Not Derby Pie

Every once in a while, dates make their way into my shopping cart during my snacks run at TJs. The large, dark brown Medjool dates are my favorite variety (and, arguably, the best variety out there). I first discovered them during my time in Israel, where if you’re lucky, you can pluck some low-hanging fruit off a tree toward the end of a hike. Commonly considered the crown jewel of dates, Medjools are a deep, rich amber, and they’re coated with a thin, glossy skin that is at once smooth and wrinkled. Far less stringy then other dates, their texture is soft, chewy, and ever so luscious. No other date even compares.

When my officemate offhandedly mentioned these date swirl cookies, I knew instantly that they’d be next in my queue. Her prescription was simple: “make a refrigerator cookie, mix a paste of dates, brown sugar, spices, and some citrus, roll out the cookie dough, spread the paste overtop, roll up, slice, bake.” Sounded simple enough, but the instructions left me plenty of room to play.
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Well hello dear readers! Nice of you to join me here, at this oft-neglected blog of mine. Work has taken a turn for the busier, and I’ve not been posting as much as I’d like. The craziness will likely continue through the end of the month, but then I’m home free and will post much more! Meanwhile, thanks for hangin’ in there. And you’ll be handsomely rewarded for your patience — I have a couple of smashingly delicious recipes in the queue.

As you may have noticed, it’s pretty smokin’ hot these days. For those of us city folks without a porch, grilling isn’t much of an option, but nonetheless, I try to minimize indoor cooking as much as possible during summer months. This orzo salad requires no oven time, and just around 20 minutes of stovetop cooking. It can also be tweaked in any number of ways; as usual, the recipe I provide here is entirely a function of what was in my fridge when I made it, and you should listen to your fridge’s innards just as carefully.
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My wonderful mom reminded me that when we first made this, we also grated in 2 pickling cucumbers. I completely forgot to put them in the recipe here! Correction appended.
Have you ever seen a recipe here at NDP that called for mayonnaise? No, I don’t think so. Definitely not. That’s because I hate hate hate mayo with, well, a passion. It makes my stomach turn just to think about it! Yuck. The grossness of mayo notwithstanding, at least 95.5% of all dip recipes list mayo as an ingredient — incomprehensible, if you ask me. Why not pass up the mayo for some yogurt? Or sour cream, if that’s your thing? Why ruin a perfectly good dip with mayo? Disagree if you must — I get that mayonnaise is one of America’s favorite condiments. Just not one of mine.

(end rant.)
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If you haven’t noticed, we at NDP eat almost all vegetarian food. Meat and poultry rarely make their way into our weekly diet, and I personally couldn’t be happier. I can’t say the same for my co-habitant, but who makes the food? I do. That’s right.
An important distinction: I am NOT a vegetarian. No, no, no. That would never be. Every once in a while, I really, just really really need some meat. When that happens, I like to humor D with a little beefy deliciousness.

I’ve been seeing skirt steak everywhere lately, from other blogs to Top Chef and beyond. It’s a summer favorite because it cooks up in minutes, and it’s lovely on salad. It also happens to be particularly flavorful, which can’t hurt. We picked some up on our way home this afternoon, and my usual patient self decided to make it right away. I’d tagged an epicurious recipe for skirt steak with wine sauce, which I imagine was intended to serve as a main dish, but as I had a hankering for spinach salad tonight, I plopped the saucy steak on top of a bed of leaves.

Not to sound like a broken record, but you can make a thousand variations of the salad I made tonight. In fact, I’ve probably made spinach salad at least 30 different ways during my measly 25 years. Granted, not all varieties would go well with wine-flavored skirt steak, but lots would. I happened to have some plump dried cherries that D’s mom sent me a while back, as well as my favorite “crunchy mix” consisting of sesame seeds, sliced almonds, and raw crushed-up ramen noodles that I’d toasted. I threw both of those in with the spinach, dressed it all with some balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and a few drops of pomegranate syrup, and laid slices of steak on top. So long as your skirt steak isn’t loaded with fat and connective tissue as mine was, I guarantee you’ll have a delicious dinner.

Sweet-Tart-Crunchy Skirt Steak Salad

1 1/2 lb skirt steak, cut into 4 pieces
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
3/4 cup dry red wine
4 fresh thyme sprigs
1 Turkish or 1/2 California bay leaf
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

Pat steak dry and sprinkle all over with salt and pepper. Heat oil in a 12-inch heavy skillet over moderately high heat until hot but not smoking, then cook steaks, turning over once, 5 to 7 minutes total for medium-rare. Transfer to a platter.

Pour off fat from skillet, then add wine, thyme, bay leaf, sugar, and Worcestershire sauce and bring to a boil, scraping up brown bits. Continue to boil until reduced by half, about 3 minutes. Add any meat juices on platter, then remove from heat and discard bay leaf and thyme. Slice steaks thinly, drizzle with pan sauce, and serve.

Sweet-Tangy-Crunchy Spinach Salad

3/4 cups loosely packed spinach
1/2 cup dried cherries (or substitute cranberries, raisins, black currants, etc)
1/8 cup sesame seeds
1/4 cup sliced and/or slivered almonds
1/2 cup ramen noodles, raw and crushed

2 Tbsp good olive oil
4 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 Tbsp pomegranate syrup
salt and pepper to taste

In a 350-degree oven, toast noodles, almonds and sesame seeds until golden brown, about 15-20 minutes. Let cool completely. Aside from that, you know the drill — combine the dressing ingredients; drizzle over the salad ingredients; eat.

Summer doesn’t take its time in DC. Blink, and before you know it, it’s dripping down your back, glowing on your face, sticking the jeans you shouldn’t have worn today to the back of your legs. Yep, awesome. In prepping for Washington’s summer-o-sweat, I’ve been reminding myself to breathe deeply and contemplating ways to limit stove and oven use. But you can only eat so many salads before the sheer sight of baby greens makes you scream. The solution? Make now, eat later, chill in-between.

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I rarely buy cookbooks. That probably comes as a surprise, considering how much I love to cook, and how pretty cookbooks can be — but I just don’t buy them that often. That’s partly because I tend to browse for recipes online, and partly because, not being able to help myself, I take all the pretty ones of the shelf at Barnes and Noble and before I know it, I’ve already looked at every pretty picture and no longer have any interest in buying the darn things.

On the rare occasion that I actually shell out the cash for one, the self control and patience I’ve been cultivating for years run out in a matter of seconds. I plop down on the couch, open the thing up, and soak up every last picture. Yes folks, that’s why they call it food porn.

Regarding the fillers between the pictures: sometimes I read those. Recipes, I think they’re called.

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(After a long, long hiatus — nearly 2 weeks! — I’ve finally got a recipe for you. I recently started a new job, which, in contrast to the old one, actually necessitates my doing work. It’s been tough to adjust to a full — often overflowing — workday and still make time to blog, but I’m coming around. Thanks for continuing to read, and I promise, more great recipes are in the wings!)

Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever posted such ugly pictures (save some of my early shots, which are pretty embarrassing). My apologies if looking at them makes you lose your appetite. I didn’t even bother to put the watermark on that second one — let’s face it; no one’s going to claim to have taken that ugly pic.

But the spinach, people, the spinach. It’s absolutely delicious, and I insist that after staring for way too long at these ugly pictures, you go bother to make the spinach that’s in them. I happened to have spinach in the fridge, and stumbled upon this recipe in The New Best Recipe (aka my New Best Cookbook). It’s not my usual tune to make creamed spinach. I’m more drawn to raw salads and quick-sautees with Asian flavors than I am to heavy, Southern-style greens. However, I will certainly be making frequent exception to that rule from now on. TNBR’s creamed spinach recipe yielded a perfectly delicate green, sweet from the cream and a pinch of sugar, slightly salty, a bit spicy from the freshly-grated nutmeg, and buttery from a sauteed shallot and, well, butter. I guess it’s not hard to see how anything can be made tasty if you add sugar, salt, cream, butter, and shallots. But anyway, this spinach was pretty much a home run. I actually cut the cream in half, and it was still delicious, so if you’d be inclined, do the same.

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