Anniversary Split-Pea Soup

I love many things that are normal to love in this world. I love my family, my friends, my kitten (I really REALLY love my kitten). I love the first days of spring and the first flowers that I see. I love pizza and sunshine and really good bargains. I love it when people read this blog; I do seriously love reading other people’s blogs.

What do y’all love? I’m just wondering.

Anyway, there are two things that I love a whole lot—probably than is good for any of us. One of those is my girlfriend. I love her to the point of doting. The other is split pea soup. I dote on that too.

So I combined to two last week and made what I’m now calling an “Anniversary Split Pea Soup.” Tuesday was our 2 year anniversary, but we were both pretty busy with work and school, so we put off the major celebrating for the weekend and simply made sure to see each other on Tuesday evening. (I mean, Tuesday was a really exciting day, what with a new president and all). I cooked dinner—and by cooked, I mean made split pea soup and my roommate baked some (admittedly dense) bread.

The recipe for the split pea soup? Really good. It came from Williams Sonoma’s Soup Cookbook, which is full of really good recipes and is gorgeous to look at. The soup itself? Needs some work. It was entirely too salty, which I’m just going to fix by using low sodium broth next time. I had to add some extra broth at the end because it was simmering off a little too quickly, and I think that’s where the salt went wrong. But I really enjoyed the texture, which was just the right mix of smooth puree and chunky soup. It was also really good the next day when I brought it to work for lunch. My favorite part was the diced pancetta I used in place of the bacon—it made a pleasant addition, texture-wise and had an impact on the taste as well. I will definitely make it again in the near future, and hopefully will remember to update my progress here!

Out and About

Goodness! What a month it has been so far! What with traveling, being broke, hanging out with my parents, and now the inauguration AND my 2-year anniversary, things have been busy! I have a lot of posts that are waiting to be written—including another GF guest post—so I’ll probably be updating a little more often for a little while. Ideally.

My mother and her husband, J, came up to visit this weekend. We had a grand time, even though Philadelphia has been frigid. I can’t remember the last time it was so darn cold!! We did less walking than I had envisioned, but we still made it to the Rodin Museum, the Liberty Bell, and some other tourist sites. We also ate. And ate and ate and are some more.

We started at Gianna’s, on 6th and Lombard. This oft-spoke of hole in the wall is home of the best vegetarian Philly cheese steak I’ve ever had. I especially appreciate that they will make them to order, because my mother greatly appreciated the addition of banana peppers and lettuce to hers. J, my step-dad has the 1-pounder cheese steak and declared it one of the best sandwiches he’s ever had.

Dinner that night was quite an affair. Mom had requested somewhere nice that I hadn’t gone to before and that I normally couldn’t afford. Since almost everything falls in that category, I had a lot of room for decisions. I finally hit on the Caribou Café, a French bistro and venerable Philly institution. I was a little nervous, because I had read some sketchy reviews, but it was actually lovely. I had a Kir Royale as an aperitif—I haven’t had one since I was 16 and visiting Paris. I think they tasted better across the Atlantic. I had a mixed salad with beets for an appetizer, while Mom had pate and J. enjoyed escargot. I went classic with my entrée, choosing steak frites—and wow, was it good! Mom, who doesn’t eat red meat, got the duck medallions, while J. chose the scallops. I tried the duck and it was also lovely—Caribou gets 10 extra points for the cherry sauce! Dessert was, probably, the best part of the meal. J. got 2 mountainous profiteroles whose exuberant ice cream and chocolate sauce could barely be contained. Mom got some delightful chocolate concoction while I maintained my classic sensibilities and has crème brulee. Overall, the ambiance was pleasant, the service was excellent, and the food was tasty—especially those profiteroles.

We followed this spectacularness the next day with brunch at Rx, my favorite brunch spot a few blocks away from my apartment. I love everything about that place—the décor, the ceiling fans, the coffee, the coffee cups, the eggs, the eggs Florentine, the bacon, the potatoes, the bacon. There’s a lot to love. Go. Now. You’ll love it too.

Comfort food and colds

Well, Happy New Year, everyone. Aren’t you a little tired of hearing it? I am. Even though I am very, very excited about 2009. I hope it will be a time of great growth and change for me—fingers are crossed!!!

However, I seem to be starting the year out with an incipient cold. Now, I’m due in Connecticut for a long weekend with my darling GF on Thursday. She’s a Connecticut native and I love visiting her family. We’re going to sample the romantic and gastronomic (???) pleasures of that strange state. Which means, of course, that I can’t get sick. I’m pretty good at beating off colds, so hopefully I’ll prevail.

But I was feeling pretty pathetic last night by the time I got home and started thinking about dinner. I don’t have much on hand right now—since I’m leaving for 5 days, I didn’t want to buy too much fresh stuff. I wanted garlic to be the star ingredient, mostly because it is so good for immune systems and warding off illnesses. I’ve also been craving strongly flavored foods; I’ve been adding red pepper flakes to everything I make recently. They were also part of last night’s dinner, as was dried oregano.

So I put some penne onto the stove to cook and diced 2 cloves of garlic—a hefty amount for a 1-person sized portion. As I was heating up the olive oil, I realized that the meal was asking for some protein. So I dumped some chickpeas onto low heat with the garlic and sautéed them until they were warm with the slightest hint of crisp. Mixed with the penne and some parmesan cheese, the entire result was a hot, comforting dish. The garlic was barely cooked, so a lot of its good stuff remained; the chick peas, in turn, mellowed the garlic and provided a lot of nice texture. Kale braised in chicken broth would have been a nice side (alas, I had no kale) as well as an additional vehicle for garlic.

A Dying Year

Well, well, well, whatever happened to December? My December was swallowed up in Christmas/Chanukah shopping, a trip to New York City, and a truly regrettable stomach bug. So I haven't been eating much recently. But hopefully my tummy will be back in shape for New Year's celebrations.

I wonder if there is some sort of end of year meme for food blogs floating around out there, but I'm too lazy to look for it. Suffice it to say, I am grateful for all of your attention and readership, and I am also pleased to find my interest in this blog still going strong. So I'll be back in 2009!!

In the meantime, I wish you all a lovely and happy new year. May 2009 bring health, wealth, and joy, as well, of course, as an abundance of good food.

Tofu Chronicles

Well, my friends, I have something thoroughly thrilling to tell you: I love alliteration.

Actually, that’s not what I had to tell you, but I thought it would be nice to let you know that tidbit about me as well. Anyway, my thoroughly thrilling news is this: I cooked tofu for the very first time. And I didn’t ruin it. And I loved it.

You know me, forever lacking in good, healthy forms of protein (cheese just doesn’t always count, you know?) Additionally, I’ve tried to give blood twice in the last 4 months and have had low iron counts each time. I don’t think I’m anemic to the point of needing to go to the doctor, but I don’t know that it’s a good sign either. So I’ve been thinking and looking around for iron-rich and protein-rich foods, especially ones that I can add to my lunch salads. There have, as late, been a lot of chick peas in my life.

I’ve never even been a big tofu fan. It can be slimy and sometimes tasteless. Asian flavors are also not really my favorite—as I’m sure you can tell, I generally favor Italian and other Western cuisines, along with a serious love for tex-mex and Indian. I mean, I have a soft spot in my heart for cheap Chinese, but I don’t think that really counts. I’m obsessed with tom yum soup (spicy, lemongrass-y Thai soup) and some Vietnamese, but on the whole, Asian cuisines are sort of low on my list.

I tweaked a recipe of Heidi Swanson’s, from 101 Cookbooks, for caramelized tofu with Brussels sprouts. She called for pecans and I had none on hand, and I wasn’t making the entire dish anyway, so I just made the tofu. You essentially heat some oil (I used olive, like I do for almost everything) and brown the tofu. Then toss in some tablespoons of brown sugar and let it all caramelize. The tofu ends up golden and sweet. I’ll probably cook it a little longer next week when I make this again, so it is crispier. I used Nasoya organic super firm cubed tofu, so that was probably why I avoided the dreaded sliminess.

I am going to wrap this post up (I should probably be doing actual work while I’m in the office) with a request. Give me more tofu recipes? Please? I am eager to expand my newly found tofu skills!

Guest Poster! The GF speaks

Blogger's Note: See, I told you I had a surprise. This year was not only the best Thanksgiving ever, but also the 1st time I've brought my significant other t0 Thanksgiving with my family. Brave of me, right? Here's what me dearest, darling GF has to report.

Like Cheesy said, Thanksgiving was just plain WOW. This was the first Thanksgiving I have spent south of the Mason-Dixon, and it was unbelievable. Now, while I certainly wasn't confronted with foods that I had never seen or heard of before (except for the dried-beef gravy and homemade biscuits, which darling Cheesy has kindly described in vivid detail), there were some subtle-yet-important differences between this Thanksgiving celebration and that of years past. I was born and raised in Connecticut, and lived an idyllic life there, galumphing with golden retrievers on autumn-speckled hillsides (much like any Lands End catalogue would suggest). Okay, so maybe that didn't happen, but you can sure tell I'm from New England. One of the most striking ways that this region asserts itself is through its food. And, in my newfound experience, Thanksgiving is very different in New England than the Thanksgiving I just enjoyed with Cheesy.

See where I'm going with this? It is a food blog, people.

In Thanksgivings past, I had become accustomed to certain dishes appearing annually, as most of us who celebrate this gluttonous holiday would expect. Some of these dishes include my mom's horseradish carrots (utterly delicious; round, thick carrot slices doused in a creamy horseradish sauce and baked in a round casserole dish with a sprinkling of breadcrumbs), pearled onions (wee tiny onions, about the size of your knuckle, smothered in cream), seriously tangy cranberry chutney with citrus rind, and these awesome AWESOME sweet potatoes, cut into generous chunks, mixed with similarly-chunked apples, apple cider, brown sugar and salt, and roasted.

Now, allow me a moment to contextualize. My mother, as Cheesy can attest, is a health-food nut. We only use margarine (never, NEVER butter), we only drink skim milk, and refined sugar is to be avoided. And while my mother will willingly cut loose on holidays (as the aforementioned recipes might suggest), she only lets a little bit hang out. Which means our Thanksgivings are a little on the lean side, calorie-wise. I thought Mom was being smart, and that I would never know the difference.

I WAS SO, SO WRONG.

Mama Cheesy is an amazing cook, as we have seen in the breakfast posting my darling GF wrote. One would have to be an amazing cook to nearly-singlehandedly pull off a Thanksgiving for thirteen hungry folk. But good golly, the things that that woman whipped up were totally off my radar screen and out of this world. Let's start with the sides. You know you want to. As my dear Cheesy suggested, the mashed potatoes were unbelievable. I lent my relatively-muscular arm to helping mash the little suckers, and I was blown away by the result. Butter, butter everywhere, and buttermilk, too! And maybe sour cream. (Cheesy's note: I don't think sour cream was involved. But whatever.) I don't even know. They were seriously life-changing. And I don't even like mashed potatoes (probably because, I have come to realize, mashed potatoes at my usual Thanksgiving table are made with nonfat yogurt and margarine). There were two kinds of cranberry sauce; one cranberry-pomegranate concoction, and the ever-loved can of cranberry goo, which I thought was a figment of modern culture, but exists(!!) and is beloved by Mama Cheesy. There was cold roasted asparagus brought by a family member, and green beans… and then things started getting unfamiliar.

Now, my mother, back in the scenic lighthouse-dotted Faire-Isle sweater lands of New England, makes her stuffing with wild rice and sausage. It's a recipe she picked up from my Gran, her mother, who hails from St. Paul, Minnesota, the land of lupines, loons, and a ton of wild rice. It's amazing. It's delicious. And it's only ever cooked apart from the turkey.

WELL. We had TWO kinds of stuffing at Thanksgiving in Virginia, and was I ever unprepared. They were referred to as "wet" and "dry" stuffing, which, I will admit, sounded totally gross. The wet stuffing was cooked INSIDE the turkey, and then yanked out and served, and it was unbelievable. Mama Cheesy also includes sausage in her stuffing, but this was a bread-base and it soaked up all the delicious turkey essence. The dry stuffing had the same ingredients, but also included chestnuts(!!!) and was baked apart from the bird. It was amazing. I had both kinds. Twice. When you come from a family that stuffs their turkey with celery (for moisture), parsley and sage, and then discards said vegetation, wet stuffing is literally the 'stuff' of dreams.

Oh, wait, did I mention turkey? Oh boy. Mama Cheesy went nuts on this thing. It was an twenty-pound monster, which I thought would immediately go insanely dry, as larger turkeys at home tend to. But no, Mama Cheesy separated the skin from the meat and spread BUTTER mixed with Bell's seasoning, sage, and thyme right onto the bird, closed the thing up, and cooked it. This turkey was the most incredible thing to ever happen; so much so that Cheesy, Cheesy's big sister and I had to huddle in the darkened kitchen later that evening and eat some of the remaining meat straight from its Ziploc bag. It was moist and tender, even in the thickest, whitest parts of the meat. I wanted to bury my head in it.

Then came dessert. Last year, around my birthday, Cheesy and I decided to make a seriously failed celebratory dinner, for which I had bought spices and canned pumpkin in order to make my family's traditional pumpkin pie. For Thanksgiving, my mom will usually whip this up in addition to an apple pie or apple crisp (she's also been toying with a pear pie recipe for the last few years, but it calls for tapioca and never seems to go well. Don't tell her I said that). With the epic failure that was that dinner, the pie was never made… So Cheesy and I made it for Thanksgiving this year! It's a fantastic recipe, quick to cook, using a pat-in-the-pan cookie crust (with one cup of chopped pecans, it's basically a pecan sandy recipe). The filling was generously spiced and not too sweet, and it was delicious. Mama Cheesy supplied a great apple pie as well as an unbelievably decadent chocolate brandy pecan pie. She also made some delicious eggnog whipped cream to top all three pie options.

And I awoke from my food coma a week later to write this post.

Best. Thanksgiving. Ever.

Wow. Just wow. This year really was the best Thanksgiving ever. EVER. And this is saying quite a lot, coming from a girl whose favorite holiday, hands down, has always been Thanksgiving. Those mashed potatoes were quite certainly small, fluffy pieces of heaven.

How’s that for a teaser? You’ll just have to wait a while longer for the post about Thanksgiving Dinner proper, because there’s a surprise in the works. For the moment, I’m going to talk about all the other food I ate over Thanksgiving weekend. Actually, I’m just going to talk about breakfast.

I feel like I should have paid attention to the signs—I should have known that this weekend would be all about the breakfasts when the occupants of the car my GF and I rode down to Virginia in all cried out ecstatically when we spotted the one lone Waffle House in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I ate buttery, wonderful grits. It was definitely an omen.

I had every single one of my favorite breakfasts over Thanksgiving. My mother is a queen among women, and knows exactly what I want to eat when I come home for a visit. Here’s the daily breakdown:

-Thursday: fried eggs, bacon, and fresh baked blueberry muffins. I’m not a muffin person, but my mother makes the best muffins in three states. They are light and not too sweet, and filled with blueberries (though where she found blueberries this time of year, I’m not sure).

-Friday: MORE bacon (I love bacon), scrambled eggs, and my mother’s biscuits. I always feel quintessentially Southern when I say this, but it has to be said: no one—no one—makes biscuits like my mama makes ‘em (please supply the drawl in your head). They are perfect. She uses a recipe from an old 1930s cookbook for young wives (written by Meta Givens, for those of you who are interested). I continually wish I had the recipe…but I often refrain from getting it. What if they don’t turn out right?

-Saturday: the tour de force: dried beef gravy and pancakes. Now, I know the gravy should go on the biscuits. But in my family, it goes on pancakes. And it is sublime. Dried beef gravy—chipped beef to some of you—was one of the grandfather’s specialties. It’s a family favorite made from milk and flour and dried beef and onions. Not for the vegans, vegetarians, gluten-allergenic, or the faint of heart.

Maybe my next projects (besides learning to deal with tofu) should be to be like my mom in a new way—cook like her.