Not so this recipe. Lynne Rossetto Kasper’s “Salad of Beef with Lime, Chile and Mint Inspired by Laos” (whew) raised my eyebrows enough that I made it last summer for Avery, and tonight for Ben. This is a riff on Lynne’s riff on larb, the Laotian crisp, spicy, protein-heavy salad that breaks summer heat into tart bursts of flavor. I’ve been using tofu, with a curiosity about shrimp for the next go.

Whereas Lynne broke out the grill for this, I seared the tofu; she used rice noodles, and I picked up a fun squishy pack of kelp noodles at the store that work beautifully. Instead of tossing it all together, I laid those big gorgeous pieces of soy curd right on top. After I snapped the photo, I realized I had an avocado, too. That took this from delectable to downright scarfable.

Larb, Kind Of
adapted from Lynne Rossetto Kasper
serves 2-3 as a main course

1 large garlic clove, minced
2 teaspons grated fresh ginger
2 packed teaspoons brown sugar, or to taste
1/4 teaspoon each salt and ground black pepper
zest and juice of 1 large lime
1 tablespoon fish sauce
2 tablespoons water

1 12-oz package kelp noodles, or 12 oz dry rice noodles, soaked in warm water to soften
4 whole scallions, thinly sliced
1/3 cup fresh cilantro leaves, roughly torn
1/3 cup fresh mint leaves
1 jalapeno, thinly sliced
2 small cucumbers, peeled, seeded, and thinly sliced
1 cup thinly sliced green cabbage

1 16-oz package extra firm tofu, pressed for at least 30 minutes
1 cup cornstarch
1/4 cup neutral oil, like sunflower, canola, or peanut (coconut oil would be good, too)

Mix dressing ingredients in a small bowl and set aside.

Mix salad ingredients in a large bowl and set aside.

Stand the block of tofu on end and slice down the middle. Stack the two slabs and cut into thirds, making six pieces. Put cornstarch on a plate and coat the tofu in it.

In a large skillet, heat oil barely to the smoking point. (Really. It’s got to be hot.) Pull tofu out of your cornstarch dredge, tap off the excess cornstarch, and lay each piece carefully in the hot oil. Shake the pan occasionally to make sure nothing’s sticking, but otherwise leave it in there for 2-3 minutes to let it get a nice brown crust. Turn with a fork and brown the other side. Remove from oil.

Toss the salad with 2/3 of the dressing and spread on a platter. Arrange the tofu on top and finish it off with the rest of the dressing. I recommend an avocado, too.

“I have cauliflower, tomatoes, and three dried figs. What should I cook?”

I enjoy these challenges. It’s not dissimilar to my job, where I find ways to use up 10 extra pounds of flank steak or a case of eggplant. At home I like shopping my pantry to see what I can pull together, and that gets more fun the barer the shelves become. Every once in awhile, though, I’ll get an idea that burrows itself into my head, and when it comes out again, the results are spot-on.

I kept thinking about quinces and sheep’s-milk cheese. I wanted to involve the two in a dessert, but manchego wasn’t going to work. I wondered if I could find a fresh sheep cheese, so I e-mailed some of the cheese shops in town, and some wrote back (way to go, Foster & Dobbs!) and some didn’t (what’s up, Cheese Bar?), but the gist was that spring is the time to get such happiness, not January. Not having that much patience, I settled on some goat fromage frais from New Seasons. It would be a tart: shortbread crust with crushed walnuts in it, a layer of cheese, a layer of quince jam, and sage to top it off.

I don’t make shortbread crusts that often, so I turned to my cookbooks to find what I was looking for. Lynne Rossetto Kasper and Sally Swift had a shortbread and jam tart. Perfect! I thought. It even had almond meal in it. So I substituted walnut meal and put everything in the food processor and prebaked and came up with… a useless, airy crumble of butter.

I remembered making an orange and date tart from Milk and Cookies a couple of years ago to end a fabulous Middle Eastern meal, and the crust was just what I’d had in mind. So I added lemon zest, substituted 200g flour and 50g crushed walnuts, and tossed that lot in the food processor again. Much better results.

What really pulls this whole thing together is the sage. I might even put some in the crust next time. It perfectly balances the sweet jam and tangy cheese. Without it, the dish is almost candy-like, but the sage really brings it back down to earth and gives all the other ingredients a reason for being included.

Make your own quince jam for this. You’ll feel even more accomplished.

Quince Tart with Walnuts and Sage
makes an 8″ tart

crust
200g all purpose flour
50g toasted ground walnuts
110g confectioners’ sugar
zest of 1 lemon
110g unsalted butter, chilled
1 egg

Place flour, walnuts, and confectioners’ sugar in a food processor and process to combine. Add butter and zest and process until mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add egg and process until a smooth ball. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 400F.

Roll out pastry on a floured surface and use to line an 8″ tart pan with removable base. Line pastry with parchment paper and fill with rice or pastry weights. Bake for 10 minutes, then remove paper and weights and return to oven for 10 minutes until crisp and golden.

(Thanks, Milk and Cookies!)

filling
500g fresh sheep or goat cheese, softened
500g quince jam, heated with 1-2 tablespoons water to soften
whole sage leaves

When tart shell has cooled enough that it won’t fall apart when handled, carefully spread the cheese. Cover with jam and return to the oven for 15 minutes, just to get the components to melt together a bit. Remove from oven and serve with sage leaves.

“Where would you like to visit next?” he asked.

This is a small-talk question. Same as “What kind of food do you like to cook?” or “Do you enjoy your job?” Of course, there’s nothing wrong with these questions. They can lead to perfunctory answers or interesting discussion, and it’s a fun challenge to find out where a new person is perfunctory or interesting. It had been awhile, though, since I had been asked:

“Where would you like to visit next?”

Because I am trying to stay grounded here, I’ve had tunnel vision on Portland. It’s not that I don’t care about the rest of the world. I know that the Dream Act didn’t pass, I know that Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest, I know about the impending referendum vote in southern Sudan.

But I don’t know where I want to pull out my passport for. I gave relatively perfunctory answers: Japan would be nice, maybe a longer trip to India. What a change this has been from the replies I would have given three years ago. This afternoon, looking for the answer to a crossword clue, I was sucked into an atlas and I began to remember those replies. Back to Turkey, I want to go. Georgia. Estonia. Bhutan. Uruguay. Ethiopia. Tunisia again, more of north Africa. I miss the assimilation of previously foreign smells spilling through the streets and becoming fodder for future nostalgia. I miss finding comfort in discomfort, miss mingling languages. When we travel, we find ourselves daily by giving ourselves up to the journey. It is exhausting. It is so worth it.

I am going to give you an armchair traveler’s dish. It is full of familiar flavors, put together in a way that is suddenly alive. It’s from Moosewood. Your potluck companions will coo. It will make you miss places you’ve never been.

Caribbean Sweet Potato Gratin
adapted from Moosewood Restaurant New Classics
serves 6-8

2 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 teaspoons lime zest
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 1/2 cups unsweetened coconut milk
1/4 cup medium-heat prepared salsa
1 cup cooked rice
4 cups peeled and thinly sliced sweet potatoes (I used a mandoline)
1 1/2 cups cooked black beans (15-oz can, drained)
1 1/2 cups fresh spinach, rinsed, stemmed, and chiffonaded

topping
3/4 cup panko breadcrumbs
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon salt

Preheat to 350F. Lightly oil a 9″x13″ baking pan.

Combine garlic, lime zest and juice, cilantro, thyme, salt, pepper, coconut milk, and salsa in a measuring cup. Pour one third of this mixture into the prepared baking pan. Layer half of the sweet potatoes in the bottom, topped by half of the rice, half of the black beans, and half of the spinach. Pour on another third of the coconut milk mixture and repeat the layers of sweet potatoes, rice, beans, and spinach. Pour the remaining coconut milk mixture over all.

In a small bowl combine all of the topping ingredients and sprinkle over the gratin, making sure to go all the way to the edges.

Bake, uncovered, for about 60 minutes, rotating the pan in the oven after 30 minutes to ensure uniform baking. When the potatoes are tender and the topping is crisp and golden brown, remove from the oven and let sit for 2-3 minutes until the potatoes absorb any remaining liquid.

Was that too much? That was too much.

Let’s focus again on simple things. Leeks are a favorite ingredient of mine, and they hopped to center stage when I first ate leek banitsa. Those little pieces of green fell apart in sweet heaven, matching the salty cheese in a pragmatic, blissful way. Beauty, I knew thy name, and it was leek!

OK, too much.

Here’s what you do with leeks. Hack off the dark green parts. Set those aside to toss into whatever stock you happen to be making at the time. Split the rest of the stalk lengthwise and rinse out any dirt from between the layers, if you see it. Carefully toss them in oil, salt, and pepper, and lay them out on a rimmed baking sheet, cut side down. Put them in a 375-degree oven and leave them there until they are soft and golden brown. Serve and realize that “allium” and “candy” actually do go together.

There are many small things I miss about being in faraway places, though, and one of them is a narrower food selection. I live just down the street from New Seasons, a grocery store with seasonal veggie burgers in the deli, bulk fresh herbs, and signage on the fish that lines up with Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch Guide. On one level, it’s foodie paradise. On another level, however, it’s over the top. It makes me miss the corner store in the village I lived in in Bulgaria, where I’d go to buy bread and cheese and tomatoes, because that’s all I needed for a nice meal. For most groceries I would ask Dani behind the counter – pasta, flour, eggs – and she would pull them from the shelves surrounding her. The produce would often be a little better quality at the farmers’ markets in the city, predictable and daily. In my tiny Euro fridge I would keep only as much as I needed (well, OK, maybe a little more), and foreign treats were excitedly used.

Back in the land of plenty, I can often be so overwhelmed by all the food choices I have that I’ll just give up and order pizza. I mean, I really love pizza, but when was the last time I got excited about a single item? Between poverty, reruns of French Food at Home with Laura Calder, and dinner last night at Cafe Castagna, I’ve decided it’s time to have a simple plate of food again. I pulled out my trusty lidded cast iron pan, clarified some butter, and seared some Brussels sprouts that I’d picked up at the farmers’ market. Three-ingredient eatin’.

Seared Brussels Sprouts

Take a couple of handfuls of Brussels sprouts and cut them in half through the stem. In a skillet that is not non-stick, heat some clarified butter* over medium high heat. When a drop of water sizzles loudly and violently in the fat, put the sprouts in, cut side down, and cook until they are nearly burned, about 3 minutes. Add 1/2 cup water and immediately slap a tight-fitting lid on the pan. Cook until sprouts are bright green and a knife easily pierces them, 2 minutes. If there’s still water in the pan, uncover to let it cook off. Sprinkle with good salt.

*To clarify butter, melt a stick of it in a pan. When the foaming subsides and the solids have separated and fallen to the bottom, remove from heat and pour through a fine-mesh sieve. Obviously you will not use a stick’s worth of clarified butter for this recipe. This means you have plenty left over for various and sundry uses.

Tortellini and Kale Soup
serves 5-6

2 tablespoons olive oil (not extra virgin)
1 yellow onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, halved
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup white wine
large can tomato juice
2 cups vegetable broth
handful frozen tortellini
1 can white beans, drained
1/2 bunch kale, stemmed and roughly chopped
1 orange, sliced in thin half moons

Heat oil in a 4-quart soup pot over medium heat. Add onion, garlic, thyme, cinnamon, and a big pinch of coarse salt; cook until softened and lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Add wine and cook until it doesn’t smell boozy, about 2 minutes. Add juice, broth, tortellini, and beans. Bring to a boil, add kale, and cook 10 minutes. Serve with orange slices. Smile at Emily.

Winter does not make me easier to be around. I looked out the window today and noticed that the trees are finally bare, really bare, spindly and stark. It’s dark by 4:30 and people are ducking indoors much more quickly. We’re all a little snarly, because that’s where our honesty is these days, and we dare ourselves to be nice to other people, because way back in our shivering heads we know we’re all we’ve got.

Last week every food magazine was wetting itself over Thanksgiving. Somehow this year it all seemed overblown to me. It was too nice. I wanted kind, I wanted simple. (Thanksgiving at Laura and David’s was wonderfully so.) The most fulfilling meals I’ve had lately have been made by people who don’t work themselves into a frenzy cooking for me, the foodie who knows what she’s talking about. I’ve been eating dinner made by friends who burned part of it, put the carrots in at the wrong time, served two dishes with completely different flavor profiles. And you know what? I loved them. I loved the food and I loved the people who made it for me. When you overcome a fear of not being nice, all you are left with is kindness.

This is food from me: this is coarse and this is kind. It has three ingredients and it is pungent and unafraid, but it needs support and love to round it out. It looks like green goop. I don’t care. I’m not going to get all Donna Hay on you. It’s amazing and nourishing. Not in the way that spinach is nourishing. I love spinach, but spinach needs a little help to taste great. I eat this and my body says thank you as much as my tastebuds do, because it hits every note. Put a tablespoon or two in pasta with some goat cheese, and serve it to someone who may not otherwise understand that you are kind.

Garlic Chive Pesto
makes 1 quart

1 pound garlic chives or wild garlic
1 cup sunflower oil
coarse salt to taste

Roughly chop the garlic chives, then put them in the food processor with 1/4 cup oil and 1 tablespoon salt. With processor running, add enough oil to make a loose pesto, then check for seasoning. You may not need a full cup of oil, but you will almost certainly want more salt.

I went on an unnecessary but fascinating grocery shopping trip, and as I was unloading my treasures, I put a bottle of juice on the shelf, thinking, “Wow, this shelf has held up really well, especially with all of these glass jars I’ve been putting things in.”

I wandered back into the bedroom and puttered around a little bit when I heard a giant crash in the kitchen. I took a deep breath, emitted a mild expletive, and walked back to the kitchen to see the contents of the pantry making a brightly colored stream of glass and goodies across the kitchen floor. Luckily, only two jars broke (the pantry doors cushioned the blow as the shelf collapsed), and neither of them was liquid. We took it as an excuse to do a little kitchen clearing, and we found all of this… stuff. Everywhere. Too many times I found myself saying, “Ooh, I’d forgotten I had that!”

In the professional kitchen I work in, I feel tremendous guilt when I say that. Finding a case of food in the walk-in freezer that I had insisted on ordering two months ago, and then forgotten about? Not cool. I saw too many unused items in the pantry, and it was time to resist the eating-out temptations that are so rampant in Portland. So I backed off on the grocery shopping for a couple of weeks. I did all right – didn’t go out to eat too much, had a couple of friends over for dinner to help clear things out. On Saturday, I was at the store buying milk and bread, and I spied some cacao nibs.

“All right, self,” I said. “If you’re going to buy these, you need to use them. Soon.”

So I did.

Sugar Cookies with Cacao Nibs
adapted from Mennonite Community Cookbook
makes about 6 dozen cookies

1 cup butter
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
5 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon soda
1/4 cup milk
about 1/2 cup cacao nibs

Cream together butter and sugar. Add vanilla and eggs and beat until fluffy.

Sift together flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Add alternately with milk. Stir until dough is smooth. (I can’t tell you how much easier this is with a mixer than with a wooden spoon and biceps.) Chill in refrigerator for several hours.

Preheat oven to 400F. Roll out to 1″ thickness. Sprinkle top with cacao nibs and keep rolling to 1/4″ thickness. Cut in desired shapes. (I like the plain old circle.) Place 1″ apart on a greased cookie sheet and bake 8-10 minutes. Cool on racks.

Grate or julienne a few radishes. Mix it in butter. Good butter. Sea salt, black pepper.

Now, go back outside. It just got warm.