The Hungry Tiger

Egg salad sandwiches

Why did I think I disliked egg salad sandwiches?

We have been eating them weekly ever since I found out how much I like them freshly made from nice fresh egg salad heaped on nice freshly toasted bread with nice crisp lettuce. Nice! Fresh!

Further, they hardly take any time to put together, say on a night when I get home late after teaching an evening class. They are pretty, with their pale colors and frilly lettuce. They are both light and satisfying, which is pleasant at lunchtime or late at night. As long as you like eggs at all, what's not to like?

And then I had some at someone else's house not too long ago and was reminded of all I had disliked in the past. What is the difference between the stuff I hated and the stuff I love? Was it a failure of seasoning? Insufficient salt? Am I, in fact, a complete fascist for freshness, such that egg salad assembled more than ten minutes before the sandwich is made is as ashes in my mouth? I don't know. Maybe you have some idea.

Okra lunch

Brown rice on one side, delicious okra on the other. You know, don't you, that there is a pretty simple trick for preventing okra from getting slimy? The key is that no water (or anything with a high water content) should touch any cut surface of the okra until it has been seared, generally in hot oil and spices. This means that you must dry your okra VERY VERY thoroughly after you wash it. Very! Dry them as well as you can and then let them lie on a fresh dry towel or cooling rack to airdry some more.

Don't use a wet knife, either; even if your knife is just damp from cutting up another, wetter, ingredient, strings of mucilage will begin to multiply. Similarly, if you are pickling okra, do not prick it with a fork! It is also best to ensure that the wet ingredients in your recipe, which you add later, are acidic: use plenty of tomatoes, vinegar, lemon juice.

This new bento/lunch box, made by my favorite purveyors of plastic food storage containers, Lock&Lock, is just right for me. The Lock&Lock lids are easy to open and close and have an excellent seal, thanks to their gasket. I usually don't have it in me to make lunches that combine more than two or three elements, but often like to bring exactly two, so the divider configuration suits me very well, and the amount of food that fits inside is also just about right. I'd also be delighted to have some of these for three-item days, but they're hard to find. In the meantime, of course, I can always bring a second little container when I need one, or nestle two things on one side. In other news, ugh! The most recent photos I've taken have all been horrendously lit and therefore generally horrendous. Hélas.

An excellent avocado sandwich

Inspired by this Ask Metafilter thread and the sandwich combining avocado with honey mustard that was described therein, tonight I made some avocado sandwiches of my own. We ate them standing up in the kitchen, making adjustments as we went: open-faced, because when you use as much avocado as we wanted to, closed-face versions just slide around; an extra sprinkle of salt; slivered red onions to gild the lily.

Like salads, most sandwiches don't really call for recipes, just descriptions. To make these, take a baguette and split it lengthwise, parallel to the table. Cut the resulting halves into pieces of whatever size suits you. Next, generously butter the cut sides of the bread with nice, soft salted butter. Now apply a good helping of avocado, mashing it slightly into the bread. Because the base of your sandwich is all crust, it will stand up to the pressure with no trouble. Sprinkle a little salt over the avocado and then add a generous (a theme with this sandwich) coating of honey mustard, which you have made by mixing equalish quanities of dijon mustard and honey.

This is very good as it is. But after we'd tried it, Snark said, "Is there any one ingredient that would make this even better?" That is how we wound up adding red onions, and also how I wound up eating quite a bit more than I had planned. In fact, if we hadn't used up all of our ripe avocado I would be eating even more right this minute.

How to boil an egg (and devil it)

Tomorrow is Snark's birthday, so I was making some deviled eggs, and at long last, I've found the timing that did the trick for hard-boiled eggs. For some reason, the times most people suggest for the supposedly foolproof cold-start method seem to give me overcooked eggs. Very sad! Today's, though, were just right--no grey ring around the yolk, yolks cooked through absolutely but no more. It didn't hurt that they were farmer's market eggs. The yolks were a brilliant yellow as well as being cooked the perfect amount.

Here's what worked for me: Eggs, size large, right out of the fridge into the bottom of the pan, nestled in so that I couldn't have fit another in a single layer in the pan in question, but not really packed tight, and covered with cold water about 3/4" above the tops of the eggs. Pan partly covered, over a high flame. When I noticed the water had come to a boil (because I heard a little clunk of the eggs bumping), I turned the flame off immediately and covered the pan entirely. Then I set the timer for twelve minutes. When it went off, I used a slotted spoon to transfer the eggs to a bowl of ice water, with plenty of ice.

If you want to be really particular, you can make an effort to center your yolks before you boil the eggs. I've read a few different suggestions for this: store the eggs tip-down, or tip the carton on its side, or give the eggs a spin before you cook them. Anyone have personal testimony about the effectiveness of any of these techniques? If you'd like my exceedingly simple deviled egg recipe, read on. (I expect everyone already has a perfectly good idea of how to make deviled eggs, but hey, why not?)

Savory lunchtime m***ins

I'm afraid the word "muffins" is always going to seem kind of dirty to me, in a sniggering playground sort of way. It's very hard for me to bring myself to say something like "Let me tell you all about my delicious savory muffins!" even though I really do, in fact, want to tell you about my delicious savory muffins.

Then there's also the difficulty that I suspect that even if you don't have my (perhaps? probably?) somewhat idiosyncratic associations with the word, "vegetable muffins" sounds more improving than appetizing. Is there some other word I could use to describe these items that would be equally accurate? Help me, please.

In any case, these were an excellent addition to our lunch boxes this week. They have a pleasant, moist but unsticky texture, slightly reminiscent of popovers because of the high proportion of eggs. They're full of vegetables, which makes them pretty healthy, and are not sweet.

The internet has many suggestions for ways to sneak vegetables into your picky children by way of baked goods and smoothies, and it seems like all of the veggie muffin recipes that result are sweet, not savory. I wanted something easy to pack in my lunch and eat out of hand, and veggie muffins (aggh, that word!) sounded like they might be a nice idea--but the apple-carrot or honey-zucchini-pumpkin route didn't really appeal.

I think this recipe should be pretty versatile, accommodating most any variety of vegetables, and you could mix it up quite a bit with your cheese/seasoning combinations. For example, broccoli, cheddar, and maybe a bit of mustard would go well together; or spinach, feta, and oregano or dill; or cauliflower, lemon zest, cumin, perhaps, and parmesan. Anyway, you get the idea. See what you think.

Linkly thinklies

Awash in work, but here are a few things I want to remember that sound good:

Black bean couscous cakes I'd make them with quinoa, I think, and either the hash version, or with unvegan eggs to hold them together.

Mini crustless tofu quiches Not much like a quiche, there, but that's okay by me. I think I find the prospect a great deal more appetising if I don't think of this as faux something else. "Golden tofu vegetable rounds," perhaps? Sounds like a nice thing to have around for lunches.

Hare chane ki seekh (green chickpea kababs) Another nice thing to tuck into lunches, I'd think, and I have a bag of green chickpeas in the freezer. Upma (see also, or with oatmeal!) No farina in the house at the moment, or indeed ever to date, but that needn't stop me for long. A good venue also, I suspect, for onions from the bottomless jar of crispy fried Thai onions. UPDATE: Tonight I was inexplicably still hungry after a perfectly adequate dinner, so I made my own little version of Indira-of-Mahanandi's oatmeal upma, and it was fantastic, especially with mango and chile pickle. Mmm, so good. And certainly filling! I foresee that we will have this for breakfast in the future.

A nice lunch curry: spinach, sweet potato, and paneer

This morning I went down to campus a little late so that I could get a few things done at home, and S. requested that I take a little extra time to try to scare something up for our lunches. I looked in the cupboard and found it not entirely bare, so I cobbled together a curry. It turned out very well, so I thought I ought to make a note of what I did. This won't be in a format designed to be specially user-friendly, I'm afraid, because I'm just going to write down what I did.

1. Heat olive oil in a suitable pan -- it must have a lid. Add about 1 T. mustard seeds, 1 t. cumin seeds, and 1 t. whole coriander seeds. Cook one minute.

2. Add 1 t. ground cumin, 1/2 t. turmeric, and 1/4 t. cayenne. Cook 1 minute more.

3. Add 1 medium onion, diced fine. Cook until golden.

4. Add 1 not-too-large sweet potato, peeled and cut into 1" cubes. Stir-fry a little. Then add 3/4 c. water and 1/2 t. salt. Cover the pan and simmer until the sweet potato is on the firm side of tender.

5. Uncover the pan and let the liquid cook down. Add a handful or two of spinach (I used the very nice Trader Joe's whole-leaf frozen spinach), and some cubed paneer or queso fresco. When the spinach is wilted and the cheese is heated through, add the juice of 1/2 lemon. Adjust salt and spiciness.

PS. I know that many lovely people think that sweet potatoes are the work of the devil. And, you know, that's cool with me. But if you don't feel that way or even are on the fence about them, I think that you'll find that spiciness and curry spices go very well with them. And once again I feel compelled to point out that this whole combination is also quite good for you, though it would be well worth eating even if it weren't.

Help my lunch!

I would very, very much like to find a little plastic caddy for taking some small number of deviled-egg halves (ideally two) in my lunch with me. My lunch goes in a box, so the caddy would not have to protect the halves from the consequences of going upside-down. Can anyone help me find such a thing?

Easy to eat: red pepper sludge

Along with the other cooking ahead I do during the week, I have gotten into the habit of cutting up a few red peppers and an onion and sauteeing them slowly while I'm doing something else. The results keep nicely in a plastic container in the refrigerator, and then I can scoop some out to use in a frittata, to mix in with some sauteed greens, or to use in one of the laziest and most satisfying jumbled-up lunch or light dinner dishes of all time.

It does not begin to deserve to be dignified by anything so elaborate as a recipe; it is just a thing that happens in your bowl, and then you eat it.

I have written before about eating alone, and my tendency to indulge my weirder cravings on the days when I am working at home. It has been a while since I have had any of my old favorites, most particularly the infinite variations on potato soup cooked down to the consistency of mashed potatoes -- which is not exactly the same thing as mashed potatoes, you'll note -- with all sorts of green oddiments tossed in, though now that I am gardening, it occurs to me that tasty green odds and ends are goingt to be in plentiful supply.

But occasionally what I think is one of my weird lunches turns out to be a crossover hit. "It probably sounds disgusting," I confessed to mixed company, "but sometimes I eat a hard-boiled egg broken up and mixed with sauteed red pepper and onions, with feta cheese crumbled on top."

"Uh, no," said S. and everyone else, too, "that sounds very good." It is, too. It is suitable to consume in pyjamas, when you are feeling fragile, or in party clothes when you need to eat something good and quick before you dash off to the club. Some Aleppo pepper does not go amiss, either, if you're the kind of person who likes that sort of thing.

Another thing that is good: Break a cauliflower into chunks. Toss in olive oil and bake at 375° F. until toasty and soft. Meanwhile, slowly fry up some onion and garlic until they are dark gold. Put these, some ricotta cheese, some milk, and salt into your food processor and render into a puree. Put this into a baking dish and put it back into the oven to get hot again. This does not taste like mashed potatoes, no matter what some people may tell you. But it does taste nutty and creamy and worth your while.

Pseudo-chaat: spicy chickpeas

Chat, or chaat, are a particular kind of flavorful Indian snack. They're usually vegetarian and feature just-combined ingredients of different textures and temperatures, all seasoned with tart-sweet-salty-pungent-spicy goodness.

Today I bought some chat masala, because I was feeling particularly homesick for the chat at Vik's Chat House in Berkeley. Then I made some spicy chickpeas and green beans, which I happened to have already parboiled, with chilis, garlic, some of the masala, and tomatoes. That's the state they were in when I took the picture above. For actual eating, yogurt, chopped red onions, bhel mix and more masala were also brought into play. It was delicious, if not much like any actual chat known to man.

A lunch

This is one of the tasty lunches that S. got to eat this week: vinegared cucumber, hard-boiled egg, carrot sticks, eggplant, and cauliflower "couscous".

Antipasti, anyone?

This weekend I went on a bit of a cooking frenzy so that we would have tasty foods for eating cold as part of our lunches and/or light dinners. I made:

• vegetable pancakes, this time with the addition of mustard seeds and (mumble) Spike seasoning
• a variation on eggplant agrodulce in which I added chopped red pepper and a handful of raisins to the baking dish along with everything else
• summer squash peeled with my thrilling new serrated peeler; sliced lengthwise into 1/4" slices; brushed with olive oil, minced garlic, and ground chipotle; and roasted at 425° until soft and toasty

We also got some nice cheeses to go along with. I packed S. a lovely lunch today of a little stack of the pancakes, a pile each of the eggplant and the squash, and a wedge of Pyrannees black pepper cheese. I had a sandwich myself, with the eggplant and some fresh mozzarella in a toasted whole-wheat pita. Good stuff.

Ganmodoki and the art of emergency preparedness

When I started writing this, the weather was insanely beautiful, in the mid-70s, sunny, clear, dry. That is all taking care of itself with the imminent arrival of Hurricane Isabel. The storm path is no longer scheduled to go right over us, but given Pepco's great track record with our last, totally un-hurricane-related storm, we've stocked up on supplies in case of a relatively extended blackout. Fortunately we have a gas stove, so it's much less likely that we'll be unable to heat things. But our morning coffee could be in danger if I don't pregrind some beans, as I discovered much to my dismay last time.

Time to cook ahead! I made a lovely batch of ganmodoki, little golden fritters of tofu and vegetables. (In parts of Japan, they are apparently called hirousu instead.) They are about the cutest things ever, and if I could remember where the USB cord for our camera went, I would show you. They are good hot or at room temperature, and they go into a number of nice-sounding simmered dishes, so it seemed like a sound choice. I was ever so pleased with how they came out.

Here's how I made them:

10 oz. fresh tofu (not silken)
2 carrots
3 dried shitake mushrooms
1 egg
1 tsp. salt
Olive oil (or other vegetable oil) for pan frying.

Wrap the tofu in a clean, dry kitchen towel for 30 minutes, to wick away the extra moisture. Meanwhile, put the shitake mushrooms in warm water to soak for about 20 minutes. Unwrap the tofu and wrap it in a new clean, dry cloth. Wring it out to remove as much moisture as possible. (It's okay to crush it.) Drain the mushrooms. Remove any hard stems and snip the hydrated caps into tiny pieces with scissors. Peel and grate the carrots. Lightly beat the egg.

Transfer the tofu to a bowl. Mash it up and knead it until it coheres. Add the other ingredients and knead again, until it holds its shape if you press it into a patty. Divide into 12 parts. Roll into balls and flatten slightly between your hands to make patties.

Heat half an inch of oil to about 350° in a frying pan. Fry the patties in batches, being careful not to overcrowd the pan. Fry to a crisp golden brown, about a minute and a half on each side. Transfer to a plate lined with paper towels or brown paper bags to drain.

Good plain hot or cold, with dipping sauce, or simmered in a light stock or thicker sauce. Savory, proteiny, light, and tasty!

Pit! (and potato soup for the weak of spirit)

Soon I am off to the wilds of Chicago, land of many wonderful things. I have been spending lots of time lately feverishly grading and holding student conferences so everything is cleared away before spring break, which is why I've been in a bit of a pit. Now that I have taken care of the piles of work I am not quite so enamored of pitlike things, but the apartment apparently did not get the memo, as it is still doing its pit impression just as pittily as pit can be. The robot butler left for vacation a day early, it appears.

This afternoon I reminded myself that potato soup is about the easiest thing in the world. And of course you can dress it up however you like. It's so good, too, especially on a cool and rainy spring day. The combination of additions I describe below is one of my favorites. I wrote it up almost as if it were a real recipe, but you will see when you get there that in fact it is not so terribly precise. But hey, you're smart, you can figure it out.

POTATO SOUP FOR LUNCH

Potatoes
Garlic
Salt
Zahtar (a spice mixture featuring sumac, sesame, and thyme)
Butter
Milk
Frozen corn

Boil potatoes until they are very tender. Drain. Return to pot with a lump of butter and mash 'em up good with your fine potato masher. Sprinkle garlic with some coarse salt and chop up to miniscule fineness. Add the garlic, lots of zahtar, and milk to the pot. Stir. Reheat to a simmer. Adjust seasonings. Add frozen corn and continue cooking until the corn is cooked through. The end.

Alone in the kitchen

The wonderful Laurie Colwin wrote, "Dinner alone is one of life's pleasures. Certainly cooking for oneself reveals man at his weirdest. People lie when you ask them what they eat when they are alone. A salad, they tell you. But when you persist, they confess to peanut butter and bacon sandwiches deep fried and eaten with hot sauce, or spaghetti with butter and grape jam."

I rarely dine alone, so I entertain my weirdest cooking urges when I am working at home all day. Last year I ate black bean and sweet potato burritos three days a week for a month. At the start of the week (or two) I would make a little pot of black beans with onions and cilantro, and bake a small sweet potato. Both went into the fridge. Then, when I was good and sick of working, I would turn on the oven, pull out a piece of foil, and fling a flour tortilla upon it. I would also start a pot of coffee in the stovetop Moka pot. If there was leftover rice from dinner, that went on the tortilla, then beans and a cross-section of the sweet potato, cut into tiny cubes. Slices of mozzarella cheese went on top and I did a tidy little maneuver to roll up the burrito and encase it in foil all at once. Into the oven it went. While it heated, I finished the coffee and cleared a little space among the books. Then I unwrapped the dense little cylinder onto a plate and ate it while I drank my coffee, with my feet up on the chair across the table, reading an article about something-or-other, which might or might not make it into my bibliography.

Today it was potatoes mashed with olive oil and extra milk, seasoned with za'atar, salt, and extra sesame seeds. I put in a handful of fresh English peas and cooked them as I cooked it down. The result was a lovely sludge, tinted slightly green from the za'atar and studded with sweet peas. It was far too strange to share with anyone else, but just perfect for me.