The Spice of Life

This past Labor Day weekend we drove 14 hours to Chicago in order to attend the wedding of my husband's cousin. Three days after arriving, we drove 14 hours back to Atlanta.*

Before heading off to the wedding in the 'burbs, we were able to spend a day in Chicago with some of the extended family, and I came upon a realization of sorts. There are two kinds of people in this world: Those of us who seek novelty in what we eat, and those of us who want to eat pretty much the same thing every day, and are just fine with that, thank you very much.

I have nothing more to say on that subject, but suffice it to say that not eating at [insert name of ubiquitous chain restaurant at random] led to a fine meal of beer, bratwurst, sauerkraut, and potato pancakes. The German half of me was very satisfied.

All of this is just to segue into a description of what we had for dinner tonight. I have a ridiculous amount of basil I need to use up, and am sick to death of pesto. Pesto is good, but at this point in the summer, a little creativity is needed, a little novelty, if you will. So I decided to mix things up a bit, and came up with this creamy basil pasta salad which doesn't use cream, so is vegan to boot. (Ironically, a bee flew over my boiling pasta pot, fell in and died, so a living creature was unfortunately harmed during the creation of this dish. I am not sure if that de-veganified it – one for the philosophers, maybe.)

The cashews provide the creaminess, and jalapeño pepper adds a subtle kick.  Lemon and tomatoes provide an acidic contrast to the creamy, sweet basil. It was good, it was basilly, and it wasn't pesto. (Needless to say, I highly recommend leftover sweets from an Indian wedding for dessert. For if you've ever been to an Indian wedding, you know there are lots and lots of sweets that must be eaten, enough to last you at least a month after the event takes place.)


Creamy Lemon Basil Pasta Salad
For the basil sauce:
2 cups cashews (plus soaking water)
2 jalapeño peppers, roughly chopped (more, or less, to taste and depending on spiciness of the peppers)
1 cup firmly packed basil leaves
1 or 2 cloves garlic
1 1/2 cups water
1 teaspoon salt (plus extra to taste)
juice of one lemon

For the rest:
One pound package fusilli noodles
Two tomatoes, chopped and salted
1 tablespoon minced shallot
1/2 cup cooked fresh corn, salted
Handful of basil leaves, cut in chiffonade (that means rolled up together and cut into thin strips)
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
Salt to taste
Lemon wedges

Soak the cashews in water to cover by a couple of inches for approximately five hours. Drain the cashews and place them in a blender or food processor, along with the jalapeños, basil, garlic, salt, and water. Blend until creamy and smooth, adding more water if necessary to reach the desired consistency. Stir in the juice of one lemon, and adjust salt to taste.

Meanwhile, boil a pound of fusilli pasta in salted water until al dente. Drain pasta, and return to pot.
Toss with enough basil sauce to make a rich, creamy mass of pasta. (I used about half of the sauce. You can freeze the rest or use it as a vegetable dip, or a sandwich spread, or make more pasta the next day. Or halve the recipe.)

Add the tomatoes, shallot, corn, basil, and black pepper to the pasta. Mix everything gently to combine. Add salt if necessary. Serve with lemon wedges to be squeezed over each individual serving. (Don't skip this: It adds a very refreshing lemoniness that you don't want to miss in combination with the basil.)

*Yes, this was insane, but cheaper than flying. And when all's said and done, I still prefer a 14-hour drive to a two-and-a-half hour flight, which is really longer than two-and-a-half hours anyway, when you factor in all the other nonsense you have to deal with. Driving allowed us to not only eat in Chicago, but in Louisville (with friends visiting from Seattle!), West Lafayette (Indiana, just off-campus from Purdue), and Chattanooga. We did the whole thing no fast food, strictly independent restaurants, though I was pretty bummed that the incongruously named 'XXX' Family Restaurant was closed for the holiday. I make fast food exceptions for restaurants more than 80 years old. Conversely, flying allows you to eat on an airplane. Blech. No thanks.

The Amazing Miracle Mystery Squash

After clearing away the brown wreckage of my month-long, mid-summer absence from my garden plot, I was left with one eggplant bush, two pepper plants, a few bedraggled bean plants that were being mercilessly attacked by Mexican bean beetles, a ton of insanely vigorous basil, a lot of empty space, and one tiny squash seedling that had somehow started to grow, despite the fact that I had not planted it. I decided to let it stay, and see what happened. That single vine has spread to cover half my plot, and threatens to entirely take over if the squash bugs and cucumber beetles don't kill it first. (They have quite a battle on their hands, because this vine obviously wants to live. )

I'm not sure what kind of squash it is. They are shaped like yellow crooknecks, but are smooth, and colored pale green, with faint white stripes. The flesh inside is a very pale, creamy orange. I cooked them with some onions for dinner tonight, and was delighted with how squashy they tasted. Sometimes when I cook summer squash, it just doesn't taste like anything. I think the key is to get young squash, with the dried up remnants of the squash blossom still intact on the end of the squash. Sometimes you can find them like this in the farmers' market, so if you do, go for it. That said, I do think these squash are unusually tasty, so if my vine does survive the Southern onslaught of insect pestilence, I'll try to let a few squash mature so that I can save the seeds and plant them on purpose next year.

Yellow crookneck squash stewed with onions is a traditional Southern dish. The traditional method cooks the onions and squash down to a tender mush. I believe mush has its place in the pantheon of vegetable cookery, but I wasn't in the mood for it, so I decided to give my squash and onions wok hai instead. (Check out the link – it gets quite esoteric. For my purposes, I'll just say the dish had the taste of the wok seasoning, and the vegetables didn't have the bejeesus cooked out of them. They were nice and firm. Sad to say, you really do need a wok to achieve wok hai, but if you don't have one, it's not the end of the world. Just do the best you can with whatever skillet you have, and it'll still taste good.)

 I then used the squash and onions in a dish I dubbed Three Sisters Tacos, which were corn tortillas filled with cooked dried lima beans (seasoned with onion and smoked paprika), corn, the aforementioned squash, chopped cucumbers, chives, chipotle pepper sour cream, and a dash of Tabasco sauce for good measure. (Oh, and in case you don't know, Three Sisters refers to the Native American agricultural triad of corn, beans, and squash.) The older daughter was skeptical about the squash, but ended up liking it and eating a full portion of everything, though not all on the taco. The younger daughter refused everything, and had leftover pizza. Ah well, she'll come around someday. And if not, one out of two ain't bad.

Wok Hai Miracle Mystery Squash and Onions
This is my general method. Put some canola oil in a wok and heat to very hot. Thinly slice half an onion, and add to hot wok, stirring frequently. Cook the onions for a few minutes, then add about three cups worth of squash chopped into one-inch pieces, and a generous amount of salt. Cook, stirring frequently, until the squash reaches the desired level of doneness. I like it to be fairly firm. Add a few dashes of sherry vinegar, black pepper and more salt to taste if needed. Stir to combine, and serve. Go very light on the sherry vinegar; you don't want to taste vinegar, just brighten the flavors.

Envy

 The farmer's market comes twice a week to my lovely town – late Wednesday afternoons and Saturday mornings. I almost never go to the Wednesday market. It's held in a bank parking lot. The combination of 100 degree heat index, tired kids, sweaty mom, and asphalt is not a good one. We fare better Saturday mornings, but sometimes it's just hard to get going on the weekend, and by the time we're out the door, the market is pretty much done except for a few over-ripe tomatoes and wilted basil no one else wanted.

The town we visited in Germany this past summer has a market every weekday from 9 am to 1 pm, complete with butcher, baker, and cheese wagon.  The cheese lady is friendly and very enthusiastic about cheese, and gives so many samples you almost don't need to buy any. (She also has the best sales pitch: "My English is bad, but my cheese is very better!") And the cheese is ridiculously inexpensive compared to what it would cost here in the States. So is the bread. As for the meat, I don't know, as I'm with the Hindu and don't cook it, but I'm guessing the same – cheap and good. The Himbeere (raspberries) were definitely good.

If only we could have that here in my town, I think to myself practically every day. It would be so easy for us to eat well, and we wouldn't even need a car. Here is a picture of the parking lot at the German town's high school:

People, we have our work cut out for us.

Motivated by the people of Germany, I rode my bike to the farmer's market last week, bought a watermelon, and carried it home in the front basket. The watermelon made it home in one piece and was delicious. So if you live in my town and saw a very sweaty, disheveled woman biking slowly with a watermelon in front of her, that was me. Unfortunately, I can't manage to look like these women, but one can always aspire.

Let Them Make Cake

The theory goes that Jane Austen wrote in the sitting room. The novels would collect on scraps of paper hastily stuffed in her desk drawer whenever domestic duty called her away. She never married or had children – I think it's safe to say that if she had, even those brief stolen moments in which she wrote wouldn't have existed, and the world would be without Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy. I certainly can't imagine a man writing “Pride and Prejudice,” let's put it that way.

I recently re-read Virginia Woolf's “A Room of One's Own” (and if you couldn't tell, I'm just in that sort of mood). These scraps of paper are important, damn it, even if they are only on a screen. Not that I'm comparing myself to Jane Austen, or Virginia Woolf (also childless), for that matter. I'm just saying, as a woman, I can relate. A friend commented to me recently how convenient it is that my hobby is also necessary for the family. I was thinking about this, and I totally agree – it is convenient. If people didn't need to eat, maybe I would be into stamp collecting or dog breeding or Harley Davidson motorcycles or something else completely unrelated. But people do need to eat, and there are always birthday cakes that need to be made. Make them I will. And then I'll write about it, because birthday cakes are important enough to be written about. Yes, they are.

I will say that I am particulary proud of this one. The five-year-old (who is now the six-year-old) requested strawberry shortcake for her birthday. Throw a bunch of strawberries on a cake with some whipped cream, and people will be impressed. This is the best looking cake I've ever made, and it tasted as good as it looked. (I nabbed the recipe from Adam the Amateur Gourmet, who found it via the good old Barefoot Contessa. Adam is right, don't skip out on the orange and lemon zest.)