The Dinner Files

Whenever I eat mâche – a.k.a. lamb’s lettuce – I think of Paris.

I say that and you may imagine that I am transported to a magical romantic weekend or a particularly delicious salad at a chic bistro.

While I have had romantic times in Paris and plenty of delicious salads in the City of Lights, mâche tends to remind me of a less glamorous time I spent there.

I used to spend a lot of time in Paris. I went at least once if not twice a year for stints that rarely lasted less than six weeks and I lived there for several longer stretches as well. One of these visits was in the summer of 1995. I was there on a research grant. Rather than staying in one of the shoebox garrets I was used to living in when in Paris, I had been invited to stay in the apartment of my first cousin once-removed family friends’ place in the 8th arrondissement while they were in Sun Valley for the summer.

Parisians who spend the summer – not just August, but the entire summer school holiday – in Sun Valley, Idaho are not the norm. And neither was their apartment. It had its own elevator from the courtyard.

I stayed in what was usually the nanny’s room in the children’s wing/half-floor. The only time I spent in the never-ending art-filled living room was when I walked through it get to the kitchen, which was on the other end of the palatial abode and included a generous eating area. I relegated myself to my bedroom and the “playroom” in the children’s wing that had a T.V. in it and a table I’d turned into a desk. The giant, empty, luxurious apartment was a budgetary god-send to a graduate student on a research stipend but it was also a depressing place to live alone.

I would wake up early, go through the empty apartment to the kitchen to make coffee and toast the bread left from the day before into tartines for breakfast, walk through the empty neighborhood (the 8th arrondissement is where you will find the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs-Elysées – the residential areas are fancy and my kind hosts were not the only ones out of town for the summer infestation of tourists) to the metro, have my bag checked by police (it was the summer of several terrorist bombings in the métro), answer their curious questions about the laptop in my bag, take the 1 to the Palais Royal/Musée du Louvre station, walk through the Palais Royal, and get to the Bibliothèque Nationale before all the seats were claimed to begin a day of historical research. Nine to five was spent with the books and other groupings of printed matter. I would then either go out with friends or head home – the heat and resulting aroma from that summer’s incessant blistering heat wave assaulting me along the way.

That’s right. It was a summer of terrorist bombings and a heat wave.

On the days I headed home I ate the same heat-friendly dinner more times than I care to remember: some bread, a hunk of cheese, and a giant bowl of mâche tossed with a bit of classic French vinaigrette – one part vinegar, three parts oil, a bit of mustard to bind them, and salt and pepper to taste. If I wasn’t feeling beyond lazy I’d add some minced garlic or shallot. I’d eat this in the kitchen while reading or, just as often often, up in the playroom while watching T.V. stripped down to my underwear with a fan aimed at my face, trying not to die of heat stroke and dreaming of the damp gray of a foggy San Francisco summer.

Mâche used to be something I only had when in France – I never saw it in the U.S. lo those many years ago. I found the beautiful mâche pictured above at the market last week and made a quick dressing that was the best dressing on mâche I’ve ever had. My dashing husband claimed it was perhaps the best dressing I’d ever made full-stop.

I was happy to have made such a tasty dressing, but feel wrong taking much credit for it. Regular readers know I don’t spend much time talking about products here, but the dressing on this mâche was so delicious because of some Lucero lemon crushed olive oil and Katz late harvest sauvignon blanc agrodulce vinegar – both of which were samples sent to me for a story I’m working on. I threw them together in classic vinaigrette proportions (3 parts oil to 1 part vinegar) with salt to taste. I didn’t add anything else. No pungent binding mustard, no bitter astrigent pepper.

The other key to the salad was, of course, the mâche. Fresh, tiny, tender leaves. I know you can sometimes buy mâche in the plastic bags so much salad comes in these days. If you buy it that way, make sure to wash it first – no matter how “pre-washed” it may be for these reasons.

These poor cookies have been forgotten many times over.

So much can go wrong with meringue. If not beaten enough, the whites will collapse. If beaten too much, the water will break away from the protein strands and leak out. If the sugar isn’t incorporated properly it will settle, creating a solid raft of caramelized mess on the bottom of whatever shape you’ve made. If the oven is too hot, the meringue will brown and take on a flavor that isn’t caramelized sugar and isn’t burnt eggs, but a rancid combination of the two. If there is too much humidity in the air, well, just don’t even try to make meringue. The mixture will just keep on soaking in moisture from the air, getting sticky all over again, no matter how long or how many times you dry it out in a low oven.

There is no rushing meringue. You can’t really turn up the temperature in the oven (it will brown), and however long it takes to dry out, it takes. There are no shortcuts to perfect meringue.

I didn’t know all this one day in March of 2000, after I’d finished grad school and was fitfully starting a career as a food writer but making my living doing curriculum development for a continuing education company. I was thumbing through the latest issue of Saveur magazine – at that point a highlight of each month for me – and I came across a recipe for “Forgotten Cookies.” They were little meringues, studded with chocolate and chopped pecans, baked long and at a low temperature, as one would expect for meringues, and then left in the turned-off oven overnight to finish drying (that’s the “forgotten” part, get it?). They sounded good. I dog-eared the page and promptly forgot all about them.

A few months later a friend had me over for tea to celebrate my birthday. On the table was a plate of little meringue cookies studded with chocolate and chopped pecans.  “Forgotten cookies?” I asked. They were delicious.

So about a month later I pulled out the recipe, separated some eggs, and left cookies in the oven overnight. First thing the next morning I pulled a pan of cookies out of the oven thinking a little egg white cookie would make a nice accompaniment with my morning coffee. I picked one off the pan, expecting the light airiness of the cookies I’d had on my birthday. Instead the little nugget stuck to my fingers and the pan. The outside of each cookie had turned into a thin layer of sugary egg white glue. I quickly realized that they hadn’t dried properly and turned the oven back on. They were dry in about an hour, cool a bit after that, and made a lovely mid-morning snack. I stacked them in a cookie tin, cleaned the pan, and continued with my day. After dinner I pulled out the tin to offer a few of my creations to my dashing husband for dessert. Instead of the little puffs I’d put away earlier that day I had a tin full of gooey stuck-together globs. I extricated the baking sheet from the cupboard (our small San Francisco apartment kitchen required master puzzle skills to store my large assortment of cookware), turned the oven back on, gently worked the cookies apart and onto the sheet, and dried them out yet again, even going so far as to leave them in the oven overnight again to cool and dry.

When they were sticky again the next morning I felt the tears welling up in my throat. No, I thought, there is no crying over sticky cookies. I set the oven to 200°, dried the cookies again, and hit the books. I soon realized that summer in San Francisco – dreary, foggy, ever-so-slightly damp summer in San Francisco – is no time to make meringue. I tucked the recipe away for the bright, dry days of fall.

I’d forgotten all about them until an abundance of egg whites and a burst of clear dry weather last weekend brought them back to mind.

Forgotten Cookies

I’ve made many modifications from the original recipe. I find a second drying is necessary to get them from getting sticky within a few hours (although if you live in the dessert or it’s winter and you inhabit an overheated apartment the second drying may not be necessary). Also, I switched out the chocolate and used cocoa nibs instead – a bit more bitter and perfect against the sweet meringue air.

6 egg whites

¼ teaspoon salt

1 cup powdered sugar

1/2 cup cocoa nibs

1 cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 225. Put egg whites in a large bowl and beat until very frothy. Add salt and continue beating until the egg whites form stiff peaks – that is, when you lift a beater out not only does a peak remain in the bowl of whites, but you can turn the beater upside down and the peak on it will hold its shape against gravity. This is tricky stuff because you are beating the whites to their limit. You are taking them right up against over-beaten territory. They should not in any way look dry or start to pull apart. If they do, start over.

Reduce speed of the beater or mixed to medium-slow and add sugar 3 or 4 tablespoons at a time. Let each addition dissolve into the whites before adding another. Once all the sugar is added the whites should look glossy and as smooth as ice.

Gently fold in cocoa nibs and pecans. Seriously, fold these in a gently as possible, trying best you can not to deflate the egg whites you just painstakingly inflated.

Line three large cookie pans with parchment paper and drop spoonfuls of the mixture on the pans. They don’t spread and bake into the shape they are going into the oven. Bake for 25 minutes, rotate pans, bake for another 25 minutes, and turn the oven off. Let the cookies sit and slowly but surely dry out overnight. In the morning turn the oven back on to 200. Let it come to temperature, bake the cookies 15 minutes, turn the oven off, and let them sit until the oven is completely cool.

Store cookies in an airtight container. Since they are just meringue and chocolate and nuts they keep forever, or at least several weeks. Why you wouldn’t have eaten them all by then I have no idea, but they do keep very nicely. If it’s humid out or starts to rain they may start to stick. Just dry them out in a 200-degree oven all over again.

If your day really really sucked, if, say, you spent the morning listening to testimony that illustrated some of the most depressing facts about modern society because you are a good person who doesn’t lie to get out of jury duty and then used your lunch hour to renew a residential parking permit only to be treated with rudeness and even contempt by not one but two city employees – the combination of which made you cry, weeping, all the way back to the courthouse where you spent the afternoon listening to more depressing testimony. And if, in putting out a fire with a client you lost track of time during the one hour you have to work between the courthouse closing and your kid’s child care shutting up shop and you had to race through rush hour traffic to get to school on time because your dashing husband is out of town and you knew your evening would be spent running a live chat for an online class before getting a few hours work done before finally going to bed, which is where you’ve wanted to crawl into all day long, you might want to take any chicken off the bones from any leftover preserved lemon chicken with olives you might be lucky enough to possess, heat it up in the leftover sauce, and pour that mixture over a hearty slice of toasted day-old bread. You might find it comforting, if but for a moment.

One of my craziest friends (believe me, that is some stiff competition) sent me a recipe from Fine Cooking that she claimed was a) delicious, b) quick, and c) neither pasta nor soup.

I got the hint.

I messed around with it a bit, but just the specifics, not the big picture. I pretty much doubled all the spices, used more herbs, used two preserved lemons instead of one (you don’t develop this “how to make preserved lemons” without ending up with too many preserved lemons sitting around; I need to use them with abandon). I also used all one cut of chicken so they would cook evenly. Feel free to mix it up if your family has white meat-only and dark meat-only people making your life difficult.

When I make it again, I’m going to chop a bulb fennel and add it with the onion. If you beat me to it, let me know how tasty it is.

Preserved lemon chicken with olives
I used thighs for this, but any chicken breasts would work just fine – bone-in, boneless, skinless, whatever you like, just decrease cooking time a bit if you use boneless. My son would have liked it if I’d used wings and drumsticks, and I’m sure it would have been just as over-eatin’ good. Feel free to bump up or turn down the paprika, ginger, and cayenne depending on how kicky or mild you like it.

2 1/2 – 3 pounds chicken thighs (or other chicken pieces)

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

2 Tbsp. vegetable oil

1/2 bunch worth of fresh cilantro (a generous, loosely-packed 1 1/2 cups)

1/2 bunch worth of flat-leaf parsley leaves

1 onion

2 teaspoons ground ginger

1 1/2 teaspoons hot paprika

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon turmeric

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1/4 teaspoon cayenne

Generous pinch saffron threads (about 20)

1/2 cup white wine or chicken broth (water works too)

2 preserved lemons

1 cup black olives (unpitted would be fine, but I used some pitted black olives that were really a red-brown color from Lyndsey’s “Naturals” line)

Rinse chicken pieces and pat dry. Sprinkle with salt. Cover and chill up to overnight, if you like, or simply set aside while you heat the oil.

Heat the oil over medium high heat in a large, heavy pan or pot that will be able to hold all the chicken in a single layer eventually – that eventual single layer can be crowded.

For now, however, things are not going to be too crowded. Place the chicken, skin-side down if that applies, in the pan to brown. Don’t let the pieces touch to maximize the browning and minimize the stewing for the moment. Cook until the chicken naturally and of its own volition releases from the pan, 3 to 4 minutes. Turn and brown on the other side. Repeat with the second batch, if necessary.

Meanwhile – and you’ll need to either do some of this ahead or work somewhat quickly, chop the cilantro and parsley and onion (you could do this by pulsing it all in a food processor if you like, but I’m warning you now that you will eventually need to clean it) and put them in a large bowl. Add all the spices and toss to combine. When the first chicken pieces are done browning, add them to this mixture and toss to coat the chicken. Add the second batch if you needed to do one and toss to combine too.

Drain off any excess fat from the pan. Add wine or broth and scrape up the delicious brown bits on the pan. Add chicken and herb-onion-spice mixture and 1 cup of water. Bring just to a boil, cover, reduce heat to a gently simmer, and cook until chicken is tender and onions are melting into the sauce, 20 to 25 minutes.

After you cover the chicken, remove the pulp from the preserved lemons, rinse the rinds in cool water, and cut rinds into strips. Scatter lemon rind strips and olives over the chicken and return cover.

Serve chicken hot, with plenty of sauce, over couscous or with crusty bread with the heft and ability to soak up the addictive sauce. Some sauteed greens onto which you can drizzle some of the sauce as you eat are a nice addition.

I had a dream. As much as I love sweet crêpes, I’ve always been a bit more of a fan of galettes – crêpes’ hearty, buckwheat flour, savory older cousins. Once when making galettes and crêpes, I made myself a dessert “crêpe” using the buckwheat galette batter. The French people present were horrified, to say the least, but I was thrilled. I didn’t know if my dessert got in my dinner or my dinner got in my dessert. The nutty buckwheat and dark chocolate were my own chocolate and peanut butter: together at last.

These cookies are way easier to make (less than 30 minutes from pulling things from the cupboard to a warm cookie in your mouth if you pay attention) and will, I hope, find a wider audience.

Chocolate buckwheat cookies

These cookies are soft, chocolate-y, and have a decidedly but undefinable nutty taste and slightly sandy texture that makes complete sense if you know there is a generous amount of buckwheat flour in them. Don’t over-bake these; the texture goes from divine to ho-hum if you do.

4 ounces bittersweet chocolate

1 cup buckwheat flour

3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

2 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup butter

1 cup brown sugar

1 egg

2 teaspoons vanilla

Preheat oven to 350. Chop chocolate and melt it. (I like to put mine in a small bowl, fill a slightly larger bowl with boiling water, and set the small bowl in the boiling water and just let it sit. It melts and it can’t scorch and I can start on other things.) Let it cool a bit before using.

Combine the buckwheat and whole wheat pastry flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside.

Cream butter and brown sugar until fairly light and fluffy. Beat in the egg and vanilla. Make sure the chocolate is cool enough to touch comfortably (go ahead, stick your finger in there!) – you don’t want it to melt the butter or start cooking the egg when you add it to the batter. Beat into the butter-sugar-egg mixture.

Add the dry ingredients and beat to stir just to combine.

Dollop generous tablespoonfuls of the batter on one cookie sheet if you want less clean-up but more cooking time (two batches) or on two cookie sheets if you’d rather rinse an extra pan than deal with a second batch. Bake 5 minutes. Turn/rotate pan(s) and bake another 5 minutes. Let cool slightly on the sheet(s) before transferring to a cooling rack.

You should get 2 dozen cookies.

I know I promised quick meals beyond pasta. I am presenting this pasta dish for your consideration despite my earlier and very recent promise for two reasons: first and foremost, it is flippin’ delicious. Who would think of adding brussels sprouts to spaghetti carbonara? Me! That’s who! And I’m pretty pleased with myself. (Brief side note: Many Americans seem to think that spaghetti carbonara should have a big mess of cream in it. For those people, I guess it does. But the Italian version of the dish has not a drop of cream – just egg that cooks and turns into a vaguely creamy sauce as the heat from the pasta cooks it on contact. If not-fully-cooked egg freaks you out, move right along – this recipe would not be for you).

The second reason I present it to you is quite simple: I am slammed. Work and life and civic duty have colluded to render me a shell of my usual self. And it’s going to last a while and I’m only at the beginning. About all I can do is cook pasta.

Brussels sprouts pasta

You can use less brussels sprouts, if you like. I tend to overdo it because I love them so much. This recipe is all about the method, so be sure to read the whole thing before you start. I can prep all this stuff while the water comes to a boil and the pasta cooks, but I’m speedy – you might want to do some brussels sprouts trimming ahead of time. You can always start the water and let it boil until you’re ready to the add the pasta – a watched pot may never boil but a pot of boiling water is not the boss of you! Oh my, I’m really losing my mind.

12 oz. orecchiette or penne pasta (or other bite-sized shape)

1 1/2 pounds brussels sprouts, trimmed and thinly sliced

2 tablespoons olive oil or butter

1 slice pancetta, about 1/3-inch thick or 3 slices thick-cut bacon, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/4 teaspoon red chile flakes or more to taste, if you like

1/2 cup white wine

2 eggs

1/2 cup grated pecorino cheese (or other hard grating cheese, such as parmesan), plus more to taste

1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper

Bring a big pot of water to a boil. Salt it until it tastes as salty as ocean water. Cook the pasta until tender to the bite. BUT FIRST…

While the water comes to a boil, heat the olive oil or butter over medium heat in a large frying pan. Cook the pancetta until brown and crispy. Add the garlic and red chile flakes. Cook about a minute before adding the white wine. Boil and let it reduce to about half of what it was. Add the brussels sprouts, cover, and cook, stirring now and again, until the sprout slices are yummily tender, about 5 minutes.

As the brussels cook, beat the eggs in a large bowl until no glops or gobs remain – they should be as thin as water. Add the cheese and pepper. Stir or whisk to combine.

When the pasta is cooked, drain it and IMMEDIATELY dump it into the egg mixture and start tossing. Keep tossing. Seriously, just keep tossing it. Then add the hot brussels sprout mixture and toss that like there is no tomorrow. The egg and cheese should have cooked and melted, respectively, to form a luscious sauce with the bit of oil and pancetta fat and reduced wine left in the brussels sprouts somewhere.

Top with more cheese and pepper and see how easy it is to eat a giant bowl or two of this after a long hard day.

Two friends and an acquaintance (well, I know him and he might recognize me but maybe not) have come out with books this spring. It was with great relief that I opened them up and found them to my liking. There is always that moment before reading a friend’s book or going to their gallery show or hearing their band when I hold my breath and hope the deepest hope that I’ll like what I read/see/hear.

Food books first. Gordon Edgar’s Cheesemonger: A Life on the Wedge recounts his travails running the cheese counter at Rainbow Grocery here in San Francisco. I’ve been shopping at Rainbow, a worker-owned vegetarian co-op in my neighborhood, for years. Since it’s a co-op, the workers tend to stay around. The nice guy who always helped me deal with bagging and getting stuff to my car when my son was a tiny baby in a sling is still there, working the service counter, directing cars, and, I’m sure, helping other overwhelmed new moms. The cheese counter Gordon (a.k.a. Gordonzola) oversees is the reason that I desperately wish against all hope that someday Rainbow will stop its vegetarian ways and start selling meat. I wish this primarily for my own convenience, but also because, if the cheese counter is any indication, the meat counter would be amazing. I’ve watched the cheese section at Rainbow grow and develop over the years into the shining beacon of deliciousness and overcrowded convenience behind the produce area. There is a lot of cheese in not much space back there, but the grab-and-go pre-cut pieces and stellar variety combine to trump, in my opinion, the fanciest cheese spots around. Sometimes I want to sit and taste cheese and talk about the cheese before I buy, but not usually. Usually I’m doing the grocery shopping and need some Italian fontina, a hunk of Parmesan, a soft blue, and maybe something else but I’ll figure that out myself, thank you very much. Reading Gordon’s account of learning about cheese, developing the cheese section at Rainbow, and how this all fits into his essential punk philosophy and radical politics reminded me about everything I love about that store. It reminded me that the insane parking and long lines are worth it.

As much as Cheesemonger hits on how I shop for the food I cook, Marcia Gagliardi’s The Tablehopper’s Guide to Dining and Drinking in San Francisco hits on how I eat when I go out. Finally someone has organized a restaurant guide in a way that I eat and choose restaurants. I’ve turned to Marcia several times for restaurant suggestions and she has been spot-on every time. Spot to impress clients from out of town but quiet enough so their older ears can hear well? Chez Spencer. Where to go for a 5 o’clock dinner with my father-in-law with my son in tow because my husband has a meeting at 6 and it’s a school night? The bar at Two serves plenty of real food that early. I could go on but I don’t need to because her book answers all these questions and plenty I never thought of. The girl knows nothing if not the dining scene in SF. If you live in or ever come to SF, this book is a must-own (unless you’re staying at my house, I have a copy you can borrow).

Finally and completely unrelated to food, Elissa Auther’s String, Felt, Thread: The Hierarchy of Art and Craft in American Art is, after many years of anticipation, in my hands in full book form. I’m interested in the whole concept of craft (my two favorite things to do besides actually craft in the form of quilting or knitting are writing and cooking which have the craft about them) and the difference between art and craft, so this book has my name all over it. I’m about a quarter in. Here’s the thing, I know Elissa well. I love how this book sounds just like her. She speaks with this level of precision – it’s a joy to hear and a pleasure to read. It is rare that the academic prose has life to it (and here I should admit a real weakness/fondness for academic studies – it reminds me of all the quiet alone reading time I had in graduate school which even then seemed like such a gift), but this book strolls along through the use of fiber in contemporary art with grace and verve.

I also recently re-read My So-Called Freelance Life to remind me not to take assignments unless I’m either really interested in them or they pay really well (of course a combination of the two is always nice…). Lorrie Moore’s A Gate at the Stairs kept seeming like it was going to be tragic but wasn’t too depressing and is beautifully written and should be read by anyone who has ever even flown over Madison, Wisconsin. The Ghost Map about the cholera epidemic in London is written like a mystery and has filled out my knowledge of cholera epidemics nicely (Paris 1832 – go ahead, ask me anything!). Even though I’d read all the stories when they were published in magazines, I still savored the time I spent snuggled up with Alice Munro’s Too Much Happiness: Stories.

How about you? What have you been reading?

One good friend just started a full time job after freelancing for years. Another friend has twins who are old enough now to eat real food so they’ve been trying to have family dinners most nights. Still another friend’s husband had a change at work and is no longer home in time to make dinner, which has always been his gig. In short, three friends in quick succession have asked for fast dinner ideas.

I’m going to try and keep them in mind in the coming weeks. Faster, quicker, easier. The fact of the matter is that I often cook that way and, due to some work-life circumstances this spring I’ll be cooking like that more anyway. At our house getting dinner on the table in a hurry often manifests in the form of pasta. Pasta with a lot of vegetables in it. I’m working on expanding that mindset (it’s difficult, though, since such pasta dishes are always a hit with all three of us).

This mushroom soba noodle soup is sort of a departure, right? Sure, it’s pasta and vegetables, but they’re in a soup! Hey, I’m trying here.

It may not be revolutionary, but it is delicious. Fresh, light, and perfect for this time of year when heavy winter foods don’t sound so great anymore but when you still need something to warm you up come dinner time.

Mushroom soba noodle soup

This noodle-y soup-y creation was inspired by a recipe for a mushroom hot pot in Japanese Hot Pots by Tadashi Ono and Harris Salat. It’s a great resource – especially if, like me, you like to make (and eat) big bowls of delicious.

4 cups broth (I used a mix of chicken and pork broth; one or the other or dashi would have been good, too)

1 cup sake

1/2 cup mirin

1/3 cup soy sauce

3 cups shredded Napa cabbage

1/2 pound shiitake mushrooms

1/2 pound oyster moshrooms

1/2 pound wild arugula (regular arugula or spinach would also work just fine, although with less bite)

1 pound tofu (firm, soft, silken – whatever you like) cut into three or four big pieces

1/2 pound soba noodles

some type of chile powder for garnish (we used ground ancho chile because it was in the cupboard)

Heat the broth in a medium pot. Add sake, mirin, and soy sauce. Bring to a simmer and cook, partially covered, for about 10 minutes. Taste and adjust seasoning – adding more mirin for sweetness or more soy for salt, if you like.

Add cabbage, cover, and cook until cabbage is wilted, about 3 minutes.

Meanwhile, bring a pot of salted water to a boil and trim mushrooms and cut into bite-size pieces if they are large.

Add mushrooms to the pot, cover, and cook until mushrooms and cabbage are tender, about 8 minutes. Add arugula, cover, and cook until the arugula leaves are wilted, about 3 minutes. Put large pieces of tofu on top of everything else, cover, and simmer until tofu is heated through, about 2 minutes.

Meanwhile, cook soba noodles in the boiling salted water until tender to the bite. Drain and divide between three or four large bowls.

Top noodles with the vegetables, one piece of tofu each, and broth. Garnish with chile powder, if you like. A few thinly sliced green onions would be tasty, too.

A neighbor asked for popover tips recently. I shared what I know and promptly made a batch of my own. The three of us ate the twelve of them in a snap.

They are good with roasts, good with stews, and a delight for breakfast. I suppose you could put jam or something on them, but it seems like a bit of gilding the lily to me.

Popovers

Here is what I know about making popovers pop. You want a very hot oven, a preheated muffin tin or popover pan, and room temperature ingredients. I’ve done the whole “fill only every other muffin cup” nonsense and never noticed it made a lick of difference.

3 eggs

1 cup milk

1 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

4 tablespoons butter, melted

Heat the oven to 450. While the oven heats, put the eggs and milk in a blender or bowl and let sit to come to room temperature. Once the oven is hot, put an empty 12-cup muffin tin or popover pan (or 2 6-cup pans) in the oven and let it heat while you make the batter.

Whirl the eggs and milk or whisk them vigorously until completely combined. Add flour and salt and whirl or whisk until smooth. Add 2 tablespoons of the butter and whirl or whisk to combine.

Take pan(s) out of the oven and brush the cups with the remaining melted butter. Fill cups evenly with the batter. Twelve muffins tins will each be about half full.

Put filled pan(s) in the oven and reduce heat to 425. Bake 25 minutes without so much as thinking about opening the oven door. Reduce heat to 350 and bake until completely golden and mostly brown, about another 15 to 20 minutes.

Serve popovers hot, or at least warm. Time does them no favors.

We ate dinner last week in an industrial space that had been re-done into a residence and studio that was so stunning that Ernest jumped up and down as he shouted “Mama, this is so cool!”

I had to agree. The space was cool, the company delightful, and the food perfection. I was offered the serving bowl filled this endive, herb, kumquat salad and took way more than my fair share. I have since made it three times for myself for lunch. I’m making it now, while the kumquats are plentiful.

Kumquat endive salad

This is the ultimate end-of-winter-almost-spring salad. The bitter chicory of winter with the bright tart sweetness of citrus and the fresh green promise of spring herbs. You might not be able to have a real spring salad yet – there is no asparagus in here, no hidden fiddleheads – but it’s starting to seem like you will if you just hang in there.

4 Belgian endives

about 10 sprigs parsley

about 10 sprigs mint

10 kumquats

2 tablespoons lemon juice (Meyer lemon juice works nicely here, too)

1 1/2 tablespoons vegetable or olive oil (nothing too strong!)

1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon salt

Cut off ends of the endive and pull apart into leaves. Cut leaves into bite size pieces, if you like, and put all leaves into a salad or serving bowl.

Pull off the leaves from the parsley sprigs and put them with the endive leaves. Pinch off the mint leaves and tear them into smaller pieces and add them to the mix. Cut the kumquats into quarters and throw them in.

In a small bowl, mix lemon juice, oil, and salt. Stir or whisk together an drizzle over salad. Toss salad to coat everything evenly with the dressing.