Seared radicchio with smoked mozzarella and walnuts

Radicchio: besides being fun to pronounce, it's that reddish leaf in "European" salad mixes. It's good for more than just salad, though, as in this recipe adapted from Deborah Madison's excellent Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America's Farmers Markets.


You'll need:
1 head radicchio
2 tbsp olive oil
2 minced garlic cloves
3 tbsp balsamic vinegar (upped from D. M.'s 2)
6 oz sliced smoked mozzarella cheese (D. M. uses regular mozz, which is great too, but I think the smokiness of the cheese and the slight bitterness of the radicchio go nicely together)
1/4 cup chopped walnuts (because walnuts taste good with everything)
salt and pepper to taste

Cut radicchio into 1 1/2 inch wedges, leaving root ends intact. Drizzle with olive oil and season to taste.
Put the wedges onto a pre-heated cast iron skillet and cook until browned, about 5 minutes per side. The radicchio should lose its reddish color, and some of the leaves should turn crispy.
Add the garlic, vinegar, and cheese. Cover the skillet until the cheese melts.
Meanwhile, toast the walnuts in a small skillet over medium-low heat.

I served this over fresh pasta, and it was a nice, comforting lunch. It isn't the most colorful dish out there, so D. M. suggests garnishing it with parsley in case you decide to serve it to company. Enjoy!

Roasted romanesco cauliflower with pistachios and feta

This is seriously the easiest 30 minute meal ever. And pretty darn delicious, if I say so myself.

At Sunday's East Side farmer's market, this pretty little thing caught my eye, accompanied by a sign reading "End of Season Cauliflower:"

It's romanesco cauliflower, which is many cool things. It's an edible flower. It's also a fractal! The latent math nerd in me is excited. Each of its buds is composed of smaller buds, all arranged in logarithmic spirals. (Here is a delightfully nerdy article about it from Fourmi Lab.) It's also rich in Vitamin C, which I certainly need at the moment.

As I cook this meal, I'm getting over my once-a-year bug. Tonight is the first time I've wanted real food (i.e. food other than ice cream and pizza ... apparently when I'm sick I turn into a seven-year-old at a slumber party). And while I'm well enough to cook, I'm not well enough for the grocery store. So this is what I've come up with:

Roasted Romanesco Cauliflower with Pistachios and Feta (serves 2)

1 1/2 lbs romanesco cauliflower (although regular would work just fine)
1 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp sea salt
red pepper to taste
toasted pine nuts to taste (I like a lot)
a couple squeezes of fresh lemon juice
chopped fresh mint
1/4 cup feta cheese

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. While the oven is heating, chop the cauliflower. Romanesco seems built around a core, so for me this was more like coring an apple than chopping a regular head of cauliflower.

Toss the cauliflower with the garlic, olive oil, and salt in an 8x8 baking dish. Roast for 30 minutes.

Once the cauliflower is done, toss it with the remaining ingredients. I served it over whole wheat pasta.
Roasting brings out a deliciously sweet, nutty flavor in the cauliflower, the full extent of which was probably lost to me, given my sniffles.

Because cupcakes are always in season

I've been quite delinquent with my market-going these past few weeks. Whether it's been Sunday morning twelve-mile hikes or just plain sleeping in, I've been occupied on weekend mornings. So while this post is't exactly about anything seasonal, does it matter? We're talking about cupcakes here, people. Cupcakes are always in season. This is a ginger cupcake with crystallized ginger topping and cream cheese/orange frosting. Mmm....

This recipe is from the January/February issue of Vegetarian Times, tweaked minimally. Because I can't reprint it, I thought I'd answer some questions about baking. Some people think of baking as an exact science - the flour has to be perfectly leveled in the measuring cup, not a quarter teaspoon more. I don't have the patience for exact science, so I don't bake that way, and everything usually works out for the best. But there are some seemingly weird things recipes will require that a lazy cook (like me, at times) might be tempted to skip. There are also quite a few substitutions you can make to work around what you've got in your kitchen.

For example, I used brown sugar instead of white, like I usually do. Brown sugar tends to make baked goods more dense and moist, which I generally prefer. If you want your baked goods to be lighter/crisper, use white.  Also, I came back from the store and realized I'd neglected to pick up buttermilk. What do you do if you don't feel like turning around, but still want that slight tang in your batter? Plain yogurt. I used the same amount of Greek yogurt as buttermilk (1/2 cup) and it worked out great. The other thing yogurt is great for is egg substitution. Eggs are a binding agent, but if you want to make vegan cupcakes without using that weird processed egg powder, get yourself some plain soy yogurt.

A couple things this recipe called for that you might be tempted to skip because you're rushed/you'd rather be watching Project Runway/etc.: Chopping butter into small pieces. Why bother, if it's all going to wind up blended together? Distributing the fat in the butter that way helps fluff the pastry while cooking. Nothing terrible will happen if you don't do it, but cutting your butter helps create a more even, aerated texture.

The recipe also called for melting butter with molasses and sugar, then cooling it for 15 minutes before mixing it with flour, egg, and spices. Wait, 15 minutes? But I have to be somewhere in, like, 20! Don't skip the cooling step. If you pour a hot substance into a mixture with egg, guess what? You'll cook the egg! Unless it's egg drop soup you're after, don't.

Wasabi-crusted tofu with bok choy

Ah, tofu, the old vegetarian standby. It's a great source of protein, but gets a bad rap. It often elicits an "ew" from non-veggie friends, and those who do eat it are often at a loss as to how to prepare it. Duh, deep-fry it. Everything tastes better deep-fried.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on the perspective of taste buds vs. health), I don't deep-fry at home. But I have experimented quite a bit with different ways to prepare tofu. Last week it was cooked in the pan with just cooking spray, and in the past I've dehydrated and frozen it, coated it with nuts, baked, and broiled it. The cool thing about tofu is it takes on the taste of any sauce/spice you use to prepare it, so it really is quite versatile.

This time around, I made my own wasabi spice blend in a coffee grinder, crusted the tofu with it, and served it over bok choy with ginger, garlic, and tamari.

Wasabi-crusted tofu with bok choy
Serves 3-4

Spice blend:
2 tsp mustard seeds
2 tsp black peppercorns
1 tsp coriander pods
1/4 cup wasabi peas
Super-easy. Just throw it all in a spice/coffee grinder, and add/subtract to taste.

1 package extra-firm tofu
2 heads bok choy
9 oz spinach
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp minced fresh ginger
tamari to taste
2 tbsp canola oil

1. The first thing you need to do with tofu is get some of the water out, or you'll have a soggy, crumbly mess. I just put a dish towel on a plate, cut the tofu into 1/3 inch slabs, and place another dish towel on top of the tofu. Let it sit for 20 minutes or so, occasionally pressing out the water. Then, you can cut the tofu into cubes.

2. Pour the spice blend into a small bowl, and coat the tofu cubes in the spices. Cook the tofu in 1 tbsp canola oil 2-3 min. per side. Transfer tofu to a plate.

3. Saute ginger and garlic in the other tablespoon of oil. When they begin to brown, add the bok choy and spinach and stir-fry until greens are cooked down, then add tamari to taste (or soy sauce, if you prefer). Serve over udon noodles or rice.

Tofu paneer

When I was a grad student in LA, my friend Ben and I had an Indian themed weekend in Atwater, where he was house-sitting. We went to an Indian grocery in the morning, where we had fried crepes filled with spicy ginger and garlic for lunch. We hit up a Bollywood dance class, where I'm sure we were quite the pretty picture -- Ben, at 6"2, the only guy in a class of women, all gangly limbs, and me, the eternal klutz. But that night, Ben and I cast our clumsiness aside to make a delicious dish of saag paneer.

I could live on saag paneer. Anything that's got cubes of fried cheese, curry, and lots of leafy greens is good in my book. More often than I should, I walk to Clay Pit downtown on my lunch break to pick up a (huge) lunch portion. Unfortunately, despite the presence of spinach, I can't kid myself any longer - saag paneer is not a health dish.

I got the recipe from the latest issue of Vegetarian Times, and because I didn't modify it much I don't have legal permission to republish it here. Basically, it substitutes tofu (browned in cooking spray, but you could use oil) for the paneer, and soy yogurt for the cream. Otherwise, the flavors are all there!

Will I regularly swap my beloved paneer and cream for tofu and soy? Probably not. But, it makes a healthy, tasty work lunch with lots of protein and iron.

New year, same root vegetables

 It's a new year, and time to get back to cooking and writing after a profoundly weird end to 2010. In honor of this, I think it's about time I gave my blog a pronounceable name. The old one LOOKS great, but just try explaining the name of your blog to people at a party when it's... more visual than verbal. It takes 20 minutes, maybe even charts and diagrams.

One thing that doesn't change, however, is root vegetables in winter. Behold, the humble sweet potato:

And my perennial favorite, collard greens:

Of course, there's also my abiding love for risotto. I've already talked about how I first started making risotto. It was a product of necessity: with a single burner and a love of fresh vegetables, what's an American exchange student to do? I still love making it. There's something so calm about having to tend the pot, stirring all along. You can really do any vegetables in risotto -- I had Cate and Kelly over for a re-housewarming party, and I roasted some sweet potatoes, braised some collard greens, and threw them in the mix.

The trick to risotto is really patience -- something that I'm trying to cultivate more in this new year. You've got to wait for the onions to be golden soft before you add the rice. Then you add wine, and it has to be absorbed before you add more and more stock, little by little. In all that time, you can't really leave the stove, but you're rewarded with such a rich, creamy dish, perfect for a rainy January night.
Cheers, everyone.

Re-creation

I really wanted to share a photo here of this amazing chickpea stew I made two weeks ago. But apparently, drinking a bottle of Rioja while you cook leads to a) forgetting to take a photo or b) not wanting to handle the very nice camera in the midst of glass #3 and messy cooking hands. So enjoy this photo I took on S. 1st while I share the recipe with you.At Lambert's, they make this achiote-chickpea-spinach appetizer with flatbread that is the best thing a vegetarian could possibly wish for at a barbeque joint. After having it on Thursday, I was so smitten with it that I did my darnedest to recreate it for Andy on Friday.

Chickpea and Spinach Stew (This recipe makes a lot. Serve it to your hungry friends, or pack it in lunches all week.)

1 red onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
olive oil for sauteeing - how much is up to you; I err on the side of healthy
2 15 oz cans chickpeas
4-5 cups spinach
2 tsp smoked paprika (available at fancy food stores, don't skip it for regular paprika unless you absolutely have to)
3 Roma tomatoes, cut into wedges
3/4 cup crumbled goat cheese
salt and pepper to taste

Basically, you start out by chopping a red onion. Doesn't have to be too fine, but it does help if you wear contacts. Cuts down on the tears. Saute the onion in some olive oil for 5 minutes or so, until it softens. Then add the garlic and saute a couple of minutes more.

Drain one can of chickpeas entirely and add it to the pan. Partially drain another, leaving about 1/2 cup cooking liquid, and add those chickpeas plus their liquid. At this point, add the tomatoes, spinach, paprika, salt, and pepper (really not too much pepper), then cover the pot and let simmer for 20 minutes.

Add the goat cheese and simmer for 5 minutes more.

Check it out, a cat!