Tamales in the 'Shire

Ever feel like you're just hanging around, waiting to see what will happen next in your life? Things aren't necessarily bad, but the whole time you're walking around with this queasy feeling - you can almost sense that a big change is coming and you're not sure if it'll be for the good. Or maybe your life looks kind of like this:

Plenty of room for the wind to blow through, but at least the roof's still on!

And then one day you wake up to find that it now looks like this:



Buh-bye.


Well, maybe I'm over-dramatizing. At least, that's a picture of what life has felt like the past few days, whenever I allowed myself think about things. You know, it's true what they say: thinking is highly overrated.

As usual, I turned to food to take my mind off the harder stuff. Tamales, specifically. And hibiscus tea, but more on that later. Tamales always make me think of my hometown. I'm actually not sure why, since I don't think we really ate them very often growing up, and we definitely didn't make them. But plenty of people did, and sold them frozen by the bag. I bet they still do.

My tamales are always an improvisation. I basically follow the directions on the side of the Maseca bag, but I don't use lard, and I don't fill them with shredded pork. The filling just depends on what I've got lying around the house, and this time, I filled them with....drumroll please... collard greens! And sharp cheddar cheese and pickled jalapenos and carrots. And they were AMAZING!!!

I brought them to a meeting of Dining For Women and the ladies were very pleased. I also made some garlicky black beans in the pressure cooker to spoon over the tamales. Added some avocado, and I'm pretty sure we achieved Mexican food bliss.

Here's how I made them, along with some step-by-step photos since the side of the Maseca bag doesn't include pictures.

Tamales for about 8-10 people:

If you're going to make the same filling I made, the first thing to do is cook the collard greens. Wash them, cut into smallish pieces, then dump into a medium pot with about 2 inches of water in the bottom. Cover, bring to a boil and simmer about 45 minutes. This step is best done ahead of time and here is a warning: while they cook your house will smell a bit like wet dog.

Take a bag of dry corn husks (found in a Mexican grocery) and soak the husks in water in a large bowl. There are usually around 16 husks. While they soak, prepare the tamales.

Mix well:

• 4 cups Maseca or other brand of tamale flour (it's made from corn soaked in lime)
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt

Pour in and mix with a spatula or your hands (traditional) to make a soft dough:

• 4 cups lukewarm vegetable broth

In a separate bowl, beat until creamy:

• 1 cup softened butter
• 1/3 cup canola oil

Add the butter mixture to the flour mixture and beat until it's fully incorporated. Set the bowl aside while you finish the filling. To make the filling, you will need the collard greens, plus:

• 2 garlic cloves, pressed
• 1 pound shredded extra sharp cheddar cheese
• 1 small can pickled jalapenos, drained

In a medium skillet, saute the garlic in a bit of olive or canola oil for a minute on medium-low heat:

Add the pre-cooked collard greens (drained well) and stir well with the garlic. Add about 1/4 tsp salt. Cook for about 5-10 minutes until it smells good. Set aside to cool briefly.

Shred the cheese. I like to do this with the food processor to speed things along. Actually, what I do is first puree the jalepenos in the processor, then I just add the cheese a few chunks at a time until it's all shredded.

Remove the cheese from the processor and mix it in a large bowl with the collard greens.

Take a corn husk and lay it down flat. Spoon out maybe 1/3 cup of tamale dough and press down into the center of the husk. Take a large spoonful of filling and flatten it out down the middle. Looks like this:

Take about 1/4 cup of tamale dough and press onto the top of the filling to cover it. Begin to fold the corn husk up on the sides to shape the dough so it will seal in the filling, like this:

Like putting on a baby's diaper. Minus the screaming.

Fold up the sides, then the top and bottom of the corn husk. It will not want to stay closed, so hold it all together with your fingers until you can lay it folded side down in the pot. The pot should be wide, have about an inch of water in the bottom, and have a stainless steel strainer or ideally, one of those collapsible steel vegetable steamers in the bottom so that the tamales won't fall into the water. If you don't have a lid, you will need to use aluminum foil to seal in the steam. Repeat the steps above to make each tamale and keep layering them in the pot (or use two pots if you run out of room) until all the dough and filling is gone.



To bed you go, my sweets!



Turn the heat to high so that the water comes to a boil, then turn down to low with the cover on. The tamales should steam for at least 1-1/2 hours, but I usually do 2 hours since it's a large batch.

Note: When you take them out, the tamales will be very hot. Also, if you try to eat them right away, they will want to fall apart. It's far more satisfying, if you can control yourself, to let them rest for about a half hour in the husks, and then when you open them up the little bundles will be nicely firm and are sure to impress those lucky enough to be dining with you!

And finally, the beverage - hibiscus tea. At least that's what I've always called it - though the label says "Flor de Jamaica" and the tea, which is tart and quite red, bears a very close resemblence to a sweetened drink I enjoyed while traveling in Francophone West Africa (Burkina, Cote d'Ivoire, etc.). That drink was called "bissap", apparently from the bissap flower, whatever that is. Another close cousin to this drink is one that is served hot and highly sweetened in Egypt, where it is actually called hibiscus tea.

Hey, wait! Stop the presses! I looked up bissap on wikipedia just now and would you believe it, it actually is all the same thing! How did I know this? It's astonishing how sometimes you can be talking out of your you-know-what, and you actually do get it right. Wow, I am shocked. Anyway, whatever you call it and however you found out about it, this tea is definitely a perfect drink to go along with your tamales. And I have to say, it's not too bad spiked with vodka or made into a white wine spritzer, either. Cheers!

Socca! + 2 Grain Salads

As someone who deeply appreciates the vast array of edible flavors and textures that abound on this planet, I've learned to pay attention when someone gets really excited about a particular food. Especially when it's vegan and gluten-free. So when I was innocently searching the 'net for a way to (finally) finish off my years-old bag of chickpea flour and ran across a highly enthusiastic blogpost about "socca" on http://chezpim.com/uncategorized/socca_nice, I immediately cleared off the counter and got down to making it.

Never mind that I had never even heard of socca before, despite having spent quality time in the area where it originates. How did I miss this on the streets of Nice, given that its scent while cooking is like melted butter wafting through the air. My oldest daughter described it as the smell of "that unhealthy popcorn that comes in a box at the movies and has fake orange stuff on it but tastes really really good!" - a major compliment. (Clearly, she has picked up my sometime ambivalence about eating healthy, natural food vs. food that has been engineered to appeal to our most basic tastebuds...if you don't believe me just put a peanut butter snickers in front of me and see how long it lasts.)

Our whole family loved socca from the start. We loved it hot and crispy out of the oven. We loved it soft and slightly chewy after it had cooled. We loved it the next day reheated in the toaster oven and even in the microwave. It was good dipped into garlicky yogurt (Greek tzatziki), it was great dipped into salsa, and it was an excellent wrapper for tabbouleh. The taste is like the most delicious buttered corn tortilla fresh off the griddle, but with more protein and no need to use a tortilla press.



Socca - doesn't look like much but is highly, highly yum.



Guess who got the last piece!

If you're still not motivated enough to try making it yourself, just consider how simple the ingredients are: chickpea flour, salt, water, olive oil. All you need is a whisk and a round cake pan. So go ahead, check out the website I mentioned above and give it a try (sorry for no direct link to the page, but I'm trying to clean up a spam issue on the blog - way too many visitors coming from an adult dating site in Russia!). Anyway, you can make a few socca, refrigerate the batter, and make some more another day. Or make a bunch at once and keep them in the fridge for later in the week. Oh, and if you're wondering where the heck to buy chickpea flour, Bob's Red Mill may have it alongside their other specialty flours at the grocery store. But chickpea flour is sure to be even cheaper at Indian food stores, where it's called besan. It stays fresh for a looooong time in the pantry, if my experience is anything to go on.

On the other hand, if you absolutely cannot force yourself to remain in the hot kitchen long enough to cook a batch of socca (and believe me, I understand), here are two lovely cold grain salads that might appeal. One is a tabbouleh recipe from Ina Garten (http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/tabbouleh-recipe/index.html). It makes a lot so I usually cut it in half or plan to serve it to a crowd. Love that she includes mint and cucumber - they really brighten up what can otherwise be a dense salad.

Tzatziki, tabbouleh, socca - I think we pretty much covered the Mediterranean on this plate.

The other salad involves quinoa and edamame beans. Quinoa is that high-protein Aztec grain from Peru that became trendy a couple years ago. When cooked, white quinoa always reminds me of embryos but I try not to think about it too much. This salad is loosely based on a popular deli item we have at the store. It's interesting: our customers may be fairly well-heeled and I would presume, well-educated, but obviously no one has ever dared tell them how to say quinoa properly - (keen-wah). I do my best to clear up the matter without making anybody feel embarrassed. They seem to be grateful and order it by the pound.

The way I make this salad is to cook the quinoa early in the morning while I'm making breakfast, then it goes into the fridge until evening. Five minutes to steam the edamame, a quick whisk of the dressing, and a few downstrokes of the knife pulled over whatever greens, herbs and flowers I've harvested from the garden. Voila!



Quinoa and Edamame Salad with nasturtiums, chard, basil

  Quinoa and Edamame Salad

• 1 cup quinoa, well-rinsed in a sieve
• 2 cups water

Bring the water to a boil, add the quinoa and turn down to simmer with the lid on. Cook 13 minutes, then dump the cooked grains into a covered glass dish and refrigerate.

• 1cup frozen edamame (green soybeans)

Steam the edamame according to the package directions. Add to the cooked quinoa.

Optional add-ins, as you like:

• a few large chard or lacinato kale or spinach leaves
• a few green or purple basil leaves or watercress or cilantro
• nasturtium flowers

Sliver and toss with the rest of the salad.

Dressing:

• 1 lime, juiced
• however much lime juice you get, the equivalent amount of extra virgin olive oil
• 1/2 tsp salt, more to taste
• fresh ground pepper, or red chili flakes

Whisk together and pour over salad, then toss well before serving cold or at room temperature.

Happy Eating! Socca! (I just love saying it. I think it's going to be my new "Cheers!" when we toast.)



Gratuitious picture of the big birthday girl! (yes, we had to use matches for candles this time - not recommended)



Choco Pudding + Muumuu Mishmash

Still not a whole lotta cooking going on in these parts... this happens to me every summer. It's ironic - all this fresh produce piling up in the fridge and I simply can't be bothered to spend much time in the kitchen. Instead we've been swimming in our local pond, attending the many free cultural events here in the Berkshires, reading long books and just generally hanging out. Oh yeah, plus there's that little triathalon thing I've been trying to get ready for. Thank goodness for the exta long days of summer!

View from the Kripalu footpath to the Stockbridge Bowl



Relaxing in front of Norman Rockwell's studio



With little cooking going on, it seems that one thing we've been eating fairly regularly is cold chocolate pudding. Which I don't feel toooo bad about, considering the only ingredients are tofu and chocolate chips. Yes, you read right: 2 ingredients. And it's so easy to make: first you dump one of those boxes of silken tofu (Mori-Nu is the brand I usually see at most grocery stores) into a food processor. Puree it until creamy, then add 3/4 cup melted chocolate chips and puree some more. Yum, yum - layered with whipped cream, or fresh berries, bananas, peanut butter, fresh mint, or in a pie crust... This recipe is not my invention and honestly, I don't even remember who first told me about it, but show up at any vegan potluck and I guarantee you there will be tofu chocolate pudding. It's just one of those axioms of life.



About 15 lbs of berries. Every year, we vow to pick even more - they are so good!



Well, as I said I haven't been in the kitchen much, but I have been spending plenty of time in the cool basement of our house since we don't have air conditioning. The basement has become our family's all-purpose creative space - it's where we've set up the workshop, craft table, painting easel, sewing machine, etc. So after a few days of staring at all the sewing projects I've had piled up since wintertime, I finally got up the courage to tackle The Muumuu.

Originally, I picked up this vintage dress because of its huge, Georgia O'Keefe-like flowers on a neon orange background. Wowie zowie!!! Also, it's 100% cotton, is from my favorite decade ('60s) and was made in Hawaii! But as much as I loved its potential, I'd been avoiding The Muumuu because I was afraid I'd make something dumb out of it and waste that lovely fabric.



The Muumuu:
Business in the front...



Party in the back.
Seriously, what's with the extra fabric layer??







It was at the point where I thought I would just to open it up and make big throw pillows, but thankfully at the last minute I had another inspiration instead. With just a little creativity, a lot of time spent communing with my seam ripper, and the patience to conquer two of my long-time sewing fears (installing garment zippers and gathering), I managed to transform one problematic dress into three cute ones! So the girls and I now have matching outfits. Cheesy, I know, but they are thrilled to be matchy matchy and I am (mostly) able to swallow my embarrassment at attracting extra attention in public.

Next time I promise to have more to offer in the way of summer recipes. Somebody's got to use up all these vegetables! Hope you're enjoying these hot days and taking advantage of all that summer has to offer.

A Little Healthy Color: Kale + Beet Salads

Feeling oh-so-grateful this week for an abundance of sunshine and time with my family. Especially since I just finished watching the film Wit, in which Emma Thompson portrays an isolated poetry professor being treated for advanced stage ovarian cancer. Pretty heavy stuff for a Friday night, but the house was quiet and it was just what I needed after a busy week of frolicking and refereeing children. My takeaway from the movie is that in the end, it all boils down to the human connections in our lives helping to prepare us for our ultimate connection with the Creator. Something to consider when we are struggling with the people around us, you know?

Well, moving on to food... lately I haven't done much inspired cooking - more like a bunch of thrown-together meals - but I haven't heard any complaints. No complaints from the big guy, anyway; the girls' nightly dinner complaints are pro forma and I would be highly suspicious if they suddenly began eating their dinner vegetables with a smile. Although there is the exception of kale salad, a favorite of the big girl. And beet salad, a favorite of the little girl. Since both of these vegetables are so exceptionally good for us and seriously delicious, this week I wanted to share our favorite methods for preparing them. Perhaps these dishes might help balance the creamy potato salad and hot dogs that tend to dominate summer meals...

The kale salad below is an adaptation of a recipe Mollie Katzen has on her website. It's kind of a funny story how I ended up on that website in the first place. I'd had a Moosewood cookbook for years (the low-fat one, a giveaway from my mom who said she hated the cookbook, ha!) and I had made nearly everything in it, but somehow I just never heard of Mollie Katzen, one of the founders of the Moosewood collective and a popular vegetarian cookbook author. Then one day I was taking a walk during my lunch hour on the campus of Harvard University, and saw a bunch of people going to this lecture about food so I joined them, and there was Mollie! She had flown in from California to talk with the University community about how to use fresh herbs, and was preparing dishes up on stage, and there was this whole catered lunch that used her recipes...Harvard spends its money in interesting ways sometimes. So I got all pumped up about frying sage and growing lovage, and spent the rest of the afternoon back at my desk, covertly surfing Mollie's website for more recipes.

Sorry no food pics today - just one of those weeks where we were too busy living life to document it much. With the exception of this fellow I recently noticed near one of my favorite kayaking spots:

Old dude of the forest

And this one, taken by big girl:



Lovely surprise perennials at our new house



Tuscan Kale Salad

Take a bunch of kale, any type, and stack the leaves on the cutting board. Slice the leaves into 1/4" shreds, then place in a salad spinner, rinse with water and give them a whirl to dry off. Place in a large bowl.

Take a small piece of bread and toast it, then puree in the processor until you have coarse crumbs. Place the crumbs in a small bowl along with 1/2 cup fresh grated parmesan cheese, 1 pressed garlic clove, 1/4 tsp salt, the juice of 1 lemon, and about 4 T extra virgin olive oil. Mix it all together and using your clean hands (or gloves), massage the crumb-cheese mixture into the kale shreds, making sure they are evenly coated. Taste and add more oil, lemon, cheese or salt if needed. The salad can be eaten at room temp or chilled.

The beet salad is more of a treatment than an actual recipe. At the specialty food store where I work occasionally, we have a salad like this in the deli case and it is seriously popular. I used to bring it home for me and the little girl to devour, then one day I realized it really wasn't such a big deal to cook beets myself. So now anytime I'm in the kitchen making something, I just stick a pot of water on to boil and set the timer for about 40 minutes so a few beets can simmer on the back fo the stove. I find that if I have a container of already cooked beets hanging out in the fridge, I'm much more likely to serve them than if I have to start from scratch.

Beet Salad
Wash several beets and trim their stem to 1 inch. Place beets in a medium-sized pot and fill it with enough water to cover them. Cover the pot, bring water to a boil, then turn heat to low so that it simmers gently. After about 30 minutes, use a fork to stab the largest beet. If it goes all the way through, drain the water and place the beets in a covered glass dish in the refrigerator. Cook for about 10 minutes longer if the beets need more time, then check again.

The salad can be prepared while beets are still hot, in fact the dressing will be absorbed nicely that way, but you can also just take them from the fridge whenever you are ready to make the salad. Either way, you can use your fingers or a vegetable peeler to remove the outer skin. Dishwashing gloves are nice if you don't want pink fingernails. Cut the beets in half, then into slices. Thinly slice a Vidalia onion or half of a yellow onion and place in the bowl with the beets. If you have it, chop up some parsely for a little color.

The dressing is a simple viniagrette. I like to use either apple cider or white wine vinegar (1 part) with extra virgin olive oil (3 parts). A shake of salt and pepper and you are good to go. They are best served at room temp so the oil isn't congealed.