an open cupboard

Shakshuka is one of my favorite middle eastern breakfast foods. It’s a simple dish, usually made with garlic, peppers, tomatoes, and eggs. Garlic and chili peppers are sauted in olive oil, along with bell peppers and lots of fresh tomatoes, forming a chunky vegetable stew. The eggs–nestled into little indentations–are poached in the stew itself. The dish is typically eaten with a thick slice of cheap, fresh crusty white bread, perfect for mopping up the tomatoey juices. Shakshuka and bread make a great breakfast, but if you’re still hungry, add a small Arab style salad–cucumbers, tomatoes, and parsley micro-chopped and dressed with s&p, half a lemon, and good olive oil.

Shakshuka Nopalitos is a Mexican twist on a middle eastern favorite, using chopped nopales or nopalitos, cleaned chopped cactus leaves that taste of green pepper and lime. “Mexican-Israeli?” you may ask, eyebrow raised. Shakshuka Nopalitos is a bit of a leap, but it’s a far cry from the chipotle sun-dried tomato hummous you find at highfalutin’ supermarkets. (If there is a hummous god, then verily, chipotle sun-dried tomato hummous must be an abomination unto Him).

For the record, though, tampering with the traditional classics of Israeli cuisine is risky. Israelis are very passionate about their multi-faceted cuisine. They love to argue about the authenticity of the regional dishes they love most, usually those their mothers or grandmothers prepared at home.

The “correct” preparation of shakshuka, for example, is a subject of much contention on Israeli food forums. Some add onions, while others are horrified by the very thought of an onion appearing in shakshuka. Some insist that peppers are the only vegetables used in the dish, while others add okra or zucchini.

Ironically, shakshuka isn’t Israeli at all, rather it is a North African dish that probably originated in Turkey and migrated to Israel along with the displaced Jews of those regions. Many versions abound, each one most likely evolved as a result of regional differences. The “correct” version that any given Israeli enjoyed at his grandmother’s table is probably a variation on the local version from grandma’s tiny Algerian village.

Is the shakshuka prepared by a weathered matriarch hailing from an obscure Algerian hamlet superior to that prepared by her compatriot from the equally obscure Morrocan boondocks? Which painting is better, an oil or a gouache? It’s an endless argument. As in many versions of traditional Israeli dishes, all and none are correct. And so, in the spirit of deconstruction, here is Shakshuka Nopalitos.

Shakshuka Nopalitos

nopales:
1/2 red onion, coarsely chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
1/2 lb cleaned, chopped nopalitos

shakshuka:
1-2 TBS butter
1/2 red onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
6 small tomatillos, halved and chopped
2 fresh tomatoes, chopped
1 can whole peeled tomatoes, chopped, drained (or save the juice for another use)
salt and pepper to taste
hot paprika to taste
1-2 tsp fresh oregano, chopped
2-4 eggs, or 1-2 eggs per person

• Fill a small pot with water, add salt, and boil. When boiling, add the nopales, onion, and garlic.
• Simmer uncovered for about 10 minutes, then drain.
• Melt the butter in a large pan over a medium flame. Add the onion and garlic and saute.
• When the onion and garlic are transluscent, add the tomatillos and tomatoes. Stir and cook for a few minutes.
• Add the canned tomatoes without the juice. Stir and cook for a few minutes.
• Mix in the nopalitos and season to taste with salt, pepper, hot paprika, and fresh oregano.
• For each egg you want to cook, make an indentation in the vegetable mixture. Crack the eggs into their indentations and season each egg with a little salt and pepper.
• When the whites start to become opaque, cover the pan and cook until the eggs have just set.
• Serve with thick slices of simple, fresh bread and perhaps an Arab style salad on the side.

Serves 2-3

Thanks to Rancho Gordo for tips on cooking nopales. Rancho Gordo is a local grower of delicious heirloom bean varieties, and other goodies.

The other night, I told my husband that his presence is comforting, like a bowl of oatmeal drizzled with maple syrup. Honestly, that was the image that came to mind. Not Peter O’Toole, Roger Moore, or Johnny Depp. Oatmeal. Steel cut, to be precise. Is there a twelve step group for this sort of thing?

In the spirit of local food month, I’d like to recommend some great local foods produced within 100 miles of the San Francisco bay area. Well, almost. Yerba Santa dairy is 132 miles away from my house–I Google mapped it (why yes, I am a geek!). But I think that’s close enough.

Yerba Santa Goat Dairy: Chevre and Bodega Goat Cheeses

I tasted Yerba Santa’s goat cheeses recently at the San Francisco Ferry Building farmer’s market. Both are fresh cheeses made of raw goat’s milk. The chevre is slightly crumbly, with a texture similar to that of farmer’s cheese. The Bodega is more of a spread.

Initially, both cheeses are sweet and mild, like cow’s milk. They finish with a soft tanginess, the kind you usually taste in goat’s milk cheeses, but much more subtle. This surprised me, as goat cheeses are usually so dominant. I do enjoy strong, tangy goat cheeses, but Yerba Santa’s cheeses stand out with their unusually delicate goat milk flavor. The chevre is delicious by itself, on a slice of bread, or crumbled over some pasta, polenta, or grilled vegetables. The Bodega is flavored with cilantro and green chile, a combination which dairyman Daniel Salmon says came to him in a dream. The combination of flavors is startlingly harmonious. The heat of the chile, the slightly bitter, slightly grassy cilantro, and the soft goat cheese all blend together wonderfully on the tongue. Try spreading it on a slice of thick country bread topped with cucumber slices. Dreamy indeed.

Spring Hill Dairy: Cultured Jersey Butter

Spring Hill Dairy produces possibly the yellowest butter I’ve ever seen that isn’t artificially hued. (Aside from making very pretty butter, the bright yellow color might indicate a very well grazed herd of Jersey cows.) If you buy from Spring Hill’s stall at the farmer’s market, there’s a good chance the butter is less than two days old. This is perhaps the freshest butter you can find, unless you live on a farm. The butter has a very high butterfat content, giving it a creamy, smooth texture that spreads better and melts faster. The salted butter is very lightly salted, such that you can use it for savory or sweet dishes. Its flavor is sweet with a very slight, pleasant tang from the cultures added to the cream. Spring Hill sells the butter by the pound and half pound. You’d think a pound might be too much (as I did), but it really isn’t. The dairy employee who sold me the butter assured me that its low moisture content allows it to freeze very well. If you somehow manage not to eat this butter on a daily basis, you can chop it into large, plastic-wrapped chunks and freeze it.

The sausages are from the Fatted Calf, a local artisanal charcuterie known for corrupting strict vegetarians (according to one of their formerly veg employees). The sweet, tangy goat cheese is from Yerba Santa dairy. The vegetables are from the farmer’s market and the lemon is from my backyard. Penance for a fallen foodblogger.

Spring vegetables with lemon herb sausages, polenta, and goat cheese

4 cups boiling water, in a small saucepan
1 cup polenta
salt to taste
butter

1-2 TBS butter
1/2 large red onion, chopped
1 stalk & bulb green garlic, chopped (chop the leafy ends and save for seasoning the dish at the end of cooking)
2 small zucchinis (I used Cocozelle), halved lengthwise and coarsely sliced
2 small squashy looking (I used scallopini), halved lengthwise and coarsely sliced
3 small carrots, peeled and sliced into coins
1/3 of a medium eggplant, coarsely chopped
5-6 sun-dried tomatoes in oil, sliced into matchsticks
4 cooked Fatted Calf lemon herb sausages (or similar, these sausages are pretty small, a little more than half a pound), chopped into bite size pieces
1/2 lemon
goat cheese

- Into the pot of boiling water, stir the polenta until it begins to thicken. Add some butter (how much you add depends on personal taste and your willingness to eat vast quantities of delicious butterfat). Lower the flame to a low simmer and stir frequently as you work. The polenta should take about 30 minutes to cook.
- Heat a large cast iron pan or saute pan over a medium flame. Add butter when hot. When the butter has melted, add the onions.
- Saute the onions until almost transluscent, then add the garlic. Saute for a minute or two.
- Add the vegetables in stages, so as not to lower the temperature of the contents of the pan. I added the vegetables in three stages, waiting a minute or so between each addition.
- Saute vegetables and then allow to cook.
- You’re remembering to stir the polenta, right? And always in the same direction.
- When the vegetables are bright and almost cooked, add the sliced sun-dried tomatoes and stir.
- Add in the sausage pieces and stir.
- Season to taste with salt, pepper, and paprika. Here’s your chance to improvise with some herbes de provence, for example, which I didn’t have on hand. Squeeze the lemon half over the vegetables.
- Taste, correct seasoning, and turn off the flame.

Serve atop polenta and sprinkle with crumbled goat cheese.

Serves 2-3

I have sinned. Majorly. May is local food month, which I’ve been celebrating weekly at the San Francisco Ferry Building and Berkeley farmer’s markets. The growers have brought in some beautiful produce, such as sweet, juicy asparagus and German mountain spinach, which is local, despite its name. But this weekend, deterred by the rain, I went to Berkeley Bowl instead. I know, it was only a drizzle. But going to the farmer’s market at the end of May in northern California on a drizzly, gray day is just… wrong. Don’t you think? Berkeley Bowl’s a different sort of mecca, and they carry quite a bit of local foods, right? So off I went.

I returned with spring treasures: raspberries, blueberries, asparagus, even a couple of peaches and nectarines. I also bought fresh porcini mushroom stalks and fiddleheads. Having read about fiddleheads on Mighty Foods recently, I’ve been itching to find some and cook them up. I’ve read they taste somewhat asparagus-like, which is always a good thing. However, I had no idea they were harvested in New England. Oops. I proceeded to cook the fiddleheads with porcini stalks (possibly local), organic boneless skinless chicken thighs (Oregon), and Rustichella d’Abruzzo lemon fettuccine (Italy), thus far my favorite brand of overpriced definitely not locally produced pasta. I’ve been a bad, bad foodblogger.

But hey, if Pim can dis packaged organic food, I can cook a very un-local lunch during local food month. Well, just this once.

Guilty global fiddleheads with porcini stalks, chicken, and lemon fettuccine

1 pkg (250 gr.) lemon fettuccine from Italy, cooked, drained, and tossed with butter, with some cooking water reserved
butter
3 boneless, skinless chicken thighs from Oregon
1/4 a medium eggplant, chopped into 1 inch cubes
1/2 lb fiddleheads from New England, trimmed
several asparagus stalks, trimmed and chopped into longish 1.5 inch pieces
1/8 lb porcini stalks, halved lengthwise and sliced
3 small cloves purple garlic
a splash of Sherry from Spain
a grating of Laguiole cheese from France

- Heat enough butter (on medium heat) in a large enameled braising pan to cover the bottom of the pan. Season the chicken with salt and pepper on both sides.
- Brown the chicken well and place on a plate to drain. Cut the chicken into bite size pieces. Alternatively, you could do this the other way around. The chicken would probably brown faster.
- In the same pan, toss in the eggplant pieces and stir.
- When the eggplant is golden, add in the fiddleheads and asparagus. Cook for a minute and add in the porcini stalks and stir.
- Cook for a minute, then add in the chicken.
- Pour in a splash of Sherry and stir, carefully scraping up the browned bits. Cook until the chicken is cooked through and the fiddleheads and asparagus are bright green and still crunchy.
- Correct the seasoning and toss with pasta, adding a bit of cooking water to moisten.
- Grate cheese on top and serve.

Serves 2

Tasting notes: The fiddleheads were refreshingly crunchy, with a contrasting texture provided by the little curled fern leaves comprising the fiddle’s head. They did taste somewhat like asparagus, but less sweet than really fresh asparagus. The porcini stalks were pleasantly porcini-like, which is to say they weren’t quite as porcini as they should have been. Seeing as they were sold capless, I presume they didn’t represent the best of the hunt. It might be fun to try this recipe with fiddleheads you’ve just picked and porcinis that your trusty pet pig (don’t you have one?) has just unearthed. Which only goes to show that local food often does taste better.

From savetheinternet.com:

“This is about Internet freedom. ‘Network Neutrality’ — the First Amendment of the Internet — ensures that the public can view the smallest blog just as easily as the largest corporate Web site by preventing Internet companies like AT&T from rigging the playing field for only the highest-paying sites.

But Internet providers like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast are spending millions of dollars lobbying Congress to gut Net Neutrality. If Congress doesn’t take action now to implement meaningful network neutrality provisions, the future of the Internet is at risk.”

Click here for more information.
Click here to sign the petition to keep the web democratic.

The scourge of American society isn’t the chipping away of civil rights, the crumbling healthcare system, or the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor. These are all irksome issues to be sure. Clearly, the greatest menace to America is industrially manufactured mayonnaise. Am I exaggerating? Think of the last time you had potato salad at a barbecue. How long was that salad sitting in the hot sun? How much goopy white mayo was in it? Was it more mayonnaise than potato? Is it any wonder you narrowly escaped food poisoning? (Can I squeeze another rhetorical question into this paragraph?)

I’ve never understood the American insistence on using mayonnaise for everything from salads, to marinated chicken, to cakes (ugh!), to sandwiches of white bread inordinately layered with industrially manufactured baloney. Remember the deli scene from Annie Hall? There’s a reason Woody Allen winces in pain as Diane Keaton orders a pastrami on white bread with mayo. Cold cuts were meant to be eaten between two thick pieces of rustic bread, spread with a country style mustard that bites back.

The overuse of mayonnaise has morphed relatively pleasant, simple foods into bizarre mutations. Potato salad has become a smooth grey mass served by the lump with an ice cream scoop. Macaroni salad is a sea of mayo in which schools of drowning eblow pasta take their last dying breaths. Tuna salad is so overwhelmingly mayonnaised that it looks more like its mutant brother potato salad than the flesh of any fish that ever swam in the depths of the ocean. Why not dispense with the pretense and just call them all mayonnaise salad?

Folks, it’s time to stop the madness. There are more condiments in heaven and earth that are dreamt of in your philosophy. Take that refrigerated excuse for caulk and toss it in the recycling bin. Instead of mayo, why not dress tuna salad with natural yogurt, labaneh, or olive oil? For a sandwich spread, why not try chilled olive oil or butter? And if you really want to, you can make your own much better tasting homemade mayonnaise. As for potato salad, there’s more than one way to prepare this great American favorite.

Reverse Potato Beet Salad
(so called for its purple potatoes and white beets)

about 1.5 pounds purple potatoes, steamed, patted dry, and cut into large bite-size chunks
5-6 small (thumb-size) white beets–or 1-2 larger white beets–steamed, peeled, and cut into a small dice
1-2 TBS minced fresh parsley
1-2 TBS finely chopped green onion (green part only)
1-2 TBS thinly sliced fresh mint
1-2 TBS rinsed, chopped capers
salt and pepper to taste

For the lemon vinaigrette:
1 clove garlic, crushed
zest of half a lemon, minced
2 TBS freshly squeezed lemon juice (no pulp)
6 TBS extra virgin olive oil
salt & pepper to taste (easy on the salt as the capers are salty and you’ll be salting the salad when it’s assembled)

- In a medium bowl, mix together the potatoes, beets, and herbs.
- In a small bowl, combine the vinaigrette ingredients, except the salt and pepper. Use a stick blender to blend the vinaigrette.
- Taste the vinaigrette and season with salt and pepper to taste, bearing in mind that the capers add salt, and that you’ll be seasoning the salad after dressing it. The vinaigrette should be fairly lightly seasoned.
- Pour the vinaigrette over the vegetables and toss to coat. Add the capers and toss again.
- Season to taste with salt and pepper (I used coarse pink Hawaiin salt, which adds crunch and color).

Serves 3

You can buy locally grown purple potatoes in the San Francisco bay area from Zuckerman’s Farm.

If you’re like me, you’re probably content to eat any form of pasta for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, so any leftovers are a rarity. My husband, A, is very fond of cooking and eating pasta, but he usually cooks the amount he’d like to eat, rather than the amount two people (and one dog) are capable of eating in one go. As a result, we often have leftover pasta sitting in the fridge. I’m the first to admit that I love even cold pasta, but it’s a little less appealing than the freshly cooked, steaming hot variety, with a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkling of salt and freshly ground pepper. So… what do you do with leftover spaghetti?

A friend of A’s once taught me a great Italian trick for using up the remains of last night’s pasta: spaghetti frittata for breakfast. Open the fridge and take out a bowl of cold, lifeless, leftover spaghetti. Chop it up, and mix it with beaten eggs, cheese, herbs, and spices. Fry the whole thing in a cast-iron pan and finish it off under the broiler. It makes a great breakfast, possibly topped with a little creme fraiche and some salad on the side. It makes a nice dinner as well. It’s also extremely versatile. You can throw in bits of cured meat, add creme fraiche or sour cream to the batter, experiment with different herbs such as fresh oregano and thyme, use different types of cheeses, or add in olives or sun-dried tomatoes. The possibilities are endless, limited only by the bounds of good taste and whatever you’ve got in your pantry. My version uses ingredients I had lying around, including some leftover black-eyed peas. They add a pleasantly soft texture that contrasts with the chewy pasta. Lightly crushed coriander seeds add some crunch and a lemony flavor that goes well with the fennel.

Spaghetti Frittatta with Black-eyed Peas and Fennel

1-2 TBS butter
1/2 chopped onion
1 chopped spring onion
2 cloves crushed garlic
1/2 diced fennel
leftover pasta, coarsely chopped
leftover black-eyed peas
minced parsley
minced fennel fronds
3-4 beaten eggs
salt and pepper to taste
paprika to taste
1-2 tsp coriander seeds
grated or sliced cheese (goat, cheddar, gruyere, pecorino, etc.)

- Saute the onions and garlic on a medium to low flame in a large pan. When transluscent, add the fennel.
- Season onion mixture with coriander seeds and stir.
- In a bowl, mix the pasta with the beans, herbs, and eggs. Optionally, mix in some grated cheese.
- Season with salt, pepper, and paprika.
- Pour pasta mixture into pan, and mix to more or less evenly distribute onions. Smooth into a pancake shape and allow to cook for several minutes.
- Turn on broiler and grate or slice cheese on top of frittatta.
- Turn off flame and place frittatta under the broiler until cheese bubbles and frittatta is lightly golden.

Makes breakfast for 2-3, along with a fresh salad, or grilled fennel with olive oil.

May is local food month, so everyone’s writing about eating locally and supporting one’s local growers. A great thing. But being a fan of the League of Gentlemen, the phrase “eat local” invariably connotes an image of these particular proprietors of an infamous local shop for local people.

Fat, purple asparagus, freshly harvested. Bright green fava beans in their pods. Fragrant green garlic and creamy King trumpet mushrooms. The spring bounty of the Berkeley farmer’s market is a fine one. Warm weather and crisp spring vegetables seem to beckon a dinner of light, small dishes. Fresh spring produce inspires with its beauty and promise of robust flavor. A simple dish celebrates these virtues by allowing the vegetables to speak for themselves, without being muffled by dominant sauces or meats.

My original idea, hatched on a long train ride home, was to make a dish of fava beans, another of asparagus, and a variation on Elise’s chard tzatziki. But time and patience are limited on a week day, while laziness is not, so the tzatziki was postponed for another dinner. I settled on just the fava beans and the asparagus. The fava beans didn’t turn out the way I expected, so I won’t bother posting the recipe here. The asparagus, however, were quite a different matter. I paired them with the King trumpet mushrooms, frying them in butter and sliced garlic. A splash of sherry adds a wonderful dimension to the mushrooms, which greedily soak up the sherry flavor. A few thin slices of naturally cured salami added a meaty, slightly tart flavor and some shavings of Gruyere rounded it out. Ah… thank the gods for spring.

Asparagus with Mushrooms

1 TBS butter
2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1/2-3/4 lb. fresh purple asparagus, roughly chopped
3-4 large King trumpet mushrooms, sliced into rounds
a splash of sherry
a bit of dry cured salami, sliced into matchsticks
a few thin shavings of cheese, cut with a vegetable peeler (I used Gruyere, feel free to use Parmesan or Pecorino)

- In a large pan on medium to low heat, melt the butter and saute the garlic until transluscent.
- Add the asparagus and stir. When the asparagus begins to brighten, add the mushrooms and stir.
- Add butter if necessary. Cover the pan for a minute or two.
- Add the sherry and cover the pan. Cook for another couple of minutes and remove the cover.
- Add salami matchsticks, stir, and season to taste with salt and pepper.
- Turn off the flame and sprinkle cheese over the top.

Serves 4