Fresh vegetables tart with crumbled feta, or why sometimes naked (food) is good

I came back from a party/celebration/event/fundraising last night, stuffed with good food (mostly because I was helping out in the kitchen and you know how it goes…) It’s themove’s summer sol party (http://getoutma.org/summersol/), celebrating local food and people connecting with the land and the farmers that feed them. What’s more appropriate than a recipe celebrating the freshness and local-ness of food? You’re saying I made this random, lazy, Sunday-morning-can’t-bother-to-cook recipe a long time ago and was just waiting for an excuse to post it and wax poetic about it? Nah, I don’t know what you’re talking about…

Ingredients

Red lentil (dal) with a loooot of dairy, and herbs

I went on a cooking spree today – it has been a while since we really cooked anything serious. We did have a Korean feast at one point, and some very good Vietnamese noodles at another, but I’ve been either too lazy, or thought that it’s nothing to document. Korean and Vietnamese food come to me quite easily, I don’t have to think much about it. Vegetarian Indian food, or just vegetarian in general, is a beast, and whenever I make something vegetarian with an Indian flair, I consider it an achievement. Also have to document it, because I will have no idea how to make it later! This is why I gave up after a month of trying to be vegetarian. I learned a ton from my Indian landlord, but if I’m hungry, I want my food NOW. Cooking something you’re ill-equipped for, knowledge and pantry-wise, is like…abstaining from sex when you’re ovulating. It’s hard.

Not chilled spring pea soup, the brainchild of laziness

Accidents and laziness can bring great things. Today D and I reached a new low: we were too lazy to cook so we decided to go out and eat, only to decide to stay home and cook 15 minutes later because we were too lazy to get dressed to go out. Figured.

Anyway, because we were lazy, we pretty much threw everything in the fridge together in the quickest, simplest, most delicious combination (ok, this last part is made up. We didn’t know it’d be delicious until later). Soup. The most beautiful thing/brainchild of laziness on a rainy day. Also, no chilled soup. Chilled soup gives me the heebie jeebies.

Ingredients (sounds fancy; really just leftovers from the fridge) 

Sardines pomegranate cucumber salad

First day in a while when I can sit back and relax a little. I like being busy but it’s nice to know that I can also just ditch work once in a while and go for a cup of hot chocolate, or something. We moved into a new place, and the kitchen is oh so awesome. Must keep in mind to always keep it clean! There’s no space for us to display our snazzy array of spices and our magnetic rack of knives (not really a problem since we have a lot of cabinet space), but more counter-top space & window over the sink = almost contentment. Even so, we went out/ordered take-out for a whole week while things were still a mess all over the floor. When the kitchen was finally cleaned up, we were able to make something simple, non-cooked for dinner.

Ingredients

1 can of sardines in olive oil, roasted lightly in the oven

Fried shad roe with sesame udon

This is such a late post – shad roe was in season in March, and I’m posting in April. When I first saw it I was like HOLY MOTHER__________ IT LOOKS LIKE A HUGE dick! I’ve never seen roe so big before!

Anyway -the lateness. It’s been hard to find motivation to post when being obsessed with wedding blogs and running experiments. I wonder if it’s the uterus/ovaries in me that can’t pull away from all the pretty (the wedding blogs, not the experiment), or maybe I’m just shallow and materialistic and ordinary like everyone else (sorry everyone else).

Ingredients

Haloumi cheese, arugula, and mango salad

Haloumi cheese = the amazing-ness that mozarella aspires to be. You can grill it like meat, it won’t melt. It has a rich yet briny taste, the perfect cross between feta and mozarella. This recipe is a spin-off of one from Ana Sortun’s “Spice” cookbook, in which she didn’t use any greens, and instead of raisin she had dates, instead of mango she used pear, and instead of bourbon she used ouzo (Greek liquor). I’m sure her recipe would taste so much better; but we had to make do with what we had at 7pm on a snowy day…

(Strangely out of words today. Am still preoccupied with how to socialize and not alienate people.)

Ingredients

1 small block of haloumi cheese, sliced 1/2 inch thick

No fuss seafood barley risotto

Risotto is supposed to be a work of love. You’re supposed to make sure every grain of rice is nicely toasted, that the resulting bed of rice spread out smoothly and creamily, and not standing up rigid (and I will admit, I learned that from Top Chef! Admit, you watch it too!). I found that if you make it in small amount, it’s easier to toast the rice, and if you make it with barley, it’s not only healthier, but also more forgiving! The barley has a chewy quality, so if you undercook it just a little, it’s fine (just chalk it up to barley being “whole grain”), and I dare you to overcook it.

This was a meal basically thrown together with whatever I had in the fridge, and it ended up a nice surprise!

Ingredients

1 cup pearl barley

Beet Tzatziki (no I can’t pronounce that either)

The first thing that struck me when I saw this…stuff is, oh dear god, it’s pink. Neon-pink. And then it hit me: it’s….BRILLIANT. It’s food that’s fucking pink! It makes me want to throw up because of the disco color, but it also looks so…different. So…attractive. Vibrant. Colorful. It’s genius! And I don’t even like pink! Right there, and then, at the famous Turkish bakery in Cambridge (Sofra), I made it my mission to make this meze at home.

Beet Tzatziki

Ingredients