not feel good.

So a few weeks ago, I started seeing this acupuncturist. He looks like your average software engineer: white as Wonder Bread, with a gentle, kind demeanor. I trusted him the moment we met. When I see him, he does the whole acupuncture thing—you know, hair-thin needles in strategic places—and he also suggested I start tinkering with my diet.

I hate the word diet. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it has the word “die” in it, because in my mind, controlling what you eat, in the strictest sense, kills the part of eating that’s most enjoyable—the impulsiveness of trying something new, the serendipity of combining flavors that work well together. But Chinese medicine isn’t the only medical culture to claim certain people benefit from eating certain things. Remember when it was popular to eat for your blood type? And oh, yeah, thousands of years of ayurveda?

To start, since I’m apparently what Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) defines as a “cold” person (keep those jokes to yourself!), I should be eating “warm” foods—both physically warm foods and energetically warm foods. I’ve started with the former, trying to avoid putting anything in my mouth that’s actually cold (which is harder than you might think, even in January), and I’m hoping to branch out into the latter, which is, as they say, a whole other can of worms.

After a few weeks, I’ve noticed significant improvements with both the joints affected by lupus and my back pain. I’m peeling apples again. I’m checking my car’s blind spot without wincing. It’s awesome. (To be fair, I’m also tinkering with my traditional medications, and doing regular old physical therapy for my back, both of which may be helping, too.)

But this appetite thing? Still pretty much MIA. And if the acupuncturist is correct, we may actually be dealing with two separate problems—one of appetite, which in TCM is often spleen-related, and one of actual taste, which is more often heart-related.

So, now you know what I’m working on in the kitchen these days.

(Phew. That feels better. I was so nervous to tell you.)

Has this happened to you?

The F Word

Click here to listen to me talking about hot and sour soup on KUOW.
Recipes are down below.

Hot and sour soup isn’t the prettiest, or even the second-prettiest soup there is. In fact, if I had to curate a list of beautiful soups, it would be miles below pho and chicken noodle, pasta e fagiole and tom yum. Hot and sour soup looks like dirty nothing in a bowl.

At least, that’s what I thought, before I got to know it. I guess it’s a soup like some people, that way – it’s easy to pigeonhole and walk away from, if you don’t know any better.

I grew up “hating” hot and sour soup, which means I’d never tasted it. (I hated a lot of things, including, but not limited to, anything with spice, foreign flavors, or ingredients whose entire preparation I didn’t personally witness from start to finish.) At Chinese restaurants, my family ordered a big bowl to share, and I ordered egg drop soup. The waitress would rattle her cart to our table and hold my lone bowl up accusingly, as if to ask Who ordered the boring soup?

Me. It was always me.

A few weeks ago, I came very close to doing the same thing, because I enjoy the simplicity of egg drop soup, and because it’s what I’ve always ordered. But for whatever reason – perhaps because I wasn’t really paying attention, or maybe because I am now An Adult Who Likes Things – I hopped on the hot and sour bandwagon, along with the rest of the table. And I tasted my new favorite soup for the first time.

I know. That f-word. It’s a bit of a shock to see it on the screen, even. I’m not a big fan of favorites. I go for change, and variety, and different every time. But this soup, people. If I count correctly, I’ve had hot and sour soup nine times in two weeks. Nine times. (Obsess much?)

The thing is, it’s worth obsessing over. Don’t look at it; taste it. Sip a spoonful, and the first thing you’ll notice is the texture – a bit of cornstarch makes it silky, almost satiny. It glosses over the tongue in a way few Western foods can, every drop somehow fatter and smoother. If you’re lucky enough to get a bit of soft, ribbony egg (and were lucky enough, in the first place, to pick a soup whose preparer got the egg to bloom up just right, like in the photo above), it glides across your palate. Then there are the cloud ear mushrooms, which don’t really taste like much, but have a lovely crunch, like some sort of terrestrial seaweed. (They supposedly improve circulation, too.) There are lily buds, with their vegetal, almost artichoke-like flavor. (Bet you didn’t even notice them the first time.) And then . . . then. . . there’s the clean, astringent hot of white pepper, and the brisk, bracing vinegar flavor.

Of course, there are endless variations. I tried rice vinegar and apple cider vinegar, white vinegar, and a mixture of various vinegars. (I think I like white vinegar the best, because its flavor is stronger than rice vinegar but not too fruity.) There’s also whatever else the cook feels like adding – little gifts, like chunks of tofu, or pork, or carrot, or chili. I’d been tasting soups everywhere, trying to figure out, since I’d never been down the hot and sour soup road, what I liked. More tofu? More pork? More hot? More sour?

Then, gazing out the windows at the rain on the Sound at Pike Place Chinese Cuisine one day, slurping the bowl above, I had a BFO: I could probably make hot and sour soup myself. At home.

Hot and sour is, after all, a rather homey thing. Traditionally made with the most humble ingredients – dried staples, small bits of meat  - it’s a soup made with leftovers. They just might not be the leftovers you have in your kitchen.

I scurried around Pike Place Market, collecting ingredients. (You can get everything there.) I made a few traditional versions first, relying on recipes from Grace Young, Mark Bittman, and Susanna Foo, until I learned what combination of flavors I liked.

As it turns out, I’m sort of greedy. I like a healthy combination of tofu and pork – more than one usually finds in restaurant versions of hot and sour soup – and more than anything, I like a soup made with good, homemade stock. I like to tinker with the pepper and vinegar, until I get it just right. And I like to eat my hot and sour soup right when it’s fallen just below scorching, screaming hot – which is to say, immediately.

I also like the version I made using what’s available now at farmers’ markets here in Seattle – Northwest leftovers and pantry staples, if you will, like dried porcini mushrooms, and kale, and carrots.

Only problem now is deciding which one’s my favorite. Time for bowl number ten.

Hot and Sour Soup (PDF)

Northwest Vegetarian Hot and Sour Soup (PDF)

How to Defibrillate Dying Kale

It’s not a pretty picture, so you’re not going to see it. But open your own refrigerator, and chances are good you could find the same thing: a few little kale saplings, melting into the produce drawer’s back corner, so long ago forgotten that they must now pretend they don’t exist.

Our refrigerator is only 5 days old. But I bought the kale well before its predecessor was wheeled off to the morgue, and unfortunately, a new refrigerator cannot act as a defibrillator for oldish produce.

Truth: Buying a new appliance is much easier than cleaning out an old one. But I didn’t have the heart to leave the kale behind. It always strikes me as The Thing That Can Be Saved.

Kale, in its market prime, is physically spunky, and stubborn enough that it often refuses to be tucked into whatever space I assign it. Two weeks past its peak, it’s a little less sexy. It sags. But really, I promise you: You don’t need to throw it away.

First, it might be worth mentioning that I’m on a pasta binge. Perhaps it started when I was working on a story about healthy pasta alternatives—quinoa, spelt, whole grain rice, and soba noodles sure do make a gal crave the old fashioned kind—or maybe it’s just this winter thing. In any event, I could eat plain white pasta three meals a day right now. Paired with the insanely peppery olive oil Jim’s aunt schlepped back from Italy for us, and maybe a little Parmesan cheese, spaghetti fits my current definition of the lip-smacking perfect food. (I tell you this with corroboration from my 9-month-old, who keeps imitating me chewing when I eat it.)

So you’ll pardon me, I hope, when I tell you that this kale saver actually seems like the complicated version. But there’s not much to it. You sauté very finely chopped kale in great olive oil, with a little spice, until it’s threatening to crisp up on you. Stir in some garlic, then some cooked spaghetti, Parmesan, and a squeeze of lemon, and sit down.

It’s important, though, that you take a seat away from your computer, and away from any reading materials. You’ll need your full mental capacity (at least, I needed mine) to focus on the little bite-by-bite cross section of spicy, sour, and earthy. And then you’ll need some more kale. And time, perhaps, although I’d be willing to wager this would work with a brand-new bunch.

Simple Spaghetti with Kale, Lemon and Garlic (PDF)

Made with a few sprigs of leftover kale, great olive oil, and a touch of spice, this simple lunch for one is quick and reasonably healthy. Double or quadruple the recipe as needed, piling the extra kale on top at the end.

TIME: 15 minutes
MAKES: 1 lunch

Spaghetti for one (a bundle about the diameter of a dime)
2 tablespoons good extra virgin olive oil
5 sprigs lacinato kale (droopy kale is fine), very finely chopped
Pinch red pepper flakes
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1 large garlic clove, finely chopped
Juice of 1 lemon wedge
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese

Cook the pasta al dente according to package directions.

When the pasta is almost done, heat the oil over medium heat in a large skillet. Add the kale, red pepper flakes to taste, and season with salt and pepper. Cook and stir for 3 or 4 minutes, until the kale starts to get a bit crisp. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, for another minute. Add drained pasta, lemon juice, and Parmesan cheese, and stir to combine. Serve immediately.

A resolution (sort of)

I’d like to introduce you to my silverware drawer.

(I know. You’ve been waiting.)

It’s awfully big, as far as silverware drawers go, which suits us perfectly. At some point when we were settling in here – most likely during that awkward six week period between arriving in Seattle and the day our moving van actually showed up – I went crazy at Storables, purchasing dozens of clean, efficient-looking trays as insurance against the kind future organizational catastrophe one might measure on the Richter scale.

The thing is, it worked. On the left side, at least. The chopsticks slept next to the chopsticks, and the weird forks and spreaders stayed with the other weird forks and spreaders. The wine accessories behaved themselves, and now, even the baby spoons seem to have found their spot. On the left, I arranged the bins according to a legend that both my husband and the utensils themselves seem to understand.

The right side, though. It just failed me.

Before Thanksgiving, we had a set of 8 or maybe 12, I don’t quite remember. Regular settings, plus extra stuff, like grapefruit spoons, long milkshake spoons, and these little cocktail forks that are completely useless unless the cornichon jar is extremely tightly packed. But all the forks and spoons and knives and extras sat idly by, waiting patiently be called on, the way I imagine hardworking Amish schoolchildren waiting, in a very well-behaved classroom somewhere in Pennsylvania. They’re very plain, and they never seemed to mind sitting still.

Apparently, though, patience is not a virtue indigenous to all breeds of silverware. When the crowds hit, we added 12 more settings, remnants of a Thanksgiving past that are almost – but not quite – identical to the usual stuff. So now instead of two spoons sizes, we have four. Instead of three fork sizes, we have five. They’re oil and water, these two sets of silverware, just different enough to make me crazy. And based on the spice drawer that just broke off its little plastic tracks, overloading this thing could be bad news for someone’s toes.

It’s not just that the tray isn’t big enough – it’s more than that. When we’re sleeping, I’m convinced the new forks do that break dancing snapping-up move. (Remember in junior high, when there was the kid who could lie on the ground, put his feet in the air, and snap up to standing like it was nothing?) The forks snap up off the curve under their tines, start a fight, push the old nerdy spoons out of the bin, jam the knives into the corners of the drawer so I can’t get it open, then lie back down quietly and pretend nothing happened. I’m actually avoiding reusing forks, just so I can whittle the mess down a bit each day. Dishwasher detention, I call it.

What I hate most about it, besides the fact that it I can’t seem to find 15 minutes to extradite the newcomers, is that the drawer is a pretty good approximation of my life right now: big, and full, and exciting, and completely overwhelming. I have all the right tools in all the right places, but can never seem to fit them into the right spaces. I wake up in the morning feeling like there was a battle inside my body overnight, and I have to step into my own brain to referee. Those recipes I have for you? Fluttering around my kitchen, like snow that refuses to accumulate enough to look beautiful.

And oh gosh, yes, this must all sound very familiar to you, if you’re . . . human.

So, for 2010, a goal: symbolic reorganization. I’ll empty the proverbial drawer out, and yes, I’ll put the little bins back in. (We all have boundaries.) I’ll put in family and health and friends and work and fun (in roughly that order), only I’ll do it a little at a time, making sure the drawer closes every time I add something. I’ll find things that really don’t need to be there, things I can do without, things I can stuff back in my brain’s basement, and then I’ll create some sort of digital legend, so each time something new comes into my life, I know just where to put it.

Then, if it’s really all that easy, I’ll declare myself “balanced,” write a best-selling self-help book on how to live well with bad cartoons on the cover, and call it a day.

Or, you know what? On second thought, maybe I’ll just leave all the silverware right where it is, all tangley and angry and poking out every which way. Because if you figure life out completely, what else is there to do?

A morning ritual

Here’s my morning ritual: coffee, with cream and sugar. Here’s what you have to add to turn it into a cookie: butter, flour, crunch, and chew.

To look at them, you’d think chocolate – I should know, I’ve been looking at them all day. But the flavor that really screams is pure espresso.

Even before they’re baked, the dough for these little holiday numbers has the gorgeous, rich brown color of an extremely comfortable couch. Or a cup of coffee spiked with the perfect amount (that is to say, not too much, but certainly some) cream and sugar. But on the inside, no chocolate at all – just a half cup of espresso beans, whizzed and shaken in the grinder until the poor thing starts to complain.

A half cup. That’s enough for a full French press, in this house.

Actually, to be fair, these cookies taste more like chocolate-covered espresso beans, once they’re doused in a healthy dose of bittersweet. And by “healthy dose,” I mean enough chocolate that the combo should make you feel slightly high, but I like them best completely blanketed, as opposed to just decorated. I’d like to think a certain rotund, pink-cheeked fellow would appreciated the sugar shot halfway though his night.

And milk. Don’t forget to leave out the milk.

Enjoy the holidays. We’re heading back east. See you in 2010!

Coffee (with Cream and Sugar) Cookies (PDF)

A cross between traditional refrigerator cookies and coffee-flavored shortbread, these cookies are made with a whopping half cup of espresso beans. For chocolate-covered espresso beans in cookie form, decorate them with melted dark chocolate—the more, the better, in my opinion.

TIME: 25 minutes active time, plus rolling and decorating, if desired
MAKES: Three to four dozen cookies, depending on cutters

2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup espresso beans, ground very fine
2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for rolling
Pinch salt
2 tablespoons heavy cream
Melted dark chocolate (for decorating, if desired)

In the work bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar on medium speed until light, about 3 minutes. Whisk the ground espresso, flour, and salt together in a small bowl.

With the machine on low, add half the flour to the mixer, and mix until incorporated, scraping down the sides of the mixer with a plastic spatula when needed. (The dough will be a little crumbly.) Add the cream, mix until combined, then add the remaining flour and mix again until the dough is uniformly blended.

Divide the dough between two big pieces of wax paper. Pat the dough into flat discs, wrap in the paper, and chill for 2 hours (or up to 3 days), until firm.

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicon baking sheets, and set aside. Allow the dough to soften at room temperature for about 20 minutes, until pliable. (You can speed up this process by kneading small pieces of the dough in your hands, if you’d like.)

Using a lightly floured rolling pin, roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface to 1/4” thick. Cut into shapes, and arrange on baking sheets. (The cookies will not spread.) Bake for about 20 minutes, rotating the baking sheets halfway through, or until the cookies are puffed in the center.

Cool the cookies 10 minutes on the baking sheets, then transfer to cooling racks to cool completely. Repeat with the remaining dough, then decorate cooled cookies with melted dark chocolate. Store in an airtight container up to 1 week.

Note: If cookie cutting isn’t your thing, you can roll each mound into a log almost a foot long and about 1 1/2” in diameter. Wrap each log in wax paper, twist the ends to seal, and chill. Cut into 1/4” rounds before baking.

Telephone

To listen to the version of this story that aired on KUOW, click here.

I recently played the most ridiculous game of telephone. It started when I called my grandmother to cook her dinner.

I know, it sounds all wrong, doesn’t it? You can’t cook for someone over the phone. I didn’t think so either. I’d planned a trip to Portland to do it in person. My grandmother, June, called her sister, and a friend, and molded an entire day around a trip to the grocery store for about ten ingredients. They scrummed around the produce department guy, battering him with questions about fennel and kale. Then they hit the fish counter, where, June told me, she knew not to order the wild salmon because it’s bad for the environment, and knew she could have told the fish guy where to cut, but didn’t have to. I smiled over the phone, not caring what she bought, because she was going to cook. (This woman eats, but she does not, in contemporary lexicon, cook.)

Then my cat got attacked by a raccoon. He was oozy and insulted and very much upset about being left alone indoors, so at the very last minute, I cancelled on my grandmother. She was devastated. She used that word – devastated – and I could hear the truth of it in her voice, weighing her down like an age. (She’s not usually dramatic.)

So we made a phone date. She’d invite her friends back over, and I’d call “on the cellular phone,” and we’d do it all that way, ear to ear. I’d talk, and she’d chop, and it would be like I was right there in the kitchen.

Of course, there was a little catch. The point of cooking for her, that night, was to demonstrate for her a holiday entertaining menu that even she could master – a whole dinner that would take me a heaping ten minutes to put in the oven. There would be roasted salmon with a lemon-cumin raita (she loves yogurt sauces), Dijon potatoes (she’s a mustard fiend), roasted fennel with sherry, and creamed kale – just the right balance of familiarity and foreignness. I figured ten minutes for me meant 20 or so for us together. But on the telephone?

But they’d already purchased the food.

Dinner at Grandma June’s house is a five o’clock affair. I called at 4:15, and June answered on the first ring.

“We’re here,” she sang. “Mary’s had her cigarette, and Verna has the knife.” Taken out of context, I might have been worried, but in this case, I knew that meant they were ready.

“I’m just going to hand the phone to Verna, and you can tell her what to do, okay?” said June.

“Not so fast,” I said. June will do almost anything to not cook. “How about you hold the phone while she chops?” I figured processing the instructions counted for at least half.

And so it began. My dinner plan echoed from Seattle to Portland, from me, to June, then invariably Verna and Mary:

Jess: Okay, let’s start by turning on the oven.
June: Verna, turn on the oven.
Verna: How do you turn on the oven?
June: Push in the dial.
Verna: Okay, how hot do you want it?
June: How hot do we want it?
Jess: 400 degrees.
June: 400 degrees.
Mary: How long is this going to take?

And on we went. I learned, over the next (honestly) 40 minutes, to give extremely specific instructions. We started with potatoes, then fennel, then kale, then salmon. But we started everything slowly:

Jess: Is your white square ceramic pan nearby?
June: Yes, right here.
Jess: Okay, I’m going to tell you how to cut the fennel, then you’re going to put the fennel slices in, drizzle them with olive oil and roll them around a bit. Ready?
June: (To Verna, excited) We’re going to get the fennel ready now. (To Jess) Okay, what do we do?
Jess: Okay. Pretend the fennel is a hand. You see it, with the fingers sticking up?
June: Verna: Pretend the fennel is a hand, with the fingers sticking up.
Verna: I don’t see it. A hand?
June: We don’t see it. What do you mean?
Jess: Can you pretend that the white part is your palm and the green sticky-uppity parts are fingers?
June: Oh, yes.
Verna: What. What? (June explains.)
Jess: (Hems, haws, then decides not to trim the bottom.) Okay. You can eat all of it, but for tonight, we’re going to cut the tops off. Cut the long green stalks off where the rings would be, if the fennel was a hand.
June: Cut the long green stalks off where the rings would be . . . what?
Jess: If the fennel was a hand.
June: If the fennel was a hand. Isn’t it were a hand?
(Chopping sounds.)
Jess: Okay, now cut it into slices through the core.
June: Now cut it into slices through the core.
Verna: I have to talk to her about the center.

Verna washed her hands, and June handed her the phone. I explained how to cut the fennel bulb into wedges right through the center core, so the layers of vegetable stick together, and promised her that it would roast up nice and soft. She handed the phone back to June, and got to work. And on we went, for potatoes, kale, salmon, and the sauce.

Overall, though, it worked quite well. Since it took us (collectively) longer than it took me alone to prepare the ingredients, I had them cut their salmon into smaller filets, instead of roasting it in a big slab, and unless they were lying, it came out perfectly.

From my end, it was sort of a grueling half hour or so. But it also made my heart melt, they same way it does when a kid says something so entirely wrong it’s cute. I’d say, “Squeeze the lemon over the fish,” and June would say, “How do you squeeze a lemon again?” and Verna would say, “June, I know how to squeeze a lemon,” and Mary, more kitchencaster than participant, would say, “What’s the lemon for? Why aren’t we putting it on the fish later?” And since I was there, they’d ask me, to make sure, and we’d spend 25 seconds – watch the clock, it’s a long time – talking lemon-squeezing.

But my goodness, they giggled. There were three of them, but even so, sometimes they were so overwhelmed by the collective energy it took to, say, find the cumin, that they’d abandon me on the counter, and I could hear them twittering, one to the next. It was like listening to a recording of a pack of teenagers in 1939.

And after they’d called back to report that yes, dinner was sensational, I imagined them gathered in front of her giant new television, watching the World Series, picking kale out of their teeth, and wished I wasn’t such a sucker for Whiney McWhiskers. But if anyone understands coddling a cat, it’s June.

Over Thanksgiving, she told me again how much fun she’d had. “But fennel,” she said. “I wouldn’t be too sad if I never saw fennel again. I’m a carrots-onions-potatoes kind of gal.”

Fair enough. I’ll cook the fennel here.

The Ten Minute Holiday Meal: Roasted Salmon with Lemon-Cumin Raita, Caramelized Fennel with Sherry Vinegar, Simple Dijon Potatoes, and Creamed Kale (PDF)

The holidays are a time to put the shine on your best silver, if that’s what suits you, but it doesn’t suit everyone. Me? I didn’t always save the pasta-making, reduction-simmering, and bread baking for other times of the year. It used to make sense to stand in the kitchen for hours, talking and stirring. But these days, with an 8-month-old, I’m lucky if I can boil water in one try at 6 p.m. So this year, having guests over will mean simplicity, so there’s a chance – even the slightest, skinniest chance – that I’ll get to talk to the people hanging out with us in our home.

The following simple menu was designed with a 4-person dinner party in mind, to be prepared in a bit over 10 minutes (with dinner about 20 minutes afterward). It doubles easily, but if you do double it, keep in mind that it will take you longer to cut the vegetables, so the salmon might go in later. Luckily, it’s hard to overcook the potatoes, fennel, and kale, so let the salmon determine dinnertime – just add the sherry to the fennel right when you start taking things out of the oven, so it has a minute or two to sizzle.

If you can’t find Olsen Farms’ “Spud Nuts,” which are basically ridiculously small potatoes, quarter golf ball-sized potatoes and use them instead. Potatoes simply halved (per the photos above) don’t quite cook enough in the time allotted.

And, as always, please READ THROUGH the directions before beginning. The directions assume all produce is washed.

*

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

MAKE THE POTATOES: Grease a shallow roasting pan with a teaspoon of olive oil. Toss 1 1/2 pounds Spud Nuts (or quartered small potatoes) with 2 heaping tablespoons Dijon mustard, transfer them to the pan, and put them in the oven on the bottom rack.

MAKE THE FENNEL: Cut the long green stalks off a 1 1/2 pound fennel bulb and save to slice into a salad. Cut the fennel in half vertically (with the stripes), then cut each half into 6 or 8 wedges, so the core keeps each wedge intact. Pile the wedges in an ovenproof pan big enough to fit them in one layer, drizzle with 2 teaspoons of olive oil, season with salt and pepper, and mix with your hands until all the fennel is coated. Add to the oven’s bottom rack.

START THE KALE: Cut 2 small bunches (about 3/4 pound) lacinato (also called dinosaur) kale crosswise into thin ribbons. Heat 1/2 tablespoon olive oil in a large, deep pan over medium heat. Add a crushed, chopped garlic clove, stir for a few seconds, then add the kale, and cook, stirring occasionally while you continue.

MAKE THE SAUCE: Stir together the contents of an 8-ounce container full-fat Greek yogurt, the zest and juice of a lemon, 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin, salt and pepper to taste, and if you want, a chopped clove of garlic. Set aside to let the flavors marry, as they say.

MAKE THE SALMON: Center a 1 1/2 pound (roughly 1 1/2” thick) salmon filet on a parchment- or baking mat-lined baking sheet. Smear with 1 teaspoon olive oil, and season with salt and pepper. Bake for 15 minutes or so, or roughly 10 minutes per inch of thickness, until the salmon just begins to exude small white beads of fat (but really not much longer, please).

UPKEEP: Add 1 cup heavy cream and a quick grate of nutmeg to the kale, stir, and walk away. Come back in 10 minutes, stir the kale, pour yourself more wine, and sit back down. (The kale is done when the cream’s gone, but it’s very happy to sit on low heat until you’re ready to eat.)

WHEN THE SALMON IS DONE: Add a big splash – about 1 1/2 tablespoons – sherry vinegar to the fennel pan, and return to the oven without breathing in too deeply (watch those vinegar fumes). Take the salmon out, and transfer it to a serving platter, along with the sauce. Transfer the kale to a serving bowl. Snuggle the potatoes in next to the salmon. Shake the fennel pan to release the wedges, and add them to the platter, too.

Serve hot.

A cure for cooktongue

I love Thanksgiving, when it’s in the kitchen, because it condenses all the ups and downs of cooking into just a few short hours. There’s the thrill of a big, brown bird, so heavy it takes two to baste. The disappointment of bland pureed meat from a too-boring pumpkin. The challenge of making whipped cream biscuits early in the morning with two crying babies, even when there are four hands. The carrots that sagged when I orphaned them on the stove for just a minute too long.

Gosh, that’s looking an awful lot like a meal I didn’t love.

I did, though. I loved it. It just took me three days.

Maybe I had a case of cooktongue. You know, cooktongue: the inevitable disease one acquires when cooking for too many people for too long. Serious side effects include food tasting terrible no matter the seasoning, boredom with dishes that usually excite, and difficulty chewing.

Our guests said dinner was good, but I thought they were just being nice. On Thursday, the only flavor I got was sawdust, ground to different consistencies and scattered around my plate. Before the pies came out, we wrapped a pretty platter of food up for E, who didn’t arrive until Friday. I was a bit wistful, shuffling it into the depths of the fridge, half hoping it would be forgotten. I hadn’t noticed the layers three different types of sausage created in the cornbread stuffing, or the hard cider in my sister’s first gravy, or the way a real, good ham coats the mouth with velvet.

What I did taste, while my cousin and my sister and I buzzed about on Thanksgiving day, was my family. I felt a laugh roll down my tongue and out into the air when I realized, after accusing them of gathering in the kitchen like a pack of rabid dogs, that a few of my female relatives had moved their semi-private conversation to the landing immediately outside the bathroom. (This is my family.)

I tasted Hong Kong, when my uncle described his meals at home there, and the sweet-and-sour fried eggplant he had at a guest house outside Beijing. I tasted the sweet potatoes, before feeding them to Graham, bourbon and all. I tasted the cold, wet air, as my cousin and I darted out the door for a massage, laughing, both of us having just found our children spots on the family baby-go-round. I tasted something between joy and happiness, peppered with satisfaction, each time a someone put a new handprint on Graham’s family tree. (Next, we’ll ask friends to add handprints in a different color.) And I tasted a little regret, for having committed to hosting Thanksgiving last year, when I didn’t know how I’d be feeling this year.

But for the most part, no, I did not taste the food in front of me.

Then Sunday afternoon, I woke up from a good, long nap, completely healed. E never got to her Thanksgiving plate, and when dinner rolled around, I put the entire thing in our new microwave. (We had a microwave before, but it lived, usually unplugged, in the basement. It’s a miracle, this thing, and much more useful living within arm’s reach of the refrigerator. Welcome to 1967, Jess.)

The kitchen itself is not anywhere close to healed, however. This morning, a glance up at the pot rack revealed my blue saucepan – the one we used to make a base for Friday’s turkey pot pie – clean inside but still dripping with gravy outside. There are little piles of flour in every countertop corner. Stray sprigs of thyme keep sticking to my socks. And inside the refrigerator – a fridge, I might add, that now has a broken drawer, a door handle that continually pops off, and a complaining freezer compressor – all balance has been erased.

It’s not that we have so much food left over – a roasting pan-sized pot pie does miracles for leftovers. (I insist you try it with bacon and Brussels sprouts next time. Really.)

It’s the dairy. It’s disturbing our refrigerator’s chi. At last count, I saw two quarts of heavy cream, one quart of half and half, one pint of half and half, a half gallon of eggnog, 2% milk, whole milk, whipped cream, and two half-used big containers of sour cream. That’s a lot of halves. In the produce department, we have half a head of kale, half a bag of cranberries, and a few onions. That’s it.

I have nothing against cream. (Clearly. If you’ve been here before, you know that.) I’m just afraid of wasting it.

So yesterday, at the risk of reinstating what my friend Kathy calls the Thanksgiving butter coma, I decided to make a cream cake.

I’d also filled a big bowl with crisp, fat red pears for the week. They’re just now finger-dentable. I thought of making pear clafoutis, but wanted something sliceable – something creamy and eggy, but not so dangerously (read: endlessly) spoonable. Something for snacking, but not a cake with bonafide crumb.

I cut the pears thin (no peeling required) and pinwheeled them into a springform pan. (Don’t panic. It turns out the pinwheel doesn’t matter, because the batter covers the pears almost entirely.) I whirled room temperature eggs and sugar together, spiked them with cream, and folded in just a bit of flour, for stability. As the cake baked it puffed – slowly at first, but eventually cracking in the center. It cooled quietly into a rich, custardy disc. Then it stood up and asked me to make another pot of coffee, STAT.

Standing alone in my kitchen, forking bites in between sips, it tasted like an overgrown pear-studded crepe, caught halfway between breakfast and dessert, three-quarters of the way from cake to clafoutis.

Thank you, family, for coming. But thank you for going, too. I do believe this cooktongue thing has cleared up.

Red Pear Cream Cake (PDF)
Caught between cake and clafoutis, this rich, custardy dessert is actually best for breakfast. Use pears that are just ripe enough to dent with your fingers near the top.

TIME: 20 minutes prep time
MAKES: 8 servings (or 2, if you’re me)

Butter, for greasing pan
2 large red pears (about 1 1/2 pounds), cored and sliced 1/4” thick (no need to peel)
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
Pinch salt
4 large eggs, room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla
Confectioners’ sugar (for dusting), optional

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Use the butter to generously grease a 9” springform pan. Place the pan on a baking sheet, and arrange the pears on the bottom of the pan, overlaying them or stacking them so they’re in a roughly even layer.

Whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt together in a small bowl and set aside.

In the work bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the eggs until blended on medium speed. Add the sugar in a slow, steady stream and mix until light, about 3 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, add the cream and vanilla, and mix again for 30 seconds or so. Sprinkle the dry ingredients on top, and mix by hand until just blended – the batter will be thinner than regular cake batter, and may have a few small lumps in it still.

Pour the batter over the pears, poking any stray fruit under the surface if it pops out. Bake 40 to 50 minutes on the middle rack, until set and puffed in the center and golden brown on top. (If the cake seems to be browning too quickly, place a baking sheet on a rack immediately above the cake for the remainder of the baking time.)

Let cool 10 minutes in the pan. Run a small knife around the edge of the cake, remove the outside ring of the springform pan, and let cool another 15 minutes or so before cutting and serving, dusted with confectioners’ sugar, if desired.

Many thanks

Six years ago, Thanksgiving meant lying on a hotel room couch in Park City, Utah, wondering what was wrong. I couldn’t see how and why my body had morphed from strongstrongstrong to something I simply couldn’t recognize. Six years ago, I admitted to myself that I was sick. It took me months to admit the same thing to the people close to me.

Thanksgiving means a lot of things, in my heart: It means food, and family, and the eggnog we age in the garage for three weeks. It means balancing cooking and relaxing and drinking and eating – have to do them all in the right amounts, in the right order, you know. And increasingly, it means a small, soft moment or two, when I sit back and remember that there was a time when I didn’t have lupus, and didn’t wake up on the easy mornings – the ones with good, greasy joints – and feel thankful, just to be walking comfortably. Despite all the physical and emotional hubbub that surrounds an autoimmune disease, sometimes I feel almost a little lucky to have lupus. It’s made me much, much better at giving thanks.

This week, I’m mostly thankful for the people who make it easier to live with lupus: For Kelly, who carried my groceries – not because I can’t, but because some days, it’s easier if I don’t. For our nanny, who came on her day off and schlepped all the heavy, awkward stuff out of the car for me. For a guy like Joe, who carried my skis on Sunday without making me feel like a sissy. For my neighbor, who walked my dog last week without knowing she’d picked the day when it hurt just to hold the leash. For my doctors, who tell me that my recent flare (honestly, the worst it’s ever been) can probably be abated by stronger medications and a lot less breastfeeding. For my friends, who told me it was okay to be devastated, and encouraged me to embrace what amounts to a huge departure from how I planned to feed my child. For my husband, who never knew “in sickness and in health” (or our own equivalent) would be a phrase he’d have to visit so often. And for all the people who help and support me, every day, without making me feel in any way handicapped. (That is a very impressive thing, indeed.)

You’ll also be thankful for Sarah, who came over for a gabbing and pie crust-making session and ended up staying to peel the sweet potatoes for this little crisp. (The real one’s bigger, but I’m saving it for the holiday, so you just get a snapshot of the baby version.) It seemed like such a nothing thing to both of us, I’m sure, but I’d broken my most hand-friendly peeler, and getting the job done with the normal metal peeler was somehow overwhelming. She just sat down and got to work.

I meant to come here days ago, for advice on what became my Thanksgiving conundrum of the year. I’d hit upon the idea of a sweet potato crisp – something done before, surely, but nothing my own taste buds had run across – and couldn’t decide whether to serve it as part of the meal or as a dessert.

Then Thanksgiving came cartwheeling in, before I could get my game face on. (There are eight here already, with eight more coming soon.) That crisp? It’ll slide in right next to the turkey, I’ve decided, as a substitute for the gooey-topped version found on so many tables. We’ll pile it onto our plates, along with Erica’s biscuits and a cornbread stuffing I’ve yet to invent all the way.

And when the meal’s over, and my husband’s salty, well-worked hands dig into the pile of dishes, I know I’ll be thankful for the way my family’s worked together to put everything on the table. When the pies come out, I’ll find a spot on the floor, because goodness knows where the couch will be by then, and wonder if it’s possible to teach a child to be thankful, just to be alive.

Thanks for reading. Happy Thanksgiving.

Bourbon Sweet Potato Crisp (PDF)

The recipe below makes enough topping to cover the crisp if the sweet potatoes are snuggled into a 9” square baking pan. You can also put it in a taller dish (like a soufflé dish) and use less topping, decreasing the crunch-to-potato ratio, or spread the sweet potato mixture out in a 9” by 13” dish, so each bite has more topping.

TIME: 30 minutes, plus baking
MAKES: About 12 servings

For the potatoes:
5 pounds sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 1/2” cubes
1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup bourbon, such as Maker’s Mark
2 tablespoons maple syrup
Salt (to taste)

For the crisp topping:
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup old-fashioned oats
3/4 cup chopped walnuts
3/4 cup (packed) brown sugar
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Pinch salt
3/4 stick unsalted butter, melted

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

First, start the sweet potatoes: Place the potatoes in a large pot, and add cold water to cover. Bring to a simmer and cook until very tender, about 20 minutes. Drain potatoes, return to the pot, and mash with the remaining potato ingredients. Puree in batches in a food processor until very smooth, and transfer to a 9” square (or similar) baking pan.

While the potatoes cook, mix the topping ingredients in a medium bowl until well blended. Scatter the topping over the potatoes and bake for about 30 minutes, until the topping has browned. Serve warm.

Note: Both the sweet potatoes and the crisp topping can be made ahead and refrigerated up to 3 days in advance. To serve, bake the sweet potatoes for 20 minutes, add the topping, and bake another 40 minutes.

Little things, and a roasted vegetable chowder

Today, just a few quick links, and a recipe for an oven-roasted (mostly) root vegetable chowder…

That fried squash? You might have heard me talking about it on KUOW, Seattle’s NPR station. (If you didn’t, it’s here.)

Also, I’ve entered the maple-kabocha sour cream bundt cake in Bon Appetit’s holiday dessert bake-off. The winner is picked in part by popular vote, which – if junior high cheerleading tryouts are any indication – has never been my strongpoint, but what the hay. Head on over to vote. (Hint: It’s in the cake category. And while you’re there, look for entries from other Seattle food bloggers!)

And then – then – I’m done with squash. Promise. At least for a day or two.

My recipe for Salty Marcona Almond Toffee – one of my favorite holiday treats – is being featured over at Saveur.com.

We’re having fifteen people here for Thanksgiving. Not much is decided, but I’ll certainly be making this pear-spiked cranberry jam, as well as these bleu cheese and walnut cookies, because a Thanksgiving elf just sent me a six pound wheel of Point Reyes. Today, I begin the hunt for an excellent sausage-studded cornbread stuffing recipe. And if you’re a geometry expert, I could use your help fitting a table for fifteen into our living room.

I’ve been on Twitter (@onfoodandlife) for a couple months now. For those uninterested in joining, note that you can now follow my tweets – and not learn a single thing about social media, if it’s not your thang – on the righthand side of Hogwash’s home page.

And oh, yes. Hogwash. She’s had a little bit of a face lift. What do you think? Is there anything you’d like to see more of around here?

For now, a quick chowder for two. For the days when you can’t sit over the stove and stir.

Mostly Root Vegetable Chowder (PDF)
Made with fennel, parsnips, kale, shallots, garlic, and of course potatoes, this bacon-studded, oven-roasted chowder is a break from the kind that cements you to your seat for the hours following lunch. And because the bacon and vegetables are roasted together in the oven, it takes much less active time than most chowders—and you get the same potato skin snap you get when you roast potatoes alone.

TIME: 20 minutes prep
MAKES: 2 large servings

2 fat slices bacon, diced
Half a (1-pound) fennel bulb, chopped
1 shallot, chopped
2 parsnips, peeled and sliced into 1” rounds
1/2 pound small white potatoes, quartered
2 large garlic cloves, roughly chopped
1 teaspoon fresh thyme
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1 teaspoon olive oil
3 cups chicken stock
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 cup chopped kale

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Scatter the bacon on the bottom of a heavy ovenproof pot, such as a Dutch oven. In a mixing bowl, toss the fennel, shallot, parsnips, potatoes, garlic, and thyme with salt, pepper, and olive oil. Roast 40 to 45 minutes, until the vegetables are beginning to brown on the bottom and the bacon is crispy. Stir to release the vegetables from the pan.

Add the chicken stock, cream, and kale, and stir again. Cook another 30 minutes, stirring halfway through. Season to taste with additional salt and pepper if necessary, and serve hot.

Note: To double the recipe, switch to a wider pan, like a heavy roasting pan, so the vegetables have enough room to spread out and caramelize a bit.

A good fry

Before you run screaming, hear me out: Frying isn’t an actual sin. I mean, yeah, it’s bad for you, if you do it every day. Plus, your curtains will smell weird if you have hot oil around the house a lot, and if you own drama queen smoke detectors, like we do, it’ll probably cause you permanent hearing damage if you indulge more than once a month.

But sometimes—when the rains come, and the days seem to be ending sooner, and you’re dealing with, say, a borderline-unhealthy squash addiction—you just need a good fry.

When it comes to fried food, in our house, there are the usual suspects: Chicken. Onions. Potatoes. Fried and true, those guys are. But squash? Never. Squash was an Untouchable.

I had fried squash (tempura, naturally) for the first time in Japan, in the basement food gallery of Takashimaya, which someone once described to me as the Nieman Marcus of Japan. The exterior was surprising – more rough-textured than any fried food I was familiar with, shattery in the mouth, and somehow ethereally light, even though it was served cold. I loved every vegetal bite.

At home, I searched for a recipe, but each click uncovered another layer of musts: You must keep tempura batter coldcoldcold, so the gluten in the flour doesn’t develop. You must use eggs. You must use rice flour. You must not use eggs. You must use oil. You must use wheat flour. You must stir with chopsticks, and leave the batter lumpy, if you want the perfect texture. You must recite the text of Tampopo while mixing. You must use baking soda. You must use baking powder. You must not use any leaveners. You must . . .

I did what any cook worth her salt would do: I tried the tempura batter that comes in a box in the grocery store. And you know what? That worked, for me, for a while.

Then I became a whole-baked squash evangelist. I’ve been roasting away for weeks now, making cakes and food for Graham, and generally abusing every type of squash available by baking it whole, until soft, pureeing it, and putting it into something. I sort of got to feeling sorry for the things – they did all the work and didn’t get any of the credit. I wanted a recipe starring squash as itself. And well, goodness me, doesn’t everyone go through an autumnal fried food binge?

My goal was to avoid tempura altogether, the way you avoid a parallel parking spot that’s technically big enough for your car but too scary to actually use. I went with what I thought was a basic beer batter, spiked with a touch of Tabasco for intrigue. I thought I’d just dip my little kabocha crescents in, fry ‘em up, and that would be that—like onion rings, only orange inside. But no. Nooooo. That first batch had to come out all shattery and elegant on the outside, with a thin, crisp crust barely strong enough to encase what had become, in essence, mashed squash.

If I’d been counting, I’d say I fried six or seven batches that first time, by myself in the kitchen, dipping kabocha into batter and then oil time and time again, just to prove to myself that yes, it would happen again. It did. I was delighted.

Then I started to play: I thickened the batter with a bit more flour, and it bulked up a bit, which gave the kabocha a protective layer that steamed and hissed when the squash was cooked. In this second version, I started to really taste the beer – which is why when I made them again a few days later, instead of using another one of the PBR cans we’ve been fostering in our fridge for going on 4 months, I used a deeply malty, nutty local amber ale.

Then I added more flour. Result: Fair food. I had squash with a chewy, doughy batter, thick enough to sink my teeth into but not so thick it hid the taste of the squash. The crust lifted up off the vegetable just enough to hold a hot, moist puff of beer-flavored air that rushed out with the first bite. Excellent.

Give it a try, if your arteries are feeling unusually elastic (especially if you’ll already have a vat of hot oil around for your turkey one of these days). Start with the thinnest batter, and play with it a bit. Just think: It could very well be the first time you fry a quintessentially seasonal food.

About that seasonality thing: I believe we think of winter squash as something that’s always ripe, but that’s not true. Most squash have to be aged a bit, to achieve peak sweetness. At the market, look for specimens whose stems have dried out and become corky or woody – wet, green stems indicate a freshly-picked squash, which isn’t what you want (unless you want something less sweet that’s harder to cut and sccop, per the photo above).

And oh, yes. I almost forgot. After much testing, it seems like the fried kabocha reaches the ultimate interior texture – and the batter’s crispness and color peak – when the squash is sliced a bit shy of 1/2” thick.

Try not to kill yourself when you cut it, eh?

Beer-Battered Kabocha Squash (PDF)
Made with moonish slivers of bright orange kabocha, this Japanese-inspired snack skips traditional tempura batter in favor of something a bit more American: beer. The batter will fry up differently depending on how much flour you add, so try experimenting—the thinner the dip, the more elegant, crunchy, and tempura-ish your end product will be, and the thicker it is, the more doughy and chewy (and the more you’ll taste the beer). In any case, the sweet squash (and its skin) cooks up to a sweet, soft treat inside.

Dip the squash in a traditional aioli, a Japanese-style combo of dashi, soy, and mirin, or simply sprinkle it with sea salt right when it comes out of the fryer. But be sure to eat your squash hot!

TIME: 40 minutes, start to finish
MAKES: Fried squash for a crowd

Canola oil (enough to fill a deep pot with 3” oil)
1 5- or 6-pound kabocha squash (about the diameter of a soccer ball), halved and seeded
1 to 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup cornstarch
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 12-ounce beer (still cold)
Tabasco sauce (optional)

Heat the oil in a deep, heavy pot fitted with a frying thermometer over medium heat until the oil reaches 325 degrees. (The burner temperature will depend on your stove, so keep adjusting it as needed.)

Meanwhile, use a large knife to slice the kabocha squash into half moons just under 1/2” thick—any thicker, and the squash won’t cook enough before the batter gets nice and brown. Cut each piece in half again and set aside. Line a large plate with paper towels (or line your kitchen counter with newspaper) and set aside.

Whisk the flour, cornstarch, salt, and baking powder until blended in a large mixing bowl. (For a lighter, more tempura-like crust, use 1 cup flour, or use more flour for a thicker, slightly chewier crust. Or start with 1 cup, and add a little as you go, if you’d like to experiment!) When the oil has reached 325 degrees, whisk the beer into the dry ingredients, stirring only until the flour is incorporated. Add a dash (or a glug) of Tabasco sauce, if desired, and mix in.

Working with a few pieces of squash at a time, dip the squash into the batter. Let any excess batter drip back into the bowl, and carefully transfer the squash pieces to the hot oil. Fry for 1 1/2 to 2 minutes, or until the batter is golden brown and the skin of the squash begins to turn from green to brown. (If you made your batter nice and thick, you’ll need to turn the squash pieces over halfway through frying.) Use a slotted spoon or mesh ladle to transfer the squash to the paper towels, and repeat with the remaining squash, keeping an eye on the oil temperature and adjusting the heat as necessary. Serve hot.

Tiny tragedies

It’s been a week of tiny tragedies, here in Seattle. I’ve been sighing a lot. They’re not the contented, self-congratulatory kind of sighs, but the deflating, disappointed sort. The kind you eek out, when there’s nothing left to do.

I’m not sure how it started. Maybe it was last Thursday. Yes, that was it. Curses on you, Thursday.

First I somehow sliced my finger open with my own wedding ring. Then I hit a parked car—a 6,000-year-old Suburban, thank goodness—and busted a headlight. Then a raccoon attacked my normally scrappy cat, and we spent part of a night in the kitty ER. (Jackson came out a little maimed, but alive. He’s mostly just insulted he’s so poorly shaven and trapped indoors.)

Then—then—I made a ricotta cheesecake, a gorgeous, pumpkin-tinged, ginger-crusted gem of a thing, inspired by my borderline-unhealthy obsession with kabocha squash and a bit of leftover cream cheese. But I nearly broke it in half, moving it too fast (and too soon) from pan to platter. (And it had been so beautiful!)

Of course, it still tasted like a perfectly plated pumpkin cheesecake. (Say that ten times fast.) I took one slice out to verify. (Yes: delicious.) Then we took it to a Halloween party, and I never got a second slice.

Poor decision.

Now, a couple days later, in the middle of a grey afternoon, I have a finger that won’t type, a completely unnecessary $150 mechanic bill, a cat yowling to be let out, good coffee, and no last slice of pumpkin cheesecake. All I really feel capable of doing is pouting out loud.

I’ll just give you the recipe instead.

By the way, there’s a tiny lie in the recipe title – it’s actually a light, faintly spiced cheesecake made with pureed kabocha squash, but there’s something inherently unsexy about a squash cheesecake. Don’t you agree? Ditto for cream cheese pie, which is what my husband called the cheesecake when he couldn’t think of the correct word.  So pumpkin cheesecake it is.

Pumpkin-Ricotta Cheesecake (PDF)

Loosely based on the recipe for Eve’s Lemon Cheesecake, from Kathy Gunst’s Relax, Company’s Coming! (one of my all-time go-to cookbooks), this fallish, ginger-crusted treat satisfies all manners of cheesecake cravings. Thanks to plenty of eggs and ricotta cheese (and a bit less sugar than usual), it’s lighter than your typical doorstop dessert. Use pureed kabocha squash if you have it, or simply substitute canned pumpkin.

TIME: 90 minutes, start to finish
MAKES: 12 servings

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted, plus more for greasing pan
1 (5-ounce) package ginger thins, pulverized in a food processor
1/2 cup sifted confectioners’ sugar
1 pound cream cheese, room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 pound whole milk ricotta
4 large eggs, room temperature
1 1/4 cups mashed kabocha squash
1/8 teaspoon each ground ginger, cardamom, nutmeg, and allspice
1 teaspoon vanilla
Pinch salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside. Grease an 8” springform pan generously with butter, wrap the bottom with a piece of foil (to catch any butter that drips out while baking) and set aside.

Stir the melted butter, ginger thin crumbs, and confectioners’ sugar together in a bowl until well blended. Dump the mixture into the bottom of the springform pan, and use your hands to pat it into an even layer on the bottom of the pan and about 1/2” up the sides. Transfer the pan to the freezer to harden while you make the filling.

Next, in the work bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, whip the cream cheese and sugar on medium speed until light, about 3 minutes. Add the ricotta, and whip another minute or two. Add the eggs one at a time, whipping on low and scraping the sides of the work bowl between additions. Stir the squash, spices, vanilla, and salt together in a separate bowl, then add the squash mixture to the batter, and mix on medium speed until uniform in color, scraping any stray cream cheese off the very bottom of the bowl.

Place the chilled pan on the prepared baking sheet, and transfer the batter to the pan. Bake on the middle rack for about 1 hour 15 minutes, or until the cake is puffed and just beginning to crack. (It may still jiggle a bit, but the cake will move as one piece, rather than just jiggling in the center.) Let cool to room temperature (or chill overnight), then cut and serve.

Note: If you want a cheesecake with almost no color (besides the obvious pumpkin-orange tinge) on the top, place a baking sheet on the rack directly above it as it bakes.

Halloween homage

It’s hard to bring a dead magazine flowers, especially when you live thousands of miles away from its former headquarters. But more than profess Gourmet magazine’s perfection or symbolism, its former prowess or power, what I’ve been wanting to say, these last few weeks, is just. . . You know. Sorry.

 

A cake to crush on

I saw you at the farmers’ market this weekend. You picked up a kabocha squash – that big, tough-looking green one, with the woody stump – and fairly considered it. You turned it around and around, right side-up and upside-down. It wasn’t without effort, of course – the weight of the thing made your market bag trip over your shoulder blade and careen down your upper arm, at which point you wondered how you’d get the beast home. Then your buddy said, “So, how do you think you get it open?” And I watched you put that poor squash down.

I hate to be Debbie Downer, but you made the wrong decision, sister. A kabocha squash can be a big thug of a thing, but it is not (despite those witchy warts and scars) actually scary or difficult to use.

And I don’t mean to be smug, but I should know. These days, with sore joints, a can opener is my nemesis; I do not cut hard things. The thought of hacking into anything tougher than a bagel (much less quartering a big ol’ squash) brings tears to my eyes. But I love kabocha. So my choices are threefold: 1) stop buying squash and be sad, 2) let my husband finally buy the Samurai sword he’s always wanted, and pray he doesn’t hurt the counters or himself, or 3) skip the farmers’ market and buy pre-cut squash at the grocery store.

But oh, wait. WAIT. There’s a fourth. See, you don’t actually have to cut into a kabocha before you cook it, if you want soft squash. You can just put it in the oven, stem and all, and roast away at 400 degrees. It comes out like I do after a too-long day at the beach—tanned and tired, a bit stinky and maybe a little slumpy. But it’s as easy to cut into as a stick of room-temperature butter. I almost snatched your sleeve to tell you, right there at the market booth, but that would have been so awkward and stalkerish.

See, if I’d grabbed you, I would have had to tell you about my kabocha-maple bundt cake, too. As if you needed someone yakking to you about a cake that went out of style five decades ago. As if you need more kitchen equipment. I mean really, who owns a bundt cake pan anymore? I certainly didn’t. But last week, after testing a donut recipe for my friend Lara’s upcoming book (it’s tentatively called The Doughnut Cookbook, now who could argue with that?), one with an addictive maple glaze, I had maple glaze on my mind. It tangoed around in my brain with all sorts of ingredients, until settling on—well, drizzling down, really—the sides of a bundt cake hued with the rich, sweet flesh of a kabocha squash.

I broke into my neighbor’s house to borrow a bundt cake pan. (Okay, maybe there was a key involved, but rifling through her cupboards with no one in the house, it felt like a break-in.) I stirred and whipped and mashed, until I had a butternut-orange batter tinged with maple syrup and spunked with sour cream. Up it baked, in a meticulously buttered and floured pan – in 40 minutes, which was less time than I expected – then out it came, gorgeous and spongy and smooth in all the right places and, I daresay, almost sexy. Aside from the oft-abused line from My Big Fat Greek Wedding, I’ve never given the bundt cake a second thought, but goodness, yes, they’re sexy, with all those curves. Add a quick maple-vanilla glaze and a sprinkling of nuts, and you’ve got a head-turner.

But enough about the way she looks. I have to tell you this: She might be my best-tasting cake. Ever.

I’ve told you before that I’m not much of a cake person. I don’t like the way dry edges call out for frosting—in my opinion, a cake shouldn’t need frosting, and frosting shouldn’t need cake. Each should be delicious on its own, but they should complement each other when they’re put together. Like people, I guess. But like people, it’s not always as easy as it sounds. This cake is different. The glaze is diamonds on a woman too beautiful for jewelry: certainly not needed, but once they’re there, how could you take them off?

I love this cake because it’s equally appropriate for the plate at 8 a.m., 4 p.m., or 8 p.m. (and, I suspect, at 4 a.m., although I didn’t get the opportunity to try). I like it because I let it sit for two days before serving it to a crowd, and it was still perfectly moist. I like it because unlike a regular dessert cake, it’s hard for others to tell how big a piece you’re really cutting for yourself, so you can have ten little slivers, if that suits you, or one giant hunk, without looking like a princess or a pig. I like that it has a rich, dense crumb, all the way to the edges. I love that it’s easy to cut. And most of all, I love that nothing about making it hurts me right now.

The problem with kabocha, in my house, is that we never seem to have enough. Roasting up a soccer ball-sized specimen left me with about a quart of mashed squash, and I’m already panicking about how to use the last of it. Do I make another cake and freeze it for my mom’s visit next week? Or do I whirl it up in the blender with a bit of coconut milk and a dab of curry paste, for a quick lunch soup? Or do I sacrifice an ice cube tray, and freeze the rest into little cubes, for Graham to eat, once he gets past the initial shock of putting something besides milk in his mouth?

Oh, dear me. I might just have to roast another. I’ve actually just purchased my own bundt pan, so you can guess where the kabocha will most likely go. I want to try the cake with cardamom.

Kabocha-Maple Sour Cream Bundt Cake with Maple-Vanilla Glaze (PDF)

Kabocha squash has a rich, yellowy flesh that mashes up soft and smooth (like canned pumpkin) when it’s cooked. To roast it, slice a kabocha roughly in half and remove the seeds with an ice cream scoop. Roast cut side-down on a parchment- or silpat-lined baking sheet (no need to oil it) at 400 degrees until the skin is easy to poke with a fork, about an hour. (Timing will depend on the size and age of the squash.) Let the squash cool, peel away the skin and any other tough pieces, and mash the squash like you would potatoes, until smooth.

If you’re afraid of cutting the squash, you can also put the entire thing – stem and all – into the oven, and bake it a bit longer. Just be sure to scoop out the seeds and stringy stuff before you mash the flesh.

TIME: 30 minutes active time
MAKES: About 16 servings

For the cake:
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter (at room temperature), plus more for pan
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for pan
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup sour cream (8 ounce container)
1/4 cup maple syrup
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 1/2 packed cups mashed kabocha squash

For the glaze:
3/4 cup confectioners’ sugar
1 tablespoon maple syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 teaspoons water (plus more, if necessary)
2 tablespoons chopped toasted nuts, such as hazelnuts, pecans, or walnuts (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Generously (and carefully) flour and butter a bundt cake pan, and set aside.

Whisk the flours, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together in a bowl, and set aside.

Using a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, whip the butter and sugar together on medium speed until light, 3 to 4 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, scraping down the sides of the bowl and mixing between additions. Stir the sour cream, maple syrup, and vanilla together in a bowl. With the machine on low, alternate adding the dry and wet mixtures – first some of the flour, then some of the cream, then flour, cream again, and finally flour. When just mixed, add the squash, and mix on low until uniform in color.

Transfer the batter to the prepared bundt cake pan, smooth the top, and bake (I find it easier to transfer if it’s on a baking sheet) until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out with just a few crumbs, and the top springs back when touched lightly, about 40 to 45 minutes.

Let the cake cool 10 minutes in the pan, then carefully invert onto a serving platter. When cool to the touch (after about an hour), make the glaze: Whisk the sugar, syrup, vanilla, and water together until smooth, adding additional water if necessary to make a thick, barely pourable glaze. Drizzle the glaze (or pour it right out of the bowl) along the crown of the cake, allowing it to ooze down the inside and outside of the cake. Sprinkle immediately with nuts, if using.

Once the glaze has dried, the cake keeps well, wrapped in plastic, at room temperature, up to 3 days.

MAKE AHEAD: Cake can also be made ahead, wrapped in foil and plastic, and frozen up to 1 month. Glaze after defrosting at room temperature.

Victim of the market vortex

Click here to hear me chat on the radio with KUOW’s Megan Sukys about The Asian Grandmothers Cookbook, which has been my source of dinner inspiration for the last week or so . . . Above, 1-2-3-4-5 Sticky Spareribs. Scroll down for recipes.

Last week, I walked into HT, an Asian grocery store near my house, with a very short list:

Shaoxing rice wine
Pandan leaves
Panko

I’d dog-eared a few pages in my most recent cookbook acquisition, The Asian Grandmothers Cookbook, knowing I’d have to expand my pantry a bit to make a few of the recipes I’d picked out. But as I stood there at the front of the store, in the shock one inevitably undergoes when one enters a market that’s not totally familiar, I looked at the list again. Is that all?

It’s a well-known fact that if you don’t go into the grocery store with a specific list, you come out with more than you really need. But there’s a corollary to that rule: if you go in with too short a list, you come out with what you need and what you never knew you needed. Multiply by two if you’re in a store you don’t visit often, then by six if you’re hungry, and again by three if your child is sleeping peacefully. (See Why I Don’t Go to Target.)

At HT, I totally got sucked into the market vortex. I came home with the last of the ingredients I needed for the recipes I’d picked from the book, as well as enough for beef pho for roughly six people, fun frozen dim sum for an army, and whatever else I could fit into four giant shopping bags: chilies, tofu, six tiny cans of coconut milk, Vietnamese meatballs . . .

This week, it’s been all about other peoples’ recipes. Gotta cook down the fridge, if you know what I mean. But here are a few for you to try . . .

(And a quick note: try poaching pears in the ginger tea, below.)

From The Asian Grandmothers Cookbook, by Pat Tanumihardja:

1-2-3-4-5 Sticky Spareribs (PDF)

Chicken and Eggs in a Golden Curry (PDF)

Ginger Tea (PDF)

*Also, fresh ginger is sometimes available at Mair Farm-Taki at the UD farmers market (not Maki Farm, as I said on the radio!).

Spain, in 5 ingredients

Once, then I’m done: Some days, lupus bites. Not in a lovely, peppery vinaigrette sort of way. In a rocks-in-my-soup sort of way. I felt so good all summer, then boom. I turned away for just a moment, and the wolf walked in the door.

It’s no wonder, really. We spent a week in Spain for a wedding, plus a long weekend in Rhode Island for another wedding. It all adds up to Too Much Fun. It was lovely, of course – the jamon iberico, watching the Vuelta a Espana’s last time trial, seeing cousins I hadn’t seen in (literally) decades, participating in weddings I wouldn’t have missed for the world . . . But coming home, we had sort of a crash landing. Graham didn’t adjust back to our time zone as well as he had going the other direction, and between his schedule, our own jetlag, and three good cases of the sniffles, we’ve been a mess. And my body has not been happy.

Thankfully, the one taste I had to bring back from our trip – the flavor of Spain that lingered on my tongue, through all the ham, through the weird Oktoberfest meal on Lufthansa, through the Willow Tree chicken salad reunion (me and the chicken salad) in Newport – was the simplest of stews. We had it at a roadside restaurant, driving from La Rioja back to Madrid in a rented 6-speed diesel minivan. (As a side note, I do not recommend driving a large vehicle through the heart of Madrid if there’s even a small chance your iPhone, with all its hoo-ha navigational capabilities, will lose power.)

Considering our lack of Spanish, you could say we ordered the soup on accident. It was hardly a looker – just chickpeas, soaking in a simple broth with little beads of paprika-spiked oil bobbing around on the surface. Studded with slices of mild chorizo, it went down easy, rich but not overwhelming, unmistakably Spanish but after 8 days of ham, appreciably different. It had the kind of broth you want to drink for days on end, like a tonic.

When I sat down to think about how to make it, I felt like my brain wasn’t working. If I sautéed chorizo and then simmered it, along with dried chickpeas, in a paprika-rich homemade stock, the legumes would soak up some of that meaty flavor. But wasn’t there more? Five ingredients didn’t seem like enough.

But they were plenty. And an hour later, there it was: Spain. I’d purchased bulk chorizo, instead of the regular kind in casings, which made it a bit different from the version I fell in love with. (If you must know, I don’t like the way sausage slices look cooked with the casings on. The way the exterior shrinks up and strangles the meat reminds me of putting nylons on – you know, when they’re only partway up your thighs? Uncomfortable, and a little gross.)

Of course, the one thing missing from the roadside stew – the same thing, frankly, that was missing from so many of my meals in Spain – was the color green. I served ours over sautéed kale.

This could very well be The Fall I Didn’t Make Pie. Peeling apples just doesn’t seem to be an option right now. My hands are too sore.

But soup. Soup can be easy.

Thank goodness.

Quick Chorizo and Chickpea Stew (PDF)

Brimming with more flavor than a stew that takes 10 minutes of attention really deserves, this hearty concoction was my favorite meal from our recent trip to Spain. I used bulk chorizo, but sliced (sausage-style) chorizo would work well also (and was what we ate in Spain). Homemade chicken stock is important here—use yours, if you have some.

Serve the stew as is, or try ladling it over sautéed greens, such as kale or chard, or over leftover rice.

TIME: 10 minutes prep time
MAKES: 4 servings

1 1/4 cup dried chickpeas
6 cups good chicken stock
3/4 pound chorizo (bulk or in casings, thinly sliced)
1/2 teaspoon smoked Spanish paprika (Pimenton de la Vera)
Salt and freshly ground pepper

Bring the chickpeas and 4 cups of the stock to a boil in a soup pot. Cover, remove from heat, and let sit for 1 hour.

Preheat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Crumble the chorizo into the pan (or add the sliced chorizo) and cook, stirring and breaking into bite-sized pieces after the first 5 minutes, until cooked through, about 10 minutes. Transfer meat to the pan with the chickpeas, stir in the paprika and the remaining 2 cups stock, and season with salt and pepper. Simmer for 1 hour, until the beans are soft.

Season to taste, and serve hot.

Baby Boy A

Before our son, Graham, was born, I started daydreaming about his culinary education. His first course always seemed obvious: My firstborn would be a boob man from the start. Yes, I’d teach it myself, with equipment provided and fuel replenished by nature. Only it never occurred to me in all the hours spent obsessing over what foods he might prefer later, or whether he’d be unreasonably picky, that there might be a glitch—like being born unable to eat.

When Graham showed up almost two months early, we knew we were fortunate because he had good lungs and a willingness to fight the e. coli infection that sent me into labor. And (be still my beating heart) he apparently inherited my rock-solid digestive system. There was just one minor detail: he’d skipped the part of fetal development in which we learn to suck and swallow. So instead of waiting until toddlerhood, when kids typically begin refusing any food whose assembly they don’t personally witness, Graham decided we needed to fret over what he did or didn’t ingest from day one. For seven weeks, we watched our child learn to do what most kids are born doing.

Graham spent the first week of his life in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), then the next two weeks at a similar but slightly less scary ward called the Infant Special Care Unit (ISCU), both at Seattle’s Swedish Hospital. If you’ve never had the pleasure of visiting these places twice daily for weeks on end, you’ll find a close approximation, minus the cow sounds, at your nearest feed lot. Here, in I’d say half the cases, small but otherwise healthy children are nourished through a tube, their every nutritional need calculated and analyzed, prioritized, and criticized. There are charts and protocols and many, many syringes. Lactation consultants—nipple nazis, we called them—float from cribside to cribside, encouraging new moms to pump breast milk for their babies, touting it as nature’s perfect food. New mothers hide behind curtains, hooked up like modest, half-clothed heifers, but most of the babies end up on formula, because it’s often the most effective way to get calories in—and in the ISCU, calories count for everything. In other words, the ISCU is where babies become veal.

Continue reading Baby Boy A at LeitesCulinaria.com

Meet Darla

It’s the same sort of day as most of the other days here in Seattle, I suppose. I’m sitting at a coffee shop, next to a woman who appears, at a brief glance, to be editing a Swedish-Chinese dictionary.

I’ve started working again, three days a week. Sitting down at Herkimer, my body remembered all the right moves—sidling into a seat before getting coffee because the line was long, shyly sneaking my yogurt snack into the corner of my little bench seat, tuning into Basia Bulat. I even remembered my favorite barista’s name.

It all seems amazingly simple: I had a certain life. Then I had a child. Now I have a different sort of life, and I also have a child. Life’s changed, but then again, it hasn’t.

I can’t imagine anything better, for me, for now.

At least, I couldn’t, until we got a new dishwasher.

A new dishwasher, people, really does change a life. It’s not that we didn’t have one before. We did. It was white and dirty, rusty inside and cranky. It didn’t clean dishes particularly well, and our dinner plates didn’t fit inside. I consider myself neither a dishwasher snob nor a connoisseur, but clearly, fitting one’s dishes inside and getting them clean should be two of a dishwasher’s top attractions.

I actually learned a few things in the buying process:

a) a dishwasher should wash your dishes for you, not after you

b) putting rinsed dishes in the dishwasher with abrasive soap leads to cloudy glassware

c) with a new energy-efficient dishwasher, you really only need about a tablespoon of soap

The new one is named Darla. Yes, I named it. I mean her. But only after some thorough testing. She had to earn her keep, you see.

It turns out that the guy I bought our new KitchenAid from, Joe, has an appliance blog. Yes, he blogs about dishwashers and refrigerators and washing machines. When he told me, I tried to stifle a laugh. But then he challenged me: Try everything, he said. See if you can stump your dishwasher. Then tell me what happens.

So I did. I baked blueberry crisp, ate half of it, and reheated the leftovers, so the purple scrapies on the bottom burned right into the pan. I left the empty pan in the sink overnight, untouched, and Darla cleaned it right up.

Then I made Thanksgiving. I know that sounds crazy. It was mid-August and 85 degrees outside, but I was working on some recipes for a November issue, and I didn’t see any way to avoid it. Darla took on the sticky cranberry sauce ring, and a  challinging kale gratin dish, and boy, did she shine.

Next I made little hand tarts. I let the fruit bubble up and over the cornmeal crust, right down into the baby brulee dishes I baked them in, and plunked the dishes right onto the top rack, berry crusties and all. The first time, they didn’t come quite clean, but once I moved them to the bottom rack, where the real business gets done, she came through.

Finally, I gave her cheese. I made a sausage- and vegetable-studded breakfast strata, and baked it until the top layer of cheese – the cheese leather, Jim calls it – was good and brown. We ate a third of it for breakfast the first day, then a third the second day, and the last of it on yet a third day, reheating it in the oven each time and cementing (at least we thought) layers of cheese to the dish’s topsides. Again: clean.

Darla darling, we love you for your cleaning ability. Joe was right. You can do anything.

Now, if you could only figure out how to dry the dishes, we’d be much obliged. Joe said you might not like our eco-froofroo dishwashing detergent. We switched to something that looks much more environmentally harmful, but you’re still not happy.

Darla. Oh, Darla. What should we do? We’ll have to call Joe again.

Sausage & Summer Vegetable Strata (PDF)

It’s easy to fold summer’s best produce into lunches and dinners, but I think we too often forget how good the garden tastes first thing in the morning. Here’s a make-ahead strata that shines with bright cherry tomatoes and zucchini. You can buy a baguette just for the occasion and let it sit out overnight, to dry it out, but I love to use up all the old bread heels that somehow end up congregating in the corner of my freezer.

TIME: 15 minutes prep time, plus 30 minutes baking time

MAKES: 4 to 6 servings

4 large eggs

3/4 cup half and half

1 cup milk

1 teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary

1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme

Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

Butter (for the pan)

1/2 day-old baguette, cut into 1” cubes (or 4 cups cubes of assorted bread)

1 cup crumbled feta cheese

1 small zucchini, chopped into 1/2” pieces

1 cup grape tomatoes, halved

1 heaping cup cooked, crumbled sausage (from 1 large sausage, about 1/3 pound)

1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Whiz the eggs, half and half, milk, rosemary, thyme, salt, and pepper together in a blender until well mixed. Butter an 8” x 8” casserole dish (or similar), and arrange the baguette chunks in an even layer in the dish. Scatter the feta, zucchini, tomatoes, and sausage evenly over the bread, then pour the egg mixture over everything, turning and scooping so that all the bread pieces are moistened. Top with the cheddar. Cover with foil and refrigerate overnight.

Before baking, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Remove the foil and bake for 40 to 50 minutes, or until the top layer is toasted and melty. Serve warm.

The food fairy

***PLEASE NOTE*** The name,”The Food Fairy,” is federally trademarked by North Carolina personal chef Terri McClernon. For more information about her business and services, please visit her site here.

Today, I’m on KUOW talking about how preparing great food ahead of time makes me feel like there’s a food fairy in the fridge. It works like this: I get hungry, I open the door, and boom – there she is, all twinkles and glitter, handing me the perfect mayo-less pasta salad.

Unlike more typical pasta salads, in this one, it’s the vegetables (and a good hit of vinegar) that shine. Crisp corn, juicy cherry tomatoes, and summer’s best green beans compete for attention in each bite. Instead of the usual dairy component, the salad gets its creaminess from white beans—which means it’s also packed with protein.

Oh, how I love the food fairy.

If you listened in, here are the other make-ahead recipes I mentioned:

Quick Bulgur Salad with Corn, Feta, and Basil (PDF)
Sausage and Summer Vegetable Strata (PDF)
Lulu’s Carnivore-Friendly Vegan Banana Pancakes (PDF)
Basil-Champagne Vinaigrette (PDF)

Bean and Bright Vegetable Salad (PDF)
TIME: 20 minutes active time
MAKES: 4 to 6 servings

1 cup orzo or other small pasta
1/4 pound thin green beans, trimmed and chopped into 1/2” pieces
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons finely chopped shallot
1/4 cup champagne wine vinegar
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper
Kernels from 1 large ear corn
1 (15-ounce) can white or Great Northern beans, drained, or 1 cup dried beans, soaked and cooked
2 cups baby tomatoes, halved or quartered
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh parsley

Cook the orzo for 7 minutes in a large pot of boiling, salted water. Add the green beans, cook 2 more minutes, and drain them both together.

Meanwhile, whisk the mustard, shallot, vinegar, olive oil, and a bit of salt and pepper together in a large mixing bowl. Add the hot pasta and beans as soon as they’ve been drained, then stir in the corn and beans. Let cool to room temperature, stirring occasionally, then fold in the tomatoes and parsley. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and serve. (Salad can be kept in the refrigerator, covered, up to 5 days.)

Shhhh. (They’re vegan.)

I’ve always had texture issues with banana pancakes. I like the principle. Who wouldn’t mind a bit of extra sweetness in a breakfast favorite, especially if each bite echoed a slice of banana bread? I’ve tried plopping slices into pancake batter right on the pan, the way you do with chocolate chips or blueberries, so that you get the right number of banana bursts in each bite as you work through the pancake. But unlike its flavored pancake cousins, banana pancakes have a clear downfall: sogginess. Right around each banana slice, no matter how careful I am (or even if I caramelize the bananas on the pan before adding the batter), there’s a little ring of gooey batter, and I plum don’t like that. Pancakes can be many, many things, but they should not be soggy. So I don’t make banana pancakes.

Last weekend, I went to Boise to celebrate my birthday. My mother, who now goes by Lulu—or Woowoo, depending on how optimistic we’re feeling about our son’s future ability to articulate certain letters—whipped up a batch of pancakes with bananas right in the batter. These were vegan pancakes, made for a brunch with a vegan and someone allergic to eggs on the guest list.

Now, I’m about as open to eating vegan as I am to not eating at all, so I’ll admit I really had no intention of eating them. Vegan foods are for other people, I usually think. They’ll be sandy or chalky or otherwise culinarily handicapped. And there was that throwinginness to my mother’s body language when she made them; that always makes me uneasy. You’ve probably seen it before, in someone you know who is completely incapable of measuring: There’s a cereal spoon in each of four different bags of flour, and a day-old half banana sitting on the counter, and a hand dipped straight into the sugar dish. It’s how I like cooking best, honestly, but since I have very little experience with vegan food, and I know my mother doesn’t have much either, I got nervous. Blind-mixing pancake batter is one thing when you can rely on an egg to lift it up and a block of butter for flavor, but I don’t exactly think of soymilk as one of those magic ingredients that makes everything work.

Now, there’s nothing really wrong with vegan food for breakfast – one bite of a Mighty O chocolate-frosted chocolate donut will tell you that. But if you’ve ever tasted through the offerings at a vegan bakery, you might have tripped over a few gritty slices of cake, and decided that there’s nothing really right with it either, if it’s not completely necessary. At least, that’s what I did. Sometime long, long ago, “vegan” settled into my vocabulary as an overgrown four-letter word.

I also thought that my general distaste for vegan baked goods was my own fault. I might as well come out with it: I have texture issues. Give me a food – any food, even one everyone else deems perfect – and chances are good that I might find something wrong with it. This time of year, for example, I live in constant fear of someone offering me the “perfect” peach. Anyone normal would die for a bite, die to swoon right into the firm-ripe flesh and watch the juices run down the hand’s creases and past the place where, years ago, we used to all wear wristwatches.

But me? I can’t do the fuzz. Just can’t get past it. I taste that bright juice, but before the flavor gets all the way to my heart, something in my brain trips over a fuzzy caterpillar, or a square of shag carpet, and I have to eat my perfect slice like an orange, before I go into convulsions because I think I’m eating caterpillars or carpet. (Tell me I’m not the only one.)

When I think about the sandy texture a lot of unfortunate vegan baked goods have, I get that same shivery reaction. So it’s not so terribly surprising, I don’t think, that last Sunday, I planned to eat bagels and cream cheese and a few slices of bacon and avoid the pancakes entirely.

The problem was that by the time my mother had blended and stirred, fiddled and fixed, burned two batches and set my husband to the task of cooking off the rest of the bowl, I’d forgotten the pancakes she was making were vegan. One accidentally found its way to my mouth. And I have news for you: that pancake didn’t taste unfortunate in any way. The baking powder made each one stand up light and fluffy, the way eggs normally do for pancakes, and the banana flavor in the background was part sweetness, part fruitiness, and all deliciousness, without any of the dreaded soggy banana rings or any sort of grittiness.

Shoot, I said. I wish I’d watched you. I need this recipe. Are you sure it’s vegan? I had visions of our friend sinking into anaphylaxis at the breakfast table.

My mother rattled off what she’d added, and like always, it was a medley.

I used half this kind of flour, and half that kind off flour, and a little of this, and a little of that. Oh, and I used a recipe, she said. She skittered around for it, finally finding it in another room, completely untouched. Here, she said. It was a recipe for 5-minute vegan pancakes, one that obviously had never made it into the kitchen. I knew I’d have to recreate her version myself.

I woke up Monday morning, on my birthday, ready for pancakes. There was no baking soda. (Who runs out of baking soda?)

This morning, armed with leavener, I tried again. I used a whole banana, for good measure, and just one kind of flour. I sweetened with maple syrup. I whizzed in the blender, adding hazelnut oil instead of my mother’s grapeseed, and poured and flipped, and realized, yet again, that there’s nothing wrong with vegan food for breakfast. I’m apparently just going to the wrong bakeries.

Being not so strictly vegan ourselves, we piled our pancakes high with Greek yogurt and nectarines, and cooked up some bacon. Nothing was missing.

Lulu’s Carnivore-Friendly Vegan Banana Pancakes (PDF)

Made with soymilk, baking powder, and hazelnut oil, these little pancakes are as great as traditional pancakes – or better, with their sweet punch of maple syrup and banana. My mom, who made the first version, found her inspiration in Mark Bittman’s How To Cook Everything Vegetarian, and online, from a recipe for 5-minute vegan pancakes.

TIME: 15 minutes, start to finish
MAKES: 2 to 3 servings

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 1/2 tablespoons maple syrup
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup vanilla soymilk
2 tablespoons hazelnut oil (or other nut oil, or canola oil)
1 ripe banana
Pinch salt
Spray vegetable oil

Blend the flour, syrup, baking powder, soymilk, oil, banana, and salt in a blender until smooth. Transfer to a mixing bowl and set aside.

Heat a large nonstick or heavy cast iron pan over medium heat. When hot, spray with the vegetable oil spray, and drop batter by scant 1/4 cupfuls onto the pan. Cook for a couple minutes, until the bubbles reach the center, then flip and cook another minute or two. Serve the first pancakes hot, and repeat with the remaining batter.

A quickie, for the fridge

My tomato neighbor – the one who replaced his backyard with what could seriously be called an urban tomato farm – is at it again. He’s been working all year, really, planning and plotting, digging and watering. But unlike the Little Red Hen, he’s generous to those of us who have sat idly by, doing nothing – which means this time of year, every third day or so, a new crop of tomatoes rainbows across the windowsill on my front porch.

He doesn’t just grow regular tomatoes. He grows celebrities. At least, that’s how they sound to me. They all have names like movie stars from the 20’s: Paul Robeson and Jean Flemme (which is actually Jaune Flamme, but would make a great name nonetheless) are the current favorites. And like famous people, the tomatoes look best wearing very little.

Lately, in my house, “very little” has meant a basil vinaigrette. I’ve been making it in big batches, and storing it in a Ball jar in the fridge, giving it just the quickest of shakes before dousing anything within arm’s reach – grilled chicken, sliced mangoes, you name it.

It’s the simplest thing to make – just a dollop of mustard, a scoop of yogurt, a glug of good Champagne vinegar, and a big stream of extra virgin olive oil, whizzed in the blender along with as much basil as I can tear off the basil plant with one hand. On paper, it hardly looks like a recipe at all. But I promise, it’s just the thing. Try it on a mixed green salad, with avocado slices and crab cakes, or mixed with some freshly-boiled new potatoes. Drizzle it over a simple salad of Bibb lettuce and hazelnuts. Or pile your favorite tomatoes on a plate, sprinkle them with feta, and drown them in the vinaigrette.

When you’re done, a nice slice of baguette should help you mop up. Of course, I much prefer to just use my fingers.

Basil-Champagne Vinaigrette (PDF)

MAKES: About 1 cup
TIME: 5 minutes

1/4 cup (packed) fresh basil leaves
1/4 cup Champagne wine vinegar
1/2 cup plus 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 1/2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons plain Greek yogurt
Salt and pepper, to taste

Whirl all ingredients together in a blender until smooth.