NothingButFood

Sometime within the past three months, a spice table was setup in the main corridor in Chelsea Market, right outside the Manhattan Fruit Exchanges. The selection of spices is pretty phenomenal. I haven’t seen anything like this open air table other than in the Middle East and Asia.

Here are a couple pictures for you. If you’re a foodie, this should get you pretty excited.

Looks like it’s been WAY too long since I posted anything here. I just made up a new schedule to update the site so let’s see how this works:

• Weekly video: Recipe/Shopping/Ideas
• Weekly Book Review (that should be pretty easy)
• Weekly Site Review (again, let’s give credit to other people)
• 3 Recipes of the Week – External links to recipes I find
• Pictures of Food

That should do it. It gives me one update a day, but stays simple. I’ll put the pieces in place this weekend and start on Monday.

When I saw the recipe page on the New York Times this morning I smiled because knew I was going to do something dangerous. I am going to let my 7 year old daughter take control of the kitchen and make some Sweet or Savory Puffs. I did it last week with my 10 year old son when he pulled down the Once Upon a Tart cookbook and started mixing up a batch of ginger cookies.

We live in such controlled times that it’s seldom that kids are off the lease long enough to actually learn something through a dangerous situation. The danger? A fully lit, gas burning stove and a 425 degree oven. Is this something a 7 year old should be able to do? My answer is an unqualified yes.

Gever Tulley got me thinking a couple years ago when he wrote 50 Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do). We’re not talking about running into the street in front of a semi or something. We’re talking about allowing kids to take chances to learn, to experiment and to get excited that something might go wrong.

I’m the kind of dad who bought a couple liters of diet coke, a pack of Menthos and took the kids outside to spray the neighborhood park with the explosion that happened.

With all that said, yes, I will supervise the making of the puffs, but she’s going to turn on the stove, she’s going to preheat the oven, she’s going put the tins in the oven and she’s going to pull them out when it’s time. She’s going to have a good life experience that she can be proud of… and be excited about the chance to do something dangerous.

I was at Kalustyans a while back and grabbed a bag of interesting looking red, Thai sticky rice. It’s been sitting at home for months, where I saw it on the back of the shelf whenever I was pushing peanut butter jars and dried beans out of the way looking for brown rice. I finally gave up trying to ignore that it was there and decided to figure out a great way to use it.

Instead of steaming the red sticky rice, I covered it with generous amounts of water and simmered it lightly for 20 minutes. While that was going on, I soaked a cup of dried cranberries in warm water to soften them up. I lightly sauted some onions and garlic, tossed them in a bowl with a little orange juice and lemon juice, a couple good shakes of cumin powder, cinnamon  and two ground up cardamon pods. Figuring I’d need a little more contrasting color, I chopped up a handful of parsley

While the rice was cooking, I cubed a small butternut squash, tossed it with a tablespoon of olive oil and baked it in the oven on 425 for 15 minutes. This was going to be the great way to “crown” the serving dish.

When the rice was done, I stirred it up well with the juice mixture, the drained cranberries and salt/pepper. The rice needed to sit a couple minute to absorb the flavors of the juices, so I took that time to pan roast a hand full of chopped walnuts, throwing them into the rice for a little added crunch.

After transferring the warm rice salad to a good sized serving bowl, all that was left was to “crown” the dish with the roasted butternut squash. The family gave me high marks on this one. A good, filling, warm salad that is extremely light on the budget. This one’s a keeper.

Resources: The idea for this dish came from “What would Cathy eat?“,