Celery Salad with Dates

These days it takes a particularly good recipe to bring me back here, but this one is so simple and surprising that I didn't want to leave it undocumented. I cleaned out a big pile of old magazines the other day, but I went through them first and pinned all the ones I had flagged with sticky notes and scraps of paper (it's an imperfect system but it works for me, heh). This little gem is from a back issue of Bon Appetit. The slightly salty crunch of the celery next to the sweetness of the dates is an unexpected and delightful combo.

Celery Salad with Dates
Serves 4 as a side

The original recipe called for a couple of ounces of shaved parmesan, which I skipped because I tasted it before I added cheese and loved it as is. The next day I ate the leftovers for lunch (they were a little soggy and the dates were kind of bloated, so I recommend you eat this one right when you make it), and I added some leftover crumbled bacon. The salty fattiness was a nice foil for the sweetness of the dates, so I'll add the parmesan next time I make this one. 

1/2 cup sliced almonds
8 stalks celery, thinly sliced on a strong bias
5 dates, pitted, roughly chopped
juice of half a lemon
salt and pepper
a good size pinch of red pepper flakes (I used a combo of aleppo and maras pepper)
3-4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 oz parmesan cheese or 4-5 strips of bacon, cooked until crisp and crumbled (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350, spread the almonds on a baking sheet and toast until golden, about 5 minutes. Pro tip: don't leave the kitchen, and make sure you set a timer. Nuts are tricky, tricky buggers and they burn in like a second. I use the toaster oven and literally watch them toast, though in a small toaster oven with more hot spots, you'll probably want to stir them every couple of minutes.

Combine the celery, dates, salt, pepper and red pepper flakes in a bowl, squeeze the lemon juice over and toss. Add the parmesan, if using, and the almonds, and a splash of the olive oil, then taste and adjust the seasoning. If you want more heat, add more red pepper, or if it's too aggressively acidic, add a little more olive oil. If you're using the bacon instead of the cheese, sprinkle the crumbles over the top of the salad just before serving.

Slow Cooker Beef and Lamb Chili

I know I'm not very good at consistent blogging anymore, but I do often post pictures of dinner over on instagram. I'm a fan of the near-instant posting, and since most of my photos are taken on my phone these days (who wants to carry around a DSLR when an iPhone fits in your pocket?), that particular social media has won out of this one. I like that the pictures are usually sort of messy and un-styled, too (note chili splash marks and chipped bowl). Unfortunately, iPhone keyboards are not so excellent for typing out entire recipes, so here I am again! Let's talk chili.

I make a big batch of chili at least once each winter. It's a fantastic recipe that I got from my friend Kristen, and I will certainly bring it out at some point during football season, but man, is that sucker a project: there's lots of chopping and hours of simmering, and it feeds twenty (twenty!) people. I needed to make some room in the freezer this week, and the weather has turned cool again, but I didn't have hours to tend to a pot - in fact, I threw this in the crockpot in about 30 minutes after Bones the other night and dinner was done before I even woke up the next day. This version is a slimmed down, use-what-you've-got interpretation of my old stand by, so there's a little bit of pre-cooking and a little bit of finishing, but the batch was perfect for dinner for two and a few lunches worth of leftovers.

Slow Cooker Beef and Lamb Chili
Serves 6-8, or 2 with plenty of lunches for the week

By all means, use all beef if that's what you've got (or what you like) but we really enjoyed the added flavor from the ground lamb. And a note on fat: Adam doesn't eat pork on principle, but we do have bacon once a year (New Year's Day, when we have guests for brunch), and I save the fat and cook with it from time to time when it seems like a good fit. If you don't save bacon fat, you could certainly use olive oil, or a combination of oil and butter as in the original, or any other interesting fat you feel like cooking with that day. Or you could cook some bacon with your breakfast and use the fat to start slow-cooker chili that you'll eat for dinner that night. I used home-canned tomatoes from my #crazycanninglady frenzy of Labor Day weekend, but I'm sure store bought would work just fine. 

about 2 tablespoons bacon fat or olive oil, divided

2 stalks celery, cut into half moons about 1/2" thick

2 jalapenos, seeded, minced

2 green peppers, diced into 3/4" pieces

4 cloves garlic, minced

2 medium white or yellow onions, diced into 1/2" pieces

1 lb ground lamb

1 lb stewing beef, cut into 1 1/2" pieces

2 14.5 ounce cans beans, drained and rinsed (I used dark red kidney beans and pink beans, but use what you like)

1 28-32 ounce can crushed tomatoes

1 14.5-16 ounce can tomato sauce

1/2 tablespoon* cumin

1/2 tablespoon chili powder

1/2 tablespoon red chili flakes

1/2 tablespoon smoked paprika

1 teaspoon celery seed

1 teaspoon ground white pepper

1 teaspoon ground black pepper, plus extra for seasoning as you go

kosher salt

*I happen to have a 1/2 tablespoon measure, but if you don't, it's equivalent to 1 1/2 teaspoons.

Heat 1-2 teaspoons fat in a cast iron or other large heavy skillet over medium high heat. Add the green peppers, celery and jalapenos and saute for 5-7 minutes until just starting to soften. Add the garlic, season with a big pinch of kosher salt, and saute for one minute more. Scrape the vegetables into the slow cooker.

Add another 1-2 teaspoons fat in the same skillet, and add the onion. Saute for 5 or so minutes, or until the onion is just starting to get translucent. Add the lamb to the skillet, breaking it up with your spatula, and season with a big pinch of salt. Cook until the lamb is no longer pink, stirring and breaking up the meat as it cooks. If your lamb gives off a fair amount of fat as it cooks, tilt the skillet and spoon out most of the fat before scraping the lamb and onions into the slow cooker. (Pro tip: I used one of the empty bean cans as a place to put the fat before it solidified and I could throw it out - never put fat down the drain!)

Add another 1-2 teaspoons fat to the skillet, then add half the beef. Turn the pieces occasionally, trying to get a good dark golden crust on at least two sides of each piece. When the first batch is golden brown on a couple of sides, scrape them into the slow cooker and repeat with the second half of the beef. If your skillet is very large you won't need to work in batches, but mine isn't huge, and crowding the meat will cause it to steam instead of developing the golden brown crust you're after.

So now you've got partially cooked vegetables and meat in the slow cooker. Add the beans, tomatoes, and tomato sauce, then add all the spices - you can use more or less chili powder or chili flake to adjust the heat level, or you could add hot sauce if you like. For me, this amount of seasoning amounted to a medium heat level - I didn't add any additional fire power to my bowl, but Adam added pickled jalapenos to his. Anyway, add another large pinch of salt, stir the whole thing together, then put on the lid and turn the slow cooker to low.

Cook on low for about 8 hours or overnight (it is kind of weird and awesome to wake up to a house that smells like chili). When you get up, take the lid off the slow cooker but let it keep simmering, stirring occasionally, for about an hour to thicken slightly (totally ok to skip this if you don't have time, it'll just be a little more soupy). Taste the chili for seasoning - it may need more salt depending on how aggressive you were when seasoning during cooking. Serve hot, with all the fixins if you've got 'em: sour cream, grated cheese, extra hot sauce, sliced green onion, cornbread, fritos, etc, etc.

Crazy Canning Lady 2013 (and some useful links)

My most-used hashtag lately has been #crazycanninglady. What you see above is what I made from 100+ pounds of tomatoes over labor day weekend: 38 pints of salsa; 8 quarts, 5 24 oz jars, and 4 pints of crushed tomatoes; 5 pints of thin tomato sauce; and 12 pints of tomato juice that I squeeze out of the seeds and peels at the end of the weekend. I bought 4 cases of seconds (the less-than-perfect tomatoes that go for cheap and are just fine for canning) for a mere $12 per case, and then because I'm a nutter I bought another box the following weekend used the whole box to make another 7 pints of thick tomato sauce.

In the last month I've also made kosher style dill pickles, tomatillo salsa verde, dilly beans, stone fruit + blackberry jam, mixed berry jam, and Asian style plum sauce. I've got tomatoes at home destined for tomato jam tomorrow night, and we're going apple picking this weekend which will inevitably lead to overbuying, so I'm guessing there's apple jelly in my future. (Thanks for the idea, Mom! I bought a jelly strainer the other day!)

If you want to be a crazy canning lady like me, here are some extremely useful links about how to do it safely:

Understanding Acid and pH in Boiling Water Bath Canning from Food in Jars.

How Not to Die from Botulism from Northwest Edible Life

Canning Q&A: The Difference Between Jam, Jelly, Marmalade and Preserves from Food Fanatic

Canning Q&A: Differences Between Jam vs. Jelly, Marmalade and Preserves - See more at: http://www.foodfanatic.com/2013/05/canning-q-and-a-differences-between-jam-vs-jelly-marmalade-and-p/#sthash.ZaewyQv7.dpuf

Canning Q&A: Differences Between Jam vs. Jelly, Marmalade and Preserves - See more at: http://www.foodfanatic.com/2013/05/canning-q-and-a-differences-between-jam-vs-jelly-marmalade-and-p/#sthash.ZaewyQv7.dpuf

Last Night's Dinner (and a recipe for Roasted Carrot "Hummus")

Adam's been traveling for work a lot lately, spending Sunday through Friday in New York and coming home just long enough to do laundry and give me a quick hug before getting back on a train. That project is almost over, thank goodness, but while he's been gone I've reverted to my single lady food habits. By which I mean that I've had an awful lot of tomato sandwiches for lunch and dinner in the last month.

Anyway, he got to come home early this week and yesterday I made us an actual honest to goodness dinner with some actual honest to goodness thought behind it. I started with the cover recipe from Yotam Ottolenghi's gorgeous book Plenty, but at Rivka's suggestion I used pomegranate molasses instead of the out-of-season pomegranate seeds. Sauteed kale was a no brainer given the enormous bunch taking up half the space in my refrigerator.

Then, since the oven was already on, I figured it was time to try the roasted carrot "hummus" that my friend Samantha suggested as a way to use up a glut of carrots (oh the woes of a CSA member!) I put hummus in quotes because there are no chickpeas in here, but carrot dip sounds like something you dip carrots in, not a dip made of carrots, and carrot spread just doesn't really capture the vaguely middle eastern flair of it. This stuff is so good, you guys. It's sweet from the honey and the carrots themselves, with smokey, herbaceous notes from the toasted cumin and coriander. I threw together some quick flatbread to scoop this up with, but I think it would be equally good on crudites (especially cauliflower) or crackers. If you can eat this outside to enjoy the waning summer (sob) so much the better.

Roasted Carrot "Hummus"
adapted (but not much) from River Cottage Veg

When I make this again (after we inevitably get another pound or two of carrots next week) I want to try using the green coriander from the gone-to-seed cilantro plants in my garden to bump up the vegetal flavors.

1 - 1.5 pounds carrots
1/2 cup olive oil, divided
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 tablespoon neutral flavored honey 
3-4 garlic cloves
3 tablespoons tahini
juice of one orange
juice of half a lemon
salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees while you peel the carrots and cut them into 1 inch chunks.

Toast the cumin and coriander seeds together in a dry skillet just until fragrant (if using green coriander, just toast the cumin). Transfer to a mortar and pestle or a spice grinder and grind to a fine-ish powder. Combine the spices with 1/4 cup of olive oil, a big pinch of salt and the honey, then toss the carrots in the mixture, spread on a baking sheet, add the garlic (don't peel it) and roast, tossing once, for about 30 minutes or until the carrots are dark brown (but not burnt!) in spots.

When the carrots are out of the oven, let them cool for a minute or two, then add them to a food processor with the garlic (it should be easy to squeeze the garlic from the skins, now), tahini, orange and lemon juices and another big pinch of salt. Pulse a few times to get it started, then add 2 tablespoons of the remaining olive oil and pulse a bit more. You may need more oil, or you may not, but keep adding oil and pulsing until you get a thick paste. Taste for seasoning - I added more lemon juice and more black pepper - and pulse again if you add anything just to finish mixing. Serve warm or at room temperature, drizzled with a little more olive oil if you like. 

Food Poetry Friday

Peeling Onions
by Adrienne Rich

Only to have a grief
equal to all these tears!

There's not a sob in my chest.
Dry-hearted as Peer Gynt

I pare away, no hero,
merely a cook.

Crying was labor, once
when I'd good cause.
Walking, I felt my eyes like wounds
raw in my head,
so postal-clerks, I thought, must stare.
A dog's look, a cat's, burnt to my brain -
yet all that stayed
stuffed in my lungs like smog.

These old tears in the chopping-bowl.

---

This seemed appropriate for a dreary, grey Friday.  I took the photo on our trip to California in May; it's from the Santa Monica Farmer's Market. I hope your cooking projects this weekend only bring tears to your eyes with their sheer deliciousness!

Strawberry Season

If we are facebook friends you might have noticed my rant when my well-intentioned landlady picked a bunch of my strawberries "so the animals don't get them!" Unfortunately, they weren't ripe yet, and they don't ripen once they've been picked. She also washed them (and I just keep telling myself she meant well, sigh), which meant they needed to be used immediately before they started to mold, but what do you do with under ripe strawberries? Well, not much. I ate the borderline ones and chucked the rest. It was so sad. But then a very nice chef instructor friend of mine bought me half a flat of strawberries from his CSA farm, becuase he is a very nice friend who understand the indignity of misappropriated fruit. Man, my office smelled good that day. With half of the berries I made this frozen strawberry pie from A Year of Pies, which I got as a Christmas gift from my mother-in-law.


Though challenging to slice (leave it out on the counter for 20 minutes to soften, but expect that the bottom crust will crumble anyway), it's been a perfect dessert in the heatwave we're experiencing this week. I wasn't sure what to do with the rest of the berries, since I've still got a couple jars of last year's jam in the cupboard, but this simple recipe for compote (a much looser preserve) seemed intriguing.



So I chopped up the rest of the berries, leaving my cutting board stained pink. After an over night maceration (apparently macerating helps the berries keep their shape better in the finished product, but mostly it was just too late for me to keep going!), I cooked and canned this vibrantly colored sauce. From a generous 6 cups of sliced fruit, I ended up with 4 half pint jars and a little bit leftover, which I ate on vanilla yogurt as a late night snack yesterday.



Strawberry Citrus Compote
adapted from One Green Tomato
makes about 4 half pints

This compote is tangy from the lime juice and just sweet enough. Since there's not nearly as much sugar as in jam, I'm guessing the shelf life is going to be shorter, so I'm planning to eat this within 6 months, and not just on yogurt. Soon I will upgrade to ice cream, and I'm guessing waffles or pancakes or shortcakes aren't far behind. 

6 cups washed, hulled and sliced strawberries (from a little less than 2 quarts)
zest and juice of one orange
zest and juice of one lime
1 cup sugar

Combine all ingredients in a bowl, mix well, and let macerate overnight in the fridge or for up to 48 hours. When you're ready to cook, get the boiling water bath canner and your jars ready, and then move the fruit, which should now be swimming in delightful red juice, into a 3-4 quart pot (if you won't need it in the meantime, you could macerate directly in the pot). Bring to a boil, stirring to avoid scorching, then lower the heat to maintain a simmer (keep stirring occasionally) and cook until slightly reduced and thickened. In my pot, this took about 30 minutes. Ladle compote into hot jars, wipe rims, apply lids and rings, and process for 10 minutes in a boiling water bath canner. Shut off the heat after 10 minutes and allow the jars to sit in the water bath for one additional minute, then remove to a towel lined counter. Check seals after 1 hour, then allow to cool completely before labeling and storing.

What's Cooking.

At the beginning of May Adam and I took a two week trip to California. You can see all the photos here. One thing that's different about previous trips we've taken is that I didn't bring my DSLR camera, I only brought my iPhone. There's certainly a noticeable difference in quality, but the trade off was that I didn't have to carry a big camera. I'm not ready to give up my camera entirely, but it was nice not to worry about another electronic something or other. Anyway, here are a few of my favorite shots:













We got back a month ago, but I already can't wait to go back. Since then, we've had a lovely visit from family, including this little heartbreaker, who I only have blurry photos of, because he is in constant motion.



That was the day we had donuts for breakfast and ice cream for dinner in an attempt to show the whole family the best that Somerville has to offer. Yeah, I think he enjoyed himself.

After a bout of kitchen malaise when we got back from California (where are MY 8 for a dollar avocados?!), I've been finding my way back to cooking in the last few weeks. I made these excellent muffins (mmm, molasses and raisins), and there are three jars of rhubarb rosemary jam on my counter waiting to be labeled. Last week I threw together a pistachio chimichurri and we've eaten it on fish, beef, eggs, pizza and grilled veggies: one bunch of parsley, one bunch of cilantro, a couple stalks of spring garlic (or a clove or two of mature garlic) 1/3-1/2 cup of roasted pistachios, salt and enough olive oil to make it as loose as you like it. Chop the pistachios in the food processor, then add the herbs, and pour in the oil while the machine runs. Use it on just about anything (my favorite was on grilled steak).

Farmer's markets have been open for a couple of weeks, and our garden is in bloom, now too. The tomatoes are starting to flower, and I've been able to use the chive blossoms to pretty up salads of local greens and baby tomatoes - even if the avocados are $2 a piece and come from across the country.



What have you all been up to? What's cooking with you?