Thrown together dinner

Tonight I literally took a few things and threw them together hoping it would be edible.

Dice and sauté one onion, garlic clove, and jalapeno.
Add summer squash coins
Add halved cherry tomatoes
Add corn

Salt and pepper and at the end add two spoonfuls of fresh yogurt.

I was a little bit leery but in the end it was great.

Desert: more yogurt with nectarine and my friend john’s cherry jam that he made from cherries in his garden.

Stratagraphy

I am formerly an anthropologist. Maybe formerly isn’t the best description: I still and will forever identify as an anthropologist. In college as I was studying anthropology I had to take intro to archaeology. You see, archaeology was what got me excited in anthropology in the first place. After spending a summer restoring a 200 year old cemetery in my hometown I was obsessed with archaeology - my friend and I spent every day the summer between Jr. and Sr. year in high school in the grove of trees, cutting down 200 year old weeds, and uncovering different strata, where the tombstones had fallen over and were now buried under dirt. It all started with a summer of what some might call digging up graves.

Though, when I got to college I instantly found that rather than the dead I was more interested in the living: cultural anthropology. Nonetheless, I still had the anthro requirement to take archaeology. The one thing I remember about that class is we had to draw our own stratagraphy. I think I chose a landfill, maybe not I can’t remember.

Well today, I was mulling over what to do with my beautiful eggplant and loads of tomatoes. So I am creating a summer stratagraphy. Each layer is a different fruit and i have used different cooking techniques for each, mixing cooked and fresh elements to this dish

Layer one: A thin soup of roasted tomato sauce: roast tomatoes, puree, sautee onion and garlic, add tomatoes and fresh oregano and a spoonful of pesto
Layer two: A slice of Cherokee purple tomato, lightly roasted in the oven
Layer three: Sliced eggplant, first roasted in oven then grilled on grill pan
Layer four: Goat cheese
Layer five: Fresh green zebra tomato
Layer six: Fresh basil pesto

All skewered with a sprig of rosemary.

No Cook Summer

Nothing says summer like a kitchen full of tomatoes of multiple varieties. Today at the market I picked up my favorite cherry tomato- sunburst. They are smaller than other cherry tomatoes and are bright orange – an explosion of flavor in your mouth. I eat them raw all the time. I also picked up a couple of my favorite green zebras. Then after going to my friend’s community garden plot I picked up some more red cherry tomatoes and regular tomatoes.

One problem: casualties. Riding a bike has its inconvienience, namely sometimes all my tomatoes get squashed a little in my messenger bag. First thing when I get home I have to do triage, separate the squashed maters from those that were saved. Then I have to think up quick ideas to use the squashed ones before they go bad.

I decided to take today’s casualties and make a chilled Gazpacho and a salad with cherry tomatoes, avocado, and corn. Both were perfect!!!

Chilled tomato Gazpacho

Cut four small tomatoes
Peeled and seed two small cucumbers
Dice a 4th of a red onion

Puree tomatoes and half of cucumbers in food processor, chill in fridge
Add onions and left over cucumber to separate bowl and let sit in white wine vinegar

Add cucumber and onion and vinegar to soup


CHerry Tomato, Avocado, & Corn Salad

This was my favorite and is perfect for a late August summer day:

cherry tomatoes- cut the larger ones in half
1 ripe avocado, cut in cubes
corn on the cob- boiled for a minute then de-cobbed
jalapeno, finely diced
1/4th red onion diced
small bunch of basil chopped

mix all together, sprinkle lime juice and oil on top, season with salt and pepper.

My Version of Succotash

The fridge is pretty bare, but I have corn on the cob – if you ignore the catepillar that ate part of the cob, fresh lima beans (babies) and fresh tomatoes from my friend’s community garden. Perfect for a succotash!!

Saute three cloves of garlic in olive oil. Add Red chili pepper flakes. Add lima beans, cover with water, bring to boil. Keep at boil for 10-20 minutes, routinely refreshing with more water. You want to boil until the lima beans are soft. I added chicken broth at some point to add a little extra flavor. Add Italian seasoning and salt to taste. Close to right before the lima beans are perfectly soft, add corn that has been cut off the cob. Finally, immediately before eating add chopped tomatoes. Also t the very end I added a large spoonful of basil pesto.

I accomponied this summer dish with homemade french fingerling potato chips

A perfect succotash for late a August summer evening!

Simple Summer Pasta

I got home from work late today and needed to make something quick.After putting on Iron and Wine on the turntable, I started assembling one of my favorite summer melodies.

Cut a handful of cherry tomatoes in half
boil pasta

Mix pasta with tomatoes, pesto, goat cheese and top with fresh cut basil

Eat with a cob of corn

YUM!!!!

Perfect Sunday

Sunday’s are best spent with friends. Yesterday was no exception. I started off by going to Malea’s house for waffles. They were delicious! Fluffy from the buttermilk, yet crisp from warming in the over. Topped with peaches equals YUM!

Then after post breakfast stupor we trekked over to my friend Lisa’s community garden plot. She is out of town for three weeks and invited me to water the garden and take some of her veggies. This was perfect! 1) I love community gardens and hope that one day I can find a coveted plot in my neighborhood. 2) all the gardens were overflowing in ripe tomatoes of all varieties – heirloom, roma, and early girls, Basil, peppers and squash. I was in my own little paradise.

So we went home with a load of basil, several tomatoes and some flowers. Several minutes later we transformed the Basil into two large batches of pesto

After doing some much needed cleaning in my kitchen I then invited another friend over for dinner. I needed to use the seconds tomatoes I got from the market on Saturday. So I made a simple tomato sauce with sliced squash from Lisa’s garden


Simple Tomato Sauce:

Sauté one small onion and three cloves of garlic
Add pinch of red pepper flakes and Italian herb seasoning.
Add chopped up tomatoes.

Simmer until the liquid reduces, Add more herbs and salt as necessary.

Puree Tomato sauce

Add thinly sliced squash

Serve over boiled spaghetti

Basic Pesto

Mix fresh Basil, garlic and toasted nuts in food processor. Drizzle in Olive Oil. Add salt pepper and parmesan cheese.

Feast'o'Beets

So often in the kitchen I find myself wasting so much food. Whether it is from ambitious market shopping with eyes bigger than my tummy, or if I only use one part of a veggie, one way or another I know I am contributing to the waste of a lot of useful nutrients.

Today was different. I went to the market, inspired by the bounty and look of large bunches of beets I bought bright red beets with greens attached: just the way they were pulled out of the ground! I've made beet dishes before and I have also actually bought beet greens as a solo produce item before, but today I decided to integrate the whole vegetable into a feast'o'beats-- eating the beet from head to toe:root to tip top leaf.

For this feast'o'beats I invited my friends Dave and Rick over. Menu included butter sauted beets with orange juice, Beet greens sauted with olive oil, onions, rosemary, red pepper flakes, cannallini beans, and sprinkled with bacon and parmesan cheese.

OJ Beets

- Wash and peel a big bunch of big beets, then shred - real easy if you have a cuisine art

- Melt butter in pan, add beets, saute until beets are soft- but still have a little bite.

- add orange juice.

- you can also add a dollop of creme fresh at the end for an extra treat

Beet Greens'n'Beans

- Saute Diced onion in olive oil until translucent, add rosemary, red pepper flakes and white wine, reduce down until jammy

- add chopped up beet greans, Cover with lid until greens are wilted

- add can of cannalini beans untill heated

- top with crumbled bacon and parmesan cheese.

Mushroom Madness

It is spring and the Fungi keep popping up in the yard and in the farmer's markets around town. I am a lover of all things fungus related: morels, portobella mushrooms, and truffles. Last night my friend Malea and I took a trip to the farmer's market by my office, picked up two crops that are in their prime right now: portobella mushrooms and asparagus. I am also super excited, I bought a cherokee purple tomato plant - my favorite heirloom ever!!!

Portobella Mushroom Cream Sauce

- Saute Garlic in olive oil, add pinch of red pepper flakes, and pinch of fresh rosemary

- chop up to portobella caps and add to saute pan, add chopped sun-dried tomatoes

- simmer until portobella reduces in size and become s super moist, add a splash of water or white wine

- take about 3/4s of this mixture pure with a bit of cream

- add pureed portion back to pan and add frozen baby peas

- Add slabs of butter and wisk in cream

- add chopped up spinach and simmer until wilted.

Serve over homemade pasta and top with grated parmesean cheese

YUM!!



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Feeling More(a)l

It always happens this time of year. The air warms up, the water falls out of the sky, and sprouts start poking their eyes through the dirt. In addition to the spring green that shows its face, I find myself getting all moral. Morel more like it. This is the small window of time in late April mid May when the delicacy wild morels start showing up in the market. Despite their outrageous price tag, I cannot resist at least one moral meal a week. I mean, with all the immoral meals that I indulge in i think the least I could do would be to have one moral meal a year- If I'm lucky maybe two.

This is a two Morel meal year. Last week my friend came over for dinner. I stopped by the farmer's market by my office and picked up a basket of tasty Morel morsels. My friend had not ever had Morels . Don't blame those without morels, they just haven't been brought up right. Thankfully my parents saw the importance of morels and early in life my dad took me morel hunting out in the woods. We gathered up a whopping three morels and took them home to be deep fried.

Those morels have followed me through college and adult life. As my mom always reminded me: don't forget where you came from. I sure haven't forgotten and am thankful for her introduction to morels!

Here is my standby morel meal I like to eat it as an appetizer or put on a piece of toasted baugette:

-Soak morels in room temp water then drain( to clean and get all the grit out of them)
- Quarter or half each mushroom depending on size
- heat olive oil in pan, add chopped shallots, then add morels
- De-glaze with white wine
- saute until mushrooms are soft, add butter to taste, also can add thyme, rosemary etc for additional flavor, Salt and pepper, a splash of lemon juice also adds a nice touch.
- time is of the essence. Last time i was tlaking to my friend and kind of forgot about the morels ( thats what happens with morels when you are fast and loose with them). They turned out great. Secret- plenty of butter

Variating from my morels:

Today I decided to deviate from my years of morel living and add a twist. Instead of just eating them by themselves, I added them to fresh made pasta.

-Make fresh pasta
- Prepare Morels as described above, add peas and add cream to create a cream sauce.

Yum! morel pasta primavera.

Cheers to another morel year!

Inspiration from a comet

One of my favorite things to do is to go to really good restaurants enjoy their food and then go home and learn how to make what I just ate. Recently, i have been enjoying a little pizza joint in upper northwest dc - comet pizza in Van Ness right next to Politics and prose. Aside from this location being a bit in the middle of no where, it has a special place in my heart- I used to live in a basement right behind Comet ( which previously was a nondescript thai restaurant) and outside my basement door was a colony of 50 turtles that my landlady collected. Additionally, the sign for comet is from another old neighborhood of mine- the comet wine shop in adams morgan. With a combination of turtles and a really cool sign, before i even stepped foot into comet I knew that I would love it. Then I walked in and noticed that the whole place is decorated with a ping pong motif. Ping pong tables, lights that look like ping pong balls, and the best part- the bathrooms, where aliens play ping pong in an idilic english country setting.

That is not to mention the good pizza. So on new years day a friend and I ventured to Van Ness and shared two personal sized pizzas. A whole carafe of wine and a broken wine glass later comet inspired us to make our very own green bean pizza.

So last night we whipped up our own comet inspired green bean pizza:

1.) Prepare a white sauce (butter, garlic cream, flour thyme and salt and pepper)

2) spread on pizza dough

3) Blanch green beans

4) Toast hazlenuts

5) carmelize onions

6) add all on top of pizza

7) finish off with mozerrella cheese and feta

YUM!We also made a second pizza:

1) red sauce, Tomatoes, garlic, onion and italian herbs (put through the food mill)

2) slices of fresh tomatoes

3) Mozerrella

4) mounds of bacon

A pizza extravoganza inspired by comet!

Teabagging!

Thanks to a thoughtful friend I now have the proper tools for teabagging - a Squeasy from oposum design. I love it. It is perfectly designed to allow one to coax the tea bag into the crevice and has a special slit for the string. Then you slightly squeasy with ever such ease the squeasy and it pumps the remaining flavors of the tea into your cup. Now my Good earth original blend, and Celestial seasoning Bengal spice will be so Yum. Yay for teabagging accessories!

New Apartment New Kitchen

I recently moved into a new apartment. As soon as all the boxes got to the apartment (even as my friends were still there eating pizza and drinking beer) I couldn't wait to unpack my kitchen stuff. It has been in storage for 4 months and was gasping for air! I felt like little kid on christmas day opening each box and getting excited about the contents. Moving into a new kitchen is also exciting because I got to figure out where i want everything to go and how to decorate.

Now I face a small dilemma: How do I stock my cabinets? I have very limited cabinet space. Plus in the process of moving everything i realized that i store a lot of food that i end up never eating. But now the real dilemma: I am having my best friend and her husband over for dinner ( my first meal i have cooked in a while) and I don't have any staples. Now olive oil, no salt no pepper, no herbs, no spices!!

It is either going to be a bland dinner or I am going to have to take out a small loan to stock the kitchen. Needless to say, the fact that I now have my kitchen back I am looking forward to more cooking, having friends over and sharing here.