Applesauce

It has been more than a month since my Grandma passed away. She was such an important part of my childhood, my idea of what family and home means--I still can't believe she's gone.

But it's good to remember that one way she lives on is through the dishes she taught us all to make. Grandma was a fantastic cook and baker. A favorite easy recipe for a cold fall day (today is close--a cold spring day) is her applesauce.

This recipe isn't really a recipe because you can vary it any way you like. Wash, core, and cut into half-inch pieces four (or more) of your favorite variety of apple. Mix a few together--a sweet golden delicious and a sour granny smith, for example. Braeburn also are very good. I leave the peel on for color, but you could take it off if you don't like it.

Place the apple pieces in a heavy pan and splash in a few tablespoons of water. Next add spices to your taste: cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, cardamom, ginger, etc. Start with scant amounts because you can always add more. Leave out anything you don't like.

As for sugar, Grandma would always say she didn't like it too sweet, and I agree. The apples have so much natural sweetness, white sugar just overwhelms it. If you are used to commercial applesauce, this homemade version will taste much spicier (and more interesting, in my opinion). I wait until the end and add a dash of sugar if the sauce is too sour. Other options: honey or maple syrup.

Put your pan over a low heat and cover. Keep an eye on it, stirring every few minutes, and let it cook down slowly. Add a little more water if it gets too dry; boil some water off if too soupy. There's really no way to mess this up. Remove the pan from the heat when the texture looks right--sooner if you like chunky applesauce. And if you're really persnickety, you can puree it.

What can you do with this? Eat it out of the pan, hot. Pour over vanilla ice cream. Drizzle over pork chops. Stir into yogurt or hot oatmeal. And thank my Grandma for the treat!

Minnestrone--an actual recipe

My friend mentioned the other day that she enjoys this blog but hasn't tried any of the dishes because I tend to be a little inexact with the details. She's right, of course. "Grate cheese until your arm falls off" isn't very instructional.

It's only that I think people's belief that they must do everything exactly as the recipe says is what makes them afraid to cook. Some would disagree with me, but in my view there is nothing sacred about a recipe. The fun is in substituting, combining, and streamlining recipes so that the dish matches your needs and not the other way around. Part of my hope in starting this blog was to talk about foods that are healthful, easy to make, and utilize ingredients you may have lying around. The only way people will start taking better care of their bodies through what they eat is if food is convenient and satisfying. I think we all love Chicken Mole, but the real deal calls for three kinds of chiles and real Mexican chocolate. If you are planning to make it, please invite me over, but alas, I will not be making it for myself anytime soon.

So, here is a real recipe, complete with measurements, for Minestrone. The word means "big soup" in Italian, and it is hearty enough to make a meal all by itself. I may be violating sacred Italian law by varying the ingredients, but I don't really care. I needed to clean out the crisper and had no meat on hand, so this one's vegetarian.

Home Food Minestrone

Ingredients:
1 tbsp olive oil
1 red onion, chopped
3 carrots, sliced into 1/2-inch pieces
5 ribs celery, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
salt and pepper to taste
1 tbsp oregano
1 tbsp thyme
1 28 oz can diced tomatoes (organic really are better)
splash red wine or sherry
1 quart broth (vegetable, beef, or chicken would work)
1 can white or romano beans
3/4 cup gemelli pasta (you could use any small-ish style--I just love the shape of this one).
7 large leaves red swiss chard, deribbed and shredded
3/4 cup frozen peas

Place a large pot over medium-high heat and add olive oil. Heat until it become fragrant, about a minute. Add chopped onion, carrots, and celery. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions become transparent. These three aromatic vegetables give a lot of flavor to the soup, so don't rush this step.

Sprinkle salt, pepper, oregano, thyme, and garlic over the vegetables and stir. You may need to turn down the heat slightly--it's ok if onions are sticking, but you don't want them to burn. Cook about 1 minute (your kitchen is going to start smelling heavenly at this point). Splash in enough wine or sherry to coat the bottom of the pan and stir vigorously with a wooden spoon, scraping the bottom of the pan to remove the stuck-on bits that are full of flavor. This is called deglazing and makes a huge difference (both for the recipe and for when you have to clean the pan later).

Add broth and beans. You may need to add some water as well, if the soup seems too thick. You'll have to eyeball this one. Just remember that if you add too much, it's ok--you can boil it off. And if you add too little, you can always add more later. Bring to a boil and turn down heat. Simmer ten minutes.

Bring back to a boil and add pasta. Cook at this temperature until pasta is done. Then turn the heat back to low. Add the swiss chard (powerfully nutritious stuff) and peas and give it one final stir. The heat of the broth will cook the peas almost instantly, even if they came right out of the freezer. Add more salt or pepper as needed, and serve with grated parmesan and a loaf of crusty bread. Yum!

How'd I do, Evi?

Goodness in a three by three square

Last Night's Lasagna (not pictured: the first two pieces)

The lasagna was outstanding! And it was wonderful to be able to pop it in the oven and lie down on the living room floor for an hour while I waited for it to cook. That's about all I can manage at the moment.

It was a little bit soupy. Just a little. But I'm afraid if I had left out some of the liquid from the tomatoes, say, it would have been too dry, which is a much more dire tragedy in the world of lasagna. I removed the foil about halfway through, rather than waiting until the last ten minutes, and that seemed to help.

Good Ol' Lasagna

As some of you know, I am anticipating some news in the next week or so on my first attempt at a novel. I keep imagining my manuscript as a figurine (with arms and legs kind of like Gumby's, except that it is made out of paper and wearing a top hat for some reason) strolling around Manhattan to meetings with publishers, shaking people's hands and fanning out his pages seductively while editors nod with approval.

And then, in some of the darker daydreams, he gets a little touristy and goes to the top of the Empire State Building, where he promptly blows off the edge, scatters all over Fifth Avenue, and disintegrates under the tires of taxis.

[insert nervous laughter here]

And that is how I decided to make something really time consuming for tomorrow's dinner.

Instructions:

Take everything that isn't milk out of the crisper (if you don't live somewhere with milk-in-a-bag, you won't get this) and dice it up. Heat a tablespoon or so of olive oil in a big pot. Dump in onions, carrots, parsnips, and anything rooty that takes a long time to soften. Cook until soft, five to ten minutes. Add several garlic cloves, minced, and cook another minute. Splash in something liquid (I love sherry, and sometimes it even makes it into the food) to deglaze. Then put in one large can of crushed tomatoes and one large can of whole or diced. Add whatever other vegetables are lying around. I had two zucchinis and some swiss chard, which I sliced into strips, plus a couple fresh tomatoes.

Now, some people would say that I should have added meat back there, and the thing is, I intended to, but blinding anxiety has a way of impeding cognition. When I realized my mistake, it was too late, as I wasn't about to dump raw hamburger into the mix. So I browned it in a separate pan and added at the end to the sauce. No big deal.

Add to this a lot of black pepper, basil, oregano, etc. No salt is needed with canned tomatoes but if you have a death wish, be my guest.

Now for the cheese. Shred mozzarella until your arm falls off or you have three cups, whichever comes first. Then add enough cottage cheese to make a thick spread. Or ricotta is even better, but I didn't have any on hand.

Spray a 13x9 pan and begin your layers with a scoop of sauce. This keeps everything from sticking. Add the pasta sheets (I had a multigrain fresh in the freezer but whatever is fine--I never cook them first regardless), then a layer of cheese, and repeat until it is going to overflow and make a mess of your fridge. Don't do what I did and continue adding ingredients like some deranged person and be surprised when it overflows.

I really was surprised. It's like I'm stupid or something.

Finish with parmesan cheese, cover with foil and cook at 375 for an hour, removing the foil in the last ten minutes to let the parmesan brown. Mine is still in the fridge to wait for tomorrow, which will come in handy, since by then I will probably be spending most of the day crouched in the back of the closet.

It's quite possible I've left out a major step here. I'll post a picture tomorrow and let you know how it turns out!

Bon Appecheap!

Today's New York Times has a great article on food magazines downshifting from luxury ingredients to less expensive recipes and teaching people how to use leftovers to make a dish stretch. There's also a nice description of how food magazines have evolved since WWII.

Bravo to a more economical approach to cooking! Fancy food is fun, but overweight, in-debt Americans need help learning to cook simple, nutritious dishes that are inexpensive and easy.

All hail bacon!

This post might seem to contradict some things I've said in the past about eating healthy. Bacon is full of saturated fat, calories, and sodium. But you know what else it's full of? Happiness. And the USDA recommends happiness as part of a balanced diet.

It is in that spirit that I give you potato cheddar soup with bacon, based loosely on the Epicurious recipe.

Fry half a pound of bacon in a pan. Before you do, though, watch this tutorial. What can't the internet teach you how to do? It must be how W. got through his first term.

Remove the cooked bacon to a paper towel-lined plate, reserving the grease in the pan. That's right--the basis for this soup is bacon grease.

Chop up one onion and cook it in the grease. Let it get soft. As I've mentioned, I hate an undercooked onion. When it's just about ready, deglaze the pan with some sherry or wine to get all the sticky yummy bits. Then pour the mixture into a soup pot.

Stir 1/4 cup flour into a measuring cup containing 1 3/4 cups water. Then add to the onion mixture, along with 2 cups give or take of chicken broth and a pound of cubed potatoes. Bring to a boil and let simmer until the potatoes are cooked through and the soup is thick and bubbly.

Now here comes the lily-gilding part. Stir in a cup of shredded cheddar cheese or some plain yogurt. Or not. Puree in a food processor if desired, or not. We had it chunky and it was great. At this point you could also chop up the cooked bacon and add it to the soup, but we elected for BLTs instead.

Enjoy!

Roasting Vegetables

I almost feel guilty posting about this because it is so easy--like explaining how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But this was what we had for dinner last night, and it was good.

We had invited our neighbors, who are from Vietnam, to come over for dinner. They were very sweet when we asked about food allergies, vegetarianism, or dislikes, saying they liked everything, but I was nervous. We have made lots of international friends in our time here in Ontario (we are some of the only Americans where Bob works) and I have learned that "We eat everything" means different things to different people.

I decided the best course of action was roasted vegetables tossed with pasta and chicken. I love roasting vegetables. It fills the whole apartment with a wonderful smell and it's so easy a monkey could do it. The most time-consuming part is all the chopping.

Seasonal is best, of course, but I am not afraid to admit I'm getting a little tired of parsnips and potatoes. I am craving green! So I did my part to prop the Californian economy and bought green beans, broccoli, red pepper, carrots (these were local, actually), and a big luscious red onion.

Clean and chop everything into pieces roughly the same size, except for the red onion, which is the secret to this whole deal, in my opinion. Slice it into the finest long slivers you can. They practically melt in the oven. Heaven! Toss all the vegetables with the onion, a lot of minced garlic, a few glugs olive oil, and generous salt and pepper. Lemon would be good too. I find the easiest way to do this is to use your hands. Just tumble it all around in a big bowl, the idea being that everything should be covered in the oil. Let it all rest a while on the counter or in the fridge.

When you're ready to cook then, spread the veggies on a cookie sheet lined with foil. Use two pans if one seems too full--it's best if the veggies roast in a single layer. Pop into 400 degree oven for about 25 minutes. If you are using two sheets, you'll have to switch them around a couple time to be sure they cook evenly. They will start to brown. Grab them out before they go too far. They can burn fast or dry out at this point.

This is hands-down the best broccoli you will ever taste. It seems smoked or something.

Boil your pasta, drain (reserving a little liquid in case you need it), and add veggies, chopped chicken, a little cheese if you like. Toss it all together and serve with big bowls.

Incidentally, I did cheat by buying a precooked chicken from the deli. Inexplicably, the cooked chicken is cheaper than a raw one, and I didn't have the time to cook one myself anyway. I'm not even going to think about all the additives it probably contains. As we speak I am boiling the carcass with lots of celery leaves, whole black peppercorns, onions, garlic, carrot, and thyme. I'll let you know how it turns out.