Chili and cornbread

American Food

My teenagers complain that I make hippie food and not American food, so this is an effort to make something their friends will recognize when they decide to stay for dinner. But without any processed foods, sugar, or meat in it. The friends liked it anyway.

How to make chili and cornbread:

In the morning after breakfast, put two cups of pinto beans to soak in a bowl with plenty of water. About an hour and a half before dinner, pour the beans into a large saucepan – again with a lot of water – bring to a boil and simmer over low heat for about an hour. If that’s not convenient, you can also soak the beans the day before you need them and cook them the evening before. Or use canned beans.

When the beans are done, they’ll be soft enough to cut in half easily with a fork. Now make the cornbread. Preheat the oven to 400. In a medium mixing bowl, mix three cups of medium-grind cornmeal, a teaspoon of salt, 1/3 cup of olive oil, two eggs and a cup of water. Or for vegan cornbread, substitute 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder for the eggs. Mix and pour into a greased piepan. Bake until dry in the center, about twenty minutes.

Once the cornbread is in the oven, make the chili. Drain the beans into a colander. In the saucepan, put enough oil to cover the bottom generously, heat until medium-hot, and saute a chopped onion in it over medium heat. While the onion’s cooking, add a teaspoon of salt, two chopped cloves of garlic, a chopped green pepper, four chopped mushrooms, a teaspoon of cayenne (if wanted), and a teaspoon of cumin. Once the onion and pepper are soft, add the beans, a half-pint or so of tomato sauce, and a cup of water. Simmer over low heat for another 20 minutes or so.

Serve chili with cornbread, grated cheddar cheese, shredded lettuce, sliced avocado, and plain Greek yogurt.

Vegetarian or Vegan?

A great vegan dinner if you use baking powder in the cornbread and don’t put out cheddar cheese or yogurt. Instead, try sprinkling some cashews over the top.

Will the leftovers keep?

Yes, vegan chili will keep for at least a week in the refrigerator, and so will the cornbread if you wrap it up well in plastic.

Chickpeas on polenta

Canned chickpeas or dried ones?

Yes. Really, it depends how organized you are. Dried chickpeas are cheaper, and they aren’t canned so you don’t have to worry about cancer-causing bpa in the can lining. But you have to remember at breakfast to soak them for dinner. If you forget, use the canned kind. Or make spaghetti, and soak the chickpeas for the next day.

How to make chickpeas with polenta:

In a medium-sized saucepan, heat 1/4 cup of olive oil over medium heat, and then saute a chopped onion in the oil until it is soft. Add 3 cloves of minced garlic, 1 teaspoon of cumin, a teaspoon of coriander, a cup of frozen tomato sauce from last summer (or a tablespoon of canned tomato paste and a cup of water), and a large pinch of salt. Cook, stirring, for 1-2 minutes. Add the soaked chickpeas, a cup of water or leftover chicken or miso soup, 1 teaspoon of cayenne pepper, and bring to a simmer. (Or use a drained can of cooked chickpeas, and don’t add any water). Cover, reduce the heat to low, and simmer for ten minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare the polenta. Put four cups of water in a large saucepan and bring the water to a boil over high heat. When the water boils, slowly pour in 1 1/4 cups of polenta (coarse-ground cornmeal), stirring constantly. Let the polenta cook for about two minutes over medium-low heat, and then it is done. If you want more solid, sliceable polenta, spread it thin on a cookie sheet to cool.

Go back to the chickpea sauce and add a bunch of spinach or other greens, a handful at a time, until it is wilted. Simmer uncovered for five minutes while you finish the polenta. Taste and add salt and pepper as needed.

Vegetarian or vegan?

Yummy and vegan, unless you use chicken soup for the broth. A good meal to have for dinner as a family, or to serve when people come over. You can have it simmering when the guests arrive, and serve it whenever you like.

Can I keep this for later?

Yes, like most stews this one will taste better the next day, when the polenta will be more solid and the flavors of the chickpea stew will blend better. It won’t freeze well though.

Chickpea crepes

Why chickpea flour?

You could just make wheat flour crepes, but these chickpea flour crepes are not much harder and have a lot more flavor. Plus, they don’t have any gluten, so if you’re cooking for a vegetarian with a gluten allergy, this is a good direction to go in.

How to make chickpea crepes:

First make the crepes: in a medium-sized mixing bowl mix 1 cup of chickpea flour (look in the health food section or bulk section of your grocery store), 4 teaspoons of regular flour (or leave this out if it needs to be gluten-free), a large pinch of salt, four eggs, 1 1/3 cups of milk, and 4 tablespoons of olive oil. Mix well. In a medium-size frying pan, melt half a tablespoon of butter, pour in 1/4 cup of the batter, and cook until browned on the bottom; then flip with a spatula and cook briefly (just a few seconds) on the other side. Stack up the crepes on a countertop or plate. Repeat until you have used all the batter.

Chickpea crepe

Now to fill the crepes: Lay all the crepes out on the counter and ladle some tomato sauce on to the middle of each one. Add some crumbled feta cheese, and roll the crepes up around the filling. Tuck in the ends as much as possible, and lay each crepe in a 9×12 roasting pan. Push the crepes up against each other to help them hold together. Bake at 350 F for ten minutes or until the cheese is melted, and eat hot with a large salad, perhaps a beet salad.

For a different filling, use sliced mushrooms sauteed in butter and crumbled blue cheese. Or, as in the picture, try grated gruyere cheese and sauteed spinach. Recently I’ve been doing these with gruyere and apple (microwave the apple to soften it), or with roast beef, swiss cheese, and grilled peppers and onions, like a philly cheese steak.

Vegetarian or vegan?

Yummy and vegetarian, but not vegan because of the eggs and milk. A good meal to have for dinner as a family, or to serve when people come over. You can have it ready to bake when the guests arrive, and bake for a few minutes and serve whenever you like.

Can I keep this for later?

Yes, these chickpea crepes are still good the next day, but they’ll begin to get tired and soggy after that. They’re really best fresh.

Chicken with clementines

Another one from Ottolenghi

This recipe was originally from Yottam Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem cookbook, where he does it with fennel root instead of potatoes and arak instead of wine, and serves it over rice or bulgar. That might be interesting to try sometime, but this is a one-pot meal, and I was able to make it with things I had in the house, rather than going shopping for the fennel root and arak, and letting things marinate overnight.

How to make chicken with clementines:

Preheat oven to 475. In a regular soup bowl, mix 1/2 cup white wine, 1/2 cup olive oil, a handful of thyme, 2 tsp mustard, the juice of half a lemon, the juice of a clementine, 1/4 cup of brown sugar, salt and pepper, a handful of crushed fennel seeds.

Now take a 9×12 roasting pan or any casserole, and put pieces of raw chicken in it – I used drumsticks, but any chicken would be fine. Add a bunch of peeled potatoes, quartered into thick wedges. Slice four clementines with their peels on into thin slices, and mix the chicken, potatoes, and clementines all together. Pour the sauce over the top. Bake at 475 until the chicken and potatoes are done, mixing a couple of times to be sure all the potatoes get done evenly and have sauce coating them. It will take about 45 minutes; the potatoes should be at least a little puffy and browned. We ate it as soon as it came out of the oven, with 1/2 cup chopped parsley sprinkled on top, but Ottolenghi suggests draining off the extra sauce and cooking it down to make a syrup, and then pouring that over the top before the parsley.

Raw spinach/arugula salad or sauteed spinach makes a good side, with vinegar or tahini sauce.

Vegetarian or vegan

This is a meat dish, but you could totally substitite tempeh for the chicken and it would be delicious, vegan, and gluten-free.

Can I keep chicken with clementines for later?

Yes, it would be even better reheated the next day.

Chicken soup and matzo balls

Chicken soup for a cold:

Official scientific studies have finally shown it: chicken soup is about the best thing you can do for the common cold. So enjoy!

Raw chicken or leftover chicken?

The great question in making chicken soup. My grandmother always used a fresh chicken for chicken soup, never leftovers. I hate to throw away the leftovers when we have roast chicken, so I usually use them to make chicken soup. I’ve tried it both ways, and they’re both good. If you use a previously roasted chicken, the soup will taste a little more complex and smokier.

Either way, I always make lots of extra soup, and then I freeze it in small tupperwares. That way, I can use the frozen chicken soup as a base for many other recipes – leek and potato soup, vegetable soup, celery-mushroom soup, gefilte fish, and so on.

How to make Chicken Soup:

Put a chicken or a chicken carcass in a large pot. Cover the chicken with water and put it on to boil over high heat. If it’s a fresh chicken, be sure you remembered to get the heart and neck out of the inside first, though you can throw those into the soup too for flavor.

While the chicken cooks, chop and add one onion, three sticks of celery, and three carrots. Some people cut the carrots into rounds, but my grandma always cut her carrots into sticks, and that’s how I do it too. As you get done chopping, throw the vegetables in with the chicken. Once the vegetables are all in, start making the matzoh balls.

When the carrots are soft, after about an hour, use two forks or kitchen tongs to pull the chicken out. Using a long thin knife and a large fork, slice off thin strips of meat and throw it back into the soup. If it’s a fresh chicken, you should save the rest of the meat for another meal. If it’s roasted leftovers, you’ll need to hunt a bit to get the last scraps of chicken off the bones. Throw away the bones. Once the chicken’s back in, let it heat for a minute, and then serve. Put two or three matzoh balls in a bowl, and ladle the soup on top of them. Or, if you don’t make matzoh balls, serve the soup with crackers or bread.

Vegetarian or Vegan?

If you want to make a vegan soup instead, make the soup the same way except instead of the chicken, put in a cup of Japanese miso. When I make the vegan version (and sometimes even with the chicken), I like to add some spinach at the very end, too.

Will it keep?

Chicken soup will be good reheated the next day, but after that you should freeze it in small containers to keep for stock. You can thaw it on the counter, in the fridge, or quickly in the microwave. But if you thaw it in the microwave, run hot water over the bottom so you can take it out of the tupperware and put it in a regular bowl; I don’t like to microwave in plastic.

Chicken pot pie

Frozen Banquet Pies or make at home?

Everyone loves those cheap frozen Banquet chicken pot pies – my mother used to make them for us as treats, and my kids love them too. But they do take a pretty long time to make, if you need five or six of them, even now that you can do them in the microwave (and they don’t taste the same cooked in the microwave as they do if the crust browns in the oven). It doesn’t take much longer to make chicken pot pie from scratch, and I don’t think it’s any more expensive, either. Most recipes I’ve found involve canned cream of chicken soup and canned carrots, but I make chicken pot pie pretty much from scratch. I do start with leftover chicken already cooked, which saves trouble and helps use up leftovers.

How to make chicken pot pie:

Put a medium-size saucepan half full of water on to boil. Grease a casserole or a pie pan with butter. In a mixing bowl, make the biscuit crust. Melt 6 tablespoons of butter in the microwave, then add three teaspoons of baking powder, a teaspoon of salt, a cup of milk, and two cups of flour. Mix. Take half of the batter and spread it roughly over the bottom of the casserole or pie pan. Preheat the oven to 425.

Now for the filling. Chop five carrots and three sticks of celery into bite-size pieces and add them to the boiling water to cook. Meanwhile, heat 1/4 cup of olive oil in a second saucepan over medium heat. When it’s hot, add 1/2 cup of flour and stir for two minutes. Slowly add one cup of water and 2 cups of chicken broth (or leftover chicken soup). Stir frequently until this gravy boils, then take it off the heat. Stir in some oregano, salt and pepper to taste. Drain the carrots and celery and add them to the gravy. Also add 2/3 cup of frozen peas, and about 1 1/2 cups of cooked chicken, cut into bite-size chunks. Pour this filling into the casserole over your crust, and then spread the rest of the biscuit crust on top. Bake about half an hour, or until the biscuit crust is browned.

We have raw spinach salad as a side, with vinegar or tahini sauce.

Vegetarian or vegan

Chicken pot pie’s a meat dish, though you could easily leave out the chicken and add seitan or tempeh instead; I don’t recommend leaving out the milk and butter.

Can I keep chicken pot pie for later?

Yes, it’s fine the next day.

Cheese blintzes

My grandma, and my brother when he was small

First Cooking Memories

When we visited my grandma in Brooklyn, she used to keep my parents up too late talking. But we kids woke up early. My grandma always let the other adults sleep, and took me and my younger brother downstairs to make cheese blintzes for everyone. Making blintzes for nine people took all morning. From when I was eight years old, my job was to stand on a chair so I could reach the stove, and make the pancakes. My brother sat at the table and folded the cheese in. By the time we were done, my mom and dad and grandpa would have slowly made their way downstairs and drunk their coffee, and we’d have the blintzes for lunch, with cantaloupe and sour cream.

Nowadays cheese blintzes are too rich for lunch for us, and we have them for dinner, and even then not too often, with so much dairy. And instead of sour cream, we have Greek yogurt, with less fat. But they’re still a big favorite with the kids, and with everybody.

How to make cheese blintzes:

First, the pancakes. In a two-cup glass measuring cup, mix one cup of flour with one cup of water, one egg, and a pinch of salt. There will be lumps in the batter; that’s okay. Melt half a tablespoon of butter in a medium-sized frying pan over medium heat, and pour in about 1/8 cup of the batter. Immediately lift the pan up off the heat and swirl it around to spread the batter out as much as possible. Then replace the pan on the stove and let the pancake cook until most of the surface is dry, and only the lumps are wet. The edges will begin to curl up. Flip the pancake out of the pan on to a clean board. (My grandma covered her linoleum counter with waxed paper; I have a wooden work surface to flip on to and I skip the waxed paper). The raw surface should be down and the cooked surface up. If the pancakes stick a little, scrape off the place where they stuck with a spatula and re-grease the pan. If they keep sticking, stop and wash the frying pan and start over.

Once you’ve got the hang of the pancakes, mix up the filling. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, mix eight ounces of Friendship fresh farmer’s cheese with one egg, a pinch of salt, and two tablespoons of sugar. Or, make your own ricotta: heat a gallon of milk in a stainless steel saucepan until it is very hot but not quite boiling. Add a tablespoon of sour salt (citric acid) or vinegar to a quarter cup of water, swirl it around, and add it to your hot milk. Stir for a minute, then let it sit for five minutes, then pour the curds and whey into a colander lined with cloth, and squeeze out most of the whey: that’s ricotta. Eight ounces of Friendship cheese will make about 3-4 blintzes; the gallon of milk will make about a quart of cheese.

When the pancakes are cool enough to handle, place about a handful of filling near the edge of a pancake, and roll it up. Tuck the edges inside, as if you were beginning to turn the blintz inside out from both ends. Pinch a little to keep the ends tucked in.

As you run out of either batter or filling, mix up another batch. It’s nearly impossible to make them come out even; use the leftover pancakes to make crepes later 🙂

When you have made all the blintzes, add two tablespoons of butter to the frying pan and gently put the blintzes in to fry on their other side. Cook until they are browned on the bottom, a few minutes, then flip them to brown on the other side. Repeat until you have fried all the blintzes. Reheat in the microwave if necessary, and serve hot with whole milk Greek yogurt, applesauce, and/or cantaloupe. Some people eat their blintzes with jelly, but we never did.

Vegetarian or vegan

Cheese blintzes are vegetarian, but they’re not vegan.

Can I keep cheese blintzes for later?

If you can keep them from all being eaten at once, cheese blintzes are delicious cold for lunch the next day, or reheated in the microwave.

Chawanmushi

Japanese breakfast for dinner?

We ate this at Smallwares on Fremont Street in Portland, and it was so delicious I wanted to figure out how to make it at home. It was surprisingly simple and cheap, and delicious too. Also, open to endless variations.

How to make Chawanmushi:

Put on a pot of beef broth: you can use beef bouillon cubes or toss in some shredded stew beef, or use the pan scrapings from yesterday’s roast beef. Use eight cups of water. Add a chopped onion and three chopped mushrooms. Cook the broth until it’s pretty concentrated, and add 1/4 cup of soy sauce, 1/4 cup of rice wine vinegar or just white wine, and a squeeze of anchovy paste or fish sauce. Simmer some more.

Meanwhile mix six eggs in a bowl. Add five cups of the beef broth to the eggs, first tempering the eggs so they won’t scramble, and stir. Distribute some of the beef in the bottom of each of five deep bowls (like cafe-au-lait bowls, or even mugs). Pour the egg and broth into the bowls, and microwave for about 12 minutes or until the custard is set. Ladle a little more broth over the top and serve hot.

Vegetarian or Vegan?

Neither vegetarian nor vegan. But you could make the broth with miso and soy sauce and mushrooms, and it would be vegetarian.

Will it keep?

Yes, it was delicious for lunch the next day, but it won’t keep very long. You can freeze the broth for next time though.

Celery-mushroom soup

Celery Season

Celery’s one of the first spring vegetables to come into season, because it’s basically a stem, like rhubarb or chives. It’s so exciting to have a new food after all those root vegetables and apples in the winter! But you can’t just be eating celery sticks all the time, so you need some decent recipes for things you can do with celery. This soup is an excellent choice for the early spring when it might still be cold; you can also use celery to make chopped chicken liver or chicken soup. Later on, when there’s a nice warm day, you can make celery granita.

How to make Celery-Mushroom Soup:

Chop about a third of a bunch of celery into small pieces and throw them into a large saucepan half full of water. If you’ve got the celery leaves, chop them and throw them in too. Add one chopped onion, a chopped carrot, and about seven regular small mushrooms, sliced into strips. Add a pint of frozen chicken soup, if you have any, or more water and a chicken or vegetable bouillon cube. Bring to a boil, lower the heat, and simmer until the celery starts to be soft. Then add a cup of macaroni or any kind of pasta noodles you want to use up. When the celery and the pasta are cooked soft, puree the whole thing together with an immersion blender. Add plenty of salt and pepper, and serve with crackers. (You have time to make the crackers while the soup cooks.)

Vegetarian or vegan?

This soup is vegetarian, and it’s vegan if you use vegetable stock or bouillon cubes instead of chicken. Better yet, use leftover frozen miso soup, or a little miso. Celery-mushroom soup is gluten-free if you use gluten-free rice in place of the macaroni, but my family thought it was better with the pasta.

Will celery-mushroom soup keep?

Yes, it will be good for several days if you keep it in a tupperware in the refrigerator. You might need to add a little water if it gets too thick.

Cauliflower curry

How to make cauliflower curry:

First put on a pot of rice. In a small saucepan, put 1 1/2 cups of rice and 3 cups of water. Cover and heat over high heat until the water boils; then turn the rice down to medium-low heat and keep cooking, covered, until the rice has absorbed all the water and gotten soft.

Meanwhile, make the curry sauce. Chop half a cauliflower and a bunch of green onions into bite-size pieces. Put 1/8 cup of olive oil in a wok. Add the chopped onions and cauliflower. While those cook, add 2 minced cloves of garlic, two teaspoons of fresh grated ginger, a teaspoon of cumin, half a teaspoon of cayenne pepper, half a teaspoon of coriander, half a teaspoon of turmeric, one teaspoon of salt, and half a teaspoon of black pepper. Stir after each addition.

When the cauliflower begins to get soft, add two cups of water and 1/2 cup of tomato sauce from your freezer, stir, and simmer until the cauliflower is entirely soft. Add another cup or two of water if the sauce begins to get dry. When the cauliflower is ready to eat, add a bunch of spinach and stir until the spinach is wilted. Serve over the rice, with full-fat Greek yogurt on the side.

Vegetarian or vegan?

Cauliflower curry is vegan and yummy and makes a good hot seasonal main dish in November! Though if you want it vegan, skip the Greek yogurt at the end.

Can I keep this for later?

Yes, cauliflower curry will be good reheated the next day or two, but it won’t freeze well.