Archive for March, 2009

up and down

03.18.09 // Comments:16

kale

Oh, spring.

I have been waiting for you for such a long, long time.

And now that you’re here, you’re playing games with me.

One minute, we’re pure magic—all fresh breezes and warm sunshine. Bailey and I go for an evening walk, his paws trotting past tiny green buds peeking out of the earth and I breathe in the new air, cold and clean, inhaling it down deep and sighing, happy sighing, the kind filled with satisfaction yet anticipation. The next, you’re waking me up in the middle of the night, my eyes swollen and my throat tight, while what feels like a hundred tiny hammers bang against my head and nothing—not the Vicks VapoRub® or the warm compress on my eyes or the two tablets of pain medication—makes me feel well again. I always forget about this part. Every year.

Then, just when I’m ready to give up on you—to say I’ll bide my time and wait for summer’s long, hot days—my mom buys and brings me a neti pot, a small contraption in the shape of a genie’s bottle that, when filled with lukewarm saltwater, clears my nasal passages and frees my airways and makes me breathe again, so I can taste your sweet, windy gusts that burst through my windows, signaling the rainstorm that will come, along with the temperate days and green, green grass.

Spring, I take it all back. I think I love you.

When I look at things clearly, I say you’re like kale. Does that make sense? Kale is dark green, leafy, sold in thick bunches wrapped with bands, filled with promise, the kind of produce you want to take home with you because it’s beautiful and healthy (!) and, you know, there will be a way to enjoy it. Even though it’s usually considered a winter vegetable, kale is easy to find on days like these in March, just like natural light and rainy evenings and smells of charcoal grills wafting through the sky.

But after I’d made a failed winter vegetable gratin and a botched attempt at blanched kale, I was ready to give up on kale. And then.

pieces of kale

First at The Kitchn and then at Robin Sue’s, I saw big promises for something delicious, easy, healthy and impossible to resist. I saw kale chips.

Essentially, this is what you do: Wash your kale and break it into pieces, then toss it with olive oil and vinegar. Lay these pieces flat across a parchment- or Silpat-lined cookie sheet, sprinkle with salt and bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes.

kale chips

In the fast heat, the kale loses its moisture and becomes crispy, airy, full of the flavors of olive oil and salt. My friend Jackie said they reminded her of potato chips, and a few other testers said they couldn’t get enough. In fact, they’re so surprisingly tasty, you might not even realize you’re eating something filled with vitamins K, A and C, not to mention maempferol, a flavonoid thought to reduce the risk of certain types of cancer.

It’s indeed possible, after having some of these, to find yourself forgetting preconceptions and declaring your affections boldly and loud, kind of the way you might after walking through wet grass, under blue skies, on a day before spring comes, like a girl in love.

Kale Chips
adapted from ChowMama’s recipe posted at The Kitchn

Ingredients:
1 bunch organic kale, torn into 1/2? pieces
3 Tablespoons organic olive oil
1 Tablespoon white wine vinegar
2 teaspoons sea salt

Directions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Wash kale, and toss it in oil and vinegar until thoroughly coated.

Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper or a Silpat. Place kale on sheet in a single layer and sprinkle with salt.

Bake for 15 minutes or so, until crispy.

Comments:16 Click here to comment! Categories: before the 2009 diet change

a recent discovery

03.16.09 // Comments:23

carrot slaw

It’s not like I have something against healthy food. Seriously. In fact, there are times—like at the end of last week, in which I’d shared an entire dozen doughnuts with a friend, ordered things like toasted (and breaded) ravioli and huge slices of pizza, eaten meat in my lunches and dinners, gotten takeout more often than I’d brought brown-bagged meals (and had the accompanying bloating and heaviness to prove it)—where something fresh and healthy is all I do want. I know it may not seem like it around here, where I’ve posted dozens of cookie recipes and, lately, an onslaught of cakes, but I swear it’s true.

It’s just—I’m going to be honest—I don’t like eating things that don’t taste good. Is that so terrible? And, at least up until this point in my life, the things that taste good are, usually, not exactly healthy. The way I see it, if I’m already frustrated about, say, the fact that an apartment I went to see was in a creepy, creepy building with hotel hallways, I don’t want to add to that misery with bad food, do I? It wouldn’t be right.

So my solution for years, in terms of eating reasonably well while not killing myself in the process, has been portion control. I try very hard to eat because I’m hungry, not because I’m bored or lonely or something else. I eat whatever I want, but I don’t eat a lot of it, at least not regularly. (And when I do eat too much, my stomach is there to punish me, and, believe me, it does.)

But I’ve made a recent discovery that sort of thwarts my working system or, really, trumps it. This probably won’t be a secret to you, but I have been shocked. Here it is: Healthy things can taste good. Like, really, really good. Who knew?

carrot slaw in pyrex

The idea for this carrot salad/slaw came from Mon Ami Gabi, a French restaurant that’s part of the Lettuce Entertain You chains. I had dinner there a few weeks ago, where the waitress brought out a long baguette to our table, hot and crusty, wrapped in a paper sleeve. With it, she placed a small dish of carrot salad, heaped high and decorated with herbs and drizzled with oils. I would later have a steak and frites, with a amaretto souffle for dessert, and it would all be lovely, but what I’d keep thinking about, what I’d decide I need to make for myself later, would be the carrots.

The carrots! I don’t know about you, but I don’t eat a lot of carrots. Beyond the obligatory trays at parties, with raw vegetables surrounding dip, and, of course, the sliced carrots that add wonderful sweetness to a slow-cooked pot roast, I just don’t think about them. I might have brought a bag of baby carrots to work a while ago, eating them at my desk in an effort to stave off hunger, but I certainly didn’t enjoy it.

Now this salad? It’s a whole different story. It takes all the good of carrots—their faint bitterness and woodsy, earthy taste—and combines it with olive oil, lemon and herbs to create a sort of slaw so good, I’ll eat it by itself or on crackers or sandwiched between chunks of bread.

As a bonus, it’s loaded with nutritional value, from the vitamin A that my grandma used to say was good for your eyes to the fact that it’s long been believed to help digestive issues. This is a dish you will feel good about eating, before, when you chop the carrots and toss them with olive oil; during, when you pile their sweet, juicy mess onto a cracker; and after, when you feel refreshed, not overstuffed, from enjoying yourself.

In fact, you could say, this carrot salad is enough to make healthy eaters out of all of us.

Good News! This tasty carrot slaw, which I can’t stop reaching for, is just the beginning of a week filled with healthy, delicious recipes. Stay tuned!

Carrot Salad/Slaw
Adapted from Joël Robuchon’s The Complete Robuchon, as seen in The New York Times

Ingredients:
1 pound medium carrots, peeled
1 Tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
3 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons chopped parsley (or tarragon or a combination)
Salt to taste
Buttery crackers, small biscuits or hot, crusty baguettes, for serving.

Directions:
Grate carrots into matchstick pieces using a food processor, a mandolin or a sharp knife. Transfer to a bowl. Whisk lemon juice and oils together, pour over carrots, and toss. Add parsley and toss. Add salt to taste. Serve with crackers, biscuits or bread.

Comments:23 Click here to comment! Categories: before the 2009 diet change

parties covered in confetti

03.12.09 // Comments:31

Update 2013: This years-ago post has recently begun attracting a lot of attention on Pinterest, so to those of you who are coming over from a pin, hello! I hope you’ll take some time to look around here and maybe say hi. In the interest of full disclosure, though, I should let you know that in the four years since this post was written, I’ve drastically changed my diet. I tried remaking this cake with einkorn flour and coconut sugar, and it was delicious, but more of a caramel cake than a sugar cookie cake, for what that’s worth.

You can learn more about our love of whole foods here.

You can also see our most recent posts at the front page of FoodLovesWriting.com.

birthday cake for carrie

I’m starting to really, seriously love Twitter. Recently, I put out a request for the absolute best cake recipe, and, within minutes, I had close to 10 (!) responses. There was a flourless chocolate cake, a vegan version, a suggestion of using something by Mark Bittman. But it was @parapluiesdoux who told me about Restaurant Eve’s cake, which she said had been published a few years earlier, and for that, I will always have a special place in my heart for Twitter and, as you can imagine, her.

To describe the flavor of this cake, I must begin with something not cake at all, something comforting in the way only things you ate as a child can be, something that begs to be eaten with a tall glass of ice cold milk, just before you stretch out on the sofa to watch some T.V. What I’m talking about, and this will be obvious the moment you take a bite, is a sugar cookie.

OK, picture that rich, buttery, creamy taste of a sweet sugar cookie, piled high with icing, and then transfer that image to a tall, moist layer cake, slathered with generous dollops of pink buttercream. Do you have it?

That, essentially, is this cake.

cake for carrie

Created by Chef Cathal Armstrong, who along with his wife, Meshelle, runs Restaurant’s Eve, the Alexandria, Virginia, restaurant named for their first child, this cake was inspired by Cathal’s aunt and tastes sweet and moist, just the way birthdays should taste, I say. After becoming a favorite at the restaurant—usually dressed up with piping and embellishments for special events—this cake, and its recipe, appeared in a Washington Post article in April 2006. And though it’s taken three years to reach me, the timing is, actually, quite impeccable. For one thing, I’ll be taking a weekend to D.C. next month (and touring the Capitol building, if all goes well—fingers crossed), so learning about an Alexandria restaurant is much more interesting than it would have been in 2006 when I was, every day, going to classes and studying in Chicago, nothing much else.

But also, and more importantly, my coworker Carrie had a birthday Monday, and, of course, we needed to celebrate.

Friday night, I managed to eek out two cupcakes in addition to the cake proper, in order to make sure this tasted all right (it did; in fact, that was when the sugar-cookie description was born) and I boxed up the real cake to bring to Carrie Saturday, when she’d be working.

In retrospect, I may have liked the cupcakes better—mainly because they are smaller portions, easier to enjoy without feeling overwhelmed. After trying a big piece, Carrie suggested making one-layer cakes, rather than two; I found a suggestion online for a version with four layers, in which you’d split the original two, length-wise.

Whatever the case, this is some birthday cake, the one I’ll remember finding on Twitter, originally from the restaurant in Virginia, baking for my friend the traveler, that tasted like cookies and childhood and big parties covered in confetti, while we ate it on a rainy Saturday.

What’s with all the cakes? It could be said, fairly I guess, that I’ve been on something of a cake kick lately, what with the banana cake and the vanilla cupcakes and the make-in-minutes chocolate cake and, now, this. I have no excuses, just a faint comment that, well, I’m almost done for now, really. In the meantime, if you’re looking for some substance, may I recommend my friend Kendra’s chicken souvlaki? It’s fantastic, and since my pictures don’t do it justice, I’ll just tell you, TRY IT. Really.

Restaurant Eve’s Cake
from The Washington Post, April 2006

My favorite part of this recipe is how hard it is to mess up: you’re actually told not to worry about overmixing. Doesn’t that make you excited? Let your mixer do the work, and you reap the benefits.

A word on the frosting: As sweet and delicious as this frosting is, I have decided, I think officially, that I do not prefer buttercream. Next cake, it will be whipped, and that’s a decision I will stand by.

Ingredients:
8 ounces (2 sticks) unsalted butter, plus additional to grease pans
2 cups sugar
2 1/2 cups flour
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
4 eggs at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup milk (may substitute low-fat or nonfat)
Frosting (recipe follows)

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease and flour two 9-inch cake pans and line the bottoms with parchment paper.

Melt butter and let it cool to room temperature.

Combine the sugar, flour, baking powder and salt in the large bowl of a stand mixer. (A stand mixer is preferable for this recipe, though a hand-held electric mixer may be used.) On medium speed, add the butter, incorporating in several additions. Beat for about 2 minutes, or until combined; the texture should resemble cornmeal.

In a separate bowl, combine the eggs, vanilla extract and milk. Add to the flour-butter mixture in two batches (scraping the bowl once), and beat on medium speed for 2 minutes, or until smooth.

Distribute the batter evenly between the two prepared pans. Bake for 35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. Transfer to a wire rack and cool for 20 minutes. Remove cakes from pans to cool completely. Frost the cake. It can stand at room temperature for 1 hour; otherwise, cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.
Frosting
Ingredients:
8 ounces (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 pounds (7 1/2 -8 cups) confectioners’ sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup heavy cream, (may substitute whole, low-fat or nonfat milk)
Food coloring (optional)

Directions:
In a stand mixer on medium speed, beat the butter until fluffy. On low speed, add the sugar in batches, increasing the speed to high after each addition is incorporated. Scrape down the bowl as needed. Add the vanilla extract and cream in a steady stream on low speed until incorporated. Add a few drops of food coloring, if desired. (Restaurant Eve uses red to make pink.) Beat on high speed for 8-10 minutes, until light and fluffy.

Comments:31 Click here to comment! Categories: before the 2009 diet change