Retreat to the kitchen

Starting to write a dissertation is no straightforward thing. You can be lost for weeks and not know it. And the advice you tend to get, while sometimes painfully obvious, is still hard to follow. I've been feeling shrunken, scared, and incapable lately. I've been wondering whether in fact I really belong here. And though I've been told that this phase of grad school is like this for lots of people, trying to push through it all, to actually believe in myself, has been hard. Sometimes, it's just been easier to retreat to the kitchen.

Still, I haven't allowed myself to take on anything too consuming. Spending time on something extravagant--a layer cake, another batch of preserves--would at this point, I think, just leave me guilt-stricken. So, I've stuck mostly to simple things, things to help keep me humming through the day, like this sunny delicata-squash hummus.

Though I spend most mornings at my desk--typing, cursing, thumbing through books--I usually find myself desperately hungry a couple of hours after breakfast, no matter what I eat. So, almost inevitably, I drop what I'm doing, tear through the cupboards, and find a bag of something salty and satisfying to mindlessly crunch my way through. I am never at my best when hungry.

Having a jar of delicata hummus around has helped. Its mellow, nutty sweetness, which gives way to a lingering serrano-kissed heat, is worth slowing down for, worth savouring. So it at least makes for more mindful snacking. I often spread it just as it is on crackers or toasted baguette. But it takes well to being gussied up too. A dab of Greek yogurt tames its heat and adds welcome acidity. A drizzle of maple syrup brings out the delicata's sweetness. Pomegranate and sesame seeds add some nice pop. And though I haven't tried this yet, I get the feeling that something smoky would really make this hummus sing. Smoked sea salt? Crumbled bacon and chives? I don't know, but I can't wait to try.

This recipe, by the way comes from Modern Farmer, a new-ish quarterly magazine that I've enjoyed paging through recently. It isn't exactly a food magazine in the expected sense (the hummus recipe is the only recipe in this issue), but unsurprisingly, it touches on issues we should all take some interest in (food waste, breeding heat-resistant strains of lettuce).

Delicata Hummus

Adapted from Karen Lebovitz in Modern Farmer, Fall 2013

2 pounds delicata squash (or of another variety of your choosing)

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

Salt and pepper

2 heads garlic, separated into cloves and peeled (about 1/2 cup of cloves)

2 or 3 serrano peppers, sliced in half, stems and seeds removed

1/4 cup tahini

3 tablespoons lemon juice

GARNISHES

Greek yogurt, maple syrup, pomegranate seeds, and toasted sesame seeds

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Cut the squash in half and remove the seeds and string. Rub the flesh with 2 tablespoons of olive oil and 2 generous pinches of salt. Place the squash cut side down on a half-sheet and bake until very soft, about 1 hour.

While the squash is baking, place the garlic, serranos, and remaining olive oil in a small saucepan over low heat. Poach the garlic and peppers in the oil until completely soft, 30-40 minutes. The garlic should be very lightly browned.

Scoop out the flesh from the roasted squash and place in a food processor. Add the poaching oil, garlic, serranos, tahini, and lemon juice. Puree until smooth, about 1 minute. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

The texture of the hummus will vary with the squash. Add up to 1/2 cup of water and blend until the desired consistency is reached. Refrigerate at least 3 hours or up to a week. The hummus also keeps well frozen in an airtight container.

Makes 5-6 cups.

A kitchen garden

Two springs ago, when I put my first seeds in the ground, I had no idea just how much this little patch would come to mean to me. These were the beginning days of my modest kitchen garden, set to sprout from one of the three 10-x-4-foot raised beds my more capable neighbours had constructed behind our building. Back then, I thought of the space and the work to come only as something that might lead to better eating, to more varied and vibrant plates at our table. I didn't give much thought to the growing itself. A row of collards, at the time, seemed an unlikely place to cultivate affections.

But I've since changed my mind--because once you've put those seeds in the ground, I've found, it's hard not to get drawn into the lives of your plants, to be utterly captivated by them. Your heart leaps when you see the first seedlings poking out from the soil. Sometimes you catch them mid-stretch, just as they're emerging--still pale, partly curled, their first leaves yet to completely unfurl. They look a little sleepy. You are struck by their vulnerability. You want to do whatever you can to see that they thrive. So you find yourself in the midst of an unfolding drama. Your plants are the unlikely heroines, weathering the assault of pests, the elements. You do what you can to help them.

And, of course, the plants you grow most attached to are the ones that really struggle, the ones that seem to need you most. For me, this year, it was my fava beans. Favas aren't really meant to be cultivated here in the Midwest. They are slow to grow. It takes them 70-90 days to go from seed to filling their fat pods, and the cool, damp weather that they love is too short-lived here. By the time they flower and begin to set pods, the first of summer's scorching days have already arrived, and so they struggle to produce. Mine also happened to attract the attention of hungry aphids. So for awhile I was afraid they wouldn't produce at all.

But they did. Pathetically, but they did. After a month's worth of harvesting, de-podding, blanching, and freezing--usually just a handful of pods at a time--I was just shy of half a pound of beans. Thinking back on it now, I wonder if it would have been better just to have eaten them as they came in and not worried so much about how few they were. The ones I tried straight from the blanching pot were, after all, incredible--delicate, sweet, vegetal--by far the best tasting thing I've been able to grow. But after all the trouble they'd given me, I wanted to do something special with them. So I ended up making Thomas Keller's fava bean agnolotti.

Making any sort of filled pasta takes a bit of time and practice. But it feels rewarding to get your hands dirty and tackle something new. You make agnolotti from long, narrow sheets of pasta. You pipe a single line of filling along each sheet and then bring bottom of the sheet over the filling, folding and pressing to form a tube. Then, using both your thumbs and forefingers, you work your way down the tube, pinching out individual agnolotti. There is something especially satisfying about this part, seeing an agnolotto plump up between your fingers, feeling the filling squish. And once you've cut them apart from each other, what you end up with are gorgeously plump little dumplings. They are so darling that you just want to pinch their cheeks.

Fat with a filling of fava bean purée, mascarpone, and breadcrumbs, these particular agnolotti were especially lovely--luxuriously textured and delicately vegetal. The puddle of warm spices, butter, stock, and cream in which they sat only helped. On a whim, I garnished each serving with a cluster or two of tiny cilantro flowers snipped from my neighbours' plot. These added a brazen citrusy pop to some bites, which I quite liked. Though the season for fava beans stretches from late spring into early summer, I feel as though these agnolotti are what I'd want to throw together on one of the chilly days just about to creep up on us. They have a soothing, velvety warmth to them that would perfect to cozy up with. And I would do just that, if there were anymore agnolotti in the freezer. But my plants weathered a lot, and I barely had beans enough for this one batch. But maybe favas fare better wherever you are.

Fava Bean Agnolotti with Curry Emulsion

Adapted from Thomas Keller's The French Laundry Cookbook

NOTE: This recipe is a long one, but don't be intimidated. You can break up this recipe over weeks if you want (which is in fact what I did). You can shell and blanch the fava beans one day and then just tuck them into the freezer. Then, when you have more time on your hands, you can make the pasta dough and the filling (thaw your favas first). Shortly after that, or on the same day, you can fill and shape your agnolotti. Finally, when you want to enjoy your agnolotti, all you have to do is cook them and put together the curry emulsion. Shaping agnolotti. It took me a few tries to really understand how to get the shape right (which is not to say that my agnolotti are at all perfect). I think that written instructions can only help so much. At some point, things just clicked for me. But you might want to take a look at the Kitchn's step-by-step agnolotti-making tutorial. Curry emulsion. If, like me, you happen to find yourself with more emulsion than the agnolotti look like they can really handle, just pour off what remains in the pan and stick it in the fridge. Drizzle some on your scrambled eggs or some roasted asparagus the next day. Trust me. Portioning. Keller intends these agnolotti as a starter for six. In my case, they made a modest lunch for three.

PASTA
200 g / 1 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
6 large egg yolks
1 large egg
1 1/2 teaspoons olive oil
1 tablespoon milk

FAVA BEAN FILLING
2-3 lb fava beans (225 g / 1/2 cups shelled)
65 g / 3/4 cup fresh bread crumbs
55 g / 1/4 cup + 1/2 tablespoon mascarpone
Salt to taste

CURRY EMULSION
2 teaspoons curry powder
2 tablespoons chopped scallions
3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons vegetable stock or water
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup crème fraîche
8 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into chunks
Salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
18 one-inch-long pieces ramps or scallions, blanched for 1 minute, then chilled and pat dry

TO SERVE
18 one-inch-long pieces garlic sprouts or garlic chives
6 sprigs cilantro flowers (optional)

TO MAKE THE PASTA DOUGH

Mound the flour on a clean work surface and make a well in the centre, pushing the flour to all sides to make a ring with sides about 1-inch wide. Make sure that the well is wide enough to hold all the eggs without spilling.

Pour the egg yolks, egg, oil, and milk into the well. Use your fingers to break the eggs up. Still using your fingers, begin turning the eggs in a circular motion, keeping them within the well and not allowing them to spill over the sides. This circular motion allows the eggs to gradually pull in flour from the sides of the well: it is important that the flour not be incorporated too rapidly, or your dough will be lumpy. Keep moving the eggs while slowly incorporating the flour. Using a pastry scraper, occasionally push the flour towards the eggs; the flour should be moved only enough to maintain the gradual incorporation of the flour, and the eggs should continue to be contained in the well. The mixture will thicken and eventually get too tight to keep turning with your fingers.

When the dough begins thickening and starts lifting itself up from the work surface, begin incorporating the remaining flour with the pastry scraper by lifting the flour up and over the dough that's beginning to form and cutting it into the dough. When the remaining flour from the sides of the well has been cut into the dough, the dough will still look shaggy. Bring the dough together in the palms of your hands and form it into a ball. It will look flaky but hold together.

Knead the dough by pressing it, bit by bit, in a forward motion with the hells of your hands rather than folding it over on itself as you would with a bread dough. Re-form the dough into a ball and repeat the process several times. The dough should feel moist but not sticky. Let the dough rest for a few minutes while you clean the work surface.

Dust the clean work surface with a little flour. Knead the dough by pushing against it in a forward motion with the heels of your hands. Form the dough into a ball again and knead it again. Keep kneading in this forward motion until the dough becomes silky smooth. The dough is ready when you can pull your finger through it and the dough wants to snap back into place. The kneading process can take anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes. It is important to work the dough long enough to pass the pull test; otherwise when it rests, it will collapse.

Double wrap the dough in plastic wrap to ensure that it does not dry out. Let the dough rest for at least 30 minutes and up to 1 hour before rolling it through a pasta machine. The dough can be made ahead, wrapped, and refrigerated: bring to room temperature before proceeding.

TO MAKE THE FAVA BEAN FILLING

Shell the fava beans and then peel the skins from the beans. Starting a small slit in the skin with a sharp paring knife makes the peeling easier. Remove the small germ at the side of each bean. You need 1 1/2 cups of beans for the filling; reserve any extra beans for another use. Blanch the beans in generously salted water for 5 minutes, or until tender, and immediately transfer to ice water to chill. When they are cold, drain the beans and spread on paper towels to drain thoroughly.

Place the beans in a food processor with the bread crumbs. Blend until they come together and form a ball. Add the mascarpone and process again until the mixture is smooth. Season to taste with salt. You will have 1-1 1/4 cups of filling. Refrigerate the mixture until it is cool, or for up to 2 days.

TO FORM THE PASTA SHEETS

Divide the dough into three or four pieces (you will have a little extra that you can cut into spaghetti or fettuccine and freeze for later use). Work with one piece at a time and keep the others covered so that they don't dry out. Set the rollers of your pasta machine to the widest setting. Flatten the first piece out with your hands into a long rectangle and feed it through the machine. Fold it over onto itself as you would a letter and flatten it with your hands again. Rotate it a quarter turn and feed it through the machine. Repeat this procedure 2 or 3 more times. Use flour as necessary to keep the pasta from sticking. You shouldn't need to use much at all.

Set the rollers down one notch and feed the pasta through. Do not fold it over. Run the sheet through on the same setting 2 more times. Then, adjust the rollers again and repeat this procedure, adjusting the rollers as you go, until the pasta is thin enough to see your fingers through it but not so thin that it's translucent. (On my machine, this means rolling it multiple times through the second-last setting.) Repeat with the remaining pieces of dough.

TO FILL THE AGNOLOTTI

Work with one sheet of pasta at a time, keeping the others covered. Lay the sheet on a lightly-floured work surface with the long side facing you. Trim the edges so that they are straight. Place the agnolotti filling in a pastry bag fitted with a 1/2-inch plain tip. Pipe a line of filling across the bottom of the sheet, leaving a 3/4 inch border of pasta along the left, right, and bottom edges.

Pull the bottom edge of the pasta up and over the filling. Seal the agnolotti by carefully molding the pasta over the filling and pressing lightly with your index finger to seal the edge of the dough to the pasta sheet; don't drag your finger along the dough to seal, or your risk ripping the dough. When it it sealed, there should be about a 1/2-inch of excess dough visible above the tube of filling (where you sealed it). Be certain that you are sealing tightly while pressing out any pockets of air. Seal the left and right ends of the dough.

TO SHAPE THE AGNOLOTTI

Starting at one end, place the thumb and forefinger of each hand together as if you were going to pinch something, and leaving about 1 inch of space between your hands and holding your fingers vertically, pinch the filling firmly in 1-inch increments, making about 3/4 inch of pinched area between each pocket of filling. It is important to leave this much pinched area between the agnolotti, or when the agnolotti are separated, they may come unsealed.

Run a crimped pastry wheel along the top edge of the folded-over dough, separating the strip of filling pockets from the remainder of the pasta sheet. Don't cut too close to the filling, or you risk breaking the seal. Separate the individual agnolotti by cutting through the center of each pinched area, rolling the pastry wheel away from your and leaning the tube of filling away from you and into the work surface as you cut. The leaning helps form the agnolotti's characteristic pocket-shape. Working quickly, place the agnolotti on a baking sheet dusted with a thin layer of cornmeal, which will prevent sticking. Don't let the agnolotti touch sac other, or they may stick together. Repeat the same procedure with the remaining pasta sheets.

At this point, you can either cook the agnolotti in boiling water immediately or freeze them on the baking sheet. Once the agnolotti are frozen, place them in airtight freezer bags and keep them frozen for up to several weeks. Cook the agnolotti while still frozen.

TO COMPLETE

For the curry emulsion, toast the curry powder in a small saucepan over medium heat until it is fragrant. Stir in the scallions and heat for another minute. Add the 3/4 cup stock, the cream, and the crème fraîche, bring to a simmer, and cook until the liquid is reduced to a half cup. Swirl in the butter. When the butter is melted, add the remaining 2 tablespoons of stock and blend for 30 seconds with an immersion blender to emulsify the mixture (alternatively, transfer to a conventional blender and emulsify). Season the mixture with salt and pepper and strain into a wide pan.

Meanwhile, cook the agnolotti in a large pot of lightly salted boiling water until cooked through, 4-5 minutes.

Drain the agnolotti, add the agnolotti and ramps to the curry emulsion, and toss over low heat to coat with sauce. Divide the agnolotti and ramps among three serving dishes and garnish the top of each with 6 garlic sprouts and 2 flower sprigs, if using. Serve immediately.

Makes 48 agnolotti.

On cultural identities

Exciting news! Today, a couple of other home cooks and I will be video-chatting live with Fuchsia Dunlop as a part of this month's New York Times' Recipe Lab. Dunlop is an expert on a number of China's regional cuisines and author of a fantastic travel memoir and three cookbooks, including Every Grain of Rice. We'll be talking with her about Chinese cooking and a dish from EGR we all made, Gong Bao Chicken. Tune in to Recipe Lab at 3 pm Eastern. It's going to be great! If you're a bit confused about why I'm participating in this chat (when, after all, was the last time that you saw anything Chinese around here?), see below for some background.

Cultural identity can be a funny thing. My mother is Cantonese. I grew up crunching my way through bok choy slicked in oyster sauce, wrinkling my nose at bitter melon, sneaking bits of crispy pork skin when I didn't think anyone was looking. But you wouldn't know it from the way that I cook and eat now, at least not in a way that I can see. Sure, I'm not half-bad at picking clean a small pile of spicy chicken feet, and I can appreciate the gelatinousness of vinegar-braised pork hocks. But I couldn't tell you much about the ingredients and methods. In fact, I don't really know how to cook any of the food I ate growing up. I just wasn't all that interested in learning to back then, and this part of my heritage is something I've always had a bit of a hard time with. I still don't really know how it fits in with who I am.

But lately, I've been trying to get a better handle on Chinese cooking (which is not to say that there's really one thing you could call that). See, at some point next year, I'm going to be travelling with my mother in China for a few weeks. This won't be the first time that I've visited, but I feel as though I've done quite a bit of growing up since my last couple of trips, and I want this one to be different. On past trips, I've left most of the planning up to my mother and her sister, and while we've seen some really amazing things together, the food, at least when travelling outside of Guandong, the province my family is from, has never been particularly good. But this, I'm pretty sure, has only been because we've relied on packaged tours when far away from Guandong. The meals are pre-arranged and totally unremarkable. My mother would probably argue that this is convenient, that it leaves us with time to see and do more, but I of course think that stumbling on a good place to eat just is a part of the seeing and doing. So this time around, I've decided to take charge, and the first step has just been learning more about some of the regional cuisines.

My starting place has been Fuchsia Dunlop's memoir, Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper. Dunlop, though British, has spent a great deal of time in China since her early twenties. She was in Chengdu (the capital of Sichuan province) initially with a year-long British Council research grant and was supposed to be studying the government's policy on ethnic minorities. But when that didn't go very far (people, unsurprisingly, were reluctant to talk), she found herself drawn to the activity in Sichuanese kitchens and to the often strange but splendid food that came out of them. She talked to everyone she could about Sichuanese food, begged her way into restaurant kitchens to observe and take notes, and eventually trained as a chef at the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine, the first Westerner ever to have done so. She had found her calling. 

The memoir details Dunlop's experiences in China over the years. It's a compelling blend of sharp observation, personal narrative, and reflection on the cultural differences she has run up against. And food, unsurprisingly, is often at the centre of all this. Dunlop, for example, is struck one evening by how much her time in China has changed her appreciation of texture when she realizes that her parents are politely struggling with the items she's ordered for their hotpot--goose intestines, ox tripe and throat cartilage, rabbits' ears, and small bony catfish, all unpleasantly rubbery, squeaky, crunchy things in the average Westerner's mouth. But for her now, there's a distinct pleasure to these textures. Chinese gastronomy isn't just about flavour but the subtle play of temperature and texture. It takes time, experience, and a lot of polite crunching, to really appreciate this (which is not to say, of course, that all Chinese food is this challenging). Dunlop often connects coming to eat like the Chinese with coming to think like them too, and there definitely is truth to this. It's what, I think, makes her memoir so illuminating when it comes to Chinese culture and what has led me to the kitchen in preparation for this trip.

A couple of weeks ago, with all these thoughts about identity, food, and travel were simmering away in my head, I noticed that Fuchsia Dunlop was the cookbook author who was going to be featured in the New York Times' Recipe Lab this month. Recipe Lab is the Times' monthly feature in which readers are invited to cook a recipe from one of the featured author's books and a few home cooks take part in a live video chat with the author. Seeing this, I applied to participate in the chat and thought that I probably wouldn't hear back. But I did! And it's happening today! So, tune in live to Recipe Lab to see me and a couple of other home cooks chatting with Ms. Dunlop about Chinese cooking today at 3 pm Eastern.

For the video chat, we all cooked the Gong Bao (a.k.a. Kung Pao) Chicken from Dunlop's latest cookbook, Every Grain of Rice. (The cookbook, by the way, is gorgeous. I've been pouring over it obsessively.) If you want to hear more about that, you'll have to tune in today (or stream it later at your convenience). But the day I made the chicken, I was feeling ambitious, so I also made another of Dunlop's dishes to go along with it, Fish-Fragrant Eggplant. This eggplant is crazy good. I'm already planning on making it again later this week. It isn't the quickest dish to put together, but it's worth your time. You first fry slices of eggplant to a gleaming gold. Then, you sizzle Sichuanese chilli bean paste (a savoury paste made from fermented fava beans) in hot oil and add to that lots of minced garlic and ginger. This forms the fragrant base for the sauce into which you'll slip the eggplant. Stock, soy sauce, and a little sugar come next, then the eggplant, followed by cornstarch to add some body to the sauce, and Chinkiang vinegar (a dark, heady rice vinegar) and chopped scallions to finish. (There's no fish in this dish. Fish-fragrant refers to the seasonings in the sauce, which are traditionally used for fish in Sichuanese cooking.) The resulting dish is incredible. The eggplant has a silky, luxurious feel to it in your mouth, and the sauce is somehow tangy, bright, and deeply savoury all at once.

I still haven't attempted anything like the dishes I grew up with. Sichuanese cooking is spicier, punchier, than the cooking you find in Guandong. But I think I might just wait until the next time I see my mother for that. I'll ask her to show me what she does (finally), and I'll cook this eggplant for her.

Fish-Fragrant Eggplant

From Fuchsia Dunlop's Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper (reprinted in Every Grain of Rice)

NOTE: Dunlop says that you can also bake or shallow-fry the eggplant for this dish. But instead of then adding the eggplant to the sauce, she recommends that you pour the finished sauce onto the eggplant--otherwise, it might disintegrate. I chose to deep-fry. However, I used a heavy-bottomed 4-quart stock pot instead of a wok for both the deep-frying and the sauce. I also used homemade vegetable stock instead of chicken stock, just because it was what I had around. You should be able to find Chinkiang vinegar and Sichuanese chilli bean paste at your local Chinese grocery store. Lee Kum Kee is a common brand that sells the latter. As Dunlop says, the brand is Cantonese and their version of the paste has some ingredients you wouldn't find in a traditional Sichuanese paste. Pixian brand is a better choice, but Lee Kum Kee will do.

TO FRY THE EGGPLANT

600-700 g eggplant

Salt

Peanut oil for deep-frying

FOR THE SAUCE

1 1/2 tablespoons Sichuanese chilli paste (dou ban jiang)

1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh ginger

1 tablespoon chopped garlic

2/3 cup chicken stock

1 1/2 teaspoons sugar

1/2 teaspoon light soy sauce or tamari

3/4 teaspoon cornstarch, mixed with 1 tablespoon cold water

1 1/2 teaspoons Chinkiang vinegar

4 scallions, green parts only, sliced into fine rings

1 teaspoon sesame oil

Cut the eggplant in half lengthwise and then crosswise. Chop each quarter lengthwise into three or four evenly sized chunks. Sprinkle generously with salt and leave for at least 30 minutes to drain.

In a wok, the oil for deep-frying to 356-392 degrees F. Add the eggplant in batches and deep-fry for 3-4 minutes until lightly golden on the outside and soft and buttery within. Remove and drain on paper towel.

Drain off the deep-frying oil, rinse the wok if necessary, and then return it to a medium flame with 2-3 tablespoons of oil. Add the chilli bean paste and stir-fry until the oil is red and fragrant, then add the ginger and garlic and continue to stir-fry for another 20-30 seconds, until they too are fragrant.

Add the stock, sugar, and soy sauce and mix well. Season with salt to taste, if necessary.

Add the fried eggplant to the sauce, bring to a boil, then let let them simmer gently for a few minutes to absorb some of the flavours. Then sprinkle the cornstarch mixture over the eggplant and stir in gently to thicken the sauce. Next, stir in the vinegar and spring onions and leave for a few seconds until the onions have lost their rawness. Finally, remove the pan from heat, stir in the sesame oil and serve.

Setting aside spades and worries

It's been a quiet summer for the two of us. We stuck pretty close to home, busy tending to ideas and vegetable beds, hoping that in time they'd flourish. But summer is fast fading, which means that many of our good friends, who've spent the summer away, will be back in town. I'm thinking that it's time that we set aside our spades and worries for a little and think about breaking the quiet, about maybe having a party.

When we do, this flatbread is sure to be a part of it. (If you want to get fancy, this flatbread is technically a Catalan coca of sorts.) It is perfect late-summer party fare--just red pepper, onion, and eggplant cooked down into a luxurious mess, spread out on thin stretches of dough, and then slipped into a hot oven for a scant few minutes. There, the onion especially melts and chars, while the dough blisters and bakes up shatteringly crisp. Cut into squares, it is ready to be passed around.

This flatbread is decidedly unfussy. The dough, though yeasted, is forgiving. I have let it sit out an hour or two longer than it really should have and then stuck extra in the fridge for later use. It held up just fine. You could definitely cook down the vegetables a few hours, maybe a day even, in advance. And with everything prepped, you could easily keep turning out flatbreads with a party in full swing.

Onion, Red Pepper, and Eggplant Coca

Adapted from Sam and Sam Clark's Moro East

DOUGH

112 g / 1 cup bread flour, plus extra for dusting

1/3 teaspoon fine sea salt

1/4 teaspoon instant yeast

75 ml / scant 1/3 cup water

1/2 tablespoon olive oil

VEGETABLES

1 medium eggplant, cut into half-inch cubes

1 teaspoon fine sea salt

6 tablespoons olive oil, plus more as needed

2 medium Spanish onions, roughly chopped

2 red peppers, cut in half lengthwise, seeded, and thinly sliced

1 heaped tablespoon finely chopped rosemary

To make the flatbread dough, place the flour, salt, and yeast in a medium bowl and mix thoroughly. Stir together the oil and water in a cup. Make a well in the flour and then pour in the water mixture a little at a time, mixing constantly with your hands. When all the yeast mixture has been incorporated, transfer the dough to a floured surface and knead well for at least 5 minutes. If the dough is still stick, add a little more flour; if it is too stiff, a little more water. It is ready when no longer tacky but soft, elastic, and smooth. Put the dough in a clean, oiled  bowl and leave to rise until doubled in bulk, 1-2 hours. After proofing, it can be chilled until needed. Give it some time to come back to room temperature, about an hour.

For the topping, first toss the eggplant with the salt in a colander and set aside. Heat the olive oil in a heavy, 10-inch sauté pan and, when hot but not smoking, add the onions with a pinch of salt. Give them a good stir and cook for 5 minutes. Add the peppers and cook for 15-20 minutes more, until the onions are golden and sweet and the peppers soft. Be sure to stir them often so they cook evenly and do not stick to the bottom of the pan. Blot the eggplant dry with a towel, add to the pan along with the rosemary, and cook for a final 15 minutes, stirring often, until the eggplant is soft all the way through. Remove from heat and rain off any excess oil. Check the seasoning and set aside to cool.

When ready to bake the flatbread, preheat the oven to 525 degrees F (with a baking stone, if you have one). Divide the dough into two and roll out half very thinly to make a 12-inch by 8-inch oblong. If it's being stubborn, cover and let rest for a few minutes for the gluten to relax and then try again. Place it on a peel, if using a baking stone, or on a baking sheet, if not. Spread half the vegetables over the surface, right up to the edges of the dough. Bake for 8-15 minutes (flatbread baked on a stone will take significantly less time), until browned and crispy underneath. While the first flatbread is in the oven, start rolling and topping the next one. They are great served piping hot from the oven or at room temperature.

Serves 6-8 as an appetizer.

Effort well spent

Summer is easy on us home cooks. There's hardly any need to fuss at the stove, to coax sweetness and colour onto our plates. There's plenty to be had already. That's the thing about summer. The produce doesn't need much help from us--a few seconds' blanching, a pinch of flaky salt, maybe. But that's it. The rest we can just put in our mouths, and it is good just as it is. How crazy is that?

So, lately, and especially when headed out to the farmers' market, I haven't been thinking too hard about what dinner or the next day's lunch will look like. I've taken to wandering the stretch of stands and going home with just whatever catches my eye. No lists, no set ideas. I figure that things will sort themselves out. And usually they do. Paper-thin slices of radish find their way into a tangle of chilled soba noodles, baby mustard greens into a sharp, garlicky salad. So things have been a little more laid-back around here. (Outside the the market season, I always head out with a list, sometimes two.) 

But I did make an exception this past weekend at the market. I made sure to pick up what I needed for this kohlrabi salad. I first had it at a friend's late last year. And at the time, admittedly, I wasn't expecting much. Kohlrabi was that one member of the cabbage family I just didn't get. Dark, bitter greens--yes. Creamy, starchy roots--still good. But that strange, saw-toothed bulb? It wasn't something that I'd yet come to terms with. This salad, though, changed that. All evening, I kept coming back for more. (And to be clear, there was competition--these pommes Anna and a sumptuous venison roast.) It was hard not to when it had so much going for it--toasted almonds, slivers of fennel, blueberries, salty goat's cheese, mint, and a serious gingery kick. But make no mistake, the kohlrabi, with its earthy sweetness, its addictive crunch, was at the centre of it all. And I got it.

So though it's been good just eating whatever comes my way, having hardly done a thing to it, the little bit of extra effort for this salad is effort well spent. Some things, like a good bulb or two of kohlrabi, are just worth seeking out.

Kohlrabi, Fennel, and Blueberry Salad

From Stephanie Izard via Food & Wine

NOTE: Choosing kohlrabi. Try to find bulbs on the smaller side, about the size of a tennis ball. They'll be sweeter and not so fibrous. The mandoline. I've never actually used a mandoline for this salad. I've always sliced everything by hand. Things might turn out prettier with a mandoline, but I like the extra crunch of the slightly thicker kohlrabi slices. I also just tend to avoid using more kitchen tools than I really have to.

DRESSING

2 tablespoons minced peeled fresh ginger

2 tablespoons minced shallot

1 tablespoon white balsamic vinegar

1 tablespoon mayonnaise

1 1/2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

1 teaspoon soy sauce

1 teaspoon pure maple syrup

1/4 cup grapeseed oil

SALAD

1/2 cup sliced almonds

1 1/4 pounds kohlrabi, peeled and very thinly sliced on a mandoline

1 fennel bulb, trimmed and thinly sliced on a mandoline

2 ounces semifirm goat cheese, such as Evalon, Garrotxa or Manchester, shaved

1 cup blueberries or pitted, halved sweet cherries

2 tablespoons torn mint leaves

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Spread the almonds on a baking sheet and toast for 8-10 minutes, until deeply golden. Let cool. 

In a blender, combine the ginger, shallot, vinegar, mayonnaise, mustard, soy sauce, and maple syrup and puree. With the blender on, add the grapeseed oil in a thin stream and blend until creamy. Season the dressing with salt and pepper. 

In a large bowl, toss the kohlrabi with the fennel, cheese, toasted almonds and dressing. Season with salt and pepper and toss to coat. Add the blueberries and mint and toss gently. Serve right away.

Serves 4-6.

The flavours they remembered

A few weeks ago, Luisa wrote about Oma and Bella, a film about two women--best friends, Holocaust survivors, splendid home cooks--and their life in the kitchen. Regina and Bella (the filmmaker, Alexa Karolinski, is Regina's granddaughter, making Regina her Oma) live together in Berlin and spend their days in bright kitchen smocks hovering over simmering pots of borscht, rolling up stuffed, oversized cabbage leaves, and filling tins to the brim with sparkling cream-cheese cookies. The film, though about their lives now, is permeated with their past. The food that they prepare day-to-day is the same food they grew up eating. Now, I don't have any personal connection to any of this--to that very dark part of history, to post-war Germany, to the culture and traditions that survive with Regina and Bella. But you certainly don't need to to appreciate the film or to want to cook everything from the beautiful little book of recipes that Alexa has put together.

What I find most remarkable about Regina and Bella's cooking is that it is all pieced together from childhood memory. They alone from their respective families survived the camps, and they'd been too young at the time to learn to cook. So, after the war, they taught themselves from the flavours they remembered. And this is the same food that they cook today, that connects them to a past of which there are otherwise very few tangible traces. (In the film,  Regina and Bella tell us that any survivors who were able to save family photos were very lucky.) So leafing through the cookbook, having the sweet smell of slow-roasted onions fill my kitchen (these onions are at the heart of Regina and Bella's cooking), feel to me like something of a privilege. I feel terribly lucky to be able to cook this food at all, and I am so glad that Alexa took on the project of turning their handfuls into half-cups so that we might all share in it.

Regina and Bella are firm believers in keeping their freezer well-stocked--as in, they are always prepared to feed a serious crowd with almost no notice. I really admire that. It always feels reassuring to have at least a few goodies stashed away. My own freezer stock was not (and still isn't) nearly as impressive (chicken stock, pork stock, gelatin purée, ground turkey, two sausages, marrow bones), so when my copy of the cookbook arrived in the mail, I decided to start with Regina and Bella's pierogis, with the hope of adding to it.

But I'm afraid that my freezer stock of pierogis is already nearly gone. I made a double batch, hoping that the pierogis would turn out well. But really, I should have made a quadruple batch at the very least. These pierogis are so, so good. The filling is super simple, just onion and potato. You cook down diced onions on gentle heat to a golden, sticky mass. This can take some time--over an hour in my case--but the onions don't need your undivided attention. And in the interim, you can also boil and mash a few potatoes for the filling and pull together the pierogi dough. The dough, by the way, isn't at all fussy. It can get a little dry once rolled out if you don't work quickly enough, but that is easily remedied with moistened fingertips. It will hold shut during cooking with some good, firm pinches and doesn't suffer after being handled a lot. Admittedly, with the onions to cook down, the dough to prepare, and the assembly, making these pierogis can feel like quite the production. But they are definitely worthwhile, especially if you make a big batch to stash away.

The cookbook suggests that you serve your pierogis with meatballs. We ate ours alongside braised red cabbage spiked with apple-cider vinegar and caraway seed. Alexa also says in the book that her Oma has been known to chase her pierogis with homemade pickles and shots of vodka. I just don't have the constitution for that sort of thing, but what women Regina and Bella must be!

Potato and Onion Pierogi

Adapted from Oma & Bella, The Cookbook

Note: You may end up with a little extra filling--I had maybe a 1/4 cup leftover--but I wouldn't expect this to be much of a problem. Even cold out of the fridge a day later, it was very good.

FILLING:

2 large yellow onions

125 ml / 1/2 cup vegetable oil

700 g / 1 1/2 lb starchy potatoes (about 3 medium ones)

Salt and pepper to taste

DOUGH:

380 g / 3 cups all-purpose flour + more for dusting

125 ml / 1/2 cup water

2 large eggs

Large pinch of salt

TO FINISH:

Scallions or chives, thinly sliced

Sour cream

Finely dice the onion and fry it in the oil in a large, heavy-bottomed skillet on low to medium-low heat until dark-golden brown, about 1 hour. Meanwhile, peel and boil the potatoes in a large pot of salted water until tender, about 20-25 minutes, depending on the size of your potatoes. Drain the potatoes and return them to their pot with the heat on medium, then mash them (doing things this way will help to rid the potatoes of excess water). Remove the onions from the oil with a slotted spoon (don't toss the oil--save it to fry the pierogis in or for some other use) and combine them with the mashed potato in a large bowl. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

In a large bowl, mix the flour, water, eggs, and salt with a fork until a rough dough forms. Turn the dough out onto a clean surface and knead for 5 minutes as you would pasta dough, pushing the dough away from you across the work surface with your palms and then balling it up and repeating this, using flour as necessary to prevent the dough from sticking. Cover the dough with plastic wrap or an overturned bowl for 5-10 minutes to let the dough relax. Then roll out the dough until it is only a couple of millimetres thick, again using flour as needed (it helps to have a bench scraper handy and to use it lift the dough from your work surface occasionally to prevent sticking). Use the rim of water glass or a biscuit cutter about 3 inches in diameter to cut circles out of the dough.

On each circle, place a tablespoon of the potato filling. Fold the dough over itself to form a semi-circle and seal the edges with damp fingers, pinching firmly. Place finished pierogis on a flour- or cornmeal-dusted baking sheet. (Be sure to gather up the dough scraps and re-roll them for a second or even third round of pierogis. Just keep this remaining dough covered while you're busy with assembly.) At this point you can either freeze the pierogis on the baking sheet until firm and then seal them in a bag in the freezer for later use or proceed as follows.

Bring a medium-sized pot of salted water to a boil. Place the pierogis in the boiling water. When they float to the surface, they are ready. Drain in a colander.

In a skillet over medium heat, fry the cooked pierogis, a few minutes per side, until golden brown. Serve hot with scallions and sour cream.

Makes about 30 pierogis, enough for 4-6 people as part of a larger meal.

Backwards arithmetic

Sometimes, I daydream about food, about flavours and colours that might well meet on a plate someday, that could just take a liking to each other. But most of the time, the sorts of thoughts about food that occupy me aren't so elevated. They are as practical as can be, driven by questions like `What to do with that neglected crust of bread?', `Is the parsley too far gone?', and `Can that cabbage be stretched to make a little lunch tomorrow?'. These, I take it, are just the sorts of day-to-day thoughts that occupy almost any home cook worth her salt. She does a sort of larder arithmetic to make as much as she can of what she has, especially of the odd scrap or two leftover from meals long cooked and eaten. It isn't glamorous, but there's an art to it (one that mothers and grandmothers seem to have down pat).

Well, that is the sort of arithmetic that I do most of the time. Every now and then, though, I get it a little backwards. I bake a loaf of bread, hoping for a few stale slices at the end of the week to blitz into crumbs. I devise ways of using up egg whites, thinking to add to my stash of yolks in the freezer. That sort of thing. Not terribly out there but still a little backwards. But my most recent round of such arithmetic--I don't think it can be described as anything but very backwards. Up until last weekend, you see, I'd been thinking a lot about whole chickens--about riding across town with them on the bus, about roasting them with garlic and paprika, about braising them with caramelized onion and cardamom rice--but all that, truth be told, was secondary. What I was really thinking about were their backs, necks, bones, and wing tips. I was in it for the stock, you see. I needed five pounds of such bits, and let me tell you, that's a lot of bird to collect, bird by bird. So there was a lot of scheming done on my part and a lot of chicken dinners from January on. (I have to confess--I eventually got impatient and bought some extra necks to supplement what I had.)

But this is not a story about stock. It in fact is about dumplings--soft, pillowy, parsnip dumplings. I first made them back in January with their intended broth. And for a vegetable broth, it was pretty good. Ottolenghi promised depth, and there was some. But I am just not a vegetable-broth kind of girl. For me, vegetable broth just never has enough depth, enough savour, to really hold its own. The carrots, the onion--they add a lot of sweetness, and there's nothing to counterbalance that. But I loved the parsnip dumplings and wanted to make them again. All I needed was a broth to really carry them. So that's how I ended up riding the bus home with whole chickens, how I ended up amassing a freezer full of chicken odds and ends, how I ended up spending most of Sunday morning perched on a stool, peering over a giant, steaming stock pot packed with those odds and ends.

All I can do is hope that these efforts do as much to illustrate how very good these dumplings are as they do how crazy I sometimes get. I won't even try to encourage you to follow my lead as far as the stock goes. I'll just say that these dumplings deserve good broth (vegetable or chicken, whatever pleases you) and that they're worth a little extra effort.

But for those of you curious about the stock, I was following the recipe from The French Laundry cookbook, which makes about 5 quarts (Keller claims 6) from five pounds of bones, an optional pound of chicken feet (that's about 9), and a mirepoix of carrot, onion, and leek. I am not quite sure what the chicken feet added, and given that they weren't exactly a bargain (oddly enough), I might try the stock without them next time. As written, the recipe produces a beautiful, pale gold stock. It is a bit subtle, but that isn't too surprising, given that in the restaurant it's intended to play a supporting role in risottos and the like. You can, of course, reduce it to good effect. This definitely won't be the last you'll hear of stock around here. I have my eye on a couple of other interesting-looking recipes.

Parsnip Dumplings

Adapted, just a little, from Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty

Note: You can get away with making the dough in advance, but it doesn't keep well past a day. It starts to lose its cohesion and won't hold its shape very well in simmering water. But if you want to get the prep out of the way and cook the dumplings a little later, make the dough as directed and chill but don't add the baking powder until you're just about ready to cook the dumplings. Otherwise, they won't float to the surface.

DUMPLINGS

225 g russet potato (one small one), peeled and diced (half-inch dice)

180 g parsnips (about 3 modest ones), peeled and diced (half-inch dice)

1 garlic clove, peeled

2 tablespoons butter

70 g / 1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 rounded teaspoon baking powder

50 g / 1/3 cup semolina

1 egg

Salt and white pepper

TO SERVE

4 cups good-quality broth, preferably homemade

1 small carrot, cut into half-inch-wide batons and cooked until tender or reserved from homemade stock (optional)

Parsley, chopped

Cook the potato, parsnips, and garlic in plenty of boiling salted water until soft, 8-10 minutes. Drain well. Wipe dry the pan in which the vegetables were cooked and put them back inside. Add the butter and sauté on medium heat for a few minutes to get rid of the excess moisture. While hot mash them with a potato ricer or masher. Add the flour, semolina, egg, and some salt and pepper and mix until incorporated. Chill for 30-60 minutes, covered with plastic wrap.

Heat the broth and taste for seasoning. In another pan, bring some salted water to a light simmer. Dip a teaspoon or small scoop (something with a release mechanism will make things easier--the dough is on the tacky side) in water and use it to spoon out the dumpling mix into the water. Once the dumplings come to the surface, leave to simmer for 30 seconds, then remove from the water with a slotted spoon.

Ladle the hot broth into bowls. Place the dumplings and carrot, if using, in the broth, garnish with parsley, and serve immediately.

Serves 4.

This is it

If in the past year or so there was a cookbook that I reached for most, one whose pages caught the spatter of sauce and oil and cream more than any other, it was definitely Nigel Slater's Tender. I cooked from it a lot, and we ate really well, all year long. But this year, it's my feeling that things will be a little different. This, I think, might just be the year of Jerusalem. And, as I'm sure you've already heard, this cookbook is one that dazzles, one that overflows with colour and stories and bold, brilliant flavours. So I won't say much more about it. I'll just say this--I cooked from it all weekend, and, friends, this is a cookbook rich in small splendours. It is one hard to pull away from. I can't wait to cook from it again.

The dish from this past weekend that I want to share with you is one, I think, that between dishes like roasted chicken with clementines and arak and burnt eggplant with garlic, lemon, and pomegranate seeds is easy to overlook. Parsley and barley salad. It sounds about as uninteresting as can be. But it isn't. This salad is bright, bold, and vibrant. The parsley, with its peppery, anise notes, definitely leads, but then there's the creamy za'atar-marinated feta, the crunchy bits of sweet green pepper, the delicate barley, the crushed, roasted cashews, the sharp scallion. I don't know about you, but come February, I'm starved for clean, bright, simple foods. I need something to counter the inevitable heaviness of winter, the rich stews, the parade of roasted root vegetables. I need something that will wake me up. This salad is it. Confetti for the parade. Let it fall on your plate, and you'll see.

I've made this salad a couple of times now and have eaten it just on its own as a late dinner and alongside a number of other things. I think it went particularly well with roasted, cumin-spiced cauliflower. But it's pretty versatile. Think of it as a sort-of wintery tabbouleh, (for those months when tomatoes are just unthinkable).

Parsley and Barley Salad

Adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi's Jerusalem

Note: About the barley. This salad is all about the parsley. Even so, I do like to add a little more barley than is called for, but do what you will. About the za'atar. Za'atar is a blend of dried thyme, sumac, and roasted sesame seeds. The blend I bought also has oregano and hyssop in it, which I'm not sure I'm all that crazy about, but it's easy enough to make your own at home. About the feta. It's really important to get a good, creamy feta for this salad. It serves as a counterpoint to the sharpness of the salad's other ingredients. None of this insipid, watery stuff.

40-55 g / scant 1/4 - 1/3 cup pearl barley (see above)

150 g / 5 oz good, creamy feta cheese

5 1/2 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon za'atar

1/2 teaspoon coriander seeds, lightly toasted and crushed

1/4 teaspoon ground cumin

80 g / scant 3 oz flat-leaf parsley (2-3 bunches), leaves and fine stems

4 green onions, finely chopped

2 garlic cloves, crushed
40 g / 1/3 cup cashews, lightly toasted and coarsely crushed

1 green pepper, seeded and cut into 3/8-inch dice

1/2 teaspoon ground allspice

2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

Salt and pepper to taste

Place the pearl barley in a small saucepan, cover with plenty of water, and boil for 30-35 minutes, until tender but with a bite. Pour into a fine sieve, shake to remove all the water, and transfer to a large bowl.

Break the feta into rough pieces, about 3/4 inch / 2 cm in size, and mix in a small bowl with 1 1/2 tablespoons of the olive oil, the za'atar, the coriander seeds, and the cumin. Gently mic together and leave to marinate while you prepare the rest of the salad.

Chop the parsley finely and place in the bowl with the green onions, garlic, cashew nuts, pepper, allspice, lemon juice, the remaining olive oil, and the cooked barley. Mix together well and season to taste. To serve, divide the salad among four plates and top with the marinated feta.

Serves 4.

And the jewels do shine

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine had a few of us over for a housewarming. We spent a lot of it plopped down with steaming cups of tea, pouring over her cookbook collection. My friend said that we were free to borrow whichever cookbooks we wanted, that she didn't cook from them much and was mostly content just to read through the stories and recipes and be warmed by them. I didn't take her up on her offer that day, but there was one particular book that stuck with me, Sam and Sam Clark's Moro East.
On dark, drizzly days like the ones we've been having here in Chicago, leafing through its pages is just about enough to warm you. The book provides a glimpse into life at the community garden where the Clarks tended a plot--a year in vegetables, small gatherings, and food shared with friends. Though the Clarks are based in London, their book has the feel of some place warmer, some place arid and sun-kissed. This owes mostly to the friends the Clarks made while gardening. Many of them hailed from the Mediterrannean--Turks and Cypriots who knew a thing or two about grape leaves and sumac and grilled lamb. They and the Clarks cooked together, often over charcoal in the open air right by their neighbouring plots. Many of the recipes in the book are contributions from these friends.

I finally asked for my friend's copy just as the temperatures around here were dipping. In return, I snipped her the last few raggedy blooms from the garden out back--something to brighten her new place for a while. By then, it was November. Thanksgiving was just around the corner. I'd been busy writing and hadn't thought much about it. I certainly hadn't placed an order for a turkey. So I started leafing through Moro East, looking for ideas. One of the first recipes I landed on was for something called la caldereta, a bone-in lamb shoulder rubbed with thyme and rosemary and slow-roasted with onions and potatoes. Exactly what I was looking for, and with a pretty name like that, how could I resist? So, that's what we built our Thanksgiving meal around this year, a lamb roast from Extremadura (in western Spain) re-interpreted by a couple of London chefs. It was wildly non-traditional. Think homemade pita bread, chickpea fritters, mint-flecked yogurt, and roasted eggplant scattered with pomegranate seeds. (I don't think our guests minded.)

Thanksgiving was a while ago now. But weeks after, there's one dish from our meal that I'm still thinking of. It's another from Moro East, a side dish that the Clarks call jewelled pumpkin rice. (They really know how to name a dish, now don't they?) It's not much to look at, despite the name. The colours are those of the late autumn landscape--soft browns, bursts of orange, faded greens. But it really is something. The rice is made spectacularly fragrant by cinnamon, allspice, and cardamon. These go in the pot following the butter and onions and toast for a good long while, perfuming your kitchen. And the jewels buried in the rice do shine--tart, chewy currants, roasted butternut squash, and toothsome pistachios. All this is finished with a splash of buttery saffron water, which lends it a lovely roundness.

The friend who lent me the cookbook was one of our Thanksgiving guests. I was gratified when she told me that we'd cooked things that she'd often looked at but would probably have never cooked herself.

I thought that the rice went wonderfully with the lamb shoulder we roasted. Its sweetness complemented the grassy, gamey notes in the roast. With the onions and butternut squash in this dish, its sweetness is rather assertive. You'll want to pair it with something else that can hold its own.

Jewelled Pumpkin Rice

Adapted from Sam and Sam Clark's Moro East
Note: About the butter. Vegans, you can easily replace the butter that the onions cook in with an equal amount of olive oil (75 g), which is what I did for one of my friends at Thanksgiving. After letting the rice rest off heat for 5 minutes, I then set aside his portion and poured the buttery saffron water on the remaining rice. Just as easily, you could omit the butter from the saffron water. I've since made the rice again, this time going half butter, half olive oil. Surprisingly, the butter didn't make much of a difference.

500 g / 1 lb peeled and seeded butternut squash (the flesh of a 750 g squash), cut into 1/2-inch dice
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
a big pinch of saffron (about 50 strands)
100 g / 7 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided (see note above)
3 inch cinnamon stick
4 allspice berries
1 large or 2 medium onions, thinly sliced across the grain
15 g / 1 1/2 tablespoons dried barberries (or currants)
50 g / 1/2 cup shelled unsalted pistachios
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
300 g / 1 2/3 cup basmati rice, soaked in tepid, salted water for 1 hour
450 ml / 1 4/5 cup vegetable stock

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Toss the diced butternut squash with half of the salt and the olive oil. Spread it in a single layer in a baking tray and roast for 30 minutes or until tender.

Mix the saffron with 3 tablespoons of boiling water and add 25 g (about 2 tablespoons) of the butter, which should melt. Set aside.

Heat the remaining butter in a medium saucepan with the cinnamon and allspice until it foams, then add the onion and the remaining half teaspoon of salt. Fry over medium heat for 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally until the onion is soft and starting to colour. Add the barberries, pistachios, and cardamom and cook for 10 minutes more, until the onion is golden and sweet.

Now drain the rice and add to the pan, stirring for a minute or two to coat, then pour in the stock. Taste for seasoning then scatter with the roast squash. Cover with a circle of parchment paper and a tight-fitting lid and cook over high heat for 5 minutes. Reduce the heat to low and simmer for a final 5 minutes. Remove the lid and parchment and drizzle with the buttery saffron water. Replace the lid and leave to rest, off the heat, for 5-10 minutes.
Serves 4-6.

Little luxuries

About two weeks ago, a couple of good friends of mine here in Chicago became parents! This, for me, anyway, is still a little mind-blowing. I feel as though, still being in my mid-twenties and a grad student, I only act like a real grown-up about half the time. Sure, I have obligations. But most days, I don't have to be anywhere at any particular time. I can work at home, curled up in an armchair, barefoot, hair still a mess. I can ease my way into the day with a good cup of coffee and buttered toast, when most people are already shuffling off to work. I can pull together a loaf of sourdough pretty well every week, even mid-week, midway through the day, if I want. So I don't quite feel like I live a particularly grown-up life with grown-up responsibilities. And the thought of having that change anytime soon, of giving up little luxuries like late breakfasts and weekly bread-baking--well, let's just say that I think my friends are brave, brave folks.

So with all this in mind, when I heard that my friend had given birth to a beautiful baby boy, one of my first thoughts was that I should make some good, nourishing food for the new parents. With a tiny, helpless, newborn to care for, I thought, they probably had their hands full. (I might have been thinking of this post.) But I didn't know what to make. What do new mothers eat? Do they crave particular foods after those nine long months, those first sleep-deprived days? I really didn't have a clue. But I knew that my friends and I had at least one cookbook in common between our two kitchens--Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty. So I asked them to pick something from it that they'd been wanting to try out.

My friends chose well, really well. Ottolenghi's Surprise Tatin is something truly spectacular, a crown jewel for the dinner table. It, much like its sweeter namesake, involves a puddle of dark caramel and pillowy puff pastry. But instead of the usual apples tucked beneath that buttery lid, it's roasted cherry tomato halves, itty bitty potatoes, sweet onions, and semi-firm goat's cheese that bubble away together in the heat of the oven.

One of the things I enjoy most about tarte tatins is the anticipation--the moments leading up to the end of baking and then the big reveal when you turn the tart out of its skillet. I'm the sort of girl who can't keep away from the oven window, even if there isn't much to see. So though those forty minutes or so of baking feel impossibly long, though they keep me in suspense--heady, tantalizing smells, puff pastry ballooning--they make the end all the more worth it--that moment when you finally get to slip on your oven mitts and get your first peek at what's been happening beneath that flakey dome. And in this case, it might just take your breath away. The onions will have reduced to sticky-sweet ribbons. The caramel and tomato juices will have seeped into the potatoes, leaving them ruby-tinged. The tomato halves will gleam, bright and candy-like. Like I said, a real crown jewel.

And this tart tastes every bit as good as it looks. With each bite you get something a little different. But each is its own discovery--different textures and flavours, harmonizing together in different ways. Sometimes, what you'll get is the sweet-tart intensity of the tomatoes balanced against the richness of the pastry and the gentle creaminess of the potatoes. With other bites, it'll be goat's cheese and the potatoes--salty, earthy, comforting. My favourite sort of bite is one where the sweetness of onions melts into that of the tomatoes right at the edge of the tart--tangy and sweet with just a little crunch from the pastry.

The process of making this tart, admittedly, is not one that you can just breeze through. The tomatoes, onions, and potatoes all need separate preparation before they get nestled together in their skillet. There's also the caramel to cook and the cheese to slice--all that prep can add up. (But once assembled, you can leave the tart in the fridge until you need it--for up to 24 hours.) And you might end up with a sink full of dishes. But this is another reason why I think my friends chose so well. Elaborate and impractical meals are a bit of a luxury on most nights, and with a newborn to care for, my friends, I thought, could use a little luxury. (Plus, I just wanted to drop something off for an excuse to see the baby.) Likewise, if there's someone in your life that deserves a little pampering, you might want to consider this tart. 

Surprise Tatin

Adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty
Note: About the puff pastry. If you're feeling really ambitious, consider making your own "rough" puff. I like this old Gourmet recipe. It makes enough for two of these tarte tatins. About the potatoes. Tinier potatoes tend to make for a better presentation here, I think, but I used what I could find--a mix of red-skinned new potatoes and a variety called German Butterball. About the goat's cheese. My go-to is goat gouda, but feel free to branch out.

150 g cherry tomatoes
2 tablespoons olive oil, plus extra for drizzling over the tomatoes
Salt and pepper
500 g new potatoes, really tiny ones, preferably
1 large onion, peeled and sliced thinly
45 g sugar / 3 tablespoons sugar
10 g / 2 teaspoons butter
1 sprig fresh oregano, picked, or a few big pinches of good-quality dried oregano
100 g aged goat's cheese, sliced
1 sheet (about 250 g) puff pastry, rolled thinly

Preheat the oven to 275 degrees F. Halve the tomatoes and place them skin-side down on a baking sheet. Drizzle with some olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Place in the oven to dry for 45 minutes.

Meanwhile, cook the potatoes in boiling salted water for 25 minutes or until easily pierced with a knife. Drain and let cool. Trim off a bit of the top and bottom of each potato, then cut into 1-inch-thick discs.

Sauté the onion in olive oil and a little salt for 10 minutes, until golden brown.

Butter a 9-inch cake pan or heavy-bottomed skillet and line the base with a circle of parchment paper. In a small pan cook the sugar and butter on high heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, until you get a semi-dark caramel. Pour carefully into the cake pan and spread out evenly over the bottom. Scatter the oregano on top.

Stand the potatoes close together in the bottom of the pan. Press onions and tomatoes into the gaps, season well with salt and pepper, and cover with goat's cheese. Cut a puff pastry disc that is 1 inch larger in diameter than the pan. Layer the pastry lid over the tart filling and gently tuck the excess around the potatoes inside the pan. (At this stage, you can chill the tart for up to 24 hours.)

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Bake the tart for 25 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 350 degrees F and continue baking for 15 minutes, or until the pastry is thoroughly cooked. Remove from the oven and let settle for 2 minutes only. Hold an inverted plate firmly on top of the pan and carefully but briskly turn them over together, then lift off the pan. Serve the tart hot or warm.
Serves 4.