Tsimmis

I promised this, and I can't go back on a promise. It's been far too long, it's been far too crazy, but... I have some slightly reasonable excuses to back me up. But really? I apologize for my absence. Here's the tsimmis recipe I promised so very, very long ago. And it starts with... another apology! I started this post so long ago that I was already apologizing for not posting!

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...
I know it's been awhile since I've posted, and it's entirely my own fault. Things have gotten away from me lately and my usual routine of logging in, typing about, and arranging photos has been replaced by... work. Lots and lots of wholesome, mind-numbing, soul-crushing work. Cleaning, paying bills, not cooking... Well, I'm back, and I have a slew of recipes to share with you. This one is a Passover dish, which I'm regrettably late for: it ended on Tuesday evening. [Hi! It's me, in the present! Tuesday evening, two months ago!] I must warn you: I'm not Jewish, which means that I have learned what I know about this through patient teaching from my beloved D. By no means am I an authority on this subject. If you want to learn more, try checking out this awesome website, kosher4passover. I especially like their tagline: "Why is this website different from all other websites?" To find the answer, go see for yourself! Anyhow, to put it simply, Passover is a Jewish holiday that commemorates the Exodus from ancient Egypt, when the Israelites were freed from slavery. During Passover, or Pesach, no leavening may be used in any foods. Unleavened bread, known as matzo, is eaten in the place of bread, crackers, and any other bread-like substance, to remember the hasty departure of the exodus from Egypt. When the Israelites left, there was no time to wait for the bread to rise before baking; thus, unleavened bread was taken on the journey. We eat matzo during Passover to remind us of our beginnings and to symbolize freedom from slavery. So: no leavening, for a week. This is simultaneously difficult and easy: lots of meals, like steak and potatoes, for example, contain no leavening and make the restriction seem like a treat. But no sandwiches, pizza, noodles -- it becomes pretty obvious that it's not easy to cook unique, delicious meals without using flour. And let's not even talk about breakfast foods, like my beloved muffins: I'm still waiting to make those again, which is frightening. They are my comfort, my solace, my breakfast.
Luckily, we made a tsimmis for the first Seder last week, and we made way too much of it, so I did have some good, hearty food to eat before leaving for work during Passover. This stuff will last until the end of time: we made a giant bucketful of it, thinking that it would be one of the main courses at the Seder we attended. A few of the people at the Seder are vegetarians, and most Passover meals center around meat courses, so I thought that our vegetarian tsimmis would serve as a main dish for the vegetarians. Not so: I should really pay attention more. Tsimmis is a side dish! There were plenty of vegetarian options and only about half of our tsimmis was consumed, leaving us with a casserole dish full of the stuff to lug back downtown.
Tsimmis is extremely easy to make, and it's basically like a fruit stew. The word roughly translates to mean "fuss," such as, "Don't make a big tsimmis out of it!" That makes it sound like the dish itself is difficult to make, but this is not the case. I think that it's called tsimmis because it's a big mix of crazy ingredients, a big mess of things strewn into a pot and boiled until it becomes a syrupy stew. And ya'll know how easy stew is to make, right? Tsimmis is equally easy, but more fun. It's traditionally a dish made for Rosh Hashanah, given the inclusion of carrots and honey -- sweet food for a sweet new year -- but D'.s aunt requested we make it for the seder, and we were happy to oblige. By the way, it's pronounced "Simmis," in case you were wondering. Shouldn't I have told you that a little earlier?

Tsimmis
Begin by combining 1 cup of apple juice with 1 cup of water and 3/4 a cup of pineapple juice in a large, heavy saucepan. By the way, 3/4 of a cup is equal to one 6 ounce can, which is easy to find in most grocery stores. Bring this mixture to a slow boil and remove from the heat.
Add 2 cups dried apricots and 1/2 a cup of dark raisins and allow the fruit to steep for about 15 minutes, until the pieces are overly plump and juicy.
While the fruit is soaking, chop 1 pound of carrots into rounds -- don't use baby carrots for this, the large chunks are usually fresher and better for cooking. Add 1 pound of sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped. If your grocery store doesn't have a scale (mine doesn't -- you have to give your produce to a guy and he weighs it -- what is up with that?) two medium-sized sweet potatoes will usually yield enough for this recipe. The recipe also calls for 2 cups of freshly chopped pineapple, but I have a confession: we used canned (although I really enjoy chopping pineapple -- it's so satisfyingly difficult -- I was already committing to such a large recipe that it seemed overwhelming, and expensive, to chop that much pineapple. The canned stuff worked fine.)
Stir the carrots, sweet potatoes, and pineapple into the liquid and dried fruit. Add 3 good-sized strips of lemon zest, 3 tablespoons of fresh lemon juice (that's about one lemon, squeezed until it's dry,) 1/4 cup of honey, 1/4 cup of brown sugar, and a small pinch of salt. Stir until combined, then bring the mixture to a boil over high heat. Once it boils, reduce the heat to medium and simmer, covered, for ten minutes.
Uncover and continue cooking until the carrots and potatoes are soft and tender, stirring occasionally. The juice should reduce to a thick, richly-flavored sauce. Although the original recipe says that this should only take about 20 minutes, it took us much, much longer -- about 40 minutes total. I probably made the carrots and potatoes too large, so keep them small.
When the carrots and sweet potatoes are soft and pliable, remove the tsimmis from the heat and discard the cinnamon sticks. Correct the seasoning to taste: tsimmis should be sweet but not sugary, and a bit tart. Serve warm.
Or serve cold. It is excellent the next day, as the flavors really combine and become a saucy, tasty mess. Or a tasty fruit stew, I should say. It really is delicious, albeit a little strange, and it's perfect anytime, not just for holidays.
[Edit 5/25: Pictures are here! I did it in a timely fashion, too!]

Fried Yukon Gold Potato Chips

This isn't revolutionary, by any means, but it's thrilling: last night, we made our own potato chips. Ever since last week, when I made those scrumptious scallion cakes, I've been chomping at the bit to get frying. It's exhilarating, frying food: not only does it make a glorious mess, the result is addictive. I couldn't stop thinking about those scallion cakes -- their crunchy edges, their soft middles, their bold flavor... see, now I want some this instant! But the key to those little buggers is that they are fried: you could fry a shoe and it wouldn't taste half-bad. But when you fry something that already tastes good -- say, Yukon Gold Potatoes -- the result is nearly always to die for. Oh, I know, it's bad for you. Very, very bad. But once in awhile? It's ok -- especially since I don't usually eat fried food when I go out. That's sort of a lie, but we don't even stock potato chips in our apartment anymore. And I haven't eaten McDonald's in months -- I suppose this isn't something that I should be too proud of, but I live in America. There are always at least three McDonald's within walking distance, no matter where I am. I can see one from my office window, for crying out loud: fried food is everywhere. At least I'm making these potatoes myself, so I have some kind of control over the whole thing. We dried the chips pretty thoroughly and didn't salt them too heavily, which are two things that you could rarely ever say about fried food you get in a restaurant, fast food or otherwise.
So, to satisfy my craving for both eating and making fried food, we sliced up two round Yukon Gold potatoes and got to frying yesterday as a nice peppered roast broiled in the oven. It's fairly easy to fry things: all you need is a semi-deep frying pan, a set of tongs, and oil. We used Crisco vegetable oil, which is made from soybeans. Soybean oil has a very high smoke point* -- of about 440º -- which makes it ideal for deep-frying. The concept of smoke points is an essential one to master, especially if you frequently use fats while cooking. It refers to the point at which the fat (usually oil or butter) begins to smoke, which indicates that it is beginning to break down and is no longer good to consume. Essentially, when a fat reaches its smoking point, it burns and becomes unusable. Therefore, a higher smoke point allows one to heat the oil to a temperature that ensures quick, easy, and successful frying. Soybean oil is also wonderful to fry with because it has a mild taste and virtually no discernible flavor, allowing you to fry more delicate foods without fearing that their unique taste will be lost in the process. This is especially true with something like potato chips, which I like to cut extremely thin: they'll still taste like potatoes if you fry them in a mild oil, even if they're skinnier than a sheet of paper.

Fried Yukon Gold Potato Chips
Speaking of cutting the potatoes, D and I tried a new method yesterday, and it was fairly successful. Since we didn't want to stand in the kitchen all day, we decided to only fry two Yukon Gold potatoes, on the large side -- this whole debacle was a test, really, of our frying prowess, especially since I didn't let D participate very much when I made the scallion cakes. We each took a potato and tried separate methods. I did a standard knife-chop while D put our new box-grater to the test: it has three razor-like cuts along one side, sort of like a low-end vertical mandoline. Well, not exactly, but that's the closest thing I can imagine. If you own a box-grater, you'll know what I'm talking about. Anyhow, since this was a new kitchen item, D couldn't resist gliding a potato over it to see exactly how it would slice. It worked fairly well, although the potato was a bit large and kept getting caught on the second blade, and the slices weren't very uniform looking. Some of them were a bit raggedy for my tastes, but that didn't really effect the outcome, so it was fine. I would recommend using a real mandoline or just chopping by hand, though -- it seemed like more trouble than it was worth, especially given the results.
After chopping the potatoes, we poured about 1/2 to 3/4 cups of soybean oil into a frying pan over medium heat. We let the oil sit on the burner until it was wavy and shimmering, then we added about seven slices of potatoes to the oil. They began frying immediately, bubbling and jumping about recklessly. About 2 minutes in, we flipped them over with the tongs and allowed them to cook until both sides were beautifully golden -- about five minutes, total (2 minutes on the first side and 3 on the second.) Since the potatoes are essentially dunked and bathed in the hot oil, there's no need to watch them obsessively to make sure that both sides brown evenly -- the one flip should ensure a pretty even coloring. When they looked crispy, we removed them, one at a time, from the oil and allowed the excess to drip back into the pan. Then, we transferred them to a plate on two paper towels, sprinkled a tiny bit of salt over them, and placed three more towels on top of the potatoes. I patted them dry while D added the next batch to the oil. It took about 30 minutes to complete the entire batch (we got lazy at the end, a bit, and added many more than 7 to the oil) but the labor was well worth it. It was the perfect amount of chips for two people, and I found myself hankering for more. But I'm good -- I had a banana instead. See? Eating fried food doesn't totally ruin you! Especially if you follow it with fruit.
Wow: I just had a thought: fried fruit. Everybody wins!

*For more information on smoke points of other fats, visit this article at Cooking for Engineers, which is one of my favorite cooking websites. Check out the handy conversion window in the top right corner!

Irish Soda Bread

The Joy of Cooking should be in every kitchen -- although some of the techniques and recipes are extremely outdated (I don't know anyone who really needs instructions on how to properly skin a seal and save the blubber) most of the information is relevant to the modern cook. It's especially helpful if you're looking for a basic recipe to build upon: their soup chapter, for example, is fabulous and offers unlimited opportunity to tweak and refine, which is something I often do in the kitchen. I'm especially partial to their chapter on Breads and Coffee Cakes, especially the Quick Breads section. In fact, most of their baking instructions are both simple and methodical, offering opportunity to experiment but retaining the essentials. Baking is basically chemistry, and I'm always concerned that a key part of my experiment will go awry if I deviate too much, but nothing that I've ever made from this cookbook has turned out wrong.
I mentioned their Quick Breads section, and I have to say that I'm quite averse to using yeast in doughs. It's not because I don't like it, per say, it just seems kind of frightening to me. I've branched out a bit recently: I've been making some pizza dough with surprising success that contains yeast, and I'm going to try a real loaf of bread at some point in the near future. I must conquer my fear of baking with yeast! I love baking, though, and I love breads, so I've made a whole slew of these quick breads from Joy. They're easy, fast, and most of them don't include yeast. Score! I always have success with their Zucchini Bread, and their Banana Bread recipe is great (although a bit boring, considering that there are banana breads out there that sound much more enticing. Ones with candied ginger and coconut. Hold me!) I have yet to try many of these quick loafs, however: honey bread, Sally Lunn (described as light and brioche-like) or Gugelhupf (which has white raisins in it!)
Last year for St. Patrick's day we made their quick Irish Soda bread, and it was both simple and fantastic. We'll certainly make it again this year, but with a few minor tweaks: I recall it being a bit bland. I will probably use a combination of butter and shortening instead of just shortening and I'll put in an extra pinch or two of sugar and salt. Also, this time I'll use real buttermilk: I have a habit of mixing white vinegar with regular milk to make buttermilk (did you know this trick? It works, but it's not as great -- at all -- as pure buttermilk. Simply add 1 tablespoon of vinegar to each 1 cup milk and stir. Allow it to sit on the counter for 10 to 15 minutes until the milk thickens: instant buttermilk!) I'll probably throw in an extra handful of raisins (which the recipe calls for instead of currants, a more traditional ingredient in Irish soda bread) and a few more caraway seeds for good measure. On the whole, though, this bread was extremely easy to make and has a wonderful texture. It's pretty hearty, and the recipe makes a gigantic loaf, so I might split it in half this time around: an 8-inch-round loaf that rises a few inches is a lot of bread for two people.

Quick Irish Soda Bread
Begin by preheating the oven to 375º and greasing an 8-inch round loaf pan. I always use a springform pan when I bake, not because it's any easier to deal with (although it is much easier to remove the bread from the pan!) but because I own three of them, in varying sizes. They were on sale and cost less than just buying one! How fortuitious. I recommend using a springform pan if you have one, because as I said before: it makes removing the bread extremely easy, but it's not necessary: a normal loaf pan should do just fine. Keep in mind, though, that the traditional way to serve Irish soda bread is in a round. I'm not sure why, exactly, but it's the traditional shape. Most likely because it's an easy shape to make. In case you were wondering, there are two types of traditional Irish soda bread: the round, which is crossed on the top in order to allow the loaf to expand, and a flat variety, called farl, which is found only in Northern Ireland.
As the oven preheats, mix together the following dry ingredients: 2 cups sifted all-purpose flour, 1-1/2 teaspoons double-acting baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1 tablespoon sugar. As I said above, I may tweak this a bit, adding an extra pinch or two of the sugar and salt the next time around. I'm not sure, though -- I'm always afraid to mess with recipes like this! It's hard for me to tell what parts of it are integral to the "chemistry" aspect of baking and what parts are more malleable.
The next part of this recipe calls for chilled shortening, which is always a bit of a bugger. I keep my shortening in the pantry -- cool, but not chilly, by any means. So when I have to chill it, I simply measure the amount I need and pop it in the freezer for a few minutes until it's cold. In this case, I'll measure out 1/4 cup of shortening. After it's sufficiently chilly, cut it into the flour with a pastry blender until the mixture resembles cornmeal. As you probably guessed, I use my KitchenAid stand mixer for this and have never had any issues. What a great friend that little monster is! After the dough looks crumbly enough, add 1/2 a cup to 1 cup raisins (err on the side of too many, folks) and 2 teaspoons caraway seeds -- again, maybe 2 heaping teaspoons. On the side, mix together 1 egg and 2/3 a cup of buttermilk. Add to the dry ingredients and combine, but do not overmix. Overmixing causes the dough to be tough, resulting in a funny texture. Once the mixture is just combined, place the dough on a surface and knead, lightly, until the dough is smooth (or as smooth as it can possibly be, what with all the raisins and caraway seeds that are in there.) Place the dough in your greased pan and press down so it fills the pan entirely. With a knife, cut a "bold cross" in the top of the loaf -- this helps the bread expand and prevents cracking -- and brush the entire top with milk. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, until the loaf has risen and is lightly browned.
This bread is an excellent accompaniment to stew or soup and is a delightful morning treat. It has to be eaten fairly quickly -- within two or three days -- due to the small air pockets in the loaf (formed by the reaction of the baking powder with the buttermilk, which has lactic acid in it) but you can stretch its life by toasting slices for breakfast.

Scallion Cakes

I know, I know -- Chinese New Year has come and gone, already, but my office is having a Chinese New Year celebration today. It involves a lot of homemade food, a large group of people crammed into a very small kitchen, and is the perfect opportunity for me to try something new in the kitchen. By the time I got around to thinking about what to make, the good stuff was taken: soba noodles, almond cookies, pot stickers... I wanted to bake something, preferably sweet, but it seems like everyone was leaning that direction. So in the spirit of culinary adventure, I decided to make scallion cakes. Scallion cakes are round bits of dough sprinkled with oil, salt, and scallions then rolled into a bun, flattened, and fried. Far from baking cookies, but perhaps a bit more adventurous -- and I'm always game for kitchen chaos.
I was nervous about the frying part, and about the whole venture entirely, so I whipped up a half-batch over the weekend as a test. They turned out ok, but they were too big -- very doughy in the center and burned on the outside -- and didn't have enough scallions or oil in them, in my opinion. So I made one and a half recipes worth for the office and made them much smaller and flatter, adding a hefty amount of scallions to each cake rather than the paltry 1 teaspoon called for in the recipe. I think it was a success, although I ran out of scallions at the end and was left with a bit of extra dough. At least it's only flour mixed with water and I wasn't throwing away much -- just one recipe's amount of dough would have been too small, so I suppose all I really needed was another scallion or two to make it right. I used a total of fifteen scallions, a whopping 5 tablespoons of sesame oil, and an additional (brace yourselves) cup of vegetable oil to fry them in. Obviously all of the frying oil isn't consumed, but it's still quite a monstrous amount of oil to put in a pan. Like I said, this was my first stint truly frying something, and I must say it was a pretty successful venture. I'm already planning my next fry: latkes.

Scallion Cakes
This is a recipe for about ten small scallion cakes -- they're better small, if you want my honest opinion -- but you could also make four or five large cakes, as the recipe recommends. If you roll the dough out very thin, though, I think they end up tasting better because of the way they are rolled and fried, so you're better off erring on the side of having more rather than having bulkier cakes.
Begin by combining 2 cups of all-purpose flour with 3/4 teaspoon of sugar. I believe that the sugar helps the dough brown more evenly as it fries, but I'm not sure -- most of the recipes I found don't actually contain sugar, but this dough was pretty stellar, so I didn't want to mess with it. I toyed with the idea of adding salt to the dough, but decided against it: the salt might make the scallions soggier, I reasoned. I'm not sure if this is logical, but there's enough salt in this recipe already, so it's worth skipping it in the dough.
Stir 2/3 a cup boiling water into the flour mixture and mix just until the flour absorbs all of the water. Gradually -- the key here is gradually -- stir in enough cold water (1/4 to 1/3 a cup) until the dough begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl and form a ball. The dough should not be sticky; if it is, you added too much water. This can be remedied by adding a bit more flour until the dough smooths out and is no longer sticky.
You want to keep all surfaces that the dough will come in contact with, including your hands, well-floured throughout this escapade. After the dough has begun to come together, remove it from the bowl and knead for a few minutes on a lightly floured surface until it becomes smooth and elastic. You can add more flour at this stage, if necessary. Cover the dough with a slightly damp cloth and let rest for an hour. Chop up your scallions at this point: about fifteen stalks total, less if you desire more doughy cakes. You want to slice them very thinly, along the bias. Use some of the white part of the scallion as well as the entirety of the green portion.After the hour has passed, re-dust your surface and your hands with more flour and knead the dough until it is smooth. Place the dough back under the damp towel and remove about 1/10 of the dough -- no more than about two tablespoons worth -- and shape into a smooth ball. Using a floured rolling pin, roll the ball into an extremely flat round. Lightly brush the round with a good amount of sesame oil, until the entire surface is evenly coated, and sprinkle with a pinch of salt. Cover the surface with minced scallions -- about 1 to 1-1/2 tablespoons total.
Tightly roll the rounds into a fat rope and coil the rope into a small bun. Make sure to pinch the end of the rope into the roll to seal it together. Cover with a damp cloth and allow it to rest for 15 to 20 minutes. Repeat these steps until all of your dough and scallions are gone -- the scallions may go first, which is what happened to me, but you can use less scallions per cake if necessary.
While you wait for the dough to rest, heat up about 2/3 to 1 cup of vegetable oil in a large skillet or a wok, if you have one. The oil should be wiggling but not smoking when it is hot enough to fry. After the dough has rested, re-dust the surface and your rolling pin with more flour and roll out one roll into a flat round. The scallions will begin to poke through, and this indicates that you should stop rolling: the less covered by dough the scallions are, the more likely they are to burn. They still taste great, but aesthetically they're not as pleasing. If you coiled the dough properly, the scallions should make a nifty spiral shape within the round. Don't flatten the dough too much: the pockets of air contained within the coil make for more air in the dough, which translates to a puffier fried cake. So watch it with that rolling pin -- easy does it.
Now it's time to fry the cake! Fry each round one at a time in the oil, carefully turning about two to four minutes in, when the bottom has turned golden brown. You might need to poke the center down to make sure that the round cooks evenly, but don't press too hard or the dough will flatten out and lose its nice puffy quality. Also, as you're frying, periodically take the cake out of the oil and dump any excess that has pooled on the top back into the pan. It gets chilly on top and the cake won't fry as evenly with a cold pool of oil on top of it. I used tongs to flip the dough, and since I don't own a splatter screen. Bad! Bad! I had one in my hand this weekend at the store and put it back on the shelf, thinking: "I don't want to invest three dollars in this frying business, I'm only going to use it once." Shame on me: I want to fry everything now. It's addictive, both the process and the actual food. When the cake has evenly browned on both sides, remove from the oil and shake a bit to get rid of any excess oil. Place on a bed of paper towels and sprinkle the top with a pinch of salt; then, place two paper towels on top and press lightly to remove even more of the frying oil. Allow it to cool between the towels as you fry the remainder of the cakes.
These are best served hot, but since they're for an office party, I brought them cold and cut them in half so that they were more bite-sized and plentiful. I personally love the taste of cold fried food, especially Chinese food, because it tastes like leftover takeout, but I'm not sure my office-mates will agree. I'm crossing my fingers, because I ate a quarter-slice this morning and it was terrific. If no one else agrees? I must be crazy. They're just as good hot as they are cold, if you ask me.
Wish me luck! I love to cook for other people, but I fear the aftermath: will they like it? Will everyone in the office now hate me because my scallion cakes weren't perfectly round, and also some of them are a bit burned around the edges? Hopefully not: this was my first time frying anything, and amidst the oil splatters, narrowly-thwarted burns, and slippery floor (oil gets everywhere when you fry) emerged some decent -- in my opinion -- scallion cakes.
(Delicious!)

Scalloped Potatoes

It was so foggy out on my walk home yesterday that I could barely see past the tip of my nose. It certainly made for interesting travel, although it was a bit dangerous -- I nearly got smashed by a bicyclist, a bus, and two cabs in my short walk from the bus stop to my apartment. I'd say that I have to be a bit more careful, but this was all on them: stop driving so quickly without paying attention to lights and traffic signals and people! Just because you're riding around in a metal box doesn't mean it's safe to speed.
Anyhow. The fog makes me sad -- it's so drippy and dreary and downright depressing that it's hard to do anything with that outside the window. It wasn't pretty fog, either -- just a mass of grey-white wetness. I am so ready for this weather to disappear, by the way. Where's the sun? Where's my promised early spring, Mr. Groundhog?! While I wait, I'll busy myself with some more winter food -- time is running out for those heavy, oven-intensive casserole type dishes. There's a bright side to every foggy day, and yesterday, that bright side was found in a hot dish of scalloped potatoes. We used to make these when I was growing up, and they're major comfort food. Just the smell makes me feel cozy, like I'm sitting in front of a fireplace with my favorite book, curled up like a cat. Is it time to go home and get under the covers, yet?
Although this is a slightly time-intensive recipe for what amounts to a side dish, it's well worth the effort. We ate the entire thing in one sitting -- but we made a half-recipe, so I suppose that's fair. It's really not all that bad for you, especially since I used skim milk and only two tablespoons of butter instead of the required four. It took me about an hour and a half, from start to finish -- that's with about 45 minutes in the oven, mind you, so it really only took 45 minutes of pure kitchen work and an additional 45 of agonized waiting.
This is a slight adaptation of Julia Child's recipe from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1 (page 523) and the only change I made was adding a middle layer of caramelized onions. Since we only had half of a bag of potatoes -- remember those rainbow beauties I used for the potato soup? -- I was working with a smaller amount of food that I needed to succeed. So I added an onion to the dish to round it out and give it more heft, and by golly, it totally worked; in fact, I think the onion might have been the best part of the whole dish. She calls them Gratin Dauphinois [Scalloped Potatoes with Milk, Cheese, and a Pinch of Garlic]. The garlic, by the way? Totally can't taste it. It's kind of a pointless step, actually, and the only thing it did was make my hands smell like garlic for the rest of the night. But I actually like that.

Scalloped Potatoes with Caramelized Onion
Begin by preheating the oven to 425º.
Slice a medium sized white or yellow onion into long thin strips -- I do this by halving it, taking off the outer layer of tough skin, and slicing it into sections from the tip down towards the root with your knife parallel to the cutting board. Don't slice through the root, however -- it holds the onion together and makes it easier to chop. Besides, it's one of the juiciest parts of the onion and caramelizes wonderfully. After slicing it down the middle, bring your knife to the top, rounded part of the onion and slice into thin strips from the side to the middle and back to the other side. Halfway through the process, your knife will be at a 90º with the board and the onion. It's hard to explain; perhaps I'll take some photos next time.
Heat a heavy frying pan on the stove and add about a tablespoon of butter. When the foam begins to subside, add the onions to the pot. They should make a satisfying sizzle when they hit the pan; if not, the butter wasn't hot enough. This is a trick to master in the kitchen, the butter/foam/heat skill, because the foam is an indication of how hot the butter is. See this wonderful post from cookthink for more details and procedures regarding heating butter over the stove. Throw a pinch or two of salt on the onions -- it helps them sweat, releasing their juices and allowing them to steam -- and cover the pan. Lower the heat to medium-low and allow the onions to cook while you chop the potatoes, stirring occasionally to prevent burning. If they do begin to burn, simply turn the heat down and stir more often.
Child suggests that you peel the 2-1/2 pounds of potatoes, and if I were using russets or something with a tougher skin, I would go with that advice; however, I had those little rainbow babies that just look better skin-on -- and the blue potatoes made the top of my dish look extra-crispy, to the point of being burned, but they weren't burned at all: just blue! Slice them thinly: 1/8 of an inch, maximum, but thinner, if you can. After they are sliced, place them in a bowl filled with cold water and allow them to soak. When you are ready to use them, strain and dry with paper towels.
You need a heavy, shallow baking dish for this recipe, three inches deep, maximum, and about eight inches in diameter. Grab a clove of garlic and cut in half. Rub the garlic on the inside of the pan. Next, coat the inside of the pan with about 1 teaspoon of butter. Remove the potatoes from the water and dry with a towel. Layer half the potatoes on the bottom of the baking dish and top with a shake of salt, a nice dose of fresh ground pepper, and 1/4 cup of grated swiss cheese. I actually used fontina, a cows-milk cheese from Italy, which has a smoky, rich, and creamy flavor. Dot with about a tablespoon of butter, divided. Top this with the caramelized onions, which should be done enough at this point -- they'll be light brown in color (perhaps with a few dark spots where they burned, which is fine) and soft.
Layer the rest of the potatoes over the onions and season as you did with the first layer, with salt and pepper. Top with the remainder of the grated cheese and another tablespoon of butter, dotted across the top. Set the entire dish aside. Measure out about 1/2 to 3/4 a cup of milk -- I used skim, which turned out excellently, but obviously whole would be tastier -- and pour into a saucepan. Heat the milk, whisking all the while, until it boils, then pour it over the potatoes.
Pop the potatoes into the oven for about 35 to 45 minutes, testing after you reach the 35 minute marker. The potatoes will be perfectly soft all the way through with no resistance or firmness when they hit your fork. When they're soft throughout, the dish is ready to serve. D added a dash of red pepper flakes for flavor as he ate them, but they're just as delicious with no extras -- I know, because that's how I ate mine.
I can see why Child's cookbook is slightly daunting after completing this recipe. Although it's fairly simple fare when all is said and done the task of slicing those potatoes as thinly as possible -- with a substandard knife -- was difficult, but well worth the effort. I suppose that's why she begins her book thusly:

This is a book for the serventless American cook who can be unconcerned on occasion with budgets, waistlines, time-schedules, children's meals, the parent-chauffeur-den-mother syndrome, or anything else which might interfere with the enjoyment of producing something wonderful to eat. (Child, Julia, Louisette Bertholle, and Simone Beck. Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1961, 523.)

I may be serventless, but I certainly am concerned with both my budget and my waistline, as well as my time-schedule. Whatever that may be. Still, though, this was a fairly inexpensive dish, and it tasted so fabulous that I feel no guilt over my plans to make it as soon as I get more potatoes in my house -- which may be tomorrow.

Roasted Asparagus

Lots of people don't like vegetables. These must be sad, lonely people -- vegetables are one of the greatest foods out there. I have a theory about why people aren't all for veggies: they're not the easiest things to cook. Overdone, most vegetables turn rubbery; underdone, they've got too much of a crunch and, well, a raw flavor. Asparagus is a great example. It's not the type of food that you can simply stick a fork in and proclaim "dinner's ready!" You have to taste a few stalks to really properly see if asparagus is ready for consumption, and this gets in the way of making sure everything is done at the same time.
I'd been pretty unsuccessful myself cooking asparagus. I usually threw it on a baking sheet or in my Pyrex pan for about twenty minutes in a medium-low oven and was left with soggy, rubbery stalks. Fine to eat, sure, but nothing to write home about -- or to blog about, for that matter. But a light went on, somewhere in my brain, and I realized: high heat! Shorter cooking time! Victory! Asparagus is fairly small, and roasting it for a long period of time is bound to dry it out and cause the fibers to disintegrate. You can do other sorts of things to asparagus, as with any vegetable: a common technique is to steam them or boil them. Some people go the extra mile and tie them into a bunch, place them upright in a small amount of boiling water, and allow the tougher stems to boil as the tips, which are generally more tender, steam. You can even purchase an asparagus pot for this very purpose.
I find that roasting asparagus gives it a heartier flavor and is easier, on the whole, to do than to steam or boil it. I don't like boiling vegetables in general -- it's difficult, especially with something like asparagus, to drain properly and I hate having a puddle on my plate. If I'm going to mash them (as I do with cauliflower or rutabaga) it's a different story, but I don't generally mash asparagus -- too stringy and fibrous. Although I suppose a food processor would help... I'll bet you could make a great asparagus dip with that handy tool. Anyhow. Roasting asparagus is easy, because all it involves is a bit of olive oil, a pan, and a hot oven. Oh, and a bit of salt. I like to use Lawry's Seasoned Salt on vegetables like this, and a small amount goes a very long way. Good, because it's (obviously) high in sodium. The health benefits of asparagus, though, outweigh that small amount of naughtiness: a whole cup of asparagus has only 34 calories and 3 delicious grams of protein, not to mention that they're an excellent source of vitamin A (20% of your DV),Vitamin C (13%), and Iron (16%). Vegetables really are good for you -- and they taste great, too.

Roasted Asparagus
Begin by preheating your oven to 400º.
Carefully wash the asparagus and take care to dry them thoroughly. You don't want any extra water on these when they're cooking, because we're going to coat them in oil. You can find asparagus in pre-measured chunks at the grocery store: one bunch should suffice for two hungry people.
Snap the rough ends off of the bottom of the stalk. You can usually find the right place to break it -- it will often snap itself -- by applying pressure to the bottom of the stalk with one hand and holding it with your other hand. Discard the ends and lay the stalks out in a large Pyrex pan or on a baking sheet with a lip.
Drizzle one thin line of olive oil over the stalks. Now, you get to get your hands dirty -- one of the best things about cooking. Rub the stalks around, in the oil, so they are evenly coated. You don't want them dripping with oil but you don't want any dry spots, either. Shake a small amount of Lawry's Seasoned Salt -- or sea salt, table salt, pepper -- over the stalks.
Arrange them back into a line without overlapping . Pop them in the middle of the oven for about 9 minutes, then remove from the oven. Shake the pan around to make sure the asparagus isn't sticking to the bottom -- if it is, add another small bit of oil and coat the stalks with it by pushing them around with a spatula. Rearrange so that they are not overlapping.
Put the asparagus back in the oven for another 5 to 6 minutes, until the tips are just beginning to turn brown and crunchy. The resulting asparagus will have tender skin and a satisfying resistance in the stalks when you bite down. You shouldn't have to test it -- this recipe is fairly foolproof. If your stalks are quite thin in diameter, reduce the cooking time to compensate; if they're fairly thick, add a few minutes after you shake them around.
You can eat the stalks with your hands -- right from the hot pan, if you so desire. Did you know that asparagus is one of the few vegetables that's acceptable to eat with your fingers in high society? I like to eat mine just like french fries, much like I eat green beans. If you want to be all classy, serve them with some fish and a fork. By the way: right now, I'm totally loving Trader Joe's frozen fish burgers. We got some salmon burgers a few weeks ago and they are just spectacular. I'm not a big fish-cooker -- it's difficult to get it right -- but these frozen burgers are literally idiot-proof. And they cook up fast. Plus, they're quite healthy -- it's recommended that people eat at least two servings of fish per week, and with these patties, you can easily exceed that amount. Asparagus is great with any type of meat, including fish, and is also an excellent addition to any vegetarian (or non-vegetarian) stir-fry. Or do what the Michigan Asparagus Advisory Board suggests and make them into a hearty soup. Any way you cook it -- as long as you don't overcook it -- asparagus tastes delicious.

Saturday Night Apple Cake

I have this darling little cookbook (I've mentioned it before) that we picked up at a local book fair last summer, and it's been... well, collecting dust ever since I traded over a dollar for it. Why? It's weird. It's the Congressional Club Cookbook from 1970 -- the eighth edition -- and while it's an entertaining jaunt into the past, it's full of jello molds, tuna casseroles, and ingredients like Oleo (from what I can gather, a particular brand of margarine.) It's a great treasure trove of the odd stuff our elected officials used to eat, supposedly, and includes some nifty tidbits: charts outlining the chain of command and where to seat specific members of the house, senate, and their wives (senate wives outrank house members) and what to do when the President invites you to dine at the White House. Never decline the invitation, even if you had other plans: just write the people you're brushing off a letter explaining that you've been invited to dine with the President, and naturally, that is more important than anything else you may have committed to.
It's a neat cookbook, but like I said -- hard to find something I'd actually want to eat in its pages. So when we decided, once and for all, to just use the darn thing this past Saturday, I was thrilled to find a recipe for Saturday Night Apple Cake. Perfect! We had a busy and full day -- complete with a ridiculously delicious lunch and a milkshake at the Eleven City Diner (I hadn't had a milkshake in years, people, and it was fabulous: supposedly one of the best shakes in Chicago, and I agree) and I was in no mood for a heavy dinner. So we settled on this apple cake -- which I imagined would turn out much like a zucchini or banana bread, but it is much sticker -- and some matzo ball soup. And the best part? The apple cake was perfect for Sunday morning breakfast. Can I just brag, for a second, about how wonderful yesterday was? The sleet mushed about outside, and we were so cozy with our two newspapers and our apple cake and an Oscar-nominated movie that there was no need to go out. By the way: Last King of Scotland? Great movie, but... I covered my eyes at the end, there. Also, I cried -- not tears of sadness, but tears of ohmygod no one would ever actually do that to another human, right? (wrong, by the way.) I recommend it -- although the plot was too predictable (I kept calling out what was going to happen, which is an annoying habit of mine) it was very well done and Forrest Whitaker totally deserved that Oscar. What an actor.
In any case, apple cake is good. And it's brought to us by Mrs. Mark O. Hatfield, the wife of the senator from Oregon (in 1970, obviously.) The women don't use their real names; in fact, they don't even sign their recipes with their name, only with the name of their husbands. Because no one knows (or cares) who they are. They just make the food, behind closed kitchen doors. And after the dinner was finished, the men took out their cigars and began yammering... and the women retreated, back to the kitchen, for a Virginia Slims cigarette and coffee. Their advertisement on the cookbook's paste-down says it all:
Saturday Night Apple Cake
Begin by creaming 3 tablespoons of shortening. Add 1 cup of sugar, gradually, until the mixture is crumbly and well-combined. As usual, I used my KitchenAid for this -- any time I'm making a batter, the KitchenAid gets to play. I'm not one for mixing by hand. When I was a child (and this, I assure you, is a true story) I was instructed to make the batter for a brownie mix. Simple, right? Add the egg, the water, and mix. By hand. I was young, so I interpreted this literally. There was batter everywhere -- a photograph exists as proof. I think that was probably my dog's happiest day alive. The moral of the story? Don't trust me alone in the kitchen.
Add one large egg and 1 teaspoon vanilla to the sugar mixture and beat well. Now, mix in 3 cups of diced firm apples. We used 3 red apples which was plenty, and D diced them into small ( about 1/4 inch) chunks. We wanted some substance to the apples, so we didn't grate them, and we went with red because those looked best at the grocery store. I know most people bake with Granny Smith apples, but... I wanted something sweeter. And the Granny Smiths looked kind of sorry anyhow.
Sift in 1 cup of flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg and 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon. Another quirk of this cookbook, by the way, is that they use soda and baking soda interchangeably. So this recipe, in actuality, calls for "soda," which we (correctly) interpreted to mean "baking soda." Very strange, no? This cookbook is wild. Stir in 1/2 cup chopped walnuts or brazil nuts. The recipe calls for walnuts, plain and simple, but -- shock of all shocks -- we couldn't find them in the store. We opted for the brazil nuts instead, because they were cheap and unseasoned, and I was very happy with the results. A nice nutty flavor without being overwhelming. We used our little Cuisinart Chopper, which could have turned them to butter if we weren't being careful, and the result was mostly powdery with some small chunks. I liked that -- I'm not that interested in chewy chunks in my bread.
Turn the batter into an ungreased 9-inch pan and bake for 45 to 50 minutes at 350º. By the way: I used a springform pan, and I'm really glad I did. The resulting cake is pretty spongy and sticky, and I can't imagine the mess it would leave in a standard ungreased pan. You might just want to smear a bit of butter in there, especially along the sides, if you're not using a springform. It can be served warm (yummmmm) or cold, and be sure to save a slice or two for breakfast the next morning. And possibly lunch. As a matter of fact, I didn't eat anything but apple cake until dinner yesterday. Glorious.

Green Beans, Blanched and Provencale

It might be surprising, but green beans aren't exactly the easiest vegetable to cook. It's not that preparing them is actually difficult: you just snap off the ends, throw them into boiling water, and that's about all there is to it. But it's not a forgiving vegetable, like the potato or even the cauliflower. It's a fine art to find that perfect consistency: soft, with a bit of snap. Overcooking them -- even by the slightest amount -- will leave you with mush. No one likes to eat mush, unless they are a dog. But even dogs deserve properly cooked green beans, if that's what they want to eat.
Green beans are commonly called string beans, but if you want to go all fancy-pants, say "Haricots Verts." This is (of course) how Julia Child refers to them in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and since we're using her recipe, we might as well be fancy here. One of the great things about green beans is their nutritional value: they're high in vitamin K, vitamin C, and vitamin A, and shockingly low in calories. We're talking very, very low here: 43 calories per cup. You could eat two rolls of Smarties and get stuck with a higher calorie count than that. These beans are great for so many other reasons, too: consider the preferred storing method. Just throw them into a plastic bag and stick it in the fridge. They should last a whole week before starting to turn that way, which gives you ample time after purchasing to actually eat them. So many vegetables don't keep in the refrigerator for that long, and it's always a shame when Thursday rolls around and you're nixing the veggies entirely because you just don't have any good ones left.

Blanched Green Beans

Whatever recipe you choose for your beans, always give them a preliminary blanching in a very large kettle of rapidly boiling salted water. Depending on what you plan to do to them later, boil them either until tender or until almost tender, and drain immediately. This essential step in the French art of bean cookery always produces a fine, fresh, green bean of perfect texture and flavor. (Child, Julia, Louisette Bertholle, and Simone Beck. Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1961, 443.)

Green beans require very little cooking, actually -- despite their hearty appearance, they're actually quite fragile little things. Their outer shell, though tough, is only a thin shield for the tender, airy inside portion. It has a large surface area for a vegetable, which gives ample opportunity for those tasty nutrients to escape from the bean as it is being cooked.
One way to watch out for this loss of nutrients is to pay close attention to the color of the beans: they should be vibrantly green when they are fully cooked. Overcook them and you'll end up with a greyish green blob: if you notice your beans beginning to turn grey, they're already overdone (although probably still edible at that point.)
You will start this recipe by bringing 6 quarts of water to a rapid boil. To help the water boil faster, and also help the green beans cook properly, add about 1 tablespoon of salt to the water when you put it on the stove. That may sound like a lot of salt, but it's not: the green beans won't really absorb most of it, but it will help preserve that essential green color.
As the water does its magic and works itself into a boil, prepare the beans. Snap off each end and pull slightly to remove any stringiness that may be attached to the end. This stringiness is less common now than it used to be: most farmers breed their beans to make them less stringy, so you may not have to worry about this. Still, though, you want to snap off the tip on each end before eating.
When the water is boiling, drop in the beans -- about a pound and a half of green beans total for this amount of water -- a handful at a time into the water. Bring the water back to a boil as quickly as possible (I do this by putting the lid back on the pot for a moment or two) and allow the green beans to cook for about eight minutes. After eight minutes have passed, start testing the beans: they should taste slightly nutty and a bit sweet. If they are still too raw, they'll have a kind of freshly-mowed grass flavor, so be on the lookout for that. In addition to the nutty sweetness, they should have a tender texture with just the slightest hint of crunch when they're fully cooked.
Drain immediately in a strainer or colander. Julia Child then suggests that you flip them into a hot, dry pan and toss until the water has evaporated, but I find this step unnecessary if I strain them properly. Maybe that's because I'm lazy, but I just don't find that the extra effort makes the beans any better. If you do decide to dry them in a pan, do not stir the beans -- this will break them -- but toss them gently. These beans will keep for a day or two in the fridge, and all you have to do to reheat them is boil a new pot of water, throw the beans in for just a moment until the water boils again, then drain. This simple reheating technique makes it worth it to prepare a whole pound or two at once, rather than trying to portion out just enough for the amount of mouths you have to feed.
We like to serve these with nothing more than a bit of red pepper flakes and a dash of salt, but there are many ways to jazz up these babies. One of the more exciting recipes in this book is for Green Beans Provencale, which is an involved recipe that will transform the beans into a whole salad. Peel 4 plum tomatoes and cut into wedges. Slice an onion in half, then cut into long, thin strips -- as thin as you can get them. Cover the bottom of a saucepan with water and bring to a simmer. Add the onions, along with a few dashes of dried basil and thyme. Throw in one clove of garlic -- with recipes like this, I merely skin the garlic and roast it in the pan along with everything else, then I remove it when the dish is ready to serve. This allows all the flavors of the garlic to seep into the dish with minimal effort. Bring the water back to a simmer, then cook the onions for about 2 minutes until they are soft but still retain their shape. Pour off most of the cooking juice and reserve.
Add the tomatoes to the pan with the onions and bring to a simmer again, cooking for only one or two minutes. Add some reserved juice if necessary to keep the dish from drying out. You should be left with about 1 to 2 tablespoons of the cooking liquids in the pan. Drain off any excess or add some reserved liquid to make this possible. Stir in about 2 to 3 tablespoons of olive oil and heat for only about 30 seconds, until the oil coats all the vegetables.
Remove the pan from the stove and allow the vegetables to rest until the green beans are ready. Stir in the beans and coat them evenly with the tomato and onion mixture. Allow the dish to rest for about ten minutes before serving -- the longer you allow it to rest, the saucier and tastier it will get. You may add grated cheese if you wish, but any other deviations will take away from the overall fresh, open-air flavor of this particular dish.

Mashed Rutabaga with Shallots

I'm deviating today, but not entirely. Last night was LOST night -- first Lost since it was 100º outside (only a slight exaggeration) and we deserved a break from cooking. Well, we took a break the night before for frozen pizza -- yikes -- but last night D. stopped at the fancy pants grocery store on his way home from work and got us some rolls (for our frozen onion soup, which tasted just as good as if we'd slaved for hours in the kitchen) and mashed rutabaga. I'd been hounding him to get the rutabaga ever since he bought it a few months ago: it is just so darn good. It's a great alternative to mashed potatoes, which can get dull if you eat them too often, and it's a fantastic orange. Not bright orange, but very mellow. And what a complex vegetable rutabaga is! This kind was made with shallots, which lent it even more depth.
So I hunted around and was able to locate a recipe that I believe is either quite similar or the same as the recipe they use at Fox & Obel's to make their mashed rutabaga. They do have quite a few recipes on their site, including one for mashed sweet potatoes that is intriguing -- it includes pineapple -- but unfortunately none for the rutabaga. Next time I have a craving, I'll try to get my hands on some fresh rutabaga (which has proven quite hard to find in the past: any tips on where to locate some in the Chicagoland area?) and make this recipe, which includes the major "tastes" that I found in the original, such as milk, shallots, and butter. Actually, aside from the rutabaga, those are the only ingredients in the dish. I found this particular recipe on BlickRecipes.com, which I've never used as a recipe source before, but it has a pretty wide selection of various recipes. Check out their rice section -- it's packed!
You can also make mashed turnips by substituting the rutabaga with turnip, or mashed potatoes, the same way. It's a pretty basic process, but the results are creamy and divine. I'll have to play with this recipe whenever I get an actual live rutabaga to work with!

Mashed Rutabaga with Shallots
Begin by slicing 5 peeled shallots into small thin rings. You may need to halve some of the rings in order to keep them nice and small. In a saucepan, heat about 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil with 1 tablespoon butter. When the pan is hot (you should see small bubbles beginning to appear under the surface) add the shallots and cook until they are golden, about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent burning.
While your shallots are cooking, peel one or two rutabagas and cut into chunks, about 1 inch sized cubes. Put them in a saucepan and cover with lightly salted water. Boil the water and simmer the rutabaga until it is tender and can be easily pierced with a fork -- about 35 minutes total.
In (yet another) pan, heat about 4 tablespoons of butter and 1 cup of milk (now, here is where the rutabagas I ate last night may differ: I suspect they used cream to make them extremely rich, but I'm not positive. I would try them with milk first, because of the high fat content in cream.) Heat until the butter is just melted and the mixture begins simmering.
Drain your rutabaga and mash, using a food processor if you have one. I think I'll use my KitchenAid for this -- it really makes excellent mashed potatoes. Add the milk mixture in a steady stream as the processor is running until the rutabagas become extremely smooth.
Put the pureed rutabaga back into a saucepan (I would just use the milk pan, because I don't like too many extra dirty dishes around, but I suppose it would be nice to use a clean pan -- especially if you don't have to wash it!) and add the shallots. Stir while heating until it is hot enough to serve. Be sure to put some salt and pepper on the table so people can season if they desire.

I'll leave you with some tips on how to choose a good rutabaga, because if you're anything like me, you don't really even know what to look for when you do come upon them at the grocery store. The rutabaga should have a nice pear shape (like the ones above) and be purple at the tip. Choose smaller ones, if possible, because larger rutabagas tend to be tougher. Pick one with no or relatively few blemishes (as with all vegetables and fruits.) Watch out for rutabagas that seem too light, as they may be hollow and not yield enough to cook with.
Store them in a cool, dry, and dark place, such as your pantry, for up to ten days. They will dry out and become brittle when they are too old for consumption.
Want to learn more about the rutabaga? Check out the Worldwide Gourmet site, which has lots of nutritional and other information on all types of foods, as well as recipes and tips for entertaining.

15 Minute Mashed Cauliflower

I have trouble with portion control. I'm often way too hungry to eat the small amount of recommended food, but I don't want to fill up on junk calories -- be it potato chips or an extra slice of chicken breast. That's why I adore vegetables. It's pretty difficult to eat too many veggies, which means that I can fill up my plate with cauliflower, spinach, green beans, peas... the list is endless. And vegetables are tasty, too, and can be very hearty while being simple to prepare.
Take last night, for example. We made some Amy's Chicken Sausages, which aren't entirely healthy on their own due to their high sodium content (although they are made from chicken rather than beef, which makes them better for you than standard sausage) and had some leftover onion soup. One sausage and a half a bowl of soup probably wouldn't fill me up, especially since my lunch usually consists of a pita, two small slices of cheese, a tablespoon of hummus, and a handful of baby carrots. So we boiled some broccoli, serving with 1/2 tablespoon of butter and a healthy sprinkle of black pepper. It was fantastic and provided the perfect accompaniment for the spicy sausage (we had the gouda and apple flavored kind, by the way. The cheese melts in little pockets when you boil rather than grill and oozes out deliciously.) The texture of well-cooked cauliflower or broccoli is really the most important thing, in my opinion, because you're going to be eating it as a side dish anyhow. I never add salt because it just detracts from the healthiness of the dish.
At the grocery store, we tried to buy cauliflower, but it was mostly brown-spotted. You want your cauliflower to be firm and perfectly white. Brown spots indicate that it's going bad, and it doesn't look as nice when it's on your plate if it is spotted. I prefer cauliflower -- I can't really say why, just that I'd rather eat it than broccoli. I think it has something to do with the texture, really, and cauliflower seems to take slightly longer to cook and is less prone to turning mushy.
I love that cauliflower is high in vitamin C -- just one cup provides more than 90% of your daily intake value -- is low in fat, and is in season during the winter, when many vegetables and fruits are not. It keeps for about a week in the fridge after purchasing it, which is an ample amount of time to get around to cooking it as opposed to a lot of other vegetables purchased during the wintertime. Store it stem side down to make sure that the florets don't accumulate moisture and spoil.
I saw this recipe when watching Jacques Pepin: Fast Food My Way (link plays sound effects) a show on our local PBS affiliate. I really enjoy watching this show, because he prepares everything from scratch and does it really fast -- not like Rachel Ray, whose "30-minute meals" would take at least 45 after you prep all the ingredients. He does almost everything right there and doesn't seem to rely on an unseen sous-chef to prepare his ingredients. There's nothing wrong with a sous-chef, but when you're touting "fast food" or "30-minute meals," it's important to deliver a product that actually meets those standards.
This recipe only takes about 15 minutes from start to finish and most of it is hands-off, leaving you free to prepare the main course as the cauliflower boils. We serve this as a side to nearly everything, but I prefer it with fish or poultry. It is so easy to make and it turns out spectacularly well that I don't think you need much vegetable experience to make it successfully. If you're wary about cooking veggies, try a simple recipe (such as this one) and you'll find that the product practically delivers itself, both in taste and simplicity.

15 Minute Mashed Cauliflower
Begin by bringing 1-1/2 cups of water to a boil in a saucepan. As the water heats up, turn a whole small cauliflower so the stem is facing up and cut through the core to remove the stem and leaves. Separate the cauliflower into bite-sized florets and wash throughly. Drain.
Add the florets to the boiling water and cook, covered, for 10 minutes. Do not stir, as stirring breaks up the florets. Drain the water and add 1-1/2 tablespoons of butter and some ground pepper to taste into the pot. Using a knife, chop the florets in a stirring motion to break them apart, chopping into fair-sized chunks.

Can you believe how easy that is to make? I suggest serving it with a dish that has a sauce because it will soak that right up from the plate. You can also serve it as is with some extra ground pepper for spice, or with some chopped chives for added zest. It's a delicious and nutritious side dish for many meals, and it's so very easy to prepare.

Candied Sweet Potatoes

We had a long day yesterday, and after stopping at two stores on the way home, we were exhausted and just didn't want to prepare a complicated meal. Good thing we had some sweet potatoes kicking around waiting to be eaten. I adore sweet potatoes: it's something we never had in my house growing up, and I love baking them in the oven (400º for about an hour) right in their jackets, then popping them open for an easy and healthy side dish. You don't even need to top them with butter; their sweetness alone makes them rich and creamy enough for automatic consumption.
We were to hungry to wait for an hour, and these were gigantic potatoes, which means that baking them, naturally, would take even longer than that. So we scrounged around for a good, easy recipe -- a quick scrounge, I might add, since we were practically starving at this point -- and found one in our good old standby, the American Heritage Cookbook (last mentioned here, in the post about Macaroni Pudding, or Mac'n'Cheese.) Out popped a recipe for Candied Sweet Potatoes, which was ridiculously simple to prepare and really good to eat. Comfort food, I like to call it.
I ate it plain, with nothing on the side, since I was too lazy to make anything else. The three potatoes made a huge batch (a full 9x13 inch pans worth, to be exact) and there are plenty of leftovers. I think he supplemented his with meatballs, which we made last Friday (recipe forthcoming.) Just potatoes is not enough for a growing man. We made a half-batch, considering that we only had half the amount of potatoes the recipe called for, but like I said -- plenty of food to go around. I can imagine this dish on Thanksgiving tables around America, as it would be a fantastic accompaniment to turkey or chicken.

Candied Sweet Potatoes
We began by heating the oven to 400º. The recipe wanted it to be at 350º for over an hour, but like I said -- we were too hungry to wait that long. And they're potatoes, not a tough cut of meat or some kind of dainty vegetable, so they can stand the heat and resulting slower cook time.
I peeled 3 good-sized sweet potatoes and began slicing them into rounds, which were too large for a normal person's mouth, so I halved the rounds and was left with nice moon-shaped pieces.
As I continued chopping, he took over the stove-top, melting together 2 tablespoons of butter, 1/2 cup light brown sugar, and 1/4 cup of water over medium heat until the sugar dissolved and the butter was completely melted. He then added some salt and pepper, to taste. This turns into a delicious sauce, a light brown and slightly watery topping for the potatoes.
We arranged (not too carefully; a more accurate term would be "we threw") the potatoes in a 9x13 inch Pyrex pan and poured the sauce over them. Into the hot oven it went (top rack, back half, which is the hottest part of our oven) for about 30 minutes, then we took them out and stirred it up with a spatula. The recipe says to "baste once or twice," but I don't own a baster, and I don't think that would have dramatically different results than the simple stir did.
Back into the oven they went, for about 10 more minutes and another stir. They still weren't done (as we had feared) so we ate some leftover guacamole and waited another 10 minutes for them to finish baking.
These were just splendidly delicious. I think that they could use slightly more sauce, or perhaps the sauce needed some more spice (I'm thinking allspice would be perfect, which I use on sweet potatoes frequently) but they were light, refreshing, and a wonderful full meal for me. I think they would be an excellent side dish for poultry or a heavier fish, but they really were splendid on their own.