better red

We live in a little town that covers 49 square miles and is year-round home to less than four thousand people (summer is another story), in a county full of similar municipalities.  On Memorial Day, each town hosts its own parade, and the fire and police departments dash from one to the other, now in the parade, now managing traffic for a neighbor town so their officials can muster and march.  In our town the bands and scout troops and oldest living veterans all process to a spot on the town green where memorial trees have been planted for fallen townsfolk.  The Schenob Brook babbles quietly behind the little park, perhaps ten feet wide at that point in its course toward the river and beyond.  After the speeches and salutes, a wreath is set into this quiet stream of water by the Naval representative.

Politics, though on display in the form of elected officials and flags and other trappings of organized government, fall away. 

Attending the parade and standing by my dad, who was in the Navy, as he and all the other citizens who have served receive a paper poppy from the gussied-up girls in the Brownie troop with their white baskets, is our official Memorial Day activity.

But Memorial Day on the calendar marks other occasions: summer officially opens, the population begins to increase, gardens can be planted. For our family, there is still more to acknowledge.  It is the anniversary (21st!) of the first time I met my husband (or so we believe; historical reconstruction suggests he may have sold me a pair of sneakers when I was in the 8th grade and he had a job after school in the Athtletic Attic on 68th and 2nd, but no hard evidence can confirm this).  It is the anniversary (19th) of his proposing marriage (the ideas that get into that man's head!).  And it is his birthday.

So I have no time to chat today.  Have to cook!  He doesn't like a party on his birthday, but he does like a big meal.  "Good Eater" is the understatement of the century in the case of this person, whose appetite is moderately legendary.  If your day has an extra two minutes in it, listen to this StoryCorps interview, and think of my husband when you hear about Herbie the Nibbler.

An enthusiastic eater is a good match for a person who likes to cook, and for this reason and all the reasons above, the birthday dinner is a robust celebration of what he likes to eat.  After one such repast, his dad pushed back from the table and remarked, "that was a broad display of nutrients," and that has become the moniker officiel.  The Annual Broad Display of Nutrients, or BDN.

Which brings us to sauce, yet again. I have been clear about my feelings regarding sauce, which are mine and mine alone, but it's true that a meal with gravy and something to sop it up with is a meal he is probably going to like.

Like other sauces before it, this comes from my trusty and weather-beaten copy of Jerry Traunfeld's Herbfarm Cookbook, and it's another one that has infinite versions extant, because it is a kind of Romesco sauce and Romesco sauce gets around.  And with good reason--it's one more example of an intensely good, simply-prepared condiment that elevates almost any plate.  Plonk it on something grilled or roasted, use it as dip or doll up a sandwich with it. You get the idea.

I adjusted his seasonings somewhat to reflect personal preferences under our roof, but those adjustments are noted so you can decide for yourself.  His recipe calls for toasted hazelnuts in place of the traditional almonds, and it is a brilliant substitution.  Sadly, since I first made this sauce I have become alarmingly allergic to hazelnuts, which over-share I only offer by way of reassurance that if, like me, you have good reason to substitute toasted almonds, you will still get a good bang for your buck here.  I have made it with jarred roasted peppers and with peppers I have roasted personally.  The bottled peppers make it the work of a moment to prepare, which is something we all appreciate when time is tight, and the home-roasted peppers kick it up an appreciable notch.  

I don't know if I should tell you how I roast peppers because it is not exactly high-tech.  But I just plop them onto the center of one of my gas burners, and after that first side is black and charred, I use tongs to flip them over and repeat.  After blackening (by this wacky method or in a hot oven or on your grill), put them in a covered bowl to steam and let them come to room temperature in there; then perform the not-very-pleasant-but quick-enough task of peeling and seeding them. 

See you after the long weekend, and do I have something in store for you?  Why, yes I do.

red pepper and hazelnut sauce

makes 1.5 cups

2 large red bell peppers, roasted, peeled and seeded, or 1.5 cups of jarred peppers, drained

1/4 cup toasted and as-skinned-as-possible hazelnuts or almonds

1 small clove garlic (he called for two standard cloves)

1 T sherry vinegar (he called for two)

1 T fresh lemon juice

1 T chopped fresh oregano or marjoram

1 T chopped fresh savory (which I like, and happen to grow) or rosemary (which I do not)

1 t salt

scant 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1/2 c olive oil

Place all the ingredients except the  oil in a blender or food processor and pulse or blend until the nuts are finely ground.  Stop the machine and scrape down the sides.  With the machine running, pour in the olive oil in a steady stream.  The sauce should have the consistency of thick salad dressing.  Taste and add more salt or cayenne if desired.

This will keep in a covered jar for up to a week, and can be used room temperature or gently warmed in a bowl of hot water; excessive heating will cause it to separate.

reweeding

The other day at the grocery store, I heard a woman (a well-heeled woman, who had parked next to me so I saw her snazzy wheels and knew this shocking thing I am about to tell you was not likely an issue of cash flow) ask the young man in the produce department where she could find fresh mint. He pointed it out. She said, “can I buy half a bunch?” and to my amazement, he said yes. “Good,” she said. “And I want half a bunch of basil, too.”

The very idea! Nice Produce Guy says that happens frequently enough that they have a policy about it, which apparently is to say yes even though it is possibly the silliest thing I can imagine asking a produce guy, other than maybe “can you peel this orange for me, and then can I pay less per pound?”

My reactionary response is a recipe for a metric butt-load of dip, because I was loathe to leave you with either the desire to ask the produce person for half a bunch of dandelions, or if that proves untenable to you, with half a bunch of dandelions themselves.

Dandelions continue to be the snappiest-looking things in the greens aisle, so I continue to seek out ways to make them into something. I started out thinking I was making pesto here, and I bet you could use it that way. So far, I am just eating it, but I watched someone in the kitchen spread it on bread, and someone else glopped it onto some noodles.

For the olives here I used the regular old kind you might put in your martini, not anything fancy, and I like the sweetness of the almonds to balance out the strong taste of the greens but you could make do with another nut that amuses you. These proportions made something quite thick that sits nicely on a piece of bread; increase the olive oil a bit and use just 1/4 cup of nuts to get something more sauce-like. If the quantity exceeds your capacity, I think it would freeze well.

dandelion pesto

makes about 1.5 cups

1 bunch of dandelion greens

about 4 ozs baby spinach leaves

¾ c EV olive oil

1/2 to 2 cloves garlic, as you prefer

½ c pitted green olives

2t preserved lemon, or 2 t lemon juice and a pinch of salt

3.5 ozs feta cheese, crumbled

¼ c raw sunflower seeds

½ c raw almonds

Thoroughly wash the greens so you don't end up with grit in your dip. Nobody likes that. Chop off the thicker stem-ends of the dandelion and discard (or give them to a sheep, if one lives nearby), and then coarsely chop the leaves. Place about a third of the greens in the container of a blender or food processor with the olive oil and garlic and whizz to break them down a bit, then add another third of the greens, or as the capacity of your machine indicates until they are all in there. When all the greens are roughly chopped, add the remaining items and process to your desired degree of smoothness. Taste and adjust seasonings.

skinny dipping

When my oldest--who is about to get her driver's license may the good great spirit above bless and protect her--was about three years old, the parents at her school decided to produce a cookbook. The idea was to raise a little money for the school, and maybe we did. In the manner of such projects, we did it at such a cost to personal time and energies that it probably would not hold up to careful cost/benefit analyses, were it not for the lasting effect that we all have a copy of this now-tattered cookbook. The thing is gorgeous, thanks to my friend Julie. She had the idea to go all Moosewood and made us hand-write the recipes, and if it is possible to use a scanner lovingly, that is just what she did on dozens of our children's drawings, which illustrate the pages. There is something wild and fantastic about the drawings of a 3 to 6 year old. For one thing, they have almost no self-consciousness about getting anything to look "right," so they draw freely. For another, I think they are still receiving messages from the home planet; I swear I can see antennae crackling over their heads as they earnestly transcribe some wild mental image to the page.

One of the best sections of the book is a compendium of little ways to get reluctant eaters to eat. Two of the most magical methods, which I continue to employ happily with eaters of all ages, are to impale things on a stick, and to serve them with dip. Dip rocks. With dip, persons overcome their objections in many surprising ways. The vegetable is just a utensil, after all, to get more dip.

I have moaned enough about eating travel-weary vegetables in the winter that I could use a few tricks myself to make them go down more appealingly. The main problem I encountered making this dip was fitting my head into the blender container to get all the dip out, and I hope you face the same.

This recipe calls for preserved lemons. If you don't have any of these, use a fat pinch of salt in their place and vow to get your hands on some, or make some yourself.

vegetable lubricant
makes about 3/4 cup

2T tahini
1T raw sunflower seeds
1/2 cup or one good handful of flat-leaf parsley
1/4 c good olive oil
2 slices of preserved lemon (about 2T)
2T lemon juice
2T water
1 t cumin
pinch to 1/4 t cayenne pepper or paprika, to taste

Put all of this in a blender and blend, baby, blend. It will be a gorgeous green color. Although I didn't manage it for the photo above, serve it with skinny twigs of carrot, fennel, cucumber, jicama, endive, celery, bell pepper, sweet japanese turnip, radish--whatever looks good. Make the twiglets skinny, so people reach for them without thinking too hard about whether or not they object to that vegetable on principle.