Edible Therapy

Caprese Couscous

Many thanks to my sister-in-law, Jane, for this idea.  Jane loves caprese salad, and I love going to her house to eat it!  Jane grows her own basil, and she always waits until the last minute to go outside and pick the fresh basil for her caprese salad which, I am sure, is why hers is always so good.  Recently, my fabulous sister-in-law told me that she had made israeli couscous and added the elements of her caprese salad to it, and that it had been delicious.  So, what could I do but copy her idea?  I love the fresh flavors in this salad.  For the dressing, I used just a splash of balsamic vinegar because I did not want all of the beautiful colors of the basil, tomatoes, and mozzarella to fade to brown.  Also, the basil and tomatoes added enough sweetness to the dish without the added sweetness of balsamic vinegar.  I like to make my dressing first, so that the  garlic gets a chance to steep into the vinegar for a little while before the salad gets dressed.

Caprese Couscous

Serves Six

For the dressing:

1/4 cup of red wine vinegar

1 t balsamic vinegar

3/4 cup of olive oil (Use a little more if you like your salad less tart)

1 large clove of garlic, chopped finely

salt and pepper to taste (I used about 1/4 t of salt and 10 grinds black pepper)

For the couscous:

2 cups  israeli couscous*, prepared according to package directions

2 medium tomatoes, chopped (don't use the core)

2 T basil, cut into chiffonade

1 8 oz container perlini mozzarella**, drained

salt and pepper to taste (I used about 3/4 t salt and 15 grinds black pepper)

Make the dressing: Combine all ingredients in a jar, screw on the top, and shake like crazy!  Taste for seasoning.  Set aside.  You may not need all of this dressing.

Drain the cooked couscous and place it in a bowl in the fridge to chill while you prep the rest of the ingredients.  I was in a hurry, so I actually had to put my  caprese couscous in an ice water bath*** to chill before I could take it to the dinner party.  After you chop your tomatoes, place them onto a couple of paper towels to drain the juices, and sprinkle with about 1/4 t salt.  While those tomato juices are draining, chiffonade your basil.  Mix all of your ingredients together except the dressing.  Add the dressing slowly, using just enough to coat the couscous.  You will probably have about 1/4 cup of dressing left to use on a salad later.  Enjoy!

*Israeli couscous is much larger in size than traditional couscous.  You can definitely find it in middle-eastern markets (in Memphis, on Park near Highland), and in Memphis you can also get it at the Fresh Market.  It is much heartier than traditional couscous and can stand up to the coarsely chopped ingredients in this salad.  I think it would also be great added to a hearty soup in the winter time.  I would not substitute traditional couscous in this recipe, but you could use a small pasta shape, like orzo, if you cannot find israeli couscous.

** Somehow, my sad excuse for a neighborhood grocery store managed to have these little pearl-sized balls of mozzarella packed in water in the fancy cheese section.  They are great, because you don't even have to cut them up, but you can always use any good quality mozzarella that you cut into small pieces yourself.  I would definitely advise getting mozzarella packed in water, as it tends to taste better than the usually rubbery stuff that comes vaccum-packed.

***If you need to chill a dish faster than normal, an ice water bath is the way to go.  Just get yourself a bowl that is at least the same size or a little larger than the bowl of stuff you want to chill, and fill about halfway with equal parts ice and water.  Put your bowl of stuff into the ice water bath and let it sit, stirring every once in a while if you want to speed up the process even more.  Works like a charm!  This salad chilled in about five minutes instead of the hour it would have taken in the fridge.

Simple Summer Side: Corn Salad

**

We finally found tomatoes at the Memphis Farmer's Market!  I thought it was still too early, but those good folks at the Jones Orchard booth had beautiful tomatoes this past weekend.  We were also lucky enough (read: early enough) to get some fresh garlic from our favorite arugula guy.  So, last night we decided to use both the tomatoes and the garlic in a corn salad to go with our grilled barbecue chicken for dinner.  If that doesn't sound like a good southern summer dinner, then I just don't know what does!  Corn, tomatoes, cooking on the grill...I love summertime.  Our herb garden is thriving, so I was happy to have some fresh basil to pair with my corn- basil and corn are so good together, no matter what the dish.  To top off all of my wonderful fresh ingredients, my friend Julie brought me some delicious champagne vinegar back from her recent trip to Napa , so I used that to season my corn salad.  Thanks, Julie!

Corn Salad:

Serves 3

2 ears of corn

1 medium tomato, chopped*

1 small clove of garlic, chopped finely

1 T + 1 t chopped basil (I like a chiffonade of basil, personally)

3 T chopped red onion

1/2 avocado, chopped

1 T olive oil

2 t champagne vinegar (or whatever kind of vinegar you like/ have on hand)

salt and pepper to taste (I used about 1/2 t salt and 6 grinds black pepper)

For the corn: if you plan to grill the corn, the way I did, then you will need to soak it in water for about 30 minutes prior to grilling to keep the husks from burning off right away.  I recommend throwing the ears on the grill over high heat for about 10 minutes.  If you want more of a grilled flavor, you can take the husks off before grilling and let the corn get a little charred.  I love corn this way.You can also just boil the corn if you prefer, so long as it's cooked!

For the salad: Combine all ingredients and taste for seasoning.  Add a little more vinegar if you like it a little more tart, and season to taste with salt and pepper.  I would recommend that your chopped items, with the exception of the garlic, be about the same size as kernels of corn. Enjoy all summer long!

*Tomatoes are super juicy, so when I am adding them to just about anything, I like to cut them, salt them, and then let them rest on paper towels for a few minutes to get some of that juice out.  In this case, I went ahead and chopped them small for my salad before letting them rest.

**I apologize for my absence- I have been so lazy in the kitchen since I got pregnant!  We have been eating out A LOT.  I guess the abundance of summer has jarred me out of my cooking hiatus...thanks for your patience!

Anchovy-Free Tapenade

Not that I have a problem with anchovies. I don't! I like them, really! I just don't keep them in my pantry, and there are few things worse than trying to park in the lot at my neighborhood grocery store during rush hour. I recently read a description of it as the ninth circle of hell, and I can't say I disagree.

As you may have inferred from a recent blog, my refrigerator has been full nearly to bursting lately due to the little one growing in my belly and the culinary demands he/she continues to make. So, I have resolved to clean out the fridge by eating at home and not going to the store until there is room in there for groceries. What that meant for my lunch today was a veggie sandwich with homemade tapenade! I had some friends for dinner a couple of nights ago to say goodbye to Ashley, who is moving to New York (bye, Ashley!), and I put out some olives for everyone to munch on. The leftover olives inspired me to make this tapenade, as I have no choice but to eat everything in my fridge. You can dip veggies into it (I like it with endive), spread it on crackers, make a little pizzette with some goat cheese, or do what I did and spread it on your veggie sandwich.

1 c olives, pits removed
1 handful italian parsley
1 clove garlic
a tiny pinch of salt
8 grinds pepper
1/4 cup olive oil
a squeeze of lemon juice

Combine all ingredients in a blender or food processor. Blend until combined.

Arugula Pesto

I love arugula! That, combined with the fact that I am pregnant and should not be allowed to enter a grocery store alone, is the reason why I had three containers of arugula in my refrigerator this morning. (Along with leftover pizza, take-out vegetable beef soup, leftover cheesesticks, and jar upon jar of pickles...you get the picture) I swear, I am more dangerous with a credit card at a grocery store than my friend Emily is at an antique store! Rather than let all of that gorgeous arugula go bad in my fridge, I decided to use it up as quickly as possible by making this arugula pesto. I ate some of this batch with a steaming plate of spaghetti, but I have also served skewered shrimp brushed with arugula pesto at a cocktail party, and I think it would also make a lovely pasta salad tossed with farfalle, halved cherry tomatoes, and chunks of parmesan cheese. It is also good dolloped onto a nice hot bowl of vegetable soup. Or you could just dip your leftover pizza crust in it.

1/4 cup pine nuts
4 c arugula
1 clove garlic
1/2 cup parmigianno reggiano
2/3 cup olive oil
salt and pepper to taste (I used about 1/2 t salt and six or seven grinds of black pepper)
a squeeze of lemon juice

Toast the pine nuts over medium high heat in an ungreased small frying pan for about seven minutes, stirring occasionally, until they are beginning to turn golden brown. Put them in a blender or food processor with all of the other ingredients and whizz until smooth. Voila! Arugula Pesto!

Manjula's Kitchen

This is wonderful! Manjula teaches you to make indian vegetarian food. Check out this link:

Manjula's kitchen

Curried Apple Soup

Chad and I went to Umai for dinner recently, and we had a wonderful meal. Mine began with a bowl of curried apple soup, and I then became obsessed with making it at home. The soup at Umai was a delicate, almost sweet concoction that tasted a bit of apple cider. It was a perfect start to my dinner, but I craved something heartier when I aproached my spice cabinet at home. For this soup, I used a madras curry that packs a lot of heat. If your curry is not hot, that's fine. It's a matter of personal preference. If your curry is not hot and you still want to add heat, you can add 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne pepper to this recipe to achieve it. It's 32 degrees in Memphis right now, and I can't think of a better way to defrost than to cozy up to a hot bowl of this spicy, hearty, healthy soup. Enjoy!

Curried Apple Soup
Serves Four

2 T olive oil
1/2 onion, chopped
2 ribs celery, chopped
3 gala apples, peeled, cored, and coarsely chopped
1/2 lemon
1 c chopped potatoes
1/2 t salt
10 grinds pepper
2 t madras curry
1 bay leaf
2 c water
2 c vegetable or chicken stock

Heat the oil in a medium saucepan. Add the onion and celery and saute over medium heat until softened, about five minutes. Add the apples and potatoes and saute another three minutes. Season with the salt and pepper and the curry powder, and add the bay leaf and liquids. Bring to a boil and cook until the potatoes are tender, about ten minutes. Puree with a hand blender until the soup reaches the desired consistency- slightly thinner than baby food. Garnish with a generous little pile of shavings of parmigianno and a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil.

Peru, Vol I: Pachamanca

Chad and I just returned from Peru on New Year's Day. We spent ten days touring beautiful ruins, travelling with insane cab drivers, and of course, eating everything in sight. We travelled with a group of friends and met up with some of their family. Luckily, the family likes to eat as much as we do, and the first adventure they had planned for us was a pachamanca.

A pachamanca is a meal traditional to the people of the central Andean mountains, and is usually prepared in an oven created from stones heated over a fire, topped with meat that is usually wrapped in banana leaves, and covered with grass and dirt and the hot stones to cook for about an hour and a half. In our case, the meal was prepared in permanent ovens similar in concept to the original stones, but made with cement. The word pachamanca actually means earthen oven.

We took a small bus to the restaurant called Mesa De Piedra, a drive that took about an hour from the Miraflores district in Lima, where we spent about half of our vacation. The drive there was fascinating and sad, as we saw Peruvians living in the most extreme poverty just before we arrived at the beautiful setting where we would spend our afternoon. Houses that were made of straw mats and sheets of corrugated metal were common sights, and the mountains surrounding us throughout the drive appeared to be huge mountains made of dust that hung in the air like smog. One has to wonder how easy it is to breathe when walking up and down the huge hills surrounding the little groups of shacks.

Mesa de Piedras (House of stone tables) only serves on Sundays. The feeling one gets when entering the compound of Mesa de Piedras is, first, one of relief ater the bumpy ride, and then one of awe and wonder. The setting, after all of that dust and dirt and poverty, is an impossibly beautiful little green valley. There are women selling honey and chiccha morada (a purple corn beverage) on the streets. The restaurant itself is completely outdoors and is surrounded by green grass and exotic flowering trees. We moved towards a huge granite slab surrounded by chairs, a few of which were already taken by friends of our Peruvian hosts, who had recommended this particular pachamanca and who had arrived armed with a bottle of Pisco for everyone to mix with sprite to make Chilcanos de Pisco.

We were served corn kernels deep-fried in pork fat to start. Like popcorn, but not puffy. Most of us ordered the pachamanca. The first dish that was presented was roast suckling pig, cooked on a spit and served with roasted yucca root. I do believe this is some of the best pork I have ever tasted. Next, the full pachamanca. A clay pot was presented for every two people, but each pot could have easily served four. The pots were filled with alpaca, the camelid that resides all over Peru and provides many a Peruvian with warmth in the form of sweaters during the rainy season; Haba beans (lima beans), tamales, choclo (Peruvian white corn), potatoes, sweet potatoes, chicken, and herbs and seasonings. The corn in Peru is amazing: we had it again and again and always it was the white corn with kernels three times as big as what we are accustomed to here in the US. The potatoes are delicious, too. They actually have their own earthy,sweet, creamy flavor which is much more concentrated than the flavor of our Idahoes. I am not a big fan of alpaca, as it is a little tough and gamey for my taste, but the peruvians do like their alpaca. We were served alpaca throughout the trip and in many different forms.

We finished the meal with picarones, little deep-fried squash doughnuts served with a syrup made from solidified molasses. This was by far my favorite part of the meal and one of my favorite Peruvian traditions.

Sadly, we had to leave the Pachamanca, the live traditional music, the costumed Peruvian dancers, and the beautiful setting to head back to Lima and continue on with the rest of our trip. More on that to come...

Tomato and Roasted Poblano Soup

I had some of the girls last night for a little Dirty Santa. For those of you who don't know. Dirty Santa is a gift exchange wherein all of the participants draw numbers and select gifts from a pile in the order designated by the numbers drawn. So, whoever receives number one selects the first gift, and then the next person can either select another gift from the pile or steal the gift from number one, and so on and so forth. It does get a little nasty at times, but last night it was fairly tame. Not too many stolen gifts. Three girls brought cheese appetizers, and another brought a yummy cheesy baked onion dip, so I went light on the entree with this soup. It is really easy to make, as most of the ingredients you just open up and pour into the pot. The soup gets a little heat from the poblanos, and the red beans thicken it up and give it a bit of a creamy texture. When the soup is finished cooking, which hardly takes any time at all, you just puree it and serve. You will get the smoothest puree with a blender, but I don't mind the slightly chunky texture that results from using a stick blender. The soup is actually good cold, too. Most of the girls ate the soup plain, but my friend Aja topped hers with a little sour cream.

2 T olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
3 poblano peppers
1 28 ounce can whole peeled tomatoes
1 32 ounce carton vegetable broth
1 15 ounce can kidney beans
salt and pepper to taste

Roast the poblanos. Over a gas burner*, roast the poblanos until charred on all sides. Remove the peppers from the heat and place them in a bowl covered with plastic wrap so that they will steam and the skins will be easier to remove. Once the peppers are cool enough to handle, remove the skin and chop them up.

Heat a large pot over medium high heat and add the olive oil. Add the onion and saute for a couple of minutes, then add the garlic and poblanos and saute until the vegetables are soft, but not brown. Add the can of tomatoes and saute for another five minutes. Add the broth and heat until the mixture comes to a boil, stirring frequently so that the soup does not burn to the bottom of the pot.

Add the can of red beans and cook for five more minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper. (I used about 1 t salt and 1/2 t pepper.) Turn off the heat and puree. Enjoy!

*If you do not have a gas stove, you can roast the poblanos in the oven at about 450 degrees for twenty or thirty minutes, until they are charred.

Cranberry Orange Jelly

It is definitely that time of year. Time for turkey, dressing, ham, yeast rolls, all of the holiday foods we remember from growing up. Thanksgiving started the season off, and now we have leftovers to last us just about until Christmas! This jelly is super simple to make, and it will go on your morning slab of toast as well as your holiday buffet. Don't get me wrong, I actually like the cranberry sauce out of a can, but this is so easy, you will never open that can of cran again. All you have to do is boil your whole fresh cranberries in simple syrup until the sauce thickens. I added the zest of one orange and a little vanilla to suit my personal taste, but you can leave those out or add a little cinnamon to it, or whatever strikes your fancy! Happy Holidays!

Cranberry Orange Jelly
makes about three cups

2 c sugar
2 c water
one 12-oz bag of whole fresh cranberries
1/2 t vanilla
the zest of one orange

Bring the water and sugar to a boil in a heavy, medium-sized saucepan, stirring frequently. Add the cranberries and cook over medium heat until the sauce begins to thicken. Add the vanilla and orange zest, and continue cooking until the sauce is thick, about ten minutes. Pour the sauce into a container and chill. Once the sauce cools, it will thicken even more and you will have jelly.

Homemade Corn Tortillas

Why would anyone go to the trouble to make their own tortillas, you ask? Because they are infinitely better than any you can buy at the store, for one, and because you just got a new toy from the Viking Store! I cannot resist a kitchen store- I enter a Williams Sonoma or a Sur la Table the way most women enter Anthropologie. It is physically impossible for me to leave empty-handed. On my last visit to one of these hallowed places, I found a tortilla press. I have always wanted one, but have just never picked one up from the mexican market while shopping for cajeta or some such other mexican delicieux. Finally, I came to my senses and made the purchase, not a big one at all, by the way. About $25 for a new toy? Much cheaper than a pair of jeans at Anthropologie. So, on to the next step: use of the toy. I confess, it was not instant success. I had many throw-aways, but the good news about throw-aways here is that you can just ball the mess up and start over with the same dough! And, ever since I discovered how easy it is to make the dough (just add water to your Maseca), I have wanted to make homemade tortillas. Here's how simple it is:

Prepare your dough according to the instructions on the package of Maseca (the corn flour required to make the dough). Divide the dough into balls just smaller than a golf ball. Do this before you start pressing, trust me, it will be easier that way. You don't want your hands all sticky with dough when you are trying to press out these little buggers. Once you have your dough all rolled up into balls, cover them with a clean damp towel so they don't dry out. Then, put a piece of plastic wrap on each inside plate of your tortilla press. Plastic wrap works better than wax paper, as the dough tends to stick to the wax paper. Pop one of those dough balls onto the center of the bottom plate and press down, briefly closing the latch on the top of the press. Then lift the top plate up, and there you have it! A nice little round tortilla ready for the skillet! Now comes the tricky part, peeling the tortilla off of the press. Just do it carefully, and if it rips, ball it up and do it again. When you are finished pressing your tortilla, put it in the middle of an ungreased hot cast-iron skillet for about a minute per side. Then continue on with the rest in the same fashion. As they come off of the skillet, they can be stacked and covered with a clean kitchen towel. Now you can make enchiladas, tostadas, tortilla soup, or a simple taco like I did, with avocado, thinly sliced radish, a little cotija cheese and some chipotle tabasco. Yummy.