Winter Salad

This salad was originally going to be named something that cast all sorts of aspersions on people who don't have winter produce. I changed my mind because my evil laugh didn't carry over to text. Instead, we have a friendly, accessible title.

I love frisee (death to accents) but I have trouble finding recipes for it. (Yes, there is the salad where bacon fat replaces olive oil. It's January. We don't eat like that anymore.) I also love other winter fruits- and C eats mandarins like other people eat Cadbury cream eggs. Clearly, all of these things need to become a salad.

Tear one head of frisee into bite sized pieces and put in a medium sized bowl. Add seeds from 1 small pomegranate. Peel two small mandarin oranges and add the segments. Slice in one avocado.

Make a dressing from the juice of one Meyer lemon, a teaspoon of chopped shallot, 1/4 cup olive oil, and a little bit of salt. Dress the salad. Eat. Cackle.

Onigiri II

This time of year is confusing for me- it's split between January asceticism and Christmas indulgence. I have no idea what most people eat this time of year, other than throwing rum balls at each other. My parents- displaced Midwesterners in California- would pack us up for the annual four hour drive two hour hike to a place that might possibly have skatable ice. I don't think you'll let me get away with family recipes for instant cocoa and camp stove ramen.

C and I are working out of our apartment, like good little third wave employees. I have been shoveling a steady supply of onigiri into his maw. As such, I have tips and refinements on the original recipe.

I still use seasoned vinegar, even though it is not correct. I am adding an extra half teaspoon of salt for every 3/4 cup of uncooked rice. I'm also garnishing each rice ball with 1/4 sheet nori and a pinch of sesame seeds. I cannot figure out how to make adorable triangle shapes without a mold.

I've found two excellent fillings. One is sweet potato, steamed above the cooking rice and mashed with a little salt. The other is chopped and fried button mushrooms with a little soy sauce. Three mushrooms are perfect for five onigiri.

And yes, I fried them in bacon fat.

Mushroom Wine Brandy Sauce.

Sorry, no crappy uncropped picture today- first, because this recipe is not pretty, and second because my camera is 254 miles away. This is a nearly perfect gravy substitute: it's excellent on mashed potatoes or the inevitable platter of roasted root vegetables that shows up this time of year. (If current trends hold, I will be posting the very dish I mock within a month.) It's also good on steamed vegetables.

Stem and dice two cups of mushrooms. Dice 1/2 onion. Saute until soft in 1 tbs oil. Add one cup of red wine, one cup of broth, and one half cup of brandy and simmer until reduced by half. Add 1 clove minced garlic, 1/2 tsp fresh thyme, and salt to taste. Serve over other foods. If you eat it straight, you will feel ill.

Simmering the likker makes the alcohol evaporate- you know that. You probably also know the brilliant cooking tip C's mother shared with me: "If you use good wine, the food will taste better." Forget using good brandy unless you already have some in the house. What else is brandy good for?

Then End of Beet Week. Beet and Orange Salad.

Man, someday you guys might catch on to my "put fresh vegetables on a plate and call it a salad" trick. Until that fateful day...

This is a recipe where roasted beets would be best- roasting caramelizes things within the beets and makes them taste like something my ancestors ate for five thousand years. Beets can be baked whole in a 350 degree oven for about an hour to an hour and a half. One can use boiled beets. One probably will, if one is not baking ridiculous Christmas foods.

Take two cooked beets, peel them, and slice them. Section two oranges- or just cut them into rounds and remove the peel. The membranes may be bitter, but so is life. Keep the juice from slicing for the dressing.

Arrange the beets and oranges on a plate. Drizzle olive oil about. Squeeze half a lemon over the plates- and then sprinkle on the orange juice. Season with salt and pepper.

Bad Idea Fridays: Mochi

Today is my birthday. This proffered Bad Idea Friday post from the incomparable A (or ---, as her friends call her) is a perfect birthday gift- I don't have to destroy the kitchen or post today, suckers. Hurrah for guest posts.

1) Purchase a small box of glutinous rice flour on a whim.
2) Decide that you have too many clean dishes in your house
3) Read rice flour box for a recipe because you are Irish and only recently mastered cooking brown rice in a rice maker.
4) Note that the only recipes on box are for chocolate mochi (all out of cocoa) and white sauce (I can make roux with cheap flour).
5) Google.
6) Opt for a stove top recipe due to a distressing lack of microwave safe containers
7) Combine 1 part rice flour, 1 part sugar, and 2 parts water, heat without boiling until quite thick. (I may have erred here.)
8) Place mochi in a very well oiled pan to cool. (13x9 would be better than 8x8.)
9) Wait several hours for mochi to set. When it does not, place in 250F oven for two hours. (When in doubt, bake, there is no recipe anywhere which advises this because...)
10) Remove mochi from oven. Notice a distressing texture on surface, somewhat like the patchwork of dessicated moss and pond scum from the bottom of a dry reservoir.
11) Leave mochi out all night, partly in disgust, partly to cool
12) Cut gummy blocks the next morning. Dust one with flour. Find it inedible and decide to dust the rest with confectioner's sugar. (bad idea because...)
13) Hydroscopic properties of the sugar cause mochi to become [more] digusting, sticky, sweaty globs of novel-textured bland starch.
14) Relegate to the back of the fridge for a week, then compost. Perhaps soil bacteria and saprophytic fungi will relish this pure energy source.

I'm fairly certain rabbits are better confectioners than I am.

-A

Beet Week Continues: Vinegar Pickled Beets

I think that is an oak leaf in the background. This time of year, our sunroom gets treated like a large walk in fridge with chairs. The rest of the year, the sunroom gets treated like a lovely bit of outside with shade and screens. Even C approves of this sort of outside. That is how leaves end up on our tables.

Boil a bunch of beets- using the instructions in the last post. (Here a "bunch" is about a pound of beets.) Peel and slice the beets and place in a bowl. Warm 1/2 cup apple cider or wine vinegar in a small pan. Add 1/2 cup water, 1 tbsp sugar, 2 tsp salt, and any spices you might feel are necessary. I think less is more in this case- but I am not always right. Stir.

Pour the vinegar mixture over the beets. Let sit for at least an hour- and up to a week. Or, if you have a room that doubles as cold storage for food, throw them out when they start to get fuzzy. One pound of pickled beets is a lot of beets, after all. You'd better hope for secret beet lovers.

Beet and Avocado Salad

Beets and avocados are friends.

My parents will not eat this dish. They have reasons, but for the sake of narrative flow I decree that they think of avocados as part of their cool California adulthood and beets as part of their homey Midwestern childhoods. I think of it as a way to integrate the two; most often when I've done something like trying to make tuna noodle casserole- with only a few modifications- and failing. (No tuna, whole wheat penne, vegetable broth instead of cream of mushroom soup. I don't know why I thought it would work.)

If such a rationalization doesn't make you feel all self-actualizing, you can sooth your palate with the dish's Cuban ancestry. Serves two.

Halve two beets, just cover with water, and simmer until tender. (20 minutes) It's awfully pretty when one of the beets is golden.

Mix 1/2 tsp chopped shallot, 1 pinch sugar, 1/4 cup olive oil, and the juice of 1 lemon. (Or the juice of 1/2 orange and 1/2 lemon. Or the juice of a Seville lemon please tell me where you found Seville lemons thank you. I suppose you could substitute garlic if you don't have shallots.) Add salt and pepper to taste, and muddle the shallot within the dressing.

Cool the cooked beets and peel. If they are a little overcooked, the skins will slip right off. Otherwise, a sharp knife or a vegetable peeler is necessary. (Beets have onion-shaped layers that are tightly stuck together. Excessive cooking makes it possible to slide these layers off easily. Proper cooking has no such advantage.)

Slice the peeled beets. Arrange slices on two plates. Slice a perfect avocado into nice thick pieces. Add to the plates. Mix the dressing and dress the salads- add more salt if necessary.

I might follow through on beet week- I have two more recipes in the hopper, and y'all need to get your beet water from somewhere.

Tom Robbins has a four page rant on how we should emulate beet pigments- but I'll abbreviate if for you: beets will retain their color even in your biological waste products. Do not be alarmed. Art like "Another Brick in the Wall" would be unnecessary if we all ate more beets.

Bad Idea Fridays: Red Velvet Cake

What a wreck.

I made Red Velvet Cake for my brother's birthday. It tasted like propylene glycol. (Wikipedia says Propylene glycol has no flavor. I accidentally got a face full when we were draining a cooling system, and I beg to differ.) I used the Cook's recipe, I followed it to the letter, I had my mother taste the result and confirm that it was the same cake her grandmother used to make and still I was horribly horribly disappointed. Still, I'm sure there are people out there- people who haven't had a traumatic encounter with food dye solvents- and they might enjoy the traditional cake.

Every single recipe I have ever read for Red Velvet Cakes briefly discusses the history of the cake. There's a lot of diddle-daddle about chemistry, a brief mention of Steel Magnolias, and a sneering reference to the wartime use of beets. Happily, I like beets. I am seriously considering making this week 'beet week'. Even more happily, my indestructible chocolate cake uses one cup of water as the fluid component. Beet cooking liquid is like water, except it stains everything it touches. Since the recipe has proven resilient when I muck around with the ingredients, halving the cocoa and doubling the vinegar shouldn't be fatal...

But what of the frosting? There must be a cream cheese based frosting- otherwise, there's no startling color contrast. I tripped off to the natural foods market to buy some vegan cream cheese. There a lovely woman told me that as a vegan, cream cheese was forever barred to me and that eating the vegan version would only make me crave the real stuff more. Plus, she said, it was gross. Better that I should make an icing of Crisco and powdered sugar.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Stir together 1 and 1/2 cups white flour, 3 tbs. cocoa powder, 1 tsp. baking soda, 1/2 tsp salt, and 1 cup sugar in a 9 inch round baking pan. (I added 1/4 cup cocoa, because my hand usually shakes when measuring out 1/3 cup) If you are using a fluted Bundt pan, do the mixing in another bowl and grease the pan. Otherwise, the cake will be removed in chunks and will look like crap.

Fill a large measuring cup with 1 cup beet water, 1/3 cup oil, and one teaspoons almond extract. (To make beet water, get some beets. Wash them, cut them in half, put them into a pan, cover them with water, and simmer them for about half an hour. Reserve the beets. Use the water. On another note; I added the almond extract on a whim. It turned out to be the best part of this cake.)

Pour the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients and whisk vigorously until combined. Add four tablespoons cider vinegar and stir until combined.

Pop the cake into the oven and bake for 25 minutes. Remove, let cool, gently coax out of the pan, fail, end up removing cake in three large pieces. Try to talk yourself into making buttercream frosting with Crisco. Fail. I made a glaze with the juice of one lemon, 1/2 cup powered sugar, and one cup dessert wine, simmered together until I could claim the alcohol evaporated. I also added 1 tsp. grated ginger, so everyone who tasted the cake could say "Ginger. Interesting." (This is exactly what they said.)

The cake was red going into the oven, but it was only a little red coming out. It smelled exactly like beets going in, but when it was removed it smelled and tasted like cake. Since it was reddish, sourish, and tasted of almonds, everyone thought it was a cherry cake. I dub this quasi-failure "Cherry Blossom Cake" and promise to oil he pan next time. Also, fie to the people who disparage baking with beets.

I realized this morning that I could have used haupia as frosting. The color contrast would have been perfect.

Baked Sweet Potato with Lime and Cilantro II

I suggested my delectable super simple sweet potato recipe to my coworker several months ago, and she loved it. Last week, I discovered that I communicate badly- even when if comes to describing recipes. She's been lightly oiling a shallow pan, slicing a couple of sweet potatoes into rings, squeezing a couple of limes over them, and baking them at 350 degrees until done. Then she sprinkles them with salt and cilantro. I figured it's one extra pan to wash, but worth an attempt- so I tried it. It was about as good as the unsliced one the first day, but on the second day the pan sauce mutated into some sort of miraculous dressing- like those honey mustard dressings but good. Very very good. So try making sweet potatoes this way if you like sweet mustard dressings or elves wash your pots. Make lots.

Moros y Cristianos

I tripled this recipe, because I have poor judgement. Two days later it has all been eaten. So yes, it is very tasty. And while this recipe will comfortably serve two for dinner and then breakfast, why not double it?

Take one and one half cups dry turtle beans and pick them over. I have opinions about dry beans which will probably be explained on some dreary day. For now, remember that it is important that the beans be fresh, or they will never get soft. Also, do not add acid or salt until they are cooked or the skins will become tough. Simmer the beans in a heavy pot over low heat with 4 cups water for about an hour- until the beans are tender. (You could be slow roasting some pork with lime and orange and cumin in a low oven, in which case the beans will be happy to hang out there.)

Rinse 1 cup brown rice and add it to the softened beans with two more cups of water or stock. Return pot to heat. Chop one medium onion, one bell pepper (Red is better, but green is fine. Lord knows I can't afford red.) and two handfuls of cilantro. Saute these ingredients with a little oil until the onion is nicely browned. Add the mire poix to the beans and rice, and taste to see if the rice is done. Cook cautiously until the resulting pottage is something you want to eat.

Good with salsa fresca, or (gasp) a fried egg.

This is the tastiest thing I have ever eaten in the name of multiculturalism.

Avocado Salsa

The second salsa in as many days! It is as the legends foretold!

Take a perfectly ripe avocado. Slice it in half and remove the seed. Dice the flesh inside the peel and scoop it out with a spoon. Add the juice of 1/2 lime, a half handful of chopped cilantro, and one finely diced jalapeño, without the seeds. (Or with them, fine.) Señor C may be sad, but jalapeños are essential to this salsa. My father sometimes uses canned jalapeños- which allow for greater regulation of capsaicin content.

Mango Salsa

Earlier, I indicated that there was a huge range of salsa besides tomato. I have *two* kinds of Solanaceae free salsa for you this coming week, to prove my wild-eyed allegations.

Take some mangoes. If you've got Tommy Atkins (what a problematic imperialist name for a fruit variety) mangoes, two will be sufficient. If you have Manila mangoes, four will be necessary. If you have another variety of mango, I will assume you are familiar enough with the first two varieties to draw your own conclusions. (I can also come to where you live and test these mangoes extensively.) Cutting mangoes is a bit difficult- there is a line of rough bilateral symmetry which indicates the location of the seed. One can remove large ovals of mango flesh from either side of this line- and then peel off the slightly toxic skin and dice the fruit into a bowl. The remaining flesh on the mango disc could be conscientiously sliced into the bowl, in theory. This has never actually happened. Instead, remove the last bits of skin, gnaw on the pit like the primate you are, floss your teeth, and get on with the rest of the salsa. (This involves repeating the process with at least one more mango. Other people might point out that you can share the mango pits, but you should point out that you are both making the salsa and holding a very sharp knife.)

Dice 1/4 medium onion very finely and add to the mango bowl. Dice 1/2 bell pepper(inessential), one handful cilantro, and one handful mint. (Mint is actually pretty important, but don't let the lack of mint combined with a surfeit of mangoes prevent making mango salsa.) Put these things in the bowl. Add the juice of 1.5 limes and a sprinkle of salt. Stir. If I'm making this for my Midwestern father, I chop in a couple of chiles. If I make this for my Chilean husband, I add a little more lime and mock him.

My entire family pretends that only I know this recipe so they will not have to chop all of these things. Now it is on the Internet, and they have no excuse.

My Last At Least I Wasn't That Desperate: Saddest Kale Salad

Unlike some people, I take my commitment to kale seriously.

Sometimes one is halfway through the morning routine, dressed in slacker business casual, and the sun rises revealing a beautiful cloudless sky. One curses the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for its lies about definite precipitation. One now has about 15 minutes to remove the frost from the car windshield, possibly gas up the car, change into field clothing, and stuff 800 calories into a box before driving to the marina. It's days like these that engender the saddest kale salad.

Grab some kale. Pull it off of the stems and put it into tupperware until the tupperware is full. Add some vinegar and some oil. Close the tupperware. It's worth taking an extra second to make sure there's a fork in the lunchbox, because eating sad kale salad with fingers is not pleasant.

People will tell you that raw kale is inedible, but you'd be surprised at what seems edible when there's nothing else in your lunchbox but almonds.

At Least I Wasn't That Desperate: Cider and Fizzy Water

I am not a big fan of adult beverages. I mean, I like R's mai tais, and about three sips of good champagne. Everything else I drink is so that I can hang with the cool kids. I am merely flotsam in the tides of peer pressure.

So there it is: sparkling cider for those of us who keep picking up sulphur tones in the Martinelli's.

At Least I Wasn't That Desperate: Mashed Avocados on Toast

I told myself I'd post every single day in November. (I did it too, because I am reliable and trustworthy and not inherently flaky at all.) I built up a little backlog of photos for when my back was up against the wall. Although the situation was never dire enough for me to roll out the truly pathetic recipes, I see no reason not to burn through them now, while I think of things to do with persimmons and additional bad ideas.

Salad Chocolate Cake- Hurrah for the End of November!

I should note that this cake is good. It isn't great- and I have had great vegan cakes- but it's good. Also, its real name is Six Minute Chocolate Cake, it really takes only six minutes to make, and it uses one whisk, one measuring cup, one spoon, and one pan. I wanted it to be the perfect last minute pantry cake, but it does require an eternity of cooling time. (Here "an eternity" is probably like 30 minutes.) Don't be desperate when making it. Leave the cake in the pan until it is cool. Don't start making a cake at 8 when you want to be asleep by 9. My advice to you.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Go do something else for five minutes so that the oven finishes preheating before the cake goes in. Stir together 1 and 1/2 cups white flour, 1/3 cup cocoa powder, 1 tsp. baking soda, 1/2 tsp salt, and 1 cup sugar in a 9 inch round baking pan. (You may reduce the sugar as a matter of course in other recipes, but don't do it here. The cake will suffer. Standard Bundt pans seem to work fine with this recipe and if you have a 8 inch square baking pan, you are a kitchen hoarder and you can also use that.)

Fill a large measuring cup with 1 cup water (or cold coffee), 1/3 cup oil (the cake above used olive oil, and while I love olive oil more than kittens, I think another oil would be a better choice. Olive oil cakes are delightful, but what makes them delightful is the combination of egg and olives. Certain combinations are intrinsically good- that's why we eat mayonnaise.), and two teaspoons vanilla extract. (A advises adding a teaspoon of grated ginger here, or half a teaspoon of powdered ginger. She says "Adding ginger to baked goods makes them taste interesting. It disguises the fact that they aren't very good.")

Pour the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients and whisk vigorously until combined. Add two tablespoons cider vinegar (There's the salad reference. Olive oil and vinegar. Gosh, how clever.) The vinegar reacting with the baking soda will leave fizzing tracks during the final lazy mixing.

Pop the cake into the oven and bake for 25 minutes, or until stabbing it with toothpicks results in clean toothpicks. The end result is a plain and practical cake that is also pretty good.

The ganache in the photo is 4 oz. very dark chocolate melted- in the microwave! in 30 second spurts! stir frequently to prevent burning! mixed with 1/4 cup coconut milk. It makes a dense fudgey topping that I imagine would combine very nicely with a ginger chocolate cake.

I have also discovered that pretty much any cake, no matter how utilitarian or Sandra Lee inspired, can be dramatically improved by a.) stabbing it all over with a long skewer (while it is still in the pan) and b.) sprinkling cooking sherry onto it. Sadly, my kitchen is clean out of cheap cooking sherry. One could use rum, or that suspect bottle of liqueur that lurks in the back of every pantry. (Not ours, because former roommates drank it. But it's totally worth living without these kitchen essentials if you can watch a grown man drink a pint of peppermint schnapps and chase it with half a bottle of Kahlua.) I'd be tempted to make a quick glaze with the chosen liqueur, a dash of powdered sugar, and some lemon juice for when the cake is ultimately removed from the pan. Heck, you could make such a glaze without the EtOH if you didn't want people to become slightly tipsy over cake.

Or Criso based buttercream. Gross.

Baked Sweet Potato with Lime and Cilantro

This is an Alice Waters recipe. And a sign that I'm really tired. Once November is over, I'm going back to the bimonthly post schedule until I'm caught up on sleep.

Wash a sweet potato. Cut off any bits that seem inedible and poke it viciously with a fork. Bake at 350 degrees (F) for thirty minutes- or until tender when stabbed forkishly once again. (Or one could microwave it for five. Philistines.) Split it lengthwise and squeeze a wedge of lime over the flesh. Add a teaspoon of chopped cilantro and a dash of salt.

Pretty tasty for such a simple thing, no? Delightful, etc...

Antipasto platter

Somewhere in my cold shriveled heart is a belief that a pile of bitter vegetables will make up for about a week of saturated fats, alcohol, and simple carbohydrates. It's like C and the whole cold drink on a hot day causes heart failure superstition. It's not that he believes it, it's that by now room temperature soda tastes better. So yes, after the excesses of the last holiday I am willing to call vegetables dipped in olive oil and garlic healthy and am willing to call bitter root vegetables antipasto. (Where I'm from antipasto is usually pepperoni, the saddest prosciutto, sliced mozzarella, Parmesan, and pickled pepperoncini- I feel like adding a couple of olives is pretty much the first step on a slippery slope to... a pile of bitter vegetables on a plate.)

Bagna cauda is supposed to be just ample olive oil and lots of chopped garlic, warmed gently. As someone who will take the occasional shot of vegetable oil when feeling low, oil and garlic isn't special enough for me. I added lemon and salt. (So exciting. Living the dream here.) So yes, heat one cup really good olive oil gently over a very low flame. Add six to eight cloves garlic, smashed and peeled. After about three minutes the garlic will be soft enough to smash further, if it pleases you to do so. Add the juice of two lemons and a dash of salt.

I used blanched kale, red endive, blanched carrots, sliced boiled beets with a splash of vinegar, thin sliced fennel bulb, and blanched Jerusalem artichokes. I would say to skip the carrots, but I'm pretty sure that it's the only thing everyone else ate. Seasonality is key, chickens- perhaps you are not reading this in the depths of winter and can choose from roasted peppers and ripe tomatoes and sauteed eggplant. Perhaps it is spring, and tiny baby vegetables are making themselves known. Do you wish to add some baked mushrooms? Some sweet onions? Some lovely spinach? Some olives and pickled artichoke hearts? Please do. Put whichever available vegetables that look delightful on a platter, and then dip them into the bagna cauda. (Some things- like blanched kale- require drizzling with the bagna cauda. Please eat blanched kale with a fork. For everyone's sake.)

I can feel my liver growing stronger. Hypothetically. Given holistic medicine isn't a crock.

Sushi

Light foods. That's the ticket for the next few days. No cream, no sugar, no butter... Let's allow my intestinal flora to adapt to a lower calorie world.

I love fish, but I don't eat it very often. It's up there with why I don't own diamonds and why I eat only organic pork as my pathetic consumer activism. Woo, my participation in the decline of society is slightly less than average for my social group. I'm such a martyr.

A couple of months ago, I read an article on making fish free sushi at home. I believe they suggested egg and prosciutto as ideal toppings. Not vegan. Happily, their advice on rice making was spot on- sushi rice really does go with most things. And if it doesn't work as sushi, it can quickly be turned into onigiri.

So yes. Cook a cup of short grain rice- since stickiness is not as essential, I sometimes use brown rice. Let's not go halfway when we're debasing the cuisine that brought us the noodle sandwich. Please don't cook the rice in a pressure cooker- it's what my mother does, and it always makes me sad.

Add seasoned rice vinegar- or rice vinegar and sugar and salt. A couple of dashes should be sufficient- frequent tasting is essential.

Now, I either compact the rice into nigiri type blocks or make rolls. I have a spiffy little press for this the nigiri: before they hold together the rice usually must be compacted by almost half. They can be hand shaped, but you must be really awesome.

Not ready to invest in sushi hardware? Buy a few sheets of nori, cut them in half, and put a stripe of seasoned rice down one long edge. Add filling and roll up- dabbing the nori with water at the end. (Some people toast the unfilled nori by waving it over a burner on high. There should be no rational likelihood of the nori catching on fire.) Slice the sushi into bite sized bits with a sharp knife- it may need to be cleaned partway through the process. Serve with soy sauce. If wasabi and gari are available, use those too.

What sort of fillings are delicious? Avocado, of course. And cucumber is traditional. I like to use a little bit of seasoned tofu, or some carrot pickles or mirin pickles. I like fried shiitake mushrooms and bell pepper and cilantro and toasted sesame seeds and dabs of miso and green onions. Kimchi might not be bad. Thin strips of kale might be nice. Shiso leaves would be slightly decadent. I don't like pickled plum paste, but I suspect various ripe fruits might be good. Stand in the produce aisle (or at the market) until something strikes you as a good idea. Don't prepare more than a cup or so of assorted fillings, or there will be all sorts of leftovers.

As concrete advice, I suggest bell pepper strips, cucumber, and a thin layer of red miso.
Or fried shiitake mushrooms and cilantro and sesame seeds. Or avocado. Avocado is always good.

Bad Idea Fridays: Vegan Stuffing

Oh, how helpful: a recipe for stuffing after Thanksgiving. You are all probably most grateful.

Oh my goodness, you guys, vegan suggestions for Thanksgiving food are dreary. Garbanzo nut loaf! Lentils and wheat berries! One of the best suggestions is a big old plate of enchiladas. I was going to make one as my bad idea, but they were so sad! Also, the house is full of food, and I am not allowed to cook until some of it goes away.

But here's the thing. Thanksgiving has a lot of great plant based side dishes, and only one ridiculous giant roast. It hearkens back to an earlier era of American cuisine- one which considers squash paste in a crust to be an acceptable vegetable dish. It's back from when meat was a seasoning- that's why one of the dishes is kitchen scraps moistened with bird fat.

Doubtless you wonder how it tastes without bird fat. Allow me to share.

Take one pound of chestnuts. Cut a cross on the flat side of each one, place them into a shallow pan with a little water, and bake them in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes. Remove, let cool, and then peel off the shell and inner skin. If you've fooled around with acorns- another member of the Fagaceae- then this will be startlingly, delightfully easy. And the fruit is delightful. I propose planting chestnut trees as preparations for the inevitable fall of society. Cut the chestnuts into small pieces, discarding any moldy bits.

Make a mirepoix with one chopped onion, one peeled and diced carrot, and two stalks diced celery. (Saute in oil until fragrant.) (Oh, and look, you've generated vegetable ends for the broth you'll need later. Start simmering them in a little water.) Add three cloves smashed garlic and 1/2 pound sliced mushrooms. Add this point, you'll probably need to add what seems like an unreasonable amount of oil.

Here's where most people start to disagree violently. Some use cornbread, or crumbs, or diced bread, or cooked wheat, or polenta, or solid sausage. (The last one is either a marker of my Midwestern family, or a marker of bad culinary decisions in college.) Some season with sage, or thyme, or angry bees... Some add walnuts or currents or dried cranberries or fresh cranberries. Happily, with a flavorfull mirepoix, the creamy nuttiness of chestnuts, and the meatiness of sauteed mushrooms, there's a flavor base that can support whatever you prefer to add. I use about four cups of diced good bread, a dash of thyme, half a cup of currents, two more stalks of chopped celery, and the chestnuts. Moisten slightly with about half a cup of vegetable stock and bake at the temperature the oven is until a little crunchy. Moisten with more vegetable stock if needed.

At this point, I cheated and added a lot of turkey drippings. Bad idea Fridays are important, but the first Thanksgiving with my family and my brand new inlaws is even more important. It was good.

If your family has irreconcilable opinions over what should be in stuffing, I recommend marrying a foreigner who is not nostalgic for an imaginary past Thanksgiving.

Pie Dough

One of the biggest surprises college held for me was young ladies who did not care a fig about their pastry technique. I was as bamboozled as my brother is by my husband's complete lack of interest in shooting things and throwing himself down precipices. I mean, yes, feminism rah rah rah, but someone must make the pies.

Fortunately, the lovely people at Cook's illustrated have a foolproof pie dough, without any worries about cracking or toughness. It does shrink a bit, so make sure there's a generous half inch margin around the rim of the pie. Makes two crusts.

Process 1 and 1/2 cups flour with 20 tablespoons shortening or butter or a combination of the two- I haven't been able to taste a significant difference, but I loath shortening with great passion. It seems to cover everything with a fine oily scum- I feel like I'm in New Orleans. Not after the oil spill, just in general. Add also a pinch of salt and a dash of sugar. The ingredients will form a paste; forbidden in traditional pastry making because unmixed butter is thought to cause flakiness. It is in fact caused by flour mixed with water, surrounded by hot fat, causing tiny crispy crackers to form within the crust. Thus, when one adds an additional one cup flour, one wants to avoid processing it in completely. Add 1/4 cup cold water and 1/4 cup vodka (gluten can't form in a non polar liquid, so toughness is mitigated) and pulse until there's a delightfully manageable dough. Chill it in two discs for about an hour, and then roll it out between sheets of saran wrap before removing the top sheet and flopping it into the pie dish. (Then remove the other sheet, etc, etc.) Remember to leave generous margins around the edge- scalloping is a good choice here- and bake it at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. (You may want to weigh the dough with beans in tin foil or pie weights for the first 15 minutes.) Fill with filling and bake at 300 degrees for eternity.

Why yes, filling will have to either be a custard (pumpkin) or already cooked before being added. I suppose you could skip the blind baking, fill it to overflowing with apples or apricots and a half cup of sugar, and then cover it with the other half. Bake that at 350 degrees until pretty. After fussing with the absurdly complicated pumpkin pie recipe all morning, I really wish I'd done that instead.

Nikujaga

When Europeans first landed in Japan, they brought beef stew with them. The Japanese thought that it could be pretty good if it weren't so patently disgusting. Thus was nikujaga born- a hearty dish with very little meat content.

Serves 4.

Wash 1/2 pound potatoes. I've also used combinations of sweet potatoes and winter squash- go for a half pound total. Traditionally, the potatoes are peeled, but it's just fine if they aren't. Remember to peel the winter squash. Cut into rough chunks- just a little larger than bite sized. Peel one large carrot and one half onion and cut into slices. Slice 6 oz. beef or pork into very thin strips- tritip is a good cut for this, as is a pork chop. Place the above ingredients into a pot.

Add three tablespoons soy sauce. (There are recipes out there that add six or eight. Gross.) Add either three tablespoons of sake and one tablespoon of sugar or three tablespoons of mirin. Add one cup or broth or water.

Simmer uncovered for about 40 minutes. The uncovered part is important, so that the broth can cook down into a salty sweet broth. Stir frequently so that all of the potatoes are stained golden brown. When the potatoes are so tender that they are beginning to fall apart it is done.

Serve over rice, because we love starch beyond reason.

Onigiri: More Fun with the Rice Cooker.

It's the birthday of my favorite sibling, so I'm posting early. I will also be brief. That's why the food is so pretty.

We are in that blissful post wedding state where I have more kitchen appliances than I can use. Still, I adore this rice cooker. It's like a magic food production machine- I put in rice and water, walk away, and find perfectly cooked proof that I am the best wife ever. C is a big fan of rice.

Onigiri is less about the flavor of the filling and more about the flavor of the rice. As such, one needs about a tablespoon of filling for half a dozen rice balls- my suggestions are mashed avocado, chopped green onion, or about a tablespoon of any savory leftover in the fridge. I used nikujaga sauce. (Tomorrow's recipe: nikujaga!)

Cook 3/4 cup short grain white rice according to whatever method you chose. (Rice cooker rice cooker) (I've tried other sorts of rice; short grain brown, long grain brown, sticky rice. They simply do not work. Sushi rice is the way to go here- when I get more adept, I may switch to 50%/50% with short grain brown. Or I may not. All the Japanese expats get a little fraught when people ask them about rice substitutions. Mix in about a teaspoon of seasoned rice vinegar. Or, you know, a good sprinkle of salt, a good sprinkle of sugar, and unseasoned rice vinegar. Taste it to make sure you approve of the flavor.

Get a smallish square of saran wrap and a small bowl or old fashioned tea cup. Line the teacup/bowl with saran wrap. Fill teacup/bowl with about 1/2 cup rice. Stick a very clean finger into the rice and fill the hole halfway with filling. Grab edges of saran wrap and twist/wrap the rice firmly into a ball. Leave the saran wrap on for at least five minutes- though if you're packing a lunch, the saran wrap can stay on indefinitely.

Repeat with remaining rice- this should make about 6 onigiri.

Stacked Things in a Rice Cooker

Get a rice cooker already. Put a cupful of brown rice or so in the bottom, along with the suggested amount of water. Put one sliced and peeled yam in the steamer basket. Let cook for fifteen minutes. Add one sliced chicken breast to the top of the rice- the steam will cook it most admirably- or leave the chicken out entirely, and just make some quick tofu. Take a couple of cups of frozen or fresh broccoli and add them to the top of the steamer basket.

Dump everything into serving dishes and eat. Either make a quick sauce- like the miso dressing from the Sarlah Salad- or add soy sauce to taste. Or there's probably something appropriate in the fridge. Season with that

A tofu dish my husband will eat.

I'm currently visiting C. One might think that cohabiting would lead to me cooking more- and it does- but so little of that food could ever be called vegan. Either I'm trying to give him a heart attack, or I've been methodically trained to cook things that he likes.

So today I made "Stack things in the rice cooker". It's a pretty complex meal; I'm sure sometime in the Thanksgiving week I'll be desperate enough to give it a post. Today, I'm posting about some artisanal tofu I found. (oh, Bay Area- full of things I was not aware existed, but now need to purchase.) I've never been fond of tofu- and fancy tofu is not significantly tastier than non fancy tofu. However, when I worked as a nanny for a very nice family their children ate nothing but Moon rice and this tofu dish. When I made it tonight, C neglected his absurdly large plate of rice and sweet pickles and hogged all the tofu. Then he ate everything else on the table.

Take 4 oz. tofu- any kind that isn't silken. Slice very thinly or cube. Add a healthy coating of soy sauce- I prefer low sodium, but I also prefer what's in the cupboard- and six drops of sesame oil. Stir so that every side of the tofu is exposed to the sauce. Serve.

Fall Salad, brought to you by the letter P

I like alliterative recipes.

I've stated before that I don't approve of lettuce. Thus, my salads tend to be heavy on non-lactucal ingredients. Serves two.

Cut two fuyu persimmons into sixths, cut off the peel, and slice into thin wedges. Collect the seeds from 1/3 pomegranate. Peel two pears and slice into thin wedges. (See how I sliced the pears lengthwise in the photo? Don't do that. They're much harder to arrange artfully. While we're learning from my mistakes, let's toast 1/4 cup of pecans in a dry pan over medium heat. Let's not burn them.)

One must dress the pears to avoid unsightly discoloration. I figure there's a threefold choice for dressings here- I used a fairly typical three parts balsamic to four parts olive oil, dash of salt, dash of sugar dressing. One could embrace the fallishness of the whole thing, use fresh pressed olive oil, the very first lemons, and a dash of apple cider. One could also make a mirin, rice vinegar, and grapeseed oil dressing. Aim for 1/4 cup total dressing.

Wash one head butter lettuce and 1/2 head escarole. (Or one head leaf lettuce or romaine. I like the bitterness of the escarole, because it reminds me of high school.) Tear into small pieces and dress with half the chosen dressing. Arrange on salad plates. Place persimmon slices and pear slices over the lettuce. Drizzle remaining dressing over the salad. Top with pomegranate seeds and pecans. Or pine nuts. Pistachios. I think the theme is exhausted.

Alternatively, you could mix everything together in a large bowl and serve it out of that. Or eat directly from the serving bowl. Or just chew on leaves you find on the forest floor.

Bad Idea Fridays: Membrillo

Dear readers, you might think that making quince jam does not count as a truly bad idea. Pish, you say, and also tosh- jam is always tasty, unless the fruit is rotten or the jam is burned. Sometimes even under these circumstances, edibility ensues. I say that you have never spoken with my inlaws about making membrillo.

A quick aside on the culture of my beloved: for some reason, jam is fraught with associations. I can't begin to comprehend what they are- but making preserves is not done. Well, of course it's done, because one has all this fruit and no one else can be trusted to can it, but one doesn't spread this fact around. Jam apparates, like horses in Jane Austen novels. There was a bit of teeth sucking when I announced my intentions. Then, there was a certain amount of trepidation in admitting to actually knowing a person who might know a recipe. Long story short, I'm not sure if this is a family secret or not. Even though I link over from Facebook, keep it on the downlow.

Get some quince. I had six, but one of them was the size of a child's head. You will probably want less than six, because there is room for only so much sliceable jam in most people's lives. (Quince are in the same subfamily of Rosaceae as apples and pears, and have a similar pome. The flavor is intensely floral; in fact, the best thing I have ever done with quince is letting them ripen in a bowl on the counter- it always smelled like I was baking pie. The fruit is full of pectin. A raw slice of quince tastes like every surface of your mouth is covered with a thin layer of peanut butter, also cider. Poach quince if you want to eat them for non-novelty reasons.) Peel, core, and slice the quince into 1/4 thick pieces. Poach in water until soft. Strain out the quince bits and puree. (Food processor, or mash them like potatoes, or put them through a ricer.) Measure your quince puree.

Now, for every four units of quince puree, you'll need one unit of water and three units of sugar. Make a simple syrup by simmering the water and sugar together in a large heavy pot until the sugar dissolves completely. Add the quince paste. Simmer gently- either on a burner or in a 300 degree oven- for three hours. Stir frequently to prevent burning. Use a long spoon, because somehow the combination of fruit paste and simple syrup results in a lava-like substance that can leap truly impressive distances when disturbed. Eventually, the magma will cook down enough so that the tracks of the spoon are reluctant to fill, and cooling a teaspoon or so of the mixture results in a bouncy, chewy sort of jam. Remove from heat, place into a lightly oiled loaf pan, and let cool. Slice lengthwise once and wrap tightly.

Slices of membrillo are traditionally served with Manchego cheese as a dessert. It would also be good with this, if you hate hard cheese or are actually a vegan. You could also put it on toast. Please be aware that if made according to instructions, the final product will not be spreadable- it's a slicing jam. It's pretty good, aside from the half-dozen burns on my hands. Also, I have seven cups of jam that no one here knows how to eat.

In the past, I've found liquid from poaching fruit makes an excellent syrup- for enlivening assorted dessert items. I thought to make some with the quince poaching liquid- I added a little tuna juice from a failed experiment with prickly pear jam because I didn't want it to go to waste. I cooked the whole thing down with a minimal amount of sugar and poured it into a gravy boat. It set up into the best jam ever, oh my goodness you guys, I want to marry this jam and Thanksgiving gravy can find another container because this one is mine.

Moon Rice

If you feed your children this rice at every meal, they will be the healthiest and prettiest children. They will also weep all day when you run out of rice. Adults will also become healthy and pretty, and will probably manage to restrain their tears. Recipe serves 2, but you can dodecuple the dry ingredients and store them in a jar for weeks.

Take 1 cup dry short grained brown rice. Add one tablespoon forbidden rice. (Forbidden rice is purple, and smells like heaven.) If you know that the rice will be consumed soon after cooking, add a teaspoon of green lentils.

Put in a rice cooker, add the suggested amount of water, and press the magic button. Wait until the rice is done. Eat your rice.

No rice cooker? Buy a rice cooker. The rice is always perfect.

Fine, yes. You can boil the rice like pasta in 12 cups of water, strain it, and then steam it briefly in a smaller pan. The rice will be almost as good as rice cooker rice.

Fine, yes, basic brown rice stovetop instructions. Bring 1.08333 cups of rice mixture and 2 cups of water to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until rice is tender- about 25 minutes. Or perhaps your rice is old- in which case you will have to simmer it longer and possibly add additional water.

What if you already know how to make rice? Does this article serve no purpose? Well. Take a cup of cooked Moon rice, add a tablespoon of sugar, 4 oz. of coconut milk, and possibly a dash of vanilla. Simmer together for five minutes, and blammo! Awesome rice pudding.

Salsa Cruda

This is the kind of recipe I post when I have committed to posting every day all month, and I am suddenly switched from a 40 hour week to a 50 hour week. I was going to try to provide a secular contrast to the holy beans, but I can barely keep my eyes open.

Serves 4.

Dice 1/2 onion- I am absolutely mystified why so many recipes specify onion color. Dice the onion finely, because large chunks of onion are not palatable to most people- I learned this through trial and error, no reason you should have to.

Coarsely chop three tomatoes. I'm ambivalent about using tomatoes this time of year. If I had slightly more energy, I'd use something seasonal. Persimmon and pomegranate salsa- Cuervito might forgive me eventually.

Chop a handful of cilantro. If you don't like cilantro, you could use Mexican oregano, or espazote, or rent a kitten and get in some solid positive associations with cilantro so that you can eat it like an adult. Please use significantly less of the dried herbs than a handful- something in the 1/2 tsp. range.

Stir the chopped ingredients together. Add the juice of one lime. Sprinkle on some salt, maybe a little olive oil, maybe a chopped jalapeño, maybe some grated garlic. If you wanted to throw in an avocado or some corn, I would understand. In fact, I'll be milking the "chop some sweet vegetable product, add onion and lime and some herbs, call it salsa" recipe cow extensively in the future- but probably not during the persimmon season.

Savory Pumpkin Pie

This is not vegan. It does not contain pumpkin. It is not technically a pie.

Now that your expectations are low, allow me to state that I served this dish to my avowed carnivore parents as part of a plant-based dinner, and they ate it up and did not complain about the lack of giant carbon hoofprints on the table. It's a vegetarian meal you can serve to Midwesterners.

Bacon's a vegetable, right?

My mother states that this first bit is unnecessarily finicky and without benefit. I'm willing to accept that it's coincidence that every squash I've roasted turned out to be delicious while those cooked near liquids turned into insipid yellow things, so leave this out if you're pressed for time. And hate rainbows. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Cut a winter squash in half and scrape out the seeds. Brush with oil, if you're fancy. Bake for 30 minutes- 1 hour, until the squash is soft. (I used a Delicata, but acorn, Hubbard, or even a pumpkin would also work. If you're leaving out the pre-roasting, use the frozen bagged kind, since you're clearly in some sort of rush. Also because the amount of effort it takes to peel a raw acorn squash is greater than the amount of effort it takes to abandon your standards.)

Obtain a pie crust. There will be no veiled snark if you obtain one from a store, with money. Once your skill with pastry making is great enough so that it's not a huge pain, you will make pie at all times and have moderately elevated cholesterol at an unusually young age. (Quick recipe: 10 parts flour, 5 parts shortening, pinch of salt, one part cold water, one part vodka. Mix half the flour with the shortening, then blitz in the other half (and the salt). Add the liquids, chill briefly, and then smash the Play-doh like substance with a rolling pin until it resembles a crust. It's sticky, so do this on saran wrap. Oh, and use about 20 tbs of flour for one crust.)

Dice an onion. Saute in oil, or perhaps the rendered fat of a solitary strip of bacon. Crumble said bacon into tiny bits.

Peel the squash. Cut into bite sized chunks. Place within crust. Dot with onion and possible bacon.

Make a roux with 1 tbs. white flour and 1 tsp. oil. (Look, the shortening's already out, and we can't pretend this recipe is healthy, so...) Add about 1/2 cup vegetable broth or milk. Stir vigorously, until there are no more lumps. Add 1/4 cup grated jack cheese and 1/2 tsp thyme. (I'll bet it would be entirely edible with just a white sauce, no cheese. However, I was aiming for something my father would eat.) Pour the sauce over the squash. There won't be quite enough, and you will feel virtuous about not being decadent.

If your pie crust is very generous around the edges, fold it in for a nice tart appearance. Otherwise, fine. It is actually a pie. Bake for 15 minutes at 350 degrees.

Sweet Sweet Failure

I found this recipe while bumping around other, better food blogs. I was about two thirds done with the process when I realized that it was my cowboy caviar, mixed 50/50 with quinoa. Quinoa is more expensive than all the other ingredients, no healthier, and less tasty. Fie! Fie!

Still, needs must post. Cook one cup quinoa until the cotyledons unspool and look like toenail clippings. Stir in one cup cooked black beans- let's not lie here, you're going to put in 12 or 16 oz, because who wants to have half a can of black beans hanging around? Add one cup frozen corn- possibly toast it in the oven for five minutes- and a chopped bell pepper and a handful of chopped cilantro and a diced onion. Sprinkle with salt. Lots of salt. Grab like four limes, and squeeze them onto the salad until it's appropriately sour. Add a dash of olive oil. Stir. Hey, it tastes like cowboy caviar and quinoa! Delightful. That is what you were hoping for.

Really, I think of lettuce as an herb I don't particularly care for. And avocados get sad in backpacks, and sad avocados are a sin.

Sick Person Soup

I further desecrate Japanese cuisine.

One of the best things about miso is the ability to make a single serving of soup in five minutes. You might say that's one of the nice things about canned soup, but I affirm that miso is slightly cheaper, slightly lower in sodium, and has never been consumed cold out of the can while standing outside in a downpour. That is to say, miso does not taste like sadness and poor career decisions.

As I stated earlier, I am currently ill. This soup contains several ingredients that holistic medicine proscribes for colds, and three that evidence based science suggests have merit. Why yes, I did go to the health food store in a small town with an obvious cold. Why yes, I did get advice. The pseudoscience will be scattered throughout, the evidence will be at the end. Think of it as a treasure hunt.

Take two cups of water. Simmer over medium heat and add the following ingredients.
Two sliced shiitake mushrooms. Chinese medicine suggests this as a remedy for upper respiratory disease.
One tbs cilantro leaves- used as a cold remedy in India.
(The goal is for the mushrooms to get cooked through, as twelve units of mycology have made me terrified of uncooked mushrooms. Prepare the following ingredients, and then add them just before removing the broth from heat.)
Three cloves garlic, smashed and chopped. The Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans suggest this as an antibiotic and as a gentle way to lay waste to disobedient bacteria and virii colonizing your body. And it's supposed to sooth sore throats.
1/2 inch grated ginger The entire western world and China suggests ginger for colds and coughing.
Juice of 1/2 lemon. Vitamin C, need I say more?
Blend in 2 tbs. red miso. I'm kinda reaching here- it's supposed to rebalance the hormones and suchlike. Reduces the risk for breast cancer- always a good plan. Salty, so my reduced tasting ability is sated.
Drink very hot. If you feel less abraded and lazy than I do, you might consider adding some red pepper flakes- also a holy rain on your internal fauna- or black pepper, or a grated chile.

What does science suggest reduces the duration and severity of a cold? Drinking lots of water, drinking hot liquids, and getting adequate electrolytes. Which is lame, and does not allow me to imaging thousands of viruses writhing in terror. "No, no, increased hydration! Aiiiiii, soothed mucus membrane tissue! Anything but that!

Bad Idea Saturday: Acorn Bread.

Sarlah dared me to do this, and I am apparently seven years old.

So some time ago, Sarlah sent me an article about eating acorns. The article had no recipes, a few tips, and a general message that I should cook with acorns, because I deserved it!

"Goodness," I thought, "Have I been unusually unpleasant lately?"

I have long suspected that acorns simply aren't very tasty. If they were, we would have domesticated them like almonds and walnuts. If they were, some of the hundreds of cultures that used to eat them wouldn't have happily turned to wheat in all of its beautiful forms at the very first opportunity. If acorns were tasty, hogs would eat the ones that fall into their pens before they ate hog food.

But because I can't resist a dare, I shelled a whole bunch of acorns, poured them into a cloth bag, and suspended them in the toilet tank. This is the sole practical tip in that article: replace the endless rinsing that used to be found in streams with the sterile toilet tank. Every time you flush, the acorns leech out a little bit of their bitterness. (The acorns will stain the water in the bowl a weak-tea brown. If you leave part of the bag outside of the tank, water will drip all over the floor. You will then have to explain that there are acorns in the toilet. It will go about as well as you might expect.)

I started looking for acorn bread recipes. An ethnobotany guide explained that 3/4 of the calories consumed in Pre-Columbian California were from acorns. It noted that the indigenous peoples of California were blessed with the ability to gather most of their food for the coming year in four or five days. It notes that preparing enough acorn gruel for the daily meals took at most one or two hours a day, leaving the people of California with copious free time. It also notes that they spent most of this free time searching for foods that were not acorns. Because acorns suck.

I found several recipes online, but they all seem to suffer from the "lotta butter, lotta eggs, lotta flour" problem. Those things taste good on their own! There's no reason to add acorns except as some bizarre ecological cachet! What's the point?

Huh. While I was complaining about that last bit, my mother wandered by and shared anecdotes. Apparently, my opinions about cooking with acorns have not changed much over the last twenty years, and are the long lost reason that I was... mutually agreed to not be the best fit with the local Girl Scout troop. I must have been really obnoxious about native peoples and their access to sugar, wheat, and baking soda. And they say we mature as we age.

The Internet recipes also rely heavily on common names for oaks. Several sites (and Cuervito) suggest eating only the seeds of the white oaks. The ethnobotany guide suggests that the preferred species were black oaks. There is a local species known as the Oregon White Oak (Quercus garryana) which is closely related to the California Black Oak (Q. kelloggii). Both species are technically classified as red oaks. There's a sister clade known as the white oaks, and it contains the Blue Oak, (Q. douglasii) the Golden Oak (Q. chrysolepis) and a whole bunch of other oaks that do not have color related names. All the records I can find are iffy, because anthropologists are terrible botanists. This is a pet peeve of mine; I had to take a quick break from researching this article to spam my anthropologist cousin with information on oak identification.

I ultimately went with the Q. kelloggii growing in my back yard. Lazy...

But what of those acorns, sitting patiently in my toilet tank for... about a month now? I tasted them every week or so, and they never got less bitter. Today, I took them out, rinsed them off, and nibbled on one for a while. Then I spat it out and drank three glasses of water. Then I tried another: still bitter. Then I shelled a fresh acorn and tasted it: less bitter than the prepared ones.

But what is this? One of my friends just returned from a reskilling fair, where there was a workshop on acorn cuisine. She suggests boiling acorns for 90 minutes to remove bitterness. The part of me that objects to using quickbread ingredients objects to boiling things in a pot for a very long time. At the very least, the energy going into making the nuts edible is probably greater than what is strictly reasonable. But still- I now have a viable plan to make an acorn food product, it's already Saturday afternoon, and my cold leads to poor decisions.

------------------------------------------------------

(Makes like four tiny biscuits, because why would you want more?)

Take two handfuls of acorns. Crack them with a meat tenderizer or a nutcracker, and remove the shells. At this point my father will wander into the room, shake his head, and say "Somehow I thought that you would have outgrown doing inexplicable things in the kitchen by now." He will then go outside so that he doesn't have to observe the devastation being wreaked.

Take said acorns and boil for one and a half hours. Change the water three times. Peel off as much of the skin over the acorns as possible- Internet sites say that it's richer in tannins, though my tongue cannot detect a difference.*

*I do have a cold, and it was cook things with tannins in them day, (quince, unripe persimmons) so I may be absolutely wrong.

Remove acorns from heat and drain water. Pulse in food processor (sorry Cuervito!) until it resembles some sort of meal. Frequent scraping of sides will be necessary. (I suppose food processors technically violate the reskilling/native foods part of this exercise, but I purposely cooked without appliances for three years, and am confident I could do so again in a pinch. I could also live on oranges and potatoes and dumpster olive oil again. Part of some experiences is proving that it was a bad idea. Like eating acorns.)

Mix with a bit of water and notice that the dough is not at all cohesive. Grudgingly add a couple tablespoons of wheat flour to harness the glory of gluten. Perhaps a dash of salt? Does that offend delicate sensibilities? And a clove of minced garlic- interesting choice. Form into small oblong biscuits, attempt to wrap in oak leaves, fail, wrap in chestnut leaves, succeed, but only until the biscuits have gone into the oven. Bake for twenty minutes. Remove. Clean the kitchen to make future Bad Idea Fridays possible.

Okay guys. Guys. Everything tasty about this is based on wheat and garlic and salt, but I would totally eat these to survive. It's got a little bitter aftertaste, and I ate only one, and that one was eaten with about an equal volume of bad idea jam- but they aren't awful. They just aren't very good.

Too Sick For Bad Ideas

Instead, here's some almonds.

Almonds made up an absurd percentage of my total calories consumed in the two month rare plant/wedding sprint. It is only now that they sound at all appealing again. Of course, before I'd just poke them into my mouth until I could concentrate again, whereas now there must be preparation.

Take 1/4 cup almonds. Toast over medium heat in 1/2 tsp olive oil for about one minute. Stir frequently. Add 1/4 cup good raisins, a dash of salt and 1/2 tsp thyme. Cook, stirring all the freaking time, for 2-3 more minutes until the almonds are toasted. Serve warm.

Is pretty good, and if you've badly misjudged how long it takes to make mujadarah you can whip this up to distract your guests. Also, I have such strong associations between thyme and beef flavors that I am convinced this contains steak.

(Bad ideas return tomorrow.)

Holy Bean Recipe

Cuervito gave this to me some time ago- all credit is to go to him.

Ingredients
1 and 1/2 cups beans
1/2 small onion
4 cloves garlic
3 leaves epazote (He has some seeds, if you desire this herb.)

Directions:
1. Rinse beans well in a colander to rid them of dust, as the Lord may rinds the human spirit of sin through grace. Soak them overnight in a bowl (such that the water completely covers the beans) in like ways as the mortal soul should soak in the teachings of the One True Faith.
2.) When the beans have soaked for as long as they should, then drain and rinse them again. Place them in a pot and add enough water to just cover them, in acknowledgement of the great divine Plan.
3.) Dice the onion and the garlic into pieces in commemoration of the cooking skills of the maidservants of Solomon.
4.) Add the garlic and onion into the pot, thus infusing the beans with spice in similar manner as the wisdom of the Church is to diffuse through the ignorant population, and add salt and pepper and other spices to taste, and the three leaves of epazote, in honour of the triune God.
5.) Bring the beans to a boil, as Satan does with the iron-bound souls of the damned. When it achieves a boil, cover the pot as the curse of Hell might cover the sanctity of the pure human soul, and turn the heat to "low". Keep thus for an hour, checking occasionally to insure that the beans do not dry out.
6.) Taste, cook or not as needed, and serve in whichever way might make you happy. There is a note here to avoid overcooking. Become religions through the metaphysical experience of beans.

Sammiches

The sandwich is moodily lit to represent my ambivalence about enveganating something that was invented to be a meat delivery tool.

This will be less of a recipe, and more sandwich theory. First, it helps to think "Bahn Mi" instead of "BLT". Second, it helps to have really good bread. Third, it's important to spread something unctuous on said bread- probably avocado, possibly some mushroom pate, (note to self: make mushroom pate.) and in a pinch, vegenaise or whatever watered down Crisco is the thing of the moment. Fourth, use tasty things you made in advance. Lastly, red peppers and cucumbers are all kinds of tasty together, particularly so when combined with bread.

Cabbage Salad

This is totally different from my kale salad recipe.

Chop 1 head cabbage into thin strips/squares. Add a good handful of chopped cilantro. Dress with 1/3 cup olive oil, 1 tbs sugar, salt and pepper to taste, and the juice of two lemons.

The citrus based quasi-vinaigrette is sort of Chilean- it's what C's nanny used to do, so it's the equivalent of mac'n'cheese for him. I will resort to nostalgia to turn someone solidly on team starch to team vegetables.

The deep love he holds for man'n'cheese is of more recent provenience.