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.

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.

The O.C.F.

I spend a lot of time in domestic airports, a lot of time. The food situation is always distressing. As hard as I try to avoid it I am forced to eat at the airport due to timing, constant weather hiccups or whatever equipment happened to go awry (Delta fix your doors on the 757s). My criteria for airport food is something not too unhealthy and not too smelly. I worry about the smelly so I don't offend my fellow passengers. Note I didn't say tasty or enjoyable, because those items are rarely an option at the airport. Why? I don't know. I don't think people want bad food. I suspect there is a national airport food vendor mafia. There are a few exceptions. My top three, in order, starting with the best: SFO, SNA, IND. The worst, in order from crappiest to slightly less crappy: LGA, LAX, MIA. And there's a lot of in between. I didn't include my own airport, ATL, which given the landscape of airport dining, may actually be the best.

One day Jim and I found ourselves at BWI at lunchtime. There wasn't much to choose from, or rather, nothing except we found something called 'Chesapeake Landing' 'Maryland Landing' 'Maryland Crossing' or something like that. It was non-descript as airport restaurants are supposed to be. Of course there were crab cakes on the menu, that didn't surprise me but there staring at me was something I had not seen in 25 years and while I liked it fine as a kid suddenly seeing it on the menu made me very nostalgic. 'Jim, they have clam strips! Clam strips! I can't believe they have clam strips, I don't know the last time I saw one. We had clam strips every Friday in school. Clam strips and french fries. I'm having the clam strips.' We did, Maryland being a Catholic state we had clam strips every Friday. We'd sit in our Bertoia chairs with the royal blue seat pads eating clam strips and french fries and maybe some cole slaw swinging our feet. Clam strips the original chicken finger. Then I think all I said for the next 5 minutes while our food was prepared was 'Clam strips? Clam strips! Can you believe they have clam strips?' That restaurant in the airport did not let me down. I'm sure those clam strips came straight out of a plastic bag from the freezer but they were good, creamy on the inside, crunchy on the outside and they came with fries and cole slaw. They were better than I remembered them. I was swinging my feet at my bar stool with food happiness. Jim leaned it 'May I try one?' 'Of course, have as many as you like.' 'That's good, remind me next time I want the clam strips.'

Well next time came a few months later. It was lunchtime again. I said to Jim 'Let's find that place with the clam strips.' 'I think that's the only place.' I didn't even need a menu. 'I'll take the clam strips.' I think Jim ordered something extra lame, like a salad or soup. 'You don't want the clam strips?' Jim's memory isn't the best. 'I don't want clam strips. Who eats clam strips? We didn't have clam strips growing up in Ohio.' Well, the clams came and Jim had food envy. 'Remind me to have the clam strips next time.' You should too. Terminal C, the place with the seabird, the bay and some indigenous plants for a logo.

As often happens on this blog I tell a story about a certain food but don't have an exact recipe for it. Really, I'm not going to tell you how to bread something and chuck it in the deep fryer. I think, this week anyhow. A little research shows you can get a giant bag of clam strips at Costco for $5; my money says those are the ones near and dear to our hearts. epicurious.com also has a recipe for clam strips if you feel the need to shuck and fry a bushel of clams. I do have a recipe for clam chowder using items that are always in our larder. Surely we all have a positive memory associated with clam chowder. This is tasty, quick, inexpensive and totally satisfying on a cold night.

Clam Chowder - Serves 4

1 8 oz. jar of clam juice

1 cup milk

1 cup cream

1 cup water

1 10 oz. can clams

1/4 cup flour

1 carrot, chopped

5 mushrooms, sliced

1 celery stalk, chopped

1 onion, chopped

2 small Yukon potatoes cubed

10 sprigs thyme, leaves stripped

1.5-2 tablespoons brandy

2 tablespoons butter

Combine clam juice, juice from clams and water in a pan and bring to a boil. Add in the potatoes and half of the thyme and cook for 3 minutes. Add in the mushrooms and cook for another 3 minutes. Add in the carrot and cook for another 3 minutes. Then remove the vegetables from the pot with a slotted spoon.

Meanwhile heat the butter in a pan and add the onions and saute until almost translucent, then add in the celery and remaining thyme and saute for another 2 minutes. Add the clams and saute for a minute.

Slowly add the flour to the pot with the clam juice, whisking to combine until thickened. Add in cream and milk, heat and add in all of the vegetables and clams. Simmer for 10-15 minutes, add brandy and cook for 3 more minutes. Serve.

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.

Soft Boiled Egg. Lime Jello. Chicken Broth.

That’s what I was served as a kid when I was sick. Those foods are probably as close to American comfort food as it got for me. To this day I have never had a piece of meatloaf, chicken fried steak or homemade chicken noodle soup. Last summer I had homemade chicken pot pie for the first time; I also had my first pork chop. I can count how many times I’ve had fried chicken on both hands, maybe even one. I was rarely exposed to potato chips or french fries. Hot dogs and hamburgers were alien to our grill. I’ve got $20 that says a grilled cheese never darkened my childhood stove top.

I also wasn’t toting a mother of pearl spoon and caviar in my Happy Days lunch box either. I teetered in a schizophrenic gastronomy of late 1970s Continental cuisine and the worldly culinary landscape of the Stouffer’s frozen meal. Nightly I enjoyed Noodles Romanoff, Chili Con Carne, Turkey Tetrazini, Swedish Meatballs, Chicken a la King, Creamed Chipped Beef , Chicken Chow Mein. Touring the world one boil a bag at a time. Really these meals were essentially the same formula; a high fat sauce whose sole intent was to utterly drench a starch, maybe with a sprinkling of frozen veggies. My favorite was the most caloric (and exotic sounding): Noodles Romanoff. A giant pink ice cube clad in aluminum foil; it went in to the oven for a torturous 45 minutes! Oh and it emerged a steaming gelatinous runny ooze.

When dining with adults I enjoyed savory crepes, spumoni, steamed crabs, proscuitto e melone, scampi, Rumaki, French onion soup, escargot, steamed artichokes, shad roe, shrimp anything and on. The chicken nugget was not yet invented, nor did my Dad frequent restaurants with ‘Kids’ Menus’ (if they even existed then; I have no idea). I would put on a Laura Ashley dress and we’d head out to a French Bistro or an Italian Restaurant. I guess that makes brie en croute the mac and cheese of my youth.

At age 10 we got a microwave, never to boil a bag again. At 11, I started to teach myself to cook. My first dish, co-authored with my neighbor John, was aptly called ‘cheese melt’. I’m sure this was conceived in some latch key child moment of self expression paired with a need to eat. John and I would take a piece of spongy white bread, smear it with some butter imitating spread, place a square of cheddar cheese in the center, put it on a paper towel and pop it in to the microwave for 10-15 seconds. Out would come a soggy cheesewich seeping not-butter. We would fold it in half and consume it in 3 bites, then make another. This led to many other self authored dishes, (including the less popular strawberry Kwik with Sunkist orange soda) only to evolve slowly and lately here.

This childhood has lead to an adulthood where cooking is done with very few short cuts. If the kids want a brownie we get out the cocoa powder and the mixer. Dinner time is the focus of our evenings, we forego television for the stove and the grill.

The other day Jim did not feel well. Sick Jim is rare and I wanted to make something that fit the feeling. Somehow at the crossroads of my Asian culinary tutelage from Stouffer’s and my adult desire to make up for it egg drop soup popped in to my head. It was comforting and from the ground up it takes 10, maybe 15 minutes. Make it, you’ll feel better for it. Jim did.

Egg Drop Soup - Serves 2-4

4 cups chicken broth (or vegetable)

3 large eggs, lightly beaten

2 tablespoons corn starch + 2 tablespoons water, mixed together

2 tablespoons soy sauce

5/8 teaspoon of white pepper

1/2 teaspoon grated ginger

1 tablespoon rice wine

2 green onions, sliced green and light green parts

Combine the broth, soy sauce, pepper, ginger and rice wine, bring to a boil, add in cornstarch and water slurry, reduce the heat to a simmer. Stir soup in a clockwise motion, when soup is moving in a gentle clockwise current, slowly stream in the eggs while still stirring. Eggs will cook immediately. Remove from heat and stir in onions. Serve immediately.

Slice of Orange

Vegetarians, love them or hate them, they are people too and they want a decent meal. As a former vegetarian I am going to speak for the group when I say we don’t want some lame sandwich with sprouts and lettuce, we don’t want a vegetable plate or a frozen veggie burger and we don’t want what you’re eating minus the meat. We want a creative, tasty, well balanced meal and we want to leave the table full too. I know, I know those damn fussy vegetarians, they won’t eat meat and then they come with a list of rules for what they are willing to eat???

Most vegetarians are foodies because they have to be. Being vegetarian certainly forces you to think about your food and what makes food structures and layers of flavors. I mean, really, you can put bacon in anything and it tastes good. For many years the vegetarian cook books were left to Anna Thomas and Molly Katzen. Anna was too earthy for me and I need pretty pictures in cookbooks. I had a Moosewood cookbook in college as well and, it had things in it like tofu Shepherd’s pie. Dishes like that that give vegetarianism a bad name. Then I found Rose Elliot. Rose produces beautiful, healthy, delicious vegetarian food.

Many dishes from Rose’s Complete Vegetarian Cookbook are standards in my repertoire. My copy is over 15 years old and I know she just released a new version of it, so I can’t speak to the new one but I have purchased two different versions of older ones and I can say I thought it was worth it to buy it two times.

I usually make this dish on Easter, in fact it’s a solid tradition. But the other day we had a ton of carrots in the house, not much else and if you are following the weather in the Southeast then you know it’s too hot for clothes or food. So I took my version of Rose’s carrot soup and I made a cold version.

Cold Carrot Ginger Soup with Basil – Serves 6

1-1.25 Lbs. carrots (about 5-6 medium) – peeled and sliced
1 medium Spanish onion – chopped
1 medium Russet potato – peeled and chopped
1-1 ½” piece of ginger peeled and grated
2 tablespoons butter
3 ½ cups vegetable stock or water
Salt and pepper
3 tablespoons Greek yogurt or sour cream
½ teaspoon honey
1-2 tablespoons basil – chopped

Sweat the onions in butter for 5-7 minutes until they are starting to become translucent, add in carrots and potatoes, sauté for about 10 minutes until the potatoes get slightly soft, add in ginger, salt and pepper, add in ½ of the stock, bring to a boil and let simmer for 20 minutes. Using a blender or immersion blender puree the soup, add in additional stock or water for desired consistency, add in honey. Chill the soup, add in yogurt and basil prior to serving.

Notes: This can easily be made vegan by using olive oil instead of butter, just be careful that the vegetables do not brown while sautéing them and omit the yogurt. I use a combination of stock and water to better control the sodium content.

Say Ceci

Bean soup doesn’t sound very 90 degree weather. But sometimes your pantry and laziness dictate dinner aided by a healthy dose of suspension of disbelief (I’m assuming you’ve seen Star Wars?). Really this recipe can fit any season. I almost always have all the ingredients for this dish on hand; it’s very simple, takes very little time to make and it’s quite savory and could easily be served cold. I believe the original recipe came from a La Cucina Italiana I picked up about 5-6 years ago, it was aptly named Zuppa di Ceci. I’ve adapted it to my taste, of course, and to accommodate 2 standard cans of chick peas. I served this the other night with grilled olive bread, from H&F purchased at the East Atlanta Farmers' Market and prosciutto and melon.

Chickpea Soup with Rosemary - Serves 2-3

(2) 14 oz. cans (or 3 cups) of chickpeas drained and rinsed

2 cloves (or 1 tablespoon) of garlic minced

4 tablespoons olive oil

2 ½ -3 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary

1+½ cups chicken or vegetable broth (or more see note below)

Salt and pepper to taste

Place the first four ingredients in a pan and saute for 10 minutes or until your house starts to smell really good. To truly smell your house I suggest stepping outside of it for a moment (1 minute) and walking back in. Add the stock and salt and pepper, bring to a boil for a minute or two and then simmer for 7 minutes. Remove from heat and blend until smooth and creamy in texture. I used an immersion blender but a regular blender works just as well, you just might have to do it in batches depending on the blender. Ladle into bowls and dress with a little extra virgin olive oil.

Notes: A friend of mine recently made this and said she needed 3 cups of broth. I believe this is due to the type of chickpea you use. The original recipe called for more broth too. We use the Rega brand which tend to be a small dense chickpea rather than some other more popular brands which are more meatier. I suggest you keep broth handy and add to your desired consistency.