Author Archives: Shannon

Rainy Day Cauliflower and Potatoes

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cauliflower and potatoesIt’s been a gray and cool spring around these parts, but there’s no reason that a little chill in the air needs to rain on your culinary parade. After all, the days are surely numbered until it’s so hot that you’d rather, I don’t know, be chained down and forced to watch that terrible new Cameron Crowe movie instead of turning on your oven. So embrace the cool; make a casserole.

Here’s one I came up with this weekend. Full disclosure: I wanted to make something that necessitated that I slice at least one ingredient because my friend Mignon gave me a sweeeet new mandolin for my birthday. This handy tool makes me feel at least fifty-three percent fancier as I am cooking, and my potato slices really were shockingly even. But even if you don’t have a mandolin (or a Mignon) in your life, fear not: you can totally rock it old-school and slice them by hand.

Rainy Day Cauliflower and Potatoes Continue reading →

The Good Herb Puzzle

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mintHerbs! What’s not to love? Because they’re the leafy part of the plant (rather than the bark, seed or root, which are considered spices), they’re one of the first signs of spring to grace the dinner table. Seriously, if there’s no basil plant sunning itself in your garden or on your windowsill by now, remedy that oversight; it will repay you a thousand times over in herb butter and pesto this summer.

But I digress. Test how well you really know your herbs by trying to name the correct one for each of the fun facts listed below. This is a tough one, guys, so if you manage to get even half, consider yourself a perfect herbivore.

  1. A belief in ancient Greece held that this herb (whose name comes for the Greek word for king) would only grow if you screamed curses while planting the seeds.
  2. An English tradition is to plant large patches of this herb as a playground for fairies.
  3. Some people have a gene that causes them to experience this herb as having a nasty soapy flavor.
  4. Some mothers take this herb to help with lactation, but a sweet side effect is that it can make their sweat and urine smell like maple syrup.
  5. This flowering herb prized mostly for its scent was thought to protect the wearer from the bubonic plague when worn around the wrist.
  6. In ancient Rome, this was the most important medicinal herb, so important that our word for it comes from the Latin term meaning “to save.”
  7. This herb is associated with the Virgin Mary, because there’s a story that the flowers of the plant got their color after she placed her blue shawl on one of the bushes to dry it.
  8. This herb has been found in Egyptian tombs dating back to 1000 BC, and Mexicans like it so much that they call it simply yerba buena, meaning “good herb.”

Don’t scroll down or click “Continue” until you’re reedy for the answers! Continue reading →

Polenta: The Answer to Starch Fatigue

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mushroom polentaOne of the first lessons that any new cook learns is that you can cook pretty much anything and put it on rice and it tastes okay. Ditto with pasta. Hell, you can even use a piece of toast if you’re in a pinch.

But what to do when these old standbys start tasting a little tired? Here’s what: polenta. It’s a thick, savory corn porridge, and the exact same rice-or-pasta rules apply. If I have some roasted root vegetables rapidly approaching their life expectancy in the fridge, I heat them up in a skillet and throw them on top of polenta and it’s a whole new meal. If I have some chunky tomato-y thing that I originally made for pasta, it’s bound to taste great on top of polenta with some Parmesan cheese.

And polenta isn’t just for leftovers. Here’s a yummy mushroom number that I dreamed up in a hurry last night.

Polenta with Mushrooms and Goat Cheese Continue reading →

Los Sabores de México Puzzle

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cinco de mayoAdmit it: your understanding of Cinco de Mayo history is a little hazy. (No, it is not just the day to get a free biscuit taco at Taco Bell. Nor is it Mexican Independence Day.) Even though I’ve heard the story a few times, I still get a little fuzzy on the details of the Battle of Puebla. I know it involved the French army and some unanticipated ass-kicking by the ill-equipped Mexicans. It’s also somehow mixed up with the story of Maximilian, everyone’s favorite Prussian puppet Emperor of Mexico. If you want a more expert take on this whole thing, check out this podcast about Maximilian, which touches on the historical context of Cinco de Mayo.

But while you’re brushing up on the finer points, you can at least make sure you’re ready for the holiday on the food front. Can you match each of the delicious Mexican foods in this list with its description? (Warning: if you have ever ingested a biscuit taco or even know what one is, this puzzle might be harder than you think.) Viva México!

  1. Huarache
  2. Menudo
  3. Elote
  4. Chapulines
  5. Tejate
  6. Cecina
  7. Pozole
  8. Taquito
  9. Rajas con crema
  10. Papadzules

Descriptions:

A. Thinly sliced sheets of meat, marinated and dried in the sun
B. Corn tortillas dipped in a sauce made of pumpkin seeds and filled with hard-boiled egg
C. A soup made with tripe and red chili pepper, often topped with lime, onion and cilantro
D. A non-alcoholic beverage made of corn and fermented cacao beans
E. A small tortilla filled with cheese or meat, then rolled and deep-fried
F. An oblong, fried masa cake, with a variety of toppings including salsa, onions, potato, cilantro and some type of protein (such as ground beef or tongue), finished with queso fresco cheese
G. Roasted peppers, thinly sliced and sautéed with onion, then simmered in cream
H. Toasted grasshoppers, seasoned with garlic, lime and salt
I. Corn on the cob, often eaten on a stick with cheese, mayonnaise, lime juice, salt, etc.
J. A hominy stew, usually involving some kind of meat and chili peppers

Don’t scroll down or click Continue until you’re ready for the answers! Continue reading →

Gustatory Oddities from the Animal Kingdom

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aye aye

We spend a lot of time here at PitchKnives thinking about the peculiar feeding habits of one particular species, but what about all the other eaters out there? This was the question that came to me when Jason sent me this pretty awesome video about aye ayes. Aye ayes are a kind of lemur with a wicked-looking middle finger/ultimate grub-hunting tool. Seriously, just watch the video.

caecilian

Mom! We’re hungry!

But this doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of some of the weird animal noshing that’s happening out there. Take the caecilian, for instance, a wormy-looking amphibian that lives in South America and Africa. Since the mother caecilians don’t want to leave their young to look for food, the young just strip the skin off their mom with special fangs and subsist on it. And then she regenerates it so they can do it again. So happy almost-Mothers Day, you lucky ladies out there! At least your babies (probably) did not repeatedly flay you and feast on the remains.

Or what about the male nursery web spider who meticulously gift-wraps a tasty insect in his silk in order to present it to a potential mate? It’s kind of like one of those Japanese gift melons that costs thousands of dollars. The really desperate male spiders (i.e. jerks) will even wrap up pebbles to try to fool the female spiders into mating. The female nursery web spider’s favorite song is the TLC song “No Scrubs.” Continue reading →

Jumble o’ Seeds Puzzle

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Tucked in an section of freezer where I dare not interfere are tucked sundry packets of seeds, patiently wintering until Jason gets around to planting them each spring. Sometimes I wonder about the disastrous confusion that would ensue if these somehow got mixed up or mislabeled. Are you prepared for such an eventuality? Test yourself with this seed identification puzzle. And don’t be too tough on yourself; give yourself partial credit if you manage to name a vegetable in the same family as the answer I’ve given.

seeds1 seeds2 seeds3 seeds4 seeds5 seeds6 seeds7 seeds8 seeds9

Don’t click continue or scroll down until you’re ready for the answers! Continue reading →

Earliest Spring Vegetables: Let’s Get Excited

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The first day of spring brought a few inches of snow to the Big Apple, and the real apples at the farmer’s market this weekend were looking a little tired. But take heart, ye well-wintered and weary-hearted: yesterday I noticed the first new buds on a tree. Spring is coming. Taking its own sweet time to get here, maybe, but it’s coming. So in celebration, let’s take a look at the first few superstar vegetables that should be hitting your local markets any day now, along with some ideas about how to use them. Those with green thumbs should also think about getting these same plants in the ground as soon as you think you’ve weathered the last frost. (And to inspire you gardeners, I’m using images from the Hudson Valley Seed Library, a favorite of ours, as well as one from Everwilde Farms.)

hudson arugula Arugula: Honestly, it took me a while to warm to arugula. It still seems to me an adult taste, like sitting through an opera or reading a Henry James novel. But warm to it I did, and at no time is it better than in the early spring, when the leaves taste perky rather than too bitter or spicy. Try them in a salad with a nice mustardy dressing (olive oil, mustard, white wine vinegar, salt and pepper), or use them in a sandwich to give it a little more kick than regular lettuce.

everwilde rhubarbRhubarb: I’m not sure I realized that you could make something with rhubarb and without strawberries until I was fully grown. But particularly if you like sour tastes like citrus (and I do), rhubarb is a natural choice. Stew it with some sugar and a little water, and you’ve got one heck of a topping for pancakes. And yes, strawberries or any other kind of berries you can get your hands on are great thrown in, as well. Continue reading →

Where Did I Put My Farro Salad Knick Knacks?: A Blue Apron Experiment

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chilaquilesIf you’ve never heard of Blue Apron, you have either been living under a rock or you like cooking so much that it has never occurred to you to outsource your grocery shopping and meal planning to someone else. I was one (or possibly the other) until very recently, when my friend Monisha (note: she is infinitely hipper than me) hooked me up with a free trial. Here’s the way it works: subscribers get a weekly box of ingredients that they use to follow three prescribed recipes for two-person dinners. (There’s also a family plan that is for four people, two or four times per week.) And when I say they send you the ingredients, I mean ALL the ingredients, right down to itty-bitty bags of pre-measured spices and toppings that they label “knick knacks.”

knick knacksThe week of my free test run I chose the vegetarian box (obvs), which happened to be farro and sumac-roasted sweet potato salad, poblano chilaquiles topped with avocado and an egg, and roasted butternut squash with stewed white beans and gremolata. (I know, right? If you don’t have to look any of those words up, hats off to you.) I will admit that, in advance of the box’s arrival, I was a wee bit skeptical, mostly because it is in my nature to be skeptical.

But I am here to inform you that it was actually kind of awesome. First, there’s the oooh-and-ahhh Christmas present feel of opening a big box of interesting stuff. Second, it made me consider cooking recipes that were outside my typical repertoire. Third, there is a mindless pleasure in following a set of beautifully written directions, and Blue Apron must know this, because the recipe cards are like the supermodels of the recipe card population. Continue reading →

For the Love of Ramen in South Dakota

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buckeyes

An Ohioan would never search for how to make buckeyes, because it’s an inborn skill.

Okay, so things have been slow here on the blog lately, and I sat down today with a pure intention to write something serious, namely a rant about this article on school lunches that annoyed me greatly, blah, blah, blah. But when I went onto Huffington Post to find the article again, I stumbled upon this one, which is approximately eighty times funnier, and so I’m going to write about that instead and save the rant for some future day, possible a day when I have a school-aged child who eats lunch.

The second article was about what recipe, according to Google Trends, each state searches for the most frequently. It’s not very scientific, to be sure, but it does provide plenty of food for thought. What is Connecticut’s obsession with Moroccan chicken thighs, for instance? Are there really that many lobsters in Wyoming, or are Wyomans just so confused by them when they do show up that they have to Google what to do with them? Would Thomas Jefferson be proud that his fellow Virginians are searching for ways to make paneer above all else? I like to think so.

I was also a little surprised that cooks in my home state of Ohio are supposedly looking for recipes for spaghetti. You’ve got this, Ohio! Continue reading →

How to Pretend to be Tamar Adler (Part II)

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cauliflower pastaAnd so the saga continued. And this time, I was determined to step it up a notch.

Attempt 3: A Cabbage with a College Education
What’s not to love about a vegetable that looks like a brain? So I decided to cook up some cauliflower, Tamar-style. She’s an advocate for boiling vegetables rather than steaming them (crisper is not always better), so I sawed up about half a head and dropped it in a pot of salty boiling water. And since I hadn’t done so well at thinking ahead up to this point, I also put the rest of the cauliflower (with some whole cloves of garlic) and some sweet potatoes in a 425 degree oven to roast.

When the boiling cauliflower was nice and tender, I ladled it out with a slotted spoon, and then used the same pot of water to cook some penne pasta. Then I mashed up the cauliflower with a generous handful of Parmesan cheese, some freshly ground pepper and the roasted garlic from the oven.  I added some of the starchy pasta water to turn to all into a sauce right before I drained the pasta. I don’t like to brag, but I think I got some extra points for tapping into Tamar’s fresh herb enthusiasm and topping it all with a bunch of fresh dill before serving.

The results were pretty good, simple but tasty. The components of the sauce did not combine quite as smoothly as I wanted them to, but no one can really complain about a big clump of melted cheese.
Tamar Score: 7

Attempt 4: It’s Not Over ‘Til the Skinny Yam Sings Continue reading →