A German Photoessay

Everyone should have a German in their lives. Those people know food. I recently had the pleasure of having a wonderful German friend cook a wonderful German meal - and not complain when I got in her way to snap tons of photos. She was even kind enough to write out the recipe.

What I present to you today may be one of a handful of vegetarian German recipes in existence – no pig, no cow, not even a lowly chicken thrown into the mix. Don’t mistake it for a healthy meal, however – it is made of equal parts white flour and cheese (are you drooling yet?), and it’s just so good. Spaetzle, little boiled beads of flour and egg, are a perfect winter food, a perfect hangover food, and perfect with beer (I don’t see a contradiction here, do you?). The Germans, they know a little something about all three of these things.

The secret weapon in making this German delight? No, not David Hasselhoff. It’s the spaetzle maker – kind of like a slide set on top of a large bore colander, in the picture at the head of the post. The slide is filled with batter, forcing drops of it though the holes and into boiling water as it is pushed back and forth.

Spaetzle can be browned in butter and served as a side dish to just about anything. Alternatively, the spaetzle can play the starring, entrée role when layered with ridiculous amounts of cheese and topped with fried onions, German lasagna style (if it's not against the law to call it that).

The following is a visual guide to the making of your very own German delight, provided you have a spaetzle maker handy. If this doesn't make you want to run out and befriend a German with kitchen access, nothing will.

Here goes.

German spaetzle lasagna
Pan fry roughly chopped onions in olive oil until deeply browned. Keep warm. Have a medium-sized pot of salted water boiling.

Count on 100 grams of all purpose flour combined with 1 egg per serving (My lovely hostess combined 300g flour with 3 eggs... I think). One cup is ~125 grams, so you can use it as a general guide for the amount of flour you need.

- Combine flour, egg(s), and salt in a bowl.

At this point, the spaetzle can be gussied up quite a bit. My lovely hostess defrosted and squeezed dry a package of spinach and mixed it in with the batter, under the pretense of off-setting the dietary nightmare that is two pounds of melted cheese layered with white flour and egg. Not that I complained, mind you. I asked for seconds. I can imagine a grating of nutmeg being really nice in there, or maybe even some mushed up peas, for a German-British fusion sort of thing… if that’s not against the law.

Mix the flour and eggs (+ additives of choice) and add enough water such that the batter drops slowly from a spoon in a thick ribbon – sorry that I can’t be more specific as I was just a spectator to this wonderful event. I can tell you that the batter is quite liquid.

- Place the dough in the spaetzle maker set over a boiling pot of salted water.
- Move the spaetzle slide back and forth over the grid, effectively “grating” the batter into the water. See the beads dropping into the water? Maybe? Stir to prevent the batter beads from sticking to the bottom of the pot.

- The spaetzle are ready when they float to the top. Remove spaetzle as they are ready with a slotted spoon and transfer to a dish.

- Layer spaetzle with big handfuls of grated Emmental and Gruyere cheeses – the heat of the spaetzle melts the cheese.

- Top with browned onions.

- To serve, scoop all the way from the bottom of the dish, and have fun battling the strings of melted cheese. Yum. Consume with copious amounts of red wine and a salad on the side. Note: salad is optional.

Cheese-O-Lantern

Ugh, sweet lord, I have missed blogging. I really have. The last few months kicked my butt kind of completely. I applied for jobs which I did not get, ended my internship working on things in which I had no background nor education (and succeeding, shockingly, despite my own predictions of complete and profound failure), and avoided pondering my impending unemployment by running away to Rome, then Austin, then Philadelphia. Now I am back, unemployed (did I mention that I have no job?), with all the time in the world to blog and a back log of about a million pictures and stories that I had neither the time nor the physical and emotional energy to record before now. So here I go.

In the middle of all the work, and the job search, and the impending darkness of the 9-month long Boston winter, my little social circle suffered a terrible loss – one of my closest friends and inspiration for numerous blog posts on this very blog – left me, cold-heartedly, for three years in Paris. I am happy for her and all her baguettes and crepes, obviously I am happy for her. Meh. I am just sad for me.

Before she left me for Parisian cheese and wine (and can you blame her, really) we had one last hurrah at my place, a going away party with lots of friends, lots of booze, and of course, lots of food, close to Halloween. A momentous departure demanded a momentous dish. The Texan and I pulled off one of the more spectacular things that has ever come out of my oven – a whole pumpkin (picked with my own two hand at the same farm as the apples), hollowed out and stuffed with alternating layers of baguette, Gruyere, heavy cream and a tint of nutmeg, baked until the cheese and cream liquefied into a fondue, the pumpkin softened to a puree, the skin blackened and blistered.

The glorious party centerpiece, complete with rivulets of hot cream running out of the cheese fondue inside

The melted cheese and cream soaked bread, piled onto a plate next to a scoop of baked pumpkin flesh made for a picture perfect (and dramatic) way to bid good-bye (a temporary good-bye) to someone you love.

All hollowed out.

The recipe here.

Happy Birthday, Melissa! I miss you very much and am jealous, daily, of the newly Parisian you. And happy for you, of course.

Yuppie cat nip

I may whine about Boston every once in a while, but I love it. I love it especially now that I have a car. Riddled with scratches, cracked taillights, and other city kisses though it may be, it’s my connection to the many farms that surround the city. Now that it’s fall harvest season, the farms are kicking into over drive, pulling up millions of varieties of squash (only a slight exaggeration), potatoes, greens, and apples. I took advantage of both the car and the season to visit a farm, in true to type yuppie fashion.

Red Fire Farm, located in a teeny town about an hour and a half west of Boston, hosted a fall harvest festival this last weekend. Farm festivals are like cat nip for yuppies such as myself - interact with the farmers, spend a day outside, eat really good food, pretend to be in touch with nature - it makes for a good day.

The farm stand itself looks like nothing more than a regular house in a neighborhood. Walk through to the back though, past the tables loaded with garlic, squash, and locally produced milk, and the house opens up to fields with the backdrop of stubby mountains, turning leaves, and a quiet calm.

German extra hardy garlic, on sale at the farm stand


It was so quiet! Almost shocking to someone such as myself, used to the background buzz of the city. The smell all around was wonderful – heavy on cut grass, with slight tinges of natural fertilizer, if you know what I mean. Not in any bad way, but in a way that reminds me that I am never out in nature. Really, never. I am not much of a nature-girl. Which brings me to the mosquitoes.

Never in my life have I seen so many mosquitoes at the same time, at the same place. They swarmed. They conspired against me, I am certain of it. They could tell that I hadn’t been that close to “nature” in years. If it wasn’t for the kindly yuppies sitting next to me who gave me the kind and generous gift of a bug repellent wipe… well, I am not sure I would be sitting here typing now. I would be a giant, pink, itch-filled balloon praying for a swift death. I am itchy still, mind you, I just don’t want to die. Not at all. I keep remembering the evening and it makes me smile.

The harvest feast began with a squash tasting – butternut, carnival, spaghetti, two types of kabocha, and others I had never heard of. All grown on the farm, all cooked till sweet and smooth. It was really interesting to taste the range of flavors in one vegetable. The word squash all of a sudden seemed rather limited.


We made our way to the tables set in the farm fields under a tent, set with a small pumpkin, cider pressed on the farm that morning, and a hard cider donated by a local company. Everything we ate that night, save for the lasagna noodles, was grown on the farm. How incredible is that? The yuppie in me rejoiced. The repressed hippie let out a 'Yippee!'.

The meal began with small (biodegradable) bowls of squash and apple soup made by a local shop.


For the entrée, we were offered a choice of delicata squash stuffed with rice and topped with mozzarella, or a squash lasagna (my choice). The lasagna was stuffed to the brim with sweet and creamy squash, flavored with just a hint of sage and other herbs. The tender whole wheat lasagna noodles were barely perceptible amongst the mounds of squash, but lovely topped with melted fresh mozzarella.


The mixed greens salad was so crisp and fresh that I was shocked by the crunch. The roasted vegetables had sweet and white potatoes, red and golden beets, eggplant, cauliflower, and bell peppers, oh my. All sweet and packed with flavor, the kind of flavor you don’t get with vegetables that have lined supermarket shelves for an unknown number of days.

As if that wasn’t enough food, there was also home made pumpkin pie with freshly whipped cream. The pie (whole wheat crust) was super smooth and not overly spiced, nutmeg coming to the front. If I had any room in my stomach at all at this point (did I forget to mention the cider donut I had before the squash samples and the rest of the meal? Oh yea, there was a cider donut) I would have tried to whipped cream. As things stood, I barely dragged myself away from the table, stuffed to the brim and reluctant to leave the farm, with its crickets and bugs in the background and nighttime farm smells.

Parting shot of the tent on the farm. I was sad to leave, yet excited to get to my cortisone cream.

It could have been the romance of the farm and fresh air, or it could have been the crisp hard cider, but everything tasted so freakin' good. So fresh and alive, made with care by dirty hippie farmers, none older than me and all committed to the cause of local agriculture.

Inspired by Bar Food

It is rare that I find myself inspired by bar food. Regular, run of the mill, anonymous, non-fancy bar kind of food. Rare, but not unheard of.

I spent a horribly rainy afternoon in an Irish pub by my house, watching a British soccer (oooh, I mean futbol) match, drinking beer (like it’s abnormal to drink beer at 3PM on a Saturday. In a bar. Please.), and snacking on surprisingly good French fries. A lady who was quite obviously a regular at the bar (which is sad in its own right, for a Saturday afternoon) recommended I get a side of curry sauce for the fries, a British tradition I have never quite understood. However, when informed by a haggard-looking bar regular, on a rainy Saturday afternoon, that I should be eating my French fries covered in curry sauce, then that’s what I do.

And you know what? It was pretty good! I have absolutely no idea what was in it, besides copious amounts of cream, I am sure, but it was smooth and slightly sweet, it was perfect for dipping thin, crunchy fries. Not nearly spicy enough, but it never is. Right there, on the spot, facing the onset of tipsiness and autumn, I started to crave curried squash soup.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it for the next few days. I made it the first chance I could, with the autumn squash that has been arriving in my Boston Organics boxes as of late. Smooth and rich, with a bit of a kick and freshness from the herbs, it was autumn, right there, on my table. I am not entirely ready for autumn yet, but it appears I am ready for the food. It’s going to be soups and more soups from now until next June. Good thing I wasn't craving the potato skins. [Shudder].


Curried Squash Soup
1 med acorn squash and 1 med dumpling squash (though you could use one large butternut squash instead – it is fabulous with curry powder - or all acorn, whatever you have)
1 large onion
2 tbsp curry powder
chili powder, to taste
chicken stock or water
handful of fresh cilantro
3 or 4 stalks of green onion

- Preheat onion to 425F
- Cut squash open, quarter, and scoop out the seeds.
- Rub with olive oil, salt and pepper, place cut side down on baking sheet and roast until tender and browned. Try to stop yourself from tearing off all the brown, sweet, crunchy bits and eating them on the spot. You need them to make the soup sweet(er). Let cool and scoop out flesh. Or burn your fingers, if you’re me.
- Chop onion roughly and sautee in olive oil till soft and translucent, about 5 min.
- Sprinkle with curry and chili powders, stir about and allow the spices to toast for a few minutes.
- Add cooked squash, squish it a bit and stir around till you get bored. Then add chicken stock/water to cover the squash by about an inch.
- Add salt and simmer for about 20-30 minutes.
- Puree and thin out with stock/water to desired consistency
- Toss in herbs, season with salt and paper.
- Photograph aggressively.
- Eat on couch, blanket on lap.

Muttar Paneer

So Archna and I made paneer. Well, that’s not really all we did. It was a Saturday to be remembered. We got up at about 9:30AM… I had my first beer by 10:30. It all went downhill from there and it wasn’t pretty. Picture two people splayed out on a couch in front of a TV blaring the Food Network, the coffee table in front of them littered with cheese, bread, and newly emptied bottles of wine. We managed to capitalize on our sporadic moments of motivation to extricate ourselves from the siren call of my couch to push on in making the paneer and engineering its starring role in one of my favorite dishes of all time, muttar paneer.

It went a little something like this:



1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 tbsp grated fresh ginger
3 cloves garlic, grated (I grated both the ginger and the garlic on a microplane. You could also pulverize the garlic in a food processor if making a large batch to store).

½ tsp cumin seeds
½ tsp ground coriander
½ tsp ground cumin
1/8 tsp turmeric
1/8 tsp chili powder

1¼ cups water
1/3 cup frozen peas
1 tomato, chopped (we used about 12 cherry tomatoes, halved)
A pinch of sugar

Fried paneer (really don’t know what amount to give… as much as you would like to add? Not very scientific, I know. I think our half gallon of milk yielded 1 – 1½ cups of paneer and we added it all in).


- Toast the cumin seeds in canola oil until they turn pink and begin to release fragrance.
- Add onion, ginger and garlic, sweat until the onion softens.
- Add the ground spices (cumin, coriander, turmeric, and chili powder), cook for another 3 minutes or so.
- Add water, bring to a boil.
- Add tomatoes and simmer on med high heat (a fairly potent simmer) about 10 minutes, mushing up the tomatoes slightly to homogenize.
- Add frozen peas and fried paneer.
- Add more water if necessary to cover the paneer.
- Cook another 10 minutes to infuse the paneer with the spices.
- Add a pinch of sugar to bring out the sweetness of the peas, salt to taste, serve over rice.



Oh it was wonderful! The paneer was tasted like the essence and soul of milk, condensed into a resilient fried nugget. It was creamy yet firm, with a fresh taste that you can only get from farmhouse milk still warm from a cow. Totally gross description, I know, but having experienced it, I find little else to compare it to.

The paneer was luscious and rich but had the little squeak of a fresh cheese curd. The heat from the chili powder, sweetness from the peas, acidity from the tomatoes and slight punch from the ginger were all in perfect balance with each other and generally got on famously. The pops of the peas, the squeaks of the paneer, and my grunts of approval harmonized beautifully.

I would have been happy to eat the fried cheese all by itself but felt we should have something more involved to show at the end of our day of Gluttony and Sloth. And we did. We had muttar paneer and we had Pride. It was a great day.

Green Eggs and Ham

I have a fear of yeast (the baking kind, not the lab kind). I never make recipes that involve yeast, rising, proofing, kneading or any other equally intimidating words. They bring up images of rolled up sleeves, beads of sweat forming on the forehead, and of little cups full of breeding, breathing, scum colored yeast. Blech. I cannot tell you why I have such a strange and powerful aversion to an organism that has served mankind for centuries, but I do.

I am here to tell you that I have made a small step toward conquering my yeastophobia. Under strict and patient supervision, I assisted in making my very first homemade pizza, complete with a made-from-scratch, yeast-leavened crust. It was scary, I won’t lie. But I made it through, ate pizza, and lived to tell the tale.

My kind supervisor added yeast to a warm water and sugar bath to wake up the little buggers and coax them into eating mode (I could not be trusted with such a key step). After the yeast solution was added to flour and salt it came time to knead the dough. For five whole minutes. Yeah, I know! Five minutes is a lot! I kneaded, I grunted, I got tired and whiney but it was worth it - the dough rose beautifully. I got to punch it down with a disproportionate amount of glee (and a little vindictiveness), after which it was rolled out by my attentive and generous supervisor (I still hate rolling pins and had to defer). The rolled out dough was covered in a thick, deep green Greek olive oil, a home-made tomato sauce with tons of browned garlic, and then it was time for the toppings.


I really have no self-control. Practically the entire contents of my fridge made their way onto this pizza. I roasted a red bell pepper and three Anaheim chiles, sliced green zebra heirloom tomatoes (note that all the vegetables were green…), tore prosciutto di Parma, cut rounds of fresh mozzarella, and what the hell, plopped a raw egg into the center. I am sure I could have found something else to sprinkle, layer, or shower on top (capers were up next … but they were vetoed) but the crust had to go into the oven before it became soggy.


Twelve minutes in a 600F oven, no pizza stone, no fancy equipment, just crossed fingers and a few bated breaths and there it was – a crunchy crust baked all the way through to the center, bubbling cheese, crispy prosciutto, melted tomatoes, and creamy, oozing egg in the middle. And let me tell you, it was fantastic – the taste of the pizza no doubt enhanced by the flavor of my victory over yeast, but delicious nonetheless. What lies ahead in my journey with yeast – cinnamon buns? Bread? Panettone? Who knows. But it all sounds a little less scary now.

Going Underground

I started school in the 5th grade when I came to the States. I was never the cool kid. This may be an understatement. Where do I even start… I had a perm (why lord, why), braces, glasses, and absolutely no idea of what kids are supposed to wear. Oh yes, there was also that pesky Russian accent and difficulty understanding humor, sarcasm, and idioms.

I came a relatively long way in a few years. I lost the accent, outlived the braces, grew out the perm, got contacts… things were looking up. I figured out that shopping only at thrift stores made me interesting and alternateen (it also irritated my mother to no end, unfortunately) and that being funny and sarcastic was way easier than being open and nice. I mastered sarcasm, bleached hair, and torn jeans. By the time I was ready to graduate high school I was voted most sarcastic in my class, infuriating my poor mother once again.

It was around this time that I thoroughly stopped caring about whether or not people considered me cool. It helped that there weren’t really cool kids in my school. We were all dorks in equal measure. There were kids who thought they were cool, but mostly they were just drunk and slutty and no one cared about them.

I am now ten years out of high school (and trying not to hyperventilate). There is no longer such a thing as cool kids. We are all on an even playing field, no one is better or worse (although some have clear asshole tendencies). Except me. I am cool, now more than ever. Why? My friend Maiya and I raided the food underground, an emerging species of restaurant - a supper club run by fellow (but far superior) food bloggers out of their own home.

Love and Butter has the air of a speakeasy, full of secrecy and quiet planning. The weekly menu is posted online, inspired by what’s in season, locally grown, or simply great to eat. The address is sent out shortly before the dinner, the attendants are limited to 6-8, you bring your own booze, sit with strangers and eat really good food made with copious amounts of attention, care, and time. They make the food just for you, taking as much time as it requires. The monetary compensation asked for is absurd. I don’t see how it could even cover the cost of the high quality ingredients used to prepare the meal. The supper club cannot possibly be for profit. It has to be for the love of food. And that, people, is cool.

Maiya and I attended the first lunch put on by the wonderful L&B folks. We sat on the patio on the most beautiful Boston day is recent memory – perfect mid 70s, blue sky, tons of sunshine and trees for shade. Everything was so well thought out, treated with much respect and care. Fresh dense bread and butter waited on the table, along with fresh zucchini heavily salted and spiced with cumin and other things I could not identify.

Shredded radicchio with white beans - bitter, slightly sour, the beans were little soft packets infused with herb and stock flavor; melted leeks in a mustard vinaigrette. It's too bad there were people watching me - I could have eaten all the sweet, soft leeks on the table.



Chicken is boring, boring and ordinary. Love and Butter chicken, however, was most memorable - with herbs and garlic stuffed under the crispy skin, it was some of the most moist chicken I have ever had (brined before roasting? Forgot to ask). Served with a salad of supremely fresh mixed greens with large crystals of salt and linguine dressed with chicken juice. [Never thought that would sound appetizing. Chicken juice…]


Spot of dessert – deep fried ripe peaches with marjoram.

Mead sorbet (sounds remarkably like MEAT sorbet when said aloud – even I didn’t think that sounded good), and addictive, crispy butter cookies that were more butter than cookie (picture at head of post).

Next time (oh there will be a next time) I hope to bother the hosts a little more, get to ask more questions, figure out why they do what they do and how they see it evolving. Right now I am just happy knowing something others do not – I have a way into the food underground, where all the cool kids hang out.


P.S. I pleaded to be let into the kitchen to help out whenever they needed a hand. Somehow, I don't think I am cool enough. It's never going to happen.

There Is No Place Like Home

Everything is better on a boat. Drinking is more fun on the water, food tastes better, rest is more restful. Sleeping on a gently rocking boat, with the rigging ringing upon soft impact with the mast and shrouds is unlike anything else. It is calming, soothing, and quiet. So calm and so very quiet. Usually.

Not so much this last weekend. This was more The Perfect Storm than The Blue Lagoon. It was absolutely miserable. I helped a friend move his sailboat (Libby Lou) from a harbor in East Boston to its summer home in Marion. A two hour car ride took a day and a half in a boat… kind of makes you wonder how anything got done in a reasonable amount of time 400 years ago.

I was very excited about this trip. I upended my schedule, ditched an interview that I have been looking forward to for ages (more on that next week!), and decided to screw off work for yet another day. What was meant to be a leisurely jaunt along coastal New England turned out to be a soaking wet, freezing cold, angry ocean nightmare. A day and a half on Libby Lou (past its prime, that boat. They really tend to go downhill after the third decade) in driving rain, 40 degree temperature, 5 foot swells and 20 knot winds (gusting to 30)… really not at all fun.

I clicked my heels together for two days and chanted “there is no place like home” under my breath but nothing changed, nothing happened, unless you count getting hit by yet another rolling wave... which made me sick. I have never EVER been sick on a boat before. Never, not in all my sailing years (all four of them). Never until this weekend. I have never missed home more in my life.

I stumbled into my apartment on Monday afternoon in a cold and nauseous stupor and ran straight into a hot shower, which rocked suspiciously under my feet. My whole body hurt. I reeked of motor oil (old boats can’t hold their liquor). I was starving.

I did not make anything creative, stupendous, unusual, or involved. I made what was fastest and importantly, freshest (not so much with the perishables on this particular sailing adventure). Creamy ripe avocado mixed with sweet and softly crunchy corn was summery, citrusy, refreshing, clean, and practically therapeutic. I hope not to forever associate this corny avocado with my Libby Lou trip. I would rather remember it as cooling and comforting.


Thank-the-Lord-I-am-home Avocado and Corn Salad

1 ripe avocado, cubed
2 cobs-worth of cooked corn kernels
a but load of lime juice (or the juice of 2 limes)
1/4 cup chopped cilantro, lightly packed
cayenne, salt, and pepper to taste

Mix all and pile on crackers or bread, while experiencing swells (pun intended) of appreciation for a warm, comfortable, welcoming home, with not an ocean in sight.


P.S. There were happy moments during the weekend, of course:

This bridge went up just for us! How cool is that? To leave the harbor in East Boston you have to call the bridge caretaker from the boat to lift the bridge and allow the boat out. See our tracks? Those are Libby Lou motoring tracks.

How The Other Side Lives

I visited two parallel universes in one weekend. It was a bit of a whirlwind.

The first visit gave me a glimpse of what my life would be like if I married for money and/or chose a career slightly (ha) more profitable than microbiology, while the second revealed what it could be like to have three kids, house, and husband, all by the ripe old age of 25. Both of these revelations were somewhat traumatic.

Let me start at the beginning. I went to Nebraska this weekend. Yep, Nebraska. I never wanted to know where Nebraska is, much less visit it. I am happy to say that I still have no idea where it is. “Over there” remains sufficient for me. Due to scheduling issues and delays (stupid Logan Airport) I was shuffled to a new flight, getting bumped to first class in the process.

We were plied with vast quantities of spring water, booze, and good cheer all before leaving the ground in our wide, recliner-like seats. And then we were fed – roasted vegetable pizza with ricotta, parmesan and feta. It was good! It wasn't "good-for-an-airplane" good, but actually good. I could very easily get used to this manner of travel.

What I would have a harder time getting used to are the semi-hostile stares of the people filing past me to their seats in coach. “It’s not my fault!!,” I wanted to yell out, but didn’t, for fear of being kicked out of first class and relegated to coach with the rest of the riff raff.

The other thing I was not a fan of – I was one of two women in first class, and the only one not traveling in the capacity of “the wife.” Bit of a culture shock there. I was surrounded by men in suits and sat next to one named (I kid you not) Blaine. Blaine? Seriously? He was perfectly nice and friendly, but I had a hard time excusing his name… even after I had a beer.

Speaking of culture shock… Nebraska. Huh.

At the engagement party of the bestest of friends, I was seated next to the Nebraska born and bred friends of her fiance. The women among them were approximately my age, if not a little younger (ack). They promptly and thoroughly questioned me as to my marital/relationship status and were shocked and impressed by the fact that I am not only single, but that I traveled to Lincoln, Nebraska *gasp* all by myself. “You are so brave!” they mused. I hadn’t realized that domestic airspace was pirate-infested and dangerous, but alright, I'll take brave.

Once they realized that I a) didn’t care to hear about their kids, b) didn’t care to discuss the possibility of having kids of my own, and that c) my sense of humor, taste in television shows, and choice of reading material did nothing but puzzle and irritate them, I was left to my Pinot Grigio and giant plate of amazingly good food from the Kansas City caterer that served the party. On my fully loaded plate: spicy saag paneer with the tenderest paneer cubes, lamb curry with strong cinnamon undercurrents, dal makhani (brown dal made with butter/ghee), raita, pakoras, naan, and assorted sweets (mithai; jalebi is a personal favorite).

I am now happily, safely, and non-pirate-molestedly back to my non-first class, child-free life. As I slip back into my normal schedule, among people who see the world as I do, I realize that I could have been many different people, each with her own society, problems, and set of expectations, judgments and motivations, but I am simply me, with a puzzling and irritating sense of humor, penchant for traveling alone, and slowly returning love of vegetables, especially multi-colored ones. These radishes are going on the salad that I will take to lab with me tomorrow as I attempt to recover from the mass quantities of food I ate this weekend. I will eat my salad while dreaming of saag paneer and deep-fried sugar syrup. Sigh.

Too Much Of A Good Thing

I love all things vegetable and fruit. I love cooking vegetables. I love Boston Organics. I love opening the big green box they leave in my entryway and breathing in the puff of fruit and vegetable aroma (or fruit/veg body odor, if you will) that accumulated over a day. It smells alive and healthy and earthy. BUT. Enough is enough. I have reached my limit with vegetables. I am starting to feel somewhat rabbit-like with all the leafy greens and roughage that I consume on a daily basis. I need a break.

No more vegetables! I want something with little nutritional value, little crunch, little green, and lots of warm olive oil and cheese. I bowed before my cravings and made a dinner that fulfilled at least half of those requirements.


Why not all the requirements? Simple. Guilt. That’s right, guilt. I had leeks I needed to use up before they crossed the veg life line into a limp and cloth-like state. I can’t waste food! Secondly, I used whole wheat pasta instead of the regular white kind. I felt guilty using regular pasta when there was a perfectly suitable and healthy alternative in my packed pantry (seriously. It’s about to burst). I have an overactive conscience, it’s true.

So, without further delay, this was my non-vegetable, non-low-fat, non-protein rich dinner… with a lot of fiber.


Non-rabbit pasta with leeks

1 leak, washed and sliced (white and light green parts only)
8 oz pasta, regular or whole wheat, for those with a guilt complex
2 tbsp chopped parsley (omit if boycotting green)
1/4 cup grated parmesan
olive oil


1) Cook leek in olive oil over low heat till it wilts and becomes soft (this takes forever... as in 15-20 minutes)
2) Cook pasta in salted boiling water until just done, reserve a cup of pasta water
3) Add into pan with leeks, sprinkle with parmesan, drizzle with more olive oil. Add
pasta water in ¼ cup increments till you get the pasta to the level of hydration you are happy with (as in, till it’s no longer dry). Toss in parsley.
4) Salt, pepper… oooh maybe red pepper flakes. Everything is better with red pepper flakes.
5) Eat with bread and beer, if you’re really pushing the carbs. Which I was.

Sizzle And Crunch

The worst sound on this earth is that of crunching fiberglass and caving fenders. Nothing can compare to it. How do I know this? I got into my very first car accident this weekend. Not bad for 13 years of driving. True to type, I hit a completely innocent and perfectly stationary car. D’oh. Oh but that’s not all. The car I so unfairly dented and scraped just happened to be the brand new SUV belonging to my landlady’s father. D’oh. When I realized what I had just done, I saw the goosebump-inducing crunching sound for what it was - a prelude to the giant waive of denial soon to be dwarfed by sheer panic, quickly followed by clammy dread of all the crap I had ahead of me. ____ ( ← please insert the worst curse-word you can think of).

From the worst sound in my world, let’s move on to a few of the best: the tearing of an envelope holding a real old-fashioned, hand-written letter; a cell phone booting up after you accidentally (or intentionally) drop-kick it across the pavement; the tearing, crunching and shattering of a crusty loaf of bread; wine hitting the bottom of a glass as it swirls, bubbles, and settles down; and the sizzle of food cooking on a stovetop.


Sizzling is warm and promising. It sounds like you’re doing something right (as opposed to say, backing into shiny new car), as though progress is being made. It also makes tofu really really good. I happen to adore tofu but I acknowledge that I may be in the minority. I like all tofu – from the squishy and jiggly silken tofu to the dense extra firm. It is the extra firm tofu that benefits most from a good sizzle in some olive oil. Tofu cubes hold their shape much better when their outsides are cauterized, so to speak. The insides remain soft, giving something generally shapeless and textureless a contrast between chewable and meltable.

I can’t pretend to have put together a recipe for this stir fry. I was too hungry while making it to be paying any attention to the amounts of ingredients I impatiently tossed in. I can say that I threw some tofu cubes into very hot olive oil and moved them about till they were golden on most sides. I then added in some chopped ginger, garlic, and red pepper flakes. After those became fragrant I added snowpeas and stir fried them until they were bright green but still crunchy. Finally (as I was getting close to dying of hunger) I poured in soy sauce, about two teaspoons of sesame oil, a tablespoon of toasted sesame seeds, salt and pepper.


I am now in the process of conquering my new fear of driving and acute paranoia of every crunch being a shattered tail light. The sound is lingering in my head. I wish I could just listen to sizzling tofu all day.

Learning Is Very Rewarding

My Russian Jew of a mother taught me how to make fried plantains. In my world, this is funny. I had never heard of half the things I eat now when I was little. Not surprisingly, there were not too many plantains… or anything besides apples, really… for sale in Russia close to 20 years ago (oy. 20 years). I had only seen coconuts and pineapples in cartoons before moving to the U.S. To tell the truth, I hardly believed pineapples were real – they were just too alien-looking to be people-food.

There were a few more discoveries to be made along those same lines. For example, we had to learn that limes are not in fact, unripe lemons. If left on the countertop for extended periods of time, they will not miraculously morph into lemons. Also, coconuts are a complete bitch to open if you have absolutely no idea what you’re doing. An electric drill may or may not have been called into action. I shall say no more.


A lime's true identity and coconut techniques are things I bet many people take for granted. For myself and my family, however, it was a steep learning curve (for like, a month). I am fully adjusted and adapted now, and can even make fried plantains, the most un-Russian of all foods (I plead the fifth on the coconuts).

My Mom went on a trip to Brazil and brought back an undying love of plantains. [And some great earrings for me, but that’s beside the point.] They turn out to be stupidly simple to make but taste like a dream– peel a very ripe (almost black) plantain and slice on the diagonal, fry in canola oil, drain on a paper towel. That’s it. With frying, the outside of the plantain slices caramelizes, becoming crisp and a little chewy. The inside almost melts. Imagine a hot banana infused with butter… and mixed with a little bit of potato. That’s a fried plantain. Sweet and slightly starchy, they are best eaten oozingly, meltingly, scaldingly hot, sparing neither the skin of your fingertips nor the tip of your tongue.

In Denial

Boston has turned itself into a giant ice rink and does not appear to be changing back any time soon. Every surface in the city is evenly covered with 3 inches of ice. Cars are frozen on the streets, the ice half way up the tires. It's not pretty. Even my fancy-pants new snow shoes do nothing to save me from stumbling and slipping with every other step. Oh, and it’s freezing cold. Well, technically, that’s not accurate. Freezing would be comparatively warm right now. It is far past freezing, what I like to refer to as “minus a** degrees.” It’s a fairly accurate (and sensitive) measurement, mind you.

Most people are cocooning themselves in their homes or going out to order beef stew and hot toddies (whatever those actually are. I always forget). Those people make a good deal of sense. I, however, do not. I came home today, all poofy with my giant down jacket, huge scarf, and red hat (complete with pom-pom, naturally), tossed down my bags, had a cup of tea and made… guacamole for dinner. Yes, I make no sense.

Guacamole is the embodiment of summer, fresh produce, and cold beer. It is the very antithesis of the poofy down jacket. So what was I doing with guacamole in the middle of winter? I feel no need to explain myself beyond the fact that I make no sense and was thinking about guacamole all day. I love it and can (and do, on occasion) eat it with a spoon. It is creamy, citrusy, spicy, fresh, and totally addictive. I was going to have guacamole, ice or no ice.

I tried to make up for the obvious deficiencies of the season the best I could. I turned the thermostat up high, checked to make sure that my avocados and tomatoes (courtesy of Boston Organics) were ripe and ready, and the cold beer was (and is) a no-brainer. While I think that eating tomatoes in the middle of winter is completely pointless, I had no choice – they came to me. The tomatoes, not surprisingly, tuned out to be purely decorative. They added nice little flecks of red and a bit of texture but no discernable taste. Asking for flavor from a tomato in February is futile.

I like to make guacamole because it is easy and fast, but most of all, I like making it because I get to use my favorite trick, courtesy of the Jacques Pepin. Once I figure out my fascination with him, I will let you know. I like the taste of garlic in guacamole (and many many other things) but I am not a big fan of biting down on big, smelly garlic pieces. Jacques Pepin to the rescue. He mashes the garlic with salt into a paste which then distributes evenly through the dish, flavoring throughout instead of offering crunchy, painful garlic bites. It’s brilliant!

Denial of winter guacamole
One ripe avocado
Juice of one lime
1 garlic clove, mashed into a paste with a pinch of salt
½ of a tomato, seeded and finely chopped
big handful of roughly chopped fresh cilantro (how’s that for a precise measurement…)
pinch of cayenne
salt and black pepper

Mix all, open a beer, and pretend it’s not winter.

**Mush is really not very photogenic, is it...



Boston has been far colder than today and I am sure it will be again soon. I really wouldn’t mind, if only my car was not, in fact, encased in a giant block of ice that I will have to chip away at tomorrow. Ick.

The Bridesmaid's Moment In The Spotlight

To continue on the theme, if goose is the neglected bird, then I think carrots are the neglected vegetable. Carrots are always the bridesmaid, never the bride. Carrots are in everything, at the core of everything. No stock is complete without carrots, no Thanksgiving turkey goes without a carrot up its bum (not in my house, anyway) and chicken soup is a pale version of itself without the carrots floating about. Yet, carrots are rarely the star ingredient… unless they are smothered in honey and resemble dessert. That’s just a shame, an oversight.

I happen to really like carrots, and not just in the background. I figured this out a couple of months ago when I was inundated with carrots by Boston Organics and had nothing left to do but… cook them. Yes, cook them. Just the carrots, all by themselves, as a side. Carrots and ginger are a classic combination, ginger and lemon get along well and I believe anything and everything benefits from a sprinkling of cayenne, and there you go! Ginger-lemon-spicy carrots (GLS-carrots, for short).

My last Boston Organics box had the most beautiful and weird-looking carrots I have seen. They were psychedelic, blemish-free, very thin-skinned, and looking very much like perfect marzipan versions of themselves. A bit of internet sleuthing led me to discover that they are rainbow carrots, bred for color. Incidentally, carrots were purple originally but were bred to be orange by the Dutch to resemble the House of Orange. I am highly suspicious of that last bit. Can’t always trust the internet, even if the source is the World Carrot Museum (World, mind you). Even carrots have a fan site.

Having never had rainbow carrots before, I had no idea what to expect. Are the purple ones purple all through? Does each color have its own flavor, like Skittles? The answers turned out to be no and, um, no. Bet you’re surprised about the last one. I was.


The purple carrots had a thin layer of purple just under the skin but they were orange at the core. The orange carrots were intensely orange and the albino carrots were just kinda white. The GLS formula was applied to the rainbow carrots with great success. The carrots were sweeter than any I have had. So sweet, in fact, that the lime juice and carrot juice made a thick syrup at the bottom of the pan. Sweet, sour, spicy GLS-carrots herald the bridesmaid’s moment to shine. In the shadows no longer, GLS-carrots (of the Skittle variety or not) hold their own.

I’d like to give a recipe here but I don’t really know what I did. Don’t you love it when people say that? The broad strokes of GLS-carrots are as follows:

Put inch-sized chunks of carrots in a pan with a little bit of water and a drizzle of olive oil. Grate fresh ginger over the top and add a dash of cayenne pepper. Steam with the lid on over medium heat until most of the water evaporates. Squeeze the juice of half a lemon over the carrots and add the zest of one whole lemon. Steam again until the liquid evaporates. The carrots should still be firm, not mushy.

How’s that for precise instructions? Sorry. I will pay attention next time I do this.

Cabbage: More Than Meets (And Offends) The Eye

I tried my best, I really did, but I think there is simply no way to make cooked cabbage look attractive. Even the word cabbage is ugly – it’s staccato and has that icky [dj] sound at the end which makes it sound like the flatulence it has been said to induce. A raw cabbage leaf is really the best I can do. To add to its unfortunate appearance when cooked, cabbage is associated with stench, need, and poverty, implying that you only eat it if you have no other choice. Well, I object.

I grew up eating cabbage (and, yes, I admit that a large part of Russia’s cuisine evolved out of need) and happen to like it (if not its English name) a great deal. I know for a fact that there are acceptable and interesting uses for this vegetable besides mayonnaise-drowned coleslaw. There is pickled cabbage (my grandmother’s is best but oooh kimchee – not at all Russian but so very tangy and spicy and wonderful), cabbage soups, and braised or stewed cabbage just to name a few, none of which will make your house smell like that of a pauper in a Dostoevsky novel.

For all my cabbage enthusiasm and loyalty, I have never cooked it myself. It never occurred to me to go out and buy a simple head of cabbage. Somehow I always got distracted by leeks or fennel or something along those sophisticated and elaborate lines. Luckily, I didn’t have to go anywhere – it came to me in my Boston Organics box. This led to a phone call to my Mom and the birth of what I now call Pink Cabbage.

The cabbage is cooked with onions until it’s soft but not mushy, and is colored slightly pink by tomato paste. That’s it. I can’t figure out if that’s a braise or a stew or a sauté or wilting, and I know that I am in no condition to go through more schooling to find out (more school may well break me), so any help is appreciated. Pink Cabbage is simple, relatively fast, not stinky, and has a lot of flavor for little input… all those pluses but it’s still ugly. I took a picture just to say I did, so here you go:


Pink Cabbage

This recipe has the infuriating characteristic of all those handed down from one’s Mother - the measurements are a dash of this and a pinch of that. The point is that the amount of ingredients you need depends on the size of your cabbage. If it’s large, use a large onion and slightly more tomato paste. My cabbage was teeeeeny (organic, remember?) so I used a smaller onion to match. The amounts I listed are for a smaller head of cabbage.

1 head of cabbage, sliced or shredded
1 onion, thinly sliced into half moons
1 tsp tomato paste
½ tsp sugar
salt and freshly ground black pepper

1) Saute onion in olive oil till softened and golden.
2) Add cabbage and salt it aggressively – the salt is needed to break down the cabbage and get it to release some of its water. Cover with lid and cook over medium-low heat till most of the water from the cabbage has evaporated.
3) Add tomato paste, sugar, and black pepper to taste. The cabbage should turn slightly pink – add more tomato paste if your cabbage is larger. Cook with lid on for about another 10 minutes until the cabbage is soft but still a little resistant to the bite. Al dente, if you will.


P.S. Hidden behind ugliness and lousy reputation is cabbage’s nutritional value – it’s really good for you. Cabbage is super low in calories and has a lot of vitamin C, and it’s umami. And now for some more cabbage leaf pictures, because I was on a roll.