Parsnip dumplings in broth

This was one of the first recipes that I marked as one I wanted to try when I first bought Yotam Ottolengi’s cookbook Plenty. Soups are known for being cheap, easy, and healthy, and also a good way to use up wilty looking vegetables. I’ve been wanting to get into making soup for a long time! The problem with this soup is that you have to make the vegetable broth from scratch, which requires 1.5 hrs of simmering on the stove, so it seems like a good thing to get started on midday. So making soup seems like a perfect sunday afternoon activity! You pretty much have to make the broth and dumpling batter in advance, and then you are ready to go to make the soup 5-10 minutes before you want to eat it.

Ingredients for vegetarian Parsnip dumpling soup

I went grocery shopping in preparation for this last night, and decided to make this broth after going to brunch this morning. The online recipe appears here but since it looks pretty different than the one from the book here are the ingredients listed in the book:

Ingredients for the broth: 3 tbsp olive oil, 3 carrots, peeled and cut into sticks, 5 celery stalks, cut into chunks, 1 large onion, quartered, 1/2 celeriac, 7 garlic cloves, peeled, 5 thyme sprigs, 2 small bunches of parsley, 10 black peppercorns, 3 bay leaves, and 8 prunes.

Ingredients for the dumplings: 1/2 lb russet potato, peeled and diced, 1.5 cups peeled and diced parsnips, 1 garlic clove, peeled, 2 tbsp butter, 1/2 cup self rising flour (to make self rising flour, combine 1 cup flour, 1.25 tsp baking powder and a pinch of salt), 1/3 cup semolina, 1 egg, salt and pepper.

I had never heard of a celeriac before, so I looked it up on wikipedia. Apparently it a variety of celery with a bloated root, and looks something like this:

Celeriac, a variety of celery with a bulbous hypocotyl.

Thankfully Berkeley bowl has strange things like this, and hopefully your grocery store does too!

Celeriac sold at Berkeley bowl for $2.99/lb!

The spice aisle in the bulk foods section also came in handy for this recipe as I was able to buy just enough black peppercorns and bay leaves for the broth for 25 cents each, enough prunes for 80 cents, and semolina for the dumplings for 38 cents.

Here is what 80 cents of dried, pitted prunes looks like

Ok so the prunes are not very beautiful, but all of the root vegetables for the soup were quite lovely.

Root vegetable bounty

To make the broth, I heated up the olive oil in a pan and got to work cleaning and washing my vegetables. I cut off the skin parts of the celeriac and diced it up and added it to the carrots, celery, and onion.

Chopped and peeled carrots, chopped celery, and quartered onions for the broth

I didn’t want to bother peeling 7 garlic cloves so I just mashed them up in my garlic crusher – I figured that was okay. Let’s hope so! Here is the mirepoix (fancy french term for carrots, celery, onion) plus the celeriac and the prunes:

Mirepoix and prunes for soup broth

Luckily Berkeley bowl also had fresh thyme springs – I’m considering starting a little herb garden now with some mint and basil and thyme since I’ve been using so many fresh herbs in my cooking these days. I’ve heard they are easy and do not require too much of a green thumb! I grow lots of plants for my research but the plants we choose to grow for research are known for being easy and I have a greenhouse staff to help me out with pesky things like watering them :) I added the rest of the herbs, covered it in cold water, and then left it to simmer for 1.5 hours.

Ingredients for the vegetable broth simmering

After I got the brother set up, I started on the dumplings. I diced the whole potato and parsnip as I figured exact measurements didn’t matter for this kind of recipe.

Diced potatoes and parsnips for the dumplings

I diced and boiled them in water with a garlic clove and tested them out with a fork to see if they were soft.

Boiling parsnips and potatoes for the dumplings

When soft enough, I drained them into a colander in the sink.

Boiled parsnips and potatoes for the dumplings

Then I quickly washed out the pan and put them back in the pan on the stove and added 2 tbsp butter. Yum!

Boiled parsnips and potatoes with 2 tbsp of butter

Next, I mashed the potatoes, garlic, turnips and butter. It smelled so good!

Mashing the potatoes, parsnips, and butter

I quickly made some self-rising flour with 1 cup flour, 1.25 tsp baking powder, and a pinch of salt.

Self rising flour with baking powder and salt added to regular all purpose flour

Then I added the flour, semolina, egg, salt and pepper to the mash and mixed it all well. It smelled so good!

Mashed potatoes, parsnips, butter, semolina, flour, egg, salt, and pepper for the dumplings

I transferred it to a plastic mixing bowl, covered it in plastic wrap, and moved it to the fridge.

Dumpling batter

Dumpling batter ready to be chilled

So there you go, make the broth and the dumpling batter far in advance, and then you are ready to go to make the soup fresh whenever you want. So admittedly, I’ve never made a vegetable broth from scratch before. What do you do with all of the vegetables after you strain the away from the broth? Here they are, don’t they look so pretty?

Vegetables strained out to make the broth

I asked my chef friend and she says she just throws them out. That seems sort of wasteful to me, so I decided to remove the thyme and bay leaves, add water, and blended them up with my handy immersion blender and make vegetable soup. It looked pretty ugly so I will spare you the picture of it :P But here is the completed vegetable broth after I strained all of the vegetables out of it.

Vegetable broth

So when you are ready for the soup, reheat the broth and ring some salted water to a light simmer in a separate pan. Dip a teaspoon into water and use it to spoon out the dumpling mix into the water. Once the dumplings come to the surface, leave it to simmer for 30 seconds, remove from the water and place into broth.

Dumplings simmering in broth

And here is the final product, parsnip dumpling soup!

Parsnip dumpling soup

All about Fattoush

As you may have gathered from reading my previous posts, I just love this fattoush :) It’s so good! Even Oprah likes it – see the recipe printed here! It’s one of the first recipes in Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi’s Jerusalem, and it just makes you feel so healthy and good about yourself eating it! I love all the herbs and fresh ingredients. Each time I’ve made it so far I’ve been switching back and forth between using buttermilk and mixing greek yogurt with milk for the dressing (you have the option of either using 1 and 2/3 cups buttermilk or 1 cup greek yogurt and 3/4 cup + 2 tbsp milk) and I’ve been trying out different pitas. I tried wheat pita today but I think white pita works the best. I also decided to add more tomatoes and radishes this time since I usually have a lot of left over dressing at the bottom after I’ve finished the salad.

Fattoush

The first step is of course getting all the ingredients – you need 2 large naans/pitas/flat bread, the greek yogurt and milk or buttermilk, 3 large tomatoes, 100g radishes, 3 Lebanese cucumbers, 2 green onions, 15g fresh mint, 1 tbsp dried mint, 2 cloves garlic (definitely worth it to invest in a garlic crusher. So glad I bought one at walgreens!), 3 tbsp fresh squeezed lemon (I invested in a lemon squeezer because I’ve realized that yes, fresh squeezed lemon juice is way better), 1/4 cup olive oil, 2 tbsp white wine or cider vinegar, 1.5 tsp salt, pepper, and sumac to garnish if you have it.

First, I tore up 2 large pitas and put them in this giant salad bowl that I just bought myself at Marshall’s (the best place to buy cheap good quality stuff! Hey, I’m still a grad student after all..)

torn up pita for base of fattoush

Next, I chopped up the tomatoes. I decided to go for 4 tomatoes this time since I just love tomatoes. How pretty are they?

Tomatoes

This is a pretty easy dish to make, you simply slowly add ingredients, layer by layer. Here is the pita with the tomatoes:

Pita and diced tomatoes

Next I chopped the Lebanese cucumbers (also called Persian cucumbers in stores, the small ones):

Lebanese cucumbers

Then I added those to the tomatoes and pita:

Pita, tomatoes, cucumbers

Next I added the radishes. I found some really pretty ones at the Berkeley bowl.

Radishes

Then I sliced up the radishes and added them to the salad bowl:

Sliced radishes

Pita, tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes for fattoush

The next ingredient is green onions. There are varying opinions on how high to cut the onion up the green part. I usually cut off the roots and then go about half way up the green part.

green onions

Next I got to add the fresh herbs, which I think are what really make this salad.

Fresh mint for fattoush

Fresh parsley for fattoush

After the herbs, I added two crushed garlic cloves, which is admittedly pretty garlicky. Next time I might add just one. Follow your taste buds on this one! Then add 1 tbsp dried mint, 1/4 cup olive oil, 2 tbsp white wine/cider vinegar, 1.5 tsp salt, and some pepper. The recipe calls for 3 tbsp lemon juice, and I definitely recommend investing in a squeezer and making it fresh. I bought one recently and I’m very happy with my purchase :)

Lemons to be squeezed for the fattoush

Next toss all the ingredients together and it’s best to let this dish sit for a while and let the flavors meld.

Fattoush

Ingredients

Scant 1 cup Greek yogurt plus 2 Tbsp. whole milk, or 1 cup buttermilk (replacing both yogurt and milk)
2 large stale Turkish flatbread/pita (9 ounces in total)
3 large tomatoes (13 ounces in total), cut into 1/2-inch dice
3 ounces radishes, thinly sliced
3 Lebanese or mini cucumbers (9 ounces in total), peeled and chopped into 1/2-inch dice
2 green onions, thinly sliced
1/2 ounce fresh mint
Scant 1 ounce flat-leaf parsley, coarsely chopped
1 Tbsp. dried mint
2 cloves garlic, crushed
3 Tbsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/4 cup olive oil, plus extra to drizzle
2 Tbsp. cider or white wine vinegar
3/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. sumac or more to taste, to garnish

Sonoma county mushrooms and wine tasting

So I was invited to give a talk to the Sonoma County Mycological Association on Thursday night. I spoke to them about my research on fungal diversity in Yosemite National Park. Here is the little blurb about me on their website. There are so many mushroom lovers in the bay area you wouldn’t believe it! In October I spoke at the Fungus Federation of Santa Cruz and the Bay Area Mycological Society, and this February I spoke at SOMA. People in the bay area really love their mushrooms, and there are so many truly talented amateur mycologists! While my research isn’t on mushrooms per se, I did my best to make the talk fun and accessible to all and entertaining for the full hour that they gave me.

Me showing off some winter chanterelles

The people at SOMA were super engaged and asked tons of good questions and it was super fun to speak with them! I was very energized about my project after speaking with the people at SOMA :) However, rather than rush back to the lab thursday night and drive in the dark, I figured that as long as I had made the trek to Santa Rosa to give the talk, I might as well take the day off on friday and enjoy the fruits of Sonoma County on Friday. After all, we wouldn’t have wine without my favorite fungus, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which is of course responsible for wine, beer, bread, cheese…basically all the good things in life!

The president of SOMA graciously gave me a long list of recommendations for places to wine taste in Sonoma County, which undoubtedly would keep me occupied for many weekend wine tasting adventures. Feeling a bit overwhelmed by my options, I decided to ask the front desk at my hotel and stop at vineyards located on my way home to Berkeley. Being a poor grad student, I ended up going to the vineyards that the hotel gave me free passes for, and I must say; I was not disappointed!

Vineyards in Sonoma county. How lucky am I to live in northern California??

How gorgeous are these vineyards?? Man it was a beautiful day in Sonoma county – not to gloat too much to my friends inundated in snow on the east coast – but you should definitely come visit me here :) I stopped in at Kenwood winery first, as it was the closest to my hotel in Santa Rosa. The people were a bit surprised to see a lone wine taster, but honestly I think it served me well visiting places on my own. I got to talk a lot with the people pouring the wine at the vineyards, got insider information on new places to visit, and probably got more free pours this way :) Here is the friendly wine pourer at the Kenwood winery.

Kenwood winery

As I pulled out of the Kenwood winery I noticed an olive oil store, so I decided to stop by for a taste.

Olive oil? Yes, please!

They had some delicious mushroom themed oils such as truffle oil and porcini oil, which were tasty, but I was actually inspired to buy some delicious balsamic vinegar. Who wants to bring some nice crusty bread to my house and dip it in my balsamic vinegar with me?

The olive oil and vinegar tasting got my taste buds going so I decided to stop for lunch at Cafe Cetti before continuing on to the vineyards. I figured having an entire pizza in my car was a good idea to get me through all the wine stops. And indeed, it served me well throughout the day :)

Artichoke heart pizza

So after Kenwood I continued on Highway 12 and stopped into Deerfield, which is known for its wine caves. I stopped in and checked out the wine caves, which were super cool! However, it was too crowded and I didn’t have a free coupon, so I stepped out without tasting any wine.

wine caves!

Next I continued on to BR Cohn, which was an absolutely stunning winery with a beautifully situated tasting room up on a slight hill.

Wines at BR Cohn

So much wine…so little time…

Wines at BR Cohn

I started off with a Sauvignon blanc, and then continued with the reds that they are famous for. I enjoyed the Barbera and the Cabernet Sauvignon immensely. Don’t they have the cutest glasses there?

BR Cohn

I met some nice ladies at BR Cohn who were visiting from Seattle and told me that I had to go to Valley of the Moon winery.

vineyards at Valley of the Moon

This was definitely my favorite stop in Sonoma. They had absolutely delicious wine and I surprised myself by buying 2 bottles! I bought a Rosato Di Sangiovese and a Pinot blanc. I didn’t even think that I liked a Rose very much, but this one was delicious. The Pinot blanc was also super flavorful and fruity. Now I just need an occasion to drink them! The wine pourer found out that I forage for mushrooms and got super excited. He is starting a kitchen at Valley of the Moon – who knows, maybe one day we will forage together!

Valley of the Moon Winery

My last stop was at Benzinger, which is a biodynamic winery. They compost everything, grow plants that foster pollinators and predators of insect pests, and have goats to eat cover crop and fertilizer with their manure. More wineries should be like them! They had a Sauvignon blanc that was like nothing I’d ever tried before, and of course, I had to buy it :) It was so delightful and flavorful and smelled like flowers and fruit and was just super unique.

I feel pretty accomplished hitting up 4 wineries in a single day, but there are countless more that were recommended to me. I especially hear that Healdsburg and Dry Creek Valley Road are good. Who wants to plan a trip with me :) ?

Broccolini and sweet sesame salad and Brussels sprouts and tofu

So for the last Saturday of January I prepared the broccolini and sweet sesame salad from p. 94 of Plenty and also featured online here, and the brussels sprouts and tofu dish from p. 105 of Plenty and featured here. I’ve been totally obsessed with Yotam Ottolenghi’s book Plenty and these two asian inspired meals captured my attention. After cooking and eating them I realized that everything I had made was vegan, except some might want to swap agave for the honey in the broccolini sauce. So here you go, a healthy, delicious, and an unintentionally vegan feast :)

Me showing off the unintentionally vegan feast

As any reader of Plenty will know, some of the ingredients are seriously difficult to source. There’s no quick dash to the grocery store when it comes to these recipes. I looked all over and let me tell you, as far as I’m concerned, nigella seeds don’t exist in grocery stores. I even looked up alternative names on Wikipedia such as black caraway, and Roman coriander, but the Safeway spice guy was at a loss. It appears that the internet is the way for these supposedly delectable seeds (I wouldn’t know quite yet) and here is a nice cheap version of the seeds.

Me checking in with Ottolenghi to make sure I’m getting everything right!

So the first step of the broccolini and sweet sesame salad is to make the sauce, which involves whisking together tahini paste (I bought this from the Middle eastern store down on San Pablo and University but I’m sure regular grocery stores have it too), water, a garlic clove, tamari soy sauce (not sure exactly why tamari soy sauce is specified here, but I took his word for it and bought it), honey (substitute agave if you are vegan), cider vinegar, and salt. Next, you have to blanche the vegetables. So as you’ve probably figured out by now by my tales of bumbling around the kitchen, I’m a total novice at this. I’m sure many more could manage to blanche broccolini, grab it out of bowling water and rinse it off and boil the snow peas and green beans in the same water more adeptly than I, but basically I used a plastic tong to grab the vegetables out of the boiling water and dumped them into a colander in the sink. I think I need to buy one of those scoopable colanders if I’m going to keep up with this! So basically you blanch the vegetables then rinse and dry them, add some oil and sesame seeds, and then mix in the sauce, and voila, delicious hearty salad! It’s really a very tasty and hearty salad and you can see I had a lot of fun making it despite the difficulties blanching the vegetables :)

Mixing in the tahini and sweet sesame sauce with the broccolini, green beans, and snow peas

And here is the completed dish!

Broccolini and sweet sesame salad

Next I put some white rice in my handy rice cooker, and started onto the brussels sprouts and tofu dish. I must say, this is one of the most delicious ways I’ve ever had tofu or brussels sprouts before. Bravo, Ottolenghi! This dish is pretty easy too. I had never bothered to marinate and sear tofu in this way before (usually I just throw it into a stir fry and add teriyaki sauce or soy vay) but the marinade on this dish is so good. It definitely takes an investment into buying a lot of asian sauces (see below), but hopefully I will find a use for my giant bottle of sweet chilli sauce! I’d actually never used sunflower or peanut oils before so I had to buy those for this dish as well, but less than a month later and I’m already almost out of my sunflower oil so it’s definitely a useful oil to have on hand!

Ingredients for brussels sprouts and tofu dish

You have to whisk together 2tbsp of sweet chilli sauce (I bought this at Safeway in a ginormous bottle for under $3), 1.5 tbsp soy sauce, 2 tbsp sesame oil (this stuff is really really good, definitely worth buying), 1 tsp rice vinegar, and 1 tbsp maple syrup. I learned the importance of real maple syrup while living on a farm in Vermont in high school (it takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of maple syrup! Tapping trees is hard! Real maple syrup is wayyyy better than the fake stuff!) so I always happen to have real maple syrup on hand. So whisk together the ingredients for the marinade, place the tofu in it, and set aside.

Making the brussels sprouts and tofu dish

Sauteeing shiitake mushrooms, green onions, and chile

This dish actually called for mushrooms, so of course I loved that :) After sauteeing the brussels sprouts in a ton of sunflower oil and getting them super crispy in one dish, I had to chop up onion, a red chile, and mushrooms to saute in a different pan. I was super nervous chopping up the red chile so I was a nerd and put plastic bags on my hand. I’ve heard enough horror stories of friends cutting chiles with their bare hands and then burning their eyes while taking out their contacts to know to be careful! Next, add the tofu to the pan and let it caramelize.

Brussels sprouts with tofu and mushrooms

These dishes complemented each other really well and resulted in a hearty, substantial, tasty, healthy, vegetarian dish. It was the kind of food that just made you feel healthy and good about yourself eating it!

Broccolini and sweet sesame salad, brussels sprouts and tofu, and white rice vegetarian meal

My new logo!

Fungi foodie logo

Very full tart

My friend Rachel, another microbial ecology grad student, was the inspiration for me to buy the book Plenty. I went to a very fun tater tot and milk shake themed birthday party at her house and discovered Plenty on her book shelf. Rachel is a way more experienced and fancy chef than myself, and her subletter was a professional chocolatier (omg does it get any better than this??), so of course I invited myself over to cook a dinner at her house :) Rachel decided to make the Sabih from Jerusalem (pg. 90), and I made the very full tart from Plenty featured here.

Rachel chopping tomatoes for cucumber tomato salad to go with the Sabih

Her roommate Michael, who is also a professional chocolatier and cooking school graduate, showed me the proper way to chop an onion and made us delicious french onion soup.

Michael making french onion soup.

Michael’s french onion soup

I set to roasting the red peppers for my tart:

roasted red and yellow peppers for the very full tart

After chopping and roasting all of the vegetables, I added them to a frozen pie crust (to Rachel and Michael’s definite dismay).

Very full tart with roasted vegetables, cheese, and cherry tomatoes

Next I had to add the cream and egg mixture, which was a bit of a disaster to say the least. The recipe doesn’t mention anything about pie dish size- but save yourself the pain and get a super deep dish pie crust! They were not kidding when they called this a very full tart! Luckily Michael is very experienced in these matters and saved the day with a baking sheet to catch the overflow.

Very full tart explosion

Since Rachel is super fancy, she made her pita for the Sabih by hand. Next time I will be fancy like Rachel and make my pie crust by hand too :)

making pita from scratch

Rachel’s beautiful home made pita

This was a decadent meal to say the least, and also a bit incongruent – filled with dishes such as the Middle Eastern Sabih, Mediterranean savory vegetable tart, and French onion soup. And finally finished off with an incredibly decadent chocolate mousse in a chocolate cup made by chef Michael , which unfortunately I have no photographic evidence of, but I can assure you it was delectable :)

Sabih with zhoug, cucumber tomato salad, and eggplant

Not the best picture ever, but here is everyone enjoying the meal at Rachel’s house.

Enjoying the feast at Rachel’s house

The very full tart is definitely one of the richer dishes I’ve made so far from Plenty, and not quite as light and healthy feeling as the other middle eastern and asian themed dishes. But if you are in the mood for a decadent and hearty savory vegetarian dish, this might do just the trick!

Yotam Ottolenghi’s Very full tart

Mee goreng

Mee goreng – vegetarian Malaysian street food – super healthy and easy dish!

I decided to remove the stress from Valentine’s day this year and cook a delicious meal for some girl friends. I was grading papers all day so I needed something that was relatively quick and easy to make. While my love for Yotam Ottolenghi runs deep, the recipes in Plenty can be filled with complicated ingredients that are time consuming to source – so I picked out the vegetarian Mee goreng – see recipe here – http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2008/nov/01/mee-goreng-yotam-ottolenghi .

Ha that doesn’t sound like something that would be simple, does it? I’d actually never even heard of it before but it’s a Malaysian street food that is designed to be cheap and fast to make – so it was perfect! I must say Mr. Ottolenghi did not disappoint :)

Lauren and I took a trip to the Berkeley Bowl to grab the onions, bok choy, green beans, lettuce, tofu, egg noodles, bean sprouts, and the slightly more esoteric sambal oelek, which is a savory chile paste. Luckily the Berkeley Bowl basically has everything, so it wasn’t hard to find :) I’m finally getting to the point where I have a nice baseline of spices and oils so I didn’t have to buy the peanut oil, soy sauce, coriander, and cumin because I already had them at home! I also had lemons and green onions, which I figured could substitute for shallots.

onions, green onions, lettuce, green beans, bean sprouts, and lettuce washed and prepped and ready to go!

key to making this dish as stress-free as possible: prep station!

Our friend Stella, another ecology grad student, met us at my apartment and brought the wine. After busting open the bottle of pinot noir and toasting to good friends, we washed and cut all the vegetables while grooving to Lauren’s favorite new tunes by Eric Church – Lauren’s from eastern Washington and has a thing for country, and I decided to humor her.

Lauren is very happy to be grooving to Eric Church, drinking wine, and getting a delicious meal cooked for her :)

Since we got dried noodles and not fresh we cooked all the noodles first which I had to do in batches because there were a TON of them and my pot isn’t that large.

cooking the noodles

Luckily the cooking goes pretty quickly after all the prep is done. I didn’t realize that I needed to heat the pan before adding the peanut oil – whoops! It smoked as it heated – oh well, next time I will get it right :)

tofu and green beans cooking in peanut oil

I ended up making two batches because the recipe says it serves two and there were three of us, but the servings in the recipe are super generous. I mean, I like big portions, but these are crazy big. Luckily I got to practice on the first batch, and decided that the noodle to vegetable and sauce ratio was way off and used half the noodles in the second batch.

Lauren too excited to wait for me to get the noodle to vegetable ratio correct in the second batch, showing off the first batch with glee!

I accidentally sort of burnt the green onions as there were many pans to keep track of at once and we were laughing too much while preparing the dinner… Despite the burnt onions the dish came out super delicious and refreshing tasting, and the fresh lemon squeezed on top added a lot. Turns out that wine, Mee goreng, and good friends is the recipe for the perfect Valentine’s day :) Of course, no meal is over without dessert, so we rounded it off with red bean mochi that Lauren and I had bought at Berkeley bowl and orange and chocolate Milanos that Stella brought over. Thanks Plenty for another great dish :)

Sambal oelek (savory chili paste) and lemon wedges to accompany the Mee goreng

Stella says hand over the noodles!

Lauren and Stella happy and enjoying the dish :)

Ingredients:

2 tbsp peanut oil
½ onion, peeled and diced
220g firm tofu
100g green beans, trimmed and cut in half on an angle
100g bok choy, leaves and stems, cut into large chunks
300g fresh egg noodles
1½ tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp sambal olek (or other savory chilli paste), plus extra to serve
2 tsp thick soy sauce
2 tsp light soy sauce
50g bean sprouts
1 handful shredded iceberg lettuce
1 tbsp crispy fried shallots (available from oriental grocers; alternatively, use dry onion flakes)
Lemon wedges, to serve

Fattoush, Mejadra, and Swiss Chard with tahini, yogurt, and buttered pine nuts

Tonight I returned to Yotam Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem and prepared the fattoush (pg. 29), mejadra (pg. 120), and swiss chard with tahini, yogurt, and buttered pine nuts (p. 88).

My friend came over and was really hungry, so first I made the fattoush and we ate it as an appetizer. The fattoush is quickly becoming one of my favorite dishes from Jerusalem! This was my third time making it – it is one of the simpler dishes to prepare in this book – there are not that many esoteric ingredients and it doesn’t require any cooking – and it is just so good! It is jam packed with herbs and so refreshing.

Fattoush – middle eastern salad with tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes, pita, buttermilk, and herbs

After energizing myself with an appetizer of fattoush, I made the yogurt and tahini sauce for the swiss chard dish before starting on the cooked ingredients.

tahini and yogurt sauce for the swiss chard dish

All of the ingredients for the mejadra!

Next I started making the Mejadra, which is a middle eastern dish consisting of basmatic rice, lentils, fried onions, and lots of flavorful spices. This was a little more complicated. It not only required thinly slicing 4 onions, but then I had to fry all of them in oil which I had to do in batches.

4 medium sliced onions with flour and salt – getting ready to fry!

It was a lot of work! I’ve never fried onions before and it was hard to find the balance between making them crispy and brown and not burning them.

frying the onions in sunflower oil

I fried the onions while boiling the lentils. I don’t know why I’ve never made lentils before – they are super simple, cheap, and healthy. After frying all the onions and cooking the lentils, I made the rice.

rice with cumin, coriander, turmeric, cinnamon, sugar, allspice, and salt

First I sauteed the cumin and coriander seeds in the pan. I got the seeds from the bulk bins at the Berkeley bowl – so much cheaper that way! It only cost me 6 and 18 cents to buy the spices this way! I can’t believe how much money I’ve been spending on buying non- bulk spices! So then I mixed in a bunch of other spices – cinnamon, sugar, salt, allspice, and turmeric in with the basmatic rice. It smelled so amazing! This dish was definitely a winner.

rice and lentils and spice before adding the fried onions

mejadra with frid onions on top!

At this point I was getting pretty tired but luckily the next dish involved wine as an ingredient, so I opened up the bottle and served myself a glass :) Lauren and I took a bit of a dance break to shimmy around to my itunes shuffle before I started chopping the chard. I definitely need to get a larger pot – this recipe calls for a ton of swiss chard! How beautiful is the swiss chard though?

swiss chard

First I boiled the swiss chard then rinsed and drained it. Then I put butter and oil in the dish and made the hot buttered pine nuts – I’ve never made anything like this before – so absurdly decadent. It smelled so buttery and delicious. Not having a slotted spoon, I used a mixture of a spoon and a slatted spatula to remove the pine nuts from the butter before putting the garlic in the pan. The recipe states to carefully pour in the wine as it may spit – but this was an UNDERSTATEMENT. What followed was nothing short of a wine-splosion! My entire oven and surrounding kitchen were covered in splattered butter/wine mixture and I had to stay away for a while before it simmered down enough for me to turn down the temperature. Yotam is not kidding when he says be careful here!

unfortunately no pictures of the WINEsplosion, but here is the final dish with the hot buttered pine nuts on top

While this was a bit of a hectic evening with so many dishes and the mild explosion, it was totally worth it – these dishes are amazing and go so well together! Something about mediterranean cooking just makes you feel so good – it is rich and filling but contains so many fresh, healthy ingredients and spices that don’t weigh you down. Lauren happily giggled while eating the food and claimed that the kitchen smelled like her grandmother (Lauren’s half Lebanese). Thank you Yotam Ottolenghi for another inspired evening of meals!

Final meal: mejadra, fattoush, and swiss chard with yogurt, tahini, and buttered pine nuts

Lauren super excited to eat our feast!

getting ready to dig in!

On Tuesday January 28, I made the mushroom and herb polenta from Plenty (recipe found here). While it’s been super dry and there are no mushrooms to forage, I figure I can always forage in the mushroom aisle at Monterey markets! It also finally gave me an opportunity to use the truffle oil that I bought at the MSSF fungus fair up at the Lawrence Berkeley Hall of Science several years ago. This dish is super rich and would be partnered really well with a simple light arugula and tomato salad or a nice crusty baguette. We used a combination of cremini, shiitake, and oyster mushrooms for this polenta. Chervil is apparently just french parsley, but I used regular parsley and it seemed to work just fine! This was also my first time using Taleggio, which is a very creamy and rich soft cheese.

This meal came out super delicious!

with the sauteed mushrooms on it, hot out of the oven!

I finally got a great opportunity to use the mushroom dish towel that my mom bought for me :)

mushroom and herb polenta on mushroom dish towel!

Sweet winter slaw and soba noodles with eggplant and mango

Last Saturday (Feb 1, 2014) my friend Lauren who is a fellow graduate student in my department was feeling a bit down and her foot was really hurting from a running injury, so i forced her to get up and come cook with me. Having been on the Mediterranean train for a while, I chose two yummy sounding asian style dishes from Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi. I must say, I’ve expanded my sauce and spice collection exponentially since I started cooking from these books! I figure I am in the investing stage right now, but pretty soon I will have a nice baseline so shopping for every new recipe will not be as big of an endeavor. We made the cooked soba noodles with eggplant and mango from page 112 first. Lauren has an inexplicable love for chopping, so I set her to chopping the eggplant into beautiful diced pieces while I prepped the soba noodles.

Lauren loves chopping!

This was my first time cooking soba noodles – they are very flavorful! We got the water boiling first and there was a lot of eggplant so we ended up frying it in 4 batches and then straining it.

eggplant about to be stir fried

soba noodles with eggplant prior to adding the mango and herbs

After cutting up the mango, herbs, and onion, we mixed mixed all the noodles and mango and eggplant and herbs and onion together at once.

soba noodles with mango and egglant

Unfortunately we didn’t realize you were supposed to let it sit for 1-2 hrs before, so we ate it right away and leftovers tomorrow will probably be even better! It was a super light refreshing flavorful and zesty dish with herbs that I would definitely never have bothered to use before but make everything taste so much better!

Who did it better? Me or Ottolenghi :) ?

To accompany the soba noodles, we made the sweet winter slaw from page 102 featured here. Here are all the ingredients for the dish:

ingredients for the sweet winter slaw

I don’t like papaya, so we used a single mango instead. We made a few blunders during the cooking of the dish – we accidentally placed the red chile into the dressing before placing it on the stove! We decided to go with it and mixed the rest of the ingredients for the dressing into the ban, boiled them, let them cool, and strained it in a makeshift manner using my vegetable steamer and a bowl to get rid of the lemongrass pieces.

lemon grass, chile (whoops!), maple syrup, vinegar, and spices reducing for the dressing

We washed and chopped the savoy and red cabbage and mango while the dressing was reducing.

Mango, savoy cabbage, and red cabbage for the sweet winter slaw

I mixed together the cabbage and mango in a bowl and added the reduced part of the dressing before adding the oil, and was wondering why it looked like so little! No worries, I added the oil to the cabbage mixture and mixed it all super well.

Sweet winter slaw

The absolute most amazing part of this dish is the caramelized nuts. We couldn’t find macademia nuts at the Monterey Market, so we used cashew nuts instead, and they were incredible! I had never caramelized nuts before in sugar and butter and salt and chile but it made them super delectable (unsurprisingly!).

caramelized cashews with sugar, salt, butter, and chile

These dishes were super refreshing and delightful, and despite the rough start to her day, Lauren ended up a very happy camper that evening :)

sweet winter slaw and soba noodles with eggplant and mango

Lauren enthusiastically digging into her dinner

fungi foodie

The world is your oyster mushroom!