tilted skillet

beef and bacon Bolognese with roasted spaghetti squash

In college, the pinnacle of my culinary creativity involved mixing various cereals together to create a special blend that I ate in place of, or as a supplement to, many dining hall meals. Quaker’s Life and some sort of granola with severely dried raisins usually filled most of my bowl, but on special occasions the dining hall staff would, to the delight of many, mix things up with the addition of Kashi or Puffins. It was an exciting time.

Although I now live less than three miles from my former cereal mecca, my culinary endeavors have expanded to new horizons – horizons that include turning on the stove, using a chef’s knife, and treating my refrigerator and freezer like stationary pack mules. Old habits die hard, but with a twist: while you won’t find a box of Life cereal in our house, a jar of homemade granola has a permanent residence nestled behind the fruit bowl on our kitchen counter.

Last weekend, many hands and spoons were dipped into the granola jar as I had a couple college friends staying with us for our five year reunion. While we spent most of our time tailgating, catching up with former classmates, and brunching, I managed to fit in a few home-cooked meals for the gang. One dinner turned into a cooking lesson with a dear friend who, now in graduate school across the country, has taken an interest in learning to cook.

Over her last couple visits, I’ve taught her a few basic dishes, including vinegar-braised chicken and Thai curry. On Sunday, I showed her how to make a streamlined and admittedly non-traditional beef Bolognese with roasted spaghetti squash. It’s a basic version of the type of hearty fare that seems right for the season, especially for people who live in regions with distinct seasons. I am not one of those people, but I find myself craving lots of warming, meat-based meals this time of year.

As she packed up Monday morning, I tucked a couple homemade blueberry muffins into her bag for the long flight back home. I took her to the airport, and came home to an eerily quiet house. I heated up the leftover Bolognese and ate it for breakfast. Special cereal it was not, but I couldn’t help mixing it up by topping my bowl with a few shavings of hard goat cheese and a handful of Marcona almonds. Old habits die hard.

slow-roasted tomato, onion, and garlic frittata

I really should’ve stayed home this weekend. My garden, currently dominated by watermelon vines dying a slow death (WHY?) and monstrous kale trees, needed tending. Our CSA box was actually overflowing this week, and I’d just picked up a month’s worth of meat, seafood, poultry, and pork from Real Food Bay Area. A box of stationery and these pieces of oddly-shaped paper called ‘envelope liners’ laid in wait on top of our printer, ready for a save the date printing extravaganza.

It was almost a three-day domestic goddess blitzkrieg, but instead I headed south to the land of sun, beaches, and more sun: San Diego! Between trips to visit the grandparents (affectionately termed by our family The Geriatric World Tour), quality beach time, and skeet shooting at my uncle’s secluded house in Alpine, I managed to fit in a bit of cookery.

We went to the farmers’ market and I marveled at the unusual produce we don’t often see in the Bay Area: green-shelled macadamia nuts, passion fruit, vibrantly-hued eggplants the size of my thumb, and thimble-sized gherkins that looked more like tiny watermelons than they did heirloom cucumbers.

I picked up some of the usual suspects, including pastured eggs, garlic, and fragrant cherry tomatoes. Before the skeet shooting and sunbathing commenced at my uncle’s house, I whipped up a frittata that perfectly complemented a big watermelon-strawberry salad and my uncle’s homemade smoked pork sausage.

Although I prefer to finish frittatas in the oven, there’s no reason you can’t cook them all the way on the stove if you don’t have an oven-safe skillet. If you go stove-only, keep the heat a little lower and prepare to keep lifting up the edges to let the uncooked eggs run underneath. A larger skillet will speed things up, but isn’t necessary. If you want to get really fancy, you can try to flip the whole thing over. This is a great way to throw 10 expensive eggs on the floor, if you’re into that kind of thing. Sometimes I am, but not when I’ve got a house full of hungry would-be skeet shooters.

roasted eggplant salad

Dow Chemical, everyone’s favorite multinational chemical corporation, has developed a plant-based cellulose that mimics the function of gluten in gluten-free baked goods. In this video, a Dow food scientist talks about the company’s commitment to helping people follow healthy lifestyles. I laughed my way through the video and its perversely campy title, When Great Ideas Rise. Dow’s particular brand of ‘solutionism’ is one that relies on extensive manipulation of odd ingredients to create compounds that are not food. It wasn’t too long ago that Michael Pollan made nutritionism – and its proponents – his scapegoats. Dow’s PR people should’ve done their research before landing on solutionism as the benevolent face of their food science division. Too late, Dow! Nutritionism = solutionism.

As I prepared dinner the other night for vegetarian, gluten-free, and dairy-free friends, I thought about the role extensively processed gluten-free products play in our diets. For me, that role is pretty much nonexistent. To extend the analogy, I’d say these food-like substances are extras on the movie set of my plate. Not even non-speaking walk-ons.

I’d made a cool and silky watermelon-tomato gazpacho, a big batch of fried padrón peppers with flaky sea salt, and a robust eggplant salad redolent of roasted garlic and toasted tahini. We weren’t hurting for food, but for a moment I felt like the texture of the eggplant salad and soup dictated a bread or cracker for dipping and scooping. I didn’t have time to buy or make anything, and the bread monster (aka fiancé) had done some serious damage to our carbohydrate stocks since my last grocery trip.

I rummaged around in the crisper drawer and emerged with a head of radicchio. I carefully peeled individual leaves from the head to form cups for holding eggplant salad. What a solution(ism)! The bitterness of the radicchio cut through the richness of the tahini and eggplant, and made the meal a little more interactive.

I guess I should say a few things about the eggplant salad, since this has been my meandering way of offering you its recipe. For this dish, I use a number of ingredients common to the eggplant spread baba ghanoush, add my own touches, and throw the standard proportions of eggplant to tahini out the window. I treat the salad as more of a main dish, and accordingly cut back on the tahini so the final product is not overly rich. The eggplant salad is great on its own, dipped into with crackers (made from real food, please!), or scooped into lettuce leaves.

black cod braised with miso and spiced peach jam

Since last summer’s peachapalooza, chronicled in scintillating detail here, I’ve enjoyed a fairly steady stream of Mas Masumoto peaches thanks to a frantic post-harvest weekend of freezing, brandying, and jamming. There have been plenty of peach smoothies and crumbles, brandied peaches atop anything creamy, and peach jam snuck into and onto coffeecake, spread on toast with salty butter, and cooked down to top fish filets.

That final frontier – pairing peach jam with a food not traditionally eaten for breakfast or dessert – was a challenge I left for the last couple jars of jam. It took us a long time to finish the jam. I gave plenty of it away, at one point feeling like a drug dealer as I sheepishly handed out jam to friends from the trunk of my car, a case of mason jars haphazardly shoved up against golf bags and soccer cleats on a trip up the city. While training for an ultramarathon last fall, I would stuff dates with a mix of almond butter and peach jam and snack on them during long runs like I did M&Ms or boiled new potatoes, two disparate foods that surprigingly pair well. It’s possible that running for seven consecutive hours lowers my food standards.

My post-ultramarathon jam usage has tended toward savory applications, such as this black cod braised with mellow white miso and a spiced-up peach jam. Through Real Food Bay Area, I’ve found a great source for sustainably-raised seafood. If you’re in the Bay Area, I highly recommend checking out their seafood selections from I Love Blue Sea and Lummi Island Wild. The black cod is buttery and mild, making it a perfect match with a sweet, salty, and spicy peach sauce. I like serving this fish with hot buttered rice, as the recipe yields a lot of sauce.

Until the next peachapalooza, peaches, I FINALLY bid you adieu.

creamy vinegar chicken with pancetta and prunes

In my not-so-new lifestyle down in the ‘burbs, a lot of chores – namely getting to and from work, washing dishes, and doing laundry – are easier than they were as a San Franciscan. I was reminded of my former life yesterday, when I dusted off my commuter bike, hauled it onto CalTrain, and pedaled around the city to attend a work event and visit with a friend who lives, naturally, at the top of a depressing hill.

I used to wake up at 5am nearly every morning to swim laps with an equally-ambitious friend before careening on said bike through morning rush hour traffic and narrowly catching the train down to Palo Alto. It was exciting and I loved it most of the time. In my 5am stupor, I’d often forget my lunch, leggings to wear under my skirt while biking, or my swimsuit. Only one of these could really deal a blow to my day, and given my love of food you can probably figure out which. Those homeless guys along Market Street have probably seen more than their fair share of my underwear collection.

Some things, though, stay the same. As I dodged sleepy drivers and potholes begging for an infusion of taxpayer dollars yesterday morning, I thought about dinner. With a giant pastured chicken defrosting in my fridge and the mouthwatering memory of a delicious chicken and vinegar dish my friend had prepared the week before, I was sold. I knew I wanted a crispy-skinned chicken redolent with vinegar, wine, and good chicken stock. My friend had tossed some figs in with her dish; I decided I’d use prunes and soak them in wine so they’d break down and thicken the pan sauce with their jammy sweetness. Pancetta seemed necessary to provide a crunchy and salty component, but with its porky goodness it’s rarely out of place.

I can’t say enough good things about my take on vinegar chicken, with due credit to my friend Amy and her recipe source for the original inspiration. With the addition of a bit of cream at the end, the sauce is elevated from ordinary to extra-special so don’t go all diet-crazy and leave it out.

bacon chops.

Every so often, a new-to-me food comes along and I think “HOW DID I NOT KNOW THIS EXISTED?”. As someone who prides herself on a well-rounded knowledge of most comestibles, I find it somewhat inexcusable that until very recently I was unaware of the best cut of meat to happen to pork eaters since bacon: the bacon chop.

Little more than a long shoulder-cut pork chop, bacon chops retain the pork belly meat and this simple slight of the knife makes all the difference. Think of a bacon chop like a mullet: business, or standard chop, in the front; and party (belly, aka uncured bacon) in the back.

Growing up, I’d help my mom make Shake ‘n Bake pork chops. Remember the jingle ‘It’s Shake ‘n Bake, and I helped!’? I remember. I remember pork chops that were usually dry and required lots of apple sauce for flavor and moisture. Thanks to fears of trichinosis and the lean nature of this particular cut, many people overcook pork chops and find them both dry and in need of some sort of sauce.

I’m never one to turn down a good sauce, dip, or spread, but bacon chops require little more than a good sear in a hot pan and a quick turn in the oven. Let me be clear about one thing: eating a bacon chop requires you to think very little about the fact that you’re eating pork fat as a main course. It can be a difficult concept to accept logically, so I suggest you don’t think about it in the first place!

Plus, bacon chops are rich. A one-pound bone-in chop was plenty for two of us, with a few slices left over for nibbling from the fridge the next day. I put out a smoky chipotle sauce for dipping, but we left it practically untouched as we speared fatty, crispy slices of pork from the skillet. Under the guise of drying the dishes George was dutifully washing, I managed to find time to gnaw on the meaty bone like a ravenous dog that had not, in fact, just eaten over a 1/3 pound of pork chop and belly.

There’s not a lot of information on bacon chops out there, so consider this post somewhat of a public service announcement. Bay Area denizens, check out Prather Ranch for a reliable source of bacon chops. All others, try a local butcher shop. If they don’t routinely offer this cut, there’s a good chance they’ll cut a couple for you if you ask. Then they’ll thank you for rocking their world. In advance, you’re welcome.

beef and lentil picadillo

After last weekend’s Prather Ranch shopping spree, I’ve been thinking a lot about – and cooking lots of – meat and poultry. My freezer currently houses a bewildering assortment of bacon chops, pork scallopini, whole chickens (with heads and feet!), and several packs of ground beef. Eager to make a dent in the protein backlog, I defrosted a one-pound pack of ground beef to whip up a dish that’s fallen into heavy rotation in my kitchen: picadillo.

A Cuban dish of spiced ground beef with lots of sweet and salty components, picadillo is kind of like a grown-up version of the taco filling my mom used to make with scary VONS ground beef and a packet of Lawry’s taco seasoning (sorry, Mom!). Picadillo is great with corn or flour tortillas, or over potatoes, hominy, or rice.

I’m not sure where I first heard of this one-pot wonder, but I used this recipe from Food and Wine as a jumping-off point. And then I jumped way off into the deep end with the kind of recipe adaptations to which my regular dinner guests are well accustomed.

The original recipe calls for one pound of ground chuck and another of ground sirloin. Even with a freezer full of beef and pork, I’m conscious of our household’s collective meat consumption (and of a certain someone’s obsessive In-N-Out habit), and thus substitute a couple cups of brown lentils for one pound of meat. Be mindful of the type of lentil you use, as almost any except brown or French/du Puy will fall apart and make your picadillo exceedingly mushy. In keeping with the rather drab yet oddly appetizing brown hue of this dish, I opt for brown lentils.

Even after cooking, lentils and other legumes tend to suck up any surrounding liquid. To compensate, I add a ½ cup of my favorite pourable salsa. I sometimes sneak a spoonful of this stuff straight from the jar, so it’s not surprising that I’d find a way to work it into a respectable meal. A final note: several of the components in this dish are salty, including the capers, olives, Marcona almonds, and potentially the salsa. Err on the side of under-salting at the beginning until you taste the dish after all of the ingredients have had time to settle in together.

roasted cauliflower steaks with tahini, date syrup, and kalamata olives

Something I’m a little afraid to tell you: if left to my own devices, I have a really hard time not eating an entire head of roasted cauliflower in one sitting. Sometimes, I’ll cook only half of a large head, but then I’m just upset with the unnecessary restriction. I mean, there are worse things I could be eating than a pound of cauliflower.

In the early days of my cauliflower adoration, I favored simple preparations – a sprinkle of good curry powder and salt, melted coconut oil, and a shower of cilantro after roasting. Lately, I’ve been exploiting the humble cauliflower’s adaptability by pureeing it with potatoes, steaming a whole head at once, and most recently, turning it into steaks.

I’m not trying to fool anyone – including myself – into thinking that a big slab of cauliflower approximates a nice filet of beef or chicken. Rather, I feel more civilized cutting into a cauliflower steak than I do digging into a mountain of tiny florets. I think it has to do with the steak necessitating use of a fork AND knife, but this is starting to smack of the theory of human evolution so let’s get back to the cauliflower.

Recently, Bon Appétit magazine posted a recipe for roasted cauliflower with date syrup from Erez Komarovsky of Calilee Cooking School in Israel. The combination of cauliflower, sweet and sticky date syrup, and creamy tahini is a bit unexpected and extremely delicious. I added ground cumin for depth, a generous handful of flat-leaf parsley leaves for color and crunch, and sliced kalamata olives for a salty counterpoint, and was completely hooked.

Another Bon Appétit recipe, for cauliflower steaks with olive relish and tomato sauce, caught my eye and, before I knew it, all I could think about was a cauliflower steak topped with date syrup, tahini, and olives. I waited for a night I knew I’d be cooking for one (lest I have to share my cauliflower with others) and, I’ll admit, went to town on my creation.

If you’re wondering where to find date syrup and/or tahini, try a Middle Eastern market or well-stocked natural foods store. Making date syrup is easy and having a jar laying around is never a bad thing. Drizzle it on pancakes, waffles, French toast, or yogurt. Making it takes about five minutes. Try this recipe.

braised pork with rhubarb and ginger beer

As an undergrad, I had the great pleasure and luxury of studying abroad for a few quarters. I spent one of them in Australia on a marine biology- and oceanography-focused itinerary that had us on the go every week or so. We traveled up and down the Eastern seaboard, conducting research projects along the Great Barrier Reef and wearing our swimsuits to classes held on white sand beaches.

I never managed to funnel my island vacation into a viable career, but I learned a lot about the ocean and even more about Australian culture during those three months. There was a lot of beer, and not just because we were a group of underage drinkers unleashed in a country where we were, indeed, of age. No, something about the Australian culture dictated that we always have a bottle of beer in hand.

I was all for the upbeat social culture, but at the time hadn’t yet grown to tolerate the taste of alcohol. My, how times have changed! As I was always being pestered and plied with drinks, I quickly adopted a fail-proof strategy for staving off alcoholic advances: Bundaberg. In Australia, this ginger beer is available at just about every outlet that sells beer. So, it’s available everywhere. Housed in a dark brown glass bottle with an understated label, it might as well be beer. And the spicy kick makes it an addictive pleasure!

Back in the States that spring, I managed to source some Bundaberg from a local Cost Plus. From time to time I pick up a four-pack for a taste of gingery nostalgia. I’ve also found that it’s a great ingredient in marinades and sauces. In my most recent endeavor with the golden elixir, I used it to both deglaze and slow-cook a braised pork dish.

While ginger beer is very sweet, the addition of three cups of chopped rhubarb tarts up the cooking liquid and cuts through the richness of the pork shoulder. Rhubarb is a super-seasonal ingredient, so find some soon! Please note that Bundaberg makes a lookalike reduced-calorie version of their ginger beer, which I strongly suggest you avoid for this dish. The only thing worse than fake sugar’s very existence would be pairing it with something as downright delicious as pork.

in praise of: the one-jellyroll pan dinner

As much as I love to cook, many nights dinnertime rolls around and I have no idea what I want to make. Sure, a lot of things sound good but as someone who cooks and eats a lot, I usually know if a dish’s prep time exceeds the amount of time I can remain comfortably hungry before going gangbangers on a bag of chips (of the tortilla or seaweed variety). On these nights, I either heed the call of the crispy tortilla and pay the price later with a disappointingly measly appetite, or throw together a surprisingly tasty and supremely easy meal for one or two.

It’s rare that there aren’t odds and ends of vegetables, proteins, and starches stashed in our fridge and freezer. My idea of a dinnertime treasure trove – a handful of kale stems, one fat golden beet, 2/3 cup of frozen chickpeas I’d cooked a couple weeks before – may well be trash (err, compost) to others, but give me a crisper of vegetable leftovers and I’ll make you dinner.  

Such was the direction I went after an afternoon spent indoor rock climbing. My amateurish technique requires me to rely extensively on hauling myself up the faux-granite like an ungainly monkey. By the time we returned home, covered in chalk handprints and nursing tired arms, I knew dinner had come down to two options: the one-cookie sheet dinner or In-N-Out. One of us chose In-N-Out.

In about the same amount of time it took my burger fiend to acquire and inhale two double-doubles and fries, I was able to prepare and enjoy a filling plate of roasted beets, kale stems, and chickpeas. The combination might sound weird, but sprinkled with Meyer lemon juice and truffle oil, and topped with a scoop of something creamy or saucy, such as pesto or hummus thinned with olive oil, it’s pretty delicious. In the last few minutes of roasting, I often put a couple thick slices of artisan bread directly on the oven rack to toast. Drizzled with olive oil or slathered with butter, the grilled bread elevates this meal to something a little less ordinary.

This isn’t a recipe so much as it is a general strategy and set of suggestions. Either way, I’ve broken it down for you into fun diagrams to guide your dinner-planning. Read on, enjoy, and preheat your oven to the magic temperature: obviously, 415°F.