beans – Page 3 – The Kitchen Illiterate

Stuffed Squash galore: Carnivale and Delicata

You might be wondering where the heck my Thanksgiving posts are, and why I didn’t share any perfect recipes for the big day before hand. Honestly, I’m wondering that myself, and all I can do is blame the fact that I am still a grad student and am nearing the end of the semester, and it’s enough that I manage to eat things besides frozen Trader Joe’s burritos. I did make Thanksgiving dinner this year, for the first time, and it was great! And I even have pictures. But who knows how long it will take me to get those photos off my camera and into this blog, so in the meantime, I wanted to share something else I’ve been eating a lot of lately: stuffed squash.

If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, you’ve probably realized that, come fall, I get a little obsessed with squash. I have made southwestern-style stuffed acorn squash, a pancetta bechamel-stuffed spaghetti squash, and man, lately I just can’t seem to stay away from butternut squash. And in the space of two weeks recently I made three different types of stuffed squash.
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3rd Annual Cold Weather Chili Party

I love chili party time. It’s the only thing that makes the encroaching cold weather bearable. (It’s 25 degrees outside right now, folks, and I’m not liking it one bit.) In fact, I suspect this, my last East Coast winter, is going to be particularly difficult, and thus am contemplating a mid-winter chili party, a kind of third and a half annual (huh?) in March, just to make the rest of the cold times bearable.

(Just to give you a sense of how terrible my memory is, I thought that last year’s chili party was held in October…but it was actually in January. I think I block most memories of winter and pretend that any good events from those months really occurred in less treacherous times. That is just my theory.)

Regardless of how cold it is, or what month it is, or any of that unimportant stuff, making chili is one of my favorite wintertime things to do. I have a standard recipe I’ve been making for probably about six or seven years, and it’s pretty close to what my mom made throughout my childhood. But I strayed this year, my friends, I strayed. I made chili without any beans for the first time in my life. And I liked it.
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Moroccan-style Sweet and Smoky Chicken, as advertised

Recipes from friends, recipes from family. Recipes with stories, recipes with memories. Recipes from food bloggers and food magazines and food television. Recipes from ads? I usually get recipes from any source imaginable, but I think this chicken dinner might be the first time I’ve cooked something from an ad in a food magazine (and Green Bean Casserole doesn’t count, because in my mind it’s a recipe that my mom created, not a soup company). In fact, I’m such an anti-advertising fanatic that I’ve mostly trained myself not to see advertising, or at least to pointedly ignore it when I do see it. But flipping through an old issue of Bon Appetit, my eye was caught by a McCormick ad featuring this recipe for Sweet and Smoky Chicken, and I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to make it.

I will have you know, though, that no McCormick spices were used in the preparation of this meal.
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I’m in love with steak burritos.

I’m very firmly against this whole idea that Labor Day somehow signals the end of summer and, more importantly, the end of grilling season. So last weekend, we decided to throw a “Summer’s Not Over Yet” barbecue, to keep the love of the grill alive. Of course, the weather was totally crap: over 90% humidity and rain, rain, rain. But we were not to be daunted. We fired up that grill anyway, and everyone huddled on the back porch and sweated.

I decided to forgo the typical burgers and potato salad route in favor of a Santa Maria-style barbecue. Or rather, a Boston-style Santa Maria-style barbecue, seeing as how some of the staples of the central California coast are unavailable on this side of things, including tri-tip steak and pinquito beans. I have on several occasions expressed my love for the tri-tip, but in my 20-some years of living in California, I’ve never really heard of this traditional Santa Maria barbecue, and I’d certainly never heard of pinquito beans. In the last few weeks, however, I started reading about this California tradition seemingly everywhere, and I knew I had to pay homage, even if my homage was a bit flawed.
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Tuna and White Bean Sandwiches

This past weekend was my birthday, and as usual, I spent a lot of time cooking. Slow-cooked pork seems to be something of a tradition, and this year, I made al pastor-style pork for a Mexican feast. It was crazy delicious, and I promise to tell you all about it once I’ve recovered a bit. But today, still reeling from a busy, adventurous birthday weekend, I wanted something easy, and I hit upon what might be my new favorite sandwich.

About a year ago I read about making tuna sandwiches with mashed cannellini beans instead of mayonnaise, and it sounded like an excellent alternative: a little lighter, maybe, and I can never say no to beans. But it took me awhile to get around to it, which is unfortunate, because it’s a perfect summer sandwich. I know, I know, tuna isn’t perhaps the safest thing to be eating, but I love it, mercury be damned. And on days like today, when my house is so hot and steamy I can barely move, it’s pretty nice not to have to get anywhere near the stove.

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Roasted Butternut Squash and Chickpea Salad

Last week was by far the craziest, busiest week I’ve experienced in grad school. But though I couldn’t find time to share my culinary endeavors here, I was, in fact, endeavoring (er?). And one of those endeavors involved some roasted butternut squash. I saw a recipe for this butternut squash salad on Orangette months ago, and while she may not have been able to hold out for winter to make it, I somehow managed to hold out until winter was almost over (at least, I hope winter is almost over). And honestly, I think this salad is more springy than wintery anyway. Sure, there’s roasted squash in there, but the lemony tahini dressing and the cilantro give this hearty salad a bright, summery taste. Perfect for bridging these last few months of cold, grey Boston.

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Curried Lentil Stew is Not Photogenic

A cup of red lentils

Why is vegetarian food often so unattractive and difficult to photograph? All the vegetables and grains look so beautiful before they’re cooked, but inevitably the outcome is monochromatic mush, and no matter how good it tastes, it refuses to look lovely on film or even to look that appealing in my bowl. Which is a shame. Because this Curried Lentil Stew, which I found at Everybody Likes Sandwiches, is freaking delicious, but I have a feeling that meat-eating manly men like Mr. X would take one look at it and flee. Kale? Mushy lentils? Rice? Noooooo!!!

Well whatever, then, more for me. A lot more for me: This recipe could feed 10 people. It would be a great thing to make before a week when you know you’re going to be really busy, so you could just subsist on this huge bowl of healthy lentils rather than resorting to take out or something horrifically full of sodium and preservatives. In fact, I suspect that I will in future do just that, and I wish I could send a big bowl of it to Miss Crystal in Spain before her next round of finals.

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It’s a Chili Party!

Chili stuff

Crystal has been waiting patiently all week for me to write about the second annual (third?) chili party, which was held last Saturday night. I apologize for the delay, but I got pretty wretchedly sick this week and could barely figure out how to type, let alone think of something interesting to say about chili. I also realized that I never bothered to take a picture of the final product, because I was too busy setting out dishes of cotija and making guacamole and cleaning the living room, which no one even went into anyway. That’s really ok, though, because my chili pretty much always looks the same, so you can just check out the pictures from the last time I made chili and you’re good to go.

To be honest, my chili wasn’t even the star of the show. Mr. X made an awesome pulled pork chili, and Laurent and Jen showed up with venison chili (!) accompanied by homemade biscuit bowls (!!) and toasted cumin crema (!!!). It was all marvelous.

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Guest Bloggity Blogger: Christa’s Turkey Chili Rice

Turkey Chili Rice

Don’t worry readers, Laura will return shortly for the next posting! This is the roommate, Christa, coming at you to report on my culinary undertakings this week. We eat well around here.

My story begins on a lazy Saturday afternoon when I had nothing to do and realized my love affair with the Food Network has been grossly neglected. I flipped the television on and settled in for an episode of Guy’s Big Bite (for you FN devotees, he’s the dude who won the Next Food Network Star Challenge a while back). He was doing a bunch of stuff with turkey, and one recipe in particular caught my eye and called to my growling stomach. I’ve been known to enjoy both chili and rice on their own, so how could a meal that combines the two be bad, I thought? Well, as we all soon discovered, it can’t.

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Black Bean and Butternut Squash Soup

Squash Bean Soup

What a minute. Am I actually posting something the day after I cook it, instead of waiting for one or two (or three) weeks before I finally find the time to get around to it? How is this happening? Don’t I have other things I should be doing? Well, yes. Yes I do. But this soup was so delicious, and it’s so perfect for fall, and I’m eating the leftovers for lunch right now, so I decided to take some time out of my way-too-busy day to share. But I’m not sharing the leftovers. Those are mine.

I actually stole this recipe, or at least the inspiration for it, from Smitten Kitchen. And I noticed that the lovely Everybody Likes Sandwiches made it, as well. Maybe this soup will become the new No-Knead Bread. On second thought, although it’s clearly very versatile, it’s not nearly as easy as No-Knead Bread. You might have to be pretty dedicated to both squash and beans to take the time for this soup. And I am both.

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