Berries. Better than Chocolate.

Berries.  Beautiful, glamorous, sweet-tart, soft, fragile gems.  These were unusual varieties- alpine strawberries and pineberries.   

No recipe.  They were too good as nature made them.  After a quick rinse we ate them out of hand, savoring each one like it was the last.

Mushroom Stroganoff

When you go to a pub in England, they always have a few vegetarians on hand to feed the crowd.  Oh, whoops, did I say vegetarians?  I meant vegetarian dishes.  There are usually but a couple options, tried and tired and true:  the ever-changing seasonal risotto and a Mushroom stroganoff.  If you go to a fancy pub where they actually have a creative chef, then you might get a few more oldie but goodies thrown in, but those are the two that I see on almost every menu I encounter.  

I'm sick of the risotto, but with a few good ingredients and a hunt for mushrooms that aren't plain white buttons and you've got yourself a really nice dinner that I'm happy to make at home.  Use fresh pasta - if you don't make it yourself, I'm finding most groceries now carry a selection of fresh egg-pasta over with the fancy overpriced ravioli section, and sometimes they even have whole wheat pasta.  It's worlds better than the dehydrated stuff, which always seems to hang around in my cupboard forever in half-box portions.  

I loved beef stroganoff when I was a kid and when I became vegetarian, my mom would put cubes of tofu in my portion to replace the beef.  She told me later that, sigh, she still used beef stock, because what else are you going to use for a base?  I'm glad I got over my "tofu in everything" obsession.  It has its place as I'll eat it in stir fries all day long but as a meat substitute I find it horrid now.   Apparently, we didn't know about how delicious and good mushrooms were in this classic dish instead.  

This recipe is healthy yet comforting and makes for a nice post-hike dinner with its earthy tang and super fast effortless time from fridge to plate.  The longest part is waiting for the dehydrated mushrooms to come around.  I use both fresh and dried mushrooms in whatever varietals I can find.  Usually the dried mushrooms are fancy varieties but cheaper than fresh, but a dry springtime means we don't have the variety of fresh I normally count on.  Don't discard the soaking water- add all but the grit that collects at the bottom in the stock to make a rich, earthy meatless base.  Feel free to go a bit wild here:  shiitakes and morels and pied du mouton.  Mushrooms are the stars!

Recipe:  Mushroom Stroganoff

Serves 4

olive oil for frying

1 onion, sliced

2 or 3 garlic cloves, crushed and chopped

200g (2 cups) mix of fresh mushrooms, wiped off with a towel and sliced

100g (1 cup) dried mushrooms, soaked in hot water for at least 20 minutes

1 leek, white and light green part only, diced

100ml (1/2 cup) stock- the mushroom soaking liquid and additional vege stock if needed

1 tsp paprika, hot or sweet, your choice

1 tsp tomato paste (or tomato puree as they call it in the UK) 

1 tsp mustard

200g (2 cups) fresh pasta

4 tablespoons sour cream or creme fraiche, full-fat

1 lemon

a couple Tablespoons wine

handful of fresh dill, chopped

handful of fresh parsley, chopped

salt & pepper

Set a large pot of salted water on the stove to boil for the pasta.  Heat oil in a large fry pan.  When hot, add the onion and leek and cook until soft and starting to color, about 10 minutes.  Add the fresh mushrooms, the drained formerly dried mushrooms, and the garlic.  Turn the heat up and fry for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Stir in the paprika and tomato paste, cook for an additional minute.  Add the vegetable and/or mushroom stock and a glug of wine and let it cook down to half.

Meanwhile, cook the pasta:  fresh stuff only takes 3-5 minutes.  Once al dente, drain and toss with a little oil to keep it from getting sticky.  

Once the mushroom stock has reduced, add the sour cream and turn the heat down to simmer for just a couple more minutes.  Season with salt and pepper.  

Plate the pasta, top with the mushrooms and sprinkle with a squeeze of lemon juice and fresh herbs.  

Boozy Apricot and Sweet Potato cake

Calling anything "boozy" just endears itself to me.  Take this cake for instance.  

I first encountered this recipe, unappetizing titled "Apricot Yam Loaf" from the otherwise wonderful and out of print cookbook from Alice Medrich called "Chocolate and Other Low-Fat Deserts".  Forget the faddy diet gimmick, this book has some real winners of less-than cloyingly sticky sweet sweets.  That cookbook, along with the other couple hundred of cookbooks in my collection, are all in storage.  Many a sleepless nights have been spent digging around the reaches of the internet, looking to see if some food blogger somewhere had republished an old favorite of mine.  Lucky day, a few months ago David Lebowitz republished this oldie but goodie, and I went to work on making it my own again.  

While putting vegetables in sweets is nothing I usually seek out (remember the whole Sneaky Chef feud?), I find that sweet potatoes work well in a cake base.  It lends it a sweetness and earthiness that I find incredibly appealing.  While there is no way no how that I would declare this cake as healthy because of its vegetable content, I would suggest that it was perhaps a better alternative than a plain white flour and sugar cake.  It's worlds more interesting anyway.  

Back in New York, I had a tricked-out gadget-strew kitchen.  Those days are gone now, and my Cuisinart stand mixer and hand-held electric mixers are all tucked away in storage indefinitely.  That doesn't stop me from baking.  I'm low-tech now, refusing help from the machines, and justifying the creations of buttery sugary goodness by the insane beating that I give them beforehand and getting overdeveloped arms because of it.  Don't despair- with a little elbow grease, you will have lump-free fluffy batter as well.  Although you might be a bit crazy to attempt something like meringue without a mixer remember that it was invented long before electric mixers were, and some poor chef at some point would have had to give those egg whites a beating by hand.  I comfort myself with this though halfway through the cake-making process.  

It's also quite a forgiving cake.  The first time I made it, idiot that I am, I forgot to set the time on the oven and left it in 10 minutes longer than I should have.  It was just fine though- the extra moisture from the sweet potatoes and the booze-soaked apricots did a good job to make sure I didn't have to suffer through a hockey puck of cake, and it wasn't even terribly dry.  The second time, I wised up and set the timer and it came out even better!  

You can use leftover roasted sweet potatoes in this dish.  Next time you are roasting them for dinner, throw a couple extras in and behold, you have your base for cake the next day.  Otherwise, you can just microwave them as I did, since I'm lazy.  

The other thing I love about this cake is while it's in the oven, I can sit down and have a nice lunch of the leftover sweet potatoes and drink the apricot-flavored vermouth as a kind of a pre-game.

I've made a few changes, but it is still recognizable as the yam loaf from days of yore.  Oh, and the icing isn't in the original either (hello, low fat cookbook).  Thank M. Lebowitz for that stroke of genius.  Cream cheese frosting tends to make everything spectacularly good.  

The other thing about this cake is that it freezes really well.  We are but two people and an entire cake sitting on the counter leads to unhappy stale cake after a week of sitting out.  No one wants that.  I cut it in half once cooled, wrap half of it tightly in plastic wrap and freezer bags, and then cut the icing in half to compensate.  Sure, you could make the entire batch of icing and frost half the cake with it, but that is so not in the spirit of a low-fat frosted cake.  

Go right ahead.  

I'll be waiting by the phone to hear you say how good it is.  

Recipe: Boozy Apricot and Sweet Potato cake

115g (2/3 cup) diced dried apricots

125ml (1/2 cup) dry vermouth (but I suppose sweet would work as well)

225g(2 cups) flour (I used a combination of white and a light whole wheat)

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

75g(6 tablespoons) unsalted butter at room temperature

200g (1 cup) Demerara or Muscovado Sugar

zest of 1 lemon

2 large eggs, at room temperature

240g (1 cup) cooked sweet potato flesh, well mashed or pureed if you have a food processor  

125g(1 cup) toasted almonds, chopped

Frosting:

• 225g (8oz) cream cheese, room temperature
• 60g (1/4 cup) unsalted butter, cubed, at room temperature
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 100 g (3/4 cup) powdered sugar

Do-ahead:  Soak the Apricots in the Vermouth for at least a halfhour.  Overnight wouldn't be overdoing it if you have the foresight.  Drain, reserving the liquid.  DO NOT WASTE BOOZE.  

Preheat the oven to 180c/350f.  Grease 2 8" loaf pans, or whatever cake pan you happen to have.  Mine is kind of a terrine pan, but it somehow manages to do.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder.

In another bowl (or in a mixer) cream the butter with the sugar and lemon zest until smooth and fluffy. Add the eggs and combine thoroughly. If using a stand mixer, stop the mixer and scrape down the side to make sure everything is incorporated.  If you are doing this by hand, I salute you and your giant guns.  

Mix in half of the flour mixture, then the drained vermouth and sweet potato puree, then the rest of the dry ingredients. Stir in the nuts and apricots.

Divide the batter into the prepared pans, smooth the tops, and bake about 55 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove from oven and cool completely.

Once cool, make the cream cheese frosting by beating the cream cheese with the butter and vanilla. Add the powdered sugar, mixing until smooth and lump free. Divide the cream cheese frosting on top of the cakes, spreading it with a knife or spatula.  

Enjoy, it's just lovely with tea.  

Since the recipe makes two loaves, you can freeze a cake.  Wrap it well in plastic once it's cooled.

Kale Curry

I don't know what exactly triggered my vegetarianism.  Honestly, I think it was me trying to be a willful teenager and cause a scene at the dinner table without resorting to doing anything really bad, like drugs of attending back-woods keg parties that end in teen pregnancy.  Refusing animal flesh seemed to be a reasobale and polite alternative to piercings and back-alley stick-and-poke tattos of an angry unicorn or the logo of a terrible band that I liked for five minutes.  It was enough of a disturbance to cuase parental units strife at dinner time, and that was vicotry enough for me.

Once I committed to tofu dogs and soysage, I stuck with it for a good ten years.  At which point, I started to travel and decided that I'd be missing out on life if I didn't indulge in local specialties- Parma ham in Italy, Brauts in Germany, Schnitzel in Austria, Coq a Vin at a farmhouse in France.  Plus, I was getting tired of not being invited out to dinner parties at non-vegetarian's houses.  Bringing your own leftovers to microwave while everyone else eats a beef tenderloin gets old fast, and I got tired of rolling my eyes at every snide carnivorous comment being sent my way.    

I do eat meat on occasion, but I really still prefer vegetables and usually go weeks on a vege diet without even really thinking about it.  I always feel much better on a vege diet- healthier and lighter and more energetic.  It just works for me.

I do get a little help- I get a weekly vege box delivered from a farm in Devon.  It's packed with whatever is seasonal and organic that grows locally.  I love getting this and it motivates me to cook and use up every last onion and purple sprouting broccoli in there in time for the next delivery.  True, in winter time, this means cabbage and spuds and leeks and little else, but if you are going to preach about saving local agriculture and small farms, you better learn to put these veggies to good use.   

A couple weeks ago, my box contained a huge mound of sweet potatoes, bunches of kale and onions.  Sweet potato and kale is one of my favorite combinations.  I got to work and soon had a dashingly good curry on my plate.  True, the final dish won't win any beauty contest, but it's packed with so much vegetable goodness that you feel virtuous and saintly at the end of dinner time.  It's that good for you.  

Thank goodness I got over lousy rubbery meat substitutes in a hurry.  Although, I do love a good homemade veggie burger.  I'll share one with you soon.

The beauty of this health-giving and tasty dish is that it makes a lot, and that lot can be slopped into tuppys at the end of dinner and stacked in the freezer for when you are too busy or lazy to throw something together.  

Recipe: Kale Curry

Serves 4 with leftovers

Adapted from The America's Test Kitchen Complete Vegetarian Cookbook, with some bright ideas from the Cookie and Kate blog.

1½ cups brown rice, rinsed

3 T olive oil, divided
1 onion, chopped, 
32oz (2lbs) sweet potato, peeled and cubed
5 garlic cloves (or more if you you are bold!), minced
2 t fresh ginger, grated
1 t curry power (I went the Indian route, Thai would work as well)
32 oz (2 lbs) kale, stemmed and chopped
8oz (1 c) vegetable broth or stock 
14 oz coconut milk
Lime, for squeezing and garnish
30 g (1/3c) pepitas or other raw seeds
salt and black pepper
red pepper flakes

Cook the rice as whatever the instructions say to on the bag. This usually takes about a  half hour, so you can easily multitask your way into everything being done at the same time.

Heat 2 T of olive oil in a large pot wit a fitted lid over medium heat.  Add the onion and cook, stirring frequently until it is soft and translucent.  Add the sweet potato, cover and cook for about 5 minutes.  Transfer to a large bowl.  Return the pot to the stove.

Heat another T of oil in the pot.  Add the garlic, ginger and curry powder.  Stir constantly for less than a minute, until your nose tells you it's good, and then add half the kale.  Stir, and when the kale wilts down, add the rest of the greens.  Add the broth and coconut milk.  Season with salt and pepper.  Reduce the heat and cover.  Cook for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the kale is wilted and tender.  Add the sweet potatoes, throw the lid on, and continue to cook for another 10-20 minutes (this kind of depends on the size of your sweet potato cubes, but you want them tender).    

While you are waiting for the sweet potatoes to soften, heat a fry pan over medium low-heat and add the pepitas and seeds.  Keep them moving constantly until they toast up, emit a nutty odor and, in the case of the pepitas anyway, begin to puff up and pop.  This should only take a few minutes.  Set aside.    

Once the sweet potatoes are cooked through, remove the lid and turn the heat up until the sauce is a consistency to your liking, about 2-5 minutes. Stir occasionally to keep the bottom from burning.   

By now, your rice should be done.  Spoon rice into bowls, top with the sweet potato and kale.  Squeeze a bit of lime on top and sprinkle some chili flakes on top, then top the whole mess with the pepitas.  Serve, enjoy, and feel like the virtuous god(dess) you are.

Fig and Goat Cheese Salad

I started seeing figs at the market lately.  They aren't quite the perfect jammy-sweet gems that the coming weeks will bring, but they are perfectly acceptable for a salad or something where you aren't overwhelmed by their mediocrity.  

I must confess though: this isn't necessarily a bad thing.  I've been known to consume a ridiculous amount of figs when they are at their peak of perfection.  It's kind of like the scene in "Coolhand Luke" except with figs instead of hardboiled eggs.  "No woman can eat 50 figs" some hardened criminal will say.  And I will prove them wrong.  Every.  Time.  

I find them an absolute delight in a simple salad.  Here's one that I've adapted (yet again) from Ottolenghi's cookbook "Plenty", which is my go-to for any vegetable recipe lately.  It's just lovely.  Pomegranate Molasses is one of those things I always keep a bottle of around.  It's common in middle eastern recipes and I'm quite in love with it.  It is a concentrated hit of the sweet-sour tang of pomegranate seeds.  It does fantastically as a fruity hit to a salad dressing, but it's also just wicked on lamb or glazed on chicken.  

As for goat cheese, I use a fresher soft one from either Cornwall or Somerset, but you can just as well use one of those pyramids of Cherve if that's what you have on hand.  I dislike goat cheese that are too salty or chalky and aged, but I prefer the soft downy-rind variety with a slightly gooey centre to light up my life.  

Recipe:  Fig and Goat Cheese Salad

Serves 2 Generously as a main

1 shallot, finely chopped

½ tsp mustard or your choosing

2 tsp pomegranate molasses (found in better grocery stores of middle eastern bodegas)

salt and black pepper

3 Tbsp olive oil, plus extra to finish

A couple of handfuls of arugula

a handful of mixed purple and green basil leaves

8 ripe figs, at room temperature

2½ oz young and creamy goat cheese

Make the dressing:  Place the shallot, mustard, olive oil and pomegranate molasses in a jar.  I keep clean jam jars on hand just for this purpose- they are perfect for mixing and serving salad dressings.  Alternatively, you can put this in a bowl and go at it with a whisk. Add some salt and pepper and whisk or shake vigorously until it becomes a homogeneous mixture.  

In a large bowl, add the arugula and basil leaves and drizzle the dressing on top.  Toss gently.

Plate your dressed salad leaves.  Cut the figs into quarters and arrange on top, and dot with bits of the goat cheese.  Season with salt and pepper and serve.

Black Kale and Shallot Salad

I do love a fancy salad as dinner sometimes.  

Not the dreaded health food pile of tasteless greens topped with vinaigrette, but something beautiful and substantial on the plate.  Sure, you still feel virtuous afterwards, but it's more of the soul-satisfying comfort of warm food with sweet and salty crunchy earthiness that makes this salad craveable.    

I got the idea for this salad from the book "One- a Cook and her Cupboard".  I think I was living out of a hotel when I spied it, heavily discounted at a fancy department store.  Books are terrible for people who move around a lot, and cookbooks make little sense to buy if you don't have access to a kitchen, so it was a smart investment all around.  It's a really beautiful book to flip through, but I soon found the reason why it was on the bargain table.  Most of the recipes are quite complicated (some needlessly so) and require oodles of specialty ingredients or equipment, and some of the directions seem quite vague.  Not the easiest thing to digest for a cook with limited means or equipment.  

I spotted a kale salad salad, made some easy modifications and knew it was a winner.  It's quite pretty on the plate and ticks all kind of boxes for me:  it looks like something that took a lot more time than it should, it's pretty to plate, it's vegetarian, warming and satisfying without being too heavy.  A good choice in winter, or a dreary spring day where winter seems closer than summer. 

Recipe:  Black Kale and Shallot Salad

serves 4 to start, 2 for dinner

6 Shallots

a few sprigs of fresh thyme

olive oil, preferably of the extra virgin variety

salt

1 large sweet potato

1 garlic clove

a pinch of brown sugar

45g whole almonds

bunch (about 300g) purple curly kale.  Sure, you could use green, but purple looks dramatic.

1 tbsp butter

Preheat the oven to 180c/355f.

Roast your roots:  Peel and cut the root end off the shallots, leaving whole.  Peel and dice the sweet potato.  Peel and crush the garlic clove.  Put the shallots and sweet potatoes and garlic in a medium pan with a good glug of olive oil, salt, brown sugar and the thyme sprigs, and give it a few turns with a spoon or your hands to coat.  Cover and place in the oven for 30 minutes until the shallots have started to collapse and they start to caramelize.  Take out of the oven and let cool slightly.

Roast your almonds:  on a baking sheet, place almonds in a single layer and place in the oven.  Give the pan a shake after about 2 minutes, and let them roast a few minutes more.  Almonds should be a couple shades darker and be pleasantly fragrant.  Once cool, chop roughly.

Wash the kale and remove and large, tough stems.  Bring a pan of salted water to a boil and cook the kale for about two minutes.  Drain and shock with a rinse in the cold tap.  

Warm the butter over medium heat in a pan.  Add the drained kale, the shallots and potato.  Gently stir to coat with butter and to warm it up, then heap onto plates.  Sprinkle the chopped almonds on top and season to taste.  

Rhubarb Ginger Crumble

It's springtime!  Time for ludicrously priced precious early gems to start appearing at the farmer's markets.  The best of which might be the lovely pale pink stalks of rhubarb.  

I'm fairly unaccustomed to paying for this stuff.  Growing up, it's one of the few vegetables that "take" to Maine soil and climate.  Like zucchinis, by mid-summer, you are paying people to haul this away from you.  We would walk down to the end of the road where a nice couple with a large patch of it would indulge us and send us back up the hill with an armful of ruby-pink stalks, me impatiently nibbling on the end much like I would later do with the baguettes in Paris.  Getting home, we would be allowed to have a small bowl with sugar in it, dip the chewed end to coat, and then chew as much of the ultra-tart rhubarb as bearable before returning to mash the chewed end into sugar once again.  Why yes,  I did buy my dentist a boat, why do you ask?

Most of the rhizomes would get chopped up and frozen as there was usually just too much to handle all at once.  The obvious choice for it was to be paired with strawberries into tarts and pies.  This is still just classic and a favorite.

I started experimenting with this tart vegetable that we treat as a fruit in recent years.  It works well in savory dishes- stir-fried with pork belly, made into a chutney and spooned onto roasted duck breast.  The tartness complements fatty and rich dishes like no other, the flash of pink gives dishes a cheerful boost.

I found a new favorite courtesy of Ginger Pig.  This is a fantastic (and fantastically expensive) high-end butcher over in Borough Market.  They raise all the animals free-range on their farm in Yorkshire and are famous for almost everything they produce (I find their homemade pies irresistible).  They have a nice (although much more meat-heavy than what I usually go for) series of cookbooks that focuses on charming farmhouse-rustic-chic cooking where I found a recipe for a rhubarb ginger crisp.  This was a dashingly good combination.  The rhubarb cooked down to be submerged in a deeply caramelized syrup of spice and sweet-tart that I couldn't get enough of, especially when you have a half-melted scoop of vanilla ice cream to lovingly mop away at with the topping.  We licked the dishes clean- a perfectly wicked preview of good things to come from the garden.

Added bonus: this would work nicely with lots of fruit combinations, so feel free to add some frozen berries that you might have lying around.  It also freezes quite well, so it wouldn't be inhuman of you to make a double batch and save some for a lazier day.

I share it with you here.  

Recipe:  Rhubarb Ginger Crumble
from the Ginger Pig Farmhouse Cookbook
Serves 4-6.  Takes about 15 minutes active time, 1 hour total.

125g (41/2oz) chilled butter, cut into dice
125g (41/2oz) plain flour
50g (2oz) ground almonds, or almond flour
50g (2oz) rolled oats
700g (1lb 9oz) rhubarb, cleaned and chopped into inch-long pieces with the tough strings peeled off
20g (3/4oz) fresh ginger root: peeled and grated with a microplane or diced finely
50g (2oz) unrefined caster sugar

Preheat the oven to 180c/350f

Combine the butter and flour together in a bowl with a pastry cutter or your fingers until coarse crumbs form.  Add the almonds, sugar and oats and mix to combine.

Place the chopped rhubarb into an oven proof dish.  I am a bit poor in the baking dish department and used two, and then froze the smaller one for later.  You could use a pie or tart dish, whatever!  As long as all the rhubarb fits and you have a bit of clearance for the topping.

Add the ginger and the sugar to the rhubarb and mix the whole mess together.  Spoon the crumble mixture over the top.

Place the dish(es) on a baking sheet (this is pretty important if you don't want a smoky sugary syrup mess on the bottom of your oven).  Bake for 40 minutes, until golden brown and bubbly.

Let cool for a minute, if you can wait.  Molten sugar is not pleasant to be slinging around your kitchen!  Serve with ice cream (strawberry comes to mind, but vanilla was just grand) and a sprig of mint.

Blood Orange and Burrata Salad

By way of introduction:  I am a burrata junkie.  

The first time I traveled to Italy, I rode the rails with my discounted eurorail pass.  It was autumn, the weather was fine, and I had no real idea what these places I was to visit might be all about.  Venice to Milan to Bologna to Florence to Rome, I was getting off the train to spend a few unplanned days in each place, staying in cheap hostels and wearing out my one pair of boots that I had brought along.  I found the Roman hostels to be a bit sketchy, so I took the step of then renting a tiny flat for a few weeks in the Roman suburbs.  It was a pretty sublime introduction to some beautiful old cities of one of the most touristed countries in the world.  Although I must admit I was pretty sick of Jesus art fairly quickly, I was lucky in my experiences and really enjoyed my time there, and after a while smiling and saying my Per Favors and Grazies came automatically.  

This is the kind of slow travel that I love.  Really taking your time to get to know a place, observing the rhythms of daily life.  Ah, and the food!  The food, the food.  I almost never eat Italian food outside of Italy because the simple magic of anything grown or made there instantly dissolves once you hit the border.  Blessed with pleasant climates and fertile soil, the produce is outstandingly good, very fresh, and lovingly procured each morning by nonnas and chefs alike at the local outdoor market that would pop up along the sidewalk and be gone by noon.

While in Rome, I would roll out of bed in the morning, take a two-minute shower before the tiny hot water tank ran out of love for me, and then head down to my local outdoor market.  Every morning, I would seek out some fresh bread, fruit and cheese and have myself a little morning picnic Tiber-side while watching men in natty slim-fitting suits and women with the highest of heels and chic dresses hustle off to work before I headed over to check out the countless galleries and ancient monuments that make up Rome. 

Having a home base outside of the tourist zone was the best idea I could have possibly had.  Not only was it filled with friendly cafes and traditional osterias serving loads of good food and wine, it was remarkably free of the busloads of tourist, and the dining options much cheaper and better than the scrum of over-cheesed pasta-slinging mama mia joints.  I was on a tight in-between-jobs budge but I would like to think I ate like royalty every meal.  In my terrible pick-it-up-as-I-need-it Italian, I would do quite a bit of guess work as to what I might be ordering for dinner, as English was not the default language in this part of town, asking the waiter shyly, "si tratta di un pesce? è un vegetale?" just to make sure I wasn't getting tripe or brains or something else that I find unsavory.  Happily, I am an adventurous eater.

It was always delicious- stuffed squash blossoms and homemade pastas with bitter greens and chili and olive oil, a jug of house wine on the table for a pittance that didn't make you pucker, and a bottle of grappa plunked down on the table once I had paid my bill.  I would dutifully take a tearful sip and then run before they poured me another of the grappa.  They are married to tradition, but oh! what tradition it is.

In these exchanges at the morning market, I was constantly trying the new varietals of things I had never heard of or seen before, which I found much more enjoyable than merely guessing at what I would get from a restaurant menu.  The vendors, friendly and chatty, would help me choose my fruit and send me on my way.  Two things that I discovered in that market- these brown pears (like boscs?) that were the size of my head.  I would need two hands to lift them to my face, and proceed to slick  myself with pear juice with every bite.  I have yet to find a pear that good again, and I'm back to being somewhat content with your every day run of the mill pear, as hard and flavorless as it might be.  The other thing that I ate voraciously and without tire was a cheese, dripping with cream, distinctively topknot-wrapped in bright green leaves.

Burrata.

Which means "buttered".

This cheese is indescribably good.  I will spend the rest of my life chasing my burrata high, looking for that perfectly creamy dumpling of mozzarella and cream.  When it's fresh, it's the only food you will want for the rest of your life.  It has humble beginnings: cheesemakers in Puliga (the wild and rural heel of the boot) would use their leftover mozzarella scraps to form a ball of cheese, which was filled with cream.  This is what they would take home at the end of the day to feed their family.  That green leaf that it is tied with?  The shade of green it is lets your know if its past its prime, as you only want it within the first 24 hours of its life, and never ever more than 48.  This is the mayfly of cheeses.

That is why this is so precious.  You will never get burrata as good as that.  Even being in Rome I was stretching the geographical boundaries of where good burrata can be found.  If you can get fresh burrata any where else, it's got a slight sourness to it, the crust is too tough and rubbery.  It's jet-lagged.  Still, sub par burrata is better than no burrata at all.  I continue to try and recapture that feeling of Rome.  

After I would wolf down my pear, use the fresh bread to sop up the leaking cream of the milky fresh burrata, I would feel much happiness.  True, I was a stranger here- I knew no one and didn't speak the language and had spent the past couple months without hearing or seeing anyone familiar- but a sense of contentment and belonging would take over and I would cheerily wander around until lunch time, where an excuse to have a pastry or gelato would present itself.  The Romans were kind to me: covered in pear juice and an unexpected spurt of cream on my jacket and just generally looking sticky with traces of soap still in my hair, they never turned me away.  I guess the fact that the city's founders were raised by wolves gave me a bit of a pass on that one.

That brings me to the recipe.  I am frequently at war in the kitchen- coaxing sauces not to curdle, violently mincing garlic, getting the perfect crust to form on a lamb chop while keeping it perfectly pink on the inside.  I'm a mess, I make a mess, and yet I enjoy it thoroughly.  I feel like home cooking is a lost art, something we are all too busy to take the time to do.  Yet...it can be very simple, and much healthier than something that came from the store in cellophane and a way to make happy connections with our pasts.

Since moving to London I have been much dismayed by the state of vegetable cooking here.  If I'm at a pub and order a side of vege what I get is this:  A dish.  It has vegetables in it.  The vegetables are usually peas and or carrots, sometimes broccoli or green beans.  They appear to have come from a bag in the freezer.  They have been microwaved until hot, then plunked down in front of me without a squeeze of lemon or garnish or ceremony.  They taste, predictably, like the seventh level of hell if vegetables went to hell.  They make me want to cry they are so terrible.

And we wonder why people aren't eating more vegetables.

Arrive our hero, Yotam Ottolenghi.  He opened a few upscale deli-style cafes around London, and a posh place in Soho called Nopi where the beautiful people go.  While I'm usually not a fan-girl of celebrity chefdom, this man does magic with vegetables.  He respects them, he coaxes the best out of them with unexpected twists and flavors.  I ran out and bought his cookbook "Plenty", and I can honestly say that I haven't had a failure yet.  Swoon.

This recipe you won't find in any of his cookbooks as far as I know.  I had a dish at Nopi a little while back and it's easy to recreate at home.  They had me at burrata and it was unexpected and delicious in the the mad combination of pieces that made it whole.  I wrote it down the best of my memory and make this as my go-to when I can be bothered to do anything with burrata upon bringing it home instead of just tearing into it like a crazed she-wolf the moment the door slams behind me.  The ingredients look weird together, but TRUST ME, they come together to make something tangy and bitter and spicy and creamy and sweet and it will be gone before you know it.   It's perfect for winter, when blood oranges and their dramatic ruby blush are at their peak but you could probably sub some clementines or tangerines if need be.  It's my favorite kind of meal- a few perfect ingredients thrown together without too much washing up to do afterwards.

If you absolutely can not find fresh burrata where you live, my heart cries for you, but you could probably do just fine with a milky buffalo's milk mozzarella.

Recipe:  Blood Orange and Burrata Salad
Serves 2

2 blood oranges
1 ball of the freshest Burrata you can manage to acquire
1 tablespoon/14 g of coriander seeds
A couple handfuls of lettuce leaves: lambs lettuce would work nicely here
1 teaspoon /7ml runny honey
good balsamic vinegar and olive oil for drizzling
Sea salt
Bread, for serving

Peel the blood oranges and roughly chop or tear them into wedges.  Transfer them into a serving bowl or big plate along with the juices that have made a mess of your cutting board along with the lettuce.

Heat a fry pan on medium-low heat.  Add the coriander seeds.  Toss them around near constantly and watch them like a hawk.  They will become pleasantly fragrant, turn a toasty brown color, and begin to make soft popping noises.  Cut the heat when they begin to pop and don't let them cook for a second more.  This should only take a couple minutes.  Do not be tempted to skip this toasting step!  It transforms the seeds into earthy, lemony little bits of popcorn.

Place the burrata on the plate atop your salad and oranges.  Drizzle with honey, a little olive oil and balsamic.  Sprinkle with sea salt and the toasted coriander seeds.  Serve with good bread to mop up all the goodness at the bottom of the plate.  Pour a glass of wine and enjoy la dolce vita!