Lentil Tacos

It's been busy around here.  I had three job interview this week, it's Sarah's last week of classes, and we've had a house guest since last Tuesday.  Eating has become what you can get, when you can get it.  But if I can fit in half an hour of cooking in the evening, I will.  Tonight I made scrambled eggs with feta and asparagus, fried up some bacon, and whipped together some biscuits.  But that's not what I'm going to talk about.  I'm going to talk about tacos.

When I cook, it's with a mind towards taste and health.  But budget is certainly a factor.  With three adults in the household (and four for the past week), creating tasty, healthy meals on a shoestring is vital.  Eating vegetarian about 90% of the time helps.  Lentils are perhaps the cheapest, healthiest, quickest protein that exists.  I know I have waxed poetic about lentils in the past.  You'll never find my kitchen without them.  But even I, until yesterday, had never put them in a taco.

My wife and her sister would, I believe, happily eat cheese and guacamole in a taco shell.  That's where I step in to add some filler to those tortillas that provides a nutritious punch and is delicious to boot.  Seasoned with the perfect spices, these lentils cook up in half an hour and fill the house with a distinctive Mexican scent.  Then they fill your tortilla.  Most people don't think lentils when they think comfort food, but this is what comfort is made of.  I'd eat these over ground beef or chicken any day (although my reluctant 90% vegetarian - Emily - would disagree).

Things will get back to normal around here eventually.  Whatever normal means when you are one PhD student, one overworked administrator/baker/barista/accountant, one dinosaur, and one orange cat living under one roof.  But I'll make sure I remember these tacos for the next evening when half an hour is all I can seem to muster together to get dinner on the table.  And the dinosaur will just have to deal with being an herbivore for the evening.

Lentil Tacos

Serves 4-6

1 T olive oil

half an onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

1 c dried lentils

1 T chili powder

2 t cumin

1 t oregano

2 1/2 c broth (chicken or vegetable)

taco sized tortillas

toppings (lettuce, tomato, guacamole, cheese, salsa)

In a large pot over medium heat, heat olive oil until hot.  Add onion and garlic and saute until tender.

Add lentils and spices, and cook for another minute.  Add broth, and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer for half an hour.  The lentils should absorb all the liquid.

Heat tacos in the oven or microwave.  Spoon lentil filling into each taco, and finish with toppings of your choice.

Asparagus Pesto

The springtime hits, and I go asparagus crazy.  Well, nature goes asparagus crazy, I suppose, but I take full advantage.  There is just something about those perfect, thin little stalks that scream spring.  When they start showing up at the farmers' market, in our CSA box, and just about everywhere, I know it's smooth sailing from here on out.  Smooth sailing if you enjoy pleasantly warm weather, which I happen to.  (But I wouldn't say no to a snowstorm either.  There's just less asparagus during a snowstorm.)

Asparagus is not only delicious, it's easy.  You can eat it raw, or you can steam it for a scant two or three minutes for that perfect crunch.  It is, unfortunately, easy to overshoot and wind up with mushy asparagus, and no one likes mushy asparagus (unless you have no teeth).  But just blend it with broth and cream, pretend you meant to make a soup all along, and no one will be the wiser.

I have been known to put asparagus in quiche with some feta, crepes with brie and mushrooms, couscous salad with tomatoes, and frittatas all alone.  But this pesto is really genius, especially if you are a little overzealous in your asparagus acquisition.  It's also a useful trick if you have some vegetable-averse people in your life.  Anything tastes good when blended with cheese, oil, and nuts!

We may have ushered in spring with a few holidays several weeks ago, but now we know it's here.  So open the windows, smell the flowers, and eat some asparagus.

Asparagus Pesto
Makes about 1 1/2 c

1 bunch asparagus (about 12 oz), trimmed and cut into 1-inch pieces
1 clove garlic
1/2 c grated Parmesan
1/3 c olive oil
1/4 c toasted almonds
1 T chopped parsley
salt and pepper

Dump everything except olive oil into a food processor.  Blend while adding a slow stream of the olive oil until the consistency of pesto.  Season with salt and pepper.  Serve over pasta, on sandwiches, or as a salad dressing.

Salmon with Tomato Fondue

It always seemed strange to me that Passover is treated as a holiday of suffering.  Sure, we remember the suffering of the Israelis as they slaved in Egypt.  We even remember the suffering of the Egyptian soldiers who perished as we made our way to freedom.  But a holiday of suffering?  No.  Passover is a holiday of liberation.  A joyous celebration of the renewal and rebirth that comes with spring.  Just as we proclaim, "'Alleluia" to mark the resurrection of Christ, we are overwhelmed with the gladness brought by this season.

A few years ago, I decided that I was refusing to make Passover a holiday of suffering.  Why eat matzo when we don't like it?  Why fill our diet with bagels and cookies and cakes that pretend to be things other than what they are?  It's why many vegetarians eschew processed soy products that masquerade as meat.  Why can't we enjoy foods that we are allowed to eat, the many bounties offered to us in spring?  I turned cooking and eating during Passover into a ritual that honors the very renewal we gather to celebrate.

To that end, this salmon gives you much to celebrate.  The flaky fish, the warm and juicy tomatoes, the buttery sauce.  You may argue that tomatoes do not celebrate spring, and you would be correct.  Since Passover falls in April, not July or August, we cannot eat endless perfect tomatoes right off the vine.  But we can let the fish take center stage, complimented by the tomato sauce - even if the quality of the tomatoes is not as we wish.  Would I eat a fresh tomato plain right now?  No.  Would I cook them down to this nearly perfect sauce?  Absolutely.

My wife has come around to Passover because of potatoes.  Sweet potatoes allow her to practically enjoy the holiday.  For eight days, it's difficult to miss a side of rice or couscous or a nice piece of crusty bread when you can make potatoes and sweet potatoes in at least eight different ways.  Tossed with whichever spices would best compliment your main dish, you have a meal that I'd be willing to bet you would eat even if it weren't Passover.  And that's something to celebrate.

Salmon with Tomato Fondue
Serves 2

2 T olive oil
1 shallot
1 lb tomatoes, cut into wedges
1 T butter
salt and pepper
2 salmon fillets

In deep skillet, heat 1 tablespoon olive oil.  Add shallot, and cook until softened, about 2 minutes over low heat.  Add tomatoes and butter, and season with salt and pepper.  If you would like this dish to be pareve, you can use margarine instead of butter, or you can leave it out entirely.  Cook until tomatoes release their liquid, about 3 minutes.

Transfer tomato fondue to another pot to keep warm.  Wipe out skillet, and add the second tablespoon of olive oil.  Season salmon with salt and pepper, and add to skillet, skin side down.  Cook for about 4 minutes, or until skin in browned.  Flip, and cook the other side, about 2 minutes.  Serve with tomato fondue.

I also roasted sweet potatoes, cubed into 1-inch pieces, with salt, cinnamon, cardamom, and a little bit of olive oil for 40 minutes at 425 degrees.

On Passover

It's the time of year when Jews forgo bread in favor of its flatter, more tasteless cousin.  It's the time of year when we sweep our houses of crumbs, scrub clean our homes, air out our lives.  As a child, Passover meant singing songs, telling stories, and eating more sugar than I was normally allowed.  But as an adult, what does Passover mean?  How do I, an American, a White, college-educated male from a comfortable background, celebrate liberation?  From what have I been freed?

We are commanded to tell the Exodus story as if it happened to us, as if we are the ones who walked from Egypt into the sea, into the desert, into Israel.  And aren't we?  Have we all faced our fears, taken a leap of faith, and headed off into the unknown?  Perhaps it was not God's mighty hand and outstretched arm that liberated us, but maybe our own arms will do.

I told the Exodus story last night and Friday night, surrounded by friends and family from all kinds of backgrounds.  Together, we asked questions.  Together, we recalled that we are at once slaves and free.  We remembered that as we were once liberated from the land of Egypt, so too are those in Mitzrayim - the narrow place - currently striving for freedom.  We told the stories of Moses and Miriam, of Shifrah and Puah.  This morning, we told the story of Jesus, another flawed individual who walked through his own desert and who did great things for his people.

I have cleaned my home.  I have told the story.  I have eaten bitter herbs and sweet charoset.  I have roasted a lamb shank and an egg.  But what are all these actions, if they don't come with a call to something bigger?  If I can spill wine drops for Pharoah's fallen army, surely I can spill tears over Trayvon Martin, over those protesting in Syria, those bombed in Nigeria, those Tibetans detained in China.  Can we really declare "Dayeinu" - it would have been enough?  It's never enough.  Not enough to be comfortable in our own freedom while others suffer.

This week, as I cook without wheat, without oats or legumes or yeast (and any number of other ingredients forbidden during Passover), I will remember being a slave.  And I will remember freedom.  And I will remember the journey that brought me from one to the other, the journey so many are on or have yet to begin.  In one mouthful, I can taste the bread of affliction and the bread of liberation.  But the taste will be bittersweet until all are free.

We are all Yisrael.  We are all coming from Mitzrayim.  And we are all headed towards Yerushalayim.

Freedom.  It isn't once, to walk out
under the Milky Way, feeling the rivers
of light, the fields of dark -
freedom is daily, prose-bound, routine
remembering.  Putting together, inch by inch
the starry worlds.  From all the lost collections. [Adrienne Rich]

Peanut Butter Popcorn

Two things about me.  First, I love peanut butter.  It's a deep, complex love that spans decades.  As a kid, I ate endless peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  Peanut butter and banana sandwiches.  Heck, I would make peanut butter and cheddar cheese sandwiches.  On Halloween, I would trade all my candy for Reese's peanut butter cups.  The brief period when you could buy inside out peanut butter cups (just what they sound like) was a glorious (and sugar-filled) time in my life.  The first thing I did upon my return from a month in Switzerland (where peanut butter does not exist) was to go out for a peanut butter cup sundae at Friendly's (RIP).  I'm not kidding around.

Second, I hate popcorn.  It's not really a food - it's mostly air, and it doesn't have any flavor.  Plus the smell of fake butter at the movie theater was enough to turn me off popcorn forever.  Until, of course, I discovered caramel corn.  You can turn popcorn into a vehicle for delivering sugary goodness.  Or, really, whatever you want.  Make cheesey popcorn.  Make spicy popcorn.  Go crazy.

My wife and sister-in-law have been enjoying themselves in Baton Rouge for the past four days.  I didn't have the pleasure of trying alligator sausage, but I did have the opportunity to make whatever I wanted for dinner.  This is usually a dangerous thing, because, left to my own devices, I actually won't cook that much.  I'll drink a lot of juice and occasionally make some toast with (what else) peanut butter.  But driving home from work the other day, I had a crazy craving for caramel popcorn.  And then it came to me.  If I can pour sugar over popcorn, why can't I pour peanut butter?  Well, you see, I can.

Since it's four days until Passover (for which I have yet to clean or shop), there's no better time to pour some kitniyot on top of some more kitniyot.  For eight days, I will have to forgo my beloved peanut butter (and my less beloved, but still tasty, corn).  This is no time for vegetables!  This is no time for potatoes, which I am sure I will consume en masse next week.  No, this is the time to eat peanut butter popcorn for dinner.  While watching Law and Order: Criminal Intent in an empty house.  With an orange cat.

My wife probably shouldn't leave very often.

Peanut Butter Popcorn
Serves 4-6 if you are snacking, or just me for three meals in a row

1/3 c popcorn kernels
3 T oil
1/2 c sugar
1/2 c honey
1/2 c corn syrup
1 c peanut butter
1 t vanilla

First, make your popcorn.  My foolproof method is to heat the oil over high heat in a large pot with three kernels in it.  Wait until those kernels pop.  That's your cue to add the rest of the kernels in one even layer and place the cover on the pot.  Remove the pot from the heat and wait 45 seconds.  Then return the pot to the burner.  Leave the lid slightly off the pot to let steam escape.  Wait until popcorn stops popping, and then dump it all in a large bowl.  This method has never left me with an unpopped or burnt kernel.

Combine the sugar, honey, and corn syrup in a small pan over medium heat.  Stir constantly until boiling.  Remove from heat, add peanut butter and vanilla, and keep stirring until smooth.  Pour over popcorn, and toss until popcorn is coated.  You can let it cool (coating will solidify slightly) or eat it warm and gooey.