Archive for September, 2008
Cult Fruit
Wanna join a cult? Don’t raise your eyebrows at me! This cult is one you’ll want to be a part of, trust me. It revolves around a small golden orb that appears out of a papery vessel that fell out of the sky. Really! I swear! Alright, before half of you click the little “X” in the upper corner of the screen, I’ll stop being goofy. I’m talking about ground cherries (Physalis pruinosa): a crop that was new to me this year and one that’s got me smitten.
I was very curious about ground cherries after my mom sent me an article on them out of a newspaper dedicated to farming topics in Pennsylvania. Purportedly, they have been a long-time favorite of the state’s “plain folk” (Amish and Mennonite), especially for pie making. That being said, I grew up in a valley full of plain folk and never once ran across these delicious little relatives of Solanaceae crops you may be more familiar with such as tomatoes, eggplants and peppers. I decided to give them the end of a row in my vegetable garden to see what they would do. Let me tell you, these are tough plants! I rarely remembered to water them because they were hidden by my giant popcorn stalks and while everything else in my garden succumbed to one variety or another of disease or insect, these babies remained lush and producing like mad!
However, I was completely in the dark about how and when to harvest their little fruits encased in a papery husk not unlike tomatillos or goose berries or, even, Chinese lanterns (they are not the same thing though). With repeated testing over the season, I finally realized they’re ripening when the husk turns tan/brown. But the truly ripe ones are the ones that are….wait for it…wait for it… ON THE GROUND! Ha, I finally understood why they’re call ground cherries! They do have several other common names though, including husk tomato and husk cherry. Whatever you call them, they’re delicious!
Playing Favorites
Have I mentioned before the warming spiced dishes of India are my favorite cuisine? Well, it is. What’s yours, by the way? I often find myself contemplating what my readers are like and what their food habits are… No, I’m not a budding stalker, but rather I’d like to know more about the food you like and what makes you tick in the kitchen. Since I spend a great deal of time talking about the food I like, it’s only fair I get to see your collective perspectives too. So, pony up and tell me what you like to eat! Favorite cuisine, favorite vegetable (cooked? raw?), favorite snack on a stick… you name it!
While I can’t think of a favorite snack on a stick at the moment (chocolate covered grasshoppers – no!), but I do immediately know my favorite cooked vegetable. Eggplant. I could eat eggplant a million different ways and never get tired of it. My absolute favorite preparation is eggplant parmesan, for which I’ve offered a great recipe in the archives. But there are a few Indian dishes that use eggplant that could easily topple my champion from its podium, given just the right blend of spices.
Until I had 5 Spices, 50 Dishes in my possession, I had a hard time replicating the amazing food I had in Indian restaurants, including the eggplant ones. Now, thanks to this recipe for Spicy Eggplant with Tomatoes in particular, I’m ready to give my homemade eggplant parmesan a run for its money. This time was my first attempt at this deliciously spicy and sweet (from the tomatoes) dish – very good, but not perfect just yet. With a few tweaks to the spice increments, I know I’ll be in heaven. As with all the recipes form Ruta’s book, this one is fast and simple: perfect for weeknight dinners.
Meatless Cooking Done Right
I’m a huge fan of public television and even more so of cooking shows on public television. See, as snazzy and slick as Food Network is, the shows on PBS are much more realistic and focused on the cooking, not the hosts. That being said, if I could order just one cable station, it’d be Food Network. Shhh, don’t tell. In any case, when I was asked to review a new cookbook just released by PBS’s Toni Fiore, host of the food show Totally Vegetarian, I was keen to dive into it.
As I flipped through my fresh copy just ripped from its packaging, I had a few misgivings. For me, a good cookbook needs good photos of each and every recipe. That’s the food photographer and blogger in me, I’m sure. After all, I’m a little obsessive about my own photos for recipes here on this very site. Well, to be honest, Totally Vegetarian doesn’t really impress me in the photo category. I might have set it back down in the bookstore, but I’d have been missing out.
After assessing the photo spreads in the book, I delved into the text a bit more. Again, I wasn’t hugely impressed at the outset as a good portion of the book focuses on very basic information about becoming a vegetarian/vegan and how to find appropriate meat substitutes and so forth. Good information if you’re a newbie cook or newbie vegetarian, but not really what I would have personally been looking for in a cookbook. Again, I might have set it back on the shelf at this point, but fortunately for me, I needed to try a few recipes to make sure I gave it a fair review.
Dear readers, when you get right down to the recipes, this book rocks! The dishes I have tried so far are all fantastic and very easy. Ms. Fiore is a cook after my own heart, showcasing fresh vegetables in straightforward preparations that always manage to surprise you just a little bit (in a good way). I’ve already dog-eared several pages.
For instance, take this Roasted Red Pepper Dip/Spread. I’m sure many of you, like me, have had a few versions of this classic party menu item in your life. I’ve never been a huge fan because I usually find them too heavy and really not all that flavorful, at least not in the roasted pepper department. But since I had several large red peppers from the garden starting to languish in the fridge, I figured roasting them was the best way to preserve them. And then once they were roasted, I needed a way to use them and so I turned to my new cookbook.
Sexy Cenouras
All you lovely readers should be cursing my name. Really, you should. I mean, I greatly appreciate all your compliments, online and off (i.e., very cool meeting Stacey this weekend at the Headhouse market!), but you’d have a different selection of choice words for me if you knew the breadth and depth of the treasure trove of post drafts waiting in the wings to be published for your pleasure. These drafts are full of sumptuous recipes and tummy-rumbling pictures.
Problem is, there are only 24 hours in a day and I usually try to spend at least five of them sleeping. Really, I’ve thought about giving up sleep altogether but it’s a dangerous proposition. In any case, with all the bounty of my garden and the farm, I’ve been cooking like mad this past month, churning out at least 4 or 5 recipes in a weekend. Unfortunately, in the effort to keep up with all the produce, I haven’t been able to keep up with the writing.
Today I start the ticking off of the draft writing to-do list. Starting off the festivities is this dreamy little recipe for carrots that my e-friend, Gintoino, sent me all the way from Portugal. If you weren’t around for my raving about Portugal, I must insist you click here and here and here to read about this amazing country and its food.
Cenouras de Conserva à Algarvia, which I’ve simplified, for better or worse, as Portuguese Carrot Salad, has become an unexpected favorite in the SFTF kitchen. For starters, it keeps for ages, which is a huge plus since I’m currently leading two lives, one in Philly and one at Longwood Gardens, so I’m not always finishing up my leftovers in a timely manner (seriously, don’t look in the back of my fridge is you have a bad heart). But even more importantly, the flavors are so sensual. I had no idea carrots could be so sexy, but they are!
Retro Lunch
As you will see from the photos in this post, I was indulging in a bit of a retro vibe in the kitchen the other day. I think it was this recipe for Couscous Burritos, which were a favorite of mine as a teenager, that inspired the bing on olive green accents. OH, goodness no, I’m not quite old enough to have been a teenager in the 70s when this color of green was in vogue! When I was a teen, it was hot pinks and orange. I probably would have been happier in the 70s.
Anyway…enough of that particular tangent! I really enjoy these fast little burritos; something about the couscous is so unexpected when you bite into them. They are surprisingly filling too as a result of those little pearls of starch. They make the perfect quicky lunch, at home or school or work. Or in the park when you’re playing hooky from one of the above…
The fillings, aside from the couscous (it’s what makes these puppies fun and unique so don’t skip that), can be whatever is in season. Right now I’m getting literally buckets of cherry tomatoes from my gardens and a few green peppers so those immediately went into my burritos. I sometimes add a little scrambled egg for protein. I bet some bits of grilled chicken thrown in would be tasty too if you’ve got some on hand.
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