One purpose of food storage

Even while sick, you can throw together a dinner like this in under ten minutes.

- Carrot cumin soup, defrosted and brought to a boil
- Plain yogurt with ground pepper, which had been sitting in the fridge strainer draining whey for two days
- Lentil-quinoa kibbeh balls, baked with the batch of burgers
- Tea
- Crackers out of the cupboard

I ate it. Maybe now I'll go back to bed.

Food storage weekend

This Sunday was one of the most profitable food days ever.

Saturday night I put white beans on to soak; Sunday morning I boiled them with a bay leaf; we now have about three cups of white beans in bean broth coagulating in the freezer. I put a batch of black beans on to soak for later.

Then I made red lentil-quinoa burgers. I cooked a cup of quinoa in the rice cooker while I chopped up a store yellow onion (dry, not highly scented), a farmer's market red onion (juicy, fragrant, striated with a stripe down the side), and four cloves of garlic (garlicky), then softened them in a saucepan with olive oil, paprika, oregano, and thyme. We still have no marjoram, or some of that would definitely have made an appearance. When soft, I added a cup or so of red lentils, a bay leaf, water, and a block of frozen stock, simmered covered until the lentils were cooked down to slurry, and simmered half-covered over low heat until sufficiently thick. "Sufficiently thick" = "stirrable, yet reasonably dry and and malleable". I mixed it with the finished quinoa and let it cool while I went to the grocery store and acquired more supplies, including the first tiny thin asparagus of the season.

When I came back, I made the mix into twelve badly lit lentil-quinoa burgers. Normally I'd do this with my hands, but the glop was just too gloppy, so instead I spooned it out like batter and smoothed the burgers with the back of the spoon. Bake at 350F on a cookie sheet with oil and flour dusting or parchment if you're intelligent and have some. Rotate or flip every 5-7m, and be careful; these can be pretty breakable. They're done in 20-30m, when golden browned on both sides.

I had maybe enough mix for 1.5 burgers left after the first tray, so I decided to make them into little kibbeh balls instead. I threw a couple shakes of cayenne and some extra paprika in to make them ultra spice balls (as opposed to the fairly neutral, sauce-vehicle burgers). Soon I will eat them with raita or maybe just plain drained thick yogurt.

I also made Joy of Cooking barbecue sauce, with no worcestershire, cayenne/paprika/red pepper flakes to sub for chili powder, and molasses to make up for my non-brown sugar. Is it bad that I know its page number (90) by heart? Don't answer that. When the sauce was done, I doused a couple burgers in it and stuck them back in the oven to let it all caramelize together. Then I threw them on a toasted bun with lots of lettuce, stuck a pickle on the edge of the plate, and had dinner.

Most of the other burgers, in contrast, went into the freezer to become emergency burger store.

Then today (oh yeah, it's Monday now you guys) I stuck two burgers, hummus, pita, and a bunch of chopped leaf lettuce/red pepper/green onion business in boxes and bags and brought them all to work, where I eventually and messily made myself two pitas' worth of stuffed sandwich for lunch, then ate them all. Oh man, that was a good idea. I may never buy a falafel sandwich again.

Then I came home.

The black beans are cooling to go into the freezer right now.

Lentil goodness; good lentils.

Can we just talk about lentils for a minute? Lentils are so awesome.

For instance, lentils will save you when you have practically no food in the house, but do have half a bottle of chardonnay. This, along with an onion, a couple of bay leaves, and some broth cobbled together from frozen scraps, was sufficient to make a pot of lentils in white wine. Both my dinner and three days' worth of lunches were saved. In conclusion, you'd better have some lentils hanging around in the freezer if you know what's good for you.

I actually went straight to the land of cookbooks for this one: it's Deborah Madison's lentils in red wine straight from The Savory Way. Obviously, we had white instead of red wine. We even had white wine vinegar to punch it up on dismount. I here report that the switch served us admirably.

Then there was kale steamed over the pot, and a pan of stuffing which failed pretty thoroughly into a soggy mess. Let us never mention it again.

The presentation was pretty great, though. It reminds me of a huge platter of Ethiopian goodness. Mmm, Ethiopian goodness. We're going to need some of that in the near future.

Bigpotofsoupathon 2009

Being suddenly back in the north, land of winter, after four years in California swimming in November and gaping astonishedly at all the people wearing parkas when it got to be 60F in October, has meant we get to jump headfirst into real winter food. That clearly means soup.

I don't know; I feel a lot more conflicted about the food transition than I expected. I mean, when we got to CA we were not really impressed by the food, especially after everyone had been hyping it up for years. We were kind of shocked by the availability of good produce really early and late in the year, but it didn't seem then like it affected our eating habits all that much, right? We only ate fresh green beans consistently all winter, and that's not too weird. (Yes it is.) Then there were things like "figs begging to be picked, taken home, and loved on the tree behind the empty house down the street." I really, really liked the fruit, but did not expect to also find it in NYC.

So when we have fairly awful produce at the easily accessible stores, I shouldn't be surprised. It's winter in a big city; I should know food will take more effort. I do know, but that knowledge is hard to apply in my actual life. It's especially hard to apply it enough to make the effort to get out to the food co-op or the farmer's market, where there will be good, seasonal, local produce that I can cook appropriately according to the season.

I really miss the concept of garden. Have to get some seeds and containers and start the tomatoes for the fire escape. Have to ask the landlord about potential roof access. Can I get away with some bush beans? Can I start a serious freezer stock of summer produce? I bet I can do it from the farmer's market peak produce if nothing else. Hmm.


Anyway: soup. This one is carrot cumin.

Soup is always really easy, but takes a while on the simmer. It's definitely a good project for long lazy weekend afternoon, during which you can do all the little things that crop up around the house while the pot is on the stove. Or you can play video games and read books. Whichever.

Carrot cumin soup

olive oil
onion
garlic if you want it
cumin
some green herb: oregano, parsley, thyme
lots of carrot
sweet potato to bulk it up
veg broth or water
salt, pepper

Get out a big, deep soup pot and warm a little olive oil in it. Peel and dice an onion; smash, peel, and mince a few cloves of garlic if you want them. Tip your minced bits into the olive oil. Season with a lot of cumin and whatever else sounds adequately delicious. I wanted a pretty simple soup, so I just added a little oregano to give it something green in the background. You could definitely go wild in the brown mustard seed/turmeric/coriander direction if you wanted, though.

Stir up the business and let it soften over medium-low heat. In the meantime, peel a big carrot or two and a little sweet potato. Make sure to keep the carrot dominant so this will actually be "carrot soup"; the sweet potato is here for texture and to bulk the body of the soup, while still keeping it as orange and sweet as carrot.

Toss the carrot and sweet potato peel, along with any other bits of vegetables you have lying around, into a pot of water over high heat; i.e. make broth. You can also use frozen broth if you have any lying around. It's all good; I just like to use all the trash for extra carrot and sweet potato deliciousness.

Chop the carrot and sweet potato into small dice and add them to the softened onion mix. Mix it up and let it all cook together while your broth develops. After five or ten minutes, start scooping out ladles of broth and adding them to the main soup pan. Get enough liquid in to cover the vegetables by a couple inches, making up the difference with water if necessary.

Bring the pot to a boil, turn the heat down, cover, and simmer until the carrot and potato are cooked through. This will take at least half an hour, and probably more. Salt and pepper, correct any other spices, and give it another five minutes to meld adequately.

Now take the pan off the heat and attack it with your immersion blender. You could use an actual blender or food processor instead, or leave the soup unpuréed if you like broths with lots of chunks.

You are done. Put your soup in bowls and eat it.

Things to have with said soup:
- lots of hot toast or warm pita bread with hummus/garlic white beans/etc.
- sauteed greens to float on top, or to put in the bottom of the bowl and serve the soup over.
- or garlic white beans or garbanzos and maybe some roasted pepper over a big salad.
- lots of croutons as garnish.
- popcorn as garnish. I've been thinking about this idea and not doing it for far too long.

Crusty creamy white beans and chard

We totally made Heidi's giant crusty and creamy white beans out of Super Natural Cooking. I used the bag of gigantic lima beans I'd been saving for fassoulia. Oh well; I don't care. In conclusion, MAKE THESE.

The beans turned out a little more creamy than crusty, but that's ok. Panfrying the beans definitely gives them much more interesting flavor, even if you stir them too much and shift the texture.

This is the closest I've come to actually following a recipe to the letter in ages. We even used the correct specified greens: rainbow chard. Oh chard, I love you. In the future, I'd use way more chard. You can see that the bean proportion's a little too high. Chard is a green; it shrinks.

Actually, I think I'd double the entire recipe so I could eat it over and over for days on end. If only there had been enough leftovers to fry into little crusty/creamy white bean and greens cakes! That story.