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.

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 take bean dishes for granted. To me, they are the go-to meal-foundations that boneless skinless chicken breast recipes used to be, before I came to my senses. When I don’t know what to cook, I put on a pot of beans, like I used to defrost a chicken breast or two. Beans take a little more planning if you cook them fresh, but there’s no nasty raw meat mess to carefully clean up, and they taste better. Sure, the chicken breast might have a chance if it weren’t stripped of the dignity of skin and bones, but as-is, it’s beans every time for me. Plus the beans cook unattended with plenty of time to figure out what to put with them. And a tip: you don’t have to soak them before cooking. You might end up with a few broken beans, but who cares?*

My bean routine is as follows:
-measure out about 1/2 cup of dried beans per person (main dish portion)
-cover with about 3 times as much water, (less if they have been soaked)
-bring to a boil, reduce to simmer, let cook on low for 2-4 hours
-salt ONLY when they are almost cooked through (salt toughens the skins and prohibits the water from softening the beans during cooking.)
-check every hour, as convenient, to make sure the water is covering the beans, and stir

The creative part is adding aromatics to the beans while they are simmering. This time I added dried New Mexican style chiles, (a good substitute for the sweet Spanish Nora chile), plenty of unpeeled garlic, and a few sprigs of herbs. A couple of onions got caramelized, some eggplants braised until silky smooth in just enough tomato sauce, and some no-knead bread was popped in the oven.  Chickpeas on their own have an amazing pot liquor, but the chiles made for a deeply flavored dish that I couldn’t get enough of.  I just about cried when Romeo offered the leftovers to his dad.

If you are having trouble getting excited about chickpeas or pintos, check out Rancho Gordo’s heirloom beans.  Steve Sando’s enthusiasm is contagious. (And adding “heirloom” to any ingredient makes it sexier, not to mention “Indian woman.”)

*Cannellini (not to be confused with navy) beans are the exception -they fall apart- so soak them first for salads.  Other applications should be fine.

Spanish-style chickpeas and eggplant with caramelized onions

2 cups dried chickpeas
7 cloves garlic, unpeeled
3 sprigs parsley, plus more for garnish
3 New Mexican dried chiles
10 sprigs thyme
2 onions, sliced
2 large eggplants
14 oz. can whole plum tomatoes or 6 fresh plum tomatoes, chopped
olive oil, about 1/3 cup, separated
salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

Put the beans in a heavy pot and cover with plenty of water (about 6 cups.) Bring to a boil, then reduce to a low simmer. Add garlic, parsley, chiles, and thyme. Cover and let cook for 3-4 hours, but check after two. (The time can vary depending on the age of the beans.)

Caramelize the onions: heat a frying pan over a medium-low burner. Thinly coat the bottom with olive oil and add the onions. Cook slowly until the onions first become very soft, and then pick up a reddish-brown color. Set aside.

Peel (if you like) and chop the eggplant into slightly large bite-size pieces. Cook in a generous amount of oil with a sprinkle of salt. When the edges soften and the flesh is glossy, add the tomatoes and juice. Cover and simmer for 1 hour or until very soft.

When the beans are approaching tender, add salt to taste -don’t be shy. Let cook about 15 minutes more, then remove the garlic, parsley, chiles and thyme stems. Squeeze the garlic out of the skins and scrape the flesh of the chiles, return both back to the pot.
Add the beans to eggplant mixture, check for seasoning and let simmer 15 more minutes. Top with caramelized onions and flecks of fresh parsley leaves.

Cantaloupe has finally found a home in my kitchen.  After years of half-hearted tolerance, I can now say I love the melon and its lovely floral flavors.  Maybe I’ve been alone for years in detecting an off flavor that just doesn’t hit my palate right, but I don’t think so. Hasn’t any one else been disappointed at nearly every restaurant fruit plate composed of 50% cantaloupe?

Well, when Romeo starting chunking up my least favorite fruit and making a smoothie out of it, I wasn’t thrilled.  But we drink smoothies all the time.  One mediocre drink wasn’t gong to ruin my day.

Then I tasted it, and was blown away. The key is in balancing out the flavors with the pineapple and raspberries.  All the beautiful notes come out, and all the ugly ones fade away.  I don’t know what the carrot adds exactly, since I couldn’t taste it, but this smoothie has got it going on, and I’m not messing with it.

Cantaloupe Smoothie
1 lb. cantaloupe (about 3/8 of a small melon)
1/3 pineapple
5 oz. (half a bag) frozen raspberries
1 carrot
1 cup 100% juice fruit punch blend (or more depending on your blender)
5 ice cubes

Chunk up the melon, pineapple and carrot - you know your blender so you decide the size of the pieces.  Put everything in the blender and whiz until very smooth and a little frothy, adding more juice if necessary - you want a pourable consistency.  Makes 2 smoothies, but you might want to drink them both yourself.

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.