Inspiration
Many people I know claim that they can either cook, or bake, and never the twain shall meet. There’s a seductive logic to this theory; after all, cooking leaves room for tremendous creativity -throw in dash of this, a splash of that, and let’s see what happens! Baking, on the other hand, favors an exact approach – this is chemistry, by gum, and we need to be precise! So I can understand why folks might be strongly drawn to one or the other.
That said, to me it was never an all or nothing proposition. It was only when became an adult that I realized that for many people that this was a war, the battle lines drawn, and that I was expected to pick a side. I’m happy cooking AND baking – any act of creation in the kitchen is a thrill to me. As I thought about why that might be, I realized that I have my mother to thank.
You see, that lady never chose sides. She’s a whiz in the kitchen on both sides of the equation. I’ve waxed rhapsodic far too many times about her turkey soup – it’s like a pot of liquid gold whenever she makes it. But then there’s her cheesecake – her cheesecake is to die for. To be honest it’s normally not my favorite dessert – but when she makes it with that hand-crumbled graham cracker crust, how can I say no?
Her influence can be seen on my kitchen handiwork in other ways, as well. In both the examples above, she makes everything from scratch, creating soup stock from leftover turkey and painstakingly hand grating orange peel to give her cheesecake just the right zest. While I won’t say that she never took shortcuts in the kitchen, when she was making something truly special it was always with the best ingredients she had, and always by hand.
My mother taught me to cook, but it wasn’t really by sitting me down and going through a step-by-step process. Instead, from a very early age, she involved me in what she was doing in the kitchen. One of my earliest memories is of standing on a chair in the kitchen, helping to stir a big pot of homemade peanut brittle. (Another is of waiting for her to fry up some doughnut holes – but you wouldn’t let a small kid near a deep fryer!) When all of us girls (there are four of us) were small, she was always coming up with projects to keep us entertained, and many of them involved baking or making food. I think that part of my joy in the kitchen now comes from the good memories of that time spent in the kitchen with my mother.
There’s a real value, I think, in having the mental flexibility to perform both of those skills with enjoyment. Most of the folks who prefer either baking or cooking can certainly muddle along through the other, even do them well. They just don’t care for it. I feel so lucky to have both, and to feel the need to try new things just for the sake of doing them. Thank you, Mom!
Sticking It To The Creatures Of The Sea
Well, not all of the creatures of the sea. Mostly just clams and oysters.
When I first mentioned that I would soon be writing about my experiences with eating raw shellfish, I universally received one of two reactions. Reaction one: “Raw oysters? Seems pretty tame for you.” Not said, but implied, was “Ho hum, oysters. When are you bringing back the bugs?”
Reaction two: “EEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWW.” There was no need for subtext here. For these folks, oysters were one very small step above eating babies.
I find the dichotomy interesting, largely because the same people who are bored by oysters were horrified that I’d eat pig’s head, which after all is just pork – most of them had eaten ham before. Granted, ham doesn’t usually come with a face (it’s the wrong end, after all) but really, the pig’s head is just meat like any other that most people I know have eaten.
The eeeewers, on the other hand, were often those who were totally fine with a pig head. Their objections were largely based on presumed texture issues and a horror of the raw.
Trying oysters for the first time at 32 had nothing to do with either boredom or horror for me, however. I simply never really had an opportunity to eat them. When I was a kid, most of our shellfish was boiled – lobsters and steamers cooked in the backyard and messily eaten, dripping with butter. There was also a slight fear, since alleviated, that I had a shellfish allergy. All of this conspired to keep me away from raw bivalves for quite some time. Thankfully, this has been rectified with the help of several friends! Over the past few days I’ve been out for raw shellfish twice – once from a stall right in the street, and once at a reasonably nice restaurant. There were pros and cons to each approach.
Approach one: the raw bar at Haymarket. For those who may not know, Haymarket is an outdoor market that runs on Fridays and Saturdays, mostly offering dirt-cheap produce. However, a few stalls sell meat or fish, and it was to one of these that my friends Dan and Elise escorted me this Saturday. There, a friendly gentleman in a raincoat had a lovely display:
For $5, you could select six oysters, clams, or a combination of the two and eat them right there on the streets of Boston. He provided lemon, hot sauce, or cocktail sauce to garnish, as well as some paper napkins for the inevitable mess. I paid my $5 and decided to try three of each shellfish. I’d had oysters once before at the tiki bash, and was eager to compare them to the clams. I forwent any seasoning other than lemon and dove in.
As Elise mentions in her post on the subject, the clams were more deeply oceanic than the oysters – slightly saltier and more heavily flavored. They were a bit bigger, as well, providing a bit more of a meaty chew than the more delicate oysters. I found that liked them more than I was expecting – the oysters by comparison were very muted.
Approach two: dollar oysters at The Marliave with Jessica. I’m a big fan of this restaurant anyway, with its old-timey feel and beautiful marble bar, and this deal on bivalves from 4-6 every day only adds to the charm. While clams were also available here, Jessica and I opted strictly for oysters – with 4 kinds available there was enough comparison to be had.
The oysters were Duxbury, Wellfleet, Falmouth and Beach Points, and were served with a champagne mignonette and horseradish cocktail sauce (I’m not normally a cocktail sauce fan, because I don’t like bottled ketchup, but I think this was made with homemade and was outstanding). We tried to figure out which oysters we liked best, but had a hard time paying attention to the poor bartender when he was telling us what each one was. I knew for sure which was the Duxbury, which I turned out to like the best, but couldn’t say for sure which were the others. I enjoyed them all, but felt the Duxbury had the most sweetness. These oysters are all the same species, the Virginica (middle one in the photo) but have a somewhat different flavor due to the water they are raised in – as filter feeders, the oysters’ environment is everything to how they taste. We paired them with a nice cold glass of Prosecco at the prompting of the bartender – while I’m normally not a fan of white wine or bubbles, it really was the ideal match in mineral sweetness to the oysters.
Pros to Approach 1:
- It was super fun! Eating on the street has an adventuresome quality that I fully embrace.
- It was super cheap – like getting an oyster for free!
- There was a sense of community – everyone’s grabbing at the same bed of ice, but in a reallypleasant, we’re sharing a meal kind of way.
Cons to Approach 1:
- It was kind of chilly. Oysters are best eaten in winter for many reasons, so it’s a bit tough to be standing with your hands in ice.
- There were fewer amenities – the condiments were a bit more rustic (which can add to the adventure appeal above) and no prosecco.
- Little variety – one kind of oyster, and one kind of clam were what you got.
Pros to Approach 2:
Beauty – the Marliave is a handsome bar, and they do nice presentation on the oysters.
Variety – the four types of oysters made it fun to explore nuances of flavor, even if I couldn’t remember which was which.
Fantastic amenities – great condiments, you could have a drink, and there was a more robust napkin to wipe your hands on.
Cons to Approach 2:
Cost – while a dollar each is a great deal, it’s only for those two hours – after that the price is 2.75 each! Add on a drink and another appetizer and you’ve got a much pricier evening.
Less adventurous – there’s something much more stolid about eating indoors.
Both were a lot of fun, for different reasons. I’m eager to do it again soon!
Before I let you off the hook, this Thursday, December 3rd, you should head over to Improv Boston at 10pm. Why, you ask? Well, because the aforementioned Jess is hosting her fabulous A Night of Oral…Tradition! This is a fabulous storytelling hour. On top of that, the theme will be eating weird food, and my dear friend Gary will be eating for your amusement! Gary is…a less adventurous eater, but he’s going to give it the old college try. Be there – I will!
Changing It Up
It’s Sunday, and you know what that means – Marathon Training Update! If you didn’t realize that Sunday meant that, I suppose you do now.
Though it was only week 2 of training, I decided to mix things up a bit. This mix-up came in two forms.
Form 1 - I bought new shoes! More specifically, I bought a completely different brand of shoe than I typically wear. I’ve been a Saucony gal ever since I started running – the Ride my shoe of choice for my neutral foot. Alas, the good folks at Saucony keep making minor tweaks – and after the latest I started noticing a rather unpleasant pain to the side of my right knee. I suspected the shoes due to a few factors – the timing of the pain, the fact that it would feel better with rest but return as soon as I ran again, and the frequency with which I needed to re-tie my shoes. The last sounds odd, but I suspected that my foot was rolling more and loosening the laces. Luckily, the fellow at my local running shoe emporium confirmed my suspicion, and fitted me into my new kicks – the Brooks Defyance 2 (nope, I don’t know why they spell it that way, either). After this week of training – no more knee pain! The big triumph here was not only that the pain is gone, but that I accurately diagnosed the problem. Makes me feel like I know what I’m doing!
Form 2 – I’ve been mixing it up with my training. For the first week I really just went out and ran however many miles the coach suggested for that day. This week, I added some hill training and speed play. I had two reasons for doing these things – the first was simply to keep it interesting. We’re not yet going long enough distances that the workout alone is enough. The second is that I am painfully slow. While I have no need (or real inclination) to become amazingly fast, I’d like to get a little bit better so that I can finish the marathon in a reasonable time. Both hill work and speed training should help with that – it will be interesting to see how this develops.
On the fundraising front, I am well on my way to meeting my first target of $1000 by December 13th! So far I’ve hit $984! Thank you to everyone who has bought raffle tickets, baked goods, or made a straightforward donation to my page! Incidentally, I’ve decided that donations of $50 or more will earn the donor a mile of the marathon dedicated to that person. This is retroactive, so if you’ve made such a donation, let me know what mile you’d like! I’m reserving the last .2, though – that one’s for me.
One last marathon note for this week, and then tomorrow it’s back to food – shellfish, in fact! You may have noticed a new link section on this here blog, reserved for my teammates who’ve started training blogs. You should make sure to visit them! Next week I think I’ll give a specific run-down of each one and what it’s about, but Jess, Kelly, and Laura are all great, fun writers – so go give them some love!
Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone!
Thanksgiving is, no surprise, my favorite holiday. This has quite a lot to do with the food, of course, which in our family includes homemade cranberry sauce, loads of sides (especially boiled onions!), and enough desserts for each person at the table to have one personally along with the turkey. There’s more to it than that, however. I love Thanksgiving because, more than any other holiday, I feel like it’s about getting together with the people you love and just being together.
It’s been a long, strange year filled with a lot of change. My oldest friend had a baby, my youngest sister got married. People near and dear to me have lost loved ones, and I’ve seen some close calls on that front, too. I decided to run a marathon. What a crazy, tumultuous year, and all of it, even the sad parts, give me reasons to be thankful. Thankful I have a job, and a family who loves me, and some of the best friends a lady could ever have. Thankful most of all for my dear, sweet boyfriend, who supports and aids me in all of my crazy endeavors, including this blog.
So to all of you, my family and friends, who make me feel like everything I do is worth doing: Thank you. I love you. Have an amazing Thanksgiving, and I can’t wait to hear what you ate!
The Edgar Allan Pomme
Back in October, you may recall, I hosted a cocktail naming contest. This provoked heavy competition – the readers of this blog are seriously talented in the arena of bestowing names. In addition to the eventual winner, there were several names that intrigued me to the point that I decided I would create cocktail to fit the moniker.
One such was the Edgar Allan Pomme. This name, suggested by my dear friend Nandi, appealed strongly to my love of wretched puns. For those not up on your high school literature and French classes, this is of course a play on the name of famous writer and ne’er-do-well Edgar Allan Poe, combined with the French word for apple. Unfortunately for the purposes of my contest, there was not one whit of apple-related anything in the cocktail that came to be known as Demeter’s Lament. The joke doesn’t really work without it, so I swore I’d create an apple-based concoction in its honor.
So! This cocktail would include apple. I toyed with the idea of applejack or some other apple brandy, but in the end decided to go with plain old sweet cider – having something non-alcoholic to start would give me more options, I felt. But what would really speak to the essence of Poe?
There are, after all, many rumors about the cause of his death and the controversial substances he may (or may not) have indulged in. I considered absinthe, though it’s likely that his use of it is a myth, or whiskey, which is less so. I pondered and pondered – and then it hit me. Amontillado!
Amontillado is a type of sherry – medium dark and on it’s own, not particularly sweet. It has a strong nutty flavor that I suspected would pair well with the cider, and even better, was featured prominently in a Poe short story, The Cask of Amontillado. You can read the full text by clicking the link, but the gist is that the nameless narrator, tired of being insulted by a gentleman named Fortunato, decides to take revenge by walling the inaccurately named fellow in the catacombs. The narrator’s lure to get Fortunato right where we wants him is none other than the titular cask.
Perfectly fitting for my drink! Sherry and cider alone seemed a bit dull, however, so I decided to add a bit of dark rum – a traditional cider accompaniment, a dash of bitters, and, rumor or no, an absinthe rinse. (Except, lacking absinthe, it’s actually a Pernod rinse, continuing the ambiguity.) I played with the proportions a bit, and settled on 1:1:1 cider, rum, sherry. You could probably bump the liquors up to 1.5 – this is a somewhat light drink – but I liked the way they melded this way. This is a lovely fall drink to serve at Thanksgiving, and the sherry on its own makes a perfect digestif!
Without further ado, The Edgar Allan Pomme:
1 oz sweet cider
1 oz Amontillado Sherry
1 oz Goslings Rum
2 dash Fee’s Whiskey Barrel Aged Bitters
Pernod to rinse
Combine all ingredients except the Pernod in an ice-filled shaker. Shake well. Rinse a cocktail glass with Pernod and strain the contents of the shaker into the glass. Write tortured poetry and beware black birds.
We Have a Winner!
I’ve decided that henceforth, from now until April 19th, Sunday posts will be devoted to training updates. Apologies to those who prefer food to running, but fear not! I will try to keep a food element in these posts, whether it’s training nutrition or the winner of the pie raffle.
Oh, hey, we have a pie raffle winner to announce today! What a coincidence. The winner of the November raffle is:
Ticket number 340027: Jessica Baker!
No, I’m not kidding, that is really her last name, and she is both a co-worker and a member of my marathon team! Visit her blog! Congratulations, Jess – just let me know what kind of pie you want!
So, week one of official training is completed – 12 miles down from the 576.2 that I’m traveling to the finish line. Since I’ve trained for half marathons before this week was pretty light. I made it more difficult on myself by running with my gigantic trail backpack, which I fully believe played a part in increasing my speed in my second half marathon. (For those of you who don’t know, I’ve run two. I’m quite slow, but did manage to improve my time by 8 minutes the second time around!)
We had our first coalition run on Saturday – the Boston Partners in Education team shares a coach with four other teams. Our coach has run an impressive number of marathons and coached literally thousands of people through Boston, so this should be fruitful. This first group run was just four miles – from Back Bay over the Mass Ave bridge and back. It was a gorgeous day for a run, and the group dynamic was a lot of fun, not to mention providing a show of strength at street crossings and the like. I won’t be able to make every coalition run due to some other Saturday commitments, but I do intend to be at as many of them as I can squeeze in.
On the fundraising front I am up to $802 – 20% of goal! This is thanks to the wonderful donations of family and friends, as well as the crazy number of raffle tickets and baked goods sold at the Museum of Toys and Pop Culture’s Nightmare Before Christmas event. (The exhibit is up until mid-February and is only $3 – go see it!) Check out the super-cute cupcakes that my guy and I made for the opening:
The Jacks were golden cake, the pumpkins were, appropriately enough, pumpkin flavored! Both were frosted with vanilla buttercream. I also sold chocolate chip cookies, my go-to, no-brainer baked good. Thank you so much to Comicazi and MOTAP for giving me the opportunity to raise money at your event – you guys are my heroes! Support your local businesses, folks – this whole mission is about community and these guys have been big proponents of it for almost ten years!
Here’s hoping the next 21 weeks of training will be as good as week one! Thanks again to all of you for your encouragement and support!
LUPEC Tiki Bash!
My whirlwind weekend continued on Saturday with LUPEC Boston’s Tiki Bash! LUPEC – Ladies United for the Preservation of Endangered Cocktails – is a ladies cocktail society largely made up of some of the best bartenders in Boston. The Tiki Bash was a benefit to support On the Rise, a community for women in crisis. Since I have a strong interest in cocktails, feminism, and social justice, this seemed like the perfect event!
I purchased tickets at my friendly neighborhood bar and convinced a friend to accompany me in these shenanigans. The tickets got us, in addition to 4 drink tickets, some free cocktail appetizers from local restaurants, a burlesque show, cocktail demonstrations, hula lessons, dancing, and a performance by Uke Springsteen, to my knowledge the only man covering the oeuvre of Bruce Springsteen on the ukulele. What wonders were awaiting us!
When we arrived, nearly everyone was in either period costume or their best tiki garb. For those who don’t know, tiki-culture has had several revivals. It was started way back in the 1930s by Don the Beachcomber, an American who’d traveled the world and brought back various influences from his time in the tropics, which he incorporated into his California restaurant upon his return. The movement really gained ground in the 1950’s, however, when American service-men returned from tours of the South Pacific. Tiki-culture, while stylistically influenced by Polynesian mythology and aesthetics, is really an American invention. It’s characterized by the use of tropical imagery, lots of fruit, and in the case of the cocktails, an incredible amount of rum.
The spirit of American tiki was certainly alive in that room! Dress styles ranged from the 40’s to the 70’s, and the food included amazing Dan-Dan noodles from Myers + Chang, pineapple cake from the Franklin Cafe, and oysters from Island Creek Oysters.
This party marked the first time I’d ever eaten raw oysters, and I’m sad to say that I neglected to take a picture. Fear not, for I plan to return to a proper oyster house and do it right! That said the Island Creek Oysters were delicious. Served from a long boat of ice, they were fat and salty, with a sweet taste. I did have a shudder-moment from the texture, but not enough to put me off of doing it again!
Cocktails included the classic mai-tai,, which is widely considered the classic tiki drink. A blend of rums, orgeat, and citrus, this is my preferred tiki cocktail for its relative simplicity. Also served up were Painkillers, Fogcutters, and my NEW favorite tiki cocktail, the LUPEC original Ken-Tiki. This beauty captured my heart mostly through the virtue of being the only drink there with a base of bourbon rather than rum, but it was also a wonderful balance of tart and sweet fruit flavor.
All in all it was a wonderful event, and I can’t wait until the next LUPEC benefit bash! Apologies for the lack of photos – the only ones I ended up taking were of Uke!
(Visit here for a more pictorial write-up!)
Getting A Head
This past weekend was a whirlwind of adventure, both food and otherwise! I hope to capture all of it, but for now I will just address the events of Friday night, and the triumph of myself and my good friend Nandi.
It all started, as so many of these things do, with a trip to Craigie on Main. For those of you who don’t know, Craigie is a Cambridge restaurant that prides itself on the use of locally-sourced, organic, and seasonal ingredients. The cooking has its roots in French cuisine, but working with those local ingredients and with the occasional eye toward fusion. Originally known as Craigie Street Bistrot, the restaurant started life in a tiny, living-room sized space in the basement of an apartment building located, appropriately enough, on Craigie Street. Almost exactly a year ago they traded that space for a much larger one over in Central Square, on Main Street (you can see how they’ve kept the naming convention simple). In addition to quite a bit more seating and a more convenient location, Craigie on Main (COM) has the advantage of a fully stocked bar, with accompanying bar menu. It was here that Nandi and I were headed; we are both avid proponents of the bar menu in fancy restaurants. This philosophy may be the basis for entirely its own post, in fact. In the meantime, here is a picture of the lovely Prospect Park cocktail that I had when we were seated:
Now, in addition to serving very local, very fresh food, the owner/chef at COM, Tony Maws, is known for his fondness for utilizing the less common cuts of meat. His “Chef’s Whim” prix fixe menus often include sweetbreads, or kidneys, and one of the appetizers on the bar menu are crispy pig’s tails, a delightful little harmony of crispy skin and soft fat. This is a restaurant for adventurous eaters.
When we sat down, the bartender gave us menus and told us there were two specials that night. The first, brand new, was a whole roasted chicken, served on a bed of soft polenta. This sounded excellent, and we were tempted, until he told us the other special.
Half of a piglet’s head. Roasted.
Well, there was no question about which way we would go! (Actually, that is totally untrue. We deliberated for what felt like hours, and made the poor bartender strain his adjectival repertoire describing each of our choices. Never have I heard the word beautiful so often in the service of food.) In any case, the pork won out in the end, aided by the fact that it is confited before it is roasted, and the idea that the opportunity might not present itself again. We also ordered a side of Brussels sprouts cooked in duck fat, for health reasons.
The head takes half an hour to prepare, during which time we nibbled bread and speculated on whether Nandi’s husband, the Panda, would disown us for undertaking this adventure without him. We concluded that it was worth the risk. With a certain degree of pomp and circumstance, the head arrived.
It was beautiful.
Nandi took on the task of dividing the meat perfectly, starting at the chin. The skin offered some resistance, but the meat beneath could have been cut with a spoon. The crispy skin crunched in perfect opposition to the buttery fat and sweet, perfectly porky meat. This was the tails turned up to 11. This was pig nirvana.
We made our way through the entire head. The ears were fantastic – not quite as soft as the marinated version at the Gourmet Dumpling House,, but not nearly as chewy as I feared. While the cheek is generally considered the n’est plus ultra of the pig head eating world, we were particularly enamored of the snout. It seemed to offer the most variety of tastes and textures.
The Brussels sprouts were also amazing, but alas, didn’t stand a chance against the sheer onslaught of pork.
This was a particularly rich indulgence, and certainly one I wouldn’t partake in too often – god knows what our cholesterol levels were at the end of that meal. We were proud to have done it, however, and if you are a lover of pork, I can think of no truer expression of it.
And Now For Something Completely Different
I have so many food-related stories to tell you all! I finally made the fig and bacon Brussels sprouts! I ate more unusual pig parts! Strange seafood was tried!
But you’re going to hear about all of those things tomorrow.
Today I’m going to write about something that has very little to do with food, but it’s important to me and I hope that you’ll bear with me. It’s about education.
You see, when I was a kid, I grew up in a pretty small town outside of Boston. It wasn’t exactly the country, (and even less so, now) but it was hardly a city. By the time I graduated high school, there were only 52 kids in my entire class. That boiled down to a lot of individual attention in school, which I needed. I was smart and capable but had difficulties due to some minor learning disabilities having to do with writing (these have largely cleared up thanks to the rise of the personal computer. I can write, as long as it has nothing to do with physically making marks on paper) and having several teachers take an interest in making sure that I didn’t just waste away almost certainly got me through high school. I was also lucky enough to have parents who cared to help me and who believed I had the tools to succeed, if I could just tap into them.
The thing is, many kids, especially in an urban setting, are not so lucky. Their parents and their teachers DO truly care about them, of course, but there are too many students who need too much help for their teachers to put as much time into them as mine did into me, and those same kids often have parents who are stretched thin trying to keep them fed, or who want to help them with their schoolwork but don’t have the tools themselves.
Fortunately, there are organizations that are trying to fill that gap. I’ve been involved with one of them, Boston Partners in Education, for eight years in one capacity or another. What they do is work to fill the need for individual attention for Boston Public School students by providing them with volunteer academic mentors. These are people who give up their time to spend an hour or more, once a week, helping kids in the subjects they’re struggling in. Along the way they develop a connection with those kids, and are sometimes able to help them in other ways. Since 2001 I’ve been an academic mentor for Boston Partners. In 2006 I increased my involvement with the organization and began working for them, first as a program manager and eventually as Program Director. Now, in 2009, I’m committing myself to Boston Partners even more.
As of today, I’m going to be training for the 2010 Boston Marathon®. This is a big honor, and the culmination of one of my other interests, running, but I’m able to do it because of Boston Partners. They’ve given me a number – in return I’ve committed to raising $4,000. I’m nervous about the size of that goal, but excited at the same time – excited to meet such a challenge, and excited about what it means for the organization I care so much about.
Clearly, I’m writing about this here because I’m hoping that some of you will sponsor me. Some of you already have, and that’s amazing. For those of you who would like to do so, I have an online donation page at http://www.firstgiving.com/erinmcgrath. My first fundraising goal is $1,000 by December 13th – a quarter of my goal.
However, donations are not all I’m looking for, and I hope I have something to offer in return! The main thing I need is support. Starting today, when I run my first official two miles of training, until I cross the finish line on April 19th, I will run 576.2 miles. I will be so grateful for any words of encouragement that you can offer, and I hope that those of you who know me personally will come out and cheer on race day.
I’m also going to be running some fun events, and many of those are related to food! Starting this week I’ll be raffling off a chance to win a homemade holiday pie, and I’ll be selling cookies at a few local events. Raffle tickets will be a dollar each – five dollars will get you six tickets. Feel free to contact me via email if you’d like tickets, or make a donation on the Firstgiving page and put RAFFLE in the comments. Comment me if you’d like more info about where I’ll be with cookies for sale.
Coming up will be more baked goods, some trivia, and a lot of other good times with fun people! I hope you’ll forgive the occasional hijacking of this blog for updates on my training and goals. This is a big part of my life and I thank you all for helping me with it!
Vegetable Therapist – Let’s Talk About Squash
Winter squash, that is. While both summer and winter squashes are members of genus Cucurbita, they differ in that summer squashes are harvested when they are tender, innocent babies, whilst winter squash are eaten as hardened adults. This lends the winter squash considerably more sweetness and flavor, but also makes cutting it up a challenge, and greatly increases cooking time. Thus, family members though they may be, I will discuss what the heck to do with a summer squash another time.
Technically, one can eat all of the above-ground parts of the squash (I’m guessing you could eat the roots as well, but there’s not much to them). Stems and leaves can be munched like any other green, and even the flowers are tasty, most famously when battered and stuffed with cheese. The fruit, however, is the bit we’re interested in today. Yes, I said fruit – the bit with the seeds in is always the fruit! Squash fruit is specifically a type of false berry known as a pepo, a fact that I personally find fascinating. The falsehood apparently has to do with the fact that most of the flesh is not the ovary – it’s extra meat to help protect the seeds.
I personally find that plant-meat incredibly delicious. Winter squash is a bit of work, but the reward is some of the sweetest, butteriest vegetable that a person can eat, even without adding any sugar or actual butter. While I do enjoy it boiled and mashed, in the Menace household we usually eat it roasted – simply chop it to bits, drizzle it in olive oil, salt, and pepper, and throw it in the oven at 375 or so until it turns brown and caramelized. You can peel it first if you like, but that’s an awful lot of work. If you’re making acorn squash (or any smaller, cup-shaped squash) you can add a little brown sugar and butter for an extra-tasty treat.
To really take it to the next level, however, invest in a little more work and make a stuffing for that baby. I made a recipe that I found on Chow last week and it was divine. Look at how beautiful it was:
What’s great about this recipe is that it becomes the entire meal. There’s starch and protein from the rice, a bit more protein from the nuts (confession: I used walnuts rather than pecans because that’s what I had in the house. It was very tasty, though perhaps a bit less decadent) and of course, plenty of vegetables. Sweet, salty, and savory tastes all getting together in harmony – it’s a beautiful thing, and the presentation is great.
Does anyone else have a favorite squash recipe? While I enjoy squash soup, particularly the Red Kuri Squash Soup at Myers + Chang, I’ve never made it. If you’ve got a great recipe, put it in the comments!
