For my friend and excellent cook, Elisabetta Scorsello, here is my lentil salad recipe which she has waited patiently for all these weeks. Sorry, Elizabeth...
I love lentils. They're delicious and good for you. My husband is less than enthusiastic when I make this dish because eating lentils means he'll be spending a lot of his day in the bathroom. I don't have that problem.
Whenever I make this dish guests are inevitably impressed--it seems much more exotic than it really is. I've experimented with various kinds of lentils and the only ones that work with this salad are the imported French ones, or the Italian Castelluccio lentils. The ones you get in the supermarket in floppy plastic bags turn to mush when they're cooked--OK for lentil soup. But for a cold, or room-temperature dish, lentils need to maintain their integrity, hold their shape, and not mush into the other ingredients.
About 4 Servings
1 cup lentils (see note above about lentils)
Red Wine Vinegar (a good brand)
EVOO
Finely diced shallot (about 3 Tablespoons)
Chopped fresh Italian-leaf parsley (about 3 Tablespoons)
1/2 cup crumbled goat or feta cheese
1/2 cup halved red grapes
Sort and rinse lentils (sometimes you find little stones amongst the lentils). In a pot, cover with water by a few inches and bring to a boil. Turn down the heat to a simmer and cook until lentils are tender all the way through which should take about 30 minutes. Keep water level up throughout cooking time, adding more water if needed. Drain, but reserve some of the cooking liquid--maybe a half cup.
In a wide shallow bowl, toss the lentils with the vinegar (about a tablespoon, more or less to taste), salt and fresh ground black pepper, and let sit 5 minutes. Taste and add more salt, pepper or vinegar if needed.
Add EVOO, shallots and parsley (or any other herb or diced vegetable combo you like), and stir. If mixture seems too dry add some of the reserved cooking liquid.
Like many dishes, this one is better after sitting for some time, or even the next day.
Enjoy!
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Friday, September 18, 2009
Block Party
Ever have one of those weeks where you hardly eat any of your own food at home? This was one of those weeks. However, we had the pleasure of dining 3 times this week with neighbors. Here's what my week looked(s) like:
Saturday night I made dinner for my next door neighbors, Scott and Maryanna who is the fabulous cook from Russia I've written about. I previously posted a blog about using my new oven and practically destroying the entire meal I prepared for them. See my post of 9/14/09.
On Tuesday we walked up to our neighborhood bistro and compared notes with our neighbors and recent fellow empty-nesters, Annette and Blake. The Chicken Piccata at Savoury Lane wasn't bad, btw; although the pasta it was served on was kind of mushy.
On Wednesday night, my husband and I ate at The Navy Yard Bistro in Charlestown, our go-to place when we're in Boston overnight. The quail appetizer was really, really good and enough for a meal. But no matter how little I eat there, or at any number of restaurants like it, I always come away feeling stuffed. I know the amount of butter restaurant chefs use is legendary and that seems to be the culprit--everything is very rich.
On to Thursday: dinner with old neighbors Bob and Donna. We ate at a relatively new place in Maynard called The Cast Iron Kitchen. Despite quirky service my meal was great. I had swordfish prepared arrabbiata style, that is with a spicy Italian tomato sauce. It was moist, full of flavor and not overly rich--I would order it again. Everyone else was happy with their meals, as well.
Tonight we're dining at the home of friends who live in Vermont, Kate and Bill Piper. Kate loves to cook and Bill is carnivore extraordinaire, so there's always something meaty and delicious for dinner. Can't wait.
I also can't wait to get back to cooking and eating in my own kitchen!
Saturday night I made dinner for my next door neighbors, Scott and Maryanna who is the fabulous cook from Russia I've written about. I previously posted a blog about using my new oven and practically destroying the entire meal I prepared for them. See my post of 9/14/09.
On Tuesday we walked up to our neighborhood bistro and compared notes with our neighbors and recent fellow empty-nesters, Annette and Blake. The Chicken Piccata at Savoury Lane wasn't bad, btw; although the pasta it was served on was kind of mushy.
On Wednesday night, my husband and I ate at The Navy Yard Bistro in Charlestown, our go-to place when we're in Boston overnight. The quail appetizer was really, really good and enough for a meal. But no matter how little I eat there, or at any number of restaurants like it, I always come away feeling stuffed. I know the amount of butter restaurant chefs use is legendary and that seems to be the culprit--everything is very rich.
On to Thursday: dinner with old neighbors Bob and Donna. We ate at a relatively new place in Maynard called The Cast Iron Kitchen. Despite quirky service my meal was great. I had swordfish prepared arrabbiata style, that is with a spicy Italian tomato sauce. It was moist, full of flavor and not overly rich--I would order it again. Everyone else was happy with their meals, as well.
Tonight we're dining at the home of friends who live in Vermont, Kate and Bill Piper. Kate loves to cook and Bill is carnivore extraordinaire, so there's always something meaty and delicious for dinner. Can't wait.
I also can't wait to get back to cooking and eating in my own kitchen!
Monday, September 14, 2009
Plain and Simple
“She grew up and then moved.” That’s what I gave as the reason for cancelling my daughter Elly’s 6-month teeth-cleaning appointment. The dental office doesn’t take kindly to casual cancellations. But it was the truth, plain and simple; part of the housekeeping I had to do that day: pay some bills; clean out the pantry; close the books on 22 years of being Elly’s mom. I explained to the receptionist that she couldn't keep the appointment because she lives somewhere else now, and she’ll be making her own dentist appointments (if she remembers), in a city of a million dentists (if she can find a good one, like the one who’s been cleaning her teeth since she was 3?, 4? She never really did like him anyway).
I don’t mean to sound so dramatic about it. It’s not like I can’t see her or don’t talk to her several times a week. It’s not like I haven’t gone through it before, with Anna; but Elly is my youngest, and I won’t have to go through it again (but I would if I could).
So, it’s on to cooking--cooking is a good antidote to feeling bereft. Besides, I have a new oven. Those of my readers who know me, know that for 35 years the only cooking I’ve done has been conducted on a stove that looks like this
It started in Vermont, in the Northeast Kingdom as it's called, where we rented a house on 90 acres. It came with a wood burning cook stove in the kitchen. There was no other cooking implement, and after we got the hang of using it we fell in love with the thing. It represented a way of life (a lifestyle, at a time when the word was first coming into usage, mind you) we aspired to, one that included a lot of the ideas of warmth, hearth, home, family, hospitality. Lots of friends and family came and we always had a wood fire going. It was so-------Vermont.
When we bought our first house in Massachusetts, we looked-up Dave Erickson who has a business in Littleton, MA restoring old, wood cook-stoves. We would sometimes make a day of it and go out to visit his place just to oooh and aaah at the vast array of antique stoves in various states of rust and dilapidation in his chilly enormous red barn. The completed ones, the ones that had been restored to all their shiny-chrome and handsome black-ness, were showcased in a room of the defunct train depot from which he ran his restoration business, and where he lived upstairs. This was before Dave had been discovered by "Chronicle" and "The New York Times;" a time when you could almost always find him in the back, welding, or sand-blasting, or re-nickeling one rusted-out hulk or another. He told us he learned the skills from his Dad who worked with him at the time. He picked-up the stoves for a song from the backyards of old folks who threw the stoves out there for lack of anywhere else to put them when times changed. They were happy to have him haul away the eye-sores. What he did with those old stoves was a wonder to behold-—transformed them into sparkling jewels, with workable ovens and burners and warming racks and fancy, shiny accoutrements. These things didn’t come with any manuals, so Dave would even accompany his babies to their new homes and put them through a test drive with the new owners.
We've had one of Dave’s wood cook stoves ever since. We cook on it and heat the house with it. When we moved to a larger home, first thing we did was call Dave and purchase another one. Using a wood cook stove kind of gets under your skin and starts to feel like anything else is a cop out. It was fun feeling smug.
The stove in the picture is what we have now-- an antique combo—gas and coal sidecar model. Two gas ovens up top (no pilot), 5 gas burners below (lit with a match), and a wood box that could burn both wood and coal. We actually burned coal in it a few times—a very few times; it gets very, very hot. Heating with coal became a definite casualty of “global warming.” Of course, using a wood cook stove for cooking and for heating one’s home means always having a wood pile around too. Finding places to store 2 cords of wood, easy in Vermont, became a challenge in suburbia. But we were up for it and still do it.
But after 22 years cooking with the Victory Crawford I was ready for a change. I was tired of never knowing when the oven temp was just right, tired of the uneven baking results, not being able to fit standard-sized pots and sheet pans in the small ovens, waiting 20, 30 minutes for the oven to pre-heat, burning my hands on the hot door. Plus I was cooking more and more and enjoying it less and less!
Enter Electrolux…
This baby can bake, de-frost, broil, dehydrate, slow-cook, proof bread, uses convection technology and can get up to speed in no time at all.
The funny thing is that it takes almost as much time to figure out how to use it as did the Victory Crawford; and no one wants to huddle around it in the winter. It kind of beeps and purrs and flashes in a non-friendly way. I have yet to put it though all its paces but we did have neighbors over the other night and used the oven to cook an entire dinner. Everything was fine except that although the chicken looked done, it wasn't. A couple minutes in the microwave fixed that. I'll get the hang of it soon enough.
I don’t mean to sound so dramatic about it. It’s not like I can’t see her or don’t talk to her several times a week. It’s not like I haven’t gone through it before, with Anna; but Elly is my youngest, and I won’t have to go through it again (but I would if I could).
So, it’s on to cooking--cooking is a good antidote to feeling bereft. Besides, I have a new oven. Those of my readers who know me, know that for 35 years the only cooking I’ve done has been conducted on a stove that looks like this
It started in Vermont, in the Northeast Kingdom as it's called, where we rented a house on 90 acres. It came with a wood burning cook stove in the kitchen. There was no other cooking implement, and after we got the hang of using it we fell in love with the thing. It represented a way of life (a lifestyle, at a time when the word was first coming into usage, mind you) we aspired to, one that included a lot of the ideas of warmth, hearth, home, family, hospitality. Lots of friends and family came and we always had a wood fire going. It was so-------Vermont.
When we bought our first house in Massachusetts, we looked-up Dave Erickson who has a business in Littleton, MA restoring old, wood cook-stoves. We would sometimes make a day of it and go out to visit his place just to oooh and aaah at the vast array of antique stoves in various states of rust and dilapidation in his chilly enormous red barn. The completed ones, the ones that had been restored to all their shiny-chrome and handsome black-ness, were showcased in a room of the defunct train depot from which he ran his restoration business, and where he lived upstairs. This was before Dave had been discovered by "Chronicle" and "The New York Times;" a time when you could almost always find him in the back, welding, or sand-blasting, or re-nickeling one rusted-out hulk or another. He told us he learned the skills from his Dad who worked with him at the time. He picked-up the stoves for a song from the backyards of old folks who threw the stoves out there for lack of anywhere else to put them when times changed. They were happy to have him haul away the eye-sores. What he did with those old stoves was a wonder to behold-—transformed them into sparkling jewels, with workable ovens and burners and warming racks and fancy, shiny accoutrements. These things didn’t come with any manuals, so Dave would even accompany his babies to their new homes and put them through a test drive with the new owners.
We've had one of Dave’s wood cook stoves ever since. We cook on it and heat the house with it. When we moved to a larger home, first thing we did was call Dave and purchase another one. Using a wood cook stove kind of gets under your skin and starts to feel like anything else is a cop out. It was fun feeling smug.
The stove in the picture is what we have now-- an antique combo—gas and coal sidecar model. Two gas ovens up top (no pilot), 5 gas burners below (lit with a match), and a wood box that could burn both wood and coal. We actually burned coal in it a few times—a very few times; it gets very, very hot. Heating with coal became a definite casualty of “global warming.” Of course, using a wood cook stove for cooking and for heating one’s home means always having a wood pile around too. Finding places to store 2 cords of wood, easy in Vermont, became a challenge in suburbia. But we were up for it and still do it.
But after 22 years cooking with the Victory Crawford I was ready for a change. I was tired of never knowing when the oven temp was just right, tired of the uneven baking results, not being able to fit standard-sized pots and sheet pans in the small ovens, waiting 20, 30 minutes for the oven to pre-heat, burning my hands on the hot door. Plus I was cooking more and more and enjoying it less and less!
Enter Electrolux…
This baby can bake, de-frost, broil, dehydrate, slow-cook, proof bread, uses convection technology and can get up to speed in no time at all.
The funny thing is that it takes almost as much time to figure out how to use it as did the Victory Crawford; and no one wants to huddle around it in the winter. It kind of beeps and purrs and flashes in a non-friendly way. I have yet to put it though all its paces but we did have neighbors over the other night and used the oven to cook an entire dinner. Everything was fine except that although the chicken looked done, it wasn't. A couple minutes in the microwave fixed that. I'll get the hang of it soon enough.
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