I haven't written anything about food since we moved to NJ...  I feel like I should rectify that.

Today's food news:  (1) picked up the CSA box.  Inside I found chard, 2 enormous heads of garlic, a bunch of onions, 2 zuch (to go with the 6 already in the fridge, MUST do something with them), a bunch of beets (to go with the 4 in the fridge, gah) and...  3 heads of lettuce.

The heads of lettuce are becoming (really, have been for the last few weeks) a problem.  See, the CSA has been giving us 4 heads of lettuce for the past 3 weeks and heads of radiccio and other salad greens. 2 people just don't eat that much lettuce...  I'm trying to look out for the neighbors, offer them lettuce n'stuff.

In looking through the fridge I discovered a 1/2 pint of peas, so I ate them while driving about.  They were from the farmer's market a few weeks ago, so the outsides weren't great, but I opened them up and ate the tasty green goods inside.

It's hot enough here that I'm against cooking, but I've got to do something with the beets.  So, we appear to be at an impasse.  Otherwise, I may or may not have acquired 12 pints of fresh-picked blueberries from a local farm for $20 and eaten 2 pints so far today.

french fry disenchantment

So, four-fifths or so of us have moved to Princeton, New Jersey. How does that math work, you ask? Well, I'm here full-time, thanks to an unexpected job opportunity. So that's one half of us. Tim will be here more or less 60% of the time - the great majority of the summer, and about 3.5 out of 7 days during the school year. So, .5*1.00 + .5*0.60 = .8, or four fifths. Does math actually work like that? It really isn't the point of this post.

The point is: there are no good french fries in princeton, and this makes me sad. There were two very good places for fries in Portsmouth (though neither of them ideal): Coat of Arms for fatty steak fries and Portsmouth Brewery for decent hand-cut style fries (not to mention decent sweet potato fries by UNH at Young's, and Duckfat if I go as far as Portland, and many places in Boston...). I have had five different restaurants' french fry offerings so far in Princeton, and they all pale in comparison:

• Witherspoon Grill: overpriced, underflavored
• Efes: completely unacceptable -- limp, greasy, especially compared to so many good fries I've had at Mediterranean places (but I ate them anyway)
• Winberie's: average, boring
• Triumph: they're the double fried ones, maybe lightly battered. not a big fan
• Zorba's Grill take out: probably the best deal of them all for the price, but still nothing special

Honestly, the best fries I've had were at Rocky Dining Hall. I'm hoping that as I broaden the search over the summer, that I'll find something decent that isn't as far away as The Continental in Philly or Pommes Frites in NYC. I suppose it's not such a bad thing that it takes an hour to get good fries - it could mean I just won't eat fries that often... but, knowing me, it probably just means I'll eat bad fries and be sad. The search continues.

beet risotto

Beet Risotto--

1) take some small beets, skin and grate them.

2) Chop up an onion and some garlic (2T ish)

3) Take your fancy-pants risotto pan, put it on the stove-top on high-medium

4) Throw 4T of butter in, or whatever randome amount of butter that you've got, add some olive oil too.

5) Toss in the onion and let it soften until it's translucent

6) Add the garlic, cook a bit

7) Add the risotto (1C) and stir it about for a while (I wandered off and did something in the basement). While that's happening, warm 3C of water in your water-boiler and mix with bullion or whatever you're using (I do about 1.5C of bullion by the package dilution)

8) Add the beets and about 1C water. Then, as the water cooks out, add 1/2c at a time all the while stirring.

9) After adding all the water, add 1 slightly old lemon worth of juice and grated peel.

10) Add 1/2 c (ish) of nice cheddar cheese.

11) Add a splash of balsamic vinegar

12) Grate some parm on top...

Eat. Also, you can add some sort of greens.

Chicken Rama

I wanted Thai for lunch on Monday, but my co-worker who I was eating with claimed that because she was having Chinese food on Tuesday, she didn't want Thai on Monday. I decided that it wasn't worth arguing about the differences between the two, and had a very tasty chicken pesto sandwich and sweet potato fries. As soon as I got home, I searched for an easy Thai recipe to put together, and this is what I settled on. The chicken is poached in coconut milk - I like cooking braised/poached meats because it's harder to overcook them. The sauce comes together easily, and could be adjusted for spice levels easily as well.

Chicken Rama (adapted from food.com recipe)
serves 3-4

1 can coconut milk
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 -1 ½ lb boneless skinless chicken , cut in 1/2 inch pieces
1 tbsp chunky peanut butter
1 tablespoon red curry paste
dash of fish sauce
3 tablespoons brown sugar
½ cup finely chopped roasted peanuts


1. Add coconut and ginger to a medium saucepan over medium heat, and stir until well blended. Bring it to a boil, add chicken pieces, reduce heat, and simmer  5-7 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through (i.e., no pink remains).

2. With a slotted spoon, remove the chicken and transfer to a bowl; cover and set aside. If any coconut milk accumulates at the bottom of the bowl, just pour it back into the saucepan.

3. To the saved coconut milk, add the peanut butter, red curry paste, fish sauce, brown sugar, and chopped peanuts. Continue cooking over medium heat, stirring constantly, for 10 minutes or until the sauce is creamy and not grainy in appearance.

4. Add the chicken, and heat for another 2 minutes.

5. Serve with steamed white rice and broccoli.

Notes:

• The original recipe calls for a lot more fish sauce. I pick the fish sauce out of dishes really easily, and err on the side of extreme caution when cooking for myself. 
• The original recipe says creamy peanut butter, but all we ever have in our house is chunky. I upped the amount, too, and decreased the sugar slightly. I like my sauce good and peanutty.
• For curry paste, I used Spice House Thai Red Curry Powder, and just dumped it into the sauce without thinning with water. I love everything that Spice House produces. Using powder might have made the sauce's consistency thicker than it would've been if I used curry paste.

Apple pancake

1) Heat your oven to 450 or 425, whatever.

2) Chop up 3ish apples (4 if they're small or you like more apple)

3) Mix in a bowl: 1/2c flour, 2 eggs, a bit of salt, 3/4c dairy liquid (milk, half & half, not-yogurt)

4) Melt some butter (1T+) in a pan, throw the apples in and put some brown sugar in (maybe 1/4 cup, dark or light, I usually use dark because I like it more)

Sautee it all for a while, til the apples are nicely browned.

5) Pour the batter over it, I leave it on the stove for 30 seconds after that. Toss it in the oven, turn down the heat to 425 (if you had it above that) and let it cook for 17 minutes.

6) Take out of oven. Cut into pieces. Wait for it to cool.

7) Eat.

Coffee cake

I made coffee cake yesterday in between brewing. The basics:

Pre-heat oven to 350.

1) Into the mixer (not exact): 1tsp salt, 1tsp baking powder, 3/4tsp baking soda (or vice versa), 2 1/4 c flour, 8T butter cut into 12 pieces, 1 1/c c sugar. Beat it up a bunch.

2) Then, add 1/2c sour cream or plain yogurt

3) In a different bowl mix 1c sour cream or yogurt, 4 eggs, some vanilla (eh, pour a reasonable amount, I like vanilla).

4) Mix the wet into the dry

5) Pour it into a greased 9x13 pan.

6) In a bowl mix something like (I really made this up) 3/4c flour, 3/4c sugar, a bunch of dark brown sugar (maybe 3/4 cup?), 8T butter cut into 12 pieces, and then some brown spices like cin, all spice, cloves and a bit of fresh nutmeg. I did some double-knife action to cut the butter into the dry goods.

7) Bake for about 40 minutes. Watch the butter pooling and bubbling and almost deep frying parts.

8) Nom nom nom. Oh, I'm sorry, did you want some?

8) Watch the butter pool on top

36 Hours in New Orleans

We actually spent seven luxurious days in NOLA, but if I blogged about all of it, it would get boring. Or at the least, I would get bored halfway through and might never get to some of the highlights. Instead, I'm going to boil down my recommendations for a 1.5 day food-centric excursion through the Crescent City, based on things I ate during this trip. I stayed in the French Quarter, so everything in this list is basically easily accessible from there. Someday I'll get back and roam a little more widely through other parts of the city.

Arrive. Eat an order of beignets and have a coffee at Cafe du Monde. It doesn't matter what time you arrive - any time is the perfect time for beignets. Enjoy the busy atmosphere, the old school uniforms that the servers wear, and the shower of powdered sugar that you will inevitably be wearing once you're done.

Lunch: stand in line at Central Grocery. It looks unbearably long, but it'll move fast, and you'll wind through what might as well be a museum of food oddities, but is actually a market. If there is only one of you, get a half a muffuletta. You probably won't finish the whole thing, but if you only get a quarter, you might long for one or two more bites. Also get a root beer in an old fashioned bottle. And some Zapp's potato chips if you like the salt to cut through the olivey goodness of the sandwich. Take your lunch to Jackson Square and eat it on the grass. They're closed Sunday and Monday and are only open til 5 on the other days, so plan accordingly.

Snack: walk into the Central Business District and grab a crepe and an espresso beverage at Merchant. Or a frozen yogurt at Pinkberry, because you can't go wrong with frozen yogurt. Or a Pimms Cup at Napoleon House Bar if you don't want to leave the Quarter and you want a refreshing drink surrounded by excellent atmosphere.

Dinner: start with the spinach salad at Muriel's. It's warmed slightly by the apple bacon vinaigrette, and topped with a perfect combination of sweet spiced pecans and thinly shaved sweet onions. I usually dislike raw onions, but these were thinly shaved enough that they just blended in with the rest of the salad rather than overwhelming it. Next, I'd have the butternut squash soup from Restaurant August. Butternut squash soup is everywhere, but this rendition was especially creamy and luxurious, just the right temperature, and garnished well. For an entree, I had so many crazy rich good dinners that it's hard to choose, but I guess the prime rib at Besh Steak wins, for being over the top and still excellent. It is probably the largest portion of meat I have ever been served. The veggies on the side were also lovely, though the potatoes were way too buttery. For dessert, I'd go back to Muriel's and its bread pudding, because bread pudding is a must in NOLA, and this one was rich and comforting and the portion size was right.

After dinner: dueling pianos and hurricanes at Pat O'Briens. Even the sixth rendition of Sweet Caroline sounds fine after a couple of hurricanes.

Super late: at 2:30am, a hard cider from the Dungeon poured into a plastic cup and drunk on the streets with all the revelers was pretty great.

Breakfast/Brunch: The corned beef hash and eggs at the Old Coffeepot plus the grits with roasted corn from Zea's plus some boudin and a pastry from Cake Cafe plus an cappucino shakerato (refreshing and strong despite its silly name) from Merchant would be my ideal combo while I recovered from the night before.

While you wait til you're hungry again, roam the shops in the French Quarter. Check out the Mardi Gras and Katrina exhibits at the Presbytere museum (it sounds like a weird juxtaposition, but it totally works). Sit on the benches and watch the boats on the Mississippi. Visit the excellent Aquarium. Browse through the cookbook shop on Toulouse.

Lunch: be more adventurous and leave the Quarter. Ride the St Charles streetcar to S Carrollton Ave @ Willow Street, and walk a block to Boucherie. I liked this place so much I would order the whole meal again without having to supplement from other places: get the duck confit po boy with roasted garlic, bread and butter pickles, arugula and creole tomatoes if you're a carnivore, or the curried vegetable stuffed roasted beet with red jasmine rice and beet hoisin if you're a vegetarian, and split an order of fries. We didn't sample cocktails here, but a sazerac is one of those quintessential things you should try in NOLA. The thai chili chocolate chess pie was fine - I wish my people had been willing to try the krispy kreme bread pudding, though.

Hop back on the street car and take it to Avenue Pub. The selection is great, and you get $2 off a pint between 4 and 6pm.

Dinner: you might be too full for another super rich meal, so sample a bunch of appetizers like the eggplant caviar and olive tapenade, Crispy Smoked Quail Salad with Pears and Bourbon Molasses Dressing, and fried pork cake with poached egg, spinach and warm lentil dressing at Bayona. Check out their beautiful courtyard and toast a successful trip. If you're too full for dessert, order the petit fours plate to go, and eat them in your hotel room after you've digested properly.

Enchiladas!

Inspired by Mary's post of Gluten Free Goddess' Black Bean and Sweet Potato Enchiladas, we threw a bunch of stuff in tortillas last night, topped it with canned enchilada sauce, and called it a day:

1. Preheat oven to 425.
2. Toss some potato and sweet potato in olive oil, spread on a baking sheet, toss in oven til tender.
3. Thinly slice an onion and saute in olive oil. When it's soft, add a can of black beans, then throw in potato and sweet potato, and a small can of olives.
4. Coat the bottom of a 9x13 pan with a layer of enchilada sauce.
5. Bathe tortilla with sauce by moving it around in the pan, then add some filling plus some cheese, roll up, and leave in pan. Repeat til you're out of space, adding more enchilada sauce as needed to keep tortillas moist-ish.
6. Bake at 350 or so until the cheese melts.

I have a lot to say about our weeklong trip to New Orleans. Hopefully I'll get to it soon!

Chard and Sweet Potato Soup

Chard and sweet potatoes are my go-to winter vegetables. I love them both, and they are plentiful. I usually put them in a coconut milk curry, but my coconut milk consumption is getting a little out of hand. So, when Lynne Rosetto Kasper featured a newer, lighter soup based on these veggies on her podcast, I thought I should try it. I am pickier than I'd like to be when it comes to soup. I almost never like soups with chunks of things in them, possibly because I want every bite to have every taste in it, and if there are more than a couple things, it's impossible to get them all on a spoon. I also have trouble getting just the right salt level, and so soup often seems too bland or too salty for me (plus, Tim and I have different salt preferences). I do love a creamy, pureed soup, but again, often not as healthy due to cream ladenness. I like this one - there aren't too many competing flavors, and the bit of cheese at the end gives it extra earthiness. The lemon juice also balances the saltiness.

Anyway... here's what we made:

original Splendid Table recipe

Sweet Potato and Chard Soup, our version:


Ingredients

1 yellow onion, chopped
1 Tbs. olive oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed with the side of the knife and roughly chopped
1 large yam, about 12 oz.
6 cups water
6 tsps better than boullion
1 bunch Swiss chard, about 12 oz.
salt and pepper
a dash fresh lemon juice
croutons
gruyere cheese
additional olive oil

• In a medium sized skillet, sauté onion with a pinch of salt in the olive oil, stirring often on medium low heat until it is soft and beginning to color. Add the chopped garlic, and keep cooking on a low flame, stirring often, until the onion is golden brown, about fifteen more minutes.
• Meanwhile, peel the yam and cut it in 1/2" dice. Wash the chard, slice the greens off the stems, and cut the leaves into 1-2" pieces. Thinly slice the chard stems. Combine the yams, chard, water and bouillon concentrate in a soup pot and simmer gently, covered, for about twenty minutes.
• Add the sautéed onions to the soup, and simmer another ten minutes. Add fresh ground black pepper and  lemon juice to taste.
• Ladle steaming hot soup into deep bowls, drizzle the top of each serving with some fruity green olive oil, top with croutons and grated cheese.

where we ate: xmas 2011 edition

thanks to my pesky ear infection, we laid low and close to home for most of this vacation. lucky for us, close to home still yields a ton of great food choices.

arrived on 12/22 after 17 hours in the car, so no energy to do a lot of anything, and no real desire for anything heavy (especially after happy hour milkshakes at steak and shake back in Ohio). We ordered some sushi from Itto's, an old standby that's two blocks from my parents' house: inari, tamago, caterpillar roll, veggie maki of some sort, and some goma ae, my favorite preparation of spinach.

12/23: went on a grocery expedition and ran other errands, with a stop at Char Dog, aka Wiener's Circle: you know it's a neighborhood institution when it has its own wikipedia entry. My favorite local pad thai for dinner from Noodles in the Pot.

christmas eve: My parents go out to breakfast together every Saturday morning. This weekend we joined them, along with my sister and her boyfriend. We went to Marmalade, a new-ish spot run by a former chef at M Henry, another of their favorite breakfast spots. The menu here was inventive, with lots of sweet and savory options. I ended up with the euro breakfast: Butternut squash, applewood smoked bacon, leek, and scallions wrapped in a crepe; accompanied by two eggs, any style, house potatoes, and cranberry cognac chicken sausage, finished with a red wine reduction. This is my favorite way to eat: little bits of everything, all well-balanced and harmonious. Tim had an eggs benedict variation of some sort, and ordered the chorizo on the side so that I could snack on it. Saturday nights growing up, every weekend since I can remember, we have had Chinese food. Our restaurant of choice has changed over the 30+ years of this tradition. The first place I can remember us ordering from was called Paris Inn, which was a couple doors down from a movie theater, and also about a block from our jewelry store. Our current go-to location is Jade East. Sweet and sour chicken, char siu chow fun, chow mein, and fried rice, every week, without fail. This food tastes like nostalgia to me. I can't get enough.

christmas day: lots of cooking! I am very lucky that both of my siblings are accomplished cooks, with similar tastes. brunch: baked french toast with berries and fresh whipped cream, peach cobbler, geoff's breakfast hash (potatoes and bacon and other good stuff), soyrizo with rice, spinach crustless quiche, chicken sausage, cantaloupe, grapefruit, mimosas. Dinner: turkey, slow braised (slow cooker) brisket, baked sweet potatoes with brown sugar, garlic mashed potatoes, stuffing, braised and glazed brussels sprouts, arugula salad with roasted beets, (and walnuts and ricotta salata), cranberries, rice, cheddar garlic biscuits, key lime pie, banana cream pie.

12/26: leftovers for breakfast, because who can pass up good post-holiday leftovers. Edwardos stuffed spinach pizza with our friend Jeremy while we caught up on watching our friend Jason on Jeopardy and played a couple of games of Scrabble. A healthy dinner of popcorn and milk duds while watching Hugo (what a sweet movie and what beautiful effects! now I must read the book).

12/27: Salt and Pepper diner for some excellent pancakes - somehow, everyone in my family prefers thin, chewy pancakes to light and fluffy ones. I didn't realize this until this year, when we randomly got on the subject of pancakes. I don't remember eating a lot of them growing up, and I definitely didn't eat them thin and chewy when mom made them at home. We did go out now and then for Dutch Baby pancakes at Grannys or Original Pancake House, but I am still intrigued that we all independently arrived at this pancake style as we've gotten older. Tim wanted to trek out to a brewery that he's been eyeing for years, so we hiked out to Indiana to check out Three Floyds. Beers: Robert the Bruce, a dark brown Scotch Ale; Black Sun, a coffee-y stout; a four beer sampler; and an Arctic Panzer Wolf (their website says: "9.5% ABV 100 IBUs. A massive IPA that will leave your palate its hapless victim". Scorched earth is our brewery policy"). Also fries for both of us, a bowl of homemade ramen in dashi broth with pork belly and a soy-infused egg for me (all pub food should be this good!), and mac and cheese for Tim. I drank one beer, and promptly slept all the way back to Illinois once we got in the car. Walked a bit of this food off at zoolights at Lincoln Park Zoo, and finished the night with two episodes of the new Sherlock Holmes on the bbc, and some ribs from Carson's, which has been around since right about when I was born. They pale in comparison to Dinosaur BBQ and some other favorites of mine, but they do the job.

12/28: Mom made breakfast! French toast, chicken sausage, bacon and fresh fruit. This was a filling breakfast, and I am also a little burned out on eating, so lunch ended up being baguette, cheese and fruit. Ventured out for one final meal in the neighborhood, Vietnamese at Simply It (which is a silly name). Tim had a vegetarian pho named Erika (no idea why) and I had Bun Bo Xao va Cha Gio: marinated beef, rice noodles, egg rolls, and a bunch of veggies on the side (bean sprouts, lettuce, onions, cukes, pickled carrots), all accompanied by a chili fish sauce. We couldn't leave town without a cupcake, so the last stop of the trip was Molly's, where I got a mixed berry and a cookies n creme (split both with sister's boyfriend) and Tim had a butterscotch caramel.

And that brings us to now. Tim's asleep since he's driving 17 hours tomorrow, while I capture all the culinary goodness of this trip. Aside from Marmalade and Carson's, all of these foods can be acquired within a square mile of my parents' house. I get so spoiled when I come back here.


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