Ten Random Things I’ve Learned in the Kitchen

5 May

1. Never say “I could make a pasta dinner blindfolded” in front of two large Australian men, unless you truly can, because you will be making that dinner blindfolded, under the attentive supervision of two large Australian men within two minutes of saying it.

2. I can make a pasta dinner blindfolded.

3. A dishwasher is your best friend. In the absence of a dishwasher, your best friend is the person who will wash the dishes for you. Not the one who asks if he or she can help, but the one who just up and does it.

4. Eat the Damn Cookie. Avoiding what you crave is false virtue. And counterproductive. When I crave something, I eat it. Right away. ‘Cause if I don’t, I will snack my way through the whole frigging kitchen and then……eat, not just one damn cookie, but three. At least. So get it over with,  eat the damn cookie, and, if you must,  walk around the block a few times. If you must.

5. Health claims on the label of any foods are to be viewed with deep suspicion, if not outright disbelief. Heart healthy, low-fat, low-carb, gluten-free, no saturated fats, natural, fat-free, blah, blah, blah…it’s all bulls**t. If they say it is beneficial in one way, it is sure to be detrimental in some other way they are not chirping so cheerfully on the label for all to notice. If you believe the health claims, well, anything I say might be unkind, so I will refrain. Ultimately, if you are not growing it yourself or know the person who is and if you’re not making it yourself, you are taking your chances.

6. Since I am not growing it all myself (nor will I be any time soon), I try to buy organic or at least buy things in their raw form, grow a little, make as much as I can from scratch, and belong to a Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm. And the rest will just have to take care of itself.

7. Having said #6, since my friend, Adriana, recently pointed out to me that commercial Adobo seasoning doesn’t have MSG, I have brought it back into my kitchen and have been using it. A lot. It’s kind of a heritage food for a Puerto Rican…I mean, I don’t know anyone whose grandmother didn’t use it!

8. A watched pot might never boil, but leave something cooking on the stove by itself for a second to load the washing machine and there goes the smoke alarm!

9. When your eyes are burning up from cutting onions, the fastest form of relief is to run your inner wrists under cold water. Don’t ask me why; it just works (Thanks Kate!).

10. Everything tastes better when eaten with friends. Except chocolate, ’cause I ain’t sharing. So go away.

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Mojitos: Celebrating, Cuban-style

4 May

There’s been so much good stuff going on in my world over the last two months that I have been too busy to stop to celebrate any of it!

Aside from my culinary dictionary finally being available to the public, I ran some successful events at the community college where I teach, delivered the keynote address at the annual gala of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese Metro NYC chapter, attended the national TESOL (Teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages) conference in Philadelphia with some of my wonderful colleagues (and without my son for three nights – a monumental event for which I have to thank my parents!), attended the Small Farms Summit here on Long Island, planted a garden in the brand-new raised boxes that my dad and his friend built and…even got a hair cut and color (which alone would be cause for celebration, given how I was feeling about my hair). I have even managed to drop enough weight to be back into all my clothes (I was very cavalier about the figure this winter, but have since reined it in). 

Things have slowed down a bit now, so last weekend it was time to catch my breath with a celebratory cocktail. Or two. At the same time, I realized that the mint was up in the garden. Put these two elements together, and the only logical conclusion was to bust out the rum and make a mojito! Or two.

A mojito is really a Cuban drink — and I have been fortunate enough to have had quite a few of them in Cuba itself, including one memorable evening on the patio of the Hotel Nacional in Havana, listening to Compay Segundo in one of his last live performances, sharing a honking big Churchill-size Cohiba cigar and some Havana Club silver rum in very good company, and feeling almost sheepish about how much fun it was to live like Hemingway for a bit. I believe my divorce papers were getting signed at the time too, in some other country, so you can imagine my satisfaction at spending that moment in fabulous and exotic circumstances far-far away from what’s-his-name.

In my world, mojitos are liquid triumph.

For rum I now use Don Q Cristal from Puerto Rico, my preferred white rum for mixed drinks. You will want a rum with a very clean, crispness. As it turns out, my mint was a bit more toothpaste-spearminty than I usually like, but the result was exceedingly refreshing.

As with any traditional recipe, I expect to hear from many folks saying that this is not at all the way to make an authentic mojito. And as with any traditional recipe, I will answer that there are as many ways to make it as there are bartenders in the world. But of course, I would love to hear your suggestions!

Thanks to Ashley for being my partner in crime on this one, and for taking the notes while I did the mixing. The recipe has quite a bit of editorializing, most (but not all) came from her!

Mojitos

3 tsp sugar

16-20 large mint leaves

2 big, fat Tbs white rum (Don Q Cristal is a personal favorite)

½ Tbs lime

Seltzer/club soda

Muddle (mush up, but don’t pound) sugar and mint in a mortar and pestle or in two glasses (Ashley says: don’t muddle the mint too much or else the mint particles go up your straw. And into your mouth. And then your drink sucks.)

Fill two glasses with ice (highball, lowball, it’s up to you). Divide rum between the two glasses. Pour lime juice over rum and shake a bit to cover. Add sugar-mint muddle, if it wasn’t in the glasses already, and stir gently.

Remember that you are supposed to add club soda/seltzer. Open bottle over sink (because since you forgot about it, you didn’t refrigerate it, so the seltzer is warm and apt to fizz all over). Pour ¼ cup seltzer atop each glass and serve. Salud!

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Garbanzos con chorizo (Chick peas and chorizo – the last of the hearty winter meals?)

1 May

Spring is definitely here – rain, fresh green smells, vegetable garden popping up all lively and bright, lily of the valley spreading lush fragrance low to the ground, lilacs towering above and spreading their own heady perfume, birds and bees doing their spring dances, kids going mental.

But there is still a chill in the air, especially at night, and there is certainly time for one or two more heavy comfort meals.

One of my favorite is Garbanzos con chorizo – chick peas or ceci with Spanish hot sausage. I don’t make it that often, because the little guy won’t eat garbanzos (yet), but after the crazed month or two I’ve just put behind me, I deserved to slather on some favorites.

Here it is – simple as pie and tasty as all get out.

Garbanzos con chorizo 

2 Tbs extra virgin olive oil

1 medium onion, peeled and chopped

2-3 cloves garlic, minced

3-4 Tbs sofrito, if using prepared, 3-4 ice cubes worth if using homemade frozen (see Sofrito for Freezing) or follow the recipe below for making fresh sofrito to order*

3-4 oz Spanish-style spicy chorizo sausage (you may substitute hot dry Italian sausage, or one of those hot supermarket brands that comes fully cooked), peeled and chopped into 1/4” pieces.

2 Tbs tomato paste

15 oz can diced tomato

1 Tbs cumin

1 Tbs dried oregano

¼-1/2 tsp salt (to taste)

1 pint soaked garbanzos (or 2 15 oz cans, rinsed and drained)

Heat oil in a large saucepan at medium-high until fragrant. Stir in onions to coat, then lower heat and sauté, about five minutes. Add garlic and sofrito and cook until fragrant. Add chorizo and heat until it begins to release its oil, then immediately add tomato, cumin, oregano, salt to taste and garbanzos. Cook at a lively simmer for 20 minutes and serve over rice.

*Here is a quick sofrito recipe that will work for this dish if you are actually making it to order. If using this sofrito recipe, do not use additional onion. The garlic stays the same.

SOFRITO

  1. 3 Tbs olive oil
  2. 3 oz ham steak or jamón para cocinar, diced (optional in this dish)
  3. 1 oz bacon, chopped rustically (optional in this dish)
  4. 1 green cooking pepper (cubanelle or Italian pepper), diced
  5. 1 large onion, peeled and diced
  6. 6 culantro leaves (recao), minced
  7. 4 sweet small peppers called ají dulce in Hispanic markets (do NOT purchase Jamaican ají or scotch bonnet! They look the same but the Jamaican/scotch bonnet are HABANEROS, deadly hot and inappropriate for this dish!) seeded and minced
  8. ½ Cup cilantro leaves, minced

Heat olive oil in whichever sauce pan you are making your dish in. Add ham and bacon, if using; cook until done (bacon can be crisp) then add other ingredients and saute until soft and fragrant.

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Eat Your Way Through Puerto Rico: A Culinary Dictionary – BUY IT, SHARE IT!

29 Apr

And finally, almost 13 years after I started working on it, my culinary dictionary is available!! I am so excited (Thanks Carlos Matos of Forsa Editores for getting on board with me and guiding me through this new adventure!) to finally, after years of writing for newspapers and magazines to actually have my own book out, with my name on it (the cover you see here is not quite the actual image, but you get the idea). It feels really, really, great.

Eat Your Way Through Puerto Rico: A Culinary Dictionary is my contribution to the foodie word world.

(Update: Eat Your Way is now available on iTunes too!)

What is does is take the words and phrases we use in Puerto Rico for produce, local dishes, meats, fish and seafood, as well as how we get a table at a restaurant or get our steak cooked to order, and translates them into English and back again. The fruits, vegetables and herbs have the botanical names included for easier identification. One day I’ll get the fish and other meat animals labeled too.

Who it is for is folks traveling in Puerto Rico who would like to understand and taste the local foods, but would like to know what it is they are trying.  It is also for people like me who are of Puerto Rican background but were born in the States (or elsewhere) and need some help learning about, making or describing our heritage foods. You will notice that in addition to straight word to word translation, some of the more interesting or unusual or typical dishes and ingredients get a little story to go with: find out about yuca and poison; where okra got its name; why sweet potato and yams are not actually the same thing; how breadfruit caused the Mutiny on the Bounty.

It is also for linguistic and food geeks (and I say that with all the pride and affection of a dedicated linguistic and food geek, because that is what I am) who just want to know. That’s where many of you come in. This is not a project that is finished, but one that I have laid the groundwork of. I hope, as we move forward, to get a lot of feedback from users and readers who agree, disagree or have other words and phrases to add to the lexicon. So feel free to comment here about what you think. I will be setting up a Facebook page in the near future to open the channels for more feedback!

So far Eat Your Way Through Puerto Rico is available on Amazon (for just $4.99 – How could you not!?!) as a Kindle book and will be coming soon to the iTunes store and print.

Soon Hot, Cheap & Easy will be back to my regularly scheduled programming – recipes from the front lines of parenting – but for now, please check out the book and let me know what you think!

Natalia

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25 Apr

It is strawberry-rhubarb season again and thanks to Restoration Farm I had some lovely fresh rhubarb that caused me to run to the supermarket and buy some (conventionally grown) strawberries. This recipe is bubbling up on my stove right now; it is so good (and so easy) it is worth a reblog!

Natalia at A New World of Writing's avatarHot, Cheap & Easy

Being part of a farm makes you really work with the seasons!

Take rhubarb. I’ve never actually cooked rhubarb before, as much as I love strawberry rhubarb pie (Briermere Farm in Riverhead makes the best I’ve had!). This vegetable is not part of my Caribbean repertory and, to be honest, I have been a little intimidated by it.

Silly me! It is simple!

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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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Small Farm Summit 2012

18 Apr

Last weekend I did something totally for myself. (But for you, I will provide relevant informational links below! I will also include random, only loosely related photos, because I can’t stand how dense the text is and I bet you wouldn’t read to the end where the juicy stuff is!)

Tulips from the garden

I attended the Small Farm Summit 2012 at Hofstra University (that’s Hofstra, not Adelphi University, which campus I drove around in error and confusion and dismay followed by self-recrimination and self-flagellation, until  I realized I was only about ten minutes from Hofstra anyway – thank you GPS – and settled back to enjoy driving through how the other half – the folks who work and study at private universities — lives. Wow, that is definitely not the cement block public university horror architecture I am so intimately familiar with in my other life as a lecturer. They’ve got rolling landscapes, trees, stately brick buildings, lush landscaping…but I am meandering around the way things aren’t; let me get back to business).

The Summit was so inspiring – especially for someone like me, who is looking at her son entering kindergarten with some trepidation, not because he is not ready or I am not ready — we are ready. It’s because I’m afraid of what he’s going to eat! School lunches are notoriously unhealthy, and food “choices” are kind of laughable, unless you think that your divine right to tater tots and a bagel every day constitutes freedom of choice for the consumer. Or a five-year-old. Oh yeah, and now that he’s leaving our beloved Greenhouse, nobody’s going to be reheating lovingly homemade foods for H.R.H. Leandro, Prince of My Heart at lunchtime. How am I going make sure he gets healthy hot meals in the dead of winter? Yikes.

Caroline, Ava and Kobe (my spellings are probably wrong - apologies!!!) at Restoration Farm...behind them are two new features!

To be fair, I have yet to truly investigate the situation — we’ll have to wait until the end of my semester for that. But I want to be armed and ready for action, should the need arise. And really, I just want to be involved with food. It’s not just about my kid. It’s about all of us.

Since I didn’t even take pictures at the event (part of the self-flagellation on my circuitous route to the conference was realizing I forgot my camera) and I can’t seem to pull even a logo off the Small Farm Summit website, I am just going to reference some of the inspiring folks who spoke and provide links to the amazing things they do!

Volunteering at R.F.

Former NBA player and son of sharecroppers, Will Allen and Growing Power are greening Milwaukee with intense urban farming that serves to feed people better, improve soil, reduce the waste stream and teach folks farming skills. Wow.

The Green Bronx Machine   is a high school project by teacher administrator Stephen Ritz, who is a dynamo who took forgotten, abandoned and given-up-on students and, through garden projects, is creating high school graduates with marketable skills earning living wages. See pretty much the same hilarious and moving lecture I did here: TEDx

Chef Ann Cooper The Renegade Lunch Lady has transformed the way many public school districts feed kids: no processed foods, no defrosted foods – just locally sourced, fresh ingredients and simple, kid-friendly good stuff. See how it can be done with the free tools at Lunch Box.

A Restoration Farm resident

For more on greening school food and all things organic (and really really tasty) especially on Long Island,  visit Bhavani Jaroff at  iEat Green LLC

Jan Poppendieck’s book Free For All: Fixing School Food in America (one of many she has written) traces the whys of subsidized school lunches from their inception as a way to use up surplus!!! In her talk she helped make sense of how we got here and where we are going (and it is not necessarily to hell in a handbasket…)

Brooklyn Food Coalition‘s Beatriz Beckford helps schools and families learn to eat better from the grassroots (this is a terrible pun, I know, but sometimes I lack impulse control). They have a conference coming up…click on the link for more information!

Leonore Russell is an educator at Crossroads Farm in Malverne, part of the Nassau County Land Trust. A former Waldorf teacher, she presented a lovely workshop on getting kids into the garden. We’ve been cuddling up with Peter Rabbit books ever since and I have to say, Leandro is very jazzed about doing the watering of the beds by himself.

And Susan Simon, a social worker at the Hicksville School District, gave a terrific little presentation about how she got raised beds into her district. I got so many ideas about incorporating gardening into the curriculum from her!!!

The beds before there was anything but seeds; I owe you pictures of our progess!

I was so exhilarated by the end of my day at the Summit (I had to go home at 2 pm because of other obligations, but the goings-on went on!) that I could barely stand it; I was and am all ready to take on the world…but I must admit to terrible pangs of some unpleasant emotion that accompany my desire to move forward. I can’t quite describe it in a word (mid-life crisis being just too damn pedestrian to want to apply to myself), but it’s that wondering why I didn’t prepare better for the grown-up I was going to be? Why did it take me so long to figure out where I really wanted to be immersed? And the ever-present questions of balancing good sense and responsibility with the desire to launch: can one do both? And…

HOW DO I FIND THE TIME??????????

So, the next day I planted some more vegetables with my dad in our new raised beds — OMG the beets are bursting through! — and resolved to dedicate my summer to gardening a lot and seeing what comes up.

BTW – shout-out to Restoration Farm our CSA, and TWBarritt, a blogging and farming buddy who was ably manning the table and whose blog Culinary Types, is a personal favorite. And to Donna Sinetar who I only saw through a conference hall window, but who presented on chickens after I had to leave!  

 

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Quickie Tomato Spread for Bread Pizzettes or Bruschetta

15 Apr

Yes, you can freeze delicious summer tomatoes and use them for sauce the following April!

I had cored, blanched and frozen (but not peeled) about 1.5 lbs of San Marzano tomatoes (click for more specific how-tos  of what I call “Lazy Preserves”) from Restoration Farm last summer when I just couldn’t figure out what to do with all that lycopene bounty and was — gasp! — almost sick and tired of summer tomatoes.

Last summer's investment in this spring's good eating

They were in the back of my freezer in a freezer bag (suffering a bit of freezer burn, I must admit) and I decided that now was the time to see how they had fared.

The other day I knocked off some — but not all — the ice crystals that had formed and put them in a soup pot and simmered them down to about a pint that was more paste than liquid, removing the peels as they separated from the flesh. Today I took that pint to a friend’s house and we used it for the base of a bruschetta/pizza toast dish that pleased adults and kids alike. It was dense and sweet with a balance of acidity — in short, everything you want from tomato sauce — and since it was organic and local — there was nothing you don’t want in it (even the freezer burn didn’t matter).

Here is the quickie recipe with tinned tomato substitute:

Tasty Tomato Paste Topping

1 Tbs extra virgin olive oil

4 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed

1 pint homemade tomato paste (or a 28 oz canned of pureed tomatoes)

five large fresh basil leaves

1 Tbs dry red wine (or whatever you have open, really)

Salt to taste

Warm the oil in a saucepan. Add the smashed garlic and cook at medium low turning cloves until they are uniformly golden brown. Remove cloves and discard (or rub the insides on toast for bruschetta), Add tomato paste or puree and basil leaves. Bring to a simmer and add the tablespoon of wine and salt to taste. Simmer until the sauce reaches desired thickness (at least 15 minutes to incorporate flavors). Serve over pasta, or on toasted bread. Top with olives, grated mozzarella or parmigiano reggiano, minced fresh basil, or other pizza-loving ingredients.

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Egg Salad…Amped

11 Apr

Have you ever seen the MTV show “Pimp My Ride” where a beat-up, tin-can of a vehicle gets a total tarted-up makeover- complete with features like aquariums and shoe racks and hydraulic surfboard lifters?

Well, sometimes I like to play culinary “Pimp My____________(fill in the blank with your favorite, but somewhat tired go-to everyday recipe).” You know, take a dull salad and add grilled shrimp and fruit, or top your morning toast with salmon and creme fraiche, or add truffle oil to any old thing to make it special.

The Chinese make cracks in eggs before hard-boiling in tea to make "1,000 year old eggs" -- that's my excuse for the rather oddly-colored post-Easter eggs you see here...

In honor of the ridiculous number of luridly-dyed hard-boiled eggs in my post-Easter fridge, today’s episode is “Pimp My Egg Salad.” Just add a number of tasty pantry items to a normal egg salad and voila! You have a hottie-hottie, hot-hot, lunch where before sat a bland and boring boiled egg.

By the way, to boil eggs perfectly, set them in cold water that covers by an inch. Bring to a rolling boil. Remove from heat, cover and allow to sit for ten minutes. Drain and shock the eggs in ice water (to help the peeling later). Using eggs that are not farm-fresh will make them easier to peel (more air between shell and membrane).

 

Look closely and you'll see that blue color....

Egg Salad…Amped

4 hard-boiled eggs

2 Tbs mayonnaise

1-2 tsps prepared mustard

1 tsp minced red onion (optional)

1 tsp capers, drained

Five large pitted black olives, sliced

1 Tbs roasted red pepper, diced

Salt to taste

Dash of sriracha or other hot sauce (optional)

Mix all ingredients in a bowl. Salt to taste and add hot sauce if desired. Serve in a sandwich on toast or atop a salad.

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Brussels Sprouts – Sautéed and Sassy

8 Apr

If you love Brussels sprouts, you’ll like this easy Spanish recipe which we will be enjoying today with our big Easter meal for a little family.It’s something my dad likes to do when he is in charge of the vegetables, as he is today.

Don’t be put off by the fact that you boil the daylights out of them; the red wine vinegar lifts them from being ordinary overcooked vegetables to something surprising and tangy!

Happy Holidays to all.

Sauteed Brussels Sprouts (Inspired by Penelope Casas; modified by Pedro)

1-1.5 lbs Brussels sprouts, bottoms trimmed and old leaves removed

1.5 Tbs extra virgin olive oil

3 cloves garlic, smashed and peeled (not chopped up)

Salt

Freshly ground pepper

2 Tbs red wine vinegar

Place the sprouts in salted boiling water to cover and cook at a lively bubble for 10-15 minutes, or until tender (this is a personal taste thing; some people like mushy, some like firm, so play around with it)

Heat the oil in a skillet. Add the garlic cloves and sauté at medium heat until dark gold on all sides. Remove and discard. Add the sprouts and saute over medium high for five minutes. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and stir in the vinegar. Cook until the vinegar evaporates, stirring constantly.

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