Bulgur Wheat Salad with Zucchini and Herb Vinaigrette

Yesterday’s BBQ was a washout. Literally. And so much rain has fallen in Fairfield County the past week that big old trees have been uprooted and fallen on the roads, electricity has been scattered.

But Sunday looked hopeful. The sun was out, bright and warm. My cousins were over for a visit. I invited my brother and sister-in-law for a cookout.

Yes! Grilled meat! Grilled corn!  Salads made with fresh produce from a farmer’s market: unwaxed cucumbers, beefy tomatoes that haven’t been gassed, slim, young zucchini squash, sweet leaf lettuce that would make Peter Rabbit go nuts with delight.

But the gray clouds moved in just as I thought about lighting the grill. Rain showers for the next two hours.

I used the broiler for the meat. It lacked that outdoor, smoky taste, but was still good, thanks to a delicious barbecue sauce.

The salads? Perfect. Didn’t matter if we were outdoors or in, whether the meat had been grilled or not or, in fact, whether there was any meat at all. Fresh, local vegetables and greens, tasty olive oil and vinegar combos — you can’t go wrong here.

We ate well, with homemade apple pie and plum cobbler as a bonus.

The sun came out just as we finished.

Oh well. Here’s a recipe for one of the salads:

Bulgur Wheat Salad with Zucchini and Herb Vinaigrette

• 1 cup fine grain bulgur wheat
• 1-1/2 cups boiling water
• 1 large ripe tomato, chopped into bite size pieces
• 1 small, slim zucchini, diced
• 1 medium cucumber, peeled, deseeded and diced
• 2 scallions, chopped, optional
• 3/4 cup crumbled feta cheese, optional
• 2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme, oregano, savory or marjoram leaves (or a mixture of herbs)
• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 3-4 tablespoons lemon juice
• salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Place the bulgur in a bowl and pour the boiling water over it. Stir and let rest for about 15 minutes, or until the water has been absorbed. Add the tomato, zucchini, cucumber and optional scallions and cheese. Sprinkle with the herbs. Toss ingredients to distribute them evenly. Add the olive oil and 3 tablespoons lemon juice. Toss the salad, taste and add more lemon juice if desired, plus salt and pepper to taste. Best to let rest for 15 minutes before serving (at room temp).

Makes 4-6 servings

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Those Cheese and Peanutbutter Crackers

I seem to remember someone (cough, you) suggesting that I carry those bright orange packet-crackers around with me for such occasions.  I’m shocked to hear you were away from home without them.  

No, but seriously, I’m a fan of the Luna Bars (Chocolate Peppermint Stick) for this kind of situation.  They keep forever.

Submitted by Meredith    mflichtenberg@yahoo.com

Yes, well, some people told me those were not healthy, though I did so love those cheese cracker-peanut butter things. :(

I’ll take a look at Luna Bars (though chocolate peppermint not a fave). Thanks for the suggestion.

Sounds like a nightmare. You should pack some snack bags of Turkish pistachios on the car (aren’t those your favorite snack?) - one in the glove box and one in each side door pocket! Or how about a recipe for snack mix that travels well and doesn’t leave the car a total mess?

Submitted by gillianfein@gmail.com

Always Have Food in Your Car

Always have food and water in your car.

Proof of that came last night as I ventured home from my daughter’s house in Brooklyn. I faced the usual rush hour traffic, no problem, I’m used to that. Except for the pileup on the GW Bridge which made traffic in all directions the usual crazy. So, okay, tack on an additional half hour for that.

I keep forgetting to change the CDs in my car and I’m a little sick of them now, but, so what, I’ll try to remember for next time. Talk radio out of the question (my normally low blood pressure would peak to stroke levels).

What I didn’t know about was the raging storm in Connecticut, where I live. I called my husband to tell him what time to light the grill and he laughed, then described the sheets of rain that were falling in lower Fairfield County. When I reached the Merritt Parkway, traffic was almost at a standstill.

Aha! I thought, I’ll take the back roads, like I usually do when it seems maybe it’ll be faster.

Am I an idiot or something? Every back road was almost impassable. I followed three or four other cars as we made our way around huge fallen trees and sometimes under the ones that fell on high wires but were still above ground — hoping a tree wouldn’t fall completely, and therefore on me, as I was passing.

An hour later, after driving on some of the same roads twice, I realized what a hopeless venture this was and found myself back on the highway, where traffic was still not moving more than a mile or two an hour. Slowly, slowly I made it home.

I was ravenous. I always carry water in the car, but not food. Hard to believe too, because my grandmother’s philosophy always was to pack up pounds of goodies before we went anywhere with the car, even if the trip was a short one to the beach or something. We’d pile in to the car, several of us, the kids on the floor in the back — no seat belts or safety regulations in those days — and almost as soon as we left she would ask if anyone wanted a peach or a plum or maybe even a sandwich or a drink from the gigantic thermos she brought.

I should carry food in the car.

There was no grilling when I got home. Thank goodness for hangar steaks which cook quickly. Steak and corn on the cob, followed by a real treat to help me relax after a bad trip: popcorn. Good to be home at last.

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Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Cookies and milk. It’s the snack we got when we came home from school. My mother, who started to work when I entered the 4th grade, somehow found the time to bake cookies three or four times a week.

There were no other snacks during the day. It’s not as if my parents were depriving us or trying to get us to eat less junk. It’s just the way it was for us, and as far as I knew, for everyone else. When I went to a friend’s house I also got cookies and milk, maybe not homemade cookies but Oreos or sugar wafers, sometimes Vienna Fingers (all three with a goodly amount of white icing).

Today is National Junk Food Day, which a lot of people use as an excuse to eat … a lot of junk. But do we really need to set aside a day to do what so many of us already do?

Btw, it’s not really a national holiday. That takes an act of Congress and, no matter what you think about our government, no one in his or her right mind would propose a national day on which we should eat (and have our children eat) junk.

First Lady Michelle Obama is actually trying to take a critical look at childhood obesity (the Let’s Move campaign). Maybe there’s a way to keep the kids, and ourselves, from getting fatter and fatter.

I say, let’s start by having only one snack a day. I say cookies and milk. How about Oatmeal-Chocolate Chip Cookies? Here’s an easy recipe:

Oatmeal-Chocolate Chip Cookies

3 cups quick cooking oats

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

12 tablespoons (1-1/2 sticks) butter

3/4 cup white sugar

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 large egg

1/4 cup apple juice, orange juice or water

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1-1/2 cups chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a cookie sheet (or two). Combine the oats, flour, salt and baking soda. Set aside. Place the butter, white sugar and brown sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer (or a large bowl) and beat on medium speed for 2-3 minutes or until creamy and well blended (or use a hand mixer). Add the egg, juice and vanilla extract and blend them in thoroughly. Add the oat-flour mixture and blend it in thoroughly. Mix in the chocolate chips. Drop the dough (a mounded tablespoon worth)  onto the cookie sheet, leaving room for the cookies to spread. Bake for about 10 minutes or until set and lightly browned. Let cool slightly, then remove to a wire rack to cool completely. Repeat with remaining dough. Makes about 4 dozen

For more about National Junk Food Day see: http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/food/article/Healthy-ways-to-celebrate-Junk-Food-Day-577270.php

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Shakshouka - Peppers n' Eggs for Meatless Monday

Just because there’s a Meatless Monday doesn’t mean your only alternative at dinner is a plateful of boring steamed vegetables.

The idea of eating “meatless” for an entire day started in World War 1 and continued through the Second World War as an effort to ration meat to make it available to the troops. Anyone growing up just after WW11 has heard about the ration stamps; my Mom always talked about how difficult it was to get meat back then. But she was a creative and good cook so she’d make macaroni and cheese, spaghetti and tomato sauce, potato omelets and other wonderful dinners when she couldn’t buy meat.

She continued those meals occasionally even through the 1950s and 60s. No one complained. When food tastes good you don’t complain whether there’s meat in it or not. In fact, you don’t miss the meat.

Today we’ve latched onto the Meatless Monday idea as a health matter. Americans typically eat too much meat so giving it up for a day could make us healthier.

Still, for people who love to eat well, the best reason to cook any dish is because it tastes delicious. Try this meatless recipe for Peppers and Eggs. It’s from my book, Hip Kosher. It’s a quickie version of Shakshouka, an Israeli dish that has stewed tomatoes and peppers and then you cook an egg right on top of the vegetables, in the same pan. This dish is spicy, filling and easy to cook. Add a piece of pita or chunk of bread and you’re done with dinner. It could be preceded by cold soup or with a salad.

The recipe calls for zatar as a final seasoning; zatar is a Middle Eastern spice mixture. You can make Shakshouka without it, but zatar is so tasty, why not get a jar and use it for vinaigrette dressing or on top of chicken and so on and so on?

Peppers and Eggs

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

1 medium onion, chopped

1 red bell pepper, deseeded and chopped

2 small habanero or other chili peppers, deseeded and chopped

1 large clove garlic, chopped

6-8 plum tomatoes, coarsely chopped

1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh basil

1 tablespoon lemon juice

8 large eggs

3/4 teaspoon zatar

Heat the olive oil in a large saute pan over medium heat. Add the onion and peppers. Cook for 4-5 minutes or until softened. Add the garlic and cook briefly. Add the tomatoes, basil and lemon juice, stir, cover the pan, turn the heat to low and cook for 8-10 minutes, stirring occasionally, or until the vegetables are very soft and sauce-like. Crack the eggs into a bowl one at a time (to make sure they are okay), then transfer each one to the pan over the vegetables. Cover the pan and cook for 4-5 minutes or until the eggs are set but are still slightly runny. Sprinkle with zatar. Serve each person 2 eggs with some of the vegetables. Makes 4 servings

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Peach Macaroon Ice Cream

Succulent summer peaches plus crumbled macaroons — two terrific additions that transform plain vanilla ice cream into something special.

Don’t get me wrong. I love vanilla ice cream. I spent my childhood defending my preference for “boring!” to a cousin who insisted that real ice cream eaters eat only chocolate and that those little specks in the vanilla ice cream were, in fact, dirt.

But while good vanilla ice cream remains unsurpassed, at least in my opinion, sometimes you just want something different for a change. Peaches are ripe and ready now. Macaroons are the cookies of the moment. So — put them together and make ice cream. Here’s a recipe — it’s easy because there aren’t any eggs to beat and cook:

Peach Macaroon Ice Cream

2-3/4 cups half and half

3/4 cup apricot nectar

3/4 cup sugar

6 ripe peaches, peeled and chopped

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 cup crushed macaroons

1 teaspoon almond extract

Combine the cream, apricot nectar and sugar in a saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves and small bubbles form around the edges of the pan. Remove from the heat and refrigerate the mixture until cold. Combine the peaches and lemon juice and stir into the cold cream mixture. Place in an ice cream maker and mix according to manufacturer’s directions. When the mixture is partially frozen, add the macaroons and almond extract. Continue mixing until the desired consistency has been reached. Makes about one quart

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Peaches and Cream

The peaches this season have been trickle-down-your-arm juicy. I’ve been eating them for breakfast all week, cut up with yogurt. Greek yogurt. I’m especially fond of Chobani 0%, which is thick but light and creamy, like sour cream.

Which got me thinking about sour cream, which was a staple at our house when I was growing up. Forget yogurt. No one I knew ate any. Sour cream was the thing. It was full fat, thick and smooth. In the summer my mother would serve it with cut up peaches mixed in. She sprinkled the top with sugar and told me to wait a couple of minutes for the sugar to melt. You could see the crystals clinging to the surface of the cream, but little by little they would change from white to clear and then you knew it was time to dig in.

The first bite was a cold, blissful rush, both tangy and sweet fruit, the melting sugar crystals still slightly crunchy to the teeth.

That dish, plus bread and butter, was dinner on a sweltering night.

I miss it. Peaches and yogurt makes a good breakfast, but it isn’t quite up to the dish with the sour cream and sugar on top, even with great peaches.

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Ketchup, the new condiment. Really?

Really. There were all sorts at New York’s Fancy Food Show a few weeks ago. Curry. Chili. Etc.

I guess ketchup will finally hit its stride and take a proud place among the other bottles of sauces, salsas, oils and chutneys that line the shelves of upscale food shops. Critics have always cast aspersions on the stuff but Americans never cared. We are unabashed ketchup lovers (during the Reagan administration the USDA declared ketchup a vegetable, suitable for school lunch. That decision was later reversed.).

My neighbor growing up splashed ketchup on the usual burgers and fries. Also scrambled eggs and chicken soup. Millions of Americans have found astonishing uses for the condiment.

Ketchup is not new of course. It was invented centuries ago, but it wasn’t tomato ketchup then. It started out as a salty fish-based sauce that English sailors brought back from their travels to China. Some clever cook then substituted mushrooms for the fish and the first vegetable ketchup was born. In the old days there was cranberry ketchup, and grape, walnut, cucumber and so on.

Tomato ketchup is a relative newcomer, invented sometime in the 1700s. But it wasn’t an iconic ingredient in the culinary establishment until the 19th century, when sugar became cheap and easy to process.

So now are we coming full circle?

I can’t say what’s in store for the store shelves. But if you’d like to take a crack at a new kind of ketchup here’s one for Plum Ketchup. You’re in luck — red plums are gloriously in season now so you’ll find plenty of them.

Plum Ketchup

4 pounds ripe red plums, pitted

2 medium onions, finely chopped

1 cup white sugar

3/4 cup dark brown sugar

1-1/2 teaspoons salt

1-1/2 teaspoons grund cinnamon

1-1/2 teaspoons powdered mustard

3/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

1/4 teaspoon ground allspice

1-3/4 cups cider vinegar

Place the plums and onions in a large, non-reactive saucepan. Cover with water. Bring to a boil over high heat. Lower the heat to medium and simmer for 20 minutes or until the ingredients are tender. Drain. Return the cooked plums and onions to the pan. Add the white sugar, brown sugar, salt, cinnamon, mustard, nutmeg, cloves, allspice and vinegar. Stir to blend ingredients. Bring the mixture to a simmer and cook for 1-1/2 to 2 hours, stirring occasionally, until the mixture is very thick. Let cool. Keep refrigerated (you can bottle this using jars, lids, etc.; process according to manufacturer’s instructions). Makes about one quart

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Happy Bastille Day

A French Apple Omelette could be the most delicious way to celebrate. Have it for breakfast, lunch or dinner. It’s fast, easy and good.

I first served Omelette aux Pommes at a brunch. I got those looks — the kind of monkey faces kids usually give you when you serve them something new — from two of my guests. They didn’t get the idea of a sweet omelet and said their last memory of one was the grape jelly omelet they got at camp.

But tasting is believing. They are now believers. Because a French fruit omelet combines a salty-sweet sensation that beguiles your palate. You’ll try it again, next time with strawberries or peaches because it’s too good not to.

Omelette aux Pommes

2 medium tart apples (such as Granny Smith)

3-1/2 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons whipping cream or half and half

1 tablespoon brandy, preferably apple brandy

4-5 large eggs, beaten

salt to taste

confectioner’s sugar

Preheat the oven broiler. Peel, core and cut the apples into thin slices. Heat 2 tablespoons of the butter in an omelet pan or other skillet with rounded sides. When the butter has melted and looks foamy, add the apples and cook over medium heat for 2 minutes. Sprinkle the apples with the sugar and continue to cook, stirring frequently, for several minutes or until the apples begin to caramelize to a light brown. Stir in the cream and brandy, cook for a few seconds and remove the mixture to a bowl. Set aside. Wipe out the pan with paper towels. Heat the remaining butter in the pan over medium heat. When the butter has melted and looks foamy, pour in the eggs. After a few seconds, stir the mixture using a fork and continue to cook the eggs, tilting the pan occasionally and moving cooked egg portions with a fork, to allow uncooked eggs to get to the bottom of the pan. When the eggs are nearly set, but still moist, spoon the apple mixture on top. Remove the pan from the heat. Fold the omelet in half or thirds. Sprinkle with some confectioner’s sugar. Place the pan under the broiler for a few seconds until the confectioner’s sugar melts and browns lightly, giving a glazed and crispy finish to the eggs. Place the omelet on a serving platter and serve. Makes 4 servings

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