tomato_kumato

I’ve been on a simple food kick lately… I think it’s the weather. In summertime, I can’t really be bothered to do anything besides combine a few ingredients. These tomatoes are a perfect example: I had bought some tomatoes for a salad, but I waited just a bit too long to eat them. Instead, I combined them with salt, pepper, herbes de provence and olive oil, and roasted them on high heat until they were charred and blistered on the outside. The juice in the pan was delicious with some fresh baguette, but most of this got served over plain spaghetti: it doesn’t get much better than that.

In other news, I’m off to Mallorca in a few days for a month. I’m excited to let you all know a bit about Spanish food… and to take some lessons from the master we’re going to be staying with, the Canadian’s friend, the Englishman. I had his roast lamb a few months ago, and I still think about it.

If you’d known me a few years ago, you wouldn’t think I would have such a good relationship with food.

I was raised in a household, like I’ve said many times before, where my mother was an incredible cook. What I haven’t mentioned are the other food-related issues in my house. I’m trying to stay away from detail, to protect the innocent, but what I will say is that my relationship with food was stressed from the time I was very young. Eating became my comfort, and binging my curse. I had younger siblings and friends who were not only thin, but had body types that made them look a way that I could never look. No matter how much I convinced myself that who I was was not who I wanted to be, I couldn’t stop finding comfort in food, so much that I barely tasted any of it.

I am a person of extremes. I am known jokingly in certain circles as “lobotomy girl” because of the extreme changes I underwent in my high school years. I arrived shy and blank, in my opinion, although my suburban-raised friends claim adamantly that I was a New Yorker through and through. My first year of high school saw me slowly moving away from my New Yorker-ness to being a “normal” high school student with a jeans and t-shirt uniform. I started heading to the Salvation army with friends to pick up t-shirts. And that’s where it started.

Indie second-hand clothes led to the also-indie idea of becoming a vegetarian. I started eating less and less in the dining hall: where I used to be able to eat anything and everything regardless of the taste, fewer and fewer things became appealing to me. I became a picky eater for the first time in my life, and I would fixate on one item at a time: piles of oranges, bowls of raw spinach, handfuls of cherry tomatoes.

That summer saw me back in New York. I met a boy who liked to wander the streets of the city at night, drinking black coffee. I adopted this habit, and the two of us would explore neighborhoods, cups of coffee sprinkled throughout the evening. Somewhere in my confused, teenage head, I decided that I needed a wardrobe to match my new life, so though the boy I had met was more like my former New York self than anything else, I chose to go in a different direction: it was black tights, red plaid and leather, even in the dead of summer, but even more so once the weather got cool and I was back in New England.

My coffee habit came with me as well, and for some reason, in my mind, my new image did not allow for much mealtime. I accompanied my friends to school, my coffee cup in tow. I ate, but unenthusiastically. I started to lose weight. I wore more black.

Winter came, then spring, and I was still traipsing around in leather and plaid and sometimes a spiky belt that I bought for two dollars at Goodwill. I drank coffee by the bucketload and mastered a permanent scowl: it’s easy to be angry in New England in the winter if that’s your goal, and it was mine.

By April, the snow had melted, but I was still bundled in my black. Then I went home for Easter break. My mother took one look at my box-dyed blonde-orange hair and essentially dragged me to a salon, where it was quickly transformed to something so dark it was nearly black, to cover my streaky homemade dye job. She forced me into some black pants and a collared shirt so that she could bring me to a party in Bedford, NY, and then promptly put me back on a plane to school.

When I arrived, back in my New York gear and snapped out of my oddly punk-grunge phase, I suddenly started getting compliments. All of a sudden, I wasn’t the fat kid anymore. How odd.

I slowly began to develop, for the first time ever, a healthy relationship with food. I made friends with a guy who grew his own tomatoes and went mushroom hunting, and suddenly, I realized that food didn’t have to be the curse I knew it to be. I fell in love with food, and fresh food especially. I was suddenly interested in different cuisines, in the way that flavors worked together. I gave up my vegetarianism when I went to France for the summer: that probably was the clincher. Being around people for whom food was such an integral part of life made me realize that my attitudes towards food had been unhealthy.

Now, I’m known as a foodie. Not only a cook, but as someone who will go out of my way to eat fresh tomatoes, who has my favorite things shipped from country to country so I can have them by my side. It took a long time to overcome my issues with food: if I’m not careful, the old feelings come back. I can eat a lot more than my 5′3 frame would let on, and sometimes I allow myself to, finding comfort once again in filling my stomach with things I cannot taste.

But then I remember the taste of a vine ripened tomato, of extra virgin olive oil on freshly toasted bread, of ripe goat cheese with a perfectly light red wine. I may not be able to kick all my old bad habits, but the new ones I have developed have brought me towards the love of food that for so many years I thought would be impossible.

Sometimes, I get really wacky ideas. I’m not even all that sure where this one came from. One minute, I’m nosing around my pantry trying to find something I can call dinner, and the next I’m at the grocery store buying peaches: a girl with a plan.

For some reason, I decided that peaches and polenta would go really well together. I don’t eat polenta too, too often. As my brother says, “We’re not mangioni di polenta.” (Mangioni di polenta just means polenta eaters, but as far as my bro, and most Southern Italians are concerned, it’s an insult directed towards Northerners.)

However, I almost always have a bag of cornmeal in my pantry for cornbread and the like, and as I’m cleaning out my kitchen to head off on my summer adventures (Cannes, Mallorca, and Paziols), I decided to pull a few dishes together with polenta. Last week, I was eating it plain with sugar on top, like my mother used to make Cream of Wheat and Cream of Rice in the morning, but yesterday, I decided to have some for dinner.

This isn’t a sweet dish by any means: you could certainly sweeten the polenta itself to make it an adequate dessert, but for me it was dinner, so the only sugar was the natural sweetness of the fresh peaches (by the way, am I the only one who prefers yellow peaches substantially to white ones? I bought some white peaches by accident this morning, and while I ate them, I was horribly disappointed.)

I can’t wait to start eating all this fresh produce that’s out in stores now. Try this for a breakfast treat (or if you’re strange, like me, for your dinner.)

Peaches and Cream Polenta

1 cup 2% milk
1/4 cup yellow cornmeal
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg, grated
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 4 oz. container plain, lowfat yogurt
1 peach, cut into sections

Heat the milk over low heat and add the cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. Slowly add the cornmeal, stirring all the time. If you find that the cornmeal soaks up the milk too quickly, you can add a little bit of water. When the polenta is cooked all the way through, turn off the stove and spoon about 3/4 of the yogurt container into the pot and stir. Place in a bowl and top with peach segments and the remaining yogurt. Serve hot with extra cinnamon if desired.

I’m about to head out to Cannes for the film festival, and then to Mallorca with the Canadian for a month before I start my job in Paziols again, so I’ve been trying to save money. Food-wise, this means living out of my pantry: in the fridge, I have a bunch of potatoes, a lot of plain yogurt, some milk and some eggs. It was time to get creative.

I invented two different baked potato recipes last week, and both were amazing. I hadn’t had a baked potato in a very long time, so I was surprised at how easy they are and how different they taste from boiled or steamed potatoes.

Here are the two recipes… more stories to come shortly!

P.S. Sorry I’ve been so M.I.A. lately… I’m really working hard at starting up my other two blogs. Come by and check them out if you’re interested! Links further down the page…

Baked Potato with Spinach and Yogurt

1 potato
1/2 cup frozen spinach, heated and drained
3 cloves of garlic
1 tsp. olive oil
1 4 oz. container of plain yogurt
1 tsp. chives
salt and pepper
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Place the yogurt in a cheesecloth over a bowl to strain. Pierce the potato on all sides with a fork. Place the garlic cloves in a ball of tinfoil with some salt and olive oil. Place both the garlic and the potato in the oven on the middle rack. After half an hour, rotate the potato.

When the potato is fully cooked, after about an hour, remove it and the garlic from the oven. Remove the potato flesh from the skin, keeping the skins whole and about a centimeter of potato in the shells. In a bowl, mash the potato with half of the strained yogurt, the spinach, the roasted garlic, and the salt and pepper. Transfer the mashed potato back to the potato shells. Mix the rest of the yogurt with the chives and top the potatoes with the yogurt.

Curry Baked Potato

1 potato

1 tbsp. prepared red curry paste

1 4 oz. container yogurt

1/2 cup frozen spinach, thawed and strained

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Place the yogurt in a cheesecloth over a bowl to strain. After one hour, removie the potato from the oven. Remove the potato flesh from the shells. In a frying pan, combine the curry paste, the spinach and the potato. Heat through. Remove from the heat and stir in the strained yogurt. Return mixture to shells.

I found this picture lurking from when the Daring Bakers baked baguette back in the winter. This is what I did with mine, besides just eat it plain: slathered with mustard, some good roquefort cheese and slices of hard-boiled egg, this sandwich reigns supreme over most other sandwiches I’ve ever made… could be the homemade baguette, but I’m thinking it has more to do with the quality of the ingredients available here in France: spicy mustard, good flavorful blue cheese and fresh eggs.

Egg and Cheese Sandwich

1/2 baguette
1 hard-boiled egg, sliced
2 tsp. good, spicy mustard
2 oz. good blue cheese like roquefort or gorgonzola

Slice the baguette down the middle and spread both sides with mustard. Add the egg and cheese, and season with a grinding of black pepper if you like. Close sandwich and consume. Smile.

I’ve often heard that the difference between French food and Italian food is the mindset: the French seek to make something incredible out of what seems like nothing. A croissant is just butter and flour, when it all comes down to it. A baguette is yeast, flour, water and salt. For the French, it’s all in the technique.

The Italians, on the other hand, seek to show off the best of the ingredients, barely adding anything at all. Prosciutto è melone is just that: prosciutto and melon. When I used to stay with a friend whose mother was Italian, she always served us an appetizer of thinly sliced cucumbers and salt: one of the best things I’ve ever had.

When I was in Italy, I came upon this phenomenon once again. I was there with a class of Americans, most of which had never been to Italy or tasted true Italian food. My professor usually ordered for us in restaurants, suggesting a dish he had tried in that restaurant, and also ordering an assortment of fried appetizers. I tasted some of the best pizza, spaghetti with tomatoes and mozzarella, and insalata caprese I’ve ever had.

I use the term insalata caprese lightly. We had taken a boat to Capri from our home base of Naples, and after hiking most of the island (whining and moaning the whole way… I won’t lie), we found a spot by the water and ate our lunch. I had bought one tomato and one ball of buffalo mozzarella, and there, with very little ceremony and over a plastic bag to catch the milk from the mozzarella, I created my own insalata caprese.

I’m sorry that I’m going to have to cop out today, but I just started not one, but TWO new blogs, and the whole formatting and setting up thing is taking up a lot of time. For now, go check them out, and I promise to be back in action with stories of my trip to Naples tomorrow!

My new food blog is going to be a collection of all of my original recipes! You may recognize some of them from this site, but the stories are new, the photos are mostly new, and a lot of the recipes are new! Check it out here.

My travel blog is going to be very exciting… with lots of stories, and although this time I’m trying to branch out from food writing, we all know that for foodies that’s not too possible. There’ll be lots of suggestions of things to see and places to go when visiting most of the cities I’ve seen. Check it out here.

This post has been hanging around on my computer for awhile, and I was getting awfully tired of seeing my last post, so I decided to come by and give you all something new!

As I previously mentioned, the Canadian is a big tuna fan. I had made him tuna once before, but it turned out too salty for my taste, so when he begged for tuna a second time, I obliged, but with a different recipe.

This was a second recipe I found on epicurious, here. I don’t like teriyaki sauce, so I subbed a mix of sesame oil and honey. I got nervous about the over-saltiness of the marinade from last time, so I didn’t marinate these for as long… I wish I had, because the tuna itself didn’t take in a lot of the flavor, but my God the mayonnaise was good! I wanted to put it on everything! I used half fromage frais (plain yogurt works) and half mayonnaise, and it was divine. The whole thing was served over wasabi-scallion mashed potatoes. I preferred this by far… much less salty. But it wasn’t quite enough for the Canadian.

He requested tuna dinner a third time, and I asked him which of the two he had preferred, and the answer was the first. I knew that it had been too salty for me, so I mixed it up a little and came up with my own recipe, an amalgamation of the two. As he didn’t love the mayonnaise, I left it out, and I didn’t have time to make the potatoes. The tuna on its own, however, was by far the best of the three: we both agreed.

Seared Tuna

3 tuna steaks
2-3 tablespoons white sesame seeds
2 teaspoons wasabi paste
2 teaspoons sesame oil
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon white or cider vinegar
2 cups frozen green beans, thawed
1 tablespoon vegetable oil 

Combine wasabi, sesame oil, honey, soy sauce and vinegar in a large glass dish. Set the tuna in the marinade and allow to sit for 30-40 minutes, turning occasionally. Heat a skillet over medium-high heat and heat the vegetable oil. Coat one edge of each tuna steak in seeds and sear, 1-2 minutes per side. Remove tuna and keep warm. Add green beans to skillet, adding remaining marinade. Cook until heated and serve green beans on the side. (Note: if you have time to make wasabi-scallion mashed potatoes, you should DEFINITELY do that as well, and make more sauce/mayonnaise.)

I got Bill Granger’s coconut bread recipe care of Luisa at the Wednesday Chef, and I have to say, it’s incredible. I’ve had these photos lying around for a really long time… I kind of forgot to post about this, and now that it’s been so long, I don’t really remember the circumstances of it, except that this was amazing and the Canadian and I fought over the last little bit.

All I remember is that I subbed white sugar for superfine, and that I used the same shredded, unsweetened coconut that Luisa did. The way I made it, it’s not terribly coconutty… kind of in the way that zucchini bread doesn’t really taste like zucchini. In my opinion, the dominant taste was the cinnamon (that could be because I added a bit more than I was supposed to… I also added nutmeg and cloves, but I’m into improvising like that.) This would be a good bread to make even for someone who thinks they don’t really like coconut… the only problem being that you sometimes get a strand or two in the bread. I don’t really know where I’m going with this, so I’m going to stop. Coconut bread=good. End of story. Go make it.

Oh, also, if you’re feeling very, very bad, toast a slice of this bread and spread it with some really good, unsalted European butter. It’s divine.

I once got in trouble for using hyperbole with the Canadian. It’s a long story that ends with me going from two cheese graters to none and my mother sending us an industrial-grade steel grater through the Post, but I learned my lesson. No more hyperbole.

Except now. Because I have to tell you: this may be the best soup ever. Which will shock all of you when you realize how simple and cheap it is. But first, a sidebar.
A long, long time ago, I used to live in California. San Francisco, to be exact. When I was in the sixth grade, my parents sat us down in our New York apartment and told us we were moving.

I adored San Francisco. I wanted to stay there for my whole life. In retrospect, I believe I would have been very happy there: I dig the whole Birkenstock thing. Although I would probably be a very different person today. For one, I believe the vegetarian thing would have stuck. But that is another story for another day.

This story involves the fact that, although I loved San Francisco, my parents are New Yorkers, through and through, and somewhere in their minds, I think they always knew that the move to California was temporary. And so, we took advantage of our short time there and really saw San Francisco. We went below Mission Street, we went to Angel Island, to Ghirardelli Square… and to Napa.

Napa was my parents’ favorite place of all. At twelve, I was less than thrilled with the prospect of spending the whole afternoon in the car (my brother was going through a period where he experienced extreme motion sickness. Curvy back roads in Napa? Enough said.) But it was all worth it if I knew we would be going to Tra Vigne.

I may have only been to Tra Vigne two or three times, but it is one of the most vivid meals (or combination of meals, I suppose) in my memory. There was the famous “Tra Vigne Chicken,” which my mother has almost replicated 100% with its distinct blend of spices (the secret is cinnamon, by the way). There was the cheese plate that came on a marble slab at the end of the meal with real honeycomb to go with your cheeses. And then there was my favorite: lentil soup.

I have always had odd tastes, I suppose, but from the moment I tasted that soup, I was hooked. Goat cheese was sprinkled on top and it melted in to mix with the lentils, which had retained the perfect texture. I loved that soup.

I had long since forgotten about it, but as I was going through my pantry, trying to find something to make for dinner, I stumbled upon a can of lentils, and the whole thing came rushing back. I called my mother, who had bought the cookbook years ago, but it was to no avail.

“Michael Chiarello? It’s not even worth it. He leaves out all the key ingredients. The recipe for that chicken? It doesn’t even mention the spice rub.”

Damn. Well… onto the experimentation. Onions, for sure. And potato, I think, for the texture. Lentils… wine (everything’s better with wine… and it is a vineyard recipe.) And then I had a strange thought. Cinnamon had been the secret ingredient in the chicken… was it possible? No. That’s crazy. And yet, I still did it.

I don’t know if I was right. It’s been so long since I’ve eaten that soup… I remember the experience more than the taste. I do know that what I created was astounding. I slurped it up for dinner last night, and even though I was stuffed, I couldn’t help scooping a few last spoonfuls off of the serving I had portioned for tonight.

I am not Michael Chiarello. I am going to share. But you will not believe that it could ever be this simple.

Best Ever Lentil Soup

1 onion, chopped
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 glass red wine
2 new potatoes, diced small
1 can lentils, not drained
1/4-1/2 cup chicken broth
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 oz. goat cheese
Sweat the onions in oil with a bit of salt until they color slightly. Add the wine and scrape all the yummy bits off the bottom of the saucepan. Add the potatoes, lentils, chicken broth and cinnamon. Cook until the potatoes are cooked through and the flavors have melded, about 20 minutes. Turn off the heat and blend slightly with an immersion blender, leaving about half the lentils whole. Stir in more chicken broth if necessary. Serve with goat cheese crumbled on top.