redfox

I also adore cake. It's true, though I never thought about about it, that I prefer it in the afternoon with tea or coffee, rather than after dinner. I don't know why that should be! But then, we don't have dessert after dinner very often in these parts anyway, so perhaps it is just my feeling about sweets in general. When better to have them than 4 in the afternoon? Unless it is for breakfast...

I'm happy to read the suggestions in this thread, as a vegetarian who lives in the area and seems to get around to fewer restaurants than most of the other active eGulleteers around here. I do heartily second the suggestion of brunch at Cafe Atlantico -- the vegetarian tasting menu, in particular, is excellent and (I think) a shockingly good value. Edited to add: I've long been afraid of eating at Buck's, as I feel sure to run afoul of Ms. Greenwood's strong feelings, and I always fear that vegetarians as a category may well be on her hate list. I can't imagine that she's super interested in making sure that there are vegetarian options on her menu, nor in making the things that sound vegetarian on the menu be vegetarian in practice.

Yes, that sounds like the one! Thank you, that is good to know.

Tomato soup with Indian spices and fresh cheese, more or less from Indian Home Cooking, and a sorta-kinda deconstructed pesto frittata: some frozen basil puree from this summer and sauteed onions and garlic and pine nuts. We have no parmasean cheese just now, so I am using porcini powder for the umaminess.

Ah, yes. Neither of those are the same as the ones in the NY Times article -- I'd link to it, but all their food articles seem to be exempt from the kind of partner links that let one get around the expiring-free-link problem. These are plain chocolate with shards of bittersweet chocolate incorporated into the dough, then made in the traditional way of cutting circular cross-sections of a log. They are very simple and very good!

Not long ago, I made a batch of the wonderful Herme chocolate sables featured with the Dorie Greenspan article in the NY Times. Both those and the plain sables that accompanied the same article were really delicious and only improved with a little age (they didn't get too much time to age in, of course). Are these also included in the Chocolate Desserts book?

We had McCanns steel-cut Irish oats topped with frozen blackberries and wild blueberries that had been heated up with a splash of water and a hearty shake of cinnamon. A blob of brown sugar in the middle and cold milk over all. Our usual moka-pot coffee and steamed milk.

We had a few people over for NYE dinner, and having a brand-new copy of Indian Home Cooking, a mini-banquet seemed like just the thing. Some was from the book, some not, all was delicious. We had stir-fried carrots with cumin and lime (at room temperature), stir-fried green beans with coconut, saffron rice with cardamom, dal, a simple raita, achar, and mint chutney. The recipes from Suvir's book (the first two dishes) were great -- they really fit in well with my own habits of home cooking Indian food but also broadened my horizons. I look forward to cooking from this book quite a bit.

Tonight I'm making tomatillo and sweet potato soup, which is my husband's very favorite: 10-12 tomatillos, husked and halved 8 large cloves garlic 6 cherry tomatoes, halved 1 medium onion, chopped olive oil 2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped into 1" cubes 4 c. vegetable broth 2 c. water hot sauce sumac salt pepper 1/2 bunch cilantro, chopped Roast the tomatillos, garlic, and tomatoes at 450° for about forty-five minutes. While these cook, peel and chop up the sweet potatoes, then set them a-boilin' in the broth and water. Cooking that also takes about 45 minutes; while it goes, sauté onion in a little bit of olive oil until it is golden. Press the tomatillos and cherry tomatoes and garlic through a strainer to get rid of the skins, or whirl in a blender or food processor. Throw the roasted vegetables and the onion into the pot with the sweet potato, and add two hefty squirts of magic rooster* hot sauce, two pinches sumac, salt and pepper, and the cilantro. After letting everything combine for about ten minutes, mash up some of the sweet potato with a potato masher. *That is, sriracha.

I wonder, too, how many Italian (say) home cooks have an enormous range of recipes they cook for ordinary dinners. Isn't part of what a lot of people find so appealing about a lot of cuisines the very fact that they're so dedicated to tradition? What keeps those traditional foods traditional is, in part, a lack of interest in, as Jinmyo said, "anything beyond the already expected." I'd be more inclined to credit a combination of a certain hankering for novelty with the fact that novel things -- even when they're easy to actually make -- require a certain amount of cognitive time and energy that people may not be ready to invest. Thinking and planning about what ingredients to buy and where to get them is tiring if the process itself doesn't thrill you. It's not just food. There are lots of products in the US and elsewhere where the simple, high-quality version is expensive and hard to find, while a dazzling array of sort-of-interesting and bright and shiny inferior variations are right on your doorstep.

It seems like almost all of these terms could potentiallly be examples of reduplication -- do the repeated elements have related meanings when they stand on their own? Is there a word "tsuru," for example, and if so, what does it mean?

It's been a little while, and I just wanted to pop in to mention a thing I've been enjoying lately: halloumi cheese, which I like just shallow-fried in olive oil. It's filling and savory and goes wonderfully with a green salad or pile of cooked greens. 8 grams of carbohydrates per 100 g, and we generally find 100-125 g. to be a generous serving. Speaking of greens, another thing that's nice as a way of having a bit of grain but not going too far is a modification of a traditional bulgur and spinach dish from Paula Wolfert. The original has a cup of (dry) bulgur to a pound of greens, but we do 1/3 c. bulgur or less. It's a different thing -- that's a pilaf with greens, and this is greens with pilaf -- but still very nice, and more suited to taking a "heavy" role in a meal than the greens alone would be. Also, I find that nice frozen greens work fairly well in this context. Obviously fresh is nicer, but not (in my opinion) the kind of fresh greens I'm finding around here right now. The options are tasteless prewashed baby spinach or tiny bundles of exorbitantly priced chard and the like. Boo. The greens: 1 large onion, cut in thin semicircles 1-2 tablespoons olive oil 1 pound spinach or kale or other mild green, trimmed and shredded OR good quality frozen greens 1/3 cup coarse bulgur 1/3 cup vegetable broth, heated to boiling 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice salt and pepper to taste Saute the onions very slowly in a covered pan, stirring often, until they're dark gold. In the meantime, wilt your greens in a saucepan that also has a lid. If there's sigifigant excess liquid in the saucepan, drain it off. Turn heat to very low. Then add the bulgur, the broth, the allspice, and salt and pepper and put the cover on. Cook 20-25 minutes, until the bulgur is tender. Turn off the heat and let it sit for another five minutes or so, then stir in the onions.

I make salty/sweet/spicy spiced walnuts myself. They're very popular and easy to do in bulk. The heart of the spice mixture I use is garam masala, in an egg white base. They are tragically addictive, I tell you what. I've started packaging them in brown bags of the same kind that you get for putting bulk coffee beans in; they come in a bunch of different sizes and are greasproof. This year, I'm also reviving my old habit of making small panpepato cakes. I use Carol Fields' recipe from Celebrating Italy, but with prunes instead of raisins.

I got really absurd quantities of greens at the farmer's market today: spinach, curly kale, and turnip greens, my recent most favorite. One of the farmers has a particularly tender variety. Anyway, I like to prepare them for storage all in one go, bringing a big pot of salted water to a boil and then parboiling each type of green separately, then draining, cooling, and squeezing out extra water. Some nutrients are lost this way, of course, but they a) take up a lot less space in the refrigerator b) keep better, because there's no risk of tearing and bruising that accelerates rot, and c) are much more amenable to sauteeing and related cooking methods, because they don't express liquid that then makes them stew rather than sautee. The spinach got used tonight in a turnip curry. It turns out that turnips are a beautiful substitute in Indian recipes where potatoes are commonly called for. Madhur Jaffrey has a tip where she suggests soaking your peeled and chopped turnips in salty water to help make the texture a bit denser. It works very well and coincidentally insures that the turnips are seasoned all through. These were particularly attractive and firm young turnips -- I should have bought more of them while I had the chance. Hopefully there will be a few more chances to get the young 'uns before the weather turns too cold. My mother sent me a nice-sounding cabbage recipe today. I'll have to buy a cabbage and try it out, and then I'll report back. I do think cabbage is an unfairly maligned vegetable. I'm very fond of it. Hm... I wonder if turnips would make a good bubble-and-squeak-ish thing. And also whether it would actually work out to be sufficiently low carb, given that turnips are not exactly lettuce. Whaddya think?

I heard some people talking excitedly about Jackie's this morning at Mark's Kitchen in TP -- I think it will be filling an unmet niche for a lot of folks. Those of you who have been there, did you notice if it seemed like there was much in the menu in the way of vegetarian options?

A slice of leftover thin-crust pizza with caramelized onions and mushrooms from last night, the usual coffee suspect, and a Honeycrisp apple.

In my social circles, we call that "lover's salad" -- lettuce alone!

Wow, thanks, those are wonderful suggestions -- I had no idea about the sand trick! mklynch, do you have a favorite recipe for ginger marmelade?

Breakfast lentils: lentils cooked with onions, garlic, and peanuts, served at room temp with yogurt and more crispy onions on top. Moka coffee with steamed milk.

Last week, I got a couple of ounces of freshly harvested ginger root, not counting the stems, which are still attached, from my community-sponsored agriculture plan. I don't think I've ever had such tender young ginger before. It's not TONS of ginger, enough to candy en masse, say -- I can eat half a pound of crystallized ginger in a sitting or two -- but substantially more than I would use in ordinary applications. There may be more forthcoming this week, or there may not. So: 1. How should I be storing it to maximize its youthful goodness? Counter, fridge, freezer? Should the stems stay on, or should they go? Are the stems good for anything? 2. Any suggestions for a delicious application or two that would make use of its goodness before the bloom wears off?

Ohhh, Natty Bo. I have a feeling I'm coming down with a big fat fall cold. In the interests of staving it off, I made a big pot of white bean soup with saffron, spinach, and a bit of madeira. Manhattans beforehand, while the soup flavors mingled, and hot tea afterwards. Possibly a Sam Fuller movie after that, though we'll see if I have it in me. It's Pickup on South Street, not White Dog or anything, so I may be able to pull it off. Am I hardboiled enough? Can my soup give me the vigor I need? *clunk* Well, maybe.

That's an Akmak cracker, which is high in fiber but still definitely a carb -- about 3 g. per cracker. But the salad is very good on lettuce leaves, or by itself, too.

I'm really enjoying this thread. I've started work on my dissertation recently, which is making it a lot harder for me to be a good, responsible cook. But on the other hand, (a) it's one of the few justifiable relaxations I can engage in, and (b) if we eat junk, I'm hardly going to work at my best. So I'm trying. Here's another breakfast/snack/appetizer item we like, and which I can make up a few days' worth at once: Take 12 oz. or so of firm tofu and drain it while you prepare the other stuff. Heat a glug of olive oil in a large pan. Saute one large or two small onions, sliced thin, and 6-8 oz. of sliced mushrooms until the onions are gold and the mushrooms are cooked. Cut the tofu into chunks and put everything in the food processor. Pulse off and on just a few times, until combined and in small bits, but still fluffy, rather than pasty. Remove to a bowl, where you add several spoonfuls of mayo, LOTS of chopped dill, and salt and pepper. I find it always needs more salt than you would think, and that it is pretty much impossible to add too much dill.

I have one and I love it. I find that the carbination holds up very well -- for example, we recently left the siphon about half full while we went away for two weeks. It was still fizzy when we got back.

Still recovering from surprisingly strong jet-lag from our recent trip to Italy, paired with instant nostalgia. Add a dash of a longish drive at what would normally have been dinnertime in order to retrieve our cat from a friend's house, and what you get is a small plate of caprese salad alla what we have in the house: two astoundingly ripe Cherokee Purple tomatoes, half a big ball of buffalo mozzarella, olive oil, salt, pepper, a drizzle of real balsamic vinegar. Accompanied by plenty of good water. Sleep now?