Posted by Robin Bellinger, July 15, 2008 at 6:00 PM
I expected pregnancy to mean constant, overwhelming, dramatic hunger. I’m growing a human being here—where is my sandwich? This has not, however, been the case for me. After all, most pregnant women need only about 300 extra calories a day. There have been a few one or two day stretches when I could think of nothing but food, and I’m pretty sure they were tied to growth spurts for baby. But that wasn’t hunger so much as a strong urge, and I hope you will forgive my lack of delicacy, to stuff my face—an urge so strong I had trouble doing anything but preparing imaginary feasts for myself as I stared blankly at my computer—that passed soon enough.
Now that my unfettered sweet-eating (which was more about lack of willpower than my condition) is (somewhat) under control, I feel as if I’m eating pretty much the same way I always have, maybe slightly healthier and with a few more wholesome snacks than usual. I don’t know if this is because I was already eating a huge amount of food and somehow exercising it off (dust collected on running shoes suggests no) or because I work at home and therefore can always have one of those snacks when I get hungry. My standbys are dried fruit, almonds, peanut butter, cheese, and sunflower seeds (which I don’t actually like but are full of protein). This lineup is getting a little tired, though, so I think it might be time to make some candied pumpkin seeds. They don’t have that much sugar in them, and pumpkin seeds are good for everyone.
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Posted by Lucy Baker, July 15, 2008 at 3:30 PM
In the introduction to one of the chapters in this week's Cook the Book selection, The Food Life, author Steven Jenkins states: "a salad without beets is just not a proper salad." I couldn't agree more. Sweet, earthy, brilliantly colored beets are one of my most favorite vegetables. I would eat them every day if cooking them wasn't such a laborious, messy operation. Fortunately, taking a cue from French produce markets, Fairway stocks imported cooked, peeled, vacuum-packed beets that are "cheap as dirt" and perfect for tossing with mixed greens and mustard vinaigrette.
Much to Steve's chagrin, Today's Cook the Book recipe for Elaine's Clear Vegetarian Borscht (Elaine is the mother of Mitchel London, Fairway's recipe developer) must be made from raw beets because their cooking liquid is essential to the finished soup. But the end result is incredibly healthy, light, flavorful, and well worth the effort.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, July 14, 2008 at 5:30 PM
Somewhere along my grilling itinerary the pineapple dessert got lost. The plan was to make a simple grilled pineapple, which I hoped would get nicely caramelized, but the fruit never made it on the grill. It wasn't until the next day that I noticed I had a leftover pineapple problem and would have to find another option. Although we tried eating some of the pineapple as is, we were still left with nearly half of it. That's when I remembered a post on Elise's Simply Recipes that used pineapple in a fried rice.
The ease of this dish is greatly enhanced if you have some leftover rice in the fridge—otherwise you have to make a batch and let it cool before starting. I don't usually think of making fried rice unless I have a big container of rice ready to go. Surprisingly, the pineapple is never even cooked—it's just thrown in at the end, making this dish much lighter than most fried rice dishes I've had.
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Posted by Blake Royer, July 10, 2008 at 4:15 PM
Like cous cous—a food originating in Northern Africa—fregola is not a whole grain but a semolina flour pasta rolled by hand (or machine). Hailing from Sardinia, fregola's coarse spheres are much larger than cous cous, giving them more heft and texture. Once dried, fregola is toasted, which imparts an amazing nutty flavor and also helps it keep an appealing sturdiness even after it's cooked.
Fregola can be added to soups, cooked gently in stock like risotto, or simply boiled and tossed with olive oil or butter and some herbs. A traditional pairing is clams and tomatoes, but I had a couple of portobello mushrooms that needed to be cooked. While the fregola boiled, I chopped the mushrooms into large pieces and sautéed them with garlic and olive oil. Then, just after they had released their water and begun to caramelize, I tossed in a handful of chopped rosemary and sage. The nutty fregola complemented the tender, earthy mushrooms beautifully. The meatiness of portobellos was especially wonderful, but any mushroom would work. Look for fregola in Italian markets or online, or substitute Israeli cous cous, which is larger than traditional varieties.
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Posted by Lucy Baker, July 8, 2008 at 3:00 PM
I look forward to floral, plump, perfectly ripe summer tomatoes all year long. And now that the season is finally here, I'm not about to let a little Salmonella scare stop me from enjoying them. Are you?
For this week's Magazine Recipe Review I prepared the Tomato Bread Salad with Olives and Mint from the July/August issue of Everyday Food. It was delicious—you should try it. Trust me. And just to quell your fears, here is a list from the FDA of all the tomato-producing places that have not been associated with the outbreak.
This easy salad came together in minutes and made for an incredibly satisfying lunch. The key is to use the best quality ingredients you can find. To that end, I replaced the hoagie roll with a hunk of ciabatta (I thought it would hold up better against all the juices), and broke out the good olive oil. Don't skimp on the pepper, and definitely use freshly ground. The intense, contrasting flavors are what make this dish so interesting: the briny olives against the refreshing mint, and the juicy tomatoes alongside the crusty bread. The light lemon vinaigrette adds a bit of tang and ties everything together perfectly.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, July 7, 2008 at 4:45 PM
We got this summery side dish from the Summer Shack Cookbook, a wonderful book that the fiancée and I have not been able to use that much. It's all about cooking East Coast seafood on the beach, and after our move to the Midwest, we've been really struggling with the concept. Though I did use it last year, I honestly forgot we had the book until the fiancée pulled it out to look for side dishes. When she called out this recipe for Portuguese salad, I didn't really know what it meant. What did a New England cookbook have to do with the Portuguese? Turns out there are many Portuguese descendants in New England, and a lot of them were fisherman.
But none of that is truly important because the dish that results from a New Englander's take on a Portuguese salad is essentially glorified gazpacho that hasn't been diced to bits. It's tasty—the cucumbers cool the sweet roasted peppers, and the bright vinegar balances it all out. It's certainly not a hard salad to love and it made a great side for the grilled steaks we paired it up with.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, July 2, 2008 at 4:30 PM
I should have known that our new little grocery store in Chicago wouldn't have fennel. The fiancée and I had been planning a crazy sardine pasta, having been inspired by the New York Times recent article about 11 healthy foods, but once the fennel was missing, the recipe quickly fell apart. We decided to make something simple instead using the availble decent looking asparagus and incredibly cheap lemons. I didn't have an exact recipe, but I knew that could find something to do with all of these ingredients.
I'm not sure how I found Robin Robertson's recipe for pasta with asparagus and pine nuts, or why the source seemed like a good one, but I was drawn to the addition of the pine nuts, an ingredient I had ready-to-go in the pantry. We didn't have as much pasta as the recipe called for, nor any fresh dill, resulting in a dish that was mostly asparagus and lemon with some pasta mixed in. I'm not sure if that would have worked or not. This simple recipe turned out really well—it was fresh and light, and a perfect summer dinner.
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Posted by Robin Bellinger, July 1, 2008 at 1:45 PM
I’ve always been a little smug about avoiding anemia and iron deficiency. In my mid-twenties my primary care doctor would always explain that it was not uncommon in women my age, but that I was doing just fine. Chalking this up to my weekly hamburger and generally robust constitution, I patted myself on the back and felt a little sorry for wan girls who subsisted on undressed salad greens, thought of Tasti D-Lite as a treat, and had to pop vitamins to maintain enough strength to spend an hour on the elliptical trainer or to hoist their enormous designer bags.
Alas, My Iron Levels Are Sub-Optimal
Fast forward half a decade or so to today, when things are a little different. Now that I know more about meat production, hamburgers are a rare treat. My twenty-seventh birthday seemed to be accompanied by a flurry of articles about my decreasing bone density and fertility, and so I braved the baffling vitamin aisles of the health food store to pick up calcium supplements. Today, pregnant, I’m slightly embarrassed by the little club of pill bottles in my kitchen: prenatal multivitamin, calcium, folic acid, and DHA. Yesterday after I had some bloodwork done my doctor told me I need to add 50 milligrams of iron a day to the lineup, destroying my silly old self-satisfaction with my vibrant red blood cells.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, June 27, 2008 at 5:00 PM
I picked up some strawberries up at the Clintonville Farmer's Market and I just couldn't wait to get them home. Real strawberries—the ones that come in early summer—taste so much outlandishly better than what you can find in the grocery store. I wanted to make a dish that would highlight them, but they taste so wonderful by themselves that I was worried that any interference would ruin their natural goodness.
And I was right. The strawberries were delicious and the dressing was fine, but it was hard not to be disappointed by this Whole Foods approved recipe for spinach and strawberry salad. First off, the recipe only called for five strawberries, which made for some meager picking amongst the spinach. We saved the salad with the addition of some crumbled blue cheese—it went better with the dense spinach than the light and fruity vinaigrette.
Any one else have some great strawberry salad recipes that better showcase the delicious fruit?
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Posted by Blake Royer, June 26, 2008 at 4:30 PM
The sign at the market said "give peas a chance." Who can argue with that? Among all the vehement vegetable dislikes that have carried over from my childhood, a dislike of peas is the only one left. Beets? No problem. Brussels sprouts? Roast them with a little balsamic and give me a fork. Yet I still eat around the peas, whether they're suspended in a macaroni and cheese or on the side of a plate by themselves.
Still, the photograph for this recipe, in Jamie Oliver's The Naked Chef (his fava bean and asparagus salad won me over earlier this week), was enticing: big casual crumbles of feta cheese, bright green peas, well-dressed leaves of baby spinach. Turns out, like many vegetables that I first encountered frozen or canned, peas taste a whole lot better when they're fresh! It took me 15 minutes just to slide them from their pods, but I put on a good album and found a rhythm, and actually kind of enjoyed myself. So there—I gave peas a chance.
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Posted by Blake Royer, June 24, 2008 at 4:45 PM
Spring produce is some of my favorite, and I'm not ready to give it up yet. That's why this weekend I found myself putting a handful of questionable fava beans into my grocery basket. If I was honest with myself, I'd realize that fava bean season is pretty much over. The large wrinkly pods, brown and bruised, did not look promising. Yet somehow, some way, I reasoned, they would taste good. On my way to the register I picked up a bunch of woody-looking asparagus.
To balance out these bad decisions, I found a salad from Jamie Oliver's first book ever, The Naked Chef, that smothered all the blanched vegetables in a delicious dressing of lemon juice, balsamic vinegar, mustard and olive oil. To add even more green, he calls for haricot verts, French string beans. The vegetables weren't so bad, it turns out, though I cooked them a bit too long and forgot to shock them in ice water to seal in their bright green colors. The good news is that you could pour this amazing dressing on pretty much anything and it would do you well.
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Posted by Robin Bellinger, June 23, 2008 at 3:15 PM
One of the most exciting things about summer is how cheap herbs are at the Greenmarket. I spend the winter making mournful calculations when I read recipes: do I really want to spend $10 on fresh herbs for a single dish? Then comes summer, when the pressure I feel to use suddenly-affordable herbs all the time comes up against my not-so-improvisational cooking style. The weeks I bring home five bunches they tend to wither in the vegetable drawer, but the weeks I refrain from buying any I find myself desperately in need of rosemary or lemon verbena.
Last week I made an unconventional spicy coriander tabbouleh that may be the answer to my problem with herbs. From now on I’ll buy whatever herbs look tempting, and if I haven’t used them by the middle of the week I’ll chop them up, toss them with some bulgur wheat, and see what happens. Stir a drained can of chickpeas into this, maybe some feta if you have it, and it would make a mighty fine lunch.
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Posted by Blake Royer, June 20, 2008 at 4:15 PM
I learned two new things this week while trying to recreate a salad I'd eaten at the Simon Pearce glass-blowing factory's restaurant in Vermont. There wasn't anything too special about it—just field greens—but something about the vinaigrette was unlike anything I'd tasted before. Luckily, our waitress didn't seem concerned about giving away any secrets, and shared the recipe: olive oil, lemon juice, parsley, dried basil, salt and pepper, and then, the key: malt vinegar.
The dressing was easy to recreate—three-to-one oil to acid ratio, with half lemon juice and half malt vinegar—and it had that same distinct taste I remembered. But something else wasn't right. The greens I used were the triple-washed mesclun variety I always bought in tubs at the grocery store, tender but boring, the same all year-round. Which led to my second lesson: at the Greenmarket I found an absolutely bulging $5 bag of spicy, hearty leaves, ranging from mustard greens to baby chard to other curly things I didn't recognize (but tasted fantastic). It made the salad substantial, interesting, and in season.
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Posted by Erin Zimmer, June 17, 2008 at 5:15 PM
What other piece of produce comes naturally in shades of gold and purple? (Alright, red-purplish). And has a homophone defined as "to conquer"? As in, to conquer the Celtics? Laker fans, get yourself both colors of beets and roast them up for this easy, rah-rah dish honoring Game Six of the NBA Finals tonight. Rally together enough beets-eaters, and maybe the Lakers will even see Game Seven, defying the historical streak of basketball teams that were all unable to win after a 3-1 deficit.
None of them were eating enough color-coded veggies!
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Posted by Blake Royer, June 17, 2008 at 4:30 PM
Tomato season is achingly close, but it's not here yet—not in New York, at least. I've resisted the temptation to eat fresh tomatoes for months, except maybe a cherry variety once in awhile. Soon I'll be chopping up the ones in my garden, tossing them in a bowl with olive oil, garlic and basil leaves, and waiting around for everything to marinate. Mix it all with pasta and call it a day.
In the meantime, this recipe for spaghetti with tomato and orange juice from The Top One Hundred Pasta Sauces, traditionally called spaghetti al pomodoro e arancia, has a unique, summery take on canned-based tomato sauce. Adding a little sugar to cut the acidity of tomatoes is common in cooking, but this was the first time I've read about using sweet juicing oranges instead of sugar. The citrus notes round out the flavors and make the pasta feel summery and fresh, rather than dull and canned. It also gives it a natural sweetness.
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Posted by Lucy Baker, June 17, 2008 at 12:45 PM
Last week, I went to a lecture given by Martha Hall Foose, author of this week's Cook the Book selection, Screen Doors and Sweet Tea. She strode up to the podium in dusty Keds, white ankle socks, and the same checkered dress she is wearing on the book jacket: the picture of down-home Southern charm. I couldn't help but imagine her in the kitchen, standing over a hot skillet frying up a country steak, or bending down to pull a pan of cornbread sticks out of the oven.
Which is only partly accurate.
Over the course of her hour-long talk, Martha made sure to emphasize that as much as her cooking is rooted in the historic traditions of the Delta, it is also influenced by the diverse and international flavors of contemporary Mississippi. Flavors like cumin, coriander, and cardamom, all of which are present in today's recipe for Apricot Rice Salad.
Enlivened with fresh-squeezed orange juice and studded with dried dates, apricots, raisins, and cherries, this salad would make a lovely, light lunch served with wedges of fresh melon and a tall glass of—what else?—sweet tea.
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Posted by Jenn Smith, November 8, 2007 at 2:45 PM
Here's another option if you're throwing a meat-free Thanksgiving. These smoky greens from Matt Lee and Ted Lee's The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook are "sneaky" because, while they taste rich enough to make you believe they have been simmered for hours with bacon or ham, they actually take little more than an hour to make and are completely vegan.
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