I’m going to start rating or grading each recipe I follow.
There are many qualities and characteristics to consider in a recipe, such as ease of preparation, length of ingredient list, healthfulness, availability of ingredients, taste, texture, expense (in money, time, and energy), and plated appearance. I don’t have an official list of grading criteria yet, but I will use a rough preliminary grading technique on the recipe for Sautéed Grated Zucchini with Marjoram from The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters.
The ingredients and technique are straightforward and simple: Coarsely grate a pound of zucchini, draw out excess water by way of salting and squeezing in a sieve, then sauté the drained zucchini in two tablespoons of olive oil or butter until lightly browned. Remove from heat, add chopped marjoram and pulverized garlic.
And now . . . the impromptu rating system makes its debut:
Sautéed Grated Zucchini with Marjoram
Source: The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters
Ingredients: Easy
Overall time estimate (with all ingredients at the ready): 35 minutes
Taste: Good. Well-seasoned with a mellow butter flavor
Presentation: Good. Pretty green vegetables and herbs with a nice golden overtone (I used herb butter in this trial.)
Healthfulness:Jury’s still out. If made with butter, not sure how this will fare. I will run this through NutritionData.com’s analysis tool later this week. In the meantime, see “practicality.”
Practicality (via No-whining Dining’s current food and cooking philosophies): Poor. One and a half pounds of zucchini were used for this trial, yielding maybe a cup or a cup and a half of shredded zucchini sauté. To accommodate the published serving yield (4 servings per pound of zucchini), each serving would get only about one-fourth of a cup. So much for filling half your plate up with veggies. Also, in a world where high-calorie, high-fat, low-nutrition foods are abundant and available around every corner, vegetables such as beautiful, sweet, fresh zucchinis are a welcome, safe, go-to tasty, healthful, low-cal oasis. WHY ON EARTH WOULD YOU WANT TO SPOIL THAT WITH TWO FREAKIN’ TABLESPOONS OF FAT?????? But that’s another blog entry.
Overall grade: C-
I’m not sure if the permanent rating system will have grades or scores. Since this system will be largely subjective, I might as well go with grades, or even just key words. Or something. I’ll figure something out. I’m open to suggestions.
Spicy Crispy Kale Chips from nutritiontokitchen.com
I ate a lot of kale this week, having purchased one bunch too many of the vivacious veggie at Whole Foods. What a spunky, curly green leaf bursting with personality! The leaves come across as bitter at first, but they can mellow with cooking, and shrink when prepared in liquid, without losing their characteristic curliness in the process.
Curly kale is just one variety of kale, of course. And kale is just one of many winter greens I desire to explore, in part inspired by the Eating Well article that included the recipe for Monday night’s meal of Kale, Sausage, & Lentil Skillet Supper. The Supper was wholesome, earthy, and satisfying, though I think a wee more spice or spark would have made it more interesting. And I added all the French lentils I had — about one and a quarter cup — which yielded an overwhelming amount of lentils. The recipe made more than four servings for sure.
OK, back to that leftover bale of kale (a baby bale?). A google search led me to Nutrition to Kitchen’s intriguing Spicy Crispy Kale recipe. Though I had decided to make this irresistible recipe on Superbowl Sunday so I can munch on something healthy while watching the Colts trample the Saints, I had nothing on tonight’s agenda so I figured I’d give it a go along with another skillet supper — this time with chicken sausage, Yukon gold potatoes, and frozen mixed vegetables.
The chips were fabulous. It’s amazing how they can enter the oven confident, firm, and flexible but emerge vulnerable, brittle, and crispy. Great crunch, great taste. Gary thought it would make a great garnish for a soup or casserole. I agreed. I will definitely be making these again.
February 5th, 2010 in
Banter,
Recipes | tags:
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My minestrone soup of yore
Several weeks ago my cabbagephobic husband broke his cabbage taboo and fixed a vegetable and sausage soup. The deliciousness of the sausage would outweigh any ick or stink of the cabbage, so his reasoning went. Another unusual (for us) addition to this concoction: tomato juice. The combination of tomato-based broth and mildly crunchy cabbage reminded me of a minestrone soup I used to enjoy many years ago.
This minestrone, as I remember it, had tender red kidney beans and soft but assertive elbow macaronis. The recipe, which I just dug up, called for frozen mixed vegetables, beef bouillon cubes, and a lot of celery as well; but the memorable aspects were the cabbage, tomato, and macaroni. I had made a mental note to fix this memorable minestrone sometime soon. Then I forgot about it again . . .
. . . until I started looking for a suitable use for a large amount of curly endive leftover from an overzealous greens purchase I made in pursuit of my first salad ala Alice Waters. The salad consisted only of red leaf lettuce and curly endive, the endive being totally edible and nicely bitter, but a little tough. “I feel like a ruminant,” declared my husband between chews. I conceded that this hearty green might be more easily eaten cooked, so I searched the Web for ideas and found a minestrone soup recipe on the Eating Well site. Aha! I can dig up my old minestrone soup recipe and add the endive to that!
But wait! There’s more! Let me see if The Art of Simple Food has a minestrone recipe. If it does, I’ll make that instead!
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A simple fix: Wine vinegar, olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper
For the actual recipe, scroll down to the bottom of the post.
Just days after denouncing all dietary crap, I found myself in a little late-night quandary. While hastily preparing a portable lunch for the next day, I realized I had no crapless salad dressing on tap. In the home fridge we had Kraft Lite Ranch and Newman’s Own Light Lime Vinaigrette, the latter of which would have been good enough by my new standards but I really wanted to try to throw a dressing together before my quickly approaching bedtime. I’d just need a little guidance. Let me check a few cookbooks . . .
Hm. Fresh Tomato Vinaigrette or Blue Cheese Dressing from Healthy in a Hurry? Nope. No tomatoes on hand; no blue cheese to speak of. Okay, how about Apple Basil Dressing or maybe Orange Tarragon from Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites? Intriguing, but no basil and no tarragon. And I had no creamy cucumbers, no minted dill, no lemon tahini, no fresh buttermilk, nor any ingredient these seemingly basic dressings required. I was too stubborn to Google “viniagrette” — why did none of my cookbooks have a simple vinaigrette recipe?
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Oatmeal Corn Meal Bread, from The Book of Bread by Judith and Evan Jones
While composing the opening paragraph for a post about my favorite cookbooks I realized I had only two cookbooks that I really really loved, at least in my current collection, plus a handful of hardy go-to books, the recipes and advice of which result in many a speedy or satisfying meal, but don’t possess the material or artistry or style to bring them from 4-star (like it a lot) to 5-star (love it!) status.
The two books I own that I will happily curl up with to read and eagerly anticipate what recipe I shall try next are The Book of Bread by Judith and Evan Jones and White Chocolate by Janice Wald Henderson. It’s not just that I love kneading and shaping and baking and eating bread, or am delighted by the ivoryness, creaminess, and subtlety of white chocolate, but that these are the only two cookbooks I own about foods that I adore and through which I allow myself an occasional flight of fancy.
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January 17th, 2010 in
Banter,
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The weeklong "no-chicken-breast" challenge will soon begin!
A recent run-in with a pile of sawdust-dry chicken breast (thank you, Blue Shirt Café) has seriously maddened my chixbreastphiliac taste buds and they are rebelling — as are my teeth that had to chew, and my throat muscles that labored to swallow the tasteless mass — leaving me no choice but to ban the substance, at least for a week, so . . .
Chicken breast is dead to me (!) at least through Saturday, January 16. Most other parts of the chicken are welcome. Gary’s on board with this, too, and looks forward to a dinner of fine chicken thighs. And I’m planning meals around eggs and pork tenderloin.
It’s probably a very good thing, since chicken breast has dominated my diet for decades. It’s time to break loose and enjoy other meats and proteins for a little while. Wheeeee! I’m such a daredevil !!!!!!!!!
I know next to nothing about wine–how to sip it, how to describe it, nor why anyone would drink anything with “leathery undertones.” Still, I’ve decided to have a few sips of red wine (3 ounces or thereabouts) with my suppers for some far-out health reasons. But what the hell.
Here’s a running list of what I’ve sipped and what I thought about it. If I learn anything more about the stuff I’ll add some flowery descriptive prose to the entries.
Wines NWD would buy again
- 2008 Yellow Tail Shiraz (South Eastern Australia) ($7.99, Berman’s Wine & Spirits, Lexington, MA)
- 2008 La Vieille Ferme Côtes du Ventoux Rouge (Rhône Valley, France) ($7.99, Berman’s Wine & Spirits, Lexington, MA)
- 2007 Red Diamond Merlot (Washington State) ($10.99, Downtown Wine & Spirits, Somerville MA)
- …
Wines we’d drink but not necessarily buy again (except maybe for cooking)
- 2006 Ravens Wood Vintners Blend Merlot (California) ($10.99, Downtown Wine & Spirits, Somerville MA)
- 2003 Glen Ellen Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon (California) ($5.99, Berman’s Wine & Spirits, Lexington, MA)
- …
Never again . . .
January 5th, 2010 in
Drink,
wine | tags:
beverages,
Drink,
wine |
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The Art of Simple Food
What I mean by “relearn how to cook,” is learn and understand enough cooking and baking basics so I am no longer at the mercy of other people’s recipes. I want to be able to look in my fridge and kitchen cupboards and have some inkling how I can combine certain items to create a dish or a meal without consulting a cookbook or Googling anything.
The list of dishes I can create in the absence of guidance is limited and includes French toast, scrambled eggs, tuna salad, various stir-fries, basic baked fish or chicken, smoothies, and sauteed vegetables. There’s also a short list of self-created concoctions I make more often than other dishes, such as The Marcia Mash (mash together one can black beans, one ripe avocado, and one cup jarred salsa; serve with tortilla chips or just eat it straight) and Cauliflower Surprise (combine or cook together all or most of the following ingredients: Thai-flavored tofu, one small head caulifloer, one can chick peas, a handful of raisins, peanut sauce to taste, curry powder to taste [optional]).
Ironically, if I want to be able to cook without constant guidance, I’ll need some guidance. To that end, I’ve selected Alice Waters’s The Art of Simple Food as my cooking primer. I’ve already read the first few pages; it looks like the first issue I’ll address will be replacing many items already residing in my fridge and cupboards.
January 3rd, 2010 in
Uncategorized |
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