so long, honey babe

i find the view from the window at my office -- although it reveals nothing of the outside world -- oddly and totally distracting. what could be out there ... ? a sailboat, three green fish, the view from a crow's nest, and nothing but ocean for miles and miles and miles...

"goodbye's too good a word, babe. so i'll just say fair thee well."

brown rice and radish salad

ingredients:

brown rice
garlic/pepper
cilantro
1 radish
red wine vinaigrette

to make:

prep brown rice, using lots of garlic/pepper and a little salt. (pssst…for great brown rice: when the rice is ready, drain the last of the water, remove the pot from heat, and cover it tightly. let the rice steam this way for about ten minutes — it really lets the flavor penetrate!)

thinly, thinly slice the radish and roughly chop the cilantro. stir them into the brown rice. dash a little red wine viniagrette and extra garlic/pepper over the top.

voila! consume.

a friend is a chef: brian k. edition

It's not difficult to explain why eating with other people is more enjoyable than eating alone. Nor is it hard to surmise why cooking has long been favored as a collaborative process. Simply put, when you're cooking with a partner, you can get away with all sorts of things otherwise impossible. You can blame them if something goes wrong, laugh at them when they hit their head on the kitchen cabinet, ask them to peel the ginger because you're not really that good at it, and -- best of all -- share dessert with them.

Brian is one of my favorite friends to be in a kitchen with, but it's not just because he fits the aforementioned bill so perfectly. It's also because he texts me photos of food that he makes. And because he gets genuinely excited over good deals on olive oil. And because he is always willing to go impossibly out of his way with me while investigating random restaurants our friends have recommended. He was also the first person that I ever tried cooking meat with, an endeavor delayed by years of stubborn vegetarianism. Oh, and he also went to Brazil with me.

To this day, Brian retains the honor* of being the only friend with whom I've cooked animals. Whenever I find a recipe that calls for the handling of raw meat (insert awkward/stupid joke), he's the first person I send it to. "Can we make this?" "Will you eat this with me?" The answer is always yes. Another reason why Brian is one of my favorite friends in the kitchen.

The inspiration for this recipe was torn from the pages of my friend Amy's copy of Martha Stewart Living (sorry, Amy!). It's incredibly simple, which is good for a fish-novice like myself. Also, it's a recipe for two. So I recommend finding yourself a friend before you make it. Simply!

*exaggeration of significance


Parchment-Baked Mahi Mahi with Bok Choy inspired by Martha

You Will Need:

2 fillets of mahi mahi
2 heads of baby bok-choy or 1 bundle of regular
4 limes, halved
zest of 2 limes
1/4 cup thinly sliced fresh ginger
6 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
3/4 medium-sized onion, thinly sliced
parchment paper

To Make:

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Mix lime juice, lime zest, garlic, onion and ginger in a small bowl -- set aside.

Fold two decently sized pieces of parchment paper in half lengthwise. Place mahi-mahi fillets and bok choy in the crease.

Rub the fillet/boy choy with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste.

Top each with mixture of onion/garlic.

Fold parchment over fish, making small overlapping folds along edges and sealing (paper clip works, we improvised with sewing needles).

Place on rimmed baking sheets.

Roast 10 to 12 minutes -- parchment will puff when the fish is finished.

Cut open and serve.

whatever happened to mr. bean?

My opinion of veggie burgers hinges on two key points. One, trying to imitate the taste of meat is counterproductive and never works, two, I like a fair amount of "chunk" in the chosen base, whether it be vegetable, grain, or bean. As a result of these two preferences, I'm incapable of consuming about 95% of store-bought veggie burgers with any amount of what I would call "joy." So my cooking gaff last week seemed curiously fated. Essentially, what I ended up making myself was a vat of pretty damn delicious veggie-burger base.

I've tried making black bean veggie burgers before and it hasn't worked out. The right recipe and a little luck later, though, and I am basking in beany success. Thick, hearty, flavor-dripping, perfectly textured, beany success. Yuuuuummm. I served mine with pieces of thinly, thinly sliced zucchini which I seared in the pan at the same time as the burgers themselves. Perfection!


Black Bean Burgers adapted from A Mighty Appetite

You Will Need:
4 cups cooked, rinsed and drained black beans (about 2 ½ 15-ounce cans)
1/2 cup Japanese-style panko breadcrumbs
2 large eggs
4 scallions, both white and green parts, minced
3 tablespoons (a small handful) chopped basil or cilantro, or a combination
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 1/2-2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 1/2 teaspoons dried oregano
1 teaspoon coarse salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

To Make:

Place the black beans in a large mixing bowl and mash -- do not overmash! Leave a good amount of the beans whole for good texture. Add bread crumbs, eggs, scallions, fresh herbs, garlic, cumin and oregano to the mix and continuing stirring/lightly mashing until well combined. When the mixture is turned out to your satisfaction, portion and shape it into patties about one inch thick. Sprinkle the patties with salt and pepper. Place a cast-iron skillet over high heat, without any fat; when it is hot but not smoking, add burgers to dry pan. Cook for about four minutes on first side or until well seared and with a flipping spatula, turn onto second side and allow to cook for an additional five minutes, over medium heat.

black bean soup and a lesson learned

I am unlucky with three things in life: electronics (always broken within a month), soups, and my health. These are listed in descending order of importance. Maybe I would have better health if I had more luck with soups.

I suspect that soups are not meant to be made from recipes. That they should be reserved for that special, seemingly innate, intuition of "moms" (emphasis on quotes). In the end, my black bean soup was an unequivocal failure. What I did end up with was a good lesson and a large pot of puffy, garlic-rich black beans. I look forward to making them into other things.

Below is the recipe reproduced in full, my annotations in italics. To make a good soup, try following the italicized version. To get hearty and delicious black beans, follow the regular version -- but leave out the eggs/tortilla and change the simmering time to 1.5 hours.

This is the choose your own adventure of recipes. Tell me how your adventure ends.



Grandpa's Favorite Black Bean Soup

You Will Need:

8 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
1 medium bell pepper, chopped (2 medium bell peppers, 1 large carrot, 1 green zucchini -- double the amount of vegetables)
1-2 tbsp olive oil
6 cups of chicken broth (vegetable is a fine substitute)
2 15 oz cans of black beans (1 bag of dry beans will suffice -- boil them for 2 minutes in water and let soak for an hour. They will cook the rest of the way down while the soup simmers)
fresh thyme, to taste
fresh oregano, to taste
4 eggs
corn tortillas
sour cream
fresh cilantro

To Make:

1. In big soup pot, grill garlic, onion and bell pepper in oil and stir. Grill until vegetables soften, onion becomes translucent. Done best over medium high heat.

2. Add chicken broth, black beans, fresh thyme and oregano to pot. Stir ingredients.

3. Bring to a boil. Lower heat, cover pot and simmer soup for at least half an hour. This will allow the herbs to fully flavor the soup.

4. Crack eggs on edge of pot and drop into soup in different areas of pot. Do not stir! The eggs will cook in place in 2-3 minutes.

5. Remove soup from heat.

6. To best enjoy the soup, place a hard boiled egg in each bowl and fill with black bean soup.

7. Tear corn tortillas in strips and sprinkle over bowl. Add a dollop of sour cream and a generous pinch of freshly chopped cilantro.





This recipe came care of the first print issue of Remedy Quarterly, which I received in the mail (appropriately enough) on my birthday. It is a beautifully curated collection of recipes and stories about food; I highly, highly recommend grabbing a copy while you still can. The ginger cookie recipe alone is worth it.

best in show

Food is a lovely thing. On more than one occasion--embarrassingly more--the stoop-shouldered slope of a bell pepper's top will swoon me to the point that I'll be late for work. Literally late for work. It turns out that I'm helpless in admiration of the evolutionary tactics that nature has employed in order to make what's edible appealing. Lustrous, yellow-skinned summer squashes, eggplants thick and fleshy, ebony with ripeness, garlic bulbs puckered from heat and oil into tiny brown kisses. The feast is entirely visual before it is edible.

In my perfect world, eating would always be composed of these three parts: careful preparation, ensuing admiration, and then celebratory consumption. It seems sadly more often than not that food is lost beneath the noise and traffic of restaurants; it moves effortlessly into our awareness and is just as easily swept back out again, a carousel of aroma with the occasional nutritive benefit. The diner entertains no relationship to the individual ingredient and the vibrant space between kitchen and table is plunged into darkness.

I take great enjoyment from the private illumination of this realm. To know how something smells, appears, and feels before it is coaxed into relationship with a half dozen others of its kind. As a result, I know that a lot of what I cook seems unforgivably dull at first glance. The eggplant pictured below was simply sliced in half and baked with garlic cloves at 350 degrees until it was soft. The squash was sliced, layered, coated in olive oil and fresh herbs, and then baked as well. The cross-section of fresh pepper above just happened to catch the light coming through my window when it was on its way to my mouth. You see? It's not that I'm eating plainly! It's that I am partaking in a prolonged and thorough study of food appreciation. Huzzah huzzah!