Sort of Saag Paneer

Thank god for our friend Jagu, and his sometimes feeding of us (oh, Jagu's lentil fritters!), because we do not eat Indian food out very often, which is sad, because I love to eat out, and I love Indian food. In fact, when I say to Michael, and I say this often, "If we had a lot of money, I'd want to live exactly the same way we live now, just without worrying all the time," he always says, "Well, not worrying, and also eating out every night." Which is so true. I love to cook, but eating out might be my very favorite thing to do that you have to pay for.

And when we do go out for Indian food, I like to establish immediately how we're going to order: Are we sharing everything? How many entrees are we getting? Who doesn't like what? That kind of thing--so that I can figure out about the saag paneer. Not whether or not we're going to order it, because we are going to order it, but how much of it I'm going to get to eat. (Don't you wish you were going out to eat with me?)

Saag paneer is a puree of spinach or other greens, with cubes of delicious, creamy, fresh white cheese nestled in it. (Ew. I've just become like one of those restaurant reviewers I hate who use the word "nestled.") I realize that if I were selling it that way door to door, you'd slam yours in my face, but really: it's crazy good. I like it even when it's kind of bad, with grease pooled visibly on its surface and the spinach tasting not unpleasantly like it came out of a can, or even the kind that comes in a plasticky metallic envelope from Trader Joe's. But when it's good, it is ethereally good: outrageously rich, subtly spiced, emerald green, and deeply satisfying. Which this recipe is. It's based on one from Deborah Madison's This Can't Be Tofu! cookbook, which is not exactly my kind of cookbook, given that of course this can be tofu, silly, but still. The idea here is that you substitute tofu for the paneer, and I don't know why it works so well, but it does. Which is a great thing, given that Anni, bless her, tried to make paneer twice, and one time the paneer ended up in two-inch layer of blackness on the bottom of the Dutch oven, and another time the paneer turned out, mysteriously, to be wadded up in the elbow of the kitchen drainpipe, which we'd unscrewed because the sink had stopped draining.

Still, even with the easy tofu substitution, I need to confess to you that this is a somewhat involved recipe--not difficult, just, kind of, multi-faceted and pot-dirtying. I wouldn't feel the need to apologize if what you ended up with was a tray full of baby-back ribs (This Can't Be Ribs!), but given that the final dish is green and tofu-studded, well--you're going to have to decide for yourself. It's a no-brainer for me because everyone around here completely loves it, and so I am rewarded for my efforts by clean plates and lip-smacking. If you are more likely to be rewarded by "What's that funny smell?" and people pushing things around with forks and grimaces, then think twice.

Saag Paneer (more or less)

Serves 4-6

Total time: 45 minutes

A couple of things. One is that I've made this with both fresh and frozen spinach, and it is so much better with fresh, that I wouldn't even mention frozen, except that sometimes I really do happen to have spinach in the freezer and a carton of tofu in the fridge, and so voila, dinner. The frozen spinach doesn't lend the final dish the same brilliant shade of green and silky texture--picture something darker and stringier--but it does make a perfectly fine meal. Also, the spices: I've upped the spices here, adding both curry powder and garam masala, which is a spice mix you can find in the bulk spice section of any natural foods store. Substitute as you like or need to. Finally, that yogurt sauce is my concession to keeping the dish milder for the children; it adds a little tangy heat, which we love. Ironically, the kids now end up adding it to theirs too.

1 carton firm or soft tofu (I've used and liked both; I'm using firm tofu here)

Kosher salt (or half as much table salt for any given amount)

1 large bunch spinach, well washed (or, less ideally, 1 bag frozen spinach, thawed)

1/2 jalapeño chile, seeded and coarsely chopped (or more or less or omit altogether)

1-inch knob ginger, peeled and coarsely chopped

3 garlic cloves, coarsely chopped

1 cup diced onion

2 tablespoons butter

1 1/2  teaspoons ground cumin

½ tsp curry powder

1 teaspoon garam masala

1/8 teaspoon each nutmeg and cayenne

½-1 cup half-and-half

1/3 cup yogurt (I like Greek yogurt for this, and everything else, really)

For topping: ½ cup yogurt whirred in a food processor with 1 tablespoon of jalapenos, ½ teaspoon kosher salt, and, if you have them, some fresh mint leaves.

Dice the tofu into half-inch cubes. Bring 6 cups water to a boil, add 2 teaspoons salt and lower the heat to a simmer. Add the tofu, turn off the heat, and leave it for 5 minutes. Pour it into a colander to drain. (If you've used soft tofu, remove it with a slotted spoon so it doesn't break apart.) Set it aside.

Steam the spinach until wilted (I do this in the same pot I cooked the tofu in), then remove it to a cutting board and chop. When cool enough to handle, squeeze out the excess water.

Put the chiles, ginger, garlic, and onion in a food processor, and process until finely chopped. Heat the butter in a nonstick skillet, add the onion mixture, and cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, for 5 minutes.

Now add 1 teaspoon of salt, all the spices, and 1 cup of water. Simmer for 5 minutes, then return the mixture to the food processor (don't bother washing it in between stages), add the spinach, and puree until smooth.

Return the mixture to the skillet, add the half-and-half and the tofu, and simmer for about 5 minutes (start with the smaller amount of half and half, then add more until it seems adequately rich and creamy). Turn off the heat and stir in the yogurt. Taste for salt and re-season, then serve over rice with the yogurt topping.

I Can't Believe It's Not Pork Ribs Tofu! Oh, wait, yes I can.

You know about spinach, right? How you start with a bag that needs to be strapped to your roof with bungee cords.

And there's so, so much spinach, it has to be crammed into a ginormous pot.

And steamed, after which

you will wonder where it all went.

Onions, garlic, ginger, jalapeno.

They get whirled up in here.

And fried up in here. Yum. The cooking jalapeno burned my eyes in a good way, since it took my mind off of my eye-burning allergies. Kind of like digging a fingernail X into your mosquito bites.

Spicy!

The simmered, spiced aromatics get their turn, along with the spinach.

And then it's back to the pan with you!

I was telling Ben about the recent gender hullabaloo--those photos of the J. Crew designer's son painting his fingernails. Ben can be beautifully outraged about stereotypes like nobody else--what with his gentle convictions and compassionate wisdom--and I was looking forward to his reaction. But this time? You could just see the apolitical light-bulb over his head, you could hear the waah-waah-waah he was hearing--the sound of me still talking--and he waited patiently for me to finish before saying, "People. Sheesh. Anyway, can I get out the fingernail polish?"

Birdy's full bowl. . .

and empty bowl. I'm not kidding about how good this is.

Springing Out All Over

Lilacs, dogwood, violets, ornamental quince, snakes, peepers, bees, morels, asparagus, chives, lemon balm. Mud. Peonies pushing up out of the ground like something being born hands first. The air blowing over us all night through our gloriously pried-open windows. Long evenings that expand my personality such that instead of 45 minutes after dinner in which to be cranky before I hustle everyone to bed, I have 3 hours in which to unfurl into the season of delight. Which is spring. It just is.

For Mother's Day, I wanted to share this photograph

of my mother, who continues to be a tremendous beauty. And me, who continues to be chubby-chinned, baffled, and listing off to the side.

And these books, which I have loved of late. Please share yours too, okay? 

I love Meg Wolitzer. Her book, The Position, for example, which is a fictional account of the children of the original Joy of Sex models--those hirsute pen-and-ink drawings that you probably knew pretty well at some point. This new one, The Uncoupling, is about a town whose high school puts on the Greek play Lysistrata, about women refusing to have sex until the war ends, and how all the women in town end up refusing to have sex. (I'm not sure why I wrote that like it was a fourth-grade book report. My book was called The Uncoupling. . . ) If it sounds like you won't like it, you might not. Here's this, about twin toddlers following their mom into the bathroom: "As she sat on the toilet, both boys observed her from a critical distance of a few inches. Brant  turned to Ryan and said, "Mama sits down when she wees. She sits down." "Why?" Ryan asked. "Why you sit down, Mama?" He stepped closer and placed an open hand on her bare thigh, peering into the shadowed slice of toilet bowl between her legs. ..The boys solemnly stood and listened and appraised her wiping style, and looked between her legs like grim nineteenth-century consulting gynecologists." Just retyping that made me laugh again.

I am halfway through In Zanesville right now but I also just read Jo Ann Beard's earlier book, The Boys of My Youth, while I was waiting for In Zanesville to get to the library, and not a page went by when I didn't say, "This is the best book I ever read." "You just said that about the Meg Wolitzer book," Michael reminded me, the same way he reminds me every morning that just the day before I observed that that was the best fried egg I'd ever eaten, so what can I say. But seriously? Both books--and they're similar, in a good way--are among the truly very best books I've ever read in my whole entire life. Here's one line from the new one: "In retrospect we probably should have quit band after the parade instead of during it." Oh, wait, now I'm adding this too: "My mother's own bras are large quilted things that I used to think were funny. Now when I see them on the laundry table, one cup folded into the other, I have a sense of impending doom. It's like being on your way to the Alps and knowing that when you get there you have to wear lederhosen." She does teenaged girlhood better than anyone else I can think of--and the stuff she remembers reminds me of all the stuff I've forgotten.

Speaking of which, there's this awesomely nostalgic anthology, Crush, that you should read while listening to ACDC or Pat Benatar or Men without Hats. Not to be coy, or anything, but I have a piece in there that my editor at Ladies' Home Journal said they couldn't run because it was "way too dirty." I'm just saying.

Happy Mother's Day, oh mothers of children and pets and brilliant ideas, oh daughters and sons of mothers everywhere.

xo

Mmm Sauce

Birdy and I were in the tub recently, and she was lying lengthwise next to me, studying us. I was braced for one of her inadvertently damning bits of commentary ("My body looks like a seal's body, and yours does too, but kind of more like the grandma seal.") but instead she was wanting simply to note how her yoni crack looks just exactly like the letter Y. "But yours," she observed soberly, "looks like a martini glass. A martini glass filled with hair."

Cocktails, anyone? Mmm.

I think that ridiculousness is kind of running in the family. Michael came home from work the other day, and even as he was still staggering in through the door with all his gear, the kids and I were already gushing over the dinner we'd put aside from him. "You're going to love it!" the kids kept saying. "It's got yumm sauce and it's so, so yummy." When Michael finally took a bite and said, "This is good. Wait. What's yum sauce?" I had to explain that, well, it's based on this sauce that everybody loves at this café in Oregon, the Yumm Café, where they serve it on Yumm Bowls (hello, tarted-up beans and rice!) and, well, sure, I've never actually eaten there, or actually even heard of them before today, but my friend Katy Killilea posted a recipe on facebook and it looked so good. "Your friend Katy who?" "Oh, well, she's not, like, a real friend. I mean I don't actually know her." Which does not stop me from being entirely convinced that I would like her copycat sauce recipe from a café I've never been to.

Oh.

This is, I know, like the opposite of the chocolate cake--a recipe that is so beyond tried-and-true that I could make it in my sleep. This is instead something I made once, and loved, and then made again a few days later. Yesterday, in fact. But not until after some engrossing internet research. "OMG!" writes everyone who's ever been to Café Yumm. "We are all completely addicted to that sauce!!!!" Everyone agrees that there must be something they're doing wrong, that there must be some secret ingredient they're missing (meth?) because the sauce they're replicating is good, very good even, but not snort-it-through-a-rolled-up-dollar-bill good, even though they have the ingredients list right there. But you know what I think? One of the ingredients is "soybeans," and even though folks are soaking and boiling soybeans, folks are opening cans or steaming edame, I think that "soybeans" is code for miso. Which is where the addictiveness starts. This is my hunch, and who would know better than a person copying a copycat recipe from a friend she doesn't know who either has or hasn't been to the restaurant in question? I rest my case. There is nothing like blindfoldedly leaping on a bandwagon without an instrument.

And not only that: this is also, to be a frank, a recipe you might not like, even though I love it. It's like a cross between hummus, curried salad dressing, and a dairy-free cheese sauce: a little funky, a little strange. But it makes a perfect dinner topping and a perfect dip. And if you go to the Yumm site, you'll wonder why you didn't open your own rice-and-beans restaurant so that you, also, could be laughing all the way to the bank. Which is not to demean the project: I love rice and beans, and I love finding fantastic new ways to spin it. The Mmm Sauce does just that, making the humblest meal feel like an adventure in luxury. I put out rice and pintos, raw baby spinach and pickled jalapenos and Mmm Sauce (the sauce is so rich, I didn't feel like we needed cheese), and I let the kids top their own bowls, which they happily did. If I'd had avocado or good salsa, I would have put that out too, but still. Mmm.

Mmm Sauce

Make about a cup

Total time: 10 minutes

The web is full of attempts at this recipe, along with notes about the success (or absence thereof) of these attempts. And here's what I gather: many folks are using the wrong kind of yeast! They're using yeast yeast--the bread kind. "The top popped off the container, and the sauce foamed out all over the fridge!" they're writing. "It puffed up really huge, and I had to put it in a large bowl!" Egads! Nutritional yeast, if you've never had it, is a yellowish flaky powder sold in the bulk foods section of stores like Whole Foods, and maybe prepackaged in the natural foods section of the supermarket. It is crazy nutrient-dense (protein, B vitamins) and tastes like parmesan cheese crossed with soy sauce crossed with a multivitamin. I know. That's not the most compelling case, but there it is. Suffice it to say: if I don't feel like sharing my popcorn with Michael, I sprinkle nutritional yeast on it, and I enjoy it very much. Another note: chickpeas is an official ingredient, but I used pintos one time (I pulled them straight from the dinner we were about to eat) and white beans another. I don't think it matters very much.

¼ cup whole, raw almonds

¼ cup very hot tap water

2 tablespoons nutritional yeast

1 tablespoon mellow white miso

1 garlic clove, smashed and peeled

¼ cup lemon juice plus ½ teaspoon finely grated lemon zest

¼ cup flavorless vegetable oil, such as canola

¼ cup canned or cooked beans, drained (white beans, pintos, garbanzos. . .)

½ teaspoon kosher salt (or half as much table salt)

¼ teaspoon curry powder, plus more to taste

Soak the almonds in the hot water while you assemble and prepare the rest of the ingredients. Now whirr everything together in a food processor, running it until the sauce is very smooth. Taste for seasoning: it should have a lemony kick, a salty richness, a faint whiff of curry and a big hit of more more more (aka umami) from the miso. Serve as a sauce, salad dressing, or dip.

These are some of the ingredients.

Also these. I thought soaking the almonds would make the sauce creamier, but it is not a scientific study as there was no control group.

Beans. Nothing like a bean sauce for topping beans. Ha ha.

Miso. I think that red miso would be too strong for this. If you don't have miso, use soy sauce and see how it goes.

Curry powder. Even though all the online approximations of this recipe call for it, I was kind of dubious. But when I tried omitting it the second time, the sauce didn't taste as good, so I put it back in. Yumm fans allege that there are green specks in the Yumm sauce, but I did not add any herbs to mine.

The Lemonator.

Before mxing. Note the flakey nutritional yeast.

And after. The texture is great: silky and creamy, and just a little nubbed from the almonds.

Mmm Bowl fixings. Mmm.

And fixed. This is not a beauty shot, but it still appeals to me.

Yummy Kid #1, eating.

And Yummy Kid #2, with dinner and pink monkey.

Last night I made this to bring to dinner with friends, and there was not a single yummy drop of sauce left afterwards.

ChopChop Winner and Morning Song

Dear Ones,

I know I don't need to tell you how that flood of ChopChop subscriptions made me feel. You've got my back is all I can say. Thank you--for your faith and your gladness and your investment and also your delicious feistiness. "Some of your readers already wrote to me," my new editor told me, and I had to laugh. "I know," I said. "They're like that." I love that. I'm going to start writing some Cooking with Ben columns over there soon, and I'll post links here. I'll still be doing Monday food here too. But blah-blah, you're thinking, did I win or what? And if you're craftsister, well then, yes, yes you did. (I did random number generator, which is always fun.) But, dear craftsister, what is it that you would like to win? Email me your address and your wish, and I will get right to it. Thank you all so much for subscribing. ChopChop was seriously impressed by the ferocity of subscription orders.

Now, Morning Song.

This is my friend Susan's book, and it's a poetry anthology for new parents, and it came out just this week. It is such a heartbreaking, breathtaking collection--you will just die, even if "new" does not best describe your relationship to parenting. (God, what was it, a million years ago that Ben was born?) It's got Billy Collins and Emily Dickinson, Sharon Olds and Kevin Young, William Blake and Patti Smith, among scores of other old favorites and new-to-me wonders. I loved it--as I mentioned exceedingly effusively in my blurb, which runs {modest shrug} among blurbs by Richard Wilbur, Tracy Kidder, and Mary Oliver. Seriously. I kind of think that consistutes my ten minutes of fame, even if it's just the teensliest bit vicarious. Susan's daughter is one of my best friends from college, and I have quite robustly insinuated myself into their family in the way of wannabe children everywhere, so when I saw Susan last night, and gushed not about her incredibe new book but instead about my own fame-by-blurb-association joy, her eyes crinkled up with maternal love, in just the way you'd want the eyes of an editor of poetry for new parents to crinkle up.

Mother's Day. Baby Showers. I'm telling you. We've got our new perfect gift. There are so many poems in the book that kill me, and maybe it's because Birdy is 8, but this one is especially killing me right now.

To a Daughter Leaving Home
by Linda Pastan

When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
as you wobbled away
on two round wheels,
my own mouth rounding
in surprise when you pulled
ahead down the curved
path of the park,
I kept waiting
for the thud
of your crash as I
sprinted to catch up,
while you grew
smaller, more breakable
with distance,
pumping, pumping
for your life, screaming
with laughter,
the hair flapping
behind you like a
handkerchief waving
goodbye.

Enjoy your weekend, darlings.

xo

Ocular Proof

Wow. I wasn't kidding about our history with that cake. I flipped through an old photo album, and found these. The backwards Act-Up baseball cap makes me think 1994--I'm not sure why I'm being presented with half a cake, but something tells me we'd already eaten the other half. And then the other one's got to be 1999, since I'm pregnant with Ben. Hello, ancient Brazilian Chocolate Cake relics!

Brazilian Chocolate Cake

The Brazilian Chocolate Cake from the Greens cookbook: we've been making it for so long that the page is like some sort of archaeological artifact from our history--each stain and bloop of batter and penciled-in note evidence of some or other birthday or celebration from the past twenty years. We've been making it for so long that we don't remember when we started slicing the cake open and spooning jam inside, or when we started using what is technically the filling as a kind of spooned-on glaze or when we stopped wondering why it was named that. We've made it a brazillion times. And so we were surprised when we made it just now and someone made a lewd joke about Brazilian, in the waxing sense. "Then why is it called that?" he asked, and I really had no idea.

But I do know that this is our go-to adult-birthday cake (God, there I go again, like I'm incapable of anything but amorphously crass innuendo) and it is, to my mind, perfect: tender and chocolaty, moist and a gorgeous deep red-brown when you cut into it, but not obscenely rich. There's a little back note of coffee here (use decaf if you're worried about your kids), a little sweetness and tang from the jam, a luxurious coat of buttery glaze, although I, of course, also like the cake in its very plain and unadulterated form, with just a sifting of powdered sugar over the top, but that's just me, I know. Michael makes this cake as often as I do, if not more often, and it's not hard, but you really have to follow the directions, and you really have to not over-bake it. That said, though, one of the things I love is that the ingredients list is so modest: it's not pounds and pounds of chocolate and butter or anything, and yet the resulting cake is so lovely and complex. If you're Brazilian, then you can explain to me how that's a classic Brazilian thing. I hope you will, because I'm all ears.

Brazilian Chocolate Cake

Makes 1 cake, serving 8-12

Active time: 45 minutes; total time 1 ½ hours

Adapted from Greens. The jam is ours, as is the glazing of the top.

3 ounces semisweet chocolate (this is about ½ cup of chips)

1 ounce unsweetened chocolate

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons hot strong coffee

½ cup unsalted butter, at room temperature (I actually use unsalted for this, since I'm already buying it for the glaze and want to use it up)

1 ½ cups sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups cake flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon kosher salt (or half as much table salt)

½ cup very flavorful raspberry or cherry jam (or some other kind you like)

Chocolate glaze (below)

Whipped cream and berries or jam for serving

Heat the oven to 350 and grease and flour a bundt pan or a tube pan (I spray mine with that horrible icky Pam baking spray that I am secretly devoted to.) Make sure your pan is one piece, since the batter is thin and will flow through the seams of a two-piece pan.

In the top of a double boiler over low heat, melt the chocolate with 2 tablespoons of the coffee, stirring constantly until it is melted and smooth. Remove it from the heat and set it aside.

Sift the flour, then measure two cups. Even though I don't usually sift anything, I do in this case. But then you're supposed to resift it with the soda and salt, but I just whisk those in. Set the flour mixture aside.

Cream the butter, then add the sugar gradually and beat until the mixture is very light. Add the eggs, one at a time, and beat well, then stir in the melted chocolate and vanilla. (I do this with my stand mixer on "stir.") Stir in the flour, alternating it with the rest of the coffee (this looks like flour, coffee, flour, coffee, flour). The batter will slop around and be kind of messy; don't overmix it, but try to mix it just the right amount (said Goldilocks the baker).

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake it until it is just pulling away from the sides of the pan and a toothpick comes out clean or almost clean, around 45 minutes. It's the kind of cake that often has a damp, sticky top--even when it's done--so don't stick the toothpick into that part or you'll end up thinking it's not done when really it is. Cool the cake 5 minutes in the pan, then finish cooling it completely on a rack.

Cut the cake in half using a sharp, serrated knife, then spoon the jam onto the bottom layer. Drizzle about half or a third of the glaze over the jam, then sandwich the top layer over it and drizzle the rest of the glaze over the cake decoratively, letting it run down the side in ways that are more attractive than gross. Serve with whipped cream and, if you like, a few fresh raspberries or a spoonful of jam.

Chocolate Glaze

3 ounces semisweet chocolate (about ½ cup chips, in case you already forgot)

3 tablespoons water or strong coffee (I use water for the glaze)

1 teaspoon vanilla

6 tablespoon cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

In a small, heavy saucepan over low heat, melt the chocolate together with the water or coffee, stirring until smooth. Remove it from the heat and stir in the vanilla, then stir in the butter, one piece at a time, until it is all smooth and incorporated. The glaze will be thin at first, but will thicken as it cools. This part is a little tricky, honestly. When Michael makes it, he cools the glaze by stirring the pot over a bowl of ice, and it thickens too much and he ends up spackling it onto the cake, which is really not good treatment of the bundt. I just kind of stir it while it cools, doing some other stuff nearby for a while and waiting patiently for the moment when it seems about as thick as cake batter, and therefore perfect for attractive drizzling. It will set up somewhat afterwards, but softly. (What light from yonder window breaks?)

These are most of the ingredients, except for the coffee and vanilla.

But here's the coffee! It looks like a product placement situation for Allegro, but that's just what I happened to have.

 

 

And here's a little more information about the chocolate. It's not that much, right? But it's perfect.

The making of the batter.

The batter poured into a bundt pan that was Michael's mother's and is more or less a family heirloom.

Birdy licking a spatula, in 2007. Seriously. That's when I first photographed this cake. But the rest of the pictures are from now.

The baked cake--see how it looks a little sticky still on top? That's just fine.

Cake sold "as is." Seriously--I can't resist showing you the part where I don't seem to have mixed the batter very well.

The cake is halved and ready for fun.

This is raspberry jam from a recipe I was just developing for FamilyFun! Handy. But you can *buy* some. I know. I'm flexible.

Then a bit of the glaze goes over it. Doesn't that look so good?

Reunited with its top, and glazed. What I meant to show you, but forgot, is that I put strips of waxed paper under the cake so that I could then pull them out after I glazed it, thereby sparing my fancy platter cookie-tin lid from being covered in messy glaze drippings. A giant butter-cookie tin is the way I transport cakes: the cake on the lid, the tin over it like a dome. It's not very snazzy, but it works.

Getting lit. Also, the cake with its candles. Ha ha.

The beautiful birthday girl, aka (for long-time readers) "Ava's mom." I gave her a hanky that I'd cornily embroidered with the words "bless you." Useful, no? No?

Because she loves me, she said, not, "This cake again?" but "Oh, I always love this cake!"

Mr. Dimples likes this cake too.