smitten kitchen

Sometimes I’m worried that I might be boring you guys. Yes, yes, being plagued by feelings of dullness and inadequacy, how very… tired of me. But, let’s take some of the themes we have here; artichokes, beans, arugula, salad, bread and the most repetitive one of all: I ate something somewhere, and had to have it again ASAP so I tried to make it myself. Today, we’ve got all of them bundled into one. I try to say to myself, Deb, not everyone is infatuated by artichokes, arugula, beans and salads and every single way you can think of eating them either separately or together. I try to rationalize, although it’s not my strong suit. But then I imagine a world without people who get as excited as I do about artichokes! arugula! beans! and it makes me terrifically sad. Thus today I present to you: Artichoke, Cranberry Bean and Arugula Salad, or seriously the best thing I’ve gotten to eat twice in a week in way too long.

We went out to dinner at really-you-must-go-there Dressler in Williamsburg on Saturday night with our most newly-married friends. Alex and Steve had leaden cocktails and I, well you know, I did that thing you do with your married female friends where you make sure they’ve ordered something with alcohol? Or you’ll start with the irresponsible rumor-mongering? Oh, I know this because it happens to me like every freaking day and people, there is always wine in my hand. We’re all caught up now? Onwards, then.

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One thing I have heard a lot of since I launched this site but six months ago is “I just don’t know how you find all that time to cook.” And while my typical response is that “Oh, well I don’t have a life so that makes it really easy,” and I’m only a little bit joking — my office is 13 blocks from my apartment, I rarely work past 6:30 p.m., I tend to wake up hours before my husband on the weekends, eager to fiddle with recipes that would otherwise be too time-consuming, and I don’t have the energy or the liver to go out many nights a week anymore — the truth is that aside from making some fresh pasta with about two pounds of wild mushrooms two Sundays ago, I haven’t cooked dinner for us in weeks. And I hate it.

You know the song; gym, errands, dinners and drinks and too many nights of getting home with no energy or, frankly, ingredients to start anything but pasta with butter and garlic, delicious but probably not the best bang for your caloric buck. If you are what you eat, I should be about 50 percent steamed vegetable dumplings, 30 percent black bean soup, 10 percent tofu pad Thai and an equal part mushroom, leek and goat cheese crepe by now, and while all of these things are excellent examples of the range of auto-dial food available in my part of the island, it does not mean that they are met with any less groaning as we pour through white container after container, creating a hideous amount of both waste and food ennui. Sure, things do get prepared in the kitchen — a biga at 11 p.m. on a Saturday, a soda bread at 10 on a Thursday, a cake on a Saturday morning — but nothing before 9 p.m., or you know, pretty much the point-of-no-return to start home cooked weekday dinners.

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Considering that I was on a two year extended Indian cooking kick before I started this site, I find it odd that I have included but one Indian-spiced recipe in the time since. I’m not sure if others do this, but I tend to go in and out of food crazes — currently, the absolutely only thing I want to eat after the gym is tofu pad thai, which doesn’t sound so horrible until you consider that I hit the gym three times a week, and no doubt reverse its effects just as often. I’ve gone through similar phases with poached eggs (atop anything), dinners of asparagus and roasted tiny red potatoes (only), dumplings, and for two torturous months of Alex’s life, a certain Belgian Endive and Grain Mustard salad of Nigella Lawson’s I fiended for, even first thing in the morning.

The Indian cooking bender was no different. What I loved was that you would take the simplest ingredients and render them into hearty, filling and unbelievably healthy dishes, and blow your expectations of lentils out of the water. Their fiscal smarts also cannot be overlooked. Once we’d bought the six or seven spices we continually came back to, we’d stand flabbergasted at the register as our lentils, cauliflower, potatoes and peas came to a mere $5 — and created leftovers that were as good if not better than they were the first day. But the real Indian food addiction was those spices; once they got under my skin (and permanently stained several cooking implements), I couldn’t stop itching for more of them. I became, excruciatingly enough, a cumin seed junkie.

Two dishes from Sunday night brightly display cumin seed’s prowess. The former is actually the first Indian recipe I cooked for us; it was a undeniable hit and I’ve come back to it more than a dozen times since. I could eat it for days, and this week, with any luck, I just might. The second is from a Madhur Jaffrey cookbook I’m ashamed to admit I haven’t used more often in the two years I’ve owned it. I hadn’t liked the first recipe I’d tried from there, and avoided its space on the bookshelf since. Well, this nonsense was kicked to the curb Sunday night, because the red lentils and cabbage are phenomenal, and I might just cut off this entry right now so I can get to scooping up the leftovers. Eerily, this is a gym night — might it be good enough to rescue me from Pad Thailand, and perchance, bounce my logged gym hours back into the progress zone?

Why the gratuitous pomegranate picture? When hunting through the fridge this weekend in search of food to apply eyes to, inspired by Amy Sedaris’ Craft Challenge, (what? I have hobbies!) I found this sad rock of a pomegranate Alex bought months and months ago, but when I opened it up, it looked as bejeweled and stunning as new. Also, as delicious.

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In the introduction to The Man Who Ate Everything, Jeffrey Steingarten admits that from deserts in Indian restaurants, kimchi and dill to seas urchins, chutney and falafel, his list of foods that he wouldn’t eat even if starving on a desert island was so vast, he had considered himself wholly unfit to be appointed the Vogue food critic in 1989. (His list of foods he might eat if he were starving on a desert island but only if the refrigerator were filled with nothing but chutney, sea urchins, and falafel, including Greek food, clams, yogurt and any food that is blue, as it is not a color found in nature, makes me laugh equally hard.)

While less nobly or eloquently worded, the truth is that when I trimmed my list of food dramatics down to six bullet points last week, I had wished for nothing more than to be liberated from them. I mean, chicken cutlets? Tuna fish? French’s mustard? Oh, grow up, Deb! Yet, I just don’t think I’m going to become a beet-lover in this lifetime, though believe me, my Russian in-laws have tried, cilantro simply tastes like dirt to some people and not to others and I eagerly await the frivolous medical study that will prove this, and a lot of California wines are loud, heavy and sweet, most especially those in my price range.

But from two days ago forward, I will soak my beans with glee and ebullience as I have been converted, dear reader, and it is because of you. I have to blame my early experiences soaking beans for my aversion to it; the first time, the skins flecked off and floated about, making for a muddled, unattractive dish (I have since learned that this means they’d been on the shelf for way too long, thank you, health food store), the second time, they never softened (possibly for the same reason) and there hadn’t been a third time until Monday, when they began their 36-hour soak, Tuesday, when they simmered for an hour forty-five and Wednesday, when they were finally whirled into what has got to be their highest calling: Paula Wolfert’s hummus. (Luisa first brought this recipe to our attention in December, and like dozens and dozens her entries, I’ve had it bookmarked since.)

This is the only hummus recipe you will ever need; one taste may cause you to never buy store-bought again. The soaking and simmering process may seem tiresome, but the truth is, you’re not really doing anything except reaping the rewards. The hummus comes together in 3 minutes flat in a food processor and if you have a day to let it sit, it’s just what it needs to allow the flavors to full develop. Which is not to say that we did not dash it with fresh parsley, a dribble of olive oil and a sprinkling of za’atar, a Middle Eastern spice blend we adore, and dive into it with carrot sticks, right from the food processor bowl, because I think that goes without saying. We are happy, happy hummus-ers, indeed.

And also: I try to be cool about stuff, I do (fooling only myself, natch) but I pretty much fell off my swivel chair this morning when I saw that Smitten Kitchen had been nominated for a 2007 Bloggie Award. If forced to choose just between 101 Cookbooks and Matt Bites, I’d be torn, but to be included among them is pretty much the definition of it being an honor just to be nominated. Thank you.

Housekeeping: Anyone having trouble commenting? Leave me a comment! (Bah!) Er, send me an email and let me know, if you don’t mind. I’m not techie enough to figure it out, but I know a couple who owe me favors. Close enough!

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It must be cold outside or something because all I have wanted as of late is the kind of grub that sticks to your ribs and sends you into a food cocoon for hours. It’s an odd sensation for a girl who hates feeling weighted down after a meal, and yet, salad has seemed an insult to freezing fingers and chapped lips, thin soups a cry for help and even my favorite dumplings have seemed too bright and springy this week. Go away, you peppy foods, I declare, and don’t come back until I can feel my toes.

Saturday morning I made another of those frittatas I’d mentioned a couple weeks back, hoping those potatoes, bacon and eggs with a toasted English muffin would make the icy breeze in Brooklyn less cruel and unforgivable, but no dice. (Though we loved it, despite all that, and I encourage you to design your own favorite frittata with on-hand ingredients.) We returned in the evening with intent make a reservation at whichever fireplace-d and cozy restaurant would take us but when first through fourth choices failed to see our charms, we started reminiscing about that three-bean chili I used to make with cheddar-jalapeno cornbread and suddenly, the idea of smarting up and going to a restaurant seemed utterly ridiculous. Go out? But why? We stayed in, spiced up and let Jennifer Hudson croon a hole in our speakers with a top-secret copy of Dreamgirls, happy as clams.

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