Naked Pasta Glory

In taking on this little adventure of ours, I had decided I wanted expose my kids to foods at their source - not just telling them but actually showing them that veggies come from the ground, cheese is made from milk, and pasta doesn't always come from a box. Hence, homemade ravioli night!

First, making our own fresh cheese! The recipe is unsettling in its easiness - boil some quality milk, pour in buttermilk (which I believe has some vinegar, salts, etc.), wait for it to

curdle, then strain through (whoa) cheesecloth. To make ricotta I'm supposed to leave it undisturbed for 30 minutes. Apparently you can make different types of cheese but waiting different periods of time or squeezing out excess water. Who k

new? As proud as I was to make my own cheese, I was a bit suspect of it. I planned to use it in a ricotta filling for the ravioli but after my stomach flips after one taste of it, I decided to not subject my kids to my first cheese experiment.

Moving onto the pasta I kept calling "Sophie! Sophie!", trying to pry her from the latest game on pbs-kids online. Finally she reluctantly wondered over to the dining room. She spotted the flour "well" on the table - she eyes widened, completely engaged "What's next?!" She helped crack a hen's house full of eggs:

Then we had to slowly beat the eggs while even more slowly incorporating more and more of the flour. Basically like trying to shore up a levee you're simultaneously breaking down. Sophie was gallant in her efforts to save the egg from running all over the dining room table:

After letting the resulting dough ball rest in the fridge for a few hours, I had to muscle it into long long strips. Bittman cautioned against doing this with a rolling pin - he only provided directions for a pasta machine. Well, honey I'm not about to plunk down $95 for a pasta machine, so old-fashioned rolling pin it is. It was actually surprisingly easy - take that!

We dotted one of the thinned-out sheets with some fresh ricotta-spinach filling (with parmesean, egg, and a few spices). Then drew a checkerboard around the heaps with water from a pastry brush. After pressing the other thin sheet on top, I just had to cut each square and throw them in boiling water.

After sauteing diced canned tomatoes (sans juice), a bit of onion and a few cloves of garlic I had fresh tomato sauce to top our homemade ravioli:

Sophie ate her entire plate! A rare occasion indeed! Anneliese took a few nibbles. We agreed it tasted completely different from its frozen/pre-packaged box brethern. It tasted like eggs and flour, and that was it. It was naked in all its pasta glory.

Deep Breath

After the fiasco of Friday night, I really wanted to take it easy this weekend. Its so typical of me to rush headlong into a project (Beet with Kasha! I'm so cool!) just to get burned and quickly move on to the next crazy/brilliant project. But no! I'm not walking away - just need a better plan. From now on I'm going to group the weeks by regional cuisine - Indian, Japanese, etc. This week I'll take it easy by hightailing to the somewhat familiar territory of the Mediterranean. To up the ante I plan to make my own fresh pasta and fresh pizza. I may even try my own cheese - whoa, who knew you could even do that?!

Saturday night I relied on a tried-and-true recipe from a Food & Wine cookbook: Pasta with Canned Tuna, Capers, and Olives. Literally just heat up the tuna with some spices, olives, and capers and bam! A yummy, delicious, inexpensive dinner. I think I ate an entire "family" portion myself. I've found myself eating more as a vegetarian - I guess I'm not filling up with meat proteins and consequently I'm eating larger meals and snacks throughout the day. And that's completely fine by me.

Sunday night I needed something filling and nutritious, but could be prepared ahead of time. I was to pick up Sophie & Erik from the airport at 7pm - poor child had been traveling for 12 hours, I really didn't want to make her wait for a warm dinner. Ah! Vegetable lasagna! I've never made lasagna before and consequently looked over several recipes to get the feel of the meal - one called for broccoli and no tomato sauce (yuck!), another was just sauce and cheese (oh please). So I experimented and come up with a pretty darn fine meal.

Layers from bottom up (3x):
1) preboiled, not-quite-done lasagna noodles
2) 10oz thawed spinach, squeezed of excess water - stirred into jar of pasta sauce
3) spooned ricotta with some shredded mozzarella sprinkled on top
4) then repeat 2 more times, adding some Parmesan on the top layer
5) pop in oven at 400 degrees for about 30 minutes and yuuuuuuum
*I admit it was a lot of spinach - I might scale back the next time.
After a quick reheat everyone, small children included (!) ate large portions! Yaaay!

I have to say I'm proud to have successfully improvised with this recipe. I usually follow the instructions to the letter, unsure of my skills as an interpretative "chef" (wait, you don't have to actually measure out that 1/2 tsp. of salt?). Erik teases me for it - but I'm slowly learning to trust my cooking intuition. In college, I can still remember being astounded when a roommate constructed a meal from seemingly nothing. Peering in the refrigerator, he said "alright, looks like we have some linguine, pesto, some fresh bread, even spinach - we could make a nice pasta dish". I blinked quietly and said softly "you can do that? just make up a meal?". I felt slightly ashamed when asked with bewilderment "you've never done that?!" I was lost without a frozen box with printed instructions...

The Great Beet Massacre

At two o’clock this afternoon I thought I had a spectacular, mid-winter Russian –inspired dinner all planned out: baked beets with pistachio butter, kasha (a type of buckwheat) with shiitake mushrooms, and hard-boiled eggs. The thought of the bright green sauce set against those deep purple beets sent my salivary glands in overdrive. Bittman kept referring to the flavors as “earthy” and “complex” – my umami taste receptors were tingling. (Umami is that sixth taste recently “discovered” by the West – its not sweet, not salty, its kind of savory; think soy sauce). What was I thinking?!

When shopping in the produce section I can find onions, I can find carrots but beets? Where in the world are the beets? Oh in that formidable wall of green leafiness one generally avoids, tucked away with the rutabagas and turnips – which are all about as distinguishable as the various igneous rocks in eighth grade science class. After making an educated guess about their appearance, I grabbed two bushels that loomed larger than my toddler with whom they shared a shopping cart seat.

As you can see from the picture, beets are ridiculously messy. After baking them in the oven you’re suppose to “slip” the skins off – oh really Bittman, that easy? I would gouge out a chunk of beet flesh just to peel off a fingernail-size piece of skin – and repeat for the next 30 minutes. I finally perfected my technique on the sixth, and last, beet. Baking the beets concentrates their super high sugar content, so by the end of the peeling everything in the kitchen is sticky and pink – like what your hands feel like after eating cotton candy.

Meanwhile, the pistachios are sauteing in some grapeseed oil on the stove. As I stared off into space congratulating myself for making my OWN nut butter, absent-mindedly stirring the nuts around, a strange singeing smell broke my trance. AH! The pistachios! They’re blackened and burnt! Well that’ll add more complexity right? I tossed the nuts with more oil in the food processor, hoping – Erik walked in, took one look at the brown, grainy liquid and said ,“Who wants poo??”

A red-flag should have gone up when the kasha recipe said to stir an egg into the grain before adding broth. Instead I thought “oh, how exotic!” The dry kasha had an intense woodsy smell – my brain didn’t know what to do with this information, like it had no receptor for east European wood smell. As it cooked for half an hour a sickening twist in my stomach grew. The woodsy, nutty scent gave way to a smell I can only describe as revolting. When I traveled in Russia six years ago, I can remember feeling totally disorientated the whole time. The language, the attitudes, the food were all completely outside of my realm of understanding. I had no compass for navigating the overwhelming novelty of it all. I bet unknowingly eating kasha at some point just confused me further.

Well, the beets tasted like if you had just finished your spring planting and licked your fingers. The pistachio butter was burnt paste. And the smell of the kasha had dug itself in my brain so I couldn’t think of anything else besides its nauseating scent. Thank goodness for the hard-boiled eggs – Anneliese ate most of them.

Lesson learned? Do NOT try more than one new flavor at a time – otherwise you’ll end up with a beet-stained kitchen bursting with dirty dishes and an empty tummy.

Thank goodness our local mini-mart who just received a shipment of “Amy’s Frozen Vegetarian Entrees”.

And here are some pretty pictures from our much more successful breakfast and lunch; steel-cut oatmeal with walnuts and cinnamon and then pasta with olive oil, feta, edamame, and cherry tomatoes. Anneliese woke me up by whispering “aaaah-meal” “aaah-meal” in my ear.

Freaky Leeky

Leek & Potato Soup - Bittman refers to it as medieval peasant's food, I refer to it as "..mmMMmmM.." Elegant in its simplicity, this warm satisfying soup contains just 4 inexpensive ingredients, but can be coaxed into a variety of forms, warm or cold, blended with cream or avocado. In fact "vichyssoise", something I'd always thought was super fancy since it sounded French, is just chilled leek & potato soup. Those sneaky French! First slicing of the veggies to first wonderful slurp took only 35 minutes, half of that simmering unattended - and now we have yummy soup leftovers at our beck and call. Coupled with a Hummus, Cheddar, Apple sandwich, I felt satisfied.

Leek & Potato Soup Recipe

Daddy didn't end up debuting his cooking prowess tonight - another late project at work. But stayed tuned!
Tomorrow: Borscht? Or other beet product??

We wanna quinoa

Tonight I made my one vegetarian staple – yes I know I said I didn’t want any more stale recipes, but this one is a real comfort food gem. It’s a spin on the classic stuffed peppers - substituting quinoa for the ground beef. Quinoa simmered in broth with zucchini then mixed with pine nuts and cherry tomatoes is just divine. It has a delightful crunchy, bright quality. Oh quinoa (KEEN-wah) how I love thee.


Can you spot the quinoa grain? Its in the bottom left.

Quinoa, an amazing grain from South America, has been produced in the Andes for well over 5,000 years. Those Incas, who held the grain as sacred ("the mother of all grain"), sure knew a thing about powerhouse energy. It’s considered one of the only “complete” grains – containing all of the essential amino acids, a truly unusual characteristic in plants. And therefore an essential component of any balanced vegetarian diet.

In all honesty though, the first time I had quinoa my stomach tumbled and rolled for several hours. Its fiber content is intense - but you'll get used to it. Its rich complex texture is definitely worth the initial stomach shock.

Cooking quinoa, note the germ spirals... ooh, ahh...





Anna entertaining herself with her new toy - lentils












The finished product! Mmmm..


Verdict: Erik and I thoroughly enjoyed it, sopping up each grain with the red pepper. Anna, well, doesn't have much of an attention span. Sigh.

Tomorrow: daddy cooks!

Singeing at Chipotle

Anna and I were invited out to lunch by some good friends. I suggested Chipotle ... mmm, how I love Chipotle and their one-dish meal goodness. However I forgot that eating vegetarian there left me with only one protein option – guacomole. Guacomole and I have had our issues over the last few years. I used to love him, but then one day he was just too hot. Those pesky jalapenos! For a few years I couldn’t even let a red onion near my tongue for fear of hyperventilating. But I figured now is as good a time as any to jump back on the spicy bandwagon … I’ll have much worse to endure if I want to follow through on this vegetarian adventure (curry pastes anyone?). A few bites in I started unclenching my jaw… happily shoveling guac & beans while Anna and her friend scurried about. Then, crunch… a nice fat screaming jalapeno right at the tip of my tongue, singeing. Oh, oh just breathe in and out, in and out – do not freak out in the middle of Chiptole. The singeing enveloped my whole mouth – quick, the Coke! I rarely indulge in Coke anymore but it’s become a necessity at Chipotle. Ahh, sweet relief. For the remainder of the meal, little jalapenos would leave what felt like holes in my mouth but I just pushed past it. The guac was actually... good.

While my mouth reeling, Anna on the other hand had happily helped herself to my guacomole. She couldn't get enough of the spicy stuff - her father would be proud.

Our last hurrah!

All week we had been debating what crazy meat feast we should concoct as a last hurrah before the start of our adventure. It has to be a bloody, still-moo-ing steak. Or no - strings and strings of bratwurst. Or better yet, pork tenderloin - oh succulent, juicy piggy thigh. And in the end we went --- vegetarian. Neither of us were really interested in eating any more meat. It just seemed like a chore to hash out some stale rerun recipe we could prepare in our sleep. We were waiting, with baited breath, to charge forth and discover new worlds!

And it really is about discovering new worlds. Growing up my culinary world had the color variation of a dental office, white to off-white to orangey-yellow. The typical weekday dinner consisted of a pre-sliced, shrink-wrapped ham slice, accompanied by pre-mixed macaroni & cheese, set against a slice of pre-buttered, frozen "Texas" toast. Goodness knows my mom tried - she worked full time at a truly terrible job - who wouldn't want just a few moments of rest at the end of the day? But honestly, I did not even know olives existed that weren't inky black packed in a tin pre-stuffed with maraschino cherries until college. My culinary awakening at college is enough for a whole other post. So here I am trying to discover new worlds outside of the northern-European laced, eastern Pennsylvania diet (so remarkably similar to that "Western" diet we keep hearing about in the news that seems to kill people).

Any adventurer needs some type of guide - some contact or pre-arranged fixer from "over there". And I've found a fantastic fixer - Mark Bittman, author of "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian". Literally my 800-page Rosetta Stone, deciphering a new language that includes "parboiling", "deglazing", and "sea vegetable". His recipes include that middle step between step 1 and step 2, the important one that most cookbook authors fail to fully address but somehow means the difference between stinky mush and perfectly seasoned stew. I'm reading the book front to back - it's mind-blowing. He draws on so many different cultures - Japanese, Mexican, Indian, Southeast Asian - there's even a fantastic Borscht recipe. I'm still trying to wrap my head around all the different types of seaweed and misos and rice (there are like 4,000 types of rice!). Oh its gonna be a whirlwind romance.

Tonight we ate bulgur (cracked wheat) mixed with steamed swiss chard, chickpeas, and feta (from the amazing Well blog on NYtimes.com). I calculated this could not have cost us more than $3 per person - and although it involved a few too many pots for my liking, proved to be remarkably simple. The adults ate two helpings each - our 2-yr-old sniffed it and then climbed off her seat. Humph.

Let's give up meat for Lent

And thus began our family's quest into the wonderland of Vegetarianism - so mysterious, so seemingly arduous, not comprised of banana splits and hot fudge rivers but rather heaps of quinoa cascading with olive oil and brussel sprout boulders.

My husband has a thing for religious obligation. He always chooses some large component of his life, some really big indulgence, to forgo for Lent - one year it was alcohol (and he's German!), then it was sugar (no not sweets, but all sweetener additives). This year he set his sights on animal flesh. Now here's a man who thoroughly enjoys a good weinerwurst telling his wife who thoroughly enjoys using sauteed chicken breast as a culinary crutch to chuck it. But instead of hemming and hawing in my typical fashion, or giving some whiney excuse I screamed "YES!" However, in the interest of familial sanity - we did decide to go "pescetarian", i.e. giving up all meat except the occassional fish dish. Beady-eyed salmon aren't nearly as endearing little baby lambs, right?

I jumped at the chance to go vegetarian because we desperately needed to shake things up. Sure I make some interesting dishes - warm red cabbage salad with walnuts, sweet potatoe-spinach stir-fry. But every day at 5pm I found myself replaying the same ticker "Chicken, pork, or beef.. chicken, pork, or beef...?" Now I'm all at once terrified and invigorated by the limitless possibilities. Will we be doomed to eating plates and plates of cheesy bean quesadillas? Will our girls throw down their 26th bowl of tofu stir-fry crying "enough is enough"? Will I stack up to this culinary challenge???