Menu for One

Summer Vegetable Tian - "Act Now! While Supplies Last!"

With the end of summer upon us, I'm dedicating the next few posts to summer produce so that we can all enjoy one last hurrah.

Do you remember this moment from the end of Disney's Ratatouille when the snobbish food critic Anton Ego sits down to a rustic ratatouille? The smell alone is enough to melt away his ego (get it? Anton EGO?), but one bite transports him back to the dinner table of his childhood, where he remembers his favorite dish prepared lovingly by his maman. Food can be powerful, and whether you're seated at the family table or dining solo like Anton Ego, a meal can be more than just the means to keep you going throughout the day.

I've enjoyed this dish twice this month, and each time it takes me back to the semester I spent studying in Paris. It was the first meal my host family served. I wish I could say that moment was as magical for me as it was for Anton, but alas, it was not. After a long day of traveling, I sat down at the table feeling awkward and self-conscious, trying to think of something, not even intelligent - just coherent, to say. As she would do every night, my host mother served a table red wine, a simple salad, three cheeses, and an entree. That night: ratatouille, the rustic stew of tomatoes, yellow squash, and zucchini. I remembered thinking, "Oh no! I HATE SQUASH! But I'm so hungry! I'm going to have to eat this and look like I like it.  If this is how it's going to be every night, it is going to be a LONG semester." [Ungrateful guest that I was, I ate every bite. My host mother turned out to be a wonderful cook (although she was too modest to agree) and I looked forward to every meal that she served.]

Unfortunately, I did not get this recipe from her. She often served a wonderful tomato tart (which I am still trying to recreate), and when I asked her for the recipe, she was genuinely surprised that I'd want it, because to her, these meals were nothing special. Alas, she did not cook with recipes, and so I have only my memories to go on.

A word to the Haters out there. If you don't like squash, or mushrooms, or green beans, whatever - I get it, believe me, I do. There is no rule that when you become an adult you have to like every food on the planet. However, it would behoove you (as my mother would say) to figure out what it is exactly that you hate. Is it a flavor or a texture thing? Or was it just the fact that your mother cooked it until it was limp and army green, and you haven't wanted to try it since? For me, with squash it's a total texture thing. So slicing the squash and zucchini very, very thin works for me. They get a little crispy. Plus, parmesan cheese makes everything taste better.

Vegetable Tian
adapted from Barefoot in Paris, by Ina Garten

Note: This recipe is very flexible, and can easily be adjusted to serve 1 or 30, using any rimmed, oven-safe baking dish.  I used a 7x10 inch baking dish (although I just got a 5x7 inch Le Crueset baking dish for my birthday - thanks Emily!) which would be even better when making this dish for one.  Try to cut the vegetables the same thickness for even cooking time.  I used a mandoline (take it from me and my bandaged finger, use the hand guard or a nifty kevlar glove like this one to protect your hand).  For the prettiest results, try to pick vegetables that are about the same size.

Olive Oil
1/2 to 1 whole yellow onion, cut in half and sliced
1 garlic clove, minced
3-4 gorgeous summer tomatoes
1 large or 2 small zuchinis
1 large or 2 small yellow squash
2-3 yukon gold or red potatoes (no need to peel)
kosher salt
freshly ground pepper
1/2 tsp fresh thyme leaves or chopped chives
handful grated Parmesan or Gruyere cheeese

Preheat the oven to 375F degrees and grease the baking dish (see Note above).  In a tablespoon of olive oil, sautee the onions for 8-10 minutes, until they become soft and translucent.  Add the garlic and cook for another minute.  Spread the onion mixture on the bottom of the baking dish.

Here comes the fun part.  While the onions are cooking, slice the vegetables into thin slices.  Ina sliced hers about 1/4 inch think, but I used the 3 mm setting on my mandoline.  Layer the vegetables tightly on top of the onions, alternating the tomatoes, potatoes, and squash in whatever order you like (one layer only, please).  Sprinkle with salt and pepper, drizzle with a little olive oil, and cover with foil.  Bake for 35 to 40 minutes.  Pierce a slice of potato with a fork - it should be tender.  Sprinkle the dish with the cheese, and cook uncovered for another 30 minutes to allow the cheese to melt and brown.

If (and I do mean IF) there's any leftover, spoon some of the onions and the vegetable mixture on top of a baguette for a great sandwich.  Bon appetit!

(Raw) Asparagus Salad with Pecorino

Slaw week continues on Menu For One!  This one is perfect beside grilled meat or seafood, and might even develop into a one-pot meal/side-salad with the addition of couscous, or a protein-rich whole-grain like quinoa.  

Now, when you read this recipe, you'll notice that there's no mayonnaise (mayo-haters rejoice!).  I looked into it, and found that technically, slaws don't require mayonnaise.  "Slaw" is a word derived from the Dutch word "sla" meaning salad.  The term usually refers to shredded cabbage coated in some sort of "moist dressing," but can include other vegetables.

Because there's no cooking involved, this Asparagus Salad can be assembled as fast as you can chop and stir.  The key to this dish is to use the young, pencil-thin asparagus if you can find it.  For me, that's always the asparagus I find at the grocery store and never the kind I'm looking for.

Asparagus, Pecorino, and Red Onion
from Anne Burrell, host of Secrets of a Restaurant Chef

 

Chop off the tough ends of one bunch of asparagus.  Cut the remaining pieces of asparagus crosswise into 1/4-inch slices.  Combine in a medium bowl with one small red onion, finely diced, and 1 cup coursely grated pecorino.  Add 1/2 cup red wine vinegar, a glug of olive oil, and a couple of pinches of kosher salt.  Toss to combine and adjust dressing to taste, adding a little more olive oil at a time.  

I guess it was a close-ups only kind of day when I photographed this dish - not quite sure what that was all about, but I think you get the idea.  Depending on your appetite and whether this serves as a side or a main course, you should have enough left over for tomorrow.  Enjoy!

French Onion Soup

 

It has been freezing here, in a technical sense.  Yes, yes, I know it's probably been colder wherever you happen to be sitting, but for Atlanta, it has been unseasonably cold.  That's why I was thankful to have this french onion soup ready for me in my freezer.  

Everyone needs an emergency recipe like this in their back pocket.  It comes from a great cookbook I got for Christmas, Eugenia Bone's Well-Preserved.  She shows country folk and city folk alike how to can (aka put up or preserve) fruits, vegetables, or meats in small quantities, AND THEN shows you what to do with them when you open them up later, other than just eating them out of the jar.  The greatest part of the book is that, for a great many of the recipes, you don't need any special equipment.  This french onion soup is one of those beauties.  All you need is a large pot and some freezer bags/containers.

As with each of the recipes in the book, this recipe is made in two stages.  You start first by making Stewed Onions with Marjoram, to be divided into 2-pint portions and stored in your freezer.  Whenever you're craving something warm and seriously delicious, you just grab a pack out of your freezer and reheat it with some chicken stock.  Voila!

Over medium-low, heat 6 tablespoons in your largest pot (I learned this the hard way - you'll need plenty of room for the onions).  In the meantime, thinly slice 24 medium yellow onions.  If you have a food processor, this is a moment where your slicer disk can really shine.  It will save you a lot of time and tears.  Add the onions to the pot and let them hang out for 30 minutes or so, stirring every few minutes.  [If you're concerned after adding the onions that there won't be room for any other ingredients, don't worry - their volume will decrease significantly.]  Next, add two quarts of low-sodium beef stock and 3 tablespoons of dried marjoram.  I recommend low-sodium because it gives you a little more control over the saltiness of your food.  It's much easier to add a little bit more than to take any out.  Let this all hang out on the stove for an hour and fifteen minutes.  The onions will be soft and stewy.

When the mixture has cooled, I used tongs to transfer the onions to 6 freezer-safe plastic bags, then ladled in the broth.  End of STAGE ONE.

 

STAGE TWO: When you're ready to enjoy the soup, grab a bag from the freezer.  Defrosting it overnight would probably be best, but I just cut the bag open and reheated it over a low flame with a quart of chicken stock.  When I could see steam start to rise from the surface of the soup, I ladled it into two ramekins, topped it with some thick-sliced bread, and sprinkled it with shredded parmesan cheese.  After 5-10 minutes in a 400F oven, the bread had soaked up some of the soup and the cheese had formed a delicious golden-brown crust.  I'm happy to report that STAGE TWO took all of fifteen minutes to prepare, maybe less.  One portion from the freezer comfortably feeds two.  Enjoy!

 

Spinach Frittata

As I see it, there are two avenues of success, if you will, in this cooking for one business: improvisation and/or careful planning.  I gave improvisation a shot in my last soup post.  As we all know, practice makes perfect, so here I go again.  Breakfast.  I figured if I got some proportions down (appealing to the side of me that loves to plan), it would facilitate my efforts in improvisation.  So, Kathryn-the-Planner pulled out a whole bunch of cookbooks to gather as many different frittata recipes as she could find, in hopes that she could determine the egg to filler ratio.  Well, low and behold, Mark Bittman already did the work for me: 1-2 cups of filling for every 4-5 eggs (See How to Make Everything).  

In a small, oven-safe omelet pan cook most of the way through (or reheat, if you're working with leftovers) the frittata fillings.  Meanwhile, whisk together the eggs, salt and pepper, and a handful of grated cheese.  Lower the heat to medium-low and add the egg mixture.  Let it hang out until the bottom starts to firm up, then transfer the omelet pan to a 350F oven to finish cooking in there (roughly 10 minutes, but check frequently).

In this version, I think I added spinach, onions, and parmesan cheese.  Since the onions take a little longer to cook than spinach, I started cooking them first. When they were nearly soft, I added some frozen spinach I had defrosted and squeezed dry.  As Bittman instructed, I added the egg/cheese mixture, let it set up a little bit in the pan and then transferred to the oven.  Here's where I went wrong: I let it cook too long in the oven.  Still edible, but not a masterpiece.  So be careful!  Check often! 

As you can see, I ate it with fruit and a glass of milk.  Looking at it now, if only I had added a bowl of cereal and a glass of orange juice in the photo, you would hear a voiceover at the end of this post saying, "Part of this complete breakfast," just like they did during the commercial breaks of Saturday morning cartoons.

Pearl Couscous Gratin with Pesto and Goat Cheese

Confession: I like costume dramas.  Jane Austen films in particular, and I'll watch them over and over again (although I promise I won't make you watch them).  And the funny thing is, that after I've seen one, I notice that my sentences become more drawn out, and are peppered with words like "quite" and "whilst."

Even if Jane Austen films aren't your thing, I'm sure there's been a moment when you've been talking to someone on the phone who's trying to be quiet on their end, and then all of a sudden you say to yourself, "wait - why am I whispering?"

Well, I've been working a lot lately, and my day job of writing in formal legal-ese is bleeding into my thoughts about this blog.  In starting this post, I had to fight the urge to write "Pursuant to page 554 in the How to Cook Everything Vegetarian Cookbook by Mark Bittman...."  So bear with me.  I'll snap out of it.

That being said, we had a few days of heavy rain in Atlanta last week (desperately needed) and it seemed like one of the last opportunities to make some hot-out-of-the-oven comfort food before the weather gets too hot for comfort down here.  I turned to a recipe I had made once before, but that can be easily manipulated to feature whatever veggies you've got in your fridge, and in my case, green beans.  

In a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, sauté a finely chopped shallot or a small handful of chopped red onion.  Add to the pan 8 ounces of asparagus or green beans cut into one-inch pieces and cook until softened, but still underdone.  In a 2-quart casserole, combine the veggie mixture with 2 cups cooked pearl couscous (aka israeli couscous, a toasted couscous that is larger than the traditional couscous; it's about the size of a pencil eraser).  This time around, I substituted orzo for the couscous, and it worked out okay, but pearl couscous may still be the better way to go.

In a separate measuring cup or bowl, combine 1/2 cup of pesto, an egg, and 1/2 cup of cream, milk, or stock, whatever you have on hand, and pour over the casserole.  While it settles into all the nooks and crannies, pull out 4 ounces of goat cheese.  Using your fingers,break the cheese into small pieces and distribute over the top of the casserole.  Bake at 350F for 30-40 minutes, until the top is golden brown and bubbling.  I was a little impatient here and didn't quite get to the golden brown stage, but it was still tasty.

I think the trick is not cooking the veggies all the way through before putting them in the casserole.  Frankly, depending on the size of the veggies, I may not sauté them at all.  Otherwise, the veggies get cooked once in the sauté pan and then again in the oven, resulting in a color I refer to as "potluck green" (if you know what I mean).  Mark Bittman does a nice job showing several variations that can be made depending on your taste, the occasion, or the vegetables in season.  His book is straightforward and comprehensive, and I recommend that you take a look at it (or its brother, How to Cook Everything).  

Unintentionally, I ended up enjoying a completely green meal the weekend of St. Patrick's day.  But I did not enjoy it under a rainbow.  Or beside a pot o' gold.  Better luck to ye.