I actually did remember to take a photo but the crazy new WordPress format does not seem to welcome my photo…will keep trying.

We leave for vacation tomorrow but since I have restarted work on the Extending the Table experiment, I feel like I need to make a little progress in the kitchen. Honestly, this recipe is so basic, I hardly think it merits inclusion in a cookbook. You cut up watermelon, you sprinkle some sugar, you eat. This seems akin to a recipe for drinking water and listing the directions as finding a cup and turning on the faucet.

There’s just one problem. I hate watermelon. Actually, it’s more complicated than that – I like watermelon-flavored things but not actually watermelon. Jolly Ranchers = yes,  watermelon slice = no. (By the way, I looked up the ingredients of watermelon flavored Jolly Ranchers and was disappointed that they do not include ANY watermelon. I guess that’s not so surprising really…In the process of my research, I discovered a recipe for a watermelon martini – now that might be the way to start enjoying watermelon more!)

The challenge begins...

I know this seems bizarre but it is one of the things that has resulted in this recipe being left incomplete. However, it must be addressed and I have taught myself to like foods in the past – I converted myself into a tomato connisseur my sophomore year of college. I find myself thinking about that watermelon martini again….

Luckily, the sous-chef is a fan of watermelon and we decided to have a watermelon showdown.  Lately the sous-chef and I have been travelling around New York City sampling artisanal popsicles so we decided to see what we could do with watermelon. We divided the watermelon piece that I purchased and both of us got to work. I prepared this oh-so-complicated recipe and the sous-chef made watermelon popsicles and we tried both.

The Hwa Che entry

And then I started thinking….I was pretty clear from bites one and two that I was not loving the Hwa Che and it seemed very un-Mennonite to waste food. So I decided to innovate….if by innovate you mean turn to the Cocktails 101 book we got for Christmas and break out the martini glasses. And suddenly, I think I could really get into watermelon!

The popsicle entry.

A new scheme unfolds.

The CLEAR winner.

Here’s what you’ve missed since the last episode of cooking….or…

How to take a hiatus from one’s blog:

1) Take the last two months of finishing a phd….

2) Combine vigorously with packing up and leaving one home….

3) Add in another new city, another new apartment, another new kitchen..

4) Take a deep breath and add a new full-time job.

5) Defend one’s PhD while juggling steps 3 and 4

6) Endlessly internally debate how much of an online presence one’s new job allows

7) Garnish with continuing food allergies.

But…..I also bring you:

Recipe for Continuing a Project

1) Start with a summer in which you have time to breathe, think and take stock of your surroundings

2) Liberally mix in a good dose of guilt everytime you catch sight of your beloved Extending the Table cookbook

3) Simmer in a broth of “I am not a quitter, I finish what I start”

4) Gently saute in getting-used-to-new-place and possibly like though not necessarily love New York

5) Garnish with a new dose of enthusiasm, curiousity and sense of adventure.

So, cooking friends, I have returned to both the cooking and the writing about cooking. I can’t promise that I am going to do this as regularly as before but I really want to finish this project!

I wasn’t sure exactly where to begin again – at this point many of the most delicious-sounding recipes have been done. In fact, many of the remaining recipes have been left because they either

a) contain a difficult ingredient to procure (please remember that I am a purist about these things)

b) sound like they might take up ALOT of time…(that’s right 5 hours to rise Bannock, I am looking at you)

or

c) frankly sound kind of disgusting…(poor kim chee – I promise I will try)

Being that it is currently summer in Brooklyn and the latest ongoing challenge that the sous-chef and I have set for ourselves is living without air conditioning, I decided that the first new phase of Extending the Table will consist entirely of the recipes that don’t require cooking or heating up the apartment. So, I went through the whole book and any time I saw the words: pre-heat, boil, simmer, saute, scald, carmelize, etc. I turned the page.

That has left a rather odd list, primarily consisting of yogurt-based recipes and/or condiments.   Not sure yet what I plan to do regarding the latter but it just so happens that I have been eating ALOT of yogurt lately so I decided to plan around those. We happen to live a few blocks from what has to be THE most incredible frozen yogurt place on the planet – no kidding – it really is MIND-blowing yogurt. I confess that I actually went there twice in one day until I decided that I was skating dangerously close to the addiction line.

Since I had already gone to aforementioned fro-yo place for lunch, I decided to go for a yogurt-based recipe for dessert tonight:

Kela Raita (Banana Yogurt Salad)  India,   page 118

Ok, ok…I KNOW I picked an easy one to start with but I just didn’t think I could cope with something too difficult – I needed an easy win!

This was beyond easy – I used Activia yogurt (another of my favorite foods) combined with bananas, lemon and shredded coconut. It was delicious. And we are off on a new start!

This photo gives the odd impression that life in Brooklyn is all in black and white! Not so....actually very colorful here!

Today as I was riding the bus home from the grocery store, I looked down into my bag and realized that almost ALL of the ingredients in tonight’s dish were things that I grew up NOT eating. Among these: rice noodles (great for a gluten-free dish), pork, shrimp, tofu and bean sprouts. All things that I did not grow up eating but have developed an appreciation for later in life.

I was a pretty picky eater as a child but my parents also had a policy – not a rule exactly – that we did not have private food and thus everyone was encouraged to eat whatever the family dish of the night was. However, an exception was made for me when we had spinach quiche which I inexplicably hated and was allowed to have a chicken potpie instead. I wonder now how much of our tastes as children (and then later in life as adults) are shaped by what we eat with our families. In any event, I can imagine that this was a dish I would have definitely opted out of as a child!

Pad thai is one of the sous chef’s favourite dishes and he was very much looking forward to this recipe so I felt incentivized to put extra care into its preparation as I suspected his expectations might be high. And, it was a good thing that I felt some drive because at one point in the preparation, I was very tempted to throw in the towel.

The culprit? Fish sauce.

Extending the Table insists that fish sauce is a complex taste that I will grow to enjoy as I use it more. I hope so. Because right now, whenever I add it to anything, the smell kind of makes me want to vomit. Everything was sizzling along nicely – onions, garlic, pork, tofu, shrimp, eggs – and then I had to add the spices including fish sauce and lemon juice. Ugh. I also felt particularly sorry for my housemates who had to smell the fish sauce and not have any of the reward of eating pad thai.

After some dramatic hand gestures and noises on my part, the fish sauce was properly blended. Needless to say, I did NOT add cilantro as the recipe indicated – cilantro and I do not mix and that just seemed a step too far for me.

In the end, all of the flavours combined nicely and the dish turned out well. A solid 3 out of 5 stars. However, fish sauce in my opinion, is a one star ingredient. It appears that there are only 3 more Extending the Table recipes that call for fish sauce and then it is over between me and fish sauce for good.  Strangely, one of the recipes that calls for fish sauce IS fish sauce. After I make that recipe, I will have a full cup of fish sauce available for use in other recipes…..oh, good.

Yes, it looks rather nice. Just be glad you didn't smell it.

Today’s recipe:

Chicken Stew and Couscous from Algeria (page 175)

I have been doing alot of thinking lately about my lifestyle and the choices that the sous chef and I have made that have brought us to where we are today. While it would seem pretentious to claim that our lifestyles are vastly different than most other Americans, nonetheless, we don’t own a home (we live in a shared house with several other people) and we don’t own a car. I have been thinking about these choices lately and specifically if it is somehow irresponsible or immature for us to continue to live this way. Upon hearing these two facts, many people have often wondered aloud when we are going to “grow up” or “settle down”.  And now that another move is on the horizon – this time to New York City it seems like a good time to think consciously about our choices.

So today as I did my grocery shopping for house meal this evening, I thought about what it means for us to live without a car in relation to our food choices. I grew up in a household in suburban Michigan where shopping at large commerical supermarkets was the order of the day. Since we drove a car to and from the grocery store, it was possible to stock up on supplies and the trunk was the limit of what we could purchase. Here grocery shopping means calculating how many of our own cloth bags we need to carry, how much weight we can carry at one time and how many bags we can comfortably manage on the bus. On nights when we are in charge of house dinner (like tonight) we need to assume that since we are cooking for an additional 6-8 people, we need more bags or stronger arms or more trips. By planning a few days in advance, we were able to ask one house member to purchase the chicken and another house member to prepare the couscous for tonight’s meal.

So, today as I walked along, lugging two weighty cloth bags of produce, I felt content that, at least for now, living without a car is still the best option for us.

The recipe itself was very straightforward but required lots of chopping: chicken, onions, green beans, carrots, garlic, zucchini/courgettes and tomatoes; and lots of spices: cumin, basil, bay leaves, parsley, salt and pepper. Our house mate made couscous and we served the stew (more of a soup consistency) in bowls over the couscous. A solid three out of five stars.

I also decided to listen to some Algerian music while cooking tonight and chose an Algerian woman singer-songwriter: Mona Boutchebak. Good stuff.

A hearty meal for an autumn evening

I made this pudding for house dinner last week. Payesh is the rice pudding that is typically served at Annaprashanna – a Hindu festival which marks the first time a baby eats solid food.

I am not parent and when I first thought about making this recipe – to be honest, the idea of making essentially a baby food kind of weirded me out. This is probably because I have suddenly become the age at which everyone begins to ask me when I plan on having children. (Note the use of the word “when” rather than “if” here….but I will get to that in a second…) Somehow the magic combination of being over thirty, married and straight means that baby questions abound. Sometimes I wonder if the people who are asking such questions have any idea how incredibly physically/psychologically/intellectually/emotionally demading a phd is.  This dynamic has gotten to the point that any time I want to make an announcement about anything in my life, as soon as I say the words “I have some good news” or “I have something to tell you all”, people feel free to jump in and ask if I am making a baby announcement. This is….not ok. And it really dampens any kind of good news that I might be sharing.

All of this is just to say, I feel ambivalent about parenthood. I am happy for those who choose to do it but I don’t think its obligatory for everyone. Some day I might want to. Or maybe not. And until I decide, it would be incredibly great if everyone around me didn’t presume to know how I feel about this topic….(one of my least favorite comments from many well-intentioned friends is “you might think that now but deep in your heart, you really do want kids”)

But I have decided to embrace my own ambivalence and, for the time being, embrace the fact that there are many ways to parent beyond being someone’s primary caregiver. I like to think that I am a pretty great aunt for the children of many dear friends and for my own new nephew (whom I am delighted to meet for the first time next week!) I like to think that my vocation of being a professor is a way to parent a large number of people in the world. I like to think that being a good youth director, a good neighbor and a good friend to children is a good way to exercise the parenting function.

And it was in this spirit that I made payesh the other night for my housemates. We had an extra bowl left over and we passed it around and all took a spoonful. It seemed like a beautiful little symbol of the ways in which we bear with one another, celebrate each other’s successes and carry each other’s burdens….and maybe in some small way, we also parent one another.

Payesh

It’s official. I think I am in love with ghee. As you faithful blog readers and those lucky few of you who have cooked with me recently know, I am extremely orthodox about the Extending the Table recipes. I do not add ingredients and I only delete them when they are deemed too spicy for my tasting audience. So – when the recipe for this curried chicken called for ghee, I went out and bought some.

Oh.my.goodness.

How did I ever cook Indian food without this? I am totally in love. I am joining the Ghee Club. This recipe got a solid four stars. It also made the kitchen smell wonderful as it calls for a blend of coriander, cumin, turmeric, cinnamon, cardamom and cloves.

Ghee-liciousFried onions on top!

This photo makes the dish look as though it had more of a yellow-cast to it than it did in real life...

Pretty much exactly what the title says….we added this as a side dish when the sous chef was making his famous and amazing homemade macaroni and cheese (the gluten free edition) the other night. Very simple but a nice fresh complement to the heaviness of the mac and cheese.

Laoo Dhal (Red Lentils with Zucchini)   India…page 157

My housemate and I made this together one night. It never fails to amaze me how, with proper cooking and enough turmeric, red lentils take on this delightful yellow color. This recipe also involved a tricky translation between British and American English. The recipe calls for zucchini which was no where to be found in any of the stores I checked in….which seemed strange considering the time of year. A helpful check with my British friends sent me back to the store in search of “courgettes”.  Lesson learned. This was a great recipe but I am a big fan of dal in any form so I am easy to please.

Zucchini Dal

A little too hot....

My housemate and I were so pleased with the progress of our dal that we decided to make chapatis as well at the last minute. This was, in retrospect, foolhardy. We were paying too much attention to the dal and the chapatis began to burn. Not the greatest chapatis ever but I don’t blame the recipe.

Chapatis – India…page 48

Salsa di Melanzane per Spagetti (eggplant sauce for spagetti) Italy page 194

Mateo and I made this AGES ago but I just found the photographs on my laptop today and realized I hadn’t posted them. I don’t usually like eggplant/aubergine very much even though I really want to be the sort of person who likes them. So, sneaking them into other foods is probably the way forward for me. This was a great recipe and I didn’t notice the eggplant at all….

Very hearty

Olia de Carne (Pot of Beef) Costa Rica….page 245

I made this for house dinner. It was good but not spectacular. The most interesting thing about the recipe was that it called for throwing in several entire uncut stalks of celery and an entire uncut onion. These were supposed to be pulled out later and discarded. At the time I thought this was surprising as Mennonites and Mennonite cookbooks are not typically big on throwing things out and letting anything go to waste. At tea time, I mentioned the recipe to my housemats who (good Mennonites that they are) urged me to not throw away the celery or onion but to serve it with house dinner. It made me feel like I really know my Mennonites.

The onion is lurking under the surface...