sweet potato sage biscuits

as finals week threatens to rear its ugly head, i start to think even more about good make-ahead-and-in-bulk meals. things that are energy dense but will also tolerate sitting in a mason jar all afternoon before being haphazardly microwaved and inhaled during caffeine breaks.

why? because if i don't, i will fall victim to the stimulant table.

affectionately dubbed the "stim table," this is the crowning glory of stress culture at reed: a table staked in the library lobby during reading and finals week, open 24 hours a day. it provides free nicotine, caffeine in every conceivable form, vitamins, weird chinese herbs, barely legal "study aids," and food. this entails mountains of flimsy sandwich bread, buckets (literally) of nutella, peanut butter and marshmallow fluff, cookies, bagels, and trashcan-sized bins of trail mix and granola. "eye of the tiger" is played (loudly) on the hour, every hour.

smothered cabbage soup

i have a special place in my heart for the savoy cabbage.

granted, i've never met a cabbage that i don't like (see here, here, here, here and here). but savoys have some sort of extra cruciferous oomph going for them--it's that spectacularly cellular web of veins, i think, that gives it a very certain spongy resilience, one that is unusually pleasing to feel collapsing under your teeth.

and cooked, well, they surprise you with a richness belied by their gradient of green. and when you finely shred a savoy and braise it into oblivion, it gets downright creamy, i kid you not. marcella hazan, she of three ingredient tomato sauce fame, takes full advantage of this with a smothered cabbage and rice soup (though if we're being honest with ourselves, this is way more cabbage than soup). you cook down a shredded savoy with onion, garlic and a touch of vinegar, and then you say goodbye to your vibrant green leaves, because you're about to turn them into an unrecognizable swamp thing.

broiled leeks with apple vinaigrette

in a post-thanksgiving stupor, i drove a friend's car into a median and dislocated* the tire.

i'm convinced it's karma, or maybe some kind of divine intervention: i'm being punished for trying to see harry potter and the deathly hallows part 1 twice in a span of eight days. i got greedy. i was made reckless, you might say, by my horcrux-induced delirium. unable to focus on the road because i was trying to predict how part two would resolve itself after the directors chose to skip over xenophilius lovegood's pivotal explanation of the diadem of ravenclaw.

it's also, i think, comeuppance for the lobster sacrifice that i took part in (and even photographed, for shame) last weekend. my friend elizabeth has a rule that she'll only eat animals if she kills them herself. i think it's a great rule, but we took it too far. we made a lobster altar. we lit candles and played drone music. we splayed the lobster out on its back and watched its legs flail (even after we put it in the freezer for 15 minutes, which they say is supposed to put the lobster to sleep), and some of us even pet it. one of us stabbed it in the head. an hour later, we all ate pasta with peas, creme fraiche and lobster. in november. we, heathens all.

goat cheese custard with roasted figs

having a fireplace in my room will be the death of me.

and i'm not referring to carbon monoxide poisoning, although there's a safe bet that i got a good deal of that in my system last week when emily helped me build the first bedroom fire of the year, assuring me that she had, in fact opened the flue, and then reassuring me for the next hour and a half that the deadly, asphyxiating haze of smoke was just an initial thing and it was definitely dissipating and there was no need to put the fire out. luckily our other housemates came home and yelled at us about fire safety before we had time to pass out and die in a giggly, fume-induced stupor.

no, what i mean is that having a fireplace in my room (now that we've properly opened the flue) is making it almost impossible for me to actually leave said room, let alone my house. last night i took it to the next level and moved my bed in front of the fireplace, which means i can now not only read deleuze in bed but watch daria in bed in front of the fire. if this keeps up i'm going to have to start bribing pizza delivery guys to bring the goods straight to my room so i don't have to get up.

brussels sprouts & chestnuts in brown butter sauce

as i type this, it's snowing outside. for portland, this is a very, very big deal. two years after the fact, i'm still hearing stories about the "snowpocalypse" of 2008, during which there was just under a foot of snow and the entire city shut down for several days. people were "buried in their houses," all public transportation stopped running, and i've heard multiple accounts from friends who were trapped in the airport for days on end about being forced to subsist on hot sauce packets and sugar in the raw from starbucks.

i, however, have bigger fish to fry than the city's ineptitude at dealing with snow (though i know i'm not the only one banking [har har har] on a snow day tomorrow). i am in the final stages of test driving recipes for the thanksgiving potluck. i thought i had it all figured out, including the pie i wanted to make, until a sudden stroke of inspiration hit me this morning and threw a wrench in my dessert plans. more on this once i've worked out the details.

raw tuscan kale salad

with only a month left, the farmers market is winding down for the season. but the crucifers! they're killing me. between an enormous savoy cabbage, a gloriously spiny crown of romanesco cauliflower, a few leeks and a small bag of bramley seedlings, which i've been heretically eating raw for the past few weeks, i could barely fit everything in my jansport. but the tuscan kale was too beautifully reptilian, too inky velvety green to pass by, even if it meant mushing it under some apples.

most of my encounters with kale have been of the curly or red russian variety, but a word of caution: those will simply not work in a raw salad. the leaves are too thick, too chewy and too indisputably bitter. tuscan kale, the flat, scaly looking kind, is more difficult to track down, but if you can only get the curly type, do yourself a favor and cook it somehow. after all, this salad is almost identical to my favorite garlicky greens, minus the sautéeing part.

fennel & pomegranate salad

my first encounters with pomegranates, outside of queen of the underworld myths, were at the thanksgiving table of my father's extended family. (yes, most years i get not one but two thanksgiving dinners. sometimes on the same day. my life is hard.) every year they pack 20ish people into their small cozy manhattan apartment. they squeeze extra tables into their thoroughly book-lined dining room, conjure up a medley of mismatched chairs, and it gets so crowded that getting out of your seat becomes a very physically intimate affair.

they are theater people, and once the wine starts flowing they become even more wonderfully animated and clever. i will always remember overhearing my 92 year old great aunt midge not-so-quietly asking my dad if "that person in the white sweater at the end of the table" (whilst pointing to my sister's boyfriend) "is a man or a woman." you can't make this kind of thing up.

we stuff ourselves silly, and then multiple pies apparate of nowhere, disappearing just as quickly. coffee, tea, and after dinner liqueurs make an appearance, and then, just when we all start loosening our belts and considering curling up under the table for food coma naps, the Bowl Of Fruit comes out.

fig, walnut & cranberry stuffing with sage

today i had a beautiful interim in which i had finished all my immediately pressing homework and didn't have class till 3, and so i had the rare luxuries of sleeping in, having the house to myself, and a late morning in which to do whatever i wanted.

i've been a little distracted thinking about stuffing ever since stumbling across the following sentence in one of lacan's seminars: "the signifier stuffs the signified." the verb he uses in french, truffer, is the same verb employed when referring to the stuffing of a turkey, and has weirdly resonated with me ever since. obscene, maybe, but also appetizing.

rosemary olive oil cake

i can't believe i haven't told you about this cake sooner. i've made it three or four times already. always last minute, a little bit slapdash, thrown together to bring to a dinner party, to feed to unexpected guests or to pass around a bonfire, with nary a spare moment and decent lighting in which to take a serviceable photo.

a shame, because it's one of the more cleverly subtle desserts i know of. it comes from kim boyce, whose sweet potato date muffins have also made repeat appearances in my kitchen. here, what looks fairly straightforward from the outside is anything but. olive oil adds a hauntingly floral note, rosemary lends an almost savory herbal element, and chocolate provides richness in what would otherwise be a barely sweetened cake. texturally, the addition of spelt flour yields a sturdier crumb than your typical every day cake, but the final sprinkling of turbinado sugar along the top makes for a pleasingly crunchy golden crust to make it very clear that you are, in fact, eating something special.

acorn squash & chevre ravioli, and some firsts

this year will be the first time, ever, that i won't be at home for thanksgiving.

it's a bit strange and a little sad, i think. my family takes thanksgiving pretty seriously, and does a very good job at it. but this year also marks the first time that i will be actively helping to prepare thanksgiving dinner. sure, i've played sous-chef plenty of times: in recent years it's become habit for me to make the cranberry sauce. i'm also a veteran peeler of apples and masher of potatoes.

tahini fried cauliflower

i try to avoid buying cookbooks if for no other reason that i'm overwhelmed enough as is with the massive span of recipes available on the internet. my bookmarked recipes folders are bursting at their invisible paper seams and i'm plenty distracted from my homework by the foodblog stratosphere without a library of cookbooks to ogle. so even though i've been intrigued by all the recent hype about yotam ottolenghi and his purportedly fabulous books, plenty and (the modestly titled) ottolenghi: the cookbook, i knew that at $20 a pop, it was extremely unlikely that i would ever buy them--even after trying (and loving) his crushed potatoes with horseradish and arugula.

and then, quite recently, i made an earth shattering discovery. he has a column in the guardian. and it's available online, for free. i had to actually restrain myself from sifting through the entire archive, because i was bookmarking every other recipe i laid eyes upon. "the new vegetarian" is focused on inventive, uncomplicated meatless recipes that often incorporate eastern flavors (ottolenghi is israeli): lots of tahini, yogurt, saffron, candied lemon. things i love, and things i want to play around with more.

i made this cauliflower as a side dish for those lentils i was talking about, and it was perfect. you fry cauliflower to a golden brown crisp and then dress it with a tangy, nutty tahini yogurt dressing. my two changes were to use far less oil for frying than ottolenghi suggests (500 ml is obscene) and to swap in an apple cider reduction for the pomegranate molasses.* the sauce is certainly a winner, one which i would like to use elsewhere: as a dip for grilled flatbread (or even sliced apples?), thinned down for a salad dressing, as a sauce for chickpeas...

apple & gruyere muffins with sage

after having desperately wanted a kitchen scale for months (most bread recipes give measurements in weight rather than volume, which make for generally better baking results all around because weights are more consistent), i recently stumbled across what appeared to be a kitchen scale in our living room. it didn't belong to any of my roommates, and we eventually figured out that it had been left behind by one of our summer subletters. some, er, questionable residue that was left on it confirmed our suspicions that it had, in fact, been used for "non-culinary purposes."

having liberated it from its illicit past, i can attest to the convenience factor it lends to baking: you can measure ingredients all in the same bowl, without having to get a zillion measuring cups and spoons dirty. and while i haven't used it enough to make claims to its superior results (insert "proof is in the pudding" pun here), i'm hoping that the sudden broadening of my bread horizons will be rewarding enough to make it worth years of being chided by every piece of acclaimed baking literature to weigh my ingredients, for the love of god.

so: i will make an effort to include weights in baking recipes in future recipes, for those who are already way ahead of me with the kitchen scale revelation. to start: apple and gruyere muffins with sage (which, it just dawned on me, are markedly similar to these here sammiches). i'm having a bit of an affair with sage right now, so expect to see sage apple pie and fried sage and butternut squash ravioli with sage in the near future (insert "sage advice" pun here).
 

ruth's lentils

last spring i roadtripped to joshua tree with a caravan of nine friends.


the car ride was harrowing, to say the least, but when we stopped pulled into LA to crash for the night around one AM, ulysses's mother (in addition to hosting a gaggle of dazed and bleary college students) presented us with a tray of homemade fennel and feta phyllo triangles and a massive pot of these lentils. the meal was one of the most restorative things i've eaten in recent memory, with the lentils certainly being the most surprising.

braised cabbage, or an exercise in humility

you know who your real friends are when you can announce to them that you are serving them braised cabbage for dinner and they will not cringe, weakly feign enthusiasm or quietly call for pizza. and when you plunk a tray on the table full of almost colorless crucifers, braised within an inch of their lives, and your friends still do not scoff or scorn, then you know you've really found some keepers.

those who do wrinkle their noses, however, will be converted upon first bite, however hesitant the bite may be. braised cabbage is as comforting as comfort food gets: slowly cooked under a blanket of foil just long enough to gently slump under a layer of onion and carrot, throwing any traces of bitterness to the winds and yielding the most mild, mellow sweetness imaginable. it brings me back to some of my favorite winter childhood meals: creamed corn, spicy shredded eggplant, baked chicken topped with sautéed mushrooms and caramelized onions, and an eponymous dish we cleverly dubbed "pork and cabbage." deep, earthy, simple tastes that are wholly uninhibited by their humble palettes.