christos anesti!

I am not at all religious, but I love Easter, thanks to that Greek stepmother of mine. And yesterday was not as much about one religion -- there were Christians, Jews, lots and lots of atheists, a Muslim and a witch up in the hizzouse -- as it was about love and food.

Or as the martini-drinkin' deacon so eloquently put it, "Easter is a time of letting parts of us die and new parts emerge. What we let go of, hopefully, is our fear and terror that feed oppression and hopelessness and what we replace it with is hope and the ability to imagine and work for a world of justice, inclusion, and hope."

The martini-drinkin' deacon


My losing red egg


Handsome gentlemen in Easter ties


Curried salmon with fresh mangos & purdy flowers


Spanakopita


The sin Jesus died for?

Those cupcakes are the best thing that ever happened to me, other than marrying Christ. I mean, Chris. The recipe is here; I'm considering kidnapping the mister who made them and forcing him to be my slave baker, which I'm sure would have Jesus rolling over in his grave. Oh, wait...

And the spanakopita speaks for itself. Seriously; if you make it, it will talk to you, sort of like the burning bush, except more tasty.

The recipe is my Greek stepmother's, of course, and as she put it, "Don't measure anything ... there is nothing exact about this recipe."

Spanakopetes

2 medium onions, finely chopped
¼ c. olive oil
2 packages frozen chopped spinach, thawed, squeezed dry with your hands.
1 pound feta cheese
1 small containers small-curd, whole-milk cottage cheese
6 eggs, beaten with a whisk
1 lb. phyllo dough
clarified butter
a few whacks of fresh parmesan

1. Saute onion in olive oil for about 5 minutes to sweat. Add spinach. Simmer with the onion over a low flame, stirring occasionally, until most of the remaining moisture is evaporated.

2. Crumble feta with your hands into small pieces. Add cottage cheese and parmesan and blend well. Add beaten eggs and mix well. Add spinach mixture and stir to blend.

3. Using a 9 x 13 or 11 x 14 pan (or something close), butter the bottom lightly, add one sheet of phyllo dough, butter lightly, and repeat until you have about 10 layers. Spoon in the filling, place another sheet of phyllo on top, butter lightly, and repeat until you have 10 more sheets. Using a sharp knife, gently cut through the top layers of phyllo lengthwise to whatever size you will want the final squares to be. Bake at 350 (preheated) for about 30 minutes or until brown. Recut lengthwise all the way to the bottom of the pan, and then make horizontal cuts.

You can add dill or mint, and definitely add pepper. Sometimes you will need a little salt, but the feta is usually salty enough. Look for phyllo that is longer and rectangular if you have a choice. If it's frozen when you buy it, leave the phyllo on the counter for a few hours, then refrigerate.

lunch on a busy day with empty cupboards

Take a little bite of chip, take a little bite of cheese, chew, swallow, and repeat.

his & hers & abe's

Lunch today.

Preparation (his).

Preparation (hers).

Glamour shot (his).

Glamour shot (hers).

Eating (his).

Eating (hers).

Preparation/glamour shot/eating (Abe's).

Recipe (his).

1. Toast bagel.

2. Apply turkey and cheese.

3. Add chips.


Recipe (hers).

This is from my step-sister-in-law; I add dried cranberries, probably because she told me to. I did all of the heavy lifting last night (actually, there is no heavy lifting, unless you count stirring those damn nuts for five minutes), but the dressing keeps well, and if you can stop yourself from eating them, you'll have plenty of leftover nuts.

Salad:
1 head romaine
Gorgonzola cheese

Dressing:
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
3/4 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper
1/4 cup walnut oil
1/4 cup olive oil

1. Whisk everything together.

Spicy glazed pecans:
2 tsp butter
1 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp water
2/3 cup pecan halves

1. Melt butter over medium heat.

2. Add sugar, salt, peppers, and water. Cook until bubbling.

3. Add pecans and stir constantly until well coated and sugar has begun to caramelize (about 5 mins).

4. Spread pecans on baking sheet to cool.

Toss all that shizz in a bowl, yo.

gruel a la nuts

Ah, the dreaded (by Chris)/beloved (by Kate) Gruel a la Nuts. I've been making it a lot lately because it's easy and because I'm obsessed with nuts. (The kind that grow on trees [bushes?], you pervs.) Gruel a la Nuts is just a handful of walnuts, chopped, with a glug of olive oil, perhaps some minced garlic, and S&P. Take this and serve it over whole wheat spaghettini (which I swear to you tastes BETTER than white pasta) with some grated parm, and you have Gruel a la Nuts in its most simple incarnation. You also have your husband on the phone ordering a pizza.

I often like to fancy this gruel up a bit (is "fancy gruel" an oxymoron?): Maybe I saute the garlic in a little olive oil and mix that with the walnuts, and I almost always add something green, because really, gruel should always include something green (one time I made a broccoli pasta dish from Moosewood Restaurant Simple Suppers and Chris's comment was "so bland and yet so green"): garlicky wilted arugula is my favorite, though sauteed broccoli, spinach, or chard are also delicious. Chris would probably add french fries, but they are not green. And do not let him tell you otherwise: Not even a tiny bite of Gruel a la Nuts has ever passed Chris's lips. When I made Gruel a la Nuts on Sunday night, Chris made himself Stuffed Shells Frozenee With Sauce a la Jar.

Chris took a couple of pictures of Gruel a la Nuts, though what Martha Stewart would most like about this photo is the great care we take in setting our table. I carefully lay out a pile of mail, there is a bag of chips in case Chris needs an extra snack, and please note the DOG TOY just inches from my plate. We are classy people.


Chris also wanted you to see what a mess I make when I cook.



Fancy Gruel a la Nuts
1 cup walnuts, chopped medium-coarse
1-2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 bunch (a couple of handfuls) of baby arugula
parmigiano reggiano cheese to taste
salt & pepper to taste

1. Chop walnuts and set aside in a little bowl.

2. In a small pan saute 1/3 of the garlic in 1 tablespoon of olive oil over medium-high heat until is just translucent (don't let it turn brown), then remove from heat, add to bowl of walnuts, and stir. Season walnut mixture with salt and pepper to taste, add more oil if you like things oily.

3. In a medium or large pan saute the rest of the garlic in a little olive oil over high heat until just translucent, then add arugula and a pinch or two of salt and saute until just wilted. Remove immediately from pan so the greens don't become soggy.

4. Spoon half of the walnut mixture and half of the arugula over your own portion of whole wheat spaghettini (cook it first, yo, in very salty water). If your husband/domestic partner/wife/mom/child/sex slave chained to a filing cabinet in the basement/boyfriend/girlfriend/whomever will eat gruel, give them the other half, and serve it with freshly grated parm. If not, save the second half, because all gruel makes good leftovers.

saturday afternoon lunch was thursday night dinner

Tomato-Cheddar Soup
Cheddar Buttermilk Biscuits
Fennel & Celery Salad

For lunch today: tomato soup and a biscuit (leftovers from Thursday night's dinner) and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (courtesy of Junot Diaz, though I'm not sure I'm thanking him: am I the only person in the Western Hemisphere who did not pee herself with joy over this book? Because I'd rather pee on Junot Diaz, or even better, reread Drown).

[I'm hoping that my dad can show me how to take photos that look more like this or this, but for now we're all going to have to settle for these:]




Chris was out of town this week, but when he found out the lovely Lisa and Amos were coming over for dinner this past Thursday, he told me to make sure to "cook them up some gruel," and recommended that I serve them "something pureed," because according to Chris I "sure do like the blender." That's sort of a load of bl*g, though I did use my immersion blender for the soup (see recipe below).

I had this tomato-cheddar soup for the first time at my mother-in-law Jo Ruth's house on the night before Thanksgiving, and it was so good I've been makin' it all winter. It's a pretty serious upgrade from the Campbell's tomato my sister and I used to eat (along with grilled American cheese on white bread and the store-brand version of Oreos. I should note that we ate this kind of thing in our twenties; our parents would never, ever, ever have fed us canned soup or processed cheese, and I don't think I even knew that white bread existed). For Thursday night I made the soup early and stuck it the fridge so I could focus on not fucking up the biscuits and cutting my fingers off with the mandoline.

When Jo Ruth made this soup, she served it with Shelburne Farms' deliciously cheesy biscuits, which I broke into bite-sized pieces and floated in my soup like croutons. I wanted Lisa and Amos to be able to play with their food, too, but the Shelburne Farms biscuits were made by Jo Ruth, who is from the South, and I get the feeling that making a batch of biscuits is as easy for her as sleeping late is for me. I haven't done much baking since the Duncan Hines brownies my sister and I used to whip up after school (at this point my parents were divorced, and all dietary restrictions had moved out with my father), and the Shelburne Farms biscuit recipe includes notes about keeping the ingredients "as cold as possible" and working the dough "as little as possible" and even had a little anecdote about how one time the authors made the biscuits in an unheated barn or some shit and though the authors were "a little chilly," "the biscuits were perfect." That's quaint and all, but so not happening in my culinary world. Instead I found this recipe for cheddar buttermilk biscuits on epicurious.com, which multiple reviewers described as easy, and it was. I was so frickin' pleased with myself when Lisa and Amos walked into the house and noted how good it smelled, then oohed and awed over my beautiful biscuits cooling on the stovetop.

After handing Amos a biscuit because he was so hungry he felt light headed, I started making the salad, a fennel and celery thing I'd read about here, which I hoped would be light and crispy enough to balance out the rest of the heavy, cheesy meal (it's early March in Vermont, and I'm still hittin' the winter foods; as I told my friend Taije when I moved back to Vermont from DC last summer, winter in Vermont makes me want to lie in bed and eat mashed potatoes. FOR SIX MONTHS). My stepmother, Chrysanne, would be horrified to know that I went out and bought a single-use kitchen appliance just for this one recipe, but I knew I would never be able to slice the fennel and celery thinly enough without a mandoline, and since Chris is obsessed with the slap chop, I thought maybe the mandoline would help him stop having a boring life. After having used the mandoline, however, I must warn Girlie Hands never to go near it lest he ruin his potential career as a hand model: I cut not one but two fingers while mandoline-ing my fennel and celery, and only avoided slicing a third finger when Lisa and Amos simultaneously screamed, "STOP!" just before I took off the tip of my pinkie. The recipe is online here, and my only advice is that mandoline-ing and multitasking do not mix. Best to stick with the slap chop.

RECIPE RATINGS & NOTES

Tomato and Cheddar Soup: 4.5 out of 5 Heavy Winter Soup stars
[See recipe for cooking notes. The soup is rich and the allspice gives it a nice, but not weird, flavor. As is the recipe feeds three people well, but is barely enough for four. It's an easy, tasty soup that is fancy enough to serve guests, but is also a good option for those afternoons when in the rest of the world it is spring but in Vermont it is still winter, just brown and ugly now instead of snowy and pretty. This soup pairs nicely with an episode of Gossip Girl or the latest issue of US Magazine.]

Cheddar Buttermilk Biscuits: 4 out of 5 Savory Biscuit stars
[These were cheesy and delicious and easy to make. I substituted minced, fresh sage for the scallions, and the recipe made a dozen biscuits with some dough left over. I highly recommend chunks of biscuit in the tomato soup.]

Fennel and Celery Salad: 3.5 out of 5 Salad stars
[As Lisa put it, "This tastes like spring." Light and crispy and lemony, so easy to make, but beware the finger-eating mandoline, or you will be serving your nice friends blood and skin as well as fennel and celery.]


Tomato-Cheddar Soup
from Cooking With Shelburne Farms

The recipe here is barely modified from the cookbook, which is probably some kind of copyright infringement. DO NOT RAT ME OUT OR I WILL POUND YOUR ASS IN THE PARKING LOT AFTER SCHOOL.

1 packed cup finely grated cheddar
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 small onion, diced
1 cup half-and-half or whole milk [whole milk is really fine, as this soup is as rich as The Donald was in the '80s.]
1 (28 oz.) can fire-roasted tomatoes [the recipe calls for whole tomatoes in puree, but I've used diced tomatoes in not puree, and didn't notice any difference, though I think the fire-roasted part is important.]
1/2 teaspoon allspice [the recipe called for 1 teaspoon, which I used the first time I made it, and maybe I just have some super-strong allspice, but that pot of soup tasted like tomato pumpkin pie, and not in a good way.]
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt [or more to taste, yo.]
freshly ground pepper

1. In a small bowl, toss the grated cheddar with the flour, making sure to coat all shreds [For those of you who are neurotic, I've found from neurotic experience that you don't have to be too, too neurotic about this coating-all-shreds business. Because when you PACK the cheese, it's hard to SEPARATE THE SHREDS for coating. I'm just sayin'.]

2. In a large, wide soup pot set over medium-high heat, melt the butter until foamy. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until translucent but not colored, about 3-4 minutes.

3. Add the half-and-half to the pot, bring to a simmer, and simmer gently for 3-4 minutes. Take the pot off the heat.

4. Put a handful of cheddar into the pot and whisk into the hot half-and-half mixture until the mixture is smooth. Repeat in handfuls until the cheddar has magically disappeared from the bowl.

5. Add the tomatoes and their puree, the allspice, and the salt to the pot and stir. Return the pot to medium heat for 3-4 minutes and cook, stirring to blend. Do not allow the soup to boil. [If the soup does boil, do not panic, as this does not seem to have any effect whatsoever.]

6. Using an immersion blender, a food processor, or a blender [my vote is for the immersion blender], blend the soup.

7. Return the soup to the pot if you took it out, warm it gently over medium-low heat, adjust seasonings, blah blah blah...