Huddled Masses

I forgot who, though it was probably Michael Pollen, said we should go for foods our ancestors ate when they were dirt poor and struggling. They got the most vitamins and nutrients out of the least dollar amount spent on food possible, and it was likely to be real food because food science wasn't as pseudo-omniscient as it is now.

My ancestors? Cabbage. Lots of cabbage. My grandfather would go out during the winter in Poland, chip the ice off the top of the barrel of sauerkraut that was sitting outside, and scoop some out for dinner every night. When you think about it, cabbage has a good amount of fiber, and according to Wikipedia, it has a bunch of other good things in it, too. You know that bitter taste cabbage has? Like broccoli, radishes, kale, mustard, Brussels sprouts, etc.? It's from glucosinolates. Interestingly enough, this compound, when ingested in huge amounts can interfere with iodine uptake in the thyroid, thus leading to goiter. HOWEVER, in smaller amounts, they offer some protection against cancer. Here's the article. Very interesting, not least of all because of the way you're supposed to get a nice sized dose to get the benefits, but eating too much of it all the time can be toxic. Speaks volumes about that whole "balanced diet" thing, no?

Instead of making a barrel of saurkraut which wouldn't last in Maryland, anyway, I opted for sweet and sour cabbage with red cabbage. Red cabbage, along with being tasty and pretty, can be used as a pH indicator. It'll retain its red color in acids, and it'll turn blue in bases. (Acid = vinegar, lemon juice; base = soap, bleach. Not many foods are basic. Milk might be ever-so-slightly basic, but I'm not sure.) Anyway, get a head of red cabbage. Cut it into quarters, cut out the "core" (really just a bit of stem at the bottom), and cut it into pieces that fit through the slice tube on a food processor. Slice it. You can put it through the shredder, but cabbage will fall apart on its own if you just put it through the slicer. Chop up one onion and one apple. Get the apple and onion sauteeing until golden brown. Then dump in the cabbage, 1/2 c cider vinegar (I'm a huge fan of Trader Joe's unfiltered variety, but whatever you've got is going to work), 1/2 c sugar, and 1/2 tsp celery seed. Stir it up. I didn't have celery seed, so I threw in a bit of fennel and caraway seeds, and while those don't taste anything like celery seed, the dish tastes good anyway. So you cook the whole thing down stirring periodically until the liquid is almost gone. Salt and pepper to taste, and there's your sweet and sour cabbage.

The other thing I made was lentil burgers. Cook a package of lentils according to directions. This means boil them in salted water until they're soft. (But first give them a rinse and go through them a bit, because every so often you'll find a stone and no one wants to break their teeth.) When they're done boiling, drain them. In a pan, sautee one chopped onion, one chopped carrot, and a couple ribs of celery. When they're almost done (soft, brown), throw in some minced garlic. The garlic will only need a little while to get soft. I put my lentils in a gallon ziplock, added my sauteed veg, and tossed it to mix. That's the base. From there, the world is your burrito. The basics = lentil + veg + egg+ breadcrumbs. From this, you can make anything you want.

I had some leftover chipotle tomato sauce (sautee 2-3 cloves chopped garlic till they start to go brown, dump in one large can of whole tomatoes, juice and all, break up tomatoes as they simmer - a splatter guard is really super useful here - and continue to cook - be careful of burning - until nearly all the liquid is evaporated. Carefully dump tomatoes and garlic into food processor, add ~2 chipotles en adobo from the can depending upon your heat preference, cover, and carefully food process. This sauce is awesome on lamb, burgers, crackers, chicken, eggs, bread, cheese, and spoons. As in licked off them.). ANYWAY. We had some leftover. So, I took a bunch of the lentil mix, put it in a bowl, cracked an egg in, dumped some breadcrumbs in and a bit of the sauce, added a dusting of ground sage and thyme, salted to taste, and mushed everything into a burger-shaping consistancy.

*The egg is binder, and the breadcrums absorb some moisture, so those are the structural elements of the burgers.* Therefore, if your mush is falling apart in chunks, you need more moisture either from sauce or egg, and if it's too gloppy and molten, add more breadcrumbs. It may take a little practice, but don't get discouraged. They're typically softer than their meat counterparts, so don't shoot for hamburger consitancy. That's just not the nature of the beast.

So heat some oil in a pan, and fry away! They tasted really good with the sweet and sour cabbage. Very filling, too. Lentils are small, but woah nelly, they will fill you up. I could see those burgers also tasting good on a bun with more of the tomato chipotle sauce and some fresh tomato slices, onion, and some avocado, radish slices, and cucumber, and maybe some feta or queso fresco.

And you could add some cumin to the lentil mush.

Or you could add some fresh cilantro and parsley, some cumin and coriander for a riff on felafel.

Or some curry powder, fresh grated ginger, and cilantro.

...Seriously, maybe I should write a book and call it something like '101 Ways to Cook the Lentil.'

But then, I'm not sure I'd make it to 101. Maybe I should shoot for something more obtainable, like 19.

Chickpeas.

I love chickpeas.  Primarily, I love them in hummus.  You have no idea how happy it made me when the 1 or 2-year old (truth is I have no idea how old she is) daughter of some friends of mine from Taiwan was licking hummus off of bread at a party Danny and I had.  And she had to be forced to eat the bread.  Clearly, a woman after my own heart.   See, I view starches - bread, pasta, rice - as simply vehicles on which one can eat more sauce, veggies, or meat in polite company.  This attitude usually leaves Danny appalled, but what can I say?  Since I was a little kid, eating starches was a way to get my parents to give me more of what I really wanted.  

Except mashed potatoes.  I love mashed potatoes.  I especially love mashed potatoes prepared the Eastern European Jewish way, with rendered chicken fat and the crispy chicken rinds (called gribenes).  First you render the fat out of the skin by putting chicken skins in a pot with a splash of water to keep them from sticking, and you slowly cook them down over very low heat.  You're left with fat and the gribenes.  So, you take the chicken fat, and you use it to sautee onions and garlic really slowly until they're caramelized and beautiful.  Then you dump this into your mashed potatoes with salt and pepper.  Because Jews who keep kosher don't mix milk and meat, you use the chicken fat to achieve the desired mashed potato consistency.  It's funny how the French capitalized on the usage of duck fat and that's all haute cuisine, but this is dirty peasant food.  Really, it's all the same.  I think my ancestors managed to not die immediately of heart conditions because this was all they had.  A lot of Jewish soul food that comes out of Eastern Europe is heavier than a cartoon anvil, but that's to do with the climate and level of poverty/starvation.  Ever hear of kishke?  Yeah, didn't think so.  It's cow intestine stuffed with flour, spices, and lots of grease, although now I believe they go for collagen casings.  We never had it growing up, but I hear it's quite tasty.  :)

But chickpeas.  I titled this post "chickpeas," not "mashed potatoes with chicken fat."  I love them out of a can, drained, with a squeeze of lemon, salt, and pepper on them.  They're a tasty addition to salads (regular, 3-bean, anything marinated), too.  And soups.  Tonight I was feeling particularly lazy, so I stopped in at Trader Joe's to get some milk, bread, etc. but opted for some take-out Indian food for dinner at the joint below TJ's, Saveur India.  I got channa massala and a roti.  I asked them to make my channa hot, and I was expecting to get hit in the face (and stomach... and intestine... and... well, yeah) but it was not as hot as I expected.  It was pleasantly painful and masterfully spiced.  The chickpeas were creamy and melted in my mouth, and the roti was partly crisp from the oven but still chewy and nutty from the whole wheat.  It was such a nice surprise to find very well-thought out Indian food not lacking in flavor in this neck of the woods.  I wasn't planning on eating it all, but I had to.  I couldn't NOT eat it.  It was too spicy and tangy and awesome.  So I ate it all.  Now that I'm done, I'm sad there isn't any more of it, but maybe that's a good thing...

...How is it that all Indian people aren't ridiculously fat?  

Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes

I have one third of the last giant Brandywine tomato from the massive quantity of various tomato varieties I took home the last time I visited my parents.  It's sitting in the fridge wrapped in plastic.  I plan on devouring it tomorrow morning for breakfast on a slice of whole wheat rye toast with some swiss cheese and a glass of milk.  

Along with the Brandywines, my mom grew smallish red tomatoes with tiger orangey stripes, yellow plum tomatoes, ghostly white orbs, sweet 1 million cherry tomatoes, and some minute yellow cherry tomato variety I'd never seen.  Naturally, my dad and bro were reaching their fresh tomato limit, so as a year-round supermarket tomato hostage, I was thrilled to relieve them of some of their tomato-eating duties.  There's nothing like real veggies.

Here's the deal.  People don't eat veggies because they taste like crap most of the time.  Varieties that make it to the supermarkets are bred for size, packability, and duration of perceived freshness.  Flavor doesn't factor into it.  Everyone's so removed from the land these days, they don't know what produce should taste like anymore, so they go to the stores every week, pick out firm tomatoes, and feed them to their families.  Firm tomatoes?  Real ones are soft, with juices ready to burst out and spray the guy or gal next to you should you bite into one. 

Can you imagine throwing a supermarket tomato from now at a bad act back in the day?  You'd kill him!  Think of how dated those caricatures of tomatoes going 'splat' are.  It's so sad and pathetic.  According Michael Pollan (who is the modern god of food policy as far as I'm concerned), one of the reasons produce prices are so high is because the government subsidizes corn farming.  If the government took away the corn subsidies, the farmers would immediately be up to their ears in debt, and because of the demand, HAVE to grow real fruit and veggies.  So I say down with the government subsidies.  

Why?

Because I want delicious, sweet, tangy, juicy tomatoes with intensely tomatoey skin that goes pop when I bite into them.  And I want broccoli with biceps, gustatorially speaking.  And cucumbers that taste like cucumbers!  Why are we so obsessed with making corn chips taste like fucking fake cheese or BBQ sauce and so detached from what the real deal tastes like?  

Hell, I'm not even going the nutrition route.  I'm going full out pure hedonism here.  What the hell, people.

Dessert-ed.

Here are two of my favorite things for dessert.  Actually, I have a lot of favorite things for dessert.  These just happen to be 2 of them.  :)  Banana bread and these cookies called melting moments.  Both recipes come out of this cookbook that is so retro it's post-modern.  No, really.  It is called The Pleasures of Your Food Processor, by Norene Gilletz.  It is the anti-food-porn cookbook.  It's food porn literotica, I suppose.  It is brown and yellow, and I don't just mean the stains on the pages.  The book is in a binder form and my mom's had it forever.  I used to resent this particular version of banana bread when I was a kid when all the other kids had their beautiful white slices of cake from cake mixes.  I had my funky brown 'nanner bread to go with my gazillion pounds of fruit and stanky hummus and baba ganoush ethnic sandwiches, and boy, did my life suck at lunch time.  

But now, in my advanced age, I realize that this banana bread is in fact a gem in its moist brown caramelized gorgeous state.  It is particularly delicious when a slice is soaked in a bit of rum with vanilla ice cream on top.  ...Because we all have to go to heaven sometimes, here's the recipe:

3 med very ripe bananas (blacker the better)

1 c sugar

3 tsp baking soda

dash salt

2 eggs

1/4 c oil

1 1/2 c flour

1/2 c butter milk/sour milk. (aka, 1 tsp lemon juice and milk to equal 1/2 c)

- Dump 'nanners in food processor and puree, followed by sugar, soda, and salt; process for 30 more seconds.  

- Add eggs and oil, process till blended, ~10 sec.

- Pour flour over, add buttermilk, and blend 8-10 sec until smooth.

Line a loaf pan (9x5) with buttered parchment paper (I used a buttered and floured tin; it works perfectly).  Dump in batter, and bake at 275 F for 2 1/2 hours.

Yeah, I know.  2.5 hours.  It's a lot, but baby, it is SO WORTH IT.  Also, I like adding a lot of walnuts.  They get brown too in there.  This is what all banana bread recipes should aspire to.  And it freezes well.

Ok, so this other recipe is good for when you have to bring something to a party.  It isn't super high-yield, so I'd go for 2 batches if you have to bring it somewhere where there are more than 12 attendees.  These cookies are called melting moments (from the same cookbook as above), and they're nothing but butter (or margerine) and flour and sugar, just you don't have to monkey around with a stupid cookie press.  With the use of margerine, they effortlessly translate into a vegan dessert.  If you don't tell anyone but the resident vegan(s), no one else will know.  

3/4 c butter or margerine in chunks

1/3 c brown sugar, packed

1 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 c flour

1 c pecans/walnuts/I tried almonds, and they're good too.

powdered (icing) sugar

- process butter with brown sugar and vanilla until well-creamed.  Add flour and nuts, processing until just mixed with several on/off pulses.  Form into small balls with your hands, ~1 inch in diameter, and bake on an ungreased cookie sheet at 350 F for 20 minutes.  Let cool completely, and dust with powdered sugar before serving.  

You can add chocolate chips with or instead of the nuts, but I'd stick to 1 c of add-ins total.  These puppies disappear in no time, hence the name.  They're not too sweet, and they have a sandy, crumbly texture.  My mom used to make them all the time, and the smell of them baking always makes me think of holidays and family gatherings.  Be careful, though.  Ration them carefully.  Because you'll keep going back for one more and they're small, so the "just one more" is far, far too easily justified.  They freeze really well, so you can ration them out and put the rest away... out of sight, out of mind, no?  :)

Anyway, I never post dessert things.  Life is too short to miss dessert.

Curried Chicken

This recipe for curried chicken allegedly came out of the Bombay Jews.  I'm nicking it from this cookbook my dad has.  Stay with me here because there are a lot of ingredients.  I know, not easy, but SO worth the effort.  It's not hard - it's essentially a stew after all - but it's not salad.  

- oil to sautee 

- 2 med. chopped onions

- 1 lb chopped tomatoes (fresh or canned, should be ~ 3 cups; I've used pureed tomatoes from a can and everyone loves it)

- 1 tblsp basic green masala (I'll post this below)

- 1 tsp garam masala

- 1 tsp dry masala for meat (posted below)

- 1/2 tsp fresh ginger, minced

- 1/2 tsp turmeric

- salt to taste

- 3 1/2 lbs chicken, skinned with excess fat trimmed off (I like thighs and drumsticks on the bone, but you can use whatever you want)

- 1/2 c water

- 2 medium potatoes, cubed.

- Stirfry onions in oil until brown but not burned.  Add tomatoes and stir briskly for 2 min, cover and cook for 10 minutes.

- Add all three masalas and spices (ginger and turmeric and salt), stirring for 5 minutes.

- Add in chicken and water, cover and cook ~45 minutes until chicken is done.  If water evaporates too fast, add more.  

- Add potatoes, simmer until they're tender, ~15 minutes.

About the spices... buy garam masala at your local Indian grocery.  

Dry Masala for Meat:

1 tblsp hot chili flakes

1 tblsp ground coriander

1/4 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp ground anise seed

1/4 tsp ground ginger

1/4 tsp ground turmeric

Mix and store.  This will obv. last a while...

Green Masala

4 oz fresh cilantro leaves

1 head of garlic, ~8 cloves

4-6 oz semihot green chili

1/2 tsp salt

Blenderize and put in the fridge.  You don't have to make the above for one batch of curried chicken.  Just chop a tbsp worth of cilantro and garlic.  Then throw in as much chili as you want. 

I know the recipe seems like a big deal, but dude.  It is so tasty.  I think of it in three stages, the sautee, the spices, and the simmering.  The onions and tomato are the sautee, all the spices are next, and then the chicken goes in (followed by the potatoes) which is the simmer.  Serve it over rice, basmati if you have it.  You can leave out the meat for a vegetarian crowd and use several cans of beans instead.  I've never tried it with tofu or tempeh, but I doubt that'll be bad.  If you want to control the heat, leave out the chili flakes in the masala for meat.  (NB: Masalas are just spice blends.)  You can also ratchet up the heat by tossing in more chili.  Even sans capsaicin, it's very flavorful.  I made it with just the slightest hint of heat, and it was good for everyone, with minced fresh cayenne peppers on the side (from my mom's garden, of course!).  

This is one of my favorite things to eat.  Try it.  :)

The Night of Glop

Tonight, we shall be feasting upon glop! Yes, after the fried chicken and booze festival, everything is back to normal. There's a thing of hummus with the appropriate hot stuff to put on top, eggplant mush, and guacamole. And some sauteed beet greens in garlic. The beet greens were FREE. So that means they taste even better than normal because I'm a graduate student, and I take the garbage from the farmers because it's FREE. FREE BEET GREENS FOR ALL. Oh yes. They're normally quite tasty, but nothing goes better with garlic and olive oil than FREE.

But for all the glop (hummus, eggplant, guacamole), I need some pita (because pita, tortillas; corn, wheat; what's the difference, really?). I also need to make some lima and dill rice (it's a Persian thing) because we got fresh giant lima beans at the farmers' market the other day. And I have some zucchinis, which will be turned into zucchini, onion, and tomato glop.

And I think I'm going to roast the cauliflower that's been languishing in the veggie drawer of the fridge. No idea what to put on it. Maybe I'll blenderize a sauce out of mustard, capers, and vinegar to drizzle over the finished product... hm. I like that. But first I'm going to the gym.

You know, I've always been afraid I'd be that moron who trips and shoots off the back of a treadmill... so far it hasn't happened. I'll surely write about it if it does.

Frittata

This is what I had for dinner last night and for lunch today. It's miiiighty tasty, and it fed 2 people supplemented by 2 small corn tortillas with cheese and roasted poblanos each.

- 6 eggs.
- 1 large tomato, chopped.
- a loose handful of basil leaves, chopped, chiffinaded, ribboned, whatever you feel like.
- 2 small cloves of garlic, minced.
- 1 jalapeno, chopped with seeds and ribs discarded.
- 1 can chickpeas, rinsed and drained.
- a small pinch of ground cumin, black pepper, and salt.

Crack the eggs and beat them in a bowl, adding in the basil. Take your chopped tomato and throw it in a hot pan with a bit of olive oil. Let it cook, stirring so nothing gets burned, until it's soft. Add in the jalapenos and garlic, continuing to sautee. Then add the chickpeas, letting them heat up a bit. Throw in the cumin and cracked pepper, mixing occasionally. Then pour the egg in, turn the heat down (because you want the egg to cook all the way through without scorching the bottom), and cover it. Let it cook until the egg is just set. Slide out of the pan, slice into wedges, and enjoy! :)

I didn't add milk to the egg because the tomato had enough moisture. And obviously everything is a million percent riff-able...