Shakshuka with Fennel and Feta

Fennel is a vegetable of mystery. I privately harbor the suspicion that thousands of them escaped the set of Toy Story only to hide among cabbages and watercress in your local supermarket. I needed one to play in the kitchen as a guitar, practicing for my Mardi Gras gigs this weekend at Tonic and Rochester Art Center, also one to make this winter Tunisian dish (or some might argue, Ottomon Empire dish)—which, curiously, with the poached egg finale looks on the plate much like the Turkish flag. I envy the North Africans their winters right about now—on a late February day with new ice curbs forming in the middles of roads and temperatures stubborn below zero.

Shakshuka with Fennel and Feta

Adapted from Food and Wine

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 small white onion, cut into 1/2 inch dice

1 small fennel bulb, cored and thinly sliced

2 serrano chiles, seeded and chopped

1 jalapeno, seeded and finely chopped

1 green pepper, diced

kosher salt

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 package harissa sauce (I used Saffron Road, but I regret now not making my own from scratch)

1 tbsp smoked Spanish paprika

1 28-ounce can whole tomatoes, chopped with their liquid

6 large eggs (I only like the egg white on mine)

2 tablespoons chopped parsley

1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese

In a large skillet, heat the oil. Add the onion and fennel and cook over moderately high heat, stirring, until softened, 3 minutes.

Add both chiles and the bell pepper and season with salt. Cook over medium heat, stirring until softened, about 8 minutes. Add the garlic, red chili flakes and paprika and cook until fragrant, 1 minute. Add the tomatoes and their juice and simmer over low heat until the sauce is thickened, 8-10 minutes.

Make 5 little divots in the sauce for the eggs to crack right into. Crack the eggs into the sauce and cover the skillet. Cook over low heat until the whites are firm and the yolks are runny, 6-8 minutes.

To serve: Spoon the sauce and eggs into a bowl and top with parsley and feta. Serve hot with warm crusty bread.

What a strange concept, to poach eggs in a skillet with cooked tomatoes. I can’t say I was a huge fan of the flavor profile, and I won’ t blame the fennel because I had too much fun playing with it, but I’m not sure there are enough flavors to balance the tomato’s dominance. I think shakshuka would be better if used as a sauce for an egg sandwich—in which case, this recipe would be worth like 50 sandwiches—a winter barbeque possibility perhaps, a party we may need if the weather doesn’t improve in the next few weeks–when Springs arrives as hollow as a lie.

Pane alle Olive, or Olive Sochi

Izzy loved the Olympics. Given the weather here in Minnesota, I think Izzy thought she was actually in Sochi, watching curling and ice dancing, gathering olives that fell to the floor like flowers after a gold medal-worthy nap. I will admit that Izzy does more impressive moves in one nap than a freestyle snowboarder completes in an Olympic half-pipe run. She and Will Ferrell shall remain among the motley crew of unsung heroes this Winter Olympiad.

Meanwhile, the world bakes on.

Pane alle Olive

Adapted from the Italian Baker

3 3/4 cups of flour, all-purpose or what have you

¾ cup of lukewarm water

1 ½ cups sourdough starter

¼ cup olive oil

a pinch of salt

a handful or two (to your liking) of delicious whole olives, deseeded

Mix the sourdough with the flour and water a little bit at a time until it comes into a dough. Add the salt and olive oil, and the olives. It’s great if the olives get crushed up a bit—their juices will add the necessary water to the dough.

Knead for about ten minutes then set the dough in a large bowl. Cover it with plastic wrap and let it rise in a warm place away from draughts for at least two hours.

Form into the desired shape, I chose one long batard. Preheat the oven to 450 with the baking stone, then when you have the bread inside, reduce the heat to 400. Bake 35-40 minutes. Enjoy!

This was fantastic with oil and vinegar, obviously, but also really good with spicy soups.

Radishes with Rosemary Brown Butter

How to radish, I mean ravish, your taste buds. Some vegetables, I’ve noticed, have yet to become trendy and cool. The radish might be the Fred Mertz of vegetables. I would imagine if a radish wore pants, they might be pulled up past his greens; a dork of a veggie. But cheap! The bunches for this dish cost me 60c each. I’m thrilled when I can find anything for 60 cents—but a whole dinner’s-worth of Vitamin C-packed red fiber balls? A ravishing deal.

Grilled Radishes with Rosemary Brown Butter

Adapted from Food and Wine Jan 2014

1 stick unsalted butter

3 tbsp heavy cream

1 tbsp lemon juice

1 tbsp rosemary

Sea salt (to taste)

3 bunches of radishes

1 cup mint

In a skillet, melt down half the stick of butter and swill around until it is browned, maybe five minutes. Pour into a bowl to cool. When cooled, add the other half of the stick of butter, the cream, lemon juice, and rosemary. Mix well. Set aside.

Chop the greens off the radishes, rinse, and chop off the little root dangly things too—whatever the name for that is. Your radishes should look like a bowl full of red pool balls. What a brilliant red.

Pour about half of the rosemary butter cream goodness onto the radishes

and toss them into a skillet that has been preheated to HOT HOT HOT. They should sizzle and snap for about five minutes until charred and tender/cooked through. If you have a grill (and/or are in a place where at this time of year people might be doing this sort of thing—enjoy the radishes out there on the barby. I am not bitter.)

Lay down a bed of fresh mint (wouldn’t you like to be laid upon such a bed?)

Spoon the grilled radishes onto the mint and top with the rest of the rosemary butter.

I’m just so shocked that I ate radishes. I think this might have been the first time, ever. I wouldn’t say they were rad. Just rad-ish. Like that one, Dad? The gene you gave me made that pun.

Overall, the butter was a superb vehicle to carry the radishes past the finicky threshold and into my esophagus. However, my gallbladder might say otherwise. I imagine she is currently squeezing like a mad bellow. Better than for the sake of a Whopper, dear heart.

Vegan Enchiladas

This is the story of a butternut squash who thought he was a pear. He grew up to be a vegan enchilada. I see a Pixar film somewhere in here. This is also the story of a lady who used to eat only Cheerios and hamburgers and made sour faces at dinner tables. She grew up to be a flexitarian with a food blog. Runts often have the biggest dreams.

Vegan Enchiladas

Adapted from Food and Wine March 2012

Ingredients

CREMA

1 cup(s) raw cashews (4 ounces)

2 tablespoon(s) fresh lime juice

1 teaspoon(s) white vinegar

1 teaspoon(s) smoked paprika

1/2 teaspoon(s) salt

SAUCE

2 pound(s) fresh tomatillos, husked and quartered

1 medium white onion, coarsely chopped

2 garlic cloves, chopped

1 jalapeno, seeded and coarsely chopped

2 cup(s) vegetable stock

1/2 cup(s) chopped cilantro

Salt and freshly ground pepper

ENCHILADAS

2 cup(s) butternut squash, diced (1/2-inch)

2 tablespoon(s) extra-virgin olive oil

Salt and freshly ground pepper

1 medium onion, finely chopped

2 shallots, minced

2 cup(s) thinly sliced shiitake caps

2 cup(s) frozen corn kernels

2 cup(s) finely chopped Tuscan kale

1 cup(s) olive oil

12 corn tortillas (I used flour, which I know disqualifies this as vegan, but just go with me– use corn if you want. I just think flour tastes better)

Sliced avocado and red onion, cilantro leaves and toasted pumpkin seeds, for serving

Preparation

1. Make the crema. In a medium heatproof bowl, cover the cashews with hot water and let stand 2 hours. Drain and transfer the cashews to a food processor. Add the lime juice, vinegar, paprika, salt and ¼ cup of water and puree until smooth and creamy.

2. In a large saucepan, combine the tomatillos, onion, garlic, jalapeño and stock and bring to a simmer. Cook over moderate heat until the vegetables are tender, about 15 minutes. Transfer the mixture to a food processor, add the cilantro and puree until smooth. Season with salt and pepper.

3. Preheat the oven to 400°. In a small baking pan, toss the squash pieces with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Roast for 15 minutes, until tender. Remove the squash from the oven and lower the temperature to 375°.

4. Meanwhile, in a large skillet, heat the remaining 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Add the onion and shallots and cook over moderate heat until softened, 5 minutes. Add the shiitake and cook until lightly browned, about 6 minutes. Add the corn and kale and cook until the kale is wilted, 5 minutes. Add the squash and season with salt and pepper.

5. Spoon 1 cup of the tomatillo sauce into a 9-by-13-inch glass or ceramic baking dish. Arrange all of the tortillas on a work surface and divide the filling between them.

Roll up the enchiladas and arrange them in the baking dish, seam sides down. Spoon 2 cups of the sauce on top.

Cover the dish with foil and bake for about 25 minutes, until the enchiladas are heated through. Spoon the crema on top and serve with avocado, red onion, cilantro and pumpkin seeds.

Quite tangy. But one needs that sort of thing when over a foot of fresh snow fills in the combed spaces of sidewalk. Outside it looks like someone took icing and frosted the city. Except it tastes too plain.

L’Otto di Merano and Innocence

when god decided to invent
everything he took one
breath bigger than a circustent
and everything began

when man determined to destroy
himself he picked the was
of shall and finding only why
smashed it into because
– e. e. cummings

Last night, I watched the 1979 film Being There alongside our Calvary film club, and my mind is still tumbling over the details of the extraordinary story. Peter Sellers plays a naïve, Forrest Gump-ish lovable protagonist, a humble gardener, who, upon the death of his master, is cast out of the garden he had tended in simplicity for fifty-odd years. His education is only that which he has seen on television. He is bewildered by modern society and all its inventions, yet he proceeds through all of his chance interactions with a fool’s confidence, which most mistake for wisdom.

This film speaks to the power of innocence, perhaps a morally complex construct, OR, a gift from God most every human finds a way to unknowingly destroy—only to pine for when recognized in a heart-breaking, dear character like Chance the Gardener, who with “rice pudding between his ears” becomes an unlikely prophet for the fallen world. Chance breaks all the rules the world made for itself because he is innocent, or ignorant, of them. In the final scene, he walks across a lake of water, and I think it is his absence of curiosity, the irritable reaching after fact and reason, that keeps him afloat. I must re-read Dostoyevski’s The Idiot. Or any Shakespeare play with a Fool. It is not a coincidence that great literature, the Bible greatest of all, chooses to convey its wisdom through the characters most unlikely to speak it.

“As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden.” -Chance the Gardener

L’Otto di Merano

Adapted from The Italian Baker

Sponge

1 cup sourdough starter

1 tbsp malt syrup

1 ½ cups warm water

Scant cup rye

¾ cup unbleached all-purpose flour

Stir together starter, malt syrup and water and dissolve together. Then add flours and stir until combined. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and let rise until bubbly, three hours.

Dough

2 tablespoons olive oil

About 3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

2 tsp salt

1 ¼ tsp caraway seeds

Stir oil into the sponge. Combine flour, salt, and caraway seeds and mix one cup at a time into the sponge. Mix and then knead on a floured surface for 3 to 4 minutes. Place dough in an oiled bowl, cover tightly with plastic wrap, and let rise until doubled, 2 hours for first rise.

Shaping and Second Rise. Cut the dough in half on a floured surface and with each piece, shape into a boule. On a piece of parchment paper on a peel, place the loaves next to each other, so that they look like two cells dividing.

Mitosis bread:

This apparently also looks like an infinity, or a sideways number eight—and that’s where the name “Otto” comes from. Bake at 400 degrees for about 40 minutes or until the loaf sounds hollow. Cool on a rack.

I could go on and on about how great this infinity bread tasted. But perhaps that would be to chase after the was of shall.

Almost Dead Vegetable Soup

This soup is an opportunity to actually use all of the vegetables you have purchased because you believe deep down that you are a healthy person with pure intentions, but which you neglected for weeks to cook. Or perhaps you are going on a roadtrip and need to gut the fridge. I regret that I took no photographs of the Almost Dead Veggie Soup, also fondly referred to as Resurrection Soup, or Road Trip Soup. But I did take this photo of Izzy, a hibernating winter bear, lying almost dead with her rear-end squared over the heating vent by the side door. Just out of view is her now entirely dead red Frisbee, which, when it was still with us, she kept watch over by day and night.

Almost Dead Vegetable Soup

2 cups black beans

1 squash (acorn or butternut)

1 -2 tablespoon olive oil

1 onion, diced

1 red bell pepper, diced

I green pepper, diced

4 garlic cloves or a shallot, minced

3 celery ribs, sliced

3 cups vegetable stock

3 cups chicken stock

1 cup corn

2 fresh tomatoes, diced

2 tablespoons chili power

1 tablespoon cumin

salt and pepper

Directions:

If you have a squash in half and scoop out seeds. Bake squash halves, cut side up, in a 375-degree oven for about 45 minutes or until tender.

Heat oil in a large saucepan. Add onions and a pinch of salt and saute over medium heat, stirring often until golden, about 10 minutes.

Add bell pepper, garlic and celery and saute for 5-10 minutes.

Scoop cooked squash out of shell. (Then say the last sentence three times as fast as you can.) Add to onion mixture and mix well, smoothing out any large lumps.

Add stock and bring to a boil.

Turn down heat and add beans, corn, chili powder, and cumin. Simmer, covered, for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Salt and pepper to taste.

Because no vegetable should go to waste.

Country Cowboy Coffee Cake and Strawberry Farms

We went South for the holiday weekend—to Iowa. Our retreat to Strawberry Farms was decidedly not a luxury Valentine’s getaway, it was, rather, like going to visit frumpy parents we don’t have (because our parents are not frumpy). Strawberry Farms had country charm—tap water that smelled of rotten eggs, a limping elderly golden retriever, chipped hardwood floors installed in the 1850s, and old, rough, dirt-flecked towels. This was the first bed and breakfast I’ve ever been to in which the hosts come into your bedroom and set up a bedside card table while you sit clutching your blankets about you. The hosts were unapologetically themselves, peeling paint, a century of clutter and all, and that, I believe, is at the heart of genuine country charm. No such dazzle, but ah, rest.

We ventured into several nearby towns during the snowstorm: Le Claire with the Mississippi River Distillery, Grasshopper’s Chocolate, and old timey music booming from old timey lamp posts.

and into Muscatine where we found the perfect post-OB rotation pizza place, and a bottle of wine for an old married couple to share for a Valentine’s Day toast.

This is a recipe I pulled from an article in Cooks Country because I was scandalized to read that this “bread” is routinely made for public school children to complement their chili hot lunch. No, no, no, rural South Dakota, once you have three cups of brown sugar, what you have made is decidedly not bread, it is cake.

Country Cowboy Coffee Cake

Adapted from Cooks Country Feb/March 2013

Bread—okay, coffee cake:

2 1/2 cups whole-wheat pastry flour

2 1/2 cups packed brown sugar

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon salt

6 tablespoons butter, cut into small pieces and chilled

1 cup buttermilk

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

TOPPING:

1/4 cup packed brown sugar

2 tablespoons butter, cut into small pieces and chilled

Cinnamon as desired

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F and move oven rack to the middle of the oven. Grease a 9×13 baking dish and set aside.

For the cake, combine flour, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda, and salt in a food processor and process until combined. Add butter and pulse until the mixture looks like wet sand. Transfer the mixture to a large bowl. Stir in buttermilk and eggs until smooth. Pour mixture into prepared baking dish.

For the topping, return 1/2 cup of the cake mixture back to the food processor and add the brown sugar and butter. Pulse until mixture looks like wet sand. Sprinkle the topping over the of the cake.

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let the cake cool for 30 minutes before slicing.

Worst photo I’ve ever taken of one of my meals–but I think after my country experience this weekend my threshold for self-consciousness was several notches below standard.

Ginger Apple Muffins

The final installment of my OBGYN muffin series: the consumption of which is the perfect mirror of birth. These will fit near entirely into your completely dilated mouth, occiput anterior, transverse, or occiput posterior. Easily in with one push. Belly after eating a full pan I’d say would be about a 20wks gestational age bump. Since this recipe makes two 12-cup pans, should bring you all the way to term. Don’t worry—I now know how to c-section. C, in this case, can be for cupcake.

Ginger Apple Muffins

Adapted from, yet again, the Penzey Spice catalogue

2 cups of apple sauce, and, if you want, another cup of chopped apple pieces (I hate chunks and so deferred to add)

3 large eggs, beaten

1 Cup olive oil

2 tsp. vanilla

1/2 tsp. almond extract (key!!)

1 cup granulated white sugar (2 cups if you’re not using apple sauce and just using plain old chopped apples)

2 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. cinnamon (who am I kidding, I used two or three tablespoons)

2 tsp. crystallized ginger, chopped fine

3 Cups all-purpose flour

Streusel:

3/4 Cup all-purpose flour

1/4 Cup granulated white sugar

1 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. crystallized ginger, chopped

6 TB. butter, cold and grated like cheese

Preheat oven to 350°. Grease or paper two muffin pans. Peel and chop the apples in 1/2-inch chunks. In a large bowl, beat the eggs with oil, vanilla, almond extract, applesausce and sugar until combined. Add flour, baking soda, salt, ginger and cinnamon. Beat until thoroughly mixed. The batter will be very, very thick. Fold in the chopped apples by hand. Spoon the very thick batter into the pans. To prepare the topping, combine butter, cut into chunks, flour, sugar, cinnamon and ginger in a small bowl. Rub between your fingers until combined. Sprinkle equal amounts of topping on each muffin – there is a lot of topping! Bake for about 20-25 minutes until firm. Let cool for 5 minutes before removing from the pans. Ooh, soooo good for breakfast with a hot cup of dark roast coffee.

I come home from my last night shift this week to find Izzy mocking me in the dorsal lithotomy position. She seems to think I’d make a great OB. There’s no way I’m going to pap smear a bulldog, I told her.

Pumpkin Streusel Muffins

Izzy sustained a tongue injury today—she froze it to the chainlink fence in the backyard while making her morning rabbit-hunting rounds. I’m going on a crusade to end the winter. Minnesota ovens unite!

This is the second batch in my muffin streak. While Izzy’s tongue froze, mine melted.

Pumpkin Streusel Muffins

Recipe from Kathy Ness

½ cup butter, softened

1 cup packed brown sugar

1 egg

1 can plain pumpkin, 15 oz

¼ cup evaporated milk

1 tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

1 ¼ cinnamon

¼ tsp ginger

1/8 tsp ground cloves

1 2/3 cups flour

Streusel topping—

2 tbsp flour

2 ½ tbsp white sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tbsp butter, softened

Preheat oven to 375. Cream together butter and brown sugar. Add the egg and blend. Mix together the pumpkin and evaporated milk and then mix into butter/sugar mixture. Add the baking soda and spices and gently mix. Lastly, add the flour and stir. If you overstir, you will develop the gluten and the muffins won’t rise well. Spoon the batter into 12 muffin cups. In a small bowl, blend the streusel ingredients together with a fork or crumble together with your fingers.