Curried Black Lentils and Sweet Potato

Posted on March 17, 2014 by Jasmine Nielsen

I’m coming off of back-to-back 60-hour workweeks. In the middle of it all, I threw my back out necessitating a trip to urgent care and a cocktail of controlled substances that I’ve had to meter our carefully so as to remain functional for Tuesday’s fundraising gala and its aftermath.

By Saturday I was off duty and officially on Spring Break. I celebrated by purchasing a bottle of Bulleit Bourbon for my train ride down to Baltimore. That plus some Percocet and a little Zeppelin momentarily had me pain-free for the first time in over a week.

The plan was (and, I think, still is) a road trip down to Nahunta, Georgia to pick up a grill (well, technically a smoker cooker) that the good folk at Lang BBQ Smokers are building to spec for my friend Don. Between my back problems, a death in Don’s family, and a freak mid-March snowstorm over the mid-Atlantic, we’re getting a slow start.

Don flew home from Wisconsin last night via Atlanta (which, incidentally, put him within a four-hour drive of his new grill). His father-in-law had passed away in the wee hours of the morning and he’d had an arduous daylong journey, so I had resolved to cook him a nice meal. My instructions were to make something low in cholesterol and high in fiber, as Don had to swing by the lab for some blood work before we left town.

Rooting through the pantry, I found some black lentils and long-grain pecan rice. The hanging basket under the stairs held an onion and a large sweet potato. In the back of the fridge were parsley and a knob of fresh ginger. This plus an ample spice cabinet would make for a warm, flavorful meal and provide us both with enough fiber to kick off five days of barbeque for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Curried Black Lentils and Sweet Potato

1 cup black lentils
4 cups water and/or chicken stock
2 tablespoons grapeseed or other neutral cooking oil
1 large onion, diced
1 thumb-sized knob of ginger, peeled and minced
1 tablespoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon whole cumin seed
2 teaspoon smoked paprika
2 African bird chilis (or cayenne paper to taste)
1 whole black cardamom pod (optional)
1 teaspoon asafetida (optional, but recommended if you are making the vegan version, as it will lend the dish a richness)
1 large sweet potato, peeled and cut into small cubes
2 tablespoon red wine vinegar
4 tablespoons finely chopped parsley and/or cilantro
salt and pepper

Bring the lentils and water/stock to boil in a medium pot, reduce heat, and let simmer for 25 minutes or until tender but still toothsome, seasoning with salt as needed. If you’re making rice to accompany the dish, now is a good time to start that process.
Strain the lentils, reserving the cooking liquid. Add oil to your pot and bring up to medium heat. Add the onions and stir frequently until softened and starting to brown. Add ginger and stir constantly for one minute. Add all of the spices, stirring constantly for another minute. Add the reserved cooking liquid and the sweet potato. Simmer until potato has softened, adding water if the mixture gets too thick.
Pour the lentils back into the pan along with the vinegar and a good dose of freshly ground pepper. Let simmer for a few more minutes, taste and adjust seasoning as needed. Add fresh herbs off the heat.

This recipe makes about four servings. I reheated the leftovers for breakfast. Don had his with rice. I simmered an egg in mine. Imagine this should get us through the first few hours of our snowy spring break road trip.

Pea Shoot & Radish Spring Salad

Posted on March 8, 2014 by Jasmine Nielsen

It’s 55 degrees in Brooklyn this afternoon. After a week in which we dipped back into the single digits, there is a giddiness in the air. By noon people were spilling out of the ice cream shop around the corner and the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket was full of eager shoppers. The farmers seemed happy to be standing in the sunshine, even as they answered endless questions about what was on offer besides root vegetables and apples. (Not much.) It seems that our appetite for spring isn’t quite in step with the realities of the growing season.

The good folks at Evolutionary Organics in New Paltz had fresh pea shoots and some wickedly spicy, not to mention beautiful, radishes on offer. I selected a medium watermelon radish and a long thin one that had a rich purple skin.

Pea Shoot & Radish Spring Salad

1 tablespoon dark sesame oil
2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
1 teaspoon honey
1/2 tablespoon soy sauce
salt and pepper
2 handfuls pea shoots, rinsed and dried thoroughly
2 medium radishes (the prettier, the better)
2 scallions
1 tablespoon sesame seeds

Whisk the first four ingredients in a medium bowl along with a pinch of salt and some freshly ground pepper.
Thinly slice your scallions and then your radishes. If you’ve got a mandoline gathering dust in the cupboard, this is the time to bust it out. Or, if your radishes are narrow enough, a vegetable peeler can work wonders.
Add your vegetables and the sesame seeds to your bowl and toss gently so as not to bruise the tender shoots. Grab a fork and dig in to the taste of spring.

(Not So) Fat Tuesday

Posted on March 4, 2014 by Jasmine Nielsen

Today is Mardi Gras. While my heart is in New Orleans, my stomach and my workload call for something a little more austere. I got home around 8:00pm after a long day of work followed by school, By 8:30, I was sitting down to a healthy, tasty meal and a couple of episodes of Treme.

The Drunken Fig in more celebratory times

Vegan Smothered Cabbage

Crack open a good quality dark beer. Bring 2 tablespoons of olive oil up to medium heat in a large cast iron skillet. Add a medium red onion sliced poll to poll and cook until starting to brown. Add a good pinch of red pepper flakes.
Stir in one thinly-sliced tofurky andouille sausage (or, if you’re looking for something a little more indulgent, go for the pork) and cook until it begins to crisp. Then add half a head of green cabbage, shredded as if you were making a slaw, along with a healthy dose of salt and pepper.
When the cabbage is wilted but still a bit crisp, add as much beer as you’re willing to sacrifice to deglaze your pan. Cook for another minute or two and then empty the contents of your pan into a low bowl. Serve with Zatarain’s Creole Mustard. (In a pinch, you could substitute any nice whole grain mustard.)

EAT THIS: Spinach Omelette Panino

Posted on February 27, 2014 by Jasmine Nielsen

Toast half a whole grain panino, slather it with hot paprika-laced mayonnaise, stuff a spinach and red onion omelette with Aleppo pepper in the middle, and you’ll be back to your grant proposal in 20 minutes. Or 25 if you feel the need to blog about it.

Black Bean & Sweet Potato Chili

Posted on February 23, 2014 by Jasmine Nielsen

This post contains two recipes which, when combined, yield a very nice pot of chili for four. I recommend doubling the bean recipe and setting half aside so that you can throw together quick dinners of tacos, huevos ranchers and the like throughout the week.

Spicy Black Beans

1/2 pound black beans
1 tablespoon lard, bacon drippings or other pork fat
1 small onion, finely diced
4 garlic cloves, peeled and halved
1 bay leaf
1/2 tablespoon dried oregano (or epazote if you’ve got it)
2 dried chili de arbol (or substitute cayenne pepper to taste)
salt and pepper

Add the beans to a large pot along with enough water to cover them by a few inches. Bring to a boil, turn off the heat and let them sit for an hour or more.
Add the pork fat, onions, garlic, bay leaf and oregano. Bring back to a boil, reduce heat and let simmer for one hour.
Add the whole peppers and salt and pepper to taste. Let simmer for another 30-60 minutes until the beans are quite soft and the cooking liquid has thickened. Remove bay leaf and chilis, transfer beans and cooking liquid to another container, give the pot a quick rinse, and move on to the next recipe.

Black Bean & Sweet Potato Chili with Hot Beef Sausage

1 tablespoon olive oil
4 links hot beef sausage, sliced into discs (If you can get your hands on Lewis Waite Farm‘s version, I recommend doing so because YUM. But any kind of spicy sausage would yield a great dish.)
2 medium onions, diced
2 tablespoons ground cumin
1 tablespoon sweet paprika
1 teaspoon dried chipotle and/or smoked habanero powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (Trust me on this; it’s your secret weapon.)
2 tablespoons tomato paste
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 batch spicy black beans (see above)
2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into small cubes

Bring the oil up to medium heat in a large pot. Fry your sausage slices in two batches, allowing them to brown and crisp in places.
Remove the sausage, lower the heat a bit and add your onions. (If there wasn’t much fat left from your sausage, you could add a little more olive oil at this point.) Saute until starting to soften, then add in the spices and cook stirring constantly for one minute. Do the same with the tomato paste.
Dump your reserved beans and sausage into the pot along with the cider vinegar and enough water that everything is just submerged. Let simmer for 30 minutes, then add the sweet potatoes. Let simmer for another hour. You can add water as you go if needed, but the goal is more of a thick sauce than a broth. Taste and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper if needed.

I served this garnished with thinly sliced scallions, avocado slices and some Greek yogurt to counterbalance all of that heat.

Working (Wo)man’s Cassoulet

Posted on February 19, 2014 by Jasmine Nielsen

Last week was a doozy. I worked late on Friday and arrived home in need of some whiskey and a comforting meal–in that order. Fortunately, the night before I’d thought to defrost some of Lewis Waite Farm‘s most excellent kielbasa and soak some flageolet.

Flageolet are a lovely pale green bean used in rustic French cooking, including cassoulet. I had a classic cassoulet once and it was delicious. Saveur’s recipe calls for duck fat, ham hocks, pork shoulder, pancetta, duck confit legs and pork sausage (that last one being optional) and, by my rough estimate, takes about eight hours. While I am not averse to spending an entire day cooking, eating such a heavy meal at 4:00am seemed ill-advised. The recipe below will yield a rich, comforting meal for a crowd in under two hours.

Working (Wo)man’s Cassoulet

1 pound flageolet, soaked overnight, rinsed and drained
2 tablespoons pork fat (or olive oil)
2 yellow onions, diced
2 cloves garlic, sliced
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon Herbes de Provence
1 healthy pinch red pepper flakes
1 quart concentrated pork stock (See Going Whole Hog for the recipe. Chicken stock would also suffice, though I might throw a little bacon in at the beginning.)
1 pound kielbasa, thinly sliced
1 very large carrot, cut into small cubes
1 very large daikon radish, cut into small cubes
3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 300.
Melt a tablespoon of pork fat in a large dutch oven over medium heat. Add the onions and sauté until soft. Add the garlic, tomato paste, herbs, and red pepper flakes. Sauté for another minute. Then add your pork stock plus enough water to cover the beans, turn up the heat to bring to a boil, then lower to a simmer.
Melt the other tablespoon of pork fat in a large cast iron skillet over medium heat. Add the kielbasa slices in batches, searing on both sides. Dump these in with your beans. Stir in the carrot and radish along with some black pepper.
Pop a lid on your beans and tuck them into the oven for 30 minutes—or until your empty whiskey glass compels you to go back into the kitchen. Take the pot out of the oven and check on your beans. If they aren’t yet tender, let them go a little longer. If they yield easily to your teeth, stir in the vinegar and salt and pepper to taste. Turn the heat up to 350 and place back in the oven uncovered for 45 minutes—or until you’re in desperate need of something to soak up the whiskey.

Going Whole Hog

Posted on February 16, 2014 by Jasmine Nielsen

I live in a 600-square foot apartment. From the front door, you can see straight through my entire home and out the bedroom window. Should you want a little air, it’s two flights up or two flights down. As I type this, I’m watching a neighbor across the alley preparing dinner. (Looks like pasta again.)

My kitchen is small but efficient. I’ve pulled off dinner parties for 12 and a surprisingly rocking baby shower for 30. But there’s no way a whole pig is going into my Easy Bake-esque Ikea oven. Sometimes you have to leave the cooking to professionals.

Last Sunday an intrepid group of friends risked life and limb in the name of pork. With snow and ice coating the ground and another storm on the way, we boarded a northbound train along the Hudson. By the time we made it out of the tunnels, the flakes were coming down hard. We disembarked at Dobbs Ferry into a glittery wonderland and hiked up a steep hill. As we rounded the corner, we caught sight of yellow light spilling out of the lone sign of life. It was The Cookery and we were there for their Pig Dinner.

We warmed up with a round of cocktails before tucking into some delightful swine and wine. The first course was a sunny side up egg atop some luscious braised kale, which was paired with a dry Gewurtzraminer that did a nice job of cutting through the fattiness. The first course was a hit, despite the fact that some in our party were surprised that it was not fried egg and tail.

As they cleared our plates, the wait staff offered sobering instructions. When the lights flickered, we were to clear the way. A few minutes later, the lights flickered and our pig emerged on the largest cutting board I have ever seen. They placed the animal in the center of the table, where the chef made short work of breaking it down into edible parts.

The pig came with a red wine that escapes me at the moment and some stellar seasonal vegetable dishes. But all eyes were on the succulent meat and the skin, which has taken on a candied quality during a final blast of high heat. We ate with abandon, as if we were desperate to ensure our fair share of the meat. Within 15 minutes, everyone was easing into a pork coma. Turns out eight people are no match for even a modest 35-pound pig.

The wait staff left us to contemplate a sparkling Moscato and a surprisingly refreshing maple panna cotta while they divvied up the leftovers. And so, less than two house after arriving in Dobbs Ferry, we found ourselves slip-sliding our way back down the hill, aluminum pans of meat and bones in hand. It is a good thing there are no wild dogs on Metro North. I made it back to Brooklyn around 11:00pm. It had been a long and booze-laden weekend. It was all I could do to shove the meat into the refrigerator and the pork bones into a baggie in the freezer before climbing into bed.

A few days later, I found myself working from home in a desperate bid to push a couple of grants proposals out by the end of the week. It was a cold and nasty day–at least from what I could glean from my view of the alley and various social media posts. For breakfast, I fried up some of my pig meat with a small onion and added some scrambled eggs for quick and delicious breakfast tacos.

But my real focus was the bones lurking in my freezer. With a whole day at home, I had time to make some serious bone broth. I threw the bones into a roasting pan and popped it into a 350-degree oven. An hour later, I added a couple of quartered onions plus some roughly chopped and slightly limp root vegetables I found hiding out in the back of the crisper.

After another hour, my bones and vegetables had taken on a rich brown color and were ready for the stockpot. I added enough water to cover everything, brought the pot to a boil and then lowered the heat until I had a very slow simmer going. I also threw in a couple of bay leaves and 12 black peppercorns for good measure. My pork stock simmered for eight hours, requiring nothing but an occasional stir and a little more water when the liquid started to get low. Before bed, I strained the liquid into a glass container, let it cool and popped it into the fridge.

My patience yielded about a quart of unctuous concentrated pork stock. It was the texture of Jell-O and topped by a nice layer of pork fat, which I reserved for a future use. Half of the stock went in the freezer (I’m thinking ramen) and the other half went into a pot of flageolet the next night. More on those later.

Collard-Wrapped Salmon with Winter Roots

Posted on February 3, 2014 by Jasmine Nielsen

I’ve lost track of how much snow has fallen on New York City this winter. This morning’s commute was a sloppy one–and we’re supposed to be getting two more rounds before the week is through. My office has been a comedy of errors since the new year. Today an air conditioning hose burst while workers sanded the outer wall, creating a dusty haze that found me grabbing for my inhaler and sending everyone home early. And so, three hours after arriving at the office, I was slogging back through the slush.

I took a different route than usual so that I could swing by Whole Foods to pick up a large can of olive oil. Dreading the wet subway ride home, I roamed the aisles for a bit. The guy behind the fish counter was fervently pushing the wild Alaskan sockeye, which was on sale. My craving was so instantaneous and intense that I have to believe I’m suffering from some sort of deficiency.

I haven’t been eating much fish as of late, in part because last semester’s foray into the world of collapsing fisheries left me a bit freaked. But a quick check of Seafood Watch confirmed that wild sockeye is one of the better choices. I arrived home an hour later, popped the fish into the fridge, changed into pajamas, and spent the afternoon emailing and editing while the snow continued to fall.

By 6:00 I was ready for dinner. I had lots of root vegetables from my CSA share and some collard greens that were already looking a little sad when I bought them a week and half ago. Some of the larger outer leaves seemed salvageable. Wild salmon is much leaner than farmed, containing about half the fat but roughly the same amount of protein. I’ve found that it dries out quickly as a result, so I hatched the notion of wrapping the fish in collards to hold the moisture in during cooking.

Collard-Wrapped Salmon with Winter Roots

2 large collard leaves (or four medium-sized if that’s what you’ve got)
3 tablespoons coconut oil (butter is fine too)
1 medium red onion, sliced pole-to-pole
4 small daikon radishes, cut into large matchsticks
4 small parsnips, cut into large matchsticks
1/2 teaspoon orange zest
2 8-ounce wild sockeye salmon filets
salt and pepper (including white pepper if you have it)

Rinse the collards and steam in a lidded pan for 5 minutes or so, adding more water as needed to prevent scorching. You want the leaves to be pliable and dark green. Remove from the pan and spread out to dry.
Rinse out the pan, add 2 tablespoons of coconut oil and bring up to medium-low heat. Add the red onion and sauté until it starts to brown around the edges. Add the parsnips and daikon radishes along with 1/4 cup water and pop the lid back on. When the vegetables have started to soften, remove the lid and cook off the water, allowing things to caramelize. Sprinkle with zest, salt and pepper. (I find that white pepper really complements the sweetness of parsnips, but it’s all good.) Remove to a plate or, if your pan is big enough, just slide them to the side.
Rinse and dry your salmon, sprinkling both sides with salt and pepper (black in this case). If your collard leaves are small, slice each filet in half lengthwise. Add 1 tablespoon of coconut oil to the pan, still over medium-low heat, and cook the salmon for two minutes per side, starting with the skin down if you’ve got it.
Spread the collard greens on your work surface and spoon half of the vegetable mixture into the center. Top with the salmon, skin side up. Fold the sides, top and bottom of the collards over the salmon as you would a burrito. Flip and place gently into a baking dish lightly greased with coconut oil.
Bake in a 350-degree oven for 10 minutes and serve immediately.

This recipe makes enough for two hungry people, so scale up or down accordingly. You could easily swap in different vegetables–leeks, fennel, potatoes, carrots, etc.–based on what you have on hand.

Let’s Drink (to the Promise of Spring)

Posted on January 27, 2014 by Jasmine Nielsen

We are in the depths of winter. Today the temperature rose above freezing for the first time in over a week. It did so just long enough to melt some of the snow. Given that Brooklyn is dropping down to 13 degrees overnight, I imagine the water will transform into sheets of ice in time for tomorrow morning’s bitter commute.

I just got back from a weekend with some of my oldest and dearest friends in Cold Spring (which lived up to its name). I made my way north along the Hudson River in the middle of a snowstorm that rendered the landscape a haunting study of black and white.

Justin collected me at the train station for the drive up the hill. Within minutes, he had a fire going, Beth had fixed a round of apple cider and bourbon, and I was gleefully trouncing Owen and Benjamin in a game of Scrabble.

The next morning, Justin declared that his goal for the day was to finish off the orphaned beverages lurking in the back of the fridge. Nothing if not dutiful, he’d polished off a bottle of Ruby Red grapefruit juice before he even changed out of his bathrobe. My sole outing for the day was to the grocery store, where Beth and I picked up supplies for dinner and Benjamin sweet talked his way into some gummy fighter jets.

While Benjamin and Owen engaged in afternoon play dates with friends who live up the road, I got to work on dinner. By 5:30, four children were dismantling the living room while five adults gathered around the cocktail shaker in the kitchen.

Beth and I had gamely taken up Justin’s challenge, figuring we’d start with the rhubarb syrup from Ikea. (That’s “Saft Rabarber” for those who like to giggle about such things.) After determining that there was no gin in the house, we set our sites on the remaining Eagle Rare bourbon. A cocktail was born.

Promise of Spring

lemon
blood orange
good quality bourbon
rhubarb syrup (Create your own by simmering fresh rhubarb along with equal parts sugar and water.)
orange bitters
ice

Muddle a few wedges of lemon and blood orange in each of three glasses and add a few cubes of ice.
Combine 1/4 cup rhubarb syrup, 3/4 cups of bourbon and a handful of ice. Shake vigorously and strain into glasses. Top with a few dashes of orange bitters.

This riff on an Old Fashioned goes down easy, keeps one’s spirits up as January slogs to a close, and is a lovely preamble to spinach and roasted eggplant lasagna.

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

Posted on January 20, 2014 by Jasmine Nielsen

Last night my neighbors and I convened for a potluck dinner. Our hosts, Matt and Ryan, had suggested a Southern-inspired menu. We kicked the evening off with some decidedly kitschy family recipes. Ryan’s Pickle Roll-Ups featured cold cuts, cream cheese and mustard wrapped around pickles. Rich presented us with British Cheddar Colourful Kiddie Snax–a half grapefruit skewered with cheese, pineapple and maraschino cherries. I mixed up a batch of Sazeracs to get us in the festive spirit.

Exactly three months before, we assembled alongside 100 of their nearest and dearest for Chris and Rich’s amazing wedding. In honor of their anniversary, Chris made theKitchn‘s Italian Wedding Soup. While not technically in keeping with the theme, our first course hit all the right comfort spots.

Round two included Ryan’s oven-baked ribs,

creamy coleslaw,

and macaroni and cheese;

Chris’ cold salad of pigeon peas and broccoli rabe;

and my pork-laden collard greens.

Naturally, the spread had to be captured.

Half an hour later, we were all very full.

But somehow we managed to make room for my apple bourbon crisp with ginger ice cream.

The red wine flowed throughout dinner. Dessert brought a lovely pear schnapps that Matt had picked up in Salzburg.

I awoke feeling slightly worse for the wear. As luck would have it, I’d managed to pack the leftover greens into a container and get them into the fridge, so breakfast was a potato-collard hash topped with a poached egg.

the drunken fig

All measurements are approximate.