vegetarian – The Kitchen Illiterate

Dorie’s Cheese Souffle

Whew. The last two weeks, nay, the past month has been crazy nuts. We have been BUSY. There’s been traveling, and hiking, and visiting with friends and family. There’s been working and more working. There has been stress, but thankfully, there has also been plenty of laughter to alleviate some of it, and there has also been some darn good food here and there along the way.

Like this souffle. I made this weeks ago, right before things got hectic, and I’ve been waiting, sometimes less than patiently, to share it with you. If you’ve ever thought of making a souffle, and pushed the idea aside thinking it’s too hard, think again. I, too, left my souffle dreams unfulfilled because I thought I wasn’t up to the task. They have a reputation as demanding and persnickety, and I’m not always good with persnickety. But this was surprisingly easy. And wow, delightful. It made an ordinary Sunday night dinner feel so special.
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Turnip Soup with Greens from Greens

I have recently become a little bit addicted to cookbooks. Awhile ago, I realized (duh) that I could check them out from the library, and decided that was an excellent way to test drive a book to see if I would really cook from it before shelling out the big bucks. Of course, what I discovered is that I’m very likely to fall in love with a book, even if the likelihood it would make its way off the shelf often is nill. That’s what happened with The Greens Cookbook, by Deborah Madison and Edward Espe Brown.
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Kale Paneer

One thing about moving back to California that has been really amazing is living close to my family again. I grew up in San Diego, and my parents, my oldest brother, my sister-in-law, and my niece (along with aunts and uncles and cousins) still live there. My youngest brother, as well as aunts and uncles and cousins, live here in the Bay Area. So I get to see family a lot more often than I did when I was entrenched in the snow on the other side of the country. About a month ago, my youngest brother graduated from college, and a mess of family drove up to celebrate. We had a weekend full of laughter and, as always when Kriers are involved, great food. Including this home cooked Indian food dinner on Saturday night.
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Winter Vegetable Stew with Rosemary Biscuits

My kitchen has been a bit quiet lately. I’ve been feeling a little down, and often when that happens, I start to rely on those culinary staples that are simple, and basic, and designed to make sadness feel a little lighter: minestrone, pizza, big pots of lentils. Macaroni and cheese is right around the corner, I can feel it.

This root vegetable stew is just right for sad, grey winter days. It’s warming and hearty, and fluffy biscuits are the very definition of comfort food. Plus, it’s easy, and allows for plenty of time to sit on the couch watching re-runs of your favorite television shows while it burbles away on the stove.
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Shakshuka!

When I was growing up, eggs for dinner were usually a sign that money was tight. Maybe my brothers and I needed dental work that month, or we’d just had to go shopping for new clothes and school supplies, or the car has broken down. As a child, I wasn’t completely aware of my parents’ financial situation, but I could usually read the dinner table to to get a sense for how comfortable we were at any given point. And even more so by whether my parents were joking about it, or serving us pancakes at night with grim faces. We weren’t by any means poor, but my parents were young, and just getting started out in life. There were times when eggs for dinner were a necessity.
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Pumpkin Seed Cilantro Pesto

I’m not alone in finding myself trying to eat better in January. I read a lot of food blogs, and I think at least half of them are talking about embracing the vegetable (the other half are valiantly clinging to their chocolate and bacon, shouting a battle cry against dieting). I’m not a dieter, I wholeheartedly disagree with the idea of limiting your food intake for a specified period of time in the hopes of losing weight. First, it’s not healthy, and “losing weight” is a dubious goal. And second, I don’t have that much willpower. But even I have to admit that after the holidays, I was feeling a little sugared out. I needed to get back to the healthy eating habits I’d more or less adopted over the last two years. I knew a lengthy visit to the produce department was in order, but I was having a hard time planning meals that didn’t involve butter. It was like I’d forgotten how.

If you know me, you know I’m a huge fan of plans. I love lists and schedules and charts. And as much as I hate to admit it, I like those detailed features in fitness magazines that tell you what to eat and when (and by the way, how do those magazines get away with calling themselves fitness magazines?). When I saw the Bon Appetit Food Lover’s Cleanse for 2012, I was instantly drawn to it.
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Squash and Swiss Chard Pasta Bake

We spent Thanksgiving weekend with my family in San Diego, and although I had some kind of notion that I would have something to share with you all here, I slipped firmly into vacation mode when I got down there, and barely even touched my laptop the whole weekend. I was far to busy being entertained by my favorite little person. I did cook Thanksgiving dinner with my brothers, as usual (they smoked a turkey this year!), but I didn’t get as intense about the meal as I have in the past. I didn’t come up with a cooking schedule, I didn’t try to manage every corner of the kitchen, I didn’t even have recipes for some of the side dishes we made. And while things might not have come out to the table as perfect as a Martha Stewart photo shoot, I was considerably more relaxed than usual. And that was definitely something to be grateful for (so was that smoked turkey; it was incredible).

We drove back on Saturday, and the drive was not so much something to be grateful for. I think in the future I’ll be much more willing to fly home for Thanksgiving; the traffic could have been worse, certainly. But my back still hurts from 10 hours in the car. And as soon as we got home, we were thrown into a very busy week. I’m just glad my mom sent me home with leftovers, because otherwise we wouldn’t really have anything to eat.
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Sweet Potato Black Bean Enchiladas

I’ve made many enchiladas in my life, but I always make them the same way. There is usually chicken, and definitely refried beans. There is always cheese. And the enchilada sauce comes from a can. These are terrific enchiladas.

I’ve also cooked many sweet potatoes in my life. They are almost always roasted, either whole or cubed, tossed with oil and salt. They get stirred into rice, or baked in gratins, or mixed into soup. They find their way to salads. I love me some roasted sweet potatoes.

I have never thought to combine these things. But last weekend, I did. And I did not regret it. The enchilada became something wholly new, something a little bit healthier, and full of flavors I never thought I would find there. Sweet potatoes love enchiladas. They love beans and chiles. How have I kept them apart for so long?
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Squash and Broccoli Pasta

I’m a recipe person. I love to read cookbooks and cooking magazines, and I love to read recipes. I like the lists of ingredients, the step-by-step instructions, and the implicit promise that if you follow the directions, you’ll have something to show for it. Of course, I rarely follow recipes exactly as written, but more often than not, when I’m cooking there is a magazine (or a laptop) open on the kitchen table for reference. Some people are not like this: They make things up as they go along, working largely from instinct, and they aren’t interested in collecting page upon page of cooking instruction. I’d like to think the process of learning to cook, at least for me, is largely about working toward some place in the middle.

As I learn, and gather experience under my apron strings (if I ever remembered to wear an apron), I get more comfortable leaving the recipes on the shelf. And I find some of my favorite times in the kitchen come when I read a handful of recipes and use them as inspiration, cobbling them together in my mind into a single, successful dish. Unfortunately, sometimes the results of these attempts are something less than successful. Sometimes improvisation results in stress, in burned things, under-seasoned things, uninteresting things. I try to remind myself that these flops are just part of the learning process.
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Tomato Soup and Grilled Cheese

I got kind of sick this weekend, which always takes me by surprise. I very rarely get sick, and when I do, it hardly feels bad enough to make me stay home and ride it out on the couch. But this one did. For two days I was congested and coughing and aching and, well, ok, whining. And I wanted only one thing: tomato soup and grilled cheese.
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