Smitten Knows: BEST COOKIES EVER

i am a chocolate chip cookie aficionado, but maybe i mean addict. i get nervous when there are not cookies around, and yet i will completely ignore substandard cookies that are right in front of me. I have discovered this best recipe ever and i want you to know where it is.

http://smittenkitchen.com/2009/02/thick-chewy-oatmeal-raisin-cookies/

Replace the raisins with chocolate chips because DUH. good oatmeal raisin cookies are better than bad chocolate chip cookies, but when i'm in charge, it's oatmeal chocolate chip for the ultimate win. this time, i also added coconut in place of walnuts, because one was here and one was not. i am equally likely to do it the other way around.

i once substituted apricot applesauce for the egg in this recipe and it sucked. do not make that mistake. do it right! enjoy, loves.

thanksgiving recipes

i meant to blow off Thanksgiving. Instead I cooked a feast over 4 days. I love having all of this Real food in the house, and wish i had more opportunities and inspiration to keep it up!

so- new recipe to kill pumpkin pie forever. holy crap http://www.indianfoodrocks.com/2007/11/curry-that-pumpkin.html

Pumpkin and potato curry [adapted for the white girl]

Bengali Kumror Chakka

1 small pie pumpkin, chopped into small cubes (or any old squash. i used kabocha, and i baked it in the oven beforehand. that may not have been necessary, but it turned out delicious.)

• 5-6 medium potatoes, cubed to same size as the pumpkin - (or much smaller, and nuked 5 minutes, to catch them up with baked pumpkin)
• 1-2 tbsp oil
• 1 tsp panch phoran - didn't have this. used cumin seeds and mustard seeds. find the other seeds and be better than i am!
• a pinch of hing - ditto, used extra garlic
• 1 dried red chilli, broken into two pieces
• 1 tejpatta (=BAY LEAF)
• 2 inch knob of ginger
• 2 medium size cloves of garlic (OR 5)
• 2 green chillies, sliced vertically and seeds discarded (HOLY CRAP 1 IS ENOUGH)
• 1.5 tsp jeera powder (=CUMIN)
• 1.5 tsp coriander powder (sup dawg)
• 1/2 tsp red chilli powder
• 1/4 tsp turmeric powder
• 1/2 tsp garam masala (or whatever blend is around)
• 1 tsp amchur powder (there is no substitute for this. find it!)
• salt to taste
• 1 can coconut milk- i used light, it worked.
• some chopped cilantro, for garnish

1. Pound the green chillies, ginger and garlic in a mortar and pestle into a corase mixture. food processor
2. Heat oil in the pan of your pressure cooker. soup pot.
3. Add the panch phoran and when it splutters, add hing, then red chilli pieces and then tejpatta.
4. Then add the pounded mixture of green chillies, ginger and garlic.
5. Add the potatoes and the pumpkin and stir.
6. Mix all the dry spices except for the amchur powder with a few teaspoons of water to make a paste.
7. Add this to the pan and stir well. Cook for a few minutes till you can smell the fragrance of the masalas start to waft through. About 3-4 minutes.
8. Add 2 and half cups of water can of coconut milk and cook under pressure until the first whistle or its equivalent. for a while, til the pot makes a mess or the potatoes are soft.
9. Allow to cool till you can open the pressure cooker without hurting yourself. Add the amchur powder and mix well (doh). Then add chopped cilantro leaves and serve with naan or roti or paratha. dal and brown rice.

Notes (from the original recipe author):

• If you don't have panch phoran, don't fret. Take 2 pinches each of mustard seeds, fenugreek seeds, nigella seeds, cumin seeds and fennel seeds.
• Be careful while cutting that pumpkin! Cut your pumpkin first and then figure out how many potatoes you will need. You want as much pumpkin as potatoes.

also amazing http://www.sugarlaws.com/flourless-chocolate-hazelnut-cake

finally: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/persimmon_pomegranate_fruit_salad/

add brown rice, dobkin dal makhani, winter vegetable soup (from soup love, a really cute and disappointing book), and the best baked spinach, and you've got a happy family of bellies. oh, and a bag of movie popcorn with Real Butter. I am thankful for time off, Eatwell Farm, my stoneware casserole dishes, The Muppets, my people, and my darling son.

just an excellent day

i slept in. i slept in so sweetly in a dream i didn't want to leave, in a soft fluffy bed with a phone turned off.

i didn't make it to yoga (there was a sub).

i went through the bills pile and cleaned it out. i did a load of strange laundry and hung it out to dry. i ate a breakfast of champions: coffee, cake, and prozac. it was perfect.

deposited a check, bought quickie sushi, sang songs and told stories on the way to breathe deep in the clean air, eat melons, tomatoes, peppers straight from the vine. art and love and therapy talk with a friend who's heading towards "old friend" and how sweet is watching friends turn from silver to gold? so sweet.

also sweet- pasta sauce* with no added liquid, which starts as a full pot and boils down to half that, bursting with fresh tomato brightness! shared beers in the hot summer sun and bean chili** with home garden zucchini and tj's carrots. yum. yum yum.

and then! after a stunning sunset and well deserved yawn, a fresh coat of lipstick and toenail polish (over the farm grime, with some body spray because HA!) out for another round of lovely and deep conversations about compromising at work and not killing ourselves for meaninglessness and laughing so hard my sides hurt.

because the neighbors thought her dog's name was "pimpin"

because my kid learned at day care to say "black is beautiful"

because our neighborhood's real life drama is too racist for TV

it's a beautiful day and i'm a lucky mama, even without my little man next to me.

*(recipe: one small onion, 3 cloves garlic, one half poblano, salt, fresh ground pepper, 3 bell peppers diced, fill the pot with peeled and coarsely chopped tomatoes, cook til thick)

** (recipe: one large onion, 6 cloves garlic, one large poblano, 2 carrots- disc'ed, 3 large tomatoes, 4 c pinto beans. not so much water, maybe an inch to cover. chili powder, salt, fresh ground pepper, 2 bay leaves. bring to boil, cover, simmer til beans turn the whole pot brown. eat with gayfritos, cheese! and cherry tomatoes.)

i thought that having a hot boyfriend would make my life better

oh, and i was right.

cooking with kids is a moving target: cold sesame noodle / salad

the little monkey used to help me make granola. it was really sweet, and fun for me because i ended up with granola AND a nice together activity.

today he wanted to "help with the noodles" so i enlisted him to stir up some sesame sauce. he's a pro at holding a measuring spoon, and dumping it out on command (ok, he sometimes jumps the gun, wha-ev).

it did not work. he got frustrated at some point - with a toddler, it could have been a cool breeze on his nose - and had a little spazzz which led him to pick up the sauce. as I watched him do that, I also watched the impulse go out of control and the tahini, rice vinegar, sriracha garlic MESS was all over the kitchen as he threw it to the ground.

i improvised another sauce which turned out great, but that was after i hosed down the rug outside and cleaned a goopy gloppy mess from my cabinet and counter, and had a good talk about when it's ok to throw things and when it's not (throwing shoes in the kitchen, for instance, is on the buzzkill list).

he even helped clean up, once we had calmed down.

So! here's the sauce. dress some noodles with it and eat it cold thank god!

1/4 c tahini
2T soy sauce
2T fish sauce
2T rice vinegar (i used the last of this in the first batch, so i omitted it from the one i actually tasted. i didn't miss it?)
generous dash of powdered ginger. fresh would be good of course.
chopped garlic clove
1T (or less) sriracha

1) i used a bag of brown rice spaghetti instead of the fettuccine Cook's Illustrated suggested, and dressed it with a splash of sesame oil while the noodles cooled.

ooh! here's a tofu lesson!

2) drain the tofu, cut it up, put it in a sandwich of paper towels, and let it get strained for a few minutes (or an hour?) then put it in a pan with hot hot oil and just leave it there for a while. a few minutes or whatever. the recipe said 8-10 minutes, but i think mine cooked for a half hour! who can tell though, when you're going up and down the stairs trying to fold the laundry and lure the kid inside. it took a while. i kept thinking of Julie & Julia, "don't crowd the mushrooms", just leaving it be and trying not to overflip.

omg i got crisp, browned tofu cubes, with creamy delicious interiors, instead of the mess of crappy tofu crumble i used to get before i gave up on the Curd [almost] altogether. (did everyone else know this? how was this information not in my "welcome to Oregon" vegan starter kit???)

3) mix the sauce into the noodles, with a little bit of noodle water (or plain water if you dump the noodle water down the drain)!

4) add in some vegetables, preferably semi-julienned and semi-cooked, and brightly colored because otherwise everything is beige and ew! (garden-picked zucchini, lettuce, and arugula did the trick tonight) the recipe calls for scallions for just this purpose.

on second thought: use greens! it's so much nicer to have a salad with some noodles in it than a bunch of noodles with a rare veggie. ignore this note if you're taking it to a party, greens don't keep.

Enjoy with white wine and later a bunch of cookies. <3 r

why there's no food at home

i guess this 3 week old grocery list explains a lot!

ftw- memorial day not-lemon cake!

How can you resist a mild lemon cake that looks like it's full of chives??

Well, ok. But TRY IT. I don't even technically like lemon flavored things. This cake is my new exception.

Lemon Verbena Pound Cake with Strawberries

For the cake:

1 cup cake flour (not self-rising)
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh lemon verbena or 1 tablespoon freshly grated lemon zest
1 tablespoon freshly grated lemon zest
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
3 large eggs
3/4 teaspoon vanilla
2 tablespoons milk
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

For glaze:

1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon confectioners' sugar
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

Accompaniment: strawberries (for a special treat, cut berries and toss em around in the glaze bowl after you've glazed the cake)

Preheat oven to 325°F. and butter and flour a 1-quart kugelhopf pan, knocking out excess flour.

In a bowl whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, verbena (or zest), and zest. In another bowl with an electric mixer beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition, and beat in vanilla. Beat in half of flour mixture. Beat in milk and lemon juice and beat in remaining flour mixture until just combined.

Spoon batter into pan, smoothing top, and bake in middle of oven 45 to 55 minutes, or until golden brown on top and a tester comes out clean. Cool cake in pan on a rack 15 minutes and invert onto rack to cool completely.

Make glaze while cake is cooling (or the next day, who cares?):
In a small bowl whisk confectioners's sugar, a little at a time, into lemon juice until smooth and thick.

When cake is completely cooled, drizzle glaze over cake and let it drip down sides. Cake may be made 1 day ahead and chilled, covered.

Serve cake at room temperature with strawberries.

recipe from epicurious.com by way of Eatwell Farm, whose fantastic CSA box also provided the eggs, flour, lemon juice, and verbena.

woulda coulda

i could go to the City Council budget Hearing about the Oakland libraries. I should REALLY do that.

I could also go to SF to help Karen with her wedding. That would be helpful and virtuous.

I think instead I will go home and cook dinner for my son. He's the one who needs me most!

(And then for excitement I will put him to bed and fold the laundry.)

xoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxo

Department of Awful Statistics

Dear Megan McArdle-

Thank you for being a great writer who thoughtfully and at times irreverently covers important topics. You are making me a smarter person!

ps please keep covering a wide variety of news, i may switch to you as my only news source.

Department of Awful Statistics

via Megan McArdle : The Atlantic by Megan McArdle on 4/29/11

It's one of the most common errors in discourse today: comparing average tax rates to marginal tax rates. David Henderson thinks he catches it in a letter to the Wall Street Journal:

Notice that Dr. Palmer computes Obamas' and Bidens' tax rates to the first decimal point but gives his own rate as 28%, which just happens to be the marginal tax rate that a fairly successful doctor with a non-earning wife and a few kids would be paying. [In 2010, the rate for a married couple filing jointly was 28% for taxable incomes up to $171,850.] Is it possible that Dr. Palmer is comparing his marginal rate with the Obamas' and Bidens' average tax rate? I think so. The right comparison is average vs. average or marginal vs. marginal. If he had done that, he would have found that his 28% marginal rate compares with the Obamas' and Bidens' marginal tax rates of 35% and that their 26.6% and 22.8% average tax rates compare with Dr. Palmer's approximately 20% average tax rate.

Marginal thinking is important! But so is comparing apples to apples, and oranges to oranges.

the best baked spinach

i used this recipe to eat up 4 bags of various farm greens- from dandelion to collards to kale & spinach- and it's a helluva lot of work! but good. and keeps easy. so i recommend it if you have wayyy more greens than you can bear eating. This recipe morphs them into cheese and crispy bread crumbs, and those are a lot easier to chow down on. heh.

via smitten kitchen by deb on 3/8/11

I tucked into the collection of letters between Julia Child and Avis DeVoto and realized I'd inadvertently brought on vacation with me the very best book ever for my current brand of mental unevenness. Apparently, even the great Julia Child went a little insane writing her cookbook. She fretted over if varied and uneven ingredients would keep her recipes from working as she wanted them to in others' kitchens and even had occasional bouts of frustration with her tiny, ill-equipped kitchens.

... Read the rest of the best baked spinach on smittenkitchen.com

watermelon

I can tell I'm back in familiar territory when I read the publication of a press member I met yesterday and it's a socialist paper with a quote from Karl Marx on the cover. Yup.

on a terrible internet date once, a man who wanted to be much smarter than he actually was asked me "You say you're green, but are you really a WATERMELON?"

I was shocked, because well, aren't we all?

sweet sweet strawberry pie

This pie is delicious, especially so because i used the very first strawberries of the season. surprise! and pie. 

Ingredients

• 1 (9 inch) pie crust, baked
• 1 quart fresh strawberries
• 1 cup white sugar
• 3 tablespoons cornstarch
• 3/4 cup water
• 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream

Directions

1. Arrange half of strawberries in baked pastry shell. Mash remaining berries and combine with sugar in a medium saucepan. Place saucepan over medium heat and bring to a boil, stirring frequently.
2. In a small bowl, whisk together cornstarch and water. Gradually stir cornstarch mixture into boiling strawberry mixture. Reduce heat and simmer mixture until thickened, about 10 minutes, stirring constantly. Pour mixture over berries in pastry shell. Chill for several hours before serving. In a small bowl, whip cream until soft peaks form. Serve each slice of pie with a dollop of whipped cream.

The Way to his heart

turns out it's through root vegetables. what luck!

Mashed Celeriac with Truffle Oil and Deep-Fried Apple Bits

via Eatwell Farm by organic@eatwell.com on 1/26/11

1 large celery root, peeled and cubed 1 large or 2 medium potatoes, peeled and cubed 1/2 pint light cream 1 tablespoon butter 1 tablespoons salt 1 tablespoons truffle oil (optional if unavailable) 1 crisp apple, cored, peeled and diced fine 1/8 cup flour 1/4 cup vegetable oil Boil cubed celery root and potato in [...]

good job, mom: indian dinner (from space)

Kohlrabi is this winter's New Vegetable. How have I never eaten it before? It's right there in the middle of the January wedge of my food wheel (buy one for yourself!). It is a space alien vegetable and I ate the greens last week with eggs. Normal, greens. Whatevs.

I wanted to do something more interesting with the bulb/tuber of the thing. Somehow I knew India/Pakistan had the answer. The recipe site format is completely annoying, but visit nonetheless because this recipe is tight. (Tight?? Who said that?)

notes: if you don't have asafoetida, use two cloves of garlic. if you are gringalicious and don't have cardamom pods, leave them out. if, for the same reason, you fear the amount of red pepper called for, reduce at will. I didn't have a pre-mixed garam masala, so i substituted some tandoori mix. oops, shoulda used the curry powder! (on a cardamom note, did you know Bombay Creamery closed?!? I just learned that this weekend. no more rose/cardamom ice cream sundaes. sadness.)

Back to dinner: delicious. Trim the kohlrabi well or it gets stringy and yucks. If you burn the everliving shit out of half of it (like i did!), trim the burned parts and keep going. The vegetable was headed to the compost bin anyway, so whatever makes it into the gravy is how do you say? gravy. 

Serve with lentils and yogurt if you happen to have them around. or soak up the gravy with any old bread. YUMMEH.

success

http://smittenkitchen.com/2010/04/new-york-cheesecake/

EAT IT

on modern dance

you are a genius, and you know who you are.

"the thought of watching a whole show makes me want to vomit piranhas." 

graham "crackers"

yummy! 

i made a mess of these, spilling the sugar/butter/egg mixture around the kitchen (and myself), so then i just added ingredients willy nilly. it turned out well! The boy ate all the batter left in the bowl, commenting "loooks like peanut butter". he's right. I didn't roll it out quite enough because there was so much darn batter and it was almost naptime, so the baking time was longer and they're not so much crackers as thin cakes. whatever!

next time: follow the recipe. substitute agave & barley malt for the 6T sugar, and find a honey that's less than $12/lb for the honey portion. 

the boy has cookies. amen.

new year, baby

i waste so much time thinking about boys!! i met a woman this weekend who does relief work in Haiti and who has worked in Darfur. A friend summarized "when you talk to her, it's always a boy problem."

seriously, ladies. enough!!

right? 

and so, i resolve:

yoga! 3x week. sometimes with a live teacher (budgetary limitations)

cardio! 2-3x week  (thank you, maggie, for making this totally easy at least 1x each week)

art projects! pursue them. make them up, maybe (though that is scarier than being dumped- maybe just participate more in other peoples')

get a job

continue to build the music library (amen for this one, finally)

(secret mission redacted for legal reasons)

stay healthy

get healthier in the brain (see mini rant, above)

fuck em!

2011 is mine!