Category Archives: vegetarian

Grown Folks’ Grilled Cheese & Tomato Soup

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Summer reared its head one last time this weekend, with temperatures soaring to the low 80s on Saturday. I kicked off my 40th birthday by taking a funder on a tour of community-run farmers’ markets in East New York and Bushwick and ended the night jubilantly dancing with good friends at Franklin Park. (OK, fine, I ended it at a 24-hour diner, but that was technically the day after my birthday.)

By Wednesday, which was the first day in October, temperatures had dropped to the low 60s. There’s a crispness in the air that I will always associate with the first day of school. The woman at my local coffee shop must be feeling the same deeply ingrained nostalgia. “Have fun. Make new friends!” were the words she sent me off with this morning.

The close of my workday found me meeting the same funder for a cup of tea and a lovely apricot and pistachio tart at one of Maison Kayser‘s New York City outposts. I hadn’t had their addictive pain au cereales since my June study trip to Paris, so I grabbed a loaf before departing.

A couple of blocks away I stumbled upon Beecher’s Handmade Cheese, which I had been meaning to investigate. Cubes of their signature cheese, Flagship, greeted me just a few steps inside the door. It was everything you want cheddar to be–sharp, creamy and crumbly all at once. My hunch that it would melt beautifully was confirmed by the sweet bearded Macalaster graduate working the counter. I mentioned my grilled cheese vision and he encouraged me to add a little funk to the mix in the form of Alemar Cheese’s Good Thunder. This young man seemed to know his cheese. And so I departed with not one but two precious (and preciously priced) cheeses in my sack.

While I am perfectly capable of eating nothing but a grilled cheese sandwich for dinner, I felt compelled to dispatch with some of this week’s CSA share. Boy, am I glad that I did.

Roasted Eggplant and Tomato Soup

  • 1 medium eggplant
  • 2 large tomatoes
  • 1 medium yellow onion
  • 1 red bell pepper
  • 1 jalapeño pepper
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 small handful cilantro
  • salt and pepper
  • splash red wine vinegar

Preheat the oven to 425. Drizzle 1 tablespoon olive oil into a roasting pan. Rinse the vegetables and slice them in half, making sure to core the peppers. Place everything cut side down in the roasting pan, drizzle the remaining olive oil over the top and place in the oven.

Veggies Pre-Roast

Let roast for 30-40 minutes until the vegetables are soft and their skins are beginning to char and pull back.

Veggies Roasted

Peel off the skins from the peppers and tomatoes and transfer everything to a food processor. Add a healthy pinch of salt and black pepper and purée until smooth. Continue to run the processor while you slowly add water until you’ve achieved the consistency of your favorite tomato soup. Add the cilantro and purée for a couple of additional minutes. Just before serving, bring soup to a simmer, remove from heat and add a splash of red wine vinegar.

WARNING: This recipe made about two servings of soup. I am seriously bummed to not have more leftovers, as it is quite tasty. As your attorney, I advise you to double it.

I recently read that Gabrielle Hamilton makes her grilled cheese using mayonnaise instead of butter. This is a game changer. Seriously.

Grilled Cheese Ingredients

Grown-Up Grilled Cheese

  • 2 slices good quality bread
  • 1 tablespoon mayonnaise 
  • 2 ounces serious cheese – 1 cheddar and 1 a little funkier 

Bring a cast iron skillet up to medium-low heat. Spread the mayonnaise on one side of each piece of bread. Place one slice into the skillet, mayonnaise-side down. Layer on your cheese and add the top slice. Let cook until nicely browned, pressing gently with a spatula. Flip and repeat the procedure. Let sit for a minute or two before serving to make sure all of that oozy goodness doesn’t drip right out.

Roasted Eggplant and Tomato Soup with Grilled Cheese

Chilaquiles Verdes for the Working Girl

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I am pulling some very long days as I settle into my new role. While I no longer feel clueless, each day brings unanticipated challenges. There’s an irony in spending nearly all of my waking hours (and, to be honest, most of my dream life as well) thinking about how to ensure that all New Yorkers have access to fresh, local food when I can barely find the time to feed myself.

I made it home at 9:00 tonight determined to make use of the last of the remaining Katchkie Farm tomatillos gifted to me at a work event a couple of weeks ago. Several had already gone into Wajeedah’s Black Bean Bean & Corn Salsa Verde. Even past their prime, as they were tonight, these were some delightful fruits.

Chilaquiles Verdes for the Working Girl

  1. Bring a cast iron skillet up to medium-low heat with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil.
  2. Remove the husks from five or so tomatillos and give them a quick rinse. Chop roughly and toss into the food processor.
  3. Add a clove of garlic and some roughly chopped hot peppers. Peppers vary in their heat and we each have our own threshold, so you’ll have to use your own judgment here. Having tasted the tip of a jalapeño and found it to be mild, I added the whole thing and also an inch or so of what I think was a serrano. The resulting dish was very spicy.
  4. Add some salt, pepper and, if you happen to have it (which I did not) cilantro. Run the food processor for a few minutes, pour the resulting salsa verde into a small pan, bring to a boil and lower the heat so that you’ve got a nice slow boil. (You’re aiming to thicken things up a bit.)
  5. Meanwhile, pan fry a few corn tortillas in your skillet, allowing them to get dark in spots and lightly salting them as they come off of the heat. Stack these and slice them into quarters or eighths. 
  6. Stir your quickie tortilla chips with the hot salsa verde and pour into a low bowl. Garnish with queso fresco (or feta if that’s what you have on had), sliced avocado, roast chicken (I wish), and/or whatever your little heart desires that doesn’t further delay mealtime. A fried egg would be nice.

Chilaquiles Verdes

This is not a purist rendition of chilaquiles verdes, but it gets the job done in about 15 minutes, leaving you with time to give the cat some much-needed love before collapsing into bed.

Non-Suffering Succotash

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Tuesday’s CSA share brought plums, corn, romaine, basil, peppers, onions, eggplant, cabbage and more glorious tomatoes. The rest of the week brought a flurry of social engagements and two distinct mountains of work.

It seems the cat is finally out of the bag; after two decades working in sexual health and reproductive justice, I am making the move to food. While I won’t officially start until after Labor Day, I am already hard at work behind the scenes preparing and training for my new role as the Executive Director of Just Food. Just Food works with community leaders to ensure that all New Yorkers have access to fresh, locally grown food. To say this is my dream job is a bit of an understatement. To say that I am busy is more than a bit of an understatement.

Somehow I managed to knock off the lettuce, plums and most of the tomatoes by Sunday morning. But that left me with a whole lot of vegetables to consume. Add to that the fact that I felt compelled to buy okra, scallions and hot peppers while introducing a friend who is new to the neighborhood to the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket and the situation gets comical.

I spent my Sunday strolling Brooklyn for a series of food-fueled meetings. I had it in my head that I might indulge in a little impulse shopping along the way. While I tried on a few pairs of shoes and a vintage dress, nothing really struck my fancy–until I stumbled on Park Slope’s Sunday Down to Earth Farmers Market. It had been a couple of years since I had hit this market, which seems to now focus less on fruits and vegetables and more on all manners of dried, fermented, preserved, juiced, pickled and canned products. Tucked among the stalls was Barry’s Tempeh. I love me some tofu and I love me some seitan. Tempeh, however, has always struck me as a bit dry and dense. But one sample of Barry’s brown rice, quinoa and barley version and I was a convert. I departed with a pound of frozen tempeh stuffed into my purse.

Barry's Tempeh

My next meeting was scheduled to take place in a bar with a backyard, but it seems we weren’t the only ones who thought outdoor drinking on a mild August afternoon was a good idea. So we retreated to Four & Twenty Blackbirds for an afternoon “snack” of giant slabs of peach and raspberry crumble pie. By the time I got home, I was pretty sure I was done eating for the day. But by 9:00 I had miraculously regained my appetite. Fortunately, the tempeh has defrosted nicely nestled between my sunglasses and some books I picked up on the street.

Tempeh, Corn & Okra Succotash

  • 1/4 cup or so of olive oil, divided
  • 1/2 pound tempeh (ideally fresh or fresh frozen), cubed
  • 1 yellow onion, chopped
  • 1 green pepper, chopped
  • 1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced
  • 3 cobs of corn, stripped (Freeze the cobs until you have enough to make a killer chowder.)
  • 3/4 pound okra, trimmed and sliced into 3/4″ pieces
  • 2 medium red tomatoes, chopped
  • 1/4 cup loosely packed basil, chiffonaded
  • 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
  • salt and pepper
  1. Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large cast iron skillet over medium heat. Add the tempeh and cook until nicely browned on one side. Flip the pieces, adding a little more oil each time until they are nicely browned. (The more oil you add, the tastier and crispier your tempeh will be, so use your own judgment.) Sprinkle liberally with salt and set aside.
  2. Add 2 more tablespoons of olive oil followed by the onions, green pepper and jalapeno pepper. Cook stirring occasionally until the onions are limp and starting to brown. Add the corn and cook for another couple of minutes. Season with salt and pepper and empty into a bowl.
  3. Add 1 tablespoon of olive oil and the okra. Cook stirring occasionally until the pods have softened and are dark along the ridges. Add the tomatoes and cook for 2 more minutes. Season with salt and pepper and then dump in the tempeh and the corn mixture. Cook for a minute more. Off of the heat, add in the basil and vinegar. Taste and add additional salt, pepper or vinegar as you see fit.

Tempeh Corn and Okra Succotash

I made up for my afternoon drinking fail by pairing this succotash with a Sixpoint Sweet Action. For a brief moment, I forgot that tomorrow will be another 12-hour workday. Luckily, I have three additional servings of succotash to get me through the week.

Ratatouille Three Ways

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This isn’t so much a recipe as a concept–one that employs the summer’s bounty and yields a nice supper, brunch for two, and an afternoon snack, all with minimal effort.

Make Ahead: 1) Crank the oven up to 400 and chop up whatever summer vegetables you have on hand. I used zucchini, yellow squash, fairy tale eggplant, and the roots and bulb of a bunch of baby fennel (which, YUM). 2) Toss the vegetables with a good quantity of olive oil, salt and pepper in a large roasting pan and pop it in the oven. 3) Let cook until you start to smell something really good. Give the vegetables a good stir and return to the oven until they are soft and nicely browned. This can be done a day ahead of time.

Summer Vegetables for Roasting

For Dinner: 1) sauté onion, garlic and red pepper flakes in some olive oil. 2) Add some chopped fresh tomato and cook just briefly before adding some of your roasted vegetables. 3) Stir in some freshly boiled al dente pasta, allowing a little of the pasta water to form a loose sauce. (I was feeding a friend who avoids gluten, so I went with a brown rice pasta, which was surprisingly tasty and toothsome.) 4) Cook for a minute or so, remove from heat, and toss with some fresh basil. 5) Serve with a nice dollop of ricotta cheese.

For Brunch the Next Day: 1) Set the oven to 400 and repeat steps one and two above, adding in all of your leftover roasted vegetables and substituting a fresh jalapeño for the red pepper flakes if you happen to have one on hand. 2) Stir in some fresh basil. 3) Reserve about a third of the mixture and spoon the rest into individual baking dishes, forming a hollow in the center. Crack a couple of eggs into each dish and pop into the oven until the eggs are just set.

Ratatouille Shirred Eggs Before

Ratatouille Shirred Eggs

For an Afternoon Snack: 1) Toast some nice bread in a dry cast iron skillet over medium heat. 2) Top with the last of your ratatouille.

Ratatouille Bruschetta

And that, my friends, is how you consume two zucchini, two yellow squash, a large bunch of baby fennel, half a pound of eggplant, three onions, a head of garlic, a bouquet of purple basil, and one jalapeño pepper in 24 hours.

Swiss Chard & Black-Eyed Pea Salad

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My nephew Wally is mad cute.

Sick Wally

He is also a vector for disease. I have been rocking the same glazed eyes and runny nose for the past week (though I fear they’re not quite as cute on me). By Friday my cough had reached a new level of intensity, rendering sleep a challenge. In the wee hours of Saturday morning, desperate to feel that something other than my cough was “productive,” I set some black-eyed peas to soaking.

I had big plans for Saturday, but a pounding headache and sheer exhaustion compelled me to stick close to home. Luckily, I had those black-eyes peas, a fridge full of vegetables, and friends who were game to scrap our night out in favor of supper on my roof.

I’ve been trying to spend more time on the roof. While the air in my apartment is thick and stagnant in these dog days of summer, it’s always breezy and at least ten degrees cooler up on the roof. A glass of wine and a little al fresco dining as the sun sets will cure just about anything (except maybe this cold). I like to treat my rooftop suppers as picnics, preparing simple, fresh food that’s easily transportable and meant to be eaten at room temperature.

Brookly Roof

Swiss Chard & Black-Eyed Pea Salad

  • 3/4 pound (1.5 cups) dried black-eyed peas, soaked overnight and drained
  • 1 large onion
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
  • 2 teaspoons dried thyme (or a few sprigs if you’ve got fresh)
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1 teaspoon smoked salt
  • 1/4 cup red wine vinegar, divided
  • 3 bunches swiss chard, turnip greens and/or other leafy greens, roughly chopped
  • 3 tablespoons finely minced fresh dill
  • salt and pepper
  1. Add beans, onion, bay leaf, red pepper, thyme and olive oil to a large pot. Cover with water by one inch, bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer. Cook until just tender, 30-45 minutes, adding water if needed.
  2. Remove onion and bay leaf. Stir in smoked salt, half of the vinegar and a healthy dose of black pepper. Add the greens in batches, starting with the stems, which will take a little longer to cook. Let simmer until greens are tender but still toothsome, 15-20 minutes.
  3. Remove from heat and stir in the rest of the vinegar, dill and salt and pepper to taste. Let sit for at least 30 minutes. Serve cold or at room temperature.

Swiss Chard and Black-Eyed Pea Salad

I served this salad alongside whole wheat sourdough toasted in coconut oil and a variation on last summer’s Garden Pea and Spring Onion Puree. A couple bottles of rose rounded out the meal.

Supper on the Roof

Neighbors trickled up to the roof as the sun set. Dishes were carried downstairs and replaced with chocolate and more wine. Just after dark, the supermoon rose above the chimney of an adjacent building.

Fava Bean, Mint & Feta Dip

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A week after returning home, I’m still on a bit of a bread bender. Having polished off the last of my Parisian stash on Friday, I found myself tucking in my desk chair at 5:45 this evening in order to make it to the Union Square Greenmarket before the good people of Bread Alone packed up for the day. Once I had a quarter loaf of their excellent organic French sourdough stashed in my tote, I was free to roam. I told myself I didn’t need anything else, as I still had vegetables left over from last week and another CSA share arrives tomorrow. But a giant bag of fava beans was just three dollars. And wouldn’t some fresh mint (at two dollars for a nicely sized bouquet) be just the thing to make the favas’ green and slightly nutty flavor pop? And who can pass up tender young garlic?

Fava Bean, Mint & Feta Dip

  • enough fava beans in pod to fill your salad spinner (Sorry, I have no idea what they weighed.)
  • four cloves garlic – the younger, the better
  • juice and zest of 1/2 lemon
  • 3 tablespoons good olive oil
  • small handful of mint leaves
  • 1/2 tablespoon Aleppo pepper
  • salt and pepper
  • 2 ounces feta
  1. Set a small pot of water to boil, crack open a cold beer and get to work popping the fava beans out of their pods. The technique is similar to shelling peas. It will get easier as you go, I promise. The beer helps.Shelling Fava Beans
  2. By the time you shell your final bean, the water should be boiling. Add a generous pinch of salt as well as the beans. Peel the garlic and toss this in as well. Let boil until the beans are tender, approximately five minutes, then strain into a collander and rinse with cold water.
  3. Remove the garlic and dump the beans into a food processor. Pulse several times until you have a coarse mixture. Remove approximately half of the beans. Add the garlic, olive oil, lemon zest and juice, mint, Aleppo pepper, and salt and pepper. Puree until smooth, taste and adjust seasoning.
  4. Stir in the coarsely ground beans and crumbled feta. 

This would make a great hors d’oeuvre served on small crostini or with pita points for dipping. I stashed about half in the refrigerator for tomorrow’s lunch and ate the rest slathered on toasted slices of that Bread Alone sourdough while watching the sun set from the roof of my building. With the temperature hovering around 90 degrees at 8:00pm, this made an ideal supper.

Fava Bean Mint and Feta Dip

Summer Squash & Kale Bruschetta

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I arrived home in the wee hours of Tuesday morning after a truly amazing study trip to Paris. Eighteen of us spent two weeks examining the performance of Frenchness through food. As you might imagine, we ate quite a bit in the process. We did not, however, encounter fresh vegetables in the quantity that Food Studies scholars are accustomed to eating. By day four, we were all obsessing about dark leafy greens, which were nowhere to be found.

What we did encounter was bread. There were crusty baguettes from the anarchist collective, rustic country loaves steeped in a studied old world charm, slender and elegant ficelles, impossibly buttery croissants a mere three blocks from our uninspired hotel, luscious eggy brioches encased in glass bells, and a particularly memorable seed-encrusted whole wheat loaf that we consumed in an impromptu picnic on the steps of the Musee d’Orsay.

But one bread emerged as the clear winner. My final day in Paris found me stashing my suitcase in a locker and (finally) mastering the bike share system with a single goal. I traveled from the 15th to the 10th arrondissement to purchase a hunk of Du Pain et Des Idees‘ sublime pain des amis.

Du Pain et Des Idees

As those who have had occasion to dine with me know, I’m not much of a bread eater. It can be helpful for transporting sandwich fillings into your mouth or sopping up egg yolk, but I prefer to take my cheese straight, or perhaps with a crisp apple slice. Bread fills space in one’s stomach that could be devoted to more tantalizing fare. Or so I thought before I encountered pain des amis. This nutty, toothsome loaf with its confounding bacon aroma is good all by itself. It is even better, I have learned, toasted in a dry cast iron skillet.

Pain des Amis

The pain des amis and I survived a rather harrowing bike ride on some of Paris’ main thoroughfares, a painfully expensive taxi to Charles de Gaulle airport, a troubling but comical security encounter involving two kilos of artisanal flour, a missed connection in London, a delayed flight, and an even pricier cab ride home from Newark (which was not our intended destination).

Staying awake until a suitable bedtime was about all I was good for on Tuesday. (Well, that and some cat cuddling.) I headed out around 5:30 to pick up my weekly CSA share and nearly wept at the site of all those vegetables. I had some truly spectacular food in Paris. I did not, however, encounter any kale. I returned home eager to introduce my pain des amis to all of this fresh produce.

CSA Vegetables

Summer Squash & Kale Bruschetta

  • 2 scallions
  • 3 thin slices good bread
  • 1 medium summer squash
  • 5 stalks purple kale
  • 1 ounce feta cheese
  • 6 basil leaves (mint or parsley would also be great)
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons good quality olive oil
  • 1/2 lemon (zest and juice)
  • pinch Aleppo pepper (or a little less red pepper)
  • salt and pepper
  1. Bring a cast iron skillet up to medium low heat with half a tablespoon of olive oil. Trim and reserve the dark green portion of the scallions. Slice the white and light green portions lengthwise into strips. Cook, flipping occasionally, until limp and starting to brown. Sprinkle with salt and remove from pan.
  2. Place bread slices into pan and allow to toast, flipping as needed, while you go about the next steps.
  3. Using a vegetable peeler, shave long ribbons of summer squash into a small bowl. Slice the kale as you would for a slaw and add this to the bowl along with the feta, remaining olive oil, lemon juice and lemon zest, Aleppo pepper, and salt and pepper. Mince the scallion greens and fresh herbs. Add these plus the cooked scallions. Stir to combine and let sit for at least five minutes to allow the flavors to meld.

If you were serving this as an hors d’oeuvre, I would recommend piling the kale and squash salad onto small pieces of toast and serving immediately. I went for a deconstructed bruschetta, which ensured that the bread didn’t get soggy before I ate it.

Summer Squash and Kale Bruschetta

 

Greek-Style Kale Salad

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This not the refrigerator of someone about to leave the country for two weeks.

Packed Fridge

I am weak in the face of the season’s bounty. Having already overbought at last Saturday’s greenmarket, Tuesday found me dashing home to Brooklyn after work to collect my first CSA share of the season before hopping a train back into the city for four hours (seriously) of Alison Krauss and Willie Nelson at Radio City Music Hall. I’ve done my best to eat my way through all of these vegetables, but that’s a tall order when you’re pulling a 60-hour week.

Late Wednesday I made myself a salad of red leaf lettuce, radishes, strawberries, scallions and fresh herbs. This was damn pretty, but didn’t quite come together flavor-wise. Had I to do it over again, I’d eliminate the radishes and let some of the strawberries macerate in the dressing for a bit before assembling the salad.

Radish and Strawberry Salad

Thursday night found me at yet another work event. I wrapped my week and celebrated the beginning of a much-needed two-week vacation with swanky hotel bar cocktails and some down and dirty Indian food.

I awoke this morning determined to get through my stockpile of vegetables in the 32 hours before my departure for the airport. Noting that I still had almost a full pint of luscious (and decidedly not cheap) goat milk yogurt, I started the day with this Greek-inspired kale salad. A latte and a hard-boiled egg left over from last weekend’s potato salad extravaganza made it breakfast.

Greek-Style Kale Salad

  • 1/4 cup good quality plain yogurt
  • pinch salt
  • 1 teaspoon honey
  • 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
  • 1 garlic scape, sliced into thin disks (or a little minced garlic)
  • 1/2 teaspoon Aleppo pepper (or a pinch of red pepper flakes)
  • 1 teaspoon dried oregano (half as much fresh would be great if you have it)
  • 1 bunch lacinato kale, cut into 1/2″ shreds
  • 1/2 cup cherry or grape seed tomatoes, halved
  • 4 scallions, white and light green portions thinly sliced
  • 10-15 kalamata olives, roughly chopped
  • 1 tablespoon of the good olive oil

Combine the first seven ingredient in a small jar, shake vigorously and let sit while you prep the rest of the ingredients. Add the olive oil and give it another good shake. Add everything to a bowl, toss to combine and let sit for 15 minutes or so until kale begins to wilt and take on a glossy color.

Greek-Style Kale Salad

Those ill-fated radishes would have been great here, as would a little sliced cucumber. But it was still a damn tasty breakfast.