I know everyone has spent all their time thinking about what to make for holiday meals, but I’m still eating dinner every day.  Having the resources to nourish ourselves is reason enough to celebrate with something tasty.  It’s New Year’s day but I’m celebrating something else: It’s a good day to be hungry.  Here’s what’s on the menu.

Black beans with bacon and grapefruit:  Simple and striking.  The grapefruit becomes subliminal in this dish.  Exotic, floral, with just enough bitterness and acidity to let you eat the whole pot without knowing why.  With bacon the dish becomes luxurious.

Arroz verde: the traditional soak and pan-fry method for Mexican rice, enhanced with spinach and cilantro.

Plantains: squishy ripe, sauteed in butter.

black beans with bacon and grapefruit, arroz verde, sweet plantains

The best way to make sure the plantains are ripe is not by color alone, but by squeezing them gently.  They should feel like a ripe peach.  If not, let them sit out on the counter for a few days, or alternately if you started to peel them and found it difficult to do so, slice thinly and fry in plenty of oil over medium high heat until reddish brown, remove to a paper towel and salt for a savory addition to the meal.

for the beans:
6 oz. bacon, diced
2 cups dried black beans
5 cloves garlic, peeled
salt, to taste
1/2 grapefruit, juiced

for the rice:
2 cups rice (brown or white)
1/2 medium onion, roughly chopped
3 cloves garlic
6 sprigs of cilantro, stems included
2 oz fresh spinach (about 3 good handfuls)
1/3 cup oil (high heat)
3 to 3 1/2 cups vegetable or chicken broth, well salted

for the plantains:
2 ripe plantains (yellow and black, and soft to the touch), peeled and thickly sliced
1-2 tablespoons butter

black beans with bacon and grapefruit:
In a heavy 2 quart pot fry the bacon until crisp.  Remove to a plate, and pour out most of the bacon grease, but reserve 1-2 tablespoons in the pot.  Add the beans and garlic to the pot, along with 6 cups of water, and bring to a boil.  Reduce to a simmer, and allow to cook over low heat until almost tender.  This could take 1-3 hours depending on the freshness of the beans.  (In the meantime, start the rice.)  When almost tender add salt to taste.  Continue cooking until beans are soft and tasty .  Add the bacon back to the pan, as well as the juice from the grapefruit.

arroz verde:
If using brown rice, bring a pot of water to a boil, add the rice and cook over high heat for 11 minutes.  If using white rice, soak the rice in hot water for 5 minutes. Drain.

In a blender, add the chopped onion, garlic, cilantro and spinach, along with just enough water to puree.  Blend until completely smooth.

In a large saute pan, heat the oil over medium high heat.  Shake the rice to remove as much water as possible.  Add the rice, and turn the heat up as high as you can tolerate.  Stirring constantly, fry the rice until it picks up a light color.  If there are any pools of oil left in the pan, tip to one side and pour out, or use a paper towel to blot.

Return to the heat and add the puree, continuing to stir until the rice is almost dry again.  Add 3 cups of broth, turn down the heat to low and simmer until rice is cooked, adding an extra 1/2 cup of broth if needed.

sweet plantains:
Melt the butter in a saute pan over medium to medium high heat.  Add the plantain slices and cook until soft and nicely browned.

Never sure what to do with familiar sounding root vegetables that I didn’t grow up eating (turnips, rutabagas, parsnips) I came up with this technique after seeing something similar on Emeril Green.  The variety of color, flavor and texture helps me appreciate the unique vegetables available during the winter, and makes me less skeptical of cooking seasonally when my garden has finally succumbed to

endless frost.

I dug up these parsnips just before the temperatures really took a dive.   The core was a bit woody, but once quartered and cored, they were deliciously sweet and complex.  I planted them in just one square foot of the garden, and they were growing side by side, almost touching.  A very productive square foot of dirt.

honey-glazed root vegetables

If you want, you can do the broiling ahead of time, toss with the honey butter and rosemary and finish the cooking just before mealtime, that way you can turn your attention to preparing another dish.

The one vegetable I always make sure I include is sweet potatoes.  Although the recipe would be fine without them, I like a few extra sweet bites every now and then, as well as their familiar taste.

5 lbs. mixed root vegetables and/or winter squash (whatever is available, such as sweet potatoes, celery root, parsnips, carrots, potatoes, turnips, rutabaga, pumpkin, butternut squash)
olive oil, just enough to coat
salt and fresh ground pepper
6 tablespoons butter
6 tablespoons honey (eyeball it -same volume as the butter)
2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary

Scrub the vegetables and chop into 1 inch pieces.  Preheat the broiler.  Thinly coat the vegetables with olive oil, and toss with salt and pepper.  Place in a broiler-safe dish lined with parchment and set on the second shelf of the oven.  Broil, turning the vegetables as they pick up nice coloring.  In the meantime, whip the honey and butter together.  When all the vegetables are browned, remove from the oven, turn down the heat to 450, and toss with the honey butter and sprinkle the rosemary.  Taste for seasoning.  Return to the oven and let the vegetables continue to cook until tender, or if already tender after broiling, cook just 5 minutes more until the flavors meld.

It’s a great time to invest in a bottle of roasted nut oil to use through the fall and winter.  Just a drizzle transforms simple baked acorn squash, but it’s also good with sweet potatoes, in a creamy cauliflower-apple soup and in vinaigrettes.  Just make sure you add after cooking to preserve the full nutty flavor,  Hazelnut and walnut are two of my favorites.

walnut maple acorn squash: Cut acorn squash in half through the stem.  Scrape out seeds and stringy bits.  Fill each cavity with 1/2 tablespoon of butter, a tablespoon of maple syrup and a tiny pinch of cinnamon (I know you’ll want to add more cinnamon, but let the other flavors shine through this time.) Place face up on a jelly roll pan.  Pour water in the bottom of the pan for steam- as much as you can reasonably transport to the oven.  Bake at 400 for an 1 hour 15 minutes, checking after 1 hour.  You want the entire squash soft and creamy and some caramelization around the rim.  Remove from the oven, and drizzle 1/2 teaspoon of walnut oil into each maple-butter pool.  Brush the liquid all over the flesh of the squash until it is completely absorbed.

Sometime I can’t resist buying produce because of it’s color: neon-green cauliflower, fire-red carrots or golden beets.  This time it was an old friend, purple cabbage.  I knew I shouldn’t have bought it for the meal I was making because I’ve only used it with German or Eastern-European meals in the form of sweet and sour cabbage with apples.  I was making pasta.  But after thinking it through I came up with a stunningly easy and versatile dish that was the star of the meal.  I’ll be making it over and over again this winter, either with red or green cabbage.  For the sweet component that purple cabbage harmonizes so well with, I used balsamic vinegar.  Although I got a little tired of balsamic vinegar for a while, I realized I was getting what I paid for, which was not much.  These days I’m still not buying aceto balsamico tradizionale, but I’m splurging for a better bottle, and using it thoughtfully.

singe-broiled cabbage

Core cabbage and cut into thin ribbons.  Toss in a bowl with just enough oil to lightly coat.  Scatter  on a foil-lined broiler pan and/or an old sheet pan in one layer -cook the cabbage in batches if necessary. Place under the broiler for a few minutes, stirring once, remove when just the edges have turned dark brown, a few caramelized pieces are nice. (If cooking in batches transfer the cabbage to a non-plastic bowl, cover with foil and set aside until all the cabbage is cooked.)
Toss the cabbage with sea salt or fleur de sel, freshly ground pepper, and some syrupy balsamic vinegar, all to taste.

The nasturtium plants have taken over a portion our backyard, climbing their way onto our deck with hundreds of blooms and even more beautifully dark and circular leaves.  We grew the nasturtium for the edible blossoms, but a month or so ago, I found out the leaves could be used like watercress.  Sort of.  They are deliciously peppery and tender -even the larger leaves- as such, but their shape is tricky to dress as a salad.  When left whole or even torn, the flat shape creates too many layers to permeate, and shredding them didn’t make for a very attractive salad.

But the leaves are perfect for stuffing.  No inconvenient protrusions to tuck in like grape leaves, nor tough ribs to cut out like cabbage.  Tender enough to eat raw, but sturdy enough to contain rigid fillings.  Pretty and easy.  Perfect finger food for parties, which always seem to lack enough green options.

If you didn’t grown them, nasturtium leaves might be hard to find, but they are incredible easy to grow from seed for next year.

While there are plenty of options to wrap, you can’t go wrong with fruit, cheese and herbs.  I used Honeycrisp apple slices, Gruyere and tarragon, tying up the parcel with chives and serving a walnut vinaigrette for dipping, but next time I might try pears, blue cheese and  fennel fronds.  Both would go well with several nut oils: hazelnut, pistachio, pecan.  Let me know what you come up with.

nasturtium leaf, apple and Gruyere salad parcels with walnut vinaigrette dip
If you prefer, you can omit the tarragon leaves in the parcels and use a tarragon vinegar in the dip.

20 nasturtium leaves, washed and patted dry
1 Honeycrisp apple, quartered, cored and sliced into at least 20 thin slices, tossed with lemon juice if not serving right away.
20 thin slices of Gruyere cheese, about 1/2 inch wide
1-2 sprigs tarragon (optional)
10-15 chives
walnut vinaigrette dip, recipe follows

Place a nasturtium leaf stem-side up, dark side down on your work surface.  Just above where the leaf was cut from the stem place a slice of cheese and a slice of apple, letting the apple stick up just above the top of the leaf.  Tuck in three of the thin leaves of the tarragon, one at the bottom, and two at the top.  Fold the bottom of the nasturtium leaf up over the apple, then roll from side to side.  One third of the way up tie a piece of chive around the parcel. Continue with the remainder of the leaves and serve on a platter with a small bowl of the dip.

for the walnut vinaigrette dip:
2 tablespoons sherry or tarragon vinegar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon mayonnaise (to emulsify)
2 tablespoons walnut oil
4 tablespoons olive oil (doesn’t need to be extra-virgen)

In a medium bowl, place the vinegar and salt, and whisk until the salt is dissolved.  Add the mayonnaise and blend.  Slowly add the walnut oil, whisking until completely emulsified after each addition.  Continue with the olive oil, until all is incorporated.

Inexplicably delicious and blissfully simple.  It can’t get any better than that.  Oh, wait: my kids were fighting over bites from my bowl the next day.

This is a great basic recipe -perfect on it’s own, but it is also great for improvising if you’re into that.  You could go very Latino with this dish, adding cilantro stems or epazote to the beans while they cook, frying chopped tomato with the onions for the tiganissi, or topping the dish with avocado.  Or you could use black-eyed peas and chard and flavor it with lemon (skip the honey), as in my original inspiration for this dish (Cypriot Black-eyed Peas and Swiss Chard from World Vegetarian by Madhur Jaffrey.)  The basic formula is cooked beans and greens with a splash of something sour, topped with fried onions and garlic in oil.

black beans and kale with tiganissi

Tiganissi is a type of garnish I’ve found in recipes from Cyprus, in which onions and other vegetables are quickly fried in plenty of oil and poured over a dish, resulting in unbelievable amounts of flavor.

for the beans and kale:
1 1/4 cup black beans, uncooked
1 bunch kale, stems removed, leaves chopped into small pieces
salt, to taste
1/4 cup lime juice, or to taste
small spoonful honey (or agave for vegans)

for the tiganissi:
1/4 cup olive oil
pinch of red pepper flakes or 1 jalapeno, minced
1 medium onion, finely diced
3 cloves of garlic, minced

cooked rice, to serve

Put the beans in a large heavy pot, cover with several inches of water and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer until the beans are almost cooked through, about 2 hours, but start checking sooner.  Add the kale and salt, to taste. Simmer until both the beans and kale are tender. Add the lime juice and honey to taste, as well as more salt if needed.

Heat the oil for the tiganissi in a medium frying pan over fairly high heat. Add the red pepper flakes or jalapeno, and stir for about 5 seconds. Add the onion and garlic. The temperature of the oil is important. You want the onions to turn brown around the edges. If the temperature is too cool, the onions will caramelize evenly, which is not what you want for this dish. The cooking should not take very long. Pour the tiganissi over the beans, and serve mixed with rice.

I don’t know if I’m the only parent who routinely forgets to save food for the kids.  Around here it happens at least once a week: I get carried away enjoying my food and *expletive* it’s gone and the kids are still hungry.  After managing to cook a meal for the family, while keeping 2 eyes on the kids, I have to come up with something else.

Well, I like making my own gnocchi, but the evening inevitably ends with me staring in the fridge wishing I hadn’t been so selfish.  Doubling the recipe isn’t really an option, because of the labor involved in cooking them.  Perhaps I just haven’t gotten a good system down, but it doesn’t really make a difference at this point.

So I tried packaged gnocchi, and I’m not ashamed to say I like it.  And I can easily cook enough for the whole family with a little leftover.  This is one of those meals that I look forward to making because cooking goes so fast, it’s the perfect balance of light and filling, and bursts with flavor.

gnocchi with broccoli, tomato, olives, capers & pine nuts
serves 4

1/3 cup olive oil, plus 3 tablespoons, divided
1 3/4 lb. ripe tomatoes, chopped
generous 1/4 cup green olives, chopped
2 spoonfuls capers
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/4 cup pine nuts
1 3/4 lb. broccoli, broken into bit sized pieces, stem peeled and chopped as well
2 lbs. packaged potato gnocchi
big handful flat-leaf parsley, chopped

Heat 1/3 cup of the oil in a large frying pan over medium high heat.  Drain the excess juice from the tomaotes, if any, and reserve. Add the tomatoes to the pan and fry until tasty.  This may be as quick as 1 minute if the tomatoes are ripe and in season.  Add the capers, olives and reserved tomato juice.  Heat through.  Remove from the heat and cover.

In a small frying pan, heat the remaining 3 tablespoons of olive oil over very low heat.  Add the pine nuts and garlic, and fry very gently until first the garlic is cooked through, then the pine nuts and garlic turn golden.  Remove from heat and reserve.

In a large pot of salted boiling water,  cook the broccoli until crisp-tender.  Remove with a slotted spoon or spider whisk.  Add the gnocchi to the same water and cook according to package directions, about two minutes or until they float to the top.  Drain.

Toss together the gnocchi, broccoli, tomato mixture, pine nut mixture and parsley and serve.

Around the world, there is a great divide between local restaurant cuisine and local home cooking.  And maybe I’m biased because I’ve never been able to afford three star Michelin restaurants, but I’m a home-cooking girl.  Sure there are great affordable restaurants everywhere, but they have their limits.  At the end of every day, wherever I am, I really just want a home-cooked meal.  If I can’t have it, I’ll settle for a plate at a restaurant with varying degrees of satisfaction.

So if I tell you that I didn’t fall in love with Spanish food after living in Spain 6 months maybe you can forgive me, because I never got a home-cooked Spanish meal.  I had some unforgettable fare, to be sure: my first Spanish tortilla, fried eggplant, tapas at a crowded bar, bocadillos with jamón Serrano or chorizo and churros with thick hot chocolate.  But honestly, the best Spanish food I’ve had has come from my kitchen these past couple of weeks.  Mostly because of Penelope Casas’ extraordinary book La Cocina de Mamá: The Great Home Cooking of Spain.  I’ve already remade every recipe I’ve tried, and can’t get enough.

So here’s a paella recipe from the book, like nothing I tried while in Spain.  My adaptations of using a short-grain brown rice instead of white Bomba rice and a cast-iron pan instead of a traditional paella pan make it slightly less authentic, but it’s everyday home cooking and it’s delicious.

Isabel’s vegetable paella

adapted from La Cocina de Mamá: The Great Home Cooking of Spain by Penelope Casas

I honestly prefer brown rice here, just be sure to use a short-grain variety.  And a quick tip that I’ve used here: to substitute brown rice for white rice, bring a generous pot of water to a boil, add brown rice and cook for 10 minutes, then drain.  Use as directed for white rice in nearly any recipe.

2 carrots
2 small celery stalks, or the heart with leaves
1/2 medium onion
4 oz. shitake mushrooms cleaned, stems only (reserve caps for the paella)
1 clove of garlic
4 cups water
1/8 teaspoon saffron
salt, to taste

Roughly chop the vegetables, and put in a saucepan with the water.  Bring to a simmer, cover and cook 20-30 minutes.  Remove the vegetables and discard.  Add salt to taste.  Add the saffron, cover and turn the heat down very low, or off completely.

1 1/4 cup short-grain brown rice
1/3 cup olive oil
1 cup frozen lima beans, thawed
1 medium carrot (3 oz.) scrubbed and chopped into 1/2 inch pieces
reserved shitake mushroom caps, chopped into 1/2 inch pieces
1/4 lb. green beens, chopped into 1/2 inch pieces (about 35 beans or 1 heaping cup chopped)
2 red bell peppers, chopped into 1/2 inch pieces
6 oz. zuchhini, choppeed into 1/2 inch cubes (1 1/3 cup)
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 cup chopped whole canned plum tomatoes
1 teaspoon pimentón de la Vera- sweet smoked Spanish paprika

In a large saucepan, bring a generous amount of water to a boil. Add the rice and cook, continuing to boil for 10 minutes.  Remove any scum that comes to the top. Drain. Let continue to drain in a colander until ready to use.

Preheat the oven to 400 (gas) or 450 (electric).  Heat the oil in a large 12-14 inch cast iron pan over fairly high heat (just one less than the highest setting).  Add all the vegetables except the garlic and tomato.  Cook for about 10 minutes, stirring regularly until the vegetables pick up some nice color and are crisp-tender.  Add the garlic and cook 2 minutes more, still stirring.  Add the tomato and paprika, and continue cooking for a minute more.  Taste for salt.

Add 3 cups of the broth and the rice, reduce the heat and simmer about 10 minutes, until the rice is getting relatively soft.  If needed, add the remaining broth.  There should be enough to finish cooking the rice.

Transfer to the oven, and cook about 10(gas) to 15(electric) minutes more, until nearly al dente.  Remove from the oven, cover with foil and let sit 5-10 minutes until the rice is cooked.  Return the pan to the stovetop and cook undisturbed over high heat for about 3 minutes until a crust (the socarrat) has formed on the bottom .

I was going to eat leftovers for dinner last night.  When I got back from the farmer’s market with some baby potatoes and a basket of cherry tomatoes, I changed my mind and threw together a composite of roasted vegetables and fried eggs.  I had a couple of bulbs of kohlrabi ready in the garden, so I sliced them up, as well as a red onion.  Everything got tossed in olive oil and chopped chervil and landed on parchment paper.

Weeknight home cooking meet Ferran Adrià, head chef of El Bulli, and creator of  “culinary foam” amongst other deconstructionist (some say molecular gastronomic) applications.

When I read in a Penelope Casas cookbook that Ferran Adrià  separates the yolk from the white so that each one can be cooked to perfection, I thought, “I’m a home cook, but I can handle that.”

I don’t expect to eat at El Bulli, or any other restaurant that has made the world’s 50 best list under it, but thank you, Ferran Adrià for thinking of everything.  The egg whites were angelic and the yolks extraordinary.

chervil-roasted vegetables with separated fried eggs

This is a loose recipe.  Feel free to experiment and use other vegetables or herbs (parsley or tarragon would be nice), just consider cooking times and flavor profiles and make adjustments.

1 quart baby potatoes, whole or larger waxy potatoes, chopped
1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved
1 red onion, sliced
2 baseball-size (or a little smaller) heads or of kohlrabi, peeled and sliced into rounds or half rounds
olive oil for coating the vegetables and frying the egg
salt, to taste
5 tablespoons chopped chervil
6 eggs
Sherry, balsamic or tarragon vinegar and freshly ground black pepper, to serve

Preheat the oven to 350.  Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment.  Pour some olive oil in a bowl and toss the potatoes.  Arrange them on the baking sheet so that they are in one layer and cover half of the sheet.  Sprinkle with salt.  Repeat with the kohlrabi, arranging slightly overlapped if needed on one quarter of the sheet.  Repeat with the onions, omitting the salt, and arranging them on top of the kohlrabi.  Arrange the tomatoes cut-side up on the last quarter of the sheet.  Drizzle with a little of the oil, and sprinkle salt and brown sugar.  Sprinkle 3 tablespoons of the chervil over the entire pan.

Bake for 55 minutes, basting once.  Move the onions off of the kohlrabi.  Turn the heat up to 475 and continue cooking for 20 minutes more.

Heat 1/4 inch of oil in a frying pan over medium-low heat. Separate the eggs, cooking the yolks immediately and saving the whites in a bowl.  When the yolks are cooked as you like them, remove them to a plate.  Cook the egg whites all at once, stirring them gently once or twice after they have begun to set.  Remove when they are just cooked through and are still very tender.

Pile the vegetables in bowl, top with an egg yolk and some of the egg white.  Finish with a big pinch of the remaining chervil, a drizzle of vinegar and plenty of black pepper.

Hearty but not gut-busting, summer is a great time to install chickpea flour in your pantry.  With Mark Bittman on my side (or am I on his side?) it might already be there.  Toasting it like a roux creates a deeply nutty flavor base and thickener for soup.  It’s the perfect new friend for broccoli, which usually can’t drag itself away from cheese and cream, which are loyal friends, but sometimes it needs to mingle with others.

While I was waiting for my second planting of cilantro to grow, I thought it might be fun to experiment with the blossoms of the first planting.  They are so pretty and have a distinct flavor, like green coriander - unexpectedly different from cilantro leaves.  The combination of lemon balm and coriander blossoms is perfect- spicy and refreshing.  But if you can’t get both lemon balm and coriander blossoms I wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to make this soup with basil.  It might be less exotic sounding, but no less delicious.  And  the soup actually lends basil a really special note and revives its sometimes over-used flavor.   So it’s up to you- basil or lemon balm and coriander blossoms.

broccoli and toasted chickpea flour soup with lemon balm and coriander blossoms

8 cups water
1/4 cup olive oil
1 cup chickpea flour
2 lbs. broccoli, trimmed and chopped
salt, to taste
7 cloves garlic, unpeeled
1 1/2-2 lemons, juiced
1/2 cup lemon balm leaves, chopped
10 heads coriander blossoms, chopped, plus more for garnish

Put the water in a tea kettle, and bring to a boil.  In the meantime, heat the oil in a soup pot over medium heat.  Add the chickpea flour and stir, scraping the bottom until it becomes a shade darker.  Very slowly add the water from the kettle, using a whisk and stopping to beat until smooth when a thick paste forms.  When all the water is added, put the broccoli and salt in the pot and bring to a simmer.  While the broccoli is cooking, toast the garlic on a comal or cast iron pan until the skins are charred and the inside is soft.  Peel the garlic and mash the cloves with a little water from the soup pot.  Taste the soup for salt -you may have to add quite a bit- making sure it’s tasty (although it will get better soon).    Squeeze in the lemon juice, and add the lemon balm, coriander blossoms, and mashed garlic. Puree in a blender or use an immersion blender.  If it is too thick add a little more water -you want it to be the consistency of cream of broccoli soup.  It it is too thin, let simmer until it thickens.  Serve alongside bread with a head of coriander blossoms floating in the soup.