Getting the Shaft

College cafeterias can be a challenge, almost a sporting event, hunting for something to eat in a sea of gross.  It might even take several trips through the steam table line just to find something not worthy of being spit out.   At the first college I attended I literally made the freshman mistake of eating the green beans, the thought of them still make me gag.  Think boiled crayons.  Retch.  While I recall the food at Bennington wasn’t bad, er, let me rephrase that, it was a hell of a lot less worse the cafeteria that produced the aforementioned green beans.  The reality is college was a culinary brain eraser; I can’t really remember anything I ate there over the course of two years save for a couple.  

The first was Friday.  Friday was great.  It is is probably why I remember the college food at Bennington as ‘OK’.  Friday made up for the sins of the previous week.  Lunch on Fridays was always burger, french fry, macaroni and cheese, chocolate chip cookie day.  I thought it odd to put all the good foods on one menu, why not spread them out over the week?  And why sneak the good foods in on Friday when everyone was headed to New York or Boston anyhow?  Either way I would front load or back load, but load nonetheless to make up for existing on salad and soup the other 6 days.  Now I also remember Fridays because oddly, Bennington had one of the better veggie burgers I have ever encountered, only Houston’s makes a better one.   They were so good I usually had two.

The other meal I remember was the cafeteria’s Greek menu, which popped up at least twice a month.  It featured the usual stereotypes: moussaka, spanakopita, pastitsio, etc.  Now I never ate any of this, I learned my lesson after one serving of the spanakopita.  And I suspect these oozy casseroles would have been erased from my memory as well except somehow in college I managed to amass a coterie of Greeks. My best friend and my boyfriend were Greek, their parents directly from, yes, Greece.  This display did not inspire either of them to national pride.  Andrew would laugh and offer some mocking commentary and Myrto would seethe with anger.  While Andrew was willing to accept that the school could and most certainly would butcher these dishes, Myrto could not. 

Now, if college had decided to attempt my national dish of steamed crabs, corn and cucumber salad, I’d be horrified too.  In fact I become equally righteously indignant when restaurants outside of the state of Maryland (falsely) advertise ‘Maryland crab cakes’. But it happens.  And it happened that the college cafeteria was hell bent to personally offend Myrto with their Greek repertoire.  

In addition to the slanderous dinner menu, lentil soup was constantly in one of the two double boilers.  After a trip around the steam table where the ‘regular’ lunch or dinner proved inedible, Myrto would begrudgingly head to the lentil soup pot.  Being Greek, the lentil soup was:  Not. O. K. She’d deliver it to our table.  Put it down in front of her.  Sigh.  Stir it.  Begin to cuss at it.  Under her breath.  In Greek.  And truly crafty cussing; creative stuff.  Stuff that should make any Greek trucker feel inferior.  Still irritated, she’d get up from the table and return with 7-10 lemon wedges from the iced tea station and proceed to squeeze them into her soup, cursing in Greek; perhaps grabbing anything else she could to doctor it.   Then she would call on God, Grandma and the island of Paros (where her family is from) to deliver her from this bowl of soup.  With disgust in her eye she’d begin to eat it, cursing the whole way through.  This show happened several times a week.  This was quite simply lunch or dinner.  To give you a better idea of the irony, go grab a J.Crew catalog, reach in there and rip out a page, any page:  that’s what Myrto looks like.  She’ll help any old lady across the street with a genuine smile but, Dear God, do not give her an inferior bowl of soup that mocks her heritage.

So I submit this.  I’m fairly certain I do it well because many (seriously, a lot) people request this dish from me, and it’s ridiculously cheap, easy, filling and tasty.  I’ll let Myrto look it over and give me her thoughts, hopefully not in Greek and under her breath.

Lentil Soup - Serves 4 - Adapted from Memories of a Lost Egypt

1.5 cups lentils

4 cups vegetable stock 

1 medium - large yellow onion, peeled and cut in half across the equator

12 cloves

1 bay leaf

3 teaspoons cumin

1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper

1/2 stick of cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon sea or kosher salt

3 cups spinach loosely chopped

1 cup water

1 lemon

Greek yogurt

Parsley, chopped

Take the cloves and stab them in the flesh of the onion.  Place the onion with cloves, lentils, vegetable stock, bay leaf, cumin, cinnamon and salt in a large pot.  Bring to a boil, let simmer for 10 minutes, then remove the cinnamon stick.  Continue to simmer for 25 more minutes.  The lentils want to be firm but not hard.  Add more water if needed.  Sprinkle with parsley.  Serve with lemon wedges and a dollop of Greek yogurt.

Summer of Eggplant Part III, Revenge of Eggplant

When I started this blog it was not my intent to feature an eggplant recipe every year.  The story behind the name is a different one than that of an innate love of eggplant.  But it has become expected of me and I guess I can do my best to help a vegetable (fruit actually) out.  This particular vegetable seems to have some pretty bad PR, even worse than the other ones.  This year’s eggplant installment is sponsored by Georgia Tech.  

The other day Jim, the kids and I were dining in the student center at Tech prior to our son’s drama camp play.  Like any food court it had a UN worthy assortment of ‘ethnic’ foods.  I got grocery store style sushi, the kids got some sort of imitation Chinese food swimming in sugar and sodium and Jim, functioning fully out of character, went Middle Eastern.  Now, the gyro or Middle Eastern food wasn’t so out of character, it was the side of baba ganoush that was off.  Stuffed grape leaves would have been in character but not eggplant dip.  He met me at the check out line pleased with himself ‘Tabbouleh and baba ganoush!’  Big smile. Unfortunately it was a truly insipid baba ganoush and I didn’t see any tabbouleh.  It was the sort eggplant dish that encourages people to hate eggplant.  It had the texture of baby food and it was beige except for the flecks of, was it carrots?  

So when I came home to a clean and empty house, save for two very exhausted dogs, I took the opportunity to work on the blog (and do laundry).  I tried to think of items I wanted to blog about but I could not get that bad baba ganoush out of my head.  I knew I had an eggplant dip recipe somewhere and it needed a day out.

Eggplant Dip 

1-1 lb. eggplant

3 tablespoons basil

Juice of 1 lemon

2 teaspoons tahini

2 tablespoons harissa

2-3 garlic cloves, blanched or roasted

3 tablespoons olive oil, divided

salt

Slice the eggplant in to 1” slices, place in a colander and sprinkle liberally with salt and rest for about 20 minutes. Rinse or wipe off the salt and leave to dry on paper towels for about 10 minutes. Meanwhile preheat the oven to 375. Pat the eggplant dry again. Oil a baking sheet and brush the eggplant slices with half of the olive oil. Bake for about 30 minutes or until the slices are golden brown and the the interior is soft. Let eggplant cool. 

Place the eggplant and the remaining ingredients in a food processor and pulse until just combined.  Serve at room temperature with a bland cracker.  I prefer the olive oil variety.

Note:  I use this recipe for harissa, you can use store bought or whichever harissa recipe you prefer.  If you make it, it keeps for about a month in a tightly sealed container in the fridge.  It’s also really good on eggs.

You do not have to blanch or roast the garlic.  If you read this blog with any regularity, you know I cannot tolerate raw garlic, but if you can, by all means go ahead.  If blanching or roasting seems like too much effort there is the microwave.  I’ll deny I told you to do so, but about 8 seconds in the old micro should do it, or so I’ve heard.

Groupies

I am unclear how it made it almost 39 years without having a panisse.  They are a French french fry.  Our first encounter with them occurred earlier last summer. ‘What is it?‘ I asked Jim taking my second bite.  ‘I don’t know, what do you think?‘  ‘No clue.  But it’s delicious.’ ‘Mmmhmm.’  So, we asked the waiter.  Chick pea fries.  Had we simply read the menu or paid attention perhaps we would have known.  However, it was a revelation.  Chickpea fries.  A little research told me these were indigenous to Southern France and as common as waffles at The Waffle House.  How had we managed to live our lives without these?  

The restaurant that gave us these gems is the second for a local chef to whom we are devoted.  We were devoted to his first restaurant and thrilled to hear about a second.  I am not sure he knows about our devotion but I suspect, now, between these fries, the pork belly BLT with lardo mayo, the crab roll, some very special clams, seriously awesome oysters and a fried chicken that rivals Thomas Keller and the Colonel. He is starting to catch on because we show up at least once a week, sometimes twice for lunch.  Lunchtime is quiet and we stick out.  Well, Jim sticks out.  If you have never met my one and only he’s the 6’5” bald guy in the Buddy Holly by way of Brooklyn glasses.  Jim, by sheer cubic space, cannot be ignored, and I’m the much shorter person with him.  Dinner is busy with curious food trendsters and hungry neighbors, lunch has not been discovered.  While I appreciate having a cool secret, I don’t want the rest of this town to screw up my good thing, so here’s hoping more people show up for lunch and Jim and I melt into the background.  

The chef is turning out food with a nod, a French nod, or a New England nod, or a Spanish nod, or a Florida nod or whatever he feels like nodding. It’s just good food.  And nary a pimento cheese dip, deviled egg or red velvet anything on the menu. The fries had to be ours though.  They are made much like polenta.  Chickpea flour, plus water, heated and mixed together, placed in a pan to cool then sliced in to rectangles and fried in olive oil.  That’s it or so said Mark Bittman and David Leibovitz.  However, these tasted better than that ingredient list.  It’s not that easy in fact it has taken me a year to get this one right.

This is what I have come up with that gets close.  If you happen to live in Atlanta go to One Eared Stag in Inman Park for lunch and try Chef Phalen’s version.  Or try something more adventurous because there is a lot of fun stuff happening on that menu.  If you don’t live in Atlanta, well, then you have an excuse to try mine.  

Panisses - Serves 4

1 cup chickpea flour

1 cup veggie stock

1 cup water

1 teaspoon olive oil

1 tablespoon parsley, chopped

salt

Olive oil for frying

Put the stock and/or water and the teaspoon of olive oil in a pot and heat until shimmering, not boiling, whisk in the chickpea flour and the salt. Continue to whisk or stir while it cooks for about 5 minutes.  Add in the parsley and pour in to a greased small rectangular dish, mine is 5"x7".  Cool to room temperature and move to the fridge for at least 6 hours.  I usually do this step the day before I want to serve them.

Turn the molded dough out on to a paper towel and blot any condensation.  The top layer will be lumpy, slice it off and slice the remainder in to fries.  Heat about a 1/2” of oil in a wide pan.  Fry the fries for about 5 minutes until golden brown.  Sprinkle with sea salt.

From the Archives

At the age of 10 I crafted my first culinary creation with my neighbor John; it was called the cheese melt. It was a piece of white bread with some yellow stuff pretending to be butter and a single slice of cheddar cheese on top placed in the microwave for 17 seconds. More time than that the cheese scorched, less than that and the goo factor was not acceptable. It was best when eaten molten hot, folded in half. It only took seconds to eat it because you had to race the cheese before it poured out of the ends and burned an unsuspecting body part or the cat.

During high school I was able to master more conventional and appetizing dishes such as pesto sauce and baked salmon. But the early college years brought a new method of cooking that can only be described as the dump, stir and wait culinary school. This involved the development of (groan, how predictable) stir fry! Mine featured chick peas and cabbage and a variety of dried spices, like mustard powder. I cringe.

The first college years also brought the equally predictable vegetarian chili. Working in tandem again, I developed this recipe with my friend Suzy in her college apartment. It was not a burning desire to eat chili that gave way to this recipe but rather it was actually a scam to get another, of age student, to bring the wine. The box of wine. We figured we could master chili quickly and easily. I had never made or had chili aside from the Stouffer’s boil-in-bag kind. I don’t know if Suzy had either but she is from New Mexico which gave us some credibility. We must have had some basic recipe to get us started, but I couldn’t tell you from where. The internet was not for use by the general public and I can’t imagine we had many cookbooks. I can only guess that Suzy’s mom got us started or I found something at the school library.

After college was over, after the requisite traipse through European youth hostels, and before my job in Texas started I was in post collegiate limbo. I was employed at both a consignment shop and a bookstore. I lived with my childhood friend, Mattie, in her childhood home in Waverly. I was always surrounded by my friends. We were always laughing. We entertained ourselves with trips to the reservoir for skinny dipping (peer pressure) in the middle of the night, making our own mad-libs about each other, creating dioramas, playing pool, watching the X-Files and writing sardonic essays about the state of our fellow barflies. On one of those perfect fall days I was making the chili. A blimp was circling outside and my friend Tim was reading articles (yes the real articles) aloud from a Playboy that had somehow made its way into our home.

‘You need cinnamon in there.’ I looked at him to see if he was joking. ‘No, seriously, you need cinnamon in there, for the beans.’

‘I do?’

‘Yup. I do it all the time. Seriously, just a little.’

And there it was; the secret ingredient, it had been hiding in a granola bar all this time.

I'd like to say the recipe has remained virtually unchanged with the exception of the cinnamon in the 20 years since Suzy and I set out to score a box of Franzia but I'm pretty sure it has evolved with me. I think I have it exactly where I want it now. I’ll add some bragging rights: this chili won second place in a chili competition that did not, at the time, have a vegetarian category.

Thanks Timmy, I still owe you a wok for the stir fry gone awry.

Vegetarian Chili - Serves a bunch (8-12)

2 14 oz. cans dark kidney beans

1 14 oz. can black beans

2 28 oz. can peeled tomatoes (I cut them in to smaller bits in the can with kitchen scissors)

2 green bell peppers (chopped in to 1” chunks)

1 red or yellow bell pepper (chopped in to 1” chunks, the total amount of all peppers should be about 4 cups chopped)

2 large or 3 medium Spanish onions (4-4.5 cups chopped in to 1/2” chunks)

8 garlic cloves (2 tablespoons minced)

3 tablespoons chili powder

1 tablespoon paprika

1 teaspoon cayenne

1.5 teaspoons cumin

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

2 teaspoons crushed red pepper

3 tablespoons olive oil

Drain and rinse the beans. I had a rather heated discussion with Jim about rinsing the beans recently, and he reluctantly admitted that rinsing the beans cut down on the negative after effects of his chili in a surprisingly wonderful way. Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a large pot. Add the onions and saute until they just start to think about becoming translucent. Add in the garlic and saute for another 3-5 minutes. Add in the peppers and continue to cook for another 5-7 minutes. They want to be al dente. Add in the chili powder and paprika and saute for another minute. Then add in the tomatoes and bring to a slight simmer. Add in the beans and the remaining spices. Simmer for about 1-15 minutes. The vegetables still want to have some texture and crispness to them. Serve with whichever chili condiments float your boat.

Watermelon Pickle

It’s amazing how things you have totally forgotten can come back instantly when someone puts the right words together. I immediately was transported straight to the 7th grade today when someone on a food website asked ‘Can you pickle watermelon?’ Yes, you can, and there is a wonderful poem by John Tobias that goes with it and you can’t do one without reading the other. I very much remember the first time I had watermelon pickle.

Miss Seidel was our 7th grade English teacher and she was from the South, Alabama I think, which was foreign enough to us. She was everything cool about the 80s. Our 7th grade class was her first year at our very strict private school. She was in her early twenties, she had an asymmetric haircut, she wore funky clothes and made jewelry. She was confident, educated and too hip for the burgh of Baltimore. She was everything my stodgy all girls school was not. Who hired her? The other teachers shopped from the LL Bean catalog and clearly only refreshed their wardrobes every decade. They looked like line backers in skirts. They had been there for 40 years and would be there for another 40. They lived and socialized in the same snobby, blue-blooded, wood paneled station wagon neighborhood that the school was and is located in.

Miss Seidel was like a beautiful bird in a burned out forest. She was friendly. She was one of those teachers. The ones that inspire you and make you want to work beyond what is required of you. We idolized her, even stalked her to her apartment one day for a surprise visit. She didn’t flinch; she buzzed us in and served us iced tea. Of course her apartment was cool, filled with awesome vintage finds that someone her age should not have had the time to collect just yet. She was like Molly Ringwald and Madonna, combined, only cooler and real.

One day Miss Seidel brought in a jar of watermelon pickle a family member had sent her. She said she had not had any in a while, maybe since she was a kid and was curious about it herself. None of us has ever seen a watermelon pickle before, let alone had any relatives that canned things. She explained its southern provenance, that It is the rind pickled, sour and sweet. She then read us John Tobias’ poem Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle from a Friend Called Felicity. I remember this clearly. Then she passed out chunks of the watermelon pickle on toothpicks. And instantly, John Tobias’ poem became my memory of watermelon pickle. Why hadn’t I had watermelon pickle for this beautiful memory? Well, I did now, and I was not going to let it go. To this day I’ll talk like I’ve been eating watermelon pickle my whole life.

Miss Seidel only lasted 1 year at our school. The bird had to fly. Every time I hear the words watermelon pickle I think of her. The poem she read us sums up how I feel about watermelon, summer and the childhood memories associated with both. Now, after all that, I have to admit, I do not have a watermelon pickle recipe to amaze you with, but, David Chang does. I can offer a you a watermelon salad recipe. But read the poem and pretend you’ve been eating watermelon pickle your whole life.

http://ellemay.wordpress.com/2007/09/07/reflections-on-a-gift-of-watermelon-pickle-received-from-a-friend-called-felicity/

Watermelon Salad (serves 12 as a side dish)

1/2 small watermelon, cubed

1 Kirby cucumber, chopped

1/2 a jicama, cubed

2 jalapenos, minced

2 limes

salt

3/4 cup herbs (I use basil, mint, cilantro and chives)

Combine the first four ingredients, squeeze lime juice on top and toss with herbs abd salt. Serve cold.

Shut-In

Atlanta received 4” of snow on Sunday and the city is still paralyzed from it. No mail, no bank, no buses, no work and the grocery store, if you can get there, doesn’t have any food. That’s 3 days of nothing. However, it did give me the chance to blog for the first time in months!

Now the reason I have not been blogging is not due to a lack of cooking or creativity; we have been eating all sorts of tasty items this winter: green beans and chestnuts sauteed in duck fat, parsnip ribbons with Nigella seeds, New England clam chowder and a favorite of the kids, Captain Crunch French toast - which we paid for dearly in sugar highs. I have not been blogging due to my lighting situation, so, for a moment let’s ignore that I’m a lighting designer. This is how the blog works: I make dinner, I photograph it outdoors no more than 10x with my Iphone, write a story about it (or use an existing one), pick the best picture and post it. Simply Socialist in approach. Winter creates a problem for outdoor photography and, in spite of an almost perfect color rendering index, our halogen downlights make food look just awful, you can see some examples of the effects on this blog. At this point I could write a 10,000 word essay on the lighting, food, color temperatures, footcandles and color rendering indexes but I’m not going to bore myself or you with that. I just don’t want to post ugly pictures.

So the point is, it snowed and I was able to make lunch and photograph in the daylight. I don’t really have a story for this recipe, it came about one day when Jim and I came home for lunch and Mother Hubbard’s cupboard was bare. Improvisation is the creator of some tasty meals. So hopefully you’ll try it, with a grilled cheese, of course.

Smoky Fire Roasted Tomato Soup (Serves 2-4)

1 - 28 ounce can fire roasted tomatoes

1.5 cups water or vegetable stock

1 medium Spanish onion, diced

1 teaspoon smoked paprika

1/4 teaspoon sugar

a pinch of cayenne

salt and pepper

2 - 3 tablespoons basil, chopped

2 tablespoons olive oil

Heat the oil in a pan and saute the onions until almost translucent, about 10 minutes. Add in salt and pepper and smoked paprika and saute for 1 more minute, add in tomatoes and water, bring to a boil. Add in sugar and simmer for 10 minutes. Puree to desired consistency with an immersion blender or standing blender. Ladle in to bowls and top with the basil.

Notes: Sometimes I puree the whole soup and other times only half of it for a heartier texture.

Bald P-Nuts

I loved my Grandpop, I just thought he was the best. My best memories about my Grandpop involve food. We ate our way through quite a lot, but I suspect it was genetics and a shared food crazed chromosome.

He had a fig tree (which is decadent to me). I’d show up in SC from Texas and I’d wake up to find Grandpop monitoring the squirrels in the fig tree. We’d go to chase them out and stand in the kitchen eating figs and drinking really awful coffee. It’s a fantastic memory. When he passed away two years ago, I knew that memory was the one I would miss the most.

We’d ride toward my aunt’s house on Yonge’s Island (crazy throw back dudes on the side of road selling the BIGGEST watermelons ever from their beat up 40 year old pick-ups). Grandpop would see them, he would get big eyes and he’d say “let’s pull over and talk to this man.” Then we’d leave with a COLOSSAL watermelon I was certain would pull our tail end down. When we got to my aunt’s house and cracked it open there was no question that it would be the best watermelon ever.

Oh... there was not a shrimp my Grandpop didn’t like; he could sit for several hours peeling and eating shrimp. When Parkinson’s prevented him from peeling shrimp my Aunt Barbara would sit patiently for hours, or so it seemed, and peel him shrimp. Grandpop would eat until her hands could peel no more and then I would peel them. Communicating was hard for him then but he would signal that he was sated by pushing back from the table, smiling very broadly and patting his stomach.

My first boiled peanut was with my Grandpop too. We went to the Pig one day, I had never seen a green peanut. There was a pack of people crowded around a produce stall furiously sifting, I asked Grandpop: “What is it? Why is it so popular?” “PEANUTS!” was the answer. “Get in there and get us some!” He pushed me through the crowd and I did as I was told: me, Grandpop and those other eight people shaking it out for the best peanuts. Turning the pile over looking and looking and turning again. I got in there, dug out the best ones I could find and we went home with a giant bag to boil up for the next few hours with more salt than you care to know about. Like chili, boiled peanuts are usually made by the truck load. My cousin Sonny has this problem solved; he freezes them in quart sized ziplocs - brilliant! He’s always ready to bring a side dish to a party and they never go to waste.

I have been watching the peanuts at the YDFM, they have been awfully small but this weekend I couldn’t take it anymore, they had at least ballooned up 3-4 small nuts per pod and that was good enough for me. I realize a boiled peanut recipe is not really a recipe, but at this time of the year, when I‘d normally be hanging with Grandpop cruising fried fish shacks on the road to Folly Beach it seems right.

Maybe you live somewhere where the side of the road “P-Nut” sign does not exist. They are the ultimate in road vittles so you must have some for your next road trip, jaunt to Grandma’s or next major couch sitting, beer swilling, sports game watching, unbridled salty snacking. They are certainly different than a roasted one most certainly more fun and slightly less messy. This is a smaller, less time-consuming batch.

Maryland Style Boiled Peanuts

1 lb. green peanuts

1/4 cup kosher salt

3/4 cup Old Bay

3 tablespoons tabasco

Put peanuts in a large pot and fill with water, bring to a boil; add the seasonings. When the pot reaches a boil, boil for 45 minutes - 1 hour. This amount of peanuts should not involve the need for refreshing the water in the pot but should the water evaporate, add more water. Cool and serve at room temperature.

Notes: I like my boiled peanuts not overly salty or mushy, salt and cooking time will need to be adjusted if you like yours “traditional”.