Well, today was supposed to be the big day for the Steady Pulse, Bean and Legume Recipes You Can Count On round-up, but I have a family medical situation I need to take care of, so I am hoping to have it all up by Friday. I will try to notify all the participants as soon as the round-up is posted, and please check back here! Thanks and sorry to make you wait for your legumelicious treats!
Coming soon to a beanpot near you…
Sugar High Fridays #53 ~ The Test of Time Round-Up
Sugar High Fridays is a monthly dessert blogging event created by Jennifer, the Domestic Goddess. Each month we get our sugar high on in keeping with a theme. This month, as the hostess of SHF #53, I chose “The Test of Time – Desserts over a century old” and bloggers from all corners of the sugar high world reached back through the ages with their spoons and mixing bowls, to grandparents and ancestors and beyond, to bring some time-tested sweet treats of yore onto our plates.
Join me now for a trip backwards through time, beginning with the recent past and nibbling our way all the way back to antiquity. And be sure to check out the individual posts for family memories, cooking adventures, old recipes in their original curious formats, and fascinating, well-researched culinary history!
Great Grandma Kelly’s Jam Cake
Laura of The Spiced Life recreates her grandmother’s great-grandmother’s jam cake, starting with figuring out how to actually make the cake! The long line of matriarchs passed down the ingredients through the years, but figured their descendants should be smart enough to figure out the rest of the directions. Luckily Laura was more than up to the challenge, as her moist, elegant creation attests!
140 years ago ~
Friedl of Kitchen Fun gets daring with speculaas, bringing this traditional autumn and winter cookie into the spring air and trying her hand at a gluten-free version. Happily for Friedl (and for the rest of us who can’t eat wheat) gluten-free speculaas is delicious speculaas. And something tells me they taste every bit as tasty shaped into a sweet heart as they do molded into a windmill!
150 years ago ~
Janne of The Bitesize makes a traditional Norwegian dessert passed down to her from her great-grandmother. She points out perceptively that old recipes are more likely to feature natural and local ingredients, and this dessert makes mouth-watering use of things like breadcrumbs, apples, and cream that would have been commonly available in a 19th century Norwegian household. The name translates to “veiled, rural girls” but, as Janne asks, which layer is the veil and which is the girl?
160 years ago ~
NAOmni of Not Another Omnivore grew up eating strawberry shortcake on her grandparents’ farm and once she started researching its history realized it was well over a century old. Her post explores all the different options for the dessert’s “carbohydrate” component, from biscuit to pound cake to angel food cake. But looking at NAOmni’s photo I’m wondering, does the carb even matter when you’ve got that tantalizing strawberry topping?
200 years ago ~
Inspired by a bottle of milk that needed using up, Pamela of The Cooking Ninja tries something new to her but quite old on this earth: Far Aux Pruneaux, a traditional dessert from Brittany, France with a dense flan filling flecked with sweet prunes. Dating back to the 18th century, this dish has evolved through the years from a savory buckwheat flan to the incredibly delicious sweet version we know today. (Can you tell this is one of my favorite desserts of all time? I am practically drooling on my keyboard…)
250 years ago ~
Elodie of yummyaourt gives Proust a run for his money with her charming “Once upon a time” tale of the origin of the Madeleine. She calls them “little pieces of pleasure,” and, looking at her luscious photos, I couldn’t agree more, especially when she advises flavoring them with orange blossom water or Earl Grey tea!
Karolcia of For the Body and Soul makes the Spanish version of Madeleines, called Magdalenas. Instead of a shell shape, these are made in a mini-muffin pan and use olive oil rather than butter. Karolcia is a baker after my own heart with some kitchen experimentation – she bakes half her magdalenas with baking powder and half without, to see if it really makes a difference. I feel quite willing to devour these moist and crunchy lemony treats under any experimental conditions!
350 years ago ~
Carolyn of 18thC Cuisine was the first person I thought of after I picked our theme, since everything in her fascinating blog is well over a century old. For Sugar High Friday she brings us a rich sugar cream pie flavored with almonds, baked on a piece of paper on the floor of the oven, using one of the oldest cooking techniques around!
My own contribution to our test of time was a literal test – a test of four different recipes for what is believed to be the oldest known cake or torte in the world! (Although I’m not really sure how they reckon that since there are cake- and torte-like desserts in this round-up that are clearly as old or older…) I compared the original 17th century recipe with three gluten-free varieties to see if 
this famous Austrian treat not only held up to through the ages but could change with the times as well.
450 years ago ~
Digigirl of Don’t Forget Delicious! brings her highly applicable experience in Medieval re-creation to this event. The only trouble being, it turns out the Middle Ages weren’t exactly the golden age of dessert. But after combing through ancient cookbooks in Middle English and French, she finally turned to the internet for aid, and came up with this incredibly appetizing sweet and juicy tart featuring wine-soaked strawberries – or strawberryes as they called them back in the day!
500 years ago ~
Hyderabadi Almond-Semolina Halva
Muneeba of An Edible Symphony gives props to her heritage with a fragrant, saffron-infused dessert. Even though her beloved Cuisinart met its end trying to prepare this dish, Muneeba soldiered on valiantly and the delectable results were clearly worth the effort! The hour it ending up taking to blend the mixture by hand gives me great sympathy and respect for the Hyderabadi princesses who first enjoyed almond-semolina halva. (Or great sympathy for their cooks, rather!)
1500 years ago ~
Anna at Life’s Too Short For Mediocre Chocolate is a history buff, and puts her expertise to work sharing the history and symbolism of Hot Cross Buns. Adopted as an Easter sweet, these buns have their origins pre-Christian England where they once (and still do, for some) honored the Saxon Spring goddess Eostre. Whatever they stand for, cranberry walnut hot cross buns with cream cheese frosting sound like sweet, sweet symbolism to me!
2000 years ago ~
Even Ivy, of Kopiaste… to Greek Hospitality, isn’t sure how old the recipe is for daktyla, one of the best-known pastries of Cyprus, only that is has been passed down in her family from generation to generation. I did some research on similar pastries, however, and it seems daktyla may have been around for two thousand years! Clearly these heavenly phyllo “fingers” stuffed with almonds and orange blossom water have had the staying power needed to make it through the ages.
Sra of When My Soup Came Alive puts a new spin on a very old formula by making an ancient Indian rice pudding from couscous. The results look positively ambrosial – I think you may start a trend here, Sra! What magic can come from expediency – in this case a years-old packet of couscous that needs to be used up becomes a reworked classic that will probably get made again and again.
Back to the present day ~
Well, friends, there’s the round-up! Thank you for joining me on this excellent adventure through time and place. I truly enjoyed all your marvelous creations and I learned so much! I feel ready for my pop quiz on dessert history now…
I’ll meet you next month for another sweet, sweet Friday!
Washoku, the first principle
“Five colors, or go shiki, suggests that every meal include foods that are red, yellow, green, black, and white. (Often very dark colors, particularly, deep purple – eggplant, grapes – and sometimes brown – shitake mushrooms – are counted as black.) Vitamins and minerals naturally come into balance with a colorful range of foods.” — Elizabeth Andoh, Washoku: Recipes from the Japanese Home Kitchen
Washoku, the book, is a huge and glossy tome filled with, as the subtitle suggests, recipes from the Japanese home kitchen. But before I started reading her book, I heard Andoh interviewed on The Splendid Table, my beloved NPR food show, and she talked about how the principles of washoku can be easily applied to a Western meal. After I started reading the book, I began looking for ways to bring the principles into any meal I prepare.
One of my first washoku meal-tweaks was a simple meal of homemade falafel over quinoa with tahini sauce, accompanied by a salad of grated daikon and carrot. Pretty plain on the plate – the falafel, quinoa, and tahini sauce all fall into your basic brown-to-tan spectrum, and the only color offered up by the salad, which I had been eating topped with toasted white sesame seeds (hello, brown-to-tan!), is the orange carrot.
So I checked the list Andoh outlines in the first principle of washoku, that of “five colors.” White was covered nicely by the daikon, and the orange carrots definitely seemed to me to be holding up the “yellow” end of things. But this plate of tan goodness was seriously defective in the other color departments, and, washoku aside, a big plate of neutral-colored food always kind of depresses me. (I remember my mom being horrified when she came to visit me at college – everything served in the dining hall that night was white-to-tan, from the fish filets to the cauliflower and mashed potatoes right down to the vanilla pudding for dessert. It was a big plate o’ neutral. Yum.)
So I brought a little color to my plate. Toasted black sesame seeds for the salad. A sexy line of sriracha hot sauce wending its way across the falafel brought in red and a sprinkle of parsely balanced the whole plate out with some green. Clearly this was not a jewel-like meal fit for an emperor – I was more interested in eating my lunch than in perfect plating – but having this extra boost of color significantly enhanced my enjoyment of the meal. Washoku is beginning to creep in, and, rather than feeling like a rule or a structure, it actually feels like something intuitive and right is coming home.
Oh, pretty!
Duck was craving noodles. I wanted something satisfying and filling, but also fresh and healthy. I looked in the fridge and found red chard, baby bok choy, and tofu. A quick consultation of my beloved Moosewood Cooks at Home spreadsheet offered up Gingered Greens and Tofu, page 232, and things just kind of went from there. I riffed off the Moosewood recipe to end up with something delicious and stunningly beautiful. An unexpected side-effect of red chard + rice noodles is a sea of gorgeous, sunrise-tinted noodles. They tasted of lime and, somehow, lime tasted of pink.
Sunrise Noodles with Gingered Greens and Tofu (adapted from Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home)
Rice noodles (I used half of a 14 oz packet from Thai Kitchen)
Tofu marinade:
1/2 c. soy sauce
1/2 c. dry sherry or Shaoxing cooking wine
1/4 c. rice vinegar
3 T. brown sugar
1-1.5 lbs firm tofu, blocks cut into 1/2-inch slices and then into 1-inch squares
4 T. peanut or vegetable oil
2 T. grated fresh ginger root
2-3 cloves garlic, minced or crushed
1 bunch red chard, lower stalks removed (but don’t pull the stalks out of the leaves), coarsely shredded
1-2 baby bok choy, coarsely shredded (optional)
3 T. lime juice
2 T. thinly sliced scallion + more for garnish
pinch of cayenne or splash of chili oil
To cook rice noodles: Bring 4 cups of water to a boil. Turn off heat and immerse rice noodles in hot water for 3-5 minutes until noodles are soft, cooked through but still firm and al dente, not mushy. (Check firmness frequently, as you would regular pasta.) Rinse with cold water for 30 seconds. Drain well and set aside.
Make tofu marinade: In a small saucepan, bring the marinade ingredients to a boil. Simmer for one minute and remove from heat. Add the tofu squares to the pot of marinade, immersing them as much as possible. Gently stir in 2 T. of the peanut oil. Set aside for 5 minutes.
Make lime juice mixture: Combine lime juice, scallions, and cayenne or chili oil in a small dish and set aside.
Preheat broiler. Prep all the remaining ingredients and have them at hand before beginning to stir-fry.
Place the tofu in a single layer in a nonreactive heatproof pan, covered with the marinade, or remove tofu from marinade, reserving marinade for later, and place on a piece of foil (depending on how your broiler works). Broil the tofu for 7-8 minutes; then turn it over with a spatula and brown the other side. Ideally, the tofu will get nicely browned and firm on the outside, chewy on the inside.
While the tofu broils, heat the remaining 2 T. of oil in a wok or large skillet over high heat. Stir in the ginger and garlic for a few seconds and then quickly add the chard and bok choy. Stir constantly on high heat until the greens wilt. When the greens are just tender, gently stir in the rice noodles and lime juice, scallion, and chili mixture. Gently toss the noodles and greens together until the rice noodles are heated through. The noodles should turn a lovely shade of pink. Remove from heat. When the tofu is browned, gently toss it with the reserved marinade and the noodles and greens, reheating if necessary. Top with a few raw scallions slices and serve immediately.
Serves 4.
Washoku, an introduction
I’ve been reading the most fascinating book, Washoku: Recipes from the Japanese Home Kitchen, by Elizabeth Andoh. In the book, Andoh (described on the book jacket as “the leading English-language authority on the foodways of Japan”) writes about the Japanese principles of washoku, the “harmony of food.”
As Andoh explains it, washoku is “both a culinary philosophy and the simple, nutritionally balanced food prepared in that spirit.” One of the things I found
most interesting is that, although Andoh details a set of principles that form the basis of washoku, she writes that in Japan washoku is so old and so deeply ingrained in the culture that “most Japanese today would have a hard time articulating washoku notions.” Nevertheless they follow them instinctively, whether preparing a home-cooked meal or putting together a meal of packaged foods from the supermarket or even the convenience store!
This made me think about the food principles that each culture follows intuitively. For the better part of the 20th century, most white Americans had a common understanding about how a plate of food should look – this much meat, this much starch, this much vegetable. I imagine a Japanese visitor wondering how each ’50s housewife knew to portion out and place exactly so much meatloaf, mashed potato, and green beans, each in their own zone on the plate. Why are potatoes served with gravy and not with tomato sauce? Why is meatloaf topped with ketchup and not mustard?
I have my own intuitive principles around food preparation and presentation, influenced most strongly by my mother. More than any specific recipes or dishes, what I remember learning were ideas about how food should look on the plate: lots of colors, pretty arrangements, interesting contrasts of textures. And above all, bounty. Not so much for an individual plate, but every platter, every holiday table, should be brimming with food, so much that every person could take as much as they craved and never have to worry for the people who hadn’t yet helped themselves.
Washoku, the book, is part cookbook, part comprehensive Japanese pantry-stocking and ingredients guide (with gorgeous, glossy photos of all the ingredients as well as prepared dishes), and part introduction to the beautiful and sensible principles that make up the washoku philosophy. I haven’t used the pantry-stocking guide or explored any of the recipes yet, but the washoku principles really resonate with me and I will be writing more about them here as I see how they incorporate into my life.
Cheese, glorious cheese, for a gluten-free, vegetarian Menu Plan Monday
This past week found me even more tired than the one before it. I still went out quite a bit and got a lot done, I just spent all the interim times collapsed in a heap. One of the big tasks I accomplished was a major shopping trip to the food co-op, where I hadn’t been since January. This meant I had cheese in the house for the first time in over a month. And it was cheese that came to my rescue this week, as the savior of the tired person. Cheese turns a snack into a meal and answers the question “I’m so hungry but so tired, what shall I have for dinner?” with a single, glorious word. (Oh, and for the record, I was way too tired to have taken the photos of Bravo Farms cheddar, Cowgirl Creamery Red Hawk, and Clover Stornetta Monterey jack up above – all the pics of these humane, local, sustainable cheeses are cadged from the interweb!)
So read on for a very simple and decidedly NON-vegan menu plan. (Sorry to all my vegan friends that there is little here for you this week. And don’t worry, vegan Duck managed nicely on his own – things made with wheat are another easy answer to the dinner question.) This week’s Gluten-Free Menu Swap is hosted by that goddess of gluten-free and vegan blogging, Sea at Book Yum. Her theme for the week was nuts, and while my menu isn’t exactly peppered with them, I did end up eating a few this week. Toasted walnuts in the arugula salad, pumpkin seeds in the salsa (they’re like a nut, right?) and handfuls of almonds during the early part of the week before I went to the store and we had nothing else to eat in the house.
This week the huge compendium of Menu Plan Mondays from all over the web, usually hosted at I’m an Organizing Junkie, is being hosted by $5 Dinners. Take a look at the list – there’s something there for everyone!
And don’t forget! The deadline for this month’s Sugar High Friday dessert event is March 23rd. I really hope to see you all there!
Monday:
GF mac and cheese with baby broccoli
Tuesday:
Tangy red lentils with goat yogurt and mustard seeds
Stir-fry of cabbage, red onion, and carrots with white rice
Wednesday:
Salad of arugula, apples, warm tempeh bacon and toasted walnuts with Hollyhock dressing
Quinoa with borscht, yogurt, and caraway seeds
Thursday:
Raw foods salad of bok choy, carrots, daikon and kelp noodles with an almond butter-coconut water-cider vinegar dressing
Sprouted corn quesadilla with Clover jack cheese and pumpkin seed salsa
Friday:
Amy’s Lentil Vegetable soup
GF toast with Bravo Farms cheddar and Maille tarragon mustard
Saturday:
Pan-cooked frittata of eggs, bok choy, carrots, daikon radish, Bravo Farms cheddar, roasted green chiles, quinoa, and pumpkin seed salsa
Sunday:
Pink lady apple, GF black pepper crackers, Cowgirl Creamery Red Hawk cheese
Announcing Sugar High Fridays #53: The Test of Time
I am delighted and honored to be hosting the March edition of Sugar High Fridays, the lick-your-plate delicious, incredibly long-running blog event created by Jennifer of The Domestic Goddess. Each month a new theme brings bakers and other treat-makers together from all over the web to show off their sweet, sweet talent and creativity.
I’m super excited about the theme I picked for us this month:
The Test of Time – Desserts over a century old.
From Eve’s apple to Alinea’s “transparency of raspberry and rose petal,” we humans have always had a sweet tooth and always will. What methods of satisfying our cravings have stood the test of time, getting passed on through the years? And what treasures from the past are languishing somewhere out there, waiting to be rediscovered?
Here’s a chance to show off your great-grandmother’s recipe, handed down since the old country and faithfully reproduced from a faded index card. Or to recreate some strange and long-forgotten ancient dish from medieval Europe, feudal Japan, or indigenous America and see how it pleases the modern palate. You’re also welcome to put your own fresh spin on an old dessert, as long as you include in your post a recipe or a description for the dish as it was in its original time period. Bonus points (in the form of SHF glory, of course!) for making a dessert that’s reeeeally old and/or using an ingredient or piece of cookware that is itself actually over a century old.
The fine print, etc…
- Make a dessert that is over a century old, then write a post about it on your blog. As mentioned above, if you are doing a “new spin on an old classic,” include in your post a recipe or description for the dish from its original time period. If you have the energy and interest, it would definitely be fun to hear some of your dessert’s history, but at the minimum tell us what era your dish is from.
- In your post, please link to this post as well as to the SHF page at The Domestic Goddess. You are welcome to use the SHF #53 logo above or this smaller version:
- Write and post your entry by Monday, March 23rd. Then send me an email at eversoscrumptious[at]gmail[dot]com with the following information:
- Your name
- Your blog name and URL
- Your post’s title and URL
- One photo (if applicable), sized to no larger than 200 x 200 pixels (does not need to be square, but the largest dimension should be no bigger than 200px), with your blog name in the filename
- If you aren’t a blogger and would like to participate, please email your well-edited entry and photo (if you have one) to me and I will post it here
- Then come back here on Friday, March 27th for a trip through sweet history as we see what century-plus desserts have stood the test of time!
Illustration from The New York Cook Book by Marie Martinelo, published in 1892
From American Treasures of the Library of Congress
Faster, Hotter
When I’m asked my favorite book, there are too many to choose from. Favorite movie? I struggle to remember any that I’ve seen. But about my favorite food there’s no question. Sushi, sushi, sushi. I could eat it all day and every day. When my mom would come to visit me all the different places I’ve lived and take me out for my special “mom’s paying” meal, it was always sushi.
Sushi makes me happy. I feel healthy and light after I finish a meal. It’s a perfect gluten-free food, and a perfect vegetarian food, as well. It’s got that umami-full nori wrapper and all kinds of surprises inside. It’s beautiful, flexible, and fun to make and eat.
Veggie sushi from more energetic days past
But sushi, at least vegetarian sushi, is pretty labor intensive. You have to cook the rice and then fan it endlessly until it cools. You have to stir sugar and salt into warm rice vinegar until it dissolves and then gently toss the rice with it. And then, since you can’t just slap a piece of nice fatty tuna on it, you usually have to prep your veggies into properly sized strips and then cook them, ideally with each in a separate marinade. And don’t even get me started on tamago, that delicate sweetened egg cake that is cooked and assembled one thin layer at a time. Then you make your rolls carefully, a skill that isn’t difficult but takes some practice, and slice them with the right kind of knife, wiping the blade clean between slices.
So even though sushi is my favorite food in the whole entire world, even though I used to throw giant roll-your-own parties all the time, it hasn’t played a very big part in my current CFS-influenced world. I don’t really eat it much out in the world – there aren’t a lot of creative veggie options at most places, especially since a lot of them feature tempura’d veggies or tofu and I am severely allergic to shrimp, which they fry in the same oil. (Needless to say, tempura is also not at all gluten-free.) And for at-home cooking, the fewer steps the better for me these days.
But yesterday, all that changed. Duck came home the other night from dinner with friends to tell me about an amazing thing they did with rice and nori, and suddenly the sushi paradigm has been turned on its head. His friends just took sushi rice (unseasoned, unfanned, and still warm from the rice cooker), spread it on a nori wrapper, and sprinkled on soy sauce and flax seed oil. I know, right? Flax seed oil? Turns out it imparts the roll with this rich, savory flavor and mouthfeel. It transforms a piece of seaweed and some rice into a full-blown, belly-fillin’ meal. They ate them plain that night, but last night we made steamed asparagus with a little citrus dressing and broiled some portobella mushrooms with miso-balsamic glaze and stuffed them inside our rolls along with toasted sesame seeds. Everything was simple and quick – the whole thing took about 20 minutes – and unspeakably delicious.
Bring on the Sloppy Sushi!
With this new “fast and hot” version, it’s probably not technically sushi anymore, I acknowledge that, but it’s still got the umami goodness, the freshness, the healthiness (with an added health bonus – aren’t we all supposed to be eating our flaxseeds?), and the roll-your-own fun! Plus, the basic dish takes no more time than it takes to cook rice, which, if you have a rice cooker, is about 30 seconds of active work. I had it again for lunch today with brown sushi rice and found it equally delicious. I can tell this is going to be a favorite addition to our repertoire!
“Sloppy” Sushi Rolls
Warm, cooked sushi rice (white or brown)
Nori seaweed sheets
Soy sauce (make sure it is wheat-free if you are GF)
Flax seed oil
Toasted sesame seeds (optional)
Filling ideas (optional!):
Avocado slices
Broiled portobella mushrooms
Steamed asparagus
Cucumber strips
Steamed carrot strips
Sprouts, especially radish sprouts
Kale or other cooked greens
Put a piece of nori down on a dry plate or other flat surface with the “rough” side of the seaweed facing you and the lines on the nori going from side to side as you face it, not up and down. Spread a thin layer of rice over the nori. Sprinkle on soy sauce and flax seed oil, and toasted sesame seeds, if using. If you are using a filling, put some in a line going across the rice, from side to side. Then roll it up and devour! If you want to be fancy, and your roll isn’t too soggy, you can cut your roll into slices like sushi pieces, but the whole point is casual, sloppy sushi, so don’t stress on it. Just start eating before it all falls apart!
Cleaning out the fridge to find a vegetarian, gluten-free Menu Plan Monday
It’s another week’s worth of retroactive menu planning! Why retroactive? Check out my post here for an explanation. Much of this week’s menu is based around the results of my New Year’s project – a thorough reorganization of my fridge. Basically I used a burst of energy to clean out my refrigerator for two days straight, staying up until 4 am on the second night to finish cooking everything I pulled out of the fridge. The results were a tidy fridge full of lovely little things to eat, which went into our meals in various combinations.
Check out more divinely, deliciously gluten-free menu plans at the Gluten-Free Menu Swap hosted this week at Fresh Ginger. This week our GF Menu Swap hostess set us the theme of “Local.” And what could be more local, I ask you, than “shopping” in my own refrigerator? (I hear all the “recessionistas” are trying to “shop their closets” these days- maybe I can kick off a foodie trend…) Our week also featured Duck’s homegrown collard greens, right from his little plot in the back yard. It was a good week for local, and a good week for eating in general!
Monday:
Crock-pot lentil-spinach curry with quinoa
Baked beets and onions with horseradish sauce
Roasted carrots with parsley
Balsamic roasted fennel
Tuesday:
Homemade falafel with quinoa and lemon-miso-tahini sauce
Carrot and daikon salad with black and white sesame seeds
Wednesday:
Chili-glazed tofu
Crock-pot lentil-spinach curry
Baked beets and onions with horseradish sauce
Thursday:
Eden Foods 100% Buckwheat soba noodles with steamed kale, roasted zucchini, and sauteed portabella mushrooms and red onions, dressed with kale sauce
Friday:
Home-grown collard greens with walnuts and raisins
Deborah Madison tofu
Quinoa with lemon-miso-tahini sauce
Saturday:
Mariposa Bakery GF pizza crust with pesto-tomato sauce, pine nuts, goat gouda, red onions, black olives, mushrooms
Sunday:
Leftovers!
Treats:
Cranberry Chutney Cobbler
Homemade Applesauce
As always you can check out the whole world of food blogger menus over at Organizing Junkie’s Menu Plan Monday compendium. To find out where next week’s Gluten-Free Menu Swap will be, visit the info page at GF Goodness.
Bottom Shelf & Crisper Drawers
The fridge project saga reaches its epic conclusion! It was a long, hard struggle to get here, one requiring culinary ingenuity and a superhuman tolerance for sniffing the mysterious contents of plastic containters, but 2009 can begin now in earnest with acres of shelf space and systems in place that should keep things tidy for at least, oh, one or two weeks.
Suit up team, I'm going in! If I'm not back in one hour...
The bottom shelf was without doubt the scariest part of this whole ordeal. Cut off from light by the shelves above, the bottom shelf was a dark and crowded place crammed end-to-end with leftovers and whatever is left after leftovers move on to the next world. Almost the entire bottom shelf went straight into the compost. It was a much-needed mercy-composting for these containers, a good half of which were Thanksgiving leftovers. (I know, right? YUCK! I swear there’s a black hole back there that things disappear into, only to reemerge weeks later.)
Won't you put us out of our misery?
The crisper drawers were more fruitful, offering up a Ziploc full of spiced wine syrup to freeze for some future ice-cream-topping extravaganza as well as non-rotten produce in the form of oranges, apples, carrots, fennel, parsley, and a daikon radish. The bounty from the drawers kept us in side dishes all week with Balsamic Roasted Fennel, Roasted Carrots with Parsley, Homemade Applesauce, and Carrot-Daikon Salad with Sesame Seeds (recipe follows). Still more carrots, parsley, and the orange zest and juice went into an unfortunately hideous crock pot carrot soup that I will write more about later.
Roasted carrots, balsamic roasted fennel, carrot and daikon salad, baked beets and onion with horseradish sauce, lentil-spinach crock pot curry, and quinoa
And with that, the fridge was complete. Emptied, reshuffled, reorganized, and ready to go. Let’s make 2009 the Best Fridge Year Ever! YAY!
New Year's Project complete!
Carrot and Daikon Salad with Sesame Seeds
1 large daikon radish (about 4-5 inches), peeled and grated
2-3 large carrots, peeled and grated
4 T. rice vinegar
1 t. salt
2-3 t. sugar or to taste
1 t. dark toasted sesame oil
Black and white toasted sesame seeds for garnish (optional)
Place the grated vegetables in a bowl, sprinkle with salt, mix well, and let sit for 30 minutes. Squeeze veggie mixture to drain it well. Dissolve the sugar into the rice vinegar and stir in the sesame oil. Top veggie mixture with the dressing, toss well to coat. Refrigerate overnight. Before serving, sprinkle each serving with a mixture of black and white toasted sesame seeds.
