A Little Something for the January Blahs

I am not at my best these days. My luxurious 3 week winter break is just a fond memory, all the kids' activities are back in full swing, and there's been a great deal of extra stuff needing my attention of late. As one might imagine, nutritious home cooked meals have been few and far between. I should be posting here more often but I can't imagine anyone needing to get the details on the burritos, pasta, and tuna melts that have kept everyone fed around here. Sadly, that's so often what it comes down to. My efforts to uplift my family's meals haven't come to much lately as we've just gone for the old standbys, food without fuss, just enough, really to keep going. Not what I envisioned for my family years ago when the introduction to Laurel's Kitchen regularly got me all fired up. Well, what is parenting all about if not dispelling illusions right and left?

Another oft-used cookbook back in the days when my kids were too young to complain was The Savory Way by Deborah Madison. Among the many treasured recipes this book contains is Smoked Chile Salsa, something I need to make a few times every winter. In her introduction to the recipe Madison writes:

This sauce is based on a Mexican sauce I like very much but that is almost impossible to find. Búfalo is illustrated with a picture of the charging body if a red buffalo, which is just about how it feels in your mouth.

The book was written way back in 1990 before Búfalo became easy enough to find in any town with a Latino population but I find this homemade sauce to be infinitely better even without the stylish little glass bottle. This isn't a tomato-y chip and dip kind of salsa but rather a rich, flavorful, slightly smoky, slightly tangy hot sauce to be served in small dollops. It's plenty picante but also delightfully full of flavor, and just the thing to add some zing to the boring, inoffensive kid food we've been living on. Burritos with tasteless canned refritos? This sauce will help. Stodgy home fries? You'll want this sauce. Another pan of macaroni and cheese? It won't make the boxed stuff edible, but this sauce will definitely do something worthwhile to cheesy pasta. My very favorite way to use it involves sautéing chunks of sweet potato in a bit of broth until tender and tucking them into a warmed tortilla with cheese, and home-cooked pinto beans. A nice drizzle of this smoky, tangy sauce sets off the sweet potatoes beautifully. Too bad my kids won't touch my sweet potato burritos with a ten foot pole.

The recipe is here. I hope it helps to liven up these cold, dull mid-winter days.

Pupusa Frenzy

Now that I have a child in school I am beginning to get used to last minute announcements relating to school assignments and projects. The latest was the proyecto cultural for The Dark Lord's Spanish class. I love that his teacher asks the students to think about the language outside the classroom but the announcement came during a very harried day which included a number of hastily changed plans, evening classes, a child care scramble--nothing unusual, but having to come up with an interesting yet simple dish with a little sabor latino was not exactly compelling at 9 pm when everyone was finally back home and The Dark Lord was able to focus on the task at hand.

Given our time frame, most of the delicious Latin American dishes I know were not in the running. Tamales and enchiladas were simply too complicated. My delicious posole verde was out because The Dark Lord doesn't think much of it (I suspect it's too nutritious). Racking my brain I suggested pupusas which require little more than masa harina, water, oil, and a bit of something to tuck inside.

With a fresh bag of masa harina from Bob's Red Mill, we were in business. A little salt and some water, and we had something the consistency of Play-Doh. We pulled out plum-sized balls, put in a bit of filling made of shredded cheddar and roasted green chile, pulled the edges of the dough up around the filling to cover, and flattened them into discs before slipping them into hot oil where they cooked, about 4 minutes per side until golden. We drained the pupusas on paper towels and then gobbled the down. Here you see The Dark Lord attempting to shove a too-hot pupusa into a mouth tender with new orthodontia. Not the recommended technique. Since the pickiest of The Picky Ones was away with a friend all weekend we decided take The Dark Lord out to give professional pupusas a try at El Palenque, Portland's venerable Salvadoran restaurant. We ordered a vegetarian family meal for 4 which included pupusas, fried yuca, a tamal, fried plantains with cream, black beans, rice, and banana empanadas, and the delicious sweet cheese bread Salvadorans call quesadilla which has nothing to do with the Mexican variety. It was a delicious meal but, interestingly, The Dark Lord decided he liked his pupusas better than those made by the little old Salvadoran lady who had no doubt been making them for decades. So last night, another batch, these filled with shredded cheddar and sliced scallions and served alongside the posole verde, which proved to be an ideal combination.

The recipe is here.

Ratatouille Follow Up

The ratatouille has been delicious and we've been eating it all week. The Spouse came up with a brilliant idea for the last of it last night: he took about a cup and half of leftover ratatouille and threw it in the food processor with similar amount of fresh ricotta, heated it, and served it over pasta. Quite tasty!

Fortifying

I don't have a whole lot to say right now other than sometimes things just suck and you have to face them anyway. But it's best not do so while hungry. Earlier in the day I made salad rolls for the family dinner, but when I came home from work fairly trembling with hunger I knew I needed considerably more substance than was enfolded in the diaphanous wrappers.

A quick tour through the cupboards revealed nothing and then I remembered the quinoa tucked away for safekeeping in the freezer right next to a small packet of pine nuts. I discovered quinoa last year during a period of doctor-ordered dietary restrictions. Quinoa was the only new thing I tried that I continue to eat. I love its golden color and crunchy texture. It's outstanding from a nutritional point of view and it cooks up more quickly that just about any other whole grain.

With feta from the fridge and a dash out to the garden for parsley I came up with a simple dish that was sustaining and comforting. Just what I needed tonight. No doubt everyone needs a dish like this at some point. The recipe is here.

Curry Noodle Pot

I recently got my hands on a copy of Super Natural Cooking, the latest from Heidi Swanson over at 101 Cookbooks which has become one of my top 5 favorite food blogs. Her recipes are fresh and vibrant and her photos are simply breathtaking. Mere mortals like myself can only dream of using a camera with her skill. I thoroughly enjoyed her earlier Cook 1.0 and was looking forward to this latest effort.

The first thing to catch my eye was a recipe entitled Big Curry Noodle Pot. It's a simple and deeply satisfying Southeast Asian style curry soup, spicy from red curry paste, rich with coconut milk, and fragrant with lime. I made the soup following the book closely the first time. The recipe was quick and easy and lent itself to experimentation so my second batch went off in a slightly different direction. I used a yellow curry paste from our local Vietnamese market and upped the veggie factor with asparagus tips and coarsely grated carrot. I wanted the asparagus to shine so I skipped the cilantro but retained the all important crushed peanuts.

The asparagus and yellow curry was just as tasty as the original pot of soup. I'm sure one can go off in any number of directions with a recipe like this depending on what looks good and fresh on any given day. I find the silky rich coconut broth so very delicious.

I'm looking forward to trying out other recipes in the book. The Wheat Berry Salad looks delicious and the Crema de Guacamole looks perfect for a sultry summer's day. Go find a copy of Super Natural Cooking. Whether you cook from it or not (and of course you should), I think you'll find that the photos are feast all on their own.

An Old Favorite

A simple dinner tonight: creamy polenta topped with garlicky sauteed chard and crumbled sheep's milk feta. There's not a whole lot to say about this dish except that it's easy, healthy, and delicious. My friend Laura and I often share this meal when we're lucky enough to spend the day together.

This One's for You, Beth!

Beth, the very first reader of Magpie Eats, wrote the following today:

Like you, I am pressed for time; and when I get home from work at 8:30 pm, the last thing I want to do is attempt to cook. So I'm hopeful that eventually something will pop up here that can be made in one pot, in less than 20 minutes.

I usually get home at 9 pm or later so I completely understand the ravenous arrival and the need for something easy and satisfying. Here's what I end up eating at least once a week. There is but one catch: you must buy Pastures of Eden kosher sheep's milk feta from Israel. I buy it regularly at Trader Joe's. It is my all time favorite cheese. When I was staring down the barrel of intense dietary restrictions I insisted I could do without all other dairy if I could just have this cheese in my life. And, while I am sensitive to cow's milk, this sheep's milk cheese doesn't bother me at all. It is creamy, mild, just slightly tangy, and simply divine.

So once you've hit TJ's and made sure you have a package or two of this lovely cheese in your fridge, you come home ravenous and looking for something to eat RIGHT NOW. Bring a pot of water to boil and throw in some kind of tiny pasta. I like orzo best, but there are numerous tiny (quick cooking) shapes. If greens are your thing, add a handful of finely sliced spinach, kale, chard, or mustard greens just before draining the pasta, for a quick wilt. Drain the pasta (and greens), toss everything in the bowl with a dash of olive oil, a clove of pressed garlic, a good grind of black pepper and the crucial couple of handfuls of crumbled Pastures of Eden feta. Give it a moment--the heat from the pasta will soften the cheese and, once you stir, you will have a deliciously creamy and delightful sauce coating your tiny pasta.

I can't tell you how satisfying this is. Obviously you can get more complicated: chopped parsley and basil are lovely additions as are chopped kalamata olives, strips of roasted red pepper, and tiny sliced tomatoes are divine with this if they're in season. But you can also leave the extras out--the pasta with the cheese is amazingly satisfying. But, please, buy the right cheese. Any other feta, in my experience, is unlikely to produce the same result, so you've been warned.