On religious pretzels and lovely western Africans

Sometimes, I feel wholly justified in sleeping for eleven hours.

At the moment I’m writing this, I just crawled out of my own bed for the first time in weeks, and I’m currently yawning, confused, and desperately trying to remember how the coffee routine in my house works.

At least I’m well-rested.


I just got back from a study tour of major American cities with an international program I’ve been working for. It was two other recent college grads and I, along with twenty lovely, if not easily distracted, western Africans. Add to that a crowded Times Square and luggage issues and vans with flat tires, and you’ll start to get an idea of my logistical day-to-day.

But there was also so so much fun. And lots of Senegalese dancing from a fantastic lady named Marguerite, who could move her hips in more directions than I think even exist. And patient French lessons from beautiful Ivorian boys, particularly on the pronunciation of vegetables, particularly concumbre. And some of the best soft pretzels I have ever tasted. (That’s where you come in.)


We were in what they cleverly call the Valley of No Wires – otherwise known as Amish country in Lancaster, PA. It’s the kind of place that makes you feel blasphemous for listening to an Ipod while driving through. And for owning a phone which is, safely hidden in the confines of a bag, deviously and sacrilegiously searching for 3G. Or at the very least, it makes you feel like some kind of technological tease, much like it would feel to eat a giant slab of chocolate cake in front of someone on a diet.

But, these pretzels. They almost make you forget about religion and blasphemy and all the man-upstairs rest for a moment. That is, until the woman at the pretzel stand tells you that the three open spaces in the dough actually represent the trinity, the twist in the center, arms crossed in prayer. But they also make unbelievable ice cream, which, in addition to being either vanilla or raspberry, happens to be completely secular.


The program is over now. I’m currently down twenty friends and trying to figure out the going rate for calls into Mali, but this is one of my favorite food memories from the trip: us sitting at picnic tables smack in the middle of Amish country, alternating bites of homemade pretzel with raspberry soft serve, racing the blaring sun as it melted cones and sundaes with reckless abandon. I don’t think I could go back without them, but you should.

Where I wish I could be

I have so many new things to tell you. So so many.

There are Amish pretzels, and twenty new lovely African friends, now come and gone, there are sixty five foot chartered schooners called Extrapolation. I think there's pesto somewhere in there, too, and a chana masala adaptation.


But while I'm sorting all of that out in a way that's at least slightly cogent, have a look at these. It's where I was yesterday, and where I think I wish I could be nearly every day. (Don't worry, I was at least thinking of food to tell you about, I promise.)

Foolproof formula

Have we talked about instant gratification on here yet? And how I, like most people, like it quite a bit?


Well, I do. I like it in all forms. My friend Katherin (the birthday-galette maker, remember?) and I hike this trail every so often that we have come to call Instant Gratification Hill. The name is self-explanatory, but essentially, you reach a lookout in about ten minutes. Five if you’re really trying, if ten minutes seems like too long to you.

I’ve found that sometimes, patience is just overrated. This holds true for most things (lines? USPS?), but where cooking is concerned, slow braising and rising times and starters certainly have their limits.


In the name of instant gratification, then, I bring you these cookies (bars?). They follow a pretty foolproof formula, which is to say: flour, sugar, summer fruit, copious amounts of butter. Done and done. They take about ten minutes to throw together (five if you’re really trying, if ten seems like too long to you). Here, patience is rendered completely irrelevant, which is the way I like it, preferably with one of these bars right alongside.



Blueberry Crumb Bar Cookies/Cookie Bars
(Adapted from Smitten Kitchen)

1 ½ cups white sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 cups AP flour
1 cup cold unsalted butter (2 sticks)
1 egg
¼ teaspoon salt
Zest and juice of one lemon
4 cups fresh blueberries
4 teaspoons cornstarch

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease a 9×13 inch pan.

In a medium bowl, stir together 1 cup sugar, 3 cups flour, and baking powder. Mix in salt and lemon zest. Use a fork or your fingertips to blend in the butter and egg. Dough will be crumbly, almost like scone dough before you add the buttermilk. Pat half of the dough into the prepared pan.

In another bowl, stir together the sugar, cornstarch and lemon juice. Gently mix in the blueberries. Sprinkle the blueberry mixture evenly over the crust. Crumble remaining dough over the berry layer.

Bake in preheated oven for 40 minutes, or until top is golden brown and berries and their juices are bubbling slightly on the edges. Cool completely before cutting into squares. (It also helps, but isn’t necessary, to store these in the fridge once they’re cool.)

Appropriately veganesque

Veganism is something I kind of shy away from. If you know me, you are well aware of my borderline sanity-threatening obsession with cheese. I am simply not willing to give that up. We can peacefully coexist, veganism and I, it’s just not my cup of proverbial tea, much like socks with individual toes or cutting the crusts off sandwiches.

I used to live with a girl who worked at our local food co-op, and as such, her diet became appropriately veganesque. She would regularly bring home tofu, nutritional yeast, and the like. For the most part I was game to try everything; I came around to my own occasional green smoothie, I came to love kombucha. I never did get within less than a few feet of nutritional yeast.


My point is, while I’ll likely never crossover into a land of no cheese, or bacon, or anything worth its culinary salt (I kid, I kid) I certainly don’t discount the possibility that vegan and good can exist in the same sentence. It can happen, and it does happen. And actually, I’ve done it:

These vegan cookies are damn good.


The thought of cookies without butter, eggs, or flour seems a bit like baking blasphemy at first, I know. But somehow, these little guys pull it off. Bananas and olive oil serve as the liquid and fat, respectively. There are nuts, and chocolate, which always help. I don’t exactly know how the rest all works, but I don’t really care. I’ve made these twice already, have fed them to precisely zero vegans, and everyone loves them.


See? You shouldn’t judge a cookie recipe by its dietary life decisions. Try it if you don’t believe me. (These also, as an added bonus, take barely twenty minutes to throw together.) My old roommate would be proud.

Vegan Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

3 large, ripe bananas, well mashed (about 1 1/2 cups)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup olive oil
2 cups rolled oats
2/3 cup almond meal
1/3 cup coconut, finely shredded & unsweetened
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
6 - 7 ounces dark chocolate chips or carob chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, racks in the top third.

In a large bowl combine the bananas, vanilla extract, and olive oil. In another bowl whisk together the oats, almond meal, shredded coconut, cinnamon, salt, and baking powder. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir until combined. Gently fold in the chocolate chips.

The dough will be a bit looser than a normal cookie dough, don’t be alarmed. This is perhaps the only setback to not having butter and flour. Drop two-teaspoon-sized balls of dough an inch apart onto a parchment or Silpat lined baking sheet. Bake for 12 - 14 minutes, making sure that the bottoms get nice and brown but just shy of burning. (If you don’t let these bake long enough, they will fall apart on you.)

Things owed

I suppose I owe you pita.

I’ve never owed anyone pita before. Money, sure. Favors, yes. But never pita. I’ll have to say, it’s not the worst kind of debt to have over your head. In fact, it’s actually quite nice. I’ve been running around lately, thinking every now and then about how I need to get on here and tell you about pita, and I’ve never once felt like hiding my checkbook, feigning forgetfulness, or say, screening your calls.


Pita is in the category of things that sound more impressive than they are difficult, like homemade pasta or figure eight knots or big pot blanching. Which, lucky for us, is the perfect combination in food. The oven does most of the work, combining the high heat and the moisture to make the steam that puffs up the pita.


I am human, though, and realize that pita is most common when it comes store-bought and plastic-wrapped. Also that, so long as you’re with me out on the east coast, heat waves and five hundred degree ovens don't make the best companions. I still think you should try this, at least once. (I’ve always been stubborn.) It’s really not so hard, and you’ll have pita to eat for weeks. Plus, you can add it to your list of things accomplished. For now, I can cross it off mine of things owed.


Whole Wheat Pita
(Adapted from epicurious.com)
2 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast
1 teaspoon honey
1 1/4 cups warm water
2 cups bread flour or high-gluten flour, plus additional for kneading
1 cup whole-wheat flour
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
Cornmeal for sprinkling baking sheets

Stir together yeast, honey, and 1/2 cup warm water in a large bowl, then let stand until foamy. While yeast mixture stands, stir together flours in another bowl. Whisk 1/2 cup flour mixture into yeast mixture until smooth, then cover with plastic wrap and let stand at warm room temperature until doubled in bulk and bubbly, about 45 minutes. Stir in oil, salt, remaining 3/4 cup warm water, and remaining 2 1/2 cups flour mixture until a dough forms. (I used a stand mixer for this step.)

Turn out dough onto a floured surface and knead, working in just enough additional flour to keep dough from sticking, until dough is smooth and elastic, 8 to 10 minutes. Form dough into a ball and put in an oiled large bowl, turning to coat. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let dough rise in draft-free place at warm room temperature until doubled in size, about 1 hour.

Punch down dough and cut into 8 pieces. Form each piece into a ball. Flatten 1 ball, then roll out into a 7-inch round on floured surface with a floured rolling pin. Transfer round to 1 of 2 baking sheets lightly sprinkled with cornmeal. Roll out the rest of the dough in the same manner. Loosely cover pitas with 2 clean kitchen towels and let stand at room temperature 30 minutes.

Set oven rack in lower third of oven and remove other racks. Preheat oven to 500°F. Transfer 4 pitas, 1 at a time, directly onto oven rack. Bake until just puffed and pale golden, about 2 minutes. Turn over with tongs and bake 1 minute more. Cool pitas on a cooling rack. Bake remaining 4 pitas in same manner.

The stars aligned

I have to speed over pita, just for today. This is much better.


Yesterday was what felt like the hottest day of the summer thus far, or at the very least, the stickiest. The humidity was so heavy you practically had to move it out of the way to walk through it, a curtain of muggy, damp, summer air.

I mention this only to help explain the fact that pasta with mushroom ragu was decidedly not what the weather called for last night. Salad would have been more fitting. Perhaps no food at all would have been better, and just really cold beer and freezer packs alternated with new ones as they thawed.


But it happened, as it sometimes does, that what was in the fridge came together in a mushroom ragu kind of way, or the stars aligned, or I really didn’t mind all the pasta kneading on such a hot day.

A customer at the restaurant the other day left a note on the back of their receipt thanking the server and complimenting the food. I am tempted to borrow from their own words about our kobe beef, for lack of a better way to describe this pasta. It was, as the man that sat at table twenty this weekend would say, downright transcendental. It is a rather dramatic description, yes, perhaps a little pretentious-sounding, but this time, really just spot on.


Try this. You’ll know what I mean. Pasta can be transcendental, probably unbeknownst to Thoreau. Something about it is incredibly complex-tasting, even though you can count the ingredients on two hands. I blame it on the red wine.

Fettuccine with Mushroom Ragù

The eggplant in this recipe really just helped to bulk up the sauce; feel free to use more if you want the flavor to be more pronounced. Also, whatever kind of mushrooms you have on hand will more than suffice. This is my favorite kind of recipe – it is one very easily thrown together, mostly by eye.

½ a large eggplant, finely diced
3 large cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup chopped onion
8 oz mushrooms finely chopped
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon black olive tapenade, or mined black olives
1/3 (or thereabouts) cup dry red wine
1 tablespoon minced fresh oregano
12 ounces fresh fettuccine

Sweat garlic and onion in olive oil until translucent. Add mushrooms and eggplant and cook over medium heat until they wilt and give up their juices. Don’t let juices evaporate. Stir in tomato paste and tapenade. Add wine, cook briefly, then season with oregano, salt and pepper. Remove from heat.

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil, add fettuccine, stir to separate strands and cook about 3 minutes. Transfer fettuccine to skillet. Add just a bit of olive oil to the noodles. Gently fold ingredients together over low heat until mushroom mixture has reheated and is evenly mixed with fettuccine. Top with grated pecorino if you’d like (you should like, it makes it much better).

A little nostalgia for you

Being home coaxes out the nostalgia in me. Looking for something in my old room or on the family computer becomes an exercise in distraction, a trip down 21st century memory lane as I click through scores and scores of old pictures, ultimately forgetting what led me to my room or the computer in the first place.

I don’t have a recipe today, but I do have a little nostalgia for you. Consider it photographic sustenance, to tide you over. Remember way back when, when I first started this thing? I was tripping over words, attempting grand mission statements for this blog, and I told you about this one picture, perfectly illustrative of my own pickiness as a little girl. I came across that picture recently.


There I am. Since, I have realized that food is much more than a lunch-box filler, sandwiched between two pieces of white bread, but I did know a few things in those days. Chiefly, that the only proper way to show your appreciation for a good peanut butter sandwich is to have pieces of it left behind on your face afterward. Also, that the only thing better than a good meal is a good nap immediately following a good meal.

I believe in eating with purpose, and with food on your face for good measure, if that’s what does it for you. Perhaps part of me is still that awkward eight year-old, with an irrational fondness for pb&j and a secret love for purple pajamas. This picture reminds me of those things, of youth, of starting this little space, and so I wanted to share it with you.

Note: stay tuned for Greek food. I have been churning out pita in my kitchen (even though the heat here has rarely felt the need to dip below ninety), an action which, to be sure, is a certain kind of martyrdom in the name of Mediterranean flatbread.