The Hungry Tiger

Ginger-lime glazed sweet potatoes

I can already tell that my winter produce resolution isn't going to last very long. Tonight I had baked sweet potato with a ginger-lime-molasses glaze over rice. I baked two medium sweet potatoes until they were easily pierced by a fork (which I think was about 40 minutes, but don't quote me; this whole thing was rather ad hoc). While they were cooking, I combined about a third of a cup of lime juice, a cup of water, about a tablespoon of molasses, a pinch of sugar, roughly a teaspoon of ground ginger and some indeterminate amount of grated fresh ginger. Had a great quantity of ginger not stuck to the grater, I could tell you more accurately how much it was; I wanted something very gingery, though, and I got it. I threw it in a saucepan and cooked it down until it was reduced to a third and glaze-like, then poured it over the sweet potatoes, which I had cut into rounds, and served it on a bed of rice.

It's often surprising to me just how spicy ginger can be, but it sure is good. Ginger and lime are, of course, classic Thai flavorings, but they both go well with molasses. Perhaps the recent batch of gingerbread that Red made has confused me and the combination is disgusting to normal people, but I don't think so. Yum.

Hazy days of winter

Red is off to California for a week, and I have been left at home to cook for myself. In many ways this is a acceptable, even a positive, thing. I don't cook as much as I might, primarily because she's so much better a cook than I am, but when I'm cooking for myself, that's not an excuse. On the other hand, it's winter. While Red is in the land of Alice Waters and year-round produce, I am in the land of scraggly carrots and canned tomatoes. Last week, I made a mushroom stew with some chestnuts, which I think is about the pinacle of winter food. Soups, stews, casseroles, gratins, and roasted vegetables are all wonderful things, but they already make up the bulk of my repetoire in the kitchen. In fact, outside a pretty decent ginger eggplant stirfry and a few pasta dishes, they make up the entirety of my fallback dishes, those I could make when I haven't had time to plan anything else and I'm too lazy to find a recipe. This is an awful time of the year to try to experiment with produce, but what the hey. If Odessa Piper can hew to those Alice Waters principles at L'Etoile in Wisconsin, I'm sure I can manage a nice winter vegetable risotto. And we'll bury the mistakes.

But today I spent twelve hours at the office. Tonight I'm having a nice, cheap, greasy, lazy pizza; ambition can begin tomorrow.

The mother of invention

Monday evening's dinner-making was intended to be as simple as possible. Lentil soup is, while not quick, terribly easy and almost imposible to screw up if you've ever made lentil soup before. However, there is one thing required for lentil soup: lentils. We had some, but not nearly enough, and we were also lacking carrots and mustard. I managed (through sheer foolishness) to scorch the bottom of the Le Creuset while running to the bodega next door to get carrots, and only discovered the lack of lentils upon my return, when I was not willing to go out again to buy more. Nonetheless, soup is a tolerant food; I managed to make it into something edible; an inspired suggestion from Red turned it into something delicious.

All ingredients and cooking times are approximate, as I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off.

NECESSITY SOUP
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 chopped medium yellow onion
1 largeish carrot, sliced thinly
3 cloves minced garlic
2 teaspoons tomato paste
1/2 cup each yellow Indian lentils, brown lentils, yellow split peas, and orzo
2 bay leaves
1/2 head broccoli rabe or other bitter green
1 tablespoon molasses
2 tablespoons vinegar
approximately 1 teaspoon ground chipotle
Tabasco, Sriracha, or other hot sauce
salt and pepper

1. In a large soup pot, sauté the onion in the olive oil over high heat until the onion has colored, approximately five minutes.
2. Add the garlic and tomato paste. Sauté for another two minutes.
3. Add 10 cups water, the lentils, carrots, orzo, split peas, and bay leaves. Bring to a boil then reduce to a simmer. Simmer for approximately 40 minutes. (Note that the total cooking time I give will leave the split peas toothsome. If you want them to be soft and fully done, you may wish to add the split peas and carrots first, let them cook by themselves for fifteen minutes or so, then add the other ingredients.) 4. After 40 minutes, add the molasses and vinegar. Trim the broccoli rabe into the pot. Simmer another ten minutes.
5. Simmer another 10 minutes. Add a squirt of hot sauce, salt and pepper to taste, and the chipotle. The chipotle gives it a wonderfully smoky savoriness, so feel free to use a heavy hand. I may experiment more with greens and chipotle, as they seem to goose up a vegetarian soup nicely; in the past, I've used molasses and liquid smoke to compensate for the lack of ham or salt pork, but the chipotle worked quite well and just seems more honest somehow.

The week of eating out

Our broadband access isn't back yet after the move, so Redfox and I haven't been very visible presences on the Internet this week, but there's not much to report on the food front anyway. The gas just got turned on at our new place, so hopefully we'll be cooking again soon. For the past few days we've been eating a lot of pizza. Saturday, we took packing-assistance-queen Amy and her boy Justin out to Udupi Palace for nummy vegetarian Indian treats; last night we went out for Salvadorean at El Tazumal, our favorite nearby restaurant. We were slightly worried last week when we went by and the restaurant was dark, but thankfully they were simply rewallpapering. We got to admire the fruits of their labors, pointed out by the waitress, who also complained about her commute and asked Red if she was feeling well when she didn't finish her meal. The kitchen in our new place may be smaller and poorly laid out, but at least we're a few steps closer to a place where they know what drinks we'll want to order -- just the thing after an evening of unpacking.

Weekend o' Brunch

Surprisingly enough, after months of not venturing into DC before dark, I found myself having brunch in Dupont Circle twice this weekend. Saturday featured a "Break Bread with Brad" date, in which Brad visited our fair city and bought us all margaritas. It took place at Lauriol Plaza; the chips were as good as the Post review says, and the margarita was excellent, but the food itself (a "Santa Fe platter" of vegetarian enchilada, taco, and chile relleno) was only so-so. I'd blame it on the vegetarian-ness, never a strong suit at Tex-Mex places, but neither of the people sitting next to me (Medley and Mrs. Genehack) seemed particularly overwhelmed by their meals (something with shrimp and something with chicken, I believe). Far better was Sunday's brunch spot, the Childe Harold, picked largely at random from the Post's restaurant guide. The food was classic brunch fare: I had a Greek omlette, which was good, very salty; my friend Patience had eggs Madison, basically eggs Benedict with smoked salmon; her fiancé Peter had a club sandwich; we all split baked Brie to begin. The portions were quite generous , we didn't need a reservation for 12:00 brunch (although we were told there was a 40-minute wait for outside tables), and most shockingly, the prices were incredibly reasonable for Dupont Circle. I've found my Dupont Circle brunch spot; I'll keep it in readiness for the day, months and months from now, when I find myself again heading to the city in the a.m.

Herbed rice with fava beans and peas

Tonight's dinner was a Madhur Jaffrey recipe, an Iranian baked rice dish. As printed, the recipe calls for (frozen) baby limas, but I substituted (fresh) fava beans and peas since no limas were handy. It came out quite well, although since I'm not a big fan of dill, I should have thought ahead and cut back on the dill and added more fresh mint. Mint's a weed, and since I'm out of rum to make mojitos with (and, frankly, I'm too lazy to make mojitos just for myself), I should take every opportunity to use the mint growing outside our door before it takes over all of the metro DC area. (I also didn't use any Chinese parsley. Is that another name for cilantro?) I was going to fry up some sweet potato rounds, but I felt that I was dirtying enough dishes as it was and skipped it. This was a good recipe -- not quick, but with fairly little active cooking time -- that I'll use again.

Spaghetti with asparagus and chevre

Dinner tonight comes from a recipe I found by entering some ingredients into Google: chevre asparagus pasta. (It in turn apparently comes from The Mediterranean Diet Cookbook.) I have no idea how it's going to turn out -- I replaced the fennel with cilantro (this is not meant to provide an equivalent flavor, Judith), I'm using spaghetti rather than linguini -- but anything using that delicious chevre is going to be creamy and soothing. The pasta water is coming to a boil right now, and I've got some big tough leaves of spinach cooking; I'm about to crack open a Murphy's Amber, and I can have another one with dinner and maybe some sorbet for dessert. A well-stocked refrigerator is a happy thing.

Baked pasta in the pink

I was going to make a fairly standard baked macaroni and cheese, but I managed to botch the roux by adding a touch too much flour. (These things happen when you're out of practice as a cook.) To cover up the raw flour-y taste, I decided to ape an Al Forno dish by adding about a third of a cup of tomato juice and a half cup of diced tomatoes to the white sauce before I added the cheese. The cheese in question was a big hunk of farmer's cheese, a smaller amount of cheddar, and some really delicious chevre that I think I may have with my toast tomorrow. It turned out well enough, although it was lacking a bit of zing -- something smokey or even more acidic than the tomatoes might have helped give the sauce a bit more interest. On the side, I had some fried sweet potato rounds, which were a bit starchy when eaten with the pasta. Ah well.

Asparagus frittata and a cheese sandwich

Tonight I had a using-up-leftovers sort of dinner: the last of the asparagus frittata I made, a toasted cheese sandwich that finished up the chili-cheese bread, and a dollop of spinach dressed with sesame seeds and sesame oil. I've been saving asparagus butts in the freezer; Red made and froze a batch of stock before she left, but I might tackle making some asparagus soup next weekend, and it'd be a nice touch to have asparagus-flavored stock (although that's certainly not what I'd want on hand for general purposes). It may be a great deal of effort to go to for a marginal improvement in the soup, however. We shall see if ambition triumphs over laziness.

Roast eggplant with salsa verde

Tonight I'm making a modified Deborah Madison recipe. I scored a small eggplant and wedged in a few cloves of garlic, then threw it into the oven (which was set to 400°) about half an hour ago, and it's collapsed. When it is, I'll pull it out and let it cool, while combining the roast garlic with a salsa verde (of cilantro, fresh mint, coriander, cumin, lime juice, water, olive oil, and one of the gigantic farmer's market spring onions) that I whipped up. Then I'll scoop out the eggplant and eat it with the salsa on toast made from the chili cheese bread that I'm desperately trying to finish before it goes stale. I trust Ms. Madison's recipes, so I'm sure it will be good, and it required very little prep time. If I had thought ahead, I might have made a nice simple salad, but I'll do without.

Pierogi and peas

Tonight's dinner is an all-farmer's-market special; the guy who sells goat cheese at the farmer's market was also selling homemade three-cheese pierogi, so I panfried three of those along with one of the ridiculously large spring onions I bought. On the side is a huge helping of peas (one of the finest offerings of the farmer's market in the spring; I'm sure Red would be kicking herself for missing them were it not for the compensatory wonders of Tuscan cuisine). One of the cheeses in the pierogi is clearly goat cheese and one seems to be either ricotta or some other soft, curd-ish cheese (pot cheese, perhaps?), but I'm not at all sure what the third is. It's even possible that the soft cheese is made with goat's milk and that's what I'm tasting, but I don't want to admit that I'm unable to identify two of the three cheeses. Pierogi are yummy; despite my distrust of prunes, I'm curious about what the prune pierogi from Millie's (recommended by John Thorne) taste like. If I ever order any, I suspect I'll wimp out and get cheese or cabbage.

Nachos and beer

Redfox is off to explore the wonders of Rome for a few weeks, leaving me looking forward some dull bachelor cooking. I'm a decent cook, but I'm not an inventive one. I can follow a recipe, I know how to make a loaf of bread, and I'm happy to vary some of the dishes I know well enough to do variations on. There just aren't that many of those: a few kinds of soups, pasta with sauces red or white, omelettes and fritattas, and stirfry. (My ginger eggplant stirfry is pretty darn good.) But that's not a terrifically wide menu, and I lack Red's ability to look at an assortment of food and figure out what to do with it. I need to start with the idea and buy the food to match. I'm hoping to expand my repetoire slightly while the Atlantic stands between me and the most likely witness to failed culinary experiments. Red showed me a trick for roasting asparagus (chop the tips off and roast the stems for a bit, then add the tips so they're all done at the same time), and I'd like to try a few recipes while it's still showing up at the farmer's market. But tonight it's classic bachelor food: nachos (plenty of jalapeños) and some Mexican beer. Ignacio Anaya, I salute you.

Simple Cooking's simple ice cream

Special for Beth: As promised, here is Simple Cooking's recipe for lemon ice cream. When we made it with Meyer lemons, I found the raw dairy taste to be slightly overpowering, but with a more assertive lemon flavor (or with coffee, which I plan on trying sometime), it probably won't be a problem, and it didn't bother Redfox at all. The ice cream is, as John Thorne reports, quite dense; if you're making it for a party, you might want to freeze into individual ramekins or bowls, because otherwise it needs to thaw slightly before it can be scooped.

Green week continued

Last night we had dinner at the local Salvadoran place we frequent when we're too lazy to either cook or drive. The food is good -- a little heavy, maybe, and not terribly authentic, but who cares? It's cheap, it's tasty, they recognize us, and we don't have to do dishes afterwards. I had a plata verde, two enchiladas and a guacomole-stuffed taco, and Red had the vegetarian Huanaco platter: beans, rice, fried plantains, baked yucca root, and a really delicious sweet tamale. The restaurant was practically deserted, perhaps because of the impending thunderstorm that never quite arrived, and the waitress gave us a free order of flan. It's nice to be regulars.