Quinoa Pasta

with leftover roast chicken and diced up summer squash and tarragon. With steamed green beans. For dessert, many, many chocolate chip cookies, from the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion. We were out of chocolate chips so I chopped up a bar of super-dark chocolate.

Zucchini Gratin

from Richard Olney. Delicious; we had it with corn, tomatoes, and salad. One of the nicest unintended consequences of my breadmaking is that I now leave my baking stone in the oven full time, which results in beautifully even heat distribution in everything I cook. Makes a huge difference.

Clapotis Four

I may never stop making this scarf pattern. I've made three winter versions in wool; here is my first summer version, in silk.

Linen T-Shirt

All ready for summer.

Roast Chicken

with tarragon. We had it with a salad and the pictured pain au levain, even better than the first batch.

Eggs

Fried eggs (Miss Sue's, so very flavorful) with brown rice and roasted vegetables (cauliflower, broccoli, carrots).

Pain Au Levain

In my opinion, the best bread yet. Stiff dough starter, nice beefy percentage of whole wheat and rye flours, and oven spring that resulted in beautifully cylindrical batards. I think I am persistently slashing too shallowly, but other than that I have no fault to find with this mouthwatering bread. We had it with friends; I made a Swiss chard quiche (pre-baked the crust this time, which made all the difference in the world), salad, and banana bread for dessert (all-purpose, whole wheat, and amaranth flours).

Cheese Omelette

with sauteed okra, corn on the cob, and bread and butter.

Long-Cooked Broccoli

over whole wheat spinach pasta, with salad. The broccoli recipe is from Alice Waters The Art of Simple Food, a book about which I have mixed feelings.

Grilled Hake

with green beans, salad, and sourdough bread.

Whole Wheat Sourdough Miche

A very, very good loaf of bread. This is the first one I've made that I would say is genuinely sour. It is tender and flavorful, but its real glory is its crust: deeply caramelized and delicious. It was also the occasion for a discovery. I had to use all of the starter I'd made for it, saving none to ferment the next batch. For fun I decided to mix a new starter in the old container, which had a few clinging shreds of starter in it, and lo: a whole new batch of starter, no problemo (and for that matter, problem solved). I'm learning that wild yeast is strong.

Quiche

with spinach, onions, and gruyere. I made the crust with the aptly named "Foolproof Pie Crust" recipe from Cook's Illustrated. Though I did in fact out-fool it: "I won't bother to pre-bake it" I thought. "It won't matter" I thought. Next time I'll pre-bake. We had it with salad and the pictured carrots, harvested by my spouse.

"Whole" Spelt Loaf

"Whole" is in quotation marks because in fact I ran out of spelt flour and had to top it up with whole wheat (maybe 20%). This is what my spelt starter did; as you can see, it had oven spring that, once again, made a mockery of my slashes. I think it's a beautiful loaf, and has a deep, complex, tangy flavor I like. Unfortunately, only I and one of the household toddlers like it, so it may not get made again for a while. Will have to find another use for spelt starter (fragrant library paste?)

Chicken Sausage

with turnips and brown rice. I had to douse the sausage in olive oil to make it worth eating; not enough fat.

Spelt Starter

I am nurturing a new starter, still in its infancy. It took me a minute to place its current aroma, but once I did it was unmistakable: it smells *exactly* like gazpacho.

Potato Salad

with little herbed hamburger patties, and arugula salad. Potato salad is shaping up to be my dish of the summer. Last night's had some tarragon in it, which really came into its own this morning, after sitting in the fridge over night. I'm having it for lunch today and can hardly wait.

J.M. Coetzee

I'm not sure if books are the kind of thing we talk about here anymore, but in case anyone's wondering I am in a deep Coetzee phase. In the last two months I've read Summertime, Disgrace, Foe, and The Master of Petersburg; I'm reading Elizabeth Costello now. I am wholly absorbed, can't, it seems, get enough. He can do anything he wants with me once he starts.

Kale Soup

Made of one onion, one red pepper, a can of Great Northern beans, two cobs' worth of corn, half a box of chicken stock, and a big bunch of kale.

French Country Boule

These are from Local Breads. If I have to quibble with bread this delicious, it would be to say that I prefer a higher percentage of rye and whole wheat flours than these called for. But seriously, why am I quibbling? There's nothing not to like here. For one thing, these babies had oven spring to spare. They laughed in the face of my wee slashes and almost burst themselves in half as they rose in the oven. I attribute this muscle to my use of bread flour; up until now I've been using all-purpose. I'm a convert.

Bacon and Mei Qing Fritatta

with salad, and the remainder of the baguettes.

Old World Baguette Redux

Definitely a life lesson here. This bread looks nothing like the bread described in my book, and no stage of its preparation went as predicted, and I suffered great frustration along the way, and when I went ahead and baked it I came up with one of the best pieces of bread I've ever tasted. I'm beginning to understand that there are not many ways to mess up bread made from a levain. The picture does not do justice to the opalescence of the bread's chewy interior.

Quinoa Pasta

with pesto, and sauteed garden turnips.

Grilled Red Snapper

with roasted sprouts, shiitakes, and new potatoes.

Potato Salad

from Alice Waters' The Art of Simple Food. It is extremely delicious, mainly, I think, because I used rice vinegar which doesn't really taste like vinegar to me (not that I dislike vinegar). We had it with sauteed cauliflower and steamed broccoli from our local farmer's market. Super yum.

Crab Cake

We only had one, so I split it. Also a salad and massive helpings of buckwheat batard with Danish butter.

Buckwheat Batards

Or as I affectionately think of them, "li'l buckwheat bastards." My second recipe from Local Bread. These are just as good as they look, and particularly gratifying because the omens during their making were so uniformly unpropitious (insufficient water, texture not at all as described in the book, dubious rising of the levain). I was cheered a little bit when I realized that the recipe itself had some significant errata, so the difference between my dough and the one it described was inevitable. Two things on which I did make progress this time were proofing (I didn't overproof) and slashing (I used a razor blade and boy, does a truly sharp blade ever make a difference.)

Grilled Salmon

with raw sugar snap peas, sauteed Swiss chard and spring onions, salad, strawberries, and les flutes. All around great meal.

La Flute Gana

Voila, my first recipe from Local Bread. It involves commercial yeast and a little bit of corn flour, plus a long refrigeration of the proofed dough, called "retarding." If only someone had asked me what I was doing yesterday I could have answered, "retarding the flutes!" In any case, they are terrific. Very delicious, with a crust so deep and strong and crisp-yet-chewy that my jaw ached as I finished my first bites. True, they are oddly shaped; I blame over-proofing, a too-cool oven, and a not-perfectly-sharp dough scorer. I can fix these things, and in the mean time, will enjoy this bread.

French Country Boule

Well, this is a revelation. This is a delicious little loaf of bread; chewy, moist, wheaty with just a touch of sourness. And nothing in it but flour, water, salt (not quite enough, I think), and time! I followed the recipe and instructions in the Bread Bible, and used my stiff starter. I feel I have crossed a threshold.

Fridge-Clearing Frittata

of brown rice, farro, broccoli, and corn. With roasted cauliflower and shiitakes.

Raised Waffles

The first fruit of my starter! I made Marion Cunningham's Raised Waffles, from Rose Levy Berenbaum's Cake Bible, using some of my starter instead of yeast. (I also replaced about half of the all-purpose flour with rye flour). These waffles are extraordinary; their surface is as delicate and crisp as the best tempura you've ever had, the interiors moist and light as a feather. They have a mild sour flavor, though might not have if I'd used any sugar. I thought they were just about perfect with a little maple syrup. Tomorrow I'll make my first starter-leavened bread; I am encouraged.

Cherry Fizz

This scarf has been done for some time, but I'm behind on my knitting documentation. I love this pattern; easy and just right for one skein of yarn.

Double My Fun!

What we are looking at here is a starter that has doubled in bulk a few hours after feeding and that, my friends, spells success. I'm baking with it tomorrow and we'll see what's next. The container comes from the paint section of Home Depot, which is appropriate because the starter smells exactly like fresh paint.

Whole Wheat Fettuccine

with sauteed mei qing cabbage, tuna, and capers. With salad. I could have eaten bowls of it.

Starter Update

The whole-wheat based starter is more active than the rye so far (though both are bubbling away) and smells like an overripe peach.

Grouper

pan-fried in butter, with brown rice and farro, and first CSA salad of the spring!

Meatloaf

Ground beef, an egg, tarragon, chives (with flowers), preserved lemon, and quinoa. With broccoli rappini and corn on the cob.

Progress?

It's a shame I can't post this picture in Smell-O-Vision, because if I could you'd know this incredible fact: both batches of starter smell exactly like sourdough bread! Unfortunately, they aren't growing in volume at all. So what the heck is up? My awful-smelling starter rose like it was supposed to; my wonderful-smelling starter seems to have no rising mojo at all. I'm just going to keep feeding it and hope for the best.

Turnip Time!

I do love spring turnips. Tonight we had sauteed tiny turnips with sauteed turnip greens and a potato-and-tarragon frittata. Wonderful all around.

I Can't Get Startered!

My second attempt at sourdough starter was not much more successful than the injera starter. You see it on day three. One problem is that it has a big dried spot on the surface, which happened because I disregarded instructions to keep it tightly covered with plastic wrap. "It needs to breathe!" I thought, wrongly. Another problem is that whereas my book predicted it would emit "a faint citrus aroma" it in fact exudes "an assertive dead-cat-in-the-basement" aroma. I threw it out and started two new batches, one with rye flour, one with whole wheat. I think one issue is my lack of a place to let it sit at the proper temperature. My book recommends 55 to 65 degrees, but where is that to be found in my house, chock a block with room-temperature rooms?

Happy Birthday to Me!

Spaghetti and Meatballs

Whole-wheat fettuccine with Rao's tomato sauce and beef meatballs: ground beef, an egg, some garlic, and fresh oregano.

Soup

Today's fridge-cleaning soup contains:

1 lb. Yellow Indian Woman beans
1 Moroccan Lemon Chicken carcass
1 bulb of fennel
1 onion
2 red peppers
1 big piece of ginger

Super yum over leftover brown rice.

Banana Bread

with ginger. About a week ago I had a Thai banana fritter, which had ginger in the batter and was scrumptious. So a few days ago I threw a big spoonful of ground ginger into my banana bread batter thinking: "frittery good!" In fact it was nothing at all like the fritter, but still pretty good.

Crab Cakes

with quinoa and sauteed turnip greens (young juicy ones from the big pots of them my husband is growing).

Lamb Chops

broiled, with spinach and quinoa.

Injera

Catastrophe. The worst cooking disaster of my life. A friend and faithful reader told me a while back that teff flour, which I'd bought without knowing a thing about it, is the basis of injera, the delicious Ethiopian sourdough flatbread. I love injera, and Ethiopian food in general, so I filed that information away in my "to-do" neurons. About a week ago, I don't know why, I got fired up about it and did some internet research that resulted in a week of tending a teff-based sourdough starter, and tonight I made it into injera. In Ethiopian restaurants injera is spongy and sour and compulsively eatable; in my kitchen it was gummy and faintly gritty and tasted (I'm quoting my husband) "worse than dirt." He was right; it was repulsive. Clearly, I have a lot to learn about starter. And I plan to persevere! But this time I'm going to try regular sourdough starter without the teff element, to see if I can get some basics down. I'll let you know how it goes.

Potato Frittata

with roasted cauliflower and shiitakes.

Meatball Soup

with chicken stock, onions, herbed meatballs, whole wheat egg noodles, and baby turnip greens.

Crab Cakes

with spinach and black rice.

Mo Banana Bread

Two loaves. The flour was a blend of buckwheat, teff, and coconut, the fat was butter, and I threw in a half teaspoon of ground nutmeg. The nutmeg overwhelms the banana, but I love nutmeg so it's ok by me. I did, by the way, make Maida Heatter's Cuban Banana Bread last week. It calls for a cup of bran cereal (I used All-Bran), and to my taste this introduced too much salt and hard-to-identify processed something or other flavor.

Moroccan Lemon Chicken

with black rice and sprout-shiitake slaw.

White Bean Soup

I realized as I was putting this soup together that my soup-making has evolved into a game with one rule: I'm not allowed to buy anything specifically for the soup. I suppose I cheat in that I usually keep things like beans and chicken stock on hand, but the moment of making is spontaneous, and I use whatever is already in the house. Yesterday that meant:

1 lb. mayacoba beans
1 squishy box chicken stock
1 big badly sprouted oninon
a few chunks of country ham
2 ancient butternut squashes
some fresh sage
garlic

The soup is sublime. I am finally getting a handle on the texture of bean soup. Realizing that the secret to thickness is blending some of it up and adding it back to the pot was a big step. That's the thing about being self taught (at cooking or, I suppose, anything else): you gain a lot of confidence at the expense of some startling holes in your repertoire.

Happy Easter!

Every year I say it: I should dye all our eggs, I find them so cheering. Below is my daughter's Easter to-do list.

Spaghetti and Meatballs

or sort of: whole wheat fettuccine, broken into pieces, with sauteed red bell peppers and buffalo meatballs (ground buffalo meat, brown rice, chives, and a spoonful of preserved lemon).

Grilled Buffalo Filet

with broccoli and brown rice. The last of the marmalade gingerbread for dessert. Next up: Cuban Banana Bread.

Baked potatoes

and roasted vegetables (cauliflower, shiitakes, red peppers).

Marmalade Gingerbread

I find few things more relaxing than throwing together a quick bread, and I'm always interested in new ones. Tonight I made the Marmalade Gingerbread from Maida Heatter's Cakes, and it's as good as it sounds (if you like marmalade, that is). The recipe, with my tweaks, is as follows:

1C whole wheat flour
1C amaranth flour
1/2 t salt
1 t baking soda
1 t ground ginger
1/2 t nutmeg
zest from 2 lemons
2 t vanilla
1 C coconut oil
1 C lime-ginger marmalade (homemade by my aunt's boyfriend, thank you so much Loy)
2 eggs

I put it all together in my stand-up mixer, then baked at 350 for 50 minutes (though next time I'll try 45). I had a piece warm and, before deciding on seconds, had to let all my brain's pleasure centers calm down after it brought them screaming to life.

What do I really eat?

When I have no one but myself to please? Let's observe: last night's dinner was four mashed up sardines stirred into brown rice along with some sea vegetable kim chi, finished off with two fried eggs on top. Yum. Accompanying this I had a handful of peanuts, an orange, and a banana, and that's more or less what I'd always eat if left to my own devices.

Grilled Sheepshead

That's the fish, not actual sheeps' heads, thought the latter might certainly have made for a more lively post. In any case, we had it with baked sweet potatoes and tiny little brussels sprouts sauteed with minced country ham.

Crab Cakes

with quinoa and salad.

Jacket, At Last

I started this project in August of 2008, and here it is, not quite two years later! It is a reasonably tricky pattern, and somewhere in the middle I just lost steam and put it aside. It's hard to go back to something once you've done that, but I'm glad I did: I not only have a beautiful sweater to show for it, but I have cleared some major dust bunnies out of my subconscious closet as well. Onward and upward!

Knitting Catch-UP

Ok, First I have to get over the difference in photo quality as the images appear here and as they would appear if you were looking at them on my computer. Why does Blogger degrade them?
Never mind. Here are the fruits of the last couple of months' worth of knitting: a sweater I love and the third iteration of a scarf pattern I adore. The sweater required some advanced knitterly techniques, so not only do I like it but it makes me feel comfortingly skilled as I remember its making.

Fried Polenta

with sauteed sprouts and prosciutto.

Grilled Amber Jack

with cheesy polenta and sauteed red peppers and fennel.

Cabinet Pasta

You know when you open the fridge and the void stares back at you? That was my plight this evening. Thank heaven for things that keep forever. We had whole-wheat fettucine with a "sauce" of shredded and wilted romaine lettuce, a can of tuna, some chopped up olives, a tablespoon or so of capers, and a big spoonful of preserved lemons. I found it delicious.

Oscar Dinner

We had a wee gathering in honor of the awards ceremony held for people we don't know in movies we for the most part hadn't seen. It was fun! One guest brought a big pot of delicious red beans and rice; I made a veggie casserole. I used for my inspiration a recipe from the Moosewood Cookbook, but I erred freely, ending up with a compendium of the following:

2 onions
1 lb. mixed mushrooms
1 head cauliflower
1 bunch rappini
4 C cooked farro
2 C grated cheddar
Several large spoonfuls of Moroccan preserved lemons
1 egg

I chopped up the vegetables and sauteed them until soft, then mixed everything together and baked it for half an hour at 350. It was very tasty. I also made some brownies (the fudgy kind from the King Arthur Flour Cookie Book) with buckwheat flour.

Frittata

of mushrooms, red peppers, and prosciutto.

Corn Bread

Corn bread with cheddar cheese and scallions, actually; if I normally pig out on cornbread, I suppose what I did last night was hog out, or something. We had it with some (undistinguished) pan-grilled steak, and pan-roasted red peppers.

Crab Cakes

with farro and roasted sprouts, shiitakes, and red bell peppers. I almost didn't even tell you what vegetables we had, but the peppers made them look and taste so different in real life that I thought I'd risk boring you in this digital report.

Bean Soup

over farro for me. Just back from a trip to LA where I ate dim sum (heaven) and the best steak I've ever had in my life (NY strip, aged, with mushrooms, rappini, and spinach on the side, and bone marrow flan to start). The steak was at a super hot (in the happening sense) restaurant with giant pictures of actors on the walls and menus, and women in four and five inch heels all around. I, with my parents and wearing my Danskos, enjoyed it hugely.

Pan-fried Trout

with leftover brown rice and amaranth, and sauteed sprouts and shiitakes. I almost didn't make that vegetable combo, even though we all love it, because I wasn't sure I could face recording it here yet again. I promise to get interested in other vegetables sometime soon.

Frittata

of farro with Aerogarden herbs and raw milk cheddar on top. With roasted cauliflower.

Lamb Chops

broiled, with sauteed sprouts and shiitakes, and brown jasmine rice with amaranth seed.

Crab Cakes

It is wonderful when dinner harmonizes the way last night's did: each piece a note that happened by chance to turn out perfectly, all together a chord to make one weep. Or eat big, as I did. We had the crab cakes with fried cheese grits (left over from breakfast) and roasted sprouts and shiitakes. For dessert we had zucchini bread that was kind of a mess, but still mighty tasty. The flour blend was white whole wheat and amaranth. My mistake was forgetting that whole grain flours absorb a lot more moisture than refined flours; since I was using as my base a recipe designed for cake flour, this was a big problem in the finished batter (way too tight). Still though, as I say, tasty: hard to mess up a spicy quick bread.

Rhinovirus

still in effect. Forgive me if my posts are beginning to sound like Twitter updates. Hey, are you having as much fun watching the Olympics as I am?

Bean Soup

Made with borlotti beans, vegetables, and country ham bone. I had it over farro, and it was all probably delicious, but I have a cold and can't taste anything so I can't be sure.

Pizza

last night, and a work dinner tonight. Back to regularly scheduled cooking on Wednesday, on which night I will try farro for the first time. A new whole grain! This could be big.

Banana Bread

And Valentine's Day wishes! The flour blend in this loaf is white whole wheat, amaranth, and coconut. Mmmm, good for you.

Meatballs

with cumin and garlic. With brown basmati rice (cooks as fast as white rice!) and sauteed sprouts and shiitakes. I'll have the whole thing all over again for lunch today and expect it to be even better.

Broiled Salmon

with brown basmati rice and roasted cauliflower and shiitakes.

Apple Cider Vinegar

I have a feeling it's going to be in 2010 what coconut oil was in 2008: my new cure-all wonder ingredient. Having read one internet article on the subject, I'm now convinced that raw, unpasteurized, unfiltered vinegar is the key to everything. I'll let you know how it goes.

Leftovers

Took the cold remains of last night's pasta, vegetables, and steak, threw them in a skillet and reheated. Delicious!

Whole Wheat Fettuccine

with sauteed brussels sprouts and shiitake mushrooms; with leftover skirt steak.

This and that

leftover rye and cauliflower dressed with vinegar for me. Sounds and smelled disgusting, but was tasty. I garnished it with resolutions to get back to the gym.

Skirt Steak

broiled, with rye berries and spinach.

Broiled Mackerel

with quinoa and salad.

Fried Chicken

with brown rice and orange cauliflower.

Fried Grits

Cold sliced cornmeal grits fried in butter, topped with parmesan. We had them with sauteed shredded sprouts and roasted red peppers.

Happy Birthday

Big number six. It was a very happy day.

Banana Bread

to end all banana breads. It was all I could do not to polish off the loaf. I followed Nigella Lawson, as usual, erring freely at whim, ending up with (for two loaves):

Six super-ripe bananas, mashed
4 eggs
4 t vanilla
1 t cinnamon
1 C melted butter
1 1/3 plus 4 T spelt flour
3/4 C coconut flour
4 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
1 t salt
3/4 C sugar

Baked it all at 325 for 50 minutes and then just wallowed in the near-pudding that resulted, all golden butterscotch banana deliciousness.

Vegetable Lasagna

and salad.

Farmed Salmon

Yes, anti-biotic ridden, native species-destroying, environmentally disastrous farmed fish. It was fatty and delicious when grilled; we had it with a sauteed slaw of brussels sprouts and shiitakes, and brown rice.

Yellow-Eyed Pea Soup

A while back I posted about Rancho Gordo beans; the NYT magazine told me to buy beans from them, so I did. They are very good, and the Rancho Gordo marketing material is super cute, so I've kept buying them. (Incidentally, this means I have found a way to turn beans, the ultimate cheap staple food, into an expensive status symbol. I am a living entry in the "Stuff White People Like" blog, which you should read, if you haven't alredy.) Anyhoo, this is what I used:

1 lb. Yellow-Eyed Peas (super-silky when cooked)
One sweet onion, a bunch of carrots and celery, diced
One piece of the shoulder bone from our Christmas country ham, with rind attached

I cooked all of this for several hours. The beans were over-cooked, though still delicious. I strained the liquid from the finished soup, then pureed a cup of the beans with some liquid and added them back to the whole beans. The I thinned the whole thing with a few more ladels-full of liquid. It is extremely good; I had a bowl of it over brown rice for dinner.

Mustard Butter

Oh yeah, you heard me. It was like this: I had leftover buffalo bratwurst from an earlier meal, and wanted to combine it with shredded, sauteed brussels sprouts to eat with spelt angel hair pasta. It all sounded good, but I kept thinking, "bratwurst is really good with mustard." So I combined a teaspoon of dijon with a tablespoon of melted butter, whisked them up and dressed the pasta with it. It was very good, though next time I'd go even heavier on the mustard.

Fried Chicken

with quinoa and steamed carrots. The quinoa was overcooked, as it always is these days; I got a new rice maker and haven't figured out the proper water ratio yet.

The Shame!

We have in fact been eating dinner: little tiny lamb chops with spinach and brown rice, a potato fritatta with roasted cauliflower and carrots, cumin-spiced meatballs with roasted Brussels sprouts. As you can see, nothing new in the repertoire lately; sometimes dinner just has to get on the table with as little fuss as possible.

Lamb Chops

I broiled them, and they were gooooood. We had them with roasted potatoes and brussels sprouts.

Leftover Lasagna

which was better than it sounds. We had some broccoli with it.

Fried Potatoes

With sauteed red cabbage and apples, and leftover meatballs.