Endive Boats with Browned Mushrooms

Most foods have a unitary spirit, a one defining trait or feeling or taste to offer.

This, however, is a dualistic food. Opposite, opposing forces are swirling around in these boats made from endive leaves and filled with browned mushrooms.  Like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  But much less sinister. I hope.

Instead of a composition of good and evil, we have the mature and the jejune.

On the one hand, there is the fussy side, the prim side, the fancy side.  Adult, perhaps.  Stuffed leaves topped with just a bit of grated fennel and tarragon.  Looking all elegant and handsome on a platter.

And yet they also have a fun and relaxed side.  A child-like side.  The side that enjoys serving the leaves separate from the mushrooms, especially on a lazy, sunny Wednesday afternoon.  No fennel or tarragon needed.  There is much delight to be had in taking a spoon and scooping the mushrooms into the leaves and pretending it is a boat. Then subsequently sailing it right into your mouth with its delicious mushrooms perked up with Herbs de Provence and sweetened with pomegranate juice.

Both sides mutually construct, mutually constitute each other.  Defining themselves in opposition to each, i.e.- an adult is a non-child, and vice verse.  Yet these are not so much mutually exclusive as they are twain - both being housed within each of us and within each of these boats.  Depending on all the variables - the time of day, our mood, what was eaten for breakfast, etc., - each of these parts of us, the adult or the child can be accessed.

Just superficial differences separate the child from the adult here - a garnish, full assembly.  But it makes the world of difference, I suppose.

Want some more ideas for using endive? Cooking Light has some fabulous salads like this one and this one to make good use of this vegetable!

Ingredients
2 heads of endive leaves, separated and rinsed
8 ounces cremini mushrooms, quartered
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1/2 teaspoon Herbs de Provence
kosher salt
freshly ground pepper
2 tablespoons pomegranate juice
grated fennel, optional, for serving
tarragon, optional, for serving

Instructions
Melt the butter and olive oil in a large sauté pan over high heat. Once the butter has melted and the bubbles in the mixture have started to subside, add the chopped mushrooms. Stir continuously, allowing the mushrooms to absorb the butter and oil mixture. After a few minutes, once the mushrooms have begun to brown and release their juices.  Sprinkle with Herbes de Provennce, and dash of salt and freshly ground black pepper. Pour in the pomegranate juice.  Take off heat and set aside.

If going the fancy route, spoon a bit of the mushroom mixture into each of the endive leaves and top each one with a small grating of fresh fennel and a tarragon leaf.  

Seasoned Tofu Nuggets with Honey Mustard Dipping Sauce

Sleep is a most unreliable, fickle companion.  Bestowing her presence, when and only when she decides.

Some days, she leaves you much too early, on a most unfortunate, most inconvenient of days. Like, for instance, the night the clocks move ahead one hour for daylight savings time, exacerbating the sleep loss tremendously.  Luckily, or unluckily, in this case, she left Seth and me both, giving the two of us opportunity to commiserate together in our sleepless despair, cursing the world in which we live, one that is supremely unfair in that a 3 am craving for a decent bowl of ramen is left unfulfilled until the following day. This sleep deprivation also results in nonsensical, yet mystifyingly stimulating, conversations about which planet we would vote out of the solar system (answer - MERCURY, naturally).

Or else sleep never even arrives as scheduled.  Leaving you alone, stranded really, with your thoughts.  Which during the daylight hours is quite a lovely experience, but at night, at night it is terrible.  Night thoughts may start out innocently enough, but they quickly become fears and worries that multiply and compound until they themselves form a companion of their own for you, leaving no room in the bed for sleep.

And on the other hand, sleep will show up without so much as a phone call, the equivalent of just dropping by.  This of course happens on those days when there seems to be an impossibly long, ever growing list of tasks to complete.  One sits down for just a second to gather one's thoughts or else to read the child to sleep, and that is when sleep will make her appearance, cradling you into her arms and you are unable to resist the softness, throwing the whole to-do list in disarray. Or else sleep decides to come when you are on a rare night out on the town with the spouse and decide to see a movie at the ungodly hour of 9 pm and find that your eyes are feeling heavy, and while you actually, truly are enjoying the movie, your eyes will absolutely not stay open. Despite a concerted effort at willing your eye muscles to keep them open and  ingesting caffeine in the form of a giant mocha drink.  An apparently impotent drink.  And you find sleep right there in the seat with you.

Sleep, when irregular, when unreliable, leaves detritus in her wake.  Whether in the form of tired bodies or in the form of to-do lists not completed.  Regardless, the world continues to turn and meals still need to be cooked.  But those meals need not be complicated, as complicated endeavors are a precarious undertaking when pressed for time or sleep.  These tofu nuggets, all coated in a seasoned cornmeal mixture and served with honey mustard dipping sauce, can be put together rather easily.  The cornmeal might not be for everybody - it isn't exactly crispy, more like a pleasantly chewy, slightly crunchy texture that is fun to bite down on.  But Max and I enjoy it. And seasoned with some smoked paprika, cumin, and coriander to give the taste buds something to seek out, something earthy, something smoky, something peppery.  A no frills honey mustard sauce makes a nice accompaniment for the the nuggets.  Sleep may be an unreliable companion, but these nuggets are not.

Ingredients
For the nuggets:
1 cup medium grind cornmeal
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
generous pinch kosher salt
12 ounces extra firm tofu, drained, sliced into about 21 squares

For the dip:
1/2 cup mayonnaise (homemade or store-bought)
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard (I prefer using Maille brand)
1 teaspoon honey
1 teaspoon lemon juice

Instructions
To make the nuggets: Heat oven to 375.  Mix cornmeal with the seasonings in a shallow bowl.  Coat the tofu squares in the cornmeal mixture.  The seasoned cornmeal should adhere to the tofu. Place coated squares on baking sheet and bake until golden brown, about 15-20 minutes.

To make the dip: Mix all the ingredients together.  Serve with the nuggets.


NOTE: We did not receive financial compensation for this post. We received the Maille mustard for review purposes. The opinions are completely our own.  The mustard is absolutely wonderful.

Flatbreads with Avocado, Seasoned Red Onions, Cotija Cream Cheese Spread, and Strawberries

This is a snack to be eaten in one of two ways -

1) All proudly assembled

2) Served as components, with all the pieces to be put together on the spot, simultaneously building and eating then rebuilding your afternoon snack

The first has some merits. But the second is my favorite. The experience of finding just the right combination that works for you, of figuring out the precise balance of those bracing red onions to avocado to cream and cotija cheeses to crunchy sunflower seeds to sweet strawberry slices that makes your particular taste buds sing.

Too often, we need our snacks to be quick. To be eaten with only one hand while the other is engaged with wrangling a small child, clicking away at a keyboard, or steering the wheel of a vehicle.

Yet there is a lovely beauty in the solitude of blocking out the responsibilities of the world and concentrating on your own nourishment. Perhaps one will share this snack with others. Perhaps not. If sharing, one may find oneself in a parallel play of sorts, building your snacks side by side, suiting the snack to each individual’s taste buds. I like to call it "parallel eating."

Eventually, the snack time comes to an end, and one resumes attending to all those responsibilities that were pushed aside. But the memory of snack time lingers until dinner.

Need to ripen your avocados? This Cooking Light article will tell you how!




Ingredients
For the seasoned red onions:
1 small red onion, thinly sliced
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
pinch kosher salt
sprinkle of freshly ground black pepper

For the cream and cotija spread:
8 ounces cold cream cheese
4 tablespoons cotija cheese

For the avocado spread:
2 ripe avocados, mashed with a fork
drizzle of fresh lemon juice (about a teaspoon)
pinch kosher salt
sprinkle of freshly ground black pepper

1 cup sliced strawberries
1/3 cup sunflower seeds
salt and pepper, to taste
4 flatbreads, warmed

Instructions
Place the sliced red onions in a bowl. Drizzle with lemon juice, and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Using a mixer, beat together cream and cotija cheeses.

Mash the avocadoes with a fork. Drizzle with lemon juice and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

To assemble the flatbreads, spread cream cheese mixture, then avocado mixture. Top with red onions, sunflower seeds, and strawberries. Sprinkle with more salt and pepper to taste. Especially the pepper, it truly makes the flavors pop.

Salty Toasty Umami Popcorn

I find myself refraining from looking at objects too closely.  I suppose this is not a new development.  Just one that I recently noticed.  I resist inspection, as that could lead to seeing too much.  Perhaps this stems from fear, as if one doesn't see it, one can pretend it never happened or doesn't exist.  Or perhaps to retain the beauty, the perfections, as the cracks and the flaws can remain invisible when quickly looked over.  Or perhaps, because quite frankly, I'm just not a visual thinker, so my mind glosses over things.  This tendency stands in contrast to my son, who must inspect all the things very,  very closely.  

I suppose Max is on to something in this case.  There are things I miss out on when I do my standard visual gloss over.  I miss the curves and contours of a single piece of popcorn. The way the seasonings collect in the crevices.  In this case, the speckles of salt and pepper that dot the surface, punctuating the white expanse with bits of color, directing your attention so that your eyes cannot help but be drawn to the sight of the glittery seasonings that await and your fingers are unable to do anything but grab a handful more.  The clinging of the nutritional yeast, holding on to each popped kernel with all of its might, trying to stay connected to this source of warmth.

It seems like a physical impossibility that this shape, the shape in front of you even exists, as they once, just a few moments ago, were part of the uniformed soldiers of kernels, and now in what seems like a defiance of physical laws, each of these heated kernels has burst open and become an individual.  An individual with its very own proportion of salt to pepper to cayenne to nutritional yeast.

While I have something to learn from Max about sight, I have one up on him when it comes to taste.  Taste is not something to be rushed over.  One must linger over each bite, finding the unexpected notes.  The warm, toasted notes from the salt and the peppercorns.  The way the Szechuan peppercorns open up taste buds, acting as an ambassador for the fiery notes of the cayenne.  The umami that comes from the nutritional yeast. The subtle background noise of the olive oil, giving just a hint of fruit. This is a rather stripped down popcorn.  But somehow it is still an electric one.  Something I can't stop eating.  I even catch myself admiring its appearance.

Ingredients
For the toasted salt and pepper:
1 tablespoon kosher salt
2 teaspoons Szechuan peppercorns

For the popcorn:
approximately 3 tablespoons canola oil (enough to cover the bottom of a large pot)
1/3 cup popcorn kernels
2 -3 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 tablespoons nutritional yeast flakes
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 1//2 teaspoons ground toasted salt/pepper mix

Instructions
For the toasted salt and pepper:  We got this technique from Fiona Smith's book Dim Sum.  Place the salt and Szechuan peppercorns in a skillet and cook over low heat for about 3 minutes, until the mixture has become fragrant. Then run the mixture through a spice grinder.

For the popcorn:  Heat the canola oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add three kernels of popcorn and cover pot with lid. Once those have popped, add 1/3 cup of kernels. Shake the pot frequently. In a small bowl, stir the melted butter and the sesame oil together. Once the popping has stopped, turn off heat, add the olive oil mixture and stir to coat. Add the rest of the seasonings.