Butternut Squash & Rosemary Pizza

I love marinara + cheese pizza as much as the next urban food blogger, but somehow I keep wanting more than that. (And yes, I did make a run-of-the-mill mozzarella and anchovy pizza the next time.) Inspired by my recent liberation of a butternut squash from an outdoors window display, I dug into Vegetarian Planet and made the pizza you see above, which was actually inspired by Didi Emmons’ encounter with a similar pizza at Chez Panisse.

Though my experiences with farming introduced me to many worthy winter squash varieties, butternut is still one of my favorites. Its size and versatility are pretty big advantages in a small kitchen — does anyone really like hacking away at 50 lb. Hubbards, as good as they are? Relatedly, my roommate absolutely hates squash, and the last time she was forced to eat it she cried. What a life I hope you don’t cry when you eat this, dear reader.

Butternut Squash and Rosemary Pizza

• Pizza dough, enough for 2 or 3 personal pizzas
• 2 shallots, sliced horizontally
• 1 medium butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cut into ¼” slices
• 1 tsp dried rosemary
• Olive oil
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Parmesan or Asiago cheese, shredded

Saute the shallots with olive oil over medium high heat to brown them. Add the squash and rosemary and cook until the squash becomes tender, stirring frequently.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and roll out the dough into rounds. Assemble the topping on top of the dough and bake for about 10 minutes. Once the pizzas are done, sprinkle with cheese (or don’t) and drizzle some olive oil on top.

 

Farm-Fresh Vegetable Tamales

He carries tamales,
And a few maize ears…
And out in the pond,
There is no salamander,
Nor frog nor fish
He would not devour

– Mateo Rosas de Oquendo

This poem, by a 17th Century Spaniard in Mexico, denigrates tamales as the food of the lower class mestizos. I quoted it in a paper that I wrote about the colonial Mexican culinary scene to stir up my professor, who was half-Mexican. The paper was basically like, “Mexican food rocks! Spaniards were assholes!” It seems like all of my papers end up like that.

The fact that tamales are still around despite Spanish efforts to eliminate them from the Mexican diet speaks to how appealing they are. Making them definitely has to be a community event — otherwise, that mountain of corn husks ain’t getting filled any time soon. I found a recipe for the dough at Veggie Num Nums, and improvised the filling. We didn’t really have meat or cheese, so this time the filling is vegan.

Another thing we did differently was the corn husks. Traditionally, you use dried out corn husks, but we had plenty of fresh ones to use. I asked Rick Bayless on Twitter (yes, yes) if that was kosher and he said it’d be fine. They made smaller tamales but the green husks made a pleasant contrast to the yellow tamale dough.

Sitka, one of the kids at the farm where I worked, helped us out. The poor kid might have had swine flu, but he promised that he washed his hands before assembling the tamales. Hahahaha! I’m not sick yet, so I think I should be fine. (Famous last words…)

Tamale Dough (Lifted from Veggie Num Nums)

• 2 cups masa harina
• 1-2 C stock
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 C olive oil, frozen (I didn’t freeze mine and it was fine.)
• salt
• chili powder

I kind of threw everything into a food processor until it got doughy, and that seemed to work fine. Remove to a bowl. That’s all!

Vegetable Filling

• assorted sweet peppers
• onions
• chili powder
• olive oil
• corn

Saute until the peppers and onions become tender. Throw everything into the food processor and chop up. Cut the kernels off of the sweet corn and put aside.

To assemble, spread a tablespoon or more of the dough onto a corn husk. You can use several different methods, which are outlined here. I used the first one because I thought it was the cutest and most simple. Once you fill the husks with dough and filling, steam them for about 20-40 minutes, depending on their size. The dough should firm up quite nicely.

 

Old Egyptian Boss Lunch!

On the menu for last Thursday: babaghanouj, twofer cucumber quinoa salad, fresh pitas and Old Egyptians! I totally made the last one up, by the way, and their name comes from my old boss at the Phoenix. And like him, they were tough and nutty, with a little bit of honey. (Oh, I slay myself.) We also served “baba” at the restaurant as an appetizer, and I regret never getting the recipe from him. But he would have probably said, “If I told you, I would have to kill you.” So I used the Zionist recipe from the Second Ave. Deli!

Planning a menu and executing it from start to finish every week has been really good practice, though I wish I could do it more. On game day, I have to deal with a lot of mishaps, so improvising is realy important. This time, I had a whole other course set up — black-eyed pea fritters — but they just failed to fritter up so I fed the batter to the cows. At least they enjoyed it.

Dear Reader, enclosed are the recipes for Old Egyptians (improvised) and babaghanouj (from The Second Ave. Deli Cookbook).

Old Egyptians

• ground beef
• minced garlic
• chopped parsley
• ground almonds
• salt and pepper
• honey
• eggs
• white bread (optional; I didn’t use it because Chris has a gluten allergy all of a sudden)

Combine everything in proportions that make sense to your taste. Ball it up and throw them into a 400-degree oven until they become brown on the outside and cooked on the inside. Ta-da!

Baba Ganoush

• 4 eggplants
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 C tahini sauce (basically: tahini, lemon juice, garlic, parsley, salt, water, paprika. You can just add these into the baba without making an extra thing.)
• 1/4 C fresh lemon juice
• 1 tbsp minced garlic
• 1/3 C chopped parsley
• 1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
• 1 tsp salt
• parsley for garnish

1. Wash eggplants and prick them with a fork in about 20 places.

2. Broil eggplants for 50 minutes, turning about every 12 minutes.

3. Slit eggplants on one side and place them slit-side down onto a colander to drain. When they cool, scoop out the flesh into a bowl and combine with the tahini sauce and other ingredients. Puree in a blender or mash with a potato masher, and cool for several hours before serving.

 

Thoughts on Salad

Salad mix sure is pretty, isn’t it? It’s hard to believe that all of that goes into your run-of-the-mill mesclun. Despite all of the work that goes into cultivating salad, it really gets the shaft at restaurants as a filler food, or even just as a platform for better things.

When I was working as a waiter, I absolutely despised salads because tables of people would always order them as their main entrees, dressing on the side. C’mon, guys! Don’t fall for that race to the bottom! I felt like they were stripping salad (and food at large) of its gustatory properties and just using it as an “I’m not fat look at how little I’m eating” food.

However, one thing I would definitely recommend trying is a Greek salad. At the Phoenix Café, you can also get one with grilled chicken on top, which works well too. In this preparation, the salad can really stand on its own. No shame!

The Phoenix Café’s Greek Salad

• A large plate of mesclun lettuce mix
• 1 tbsp crumbled sheep’s milk feta cheese
• 4 kalamata olives
• 4 anchovies
• 4 tomato wedges
• 8 cucumber slices

Assemble ingredients in a manner that is aesthetically pleasing! Dress with your own top-secret-recipe Parmesan vinaigrette (here’s one).

 

Garlic in Progress

We’re growing three rows of garlic in our west field, and as you can see they’re coming up very nicely. We tossed some organic nitrogen fertilizer on them this week to help them out, too. Like ramps, garlic belongs to the Allium family, and even the leaves smell pungent. Our boss, Gary, told us that good garlic bulbs are indicated by the thickness of the plant’s stem. Most of these are probably a centimeter wide now. They’re big, too! Most are about a foot-and-a-half tall.

Since these aren’t ready yet, we’ve been buying our own garlic from the grocery store in town. (Do you say “grossry” or “groshry”? Midwesterners talk so weird!) The garlic we’re growing will probably all go out to the CSA shares later this summer, but but BUT I’m hoping that we’ll be able to snag some scapes once those come out. The scapes will kind of snake out from the main joint of the plant in a few weeks.

I use garlic in just about everything, so it’s hard to choose a single recipe for this post. I’ll do a two-fer!

Roasted Garlic

• 1 garlic bulb, with the first third chopped off
• olive oil
• kosher salt

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Place the bulb on some tinfoil and sprinkle the oil and salt over it. Wrap it up and toss into the oven (probably on a baking sheet if you’re not reckless like me) for about 45 minutes to an hour. Eat on everything. You should definitely add it to hummus, pasta sauces, bread and pizza.

Chipotle Salsa

• A bunch of tomatoes, chopped roughly
• 1/2 an onion, chopped roughly
• A can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce
• 3-4 cloves of garlic, chopped
• cilantro
• salt and pepper
• olive oil

Saute the onion and garlic with the olive oil over medium heat. Once they’re nice and browned, add the tomatoes and chipotles. Stir and let the mixture simmer for about 10 minutes. Let it cool off, and put the whole mix into a blender and puree with cilantro, salt, pepper and additional chipotles if you want it spicier. (I usually do.) Also eat on everything.

 

Vegan Enchiladas, Hooray!

Spring break is over and it’s still kind of cold in Grinnell. What a crock of shit! Springtime in the Midwest is such a tease — February tantalizes you with 70-degree days and snowstorms, while March delivers much of the same. Why am I moving to Minnesota, again? Christ. As you can see in the above photo, even my tablecloth is pissed.

Well, as you’ve probably heard, I’m a tortilla-making monster. What’s better medicine for a cold bitch of a day than Tex-Mex? With the help of my manservant Tim, whose twin allergies to milk and eggs are legendary in these parts, I whipped together a kind of something that resembled the image of enchiladas I have in my head: a bunch of rolled up tortillas containing some kind of thing in some kind of red sauce.

I’ve actually never made them before, let alone eaten them in any great quantity. Chris’ mom makes a version with shredded cheese, cream cheese and chicken, which is pretty good. Unfortunately, I couldn’t use any sort of cheese, and Chris has been on a vegetarian kick for the past week. Another caveat was that I wanted to make everything from scratch, at least within reason.

I made the usual tortilla mix, but as I was resting it (and myself) I had a sudden idea: what if I put spices in the tortillas to start? They’d be so sexy and orange! I leapt out of bed and threw in generous quantaties of cumin and mild chili powder. Mixing it all in was a bitch, so I’d recommend doing it before you add oil and water to the mixture. Despite that last-minute half-assing, they turned out really nicely. Genius!!

To fill the tortillas, I made some refried beans with chipotle and cooked up some wild rice for that distinctly Midwestern touch. (PROTIP: Most American wild rice is from Minnesota!) I fried up the tortillas, filled them up and put them in a pyrex baking thing on top of a thin layer of homemade salsa. Then I topped them with more salsa and some chopped up green onions.

They turned out great! My dudes loved them and we finished dinner off with Chris’ date-studded focaccia and a strawberry-and-lime compote.

Vegan Enchiladas

• One batch of tortillas, rolled out extra large with extra cumin and mild chili powder in the mix
• 1 C raw wild rice
• 1 15-oz can of beans, black or pinto
• 5-6 chipotle peppers with adobo sauce, chopped roughly
• 1 28-oz can of whole tomatoes, chopped (do it in the can with scissors)
• 1 onion, diced
• 5 cloves of garlic, minced
• a handful of cilantro
• salt and sugar, to taste
• cumin
• cayenne pepper
• green onions, diced for garnish

Cook the wild rice in a rice cooker or pot. While that’s going, throw half of the onion into a pot with some olive oil over medium heat. When the onion becomes transparent, put in the can of beans, followed by a canful of water. Let it all simmer for a while over a low flame.

In the meantime, heat the rest of the onion in a saute pan with olive oil over medium heat. After a few minutes, add the garlic and cook til aromatic. Then add the tomatoes with their water and the chipotle peppers. Use the sugar to cut the acidity and add salt to taste. Let the mixture simmer for 10 minutes, then take it off the heat. Once cooled, throw it all into a blender and blend with the cilantro. Tweak the seasoning to your taste and put aside.

Once the beans and rice are done, preheat the oven to 350. Fry the tortillas. Layer a baking dish with a thin layer of salsa. Fill the tortillas with beans and rice and lay them seam-down in the baking dish until it’s full. Cover with a ladleful of salsa and top with green onions. Throw into the oven for 10-15 minutes.

 

What Dreams Are Made of

Flour, vegetable oil, water and salt. Well, shit.

During her time at Grinnell last semester, my anarchofreegan doom metal friend Emily instituted Tortilla Tuesdays, nights when she would make mounds of tortillas by hand in exchange for attendees’ fixins. Before then, I had never even contemplated making tortillas. It seemed like something that should be left solely to the specialists.

But it’s so simple! It’s like trying really hard to figure out what to get your mother for Christmas and settling for a generic candle that’s she’s kind of OK with when you could have just asked her in the first place. In the end your mother thinks you don’t love her. This is the same thing.

The recipe is so easy that I’m going to write it down from memory right here:

Flour Tortillas

• 2 C flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 C vegetable oil
• 3/4 C boiling water

Combine the first three ingredients in a bowl and mix them together while the water boils. Make an indent in the mixture and pour the water in. Mix it with a spatula for the first 30 seconds or so until it cools down, then use your fingers.

Once it gets to be the consistency of dough, roll it into little balls with a 1-inch diameter. Set them down in a baking tray or something and cover with a cloth for 45 minutes. Once their time is up, roll out each one to your desired thickness and toss ‘em onto a hot skillet. I believe the cooking time is 20 seconds, flip, 10 seconds, flip, 10 seconds and you’re done. [Edit: Actually, Emily corrected me on this one. It's 10/20/10 seconds.]

They come out really nice and chewy, just how I like them. And you can top them with pretty much whatever — Emily likes them with peanut butter and jelly, or you can go for more Mexican-inspired things.

This guy over here has homemade refried beans, guacamole and salsa. Fuck yeaaaahhhh these are so good when you’re drunk!