Sangria in the Garden

As I’ve previously waxed lyrical about, sangria is my favorite alcoholic beverage for purely sentimental reasons. Part of my attraction to it, I think, is that it’s communal. Sangria has a lot more in common with punch than it does with the solitary bottle of beer or made-to-order cocktail. Sangria is meant to be shared.

As the intense heat of summer fades and the outdoors becomes livable again, the garden seems a perfect place to linger over a pitcher of sangria. There is something… celebratory about it, but without ostentation. Perhaps it’s the bright fruit floating in a “wine dark sea.”

Sangria is also the perfect beverage for late summer as it can use up all the flotsam and jetsam of fruit hanging about. You know, that peach over there on the counter that’s bruised in a few places. That apple in the fridge that isn’t as crisp as it used to be. Those berries that got a little squished on the way home.

What follows is my basic outline for making sangria. I adjust the proportions of cranberry juice and wine based on who I’m making it for. The exact amount and type of fruit varies each time I make it. I’ve yet to use a fruit that just didn’t “fit.” Peaches, apples, berries, pineapple, orange segments– all of these make excellent sangria.

Zapotec Pizza Margherita

One of the regrets I have every September is that I never make enough of these pizzas. Even with a family tradition of Friday pizza and movie nights, I can never seem to get enough in. And it’s my fault. I spend the better part of spring and early summer pinning for the First Tomato, inevitably resulting in darn near deification of the first month of harvest.  These tomatoes are above such things as flame and heat. They are the pure essence of summer and therefore must be eaten in their pure state, accompanied only by such acolytes as salt and olive oil.

As July meanders into August, I become less of a tomato zealot and start throwing them willy nilly into everything. After all, what dish is not made better by the addition of a tomato slice or two? This is when I seem to remember the Pizza Margherita. Not needing a recipe, making them become a kind of meditation. I am completely in the present moment as I make it. The golden olive oil pooling in the dimples of the crust. The feeling of the knife brushing my knuckles as it carves off the thin slices of tomato. The spicy green smell of snipped basil lingering on my fingertips. The sizzling of the cheese blistering in the oven. Pizza nirvana follows with the first bite.

And then September comes. Tomatoes are once again precious. Only this time I scrimp and save them up to make this pizza one last time, vowing to make better use of Tomato Time next year.

This year a new tomato wondered across my cutting board. The Zapotec. It’s an heirloom variety from the Oaxacan region of Mexico.  Much like a Roma tomato, it lacks the copious amounts of jelly/guts. Its lower moisture content means it doesn’t make the pizza soggy. Unlike a Roma, however, it’s pleated shape adds visual appeal to a pizza. And it tastes good. All of which leads me to the conclusion that even though pizza might be Italian, its tomato mate speaks with a Mexican accent.

Prosciutto Basil Peach Sandwich

Ladies and Gentlemen, meet the BLT’s posh older sister– the PBP. I saw this on the menu at Drip in Five Points but didn’t have the moolah to order. But like an intriguing stranger, it’s been on my mind ever since.

Now that I’ve finally had the opportunity to make them, I think they will become standard summer fare for the Quotidian household. When ingredients are fresh they don’t require lots of culinary cover up to hide the under eye circles developed in red eye flights from Argentina or China.  But what I love most about this recipe is the crispness of the idea. Even when the produce is spectacular, there’s only so many Caprese Salads a girl can eat. Especially in summer when there are so many other chores to be done and activities to be enjoyed, seasonal eating can get stale. Balsamic Cucumber Tomato salad again? While fast and easy are rarely the sole determinants of what I cook, it is nice to have a few of these types of recipes in my apron pockets. A side salad of arugula microgreens makes a perfect meal.

Tips for Better Scrambled Eggs

I have a confession to make.

I’ve never made scrambled eggs well.

It’s not that they’ve been inedible or even half-bad. They’ve just never been really… good. They either end up doing an overcooked backstroke* around the plate or they wallpaper the pan. Both of these problems are somewhat alleviated by adding extras like sausage or cheese or peppers. But only in the way that putting a hat on fixes a bad hair day.

In the past few weeks however, my stars have unscrambled and a series of fortunate events have pushed better egg cookery upon me. These events are fairly mundane– a dirty pan, extra bacon grease, a distracted mama– but together they produced a breakfast that was anything but a jumbled up mess.

Tips for Better Scrambled Eggs:

1. Use an appropriately sized pan. I’ve found it better to do single servings (2-4 eggs)  in an 8 in pan rather  than large batches in a 12 in pan. Using too big of pan seems to result in overcooked watery eggs, probably because they cook too fast to manipulate them properly.
2. Use enough fat. Seriously. Even I, who have no fear of fat, evidently have not been using enough. Using at least 2 Tbs per serving seems to eliminate the eggy wallpaper problem. I know non-stick pans are supposed to be the Holy Ovum, I just don’t trust them. Even if you only use plastic utensils (an issue unto itself) they still get scratched. And where does all that stuff go? I shudder to think how much Teflon I’ve ingested. Besides, fat adds flavor. Butter is a natural companion to eggs, but I typically use bacon grease that I save in jar in the fridge. Frugal and tasty– what more can a cook ask for?
3. Let the pan get hot enough before adding the eggs. This is another reason to forgo the non-stick pans as it’s dangerous to heat an empty Teflon pan. The beaten eggs should sizzle as you pour them into the pan and immediately begin to cook around the edges.
4. Take them out of the pan before they are completely done. Eggs continue to cook after being removed from heat. So if you “go all the way” in the pan, you’ll be left with something less than the best on the plate. This step takes practice. After all, how to you know when they are “almost done” and not just undercooked? Only in the scrambling of many eggs will you learn, young eggdi, Yoda says. (Yes, I did just do that.)
5. Cheese confuses this whole processes. It’s Meltiness sticks to the pan no matter how much fat you use. I suggest staying away from it until you get your Scramble on better. If you can’t do without it, try sprinkling it over the eggs on the plate rather than in the pan.

This list is far from exhaustive, I know. Some of your technique will depend on how you like your eggs. For example, I prefer a cohesive lump rather than a thousand tiny curds. So I tend to flip my eggs rather than break them up by stirring. What about all of you? How do you like your eggs? What techniques do you use to get the perfect Scramble?

*Eggs get watery when overcooked because the proteins have contracted too much and pushed all the liquid out. Therefore, cooking the eggs more will only exacerbate the problem.

Sangria on a Stick

Sangria will always have a special hold on my taste buds. In my pre-married days I lived at a house where there was always a frosty pitcher of Sangria in the fridge. It was the accompaniment of many a weekend backyard cookout and afternoon share-more-than-you-meant-to  conversations. To this day I cannot make Sangria without thinking of my much cherished roommates.

This summer, however, while a sangria pitcher is not a stranger to my fridge, I needed something different. I’d been itching to try some of Mark Bittman’s adult ice pops and given my penchant for sangria, figured that would be a good place to start.

It was.

Normally part of the appeal of sangria is the wine soaked fruit at the bottom of the glass. But I wasn’t sure that would work for an ice pop, so I blended the juice in with the wine. While I personally used blackberries for this recipe, any berries (or fruit for that matter) would probably work. Although, if it’s something like peaches, you can probably skip the straining step.

Rustic Fresh Fig Tart with Lavender and Goat Cheese

I feel like this post ought to start with some quip about the inferiority of Fig Newtons and Pop Tarts. But anything I think of either sounds lame or pretentious. “Fig Newtons are only a figment of your imagination compared to this!” or  “Pop Tarts: the illegitimate child of a tart.” See? I told you– I somehow manage to be lame and pretentious (and slightly risque) at the same time. Continue Reading…

Crispy Coconut Oil Crust

Pie crust has always been a big deal to me.  My dear sweet Grandma Rolf was a pie making goddess from crust to crumbs. A visit to her house was never complete without some sort of pie, though most commonly it was a sweet spicy-scented apple pie that came out of her oven. As a child I didn’t realize what a perfect slice of Americana I was as I sat at the table digging into my warm apple pie and melty vanilla ice cream. I only knew it was good.

She set the bar high. When my friends would scrape out the filling and leave the crust behind, I was confused. The crust was my favorite part! It wasn’t until I tasted a commercially prepared crust that I understood and empathized with their behavior. When I became my own cook there was never even the option of a store bought crust. To do such a thing felt on the order of building a cold, tough, mealy sidewalk over her grave.

While I hear tell that my grandma used lard and butter for most of her pie baking days, near the end she had switched to an oil based crust because it was “healthier.” While this is probably the crust I grew up on so I can attest to its goodness, ironically I’m too uncomfortable with the unhealthy aspects of low quality vegetable oil to make it. So I had to start from scratch finding my own recipe. Continue Reading…

Spiced Butternut Squash Soup with Cardamom and Lemongrass

You’ll have to forgive the anachronism of this recipe. It’s been wafting around my draft folder for months, but with one baby and another, I just never got around to publishing it. So even though summer has spread its steamy cloak over all of us, I hope you’ll remember this recipe the first time you wish you had brought a sweater with you.

Chocolate Sourdough Braid

These were supposed to be cookies.

It all started with about an eighth of a cup of leftover sourdough starter that I just couldn’t bear to throw out. There had to be something I could make with it, right? A quick internet search revealed these sourdough cookies whose feet seemed to fill the shoes quite nicely. But, as often happens to me, I hadn’t even finished reading the recipe before I was fiddling with the specifics, imagining how I could tweak, alter, and otherwise change the recipe to fit my tastes. I’d had a hankering for spicy Mexican chocolate recently, so cocoa powder and cinnamon were added to the ingredient list. I also thought that a whole cup and half  of sugar seemed excessive. Most recipes, even for sweet things, that I make these days rarely call for much more than 3/4 cup sugar. A full cup if I’m feeling generous and amiable toward the world. So obviously the sugar would need to be cut back. And why not go ahead and double it? If I’m going to the trouble of making cookies, why not have plenty to enjoy and share?

Even as I started the venture, a lecture was rolling in my head. “You know you’re not a baker, Jana. Perhaps you should rethink all these amendments and just make the recipe as is. Or at least choose just one alteration.” But I skipped ahead with an optimism born of past cooking successes. Hadn’t I turned those leftover scrambled eggs and sausage gravy into killer breakfast pitas? What about all the leftovers I’ve cunningly foisted in under the roof of “fried rice”? Surely something with such good things as butter, eggs, and chocolate can’t go too horrible askew, right?  Six cups of flour, about a quarter of a box of cocoa powder,  and God only knows how much cinnamon later, the cautionary voice in my head was proved right.

I am not a baker.

On the counter stood a bowlful of not quite bad, not really delicious, but definitely wheat-y tasting cookie dough. Don’t let the rich chocolate-y color deceive you. The thing stared me down, hands on hips, eyebrows raised, lips pursed. If it had been a miffed fourteen-year-old girl, it couldn’t have been more sassy. “So what now, Miss Creative Genius of the Fry Pan? Where’s your artistry now, huh?”

I quailed before it.

What had begun with my refusal to waste a few tablespoons of starter now had morphed into a giant ethical dilemma for my frugal nature. Here was a bowlful of half a dozen eggs, two sticks of butter, the last of my stock of chocolate, not to mention my cracking pride. The bowl had all these things in it, but what it definitely did not have was cookie dough. What to do? To give up and throw it out would be to admit defeat and make the waste of that dollop of starter sting even more. But I couldn’t possibly make cookies with it as it looked more like the pizza dough I’d made earlier that afternoon.

And with that, a thought occurred to me with the force and clarity of a forgotten proverb. If it looks like bread, tastes like bread, and acts like bread, then it probably is bread. And so I treated it like bread.

I debated whether or not to post the actual “recipe” for this bread. After all, it was a complete mistake. Since I didn’t even measure half the ingredients, how could I even be sure what the “actual recipe” was? However, I decided that the bread was good enough that I might actually want to make it again- in which case I would appreciate having a place to start from. So, baker beware! The following recipe should not be taken as gospel truth but instead as a draft that the baker ought to edit.

After a few tries of fashioning a free form loaf that always ended up looking like, well, some other amorphous brown substance, I settled on making braids. Though I tried several different sizes, I think the thicker the strands, the better.

Bok Choi with Ginger and Lemon

I am sadly less than proficient when it comes to Asian vegetables. You’d think all the time I spent in Asia would have up-ed my skill level (or at least awareness) a bit, wouldn’t you? But alas, during my years there if I thought about food at all, it had to do with how many “weird” things I could eat in order to impress people back in the States. Therefore, while I certainly ate my fair share of traditional Filipino food, I missed out on the finer points of what the vegetables actually were and how they were prepared.

Today, my co-farmer, Ben, alerted me to the fact that we will be harvesting baby bok choi on Friday. As far as Asian vegetables go, I know bok choi is pretty mundane, but even so I wasn’t familiar with it. Like most brassicas, bok choi gets sweeter with the colder weather. Because of all the frosts (not to mention snows) we’ve had this winter, the bok choi leaf I sampled was as sweet as any summer corn I’ve tasted. Sweet and almost lemony but with a definite cabbage-y twang, like a farm girl who can’t quite banish the drawl from her voice. As delicious as it was raw, Ben counseled that they are even better cooked– but not too much. Bok choi, also like other brassicas, gets extremely bitter when over-cooked.

After doing my “new vegetable encounter” Wikipedia search, I learned that in traditional Chinese thought bok choi is a cool vegetable. In order to counter balance the coolness, a warming ingredient is added, such as garlic or ginger. I figured that was as good a place to start as any. That, combined with my first impressions of the raw leaf as having distinct lemony undertones, gave birth to this dish. While I served it with beef, I think it would make a fantastic bed for some fresh fish from the farmer’s market.