green beans: boy howdy!

One busy day last week, I hadn't planned on doing much cooking. But then I made sesame green beans for lunch, mixed up some ice cream after work and, let's say, freshened up some jarred pasta sauce with some sauteed summer squash for dinner. None of this was very intensive, but on a day that I'd figured would allow time for nothing but a bowl of cereal, it felt pretty good.

Not long before, Whole Foods downtown had been making a big deal of a new crop of asparagus. And rightly so — I've been ready for it since reading this recipe. I was loitering in the produce section sampling orange wedges and red grapes when I saw a guy behind a wok handing out bites of asparagus stir fried with sesame seeds. As my dad says: boy howdy. The Asian flavors made it so much more interesting than the relatively plain asparagus I'd eaten before.

This is all leading to the green beans I got in my latest vegetable delivery. They're the same size, shape and color as asparagus and, most importantly, were already in my fridge. So I trimmed, blanched, then sauteed them according to the asparagus recipe when I went home during my lunch break — which means this comes together fast. I didn't have sesame seeds, but the sesame oil on its own does the trick. Again: boy howdy! Scrounging for samples in the grocery store pays off.

Later, I acted on an idea that I think makes me a genius, as I've been telling my more eaterly friends since it struck me. So normally, you buy horchata at a taqueria, you drink it, it tastes like the milk leftover after a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and you love it. My idea: throw it in an ice cream maker!

However, it seems I'm not the only genius to think of converting this flavor into ice cream. And I have to report that I experimented, and my lazy method isn't really worth it — it all turns out too icy. So now I'm trying to figure out how I can turn horchata from El Taquito into really creamy ice cream without too much extra work. Maybe use it in place of milk in that Bojon Gourmet recipe? I suppose that lets me skip toasting the rice but I'd still have to cook the eggs. And I'm going for real laziness. Any ideas?

Sesame green beans

Appropriated from an asparagus recipe from Whole Foods

This recipe is labeled as serving four to six as a side, or halved it serves me for lunch. I learned something terrific at a cooking class I took not long ago, which also happened to be at Whole Foods: you can blanche vegetables way ahead of when you want to use them! Just make sure you dry them and seal them up before storing in the refrigerator for a week or so.

1 pound green beans

Half of a lemon

1 Tbsp. toasted sesame oil

1 Tbsp. sesame seeds

A sprinkling of flaky finishing salt

Trim the green beans and blanch them for two to three minutes. Heat a large skillet on medium high. Sprinkle half of the sesame seeds in a pan for a flash toasting.

Pour in the oil. Add the green beans and cook for two to three minutes, then move them to a bowl. Squeeze fresh lemon over and add salt to taste. Add remaining sesame seeds to garnish.

recipe for a great easter sunday

It starts the evening before. Make a yeast dough for hot cross buns and let it sit in the fridge overnight. The buns will have to be baked in the morning since you're out of cinnamon and raisins and there's no time to go to the store. There's music to see: Sleigh Bells is in town!

Wake up around 9:30 Sunday after a few snooze hits. The dough's already mixed, so there's plenty of time before the 1 p.m. lunch with family to add in the dried fruit, sugar and spice and let it rise for another hour before 20 minutes of baking time. Except the empty H-E-B parking lot tells you the grocery stores are closed. Oh yeah — it's Easter! Let's see, Farm to Market is way too local to be open. Would a gas station stock cinnamon and raisins? Nah. A warning: this will prompt frustration that results in a harried sweeping of the entire house — because at least dingy floors are a frustration with an obvious solution.

Miguel's dad is visiting, so breakfast is barbacoa tacos. As if barbacoa itself wasn't miracle enough, how about a boyfriend who has the bright idea of driving to Wal-Mart for cinnamon and raisins while he's out picking up breakfast? Yes! The only thing is, after showering and eating and sweeping like mad, there's no time left to bake buns before lunch.

As it turns out, the 16 family members likely to show up on Easter are with the other sides of their families. A giant holiday feast turns into a super casual lunch for three — just you and the parents. You have time to really catch up, talk about Easter and work and the idiosyncrasies of grandmas. And they wouldn't be happy if you'd brought several dozen sticky buns to leave at their house, so it's best that the dough's still at home.

Next, drink a cappuccino and loiter for a few hours with a buddy who works at your favorite coffee shop. (Open on Easter!) Discuss the new indie movie theater opening this week and the recurrent topics of barbecue and The Wire. Decide you've been on hold in the middle of Season 3 for too long, pick up a pizza for dinner and go watch what Omar is up to. Watch one episode while you eat, another while your dough balls rise and a third one while they bake.

Decide not to worry that the eggs in the fridge are, let's say, passé. Make a glaze of powdered sugar and milk that will taste good even if it doesn't hold a cross shape. Finally, buns!

Hey, I tried.

Hot cross buns

From The Pioneer Woman Cooks

Makes 18 buns or many more smaller ones if you've forgotten, like I did, how big a ping pong ball is

Hot cross buns are traditionally eaten on Good Friday, but I have tested and verified the theory that they taste good any day of the week, even post-holiday for breakfast. And even if they're not quite round.

2 cups whole milk

½ cup canola oil

½ cup, plus ¼ cup sugar, divided

1 package (2 1/4 tsp.) active dry yeast

4 cups, plus ½ cup all-purpose flour, divided

½ tsp. (heaping) baking powder

½ tsp. (scant) baking soda

2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. cinnamon (plus a few extra shakes because you can't overdo it with cinnamon)

Cardamom, nutmeg and allspice (optional)

½ cup raisins

2 whole egg whites

Splashes of milk

Powdered sugar

For the buns

Combine 2 cups milk, canola oil and sugar in a saucepan. Stir and heat until very warm but not boiling. Turn off the heat and allow to cool until mixture is still warm, but not hot — about 30 minutes.

Sprinkle yeast over mixture. Add 4 cups of flour and stir to combine. Mixture will be very sticky. Cover with a towel and set aside for one hour.

Add half cup flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Stir until combined. At this point, you can let it sit for a while covered with a tea towel, cover it and put it in the refrigerator overnight or just move on to the next step.

Combine 1/4 cup sugar with cinnamon and whatever other spices you want to use.

Lightly flour surface. Press to slightly flatten dough. Sprinkle a couple tablespoons of the sugar/cinnamon mixture. Sprinkle on about a third of the raisins. Then fold the dough over on itself and flatten again so the dough is “plain” again. Repeat the sugar/raisin process, then fold the dough again. Repeat a third time until all the raisins are used. (You won’t use all the sugar/cinnamon mixture.)

Pinch off ping pong or golf ball-size bunches of dough. With floured hands, quickly roll it into a ball, then turn the edges under themselves slightly. Place on a lightly greased cookie sheet. Cover and allow to rise in a warm place for at least 30 minutes. An hour-plus is better.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

Mix one egg white with a splash of milk. Brush onto each roll.

Bake for 20 minutes, give or take, or until tops of buns have turned nice and golden brown.

Remove from pan and allow to cool on a cooling rack.

For the icing

Mix one egg white with enough powdered sugar for icing to be very thick. Splash in milk as needed for consistency.

Add icing to a small plastic bag and snip the corner. Making sure the rolls are completely cooled first, make icing crosses on each roll.

baked goods galore

Bake Sale for Japan on South Congress Avenue

Holy moly. The Bake Sale for Japan was a terrific way to spend a Friday night of baking and a Saturday morning of fundraising, visiting with Austin bakers and bloggers and buying up homemade treats that look good enough to be in a bakery case. I wish I'd reported back on it here sooner, but this time my slovenly ways aren't to blame for putting blogging on the back burner. It's just been a heck of a busy two weeks!

But don't feel too bad for me — sometimes busy means hiking, ice cream with a new buddy (met at the bake sale!) and late nights with these fine folks. Full days are good days.

So back to the update: the Austin bake sale raised more than $11,500! Donations were given to Americares to support medical and humanitarian aid efforts for people affected by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. One man walking by with his son bought a bag of cookies and said he'd tell his family members in Japan what people in Austin were doing to help. And really, the bounty these bakers provided was amazing. Three long tables were piled high with cookies, breads, cupcakes, tarts, muffins, cake pops, truffles and on and on. There were vegan cupcakes and gluten-free brownies. Potato chip cookies and Star Wars cookies. Homemade pop tarts, plum jam financiers and huckleberry cakelets (these three were my favorites). There was no shortage of generosity.

And because blogs are about sharing, if not always timeliness, I'll post the recipes for the cookies I brought, the ones in that box above. The ginger molasses chocolate chip ones I'd made several times before, but this time they unexpectedly spread out pretty flat in the oven — the same way the batch of cookies I made for my birthday party did. I started to think I'd lost my cookie-baking mojo. Especially when I also had to abandon my super cute plans for the linzer cookies. Picture two rectangular cookies sandwiching red berry jam that's visible through a round hole in the top cookie — the Japanese flag in linzer cookie form! But with a sticky dough that refused to be cut, I once again had to face my inability to cute-ify and just hoped they tasted good. With a recipe that called for three sticks of butter, not tasting good wasn't even an option.

My attempt to get sunlight in this picture means you can see

a bit of the first plant I've ever sustained, a pot of paperwhites!

Mini Linzer Cookies

From The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook via Food Network

Yields 36 cookies

3 sticks unsalted butter at room temperature

1 cup granulated sugar

1 tsp. pure vanilla extract

3½ cups flour

¼ teaspoon salt

¾ cup raspberry preserves (I used the brightest red strawberry jam I could find but something not so sweet would have tasted better)

Confectioners' sugar, for dusting

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix together the butter and sugar until they are just combined. Add the vanilla. In a medium bowl, sift together the flour and salt, then add them to the butter and sugar. Mix on low speed until the dough starts to come together. Dump onto a surface dusted with flour and shape into a flat disk. Wrap in plastic and chill for 30 minutes.

Roll the dough 1/4-inch thick and cut 2 3/4-inch rounds with a plain or fluted cutter. With half of the rounds, cut a hole from the middle of each round with a small heart-shaped cutter. [Alternatively, to make small discs without the hole, roll out 1-inch balls and flatten them slightly with your palm on the cookie sheet.] Place all the cookies on an ungreased baking sheet and chill for 15 minutes.

Bake the cookies for 20 to 25 minutes or until the edges begin to brown. Allow to cool to room temperature. Spread raspberry preserves on the flat side of each solid cookie. Dust the top of the cut-out cookies with confectioners' sugar and press the flat sides together, with the raspberry preserves in the middle and the confectioners' sugar on the top.

Cookie dough casting dramatic shadows.

Chocolate Chip Ginger-Molasses Cookies

From Molly Wizenberg of Orangette

Yields about 40 cookies

The original version of this recipe from Orangette calls for a half cup of butter and a quarter cup of vegetable shortening, but I went all-butter. And dark molasses and not blackstrap molasses is best here. Also, I've now learned for good how to spell molasses after writing it repeatedly on those labels!

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

2 ½ tsp. ground ginger

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

½ tsp. ground allspice

2 tsp. baking soda

¾ tsp. salt

1¼ cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

½ cup finely chopped crystallized ginger

1½ sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature

½ cup granulated sugar

½ cup packed brown sugar

1 large egg

¼ cup unsulphured molasses

½ cup demerara sugar, for rolling (I had turbinado)

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, ginger, cinnamon, allspice, baking soda, and salt. Whisk well. Add the chocolate chips and crystallized ginger and whisk to blend. Set aside.

In a large bowl – preferably, a stand mixer – beat the butter and shortening briefly to soften them. Add the sugars, and beat until fluffy, scraping down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula as needed. Add the egg and the molasses and beat to blend well, scraping down the sides as needed. Add the flour mixture in two doses, beating briefly after each until the flour is just absorbed. Do not overmix. Use a rubber spatula to give the dough a final stir if necessary; it will be quite firm and stiff. Cover the bowl, and refrigerate for one to two hours.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone liners. Pour the demerara sugar into a small bowl.

Using damp hands, pinch off blobs of dough and roll them into 1¼- to 1½-inch balls. Roll each ball in sugar to coat. Place them 2 inches apart on the baking sheets. Roll only about eight balls per sheet at a time and cover and refrigerate the remaining dough.

Bake the cookies until they are cracked on top but still soft to the touch, about 12 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through. Cool on the sheets for one minute, then carefully transfer the cookies – still on the parchment or silicone liner – to wire racks to cool completely. When they are cool, remove them from the parchment or silicone liner.

When the baking sheets have cooled, repeat with more dough.

bake sale for japan

Saturday morning is going to be great. I'll be sitting out in front of Hotel San Jose on South Congress with more than 20 bakers who have signed up to contribute to Austin Bakes for Japan. So many things about this event strike me as being really special: for one thing, multiple bake sales are happening at the same time nationwide (Austin alone has five locations). Then there's the fact that people who mostly, I'm assuming, don't know each other and won't meet in person until they arrive to set things up are making this happen. Yay, Internet!

And, of course, the cause of this benefit is certainly worthy of attention. I love the idea that getting together to meet neighbors over treats and good will is just a side effect of something that's already worth doing.

I'm bringing ginger-molasses chocolate chip cookies and linzer cookies with strawberry jam. And, it just occurred to me, cash so I can try other people's goodies. Photos and recipes to come!

Funds raised at this event go to AmeriCares. Find the Austin bake sales at these locations:

Downtown Austin: Woof Gang Bakery

1204 North Lamar Blvd., 78703

East Austin: Nomad Bar

1213 Corona Drive, 78723

West Austin: The Shops at Mira Vista

2785 Bee Cave Road, 78746

Central Austin: Foreign & Domestic

306 E. 53rd St., 78751

South Austin: Hotel San Jose

1511 South Congress Ave., 78704

my name is beth, and i just finished eating barbacoa tacos

I plan to start making a similar statement after each meal.

garam masala improves everything

Here's an odd tidbit: last night I dreamed I was rummaging through a drawer of kitchen utensils, then realized whose it was once I saw a tiny fish-shaped cookie cutter mixed in with some spatulas. My unconscious squealed, "I'm in the Smitten Kitchen!"

I told Miguel this in the morning, and he said he'd dreamed about Kevin Nealon guesting on Weekend Update, just like the old days. Then Jerry Seinfeld piped up and said, "I had a dream last night that a hamburger was eating me!"

Well, anyway. I wonder if my dream means A) I spend way too much time reading food blogs, or B) I should make those Pepperidge Farm replicas myself. It could also mean I should diversify my recipe sources, as crazy as I am for well-tested and well-photographed SK cooking. So tonight I cooked dinner from the Whole Foods website: collards with lentils, tomatoes and Indian spices. For once, I already had all the ingredients on hand, thanks to my delivered bushel, of course.

I admit to feeling a little weird while I took this picture of vegetables.

With a cake or finished dish, it's something I made, sort of an accomplishment.

This, I just found on my doorstep. Still, aren't they pretty?!

I used a green onion that came with my delivery and something that could be either collard greens or kale — I'm honestly not sure. First, the onion is chopped and — get this — sauteed in water. Or maybe there's a more precise cooking term for that. (Do you know it?) Whatever it was, I'd never cooked onions and garlic that way before. Later, I looked at the nutrition info given with the recipe and saw that a serving has zero fat and zero cholesterol. When have I ever prepared something to fit that bill? That's what happens when you skip the olive oil, I suppose. I should really make cookies now.

On to the next step. As soon as the garam masala hit the pan, the smell seemed to slow that 20-minute cooking time to a crawl. When the timer finally beeped, it was full of deep color and an even better smell. Not to mention the taste. Made from a few basic ingredients and somehow with no additional salt, it reminded me of this Moroccan dinner. I'd say simple and from the pantry is the way to go.

Collards with lentils, tomatoes and Indian spices

From Whole Foods Market

Serves 4

1 medium onion, chopped

4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced

2 teaspoons garam masala

1 (15-ounce) can diced tomatoes

1 bunch collard greens, thick stems removed and leaves sliced into 1-inch-thick ribbons

1 cup red lentils

Bring 1/2 cup water to a simmer in a large deep skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion and garlic and cook for five minutes or until onion is translucent. Stir in garam masala and cook for one minute. Add tomatoes and their juices with 1 cup water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and stir in collards. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, combine lentils and 2 cups of water in a medium pot. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook about 8 minutes or until lentils are tender. Stir lentils into skillet with collards and serve.

it's italian for 'layer'

Loose-leaf lettuces, spinach, turnips, hot house tomatoes,

cilantro, broccoli, oranges, chard and leeks!

In my first few days with Farmhouse Delivery vegetables filling my refrigerator drawers, I learned for sure what I had suspected: signing up to have a lot of vegetables around doesn't mean you're set for groceries. It means buying more accompaniments — cheeses and breads and beans and grains are what turn greens into meals. In case I'm making it sound like it, I should be clear and say this is not a bad thing. See below:

Before being doused with egg.

This is a Gourmet spinach and cheese strata I found by way of Deb. What she calls a do-ahead brunch meal, I'm calling lunch and dinner for the next few days. With the exception of eggs, milk and cheese, the major ingredients (you know, not seasoning and oil) for this recipe came from my bushel bin — my first-time delivery came with a free whole wheat baguette, too!

These remind of a calendar I had that cracked me up daily.

It took a small bit of adapting. For one thing, I don't need to eat six to eight servings of an eggy brunch dish on my own (Miguel's not into quiche-like things, surprise), so I halved it. I also used leeks instead of the onion called for and fresh spinach instead of frozen and sort of guessed at how much bread and spinach I could fit in. I'm pretty sure this is fine because it seems like the kind of recipe you could get away with filling any old way.

I accidentally added all the salt and pepper to the vegetables rather than saving some for the eggnog-like mixture that gets poured over the whole thing, but to no ill effect. It's cheesy and satisfying, the two best adjectives that can go with food, and reheats quite well. While the whole point of the strata was to put fresh vegetables to use — and it is a wonderful way to do that — I have to confess: my favorite bites are heavy on baguette.

Finito!

Next up: what to do with turnips? Any suggestions?

Spinach and cheese strata

Adapted from Gourmet

Serves three to four

1 1/2 Tbsp. unsalted butter

3/4 cups finely chopped onion or leeks
1 large bunch of spinach, roughly torn

1/2 tsp. salt, divided
1/4 tsp. black pepper, divided
1/8 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
4 cups baguette in 1-inch cubes (1/2 lb)
3 ounces coarsely grated Emmentaler cheese (1 cup)
1 ounce shredded Parmesan
Just under 1 1/2 cups milk
5 large eggs
1 Tbsp. Dijon mustard

Sauté onion in butter in a large, heavy skillet over medium heat until soft, about three minutes. Stir in spinach and add 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1/8 teaspoon pepper and the nutmeg. Continue cooking until the spinach is wilted. Remove from heat and set aside.

Spread one third of the bread cubes in a well-buttered ceramic baking dish. Top with one-third of the spinach mixture and one-third of each cheese. Repeat layering twice with remaining bread, spinach and cheese.

Whisk together eggs, milk, mustard and remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/8 teaspoon pepper in a large measuring cup and pour it evenly over the strata. Cover the strata with plastic wrap and chill it for eat least eight hours or up to a day.

The next day, let it stand at room temperature for 30 minutes while preheating the oven to 350°F. Bake strata, uncovered, in middle of oven until puffed, golden brown and cooked through, 45 to 55 minutes. Let stand five minutes before serving.