Marigolds

Several months ago, back when the sun was shining for 14 or 15 hours a day and I still had a normal 9-5 day job, I decided that my cookbook shelf was not quite full enough, and I treated myself to a copy of Tender: A cook and his vegetable patch by Nigel Slater. Slater is an icon in the world of British food writing. While I’d heard many wonderful things about him & his cookery books, I’d never actually explored his writing & recipes myself. But I can always use another resource for veggie-centric recipes, especially ones that are not strictly vegetarian (not remotely, in the case of this book). So room was made for this lovely, squat book on my shelf. 

I’ve prepared quite a few of the dishes so far, and one of my favorites was this soup. The header reads “A soup the color of marigolds,” and the recipe is written as a single paragraph. I love this kind of recipe for its simplicity, and for its strict dependence on using the best ingredients. I don’t recommend making it right now (if you live in my region of the world) because you’d be hard pressed to find acceptable tomatoes of any shade, but if you reside in a different climate, or if you can wait until summer comes around again, I highly recommend it.

Start with a shallot, or an onion, or whatever’s handy, and about a pound each of yellow tomatoes* and carrots. Chop them all up, and cook the shallot in olive oil until it’s soft and going translucent.

Add the tomatoes and carrots, and stir them up a bit. Cook for a few more minutes.

Then add a quart of water, a couple of bay leaves, and salt and pepper.

Simmer for a half an hour, until the carrots are quite soft, then puree with the appliance of your choice.

My choice is the stick blender my mom gave me last year, which means I’m no longer in danger of spattering steaming vegetable matter all over myself & the kitchen when I’m too impatient to work in small batches in a regular blender. Feel free to keep the soup kind of chunky, or keep going until it’s velvety smooth–whatever is your preference.

Then just check the seasoning and serve. Slater recommends topping with chopped chives. Having none on hand, I drizzled a spoonful of good olive oil into the bowl.

It is amusing (to me) that some of the most compelling vegetable recipes I’ve found recently are coming from two non-vegetarian British cooks (Slater and Ottolenghi). Historically one equates British food with vegetables boiled into submission, served alongside some meat, or something fried. I like it when people defy expectations.

*You could, of course, substitute red tomatoes. I am not someone who thinks overly hard about presentation, but the color of this soup really is lovely with yellow tomatoes.

Harissa-holic

I am capable of eating embarassing quantities of hummus. It is my preferred pre-dinner snack on those nights when I think my stomach is going to implode before I get a plate of food to the table (a frequent occurrence if I come home from the dojo and there are no leftovers). It is a perfect combination of rich and salty and tangy and sweet, and I wasn’t even looking for something to replace it when I found this recipe for carrot puree. Which in addition to being rich and salty and tangy and sweet is also a full serving of vegetables. Or multiple servings, if you power through as much of it as I did.

Admittedly, it doesn’t sound exciting. It’s basically spiced mashed carrots. But look closer, and you’ll see that the spice in question is harissa, and that makes all the difference. And if, like me, you like to keep a jar of harissa in the fridge at all times just in case (there are plenty of emergency situations where that stuff comes in handy), you can have this on the table in about 25 minutes.

Start by pretending you’re making mashed potatoes, except that they’re carrots you peel & toss in a pot of salted water.

Simmer until they are soft, then drain and put back in the pot. Heat them in the dry pot until the water on the outside of the carrots has mostly evaporated. 

Then add in the seasoning: olive oil, white wine vinegar, harissa, ground cumin, and ground ginger. Play around with the ratios. Not surprisingly, I prefer more harissa and less oil and vinegar than this recipe calls for. 

Then get out your potato masher and mashmashmash. (My double-masher is fun and quick to use, but sadly more difficult to clean than a single-layer one.)

Taste it to adjust the seasoning as you see fit, add salt and pepper, whatever. 

It is wonderful on a cracker, or bread. Or pita. Or maybe get all meta and dip a carrot in there. Or just a spoon.

I was out of shredded coconut (tragedy!) when I made this, so I have yet to try the dukkah spice mix that is meant to accompany this. It sounds wonderful, but frankly, I can’t imagine that my enjoyment of the carrot dip could possibly be raised to a higher level. 

Side note: when the Flyers make it to the Stanley Cup Finals and my friend J. and I make a hockey version of the snackadium, this would be perfect for some element of that. 

Couscous

About a year ago, a reader suggested that I check out a recipe in Yotam Ottolenghi’s book Plenty for something he calls Ultimate Winter Couscous (also available on his blog on the Guardian). Well, it took a while for me to get around to it, but I finally made it for dinner a few weeks ago. It should come as no surprise at all that it’s another winner. I admit, the ingredient list is a bit long. But if you are someone who cooks a lot, chances are most of these things are in your pantry anyway. And if they’re not, then this is an excellent excuse to go out and buy some saffron and preserved lemons, and to make up a batch of harissa. 

Start with a roasting pan, with chopped carrots and parsnips, peeled shallots, cinnamon sticks, star anise, bay leaves, ginger, turmeric, paprika, and chili flakes. Toss with olive oil and salt, and roast in a moderately hot oven for 15 minutes.

Add some cubed winter squash, and stick it back in the oven for another half hour or so, until the veggies are tender.

While that’s doing its thing, get the couscous ready. Mix the dry couscous with a pinch of saffron, salt, and olive oil in a big bowl. Pour boiling water (or veggie stock, if you’ve got it) over it, stir it up, and stick a plate on top of the bowl until the water is absorbed, about 10 minutes. Stir in a little butter and put the plate back on top until you’re ready to serve.

Add some chopped dried apricots, cooked (or canned) chickpeas, and some water (or the chickpea cooking liquid) to the roasting pan and cook another 10 minutes. 

Just before serving, stir in some harissa paste and chopped preserved lemon skin into the veggies. 

Serve a couple of big spoonfuls of the vegetables over a plate of the couscous, and top with a lot of fresh cilantro.

It’s a very flavorful dish without being overwhelming, and filling without being too rich. It may no longer be winter, technically, but the pickings are still pretty slim at my greenmarket, so a dinner based on root vegetables and legumes isn’t out of the question just yet.

Raw Foods

This recipe calls for kohlrabi.

I was positive that I’d seen some in the greenmarket recently, but then I didn’t quite make it there during the day. So I stopped at Agata and Valentina, which usually has just about everything (including, somehow, rhubarb well into the summer and fall, which is suspicious), but it was nowhere to be seen. 

So standing there in the produce aisle, wondering, “Now what am I going to make with those pea shoots?” I remembered a scene from Christmas at my mom’s house a few years ago. A traditional hors d’oeuvres in my family (the Austrian side, anyway) is peeled sliced kohlrabi sprinkled with a little salt. One year, though, my uncle brought in a plate of turnips, prepared the same way. He neglected (ahem) to tell my mom, and she didn’t notice the difference. And I figured if she couldn’t tell, then there was no point to informing her. (Sorry, Mom.) So I thought to myself, “Why can’t I just swap in a turnip again?”

Meanwhile, back home, I had finally located the julienne blade to my mandoline. After the requisite rejoicing, and after a few misguided attempts at using it without reading the instructions (um…) I found myself with a lovely bowl of vegetable matchsticks. I was a little hesitant about feeding anyone else raw turnips, no matter how finely julienned, but I think it turned out ok. Though truthfully, next time I’m going to hold out for actual kohlrabi. And/or I also might try this similar recipe, with a sesame dressing. The fennel/sesame oil/rice vinegar combo called for in the one I made is very light, and I think the turnips kind of overpowered it. Or else I wound up with too high a ratio of vegetable to dressing.

In a related note, if anyone has something that needs to be julienned, just give me a call. I have an urge to julienne everything in sight. Greatest kitchen gadget since the little spoonrest/holder that clips onto the side of the pot while you’re cooking. (Thanks to T. for that one.)

Glazing Over

I grew up in a raw vegetable household. If absolutely necessary, things would be steamed (barely) or, in summer, grilled. But as often as possible, the vegetables on our plates were not much more than crudite. And that was just the way we liked it.

As I’ve grown up, though, and started exploring actual recipes for vegetables. And not just the vegetarian entrees that so often inhabit my kitchen. I mean the vegetable part of the meat/starch/vegetable plate, where there’s actual cooking involved. I am as big a fan as anyone of the theory that good food comes from taking good ingredients and doing as little as possible, but I am always up for trying something new and slightly more complicated than “heat olive oil, saute until slightly brown, pour onto plate.”

And that’s what this is: Dorie’s Spiced Butter-Glazed Carrots. (Mom, you are excused from reading this post.) Carrots, onion (shallot here), garlic, ginger, and cardamom.

Cook it all up in a pot with butter, salt, and white pepper.

Pour in some chicken stock, cover and simmer.

And then cook it down until the butter and chicken stock have formed that titular glaze. I don’t usually think of ginger (or cardamom) as a key ingredient in French cooking, but they are excellent with the carrots. Another winner courtesy of French Fridays with Dorie.

A Bowl of Sweet Spice

This was supposed to make much more soup than three bowls full.

I started with a Monica Bhide recipe and veered immediately off course, because I had poblano peppers that needed to be used. Also, I have it in my head that vegetable soups taste better if you roast the vegetables before simmering them, rather than just browning them in the pot.

Mostly you need carrots. I decided that 1 1/2 lbs was the appropriate amount, which makes it all the more ridiculous that I only wound up with three (normal, not super-sized, I swear) servings.

Also thrown into the mix: 2 poblano peppers (instead of the bell peppers originally called for), a red onion (instead of leeks, I think), a piece of fresh ginger root (cut into chunks), some turmeric, a dried red chile pepper, and coriander seeds. Toss with vegetable oil and some salt, and stick in a hot oven for, oh, a while.

Once the vegetables are veering towards browned, dump them into a big pot and cover with water or the stock of your choice (I used a mix of water and homemade chicken stock). And here is where I would probably recommend A LOT of water/stock, rather than just enough to cover the vegetables (which is what I did–though in my defense, I was purposely going for a very thick soup).

Simmer for another while, until the carrots are really quite soft. Even so, when it comes time to puree the soup, you’re probably going to want a food processor rather than a food mill. Especially because of the coriander seeds, but also because carrots seem to resist being mashed fully in a food mill (or maybe I wasn’t patient enough with the simmering). Either way, puree and then pour back into the pot. Pour in maybe a 1/2 or 3/4 cup of cream, or milk, or half-and-half.

While you are bringing the soup back to a simmer, heat some vegetable oil in a small skillet and dice up some ricotta salata. (The original called for paneer, but one thing that is not easy to find on the Upper East Side is a market that stocks Indian ingredients. Goat’s milk ricotta salata was my surprisingly good substitute.) Fry the cheese cubes in the oil until they’re more or less browned on all sides, and you wind up with something like a cheese crouton. Serve the soup garnished with some of the “croutons” and some chopped fresh parsley.

Spicy Roasted Carrot Soup
Serves not as many as I’d have thought

1 1/2 lbs carrots
1 medium red onion
2 poblano peppers
1 inch fresh ginger root
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 dried red chile pepper
1 Tbsp coriander seeds
water or stock
1/2-3/4 c cream
salt
vegetable oil
ricotta salata
fresh parsley, chopped

Preheat the oven to 400F.
Peel and chop the carrots and onion into chunks. Remove the seeds and membranes from the peppers and cut them up, too. Peel the ginger root (a spoon works surprisingly well for this) and cut into a few small pieces. Toss all of these ingredients together with the turmeric, chile pepper, and coriander in a roasting pan, along with some salt and a tablespoon or two of vegetable oil. Roast for 20-25 minutes, until the carrots are starting to brown.
Transfer the contents of the roasting pan into a big pot and add water or stock to cover by a couple of inches, or more if you like a thinner soup. Bring to a simmer and cook 25-30 minutes, or until the carrots are soft. Puree in batches in a food processor (carefully) or a food mill, and return to the pot. Add the cream, taste for salt, and keep over very low heat until you’re ready to serve.
While the simmering is going on, dice the ricotta salata into crouton-sized pieces. Heat some more vegetable oil in a small skillet, over medium heat, and fry the cubes, browning on all sides (as much as that’s possible). Remove them to a plate until ready to serve.
Serve each bowl with a good spoonful of the cheese croutons and a sprinkling of chopped parsley.

For the Love of Harissa

I have been craving harissa lately. Harissa is a Tunisian condiment, common all over North Africa (and beyond). It is sweet and spicy and rich with olive oil and hot chile peppers. Try it on bread, eggs, vegetables, meat–I’ve even seen it used on pasta. Much like chimichurri in South America or sriracha in Southeast Asia, there are dozens upon dozens of variations, both homemade and available commercially. You may well have your own favorite recipe or brand; mine is from David Tanis’s book A Platter of Figs and Other Recipes. It’s got fennel, caraway, coriander, cumin, paprika, cayenne, and garlic. And I’ve had a serious yen for it the last few weeks. Luckily, my spice cabinet is very well stocked, so made up a batch the other night–and then had to figure out what to eat with it.

Something drew me to the combination of harissa and turnips. I’ve found turnips to be a little astringent in the past–I can’t help thinking of horseradish when I cut them up.  So I thought roasting them (with some other vegetables) would bring out some sweetness, and then drizzling with harissa would add a welcome bass note to the flavor profile of the dish.

“Other vegetables” ended up being carrots, Carnival squash, and beets. I wasn’t sure how beets and harissa would do together, but since it seems some recipes for harissa include pureed beets, I figured it would turn out ok.

While the veggies roasted (with a couple cloves of garlic, some thyme, a bay leaf, and a dried chile pepper), I cooked up a pot of bulgur. This involves boiling some water, dumping in the bulgur, turning off the heat, and leaving to sit (covered) until the rest of the meal is ready. It’s that easy, as Ina would say. You can use stock, too, if you like. I did not, but I added the same aromatics as I did to the veggies–bay, thyme, dried chile. And then when it was properly soaked, I drained it and mixed in some fresh parsley and mint.

By that time, the veggies were all nicely roasted. Note that many recipes for “roasted root vegetables” advise you to cut everything into roughly equal-sized pieces. This is not actually the best way to go, in my mind, in retrospect. Carrots are nice when there is still a little crunch to them. Turnips cook quicker than beets, and both must be cooked all the way through to be enjoyable. Sweet potatoes would be nice, but I had winter squash, and that cooks faster than anything else in the baking dish. Just something to think about for next time.

In the end, this is basically a salad: grain + vegetable + dressing. Normally I don’t bother to write about such simple meals, but there’s so much good flavor in this one that I’m making an exception.

Roasted Vegetables with Bulgur and Harissa
serves 4

1/2 lb each of:
    turnips
    carrots
    beets
    winter squash (or whatever sturdy vegetables you like and have on hand)
2 garlic cloves, lightly smashed and peeled
2 sprigs fresh thyme
2 bay leaves
2 dried chile peppers
1 c bulgur
2 c water
2 Tbsp parsley, chopped
1 Tbsp mint, chopped
olive oil
salt
fresh ground pepper
harissa, to taste (Tanis’s recipe is available here, among other places–or use your own)

Preheat the oven to 400F.
Peel the vegetables and cut them into roughly bite-sized pieces, going a little smaller on tougher things like beets and larger on things that cook faster, like winter squash. Toss them into a baking dish with some olive oil, salt, the garlic cloves, 1 thyme sprig, 1 bay leaf, and 1 dried pepper. Roast for 25-35 minutes, or until the vegetables are cooked to your liking.
Bring 2 cups of water to a boil in a saucepan. Pour in a teaspoon or two of salt, and then the bulgur, along with the remaining thyme, bay, and pepper. Turn off the heat and slap a lid on the pot. Let it sit, 15-20 minutes, until the bulgur has absorbed all (or most) of the water. If there’s still water left in the pot when the texture of the grain is right, strain it through a sieve. Then stir in the chopped parsley and mint.
Pick out the aromatics from both the bulgur and the veggies, and combine in a big bowl. Serve with as much harissa as you like.

A New Project

As I’ve mentioned obliquely already, Moody Food and I have both decided to participate in this food blogging project called French Fridays with Dorie, wherein we–along with several hundred other people who like to cook and take pictures and write about it–will jointly work our way through Around My French Table: More Than 300 Recipes from My Home to Yours, Dorie Greenspan’s latest brilliant cookbook. Moody Food pays a little closer attention to things like “start dates” and “deadlines” than I do, but luckily they don’t kick you out of the club if you miss a week, so it doesn’t matter that I had no idea this project started LAST week already. I missed making gougeres (though I’ll likely make them on my own at some point, just because–I mean, why WOULDN’T I want to make cheese puffs?) but clued in just in time to make Gerard’s Mustard Tart.

I asked my friend P., who shared this with me, and who is a Genuine French Person, what is the difference between a quiche and a tart, and he did not know. Things that I have made and considered a quiche have always been in a pie plate, and I understand that is not really correct, but I have three pie plates (thanks to Lindsay for 2 of them!) and I don’t know how I lived with fewer, but that made it difficult to justify buying a tart pan. I have learned, though, that Projects (like Cook Club, and French Fridays with Dorie) serve as an excellent justification for buying myself new kitchen tools and exotic ingredients. Like a tart pan, or this fancy pants mustard:

 

which I won’t tell you how much it cost (more than the tart pan), but Moody Food said it was the best, and I saw it at Kalustyan’s, and said, “Ooh, yes, I think I need this.” And lo and behold, a few months later I find myself making this mustard tart, and very glad I had some high quality whole grain mustard on hand.

 

Anyway. Usually I would do my sister’s patented (not really) olive oil crust for a quiche, but I like following directions on occasion, so I did the crust Dorie recommends, which includes an egg, and a bit of sugar, and only a teensy bit of ice water. As always, I was sure there wasn’t enough liquid to make it into a proper dough, and as always, I was proven wrong (with DG looking on through the parchment paper).
 

 

Like any normal pie crust, this gets chilled, and then rolled out.

 

(See, mom? The first mat you bought me was a roul-pat, not a sil-pat. Still very useful, but not for oven use.) And then put in the tart pan, and chilled again. 

 

And then baked, ideally with something used as weights, though she says if it’s cold enough, you don’t need them. She also says that if you use dried beans or rice as the weights, you cannot then cook with them. Because I am ignorant, I did not know this already, and because I hate to waste anything that qualifies as food, I have in fact cooked with beans that I had used as pie weights. If I served them to you, I am sorry. But I happen to own ceramic pie weights, so that won’t happen again.

 

So you bake and cool the crust, and then you chop up some carrots and leeks into sort of thick matchsticks, and steam them with a rosemary sprig.

 

Remember when I discovered this spring, doing the detox, that lining the steamer with fresh herbs is an amazing way to cook fish? Well, I’m a slow learner, and it hadn’t occurred to me that it would have the same transformative effect on vegetables. It’s amazing I managed to graduate from college at all, seeing how thick I can be.

 

So you do a little egg/cream mixture, dump in a good amount of mustard, pour that into your par-baked crust, and top it with the veggies. They can go any which way you want, but the picture in the book was so pretty, I decided to be formal (if not as neat as J. would have been) and do them in spokes.

 

One hot oven later, and P. declared this an unqualified success, although he had never heard of a mustard tart before (neither had Dorie’s Parisian friends, it seems).

 

 

And so, my first FFwD adventure comes to a close. I have learned many things already, beyond just the recipe for a delicious quiche. (It’s made of egg, it’s in a crust, it’s round. You can call it a tart, and I can call it a quiche.) The project has already proven worth the price of admission, which was really just the cost of the book, which I wanted anyway. In fitting with the community aspect of this project, and on the chance that some other participants meander over to my little blog, here are my answers to a little “getting to know you” questionnaire the organizer put on the site for people to fill out. (And apologies if you all now also have The King and I stuck in your head.)

 

Name: Lexi Beach

Hometown: Bryn Mawr, PA

Current town: New York, NY

How you pay the bills: A funny little niche of book publishing.

How many in your household? Just me and my frequent dinner guests.

What is your favorite comfort food? It’s the cooking that’s my comfort. But I have been known to indulge in yogurt-covered raisins.

The best restaurant you have ever been to? (and what did you have?) Blue Hill (the one in Manhattan, not at Stone Barns). We had the tasting menu, with the wine pairings, which might help explain why I just about fell out of my chair upon tasting the basil ice cream.

Worst habit or vice? Biting my nails (which I can’t do while I’m cooking, so all the more reason to spend lots of time at the stove).

What is your mother’s best dish? Lasagne.

What is your motto? It all works out in the end.

Which kitchen gadget do you use the most? The Cuisinart. Couldn’t survive a week without it.

Monster Carrots

My mom and I were taking advantage of our neighbors’ fenced in yard, to let the dogs romp freely for a little bit, and she walked over to the garden section. It’s late November, of course, so there’s not much there, but there are still some carrots that weren’t picked. And it turns out that carrots just keep growing if you don’t harvest them. So we plucked a few out of the ground, and then just because they’re so awesomely big, I decided I had to make something with them for Thanksgiving.

The big ones weigh over a pound each. It’s hard to see in the photo above just how big they are, so for reference, here’s me holding one:

So I decided on a grated carrot salad from Orangette, which I’ve made before, and a carrot ginger dressing from Gourmet, which I’ve also made but not posted about. This recipe makes about 2 cups, and even though I could happily eat it by the spoonful and finish that amount in a day or two, I figured it would be a nice thing to leave in my mom’s fridge.

To start with, peel your carrots, and if they are Monster Carrots, cut out as much of the core as you can, because there’s not much flavor there. (This was one of the 1+ lb. carrots, but after removing the core it was only about 10 oz.)

You’ll also need a shallot or two, and a chunk of ginger, peeled.

Toss all of it in the Cuisinart with 1/4 c. rice vinegar (conveniently EXACTLY the amount left in the bottle in my mom’s pantry), 1 Tbsp. soy sauce, 1 Tbsp. sesame oil, 1/2 c. vegetable oil, and 1/4 c. water. Run the machine for as long as it takes to get a puree.

It doesn’t have to be baby-food-smooth, but you want the chunks of carrot to be as small as possible. (It takes a bit longer to get to that point with Monster Carrots.)

This dressing is lovely on salad greens, or steamed vegetables, or just by the spoonful…

New favorites

So I have been a bit overloaded with potatoes lately. For several weeks now, we’ve been getting 4 POUNDS of potatoes with each delivery. It’s a little ridiculous. So I keep looking for new interesting ways to prepare them. Often it winds up being just a variation on mashed potatoes (with celeriac, with kale, with turnips, with mustard seed, hot pepper, and coconut…) but that never feels like a whole meal.

This recipe, on the other hand, is not only a legitimate meal unto itself, it’s also my new favorite thing in the world. It comes from Deborah Madison’s giant veggie cookbook, and it is a Lebanese stew with chickpeas, carrots, and tomatoes.

Start off by cooking some chopped onion in olive oil. Meanwhile mash up some garlic with ground coriander (that was a new technique to me–I’ve seen garlic mashed with salt, but never a spice).

Then in go the potatoes, cut into a chickpea-sized dice, the carrots in a rough chop, the garlic/coriander mix, and a dried hot pepper.

Cook that for a while, and then add the chickpeas…

and some peeled, diced tomatoes.

Stir it all up, add a bit of water, and simmer until the potatoes are cooked through, maybe 20 minutes.

Garnish with chopped parsley, some lemon juice, and black olives (I used oil-cured Moroccan olives, which seemed like the best choice from the options at Agata & Valentina).

Once again, I learned that Deborah Madison has most of the answers (the question being in this case, “What do I do with these potatoes?”). I also learned, again, to trust her marginalia, which advised for this recipe that it is also good cold. And is it ever. I enjoyed this quite a lot when it was straight out of the pot, but somehow after sitting in the fridge overnight, it tasted ten times better the next day, not even heated up. I find that to be rare with potato dishes especially.