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Cooking for One

My daughters are spending the April vacation with their father, and the needs of family and work are taking a big part of Dr. S’s time at the moment.  Thus I have found myself somewhat at loose ends recently when it comes to my evening meals.  One night was cheddar, crackers, and wine, while Skyping with my dad, but last night I spent a few minutes in the kitchen, determined to make dinner for one from my almost-empty fridge.  (With the girls gone, why grocery shop?)  I found a red pepper and a nice bunch of basil.  I channeled that most fabulous former Gourmet writer and novelist Laurie Colwin (don’t tell me you don’t own Home Cooking), and slowly sauteed that red pepper in olive oil and garlic, while I brought water to a boil and julienned the basil.  Into the water went some penne, and when it was almost done I threw a huge handful of basil in with the now quite softened red pepper and garlic.  A big grinding of pepper, little salt to taste, and the sauce was done.  I tossed the cooked pasta into the red pepper pan, poured it into a bowl, added a very generous grating of parmesan, poured a glass of wine, and sat myself down in front of “The Black Swan”.

If poor “White Swan/Black Swan” Nina could only have contented herself in the same fashion, I think things may have turned out quite differently for her.

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Toasted Barley and Sweet Potatoes

In addition to avoiding raisins, best friend Kathleen tries to keep her home leaning toward vegetarianism, something encouraged by her husband since he began reading books such as Eating Animals, Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore’s Dilemma.  Bacon, beef, and eggs do still make an occasional appearance, but overall there’s a great deal of healthy eating going on in their Westchester home.  And so I found myself flipping through Jesse Ziff Cool’s Simply Organic, as I sat at Kathleen’s kitchen table some months ago.  It was a chilly November day, and I was looking for some inspiration for the coming week’s dinners.  What I happened upon was Toasted Barley and Sweet Potatoes.

My daughters both LOVE sweet potatoes, and this looked like a pretty good way to include a whole grain.  The author suggested that it could be turned into a more substantial meal by adding an egg, or leftover chicken or shrimp.  We like it with an egg, as the runny yolk contributes an additional layer of taste to the whole event.

Toasted Barley and Sweet Potatoes

1/2 c. pearl barley

2 Tbs. vegetable oil

1 small onion

2 sweet potatoes, cut into 1/4″ pieces

2 c. vegetable broth

salt & pepper to taste

One egg per diner

Toast the barley in a skillet over low heat until just lightly brown.  Set aside.  Saute the onion in oil until softened.  Add the sweet potato and barley and stir to coat with oil and onion.  Add the vegetable broth, salt and pepper, bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer and cover.  Cook until the sweet potato is just tender (you don’t want it too mushy), somewhere in the 20 – 35 minute vicinity, depending on the size of your sweet potato cubes, and the strength of your flame.  Prepare the eggs (“over easy” is usually the way I go, but poached would be lovely, too).  Enjoy!

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Score 1 for Team Raisin

Newsflash:  Saturday, 9:56 p.m., Pelham, New York

Former raisin detractor (see Raisins Ruin a Good Dessert)  and best friend of this reporter, devoured a bowl of Linguine Mendiant – raisins, figs, pistachios, and almonds all!   Eyewitnesses heard her trying to hide behind the old “butter makes everything taste good” defense, but when pressed, she was woman enough to confess the error of her raisin-slandering ways.

Unfortunately, her husband, who was not present for the meal, has yet to be persuaded.  By long distance phone call from Vermont he had this comment, “Raisins have no business in pasta.”

We’ll make a convert of him yet.

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Salted Butter Break-Ups

I am not a baker.  I am certainly capable of baking, and do bake my share of birthday cakes and cupcakes and Christmas cookies, but I’m not a fan.  The measuring, the sifting, the flown-away flour gumming up my sponge . . . these things do not rev my engine (and my engine could use a little revving right now, but I digress . . . )  A few factors, however, conspired to induce me to bake Dorie Greenspan’s Salted Butter Break-Ups:

1.  The French Fridays with Dorie crowd was making her Salted Butter Break-Ups last week, and I had failed to participate, hence a sense of having missed a homework assignment (even if self-imposed).

2.  There are only 5 ingredients (if you don’t count the water) – butter, flour, sugar, salt (albeit sel gris, but coarse kosher is a happy alternative), and an egg yolk.

3.  A family get-together this weekend provided the perfect venue in which to introduce this convivial cookie.

Let me report that this has to be some of the least labor-intensive baking I have ever encountered.  Toss the first four ingredients in a food processor, scrape the dough into a rectangle, refrigerate, roll into a flatter rectangle, paint on some egg wash, bake and break!

The twist on what is basically a butter cookie, is that you serve it whole, placing it in the middle of the table and encouraging your guests to break off how ever much they like.   Fun and unfussy!   We served it after a Vietnamese meal from a favorite local restaurant – curry chicken with vegetables, chicken with onions and oyster sauce, beef with snow peas – and it was reduced to mere crumbs in a flash.

There are those in my life who are generally desirous of no more than a piece or two of dark chocolate after a meal.  But I think I do not go out on too much of a limb to predict that when presented with this cookie, there may be something other than chocolate melting in their mouths . . . and since seeing those I love happy, makes me pretty darn happy, maybe baking could rev my engine after all!

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Beggar’s Linguine for a Birthday

Having been apart on my recent birthday, my daughters informed me that we would celebrate my birthday this evening.  They had a little plan up their sleeves, about which they whispered and plotted with our dear friend and irreplaceable sitter, Beth.  I decided to make my own contribution to the evening by trying out this week’s French Friday recipe, Beggar’s Linguine, or Linguine Mendiant.

Calling for pistachios, almonds, golden raisins, and dried Mission figs, a healthy heap of Parmesan and dusting of orange zest and chopped chives, this is not a recipe that would normally catch my eye – even if the 1 1/2 sticks of butter might!  I simply could not get my mind around what it was going to taste like.  Sweet?  Fruity?  Is that really something we want for dinner?  The raisins alone gave me quite a long moment of pause.   Some readers may recall the dismay I caused at my best friend’s home when I showed up with a dessert containing golden raisins.  And a person with whom I generally share a similarity of taste in all things culinary, made a face bordering on disgust when I suggested we share a cinnamon raisin bagel one recent morning.  Would my daughters and Beth join this group of people offended by the inclusion of raisins in their meals?  (Topic for future blog:  Where to do raisins belong?)  After mulling this all over for a few minutes, I decided, “What the hell!” and made my grocery list.

A little background on where the inspiration for this pasta may have come from.  Dorie Greenspan tells us that there’s a French candy called a mendiant, which comes in the form of a chocolate disc topped with chopped nuts, dried fruit and sometimes a little orange rind.  Traditionally, the nuts and fruits represented the four mendicant monastic orders – dried figs for the Franciscans, raisins for the Dominicans, hazelnuts for the Augustinians, and almonds for Carmelites.  So it seems that someone thought it might be a good idea to apply this idea to a pasta dish and, somewhat surprisingly, it was!

Beggar's linguine

After browning that stick and a half of butter, in go the chopped fruits and nuts, followed by the cooked linguine.  Toss that all around, pour it into a bowl, add a generous heap of Parmesan, little orange zest, and healthy handful of chives, and oh my how happy you will be!   I am, in fact, so certain of this fact that I intend to prepare this dish for each of the aforementioned raisin detractors in the very near future.

Good as this pasta was however, it couldn’t beat dessert – a birthday cake baked, decorated, and served with an abundance of love by my two beautiful daughters.


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Almost Friday . . .At Least in My Kitchen

My apartment smells of toasting cheese – Comté, to be exact – and scallions.   In the oven is a loaf of Dorie Greenspan‘s cheese and chive bread, though I’ve taken her bonne idée, substituting scallions for chives and throwing in a handful of toasted walnuts, as well.   Cooking this bread is my way of hurrying the start of my weekend, because as I chopped and stirred and now enjoy the warm scents drifting through the apartment, I am thinking of tomorrow night, when this bread will be the accompaniment to a well-deserved glass of Friday-night scotch for an overworked, carbohydrate-loving doctor I know.

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