Weekend To-Do List

* Update blogroll. I’ve been on the fence for years about my blogroll.  It’s not exactly a reflection of the blogs I like to read, and I’d like to make some adjustments to it.  To be really honest, I’m going to remove some of the really popular blogs which don’t need any promotion from me (like the healthy living blogs) to make room for lesser-known but very lovely blogs.  Also, if you have a blog and you think I’d enjoy reading it, tell me about it in the comments!  I’d love to find more blogs written by people who are neither professional bloggers nor writers—in other words, people like me, who have a day job that has nothing to do with food or blogging.

* Update recipe index.  The index is so out of date that it frightens me.  It’s going to take me a while to catch up on all those recipe posts!

* Plan dinner menu for Saturday’s dinner with upstairs neighbor.  I’m thinking chili and cornbread.

* Pick out a tart pan to add to my Amazon wishlist.  My sister has been pressuring me lately to add more items to my wishlist, though I’d like to point out now that mesquite flour has been languishing on my list for nine months now.  I added a few Iron & Wine albums to my list because I can think of nothing better than an evening in the kitchen with Iron & Wine keeping me company, but this post over at rachel eats reminded me: this tart needs a tart pan!

* Make more basil oil.  I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it, but it’s a delicious decision to make!

* Read Dreaming in Hindi while relaxing on the couch.  I’ve been reading this book for a while now.  It was a little slow in the middle, but I think we’re picking up speed toward the end and I’m feeling eager to finish it.

Happy weekend, friends!

Let’s Talk About Peppers Today

With apologies to my friend Ammie, let’s talk about peppers today.  Ammie hates peppers, and I feel like I’m leaving her out.  Maybe next week we should talk about pie?  Ammie loves pie.

On the subject of bell peppers, Nigel Slater writes,

“Without heat—from a grill, an oven, a cast-iron pan blackened with age—there is little point to the pepper.  Raw, green, and unripe, its waxy, plastic skin and lack of obvious juice offer little but crisp nothingness.  Refreshing, yes, but somehow an imposter in a green salad; an annoying intruder in a Bloody Mary; an unimaginative addition to a rice dish.  Wherever it appears, the raw green pepper seems uncomfortable.”  (from Tender)

Hmm.  It’s an interesting take on bell peppers, but I think I’ll beg to disagree.  I think a side of crunchy bell pepper slices can be rather nice next to a gooey, cheesy main course, such as a grilled cheese sandwich, a creamy bowl of soup, or an indulgent pasta.  Their “crisp nothingness” can be a lovely palate cleanser, a little vegetal mouth freshener between bites of something rich.  And perhaps I’m just fond of raw vegetables because they’re so easy: a little knifework and they are ready to eat.

But Nigel does have a point about the alchemy of bell peppers and heat.  When the two come together, something wonderful happens: crispy becomes silky, and something both brighter and deeper emerges out of the bell pepper.  The flavor is pulled in two different directions, which I think is why roasted red bell peppers are so beloved by foodies.  I’m actually not the biggest fan of them myself, but I was intrigued by a recipe in Tender in which Nigel calls for baking red bell peppers with tiny tomatoes, with both vegetables lightly dressed in salt, pepper, and olive oil.  After a blast the oven, the roasted vegetables are dressed with basil oil, which is so simple and so sublime that I demand you make it before the end of summer: fresh basil and olive oil, buzzed to a cheerful green puree in the food processor.  This stuff is amazing…AMAZING!  Nigel’s recipe will make more basil oil that you probably want or need to dress your peppers, and I’ve been using the remaining oil in all sorts of delicious things: dribbled on fresh mozzarella(!), mixed into fat pearls of Israeli couscous, as a dip for crusty bread.

As you can tell, I’m rather fond of the basil oil.  The peppers were good too.  Ammie, it turns out there is something in this post for you after all!

Nigel Slater’s Roasted Red Peppers and Tomatoes with Basil Oil

From Tender by Nigel Slater

Serve 4, with appropriate accompaniments, such as a nice cheese offering and some good bread

Nonstick spray

4 large red bell peppers

16 tiny tomatoes, such as grape or cherry tomatoes

Olive oil for drizzling

Salt and pepper

For the basil oil:

1/3 cup olive oil

Fresh basil to taste (I used one of those little 2/3-ounce packages from the grocery store and liked the looseness of the resulting basil oil, but you could certainly use more basil if you like)

1)  Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.  Spray a large roasting sheet with nonstick spray.  Slice the peppers in half lengthwise and remove the seeds and white membranes.  I sliced off the stems too.  Lay the peppers, cut-side up, on the roasting pan.

2)  Halve the tomatoes, then divide them among the peppers, placing them inside.  Sprinkle some salt and pepper over everything, then drizzle a little olive oil over each pepper half.

3)  Roast the peppers for about 45-50 minutes, until the peppers have softened and the tomatoes are collapsing.

4)  Make the basil oil: place the olive oil and fresh basil in a food processor, then buzz to make a puree.

5)  Serve the peppers with the basil oil, either drizzling some oil over each serving or letting each person add basil oil to taste.  Save the leftover oil and use it anywhere and everywhere.  Or just call me up and I’ll come over with a loaf of bread to take care of that leftover basil oil.

Friday, with Up, Down, and a Little Visual Nostalgia

A year ago…

…working at home, riding the bus, taking self-photos, enjoying the water lilies.

Lately I’ve been interested in looking back through my photos from last year’s summer, particularly the ones that I never shared on Flickr.  I don’t spend a lot of time on this blog looking into the past; I tend to be a very forward-looking person in general.  It takes some effort for me to reel myself in from events that haven’t happened yet, and my constant anticipation of things to come is a major source of my anxiety.  So it’s refreshing to look back for a change, to see what caught my eye and what I liked when I was a year younger.

It’s funny that to my eyes now, last summer seemed fun and lighthearted, at least when I see it as a collage of photos.  When I think back to what was happening on the ground here, last August was the first indication that this job I’d accepted was not turning out the way I had hoped.  August 2010 was unpleasant because it started to shake the foundation upon which I was building my future.  Those rumblings have continued, but a year later, I feel much more at peace with not knowing where and how I will be employed.  Right now, there is a certain comfort in not worrying about it, not yet at least.

For now, I remain focused on my immediate experiments and the day-to-day chores.  I’m actually feeling really bogged down with daily responsibilities right now, to the point where I wish I could have taken today off from work to deal with my empty refrigerator and the dirty dishes in the sink.  Is that a lame set of reasons to take a day off?  I’m also feeling generally tired and a little worn out today.  I could have used a day to relax and catch up on my non-work life.

But I do what I have to do, and what I have to do these days is work.  I have to keep my eyes on the prize, which, in theory, is another paper.  When I think about my work like that, I do feel a little better about days like today.  And the fact that today is Friday makes me feel like some rest is not too far away.

I’m a little grumpy today.  Perhaps you could tell?  I’m sorry about that.  Let’s lighten things up a bit with another Up/Down list.  I’ll try to make sure the Up side is long enough to cheer us both up.

On the Up side of things, we have:

* Friday Night Lights.  I’m watching season 1 of this high school football drama.  It was a little depressing and slow at first, but the storylines are picking up speed now and I’m enjoying it very much.  Plus, Matt Saracen reminds me of my high school boyfriend, which is kind of adorable.

* Rocking out with Tom Petty while working at my microscope.  I spend a lot of time in front of a microscope these days.  When I was writing my PhD thesis, I had a playlist called Thesis Rock, and Tom Petty was an important part of that list.  He’s good for lab days.

* Pulling together today’s lunch out of random bits and bobs in the refrigerator.  I had no leftovers to use for lunch, except for a bit of rice and a tiny bit of chickpea salad.  It was depressing.  But then I dug through the produce drawer and found half a cucumber and a third of a tomato.  Combined with the chickpea salad and some jack cheese, sprinkled with some Herbemare, and tucked in a spicy flour wrap, my vegetables made for a tasty little main course for one.  I’m pretty pleased with my fridge raid!  That being said, I need to cook tomorrow!

* Postdoc happy hour tonight!  Since I’m eating dinner at happy hour as well, let’s hope there is something reasonably tasty and nutritious for vegetarians on the menu.

* Peanut butter chocolate chip cookies.  I need one right now, which means I must bake more of them ASAP.

On the Down side of things, we have:

* A job that doesn’t offer as much flexibility as I would like.  Sometimes I just need a day off, but it’s hard to make that happen because of the patterns within my work schedule.

* Being a tired, grumpy postdoc.  Blarg.

* Needing a vacation!  And then having to wait another month for that vacation.

* I was pretty bummed to learn a while ago about Borders going bankrupt.  The cookbook section of the Evanston Borders was a very important place for me during graduate school.  This piece, published in The Stranger, makes me even more sad for bookstores and book lovers.  But it’s insightful, well-written, and worth a read, especially if at one time, you loved Borders like I did.

* * *

Happy weekend, my dears!

Even Without a Gay Husband

Some of us are, shall we say, visually challenged.  Not only are my eyes something like 20/200 (which is terrible, terrible vision!  I can’t even read the words I’m typing!), but my interior decorating skills are so poor that Matt has said he feels like he is staying in an asylum when he visits me.  The white walls, the beige carpet, the lack of art—it’s just too much for him.  He likes bold, daring interior spaces.  My apartment is a little too calming for him.

But you know, I’m a high-strung person, and I find the white walls soothing.  I wouldn’t mind having more art, or even some color on the walls, but with my transient postdoc lifestyle, it’s hard to justify the investment of time and energy in this space that I’m renting.  I felt the same way when I was a graduate student, knowing that I was very likely to move to another city within a few years.  Decorating felt a little pointless—a waste of time and money, especially for impecunious graduate students who are short on both!

Last weekend, I was sitting at my kitchen table, eating lunch, messily, as usual, when I spilled my soup on the tablecloth.  It was a mess that required a change of clothing for the table.  Normally, I’d reach for another tablecloth because I always use tablecloths, just like my mom.  But that day, I wasn’t in the mood.  I wanted something different.  I’ve always liked the look of table runners on other people’s tables.  (These are the sorts of things I think about when I read food blogs: table runners.)  I have a circular table, and I didn’t think table runners worked with round tables.  The geometry doesn’t seem quite right, like the linear shape of a table runner against the curviness of a round table do not match.  Despite all this, I decided to experiment, and I came up with this: 

and this:

I overlapped three of my square cloth napkins to create a makeshift table runner, and I really like how it turned out!  The bright colors look so cheerful against the polished wood.  The effect seems very summery to me.

Not bad for a visually challenged postdoc, eh?  Maybe I don’t need a gay husband after all.

On Love and Cookie Dough Truffles

I’ve been known to bake in August, much to my mother’s horror.  August, in Texas, is what I like to call “the indoor season,” for obvious reasons.  I don’t spend the entire month indoors; I still get outside for bike rides and the occasional and quite literal run to Starbucks for coffee beans, but in summertime Texas, the outdoors don’t entice me like they do the rest of the year.  So I spend my time nesting and cooking, waiting out the heat until the cooler days of fall saunter into my life.

I realize that it’s kind of stupid to have the oven and the air-conditioner running at the same time.  I feel dollar bills slipping through my fingers, money seeping out of my apartment on a breeze of baked granola and artificially cooled air.  To my mind, the best strategy is to not think about these things too much because summer is an awfully long season where I live, and it would be a shame to deny myself treats like Roasted Tomato Soup or Crunchy Brown Sugar Granola.  I do tend to avoid turning on the oven at every meal, and I eat a lot of leftovers, so I’m not a complete spendthrift about my energy consumption.  But the smart Texas cook turns to a different set of appliances to survive the summer: a food processor and the freezer.

I mentioned long, long ago that I would tell you the story of my little food processor.  Back in the Stone Ages, I dated K, who lived in a lovely condo but had no real drinking glasses.  All of his water cups were those giant plastic ones, which was so strange to me because he seemed like a grown-up, but here he was with frat boy kitchen supplies.  He needed grown-up glassware, so for Christmas, I bought him a set of drinking glasses.  They were very heavy, and I lugged them from the store to the L to my apartment, where they sat, gift-wrapped, until K broke up with me in March.  I was deeply disappointed about being dumped, but I was pissed—PISSED!—about those damn drinking glasses, which I would now have to lug back to the store to return.

I was so angry about the stupid glasses that I was filled with superhuman strength as I hauled them back to downtown Chicago.  I stepped up to the return counter, and the clerk asked, “Is there a reason for this return?”  I answered, “They were a gift for someone, but I’m not giving them to him now.”  The clerk, bless his heart, said, “He must have been a jerk,” as he ran my return through the system.  He handed me my receipt, and I realized that the best way to make myself feel better about having been dumped would be to buy myself a present with K’s returned gift!  I’d been thinking about getting a food processor for a while; I had a new cookbook that called for a food processor.  So I bought myself a little Cuisinart Mini-Prep Plus.  The Cuisinart and I have now been together for far longer than K and I were together, and I daresay that we’ve been happier together as well.  In June, as I watched Matt making gazpacho using the Cuisinart, I thought about the ways in which our old lives intersect with our current lives.  Not only did K help bring me and the Cuisinart together with his returned gift, he helped bring me and Matt together because it was through dating K that I realized how desperately I needed to be with someone who could listen, empathize, and love in ways that didn’t come naturally to K.  To this day, I think that dumping me is the nicest thing he ever did for me.  Life is funny that way.

The Cuisinart and I have shared many moments together in the kitchen, making pesto and chickpea patties and now, cookie dough truffles.  I first found a recipe for these unbaked dough balls on Oh She Glows; since then, I’ve tinkered with the recipe to come up with something I really love.  Since the end of my Specific Carbohydrate Diet experiment, I’ve had bags of almond flour moping around my freezer, unused.  Swapping almond flour for the cashews in the original recipe seemed like a great opportunity to use up the almond flour before it went bad.

In my first batch of truffles, the only swap I made was almond flour for cashews.  Since then, I’ve dropped the oatmeal because I felt it made the dough gritty, subbing in more almond flour; lowered the salt; mixed up the sweeteners; and experimented with different chocolates.  But every version has been delicious: the dough, though (usually) vegan and relatively nutritious, tastes decadently rich and the texture is very similar to a traditional chocolate chip cookie dough.  It’s really kind of remarkable and a nice trick to have up your sleeve if you are into alternative cooking, such as making vegan or gluten-free treats.  I’ve probably made these truffles half a dozen times this summer, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I make them just as often in this final month or so of summer.  They’re too easy to make! 

Below is my favorite iteration of this sweet, along with a few notes to help you play with the recipe to your heart’s content.

Cookie Dough Truffles

Adapted from this recipe on Oh She Glows

Makes about 12-14 truffles

A few notes, just for fun:

* I’ve made versions of this recipe with honey and maple syrup; they seem pretty interchangeable to me.

* You could use a pinch or two more of the salt if you like, but I think I’m happiest with 1/4 tsp.

* I think this could easily be made gluten-free and grain-free by substituting a different flour for the pastry flour.  Perhaps coconut flour?  Or you could try going up to 1 cup almond flour and adding a bit of flax egg.  If I went that route, I’d start with 1/2 tbsp. ground flax mixed with 1 1/2 tbsp. water.

* My other favorite version of this recipe uses half of a Chocolove bar of Orange Peel in Dark Chocolate.  The orange peel is so delicious and adds this wonderful crunch to the truffles.  They are addictively good!  Consider yourself warned.  

3/4 cup almond flour

1/4 cup whole-wheat pastry flour

1/4 tsp. kosher salt

2 tbsp. granulated sugar

1 1/2 tbsp. honey

1/2 tbsp. water

1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

1/4 cup chocolate chips

1)  In a food processor, combine the almond flour, pastry flour, salt, and granulated sugar.  Buzz to combine.

2)  Add the honey, water, and vanilla.  Buzz to let the ingredients come together into a doughy consistency.

3)  Add the chocolate chips, and buzz to combine them into the dough.

4)  Scrape the dough into a small bowl.  Use your hands to shape the dough into bite-sized balls.  Tuck them into a container that you can seal tightly, and store them in the freezer.

Right on the Money

Dear readers, I have good news!  The roasted tomato soup is a winner!  I’m actually writing a recipe post!  Hip hip hooray!

I confess that I was not as enthusiastic about this soup the night I made it.  The original recipe makes a chunky vegetable soup that you ladle over toasted garlic bread.  While that sounded good in theory, I opted out of the garlic bread part and found that the chunky soup was just a little too rustic.  Normally, I’m all about rustic cooking, but there were too many tomato skins and seeds for me to be thrilled about this soup.  I was, in fact, so distracted by the texture that I barely considered the flavor.  I’m sure it didn’t taste bad, but it needed help.

The last roasted tomato soup I made was a Roasted Tomato and Black Bean Soup.  That soup blew me away with its complex flavor.  It was rich and spicy, robust and so perfectly balanced that I crave it now, just thinking about it.  I was hoping for a similar experience with the Italian-style roasted tomato soup on Sunday night, but instead I slunk away from the table, disappointed and pouting.

Thinking back to the black bean soup, I decided to experiment by throwing the roasted tomato soup leftovers into the blender and buzzing it to smoothness.  I also felt hopeful that a few days of resting in the fridge might help the flavors to coalesce.  After all, there was no reason why a soup with roasted onions and tomatoes, half a cup of roasted garlic, and a generous handful of fresh basil should be anything less than terrific.  (Yes, you read that correctly: HALF A CUP of roasted garlic.  It was insane.  It was incredible.  You must try it.)  While I was prepared for my predictions to be wrong, as they often are, for once, I was right on the money.  After a patient zhuzh in the blender, the soup was transformed.  Gone were the distracting textural issues; in their place was a deep, wonderful soup, like the best tomato sauce you’ve ever had but even better.  Even knowing what was in the soup, I found it hard to tease apart the flavors—they’d melded into something singularly delicious, something perfect for slurping from the spoon and dipping my bread into.  It was ambrosial, this roasted but now chilled and blended soup.  I highly recommend it, and the bread too, if you can find it.  I bought a loaf of Blue Baker’s Italian Loaf, and it was wonderful.  But really, I think any good sourdough or savory artisan bread would be nice with the soup.

Roasted Tomato Soup

Adapted from EatingWell

Serves 4

2 medium or large onions, sliced

2 tbsp. vegetable or olive oil

1/4 tsp. salt, plus more to taste

1/4 tsp. black pepper, plus more to taste

20 ounces tiny tomatoes (I used grape tomatoes)

1/2 cup garlic, peeled and coarsely chopped (yes, half a cup!)

3 cups vegetable stock

Generous handful of fresh basil

1)  Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.

2)  In a 9x13-inch pan, toss together the onions, oil, salt, and pepper.  Roast for 18-20 minutes, until the onions start to brown.

3)  Stir the tomatoes and garlic into the onion mixture.  Roast for another 18-20 minutes, until the tomatoes start to collapse and the onions have browned some more.

4)  Scrape the roasted vegetables into a soup pot.  Add the vegetable stock, bring everything to a simmer, and turn off the heat.  Let the soup rest for 10 minutes or longer.

5)  Add the basil to the soup pot.  In a blender, working in batches, puree the soup to smoothness.  Taste and add more salt or pepper if needed.

6)  Serve, either warm or at room temperature.

It’s Random, I Know

May

June

July

Today I share with you three random photos from May, June, and July, in that order, from this year.  Apparently I like taking pictures of tree branches.

There is a shortage of good, functional pens around the lab, so whenever I find an abandoned pen, I snatch it up and make it mine.

I have no interior decorating skills.  None.  And I wish I had a husband with a gay man’s interior design skills!

I wonder if I can poach the nectarines that are refusing to ripen into something that does not feel like tennis balls.

I like seeing spiders around my apartment because I assume they are busy eating the insects in my apartment!

I often feel guilty about not being able to read the work of much-praised writers.  But then I think, How much work should my pleasure reading be?

The roasted tomato soup from Sunday night was not as good as I hoped it would be.  But tonight, I’m going to find out if a few days of chilling in the fridge have brought out the best in my soup.  We all need to chill sometimes, right?  Why should it be any different for food?  I’ll report back with the results and a recipe.

I’m sure this one is obvious, but I’m having trouble writing recipe posts.  Perhaps it’s a case of the summertime lazies?