Winter Warmer

My dears, I am very happy to share some pretty rockin' news with you - I've been selected as a guest writer on one of my favorite blogs, Not Eating Out in New York. I've written my praises of Cathy Erway's blog. On top of kick-ass recipes with a green slant, she also documents the DIY culinary happenings in the New York area, along with her reasons for lighting up a burner and, well, not eating out in New York. I answered the call to her readership: to offer up an outside defense of home-cooking.

What an appropriate time for this boost of confidence. My warmest thanks for the support of those of you who check up on my little space on the internet. I know you'll all dig Cathy's writing, too, so if you're not already, get yourself familiar with her site. And a special thanks to her for this honor. Oh, I'm all fuzzy inside now. I feel like I should end this with some sort of toast! So, um... Excelsior! Sure.

Santa? Toys? OK! Do That!

Thus quoth my two-year-old niece on the matter of the annual gift-man. Yeah, Santa, do that thang! Inspired by her holiday enthusiasm and her tiny brain's ability to now form simple sentences, I decided to get some holiday baking underway. I tackled chocolate chip cookies, which I've been meaning to bake since the NY Times posted this back in July. The summer heat left me with no desire to fire up a hot oven, and the inspiration has been simmering since sometime right after the fireworks.

The recipe is an amalgamation of a few tried and true ones - healthed up a bit by oatmeal and whole-wheat pastry flour, inherently awesome by the presence of chocolate. I heeded the Times' advice on chilling the dough, something a step I've only ever followed on my mom's peanute butter cookies. But for reals, it made such a difference. The result was a creamier, chewier cookie with a more consistent, vanilla-y flavor. I guess that the idea is that the egg saturates the dough - though I didn't use egg, the liquid egg replacer achieved a similar effect. If you use egg replacer, make sure it's a gooey one like a store-brand or one with a water base. The fruit-and-baking-powder trick doesn't really apply here. And a sprinkling of salt on each dough-drop really plays on the sweetness - but in retaliation, I reduced the salt in the dough ever-so-slightly. And if you make these guys with the egg replacer and spoon some of the dough into your mouth when no one's looking... then no, Virginia, there is no salmonella clause.

Oatmeal-Chocolate Chip Cookies

3 1/2 C whole-wheat pastry flour
1 t baking soda
1 t baking powder
1/2 t fine-grain sea salt
1 c cane sugar
1 c brown sugar
1 c soy margarine or organic unsalted butter (2 sticks), softened at room temperature
3 egg replacers or 3 good-quality large eggs (EnerG Egg Replacer)
1 T pure vanilla extract
1 c rolled oats (walnuts or pecans work, too)
12 oz good-quality chocolate chunks (I love Ghirardelli, though it comes from the opposite coast) or 1 package chips

Whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. In a separate bowl, beat the butter with a hand mixer until smooth and creamy. Add the sugar one cup at a time and beat until smooth - the butter should return to that state it was at when you first beat it, but grainy with the presence of the sugar. Add the egg replacer or eggs one at a time and beat until incorporated, pausing to scrape the sides of the bowl. Add the vanilla extract and beat in until the brown swirls disappear in the mix. Add the dry ingredient mixture to the bowl one cup at a time, beating until just beat - do not overmix! Pastry dough requires a gentle hand, or else the gluten in the flour become overtaxed and stretchy. Then stir in the oats and the chocolate.

If you can muster the wait...CHILL OVERNIGHT. I know, it's the hard-est part.

Preheat oven to 375. Line two cookie sheets with parchment or wax paper. Drop the dough by a tablespoon onto the sheet, allowing room for the little guys to grow in the oven (about 10 per sheet). Bake for ten minutes, or until just golden on the top. Great cookies are born from not over-baking. Transfer to wire racks and cool.

Yields about 3 dozen cookies.

Chili Sin Carne

As I'm writing, I watch pairs of animals waddle, slither, march and trot outside to an unseen destination. We've entered the thirty-sixth straight hour of rain, and the arc is leaving pronto. Me, I'll stay behind. I can probably finish most of my Christmas shopping before the dove swoops down. Actually, I should really finish, like, yesterday. In my enthusiasm for giving (or perhaps overcompensation for a year of frivolity-free shopping), I am way over budget and I'm running my bank account in the ground. But, damn it, I'll enjoy every step of the way to fiscal ruin.

The weather coupled with the my need to pinch some pennies inspired a one-woman chili cook-off today. Canned beans and root veggies are always in my kitchen for just such situations (Broke! Gloomy! Hungry!). I've been craving the stuff anyway, and thought I'd try to put a spin on an old standby. Sweet potatoes are the new cocoa powder to chili ingredients. There are a gazillion sweet potato chili recipes out there, so it's not as edgy and exciting to me as I once thought. But I still love the idea of those golden-sweet tubers rocking out in a bowl of tomato-and-bean-filled goodness. Boston vegans seem to tirelessly rave about the cashew chili at Trident Cafe; though I am nonplussed by it, I love that idea, too, and invited cashews to the party. And oh yes, there is cocoa powder in the mix. It adds a comforting, dark hue to the dish and a mysterious smokiness - and I was sort of out of chili powder.

Sweet Potato and Cashew Chili

olive oil for saute
1 large onion, diced
3 gloves garlic, minced
1 jalapeno, seeded and diced
3 celery stalks, minced
2 or 3 sweets potatoes (about a pound), peeled and diced
1 28oz can diced tomatoes, with the juice
1 15oz can red kidney beans
1 15oz can cannellini beans
2 t cumin
1 t cocoa powder
1/4 t cayenne pepper
pinch red pepper flakes
2 cups water or stock
1/2 c unsalted cashews

In a large stockpot, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion, garlic, jalapeno and celery. Cook until tender, about 5 minutes. Add the sweet potatoes, tomato, beans, cumin, cocoa powder, cayenne, red pepper flakes, and water. Raise the heat and bring to a boil, uncovered. Reduce the heat and simmer for about half an hour, or until the potatoes are tender. In the last five minutes, stir in the cashews (you went them slightly softened, but not mushy). Garnish with cashew pieces. Serves at least 6.

Matters of Great Import

A few observations:

1) Playing bar trivia is always a good way to spend an afternoon.
2) There are few things in creation less attractive than a man naked from only the waist down.
3) There seems to be a great discrepancy in public opinion as the lifespan of leftover pizza.
4) London loves Modest Mouse.

There are a lot of great people writing great things out there. Please, visit the links I've offered and support your independent artists! And food writers in Boston: I want to hear from you.

Post Hoc Detox

Not gonna lie, I'm feeling pretty uninspired lately. Cooking quasi-professionally is a quasi-nightmare, and I haven't been cooking much myself lately. I was still recovering from Thanksgiving when along came December. Not to worry; we've bedazzled our nest with all sorts of sparkly wonderment, so that cheers me up (hear me now, that if we had the disposable income, we'd fully be the creepy house on the block with light-up snowmen, animatronic reindeer and trains that follow an endless circular path to nowhere).

In an effort to detox from the last holiday's revelry, I made this miso soup. Really not much cause to write out a recipe. Miso soup is just a couple cups of water, a couple plops of miso paste, some dried seaweed, some tofu cubes, and scallions. Bring the water, seaweed and tofu to a boil. Remove from heat, stir in the miso and scallions, and yir done, son.

You Gotta Compost It...Make Less Of It...

Apple cores. Potato peels. Kale ribs. Garlic skin. Corn husks. For years I've been sweeping all sorts of organic, nutrient-rich goodness off my cutting board and into the trash can, wincing every step of the way. I'm finally at a place and time where I can do something about it, and I recently started my own compost bin.

There are so many great resources online aimed at teaching the ways of thrifty, edgy gardening and composting. Such as...? you ask...

You Grow Girl is where I got the template for by bin

www.compstguide.com offers tips and encouragement for a compost endeavor. For example, according to this site, the average household kitchen produces 200lbs of kitchen waste a year. I know most of us aren't cooking for a spouse and 4 hungry kids, but even with our apartment lifestyles, there's plenty of room to grow from there.

This is just a start. The photo above features scraps from today's dinner - Citrus-Spiced Butternut Squash Soup - on its way to a better life.

I was inspired by my trip today to Christina's, the spice store in Inman Square. Truly, truly the adventurous gastronomer's paradise. Rows and rows of exotic and mundane spices, bulk grains and beans, dried chiles and mushrooms...feels like home.
Vietnamese (or Saigon) cinnamon is slightly hotter, spicier and just ballsier than what you'd normally put in cookies or oatmeal. And freshly-ground nutmeg is such a treat. Under its hard, acorn-like exterior you'll find a creamy, brown-speckled interior that looks to much like a chocolate truffle to not be immediately edible. The orange loves to cozy up to these spices. The potato - arguably the secret ingredient - adds a creaminess you thought was only reserved for dairy-based soups (a little starch goes a long way here)

Citrus-Spiced Butternut Squash Soup.

splash of olive oil and a plop of butter (soy margarine), in a pot for saute
1 butternut squash (2-3lbs), peeled and diced
1 or sweet potatoes, peeled and diced
1 or 2 boiling potatoes, peeled and diced
1 orange - you'll need the zest and juice (or 1/4 c orange juice)
1 onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 nutmeg, grated
Good pinch of Vietnamese cinnamon (1/4-1/2 tsp)
pinch of sea salt
4-6 cups water

Grate the orange to zest, setting the zest aside. Save the fruit. Heat the oil and butter in a pan. When the butter is just melted, add the onion and garlic. Cook for about 4 minutes, stirring constantly. Add the squash, sweets and boiling potatoes. Stir in the orange zest. Squeeze juice the naked orange over the pot (or just add the o.j.). Stir to coat with the oil and juice. Add the water, 2 cups at a time - you want just a little more than what covers the potatoes. Turn up the heat, cover, and bring to a boil. Remove cover, reduce heat, and cook for about 20 minutes, or until the squash and potatoes are tender (spear with a fork to test the doneness). Remove from heat and puree with an immersion blender until smooth. Add the cinnamon and salt, grate the nutmeg over the pot and stir in the spices. Taste to adjust the seasonings to your taste. Serve in bowls with a little nutmeg grating as a garnish if you've got your fancy pants on. (I'll be eating my soup with the flax seed crackers from the other day!)

One Broken Cracker

They call me Grace. On Saturday I smashed my pinkie toe to oblivion (a Bolivian?) and spent roughly thirty-six hours in bed with my injured little phalange on ice, resting atop a pillow. Sounds downright regal, and maybe it was for the little guy, but the rest of me has been bored bored bored. I plowed through most of Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I have plenty to say on that work, namely: Emma, you're right - I'm completely ready to quit the world and start a farm. I diverge with her slightly when it comes to her theory on "carnivory." (The quotes are not meant to be derisive, just to indicate that that is her word). She says that an animal-free diet is a luxury for the affluent Northern Hemisphere, indicating that the claim that vegetarianism can save the world is biased against the truly poor. A good point, a sort of Guns, Germs and Steel argument, but guess what? Having enough cash on hand to pack up your family and drive across the country to your already- extant farmland - where you're able to take the risk of not having a harvest bountiful enough to feed the kin - sounds like a bit of a luxury to me. Let's face it: buying, and ideally raising, free-range eggs and meat and hormone-free dairy is not an immediate option for the general public. Not that I wouldn't love it... but in the meantime, I'll have to stick to my heavily-traveled tofu and go to sleep at night knowing that, yes, a lot of bunnies died under the plows that harvested that soystuff.

Gloom and doom, right? Maybe not. I was inspired enough before the Accident to start a compost bin! Very fun and fulfilling project. More on that when I can hobble outside to shoot it before the sun goes down. While I was laid up, I of course leafed through some culinary classics, both old and new. When I finally got on my feet today, the first thing I made was a batch of whole-wheat flax crackers from the seminal How It All Vegan!. My relationship with the book is a complicated one. Are there better (read: less preachy) vegan primers out there? Absolutely. Is there when that speaks more clearly to the bad-ass, good-life, post-punk zeitgest? Not for my money. And do I have a borderline-inappropriate girl-crush on Sarah Kramer? ...I'm working on it, ok? Obviously I can't reprint this recipe (I'm waiting for the day where something on here gets me sued), but check it out on page 124 of the tome. Super healthy and super easy to make! A gratifying way to get off my ass and back into the kitchen