TheLindsayist

Kitchen sink carbonara and the Subjects

We played last night at the Middle East in Cambridge, which was a pleasure every which way. Even despite Tim’s cut finger opening up onstage, splattering blood all across his already red and white guitar. I found it so distracting, I started the next song in a completely wrong key.

The Subjects also played, a terrific band on tour from New York that you can hear here. Not only did they play a set that left us all quite giddy, they are delightful gentlemen and gracious guests. When we found our late-night Chinese food plans thwarted [no 24-hour Peking ravioli in JP, alas], we all agreed homemade pasta did in fact sound better than take-out pizza. Turns out they’re enthusiastic, adventurous eaters. I had dough all over my hands so I didn’t take pictures, but they did, so maybe I’ll add some later. Over reports of cross-country BBQ comparisons, we ate the following, a what’s-in-the-crisper variation on pasta carbonara.

Mark Bittman’s egg pasta recipe, recounted here from memory i.e.

2 cups flour
3 eggs
Pinch salt, water as needed

Flour in a bowl, make a well in the middle with a spoon, crack an egg into that and with a fork, start whisking the egg so it incorporates flour as it mixes. At some point in this process, add the salt. When it’s too dry to manipulate, crack another egg and repeat until all three eggs have incorporated all the flour. Ball up the dough and knead it for about a minute until it is smooth and pliable, and add a little water if it’s too dry. Split the dough into four balls. Roll out as you like – we use a little metal crank pasta machine – and drop in boiling, salted, oiled water for about two minutes until it’s tender.

Kitchen Sink Carbonara

Couple ounces pancetta, chopped
Half a red onion, diced
Big clove of garlic
One Chinese eggplant, chopped
2 eggs
½ cup grated Parmesan cheese
2 tbsp olive oil

In a skillet, sauté pancetta until crisp and mostly rendered. Add onion, sauté until soft and sweet, about 4 minutes. Sliver garlic and add to skillet. Add eggplant and fry until tender but browned. In a bowl, whisk eggs and cheese. Cook pasta; drain, but do not rinse, and reserve about ¾ cup of the cooking water. Return the pasta to the pot with the reserved cooking water; toss with the fried eggplant mixture. Pour egg mixture over the pasta and toss to coat. The heat of the pasta will cook the egg. If the pasta is too dry, drizzle with a bit more olive oil. Grate extra cheese to taste, and finish with freshly ground black pepper. Sleep a few hours, wake up and make brunch.

Yo, dawg

We have a pepper and carrot surplus at the moment, so I’ve been finding ways to integrate them into everything. See: carrot macaroni and cheese, a well-intentioned stab at introducing Vitamin A to the comfort food staple. The recipe I used was all wrong – melting cheese over pasta and calling it macaroni and cheese is for junk food amateurs, and adding oranges to carrots is the way to make babies eat vegetables. I’m perfectly happy eating my veggies even when they don’t taste like candy; I don’t even LIKE most candy. And, I certainly don’t have to disguise them in my m&c; but, without the carrots, I’d be unlikely to make that dish, so I gave it a try.

I ditched the juice in favor of savory seasoning by way of garlic and mustard powder, and built a classic bechamel before adding the carrot puree; also, added a bread crumb topping. The result left me with a curious, grainy sauce that seemed to miss the point of both lovely Granby carrots and cheddar mac & cheese, but as a side dish to my roast, it was fine.

I’m taking a moment to spend more time on the internet tonight to mention that I’ve been spending too much time on the internet. See, tonight, I went back to the carrot-and-pepper crisper this time for stuffed peppers [ground turkey, not unlike what I did to the zucchini previously]. And as I chopped a little red pepper to add to the filling, I found myself thinking, “Yo, dawg. We heard you like peppers, so we put a pepper in your pepper so you could…”

Stuffed Zucchini

What we might have here is a new entry into the “look who got a farmshare and is now writing painfully obvious recipes from the contents.” You know – we have some basil, some okra, some corn and some peppers, and then suddenly there’s a recipe for basil okra corn and pepper salad – just toss with vinaigrette! – and aren’t we clever? Well, that’s what you’re going to get here. This was supposed to include tomatoes but they’d spoiled, so you’ll never know, and I think the only reason the filling does not employ Parmesan is that it was 10:00 and I was loopy. Now that you’ve been warned:

3 zucchini, sliced in halves lengthwise, stubs removed and innards scooped out, chopped and reserved

1 tbsp olive oil

1 carrot, finely chopped

1 white onion, finely chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp thyme leaves

1/2 lb. ground turkey; I used a mix of white and dark meat

1/4 cup dry white wine

1/2 cup bread crumbs

1 tsp salt

ground black pepper to taste

1 egg, beaten

Oven 400

Heat oil in a deep saucepan; saute onions until sweet and soft, just under ten minutes; add carrots and do the same until tender, then add garlic and salt. Add ground turkey, chopping up a bit with your spatula and browning the meat until it’s done and a bit more flavorful. Add wine, simmer another five minutes. Remove from heat.

In a separate, heat-resistant bowl, mix bread crumbs and egg to a paste, and add meat-vegetable mixture, tossing well to combine.

Salt and pepper the inside of your zucchini canoes, drizzle with olive oil and spoon in filling. Cover with foil and insert into oven. Bake 20 minutes, then remove foil for the final ten. By this point, your filling should have crisped and your zucchini will be tender.

Mom: make this slaw.

This is another variation of the cabbage/peach/pine nut version I posted earlier, or the one with the roasted matchsticked beets. This one is completely raw, and Tim ate a quart of it yesterday.

Lunch and dinner and lunch and lunch

2-3 carrots, peeled

3-4 beets, peeled

2 hakurai turnips [if you want]

1 small head red cabbage

1 bunch scallions, coarsely chopped

1 tbsp rice wine vinegar

1 tbsp apple cider vinegar

2 tbsp olive oil

2 tsp soy sauce

1 tbsp agave nectar or honey

salt and pepper to taste

In food processor, shred carrots, beets, turnips and cabbage to slaw texture, and toss in a big bowl with scallions. Add dressing, toss to coat, adjust to taste.

This makes a big whopping pile of blazingly fuschia slaw. The other night, we had this with polenta and shrimp prepared like this.

Gendered cuisine, plus the way we’ve been eating.

It was already percolating on my mind after driving by a billboard for “Pepsi Max,” a cola for men. I do want to try it (queue ‘anything, once’ slogan) if only to understand what a focus group determined was a male flavor. Beef? Mushrooms? This beverage is taking on decidedly umami characteristics in my imagination. Old Spice?

When I arrived at the new taqueria in the Theater District yesterday afternoon, I was feeling chatty. I’d just left Grillo’s Pickles on the Common and was still glowing from the trio of garlicky spears eaten as I strolled. I’d read a positive review of the taqueria recently; as is my custom, I thought I should ask about specialties, what’s best, blah blah.

The owner answered, “Well, for the girls, they like…” and “For the boys…” explaining that the latter prefer bulky burritos while the former dine on delicate quesadillas. I immediately bristled, wondering what that had to do with how anything tasted, but it was advice I took with a grain of salt since it was, after all, pushing 90, humid, and not a day for a hefty lunch. Subtext: perhaps I wasn’t in for anything too special anyway, since there was no must-have menu star.

There was a passage in, I think it was, Tender at the Bone by Ruth Reichl, who described how it was common for a waiter to deliver her steak to her husband, while she could expect to receive her husband’s salad, swap to follow. Tim and I encounter this regularly; he’s far more apt to order a dinner salad out than I am, and likewise, I gravitate toward whatever menu item is still bleeding more often than not.

I thought of this as I ate my feminine quesadilla, which tasted vaguely of paper, and was cursed with the sort of pico de gallo you can buy in a tub near the pre-cut carrot sticks and salad bags. I’m not sure I would’ve been any better off had I ordered the burrito in question, given the faulty components. So much for heteronormative burritos.

Meanwhile, photos of a few recent meals at home, where the men and the women all eat the same thing.

North African spice-rubbed chicken, vegetals

Pan-crisped cod; dilled mashed potatoes; corn, tomato and scallion salad

Olive oil fried egg, stock-braised kale and some funny purple-grained toast

Cabbage Strudel

There ought to be a law keeping me from handling phyllo dough; making it, purchasing it, processing it in any way. I’m waiting for tonight’s dinner – little Greek pies [but it's called "strudel" anyway?] of cabbage, carrots, onions, carraway and feta sauteed and rolled up. As assembled, they look like rows of those mummified Egyptian cats. But more buttery.

No pictures; I’m too ashamed. It’s bad personal PR. [To be fair, the filling is delicious.]

To be accompanied by pork chops, pan-fried, with dill and Parmesan.

A mummified Egyptian cat.

New pickles, sour pickles.

Two competing crocks tonight; one vinegared, one just salt, same spice components (garlic and dill plus a cinnamon stick, mustard seed, black peppercorns, allspice, nutmeg, red pepper flakes, cardamom pods etc).

I have the impulse to check on these, about 20 minutes later, like a pan of cookies, but that is not how this works.

Thing One & Thing Two

Anatomy of a BBQ.

I’m ashamed to describe the limited scope of my BBQing history, but after the success of last weekend’s ribs, we decided to try those out on our dinner guests last night. I think my lack of experience is due to the fact that at most times, I’m surrounded by dudes who either absolutely adore BBQing (Matt coronated king of BBQ meats) or Tim, who I absent-mindedly let handle it, not that he cares much but that he can. There is some sort of gender-based complacency woven through all of this. I think to some extent, I felt about BBQ the way I felt about playing in a band; it hadn’t really occurred to me that it was something I was perfectly entitled to do.

I gave myself plenty of lead time in case something went horribly wrong, but unlike most meals where I promise a 7:00 seating and we actually eat at 11, my kitchen timing has really gotten efficient. Early views of the meat:

These were massive; one of those vertical metal racks would be a really superb idea for when I am not completely sick of ribs again. I cut each one into two and laid four across, I had just enough room to fit them all.

Rub the same as pictured earlier – cabinet content style, ditto the BBQ sauce.

Most miraculous was the temperature’s stability; last week, we fought flare-ups and blasts of high heat which created crunchy, nearly burnt edges. Yesterday, the BBQ stayed between 200-250 degrees steadily for about three hours before requiring additional coal, and asking for very little attention until it finished around the seven-hour mark. Cheers to the chimney starter.

As usual, I took next to no photos of the finished product, because I find mealtime photography antisocial in so many cases, and mainly because I forgot. To match the ribs though, we had Confit Byaldi, the Thomas Keller ratatouille dish that Tim tricked me into making through several cycles of reverse psychology after I suggested I’d make the simpler Mark Bittman approach (an hour at 300 or so, haphazardly piled but lovely for summer vegetables and sopping bread v. the former’s artfully coiled mandoline slices with balsamic and piperade, 2 1/2 hours at 275).

Also baked Courtney’s focaccia recipe that we first made on Vinalhaven with her last year. Kneading dough is such a pleasure, let alone the rewards. I really should do this more often.

Future Focaccia

And, second-smallest guest took a tour of our least-played musical instruments from the hutch, including the Zellophone. Times like those will justify impulse flea market purchases for years to come!

Mid-week Index

• A tiny little kid high-fived me as I finished my last lap around Jamaica Pond tonight.
• I really, really, really wish this Julia Child movie didn’t include a blogging theme.
• On my ride home down the Southwest Corridor, I saw a couple who had tossed their bikes aside onto the grass and were rolling around smooching.
  Kind of reminded me it is, in fact, summer.
• Speaking of my ride home, a dude cut me off whose truck was wearing one of those “LOOK OUT FOR MOTORCYCLES AND SHARE THE ROAD OR WHATEVER” stickers. I was about to get huffy but when I caught up to him at the intersection, I found him singing along to “Mister Jones” at the bleeding top of his lungs, and what kind of a person could stay mad at that?
• Eating Meat for the Environment
• Ate my first fresh tomato of the season, simply wedged up with salt and pepper. Slicing it felt like I was cutting through clay; very firm. I can’t wait for the messy late-summer ones.

Buon giorno, principesa!

Recent recipes

These two made a nice lunch last week, and were cobbled together from what came in the farmshare plus what was in the cupboard. The bean dip is adapted from Mark Bittman’s adaptation of the Lidia Bastianich version. So, where one might use lemons and rosemary, I hadn’t been bothered to go to the store all week what with most groceries coming in the crates and so on – instead, vinegar for acid and whatever herbs came here. I actually, weirdly, really enjoyed the cider vinegar. The slightly sweet cider rounds the lemon’s corners somewhat.

And you can put any old thing in a salad, and it pains me to measure out these things so methodically as that is not how I cook (no baker, here), but I wanted to record. These measurements are approximations; if you find you need more acid, you probably should add that. I usually make that slaw with white cabbage, toasted pine nuts, various vinegars, honey and white peaches – alternately, yellow peaches and radicchio, but this worked. I haven’t ever done much with kohlrabi but its composition makes me want to eat it up against granny smith apples.

White bean spread

1 can white beans
2 tbsp olive oil
1 fat clove of garlic, minced to paste
Half a bunch scallions, finely chopped, and whatever other herbs you have around – I used about a tbsp of finely chopped lemon balm, basil and sage as well
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
salt and pepper to taste

Puree beans in processor (you can hand mash; I’ve done this before and it’s fine, just not the road to fluffy) while pouring in oil to lubricate.
Stir in herbs, garlic, vinegar, salt and pepper; great spread on some kind of toasted whole wheat business with thick grilled slices of zucchini on top. About four servings.

Summer slaw

Half a white cabbage, shredded
One bulb kohlrabi, matchsticked
Four beets, roasted and matchsticked
Half a bunch scallions, chopped
1 tbsp agave nectar
1 tbsp rice wine vinegar
2 tbsp olive oil
s&p to taste

Combine cabbage, kohlrabi, roasted beets, scallions, toss to mix. In separate bowl, whisk remaining ingredients. Pour over vegetables, tossing to coat evenly. Season amply with salt and pepper to taste. Wait for me to remember if there were more things in there – it seems like there should’ve been but anyway, this was simple and quick, so maybe not. Turns garish pink and incorporates several pleasing notes of sweet, sour and salty at once. Serves four.