Smoked Salmon Sandwich
Ever heard of the term, “food desert?” It refers to the lack of fresh, unprocessed foods in certain urban or industrialized settings, whether due to location or financial means. By no means do I live in a food desert; the closest supermarket by my house is less than a block away and it regularly has full stock of basic perishables and canned goods. But even so, it’s an urban grocery store: constantly in a state of being picked-over and a bit grungy (well, sometimes, just down right dirty).
This weekend, I took a trip to another grocery store just a couple of blocks farther away and what a difference a couple of blocks makes. There isn’t a racial or economic separation between the two stores. They service the same demographics and are comparable in price. But the one farther away is just better: more and varied produce, clean aisles, and just an overall pleasant shopping experience. It invigorated me and made me want to cook!
This past week, a housemate went on a trip to Seattle to visit a friend and came back with a delicious present for everyone: smoked salmon from Pike Place Market. I made this beautiful and simple sandwich with some fresh ingredients from the grocery store. Now, we’ve just got to wait for the farmers’ market to start up in the neighborhood.
Smoked Salmon Sandwich
Thin Mint Cookies
It’s that time of year again. No, I’m not talking about the beautiful blooming cherry blossoms along Washington, D.C.’s tidal basin marking the official coming of spring here in the District (even though there was a light dusting of snow this morning and the temperature right now lingers just above 40 degrees). No, I’m talking about the season when those ubiquitous Girl Scout booths begin to pop up in front of grocery stores and libraries and college campuses like the much awaited-for early flowers of spring.
Everyone has their favorite. Mine happen to be Samoas and Thin Mints; what’s better than a chewy cookie of caramel, coconut flakes and chocolate or the cool crispness of a Thin Mint? They are a guilty pleasure and an expensive one at that (4 dollars is not the best bargain for a box of cookies, whether you’re buying them from a young, green sash-clad entrepreneur or not) but oh so good and so worth the wait every year. I remember the dearth of them in my life during college when the scouts were only selling them during the weekend at our University Center at much too early an hour for me to crawl out of bed to buy.
A friend of mine found this recipe and sent me a picture of her delicious looking cookies and, of course, I immediately asked for the recipe. While mine are not the classic, chocolate-enrobed wafer cookies, they still pack the wonderfully minty bite and chocolatey taste of this most beloved of iconic cookie!
Thin Mint Cookies
German Chocolate Cake
A phone call late one evening to ask for an extra cake pan led to an email with a picture of a gorgeous German Chocolate Cake the next morning. Our downstairs neighbor and also friend and co-worker, Lizzie, as you will read, was baking this cake for Valentine’s Day. When I saw the picture she snapped of it the next day at work, I was hoping there would be leftovers. Fortunately, there was! And I was able to get her to write up a special guest post for the blog. The cake is delicious and if I had someone special to bake it for, I definitely would. Here’s what Lizzie had to say.
For Valentine’s Day this year, my husband and I decided to eat at home instead of going out. We’ve found it a bit overrated (and overpriced). However, I still love holidays, especially ones that involve decorations and most importantly, special food that is specific to the season.
While thinking about the menu for our dinner, I told my husband that I’d like to bake something for him and he requested a German Chocolate Cake. Thankfully, we both enjoy anything with chocolate or coconut and this particular cake has both! I thought, oh, no problem, this will be easy and fun! I went straight to my shelves (that’s right– shelves, plural) of cookbooks but to great disappointment, I didn’t find a single appealing take on what I thought would be a very common recipe. This took me to my second favorite place to look for recipes, the Internet! Right away, Joy of Baking‘s website came up with a lovely, thorough recipe for this traditional Valentine’s Day dessert.
If you want something especially delicious with a bit more depth, this is a cake you should definitely consider. Not only is it tasty, it is a show stopping beauty. What better way to welcome guests for an evening meal than a tempting three layer cake with gooey, caramel coconut pecan icing trickling down the sides, waiting to be enjoyed after dinner!
German Chocolate Cake
Cheesecake with Raspberry Sauce
There’s little else in life that’s better than a well done cheesecake (well, perhaps a good fresh berry tart). Light and creamy, sweet but with a distinct tang, all on top of a crumbly graham cracker crust, perhaps with a side of fresh berries or topped with sauce. I have eaten my fair share of cheesecake, everything from the sub-par grocery store’s bakery for a quick fix to specialty cakes for the holidays with pumpkin and chocolate to mini-cheese-cupcakes when I’m too lazy to worry about a water bath. I even tried to hunt down the best cheesecake in New York, but even the “best” of these all shared one major flaw: a dense filling.
There is nothing more distressing than creamy cheesecake stuck to the roof of your mouth or cemented onto your fork. It is nothing short of a tragedy when this happens, and it so often does; a filling rich and perfectly balanced in flavor yet weighed down and overshadowed by its thick texture. Never fear though, this recipe covers all the bases of a good cheesecake, embodying each of the characteristics necessary for a dreamy cheesecake-eating experience. Once this cheesecake is ready to be eaten, close your eyes and you’re floating in a tangy cloud of delicious cheesecake heaven.
Cheesecake with Raspberry Sauce
Spicy Chili with Flank Steak
This past weekend has gone on record as being the coldest of the season so far in the District. It was a steady and blustery 28 degrees on Saturday and with the wind blowing between the tall city buildings, it was colder than that. After working on Saturday taking some patients out for a trip to the Newseum (one of the best museums in D.C. — it’s not free, but worth every penny), I was glad to have a bowl of this chili waiting for me at home.
The real reason this chili came about was because we had an excess of flank steak in the freezer; a big block of it bought at the beginning of the month and tossed in the back. When we defrosted it, we had to defrost the whole thing so we needed something to use up three big slabs of steak. I remembered one of my co-workers raving about this chili recipe from Whole Foods. She loved it for two reasons: one, she got to make it in her Le Creuset dutch oven, and two, the chipotle in adobo made for a wonderfully smoky and spicy combination. Both, as it turns out, are very good reasons.
The original recipe was for a vegetarian chili but when you’re living on a monthly food budget between seven people, you make your ingredients work for you and the flank steak paid off. The cut was tender after being simmered for half a day and made the chili heartier than it already was.
Spicy Chili with Flank Steak
Apple Pie
Living in community with six other people can be a challenge at times. Sharing your space, time and experiences constantly with other people can be draining, physically and emotionally. But it’s nice to have other people around and if you really want some time alone, it’s never too hard to find a quiet corner of the house to retreat to, whether it’s the solarium or your room.
One aspect of community-living that my housemates and I still struggle with is working with our monthly grocery budget. At the beginning of every month, we get a set amount of money for groceries, to include toiletries for the house like paper towels, laundry detergent, but principally, food. Seven people means seven different styles and attitudes towards eating. Some of us like quick and easy dinners like frozen meals. Most of us crave fresh ingredients like vegetables, red meat, and fruits. And some of us are just happy eating oatmeal and pancakes for breakfast and dinner. However we decide to spend the money for the month, it’s all we get and we have to work together to figure out how best to spend that money.
So, where am I going with all this? We start every month off with a huge grocery trip at a wholesale store where we buy the essential perishables in bulk to last us the whole month. This past trip yielded two dozen apples, twelve red apples and the rest green. It’s nearly two weeks later and a dozen Granny Smith apples have yet to be eaten, wasting away in a fruit basket on our dining room table. It’s a bit disappointing when something like this happens but what can you do but make lemonade out of lemons, or in this case, a delicious apple pie out of some sour apples.
The best thing about this pie is the thick syrupy sauce, sweet and fragrant from melted brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla. The apples are baked perfectly with just a little bite left in them to highlight their tangy flavor. Encase all of this in a buttery and flakey pie crust and you’ve got yourself the best dessert. Ever. Wait, don’t forget the vanilla ice cream! Now, it’s the best dessert ever. Really.
Apple Pie
Salty Oatmeal Cookies
I have been living in D.C. now for about four months. Each week, I am still discovering a new corner of the city with great places to eat. But one of my favorite places to enjoy a meal is one I discovered, or was rather introduced to, a few years back. While the food is great, I admit that I don’t go there as much for the food as I go for the tea and cookies, or rather, just a cookie. This cookie, the Salty Oat Cookie from Teaism.
Teaism is a great chain of tea houses with a large selection of tea, baked goods, and Asian-inspired food. My favorite location is the one at DuPont Circle where your tea comes out to you in a teapot and you can sit back in their quaint attic seating area (if you’re lucky enough to find a table) with old windows filtering in pale city light and think about your day or life. Teaism’s Salty Oat Cookies are a must try if you’re ever in the city.
These fantastically dense and hardy cookies are the perfect play between sweet and salty, moist and crumbly. At nearly two dollars a cookie, they are too expensive for me to enjoy on a daily basis, however. So I went to the internet in hopes of finding a similar cookie to make at home. Luckily for me, DCist, one of the blogs I follow about happenings in DC, also shared a similar love for this cookie and, after some experimentation, developed a recipe that yields a fairly close second. This recipe won’t be the end of my relationship with Teaism, but it will certainly do when I’m feeling a bit more frugal.
Salty Oatmeal Cookies
Baklava
I do not love overly sweet things. I will scrape off most of the frosting on my slices of cake and I don’t usually care for sugary candy. Chocolate is exempt, of course, and I will readily eat anything with chocolate (unless it’s frosting). And I also like my coffee creamy and with extra sugar; I haven’t quite gotten to the point where I can appreciate it black but I will forgo the sugar before the milk. Yet, for all that sugar makes my teeth ache, I love, with an unhealthy passion, baklava. In my mind, it is somehow different from other desserts.
Maybe it’s the nuts and their crunchy-then-smooth texture in your mouth. Or the phyllo dough with its ability to be airy and light yet crisp at the same time. Or the honey, scented with cinnamon and orange to balance the natural saltiness of the walnuts and almonds. Or maybe it’s all of these perfect components layered together into an even more perfect whole.
This recipe is surprisingly easy, though perhaps a bit laborious. The ingredients are straightforward but the assembly takes some time. If you’ve never seen phyllo dough before, imagine something along the lines of tissue paper, delicate and almost transparent. Each layer, and I mean each individual sheet of phyllo dough, is hand-laid into the pan and brushed with clarified butter. The nice thing, though, is if the dough tears, you can’t tell because it is all kept together by the heavenly syrup. I admit, the hardest part of this recipe is letting the baklava sit overnight undisturbed and uneaten!
Baklava
Stuffed Tomatoes
It’s been awhile since I’ve done anything culinarily resourceful. Back in college, when I was craving a little bit of home away from home and grandmother’s and mom’s delicious home cooked dishes, I started experimenting a lot with Asian flavors. A lot of research and phone calls home helped get me on the right track to recreating some dishes from childhood. There were many successes and thankfully fewer failures.
One success was a recipe for wontons, a dish my family never really made but I still enjoyed when we went out to eat. I recently rediscovered the recipe and made a huge batch of them to freeze for a quick dinner when I’m too tired to make anything elaborate. In making them, I had some leftover filling and in an inspired moment threw this dish together.
It’s nothing original and in fact, it’s one of my favorite dishes growing up. The inspiration came not from the creation of this dish but from me putting two and two together and realizing that I now don’t have to call home for recipes but can attempt to make the flavors and textures of home just from memory. Mom and grandmother taught me well! Or, at least, fed me well.
My favorite thing about this recipe is the contrast between the sweet and sour tomato sauce and the spicy, meaty filling. As the tomato cooks down it develops a rich tangy flavor that complements the shrimp and pork. So comforting over a bowl of jasmine rice!
Stuffed Tomatoes
Tomato Sauce
All my life, I have always thought that pasta sauce came from a jar. I never gave a second thought to ever making something like tomato sauce at home. Even in college, when pressed for money, I found making my own sauce a bit daunting. I mean, why bother when I can go to the supermarket, buy a jar, and have it ready to eat in just a few minutes?
But as I am trying to be more aware of what I eat, and especially after reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, a great book that details our tenable relationship with the foods we eat, the idea of making as much of my foods as I can has become not only more important to me but in fact, necessary. And what is better to start weaning myself away from processed foods with than the most ubiquitous one of all, tomato sauce.
This recipe is wonderful. The tomato sauce is rich in what else, but tomato flavor with a subtle sweet and sourness that cannot be replicated when preservatives and artificial flavors are added. The stuff found on the shelves of the supermarket pales in comparison with its overly sour and salted taste. The cinnamon and nutmeg in this recipe adds that peculiar flavor that enhances the honey-sweetened sauce. While I’ve only made this recipe in small batches, it would definitely be worth it to jar some myself!
Pasta & Meatballs with Homemade Tomato Sauce
