Cheese and Choux

My relationship with food lately has been rocky, at best.  I dealt with a surprising bout of illness this spring; I naturally followed this with a handful of weeks of tentative eating.  Just as I thought I had reached my personal zenith of health again (note that mine differs immensely from, say, Lance Armstrong's), I went to the aquarium. 

It was a good idea, as many terrible ideas are, in theory.  You know, hammerhead sharks.  Glow-in-the-dark fish.  Ancient-looking turtles.  A dolphin show.  Yet somewhere in the midst of the unending masses of munchkins and one questionably stale grilled cheese sandwich, I managed to acquire food poisoning.  The timing was the worst it could have been, as it occurred the evening before a dear friend's wedding.  (Another friend later mentioned that mine was the ONLY unused placard, so the groom was concerned.  How do these things happen?)  As my stomach convulsed on one long highway with an appalling lack of rest stops, I vowed never to eat again.  Apparently, I get fairly melodramatic with food poisoning.

After another week of merry-go-round-style nausea, I managed to default back to two weeks of tentative eating.  Soup.  Bread.  Juice.  Wash and repeat.  In the process, I reached a whole new level of closeness with my husband.  All of that newlywed vanity and courtship trying-to-be-pretty stuff is a thing of the past.  He has now seen me in throes of ugly unlike anything since the bar exam, and he still loves me.  I'm astounded and grateful and beginning to believe him now when he says he'll love me always.  That's what these hardships are, I suppose: tiny affirmations of his commitment to always stay.  As the greenery all around blossoms fully and winter is all too easily forgotten, it would seem that my own marriage fits nicely into summer's easy metaphor.

But not so fast.  I'm not a sarcastic, skeptical, left-leaning blogger for nothing.  I'm still annoyed for the wicked trick that's been played on me in these early summer days.  While I've dutifully read all of your blogs (and you've been eating marvelously, I might add), I've been steaming away with envy.  It feels like a cruel joke to be forced into sacrifice, into tasteless crackers and broth, just as the earth itself offers such a bounty.  It feels like the very definition of irony.  And if I hadn't had such time - what with my stomach rumbling precariously and our most not-funny friends tossing around words like "pregnancy" - I would be incredibly peeved at having missed summer.  Fortunately for me, I'm not pregnant and my stomach has calmed to still water.  Moreover, I sometimes keep a blog where I think about these things.  And right now, all I really feel is grateful.

Having been relegated to the house on dozens of sunny days, I have fervently enjoyed my lazy strolls through the farmer's market.  The strawberries, all dirty and plump, taste like heaven.  Slicing them, and licking the juices that trickle down clumsy fingers, is the ultimate sensory experience.  Fresh-grown basil smells like it's finally come into its own.  Like it's finally ready to really shine.  The cheesemonger is there, too, as he offers tantalizing shards of things that I can't quite pronounce.  I purchase cannolis from a local baker, and lettuce from a kid who looks like he wants to get out of the heat. 

Yet, even with all the bounty at stake, summer really isn't the best time for a foodie blog.  Because people like me, people who like to eat things best when they're in season, don't want to take the time to cook their wares.  We're a little impatient, particularly those of us in the mid-atlantic, because we've been waiting some time for food to taste of summer.  In truth, all of the fresh fruit and vegetables truly could (and maybe should) be left alone.

But there are reasons to find our way back into the kitchen.  There will be rainy days and bellies that gurgle (hopefully, not mine) for something warm.  With that, I'll offer up my own recipe for ratatouille.  My mother made it when we were young, as it was one of the easiest ways to urge us to "eat our colors."  I've spiced it up with some white wine and roasted peppers.  I've tailored it to suit my grown-up tastes.  Yet, I like this dish because those infantile parts of me, those parts that don't care for summer squash and zucchini unless they're cooked, warm to the idea of a meal that will soak up any vegetable that my refrigerator can regurgitate.

And with that last, impeccably wrong (under the circumstances) choice of verb, I'll leave you to your summer.

Lizzie's Ratatouille

Ingredients

Olive oil

1/2 an onion, coarsely chopped

3 gloves of garlic, chopped

2 orange bell peppers, sliced in half (remove seeds)

2 red bell peppers, sliced in half (remove seeds)

1 medium-sized eggplant, sliced

4 Roma tomatoes, chopped

1 zucchini, sliced

1 yellow squash, sliced

Fresh basil

Fresh thyme

Dried oregano

Dried parsely

1/2 cup of dry white wine

Instructions

Heat the oven to 400 degrees.  Place pepper halves on foil with the skin facing upwards.  Roast for 20 minutes.  When the pepper halves have cooled, chop them coarsely.

In a Dutch oven, heat olive oil, garlic, and onion on medium heat for approximately 6 minutes or until softened.  Add the eggplant until coated with oil.  Add the peppers.  Cover and cook for 10 minutes.

Add the sliced tomatoes, zucchini, and herbs.  Add the white wine.  Cover and cook for 15 minutes on medium-low heat.

I am a generally healthy person who sometimes daydreams about being sick. 

It's one of those things that I don't normally share, but this is what blogs do, right?  They lull you into a false sense of security until the ever-elusive over-share finally asserts itself.  So there you go.  Sometimes, even on the sunniest and most dappled days, I'd rather be in bed.  As a disclaimer, this feeling is usually dredged up when I've signed on for too much.  Over booked weekends.  Too much work.  Lack of lazy contact with good friends.  Lack of time with my characteristically un-lazy husband.  As someone who has never been one to nap (or at least, never figured out how to do it well), this is right about the time that I'm ready to sign out.  Curl up.  Assume the fetal position.  Shut the blinds, and shut out the world.  Retreat.  But then, what's that old adage?  Ah yes, that's it.

Be careful what you wish for.

Indeed, be careful what you wish for, because sometimes wishes pounce with snarled teeth.  And suddenly, it's the middle of picture-poignant May and I'm sick.  See, most of what I really wanted in those daydreams revolved around a decent break and a soft pillow.  I often forget that being sick, being the sick that involves doctors and antibiotics, is just plain rotten.  It's right up there with mud puddles and the stench of dirty diapers.  It has little to no redeeming qualities, and retains the sobering quality of rendering its victim both unproductive and slug-like.  (I do know that I could write sluggish here, but really, it's too pretty a word).

So, as you might have guessed from the rambling diatribe, I was out for the count for a little over a week.  In the week following my bout with bronchitis, I loped around our home with little energy.  And if my eyes ever glowed, it was only because my fever had come back unannounced.  It occurred to me - when I was too tired to read the stack of magazines positioned neatly by my pillow - that I often wish for breaks, because I don't often take them.  And I don't often take them, because I'm not good at being so still.  I know what you're thinking: startling, Sherlock, just startling.  Even so, it's been a real lesson for me as I ease my way back into my previous pace.  It's been my own cautionary tale.  I have to go easier on myself.  At the very least, I can't give the universe an excuse to knock me out again.

That being said, I found my own ways to be one badass invalid.  I ate Popsicles with no thought to portion control.  When I tired of Vogue, I lingered over Simone de Beauvoir's slightly depressive She Came To Stay with its group of morose characters; I had to embrace my people.  And when I really wanted to throw caution to the wind, I limped outside to sit on the porch for 10 minutes.  Without sunglasses.  The splintering headache the followed only served to augment my very satisfied feeling of rebellion.  But my greatest coup d'etat came from the mother of all counter-culture leaders: Oprah.  I know what you're thinking.  You're thinking that Oprah's pretty tame, but you weren't there for one Monday's sandwich spectacular.  Oprah sent her best friend, Gayle (don't pretend you don't know her name), on some kind of cross-country tasting mission to find the best sandwiches in America.  Instantly, I was salivating - and this from someone who had lost all ability to taste!  A number of sandwiches had me sitting on my elbows amidst my pyramid of pillows.  But there was one sandwich that, according to Gayle at least (whom I now really want to be friends with too), left the others in its dust.  Or crumbs, as the case may be.

This sandwich was a grilled cheese constructed by the Cafe Muse out of Michigan.  Now, I love a rockin' sandwich, particularly when it's coupled with soup.  Still, I hadn't thought to do anything with grilled cheese.  I'm not sure why the thought had never crossed my mind, because grilled cheese has all the elements to satisfy: undeniable nostalgia, simplicity, gooey constructs, bread.  What's not to love?  But THIS grilled cheese mixed in different types of cheeses and honey.  In the words of Renee Zellweger (who will never cease to be the chick from Empire Records for me), it had me at hello. 

On Monday night, and then AGAIN on Tuesday night, I ate the very worst kind of food for a sick person.  I succumbed to temptation and had my grilled cheese.  It involved heirloom tomatoes and toasted bread.  It was the most gooey its ever been.  Jordan and I couldn't even talk, because our mouths acted as vessels to catch fallen cheese.  (Now, I had lost my voice by this point, but that's really besides the point).  While I dutifully ate sick person food for the rest of the week, namely broth and more broth, I treasured my act of rebellion.  And in throes of a cloudy illness that resembled nothing like the stuff of my daydreams, I even believe that I could taste it.

I don't need to post this recipe.  I'll just send you to it by way of O herself. 

The first time that I ever tasted white asparagus was in an impossibly trendy restaurant in Baltimore, the city of my birth - a place that I never, in a million years, would depict as trendy.  The restaurant was called Corks.  We ate there initially because my aunt is something of oenophile.  We had excellent wine, however, because of her knack for convincing balding sommeliers to share some secrets.  As we all do with the best meals, I remember snapshots.  I remember mango chutney over grilled chicken.  I remember some fluffy mesclun mixture with a sweet vinaigrette.  I remember my aunt's, who also incidentally happens to be Francophile, cheese plate.  Even better, I remember pilfering some of its best offerings when she turned her head; she had, fortunately for me, begun speaking professionally (maybe flirting a little) with the balding sommelier.  Most of all, I remember the moment that my white asparagus arrived, laced with a prudently delicate sauce.  I had titled my head to the side, raised my eyebrows, and wondered what in the kitchen had gone horribly wrong.  My aunt must have noticed my decided lack of poker-face, clearly painted with confusion.  That's white asparagus, she said, it grows underground.  She said it like she had explained everything.

I've always had a thing for green asparagus, because it denotes spring and cooks up so pretty on the plainest of plates.  Green asparagus requires nothing more than sea salt, olive oil, and seasonality.  Et voila, it's the most lanky and elegant of all of the vegetables.  However, at least in the U.S., white asparagus often gets the cold shoulder.  Throughout Europe, I see its ivory visage more frequently on my dinner plate.  Those Europeans use white asparagus like it's any other vegetable, like it's something approaching common.   While, admittedly, white asparagus is native to Europe, you would think that its mild flavor would convert any green asparagus-adherents.  Still, I seem to be in the minority.

I love cooking with white asparagus, because it enters a meal with little fanfare.  Whereas green asparagus can easily dominate a meal, white asparagus instead harmonizes with all of its elements.  Flavors merge, colors blur, and any lingering bitterness subsides.  In fact, I think that Jordan was initially turned off by the white asparagus.  It's no matter, though.  White asparagus, with its gentle taste and familiar texture, wins them over every time.

Remember when Thumbelina left her underground home with the mole to rejoin the world of sun and flowers and fairy princes?  In my mind, had she been treated underground to white asparagus in a delicate sauce, she might have reconsidered. 

White Asparagus and Wild Brown Rice Casserole

*Note that while the casserole is okay, it's still best with olive oil and sea salt

Ingredients

1 pound white asparagus, with lowest part of the stalk broken off, and cut into pieces

1 can Cannellini beans

3 cloves of finely chopped garlic

4 servings of cooked brown wild rice, according to your own instructions

1/3 cup Parmesan cheese

Hunks of fresh basil, ripped to shreds

Dried oregano

Dried parsley

Olive oil

Instructions

First, heat the brown rice according to your own instructions.

Cook the asparagus in olive oil with the garlic for 10 minutes or so over medium heat, until it becomes more translucent.  Cook the beans with olive oil for five minutes.  Mix the remaining ingredients together, according to your own discretion.  Mix with the rice.

So, I do recognize that I've been a fairly tardy blogger.  However, I can point to a litany of excellent excuses. 

The sun has been shining for nearly two weeks straight.  The park where I run has been beckoning, and the foot (mine, not my husband's) that has kept me from doing so has begun to heal.  The year, for me, is at its most exquisite.  It's the narrow sliver, the slice of perfect, that acted as a reward in the biting cold of winter.  I had forgotten the simplest, most lovely touchstones of spring - the falling to sleep with the windows open and the rising with the birds as they chirp.  I appreciate it even more this year, I think, because of the heady quality to my autumn and winter.  Autumn was all joyous weddings (ours and others), but tempered by the massive amount of change.  I thought I was okay with transition, but it turns out that I have my limits.  Winter was bleak.  The test and the snow and the locomotive-like wind nearly knocked me out.  So this spring, this transient moment where trees bloom as flowers do, feels like peace.  At the very least, I've been counting my blessings.  Yet, I do recognize that I haven't done much blogging.  We're in luck however.  With a thunderstorm roaring outside (and the resulting promise that April flowers actually DO often bring May flowers), here we go.

Though it's probably obvious right now, I would often rather be outside.  I would rather be outside than, oh, just about anything.  As a result, I haven't done massive amounts of cooking.  I've cooked, of course.  All of my meals been a bit meh, though.  It isn't so much that I don't care, because hopefully you know by now that I relish deceiving Jordan with as many vegetables as possible.  It's just that cooking often requires planning.  It requires basic things, like a grocery list.  Like thought.  Instead, I've been logging hours walking and running in the park where I try my very best to clear my head.  And not to think.  In short, I've been seeking out some inspiration again.

Often, when I want to be inspired, I turn to a number of famous chefs and their pretty cookbooks.  Grocery store web sites are great, too.  On the slowest, most uninspired of days, there is always Google.  I'm not sure what's been the matter with me, all of this time, thinking that I arrogantly know what's best for me.  I'm not sure, not sure at all, why I hadn't turned to my mother.

I should start by saying that I grew up in a meat and potatoes family.  In the lean years when I (the first baby) was little, I can remember nights where my mother was still working crazy shifts.  My dad would be a bit harried, trying to feed us three, and Chef Boyardee was often involved.  It was the eighties, and I think that the notion of food as a name-brand thing was almost fashionable.  Anyway, the point is that I recall with great nostalgia both my mother's secret recipe for chicken salad and Kraft macaroni & cheese.  Homemade food had its constraints, and they did the very best that they could.  And in the string of meals every night at 6 pm, my mom would sometimes offer up some real gems.  One of my favorite meals, with its glistening emerald coating and charged red sauce, was Stuffed Peppers.  They were the best.  Even now, even grown up, they're still the very best.  Until recently however, I completely forgot about them.

I should say that - you know this by now - I'm stubborn.  I like to think that I'm independent.  I don't particularly care for asking for advice.  In fact, I'm often that really aggravating person who refuses to ask for directions.  I don't care if I'm spinning in circles, I won't allow myself to be led.  Still, sometimes the guidance of another can loosen up our burdens.  Spinning in circles exhausts a tremendous amount of energy.  Sometimes, life is just best easy.  In that spirit, I finally called my mom to ask for her recipe. 

Like any dish that's been loved to the point that it's become reflexive however, my mom didn't remember the nuts and bolts of the recipe.  She etched out its bones for me, though.  And like any stubborn daughter in her mid-twenties, I've messed with it a little.  For instance, I needed a side dish, not the main meal.  (You know me and my endless quest for side dishes).  In any case, I dispensed with the traditional ground chuck.  Also, instead of marinara sauce, I used salsa.

I have to digress for a minute to wax poetic about cilantro.  This is an herb that I detested in my teens - I always felt that too much of it had the interesting aftershock of clearing out my sinuses.  It wasn't what I wanted in salad.  Lately though, I've come to yearn for this unique jolt to the system.  Lately, I've been eating way too much Mexican and Latin-inspired food as a result.  My Stuffed Peppers were chock full of cilantro.  And while quinoa might have been an interesting choice of "stuffing," this grain has become nearly trendy (read: cheap) recently.  It's very accessible.  How something as ancient as Babylon becomes trendy is beyond me.  Nonetheless, I like quinoa best because - though it's fairly tasty stuff - it has a Goldilocks-aesthetic that makes me smile. 

So, they aren't my mother's stuffed peppers.  I made them for a mid-week meal, just as she would have done once.  I made them because I wasn't exactly in the mood to be cooking (after running blithely through the park), just as she would have done once (after a tireless night-shift at the hospital).  And, of course, my Stuffed Peppers were a pale imitation of my mother's dish.  I should have called her a long time ago.

Mexican Stuffed Peppers  (*Will annoy mother for her recipe eventually)

Ingredients

4 stuffed bell peppers (either green or red)

Salsa, 1 regular-sized jar or homemade

1 can black beans, or dry black beans that have been soaked over night in water  (*Note that I do realize that I used kidney beans, instead.  But, as with coffee, I always prefer black).

1 cup quinoa, cooked according to your instructions

1 cup of cooked corn, cooked according to your instructions

1 medium-sized onions, chopped

3/4 cup of any grated Latin cheese

Grated parmesan

Cilantro (!!!)

Instructions

First, cook the quinoa and black beans according to instructions.  Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

Chop off the top and carve out the middle pulp of the peppers, leaving their shell behind.  Drop stuffed peppers into a saucepan of boiling water.  Let them sit for fifteen minutes, or until they've grown soft.

Meanwhile, mix the quinoa, black beans, Latin cheese, cilantro, onion, corn, and a bit of salsa.  After having allowed the peppers to cool, stuff them with the stuffing and place in a baking dish.  Pour the remaining salsa over the peppers and into the baking dish.  Top with parmesan cheese.  Bake for approximately 30 minutes.

I never thought I would say this, but: my man has gone off to rehab.  Oh no, no no.

Ha, totally kidding.  I've always wanted to say that.  Sadly however, I've never dated the Sid Vicious God-Save-The-Queen types.  Not me, no.  I've always gravitated towards the fine wine, carefully puckered tie, newspaper under the arm on Sunday mornings types.  They've been well-read; they've had a good sense of humor; they've never done any real time in prison.  Still, there has to be some merit to the bad boy that I've been missing.  If not, I certainly have a bone to pick with a number of girlfriends who kept me up weeping and waiting by the phone in college.  I'm not sure what the merit is, and this is probably why I married the very best of "my type."  Nonetheless, there's a certain dangerous something to wiggling your eyebrows, casually leaning in to offer a secret, and chucking about a lightening-bolt word.  Like rehab.

Unfortunately, I've just never been that interesting.  My fine wine husband isn't in rehab for anything that requires a twelve-step program, but rather to fix the foot that he royally screwed up playing basketball.  The plebians call his rehab "physical therapy," but honestly, what's the fun in that?  So my husband not only popped a handful of ligaments (two days before the bar exam, I might add), but he went above and beyond your ordinary sprain.  He did such a number on that foot that his therapist has proclaimed the look of it (tiger stripe purple bruises on all sides) and the feel of it (disturbingly wobbly) unprecedented.  For a good month, I just winced when I looked at that foot.  Unprecedented or not, I just felt helpless.  Watching him.  Not being able to do anything. 

This is kind of love that never gets shown of TV.  They always give you these oddly oiled bodies straddling each other in great abandon.  Nearly every woman (don't me started) has implants that actually look implanted.  Everything's all hot and bothered.  But very recently, I've decided that the best kind of love is the kind that mops your head during a fever.  That chills with you during a chick flick (however grudgingly).  That doesn't make fun of you (too much) when you spill wine at a work function.  I suppose I have to resign myself to the inarguable fact that I actually love somebody more than myself.  And I've decided that it's the most frustrating freakin' thing in the world.

Because I can't actually do anything to make my gimpy mate better.  Recently, I've exhausted energy elsewhere.  I've cleaned bathrooms.  I've helped him carry heavy stuff upstairs.  You know, we do what we can.  Many people would probably advise me to mellow out, as there's nothing (really) that I can do to help.  To these pessimists, I have only one word: muffins.

That's right, I made him muffins.  I made muffins, because his physical therapy required him up at the crack of dawn.  I made muffins, because he gets tunnel vision sometimes, and I knew he would miss breakfast.  And, of course, I did it because it was the only thing that I could do.  And, if a girl's gotta be helpless, she can at least be helpless with sparkling bathrooms and a yummy smelling kitchen.  Besides, I'm no martyr here; I definitely pilfered some for myself.  I should note that the recipe calls for blueberries, which always seems a bit weak to me.  How many blueberry muffins have you eaten in your life?  There you go, I rest my case.  I should also note that this recipe is super healthy, and in that sense, a little bland.  However, because it's so healthy, the fiber should prove filling enough for a meal substitute.  I should also note that all of my pictures are of the strawberries, because they're just so sublimely pretty this spring.  Forget the look of the muffins.  Just eat them.

And I should also say that, in the end, I ate more muffins than him.  But that's okay, because I made them all for him.  And that - for me - is unprecedented.

Oat Whole Wheat Strawberry and Banana Muffins, pilfered from Bea Ojankangas "Light Muffins . . . "

Instructions

1 1/2 cups uncooked old-fashioned rolled oats

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1/3 cup packed brown sugar

3 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ginger

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup fresh or dried blueberries

1 cup skim milk

1/2 cup (1 medium) mashed ripe banana

2 tablespoons Walnut oil

1 large egg, beaten

Instructions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Spray a 12 cup muffin tin with olive oil based cooking spray.  In a large bowl, thoroughly mix the rolled oats with the wheat flour, brown sugar, baking powder, ginger, cinnamon, and salt.  Add the strawberries, and stir gently until they are evenly distributed.  In a small bowl, stir together the milk, banana, oil, and egg until blended.  Add the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir until just moistened, about 20 strokes.  Spoon batter into the muffin cups, dividing evenly.  Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until wooden toothpick comes out clean.