In answer to a recent *nudge* to finish what I started, here's an update on the previously mentioned project to expand our daily menu.
(An aside: this might be a little fuzzy-sounding, since I finally broke down and took some allergy meds today. Springtime is upon us here in Seattle and my body is adjusting to brand-new allergens. If you'd like to see some truly spectacular images of said allergens, check out these pics on Flickr. The link will take you to images of cherry trees in bloom on UW's campus. These trees, along with the plum and apricot trees which have been in bloom for several weeks now, make everything seem prettier. Even in the rain.)
Alrighty. I have three food items to report upon. One success was some properly-made polenta with garlicky vegetables on top. Polenta is one of those things that I've always felt I should embrace as a standard of vegetarian cuisine circa Diet For a Small Planet, but I never liked how it came out when I made it. Turns out that the right grind of cornmeal--medium--makes all the difference (duh). It was marvelous, smooth but with lots of body and not at all gluey. The next day we cubed it up, fried it, and added it to a quick, paprika-spiked tomato soup like little corn dumplings. It was fantastic in both iterations. So: Polenta is now in the weekday meal lineup.
Probably the big winner of this week of experimentation was the recipe for slow-cooked white beans from Cook's. Mercy! those are some good beans. We'd had them made for us once by some greatly-missed friends, and I've been meaning to make them myself ever since. I've made the cheater's variation using canned beans (lame!). But these, with the onion halves and carrot pieces and Whole Garlic Bulb, well, they take the cake. And best of all, the recipe makes about a gazillion servings, so you can just freeze the leftovers. Should you have any.
The least successful venture of the week was the socca, which I did finally get around to making and which was supposed to be the starch with those white beans. It wasn't a major failure, but our recipe called for baking it in a 10-inch skillet when really it needed to be cooked on the stovetop like a crepe and then maybe finished quickly in the oven. It's only garbanzo flour, salt, and water, so there's not a whole lot to hold it together. The bits that cooked properly were really yummy, though, so socca is definitely on the rotation, if somewhere near the bottom. Just need to perfect the method.
That's all for now. The project continues, though, so I'll post updates as they seem relevant.
Ok, you know that strategy whereby you obligate yourself to finish something by making a public announcement? I'd like to try that out, albeit at a fairly safe level: I have a spring break project. We like to cook, but lately I think both Andrew and I feel like we're making a lot of repeat meals. This is mostly a misperception, since when I wrote down all the stuff that we consider our typical fallback meals I came up with a good 20 or so...but anyway, my goal for next week is to find and try out at least three new meals to be added to our repertoire.
This is meant to expand our menus, but it's also meant to get me to reconsider some neglected cookbooks. I love to buy them, and I love to read them, but once I've identified one or two quick and good recipes I tend to leave them on the shelf. Especially since The Book entered our lives, we've been virtually ignoring all the others.
I shall post my progress here throughout the week, maybe even with glamorous foodcam photos!
Just in time for kickoff:
Andrew outdid himself this afternoon by making these out of The New Best Recipe. We think of ourselves as fairly savvy in the kitchen, but we're hoping this cookbook will make us, uh, savvier. Even though we tend to be skeptical when we read the recipes (will this really be better than the way we usually do it?), they've been right so far; the cinnamon buns and the chocolate chip cookies have been definite keepers.
I went back to the new Whole Foods on Saturday, by myself, while Andrew was off at SXSW getting edumacated about the Interthingy. I bought all of ten things in the course of an hour and a half: little indulgences like wheat gluten and Whole Foods brand cat food. Mmmm.
But the most important purchase was also a partial admission of defeat. Several months ago a friend sent me a package of treats which either the DP or the USPS has subsequently eaten or blown up on a tarmack somewhere. At any rate, it hasn't shown up yet--so I figured it was time to take matters into my own hands.
Even if this package never appears, I STILL think it's the greatest thing to happen online, ever, that someone I never met would send me Caro.
In the meantime, Whole Foods has expanded its ersatz coffee offerings substantially and this tub of "Pero" is the same thing. So I bought one. I am drinking it now. I hope that by doing so, I will bring the forces of the universe back into alignment and Vasili's package will materialize, either on my front porch or on his...
[Yeah, woo, gluten AND ersatz coffee in one shopping trip, I live dangerously.]
Tonight we made Armenian Lentil Stew, which is a Moosewood recipe (the link is someone's annotated version, but the ingredients and methods are the same). It's perfect in many ways: most of the ingredients you already have on hand, and what you don't (mint, eggplant, apricots) is easy to get. This is really a nice change from your usual lentil stew, great with some nice, slightly sweet pumpernickel and a good cheddar.
One more for good measure. Andrew has a bunch of color nighttime pics up at Flickr, as well as some shaky shots from 37th street last night. I plan to mess around with those and post a few here too a little later.
Here's our amazing aluminum Christmas tree, freshly decorated with a whole lot more glass ornaments than we had last year. So far no interest from the cat, which is good, I suppose. In the sunlight it is extremely sparkly...
_
Yesterday I made yetakelt w'et, out of Sundays at Moosewood. I highly recommend it. It's a wee bit labor-intensive because you need a spice mixture, berbere, and spiced clarified butter, niter kebbeh, both of which are a little bit of extra work. For simplicity we don't bother with the niter kebbeh and instead just use a little more of the berbere, adding a tablespoon or so of butter at the end of cooking. I know it's not the same, but it was good anyway. And it will be even better today.
