growing up: a hasty update from home

when i was little, i was the designated grilled-cheese maker of our house. it was a purely honorary title, but i wore it with pride. now, at age 24, practically nothing has changed -- when i am cooking for others, i still rely on simple, cheese-based comfort foods that can be eaten with your hands. the cheese may have matured from orange cheddar into salty feta; the slabs of butter into here-and-there drizzles of olive oil, but the comfort part has stayed the same. honorary. universal. irreplaceable. etc.

Butternut Squash and Feta Quesadillas (adapted from Cooking Books)

2 cups cubed squash
1 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp cumin
1 leek, diced (only the white and pale green area)
1/4 cup cilantro, fresh and finely chopped
Feta (to taste)
Tortillas (2-3, whole wheat or four)
2 tsbs olive oil

To Make:

Pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees F. Toss the cubed squashed with 1 tbsb olive oil, cumin and chili powder in a glass baking dish. Roast for 15 minutes.

Toss the leek in remaining tbsb olive oil. Remove squash from the oven, scoot squash to one side, and add leek. Roast for another 10 minutes.

Remove leeks and squash from oven. Puree just the roasted squash cubes in a food processor, until they are smooth and creamy.

Spread the squash puree over one side of a tortilla. Sprinkle cilantro, roasted leeks and feta. Fold the tortilla in half, enclosing the squash/feta/herbs. Heat olive oil or butter in a skillet over med-high heat until you can feel the heat coming off the pan by hovering your palm over it.

Place the squash/feta stuffed tortilla in the pan and cover with a tight-fitting lid. Let roast for one minute or so -- check to make sure the first side has browned nicely. Flip and repeat on the next side.

Repeat until appetite satiated and adulthood reached.

I'm Gonna Bake You! (Stay Gold, Ponyboy!)

One of my absolute favorite things about cooking is when a dish signals its completion by browning. From the decadent (creme brulée) to the demure (toast, anybody?), the deepening to gold of any cuisine is like some kind of consumptive mating dance...a visual offering that elicits desire in any onlooker à la peacock. Hence my attraction to a classic like the baked pasta casserole. So perfectly crusty and golden. I'm sure my recent infatuation with summer-time pizza is fully responsible for this recipe, and I apologize in advance for any disgusting and flagrant displays of joy on my part if you're around me the next time I make it.

You Will Need:

A few cups of pasta (the wider and heartier the noodle the better)
1 cup shredded mozarella
2 tbsp. olive oil
3 cups of spinach, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup of sun dried tomatoes (a little goes a long way, hoo boy)
1/2 onion (chopped)
4 cloves of garlic (died)

To Make:

Prep time first! Preheat the oven to 375 degrees, and oil up a large/deep baking dish. Boil the pasta, toss it with olive oil, and set it aside for later. Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. Toss in the chopped onion and let it cook for several minutes, until the slices start to brown. Add in the garlic and the sun dried tomatoes. Stir the mixture and let it cook for a minute or so, making sure everything is thoroughly coated. Then add the spinach, making sure everything is still well mixed. A few whirls around with your spatula should do it, then remove the goods from the heat. Toss it in the large bowl with the pasta, and stir everything together. Then stir it some more. Add a layer of this mixture to the bottom of the baking dish, following it with a hearty dusting of sliced mozzarella. Repeat, until all the pasta and all the cheese are used up. Make sure to leave enough cheese to be sprinkled over the very top...this is the key part, now. (Without the cheese topping you'll have none of the fine and delicious golden crust.)

Cover the dish and place it in the oven, cooking for about thirty to forty minutes. Trust me, you'll know when it's done. Aromatic, bubbling...sigh. I wish I could eat the whole thing all over again right now.

Summer's First Sound!

The first time I ever came to New York, my friend Julia and I survived exclusively on two dollar slices of cheese pizza selected at random from various sidewalk cafes. It was the dead of winter, fresh snow shivering in the still air, and I remember being particularly grateful for each still-steaming, gratuitously layered slice of genuine Big Apple 'za. I was then unacquainted with East Coast weather beyond the novelty of a Christmas spent in Ohio with my extended family, and I thought that pizza must be the pinnacle of all NYC cold-weather-food staples. Short of heavy drinking, it was second to none in terms of combining comfort and satisfaction with warmth.

I certainly wasn't giving summer a second thought at the time, let alone the idea that I might be a bona-fide resident of NYC by the time the season rolled through again, so I was pleasantly surprised by my recent discovery that pizza transcends seasonal parameters and is actually the perfect food all year round. It was a revelation sparked first by a decadent pie-on-the-promenade in Brooklyn Heights (see above), and then fully solidified by a hasty grease-fest on the LIRR coming home from Long Beach yesterday afternoon. After gorging at the latter, we all laid back, hands comfortably resting on newly-inflated belly's, to satisfactorily contemplate the greenery idling by our windows.

If I thought that pizza was good when it was cold out, it was only because I was utterly clueless to the delight of pizza when it is quite literally BOILING out. As far as slices go, I'll admit that the Long Island wedge was a simpleton...bubbly cheese crested with grease and ringed with a slim, attractively golden crust, but of a quality smartly bolstered by its consumption on such a perfectly hot summer day. It became the perfect accessory to my already overblown sense of adolescence. (A sense wrought upon me by the coming of every June, let me remind you, an academic hangover of sorts from my still habitual expectation of summer vacation.) It's just so easy to pretend I'm still a kid on a summer day when I'm toting around a massive hunk of dripping, cheesy pizza. Sigh! If only Miss Julia could see me now...

craving

Sometimes I feel like I'm just a few gestation periods shy of being a full-on pregnant woman. My cravings for certain foods are so strange, sudden, and intense that the only possible explanation must be preggers. Sorry, Mom & Dad! But the Cheese Must Be HAD!

soup kitchen

photo credit: (click)

My friend Jacky and I don't see each other much. This is the understandable way of two girls in New York City who have multiple jobs and very little time to spare, but our rare and always magnificant collisions have unearthed a little remembered (and even more rarely employed) architecture of total contentment. It is a flawless structure thus far; a wordless affirmation that when times are hard, bliss is still available to be assembled on a case-by-case basis. Or, in this case, a "can"-by-"can" basis...Waka waka waka.

What we do is make soup. Then we kick back inside one of the monstrously comfortable cushions of her couch and watch an old movie. By the end of the night, everything bad has dribbled off to rest their haunches in some other anxious cave and I'm left to peaceably toe the line between sleep and consciousness. Of our sessions, this recipe for split pea soup has become my most favorite. It begins with an incredibly easy-to-make base of peas and onion, and can then be fleshed out with whatever happens to be in your fridge. (Jacky had spinach and carrots, but honestly anything will do just fine.)

You Will Need:
2 cups of split peas
2 onions, diced
2 carrots, diced
1 Bunch Spinach
2 tbsp olive oil
4 cups of water
1 lemon

How To Make:

In a large pot, big enough to accommodate the eventual soup, warm the 2 tbs of olive oil with the 2 diced onions for a few minutes, until the onions soften. Add the water and peas and bring everything to a boil, then lower the pot to a simmer. Add the carrots and spinach and simmer for twenty-thirty minutes until everything is soft. At this point you can puree or not to puree, whichever way you prefer your soup (once again---peanut butter: chunky or smooth?) Add the juice of the lemon to taste, along with salt and pepper and paprika and VOILA, a hearty, vegetable garden of split pea soup. It's that easy. Amazing! And suddenly your total mental and physical well being is right at hand.

Side-note: I have also found out that it is nearly impossible to take an attractive photo of Split Pea Soup, so forgive me the lack of.