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Cold Rice Noodle Salad with Creamy Tahini

17 Jun

Rice noodles are cool. They start out all stiff and fragile and white and, after just three minutes in boiling water, they turn glassy and soft and a bit sticky. I love their texture and their look, and they remind me of a beloved Filipino chicken and noodle recipe my mom used to make when we were kids, one she got from a very dear Filipino friend.

My son loves them plain; he has taken to burying the fresh peas from our garden under a pile of noodles and carrying on all sorts of conversations with pretend characters as they make their way to his mouth. I am sure there is a whole chapter in the Bad Mommy Handbook about the evils of letting kids play with their food, but I can’t bring myself to care. The last thing I want is for the dinner table– perhaps the last bastion of real family life left to us all — to become a battlefield.

So he plays with his plain rice noodles and peas (“Oh no, don’t let him find me!” says the pea. “I am going to eat you!” says the evil bad guy, played by my son) while I play around with making cool dressings for the part I want to eat.

This one was inspired by Lindsey at Makes and Takes and I modified to suit our tastes and what was available in our garden and pantry. You will note that I used Veganaise – this was a salad my dad promised to try (yes, he is still on his crazy ass diet, but he is not so militant anymore and for this Father’s Day he was downright anarchic), so I used the vegan mayonnaise as a consideration. It’s actually fine for things like this.

You’ll also notice the pea pod option. Leandro eats the peas from the garden, but not the pods (yet), so I took the pods he was emptying and added them. They are unbelievably sweet and crunchy right off the vine and fit right in with the other stuff.

Cold Rice Noodle Salad with Radish, Cucumber, Pea Pods, and Creamy Tahini Dressing

Salad

8 oz. rice noodles, prepared according to package directions and cooled.

5 small radishes, greens removed and cut into tiny matchsticks (about 2 Tbs)

¼ hothouse cucumber, cut into tiny matchsticks (about 2 Tbs)

(optional – a handful of peapods – peas removed – cut into tiny matchsticks; microgreens; toasted sesame seeds, matchstick carrots)

Dressing

2 Tbs mayonnaise or Veganaise

1 tsp rice vinegar

½ tsp sugar

2 generous Tbs tahini

1-2 cloves garlic, pressed or minced fine

Sriracha or other Asian hot sauce, to taste (I did one generous squeeze)

¼ salt or to taste

Mix salad ingredients together in a bowl.

In a separate bowl, whisk together dressing ingredients. Add dressing to bowl mix thoroughly, adjust seasoning, and serve.

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Radishes and Cucumbers – Making the Basics More Beautiful

15 Jun

Sometimes I just want my life to be prettier.

Not that I want it to be a continuous Martha Stewart tea party where everyone stands around, looking just-so, with their sun-kissed cheeks and breezy hair, crisp button-up shirts and slouchy khakis, admiring the centerpiece and the color scheme and the details, like the charming DIY slipcovers the hostess whipped up in an afternoon between tending to the prize-winning peonies, putting up a winter’s worth of pickles and preserves, reorganizing the linen closet – which now smells of the homemade lavender sachets she made yesterday – and transforming the old outhouse into a conservatory and gift-wrapping center, complete with handmade paper recycled from organic coffee filters from Oregon and antique twine from the Medóc…

Might be nice, but no, that kind of lifestyle would probably drive me to drink more than I already do and of course the drinks would have to be much fancier and therefore take longer to get to than unscrewing the top of a bottle of humble plonk from Westbury Liquors…

No, the full-on Martha thing is not my thing at the moment.

But still. Sometimes I just want things to be prettier.

Thus, this very simple treatment of radishes and cucumbers that I put together with radishes from the garden and cucumbers from who knows which hothouse somewhere far less virtuous. The sharpness of the radish is tempered by the cool of the cucumber and the sweetness of the balsamic vinegar, and a bit of good salt completes the palate panorama. It looks sweet and beautiful and presentation tells the eater that someone cares, even if the only eater is you.

Cucumber and Radish Rounds (I considered calling it carpaccio, but am just not going that route today. That shouldn’t stop you from doing it, though.)

Thinly slice equivalent amounts of radishes and cucumbers. Put a layer of cucumbers on a serving plate. Top with a layer of radishes. Drizzle with olive oil and dot with balsamic vinegar. Finish with a pinch of flaky sea salt, and serve.

Note: We eat it with our fingers over here, so forget keeping the crisp button-up shirt clean. But this is about pleasure, and pleasure is not always tidy. And tidiness is not always desirable.However, should you decide to be more formal, make separate appetizer portions for each person and hand them a fork and a napkin. Preferably cloth 😉

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Quick Vegetable Soup for a Sick Day You Couldn’t Take

10 Jun

A few weeks ago I got bronchitis. I don’t get sick often, but sometimes you just pound it too hard and the body craps out.

However, it was not the right time to take off from work, which statement is probably a clear indicator of how crazed about work our American society is (And how I have become). “Yeah, I am on death’s door, but I gotta go to work.” Heavy sigh followed by a hacking, wracking cough. Wipe nose on sleeve. Carry on.

And I was one of at least two in our department who were in the same boat. Ah well. In my next iteration, I will go back to being Mediterranean or Caribbean in my approach. It is much better.

Anyhoo, by the time I stumbled home and crawled up the stairs on one of the worst days, I wasn’t up for much cooking. I was, however, very much in the mood for a comforting, nourishing soup. So was my mom, who was in similar condition downstairs.

That is when knowing your way around a kitchen is a good thing. If you can chop, saute, and add flavorful liquids, in about 25 minutes you can have a soup that may not raise the dead, but will smell good, taste good (if you have any sense of smell or taste left)  and make you feel better. If you don’t have any sense of smell or taste, just load on the hot sauce and enjoy a few minutes of steamed and spicy relief.

Feel like you can’t even deal with chopping fresh vegetables? Go ahead, empty out all the useless quarter bags of frozen vegetables buried in the back of the freezer. The tomatoe-y broth and herbs will make it all taste good, even if the texture leaves a bit to be desired.

Easy Vegetable Soup

2 Tbs extra virgin olive oil

1 medium onion, chopped

4 cloves garlic, chopped

1 Cup chopped carrots and celery

2 Cups other mixed vegetables (whatever bits are around the fridge anxious to be used – I used cauliflower, broccoli, summer squash. Potatoes, leeks, spinach would be nice too. You can also use frozen – why not?)

15 oz. can of tomatoes – pureed, chopped, diced, whole, whatever*

1 quart your preferred stock, plus more liquid to cover – can be stock or water*.

15 oz. can of white beans, rinsed and drained

½ Cup of cooked rice or pasta, if you’ve got

½ Cup fresh or frozen chopped spinach, optional

1 Tbs dried herbs (your preferred combination of oregano/thyme/rosemary/parsley/marjoram)

Salt, pepper and hot sauce to taste

In a deep soup pot, heat the oil at medium high until loose and fragrant. Add onions, stir to coat, and lower heat to medium. Add garlic, carrots, and celery, and saute for five minutes, until becoming tender. Add additional vegetables, stir to coat and sauté another three minutes. Add tomatoes and broth, plus enough additional liquid to cover, bring pot to boil, then lower heat and simmer for ten minutes. With about five minutes left in the simmer, add beans, and optional pasta and spinach, and seasoning. Serve with saltines or crusty bread.

*(Note: You can substitute some or all the stock, or the can of tomatoes with vegetable juice such as V-8 – low-sodium preferred)

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A Camping Week Come-a-Cropper…And What We Cooked

8 Jun

Some camping trips are divine: perfect weather, happy children, equipment fully-functional, bugs bugging someone else, and The Great Outdoors is, well, great.

The Montauk Lighthouse.

Then there are the camping trips that are more, shall we say, character-building.

A tick-free hiker is a happy hiker!

We’ve just come back from a trip that was a bit of a mixed bag. We were on the beach at the East End of Long Island in Spring, which can be a hit-or-miss deal. You might have sun and breeze. Or you might have 30 mph winds, cold temperatures, and chilling rain. We mostly had the latter, but in the end, managed to pull out one spectacular beach day, the requisite s’mores, several yummy, grilled meals, and a couple of tick-free hikes. And anyone who has ever camped by a body of water will understand the sheer joy of spending a week living outdoors Without One Single Mosquito Bite. (Even if you had to freeze your miserable ass off, huddled around a smoky damp wood fire gripping desperately to a plastic tumbler of boxed Malbec to achieve it).

There were other umbrellas that might have come in handier on this trip, but funnily enough, these were the only ones I had!

I like to say that the best friendships are forged by shared suffering, so Ashley, Marianne, and I have done yet another round of forging and are already planning for next year! (Leandro may have other ideas, but I have the deciding vote as long as I am paying.)

This trip was rather light on cooking – it happens when you are hit with gale force winds, blustery rain, and a shitty, shitty, shitty propane stove which is headed straight for the Island of Misfit Toys even as we speak.

Look out, Bobby Flay…here comes Leandro and His License to Grill

But, cook one must and following  are two of the recipes that came up during this trip. I hope to post a couple more in the next few days, but I am still doing laundry and catching up with the wreckage that is post-camping! And really, I am deciding whether to ‘fess up on how we cheated on the camping thing, discuss Leandro’s stomach issues; and am hoping to sort out a nifty vodka cocktail we adjusted our attitudes with…we shall see…

(for other camp-friendly recipes, see Spaghetti a la Carbonara, Spider Dogs (the coolest hot dogs EVER), Spanish tortilla with zucchini, Quesadillas, Scrambled Eggs, Aglio, Olio & Peperoncino – Pasta with Garlic, Oil and Hot Pepper, Grilled Tomato Pasta Sauce, Cannelini and Tomato Salad, Black Bean and Sweet Corn Salad, and Five Minute Black Beans).

Goat Cheese and Crackers – with Cucumber or Green Grapes!

Spread your favorite crackers with goat cheese (which keeps very nicely in a cooler). Top with cucumber slices or halved green grapes and served. Apple slices would also be lovely.

Skewered Vegetables

Fire up the grill. While the coals are heating up, soak ten wooden skewers in water for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, cut up a mix of vegetables – figure about 4 cup, but this is a very flexible recipe

(Notes: Peppers, zucchini, mushrooms, onions, are especially recommended. Eggplant is not, as it takes so long to cook through that everything else will be burnt if you put them together on a skewer. Grape tomatoes should also be skewered separately, as they cook faster than anything!

Also, try to cut the vegetables so that they cook evenly: denser vegetables should be smaller; more porous vegetables should be thicker.)

Skewer the vegetables, leaving a bit of space between them so they cook evenly.

In a separate bowl, whisk  – or use a fork! –  2-3 Tbs olive oil; 1-2 cloves garlic, minced fine; a pinch of salt; the juice of half a lemon; 1/2 tsp sugar; and 1 tsp oregano (or your favorite herb).

Brush the skewered vegetables with the oil mixture, using a brush, paper towel or your fingertips, or use a shallow plate to dip them lengthwise.

Place on grill and turn every two minutes or so, depending on your grill. When the vegetables exchange their crisp look for something more translucent and maybe even a bit charred, serve!

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Radish Revelation x 2: Roasted Roots and Sauteed Greens

30 May

We are eating from the garden! We are eating from the garden!

I cannot tell you how pleased we are with the French Breakfast radishes. No, we are not eating them for breakfast. No, we do not have any desire to suddenly become French (although a pied a terre in Paris or a cottage in the South of France would be very nice, thank you).

But the French Breakfast radishes? This little piggy said “Oui, oui, oui!” all the way home.

They are the easiest thing ever to plant and grow, don’t mind being crowded, move fast (like less than four weeks to edibility) and  are easy for a preschooler with no patience and limited fine motor skills to harvest.

Because we are pulling them out of the ground, and not out of a little plastic pouch, we also get the radish greens, so today’s blog is a double feature. You can use the whole thing (well, I do cut off the stringy rooty bit)!

However, because we pull them out of the ground, they are very, very dirty. In fact, I just found out that rather than harvest lettuce from the garden, my dad has still been buying clamshells of mixed greens from the store, “because I don’t feel like cleaning all that dirt….”

Seriously.

Let me just move on from that one and say, if you are willing to deal with the dirt (you may want to hose them down over the garden bed so you don’t lose all that good soil), the freshness of these radishes is amazing. And the sweetness that comes out in roasting is astonishing. The greens are great too, in the way that all leafy greens are great (to me). Saute with garlic and love them up. So here are your two recipes for the the same veg. Rock on!

(Full disclosure: my darling son – who planted, watered, thinned and harvested these with his own hammy little hands –  tried a bite of the roasted ones and spit them out. Whatever. More for me.)

Roasted Radishes

20-30 radish bulbs, topped and tailed (radish greens can be reserved and used for salad or sautéed with oil and garlic), and sliced in half

1 Tbs extra virgin olive oil

1 Tbs salted butter (or 1 Tbs unsalted butter and a sprinkle of salt)

1 -2 tsp fresh lemon juice

Preheat oven to 450°F.

Place radishes on a rimmed baking dish (lined with foil if you prefer). Smother with remaining ingredients and roast for 15-20 minutes or until browning at the edges. Sprinkle with additional salt, if desired. Serve.

Sauteed Radish Greens

1 -2 Tbs extra virgin olive oil

Three cloves garlic, minced

Radish greens from 20-30 young radishes, thoroughly rinsed and dried, stems removed, if desired

Salt to taste

Heat olive oil in sauté pan at medium high until liquid and fragrant. Add garlic, lower heat and cook for one minute or longer – until lightly golden. Add radish greens and stir to coat. Cook at medium heat until bright green and wilted. Serve on its own, or as an addition to a sandwich.

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Kale Chips – Crunchy, Tasty, Healthy, and EASY

28 May

My friend Carolyn has been telling me about how good kale chips are. I kind of found it hard to believe. Kale? Really?

Kale, if you don’t know, is one of those virtuous leafy greens that often confuse you in the supermarket: Is it chard? Is it kale? Is it collards? What do I do with it? And is it going to smell up my kitchen if I try it?

Really, kale is simplicity itself to use. It’s the bumpy looking one with curly edges and a stem that is not very thick (chard’s stems are more noticeable and quite often red or yellow – as in rainbow chard). Rinse well, cut out the stem and cook it much the way you would spinach, just cook it a bit longer, as it is denser and tougher. I don’t use it raw. It is a cool weather crop, meaning that if you have a patch of dirt, you can grow it even in winter, which is a big plus if you are big into seasonal eating.

Now Carolyn loves good food, so I knew she couldn’t be making it up, however odd kale chips sounded to me. And the more I thought about it, the more I considered the Asian seaweed strips I like so much. Wouldn’t it be similar?

So I got myself a bunch of kale – about 8 oz, give or take — from Sang Lee out in the North Fork and gave it a try.

Had to wrestle this from the table in order to get a shot of the shrapnel!

The results were a revelation! The kale chips were crunchy and had a slight, but pleasant bitterness, tempered by the salt. My parents and John the Painter who happened to be doing some painting with my dad downstairs gave it a try – Leandro was not having it – and we made short work of the whole tray. In fact, my pictures are pretty thin on the actual kale because in my eagerness to try them, I forgot to take any photos until we had almost cleaned them out!

I will be planting kale in the late summer and I will be making this all winter long for my late-night movie snack! Thank you Carolyn!

What was left when I remembered to take a picture!

Kale Chips

1 bunch kale (about 8 oz. – can be increased)

1 Tbs oil (I prefer extra virgin olive oil, but you can play around with flavors)

2 pinches salt

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. Lay kale pieces on parchment paper, leaving space between all of them – no touching! Drizzle with oil, and sprinkle with salt. Bake for 20-30 minutes, until leaves are crisp. Serve.

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Pasta With Roasted Vegetables (Potluck Portion!)

21 May

We always do an end-of-semester party with our students in our language immersion program; after all, when you spend 20 hours a week for 15 weeks with the same class, you get to know each other pretty well, so it’s nice to have an informal day with them.

When you don’t have proper travel packs for food – improvise! Saved rubber band show their worth here.

Usually, we do a massive celebration with all our classes together, but this semester it just wasn’t coming together, so each lecturer did an individual class party.

And sometimes you DO have the right gear: Pampered Chef Measuring Cup with LID

So I passed around a sign-up sheet so we’d know who was bringing what, including paper goods and soft drinks and the like. And my students, who claim to love food and hail from most corners of the earth (Caribbean, Central America, South America, Europe, Asia, SouthEast Asia, and Russia, wrote cookies, snack, cookies, snack…like, what!?! I was NOT going to have a Dunkin’ Munchkin affair.

Mixed up and ready to go…

So I panicked and made a dish myself (which we lecturers don’t often do, since our students are usually so generous with the home-cooked dishes). Pasta seemed the right solution and I was able to carry the sauce separate from the pasta and reheat it in the office microwave…Although we have no vegetarians, roasted vegetables seemed the right way to go.

I needn’t have worried. My wonderful class brought chicken adobo (Philipines), roast chicken (Korea), empanadas (Colombia), warmed greens salad (Haiti), and pasta (U.S. style!). Plus a gigantic and delicious lemon cream cake! So it was a lovely spread and a nice way to close the semester before their big test

The International Buffet

The Thank You Cake

Pasta with Roasted Vegetables

Two pounds short, curly pasta – shells, farfalle, penne, or cavatappi

Vegetables

4-5 Cups mixed chopped vegetables (zucchini/red pepper/yellow squash/cauliflower/broccoli/asparagus)

4 cloves garlic, minced

Small onion, peeled and minced

1-2 Tbs olive oil

Sauce

2 Tbs olive oil

1 medium onion, peeled and diced

2-3 cloves garlic, minced

8 oz button mushrooms (white or baby bella), woody parts of stems removed before chopping

Hot red pepper flakes – a pinch or two, optional

Two 28 oz. cans diced or pureed tomatoes

Salt to taste

1 Cup grated Parmigiano Reggiano or other grating cheese

Instructions

Preheat oven to 375°F. Spread vegetables, onion, and garlic on a rimmed baking dish, drizzle with oil and roast for 1 hour.

Prepare pasta according to package directions.

In the meantime, heat oil for sauce in a large pot until liquid and fragrant. Add onions sauté for a minute, then add garlic. Saute for an additional minute, then add mushrooms. Cook at medium heat until mushrooms release their liquid (about five minutes), stirring occasionally. Add pepper flakes, if desired, and add canned tomatoes. Cook at a slow simmer until vegetables are finished roasting. Add vegetables and stir to combine. Add pasta and cheese, mix well and serve.

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And the garden grows!

11 May

It’s working! It’s working!

Today we harvested the first leafy things from our new raised beds. I couldn’t be more excited! Leandro and my dad harvested lettuce leaves, and they also thinned the radishes.

Baby, baby…rinse and eat.

The freshness and flavor were mind-blowing (for the grown-ups, at least. Leandro tasted, and rejected, but nevermind…he will come around eventually…and at least he’ll never embarrass me on a Jamie Oliver program by not knowing his veggies and where they come from….). No recipe, just farm to mouth, and then farm to salad spinner, and a whisper of oil and vinegar.

Here, some quick pictures of our first draw, so you can celebrate with us.

Padushi and grandson, working together

He didn’t like it (spit it out everywhere, in fact), but he tasted it. Willingly. And that is all I ask.

The grandson took out a bit more than we intended, but doesn’t it look nice?

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Can These Strawberries Be Saved? Yes!

10 May

‘Tis the season of strawberry temptation. You know, such a good price on 4 fragrant ruby lbs. of strawberries that you don’t even think about the organic vs. conventional argument, or about who is going to eat them all.  You put that clam shell right into the shopping cart and carry on.

And then a few days later, you re-encounter said clam shell, about two pounds lighter in strawberries.  But the ones that are left are looking sad, faded, withered, mushy, maybe even a little gray and mossy in spots. A bit like Lola the Showgirl thirty years on at the Copa.

They seemed like a bargain at the time, but now they threaten to become food waste, a drain on your wallet, a stink in your trash can, those starving children in Ethiopia that your mom used to tell you about, yakkity, yakkity, just wrong.

Relax. There is a way to save them, make them delicious and desirable once again, make yourself feel better about your folly.

Roasting. Yes, roasting. Toss those aging beauties (do cut out those grey mossy bits, of course, and all the other dubious bits) in sugar and balsamic vinegar (and rosemary if you are so inclined), roast for an hour, and you will end up with some deliciously jammy stuff that you can use on toast, stir into plain yogurt, use to top ice cream or even experiment with to make some sort of chutney or relish for meats.

As the strawberry season is upon us, I know I won’t be the only one to make ridiculous seasonal purchases. Here, at least, is one solution to the retail hangover.

Roasted Strawberries (adapted from The Oregonian)

1 lb strawberries, hulled and cut into 1” pieces if the whole fruits are bigger than that

scant ¼ Cup sugar

2 tsp balsamic vinegar

Preheat oven to 375°F. In a bowl, toss the berries, sugar and vinegar. Spread berries on a rimmed baking sheet and roast for about an hour or until soft and dark. Stir occasionally. Remove from heat and cool before serving. Will keep a couple of days in the fridge.

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Party Snacks: Stove-Top Toasted Garbanzos

22 Apr

(Happy Earth Day, everyone! I am not trying to ignore it, nor am I not cooking at all at home, but I have had so many professional and personal events in the past week that I admit to not doing much new or innovative in the kitchen. I organized and moderated two events on campus; was the keynote speaker for an annual gala of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, Metro NY chapter – what a terrific group of people!; — plus my teaching responsibilities; my son — we just went to a performance of Peter and the Wolf today in NYC and had to negotiate around the rain and the E line being nonoperational- ick!; the dictionary; which should be available this week as an e-book on Amazon and at the Apple store, more on that later;…in short, I have been up to my neck in it! However, I’ve always got something in my back pocket to tell you about, and here it is. Simple and basic, but delicious. And more excitement later in the week as I catch my breath!)

This is a nifty stove-top snack that is relatively — actually quite, very, absolutely – healthy. Except for the part where it gets addictive and people starting pulling the bowl towards themselves and not sharing (Yes, that was me). It can actually get kind of ugly…you might want individual little ramekins as a preventative measure.

Thanks to Beth for the inspiration and Ailish for the fearless cumin seasoning! I think you will like the Indian inflections in this one, but you could go completely Mediterranean as well.

For an oven-roasted version click here.

Stove-Top Toasted Garbanzo Snack

1 pint presoaked chick-peas*, patted dry (or a 28 oz. can of chick peas, rinsed, drained and patted dry)

generous gratings of salt and pepper (Mediterranean seasoned sea salt blend is really good here)

2 or more heaping Tbs cumin and garam masala (or other spice powder blend that you like)

Heat a heavy skillet on medium high until quite hot. Add chick peas and seasonings and toast until starting to scorch, , at least ten minutes, stirring or tossing very frequently. When toasted all around, adjust seasoning, pour into a bowl and serve as a party snack or accompaniment to cocktails (as you might serve peanuts) for two to four people.

*To soak garbanzos from dry to get a pint, rinse and pick over about 10 oz of dry. Place in a bowl with a tsp salt and abundant water (to cover by several inches). In the morning, change the water. In the afternoon, drain the chick peas and rinse. Place in a pot with water to cover, bring to a boil (scraping the foam off the top) and then simmer at a gentle bubble for an hour or until desired texture is reached. You will never get the same softness as canned, but is that what you really want?

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