Raviolis + BIO101 = Time

This is likely going to be my last blogpost for a while. The one thing I have had most in abundance this past year - free time - will soon be greatly reduced, and I don't like to do things halfway. But you know, that's the thing about abundance: often you can't predict when it will appear on your doorstep, and you don't usually get to decide how long you'll have it. It is a gift, and as I've been reflecting lately, the gifts we tend to appreciate most are the fleeting ones. Things (and people, and experiences) apart from the ordinary, are less easily taken for granted. Of course our daily challenge is to try to take nothing for granted, for there are no guarantees in life. At any rate, this week, likely to be my last one for a long while where the only thing I really have to do is take good care of my family, I finally dug out the bag of semolina flour that's been sitting in the pantry for oh, about a year now. A year during which I've had plenty of time to use it but never did. I guess that's just how these things sometimes go.

Red Pepper and Goat Cheese Raviolis with Creamy Spinach Walnut Sauce

It was my first experience making pasta and all I had to go on was the recipe on the back of the semolina bag, but I have to say it was pretty darn easy. Made extra easy, actually, by a recent hand-me-down gift of the sort I've long coveted: a KitchenAid stand mixer with dough hook! I wasn't totally sure how much use I'd actually get out of this kind of appliance but it performed ten minutes of kneading while I cleaned up the dishes, how cool is that? After that, I tried to roll out the dough using a nifty little device we found left behind in our new house about seven years ago. It never saw the light of day in my kitchen, yet I carried it with me to two more houses, determined to use it eventually. Well today was the day. Maybe I did something wrong, but the pasta just didn't want to come out of the place it should have, making a gooey mess on the rollers. So I resorted to the old rolling pin and in the process, found out that durum wheat is pretty cool to work with, thanks to its extra-high gluten content - it just stretches and stretches...



Away to the transfer station with you!

See the blue mixer peeking out its head - love it!



This really was a fun project. I should have started making raviolis years ago - why didn't I ever try it before? Fact is, it's the one menu item that ever gets me into Italian restaurants, since everything else they have that's vegetarian is something I could just make at home. Ricotta-stuffed manicotti, lasagna with bechemel sauce, pasta e fagioli, garlic breadsticks: easy. Light little pillows filled with tasty insides sitting in a creamy sauce: not so easy (or so I thought). And I can't stand the raviolis sold in the grocery store, frozen or fresh. They are such a disappointment if you really love fresh ravioli. But that's all behind me now. I've made two batches (froze the second one) and am never looking back.

FYI - all in all, it takes about an hour to make the dough and filling, form the raviolis and cook them if you work straight through. And this recipe serves maybe 3 hungry people, so double it if you want leftovers! You could always just make little orecchiette (ear-shaped) pasta if you don't want to roll it all out. The girls did that with the leftover bits and had a grand time eating them with butter after I threw them in the pot with the raviolis.

Pasta Dough:

• 3/4 cup semolina flour
• 3/4 cup unbleached white flour
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tbsp water
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten

Mix the flours and salt with a whisk. Stir in the oil, water and eggs until fully incorporated. Turn out onto a floured board or using a dough hook or paddle on your stand mixer or food processor, knead the dough for about 10 minutes, or until springy. It will retain a certain stickiness that ordinary bread dough doesn't after kneading. Form the dough into a ball and wrap in a kitchen towel. Allow to rest for 10 minutes before rolling out.

Sprinkle flour onto your largest cutting board and roll out half the dough into a rectangle 30 by 7 inches. It should be symmetrical so that when you fold it in half, the two sides match fairly closely. Lay one half on the cutting board and fold the rest out of the way (it will hang off top of the board). In rows about a half-inch apart, place teaspoon-sized dollops of filling. The dollops should be about 1/2 inch apart going down. Make sure there is about 1/2 inch of dough clearance along the outer edges.

Carefly fold the top half of the dough over to meet the bottom half. Use your fingers to press around the filling, eliminating air pockets and creating a seal on all sides. Cut the raviolis into fairly equal-sized squares and lay on a clean towel until you are ready to cook them. To cook, slide them into a pot of boiling water to which you have added 1/2 tsp oil. Cook until al dente, which will depend on how thick your dough ended up being. After about 5 minutes, I took one out and nibbled on its edge, then let them cook another couple minutes.

I ended up using a different filling for each batch. The first was the red pepper/goat cheese (see below) that I topped with a creamy spinach walnut sauce. The second was a kalamata olive/spinach/feta/Greek yogurt filling (didn't note the proportions, sorry!) that also turned out to be very tasty. With that one I will serve a marinara sauce.

Pepper Goat Cheese Filling
Puree in a small food processor:

• 6 oz goat cheese
• 1 whole roasted red pepper (from a jar)
• 10 fresh basil leaves

The little sauce dish is actually the glass top from an old canning jar that I bought from an antique dealer (25 cents!). Each one has a star in the center, so sweet.

Creamy Spinach Walnut Sauce:

• 1/2 onion, chopped finely
• 1 tbsp butter
• 1 tbsp flour
• 1 large clove garlic, pressed
• 1 cup chopped frozen spinach
• 1/4 cup ground walnuts
• 1 cup whole milk
• 1/3 cup finely grated parmesan/romano cheese
• salt & freshly ground pepper to taste

Heat the butter on medium and add onion. Saute for several minutes, then stir in the flour, cooking it for a minute so there will be no raw flour taste. Add the spinach and 1 tsp water, then cover and turn the heat to med-low. Cook for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally and adding a bit more water if needed to keep it from sticking. Gradually add the milk, stirring thoroughly to combine. Add more milk if necessary to make a smooth sauce. You could also puree it with an immersion blender at this point if you want. Stir in the walnuts and cheese, tasting for salt at the end.

  ***********

And as for what will be going on in the next phase of my life that will make it harder to have time for blogging, I offer a quote and an image:

Just like Alice (in Wonderland), "Sometimes I believe in as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

and,



Guess which one I want to be. (And which one I'd like to take home... ;-)

Finger Food: Summer Rolls

Just what is it about summertime and eating with our hands? Maybe it's part of the general informality of the season - wearing fewer clothes, going barefoot, having meals outdoors, roasting things over the campfire. Eschewing utensils, we use our hands to hold corn on the cob, burgers and dogs, chips and dip, cookies, watermelon slices, and drippy stone fruit. The garden hose (or lake, or sea) is right there for rinsing off and it just feels right to engage with our food like this in the summertime.

And though we may be sandy and sweaty and sticky, I also enjoy the fact that there is more personal touch this time of year. Playing with the kids in the lake, their knobby knees and pointy little toes digging into my legs and back... running around kicking the soccer ball and slamming into each other on the grass... jostling to pick berries and smearing the over-ripe ones on each other's cheeks... holding hands as we tramp through the forest in search of wild treasures. No mittens or gloves or long sleeves and pants to separate us from each other. Just sun-kissed, mosquito-bitten, epidermis on epidermis.

Likewise, whether you all gather at the kitchen table or set up the fixings out on the deck, summer rolls are best enjoyed as a full-contact activity. 'Cause where's the fun if someone just presents you with a platter of them, ready-made? For children, there are carrots to be shredded, herbs and greens to be picked and torn apart, bean thread noodles to be cut up with scissors...and then there is the actual spring roll making. Even for the youngest kids unable to roll them up while still keeping the filling inside, there is dipping to be done. From experience, I can vouch for the hygienic and aesthetic benefits of setting out individual bowls of peanut sauce. :-)



Ready to roll...



... now dip!



The making of summer rolls (or spring rolls, as we like to call them the rest of the year) isn't rocket science, but it can be frustrating for the perfectionists among us. As someone who often overstuffs, the approach I've developed is to just relax and eat them as they tear (and many will). That way when all is said and done, you have a full tummy and a plate of beautiful summer rolls to share with a friend or enjoy the next day.

A few technical points of note:

Depending on where you live, these might be hanging out in the Asian foods aisle at the supermarket!

The spring roll wrappers are quite stiff out of the package, but as they are basically just rice starch, slipping them individually into a cake pan or baking sheet filled partway with warm water softens them up in a few seconds. Likewise, the bean thread noodles, which are made from mung bean starch, become soft enough to use shortly after you've poured boiling water over them.

The basic method is to set out all the ingredients ready in little bowls, including the drained noodles. Then you boil a kettle of water and set it out near the cake pan or baking sheet so that as people are busy filling and rolling, a new wrapper is always ready for the next round. You can make a bunch and then eat, or you can make and eat as you go. It can be quite a messy process, with tofu chunks falling into the bowl of carrots, bean thread noodles flying everywhere, and participants crowding each other to get what they need from the bowls.

One person will surely emerge as the designated 'wrapper', as this is a specialized task and ultimately, people won't want to have their rolls break every time. But it may surprise you who turns out to be the most naturally gifted - at our house it's the 7-year-old who exercises the most restraint when filling and therefore never tears her wrappers. The other key to wrap fairly tightly, but not so tight as to force the filling to puncture the wrapper. Loosey-goosey wrapping will result in a noodle salad explosion; it's best to keep several forks handy for this possibility.

When you've run out of ingredients or stuffed yourselves to the point where you can't look another spring roll wrapper in the eye, it's time to abandon the whole mess and go play badminton. Rock paper scissors determines who does dishes!

Fresh Summer Rolls

• 1 package spring roll wrappers
• 1/2 pound of firm tofu, diced into 1/2" cubes
• 2 tbsp Braggs liquid aminos, soy sauce, or Soyaki sauce
• 1 bundle mung bean thread noodles, soaked in hot water and drained according to pkg directions
• 1/2 cup fresh herbs/edible flowers, such as cilantro, Italian or Thai basil, mint, lemon balm, nasturtiums - a mixture is nice
• 2 cups torn salad greens, any type
• 2 medium carrots, shredded
• 1/2 cup peanuts, chopped finely
• 1 lime, cut into wedges

Peanut Dipping Sauce

• 4 tbsp natural peanut butter
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 tbsp Braggs or soy sauce
• 1 tsp sugar
• juice of 1/2 lime
• 1 tsp grated fresh ginger

To make the sauce, heat peanut butter and water together in a microwavable glass measuring cup for about 30 seconds, or in a small pot on the stove, until they can be easily stirred together. Add the other ingredients and mix well. Taste and add more of any ingredients it may need (this part is highly personal and I cannot tell you whether you like your peanut sauce sweeter or more tart, just as I cannot guess your preference for creamy or crunchy peanut butter. For the record, I prefer crunchy but am overruled in the house, so creamy I must use). Also, do add more water if needed - the goal is to have a sauce that's not too thick, because it will be harder to dip your spring roll that way.

Jer gan mai! (I'm not entirely sure if spring/summer rolls are considered Vietnamese or Thai, but this is one of the few Thai phrases that has stuck with me over the years - it means, see you later!)

Rat-tat-a-touille!




It’s 8:30 at night and I’ve just returned from work. There’s chicken juice inside my watchband, roast beef blood on my shoes and liverwurst bits down my shirt. But despite all that meaty nastiness (sorry, carnivores) I’m super hungry and have been ever since a tough workout early this morning. I see leftover oatmeal on the stove – the finale of a ‘backwards food day’ where dad fed the kids lunch for breakfast, dinner for lunch, and breakfast for dinner – but oatmeal just isn’t going to do the job.

So right now I’m thinking: it’s time to cook up a storm. A quick, tasty mess before I collapse for the night. Have you ever seen the PBS kids’ cartoon ‘Word World’? There’s this great little chant they always sing when it’s time to make a new word. “It’s time to build a word, let’s build it, let’s build it now!” Well, that’s the song in my head at this moment. “It’s time to make some food, let’s make it, let’s make it now!”

Between our own garden and the neighbor's farmstand down the road, our kitchen is brimming with  vegetables - squash, beans, garlic, peppers, onions and tomatoes. With this in mind, what I’m aiming for tonight is a fast, easy ratatouille.

Ah, ratatouille: the simple vegetable stew that is invariably the only vegetarian-friendly item I can find to eat at fancy French restaurants. Well, there is also the cheese soufflé, but that dish always reminds me of a story for another day, one that involves the Champs Élysées on New Years' Eve, a tiny table squeezed next to a swinging kitchen door, a large statue against which people were throwing full bottles of champagne, and a bunch of drunk U.S. Marines, one of whom decided to steal a kiss and got punched for his audacity. Like I said, a story for another day. Besides, not being a big egg-lover, I'm not such a fan of cheese soufflés.

Anyway, by now I know how I like my ratatouille. I don't use the typical eggplant (I'm a weird vegetarian that way; I hate both eggplants and mushrooms). Also, my version it isn’t strictly French. French Mediterranean perhaps, with a nod to North Africa from the chickpeas and green olives, and sometimes there is an Italian flair, depending on what cheese I throw on top and whether I serve it over pasta. Tonight, after I’ve enjoyed this hearty veggie stew with a little parm grated on top, a crusty slice of bread, and a full-bodied glass of red wine, I know I’ll go to bed satisfied.

Note: The main thing which makes this veggie stew 'ratatouille' is basically the use of herbes de provence. Herbes de provence may not be something you’ll find in the spice aisle at your typical grocery store, but it’s worth a look. You could order it from Penzey’s and any French bakery might have some bags piled on a shelf near the back. To me, herbes de provence tastes quintessentially French. The hint of lavender, maybe? Or is it the savory? I first encountered this mixture years ago in Belgium when a friend’s father threw a several teaspoons into a thick soup meant to satisfy a hungry vegetarian backpacker. I was instantly hooked.

Not-So-Classic Ratatouille

Saute for about 5 minutes on medium heat in a large skillet:

• olive oil
• 1 onion, rough chop
• 1 bell pepper, rough chop
• 1 clove garlic, minced

Add and cook 5 minutes more:

• a handful of haricot verts (small green beans), topped - if using larger beans, remove strings and break in half
• a heaping tablespoon herbes de provence, ground finely with a mortar and pestle or spice grinder
• 3 large tomatoes, chopped - even better, a 15-oz can whole tomatoes in juice, broken up with your hands or roughly cut with kitchen shears
• 1 medium zucchini, rough chop
• 1 medium yellow squash, rough chop

Stir in, then cover and turn heat to low, cooking for an additional 5 minutes:

• a 15-oz can chick peas, drained and rinsed
• ½ cup green olives, pitted and sliced
• salt and pepper to taste

To serve, sprinkle with cheese - grated Gruyere or parmesan reggiano. Have some good bread on hand for mopping it up. Ratatouille is good served the next day at room temp or even a bit chilled. It's also nice alongside or stuffed into an omelette if you're trying to hide the egg taste. :-) Bon appétit!

And to close, a few action photos highlighting our summer fun as of late...



Watch me Mommy! Are you watching? Watch me!!!

 

Our one-time scaredy-cat now loves dogs, go figure. And chickens.



Attempting some Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon action...minus the computer hocus pocus.

Making connections

I've been having some great conversations with strangers lately. I often make it a point to talk with people I don't know in the hopes of learning something new (which often happens) or just making a positive connection to brighten up the day (which it often does). I'm convinced that in direct contrast to our overly busy, self-centered, technology-driven lives, making even the smallest of personal connections can help bring about peace and harmony to the planet. And it's way more exciting than online gaming, if you ask me. :-)

The other day it was a precocious 12-year-old playing with his mother's iPhone. While I had my lunch break on the patio at work, he eagerly explained to me about what apps are and what kinds of things he does with his own iTouch when he's not in school or doing homework. He also shared with me at length what he knew about elementary and middle school sports for kids in our area, and which teachers were the best at one of the local schools. All of that information will surely come in handy one of these days, and when we parted ways it was with a big smile and wave.

This morning, as with many others, I ended up chatting for a bit with a passerby while I secured my kayak to the top of the car. This older lady turned out to be a Harvard medical researcher, recently out of work and enjoying her free time playing at the lake with her grand-dog (did not know there was such a thing but there you go). Our conversation explored city vs. rural life, preventive medicine, the importance of doing something you love every single day, and the virtues of pursuing your vocation, no matter how old you may be. The very topics that have been on my mind lately...I drove home feeling renewed inspiration for my path and the motivation to write this post.

So today I encourage you, take a risk and smile at a stranger today. Force yourself to ask them a question to get the conversation rolling. (Nothing too personal, please.) Be willing to answer their questions with more than a simple yes or no. And get ready for your day to become just a little brighter!



Props to my honey for this gorgeous picture of one of our favorite local ponds!



Gazpacho Soup, etc.

In truth - 'cause that's what it's all about, right? - it feels pretty hard to blog this week. Lately I find myself swinging between huge waves of gratitude for all that's well with life, to fairly major feelings of uncertainty and overwhelm. The effects are enervating. All I want to do when I get home in the evening is just lie on the rug with my eyes closed, preferably in silence. Which is pretty hard to come by at our house. And besides, somebody still needs to make dinner.

As for me, the appetite is gone for now, which takes all the fun out of cooking. So this week it's been what I call 'survival cooking' - meals that meet the basic requirements of nutrition and good taste, but nothing approaching the rarefied echelons of what my stepson calls 'a vacation for your mouth.' Oh, he is a funny guy.



So much to be grateful for...if only I can stay focused on it.

Well, perhaps there are some folks reading this who don't feel so much like cooking either. Maybe they would appreciate a few ideas for what to make in 15 minutes or less. After all, at this time of year it is usually well over 105 degrees where I come from and God knows that is no time to be slaving away in the kitchen! So here is a sample offering and then I'm going to force myself to get back on the bicycle. (I do mean that literally - even my triathalon training is taking a hit lately and I really need to get it together if I'm not going to embarrass myself next month!)

Tican platter (oh, to be back in Costa Rica living a carefree existence right now!) - brown rice, refried pinto beans, saute of summer squashes, garlic, onions. Garnished with diced tomato, avocado and lime.

Chips 'n dip (yes, I served my children tortilla chips for dinner) - 1/2 jar salsa, 1 drained can of mashed kidney beans, corn scraped from 1 cob, 1 diced avocado, lime juice, 1/2 cup shredded fresh spinach and some shredded sharp cheddar cheese stirred in.

Cucumber yogurt soup - In a food processor, puree 2 peeled, seeded, chopped cucumbers, 4 cups plain yogurt, 1 pressed garlic clove, a couple spoonfuls of olive oil and a handful of fresh dill and another of fresh mint. Divine. We ate it with a simple spinach salad and garlic toast.

Gazpacho - an approximate recipe is below, since I can't seem to find the basic one I usually start off with right now. I served it with grilled sandwiches stuffed with fresh basil, goat cheese, sauteed onions and zucchini. The kids barely managed choke this meal down but it could have been b/c we ate it at the lake and they were distracted by fun. Next time I'm going to sneak some cannelini beans into the soup and see if anyone notices...

Basic Gazpacho Soup (a traditional version, with bread)

• 1 slice stale artisan bread, soaked in water to cover
• 8 medium tomatoes, chopped
• 2 medium cucumbers, peeled, seeded, chopped
• 1 yellow onion
• 1 stalk celery, sliced
• 1 bell pepper, any color, seeded, chopped
• 2 small cloves garlic
• handful basil leaves
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 4 tbsp balsalmic vinegar
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• salt and pepper to taste

Dump all ingredients in a large food processor and puree for several minutes until relatively smooth.

Garnish with diced avocado, tiny croutons, fresh herbs, etc.



Celebrating Thumbelina's birthday - thank God for children and their natural joyfulness!