Celery. Boletus mushrooms. Blue cheese. (Majorly.) Truffles. Hard boiled eggs. (See previous post.) Radishes.

The thing is, though, you can make me eat all of these things if you use them properly. (Not the blue cheese, though. Never, ever the blue cheese.) The right amount of celery in a well balanced, brothy soup will sing. I once had gnocchi that involved truffles at Little Bird, and I nearly cried. And a couple of diced, hard boiled eggs in tuna salad can be just the ticket, sometimes.

I have found that the flavor of radishes is well aided by a generous schmear of dairy products, something that I am generally in favor of. A hot pan has also given me reason to buy a little red bunch of punch for the past couple of springtimes. Last year I cooked them with garlic and anchovies for bruschetta. A couple of weeks ago, as Talia was on her way over for dinner, I pulled out some rice crackers, cream cheese, and scallions, and popped these together just before the doorbell rang.

If you’re looking to fancy these up further, the cream cheese is a good vehicle. Lemon zest, chives (chive flowers!), anchovy, verbena, go crazy. You could even pipe it into mini tart shells instead of serving it on a cracker. Here’s the simple route, easy and tasty.

Seared Radish and Cream Cheese Bites

First, sear yerself some radishes: cut off the greens, then slice a couple of radishes into 1/4″ discs. Roll them up in a tea towel for five minutes to remove excess moisture. While that happens, heat a small frypan over high heat, with clarified butter or oil that has a high smoke point, like peanut. When a drop of water sizzles violently in the fat, add the radishes. Cook 1-2 minutes on each side. Remove from heat.

Spread a rice cracker with cream cheese, add a radish slice or two, and top with a bit of scallion green that’s been cut on a hard bias. Fresh-cracked pepper, anyone?

(I like this Little Bird, too.)

I like custard, I like cake, I like clafoutis. But serve me toad-in-the-hole, sunny-side-up, even hard-boiled, and I can’t bring myself to swallow. I allow no runniness in my eggs. Give me migas, oh lord yes. Give me delicately scrambled sunshine, I gag. I will scramble an egg for myself, and I will let it sit in hot hot butter until it is browned. Only then has it coagulated enough that it becomes suitable for consumption. That’s why the photo below may sting a little bit if you are someone who likes to dip your toast in the yolk.

I love olives tossed in with scrambled eggs, and so when I saw an egg and tapenade sandwich on the menu at Lovejoy Bakers, I snapped to attention and devoured the plate of salty goodness presented to me. Then I sat with it for a moment and decided I needed another one. The server said, “Aren’t they delicious? It sounds a little weird to put those two things together, but it totally works.”

Not weird at all.

Allow one egg per sandwich. Scramble and cook in butter. (I will permit you to cook it less than I do.) Pile it onto a slice of buttered bread. Good butter. Good bread. Smear some olive tapenade on the other slice. Eat. Repeat as necessary.

This means that winter is shedding, and that my brain is waking up a little bit. This February I spent a great deal of time with lovely people whose company I enjoy and whose companionship is essential, but I overloaded my calendar and forgot how much time I need to myself. Last weekend I went to March Fourth’s bacchanalian anniversary show and danced until I dropped. The next morning I drove to Wheeler County, the least-populated county in Oregon, and left behind the urbanity and, uh, moisture of Portland. Dramatic, dry landscapes surrounded me and made me feel blessedly insignificant. I saw no one for miles.

Today is another day of catching up on self-connection. I slept for 11 hours, stayed in bed and read til noon, and then: I got up and scrubbed the bejeezus out of the stove. Months of cooking oil and blackened debris were no match for me and my steel wool. It didn’t clear my head as much as Wheeler County did, but it sure cleaned out a couple extra cobwebs. Elbow grease can be a powerful meditation, when the mood strikes.

Under my newly scrubbed cooktop I baked this quickbread. I’d been craving an olive oil cake for awhile and had everything I needed on hand. In my fridge-clearing theme of late I also found some ricotta cheese that hadn’t gone moldy – hooray! – and from it got a wonderfully tight texture that opened up with the flavors of olive oil, rose, and lemon. The walnuts on top toasted perfectly and gave a buttery richness in their crunch that complemented the silky crumb. Everything in here came straight out of my pantry. As long as you keep rose petals on hand, it can come out of yours too.

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
3/4 cup ricotta
1/2 cup almond milk
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/2 teaspoon rosewater
1/4 cup lightly crushed dried rose petals
zest of 1 lemon
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup untoasted walnuts

Preheat to 350F. Butter and flour a loaf pan. In a large mixing bowl combine flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. In a medium mixing bowl combine eggs, ricotta, milk, oil, rosewater, rose petals, and lemon zest. Add wet mixture to dry and mix until barely combined. Add raisins and give it another few stirs. This batter will be thick. Spoon into loaf pan, smooth the top, and sprinkle with walnuts. Bake 55 minutes or until a tester comes out clean. Let rest 5 minutes on the counter, then turn out onto a cooling rack.

When I first moved to Portland I was living downtown – no yard sales there, either. But last winter I moved over to the east side, and when we emerged from our damp caves at the beginning of summer to take our more regular perambulations allowed by beautiful northwest summers, I started to see them, tacked on community bulletin boards, lampposts, fences: yard sale signs. I began to wander past a few, and as the season wore on, I started paying attention during the week to sales that would be happening that weekend. Always something new-to-me and unusual to be picked up, almost always for the equivalent of change I can dig out of the couch cushions. I’ve bought a Victrola cupboard, a botanical lithograph, a 50-year-old jewelry box. I went really nuts at one yard sale and spent a whole $19. (I may never move back to the country again.)

I’m always keeping an eye out for sturdy kitchen equipment. Buy what you can afford, when it comes to cooking, but on my salary, I can afford aluminum baking dishes from Safeway. So yard sales are it, for me. A few weeks ago I spied two super high quality muffin tins. Sweet! I said. I need muffin tins! $5 each! For two… muffins-the-size-of-your-head muffin tins.

I figured oversized muffins were better than no muffins. So I stuffed them in the messenger bag, along with a bedskirt (I’d been looking for one of those forever! They’re either expensive or heinous. Sometimes both!), and I pedaled back home. And then I made myself some of Deborah Madison’s quinoa muffins. Some credit goes to my roommate: I stole her quinoa to make these. She didn’t mind. Why? Because they’re tasty, that’s why.

This recipe is made for regular sized muffins, not the behemoths I made, for which I just doubled the recipe and thus put twice as much batter in each muffin cup.

Quinoa Muffins
from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison

1 cup cooked or 1/2 cup raw quinoa
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 cup quinoa flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1 egg
1/4 c butter, melted, or vegetable oil
1 1/4 cups buttermilk or yogurt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat to 375F. Spray or oil muffin tins.

If cooking quinoa, rinse it well, put it in a small saucepan with 1 cup water, and bring to a boil. Simmer, covered, until the water is absorbed, about 15 minutes, then drain.

Meanwhile, combine flours, salt, soda, and sugar in a mixing bowl. Beat the egg with the oil, buttermilk, and vanilla. Stir wet ingredients into dry, add the quinoa, and mix with a spatula, scraping up from the bottom so that the flour is mixed in thoroughly. Scoop the batter into the muffin cups and bake until firm and light brown on top, 25-30 minutes.

I have spent much of my brief life looking for good biscuits. Usually, I paid for them. (I think there’s a support group for that.) Outside the American south, amazing biscuits are hard to come by – most folks don’t understand that the point is to use just enough flour to hold all the fat together. What ends up happening without this rule is a lump of baked dough that tastes like toothpaste without the minty freshness, thanks to all the baking soda that gets thrown in.

I could always make decent biscuits, but I needed a gobstopper of a recipe to support the technique I understood. A few weeks ago, I found it. It’s in the Gourmet cookbook, and everyone who’s eaten these that I’ve made for them has said little more than “oh. Woah” before they vacuum them up off the plate. Then they look at me in adoration, a buttery gleam in their eyes, and say, “…could you, uh, make those again?”

You’d think that I would make enough of a recipe that people wouldn’t need to ask for a second batch. But when a stick of butter makes only four biscuits… Well, you’ve got to pace yourself.

When I made them this morning, I took a bite, held it for a second, and literally felt it melting in my mouth. I didn’t know that was possible with anything that wasn’t chocolate ganache. I see no other biscuit recipe but this one from now on.

Biscuits
adapted from The Gourmet Cookbook
makes 4 giant biscuits

2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon coarse sea salt
1 stick butter, chilled and cut in tablespoons
3/4 cup well-shaken buttermilk (I like to use 1/4 cup almond milk and 1/2 cup yogurt)

Preheat to 425F. In a large bowl stir together flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Add butter and cut in with forks or a pastry cutter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add buttermilk and stir just to combine.

Turn out onto a well-floured surface and knead 5-6 times, until the dough starts to come together. Pat into a small circle, about an inch and a half thick. Using a 2″ ring mold, punch straight down into the dough, no twisting. Reform dough and cut out three more biscuits. Bake 10-15 minutes, until golden brown and delicious. (You’ll hear them sizzle on the pan. It’ll be great.) Eat with apple butter and sweet tea.

I made these a couple of weeks ago. On the phone with my dad one Saturday morning, I said, “What should I cook today?” and he relied, “Sweet potatoes and wine.” Very doable. I felt like some weekend baking, and I wanted something that I could eat casually but didn’t mind taking some time to work on. Stumbling across this recipe on Real Food Rehab, I cooed and headed straight into the kitchen.

This is a great pie crust recipe, using an egg to help it stand up to the little bit of mauling necessary to make the half-moon shapes. I’d never made little pastry pockets like this before, and as I pressed the ends of these together with a fork, I kept looking at them and going, “….aw.” When I ate them, though, cuteness turned into lustiness. Rich sweet potatoes spiked with wine and laced with 7-spice powder: how can you go wrong?

Lebanese 7-spice powder (in some cases it’s Syrian) is the ace up my spice rack’s sleeve. If you can find this in a Middle Eastern grocery, you’re in like Flynn. If you can’t, don’t despair – use a combination of allspice and black pepper. I made the filling vegan by using soy creamer and Earth Balance, but I’d be hard-pressed to let go of that egg in the crust.

Sweet Potato and Pear Hand Pies
crust recipe from Kate Neumann, as printed by Dana Joy Altman
makes about 16

crust
3 2/3 cups all purpose flour
2 tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. salt
10.5 ounces (about 2.5 sticks) unsalted butter, very cold and cubed
2 eggs, cold & gently beaten
1/4 cup ice water

filling
1 medium-sized sweet potato, 1″ dice
sweet white wine
1 medium-sized pear, peeled and cut into 1/2″ dice
1 teaspoon Lebanese 7-spice powder
2 tablespoons cream
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup apple butter
1/4 cup brown sugar

Combine flour, sugar, salt and butter in a large mixing bowl. Using your hands or a pastry cutter, work the fat in until it’s broken down into pea-sized pieces. Add one of the eggs and mix with a wooden spoon. Then, pour ice water in tablespoon increments until dough looks “shaggy”, feels a bit wet, and holds together only if you smush a bit in your hands. Knead the dough together by hand, no more than a minute, and form into a round disc, cover with plastic wrap and let chill in fridge for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, make filling: Bring salted water to a boil in a 2-quart saucepan and add diced sweet potato, along with maybe half a cup of wine. Cook until sweet potato is very soft, then drain. Put sweet potato in a large mixing bowl along with remaining filling ingredients. Mash until… well, until it’s mashed. Add another glug of white wine and stir that in.

On a well-floured counter or pastry board, roll dough out to 3/16″ thickness and cut out 4″ rounds. (You can use the outline of the rim of a bowl and trace it out with a knife.) Place each cut round on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and a light dusting of flour. The scraps can be combined and rolled out again. Place a heaping tablespoon of filling in the center of each disc.

Whisk the egg. Brush a half circle of egg around the edge of exposed pastry to act as “glue.” Fold the circle in half and press down the edges with a fork to seal. Chill for at least one hour, and preheat the oven to 375F.

Before baking, brush surface of the crust with egg, cut three slits as vents and sprinkle with sugar. Bake for about 45 minutes until golden brown.

This is an infinitely adaptable basic recipe: one part sugar, two parts butter, three parts flour (by weight). Because it’s so simple, you should bring out the good butter for this. Or the good… coconut oil?

Coconut Lime Shortbread
makes about 20 cookies

2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (one stick) butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup coconut oil, at room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
zest of 1 lime
unsweetened dried coconut

Combine all ingredients except dried coconut and rub together with your hands until a dough forms – it will barely hold together. Pat into a circle and wrap in plastic; stow it in the fridge for at least an hour. (I left mine in there for a week. Oops.)

Preheat to 350F. Remove dough from fridge and let warm enough to roll into a circle 1/2″ thick. Pat dried coconut into the dough and cut into any shapes you like. (Unicorns!) Bake 15 minutes and allow to cool on baking sheet 5 minutes before removing to a rack to cool completely.

I brought these to Zeke’s birthday party. Here is a picture of Zeke eating his giant birthday cupcake.

Hooray for sugar!

I have an announcement. Are you sitting down?

The sun has been shining in Portland for 10 straight days.

It’s been amazing.

I was lolling on the grass one sunny day in college, Back East, and my friend Natalie, who grew up here in Portland, turned to me and said, “I’m from Oregon. We don’t really trust the sun.”

“Well, I sure as shit ain’t moving there,” I said to myself.

But 8 years later, here I am, and after my first northwest winter, I’ve joined the club. I get out of the house the moment the clouds thin, because I know that blue skies won’t be the case for long. When the sun can’t decide whether or not to come out during the day, however, and we get clouds-sun-clouds-sun, I think, “Oh, just let it be cloudy and let’s be done with it.”

Last weekend, though, I dug out spaghetti straps, linen dresses, and tube tops from the back of my closet. After a week and a half of this weather, I think it’s going to hang around for a little while. My pasty winter skin has gone away and I feel like a normal human being again! It’s been picnics aplenty here in Stumptown and today was no exception. Sesame cookies and seitan bánh mì with a rockstar dipping sauce from Veganomicon were in hand as Ravi and I walked to the park; we munched away on our tasty sandwiches and sugar while feeling summer coming on stronger by the minute. Let’s just hope the sun sticks around for awhile.

The bánh mì didn’t last long enough to get a decent picture, so I’ll focus on the cookies. The hardest part of vegan baked goods is getting the texture right for those of us who grew up on egg-leavened treats. These cookies nail it. And they do it without flaxseed, a hippie-food favorite that my body just doesn’t tolerate. Brown rice syrup, peanut butter, and equal amounts of baking powder and baking soda pull together the right mouthfeel; the spices and wandering hint of almond extract makes a wonderful balance. Plus, pretty!

Peanut-Ginger-Sesame Cookies
from Veganomicon by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero
makes 42 cookies

2 1/4 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 cup nonhydrogenated vegan shortening, softened
1/2 cup chunky peanut butter
1/4 cup brown rice syrup
1 1/4 cups sugar, plus additional sugar for rolling
1/2 cup soy milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
5 ounces candied ginger, diced finely
1/3 cup each white and black sesame seeds, or 2/3 cup of just one kind

Preheat to 350F and lightly grease two cookie sheets.

Sift together flour, baking powder, soda, salt, ground ginger, and cinnamon, and set aside.

In a large bowl use electric beaters to cream the shortening until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the peanut butter, rice syrup, sugar, soy milk, and extracts, and continue to beat until creamy, 4-5 minutes. Using a rubber spatula or wooden spoon, stir in the flour mixture, then add chopped candied ginger and stir until a very firm dough forms. You can use your hands towards the end to mix the dough.

Roll scant tablespoons of the dough into walnut-sized balls. Roll each ball in sesame seeds, then roll in a little sugar and place on a prepared cookie sheet, leaving about 1 1/2″ of space between each cookie. Flatten the balls just slightly and bake for 10-11 minutes for chewy cookies, up to 14 minutes for firmer, crunchier cookies. Remove from oven and allow cookies to remain on baking sheets for a few minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool.

I was worried that this would happen when I decided that I would spend the afternoon lazing about on a grassy knoll. A few hours of soaking up the Vitamin D really takes it out of you. We walked back in the house, plopped down on the couch, and I asked myself, “Do I really, really feel like dancing?” And I’m still on the couch, two hours later, having not even gotten up to wash the sunscreen off my face. The dance is starting now. I think I might make it to the laundry room, but no farther.

This morning, Zeke came over and we walked over to the farmers’ market to stand in a 3-mile long line for biscuits. I understand that you’re not supposed to be able to find good biscuits north of the Mason-Dixon Line – or west of Tennessee, for that matter – but Pine State Biscuits knows what they’re doing. My friend Luke, who moved to Oregon from North Carolina a few months after I did, went behind the counter to hug all the cooks after ordering the Reggie last weekend. (Also, they have Cheerwine, which I miss, but not enough to pay $2 a bottle.)

So after some sweet biscuit love, Zeke headed to French class and I headed into the kitchen to make some picnic preparations. There was a feeding frenzy at the strawberry stand over at the market, so I grabbed a pint, and I also picked up the last bunch of basil from a neighboring vendor. This and a little drizzle of real balsamic gave me basil-wrapped strawberries. Three ingredients. Welcome to summer.

After that I threw some Puy lentils together with olive oil, the same real balsamic, salt and pepper, red scallions, plenty more basil, herbs de provence, a big pinch of lavender, and a couple of splashes of lemon juice.

Next was a simple, no-frills pasta salad: broccoli, parmesan, basil (what? It was a big bunch), olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt and pepper, and roasted garlic.

Finally, I melted a little Earth Balance in a pan and chopped up about 5 stalks of rhubarb. Cooked it down with more brown sugar than my teeth will forgive me for, a handful of raisins, some cinnamon, allspice, and cloves, and poured some Cointreau over it for good measure. When it got all mushy, I had rhubarb compote. Plus bread and goat cheese? You’ve got yourself a picnic.

We packed it all up, along with some Thai iced tea and blood orange soda, into sexy sexy Tupperware and went up to Washington Park, finding the perfect spot of grass in Hoyt Arboretum. We munched on our riches while watching sun-ecstatic Portlanders engage in such stimulating activities as playing hackey sack and rolling down a giant hill. Urban hikers walked past; children scuttled about, parents in tow; couples meandered by; amateur botanists pontificated within earshot. Zeke and I, meanwhile, raised forks to mouths and chewed in harmony with birdsong. Then we sat, in the sun, and did absolutely nothing. And it was wonderful.

The more I cook, the more I pay attention to food in the places I’ve been. It’s been Italy that keeps coming back to me, though, for recipeless cooking – I spent four months there and learned a ton about throwing stuff in a pan, more by osmosis than by any study of cuisine. My favorite trick, by far, is the risotto cake.

I learned this in Venice. I spent a few days there near the beginning of my time in Italy, and when I was trying to decide how I should finish up the two empty weeks I had before getting on my flight back to the U.S., Venice kept pulling me back. I know the arguments against it – it’s an open sewer filled with rotting buildings, topped off by pickpockets and souvenir stalls. I was wary of all of these things before I went, and dubious at any chance of a positive experience as my train from Verona rolled through the marsh in February drizzle. We left the land, though, and barbershop poles poking up through the water tugged at the corners of my mouth. I stepped off the train and out of the station and there I was, on the Grand Canal, and I immediately loved Venice. I have never left. I stayed with a friend of a friend who fed me simple, perfect food, and when she made risotto cakes, my 20-year-old’s pride hid my enthusiastic surprise at the ingenious idea. I won’t give you a recipe, because she didn’t give me one either.

Take some leftover risotto. Add an egg. Mix it up, make into patties (about 3-4 tablespoons’ worth), fry in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. The only trick is to wait long enough before flipping them – if you do it too soon, they’ll fall apart. Wait until you see a healthy brown crust forming on the bottom, then turn them.

This is a great post-dinner-party brunch. At least, that’s how I made it this week.