My mother's kitchen

Here are some snapshots from my mother's kitchen (featuring her creations, of course).


Home-brewed Kombucha with Rose Hips and Grains of Paradise



Fried Jerusalem Artichoke Chips with Lemon Zest



Coconut Milk Custard and Fresh Berry Tart with Sweet Amaranth Crust



My mom's spice cabinet (less a creation, and more just a sight to be seen)

You know that place you run to when the world seems too wild and and too chaotic and too confusing? That place that warms your belly, and makes you feel as cozy as an egg nestled under a big fluffy hen? If you haven’t found that place yet, you can come and share mine. After all, there’s always room for one more in my mother’s kitchen.

I know it’s been a while since my last post. I’d been working late at the office. I’d been schmoozing with spreadsheets and flirting with files each night until my eyes were red and tired. I’d been living on diet coke, coffee, dunkin’ donuts and other soulless forms of sustenance. Really, it hasn’t been pretty.

That’s why, at the first opportunity, I hopped on a plane to New Jersey, claimed my spot on the hard wooden bench of the family table at my parent’s house, and didn’t budge for four whole days. If there’s one thing a weary body needs more than anything else, it’s my mom’s cooking. For my first meal, I was served a heaping bowl of vibrant fuchsia beet slaw with homemade wine vinegar. Next came a French omelet consisting of our neighboring farm’s fresh eggs, spiced butter, and chopped tarragon. Then a feast of haddock au papillote with braised fennel, shallots and vermouth. Then local pastured Italian sausage served with polenta spoonbread and herbed green beans. Then a spicy lamb curry with pistachio, saffron and cardamom rice. It was a glorious gastronomic adventure, to say the least.

And after four days of learning, and tasting, and preparing, and feasting, let me tell you, I’m as good as new. I returned to Chicago, feeling as warm and contented as I used to each Christmas Eve growing up when I would don a new pair of flannel pajamas and pad around our pine-scented house waiting for Santa.

One day, I will invite each and every one of you back to my mother’s kitchen for a four day break from the world. For four days of chopping vegetables, breaking eggs, stirring big pots, and sitting down to eat at a long wooden table with hard benches does wonders for whatever ails you. But until that day, I will leave you with a recipe so delicious, comforting, and nourishing that maybe, for just a few bites, you’ll feel like you’re already there, sitting next to me on the bench, and wondering what culinary wonderment will next land on your plate.

My mother’s

good-for-what-ails-ya

beet slaw

Ingredients:

6 medium-sized beets, (whatever color you like, but my mom likes to use three red and three golden)

Half a bunch of cilantro, chopped

¼ cup vinegar of your choosing (my mom uses her homemade red wine vinegar, but I’ve tried a white balsamic which is also lovely)

¼ to ½ cup extra virgin olive oil, depending on the strength of the vinegar

Step one: Scrub and peel your beets. It’s important to remove the peel because it often has a bitter or metallic taste. Using a food processor or a regular grater, grate all of the beets until you have just a pile of shavings. If you are using both golden and regular beets, I would suggest keeping them separate until you’re ready to serve the salad so that the colors stay sharp and beautiful. It won’t change the taste, it’s just prettier to look at.

Step two: Toss the shredded beets with the vinegar and olive oil, and mix in the chopped cilantro.

Step three: Eat this tasty slaw to your heart’s content.

-Adriana

greens and all

Lately, I've been all about reusing instead of throwing things in the trash. I still haven't figured out a good system for composting in our new apartment, so I'll admit I'm doing nowhere near as well at reducing waste as I'd like. However, I've been doing alright in other areas. Instead of buying new wrapping paper, I've been saving old papers and scraps to decorate and create new works of art and handmade wrapping paper. And I've been thoroughly inspired by websites like Design*Sponge (particularly their before & after section) to look at refuse in a new way instead of rushing to the store to buy each item I need. 

Today, after a nice morning workout, I planned to find a hardware store somewhere near the gym. We've had some potential home accessories sitting around the apartment for a while that I felt could be freshened up by a new coat of paint, and today seemed like as good a day as any to muster up the courage to figure out how to: a) buy paint, b) sand off old, peeling paint, and c) correctly refinish some furniture. Somehow the below-freezing weather didn't deter me, even though I was still wearing my capri gym pants. I'm really silly sometimes. 

I found out that there was a Lowe's just a few blocks from the gym, and I jauntily departed. I left brownstone-covered Park Slope and started to feel small among the industrial buildings. Below the train tracks at the Smith and 9th Street F stop, on a sidewalk frozen over and slippery enough to skate on, I spotted a few chairs and a broken mirror. Sitting in the middle of the sidewalk. Ready to be thrown out. I walked past, partly because my calves were getting numb and partly because I was afraid somebody would see me eyeing that old furniture and shoo me away. 

I finally made it past lines of sanitation trucks and into the compound of the hardware store. I decided on paint colors, successfully purchased them, and left armed with some extra courage (could it be that the hardware store infused me with some sort of butch bravado while I waited for my paint to mix? Doubtful). Regardless, I made my way, again, below the train tracks, skidded across the icy concrete, and poked with a numb finger at the bottom of a battered old chair. It looked like it had been broken in an Italian restaurant, perhaps cracking atop a mobster's head. I swooped it up beneath my arm and dashed for the train. 

It was exhilarating. While I really knew nobody cared if I wanted to go home with a broken, ugly bottom-half-of-a-chair, I felt positively brazen. I finally made it home with my haul, and Mary's eyes widened a bit, like, "Oh, god, what is she bringing home now?" My mischievous grin must have won her over, though, as that half a chair is now sitting against the living room wall, waiting to become something fantastic once again. 

. . .

One of the things I like most about this recipe from Bon Appetit's February issue is the fact that it uses the whole beet, greens and all. It's meant to be made with golden beets, but I used the red ones because that was what the Coop had, and I honestly like the sweetness of red beets better anyway. If you use red beets, your whole dish will turn red, including the pasta. Personally, I like that. I think we can all use some more color in our lives, or a fresh coat of paint.

-Kylie