Sensing the Moment and Other Cheesy Ponderings

*Breathing a sigh of relief.* I've always been a big sigher. It's how I let go of tension. Ah, to exist as a breath. So brief and loaded with meaning. There are so many beautiful things given in this life, here's a list of recently pondered beauties returned as a tribute:

Sleepless  >  The Decembrists

Salty garbanzo beans

Crunchy leaves

Bags of apples

Old and broken cuckoo clocks

Dying light

Twilight walks

Golden retrievers

Sisters

Brokenness

Halloween

He Doesn't Know Why  >  Fleet Foxes

The entire Dark Was the Night album

Irish music at the Dubliner

I'm glad to savor the few quiet moments I can steal. I love our new neighborhood, which the rich people let Megan and I pretend to belong to. After going on an evening walk at 5 p.m. (almost dusk at that time), I made another of Mark Bittman's low-maintenance salads and fixed this antique cuckoo clock. The clock once belonged to my grandfather. I "borrowed" it from my parents because it was sitting in their basement collecting sawdust from my dad's woodworking and hung it on the wall in my old apartment. I walked away after hanging it, and the clock almost immediately crashed to the ground. I finally got around to gluing it back together last night. Here's hoping it's not a valuable handcrafted clock made by a German-Jewish clockmaker just before the onset of World War II ... knowing my luck.

Tomato and Garbanzo Bean Salad: tweaked from Mark Bittman's 101 Simple Summer Salads

2 tomatoes
1 garlic clove
olive oil
salt and pepper
1 15-ounce can garbanzo beans
3 cups water
2 green onions
lemon juice
cumin
parsely

I roasted the tomatoes because they're not ripe at all right now. To quick-roast, preheat the oven to 400. Cut tomatoes in quarters and arrange on a baking sheet with the unpeeled garlic clove. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast for one hour to allow some of the water to evaporate and the juices to concentrate the flavor.

Meanwhile, in a skillet, bring the water (salted) and drained garbanzo beans to a boil. Reduce to simmer and boil until barbanzo beans are cooked through--should take 10 to 15 minutes, but do a taste test. Drain the beans. In the skillet saute the green onions with olive oil. Toss in the garbanzo beans and tomatoes and garlic. Smash the tomatoes and garlic so the juices spread all over the salad. Remove to a serving bowl and season with lemon juice, cumin and parsely.

I Channa You Masala

A few weeks ago after a rather long meeting at work, I took a break on the sunny spring day to go to the Bookworm. I found Wallace's Infinite Jest but just wasn't satisfied until I made the entire bookstore staff turn the culinary department upside down looking for Orangette Molly's A Homemade Life. Once we had scoured the entire store to find the book, I couldn't very well not get it, could I? I was initially unsure about the book. There was a ridiculous amount of hype about it in the foodie blogosphere. But the cover was just so pretty. I've fully dug in and completely abandoned reading The Satanic Verses and ever picking up any sort of post-modern writing again, I swear. (Unless it's by Jonathon Safran Foer.) I love the book. Love it. I was reading it at lunch one day and actually started crying. Tears running down my cheeks. I had to go over and get a paper towel to dry my eyes. But funny thing, I hadn't run into anything I needed to make rightthissecond. I had been folding over the ears of the pages at the end of every single chapter, but I always do that and I never follow through. Until I came across the channa masala recipe. What I need from recipes these days is one that won't take long and one that doesn't require a separate trip to the grocer. What sealed the deal were these ingredients: fresh cilantro and garam masala. I had cilantro just sitting around the fridge after the salsa, waiting to be used on something besides a salad. And I had a bag of garam masala collecting dust in the back of my spice cabinet. Who has garam masala just lying around? I mean, I don't even know what that is. And just like Molly, this meal comes with it's own story. Unfortunately for me, mine is not accompanied with a cute boy sauteeing onions in my kitchen. My story is a touch more tragic. I had just been talking to someone, nary 24 hours prior to making the channa masala, about my partiality for chopping saying something like "the repetitive motion is therapeutic, and if you have a bad day, you can take it out on a bunch of vegetables, but I'm such a clutz it's a miracle I haven't severly injured myself." You can see where this is going. Instead of finely chopping the cilantro, I finely chopped my left index finger. I wanted to cry, but instead I just cursed all the way to the bathroom, ripping through the cupboard looking for some freaking bandaids and going through tissue upon tissue of blood-soaked toilet paper. Of course I was home alone, and of course my nurse mother was unable to answer her phone. I finally found an old T-shirt and paced around the living room until I was convinced I didn't need to go to the hospital to get stitches. (Have I mentioned I'm dramatic?) I finished off the rest of the meal with the T-shirt wrapped tightly around my finger. And no, blood didn't get into the cilantro. Molly's Channa Masala:

1/4 cup olive oil 1/2 large onion, chopped 1 teaspoon cumin 1 teaspoon coriander 1/2 teaspoon ginger 1 teaspoon garam masala 1/2 teaspoon cardamom 2 garlic cloves, minced salt 2 14-ounce can diced tomatoes 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro finger (just kidding) dash cayenne pepper 2 14-ounce can chickpeas On medium heat, saute onion until soft-ish, about 5 minutes. Toss on the spices then add the garlic and saute for another minute. Add 1/4 cup water, bring to boil and simmer until its just about evaporated. Add the tomato juice from the cans of diced tomatoes. Simmer for a couple minutes then add the tomatoes and cilantro. Boil and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the drained and rinsed chickpeas along with 1/4 cup of water. Boil and reduce to simmer for 10 to 15 minutes until chickpeas are tender but firm to the bite. Halfway through add another couple tablespoons of water. Serve garnished with cilantro. Molly recommends serving with plain yogurt or lime.

Garbanzo Bean Stew

I thought I was going to have my Monday routine back in action: come home from work, work out, cook, watch Gossip Girl. Alas, Gossip Girl was a rerun--for the fourth week in a row! Come on people. Don't they know I need my guilty pleasures.

I suppose I shouldn't complain because the rest of my routine worked out. Dinner was great and easy. And I even managed to get over my fear of cooked spinach. Cooked spinach brings up bad a singular bad memory for me. I swear it happened, but my dad swears it didn't.

I was five and we were living in the rented house in LaVista. Mom must have been working, so Dad was making dinner or reheating something and it was, dun dun dun, cooked spinach. I swear it was so bad I gagged and threw up. Probably I just spit it out of my mouth. So I got mad at my dad, probably made some sort of fit-temper-tantrum thing and ran away from home. I only made it to the bottom of the street before Dad came and got me. All this drama over a bunch of limp spinach that (to be fair) probably was pretty bad. I had major issues with vegetables as a child. Come to think of it, this is actually a really great memory because I have always wanted to dramatically leave somewhere and have someone chase after me--just like in the movies. You could say it's a fantasy of mine. I haven't added any sort of wilted green to anything since then, even though it seems to be so popular of late. I'm over it. So mom, I think it's time that you got over your childhood fear/hatred for beans and make this garbanzo bean stew. You can work your way up to lima beans.

Garbanzo Bean Stew: adapted from Food and Wine
10 ounces fresh spinach
2 cloves garlic
1 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
2 teaspoons paprika
1 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon cloves
1 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 onion, chopped
1 15-ounce can diced tomatoes
1 15-ounce cans of garbanzo beans or chickpeas

In a medium skillet, bring a pot of water to a boil. Drop in spinach and simmer for 2 or 3 minutes until wilted, stirring. Drain spinach in colander and use a paper towel to squeeze out some of the water. Coarsley chop.

In a small mixing bowl, mince the garlic. Mix garlic with turmeric, salt and pepper. Add in 1/4 cup of the water from one of the cans of chickpeas. Add paprika, cumin, cloves and chile powder and blend together.

In the medium skillet, saute onions with tomatoes (undrained). Allow some of the juice to evaporate, so saute for about 5 minutes. Add the garlic mixture and the rest of the chickpeas and it's water. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to simmer. Add the spinach and simmer for 15 minutes or until garbanzo beans are cooked through and split. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Chickpea Salad

I have this problem with wasting food. I overbuy at the grocer and then can't finish the tub of sort-of-expensive ricotta cheese, marscapone or mozarella before they are consumed by a furry, green animal (at least someone's eating it). In fact, I have a tub of cottage cheese and a tub of sour cream in the fridge that I am afraid to even touch. I push them further and further into the hard-to-reach recesses of the fridge. I feel really bad about this. It's such a waste of money and resources. Monday night was probably the worst because I discovered with one whiff that the chicken that I had procrastinated on making into something delicious had taken on an odor that threatened to curdle milk inside its carton. Because of my laziness, I had to throw away five, once good, chicken breasts. Do yourself a favor and wrap chicken separately when you freeze it. So I did what I always do and improvised. Unfortunately or perhaps fortunately, in the process I discovered a jar of mold-encrusted roasted red peppers back next to a frozen bottle of Coca-Cola. I'm pretty sure I bought that jar of peppers last summer. I'm sorry, this is what happens when you are single. You have to eat leftovers for weeks. You do also get to enjoy cookies for weeks too. Seems like a fair trade. Instead I made a chickpea salad on toast, with Laughing Cow Swiss Cheese (not to be confused with Mad Cow). This cheese is really fantastic. I think my eighth-grade French teacher Mr. Srb introduced it to me. But I rediscovered it via Weight Watchers a couple years ago.

Chickpea Salad: (inspired by/copied from Smitten Kitchen) 1 15-ounces can garbanzo or chickpeas
1/2 cup Kalamata olives, pitted and halved
1/4 cup onion (I used green onions, she used purple)
1 garlic clove, minced
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon lemon juice (use the zest if you've got a whole lemon--I did not, it could go bad)
dash parsley (dried or fresh)
salt and pepper to taste

Toss all this crap in a bowl and mash it up a bit.

I deviated from the perscribed recipe by adding some capers that have been sitting in the fridge at least as long as the ill-fated red peppers had been. But capers are stored/preserved in vinegar, so they won't go bad. I'm not sure this was a good addition to the salad. Also, as you can see in the above photo, I put some roasted tomatoes on the toast in place of the red peppers. Not a good idea. The canned roasted tomatoes are tough and chewy. I remove them and all was well again.

Roasted Tomato and Bean Dip

It's a good thing we made so much food last week because the only thing I've cooked this week is an egg over easy. You could blame a few things, 1.) we overdid it last week and are now sick of cooking, 2.) our kitchen and the sun room in particular has suddenly become ridiculously frigid, or 3.) our pipes froze/burst. It's likely a combination of all three. I came home from work on Monday and no water would come out of the kitchen tap. Whatever. But when I woke up in the middle of the night to get a drink of water and nothing came out of the bathroom tap, it registered as a problem. I had to drive across town to take a shower at my parents' (it took 45 minutes to get there with the weather). Fortunately, our landlords are awesome, and Bob was surveying the damage at 8 a.m. (apparently a pipe burst in the basement and the plumber had to take down part of our downstairs neighbor's wall--whoops). It's funny, these random blips happen so frequently that I sort of just shrug my shoulders and say, "meh." But if you're someone who is fortunate enough to have running water and a food processor, you should give this dip a try. It's another Giada (am I going to get into trouble for posting too many of her recipes?). I make it all the time for parties and gatherings and the like. It's sort of like hummus but tangier. Disclaimer: this is not a scary bean dip. My mom hates beans (some sort of aversion carried over from childhood), yet she likes this dip--a lot.

Tomato and Bean Dip:
1 clove garlic
1 15-ounce can garbanzo beans (aka chickpeas)
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons water
salt and pepper (to taste)
1/4 cup olive oil (I use the oil from the jar of roasted tomatoes)
1/4 cup roasted, oil packed tomatoes, coarsely chopped
1 tablespoon dry basil
1 tablespoon dry parsley

Blend the clove of garlic in the the food processor. Add beans, lemon juice and water and blend until the mixture is relatively smooth. Add salt and pepper (Giada recommends about a teaspoon of each). Blend in olive oil a bit at a time until the mixture is completely smooth. (I don't actually measure the olive oil, and I suspect I use less than 1/4 of a cup). Add the tomatoes and herbs, mix again. Serve with pita chips or on crusty bread.