I would be remiss not to remind you all that signups for the Commie Pinko Writing Contest are still open.  We’re about halfway full on fiction, so if you’re thinking about being a fictionaut with us, now’s the time to get in while the getting’s good.  There are scads of nonfic spaces still open, as well, so perhaps you’ll be brave and join us for that.

Yesterday we went to the Mayor’s Christmas Parade, which winds right through my neighborhood, Hampden.  I failed, stupidly, to take my own camera, but my Belovedary managed to snap a few pictures at my request, and I share some of them with you here.

First, the float that made me gasp open-mouthed:

Why yes, that is indeed a giant wooden cross on top of which the holy family is perched, with angels above them waving to the crowd.  Had I been in charge of giving these things names, I would’ve called it “Manger Danger,” because that thing has a serious slope on it and had the blessed infant — who was made of plastic in this instance, mind — taken a tumble, the Lamb of God would’ve been gyros meat in a nanosecond under the tires of whatever lurks beneath that old rugged crossy shell.  I must not have been the only one who half hoped for some excitement of that sort, but none transpired.

Best of all this float had brass-looking placards on both ends, like bumper stickers.  The one on the back said “Jesus is coming, be prepared!” and I was not the only one who mentioned wanting to alter it to end with “…look busy!”

The divine lovelies at Ma Petite Shoe pulled out all the stops per usual, and their Mrs. Claus was sort of a Marie Antoinette Claus, with a giant headpiece wig that incorporated a fully functional fishbowl-sized snow globe.

Among the other highlights, of which I have no particularly good pictures, were the well-costumed members of the Maryland chapter of the 501st Legion — Star Wars cosplayers, with an imposing Darth Vader in a Santa hat — and some delightful New Orleans-style mummers, whose presence in a Christmas parade somehow worked better than it should’ve.

There were also furries.  Including a blue plush-suited dragon with bondage straps on his tail, which we all thought slightly the wrong kind of festive, somehow.  I’m not sure how it works that furries end up in the Christmas parade, but welcome to Baltimore, how’d you like the show?

Later on that evening there was a nice pot of chicken and dumplings, thanks to my having scored a couple of fantastic, flavorful, lives-well-lived stewing hens at the farmer’s market.  You can take the girl out of the Midwest, as I am occasionally wont to note, but you cannot take the Midwest out of the girl.

And no, before you ask, there is not a recipe.  It’s chicken and dumplings.  You just put things in until it looks right.  Including lots of onion and parsnip, because chicken and dumplings tastes best with plenty of onion and parsnip.

                          

There’s been a fair amount written about “American Chinese food,” which as some of you probably know is its own culinary vernacular with its own history and traditions — see also Jennifer 8. Lee’s book The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, among other sources, or the neat little piece in the first issue of Lucky Peach about yatka mein — that centers around how Chinese food adapted to America and Americans adapted to Chinese food.  I don’t have or pretend to any kind of encylopedic knowledge on the subject, though I find it fascinating.

Partly it interests me because it’s relevant to the way I cook.  I cook a lot of Chinese and Chinese-influenced food.  In terms of ingredients, I cook what I can get that’s good and fresh that I enjoy.  And, especially in summer, a lot of what meets those criteria is what grows here and what is native to the landmass that I live on.  Squash.  Beans.  Sweet corn.  Tomatoes.

Which is, in essence, also what a lot of Chinese cooks did when they came to America, and what a lot of Chinese cooks do today when originally American ingredients show up in Chinese markets.  I have never encountered a vegetable that a Chinese cook couldn’t and didn’t happily make use of.  Just because things like tomatoes and sweet corn aren’t native to China doesn’t mean they haven’t become part of the Chinese food culture.  They have, with a vengeance.

One of my favorite Chinese recipes for high summer includes both corn and tomatoes, as it happens.

I first discovered the Cantonese penchant for combining corn and tomato in the form of corn soup with tomato, which is usually made with chicken broth for its base, and seasoned with ginger and a little garlic and some sesame oil and maybe some cilantro.  Sometimes it has minced velveted chicken in it, sometimes egg beaten and swirled into the boiling broth to make “egg flowers” or “egg clouds,” sometimes a little soft tofu cubed and dropped in just long enough to heat all the way through.  You can also make it with a broth made from boiling corn cobs after you’ve sliced off the kernels, which is actually quite nice, sweet and comforting.  Or you can make the corn cob broth, then simmer chicken or pork or dried mushrooms in it.  Or more than one of those things, which takes things from merely nice to quite decadent.

This was very very good.  Then, later, I encountered stir-fried corn and tomatoes, I think in a recipe by Mary Tsui Ping Yee if I’m not mistaken, and I think my heart skipped a beat.  You need roughly equal quantities by volume of sweet corn cut off the cob and tomatoes, chunked into largish but still bite-sized pieces.  Don’t waste your heirloom tomatoes on this unless you are growing them yourself and have a surplus.  You want a reasonably firm tomato for this.  Field tomatoes are fine.  Plum tomatoes are good too.  So long as the tomato has good flavor and a good amount of acid, it will be just fine.  (Don’t use yellow tomatoes.  They are like a certain flavor of Regency heroine, pretty and highly-bred and anemic.)

You’ll want a fairly goodly amount of green onion, diced, about half again as much by volume as either of the other vegetables.  You need a little cooking oil, like peanut or canola.  You need a little brown bean sauce, which is a concentrated semi-fermented salty paste you can get at Chinese markets.  A blob about the size of an egg yolk seems to work out OK most of the time for me. (Or you could use some dark miso, which would be different but still good.)  A skosh of Asian sesame oil.  And you’ll want to have on hand a few tablespoons of cold water in which a couple teaspoons of cornstarch have been mixed.

It’s a simple simple dish.  Heat the wok, swirl in a little cooking oil, add the corn, stir-fry until it’s starting to brown in places, add the tomatoes, toss in the  brown bean sauce (how much depends on how salty it is, and how big a quantity of veg you are cooking — you can figure it out, it’s not rocket science), stirfry as the tomatoes release some water, and to finish the dish, throw in the green onions, stir, and then add about half of the cornstarch/water and stir it well while letting it heat through to activate the thickening power of the cornstarch.  If this doesn’t thicken the dish adquately — it should end up like a thick gravy — add the rest of the cornstarch/water and stir it well and let it cook for another minute or two.

Serve with rice.

If your bean paste is not super salty, you may want to add a little soy sauce or fish sauce, depending on how you roll.  Black soy is nice because it is slightly sweet, which plays well with the sweet corn and sweet tomato.  Fish sauce is funky and salty and a revelation with tomato in any capacity.  Fish sauce with sweet ingredients is definitely a South Seas sort of move.  It’s delicious either way, in Taishan or Iowa or anywhere you have corn and tomatoes and an appetite.

                          

In Sicily, they haven’t always had much to eat.  But one thing they’ve always had a pretty steady supply of is sardines.  Another is garlic.   A third, mirabile dictu, is pasta.  A fourth is olive oil.  Put these things together, with whatever other interesting things you have lying around the place, and believe it or not, you have the sturdy skeleton of a very fine meal.

Many Americans I know have an essentially religious aversion to sardines.  They don’t like anchovies either, or herring, or mackerel, or other fishy-tasting, fishy-smelling, oily little delicious fish. Occasionally they’ve never even tasted any of them, but they’re sure they don’t like them anyway.

Well, too bad for the ‘fraidy-cats, because not only are all these small fish tremendously good for you (hello, vitamins A and D! nice to see you, omega oils!) but they are tasty and versatile and will make your belly, your pantry, your conscience, and your pocketbook all pretty darn happy.  Your pocketbook will be happy because they are cheap.  Your conscience will appreciate that these are reasonably plentiful fish, and easy to find in sustainably harvested versions.  Your pantry will be happy because sardines (and anchovies, and kippered herring, and many other things of this ilk) are available in high quality tinned versions, you can buy a half dozen tins when you’re feeling flush and then sock them away, just like you do with dried pasta, to use them at your leisure.

Buy sardines packed in oil for this.  (Buy anchovies packed in oil, and in glass, always.  It’s like a whole different fish from the tinned kind.)  I like the Portuguese Lusa brand sardines, or Vital Choice brand packed in extra virgin olive oil.

The method is pretty simple.  Put some pasta water on to boil.  While you’re waiting, chop some parsley.  How much?  Oh, a couple handfuls.  Maybe you’ll chop up a few ripe olives too, if you have them.

When the water’s ready, you cook yourself some pasta.  What kind?  What kind have you got?  Things like farfalle work well, but so does spaghetti.

While the pasta is cooking, saute up some sliced garlic, probably with a thinly sliced onion or two.  Throw in some shredded fennel if you have some, or shredded chard, or a couplefew handfuls of kale or what you’ve got in the way of greens with personality.  Don’t burn the garlic, capisce?  Just soften everything up, maybe get a little brown on the garlic.   Maybe you add a small glass of white wine, maybe you don’t.  (Depends on what you have, and whether the bottle’s already open.)  If you do, cook most but not all of the liquid off.  When you’re done cooking it, take it off the heat and set it aside.

Drain the oil off of two cans of nice sardines.  Break the sardines up into large chunks with a fork.  Don’t mash them, just chunk ‘em up a little.

When the pasta’s done, drain the pasta, toss with the sauteed garlic and other veg, then add the sardines and the parsley and toss gently.  If you want a real Siciliano feel to this, a handful of raisins (scoff if you like but the Sicilians know a thing or two about raisins that you might wanna learn), a handful or two toasted pine nuts, and a handful or two of coarse bread crumbs browned in olive oil.  Maybe a scattering of fennel seeds.

Or instead you can throw in a handful of capers, and some lemon zest, a little extra-virgin olive oil, and a good squeeze of fresh lemon juice.

Or a bit of Aleppo pepper and some spicy Greek oregano if you want to keep it real simple.

Toss gently.  Serve with a salad or some plain steamed or grilled dark greens.  Partners well also with egg, and asparagus, with ricotta salata, and with cucumber salads. Do not be afraid to drink red wine with this, if the spirit moves you.  Or perhaps a Sicilian insolia for a white (yes, there are white Sicilian wines).

Takes about as long as it does to boil the water and boil the pasta.

No fear.  And no excuses.

                          

Buy your chickpeas (and all your dried beans) from stores that have a sizeable clientele of folks who buy dried beans, so you don’t end up with ancient dust-shrouded tooth-breaky monsters that will never cook up tender no matter what you do.  Stores with big Latin American and Indian sections are good places to look.  Or just go to Latin American or Indian grocery stores.  I recommend Goya and La Fe for Latin American brands, and Swad for Indian.

So what’re you gonna do with your pound of chickpeas?  Seems like a lot of beans, I know.  But bear with me.

Well, first you’ll soak them.  Just dump ‘em in a big bowl and fill the bowl with water and set it somewhere out of the way overnight.  Cover it with a plate if you have cats.  Just trust me on this.

The next day, you’re gonna cook them.  The thing with dried beans is that you have to cook the beans before you cook the dish in which you’re going to use the beans.  Plan to do this at a time when you’re going to be home for most of the day.  For me, because I’m a writer and I work at home, this is pretty much any day.  You may be more limited in your scheduling.  Or, y’know, not, because you can cook chickpeas in a slow cooker too.

To cook the beans, drain off the soaking water and give the chickpeas a quick visual inspection.  Throw away any that look weird or discolored.  Also look out for little rocks, which sometimes make their way into dried beans bags.  Throw those away too.

Put your soaked beans in a big pot, and then add plenty of water.  You want to cover your beans to a depth of about 4 inches.  Put this on the heat and bring it to a simmer, then cover, leaving the cover with just a little vent space to help prevent boilover.  (If you cook in a slow cooker, you will not leave the cover ajar.)  Check them periodically.  Add some boiling water to the pot if the water level in the pot begins to get below the top of the beans. DO NOT ADD SALT or anything else.  Just plain old water.  Simmer the beans for as long as it takes for them to become pleasantly soft when you test one.  You should be able to mash the bean easily with the tines of a fork.  You should not cook the beans so long that they begin to fall apart in the cooking water although some of them may split a little.

When they’re done, drain them.

Then divide them into four parts.  Four small batches of four different things, a quarter pound of chickpeas in each, is enough things to give you some variety and not overwhelm you with the need to eat through a batch of something that will last you 3 weeks.

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Balela

While the chickpeas are still warm, you want to marinate one batch of them in a dressing that will later enable them to become a version of the Mediterranean salad called balela.  Make the dressing by whisking together:

1/3 cup olive oil

1/4 cup fresh lemon juice

2 cloves garlic, minced or crushed to a paste

1 Tablespoon za’atar (you can buy a good za’atar premixed from Penzey’s if you don’t want to make your own)

a three-fingered pinch of coarse salt (use less if you’re using finely ground salt)

a goodly amount of freshly ground black pepper

Pour this over your warm chickpeas and let them sit in it, covered, at room temperature, until you’re ready to make the rest of the salad.  There are no real rules about how this must be done, but it is traditional for balela to include some or all of the following ingredients:

chopped seeded cucumber

chopped parsley (use whatever kind you like best)

chopped fresh mint

chopped seeded ripe tomatoes (oil-packed dried tomatoes can also work)

minced raw onion

chopped seeded bell pepper, red or green

chopped romaine lettuce

You simply take what of these you like, and mix them up with the marinated chickpeas.  You adjust the seasoning to taste — maybe a little more lemon juice, a little more salt and pepper — and you eat.

What you don’t eat will keep several days if you don’t add lettuce (lettuce gets slimy if it sits after it’s dressed).

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Algerian Ginger Chickpeas

With the second quarter of your cooked chickpeas, you maybe want something to eat hot.  Easy-(chick)peasy.

Take your second batch of chickpeas and put them in a saucepan.  Add either a largish can or jar of diced peeled tomatoes, or else take a couple-few nice big fat juicy ripe tomatoes and grate them into the pan using the large holes of a box grater — this will more or less puree the tomatoes, while leaving you with the skin, which you can discard.  (You may never peel a tomato again now that you know this trick.)  Simmer this to thicken it up a little.

Mince a goodly amount of fresh peeled ginger root.  How much?  Well, depends on how much you like ginger, but I usually use a piece about the size of my thumb.  Mince a garlic clove or two as well.  Maybe a small chili pepper if you have one and you like them (or you can use dried chili flakes if you prefer).  Saute all these in a small frying pan in a little bit of olive oil until everything smells fantastic and the garlic has begun to brown but is certainly not charred or burnt.  Stir this into the chickpeas and tomatoes and let it all simmer a little while longer, maybe 10 minutes, then turn off the heat and let it stand for 20 minutes, uncovered.

My favorite way to eat this I learned from chef <a href=”http://www.chefzadi.com/2007/09/basic-chickpea-.html”>Farid Zadi</a>, whose blog introduced me to the idea of these ginger/tomato chickpeas, and that is to put some in a bowl and slide a fried egg on top.  It’s a fantastic breakfast.

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Chickpea Fritters

The third quarter of your cooked chickpeas you’ll make into some nice hearty little fritters.  You can eat these in a sandwich sort of format, like you would falafel, or you can eat them straight on a plate with some salad and maybe some plain yogurt with a little garlic and black pepper stirred in as a sauce.  Or you can dollop harissa on them and eat them that way.  Really up to you.  You can even make these into little “meatballs” if you like.

Mash the chickpeas with a fork until they make a slightly chunky paste.  Stir in a beaten egg if you are not vegan or otherwise disinclined to eggs.  Also mix in a moderate amount of minced raw onion, a minced/crushed garlic clove or two, maybe a little minced parsley if you have some.  Some salt does not go amiss, nor a small glugette (a teaspoon or two) of olive oil.  The texture should be stiff enough to form into patties or small balls.

Troubleshooting: If it is too loose and won’t hold a shape, add a small amount of one of the following: fine breadcrumbs/chickpea flour/wheat flour/cornstarch.  Add a tablespoon or so at a time, mix it in thoroughly, and give it a minute or two to absorb some liquid before adding any more.

You can spice these if the mood strikes you.  For an Indian vibe, garam masala works well here.  If you’d prefer a North African slant, try some ras el hanout (this page has a promising recipe for mixing your own if you want to try, or shop around for a pre-mixed version you like).  Or leave it relatively plain.

Form the mixture into patties or small balls and fry them at a moderate heat in a pan well-coated with olive oil.  You want to fry them until the exterior is golden brown and nicely crisp.  Flip them when it seems like that’d be a good idea.  I expect you could brush them with oil and bake them, too, but I’ve never done that so I don’t know specifics.  You can figure it out, you know how.

Eat these hot or at room temperature.  They’re not so nice cold, but they do reheat pretty well.

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Roasted Chickpeas

Roasted chickpeas are one of the darlings of the foodie blogosphere right now, and have been for a while, so instead of reinventing the wheel here I’ll simply leave you in the capable hands of Mr. Mark Bittman.  Don’t worry about precise quantities, just work with the concept.  Dry your chickpeas well, oil them, roast them, season them, eat them.

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So there you go.  Four reasonably healthy, definitely tasty, things you can make out of a pound of dried chickpeas.  You want bigger batches, cook 2 pounds of chickpeas.  Or only make one or two of these recipes out of your pound of chickpeas.  Up to you.

If you had to, you could use drained and well rinsed canned cooked chickpeas.  But then it wouldn’t cost less than $2 for the chickpeas any more.  Consult with your inner exchequer and your calendar and decide what makes the most sense for you.  I will say that for my money, the chickpeas you cook from dry always taste better and nuttier than the canned ones, which you may want to factor into your decisionmaking as well.

                          

The first secret of having lots of houseguests is: stock up on household linens.  You will require more bath towels, hand towels, washcloths, tablecloths, table napkins, and kitchen towels than you ever dreamed possible.

The second secret of having lots of houseguests is: learn an array of simple but flavorful unfussy foods that appeal to a wide range of palates and do not have any particularly challenging ingredients in terms of the most common allergens.

One of the dishes I whip out frequently for guests is blanched chilled vegetables of some sort or other with a Chinese-inspired, and rich yet mild, slightly sweet nut sauce.  It plays well to children as well as adults.  Typically I use almond butter as the base for the sauce, but any nut butter will work as long as it is unsweetened and of high quality.  If allergies to tree nuts are at issue, you can use tahini.  To make somewhere between two and three cups of sauce, I combine in a bowl

• about a cup of nut butter
• several cloves crushed raw fresh garlic (mince, then crush to a paste with a little salt using the side of a knife, or in a mortar)
• about a quarter cup of hoisin sauce
• a couple tablespoons of Asian sesame oil
• a tablespoon or so of regular soy sauce
• and then whisk in a cup or more of boiling water

until you get the consistency you like.  At times I will also add a jolt or two of citrus juice, either lemon or orange.

If you require a gluten-free version of this, use a GF tamari instead of soy sauce, and instead of commercial hoisin sauce, make your own small-quantity fresh hoisin sauce as follows: combine in a bowl

• 4T tamari
• 2 large dried prunes or apricots, soaked 20 minutes in hot water, then pureed
• 1 T honey or molasses
• 2-3 t cider vinegar, depending on how tart you like it and also whether you used prunes (not tart) or apricots (tart)
• 1-2 cloves crushed fresh raw garlic
• 2 t Asian sesame oil
• optional: hot chili sesame oil (to taste), finely ground black pepper (to taste)

Of course you can make your own hoisin sauce just because you want to, too.  I confess I usually just use the Lee Kum Kee kind that comes in the nice convenient squeezy bottle.  But it’s nice to know how to make it from scratch if you want to.

You can serve the nut sauce with veggies, but also tossed with noodles — this is the genus from which “sesame noodles” arise — or as a dipping sauce for other things.  I like it with grilled pork particularly.  It also plays nicely with lamb.

And speaking of lamb, if you are a meat-eater, you will want to know how to roast a leg of lamb as one of those tried and true, easy things you can pull out when you have guests.  I roasted a very large whole leg this weekend for dinner for 8, and we consumed virtually all of it, leaving just enough meat on the bones for me to make a good lamb stock out of later on.

People talk about roast leg of lamb as if it were some serious technical production.  It’s not.  It’s a lot like roasting a chicken, which, as you may recall if you’ve been reading for a while, is really very easy.  A leg of lamb is a somewhat bigger thing than a chicken, of course.  And it is shaped so that inevitably the thin bit will be well-done and the thick bit will not be.  This is okay, a medium-rare lamb is every bit as beautiful a thing as a well-done, and in fact some people think more so.

Here are my tips for roasting leg of lamb:

First, keep your leg of lamb on the bone. Bones help provide flavor and retain moisture.  Do not give in to the temptation of supposedly easier carving and have your butcher bone it out for you.  Be a grownup, buy it with the bone(s) still in it.

Second, remember that lamb, because it is young, does not generally need a long cooking time to be tender and flavorful.  It also doesn’t really need to be marinated, unless you want to do it for whatever flavor it may add.

Third, remember that cooking meat has two phases, the active cooking and then the resting, which actually finishes the cooking process as well as redistributing the juices throughout the meat.  Allow enough time to do both.

Fourth, do bear in mind that you’ll need a roasting pan that will fit the joint you want to roast.  And, for that matter, an oven big enough to hold it, with the oven racks arranged so everything will fit.

Fifth, if you don’t have a meat thermometer, go get one now.  Not later, now.  You cannot tell when the interior of a big joint of meat is done to the proper temperature by looking at it.  You need a thermometer with a long pointy probe so go get one, decent ones can be had for about $10.

All that said, you prep your leg by bringing it to room temperature and washing it.  I bring meats to room temperature by placing the meat, still wrapped, in a chest cooler (like you’d use for camping) closing it, and leaving it there for a little while.  This lets the temperature rise gradually without any real effect from drafts or external heat sources like sunny windows or busy ovens.  A chest cooler is also a good place to thaw large cuts that might not fit conveniently in the refrigerator, for similar reasons.

Wash down your room-temperature leg of lamb, rubbing it thoroughly with a couple of handfuls of coarse salt to remove any surface ook.  If there are bits you want to trim, do it now.  Pat it dry or let it drip-dry a little.

Preheat the oven to 425F and put the leg in your roasting pan.  Give it a nice rubdown with something delicious.  I typically rub down a lamb leg for roasting with a paste made of roughly 4 parts garlic to 4 parts olive oil to 2 parts coarse salt and 1 part rosemary.  You can omit the rosemary if you like but never the garlic.  You can also substitute other herbs you enjoy for the rosemary — Mongolians traditionally spice lamb with cumin and chiles, for instance.

Pop the leg into the oven and cook at 425 F for about 20 minutes, then drop the temperature to 350 F, and roast for another hour or more, depending on the size of the lamb.  What you’re aiming for is an internal temperature of 145F in the thickest part of the leg (be sure the probe isn’t touching the bone), which is the bottom end of the “medium rare” range for lamb.

The first reason to aim for the bottom of the “medium rare” range with lamb is this: the bits right at the bone will, indeed, be slightly lower in temperature still, so there will still be some truly rare meat on the bone for those who like it, while the majority of the meat will be medium-rare, which is widely considered the optimal doneness for lamb. (I like mine a little more well done, but I am a Philistine.)

The other reason is that the temperature of the interior of a piece of meat continues to rise a little bit after you take it away from the direct heat.  So if you take the lamb out of the oven at 145 F, the interior of that leg will actually coast a few degrees higher during resting as thermodynamics do their thing, which means that you will have cooked it to the middle of the “medium rare” range after all is said and done.

Rest the lamb for 15-20 minutes, then carve and serve and eat and be happy.  Leftovers are a delight and can be served in a billion ways (also convenient when you have houseguests) and of course the bones and odd scraps can be tossed into the stockpot and turned into delicious lamb stock for any variety of soup you care to create.

As an aside: because not everyone knows just how easy it really is to cook a leg of lamb, your houseguests will probably be impressed and honored that you are going to all that trouble for them.  Win-win!

                          

There are a couple different ways you can roll with a vegan dumpling filling and still have it be pretty solidly traditional.  You can go the meat-like route, with seitan or pressed tofu for a meaty chew.  You can go the greens route — there are several types of traditional Chinese dumplings whose fillings are mostly greens, including ones with watercress and garlic chives.  Or you can go the mushroom/fungus route.  We chose the fungus/mushroom option.

I am not very fond of vegan cookery where things are presented as being “just like” something that they’re not.  Case in point: vegan cheese.  It isn’t cheese.  Which isn’t to say some of it isn’t tasty.  But it isn’t cheese.  It isn’t even close.  And I would like it better and enjoy it more if I weren’t being encouraged to believe that it’s “just like” cheese when any idiot with two taste buds to rub together can tell that it’s not.

So when I make veg dumpling fillings I’m not trying to mimic meat.  I’m not trying to make a sophistication that’s “just like” a “normal” dumpling filling.  Vegetarian food is normal food, thankyouverymuch.

Anyhow.  I haven’t any photos of last night’s dumplings because we ate them.

But, roughly speaking, I can tell you how to make a lovely savory deeply mushroomy filling for wonton.

First, heat a wok or other pan and add a bit of vegetable oil, enough to coat the bottom of the pan.  Then add:

• 1 medium onion, minced

Saute until transparent and add

• About a pound of crimini mushrooms, cleaned and coarsely chopped

Saute over high heat until the mushrooms begin to give up their liquid.  Cook off a bit of the liquid and then add

• a large fistful of garlic chives, minced
• 3-4 cloves garlic, minced
• a teaspoon or two mushroom soy sauce
• a small skosh sesame oil

Continue to saute until the mushrooms are well cooked but not until they have shrunken into nothingness.

Puree this mixture in a food processor with about 2 Tablespoons vegetarian “oyster” sauce (which is also made with mushrooms) and a tablespoon or so of cornstarch or potato starch or some other kind of very fine starch powder.  Let cool to a workable temperature and then use to stuff your dumplings.

Because this is a robustly flavored filling, you can also serve the dumplings with a good vigorous dipping sauce.  Perhaps one with chiles.  Mixing a bit of chili garlic sauce with a bit of soy sauce and a little sesame oil is easy and good.

                          

Why had it been so long?  Well,  I can’t eat milk and its derivatives.  And nachos without cheese are just hot tortilla chips.  Which are nice, don’t get me wrong, but as far as I’m concerned, not sufficiently enticing to get me to bother making them.

Faux “cheeses” just aren’t the same.  And until recently, I had never tried a faux “cheese” that I wanted anywhere near my actual taste buds.

A few months ago I encountered Daiya vegan cheese, and it was an astonishing thing.

Now, I don’t claim that Daiya is “just like” real cheese.  It isn’t.  But it’s a lot closer than any other faux “cheese” I’ve ever tried, and I have tried a few.

More to the point, it does, as advertised, melt.  And while the flavor sort of approximates cheddar in the same way that green Jolly Ranchers approximate “apple,” which is to say, only in the most glancing and Impressionist sort of way, they get the texture a hell of a lot closer than any other faux “cheese.”

The rest you can make up for with salsa.

So you vegans and fellow dairy-intolerants, now you know.  Go make some nachos.

                          

Soak about 2-3 cups of small dried fava beans in water overnight.  When you are ready to cook them, leave them unpeeled.  Drain the soaking water, place the beans in a pot, cover them to a depth of about 3 inches with water, and simmer until the beans are soft, usually about 2-3 hours.  Add more water if it starts to get lower than the surface of the beans.  (If you have a pressure cooker, your bean-cooking can be made much faster.  If you have a pressure cooker, you probably know how.)

When the beans are soft, let the cooking water reduce until it comes only about halfway up the level of the beans.  Remove a cup or so of beans from the pot and mash them coarsely before stirring them back into the pot.

In a separate pot, heat a quarter cup of good olive oil.  When it is hot, add 5 (or more) cloves finely chopped garlic, several handfuls of chopped parsley, a half teaspoon to a teaspoon of ground cumin, and stir them all together in the oil.   If you have fresh tomatoes on hand, chop up a couple of small-to-medium ones and chuck them in too.  If not, you can use canned peeled tomatoes or canned chopped tomatoes.  Heat all of this together with the oil, then combine the oil mixture into the beans and stir.

Finish with plenty of fresh lemon juice (to taste) and some salt if needed.  Serve with fresh hot pita bread, with or without a fried egg on top.  Some chunks of cucumber alongside are a frequent addition, as are olives and ripe tomato (in season).

You can use other beans if you dislike favas or can’t find them.  Plain green lentils actually work very well and cook up much more quickly than fava beans.  It is also very tasty made with red kidney beans.

Another option is koushary, a less-well-known but no less widespread and popular Egyptian standard, quite similar in some ways to ful medames but combining rice, pasta, and beans together with a savory tomatoey sauce.  The Grand International has a fine recipe here, though in the spirit of independence, I highly recommend reading their recipe, then putting together your own variation.

                          

Turkeys can be a little intimidating, particularly if you’ve gotten one of those 34-pound behemoths whose selectively-bred-for breasts are so large that the turkeys cannot even mate on their own but have to be — forgive me — helped along with the process by human hands.  (And if you worry that your family finds you a disappointment as you are, just think how fortunate you are not to have to explain to that cousin who has always been better and brighter and more successful than you are that you do not earn your crust extracting semen from turkeys.) If what you’re used to dealing with are chickens, and perhaps the occasional duck, a turkey is another order of magnitude altogether.

Nevertheless, what holds for one bird holds pretty well for the next, as far as cookery goes.  Remember this post on How Not To Screw Up Roast Chicken?  It’s not so different for turkeys, really.

Here’s what you need to know.

1) Start with a raw, not a frozen, turkey. If your bird came frozen, thaw it (still wrapped in whatever wrapping it had, otherwise in a food-safe plastic bag like the brining bags you can get at some markets) in a bucket full of cold water until it is thoroughly thawed.  By “thoroughly thawed” I mean that you can stick your hand right into that turkey cavity and feel around the inside and not encounter anything frozen.  The bird needs to be at one more or less consistent temperature in order to cook evenly.  If the bird ends up in the oven with the heat simultaneously cooking the well-thawed outer bits of the bird while the inmost bits are still thawing out, it’s never going to cook evenly and you’ll likely end up with nasty dried-out wings and drumsticks and perhaps breasts before those thighs are done.

2) Give it a good rubdown.  Wash the bird with cold water and a few handfuls of kosher or coarse sea salt.  Pat it dry afterward.  While you’re about it, remove the neck and all the internal organs from the body cavity — you will probably have been given the gizzard, heart, liver, and possibly the kidneys.  Wash the inside of the cavity as well and remove any large clumps of cavity fat.  Discard these unless you are the kind of person who likes to render your own fats for cooking, in which case I have no clue why you’re reading a turkey primer.

3) Cut off the wingtips and tail, and trim the neck skin. The wingtips — the last joint of the wings, with the pointy bit at the end –  have very little meat, very little  fat, and are prone to burning.  The tail has very little meat and lots of fat and is scorch-prone, plus it renders out a lot of fat into your pan, which you just have to remove if you want a gravy and not, say, turkey lard soup.  Just cut them off.  There will often be extra skin around the neck end of the bird’s body as well.  Trim this.  You want enough skin to be there to cover the breast completely, including the neck opening, but you need not have swags of skin that must be folded under the bird’s body or anything like that.  It’ll only stick to the pan, anyhow.  Add these to your stockpot with the neck and gizzard and tail (aka “the Pope’s nose”) to make a nice stock from which you can make rivers of delicious gravy. (You should fry up the liver and thinly-sliced heart in a little olive oil, splash them with Worcestershire sauce, and eat them on toast as a treat for yourself because you’ve been doing all this hard work.  Kidneys too, if you like them.)  Or, in the case of the neck skin, reserve it to place over your pan of stuffing (see below) while it cooks.

4) Do not stuff the bird. Stuffing impedes even cooking.  Because it is wet and dense and in the center of the bird, it takes a lot of extra cooking to get the stuffing cooked to a microbiologically safe temperature.  This will dry out your bird.  Cook your stuffing in a baking dish alongside the turkey, or even while the turkey rests after it is finished cooking.  Stuffing alone does not take very long to cook.  If you like, take the skin you trimmed from the neck end of the turkey and lay it over the top of the stuffing in the pan before you bake it.  It will add some extra fat and flavor to the stuffing, and give you a nice crispy bit of skin to snack on if you like that sort of thing.

5) In lieu of stuffing, you may stick a peeled onion or two, or a handful of garlic cloves, or a halved lemon, or a handful of fresh herbs (sage and rosemary are traditional) into the turkey’s body cavity.  Even turkeys like wearing a little perfume now and then.

6) Truss your turkey. Trussing the turkey will keep the wings close to the body so they don’t dry out.  It will keep the drumsticks close to the body and closer to one another, to the same end.  Trussing creates a more uniform density, which results in a more uniform cooking.  Use plain cotton or linen kitchen twine for this.  Don’t worry about stitching up the cavity, because you don’t need to if you haven’t any need to keep the stuffing from spilling out.  It cooks more evenly if the heat can get into the cavity.

7)  Season the skin. I do not go in for buttering, oiling, or otherwise greasing up a turkey, perhaps because I tend to buy very good turkeys that have a good distribution of fat and thus don’t feel I need to.  I usually rub the skin with a somewhat freehand mix of herbs and salt.  Typically this contains rosemary, thyme, sage, sweet paprika, and perhaps a little winter savory, but you can certainly pick what herbs you like for this.  You can also just sprinkle some good salt over the turkey and call it a day.

8) Roast.  At about 400F / 204C. Don’t make a production out of it.  Just stick the bird in the oven. And don’t believe the bullshit about how roasting a turkey at a low temperature makes it juicier.  It doesn’t.  It just means it takes longer to cook, which actually tends to give it a whole lot more time in that hot oven to get thoroughly dried out.

9) Monitor the turkey’s temperature. When you start being able to smell the turkey, which will happen as it starts to render out some of its juices, go and take its temperature.  Take a turkey’s temperature in the thickest part of the thigh, with a probe thermometer — the kind with a pointy bit at the end that is made for sticking into things like turkeys.  If you’ve read this far and you do not own such a thermometer, by all means GO NOW AND ACQUIRE ONE.  There are cheapie digital models for less than $30 that are just great, and given that they take the guesswork out of “is it done yet?” and taking the guesswork out of “is it done yet?” is what stand between you and an overcooked, dry, inedible chipboard turkey, just go get a damn thermometer already.

The temperature you’re looking for, by the way, is 165 F / 74 C. This will be the temperature at the thickest part of the thigh, being sure that the probe tip is not touching bone.  Pro Tip: you can actually take the turkey out of the oven when the temperature’s a few degrees shy of that, because cooking continues while the turkey is resting.

Monitor the temperature every 20-30 minutes.  You’ll be able to tell when you’re getting close to your goal.

10) Rest your turkey before you carve. Just take the whole thing out of the oven and set it on a nice stout chopping board or on several layers of towels on the counter (note that I do not tell you to rest it on the stovetop because I presume you have things going on there).  And let it stand for about 20 minutes or even longer before you carve.  It finishes cooking in this time, and the juices redistribute themselves a bit.  Resist the temptation to prod it, poke at it, or cut into it “to make sure it’s done.”  If you’ve done what I told you to do, above, regarding the temperature and regarding not stuffing the bird, it is done.

11) Carve and enjoy. Happy turkey-eating!  (Don’t know how to carve?  Here you go.  Isn’t the Internet wonderful?)

                          

Still, there’s something about the short days that makes easy, calming cookery appealing.  When I am compelled to start cooking dinner after it is already dark, I always feel as if I am already being pressed up against impending bedtime, and something soothing seems appropriate.

Lately, as a result, the theme of our meals has been Soothing (but not nursery) Food.  We’ve eaten all of these things in the past week or so and they were all good.

Carrot-Coconut-Tangerine Soup

Take the tired carrots from the bottom of the refrigerator bin.  Providing they are not actually soft, you may use them for this soup.  A little bendy is fine.  If you have nicer carrots than this, by all means include them in the reindeer games.  Clean the carrots and grate them on the large holes of a box grater.  How much?  Oh, about 6 carrots.  8 if they are small.  10 to 12 if you want a Large Vat of soup at the end.  Set the grated carrot aside.

Dice a couple of onions.  Dice them on the smallish side.  Do the same with several cloves of garlic.  Peel and grate finely a chunk of fresh ginger root about the size of your thumb. Use a ginger grater if you have one, a fine Microplane grater if you don’t, and the tiniest holes on a box grater if you must.  You should have a tablespoon or two of grated ginger.  (No, this is not A Lot Of Ginger.  A Lot Of Ginger is when we use it as a vegetable.  Which sometimes we do. Such dishes are, however, not Soothing Food, they are Invigorating Food.)

Heat a large pot over a medium flame until it’s good and hot, then add enough neutral oil (grapeseed is the current neutral oil here at the Stone House) to cover the bottom lightly.  Add  your onions and saute until they start to turn translucent.  Add the garlic and the ginger and saute until it gets fragrant.  Add the carrots, sprinkle on a couple of three-fingered pinches of salt, and toss to combine and get the oil distributed evenly throughout the veggies.  Put a lid on the pot and let everything sweat for a few minutes.

While it’s sweating, get out about 1 1/2 quarts of stock.  A light veg stock is great, or a light chicken stock, or you could use water if you didn’t have any stock.  You might want more stock if you decided to make a truly sizeable vat of soup.  Let your conscience be your guide.  Also get out a can of unsweetened coconut milk.

After a little schvitz, the veggies should all be softish but not fully cooked.  Add the stock (or water) and the coconut milk and bring to a simmer.

While you are bringing the soup up to temperature, make a little spice mixture, approximately like this: 1 part ground coriander seed, 2 parts ground cinnamon, 1 part ground black pepper, 2 parts ground cumin.  For my tastes, this would probably work out to 1/2 teaspoon coriander, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon black pepper, 1 teaspoon ground cumin.  Also for my tastes you grind all this fresh, but that is up to you.  If you like, you can add some ground hot chili.  I recommend cayenne, it has the right brightness.  You will briefly cook this spice mixture in a small frying pan, using a small skoshlet of the same oil you used to start the soup, until it is fragrant, whereupon you will stir it into your soup.  (Rinse out the frying pan with a ladleful or so of soup broth, then dump it into the soup pot, so you get all the goodness.  Then clean your frying pan.)

Simmer your soup for about a half hour.  Not a terribly long time.  When all the veggies are nice and soft and all the flavors have gotten to know one another,  taste and correct for salt.  Then get a half-dozen tangerines and zest one of them so you have a nice little pile of perfumed feathery orange bits.  Then juice all of them and strain the juice to get the pips out.  Add the tangerine juice to the soup.  If the tangerines are sweeter than they are tart, you will also want to add the juice of a lime or, perhaps, a lemon.  Lime is better, but if lemon is what you have, then lemon it shall be.

Stir everything in and, turning the heat off, let it stand for 5-10 minutes.  Serve with a pinch of tangerine zest sprinkled over each bowl.

Soothing Braised Kale

In a large heavy pot with a lid, heat just enough oil to cover the bottom.  Add a few handfuls of chopped or thinly sliced onion, and perhaps a few cloves of roughly chopped garlic if you like.  Once the onion has begun to go soft, add your well cleaned kale, which ought to be chopped but need not be finely so.  If the kale is young and tender, do not worry about the ribs and stems, but if it is old and the stems/ribs are tough or woody, you’ll want to strip the leaves from the ribs.  Toss the greens around a bit to coat them, as much as possible, with the hot oil and to distribute the onions/garlic throughout.

Add stock (whatever kind you like, although perhaps not fish stock…), about 2-3 cups.  You can use water, but stock is nicer.  Put the lid on the pot and let it cook undisturbed for 15 minutes, at which point give everything a healthy stir.  Put the lid back on and cook it for another 15 minutes.

Taste the kale to see how done it is.  It should be yielding but not mushy, and its color should still be green, and not gray.  It may need a bit more cooking, or it may be just about right.  Much depends upon the age of the kale leaves.

Serve with a splash of cider vinegar or sherry vinegar, if you like.  Pepper vinegar is good but not so soothing, so let your mood decide.

Do not discard the liquid in the pot.  Pot liquor, as the place where by legend and popular agreement all the vitamins go, is not only good for you, it is also delicious.  If you wish to be traditional about it, pour it over a piece of broken-up cornbread (bannock, soda bread, etc.) in a bowl and eat as a sort of porridge.  If you wish to be less traditional about it, just pour it into a mug and drink it, perhaps with a sprinkle of celery salt.

This technique works with all varieties of tough-leaved greens: collards, mustard greens, turnip greens, broccoli greens, etc.

Roast Butternut Squash with Garlic Yogurt and Cranberry Chutney

Choose a butternut squash with a long cylindrical neck for this dish.  You may use a purchased cranberry chutney or cranberry sauce for this, or you can make your own.  The yogurt may be dairy or soy, but must be unsweetened (check the ingredients, there are an alarming number of “unsweetened” yogurts that have been sweetened) and fairly tart.

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F.

Step One:  Put a cup or two of plain unsweetened yogurt into a bowl and mix in one or two cloves of crushed fresh garlic plus a bit of salt and black pepper, to taste.  Set aside so the flavors can do their thing.

Step Two: Cut the stem end off your butternut squash. Peel it — I highly recommend using a vegetable peeler to do this, not a knife.  It is much safer and more effective besides. The Y-shaped peelers that are popular these days are great for this chore.  You have to peel off the outer shell, then keep peeling down until you no longer see the veins of the shell, only beautiful unblemished orange flesh.  Once this is done,  you can lop off the cylindrical “neck” portion, set it aside, then cut the bulbous bottom in half and scoop out the seeds and stringy bits with a sharp-bladed metal spoon (I have a tablespoon from a measuring spoon set that is ideal for this).  If the bottom bulbous bit is large, you should probably cut it into smaller wedges.  If it’s small, you can leave the halves intact.  As for the cylindrical neck bit, cut it into rounds about 1 1/2-2 inches thick.

Step Three: Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper or aluminum foil.  Brush this lightly with olive oil.  Arrange your squash pieces on the sheet and brush them with olive oil as well.  Put them into the hot oven.  Roast for as long as it takes for the slices to become soft, but not mushy-soft.  Yielding.  Fork-tender.  I’d start checking by poking them with a bamboo skewer or a toothpick after about a half an hour.

Step Four: When the squash is done, remove it from the oven and let it stand for a few minutes.  If you are plating food before serving, put two rounds of squash on each plate, and top each one with a largish dollop of the garlic yogurt and a smaller dollop of the cranberry chutney or cranberry sauce. If you are doing things family style, let people top them with yogurt and cranberry-stuff at the table, as they please.