Monday, April 18, 2011

Carats of Inspiration

Tune of the Moment: "Still" sung by Gretchen Parlato and Alan Hampton, music by Alan and lyrics by Gretchen. 





This is just one of the gems on Gretchen's most recent album "The Lost and Found". The CD has been on repeat shuffle for the past week or so-it's just soooooo good. And, not only is Gretchen a beautifully intuitive musician and singer, but she's such a warm, humble and lovely person. Go out and buy it!


Here are some things I'd like you all to know:


1) My references to carrots and hummus do not suggest I will be visiting Israel any time soon nor will I be making Tzimmes in view of Pesach celebrations (sorry, Ima).


2) Culinary creativity has now become the barometer to measure how content I am at any given time (the barometer used to be my ability to refrain from massacring my cuticles).


3) The best hummus is from Hummus Place-the chain of restaurants. It's so earthy, not overly acidic, and lushly thick and spreadable. I've given up on Sabra Hummus. It's so incredibly acidic-probably because it contains chemicals and flavourants that allow it to possess such a long shelf life- and so unsatisfying.


4) Fresh carrot juice is super underrated. I'm talking about the kind made in a juicer-not the store bought, bottled variety.


5) Cooking with herbs is mildly terrifying. I don't know why. It is just hugely daunting.


6) Jonathan Safran Foer's tome "Eating Animanls" has persuaded me to become pescatarian. I wish it was just for affect (so I could lapse and laugh it off), but I suspect it will stick this time. Read the book. It's an education if nothing else and it will allow you to make educated choices.


7) Some of my favourite, newly-discovered food blogs are http://www.101cookbooks.com/index.htmlhttp://www.davidlebovitz.com/ (thanks to my pal Lohr), and my beloved http://reciperifle.blogspot.com/ is no longer on maternity leave-so let the acerbic witty blogging continue!


Last week was not a great cooking week mainly because I was wrestling with a chest-cough-turned-cold, several boxes of kleenex and general sense of bluh-ness. This week, however, is going to be much, much better. How do I know this? Well, while drinking my daily cup of Trader Joe's green tea and perusing food blogs, I was inspired. It was inspiration in the form of David Leibovitz's take on grated carrot salad (and the fact that I'm craving vitamin A) and the most delicious recipe for spinach gratin from Julia Childs via http://smittenkitchen.com/2011/03/the-best-baked-spinach/


So, post a little hop and skip on the treadmill-I'm hoping that if I start exercising again ignore my running nose, it will leave due to neglect, besides, I'm bored of being sick- I wandered into my local Fairways grocery store. Six organic carrots. A bunch of cilantro/coriander. Blueberries, strawberries, raspberries (all containing more Vitamin C than oranges...apparently...and they're good for lowering cholesterol). My favourite Pain De Seigle bread by Rudolph...to be consumed after Pesach OBVIOUSLY. See, Mum, you did raise me right!






My version of the carrot salad went like this:


Grated Carrot Salad...And Then Some

1 large carrot, grated
leftover black and red quinoa
half a fennel bulb finely shaved (or you could grate it)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon dijon mustard
1 teaspoon honey
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
salt & pepper
a handful of spinach leaves
a handful of coriander and flat-leaf parsley, chopped finely

Mix the dressing ingredients in a bowl. Grate the carrot into the bowl first, then adding the fennel, quinoa, spinach leaves and herbs. Mix it all together-check the seasoning-and devour while perusing food blogs and reading about the impending  royal nuptials on eonline.com.


Note: if you choose to behave like a savage and eat this delish salad in this manner, you might be finding stray kernels of quinoa nestled in your keyboard keys for weeks to come....you were warned.






The second kitchen adventure occurred this evening. It wasn't quite Julia Childs' version of baked spinach-I didn't have the time nor the patience. But it was delicious and protein-packed.


Spinach Bake for a Hungry Musician

1/2 cup lentils
1/2 onion, chopped
1/2 a garlic clove
a handful of mushrooms, any variety will do
2 handfuls of spinach (remember that it cooks down a lot, so the more the merrier)
1 teaspoon honey
salt & pepper
a nob of butter...or two nobs of butter (Julia said you can never have too much butter)

Note: I mixed in more left-over quinoa. If you wanted a complete meal, you could add cooked brown rice or any grain to make it more hearty.

Cook the lentils according to the packet or your preference.
Heat some olive oil in a pan and add the onions and garlic when hot enough. Once slightly softened, throw in a big pinch of salt and the honey.
Add the mushrooms and more salt (this helps the mushrooms release water and, in turn, cook faster).
Mix the cooked lentils into the onion, garlic, mushroom mixture and add the butter.
Wash the spinach and place in a pot, on low heat, and cover with a lid until the spinach has wilted sufficiently.
Place the lentil mix in a small porcelain baking dish 
(I used my blue-ish Le Creuset mini dish-happiness), top with the spinach (you might want to squeeze out excess liquid beforehand) and a handful of grated cheese (I used cheddar).
Place the dish under the grill/broiler until the cheese has melted.






Eat. And be happy. And then drink some rooibos tea to aid digestion and to get a good dose of antioxidants.





Thursday, April 14, 2011

April Showers Bring May Flowers....Kinda

Tune of the Moment: "Midnight Running." Composed by an extremely talented classmate of mine, Jonas Ganzemuller, this song is the first song played on the website belonging to Manhattan Experiment-a quintet comprising fellow Manhattan School of Music musicians.

I go through phases of either listening to entire albums on repeat (Gretchen Parlato's latest release "The Lost and Found" comes to mind) or to individual songs. I become completely smitten with a tune and have to listen to it first thing in the morning, several times throughout the day, and then again just before I go to bed. In the case of "Midnight Running", Jonas was generous enough to send me the music and I am now transfixed both by the beauty of the song and by the mouth-watering challenge of learning and singing it. Doubly delicious.

Check out Manhattan Experiment on http://manhattan-experiment.com/live/ and have a look at Jonas' website http://www.jonasganzemuller.com/ I'll leave you with a video of the Jonas Ganzemuller Quartet playing Jonas' composition "Riverside Walk" at the Iridium Jazz Club, NYC:

Jonas Ganzemuller (alto), Nick Paul (pno), Jeff Koch (bass), Bastian Weinhold (drums)

I can't tell you how privileged I feel to be learning alongside musicians and people like Jonas and my other 24 classmates in the masters program at MSM. These feelings of gratitude, inspiration and bliss are especially prevalent as our time at school draws to a close-29 days until graduation y'all!

Onto food... I know I haven't written in a while-apologies and blame it on having a cold. I was struck down with bloggers-flu a few weeks ago and spent an entire week feeling sorry for myself and cooking comfort food. I did manage to take pics of the food but actually getting my fingers to fly across the keyboard and produce a blog posting proved to be too much effort. The following week I got hooked on "Friday Night Lights." Um, hello? Where had it been all my life?! I immediately started asking all my Southern friends about it only to be greeted with responses like, "Nicky, that show was aired ages ago. Which rock have you been living under?" The rock of loserdom, perhaps? Because, yes, it is THAT good. OMG. And, because I'm apparently a decade behind the times, there were four whole seasons for me to watch. Happiness except for the fact that I'm loaded with school assignments, a blog to attend to and should be mightily productive. No. My questionable priority list placed FNL at the top and a mammoth big band arrangement at the bottom. Such is life.

So, I was incapacitated for yet another week due to binge-TV-watching. The following week I flew to Lithuania for a jazz vocal competition (isn't that what all the cool kids do??). It wasn't altogether successful, but being unsuccessful has its perks. Yes. I got to inhale more FNL in between meeting rather fabulous singers and people and eating my share of potatoes, meat and other Baltic fare. I might also add that I spent copious time with my Kindle-it was not wise to start reading Jonathan Safran Foer's "Eating Animals" upon arriving in a country where, according to British singer, friend and "Lonely Planet" expert DeutscheFin,  "vegetarianism is coming." It is obviously "coming" from many, many miles away and I opted to put off my pledge-to-veg for when I returned to NYC.

So, one week sick, another week glued to my MAC screen, and another week in a small Lithuanian town. I returned to NYC to be bombarded with assignments, admin and a dusty apartment (why, please tell me, do NYC flats accumulate so much freaking dust?!). So no blogging for a fourth week. Oi va voy. And I suspected that my idea to blog about the comfort food I used to nurse myself back to health had now passed its sell-by date. "Hold on! Not so fast!" the fates exclaimed. I am now sick....AGAIN. But every dust cloud has a silver lining....I can blog about sickling-food!

So, without further ado and a-don't, here are some visuals:

The consumption of pasta-in any shape and form-allows me to wade through childhood nostalgia. My sister and I went through phases of eating noodles for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Even if they were chicken-flavoured Maggie 2 Minute Noodles, we were devotees of the celebrated carb. Another phase saw us eating entire packets of Woolworths pumpkin tortellini sprinkled with enough grated gouda cheese to feed an entire termite family. The cheese would melt, become increasingly sweet and cheesy, and we'd each devour an entire plateful while watching junky TV. Other pasta adventures saw us frying pancetta or parma ham (or bacon when we had to admit that we weren't actually sophisticated enough to be using pancetta...nor were we footing the bill. Thanks Mum!) until crispy and saltily swathed in olive oil, throwing in a bag of frozen petit pois (peas) and mixing in al dente farfalle. Now, whenever I eat pasta, I think of my older sister and her fearless pasta conquests.

"Pasta For A Single Sickling" involves pasta of your choice (I try to use whole wheat to assuage my guilt of eating pasta in excess but sometimes you want the durum wheat stuff, white and calming), canned tomatoes (chopped because who has the time to wait for whole ones to break down?!), onion, garlic (good for a cold), mushrooms if, like me, you got a bit overexcited in the grocery store and purchased oyster, shiitake, enoki, and button 'shrooms, and grated cheese (lots and lots and lots of it). It's not the most sophisticated of pasta dishes, but when eaten out of a white bowl while throwing oneself a pity-party, it is perfection.



I must admit to being very lazy when it comes to cooking for my under-the-weather self. But I did manage to find a pocket of motivation to cook steel cut oats. I even googled the best ways to prepare them as their longer cooking time often persuades me not to make them. Lazy. I said it. The verdict is that soaking them over night and then spending the time washing the excess starch off them the following morning is time well spent. Here are the pics for proof:



Yours in good health, good eating, good listening and better weather (pretty please?).