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    This mostly-raw blueberry pie is a snap to make and very versatile--the filling microwaves in a few minutes, and you don't even have to bake the zippy gingered graham cracker crust--perfect for a hot Fourth of July and all summer long.

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A Slow Food Fast Thanksgiving

Posted on November 23, 2011 by DebbieN

Pumpkin pie in the microwave

I’m not sure how to take all the following good news–it’s been such a strained year that the sudden release of pressure is going to make me zip around the room, once the coffee kicks in.

1. My mother-in-law has threatened to favor the brand-new kosher butcher in her town this holiday season so that we can eat the turkey too this year (and maybe not fight about it). She promised not to smear said turkey with butter. We’ll cross our fingers. But at least we won’t have to cook. I’m keeping that firmly in mind.

2. As of this week, my daughter’s finally on an insulin pump and fairly thrilled about it, so she can navigate dinner AND dessert at my in-laws’ without breaking down and crying that she only gets two tablespoons of pie for a reasonable serving. We are still encouraging her to count carbs and not go hog-wild or she’ll be zipping around the room until midnight.

3. The school concert’s in less than two hours. Is that really enough time to do everything, or at least something? Naaaah. Well, maybe coffee and something other than the news.

4. We still have to schlep up Interstate 5 for about 6 hours tomorrow, starting “early” (i.e., an hour and a half after the time my husband announces this evening as the absolute latest), passing the Harris Ranch and its attendant aromas, which can be more than slightly offputting if you’re not an avid horticulturist. But at least when we get to my in-laws’ we don’t have to cook. As I said, I’m keeping that firmly in mind. I know I already said it, but it’s so important I figured it was worth saying twice.

Despite my firm resolve after last week’s marathon kiddush that I will strive Not To Cook (could I possibly be Peg Bracken’s unacknowledged lovechild? Unfortunately, no. However, my mother was a devotee of the Don’t Cook Too Much school of thought, and I’m starting to appreciate that. Really I am.)…where was I? Oh yeah…I will probably bring at least two lemons, some thyme and rosemary, a head of garlic and a couple of bags of fresh cranberries with us on the road. Call it flavor insurance. For whatever reason, my in-laws, who have developed what can only be called fanatical devotion to Italian food of every possible kind (having both grown up in white bread country), always run out of these basic essentials about halfway through, and my mother-in-law tends to tell my father-in-law to go back out and pick up extras just as the stores are closing…

The cranberries, I’m well aware, aren’t Italian. They’re for making 5-minute microwave cranberry sauce with about half the sugar of regular. My mother-in-law tends to try out her fancier cranberry chutneys and relishes every year, and every year they contain things like chardonnay–which is fine for the grownups but I’m no grownup. Her chutneys have more than 10 ingredients and sit stirring on the stovetop for at least 45 minutes. I don’t know how she does it–I’d go stir-crazy. I’m just not that good.

So anyway–I wish you all a great Thanksgiving at somebody else’s house, so you don’t have to cook or do the dishes. My idea of heaven.

But if you absolutely have to cook, here are a couple of posts for speeding up a few of the obligatory or not-so-obligatory Thanksgiving items–most can go in a microwave (I always, always think that’s worthwhile. Well, usually). A few of these are dairy, so use your discretion.

5-Minute Cranberry Sauce

Microwave Pumpkin Pie

Basic instructions for microwaving green beans, brussels sprouts and other vegetables

Creamed Spinach Variations

“Marbella”-style cooked vegetable relish with artichoke hearts, olives, tomatoes and prunes

Turkey Breast with Ta’am (flavor) –not microwaved, not a whole bird, but it is a lot quicker and tastes unusually good if you have a small crowd. DO keep it covered in the oven to prevent it drying out.

Some options for vegetarian centerpiece dishes… (ideas more than recipes)

Spice mixes because sometimes you want to liven up the party…

Syrian Jewish stuffed vegetables (baby eggplants and onions) with an incredible lentil filling (NOTE–this one is “not exactly quick”; well, maybe for the eggplants microwaving would be enough, but the onions still take some serious roasting even after microwave assistance.  However, it is delicious and impressive.)

Microwave gingerbread and microwave flan (and a recommendation for mead…)

 

Filed under: baking, Beans and legumes, cooking, Desserts, holiday cooking, meat and poultry, Microwave tricks, Revised recipes, sauces and condiments, Vegetabalia | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A Slow Food Fast Thanksgiving

DIY Pasta–no chic gadgets needed

Posted on November 17, 2011 by DebbieN

 

handmade pasta, cut for ravioli

A few months ago I was surprised to read an interview with the British actress Emma Thompson–not about her acting, or producing, or screenwriting, or whatever, but about her having acquired a pasta machine so that she and her family could have fresh pasta at home.

What surprised me is that she called it a revelation, or revolutionary, can’t remember which. I think it came up in relation to a short dramatic interpretation of a poem called “Song of the Lunch” that she and Alan Rickman did for the BBC last year. It’s about 20 minutes long, posted on YouTube in sections but in its entirety, and it’s actually not bad, though not as funny about foodieism as “The Trip”. The main thing about it is that it takes place in an Italian restaurant in London. Hence the pasta issue.

Over the course of a misspent youth (which I’m still in, thank you very much) I have tried a number of times to make sheet pasta myself, with varying degrees of success.

  • Buckwheat noodles–grainy and dry. Try this soba recipe instead.
  • Jao tse dough made with flour, salt, and boiling water–a little thick but it worked well enough to boast about
  • Ravioli dough made with half egg, half water (this was a few weeks ago)–grainy, sticky, hard to roll evenly to the right thickness.
  • Yesterday’s classic pasta dough from Marcella Hazan, just flour and eggs–just right. In fact, the only right recipe there is, I’m now convinced.

So of course this post isn’t really revolutionary–I’m about 20 years behind the “Wow, you can make pasta at home” trend. And I refuse to call it “a revelation”, as fresh food that includes actual garlic always seems to be for the British. It’s just that it finally worked, came out pretty well, and wasn’t as hard or as time-consuming as I thought. Take it as read.

I should back up and say I never actually managed to pick up either a proper cranking pasta machine, even though you can sometimes find one at Ross for Less at under $20, or a proper long dowel-style rolling pin, which Hazan deems necessary for hand-rolling. This still worked very well.

Why no pasta crank for the crank? Why no artisan rolling pin? I’m not good about kitchen implements that are hard to store, particularly now that the drawers are out in the garage and the counter space is severely limited. I use an empty wine bottle, the tall hunch-shouldered kind with a long straight barrel and short neck. It stands up in a corner when not in use and doesn’t take up space. I also don’t roll any dough directly, but between two sheets of plastic wrap with a little flour or–my great new discovery, especially for this pasta dough–parchment paper. Works incredibly well, better than the plastic wrap, because it doesn’t wrinkle and stick.

In any case, the one kitchen gadget (other than the microwave, the toaster oven, or the coffee maker) that I’m always willing to give counter space to is my food processor (also not fancy–a $30 Hamilton Beach with a big work bowl, not a $200 Cuisinart).

Because although I’ve watched my share of “Make Your Own Pasta” cooking demos over the years where Mary Ann Esposito or the guest du jour on Julia Child cracks eggs into a well in a bowl of flour and “incorporates them” gradually, I know perfectly well from hard experience that kneading by hand is going to precede rolling out by hand, and that the food processor will make at least one of these ordeals a lot faster and less of a pain. It will also give me a better product. Pasta needs a lot of kneading–8-10 minutes!–to develop the gluten and get it to a smooth uniform texture that will hold when you roll and stretch it very thin.  I’m not that good or that patient. Or at least I wasn’t yesterday.

The rolling is the big thing–you have to get that dough thin enough to the point where you just begin to see through it. You don’t want it breaking, but it really Continue reading →

Filed under: books, cooking, DASH Diet, Food TV, frugality, haute cuisine, Pasta | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

School lunch vs. Congress: Ketchup all over again

Posted on November 16, 2011 by DebbieN

The House and Senate’s reconciled spending bill–surprise, surprise–now strips out the new USDA rules on school lunches. You know, the new rules to lower sodium, limit potatoes as in french fries, and debunk the idea that the smear of tomato paste on a commercial frozen pizza slice sold to the school through a fast food concession contract somehow counts as a vegetable. Those rules.

The spending bill is due for a final vote later this week and you won’t be surprised at all to find that the “no new lunch” provisions come primarily from the hands of a number of Republicans in both houses. Worse, one of their chief arguments is that because vegetables other than potatoes, corn and other starches are expensive, the schools shouldn’t have to comply.

But who made–and keeps making, take a look at the other parts of the spending bill–greens so much more expensive to grow than wheat, corn, soy, potatoes…the big heavily-subsidized commodity crops? You got it.

The shamelessness is everywhere though. While trying to verify the details of the bill in the Washington Post article, I looked up “House Budget Committee” (which isn’t exactly it; the official spending bills for the House come from the Appropriations Committee, but I wasn’t thinking official terminology first thing before coffee this morning).

I was disgusted to find an official House committee page apparently dedicated to singing the outsized praises of one party’s platform rather than to presenting actual public business–bill texts and status, committee assignments and mandate–conducted by and representing the work of all the members of the committee, whatever their party affiliations.

The Budget Committee’s chair, Paul Ryan, has commissioned a web site so grossly propagandist and silly it should be a public embarrassment. Go visit it. Am I wrong? Or does almost every single item on the front page mention Paul Ryan prominently in tones that suggest he led the Battle of the Bulge or launched NASA or some equally visionary achievement?

Given his performance in the GOP debates and the many polls that show his true popularity among voters, I shudder to think how much he had to spend out of the committee budget to get someone to put up such a flattering page.

If the House wants budget cuts, maybe this is where the supercommittee (and is that ever an overrating) should start. And then they should get back to work and put some actual food on the tables in public schools. $6.8 billion to improve school lunches and the federal breakfast program for low-income students is a pittance. It’s not enough to do everything students need, but it would do a lot if it weren’t wasted battling the processed food lobbyists over salt, potatoes, pizza, tomato paste and ketchup.

As it is, the food lobbies are likely to win this round in the legislature, or so the newspapers predict.

What power is left? Your purse. Your vote. Your phone calls to your senators and congressional representatives.

Likewise your ability not to pay for garbage. Boycott frozen pizza. Boycott french fries. Boycott soda. Stop buying this stuff for home and tell your kids why. These shameful food substitutes are a lot more expensive than they look. Pack your kids a real lunch–it could be leftovers or a sandwich, but pack something with protein, a little whole-grain starch, and actual vegetables. Maybe a fruit. Keep it cheap and whole–apples/oranges, not passionfruit.

I would also like to see students whose families can afford it to chip in by bringing a bag of apples to school, or a bag of carrot sticks, or a can of tuna, or a pound of cheese or a loaf of bread. Not every day, but every week or month. I have the idea that if all of that donated food went into a kitty for the low-income students, they might eat better than the way they do now.

Filed under: Food Politics, frugality, kid food, nutrition, shopping, unappetizing | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on School lunch vs. Congress: Ketchup all over again

Tabbouleh vs. me

Posted on November 13, 2011 by DebbieN

Exhausted. Yesterday I brought enough lunch food for 65 or so people at services because (get this) my husband signed us up to prepare the kiddush in celebration of our anniversary. Which is coming up in a couple of days. Ok. But I still have a tiny galley kitchen and all the drawers are still out in the garage awaiting some kind of decision on their fate–they have been that way since before we moved in, because they’re so chewed up I didn’t really want them back and haven’t decided what to replace them with yet.

And I think we (meaning I) did pretty well for costs by not doing the usual buy-salad-in-a-bag-for-thirty-bucks  and buy-a-big-commercial-sheet-cake and buy-a-vat-of-decorator-hummus.

But let me explain something I learned the hard way about making things from scratch. There’s a reason the boxes of commercial just-pour-boiling-water-on-it-and-wait tabbouleh are so tiny.

It’s not just all about profiteering–as you’d think I was going to say. Even I thought I was going to say that. But no.

At my local Armenian greengrocer’s I bought a 2.5 lb bag of #2 bulgur (the number denotes size of the cracked wheat grains) for $2.52 and a couple of bunches of parsley and lemons and a bunch of scallions and thought I was clearly way ahead of the Near East and Sadaf-purchasing folks. And yes, bulgur is microwaveable if you have a good-sized container. Just add water to cover by about an inch, put on a lid, and microwave 3-5 minutes, or enough to get the water to about boiling temperature, and let it stand about 15 minutes to absorb the boiling water. Then drain it and add lemon juice, olive oil, chopped parsley and scallion (and mint if you like it) and a bit of salt. More parsley than grain if you’re Lebanese and being authentic. Less green than grain if you’re doing what I grew up with.

What I didn’t take into account was exactly HOW MUCH tabbouleh one innocent-looking little pound of dry bulgur, or about 2 cups, actually makes.

Let’s just quietly admit it was considerably more than a salad bowl’s worth. So the expensive boxes you see in the Whole Foods, the little 4-6 oz. boxes, are probably just right for a family of less than 14.

I ended up freezing half of the grain in bags. I don’t think I’ll bother telling my in-laws before I bring it up for Thanksgiving. Wouldn’t want them to find themselves a pair of plane tickets just in the nick of time…

 

Filed under: frugality, Grains, Microwave tricks, Pasta | Tagged: , , | 2 Comments »

Microwave Tricks: Getting more chocolate power from cocoa

Posted on November 6, 2011 by DebbieN
Chocolate pot from the movie "Chocolat"

The infamous chocolate cauldron, image © Miramax

In the movie Chocolat, the riverboat captain tells the chocolatier that his favorite of all her confections is none other than the prosaic cauldron of hot chocolate she keeps on the hob to thaw out her customers. When she pours out a cup, it’s so thick it’s like hot molten chocolate bars. Hard to imagine how anyone could swallow more than a spoonful of it in reality, but you immediately believe it’s superior to the thin, miserly stuff that’s been passed off as hot chocolate in your childhood. And you’re right.

And on the other hand, how could anyone in their right mind want to down a cup of melted chocolate bars? Too rich, and for me, much too fatty. And with much too much cleanup–the last image that stuck in my mind from Chocolat was actually not the hot chocolate Juliette Binoche handed Johnny Depp and Judi Dench but the thickly encrusted cauldron that had been cooking chocolate all day long. Scary, and what a waste of chocolate for one scene!

So I don’t go for that myself, or at least not on such a grand scale. Though if you want that kind of recipe–go to David Lebovitz’s blog and look for Parisian (or worse yet, with even more chocolate, Belgian) hot chocolate. He’s got two kinds of Mexican hot chocolate drinks too.

Cocoa powder, the ordinary day-to-day stuff of American hot chocolate mixes, seems so much less potent and chocolaty than all the fancy recherché chocolate bars with the cocoa solids percentages, the exotic Latin American or African source names, the single-source, fair-trade, wine-label-styled descriptions. Cocoa powder is so prosaic (unless it’s Scharffen-Berger or Valrhona or another premium brand). How could it possibly be good enough for a high-class, French-style cup of hot chocolate?

Granted, cocoa powder–dutched, natural, either way–it’s pure cocoa solids. But it doesn’t really give you the full chocolate experience if you just mix it into things. Something’s missing.

Most professional chefs and chocolatiers will probably tell you it’s the cocoa butter that’s missing. And they’re not entirely wrong–fat does carry flavor and keeps the more volatile, delicate aromas in the chocolate from evaporating off too quickly or breaking down under heat.

But if that were the entire reason, cocoa powder, stripped of all its fat and stored in warehouses and supermarket shelves for months at a time, would be flavorless and dead by the time you got it home from the store, and we know that’s not the case.

When you make brownies or chocolate cake with cocoa powder, there comes a point in the baking when you suddenly smell the chocolate wherever you are in the house at that moment. Before you even realize you’re smelling it, before any Continue reading →

Filed under: cooking, Desserts, history, Microwave tricks, Revised recipes | Tagged: , , , , | 4 Comments »

Tomato paste rules…

Posted on November 3, 2011 by DebbieN

School lunch debates now apparently hinge on the 30-year-old question: if tomatoes are a fruit and not a vegetable, what’s tomato paste?

The American Frozen Food Institute is quoted as objecting to new proposed government rules that a quarter-cup of tomato paste can no longer qualify as a serving of vegetable in public school cafeteria lunches. I’m shocked that it has up to now.

The organization’s spokesman actually tried to argue that putting enough tomato paste to qualify as a vegetable would swamp the pizza, which he called “a big part of school lunches”.

Well, yes. That’s one of the big contributing factors to the push for better nutrition guidelines. And in complaining so hard about the tomato paste rule, the spokesman effectively admitted that tomato paste isn’t incredibly nutritious in the quantities most people can consume. It may be vegetable in origin, or it may be “a fruit and not a vegetable” if you want to get prissy about it, but mostly, it’s just a condiment, like ketchup or mustard.

Anyone who’s managed to fool the public this far that the little smear of tomato sauce on a commercial pizza is a sufficient serving of vegetabalia for growing kids deserves every possible food-related and financial comeuppance.

And on the other hand…mustard. Hey. Wait a minute! Mustard is a Vegetable! (well, mustard leaves, anyway).

–  –  –  –  –

Actually, what all the hue and cry boil down to is money. The trade organizations for processed and fast food concessions to public schools stand to lose a lot of their profits if they have to provide nutrition along with the colored sawdust they sell as “pizza” and the greasy mush they sell as “french fries”.

They turn around and threaten the school districts with increased cost per meal, perhaps above what the Federal Government will pay per student.

The school districts panic and shake their heads, complaining that $2.79 government reimbursement per student per lunch isn’t enough as it is, and maybe the Federal Government should drag its heels even further on requiring low sodium meals and fewer potatoes and less tomato paste and more vegetables of worth.

–  –  –  –  –

Step on the brakes a second. $2.79 for lunch? Does that include labor and dishwashing? Or just the food?

If that’s just for the food, I have great news for the school districts. A peanut butter and fruit spread (disclaimer: doesn’t meet govt. standards for a full serving of fruit; this too is just a condiment) on whole wheat bread, with carrots and an apple, maybe if we’re feeling fancy some raw cabbage or green beans or cauliflower, comes to significantly less than $2.79 per serving.

And that’s retail with unpaid labor (mine), and it takes less than 5 minutes to prepare in the morning, even including all the standard parental yelling, “Let’s go, we’re gonna be late, it’s already 5 after, where are your socks?!” Believe me, if I can manage it before benefit of coffee, so can the schools.

Surely the school district bursars can figure out how to drive a harder bargain from their suppliers with so much at stake? Surely lunch should be a simpler thing to prepare?

Filed under: Food Politics, kid food, nutrition, sauces and condiments, unappetizing, Vegetabalia | Comments Off on Tomato paste rules…