If ever there were a habit of mine that were problematic enough to warrant an intervention, it would be this: I have a jar problem.
At first, it was just tomato sauce. At the height of the season (which, get excited friends, is so near it’s basically here), I spend two long afternoons with a pot of tomato mush on the stove, bubbling and simmering until it breaks down and thickens into sauce. Then I pack it into jars and tuck it away until fall. These days, I use a big pot to process my jars for shelf storage, but back in the day, I just tossed them into the back of the fridge.
Then it was jam. The strawberries, the sour cherries — how could I resist? I always buy too many; add a little sugar, and I’ve made January breakfast taste like summer. And while I was already bothering, I put up some brine and started pickling cucumbers, asparagus, beets and cauliflower.
At this point I should note that our fridge is smaller than regulation size. It’s small. It’s not equipped to serve as a pantry for my experiments. Things have calmed down a bit since I started properly canning food, but still — the extra egg yolks from meringue, the leftover chicken broth from last week’s dinner, the five blanched asparagus waiting for tomorrow’s lunch — it’s all in there. These days, I’m trying to be better about using the stuff up.
Pesto is almost always in (at least) one of the jars in our fridge. Just last week, I made one batch with the first basil of the season, and another — the topic of today’s post — Â using garlic scapes.
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Here’s one good thing about living in DC: this time of year. This time of year is usually a month or so long, but 2013 has decided to be obnoxious and stubborn about sending winter on its way, and so we find ourselves in late May — it’s almost June — occasionally wearing scarves in office buildings that clearly didn’t get the memo and insist on blasting the A/C to the max. But at last, the cold has passed. It’s now that special time in DC where there’s warm sun and cool breeze at the same time. Not one to let this fleeting time pass me by, I’ve been taking some long walks. A couple weeks ago,D and I strolled all the way from our corner of northwest all the way to Eastern Market for dinner. No better way to prep for a big night of pasta-eating and wine-drinking.
DC also has some affordable (coughnot) housing with outdoor seating, and we’re lucky enough to have a deck. Now is the season to brush off that patio furniture and settle in with a drink outside. Fortunately, the long weekend provided ample opportunity to bask in the sun and pretend to be sophisticated with some shmancy cocktails.
But you know what DC does not have, like at all? Affordable alcohol. My friend Josh (he of Mutabbaq-making fame) alerted me to the fact that just a hop-skip north, in MoCo, my beloved Bulleit and Hendricks, and plenty of other stuff could be procured at a fraction of the price the robbers in DC charge. So this weekend, I put on my driving shoes and headed to liquor mecca. (Do you think prim and proper Montgomery County would like this nickname? Methinks not.) And there, I purchased what can only be called a full bar worth of product: two kinds of gin, a Haitian rum that Josh recommended, two vermouths, a vodka, and I probably could keep going but I will stop, to avoid total embarrassment. But people, it was like Christmas, it really was. By the time I’d left the store, I’d already decided which bottle to open and what to use it for. It was the right call, and this weekend, it can be yours.
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Downtown Jerusalem has some decent hummus shops, but in my opinion, Jerusalem’s best hummus is in the Arab shuk, which is just past the Jaffa Gate in the Old City. If you head down the main stairs of the shuk, hang a left and head toward the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, but then peel off to the right again, you’ll pass a a couple shop owners who sit in their doorways and occasionally toss rice at children who walk by. Just keep going, and when you’ve gone down a few stairs, you’ll come upon Lena’s, which serves the best hummus in Jerusalem.
I found Lena’s on a recommendation from a shop owner in the shuk. He told me to get hummus and labneh there, and then to continue even deeper in the shuk for most of a kilometer – past the scarves and the hukkahs and the fish, ick – until I came upon a fluorescent-lit storefront on the left, called Jafar Sweets.  There, he said, I would find dessert.
That was in 2006. I’ve been going to Jafar ever since, and I’ve never been disappointed with my spoils. Jafar’s got baklava in every imaginable combination of nuts. But what they’re really famous for is knafeh, a pastry of crunchy vermicelli sandwiching hot, syrupy cheese. Knafeh is made in massive round sheet pans and cut into big slabs for the hungry. It also happens to be my all-time favorite Middle Eastern dessert and will definitely be a post just as soon as I can find Kataifi, the crunchy shredded noodles.
For now, I’m settling to tell you about another fantastic Middle Eastern pastry from another pastry shop, this one founded in Jerusalem but now based in Amman. The shop is Zalatimo’s, and the pastry is Mutabbaq. It’s easy to make, requires no special ingredients, and tastes distinctly of the Middle East. Oh, and it’s really really good.
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Back in April, the wonderful Melissa Clark tried to make brownies into a vehicle for her ready-to-go bananas. After 6 failed batches, she couldn’t get the results to taste chocolaty enough. Sometimes, a brownie just wants to be a brownie.
So she kept the chocolate for the bottom, and folded her mushy bananas into rum-scented blondies. Brilliant, I say.
Let’s break it down: we’ve got a crumbly, crunchy chocolate cookie crust (ground chocolate cookies and butter – nothing bad there). Poured overtop is a batter that’s the beautiful lovechild of blondies and brown-butter banana bread. Come again? Blondies, and brown-butter banana bread. You can imagine why I had no choice but to make these.
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Lurking behind the shiny exterior of this homepage is a Drafts folder, containing every post I’ve ever started. And friends, I could make an entire second blog out of the posts stuck in draft-purgatory. There’s a parsnip cake I made for my mom’s birthday back in 2011; a winter citrus salad that I keep meaning to tell you about while it’s still…well, winter; a tremendous zucchini gratin that I will tell you about in just a few short weeks, when summer decides to make an appearance for good; and about 15 quinoa recipes, none of which I deemed delicious enough to share.
Thing is, I am no big fan of quinoa. Try as I might, I can’t love the stuff. I wish I did: it’s nutritious, cooks up really quickly, and at least purports to be versatile. I’m just not the biggest fan.
But last week, fresh on a tear to use up all the little bits of things in the bottom of jars in my kitchen, I came upon some quinoa, leftover from Passover and languishing at the back of my grain shelf. I’ve been trying to cook more economically, and I’ve been having success tucking bits of boring-seeming leftovers into new dishes. I improved my last batch of mujaddara by adding bits of salsa verde-braised green beans. What’s a little quinoa?
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One of my favorite food-related articles from 2012 came from Slate. It was called, “Why do recipe writers lie and lie and lie about how long it takes to caramelize onions?” and it spoke the truth: caramelizing onions is a matter of patience. Doing it properly takes at least 40 minutes, and the recipes that tell you you’ll have soft, brown onions in five or ten minutes are straight-up lying.
So, do I have some sort of trick to shorten your wait? Not exactly. But let’s be honest: we see caramelized onions in a recipe, and we let out a sigh. There goes any hope of getting dinner on the table quickly. And friends, that’s a problem I can solve.
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Sometimes, when I really want to share a recipe with you, I go a little nuts with the testing and tweaking. The recipes I get most jazzed about are the ones I want to be most perfect. So I make the thing 5 or 6 times, fussing with quantities and baking times and potential extra ingredients, all so that when you make it yourself, it’s not almost perfect, it’s actually perfect.
This recipe had me at hello. I made it once, and immediately knew how I’d change it for posting. Chick-chock, were headed straight for primetime. Amazing!
I sat down in front of my computer and opened up a blank page. Now then: what to call it?
Uh.
Guys, I made this in March. Only now, practically mid-May, do I finally have a title that’s clear enough to tell you what you’re making. And I feel like if I just explain what’s actually in this thing-I-decided-to-call-a-pie, you’ll see why it was so hard to figure out what it actually should be called – and you won’t think I’m a total nutcase. But you will make it, yes you will, because it really is fantastic. So here goes.
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It’s me again. Just wanted to tell you that I am still love-loving asparagus season (and still freezing my butt off…DC, get warm already!). To prove my undying love for the green spears, I’ve shared a few more thoughts about asparagus for dinner (okay, and breakfast and lunch, too) over at Food52. Cold soup, hot hash, and more – it’s all up on the site now. Go check it out, and then get thee to the grocery. Dinner awaits!
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