remedial eating

right this minute

Here is what I want you to do:  Go get your hands on some true asparagus.  

Now.

 

You'll have to forgive me.  I'm not normally so bossy, but this, this is serious. By my calculation, we are most of us, right this minute, smack dab in the (circle that which applies: a. beginning b. middle c. end) of asparagus season. Somehow, I've gone all my long life without ever slipping asparagus into salad. Roasting pans, risottos, stir-fries, rice, pasta, hollandaise, yes.  But not salads.  People.  I don't want you to suffer the same.

(Injury?  Go, mend.  Even asparagus doesn't trump Spring's scrapes.  A wise man recently announced we'd best re-arrange our medicine cabinet, flu box to the back, first aid to the front.  Colds are out; boo-boo's, in.  Must be May.)

 

 

A pound will do.  Though you might pick up three.  Or, if you're me, clear the farmstand's decks.  I prefer thick, thick as it comes, ideally thicker than my thumb.  And I'm Scandinavian.  I have thick thumbs.  

Although thin's good, too.  So long as it's true.  

(Eh?  Spirit's moving you to practice little letters?  Very well.  a-s-p-a-r-a-g-u-s.)

 

 

By true, I mean the backyard kind.  Not your backyard; I can't manage so-called-easy zucchini, much less something with adventitious root systems and fasciculated root types.  Just big-picture backyard, from your 100-miles, your state, your wherever's-nearest-that-grows-asparagus place.  Look for local, here.  Please?  Asparagus is May's tomato, bred to look the part and stocked year-round, tasting exuberantly of itself for only an instant.  Plump, sugared, juicy, taut, a crisp sweet soliloquoy to spring.  

Grab it.  

Do not pass go.  

 

 

(Oh, right.  Teddy-bear hard-boiled eggs wait for no girl, and certainly no iconic veg.  Bring "help" to the Japanese grocery, and the cart will yield surprises, guaranteed.  

Admire.  Grin.  Eat.  Back to business.)

 

 

While you're at it, gather up some crunch.  I like sprouts, of any sort, and radishes, and anise-breathed fennel.  Watercress would work, or celery, or even those tiny new ping-pong turnips.  Anything snappy and sweet, when raw and sliced thin-as-thin.    

Excellent!  Almost there.  

 

 

(Distracted by peonies?  I know.  Me, too.  They're as fly-by-night as spring asparagus.  

Take your time.  Definitely inhale.)

 

 

Also, some herbs, parsley and chives, which even my zucchini-challenged self can (mostly) grow.  Fistfuls of both.  Several fistfuls, if you're five.  

(What's that?  Need to engineer cracker-bearing structures out of toothpicks, paper plates, and marshmallows?  Because it's pushing 90° and humid as Hades? I'm so with you.  Just don't forget...  Asparagus.  Asparagus.  Asparagus.)

 

 

You'll need a bit of buttermilk, preferably the thick stuff, cultured, full-fat, wobbly.  Nuts are nice, slivered almonds, or better, salted sunflower seeds.  Or both.  And pantry staples like olive oil, vinegar, salt, a nub of garlic.  

(Oh, the roses.  Did they beckon you, too?  Because they're the small scraggly potent old-fashioneds?  Absolutely sniff away.  They won't get you one inch closer to salad, and they certainly won't help you spot a whale.  But I'd never get between a rose and a nose.  Or, for that matter, you, Stead and Fogliano.  Go, read their latest, loveliest.  I totally did.  Then fire your oven to 450°)

 

 

Lastly, some lentils.  Du puy, specifically.  Here I go, getting all insistent, again.  Bear with me.  Even I can't avoid tilting my chin and pinching my nose and sniffling a little, before muttering du Pweeee.  It sounds so twee.  It even rhymes.  But they hold their shape brilliantly in the cooking, and go all tender and winsome in the pot, and add tiny plinks of buttery charm to salads in a way I apparently adore.

(Care package from Annette?  DROP.  EVERYTHING.  Because it might yield up, oh, I don't know.  Shark bite band-aids?  Zombie brain jello molds?  Tootsie Roll Pops the size of ogre heads?  Cheer.  Devour.  Let sugar rush subside.  Carry on.  Asparagus, asparagus...)

 

 

Right-o!  We're set!  Cook those lentils (a boiling salted pot, twenty minutes, drain, done).  Roast that asparagus (blazing oven, olive oil + salt, ten minutes, tops).  Blitz that dressing (mini-processor, stick blender, stand blender, whatever whizzing thing you've got).  Slice those radishes and fennel, thin-thin. Layer, drizzle, sigh... Wait up.

(Mud-time, is it?  Hold the fork!  There are mere days when the wallowing's grand and the mosquitoes, not yet moved in.  Go carpe those diem.  Just, you know, be quick about it.)  

 

 

Sorry.  I love a patch of good mud almost as much as this salad.  Almost.

This salad is the working out of several asparagus salads I ate and enjoyed, these past weeks.  I adored the dialogue between lentils and asparagus in Ashley's play on Ottolenghi's.  Also, Heidi's pairing of spears and sprouts, and the sweet mantle tang of buttermilk.  I built on what I loved best about both, and tweaked and embellished and eventually, landed happily in this bowl.

 

 

Inside is a pile-up of every good thing I appreciate about Spring.  Cool shavings of fennel, sweet-kicky fresh radish, plus tangles of sprouts, for loft and snap. Buttery lentils are littered throughout like so many edible polka dots.  Sunflower seeds, also small, salty, brown, are the little lentils' doppelgängers, identical save for their excellent crunch.  

The dressing—which I like to drizzle on as I go, this belonging more to the layered than tossed school of saladry—is its own glory, versatile, wonderful.  It's a bit like Green Goddess, but better, with twice the herbs and a clean, clear sweet that fuggy mayonnaise can never quite manage.  Gently herbal, faintly garlicked, creamy and sweet with a rim of tang, it tastes like Spring bound up in a bottle.  

 

 

And everywhere, that asparagus.  Why I never thought to slice spears before roasting, I can't even begin to explain.  Any more than I can explain overlooking this whole category of asparagus cookery.  Cut first, they cook faster, and caramelize better, each extra edge, an added opportunity.  Every bevel can catch, and go sticky and golden, while the insides steam-roast to just-right, sweet as candy, juicy as corn, addictive as all get-out.  Good luck not plucking them, straight off the sheet.  

Just don't, whatever you do, eat them all.  Save some for this.  For those golden-green nubbins, roasty, intense, are the thing that make the whole sing. They are the pop, the rich sticky contrast, gravitas to all that hop-skippy Spring crunch.  If I knew half a thing about music I'd throw out analogies about harmony and melody and Simon and Garfunkel and the way the Avett Brothers rock Brooklyn and banjos like no other.  Because that is the asparagus, here, soulful, essential, fantastically good.  But you'll figure that out for yourself, if not right this minute, then soon enough.  

 

 

A High Spring Salad of Asparagus, Lentils + Crunch,
with Herbed Buttermilk Drizzle
inspired by 101Cookbooks and Not Without Salt
yield: 2 immense dinner-sized servings, or 4 nice sides, or 1 week's solo lunches 

Realistically?  I cook the lentils and asparagus, and make the dressing, at the week's outset, and am then five minutes—and a few shaved vegetables—away from lunch, for days.  If you part it out this way, shave only as many radishes and as much fennel as you need for that day.  If you make this in one go, let the asparagus and lentils cool slightly, so as not to wilt the raw veg. Mandolines terrify me, but I adore my Benriner.  Hand-cutting the fennel and radishes would work just fine.  You could, of course, make one big salad for dinner.  But then you would have to share.  

As to amounts and details, do play.  I can see carrot ribbons here, or avocados, or arugula, or watercress.  A soft-boiled egg.  Feta, pecorino, ricotta salata.  I'll add slivered snap peas, when they're ready.  Ditto the dressing.  Use whatever is fresh and green in your garden, all parsley, more chives, a bit of tarragon and/or dill.  This makes a loose dressing, which I like, for it doesn't weigh down the sprouts and slivers.  Add extra herbs if you want more body.  You will likely have dressing leftover.  Lovely on steamed potatoes, or as a dip for crudités, or to dunk whole roasted spears into, or or or...     

for the salad:
1 cup green lentils (du Puy lentils)
1 pound asparagus
1 box (2 packed cups) sprouts (I used spicy)
1 generous bunch radishes (10-12 plump)
1 rotund fennel bulb
1 cup salted sunflower seeds, flaked almonds, or a mix
extra-virgin olive oil + salt, for seasoning 

for buttermilk herb dressing:
1/2 cup buttermilk, whole milk, well-shaken
1/4 cup olive oil
1 Tablespoon red wine vinegar
1 cup fresh parsley, leaves and tender stems, loosely packed
1/2 cup chives
1 clove garlic
1/2 teaspoon salt
squeeze of honey (1-2 teaspoons) 

Cook lentils:  Bring a medium pot of well-salted water to the boil.  Tip in the lentils, turn heat down, and simmer, 20-22 minutes, or until just tender to the core, but not beginning to disintegrate.  Taste a few to test.  Drain.  Set aside to cool slightly.  Use immediately, or refrigerate, up to 5 days.

Roast asparagus:  Preheat oven to 450°, and place rack a few inches from the bottom.  Line rimmed baking sheet with parchment.  Snap woody bottoms away, slice spears into roughly 2" chunks, shorter for the thick ends, longer for the tips, and scatter on lined baking sheet.  Drizzle 1-2 tablespoons olive oil and 1 teaspoon kosher salt over all, toss lightly with fingers to coat, and place in preheated oven.  Roast 5-10 minutes (5 for slim spears, 10 for extra plump), shaking tray halfway through, until edges are catching and going chestnut in spots, and insides are tender, plump and sweet.  Set aside to cool slightly.  Use immediately, or refrigerate, up to 3 days.

Make dressing:  Combine everything in a food processor or blender, and blitz until completely smooth, 1-2 minutes.  Taste for seasoning and strength, adjust to suit, and blitz again, if needed.  Set aside, or refrigerate, up to 5 days.  Give a stir before using, if pulling from the fridge.

Prepare salad:  Shave your radishes and fennel, either on a benriner, or very thinly, with a sharp knife.  Gather your lentils, asparagus, sprouts, dressing and seeds.  On a large platter, or in a greedy-hungry mine-all-mine bowl, build layers of goodness, drizzling on dressing as you go: fennel, radishes, asparagus, lentils, sprouts, seeds, dressing; repeat; repeat; until you've enough; finish with a final drizzle of herbed buttermilk.  This keeps the dressing from weighing the sprouts down, and eliminates the need for a final toss.  Dig in.  And raise a glass to Spring.  

on a roll

Some people fall into a groove.  I fling.  

Then I reach for a spade, really put my back into it, and digdigdig until I can't quite see the light.  I love it there, in the deep underneath, earth dark and cool and fantastically dank.  But it has been pointed out to me, once or twice, that I might maybe sometimes overdo.  

Take Poppy.  In January, I concluded the Poppy (pattern here) I made for Zoë's 3rd birthday was overdue a new wardrobe.  She had just the two dresses she arrived with, and Zoë was coming up on another birthday herself, and, well. Two dresses.  Two years.  Surely you see it, too?

I set to work.   

I cut out one smock, and another, and then another.  Because making things in multiples is so simple, you know?  Same pattern, same seams, autopilot territory.  

And then I cut out some pants, one-two-three.  Because smocks without pants are like chocolate without peanut butter.  

And then, I made the happy discovery that pants cut for five-year-olds from one-yard lengths yield scraps perfectly sized for Poppy pants.  Sweet!

More pants.

And more tunics to go with. 

(To give you a sense of where we're at, were I a mouse, I'd be asking for a straw about now, but would not yet have trimmed my hair, or swept, or fetched crayons, or napped.  Or, asked after another cookie.)

Let's just say Poppy scored.  

She wound up with pants which matched most of Zoë's, pears and polka-dots and paisleys.  She has smocks cut from pajama scraps, and old quilting cottons from my childhood, and tiny 2T dresses once worn by my girl, re-purposed to rag doll proportions.    

There were white pants of thick Irish linen, cut from an old hole-riddled $1 runner.  A Downtown Abbey-era bit of lace I've had since high school, and adored, and admired, and wondered what on earth to do with, raised its hand and suggested itself for a little blue, brass-buttoned smock.  I accepted.  The antique pink tea towel with extraordinary appliqué—and the pox of indelible spots—finally found its purpose in life.  Cut carefully, add buttons strategically, and voilà!  Wee sailboat smock.  

And so it went.  The final count was, well, unknown, as I don't prefer to quantify my excesses.  I do know the new duds handily filled an old Samsonite overnight case.  And that putting scraps to such small, delicious uses evokes a certain thrifty indulgence.  

And that although no stuffing-headed little girl (or for that matter, red-haired real girl) actually needs a suitcase thick with doll clothes, it was great fun for me.  And if we're honest, such projects are really more for the makers than those they're made for.  And if I'm going to get on a roll, fast and furious, with no exits in sight, it had better be an innocent, upstanding roll.  You know where I'm headed with this.  

Salad.  More salad.  Every day a salad.  We went through six bags of greens, last week, and had to buy more, to patch us through.  Half of them went to this salad, here.

This here salad is a relatively new addiction for me, which is why I've only made ten (twelve?) times, over these past three weeks.  It began when the library notified me that I could pick up Lucinda Scala Quinn's new book.  When it will end is anyone's guess.  Although, knowing my track record...

Enough about me.  You.  You'll want some fresh spunky greens on hand, something with crunch and character.  Mizuna's been in regular rotation in our CSA, and I've loved its juicy crisp, here.  Quinn suggests mostly escarole, with a half head of raddichio.  Sounds good, too.  To this, and to Quinn's original, you'll add slivered celery and smashed hazelnuts.  (Yes, that's me, digging deeper, deeper, into the excellent crunchy groove.)

You'll also want some parmigiano reggiano, or pecorino romano, either/or.  I've tried both.  Declared both best.  Then re-negged.  You decide.  Either way, get your hands on a wedge, because you'll want slivers, substantial, toothsome, salty alter-egos to those crisp leaves.  

And, you'll want dates.  Yes, dates.  I know.  I never wanted dates, either.  In all my life, I've never understood the appeal of this sticky cloying gacky brown lump.  I finally understand.  (And by finally, let's be clear: we're talking forty-years of date confusion, people.)  Dates exist for this salad.  

Toss sliced dates with smart greens and toasty filberts and a serious hit of gritty-creamy parmesan schrapnel and oh. my. stars.  They make sense. Against all these other tastes, bitter/salty/umami/sharp, they come to life with all kinds of complexity.  Like bits of brown sugar, the dark stuff, muscovado, maybe, but also caramel's kissing cousin, and a mysterious swarthy something that try as I might, I can't put my finger on.  I sliced some kumquats over this last go around, which added another, wonderful sweet-tart dimension. But don't let lack of kumquats stand in your way.  This salad is stand-alone wonderful, as is.  The dates make it so.  Which is why I, lifelong loather of dates, recently bought a pound of Medjools at Costco.  I'm down to eight ounces, maybe six.  I'm on a roll.  Best step aside.

An Anytime Salad of Greens, Dates, Pecorino + Hazelnuts
inspired by Lucinda Scala Quinn, Mad Hungry Cravings
Costco's Medjool dates are phenomenal, plump, rich, profoundly fresh (yes, there is fresh and stale dried fruit).  Wherever you buy them, make sure they are rich shiny brown and soft, not white or wizened.  Great dates are impossibly sticky to slice.  Work with it.  Their flavor overcomes all.  On hazelnuts, I'm ever and always a Holmquist girl.  

for the salad:
6 ounces (8 cups) mizuna, or one head of escarole + half a head of raddichio
2 ounces pecorino or parmigiana reggiano (from a wedge)
8-10 dried medjool dates, pitted and sliced
generous 1/3 cup toasted* hazelnuts, roughly chopped
3 stalks celery, thinly sliced
15 kumquats (optional), sliced and seeded

for the dressing:
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (from 1-2 lemons)
1 tablespoon maple syrup or honey
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Prepare Salad:  Roughly tear or slice greens into generous bite-sized pieces. Place in a large, shallow salad bowl.  With a paring knife, shave cheese into thin tiles, slightly thicker than what a peeler would yield.  You want toothsome bites of cheese, thick enough to have presence, thin enough to go around.  An inch across, say, and thick as a dime.  Add to greens, along with sliced dates, chopped hazelnuts, sliced celery, and kumquats, if using. 

Make dressing:  In a jar with a tight-fitting lid, combine lemon juice, syrup and salt.  Swirl to dissolve salt.  Add olive oil, attach lid, and shake vigorously to emulsify.  

Drizzle 3-4 tablespoons dressing over salad, and toss gently and vigorously to combine.  Munch a handful, and add more salt and/or dressing to taste.  (You will have leftover dressing.  You will be happy about this.)  Try to share.

*To Toast Hazelnuts:  Preheat oven to 350°.  Lay hazelnuts on a rimmed baking sheets, and toast 10-12 minutes, until the white nuts turn ivory, the skins begin to curl, and deeply fragrant.  There's much fuss about peeling hazelnuts. Buy good ones (order from Holmquist; you'll never look back), and the skin is as sweet as the meat.  

 

'tis the season

Right, so I realize you packed up the trees and tinsel months ago.  Us, too.  But in our home, the end of December is really only the beginning.  

Our Winter is sort of synonymous with Fest, with one party spilling on into the next.  We start with a bang, lucky enough to celebrate two birthdays within days of Christmas.  Then, there's New Year's, which is pretty staid, maybe puzzles and pizza and toothpicks for small eyelids, and two minutes of TV on either side of midnight.  And new calendars.  The most exciting bit, really.

What really keeps the celebration drum beating, though, is the everything thereafter.  For there's a birthday three weeks into January, and another three weeks later, during February's first week.  And then, exactly one week after that, V-day, heart day, cheap glorious chocolate day, take your pick.    

(Me, I pick glitter day.  There is glitter in the grout.  Glitter between the floorboards.  Glitter in the ancient basement cast iron sink.  There is glitter enough that, were the space shuttle still circling, the crew could see New York, Chicago, and us.  There are those who say February's a dark, dreary month.  To them, I say: get a load of my laundry tub!)

And then, as an added bonus this year, we got Annette, all weekend long. Annette packs more party into 5'4" than does David Stark in his much-buzzed-about events.  This does not include the toys she packs in every suitcase, which this time included one marshmallow crossbow, one marshmallow air pistol, and one large lights-and-sounds target.  

Small pack of Jet-Puffed: $2.39.  Marshmallow Crossbow: $18.05.  Being a fly on the wall while Annette explained this particular set of carry-ons to TSA at Sea-Tac: Priceless.

What this means, practically speaking, is that our Winter is also celebration season.  Yes, Winter's mittens and hats and floors, stained white with salt within moments of mopping.  

But it's also planning and plotting and inviting.  It's lantern-stringing and candle-lighting and excellent  off-key singing.  It's bright happy paper and gloppy glue sticks and food color used in untoward proportions.  It is cupcakes in cones, and a stealth lemon cake, and confirmation that the extra curd and cream was extra nice.  And that this remains, one year later, one heckuva cake.  Ditto the kiddo.  Keepers, both.

There are thank you notes yet to be written.  The odd moustache, still on the wall.  A few ROYGBIV balloons yet to contend with.  (As for the birthday theme one freshly-minted five year old chose: three guesses, first two don't count.) But by and large, we're winding down. 

We've packed up the doilies, pulled down the banners, returned the blackboard to black.  My cuticles, if not quite white yet, are also no longer royal blue. Progress.  This week, normal returns.  It's been a grand ride.  I'm ready.  

(Well, normal save the lunches left behind yesterday morning.  And the mittens, much-needed for a field trip.  And the trash can lid that vanished in the night's storm.  And the dryer drum, which, I discovered after breakfast, is completely coated in melted crayons.  Crayons.  Plural.  Red and blue.  As is every item of clothing therein.  Who knew Crayola could do such damage?  

Typical Tuesday, filling in for a Monday.)  

Which brings me to something else we've been celebrating during this same dark, cold stretch: pomegranate season.  And, before it leaves us entirely, I must must must must get this to you.  

The "this" in question is the burnt eggplant with pomegranate, lemon and mint from Jerusalem.  The breathlessness is because this much-ballyhooed recent title is all that, and then some.  And then some more.  (No, more.  More, still. Getting warmer.  How about just plain wonderful.)  The urgency stems from the fact that pomegranate season's almost over.  And the reason for my many "musts" is eggplant, pomegranate, lemon and mint.

Eggplant.  Pomegranate.  Lemon.  Mint.  

Together.  In one bowl!  Think about that.  Exactly.

Me.  

Oh.  

My.    

My eggplant love is well-documented, my fondness for the burnt stuff, no secret.  But this particular iteration is new to me.  If it's new to you, change that fact.  Now.

You begin with a base of burnt eggplant, a.k.a. eggplant brought to its smoky-sweet, supple, scoopable, silk-stockinged knees.  After broiling your eggplant beyond recognition, you spoon out out its soft insides to strain an hour, and let loose any liquid that might tarnish bliss.  The now-concentrated heap of smoked eggplant meat is then loosened up again, but this time, with dazzle. There's the juice and zest of one large plump lemon, plus the cool fresh of chopped mint.  There's garlic, whose raw bite I don't favor, which I therefore warm in the accompanying olive oil.  And there's pomegranate, seeds and syrup, the first stroke of brilliance all Ottolenghi and Tamimi, the second minor add, greedily mine.  

The end result is extraordinary.  Smart with lemon, bright with mint, softened and deepened by gently-garlicked oil, the smoked eggplant startles, just like that.  Stir in the pomegranate syrup and seeds, and stand back.  It stuns.  The syrup, garnet, heady, treacled, adds a caramelized, concentrated thread throughout.  And the seeds, how the seeds delight.  Rubied, crisp, tart, they punctuate each bite, edible exclamation points.  They pop on the tooth and sparkle on the tongue, like so much sweet caviar.  Like glitter for the tastebuds.  Like genius.

What to do with it, you say?  Oh ho!  Let the fun begin...  It would sidle up next to a piece of fish nicely, halibut or cod, simply, expertly seared.  Lamb, also, if you like lamb.  Falafel, definitely, if you don't.  I can see it piled high in warm pillowy pita, with leaves and sharp feta, or nothing at all.  In my home, it began life as a pita chip dip, which we'd lay out with hummus, olives, cheese and veg, on our semi-regular chips and dip night.  Highly recommended.  Few things flatter a pita chip better, soft smoky sweet against salty crisp crunch.  Pile it on as high as you can.  

(No, of course I didn't push burnt eggplant on the pre-K birthday guests.  We had rainbow goldfish, and rainbow fruit, and rainbow spaghetti.  What else?)  

Me, I couldn't pile it on high enough, and ended up inverting the equation. These days, I pile it into a bowl, and crumble a few pita chips on top for crunch. More eggplant fattoush, less dainty dip.  More of the good stuff, eggplant, pomegranate, lemon, mint.  More more more, before those pomegranates pack their bags.  Because pomegranates remain, in my neck of the woods, one of the few foods MIA in the off-season.  'Tis their season, still.  Tic-toc, tic-toc! 

(What are you still doing here?) 

Smoked Eggplant with Pomegranate, Lemon + Mint
adapted from Jerusalem, Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi

It isn't remotely eggplant season, of course, but worldly eggplant works fine in this context.  Next fall, I intend to nail that narrow window when eggplant and pomegranate season coincide.  There are many ways to seed pomegranates.  My preferred method is dungeness-crab style: spread newspaper on the table, and go at it.  For the clever water method, see here. Eggplant varies widely in size; I've used from 2-4 to yield the quantities called for.  Use the weight and volume guides, to nail quantities, and simply adjust your seasonings to match your finished eggplant yield.  

Please note eggplant needs at least one hour to drain.  Eggplant can be roasted and drained 3-4 days in advance, and the dip mixed 24 hours in advance, with fresh herbs added at serving.  

3-4 large, Italian globe eggplant (3-3 1/2 pounds total, uncooked weight; 2 1/2 cups cooked, after roasting and draining) 
2 cloves garlic, minced
3-5 tablespoons olive oil, to taste
grated zest of 1 large plump lemon + 2 tablespoons juice, freshly squeezed 
2 tablespoons flat-leaf parsley, chopped
4 tablespoons fresh mint, chopped
2 tablespoons pomegranate molasses
seeds of 1 large pomegranate (1 cup)
1 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste

Burn eggplant:  During the winter months, I burn eggplant under the broiler, as follows.  For gas stovetop* and BBQ methods*, see below.  Place rack 6" under element, preheat broiler, line a sheet pan with foil, and score eggplants with a few shallow, 3/4" slashes. Place eggplant on the foil-covered pan, then place pan in oven.  Broil for 40-60 minutes, rotating each eggplant a quarter-turn once the exposed side has blackened and blistered, every 15-20 minutes.  An exhaust fan comes in handy.  Eggplants are done when all sides are black, burst in spots, and have collapsed.   Err on the side of overdone.  The flesh should be silky soft, the exterior, absolutely dreadful.  

Allow smoked eggplant to cool enough to handle, then cut along one side, baked potato style.  Spoon flesh from burnt skin (discard skin), place in a colander, and pull apart into slender threads, or snip roughly with clean shears.  You are aiming for scoopable, bite-size bits.  Drain at least an hour at room temperature, or up to overnight, in the refrigerator.  (Smoked, drained eggplant can be refrigerated 3-4 days, at this point.)  

When you are ready to mix your dip:  Place 3 tablespoons' oil and minced garlic in a small skillet or saucepan, and place over a medium flame.  Warm oil and garlic together, gently, until garlic is fragrant and faintly golden but not taking on any true color, 3-4 minutes.  Place drained eggplant pulp in a medium bowl, and add lemon zest, juice, garlic and olive oil, 1 teaspoon salt, pomegranate molasses, and stir well to combine.  Taste for seasoning, and add more olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and/or pomegranate molasses, to taste.  Let marinate an hour, if you can stand it.  (I often can't.  It's awfully, awfully good, just-mixed.) When ready to serve, mix in the mint and parsley, and half the pomegranate seeds.  Mix gently to combine, pile high on a plate, and scatter with the remaining rubied seeds.  

This is brightest the day you make it, but holds very well several days.   

*Alternate Methods to Burn Eggplant:

On a gas burner:  line the stovetop with foil to catch drips, keeping only elements exposed.  Turn heat to medium-high, and place eggplant on prongs, directly over flame, one eggplant per element.  Roast 15-18 minutes, rotating every 5 minutes or so, when bottom has become blackened and blistered. Eggplant is done when interior is melting soft and the exterior can no longer hold together.  

On the BBQ: see instructions (and another favorite burnt eggplant recipe) here.  

like a kid

In seventh grade, I took algebra with The Warlock.  

The Warlock wasn't her given name, just the one used by my brother, who'd had her years earlier.  There was nothing mean-spirited in his tone, as he read over my first middle school schedule.  No rancor, no malice, just matter-of-factness.  "Mr. Hillyer for Shop, Ms. Levine for Health, The Warlock for Algebra, 4th period Lunch..."  

Being older, wiser, well into high school, his words had the air of fact about them.  Being younger, more stubborn, well accustomed to contradiction, I was duty-bound to disagree.

For the first half of my first middle school year, I maintained there was nothing Warlock-like about her.  So what if her fashions were a bit 1962, black cat eye glasses through beehive 'do.  Who cared if her A-lines and sweater sets only leveraged the fog-dishwater-ash end of the rainbow.  And okay, maybe she was a little troglodyte in aspect.  Severe.  And serious, and solemn, and stern. And didn't tell jokes.  Or laugh.  Or smile.  Ever.  

So what.

She knew algebra, understood its pure piercing brilliance.  She drove home the difference between constants and co-efficients.  Could sniff out every x, y and z in story problems.  Could isolate a variable like nobody's business.  The woman could solve for anything.

She made clear to me, for the first time ever, the raw gritty beauty of mathematics.  Variables equalled mysteries.  Equations, answers.  Constants, powers, co-efficients, the bridge between the two.  Algebra was Agatha Christie, but with far fewer letters, and no surprise endings.  Algebra was useful, and predictable, and orderly.  I liked orderly.  I loved algebra.  And so I defended The Warlock with all my might, singing her praises to my brother for months.

For four months, specifically.  Until mid-January.  When she fell from my grace, fast and hard.

It was early winter, in Seattle, which almost always means forty, precipitating, and green.  Except on this one particular mid-January Monday, it was thirty, precipitating, and green.  As happens in Seattle, snow had been rumoured, working every last schoolkid into a Sunday night frenzy.  As happens in Seattle, Monday broke with no snow, breaking every last frenzied schoolkid's snow-starved heart.  And then—as almost never happens in Seattle—the rumours actually came true.  Right there, in third period Algebra.  Big, fat fluffy flakes. Falling.  Thick.  Glorious.

We sat there, in our orange melamine desk-chairs, mesmerized by the sight. (With one classroom wall made entirely of windows, the sight was pretty spectacular.)  There were murmurs.  Turned heads.  Hushed exclamations.  The odd uncontainable outright squeal.  

All, unrelated to the day's lesson plan.  

 

She stared.  She glared.  She pursed.  She commanded.  She ordered our attention back toward the board.  

We tried.  Honestly.  But those flakes!  They fell faster and fatter and fatter and faster.  Like nothing I'd seen, in all my eleven years.  We knew these were different, special.  She knew no such thing.  So she walked over to the West window—and to this day, I can't fathom it—and closed the vinyl blind—SNAP!—all the way down to the sill.  [Show's over.]  

And then, kept going.  All along the wall.  Every last blind.  

SNAP!  

SNAP!  

SNAP!  

Until the only light left in the room came from the fluorescents, buzzing above our astonished, seventh-grade heads.  She returned to her lesson. 

We didn't.  

We mentally checked out when the blinds went down; physically, two hours later, when school was cancelled for the day.  And, it would turn out, for the week.  School in Seattle is never cancelled for a week.  It was, that week. Math is magic, yes.  But so, dear Warlock, is snow.  

She's still an anonymous "she" to me, because after that, her given name never stuck.  And I'm like a kid to this day when it snows, because I've still not gotten over the stuff.  

We got more snow, Saturday.  And Monday.   And even though I know, at this age, it's not all skipping school and lunchroom-tray sledding, that it's back-breaky shoveling and frigid window scraping and at-best tricky slippery touch-and-go driving, still.  I love it.  I can't help it.  From the first, I considered snow one of Ohio's finer features.  And ever since, with levels low to no-show, I've considered snow extra-special, even here.  

Needless to say, I suited up.

 

There was, because of the snow and other circumstances, a lot that didn't happen this break.  Outings undone.  Walks not taken.  Ice cream uneaten, save one precious cone.  But because of the same, a different lot did. Games were played.  Satsumas eaten.  Letters written.  Pants lengthened.  Puzzles completed, all 750 pieces.  Elephants got capes.  Dolls, monogrammed sheets. Molly's, first-hand lessons in French seams.  Snow bunnies were built.  Igloos, also.  And snow boots, laced and unlaced a-plenty.  And the same salad eaten, several times over.

Squeal!

Squeal for the snow, and for this salad, which I think I served three times, this week alone.  Which I've not gone a week without eating since September. Which I know, because in September, I was withering under an arugula mountain.  Our fall CSA had begun, and each week brought a box overflowing with produce, every week, a different bounty.  Except the arugula.  The arugula was every week.  (For the bounty, see above.  And past the frame, where it continued.  I do love snow.  But I so miss that bounty.)

Now, I love arugula.  At least as much as algebra.  But the arugula bags were big.  And weekly.  And sometimes double, as vacationing friends kindly donated their share.  And sometimes triple, as folks quietly abandoned unwanted arugula on my doorstep, like orphans.  I didn't mind.  Some people take in cats. I take in arugula.  I cannot turn a good green down.  And this was good arugula, bracing, bold, fantastically plucky, with more spring in its leaf than I knew a leaf could muster.  Fresh, I think they call it.  Fabulous.  Abundant.

By mid-September, I needed an arugula intervention.  Scanning my shelves, I knew who to call.  Taking first bites, I shook my head, marveling at yet another Hesser home run.  But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself.

What went into that bowl, what went into those bites, was a heap of arugula, the salad's one and only green.  To this, you add a dice of firm pear, perfectly ripe, preferably chilled, juicy and dripping and almost buttery.  Also, a smattering of good blue cheese, whose pungent bite is offset by the pear's sweet.  Also, a toss of toasted pine nuts, which I never before thought I much liked.  Three pounds of which I've since eaten thus.  That's a lot of pine nuts, in quarter-cup allotments.  That's a lot of salad, since September.

The whole thing is tossed, ever-so-gently, with oil and vinegar plus a smart pinch of sugar, to gently, invisibly soften rough edges.  What you wind up with is, on the one hand, your textbook g(reens) + f(ruit) + n(uts) + c(heese) = s(alad).  This formula is lovely, and nothing new, and pretty standard, so far as salads are concerned.  

But this particular iteration of the formula, peppery greens against melting sweet pear against toasty waxed nubbins against creamy bite, bound up in a smooth featherweight shawl of a dressing, has me smitten.  Seriously smitten.  As in, I can't get enough of it smitten.  As in, I make an entire bowl of the stuff, and eat every last serving and call it lunch.  I'm reminded of my children and bagels and cream cheese, of which they can't ever seem to get enough.  I'm exactly the same around this salad, just like a kid, could eat it forever.  At least the forever left over after snow.   

Arugula, Pear, Pine Nut + Blue Cheese Salad
adapted from The Essential New York Times Cookbook, by Amanda Hesser

I like this salad with more pear than first called for, and have spelled our the arugula and salt quantities I've settled on.  Also, although the gorgonzola dolce originally called for has lovely flavor, the sort I can get my hands on is a creamy sticky mess, too much a hassle to crumble for salad.  I prefer a balanced, charismatic blue, such as Point Reyes or Maytag.  As to pears, I like a basic Bartlett best, here, for their balance of flavor, firm and juice.  A good red pear (if you can find it; they can be grainy) is beautiful, and the fragrant Comice, delicious, though their copious juices can sog down a salad.  Finally, the boxed "baby" arugula I buy now is a mere shadow of the bright vibrant local leaves of fall.  When growing season gets up and running again, I encourage you to try this with the real arugula deal.    

for salad:
4 ounces arugula
2 ripe pears, diced
1/4 cup pine nuts, toasted
1/4 cup good blue cheese, crumbled

for dressing:
2 tablespoons sherry, white wine or cider vinegar
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt

Set all salad ingredients into a wide, shallow bowl.  For dressing, pour vinegar, sugar and salt into a lidded jam jar.  Shake well to dissolve salt and sugar.  Add olive oil, shake again to emulsify, and drizzle 2/3 of dressing over salad.  Toss salad gently, well, taste for seasoning, and add more salt, pepper, and/or dressing, to suit.  Enjoy.

let's not confuse the two

Let's be clear: this is no eating squash.  It is a pumpkin, and not the pie variety, either.  The sort brought home from pumpkin patches, destined for eyeballs, mouths, moustaches.  The carving sort.  

Not that we're the sort to carve pumpkins post-Halloween.  This was one we carved just before.  But between politics and procrastination and twenty- (thirty?-) some loads of laundry, I have only just recently pulled up the photos. They are very orange.  And more than a little confusing.  Because during the same stretch of days we carved our jack-o-lanterns, we also consumed a few butternuts.  And several carnivals.  And a kabocha or two.  It seems it was a squashy October.  November seems set to continue at pace.  

(Of course, if you do have an edible pumpkin, I cannot recommend Heidi's soup highly enough.  Fry the onions in coconut oil, if you love its sweet aromatic whiff as much as I.  Triple the ginger, for a warming boost.  Make the browned butter ginger rosemary gunge, no excuses, as it tastes like stars look on a cold clear November night.  Not that we're here to talk pumpkins, or soup. Didn't mean to confuse. But superior soups must be noted.)

To keep things straight, then, let's do it this way: ornamental squash in first position, edible in second.  Am I pigeon-holing, here?  Why don't we anthropomorphize butternuts, also?  Two twigs up top, one bright crabapple in the middle, a few carved eyes, and bingo!  Rudolph.  But it would be tricky. Those long, thick necks would give you a real run for your money.  There's just so little hollow in a butternut squash. They're the solid chocolate Easter bunnies of squash, heavy, dense, substantial.  Which makes them particularly fine for eating, optimal bang for the effort buck.

The effort being no small matter, with squash.  Squash can be hard, unyielding beasts, thick of skin, wobbly of stature.  When my children were babies, I would tuck them in a sling and carry them about while I cooked dinner.  They loved this set-up, because they could, in turn, snuggle, sleep, sway, and see everything.  I loved this set-up, because it meant that we weren't restricted to cheerios and toast, that first year.  

This sling arrangement worked beautifully, until mid-fall, when the squash started rolling in.  The squash months were difficult.  Over time, I arrived at a terrifically awkward yet effective body-perpendicular-to-counter maneuver, babe turned this way, shoulder angled that way, heavy chef's knife at one fully extended arm's end, other arm doing its best Elasti-Girl imitation, reaching up-and-over-and-around baby, to hold said squash something like still.

It was nuts.  But I loved—love—squash.

(Oops.  Here I go, muddying the waters, again.  That second position pic is neither pumpkin nor butternut, but a blue plastic Lego whale.  For what it's worth, I was breaking down a butternut when it ran aground.  And do you see that yellow square?  It's a secret compartment.  Pull it out, and inside, hidden away, there's a single red brick, a heart.  

I heart that.) 

Things are a little safer, these days.  I can set them up across the table, carry conversations instead of humans, give them something to stir and scoop and spread and count and arrange and salt.  Stirring buys me five minutes, easy. Scooping and arranging, at least as much.  Not every child takes such pleasure, of course, in the orchestration of squash seeds.  I've others who subscribe to the Scoop and Dump School of seed management, still others who invoke the "EWWW!!!  No thanks!" clause.  Results may vary.  

But salt, salt is a universal, at least among my sample size of three.  It is small, and administered in pinches, and magically, I always seem to need exactly as many pinches as the child is years old.  Until they're too old to want to add pinches.  (It happens.  Quick as a wink, doing double-time.)  At which point, they occupy themselves.  Also magic.

Apparently, I take my squash with a serious side of nostalgia.  All asides aside: I came to talk salad.  Salad squared up with sweet cubes of roast squash.  And a dice of tart apple.  And toasted pecans.  And feta.  And dried cherries.  And have I lost you yet? 

Because I would have lost me, had I read this salad before I ate it.  On paper (on pixel?), it sounds, I don't know, baroque?  Even now, after eating my way through a dozen helpings, it sounds unlikely, excessive, too too. Apples and squash?  And also dried cherries?  And don't dried berries evoke bad aisle 7 "salad kits", the sort with week-old lettuce and stale croutons and tiny mummified packets of the aforementioned for color?  Let's not confuse the two. This isn't that. This is none of the above.  This is wonderful.  

I wish I could talk to your tastebuds, direct, slide a plate through the screen, bypass the brain.  Because this is how I first experienced this salad, straight from a bowl, brought by a friend.  There was pizza, also, hot and good, the sort I ordinarily eat three or four slices of.  That night, I didn't finish my first.  Too busy, I was, making a salad fool of myself.  Although, in retrospect, I would've been a fool to do otherwise.

Because this salad's so got it figured out.  There are tender, sweet caramelized cubes of squash, plus crunchy tart bites of juicy apple.  Briny, creamy nubbins of feta bridge the yielding and the crisp, the honeyed and sharp, the raw and the cooked.  Toasted pecans bring their own caliber of crunch, shattery, roasty, deeply mapled.  

And then, those dried cherries.  I'm still baffled by those cherries.  Baffled, because I don't like cherries in my salads.  So baffled, I tried leaving them out, once, only to come face to face with an uproar.  From the cherries, and the bowl, and yours truly: those cherries belong there.  Those cherries act like edible sequins, condensed winey bits of glitter and charm.  A few bites without, and without meaning to, you find yourself, and your fork, poking about, searching for garnet, until, score!  You spear one, add one square of squash, one apple, a pecan, a blip of white, a few leaves of green, until you've achieved The Perfect Bite.  

(Does anyone else do this?  Construct carefully composed bites?  Little still lifes, arranged on four tines, with life spans that make Mayflies look geriatric?  Maybe you're more the mindless salad eater, jabbing up forkfuls that just hold together, loading them in while you read The Times.  I tend to go 17th century Dutch Tuesdays and Wednesdays (Science, Food), distracted shoveler on all the rest.  Graciously, this salad holds up to both.) 

Two final footnotes.  Loads of flavor needn't equal loads of work.  Take the squash.  Roast a whole one (or two) hours (or days) in advance.  The cubes must be cooled, anyway, and you'll have a bowl at the ready all week. Witness the multiple slumped squash, above.  I roast several at a time, whole, sliced, or cubed, just to have their sweet goodness on hand.  

Ditto the toasted pecans.  We go through pounds of nuts, around here, both out of hand and in stuff.  Toasting improves nuts immeasurably, underscoring their oil, amplifying their flavor.  A toasted pecan is me, after my morning coffee, perky, sharp, tip-top, brimming with personality.  Unlike me, pecans keep their gains a dozen days or more.  Fill a sheet pan, toast a slew, keep cooled nuts in a jar, leverage your ten minutes' work all week.

Finally, play around.  This is the iteration of the salad I've settled on, and there are some pillars I wouldn't change: crisp apples, soft squash, salty feta, crisp nuts, the occasional bling and chew of dried berry.  Beyond that?  Latitude, galore.  The original had pepitas, not pecans, and they were awfully wonderful. Good candied nuts, the sort you'd set out with drinks, would, I think, be a slam-dunk.  You may prefer cranberries over cherries.  Blue cheese and feta are a toss-up, to me.  Roast the squash in coconut oil.  And perhaps smoked paprika, Sara-style.  Add maple syrup to the vinaigrette.  Or walnut oil.  Or whatever piques.  The three salads here?  Three different days, made three different ways.  Let's not confuse framework with formula.  The fun and yum are in the flex.  

A Salad of Greens, Squash and Apples for Autumn
with tremendous thanks to Tricia

If your squash has been roasted and refrigerated, allow 30 minutes, if you're able, to come to room temp.  Likewise, if you roast it same day, it will hold at room temp a good 4 hours.  I adore the tart Montmercy cherries from Trader Joe's, although any unsweetened, tart cherry will do.  

8 loose cups salad greens
2 cups cubed, roasted and cooled butternut squash*, approx. 1/2 a small squash 
1 large, tart apple (Honeycrisp or Pink Lady), cut into bite-sized bits
heaping 1/2 cup pecans, toasted**, roughly chopped
1/2 cup feta, crumbled
1/4 cup dried sour cherries, roughly chopped, or dried cranberries

dressing:
1/2  teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons cider or sherry vinegar
2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
plenty of freshly ground pepper

In a lidded jar, add vinegar and salt, return lid, and shake to dissolve.  Add oil and pepper, and shake vigorously to emulsify.

In a large salad bowl, add all salad ingredients.  Pour half of dressing over all, toss to combine, and taste for seasoning.  Salad will likely need more, though not all, of the dressing, plus additional salt and pepper, to taste. Adjust, toss, adjust, toss, clink a glass to fall, eat.    

*Roasted Butternut Squash:
Since reading Sarah's method for Perfect Roasted Squash, I've never looked back; it yields perfectly creamy, caramelized cubes, every time.  

Preheat oven to 425°, and place a rack in the lowest position.  Top and tail your butternut, peel, and slice neck from body of squash.  Halve both pieces, and scrape seeds from bulbous end.  Set each quarter on flat side, and cut into 1" slices.  Dice each slice into rough 1" cubes, set on a rimmed, parchment-lined baking sheet, and toss with two tablespoons' olive oil and 1 teaspoon kosher salt.  Cover sheet with foil, place in preheated oven, and roast 12 minutes.  Remove foil, return squash to oven, and roast another 12-15 minutes, until squash is deeply tender and caramelizing at the edges.    

**Toasted Pecans:  
Preheat oven to 350°, scatter pecans on a baking sheet, and place in the preheated oven for 10 minutes, or until the entire kitchen smells toasty and nutty and mapled, and until the nuts have darkened slightly.  Set a timer, and don't walk away; nuts burn in a wink.  Remove to a plate to end cooking, and set aside to cool.