I returned to the city to find Matthias happy, but in a conglomerated meat and hyper-processed potato stupor. He said to me, 'Hannah, maybe we could have a giant salad for supper.' Having had a lovely weekend at home, filled with delicious food, and even better wine, I wasn't feeling quite as poisoned (plus, before I went to the airport I had a salad for lunch with my mom. Don't get me wrong, I love salad, but they aren't exactly the sort of thing you crave twice a day in the dead of February). So, I suggested sushi and Matthias was thusly rerouted on the road to civilized eating.
Now, please do understand that I am not a bossy girl. I am not a vigilante vegetarian. I have spoken my peace about the animal industry and I generally refrain from climbing repeatedly onto my soapbox (usually people get the speech once and once only). So, you should note that the meals below were ingested by free will and with gustatory delight.
Almost-But-Not-Quite Spring Frittata
yield: 2 servings
Ingredients
4 organic free-range eggs
2 tbsp. milk
2 medium leeks
5-7 asparagus stalks
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp. olive oil
1 tbsp. butter
1 tsp fresh thyme, chopped
1 tsp fresh tarragon, finely chopped
1/4 cup parmesean cheese, finely grated
salt and pepper to taste
Using the whites of the leeks, split them down the center and rinse thoroughly under cold water, running your fingers through the layers gently to remove all of the sand. Slice thinly. Also, now would be a good time to chop your asparagus into about 1” pieces.
Sauté leeks and garlic in 2 tsp. olive oil (or butter, for a sweeter flavor) for about 5-7 minutes, or until slightly wilted and fragrant.
While your vegetables are cooking down, wisk eggs and milk until slightly frothy. Grease a 10” cake pan with your pat of butter (if we had a tart pan, or a springform, or hell, even a pie pan we would have used it. So, if you are in a kitchen better outfitted than ours, please, by all means, feel free to take advantage of it). You won’t use the whole tablespoon for non-stick purposes, so just tear the leftover piece into little pea-sized bits and distribute them sporadically on the bottom of the pan so that they can soak into the egg/vegetable mixture and make it rich and lovely.
Pour your egg and milk mixture into the pan. Add the asparagus, leeks, garlic, herbs, and cheese. Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes, or until the asparagus is bright green and started to brown at the tips and the eggs are sufficiently set.
We had this with some rye toast and jam. Matthias had some pancetta on the side, which he said was a nice complement to the frittata. The vegetable and cheese combinations are numerous and this is a dish we come back to often with various substitutions, but this just felt so green and hopeful to us that night.
Barley, Mushroom, Asparagus Soup
Yield: 4 main, 6 side dish servings
I went for a long walk on Tuesday to clear my head and find some coffee and I was out for just long enough to let the damp cold seep into my bones and for my heart to demand soup for dinner. And so it was.
Ingredients
6 cups homemade vegetable stock (or 3 cups mushroom broth, 3 cups vegetable stock)*
6 button mushrooms, sliced
6 cremini mushrooms, sliced
2 carrots, sliced into thick coins
1 leek, sliced
1 garlic clove, minced
1 tsp. butter
2 tsp. fresh thyme
2 bay leaves
2/3 cup organic barley
5-7 asparagus stalks
Bring stock to a simmer. Add mushrooms, carrots and bay leaves, and cover. Cook over medium/low heat for about 20 minutes. Add barley and cover again. While the barley is cooking, sauté the leek and garlic in the butter, set aside while you chop the asparagus into ½” pieces. The barley should take about 25 minutes to cook. Add leek, garlic, thyme, and asparagus about 5 minutes before you are ready to serve, just to heat through. You want the asparagus to be bright green, with a slight crunch and its characteristic fibrousness.
Salt and pepper to taste.
*I made my own stock, but Pacific mushroom broth and Rapunzel vegetable stock cubes would probably be just fine in a pinch.
We had this soup while it was still piping hot, with some warm freshly baked whole wheat honey bread and some steamed broccoli with white wine vinaigrette, and it was the perfect dinner to take some of the chill and dread from my heart and from our hands. It’s the kind of soup that makes you think that something is going to change soon, be it the weather, or something more significant.
Regrettably, I can’t leave you with a soup or an egg song, but I can tell you that we have thyme and lavender sprouts in our window herb garden, a kitty that is happy to have both humans in the same room, a refreshed and more hopeful Hannah, and a detoxified Matthias who is ready to roast some chicken tonight.
Today I would like to tell you about Matthias's favorite bread. It actually started out as a quest to find my favorite bread, but in a weird reversal, it ended up being his. In fact, it is so very delicious that the mere mention of buttermilk on the daily grocery list makes his eyes sparkle.
The reason this is strange is because the recipe comes from....
The Vegetarian Times.
Ideally, this bread would have lived up to its description as a good substitute for the sourdough I so dearly miss on this coast, without requiring the complicated nature of a starter (which, I would be happy to nurture in our refrigerator, if only we had room - the reason why we do not is a story for another day...). Oh but how this recipe failed me. I have tried using less honey, amping up the tang of the buttermilk with some additional vinegar, kneading for a longer duration to give me something chewier, and kneading for less time to give me something more porous. Alas, any faint resemblance to sourdough is completely absent in the final result.
Buttermilk Boule
Adapted from the Vegetarian Times
Serves 8 (makes 1 round loaf)
1 0.25-oz. pkg. active dry yeast
3/4 cup buttermilk
1 1/2 Tbs. honey
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. kosher salt
Stir yeast into 1/2 cup warm (110F) water, and let stand 5 minutes, or until liquid is cloudy and bubbles begin to form on surface. Combine buttermilk and honey in small heatproof bowl. Microwave on high 30 seconds, or until warm to the touch. Whisk yeast mixture into buttermilk mixture with fork.
Combine flour and salt in large bowl. Stir in buttermilk mixture until thick dough forms. Knead (in the bowl if you're pressed for space, as we are. Or on a well-floured surface if you have the luxury of counter space) 7 minutes, or until dough is elastic and no longer sticks to your hands. Form into ball, and set in lightly oiled bowl. Cover with clean dish towel, and let rise 1 hour in warm place.
Gently reshape into a tight, smooth ball. Cover again with dish towel, and let rise 40 minutes in warm place.
Preheat oven to 375F. Place onto baking sheet. Cut diagonal slashes across top of loaf with sharp knife. Bake 35 to 40 minutes, or until golden brown. Cool (if you can wait), slice and serve.
But! All is not lost! Because where this bread disappointed me as a substitute, it delights Matthias as a staple. He loves its faint sweetness, its incredibly dense crumb, and the way that it makes perfect bacon sarnies.
For you see, Matthias is the only person I know who can take a recipe from the Vegetarian Times and turn it into a meat-fest. I want to make fun of him for this, gently reminding him that every time I make this bread, there are potentially hundreds of vegetarians out there enjoying it as a vessel for veggies or plant based proteins. Sometimes I want to bemoan the loss of squishy tartness originally promised by this recipe. But mostly, I end up taking an immense amount of pleasure in watching Matthias concoct and devour this meal, for you see, it is just as good as toast for me, and I really do believe that breakfast is for benevolence.
Bacon Sarnie
Recipe adapted from Jamie Oliver
Serves 1
3 or 4 slices of thick cut, meaty bacon
2 slices of buttermilk boule (or other thick crumb bread)
Brown sauce/Steak sauce (we use Heinz because we hate Kraft and woefully, A1 is made by them; I am from near Pittsburgh and Matthias is from PA and all that entails. We buy locally...)
Fry up the bacon in a grill pan, cooking it until it's just tender and slightly crispy on the edges. There should be some bounce in the bite. Toast the bread just slightly. When the bacon is finished, drain it on a piece of paper towel, sop up the grease. When the bread is finished, place the bacon on the bread and add the brown sauce liberally. Enjoy.
Hello, everyone.
My dear Matthias was correct. We are foodies. Though the term is most often used pejoratively, and since our pockets are riddled with holes and seldom filled with anything other than pennies, pens, or hands, I also hesitate to use the term for its implications of privilege. But the plain and simple truth is that we love food - taste, texture, appearance, and the solace and community of preparing and eating it.
Though these pleasures hardly qualify us for special status in the food blogosphere, you should remember that there will often be two versions of recipes, simple instructions for omissions, or ideas on how you can sit diagonally at a table that simultaneously bears flesh and well, not-flesh and still have a cohesive meal and a blissful relationship (with food, and each other). We try to consume conscientiously and responsibly (that means eating as organically, locally, and fairly traded as possible. Please assume that all recipes include at least one of these words before each ingredient, but we will try to be specific at least for a while).
There are many writers and cooks who inspire us, please see the previous post for initial recommendations (more to come soon! and to be updated regularly). We hope that you will bear with us as we get up and running with photography, layout, links, and other general administrative tasks. What we can promise are lovely recipes, witty exchanges, sometimes music, book, movie, personal and philosophical reflections, and above all...thoughtful, descriptive writing (for, you see, Matthias is a real writer, and I am one of a different sort, just doing my best and taking most of the photos).
Welcome to our little site. We look forward to meeting you!
There comes a time when you have to just suck it up and admit that you are a foodie. This is usually the exact time you make French pork steaks with pickles and capers, and a roasted cauliflower.
You see, we are a pair of foodies. Yes. We are. Foo. Deez.
And I will eat anything.
She eats vegetables.
I love bacon.
She doesn't so much.
(She's eating Paul Newman's Own Cinnamon Grahams. I really think she ought to give those back to him. He's an old man, for Christ's sake.)
The story of how we came to be is vastly fascinating and not really the point of this blog. The Point of this blog is to show you that a perfectly right thinking person (me) can eat at the same time as a not-quite-so-right-thinking person (her) and you can do it pretty easily. And we're going to show off our recipes and we're going to probably show off some pictures.
Really awesome.
We're also going to pop up some links ot our favorite food blogs and sites. For now, here are the people who inspire us in the kitchen:
Orangette.
Jamie Oliver.
Smitten Kitchen.
Alton Brown.
The Urban Vegan.
Tastespotting.
Check them out. say hello. Read their recipes.
Soon, we will have some awesome recipes. And some awesome pictures. And some awesome banter between a meatosaur and a veggiesaur.
Oh yeah. And it's all as organic as we can make it.
