For Old Time's Sake

I never cooked in college since I lived in the dorms, but after college I was lucky enough to live with roommates who loved cooking. In our three years together, a pattern emerged. Weekends were spent perusing cooking magazines and cookbooks, creating lists of dishes we wanted to make, and grocery shopping together or ordering Peapod. During the week, we'd email all day about what to have for dinner and who would be home first to start cooking. We took turns cooking for each other, but the best nights were when we cooked together. The kitchen was just big enough for three - one at the stove, one chopping and prepping, maybe one peering into the oven or refrigerator hungrily.

Whether we cooked together or separately, everyone had their specialties. Somehow, I became responsible for salad dressings. It became my habit to dip into the condiment cabinet and fridge shelf, pulling out random vinegars, mustards, oils, or the occasional worcestshire sauce. I'd whisk them together, seasoning with salt, pepper, or lemon juice as I saw fit. Now at this point you might be thinking that salad dressing comes in a bottle labeled "Kraft" or "Hidden Valley" and resides in the refrigerator doorway, lasting for years all hyped up on preservatives. But why ruin a perfectly fresh, homemade salad with that? To quote Julia Child, "The perfect vinaigrette is so easy to make that I see no reason whatsoever for bottle dressings."

One of my standby dressings was a tahini dressing, which will help you use up the tahini you bought to make hummus. It's quite good on a salad of mixed greens, cucumber, red onion, and chickpeas, but it's basically quite good on any kind of salad or just as a dip for carrot sticks and the like. I usually whisk up a small batch in a bowl, but you could make a larger batch in a food processor or mini blender. The dressing is so memorable that when I recently made it to welcome my former foodie roommate back to Chicago, she recognized its creamy pale complexion instantly.

"Is that your tahini dressing?" she asked. When I acknowledged that it was, she was excited. I made it for old time's sake, but it was like bringing an old friend back into my life. It was just as good as I remembered and I'm happy to have it back gracing my table or huddling in the kitchen with me, making any ordinary salad taste phenomenal.

Tahini Dressing

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons tahini
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 large garlic clove, minced and mashed to a paste with 1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon cayenne, or to taste
1/3 cup olive oil
water to adjust consistency

In a blender, blend together the tahini, lemon juice, garlic paste, and cayenne. With the motor running, add the oil in a stream, blending until the dressing is emulsified. Add water to adjust the consistency to your liking. Season with additional salt if desired.

A good place for a date

I had a coworker once who told new acquaintances that he worked with models. This made him seem sexy and exciting, until his listeners realized he was talking about models of the mathematical variety.

In the same vein, I like to talk about all the dates I have. Some people have never had a date, and that is very very sad. The dates I had as a child were among the most memorable. I've had dates at Spanish restaurants and I've had dates in my own kitchen. Any place can be a good place for a date.

Dates of the gastronomical variety are rather like models of the mathematical variety. Not as sexy on the surface, but elegant and surprisingly useful. When I was young, I ate chewy date bars from the supermarket, packaged and processed but tasting like they were homemade. My mom liked them too, and we bought them all the time until suddenly they were discontinued - which is something like making a best friend at work only to have them quit. (The fact that I equate food to a best friend speaks volumes about how highly I value my friends.) At many a tapas bar, you can find bacon wrapped dates simply broiled, and why we pay so much for them is beyond me but they're delicious. Something about dates is mysterious and fascinating, maybe because they're under utilized, the bench player of the fruit squad, and by no fault of their own, often confused with prunes or figs.

As I wandered around the fruit section of the supermarket the other day, a shopping list held firmly in my hand, I spotted a little basket of dates. I was compelled to purchase them, with no particular recipe in mind, but a taste for chewy, sweet bars or bread in my mouth. But a week later those dates were still sitting on my counter making me feel guilty for buying them under false pretenses. So I hussled over to the computer and dug up a date bread recipe. Now the key to this recipe is not anything complicated in the ingredients of the bread itself, but the recommendation that you eat it with cream cheese. If you've had a cinnamon raisin bagel with cream cheese, you know what I'm getting at. The cream cheese cuts the sweetness of the bread perfectly. Use reduced fat cream cheese if you must, but put a thick layer on the bread. This is no time to skimp and ration. The cream cheese needs to be toothmark thick - which means it's thick enough that when you take a bite, you can see your toothmarks on the cheese.

I'm hoping for more dates in my life, of any variety. But this is a good place to start.


Date Nut Bread (Gourmet)

3/4 cup boiling water
1 1/2 cups chopped dates
1 tablespoon butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup molasses
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 large eggs
1 cup all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped walnuts

Heat oven to 350°F.

In a medium bowl, pour hot water over dates and butter. Stir and let the mix sit until lukewarm. In a food processor, puree 1/3 of the mix to make a paste. Stir it back into the bowl full of date mix. Add the brown sugar, molasses, vanilla, and eggs. Stir until combined.

In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Make a well in the center and pour in the date mixture. Mix. Pour the batter into a butter-greased loaf pan.

Bake for 60 minutes or so; loaf is done when the top has risen. Remove the bread from the oven and cool it on a rack for at least 30 minutes before serving.

You'll Be Fine

Are you sitting down? Good. Because what you're going to make this week requires lots of sitting down. Specifically with a glass of wine and maybe a few friends, but only if you're willing to share. And you might not be after you taste these tomatoes.

Several months ago I found a book called The Improvisational Cook at the library. The author Sally Schneider has a creative approach to cooking in that she does not use recipes. That's right, she just cooks on the fly. Which is how a real chef works, I suppose. You learn about foods and flavors and cooking techniques and when you have all these tools collected and polished and lined up, you can start inventing dishes of your own. For example, she'll tell you how to infuse oil with zest and garlic and chilis and then you can make a variety of oils to drizzle over salads or fish or fresh mozzarella.

Her idea for tomatoes was simple - roasting. I'm a huge proponent of roasting, and if I haven't told you about roasted broccoli yet then you haven't been talking to me enough because I talk about roasted broccoli the way some people talk about their children or their 401K plans. Roasting brings out the best in all vegetables. Tomatoes look like they're too weak and tender to stand up to roasting but you just have to know how to treat them.

You can roast any size tomatoes. I tried large beefsteak tomatoes (which are perfect for pureeing into soup, just roast some garlic alongside and blend it all together, then let it sit overnight to meld the flavors) and cherry tomatoes. The cherry tomatoes were much faster and naturally have more sugar to caramelize and create flavor. Here's what you need to do.

Preheat the oven to 275 degrees. Cut the cherry tomatoes in half and line them cut side up in a baking dish. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with kosher salt. Bake for about an hour and a half. While you wait, you can sit around drinking your wine and telling your friends how good they have it to know you. But don't forget about the tomatoes. You know they're done when they are dark but not black, with a little sizzle and easily smashed. You can scoop them out into a bowl, but make sure to pour all that flavorful oil into the bowl too. The tomatoes become something like a chutney or compote which you can then put on pizza, pasta, or as I did - on bread spread with goat cheese.


It's not a recipe. It's just guidelines. If the oven temperature isn't exactly right, you'll be fine. If the timing isn't exactly right, you'll be fine. If you don't serve it the same way I did, you'll find another way, maybe even a better way. Let me know what it is.

Crispy and creamy and crusty

I don't mind a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant. You know, the kind with metallic tables and chairs with plastic seats that stick to the back of your legs in the summer. Where the ethnicity of the patrons gives a clear indication of the authenticity of the food. Where the floor is sticky but the ingredients are fresh and the waiter is nice not because he wants a good tip but because he's NICE.

There was a restaurant in St. Paul which my old group at Northwest, that hummus loving group, enjoyed going to. It was called Saigon, and was authentically Vietnamese, serving big, comforting bowls of pho. But I went there for the sandwiches. Sandwiches don't sound Vietnamese, but they have them as a result of French colonialism in South East Asia. They call them Banh Mi, which sounds more Vietnamese, and they're made like this.


Take a good baguette, or some kind of crusty French bread. Slather it with paté and mayo. Add some carrots (I made strips with a peeler) and sliced jalapeño peppers both pickled in rice vinegar. Top with some fresh cucumber slices. And make some peppery pork (recipe below) to slice up on the sandwich.

It wasn't a sandwich that sounded good to me the first time I was told I had to order it. The pho sounded good, lots of fat noodles and meat swimming in broth. But paté and mayo? Pickled vegetables? More pork on top? I was unsure.

But I've always been willing to try new foods. Not that I would eat dog or most insects, but in the realm of normal foods, I will try just about anything. Sometimes this leads to disgusting flavors I will never ever forget (e.g. gefilte fish, durian), but often it leads to amazing new flavor combinations. Wasabi blended in soy sauce. Candied ginger. Avocado white bean soup. Goat cheese with honey.

Why should these things not go together? Just because it hasn't become commonplace doesn't mean it can't be good. After all, the first time someone came up with a recipe for, say, lasagna, it may have gone like this:

Cook: Maybe I should mix up some meat and tomatoes and cheese.
Spouse: Why would you do that?
Cook: That's all I have left in the house. Oh and this flour that I can mix with water and egg to make dough. I'll just put the meat mixture between layers of dough.
Spouse: That sounds gross.
Cook: I'll put more cheese on top. Then it'll be good.
Spouse: You can't make me eat that.

And yet lasagna is much loved. How do we get from there to here unless I try something new?

It turns out that I loved the sandwiches, and not just because they were $2 each. And not just because my expectations were low. I loved how the ingredients from different cultures worked together and complemented each other. There were fresh crispy vegetables and creamy spread and crusty bread. Crispy and creamy and crusty, all in one package. I always ordered two, ate 1 1/2 and took the last half home to enjoy later. I miss that restaurant in St. Paul but I've heard about a good place in Chicago with Banh Mi. Until I get there, I found I can make Banh Mi at home.

Black Pepper Pork Banh Mi Recipe

1 pound of pork chops, shoulder or loin. Sliced thinly

2 cloves crushed garlic

2 table spoons of fish sauce

2 teaspoons sugar

1-2 tablespoons fresh ground black pepper. If you like the spice and flavor, add more!

2 tablespoons of finely chopped shallots or onion

1/4 cup vegetable or grapeseed oil

1 teaspoon of sesame seed oil

1. Mix all marinade ingredients (except for pork) in a plastic bag. Let all ingredients dissolve in oil, then add slices of pork. Allow everything to marinade for at least 1 hour.

2. Heat up frying pan, lay slices of pork, one layer at a time. When one side is cooked, flip to other side to finish cooking.

3. Assemble pork in your sandwich with condiments.

It's Like That

I found the best little shop the other day. I was wandering through Old Orchard mall (great outdoor mall here in Skokie, except when it's cold which is about 9 months of the year) and noticed a little store called Oil & Vinegar. As you can imagine, I love these culinary shops. Not because I buy a lot of food or cookware, but because they are INSPIRATIONAL. I see a muffin mix so I make homemade muffins. I see a bottle of fancy mustard and decide to make a tilapia filet with mustard sauce. I see a waffle maker and crave waffles but settle for pancakes. It's like that.
So I walked into Oil & Vinegar and was in heaven. On my right was a tasting table with tiny cubes of bread speared with toothpicks arranged on a plate and surrounded by plastic cups filled with vinegar. Another tasting table held cups of oil. Yet another had tastings of salad dressing. The back corner of the store had large vessels holding the oils and vinegars, and empty glass decanters were available for purchase and filling. Oil and vinegar on tap! The Turkish store manager had endless suggestions for every type of oil in his store - use the lemon oil on fish, rosemary infused oil for lamb, or walnut oil in a salad dressing. I wanted to be invited over for dinner. The store had other fun foods too, like specialty chocolate, flavored pasta (squid ink pasta anyone?), fig spreads, honey, spices mixes and rubs, olives, pickles and tapenades. All these foods that make me think of decadence, luxury, and concentrated flavor that satisfies on first taste and doesn't require stuffing myself.
But I wanted to stuff my shopping bag. I restrained myself and picked a only a single delicious white truffle balsamic vinegar to bottle and take home. That night I sprinkled it over a salad of mixed greens, granny smith apples, and goat cheese, letting the cheese soak up a good amount of vinegar. The white truffle adds depth to the balsamic vinegar and would also be delicious as part of a pan sauce for meat.
But if you're going to buy a good balsamic vinegar, there is one thing you must do with it - make dessert. Get some good strawberries or blackberries. You can soak them in the vinegar raw, or cook them down a bit and add the vinegar in to make a compote. Then go into your freezer and find that ice cream you've stashed. I know you have some in there. You don't? That's even better, because then you can get out the ice cream maker and make some almond ice cream in no time. Take a basic vanilla ice cream recipe which requires no cooking, and add in the same amount of almond extract as there is vanilla extract before pouring it in the ice cream maker. When the ice cream is almost frozen, add some chopped toasted almonds. Now serve up a scoop of the almond ice cream with a spoonful of your balsamic vinegar fruit mixture. Drizzle some extra balsamic over the ice cream, and if you're wondering now whether vinegar is really meant to be with ice cream, just put your mind at ease and try a spoonful. And then stock up on vinegar.

Brunch

I rather like these strawberry cinnamon muffins I made last week. They smell fantastic and are the perfect addition to a brunch menu, alongside some deviled eggs, a salad of mixed greens and cold bay shrimp with a lemony vinaigrette, and a leek and onion quiche.


Brunch is probably my favorite meal of the day. I say probably because if you ask me the question while I'm devouring creamy broccoli mascarpone soup, then soup would be my favorite meal. And if I happen to be savoring a spoonful of almond ice cream then dessert would be my favorite meal. And I have a weakness for appetizers, canapés, and foods that are cute.

But when no immediate food is set before me and I can state an unbiased opinion, brunch is always my favorite meal of the day. It's my favorite meal to go out for, it's my favorite meal to cook, and it's my favorite time of day to eat. Mid-morning my appetite is at its peak.

My friend Huzefa once asked what exactly defined brunch. Brunch doesn't exist in India where he grew up, and he wanted to know why we had to go out for brunch instead of lunch. Technically brunch is defined as a meal that replaces both breakfast and lunch. Eating anything before it qualifies your second meal of the day as lunch, not brunch. But brunch connotes so much more than that. It is hot tea and croissants and smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels and fruit. It is pancakes and waffles thick with syrup and whipped butter. It is wearing wool sweaters in January and waiting 45 minutes for a table at a favorite restaurant that never has enough tables but has wild rice porridge on the menu. It is sitting outside on a summer day eating an organic egg omelet and free range chicken sausage. But most of all, it is making something at home as simple as challah french toast.


Brunch is scents too, the smell of coffee, of cinnamon rolls, of sizzling bacon, of banana bread. It's good in the rainy season, it's good on a snowy Christmas morning, it's good on a hot summer day when all you can eat is a cold plate of deli meat and cheese and fresh berries. Have you noticed that just about anything qualifies as brunch food? No wonder Huzefa was confused - brunch couldn't be defined as a particular food so much as a particular feeling. It evokes coziness and satisfaction.

Maybe I love brunch because it means it's the weekend and I can take things easy, sleeping in a little and then eating good food. What could be better than that?

Strawberry Cinnamon Muffins

*Don't be afraid to add plenty of strawberry jam because it won't seem like enough after they're baked.

Day In Day Out

I have to confess something. I have a hummus habit. It started years ago at Pita Inn, the best place for cheap Middle Eastern food like kabobs, rice pilaf, and falafel. There you can get a hummus plate, the creamy chick pea and tahini blend spread thick as mayonnaise on the plate with a puddle of olive oil in the middle, a garnish of parsely and specks of cayenne pepper sprinkled over it all. I didn't think about it much those days, when I was more interested in the flavorful kabobs of ground lamb or the strips of gyro meat doused in tzatziki sauce. I never expected hummus to be the kind of food one could eat day in and day out.

Fast forward to 2005. I had just started my job at Northwest Airlines in the international route planning group. My group was small, close, and we talked about the food we like all the time. My director had a heart attack a few years earlier and followed a strict diet, but hummus was allowed and was one of his favorite foods. Being the savvy employee that I was, I whipped up a batch one day and brought it in.

That was it. I was the hummus queen. At most offices people bring in cookies, brownies, or other baked goods. I brought in hummus. If in fact I dared to bring in something less healthy, my director chastised me and asked me when I was making hummus again. Even when I was invited over to his place for a cocktail party, I was instructed to bring the hummus. My director was the kind of person who had a very strong opinion about right and wrong and my hummus was all that was right with the world. It was healthy and flavorful, filling but light, and had the perfect balance of garlic and lemon. It could be a snack or a meal, eaten with carrot sticks or crackers or bread.

A bacon cheeseburger, on the other hand, was all that was wrong with the world.

I still think hummus is one of the easiest things to make myself, but others have had problems when using my recipe. I swear it's not a recipe that magically changes ingredients and quantities for the recipient à la Harry Potter, so that only the original owner can make it well (but wouldn't that be cool?). Hummus is one of those amazing foods that is made up of things that don't taste particularly good by themselves. Chick peas aren't bad, though a bit dry and bland. Raw garlic is pungent, lemon juice is not a popular beverage. And if you've never tasted tahini, don't bother. It's a gluey, bitter sesame seed paste. I put all the ingredients into a food processor, adding salt and a dash of cayenne. Olive oil is added in a stream until the chunky mixture turns soft as whipped butter. Then it's packed in a tupperware to take to work, sliding sloppily up the side, crackers stashed in a zip lock bag. My presentation of the hummus is a bit different from Pita Inn's. But it's just as good.

Hummus

2 garlic cloves
1/2 tsp salt
1 15 ounce can chick peas
1/3 cup tahini
1/8 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup water

Mash garlic with salt. Add to food processor, add remaining ingredients through lemon juice. Pulse to blend, then add olive oil in a stream with the processor running. Add a little water at a time until thinned to a consistency you like.