For The Sake of Full Disclosure…

One of the things that makes me laugh these days is when I hear from a friend of mine who says something along the lines of: “I know we haven’t talked in a while, but I read your blog so I know what’s going on in your life.”

Ha, ha, ha.

It might be easy to think that a blog is an accurate representation of a life, but I’m here to say that it’s not. I’d love to say that I spend every day riding my bike along the Burke-Gillman Trail, going to farms, and stopping off at farmers’ markets—and I do my best to fit those things in—but there’s a lot of other stuff too. The stuff of life.

Just as with life, so as with my diet. I wish I could say that I eat beautifully crafted salads every day, made with the freshest organic produce, lovingly grown and carefully selected, but it just ain’t true.

Case in point, today’s lunch:



The beans are from a can, brought over by a dinner guest last night and never used. I drained them and tasted them and, dang, they were good. Sort of smoky and salty and very soft. Comfort food.

I dumped in a few spoonfuls of leftover chimol—also from last night. It’s not even the best chimol I’ve ever made. I’ve always used cherry tomatoes and they are more flavorful than the large tomatoes I picked up at the (yes) farmers’ market yesterday. This version was watery, not very flavorful, and made in a hurry.

Then I stuck in a handful of tortilla chips. I could have used corn tortillas, it would have been healthier, but I had just spent hours on the phone with ATT/SBC/Whatever-else-they-are-calling-themselves-these-days tech support (and no, they did not manage to fix my outgoing email problem). I was already gnashing my teeth in frustration, I needed something that went crunch.

Then I poured some vinegar over the whole thing.

I considered adding cumin but decided not to—that would require opening a cupboard and sorting through spice packets. Who could be bothered?

Then I ate. And you know what—it was awfully good. I love my Rancho Gordo (I even made this dish with them last night—yummy), but I think canned beans have a place in my life as well. Especially after hours of being put on hold by ATT/SBC/Whatever-else-they-are-calling-themselves-these-days tech support. If I have to talk to yet another person about SMTP settings I might just scream.

Perhaps I need to break into the leftover margaritas as well…

What’s really going on in my life—it ain’t always pretty.

But today’s lunch was awfully good. You should try it (personal breakdown caused by technology failure and subsequent telephone hold nightmare is entirely optional).

Farm Tots

We’re going to the farm, farm, farm
Maybe we’ll see a barn, barn, barn
There will be goats there too,
I’m going to the farm with you!

This is the song that Alice and I sing as we head eastward, over the floating bridge and across Lake Washington. Alice and I make up songs to sing whenever we’re in the car together, but this song is new, made up just today. Today is the first time for Alice ever to go to a farm, and I get to take her.

I had been scheming a farm visit since I went to South 47 Farm for their raspberry U-pick earlier this summer. There were a number of families there with children, and a fenced off area with goats and ducks. You could buy goat feed from a gumball-style machine and the kids were having fun feeding the goats. Because Alice, my two-year-old niece, dearly loves animals, I got excited about the idea of taking her to the farm.

Not to mention, these days I am feeling strongly about how important it is for everyone—especially little ones—to get a sense of where their food comes from and how it all works.

My scheming was aided by the purchase, by my brother, of an extra car seat. This seat is now installed in my car, which makes me feel oddly like someone’s mom but which opens up a world of adventure for Alice and me when we have our weekly playdates each Friday. This week I decided to take her to the farm. We would feed the goats, maybe pick some blueberries, it would be fun.

When I went online, to check the hours on the farm’s website, I discovered they had a Farm Tots program—a weekly activity program they run three days a week for kids under the age of five—and it happened to be running on Friday, from 10:30-11:30.

A farm program just for kids! I could hardly wait.

Alice and I sang our way up the highway and east towards Woodinville. I told her what a barn is (“I love barns,” she said). And when we saw one—a rambling white old thing off to the side of the road—we were both excited. We pulled into the dirt parking area at the farm to find many children, many parents, and a buzz of excitement about the place. We waited in line to pay our six dollars for participation, then went to the large covered area where there were a series of picnic tables and everyone seemed to be gathering.

There were “bean bins,” containers filled with dried beans and corn that the littlest children were having fun running their hands through.



Then a woman from the farm jumped up and, like a summer-camp counselor, told us about the day. The theme of the week was sunflowers, she said. She sang a sunflower song and showed us how to make the gesture for “flower” in sign language. She then explained the crafts projects that were on the tables in front of us—a crayon coloring project, and sunflower crowns we could make from construction paper. There were tractor rides to go on, and the goats and ducks were available for visits. We also got to pick one of the large, blooming sunflowers to take home with us. We could do the activities at our own pace, she said.



Alice and I decided to make our sunflower crowns first (“I love sunflowers,” Alice said), and when we were done she decided she liked mine better than hers. “You wear this one, Aunt Ti-ti,” she said, and I obliged. When your two-year-old niece likes your coloring project, you take it as a compliment.



Then waited in line for the tractor ride. The tractor, when it arrived, was pulling a wagon filled with hay bales and we clambered aboard. The friendly farmer called Alice “little sunflower” as he helped her into the wagon, and we made our way towards the front and sat down on a hay bale. From up in the tractor we could see the flower gardens filled with blooms of different colors—golden sunflowers, red and pink dahlias, purple lavender. “Look, lavender,” Alice said, pointing to the hazy purple blooms across the field. This kid amazes me.



The tractor took a trip around the farm, the farmer/driver pointing out the different crops. “This is our summer squash on the left; here’s where our corn maze is going to be for Halloween; here’s the pumpkin patch” (“I love pumpkins,” said Alice).

Next we decided to smell the lavender (“I love lavender,” said Alice).



And to pick our sunflower (“Let's take this one, Aunt Ti-ti," Alice said, holding onto a stalk. "This is the one I love").



Then we fed the goats. I showed Alice how to put her hand forward, palm flat and fingers held together, so no one would accidentally nibble or bite her little digits (“I love the goats,” she said. “How about the ducks?” I asked. “They’re funny," she said, "but I don’t love them.”).



Then, as we were heading back to the car feeling tired from a full morning in the sun, we stopped at the farmstand. I wanted to buy some summer squash, perhaps some berries if they had them.

There were no berries, but there were purple cabbages. Alice fell in love with a purple cabbage.

“Can we take this home with us, Aunt Ti-ti? I love it.”

Who can say no to a child in love with a cabbage? (how often does that happen?)

Alice was so in love with the cabbage that she had to have it with her in the car seat on the ride home ("I love it so much," she said).



And when we were home she had to have it on the table next to her during lunchtime. Then, partway through lunch, she tried to take a bite out of the cabbage. She didn’t manage to scrape off much of the vegetable with her tiny little teeth, but enough to get a hit of the strong flavor. Then she didn't like it so much anymore. "Daddy will cook it so it tastes good," we promised her.

The sunflowers were put in water. We told tales of tractor rides and pumpkin vines, and Alice insisted on sleeping with her sunflower crown in her crib with her when it came time for her nap that afternoon.

“I love the farm,” Alice said.

I do too, Alice. I do too.



The Farm Tots program at South 47 Farm is held every Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, from 10:30-11:30, from June 13-October 26 (for summer 2007).
Each class includes wagon ride, art or nature activity, and a chance to pick a child-sized portion of a seasonal U-pick crop. Every week is a new theme—bugs, flowers, seeds, worms, bees, herbs, etc.

The program is offered to children five and under, with an adult parent or guardian. The cost is $6 per child, accompanying adult is free of charge. For more information, call Cindi at 425-753-0756 or see the South 47 website.

Cooking for One, a Pleasure or a Trial?

I learned how to cook in quantity, large quantity.

I was cooking for a family, you see, and our pots were large. I had a younger brother who was always happy to polish off any amount of food. When he was a baby we called him Paul Bunyan, because of his prodigious appetite; as a teenager it had only grown larger. He came home from La Crosse practice ravenous. I could never cook too much—I don’t remember us ever having leftovers.

When I went to college it was the same, there were always friends around willing to eat whatever I made. I continued to make vats of soup and pasta sauces. If the leftovers became a problem I had only to call my guy friends on the rugby team, the boys at the frat house across the street, or any number of hungry girlfriends to polish things off. I never lacked for mouths to feed.



Then I moved to Japan and soon was living on my own in a small apartment, cooking in even smaller pots. Everything seemed petite, almost miniature. The largest pot I owned would have been a saucepot back home, used to hardboil a couple of eggs or reheat soup; my oven was the size of a small toaster. In a fit of homesickness one weekend I made bagels and had to boil them one by one and bake them two at a time, the tiny baking sheet wouldn't hold more.

But it wouldn’t have mattered how large my pots were—for the first time in my life I was cooking for one.

I trimmed my recipes down, making half batches, sometimes a quarter. It was a strange thing to start a soup with part of an onion, rather than the whole thing, and there were never any leftovers. Occasionally I even divided a beaten egg in half, when I wanted to make three muffins rather than a dozen. It took a little time, but I adjusted. These days I am a pro at cooking for one. I even know how to reduce my favorite pancake recipe so it makes exactly the number of pancakes I want (three). It may sound absurd, but it works.



I was thinking about this recently, as I read the newly published book At Home in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone. It is a collection of essays about eating alone, cooking—or not cooking—for one. It’s an interesting topic.

Most all of us will find ourselves cooking for one at some point or another, and it’s not always an easy thing. Last year I gave a friend of mine a book that included in it one of my food essays and recipes. She had recently gone through a breakup and when she called to thank me for the book her voice broke. I had written my recipe—for grilled eggplant, ironically enough—the way I make it: per eggplant, multiply as needed. No one writes recipes for single people, my friend told me through tears, and I realized how difficult it was for her to face cooking for just herself.

Though I spent my entire young life cooking for many, these days I am mostly cooking for one. I know there are those who believe a meal can’t fully be appreciated unless it is shared, but I have to admit—as much as I love sharing food with those I care about, I enjoy the times I spend cooking and eating alone. When else can I be as selfish to cook exactly what I want, the way I want it? It may be an Indian meal of curried lentils, rice, and raita (last night) or it might be toast and cucumber and yogurt (tonight), but fancy or plain, it is mine. I am limited only by the contents of my kitchen and my own imagination, and I never have to compromise with someone else. I really do love cooking for others, but put me alone in the kitchen with an eggplant and I’ll have no complaints.



The title of the book comes from a Laurie Colwin essay:

“Dinner alone is one of life’s pleasures,” Colwin writes. “Certainly cooking for one reveals man at his weirdest. People lie when you ask them what they eat when they are alone. A salad, the tell you, But when you persist, they confess to peanut butter and bacon sandwiches, deep fried and eaten with hot sauce, or spaghetti with butter and grape jam.”

Not everyone is quite so happy to be cooking alone. Ann Patchett, one of my favorite authors, feels differently:

“So what does it say about my self-esteem that I know perfectly well how to make a velouté and yet would choose to crack open a can of SpaghettiOs when dining alone? (I am not using the word “SpaghettiOs” as a metaphor here.) Do I not believe that I am entitled to the same level of tenderness that I extend to others? Or is it, in fact, a greater level of self-love to not put myself through the hassle of making dinner?”

[Editor note: feel free to invite me over for dinner, Ann. I'd be more than happy to save you from an evening of SpaghettiOs. We can make velouté together, it will be great.]

Clearly there is a dilemma about how we feed ourselves when we are alone. Editor of the book, Jenni-Ferrari-Adler, does a good job of summing up the issue in her introduction:

"A good meal is like a present, and it can feel goofy, at best, to give yourself a present. On the other hand, there is something life affirming in taking the trouble to feed yourself well, or even decently. Cooking for yourself allows you to be strange or decadent or both. The chances of you liking what you made are high, but if it winds up being disgusting, you can always throw it away and order a pizza; no one will ever know."



There are plenty of thought provoking essays in this collection, about cooking and also about dining alone in restaurants (something I have more of a struggle with—unless I am dressed to the nines, feeling wickedly romantic, and somewhere in Europe). There are recipes as well, humor and insight, and a description of asparagus by Phoebe Nobles that might be worth the price of the book alone.

It’s an interesting question:
How do we feed ourselves when we are dining alone—do we cook at all?
Is it a dreaded chore or a guilty pleasure?
Is a meal not a meal unless it is shared?
What do we eat when nobody is watching?

How about you?

[The photos on this post—some of the weird and occasionally wonderful things that I've made for myself over the past year. These are the dishes that didn't make the blog: what I eat when nobody is watching.]

If you'd like to buy the book:
Through your local independent bookseller
Through Powells
Through Amazon

Lemon Blueberry Buckwheat Pancakes: Breakfast on the Burke-Gilman Trail

Some of you may know that I am a bit iffy on pancakes. The ones I like are light, either thin with raspberries bits strewn throughout, or soft and moist with ricotta cheese and lemon curd. Big, hefty, bready pancakes I do not like. They sit in my stomach for hours feeling leaden: they weigh me down,

There is one exception to this pancake rule of mine, and that has to do with bicycles. If a bicycle is involved, then hefty pancakes are okay. In fact, they are encouraged. On a bicycle, you need that sort of fuel.

I discovered this while on a three-day bike trip with my friend Michelle, along the California coast. We biked north from San Francisco, stopping for lunch along Tomales Bay, rolling past fields of cows near Valley Ford, and camping that night just north of Bodega Bay, a place of craggy cliffs, sand dunes, and cypress trees.



The next morning we woke to a world shrouded in fog and chill, and backtracked into town for a hot breakfast. Michelle had pancakes and I had an omelet—figuring the eggs and cheese would keep me going—but an hour later, when we crested the hills above the coastal town of Jenner and turned inland, following the sinuous curves of the green Russian River, I was hungry already. Michelle, with a belly still full of pancakes, was fine.

Ever since then I live by this rule: if a bike is involved, it’s time for pancakes.

I thought of this recently, one morning as I planned to explore the Burke-Gilman Trail. I had heard of this trail even before I arrived in Seattle. When my friends Melinda and Brian left the Bay Area three years ago, to move back to Seattle, they said they were looking forward to being on the Burke-Gilman Trail again. Because I grew up on the slopes of Mt. Tam, and consider the Matt Davis Trail as one of the things that makes life worth living, I assumed this must be some woodsy, Northwest hiking trail. I imagined pine trees and salal bushes.

But the Burke-Gilman Trail is a bike trail. I saw it on my Seattle Bicycle Route Map (the city Department of Transportation will send you one for free, if only you ask them). I noticed that I could join up with the trail on the campus of the University of Washington, not far from my house. One Sunday, earlier this summer, I decided to check it out.

But first I made pancakes.

I had recently read an old post of Molly’s on Orangette, where she was talking about putting leftover pancakes in ziplock bags and taking them with her on airplanes. I don’t often have leftover pancakes, because I usually make partial recipes, but I was intrigued by the ziplock bag idea. Perhaps this was the best of all possible worlds, perhaps I could have my bicycle and my pancakes—to go!

Of course, for this I’d need a hefty pancake—no crepe-like raspberry thing or tender bit of ricotta fluff. For this I’d need a new pancake recipe, something sturdy and filling—and since my mother had just been to visit, bringing with her a goodly amount of blueberries from the island (thanks, mom!), that something would be blueberry.

A blueberry buckwheat pancake—with lemon.



A little research and a few trials and errors later, I had come up with a recipe I was happy with. The nutty flavor of the buckwheat flour played with the tart-sweet berries, extra juicy now from the heat of the pan. There was a little citrus there in the background, waking things up, and the whole thing tasted like something you would want to wake up early for. It was hard to not eat them all fresh off the stove, but I dutifully wrapped them up and slid them into my bicycle bag. I had a trail to explore.



The Burke-Gilman Sammamish Trail is built on an old railroad route. In 1970, a group of locals convinced the city to purchase the land. After extended negotiations, the land was bought, the rail ties removed, and the trail opened for use in 1974. It is now a 27-mile bike and pedestrian trail that runs from the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, west and north along Lake Washington. It is part of the 90 miles of signed bike routes in the city of Seattle, 175 in King County (with plans to become 300 miles, yippie!).

That paragraph above, while perhaps of interest to some, does not at all convey the experience of the Burke-Gilman Trail. It cannot explain the sheer pleasure of riding underneath a canopy of leafy green arching overhead. It cannot share the experience of smelling blackberries warming in the sun as you ride by, or hearing the trickle of flowing streams. It cannot make you understand what a joy it is to ride for miles—miles, I tell you—without having to worry about traffic and the possibility of someone opening their car door suddenly just as you are riding by.



Instead you glide for miles—miles, I tell you—past waves of green trees, lovely houses, and slices of the deep marine blue of Lake Washington. You see other cyclists and walkers, and families with strollers. There are wooded sections, with the smell of pine and damp, and leafy green areas where the sun filters down through a canopy of green, leaving a speckled pattern on the pavement as you coast by.



And then there are the parks. Pockets of grass and shoreline where you can lean you bike up against a tree, stick you feet in the water of the lake if you like, and eat your pancakes.



They are delicious, even more after the exercise and fresh air. The blueberries burst out of the pancake, and if you fold it over to munch away, you might end up accidentally squirting berry juice on your hand. You don’t mind. You're too busy enjoying the day and the delightful novelty of a breakfast picnic, far from home.



As you sit there you are thankful, for the day, for the berries and pancakes, and for the foresight that a group of people had, more than 35 years ago, to set aside this land for a bike trail. You appreciate it even more, perhaps, because similar efforts have been on the ballot in the county you grew up in, where they routinely fail to win approval. A measure last fall, to fund a 70-mile bike, pedestrian, and rail line through Marin and Sonoma Counties, was turned down by voters who didn’t want to approve a one quarter percentage increase in sales tax. But what joy, what beauty, what a gift those pennies might provide a community 35 years later.

With a gorgeous ride ahead of you, and a belly full of pancakes, Seattle seems a grand place to be.



LEMON BLUEBERRY BUCKWHEAT PANCAKES
These are mighty pancakes, filling enough to fuel a good bike ride or mountain hike.

1/2 cup buckwheat flour
1/2 all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp sugar (more if you like your pancakes on the sweet side, or if your berries are super tart)
1 tsp salt
1/2 stick cold, unsalted butter (1/4 cup) cut into small pieces
1 cup buttermilk (you can fake the buttermilk but adding 1 tsp lemon juice to 1 cup milk)
2 eggs
1 tsp grated lemon zest
2 cups blueberries
oil or butter for the pan

Mix the flours, baking powder, sugar, and salt, either in a bowl or in the bowl of a food processor and cut the butter into the mix—by pulsing the food processor or by using a pastry cutter or knife and fork—until the mixture resembles fine meal.

In a large bowl, mix the buttermilk and the eggs until smooth. Add the dry ingredient mixture and stir until incorporated. Add the lemon zest. Let sit five minutes before adding the blueberries. The batter will be thick.

Grease a fry pan or griddle and heat on medium high. Once the pan is hot enough so that a drop of water “dances” on the grease, pour the batter on in 1/2 cup scoops with a ladle. Don’t flip the pancakes until a generous amount of bubbles have appeared towards the center of the pancake. Adjust heat as needed.

Raspberry U-Pick at South 47 Farm

I went to my first u-pick this summer, something my foodie friends had a hard time believing.

“You’ve never been to a u-pick?” Sean at Hedonia asked. He perhaps doesn't realize that I grew up in the country. U-picks are really more interesting to city folks.

“We had our own u-pick,” I told him. “It was called chores.”

And it’s true. I’ve picked a million blackberries, plucked a thousand plums, but never at a farm. It was always in our backyard, or at the blackberry bushes nearby. There are u-picks in Northern California, of course. I’ve tried to make it down to Mariquita Farm, for their tomato u-pick, but it just never happened. That’s why I was particularly pleased when my neighbor (she of the front door mojitos) invited me to join her and her two daughters at a berry u-pick in Redmond.



That Saturday we piled into the car, drove over the long floating bridge that spans Lake Washington, and took a short jaunt up the highway and off on a road that runs towards Woodinville. It was surprised by how quickly the scenery changed from strip malls and car lots to open fields and trees. There were definite signs of housing development in the area, but within twenty minutes we were pulling into the dirt parking lot at South 47 Farm.



I love the experience of arriving at an organic farm. Even though South 47 is right on a small highway, there is a sense of peace and quiet that I recognize at all small farms. It’s something that makes me profoundly happy.

The farm was also beautiful, with gorgeous swaths of vegetables that looked like an Impressionist painting. I’m almost sure that Pissarro did something quite similar.



I fell in love with the purple cabbages, each one looking like a lavender colored pearl surrounded by cabbage leaves.



But we were here for the raspberries, and the rows of berry bushes were dripping with them.



It’s an awfully pleasant thing, I must say, to spend a warm afternoon with friends, picking berries and chatting. We wandered among the rows of raspberry canes infused with a sent of warm sweetness, popping berries into your container—and a few into our mouths as well. These berries were some of the largest I’ve ever seen.



With the easy proximity to Seattle, South 47 Farm draws a lot of people from the urban suburbs. I was delighted to see so many kids, as I seem to be developing a not so secret agenda about wanting kids to know about where their food comes from and what it looks like. And what a great experience for a kid to pick their own berries.

(for all I know the parents of these kids bribed them with the new Harry Potter if only they would put up with berry picking for an hour or two, but I like to think they were enjoying themselves).



It really was a gorgeous day, with plenty of berries to be had for all.



Even the little ones got their share of berries.



We headed back to the city, our buckets and baskets filled with fresh berries. What does one do with so many fresh berries? Well, I made the raspberry frozen yogurt from David Lebovitz’s Perfect Scoop. It is absolutely the best frozen yogurt I have ever eaten—and the prettiest to boot. Leave it to David to knock my frozen yogurt tasting socks off—if you don't have the book, you really should take a look at a copy. It's stunning.



The rest of the berries—raspberries and blueberries—I took over to my brother’s house, where I had the distinct pleasure of feeding my 10-month-old baby niece her first raspberry. It was incredible to watch as she put the berry in her mouth. After a second her eyes opened wide, utterly surprised and delighted at what she was tasting.

Then she wanted more.



Slippery little suckers, these berries.



Ah, got it.



Hey, where are you going with my berries?



If I smile and look cute, will you bring them back?



Give me the berries now, Auntie, and nobody will get hurt.



I'm just saying—if you want to go and get a baby all hooked on freshly picked berries, just make sure you have an ample supply. These things are addictive, and the withdrawl symptoms of a 10-month-old are not pretty. We're trying to teach her some self-restraint, but it's slow going. I hope that by fall, when the berry supply really dries up, we will have been able to adequately wean her off the substance, at least until next year.



South 47 Farm
15410 NE 124th St. (corner of NE 124th St. & the Woodinville-Redmond Rd.)
Redmond, WA 98052

425-869-9777

I Promised You A Caprese

I did promise you a Caprese. Back in June, on that day when life felt overwhelming and painful, I planted some tomato plants. It was an act of hope, the best I could muster at a time when the earth felt like it was shifting under my feet and I might never regain my balance. I grabbed hold of something green and tried not to let go; perhaps a garden would help make things feel better.

I have to report, a garden does work wonders. The next morning I hopped out of bed early, eager to see how my plants were adjusting to their new home. All summer long, I’ve watered and tended. I’ve taken my frustrations out in digging sessions with the pitchfork (a surprisingly good workout, cathartic to boot), and been delighted to watch these tender green things thrive and grow.

And now, there are tomatoes.



The larger tomatoes are still green, summer in Seattle has been slightly on the cool side this year (or so they tell me) and they are not yet fully ripe, but the cherry tomatoes have turned yellow. I’ve been patiently waiting for them to turn red, until I noticed that one had split open already and realized (remembered) that they are yellow cherry tomatoes (duh). They are sweet and flavorful, with that slightly acrid vegetal smell from the tomato vines still clinging to them. The juxtaposition of that green bitter scent and the sweetness of the actual tomato is something no store-bought tomato will ever be able to imitate. My tomatoes are not as good as Joe Shirmer’s dry farmed Early Girl tomatoes (what else is?), but they have a good acidy sweet flavor and, best of all, they are mine.

The basil is mine too, two big bushy plants of it. One of them is right next to the walkway and when I brush past it I get to smell that pungent flavor with hints of anise. For me it is the scent of late summer, an unmistakable fragrance that conjures up images of long weekend luncheons with friends in the slanting sunshine (I’d say under a vine-covered pergola, but that might just be a tad too cliché). The smell of basil is laughter and sunlight, August and September days that feel like they could go on forever, like autumn might never come.



With fresh tomatoes and basil on hand, there’s only one thing a person could possibly do: make Insalta Caprese, a divine mixture of these two ingredients with the addition of fresh mozzarella (and yes, it must be fresh, those hard balls of stringy cheese that were grated over lasagne in the ‘70s and ‘80s don’t count, better to go without).

fresh mozzarella is creamy and light, like it almost isn’t even a cheese at all. Something this fresh tasting couldn’t be possibly be bad for you, could it? You might think me funny but fresh mozzarella always reminds me of freshly made tofu—a taste experience everyone should get to try once. If there is a flavor to clean, this would be it.

I didn’t make the cheese myself, but someone did fairly recently. At least that’s what it tastes like. Until I can get back to Delfina for their fresh stretched mozzarella (bliss on a plate) or Italy for the real thing, this will do.

So here, as we slip into late summer, I have a bowl filled with the yield of my own labor, despair turned into something sweet and fragrant. I still don’t have all the answers to the questions that plagued me that day; life is an ongoing puzzle to be figured out. But I do have a tasty lunch to tide me over as I continue to look for my own solutions. Life is a lot like gardening—if you keep at it, plugging away week after week, watching over it and feeding it what it needs, eventually you get the joy of tasting the fruit of your own hard work. It's pretty delicious.



Isalata Caprese is translated as: salad, Capri-style. Capri is an island off the Sorrentine Peninsula in the Campania region—the front ankle of Italy’s boot—that includes Naples. A Caprese salad is known for having the most minimal ingredients—tomatoes, basil, mozzarella, olive oil, salt and pepper (there are those who add balsamic vinegar, but I don’t cotton to it). This is the time to pull out a nice olive oil, it makes all the difference.

I wonder if the fact that Capri is an island has a hand in the evolution of this tomato based salad—lettuce is a crop that needs a good amount of space, which would be at a premium on an island. Tomatoes are a much more space-efficient crop.

However it came to be, this is one of those dishes that defines synergy—the result is far greater than the sum of its parts. If you make it with red tomatoes, they say it resembles the Italian flag. Either way, it’s delicious and addictive, especially when you'v grown most of it yourself.

The Ratatouille Test

If you can look at the above photos and not feel an unmistakable urge to make ratatouille, then you are a stronger soul than I am.

Perhaps I am a light touch, but I saw the crates of tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, and peppers at the market recently and, like a Pavlovian dog, only one thought came to my mind: ratatouille. And I wasn’t thinking Disney.

Yes, my friends, it’s ratatouille season. This dish of stewed vegetables originated in Nice, in the south of France, and utilizes all the produce of a summer garden—tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, zucchini, and fresh herbs. It’s the answer to the question of what on earth to do with an over productive late summer garden, or an irresistible farmers’ market.

I have to admit that ratatouille is a dish that can easily go wrong. Cooked too long, zucchini and eggplant can become waterlogged and unappealing. I’ve never been the biggest fan of ratatouille. It’s not something I ever want to eat in a restaurant, far too much of a menu risk.

But last summer I had a ratatouille revelation. When I make it at home, for myself, I can cook the vegetables to perfection—no mushy lumps of questionable veggies here. I cook the eggplant and zucchini separately, making sure they soften but retain their own flavor and personality. And I tried Bea’s recipe for ratatouille, from her astoundingly beautiful blog La Tartine Gourmande, and I experienced the bright, spring-like flavor of tarragon in ratatouille, an herb I would not have thought to include. Basil is often added to ratatouille, or herbes de Provence, but I adore the anise-like flavor of tarragon, which is a lovely and underused herb if you ask me.

Thus a ratatouille lover was born. This time of year I get excited for overflowing gardens and markets; it means I’m soon going to get my dose of ratatouille. Not only can it be wonderfully delicious, it makes a girl feel pretty darn virtuous to sit down to a bowl of perfectly cooked, seasonally appropriate, locally grown, organically raised vegetables. I mean really, hard to be better than that. It’s an easy way to earn your gold star for the day, at least in the veggie department. It may not be the most photogenic dish ever, but it's delicious and oh-so-good for you.



Just to counteract all that virtuousity, I like to serve my ratatouille on a bed of Israeli couscous (sometimes also called Middle Eastern couscous). This pairing is something I first tasted last year, at the home of my friend and fellow food blogger Mary Ladd. Mary had mixed the more common, small sized couscous with the larger, round couscous balls and it was a delightful textural contrast. On top of this all we had heaping spoonfuls of ratatouille, you can see this veggie goodness tucked away behind the impressive piece of salmon on my plate in the final photo of this post (yes, me eating salmon—an exceedingly rare turn of events).

That evening was the first time I had ever eaten Israeli couscous and I was a fast convert. I think I made it three times the next week, delighting in the sensation of these small bubble-like shapes in my mouth. I couldn’t get enough.



As Deb, the fantastically witty and charming writer behind Smitten Kitchen, recently wrote, there is a bit of a couscous dilemma. Thought you’d easily be forgiven for thinking so—and certainly I often wish it were—couscous is not a grain. It’s of the pasta family, really, made of semolina flour. Thus it confers none of the health benefits of whole grains, and for this I am a little resentful. I wish it weren’t the case, but I don’t make up the rules around this place, and while I’d happily eat Israeli couscous every night of the week and twice on Thursdays, I resist the urge.

But with the overwhelming virtuosity of ratatouille, I feel fully entitled to indulge a little in my adored bubble couscous. Topped with a veritable vegetable garden of a stew, a little refined starch certainly can't be that bad. I promise I’ll have quinoa tomorrow.



Bea’s wonderful ratatouille recipe.
Because I am picky about my vegetable textures, I cook the zucchini and eggplant separately, getting them just barely soft in the first phase, still keeping a bit of crunch to the vegetables. Other than that I follow Bea’s recipe, making sure to indulge in a happy helping of tarragon.

Ratatouille, it’s what a summer garden—or farmers’ market—is made for.

Biking to the Market: The University District Farmers' Market

When I am in San Francisco I like to ride my bike to the farmers’ market. It’s a trip that takes me across the city, through different neighborhoods, up and down hills. I don’t do it every week—some weeks I don’t have the time, or I have plans to buy things that can’t be easily accommodated (a flat of strawberries is hard to strap onto a bicycle), but there is something wonderful about being able to bike to your local farmers’ market and return home with your bags brimming with beautiful produce.

Here in Seattle, I bike to the market nearly every week.

It’s just a quick jaunt, you see, from my house north to the University District and the wonderful U-District Farmers’ Market. In fact, it takes only 20 minutes. There’s even a bike route most of the way, it goes right past my door.

In San Francisco I ride by grand Victorian houses, but my Seattle commute in no less charming. There are beautiful gardens, filled with flowers.



And quaint houses with front porch swings (the other week I was walking home from dinner with a friend and saw the pair that lives here drinking wine and reading the newspaper on their swing, it was so sweet I could barely stand it).



I get to ride over bridges and check out the boat traffic (boat traffic, people, boat traffic!). See the kayaks there in the slow lane on the left? Oh, and those snow-capped mountains aren’t too bad to look at either.



My route takes me through a leafy green bit of the University of Washington campus.



It's uphill through the University District until I get to the market,
held in the parking lot of the University Heights Community Center, an old school turned community center. The building is now home to a number of cultural organizations, a preschool, and a community garden—one of Seattle’s P-Patches. And on Saturday mornings it houses a farmers’ market The U-District farmers' market is the oldest and largest "farmers only" market in the area, having been established in 1993.

(see the scruffy guy in fleece and hiking boots, holding his coffee? This is how you know that you are truly in Seattle).



Farmers’ markets in Seattle are more seasonal than I am used to. The U-district market is one of only two Seattle markets that run year round, having switched to year-round operations just this past year. When I arrived here last March I found about twenty vendors at the market but only two selling produce—and one of those two had only apples and butternut squash. Coming from California, where the growing season is much longer, I wanted to cry.

But slowly, as spring turned into summer, the market has grown.
Every week has brought more vendors, new produce. There are products here that I’m not accustomed to seeing—Montmorency cherries, gooseberry jam, hazelnuts, and more fish, meat, cheese than I’m used to. It’s been a delight watching the market swell each week, expand with new stalls and new products.

I have my favorite vendors now, JoanE at Rents Due Ranch, Taki-San at Mair Taki Farm, Steve at Tolt Gardens. I look forward to seeing them each week, and finding out what they have brought to the market.

Lately there’s been squash blossoms, and deep purple potatoes.



Black raspberries (which look much more dramatic than they taste, I’m afraid).



It’s been high season for peaches. My god, I love peaches.



Plums as well.



And at least a peck of purple peppers.



And once I’ve made my rounds, bought my produce, and chatted with myfavorite vendors, it’s time to ride home. I'm always a little sad, but I know I get to come back next week. Now I get to coast down the hill, over the bridge, and back through a leafy green city, my bag full of treats from the market that I will get to cook with and nibble on all week long. I can’t tell you how happy my Saturday mornings at the market make me.

Do you go to a farmers' market each week? (and how do you get there?)

Chimichurri Pasta: What Tired Cowboys Have For Dinner

You may laugh when I tell you this, but I have always wanted to be an Argentine Cowboy.

I first read about gauchos, the traditional cowboys of Argentina, in the pages of National Geographic magazine when I was about nine or ten and I knew I'd make a great one. I'd roam the pampas, ride horses, herd cattle, and look dashing while doing so—wearing a wide brimmed hat, kerchief around the neck, and a woven poncho for when it got cold. Some kids want to run off and join the circus; I wanted to run off to Argentina and herd cattle.

Had I known that gauchos get to eat chimichurri sauce, I would have wanted to be one even more.

Chimichurri sauce could be considered the pesto of South America, but it's the jazzed up Latin version with a bit more sass. Made of parsley, garlic, and olive oil, with either lemon or vinegar for a bit of a kick, it’s often served as a condiment to the steaks that a gaucho would certainly be eating. The piquant flavor of the sauce cuts the richness of the meat and makes for a combination that I find addictive. I may be a reluctant meat-eater (former vegetarian and all) but I’d be willing to eat steak and chimichurri sauce every night of the week.

See, wouldn’t I make a great gaucho? Not to mention, I look pretty smashing in a hat.

I love chimichurri sauce so much that I’ve been known to say that I would be willing to eat anything, if only it were doused in chimichurri sauce. Anything!

This occurred to me the other night, when I came home exhausted and hungry. I may not be roping cattle these days, but chasing after a two-year-old can wear a person out as well. I don’t ride horses, but I do give piggyback rides, and a day of herding my little niece Alice is tiring in its own way. I wanted food and I wanted it fast. What would a hungry cowboy eat after a long day, when he didn’t have much energy left to build a fire and grill a steak? Were there easy go-to cowboy dishes for lazy nights?

The problem with my “born-again foodieism,” as my friend Rosie likes to call it, is that I don’t have much prepared, packaged food in my house any longer. I make most things from scratch now, which I enjoy, but on those off nights when you want dinner with a modicum of effort the pickings are slim. It seems the only packaged food I buy these days are crackers and pasta.

Pasta—now that might work—and I had been craving chimichurri sauce. Could I make chimichurri pasta? Why not?

Normally I would pull out the Cuisinart to make chimichurri, but not this time. I was going for authenticity and couldn’t imagine a gaucho whipping a food processor out of his saddlebag there amidst the pampas. But gauchos do carry knives—called facón—which are tucked into the back of their waistband. I don’t have a facón but I do have a Wusthof, a recent present from my brother. I whipped out my knife (from the cutlery drawer, not my waistband) and I got to work.

I smashed the garlic, threw some kosher salt in there, and smeared it into a paste using the side of the knife blade. Chopping equal parts of parsley and cilantro until they resembled a rough and rustic sauce, I added olive oil and white vinegar as I went and finished it off with a pinch of crushed red pepper. It began to look intensely green, and to smell delicious—a spritely and tangy scent. Do you know how delightful the smell of freshly cut grass is? This is sort of like that, but garlicy and—most importantly—edible. It kind of looks like mown grass as well.



I can hardly describe the taste of this sauce—the piquant hit of the garlic and vinegar, the fresh herby green flavor of the parsley and cilantro, like spring, and the slight heat from the red pepper flakes. It’s a flavor I would ride for hours to get a taste of—on horseback, over rough terrain. Even after a long day of herding cattle (or two-year-olds), a spoonful of chimichurri sauce perks me right up. Dolloped into a bowl of warm pasta, it was blissful.



And eaten quickly (one hungry cowboy over here).



Until there was no more (and I did a scarpetta* of the bowl, as soon as the picture-taking was done).



Of course, you can make chimichurri sauce in a blender or food processor—that’s how the recipe is written. It makes for a smoother, more cohesive sauce. But I may have been converted to hand chopping my sauce in the future, at least for small batches. All that chopping probably builds muscles—and you never know when I might have to run off to Argentina to herd cattle. If I get to eat chimichurri every day, that’s just one more reason to head for the pampas.

CHIMICHURRI SAUCE

I’ve seen a number of chimichurri sauce recipes that call for only parsley, or parsley and oregano, so this may not be the most authentic version around (which should delight those cilantro haters out there, just use all parsley). What it is, however, is delicious. It’s so good that when I went to visit a friend and her new baby in the hospital recently, her mother took one look at me and said, “You’re the girl who gave Carrie the chimichurri recipe—thank you so much!” Apparently this sauce has been spicing up Smith family barbeques in both California and Massachusetts, and I am now known as “the chimichurri girl” on two coasts.

If you’d like to serve this with flank steak, as would be more traditional, follow the instructions on how to spice and cook the steak as described here. But chimichurri sauce is good on just about anything—grilled or steamed vegetables, tofu, fish.

2 cloves garlic
1 1/2 cups fresh cilantro
1 1/2 cups fresh flat-leaf parsley
1/4 cup distilled white vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cayenne or a pinch of crushed red pepper flakes
extra olive oil for pasta

Put herbs, spices, and garlic in the food processor and pulse until chopped. With motor running, drizzle in first the olive oil, then the vinegar until smooth and emulsified.

Alternately, chop all ingredients on a cutting board, mixing in the liquid at the end.

If serving as a pasta sauce, toss your pasta in olive oil before adding the sauce.

* fare la scarpetta is an Italian term that refers of taking a bit of bread and using it to mop up every last drop of sauce from your plate or bowl. It’s not considered polite dining practice, but when something is so good it’s hard to resist.

Gaucho image used courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.

My Front Door Mojito Delivery Service

The benefit of making sushi for your neighbors is that one day—one day when you’ve had a terrible, awful no good, very bad day—your neighbor might happen to drop by to borrow your Cuisinart.

On this particular day, you may be reeling from discovering that the person who was meant to be helping you with a very large project seems to be in la-la land. She hasn’t been able to do the few small tasks she was given a month ago, she tells you, due to the fact that she’s been busy going to bridal expos because she is getting married—wait for it—next summer.

You tell your neighbor how very awful your day has been—how very awful the next two months of your life are going to be because you now have to do two people’s work—and how, while you love weddings and appreciate how very much work they are to plan, you don't think they should completely incapacitate a person for an entire year.

Then, offhandedly, you say you need a mojito. She asks you what a mojito is and you explain that it’s a Cuban cocktail made with mint, lime, rum, and soda water. She says it sounds good and you agree that, indeed, they do hit the spot. You don’t drink much these days, but every once in a while you get the hankering.

And it’s not ten minutes later when the doorbell rings and your neighbor is standing there, a glass filled with mint, lime, and rum in her hand, a smile on her face. “Here,” she says. “I think you could use this.”

And that, my dear friends, is what being neighborly is all about.

For more about the miraculous mojito, and a recipe, take a look at Anita and Cameron’s blog, Married…with Dinner. These two are serious cocktail aficionados, unlike yours truly, and so nice that they’d be the type to bring you a drink when you've had a down day (not that any of us endorse alcohol as a panacea, ahem).

Also check out Jeffrey Morganthaler’s Dos and Don’ts of Mojitos, for the essential primer on mojito etiquette. I'm sure I've broken at least one of these rules before (sorry, Jeffrey—and bartenders everywhere).

As for me, I think I might have to hie myself away to the Zig Zag Cafe (Anita and Cameron’s favorite bar) here in Seattle, to try the mojitos made be the famed Murray Stetson, recently picked as one of the top ten bartenders in America by a certain girly mag whose name will not be mentioned here (click through at your own risk).

Hmmm, wonder if I can get the Zig Zag to deliver…

Introducing: The Dining Table

Have I told you about my dining table yet? I don’t think I have.

The Treehouse, where I have been living here in Seattle for the past few months, is mostly but not completely furnished. The house was bought last November and I am its first fulltime resident. There are stools and chairs in the living room, as well as the most comfortable sofa I have ever met. There’s a bed upstairs, a rocking chair too, and an extra futon for when guests come. I brought the kitchen basics with me. The only thing missing was a dining table.

It is true that I could have made do without a dining table. There are three stools that nestle under the bar counter by the kitchen and make for passable seating. This is where Molly, Brandon, and I sat that first day they came for lunch. I could have muddled through using those, I did think about it. I have a dining table in my flat in San Francisco that I rarely use—a full formal dining room even. Most of my meals I eat sitting on the kitchen steps; at the coffee table in the living room; or at my desk, pecking away at the computer. It seems I can function quite well without a dining table.

And yet I wanted one, something fierce. One of the reasons I am here in Seattle is family—my brother, his wife, and my two little niece-lets. I couldn’t imagine being here without a dining table that we could all gather around. Come Thanksgiving time we will likely have our meal here. I wanted a table that would fit everyone, where I could look around and see all the faces that I love.



But the table meant something more than that. In coming up to Seattle I have made a conscious decision to step back from my life. I wanted to take some time away from the busy-ness that I get consumed by when I am in California—I am always rushing from one thing to another, trying to fit in time for friends and fun, always on the go, always late. Arriving up here last April felt like turning the static noise down on the TV show that is my life and I began to realize that I’m so busy with my life that half the time I don't even notice my life (and perhaps that is why I do it, filling up the space so that I don’t have to look at the big picture). Stepping back has allowed me some small amount of perspective.

I am also in transition, anyone who knows me will tell you that. In the nine years that I’ve been back from Asia I worked hard to build a life and career for myself in the Bay Area, and I may have succeeded a little too well. I now have a life that I can’t keep up with. There are too many people I want to spend time with, too many causes and events I want to participate in, too many directions I am running off all at the same time. I don’t know if there was a time when I could successfully juggle it all, but that day has passed. I should have known that my apple cart had toppled over when, shortly after the literary festival ended last year, I stopped answering my home phone and didn’t check my messages for three months. It was as if I’d gone on strike; I’d simply had too much.

Part of this is the age we live in—an era of multitasking, of being on the run. It’s exciting sometimes, this adrenalin-fueled, technology-enabled life, but these days I find it leaves me drained. Our lives are high productivity, but often that doesn’t allow room for much more. We are able to accomplish so much so quickly—yet this means that we are expected to, often at cost to the rest of our lives. I have yet to hear anyone say that they were able to take the hour they saved by using email and spend it walking on the beach. More often we spend that extra hour checking our email—at night, on the weekends, from the car. Don’t get me wrong, there are things about technology that I love and embrace (I’m writing a blog, for crying out loud), but often the ramifications of technology leave me exhausted.

What I want, more and more these days, is a simpler life. I want less time in a car, fewer meals eaten on the go (I've had enough energy bars to last a lifetime, thank you very much), and a computer that gets turned off hours before I go to bed rather than minutes before. I want a little garden of my own: flowers, vegetables, berries, herbs. I want less rushing and more laughing with those I love. I want meals I have cooked to share with friends, and a long table—the kind that feels like there will always be room to fit one more person—where we can eat and talk and laugh together. I wanted a dining table.

My friend Paul sent me an email recently telling how he had been at his parent’s house when the power went out. “We sat in the backyard till 10:30 drinking cocktails with the neighbors,” he wrote. “It felt like Italy.” I loved this story, but I don’t want to wait until the power goes out to stop and spend time with my friends and family. I want regular opportunities for shared meals that last late into the night, conversation and laughter floating out the open window. I wanted a dining table.



There was one I had in mind, too. A solid wood sort of a thing, in a style I thought would match the Treehouse. It had the option of both chairs and long benches—which my friend Violeta has told me are bad because people want their own chairs to be comfortable, but I have to say that I like the benches. They feel cozy to me, and remind me of meals eaten outdoors on late summer evenings. The table was not badly priced, for that sort of thing, and I kept on looking at the online listing. It was quite tempting.

Then it went on sale, 40% off. This seemed like it could only be a sign.

The sale was sparked by the fact that the table was being discontinued, it was already no longer available online. I called around the stores in the Seattle area and they were all sold out. They had the benches and chairs in stock, but not the table. I put a set of chairs and benches on hold, and widened my search for the table to Tacoma and beyond, down into Oregon even. I was on my way to Portland that week, if I could find it there I would have made arrangements to pick it up. But nothing, all the Oregon stores were sold out as well.

I located one lone table in Olympia—the last one in all of Washington State. It had been a floor model, used as display, and I bought it sight unseen, begging the manager to hold it for me for the ten days that I would be out of town. When he noticed the 415 area code on my cell phone number he warmed up to me; he’s a Bay Area transplant as well. It was against company policy to hold it that long, he said, but he would do it. I then had to figure out transportation, as I realized that it would never fit in my car. Should I rent a truck, hire movers, or just give up on the whole thing? I was out of town by this time, calling in, trying to figure out what to do.

Salvation came in the form of my very kind neighbor, who offered to drive down with her minivan and pick up the table (making sushi was the least I could do to express my gratitude, don't you think?). I arrived home late at night to find this huge and heavy table, in pieces, leaned up against the entrance to the house. It was so weighty that I couldn’t even shift the tabletop by myself. And when we finally got it carried into the house, I put on the legs and couldn’t get the thing to even roll over onto its side. Made of solid rubber wood, this is a table for the ages.



And so I have a dining table, which often becomes my desk as I write during the day (when I can actually tear myself away from the uber-comfortable couch). Sitting at one end of it I have a view out through the living room windows and into trees of the Arboretum beyond, and the bar/counter of the kitchen is just to my back. A pot of soup bubbling away on the stove is just steps away, within stirring distance. Long-time readers might remember that I once said I wanted an office that was adjacent to my kitchen and had a view out the window and I think I may have got it—at least a makeshift version of it, at least for a while. And an unexpected bonus: the second bench makes a dandy coffee table when not in use.

Do I use my dining table? I do, indeed. One of my first weekends here was Easter, and my brother and sister-in-law came over and brought the girls for brunch. We had fresh fruit, new asparagus, matzo brei (as befits a culturally confused family such as ours) and my version of Molly’s addictive Spring Salad. My little niece Alice sat on the bench seat and bogarted the bowl of strawberries, serving herself spoonful after spoonful, while the little one gnawed away on one big berry.



I’ve had friends over as well—Shauna and Molly for dinner; my grad-school friend Melinda for Persian soup and rice; Indian food with Rob, the non-foodie; a luncheon of salad nicoise with the lovely woman who redesigned my site; a sushi-making party with the neighbors. My very first meal at the table was shared with my cousin, who also helped me turn the darn heavy thing right side up. My entertaining has slowed down a bit the past month or two, as I’ve gotten busy with houseguests and weddings, but I have plans for dinners, brunches, and other food projects. Perhaps this Christmas will see the table covered with cookie dough and decorations.

I wrote a post last week about food heritage that garnered my favorite set of comments ever—people sharing their own stories of childhood and how they came by a love of food. One commenter (a new blogger with the cutest name ever—Parsnip) mentioned the community that food creates; another, Cris, told the story of entertaining in college, without much money, of making Brazilian Cheese Rolls and having friends over to talk for hours. I love these stories, this idea of building a community, a life, around the act of sharing food. I think it's true, and I think it's important—maybe not to everyone, but it is to me.

That is what this table ultimately means to me. Here, in a time of transition that is all about taking stock and creating something new for myself, something that fits me better, I am building a life and community around my dining room table. One that I hope will sustain and feed me as I walk into a new future.

Feel free to pull up a seat, we serve family style around here.

What To Do With Leftover Spaghetti

I don’t know about you, but for many years there I had a problem with making too much spaghetti. That small handful of long dry noodles just looked skimpy to my eye and I always put in more—or maybe I liked the idea of noodles so much I thought I could eat more than I ultimately was able to. Japanese noodles come nicely wrapped in one portion servings, but with Italian pasta you’re on your own; I always overshot the mark.

I was pretty young at the time, just learning how to cook. Because my mother was busy working, my brother and I were often left to our own devices. Not infrequently we ended up in the kitchen, attempting to cook one thing or another. We came up with a number of recipes during that time. There was a biscuit/scone sort of thing with raisins that I still crave. We often made a dish we called "Bachelor Beans" that consisted of heating up a can of beans, a can of corn, half a jar of salsa, and some grated cheese and eating it out of the bowl with tortilla chips (if we wanted to be really gourmet we added fresh chopped tomato and cilantro). We also figured out what to do with a bowl of leftover spaghetti: we made a big spaghetti pancake.

I thought of this recently when I was at my brother’s house, taking care of my baby niece, and noticed a large bowl of leftover noodles in the fridge. I hadn’t made a spaghetti pancake in years and I wondered if it were one of those childhood cookery projects best not revisited. Some of our young favorites turn out to be bland or soggy when we try to recreate them as adults. Our palates have sharpened, become more refined, and suddenly peanut butter balls rolled in flaked coconut doesn’t seem nearly as delicious as you remember.

But I know I was making spaghetti pancakes well into my college years. I remember one morning when my boyfriend at the time and I were faced with a large bowl of cooked noodles left over from the night before.



“Let’s throw it out,” my boyfriend said. We were spending the weekend in Bolinas and heading back home that afternoon. There wouldn’t be any more dinners before we left.

“No, we can make spaghetti pancakes with that.”

“That sounds gross,” he said, wrinkling his nose. For a mountain climber and wilderness guide, he had a rather unadventurous spirit and palate.

“It’s just noodles and eggs," I said, like a matzo-brei but with spaghetti. You never know—you might like it.”

And when I had cracked and beaten the eggs, mixed in the leftover spaghetti, and fried the whole thing up—a large pancake-like thing that was eggy and salty and crispy on the outside, he admitted that it wasn’t half bad. Then he asked for seconds.



This all came back to me recently as I was reading Faith Heller Willenger’s book, Adventures of an Italian Food Lover. There, in the pages, I found a recipe for what is called a Spaghetti Torte, but is really no more than a riff on what my brother and I had invented in our kitchen: leftover noodles mixed with egg and fried. Though you can see from the photo of the version Angelika made from the book, it's a bit looser than my spaghetti pancake.

Faith’s version is gussied up with proscuitto and cheese, items that were not available in our 1970s health food kitchen, but the frugal bones are the same: don’t throw out the noodles, use them as the basis of a new dish. This is one of the things that I love about Italian cooking, there is a down to earth frugality. Stale bread is never thrown out, it is used in soup or a salad—or soaked in warm milk and drizzled with honey for breakfast, as I onced watched my friend Fabio do when he woke up tired and hungry after flying in from Rome.

So, as a homage to frugal cooking—and because I really wanted to try recreating a childhood invention—I recently boiled up a large quantity of noodles, far more than I needed for dinner. The next morning I cracked the eggs, mixed the whole thing together, and fried it up. I followed my own instincts, not wanting to make the dish from Faith’s book, but hoping for an approximation of what my brother and I used to make. I was dreading that it might turn out awful, a child’s palate pleaser far too bland for the adult I’ve grown into.



I have to report that still like my spaghetti pancake. It’s yummy and comforting, though I will admit the basic version is a bit plain. The adult I’ve become would jazz it up a little, with chopped herbs, perhaps some proscuitto or bacon—cheese would work well here too, or finely chopped tomato. It has a texture that reminds me of noodle kugel, tortilla Espanola, or matzo brei.

[For those who have been deprived of the joy of matzo brei, it is a large pancake made of matzo crackers softened and mixed with beaten egg and then fried. At least it is traditionally made with matzo—once, in a fit of culinary homesickness while in Japan, I made matzo brei with Saltine crackers, which was the goyest version of a matzo brei ever, but desperate times call for desperate measures].

In any case, I still like my spaghetti pancake. And the leftovers are going over to my two little nieces. Perhaps we can get another generation of the family hooked on the pleasure of leftover pasta and serendipitous kitchen experiments.

What do you do with your leftover spaghetti? Any inventive solutions?



SPAGHETTI PANCAKE
Serves four

3 cups cooked spaghetti noodles
4 eggs, lightly beaten
1 tsp salt, or to taste
black pepper to taste
butter or oil for frying, at least 1 tsp
Optional add-ins, as desired: chopped fresh herbs, diced tomatoes, proscuitto or bacon, cheese, small diced vegetables such as zucchini (dice very small so it will cook through), minced onion or garlic.

In a large bowl beat the eggs until smooth. Add the spaghetti noodles and mix until they are all coated. Mix in the salt and pepper and any add-ins you would like. Heat the oil or butter in a large fying pan, it should be well oiled. Pour the noodle mixture into the pan and allow to set on the bottom. Using a plastic spatula, run it around the side of the pancake, to prevent sticking to the pan. Peer under the bottom from time to time, until the pancake begins to brown. Turn over by sliding it onto a plate and putting the fry pan on top and flipping over. Cook until slightly brown on both sides and the center has firmed. Turn out onto a plate and cut into wedges.

Note: If you'd like to make a smaller pancake—or have a smaller amount of leftover noodles to use up—you can easily decrease the amounts here. You just want to make sure that all the noodles are coated and the mixture isn't too soupy with beaten egg, see here for a picture of the consistency you are looking for.