Category Archives: Easily Multiplies to Feed a Crowd

Migas

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We are fortunate enough to live in a walkable neighborhood of a walkable city, and sometimes days go by between car trips.  I made up for all those blissful carless days in one fell swoop today, though.  President Obama was visiting Seattle and I got stuck in traffic for almost two hours with five little girls in the back of that darn minivan.

Luckily, we were well-stocked with snacks, and the girls were full of songs and laughter.  My four-year-old told a detailed and breathlessly-enunciated story to anyone who would listen featuring characters named Macinnanin, Skingerque, Banana Peel, and Spoon Guy.  (The spellings of those first two names are approximate at best.)  The baby practiced her shrieks of joy at top volume.  Other drivers stared at the ruckus my passengers were making and then laughed.

Did you think this was going to be a post about how I came home hours late and cooked a nice dinner?  Heavens, no.  I collapsed on the couch with a beer and let J hustle the kids off to bed.  (Thanks, honey!)  We ate leftovers: this soup, that salad, those beans.  Leftovers are a cook’s reward, I say.

But if you don’t have a fridge full of good leftovers, make migas at the end of a frazzled day.  There’s a reason I mostly cooked scrambled eggs for all those months when life was so hectic: they’re fast, filling, and delicious.  The kids call these migas “cheesy chippy eggs” and eat their plain version (no salsa, no green flecks) without complaining.

Migas take various forms in various countries, but this surely-Americanized version is basically scrambled eggs with lightly crushed tortilla chips, green onions, tomato, cilantro, cheese, and salsa, maybe with a warm tortilla on the side.  Dinner will be served in ten minutes. Continue reading Migas (click for recipe)

Crunchy Celery and Fennel Salad

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We are welcoming some new friends to Emmy Cooks today!  They are fine folks, the discerning type who chose not only to click on a “Freshly Pressed” beet recipe, but also chose to stick around and click on over here, too.  So welcome, new friends!  Here you’ll find a community of cooks and readers and writers and old friends who are always ready to answer questions, share good advice, and trade recipes and tips.  Thank you, old friends and new friends, for being here!

In the spirit of the communal table, here’s a potluck contribution that travels well, so you can take it to parties all summer.  I was inspired to make it, I confess, when I accidentally found three heads of celery in my grocery bag instead of the one I meant to buy (don’t even ask how that happened), but the happy result was a salad so crisp and lemony that I will certainly be making it again.  It joined a host of other outstanding salads in our friends’ back yard this afternoon, where I also discovered the allure of thick slabs of roasted fennel.  Just make sure you save a fennel bulb for the salad.Remember that riotous fiesta of a Summer Crunch Salad with Feta, Mint, and Lime?  The one we had to make over and over because it was so good?  This salad is a refined Italian relation: fennel, Parmesan cheese, lemon.  You could go the distance by substituting pine nuts for the pumpkin seeds.  Either way, the key elements here are the same: celery and fennel for crunch, plenty of Parmesan shavings for salt, and enough lemon juice to make the whole thing sing. Continue reading Crunchy Celery and Fennel Salad (click for recipe)

Christmas in July Lima Bean Salad

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It’s a good friend who knows what kind of gift you will appreciate.  It was a good friend who recently gave me a bag of dried Rancho Gordo Christmas Lima beans.I had heard of Rancho Gordo before, and I seem to remember that around the holidays they sold a year-long bean subscription that I considered buying myself for my birthday.  My friend’s gift inspired me to check their website for cooking tips,  which, of course, led me to the online store.  And they sell so many kinds of “glorious, old-fashioned heirloom beans” that I imagine I will be spending much more time there in the future.  And ordering glorious beans galore.  It’s a small indulgence, really.

The recipe suggestions for this chestnut-flavored bean ranged from curry to sauteed mushrooms to gorgonzola sauce.  I liked the idea of the curry flavors and I planned to serve the curried beans with this jeweled rice–but once the beans were cooked they were so good that I couldn’t bear to adulterate the flavor.  Instead I tossed a few cups of the beans with fresh herbs and a splash each of olive oil and good sherry vinegar.  I cooked a pound of dried beans and used about half for this dish. Maybe I’ll feel ready to curry the other half later this week. Continue reading Christmas Lima Bean Salad (click for recipe)

Raw Rhubarb Compote

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I don’t think I knew about rhubarb when I was a kid.  But I have read about and romanticized the childhood pleasure of being sent outside with a bowl of sugar to dunk the tart whole stalks as an afternoon treat.  Did you get to do that?

This compote is like a grown-up version of what I imagine that sweet-crunchy experience to be.  I especially like to make it with green rhubarb, which turns a dingy beige color when cooked; leaving it raw instead preserves the gem-green color and lets the occasional pink highlight shine.  The flavor is very bright, tart and sweet at once, and if you are feeling adventurous the recipe (from Rustic Fruit Desserts, again) smartly suggests infusing the compote with fresh rosemary or lavender.  I always mean to try that, but it’s so good as is that I never have.

Likewise, I’m not too creative about serving this dish.  We usually scoop spoonfuls over yogurt, maybe with a little granola (like this one with orange zest and currants) sprinkled on top.  What other ideas do you have?  I have a big bowl in my fridge.

Continue reading Raw Rhubarb Compote (click for recipe)

Tomato, Pesto, and Mozzarella Sandwich for a Crowd

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Summertime, with its good weather and long light evenings, always means more spontaneous meals with friends.  The past few days we’ve had plenty of them because my sister and I and a couple of girlfriends took all our many children to some nice little cabins by a beach on an island.  We worked hard all day–the pool! the beach! the playground! roasting marshmallows!–and collapsed at the shady picnic tables at the end of each day for a small feast together.  (Although “collapsed” may be wishful thinking here; moms traveling alone with a contingent of young children rarely get to “collapse” for more than two consecutive minutes, I’ve learned.)

One of my favorite strategies for feeding a hungry crowd is to slice a baguette or two in half lengthwise, stuff it full of delicious things, and cut it into many pieces.  Serve a few salads alongside and voila, an easy dinner for as many people as you need to feed.  (Bonus points if you give the kids popsicles for dessert so they can run off and get sticky while the grown-ups linger over another drink.)

The classic caprese combination (tomato, mozzarella, basil) makes one of my favorite sandwiches.  I find that some versions can get a little dry, though, so I juice mine up by using pesto instead of basil leaves and a generous drizzle of balsamic vinegar.

The order of assembly is important here: pesto on the bottom half of the bread, please, and vinegar on the top, so that the vinegar soaks down into the tomatoes, which should be on top of the cheese, which collaborates with the pesto to keep the bottom piece of bread from getting soggy.  Got that?  Top to bottom inside your baguette: balsamic vinegar, tomato, fresh mozzarella, good basil pesto.  Yes, I spend time thinking about these kinds of things.  I can admit it here because I know that you do, too.  That’s why I’m glad we’re friends.

Continue reading Tomato, Pesto, and Mozzarella Sandwich (click for recipe)

Summer Crunch Salad with Feta, Mint, and Lime

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Need a last-minute idea for tomorrow afternoon’s Fourth of July picnic?  Look no further.  After a day that started and ended with chocolate yesterday, we needed a good salad around here today.  (I don’t mean that in a we-must-repent-with-salad way.  I mean that in a let’s-have-more-cake-today-but-maybe-some-salad-too way.)

This one is a beaut.  I think that my love for radishes has been well documented here, and when I saw this Smitten Kitchen recipe I was pretty sure that a radish-less version would be a pale imitation.  But in a very unusual turn of events, my fridge is relatively bare (we were out of town for 10 days and I haven’t gone shopping yet).  The only crunchy vegetables I could scare up were romaine lettuce, a yellow pepper, a few baby carrots, and a couple of green onions.  Into the salad they went.

I toasted pepitas for more crunch, and because I was thinking of Barrio’s chopped salad, a place my mind often wanders in my wistful-for-salad moments.  I piled on the one-two-three punch (is that a thing?) of feta, mint, and lime juice, which I copied from Deb and Deb copied from April Bloomfield.  Genius.  Do it. Continue reading Summer Crunch Salad with Feta, Mint, and Lime (click for recipe)

Summer Berry Sauce

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Why yes, those are chocolate pancakes you see pictured below.  A certain three-year-old daughter of mine is about to turn four, and she requested them for the birthday pre-party we had today.  (Last year it was chocolate waffles.)  We like to draw birthdays out as long as possible in our family.

While chocolate pancakes might be unconventional, they were topped with the most natural pancake topping I know for this time of year: a berry sauce.  My parents grow blueberries, raspberries, and multiple varieties of blackberries that bear fruit throughout the summer.  My kids’ hands and shirts have been stained with berry juice since the day we arrived, and every day there are fresh baskets of berries waiting after my dad makes his morning rounds.  This berry sauce, one of my mom’s specialties, was inevitable.

And yes, of course you can also make summer berry sauce all winter using frozen berries.  I usually make it with blackberries, but today’s version was raspberry.  The only real requirement here is that you whisk the cornstarch into cold water until smooth; if you add the cornstarch after the sauce is warm, it will clump.  Weird, huh?  Other than that, feel free to play around, you really can’t go wrong. Continue reading Summer Berry Sauce (click for recipe)

Black Sticky Rice Pudding with Coconut Milk

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Watch this space for more Thai food now that summer is coming.  Tropical fruit gets all the love, but vegetables like eggplants, peppers, and squash are unique products of hot temperatures as well, and with summer comes the opportunity to cook like we live someplace warmer.  Like Thailand.

My sweet tooth has always liked the idea of eating dessert first, and we’re starting our summer Thai series with it here.  I have to admit that we cook less Thai food now that Little Uncle makes it so well and so close by, but the flip side of that coin is that it was one of their desserts that reminded me to dig out this recipe for black sticky rice pudding.  (The dessert in question was kabocha squash simmered in sweet coconut milk; watch for it on the menu!)  It’s a great dessert to make for a party because it’s so simple yet visually impressive, and also because you can make it in advance and serve it cold or gently reheated.

Little Uncle’s simmered kabocha was excellent stirred into this rice pudding, but if you don’t have any handy you can just serve it plain, as I usually do, or with mango slices stirred in or on the side.  Of course you can also make this dessert with white sticky rice in place of the black, although, as you’d expect, the resulting color is a bit more pedestrian.  Try to remember to save a swirl of the thick coconut cream from the top of the can to garnish the dish. Continue reading Black Sticky Rice Pudding with Coconut Milk (click for recipe)

Stuffed Little Red Potatoes

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It’s a salad time of year, and I love a good salad, but I’m not really a just-salads kind of eater.  A hearty Nicoise salad is a full meal, sure, but short of that?  I want something on the side.   A slice of pizza.  A tangle of pasta.  A frittata wedge.  These potatoes.

In the most dubious honor recently bestowed upon a meal from my kitchen, J said that these tasted like something you might get at an American chain restaurant.  By which he meant to say, surprisingly, that he liked these potatoes a lot; they reminded him of restaurant potato skins he loved as a kid.  I liked this homemade version a lot too.

I think what J meant was–and I’m just guessing here, I will have to make another batch very soon to confirm–that these are salty, and cheesy, and creamy, and delicious.  They certainly have a decadent quality characterized by the calorie-dense fare that gives standard American food a bad name.

In other words, a few of these babies are best balanced out by a nice big salad.

Continue reading Stuffed Little Red Potatoes (click for recipe)

Vegan Chopped Salad Bar

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When I visit California, I sometimes wonder if people are really meant to live anywhere else.  We left Seattle in the driving rain and arrived in California’s summertime.  My mom’s tomato plants are taller than me, and I picked a ripe tomato.  The girls gorged themselves in the raspberry and blackberry patches.  We spent all day in in the back yard.

When it was time for lunch, it seemed only sensible to chop up a small mountain of garden and farmers market produce to make a DIY chopped salad bar.  My parents (who eat very healthfully) always have a fridge full of the best fruits and vegetables of the season.  My uncle recently started eating an exclusively plant-based diet, so we made our salad bar vegan. Today’s offerings included shredded lettuce and diced cabbage, zucchini, cucumber, carrots, and broccoli.  You could vary these in infinite combinations, of course.  We put out drained kidney beans, ground flaxseeds, nutritional yeast and walnuts for protein, and raisins for a bit of chew and sweetness.

I love this approach because it lets everyone customize a salad to their own taste.  I bet my mom took all the veggies plus flax and nutritional yeast (and maybe a splash of vinegar); I left off the carrots, went heavy on the broccoli, and topped my bowl with walnuts, raisins, and balsamic vinaigrette.

My uncle took this photo of his salad to share with you all in exchange for some tips about embarking on a vegan lifestyle.  What’s your best advice for him? Vegan Chopped Salad Bar (click for recipe)