Running, baking, and food blogs
I run on Sundays. These are long runs, somewhere in the vicinity of 10 miles or so. Every Sunday morning, when the city is still asleep or just blearily waking up to go to church (or food shopping or temple, this is medical Boston during passover, afterall). I usually do a loop along the Charles, but I ran into some obstacles this morning. Namely, the women's qualifier for the Boston marathon going on right on my favorite bridge, Harvard bridge. Mine.
The view is spectacular, particularly at sunrise:
So I couldn't cross this amazing bridge like I do every Sunday. I did a weird zigzag loop thing instead, taking backroads as much as possible, and calling it a day after an hour and a half. 10.17 miles on the gmaps pedometer, not bad.
I like Sundays because I get to eat whatever I feel like. I'm baking a flourless chocolate cake today, after I finish procrastinating. Here's what I cooked today:
-baked peas in a tarragon yogurt sauce, sprinkled with chopped pistachios. The sauce came together beautifully in the blender. It was thick and gorgeous with the scent of tarragon (one of my favorite spices, great with chicken or turkey) and had a surprising crunch of chopped scallions in it. The olive oil helped it's consistency, but its thickness was mainly due to greek strained yogurt, which is heavenly stuff indeed.
-Lentil soup featuring the fabulous green monster vegetable, kale. Kale is amazingly tough and herbaceous to work with because 1)it's so prickly and dusty looking when you get it at the grocery store and 2) it DOES NOT REDUCE IN VOLUME when you cook it, a difficult concept for those used to working with spinach or chard. But it's deliciously mellow and nutty if you treat it right. A brisk sauté with pancetta or a gentle 5-10 minute wilting is all you need. Lemon or red wine vinegar helps add complementary acidity. Kale is great in turnovers with spinach, nutmeg, and shredded manchego. Enough about kale though, and more about lentil soup!
This lentil soup featured crushed tomatoes and black beluga lentils, along with a lot of kale. The acidity of the tomatoes is a great foil for the earthy lentils, and all those great flavors are brightened by a daub saffron yogurt.
I also made baked pepper-lime asparagus. Grayson had a lime left over from a party the other night. I had been craving asparagus recently, as it is spring and thus asparagus season. I spread out a layer of beautiful asparagus stalks in a layer, tossed them with a glug of olive oil and a generous pinch or two of coarse sea salt and a crack of pepper, and topped them with fresh lime juice. I feel no guilt to admitting that I ate the whole tray standing up next to the toaster oven twenty minutes later.
Finally, I finished off with a rice and asparagus soup of my own creation:
I love brown rice (I'm asian enough that I love all rice, really). I like it's nuttiness and plump texture, and how it has a little bit of give when you chew it. I like that it doesn't mush like white rice does (whether rice-like stickiness and mushiness is a virtue or a sin is a long debated question between basmati and sticky rice enthusiasts). These properties makes me think that it would hold up pretty decently in a soup.
I fried up some garlic in olive oil and threw away the solids after all that gorgeous flavor had infused into the oil. To that, I added thinly sliced shallots. I sweated the shallots until they turned translucent but not quite brown. Added in the cooked rice, stirred in a pat of good butter, and set aside. In a sauce pan, I brought two cups of chicken stock to simmer. Dumped in the rice to absorb some lovely stock flavor, and blended in freshly roasted asparagus (a second batch) with another stalk's worth of finely chiffonade-ed tarragon. Serve topped with floaty circles of scallions, and a squeeze of lime juice to perk up the broth.
All this cost me about $30, and a lot of looking at food blogs. Completely worth it, and it'll feed me until next Sunday.
The view is spectacular, particularly at sunrise:
So I couldn't cross this amazing bridge like I do every Sunday. I did a weird zigzag loop thing instead, taking backroads as much as possible, and calling it a day after an hour and a half. 10.17 miles on the gmaps pedometer, not bad.
I like Sundays because I get to eat whatever I feel like. I'm baking a flourless chocolate cake today, after I finish procrastinating. Here's what I cooked today:
-baked peas in a tarragon yogurt sauce, sprinkled with chopped pistachios. The sauce came together beautifully in the blender. It was thick and gorgeous with the scent of tarragon (one of my favorite spices, great with chicken or turkey) and had a surprising crunch of chopped scallions in it. The olive oil helped it's consistency, but its thickness was mainly due to greek strained yogurt, which is heavenly stuff indeed.
-Lentil soup featuring the fabulous green monster vegetable, kale. Kale is amazingly tough and herbaceous to work with because 1)it's so prickly and dusty looking when you get it at the grocery store and 2) it DOES NOT REDUCE IN VOLUME when you cook it, a difficult concept for those used to working with spinach or chard. But it's deliciously mellow and nutty if you treat it right. A brisk sauté with pancetta or a gentle 5-10 minute wilting is all you need. Lemon or red wine vinegar helps add complementary acidity. Kale is great in turnovers with spinach, nutmeg, and shredded manchego. Enough about kale though, and more about lentil soup!
This lentil soup featured crushed tomatoes and black beluga lentils, along with a lot of kale. The acidity of the tomatoes is a great foil for the earthy lentils, and all those great flavors are brightened by a daub saffron yogurt.
I also made baked pepper-lime asparagus. Grayson had a lime left over from a party the other night. I had been craving asparagus recently, as it is spring and thus asparagus season. I spread out a layer of beautiful asparagus stalks in a layer, tossed them with a glug of olive oil and a generous pinch or two of coarse sea salt and a crack of pepper, and topped them with fresh lime juice. I feel no guilt to admitting that I ate the whole tray standing up next to the toaster oven twenty minutes later.
Finally, I finished off with a rice and asparagus soup of my own creation:
I love brown rice (I'm asian enough that I love all rice, really). I like it's nuttiness and plump texture, and how it has a little bit of give when you chew it. I like that it doesn't mush like white rice does (whether rice-like stickiness and mushiness is a virtue or a sin is a long debated question between basmati and sticky rice enthusiasts). These properties makes me think that it would hold up pretty decently in a soup.
I fried up some garlic in olive oil and threw away the solids after all that gorgeous flavor had infused into the oil. To that, I added thinly sliced shallots. I sweated the shallots until they turned translucent but not quite brown. Added in the cooked rice, stirred in a pat of good butter, and set aside. In a sauce pan, I brought two cups of chicken stock to simmer. Dumped in the rice to absorb some lovely stock flavor, and blended in freshly roasted asparagus (a second batch) with another stalk's worth of finely chiffonade-ed tarragon. Serve topped with floaty circles of scallions, and a squeeze of lime juice to perk up the broth.
All this cost me about $30, and a lot of looking at food blogs. Completely worth it, and it'll feed me until next Sunday.