Cold Noodle Bowl

I really do love to cook, but sometimes I just hate it so much. Like now. I don't feel like making dinner, and if it weren't for the kids, I'd eat a bowl of granola and a handful of cherries every night after drinking many beers. Instead, we have granola for dinner only sometimes, and sometimes we have popcorn and smoothies, and also I troll a lot for dinner invitations (Oh really? Gosh, we are free! Perfect.) and fantasize about having, as Ben says, "limitless money" so that we could eat out every night. And believe me: we would too.

 

But that still leaves many summertime dinners needing to get made. Grilling is good: easy, outdoors, minimal clean-up. And big salads are good. And this kind of meal, which is similar to the Make-Your-Own (Quinoa) Sundaes, is perfect. It's one of my favorite ways to eat: a bowl of food that you assemble yourself, and that is perfectly balanced: sweet, chewy, crunchy, green, soft, salty, fresh, tangy. Somehow it's both light and filling, gorgeously summery, and everybody loves it. But what I want to make clear is that it can be way less labor-intensive than this version. I had CSA produce I was trying to manage (lots of bok choy, a quart of sugar snap peas), so I was basing the dish around that, but you could make it much easier by using raw veggies: cukes, radishes, a handful of greens. And instead of the fried tofu, you could use prepared baked or smoked tofu or leftover grilled meat or a shredded rotisserie chicken. You could use bottled dressing and already-roasted nuts. See? Much easier. Though if there were two things I'd recommend making, it would be the dressing, which is excellent, and the soba noodles themselves, which boil up into this deep grayish-purplish-brown tangle, and which are deeply grainy and flavorful. Of course, that said, feel free to substitute any other kind of pasta: it will still be good. And you could, of course, toss it altogether in to a big bowl of pasta salad, which would be especially handy if you were pot-lucking or picnicking. But the make-your-own factor is so appealing to kids, who crave control over their own meals and eating, that it's worth trying this way at least once.

But you should still invite me over for dinner because I still want to come.

Cold Noodle Bowl

Serves 4-5

Total time: 1 hour

The Dressing

This dressing is bright with ginger, dusky with scallions, and just a little sweet. It's kind of perfect. But if you want to swap in a store-bought dressing, I would especially recommend Annie's Shiitake & Sesame, since its Asian flavors will perfectly complement the rest of the meal.

2/3 cup peanut or vegetable oil, divided use

3 fat scallions, white and healthy green, sliced (around 1/2 cup)

1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh ginger

2 teaspoons kosher salt (or half as much table salt)

2 teaspoons sugar

1 teaspoon sesame oil or roasted peanut oil

1/3 cup balsamic vinegar

Heat a tablespoon of the oil in a small pan over medium-low heat and sauté the scallions until wilted and fragrant, around 3 or 4 minutes. In a food processor or with a hand blender, whir together the scallions with the remaining ingredients until the dressing is thick and emulsified. Taste for salt, sugar, acid, and overall balance, and re-season as necessary.

The Noodles

Soba are Japanese buckwheat noodles, and they are lovely here: sturdy, nutty-tasting, wholesome. Plus, they come wrapped so prettily that you'll feel like someone gave you a present. Look for them in the Asian foods aisle of your supermarket or at Whole Foods or (duh) at an Asian market--but if you can't find them or don't want to, feel free to swap in whatever noodles you like. Soba are pretty salty, so I don't salt the water when I cook them; if you're using other noodles, though, you should.

Cook 1 10-ounce package soba noodles in boiling, unsalted water until just tender, 3 or 4 minutes. Drain, rinse under cold water, drain well, and toss with half the dressing.

The Tofu

The seasoning here echoes the salad dressing in a nice way, but please--feel free to swap in a prepared tofu product: the baked or smoked kind that you can just slice up and serve.

2 tablespoons vegetable or peanut oil

1 14-16-ounce package of extra-firm tofu

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

Heat the oil in a wide nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Meanwhile, cut the tofu into 12 slices. Fry the tofu, around 5 minutes per side, until it's browning and crispy-looking. Splash in the soy sauce and vinegar, and continue cooking, shaking the pan and flipping the tofu, until the liquid is evaporated and the tofu is glazed. Remove to a cutting board and cut into strips.

The Almonds

Use the unwashed scallion pan. Feel free to swap in roasted peanuts for ease or a change of pace.

2 teaspoons peanut or vegetable oil

1/2 cup slivered almonds

Heat the oil in a very small pan over medium heat and fry the almonds until golden, around 2-3 minutes. Remove to a small bowl so they don't burn in the hot pan.

The Sugar Snap Peas

Steam until just tender, around 3 minutes. Rinse under cold water.

The Bok Choy

Heat a tablespoon of peanut or vegetable oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat, then add a large bunch of clean, wet boy choy (cut off the bottoms of the stems to separate the clumps into leaves) and a large pinch of salt and sauté, stirring, until the stems are just tender, around 6 or 7 minutes. If it's getting overly browned before it's tender, add a splash or two of water. Taste for salt.

Double-Delicious Grilled Chicken

This is an absolute favorite summer meal, and it's a recipe, but it's also a philosophy. Not in the Kierkegaard Fear and Trembling sense, but in the oh-wow-yum sense: you marinate the chicken before cooking, like usual, but also after cooking. In a different marinade, of course, so as to not get salmonella. And oh, wow, yum--the chicken is so, so succulently excellent: tangy, herby, and mouth-watering.  We tend to use it to top a salad or noodle bowl, but it is also good on its own.

The pre-cooking marinade makes the chicken delightfully tender and seasoned, but then the post-cooking marinade introduces all the fantastic and fragile flavor component--the herbs and citrus zest and garlic--that would have burned off on the grill. 

Also, since you slice up the grilled chicken, you maximize the flavor-absorbing surface are. You will be a hero to your family and dinner guests. Seriously.

 

Double-Delicious Grilled Chicken

Serves 8

Active time: 20 minutes; total time, including marinating: 1 1/2 hours

So yes, there's lots of salt, as you'd expect, and lots of zest for a full, rounded citrus flavor. There are many different ways to make this, of course: sometimes I use lemons instead of limes, and switch the herbs to lemon thyme and parsley or else basil. Yum. Sometimes I add a bit of chopped shallot or scallion to the first marinade or a bit of chipotle puree to the second. And sometimes, if there are people around in whom the flecks of green are going to inspire fear and trembling, I leave some of the grilled chicken out of the second marinade. It is still delicious, just not so zingy. As you would imagine, this chicken makes an excellent addition to salads.

Note: Feel free to skip the first marinade altogether, and simply salt the chicken well as early in the day as is possible. If that's right before you grill it, so be it, since it's really that second dressing that's doing the work here. Then just rub the chicken with oil before popping it on the grill.

For chicken and first marinade:

8 small skinless, boneless chicken breasts, trimmed of fat and (shudder) gristle 

The juice of 1/2 large, juicy lime (scant 1/4 cup--if your limes are small, you'll need more of them)

1/4 cup soy sauce or tamari

1/4 cup olive oil

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

Stir together the lime juice, soy sauce, olive oil, and salt, then pour it over the chicken in a large dish, tossing the chicken to make sure it's all covered with the marinade. Cover the dish and leave the chicken in the fridge to marinate for an hour or so (too much longer than that and the acid in the lime juice can make it mushy). Preheat your grill or broiler, and grill or broil the chicken (drained from the marinade, which you then discard) turning it once, until it's cooked through, around 3 or 4 minutes per side. Let the chicken rest for a minute, then slice it against the grain and toss it with the second marinade in a wide serving dish. Serve warm or at room temperature.

For the second marinade, whisk together:

The zest and juice of 1 large, juicy lime plus the zest from the 1/2 you already juiced (zest the limes before juicing them)

1/4 cup olive oil

1 teaspoon kosher salt

A large handful of cilantro, finely chopped

1 clove of garlic, peeled and pressed through a garlic press

Freshly ground pepper

Baked Pancake

When you take it out of the oven, a chorus of angels sings Hallelujah in your ear.

Maybe you know this as a Dutch Baby or a German Pancake or as Yorkshire pudding or a ginormous popover. In our house we call it Baked Pancake, and we make it all the time. It is Ben’s favorite weekend breakfast, especially since he doesn’t mind waiting for it, while his starving starving STARVING sister is growling and grouchy, fainting from hunger and demanding yogurt and cottage cheese and granola with fruit, because who can wait 15 minutes for the pancake to be out of the oven? That’s okay: Ben can eat the entire pancake by himself, and he like to.

This is another of the many, many recipes from my own childhood. My mother actually has the original and very ratty clipping from the 1966 New York Times, where this was called David Eyres Pancake after a Honolulu somebody whom Craig Claiborne something-or-othered with. The original recipe calls for a full stick of butter, although (apparently) this was identified as a mistake and amended in a later article. A full stick of butter would make this something more like a Dutch Clogged Coronary Artery—as it is, we’ve reduced the butter from 4 to 3 tablespoons for the sake of, er, a desire to be less fat.

I would also like to add that who most often makes this in my family is Michael. What’s with the dads making the weekend breakfasts? Okay, forget that dead-end question. I am glad Michael makes it. Gratitude is leaking out of me, rising like steam from my every pore. Because it could be that Michael would be the kind of person who would only feed the birds—who would manage four bird feeders, including a suet feeder and a finch feeder, which he would fill assiduously with seeds and fat and whatever all else the birds like to eat because, yes, his children and dinner and blah blah, but the birds! The birds must be fed! The poor, hungry little birds! But he’s not like that. Because he feeds his bird children AND he makes this baked pancake for his human ones. Praised be.

Baked Pancake

active time: 10 minutes; total time, including preheating the oven: 35 minutes

The only trick here is that the pan be very, very hot before you melt the butter and pour the batter in: that’s what will make the pancake puff (but if you burn the butter, wipe it out with a paper towel, and start over). The temperature of the ingredients, on the other hand, is a point of contention. Many people suggest that the ingredients should be cold, but we actually find that if they’re a bit warmer than right-out-of-the-fridge, then the whole pancake puffs and rises, which we like a lot; cold ingredients produce a pancake that is high on the sides and dead flat in the middle, which we like a little less. And every now and then, for no reason you can fathom, the pancake will rise so completely not at all that you will feel like you’re in the breakfast version of a Viagra commercial. It’s not you.

Ingredients:

2 eggs

½ cup milk (2% and whole both work well)

½ cup flour

¼ teaspoon kosher salt

3 tablespoons butter, cut into a few pieces

Heat the oven to 425, then put the pan in to heat while you prepare the batter. A 10- or 12-inch oven-proof skillet is ideal, but you could use a comparably-sized baking dish (Pyrex, say)—you know, somewhere between 25π and 36π inches in area, give or take a couple of pi.

Now use a whisk to beat the eggs in a medium-sized bowl (if it has a spout, to quote my former German housemate Ute, “the better it is”), then beat in the milk, then the flour and salt. The original recipe cautions against over-beating and recommends that you leave the batter a little lumpy, but we tend to beat it until it’s just smooth.

By now your pan should be very hot. Add the butter to it by tossing it into the cracked oven door (this is Michael’s trick) and letting it sit in there a couple of seconds, then remove the pan from the oven and swirl it so that the butter is melted and sizzling wildly. You need to do all this quite quickly because you don’t want the oven to lose its heat, you don’t want the pan to cool off, and you don’t want the butter to burn. It’s not hard, and I don’t mean to worry you. I’m just saying. Now pour the batter into the buttery pan and return it the oven. Set your timer for 15 minutes. We bake it for 20, but I think it’s worth peeking at it at 15 because your oven might be different from ours: you want it to be puffed and golden and quite brown in places.

The yummiest way to eat this is to sprinkle it with lemon juice and sieved powdered sugar, a la the original recipe. However, we usually eat it in big hand-held wedges, utterly plain or spread with jam.

Perfect Oatmeal Cookies

You know when your kids have been sick, except then it's day three of being home from school and they're up and about, munching crackers and introducing the Pretty Ponies to the Playmobil Vikings, so you kind of forget they're sick, only then you hear a terrible keening wail and when you run upstairs to investigate the calamity (A compound fracture? A puncture wound? Decapitation?) you find a small girl lying on the carpet weeping: "I don't want to clean the play room." "Did someone tell you you had to clean the playroom?" you might ask her, and, after another round of choking sobs, she will say only, "Noooooo-ho-ho-ho." And then the dim Mama-bulb will illuminate, and you will place your open palm on her hot forehead and feed her Tylenol and ask, cheerfully, "Would you like to come down and make cookies with me?"

So it was with the Bird--and let me just say, the cookies were a good idea. Even if she made occasional announcements like, "Maybe they'll taste my sneeze in the cookies!" and "Will the oven burn up the coughing germs do you think?" that I tried not to hear. These cookies are wildly delicious, and even though we've been making them for just over a year, they are one of my absolute all-time favorites. This is not your usual cakey, raisiny, cinnamony kind of oatmeal cookie; instead they're buttery-edged and crisp but also teeth-stickingly chewy. Plus, they're a strange and beautiful color--a kind of ruddy burnished gold that is very appealing. We all love them; everybody always loves them. Also--and I realize this makes me sound almost unconscionably lazy--you melt the butter before stirring it in, and this freedom from creaming makes me very happy.

I got these cookies from Cindy Hopper's lovely craft blog Skip to My Lou, and while she is not herself Australian, the recipe is. It's for something called ANZAC biscuits, and it stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, the idea being that the cookies were sturdy enough to travel intact to far-away loved ones who were fighting in the war. I have to say, however, that I think this may be the recipe equivalent of the game telephone, since these cookies, while perfect, are somewhat fragile and don't seem like they would travel especially intactly. Nonetheless, their Australianness is preserved with the ingredient "Lyle's Golden Syrup." As the daughter of an English woman, I myself grew up with Lyle's Golden Syrup--a honey-colored, sugar-based stickiness-in-a-tin--and, until recently, it was the kind of thing you had to beg traveling relatives to bring home for you from abroad. Now, however, you can buy it in a plastic bottle in all kinds of American stores, and we get ours in the Whole Foods nearby. Cindy uses light corn syrup instead and, given her good taste, I trust that this is a perfectly acceptable substitution.

Also, while I'm at being all English and everything, I should tell you my mum's theory about sickness: "A little of what you fancy does you good." Which explains why a cookie, while not exactly laden with vitamin C or zinc or antioxidants or codeine, can actually make a person feel much, much better.

This is Birdy in 2009. Sigh.

Perfect Oatmeal Cookies

Makes 3 dozen.

active time: 20 minutes; total time: 1 hour

Adapted from Cindy Hopper's ANZAC Biscuits recipe, and reprinted with her gracious permission. Please do note the low oven temperature.

Ingredients

1 cup rolled oats

3/4 cup sweetened, flaked coconut

1 cup flour (now, in 2014, I use half spelt, because that's how I roll these days)

1 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt (or half as much table salt)

1 stick butter (I use salted)

1 tablespoon Lyle's Golden Syrup (or light corn syrup)

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 tablespoons boiling water

Heat the oven to 300 and prepare a large cookie sheet: I cover mine with parchment paper for even browning and easy clean-up, but you could grease it instead. In a large bowl, stir together the oats, coconut, flour, sugar and salt. Meanwhile melt the butter and syrup together in a small pot over low heat. Stir the baking soda into the boiling water, then stir this into the butter and syrup and pour all of it over the dry ingredients. Stir well, then drop cookie-sized amounts (we use a heaping melon baller, which is about 2 teaspoons I think) onto the baking sheets, leaving plenty of space for them to spread.

Bake for 12-15 minutes, switching the pan around if you need to for even baking, until the cookies are golden all over and quite brown on the edges (keep an eye on them--they can burn quickly); the cookies will look puffy when you remove them from the oven, and then they will sink and go a bit lacy. Leave them on the cookie sheet for 3 or 4 minutes before removing them with a spatula to cool on a rack; if you go at them too early, they will fall all to pieces. Repeat: it will take 3 batches to get all the cookies baked. Yum.

Perfect Quinoa Bowls

You need crunchy, tender, salty, rich, tangy, creamy, and protein. But how you achieve that is up to you!

{Note: this post has a very 2009 sound to it. Which is when I wrote it. At this point, I know, everyone and their brother is making quinoa in their sleep. So please forgive the retro-ness.}

I understand that I'm about to lose a lot of you here, and that I risk compromising my integrity as a peddler of kid-friendly meals and becoming the kind of cultish health fascist who would suddenly foist upon you QUINOA! THE SUPERFOOD OF THE ANDES! I know. Let me start by telling you that it's pronounced keen-wa, just so that you don't end up in Whole Foods insisting to the eye-rolling hippy supermodel of a floor manager that what you need is a bag of kwin-oh-a. Keen-wa. And let me say further that this grain (okay, it's technically a seed) is not only wildly wholesome, it is also incredibly yummy: tender and crunchy at the same time, with a mild, grainy flavor that takes well to things like butter, cheese, and citrus. Picture couscous, only picture it emerging from a phone booth as the Caped Crusader of Complete Protein--with the powers of fiber and iron!--instead of a wimpy processed pasta product. If you are unsure about it, try just following the quinoa directions below, and add the lemon zest and juice, but then instead of olive oil stir in a big blob of good butter and serve it just like that. It is very hard not to like. (I write that, though, and then picture the crazy things my children have managed not to like over the years: potatoes, say, or lettuce. So, maybe quinoa won't actually be that hard not to like.)

 

If you think your family's game, try this meal. Even though it is neither especially quick nor especially simple to make. Quinoa--and I know this is not helping it's case--requires a bit of gentling, as you need first to rinse off its bitterness (nice!) and then boil it and then, so it will be fluffy instead of gluey (mmm!), steam it briefly: none of this is hard, but it requires you not to be trying to get dinner on the table out of a single pot in five minutes. Likewise, the way this meal works best is to offer many components that your family can add to their bowls of quinoa to customize them: beans for velvety wholesomeness, a vegetable for its vegetableness, cheese for salty richness, seeds or nuts for luxurious crunch, and something herby for zing. I'm giving directions here for a quick black bean salad, broiled zukes, crumbled feta, toasted pumpkin seeds, and a cilantro pesto--but use what you've got. Chick peas, pickled beets, grated cheddar, toasted walnuts, and a blob of purchased pesto, say. (But do use a seed or a nut, because the crunch is really key here.)

I've said it before, I know, but a meal that everyone gets to assemble as they please? It is just the most brilliant marketing device. You feel like you're eating every healthy thing of your own total and complete free will.

Or simply serve quinoa with the beans and nuts, and a salad on the side. It doesn't need to be so complicated. But what is wonderful, if you do it this way, is that you'll have a crazy-delicious citrus-scented bowl of food that will, quite literally, energize you. Also, it's fun to sit at the table and rank the components. My kids both ranked the feta first and the zucchini last, though Birdy did like the fact that "The zucchini is burnt and so it kind of tastes like a burnt marshmallow, which I like." I don't know how I feel about that. Michael liked the sauce best and skipped the feta entirely. And me? I love how all the flavors echo and complement each other--the lime and lemon zest, the olive oil and salt--but I like the quinoa itself best of all: all those little lemon-scented grains popping wholesomely under my teeth. I just do.

Perfect Quinoa Bowls

Serves 6

Total time: 45 minutes

This meal was inspired by Heidi Swanson's book Super Natural Cooking--a book so inspiring as to be, in fact, a little daunting. But the quinoa cooking method comes from Gourmet Magazine's recipe for "Lemon-Scented Couscous." If you like the concept of the grain-bowl meal but just can't bring yourself to deal with quinoa, then make it with something familiar first: rice, say, or couscous, or even pasta. In fact, stirred together with a bit more oil and lemon juice, this makes a killer pasta salad. You'll note the usual themes here--salt, olive oil, citrus, fresh herbs--but feel free to vary the components as you like, using nuts instead of seeds (if they're raw, toast them at 350 for 5 minutes) or different cooked or raw vegetables, different cheese, different kinds of beans. 

I have, more than once, caught the dish towel on fire. Just saying.

For the quinoa:

1 1/2 cups quinoa

Kosher salt

The finely grated zest of 1 lemon, and 1 tablespoon of its juice

1 tablespoon olive oil

Wash the quinoa in 3 changes of cold water in a bowl, draining it in a sieve after each rinsing (this is a great job for a child). Now cook the quinoa in a medium pot of boiling salted water (it should be salted enough to taste salty), uncovered, until almost tender, about 12-14 minutes; the grains should have spiraled open somewhat. Drain it in a sieve, then set that sieve over the same pot above 1 inch of simmering water (the water should be lower than the bottom of sieve). Cover the quinoa with a folded kitchen towel, then cover the sieve as best you can with a lid and steam it until tender, fluffy, and dry, about 10 minutes. Remove the pot from the heat and remove the lid. Let it stand, still covered with the towel, for 5 minutes, then move it to a bowl, fluff it with a fork, and stir in the oil, zest, and juice. Taste it for salt, but bear in mind that both the seeds and the feta are going to up the saltiness quotient in the end.

For the beans:

1 15-ounce can of black beans (or any other beans or chickpeas you like), rinsed and drained

1 tablespoon olive oil

The juice and finely grated zest of 1/2 a lime

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt (or half as much table salt)

Stir all the ingredients together, taste, and adjust the seasoning as you like.

For the seeds:

1 teaspoon olive oil

1/2 cup raw pumpkin seeds

1/4 teaspoon chili powder or flakes (optional)

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt (or half as much table salt)

A few scrapings of lime zest

Heat the oil in a tiny pan over medium heat. When it's hot enough to sizzle a seed, add all the seeds and fry, stirring, until popping and golden-brown, about three minutes. Turn off the heat but keep stirring for another minute so that they cool down without burning, then add the chili, salt, and lime zest.

For the herb sauce:

A large handful of cilantro (or parsley or basil), washed and dried

The juice and finely grated zest of the other 1/2 a lime (minus the bit you used for the seeds)

1 clove garlic, peeled and put through a garlic press

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1/4 cup oil (I actually used canola here, for mildness)

In a food processor with the metal blade, whir together the cilantro, lime juice and zest, garlic and salt, stopping the motor occasionally to scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. With the motor running, drizzle the oil through the feed tube and process until emulsified. (Honestly, you could so skip this step: use already-made pesto, or simply chop some herbs nice and fine and put them in a bowl.)

For the cheese:

1 cup crumbled feta (or crumbled fresh goat cheese or another crumbled or shredded cheese of your choosing)

 

For the veggies:

3 or 4 small zucchini

Kosher salt

Olive oil

Dice the zukes into half-inch pieces, then toss them with oil (about a tablespoon) and salt (about a half teaspoon) on a foil-covered baking sheet. Broil close to the heat for 10 to 15 minutes, until the zukes are tender and browning and taste like burnt marshmallows. (Alternately: quarter the zukes lengthwise, brush them with oil and sprinkle them with salt, then grill them, covered, until they're tender, then chop them up.)

Borscht

Do you remember the Empathic Metamorphs from Star Trek Next Generation? No? They’re the perfect-date aliens who subtly change their personalities until they become exactly who you want them to be: big-bosomed hockey-loving gymnasts, most likely, or else maybe limber football enthusiasts with large breasts. (In the show they were more like intensely philosophical oboe players, but I think that’s kind of unrealistic.) Anyways, I’m not saying I’m exactly an alien? I’m just saying that when Vasili and his crew were recently painting four rooms of our house, I found myself speaking to them in a slight Russian accent. Partly it’s my awkwardness about having anyone in the house who is actually being paid to be here—a situation that has only ever occurred before when the hot-water heater burst open on Christmas day or on the one night a year we hire a babysitter. It makes me feel like I’m throwing a dinner party that’s going really badly—or like I’ve hired someone for sex. I just cannot relax and let it be what it is. And so, when this four-person Russian painting crew—ranging in age from 10 to 100—were at our house for two days, I fretted around, offering mugs of tea and plates of cookies and wedges of quiche and glasses of vodka. Also, I smiled a lot, especially when Vasili asked me questions I couldn’t understand. “Igsheel zimbly vhyt, zees?” (That’s “Should I paint this Simply White with an eggshell finish?” And the answer is “Yes.”)

“Like me, like me, like me!” I didn’t say. But I did say, “Nice color, yes?” Also I said, “You vant to khev bowl of boorscht, mebbe?” And all I can say in my own defense is that I come by it honestly: my Russian grandmother, the one who called me Katushinka, spoke with that exact same accent, and everyone in my family can imitate it perfectly.

Anyways, about the borscht: it’s sweet and vibrantly pink, and so your kids might just surprise you and like it. Plus, when you stir a bloop of sour cream into it, it turns almost fluorescently pink. And in their very popular article “The 11 Best Foods You Aren’t Eating,” The New York Times listed beets as number 1! Thanks to all their lovely folates and antioxidants and whatnot. I admit they recommend eating them raw for maximum nutrition—but they’re still plenty healthy cooked. And who doesn’t love cabbage? Well, lots of people actually don’t like cabbage. But I do!

My parting advice? It’s not about beets. It’s Benjamin Moore “creamy beige.” Like a buttery pale apricot. Vut kulhr!

Borscht

2 fist-sized beets, peeled and diced (about 2 cups)

2 fist-sized potatoes (we like Yukon gold for this), peeled and diced (about 2 cups)

4 cups chicken or veggie broth (1 32-ounce box) or use the same amount of water but add 1 teaspoon kosher salt

2 tablespoons butter

1 onion, chopped

½ teaspoon caraway seeds (optional)

1 large carrot, peeled and diced (about ½ cup)

1 large celery stalk, peeled and diced (about ½ cup)

½ of a green cabbage, finely shredded (3-4 cups)

1 cup canned crushed tomatoes or tomato puree

2 tablespoons each honey and cider vinegar

Kosher salt

Sour cream and (optional) fresh dill for serving

Begin by bringing the beets, potatoes, and broth (or salted water) to a boil in a medium pot over medium heat. Cover the pot, turn the heat down, and simmer while you prepare the rest of the ingredients—around 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat the butter in a wide soup pot over medium-low heat and cook the onion until translucent, around five minutes. Skip the caraway if your children don’t like their soup to evoke rye bread, otherwise add it with the onions. Add the rest of the vegetables with a teaspoon of kosher salt and sauté for 5 or so minutes until the cabbage is well wilted, then pour in the beets and potatoes with their cooking liquid, the tomatoes, the honey and cider vinegar, and 1 or 2 cups of water—just enough to submerge all the ingredients in liquid. Bring the pot to a boil, turn the heat to low, cover, and simmer for 45 minutes or so, stirring occasionally, until all the vegetables are very tender.

Puree about half the soup with a stick blender (or do this verrrry carefully in a regular blender, and then stir it back in—or skip pureeing it altogether), then taste for salt, sweet, and tart: add more salt, honey, or vinegar in tiny increments as needed to make the soup lively-tasting and good. Especially salt. Serve each bowl topped with a spoonful of sour cream, a snip of dill, and lots of confident enthusiasm.

Brown Beef Stew

Brown is a nice color.

You never see it in a rainbow,

but. . .

Brown is all around. Ground is brown.

Mud puddles are brown.

Mud pies are brown. Mince pie is.

Turkeys are brown.

Turkey is nice and brown.

Brown gravy is nice, too.

Brown bread and brown betty are brown.

Brownies are brown.

Brown elves are brownies.

Brownie girl scouts are brownies, too.

I like brown.

I like brown eyes

and brown

shoes and

brown cows

ad the first day of November.

Did you grow up with this book? What is a Color by Alice and Martin Provensen, from 1967?  Oh, it's so, so good: funny little illustrations of funny little bits of text, interspersed with a moody, saturated spread for each color: "36 baby chicks and four yellow lions" for yellow, "ten thousand policemen" for blue, "five fire engines at a four-alarm fire!!!" for red. And a gentle herd of long-eyelashed cows for brown. When I started reading it to Ben and Birdy, it turned out I still had it memorized from my own childhood.

And I'm thinking of it this morning because this stew is the brownest thing I make; it is, to me, what brown tastes like. The chunks of meat cook forever, and they masquerade as cubes still--you can even spear one with a fork--but then in your mouth they fall into the heap of tangy shreds that they've actually become. A rich, savory sauce clings to everything--the kind that makes you run your finger around the rim of our empty dish and lick it. "Didn't you just remind me to use my fork?" a child might ask you, and you'll just have to shrug and smile the sheepish smile of the hypocrites.

But this stew seems like the perfect gift to give yourself this week: a hearty, warming meal with an absence of fuss--one that can simmer away while you wrap or bake, work or shovel or sit by the fire under a blanket, the house filled with the smell of the fact that later there will be dinner. It is warmth in a bowl, all comforting deliciousness.

Brown Beef Stew

Serves 8

Active time: 40 minutes; total time: 3 hours

This makes a lot. The truth is that we were bringing half of it to a sick friend, and so I took the measurements from that vast amount. But you could easily make half as much--just keep an eye on the liquid, and prepare to add more as it cooks.

4 pounds of beef stew meat, cut into 1 1/2-inch cubes (I bought a single piece of chuck and cut it myself)

2 teaspoons kosher salt (or half as much table salt)

Freshly ground black pepper

3 tablespoons flour

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 large yellow onion, halved and sliced

1 cup red wine

2 cups plain tomato sauce (I use Hunt's) or tomato puree

1 cup broth (I use chicken, though beef might make more sense)

A sprig of thyme and a bay leaf

4 celery stalks, cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces, their leaves chopped

6 carrots and/or parsnips, peeled and cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces

Heat the oven to 325.

Season the meat very well with salt and pepper, and sprinkle the flour over all of it, tossing the cubes to coat them. It's okay if some cubes are flourier or saltier than others; it will all even out in the pot.

In a large Dutch heat half the oil over medium-high heat until hot but not smoking, then

brown the meat well on as many sides as is reasonably possible. This is the only part of this dish that's a bit of a pain, and it just is what it is: you will need to do the meat in batches, adding more oil at some point, because if you crowd it then it will steam instead of browning properly. I do the meat in 2 1/2 batches: I add the onions to the pan with the final half batch of meat and stir and brown them while the meat is doing its thing across the way. Tongs are good for flipping the meat over, and you can adjust the heat if the meat is either not browning properly or if anything seems to be burning. Also, and I swear this is the last thing I'm saying about this, I actually deglaze the pan between batches because otherwise the bottom of my pot seems to burn: so after the first batch of meat is done, I pour half the wine into the pot, swirl it around and scrape with a spatula to get up all the nice stuff from the bottom, then pour it into the dish with the already-browned meat and heat more oil for the second batch, which I do the same way. Honestly, you're talking about a twenty-five minute investment in browning for immeasurable stewy pleasure later on. It's totally worth it.

Have you already browned the onions by now? If not, add another splash of oil to the pot and brown the onions for 5 or 10 minutes until they are nicely colored. Add the meat and its juices back to the pot, along with whatever wine you haven't used yet, the tomato sauce, the broth, the herbs, and the remaining vegetables. Bring to a simmer over high heat, then press a large piece of parchment down onto the surface of the stew--the paper should come up far enough that the lid will hold it in place--and cover the pot with a heavy lid. (If you don't have any parchment, skip this step, but expect to add more liquid at some point as more will evaporate).

Cook the stew in the oven for 2 to 3 hours until the meat is fork tender, checking on it every now and again to make sure that the liquid isn't on the verge of being entirely evaporated; if it is, add more broth or a cup of water. After it's cooked, taste the stew and add salt if it needs it, which it might or might not, depending on your broth.

Apple Pie Tutorial

I have written before, I know, about Michael's New Year's resolutions and their amazing, er, concreteness. And so, with the end of the year looming suddenly, and with apple season in full, fragrant swing, Michael decided to learn how to bake a pie crust. Which was the entirety of his personal goals for 2010. Of course, fulfilling his resolution presented a direct challenge to one of my own: patience. I am just not that patient a teacher sometimes. Michael has these beautiful hands, these intuitive massage-therapist hands that work magic on the bodies of people in pain, people in need, people looking for the kind of experience that makes you groan, one minute into it, "Never stop. Oh, I'm already sad about the fact that you're going to stop at some point." Honestly. And yet in the context of the pie crust, it was as though he suddenly had ten thick sausages stapled to his palm. "Gently!" I admonished him, more than once, and he said, sheepish, "I'm trying." I'm sure it didn't help that I was snapping a million pictures, or just snapping in general.

And yet: he found the overall experience to be a positive one, and he was thrilled with the finished pie which looked, there's no way around it, like a specimen from a magazine cover (or centerfold). And it tasted even better.

As I was teaching him, though, I started to understand pie crust's bad reputation for making people feel incompetent and afraid. There's a lot of that kind of hazy "not too much. . . but not too little. . ." precision that throws everybody. You want to mix the butter into the flour just enough; you want to add just enough water; you want to work it just enough. I know. It's a little stressful, and I tend to offer recipes here that are much more like, "between 1 and 16 tablespoons of butter" or "walnuts or pecans or something else crunchy that's not even a nut if you want." But if you are new to pie crusts and want to try making one, you should; this is as hand-holding a recipe that there could be for pie, and I'm happy to entertain any questions in the comments section here. If you need to, you can even fax me a photograph of your pea-sized butter bits so I can say, "Yes. Exactly like that. Good job, sweetheart." And then you can head into the holiday pie season full of the confidence of the capable pie-makers.

Apple Pie Tutorial

Serves 8

Active time: 1 hour; total time: 2 hours

You could make this crust with all butter, if you prefer, but I make it this way--with (non-hydrogenated) shortening--because it's my mom's crust recipe and that's how she makes it (though now we both use lard when we can get away with it). Also, if you must add spices--I think that cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves are the classic apple-pie trifecta--go for it. But don't come grumping to me when you can't taste the apples.

For crust:

3 cups of flour

1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt (or half as much table salt)

2 sticks of butter (mine is salted), cut into 1/2-inch cubes

6 tablespoons of shortening or lard (I was feeding vegetarians and used shortening. Sigh.)

2/3 cup ice water (put some ice in the water, and when you're ready to use it, fish out the ice and measure the water)

For filling:

7 apples, peeled, cored, and sliced fairly thin

1/2-3/4 cup sugar, depending on how tart your apples are (we used 3/4, and I think I was the only person who thought it was a hair too sweet)

2-3 tablespoons flour (we used two, and our filling was on the juicy side, but that's how I like it; if you want perfect slices, with all the apples lining up like little beige mosaic tiles, use 3)

For egg wash:

1 egg, beaten

To make the crust:

Mise en pie.

Butter cutter.

Food processor method: Combine the flour and salt in the bowl of your food processor, then distribute the butter and shortening over it. 

Sandy pebbles.

Pulse for a second or two at a time, 5 or 6 times, and then check to see what it looks like: you want to see a mix of butter sizes at this point: some should be the size of peas or even a little bigger, like, hm, the tip of your thumb, say, and some should be mealy and crumbly looking. If you see giant pieces of butter at this point--the size of dice still--then pulse a couple more times. Those butter pieces are going to create the flakes, though, so be judicious. Now dump the mixture into a large bowl, and proceed from the asterisk, below.

By-hand method: Combine the flour and salt in a large bowl, and distribute the butter and shortening over it. Use a pastry blender or your fingertips to work the fat and flour together. For the former, you're on your own, since I've never used a pastry blender; for the latter, you want to lift handfuls of the mixture up out of the bowl, then gently let it fall through your fingertips as you rub it lightly together. Eventually, you'll have a bowl full of clumpy lumps, some the size of peas or fingertips, some the size of fish-tank gravel and cornmeal, and this is perfect. You don't want to spend too long doing this, or the crust will be tough and unflaky; nor do you want the fat left so big that when you go to roll out it sticks all over the place and you curse me.

Stirring in the drizzled water.

* Now, whichever method you've used, drizzle the ice water over the flour and fat mixture, and stir it with a fork until it starts to cling together in shaggy crumbs. Gather a little clump in your hand and squeeze: if it creates a shaggy dough, you're good to go; if it seems to dry to stick together, then drizzle another tablespoon or two of water over it, stir, and try again (this part's a bit tricky: too little water, and the dough will crack and break as you try to roll it; too much and your crust will be tough). 

Gathering up the dough.

Dump it onto your clean countertop and gently gather it into two balls, squeezing and pressing and very slightly kneading just enough to hold it together. 

Flatten each ball into a disk, wrap it in plastic wrap, and refrigerate it while you prepare the filling.

To make the filling:

Peeling and slicing the apples.

In a large bowl, sprinkle the flour and sugar over the apples, and use your hands to combine. There. That was totally straightforward, right?

Heat your oven to 425 and roll the dough:

Rolling in the deep.

Sprinkle your clean, dry counter with flour, put an unwrapped disk of dough down, sprinkle it with more flour, and use a rolling pin to roll it thin. The thing is, this is more dough than you'll actually need, so the size is less important here than thinness. It should be about as thick as, geez, metaphors are eluding me. Glove leather? I don't have leather gloves, but I once did. About an 1/8th of an inch is what you're going for. Roll from the center out to the edges, pressing as evenly as you can to make a roundish shape, and checking to be sure the dough is not sticking beneath; sprinkle more flour as you need to, but cheat it as much as you can (sticking is a disaster, but too much flour will make a tough crust). If the dough tears, wash your hands and dry them, sit on the couch for a minute to take a few deep breaths, then patch it as best you can.

 

When the dough is rolled out, fold it loosely into quarters, center the point in the bottom of your pie plate, and unfold it. Now lift the edges as you use the flat of your hand to press the dough down into the pan--that is, you don't want to just press down, or you'll tear it, so you want to offer it some slack and a certain generosity of spirit. 

When the plate is lined, use a pair of clean scissors or a knife to trim it, leaving about an inch of overhang to make the fluted crust.

Roll out the top crust in the exact same way, then dump the apple filling into the pie plate, center the point of the folded-into-quarters top crust on top of it, and unfold it. Trim the overhang to match the one below it, then brush some water where the top and bottom crusts meet and press gently to seal. 

Tuck the overhang underneath itself (I realize, looking at the pictures, that Michael folded it up over itself, and this worked fine too) all the way around the crust to make a thick lip, then flute the rim by pressing it with your thumbs and index fingers all the way around. (You could crimp it with a fork instead, which might be a look you have some affinity with from your own childhood.)

Use a sharp knife to cut 4 or 5 2-inch vents in the top crust (to let the steam escape!), then brush the crust and edge all over with the egg wash. 

If you like, cut some of the leftover dough scraps to make decorations: apples, say, or leaves. I always roll up a little rose shape, because that's what my mother always did.

 

Bake the pie in the middle of the oven for 25 minutes, then turn the oven down to 375 and bake for another 30 minutes, until the crust is nicely browned and you can see the apple filling bubbling away through the vents. If the edges threaten to burn at any point, you can wrap a strip of foil around them, which is kind of a pain, but works. (I tented my little rose with foil for the last 10 minutes or so--though I think it actually would have been fine.) Cool the pie on a rack before showing if off and devouring it.

p.s. Gather the leftover scraps into a ball, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate. When you've recovered from the pie experience, you can let your kids roll them out to make little jam tarts and chocolate chip pastries. Maybe I'll post a few pictures of this activity later in the week. . . 

Lemony Broccoli Pasta with Chicken

Lemony Broccoli Pasta with Chicken

Serves 4-6

Total time: 30 minutes

Wildly nutritious broccoli gets a starring role in this zingy, substantial pasta dish. For the highest yum factor, try to get your hands on a bunch of super-freshly grown broccoli--and don't discard the stems! Peeled and sliced, they add a sweet, mild crunch to this lightly sauced and deeply flavorful pasta.

12 ounces dried pasta shapes (fusilli, wagon wheels, rotini, etc., ideally whole-wheat)

1 pound (4 small or 2 large) skinless, boneless chicken breasts, preferably naturally raised

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

4 tablespoons butter (divided use)

2 tablespoons olive oil

3 cloves garlic, pressed through a garlic press

1 large bunch broccoli, stems peeled, and stems and florets cut into small pieces

1 cup chicken broth

Juice and finely grated zest of 1 large lemon

1 cup walnuts, coarsely chopped and toasted at 350 for 5 minutes

1 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese, plus extra for serving

Bring a large pot of pasta-cooking water to a boil and salt it heavily: it should taste as salty as seawater. Cook the pasta (if you add it when the chicken is about half cooked, the sauce and pasta will be done at the same time), drain it, and return it to the pot with 3 tablespoons of the butter.

Pat the chicken dry and season on both sides with salt and pepper. In a very large skillet, heat the olive oil and remaining 1 tablespoon of butter over medium-high heat until foamy and very hot, then add the chicken and sauté until well browned and cooked through, around 4 minutes per side (thicker breasts may take longer; turn the heat down as needed to keep the chicken from burning). Remove the chicken to a cutting board.

Turn the heat to low and add the garlic to the pan, stirring for a few seconds until it is fragrant but not browned, then add the broccoli, the broth, and 1 teaspoon of salt, stirring to dissolve the browned bits on the bottom of the pan. Cover the pan, turn the heat up to medium, and cook/steam until the broccoli is just tender: 3-4 minutes. Add the chicken, which you've sliced thinly, back to the pan, along with the lemon juice and zest, the walnuts, and the buttered pasta, and stir to combine well (if the skillet isn't large enough, combine in the pasta pot). Now taste a piece of pasta: it should be lemony and flavorful; add more salt, pepper, and lemon juice to taste. Stir in the parmesan cheese, then serve, passing more parmesan at the table.

Hummus Among Us

It all started with a pita the size of a car tire. No. It started before that, in Target, where I'd taken the kids on an errand, even though it was such a beautiful Sunday morning, and driving to the mall was a strange and guilty pleasure. But a "quick" trip to Target is about as likely a "quick" trip to Kathmandu. Finding what we were looking for was easy--though I have to be cagey about it, since it's for Michael, and no, it's not barbeque-related, but, yes, there was plenty of barbeque-related merchandise laid out for people like us to buy for people like him for a particular upcoming necktie-themed holiday, if you know what I'm saying. It's the things we weren't looking for that took so long--the toy aisle, which sings its siren song to the kids, and where they remained for years on end while solar-powered strings of patio tree lights sang their own special siren song to me (too expensive, sigh) until I finally plopped down into a comfy demo lawn chair and waited for them while my beard grew down past the outdoor furniture aisle and through electronics and finally out into Joann's Fabrics next door. By the time the kids were done ("Save your money," I counseled wisely, "and if you wake up still thinking about those pet shop critters, we'll come back.") we were all starving to death.

Food shopping while starving to death--now that's as sensible, really, as a "quick" trip to Target on a glorious spring day. Nevertheless, there we were, in the Turkish market that I had been meaning to investigate since it opened a few months ago. Everything looked good to us--from the Armenian string cheese to the dill-flecked tzatkiki to the barrel-sized jars of pickled peppers (okay, those looked good only to me). Instead, we got a quart of local strawberries, a jar of roasted-pepper relish (see picture at right) and a still-warm pita bread the size of a car tire. The kids grew a bit unravelish in line, and suggested we get some hummus (there was a sample out, and it was, indeed excellent)--but hummus? I can make hummus with both hands tied behind my back and a pair of hungry children watching hungrily.

And so, inspired by the Wheel-of-Fortune pita and our beckoning picnic table and the children's "utter starvaciousness," as Ben put it, that little chip off the exaggerative block, I did. Homemade hummus is both excellent and wildly inexpensive. Plus, you can keep all the ingredients on-hand, and you can make it just the way you like it. For me, and I realize this is heresy, that means no tahini. Tahini is a middle-Eastern sesame paste, and while I love everything middle Eastern when middle Eastern folks make it for me, tahini in my own home always tastes exactly like the dust that has been scraped off of a fossil of prehistoric cave-dwelling sesame seeds. I dutifully added it to my hummus years ago, as it was called for in every recipe, but have been secretly winnowing down the amount ever since until I have finally come up with my ideal measurement: zero tablespoons. I know.

But I do use plenty of olive oil and lemon juice and garlic and salt, because if it's not super-vibrantly seasoned, then hummus, even without tahini, tastes like the dust you scraped off of a fossilized can of chickpeas. And if I have fresh mint, I use that too (if I don't, I add a bit of lemon zest instead). Plus, I add a tablespoon of pomegranate molasses, which is a deliciously tart syrup you can buy at middle-Eastern markets or even at Whole Foods, and which can be stirred into seltzer to make a refreshing drink (but if you don't have any, just use more lemon to taste). The other hummus trick is to make sure you move past the super-grainy stage to the super-creamy one, which you do by adding a bit of warm water. Easy.

Homemade hummus is zingy and wholesome, and it makes an ideal lunch-box addition with a handful of carrot sticks and pita chips. Our kids love it (which is more than they could say about the red-pepper relish), but if yours are squeamish about trying it, well, you know what I'm going to say: Butt-pea Paste. What could sound better?

Hummus Among Us

Makes about 2 cups

Total time: 5 minutes

1 15-ounce can chickpeas, drained

1 clove garlic, smashed and peeled

1 teaspoon kosher salt (use more or less, depending on how bland your chickpeas start out)

Juice of half a lemon (plus some of its grated zest if you don't have any herbs)

1 tablespoon pomegranate molasses (or skip it and add more lemon juice to taste--just don't substitute regular molasses, which is nothing like it!)

A few fresh mint sprigs, finely chopped (parsley is good too, but I didn't have any)

1/3 cup flavorful olive oil

Hot water (about 2 tablespoons)

In the bowl of a food processor with the metal blade, whir together the chickpeas, garlic, salt, lemon juice (and zest), pomegranate syrup, and mint, stopping to scrape down the bowl with a rubber spatula, until the mixture makes a coarse mash. With the motor running, drizzle the olive oil through the feed tube until the mixture is smooth. Scrape down the sides with a rubber spatula, then, with the motor running again, drizzle in hot water, tablespoon at a time (up to 3 tablespoons), until the mixture turns very creamy.

Crunchy Oven Fries

Ben is ten, and he asks many questions that begin this way: "If you had limitless wishes…" What would you wish for first? (Justice.) How many wishes do you think it would be before you wished that poop didn't smell bad? (Never. Poop smells bad so we'll stay away from it, which helps keep us healthy.)Which wish do you think would go the least like you'd meant it to? (No mosquitoes. Then all the bats would die and the world would fall apart and it would turn into one of those King-Midas stories where you feel like a greedy, foolish jerk.) There are many related questions of the if-you-could-have-anything sort. For instance, this is a popular one: If you could change one unhealthy food to being healthy, what would you pick? Beer? That just doesn't seem like the right thing to say to a child. But then again, Most of the foods I like are already healthy feels like a smarmy Polyanna Granola cop-out. Jalapeno Bottle Caps feels short-sightedly specific, even though our local brew-pub's batter-fried pepper rings may be the junk food I crave most often. But then fried foods is deemed too general. ("Even though you and Birdy both said candy?" "Yes.") So I usually pick French fries.

And I'm seeing the way this story should go: this column should be of the wish-fulfillment sort: And look, now French fries can be healthy! But that's not quite how it's going to be. True, you make these with the skins still on, thereby keeping intact much of the potato's nutritional value. And you use healthy oils, thereby making the most of the grease factor. Plus, I'd always rather see oil amounts in tablespoons rather than quarts. Those are all good things. But, though baked in the oven, these are hardly dietetic. What they are, though, is soul-satisfyingly good. Deeply crunchy on the outside and fluffy on the inside. Salty and garlicky and addictive and just totally French-fry-like. They are not at all like those false-promise oven fries that are as limply disappointing as fat-free nuts (if there were such a thing as fat-free nuts, believe me--they'd be disappointing). Oh, they are so good, these fries. If they are a component of a healthy meal, you will feel happy about them. If instead you cave to the pressure of your own craving and make them as an after-school snack and serve them with chipotle mayonnaise, your children will still be too full, even hours later, to eat their lentil soup. "Life is short, eat dessert first." That's a slogan we saw over the weekend and Ben said, "Yeah, and then you'll never actually get to the healthy stuff, and life will be really short." Indeed.

A quick recipe note: I hate to run a recipe that requires a microwave, but I haven't tried making these without that step. Which is funny, given that we are still using Michael's late grandmother's microwave, which is like a cross between a slow cooker and a bug zapper--not in a good way. Also, nuking plastic wrap is not my idea of a good time. If you didn't microwave them, I imagine that the potatoes would still cook through, but they'd be less fluffy inside, and if you try it, please let me know. Likewise, please let me know if you make these with sweet potatoes. Sweet potato fries is another favorite around here. They'd be in at least my top 25 for foods I'd wish were healthy.

Crunchy Oven Fries

This recipe is adapted from America's Test Kitchen, from a recipe that uses all vegetable oil, more garlic, and more seasonings overall (including garlic powder, which seems redundant to me). We ate these with chipotle mayonnaise: a third of a cup of Hellman's (or Best Foods) full-fat mayonnaise, whisked up with a spoonful of chipotle puree, a squeeze of lemon juice, and a bit of salt. Heaven.

4 garlic cloves (or 1 garlic clove the size of a baby's fist), smashed, peeled and pressed through a garlic press or finely chopped

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 1/2 pounds russet potatoes (about 3 or 4)

2 tablespoons cornstarch

1 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

Freshly ground black pepper

1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Heat oven to 475. Quarter the potatoes lengthwise, then cut each quarter further into 3 or 4 skinny, even wedges.

Combine the garlic and oil in a large bowl and microwave until the garlic is fragrant, about 1 minute. Pour off most of the oil onto a rimmed baking sheet, and tilt the sheet to coat it; you will leave behind the garlic with around 1 tablespoon of oil in the bowl, and this is just right.

Add the potatoes to the bowl and use a rubber spatula to toss and coat them with the oil and garlic. Wrap the bowl tightly in plastic wrap and microwave on high power until the potatoes are translucent around the edges, 3 to 6 minutes, shaking the bowl to redistribute the potatoes halfway through cooking.

Combine the cornstarch, salt, pepper, and cayenne in a small bowl. Sprinkle over the hot potatoes and toss well to coat. Arrange the potatoes in a single layer on the prepared baking sheet and bake, turning once, until deep golden brown and crisp, 30 to 40 minutes (I flip them after 15 minutes). Drain briefly on brown paper bags, then serve hot.