Penultimate Pea

So, I cooked lentils for the first time the other night. I like to think that Ryan and I eat pretty well, but unfortunately that doesn't necessarily mean we eat healthfully (what can I say, I like butter. and cheese. and potatoes. and pasta. mmmmmm). I was a picky eater and notorious vegetable hater for much of my life (which made the seven years I was a vegetarian a bit tricky!), and over the past few years I've been trying to make a conscious effort to eat more and a greater variety of vegetables. So Wednesday night, in a fit of adventurous optimism, I decided to make this recipe for Sausage and Lentils with Fennel. The lentils smelled a little healthy as I was cooking them, but I pressed on. It looked okay when I was done with it:

And the flavors were a good, interesting mix. But I only made it through a few bites before I had to admit defeat. I think there were just too many different textures for my delicate palate: the oily, crumbly sausage, the soft sauteed vegetables, the tender-but-not-mushy lentils…but I think what really did it were the dry, feathery fennel fronds sprinkled on top. They were just too much for me.

But I was still hungry. So, I did the only logical thing—I made brownies.

Brownies

4 oz. semisweet chocolate
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 tsp instant espresso powder (optional)
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
2 Tbs cocoa powder
3/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 tsp baking powder

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Grease and flour an 8x8inch pan. Break the chocolate up and put in a medium-sized microwave safe bowl. Cut butter into pieces and add to chocolate. Microwave in thirty-second increments, stirring between each, for about a minute and a half. The butter should be completely melted, but there should still be visible pieces of chocolate; stir until the hot butter has melted all the chocolate and the mixture is uniform. Add espresso powder, vanilla, and brown sugar and stir well. Add eggs and mix until incorporated. Add cocoa powder (you might want to sift it), flour, salt, and baking powder and stir gently until all are incorporated and no streaks of flour remain. Pour into pan and bake for about 30 minutes. Allow to cool for at least 15 minutes before cutting. Or, if you're like me, allow to cool for about three minutes and then scoop hot brownie over a bowl of vanilla ice cream. Mmmmmm.

So, the past few days have been a blur of cookie madness. I've got two batches done and four more doughs just waiting to be rolled/sliced/shaped/baked. I'm sure I have chocolate under my nails and I wouldn't be surprised if I've got peanut butter in my hair. It has been cookie madness, I tell you.

But everything's been going pretty well, the cookies are delicious so far, I'm on schedule and I would be all set with lovely overflowing packages of homemade cookies for all twenty-five of Ryan's relatives this weekend. If, that is, we hadn't gotten a foot of snow dumped on us this afternoon and another huge storm set to come in on Saturday night. It's looking highly unlikely that we'll be heading out to Boston on Sunday. I can freeze the doughs that I haven't baked yet and save them for a potential future get-together with the family (or just many many nights of fresh baked cookies here at home), but that still leaves me with, oh, about three hundred ginger almond crisps and mint chocolate snowflakes. I guess if we do get totally snowed in we won't go hungry.

Ginger Almond Crisps
This is a very slight adaptation of a Martha Stewart recipe. I've omitted the crystallized ginger and used less lemon zest than called for. These are delicate, subtle cookies, better suited to tea than coffee; slicing them very thinly is key.

1 cup sliced almonds
3 ½ cups flour
1 cup sugar
1 Tbs ground ginger
1 tsp fresh lemon zest
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks)
½ cup molasses
1 tsp vanilla

1. Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Spread almonds in a single layer on a baking sheet. Bake until golden, 5 to 10 minutes. Remove almonds to a shallow bowl to cool. Turn off oven.

2. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine flour, sugar, ginger, lemon zest, baking soda, and cinnamon. Add butter, molasses, and vanilla extract, and beat until combined. Stir in almonds.

3. Divide dough in half. Shape each half into a 7-by-3-inch rectangle about 1 1/4 inches thick. Wrap in plastic, and refrigerate until very firm, about 2 hours.

4. Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Line baking sheets with Silpats or parchment paper.

5. Using a sharp knife, cut rectangles crosswise into very thin slices, thinner than 1/8" if possible. Arrange on prepared baking sheets 1/2 inch apart. Bake until just beginning to darken around edges, 8 to 10 minutes. Transfer crisps to wire racks to cool.

ganache covered chocolate cheesecake with marzipan leaves and acorns

laundry's always more fun with a folding partner…

just make sure your partner doesn't eat the socks!

After a mostly lazy day yesterday, I got a little crazy with cooking. I made bratwurst with creamy apple compote and green beans for dinner. And then I made butternut squash gratin with goat cheese and hazelnuts to have for lunch today. And, I finally cooked the hen that had been in the freezer for…um, six months? There's a good story behind this hen:

At the last restaurant where I worked, there was a very sweet middle-aged woman from El Salvador named Mirna. Often she and I were the only people in the restaurant in the very early morning. It was cold in there before the ovens got going (one time the water in the toilet froze!), and quiet, and though Mirna's English is fairly limited, we did manage to bond in those calm morning hours. She would tell me about the city where she grew up, about her family, about the kind of things they cooked in El Salvador, and I would try to answer in my halting high school Spanish. I remember one morning when I was still newly pregnant, long before I'd told anyone at work, and was feeling sick, Mirna shared one of the tamales she'd brought from home; it was sweet and creamy and the warm mix of bananas and cinnamon was just the thing I needed to settle my stomach.

Mirna was very excited about my pregnancy, and sweetly maternalistic. She was always right behind me if I started to lift something she considered too heavy and would take over before I even had time to protest. I would bring in ultrasound pictures and she marveled over them; sonography wasn't around when she'd had her own children. When Mirna found out I was having a boy she was very pleased and thought that it was very good fortune. She said in her country, if you have a boy, you're given a hen. If you have a girl, well, you get nothing. So, she gave me a hen! She said I should make soup with it, and though it took me a really long time to get around to it, that's what I did.

I simmered the hen with the tops of three leeks, a handful of carrots, an onion cut in half (skin and all), a few cloves of garlic, two ribs of celery, a few sprigs of sage, a handful of fresh parsley, and some dried thyme. I strained the broth, picked the meat from the bird and added it back in, along with some fresh carrots, onion & celery, a little parsley, and a few handfuls of little star-shaped pastini. I think it might be the tastiest soup I've ever had.

And then, it being 11:30 at night, I figured why the hell not? and made some pumpkin maple pots de creme. I could've kept going but thought I should probably try to get a little sleep.

Today all the grandparents came over; Ryan's parents helped us rake while my parents watched the boy, and then we all had lunch together. After lunch, Ry and I took the babe into Northampton to look at some open houses (both overpriced and didn't really match our needs), then we visited some friends who have a two month old daughter. Phew! A pretty perfect weekend, tiring but wonderful; hope yours was great too.

I was never much of a breakfast eater (okay, except for the four years that I worked at a cafe and regularly ate one (or two!) bagels for breakfast, in addition to the bowl of cereal that I'd had at home). And I used to hate oatmeal. I could never understand why my sister and brother liked the disgusting, mushy mess. Not Martha turned me on to steel cut oats (Irish Oatmeal) a while back, but it wasn't until a few months ago that I really got into it.

Steel cut oats are chopped (as opposed to instant oats, which are rolled and steamed), so their texture is chewier and they have a nuttier flavor. Unfortunately, they also take longer to cook (about 30 minutes), so I make a big batch once a week and reheat them each morning. It's a bit absurd how much I like breakfast now -- I actually look forward to eating my oats every morning, and even had them for dessert once! Oatmeal is also really healthy (especially for breastfeeding moms), and sooo much cheaper than boxed cereal. The recipe below makes four servings, but I usually double it to last me a whole week.

Irish Oatmeal

1 Tbs butter
a pinch of salt (leave out if your butter is salted)
1 cup steel cut oats
4 cups water
1/4 cup wheat germ (I like it toasted)
1/4 cup ground flax seed
extra water

for serving:
milk
bananas
chopped walnuts
maple syrup

Put the water on to boil. Meanwhile, melt the butter over medium heat in a large saucepan. Turn the heat to medium-high, add the oats and cook, stirring frequently, until toasted and fragrant (maybe three minutes?) When the water has boiled, add it to the pot (be careful, it will bubble up). Turn the heat down so that the mixture is at a simmer, bubbling only around the edges, and cook for about thirty minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the wheat germ and flax seed and stir; add more water to make it the desired consistency (I think I add about another cup). Eat immediately, or put in a big ol' container in the fridge to save for later.

Reheating:
Spoon some oatmeal into a bowl (it will be pretty thick) and add milk (maybe 1/4 cup), microwave for two minutes (depending on your microwave, obviously). Stir to mix milk and oatmeal and top with sliced bananas, chopped walnuts, and maple syrup. Yum!

Some other ideas for oatmeal toppings:
dried cranberries with toasted pecans
blueberries and brown sugar with sliced almonds
chocolate chips and chopped hazelnuts