Presentation is key

Not only was guacamole the first dish I ever learned to make by myself, but it remains my go-to appetizer for pretty much every occasion. And while I am open to trying other versions, I’ve honestly never tasted a batch of guac that I like better than my own.

We ate Latin-inspired food frequently when I was growing up. My parents got into Cuban food when they were living in Boston as a young couple. Later on, with four kids under the age of 10, a meal based on tortillas, beans and rice was easy to prepare and pleasing to toddler palates. Guacamole was a natural accompaniment.

Guacamole might seem basic, and barely even qualifying as “cooking”. There’s no heat involved, and minimal chopping. It’s made with avocados, which are nature’s ice cream only more addictive, so pretty much no matter how it comes out people are going to scarf it down.

Nevertheless, learning to make guacamole taught me the crucial, elemental guidelines of cooking that today I apply in everything I make. Simplicity of ingredients: don’t get too fancy, and trust what tastes good as you go. Texture is as important as flavor: in my guacamole, it’s mandatory to preserve chunks of avocado. Presentation matters: my dad taught me to always wipe down the sides of the bowl before serving, even if it’s just for a casual appetizer between friends.

Aside from avocados, salt and pepper, the other ingredients can be flexible. You will want to have citrus, preferably lime but lemon is doable. I prefer crushed garlic cloves, but I’ve used garlic powder in a pinch. Cilantro is practically necessary, but I can make do it without it. Hot sauce or salsa are nice to add, if you have it.

I may or may not use all of these ingredients

For me, the most important thing is that you don’t overly mash or puree the avocados. Instead, cut them into chunks as shown below, and add crushed garlic and/or a little bit of chopped onion and/or a dash of hot sauce or salsa and/or a good handful of chopped cilantro and/or a squeeze of citrus and salt and pepper to taste . Then use a fork to gently combine, but making sure to keep some significant pieces of avocado intact. Adjust seasonings to taste, then wipe down the sides of the bowl with a napkin or your finger and garnish so it looks pretty. Sometimes I refrigerate it for a few minutes to let the flavors meld.

Cut it into chunks like so

I like that the first dish I ever made is still the one I return to over and over again, that I can make it without even thinking and that it’s always polished off down to the last scrape.

The ultimate comfort food

We have a tradition for the first meal we eat on our first night in a new apartment. It’s not particularly original – we order pizza. I remember when we moved from Brooklyn to Manhattan, in one of the most hellish days I’ve ever spent – just try to imagine navigating a U-Haul through the streets of the Big Apple – and we finally allowed ourselves to relax, surrounded by boxes, with a pesto pizza from the parlor a few blocks down Amsterdam Ave.

Last weekend, we moved from our well-appointed but tiny apartment in Wallingford to a more spacious pad in Madrona. We now have a washer and dryer, a dishwasher and a (gasp) full-sized refrigerator. The first night, with an almost-bare fridge and most cutlery still deep in boxes, we again ordered pesto pizza, indulging in a garlicky chicken topping.

You get a freebie on moving day. But after that, you have to roll up your sleeves and put away enough kitchen supplies to actually make use of that nice fancy kitchen you wanted so badly. For me, the odds are good I’ll break in my oven with cookies.

The critical components

It used to be chocolate chip was my standby, but Jeremy loves snickerdoodles with an almost-religious fervor. I can get behind that. Snickerdoodles are essentially sugar cookies with the addition of cream of tartar for that distinctive tang, given a quick roll in cinnamon and sugar. Some bakers believe they should be thin and flat, and I’ve made them that way before. We prefer, however, a plumper cookie. That gives you a slightly crunchy crust on the exterior that gives way when you bite it into a chewy center.

My recipe is adapted from an AllRecipes.com entry called “Mrs. Sigg’s Snickerdoodles“. It might not be that glamorous to use an online recipe, but I’ve tried the America’s Test Kitchen version and it honestly wasn’t as good. Also, the AllRecipes one has almost 2500 reviews and over 33,000 versions saved. Sometimes, the masses are just right.

Mmm...cookies...

Snickerdoodles

From AllRecipes.com

• 1/4 cup butter, softened
• 1/4 cup shortening, such as Crisco
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 1/3 cups flour
• 1 tsp. cream of tartar
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/8 tsp. salt
• 2 Tb. sugar
• 2 tsp. cinnamon

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Using a hand or stand mixer, cream together butter, shortening, sugar, egg and vanilla. Slowly stir in flour, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt (ok, ok, you can sift the dry ingredients together first if you’re legit like that.)

Cover a baking sheet with a parchment paper. In a small ziplock sandwich bag, mix the sugar and cinnamon.

Shape the dough into small balls about 3/4 inch in diameter. I find it works best to do this with your hands. Then drop each ball of dough into the ziplock bag and shake it around so it’s coated on all sides.

Arrange the balls of dough on the baking sheet with some space in between and then gently press on the top of each one – don’t flatten them, just dimple the tops a bit.

Bake 8-10 minutes, until the bottoms are light brown and the tops start to crack a bit. Don’t wait until the tops are golden-brown – they will be dry and overcooked at that point.

Makes 18-24 cookies, depending on size.

Beef stews - so delicious, so un-photogenic

I promised amazing paleo recipes, and I will deliver. This is straight-up cribbed from the amazing site Mark’s Daily Apple, which is a must-read for anyone interested in paleo or primal eating, or just plain healthy eating and exercise habits. While I love the success stories, fitness analysis and links on this site, of course the recipes are my favorites.

While poring over the site for inspiration, I came across the Beef Burgundy recipe. Like probably everyone else who saw the film Julie and Julia, we desperately craved boeuf bourguignon throughout the movie and then promptly forgot all resolve to actually make it the moment we left the theater.

When I ran across this recipe, months later, I was reinvigorated. It is a bit modified from the original Julia Child version from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, but you should still plan to block off a few hours to commit to this masterpiece. It is absolutely worth it. The slow braising makes the meat become meltingly tender, and the flavors meld into something rich and winey and unmistakeably French.

[Side note: In my limited experience, I'd advices using a quality source for your meat. Not that the cut needs to be expensive — since it's braising for a couple hours, it's going to get tender — but I think it's worth it to get local and/or grass-fed. Obviously it's more environmentally friendly, green-friendly, Paleo-proper, and all that en vogue stuff. But I made this dish with grass-fed Washington State beef purchased at Whole Foods as opposed to another beef stew later with free-range Australian meat from Trader Joe's, and I thought the WA meat tasted much better. Who knows...more testing needed. Price was the same, anyway.]

The recipe makes enough for 8, or a big dinner and 2 sets of lunch leftovers. It also freezes quite well.

Boeuf Bourguignon

Inspired by Julia Child and adapted by Mark’s Daily Apple

• 1/4 lb. bacon
• 4 Tbs. fat of some kind (butter or oil…I used a mix of coconut and olive oil)
• 2 1/2 – 3 lbs. of beef cut into 2-inch cubes. I used the stew meat from the WF meat counter.
• 1 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/4 tsp. pepper
• 2 Tbs. almond flour (or regular flour, if non-paleo)
• 2 carrots, chopped
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 Tbs. tomato paste
• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1 Tbs. fresh thyme (or 1 tsp. dried)
• 1 Tbs. fresh parsley, finely chopped
• 1 bay leaf
• 3 cups full-bodied red wine (I used Chianti)
• 2 1/2 cups beef stock
• 1 lb. white or brown crimini mushrooms

Preheat the oven to 425. Get your big shallow oven-proof casserole ready. I used our cazuela [How do you know you're a hipster foodie? When you have kitchen tools that don't have an English translation!] but any deep and wide oven-safe dish would work.

Cut the bacon into little strips (lardons) and saute with a tablespoon of the fat until cooked but not crisp. You can do this all in your Le Creuset if you are fortunate enough to have one, or in a deep skillet. Reserve the bacon in your casserole dish.

Pat the beef as dry as possible and in batches, brown it on all sides. Take the time to get all the sides brown, even though it takes a long time and is a bit messy, because it’s worth it for the flavor in the long run. As the pieces brown, add them to the casserole with the bacon.

When all the meat is browned, sprinkle it with the flour, salt and pepper and put it in the oven for 10 minutes. The goal is to create a bit more of a crust on the meat. Then remove from the oven and turn the heat down to 325.

In the skillet or saucepan you used to brown the meat, add another tablespoon of the fat/oil and saute the onions and carrots until soft. Then add the tomato paste, garlic, thyme, parsley and bay leaf. After a moment, stir in the wine and beef broth and bring up to a gentle boil.

Let the whole thing simmer for about 5 minutes so the flavors start to meld, then pour over the meat in the casserole pan. Cover the dish with a lid or foil, then place it in the oven and cook for 2 1/2 hours (I told you you need to commit to it!)

In the meantime, slice the mushrooms and saute in batches in the remaining fat/oil. Set aside.

Every hour or so peek in the oven under the lid to make sure the liquid bubbling gently. It’s done when a fork easily pulls the meat apart. You should taste it to make sure.

When done, take the meat out of the oven and strain it through a colander with a bowl underneath, so the liquid is in the bowl and the solids in the colander (not the other way around!) Put the liquid in a saucepan and bring it to a boil, then turn down the heat and simmer for about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, put the meat back in the casserole (or another serving dish of your choice) and add the mushrooms.

When the sauce is done, pour it over the meat and mushrooms and top with chopped parsley.

Rather than highlight any one event, I thought I’d just do a roundup and give some link love to some of those who are actually motivated enough to blog responsibly. I realize this also makes it seem like we eat all the time, but I figure people would rather read about food than the grueling Crossfit workouts, hours sweating in a hot yoga studio, or late nights at the UW athletic communications office or on the road in exciting places like Kalamazoo, Michigan.

• The Rachel Dinner, aka Foods That Scare Us, in honor of Rachel’s food phobias, including tongue, blue cheese, tendon and chicken liver. May I just say that the pigs’ ears were absolutely delectable?
• There was Chinese-Jewish (aka “Chewish”) night, that came about from some matzah-ball soup-related Twitter trash talking and evolved into a massive potluck that included standards like the classic aforementioned soup, knishes and brisket (my contribution, from Joan Nathan’s recipe), as well as more creative efforts like Naomi‘s guanciale-spiked kugel (kugel is SO much better with pork!) and Lorna’s red-cooked pork belly which is the perfect combination of melty crispiness.

• 

  Protest Nachos

  Thanksgiving, which I desperately wanted to be Mexican-themed but we’re not all yet quite enlightened enough. One day. It still featured “Protest Nachos” as an appetizer and five kinds of pies.In the head-to-head of Columbia City‘s pumpkin vs. my Aunt Maureen’s, the homemade version was a clear winner.

• Cookies and Dumplings, originally two events but combined into one glorious afternoon. Picture, if you can, a piano top with every inch covered by plates of cookies, from chocolate to maple to meringue to chocolate chip and chocolate chip and chocolate chip. And lest you get distracted by the sugar, noticed that dumplings of all kinds are being cranked out in the kitchen, some Chinese-inspired, some that go hand in hand with long-stewed chicken in a restorative broth. The bag of cookies I took home from this lasted a solid week.
• Latkes, which happened because every Hannukah that I’m in Seattle I make my father make latkes. No one makes them lighter or more spidery. Trust me, spidery is a very good quality in a latke. (Sorry, didn’t get any photos of them. Next year, maybe.)
• I went to The New Guard‘s holiday party, which brought together art, music and food by Poppy pastry chef Dana Cree, who re-envisioned an old-fashioned holiday meal of ham, green bean salad, homemade onion dip (addictive) and many, many kinds of pie.
  

  Breakfast tacos, I love you

• And finally (though I’m probably forgetting some things) we went to Austin, Texas, and dined on breakfast tacos every morning while managing to squeeze in swimming, biking, exploring and BBQ, of course. But really, the breakfast tacos were the best. I’ve never had flour tortillas as soft and buttery as the ones we had in Austin. Filling them with fluffy scrambled eggs, bacon, avocado and hot sauce was practically overkill. They were so good that we had to smuggle 20 extra home in our suitcases.

It’s been an incredible year being in Seattle. We can’t wait to see what we’ll do (and eat) in 2010.

A spread of cheesy goodness

I decided to go for the mac n’ cheese, which like any good human being I love, though oddly before this weekend I had never made it myself. I’ve always tended more toward the quick and dirty boxed variations, growing up with the occasional Kraft or shells + Velveeta before graduating to the more virtuous Annie’s. For whatever reason, I never felt the urge to make it from scratch.

So this was the perfect opportunity. Naturally, I obsessed about it for days. Basic? Bacon? Mushrooms? Green chiles? An attempt at the legendary fried mac n’ cheese wedges from Denver’s Cherry Cricket?

Ultimately I did the obvious thing and turned to one of my most reliable cooking resources: my cousin Megan, currently a pastry chef at the delicious Columbia City Bakery, always ready with recipe suggestions and sure-fire potluck winners. We consulted, and she gave me the guidelines for her crab mac n’ cheese with Gruyere, Comte, and chives.

I ended up using a Barefoot Contessa recipe for lobster mac n’ cheese as the template for Megan’s crab mac n’ cheese, and I have to say I was pleased with the result. It’s always nerve-wracking making something for the first time, especially when you are making it for other people and even more so when you aren’t going strictly off a recipe. But it turned out gooey and bubbly, with the sharp bite of the Comte cheese giving it a nice kick while the savory crab paired well with the chives.

The reviews from the others at the potluck were positive too, and almost all of it got eaten — which is the best kind of feedback, especially considering there were about 8 or 9 other kinds of mac n’ cheese and a few types of fried chicken.Some of the other offerings: Lorna‘s prize-winning macaroni and cheese had six kinds of cheese and a pound of bacon (!), Valentina creatively rolled up long, wide noodles individually, and hosts Sarah and Frank fried up ridiculous amounts of popcorn chicken that everyone devoured like…popcorn. [Update: Lorna thankfully has better photos in her blog post.]

I only took one hurried photo before diving in, but you can see my little mac on the right side in the red casserole.

If you need a dish for a potluck, macaroni n’ cheese or otherwise, I’d recommend this one. It makes a ton of food so you’ll need some help eating it. I have an entire pan full of it in the freezer still.

Crab Macaroni n’ Cheese

Adapted from Megan Bokan

• Kosher salt
• Vegetable oil
• 1 pound cavatappi or penne
• 1 quart whole milk
• 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, divided
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 12 ounces Gruyere cheese, grated (4 cups)
• 8 ounces Comte cheese, grated (2 cups)
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1 pound cooked crab meat (canned is fine unless you’re a high roller)
• 1/2 cup chives, chopped
• 1 cup panko (optional)

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Drizzle oil into a large pot of boiling salted water. Add the pasta and cook until just al dente but not completely done. Drain well.

Meanwhile, heat the milk in a small saucepan, but don’t boil it. In a large pot, melt 6 tablespoons of butter and add the flour. Cook over low heat for 2 minutes, stirring with a whisk. Still whisking, add the hot milk and cook for a minute or two more, until thickened and smooth. Off the heat, add the Gruyere, Comte, 1 tablespoon salt and the pepper. Add the cooked noodles, crab, and chives and stir well. Place the mixture in 1 big casserole or 2 medium ones.

Melt the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter, combine them with the panko, and sprinkle on the top. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until the sauce is bubbly and the noodles are browned on the top.

You say you want a Canvolution?

A few months ago, the ridiculous yet continuously inspiring thing that is Twitter sprouted yet another movement: The Canvolution. Essentially, one person asked if others were interested in learning more about canning and the art of “putting food by.” The response from all corners was resoundingly positive, and the result was a summer and fall full of classes, events and blogging on canning and preserving. The Canning Across America homepage has more details, and mastermind Kim O’Donnel has blogged about the Canvolution’s full history.

I got involved because I was also curious to learn more. I know little about canning myself, so my paltry contribution to the effort was to organize the group email list. I have canned before, though — when I was about 8, I went over to my aunt Maureen’s house and we spent several hours canning peaches and tomatoes. So this summer, when I wanted to revisit canning, I cornered Maureen and told her I wanted to learn at the feet of the master.

“Sure!” she said. “What do you want to do? Blackberry jam? Peaches? Pears? Tomatoes?” I lost track at that point. Suffice to say, the Canvolution was in full swing.

Millions of peaches, peaches for me

On a rainy Sunday about a week ago, we finally made it over to her house in Ballard. While Maureen and her husband Don grow some fruit and vegetables in their garden, to get enough peaches for canning they bought a few boxes worth. We decided to make some regular canned peaches and some with Cognac and schnapps. Maureen said my newfound enthusiasm inspired her to “get creative” and raid the liquor cabinet.

While my teenage cousin Mariah provided adolescent commentary (“Mom, why do you always take the jars out of the oven without mitts? What is wrong with you?”) Maureen walked us through the process. First, she sterilized the jars in the dishwasher and then kept them in a hot oven while preparing the fruit. She had three kettles boiling, one for processing the cans, one for scalding the peaches, and one of sugar water for the syrup.

Jeremy's a pro at this already

We dunked the peaches in the boiling water for a minute or two, then dunked them in an ice bath. That helped the skin slide right off. We cut the peaches in halves or quarters, depending on the type, and then put them into the syrup.

After they had cooked in the syrup, we grabbed the sterilized jar and slipped the peaches into it. Then we filled them to the brim with the rest of the syrup, put the lids on, and popped them into the canning kettle to process. About 15 minutes later, we had gleaming jars of golden fruit, just waiting to be opened months later on a dark Seattle winter evening.

We also made some smaller jars for the alcohol-soaked peaches, and then Mariah cranked out some peach jam and Maureen cooked down the scraps of skin to make a thick peach syrup for pancakes. It was a lot of work, but it was fun work, the sort that only gets better the more people are involved.

We came away impressed with the ease of it and itching to try making our own red pepper jelly. I’m also looking forward to trying some of those Cognac peaches on top of pound cake or ice cream in a few months…

A sampling of cookbooks

If you grew up cooking or in a family of people who cook, like I did, I bet you have That Cookbook. The one you always grabbed when you needed to make something special for dinner, or needed to check the best way to make a certain dish, or wanted to flip to the old standby recipe that was guaranteed to produce that one familiar meal.

For me, or at least how I remember it, that cookbook was The Silver Palate Cookbook. Sheila Lukins, one of the authors, died this week. Reading about her life and the way her cookbook expanded the culinary horizons for so many American home cooks in the 1980s made me think about just how significant a cookbook can be. Reading Twitter, you would have thought everyone owned this book! It was either their first, or the one that taught them to “cook like a grown-up”. Seeing this, it’s logical why it was so popular in my house growing up in the 1980s and 1990s.

Thinking about cookbooks got me thinking about the ones I use regularly. We don’t own too many, as I try to resist the urge to buy every cookbook that catches my fancy and because the Internet is such a wealth of resources what with Epicurious and all the numerous food blogs I am addicting to reading.

But we do have a few favorites, and as I was thinking about our little cooking library I realized that each one has some special significance for me. Here are a few selections of what we’re cooking from, and why.

How to Cook Everything, by Mark Bittman

This is my Joy of Cooking and my non-Internet encyclopedia. It was one of the first cookbooks I got when I moved out on my own (Silver Palate was the other) and it is battered and worn after just a few years of service. This cookbook is great because it doesn’t make me feel stupid when I realize I don’t know how to soft-boil an egg or cook beets. Plus, it’s really entertaining reading material in its own right.

One Pot Spanish, by Penelope Casas

We got this at our favorite cooking store, The Spanish Table, and are smitten with it. Anything Spanish is a win for us, and everything we’ve made from this so far has been delicious. The favorite is the Tomato, Chorizo and Homemade Pasta Stew.

Classic Rachael Ray 30 Minute Meals and Rachael Ray Express Lane Meals

I know what you’re thinking: R-squared? Seriously? But one thing Rachael Ray does, for all her annoying perkiness, is give you confidence in the kitchen, and when we were just venturing into cooking for ourselves she was the perfect launching pad. Plus, Jeremy gave me the Classic 30 Min. Meals as a Hannukah gift the first year we were together, so I will always think of it as particularly special.

Tapas: A Taste of Spain in America, by Jose Andres

Have you been to Washington, DC? Have you eaten at Jaleo’s? If not, go do that, and then come back and finish reading. Jose Andres is the chef at this tapas destination, which Jeremy introduced me to when we visited DC and where we’ve had some of the most perfect tapas ever. Getting his cookbook was a no-brainer, and the recipes are surprisingly easy and practical for home cooking.

Seven Fires: Grilling the Argentine Way, by Francis Mallman & Peter Kaminsky

We’ve mentioned this book before, but we’re really pretty infatuated with it right now. Gorgeous photos, lyrical writing, and compelling recipes based off simple ingredients. Not sure we’ll venture to cook the whole cow any time soon (yes, that’s a recipe in there) but the delectable Pork Loin with Peaches will tide us over. It makes me want to go to Argentina and build a massive wood firepit on our tiny patio.

That isn’t everything, as you can see from the picture, but those are the ones that resonate for me right now. What are your favorite cookbooks? Which ones mean the most to you?

Meet the Jucy Lucy

I received my first introduction to Jucy Lucys via cable TV, when I saw the spiky-haired Guy Fieri of the Food Network biting into some melty burger goodness at Nook’s dive bar in St. Paul, Minnesota. After wondering for a few seconds how he did not experience a “cardiac event” afterwards, I knew I had to try one. Here in Seattle, we have a lot of friends who hail from the Twin Cities. So the other night we decide, WTF, we’ll have a bunch of them over and grill up some Jucy Lucys.

The concept is simple, yet brilliant. Take burger. Stuff American cheese in the middle. Grill.

Of course, even with the most minimal of culinary creations, there are subtle arts to it all. So Lisa and I did our research. A wonderful resource was the super-comprehensive Twin Cities food blog, Heavy Table, which detailed step-by-step how a true Minneapolitan (or a St. Paulite) constructs a Jucy Lucy. There’s even a six-minute video.

From other Web browsing, we noticed a lot of foodies like to put their own creative “spin” on their Jucy Lucys. There’s no denying American cheese is processed, and pretty gross. So people add fancier cheeses, and then wonder why the burger didn’t turn out as expected.

American cheese? *Chortle* I have this aged raw milk manchego that is produced only from a hand-picked group of La Mancha sheep who have passed my own rigorous selection tests based on intelligence, athletics and personality.

So yes, American cheese is “gross,” but in this case it works perfectly. This reminds me of an old lesson harped on by many a print editor in the past: “Don’t use a $10 word when a 10-cent one will suffice.” That being said, you can also use another SOFT cheese, something that melts easily into a fondue-like consistency — we used fontina on half of the burgers, to provide a non-plastic alternative to the bright yellow classic. But those who insist on using cheddar will be disappointed.

Another crucial element is to flatten the meat a lot when constructing the burger — too fat a burger, and the cheese won’t melt all the way. It’s also important to securely seal the two halves of the patty when constructing it, so the cheese won’t leak out during the grilling process. Then you end up with a messy grill and a hollow patty.

The most surprising part is that this burger ends up being more than a gimmick. The cheese on the inside actually helps keep it moist and “jucy”, and ensures that it melts properly. Think of all the times you’ve had a burger with gummy, half-melted cheese on top. In the Lucy, you have gooey cheese evenly distributed throughout each bite. We devoured them, and our Midwestern guests raved. One said it was one of the best burgers she’d ever had. Aw shucks.

Jucy Lucys

• 2 pounds ground beef (use a fatty mixture, 80-20)
• American cheese. Kraft works fine.
• Hamburger buns (here’s a hint…use something soft. We went with onion loaf)
• Montreal steak seasoning
• Mise-en-place your fixens: lettuce, tomatoes, onions, etc

Preheat your grill (medium heat, or 400°F for those using gas). Divide the beef into six portions. Take one portion and roll into a ball, and then chop in half. Now, roll one of the halfs into a ball and then mash into a thin patty on the cutting board. Remember, go thin because otherwise the cheese won’t cook well in the Jucy Lucy. Secondly, make the patty slightly bigger than the bun, as it will reduce in size during cooking.

Here comes the cheese! Take one slice American cheese and fold it into quarters. Place the pieces of cheese in the middle of the burger, leaving space on each side for hamburger to be exposed. Then roll the other half of meat into a ball and flatten into a thin patty. Place on top of the first patty and seal the edges real tight, working the hamburger with your fingertips to make sure there are no holes/openings in the meat. Otherwise, the cheese will volcano spew outwards during grilling. No good.

Burgers are now ready for the grill. Season Jucy Lucys with the Montreal steak goodness and place burgers on and grill for 8-9 minutes. Flip and then poke each burger with a knife to let out some steam. Grill for another 7-8 minutes.

There might be a trip to the Twin Cities forthcoming for the Hipster in my Latte duo, and so a pilgrimage must be made to see the true Jucy Lucy professionals at work. We’ll probably start at Matt’s Bar, which is the self-proclaimed inventor, and then stop when our hearts tap out and say “no mas.”

P.S: This has absolutely nothing to do with cheese-stuffed hamburgers, but the new season of Top Chef looks beyond awesome. Even if there’s only 10 minutes of actual substance between all the product placements, celebrity chef/hotel plugs and forced Padma segues. As usual, plenty of snarky recaps from the writers over at Grub Street.

Shelf life of about 3 hours

One of the great things about living in the Pacific Northwest is that every summer, right around the beginning of August, the landscape erupts with blackberries. I mean, the little buggers are everywhere: in vacant lots, in alleys, climbing out of retaining walls, in traffic circles, along every road. I’ve read that they’re comparable to kudzu in the South; crawling over everything like weeds, resistant to extermination.

If something has to be so pervasive, hey, at least it produces fruit. There’s really no reason to buy blackberries in the store or even the market, when I can take a bowl, walk around the block, and pick a good half-pint. My father said he went to a 5-foot swath south of the city, shook the branches, and enough for a pie literally fell into his waiting bowl.

Today I took a little stroll around my neighborhood and down to Greenlake and returned with, as usual, more berries than I knew what to do with. There’s a fine line when picking blackberries — you go from “hmm, will I find enough?” to looking down and realizing “holy crap I just picked three pounds of blackberries” rather quickly. Once you find a fruitful patch, you go into a blackberry frenzy, picking every plump berry in sight until you suddenly snap to reality and accept that you have way more than you need.

I decided to make free-form blackberry tarts, which is another way of saying I didn’t want to worry if they looked pretty. A good thing, too; these were, shall we say, “rustic” in appearance, though they tasted just fine – maybe a little more sugar needed to counter the tartness of the berries. Or vanilla ice cream on top would work as well.

I really do feel fortunate to have so much good quality fruit at my fingertips. We don’t have enough room for a garden, yet I’m still able to walk out the door and within minutes have ample fresh produce in hand. Seattle in the summer, to me, always means blackberry picking.

Free-Form Blackberry Tarts

(adapted from How to Cook Everything)

Dough:

• 1 1/8 cups flour
• 2 Tb. sugar
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 stick cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
• ice water
• 1 egg yolk

Filling:

• approx. 2 cups blackberries (or could use another berry of your choice)
• 1-2 tsp. sugar, depending how sweet the berries are
• 1 tsp. cinnamon or nutmeg
• 2 Tb. melted butter

To make the dough, put flour, sugar, and salt into a food processor and pulse a few times to blend. Add in the butter and pulse for about 10 seconds, until mixture resembles cornmeal.

Turn mixture into a bowl and sprinkle 3 Tb. ice water and egg yolk over it. Using a wooden spoon, gently mix until it starts to come together — you may need to add another half Tb. of ice water. When you can, use your hands to mold the dough into a ball. Wrap it in plastic wrap, flatten into a disk, and put in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Mix the berries with sugar and spice, but gently so they hold their shape.

When the dough is chilled, take it out and cut it into four pieces. Roll each piece out into a rough circle, about 1/8 inch thick. Place all four circles onto a baking sheet.

Put berries in the center of each circle of dough, leaving about an inch of dough from the edge. Fold up the edges around the berries so they’re tucked in, but don’t try to cover the berries with the dough entirely.

Brush the dough and the fruit with melted butter. Bake for 20-30 minutes, until fruit bubbles and the crust is golden brown.

Serve with powdered sugar, or vanilla ice cream, or whipped cream. If they look misshapen, just tell people that’s the idea.

Fug-tastic tarts

It looks like meat, doesn't it?

At the moment, we’re eating vegetarian (for reasons to be explained at a later date). We’re four days in to the two-week experiment, and so far it hasn’t been too difficult; lots of beans, nuts and vegetables have filled in the gaps in our diet where meat used to reign supreme. Talk to me on Day 10, though, and I might be ready to sell my soul for some sirloin.

As the 4th of July weekend approaches, we’ve made plans to go to Portland for the long weekend (details on that trip to come after). To me, as to many of you I’m sure, the 4th of July necessitates some kind of outdoor barbecue experience. If you’re not eating meat, as we’re rapidly learning, your barbecue and “burger” options are pretty limited. Personally I think Gardenburgers are about as tasty as water-logged cardboard, and Boca burgers have too spongy a texture.

But we had a can of black beans lying around the apartment, so black bean burgers seemed a logical outcome before packing up for the long weekend.

A quick Google turned up a recipe from The Washington Post food blog, A Mighty Appetite, authored by Kim O’Donnel. The post is from last year, but since I already read Kim’s blog and follow her on Twitter, all I needed was her stamp of approval on a black bean burger recipe to forge ahead.

The trouble with making a burger without ground beef is that it’s more inclined to fall apart. I solved this with a healthy dose of my beloved panko, and chilling the burgers for about an hour before putting them on a hot griddle. They ended up being savory, spicy, almost, dare I say, meaty. And hey, look at that picture. If you didn’t know better, you’d think it was a REAL burger, right?

Black bean goodness

Spicy Black Bean Burgers

Adapted from A Mighty Appetite (in turn adapted from “Recipe of the Week: Burgers” by Sally Sampson)

• 1 can black beans, drained, rinsed, and drained again
• 1/3 cup to 1/2 cup Japanese-style panko breadcrumbs
• 1 egg
• 2 scallions, both white and green parts, minced
• small handful chopped cilantro, to your preference
• 1 garlic clove, pressed
• 1 tsp. ground cumin
• 3/4 tsp. dried oregano
• 1 tsp. red pepper flakes
• liberal salt and pepper to taste

Serves 2, but really hefty burgers, so probably really makes 3 normal burgers

Put about 1 cup of the black beans in a food processor (or alternatively, mash with a potato masher). Put beans in a bowl and mix in all the other ingredients. If it seems a little too oozy, add more panko.

Shape into patties about 1 inch thick and put on a plate covered with wax paper or foil. Chill for at least 15 minutes.

Heat a cast-iron skillet or griddle to high heat. You can put a little olive oil on the hot surface if you want, but it works fine without. When hot, put the burgers on and cook for 4-5 minutes, until seared. Flip (careful, they are a bit flimsy), turn the heat to medium, and cook another 5 minutes.

We served these with Tillamook cheddar, lettuce, tomato, and some cilantro-lime mayo.