Fresh Cracked Pepper

Yesterday, a friend reminded me that every once in a while, creativity pays off. In a world where ideas are cheap but increasingly void of meaning, I pounced on the opportunity to win some cash for an hour spent experimenting with a large melon. Let me explain.

It happened in the blink of an eye. While hanging out after competing in a triathlon together, my friend informed me that there was money to be made in the cheese aisle. She works at an advertising company, and one of her clients is running a contest: Buy cheese. Invent salad. Win cash. As we stood there in our sweaty post-tri glow (waiting to mount the podium for our respective age group awards, I must add),  she convinced me to try my hand at corporately-sponsored food alchemy.

When it comes to a $500 Wegman’s gift certificate, I have no shame. Président cheese, you are my master.

That same friend had some pre-race advice too:  Never try anything new on race day. She was talking about the wet suit I’d never tested out in the water (which, incidentally, transformed me into a hyperventalating slug). It turns out I’m familiar with this advice when it applies to food: I seldom test a new invention on guests.

Conveniently, I had a birthday potluck to attend tonight. If the salad bombed, someone else would eat it. (It’s not that I don’t love people, but the general public is as good a candidate for a edible pawn-off as any.)

As with any invention, this salad is an amalgam of things that came before: My first watermelon salad at Dish last week in Colorado being one of them. (If you’re ever in the Vail Valley, do yourself a favor and eat there.) Dotted with pumpkin seeds, watercress, and goat cheese, it endeared me a little more to my least favorite melon.

I wanted to recreate the salad, but add enough new elements to make it truly mine. I got to thinking about great salads: cool Indian raita and my ultimate favorite Middle-East-inspired one. When it came to watermelon salad, I knew I couldn’t break the rules — I didn’t know them. A quick trip to Wegmans and I was ready to paint my melon-pink canvas with mint, cucumber, dates, and yogurt.

The result? A salad I was happy to share around a table and around the Web. And here is where you come in: vote for my salad at www.presidentsaladcontest.com before August 23rd. Your click will help fuel foodie creativity the world over. Or at least in one little second-storey apartment.

Continue reading ‘watermelon raita’

I’ve safely arrived in Eagle, Colorado, but before I get to the amazing food here, let me tie up the last few days of the Missouri leg. In my last post, I’d begun to wax poetic about how home cooking redeemed the area’s slew of chain restaurants.

The day after that amazing Indian meal, we found ourselves on the Virnig family farm. For the rest of our time in the Nixa area, we ate like queens around their harvest table. Healthy, organic, pasture-raised queens, that is.

Doug and Mary Virnig have eight children: Jessie, Laura, Emma, Madeleine, Tucker, Adelaide, Helen and Rachel. They live in an old farm house on the outskirts of Ozark, Missouri, where they raise beef and dairy cows, and tend an ever-expanding garden. We had dinner with them the Tuesday night before we left, and managed to squeeze ourselves into their lives for the next three days.

They won us over with their homemade burgers and fresh devilled eggs — which I had the pleasure of making, with the help of two pairs of little hands.

In the days to come, we feasted on homemade tostadas, guzzled kombucha tea (the kids were pretty excited to learn that I make it, too), munched on stovetop popcorn sprinkled with nutritional yeast, and sipped raw milk around a fire.

The Virnigs haven’t always lived like this. Neither of the parents grew up on farms. They’ve morphed, in their life together, from town to country folks.

Their  journey toward self-sustenance is well thought out. This is no trendy organic dream. It’s a well-researched, tenderly executed dance with the earth God has set them upon.

As I lived and worked beside them for three days, the Virnig family became more than just a story.  From early-morning family time cuddled in blankets to outdoor labor to afternoon dips in the cold creek,  they refreshed me.

I know life isn’t perfect for them, but their joyful generosity imprinted itself on my heart. With grubby hands, skinned knees, and an a wide open door, I left feeling lucky to tell their story. It’s a debt not even our gifts of fresh fruit and Lola’s chocolate cake could repay.

I should have known better. For all my disappointment at Missouri’s impoverished restaurant landscape, all I had to do was go home. In our last few days in the area, we found our appetites again— simply by following our noses down driveways and through front doors.

This week made up for all the bland burritos, dishwater coffee, faux-italian and “fusion sushi” (drenched in cloyingly sweet chili sauce). And thanks to my photojournalist colleague Mary, every precious bite was beautifully documented.  So beautifully, in fact, they deserve two posts. (I chipped in a few pictures, too).

My lesson for News21 summer trip #1: Real food in this part of the country isn’t broadcast on interstate signs. It’s strewn across scratched harvest tables and served up in suburban kitchens. 

Our last Monday in Nixa, the family of a boy we’re profiling invited us for dinner. The spread included everything the Indian family calls everyday, and everything we call special.

There was pre-feast chai, homemade, with a thick sweetness that lingered through the afternoon. It was accompanied by cookies with the odd flavour of mango. Girl Scouts meets tropical lands.

And then there was one of my favorite snacks: the addictive mixture of chickpea-flour crunchy bits mixed with dried lentils, peanuts, and spices. Served up in a classic steel thali plate, the taste took me far from the flat Missouri prairie, and back to a toy train winding through the Indian Himalayas.

After dinner we had little cups of homemade pistachio ice cream, topped with threads of saffron. I ate mine, and then I ate Mary’s.

These were some of the happiest moment of my trip. Add to the mix gracious hosts, warm conversation, and a young boy whose story is worth telling the world, I went to bed grinning at the small things.

Part two tomorrow

In the “buckle of the Bible belt,” touting food as the harbinger of salvation could be seen as sacrilege. After a five-day string of meals I’d plot somewhere between barely edible and “for sustenance only,” Gailey’s Breakfast Cafe brought praise to my lips.

The historical downtown drug-store cafe turned hip brunch join came to our rescue after a rushed morning. We’d spent five hours gathering interviews at two local churches, and by the time we’d set our gear up and down twice (not to mention engaging and entertaining the locals with our wit), we were ready for something heartier than cereal.

So too was everyone else hanging out in downtown Springfield’s struggling core. There are a few gems, clustered together in a few square blocks, and this is most definitely one of them. 

Gailey’s conjures up images of simpler times, when bacon and gravy biscuits and white bread were a-OK. Times when people could come get a prescription filled, order a coffee and an egg salad sandwich, and sit down on a shiny bar stool to chat about the day. 

With simple but creative menu items and open, cheery windows, Gailey’s brings old-school charm to urban mod. In the other room, there was an acoustic guitar-harp duo to add mystery to the din of chatter.

The only regret was that they closed an hour after we arrived. There was only time to eat, check our email and make some phone calls. Then, out of pity  for the endearingly friendly staff, we were on our way.

Our way is likely to snake by Gailey’s at least once more before we leave. 

Gailey’s Breakfast Cafe: 220 E Walnut St., Springfield, MO 65806. Tel: (417) 866-5500.

A warm —read: stifling — foodie greeting from Nixa, Missouri, land of chain restaurants, strip-malls and “Authentic Mexican” food. The quotes around that last one are meant to hint at the painful truth that here, we’ve found the exact opposite. This is Cielito Lindo, the best I’ve had so far but still barely passable:

I’m sad to announce that Fresh Cracked Pepper is going to look a little different over the next 10 weeks: I’ll be busy working on a multimedia journalism project on youth and technology (site to officially launch in August, but visit the link to see our trip e-journals), and so won’t have time to bake anything except my bod, running around in the hot Missouri sun.

Instead, over the next few posts I’m simply going to share what’s fueling me along the way (much like in my NYC post). From artichoke panninis at Panera to fresh smoothies at the local library cafe, my meals will be windows into my days. 

Eating on the road, and on the run, starts out as a novelty but quickly descends into cravings for home cooking. Even restaurants advertised as “home cooking” (there are those quotes again!) often offer just the opposite. Let’s face it: it’s hard to get the taste of the fruit of your labor when it’s someone else’s.

I’ve been here in Southern Missouri for two full days, and while it hasn’t been too bad, there’s been nothing worth drooling over. My colleague came out a week ahead of me, and I’ve benefitted greatly from her travails along the Nixa food scene.  In the little free time we have, however, we still find ourselves hunting for that memorable Missouri meal.

Last night’s dinner, eaten on a patio spilling out into a parking lot, wasn’t too shabby. I spotted a Vietnamese restaurant called “Bambu,” set next to a natural food store where I later bought some Kombucha.

To help explain the diversity in restauarant offerings in the area, I will quote a young woman we talked to later last night: “What kind of food?” she said. Vietnamese, I replied. 

“I’ve never even heard of that!”

In Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, there’s an entire chapter named after “One Onion.” In it, the ubiquitous allium becomes a symbol for generosity, goodness, and salvation.

Recently, one lunch blew open some big questions in my own life. Perhaps not as weighty as the ones Dostoyevsky’s 19th century characters posed, but big enough for me.

The lunch came in an oval white dish in a New York City cafe. It was simple, fresh, and affordable — an American rendition of bibimbap, the Korean name for a mixed rice dish.

Just lunch, really. In and of itself, much like the character Grushenka’s onion. But as I let the egg’s soft yellow drench the delicately chopped vegetables, I couldn’t silence the questions: What would it be like to walk through those doors every morning? To work in the tall tower rising up around me, full of the cubicles of some of the world’s most successful writers and editors?

Usually when I’m stabbing cubes of fried tofu with my fork I’m not also having one of those moments of profound smallness. But this time I was. All around me success seemed to shine its toothy, too-perfect smile. All I could seem to muster was one halfway to hopeful.   

That lunch stood in for something else, a life neither close nor far away. Food prepared by someone else. Outside all the amenities of a city fiercely alive. Wilderness packaged up in a park not much bigger than a postcard. 

We ate well, and copiously. Cupcakes, sandwiches, pastries and fruit. Two days passed in the whirlwind of avenues and boulevards, stairs pointing to greatness, alleys threatening dead ends. I came out alive, but with more questions than ever, pushing against me like subway doors.

One lunch. A world just brushed up against. A window into an afternoon into a day, a week, a year, a life I can’t yet see clearly. A sigh of satisfaction with the present, with a Sidecar of uncertainty.

New York put flowers in my food and a Sonatra song in my heart. Back in Syracuse, the questions it left are proving a little harder to digest.

In the meantime, here’s a recipe for bibimbap. 

Continue reading ‘one lunch’

I am a spoiled child. Mark’s parents arrived on Wednesday, and as per our usual custom with them, food and wine co-starred in our little four-person show. They leave tomorrow, and I can confidently say that we’ve sipped, nibbled, and chomped our way through a good deal of the Syracuse area.

From kale and pasture-raised chicken in Trumansburg (the post you’re reading) to slow-smoked ribs at Dinosaur BBQ, our tastebuds have not been left wanting.

First I must share this incredible nook in the nearby town of Trumansburg (15 minutes North of Ithaca) that our good friend Jennifer suggested. We’d spent a long day wine touring on Seneca Lake, and by the time 7 o’clock rolled around, we were hungry for something more substantial than wine-tasting crackers.

Enter the Hazelnut Kitchen, where eating local simply means eating well. Buzzing with life on a warm Friday evening, we could tell immediately that it was a popular place.

With pinots and rieslings still dancing in our heads, we chose cheese as a further amuse bouche. The cheese selections (along with nightly specials and desserts), were etched in chalk on the wall next to us — urban flair meets rural comfort.

The selections had changed but the time ours came, and they were all superb. My favorites were the Point Reyes blue and another soft type whose name I can’t recall, but that was perfectly tinged with lavender. A pat of balsamic strawberry jam sat in the middle, and the plate was drizzled with honey from a local apiary.

Choosing a main was difficult, but thanks to their realistic  menu, not as stressful as it is in places with too many choices. I ended up with pasture-raised chicken wrapped in bacon with a green peppercorn jus. It was served over warm bread salad (a Tuscan thing, I think), and crispy-roasted local ramps and asparagus.

I’ve been known to exaggerate once in awhile when it comes to food, but it’s Sunday and I’m still thinking about that food. I haven’t had a meal out this good since 7¼.

Mark ordered an unusual cut of beef called a hanger steak. Beef is not something I usually eat, but he entreated me to try it. Two small bites of velvety rareness were enough to satisfy the next half a year of cravings. It came with fries and a house made aioli that I could’ve spooned directly into my mouth until my arteries complained.

I also got to try my mother-in-law’s meal, which would’ve been my second choice: a porcini and mushroom and kale raab phyllo streudel, served over French lentils swimming in a thick green curry cream.  Green curry usually makes me think of bottled Thai marinades at grocery stores, but this one surprised me with its lemony subtlety and gentle heat.

As my blog’s tag proclaims, I eat for many reasons, place among them. It delights me to find nooks like this, tucked away in the small towns of America, their staff toiling away at representing their neighbors and their land.

With clean white tablecloths, mis-matched antique cutlery, and warmth that radiates from its open kitchen, Hazelnut Kitchen excells at kitschy-class.  Their peasant-inspired fare is fit for royalty; the company I shared it with this past Friday definitely fit (as well as footed!) the bill.

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Entrees: $13-$25, varied wine list with local favorites, good beer selection, and homemade desserts.

Hazelnut Kitchen

53 Main Street

Trumansburg, NY

607.387.4433

Through the winter months, I dream of warm food. There are afternoon lattes, tea, and hot chocolate, greedily assembled as my cheeks thaw out from the wind-whipped walk home. There are soups and stews simmering away on the stove. There are filling one-pot meals, spicy burritos, and steamy risottos.

And then suddenly, out comes the sun and up go the windows. Mac n’ cheese gives way to crispy wraps and salads of all stripes — the last thing you want to do in a hot apartment is turn on the oven.

But best of all, the outdoors once again becomes your dining room. From cookout to picnic, patio to porch, good food is more about portability than presentation. In the summer, I can say that about myself, too.

This past weekend I indulged. The last exam I quite possibly might ever write was over by 5 p.m., and half an hour later I was settled on my couch with Mark Bittman. His book at least.

I had an eggplant in the fridge and a dinner guest on his way. I needed inspiration. Seeing me paw through my cookbooks again, after an insane semester, must have been a rare sight: Mark (the other Mark, my Mark) pointed out how sexy it was to see me dreaming of cooking again.

By the end of my kitchen dalliance, I’d made a selection of tapas to share: caponata (eggplant salad), sushi-style spinach rolls, and this tangy, refreshing soba-noodle salad. A few slices of crusty sourdough bread, some spreadable feta and black olives made the little spread into a veritable feast.

We wanted to stay in all evening and let the rain patter outside the open windows as we digested. And so linger we did.

The next day, I added some julienned carrots to the leftovers to cart to a birthday barbeque in the park down the street. Beer, ultimate frisbee, and pinatas carried us into the twilight, smudged in charcoal’s magic scent.  

It couldn’t have been better preparation for my 10-mile “Mountain Goat” race the next morning. Good food in the belly restores the body. This weekend, I traded in my law text book for a long Saturday morning tea on my friend’s porch, my computer screen for a cutting board, and the gym for a game of Ultimate frisbee. 

Productive? Not so much. But perfect in every other way.

Continue reading ‘cool food for warm days’

Summer hit Syracuse last weekend with the impetuosity of a season long-forgotten. Blazing down during a Sunday bike ride, it left its pink hand print squarely between my shoulders. Yesterday it reached 30°C (87°F) and today the mercury is still up in the high 20°s (70°s). Our apartment, in good second-floor sun-drenched form, is responding as expected.

One of my favorite things about hot weather is eating cooler foods. Anything I can make without turning on my oven or standing over my stove gets my immediate approval. Coming in at a close second are things that can be cooked quickly or on low heat.

But first, a warning: I can’t promise you this will be the prettiest post. But food doesn’t always present us with the most photogenic subjects does it? In this case, tofu came out a little camera-shy, looking rather drab drenched in marinade. But once it was tucked into a toasted sourdough sandwich, it was reunited with greatness.

Tofu, which a wonderfully healthy source of natural soy protein (as opposed to all those junky bars, shakes, and factory-produced cereals), seems to have this way of sitting in my fridge too long. For some reason, I seem to have this horrible tendency to neglect it. But you know what? It deserves to be loved. And topped with avocado, sprouts, and fresh tomatoes, tofu-love comes easily. Even if you’ve been known to say a mean word or two about it.

And that’s where this tofu saver comes in. When I stopped buying deli meats, I missed the thick, juicy filler they gave my summer sandwiches. Egg salad and tuna got old fast. And so I hauled out the tofu, tapped it three times, and politely asked it to become something wonderfully sandwich-worthy. I’ve been making these slices ever since. And best of all, they last (almost) forever in the fridge.

Tofu Deli-Slices

Slice firm tofu in ¼ to ½ – inch slices.

Mix up a marinade: There’s almost no limit to what you can do here, just mix up any liquid things you think go together. In the past I’ve used brown sugar, soy sauce, worchestershire, even ketchup. You could use pesto, or a curry-coconut milk mixture, or any supermarket bottled peanut, Thai, or Indonesian sauce. I’m sure some salad dressings would do a great job, too. For a smoky taste, try a few dashes of liquid smoke, or BBQ sauce.

Marinate the slices in a plastic container or bowl for a few hours, overnight, or until it  starts calling your name.

Preheat oven to 275 degrees F. Lay the slices out on a piece of parchment or foil, and bake until they become dry and leathery at the edges, and maybe start to brown slightly, usually over an hour. You can continue to bake them until they’re completely “meaty” all the way through, or leave them soft an squishy at the centers. Up to you.

Cool, and store in the refrigerator to use in sandwiches.