A 30 minute dinner

Quick: it's 6 p.m. You've just finished a 5 mile run. You're starving, with mostly odds and ends in the fridge. What do you do?
Go to Amy's and eat a sundae for dinner!
Just kidding on that one, but it's happened before, more than I care to admit. Ice cream has calcium! It's healthy!

No, in all seriousness I put together this mint-pecan pesto over broiled tofu and Israeli couscous. Total experiment, but it worked.
Broiled tofu is pretty easy. I recommend marinating it, but I didn't have time, so I just brushed it with olive oil and broiled it for 10 minutes on each side.
For the pesto, I had some leftover mint from last week's radish, blood orange, and mint salad, and these wonderful local pecans that I bought from a super-friendly farmer at the market a few weeks ago. I've been putting them with brown sugar and raisins in oatmeal:

Mint and pecan pesto (makes about 1/2 cup, doubles easily)

1 cup fresh mint leaves, packed
1/3 cup pecans
1/3 cup olive oil
1/4 cup parmesan cheese
2 cloves garlic

It's easy. Mix it all up in your handy food processor. You don't even have to chop anything.

Israeli couscous with peas

1 cup Israeli couscous
1 cup peas (frozen, cooked according to package instructions)
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp ginger
salt and pepper to taste

Boil 1/4 cup water, add couscous. Cook for about 8 minutes, until all water is absorbed, over medium heat.
Mix in peas, lemon, ginger. Serve under broiled tofu with mint-pecan pesto.

There you go, a healthy weeknight dinner in less than than 30 minutes. Almost as good as an ice cream sundae.

Crummy pic, I know. I had take a really nice one, and then genius that I am deleted it accidentally from my camera.

And now, I'm off to some Brazilian-themed dance party on the east side. Don't really know how to dress for this (I'm low on feather headdresses and spangled bras) so I'm wearing blue shimmery eyeshadow and basically all the jewelry I own.

On Paris, risotto, and sparkling wine

I think I gravitate toward apartments with great views and tiny kitchens. My place in Hyde Park boasts a beautiful balcony with trees all around and wind chimes blowing in the breeze, but we have maybe 10 square inches of counter space, and the microwave, pots, and pans, are all stored by the front door. Back in the day, when I was in college, I went away to Paris for a year, where I found an apartment with a dream of a view – and the most challenging kitchen I've ever worked with, aside maybe from cooking over a campfire the last time I was at Pedernales Falls.

Looking out my bedroom window, I could see the Eiffel tower twinkling over a picture-perfect view of red tiled rooftops. (I have a thing for photographing rooftops.) Looking into my kitchen, I could see a mini-fridge, a hot plate, and one pot. That's it. There was no way I wasn't going to take advantage of the bounty of Parisian farmers markets, even if cooking for few is an apparently weird thing, and vendors would roll their eyes at me for not purchasing, say, a kilo of spinach. My company dish of choice in those circumstances was risotto: the technique is involved enough and tricky enough to impress my fellow expat friends, it showcases fresh veggies, and it can all be made in one pot over a hot plate.
Even though I now have a few more modern conveniences– an oven! four burners! a food processor! – I still love making risotto. It's not terribly difficult, but it does take attention and practice. The combination of greens, pine nuts, and raisins is classic Mediterranean. I made it with baby spinach from the farmer's market, but it would also be great with chard or kale. Just make sure to slice the greens and remove their stems if you're using something with larger leaves.

Risotto with spinach, pine nuts, and and raisins

4 cups vegetable stock
1/2 onion, chopped
2 tbsp pine nuts
3 tbsp golden raisins
4-5 cups baby spinach
1 1/2 tbsp olive oil
1 cup arborio rice
1/2 cup white wine
1/2 cup parmesan cheese, plus more for garnish
1 tbsp unsalted butter
1 tsp cinnamon

salt and pepper to taste

1. First, heat the stock. Keep it over a very low heat. Do not allow it to simmer or boil. (I skipped this part in Paris due to insufficient burners, but I do recommend it.)
2. Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan over medium high heat. Add the pine nuts and fry until they are lightly browned. Remove with a slotted spoon and place on a small plate covered with a paper towel. Set aside.
2. Add the onion to the oil and saute until translucent, about 3 minutes. Then, add the spinach, raisins, cinnamon, salt, and pepper, and saute for 3 more minutes.
3. Add the rice and stir until it is coated in oil. Add the wine and stir until it is absorbed.
4. Add 1/2 cup or so of stock - a ladleful- and stir until the rice has absorbed all of the stock.
5. Continue adding stock, one ladle at a time, until the rice has absobed all liquid.
6. Stir in the butter and cheese.
7. Add more cheese to taste. Enjoy!

As a first course, I used those beautiful radishes I mentioned last time to make a blood orange, radish, and mint salad. The full recipe is here. I left out the celery 'cause I'm not a fan, but other than that I stuck to the recipe.
We drank this Spanish Casteller Cava Brut (11.95) with our meal. For the price, it was remarkably good. Not too sweet, toasty, with hints of almond. Also makes for a nice blood orange mimosa the next day if you have a bit left over! Next up: mint/pecan pesto...

Potluck!

Last week, I saw this bunch of carrots and couldn't resist:
Aren't they gorgeous? So, I had invited about ten friends over for a potluck last Saturday, and wanted to make dishes that really showed off the flavor of these carrots. I tried a bit raw before I started cooking and they were delightfully fresh, and much sweeter and more delicate than supermarket carrots. I decided to make carrot-cake cupcakes and a pasta with carrot ribbons and a lemon/ginger sauce. Word to the wise: do NOT make both of these dishes in the same night. I literally spent an hour grating and making carrot ribbons. First my wrist cramped up. Then my wonderful roommate took over. Then her wrist cramped. This had better be good, we thought. And it was: Basically, all you do is saute some ginger and lemon zest in butter (or olive oil, which is what I did to for some vegan guests) add the carrots and some yellow pepper (which I'd actually leave out next time), and mix it with linguini and freshly grated parmesan. The full recipe is here.

The cupcakes got snatched up so fast I only got a chance to take a picture of the very last one ;) The recipe wasn't vegan, but I veganized it by subbing vegan margarine for butter and soy yogurt for eggs. As far as vegan egg substitutes to, I'm not a fan of the powdered egg replacer stuff, since I try to avoid processed foods as much as possible. Soy yogurt makes baked goods taste so moist and rich. The mascarpone/orange zest frosting I made was (obviously) non-vegan, so my vegan friends really had muffins rather than cupcakes. Hence the name "mupcakes," which stuck.Other delectable dishes included Roomie's roasted butternut squash with sage
and a dish my boyfriend invented that prominently features sour cream, cream of mushroom soup, and crunchy potato chips on top. It was quite the hit and provided a nice counterpoint to my "healthy" cooking.The full spread:
And, last but not least, I tried out this bottle of wine: 2008 Falernia Pedro Ximenez (11.95) from the Elqui Valley in Chile. The Pedro Ximenez grape is usually used to make sherry and other fortified dessert wines, but in this case it was a nice white table wine with almond flavors and good, crisp minerality that complemented the carrots' sweetness.

Tonight, I'm cooking a pre-theater dinner for my darling sister. It's going to feature these beautiful radishes from this
morning's farmer's market:

K is for Kohlrabi

My original plan for this week was to make my special "heart attack pasta," a delicacy of which you will learn later, because the downtown FM did not have the necessary wild mushrooms this week. Why not? Because it was FRIGID. Unbearably cold. M. in Chicago is probably laughing at my pathetic Texan definition of "cold" right now, but it was in the upper teens on Saturday morning. I had to wear GLOVES, for Pete's sake. The wild mushroom guy stayed in his warm bed, but in my ever-courageous quest for fresh vegetables, I went down to the market.

These caught my eye: I had never eaten or even really seen kohlrabi before, but apparently they were a favorite of Charlemagne's. The farmer who sold them to me described them as cabbage-like. They smelled delicious - sweet, a little sharp. I cooked them Indian style, in a recipe from Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian.


All I can say is YUM. Madhur has you make a paste of fresh jalapeno, ginger, oil, white vinegar, and garlic in a food processor. Being lazy, I was inclined to skip that step. So glad I didn't - the paste made the dish taste tangy and fresh, and none of the flavors overwhelmed that sharp, sweet kohlrabi flavor.

The other veggie I picked up was some kale. As a fan of all leafy greens, I knew it would be good. Since I was looking to try a new cuisine, I decided to go Caribbean and cook this soup from Food and Wine.

It had potential. Eating it, I really, really wanted it to be a stew. The thin broth wasn't doing it for me. Granted, that was partly because the only can of coconut milk left at Central Market was the "lite" kind. I don't know when or why there was a run on coconut milk at CM, but it's worth making an extra trip to Wheatsville for the full fat kind. Good to know. All the same, I'd double the coconut milk and halve the stock. Also, it wasn't nearly spicy enough for my taste. Add jalapeno seeds! Double the jalapeno! Feel the burn!
One final change: kale cooks MUCH faster than sweet potato. While the sweet potato turns beautifully tender, the kale starts to lose its color. Still tastes good, but looks like something your middle-school cafeteria would plunk down next to your defrosted chicken nuggets. Add the kale about 10 minutes into the sweet potato cooking time, and you should be fine. It was quite filling, I should add. So filling that when I had it the next day at work, I didn't crave cookies all afternoon. And that's saying a lot.

With this Caribbean/Indian meal, I paired the lovely off-dry Banyan Gewurtztraminer from Monterey, CA (10.95). (off-dry=slightly sweet. Good to pair with spicy foods.) It had an interesting nose - almost like spiced tea. It was just sweet enough - slight honey tones, but certainly not cloying.

Next week - farmer's market potluck. Now - this blogger is off to bed to rest up before a 7 a.m. run. In theory.

A New Year's Blog

Two "firsts" for me this week:
1. My first time blogging.
2. My first time cooking turnips.

You see, one of my vague New Year's resolutions was to go to the farmer's market more often. Another was to eat less cheese and more veggies, fewer double-chocolate brownies and more fruit, less wine and more ... well, never mind. So early of a Saturday morning, I headed to the downtown Austin farmer's market, drank some coffee, ate some tangerines, bought some turnips. Although I have an abiding love of maligned vegetables (brussels sprouts and beets are among my top 5,) I had never cooked turnips, and only tried them for the first time over Thanksgiving, in Marfa.

So I floated the idea by my boyfriend: I was going to cook a turnip-themed dinner. If the turnips were that awful, we could order pizza. Flying back and forth from the stove to the cutting board in the living room to the pots and pans by the front door (tiny kitchen ... I dream about islands and ample counter space) I declared, spatula in hand: "I think I'll start a blog about this!" It was quite the Julie Powell moment. The idea was that every week I'd go to the farmer's market, and cook a meal with what I'd found there, going for new and challenging vegetables whenever possible. I should add that I'm a vegetarian, so while the F.M. may feature really awesome local meats, I shan't be blogging about them.

So, were the turnips awful enough to drive us into the arms of a large veggie with extra cheese? Thankfully, they weren't:
Despite my poor photography skills, this is a turnip, leek, and blue cheese gratin that was so good we took it in our lunches the next day! I had to supplement the farmer's market turnips with some from Central Market, and let me tell you, the difference is huge. The f.m. turnips were tender, slightly sweet, with just a subtle bitterness. You can use any blue cheese you like, but this is Saint Agur, a mild, creamy blue cheese imported from France. The full recipe is in Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.
Next, I made a first-course of turnip greens chopped and boiled with pasta, topped with breadcrumbs (use fresh if you can - I was too lazy) and olive oil sauteed with garlic and lots of red pepper.
All of this deliciousness was paired with a Jackson Estate's Green Lip Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand (14.95). It had less herb flavor than most Sauv Blancs I've tried, with hints of basil and lots of citrus. It was kind of a delicate straw color, which is obscured by my spice jars in the back ground, and a faintly sweet flavor that cut the bitterness of the turnips a bit. And, it was great drinking on its own the next night when I finished off the bottle.

Stay tuned for kohlrabi and kale...