Camp Cooking

The trip to Mexico was never supposed to be about the food. But two months before the trip, when I received the trip guidebook, there was a menu in it available to review. Chicken mole. French toast. Ceviche. It even listed happy hour drinks and snacks, like pina coladas and chips and salsa. I was as excited for the food as I was for the kayaking! Our meals were almost exactly true to the menu. The guides use the same menu every week so they were sick of it, but it's obviously a crowd pleaser.

So here's a couple of things you can do that taste really good when camping - or any time.
1. Veggie quesadillas for breakfast - Tortillas, monterey jack cheese, sauteed zucchini and onions - serve with salsa.
2. Cream cheese with roasted red peppers on crackers appetizer - use bottled roasted red peppers, dump onto a block of cream cheese and serve with crackers or wheat thins. Awesome.
3. Bake a cake in a Dutch oven - add canned peaches or pineapple to a box cake mix in a Dutch oven. Put heated charcoal briquettes underneath and covering the top and bake for allotted time or slightly longer. It's really good for breakfast the next day too.
4. Make an avocado and cheese sandwich. Fresh avocado, monterey jack, tomatoes and onions on a bread roll.
5. Serve hot sauce with everything.

This is what cooking looks like on an island in Baja:

It Must Be Fall

I just perused my Facebook feed and learned that my friends spent the weekend picking apples, checking out the fall colors at state parks in Minnesota and Wisconsin, watching football, and cursing the broken heat in their apartments. It must be fall in the Midwest.

Usually at this time of year, I'm doing delicious things with pumpkins. Legal things, I assure you. For example, pumpkin soup makes a hearty fall meal. I'll buy cans of pumpkin for pumpkin bread duels. Is pumpkin bread better light and spicy or full of chocolate chips? Chocolate lovers are easily swayed by the chips but the spiced bread ended up with more votes. The one redeeming factor of fall has always been pumpkin.

But when I went looking for canned pumpkin, it was sold out, and the local market was too small to carry it. I was eager to make a bread that was warm and spicy and went well with tea. So I turned to another squash. Zucchini is a summer squash, one that doesn't get much as much attention as the pumpkin. It doesn't get carved with eyes, nose, and mouth, it doesn't get baked into a famous holiday pie. The humble zucchini doesn't have a strong personality. By itself, it can make a lovely, light salad tossed with lemon and olive oil and oregano, or it can be sauteed and drizzled with honey. But blended into a bread flavored with cinnamon, it melts away. So you can tell yourself you're eating healthy. You know you put a whole squash in there because it will look like it's all zucchini when it goes into the oven. You'd never know it when it comes out, moist and not too sweet, with a crunchy crust. The summer zucchini, like the trees around here, has lost its green.


Zucchini Bread
makes 2 loaves

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
2 1/4 cups white sugar
3 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups shredded zucchini

Grease and flour two 8 x 4 inch pans. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Sift flour, salt, baking powder, soda, and cinnamon together in a bowl. Beat eggs, oil, vanilla, and sugar together in a large bowl. Add sifted ingredients to the creamed mixture, and beat well. Stir in zucchini until well combined. Pour batter into prepared pans. Bake for 50 to 60 minutes, or until tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pan on rack for 20 minutes. Remove bread from pan, and completely cool.

Green Olive Enchiladas

I've had good luck with roommates. All of the friends I've lived with have loved to cook as much as I do and we've shared food and cookbooks, dishes and wine glasses. Even in grad school, when my roommate was a Phd student who worked, taught, and took classes, and I was an MBA student who spent hours in group meetings, at company presentations, or at happy hour, we found time to cook for each other. Kristen and I loved to cook and hated to do the dishes, so it was always a race to see who got dinner started first and so could pass dish duty to the other.

Ask yourself the next time your spouse or roommate makes you dinner, and you take it as a kind gesture, but then get stuck with the dishes, did you just get played?

Kristen used to make an easy green olive enchilada dish, and it's so tasty when you are looking for something vegetarian that is not pasta with red sauce. It's perfect for grad students with no time and little money, who want to cook enough for leftovers and for that ingrate roomie who will get stuck scraping the cheese out of the baking pan.



Green Olive Enchiladas
Makes 12 enchiladas, 4 servings of 3 enchiladas each

1 cup chopped onion
1 cup sliced green pimiento stuffed olives
1 cup shredded pepper jack cheese
1/2 tablespoon flour
12 corn tortillas
1 10 ounce can green chile enchilada sauce
1/2 cup shredded cheddar
Sliced jalapeno (optional)

Mix onion, olives, pepper jack cheese, and flour in a large bowl. Preheat oven to 350F. Spray a large (9X13) baking pan with cooking spray. Heat skillet or griddle pan sprayed with cooking spray on medium heat. Warm each tortilla about twenty seconds on each side, then place filling down center of tortilla. Roll up and place seam side down in baking pan. If tortillas tend to crack or tear, add some oil to the skillet while heating. Continue warming and filling all tortillas. Scatter extra filling on top. Pour enchilada sauce over top and sprinkle with shredded cheddar and sliced jalapenos. Bake for 20 minutes, or until cheese is bubbly.

Raising My Standards

I can't help it. I'm living in one of the best culinary cities in the country, but I crave the food I ate in Minneapolis a couple of weeks ago. I feel like an ungrateful child, the one who wants the proton pack instead of the shiny red fire engine (you know who you are!!!). When I was in Minny, I had a delicious huevos rancheros at Grand Cafe - melty cheese between two fresh tortillas topped with braised pork, black beans, and a mole sauce. Oh yeah, and some huevos. I had amazing Thai food at King and I Thai - flaky curry puffs, red curry with chicken, a shrimp pad Thai. And where else can you get Somali food at a wedding? Savory sambusas with a spicy green chutney, chicken fantastic (that's what it's called), and vegetable curry.

Dining in Minneapolis seriously raises my standards for home cooking. But traveling means my home cooking has suffered. I ran out of food the other day, and while my zucchini soup was tasty it was not enough to satisfy and left me stuffing my face with cheese and crackers. My lentil salad was lackluster. When I finally made it to the store and refreshed my fridge, I decided to make a simple but incredibly satisfying pork chop with apple compote. A good dinner makes a huge difference in how I feel. I stop craving the great food in Minneapolis, I stop missing my old home. I feel a little better about where I am.



Pork Chops with Apple Compote
serves 4

1 tablespoon olive oil
4 center cut pork chops (thick cut)
salt and pepper
1 large shallot, minced
1/4 cup white wine
2 apples, sweet and crisp such as Gala, peeled and diced
1 cup chicken broth
2 tsp balsamic vinegar

I like to use thick cut pork chops because they don't get overcooked as easily. Season pork chops with salt and pepper on both sides. Add olive oil to large skillet and swirl to coat. Add pork chops before heating pan. Heating the pork chops more slowly allows them to retain more moisture and not dry out. They lose a lot of moisture when you add them to a hot pan. Heat pan on medium high heat. Cook chops until browned, about six minutes on each side, or more if very thick. Remove to a plate and keep warm in oven. You may need to cook chops in two batches.

While chops are cooking, peel and dice the apples and mince the shallot. After removing the pork chops, add shallot to pan and stir until brown. Add white wine to deglaze the pan, stirring to loosen the brown bits. Add chicken broth and diced apples. Simmer apples for ten minutes, until tender. Stir in balsamic vinegar and any accumulated juices from pork chops. Season with salt to taste.

Serve pork chops with apple compote on top. If pork chops have cooled off, return them to pan with apples for one minute to heat before serving.

Totally Homemade And Only a Dollar

I could hear the girl on the street corner from a block away.

"Cupcakes! Water! Cupcakes! Water!"

As I approached, she pointed to her card table set in the grass at the corner of Lincoln and Ridge in Evanston. She had purple frosted cupcakes to sell - and it was a game day. Her white posterboard sign announced $1 cupcakes and $1 water bottles. It was the perfect breakfast for Northwestern students who are walking to the football stadium for an 11am game.

I was coming back from a tailgate where I had consumed a scone, a twinkie, and a brownie, so I immediately shook my head no. Then I reconsidered. I had to support a fellow baker, an entrepreneur, a 10 year old marketing genius.

"They're totally homemade and only a dollar!" she crowed as I forked over a dollar bill. I asked if she had anything for me to put it in because I wasn't going to eat it right away. She profusely apologized for not bringing tupperware. In my car I found some scrap paper and wrapped it around the cupcake, then nestled it in the hood of my windbreaker on the passenger seat. I had visions of purple frosted seats, but the cupcake held up to my erratic driving and I got it home safely.

It's not hard to please with cupcakes and they don't require special techniques. If you can whip up a buttery cake batter, if you can frost with the best of them, you can equally thrill a room of 2nd graders or a group of a bachelorettes. Only the second graders' cupcakes would have a cute frosting carrot on them while the bachelorettes' cupcakes should boast another frosted phallic object.

We make cupcakes not to aspire to high gourmet but because they can be eaten out of hand, a ready made serving that stays moist in its paper wrapper. We'll wave away that slice of cake claiming a diet but accept the cupcake because it's perfectly proportioned. It's modest, like the cute, quiet girl at the back of the classroom, not the bossy drama queen that is a four layer cake. It won't beg to be consumed, but its unassuming quality is light and satisfying.

That girl's totally homemade cupcake was nothing to get excited about. The white cake and sugary frosting was all a bit too sweet, and uninspired except for the purple of the frosting. But little girls making cupcakes and being entrepreneurs and big girls still eating cupcakes instead of fancy desserts is always worth at least a $1 to see.

I Figure It Out

A new friend, upon learning that I like to cook, asked me if I know how to cook Indian food. It's a natural question. The brownish tint of my skin and the heart disease that runs in my family would lead one to believe I have Indian roots. But I found it hard to answer her question. Have I learned the right way to knead the chapati dough, or memorized the proportions of salt, cumin, red pepper, and turmeric to shake into a curry? Did I know how to make ghee or have my own proprietary blend of masala spices? Because the answer to all those questions is no.

But do I know how to cook any specific cuisine? I don't know how to roll out pasta for raviolis. I'd be a mess filling a pan with layers of phyllo for baklava. I was afraid to buy lemongrass for a Thai curry because it looks like a houseplant. I don't really know how to cook anything when it comes down it. But I figure it out.

Hell, I don't even know how to do my job but I do it every day and get paid for it.

The cooking process starts hours, days, weeks before any particular dinner. It starts when I'm sitting at the table eating another delicious meal and flipping through a cookbook. With every recipe I read, I picture myself not only eating but actually going through the effort of cooking it. And if, in my head, I get more pleasure from eating than pain from cooking, I write it down, mark it with a post-it, add the ingredients to a grocery list, and away we go!

Maybe the book I'm perusing is my Complete Book of Indian Cooking, which has so many different ways to cook chicken in it that I read the titles out loud for a good five minutes before my dad made me stop. Maybe I'll come across a hot dry meat curry or some lamb kebabs, and decide I'm making them whether I know how to mold ground lamb to a skewer or not. Sometimes "not" is okay, because my oblong lamb meatballs were pretty tasty sans skewer. And the seemingly dull cherry tomatoes and baby onions sprang to life when salted and pan fried.


I don't need to know how to cook Indian food for this to work, and neither do you.

Mini Lamb Kebabs with Baby Onions and Tomatoes (The Complete Book of Indian Cooking)

Ingredients:
1 lb ground lamb
1 medium onion, chopped
1 teaspoon garam masala
1 teaspoon garlic pulp
2 medium fresh green chilies, chopped, and 4 fresh green chilies sliced
2 teaspoons chopped cilantro
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
4 tablespoons corn oil
12 baby onions, peeled and trimmed (fresh pearl onions should be in onion section - do not use frozen!)
12 cherry tomatoes

Blend together the ground lamb, chopped onion, garam masala, garlic, 2 green chilies, cilantro, salt, and flour in a food processor. Process for about one minute, until mixture has a fine, blended texture. Break off small pieces and roll into balls or oblong kebabs. Place on broiler rack, with pan underneath to catch drippings. I like to line that pan with aluminum foil to making cleaning easier, otherwise burnt drippings can be a pain to scrape off. Baste the kebab meatballs with 1 tablespoon of the oil and place under broiler for 12 to 15 minutes, turning halfway through, or until evenly browned. Heat the remaining 3 tablespoons of the oil in a deep round-bottomed frying pan. Lower the heat slightly and add the whole baby onions. As soon as they start to darken, add the fresh chillies and tomatoes. Cook until tomatoes begin to brown. Remove the kebabs from the broiler and add them to the onion and tomato mixture. Stir gently for about 3 minutes. Transfer to serving dish and sprinkle with additional salt to taste. Serve with basmati rice and non-fat plain yogurt.

Easily Seduced

I am easily seduced by food. Even as I flip through a cooking magazine to choose, say, the short ribs with sun-dried tomato gravy, I'm watching a cooking show where Barefoot Contessa is making a roast beef sandwich with truffle butter and I'm torn. Two delectable lovers stand before me and I cannot choose. I want them both, and if I choose either one I will surely end up craving the other.

What's a girl to do?

A friend was telling me today about how wonderful her boyfriend is and how much she loves him, but doesn't feel about him the way she felt about her ex - who would take her back if she'd have him. And such is her dilemma, whether to go back to her passionate first love, who comes with a roller coaster of emotions, or settle in with a stable man who she has grown to love.

How do we choose what to eat every day, what we crave or what we have a taste for? What's just a momentary fling versus a recipe that stands the test of time? Who would have guessed that a simple spicy spinach pesto could woo me week after week, but the promising Ethiopian chicken would fall flat? And every once in a while I remember the summer I ate breakfast couscous every day, I couldn't get enough, and now it hardly seems worth the effort. But damn it was good at the time. I couldn't have predicted that roasted broccoli was impressive enough to introduce to my parents, or that roasted tomatoes would have my friends talking. The only thing they all might complain about in the end, is that I won't just settle down already with all the recipes I've collected rather than running around with new ones all the time. But I'll distract them with some homemade butter pecan ice cream on a slice of oatmeal cake. They can be seduced too.



I swear this pesto is better than any basil pesto. Giada's version has arugula but I prefer just spinach which is less bitter. Get a good olive oil for this, it contributes at least half the flavor.

Spinach Pesto (Adapted from Giada's Fusilli with Spicy Pesto on foodnetwork.com)

• 1 cup chopped walnuts
• 2 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
• 1 (2-inch long) red or green jalapeno pepper, stemmed and coarsely chopped* see Cook's Note
• 2 cups grated (4 ounces) parmesan cheese
  
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 6 ounces baby spinach
• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 pound fusilli or penne pasta
  

For the pesto: In a food processor, combine the walnuts, garlic, jalapeno, cheese, salt and pepper. Process until the mixture is smooth. Add the spinach and process until blended. With the machine running, gradually add the olive oil.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat. Add the pasta and cook until tender but still firm to the bite, stirring occasionally, about 8 to 10 minutes. Drain and reserve about 1 cup of the pasta water. Place the cooked pasta and pesto in a large serving bowl. Toss well and thin out the sauce with a little pasta water, if needed.