A New Summer Favorite

I think about food all the time, but it seems I am especially laser-focused on what I want to cook and eat when nursing Sam to sleep in the evenings. As he drifts into a milk-induced slumber, I mentally peruse the contents of the refrigerator and kitchen cabinets, putting together dishes and meals according to what I find. A recent hunt and gather of this kind revealed the makings for Thai Shrimp Burgers (or so I thought) and some kind of rice noodle salad. The shrimp burgers were pre-made and purchased at our favorite grocery store, so that was done, but I needed assistance pulling off the kind of salad I craved and had ingredients for. After Sam drifted off, I googled "thai rice noodle salad" and found the following recipe (originally published in the January 2003 issue of Bon Appétit) on Epicurious.com. So good. I tampered with it only slightly, replacing the called-for linguine with rice noodles, and adding cucumbers and lots of Thai basil and mint. I love a little extra spice, so I upped the amount of chili-garlic sauce, too. This was an unfortunate decision on my part. The dish was far from ruined, but the heat was, let's just say, distracting the first night. The leftovers, on the other hand, were perfectly spiced. That said, you decide how far you want to go with the chili sauce.

Thai Noodle Salad
by Jennifer Martin, Portland, OR

12 ounces linguine (I used a whole package of rice vermicelli instead)
4 tablespoons oriental sesame oil (I drizzled the cooked noodles with roughly 2 tablespoons of dark sesame oil and cooked the sauce in a little peanut oil.)
8 green onions, chopped (I only used 4 green onions, which is all I had. More would be better.)
5 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon minced peeled fresh ginger
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup creamy peanut butter
1/4 cup soy sauce
3 tablespoons unseasoned rice vinegar
1 1/2 tablespoons chili-garlic sauce
2 cups mung bean sprouts (Didn't have these on hand so my salad went sprout-less. I did throw in a good amount of shredded Thai basil and mint and seeded sliced cucumber, though. I highly recommend the addition of fresh herbs, but I always do.)
1 cup finely shredded carrots

Cook pasta in large pot of boiling salted water until tender but still firm to bite. (If you are using rice vermicelli, follow the directions on the package.) Drain. Transfer pasta/vermicelli to large bowl; add 3 tablespoons sesame oil (or less) and toss to coat.

Heat remaining 1 tablespoon oil in heavy large skillet over medium-high heat. Add 6 green onions, garlic, and ginger; sauté until onions soften, about 2 minutes. Add honey, peanut butter, soy sauce, vinegar, and chili-garlic sauce; whisk to blend. Simmer sauce 1 minute. Cool to room temperature. Pour over pasta and toss to coat. Add sprouts and carrots (or in my case, cucumbers, mint, basil, and carrots); mix well. Transfer to platter; sprinkle with remaining green onions.

We grilled the shrimp burgers and dressed them with Sriracha mayonnaise, more mint, more Thai basil, and lettuce. The burgers would have been a lot better if they were actually the Thai version we requested at the store rather than the Cajun version that ended up in our basket - and on our buns, garnished with wholly inappropriate condiments. The salad saved our overly spiced, globally confused dinner from being a total failure and I have a new favorite summer salad. Just in time.

Will Write For (and About) Food

In December 2008, I was hired to replace the outgoing food writer for the Good Life magazine. I was thrilled. My first column would be published in the February 2009 issue and there were few stipulations regarding its content. It was up to me to come up with a recipe, written in conversational style, and an accompanying story. That was it. I wrote a piece with a Valentine's Day theme, turned it in ahead of schedule, and waited to hear from the editor, Ken Martin. I heard from him, but it wasn't the glowing praise I'd hoped to read. The email I received in early January announced the end of the Good Life, which meant my new gig as a food writer was over before it started. I'm posting the previously unpublished article here because it's filled with good background information about me and my family. And because last night I forgot to start the dough for the No-Knead Seed Bread I was going to write about today. Check back tomorrow for that post. For now, though, my first and last Good Life food column:

Ten years ago, I cooked Spaghetti al Tonno e Pomodoro for a man I wanted with all my heart. I had fallen. Hard. Wooing him with a fairly lusty plate of pasta and an inviting bottle of wine was my way of expressing serious interest. We were both writers doing time as waiters in a beloved Austin restaurant. I had just moved back to town after escaping to Seattle for a year. He had just moved back to town after a short stint in Virginia. We were both looking ahead. It felt like we were meant to be.

My year in Seattle was spent taking long walks and bicycle rides, working mindless temp jobs and fantasizing about food. I couldn’t afford to eat out and bought only meager grocery items to cook at home. My passion for all things culinary was instead fueled by a mountain of cooking magazines found in a storage closet in the rambling house I shared with four roommates. I carried a modest stack with me to work every day and copied recipes, studied techniques, and memorized ingredients in my copious downtime. Before long, I had made my way through every issue of Food and Wine, Gourmet, Fine Cooking, Vegetarian Times, and Cooking Light in that closet. I mastered the easier recipes that called for the cheapest ingredients, including the previously mentioned Spaghetti with Tuna and Tomato Sauce, and dreamed of the day when I could attempt the more precious dishes.

Now, ten years later, the man I wanted with all my heart is my husband and the father of our wondrous eight-month-old son. Spaghetti al Tonno e Pomodoro has been shortened (and anglicized)--around here the dish is now known as Tuna Pasta, and it remains, of all the meals in my much expanded and practiced repertoire, my husband's favorite. He recently admitted that sentiment plays a part in dictating his preference for the dish, which is why I've chosen it for this month's column. It has become "our" dish, a culinary Valentine, if you will. Make it for someone you love, or might love. Make it for yourself. It's easy, healthy, and relatively inexpensive, and you probably have a handful of necessary components lingering in your pantry already. Remember: your Valentine's Day meal – or any special meal, for that matter – need not involve high-end ingredients or an exhaustive grocery list. Special meals are special in exact proportion to the love and care you put into them and the spirit in which they are shared.

To make Tuna Pasta, start by draining a can of Italian tuna packed in olive oil into a large nonstick skillet. Release the tuna into a small bowl, break it up with a fork, and set it aside. Finely chop 3-6 cloves of garlic. When it comes to garlic I say bring it on, but I'm overly fond of the stinking rose and believe this humble yet powerful bulb elevates this dish to amazing heights. Worried that garlic breath might put a crimp in your romantic evening? Soothe yourself with the reminder that your dining partner will be eating the same thing. If that doesn't work, concentrate on garlic's reputation as an aphrodisiac. Long credited with prolonging physical strength, garlic was fed to pyramid-building Egyptian slaves while Tibetan monks were forbidden from entering the monasteries after eating the stuff. This is presumably because garlic was thought to inflame the passions. But I digress.

Open a 28-ounce can of plum tomatoes, pour the tomatoes and their juices into a large bowl, and with clean hands break them up. Set the bowl aside. Roughly chop a good handful of Italian parsley and put a large heavy pot of salted water on to boil. (A note about the parsley: if I still haven't convinced you not to worry about garlic breath, you may want to chop more than a handful of the stuff. If treated as another primary component rather than a condiment, parsley can counteract the effect of garlic on the breath.) Toast a tablespoon or two of pine nuts in a dry skillet and set them aside. If you like capers, rinse a tablespoon or two of brined or salted buds and set them aside, too.

Now you're ready to compose the sauce. Turn the flame under the skillet of tuna-infused olive oil to medium. When it comes to temperature add the garlic and cook, stirring, for thirty seconds. Pour the tomatoes and tomato juice into the pan and add a pinch of crushed red chili flakes and salt and pepper to taste. Lower the heat. Simmer the mixture until it has thickened slightly, about fifteen minutes. Add the tuna, adjust the seasonings, and set the pan aside. Immerse a pound of spaghetti into the boiling salted water and cook for eight to ten minutes until al dente. Drain it and return it to the pot. Add the sauce to the pot and marry it and the pasta with most of the chopped parsley and all of the pine nuts and capers. Gently toss the tangled, heady concoction and transfer it to a platter. Rain the rest of the parsley over the top and stand back and admire your creation. Ten years ago, my then future husband and I enjoyed our meal with a bottle of Mulderbosch Sauvignon Blanc--and to this day we often turn to the same wine when Tuna Pasta is on the dinner menu--but it would also go well with an off-dry rosé.

Austin Food Bloggers May Potluck

Yesterday's potluck was hosted by David Ansel, aka The Soup Peddler, and his family at their lovely south Austin home. The weather was gorgeous and the food and the company made for a perfect Sunday get-together. I could have hung out in the Ansel's backyard all day.

My date was Hunger Sauce blogger Kate Thornberry of Austin Chronicle fame. (Kathy is also a famous rock star - remember Glass Eye? - who goes by the name of Kathy McCarty, and a famous baker who goes by the name of the Pie Lady.) So many names. So many talents. She brought Pecan Tarts and I brought Fruit "Cupcakes" with Lavender Yogurt "Frosting." (Read on to discover the reasoning behind the quotes.) Because I was stuffed and generally overwhelmed by all the great food and desserts on offer, I waited until I got home to enjoy Kathy's tart. Oh. My. It was Pecan Pie perfection in four flaky, gooey, nutty, not-too-sweet bites. They don't call her the Pie Lady for nothing.

Other standouts included the Cajun Stuffed Chickens Mr. Ansel got somewhere in Lafayette, Louisiana and grilled for our pleasure. When I told him how much I loved them, he admitted that he wished he'd gone with his first impulse and saved one for himself. Judging from the comments I overheard, his generosity was truly appreciated. As for other desserts, the Donut Holes with Caramel Dipping Sauce from Cissi's Market were crazy good, as were the Mascarpone Brownies.

The faux cupcakes I made for the event are a version of something I came across in Cookie magazine either a year or a month ago. Who knows. I couldn't find the photo when I went looking for it, but remembered the image of individual towers of fruit sliced and layered to resemble small cakes topped with yogurt "frosting." They didn't make the cut as Sam's first birthday "cake" (see previous post), but made pretty little healthy sweet treats for the children - and several adults - who attended his party.

I've made these three times now. Twice using layers of pineapple, mango, and strawberry and once with pineapple and watermelon. The latter is pictured below. I don't recommend the watermelon version as it is, well, a bit watery.
Beyond that advice, I imagine lots of fruits would work well, as long as they can be sliced to lay flat. After making slabs of fruit, I used a flower-shaped cookie cutter roughly the size of the bottom of a cupcake liner to cut out little mango and pineapple flowers. I layered them with fat strawberry slices and topped them with strained plain yogurt flavored with a little lavender agave nectar. I then divided the yogurt into two bowls. I left one milk-white and tinted the other with a sprinkling of frozen blueberries. After topping the fruit stacks with alternating white and purple yogurt, I garnished each with a blackberry, a strawberry spear, and a tiny sprig of mint.

If you're familiar with the original Cookie photos that inspired these sweet treats, let me know. I'd also love to see images of your version of these fake-outs.

Sam's First Birthday Cake

To say this gorgeous creation was not my first choice for Sam's first birthday cake is a wild understatement.

My original ideas ran along the lines of sugarless concoctions featuring bananas and/or applesauce. Sam was slow to warm up to solid foods despite several months of experimentation on my part. By his eleventh month, he had only shown serious interest in bananas, applesauce, and pureed roasted sweet potatoes.

I couldn't bring myself to taint his perfect system with refined sugar just yet and was wary of introducing dairy in the form of butter too soon. For these reasons, my early attempts at "healthy" test cakes sucked. Punishment Cake is what I dubbed the whole wheat, sugar-free, butter-less banana "cake" I made. When I decided that a little butter wouldn't kill him, the lack of sweetness in my second experiment prompted my mother, who was nice enough to taste it, to ask, "You don't want to put a little sugar in it?"

I was stuck. I considered making Punishment Cake for Sam and something beautiful and indulgent for the grownup party guests but feared the damage this might do to his palate and psyche. I have hazy memories going back to my first year of life and imagined Sam might, too. It just wouldn't do to feed him something brown and tasteless on his first birthday while the rest of us got high on real pastry.

Then I realized something. Even if I put the sweetest, creamiest, most decadent dessert in front of him, he wouldn't be interested. If my research was correct, the most he was likely to do was squish it through his tiny little fingers before flinging it everywhere. I finally decided to chance it and make something everyone would like.

An Icebox Cake was perfect for the occasion. Ridiculously quick and easy to put together, it beats baking, cooling, and frosting a real cake any day. Layer a bunch of chocolate wafers with whipped cream, give it a couple of hours in the fridge to get nice and cool and smooshy, shave some chocolate over the top, and you have an impressive looking, delicious creation on your hands. (Believe me. I dreamed of slaving over Sam's first cake - really looked forward to it - then real life stepped in and quickly quashed my fluffy fantasy of spending an afternoon in the kitchen.)

Since the "cake" is really nothing more than a whipped cream delivery device, I knew it would be a hit. Its kitschy, nostalgic nature also went with the rest of the menu, which included pimento cheese sandwiches (which I'll post about later) and iced tea with mint from the garden. But what really clinched my decision was the fact that I could make Sam his own personal "cake," which looked like this:

Cute, huh?

In the end, the big cake wowed the big people and the little cake also did its job. Sam squished the top two layers between his tiny fingers, tasted a bit of the whipped cream, then flung little bits all over the porch. I was so proud.

I followed the Magnolia Bakery recipe to the letter for Sam's big day, but have had good luck in the past replacing the Nabisco's Famous Chocolate Wafers with Anna's Ginger Thins and the chocolate shavings with candied ginger and a sprinkling of cinnamon. Anna's makes seven different cookie flavors. Which ones would you slather with whipped cream and make into cake?


Icebox Cake
from The Magnolia Bakery Cookbook

3 cups heavy cream
3 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 (9-ounce) packages chocolate wafer cookies (I used Nabisco's Famous Chocolate Wafers)
Unsweetened cocoa (or chocolate shavings)

In a large bowl, beat cream, sugar and vanilla with an electric mixer on high speed until soft peaks form.

On a flat serving plate, arrange 7 cookies side by side in a circle, keeping 1 cookie in the center.

Spread with 1/2 cup whipped cream, making a 7-inch circle. Repeat with remaining cookies and cream, making 11 layers of cookies and ending with a layer of cream (there will be a few cookies left over). Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

To serve, dust top lightly with cocoa powder or chocolate shavings.