Roasted Banana Ice Cream

..is like ice cream crack.

To make: sprinkle bananas with butter and brown sugar, and roast at 400F until they are caramelized. Scrape with syrup into a food processor, puree with milk and vanilla until thick and custard-like, then process in your ice cream maker.

All of this via David Lebovitz's Perfect Scoop, the best ice cream cookbook ever....

When the cat's away.....

...the mouse has a burger! T. was away last weekend and so the A-man and I indulged in a burger. Which he didn't like and which promptly made me feel ill. Here they are half-formed and under-cooked in the frying pan. Besides roasted chicken, I'm not convinced I know how to cook meat well....

Plans and experiments continue on the cooking front. Above you will see the A-man chowing down on an orzo-peas-pesto-asiago combination that I made and froze up last week. We are still tweeking the weekly cook-a-thon but these days I'm thinking that Sunday should see two complete sets of frozen entrees for the week, one container of roasted veggies and something sweet. With that to count on, some fresh fruit and dairy, eggs, a few fresh-cooked meals and a couple of prepared foods like the shu mai that we've taken to buying every week, that takes us through a full week of three meals-a-day plus two snacks.

Last week's other major frozen dish was chana masala, but it's clear that the A-man likes dal better. Coming up: roasted banana ice cream, via David Lebovitz...

Now Under New Culinary Dictatorship: All Hail the Toddler!

As you can see, like most kids the A-man loves his pasta. Which is great because even though I've bragged that he eats everything, we do have to do some concealing of vegetables to get as many down as we'd like. Pasta is a good way to do it.

In order to save time during the week I've taken to cooking two or three pots of food on Sunday and then freezing them into individual servings. This way T. gets food to take to school and I don't have to cook every day or think about planning meals more than just minimally. Honestly, I never thought I'd be the kind of person who planned out weekly menus but, yup, here I am with a menu sheet on the fridge and a master grocery list written out in OmniOutliner. Gone - at least temporarily - are the days when dinner was a glass of wine, a hunk of epoisses berthaut and some bread.

This week I did three dishes: orzo with cheddar, peas and carrots; berry compote for yogurt, and spaghetti with a red pepper-tomato sauce, spinach and feta.

I know there are some people out there that can do a whole fresh meal every night, but these days, if I want to get any of my own work done at night - and sometimes I'm way, way, way too knackered to - I have to plan ahead. At least this way I'm not defrosting Duncan Hines pizza every night.*

I think I'll do a chana masala this week, and maybe some sheperd's pies... Or maybe I'll pull out that Le Creuset tagine I've been ignoring for the last five years and do a chicken with preserved lemons and olives dish and some couscous.

* -- I'm not saying we don't do pre-packaged foods, either. We aren't afraid of a good frozen organic burrito, that's for sure.

Still a bad blogger....

...take it up with me AFTER I finish the manuscript, okay? In the meantime, a few short notes.

1. The Collection

Two weeks ago I actually pruned my cookbook collection down to about, 80 or so, from around 300. I was overjoyed to get rid of anything Moosewood, which raised some eyebrows amongst my friends. I think it's hideous cooking.

I was sad to see some of the big tomes from the C.I.A. go. But I never open them and they'll do someone else a lot of good. Letting go of so many books turned me inwards and made me nostalgic for the period in my life when I was really passionate about cookbooks. I couldn't help wondering what I was searching for when I started hoarding them all. And what I've found such that I no longer need most of them. Actually I threw out a lot of old cooking stuff as well, including a full set of pots and pans and a fondue set, which, yes, I have actually used, and recently too.

I guess I just don't feel like carrying so much STUFF around anymore.

2. The Boy

The A-man continues to eat everything! This week saw the introduction of rice and lentil dal and pluots. Very exciting. The rice in the picture above is not basmati but rather some short-grained rice from a bag of Carolinian brown rice that my good friend and former roomie the Southern Slavicist bought me a few years ago. Rice, if you can believe it, is actually a new thing for me: except for risotto I NEVER make it. But I faithfully followed the package directions, left the pot lid on and stirred the cooked rice with a fork and not a spoon, thereby hopefully averting some hideous curse.

I love that my kid is into spicy food. This recipe came courtesy of my cousin's wife S., who told me to roast cumin and coriander seeds, grind them and add turmeric in order to make a mild introductory curry for the A-man's palate. I love the dal on the Bunnykins plate. Not sure what Beatrix Potter would say.

3. The Dish

New salad, born out of hunger and desperation one late night: diced peaches, pluots and avacodoes, topped with walnut oil. If it isn't too shameless to say this about your own recipes: dazzling.

Happy Canada Day!

....and as that's the only Canadian thing happening to me right now, I'll move on.

Can I just say that as my cooking life is entirely taken up with what to feed baby these days I have nothing to say about food at all and seem to have even lost my appetite for the stuff, to the extent that I've lost at least ten lbs and two dress sizes... It's a strange thing, but I seem to have gone off eating altogether. Has that happened to any other new parents besides me?

My mother, who is visiting me right now, says the same thing and it makes sense: she's been running her own restaurant for twenty years and I've been reading, researching, writing and thinking about food for at least that long. So all of a sudden I don't really attack it with the same gusto I used to. I've lost my curiosity for new tastes! We even went for sushi last week and I just thought: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz............ Boring.

On the other hand, I haven't lost my taste for food-as-process and project, especially for canning, and I've been planning to put up some preserved lemons and harissa for weeks now. Maybe once I get this latest writing deadline met, for next Monday.

Above is a picture of me at my favorite writing spot, filling up with my favorite fuel, diet coke. Get this KF and DR, my fellow DC-junkies: I don't even really like diet coke anymore!

not much going on...

So....not much happening except this:

1. We are now the parents of a one-year old boy, code named the A-dude, whom we brought home three weeks ago from Ethiopia.
   
2. I am on parental leave
3. I am trying to start blogging again
4. We are moving up to San Francisco on Saturday for ten weeks
5. I am still trying to finish my book (and write one chapter for an anthology and also two articles, but who's counting?)

On the issue of #3, above, I'm going to take a cue from The Dinner Files, which I hope you're reading, and start off with a discussion of what A-dude likes to eat, because that's pretty much what occupies my days these days. Here is what he likes:

1. everything

Seriously, the kid eats everything, with two exceptions: mushy cereals, which he is clearly outgrowing, and avocado, which he technically eats but only after spitting out once or twice. Sara G. assures me that food spitting is an important, though irritating, developmental milestone.

poulet

I've been trying to give the A-dude more spices recently, as we battle the giardia he brought home from the orphanage into submission. Above is chicken stuffed with garlic but as you can see from the picture below, I've been encouraging kitchen exploration.

Last week we pulled kecap manis, sour cherry syrup, tamari, corn syrup (shut up food psychos, you need it for shoofly and pecan pie!), fig balsamic, truffle olive oil and red wine vinegar out of the cupboard and got to sample them all. This week we're on a restricted diet because of the giardia meds (no dairy!) so we're doing a lot more tofu and veggie products.

I've also been trying to make some baby foods, though at one years old I obviously have to stop pureeing everything (but can be forgiven for babying him as I only got him two months ago). I made a mangu-like dish of yellow sweet potatoes, butter, milk and nutmeg last week that he also seemed to love.

I highly recommend this advice from Molly on raising an omnivorous child. And thanks to cousin C. in New York for our first foodie baby book.

Still a Crap Blogger....

why i'm not food blogging these days

...but I am trying trying trying to do better! I've been considering a blogger re-org lately, moving the blog away from a food-centric focus and back to the more cultural commentary format I used to have. Problem is, I'm working on three writing projects, teaching, chairing the Gender Studies program at my college and - news! - expecting to bring home a one-year old baby boy in one month. So blogging is still going to be slow.

Anyway heads up that a blog shift is coming. Just don't know what it's going to be. I really don't want to do mommy blogging that's for sure. Just not my style.

The cat has nothing to say about this:

toasty

Sorry to have been such a terrible blogger - I've been finishing a manuscript and starting a new article. But more soon.

I actually made the cornmeal pizza recipe from the Nigh-Times this weekend using fresh bocconcini. Malgre moi my flash wasn't working and I ended up with pictures that could have been captioned: Bocconcini Caught In Headlights.

Thus: no recipe for this week, just a picture of some toasty coriander and cumin seeds.

Garbage Soup

before

Well I think we can all agree that I've been a terrible blogger for the last three months, while I finish another project. (FYI, look for a major article in the next Gastronomica.) However! I'm going to try to do at least minor posts for the next while, until my commuting schedule (SF-LA for three days a week) slows down.

welcome to northern california....

As you can see from the picture above, it's horrid out: freezing, rainy, ugh. Lizzy and Lucy have hunkered down to do nothing today - seriously, they are totally immobile - and I've got a pot of garbage soup on, to keep us fed for the next week.

lizzy and lucy in action

As you probably already know, garbage soup is a big pot full of whatever-you've-got plus some whatever-is-leftover all chopped up and cooked down together. Here's today's version of

Garbage Soup

One leek; one green pepper; one small green cabbage; two large heads of broccoli; lots of celery - all the above chopped, obviously - and four cans of diced tomatoes with jalapenos. For flavor backbone and just that so the soup doesn't taste like wet mulch add two cubes of vegetable bouillon, one poblano pepper split down the middle and a parmesan rind, the latter an old and excellent corrective to otherwise pallid and depressing vegetarian soup. Before serving add a bunch of chopped cilantro and maybe a dollop of sour cream.

after....

Vote For Change

Shop Runway for Change at the Obama/Biden site. Get 25% off with the code 25OFF. Or don't take the discount at all....

Quick Trip to Pasadena

A quick trip to LA this weekend for a wedding reception gave me the opportunity to utter four words I never thought would leave my mouth: I miss L.A. I really do! It was hot and muggy and smoggy but driving up the 110 I got a real wave of nostalgia for our year of living in Pasadena. Despite the traffic going through downtown.

Any of you who have driven in LA know that the above is not a good example of bad traffic.

On our way home we flew into SFO and took a quick side trip through Daly City to Koi Palace for what is purportedly the city's best dim sum. I've been to Koi Palace twice now and it really is the most complex and interesting Chinese food I've had since moving to the States. And I say that as a resident-in-exile of one of the foremost Chinatowns on the continent, where some of Hong Kong's top dim sum chefs decamped after Hong Kong went back to the China. A few examples:

One of Koi Palace's signature dishes are the coffee spare ribs, which while decidedly not authentic - not that I care about what is authentic - beats any ridiculous fusion invention that you'll ever find in SF's Financial District. See the cream on top? Get the joke? I'll eat anything that tastes like coffee, especially sugary, meaty, fatty spare ribs. From the other side of the tracks:


Tim got this agedashi-tofu-like tofu dish, which we both liked a lot, plus something called "Mexican Rice" (to be seen in the back of the lead picture) and an order of kai lan. T. and I always order the kai lan and in this case the waiter was thoughtful enough to offer to bring the oyster sauce on the side out of consideration for vegetarian T. I really wish I had better access to an Asian supermarket where we are; I'd love to get back into cooking more Chinese greens.

My not-very-adventurous but central reason for going for dim sum: har gow or some variation thereof:

These dumplings had shrimp and scallop in them so they're not strictly speaking har gow but I loved them nonetheless. These are the crab dumplings which I wasn't as crazy about:


Granted, none of these dumplings reach the heights achieved by Din Tai Fung in Arcadia, or even Monterey Park's Ocean Star - the rice noodle is a bit stickier and thicker than I'd like - but they're pretty good especially when you can order them with dishes like the coffee spare ribs, or the peking duck, which I had the last time we went. In fact, as I recall, I ended up eating a half duck alone, over the course of the week. Maybe I shared the skin with Lizzy.

We ended the meal with mango jelly which, to my total delight, they serve with a dish of evaporated milk the way I used to order off the dim sum dessert trollies as a child in Toronto (with canned fruit salad and almond tofu - fabulous).


Jellies are perfect slurped down with hot oolong. Now back to grading.

sparse notes from a busy week (or three)

Artichoke season! Which doesn't apply to me because for the life of me I cannot ever cook these pain-in-the-butt vegetables properly.



More important and fun, it's melon time and T. and I have been dining out on the same cassaba melon for about two weeks. He's on a smoothie kick and we have been getting our 4 servings or whatever in liquid form. Throw in some white nectarines (see background) and you're in smoothie heaven.


We've also been going nuts on heirloom tomatoes and the last of the season's basil, as in these two pictures, taken from Friday's dinner party with visiting family:


This is a local Bulgarian feta that I bought at the new New Leaf in Half Moon Bay, and it's accompanying TWENTY DOLLARS worth of heirlooms, bought to feed a party of eight. We'd done a similar dish the weekend before when Cousin Baby Momma visited and we made our own pesto to go on top.

Besides that, nothing interestingly foodie to report, really. I'm going to have to try and put something up soon or there won't be anything to give away for the holidays....

Nothing Much to Report....

Right so it's a little fuzzy but above you see pictures of my latest preserving project which is called I-have-no-time-to-cook-because-sabbatical-is-over-so-I'm-freezing-everything. Basically what I've been doing is buying a flat of berries every weekend, freezing and then bagging them for the winter so that we have good fruit for our smoothies at least for a few weeks after berries are gone. One day, hopefully, we'll have room for a really big freezer and I can put up enough to last us for a few months, but in the meantime, a couple of flats of frozen strawberries and raspberries will have to do.

We had friends over for dinner on Saturday and out of sheer exhaustion and some awful allergies I could only come up with a really simple meal: chakchouka with lamb sausages (but not merguez! my usual merguez guy wasn't at the market), cheesy orzo topped with truffle oil, arugula salad dressed with walnut oil and this amazing cheese that my local cheesemonger sells, called pecora pistachio. Which is exactly what it sounds like: a sheep's milk cheese with pistachios in it. Divine.

And finally, because I wanted to take them to work tomorrow, I took twenty minutes out of a dreary boatload of administrative writing and whipped up Martha Stewart's black bottom coconut bars. Because that's what I should be eating after twelve hours in front of my computer.

Next up: airport food. I'm seeing a lot of it these days....

Yesterday

I spent yesterday morning at the farmer's market, before getting some terrible news about a colleague. So, today, I just have nothing to say, really. It is strange to see pictures of the world taken before you heard something important had gone out of it. Just as watching the world go by after someone has gone seems profane.

Fittingly, it's fall, and the tomatoes and apples and zucchini blossoms are out. It smells cold these days, and soon we're going to have to light a fire every morning and leave heavy socks next to the bed. I want to eat things that are warm and heavy, and I want to share them with others.