February dinners

I am emerging bleary-eyed from a trance induced by online real estate, and this on top of a heck of a bread bender--the first thing I did yesterday morning was to preheat the oven for a pizza made with Tartine dough, an appetizer for Bellinger Tartine loaf #3 (longer, colder rise; less dramatic holes; wimpier crust; excellent taste, especially good with salami). (And since I really am in danger of having "bread" become my only hobby/primary interest, I must add that Tartine Bread offers a pizza technique new to me, which is to use your fingers to press in a little trough 1/2 inch in from the edge of your dough round before you begin to stretch and shape it, thus ensuring that the crust is full of air bubbles. Perfect!) Ahem. Houses. Few things are as engrossing as click click clicking through all those pictures, imagining all the slightly different ways of living; but it's hardly productive, since I'm not there to see them right now. I told myself I'd do something before bed, and so I'm going to post our February dinners. One less thing knocking around this drafty mind.

2.1 mushroom "risotto" made with Trader Joe's parboiled rice, barley, spelt blend--good

2.2 beans, polenta with goat cheese

2.3 pepperoni pizza, thanks to this, romaine salad (left myself a helpful note about this evening: "too much pizza")

2.4 polenta, cheese, pork (cooked the momofuku way? can't remember), beans

2.5 lentils, carrots with cilantro (At Home with Madhur Jaffrey), crackers and cheese

2.6 spanish tortilla, arugula salad

2.7 “lots of pineapple upside down cake” reads my note--so, I've been dying to make a pineapple upside down cake and finally got around to it when I had to buy a pineapple to "plant" for a project from Sow and Grow. I decided to try the recipe from Flour and set to work with what turned out to be a severely underripe pineapple. I promised myself I would not have even a bite until Andrew got home, since the first bite is, as we all know, the gateway bite. Alas, when I unmolded the cake a large chunk stuck to the pan; there was no way I could resist trying it under such circumstances. Although the cake was not ideal (mostly, I think, on account of the bum fruit), I spoiled my dinner on it, and everyone else was served baked chicken from At Home with MJ and some mashed sweet potatoes.

 

2.8 MJ chicken thighs, broccoli, sweet potatoes

2.9 MJ black eyed peas with squash

2.10 fusilli with ginger red lentil dal; there's a note here that I had wilted chard with butter and lemon for lunch, something I used to make all the time but have lost the habit of; it was so simple and so good

2.11 tamatar biryani (food52)--I loved making this; even if it hadn't turned out to be scrumptious, the minutes of cooking spices and onion in butter made my day; leftover dal pasta and black eyed peas

2.12 pork burger (also food52, also fantastic), slaw, cardamom cookies

2.13 frozen pizza from Trader Joe's (WHAT, I get tired)

2.14 chard and sausage lasagna--I will say that I did not find the lemon in this lasagna "refreshing" and leave it at that; salad, chocolate caramel tart; the picture below, by the way, is our pineapple top, which we were told would become a lush pineapple plant. ????? Instead it became a tropical haven for a few tiny flies before being sent off to join the municipal compost heap.

 

2.15 radicchio, apple, radish, pumpkin seed, cilantro salad with miso dressing--remedial eating, yum

2.16 broccoli with miso dressing, mac and cheese

2.17 whole wheat spaghetti with tomato-garlic-anchovy-bacon sauce (I am often accused of never making pizza or pasta with tomato sauce; let the record answer these accusations.)

2.18 food 52 chicken with onions and spices, eh; farro; lots of Tartine bread (baked late on 17)

2.19 miso soup (too much croque monsieur at lunch)

2.20 farro and chicken

2.21 beef and barley soup (America's Test Kitchen--I bought a slow cooker--good but not revelatory), bread with goat cheese and fig jam

 

2.22 roast cauliflower, more beef and barley soup

2.23 Martha Stewart meyer lemon salad (radicchio, chickpea, feta)--delicious and easy; potatoes in duck fat

2.24 sardine and egg sandwich

2.25 millet black bean health bowl, which got a surprisingly warm reception; I skipped the cabbage because there was alreayd a lot going on; grapefruit avocado salad from The Art of Simple Food, very good

2.26 friends over for pizza: leek with goat cheese and pancetta (Chez Panissa Pizza Pasta and Calzone), tomato mozzarella, sausage feta tomato, kale potato mozzarella (food 52), romaine and radicchio salad with lemon-cream dressing, pot de crème; This was a night of perfectly acceptable food, but of course it was not my best, since it was prepared for other people. I just can't calm down and cook well on demand. I'm amazed restaurants are able to turnout such consistent food. Also, I had not yet received Tartine Bread and learned the important crust trick.

2.27 leftovers

2.28 Martha Stewart slow cooker Tex Mex chicken--Andrew was very excited about this, I could take it or leave it, and Bee refused to try even a bite; cabbage salad

These poor summer squash from last summer never got posted, so I'm taking pity on them now. I don't know if the stuffed iPhoto folder and haphazard blog entries will help me remember my now-life on some distant future day or if they'll just kindle confusion. Last week I found an annotated calendar page from my senior year of high school and was amazed to think that I am the person who lived that life (I seem to have gone to a movie in the theater about once a week, and I worried a lot about tests). Who knows what we'll remember. Tonight while I reheated Bolognese sauce, I remembered how I always used to confuse it with carbonara, which was a shame, since I liked the former but not the latter. I ordered spaghetti carbonara at the cafe at Fauchon with my mother (me, I did that?) and was dismayed when it arrived with a whole glossy, mocking golden yolk on top. Now I never go to Paris (or movie theaters), love carbonara. Bake bread at the drop of a hat, consider vegetarianism, can't imagine going without butter, yogurt, and cheese. Always have sand in my shoes, dangle the threat of time outs like I've been doing it for years. I think playground sand in the shoes might be the one hardship of motherhood that I did not anticipate; thank goodness it's small!

Comments

[theresa]

if you want your pineapple top to grow into a pineapple, you have to twist off the top, not cut it. When you cut it, the exposed fruit rots and becomes a breeding ground for fruit flies. If you twist it, and put it in water it will grow roots and, eventually, a pineapple.
i'm sure google knows exactly how you should twist it off, i have forgotten. but that is KEY.

[Robin]

Oh, thank you! The book said to let the cut top sit out for a day or two before putting it in water, so that it would dry out a little and not rot once it was in the water. The instructions for sprouting carrot tops were also not totally clear...I should go back and amend my original post.

And now I have a good excuse to find a ripe pineapple, make another cake, and sprout the pineapple top the right way! Thanks again.

[Molly]

Love that last paragraph (then, now) like nobody's business. Also, the header photo.

Also, I now must have that meyer lemon salad. Except it's 9 p.m. and I'm stuffed. Sigh.