The roads are bad, and the government let us know that it won’t even try to plow local streets until after the snow stops.  One thoroughfare near us is blocked by several fallen trees (yes, that’s a road in the picture); other main roads are covered in slush that may soon turn to ice.

But we’re lucky to still have power (so far, so good), we’ve got nowhere to go, and I’m excited to spend a weekend hunkered down and eating good food.  How better to spend a blizzard than by baking?

Other people seemed to have the same idea.  Our local grocery stores on Thursday night were out of things like bread and milk (for the panicked pantry-stocker), chips and beer (for the panicked sports fan – no one’s going shopping between now and the Superbowl), and dangerously low on chocolate chips (which was my priority).  Fortunately, Nathan secured us some chocolate chips, and we’re well stocked to spend the weekend eating.

If you’re snowed in, now or in the future, here are some of my favorite storm survival techniques:

• Hot cocoa is a must.  None of the instant powdered stuff, please.  Put milk in a saucepan, add cocoa powder and sugar (in roughly equal quantities for your standard cocoa – make it sweeter or more chocolatey depending on your preferences), and heat it until it’s steaming.  Or, add pieces of real chocolate for an even richer drink.  Then spice it up with cinnamon or cayenne (for a Mexican flavor), mint or almond extract, or your favorite liquor (rum, kahlua, and Bailey’s are some of my favorites), and enjoy.
• Cookies!  I made a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough last night, formed it into rolls, wrapped it in plastic, and chilled it in the fridge.  Now it’s ready for us to slice off and bake cookies anytime, and have fresh hot cookies whenever we want them.  But really, in a snowstorm, any sort of cookie will do.
• Bread can be an all-day activity, and is satisfying in an entirely different way that cookies.  I’m making pretzels.
• Soup of any kind.  Tomato soup, lentil soup, vegetable soup, all perfect.
• Chili.  I’m making chili tomorrow for my coworker’s Superbowl chili cookoff, but I would make it anyway.  If I can’t make it to the party because the roads still aren’t clear, I WILL make it anyway.
• Macaroni and cheese. Need I say more?
• Baked potatoes, which we had last night loaded with cheese and broccoli.
• Something extravagant – because, has there ever been a better time to spend all day in the kitchen?  It’s the perfect excuse to try your hand at pasta-making, make a four-course French dinner, or simmer a curry for hours on the stove. Make enchiladas with homemade tortillas and sauce.  Use one of the 5 gallons of milk you stocked up on to make your own cheese.

Wherever you are, if you’re in this storm, you’re not going anywhere.  So flip through your cookbooks, and make something tasty!

Are you stuck in the snowpocalypse this weekend?  What are you making?

“We need dinner,” I told him.  “We have two options. We can have spaghetti with the veggie meatballs -”

“Did I mention those meatballs were really, really good?” he interrupts.  (They are good.  I’ll be sharing that recipe in a few days, just as soon as I get some pictures.)

“- or sweet potato quesadillas,” I finish.

He does not hesitate for a second.  “The quesadillas.”  There was no competition.

Sweet potatoes are good for many, many things, and I don’t use them often enough, or creatively enough.  I’ll usually just bake them and mash them, to eat as a side dish.  But in this dinner, they’re the stars.  They’re quite literally the secret ingredient.  I will confess that I’ve started keeping already-baked sweet potatoes in the fridge just so I can make this recipe. It’s rapidly becoming one of our favorite dishes.

If you have baked sweet potato on hand, it only takes about 15 minutes to make.  If not, then what were you thinking? But it’s not the end of the world, because it only takes about an hour to bake them at 425, and you can speed the process by microwaving them for about 5 minutes, then finishing them in the oven.  (Or just cook them in the microwave until they’re soft, but I don’t think they taste as good.)

You can season these however you want, but I think they’re great with just a few spoonfuls of salsa mixed in. You could go crazy and add spices, maybe a little cumin or cinnamon, dice some onions, chop some garlic, maybe sauté some peppers… but if you just want to stir in some salsa from a jar, it’ll be just fine.

Sweet Potato Quesadillas

• Some baked, mashed sweet potato (about 1 medium potato for every 2 people)
• Some cheese (I like sharp cheddar)
• Some salsa (pretty much any kind)
• Some tortillas

Mix the salsa (or other seasonings of your choice) into the sweet potato.

Spread the sweet potato about 1/4 inch thick over a tortilla.  Cover with shredded cheese. Then cover with another tortilla.

Fry the whole thing in a large frying pan (no oil needed) over medium heat for a couple minutes.  When the cheese is just beginning to get melty, flip it over (carefully! but it should hold together fine) and cook it on the other side for a couple minutes more. The tortillas should develop some pleasing black spots, but should not burn.

Serve piping hot and try not to burn your fingers as you gobble it up.

But I can’t live on tea alone, and that’s why our ancestors invented stew.

Stew is typically a meaty dish, but it can easily be made vegetarian and it’s just as warm and satisfying. It’s also a good clean-out-the-fridge dish, as it’s very forgiving, and the balance of flavors it usually less important than just having lots of hearty things in it.

Still, I’m proud of the stew I whipped up the other day – I think it came together with a lot of personality, and is different enough from the average stew to merit special recognition.  It’s loosely inspired by some West African recipes I’ve eaten and/or read, but doesn’t really follow any cooking tradition.  The choice of ingredients (especially the peanut butter) was guided partly by my imagination of what flavors might be nice, but equally as much by the fact that I was craving peanut butter that day.  It worked well.

The following “recipe” is more like a guideline – I lost track of how much of some things I put in, or how long they cooked, but like I said, you’ll find it pretty forgiving.

Sweet Potato Peanut Butter Stew

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tablespoon (or more) minced ginger
• 3 cups warm vegetable stock
• 1 cup warm water
• Two small or one large sweet potato, diced
• 1 can chickpeas
• 2 tablespoons brown rice
• 2 tablespoons peanuts
• 1/4 cup (or more) chunky peanut butter
• lemon juice, salt, and pepper (to taste)

Heat the olive oil in a large pot, and saute the garlic and ginger until the garlic begins to brown.

Add the water and stock, and bring it to a boil.  Lower the heat to a simmer, then add the sweet potato, chickpeas, rice, and peanuts.  Let it simmer half-covered for about an hour, until the rice is done and the sweet potato is falling apart.

Add the peanut butter and stir to dissolve.  Mash some of the sweet potatoes against the side of the pot to thicken the stew.

Simmer a few more minutes, then taste and add lemon juice, salt, and pepper as needed.

Serve piping hot and enjoy!

My extra motivation to sleep in came from my Sunday farmers’ market haul.  Nathan and I had trekked up to Baltimore, where their farmer’s market is impressively large, hugely diverse and, while it’ll never compete with my local market in my affections, does have better prices and some good bargains.  For instance: a great big basket of seconds tomatoes for $2.50.  The basket was probably over 3 lbs of tomatoes, and it was too much of a steal – I had to get it and make sauce.

Tomato sauce, simmering away

Making tomato sauce is a little labor intensive, but the real reason I haven’t done it in years is that it’s just not economical.  No matter how good the sauce comes out, it takes a huge volume of tomatoes to make a respectable amount of sauce.  Even mediocre fresh tomatoes tend to be pretty expensive, and good fresh tomatoes are really, really expensive if you buy them in quantity.  Maybe you’ve got a great big garden, but the odds are you don’t have enough tomatoes to make sauce.  If you do have that quantity of tomatoes to spare, you’re living the good life.  That’s why, if you ever get a good deal on a big box of tomatoes, you should pounce.

Because these tomatoes weren’t great, but let me tell you, they made a damn good sauce.  Most of them had huge, ugly bruises; a couple were starting to turn fuzzy; and several felt too hard when I cut into them.  But once I chopped them up and cooked them down, some sort of magic happened.  They tasted like the most tomato-ey tomatoes you’ve ever had.  And that’s the reward for spending a rainy afternoon chopping tomatoes and making the house smell delicious – the best sauce you’ve ever had.

There are two keys to making sauce (besides having lots of tomatoes): peeling them, and seeding them.  Neither of these things is hard to do.  But, they can take a little time if you are doing them a lot.  It helps to crank up the music, or bring a friend if you can.

Peeling tomatoes is actually a neat trick, if you’ve never done it en masse before.  The secret is blanching: dipping the tomatoes in hot water long enough to release the skins.  First, get yourself set up with a pan of boiling water, deep enough for a tomato, and a bowl of ice water.  Then just cut a small, shallow ‘x’ in each one with a serrated knife, dunk them one at a time in boiling water and let them sit just until the skin starts to pull away – about a minute.  Then, move them quickly to the ice water, and let them sit until you can handle them.  The skin will just slide off: magic!

It takes a lot of tomatoes to make sauce!

Seeding is similarly easy: slice the tomato in half along its equator, and then squeeze each half over a bowl until the seeds and pulp come out.  (Did I mention it helps to get meaty tomatoes, the kind that are more flesh than juice?  No surprise, but it helps!)  You don’t have to be a perfectionist, either.  A few seeds in your sauce won’t hurt you.  Once the seeds are out, just coarsely chop the flesh.  (When you’re done, you can strain the seeds out and save the tomato juice, which you can drink or use in place of stock; it’s like a bonus.)

Then, you get cooking.  There are lots of variations on tomato sauce, and you can get as creative as you want.  My rendition was, I feel, pretty classic: I sauted an onion and a few cloves of garlic in olive oil, until they were just starting to brown, then added the tomatoes, along with some basil, oregano, salt, and pepper.  I let it simmer for about an hour and a half, until most of the liquid cooked off, and was left with a nice chunky, flavorful sauce.

The best part was that I served the sauce over homemade gnocchi – but that’s a story for another day.  The moral here is that homemade tomato sauce is amazing, and if you get a good deal on a couple pounds of less-than-perfect tomatoes, you should take it!

Have you ever made sauce from scratch?  Was yours more creative than mine?  What did you do?

The compromise?  A fancied-up version of our standby favorite: burritos.

Fresh tortilla with all the fixin's

There’s probably a “right” way to do Tex-Mex, and I’m pretty sure my way isn’t it.  The typical quick-and-dirty Tex-Mex dinner in my house is: can of refried beans, jar of salsa, grated cheese, bag of chips.  Not so impressive.  But last night it was much, much better: homemade salsa, homemade refried beans, homemade tortillas (plus non-homemade cheese… what can you do?)

The salsa was the easy part, and I followed a pretty standard pattern: fresh tomatoes (I used Cherokee Purples), garlic, onion, red pepper, cilantro, lime juice, all chopped up fine and mixed together.  As a general rule, you should chop everything more finely than I did, or use a food processor, or else you’ll have very chunky salsa. But sometimes that’s nice.  I still haven’t figured out the trick of keeping salsa from getting too watery – I even squeezed out (and saved) the juice from the tomatoes, but it was still very wet.  Any of you know how to deal with over-juicy tomatoes?

Fresh tomato salsa

I learned a few months ago that you can make refried beans from scratch, and it was a revelation.  No more canned refried beans for me!  I’ve been waiting and waiting for a chance to share this one with you.  It’s fast and easy, and much tastier than the processed kind.  It has a pleasing, chunky texture, and you know exactly what’s in it. (I always felt there was something a little… odd… about refried beans.  Not sure why, except that they kind of look like dog food.  Am I the only one who’s noticed that?  The homemade kind definitely don’t!)

I had never made tortillas before last night (except maybe at some long-forgotten, ambitious co-op lunch), but I’d always kind of wanted to try.  It turned out to be nearly the easiest bread I’d ever made.  I say nearly because you do have to roll them out.  It’s not that arduous for a small batch, but it would give me pause if I were throwing a party.  It is easier, of course, if you have a willing cooking partner, which I did, so I can’t honestly speak to how long it took.  (Incidentally, both of the cookbooks I referenced suggested “if you have a tortilla press…” which I’d always thought was a silly single-purpose gadget.  After last night, I can imagine that if you made these with any regularity, you would really, really want to have a tortilla press.)  But the cooking is incredibly, delightfully quick: toss the tortilla on the frying pan, wait about 30-60 seconds, flip it, wait another 30 seconds, remove and repeat.  These tortillas were so well-behaved I couldn’t believe it.  They didn’t stick at all, firmed up quickly enough that you could flip them just with tongs, and yet stayed soft enough (mostly) that you could make a burrito out of them.  The hardest part was just getting them into the frying pan without letting them double over – as you can see, most of ours ended up rather misshapen.  But that didn’t affect their usefulness or deliciousness!

What do you like to make from scratch that you’d normally buy in a store?  Comment and tell me!

Mash the simmering beans against the side of the pot until they get nice and thick

Refried Beans

• One can (or a couple cups) of black or pinto beans
• 1/4 of an onion, chopped
• 1-2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• A few tablespoons of water or (better yet) stock
• salt, pepper, and other appropriate seasonings

Heat the oil in a medium saucepan, over medium heat.  Add the onion, then the garlic, and stir occasionally until they’re beginning to brown.  You could add cumin or other seasonings now if you wanted.

Add the beans and liquid, bringing them to a simmer.  Once they’re warm, start stirring and mashing the beans against the side of the pan.  As you mash, they’ll slowly become smooth and thick.

That’s all there is to it!  Keep stirring and mashing until you like the consistency.  Don’t let them dry out – if they start to, add more liquid.  The end product should be thick but easy to spoon and spread.  Towards the end, add salt and pepper to taste.

A stack of fresh, hot tortillas

Tortillas

• 2 cups flour (white or whole wheat)
• 3 tablespoons oil
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2/3 c warm water (plus or minus)

Stir the flour and salt together.  Drizzle in the oil and mix until it’s well blended.  Add water slowly, stirring, until you have a soft-ish dough that holds together well.  (One book I read described it as “the texture of your earlobe” which I think is great.)  Cover it with plastic or a damp cloth, and let it sit about 20 minutes.

Divide the dough into 8-10 pieces and form them into balls.  Let them rest a few more minutes, then roll them into flat, round disks.  They should be very thin, about as thin as you can get them without them falling apart.  We found that the thinnest ones had the best taste when cooked, but were more likely to crack when we rolled them – slightly thicker ones were more pliable but tasted kind of doughy.  So, experiment and look for a happy middle ground.

The tortilla will start to form bubbles on the skillet, and cooks very quickly!

To cook them, put a large, dry (unoiled) skillet over medium to medium-high heat and let it get nice and hot.  Add the first tortilla and let it cook for less than a minute, until there are nice brown spots on the underside.  Then flip it, and cook another 30 seconds for the second side to get browned.  Then remove to a napkin-covered plate, and start the next one.  Don’t multitask or get distracted!  They cook (and burn) quickly.

Our very own burrito bar, (almost) all made from scratch: beans, cheese, tortillas, salsa

Savory pancakes, packed full of good things, make a great dinner

The other day, I was in the mood for something very hearty and healthy for dinner, but because it was a rainy day, I was also in the mood for comfort food.  Really, I was in the mood for pancakes.  I thought of my own savory pancakes of the past, and remembered some tips from Mark Bittman on some very tasty-looking spinach pancakes.  Then I combined the ideas, went a few steps further, and got something a little more extreme.

As it turns out, you can cram just about anything into pancakes, and end up with a tasty dinner.  If you know how to make pancakes from scratch, it’s easy to improvise and throw in additional fillings or seasonings – just make sure the batter still holds together.  (If you’ve never made pancakes from scratch, grab a book and learn.  It’s an invaluable skill and the results are far better than any boxed mix.  It’s easy and takes hardly any time.  Really!)  These weren’t the very best pancakes I’ve ever had, but then they’re in their own league – they were undoubtedly the healthiest, and more than held their own in the taste department.  I don’t know the exact proportions, because I was improvising, but what went into these pancakes was approximately:

• 1 1/2 cup frozen chopped spinach
• 1 carrot, grated
• 1/4 cup swiss cheese, grated
• 1/4 cup sunflower seeds
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 1 Tb olive oil
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• dash of pepper, dill, and nutmeg
• 1 tsp lemon juice

Then you just mix up the wet ingredients, mix up the dry ingredients, mix them all together, and cook them up.  I pre-cooked the veggies, but I’m not sure it was necessary.  This made 6 small (but dense) pancakes, which was slightly more than the two of us could manage.  We ate them with plenty of yogurt.  This is definitely going to be the direction I go next time I want pancakes for dinner – which, to be honest, is pretty often.

Do you like pancakes for dinner?  What’s your favorite way to jazz them up?

Chachouka - eggs just added

This recipe has been off my radar for a little while, but it’s quick and easy and wholesome (if you’re in the camp that thinks eggs are healthy – I do).  It’s also fun to say! I was first introduced to chachouka on a trip to Israel, where aside from really good falafel, this was the best thing I ate.  The one-pot simplicity makes it especially appealing to me: you make a tasty sauce of diced tomatoes and spices, and then poach eggs right there in the sauce.  It makes poaching eggs, which is normally an intimidating task, dead easy.  It’s quick enough for any weekday meal, and makes good leftovers, too.  The quantities here feed about 4 (or 2 plus leftovers).  I recommend serving it over simple grains or flatbread.  I used Israeli couscous, which looks just like an extra-large version of the couscous we’re most familiar with, because it seemed appropriate and it’s fun to eat.  You could easily use rice or pita bread.

Chachouka - poached and ready to eat

Chachouka

One 2 lb can of diced tomatoes or two smaller cans (though you could use fresh, if you have an abundance)
One small onion
2 cloves of garlic
Olive Oil
Cumin, paprika and/or hot pepper, to taste
4 eggs

• Use a deep skillet.  Remove the eggs from the fridge to warm a little.
• Dice the onion and garlic, and saute in olive oil until soft.  Add spices and saute another minute or two.
• Add the tomatoes, juice and all, and bring the mixture to a simmer.
• The fun part: make evenly spaced indentations in the sauce, one for each egg.  Crack each egg and pour into one of the indentations (careful not to get any shell – if you’re concerned, crack the egg into a bowl first, then pour into the sauce).
• Cover and turn the heat low.  Cook for about 5  minutes to poach the eggs.  Keep an occasional eye on them – you can call it done when the whites turn white but the yolks will still be runny.  Or, wait a couple more minutes for more solid yolks.
• Serve hot, with one egg and sauce per person, over grains or with bread.

This is comfort food at its best.  It’s not a dish for calorie-counting types.  Just acknowledge that it’s terrible for you, and that it’s delicious and you’re going to eat it anyway.  This concoction is so rich, cheesy, and creamy that I’d suggest serving it with plenty of veggies on the side to balance it out.  Or, saute some veggies and stir them in.  I usually go just for the classic, but this week I added some finely-chopped mushrooms and seitan, and it made a nice counterpoint to the heaviness of the cheese, and made the dish feel like a whole meal and not just an indulgence.

It’s not hard to prepare, and since it’s based on a pretty standard bechamel sauce (with extra cheese) it’s a useful technique to add to your skill set if you’ve never done it.  You can use any kind of cheese you want, or a combination – hard cheeses work best, and cheddar is the classic, but I like to mix up whatever I have on hand.  Be creative!

Another note – don’t skimp.  No low-fat cheeses, margarine, or anything like that.  If you’re going to make macaroni and cheese from scratch, make sure it’s the real thing.  If the “mac and cheese” you’re used to comes from a brightly-colored box (and I confess that I keep some of that stuff on hand, for long days), prepare to be blown away.

Baked Macaroni and Cheese

• 1 tb. butter
• 1 tb. flour
• 1 c. milk
• 1-2 c. grated cheese (cheddar or blend of your favorites)
• 1/2 lb. pasta
• any desired seasonings or add-ins (completely optional)

1. Set oven to 350.
2. Start the pasta cooking.  It can cook while you make the sauce – just drain and set aside when it’s done.
3. Heat up the milk on the stove or in the microwave until it’s quite warm.  This will make it easier to stir into the sauce without lumps.
4. Melt the butter over low heat in a small saucepan.  Once it’s melted, stir in the flour and cook gently, stirring often, until it begins to brown a little.  Careful not to let it burn!
5. Add the milk and stir well.  Raise the heat to medium and bring the mixture towards – but not to – boiling.
6. As the sauce gets hot, gradually add the cheese, stirring until it’s melted into the sauce.  As it approaches the boiling point, it will suddenly thicken.  Be careful not to boil it, because the cheese will begin to clump unpleasantly.
7. Combine the sauce and cooked pasta, along with any additions, in a baking dish.  Any large enough dish will do – the wider it is, the greater the crispy-top-to-creamy-inside ratio.  I sometimes add the pasta to the sauce a bit at a time just to make sure I haven’t made more pasta than the sauce can hold.  Follow your own instincts about what cheese-to-pasta ratio you want, but make sure the pasta gets well coated.
8. Bake for about 15 minutes, until the top just begins to brown.  Enjoy!

Grandma passed away recently, so this weekend I made some of my favorite recipes in her honor. Food has a great power to evoke memories, and to me these recipes are intertwined with Christmas and my grandmother.  Her mint brownies are a tradition in my family – it just wouldn’t be Christmas without them. And her gingerbread is remarkable; it’s not hers, strictly, since this one has been passed down for a few generations, but it’s rich and full of spice, and unlike any I’ve tasted elsewhere. Most gingerbread you see is in cookie form, but this one is a cake. It goes great with whipped cream.

Thanks to Grandma for so many happy Christmas memories.  If you make these, I hope they bring a little extra warmth into your holiday celebrations, or into your winter if you make them just for fun.

Mint Brownies

• 2 oz. unsweetened chocolate
• 1/2 c butter
• 2 eggs
• 1 c sugar
• 1/4 tsp peppermint extract
• 1/2 sifted flour
• 1/2 c chopped nuts (completely optional; I don’t usually use them)
• dash salt

Melt chocolate & butter.  Beat eggs well; stir in sugar, peppermint, chocolate, and butter.  Add flour, salt, and nuts (if using).  Mix thoroughly.  Pour into a 9″ square pan and bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes.  Cool completely.  Stir together a frosting of:

• 2 tbsp soft butter
• 1 c powdered sugar
• 1 tbsp milk (or more if needed to get a spreadable texture)
• 3/4 tsp peppermint
• a few drops of green food coloring (optional)

Spread frosting over brownies.  Make glaze by melting:

• 1 oz unsweetened chocolate
• 1 tbsp butter

and gently spread over frosting.

Gingerbread

Cream together:

• 1/2 c shortening
• 1/2 c sugar

Add:

• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 c dark molasses

Mix well.  Sift together:

• 2 1/2 c flour
• 1/2 tsp soda
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp powdered ginger or 1 tbsp grated fresh ginger
• 1/2 tsp cloves
• 1/2 tsp salt

Add to wet ingredients and blend well.  Add:

• 1 c very hot water

and stir until blended.  Bake for 30 minutes at 350 in a 9 x 13 pan.

First up is tomato soup, which is among the great winter comfort foods.  Though fresh tomatoes are in short supply, this recipe is just great with canned tomatoes.  Furthermore, it’s easy, and so much better than canned tomato soup that you’ll want to eat it every day.

I made this in my slow cooker, and if you have one, I highly recommend it.  It benefits a lot from a long cooking time, and it really is very quick to assemble in the morning – 15 minutes or less to throw it together, plus another 5-10 to finish it when you get home.  If you don’t have a slow cooker, you can basically follow the same directions and let it simmer on the stove for 30 minutes or so.  One benefit of the slow cooker is the comfort food factor – it’s a great feeling to come home at the end of a long, cold day and have your house smell of just-made soup.

There are many ways to serve tomato soup, of course.  Having a grilled cheese on the side is classic.  We served it over Israeli couscous, which is a small, round pasta that looks like a bigger version of normal couscous.  You could use just about any small pasta in its place.

Tomato Soup – serves 3-4

• Turn slow cooker on high.  Pour a little olive oil  and about a teaspoon of crushed or mince garlic in the bottom.  Let it cook a few minutes while you do other things, like shower or get ready for work.
• Turn the cooker down to low.  Add:
  • 1-lb can of diced tomatoes
  • 2-3 cups of vegetable stock
  • 1 tsp dried basil
  • 1/2 tsp dried thyme
  • 1 tb sugar or brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup of white wine, if desired
• Cover and let cook on low for 8 hours or more.  When you’re ready to eat:
• Puree the soup.  You can use a stick blender (also called an immersion blender, a fantastically convenient device for soup-making because it requires no hazardous pouring of hot soup) or a regular blender – be careful of splashing!
• When the soup is smooth, stir in a cup of milk, or more if desired.