When I was a little girl, my favorite restaurant was a steakhouse in my hometown called the Sawmill. The interior was one of those 1980’s restaurants with no windows, an open kitchen, dim lighting, a terrarium, rough-hewn wood beams and leather club chairs, but to very small me it was heaven. I always ordered a steak sandwich and a Shirley Temple (in a short glass, with extra cherries), but what really made the restaurant my favorite was the old fashioned salad bar. Young children don’t usually have that much control over what they eat, but at a salad bar I was master of my destiny. After much trial and error (what is the POINT of baby corn?) I settled on the winning combination of romaine lettuce, spinach (this was before the era of ubiquitous mixed greens), chick peas, scallions, croutons, bacon bits, blue cheese dressing and beets. This was a particular treat because we NEVER had beets at home — to this day my father claims to be allergic based on a rash he got in 1948 (and to this day, I remain skeptical about the existence of such an allergy), and I loved their earthy sweetness.
Fast forward to 2006, and when enjoying a lovely (outdoor) dinner at a local Greek restaurant in Los Angeles, I discovered Patzaria — a Greek spread made from yogurt and beets. Spread on toasted pita bread, the sweetness of the beets tempered by the tang of the yogurt, this spread was my favorite beet dish I had had since those childhood salads. So I decided to reconcile the two experiences, and come up with my own patzaria that replicates the flavors of my childhood nostalgia with a modern Greek spin.
(As a housekeeping note, I’m giving away a set of Oxo Tools and you have until 11:59 Pacific Time Wednesday to enter! What are you waiting for?)
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Tags: Bacon·Beets·Dip
In the rush of planning and eating a Thanksgiving Meal, the cranberry sauce is kind of an afterthought. We carefully plot out our turkey roasting techniques, strategize our side dishes, and lovingly craft pies from scratch, but cranberry sauce usually involves the can opener. Diners, too, look askance at cranberry sauce — they politely take a spoonful because it looks pretty on the plate and may add a little zing to a bland and dry turkey, but there is invariably nearly a bowlful of leftover cranberry sauce which becomes the subject of a polite-off after dinner conversation:
“I’ve packed you a big bowl of cranberry sauce to take home!”
“Oh, I couldn’t possibly — I know how you love cranberries! But I’ll take more stuffing.”
“It’s no problem! I’ll just put it in this bag here!”
“Well, I was saving that spot for more pumpkin pie …”
“We ate all the pumpkin pie. Just take the cranberries, OK?”
I, too was cranberry unenlightened. I had it on the table out of deference to tradition, took a polite spoonful, and scooped the remainder into the trash at the end of the night. But then I got married, and my father in law (who really isn’t a gourmet cook, but occasionally hits it out of the park) introduced me to this cranberry sauce (OK, I tarted up his recipe just a tad, but I can’t help it!) It’s INCREDIBLY easy to make (I honestly don’t know why anyone bothers buying cranberry sauce — it takes about 30 seconds of active cooking), is a perfect complement to turkey, and actually tastes good on its own. I made some last week and I found my husband sneaking into the fridge to eat the leftovers out of the jar.
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Tags: holiday·Thanksgiving·Vegetarian
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I have a confession to make. I have not been entirely truthful with all of you. I have been cooking this summer, but not dinner, and not dessert. I have been making jam.
I understand jam making to be the latest trend among “hipsters” (google “hipster” and “canning” and you’ll see what I mean.) I never really thought of myself as a hipster, I mean, I’m certainly not a hippie because I don’t like hiking or Phish, and I can’t be a yuppie because it’s not 1987, so I turned to Urbandictionary.com to determine if I am, in fact, a hipster. A quick skim of the 138 definitions of hipster yields a person in their 20’s or 30’s (yes) who lives in Brooklyn (no), values “creativity, intelligence and witty banter” (yes), drinks a lot of Pabst Blue Ribbon (no), sports “high cultural tolerance and a slight tendency towards intellectual arrogance” (yes), is too ironic for their own good (maybe), and is cooler than cool (heck no).
I am still confused.
What I am not confused about is this: making jam is a) fun b)easy and c) cool (which may be the hipster connection. I’m certainly not putting PBR into my jam). There’s something special about those little jars of homemade preserves, all lined up, ready to be eaten, or given away as gifts, or, if you have a packrat nature (like nobody I know, nosirree) to be stored in the pantry and gazed at lovingly. My husband makes fun of me, pointing out that I have an Ivy League education, am admitted to the Bar in two states, have a successful career and yet I am proud of making jam, something his great-grandmother did on a regular basis without much fuss. So sue me. I’m proud of my jam. I love my jam. I bid thee to go forth and make your own jam. You won’t be sorry.
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Tags: canning·fruit·jam·pantry·plums
