Endless Simmer - A Food Blog

My Sunday Night Dinner Club took on a new form this past weekend - it was a task that we’ve not undertaken in quite sometime. What was supposed to be a nice quiet dinner for twelve turned into a debacherous affair for twenty-four. But what a night it was. If you are familiar with my Sunday night dinners then you will know they are themed, like last weeks picnic, for instance. Our spring tour continued with our good friends Summer Camp and his ladywife hosting (they are available for all future Sunday night dinners).

This past Sunday was the 28th anniversary of the eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington State, and with Summer Camp being from Washington he thought what better way to celebrate this than to have a meal dedicated to all that is volcanoes. We planned the menu meticulously, and ensured that most, if not all, ingredients came from a region with a volcano.

To start we served a white bean and herbed crostini; we had Korean inspired lamb, albeit from New Zealand; and Japanese and Peruvian inspired miso garnet sweet potatoes, courtesy of our resident chef, T2. There was also a tomato and mint keftedes from Greece and last but not least, a Pacific-rim Fuji apple salad. Not forgetting dessert we created an amazing chocolate molten cake from Mexico (not really from Mexico, but we claimed that region for the dish). We even sought out Assyrtiko wine, which is made from a grape grown in volcanic ash in the Santorini region of Greece.

The lamb, keftedes and molten cake were simply amazing. I have included some pictures after the jump and more details re the lamb.

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Or, how I learned to stop worrying and cook an entire meal without pork or pine nuts.

The problem with this whole food blog thing is that every time I cook a meal, I feel like I have to do something really original and different - or at least put a new bloggable spin on it - so that I can share the results with you guys. It’s a lot to live up to. Every time I make a plain old quesadilla or just boil up some noodles, I can’t help but think that I’m wasting valuable cooking time on something that isn’t good enough to blog. It’s kind of stressful actually. See what you people are doing to me?

I recently realized that because I’m always trying to do something new, I never even think to make everyone else’s great recipes that appear on this site, which really was the whole point of this thing in the first place. So when I had a half-empty fridge and no original ideas goin on recently, I decided I should try out one of gansie’s more delicious looking creations, Eggplant and Chickpea Lasagna.

Before Gansie says wait, wait, wait, that pansy little slice looks nothing like my beautiful hearty lasagna, I did make a few modifications, just so I would have something to write about. Details after the j.

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(In the spirit of the picnic, palsticware was used, blankets available and sandwiches wrapped)

Last week I asked ES readers and foodies from across the land to help me with my dilemma. I was to attend a potluck picnic but had no idea what to cook, nor what to suggest to my friends, as I was the orchestrator of the event. For our non-DC readers, this past weekend was a complete wash-out; it rained for days. As concern was mounting, we were thinking of creating paddy fields on the national mall. All this rain meant we had to cancel our outside activities, which included missing the Lighting to Unite event at the National Cathedral. We’re not ones to be defeated so we decided to go full steam ahead, transferring the picnic to my apartment.

My friends who cooked did an impeccable job, and we had some amazing dishes. These included:

Coconut & Almond Cupcakes thanks to my friend BJ.

My friend 3Y’s made a delicious Olive Tapenade, I don’t like olives myself, not even on pizza, but this was really something new for me which I know I’ll be trying myself.

There was a Babaganoush made with homemade tahini, thanks to Boozilla.

Summer Camp went totally crazy. She made a Tyropita (Greek cheese pie): Feta and Kasseri cheeses with nutmeg and mint; a Kreaopita (Greek meat pie): Beef with kasseri cheese, cinnamon, cumin, and allspice; also a Tzatziki (Greek yogurt dip): Greek yogurt with cucumber, garlic, and mint.

I made a Brie and Avocado baguette with a mint, garlic and oregano mayonnaise.

Finally, it pains me to write this but I do have to give a shout out to MD, he brought with him boxes and boxes of Popeye’s chicken, yes, you read that right, leave your thoughts on that one in the comments!

I pleaded and pleaded for my friend Tucker to make the potato chip cookies that gansie suggested, but to no avail. He chose to bake some absolutely amazing hazelnut chocolate cookies, the how-to on those are after the jump. They were seriously amazing.

The other superb dish I want to tell you about is the cabbage and bacon salad come coleslaw which one of the more discerning guests created. He used 1lb of bacon for this delight. Again, the recipe is after the jump.

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I’ve never been a ginormous fan of yuca. I’m not sure why, it just hasn’t come up that much. The only time I really ever see it on menus is as a side at Hispanic restaurants, but there’s usually a choice between that and either plantains or french fries, so I don’t think I’ve ever ordered it. No disrespect to the yuca, but that is some tough competition.

However, last time I was down in D.C. we all went to dinner at Mayorga Cafe, where there were no plantains or french fries at all, and the yuca fries were the only fried starchy goodness to be had. And let me tell you, they sure made me forget about french fries for the evening. Golden-crispy, not too oily, and with just a little more actual taste than spuds, I was hooked.

So even though I had NO idea how to cook with these, I grabbed one on a whim last time I was at the food co-op.

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I first discovered halloumi cheese in South Africa last year. A trendy SA chain called News Cafe serves an avocado salad with fried halloumi, grilled brinjal and peppadews. Since I didn’t know what any of those things were, I had to try it. I ended up making several return trips for this amazing fried cheese.

For the record, brinjal is just eggplant, and peppadew is a spicy red pepper native to South Africa. But that’s beside the point, because halloumi was the real discovery. This super-salty, extra-firm-but-slimy goat/sheep’s milk cheese is actually from Cyprus, and if you try to say otherwise, the Halloumi Police will get you.

I’m not sure why it’s so prevalent in South Africa, but I have never noticed it stateside before, so when I spied it at the co-op last week, I jumped for it.

In taste, it’s probably most similar to a queso blanco, and like that Mexican cheese, it’s most exciting because it can be fried or grilled. A few recipes around the web recommend dipping it in flour, but I just tried it straight up and got this nice golden brown after frying thin slices for about a minute each side in extra virgin. The outside is a crisp golden brown and the inside is just a tad melty.

Since I didn’t have any peppadews lying around, I made my own version of the salad, with roasted red peppers, cucumbers, and of course, pine nuts.

*This post is tagged both Greek and Middle Eastern for redundancy’s sake, not as an attempt to fuel any cheese-related territorial conflicts.

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I feel like Gansie would call these, “personpeas”.

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I’m proud to report that I made some progress in “not cheating” for Sunday night dinner. Although I didn’t whip up something intense, I actually did so some prep work, as opposed to the shame that was last week.

I obviously spent the day sleeping in, watching football (Eli continues on?!?!) and this terrible commercial 700 times (although for some reason, 80 loves it,) reading a good amount of the Wash Post* (that’s me to the right) and, of course, eating.

*Okay, let me rant for a second. I hate/do not believe when people say they read the whole paper every morning. That’s a lie. The paper is HUGE. It’s absolutely impossible to read the entire paper every morning. You’d have to start reading the second it was delivered (4-5 am? and shoot-off rant, you know you’re in trouble when you get home from a night partying and the paper is already delivered, but that can be a rant for another day) to be done reading it by the time you had to go to work. Sure, some people are animals and get up at 5 o’clock in the morning and drink coffee and read the paper and save the world, but I’m sooo not one of them. And anyway, they’re lying. 80 and I spent three hours tag-teaming the paper and we still couldn’t get through the whole thing. Regardless.

So for dinner, 80 and I flirted with the idea of ordering from Goodys, one of those all encompassing delivery places. They serve everything from fried rice to buffalo wings to burritos to chicken parm subs. And, during the end/beginning of the year, they also give a complimentary calendar/menu (see left) along with the food. The calendar kicks ass, it features the Chinese Zodiac (or peacocks or pandas) as well as their extensive menu, ensuring easy ordering all year long. But, we decided instead to find something in the kitchen because god-forbid one of us has to actually leave the apartment and go downstairs to get the food. Leaving the couch was hard enough.

Continue reading for the startling conclusion to Sunday night eating.

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So I have to admit, I’ve been less of a crazy chef since moving back home to New York. When not surrounded by 10 like-minded culinarians living on the same block, I’m a lot less likely to come up with insanity like hot dog sushi. If I’m just cooking for myself, I often end up preparing a non-blog-worthy sandwich, salad or stir-fry. Which kind of sucks, because, you know, I have a food blog.

But this week, I finally got around to watching the Top Chef Holiday Special on DVR. In addition to such scenes as Padma playing Dirty Santa (not nearly as exciting as it sounds), it got me right back into the mood to be running around my kitchen, hastily throwing random ingredients together in attempts to semi-invent something semi-fancy. Remembering I had some awesome leftovers like duck bacon in the freezer, I put together this quickfire dinner.

If I was Rachel Ray, I’d call it a gourmet 30-minute meal. But then I would have to tell you dumbass things like its OK to substitute baloney for prosciutto, so let’s just call it a tortellini explosion.

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(See that beautiful white bowl in the back - it’s courtesy of 80P’s mom.
The thank you note is in the mail!)

Fine. I’m a total fucking homemaker.

Last minute, 80P and I had friends over for the Bengals game before we headed to El and h diddy’s holiday/birthday party. Godforbid I don’t have an appetizer greeting them on their arrival. I assess the contents of the fridge and decide a dip is totally workable. I also have wholewheat pita that I can turn into pita chips. Perfect. I’m turning into Martha Stewart. Well, except for the fact that since I used all of my prep time to cook, I answered the door in my sweats and a t-shirt. And then insulted the beer they brought over. Well, maybe I’m not Martha quite yet.

Post jump: More beautiful pics from 80P and, of course, recipes

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