trifling

Perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to try to start this thing in the midst of a whirlwind of other busy-ness in life — then again, I’d never get anything done if I just waited around for enough time to show up. So I’m saying a big so-what to this being not-necessarily-weekly, and not-necessarily-community. Me, talking to myself at random intervals? Nothing new.

So, soldiering on, my plans for this week:

• Garden Vegetable-Semolina Pilaf, from Yamuna Devi’s Yamuna’s Table
• Potage Polenta, from Nava Atlas’ Vegetarian Soups for All Seasons
• Lamb Sweet Potatoes with Apricots (Jordaloo Boti), from Camellia Panjabi’s The Great Curries of Indian

Sadly I know next to nothing about Indian cooking terms (apart from the usual suspects: saag, paneer, aloo, etc), so I have no idea how to rename my vegetarianization of that curry. We’ll see how it tastes before I start trying to figure that one out.

Athena Barley with Kalamata Olives and Tomatoes
I discovered this week that I love barley. It’s like eating tiny, perfectly-cooked gnocci — chewy and somehow both soft and firm at the same time. Toothsome. I could eat it all day long. And this particular preparation sang. It was bright and sassy, with a nice bite from the parsley and lemon juice and green onions, which would make it work equally well as a summer salad. (Never fear — that delicious comforting barley [seriously, I could just curl up all snug and glowy in the experience of eating it] means this dish is equally at home in winter.) Don’t cheap out on your olives here — I was very glad I’d gotten good kalamatas from Whole Foods. If you’re looking to save money just put less in. I ate (and loved) this salad throughout the week, but I think it was at its peak on day two.

Gigi Hamilton’s Really Hot, Really Delectable Mixed Beans with a Lot of Ginger
I thought these beans were as advertised: hot and delectable. Though I don’t think I’d go so far as ‘really’ hot — they had a lovely (and pleasantly surprising) range of qualities of spicy from the ginger and chiles, but didn’t leave my tongue feeling flayed (which is how hot food earns its ‘really’ in my book). So don’t be afraid of adding that extra chile in. I have heaps of this in my freezer now, and I find that quite delightful. The secret star of this dish is the hominy, so don’t skip it! (The not-secret star, by the way, is the ginger. Mmm ginger.)

Scallioned Potato Bake
This recipe is easy enough to make with a toddler in one arm (though it makes the chopping awkward; I recommend you set your toddler down for that part if you can). It’s not an especially photogenic dish, but it’s a satisfying one, and I found myself increasingly charmed as I ate through the leftovers. It’s a little different from potato preparations I’m used to, but in a friendly, unpretentious way. This could be a good recipe for your last-minute/recipe-less repertoire — there are only a few ingredients to remember, some of which could be easily substituted, and I don’t think the measurements are all that picky. I count my veganization of this one a success (particular notes on that in its own post).

The thought of cook-alongs has been rattling around in the back of my mind since I first started considering this site. I like the camaraderie of it, the idea of swapping notes on the same recipes. Living alone — and having a family who doesn’t particularly care about cooking — I usually miss out on the social aspect of meal preparation. Cook-alongs seem like a good way to share kitchens across the miles. Not to mention share the burden of weekly meal planning: I invite anyone who’s interested to pitch in — offer a recipe or a whole week.

For this first week I’ve chosen three recipes based entirely on whim (well, and the barley I’ve been meaning to use for ages). I usually cook a few times a week and eat a lot of leftovers; please jump in and make any or all of these as your time and needs dictate (I’m halving the barley dish because there’s only so much one person can eat). I’m thinking for archiving purposes I’ll make separate posts for each recipe — general comments and ideas for how to fine-tune this can go here, and anything related to a particular recipe can go in its own comments. Everyone can send in pictures and verdicts and all and we can edit those into the posts for posterity. So let’s get cookin’!

Cook-Along #1:

• Athena Barley with Kalamata Olives and Tomatoes
• Gigi Hamilton’s Really Hot, Really Delectable Mixed Beans with a Lot of Ginger
• Scallioned Potato Bake

Note: Please make sure you’re logged in or registered to participate. This is about a shared cooking experience, not just posting a bunch of free recipes (not, that is to say, that you have to pay to register — it’s totally free, and private, and etc!).

I spent a lot of time in the kitchen this weekend (though it seemed like most of it was spent washing dishes, ugh). I made some very mediocre pumpkin pancakes (they tasted good but the texture was all wrong, and you’d think that one day I’d stop trying to just shoot from the hip with pancake recipes and instead actually write one down and follow it) and some very satisfying tortillas (not the best I’ve ever had but the first I’ve ever made myself, and extremely tortilla-y, much to my delight), and spent much of the day yesterday making variation #1 of the white rolls from Peter Reinhardt’s Bread Baker’s Apprentice. I want to make the Thanksgiving rolls but, being an extremely novice bread-baker to begin with, I didn’t want to have my first crack at them be for the big event. (Incidentally, I am utterly in love with the BBA book. It’s on my Christmas list. I have to keep reminding myself that I am not allowed to write in the copy I have out from the library.) I also remembered that I have a box of this lovely flowering tea and broke out my little tea set, and it was all beautiful and zen and perfectly Sunday afternoon. Sadly I don’t have a glass teapot, which makes it hard to watch the whole show of the flowering tea (it starts out as this closed bud and as the tea steeps all the leaves unfurl to reveal this soft pinkish interior, and it’s all quite beautiful and fascinating), but it was pretty and delicious all the same.

Anyhow. It seemed a shame not to eat some of the rolls straight away, so while the dough was rising I spent way too long flipping through sandwich ideas from about a zillion cookbooks. Along the way I picked up a craving for both eggplant and a Reuben, so I smooshed four recipes and my idea of a Reuben together and jaunted off for my weekly grocery shopping.

The rolls came out beautifully. I need to work on my shaping technique for the pull-aparts to make the tops prettier, but all the rolls had a deep goldeny flush of brown that made me want to dance around the kitchen: I’d made rolls that looked just exactly like rolls, and smelled like rolls, and (I admit I squished one a little almost straight from the oven, just to see) felt like rolls. I probably shouldn’t've been so delighted, but somewhere along the line bread-making got built up in my head as this big impossible task, this culinary Mount Everest. Easy enough to make mediocre bread, but to make something good required some serious kitchen wizardry. I still wouldn’t take my own rolls over, say, French Meadow’s (I actually haven’t had their rolls but remembering the bread baskets we got on my birthday still curls my toes), but see-ya grocery store bread!

So, onto the Reuben. I feel compelled to tweak it before really setting down a recipe for it, but I’m definitely onto something tasty. All the veg Reuben recipes I’ve seen call for tempeh, and then some variation on a mayo-tomato dressing. I didn’t feel like tempeh, though, and I really didn’t feel like marinating anything. So I put everything in the dressing: mayo, ketchup, dill, carraway seeds (because I was using white bread, which is normally totally wrong for this sandwich but which had very recently come out of my oven, making it, in this case, just right — er, and carraway seeds are something I associate with rye bread, which is what’s usually right, and which is incidentally my very favorite sort of bread), and capers (because my golden standard, French Meadow’s vegan tempeh Reuben, has capers in their dressing; and because I really like capers). I broiled thick slices of eggplant and layered that on the bread with slices of tomato, some sauerkraut, and the dressing. And it was lovely. Next time I’d like to try marinating the eggplant in something involving veg Worcestershire sauce (I don’t have any now, which is why I left it out of the dressing). And there needs to be more sauerkraut. I like sauerkraut.

Along with the sandwich, I had Cooking Light’s Tuscan Tomato Soup. I made it last year for Christmas and fell utterly in love with how easy and tasty it was, and then promptly forgot to make it again. I also forgot that I think it’s silly that the recipe calls for canned whole tomatoes and then asks you to chop them, rather than asking for canned chopped tomatoes to begin with. My immersion blender made quick work of it, but still: save yourself some time (and extra clean-up) and get chopped or diced or crushed or whatever your fancy is to begin with. I’ve skipped the crouton rigmarole both times. It’s the balsamic vinegar that delights.

Incidentally — imagine my surprise this morning to discover over at Simply Recipes that Elise and her family just had Reubens as well. For a more traditional (non-vegetarian) version, check it out!

This is a Kashmiri dish that Panjabi describes as “mildly spicy”, whose name she explains comes from words meaning fat and heat, intensity. I knew going in my version wasn’t going to involve any stewed bones and would not have the glimmery lustrous sheen of oil hers does, but I was hoping for the promised intensity. I ended up getting a lot more of it than I’d bargained for. (Verdict: Spicy, holy god.)

At the store I’d puzzled over packages of both tempeh and seitan, hoping for a clue about which would be the best lamb replacement, but with none forthcoming I chose seitan because it was cheaper. It ended up being a bad substitute. Not that I didn’t like it, but both the texture and taste of the five-grain variety I’d bought bore no resemblance whatsoever to the traditional lamb. I’m not a big meat-substitute sort of person, but the sweet, forthright grain taste did battle with the curry rather than complementing it. It was also far shy of the pound and a half of lamb called for; in the end I think I just didn’t have enough stuff for the amount of spice in the dish. Next time I’ll cut back on the spices and bulk up on veggies, particularly potatoes. Until then, I reserve further judgment.

As for the soy yogurt — alone it has a distinct, though not unpleasant, soy taste. Cooked into the dish I couldn’t detect it at all, and I think it worked fine as a cow yogurt replacement. The real test, I think, would be in something much more delicately spiced.