Dandelion Mine

This morning we had some standard breakfast fare, with a little added green from the never-sprayed, never-mowed lawn: dandelions. I am told that they came over from Europe with the English, who paradoxically gave Americans a love of lawns (without sheep to trim them) and the scourge of dandelions.

My first inkling that dandelions had some other use came from my high school reading of Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury. As I have always like anything fermented, this idea of making something out of a weed fascinated me–and I loved the book, too. Since then, I’ve always wanted to try dandelion wine, or any wine, but have made do with simply eating the green parts of the weed.

But these greens are lovely to eat. I’ve been eyeing greedily, perhaps even lustfullly, the little patch of dandelions growing up through the cracks in our driveway. Every time I come home, I see them.

"I will eat you."

They are no longer the annoyance that most people see them as, they are a welcome-home-for-dinner greeting. I have been just waiting for them to pop up this year, and little have they known my sinister plans for them.

But this particular bunch is waiting a few days to await a dinner later this week. For this morning, I picked some very nice young dandelions from out back, so young that they barely had the bulb that would become the yellow flower we all know so well. I washed them and sautéed them in olive oil with a little garlic salt. Incredible!

The dandelions are center, with some yellow beet tops on the left. Since these dandelions were picked so early, they were almost devoid of bitterness–just a smooth spinach-like taste with a hint of spicyness that ended with a buttery flavor. The older the dandelion, however, the more bitter. For mature greens, it sometimes helps to parboil them for 2-3 minutes before sautéeing.

Easter dinner

My mom invited us over for Easter dinner today. Roasted leg of lamb, rice pilaf with almonds, ciabatta bread (that I supplied) and an interesting salad. It was a spinach salad with bacon, egg, and…strawberries. And it worked. The dressing was a light cream dressing mimicked the egg, while the saltiness of the bacon balanced out the strawberries’ sweetness. Excellent!

Pad Thai improved, not perfected

As a prelude to describing tonight’s meal, which J liked, I need to let everyone know about the ghost of pad thai past that has been haunting me for a year. When I was still commuting to Boulder from Baltimore during the 2008-2009 academic year, I was living alone in the basement apartment of our house and renting out the rest of the house. Feeling adventurous and alone, I tried to make pad thai, one of my favorite dishes of all time. The result: so bad I couldn’t finish it. The rest went into the rubbish bin.

What did I do wrong? First of all, I cooked the rice noodles like Italian noodles and this overcooked them into a mush. When I went to add the noodles to the sauce, all I had were rice paddies. The peanut sauce tasted awful. It gave me the impression of chunky peanut butter turned moldy. Finally, my timing was off. I added things in the wrong order, left them frying up too long, and destroyed every delicate aroma that should come from nicely done pad thai.

This time was better. While I remain disappointed and a bit down, J liked the meal. I took my recipe from Alton Brown’s website, and made a few adjustments. Here is what Alton has for ingredients:

• 1-ounce tamarind paste
• 3/4 cup boiling water
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
• 2 tablespoons palm sugar
• 1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
• 4 ounces rice stick noodles
• 6 ounces Marinated Tofu, recipe follows
• 1 to 2 tablespoons peanut oil
• 1 cup chopped scallions, divided
• 2 teaspoons minced garlic
• 2 whole eggs, beaten
• 2 teaspoons salted cabbage
• 1 tablespoon dried shrimp
• 3 ounces bean sprouts, divided
• 1/2 cup roasted salted peanuts, chopped, divided
• Freshly ground dried red chile peppers, to taste
• 1 lime, cut into wedges

J didn’t want the bean sprouts, because they are contraindicated for pregnant women, and the shrimp was too expensive at the store. So we opted for tofu only. In addition, we didn’t have peanuts, but we did have roasted peanut butter. We also didn’t have tamarind, which is a shame. The sweet and tangy flavor would have improved the meal significantly. Finally, we didn’t have cabbage, so we used finely chopped Italian kale. I didn’t have time to marinate the tofu, but it was a good thing: our sauce was certainly salty enough without salty tofu. J’s suggestion, which I think would be fantastic, is to marinate the tofu ahead of time with lime and ginger.

I avoided the rice paddies by soaking the noodles in very hot water (it was boiling, then taken off of the stove for 5 minutes) for 6 minutes. They were just a little too soft, but still ok.

I then simultaneously fried up the tofu in one cast-iron pan and the garlic-and-kale in the other. (I have no wok, which really would have improved matters.) Once done, I took out the tofu and the kale, and started sautéing the scallions, added 3 eggs, stirred it around, added the drained noodles, the sauce (which was 1/8 cup brown rice vinegar, 2 tablespoons of fish sauce, a teaspoon of peanut butter, one crushed red dried pepper, and teaspoon of the Thai Kitchen satay sauce), and the kale, in this order.

From the pan, I served it on a warmed plate with the tofu placed on top. J’s commented that there wasn’t enough sauce and she was right. I doubled the recipe and in so doing, probably violated a huge commandment of thai cooking, which stresses freshness. This meal only works because the ingredients are all cooked well and of high quality. Small batches can be made in 5 minutes each. I, however, was still cooking like an Italian with meatballs, going for quantity. The time investment in making a second batch is limited only to the amount of raw materials, and the (insignificant) time needed to soak the noodles. The result: too many noodles for too little sauce. That said, the sauce was hot enough, but not sweet enough (no tamarind!). The fresh lime we used on our plated food helped that problem, to some degree.

All in all, it’s edible, and we have no qualms about eating it tomorrow. Next time, I feel confident that my pad thai will be a bit closer to what I want. It’s been a learning experience…

Miso did it!

Tonight, perhaps because it is cold and full of wet snow, J wanted some miso soup and a bowl of rice. In addition, the heart burn seems to be getting worse so she was craving something that was not acidic. I used a new kind of red barley miso paste, made by South River, and it was great. We usually use Miso Master from Whole Foods, but the South River kind had a richer, woodier flavor, in my opinion.

The second item that really made the taste perfect was a handful of Wakame seaweed flakes. They quickly puffed up into long rectangles of seaweed with a light taste and a tender texture.

In addition to the seaweed and the paste, I added mushrooms, just a few carrots (diced very fine), scallions, and two teaspoons of the taré sauce from the Momofuku book. (I have since found out that taré sauce is like saying shrimp scampi: sauce sauce or shrimp shrimp!)

With the rice neatly scooped into a ball and placed in a bowl, J reminded me that I had forgotten the toasted sesame seeds. Arghh! They would have been tasty and pretty.

Last bit of news: the doc says that J can have some wine now and again if she wants. Woohoo!

Back in the swing of cooking

When the new year started, J and I both got slammed. I found myself thankful that she has a little more energy than she did in the first three months, because I needed the slack. I was beat, and content to find anything that I could cook expediently. J still ate regularly, and well, but we sorely lacked one crucial pregnancy food group: the snack group. While she was getting slammed with full days, J ran out of snack bars, and then crackers, and then dried fruit.

I’m proud to announce that she now has all of these things, and more. Top of the yum list is: dried apricots, organic and unsulfured (less gas). God, I love these things–so much so J is taking them all to work. Smart idea.

Most of what we cooked today was stuff you’ve seen from us before. Breakfast was beautiful deep red cherry shake with banana, pear, honeydew, and blackberries followed by left-over pasta. That’s what she wanted.

We were lucky enough to feast on my mom’s chili later on today. She used beef chuck for the chili, but not ground up. She merely cut the meat into small pieces and it was a surprise how much nicer the texture was. I am hands down a fan of this new method, and I’ll ask my mom for the recipe to post.

Meanwhile, we had sauteéd collard greens on hand and salad. On deck is the French Onion soup I just finished, made with some great marrow bones from a local livestock farmer. These, I believe, will be great for the anemia that is hard to avoid while pregnant.

Semolina break with whole grains is about twenty minutes away from coming out of the oven, and we have a yam and tart apple with thyme dish that just became cool. The Yam-Apple dish has been a favorite of J’s, of late. But it is fantastically simple. Peel and cut up 3 large yams and 6 or seven apples (mix of tart ones). Add a tablespoon or two of lemon juice, 3 tablespoons of olive oil, 1/4 maple syrup, 1 teaspoon of salt, and 1 of sugar. Bake at 400 under soft, mixing the dish up every 40 minutes or so. We’ll eat it tomorrow with pork chops brined in saltwater and soy sauce. Perhaps I will use the taré sauce from the Momofuku book that I still have…?

On Friday, I asked my Japanese friend, Mayumi, if she had ever had taré sauce. I was in for a small, cultural disappointment. First, my pronunciation was distinctly Spanish. Instead, the “e” is very short in tone and more like the “e” is “let.” On top of that, taré just means sauce. This was like when we showed Mayumi our proudly acquired sake set. What does it say on the cups? we asked her. “Sake,” she replied. Oh, how boring.

Stay tuned! More cooking is on the way.

Standard fare, large appetite

This past weekend has proven that I can no longer write and cook, at the same time, with the verve I had a few weeks ago. Now that J is getting bigger, and our little girl more active, she’s waking up several times during the night. This makes me wake up, too. And so the sleep deprivation begins, with a whimper, of course.

Yesterday was a surprisingly big cooking day. Breakfast was two fried eggs, toast with butter and preserves, and sautéed beet top greens. These are really a treat, and it’s amazing that one can eat the whole plant. The root AND the greens. Now that is a plant that keeps on giving.

I tried once again to fix some dandelion greens for J, but this is one of perhaps two things in the world she doesn’t like to eat. My preparation–par-boiled, sautéed in olive oil with garlic salt and lemon juice–did not make them any more palatable. I had hoped that the parboil would leech out most of the bitterness, but it did not. Then, I made the mistake of thinking, “Bitter=basic. Sour=acid. They should cancel each other out.” Perhaps the pH was neutral, but the taste was not. I still ate them, and enjoyed it, but only because of my dedication to this wonderful weed.

Dinner was roast chicken with assorted greens, and a mix of the fingerling potatoes now seen in stores. Since I ate them all, I don’t have any photos, but they are purple (like a Latin American batata), red, and white.  For the chicken, I used a method that J taught me of adding lemon slices, with the peel and pith cleanly cut from the fruit (and seeds removed) directly under the skin. Using a butter nice to pull up the skin from the neck of the bird, I stuffed the lemon right all the way to the other slide of the breast and into the thigh. My only improvement over the process would be to pin the slices on the breast in place with a toothpick (perhaps a clove?!), so that they don’t migrate downwards. The result was exceptionally juicy. Easy, fast, and with a free-range bird, very tasty.

Breakfast, with tostones

Our favorite meal is breakfast. Sitting in the sunroom sipping café is one of the pleasures that we both fully enjoy. If I were to say that it is part of what binds J and I together, I wouldn’t be exaggerating.

Our love of breakfasts was always there, but it became an “our” moment when we traveled to Brazil in 2002 for J’s research trip. We took a side trip for one week to Buzios, made famous by Bridgette Bardot (pronounced Brig-ditch-ee). We were there about two weeks before the season started, and stayed at a little pousada named Praia da tortuga. We were the only guests. At night, the staff didn’t see a reason to stick around so they went home, leaving us there with the hotel dog guarding our door.

In the morning, again just us, the hotel manager treated us to a huge display of the tropical fruits of Brazil–fruta de conde, papaya, abacaxi (pineapple), banana, maracujá (passion fruit)–and an assortment of breads, cheeses and jams. Local bees found our breakfast lovely, too, and decided to visit all of our fruit. Not quite the budding beekeeper, but having already done a photo story on a beekeeper back in the States, I recalled that bees may like fruit, but they like honey above all else. We put a little honey in a cup on the next table, where the bees promptly congregated, leaving us to all to feast without incident.

This is the vision of breakfast: a brand new day, quiet, a cornucopia on the table, and at peace.

Breakfast this morning was in that grand tradition. I served a cheddar cheese omelette for J, sautéed spinach greens, leftover vegetarian chili, sourdough bread toast with passion fruit (maracujá) and maqui preserves, and tostones.

Tostones is one of the things that I brought to the relationship that I can unambiguously brad about. I ate them while living in the Dominican Republic during college. I liked everything I ate there, even the boiled yucca that my colleagues tired of. But tostones, the fried sliced plaintains (platanos) that are smashed and fried again, are a treat better than french fries. Although the Dominicans never did it while I was there, we like to serve them with hot sauce. This morning, we ate them with guacamole that J made the evening before.

To make tostones, you have to decide–somewhat epistomologically–what kind of tostone you want. You can make them sweet like our friend Alyse does in New Orleans at her Cameroon-food restaurant by waiting until the platanos are yellow. Or, if you like them more like french fries, you can prepare them while the fruit is green. We prefer the green, although I have been secretly hiding a desire for the sweeter version. Can you feel the tension?

In either case, slice off the tips of the platanos and make a long slit along one of the biggest grooves in the fruit. You can take the peel off (harder if they are green) by holding the plantano in your hands, palms up, and shoving your thumbs under the peel. If worse comes to worse, gently peel the skin off with a knife.

Cut the platanos about 1/2″ to 3/4″ thick in order to make several little discs of fruit. Put them into already heated oil (your choice) and fry them until they begin to get brown marks on each side. I don’t immerse them in enough oil to cover them completely, so I flip the platanos about midway.

When you take out the platanos in order to crush them is where the magic happens. If you take the platanos out too soon, they are too chalky and they fall apart when smashed. If you do it too late, they just get too brown. Generally, I tend to take them out too early because I am hungry and impatient. Resist the urge, is my best advice.

The smashing is fun, and when the little one is big enough, I will let her do the smashing. One needs a large cup, jar or other clean implement of destruction handy. This stone, pan, cup, or underside of a bowl should not have a lip around the bottom. The lip would impede the crushed platanos from flattening and making the telltale star pattern.

Simply put, put the platano slice on cutting board or plate, and smash is flat with the jar (which is what I use). If you’ve cleared the pan of the first-fry batch, put it right back into the frying pan with the oil. (I like to use our cast iron skillet for this. It hold the heat and grease very well.) When you smash it, if it stays all in one piece easily and can be picked up without a problem by your fingers or a spatula, then you have timed the first fry well, grasshopper.If the whole thing wants to crack in half, or third, or generally doesn’t look good, it’s time to fry some more. Nonetheless, there is always some that falls off, so don’t think that it has to be perfect.

Fry until light brown on both sides. This second fry is important because without it, the center never really gets cooked well. If you like the sweet version, however, they can be cooked all the way through without smashing, but you have to cook them until dark. As for us, we smash both of them.

I’ll add photographs next time we make them. This time, I admit I was too hungry to concentrate on more than one thing.

J rated the breakfast a Yum Factor 4.

Bombay Bistro. Best Indian in Boulder

Perhaps it was a little bit of pre-holiday blues, but I didn’t want to go home to the routine tonight. J picked me up from the RTD stop after work, and asked if we could make an errand for her. Our pattern already disrupted, I asked if we could go to the Pearl Street mall, and go to the bookstore. “But what will we eat?” she asked.

A year ago, we had a lovely dinner at the Bombay Bistro. We don’t go out much because of the cost, and so where to go was a difficult question. Tired and increasingly hungry, we decided to go back to the one place (aside from a bar) that we knew well.

What a fantastic choice. We ordered three 1/2 entrées: the lamb vindaloo, the channa saag (chickpeas in puréed spinach), and the bindi sabzi (okra sautéed in onion, garlic, and ginger). We were also happy to find out that the meals all used local (as much as possible) and natural ingredients.

Each entrée, by mostly chance, enhanced the other. The vindaloo melted in our mouths, and the red sauce had none of the heaviness that can sometimes make the dish sit low in stomach. In addition, the vindaloo carried just enough sweetness to enhance the meaty taste without overpowering the dish. It make a perfect foil for the sabzi, my personal favorite. I have never had okra in an Indian restaurant, but I will have a hard time not ordering it for as long as I live. It was made not only with onion, ginger, and garlic, but lemon and cilantro. Each ingredient was sautéed to perfection, especially the okra, which was cooked enough to have some crunch without being burnt. Nothing was cooked with too much oil. For me, the lemon took the dish to a higher level. I felt as if here was an Indian version of the mexican salsa, but nonetheless all of its own.

Finally, the saag made its mark with a spicy finish that surprised me. It was so smooth that I somehow forgot that it could also be hot. Inside the spinach were the chickpeas, so tender I thought they were cooked raisins. J thought that the spinach didn’t need to have been puréed as much as it was, but it was a question of style, not quality. We know that our child just became introduced to some excellent good food out in the world.

J grew up with an Indian friend, Mona, and would go over to her house and learn how to cook from her friend’s mother. (I have this friend to thank for the samosas and curries that J makes today. J even makes her own curries!) J said that she has never had food this good since she ate Mona’s mother’s food. When the owner, Paul Guild, stopped by our table, he told us that he and his staff try to cook food that they would like to eat themselves. We believe him.

To sum up, we loved the meal, and began feeling a little amorous by the end of it. And why not?

J says, “They say that women lose their taste for alcohol while pregnant, but I want a bucket of champagne.”

Instead, Martinelli Apple Cider gives us a little bit of a festive atmosphere.

Just a steak

Tonight was easy. J wanted a steak, and my folks have recently donated their extra grill to our us. We bought a 1.25lbs slab of NY Strip, grass-fed beef, put a little coarse pepper and salt on it, and grilled away. My method has been to wait until the juices begin to seep from the top. That lets me know that the middle has started to rise in temperature. If I move it sooner, all I do is heat both sides, but never cook the center.

Once flipped (and only once), I cooked it until about 155 degrees–more well-done than usual, but on the safe side with regard to pathogens. I needn’t had worried. It is an excellent piece of meat, and all I had to do was not screw it up.

I served a side of kale, sautéed in (you guessed it) garlic and olive oil and those little french fingerling potatoes. The potatoes were put into the little oven at 500 degrees in a pyrex dish, which I covered with aluminum foil. After 35 minutes, they were done. The little bit of salt and olive oil permeated them completely. They are now my favorite potato. Of course, if I ever visited Perú…I’d have to try their 200 varieties. For now, these hit the spot.