Mirin-Glazed Tofu and Tomatoes

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The mise en place, to me, is a creature that exists in fantasy only.  Here’s how dinner happens in real life: I cook and chop at the same time.  It’s revolutionary, I know, but I suspect that many (most?) home cooks join me in rising up against French tradition in this regard.  First we chop the onions, and then once they’re in the pan we chop the next thing.  I’m not alone here, right?

But here’s the thing about on-the-fly prep when you’re making what’s essentially a stir-fry: you have to work fast.  So be prepared to let your knife fly—or get all Martha and chop your ingredients in advance. Continue reading →

Apple Peel Tea

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We have peeled many, many apples recently.A few years ago this handy little gadget came into our lives.  It peels, cores, and slices the apples all at once.  These functions are handy, of course, but the thingamajig’s real value lies in its ability to produce a lengthy, swirling, snaking apple peel that can stretch clear across the kitchen and be used as a jump rope. Continue reading →

What’s Cooking: October 2012, Week 3

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Aside from the apples, this has been a very relaxing week for me in the kitchen.  My in-laws visited last weekend and, as I’ve told you already, my mother in law is an excellent cook.  She arrived with a stack of recipe print-outs and a plan, and she fed us well.  What luxury.  I could get used to that.

In The Kitchen

Menu 1: My mother in law made this leek and gruyere tart in puff pastry, which sparked a lively discussion about the difference between a tart and a pizza.  The upshot, I think, is that if you want to serve something fancier than a pizza you should put the toppings on puff pastry instead of pizza dough.  (These mushrooms and blue cheese would certainly work in puff pastry.)  I made that super-green lemony spinach soup and my favorite summer crunch salad–which is too good to confine to summer–to serve with the tart.Menu 2: If you’re most people in the world, apparently you’ll love Marcella Hazan’s tomato sauce.  But whatever tomato sauce you choose, I recommend serving your pasta alongside roasted eggplant tossed with pesto and garlic bread.  My favorite garlic bread formula is as follows: 2 Tb. softened butter, 1 Tbsp. olive oil, 2 pressed cloves of garlic, a big pinch of salt.  Mix together and spread on a length of baguette.  Top with fresh parsley and toast for a minute under the broiler.Preserving

Meanwhile, we’ve been peeling and peeling apples.  We made more applesauce.  A friend dropped two dehydrators by so we could dry countless apple rings (which somehow, once dried, shrink to an insignificant size that belies all the work it took to make them).  And I made apple peel tea.  I’ll tell you more about that this week.On My Plate

I’m looking forward to participating in the Virtual Vegan Potluck on November 1!  I’m bringing soup, of course.  A roasted celery soup.  Creamy.  Intense.  Vegan.  I hope you’ll join us!

And now we’re on to the good part of the apple project: all the perfect ones we stashed in the fridge for eating and baking.  I can never decide between apple cake and apple pie.  Which do you prefer?

Pasta with Smoked Salmon, Cream Cheese, and Peppers

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I meant to eat chocolate cake for dinner tonight.  It was just one of those days.  J kindly intervened and made me this instead.  It was so good.  Salty, creamy, hearty–and it even used up some of our CSA peppers.  That man knows what I like.  It was perfect for a chocolate-cake-for-dinner kind of night. Continue reading →

Marcella Hazan’s Tomato Sauce

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Have you made this tomato sauce?  People swear by it.  People LOVE it.  People think it’s genius.  I am completely undecided.

The sauce has only four ingredients.  One of them is butter.  The sauce was so fine-textured that it clung delicately and evenly to each individual noodle.  Its flavor was the summer flavor of the good tomatoes I used, enriched with butter and salt.

With very little effort, this recipe produced a refined and tasty dish.  Which made me notice that refined and tasty aren’t necessarily enough for me.  Continue reading →

Green Spinach Soup

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What more do you need to know?  It’s a velvety, lightly lemony spinach soup.  A nearly-effortless soup.  A 15-minutes-to-the-table soup.  A vegan soup.  A painless way to drink your veggies.  And a green, green, green, green soup. Continue reading →

Green Olive and Celery Salad

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Welcome to Emmy Cooks!  You can see more of my favorite recent recipes by clicking the “My Favorite Recipes” category on the sidebar (here are July, August, and September).  If you like what you see here, you can sign up on the sidebar to receive a daily recipe by email, add the RSS feed to your blog reader, or follow Emmy Cooks on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.

Here’s a funny little thing, while we’re eating bits and bobs this week.  Not quite a salad, not quite a relish, full of flavor and crunch and brine and pop.

I found it via Lottie + Doof, where Tim says he found it in a Sicilian cookbook.  It’s kind of weird.  Whatever.  It’s great.We scooped spoonfuls onto the baguette rounds we ate alongside our shakshuka the other day.  I had a little pile of it beside my sandwich.  I daresay it could go right into a sandwich of the right sort quite happily.  Or serve it as part of an antipasto spread, of course.  Or just with a fork. Continue reading →

Tomatillo Pizza with Cilantro Pesto

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I don’t think of myself as a huge fan of fusion food, whatever that is.  I like a certain harmony in the flavors of a meal, and I think that can be harder to achieve when you bring wildly diverse cuisines onto the plate at once.  But every once in a while I go there.  And every once in a while it works.  Take this pizza.

Continue reading →

Homemade Celery Salt

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Waste not, want not, and all that.  So I’m sure you’ve been aching for a novel way to use up your celery leaves.  There’s making vegetable broth, of course, but this is better.At this time of year I’m getting crisp, leafy heads of celery in my CSA box, which inspired me to make this batch of celery salt.  But a leafy bunch of celery yields approximately an endless supply of celery salt, so don’t be deterred if you can only unearth a few handfuls of leaves from the depths of your celery heart.  It’ll do. Continue reading →

What’s Cooking: October 2012, Week 2

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I’ll give you a clue about what’s cooking around here….But first, this: I was just reading about October Unprocessed, a project that has inspired literally thousands of people to take a pledge to eat only unprocessed foods during the month of October.  I’d say I’m an avid home cook, but reading about this made me reflect on what it would mean for our family to take that pledge.  No Os cereal for the baby.  No granola bars for the kids on the go.  No MSG-laced almonds at happy hour.  (I don’t know if they really have MSG.  But probably.)  It would be kind of a big deal.  Have any of you taken the pledge?  Do you think you could?

And hey, what’s cooking in your kitchen this week?  Please feel free to leave your seasonal favorites and links in the comments! Here’s the weekly glimpse into my kitchen.

In the Kitchen

Menu 1:  Tune in to the Virtual Vegan Potluck on November 1 for a rich and creamy (vegan) roasted celery soup.  We had it with homemade beer bread and cabbage and apple salad.Menu 2: J grilled sardines for maybe our favorite sandwich of all time: crusty bread, swipe of mayo, generous smear of dijon mustard, crunchy lettuce, grilled sardines.  Try it.  We had them with a cooked-greens salad and a beet-and-orange salad.  (There I go again with the many-salads thing.  So decadent!)

Menu 3: We made a tomatillo pizza with cilantro pesto (recipe soon!) and had it with a roasted carrot and avocado salad.Preserving

Today I canned 26 pints of applesauce (which meant four loads in the canner; maybe I’ll do quarts next year) and started a gallon of sauerkraut.  Someone remind me to check it in a few weeks, please!I also dried the leaves from a bunch of celery and made a kind-of-amazing homemade celery salt.  So far it’s gone on soup and buttered bread, and I can’t wait to sprinkle it on deviled eggs.  What else should I do with it?

On My Plate

How many apples are in a bushel?  I think I’ve still got at least that many in the basement.  What are your favorite or most unique things to do with apples?

Thanks for Cooking with Emmy Cooks!

Epicurean Ramblings made our favorite Healthy Cookies.

Blue Kale Road made chickpeas from scratch and used the broth in a gorgeous-looking Kale and Polenta Stew.  I can’t wait to try it.  (I also want to make most of the other recipes on that site, and I’ve loved the ones I’ve tried.  Check it out.)

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