Strawberry Shortcake

When it comes to food, I make plans.  As illustrated last week, I know what's for dinner each night, and I have a list when I go to the store.  Every item that makes it into my grocery cart has a purpose.  I can be derailed, however, by the produce at Berkeley Bowl.  For those of you unfamiliar, Berkeley Bowl is a grocery store with an enormous produce section.  It was even featured on an episode of Radiolab about choice, in which Jad and Robert talk about selecting an apple from among dozens of varieties.  Not only is the diversity of options incredible, but everything is ridiculously cheap.  It's not the rare occasion that some figs, asparagus, or plums make their way into my cart unexpectedly.

Or, in the case of this week, strawberries.  Intellectually, I know what they're playing at.  They stack them so beautifully, boxes filled with vibrant red berries.  You try to pass them by, but the air is filled with the scent of early summer.  And there's a giant sign that informs you those four pounds of strawberries can be yours for only $2.50.  And so you make them yours.

I don't even like strawberries; I don't really like any berries at all.  I was the kid you wanted to take berry picking.  As my brother shoveled handfuls of blueberries in his mouth, each and every one of mine went straight into my bucket.  I've warmed up to them over the years, but I am not strawberries' biggest fan.  But if you put it on a cake and serve it with whipped cream, I will eat it.  There's something so quaint, so delightful about strawberry shortcake.  And it's a pretty good way to eat four pounds of strawberries before they start to rot, which seems like a physically daunting task.

I went for a traditional biscuit because if there is one thing I love, it's biscuits.  I don't know when I made my first batch, but it was young enough to develop aspirations of becoming a cook at a logger camp.  Yes, I wanted to make biscuits for lumberjacks all day long.  I maintain that I would have been extremely successful if I had chosen that career path.

These biscuits are topped with turbinado sugar to give them a sweet crunch, but other than that, I try to leave all the sweetness to the strawberries.  It's such a simple dessert, but it looks impressive and tastes even better.  The strawberries start to form a syrup that permeates the biscuits, and each bite is a little bit soft, a little bit crunchy, a little bit juicy, and a little bit creamy.  Strawberry shortcake is the ultimate way to usher in the summer, and it's fashionable both before and after Memorial Day.

Strawberry Shortcake
Makes eight servings

For the biscuits:
1 1/2 c flour
3/4 c cake flour
3 T sugar
1/2 t salt
6 T butter, cold, plus 2 T butter, melted
1 c heavy cream
1 1/2 T turbinado sugar

For the strawberries:
2 pints strawberries, sliced
2 T sugar

whipped cream, for serving

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Whisk flour, cake flour, sugar, and salt together.  Blend the cold butter in with your fingers, until you have a breadcrumb consistency.  Move quickly so as not to warm the butter too much.  Stir in the cream until completed mixed.

Turn out the dough, and knead until it comes together.  Roll out to a 3/4 inch thickness.  Stamp out biscuits using a biscuit cutter, drinking glass, or mason jar.  You should have eight biscuits, give or take.

Transfer biscuits to a baking sheet, and brush them with melted butter.  Sprinkle turbinado sugar evenly, and bake for 25 minutes.  Let cool.

Toss strawberries with sugar, and let sit for 15 minutes.

Whip enough cream for the number of shortcakes you will be making.  I used about a cup of cream for three servings, and I whipped it with the zest of one lemon.  The amount of whipped cream was probably excessive, but it's up to you.

To serve, split each biscuit in half.  Top each bottom half with strawberries and whipped cream, and replace the tops.  Spoon more berries and cream on top, if desired (always desire!).

I made the full recipe of biscuits, since they keep for a few days (rewarm them in the oven for a few minutes before serving).  You'll only want to make the amount of strawberries you'll be eating right away, since the won't keep for long.  Just eyeball it, and sprinkle some sugar on top.

Cornflake Cookies

I'm not one to jump on the cooking trends that sweep the internet.  I've never made Jim Lahey's No Knead Bread and, although tempted, I did not try the Jacques Torres Chocolate Chip Cookie, mostly because I don't like to wait 24 hours to eat the cookies I have just made.

But there's one trend that even I cannot ignore.  Perhaps you have heard of Momofuku Milk Bar?  It's a bakery in Brooklyn beloved by hipsters and sugar junkies, and it's the home of cinnamon bun pie, crack pie, compost cookies (made with potato chips), and any number of cereal inspired sweets.  I'd heard about their famous chocolate chip cookies with cornflakes mixed in, but I didn't give them much thought until last night.  I can't quite handle it when there are no baked goods in the house, so I always keep ingredients for chocolate chip cookies on hand, and I have a go-to recipe for such occasions.  A proper husband always packs a cookie with his wife's lunch.

Instead of turning to my usual recipe, I found myself craving something with a little more crunch than an unadorned cookie.  Because I live in a household that consumes cornflakes at an alarming rate, my mind drifted to those famous cookies.

The original recipe calls for "cornflake crunch" - basically sweetened cornflakes, or Frosted Flakes, if you will.  I opted to use just plain cornflakes, and I'm glad I did; these cookies are sweet enough as is.  They also contain more butter than I have ever put in a cookie, causing them to spread considerably while baking (and to burn easily, so be careful).  But now I get what the hype is all about.

You can make these as they do at Momofuku and use 1/3 of a cup of dough per cookie.  But I decided that, while we enjoy dessert around here, we probably should opt for cookies the size of cookies, not cookies the size of a human face.  But your choice.

I'll probably stick with my plain old chocolate chip cookies; you can't go wrong there.  These cookies were good, and they certainly met my craving for some crunch in my cookie.  It was a nice experiment, and now I can say I've tried, just like every other food blogger on the planet.  But I'm still going to knead my bread.

Cornflake Cookies
 Makes two dozen normal cookies or 15 enormous cookies

1 c butter (2 sticks), softened
1 1/4 c sugar
2/3 c packed brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 t vanilla
1 1/2 c flour
1/2 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1 t salt
3 c cornflakes
2/3 c chocolate chips
1 1/4 c mini marshmallows

Beat the butter with the sugars for a few minutes.  Add the egg and vanilla, and beat for 7-8 more minutes.

Add flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  Mix until dough just comes together.  Scrape down the bowl.

Mix in the cornflakes, chocolate chips, and marshmallows by hand.  Try to mix them evenly, and do not over mix.

Cover dough, and chill for an hour, or up to a week.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Form cookies in your desired size, and place on a greased or lined baking sheet.  Place cookies at least four inches apart; they really spread!

Bake for 12 minutes.  Check your cookies at this point to see if they have begun to brown.  If so, remove from the oven and cool.  If not, keep checking on cookies every minute until they are done.

Meal Planning

So perhaps you are wondering where I get all the recipes on this blog, how I decide what to make, how I make a shopping list, where I shop, and how much time and money this all takes me.  Maybe you're not.  But I'll tell you anyway, because it's a process that I have fine tuned for about three years now, and I think I've got it down.

We subscribe to a community supported agriculture (CSA) project through Full Belly Farm.  We get a box of fruit and vegetables weekly, which seems like a pretty good place to start.  Each week, I take a look at what we're getting in the CSA, make a list of vegetables still remaining in the fridge, and take inventory of other ingredients to use up.  Then I come up with seven meals that make the most efficient use of everything.

For example, if the CSA contains broccoli, potatoes, carrots, lettuce, onions, spinach, and chard, and I still have sweet potatoes and beets in the fridge, plus some whole wheat pasta, couscous, lentils, and black beans, I'll probably come up with some roasted root vegetable dish, a pasta dish that involves broccoli, potato and chard enchiladas with black beans on the side, and a few simple dishes that can be served with a side salad.  That's a good starting point.  I'll fill in with recipes that I've been sitting on for a while, as I mark whatever makes it onto my radar as a delicious dish to try.  I go through my cookbooks, cooking magazines (I got a huge pile of old issues of Food and Wine for free a few months ago), and my favorite food website, Taste Spotting, which is like a run down of all the best food blogs.  I'll also click the "Surprise Me!" button on Smitten Kitchen if I'm in need of some real inspiration.

Once I have a meal plan, I make a list of ingredients and cross off the ones we already have.  What I'm left with is what I'll need to cook for the week.  The rest of the list will be things I buy every week (corn flakes, milk, orange juice, yogurt, seasonal fruit for lunches and snacks, bread) or things we don't go through every week but run out of on a fairly regular basis (butter, cheese, salami, coffee, olive oil, flour, sugar, etc.).  Bright and early on Sunday morning, I head out to Trader Joe's for dairy, bread, cereal, etc. and Berkeley Bowl for produce and bulk.  I don't know what I would do without bulk food; it makes buying things like flour, grains, legumes, nuts, teas, and spices dirt cheap.  All told, I attempt to spend $80-100 each week on groceries, which does not include the $16 for the CSA box.  For three adults, it's not that bad.

This is the system that works for us, and it's been perfected over many years.  It demands planning, but the result is no wasted food, as I only purchase ingredients that already have a recipe waiting for them.  Each week, I write out a menu on the kitchen chalkboard, which serves several purposes.  It means that the diabetic in the house can program her pump accordingly, and it means the person who does not appreciate surprises knows what she'll be eating all week.  It means I have a visual reminder of what's for dinner and a sense of accomplishment for feeding three adults healthy food relatively cheaply.  We out out sparingly and spend dinnertime together as a family, which is a habit that has been linked to lifelong health.

Chai Latte

Here's a shocker from someone who owns a cafe: I don't drink coffee.  I'll have a latte on occasion, and I'll indulge in a trashy Starbucks drink as a treat, but I don't down coffee like the rest of my family.  I do enjoy tea, and I'll try just about any kind of tea I stumble upon.

In 2004, I moved to Oregon, and the tea I stumbled upon was the chai latte.  There is a brand called Oregon Chai, which I had never seen on the East Coast, and I was convinced it was the drink of the gods.  That carton full of sweet and spicy concentrate was always waiting to be mixed with milk and enjoyed cold or heated in my dorm room microwave.  But I soon moved beyond the carton.  I tried chai lattes everywhere.  The best ones were just slightly sweet with a real kick of spice that warmed me to my core.  And even though I cook almost everything in my household from scratch, it never occurred to me to figure out how to make this drink.  I bought concentrates and tea bags, all promising that perfect chai.  But when my cafe opened, and I wanted to offer a drink for those who, like me, don't love coffee, I knew I needed to crack the chai.  And crack it I did.

With black pepper as its main ingredient, this chai is spicy, just the way I like it (and just the way it should be).  I make the chai marsala in large batches so that I have some for personal use and some to make a concentrate for the cafe.  When making your chai, there are a few things to keep in mind.  One, use the cheapest black tea you can find.  I use the regular Lipton tea bags.  You might be tempted to buy a high quality Indian tea, but that's not what is used to make chai in India.  I never drink this tea by itself, but it makes a mighty fine chai.

Secondly, use whole milk.  I know you usually keep around skim or 1%, but trust me, a chai latte calls for whole.  Aromatic compounds dissolve best in alcohols or fats, which means your skim milk won't extract as many flavors as whole.  We only keep whole around here, so it's not a problem, but I would never, ever try to make this drink with anything else.

Chai Masala
Makes about 3 cups

1 c + 2 T ground black pepper
3/4 c + 1 T ginger powder
1/4 c + 2 T ground cinnamon
1/4 c + 2 T ground cardamom
2 t ground clove powder
2 t ground nutmeg

Mix all spices together.  Store in an airtight container and keep dry.

Chai Latte
Makes one drink

1/2 c milk
1/2 c water
1 to 2 t sugar
1 black tea bag
1/8 to 1/4 t chai masala

Put all ingredients in a small saucepan over medium heat.  Heat until milk begins to bubble.  Stir to avoid scalding the milk.  When it has boiled, turn off the heat and stir.  Allow to steep several minutes, and then remove the tea bag.  Strain and serve.

Alternatively, you can make concentrate like I do for the cafe.  I multiply this recipe by 16 (minus the milk) and boil everything together in a large pot until it boils.  Then I let it sit for a few hours, sometimes overnight.  One I remove the tea bags, I strain the concentrate through a sieve lined with paper towels.  The concentrate can be mixed with equal parts milk and heated to make each chai latte.

Spring Panzanella

Around here, it's kind of like we rocketed straight from winter into summer.  All the signs are present.  We received our first carton of juicy strawberries in the CSA box this week.  I squelched my aching desire to bake up some shortbread , stuff those berries in between, and top the whole thing off with whipped cream.  I wanted to, I really did, and I'm sure I'll give into that desire in a few weeks.  But for now, those first strawberries of the season should be enjoyed unadulterated, just plopped into awaiting mouths, letting juice dribble down chins, probably landing on the floor, where a cat will lick it up.

There are other signs.  People are taking advantage of the warm weather to clean house, literally.  I went on a walk around my neighborhood and came back with quite a large bounty of household items.  This is the benefit of living in a fairly wealthy neighborhood: their trash is better than what I would buy for myself.

I'm not a summer person, but I'm embracing this one.  I'm embracing swimming in April and long walks in warm mornings; I'm embracing strawberries and sunflowers and free household goods.  I'm embracing the desire for a large salad for dinner than warm weather brings.  A salad bulked up with mozzarella cheese and garlicy croutons.  A salad that you can make with any vegetables you have (and we have a lot).  A salad that will make you realize you should have a first-aid kit around.  Well, no, I don't recommend the last part.  But if you do happen to slice your finger will cutting asparagus and your household lakes first-aid supplies, a paper towel and some rubber bands will do.  Embrace it.

Spring Panzanella
Serves 4-6

A panzanella is an Italian salad with stale bread and, traditionally, tomatoes (but any vegetables will do).  Traditionalists would disapprove of this version, but it's too delicious for me to mind.  Make it with whatever you desire, but do me a favor and don't skimp on the croutons.

1/2 c olive oil, divided
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
6 c cubed bread
6 T grated Parmesan
salt and pepper
small red onion, diced
3 T balsamic vinegar
juice of half a lemon
1 t Dijon mustard
1 lb broccoli, cut into small florets
1 lb asparagus, cut into 1-inch pieces
1/2 c cubed fresh mozzarella

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Toss bread with 1/4 cup olive oil, garlic, Parmesan, and salt and pepper.  Spread into one layer on a baking sheet, and toast for 15 minutes.  Set aside and let cool.

Mix red onion, vinegar, lemon juice, mustard, and 1/4 cup olive oil in a cup and set aside.

Boil a large pot of water.  Throw in the broccoli, and let cook for a few minutes.  Add asparagus, and let cook for another minute.  Be sure not to overcook.  Drain the pot, and run cold water over the vegetables to shock them.

Toss croutons, vegetables, and mozzarella in a large bowl.  Dress with vinaigrette and mix thoroughly.  

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.