Tomatillo gazpacho

Make the most of summer produce with a tangy gazpacho that manages to be both light and surprisingly hearty.

Take me to the soup!

The calendar has turned to September, friends. Most years I’m desperate for the fall to come. I’d be happy if it was sweater weather and apple season all year round.

But this year I sort of wish I could freeze time (but also, skip over the next bit entirely). We still have a week before Kindergarten starts for M, which means, I’m not yet worrying about an email from the school saying that someone has Covid. And Z is at the perfect baby stage where he’s sleeping more, crying less (sort of), and has a personality, but isn't yet mobile.

I hate this instinct of mine to imagine that whatever is coming will be bad. Or that if I imagine all the possible bads, that I can stop them from coming. What is that? Did I inherit some DNA from great great great great-grandmother Esther who escaped the pogroms?

Anyway, I’ve been dealing with all this dread by eating gobfulls of not-great food. I’m not even trying to food shame myself. I don’t think anyone would classify my current eating regimen as “balanced.” And I’m certainly not eating only things that taste absolutely delicious. I’m eating for the sole purpose of thinking about something other than my fears. It’s not great, Dan.

Consequently, I’m trying to come up with meals that are a little more veg-heavy while still being fun and tasty and most importantly, simple. Because, though I’m cooking and eating to stop myself from worrying, I’m also deeply committed to worrying and thus, don’t want to take too much time away from the task of imagining any and all worst-case-scenarios. You know, in case I CAN stop them from happening with my imagination.

So, this gazpacho. I used to hate gazpacho. As Lisa Simpson described, it’s tomato soup served ice cold. But when it’s good, it’s oh so much more than that. Our favorite farmstand had tons of beautiful tomatillos, so I bought some and threw them into the toaster oven (but you can obviously use a real oven too) and then threw them into the soup. The rest is really your standard Spanish gazpacho with none of the American faff that we often add. Think veggies at their peak, aromatics, salt, vinegar, and lots of olive oil.

I also realized that, while straining is a pain and you end up throwing out a lot of stuff that you could otherwise eat, it also makes the texture SO MUCH BETTER. So now I strain even though it’s a pain. But you certainly don’t have to. It saves time and this recipe yields a lot more soup when it includes the tougher stuff.

A couple of notes:

• Please don’t reduce the oil content in this soup. It gives the dish its body and staying power. Without it, you might as well open a can of V8.

• Tomatillos are a little sour and as such, give another dimension to the soup. But you can absolutely skip them and use all tomatoes.

• Start with 1/2 tsp of kosher salt. I’ve found that this soup can easily taste too salty if you go overboard.

Tomatillo Gazpacho

Yield: about 3.5 cups (depending on how juicy your veggies are) 
Time: 25 minutes, all active (less if you choose not to strain the soup)

¼ lb tomatillos, husks removed, rinsed of the sticky residue, and halved
1¾ lb heirloom, plum, or other red tomatoes
1 small cucumber, peeled and roughly chopped
1 small zucchini, roughly chopped
3 large scallions, green and white parts roughly chopped
2 Tbsp red wine vinegar
1/2-1 tsp fine sea salt
½ cup olive oil

Preheat the oven or toaster oven to 350. On a parchment or foil covered baking sheet, place the halved tomatillos face down. Bake for 5-7 minutes or until the tomatillos have softened a bit, but aren’t completely mushy.

While the tomatillos are cooking, roughly chop the rest of the vegetables.

Add the tomatillos, tomatoes, cucumber, zucchini, scallions, vinegar, and salt to your blender and blend on high for 2 minutes. 

While the blender runs, add the olive oil in a slow stream until it’s completely incorporated, about 2 more minutes. 

Strain the soup through a fine mesh sieve.

Test for seasoning and add more salt or vinegar if needed.

Chill for 2 hours or up to 1 week.

Broccoli tacos

Roasted broccoli, poblano and meunster cheese sauce, and broccoli micro greens make for a quick, nutritious, and lip-smackingly good meatless monday or taco tuesday meal.

Take me to the tacos!

A few weeks ago, M decided that he didn’t like tacos. He still liked tortillas and all of the fillings, but brand anything as a “taco” and he was not interested. I only cared because often, the easiest route to dinner goes right through fridge-clearing-taco-ville. Maybe if I’d offered a Chocotaco he would have been into it? We’ll never know.

But while I was making these broccoli babies for the first time, he commented, “that smells really good.” Dear reader, he ate it. The whole thing. It was definitely the poblano cheese sauce, which I would like to put on everything for the rest of my life.

Instead of making a queso with cornstarch added at the end, I make a roux to start and added the cheese once the milk had thickened. I’m sure going the traditional queso route would also have been delicious. I just chose something else because life is about choices.

A couple of notes:

• Keep an eye on the broccoli after about 15 minutes. The cooking time really depends on how fresh your broccoli is, how large your florets are, and how hot your oven runs.

• Add in any other bits and bobs to the tacos that you want. I used broccoli because its a favorite in our house, but other roasted veggies or proteins would be delicious here.

• Double the cheese sauce. Just do it. This recipe makes enough for about 6 tacos, but the sauce makes a delicious dip for chips or raw vegetables.

Broccoli tacos

Yield: 6 tacos
Time: About 40 minutes, mostly active

1 lb broccoli florets (buy 1.5 lbs because you’ll cut off the stalks)
3-4 Tbsp olive oil 
Large pinch of salt 
1 large poblano chili (or 1 small can of pre-roasted chili) 
1 Tbsp butter 
1 Tbsp flour 
¾ cup whole milk 
3 oz muenster cheese 
1 oz cheddar cheese 
½ tsp sea salt 
¼ cup minced poblano chili 
6 corn soft taco shells
Broccoli microgreens 

Preheat the oven to 425. Spread out the broccoli florets on a baking sheet and toss with the olive oil and large pinch of salt. Roast for 20-25 minutes, or until the broccoli is as crispy as you’d like. Stir the florets around on the sheet pan halfway through cooking. 

While the broccoli is roasting, make the sauce. 

Roast your poblano pepper. Turn on the stove burner and place the washed and dried pepper directly on the flame. Have a pair of tongs handy and turn the pepper every 30 seconds or so to ensure that it’s charred everywhere. This usually takes me about 5 minutes.

Once the skin is blistered all over, place the pepper in a large bowl or paper bag and either cover it with plastic wrap or a tea towel or close the paper bag tightly at the top. Let the pepper stand for 5-10 minutes until the steam has loosened the pepper’s skin. Check by pinching some of the pepper and the skin should slip off easily. If it doesn’t, let it steam for a few more minutes and try again. 

Once the pepper has steamed, remove as much of the skin as you can, the top, and the inner seeds. Chop the pepper into small pieces. One pepper should make a scant ½ cup of chopped, roasted peppers. 

In a small pot, melt the butter over medium heat. Whisk in the flour and let the mixture bubble lightly until it has turned a medium golden color, about 5 minutes. 

Whisk in the milk and stir thoroughly to combine. Continue to stir as the milk bubbles very slightly on the edges. If the milk bubbles up too vigorously, turn down the heat. When the milk mixture has visibly thickened and coats the back of a spoon, add the salt and cheese and stir until the cheese has melted.  

Stir in the chopped roasted poblanos.

Assemble the tacos.

Heat up the tortillas in a hot, dry pan for about 1 minute each. When hot, fill the shells with the roasted broccoli and top with the cheese sauce. Top with the broccoli microgreens, avocado, grated cotija cheese, and any other toppings you like.

Corn and hominy salad

Take advantage of corn season with this raw, refreshing, and super flavorful corn and hominy salad.

Take me to the recipe!

This salad was inspired by elote or Mexican street corn. When we lived in NYC, my favorite thing to get at the street fairs that popped up on summer weekends (we called them “socks and sausages”) was the grilled corn with mayo, chili powder, cilantro, and cotija cheese. Spray a little lime over those babies and they were the perfect mix of smoky, salty, creamy, and acidic.

I started developing this recipe last summer and never got around to posting it before corn season was over. This salad uses raw corn, so you really want to get the freshest cobs at the peak of their season. You can use frozen or otherwise not-peak corn and give it a quick saute before making the salad, but the fresh, raw stuff is truly the best.

So, there are about 12 million elote salad recipes on the interwebs, so what makes this one different, you ask? Hominy!

Hominy is dried corn kernels that have been soaked in an alkaline solution. Hominy is actually used to make masa, which is the key ingredient in corn tortillas, tamales, and other staples of Mexican cuisine. It has a light corn flavor with a slightly nutty aftertaste. Actually, once you taste hominy, you know that it tastes exactly the way corn tortillas taste.

The hominy adds bulk to the salad that makes it more versatile than a side dish. I’ve added this corn concoction into other meal salads and eaten it on its own with some shredded rotisserie chicken. So, while technically a side dish, this salad can easily transform into the star of the show.

A couple of notes:

• I only use 1/2 of a garlic clove because I want to be able to taste all of the ingredients rather than just raw garlic. If you really like garlic, feel free to use more, but I REALLY REALLY like garlic and 1/2 of a clove was more than enough for me.

• You can find prepared hominy in cans at basically any grocery store. If you have some dried hominy that you want to rehydrate, find instructions here.

• Cotija cheese is a dry, salty cheese that’s close to a farmer’s cheese. Kind of like if Feta and Parmesan had a baby. If you can’t find it, substitute a dry, nutty, crumbly cheese.

Corn and hominy salad

Yield: about 5 cups of salad
Time: 10 minutes

4 medium ears of corn, kernels removed (about 3½ cups)
1 cup hominy
1/3 cup fresh cilantro, tightly packed (stems and leaves are fine)
3 Tbsp mayo
½ tsp kosher salt
Juice of 1 large lime (1 Tbsp)
½-1 tsp chili powder, to taste
½ large garlic clove
Water, as needed to thin out the dressing, added 1 tsp at a time
3 oz cotija cheese

Remove the corn kernels with a knife. I like to use a bundt pan to catch them as they fly around, but any old bowl will do.

Rinse the hominy and add it to the bowl of corn.

In a blender or food processor, add the cilantro, mayo, oil, salt, lime juice, chili powder (start with 1/2 tsp and add more to taste), and garlic and blend until smooth, adding tiny amounts of water to thin out the sauce as necessary.

Mix the cilantro dressing into the corn and hominy.

Taste for seasoning and add more salt, chili powder or lime juice.

Mix in the shredded or grated cojita.

Macadamia nut brittle no-churn ice cream

Since we’re all still social distancing this summer, cut down on your trips out for ice cream by making this simple, but fancy-seeming caramel-y, nutty, and creamy no-churn ice cream at home.

Take me to the recipe!

This dish is the epitome of “looks harder than it is” cooking. There are some tricky parts, but all told, the ice cream base only takes 10 minutes to put together and the brittle is about 10 minutes of prep and then 10 minutes of watching like a hawk and then you’re done!

So why should you bother with this recipe if it’s tricky? Well, it’s the best combination of a '‘project” because we all need things to fill the day, especially when those things result in delicious ice cream, and something simple. You won’t end up with hundreds of dishes and the ingredients are pretty easy to come by. (I mean, so far, there’s no run on sweetened condensed milk, but who knows. I got everything through a curb-side order from Target.)

I also love no-churn ice cream because, even if you have one, who really wants to haul out an ice cream maker? The texture falls somewhere between soft serve (the love of my life) and hard ice cream,

This is also a great kids’ cooking project. Maybe do the scalding-hot-sugar portion yourself, but the rest (smashing brittle to pieces! whipping cream! Gently folding the two together!) is 5-year-old approved.

And best of all, the final ice cream is so much better than the sum of its parts. I literally couldn’t stop eating it. It’s caramely and crunchy, but also super creamy. It’s sweet, but not overly sugary. And for my husband, it brings him right back to childhood when he used to eat this now discontinued Haagen Dazs flavor with his dad.

A couple of notes:

• I barely adapted this recipe for the brittle from Bon Appetite, and added copious notes to demystify this process (don’t be put off by the length of the recipe below! it’s actually really simple!). Caramel is basically just-burned-enough sugar, but it goes from perfectly browned to acrid in a matter of seconds. So, to save you from redoing the brittle a few times and wasting ingredients, I’ve added a lot of notes within the recipe itself.

• Read the directions through one or two times before making this. It’ll really streamline the process and help you anticipate what’s happening with the super hot sugar.

• I’ve used salted nuts and salted butter, but both are optional: Use what you can find. If opting for unsalted nuts and butter, add some salt to the dry brittle ingredients (see note in the recipe).
  

Macadamia nut brittle no-churn ice cream

Yield: 2½ cups brittle; about 5 cups ice cream  
Time: About 20-25 active minutes for the brittle; 10 minutes for the ice cream; 8 hours freezing time

For the brittle
(Adapted from Bon Appetite)

1 cup roasted, salted macadamia nuts, roughly chopped into peanut-sized pieces (you can also use unsalted, raw nuts, but you’ll need to roast them yourself in a 400 degree oven until they start to smell nutty and are slightly golden; and add ½ tsp of sea salt to the dry mixture)
1 Tbsp butter (salted or unsalted), straight from the fridge and chopped into 9 pieces
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup sugar
½ cup water (plus an extra ½ cup for wiping the sides of the saucepan while cooking)
2 Tbsp light corn syrup

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.

Grease a spatula with butter and set aside.

Place a trivet or oven mitt on an area of your counter.

Fill a cup with some water and unearth your pastry brush. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, combine the chopped nuts, butter, and baking soda. Set aside.

In a medium-sized, but deep (not wide) saucepan, combine the sugar, water, and corn syrup. Stir to combine with a second spatula (other than your greased one). Place over a medium-high flame and stir until the sugar dissolves and you can’t feel any grit, about 2-3 minutes.

Leave the flame at medium-high and let the mixture come to a big, rolling boil for anywhere from 7-9 minutes. Do not stir.

• The sugar usually turns from a clear, light-ish yellow to a golden camel color in about 8 minutes, but if your flame is slightly cooler or hotter than mine, it may take an extra minute or one minute less.

Every minute or so, wipe the insides of the pan with a wet pastry brush to remove thin layers of sugar water that may have splashed up the sides of the pan. Start with your brush about an inch away from surface of the hot sugar and then work your way down the sides of the pan with the wet brush, shimmying it from side to side, dissolving that thin layer as you go. Re-wet the brush often.   

• It’s hot in there, so be careful. If the water bubbles or crackles so much that it spits onto your skin when you touch the sides with the wet brush, the pan is too hot. Turn down the flame slightly and try again in 30 seconds.

• However, if you brush the insides of the pot with the water and it doesn’t make any hissing sound, your pan isn’t hot enough. Turn up the flame slightly and try again in 30 seconds.

• Another temperature gauge is the steam or smoke coming off of your pan. You DO want some steam, you DO NOT want smoke. It can be hard to tell the difference. For me, the volume of that vapor is the easiest way to tell: Really visible, obvious steam that looks at all smoky means that your pan is too hot.

• Once you’ve found a comfortable angle for wiping the sides, rotate the pan to ensure that you get everywhere, but aren’t sticking your hand awkwardly over burning hot sugar.

• This cleaning method isn’t perfect and you’ll likely smell some burning sugar. Don’t let it fool you into thinking that your sugar is cooked too early. Just try to find the burning spot and give it an extra brush with water.

Let the pan bubble until the sugar turns that medium camel color. Every 30 seconds to 1 minute, give the pan a few swirls to make sure the sugar browns evenly. The edges of the sugar will cook faster than the center.

•  These swirls should be vigorous enough to really mix the sugar, but not so vigorous that you splash more sugar onto the pan’s sides than necessary. Rotate the pan occasionally too.

• If the bubbles make it hard to judge the color, use a rubber spatula to gently move the bubbles to one side and try to spot the color underneath.

Once you reach your desired camel color, remove the pan from the heat. (Don’t just turn the flame off, actually move the pan to the trivet we placed earlier. The caramel can burn quickly.)

Using the buttered spatula. stir in the nuts, butter, and baking soda and combine vigorously. It may take a minute for the butter to melt completely. The mixture should bubble up a bit thanks to the baking soda.

Immediately dump the mixture onto the parchment and spread into a thin layer with the buttered spatula. Let harden and cool completely while you make the ice cream base.

When it has completely cooled, smash the brittle into lots of small, pea-sized pieces. I use a kids’ hammer for this part.

For the ice cream
(Adapted from literally hundreds of recipes for no-churn vanilla ice cream)

2 cups heavy cream (1 pint)
14 oz sweetened condensed milk (1 small can)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 generous pinch salt

In a large bowl or the bowl of stand mixer, combine all of the ingredients. Whisk slowly to combine.

Gradually increase speed until you’ve reached the highest setting or second highest setting on your hand mixer or high speed on your stand mixer. It will splatter either in the bowl of the mixer or all over your kitchen if using a hand mixer. Keep mixing..

Slowly, you’ll begin to see tracks in the cream from the whipping of the whisk attachment. When those tracks deepen and remain after the whish has gone through the cream, keep whisking for one more minute.  

This entire process should take about 5 minutes.

When the cream is whipped to “stiff peaks” stage (when you run a spoon through it, the indentation from the spoon should stay firmly in place), Gently fold in 1¾ cups of the brittle.

Move to the container you’ll use for freezing the ice cream. Top with another ¼ cup of brittle.

Freeze for at least 8 hours or overnight.   

Creamed broccoli

A little garlic, cream, and parmesan transform ho hum frozen broccoli to a delicious side dish that even my 5-year-old, hot-dogs-for-breakfast kid will eat.

Take me to the recipe!

I don’t actually feed my kid hotdogs for breakfast, but he WISHES that I would. I’m pretty sure he’s cried about it at least once this week.

How are you all feeling about your kids’ nutrition during quarantine? I know I’ve been eating like a maniac for a few reasons. First, I’m nursing, so I need at least 10,000 calories a day, right? Second, we can’t go anywhere or do anything, so we’ve definitely been using food as recreation, pleasure, and fun; all of the things we used to get outside of our house and with people besides one another. Third, I’m awake so many more hours per day with a newborn that I have more time to graze in a fatigued stupor.

All of this has set a really bad example for my kid. He wants to eat only comfort, pleasure foods and I’m too tired to fight it a lot of the time. Also, he’s kind of a jerk when he’s hungry, which I’m pretty sure is genetic. This broccoli has been helpful because I feel good about him eating something green and he feels good about eating something with cream and cheese.

I’m really trying not to sweat the eating too much. I think we’re all feeling like some degree of failure if the number of “It’s okay to______ or not to _______during quarantine” think pieces I’ve seen is any indication. It’s hard to do anything all the time. Like I always say, too much of a good thing is still too much. Family time is great, but no one gets a break from each other. I like being a homebody, but what I wouldn’t give for a playdate so my kid could destroy someone else’s house for a change.

If eating a fourth cookie means I can laugh at the AWFUL haircut my husband gave M and not cry with rage because he looks like Eleven from Stranger Things, so be it.

A couple of notes:

• This recipe is barely adapted from one I found on epicurious. Some commenters didn’t love it, but extra Parmesan and garlic really help, I think.

• This is a little soupier than other “creamed” things like spinach or corn. A lot of recipes call for a roux, which I opted against because I wanted this recipe to be fast and also, AP flour is about as scarce here as toilet paper or hope. What? Too dark??

• I kind of like the soupyness because we all have enough homemade bread to last until the next pandemic, right? So we need something to sop up with all those carbs. This is also nice tossed with some noodles or zoodles or the like.

• I use frozen broccoli for this recipe because I feel like that might be more accessible currently, but you can definitely use fresh broccoli.

• If you don’t have a shallot, sub in some really finely minced onion or just another clove of smashed garlic.

• When I say “well-smashed” I really want you to give the garlic a good squish with the side of your knife. Get aggressive. You want each clove to be in several pieces.

Creamed broccoli

1 bag frozen broccoli or 1 large head of raw broccoli (about 4 cups of florets and stems)
1 Tbsp butter
4 large garlic cloves, smashed well
1 large shallot, thinly sliced
1 cup heavy cream  
½ cup grated parmesan cheese
Salt and pepper to taste

Yield: About 3-4 cups of broccoli
Time: 15 minutes, all active

In a large bowl, microwave the frozen broccoli until completely defrosted, about 4 minutes. Drain and place the broccoli on a paper towel while making the sauce.

If using fresh broccoli, bring a large pot of water to a boil and drop in the florets. Cook for 3-4 minutes and drain. Set on a paper towel to dry while making the sauce.  

In a medium pot, melt butter over a medium flame. Add the garlic and shallots and cook until fragrant, about one minute, reducing the heat if the shallot or garlic start to burn.

Add the cream and allow it to bubble. If it isn’t coming to a boil, increase the heat slightly. Similarly, if the cream is scalding or bubbling too fast, reduce the heat slightly. You want the cream to bubble pretty vigorously and it’s okay if it bubbles up and seems to expand, but we don’t want browning or burning.

Keep a close watch and stir occasionally until the cream has reduced and thickened so that when you scrape the bottom of the pot, the liquid doesn’t immediately re-cover the metal, about 4-5 minutes.

Add the parmesan and stir until melted, about 30 seconds.

Carefully taste the sauce (don’t burn your mouth!) and season with salt and pepper.

Add the broccoli and cook, stirring, until the sauce has covered the broccoli to your liking. The broccoli will release some water and thin out the sauce.