Root Veggie Laden Fried Rice

I've been on a fried rice for breakfast kick, and I've been experimenting with how much vegetable matter one can add while still calling it fried rice. The answer: lots.

Two factors make this breakfast almost as easy as toast. The first is that I always have a big pot of rice around for the dog, whose food we cook (ground turkey, brown rice, sweet potatoes) due to his sensitive stomach. The second is the menagerie of wacky root vegetables constantly streaming in from my winter CSA.

I pour enough oil into a pan to barely create a film across its surface. I add the chopped up veggies, which vary, but often include carrot and various radishes: daikon, black, watermelon, and "mystery." Sometimes I'll add some sliced cabbage, but the point is versatility, and every vegetable I've tried thus far (celery, spinach, turnip, leeks) has worked.



When the veggies are just beginning to soften up -- I like them crunchy and sometimes don't even bother cooking them -- I add the rice and a splash of water to rehydrate it. Then I clear everything to the sides of the pan, add another wee bit of oil, turn up the heat and crack in an egg. Sometimes I quickly scramble it, sometimes I let it fry and then mix it in. Sometimes I don't use an egg. Again, versatility is the key ingredient.

Then I plop in a scoop of chili paste and a splash of soy sauce and mix it all up. I was using sesame oil too, until I ran out, and then I found that I didn't miss it.



Fried rice can be divine, especially if you use Mark Bittman/Jean-George's crispy ginger and garlic trick and get all fancy by packing it into a ramekin before plating it. But I think of this version as morning workhorse fried rice. It's quick, it's easy, and it helps me chip away at the root veggie stash.

Another benefit is less easy to describe, but I'll try. And that is the feeling I get from eating rice, chili paste and almost-raw root veggies first thing in the morning. If toast makes me feel like I'm dangling my feet off of a happy cloud, this makes me feel like I'm planted up to the shins in warm rich dirt. It's not a bad way to feel when kicking off the day.

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Recipe: Root Veggie Laden Fried Rice

about 1 1/2 cups cooked brown rice
about 3/4 cup finely chopped root veggies, such as carrots, radishes and turnips
1 egg
1/2 tbsp of chili paste
a dash of soy sauce
olive, canola or peanut oil, about 1 tbsp

1. Briefly saute the veggies on medium heat in a little of the oil, about three minutes.

2. Add the rice, add a splash of water, cover and cook for a few more minutes until the rice is moist and warm.

3. Clear a space in the center of the pan. Add a little more oil into the center of the pan, set heat to high, and crack in the egg. Once the white is cooked through, turn off the heat, add the chili paste and soy sauce and mix it all up.

4. If you want to get fancy, pack it into a ramekin or other mold and stamp it out onto your plate.

5. Have a grounded day.

Sumac Agua Fresca

If your soul screams for yet another post about a sour tea made from wild ingredients, read on. If you'd rather read about designer cupcakes, might I suggest another food blog.

To begin, let's play a little game of word association. I'm going to say a word, and I want you to think of the first word that immediately jumps into your mind. Ready?

Me: sumac.
You: POISON!

But have no fear. The only similarities between poison sumac and regular -- or "delicious" -- sumac are literary. Though they share a name, they look nothing alike.



And yet a hairy, red, seed-studded head of common sumac just doesn't look like something you'd want to eat. And it isn't. But it is something that you want to drink. Simply muddle a ripe head in cool water, let stand for about ten minutes, strain, and drink. The resulting liquid should be a shade of salmon that can only be described as "lovely." It is to pink lemonade as manna is to food.



Besides za'atar, this simple drink is my only experience ingesting sumac, though I could easily imagine a sumac syrup splashed into champagne, among other possibilities.



Though I have little desire to experiment given the quality of sumac tea and the ease with which it is made. Sumac tea is tart and fruity, part citrus, part berry. It is a dead ringer for a splash of pure cranberry juice in water, which is something I drink all summer but will never need to pay for again. Sumac-ade, as it is often called, is just as good if not better, not to mention carbon-neutral and obtainable without the exchange of currency. Nor does it come in a wasteful container; I carried mine home in a hat.

Brewing a cool, refreshing glass of tangy sumac jus doesn't even require a heating element, and the process could therefore predate the invention of fire. Forget about so-called organic food flown in from China: this stuff is the essence of sustainability.

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Sumac Agua Fresca (aka Rhus Juice)
serves 6

Ingredients:

1 quart of water
1 ripe sumac berry cluster (dark red, picked in mid-summer to fall)

To test a berry cluster for flavor, gently rub it and then lick your fingers. They'll taste tangy if you've got a winner.

Twist or snip off the berry head. Thoroughly muddle it in the water using a wooden spoon or your fingers. Pour through a fine strainer or cheesecloth removing all seeds and hairs, which can irritate the throat.

Sweeten if desired. Serve room temperature or cold. Connect with nature.

An Elegant, Vegan Dessert

This is a somewhat elaborate dessert recipe, but a good one nonetheless. And if you use dark chocolate, it's vegan.

Recipe: Raw Ginger and Dark Chocolate Sandwich

Ingredients:

2 small squares of dark, fairly traded, organic, communist chocolate
1 thick slice of raw ginger root, peel on

1. Carefully snap the pieces of chocolate from the bar. Snap another and eat that one too.

2. Slice off a thick slab of raw ginger root. Stick your nose in the freshly cut root and deeply inhale.

3. Place the ginger between the slices of chocolate, pinching between your fingers to keep in place.

4. Garnish with nothing, serve by putting in your mouth.

Leeks and Eggs (or Eggs and Leeks)

What, besides dirt that's impossible to remove, is there to not love about leeks? They're like onions without the bite, plus some spinach.

I've played around with leeks a lot and found that they're as versatile as they are funny to anthropomorphize. Though most chefs would say "discard" if you asked them to free associate a word with leek greens, I'm a big fan. You can blanch them and crisp them in hot oil as a garnish, you can chop them up and add them to a soup, or you can do my absolute favorite thing to do with either part of a leek. If you've read the title to this post, you know what that is.

A warm mound of leeks and eggs is the most comforting breakfast imaginable. Disagree? What, do you think French toast is? You're wrong: it's leeks and eggs.

Leeks and eggs are like peas in a pod, only better, because they're two things and because they're better than peas. They go together perfectly, and I could waste your time by describing exactly how and why, but instead you should just go make some.

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Recipe: Scrambled Eggs and Leeks for Two (People)

Leeks (about half of a normal sized leek or five inches' worth or 3/4 cup chopped)
4 eggs
a pinch of salt
a pinch pepper
a pinch of your cheek, to know that you're not dreaming

1. Slice the desired amount of leek once down the middle and then chop into half circles, about the thickness of a Necco wafer.

2. In a deep bowl, pour cold water over the chopped leeks and thrash them around to remove the dirt. Once the dirt has settled, skim them from the surface and rinse again.

3. Warm a glug of olive oil or a pad of butter in a pan, enough to cook both the leeks and then the eggs. Add the leeks. Cook until tender but not crispy.

3. Add the whisked eggs, salt and pepper. Cook over low heat, stirring, to achieve a custardy, small curd scrambled egg. Serve with toast.

4. What else do you need to know?

Peace and Hominy

There may be nothing more comforting than having a bubbling crockpot full of hominy stew. Except perhaps two bubbling crockpots full of hominy stew.

I've been making such meals ever since having the posole at Ole in Inman Square, and I have to say that I'm quite pleased with my results. I've used both beef bones and chicken legs and each has yielded a rich, buttery broth. After a long simmer, the hominy surrenders its starch to the surrounding liquid, and the whole thing tastes like the best corn tortilla.

I've also been using Amanda's slow cooked soup plus fresh garnish theory, which I think I can now call the slow cooked soup plush fresh garnish law. One day, Amanda thought "It seems like such a waste to make stock out of ingredients like vegetables that you could eat instead." And then she thought "What if you could make stock out of something that you wouldn't otherwise eat, like bones and spices?"

So she started making soups with just a spiced bone broth and finishing it with herbs and veggies at the very end, thereby creating the perfect yin and yang of slow cooked richness and last minute freshness.

Here's how my posole works, and I'm open to other suggestions. I brown a few chicken thighs and do the same with onion, garlic and cumin seeds. That all goes into a crockpot with the hominy (previously soaked overnight), a large can of tomatoes, a dried chile, salt and a splash of some leftover wine or vinegar. I forget about it pretty much all day, then take the meat off the bone, reintroduce it, and serve with chopped cilantro, diced raw onion, and lime wedges. It is divine.

Here's the one problem: when the chicken is falling off the bone and everything else is just perfect, the hominy still needs to keep going. What I've been doing is finishing it on the stove on higher heat once I take the chicken out, but it would be nice to get everything to finish at the same time (single entendre). I suppose I could just start the whole thing earlier - any thoughts?

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Recipe: Posole (At Least I Think It's Posole - Call It Hominy Stew to Be Safe)
serves 4

The stew:

12 oz of hominy, soaked overnight
4 chicken thighs
1 28 oz can of tomatoes
2 cups water
2 onions
1 whole garlic clove
2 tbsp cumin seed
1 whole, dried, chile pepper
salt to taste
a splash of wine or a slightly smaller splash of balsamic or wine vinegar
2 tbsp pimenton

The garnish:

1/2 bunch chopped cilantro
1/4 diced, raw onion
1 lime, cut into wedges

1. Brown your chicken thighs, onions, garlic, and cumin seed.

2. Add the above to a crockpot with everything else in the stew list.

3. Simmer on "high," about forever.

4. Remove the chicken and shred like pulled pork. Put it back as such.

5. Serve with the garnish.

Great Ingredients, Horrible Food

Dinner prospects couldn't have looked better.

I had chicken jus, chicken fat, and a fresh chicken of the woods mushroom harvested from the woods behind T&F HQ. I also had a can of coconut milk and an heirloom eggplant from Allandale Farm -- a Louisiana Green -- plus plenty of spices, fresh cilantro, scallion, and my go-to dried noodles. By all accounts, it should have made for a bangin' curry.

It was not, and I blame the Louisiana Green. The eggplant was gaggingly bitter and made my tongue prickle and itch in that special eggplant way. I would have just eaten around it, but like a skunk that's been hit by a car, its influence had spread.

The whole beautiful thing tasted as bitter and as mushy as the eggplant. I ate the noodles with as little of the sauce as possible and, out of respect for the slugs whose food I'd stolen, picked out the pieces of the mushroom with a pair of chopsticks. I was so disgraced that I couldn't even bear to empty the pot for another day, and so it remained on the stove, full of horrible curry, haunting me. It's final resting place was not my stomach, but the trash can. Hence the above photo.

Ironically, I had picked up the eggplant while researching an article on the resurgence of heirloom vegetables. My slant had so far been positive, but now I might reconsider.

It was definitely the worst tasting, highest quality food that I've ever eaten. In that one sense it takes the cake, though I wish I had taken a piece of cake for dinner instead, and I hate cake.

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Recipe: Ruined Curry

Directions: Combine the freshest, most flavorful, heirloom, organic, local, seasonal vegetables possible with spices of your choice and equal parts coconut milk and chicken stock. Add a nasty eggplant. Serve over noodles. Throw away.

A Shortcut to Food

As some loyal readers might know, T&F is in part a musing on how to eat well while working from home. And I think I've finally cracked the code.

The answer: highly seasoned ground meat and noodles. Don't be thrown off the seeming simplicity of the dish. This can be very, very good food.

For instance, dan dan noodles, perhaps the greatest culinary gift the Sichuan province has made to the rest of the world. If you can just look past your school room cafeteria associations -- to stop beating around the bush, that's "beefaroni" -- you'll see the vast potential in this elemental combo.

The version pictured at top includes ground pork from happy, heirloom pigs at nearby Drumlin Farm and mung bean noodles, which looked very cool and just a little scary while resting in a glass bowl.



My inspiration started with dan dan noodles, which is basically soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic, Sichuan peppercorn, chili flakes, and something else that restaurants do that I can never replicate at home (and no, it's not MSG, unless they're lying to me). But now I just throw together real meat and complimentary spices and it always works out. The one in the photo, which was the best yet, had a sauteed onion and bell pepper and focused primarily on the interplay of pimenton and cumin. It was so rad.

And you really could make the whole thing in ten minutes. Add more veggies to the meat and you've got a balanced meal, assuming that phrase still means anything. Use non-wheat noodles such as mung bean, rice, or buckwheat and it's that much more interesting.

This really is the fastest, most filling and flavorful lunch (or dinner) I can think of.

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Recipe: Not Beefaroni

1 package mung bean noodles (or rice noodles, buckwheat, udon, spaghetti, etc.)
1 lb organic, sustainably raised meat (pork, beef, turkey, beefalo...)
1 onion
sesame oil
soy sauce
spices!

1. Boil the noodles until katame ni yuderu. Rinse and toss with oil.

1. Sautee the onion until translucent.

2. Add the meat to the same pan and cook until brown and slightly crispy.

3. Add the soy sauce and spices (such as pimenton and cumin).

4. Add the sesame oil.

5. Top the noodles with the meat.

The Reign of Gorditas Continues

Now just because the article isn't still up on the Globe's main food page, it doesn't mean that I'm not still cooking and eating tons of gorditas ala Chole Adams.

In fact, they're the most satisfying vegetarian - vegan, even - meal I can remember eating in a long time if not ever. Must be the starch combo of the beans and cornmeal. Or maybe it's all the fat? Either way, they're one of those perfect, transitional early Fall foods. A hearty base of corn and beans, and an end-of-summer topping of raw tomato, onion, and cilantro.

For the recipe, follow the link from the article, with two additional notes. Your choice of refried beans can really make or break the dish. I recommend taking cooked (canned works) beans and blending with a little water, some sauteed onion, garlic and ***pimenton***. Also, it's a lot easier to just dress the top of the gordita rather than slicing and stuffing it.

If you really want to be like me, you can also garnish with lemon (cucumbers) and lime, as pictured above.

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Recipe: Gorditas de Chole

http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/food/articles/2009/09/09/gorditas_recipe/

Lobster Bolognese, Revealed

I'm sure you all think about The Best Thing I've Had All Year as much as I do, but you may not have realized that we received the recipe for it in a comment.

I'm also sure that you all comb through the comments as obsessively as I do, but just in case this one slipped past you, I thought I'd showcase it here. Thanks to Rick Rodgers for sending it along. He wrote:

This recipe was popularized by Alfred Portale at Gotham Bar and Grill in NYC, and is in his first cookbook. You are right--cream, stock, and veggies are the ingredients. I have the recipe in my computer because I worked on the book as the recipe tester and writer.

Recipe: Fettuccine with Lobster Bolognese
makes 4 to 6 main course servings

Lobster Bolognese Sauce:

l/4 cup distilled white vinegar
3 (l to l l/4 pounds) live lobsters
2 tablespoons olive oil
l medium onion, chopped
l/2 cup chopped carrot (about l/2 medium carrot)
l/3 cup chopped celery (about l/2 small celery rib)
4 garlic cloves, sliced
5 sprigs flat-leaf parsley
5 sprigs tarragon
5 sprigs basil
l dried bay leaf
3 tablespoons tomato paste
l/4 cup Cognac or brandy
l/2 cup dry white wine
6 cups white chicken stock, or as needed
1 cup heavy cream
Coarse salt and cayenne pepper

Bring a large stockpot of 10 quarts salted water and the vinegar to a boil over high heat. In batches, if necessary, add the lobsters and cover. Cook for 5 minutes. (The lobsters will only be partially cooked.)

Drain the lobsters, place in a bowl, and set aside until cool enough to handle.

Working over a bowl to catch the juices, twist the lobster bodies away from the tails; reserve the bodies. Saving as much of the juices as possible while working, crack the lobster tails and claws. Remove the meat and cut into 3/4-inch dice. Transfer to a bowl, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate. Coarsely chop the lobster shells.

In a large stockpot, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the onion, carrot, celery, garlic, and parsley sprigs and cover. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables soften, about l0 minutes. Stir in the tomato paste. Add the lobster shells and bodies and cook, stirring often, for 2 minutes. Add the cognac and reduce by half, about 2 minutes. Add the wine and reduce by half, about 3 minutes. Add the reserved juices and enough stock to barely cover the ingredients. Bring to a boil over high heat, skimming off any foam that rises to the surface. Reduce the heat to low and simmer until well-flavored, about 45 minutes.

Strain into a large bowl, pressing hard on the solids to extract as much flavor as possible, then discard the solids. (If making in advance, cool, cover, and refrigerate.)

In a large saucepan, bring the stock to a boil over high heat and reduce to l cup, about 30 minutes. Add the cream, return to a boil, and cook until the sauce thickens slightly, about 5 minutes. Taste and season carefully with salt and cayenne pepper.

Assembly:

l pound fresh fettuccine
l tablespoon finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
2 teaspoons finely chopped tarragon
l0 basil leaves, cut into chiffonade
Sprigs of chervil for garnish

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat. Add the fettuccine and cook until al dente, 2 to 3 minutes. Drain and return the pasta to the pot.

If necessary, reheat the lobster sauce over low heat. Add the lobster meat and cook just to heat the lobster meat through, about 2 minutes. Stir in the parsley, tarragon, and basil. Add the warm lobster sauce to the pasta and toss well.

Serve in warmed pasta bowls, garnishing each serving with the chervil leaves.

To Eat Wheat?

You can imagine a well sculpted, deeply researched New York Times piece about the increasing numbers of those who cannot (or just think they cannot) tolerate wheat, but this isn't it. This is a baseless morning blog post.

As I've said before, when it comes to the burgeoning realm of food sensitivities, I'm torn. There's my inner Michael Ruhlman, who thinks people who don't eat everything are sissies. Then's there's the inhaler that I stopped using once I stopped using dairy.

Wheat, or gluten, is by far the fastest growing intolerant food. I'm shocked by the sheer volume of people who are giving it up. Often these tales of abstinence are accompanied by miraculous recoveries. Suddenly that chronic back pain you've had for years just disappears, all because you switched to quinoa pasta like that pictured above (with bacon, escarole, garlic and chili flakes).

Sounds fishy, doesn't it? And yet I have my own health success story with cutting out dairy, so I'm left wondering if perhaps it isn't the wheat itself that's to blame. Why would one of the oldest crops known to humanity suddenly turn on us?

Probably because we turned on it. I'm no farmer, but I know we don't grow wheat like we used to. Perhaps we've done to wheat what cell phones did to good old to human interaction.

I don't know if it's the pesticide, genetic modification, over-processing or... well, it's probably some combination of those.

Do I eat wheat? All the time. We all do, and the number of those who cannot is vastly outnumbered by those who can. And I wouldn't be surprised if those who think they can't eat wheat could eat some kinds of wheat, perhaps an heirloom variety not processed into white bread. But to be perfectly honest, I now eat less of it and feel better.


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Recipe: Quinoa-Corn Pasta With Escarole

Ingredients: just look at the directions. The ingredients are in there.

1. Boil pasta.

2. Sautee diced bacon and chili flakes. When the bacon is crisp, add escarole and garlic.

3. Toss the pasta with the escarole, bacon, spices, and one dipper of the pasta water.

Return From Vermmmont Raw Corn Salad

Returning from my annual two weeks teaching in VT is usually a drag. When I would come back to Somerville, I found the urban setting abrasive if not hostile. Luckily my new place of residence is much greener, but in comparison to VT, our nature somehow seems less natural.

So I was cheered to see that in my absence things had been growing back home. Oli had a short, sleek, summer coat, and despite the lack of soil, light, attention and planning, there was actually some food in the garden.

The apples had blushed.



The blackberry blossoms had transmogrified into blackberries.



And there was a cucumber...



... that went into a raw corn salad, along with some of the local sunflower oil I picked up at Pete's Greens.



In the summer I crave unadulteration more than I crave any specific ingredients. I eat less and I eat dishes made with less preparation, if you could call taking a cucumber out of the refrigerator and eating it whole a "dish" that underwent "preparation." But when I can overcome my estivation, I make a raw corn salad.

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Recipe: Raw Corn and Cucumber Salad
(serves 2)

Note: variations are limitless.

1 cucumber
2 ears of corn (suitable for eating raw, i.e. sweet and picked that day)
Pete's Greens sunflower seed oil for dressing (or olive oil)
salt to taste

1. Dice the cucumber, keeping the peel on, unless you're a total weiner.

2. Slice the kernels from the shucked corn cobs.

3. Combine both with salt to taste and an ample drizzle of the sunflower (or olive) oil. If you got 'em, add fresh herbs or nearly anything else.

Homemade Jam: As Easy as Pie

Homemade jam. Go ahead, think about it. The mess, the effort, the special equipment, the self righteousness. Now think again.

If you have fruit and sugar, and you do, homemade jam is at your (sticky) fingertips. You don't have to pick the berries. You don't have to hermetically seal the end product. You don't have worry about odorless, tasteless, killer bacteria.

You don't even have to be a hipster. You just have to cook a little fruit with a little sugar.

I had some strawberries that were on their way out. They weren't even local berries, just some Big Organic (not that good for the planet, but also not that bad, right?) fruit that I had lying around, getting a little fuzzy around the edges. I halved them and simmered with less sugar than you think goes into jam for less time than you think jam cooks for.

I didn't add pectin. I didn't add rosemary or anything else that doesn't belong in jam but increasingly finds its way there.

As soon as the heat and sugar permeated the fruit, my limp, squishy strawberries transformed into vivid, cartoon like fruit. They went from looking like something that you wouldn't want to eat to looking like something that you wouldn't want to eat because you'd think they'd been dyed and thickened with cornstarch.

But no. The thick, ruby red concoction was more natural than most of the girls who went to my South Florida private high school. The berries were plump and toothsome, full of seeds that popped and crunched between my teeth. The flavor was tart and fruity, just a shade sweeter than what you might pick from the vine, and nowhere near as cloying as, say, Smuckers.

It was easy. It tasted amazing. It resurrected my fruit.

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Recipe: Homemade Strawberry Jam

-strawberries that no longer look good enough to eat fresh
(about 2 cups)
-enough water to cover the bottom of the pan - no more!
-a fat pinch of unrefined sugar

1. Wash and halve the strawberries.
2. Combine all ingredients in a small pot or pan.
3. Cook until the berries are vivid and surrounded by thick syrup.
4. Cool and store in the fridge, if it lasts that long.

Buffalo Shepherd's Pie

Not only is this dish good in and of itself, but it's also a superior recreation of a childhood comfort food. Without lunch lady hairs.

Even though I secretly liked the version slopped onto my lunch tray as a school boy, this shepherd's pie is a vast improvement, with buffalo meat instead of beef (leaner, hipper), smoked paprika, fresh sage and a touch of cumin. Instead of the classic trinity of frozen peas, frozen carrots and canned corn, we use whatever fresh veggies we have around. Last time our friends brought over some of the surplus bounty of their CSA, including turnips and chard, which worked great.

I also appreciate the irony of a shepherd's pie made from buffalo, since buffalo can't actually be shepherded. The only downside is that while it's still hot, using the term "pie" is really being generous. Even though it doesn't taste like slop, it still kind of looks like slop.

But when you have the leftovers the next day, as you invariably do because you make an entire skillet's worth, because it looks gorgeous and rustic to do so, that slop sets into distinct strata that can easily be sliced into a clean, self-supported wedge.

While eating one such pie during last night's dinner, conversation turned to talk of sprouting grains. Our guests, an enterprising young family that bakes their own bread and makes their own cheese, are in the habit of sprouting everything from grains to nuts. That's a food wagon I haven't boarded yet, largely because of the extra effort required.

That said, when I looked in the dog's water dish this morning, I noticed that two buckwheat grains had accidentally fallen in and sprouted. Guess it's not that hard after all.



Now if only buffalo shepherd's pie appeared so spontaneously.

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Recipe: Buffalo Shepherd's Pie

1 lb ground buffalo (it goes a long way, 6-8 servings)
8 potatoes
chopped seasonal vegetables
pimenton (smoked paprika)
fresh sage (about a handful)
cumin
salt

1. Make mashed potatoes.

2. Brown the buffalo meat in an iron skillet with a healthy dash of pimenton and slightly less cumin.

3. Layer the chopped veggies and chopped sage on top of the meat, sweating anything that would produce a lot of water first (i.e. chard or spinach).

4. Top with the mashed potatoes. Top the mashed potatoes with a heavy sprinkling of pimenton and a drizzle of olive oil (and cheese, if that's your thing).

5. Bake at 400 until it begins to brown, then slide under the broiler to finish the job.

6. Serve as is or let set in the fridge over night for pretty slices.

So Good, There Must Be A Name For It In French

Sometimes when I hit upon a great new dish, I think "I've done it!" Other times I think "This is so good, the French must have already done it." The chicken leg pictured above fell into the latter category.

I usually buy chicken whole, but sometimes I want less than a whole chicken in less than the time it takes to cook a whole chicken. When this happens, I carve off a raw hunk of bird to cook immediately, and later, when I roast the rest of it, it appears as though there has been some sort of accident.

This time, I sawed off a drumstick, which I browned in olive oil. I then added about a cup of stock, several whole peppercorns, and sliced garlic. I covered and simmered, and once the meat was tender, I reduced the remaining liquid and poured it on top of the leg.

The meat had that supple moisture that only cooking in liquid can provide and the stock cooked down to a thick, chickeny sauce made all the more flavorful by the browning. And while cooking with stock might sound a little involved, the whole thing took about twenty minutes, also known as the time it took to chop and steam a few sweet potatoes (see background of photo). That and the leg was lunch.

I'm sure I'm not the first person to cook chicken like so, but I'm as excited about the dish as though I were.

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Recipe: Hasty, Seemingly French Chicken

1 drumstick or thigh per person
1 cup chicken stock
1 tsp whole peppercorns
3 cloves garlic
salt to taste
olive oil

1. Brown the chicken in the olive oil.

2. Add the stock, garlic, and peppercorns.

3. Cover, simmer until tender (about 15 minutes).

4. Remove the chicken and reduce the remaining liquid to the consistency of maple syrup.

5. Pour the sauce over the meat and garnish with the peppercorns and garlic. Serve alongside steamed sweet potatoes.

6. Exclaim in delight using whatever French you know.

7. Explain to your girlfriend why the raw chicken in the fridge is missing a piece.

Leftover Braising Liquid Flatbread

After braising two of the now dubiously cool Niman Ranch lamb shanks, I found myself staring into the pool of leftover liquid, thinking "now what?"

We served the shanks on the bone, in the center of the table, with in-apartment tortillas to cradle the hand-torn meat. The lamb was great, but so much of its umph was left behind in the juices it had cooked in, and there was only so much of it (lots) that we could spoon over our meat.

As I gazed into the bowl of orange juice, fennel seeds, onion stock, whole peppercorns, garlic cloves, and lamb fat, I suddenly had a vision of incredibly flavorful flatbread.



I made Bittman's socca, a staple in my kitchen, but instead of water I used the rich slurry described above. The lamby liquid worked perfectly with the slightly sweet chickpea flour, and the flatbread/pancakes were studded with mashed potato-soft chunks of garlic and onion. My test batch was so good that I made a whole stack of them for company the next night, simply mixing the braising liquid with the chickpea flour and pan frying on the range.

I'm thrilled to have found yet another way to close the kitchen loop. Often my braising liquid is made up of odds and ends anyway, so the thought of stretching it out into one more meal really tickles the stingy environmentalist in me. Luckily, it also appeals to my inner glutton.

And what else are you going to do, throw it out?

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Recipe: Leftover Braising Liquid Flatbread

Simply follow any of Mark Bittman's recipes for flatbread, substituting leftover braising liquid for water.

Weighty Issues

In my class at the Boston Center for Adult Ed, my students have been tackling a different genre of food writing each session. Last week they tried their hand at the fastest and newest: blogging.

The following is the first ever blog post by Jeanine Slater, one of the class. Let her know what you think!

I used to think that healthy food couldn’t taste good too. Brown rice? Sorry, no. Steamed vegetables? Again, no.

I’m a Yankee with southern roots and I love all kinds of food, so you might say I have equal parts clam chowder and fried chicken running through my veins. In high school I joined the track team and ran 10 miles a day, played tennis, ate whatever I pleased and until I was 18 never weighed more than 110 pounds. Then I went to college. You’ve heard of the freshman 10? Try the freshman 30. So began my on-going battle with my weight.

A few years ago, with the assistance of a Health Coach, I lost 55 pounds and have continued to maintain a healthy weight. The basic formula is very simple: calories in, calories out, but of course we all know it isn’t quite that easy. Finding time to exercise and prepare healthy meals can be very challenging. To help me stay on track, I began creating lighter versions of my favorite foods using both fresh and prepared ingredients.

You’ve heard of Sandra Lee? Oh, please. I was creating semi-homemade meals long before blondie appeared on the Food Network - she just got there before I did.

But you would be amazed by what you can eat while still maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Now that Spring has arrived I am experimenting with grilled chicken & fish (thank you George Foreman!) and preparing tasty and filling salads. I rarely use recipes but have created one for the shrimp salad below. It is simple, tasty and a crowd pleaser at large or small gatherings. Feel free to use the reduced calorie dressings or herbs of your choice

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Recipe: Peppery Shrimp Salad

1-2 lbs cooked or raw shrimp
1-2 fresh lemons
Herbs - Sweet basil, thyme, oregano (or whatever you have on hand)
1/4 Cup Ken’s Reduced Calorie Creamy Parmesan with Cracked Peppercorn Dressing (this is my favorite)
1/8 Cup Hellman’s Low Fat Mayonnaise (optional)
Lettuce or other greens

Step 1: If using cooked shrimp, remove tails, rinse & drain thoroughly. Proceed to step 3

Step 2: If using raw shrimp, peel and de-vein (if desired); add shrimp to a large pot of simmering water to which a few lemon slices and herbs have been added. Shrimp will immediately begin to turn pink ; stir & cook for 1-2 minutes depending on the size of the shrimp; remove 1 or 2 & taste for doneness; shrimp should be pink & firm but not mushy (undercooked) or tough (overcooked). When done, empty into a strainer and rinse with cold water to stop the cooking process.

Step 3: Drain shrimp thoroughly (pat dry with paper towels if necessary); place in a strainer and refrigerate overnight if you are not in a hurry.

Step 4: Place shrimp in a non-metal bowl & add salad dressing, mayonnaise, a few squeezes of fresh lemon juice, and herbs to taste. Refrigerate for 1-2 hours; adjust seasoning & serve on a bed of lettuce or other greens; garnish with lemon twists.

Serves 6-8.

Bok Choi and Brazil Nut Butter

Bok choi and Brazil nut butter, or "no ants, different log," is a weird snack, but a good one.

My inspiration to pair a brassica with a nut butter came from Michael Ruhlman, who confessed to eating something equally bizarre: cabbage and peanut butter sandwiches, for lunch, all the time.

Just seeing the photo of his sandwich, and I strongly recommend doing so here, caused me to rethink food more than any spherification or foam could.

I like bok choi. I like nut butters. Though they're rarely paired together (besides in a stir fry with peanut sauce - but do people even say "stir fry" anymore?), the flavors are not antagonist. If you're hesitant to try it yourself than you'll be all the more surprised at how pleasant the combo is.

The bok choi is light, wet, cool, and crispy. The nut butter thick, dry, and salty. The bok choi counteracts that infamous nut-butter-pasty-mouth-syndrome so well that you won't even find yourself wanting to wash it down.

Why bok choi and Brazil nut butter instead of cabbage and peanuter butter, as Mr. MR suggested? No other reason than the fact that I've been on a huge bok choi kick - raw, only - and will buy Whole Foods in-house bulk b.n.b anytime I find myself near or in the store. I always prefer an independent coop or farmers market over the creepily pleasant, dubiously ecological megachain, but they do have their strengths.

I eat it as a snack, but I suppose it could also make for a conversation-starting starter to a meal.

Try it, you'll like it.

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Recipe: Bok Choi and Brazil Nut Butter (or B.C. n' B.N.B.)

2 bok choi stalks
4 tbsp Brazil (or other) nut butter
1 pinch daring-do

1. Thoroughly rinse and rub two bok choi stalks free of debris, acknowledging the cruel trick of fate that the base of the stems always have dirt and sometimes have natural freckling that looks exactly like dirt.

2. Trim all but a suggestion of the greens from two stalks of bok choi. Eat them later, or if you're me, feed them to your strange dog who loves bok choi.

3. Schmear the hollows of the stalks with nut butter.


4. Congratulate yourself for having now become a molecular gastronomist.

Kill and Eat: Garlic Mustard

When I last wrote about the edible exotic invasive weed known as garlic mustard - and I know you've all been on pins and needles awaiting further commentary - I concluded that it was not as attractive to me as plain old domesticated garlic.

But why? Why didn't I want to eat something that's edible, free, and threatening the native vegetation?

Fear. That's why.

Fear of the unknown, as in "can I really eat something that you can't buy from a supermarket?" But we all know that I wasn't going to not eat the thing, and that it was just a matter of time. It was the following sentence on Wildman Steve Brill's site that finally twisted my arm:

"The flower bud resembles broccoli, a relative."

I then had the following thought sequence:

1. This stuff looks like broccoli rabe.
2. People eat broccoli rabe.
3. People eat broccoli rabe with garlic.
4. This stuff already tastes like garlic.
5. I'm going to eat this stuff.



Sautéed in olive oil, the buds were a dead ringer for rabe with a hint of garlic. It's no wonder the plant is also known as sauce-alone.

Like autumn olive and Japanese knotweed, this is one invasive plant that should be savored before being slaughtered.

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Wild Garlic Mustard With Buckwheat Soba

(serves 2)

About 10 garlic mustard flower buds
1 package buckwheat soba noodles
4 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp soy sauce

1. Pinch the buds off where the stem begins to darken. Rinse and spin.

2. Cook the noodles in boiling water under slightly tender, about 7 minutes. Drain and rinse.

3. Sauté buds in the olive oil until verdant. Add noodles and soy sauce.

4. After dinner, go back and pull up the entire plant, ensuring its destruction.

Miso Plus None

I've written before about the joys of miso + 1, an equation which clearly proves that miso paste is the most simple and versatile path to soup. Add any one (compatible) ingredient and you've got an elegant and easy bowlful with practically zero effort.

But in thinking about miso + 1, I overlooked the even more minimalist miso + none. Or rather, miso plus water. Yes, that alone is food.

If you have good miso, which is neither hard to find nor costly, you've got soup. What else can you say that about? Miso, in and of itself, has an even more complex flavor profile than a bloody brownie.

The only challenging step is finding the right miso. After years of experimentation with red and brown, I've finally settled on white. I now use Westbrae Natural's "organic mellow white miso" and I'm never going back. I had a mug of it just yesterday, and nothing could have better suited the cool yet sunny Spring weather. The only possible improvement would be if Westbrae came up with a Beck tribute miso called Mellow Gold. (I can just see him staring into a bowl, tripping out on those ever shifting clouds of soy.)

A satisfying -- not to mention probiotic -- bowl of soup that's as easy to make as stirring. I challenge anyone to come up with an faster, healthier, more delicious snack that could still be considered cooking.

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Recipe: Really, Really Simple Miso

1 tbsp miso paste per person
1 soup bowl's worth of water

1. Heat the water in a tea kettle, microwave, or under a magnifying glass.

2. Dissolve the miso in a small amount of the water, then add the rest.

For Mate Morons, More On Mate

After my last post on mate (the tea, not the romantic partner), I received a stern rebuking from my Chilean mate muse. He had this to add:

There are some points that could help you to improve your mate (not maté):

Aclaración: the idea is the leaves are getting wet from the bottom to the top. You said that you must cover the leaves with cool water... that's a mistake: you musn't cover it. You have to put in the water and try, always, to do it in the same point, in order to keep the top leaves dry: don't spread the water and never cover the leaves. Like that, it'll taste better and it will last more!!!

Not only did I accent the word incorrectly, I also missed out on the whole concept of the water percolating up through the leaves rather than down from above. So from now on, when I drink mate, I'll say "bottom's up!" And no one will know or care what I'm talking about.

I also received advice for brewing mate in a grapefruit, which sounds like a much classier version of smoking pot out of an apple. Eli wrote:

Make mate in your grapefruit. Delicious:

1. Hollow out a mate-sized hole in a grapefruit. Leave a thick layer of flesh on the bottom and sides. (You can still use the grapefruit scraps.)

2. Fill the void with yerba, leaving about an inch of space at the top.

3. Pour a little cool water down one side and slip the bombilla in (to keep the yerba from scalding).

4. Your mate is now ready for hot water, sir. Heat the water until it gets noisy, but don't let it boil. As you refill the grapefruit, squeeze it a little to flavor your delicious mate.

Is anyone else doing anything crazy with your mate that we should know about? (Again, that's the tea.)