Banchan/Fromage/Fusion Goodness

Because why work on things that are on deadline or pay when you can photograph this?
.

All cheese raw milk, French,

 triple creme, brie, mourbier, chevre from Whole Foods 

as are organic red grapes from CA and cornichons.

Hummus from Jerusalem Gardens

Kimchi and rice crackers from Noble Fish.

Frano Korean Japanese Lebanese goodness. .

Sigh.

PS Vegan attempt fail and can't really count raw milk cheese as raw food diet. So relishing vegetarian goodness

Day Two: the hidden Sprite and other surprises.

So the vegan/raw generally 'heathy' kick is surprisingly harder than I anticipated. Or at least for certain things. 

Dairy has been near to impossible to give up - perhaps it didn't help that I had splurged in several price raw milk cheeses from Whole Foods (yup, Whole Paycheck) the weekend before starting this. Perhaps also because my stomach curdles at the thought of black coffee. And perhaps because as a good Turkish-American, not being able to eat yogurt makes my ancestors roll around in their grave. 

Morning latte machiatto with Lavazza Espresso. Without which I am catatonic.

However other things have been very, very easy - cutting out meat, butter, sugar, refined flour, processed foods and bad fats a breeze. I think it helps that I am still enjoying a glass of good wine (just jacked up grape juice really) as I please. And that my diet is already pretty typically Mediterranean, which means it is pretty healthy on its own. 

Late lunch with the very Turkish combo of  tomatoes and cucumbers drizzled with Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Corn Tortilla chips, hummus mixed up with some pico de gallo (surprisingly good). 

and a far less healthy light dinner of fried beets - golden and red and lovely Rose from my friends at Vellum

Okay, so I also had the fries. But they were hand cut. And I'm sure the potatoes were local, organic, etc., in the back you see Sonya's amazing pea soup (she got a vegetarian version)

So overall, I do feel better, have more energy, etc., etc. I don't feel hungry (though let's be honest, even skinny Ebru never did) (call it an embrace of gourmandise lifestyle). And there are a few changes that I want to incorporate on more permanent basis. 

Back. Healthy. Day One.

It has been too long. Too many posts started, mulled over, and never posted.

Also unhealthy far too long and a bit sick very recently. But as I'm on the mend - decided it was time to do a small cleanse. Not just in terms of what I eat, but also in terms of overall 'stuff,' people, things, mind clutter, etc. Here is hoping it goes well...and here are some pics of my last indulgences, and (very) newly formed healthy habits :

Saturday morning double affogato at Zingermans with Burnt Sugar and Coconut gelato. Breakfast of champs.

Saturday afternoon beef brisket at Biercamp

Sunday mornings breakfast - note the fresh figs from the Produce Station (first of the season!) and raw honey from the AA Farmers Market, which apparently has very good anti-allergen health properties. Va voir. Regardless it tastes good.

Afternoon cheese plate - all raw milk (unpasturized)  with fantastic red from Corsica. You can see the blue d'auvergne, vieux gouda, mourbier (which has the ash in it) and a tiny bit of the triple creme on the bottom left. As donuts are for Homer, is French cheese to me.

Sunday night dinner of local Pierogies (with cheese and chives) and some yogurt. 

First day - sliced avocado and heirloom tomatoe with lime juice, sea salt and extra virgin olive oil from Bari

Cornichons from Whole Foods, Sauerkraut from Biercamp. Note to self, must learn how to make both.


Lunch - long, long curly pasta, basic tomato sauce and teeny, tiny bit of shredded asiago. (not sure I'll ever be able to fully give up dairy, but am thinking raw milk products are better? or not as bad?)



Dinner - basmati rice cooked stir fried with sauteed button mushrooms. I ended up having it with the San-J Thai Peanut sauce (as a side note, is gluten free)  and lots of lime juice.



And what made the day so great - watching Les Amants, Coco Before Chanel, and Poupees Rousse on DVD and getting these treasures in the mail from Bruxelles and Paris.

So if anything, these posts are just to keep me on track and motivated to get through July. Doing vegetarian 100%, not smoking at all (and probably, slightly sadly, never again), moderate wine, no processed foods, no added sugar, no butter, limited caffeine, and hopefully lots of sleep and sanity. Done juice fasts before, especially while living in Germany, and 2-week detoxes but this will be the longest by far. Fingers crossed. 

A warning to all food bloggers out there?

In my lingering post-holiday food coma, the thought about writing hasn't been too appealing. . . but I came across this article in the Guardian which caught my eye. Recipes can be dangerous stuff: 

Judges ruled that the newspaper failed to test the recipe before publication, and that if readers followed the recipe exactly, the churros had a good chance of exploding once the oil reached the suggested temperature.

"The explosions were so violent that in some cases the splashes hit the ceiling and covered the person who was cooking," the court said.

"Faithfully following the recipe published in the newspaper, this damage could not have been avoided."

Guess I won't be cruising Chilean newspapers for churros tips. I'm so curious about what specifically they suggested that led to so many incidents, but alas they aren't publishing the original article. 

Busboys and Poets

My relationship with Washington, DC is complicated, fraught, and wistful. There is and was a lot about the city I actively dislike. The provincialism, the lack of style, an acute divide between those of us who work (worked) for Uncle Sam or lobbied him and anyone else are but a few gripes. And while I might find myself fascinating, being surrounded by people just like me in terms of their profession and interests felt oppressive and dull.

However, since I began coming to DC professionally (from  Spring 2003 on) there were things that I always liked. The (now gentrified) 14th Street/ U Street corridor being very high on the list, as my first apartment in DC was on New Hampshire Avenue and Swann Street.  My last DC address was in beautiful flush Georgetown so complaining about the gentrification would be a tad hypocritical. . .

With the gentrification of that area, the infusion of Obama administration folks, and the development of much better dining and nightlife, DC has become far more palatable and (gasp!) fun. One of my favorite places is Busboys and Poets, the original one being on 14th Street between U and V.  This article on the Washington Post on the owner Andy Shallal was a great read. It made me realize the exciting things going on in DC and reminisce about the good times there. I'm going back for my birthday, for the first time in 2 1/2 years and I'm looking forward to it.

And the article inspired me to think deeply about what I am doing right now. It makes for good reading.

A Day in the Life. . .(part deux)

Some days are just a beast. Today was one. Tomorrow will be another. And then, finally, a fun weekend.

Luckily some nice moments broke the gloom. And while I did not burst into song like Julie Andrews, it was nice to enjoy some of my favorite things. . .

1. It snowed!!!!!! To the naysayers: yes, the novelty and joy will wear off in about 24 hours as the prospect of the next few months kicks. But this is how snow makes me and my IKEA man feel.

2. Grocery shopping and realizing that my slightly dysfunctional, though extremely gourmand shopping cart only included

• A half a case of wine (is it my fault that Buschs has amazing wine sales?)
• 4 avocados (ditto the sale)
• roasted peppers (yup)
• blue corn chips
• and a copy of Harpers.

Dysfunction, or a recognition and acceptance of the sweeter things in life. . . the wine is for a holiday party and include a Spanish Verdejo and Pinot Noir from Coppala's winery, both of which I am really excited to try. Given the amazing sale prices, I also picked up some Chilean carmenère, New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, Australian Cabernet Sauvignon, and a Spanish red to round out my "cellar."

And of course we had a busy day at the cafe, which was rewarding but tiring after an incredibly high stress week.

But as long as my cellar is full, the cat happy and my Internet working, life in our little city/big town will go on.

Healthy Inspirations

Today was my annual check-up. Luckily, given that my primary care physician is lovely, the 2+ hours long appointment was not as unpleasant as it could be. And while I've quit smoking and got a great all-clear recently after surgery, the holidays have provided plentiful rich food and drink. . .

Let's just say the scale was not kind. Surely a fluke, probably a seismic shifting of the earth or problem in the buildings structural integrity that led to the floor tilting, etc., etc.

Nonetheless the health scares of late and scale results led me to think that my recent indulgences (French-style hot chocolate with whole bars melted into milk being one very unfortunate new recipe.. . )should be a tad less frequent.

So this great article in the Times inspired me to think of making some lighter fare. Asian inspired, probably with a heavy leaning towards Japanese and not my beloved coconut milk-heavy Thai curries, lots of ginger, fresh steamed healthy goodness which is light but flavorful.

Ah well, if there is any hope of looking cute in all those party dresses then perhaps a bit more healthy living could be arranged.

Food and Friends

I find the best meals tend to be with good friends and the best dishes tend to be those that are the most spontaneous, cooked while sipping wine in the kitchen and gabbing with good company.

Having just spent Thanksgiving near Traverse City, I realized that my dinner invite to one of my oldest and dearest friends, S., was not well-timed for cooking a gourmet meal. Whoops. However she is like family and as my fridge, pantry, and bar have been well stocked of late, I figured an improvised meal would be possible.

The freezer tends to be underutilized in my kitchen, but when I do use it, I realize how hugely helpful it is to keep good frozen food. Buschs had had a sale on frozen wild shell-on shrimp a few weeks ago, so I had bought an extra pound and chucked it in there thinking it could come in handy. It did.

My mother, bless her, always buys extra produce with me in mind, so I had a beautiful large eggplant, bell peppers, fresh tomatoes and fresh herbs in the crisper drawer in my fridge. And then of course I had some olive oil (Colavita extra virgin and my current obsession, a Chilean varietal from Fustinis) , butter (you really can't go wrong with butter), sea salt from the always reliable Trader Joes, canned organic chopped tomatoes, fresh garden grown jalapenos, onions from the farmers' market, and french feta cheese and couscous from the Middle Eastern store, all of which I set out, mulling what to do and sipping a lovely 2009 Chenin Blanc. (Thanks again, Whole Foods!)

I initially thought I would make karades guvec, a Turkish shrimp casserole that is baked in a clay pot, and incorporate eggplant in the stew. So I set to peeling and salting the eggplant, and thawing the shrimp.

Though, while I am not engineer, the shrimp to eggplant ration already looked a bit off. . .

And as the onions and garlic sauteed and were joined with the red bell peppers, tomatoes, and eggplants, S. came, the conversation and wine flowed. As we launched into our catch up, it was clear that my initial plan would not work or be too time consuming to tweak.

So I switched to a far easier ratatouille and decided to cook the shrimp shell-on in a very hot pan with just some olive oil and green onions. I had fresh rosemary, thyme and sage all of which I chopped and added to the eggplant mixture which was cooking down, and the shrimp cooked very quickly. While a pain to peel while eating, they tend to be so much more tender when cooked with the tail, shell and legs still on.

And in the end, for an extremely improvised dinner it was not bad at all. S. and I both agreed that the couscous could have been more flavorful (I only used butter and sea salt) but the ratatouille and shrimp were both tender and flavorful, and complemented each other better than I planned.

But more importantly, it was so nice to spend an evening with someone I have known for the better part of 23 years. Laughing, commiserating, and going down memory lane. That the evening was accompanied with good food and better drink was a lovely bonus. As is the fact that my 1990s pictures of S. and I remain happily in the non-digital world - MC Hammer pants and crop tops not being my most elegant of looks. . .

Detroit food musings

Why is it that everyday brings a new article about how amazing the D is?

This one from the Guardian is on the local food scene. Makes for a good read and good guide to planning some long overdue time in the city.

Friday Food Thoughts

On vacation, my plan has been to de-connect/go offline (ha!), relax, read, eat well and do wholesome yoga-like activities (umm, kind of?).

I finally got around to picking up The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation by David Kamp. It is a fun read and I knew I would enjoy the book immensely when I read this passage:

I love the way that even the seemingly mundane staples of our daily life are being tapped for all the depth and complexity they can offer - to the point of ridiculousness, but benign ridiculousness. Butter is now something you can get in a variety of regional pedigree and butterfat contents: 86 percent for the artisanal "cultured" version made by the Vermont Butter and Cheese Company, 85 percent for the butter from California's Straus Family Creamery, 82 percent for the commercially manufactured but high-end Plugra, and 80 percent for your basic supermarket Land L'Lakes. Sugar, too, is making a play for our attention, its enthusiasts arguing that there's a whole world out there beyond the yellow Domino box, a world populated by varieties with Dr. Seussian names as jaggery, piloncillo, muscovado, and demarra. What about salt, then? Well, at the restaurant widely regarded as the best in the United States, Thomas Keller's French Laundry, in Yountville, California, I was soberly presented with a salt tasting - a salt tasting! - as an accompaniment to my foie gras course. The waiter, like some particularly elegant cocaine dealer, gently spooned nine mini-mounds onto a little board, each salt a different hue and consistency from the next - one as fine and white as baking power, another as dark and chunkily crystalline as the inside of a geode.

It is, in short, a great time to be an eater. And how often do we get to say something as unreservedly upbeat as that?

From Kemp, Preface pages x - xi

Thanksgiving, 2 years later

Life since the last post has been, well, life. Full, complicated, difficult, rewarding and never lacking adventure though also at times slightly bleak. . .

However - this Thanksgiving has taken me to Crystal Mountain Resort in northern Michigan with my parents, brother, and our cat Fatty. It has been a welcome break as this fall was one of the hardest in memory. Things are looking up and I suppose I do have much to be grateful for: first and foremost my health, and always my family and my friends who have truly been rockstars.

So in the holiday spirit and to get back into blogging foodie mode, a few pictures from our Thanksgiving this year:

The view of the table with drinks - we had a lush 2008 Parducci Cabernet Sauvignon (soon to be available at my mother's lovely restaurant), Toso Champagne from Argentina (great quality/price ration, very smooth and drinkable - thanks Whole Foods recommendation!) and some local St. Julian Blue Heron White for desert (also available at Ayse's Cafe and a very underrated little white in my opinion).

My plat composé

Our delicious bird

Wild rice stuffing and cranberry sauce

And a pre-dinner shot of me and my brother.

Wishing you and yours warm wishes over Thanksgiving with much to be grateful for and much good food, wine, and cheer.

Risotto a la belge

Sometimes it is great to have a recipe to rely on, and this one is particularly yummy. It is also a great website for those who have lived, live, or will travel to Belgium. In my humble opinion, some of the best food (and fashion!) to be had in Europe is in that little country.

Bon appetite!

Thanksgiving, Past and Future

This year’s Thanksgiving was, modesty aside, The Best Ever. Naturally I attribute that to two key factors - excellent food, for which I was partially responsible - and a healthy amount of Moet et Chandon White Star and Evolution from the Sokol Blosser vineyard in Oregon - for which I was fully responsible for. Family gatherings can be tense in the best of situation, but loosening everyone up, albeit in a reasonably civilized way, ensured that the final prep, dinner, conversation, desert, and subsequent card games all flowed smoothly if not a little hazily.

This year was the second time in my life that I made the turkey. Now cooking in my house is very daunting as everyone is an amazing cook and thus, a spot on critic. So rather then completely winging it (no pun intended) I decided to stick as closely to a recipe as possible. Naturally, that didn’t fully happen and what turned out was an improvisation of two recipes. One was for the actual brining, which I shall forever do before roasting any poultry, the second for roasting the turkey. I found both on epicurious.com, which has always proved reliable in my experience and usually has very helpful user comments.

The first step, after we bought the 13.15lb (5.9 kg) monster was to wash it thoroughly and remove giblets and organs. I then found a pot large enough to put the bird in so that it would completely submerged in the brine, plunked it in, and improvised the following brine recipe.

Rather then adding a whole three pounds of kosher salt, I added approximately 1 1/2 cups, and while we didn’t have marjoram, I used fresh rosemary instead. This was done the day before to let the Turkey soak overnight, and the whole concoction looked something like this:

The hardest past was probably washing the bird after the brine, because you really do want to do it thoroughly, but it is a large, slippery, unwieldy thing.

As to the actual bird, I decided to improvise on the Porcini Mushroom Turkey with mushroom gravy recipe with fresh baby portobello mushrooms instead of dried porcini.

What that meant was that I boiled approximately 8 ounces of the mushrooms (cleaned and sliced) and using maybe 1/4 of that for the mushroom butter that went under the skin and the rest for the gravy. Thinking back on it, 1 1/2 sticks of butter under and over the turkey’s skin is a bit much, but it made the meat unbelievably juicy.

For the actual bird, my mother had brought homemade chicken stock from her cafe, and I had saved the mushroom broth, so I combined both of those to put in the roasting pan with the bird and the fresh herbs. Luckily there had been a farmer’s market at the Corner Brewery the week before and one of the vendors and been kind enough to give me a ridiculous amount of fresh rosemary, thyme, and sage (alas no parsley or we would have had us a good old Simon and Garfunkel moment) for only five dollars.

There was extra butter, so in addition to putting it under the skin (a very intimate process not for the squeamish) and in the cavity (ditto), I put it over the skin as well instead of the olive oil the original recipe called for.

So as the bird was ‘doing its thing’ roasting in a separate roaster oven we have, I started the prep for the gravy. Again, I substituted fresh portobello’s and used regular onions for shallots. I started the gravy with a blend of the chicken and mushroom stock, and added some pan drippings later once the bird was out and tenting. The sauce was way too much for the 5 of us, however I refrigerated one part, and froze a good 2 cups of it for future use. The part initially saved was used with the last of the turkey breast, sauteed mushrooms, and extra fresh herbs to create a sort of post-Thanksgiving Fettucini Alfredo. I don’t usually much care for cream sauces, but given this had more broth and white wine in it then actual cream, it was surprisingly light and yet still onctueux.

I was told by no less than my father, one of the kindest people I know but with a highly sophisticated palate, that it was the best turkey he had ever eaten, and my mother, who has even more discerning taste buds, seconded this. It was pretty damn good, and though time consuming, surprisingly easy to make. In the future, I would roast it in a conventional oven as I think it lets the skin brown more and maybe try it with a mix of mushrooms to add even more woodsiness and richness to the flavor.

Also on the dinner menu was the wild-rice and chestnut stuffing my mother makes’ every year (unbelievably good, also time consuming but fairly straightforward). I had my dad send me the recipe the first year I cooked Thanksgiving dinner by myself, but have been unable to locate the .pdf file or the recipe online. As suggested by the title, the stuffing involves loads of wild rice and roasted chestnuts, is cooked with chicken broth and celery, flavored with fresh thyme and the rest I will leave to your imaginations. Because the bird was brined we did not stuff it, but baked the cooked stuffing.

Other sides were roasted Brussels sprouts (the only way I eat them), mashed yams, and a lovely cranberry-orange sauce whose recipe was from a girl who works at my mom’s. I’m not a huge fan of cranberry sauce, usually finding them far too sweet, but this one had no added sugar and fresh orange rind, so it had a lovely citrusy, aromatic bitterness.

For desert I made a maple-pumpkin pie, with the best crust recipe I’ve ever found, all from November’s edition of Real Simple.

I made the crust the day before and was really hesitant about rolling out. All previous crusts I’ve used have been with the “pat-in” method, and I’m really no baker. However with my mother’s help, we rolled it out evenly and it turned out flaky, not too sweet, and buttery. I think I’m going to use the recipe next time I make my caramelized onion quiche.

So as I get ready to go back to Berlin (where ironically, I cooked my first Thanksgiving dinner by myself) my brother and I are planning to have a late Thanksgiving dinner for him and some of our friends. It will also be a Festivus celebration (dorks that we are). I suspect we will substitute 2 roast chickens for the turkey as it is hard to find a reasonable sized one, and I will bring canned pumpkin, ready roasted chestnuts, maple syrup and other ingredients from the States. I also suspect we won’t make all the trimmings, but definitely the stuffing and one other veg. Either way, it should be a good time and a fantastic trip.

Food for Thought

I do not usually proselytize, but the article by Nicholas Kristof, "Cancer from the Kitchen" in last week's Times and this Yahoo features piece on toxins in food really got me thinking about focusing on all things organic and local to the extent possible.

Not easy or cheap to do, but perhaps necessary not only for environmental sustainability but also to preserve one's own health. At my mother's restaurant she tries to buy as much as possible from our local farmers' market and butchers. In a country where we are used to eating whatever produce we want, whenever we want it (strawberries in winter, sure! apples and oranges all year round, of course!) it is challenging to get accustomed to the idea that food in season might provide more limited options, but much better tasting ones.

For you local folk, Concrete Media had a great guide on how to be a locavore, a term I find a bit affected but a damn good concept not only for health and environmental reasons, but also to support our faltering economy. Plus the idea of having milk delivered in glass bottles is just so charmingly old-fashioned. . .

Some images from Ann Arbor's lovely farmers' market, Wednesdays and Saturdays :

Housewives, continued and Fall Tulips

I just realized that I wanted to include one tip that I discovered this weekend, thanks to my mother. We had bought tulips (first of the year and my favorite flower for any of you who might care to know...) the day before Thanksgiving and I was worried that they were looking as though they might not last one, much less a few days days.

Well, they are still going strong, as are the Irises I bought yesterday from good old Trader Joe’s. The secret is to put lots and lots of fresh cranberries in the vase along with the water. It not only looks very festive, but the flowers last. I suspect it has something to do with the sugar in the fruit feeding the cut flowers allowing them to last longer.

I also suspect that my inner 1950s housewife is not so inner. Though I would prefer to have more of an inner Julia Child, or, younger, hipper, less felony-convicted Martha Stewart.

Enfin, voila what it all looks like:

I on the other hand am going to go and listen to "Mother's Little Helper" by the Stones to excorcise some of these cheesy ghosts haunting my psyche.

Thanksgiving, dinner parties and the return of my inner 1950s housewife

The past week has been wonderfully busy. Every day involved cooking in some capacity, and Thanksgiving was an exceptionally fun dinner where the Turkey turned out moist (secret to come in a later post), the libations flowed (due in no small part, ahem, to my generous shopping and servings), and everyone in my small family relaxed around the table. Every family has its tensions, weak spots that tend to give way when we all get together but given that this is the only holiday I'll spend at home this year, I'm so glad we were all able to relax into the meal, enjoying each other’s company without the baggage of having to pretend to.

The week also brought out my inner 1950s housewife - while she doesn’t come out very often, she is there, and likes to cook. And bake. A lot. So while there is a lot to share, for the moment, we are both just still exhausted especially given that I had two deadlines for Tuesday and have been surviving on coffee and minimal sleep.

However, I read this lovely article in the Times about neighbors and cooking, and thought I would share this. Sadly in our current community our neighbors, while lovely, all do tend to keep to themselves. So while we all use our back decks for grilling, we very rarely tend to do it together, much less organize elaborate ‘cook-offs.’ Perhaps it is for the best, though given the diversity of our court (Chinese, Bangladeshi, Danish, Latvian, and of course Turkish that I know of) I could imagine it would make for a very enlightening culinary evening. Perhaps something to mull over. In the mean time, here is the article:

“Neighborly Stuffed Cabbage” to be published in the print edition of the paper on December 3.

A la prochaine!

Lazy lunches, lazy bloggers

Well, I will admit that as bloggers go, I have hardly been ideal.

My plan of using this blog as a release, a means to muse about those things that I deeply care about, namely eating and recalling experiences that revolve around the table, got set aside as life became complicated and less then ideal during the past few months. While stress used to always increase my appetite, since my 2os I've found that it leads to the exact opposite: no desire to eat or willingness to cook, and worst of all a diminished sense of taste. But things are on the upswing, and I plan on eating, cooking and writing more regularly.

Today was one of those days where I promised myself that if I finished certain dreaded tasks, I would prepare a nice lunch and take the time to write. As I've successfully been fighting a cold (which dare not become swine flu) I also figured the healthier, the better. Breakfast had already consisted of some raspberries, a handful of walnuts and a banana, after the requisite coffee in bed and mellow Lou Reed to ease into the day. Having worked a few solid hours, I peeked in the fridge and came up with the following. It involved minimum time and effort, but was rather tasty.

My lunch consisted of a mixed green salad with a cilantro/lime/garlic dressing made a few days before, half an avocado with just squeeze of lime juice and salt, a mini faux-salad caprese with some fresh mozzarella, sliced tomato, and healthy swig of extra virgin olive oil, and a small portion of roasted portobello mushrooms with balsamic vinegar. All accompanied by a small glass of a Oregon pinot noir.

Having just written all of that, it does sound like quite a bit, but in fact, it looked like this:

It was also quite light and very easy to make. Most of the lunch considered of cutting and assemblage, but the two recipes I wanted to share were for the dressing and the mushrooms.

Cilantro/Lime/Garlic dressing:

finely mince a small bunch of fresh, preferably organic, cilantro

finely mince a clove of garlic

add the juice of one lime and a roughly equal amount of olive oil to the mixture

add salt and crushed red pepper to taste

whisk or emulsify, taste and add up a teaspoon of sugar if the lime is too tart.

I ended up emulsifying the mixture in a blender, but I imagine that whisking could work just as well. In that case the cilantro and garlic would really have to be very finely chopped.

The dressing was great on a salad, kept well in the fridge, and would also work as a marinade for fish or chicken.

Easy roasted mushrooms with balsamic vinegar:

clean several baby portobello mushrooms

place with the body down on an aluminum covered tray and put in a pre-heated oven at 450F.

allow mushrooms to roast for about 15-20 minutes.

remove the mushrooms and put into a bowl, taking care to preserve the juices from the mushrooms on the tray.

let cool a little bit and then slice the mushrooms in half, add a splash of balsamic vinegar and salt to taste.

Ideally, I wanted to use pomegranate molasses instead of the vinegar, a dish I had eaten at a Persian restaurant in Chicago and dreamed of replicating. Alas we were all out, but la prochaine fois. . .

Merguez Adventures and DC foodie life

Being back in Washington has been surprisingly wonderful, both in terms of enjoying the city and my friends and colleagues who live here. Today was my first day back at work, and I got the surprising (and fantastic) news that I'll be probably posted in Istanbul. Very unexpected, but also exciting.

That being said, DC has offered much, especially food wise. 

First, I found the best Merguez I've had in my life at the tiny Wednesday farmer's market in the Georgetown Rose Garden. For those of you who don't know, Merguez is a lamb sausage from North Africa, well spiced but not necessarily spicy hot. I ate it often in Belgium, but this one was really the best in terms of being spiced properly, not too fatty, and just delicious. It is made by this lovely, half-Turkish couple who own Whitmore Farm in Emmitsburg, Maryland. I just went on their website and it seems like they do some amazing work with animals including the Tennessee Fainting Goat and Silver Fox Rabbits - once I can find a willing driver, I would love to visit the farm, it looks like a lot of fun.

The first cooking was straightforward, pictured below - grilled on a heavy bottom skillet, served with salad and bread, fantastically simple and delicious. 

The second was a dish I improvised this weekend for a friend, which was basically orecchiette with roasted vegetables, mushrooms and merguez. 

I had baby yellow squash / zucchini from the farmers market which I sliced match-stick style, and slow roasted with rosemary and olive oil for approximately 2 hours. 

While the veggies were roasting, I sauteed some baby portabella mushrooms and fresh garlic and stalks in olive oil with fresh rosemary, thyme and basil in a pan until they were just cooked through, and added some added some sliced merguez. At the same time, I cooked some pasta al dente (orecchiette) and added some of the cooking liquid  from the pasta to the sausage/mushroom sauce to make it more viscous. 

I then gently mixed in the zucchini with the sausage mixture, drained the cooked pasta, mixed it all in adding salt and pepper to taste, letting it rest for a few minutes and before serving. 

While I have no photographic evidence to back up the final product, it was very simple to make, reasonably healthy, and, I think, pretty tasty. It paired very well with a New Zealand Pinot Noir, as well as the three other bottles we decided to polish off with it - Napa Chardonnay, a 2003 Spanish Grenache and a sparkling Chardonnay from Argentina. 

Quite a lovely, if not tad lushy, dinner. 

Chickpea stew improvs

Having bought far too many greens (swiss chard and baby beet greens) at the market on Sunday, I decided something had to be done before they started wilting and that that something had to involve chickpeas (garbanzo beans). 

For some reason, I've been mulling over this amazing chickpea stew I had in Assisi, a town in Perugia, Italy, famous for St. Francis. This dish made me redefine how I saw chickpeas and value them beyond "healthy thing" or "thing to be pureed into hummus." It was a simple dish with chickpeas, tomatoes, olive oil, and fresh rosemary sprigs, all baked in individual clay pots to the point where the chickpeas reached a consistency of tender veal and blended with all of the simple but strong flavors in one happy, clean tasting food melange.

My own dish was a less simple and highly improvised. 

Chickpea stew with baby beet greens and swiss chard

Sautee fresh garlic greens in a little bit of olive oil in a non-stick pan or heavy bottomed skillet. Add an entire washed, spun and chopped bunch of baby beet greens including stalks into the pan and cook until greens are wilted and stalks translucent. Add an entire washed, spun and chopped bunch of swiss chard into the mixture in batches until all the greens are just cooked through. Place cooked greens in a separate bowl and put pan back on the stove top. 

If needed, add another swig of olive oil and sautee diced sweet baby peppers (approximately 3-4) and 2 large chopped ripe tomatoes. While the mixture is cooking, empty a can of chickpeas into a colander and wash several times. Add the chickpeas into pan and let simmer on the stovetop for at least 10 - 15 minutes. 

Place the cooked greens mixture and the chickpeas in an ovenproof casserole with cover. Add sliced fresh basil and fresh thyme, salt and red pepper to taste, and another dash of olive oil. Stir gently, cover, and place casserole in a pre-heated oven at 350 degrees. Let the stew cook at least 30 minutes, remove from heat, adjust seasoning to taste and serve. 

The final product: 

I found the dish went wonderfully with this German Pinot Noir (who knew the Germans made good pinot?) and ate it on its own with blackberries and a wedge of stilton for dessert. 

Happy cooking. 

E.