The Hungry Tiger

Pumpkin bread

Here in America, November marks the time when canned pumpkin appears in profusion in every store. I myself am extremely fond of pumpkin pie, and especially like a slice the morning after Thanksgiving, chilly from the refrigerator. But what about times other than Thanksgiving, and what about sources other than the can?

Apparently there is a shortage of the canned stuff this season, brought on by bad weather a year ago. Fortunately producing your own is a snap, provided you don't use the pumpkins sold for jack-o-lanterns, which are weak and watery. Sugar or pie pumpkins are dandy, but my favorite is the good old reliable butternut, so smooth and easy to cut in half. In fact, the "pumpkins" that fill all those Libby's cans are a varietal that's more closely related to butternut squash than it is to the usual Halloween specimen. 

Just remove the seeds and roast until soft. Then scoop out the flesh, and send it through a food mill, ricer, or a trip in the food processor. The results freeze just fine. I often turn the bulb end of a butternut into puree this way while I'm using the neck for something else, and build up a nice little stock with hardly any trouble.

Then whenever you feel the need for a slice of reliable, unpretentious, autumnal cake, you can use a cup from your reserves to make pumpkin bread. I like good old Fannie Farmer for this sort of thing (especially with a couple of adjustments penciled in the margin) and I am always impressed at just how mindless it is to put a batch together. Before you have fully registered that you're engaged in an act of baking, you have put something delicious in the oven that will go admirably with a cup of tea or coffee, or that your child might hold in her tiny fist as she runs off to jump in the neighbor's pile of leaves.

A big pot of vegetarian beans

I may have mentioned that I am fond of beans. Usually when I post bean recipes, I link to Rancho Gordo's instructions for making a basic pot of beans. There is not a thing wrong with those instructions. They are reliable, simple, and good. Lately, though, I've been doing something slightly different for my "basic" beans -- the beans that stand on their own but still feel like just plain beans, in a bowl beside some cornbread or tortillas, or alongside a plate of enchiladas, the ones I bring to a potluck when my friend F. warns, "No fancy stuff, now."

Usually beans of this sort would involve some pork, but they don't need it, which is fortunate for our vegetarian selves. Sometimes I add some Bragg's Liquid Amino, which if F. knew about it, she'd definitely class as "fancy stuff." It just adds a little umami, though, and doesn't make things taste any less traditional, I promise. It is also fully optional.

The secret, crucial ingredient is jalepeño brine. It does a magical delicious something without disrupting the essential Big Pot of Plain Beans quality of the thing. Try it and see!

A good idea: quick fresh vegetable broth

I've just returned from a short trip to visit my mother. She's an excellent cook and, as always, fed us very well. She also passed along a clever new trick she'd learned for making an especially easy, clean tasting vegetable broth.

This broth is so simple and flexible that it doesn't rise to the level of a recipe. But it does have a method, and the method is this:

Take about two pounds of vegetables, mainly ones with a high water content, like lettuce, tomatoes, celery, cucumber, or bell peppers. Carrots are nice. Toss in odds and ends of whatever you have on hand, except for brassicas like broccoli or brussels sprouts, which are a bit too pungent. Skip the potatoes, too. But corn, spinach, summer squash, even a bit of onion -- go for it.

Then wash and chop the vegetables (the handiwork on display in the photo here is fussier than necessary) and put them in the blender with two cups of water. Blitz the hell out of them and strain the results through a fine sieve. The end.

Now you have a nice, fresh, uncomplicated broth with a bit of body to it that you can use for soup, a pilaf, a plate of lentils, breakfast strata, whatever you like.

Buttery green beans in a saffron yogurt sauce

Many recipes for green beans exhort you not to overcook them, lest you lose their lovely crunch and bright green color.

It is true that a lightly cooked green bean is a delightsome thing and that a middlingly cooked green bean is generally less so. A number of delicious recipes from Paula Wolfert, however, have convinced me that cooking green beans for a long time is also a good idea. I suppose that green beans are like squid in this way. Cook them quickly or stew them forever; in between lies sadness.

I have noticed that Wolfert often speaks of long-cooked green beans as "putty colored," perhaps as a scheme to preempt confusion and disappointment. These, inspired heavily by a recipe in her book The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean, are not quite that far gone. Though I have made them several times, I have perhaps not yet ever truly cooked them long enough. Even so, they will not be winning any contests for vividness or crunch. They have other qualities to recommend them. The yogurt (which I add later than the original recipe suggests, because I found that I had trouble with curdling when I made it as written) makes a luscious sauce. Saffron is not commonly paired with the humble green bean. That gives this dish a little thrill of the not-ordinary, and in fact the combination works very well.

These are served at room temperature, which is nice because you can make them ahead and pull them out as an accompaniment to a simple light supper or hot lunch, an omelet for example.

Tarte au Sucre

In Canadian French, "tarte au sucre" means a real sugar pie: flaky pie crust with a sweet filling, along the lines of shoofly pie. In France, though, it's the name of a yeasted cake with sweet topping. To make one, first you make a brioche dough and pat it into a buttered springform pan. Then you spread the top with soft butter, and sprinkle sugar over that. In the oven, the sugar and butter melt into a crunchy sweet crust over a tender but substantial base.

Despite the name, it's not excessively sweet, and it makes an excellent breakfast or teatime snack. After the first day, I like to cut a wedge, then warm it in a toaster oven. (Keep an eye on it lest you burn the topping.) This magically restores it to soft freshness and adds a little bonus toasty flavor. With toasting, the slices we ate on Thursday were as good as the ones we'd had on Sunday.

Of course yeast doughs take a little extra planning, but this one is pretty straightforward, with its long cool overnight rise. I plan it like so: Start the dough on Friday or Saturday evening, then pop it into the fridge. The next morning, take it out first thing and go about your business showering, having breakfast, and so on while it comes to room temperature, or take it out after breakfast and go run a few errands. Then you can bake it up around lunchtime and have your first taste as an afternoon snack. Instructions below assume a stand mixer.

Breakfast lentils

From the archives. These are tasty, absurdly easy, and low on the glycemic index, so you won't be ravenous again at ten. I always think that they'll be too weird to appeal to other people, since most of us are not at our most adventuresome at breakfast time, but history has proved me wrong. Maybe you will like them too. Originally posted in September 2004.

We like savory breakfasts in these parts, but are not remotely capable of making a hot breakfast on weekdays. Omelettes and the like are lovely on Saturday mornings, but require too much coordination for Tuesdays. So there are a couple of dishes I've developed that I can make very easily in bulk, and which dress up quickly and appetizingly in the morning. One of them is what we call "breakfast lentils." Here you see them with yogurt, red onion, and lightly pickled cucumber.

Links: Things to make

Bottled Fruit: Belgian Pears.

A truly delectable sounding recipe for special (but not complicated) poached pears, from The Cottage Smallholder.

Dutch Apple Cheese muffins.

"I make these once or twice a week. Lord help me, but when I'm pregnant I make them every other day or so." 

"Red espresso".

Rooibos tea ground to be used in an espresso machine or moka pot. Via Ask Metafilter. I have no idea if this is any good, but it's intriguing.

Miso, tahini, and nut paste.

A toasty topping for roast vegetables or a vegan filling for onigiri, from Just Bento.

Onion jam: like bacon jam, but not bacon

This past year, there was an explosion of enthusiasm over the "bacon jam" produced by Skillet, a West Coast gourmet food cart company, because the Internet loves bacon. (Also because Skillet isn't stupid, and put jars of the stuff in the hands of any number of Internet bacon lovers. Indeed, the jam has its very own Twitter account!) Bacon, you may have noticed, in addition to being a classic beloved foodstuff, is a Thing, has been a Thing, goes on being a Thing, and shows no signs of stopping being a Thing.

Onions aren't a Thing, but onion jam is very good. It's also vastly cheaper to produce eight ounces of it, or twenty-four ounces for that matter, than it is to order a $10 jar of bacon jam. And it's (at least potentially) kosher! How can you resist?

I've written about it before, but it never hurts to mention it again. A jar of onion jam, or onion confit, if you prefer, is an uncommonly useful thing to have in the refrigerator. Use in or on scrambled eggs, spread on toast, slip into a sandwich or burger, include in a savory tart, stir into your soup, mix with soft cheese, toss with pasta, add to simple fried rice, whatever your little heart desires. 

This is the recipe I've settled on over the years, cobbled together from what other people do, what I like in the final product, and what I find least fussy to put together in the kitchen.

Black bean and butternut squash stew

Butternut squash may not be the most exotic or rarefied of squashes, but it is easy to find, easy to prepare, and easy to like. This year the local ones seem specially dense and flavorful, but I'd find their combination of simplicity and pleasant texture and taste difficult to resist even in an ordinary season.

Cubed roast squash is lovely in the kasha and preserved lemon dish I wrote about in my last post, and in the roast vegetable gratin I wrote about in the post before that. It's also excellent with black beans.

Some time ago, I learned that roast squash is an unexpected but very good addition to black bean burritos (roast sweet potatoes are, too). More recently, we've been enjoying it in this simple bean and vegetable stew. If you use canned beans or have some cooked up ahead of time -- they freeze well, incidentally -- you can make it without blinking an eye even on the most exhausting and irritating of work nights.

For this kind of thing, I cut a thin slice off the stem end and the bulbous blossom end of the squash to make them both flat, then stand it on the larger end (now stable) and cut the whole thing in half vertically, then scoop out the seed. There are two options at this point: I can peel and cube both the bulb and the neck, or I can cut off the bulb and bake it separately, unpeeled and unchopped, for a separate dish. Either way, for my usual roast vegetable extravaganza, what I want is peeled chunks of squash cut into rough cubes of about 1" or a little larger, tossed in olive oil, sprinkled with salt, and roasted at about 400 degrees F until toasty on the outside and tender all the way through. The result can then be set aside to use as an ingredient in any number of tasty main course dishes, including this one.

Kasha and roast vegetables with lemon and spices

I wouldn't roast vegetables ahead of time week after week if I only had one meal I liked to make with them them. Here is another favorite, again good for using up leftovers or the sort of intentional "leftovers" I often produce on the weekends.

This warm sort-of-salad combines the cozy autumnal browns of roast vegetables and nutty kasha with bright flavors that ensure that you don't wind up with a plate of stodgy dullness. Even if you make it with the exact same set of vegetables you've used in the gratin I wrote about last week, I promise that it will taste very different; I would (and do!) happily eat both in the same week without feeling monotonous.

It has one specialty ingredient, preserved lemons. They are crucial to the lively, zingy effect. I recognize that not everyone has them in the house, but they're easy to make and not like anything else. That said, I suspect you could make a different, but equally distinctive, dish by using chopped green olives and plenty of lemon juice instead.

Roasted vegetable and grain gratin

Roast vegetables are good in themselves, and a surprising number of vegetables respond pleasingly to the treatment. Broccoli, cauliflower, parsnips, peppers, sweet potatoes, fennel, asparagus, carrots, green beans, onions, summer or winter squash, mushrooms -- any and all are delicious hot out of the oven, dressed only in olive oil, salt, and pepper. Roasted garlic scapes are outrageously good, and next spring you should be sure to make them in vast quantities. Roast eggplant is so delicious that I have pretty much given up on cooking it any other way; when I make dishes that call for fried or sauteed eggplant, I roast it instead (with plenty of oil - it's still usually less than it would soak up in a hot pan) and am never disappointed.



This last point raises the question: yes, what about roast vegetables as ingredients in more complicated dishes? When it is seven in the evening on a Wednesday, who wants to peel, cut, and roast several vegetables first, and then assemble them into something else? Not I. I do, however, very much like to reach into the refrigerator and mix and match from containers of several different vegetables that I thoughtfully roasted on the previous Sunday.

This gratin is good with nearly any combination of grains and vegetables that suit your fancy, though I would strongly urge you to include roast onions among them. What pleases your tastes and looks good to you at the market should be your guide otherwise. Add some greens, too, if you like, as I did in the batch shown in the photo. Cheese on top is good as well, though for some reason I seem to have skipped it in the photographed batch (foolish me), and it was still delicious.

Leftover grains work nicely here, and go with the theme of assembling pre-cooked elements into something else, though of course you can make something fresh for the occasion. I like using quinoa -- especially since I've started cooking it in the rice cooker -- or brown rice, or a mix of the two. Aside from the white sauce, which is the same one I use for baked pasta, quantities are very flexible.

Beans, baked

Nearly all my bean cookery takes place entirely on the stovetop and at the counter. Soup, stew, chili, refritos, salad, a plate of just-plain beans, and even my "baked beans," which I hope to write about soon, never see the inside of an oven.

However, every once in a while I do things the other way. Half an hour of baking, bathed in tomato sauce and plenty of olive oil, produces a bean dish I like very much. It's not quite the same as what you would get if you simmered the same beans in the same tomatoes for the same amount of time on top of the stove; the undisturbed gentle, dry heating in a shallow dish ensures that every bean retains its integrity, while the sauce cooks down into a lovely dense evenly clinging coat for each one.

I recently received a fresh order of beans from Rancho Gordo, including two bags of the pretty-in-pink Flor de Junio. They are a medium-sized pink bean with a somewhat pinto-ish shape and a lovely smooth, creamy texture. Steve Sando, the owner of Rancho Gordo, warns that they don't age well, which makes this fresh supply feels like a special treat. These were harvested less than two months ago, sometime in July, and should be cooked before next summer--but I'm sure they won't last the month. Being so fresh, they cooked up quickly, from their overnight soaking to tender in about half an hour flat.

Dinner reports

This is just a quick note in between proper posts to say that if you are (for some reason) interested in the daily minutiae of what we eat for dinner at our house, you can check in at the sidebar of my other weblog. That site is more an unfocused melange of this and that than this one is, but there is a bit of food-related overlap, as in the little "dinner reports" section. It's on the right, about halfway down the page, between the Twitter feed and the list of categories.

"Inconvenient" granola

Two years ago I posted a recipe for "very good granola." That granola was indeed good. I ate it with pleasure and would happily eat it again. This granola, however, is better. It's a bit more trouble, but I don't think it actually takes more time. For one thing, that old recipe (like many others) involves toasting everything at a truly excruciatingly low temperature, which is unnecessary and takes forever.

In the interim, I have been convinced by this method if not quite those ingredients. I abominate sunflower seeds in granola and was also influenced by a New York Times piece a little while ago about the virtues of using olive oil and extra salt. And then, rather than mix in dried fruit at the same time as everything else, I add it to the bowl just before eating -- why not? That way you can choose something different every time, if you like. These days I am fond of dried cherries and Persian green raisins, which are beautiful and have their own very nice flavor, not quite like any other raisins I've had.

I also claimed that the "very good" recipe made "a fairly enormous quantity" -- half a gallon, including the dried fruit. In light of the quantities of granola now gracing my kitchen, this seems slightly comical. The recipe here makes at least fifteen cups before the fruit gets involved at all. 

Beets, pickled

Beets are a divisive vegetable. On the one hand, they are beautiful and delicious. On the other, they dye everything in their path, including your fingernails if you are not careful, and some people are of the opinion that they taste exactly like a big clod of dirt.

Both undercooking and the absence of acid tend to make beets taste less pleasantly "earthy" and more unpleasantly "like dirt," and so one of the nicest things you can do with a beet is to pickle it. Indeed I think it is a mistake under almost any circumstances to serve a beet without including a little something acidic to raise it up. A squeeze of lemon or splash of vinegar will pull together a plate of roast beets, a pink risotto, or a beet rösti the way that butter finishes a sauce. As the Dude's rug is to his room, so is a touch of acid to a beet-oriented meal.