White Bean & Winter Vegetable Stew

Posted on March 8, 2015 by Jasmine Nielsen

We’re getting down to the dregs in terms of seasonal eating. My last CSA pickup was over a month ago. The green things at my local farmers’ market dwindled down to hearty spinach before drying up completely sometime in the middle of February. And so I have turned my attention to beans and storage vegetables (plus a little store-bought kale–hey, a girl’s gotta get her greens).

White Bean & Winter Vegetable Stew

1 pound dried navy beans, soaked overnight and drained
1 onion, peeled and halved
2 large carrots, cut into large chunks
2 celery stalks, cut into large chunks
3 garlic cloves, peeled and halved
1 teaspoon sage
1 teaspoon rosemary
1-2 teaspoons red pepper flakes
2 bay leaves
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 ounce guanciale, cubed
1 large butternut squash, peeled and cubed
1 large bulb celeriac, peeled and cubed
1 parmesan cheese rind
1 Meyer lemon, skin and all, finely chopped
1 large bunch kale, stemmed and roughly chopped
salt and pepper

Add the beans, onion, carrot, celery, garlic, guanciale, herbs and spices to a large Dutch oven along with enough water to cover by a couple of inches. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer and let cook for an hour or more, until the beans are tender. Fish out the celery, carrots and bay leaves. Add the squash, celeriac, cheese rind and lemon, and top with enough water to just cover everything. Bring back to a boil and then reduce to a simmer. When the vegetables have softened (about 15 minutes), stir in the kale along with plenty of salt and pepper. Cook until the kale is wilted.

It’s going to be another long and strenuous workweek. At least I’ve packed my lunch.

Braised Cannellini & Kale

Posted on January 6, 2015 by Jasmine Nielsen

Sunday was my final day of a much-needed break. After four months of going hard at my new job, I was desperate for a little physical and mental recovery time. I took a few long walks, drank more than my fair share of a wide variety of adult beverages, watched some movies, caught up with dear friends, halfheartedly read a book, organized my apartment, did a little yoga, cooked and was cooked for, and generally tried to live a life of leisure. Needless to say it all went by a little faster than expected.

I spent my last day of vacation reading, napping and making a big vat of beans and greens to get me through what was promising to be a long, dark and cold workweek.

Braised Kale & Cannellini

1 pound cannellini, soaked overnight and for up to two days
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 ounces guanciale, cubed
2 large onions, chopped
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
6 cloves garlic, chopped
1 cup white wine
4 cubes frozen chicken stock
4 carrots, diced
1 parmesan or romano rind (optional, but oh so good)
3 sprigs rosemary
6 sprigs thyme
1 large bunch kale, roughly chopped
3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
salt and pepper

Bring the olive oil up to medium heat in a large dutch oven. Add the guanciale and cook stirring frequently until it is partially rendered. Add the onions and continue stirring until the onions are nicely browned. Add the red pepper flakes and garlic and cook for another minute or two.
Add the wine, chicken stock, carrots, cheese rind, fresh herbs and enough water to cover the beans. Bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer. Let this go for an hour or so while you take a nap with the cat. Give it a stir, add a little water if needed, and let it go for at least another hour, during which time you might consider another nap.
When the beans are cooked but still a little al dente, add the kale, red wine vinegar and a generous portion of salt and pepper. Pop the lid on and cook for at least another half hour, but no harm in letting it go quite a bit longer given the toothsome nature of winter kale. (A third nap would be excessive, right?) Season with additional salt, pepper or red wine vinegar as you see fit.

I ended up serving this to my travel-weary sister Hannah and her husband Rick along with thick slices of whole wheat sourdough toasted in a generous pour of olive oil–an ideal vehicle for soaking up the rich broth. I finally persuaded my nephew to try one of the beans. Let’s just say that Wally was not a fan.

Later we all piled into the car to travel the mile and a half to where Hannah and Rick would be spending the very first night in their new house. While his parents struggled to make the place habitable, Wally and I read stories amidst the cardboard boxes in his new bedroom and played a modified version of beer pong using a tape ball left by the painting crew.

At some point, Wally dragged a pillow into the middle of the living room and curled up with his blanket.

I knew just how he felt. I got home just in time to pack up the leftover food and climb into bed. Come Monday, this hearty stew made for a nice lunch whilst hunkered over my keyboard desperately trying to get a series of spreadsheets to bend to my will. Yep, vacation is over.

Wajeedah’s Black Bean & Corn Salsa Verde

Posted on September 14, 2014 by Jasmine Nielsen

Friday morning found me trekking to South Jamaica, Queens to meet Wajeedah Anderson-Beyah at McKinley Children’s Garden. The garden is named for Wajeedah’s late husband, an urban farmer and community activist who grew up in nearby public housing and attended P.S. 40 just across the street. McKinley envisioned a space where neighborhood kids could learn about gardening and connect to nature.

I am here to attest that McKinley Children’s Garden is also an oasis for overworked grownups. An hour of chatting about the garden’s educational programs, munching cherry tomatoes fresh from the vine, and learning about different techniques for container gardening did wonders for my frazzled mental state. I would have loved to have spent the day.

Alas, I was due back on the 15th floor of a Midtown high-rise. Before my departure, Wajeedah tasked me with picking black beans while she gathered sunflowers and lemon balm for me to take home. While I am a serious lover of all manners of beans, it turns out that I didn’t have a clue about how they are grown. These particular beans grow in long thin pods that fade from a lovely eggplant color to white as they dry. Once dry, the pods are easily plucked from the vine.

And, as I learned later that night, the small, inky beans are easy to pop out of their shell–even after several glasses of wine followed by a long and sleepy subway ride.

Friday at last.

Wajeedah’s Black Bean & Corn Salsa Verde

Turn the oven up as high as it will go and get to work on the beans.

1/4 cup dried black beans
1 tablespoon bacon grease (optional)
1 clove garlic
1″ piece of jalapeno or other hot pepper
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 large pinch salt

Add ingredients above plus 3/4 cup water to a small pot, bring to a boil and then reduce heat. Let simmer for one hour or until beans are tender but still toothsome, adding small amounts of water as needed.

6 tomatillos, halved
1 large onion, trimmed and halved
5 mild peppers (bell, Poblano, etc.), seeded and halved
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and halved
2 tablespoons olive oil

Drizzle one tablespoon olive oil into a roasting pan, arrange the vegetables cut side down in a single layer, drizzle with the remaining oil, and pop into your pre-heated oven. Cook undisturbed until you have some nice charred bits, by which time your tomatillos will likely have collapsed into a mush. Finely mince the jalapeno, roughly chop everything else, and add the vegetables plus any remaining juice to a mixing bowl.

2 cobs of corn, niblets sliced off and cobs reserved for stock
1/2 bunch cilantro, finely minced
juice of 1 lime
salt and pepper

Stir in the remaining ingredients, including a generous amount of pepper and salt to taste. Let sit in the refrigerator for at least an hour. (Overnight is fine.)

Serve this as you would any salsa–as a dip with tortilla chips, as a condiment with grilled fish or meat, etc. I ate some with scrambled eggs nestled inside corn tortillas.

Swiss Chard & Black-Eyed Pea Salad

Posted on July 13, 2014 by Jasmine Nielsen

My nephew Wally is mad cute.

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.

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

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.
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.
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.

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.

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

Posted on July 7, 2014 by Jasmine Nielsen

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

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.
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.
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.
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.

Smoky Creamy Field Peas

Posted on March 24, 2014 by Jasmine Nielsen

I just returned from a truly epic road trip down South. It’s going to take me a minute to put the whole thing down in writing, but suffice it to say that one of the many highlights was consuming five different specimens of pulled/chopped pork in 24 hours. Of all the fine swine that we consumed, the winner by unanimous decision was the unsuspecting plastic-wrapped BBQ sandwich from Cooper’s Country Store in Salter, South Carolina.

Cooper’s is a classic combination gas station and country store that I suspect hasn’t changed much since it was built at a country crossroads in 1937. Mercifully, they do take credit cards, so we were free to stock up on Blenheim’s ginger ale, locally ground grits, field peas, and all manners of pork. My traveling companions couldn’t resist the lure of the country hams that were curing behind screens. Being a single gal who lives in 600 square feet, I limited myself to several pounds of bacon and smoked ham ends, which would make excellent seasoning meat.

But back to that sandwich. It came on an ordinary enough white hamburger bun. No slaw. No dripping sauce. Just pulled pork meat (whole-hog, as is de rigueur in South Carolina) that was smoky but not overpoweringly so, assertively vinegary, a good bit spicy, and just the tiniest bit sweet. This was the barbecue of our collective dreams.

Three days later, I found myself back in Brooklyn, catching up on real life. After 36 hours of kale salad, haricot vert and sushi, I was feeling recovered and even a bit nostalgic. The field peas that had made it out of my backpack but not into the cupboard were calling out to me. And, of course, there was that seasoning meat.

Smoky Creamy Field Peas

1 pound dried field peas, soaked overnight and drained
1 large hunk seasoning meat (approximately the size of a deck of cards), sliced – bacon ends, ham trimmings, salt pork, or what have you
2 medium onions, quartered
2 carrots, cut into large chunks
2 celery stalks, cut into large chunks
3 peeled and halved garlic cloves
1 bay leaf
2 sprigs fresh thyme
dried chilis, fresh chilis and/or red pepper flakes
2 or more tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon butter
1 red bell pepper, minced
1/4 cup flat leaf parsley, minced
salt and pepper
hot sauce (optional)

Fill a large dutch oven or other heavy-bottomed pot up halfway with water. Add the seasoning meat, onion, carrot, celery, garlic, bay, thyme and chilis. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and let simmer for 15 minutes. Add your peas and let simmer partly covered for approximately 45 minutes or until tender but not falling apart.
Remove and discard the veggies and herbs. Pull out the seasoning meat and dice into small pieces. Unless you are feeding a crowd, remove a pint of the peas and most of the cooking liquid, reserving for future use. (Beans freeze brilliantly.) Scoop another pint into your food processor with a bit of the liquid and let run until they form a paste.
Add 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar. Taste your beans and adjust seasoning with salt, black pepper, more vinegar, and a little hot sauce of your choice. (If you used country ham ends like I did, you may even be able to forgo any additional salt.) If needed, add back a bit of your cooking liquid.
Add butter to a small skillet over medium heat and sauté the bell pepper until just soft. Stir this into your beans along with the parsley and remove from heat.

Field peas are traditionally served over long-grain Carolina rice. But, if you happen to have a pot of kale and mustard greens slow cooked with some more of that seasoning meat, that would do fine too.

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.

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.

A Day in the Life of a Food Studies Grad Student

Posted on April 30, 2013 by Jasmine Nielsen

My first year in the Master’s Program in Food Studies at NYU is barreling to a close. Holding down a full-time job–one where I am expected to be both physically and mentally present–while taking two courses is rough. And it gets worse at the end of the semester. This past weekend I swore off social engagements and locked myself in my apartment in a desperate bid to make some headway on the first of my two research papers. When the fog lifted on Monday morning, I had some rather impressive spreadsheets, maps, and charts. I also had a lot of leftovers.

It is a common misconception that Food Studies involves cooking. While most of my classmates love cooking and many hold culinary degrees and/or have made a living working in kitchens, Food Studies is an academic discipline and most of our time is spent slogging through old cookbooks, historical documents, scholarly journals, and online databases.

In my experience, this disjuncture gives rise to a unique form of procrastination. Allow me to present A Day in the Life of a Food Studies Grad Student (as Told through the Medium of Food)…

Saturday, 6:00pm – Having dutifully stayed home on Friday night in order to research the geography and history of New Orleans’ Bywater neighborhood, and recognizing the importance of quality food to keeping my energy and my spirits up, I allowed myself a foray to the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket earlier in the day. This meant there were Cayuga Pure Organics cannellini to rinse, sort, and soak.

I also bought a chicken and some andouille from Flying Pigs Farms. The sausage went into the freezer for some future use and the bird got rubbed down with salt, pepper, and Herbes de Provence. I would soon make short work of the leeks, kale, rosemary, chives, and apples that I toted home.

Saturday, 8:00pm – My eyes were starting to go in and out of focus as I struggled through a spreadsheet detailing census data. Assuming it was some combination of fatigue and hunger, I decided it was time for a break. While the oven preheated, I cracked open a beer and set to work making a stuffing of kale, leeks, lemons, fresh rosemary, and toasted almonds. (Shout out to my dear friend Louis for the almond inspiration.)

Saturday, 8:30pm – It had been several hours since my lunchtime salad and the beer had gone straight to my head. There was a light rapping at my door. A neighbor who had spent the day on a silent meditation hike and knew that I was grounded for the weekend wordlessly handed me a very full glass of red wine. That is the only excuse I can come up with for this compromising photo of my beautiful stuffed heritage chicken.

Saturday, sometime after 10:00pm – I am not sure what I did while the chicken roasted (save for ponder whether my oven temperature was accurate), but at some point the bird was finally, mercifully done. Even better, my makeshift roasting rack had proven a success. I hacked off a leg, scooped out some stuffing, and went to town.

Sunday, 9:30am – After a leisurely hour sipping a latte and catching up on the gossip blogs, it was time to get back to work. Well, first it was time for an omelette made with whatever bits and ends were in the fridge. In this case, it was red onion, red pepper, and feta accompanied by a slice of toasted whole wheat sourdough and arugula and (past their prime) grape seed tomatoes dressed with lemon juice and olive oil.

Sunday, 10:00am – Just one more task before I got to work. I needed to get some vegetable stock going for those cannellini beans. In went the tops from the previous night’s leeks, a large onion, some garlic, a carrot, a few desultory celery stalks, some dried shiitake mushrooms, the grape seed tomatoes that hadn’t made the cut for breakfast, and some whole black peppercorns.

Sunday, 12:00pm – Having put in a couple of solid hours researching mentions of New Orleans and the Bywater in The New York Times, my vegetable stock had achieved a rich caramel hue. I strained it into a bowl, pressing on the solids to squeeze out any additional broth. I was about to discard the dregs when I remembered the chicken carcass I had drunkenly picked before bed. The bones and the leftover vegetables went back into the pot with whatever was left in the fridge – another onion, some garlic, and a bit more celery. This all simmered for a couple of hours before being strained and placed in the fridge.

A couple of days later (tonight, in fact, when I happened to remember it while rooting for the leftover roast chicken), I pulled the bowl of stock out of the fridge. I skimmed off the fat that had congealed on top and added it to the jelly jar labeled “schmaltz” that occupies a place of honor in the freezer. I then spooned the stock into ice cube trays, which I will transfer to a plastic freezer bag once they are set. (If you haven’t already done so, be sure to check out my tips for making stock.) The warm color and the Jell-o consistency tell me that this is going to be good stuff.

Sunday, 2:30pm – Time to get the cannellini going. I very loosely followed an online recipe that someone had adapted from Sara Forte’s The Sprouted Kitchen, a book I had not previously encountered. (If this recipe is any indication, I’d say it’s worth giving a look.) From what I can recall, my alterations included adding a whole lemon sliced into thin pieces, the rind from a hunk of hard cheese (the ham hock of the vegetarian world), some fresh rosemary, and the aforementioned homemade vegetable stock. It’s safe to assume I took some other liberties.Sunday, 3:30pm – Sometimes it’s hard to differentiate between distractedness and hunger. Better safe than sorry, so I cut up an apple, added a spoonful of peanut butter, and got back to the books.

Sunday, 4:00pm – OK, it really was hunger. Next up: peanut butter and raisins. This is one of my all-time favorite snacks, which I picked up from a friend of my parents who lived with us when I was somewhere under the age of four. He and I were the morning people in the household. (I grew out of it.) One of my earliest memories is hanging out in the icy cold kitchen of our farmhouse taking turns scooping spoonfuls of peanut butter and raisins while my parents slumbered upstairs. (Our roommate preferred to add the raisins to–and eat straight from–the jar.)

Sunday, 5:30pm – I had an early dinner party with neighbors scheduled, so I scooped about half the beans into a bowl left over from my short-lived ceramics hobby. I mashed them up, folded in shredded parmesan cheese and chives, dusted a bit more cheese on the top, and popped it under the broiler. While the cheese browned, I toasted slices of the whole wheat sourdough in a cast iron skillet with a little olive oil. I garnished the dip with additional chives and headed downstairs for some much-needed human contact.

the drunken fig

All measurements are approximate.

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