The Yellow House

With a pile of greens: Tortilla española

Sarah — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 18:13:48 +0000

Maybe you’ve heard of Ruth Stout, who is quickly rising to the top of my Ideal Dinner Party Guest List (posthumously, sadly). She smashed saloon windows with Carrie Nation during temperance, and then went on to become a garden guru in the ’60s and ’70s. I’m reading her book called “Gardening Without Work: For the Aging, the Busy, and the Indolent”. (If nothing else: such an appealing title!) Stout champions a way of gardening that essentially has one tenet: mulch the heck out of everything with straw, organic matter, newspaper, and forget about the rest. No weeding, and the organic matter of the mulch is supposed to occupy pests just as much as much as your plants themselves. The end. How she manages to fill up a book with this information, I’m not sure, but she does, and she’s lovable and eccentric and I enjoy every minute of it. It comes as no surprise, I suppose, that this woman was known to garden in the nude (as if I could like her more).I’m not the kind of person who believes that everyone should grow things. But for people who do want to grow things and are looking for a gateway plant, I would suggest growing greens: head lettuce, romaine lettuce, loose-leaf lettuce, kale, collards, mustards, chard, and the like.

For those just starting to garden, greens are not the showy crop they aim to produce–tomatoes and squash and other more summery, evocative fruits and vegetables frequently take that distinction. To me, though, these are less rewarding than a patch of greens. With lettuce at your fingertips, you have a relatively easy-to-grow, frequently harvestable salad bar that lends itself to every day eating. So many humble meals, in fact, become just that—a meal—with a bunch of greens on the side.Ben’s favorite is a loaf of crusty bread, soft-boiled eggs, a massive amount of lettuce and mustardy vinaigrette. We like Nigella Lawson’s supper onion pie, too, with lots of leafy stuff on the side (Matthew Amster-Burton turned me onto that one). For myself, it doesn’t get much better than a tortilla española, that staple of Spanish cookery.

Tortilla is sometimes called a Spanish omelette, but I’ve always found that a bit inaccurate. It’s more like a potato cake bound together with eggs–potatoes are primary, eggs are secondary. I got addicted to tortilla in Valencia, where leftovers are served cold the next day on crusty white bread as sandwiches (starch-phobic Americans everywhere are shuddering as they read that, but it is so good). A true Spaniard serves tortilla with some very olive oil-y, soft sauteed peppers on the side, but I prefer it with–you guessed it—a pile of greens.

Tortilla española

My version uses a stovetop-to-oven cooking method, but some people consider this a bit inauthentic. Saveur has a stovetop-only version, but it is trickier—be warned. They must have gotten the same Spanish-madre advice as me, though: when in doubt, use a 1 egg to 1 potato ratio.

You’ll need

At least 1/2 cup olive oil
6 medium potatoes, peeled if you care, and thinly sliced
1 yellow onion, thinly sliced
1 clove garlic, minced (optional)
6 eggs
Kosher salt and black pepper

Directions

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
In a thick-bottomed, oven-proof skillet, heat the oil over medium heat. When hot but not smoking, add the potatoes and toss in the oil, cooking for about 10 minutes, trying not to let them stick too much (because they will). After 10 minutes, add the onion and continue to cook another ten minutes. Both potato and onion should become soft and a little golden, but not brown. Add the garlic if using and saute for a minute or so more. Lower the heat in the skillet.
Beat the eggs in a with a few pinches of salt and a few grinds of black pepper until well combined. Add the egg mixture to the skillet, shaking the skillet to distribute the beaten eggs throughout the potato and onion mixture. Continue to cook on the burner until the edges of the tortilla begin to set.
Transfer the skillet to the oven. Bake for 10-15 minutes, until the tortilla is cooked fully and the eggs are set but still tender.
Remove the tortilla from the oven and allow to cool for ten minutes. Run a thin knife around the edge to loosen, place a plate on top of the skillet, and, using hot pads to protect your hands, quickly invert the tortilla so that it is flipped out onto the plate.
Eat immediately, or serve tapas-style at room temperature after cooling, with a green salad.

Farro with braised radishes & their greens

Sarah — Tue, 14 May 2013 20:23:21 +0000

I entertain the big questions with frequency but allow them to slide away unanswered with equal frequency, which is one of the 3,798 reasons I should probably never bear children into the world. This is a roundabout way of getting to my point, which is Dear Stephanie, I apologize for taking so long to get back to you. Stephanie wrote me the kindest email weeks ago asking lots of questions, mostly answerable, except for one: How do you do it? In the parallel universe where I actually am “doing it”, I probably also return everyone’s phone calls, eat a decent breakfast more than once a week, drink coffee and wine only occasionally, and have found a natural deodorant that actually works (I’m back on Dove Unscented like a junkie). In that world, I know for a fact that I did not burst into tears last night when the can opener refused to cooperate on a 16-ouncer of San Marzanos.But I did (Ben, to his eternal credit, gently pried the can and opener out of my hands without comment). I generally have my act together so little that I felt phony and undeserving reading Steph’s email, wondering what I could say to this kind human looking for affirmation. You just can’t admit to someone Oh, you know, some days after a rough day at work where I question my life’s direction and the foreign aid industry and then struggle through a two hour commute home, I start crying while I’m cooking dinner over a dysfunctional can opener. That’s how I do it!But it is. It’s how we all do it, muddling through, these little people running around on the face of the earth tearing our hair out trying to make everything right. I would like to exude chill wabi-sabi vibes (nothing lasts, nothing is finished, nothing is perfect), but instead, I am a perfect storm of workaday sweat ethic, Catholic guilt, and big dreamer, wanting to serve and work hard and take care of everything and accomplish much—and then criticizing myself for every missed opportunity, every night I go to bed early, and every dirty dish in the sink to the point of total uselessness.
. . . .
It helps to focus on the low-hanging fruit, I think. Writing a book, for example, not that I would know, is a worthy pursuit, but sometimes you have setbacks, and also, it is effing hard and takes forever and you probably aren’t even writing a book even though you think you are. Now, I’m not saying that the big battles aren’t worth fighting. But there are those small, beautiful tasks in life that are relatively accomplishable.

These things keep me sane. They empower me. Being able to make a quick dinner, for instance, even if it’s just a nice omelette, is one of those tasks: I rarely come home after a crappy day and feel worse after being able to make a 10-minute dinner for Ben and I. (I often feel worse after ordering disappointing pizza.)

Growing radishes, similarly, falls into the category of Easy Work That Makes Me Feel Good. Outranked possibly only by lettuce and greens as easiest veggies to grow, radishes give concrete, harvestable proof, early in the season, that you can indeed grow things. Yes, you. Us! We, the people of the world of the crying-over-can-openers ilk. In about two square feet, I can continuously have about 25 radishes going, and it’s not even hard. Of course, having radishes means that you must do something with them, and after discovering cooked radishes a couple years ago, I’ll roast or braise them all at once, and then save for tossing into salads.

I made this salad for my own dinner one night, and then took we all took it to lunch the next day at work. Just like that (!), I fed myself and Ben and Louise lunch, too.

Small victories, friends. Keep fighting the good fight.

Farro with braised radishes & their greens

There is a little bacon in this recipe, which adds some really nice smoky flavor and depth. For vegetarian friends, I would recommend browning the radishes in butter in the first step as a substitute, and adding some smoked paprika in the step when you add the sugar and vinegar. For vegans, substitute your favorite fat, definitely add the smoked paprika, omit the goat cheese, and try to amp up the umami with some mushrooms along with your radishes—but it will be a different dish.

You’ll need

1 cup farro (you can substitute barley or other grains)
About 10 radishes with greens attached, rinsed well
2-4 ounces bacon (this is about 2-3 strips of bacon)
A few pinches kosher salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
1 cup flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped
1/4 cup crumbled fresh goat cheese (commonly sold as chevre)
Black pepper

Directions

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the farro, give a quick stir, and simmer for 20-30 minutes, until the farro is tender but still chewy and retains its shape.
In the meantime, trim the greens from the radishes. Roughly chop the greens into 1/2-inch pieces. Remove any particularly stemmy parts.
Trim the radishes at the root and the stem end, and then quarter them.
Heat a heavy-bottomed skillet over medium heat. Add the bacon and cook until fat is rendered and bacon is very crispy, about ten minutes, turning the bacon once. Remove the bacon with a slotted spoon or spatula to a plate.
To the remaining bacon fat, add the radishes, continuing to cook over medium-high heat. Resist moving the radishes for a few minutes—they will brown and caramelize a bit on the sides that have hit the hot pan. After about 4 minutes, or if they start to smoke, stir the radishes. Allow another 4 minutes or so of cooking, stirring occasionally. Add the sugar, salt, and cider vinegar and toss with the radishes, and continue to cook until the radishes are coated with the glaze-y mixture. Add the chopped radishes greens, toss with radishes until they are coated as well, and remove from heat. The radish greens will continue to wilt and cook.
After it is cooked, drain the farro in a colander and give it a quick rinse in cool water (this is meant to be a warm salad, not a hot one). Shake the colander very well to get out as much water as possible. Transfer the farro to a bowl or platter.
Crumble the bacon over the farro. Add the radishes and their greens, parsley, goat cheese, and any remaining fat or liquid in the skillet. Toss the salad. Taste for salt and pepper and season (it will likely need both).
Enjoy warm or cold. Keeps well, covered, in the refrigerator for several days.

Chicks

Sarah — Mon, 06 May 2013 13:38:05 +0000

I’ve assembled quite the little family around me these days. Ben is here, of course, and our brown tabby—those have been my dependable household for awhile now. Louise, my sister (of whom I don’t write very much, but who is between all these lines), recently moved in for the next few months, her own little brown-striped tabby in tow. Then, these little guys hatched. I feel like an old, cantankerous grandma, having raised their momma and poppa from babies just last year.
I especially like the tawny-colored one that looks like an owl; the yellow one wearing dramatic, ’60s-style, winged-out eyeliner; and the runt.

Kombucha

Sarah — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 15:13:10 +0000

After considering taping a “dirty hippie” sign to my forehead and being done with it, I thought instead we’d talk a little about making your own kombucha, because it accomplishes the same effect. Maybe you’re a little more open-minded to me, but I had always written off kombucha as a vinegary punishment beverage to be served alongside tasteless vegan lentil loaves or plain brown rice. Worst of all, any mention of kombucha always seems to be accompanied by (at best) half-baked and possibly dangerous claims of health benefits. Here is a direct quote, for instance, that I obtained by Googling “kombucha health benefits”: “In the first half of the 20th century…Russian scientists discovered that entire regions of their vast country were seemingly immune to cancer and hypothesized that the kombucha, called ‘tea kvass’ there, was the cause.” That’s some science for you, folks. You heard it here: kombucha does not immunize you from cancer. Okay, glad we got that out of the way.

Kombucha does, however, taste a lot better than I thought it would. A friend gave me a kombucha culture, so I’ve been making it at home. At its most basic, kombucha is a fermented, sweetened tea drink. Unlike other fermented beverages, though, where yeast eats sugar and turns it into alcohol, the culture that ferments kombucha (called a SCOBY—a symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast) takes fermentation one step further. After yeast turns sugar into alcohol, the alcohol is then transformed by bacteria into acetic acid. This acetic acid lends the distinctive tanginess to the final product (dilute acetic acid, as you probably know, is common household vinegar).

I find home-brewed kombucha to be more complex and less bitter than store-bought versions. As kombucha continues to ferment, its sweetness lessens and its tanginess increases (the result of yeast processing sugar), so by making it at home, you have control over how sweet (or how tangy) the final product is. And, since kombucha is mildly effervescent, I’ve heard that it’s a good substitute for the occasional soda craving, because it pushes the right sweet and sparkling buttons.

Kombucha can be made with any kind of tea, but my favorite is green. In the same vein, you can use a variety of sweeteners, from white table sugar to brown rice syrup, but I like honey. I’m including a quick primer below, but I’d be interested to hear if anyone else has kombucha-making experience or favorite teas/sweeteners to use.

–
A quick couple questions people ask me about kombucha:
Is kombucha alcoholic? Kombucha can sometimes have a very low residual alcohol content (alcohol that the bacteria in the culture has not yet turned into acetic acid). But so can orange juice. Awhile back, you may remember that the FDA pulled kombucha off the market temporarily because some commercial kombuchas were refermenting in the bottle. Even then, the alcohol content only got up to about 1%. You don’t have much to worry about in terms of alcohol, especially with homemade kombucha.

Is it safe to make kombucha at home? Making kombucha at home is about as dangerous as making your own beer, yogurt, vinegar, or other fermented, active culture, and/or unpasteurized product at home, which is to say: please use common sense. Work cleanly—use hot water and soap to clean the container before using it– and if there is visible mold or off-putting odors, throw out your kombucha, as you would with anything you make at home.

A kombucha primer

Kombucha cultures (also known as a “starter” or a “mother”) can be purchased online or in stores that carry homebrewing supplies. The culture reproduces itself over time, so if you have a friend that makes kombucha, they can give you one easily. If you purchase a liquid culture online and add it to your tea, don’t freak out when after a few days, it forms a strange, gelatinous mass on the surface of the liquid—this is what it’s supposed to do. (If you’re interested in the science of this, check out the Wikipedia article on zoogleal mats. This “mat” is what you can see in the photo above, in my container of kombucha. It is weird and mildly alien. I love it.)

You’ll need

A kombucha culture
3 quarts of water
4 tablespoons green tea or 4 green teabags
3/4 cup honey (raw is supposedly best, but I’ve used grocery store, “honey bear” type honey with fine results)

Directions

Gather a large jar or other glass container, a clean tea towel, and a rubber band.
Heat water in a large pot. Bring it to a boil, then remove from heat. Add the tea. Allow to steep for 10-15 minutes. Remove tea bags or strain out loose tea.
Add the honey to the still-warm tea and stir until dissolved. Allow the tea to cool. The tea mixture should taste too sweet—this is good, as your kombucha culture will consume a lot of that sugar.
Transfer tea to the glass container. Add the kombucha culture, and then cover with the clean tea towel and fasten it on with the rubber band (fruit flies love kombucha, so be sure to close it such that they stay out).
Place the container in a not-too-warm, not-too-cool, relatively dark place. (Between 55 and 70 degrees should be fine).
Start tasting your kombucha after 4 days or so. It will probably still be too sweet at this point, but it’s good to get a feel for how the kombucha is coming along. I like my kombucha best after about 10 days, when it’s decently effervescent, still sweet, but with a good tangy kick. Some like their kombucha much more vinegary, allowing it to ferment for two weeks or more.
Before serving, strain the kombucha through a fine-mesh sieve or through cheesecloth. Keep the kombucha in the refrigerator. Enjoy chilled or over ice.

Warm potato salad with spring greens

Sarah — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 12:48:53 +0000

spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere) arranging
a window,into which people look (while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and
changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

-E.E. Cummings

(First Steinbeck, now E.E. Cummings. Sorry. Try as I might, my favorite literary genre seems destined to remain Dead White Guy.)
So: we find ourselves in the thick of it. April showers, birds and the bees, all that jazz. The forsythia is practically glowing, all my greens are in the ground, peas and favas and radishes are out too, and—the current highlight of my existence—there is a hen sitting on a clutch of eleven eggs. Today marks Day 10 for her—only about that many more days, cross your fingers, and we should have some fluffy little baby chickies running around here. I’ve been thinking about seasonality lately, how you can’t go anywhere without mention of “seasonal” or “in-season” nowadays, feeling a little cynical about how it’s all a marketing ploy.

Then, this morning, lying awake before the alarm went off, the air changed. A stiff breeze kicked up, the skies opened, a single crash of lightning lit the pre-morning. All before the sun rose. I take it all back: shedding winter for this time of year is still one of the most exciting things I know.

Warm potato salad with spring greens

You’ll need

1/2 cup buttermilk
1 clove garlic, peeled and crushed with the flat of a knife
The white parts of two scallions, chopped
A squeeze of lemon juice
A generous punch of salt
1/2 cup loosely packed parsley, chopped
1-2 pounds baby or new potatoes, or regular potatoes chopped into 1-inch pieces
3-4 cups greens, such as watercress, dandelion greens, arugula, baby kale, or pea shoots, rinsed
Shaved parmesan
Freshly ground black peper

Directions

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Meanwhile, in a food processor or blender, process buttermilk, garlic, scallions, lemon juice, salt, and parsley until smooth. Taste for salt and add more if needed. Set aside.

When boiling, add the potatoes to the water. Cook for about ten minutes, until tender but still firm. Drain.

Toss the warm potatoes with the greens and dressing. Top with shaved parmesan and black pepper. Serve immediately.