Sausage and Potato Flatbread

In order to get my sister and I to finish every single grain of rice in our bowls, my grandmother used to tell us that leaving rice grains would mean our future husbands would be ugly. “What do you mean ‘ugly’, grandma?” we asked. “Lots of pockmarks. Or freckles. Or both!” exclaimed my grandmother.

Unfortunately for my grandmother, marrying yucky boys was the last thing on our minds. So she quickly revised her strategy: not finishing all your rice would mean we would grow up with lots of freckles! Yikes! From then on, not one grain of rice was seen in anyone’s rice bowl. Funny thing is, little did she know that we would one day grow up and live in a country where people actually think freckles are cute!

(I hope I’m not giving anyone the impression that my grandmother was cruel because she was the sweetest and kindest woman. She just had a funny strategy of asking us to finish our dinner.)

Thanks to my grandmother’s efforts, the philosophy of not wasting food is now permanently etched in my brain. So, what does that have to do with flatbread? If you’ll remember (from what seems like ages ago), the creation of a certain sourdough starter (admit it, you thought I killed it already, didn’t you!) and its continual maintenance (ha! but I didn’t!) generate enough leftover starter that I can feel the onset of freckles just from thinking about dumping it in the trash.

What to do … what to do? Thanks to a recipe from breadtopia, slight modifications, and an expectation of something more like flatbread than a fluffy pizza, not one grain(?) of wheat will go to waste!

 

Sweet Potato and Leek Latkes

Happy Hanukkah, everyone!

Ok, ok, so I didn’t actually know that Hanukkah has already started until my friend Noah told me about it yesterday. Being non-Jewish, I feel like maybe it’s ok. But then again, I do have a lot of Jewish friends, so you would think I would pay attention to stuff like that. I guess I’m just a terrible friend.

To make up for my ignorance, I tried my hands at making latkes. I have to preface this by admitting that I wasn’t too hopeful since I’ve attempted latkes twice before and both times, they ended up as soggy messes that failed to hold together. But I refuse to let latkes defeat me! So in Battle of Latkes III: The Reckoning, I decided to cheat just a little and use sweet potatoes instead of regular potatoes.

Not only did a semi-sweet latke sounded lovely to me, but sweet potatoes are also much drier than regular potatoes, so I might be saved from the cursed sogginess. Since they are drier than regular potatoes, though, I actually had to throw an extra egg into the mix to get the latkes to bind. I also threw in a little bit of cornstarch as extra binding insurance in addition to the flour that’s usually in latke recipes. Finally, I up-ed the cooking time since sweet potatoes require slightly longer to cook through.

The result, as you can see above, was not too bad and definitely my best and proudest attempt to date. I might even go so far as to say I’ve defeated the latke this time around: Angi 1/Latkes 2. The latkes held up relatively well and tasted quite yummy, especially with a horseradish yogurt I whipped up last minute. Basically, we had some yogurt in the fridge and some horseradish leftover from a Bloody-Marys morning long ago. Also, I was too cheap to splurge on creme fraiche or even a tub of sour cream that I’m only going to use a little bit of (welcome to the life of a grad student!). I still think I have some playing around to do in order to get the latkes to be crispy without being too burnt, but perhaps that battle can be saved for next Hanukkah.

 

Curried Winter Squash Soup

Winter has definitely arrived in San Francisco. I conclude this not from any sudden changes in weather, but from the millions of holiday sale signs and the constant barrage of holiday jingles everywhere you go. My conclusion is also supported by the appearance of winter veggies in our farm box - winter squashes, sweet potatoes, leeks, etc. What? No kale?? That’s right - no kale yet! This makes me sad (I’ve been wanting to make a big pot of caldo verde for a while now) but probably makes numerous other subscribers happy.

In any case, with my kale soup visions as yet unrealized, I have to resort to other soup options. Roasted butternut squash soup is always a popular item, but since we haven’t received any butternut squashes, I figured any winter squash should work (I was right). The squash we got was a ‘delicata’ squash (also called sweet potato squash), which is pretty much like a pumpkin but sweeter and creamier. A quick roast in the oven, toss in plenty of ginger and spices, and you’ve got a soup that’ll warm you right up - perfect for those cold and foggy winter nights when one’s stuck at home working on one’s thesis (and by ‘one’, I really mean Nathan).

 

Baby Spinach Salad with Persimmons, Blue Cheese, and Candied Walnuts

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!!

Since Thanksgiving is probably my favorite holiday (how can I not love a day all about cooking, eating, and hanging out??), I always get very excited when the end of November rolls around. With most of my friends being foodies also, the last few Thanksgivings have ended up being cooking marathons, when we try out as many cool recipes as possible.

This year, however, I celebrated a quieter Thanksgiving with my sister. With just the two of us, I vetoed the idea of buying a turkey (much to her dismay) and instead we made Zuni Cafe’s Roasted Chicken instead. That recipe is truly amazing! Ok, so you do need to plan ahead and salt the chicken (use the term “dry brine” to impress your friends) two days in advance, but the resulting product is more than worth it. Juicy, flavorful, with a super-crispy skin - basically, everything you want your roast chicken to be.

As for sides, we went with a spinach salad with persimmons+blue cheese+candied walnuts (recipe follows), some beautiful golden-crusted brussel sprouts a la Heidi of 101 Cookbooks (although we did put in less cheese, opting for a lighter side dish since we had so much chicken to deal with), and a chestnut and wild mushroom stuffing a la Jardinière (to which we added a bit of sausage).

(Unfortunately, I had high hopes for the chestnuts in the stuffing and while the dish tasted great, the chestnuts didn’t really add much so I would probably skip the chestnuts next time. As long as you have a good selection of wild mushrooms - we combined cheap non-wild creminis with dried porcinis and a couple of chantrelles - the stuffing will taste amazing anyway.)

 

Rice Porridge (Jook)

Is it weird that I’ve never gotten a flu shot?

I’ve lived 30 years of my life with the explicit mission of getting poked by as little number of needles as possible and it’s done me pretty well so far. But last week, I started to wonder if I need to reconsider my stated mission. Not that I’ve kept track, but looking back, I think I have gotten the flu every time I start to see flyers about getting your flu shots. Hmm…

When I was little, every time I would get sick, my parents would make me eat giant bowls of really bland noodles in a clear soup with a few chunks of fish floating around - what I dubbed ’sicky noodles’. Even now, when I see ‘fish soup with noodles’ on any menu, I associate it with sickliness and avoid it at all cost. (”Why not order something with taste instead??”)

Unsurprisingly, being sick makes me not want to cook. Well, not much anyway. While I still can’t bring myself to cook ’sicky noodles’, I have started to believe in the power of jook (or congee, or rice porridge, whatever you want to call it). Jook is probably on the comfort food list of every Cantonese person — even my sister who hated jook when she was young now craves it every so often.

So last Thursday, since I was just laying on the couch feeling miserable, I decided I might as well be useful and babysit a big cauldron of jook I can have for dinner. Jook is easy but takes quite a bit of time - when you’re down with the flu, though, time is something you’ve got plenty of.