Wow - it's been a while since I posted. It's not like I stopped cooking... but a lot has changed in the intervening almost-two-years since I last put anything out there for the discerning (not-so-general) public!

New job, new relationship, new friends, old friends (coming, going), fun trips around the world and close to home. Many, many Supperclubs (I don't have the patience to count). Which means many, many recipes - borrowed, modified, created outright. And guess what, mostly forgotten! I suppose I could dredge up the old menus. There are definitely repeats at this point. The All Time Favorite Birthday Menu, for example (pork in milk with bitter greens and polenta - followed by the bday celebrant's choice of dessert, of course), for example. Versions of old stand-bys (lasagna of various sorts, kale in everything). New stuff, like homemade kimchi. It's been a good couple of years.

So, what inspires me to post again? Why, the thrill of creativity, of course!

A couple days ago, I read an off-handed comment about what Thomas Keller (of "F-you, Thomas Keller," fame) might eat on his off nights. I don't remember where, exactly (www.thekitchn.com? NYT?). Doesn't matter -- the phrase I read went something like, "even Thomas Keller eats a simple quinoa with a swirl of hummus at home."

And thus, a recipe is born.

Quinoa-chard pilaf with roasted winter vegetables and hummus

For roasted winter veggies:
1 small head cauliflower, cut into small flowerettes
1 bunch multi-colored (or regular) carrots, sliced thickly at an angle
1 large leek, cleaned and sliced in half longways, then into 1 inch pieces, cross-wise
1/4 cup olive oil
salt & pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400 F.
Toss vegetables with olive oil and salt and pepper in a roasting pan. Roast in oven for 30 minutes, then toss. Roast another 10-15 minutes, until veggies are nicely browned and easily pierced with a paring knife.

For hummus:
2 15-oz. cans chickpeas, drained (I know, I know, starting out with dried is better. It's Thursday night after a long week, ok?)
1/2 cup (or so) tahini
2.5 lemons, juiced
2 cloves garlic, pressed
salt to taste

In a food processor or blender, blend all ingredients together until light-colored and fluffy. Check salt and adjust as needed. Depending on how juicy your lemons are, you may need to add more lemon juice.

For quinoa-chard pilaf:
1 bunch chard, washed well, dried and chopped
2 cups quinoa, well rinsed (do this - you don't want to know what happens if you don't rinse quinoa)
3 cup chicken broth, preferably homemade (but really, you could use any broth or just plain water in a pinch - just add a little more or less salt, depending)
1/8 large onion, chopped
1 Tbs. olive oil
salt to taste

Heat up a sauce pan on medium-high heat, then add the olive oil. Once it's shimmering, add the onions and saute for a few minutes until softened. Add the broth or water and let this come to a simmer. Add the quinoa and a pinch or two of salt, let it come back to a simmer, then turn the heat to low, cover and cook for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, add the chopped chard, and replace the lid. Let cook for another 10 minutes. Give it a stir. If the chard is wilted and cooked through, it's ready. Adjust salt as needed.

Garnish:
Olive oil
Salt to taste
Sumac (optional)
Crumbled feta
Pitted Kalamata olives

To serve:
Place about a cup or so of the pilaf in the center of a shallow bowl or plate. Surround the sides with roasted veggies. Add a generous dollop of hummus on top. Drizzle with olive oil. Sprinkle with a little salt and the sumac (optional, but lovely and tasty). Crumble a little feta and throw some olives on top. Enjoy!

Serves.... maybe 4-5 as written? Probably with leftover hummus. I am banking on it being delicious at room temperature tomorrow for lunch.

Eat In for Japan!

Wow! I haven't posted in quite a while... well, I have good cause to do so this week: check out Eat In for a Cause on Facebook! This isn't a formal non-profit or anything like that - just a community concept that I'd love to see catch on beyond my little circle.

I woke up at 4 am on March 11th (the number 11 has had bad juju of late - wonder why??) to the clock radio BBC reporter's story of a massive 8.9 magnitude (now known to be 9.0) on the east coast of Japan, and the subsequent tsunami. I groggily got to the airport to catch my flight to San Francisco, and obsessively watched CNN on the airplane tv the whole time. I'm still thinking about this tragedy constantly - as I thought on that flight, and since, if Japan isn't ready for a huge earthquake tsunami, who the heck is??

The photos of people looking out at the devastation really hit me hard - when would they be able to have another decent meal? It's still cold/wintry - how will they stay warm? And let's not even get started on the pending nuclear disaster - too much to comprehend.

Maybe it's also that I've been wanting to go to Japan lately - love the food, the people, the bath concept (was at Ten Thousand Waves in Santa Fe last year - amazing!), and work for a Japanese company (Hitachi Consulting - a subsidiary of the "big Hitachi" in Japan - who's "Hitachi City" is on the east coast of Japan!). Most recently, I learned to love sake at Sake Nomi - a great little sake shop in Pioneer Square in Seattle, owned by friends of friends... basically, I guess Japan has been on my mind.

All in all, I've felt the urge to DO something - more than Haiti, more than the tsunami a couple years ago (although I did donate then)... how can I make a bigger impact? Little ol' me??

Well, what about asking my friends to make donations at my next Tuesday Supperclub? Easy enough - so I did! We had a Japanese themed Supperclub (sorry, Irish - should have been corned beef this week), and all in all raised $1,010!!! that's about 10x what I able/willing to raise on my own... which made me think - WHY DON'T I TRY TO TALK OTHER PEOPLE INTO HOSTING A DINNER PARTY WHERE PEOPLE DONATE MONEY TO JAPAN OR WHATEVER CAUSE THEY CARE ABOUT MOST??????

Sorry for the shouting - it just hit me like a runaway nuclear reaction (sorry for the bad image - can't help it!)...

So - this post is all about HOW to make this happen (at least how I've done it), WHAT you should make (see recipes below - or other posts for easy "feed a crowd-able" recipes), and WHEN you should do this (for Japan - right now!).

The Scene:
Having Akane help set the tone with some delicious, beautiful homemade inarizushi (eaten faster than photography), and a MASSIVE bottle of sake from the affected region in Japan (as she put it, probably the last time in a long time, due to the devastation and potential radiation that we'll be tasting this sake). For newcomers, I host a weekly, Tuesday (usually) night Supperclub where the rules are: bring some cash to cover expenses (usually $7-10), and a bottle to share. I buy the ingredients, everyone helps cook, we eat later than we should for a Tuesday night, and have a fantastic time! See other posts on this blog for more details/examples.

The Menu:
- Appetizer: Inarizushi (Akane, can you post a recipe, please?)
- Sake-Steamed Chicken with Ginger and Scallions that had been featured in the NYT just last week. Only deviation from the printed recipe is that I doubled it to feed 12 (two 4-pound chickens, let them steam for about 20 minutes longer), and spatchcocked the chicken to make it fit in my steamers better (I didn't bother to remove the breastbones, just leaned on them to crack them and flatten the chickens - and of course kept the backbones to make stock!)...
- Spinach with Sesame Shoyu Dressing - one of my favorite ways to eat spinach - and yes, I bought 4 1 lb. boxes of baby spinach, leading the cashier to comment on my love of spinach :-)
- White rice (come on - you're eating low-fat chicken and a ton of spinach, cut yourself some culinary slack!)
- Cucumber and Daikon Sunomono - I added about 1/2 as much daikon to the cucumber in this recipe - but used the recommended amount of dressing
- Mochi ice cream (store bought)

People seemed to enjoy the dinner - AND donated lots! :-)

Remembering our Teta Ole

My great-aunt died on June 17th, and my sister Nida and I wrote and read the following at her memorial service this past weekend. She will be missed and not forgotten.

Remembering Teta Ole

As a child, I remember being very confused about our great aunt’s name. I was surprised for instance that her neighbors called our Teta Ole, Alice, which seems so strangely conventional and American that it simply didn’t ring true. Then I found out that she wasn’t Ole at all, but that her name was actually Aleksandra, which seemed amazingly regal for someone so absorbed in an endless stream of daily work, and so eager to get her hands dirty. But I see now that she occupied the entire expanse of those names, and perhaps one of the most valuable lessons she taught us was the transcendence of being occupied, that work, in a sense, was life itself.

That type of paradox defined her life. The contentment she felt working in the garden, kitchen or her sewing room belied the fact that she had lost her real home, lived through the atrocities of war, and suffered the indignities of being a refugee and an immigrant. Upon meeting her, most people would simply see a sweet, accommodating woman. But in fact her experience taught her to be strong, to seek direction in chaos by focusing on meeting the needs of the people around her. By humbly taking it upon herself to simply do what needed to be done, she was an anchor for us all, and a subtle example of how to live.

Watching Teta Ole work was like seeing something magical. I always knew who my fairy godmother was, and made room in my closet whenever she came to visit, because she never arrived without having sewn us each some new, beautiful dresses. When something was lacking, she seemed to pull things out of thin air, producing exactly what you needed before you had a chance to imagine it. She loved to recount the story of being 3 years old in Lithuania and shocking the neighbors when they found her expertly working the loom. She told stories about how, when her mother was sick in the hospital, she took it upon herself to make bread for the day with her two younger brothers, which in the village where they lived involved stoking the fire and mixing and kneading the dough by hand. She couldn’t have been more than 7 years old at the time. And so she lived her life, meeting hardship, loss and difficulty and responding with her ingenuity and a bit of effort.

That early skill at the loom and in the kitchen served her for a long, full lifetime. Teta Ole was generous to a fault; she was the kind of person who couldn’t sit down while others were eating – she had to make sure that we were all well fed and satisfied. She lived to serve others – everyone near and dear to her – her family in particular, but also to her friends and neighbors. She didn’t have a husband or any children of her own, but the people in her vicinity inevitably benefited as though they were her own family. Teta Ole helped her sister-in-law, our Teta Brone, when Brone was a brand-new mother fleeing Lithuania in a horse-drawn wagon. Brone told her that her own sisters would not have cared for her so well. She raised our mother, her niece, when our grandmother died in Germany. She never left her mother’s or her two brothers’ sides, always vigilant to their needs, selflessly helping them all through illness, old age, and death.

Understandably, she found life to be much more difficult when her abilities waned late in life. She would apologize and explain to us that she used to work really hard, that she could make anything, and that people praised her resourcefulness and efficiency. The fairy godmother who used to feed us 3 meals in 5 hours, who sent lasiniuociai and her special deviled eggs to us homesick college students, who could always be counted on for help, was slowing down – and she didn’t like it one bit.

But, Teta Ole will live on not only through all of our memories, but also through the more tangible gifts she left us. The high-quality clothes she made for us when we were children (all matching for us 3 sisters and our brother), have been handed down to other families in the community. We will remember her in the kitchen whenever we make her recipes – or even food that reminds us of her cooking (which has become very fashionable – seasonal, local, fresh flavors with an old-world thriftiness). I recently made a dinner in her memory for friends in Seattle who had never met her, and felt myself tapping into her spirit as I made her Viennese Walnut Torte, her version of kugelis and saltibarsciai – making sure we had a fresh salad from the garden. She will be remembered in the gardening tips she handed down, in her patience at showing us beginners how to knit and sew, and her strength in keeping the family together in hard times. We all have benefitted from these gifts during her lifetime, and the best way for us to remember Teta Ole is by sharing her gifts of generosity and service (and her Viennese Torte) with others.

Viennese Walnut Torte

Notes: you can also make this delicious dessert using ground almonds - that's actually how Teta Ole preferred it, but she started out making this with walnuts, and the flavor of the nuts really took me back at least 20 years. Also - I accidentally doubled the amount of salt I put into the crust when I made this, and it actually perked up and modernized the flavor - I would recommend adding maybe an extra 1/4 tsp. of salt and see how you like it! The instructions were a little cryptic, so I'm not going to give you the recipe verbatim (it's in Lithuanian, anyway), but try to give you a little more direction! This cake also freezes well, if you want to make it ahead of time. Finally, this will easily feed 12-16 people, but if you want to make it look even fancier and/or want to make it for a crowd, use the same springform pan, but increase all the ingredients by 1/2 - so you're making 1.5 times the original recipe. You'll need to increase the baking time for the filling to set up properly (start checking it at 40 min. and keep checking it every 5 afterwards).

Ingredients:

For the crust -

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter (cold)


• 1 cup all-purpose flour


• 1/2 tsp. salt (this is where you can add a little extra to taste - start with 3/4 tsp. total)


• 1/2 cup (or more - I used about 1 cup) apricot or plum jam (I actually used homemade peach jam, because that's what I had in the house)

For the filling -

• 3 Tablespoons unsalted butter (room temperature)


• 1 1/4 cups sugar


• 6 eggs, separated


• 1/2 lb. ground walnuts (or almonds - grind in a food processor, but be careful not to make nut butter! Better that they're a little chunky..)

Instructions:

• Preheat the oven to 350 F - have a 10-inch springform pan ready (don't need to butter it).


• For the crust - mix the flour and salt in a bowl, then cut the butter in with a pastry cutter or 2 knives (or a food processesor) until the mixture is uniformly crumbly. Press the crumbly mixture into the springform pan so that it covers the bottom and 1/3 of the way up the sides of the pan evenly (don't worry if it's not perfect - that's part of the charm). Bake at 350 F for about 15 minutes or until the crust is golden - don't let it brown too much! Reduce the oven temperature to 325 F.


• Take the crust out of the oven, and while it's warm, spread the jam evenly over the bottom on the crust, then set aside while you make the filling.


• For the filling - in a standing mixer on medium speed, beat the butter and sugar together until they are fluffy. Add the egg yolks, 1 at a time, and continue beating until the entire mixture is light in color. Turn the mixer down to slow and add the nuts.


• In a separate, clean bowl, with a clean whisk beater, beat the egg whites until they are stiff. Take 1/3 of the egg whites and using a spatula, mix them into the nut mixture to lighten it up. Then add the remainder of the egg whites and carefully fold them in until the batter is mostly uniform in color - don't overmix!


• Pour the filling into the prepared crust over the jam. Bake it at 325 F for about 35-45 minutes (depends on your oven) - or until it's lightly browned and the center is only slightly jiggly. Cool completely on a wire rack before removing the springform pan and serving.

Blogging is harder than eating...

Here we are, 5 months after my last post, where I vowed to keep up to date on Supperclub and other food-related happenings in my life. Well, I guess I've been busy and probably a little lazy, because although I've been cooking and eating well, no blog posts.

So - let's work backwards. Today I want to tell you all (ummm - I think that's just you, Tete), about the last couple Supperclub dinners, because they were memorable. First, let's talk about last night.

Tuesday, August 18th Menu:

• Maui potato chips with beer (love it when someone else brings snacks!) - we had a Banana Bread Ale from England that was surprisingly good... not sweet, good flavor - check it out.



• Grilled corn on the cob with butter and salt (husk the corn, let the kernels caramelize but be careful not to burn them!)



• Grilled bring-your-own steaks (just salt and pepper and olive oil-seasoned)



• Black Kale Salad (a Supperclub favorite)



• Roasted new(ish) potatoes with rosemary and garlic



• Grilled peaches with salted caramel ice cream
  

It was such a simple and delicious summer menu - the corn and potatoes and peaches were all bought in Eastern Washington on a weekend impromptu road trip, and were exceptionally sweet and fresh. The kale came from my garden. The Salted Caramel Ice Cream was some of the best I've ever had (better than Molly Moon's, I have to say, which is highly addictive but too rich). I thought the recipe was a little too fussy, and fudged some of the steps (you can skip heating the milk in a separate pot, and just pour it all on the caramel, dissolve the caramel, and then slowly incorporate with the eggs. Back on the heat to thicken slightly (coats the back of your spoon) and then strain it before chilling to get any caramel chunks or milk/cream skin out. And the company was lovely, as usual!

Last week, we had a special Sunday Supperclub, in honor of Laurie and Phred from Elemental (one of my favorite restaurants in Seattle). Because of the weekend timing, we had a huge crowd (22 people!). The weather was perfect for cooking - not too hot - but lovely and sunny and let us all sit outside and enjoy summer without freezing after the sun went down (well, as long as you were dressed for a Seattle summer evening!).

Sunday, August 9th Menu:

• Curried Pistachios



• Port Madison Goat Cheese with crackers



• Grilled butterflied leg of lamb rubbed with fresh herbs and garlic (thanks Laurie!)



• Green peach chutney (labor of love peeling all those green peaches - thanks Heidi! - recipe based on Green Mango Chutney by Julie Sanhi)



• Tabbouleh with tomatoes, parsley, red onion and pomegranate molasses



• Lettuce with balsamic vinaigrette



• 3 pies: peach with honey caramel, sour cherry, and huckleberry apricot (see photo)



• Lavender lemon ice cream

I went a little nuts with dessert - but the only thing left of the pies were a few cherries that I ate on my yogurt the next morning! The farmer's market this time of year is so amazing - fruit this year in particular is stunning - very ripe and sweet and flavorful. So when I found myself with peaches and apricots and sour cherries and huckleberries, the only thing to do was bake! The peach is on top in the photo, sour cherry has the lattice top, and the leaf-top is huckleberry apricot (which was my personal favorite - just made up the recipe - it had a little cinnamon in it). I also wanted to experiment with lavender, so made a mostly lemon-y, somewhat ethereally lavender-y ice cream (just used 1 lavender flower head's worth of blossoms and zest from 1 lemon). Much better to be restrained - I've had seriously soap-y lavender ice cream in the past!

I wish I had photos of this event, and the food - I know others took some, so if you're reading this and have some, please post or send them my way!

Mardi Gras Supperclub!

Lots of great holidays and events have fallen on Tuesday in the past few months - Election Tuesday, Inauguration, and, of course Fat Tuesday! I was getting back from a training in Dallas last Tuesday evening, so Mary hosted Mardi Gras at her place. I got there around 9:45 and things were still hopping - had some great Chicken and Sausage Gumbo, bacon-y Greens, Rice... and Bananas Foster for dessert.

It's great when time changes due to travel let you eat extra meals!

Also, Leroy hooked up his laptop and shared a lot of great cajun and zydeco - which meant that we needed to dance, of course!

Mary or Leroy, if you have any recipes that are post-able, please do so...

I [heart] Supperclub!

The Tuesday after Valentine's Day was a classic Supperclub experience - and reminds me of why this has been such a wonderful weekly event! There were a lot of people in my little bungalow - more than really fit around the table (11? 12?) - but it was ok because a lot of the action was taking place all evening in the kitchen...

The Menu:

Pizza - homemade, with various toppings (the recipe is linked to the left - in it's prototypical Prosciutto and Arugula format)

Salad - arugula with dried cherries, red onions and toasted pecans, with a balsamic vinaigrette

Chocolate Pudding (found in Best Recipes)

Chocolate Torte (a heavenly torte with meringue and cake layers - Heidi, can you post the recipe?)

Everyone had a hand in creating a pizza - see the photos below for some sense of the process:

... and in making dessert...

Soup's on!

Last week's Supperclub was a soup potluck - a fairly random selection of soups that worked together quite nicely... we also had quite a crowd, so the potluck concept worked well! I made 2 kinds of bread, and we had 5 soups altogether... plus some chocolate chip cookies for dessert that we whipped up at the last minute. Mary brought the wine because she wanted to create some tasting notes for a blind tasting she was hosting later in the week, which added to the festive and fun nature of the evening.

The Breads:
- "No-Knead Bread" from Mark Bittman's Minimalist column in the NY Times (He's also done a much shorter version, but I opted to figure out the timing and let the bread do a nice slow rise overnight - it was delicious and the crumb was excellent, although next time I'm going to try baking it in a hotter oven to get a denser crust - it turned out fairly delicate)
- Oatmeal-Wheat Bread - a recipe I've been making fairly regularly for a few years

These two breads couldn't be more different - the No-Knead bread uses only a 1/4 tsp. of yeast and all white flour, while the Oatmeal-Wheat Bread uses 2 Tbls. and oats, whole wheat and white flour. The huge amount of yeast (and honey) in the Oat Wheat makes it rise quickly and have a nice light texture despite the dense whole grains. The tiny amount of yeast in the No-Knead bread lets it rise very slowly without using up all the nutrients in the flour, developing more flavor in the process. It was fun to make them both side-by-side and watch the biology in action! (I'm such a geek!)

The Soups:
People brought cold beet soup with sour cream (a beautiful, jewel-colored, clean-tasting pureed beet soup), curried cream of broccolli, veggie pho made with chicken broth, and Portuguese potato, chard, leek, sausage soup.

I made a cream of roasted cauliflower soup with chorizo that was inspired by a soup I had had in Paris a couple years ago... I was walking down the street after work on Monday, right past The Spanish Table, an awesome store near Pike Place Market in Seattle that features all things Spanish and culinary - amazing wines, cheeses, sausage, condiments, saffron, etc... so anyway I was trying to figure out what kind of soup to make, and as I walked past The Spanish Table I was hit with a very visceral memory of this soup - completely out of nowhere! So I ran in and bought some Basque chorizo and some marcona almonds, and concocted this soup:

Cream of Roasted Cauliflower with Basque Chorizo

- 2 heads of cauliflower, trimmed of outer leaves and sliced crosswise into thin florets
- 6-8 cloves of garlic, smashed lightly and peeled
- salt & pepper to taste
- 1/3 cup (or so) olive oil

Preheat oven to 450 F. Combine above ingredients in a roasting pan, then roast in the oven, stirring once or twice, for about 40 minutes, or until cauliflower is tender and carmelized.

- 1 qt. chicken stock
- 1 cup heavy cream
- additional cream or milk to taste/texture
- additional salt and pepper to taste

Warm the chicken stock in a large pot - add roasted cauliflower and garlic. Puree with an immersion blender (my new favorite gadget!), or in a regular blender of food processesor (you'll probably need to do a few batches). Once fairly smooth, stir in heavy cream and additional liquid until the desired consistency is reached (should be fairly thick and will probably be a little chunky - that's ok unless you want to get all fancy and run it through a sieve). Check for salt/pepper and adjust as needed.

Garnishes:
- 6 links of chorizo, sliced and fried until brown in a little olive oil
- 1/2 cup of marcona almonds, chopped

To serve:
Place 2-3 pieces of chorizo in the bottom of your bowl, ladle the soup over them, then sprinkle with chopped almonds.


If anyone has links to their soups - please comment on this post and share them with us!