The Hungry Tiger

Take your salads to the next level, as your SEO consultant would have you put it.

This recipe here, from Yotam Ottolenghi's "New Vegetarian" column, has a trick in it that I have been using in all sorts of grain salads, pilafs, mixed roast vegetables, and other things of that room-temperature party dish variety. It is a fantastic secret-ingredient sort of thing that will make you feel like a wizard, it is highly generalizable, and I am drawing your attention to it because I love you.

The conditions: You have some dish of this sort, anything from the broad range of things you might call a "salad," or maybe something that would stretch the definition a bit too far. The main qualifying factors are (a) that it involves some non-homogenous stuff tossed or mixed together, (b) it is not to be served piping hot, and (c) you might conceivably want to squeeze some lemon or lime over it before serving.

The thing to do, and here I am partially quoting and partially paraphrasing from that linked recipe: Instead of just adding juice, take one or two or three lemons or limes (as you prefer). Use a small, sharp knife and trim off both ends. Then cut down the sides of the fruit, along their round curves, to remove the skin and white pith. Over a small bowl, remove the segments by slicing between the membranes. Squeeze any remaining juice over the segments. Poke your sharp knife in among the segment and cut them into small pieces -- say, thirds. Then add the segments and the juice to your whatever it is.

YES, this is more work than just squeezing a lime or two. But it is not much more work, if you have a suitable knife (it must be SHARP or you will be sad. I have a lethal little serrated fruit knife with a curved tip that works very well) and holy crow does it make things taste just like they would otherwise only magically extra amazing.

Fennel

I get infatuated with this; we go on a kick of that; suddenly four meals out of every five feature this thing or the other, where the month before it never crossed my mind at all. So we live in a succession of food eras, each characterized by a couple of distinctive flavors that run through everything, until they disappear from the market or we get distracted again. 

 

We are currently in a Fennel Period and a Grilled Lettuce Period. Grilled romaine is so two years ago, but it really is a pleasant way to fulfill simultaneously the desire for something warm and cosy and the desire for something light and salady, without faffing about with a pile of different ingredients. (You know how to make it already, but here's how I've been doing it lately: big head of romaine lettuce, cut in half lengthwise, rinsed, and shaken dry, cut side brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with salt, on a very hot pan for two minutes or so each side, until lightly charred and wilting -- then roughly chopped and piled on a plate with a little of the aged, thick sort of balsamic vinegar drizzled (vile word) on top.)

Fennel: also perfect for that late winter pushmi-pullyu of fresh springy things on the one side and warm roasty things on the other. The bulbs you know about. I made this Ottolenghi quinoa salad for a potluck last week, with quartered brussels sprouts in the place of the fava beans, and it was very good. Sliced very thin, it makes a swell winter salad, especially with apples; or you can slice it thicker, then steam it and dress it with lemon and red pepper oil a la David Tanis.

The new trick at our house, though, is making full use of the stems. Fennel is too big and awkward to fit in the fridge as it comes. So I lop the bulbs off and put them away separately, then trim off the frondy bits for garnishes or the compost bin. The stems, then, I chop up and keep in a container to toss in with everything. They are lovely. They may look a lot like celery, but I think their texture and flavor are much nicer and more interesting. I have been tossing a half-handful in with any pan of roasting vegetables, or stirring them into a pilaf, and it makes everything taste a little springier and a little different from the way it did last month.

If you really want to enjoy chopped fennel on its own merits, though, try Fennel Rice or Fennel and Eggs:

FENNEL AND EGGS

For two.

At least half a cup chopped fennel, mostly or entirely stems, as pictured above
About a quarter cup finely chopped onion  
Butter
3 or 4 eggs
salt and pepper

Beat the eggs lightly and season with salt and pepper. Saute the fennel and onion slowly in butter until transluscent and tender. Pour the eggs into the pan. Scramble until they are set the way you like them. Serve immediately. Hot buttered toast would not go amiss. 

--

FENNEL RICE

There is no reason why fried rice, which is ultimately a very basic and versatile approach to a very basic and versatile grain, has to be, or pretend to be, Asian. This makes a pretty, green rice dish that goes well with Italian, Spanish, or California-ish flavors.

I think it would be good as a side with salmon, but what do I know?

1-2 Tbsp. light-flavored oil for frying 
3/4 cup chopped fennel, mostly or entirely stems, as pictured above 
2 tsp. minced ginger 
2 cups leftover, cold rice, preferably long-grain   
1 egg, lightly beaten with 1 tsp. ground cumin
2 Tbsp. chopped flat leaf parsley  
Salt and pepper 

Put your large stir-fry pan over high heat. When it's hot, add the oil and swirl it around.

Keep the heat high and the food moving in the pan. Put the fennel in and cook for about two minutes, then add the ginger and cook for just a moment before adding the rice. Fry, stirring/tossing constantly, until the rice is heated through. Add the egg and cumin mixture. Keep things moving, so the egg just coats the rice and more or less disappears.

Remove from heat and add parsley plus salt & pepper to taste. My own taste says that you want to err on the side of more pepper, but maybe you disagree! If you have some of your fennel fronds around, you may as well chop them up and toss them in there, too: it's pretty. 

Behold, a sandwich.

It's the fifth annual Sandwich Party! We have been eating variations on this sandwich four or five days out of seven since we moved to southern California.

The version you see before you is a little duded up, with those sprigs of cilantro. Occasionally it might instead be topped with a very few slivers of thinly sliced red onion, or slices of tomato. But the basic scheme is:

• Slice of kalamata sourdough bread
• Butter
• Avocado
• A tiny sprinkle of salt
• A drizzle of this here chile oil

That oil is really, really good. (So are these avocados, I tell you what.) I was thinking of making little bottles of it for christmas presents. Is that too weird, do you think? It depends on the recipient, I suppose, as with so many things.

Dinners

You see those dinner reports in the sidebar over there to your right? I don't know if you know, but sometimes you can click through and find a picture, or some extra notes, or a sketchy recipe.

I've been doing it more and more lately (though not all the time -- I don't want to mislead you!), so if you've been hankering for a just a little more content, you might enjoy taking a look.

Oaty pikelets

 

First I made these excellent pancakes. You start them the night ahead, with some oats and buttermilk mixed together in a bowl and put in the refrigerator to soak. (We have a fridge! At last! Hooray!) The next morning, you have some for breakfast and a few leftover, cold, later on. 

Soon I realized that though they were fine hot off the griddle, I liked the leftover ones much better. I started making them just for snacking on. And once I was doing that, I made them a bit smaller, the better for eating out of hand. And once that happened, I finally realized that what I was making, in fact, was oatmeal pikelets.

 

They are somewhere between a pancake and a crumpet, not quite as holey as the latter but made en masse for toasting (or not toasting) later, unlike the former. If you have crumpet rings, as I now do, you can make them extra pikelety and a bit taller. If you don't, leave out the extra splash of milk from the recipe below and just make small, free-form griddle cakes. The batter will be very thick, so they won't spread much, and they will work just fine. 

Then when you're done, either way, let them cool and pop them into a bag, or bags, or some covered container, and put them away in your refrigerator, so that over the next week you can eat them cold or toasted, with butter or jam, or butter and jam.

 

OAT PIKELETS
repurposed from Orangette

2 cups rolled oats
2 c. buttermilk
½ c. all-purpose flour
2 T. sugar
1 t. baking powder
1 t. baking soda
½ t. salt
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
2 T. milk, if using crumpet rings

The night before, mix the oats and buttermilk together in a large bowl. Cover and refrigerate for 6 to 24 hours.

When you're ready to begin cooking, take out the bowl of oats and melt the butter in a small saucepan. Leave it a few minutes to cool down a bit.

In the meantime, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl. 

Add the melted butter, beaten eggs, and milk (if using) to the oat mixture and mix well. Add the flour mixture and mix just until it's completely incorporated. The batter will be thick.

You are going to cook these a little lower and slower than you might ordinarily cook pancakes, because of the thickness. Heat a skillet over a medium flame and brush a little butter on the pan. (I use the dregs of the melted butter that went into the batter.) If you are using crumpet rings, oil them too.

Set the crumpet rings in the pan, or not if you don't have any, and scoop the batter. A skimpy quarter cup is about right. That's about three tablespoons. When bubbles appear at the top and you can see that the edges are set, remove the rings and flip to finish. I find that the first side takes about four minutes when the temperature is right. The second side cooks a little more quickly.

Remove to a cooling rack and repeat until the batter is used up. 

For me, this makes 24 pikelets every time.

New digs

Hello from sunny California! 

Our kitchen is currently lacking a refrigerator, and I've just found out that it will be two days longer than we were told until one is delivered. I don't care, I've already been shopping at the farmer's market and the cheese shop, even so. We're buried in packing paper, but the kitchen will be the first room to emerge from the rubble.

I feel a bit dashing and chic somehow, sans fridge, but I do miss ice for a cocktail and milk for morning coffee. 

Spinach salad, but not the kind you're thinking of.

The weather is hot and my desire for fresh light cool vegetables is, once again, running face-first into local reality. Tomatoes are approximately one million years away and even spring lettuces are still about three inches tall. And leafy green salads are all very well and good, anyway, but sometimes I just don't want one. (Here you can imagine me stamping my foot petulantly.)

This cold spinach fills roughly the same niche as a green salad but is not one. It's fresh, it's cool, it's green, it's even leafy. It makes a nice contrast to a hot entree or a hot day, or both. It's incidentally even quicker to put together than salad, at least if you follow my habit of washing and parboiling or steaming your spinach as soon as you bring it home from the store. Even if you don't cook the spinach until you're getting dinner ready, it's just not all that time consuming.

Super simple, delicious enough to eat multiple days in a row, suitable to the weather, novel yet not weird: what more could you ask?

Well, you might conceivably ask for it not to include preserved lemons, which I recognize are not the staple of everyone's cupboard that they are of ours, and no one is going to make or buy them just for the sake of putting a tablespoon's worth into a plate of spinach. I don't know that I can really advocate a substitute in this case, either--the soft briny lemon is what brings out the fruit in the olive oil, the vinegar, and even the onions, making the whole thing so well balanced and delicious. Maybe if you had Meyer lemons, you could get a similar effect with their juice in place of the vinegar, and plenty of grated zest?

If you're looking for inspiration for things to do with the preserved lemons you already have, though, or for an excuse to get some or make some, this is just the thing.

Snacking on tofu, baked and pressed.

That jam tart turned out kind of soggy on the bottom anyhow.

What sorts of things do you cook so that you will have them around the house for a while to snack on? I haven't made a batch of godlike lentil snacks in a while. Maybe I'll do that this weekend.

I will definitely be making more buttermilk oatmeal pancakes, which I like so much cold, with jam, for snacking that we no longer bother with eating them hot for breakfast. It's all direct to leftovers now, which is like direct to video except that it should be taken as a sign of success, not failure.

Another not very canonical snack in our refrigerator right now is these little cubes of pressed, baked tofu. Probably they make more sense as an ingredient in a stirfry or something, but I eat them all out of hand before they get a chance at the big time.

Stupid gadget confession: I really love the dense but unrubbery texture produced by the Tofu XPress. It seems goofily expensive, and I guess it is, but it sure does get the job done.

SNACK TOFU

First, press the hell out of one block of firm tofu. I put it in the Tofu Xpress for at least 24 hours. You can rig up whatever alternative pressing apparatus you like, but you'll want it to be something you can put in the fridge, so you can leave it to compress for a good long time.

A day or two later, slice the pressed block in half along the same plane as the cutting board, which is to say the largest side of the block. Then cut each half into bite-sized pieces. I do sixteenths.

Put the pieces back into the base of the Tofu Xpress or into a similarly-sized container and cover with marinade. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

MARINADE

1/4 c. ponzu or 2 T each soy sauce and lemon juice
1/4 c. sherry
1 T. mirin or a squirt of honey
1 T. sesame oil
1 T. miso
Plenty of freshly ground pepper

Dilute with warm water as needed to make sure all the tofu is covered, but try to choose a container that minimizes the amount of dilution necessary.

Bake in a single layer (a cookie sheet lined in parchment works nicely) at 375 degrees F for 25 minutes. Let cool on the pan at least until cool enough to handle, about ten minutes.

Goddammit.

Every time I plan a post for Hungry Tiger, the dish appears on Smitten Kitchen two days before I'm ready to write about it. I give up!

Ughivores.

Femivorism? The latest food trend is eating women? Also: "All of these gals." Buzz off, Peggy Orenstein.