Totally bizarre but unexpectedly outstanding Friday night improvisation....

You probably have noticed that my recipes go in phases. I try to use up my on-hand ingredients before moving on to a new set of ideas and grocery-lists, and my brain gets into a sort of culinary riff, where I try to work out all the different variations on a theme I can, until I can't stand it any more. So, this week I was determined to find a new use for tupper-wared remains of last week's Chipotle peppers in Adobo sauce.

Being a Friday night, I had seriously low energy and motivation to cook, so it took some will power and a good half hour of browsing my cookbooks and files for inspiration before I started getting excited about dinner again.

I still had a small butternut squash I picked up from the market several weeks ago, as well as some small Yukon Gold potatoes, and when I was perusing Martha Rose Shulman's taco recipes (tacos are great for low-key, tired nights) from her NY Times column, I hit upon her "Soft Tacos with Sauteed Winter Squash and Chipotles," which seemed like an ideal solution for dinner. I had to go to the store to pick up some things for tomorrow night, so I resolved to get tortillas for the tacos.

Well, lo and behold, my exhaustion level led to quite a cluster-failure: I didn't read the original recipe carefully enough, and so I didn't think to buy the requisite yogurt, and I completely spaced out the tortillas, none of which I realized till I got home.

One thing I find though, time and again, with cooking, writing, and living, is that there's a curious freedom in constraint, and I get much more creative with externally imposed limitations on my options. So, my failure at the grocery store only served to motivate me to figure out what I could create from the remnants of my plan.

First, I had to think about a replacement for the tortilla. This one was obvious: rice! I started some jasmine rice (it's all I had on hand) to cook on the stove. Even if the rest of dinner falls apart, you can salvage good quality fragrant thai rice, so at least now I was cooking with a safety net.

Rice and chipotles started me thinking in the obvious direction: rice and beans. I had a can of black beans in the cupboard, but I was resistant at first. Once I realized the original recipe called for a chipotle-yogurt mixture to dress the squash in, I started thinking about curry. Why not Mexican curry? I had some leftover chicken stock in the fridge that needed using, so I tinkered with the idea of baking the squash in a mixture of pulverized chipotle and stock. Sadly, the stock was past its prime (I really need to come up with a better solution for keeping and using stock), but a plan was starting to form.

Right about this moment, Sean was busy cleaning up the remains of last night's dishes, and getting quite vocal about the number of pots that needed washing. I took this information under advisement, and resolved to be as one-pot about this as possible, which means I ended up using three.

As the rice was cooking, I committed to the idea of baking the squash in small chunks, along with a single small diced potato, in the nice red ceramic baking dish I received for Christmas (thanks Sean, even though it just adds to your washing up!).

The path cleared as I got to work. I preheated the oven to 400 degrees, chopped and peeled the squash (fortunately a small one), cleaned and chopped the potato, and put them in the baking dish with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, ground salt and pepper, dried thyme and dried oregano, coating it all nicely, and put the whole thing in the oven while I worked out the next steps.

I finely diced an onion and crushed a couple cloves of garlic and pulled the baking dish out to add them in, again giving it all a good stir to evenly coat everything with olive oil. After returning the squash and potato to the oven, I rinsed and chopped a bunch of broccoli raab, and heated some olive oil, garlic, thyme, oregano, and finely diced cilantro stems in a medium sauce pan on medium heat. Once the garlic had just begun to crackle in the oil, after just a minute, I added the chopped, rinsed raab with a couple of tablespoons of water, and put a lid on it.

Then I started to chop up the chipotles quite finely in their sauce (about half of what was remaining, so maybe 3 chilis and a couple of spoonfulls of sauce. We like it really spicy, so you will probably want to use quite a bit less unless you are a hot chili fiend). At the 20 minute mark, the rice needed to be turned off and left to steam, which I think happened at about this point.

It was time to check the squash and potatoes again, and I decided to turn the heat up to 450 degrees. Perhaps a rookie sort of move, but that's how things go in my kitchen. I added a few tablespoon-fulls of water and the chopped chipotles with sauce to the baking dish and gave it all a good stir, and put it back in the oven.

This was a good point to check on the broccoli raab, which was just on the verge of starting to stick to the bottom of the pot, so I added another 2 tablespoons of water before stirring and covering again. Medium seemed a good temperature for the raab, as the stems can be quite tough and fibrous, and they generally need a good hot steam bath to make them pleasant to eat (they have a lovely verdant flavor, slightly bitter but not overwhelmingly so, somewhere between broccoli and spinach).

At this point, I worked on chopping my remaining cilantro, lime wedges, and avocado, and finally gave in to the idea of making this a rice and beans dish. I opened the can of black beans, gave them a good rinse, pulled the baking dish out AGAIN, and threw in the beans. I gave them another good stir to evenly mix all the elements, added a splash more water, and then returned the dish to the oven.

At this point, I set the timer to 7 minutes because I didn't want to lose track of time, at such high heat. I grated about an ounce and half (roughly, maybe it was an ounce, maybe it was three...oh I don't know, it was enough--that's all that matters) of Mexican cotija cheese. I don't see why you couldn't use parmesan, pecorino, feta, or a hard french or US American goat's cheese instead. At this point, I got Sean to set the table so all would be ready.

I pulled out the dish again, raised the heat on the oven to the broiler setting, sprinkled the cheese all over the top of the squash and the potatoes, and broiled it for about 2 minutes, just till the cheese started to brown lightly.

After 2-3 minutes, the--I guess I can call it a casserole or a gratin now, can't I?--casserole was more than ready, so I turned the oven and stove off and pulled it out.

At the dinner table, we filled our bowls with rice and sauteed broccoli raab first, and then dished up the squash, potato, black bean and chipotle casserole on top, garnished with an extra helping of cilantro, avocado, and fresh lime juice.

Holy moly you guys. This was SO GOOD. I had very low expectations of this bizarre improvisation, but it was just fantastic and I'm definitely going to make it again. This, or something very like it, may exist out there somewhere already, but I kind of feel like I invented something completely coherent and intelligible that really works. You could make it vegan, without the cheese topping, and it would still be delicious and deeply, completely satisfying. I am pretty proud of myself!

More thoughts on the politics of food and public health

National Treasure Mark Bittman's weekly Opinionator post is up on the New York Times website, and this week he offers an incisive analysis of the USDA's new food guidelines.

The gist of his argument is that the guidelines are pretty anemic, and downplay their most potent recommendations (what to eat less of) in deference to the food industry. He feels the US Department of Agriculture is debilitated by a conflict of interest, in that it is responsible for promoting the health of the national populace, as well as promoting the economic interests of the national food industry. Given the current structure of food subsidies and manufacturing practices, public health takes a back seat to economics.

The comments responding to his post are thought-provoking. I think there are two significant questions of political and moral philosophy at stake: 1) What is and what should be the state's role in protecting and promoting public and individual health? 2) What is and what should be the state's role in protecting and promoting national industry?

These are two giant, thorny issues that tend to provoke violent emotions. There is a longer tradition in the political culture of the modern nation-state of designating the state government responsible for national prosperity. For some reason though, the people who take this to be self-evident don't think the same logic should apply to the health of the nation. Suddenly the individual (and his or her family, and community) is solely responsible for their health and eating habits, despite the aggregate effects on the national economy (health care costs etc.). There is equal indifference to the effects of broader social and economic conditions on the health of individuals and communities. Why the disconnect? I think it ties in with larger ideological debates in US political life about the relationship between the individual and the state, but it seems to me that food is a way to intervene in this ancient ideological battle and perhaps write a new script and envision a new kind of society and political culture.

My ideas on this subject are still embryonic, but I'd like to think there are as yet un-envisioned political and cultural possibilities.

I attended a fascinating workshop for a professor from my department yesterday, who has an interesting book out on food and medicine. The workshop prompted me to start asking myself some more challenging questions about some of my own taken-for-granted assumptions about the relationships among food, individual health, and public health. I'm going to try to pick up her book and read it in all my (not copious) spare time. Hopefully I'll have some more thoughts on this subject and can start thinking more systematically about this question of food policy as an intervention into political culture.

On making your legumes more digestible...

I received some feedback recently on my Red Lentil, Bulgur and Chipotle stew (which I'm SO grateful for, because it is really helpful to know how things work for other people) from someone who felt the legumes were a bit hard on her system.

This made me realize I left something really important out of the recipe, and indeed had forgotten to include it in this most recent attempt at cooking. But, it's all for the best, because it gives me the opportunity to discuss two important points related to legumes.

The first point is that legumes are really high in fiber and complex sugars that can be hard to digest if you are not used to eating beans very often. The first, most simple solution, is to eat beans more often, so your internal flora can grow accustomed to processing them. Your insides need this kind of exercise. The second solution is to add one of the traditional seasonings used to aid digestion to the soaking and/or cooking process.

Different regions have different traditions of making legumes more digestible. In Mexico, Central America and South America, the spice epazote is used. Cooks in central and south Asia use the spice asafoetida. In east Asia, kombu, a variety of kelp, is used to soften the beans and make the sugars more digestible. A lot of the nicer organic canned beans include kombu in their ingredient list. I usually try to buy the cheaper kinds of canned beans, so I just take a stick or two of my own dried seaweed and crumble it to the pot as I begin the cooking process (and by crumble I mean take a knife to it and try to force it into smaller pieces, not necessarily all that successfully. Hmm. Maybe 10 seconds in the food processor would help. I'll give it a try.). It doesn't mess with the flavor in any noticeable way, except maybe to add a touch more umami and salty flavor. You certainly would not need to add salt when you cook with it.

There are a number of good reasons to eat seaweed regularly, beyond making your beans easier to digest. Kombu in particular is a good source of iodine (though you don't want to overconsume either, a little goes a long way), and sea vegetables in general are nutritional powerhouses, full of all sorts of valuable minerals and vitamins. They are also reputed to eliminate toxins from the body.

Other kinds of sea vegetables worth playing around with are arame, wakame, dulse, hiziki, and nori. They have specific benefits and strengths, but they are all good for you and something to eat regularly. I picked up a bag from the health food store in Santa Cruz, but I will take a look at my local Safeway and some of the other groceries around town to see who carries it and how much they charge for it. I think my bag was a couple of dollars, and lasts a long time, as you need only a little for whatever you're making.

I will work on gathering some recipes to experiment with soon to demonstrate the tasty things you can make with seaweed.

Personal Responsibility and Food Politics

I'm going to try hard not to let this blog devolve into simply reposting everything Mark Bittman says. But I'm busy, and I think people should read what he writes about food policy and food justice, so here's his first bit of meta-commentary on his food manifesto. You should read both and then we should discuss.

He articulates an important point that I think gets lost in the debate about structural forces vs. personal responsibility:

"To those of you who argue that it’s a matter of personal responsibility, to some extent you’re right. However, it’s not only personal responsibility about what we put in our mouths but about determining how things are produced, marketed and sold. That’s our responsibility also."

The personal responsibility thing just kills conversation, in my experience, and ignores the fact that the choices we make individually for ourselves also impacts everyone and everything around us.

I have a long way to go before I've really figured out what I can and need to do to improve the food supply chain in this country, so I'll probably be linking to Bittman's column's and reflecting on them frequently in the future. I won't always have time to get into as much depth as I'd like, but hopefully they will be conversation starters.

The recipe that changed it all....

Continuing my Monday night post-lecture decompression food meditation, I find myself missing the Minimalist videos already. But fortunately so is half of America, so the New York Times has handily provided us with a easy access to Bittman's best!

Scrolling through the slide-show in a trip down memory lane, I stumble upon the recipe that changed my life. My number one most favorite food of all time is pasta. I could eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner (in college, I did). Bittman introduced me to the other great pasta pairing beyond the tomato: the bitter green. I have made a hundred variations of this recipe since 2009, using every kind of green I've ever gotten my hands on. I'm going to make this recipe this weekend, for old time's sake.

My guys....

Ok...not really my guys per se. But I'm feeling nostalgic, and it was a pretty exciting day when I first watched this video with my top two favorite foodies in all the world.

Don't they just make you want to cook something delicious right now?

Enjoy!

Red Lentil, Bulgur, and Chipotle Stew

Healthy, healthy, healthy. Yes indeed.

But actually pretty tasty too.

I got excited about legumes last year while I was doing my fieldwork in the Netherlands. The community I work with, the Syriac Orthodox, have to fast quite frequently. For them, that means basically a vegan diet, every Wednesday and Friday, and then a number of extended day fasts throughout the year. The longest fast is the 50 day Lenten fast before Easter. All in all, they are required to fast for the equivalent of almost six months a year.

It's generally good practice for anthropologists to at least TRY to participate fully in these sorts of activities, as it gives you some insight into the physical and emotional sensations of your informants' daily lives. It was a challenge for me, and I wasn't always at 100% because I get pretty weak and shaky if I go for too long without a small amount of meat, but in the end I'm really glad I experienced it. I found that eating vegan for extended periods of time did some good things for me...it made me feel very clean and clear and did wonders for my skin.

When eating vegan you do have to push a bit harder to find alternative sources of protein of course, and so I followed my informants' lead and tried to start cooking with legumes and whole grains more, as the combination of the two together provides a complete dietary protein. Eating at Syriac homes during the fasting periods was actually a treat, as I was often served one of my favorite Syriac dishes: Red Lentil Soup with Bulgur. Many of the mothers who made this for me came from south east Turkey, and I'm not quite sure what they put in it, but it was consistently delicious.

I acquired a number of legume based recipes from Martha Rose Shulman's Recipes for Health series on the New York Times website last year, when she did a special on traditional Greek Orthodox dishes meant for the Lenten fast. These provided me with a good framework for starting my own experiments with beans and grains, and I haven't gotten tired of them yet.

My favorite variation, of course, is still Red Lentils with Bulgur (cracked wheat), but I've taken it in a few different directions. Red lentils are just so quick and easy to cook compared to most dried bulk legumes, so its good for my last minute planning problems as well as my limited cooking budget. For awhile I just seasoned it very simply with chopped onion, garlic, and mixed Italian herbs, which did the job beautifully, but since I've been back in California I've been getting fancy with the Mexican spices and have come up with this rather delightful chipotle-based version. I was inspired by Shulman's Brown Lentil and Chipotle Soup recipe, but I like my version a bit better.

Sunday I went to the farmer's market and picked up a couple of bunches of Red Russian kale and a bunch of mustard greens, which I decided to shred and incorporate into the stew for some extra nutritional value and greenery. Bulgur is basically cracked whole wheat grains, and I have used different size grades for this recipe many times...you can use whatever you prefer. It comes in fine, medium, and coarse.

Here's what I did to make a big pot of soup to last two people at least four days (this makes a lot, so I used my large Dutch oven):

Before you begin the rest of your prep, it is worth measuring out your lentils and bulgar and giving them a rinse, so they are ready to go into the pot when the time comes. For this, I used 2 cups of red lentils, and about a cup of bulgur, and rinsed them separately in a fine-meshed colander.

Dice onions finely and saute in large thick-bottomed sauce pan in olive or vegetable oil, on medium-low. Give the onions a bit of salt to prevent sticking, and season with ground cumin, ground coriander, chili and/or cayenne powder, and ground pepper. Some chopped cilantro stems wouldn't go amiss either, if you have them on hand. As the onions soften, mince the garlic and throw in the pot. Keep an eye on the heat so you don't burn the garlic.

Once the onions and garlic have softened, after about 3-5 minutes (I'm never precise), dump in the lentils to the pot and promptly pour in 4 cups of water and/or veggie broth. Chicken broth would work well too if you don't care about the vegan-ness.

Raise the heat to medium-high and allow the liquid to boil. Let the lentils cook for about 10-15 minutes so they have a head start on the bulgur wheat. Add the bulgur to the pot once the lentils look like they are starting to cook down. You might need to add some liquid, you might need to let it cook off, it all depends on how thick or thin you like it. Mine usually ends up very porridge-y, which I enjoy. Just keep an eye on it and use your judgment (or find out through trial and error). Lower the heat to medium or medium-low, depending on the strength of your stove-top, and let the soup simmer gently. At this point, I open my small can of chipotle chili's in adobo sauce and take about half of its contents, putting the rest in tupperware for some culinary excitement later in the week. Spoon the adobo sauce into the stew, and chop the chipotle peppers into small chunks and incorporate into the stew. At this quantity and the usual spiciness of my chipotle's, this will make a mighty spicy soup.

While the lentils and bulgur are simmering away and getting darker under the influence of the adobo sauce, rinse and shred your greens. Red Russian kale is pretty fibrous, so I rip the leaves of the stalks and discard them, and put the kale into the soup first, followed by the mustard greens roughly chopped. You could use any hearty green vegetable...I have even put in chopped broccoli and let it cook in the soup. You can let the soup cook longer first and just put the vegetables in towards the end if you want to leave them crunchier and less cooked.

Do stir fairly often and keep an eye on the heat. The moisture can separate from the mass of lentils, which can sink to the bottom and burn if you're not careful, but semi-regular stirring will prevent this.

Technically, lentils don't need much more than 20 minutes of cooking to be ready to eat, but I like to give the flavors enough time to marry and deepen and let the liquid cook off to make a thicker stew, so I let it simmer for 45 plus minutes on low heat. Yesterday, I was cooking in the afternoon knowing we wouldn't eat for several hours, so I turned the heat off and put the lid on, which let it steam cook for longer. I reheated it for dinner and it acquired a lovely smokey round comfort-food sort of flavor that you don't generally associate with vegan foods, and it was punctuated by some aggressive chili heat. I'm looking forward to having more this evening with a dark seasonal bock beer, which will require zero labor on my Monday night, apart from twisting the bottle cap off.

Addendum: Ok, so I had to get the bottle opener out and pop it off. But still.

xkcd on cooking....

I do enjoy xkcd sometimes, despite Randall Munroe's questionable position on the social sciences. He has a classic up about cooking today. We've all been there, for sure. The trick is to not buy expensive ingredients, which takes some thought and practice, and some chops in the kitchen, which also takes some thought and practice. I have been planning a major post on that topic since day one, complete with pictures from my local farmer's market, but it will be a bit of a thing, so I'm waiting for a day (any day now) where I don't feel quite so overwhelmed by all the things I ought to be doing instead.

Tomorrow I'll tell you about the giant pot of Red Lentil, Bulgur, and Chipotle soup that I made this afternoon, though. An excellent dish for a cold and rainy January night!

A week of New Mexican Chile Verde

Well, I suppose it was four days actually. But still, that's pretty good for me. I knew it was going to be a full and busy week, without much time for cooking, so I tried to plan ahead. I don't always do well with the planning ahead, because I get taken by unexpected craving mid-week, and get bored easily, but this is a keeper I think.

You may recall I was working on a fairly major pork project last Sunday, and set off the fire alarms a couple of times. I am pleased to report that the experiment turned out very well despite my un-neighborly noise. Last week I defrosted Sean's last pound or so of New Mexican Hatch chili's, and picked up two pounds worth of pork shoulder, to turn into a vague approximation of New Mexican chili verde with pork. I had never tried it before, so I felt pretty adventurous and not at all certain of my success.

The pork shoulder was a very inexpensive cut of meat, and so good for braising and long stewing, and was ultimately very flavorful. A little went a long way, which was the guiding principle of this week's meal-planning.

So, this past week we dined on four different variations of this chili verde and braised pork stew, served on a bed of steamed rice and steam-fried greens. The main difference between each evening was the greens. I had a few bunches of thai broccoli and baby bok choy from the market, and every time I reheated the stew and the rice, I steamed one or the other of the greens in garlic, olive oil, and chicken stock, and then just served it in a layer between the rice and stew.

For the stew itself, I adapted a recipe I found online. It was surprisingly difficult to find "authentic" sources...not sure what that was about. I ended up going with an Emeril Lagasse recipe, which is not something I tend to do (his approach is way too over-the-top for my taste usually), but his version was the most promising I could find.

I adapted it using a few suggestions from the comments on the recipe's webpage. I started by browning the pork shoulder with a lot of olive oil in my Dutch Oven, and got it quite dark (hence the fire alarms). That part was a bit stressful...I haven't fully worked out my technique yet. Once well browned, I took out the pork to rest, turned off the heat, and cooled/loosened the browned bits at the bottom of the pan with some chicken stock and olive oil. I added the chopped onion, oregano, bay leaf, cayenne, and salt and pepper called for by the recipe, browned a bit in the residual heat, and then returned the pork and covered with water, to begin the long braising process, turning the heat back onto medium-low. I gave the pork about an hour and half in the water, which is quite a bit longer than the recipe.

While the pork was simmering, I chopped and semi-de-seeded the thawed green chili's, and prepped the onion and garlic and half a fresh jalapeno for the chili verde.

Once the pork was "done" (i.e. I couldn't wait any longer), I took it out and put it on the chopping board, drained the braising liquid, and threw out the remaining solids. I gave the Dutch Oven a bit of a rinse, since I was going to be starting from scratch on the chili, and put it back on medium-low heat with a glug or two of olive oil. In went the onion, garlic, and jalapeno, along with more oregano, salt, and cumin. After a few minutes of sauteing, I added a spoonful of flour and let it all meld nicely without browning the flour, and then added the chopped Hatch chili's and the chicken stock. I threw in a bunch of chopped cilantro stems too, which was my own addition. I let it all simmer while I shredded the pork (see photo), and eventually re-added the shredded pork to continue cooking in the chili verde mixture. I left it, checking and stirring occasionally, for another hour and a half (student papers needed to be graded).

I felt it was a bit meat heavy at this point, so I decided to add a can of drained kidney beans, which I think was a good decision.

After full cooking, this was an easy dish to ignore, so I just let it simmer on low for hours, and turned the heat off to let the flavors meld and deepen over night. We had it the next night, with steamed rice and greens, and it turned out pretty spectacularly, if I do say so myself. Despite my anxieties, it was nice and spicy and well-balanced, with a bright green chili pepper flavor, rounded out by the rich pork, the toothsome kidney beans, and some crumbled goat's milk Jack and chopped cilantro. The mellow steamed rice and greens gave it a solid base that kept it from being over-powering-ly meaty or hot, and we tore up pieces of corn tortillas to eat like croutons on top. We got almost a full work week's worth of dinners out of it, so I hardly had to do any more cooking that week (which is good, because it felt pretty labor intensive as it was).

I'm including the ingredient list from the original recipe, and you can find the complete original recipe by Emeril Lagasse on the Food Network website. I doubled all the quantities.

Pork Braise:
1 pound pork butt, trimmed of fat
2 yellow onions, quartered
1 tablespoon ground cumin
2 bay leaves
2 teaspoons dried Mexican oregano
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
Chile Verde, recipe follows
Corn Tortillas, accompaniment

Chile Verde:
1 pound fresh mild green New Mexico chiles, or Anaheims
1 pound fresh hot green New Mexico (Big Jim) chiles, or anchos or poblanos
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/2 cup chopped white onion
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1 tablespoon minced, seeded jalapeno pepper
2 teaspoons dried Mexican oregano
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cumin
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
3 cups chicken stock, or canned low-sodium chicken broth
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro

End of an Era

"It's not about the elegance, it's about the deliciousness." -- National Treasure Mark Bittman.

I am heart-broken, just heart-broken, to learn that my favorite New York Times column, National Treasure Mark Bittman's The Minimalist, is coming to an end this week.

He's been a guiding light for me in the kitchen over the years, and I think I have made more of his recipes than anyone else's.

He was the one who convinced me to up the vegetable-to-pasta ratio in my pastas, start using meat as an accent, rather than a center-piece, experiment with whole grains in all sorts of new and unexpected places, and to recognize that there is a perfectly balanced sweet spot in every meal where deliciousness, simplicity, and good health meet.

It appears that instead of the Minimalist column and video series, he'll be working on more food policy stuff. Hopefully I'll continue to get lots of good inspiration and information from him that way.

He's got a list of his twenty-five favorite recipes from all time in this week's Dining section. Here's my own little retrospective of some of my favorites, just off the top of my head:

Roast Ducketta (Duck breasts stuffed with parmesan, garlic, and fennel seeds, like Italian porchetta),

Braised turkey, which my brother-in-law and I made for Thanksgiving this past year--an astounding success,

Chicken Liver Pate,

Chickpea, Chorizo, and Spinach

...I will probably add to this list as I remember them.

Goodbye Minimalist! You'll be sorely missed!

A Restorative, End-of-the-Weekend Dinner

Last night a big group of us went out to celebrate a friend's thirtieth birthday. You only turn thirty once, so it was without a doubt a raucous, colorful-cocktail sort of affair, and the night ended pretty late for us old-timers. Today has been spent somewhat recovering, and planning out the rest of my week's meals. I have big plans for the remaining Hatch chili peppers, and bought a big chunk of pork shoulder, which I'm braising for several hours to go into a New Mexican style green chili stew, which hopefully will provide several days worth of dinners throughout the week. Pork shoulder (also known as pork butt, weirdly) is a pretty inexpensive cut of meat, so a couple of pounds of properly raised pork from a good butcher isn't a bad way to go, and lends itself well to long slow braises in flavorful broths.

The process for the pork turned out to be rather involved, and I managed to set off both my fire alarms browning it, but now its simmering away in preparation for the stew. Tonight's dinner itself was a bit of a predicament, as I was in the midst of the pork project (which won't be ready to eat till tomorrow, sadly), and I'm on my own tonight, so I wanted something really quick, but also very clean and restorative after last night's indulgence.

Whole wheat pasta and green vegetables are my go-to standby in most situations like this, and tonight's turned out exceptionally well, if I do say so myself. I had some extra chicken stock leftover from the pork braise, and some week-old broccoli, Russian kale, and my last stalk of green garlic, all of which were still in great condition because of my handy reusable "green bags" (I should do a post on them soon, I think), that keep produce from going off so quickly. Additionally, I had some remaining chickpeas and anchovies from earlier dinners this past week.

While I boiled water for pasta, I quickly chopped up the green garlic, broccoli, and kale. After setting a frying pan on medium heat, I poured in some olive oil, sprinkled some dried red chili flakes, and a shake or two of mixed dried Italian herbs, and ground pepper. I threw all the vegetables in together, rather unceremoniously, and gave them a brisk stir to coat all in the oil. Once well coated, I poured in about a third to a half of a cup of chicken stock, and covered the pan. Then I chopped up my remaining anchovies and added them with the chickpeas to the pot. I worked on my pork recipe for a bit while letting the vegetables cook. At this stage, once the water boiled, I added a wee bit of salt and then the pasta to the water. Once the pasta boiled, I drained it in a colander, and tossed it into the pan with the vegetables and chickpeas. The timing was very approximate, as I had my eye on my pork recipe, but with some nice extra virgin olive oil drizzled on the pasta and vegetables at the last minute, it turned out surprisingly luscious.

It still tasted clean and healthy, but was rich and flavorful at the same time. I think cooking the kale and broccoli and chickpeas together in a little chicken stock really did something wonderful to them. Melting the anchovies into the hot oil didn't make it particularly fishy either, but just gave it a bit more umami depth. This was definitely one of those dishes that tastes more impressive than it looks, and I will be making it again for certain. Even better, it made enough that I have a couple of days of lunches prepared for the week now. With prep and boiling water, I think it took about 20-25 minutes to make.

I will keep you posted on the progress of the green chili pork stew. It's a big project, and I've never tried it before, so we'll see how it turns out!

An Egregious Omission

So, Sean read my previous post and feels that I have slandered him terribly by claiming he and Brett ONLY made cornbread with the Hatch chili peppers. Apparently, they also made vegetarian chili, and a salsa. So there you have it. I was not here, and thus did not get to enjoy the bounty.

Sean reports that the chili's have gotten spicier in the months they have been in the freezer. If anyone knows the science of this, I'd love to know why!

Tacos with Hatch Chili's and local Goat's Milk Jack

Sean came home last night! Yay! I knew he'd be hungry when he got home, but not up for anything really heavy so late at night, so I mulled for a while over a suitable dinner. Looking in the freezer, I remembered that many months ago, he received a ginormous pile of fresh green New Mexican Hatch chili peppers from a co-worker. He and our good friend Brett set about roasting them, and at the time, put a number of them in a big batch of corn bread. There was too much to eat all at once though, so they froze the rest, and they've been sitting in the freezer ever since. I thought of it in time, the night before, so left them out to thaw, and they were ready to be peeled for dinner last night.

I had some Sonoma-made corn tortillas on hand, that were on sale at the grocery store, and a wee bit of goat's milk Jack Cheese I sampled from the market last week, from the fine people of Achadinha Cheese Company (basically a small family outfit: mom makes the cheese, dad and kids sell it at market)from Petaluma, CA.

Before leaving for the airport, I peeled the skins off the chili peppers so they'd be ready to go when we got home. After getting back, I minced and sauteed a clove of garlic in olive oil in a frying pan, sprinkled in some ground cumin and coriander, chopped fresh cilantro stems, and dried oregano, letting it meld for a minute or two, then dumped in a can of black beans.

I turned the beans down to low, and covered the pan to let the beans heat up slowly, while I sliced the peppers into long strips, and then laid the strips on top of the black beans, to warm up slightly (keeping them covered so nothing would dry out).

While the beans and the peppers warmed up, I chopped the last of my cilantro bunch, sliced a lime, and pulled out Sean's home-made Habanero sauce (another spicy joint venture with Brett). Last of all, I placed the corn tortillas on top of the beans and peppers, covered them again, and let them warm up for a minute, while I crumbled the cheese.

I then removed the tortillas and put them on plates, and scooped the beans and sliced peppers onto them, gave it all a squeeze of lime, sprinkled on the cheese and cilantro and a dash of Habanero sauce, and it was good to go...ready in about ten minutes.

Simple, light, quick and delicious!


The picture turned out a bit grainy...I need to work on my food photography techniques!

Eating In Season

Despite my disappointment not to have the shredded duck steam bun from Chairman Bao tonight, I completely support their reasons for temporarily discontinuing it. It isn't particularly reasonable to want to eat mangoes in North America in January anyway, and it reminded me that I wanted to share a website and online newsletter I subscribe to: eattheseasons.com.

I get an email from them about once a week, and it gives me a handy little reminder of what foods I should be thinking about as I plan my meals during the week. They have recipes, too. Very inspiring!

Thursday Night Off the Grid

You know what makes living so far away from where I work worthwhile? I live in San Francisco, where the food never ceases to delight.

While I was away in the Netherlands last year, Sean discovered a particularly wonderful manifestation of the food truck phenomenon: Off the Grid - San Francisco.

Off the Grid is a weekly, evening meet-up of food trucks around the city, and every Thursday night they come to our corner of Golden Gate Park, where Haight-Ashbury meets the Inner Sunset. There is usually a good crowd selection, with everything from your standard taco trucks, to the Filipino tacos, to the Korean barbecue, Vietnamese and Indian street food, re-invented Americana comfort food, Japanese snacks and a cupcake cart. (We still need to persuade the Creme Brulee man to come visit us...we usually have to go to him elsewhere in the city). But best of all is Chairman Bao.

Mm mmm. Chairman Bao. Baked or steamed buns that unfold like a taco, stuffed with wonders like pork belly and pickled daikon, or shredded duck with mango, and several other items. I made my usual Thursday trip this evening, and was saddened to learn that the shredded duck has now been made into a seasonal item, so won't be offered till mangoes are cheaper again. I rallied though, realizing I would have room to finally try the Sisig taco from the Filipino truck, and it did not disappoint! It wasn't that far off from a carnitas style taco with a yummy sauce, but you get a hint of adobo (I think?) spicing in the braised meat, which is absolutely succulent, that goes beautifully with the cabbage and limey cream sauce. Between that and the crispy Pork Belly Bao, I was well satisfied.

This was followed by a Red Velvet cupcake from Cupkate, which was reliably moist and topped with a healthy amount of cream cheese frosting.

After several days of heavy working out and fairly light, minimalist dinners, my body was grateful for the additional protein and fat. Balance is everything!

Awesome Recipe for Sweet Potatos, Greens, and Chickpeas in Anchovy Sauce

It seems only fair that I provide a more substantial recipe for the evening, to make up for the nothingness of tonight’s dinner. It’s related though, as it’s the first dish I ever made trying to be creative with sweet potatoes, and was the loose inspiration for tonight’s meal, in it's combination with anchovies. It’s much more exciting, and was a hit with my diners:

Roast Sweet Potatoes with Sauteed Broccoli Greens and Chickpeas in Anchovy Sauce, on Whole Wheat Pasta (serves 3-4, I think).

Part 1: Roasting the Sweet Potatoes in garlicky olive oil
2 medium sweet potatoes, washed and peeled and chopped into 1/2 inch dice
3-4 cloves of garlic, with peels left on
a couple of glugs of e.v. olive oil
several shakes or grinds of salt and pepper--it should be well-seasoned as these will bring a lot of flavor to the dish.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees while you prep the sweet potatoes, and then toss with the oil, garlic cloves, salt and pepper, so they are well coated. Roast them in the oil with the garlic cloves for 20-30 minutes in a good roasting pan or tin (or follow your own method for roast potatoes, to make them crispier).

Part 2: Start a big pot of water to boil, while you prepare the greens and chickpeas. Put a lid partially on, so water doesn't evaporate too much, but turn heat down if water starts to boil over sides of pot.

Part 3:
Big bunch broccoli greens, well-rinsed and coarsely chopped (any greens will do, experiment with different kinds of chard, kale, rapini/broccoli raab, wild spinach etc. the tougher greens will take longer to cook and become tender)
12 oz canned (or dried and pre-soaked and cooked, but cans are easier) chickpeas, though one of those big 14 inch cans couldn't hurt either, if you want plenty of leftovers
1-3 cloves garlic, crushed and finely minced (i.e. chopped tiny), quantity depends on taste
1 medium shallot or small onion, finely minced
Tin of whole anchovies in oil
a couple of shakes of chili flakes to taste
a couple of shakes of dried Italian herb mix (includes sage, rosemary, basil, oregano etc) to taste (the sage in this mix is what really works so well with the roasted sweet potatoes)
a couple of shakes and grinds of salt and pepper to taste
1/3 to 1/2 of a box of Whole wheat (or regular) pasta (Barilla makes pretty decent whole wheat pasta, as well as high protein Barilla Plus made from legumes), otherwise, use regular de Cecco pasta, in whatever shape you like... stubby pasta shapes like rotini, penne, or farfalle would work equally well.
1 oz Parmigiano or Pecorino cheese (optional), grated straight on the pasta after dishing up

To rinse your greens, submerge thoroughly in a bowl of water, once or twice, to get thoroughly clean, then let drain in a colander. Chop greens roughly: the smaller you chop the greens, the more evenly they will cook and distribute throughout the pasta, but perfection does not really matter here.

(Check on the sweet potatoes and garlic every 10 minutes or so, to make sure nothing is burning...if it is going too fast before the rest of the dinner is done, turn the heat down to 325 degrees, or even lower).

While greens drain in colander, mince shallot/onion very finely, followed by garlic, finely minced. Put a large skillet/frying pan on medium heat, with a couple of generous glugs of olive oil. Let oil warm up 2 minutes-ish, then put the shallot and garlic in the oil (adjust heat if the garlic is cooking too quickly, you don't want it to brown). Add the chili flakes, italian herb mix, salt and pepper, and give a good stir with a wooden spoon or spatula. Let the shallot and garlic soften for several minutes, while you open and roughly chop up the anchovies from the tin (I use the whole tin, which says is 5 servings worth, but I like the flavor). Don't worry about getting the anchovy oil in the mix...tastes good! Add the chopped anchovies to the onion/garlic mixture, and stir it up for about 2 minutes-ish. (Times don't need to be very precise). The anchovies will gradually dissolve into the hot oil and make a yummy "sauce"-- basically a bagna cauda like they make in the Piedmont in Italy).(Keep checking on the temperature/cooking rate of the sweet potatoes in the oven!)

Add the chopped greens to the pan. You may need to do this in stages if the amount is too much to fit. Put in some, let wilt, and add more as it shrinks. If there doesn't seem to be enough moisture in the pan to wilt the greens, add a splash or two of water, white wine, or chicken or vegetable stock--you can always boil it down if you get too much liquid in there.

As the greens are cooking in the pan, open the can of chickpeas and rinse with running water in a colander. Add the chickpeas to the pot.

Let the greens and chickpeas cook together, partially covered but stirring frequently, for about 10-15 minutes. Keep an eye on the potatoes, and test for doneness. When they are really soft and cooked through, you can pull the pan out of the oven and just let it sit till the other stuff is ready. As the greens and chickpeas cook together, make sure the heat is high enough again to get the pasta water to a roiling boil. Once its ready, add a shake of salt to the water, then put in 1/3 to a 1/2 box of whole wheat (or regular) pasta, and follow the cooking time instructions on the box, but taste the pasta a minute before the official cooking time is up, to check for your own standard of al dente. Have a colander ready in the sink to drain immediately when the pasta is ready.

Have bowls and silverware ready to dish up into as soon as the pasta is done!

Once the pasta is done cooking, turn off the heat on EVERYTHING (pot, pan, oven, if you haven't already) and drain the pasta in the colander, and mix with the chickpea and greens mixture, in whatever bowl or pan is big enough to hold it all. Toss thoroughly to evenly distribute greens through the pasta. Scoop the roasted sweet potatoes onto the pasta and mix through as desired. Serve!

If desired, grate a bit of Parmigiano Reggiano or Pecorino Romano onto individual servings, along with some extra ground pepper.

Drink with a crisp, assertive Italian style white (like Pinot Grigio or a Soave Classico), or a mellow, soft or medium bodied red....

The more you repeat the recipe, the more you will work out the timing of all the different elements...good luck!

What To Do When Tired, Mopey, and Out of Supplies: Bake a Sweet Potato!

Boy did I ever want to go get Thai food tonight. Sean’s away on a business trip, and my Wednesdays are pretty long and tiring, and I have been nursing a hankering for red curry for several days now. But I’m in money-saving mode, so I did my damnedest to resist. I felt a bit mopey on the long ride home from Santa Cruz, through thinking how bare my fridge is, and how much work I need to get done tonight, and how all signs were pointing to a lackluster dinner. When I got home, I rallied with some apples and peanut butter, and forced myself to work out, knowing my mood and energy levels are always better afterwards.

About ten minutes into my workout I had a sudden brain-wave, and remembered there was still a sweet potato down at the bottom of my vegetable drawer. The day immediately brightened! I paused the dvd and quickly preheated the oven to 375, while I cut the sweet potato into quarters, for quicker cooking. I’m not very experienced with sweet potatoes, having only recently gotten into them on the advice of Dr. Mao, slick L.A. acupuncturist to the stars (he has slightly cheesy but oh so procrastination-friendly video blogs on all the foods that are good for you according to Traditional Chinese Medicine). Sweet potatoes were never our thing growing up, and we never had them at Thanksgiving, so thankfully I didn’t develop an aversion to them, as many people seem to have. Sweet potatoes (or yams, I suppose) at Thanksgiving are traditionally made too sweet, in my view, because people add to their already significant sweetness, which takes them way out of balance. And balance, of course, is the key! It’s too bad, because sweet potatoes are an entirely different creature if you veer away from adding sweetness, and make it more savory. It’s worth trying out, even if you think you don’t like it. It is so good for you—really a powerhouse of nutrition for how little it costs.

Tonight, I slicked my sweet potato quarters with a healthy glug of olive oil, some grinds of pepper, and a generous couple of pinches of dried sage. I put them in a small roasting pan, along with a clove or three of garlic, covered with foil, stuck in the oven, and went back to my workout. This is fairly typical mid-week improvisation for me, unless I’ve gotten it together to make a truly epic amount of food for leftovers on Sunday afternoon. My approach to the oven horrifies my sister, a scientifically-minded baking enthusiast. In a single cooking session I turn the heat up, down, lengthen cooking times, change my mind about what should be in pan, and cause all sorts of havoc, but it seems to turn out all right in the end. Tonight, I took a couple of breaks during exercise to adjust the oven, and then just turned it to warm while I showered.

The only other significant produce in my vegetable drawer was an aging head of red leaf lettuce. When I’m alone, I seem to manage an odd balance of minimalist and self-indulgent in my cooking, so it struck me that the best possible thing to put on top of my lettuce was chopped anchovies. My abiding passion for all forms of preserved fish speaks to my familial roots along the North Sea…I love pickled herrings, anchovies, boquerones, all manner of smoked trout, salmon, mackerel, eel. It’s the puckering briny saltiness of it all…just, just …YUM! So, when I’m cooking for myself, I feel no need to fancy up a dish of chopped lettuce and anchovies.

Once my salad was put together, and sprinkled with olive oil and red wine vinegar, I grabbed my sweet potatoes, and was pleasantly surprised to discover the skins peeled right off, with out any fuss. If you’re not a huge garlic fiend like I am, you might be content to just redrizzle your sweet potato spears with the garlic infused olive oil. But if you ARE a garlic fiend, mush the roasted garlic into the potatoes and eat it all up. Yum. I took a photo, even though this was about at the bottom of the list of memorable meals I’ve made in my lifetime.

It wasn’t so heavy on protein, but I had just had peanut butter before exercising, so I wasn't too worked up about it. The salad and sweet potato didn’t go together well at all. So, I just took them in courses. I started with the salad, which was delightful in its sour, briny simplicity, and the sweet potato, on its own, was awesome, and just sweet enough to make me feel like I didn’t need dessert. I felt fully satiated afterwards, and pretty pleased with the unexpected success of my barely-there dinner. My students are lucky—I’m going to grade papers in a much better mood now! I will post the photo as soon as I’ve found my damn cable!

Eat well, everybody!

Hot "Mexican Tabbouleh"

Yesterday evening, I had some leftover pearled barley from a bag I’d picked up a year or two ago on discount somewhere in Santa Cruz. I had originally just boiled what I had in a big pot of water for 25-30 minutes-ish, and then drained it, never having bothered to research the proper method for cooking barley. I’ve been using leftovers in various things for the past few weeks. Tonight, I had roughly a cup and a half worth’s left, and decided to combine it with some of the other random bits and bobs left in my fridge. I always have a few cans of beans in the cupboard, and decided to pull out the chickpeas for this. I had some leftover goodies from the market: a giant bunch of cilantro that I got for 75 cents because it was about closing time, a Lisbon lemon, which tastes is bit lime-ish, and some green garlic, just because. Green garlic arrived in the market just last week, so I was excited to experiment with it, but it is easily substituted with a clove or three of regular garlic, well minced, and maybe some scallions or shallot or whatever you have available. Because we don’t have a dishwashing machine, and my dear fiancé is generally the designated dishwasher, I am trying to be better about cooking one-pot meals, to reduce his washing-up time, so tonight’s dinner was an attempt to expand my repertoire in that direction.

I think this dish is a testament to the glory of simple, pure, well-matched flavors. I didn’t have to add any salt beyond what was residual on the chickpeas, and the balance of lemon/lime juice with garlic and cilantro was clean and vibrant against the soft and nutty flavors of grain and legume. The texture contrast between the chewy barley and the soft chickpea was also interesting and satisfying and made me feel like I was eating a well-balanced meal.

So, here’s what I did: While preheating a medium sized, thick bottomed non-stick sauce-pan on medium-low heat, rinse and chop the green garlic (if you’re using regular garlic, you want to keep your temperatures low and add your other ingredients quickly so you don’t burn it—green garlic is a little more forgiving of a loose approach to cooking times).

When the pot is hot, pour in a glug of olive oil (I follow Jamie Oliver’s intuitive approach to measurements) and let it get hot, and then throw in your roughly chopped garlic. This is generally when I add my seasoning, pepper and salt. I use a lot of fresh ground pepper, but I didn’t add any salt to this dish.

Making sure to stir the garlic every so often, squeeze a lemon, open your can of chickpeas, reserving about half, with its liquid, in Tupperware for another day, and started chopping your pre-rinsed cilantro. Add some chopped cilantro stems (getting some leaves in there is no biggie) to the garlic, and then toss in about ¾ of a cup of your drained chickpeas. Stir occasionally. While the chickpeas warm up, keep chopping cilantro, and adding in stages. I like having fresh herbs incorporated into the cooking process at different phases, because it brings out different aspects of the herb’s flavor, giving the whole dish more dimension. The key to this dish is LOTS of cilantro. Think tabbouleh quantities of green stuff.

Throw your cooked barley into the pot, and give everything a good stir. You just need to get the barley and chickpeas hot enough to eat, so it will only take a few minutes. In the last minute of cooking, pour in the lemon juice. You could just use the juice of one lemon, or go half lemon, half lime, or just use lime. When you dish up, throw some uncooked cilantro leaves on top, add another grind or two of pepper, and if you like some extra hot and tangy flavor, throw in a few sliced pickled jalapenos.

This dish is great because it expresses perfectly all my fundamental guidelines to nutritious, sustainable, affordable cooking. It is centered around in-season vegetables, involves (leftover!) whole grains and beans, all goes in one pot, and takes less than half an hour to prepare, if you are using leftover grains and beans, or beans from a can. You can make all sorts of substitutions if you want. Spelt, faro, coarse bulgur, rice, wheat berries: anything with an al dente sort of chewiness. You can use other kinds of beans, maybe cannellini or kidney or black or lima beans; other kinds of herbs, maybe taking it closer to a Mediterranean or even a Thai style tabbouleh, with basil and mint and lime and fish sauce…why not? It’s your kitchen, you can do whatever you want in it!

So, for the sake of scaling up or down, here’s a measured ingredients list. Let’s call it Hot Mexican Tabbouleh. This made two decent sized portions. I ate both of them.

1 ½ cups cooked pearled barley
half 14 oz can of chickpeas
1 stalk of green garlic, roughly chopped (substitute 1-3 cloves garlic, finely minced, plus scallion) several large handfuls roughly chopped cilantro
Juice of one Lisbon lemon, or a mix of lemon and lime
Lots of ground pepper
1-2 spoonfuls sliced pickled jalapenos (optional)

Into the Third Culture Kitchen...

There are a lot of people out there talking about the importance of vegan and vegetarian cooking based on locally sourced organic food. It’s an important conversation, and you can think about it from a health perspective, or from an environmental sustainability perspective. Either way, I’m down with it, and I think everyone in the world should have the time and resources and access to cook and eat good healthy food that doesn’t contribute to worsening environmental and public health catastrophes, and I think this is a worthy goal for activism and advocacy. The trouble is, I, like you, don’t have a lot of time or money, and for my own health reasons, I can’t go 100% vegan, or even 100% vegetarian, all the time, nor can I be as involved in food justice activism as much as I’d like, at this point in my career.

So, I’m going to write this blog, to do my little bit in my little corner, to share ideas and reflections and recipes with friends and family and whomever is interested. In my own cooking and domestic arrangement, the most important thing I strive for is balance. I’m looking for balance in flavor, cost, time, environmental impact, and health, and I have spent a number of years now trying to figure out, through trial and error, a way of cooking and eating that works for my own particular lifestyle and personality. There are lots of great ideas and approaches out there that don’t work for me: on the one-hand, I’m crazy-food obsessed and if it isn’t delicious, I won’t eat it. On the other hand, if it requires a trip across town to find the one market in the city that sells that one random and expensive ingredient, I’m probably never going to get around to making it (well, maybe for my birthday I will).

This blog is going to chronicle my daily efforts to cook cheaply, quickly, healthfully, and responsibly, to make the most delicious meals possible. There will probably be a fair number of misfires, but hopefully they will be informative. I love reading recipe books, but only to get inspiration and guidelines for experimentation, so you’ll be seeing the results of my experiments, good and bad, as well as occasional reviews of the cookbooks, websites, and chefs who inspire me.

I’ll also talk about some of the tricks and tips I’ve worked out to save money and time, reduce waste, and add deliciousness. I believe in Jamie Oliver’s argument that social and emotional healing can happen at the dinner table, but I also think it’s got to be doable on a daily basis. Mark Bittman has been a great guide to minimalist and efficient home-cooking, and Lynne Kaspar Rossetto has taught me to respect the traditional wisdom of Mediterranean cooks who knew how to make an entire meal for a large family out of the weeds growing by the side of the road.

Sean, my fiancé, and I, have some exciting plans for this year, apart from just getting married. We’re going to start growing some of our own food in our little apartment in the foggy Inner Sunset of San Francisco, and we’re going to try to get our friends and neighbors involved in our food adventures, too. Food and eating and cooking are central to human sociality, so it will be interesting to see what comes of this as a community-building exercise. I’ll be chronicling as much of this as I can in between teaching, writing my dissertation, and planning a wedding. Wish me luck, and eat well!