Friends=Food

I missed my darling Lizbeth today and decided to console myself by trying my hand at a dish she made while we visited over the holidays: roasted sweet potato, apple and onion. The apple bakes down into a magical slush that co-mingles with the sauteed onions and tender sweet potatoes. It's simply divine. It tastes like winter. And friendship!

Now she's one of those obnoxiously talented people who when you ask for a recipe say "oh i just threw some things together and a little while later I got this magically divine dish that tastes like what angels eat". Lovely. I have control issues! Just because I'm not going to follow the recipe doesn't mean I don't need one!! Gah! She also cans. CANS! That mystical thing people in the olden days did. She keeps telling me its not scary but I don't believe her. (I'm working on it though.)

But back to the food.

She said she "chopped up some sweet potatoes, apples and onions. Sauteed the onions then stuck it all in her Le Creuset dutch oven with some butter and cooked it in the oven for a while." Or something like that. So today at the Jewel I bought three sweet potatoes, four apples and one onion. Came home, peeled all the potatoes and realized I really only had space for one in my non Le Creuset baking dish. Damn! So peeled only TWO apples which was perfect and chopped up HALF the onion. I stuck the potatoes and apples in the dish with some butter in a 400 degree oven, sauteed the onion and added it a bit later. Then I tried to be all "relaxed" and "free form" and not set a timer. To just organically let the apples and potatoes cook down, occasionally peering in to watch the beautiful process, really feeling when they were ready...all that hippy cook shit.

I lasted approximately ten minutes until I freaked and set the timer for 20 min. So I'd say it took about 30 min to bake...makes enough to feed two as a side...it tastes as good as it smells. Delicious. Happy memories of a wee kitchen and dear friend ran through my brain, not as good as the real thing but hey, I'll take it. And eat it too.

I was slightly nervous the whole time, wondering if I had forgotten something, messed up the ratios, should be stirring it more?? etc etc. Hopefully the next time I make this dish I'll be less twitchy about going sans recipe...free ballin' it? Is that too much?? Cooking from the gut? Being the Neil Armstrong of chefs? Something like that. I'm not terribly good at being off script in my life so I suppose I'm not surprised it extends into my cooking style, it's certainly something to work on. And comes with tasty rewards!

At the Jewel I also bought some brussels sprouts. They're apparently a winter thing so I've been planning on using some for a while. They looked very fresh today so in a moment of Alice Waters style "being open" I bought a hand-full. I have no idea what I want to do with them other than eat them. So if you people have any suggestions I'd love to hear them. And they'll be a very healthy start to 2011 if you, like me, are beginning a veggie binge after eating the Holidays.

P.S. If you've never checked out what a brussels sprout plant looks like DO. It's freakish and Belgian. Like Poirot.

Giving Thanks Sandin Style

In the world of retail the holiday of Thanksgiving seems barely a blip. After the Halloween displays come down it jumps straight to Christmas, which makes me sad. Mainly because we Chicagoans have a really loooong winter ahead of us, and while the holiday season is lovely, fall needs to be fall as long as possible!! But really it's because Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.

First there's all the political incorrectness. It's just so fun! Small pox blanket anyone??

Second, there's being full of Thanks. I've got a lot to be thankful for, especially around this time of year as it's my anniversary with Chicago. Two years and we're still in love! And isn't the idea of a holiday completely devoted to counting your blessings a lovely thought?

Thirdly I could count all the crazy sales, but as I do not partake in Black Friday I wont.

So thirdly, and most importantly, it's about the food.

Duh.

Sandins are traditionally un-traditional, but for our Thanksgiving fare we actually pretend to be normal. Of course things end up a bit funny...take our turkey this year for instance. My parents ordered a 15 to 20 lbs turkey from the IGA and ended up with a whopping 27 lb bird! Twenty Seven Pounds of Meat. By my father's calculations (double checked by Mom I'm sure) it would take 8 and a half hours to roast. Almost two bags of stuffing were shoved up its cavity. It took up the whole of the oven. It was as big as my head.

We all came to the table with hearty appetites and barely managed to eat half of it. Though having a 19 yr old male to feed certainly helped!

Our post feast entertainment was watching Dr Karl bemusedly de-meat the bird.

But that didn't take too long so D and I had to entertain ourselves by doing finger tip/dead hangs from the grip tape he put above the door moulding. It's a climbing thing. Of course I am barely tall enough to reach with one hand while D...well, not much of a challenge for him. Do your family members climb doors? Oh, apparently the proper term is 'header moulding'. We have grip tape above our header moulding. Hah.

And then there's the left-overs. Turkey Sammitches. I love it. I never buy lunch meat so its really the only time of year that I'm going to eat a turkey sammitch. And I do it with bells on.

First there's the issue of bread. For some reason we've latched onto sourdough for turkey leftovers, I think there's a story there but I'm not sure what. I like mine toasted, because toast is amazing. Mayo on one piece, cranberry relish on the other. The middle consists of turkey (dark meat), mashed potatoes and perhaps a piece of lettuce. Because you probably need some lettuce by that point...or stuffing if you're not ready to be responsible yet. We take our sammitches seriously, especially Dr K. A remnant of his days lurking in Jersey hoagie shops. You should see him terrorizing the staff at Subway, it's hysterical.

This is his Serious Face.

This is Serious Business.

Ok now it might be 'lintel moulding'. The proper use of architectural terms is also Serious Business. Lintel moulding is both architecturally and structurally correct, we (Dr K) is still searching for the proper vernacular carpentry term. He has books in his office you see...

And on that note I'm declaring an end to the Thanksgiving post. It's after Boxing Day. And my father is reminding me of my duty to the blog reading public. That means you. Are you thank-full??!!

Eating Trees

Eating seasonally is something I'm trying to do more (along with drinking more water and eating better chocolate). Having to try to eat seasonally is kind of funny when you think about it. We have come so far in our ability to get food out of season that we forget that we used to be bound to the earth for when we could eat things. Eating strawberries in winter doesn't even make us blink. You can't cheer an unhappy Margaret with the prospect of strawberries from Col Brandon's greenhouses any more! No! But are they really worth it? Forced into ripeness can they really be as good as the first strawberry of summer? After all, anticipation is an important part of eating...thoughts, thoughts, thoughts.

Well, eating seasonally in winter means Cauliflower.

I have never been anti-cauliflower, just not particularly fond of it. Other than eating it raw with ranch dip I've never really known what to do with it...steamed cauliflower is ok just not...y'know...enough to make me want to eat it. While I was home in the fall my Mom had a copy of Donna Hay's magazine. Cauliflower was a featured item of that issue with recipes that got me thinking. White cauliflower pizza? Cauliflower puree? Hmmm.

However it wasn't until I was home for Thanksgiving that I actually got around to doing anything about it. It was after dinner that Friday, my parents and I decided to make a quick Dessert Run to the IGA and you have to pass through the produce section to get to the ice cream. That was where we saw it. The biggest head of cauliflower I've ever seen in my life. It was massive. Still encased in their leaves there were three of them taking up a whole stand. "Can we get one??!!" "Oh yeah." Ignoring the basket my Dad just carried it around like a baby while we made our ice cream selections. Once we were home we just stared at it for a while. I took pictures with a pint glass to show its size.

"What are we going to do to it??" The plan was to make a side dish for the dinner we were going to the next day. Recipe books and boxes were brought out, I consulted my Fearless Leaders of Food (Orangette and Smitten), but it was the recipe for braised cauliflower from that Donna Hay Magazine that won out.

I didn't end up making the dish at all (Bad Bear!). Mom made it while I went on a mission to Beverage Source with Dad so I'll post the actual recipe once I get it...but I did eat it! We had it with a delicious shepherds pie, greedily pouring the buttery juices over the braised vegetable and scraping our places. Even the small child ate all her vegetables! I officially love cauliflower.

I'm going to try my hand at this braising thing soon...but one of my favorite things to do in life is roast things. Anything really. You already know I roast beets and pumpkins but there's Tomatoes with coriander, eggplant for a sauce, asparagus, whatever.

I'm currently eating half a cauliflower that I've roasted to deliciousness. It's salty and savory and buttery. This is what I love about roasting. The ratio of effort to delicious is completely in your favor.

Turn your oven to 400 degrees. Grab a vegetable, chop, cover with olive oil and some salt and pepper. Place on a greased cookie sheet, or do as I do and put it on tin foil in a toaster oven (this is the way to go in summer or if you're just cooking for one). Set your timer for 10-20 min depending on what you're roasting and then walk away. Walk away! Clean up the kitchen, prep the rest of your meal, smells will soon begin to emerge and fill the room. Now is the time to peep at it once in a while, give a few stirs, and once you've reached your desired level of golden brown take it out and eat it. Soon you'll be like me, blinking sadly into an empty bowl and coming to the stunned realization that you just ate half a head of cauliflower.

Now I know that I promised Thanksgiving but eating that bowl of white awesomeness I just had to gush about it! Besides Thanksgiving is turning into a multi post monster so just hold your horses! So until next week, go stuff your faces! Oh and I put up two photos from the Beet Episode, check out the horror.

But Wait! There's More!

So that pumpkin...I forgot to talk to you about its guts. And what I did with them.

Because when you use whole pumpkins you get to be like the Native Americans and use practically everything! Well just the pulp and seeds, but still!

When I was prepping the pumpkin for roasting I just set the seeds aside to deal with later, I was still sifting through the millions of recipes for roast pumpkin seeds that are out there-salty, spicy, salty AND spicy. I finally settled on one that was Sweet, Spicy and Savory. I was intrigued by the use of rosemary, which is one of my favorite spices.

Removing the seeds from the slimy stringy inner guts bit was highly entertaining to myself and my inner child. It has fantastic squish, and made a bit of a mess! Once they seeds were finally de-gooed i just set them on some paper towel to dry and stored them in the fridge.

I do recommend waiting to roast the seeds until you are able to eat them fresh out of the oven, they just aren't the same after they cool down! Plus it smells amazing and you should share the smell with more than just yourself. But oh man are they tasty, and the rosemary is definitely what sets this recipe apart.

Now as you know Thanksgiving was this week, and for we Sandins it's kind of a big deal. We like it better than Christmas. And this year we had the Largest Turkey in Memory, weighing in at just under 27 lbs. It took eight and a half hours to roast and we barely ate half of but that's not really the point now is it. I made sure to document the gastro blast this mini-break at home turned out to be, and even took photo evidence. Next Sunday: Giving Thanks Sandin Style.

Punkin.

Ok. I say "it was as big as my head" a lot. Now I didn't actually measure, but I'm pretty sure that pumpkin was as big as my head. It lived on top of my fridge for almost a month. Staring at me when I made my dinner, perhaps wondering when I'd get the balls to do something with it or wimp out and let it rot like the rest of the pumpkins people buy in the fall. Except it wouldn't die a death by carving, or a splendid rot in an autumnal decorating scheme. No. It would rot alone, on a 24 yr old's fridge surrounded by bags of bread, naan, and apples.

I may be chicken shit but I'm not that heartless.

And I'm chicken shit because I want to bake with it. And last fall I had a nightmare about being forced to make pumpkin pie out of real pumpkins which ended with me and the kitchen getting covered in Nickelodeon levels of pumpkin guts. Not cool.

Then I found this post: http://www.elanaspantry.com/how-to-roast-a-pumpkin-in-10-steps/

It has pictures. Pictures make things not scary, it's proof that someone out there managed to do it without dying or trashing their kitchen. So, the morning of October 30th, I took the pumpkin down from the fridge top, patted it on the head and then proceeded to hack it in half, scoop out its guts and roast it in a hot oven for an hour.

Now that article has you set the pumpkin in a pan with some water. That sounded silly to me so I found another where you brush it with melted butter and wrap it in tin foil to roast. Removing the pumpkin skin was pretty fun, and a food processor would have been easier to puree the pulp with, but a blender can be made to do it! So I had pumpkin puree. Well this kids is what I decided to do with it:

http://smittenkitchen.com/2008/11/pumpkin-cupcakes/#more-1401

Pumpkin cupcakes with maple cream cheese frosting. Oh yeah, you all wish you live with me now don't you. But of course nothing went as it's supposed to...i'm 24 I don't buy cake flour so that switch was a given, however I do own pumpkin spice mix so just used that, and I wish I knew of this post before I wasted buttermilk. And of course once the batter was all made I realized I didn't have enough cup liners...so it became 8 cupcakes and a pumpkin loaf. But things went pretty smoothly after that, they were happily baking in the oven, my apartment smelled delicious, the frosting all made with no problem...awesome! Right?

No. Of course not.

The frosting. It's delicious, I'm smothering the cupcakes in its loveliness, licking the knife and everything. It's creamy and has that tart thing going on with just a hint of the maple sweetness. It's fantastic. And oh my God there's like 6 cups of it. For 8 cupcakes. WTF?! What did I do?? I measured everything correctly! Sure I only made 8 cupcakes instead of 18 but really! There should not be that much even for 18! Sure I could frost the loaf but I didn't want to damnit! So what to do with a tupperware container of 3 cups of leftover maple cream cheese frosting...hmm.

I was hesitant to classify it as a "problem" because surely frosting is not a bad thing. I know people who eat it straight out of a can. With spoons. And while I'm not crazy about frosting typically, this batch was really good. Moshka (the Awesome Roommate/Best Friend For Life) and I held conference about the Frosting Dilemma. Our solution: graham crackers, gingersnaps and friends. For the next two weeks we pushed frosting on anyone who stepped through our front door, including ourselves. We ate it watching Friends, as a late night snack, at Girls Night, and finally killed it over a game of Bananagrams. It was about this time that I realized the Why to the So Much issue. I was meant to make rosettes for 18 cupcakes as well as just "frosting" them. Oh. Yeah. I'm not that fancy. And you don't have to be either, just halve the recipe. Or buy a lot of graham crackers.

And the cupcakes/loaf themselves were really quite spectacular. Being a big fan of pumpkin baked goods I cheerfully ate a slice of bread a day, begrudgingly shared with co-workers, mourned when it was all gone, and told anyone who would listen about how I killed a pumpkin and then ate it.

But the best part is all those Halloween pumpkins are on sale right now! Looking at you with their sad eyes at the grocery store like puppies, I know you see them. So I think you should buy one. I really do. Make a pie. Bake some bread. Frost the shit out of it. It's really an act of kindness you see, without you they'd rot en mass in some depressing dumpster. A giant gourd genocide. And only YOU can stop it!

Go buy a pumpkin. The End.

You will never forget you've eaten beets.

When passing on recipes people often add little notes or comments, "make sure you don't boil it too long as it gets bitter!" "you don't have to use cake flour!" etc. But when someone tells you that fresh beets will "make your stools look like you hemorrhaged a fetus," it gives one pause. I mean asparagus pee is one thing but...whoa. I knew beet juice could stain but is that the reason why people don't eat beets that much?? My god!

A friend once raved about a recipe for roasted beets she found on the Friday Food Files from the sfgirlbybay blog. However I don't have a grill. One day I will be a real grown up with a back yard to grill in. Or at least a fire escape big enough for a mini-webber...and then I will grill beets. So on with the searching for things to do with beets. Julia suggests making them into a salad, Molly of Orangette likes to make them into a tart with feta cheese. That was a fantastic post of hers but still not quite what I was looking for...I finally just google searched beets and lo! Roasted beets with shallots? Now that's more like it.

Of course I had to bastardize the recipe. It's what I do. It's nearly impossible for me to complete a recipe as is. I don't set out to do it, it's usually a combination of lack of supplies and just being ornery. This time the beet greens were a bit too far gone to be eaten, orange zest is silly when you don't have an orange, and I didn't have walnuts...so I ended up just buying shallots and deciding to see if it would go well over pasta instead of greens.

So there I was, alone in my kitchen on a Friday night with rubber gloves, a sharp knife and a bunch of beets. Let's do this.

Cut to ten minutes later. I'm slamming the oven door shut and surveying my kitchen. It looked like I had slaughtered tiny hot pink animals. Pink stained gloves, pink stained knife, pink stained chopping board, pink spots on my floor from dropped bits. Awesome. I was just finishing the cleanup when the beets and shallots were done roasting, and of course slicing the beets made a mess again so the mean thoughts about beets was at an all time high when it came time to taste my dinner.

I take it all back. Slaughter is fun. The clean up is worth it. Beets are delicious. Rubber gloves not actually needed.

Beets have a fantastic earthiness to them, which isn't quite like anything else out there. Paired with the slight sweetness of the shallots and the vinaigrette it's fantastic. Though perhaps a bit too sweet...less sugar next time. And penne is a good solid base to put it all on, and when it absorbs the beet juice it turns an awesome shade of pink! PINK!

Now this recipe did take a bit of time and makes an awful mess but guess what! The basic concept is easily turned into a "I'm starving and only have 10 minutes to make dinner" dish! A must have for any Twenty Something. Boil up a hand full of penne, saute up some onions/shallots in olive oil. Chop up some canned beets, add them to the onion to heat up and then serve over the penne.

So go, find some beets and revel in pink food.

But wait, about 20 minutes after you eat it you'll remember the beginning of this post. The post beet scatological horror. Oh yeah they weren't kidding. If you hadn't been given a heads up you'd be checking into the ER right about now. It only lasts about 24 hrs, let your inner 5 yr old enjoy itself.

"WTF do I do with bok choy??"

That was the title of an email I sent to my Aunties a few weeks ago.

You see I had just inherited a friend's vegetable order as she was out of town and was now faced with a fridge full of kale, beets, baby bok choy and a small pumpkin. Now I've always considered myself a pretty adventurous eater. And cook. I know what to do with kale. But fresh beets? Bok choy??

I was not prepared.

So I sent out emails. And asked "What would Julia and Giada do?" Armed with advice from family and friends I entered the kitchen to begin the Great Veggie Fest of 2010. Two weekends. Four dishes. One happy belly.

First up: baby bok choy

When asked my Mom remembered a salad she once ate while visiting the Aunties, "it was a salad with rice, plum vinegar, olive oil, garlic, soy sauce with apple and roasted pumpkin seeds"

Isn't it funny how some dishes just stick with you? Sure enough the Aunties knew just what she was talking about, a salad of raw baby bok choy sliced with apples and topped with vinegars.

I ended up making it with the bok choy, apples, sliced almonds and just rice vinegar. It was quite delicious, added a lovely crunch to the salad. I ate it standing up in the kitchen on a lovely Friday afternoon with the smell of burnt...something...wafting through the air. Courtesy of the new downstairs neighbors. Its never a good sign when you round the corner to find a fire truck parked in front of your apartment and the fire marshal walking out your front door shaking his head. After making sure nothing was still burning I marched straight up stairs and made baby bok choy salad. Very comforting.

Next up, beets.