Eating Outside the Box, Take 4

This season' CSA delivery is drawing to a close, as Fall is upon us.  Only three more weeks of bountiful, organic produce remain.  (Only three more weeks of less time spent in grocery stores, too, sadly.)  Gazing upon the bright orange and gold vegetables so fitting this season, I once again sought dinner inspiration from Nigel Slater's Tender.

With a plenitude of snappy carrots and golden beets, I chose Mr. Slater's recipe for "a salad of carrot thinnings" as my springboard.  The recipe is actually for those tiny, tender spring carrots, and miniature beets.  Mine were large, and very autumnal.  And I don't think Mr. Slater would mind my adaptations one bit.

Away we go:

A Warm Salad of Carrots and Golden Beets - adapted from Tender
 - serves 4 to 6 as a side

Ingredients
1 bunch carrots, about 1 pound, peeled, and cut into sticks
3 medium to large golden beets, peeled, and sliced into rounds
1 clove garlic, minced
1 Tbs red wine vinegar
1 Tbs freshly squeezed lemon juice
3 or 4 Tbs olive oil
handful of fresh herbs, chopped - I used dill and parsley, the recipe calls for cilantro, use what's on hand
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

You may either boil or steam your veggies, depending on your preference, and their size.  If you're making this as it's originally intended, with wee spring vegetables, steaming would work best.  (In this case, leave small beets whole.)  If, as I did, you're using larger, autumn veg, it may be more prudent to boil them.  Boil the beets first until just barely fork tender, with a bit of a snap remaining to them.  Remove from the pot with a slotted spoon and set in a colander to drain.  Cook your carrots for a minute or two, just to take the raw edge off, and drain.

While the carrots cook, slice your beet rounds into sticks, similar in size to the carrots.

In a medium mixing bowl, whisk your vinegar, lemon juice, garlic, salt and pepper, then drizzle in your oil, whisking to combine.  Toss in the vegetables, stir to coat in the dressing, and add your fresh herbs.  Serve warm or at room temperature.

This salad keeps nicely for a day in the fridge, and is lovely for lunch the next day.

Happy Autumn to you!

The Spice of Life

We're in the midst of a major transition these days:  contemplating yet another move to a more permanent place (not just yet...but it's coming), ending old jobs and beginning new ones, and shifting from Spring and school days to carefree Summer.  And house hunting.  (Shudder.)  In the midst of all of this, this Life that is happening, the Mister and I are finding ourselves excited by all sorts of possibilities.  We're finding that our dream of a place to call home, near the waves, with a bit of space to grow things, to raise our Kiddos...this dream may actually be turning into a reality.  After months of forced attempts to make this dream work, of disappointing house hunting, frustrating job searching, ineffectual planning, we finally reached a point where we just let it go.  That fruitless act of beating our heads against a wall, in a vain attempt to make something happen when the timing was off, simply wasn't paying off.  We looked around ourselves, at our thriving children, our astounding community of friends, the beautiful area we're currently calling home, and decided Hey...this might be enough.  For now.  Apparently, merely finding peace with we're at, right now, was exactly where we needed to arrive, before change could occur.  (I believe this is one of those forest-for-the-trees moments...so difficult to see when you're mired in it...and so simple when you take a breath, step back, and let Life unfold.)

Suddenly, an exciting job offer came up for the Mister, in just the right location to make this little dream feasible.  Now our task is to wrap our heads around what this all means:  new schools, moving further from our well-loved people, finding home.  It's not going to be easy.  It's a little bit scary, really.  But this is exactly where we want to be.  New adventures await, and possibilities abound.  I love this stuff, I must tell you.  Looking back on all our travels and wanderings, it's always those moments of uncertainty in the outcome...but certainty that it's the right move...that Life is truly lived.  Taking that big leap is what stokes our fire.  It's how the Mister and I found each other in the big, wide world.  It's how we've managed to live in some amazing places around the globe, and meet so many interesting, dear people.  And now, we get to do it again.

 

 

 

Lucky us.

When we married, the Mister and I wrote our vows, and the main point of what we promised to each other was that together, we would live a life filled with love and adventure.  And how.

So, with all this exciting stuff going on around us, I must admit I do not always find the time for an exciting meal.  A great deal of energy is being spent (well-spent, without a doubt) on realizing a dream, sometimes leaving little, at the end of the day, for meal-planning.  (Or grocery shopping.)  Thus, a simple meal is in order.  And who to turn to, other than Mr. Nigel Slater, for inspiration?

From Appetite, this dish is referred to as "a fragrant, healing bowl of rice...Food to soothe and revive."  What could be more appropriate?

I do hope you enjoy it.  And remember, allow yourself the freedom to adapt, in order to feed your appetite,  in the recipe, and in Life.

Fragrant, Spiced Rice - adapted from Appetite

Ingredients
peanut or vegetable oil
one small onion, or half a large one
basmati rice, 2 cups
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Aromatics
a few cloves garlic, bashed, but left whole
few slices of fresh ginger
5 to 8 green cardamom pods
cinnamon stick
4 or 5 cloves
pinch of chili flakes, or one whole chili pepper
handful of cilantro leaves, chopped

You can prepare this rice two ways.  One, use a saucepan, and begin by sauteing your onion.  Or, if you're rather busy, cheat, and use a rice cooker.  You can either start by sauteing your onion on the stove, then adding it to your rice cooker, or just start it off in the rice cooker itself, to really make things simple.  If you solely use your rice cooker, you won't get much in the way of caramelization, and you may have to prop something down on the little button that flips between "warm" and "cook" to keep it cooking.  But it does work.  Just so you know.

Whichever method you decide, begin by gently cooking off your onion in a tablespoon or so of oil, with a bit of salt, until softened and translucent.  Add to this the garlic, ginger, and spices (not cilantro), and allow to cook briefly, to bring out their essential oils.  Stir in the rice, and chili, and add the recommended amount of water (from either your bag of rice, or your rice cooker).  I use 1 1/2 cups water to 1 cup of rice, yours quite likely, may differ.  This is not a problem.  Season with sea salt, cover and cook until the water is absorbed, without stirring.  Again, follow your recommended cooking times on your rice packaging, your rice cooker, or go with experience.  Once the liquid is absorbed, gently stir the rice, and re-cover for about 10 minutes (or up to an hour in the rice cooker).

Delicious.  We served ours with some roasted veggies, and it was just about perfect.

Life is a grand adventure.  Eat it up.

How I Cook

I've been thinking about recipes lately.  I have a love/hate relationship with recipes, and cookbooks.  On the one hand, I adore pouring through the pages of a new cookbook.  I love reading ingredient lists, envisioning some new flavor combination that I've never thought of, being transported to foreign lands simply by reading about their foods, drooling over gorgeously styled food photos.  But then, we have the other hand.  My rebellious hand, I suppose.  And this hand despises being told exactly how one must prepare a meal, with exactly this type of cheese, sliced or diced using exactly this tool and this technique.  This hand much prefers to use recipes as inspiration, or guides.  (And this hand also does not style food gorgeously.  We eat family style, and I haven't yet discovered an inner desire to toil over arranging food just so, in order to get a good shot.  People are hungry here.)

There are rather a lot of italics in this post today, aren't there?  Strong feelings here, people, strong feelings.

Anyway, this inner struggle with the whole recipes-as-rules thing kind of defies logic, as pertains to this here blog.  I mean, here I am, in all my hypocritical glory, pushing recipes on you fine folks, while I contradictorily proclaim a  disdain for them.  Add to that my self-awareness that I am not some genius chef, just a woman who likes to feed people...what right have I to tell anyone how to cook?  Hm.  Ponderous.

(Just so you know, that was the rebellious hand speaking up there, the other one does enjoy recipes, especially for baking, and as long as they're not too incredibly stringent.)

Cue the perfect book to read, for this conflicted state of mind:

I have raved incessantly about Tender, and now you'll have to bear with me and my new-found passion for Appetite.  This book predates Tender by a good few years, but the gist is the same:  Cook creatively.  Simple as.  Mr. Slater generally gives brilliant suggestions for meals and foods that work well with one another, leaving precise amounts up to you, the cook, to decide.  He outlines pantry ingredients, spices, equipment, with the main point being:  You don't need every single damn gadget and fad food in your kitchen.  You don't need to revere those cookbooks that claim that theirs is the only way of doing something.  Instinct is key, and the way to develop that instinct is to spend some time playing around in the kitchen.

I think that's what I love most about cooking...aside from the obvious practicality of feeding myself, my family, and my friends, it's an amazingly creative outlet.  If you allow it to be.  If you ignore that inner voice that tells you to follow the rules, because so-and-so knows what they're doing, and you don't.  (I think my "inner child" is an uptight, anal-retentive tattletale, who still fears getting grounded for breaking the rules.  Delve into that one.  Actually, don't.)  A meal that turns out well is so satisfying, when you're using ingredients that you have on hand, and cooking with all your senses.  Smelling...touching...tasting...It's a pretty sensuous gig, cooking.  Get into it.

My uptight hand would like to interject here, and say that the rules are there for a reason.  Certain foods need specific cooking times, in order to not only taste good, but to be safe.  Some spices marry well with others, while some decidedly do not.  This is where recipes come in handy:  there's a wealth of wisdom to be gained from other cooks.  There is also a wealth of wisdom to be gained from experience.  From getting your hands dirty.  And it's a heck of a lot of fun.

Here's what I came up with last night:

One rather un-styled photo, of a barley pilaf.  I probably should have removed that cinnamon stick, but oh well.  By the way, there is no mention of barley in Nigel Slater's book, but I had some in the pantry, and went with it.  I will give you the ingredients and amounts that I used, but please, for the love of all that is right, play with your food!  If an alternative spice or veggie sounds more appealing, use that instead.  Hard and fast rules have no place here.

Barley Pilaf - serves 4, as a generous side

Ingredients
1 cup pearled barley, rinsed
chicken or vegetable stock (I used chicken), or water, about 2 1/2 cups
1/2 large onion, chopped
butter
1 cinnamon stick
4 or 5 cardamom pods
1/4 to 1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1/8 to 1/4 tsp ground coriander
bay leaf ( I used fresh)
grated lemon zest from about 1/2 large lemon
sea salt and black pepper to taste
couple handfuls fresh or frozen peas (if frozen, defrost under cold water in a colander)
few handfuls baby spinach, to serve
dill, or another fresh herb, minced, to serve

In a medium sized pot, heat a tablespoon or two of butter, over a moderately low heat.  Cook off the onions, with a bit of sea salt, until they're softened and translucent, about 10 or so minutes.  Add the spices (cinnamon, cumin, coriander, cardamom), and stir over a medium low heat, for about a minute, until you can smell them.  Add the barley and stir to combine.  Add in your stock or water, a bit of salt and pepper, and bay leaf, and bring to a boil.  Cover and lower heat to simmer.  I started off with 2 1/4 cups of chicken stock, and added more as cooking went on, and the grain was getting dry, but still not fully cooked.  Just keep an eye on it, and top up with a bit more liquid, if needed.

Grains don't follow exact rules with cooking times.  I suppose this can depend on the age of the grain, and who knows what other factors.  My barley took about an hour, yours could take anywhere from half an hour, to an hour.  If your barley finishes cooking before the rest of your meal is ready, simply turn off the heat, and cover with a lid.  It'll stand just fine, for a while.

Once the barley is cooked to a texture you like, it should still have a nutty bite to it, turn off the heat, and leave covered for 5 or 10 minutes.  If, near the end of cooking time, you still have a substantial amount of liquid left, remove the lid, and turn the heat up a bit, minding that it doesn't burn, so the extra stock cooks out.

Stir in the zest, dill, and peas, and check seasoning.  If you'd like a richer dish, throw in another tablespoon of butter, or a glug of olive oil.  I served our pilaf up over a bed of baby spinach, which wilted down nicely from the heat of the barley.

We really should eat barley more often.  It is so dang tasty, and good for you.  For leftovers, this can be served at room temperature with a squeeze of lemon juice over it, or reheated, maybe with a grating of parmesan.

Get your hands dirty.