Figs: Pure Romance

I ducked into the Whole Foods to buy dip, and what should appear before my eyes but a display of fresh turkey figs? They were perfectly ripe and they were on sale. When the universe is speaking to you this clearly, ignore it at your own peril.


Soft, fragrant, and curvy figs are among our most sensuous fruits. Bite or cut into one: the dusky skin just barely offers resistance, then yields to reveal white flesh and glistening pink jelly. The taste is as delicate as a caress.

Match the sweet murmur of figs with a nibble of black pepper and a nip of goat cheese. Soften the cheese’s bite with a little dollop of honey. Serve these to your sweetheart as a light dessert, maybe with a moscato or a glass of lemonade, as the sun slips out of the summer sky. Breathe in the scents of figs and summer as evening fades into night. Draw your lover gently into your arms, place your lips close to her ear, and whisper:

“Are you going to eat that last one?”

Figs with Honeyed Goat Cheese
Sometimes you can find goat cheese with honey in the schmantzy cheese section of the grocery store. If you don’t see it, just get some chevre and put it in the blender with a couple of tablespoons of honey. Taste and add as you go until it is a nice balance of goat-tart and honey-sweet.

Fresh ripe figs
Honeyed goat cheese (see note above)at room temperature
Fresh ground black pepper

Trim any stems off the figs. Slice them in half the long way. Lay the fig halves cut side up.

Stir up the cheese so it is soft. Using two spoons, drop ½ to 1 teaspoon of cheese on the center hollow of each fig half. Arrange the figs smartly on a serving plate.

Grind a little black pepper over the figs. Bat your eyes a little as you serve them.

Go with what you know

Today is a special day! It’s a milestone birthday for Beth, the most important person in the entire universe. There’s little to nothing I wouldn’t do for her, so when she asks me to make her favorite cake and decorate it with flowers, I do so with a smile on my face and a song in my heart.

Beth loves the devil’s food cake recipe from Eleanor Ostman’s Always on Sunday frosted with the chocolate mousse frosting from Joy of Cooking. I usually decorate her cake with fresh pansies and mint leaves from the garden.

“But,” I wondered, “what if I candy the flowers?” I mulled over the advantages. “They will stay pretty for longer. I can preserve them in advance. I can capture them at the apex of their bloom, and they will look FABULOUS.”

And besides, it would be one more layer of elegance. One more confectionary demonstration of how much I love this brilliant woman. She makes my whole world feel like chocolate cake and a field of flowers. Why wouldn’t I want to pull out all the stops on her birthday?

So I studied up on how to candy the flowers. I picked the best ones, freshened them in cold water, and brushed them in egg wash with a clean, fine paintbrush. I dusted them as gently as I could with superfine sugar. I laid them carefully on parchment to dry.

I succeeded in turning the simple beauty of summer pansies…


into these sugar-mummified floral corpses.


I did not have the heart to put them on a cake this important. Good thing I have been super nice to my pansies all month. They were kind enough to have opened some new flowers. Thanks, pansies. I’ll go with what I know and not count on fancy sugar acrobatics to carry the day.

Happy birthday, dear Beth!

Pico de Mango

In case you didn't get the bulletin, it's summer. The days are a grind of punishing sun. The night flows in, sultry, its dark heat draping us with a slick sheen of languor. The dense, humid air trails its heavy fingers across our skin, leaving trickles of sweat to slip down a back or a neck. In my garden, the scents of jasmine and lily hang in voluptuous clouds, nectar oozing to the tips of turgid pistils, pollen sifting off to stain fleshy white petals.

It’s salsa weather. Mangoes are a shudderingly fine balance between acid and sweet. Their lazy, musky nectar and silk-smooth flesh are a perfect complement to the vigorous crunch and zing of onions, chiles, and cilantro. Round it off with the clean finish of lime to cut the lingering sweetness.

Mango Salsa
I have won so many salsa contests with this recipe that people don’t know whether to get mad or hungry when they see me coming.
2 ripe mangoes
5 or 6 scallions or half a small onion
1 or 2 jalapeño chiles
A fistful of cilantro
Juice of one lime
A dash of salt

Chop everything and mix it up. That’s it!

Bonus: How to cut up a mango
There are still people in the world who do not know how to cut up a mango without waste or injury. Not another thumb lost to mangoes!

Anatomy of a mango: The large, flat seed is in the center of the mango. Its fibrous outside is entrenched in the flesh. The trick is to cut away the fruit as close to the seed as possible, then come back for what’s attached to the seed.
























Addressing the mango: Find the stem to tell you where the center is. Hold the mango so the seed is perpendicular to the cutting surface.





















Lop off the cheeks. With practice, you will learn to know how close to the center you can cut.

















Score the flesh. Try to cut as deep as the skin, but not through the skin.



















Now hold the mango slice like a votive offering and push it inside out. The skin will pop from concave to convex, presenting you with many cubes of mango that you can slice or pick off the skin.





Finally, pare the skin off the remaining disc and whittle the flesh off the seed. This is slippery and possibly dangerous. If you don’t want to risk your fingers, and especially if no one is looking, you might just want to gnaw the fruit off the seed.

Hey, cook’s privilege. You earned it.

Salmon for Introverts

I’ll have a real picture as soon as I can figure out how this damn camera phone works.

Every time my friends John and Mike get an invitation to the same event as me, Mikey asks, “Is Beth going to be there?” The answer is often “no.” My partner, Beth, likes a quiet, intimate setting with a nice meal and a chance for a long conversation.

John and I belong to a circle of friends that, quite frequently, sings bawdy songs at the top of our voices in a space packed with as many of us as will fit.

So to give our introverted partners a chance to bond, I arranged dinner with Beth, John, and Mike at my house. John and I conducted an entire conversation to the tune of “America, F*** Yeah” (NSFW) while Beth and Mike embarked on an in-depth mutual fascination. In another room.

When it was time to serve, we turned to Beth and Mike. They were so deep in a conversation about yoga and modern art that they did not even hear us sing, “It’s dinnertime, F*** YEAH!”

Eh. How did we manage to attract these gentle people, who assert themselves so differently—and so much more quietly—than we do? I don’t know about John, but I used recipes like this to entice my introverted sweetheart into loving me back.

Salmon, Spinach Pasta, and Salad with Beet and Fennel
This meal would have served six. There were leftovers.

The Salmon
2 lb salmon fillets
5 springs rosemary
1 T olive oil
3 T lemon juice
Salt and pepper

Pick the leaves off the rosemary stalks and chop them. Mix all ingredients but the salmon. Rub the seasoning mix on the cut side of the fish. Refrigerate for 1 or 2 hours.

Broil or grill the fish for 8-10 minutes or until cooked to desired degree of firmness.

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The Pasta

1 lb whole wheat penne
2 T olive oil
2-3 cloves garlic
1 lb spinach leaves, washed and dried
1 splash of white wine
½ c Parmesan cheese
A grating of nutmeg
A grind of black pepper

Boil water and heat a pan. Pour the pasta in the boiling water. About 5 minutes before the pasta is cooked, pour the olive oil into the pan and swirl it around. Sauté the garlic for 30 seconds. Toss in the spinach and sauté for three or four minutes. Pour in a splash of wine, cover, and steam for a minute more. Take the pan off the heat.

The pasta should be about done. Drain it well. Throw it in the same pan with your spinach, the cheese, and the nutmeg and pepper. Toss to coat the pasta and serve immediately.

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The Salad
1 cup cooked diced beets
1 cup sliced fennel (stalks and leaves are great!)
1 head Boston lettuce (I used red from Dehn’s Garden)
Balsamic vinaigrette
Moisten the beets with a teaspoon or two of dressing. Toss the greens, beets, and fennel with a little more of the dressing. That’s it!

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The Crazy Cat Index

We interrupt our regular food-related programming to bring you the Crazy Cat Index.

The Crazy Cat Index is a metric that gives insight on whether you (or anyone) are in danger of becoming a Crazy Cat Lady. It is just an indicator, and the outlying values are not necessarily useful. But that's no problem for me. The Crazy Cat Index is really just a tool for speculation, time-wasting, or making fun of my ex-girlfriends.

Here's how it works: the index is a ratio of person's age multiplied by number of cats in the household; over number of rooms in the household times number of human beings who share it. Age is measured in years. "Room" is defined as a weatherproof, full-time habitation space. Hallways don't count. Patios don't count. Bathrooms count, as do finished basement spaces. Laundry rooms? Sure, why not. Storage closets? No. If you're arguing to include closet space, then you already know you're a crazy cat lady. Stop trying to game the index.

Here are some examples for comparison.

Let's say a 35-year-old woman with one pet cat lives alone in a one-bedroom apartment with separate living and dining spaces. Count the rooms: 1) bedroom; 2) kitchen; 3) bathroom; 4) living room; 5) dining room.

Nothing about this woman sounds crazy outright. Her CCI is (35*1)/(5*1), or 7. If we increase her age to 50, her CCI is 10. So 7 to 10 a good benchmark for a person with a cat but no particular indicators of crazy. If the person shares the apartment with someone, the CCI is halved. This is still within normal range.

Compare with the CCI I calculated for someone of my acquaintance who is a known crazy cat lady. At 43 years of age, she lives in a small one-bedroom apartment (bed, bath, kitchen, living/dining area) with three cats. Her CCI, (43*3)/(4*1)=32.25, is frankly disturbing.

The CCI postulates that, all other factors being equal, crazy-cat-ladiness increases with age. Thus the CCI for each person in a cat-owning family is different, even though they share the same number of rooms, cats, and human companions. Living alone indicates more craziness than sharing a home with other people. Living in tiny one-room apartments is more crazymaking than living in spacious quarters.

Living alone in a studio apartment with multiple cats is, obviously, crazier and crazier every year.

One of these things is not like the others

I have finally gotten around to making atonement for this.

I speared Kadejan chicken thighs, Tollefson Family Pork bacon, and a pineapple that I only bought because it was on sale at the local big box grocery store. I served them on a bed of grilled garlic scapes alongside some new potatoes with dill, both from the Minneapolis Farmers Market.

It’s all local! Except the pineapple! That’s OK; I’m an import, too.

Wagon Scapes

I have never met my friend Kerry, and this recipe is for her.

Last summer I decided to try Twitter. One of the first people I found was one who blogs and tweets as Clue Wagon. We were both new to Twitter, and we quickly discovered that we really enjoy each other’s perspective on life. Go read her blog about genealogy. You’ll see; she’s a mensch.


Clue Wagon and I discovered garlic scapes at about the same time last year, I think. I remember sharing confusion and fascination with this absurdly curly vegetable. We swapped recipes. She sent me a nice pesto. I sent her a sauté of scapes and shrimp finished with white wine and served over cappellini. She told me she’s a vegetarian.

Damn it! I try so hard; I really do. I try to be open to the notion that not everyone will eat everything. I try not to assume. But it did not occur to me to wonder, much less ask, if Clue Wagon was into eating the not-kosher, not-halal, not-vegetable underwater bugs that shrimp essentially are. Crap!

I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Here’s the deal: cooked shrimp are a circle of savory yum. They meet the tooth with just the right amount of resistance. They are salty-sweet and meltingly delicious. I hate the thought of my friend missing out on an ingredient that creates this satisfying burst of flavor, but I’ll be damned if I can’t come up with something that isn’t a dead animal, too.

So, Kerry, please accept this recipe as my love song to vegetarians and food lovers everywhere. You’re at the top of the list.

Wagon Scapes
If you are a vegan, you could make these with gnocchi. It’s so gratifying to bite those. Rrrr!

Pan photo by Beth Berila


1 package cheese tortelloni (2-3 servings)
2-3 T olive oil
1 bunch (10 to 12) garlic scapes
1 bunch(6-8) green onions
½ lb crimini mushrooms
¼ to ½ c white wine, stock, or water
1 sprig each of sage, rosemary, parsley, and basil
Salt and pepper to taste

Set a pot of water to boil. Mince up the herbs. Cut the scapes into ½-inch pieces. Slice the white part of the onions and save the greens for some other use. Slice the mushrooms.

Pop dried tortelloni in the boiling water and give them a bit of a head start. If you’re using gnocchi and you are a multitasker, you can make them at the same time as the scapes. If you’re a one-track cook or you’re using fresh pasta, make them at the end.

Heat the oil in a sauté pan over medium-high heat. Throw in the onions and garlic scapes and stir them around for a minute or two. Throw in the mushrooms. Stir until they release their juices.


Splash some of your liquid into the pan. Keep stirring until reduced and the vegetables are tender. Remove from the heat. Finish your pasta, drain it, and put it in serving bowls. Spoon the vegetables on top. Sprinkle on the herbs and finish with salt and a grind of black pepper.

Mangiamo!

Ladies Who Lunch

OMG, you guys. This may be the most precious thing I have ever posted. “Precious” as in “twee.” For I have created a Cheese Log.

...wait for laughter to die down...

Here’s the deal. Two kinds of people will like this thing. First, people who genuinely like cheese logs. Second, people who like them ironically. Which one am I? I’m not going to confess, and I challenge you to guess.

Three events have converged to result in a cheese log. First, I am planning to attend a small gathering over the weekend, and snackies shall be required. Second, radishes the size of golf balls showed up in my Harmony Valley CSA box today. Third, I have been keeping the salad burnet from last week's box in a jar of water in the fridge. The plant is so pretty that nothing seemed special enough to use it in.

Well, cheese log is the thing! It is pink. It is springy and cool. It is covered with the minced leaves of a sparkly-flavored, wine-dark herb. I am so pleased with my own cleverness that I may just decide this appetizer is too special to serve.

Wait, no I won’t.

Ladies Who Lunch Cheese Log
1 package cream cheese (use full-fat or the log will not be very solid)
1 golf-ball-sized radish
2 T minced chives
A dash of salt
A handful of herb leaves, minced fine

Chop the radish and throw it in a food processor with the cream cheese. Process for several minutes until pink and smooth.

Gently stir in (do not process!) the minced chives. Salt to taste. Turn the cheese out onto a piece of waxed paper. Wrap the cheese up like a burrito and refrigerate until firm.

Unwrap the cheese. (You can cut the log in half at this point if you want it to be smaller.) Briefly smooth it out by rolling it on a counter or between your hands, and then roll it in the minced herbs until covered. Serve right away; or wrap in a clean piece of waxed paper or plastic wrap and chill until serving time.

I’ll drink to that.

Harmony Valley, Are You Trying to Kill Me?

Harmony Valley Farm has never before given me any indication that they wanted me to be sick, hurt, or dead. So then why did they fill my CSA box with stinging nettle? We’re talking about a noxious weed that, when touched, retaliates with pain, itching, and blisters.

OK, OK. I know that Harmony Valley just thinks weird vegetables are fun. They like to grow new things. They like to try feeding these things to their customers—their newsletter even has handy tips on how to make pesto and pasta and soup with their new little friend. Hmmph. Next I suppose they’ll ask me if I want to play fetch with their pet alligator.

Well I want revenge. The only way I’ll be satisfied is to invent a more exciting recipe than what they came up with–and I have done it! I thought and thought until I realized this problem may have been solved before. My idea comes from an area of vague overlap between Mexican and East Asian cooking. The magic solution is, indeed, a solution: I will quick-pickle these little demons.

A Mexican cook would probably wait only an hour or so before serving this nettle recipe. A Japanese, Korean, or Chinese cook might wait one to three days. Any of those people would have put in hot peppers, garlic, ginger, or other seasonings, too; but I was interested in the pure nettle flavor. It’s a surprisingly complex taste: an initial pleasant pickle sourness broadens and mellows into a flavor that’s slightly nutty, slightly musky, slightly minerally. These would make a great taco with queso blanco, or a condiment for black bean soup, or for plain rice, or even for sushi.

Take that, Harmony Valley!



Pickled Stinging Nettles
They won’t sting anymore after you do this to them.

⅔ c vinegar – I used rice, but you could use white or apple cider too
1 T salt
2 T sugar
2 qt stinging nettle leaves – the bundle from a Harmony Valley CSA is just right

Pick the nettle leaves off their stems (wear gloves unless you like weeping sores), wash them, and spin them dry in a salad spinner.

Put the vinegar, salt, and sugar in a 2-quart saucepan, cover, and bring to a boil. Stuff the nettle leaves in the pan, clap the lid on, and return to a boil—this will only take a few seconds. Take the pan off the heat and stir the nettles so they all get dunked in the vinegar. Put the lid back on and allow them to stand for a few minutes until they have reduced in volume and are covered with the liquid.

Pack the nettles into a clean half-pint jar, pour on the vinegar, and screw on the lid. (I wrap the lid in plastic wrap to keep the metal from corroding.) Store in the refrigerator until ready to eat. I wouldn’t keep them more than a week or two; I don’t think long-term storage is going to be a big problem. Because, you know, yum.

Spring Thing Fling!

Yesterday it tried to snow, and today it was sunny and 60 degrees. I bought my tomato plants but they will have to live inside for a few weeks. All the flowers in the garden are growing! I got to spend the whole afternoon outside playing with them! And tonight I will pay for it in allergies. Aaah! Spring is here!

Best of all: there’s finally something to cook. Vegetables have returned to the Minneapolis Farmers Market, and last week my neighbor Gwen and I pawed through the very first of a whole growing season’s worth of Harmony Valley CSA boxes we’re sharing this year.

Here’s my first hurrah of spring!

Spring Things Menu


Like a Minnesota spring, this meal is here in a heartbeat and gone before you know it. To make the dinner, get everything you see in the photograph; romaine lettuce; salt and pepper; a handful of sugar; salad dressing; a pat of butter; and a splash of mirin. Oh, and ice cream.

• Sorrel and Romaine Salad
• Sauté of Morels and Green Garlic
• Fresh Asparagus
• Pan-Seared Salmon in Mirin Reduction
• Stewed Rhubarb with Vanilla Ice Cream

First, cut things up. Chop the rhubarb into ½” chunks. Chop the garlic and slice the morels. Roughly chop or tear the romaine and sorrel, wash it, dry it, and toss it together. Chop or snap the asparagus.

Next, throw the rhubarb in a saucepan with sugar and a splash of water. Heat to boiling. Simmer that, stirring occasionally, while you cook the rest.

Heat butter in a sauté pan. Cook the garlic and morels until tender and any water has been resorbed. Carefully scrape out the pan. Heat it back up.

Put the salmon, skin side up, in the hot sauté pan. Cook 3 or 4 minutes. Turn over and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Put the asparagus and a drop of water in a saucepan with a tight-fitting lid over high heat.

Pour a splash of mirin in the fish pan and shake. In the 3 minutes it takes the mirin to reduce, the asparagus will be done. The rhubarb sauce is probably done too.

Turn off all the burners, put your dinner on your plate, dress the greens, and serve. For dessert, spoon the still-warm rhubarb sauce over scoops of vanilla ice cream.

What to Make with What’s Left: Compost

Many years ago, a pushy houseguest suggested I get a compost bin. I didn’t figure out until too late that she was pushy. The bin, I later understood, had not been a suggestion but a demand. Its installation encouraged her to new heights of imposition until finally I had to suggest she find other accommodations.

The overbearing guest is long gone, but the compost bin stuck around. We get along great! It stays out in the back yard near the alley and mostly keeps to itself. And on trash day, there’s not a whole lot for me to carry to the curb.

All spring, summer, and fall, every time I make fruit or vegetables, the compost bin gets to eat the scraps. Peels, trimmings, cores, and the occasional moldy crisper-drawer tragedy—everything goes in the bin. Good compost is a balance between these nitrogenous “green” materials and carbon-rich “browns,” things like grass clippings, fallen leaves, wood chips, last season’s mulch, and other yard waste. If it’s not rotting fast enough, it needs more green. If it’s too wet, it needs more browns. Eventually, any mix breaks down to a crumbly brown, earthy-smelling dirtlike substance.

Compost might not look like much of a treat to you, but try serving it to your garden. It makes clay soil drain better. It makes sandy soil retain water. Work it into the vegetable garden before planting, or spread it like mulch in your perennial garden, and you won’t need chemical fertilizer.

Here are some pictures of permanent houseguests who eat compost at Chez Boland.

Happy spring!


Wild ginger, Asarum canadensis


Pasque flower, Pulsatilla vulgaris


Blueberry, Vaccinium 'North Sky'


Lungwort, Pulmonaria and I forgot the cultivar.


Checkered lily, Fritillaria meleagris

Release the Krakenburgers!

Caution: this post contains a spoiler! If you can't predict how the movie would end, watch out!

Oh my gawd, you guys. I just got back from watching Clash of the Titans with my friend Joe. I cannot remember the last time I laughed so hard, and it was only five bucks!

This movie did not have an original thought in its head. It was a hamhanded pastiche of classic and not-so-classic sci-fi, adventure, and fantasy movies. I only wish I had a broader crap-film background so I could name more quotes.

Let's see, first we see a coffin bob up in the Aegean Sea (Call me Ishmael!) bearing a baby... of mysterious parentage! Then the plot limps along on twin crutches: Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. Obi-wan Kenobi Liam Neeson as Zeus strides around pronouncing things, even turning up in a floppy brown hood. (Luke, um, Perseus! I'm your FATHER!) Perseus collects a ragtag band of soldierly followers in historically dubious armor. He even picks up a Jabberwocky/Wookie that communicates in sibilant grunts and a raven-haired immortal lady with great cheekbones. And a light saber! Of all things!

The film then lurches from the video-game monster violence of Robert Zemeckis's Beowulf past the Dark Crystal-meets-Pan's Labyrinth Gray Sisters and an Anaconda-esque Medusa, to a truly Godzillian ending with an impossibly giant kraken corpse making a tsunami-sized death splash—never quite managing to carry off Andromeda, though she is strung up like Naomi Watts on offer to Peter Jackson's King Kong. Along the way we even manage to quote The Mummy (blood falls on the sand and giant monsters pop out!) and Sam Raimi's Evil Dead (a severed hand gets up and scurries off to do mischief!) I'm pretty sure they threw in some Pirates of the Caribbean, too (creaky skeleton ship ride!).

Meanwhile a black-cloaked Ralph Fiennes as Hades swoops and skulks through the movie, vaporizing and rematerializing around every corner like Sauron-cum-Dracula-cum-Voldemort-cum-Nightcrawler from X2. All the while he's simpering, sulking and glaring like the runner-up in an emo beauty pagent, coldly quipping on the movie's premised economies of human existence like Stalin to Zeus's Lenin: "No. YOU need their love. I learned to live on their FEAR." (Thanks to friend Joe for the apt comparison.)

In other words, it was a hokey, derivative-as-hell retread—but big and fun and made me laugh! And it only cost FIVE BUCKS!

Just like this week's recipe! These burgers do not teach anyone anything, but they are big, cheap, pretty tasty, and they make us happy.

Burgers of the Titans!
In a world where grilling seasons are all too short, one burger recipe hides a secret: savory ingredients lurking inside...

2 lb ground beef
1 piece of bread, rubbed between your palms until it is crumbs
2 eggs
2 T fines herbes
1/4 c grated Parmesan cheese
1 T freshly ground black pepper
1 T minced garlic or onion (optional)

Mix it all up! Pat it into 8 burgers. Grill over hot coals.

So Not in the Mood

OMG you guys, it’s allergy season and spring. Two of the stupidest times of the year in terms of cooking: not only do my symptoms and/or pills render me functionally useless, but there’s nothing to cook! There’s nothing fresh, nothing in season, nothing local or abundant. Yeah, yeah, local food blah blah blah, traditional foodways blah. Back in the day, you know what people did this time of year? They starved!

Well, I guess I DO have some canned kraut around here. Quit bitchin’ and get in the kitchen.

A Thing I Just Made Up This Minute
Hardly groundbreaking, but hush up. I’m crabby and this is comfort food. It tastes good to this Slavic American, so make one for yourself too.

Olive oil
1 or 2 pork chops
1 onion
1 qt sauerkraut – mine has caraway in it
3 Yukon Gold potatoes, quartered
2 carrots, cut in chunks
1 apple, quartered, cored and peeled
¾ c water – white wine would’ve been good too
1 bay leaf, broken up

Heat the olive oil in a skillet with a tight-fitting lid. Throw the pork on one side and the onions on the other. Stir those onions around while the pork browns well, then flip pork over to brown the other side.

Throw everything else in the pan, stir it up a little, and heat to boiling. Turn down the heat to simmer. Clamp that lid on. Go do something else for an hour.

Come back and see if you can cut the pork with a wooden spoon. You can? Yay, it’s done. Oh, it smells good in here. Maybe I can carry on another day.

Risotto Is for People...

Risotto is for people who like to stand around and fuss over things. You have to stir constantly for twenty minutes or more, and you might as well get comfortable at it. Risotto is for the standing meditation. The zone-out. The long phone call to someone who talks your ear off: “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Sure, Grandma. Yeah… No, you’re not using up all my long distance. I’m making risotto.”

Risotto is for people who haven’t been grocery shopping. Let’s see… I have half a carton of vegetable broth. I have a handful of dried mushrooms. I have two celery stalks, part of a jar of tomatoes, some leftover herb butter, and one shallot. What the hell am I going to do with one shallot?!

Risotto is for people who need to make something really, really good but who don’t have all the food, time, or money in the world. Maybe you have a lot of one thing, or maybe you have only a little of a bunch of things. Risotto is how you lengthen and broaden that one thing, or meld those many things, until it tastes like the whole world is made out of them. You pour on liquid and stir as the rice absorbs it and the heat reduces it. The dish builds up layers of flavor as your ingredients dissolve, transform, and reconstitute into something richer and greater than the sum of their parts.

Risotto is for people who want to impress someone. You can say, quite honestly, “Look, I worked over a hot stove for you. Now my whole house smells like the bliss I feel with you every day, and the savor of this dish is as deep and intense as my love for you, my cherished one.”

Eh, and if she still won’t come over after an overture like that? Risotto is for people who wouldn’t say no to a second helping.

Risotto alla Whatever
Make it up as you go, or make the same one I made. I don’t think you could screw up this recipe if you tried. The only real essentials are rice, liquid (even just plain water), and maybe butter and cheese. If you have these few things on hand, you’ll always be minutes away from something wonderful to eat.

2-3 T olive oil
Some aromatics (I used 2 celery stalks, a shallot, and a small onion, all diced up)
2 to 2½ c Arborio rice
Some minced garlic, or not (I used 2 cloves)
Some vegetables that can cook a long time (I used a handful of dried mushrooms reconstituted in 2 c water)
A quart of canned tomatoes, or not
Some quick-cooking vegetables (I chopped up fresh local spinach to make 2 cups)
Total of 8 c liquid (I counted the canned tomatoes as 3 cups, drained the mushrooms to make 2 cups, added 2 cups vegetable broth, and topped it off with a cup of water.)
Butter and grated cheese (I had ⅓ c leftover herb butter and ½ c grated Parmesan.)
Salt and pepper to taste

Put your liquid in a saucepan and bring it to a simmer. (I didn’t include the quart of tomatoes.)

Heat the oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Sauté the aromatics until they begin to turn translucent. Toss in the dry rice and let the stirring begin: sauté it until it is translucent and beginning to turn gold, maybe 3-5 minutes. Add the garlic if you’re using it and stir a minute or two more.

Toss in the long-cooking vegetables and quart of tomatoes, if you’re using either of those. Otherwise start ladling in your simmering liquid about a cup at a time. Stir, stir, stir until the liquid is absorbed. This takes maybe five minutes or so. When the rice is the consistency of stiff oatmeal or thick tapioca pudding, add another cup of liquid.

Keep stirring, reducing, and adding more liquid until the rice is about al dente. You will probably only have a cup or less of liquid left in the simmering pot. Add the quick-cooking vegetables and a half cup or so of liquid. Stir and reduce until your vegetables are cooked, adding a bit more liquid if needed. Stir and stir like a brave soldier. Don’t give up now. A spoon should stand up in the risotto; it should remind you of stew but not of soup. Take the pan off the heat and stir in butter, cheese, salt, and pepper to taste.

Doesn’t it taste amazing? Mangiamo!

Fat Commuter in Mismatched Ensemble Hands Ass to Road Cyclist

(MINNEAPOLIS, MN)-- Fat girl Amy Boland, wearing mismatched gear, handed back the ass of an apparently fitter, more stylishly dressed cyclist on a better bike today on the Kenilworth Trail.

Sporting a two-tone blue jersey, turquoise and gray jacket, brick-red bandanna, olive shoes, black shorts, and black helmet, Boland admired the red-clad fellow cyclist's toned calves as she approached from behind at approximately 13 miles per hour. Drawing abreast, she called "On your left," as dictated by cycling etiquette.

To Boland's surprise, the other rider responded by pedaling faster. As the thin-tired red road bike with newly taped drops began to gain ground, the rider turned to exchange a glance with the would-be overtaker. Boland grinned, dropped her 12-year-old commuter bike into the fifth ring, and left the other rider behind in a cloud of dust and clashing colors.

"Ha, ha," Boland commented about the incident. However, sources close to the triumphant fat chick predicted that by the time she rode up steep Dupont Avenue between Vineland and Mt. Curve, she would be laughing out of the other side of her face.

I made a tart!

I made a tart out of spring vegetables! Wanna see how?

1 leek
10 asparagus
Butter
3 egg
1/2 c cream
Salt, pepper, nutmeg
1 pie crust


First I chopped up the vegetables and sauteed them in butter:



Then I patched together a tart crust from some dough bits left over from last week's pie. I baked it 20 minutes at 375. Then I painted it with the yolk of one of my eggs and returned it to the oven to set. This seals the crust in case of small holes or fissures and also keeps it from getting soggy.



Then I sprinkled in my veggies:



And I poured in a custard made from the rest of my eggs, the cream, and seasonings:



Then I baked at 400 for 20 minutes or so until the egg was just set. Easy and fun!

Cherry pie, babies. Cherry pie.

If you were smart last summer, you froze some cherries. If you were smart all winter, you have eaten most of what’s in your freezer.

I apparently think that if I hoard frozen cherries, I am somehow wealthy beyond imagination. Now it’s spring and I am yelling at myself. “Wise up, kitten. It’s going to be July again before you know it. You will feel like a real dope with a freezer full of last summer’s fruit.”

Time to bake a bunch of pie before everyone finds out what a blockhead I’ve been.

Cherry Pie
To freeze fruit for use in pie, scatter it in one layer on a cookie sheet and freeze solid. Then pack the individual frozen fruit pieces in a freezer-proof bag or container for long-term storage.


The crust
2 ½ c flour
1 t sugar
1 t salt
1 c shortening
5 T ice water

The filling
5 c frozen sour cherries
1 ¼ c sugar
¼ c cornstarch
2 T butter, cut in 6 to 8 pieces

For the crust, mix the dry ingredients. Cut in the fat. Sprinkle with the water and stir with a fork. Make a ball, divide the dough in half, and refrigerate for at least ½ hour.

Set the oven rack at the lowest position and preheat the oven to 400°. Get three pieces of tin foil about 2” wide and join them, end to end, to make one long strip.
Roll out bottom crust and fit into pie pan. Roll out top crust.

Now move fast:

Knock any ice off the cherries. Toss them with the sugar and cornstarch. Put them in the pie pan and pour any remaining dry ingredients evenly over the fruit.

Space the butter pieces evenly over the fruit. Lay the top crust over the pie, trim the overhang to 1 or 2 inches, and crimp the pie shut.

Put on some decorative pie crust cutouts or other hoo-ha if you like. Cut steam vents in the top crust. Wrap the strip of foil around the pie like a collar, bending it in half over the crimped edge. This will keep the pie edge from charring to a crisp.

Bake for 50 minutes, then turn the heat down to 350° and bake until juices are bubbling out of the steam vents, another half hour or so. You can put a cookie sheet under the pie to keep pie juice from blarping all over your oven. You can also take off the little collar at this juncture.

Cool completely to give the pie a chance to congeal. Or cut it warm and suffer the runny, yummy consequences.

Beach House Seafood

So, let’s say you go on vacation. Let’s say you go to a little island in the Gulf of Mexico where you get accommodations that include a kitchen with three pans, a dull knife, and a cookie sheet. Let’s say that on this island, all the good restaurants are expensive and all the cheap restaurants are crap. And let’s say that you have access to either a fish market or a fishing pole.

Wouldn’t you rather just be your own restaurant?

I would rather, yes, I would. With a few staple items at the overpriced grocery store, I can cook various sea creatures using different techniques to highlight their unique flavors and textures.

The groceries:
Get as many of these as are available, convenient, or attractive to you.

• Butter
• Olive oil
• A lemon
• Parsley
• Other herbs, i.e. bay or thyme
• Salt
• Pepper
• Garlic
• Shallot
• A big bottle of dry white wine
• Cocktail sauce

The sea creatures:
Ideally, you will buy/catch different ones every day. Get something shelly or bony the first night so you can make a nice stock that will only get more delicious the rest of the week.

• Crustaceans (shrimp, crabs, lobster)
• Mollusks (mussels, scallops, clams)
• Fish

The cooking techniques:
Boil/steam: Throw some parsley stems, dried herbs, and shallot peels in some water, wine, or a combination of the two. Bring it to a rolling boil. Throw in your sea creatures. When the water returns to a rolling boil, shrimp and scallops are cooked. Mussels and clams should be boiled until they open.

I like to make a shrimp cocktail and then throw the shells back in the cooking liquid. Simmer this for a half hour and you have a lovely stock that can be used for more shrimp cocktail. Or use it to finish off sautéed fish. Or use it as the base for a sauce.

Grill/broil: This is easy. You just, um, broil things. Scallops need just a few minutes. Shrimps too. Fish can go as long as 7-10 minutes per inch of thickness depending on how done you like it.

Sautée: Heat butter, oil, or both in a pan. Toss in garlic and shallots and cook until translucent. Put in fish skin side up, or throw in crustaceans/shelled mollusks. Cook only a couple of minutes for crustaceans/mollusks. Cook 3-5 minutes per inch of fish, flip over, season the top, pour in a splash of wine or stock from your fabulous shrimp cocktail, cover, and cook the remaining 3-5 minutes per inch of fish.

Pasta: If you boil up a nice linguine or capellini while you’re cooking your sea creatures, everything can be done at once. You can toss the sea creatures with the pasta, as I did with these sautéed scallops. You can put the sea creatures on a serving plate; splash your pan with more stock; then reduce it for a nice little sauce to go on your pasta. Or you can just butter the noodles. Or maybe serve them with garlic and olive oil.

The possibilities are not endless, but they will see you nicely through a week at the beach.

Mangiamo!

Beware the Ides of March: Fallen Caesar Cookies

Cook ‘Em if You Got ‘Em is pleased and proud to present you, for the first time EVER, a holiday recipe well in advance of a holiday: Fallen Caesar Cookies for the Ides of March!

OK, so it’s not really a holiday, and I’m the only one who celebrates it, and the cookies usually freak people out. But still!

Here, I’ll let you in on the backstory. When I first moved to the Twin Cities, it was in the middle of a recession. I worked for a school library book publisher. A lot of the staff were, like me, Gen Xers right out of school. In college, we’d been writers, visual artists, English majors, theater minors. Now we were working for abysmal pay in a company with a World War II–era business model. We were energetic but cynical; creative but financially crippled.

Those times were an anxious mix of compliance and defiance. The myth of the American Dream was evaporating for college graduates across the country who would NOT be doing better than our parents. As well, I didn’t know anyone my age who was interested in the Baby Boomer live-to-work ethic. We didn’t want to be like the older adults around us, but we were scrambling to establish adult identities. For me and everyone I knew at Lerner, this included finding and using our creative voices as artists.

So we were constantly doing things like, say, composing haikus about our lunches. Or making Jello aquariums, complete with Swedish fish, for the company potluck. Or using decorative gourds to create dioramas of famous characters in literature.

Or commemorating the Ides of March by baking sugar cookies decorated with stab wounds and staging a recital, in a Boston accent, of Marc Antony’s funeral speech from Julius Caesar. This was so much fun that I started doing it every year.

Now we’re in a much worse recession than the one in which I came of age. I look at the young adults around me and I can remember how it felt, but I can’t imagine what’s going to happen: what career paths will they have? How will the world change because of them, and how will it change them?

And THAT is why I’m putting out the call: everyone bake these cookies for March 15. Take them to work if you have a job. Or take them to school, or to church, or send a box to a distant friend. Just share them however you can. Read the funeral speech. Not for any logical reason. Just because it’s the Ides of March, and we should all beware, and tough times call for ridiculous measures.

Fallen Caesar Cookies
Use your favorite cookie dough recipe to make my traditional non sequitur response to The Man. My favorite is Rich Rolled Sugar Cookies from Joy of Cooking.

1 recipe sugar cookie dough
1 tube of red Cake Mate decorating gel
1 cookie cutter shaped like a person, i.e. gingerbread boy

Roll out the dough and cut out the shapes. Transfer shapes to a cookie sheet. Use the decorating gel to make seven marks—one for each conspirator in Caesar’s assassination—on each cookie. Use a little pressure to make a slight dent in the surface of the dough.



Bake the cookies, watching carefully. You want to bake them until they are just done, rendering as pale a cookie as possible without underbaking. This will make for more lurid contrast between the cookie and the stab wound. The decorating gel will bake into the cookie and will not brush or smear off after the cookie cools.

Beans and Sausage Belong in Soup

Honestly, you guys, I don’t set out to cook cauldrons full of undifferentiated glop. This cauldronful is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from the vat of stuff I made last post. This is bean soup, a magic soup full of protein and fiber and flavor. It will fill you up on a cold night. It will make your house smell so good.

Beth and I invented this soup because we wanted to make dinner for some friends. But we did NOT want to spend the last hour fussing in the kitchen while the friends stood about awkwardly, wondering if they should offer to help. The beauty of this soup is that it is easy to make. The secret of its deliciousness is in patience, not effort. Give it enough time on the stove for the vegetables to soften and melt a bit. The mellow bean flavor is punched up with sage and sausage*. Kale adds bright color as well as vitamins and minerals.

Add a salad and some good bread, and you’re done.

White Bean, Kale and Sausage Soup
Serves 6-8
Dry beans are more planning and monkey business than canned beans. Of course, they are correspondingly more delicious. You can soak and cook some extras, then pop them in the freezer to cut down your prep time for a future soup.

1 lb white beans: cannellini, great northern, or navy
2 bay leaves
4 peppercorns
3 carrots, chopped
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic
8-12 oz sausage*: sweet Italian, hot Italian, andouille, chorizo; anything with garlic and/or chile
1 bunch kale, roughly chopped
4-6 leaves of sage
Salt to taste

*If you are a vegetarian, then instead of sausage, get some olive oil, a chopped bulb of fennel, some cayenne, and some chopped parsley.

Soak the beans overnight.

The next day, put the beans and their soaking water in a soup pot. DO NOT discard the cooking water. All the deliciousness is in it. I don’t care what your mom said about how throwing out the water will reduce bean gas. It won’t. It will only reduce my regard for you. Don’t you step to me.

Ahem. Make sure there is enough water to cover the beans. Add the bay leaves and the peppercorns. Bring them to a boil, then simmer them until they are tender.

Keep a kettle of water on the stove while you cook beans. If they need more water, bring the kettle to a boil. Adding cold water to beans makes their skins tough. Passive-aggressive little sulkers, aren’t they?

Toss the carrots, onion, and garlic cloves in the pot. Keep simmering until these soften. The garlic should break down. You can stir this into the broth, which by now should be getting thick and creamy as the beans break down, too.

About an hour before you plan to serve the soup, add the sage.

Meanwhile, brown the sausage. Or heat the olive oil and saute the fennel bulb, adding the cayenne for the last few minutes. Put the frying pan contents in the soup, reserving the cooking fat.

Sauté the kale, then pour a half cup of water in the pan and cover it tightly. Turn the heat down and steam until the kale is tender, maybe 20 to 30 minutes. (Keep an eye on it so the pan doesn’t get too dry.) Stir the kale into the pot. If you have parsley, sprinkle it on top of each bowl of soup.

Mangiamo!