Ratatouille Season

Andrew is one of those people who needs to eat frequently, OR ELSE. I once asked him how this worked when he was growing up, with three younger siblings in the house. What was his mom, Mary Helen’s, secret for keeping him satiated without being driven insane?

From what he remembers, he and his sisters were raised primarily on a diet of zucchini and other vegetables that she grew in her garden and cooked into ratatouille. And chicken curry. As the season changed, he began to look forward to the end of zucchini and ratatouille, but his hopes were dashed when he realized that all along she had been freezing enough vegetables that they would never be without the ingredients for ratatouille year-round. 

That is what I think about during zucchini season, which is happening now obviously, and I try my very best to use up every darn last zucchini that hits my counter, despite any objections. It’s not easy! As you probably know, when it rains zucchinis, it pours zucchinis! But, it could be worse, like if the deer hadn't decimated my sad attempt at a vegetable garden a couple weeks ago. Now we're only dealing with the CSA box we receive once a week from the Shumei farm, and that seems like more than enough for the two of us. 

So last night I busted out the Le Creuset pot we inherited from Mary Helen, which is the ideal size for ratatouille. I'm convinced this pot holds the memory of countless splendid ratatouilles past, and makes everything taste better, almost like someone other than me cooked it. I don't have a recipe from Mary Helen unfortunately (ahem...Gnome...hint hint), so I've adapted some from the web instead, and I’m thrilled to report that this latest batch earned Andrew’s seal of approval. He even admitted he liked the eggplant in it, which is notable considering that once, while on a boat sailing to Hawaii, he threw the last remaining eggplant overboard because the captain threatened to serve it two nights in a row (mutiny?). 

Thanks to this one dish, I am finally seeing the light at the bottom of the vegetable drawer. If, like me, you are buried under a mountain (or drowning in a sea—choose your metaphor) of zucchinis, eggplants, and tomatoes, you might want to try this Dori-tested, Andrew-approved recipe:

Roasted Vegetable Ratatouille

Ingredients:

~ 2–3 medium zucchinis

~ 2–3 medium Japanese eggplants

1 small onion

2 bell peppers

3 large tomatoes

½ cup red wine

½ cup chicken broth if needed

Herbs d’ Provence (or any variety of herbs of your choice, fresh or dried)

olive oil

Method:

Chop zucchini, eggplant, onion, and peppers into bite-size pieces. Toss them in a roasting pan big enough to spread them out with olive oil, salt, pepper, and herbs. Roast at 400 degrees for 30-40 minutes.

Meanwhile boil a pot of water and blanch tomatoes to remove skin.

When the roasting is done, add veggies to a big shallow pot of some sort, turn on medium high heat, add tomatoes, and break up tomatoes with a spoon. Add chicken broth and/or wine gradually till it achieves your desired soupiness. Simmer for about 30 minutes until flavors are blended.

Great with a little parmesan on top, with chicken and rice.

Favorite and Practically Original Cookie Recipe

As I prepared to bake yet another batch of my standard go-to cookies, I started thinking about how I've lost my sense of adventure as far as cookie baking goes over the last decade. On holidays, I will sometimes branch out, but otherwise, these are what you'll get at my house.

This recipe is an amalgamation of my favorite ingredients, Andrew's preferred ingredients, and the recipe on the inside top of the Quaker Oatmeal container. In my opinion, they have an ideal balance of enough healthy-ish ingredients, without sacrificing too much from the sacred sugar/chocolate/butter triad (because otherwise, why bother?) I may have lost my sense of adventure in the world of cookies, but I've gained so much.

So without further ado, here is the recipe...just promise you won't bring these to the same potluck as me, kay?:

Dori's Favorite Cookies
1-1/2 sticks of unsalted butter
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup Silk Vanilla Soy Creamer*
1/2 cup peanut butter or almond butter
1-1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 cups oats
1-2 cups chocolate chips

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Beat together butter and sugars until creamy.
3. Add eggs, soy creamer, and peanut butter.
4. Add combined flour, baking soda, and salt. Mix well.
5. Stir in oats and choc chips.
Back 10-12 minutes.

* The original recipe calls for two eggs, but once I only had one egg and no vanilla (gasp!), so I substituted Silk Vanilla Soy Creamer, which I love beyond all reason, and found the results quite revolutionary, only furthering my addiction to this heavenly product. You can easily use two eggs and 1 teaspoon vanilla if you are sadly lacking in Silk Vanilla Soy Creamer.


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So, do you have a favorite cookie recipe you make over and over again? Please do share! Or is it a big secret? Or not? Are you a wild and crazy different-cookie-all-the-time type of person? Or are you perpetually dieting and therefore abstaining from baking cookies? Or do you not make cookies due to gender issues? We'd like to know.

Squashed squash

This Thanksgiving we stayed home and just had dinner with the two of us. I made the key dishes, and slided on a few items that, if serving guests, I’d certainly do from scratch. But even I had to draw the line when I caught myself starting to open the can of cranberry sauce at the table. Presentation faux pas!

We got a smoked turkey from Corralitos Market in...you will never guess where...Corralitos. It was (and still is) fabulous. Highly recommend it. Much less daunting then roasting a turkey in the oven, in my opinion, and very tasty. The flavor makes for excellent soup too.

Cooking Thanksgiving dinner is just about my favorite holiday tradition. If I have Thanksgiving somewhere else, I cook the whole dinner anyway on a different night. I refuse to be deprived of leftovers!

Every year I try to add one new recipe to the mix. If it's a disaster, at least it's the only one (hopefully) and it can fade into the background without bothering anyone too much. This year I tried butternut squash puree from the Pioneer Woman Cooks blog.

I am new to squash. My whole life I have been brainwashed against squash by my father who hated it. It's discriminatory, really. Well, after reading this recipe, I thought, "It's time to give squash a chance."

Even as I started cooking, I had that lingering feeling that this would be a waste of efforts. The squash could not be trusted. It would surely be a disappointment.

Boy was I wrong. The squash puree was the surprise hit of the evening. I’ve already gotten a request to make more. In fact, there was a long speech given about this recipe needing to be added as a regular item to the menu at our house. The speech even included direct quotes from an article in the SF Chronicle that came out that day: Squash is one of the “Super food choices to reduce your risk of heart disease”.

I have to admit, it was good. The sweet potatoes were practically forgotten in the two-person stampede for seconds.

Using the blender at the end makes all the difference There is a textural resemblance to baby food that is hard to ignore, but in this case, it is so good chewing is irrelevant.

Special Halloween Edition

Here is the "spooky dish" I created for today's Halloween party. Had a couple bags of ollalieberries in the freezer leftover from going to a U-pick this summer with the Hughes family (Popsey's sister and our niece and nephew). They gave us ALL the berries they picked because it didn't make sense to take them back to Idaho. Thanks Hugheses!

I was thinking the berries had some Halloween potential, since they have that bloody coloring. A blood and guts pie? Maybe with organs sticking out of it or something? Then had the realization that cutting gashes in the top could be made to look like wounds with blood ooking out, and even more so if I tied the wounds up with sutures.

Tying the sutures required about all the dexterity I could muster. I used food-grade kitchen string peeled off into thinner threads. I wasn't quite prepared enough and a medium sized basting needle was all I could find in my sewing stuff. Next time I'd use a larger hooked needle.

Dough recipes all say to refrigerate the dough at least an hour before filling and baking, but this always seems to cause the dough to get stiff and crumbly. This time after it was cold and I tried working with it, it started falling apart as usual. I ended up letting it sit out to soften, and even then having to roll it out again. Oh well. Every time this happens I tear my hair out trying to deal with it, not sure which is more frustrating: that it will be cardboard textured after all that work, or that I'm stressing out over a stupid pie crust. Then we can't even tell anything went wrong when we're eating it. So this time I just tried to relax and go with it.

Cutting eyes and a mouth into it were a last minute idea, and it was a stroke of luck when the berries ooked out of the mouth like a tongue. Had to restrain myself from looking in the oven every 10 minutes to check out the ookage.