My son staring at eggs in a pan

Before last night, he’d done a few things here and there to help out: adding a dash of salt to a chick pea salad, putting the coffee filter in the coffee maker (we make the coffee together almost every morning), and adding a splash of lemon juice to some sauteed greens. But the night before last, it really felt like he was helping. We made a mexican-style casserole, modified from a vegetarian layered enchilada recipe I found in the Whole Foods app. My son helped me line the pan with tortillas; helped me measure out the corn, chili powder and lime juice; helped mash the black beans; and helped spoon the black bean and vegetable mixtures into the pan.

Too young?

Lining the casserole dish with tortillas

Some poeple might think he’s too young to be in the kitchen. Some people might think that he’ll get hurt, what with all the knives and hot pans and scariness. And yes, he might. But I think the positives far outweigh the negatives. I want him to get an appreciation for food and cooking. I want him to undersand how good it feels to make something (he was super excited when I pulled the finished dish from the oven), and though I never put it together before, cooking can teach kids some valuable skills, like addition, measurements and time:

• You can get two cups of corn kernels by counting out four half-cup measurements
• A tablespoon is three teaspoons
• Fifteen minutes is one quarter of an hour

Whether he puts any of this togther at this point is irrelevant. He counted to four when we measured the corn, and it made him happy. He was able to hold a measuring teaspoon steady enough to fill it three times with lime juice, and each time tipped it into the right bowl. He added two pinches of salt to the kale I sauteed on the stove. And when we’d finally put everything together and I slid the food into the oven, he raced into the living room and said, “I helped make dinner!” It was followed by multiple high-fives all around.

Don’t make it too complicated

If you’re going to cook with kids it’s important to keep things simple. Casseroles are perfect. You mix and layer a bunch of ingedients, then put it in the oven to cook.

veggie Mexican casserole

Mexican casserole (nee layered veggie enchiladas)

Ingredients:

• At least 12, small white-corn tortillas (They’re probably listed as taco-sized on the package)
• 16oz freesh greens
• 2 cups frozen corn kernels (or fresh, if you have them)
• 2 cups thinly sliced bell pepper
• 15 oz. diced tomatoes (it’s tomato season in many places, and fresh is best)
• 2 cans black beans (if you make fresh, you’re looking at 28oz., give or take)
• 1 cup shredded cheese (equal parts cheddar and monetery jack works great)
• Cumin
• Chili powder
• Salt
• Pepper
• Lime juice

Supplies

• 9″ * 13″casserole dish
• 1 large bowl
• 1 large skillet
• Measuring spoons
• 1 wooden spoon
• A potato masher (or sturdy fork)

Set your oven to 400 degrees. While the oven heats, you can do everything else:

Sautee a pound of greens over medium heat in about a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil. You’ll want them to cook down^1., so it might be best to work in batches. We used kale.

While the greens cook down, mix the bell pepper, tomatoes and corn together in a large bowl. Add a tablespoon of chili poweder, a tablespoon of lime juice and a sprinkle of salt. Mix it together. Then line the bottom of the casserole dish with half the tortillas.

note: the tortiallas should overlap and should come up some on the sides of the casserole dish.

Once the greens have all cooked down, add the corn mixture to the pan and mix it together.

While that warms through, put the beans into the bowl, add some chili poweder, a little salt, and a little cumin and mash them (if your potato masher will work, great. Otherwise, use a fork).

When you’re done with the beans, spread them evenly on top of the tortialls. Spoon half the corn mixture over the beans, and sprinkle half the cheese evenly over the vegetables. Top with the remaining tortillas, spoon on the remaining corn mix, sprinkle the remaining cheese over the top, then slide the dish into the 400-degree oven for 15 minutes.

Slice and serve.

1. When you cook down greens, you’re essentially extracting water and wilting them. It’s best to work over medium heat so your greens don’t burn. Add a little oil to a large pan, get it hot, then begin adding the greens. Add enough so you can still stir them a bit, but get as much in as you possibly can. Let them sizzle, and move them from time to time. When you can add more greens, do so, then stir it up so the newest addition gets worked to the bottom and closest to the heat. Working in this way, you should be able to get your greens wilted down so you have enough room to add the corn mixture.

The week’s menu

Sunday: Sausage soup w/ kale greens

Monday: Black bean tacos

Tuesday: -

Wednesday: Pasta with italian sausage (and sage)

Thursday: Lentil Chili

Friday: Fritata and salad

The sausage soup is a modified version of Epicurious’ mixed-greens and sausage soup, which I think is a southern take on the traditional Italian wedding soup. I think.

I didn’t know whether we’d find andouille sausage at the local market, so I prepared to use Italian sausage if it came to that. I figured we’d have some left over (we do anyway, from last week), so I knew we could count on sausage later in the week as well (pasta on Wednesday).

The black bean tacos are easy, and we have half-and-half in the fridge, plus shredded Mexican cheese. In fact, we had everything except the beans.

Wednesday we’ll have the pasta plus some fresh salad vegetables, and I might swap Thursday and Friday’s dinner items, depending on how well the salad fixings are doing.

I’m going to freeze a large portion of the soup to have again in a couple weeks (soup freezes great), and we have plenty of fresh fruits for lunches and snacks through the week.

Kale-greens and sausage soup

Dice a medium onion and mince about four cloves of garlic. Sweat them in a couple tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat. While they sweat, slice a pound of andouille sausage into half-inch rounds, add them to the pot and let the fat render for about five minutes. Add a can of diced tomatoes, eight ounces of chopped kale, several bay leaves and few grinds of fresh black pepper. Add just enough water submerge your ingredients. Salt to taste, then cover and bring the soup to a boil. Once it reaches boiling, take off the lid, reduce the heat to simmer, and let it cook for about twenty minutes.

All done. If your andouille’s not too spicy, you might want to add some hot sauce at the table.

If you wanted to make this soup vegan, you could easily substitute 28 ounces of cooked garbonzo beans or great northern beans for the sausage. You’d want to add a little more oil then, and probably some more salt, since you wouldn’t get the benefit of the sausage’s salt or fat, but it would still be an amazing soup, and one that’s simple to make.

"Spice Cabinet: Tins with Spices" by Chris Martino

A: There are really three ways I can answer this question. The first would take up a book: The Complete Book of Spices: A Practical Guide to Spices and Aromatic Seeds, which someone else wrote. The second is grossly simple: practice (also, kind of a jerky answer). The third lays somewhere in the middle, and starts not with spices but with our tongues.

We humans have receptors for five tastes: sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and savory (first coined as umami by a Japanese chemist, Kikuane Ikeda, according to Harold McGee. Also according to McGee, the term roughly translates as “delicious”). In thinking about food it’s valuable to consider these fundamental tastes and then begin thinking about what kinds of ingredients awaken those taste receptors.

So really, we’re going way past spices here and instead are thinking about how to build flavors. And to do so, we’re going to make a simple tomato sauce.

Start off with one 28 oz. can of crushed tomatoes. If tomatoes were in season, I’d recommend fresh ones, but they’re not right now, and the best possible tomatoes at this time of year come in cans. So go ahead and set that can on your counter.

Seasoning
The most important flavor enhancer is salt. I like to use kosher salt because its structure enables it to melt really easily into juicy foods like beef, pork, poultry, tomatoes, apple slices, hashbrowns, even oatmeal. Salt does more than just taste salty. It seasons food and enhances many of food’s natural flavors. Potatoes can taste more potato-y. Even things like bread benefit from a dash of salt. I add at least a pinch to everything I cook. (for a bit more on salt, you can check my salt post, or the essay in Michael Ruhlman’s Elements of Cooking).

So go ahead and set the salt on your counter.

Sweetness
After salt, you can begin building out the rest of the flavors with various ingredients. Sweet is fairly easy: sugar, honey, corn syrup, maple syrup, molasses. All these things can bring a certain sweetness to foods and can be added in various amounts. It’s important to think about each items’ characteristics, however. Corn syrup and sugar will provide sweetness without many other flavors. Molasses, on the other hand, brings a certain depth and smokiness to foods, and honey provides a subtle brightness, especially if you use a honey that carries with it specific characteristics of its source flowers. Orange blossom honey, for example, tends to be slightly more acidic than regular blended honey.

I’m not a big fan of sugar in my tomato sauces, but many people are, especially if they’re fond of Ragu or Prego, which all have some kind of sweetener added. If you really want some sweetness, bring out the sugar, but I’m going to say no at this point.

Sour and Bitter
I tend to think of sour and bitter are related. Each brings a certain brightness to food, though most folks believe sour is more pleasant than bitter. Indeed, “Scientists believe this was once an evolutionary advantage that warned us away from eating plants containing bitter, poisonous alkaloids.”  Each is important, however, to bring a balance of flavors to whatever you cook. In our test-case tomato sauce, the tomatoes themselves are pretty acidic and will bring brightness to the dish on their own.

But let’s say you want to make a salad dressing. You’ll want to start with a good oil and add an additional ingredient for brightness and additional flavors. For example, you could start with three tablespoons of really fine extra virgin olive oil, and a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar, a little salt, a sprinkling of minced shallots, and you have an incredible, well-balanced salad dressing. The vinegar’s acidity helps cut the liven the fatty flavors of the oil and also helps with mouth feel. Lemon juice is another great acid that can be added to dishes to give them a certain brightness or to elevate other earthier flavors. There are a couple of spices I can think of that lend this brightness: cumin and tumeric. Cumin is used in a lost of Latin American cooking and Tumeric is pretty common in a lot of Asian, Indian and Middle Eastern dishes.

In our tomato sauce, we’ll want something to help cut the acidity of the tomatoes and deepen the sauce’s overall flavor. But to do that, we have to get through the rest of the taste spectrum.

Savory (and fat)
Savory tastes are easy to come by if you’re willing to load up on the MSG. You can read about the chemistry behind the taste over on Wikipedia, but the important thing to remember is that savory qualities in food probably have as much to do with mouth feel as they do with taste. And for a good, savory mouth feel, we’re going to need a little bit of fat.

Haul out the extra virgin olive oil. This is going to do a couple things, all having to do with depth of flavor. First, the slight nutty flavor of the oil itself will lend a certain savoriness to the sauce. It will also pick up other flavor molecules from the garlic we’re going to sautee in it (might as well bring out the fresh garlic bulb and set it on the counter), and then will disperse those flavors through the sauce as the oil coats each piece of tomato, forming a sort of emulsion (fat suspended in liquid via some mechanism [an emulsifier]. In this instance, giant pieces of tomato, but in other instances, it might be mustard in a vinaigrette or egg whites in a mayonnaise.)

So, our ingredient list so far:

• 28 oz can of tomatoes
• Kosher salt
• Sugar (if you want to add sweetness)
• Olive oil
• Garlic bulb

Go ahead and get a large skillet or sauce pan and a wooden spoon.

Depth of Flavor
In the section on bitter and sour I talked some about brightness of flavor. I tend to think of taste and flavor as separate. Our taste receptors are fairly limited, but our FLAVOR receptors are complex and finely tuned. Flavor occurs when fundamental tastes blend with specific scents and aromas to produce an overall flavor experience. Part of that experience for me is the depth of flavor found in any dish. Ceviche, for example, often has a very shallow, bright flavor, with many of the flavor elements harmonizing in the upper register of sour and sweet. If you take a look at the basic ingredients list for a ceviche, and think about the individual tastes of each element, the taste profile becomes pretty clear:

• Shrimp or fish (a little sweetness, a little savoriness)
• Lemon or lime juice (sour)
• Cilantro (a little bitter, a little herb or green flavor. Both bright)
• Yellow peppers (a little heat)
• Red onion (a little brightness, a little heat)
• A little garlic (a hint of savory)
• Salt and pepper (seasoning)

We can perform the same kind of analysis on our sauce ingredients and get a good idea of where we stand in terms of flavor balance:

• Tomatoes (their inherent acidity will provide some brightness)
• Olive oil (a little savoriness, a little fat)
• Garlic (a hint of savory, plus a little flavor depth)
• kosher salt (seasoning)

As it stands, we’re going to have a very bright fairly acidic sauce. We’ll have to get some herbs and spices to help counteract that. Go ahead and get some oregano, some black pepper, some paprika and some nutmeg, and set them all aside.

Get cooking
Begin with a good stainless steel or anodized aluminum skillet. Measure in a couple splashes of olive oil (approximately 2 tablespoons, but who’s counting?) and set the stovetop for medium. This sauce recipe is designed to come together in the time it takes to heat water for, and cook pasta, so we won’t be letting it bubble away for an hour on the stove or anything like that.

While the oil heats, prep and mince the garlic. This video provides good, step-by-step instructions:

Add the garlic to the oil and give it a stir with a wooden spoon. Let it sit in there for about a minute, or until some of the garlic just begins to turn golden. This is caramelization and adds richness and depth by chemically altering sugars in ways scientists don’t yet understand(!) and adding a slight smoky flavor. Don’t let it burn! If it does, it’s not the end of the world, but burnt garlic can be pretty bitter.

Once the garlic has browned slightly, add the tomatoes and slowly stir everything together. When it warms a bit, give it a taste. It should taste very bight and very tomatoy. Now go ahead and add two large pinches of salt. Stir it in and give it another taste. Notice the difference? The salt should highlight some underlying flavors which will help equalize the bright, acidic flavor of the tomatoes (it’s from the skin, by the way).

So now what? First, spoon some of the sauce out into two bowls (just a little bit). This is for our experiment. Then shake some of the oregano into the pan (no harm in using dried herbs from the store, especially if you’re just starting out). Maybe a teaspoon’s worth. Mix it in and give the sauce another taste. If it still tastes really bright, shake in another teaspoon of oregano. You should notice something amazing begin to happen. The oregano will lend depth to the overall flavor of the sauce, cut the acidity and lend a certain sweetness and a certain smokiness to the whole affair. In essence, it’s balanced the flavors and made a more appetizing sauce. As a point of reference, go ahead and shake a few specks of nutmeg into one of the bowls you set aside and a few specks of nutmeg into the other. Give them a taste. Notice anything? Make note of how they changed they flavor. If they did it in a good way, then maybe add a bit of one of those spices to your sauce. If they made it taste terrible, then forget I ever mentioned it.

Working well with spices takes a long time. I’ve been cooking for a while, and I still use only five or six spices with any kind of regularity. However, if you think less about specific spices and more about what kind of flavors you want to work with, then you can really begin expanding your cooking repetoire to incorporate not just spices, but all manner of ingredients.

Heat
One thing I didn’t mention in our recipe for tomato sauce is heat. Heat is another flavor element that can add real complexity to a dish, especially when combined with sweet (think Thai dishes, which feature wonderful, complex chilis as well as sweet coconut flavors). Adding heat is usually accompanied by some acid, as many peppers and chilis tend to have fruity undertones. However, heat is one of those things that seems regionally distinct and, in my mind, works best with those dishes we traditionally think of when someone mentions a little fire: Schezwan, Thai, Indian, Mexican, and others, and seems deserving of its own post.

Extra credit
You know how lemon is often added to fish? The acid helps cut some of the fatty flavors that fish can harbor. Get what you made earlier that was pretty acidic? Tomato sauce without oregano. If you wanted to do a bang-up job cooking some flavor-neutral fish (orange roughy or grouper, let’s say), you could put some oil in a pan, get it really hot and sear the fish on each side for about 30 seconds. Transfer it to a non-reactive cooking vessel (a pyrex casserole dish, for example, spoon the tomato sauce over it, and bake it in the oven for about 10 or 15 minutes. Pull it from the sauce, garnish with some sliced black olives and finely chopped chives and you’d have a great and easy fish dish.

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We’ve gone to a mostly vegetarian diet since my daughter declared her new status this past Christmas. It’s been easy in some respects. I put food on the table, we eat it. Not a big deal. But in many ways it’s like starting from scratch. I’m uncertain, don’t know a thing about ingredients or spices, don’t have the confidence in the kitchen I did when cooking with meat. I began to question myself as a cook.

I understand meat. I know what happens to connective tissue when a roast is braised; I know the flavor bacon fat gives to green beans. I can roast a chicken. I even understand some vegetables. I can roast broccoli now without a second thought. Fresh green beans without bacon fat are delicious when boiled fast in salted water. But the rest of this stuff escapes me. I’m in unfamiliar territory.

So now I guess I need to practice. It’s what a person does when he doesn’t know something. It’s what I do, at least. And I’m telling you this because I’d appreciate it if you bear with me. If you want to learn how to cook vegetarian meals, great. Maybe we can stumble through together. If you’re a seasoned pro, even better. Maybe you can leave me some tips in the comments. I think I’ve been stalled (and stalling) on this blog because I felt like I need to be an expert, but really all I need is time in the kitchen.

Tomato Basil Salad with Tuscan Bread (for two)
1 giant heirloom tomato, locally grown
1/2 loaf of excellent, hearty bread cut into thick slices, at least two per person (the garlic in the bread I used imparted wonderful flavor to the meal)
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil (the better the olive oil, the better the dressing)
2 tablespoon balsamic vinegar (again, the better, the better)
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil (or less, to taste)
4 tablespoons shaved Parmesan cheese
Fresh ground pepper, to taste

I’d like to be able to say I make my own bread. Some day that might become a reality, but at this point, I still buy my bread at the local supermarket. This weekend I bought a great Tuscan bread infused with olive oil and garlic. We used half the loaf for garlic bread last night, served next to stuffed shells (I just followed the recipe on the back of the pasta box. For the shells, I mean. For the bread I toasted thick slices and slathered them with butter I melted in the microwave.)

The second half I used for lunch:

First, make the dressing. Combine the olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper, and basil in a container and shake vigorously. Then slice and toast the bread. While the bread toasts, chop the tomato into bite-sized pieces. On a plate, lay out two thick slices of bread for each person, and liberally scatter with the chopped tomato. Shake the dressing again, and drench each plate. Finally top the tomatoes and bread with shaved Parmesan cheese. It’s really that simple.

The key to this dish is fresh, high-quality ingredients. Here in Florida, spring has arrived in full splendor and glory, so we can get things like heirloom tomatoes. And don’t even ask if the extra expense is worth it. It totally is, as is the inconvenience of having to wait for local tomatoes to come into season. The difference is night and day.

So that’s my first step. That’s the commitment I’m making to vegetarian cooking and to this blog. It’s not going to be fancy, not for a while at least, but the ingredients will be as good as I can get given the time I have, and I’ll strive to make them seasonal.

I swear, it’s just like starting over.

This past Saturday afforded me such luxury, and I took a few selfish minutes to cook up a four-egg omelet for one.  I had a busy day ahead and needed my strength (plus, grilled onions, bacon, and cheddar cheese–I get selfish when faced with pure deliciousness).

Ingredients (serves one, two, if you have a side item)
2 strips of bacon, diced
1/4 medium onion, diced
1/4 red bell pepper, diced
4 eggs, beaten
grated cheddar cheese (to taste, but you’re probably going to want a quarter-cup)
kosher salt
ground black pepper

Note: you’ll also want a good non-stick pan (trust me on this one.  Non-stick pans are perfect for cooking eggs, and this is no exception)

Technique
dice

Method
low heat

First, set out four eggs. Let them warm a bit. Eggs closer to room temperature cook more evenly and more predictably than cold ones. So set out the eggs and brew your coffee. Then place the bacon in a cold skillet and set the skillet on a burner, medium heat.  Let the pan come to temperature.  When the bacon begins to sizzle, let it go for about a minute, then add the diced onion.  Stir occasionally for three minutes or so, then add the bell pepper.  Stir occasionally for another five minutes. You can also use this time to beat the eggs. Once the onion has gone translucent and browned a bit, the bacon has crisped some and the peppers are soft, remove all the ingredients to a bowl.

Place the pan back on the heat and add the eggs.  Leave them be.  If you need to, swirl the pan gently so the eggs cover the bottom completely, then let them cook a while, approximately four minutes.

What to look for: the gentle heat should prevent the bottom from burning.  The omelet will be ready to fill and fold when the eggs on the top achieve a jelly-like consistency in just a thin layer above a pale, custardy layer.  Now it’s time to fill the omelet.

Place 1/3 the filling ingredients near the center of the omelet, but slightly off center and top with half the cheese.  With a rubber spatula, fold over the right third of the omelet, then the left third (or vice-versa, depending).  Working quickly, slide the omelet to a plate and top with the remaining bacon, onion, pepper and cheese.  If you let it stand for another 30 seconds, the eggs inside will heat through and firm up, and you’ll be able to enjoy your perfect omelet with the sun streaming in through the living room windows and the sounds of a house waking into itself around you.