The Dinner Files

The nice people at Lindsay olives sent me some samples of their “Naturals” line. Ernie is a fan. He not, however, a fan of having his picture taken:

We had a first course of creamy fava bean soup that my dashing husband declared was “like restaurant food.” The comment was mainly observation, with a dash of compliment on the side. It was rich and creamy (what with the heavy cream I added) and perfect, as long as one only ate a little of it. A huge bowl would have rendered me ill. But a tiny ramekin of it topped with minced chives was divine. Shell 3 pounds of fava beans. Blanch them in salted water for 3 minutes. Run through a food mill or shell them again. Cook resulting beans in 1/2 cup chicken broth until very soft, mushy even. Whirl in a blender until super-duper smooth. Heat over lowest possible heat, add salt to taste, and stir in 1/4 to 1/2 cup heavy cream. Serve in tiny portions garnished with minced chives. The chives are key. Do not skip the chives.

Our main course was my attempt to fix the spring vegetable couscous (cuckoo!) I made last week. Sadly, I must try again (yes, I’m secretly pleased because even the less perfect versions are delic!)–someone, and I’m not saying who (me?) bought two bags of English peas and no snap peas AND I forgot to ask my intern not to shell and use ALL the favas yesterday. The couscous (cuckoo!) lacked the wide variety of spring vegetables I had planned, but the peas and spring onion couscous (cuckoo!) with feta was tasty. I’ll work on it. I’ll get back to you.

p.s. Happy Birthday Mom!

It must be spring–have you ever seen a dinner so green? We stirred a bit of horseradish cream into the stinging nettle soup and added plenty of extra pepper, as is our way. I put scads of shallot-y marinated fava beans on top of some extremely tender lettuce greens. Those made me swoon, no matter how much shelling and re-shelling they require. My dashing husband had the foresight to toast some whole wheat walnut bread. It was all so healthful I’m worried it was bad for us. Are we on the edge of overly healthful eating? I’m willing to live on this edge. This edge tastes good.

My cousin and her lovely companion came to dinner last night. Our household is filled with fans of both of them. Jointly I would say they have only one fault: one of them (I’m not saying who) is a vegan.

We had some grilled eggplant salad, red pepper salad, and dolmas from a Turkish resturant I went to for lunch. Then I grilled some vegetables and made a lemon-herb-pistachio orzo salad. It was hot and sunny in San Francisco. We were in sandals and shorts and summer dresses. We sipped white wine and Ernie ran around in the garden and it felt like summer. Summer doesn’t happen frequently or predictably around here. We have to grab it when we see it.

Lemon Herb Orzo Salad: Boil a 1 lb. box of orzo in plenty of very salty water (if vegans aren’t involved, use chicken broth for extra yumminess). While pasta cooks, zest 2 lemons and juice 4. Combine zest and juice with 2 cloves minced garlic in a large bowl. Add drained, hot orzo and toss to combine thoroughly. Let sit, tossing occasionally, until cool. When ready to serve, taste orzo and add more lemon juice if it doesn’t taste really lemony. Toss in 1/2 cup finely chopped mint, 1/4 cup finely chopped cilantro and dill (why mint, cilantro, and dill? because that’s what I had in the fridge–try whatever herbs you have in the house), a handful or two of chopped pistachios (why pistachios? same reason as the herbs–almonds or pine nuts would have been good too), and enough oil to coat the whole thing. (I used some fabulous pine nut oil someone gave me and it was delicate and flavorful and I highly recommend it. I’m sure your favorite olive oil will be great too.) The non-vegans at the table topped their servings with some crumbled feta cheese, but honestly, the orzo really didn’t need it.

Not much in the cupboard, no one wanted to brave the throngs at the store on a Saturday evening. So Spinach, Pistachio, Pecorino Pasta! was born.

Boil fusilli in salted water. After cooking for a few minutes, remove and reserve a cup of the cooking liquid. Drain pasta a bit before it’s done. Set aside. In the same pot, sauté 3 oil-cured anchovies in some olive oil, as they sizzle, add a few shakes of red pepper flakes (were we not out of garlic, I would add a few sliced cloves of that as well). Add as much thoroughly washed spinach as you have lying about (you could even add a handful of beet leaves, as I did) and stir until they look defeated.

Add the drained pasta and the reserved pasta water. Cover and cook until liquid is absorbed and pasta is tender. Stir in 1 cup grated fresh pecorino until it melts and everything looks just a bit cheesy. Add about 1/2 cup chopped pistachios. Serve topped with grated aged pecorino

A friend had a birthday party on the shores of Lake Berryessa yesterday. As luck would have it, Ernie’s school was closed for a long weekend paint-job. We grabbed his best friend from school, packed up a cooler and some beach towels, and headed north to play hooky. Not a cloud in the sky, water just warm enough for me and children to play in, and a rented boat for waterskiing made for a lazy, exhausting afternoon.

We got the fire going before dark and started throwing things on the grill. Sweet potatoes, baby potatoes, asparagus, and sausage. Lots and lots of sausage. Plus a rib-eye to share. Manhattans shaken, candles lit, mouths stuffed.

Other party-goers camped out. One of my dashing husband’s few faults is that he doesn’t like to camp. Correction: he doesn’t think he would like to camp. He can’t say for sure because he’s never done it. The boys fell asleep as soon as we hit the highway. We savored the still of a long drive home in the dark.

I’ve always been a lone cook. Happy in the kitchen by myself, doing my thing. The modern trend towards group cooking and having scads of people in the kitchen has never appealed to me. Once in awhile I team up with a similarly food-obsessed friend and enjoy making (and eating) some amazing meals, but it’s definitely the exception to the rule.

Last night, as we came in the door from school, Ernie sweetly asked, “Mama, can I help you make dinner?”

There may be no sweeter words to my maternal ears.

So I put him to work sorting (that is, separating out the baby spinach from the salad mix) and washing the spinach:

Then he cut the tofu and some snap peas:

To make this light spring dinner for yourself, heat a large saute pan. Add 2 tsp. grapeseed oil and 1 finely chopped spring onion. Cook, stirring, until onion is soft. Add 5 chopped cloves garlic, about a tablespoon of finely grated fresh ginger, and about 2 tablespoons salted Chinese black beans. Stir as everything comes to a sizzle. Pour in 1/2 cup rice wine, sake, or dry white wine (I used some vino verde we had open–worked fine) and a teaspoon of tamari. Cook until liquid evaporates. Add 1/2 pound snap peas you’ve cut into bite-size pieces; cover and cook until just barely tender (about 3 minutes). Add 12 ounces tofu you’ve also cut into bite-size pieces, gently mix in, cover, and cook until heated through. Serve with rice and garnish with chopped cilantro, if you like (I do). We had some sautéed spinach on the side. Ernie had what seemed like an awful lot of tamari on top. My dashing husband used not one but two hot sauces. He is a bold man.

There was more clean-up to do than when I cook alone (I don’t tend to strew many spinach leaves on the floor), but the spinach was fully and totally grit-free thanks to Ernie’s diligent washing and the unevenly cut snap peas were the best I’ve ever tasted.

Our “farm box,” as Ernie calls it, arrived this afternoon. It also had salad greens (whisked away to the refrigerator a.s.a.p.), kiwis (given away to neighbor who LUVS kiwis and gets a smaller, kiwi-less box), and a paper bag I guessed what was in and hid for after dinner.

At the suggestion of our kiwi-loving neighbor, I made a spring vegetable couscous (or, as my mom often calls it, “coucou”–yes, she pronounces it like the iconic Swiss clock; no, I don’t know why). I used the big, Israeli style couscous (are you hearing “cuckoo” in your head when you read that like I am?) cooked in chicken broth, added shelled English peas, chopped snap peas, and the fava beans I garnered from the 14 pods in our box. We topped the whole thing with chopped spring onion tossed with olive oil, lemon juice and zest, and chopped cilantro. Very tasty. Needed… something. Perhaps that feta cheese the kiwi-lover suggested adding and I forgot about until just this moment? Yes! That’s it! Next time I’ll pay attention and write up amounts and times and other recipe-like details. (Or, feel free to experiment yourself and report back.)

That paper bag I squirreled away? Beautiful, luscious, brilliantly red strawberries. Have I already discussed my dislike of strawberries? Yeah. I don’t like ‘em. Not at all. Not even when they’re really good. These were beautiful, though. And they smelled a lot. I can only assume they would smell great to people who actually would like to ingest a strawberry. A fact borne out by Ernie’s avid consumption of all 10 strawberries. My dashing husband just let him go at it and forsook all claim to any berries. What a martyr.

Ernie doesn’t like to smile for pictures anymore. His new mode is either to run away when a camera appears or to stare glumly into the lens and look directly into your soul until you run away. I got this shot with maternal teasing. It wasn’t right, but it had to be done. Now the grandparents have something to show their friends when they look at the internets.

Someone got creative with the oil, that’s all I can say. Week after week of beets. I’ve roasted them, boiled them, souped them, saladed them. I’ve even grilled them (yes, it works quite nicely). So now I’ve fried them. As chips. Guess what? They were a big hit. Ernie snarfed down a ton and my dashing husband joined him.

And anyone who has deep-fat fried can tell you: once you have the oil going, you might as well keep frying. So the sweet potatoes–sitting so innocently, thinking they were going to be turned into a spicy gratin–were next. Cut into fries and fried. Delicious. Not as crispy as potato french fries, but really good. A bit of chile “lava salt” we got in Kauai was just the ticket to sprinkle on them.

You would think that after five days in New Orleans, I’d want a break from the fried.* And I thought I did. I do. So dinner began in earnest with this gloriously simple but labor-consuming fava bean and pecorino salad. Shell a shit-load of fava beans. Blanch them. Shell them again (seems like torture, I know). Toss with a bit of delicious olive oil and top with tiny cubes of fresh pecorino cheese and a sprinkle of salt. This is a dish best made if you have staff. Staff to do all the shelling and blanching and re-shelling. Today I had that staff in the shape of my lovely intern.

Isn’t it just lovely? Stay tuned next week when we develop a whole slew of fava bean recipes.

The main thrust of the meal was some simple grilled asparagus (brush with oil, grill until charred and tender–about 10 minutes total (covered) and some braised greens with a poached egg on top. Yes, you caught me, that’s a total fall-back meal for me. We all eat it, we all like it, my dashing husband can customize it with hot sauce. I highly recommend it.

* To be honest, I’ve been a bit obsessed with some sweet potato fries I saw at Parkway Bakery and Tavern while I was eating a giant po’ boy–a dining companion saw them too and made a bee line for the counter to order some for us. Alas, the line was long by then, and he gave up. It was for the best, but I’ve been thinking about them ever since.

I made green garlic pesto a few weeks ago. A lot of green garlic pesto. So I froze a few servings of it. Last night I pulled one out of the freezer, tossed it with some spaghetti and pecorino cheese, tossed a green salad, and dinner was made. Ernie started off with his “plain noodles with cheese” but quickly asked where “the green stuff” was on his noodles. I told him he never likes sauce on his noodles, so I didn’t give him any.

“But Mama,” he said, “I like green stuff. Not sauce. Green stuff.”

Can I quote you on that, kid?

The strawberry-eating portion of the family also enjoyed a bit of fool–mashed strawberries folded into whipped cream–at the end of the meal. Reports were positive. Requests for seconds were made. Seriously, you just mash berries with a fork, add some sugar to taste (and to help pull out their juice), whip heavy cream to soft peaks, and fold the two together. You could add grand marnier or some other liqueur to fancify it, but you really don’t need to and people will beg you for the “recipe” such as it is. Plus, it’s real purty.

My New Orleans adventure came to an end last night. After a bowl of seafood gumbo and a plate of “shrimp remmy,” as our server affectionately referred to shrimp rémoulade, I was off to the airport. I believe some might argue that technically my dinner last night was actually a pre-made turkey sandwich I grabbed as all the food stands were closing at my connecting airport and then snarfed down on the plane. But I prefer to remember it as that gumbo, earthy and rich, and remmy, sweet and fresh and spicy.