Cookbook Challenge #6: The Best Fancy-Ass Grilled Cheese Sandwich You’ll Ever Make At Home

Since I counted my cookbooks and decided that I needed to cook at least one thing from all of them in order to justify the shelf space, I’ve (A) purchased at least 5 new cookbooks and (B) not made any sort of effort to blog my efforts to work through the existing ones. I have, however, actually been *cooking* from the existing ones even if you don’t hear about it; and Cooking Light Annual Recipes 2005 is just as much a favorite as the more recent issues have been. Since we’ve all been collapsing from the gawd-awful heat of the last month I haven’t been cooking as much as I probably should be – carryout and salads have been a very big deal – but anything I’ve actually managed to put on the table has been new and interesting and tasty, and I promise I’ll get more of them posted soonish. Ish.

In the meantime, here is the best grilled cheese sandwich you’ll ever make at home, from the June chapter. This definitely falls into the category of Fancy-Ass Grilled Cheese, and shouldn’t really be compared to the justifiably-beloved Kraft American Cheese Food Slices on Wonder Bread grilled cheese – a classic, especially with tomato soup from a can. The cheese and preserves were already in my fridge (and should be in yours, because goat cheese belongs everywhere and fig preserves are beautiful on a cheese board and I feel very strongly that we should all be eating cheese boards on a regular basis). If you’re the sort of person who has cinnamon raisin bread and fresh basil on hand, this is going to be no problem whatsoever to whip up for breakfast or lunch or a snack or a late dinner or just a treat because you’ve been home with your kids for 5 weeks now and goodness knows you deserve one. And if you have to go out and buy any of this especially, it’s nice to know you can make these every day for a couple of weeks and have something to look forward to. Also, your kids are almost guaranteed to hate some component of this so you can eat it all by yourself without sharing. If you have wee gourmets in the house, they’re welcome to make their own.

Scaled down to make 1 sandwich, adapted from Cooking Light AnnualRecipes 2005. I put actual measurements in there so you can scale it up if needed, but this was totally approximated when I made it.

Goat Cheese and Fig Grilled Cheese Sandwich

1 tablespoon goat cheese (if you can get the super fresh locally made stuff in a tub, opt for that over the prepackaged log)
½ teaspoon honey (OK, a drizzle – who is going to bother measuring this?!?!)
¼ teaspoon grated lemon rind, or a swipe or two with the microplane grater
2 slices cinnamon raisin bread
½ tablespoon fig preserves
½ teaspoon thinly sliced fresh basil, or 1 good-sized leaf

Combine the goat cheese, honey, and lemon zest. Spread over a slice of cinnamon raisin bread. Top with the fig preserves and basil and the second slice of bread.

Spray with bread with cooking spray and cook on medium for about 2 minutes, pressing down on the sandwich during cooking with a small cast-iron pan or anything you have handy that can take the heat and the grease and not get something disgusting on your food. Flip the sandwich after 2 minutes and replace the weight while the second side cooks. Take great comfort in knowing that even if you turn the heat up too high and your bread looks burnt, this is going to be a sweet, tangy, oozing mass of utter deliciousness and it’s well worth washing 2 pans.

Santa Clara Diet: A Garlicky Lentil Salad

I can’t bring myself to make vegetarian grapeleaves, but I feel duty-bound to make sure that my friend’s vegan daughter has something substantive to eat when she comes to parties at our house. David turned 50 this week and we invited friends over for dinner; it’s the busiest week of the year, what with the school year ending and the kids having half days and Anna going to work orientation and so on, so I was looking for things that I could make in advance and hold in the fridge or at room temperature without any last-minute fussing. This garlicky lentil salad from the online archives of Saveur was a winner in all categories.

Lentils are pretty great. I like how their earthy flavor comes through when you do something minimal to them, and also how you can dump just about any kind of spice in and completely change them up. I like the firm bite of cold lentils and the creaminess of dal, and mjadara is a staple in our house because we love it, not just because it’s fast and cheap and easy and we always have ingredients on hand.

This particular salad is poised to become a regular on the summertime menu. It was fantastic warm and freshly tossed with the garlicky, lemony olive oil dressing, and just as fantastic at room temperature later in the day when everyone wandered in for dinner. When I’m done typing this I’m going to see how it tastes cold out of the fridge – but I’m guessing it’s going to be just as good. I’m picturing it piled into pita with some variation of a cabbage slaw and garlic sauce or tzatziki or hummous, and added to fattoush and a bit of chicken shawarma next time we make Flaming Moes. I can see making a big batch at the beginning of the week so the teenagers in house aren’t living on gluten-free Hot Pockets and granola bars because they need to eat Right Now. And given the absolutely heroic amount of garlic in the dressing, I feel confident that we will safely avoid even the hardiest of vampires in our summer travels; this is one of those things that everyone in the family has to eat so that we all have the same garlic breath and nobody gets ostracized. (If you didn't get the reference in the title, this summer is a great time to rewatch The Lost Boys.)

Grandpa still can't stomach all the damn vampires.

A note about the garlic: This is one of those times when the garlic takes center stage, so you absolutely don’t want to use the pre-chopped jarred kind. And for some reason, the pre-peeled garlic always tastes a little funky to me, so I wouldn’t use that either. Faced with the prospect of making a triple batch of this and therefore needing 36 cloves (3 small heads of garlic, in case you care), I borrowed an annoying but effective tip I learned from my daughter. Separate the cloves and put them into a small metal mixing bowl. Put another bowl over the top and shake vigorously for about 30 seconds. This is loud and obnoxious and your arms will realize that 30 seconds is kind of a while…. But when you take the top bowl off, your garlic will be peeled. If it doesn’t all get done in the first round, pick out the peeled cloves and papery skins and do it again. I wouldn’t go through this bother for just a couple of cloves – I don’t mind the smash-peel-have-garlic-hands thing – but this is a really efficient way to get a lot done at once.

Garlicky Lentil Salad (Salata Adas)

1 cup green lentils, rinsed
6 Tbsp olive oil
12 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
3 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 tsp ground cumin
½ tsp ground allspice
1 Tbsp minced parsley
1 Tbsp minced fresh mint
Salt and pepper to taste

Bring the lentils and 3 cups of water to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer until the lentils are tender but not mushy, about 30 minutes. Drain the lentils and set aside.

Heat 2 tablespoons of the oil in a skillet, add the garlic, and cook until tender but not brown, about 7 minutes. Take the pan off the heat and whisk in the remaining oil, lemon juice, cumin, and allspice. Pour over the warm lentils and mix well. Season with salt and pepper to taste, then add the parsley and mint.

Fancy enough for a birthday dinner: Sesame-Miso Salmon with Kimchi Butter

We’ve already established that my son’s tolerance of seafood is directly related to the price, so when wild-caught salmon went up to $22/pound he immediately fell in love with all things salmon. Sushi-grade tuna? Adores it. Scallops? Pretty great, especially when you wrap the really large ones in bacon and grill them. I’m in trouble if he ever discovers Chilean sea bass, which aside from being the most gorgeous fish fillet you’ve ever seen is also $32/pound at the local Kroger. But honestly, there’s only just so much chicken we can eat; he’s hit-or-miss on pork and beef, especially if there’s evidence that it ever contained a bone; and with all of David’s dietary restrictions, I just don’t have enough energy to make any serious efforts towards vegetarian meals.

I’m always on the lookout for salmon recipes that we can eat without leaving out key ingredients. While there’s nothing wrong with a mostly-naked piece of fish, it’s nice to mix it up and give the appearance of having made an actual effort on dinner, especially if I’m guilting the rest of the family into doing the dishes. This particular recipe was a winner on all fronts: Asian flavors, which we all love and apparently never get tired of; includes kimchi, my latest obsession since our discovery of the Korean BBQ burger; and can be made with absolutely zero modifications in under an hour with roughly 3 minutes of actual hands-on work. I was delighted to see that my local fruit market carries gluten-free white miso so I didn’t have to drive all over hell’s half-acre looking for it or try to interpret food labels printed in Japanese, which is absolutely a bonus in my book. Two weeks after I first made this, the kids are still talking about – and requesting – a repeat.

Since David’s birthday is coming up, this was a logical candidate for the actual birthday dinner (not to be confused with the birthday party dinner, which includes me gang-pressing various family members into helping me make grapeleaves for 20). We eat more than enough rice around here as it is, so it’s going over some rice noodles dressed with sesame oil, with a cucumber-radish-rice vinegar salad and a seaweed-sesame salad on the side. I'm also serving it with one of my favorite sakes; it's a great entry-level one to try if you don't want to buy a huge bottle and/or aren't sure if you're going to like it, since it only comes in teeny bottles and the sparkling aspect makes it lighter and a little less funky than some other types. 

This recipe comes from Cooking Light magazine, June 2018. I’m back after a decade-long break in my subscription, and it’s the single most useful source of weeknight dinners I’ve ever found. I highly recommend a subscription, plus you get awesome deals when you renew.

Sesame-Miso Salmon

1 (1 1/2-lb.) salmon fillet

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

2 tablespoons fresh lime juice

1 tablespoon lower-sodium soy sauce

1 tablespoon honey

1 tablespoon sesame oil

1 tablespoon minced garlic

2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger

1 teaspoon sesame seeds

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

2 tablespoons finely minced kimchi

2 teaspoons white miso

2 tablespoons sliced scallions

Pat salmon dry with paper towels. Sprinkle with salt, and place in a gallon-size ziplock plastic bag.

Stir together lime juice, soy sauce, honey, oil, garlic, ginger, and sesame seeds in a bowl. Pour mixture over salmon in ziplock bag. Seal bag, removing any excess air, and gently massage mixture into salmon. Let stand at room temperature 30 minutes.

Preheat broiler to high with oven rack in upper middle position. Stir together butter, kimchi, and miso in a small bowl. Set kimchi-miso butter aside.

Place salmon on a rimmed baking sheet lined with aluminum foil. Broil until fish flakes easily when tested with a fork, about 8 to 10 minutes.

Serve with the kimchi-miso butter on top.

It's Never Too Hot to be Fabulous: Penne with Fennel, Currants, and Pine Nuts

OK, let’s start by establishing that I know it was a long, cold winter. I know that it lasted a really long time and we were all longing for spring. I know it snowed – really snowed – on Easter when we were in Traverse City. I know this. But we went from 40 degrees to 95 degrees more or less overnight; it’s only May and the window A/C units are in and I’ve already had my first heat-induced temper tantrum, which usually doesn’t appear until mid-July. In cold weather, you can put more clothes on; you can turn the heat up; you can give up and go to bed with extra blankets. In the summer there are some obvious limitations to the inverse of this. And thus we come to the dinner hour.

Dinner would be greatly improved by eating it here

I don’t want to cook. I don’t want to eat anything hot. I want to sit on the deck, being fanned by palm leaves, eating prosciutto-wrapped melon and sipping rose and looking at the blue waters of the Mediterranean.

Since this is my actual life, I needed to figure out something that would let me skate by with a minimum of effort without feeling guilty. It’s white wine season and I just picked up my mixed whites/roses case from Cloverleaf, so I wanted something nice enough to justify opening a bottle. And since John had two teeth pulled today (translation: won’t be eating) and Anna doesn’t feel well (translation: won’t be eating), I could go a little further afield without caring a whole lot if they were going to like it or not. The answer came from the depths of my “I really ought to cook this someday” file, courtesy of Gourmet magazine, August 1996.

Following the instructions precisely, I dutifully hauled out my mandoline slicer before realizing that I could perfectly well slice the fennel without it; quarters are easy to deal with since they lay flat (just don’t open the wine until this part is done – you really do want a steady hand!). Literally every other thing was already in my fridge or pantry; I’m frequently grateful for the wide/weird array of things we keep on hand, because it lets me try things like this on the fly without spending a fortune at the grocery store or searching all over for specific ingredients. The whole thing came together in the amount of time it took to boil some water for pasta, steam the asparagus and slice up a Costco rotisserie chicken, and I’ll definitely be making it again.

The author of this particular recipe specifically points out that this is Italian-inspired rather than Italian classic. That’s close enough to the Mediterranean for me.

 Penne with Fennel, Currants, and Pine Nuts

1 large fennel bulb, quartered and core removed
3 scallions, sliced thin
2 cloves garlic, minced
½ teaspoon fennel seed, ground in in a spice grinder or mortar and pestle (yes, I have one, it’s very convenient for small jobs like this)
6 anchovy fillets, rinsed and patted dry and minced very fine (seriously, keep anchovies in your fridge. They’re super useful in saucy things of all sorts, they keep forever, and I swear they won’t make your pasta taste fishy)
1/3 cup dried currants
½ cup good-quality extra-virgin olive oil (bust out the good stuff for this – you can really taste it here)
1 pound penne pasta
½ cup fresh bread crumbs, lightly toasted (in the toaster oven, fer cryin’ out loud – it’s bad enough you have to boil water for pasta!)
1/3 cup pine nuts, lightly toasted
Fresh lemon juice, to taste

Slice the fennel as thinly as you possibly can. In a bowl large enough to hold – and toss – the pasta, combine the fennel and all the ingredients through the pasta. Let this sit for 30 minutes.

Cook the pasta until al dente, drain, and toss immediately with the fennel mixture. Add in the bread crumbs, pine nuts, salt and pepper, and lemon juice and toss again. Add more salt, pepper, or lemon as needed and serve warm or room temperature.

Served with: Casas del Bosque 2016 Sauvignon Blanc (Chile). Grapefruit, grass, and apricot on the nose and lots of grapefruit and mineral on the palate. It really went well with the fennel and lemon juice. I’m not normally a big Sauvignon Blanc fan but this was a nice pairing; I would definitely buy this bottle again and maybe try it with a citrusy seafood dish.

Fun Things to Throw on the Grill: Or, Our Korean Burger Bender

Seriously. It's so hot.

Grilling, to me, is the answer to a lot of our summer cooking needs. Our house isn’t air-conditioned so turning on the stove or oven on a 90+-degree day is a pretty major undertaking. Clean-up tends to be fairly minimal even for ambitious meals. And sometimes we eat dinner on the deck, which always feels like a bit of a vacation and lends itself to sitting there afterwards sipping on something and watching the day wind down. Also – let’s face it – I’m kinda lazy sometimes, and grilling means that while I do the prep, David does the actual cooking, so I feel like I’m getting away with something. Note that these reasons are not necessarily listed in order of importance.

Naturally there are some challenges, such as John’s refusal to eat any piece of meat with a bone in it and his intermittent hatred of seafood. David’s dietary restrictions mean that we’re skipping a lot of grill-friendly seasonings and sauces (and rubs and salsas and sides and marinades….). And there’s always the issue of variety: you can only eat just so many brats and burgers before wishing for something a little different, something super easy, something still fairly cheap because your kids eat like stevedores and the money tree in the backyard hasn’t sprouted up yet.

The answer: fancying up your burgers big-time (and I don’t just mean the outsides). We’re already devotees of the Hamburgers of Doom, a year-round favorite that includes bacon, chutney, goat cheese, and a complicated backstory. Our most recent favorite is one of David’s finds from the depths of the internet, a burger based on elements of Korean barbeque that hits the sweet spot between crazy-flavorful and “plain burger” and means that every single one of us will eat them without complaint, sometimes twice in a week. If you scale the recipe up and eat the leftovers for breakfast and lunch the next day and then dinner another night and actually have to go to the store for a second jar of kimchi…. Well, who am I to judge? I certainly won’t say anything if you make them again the next week. And the next.

Random note: I impulse-bought a burger patty maker online last year and got laughed at – ha ha, how hard can it be to actually shape a burger? We need a special tool for this? But this nifty little Cuisinart burger press does a really nice job of making burgers that actually stay flat when you cook them without packing the meat into a hockey puck-like mass. They all end up roughly the same size, which cuts down on the at-table fighting (well, it shifts the topic of the fights, anyway). It’s a fast way to make a big batch of these, which you could theoretically freeze and have on hand for days when even a little bit of prep work feels like too much. If you’re feeling really ambitious you can use it to make stuffed burgers, which I think sounds completely amazing and yes I’d love to accept that dinner invitation.

Korean Barbeque Burgers

½ cup chopped green onions
1 ½ tablespoons brown sugar
1 ½ tablespoons minced peeled fresh ginger (this is a great justification for keeping ginger paste in your fridge. We buy it at the Asian or Indian market; it’s much more convenient than dealing with fresh ginger and is a fine substitute for most applications.)
3 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon dark sesame oil
½ tsp freshly ground black pepper
2 garlic cloves, minced (this is a great justification for keeping garlic paste in your fridge. We buy it at the Asian or Indian market, where it’s much less expensive than the Christopher Ranch brand at the regular grocery store and is available in different textures. Be sure to the get the paste, not the minced chunky one, which smells and tastes a little weird and isn’t a great substitute.)
1 ½ pounds ground sirloin

Combine all the ingredients and shape into 6 ½-inch thick patties. Grill about 6 minutes on each side and let stand for a few minutes before serving.

Serving! That’s the best part. You could grill some split burger buns and top these with the traditional lettuce-and-tomato combo. You could top it with some kimchi and thinly-sliced radishes. You could peel and seed some cucumbers and marinate them in rice vinegar and pile them on top. Or make (or buy) a quick seaweed salad. Or shred carrots. You could do any combination of the above and wrap this up in a big lettuce leaf.

Seriously the Best Ever Pot Roast

I feel like pot roast has gotten a bad reputation along the way – too many people have manfully gnawed their way through dry, chewy hunks of meat on a plate next to some soggy carrots and wan-looking celery for anyone to really get excited about pot roast night. And you know what? Slow cookers have the same kind of image problem, producing lots of too-soft foods with the same flavor and texture as everything else in the pot. Unable to resist a BOGO offer at the meat counter and pressed for time during this multi-sport spring, what’s a busy mom to do? Put a pot roast in the slow cooker, of course! Because damn your taste buds.

But something absolutely fantastic happens along the way, helped along by a bottle of cheap-but-not-too-cheap red wine (for the pot roast, not for you)(but if you open another bottle I’m not gonna judge you). I swear you can have this entire thing in the slow cooker and be out the door in under 10 minutes, and it will taste like Imaginary Mom slaved over a hot stove all day long and your family will be whining that there aren’t enough leftovers because they had seconds and thirds and can you make this again tomorrow?

There are 2 key elements here: (1) Don’t buy a horrible bottle of wine, because you’re going to reduce it and that will amplify whatever grossness caused someone to mark it down to $2. This is not the place to bust out a $20 bottle, but it should be something you could drink a glass of without making a face. (2) Have the right size slow cooker – the meat should fit in there without a lot of room around the sides. If it looks like a toddler in the big kid bed, you either need a smaller slow cooker or a second roast, because nothing will doom your dinner faster than a slow cooker with too much room left over to dry it out. I use a 4-quart slow cooker for a 3-ish pound roast.

This particular recipe started out over at Food52, one of my favorite food websites, with a shout out to the always-fantastic Stephanie O’Dea and her wonderful slow cooking website. It’s my new favorite, infallible way to make a pot roast, provided I start it early enough in the day. It’s nice enough to serve to company, reheats beautifully, scales up to as much as your slow cooker can handle, and generally will make you the rock star of dinner, which is no less than you deserve. The alcohol in the wine cooks off so you can give it to your kids with a clear conscience. And it should go without saying that you can open that $20 bottle and treat yourself to a nice glass with dinner, because something this delicious deserves it and so do you.

Seriously the Best Ever Pot Roast

3 lb beef chuck roast
Salt and pepper
Olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
1-2 carrots, chopped
2-4 garlic cloves, chopped
2-3 bay leaves
1 handful of whatever fresh herbs Imaginary Mom has around the house (rosemary and thyme are my favorites) or a teaspoon or so each of whatever your personal favorites are. Also welcome: a few juniper berries, whole cloves, and/or a stick of cinnamon, if you have them on hand and want to feel fancy-schmancy
1 bottle red wine (I usually use Merlot or Cabernet Sauvignon)

Season the roast with salt and pepper. Heat a couple of tablespoons in a skillet large enough to hold the roast, then brown thoroughly on both sides (if you skip this step, I totally understand. But you're going to dirty up a pan reducing the wine anyway, and you probably haven't chopped your veggies yet so just put the meat in the pan and act like the awesome multi-tasker you are). 

While the roast is browning, chop the onion, celery, carrot, and garlic. Put the browned meat in the slow cooker, then add the vegetables to the skillet. Stir and cook for a couple of minutes until the onion starts to soften. Add the entire (yes, entire) bottle of wine, bring to a boil and reduce by about half.

Pour the vegetables and reduced wine over the pot roast. Add the bay, herbs, and any other spices. Cover and cook on Low for 8 hours.

Remove the meat from the slow cooker with a slotted spoon. If you want a sauce to go on the side, remove the bay leaves and any whole spices, then blend the remaining vegetables and liquid with an immersion blender. If you’re doing dairy, drop a little butter in there and swirl it around.

If you don’t have a slow cooker, this can also be made on the stovetop in about 2 hours. Make sure you cover the skillet and turn the meat every half hour or so. You could also put it in a 325-degree oven for the same amount of time. But really, given a good slow cooker option, why would you?

* Apparently the key to successful slow cooking is having the right size appliance. It should be at least 2/3 full of whatever you’re cooking (obviously you don’t want stuff spilling over the sides – use some judgment here). Once I realized that was the reason all my slow cooker meals were drying out, I switched to the pre-kids (i.e., smaller) slow cooker for a number of dishes and was so happy with the difference. Also: slow cooker liners. I kid you not, this is the best invention ever; basically, a giant plastic bag that goes in the slow cooker insert so you can remove your food, throw out the bag, and rinse out your slow cooker insert. Reynolds makes them but I get them cheaper at Gordon Food Service.

** I was looking for a picture to add to this post but there were So. Many. Dog food. Pictures. I've just given up. You know what a pot roast looks like anyway. 

Cookbook Challenge #5: Coney Chili

One of the less-expected parts of being an adult is discovering how different things that you take for granted can be in other parts of the country. Case in point: coneys. I had no idea that Coney Island-style restaurants and the ubiquitous coney dogs are, in fact, a Detroit thing until I visited a friend that moved to the East Coast.

Of course they have diners. Some of these diners also sell hot dogs, but not as often as you think. Good luck getting a nice ladle of beanless chili on top of it.  And you certainly can’t take it for granted that you can get a gyro as well as a coney, because apparently Greek immigrants in other parts of the country don’t open restaurants they way they do here.

Some people look back on the their 20s and get nostalgic about Taco Bell, but for me it was always coneys: cheap, fast, filling, and available at pretty much every major intersection in the metro area. Our friends would congregate there on Sunday mornings for Hangover Helper and a rehashing of the previous night. My 3^rd shift co-workers and I would get beer and coneys at 7 a.m. at National, a perfectly logical thing to do after a long shift. David and I even went to Lafayette Coney Island after our wedding, because it was late and we were hungry and so were our friends.

There’s a lot of contradictory history about coney dogs in Detroit. After way too much time on the Internet, I feel confident saying the following:

1.  Coney dogs as we know them were most likely invented by Greek and Macedonian immigrants in the early 1900s and quickly became the working man’s lunch of choice (see above re: cheap, fast, filling, and readily available).
2. Detroit has the best coney dogs anywhere, despite efforts in Flint, Jackson and Kalamazoo, and also in Indiana, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, New York, and Texas. People in other states do some weird damn stuff and call it a coney but they’re clearly wrong (when they’re trying to do it right they call it a “Michigan,” a clear and unequivocal acknowledgment of our coney superiority).

While Lafayette is clearly the superior Detroit coney, I understand that different people have different (wrong) opinions about this. It’s all about the chili – just like Mom’s meatloaf, it’s the stuff of strong preferences, what you’re accustomed to, etc. etc., and once you find the one you like the best it’s hard to really consider others fairly.

With all of that in mind, it’s with a little trepidation that I present you with this homemade version of coney chili. In general, I think that anything you can buy in a can should be made at least once from scratch, if for no other reason than for you to concede the contest to the food scientists. My church recently did a Detroit-themed fundraiser lunch and it seemed as good a time as any to bust out the chili cookbook* and dust off a recipe I hadn’t thought of in years. While not quite up to Lafayette standards, it has the advantage of being in my refrigerator and therefore not requiring the putting on of shoes or driving anywhere in order to eat it; and also we can get the really good natural casing hot dogs and some gluten-free buns (not really all that good...). Detroit expats, I urge you to give it a try.

*Yes, I have an entire cookbook of chili recipes, including an Army recipe from 1896 and a buffalo chili recipe that serves 600. Ask me about your next party….

Coney Island Chili

Minimally adapted from The Great American Chili Book by Bill Bridges. I'm going to agree with the Amazon reviewer who said "I'm sure someone else would enjoy this book, just not me." It really is about the formation of the International Chili Society and reads like the social pages of the organization. Still - a whole cookbook of chili recipes! It's staying on the shelf. 

½ cup olive oil
¾ lb 70% lean ground beef
1 8 oz can tomato sauce
1 teaspoon chili powder (or to taste)
1 ½ tsp sugar
½ tsp turmeric
½ tsp oregano
½ tsp cumin
½ tsp paprika
1 ½ tsp cornstarch
¼ cup water

Heat the oil in a large skillet, then add the beef and cook for about 3 minutes. Make sure the meat is broken up very well. Add all the remaining ingredients except the cornstarch and water. Cover and cook for 20 minutes, stirring frequently. Add a little water if it’s too dry or sticking excessively to the bottom of the pan; you should be able to envision ladling this evenly along a hot dog.

Mix the cornstarch and water and add to the chili mixture. Simmer for about 10 minutes or until thickened.

Home again, home again, jiggety jig! We’re back from a fantastic family vacation and easing slowly (painfully….) back into real life. Where is my ocean view? Where is my room service? Where is my 24-hour taco bar? Not here, alas. This is not the manner to which I’ve become accustomed.

Our family took a week-long cruise along the coast of Baja California, a trip that was originally intended to be a once-in-a-lifetime graduation gift for my husband. There have been some technical difficulties with the thesis project so it’s not *actually* graduation time yet, and we had such a wonderful time that we booked again for next year’s Caribbean version of the same cruise. I guess that means we went on a first-of-several graduation incentive trip. Either way, it was completely fantastic: a lovely and luxurious week on a boat with 1600 nerds, geeks, and creative people of all sorts, the annual JoCo Cruise. If these are your people, you really need to be there.

While I can’t do anything about the snowstorm that smacked us upside the head shortly after we got back, I did feel it was within my power to address our sad lack of a taco bar. We invited friends over (not gonna lie, we’re trying really hard to get them on the cruise with us next year!), cracked open the extremely excellent tequila we carried back from Cabo San Lucas, and did our best version of the Lido Deck Taco Experience.

Not the actual band, but you get the idea.

This recipe comes from Mark Bittman’s Best Recipes in theWorld, where it’s called Garlic Shrimp, Yucatan Style. He says that he originally had it near the Gulf of Mexico at a place with mariachi and an outdoor shower. Since shrimp is easier for me to find right now than lobster, this is my homage to the excellent lobster tacos I had in Cabo, at a place with mariachi singing Jimmy Buffett and 2-for-1 margaritas and a breeze off the water balancing out more sunshine than I’m used to lately. I fully expect we’ll do this again on the deck this summer with cold Mexican beer and mariachi on the radio. Bittman claims this feeds 4 people but we could have tripled this recipe and still been fighting over the last of it; scale up as you see fit. 

I Wish I Was in Cabo Garlic Shrimp

¼ cup olive oil
10 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
Salt and pepper
1 pound shrimp, peeled
Sliced tomatoes, for garnish
Chopped cilantro, for garnish

Put the oil in a skillet large enough to hold the shrimp and turn the heat to medium. Add the garlic and cook, stirring occasionally, until the garlic turns brown and crisp. This will take about 10 minutes – don’t rush it or the garlic will burn and you’ll be sad. Sprinkle with salt and remove from the pan with a slotted spoon.

Raise the heat to high and add the shrimp, along with a little more salt and some pepper. Cook, turning once or twice, until the shrimp is pink and firm, about 5 minutes. Put the shrimp and oil on a platter, garnish with the garlic, tomatoes, and cilantro, and serve with lots of white rice.

Cookbook Challenge #4: Leek Pate

Every family has their own secret language. It’s a thing that evolves over time and includes everything from childish mispronunciations to inside jokes, and I don’t think you ever realize you’ve created this peculiar thing until you say something that makes non-family members look at you funny. Invariably, trying to explain precisely why this is funny falls flat. Suffice to say, “there’s a leek in the boat” should be this recipe’s real name.

Over the holidays I went a little crazy with the food when we invited friends over for falafel. My plan was to not have to cook for the entire rest of the calendar year (I succeeded, btw), so I cooked everything that came to mind and stuck it all in the fridge after dinner and we dined on assorted bits and bobs for days. In trying to find a vegetable recipe that wasn’t pickled or fried, I can across this in one of my older cookbooks. The headnotes are extensive, the research is impeccable, and pretty much all the recipes have been delicious; but for whatever reason, I find this particular book a little intimidating and don’t go back to it as often as I probably should. This recipe, however, is going to make it into the regular rotation of Things to Take to a Party, as it’s easy, can be made in advance, is gluten- and dairy-free, is vegetarian, and is served room temperature (my apologies to those of you that can’t eat nuts).

From “The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean” by Paula Wolfert.

Leek Pate

3 large or 6 medium leeks, washed and trimmed, white and tender green parts sliced very thin
½ teaspoon salt
3 large cloves of garlic, unpeeled
½ cup chopped walnuts
½ teaspoon ground coriander
1/3 cup mixed chopped herbs (basil, parsley, celery tops, mint, etc.)
2 teaspoons mild vinegar (I used rice vinegar)
2 tablespoons pomegranate seeds, for garnish

Steam, boil, or microwave the leeks until almost tender. Add the garlic cloves and cook 2 minutes longer. Remove the garlic, peel, and set aside. Drain the leeks and let them cool.

When the leeks are cool enough to handle, squeeze them to remove as much liquid as possible, reserving 2 tablespoons of the cooking liquid. Chop the leeks coarsely and put them in a mixing bowl.

Use a food processor to chop the walnuts with the salt, garlic, and coriander seeds. Mix in the reserved cooking liquid.

Add the walnut mixture and chopped herbs to the leeks and mix well. Moisten the mixture with the vinegar and season with a little more salt and pepper. Pack the mix firmly into an oiled ramekin or bowl and refrigerate, preferably overnight.

Before serving, bring the pate to room temperature. Invert the ramekin onto a serving plate to unmold and garnish with the pomegranate seeds before serving. Fantastic on crackers or cut veggies, but you can also just eat it with a fork.