CONSUMED(I,THIS)

lunch on daisy’s birthday: linguini, chard, corn, sun gold tomatoes, aged myzithra, basil, parsley, white wine.

Happy sixth birthday to Daisy, our Jack Russell Terrier! Daisy didn’t get to eat any of this pasta, but she did get a scrambled egg in her breakfast!.

Aged myzithra is a firm, salty Greek cheese made from ewe’s milk. The flavor and texture is like ricotta salata, but saltier. Myzithra can be found in specialty stores in the US.

1. Bring a big pot of salted water to a boil, and begin to cook the linguini.
2. Meanwhile, in a large pan, sweat a diced onion in olive oil and butter until it’s soft. Add minced garlic, cook for a minute, then add chopped swiss chard. Deglaze with white wine. Once the chard is nearly cooked, add corn and tomatoes and cook for another minute or two.
3. When the pasta is cooked, drain it and add it to the sauce. Cook together for a minute, tossing. Turn off the heat, and then add a handful chopped parsley and basil, and a handful of finely grated myzithra cheese. Toss to combine, and serve.

taste memory salad: eggplant, red wine vinegar, garlic, green chili.

I saw these cute little purple eggplants at the farmers market yesterday, and bought them impulsively. Today, thinking about what to do with them, I remembered a dish that I haven’t eaten in almost 20 years. When I was a child living in Western Massachusetts, an Israeli family moved in down the street from us. The mother of the family used to make an unctuous, tangy marinated eggplant dish that I’ve tried to recreate today.

1. Slice eggplants into 1/4 to 1/2 inch slices. Season the slices with salt. Heat 1/4 inch of oil, half olive and half vegetable, in a skillet. Once it’s hot, carefully add the eggplant slices in one layer, working in batches if necessary. Cook the eggplant until very soft and well-browned. Remove cooked eggplant to a sheet pan, and season generously with more salt. (Don’t worry about excess blotting oil; it will become part of the dressing.)
2. Meanwhile, sweat two cloves of garlic and a chili pepper, both sliced, in a bit of oil in a small sauce pan. Add a generous grind of black pepper, and half a cup to a cup of red wine vinegar. Simmer for a few minutes to allow the flavors to meld.
3. Pour the vinegar sauce over the eggplant while both are still hot. Season with more salt if necessary. Sprinkle with chopped parsley. Allow to sit and marinade for a few hours before serving at room temperature.

how to cook beans in summer if you don’t have air conditioning: black beans, aromatics, espazote, spices, lime.

Beans, especially Mexican beans, would be a great focus for a veggie summer dinner. But the prospect of hovering for hours over a simmering pot on your stove when it’s sweltering in your house is enough to rule them out. The solution: slow cook the suckers.

1. Pick through your beans, and then place them in a pot with enough cold water to cover them by several inches. Add a quartered onion or a roughly chopped leak, several peeled and smashed cloves of garlic, several sprigs of dried espazote, and a generous amount of chile powder and ground cumin, coriander. No salt!
2. Place the pot on high heat and bring it to a rolling boil, stirring once or twice on the way up. Turn off the heat, cover the pot, and let it sit for 1 hour.
3. After an hour, bring the pot back up to a boil and transfer its contents to a slow cooker. If necessary, add enough extra boiling water to just cover the beans. Cook on high for 4 hours, checking for doneness at 3 hours. Once the beans are done, salt them to your liking.
4. To serve, season with lime juice, and garnish however you like. In the picture, I’ve used cotija cheese, a charred red chile, cilantro, and a lime wedge.

summer sandwich: crusty bread, fresh mozzarella, green zebra tomato, salt-packed anchovies, basil, cucumber pickles (by chris).

1. Soak two salt-packed anchovies in cool water for a few minutes. Peel the filets off of the bones.
2. Build a sandwhich in this order: quarter-inch sliced fresh mozzarella, quarter-inch sliced tomato, salt and pepper, anchovy filets, torn basil.
3. In a cast-iron or non-stick pan, gently cook the sandwich in olive oil, so that the cheese melts and the anchovies soften as the bread browns. Cook with cheese-side down first, so that the cheese melts and holds the sandwich together before the flip. You may find that weighting down the sandwich as it cooks helps with even heating and browning.
4. Serve with pickles!

california summer salad: cherry tomatoes, avocado, fried chickpeas, lemon.

1. Drain a small can of chickpeas, and rinse them well. Take a large handful of chickpeas and pat them dry with paper towel.
2. Fill a small saucepan 1/2 inch deep with oil, half olive and half vegetable. Heat the oil until it is very hot but not smoking. (Test with a single chickpea; it should immediately form steam bubbles all around it.) Carefully add the chickpeas, and cook until crispy, about 3 minutes. With a slotted spoon or similar implement, remove chickpeas to paper towel (or, better, use a piece torn off of a clean paper shopping bag). Immediately season the chickpeas with koshersalt (very aggressively) and pepper. Reserve and allow to cool slightly.
3. Halve some cherry tomatoes (sun golds ftw!) and a ripe avocado, and place them together in a bowl. Dress them with olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Sprinkle fried chickpeas on top. Consume on a sunny California afternoon (or at while least imagining one).

hummus, from scratch: chickpeas, mirepoix, garlic, thyme, tahini, smoked paprika, lemon juice, olive oil.

1. Standard bean cooking procedure: Rinse off a bunch of dried chickpeas, then soak them in cold water for 4-8 hours. Transfer the beans with their soaking water to a pot, and cover with more water. Add an onion (quartered), some carrot and celery (rough chopped), some whole smashed cloves of garlic, a few sprigs of thyme, and a bay leaf. Bring to a boil, boil hard for five minutes, lower to a simmer and cook until tender. Top off the pot with boiling wanter now and then if necessary. Salt, simmer for another ten minutes, and cool.
2. Put the amount of chickpeas you’ll be using to make hummus in a mixing bowl. Be sure some of that juicy goodness they’re swimming in comes along for the ride too. Add tahini, lemon juice, good olive oil, smoked paprika, and salt. (You could through in some raw or roasted garlic as well if you happen to swing that way.) The amounts here are really a matter of taste and feel. You can always add more of whatever once you’ve blended the stuff (but as my grandma used to say, you can’t take anything out!).
3. Working in frustratingly small batches (unless you have a super blender), puree this mixture to as smooth a paste as possible, adding more liquid (cooking juice, lemon juice, or olive oil—your call) if necessary to achieve the desired texture. Chill before serving.

Wait, what? I thought CONSUMED(I,THIS) was a place for homemade food. Real food. Food from scratch. What’s up with this picture of plastic tubs of convenience food? Has CONSUMED(I,THIS) sold out?

Yes. Well, no. I mean, I guess, kind of. But not in the way you think, at least. I agreed to participate in a new program called TasteSpotlights, run by the fine folks at TasteSpotting. They match up bloggers with products, and ask the bloggers to give their opinions on the products. I saw a tweet that said “Want to try some cream cheese and give your opinion?” and I said “Sure, send me some free stuff.” So I can’t be selling out becuase I’m not getting paid. Except in cream cheese. And a box of Triscuits. And a box of some terrifying cracker conceived and manufactured by the Corn Lobby called Sociables (“Perfect for Entertaining!”). Oh, and a really nifty brushed aluminum cheese knife embossed with “Philadelphia.”

I was fully prepared to despise these cream cheeses. (Sorry: cream cheese spreads.) I mean, do you really want to eat something that has an ingredient called “cheese flavor”—an ingredient, I might add that is “a dehydrated blend” of no fewer than eleven sub-ingredients, two of which have sub-sub-ingredients? Tasting the products has not reduced my loathing for their science-experiment ingredient lists—I don’t feel the slightest urge to go purchase them for myself—but I did like the flavor of the products more than I expected. Hey, at least they’re full-fat! Here’s what I thought:

General Reaction

My big problem with these spreads is their texture. It’s heavy and gloppy. Far too heavy and gloppy for a brand that has an ad campaign centered around images of clouds. Perhaps this is a good texture for baking or other cooking applications, but flavoring cream cheese destroys its prolific culinary flexibility. Spinach artichoke cheese cake, anyone? (Note to self: make spinach, artichoke cheese cake and submit to thisiswhyyourefat.)

Sundried Tomato & Basil

What impressed me here was that you could actually taste the sundried tomato. Not just some ersatz sundried tomato chemical, but the actual flavor, complete with its sourness and meatiness. The basil flavor was also there, and distinct. But my question is: why do I want these flavors in my cream cheese in the first place? I mean, chives in cream cheese? Sure. Lox trimmings? Why not? Makes sense. But to put sundried tomato in a cream cheese just feels like a feeble attempt to exploit the cache of this new and gourmet ingredient. Except that sundried tomato hasn’t been new or gourmet for a few decades now. (Which is not to imply that Philadelphia is the first to put sundried tomatos in cream cheese.)

Spinach & Artichoke

Again, I was impressed with the clarity and quality of spinach flavor tat came through here. The artichoke didn’t taste like much, but I could see little chunks of artichoke in there. For this flavor, the “Why?” question has an obvious answer: this is cold spinach-artichoke dip with the ratios inverted. Fans of that dip will probably be pretty happy with the flavor of this cream cheese. I guess you could go ahead and dip bread straight in there. Or just put it out at a party with Sociables and HFCS shooters. You lazy bastard. ;)

Numerical score (for TasteSpotlight purposes): 2 out of 5.

“oh well, we forgot the olives for the salade niçoise” dinner: lettuce, green beans, potatoes, eggs, tuna, garlic, anchovy, mustard, white wine vinegar, olive oil.

1. Hard boil some eggs, blanch some green beans, and boil some potatoes. (My hard-boiling regimen for eggs: Cover them with an inch of cold water. Bring to a boil uncovered. Turn off the heat, cover, and let sit for 9 minutes (adjust for the size of the eggs). Immediately drain submerge the eggs in running cold water until the eggs are cool.
2. Meanwhile, begin the dressing by pounding up a few cloves or garlic and several anchovies in a mortar and pestle with some salt. Once you have a paste, add some white wine vinegar and a few dollops of mustard. (My affection for moutarde a l’ancienne is extreme.) Stir, and then whisk in the olive oil.
3. When the potatoes are cooked, cut them up toss them in some dressing while they’re still warm. Peel and quarter the eggs, and sprinkle them with a little salt. Toss the beans in some dressing. Toss the washed and dried lettuce in some dressing, and serve it the potatoes, eggs, green beans, and some drained, flaked olive-oil-packed tuna.
4. If you have some olives, put those suckers on there too for Pete’s sake!

side for jay’s lamb: flageolet beans, mirepoix, garlic, rosemary, thyme, stock.

1. In a medium bowl, cover a pound of flageolet beans by a few inches with cold water. Soak for 4-8 hours.
2. Small dice two small onions, a medium carrot, and a stalk of celery. Sweat all of this in several tablespoons of olive oil in a large dutch oven, until the vegetables are translucent. (Don’t season yet!)
3. Smash 4 peeled cloves of garlic with the side of a chef’s knife. Add the garlic to the pot along with a large sprigs of rosemary, several sprigs of thyme, and a couple of bay leaves. Stir and cook for another minute or two. (Still no salt!)
4. Turn the heat up to high, and add the beans, with their soaking water, to the pot. Top off the pot with chicken or vegetable stock (or just plain water), until the beans are comfortably covered with liquid. Bring to a hard boil for 5 minutes, stirring often, and them bring down to a simmer.
5. Simmer until the beans are tender, about an hour and a half (though this time can vary widely depending on your beans and other variables). Now you can add salt. Simmer for another ten minutes so that the beans can absorb the salt, tasting a few times in case more is needed.
6. Serve the beans with some of their liquor, drizzled with olive oil with some crusty bread on the side. Or use it as a side dish. Flageolet beans are classic with lamb.

weeknight dinner: canned tomato, fennel, fennel seed, onion, garlic, thyme, red wine vinegar, sugar, baguette, bucheron. (inspired by molly)

1. Thinly slice two yellow onions and two bulbs of fennel. Cook in a heavy bottomed pot with a good amount of olive oil until translucent, about ten minutes. Add several cloves’ worth finely chopped garlic and cook another five minutes. Add two teaspoons of fennel seeds and a tablespoon or so of chopped thyme, and cook another couple minutes.
2. Open two 28 ounce cans of whole peeled tomatoes in juice. Add the juice to the pot, then squish up the tomatoes into small pieces and add them. Also add a whole can’s full of cold water. Turn the pot up to high until it boils, and then turn it down to a simmer. Simmer, stirring occasionally, until the soup has reduced some and tastes good, about 45 minutes to an hour.
3. Working in batches if necessary, blend half of the soup in a blender until smooth. Add the puree back into the pot, and then check for seasoning. Add some sugar and some red wine vinegar to get the proper sweet-sour balance.
4. Preheat the oven to 400˚F. Slice some baguette on the bias, as pictured. Drizzle the slices with a little oil and place them in the oven until they just begin to toast, but have not colored significantly yet. Spread each slice with some goat cheese (I used Bucheron), turn on your broiler, and broil the cheesey toasts until golden and melty. Grind some black pepper on the toasts.
5. Serve the soup drizzled with good olive oil and scattered with roughly chopped fennel fronds, with a cheesey toast on the side.